Season 2, Episode 4: Presenting History (with guest host Dr. Karen Bellinger)

Lucy & Laura are joined by the ever brilliant Dr. Karen Bellinger, who in this episode helped us delve into field of presenting history and provided insightful tips on being an historian in front of the camera...

From podcasts to documentaries to social media, we took an in depth look at what exactly goes into the art of presenting when building a portfolio career in history. 
 
A massive thank you to our wonderful guest Karen, you can find her on….

X: @theTimeScribe
Instagram: @thetimescribe

You can also catch Karen's podcast that Laura & Lucy both featured on - 

X: @WorkingOTseries
Instagram: @workingovertimepod

As for us you can find us on:

X: @HistBizAGuide
Instagram: @historybusinessaguide

For Laura:

X:  @laurafitzach
IG:  @seekthehistoric
Tik Tok: @seekthehistoric
Threads: @seekthehistoric

For Lucy:

X: @lucyjanesantos_
IG: @lucyjanesantos_   
YouTube: @lucyjanesantos_
Substack: https://lucyjanesantos.substack.com/

Until next time!

Transcript

00:00:16 Laura Fitzachary

From podcasts, documentaries to social media today, we are taking an in-depth look at what exactly goes into the art of presenting when building a portfolio career in history. Welcome to History business, a guide to being a historian for hire a new podcast taking an honest look at building a freelance or portfolio career in the field of history. 

I suppose we should introduce ourselves first. My name is Laura. I'm a historian and historical consultant, educator, writer, researcher and presenter whose background lies in mediaeval art and museum studies. But then later, 18th century social history, in particular the history of fashion and beauty. And this week I've been working away on conference abstracts for next year in an attempt to balance profession development and present new work.

00:01:07 Lucy Jane Santos

And I'm Lucy Jane Santos. I'm a historical consultant, researcher, writer and presenter specialising in examining the historic crossroads of health, leisure and beauty with science and technology. And this week I've been doing some work into the history of automated services. So in this case, automatic buffets, those places where you put a coin in the slot and you get your food and your drink.

I mean, I always associate those with the 1940s and 50s in the US, and I think it's because there's a Doris Day film where there where they go to one, which I'm obviously was obsessed with at some point. But I'm actually researching one from 1903 in the Embankment gardens in London at the moment, which is actually really, really exciting.

00:01:48 Lucy Jane Santos

So in this week's episode of History Business, we are going to be talking to Dr Karen Bellinger. Karen is an anthropologist, a historical archaeologist, and she works as a popular media communicator and educator across TV, podcasts and various interactive platforms.

Karen was the host of Working Overtime Podcast, which is a fantastic listen covering lots of different topics, and she's also trained as a field archaeologist and archival historian. So Karen has investigated sites in Europe, Africa and North and South America, exploring human behaviour from prehistory through the modern day.

 This episode is going to be good- I can feel it. 

You can find Karen on 

Twitter: @theTimeScribe

https://www.instagram.com/thetimescribe/

So welcome to the show, Karen.

00:02:36 Karen Bellinger

Thank you both of you ladies are delightful past guests on Working Overtime. In fact, that's really how we met, isn't it? While ago now while ago now. Well, it's my pleasure to be in the hot seat.

Thank you for your very nice introduction. Listening to my intros, I always reminded of what a mongrel. I am in some respects just sort of backed into being a little bit of a jack of all trades.

And you know, just to sort of dive right into our topic, I think. Some of that has been the fact that I have landed in popular media and it really is useful to be more of a generalist in popular media, whereas you know in academia what is valued is very narrow focus and frankly. A focus that I felt at times gets a little siloed, a little arcane, and it becomes a bit of conversation you have well, if not with yourself, sadly, writing things that no one ever reads. The same group of experts in a small specialty. 

So I'm really excited to talk to you about how I've sort of landed where I am and how I've become a mongrel.

00:03:57 Laura Fitzachary

And so to kick off then with our questions. Thank you so much for joining us. We are so delighted to have you. Karen, how did you first become interested in presenting history? And what drew you to this field?

00:04:09 Karen Bellinger

Well, The funny thing is I well -I will disappoint on two levels here. I am not one of those people who from the time I was three years old, knew I wanted to be an archaeologist. I actually came to it quite late. I loved literature. I've always been a writer, a reader and a writer, and my undergraduate degree is actually in literature. It's my graduate degrees that are in anthropology and archaeology.

And so I became interested in, well, what's the meaning of literature and why do we write stories? Why do we read them? And you know, it's really the, the purpose of life and what it means to be human. And I kind of got a little tired of being constricted to the page with that and realised by the time I finished that undergraduate degree that I actually wanted to look at those questions in real life, you know and so that's that was history for me. I knew I wasn't, you know, interested in going to say politics or something like that. I wanted to study the human condition in the past. And so I launched into the academic career that one normally follows from completing a PhD in anthropology with a specialty and historic historic period archaeology in my case in the United States, which means sort of early modern period forward. It's a misnomer to say it's any culture for which we have written records, you know, because you know, Egyptology is not considered historical archaeology in any way shape or form. But of course we benefit from many texts in that culture, so historical archaeology is a little bit of a North American specific term.

00:05:44 

But I you know, I love to teach. Obviously, I love to talk. I love to talk about these subjects with people, but anyone who will listen to me, I'm probably very tiresome at a cocktail party. But I enjoyed very much the part of academia which involves interacting with students. I loved field work. I particularly loved teaching field archaeology, but I just knew pretty early on that I wasn't cut out for the way in which you're required to kind of jam everything into these boxes and there's a certain academic language that is acceptable that I just found very dry and sad. You know, it's just this is the greatest stories in the world or even history. And I like a little more freedom. I mean, I like to think that I don't stray off into the sensational even when I'm on a television programme that would like me to. But, you know, there was that. But that said TV never occurred to me consciously, to be perfectly honest, I was completing a post doctoral fellowship, so  got as far as I can, and dorky academia as a student of the past.

And I and was doing this postdoctoral fellowship that was jointly appointed at Queen Mary University in London and the Museum of London and we did a really exciting project on Victorian London where we were analysing these boxes of materials that had just been moulding away in the basement of the Museum of London Archaeological service - their archives, and that's because it was too new to be of interest, right. You know, anything after the Georgian era in England is considered basically modern and not really useful for archaeologists, so this was an exciting project and it was quite unusual and BBC One came along and did a little TV piece for their show Inside Out and I appeared in that and I didn't think about it again. And then at some point, honestly, I want to say it was a couple of years later, Nigel Hetherington of Past Preservers approached me and said well, would you like to be on my books?

I think I was actually, back in the United States at that point.

Anyway, I did go on his books and sat there not doing anything with that for another few years and then a programme came along that saw my profile. And you know I did an interview with them and I really loved it and I guess it went well enough and they had me come back. This was a series called What On Earth which I've appeared on probably six seasons now. It's actually just wrapped it’s last season, but that became really my first recurring role as a as an on screen expert. Yeah. And it's just spiralled from there.

00:08:33 Lucy Jane Santos

What do you believe is the role of a TV presenter and podcaster in making history accessible and key engaging for a broad audience?

00:08:44 Karen Bellinger

Well, honestly, I think the key thing as a presenter or participant in the podcast on either side of the microphone is to, you know, lead with a hook. You know why? Make people care, be a storyteller, and I, you know, I don't mean make things up, obviously, you know. But there's an angle one can take on any subject, and I think unless people have a reason to care right off the bat, you know, there's no reason for them to continue watching or listening.

00:09:15 Laura Fitzachary 

Thank you very much. Yeah, it's absolutely true as well. Like, you have to give them a reason to actually want to listen to what you say.

00:09:22 Karen Bellinger

Well, I mean, that's true even before we're subject to a fire hose of information and media choices 24/7, it's how do you break through the noise? You really have to hit the ground running and yeah, have something that makes some ancient dusty bit of history immediately relevant?

00:09:42 Laura Fitzachary

History can sometimes be controversial or involve sensitive topics. How do you navigate these challenges when presenting historical narratives to the public?

00:09:52 Karen Bellinger

Yeah, that's such a good question. I actually I love that question and I guess for me personally, I think there's two kinds of sensitive subjects. There are subjects that are inherently sensitive, that could be upsetting or concerning to people in in the modern day in, in their own culture, you know, and I mean a great example is the subject of human sacrifice. OK, obviously this is a scary topic and it's a violent topic. Involves ending lives.

And you know, for example in in the case of the Inca, it involves ending the lives of children in this. ritual called Capacocha. Which is something that immediately can create resistance to even listening, can create resistance to wanting to hear anything positive about those people or the ritual.

00:10:41 

You know, that's just horrible. It's barbaric. I, you know, there's nothing good to say about it. It's a classic example of when it's important to try to help the audience think like an anthropologist to see things from a different point of view, to be empathetic. And you know, the reality is that the example of the Inca Capachocha show was the greatest honour that could be bestowed upon people who were subjects of the Inca Emperor. You know, it's not one of those ancient cultures that people feel like they know much about compared to, say, the Roman Empire.

But in fact, they were actually really similar to the Roman Empire in that they very quickly really amassed a terrific amount of territory and about 10 million subjects, we think. Who spoke, you know, 30 languages came from all these different cultures and one way in which the Inca Emperor made sure that this sprawling new empire stayed together was by allowing individual subjects to kind of keep their own belief systems, but one thing that was sacrosanct was taxation, and these tributes were not paid just in monetary terms, but in giving of the members of families of elites in these far-flung parts of Empire. So if your family was chosen to sacrifice one of your children, they would be groomed from an early age. They were well fed. They were treated like royalty, literally because they were thought to be headed for a form of deity. Once they were sacrificed, processed to meet the emperor before the sacrifice itself was performed, and then their family ever after would be famed as one of the most sort of glorified in this empire. Were the families happy to be losing their children? Probably not, but this was a deep cultural belief that bound them all together, and it was a happy thing. No, it's not something that we would do. Now we have different belief systems, but I think it's important to take some of these activities at face value and really look at why they were gone but to be honest, as a as a presenter, I think a second form of sensitivity can be even trickier to navigate, and that's when there's a sensitivity to an idea, perhaps a religious idea. Christianity is full of these and sort of this idea, particularly of what the Bible has to tell us. Well, how useful is the Bible in historical terms, for example, and I just recently did a lecture for popular learning channel On the Ark of the Covenant 

00:13:32 

And if I can say honestly of many - I probably could say hundreds if not thousands of topics that I have presented on many platforms over 10 years. That was the trickiest. I felt it was putting together a Swiss watch because you know the sensitivity to those who might believe in in this object as a real thing. Because the Bible says so. The sensitivity of scholars who would say, ohh my gosh, turn this off that person. You know, Dr Bellinger, you don't deserve your PhD if you're even talking about this subject. But I think it's all about being very open to different points of view, just as it is to accepting an idea such as human sacrifice, that's repugnant to me personally, as to many others. To be open minded to hear all the views that people bring to some of these topics, which do really resonate over time for a reason. The Bible is very useful in many ways as a religious document, but we simply can't count on it as history. Now, there are ways of saying that that are not offensive to Fundamentalist Christians, for example, there are many ways to say it in which they will be deeply offended. So that's yeah, it's tricky, but I think we have to make that effort unfortunately, so much of what appears in popular media and on television, particularly is in this category, it is sensitive topics. It's lightning rod topics. So I think more often than not I do feel like I have to be very careful and very precise and think a great deal before opening my mouth. I don't think there's any clear answers other than to just be very thoughtful and respectful when you're tackling anything that has the to offend or concern an audience or your entire audience. In some cases you know.

00:15:42 Lucy Jane Santos

Your work, and specifically the working overtime podcasts, has obviously covered a wide range of historical topics. Are there any specific time periods or events that you find particularly fascinating or that you're especially passionate about?

00:15:56 Karen Bellinger

No, I know that's disappointing. I also hate it when people ask what the most wonderful thing I ever found as an archaeologist working the field was because I feel like I have to. If I have three children and I could never choose a favourite and I have so many more topics and artefacts that I have for.

No, I don't have a favourite and I think I think that's partly because of my fundamental identity as an anthropologist as opposed to a historian. And you know, I mean I am trained in in historical or archival research and in material culture research. And yeah, there are some periods that I find more aesthetically pleasing. Maybe. But what excites me I think are kind of the broad processes of cultural change and that is what anthropology is. It's why we do what we do. And there are surprisingly few number of patterns that that one sees throughout time across cultures. And I always think about that, that old line, that what they're only 12 dramatic plots or something like that, and every story somehow hangs into it so.

00:17:10 

Yeah. For me it's about identifying the overall pattern and thinking comparatively honestly as opposed to thinking. Ohh goody. I get to go study the Bronze Age of today.

00:17:23 Lucy Jane Santos

I feel I'm very similar. I sort of a magpie of history research. I'm always moving from one to another and I'm I like little historical trinkets and I I hoard them. I love finding little patterns between them and there are a lot of historians that do that deep dive into one very specific topic, but then there's an awful lot of people are like I want this. I want this. I want this one.

00:17:44 Karen Bellinger

I want it all. I I yeah, I want all the things. It just feels like why limit yeah.

00:17:53 Laura Fitzachary

But I suppose then just to ask you as a follow up to that, can you share some insights into your creative process when developing an episode or show focused on a historical topic, you know, what steps do you take from idea to final production?

00:18:08 Karen Bellinger

That I do a lot of and so I'll have to say that it often begins with what the aim of the television programme is. You know, producers, content developers with the networks generally have an idea for what they want the through line of the narrative to be at least, and so it's often necessary to work around essentially story beats, which are presented and that's both helpful and sometimes frustrating, but usually it's possible to kind of come up with a bit of a Frankenstein thing that that ticks all the boxes. That pleases me, that I I feel good about that meets what is needed for the aim of the episode or the whole series as the case may be, and what I think is going to be piece of quality content for the audience. And so I generally just knowing what the theme is going to be and what beats I need to hit, I just start collecting a lot of notes. I'm a major note taker, a percolator and I'll just sort of go off and not think too directly about some of these topics believe it or not, and ideas come to me as I'm riding my bike and in the shower and all sorts of really inconvenient moments, but I I find that it all coalesces in not a dissimilar way to the way in which my mind processes fiction and outlines fictional stories that I write middle grade Time travel fiction as well. So I would say it's not a process to be rushed, it's not one of those processes that for me at least lends itself to cramming.

As I certainly couldn’t have been accused of doing as a as a student in high school, for example, that doesn't work too well because the probably the most important part of my process is digesting and just sort of owning the material so that when I'm in front of the camera I - actually believe it or not, almost sort of let my mind go blank and I get the best results. When I I just start talking and so far it hasn't failed me yet. But the story as I know it needs to be and as I would like it to be emerges. And if it is a story and it is composed in a way that suits the medium of television. I mean it's just a really different way than I would go about writing a lecture for an academic class or a lecture as I as I do for some of the streaming learning products that I'm working with, and then I kind of pretend I'm sitting in a bar talking to somebody about the subject.

00:20:58 Lucy Jane Santos

You just can't get these types of tips every anywhere else. Can you know? And this is great stuff.

00:21:02 Karen Bellinger

It's the being relaxed too, I think is so important. I think enthusiasm on its own is infectious and does draw people in and it's welcoming, it's not intimidating in any way and I think that's critical when you're working in popular media, it's not about me, Dr Karen Bellinger, PhD, at all. It's about Karen who is so excited to share this amazing thing she has seen or learned about. Let me tell you.

00:21:34 Lucy Jane Santos

Yeah, I love that. I mean the worst experience I had on camera, it was a, it was a great, but instead it was Lucy trying to memorise somebody else's words and not get a grip on the actual topic, trying to almost be an actor rather than a presenter. I guess it was and you know - rookie mistake never done that again. You know you have to learn these things, but it's. Yeah.

00:21:49 Karen Bellinger

Yeah, yeah. Everyone's a rookie at one point, and you and I will, I will say completely the first time I sat down, it was with What on Earth? Even I was trying to say too many facts. I'm much more of a  big picture person. I'm 60,000 feet above the runway. I'm I. This is why I'm an anthropologist, not a historian  and I hate dates. I hate remembering dates, right? But I did try to come to it with way more detail than can be absorbed by a beat in television. I mean, that's another thing I would add. You better figure out how to say it quickly because they're going to cut you to bits in the editing room and then you're going to say something you didn't mean to say, and that's really upsetting.

And you only managed to get half a thought out and the second-half of the thought is actually very important qualifier that has happens to me not so much in more recent days because I've learned my lesson. I've I've learned how to -speak televisions speak in a sense. You know you've got to be able to spit out these. These little sound bites.

And I don't think that that is a cop out? I don't think it's the equivalent of, you know, dumbing it down by any means it it? Well, it  shouldn't be, but that's where the real commands on a kind of cellular level of the material is important going in so that you can on the fly frame your statements to match where the interview is going.

00:23:36 Laura Fitzachary

That is such amazing advice. Thank you, because sometimes I'm a devil for saying something and then going, oh, I'll get back to that. We'll circle back and then realising you're not going to circle back.

00:23:46 Karen Bellinger

Nope, they took it. It's in the can, and now they can do whatever they want with it.

No, I think that happens to everybody because it's its own language. It's its own sort of rhythm of interchange between yourself as a as a guest or an expert and an interview.

I mean, obviously that that applies to this, the talking head kind of presentation, I mean for many reasons, what I love most when I'm fortunate enough to do it is to actually be the presenter and then you have a lot more control over what is said and how much. Even even still, even then, it's not as if got to make sure that you are responding snappily enough to the interviewer, but you still at risk of much of what you would love to convey to the audience, ending up on the cutting room floor. If you're not concise.

00:24:49 Lucy Jane Santos

You know all of these tips and stuff is so useful, and it is why we do this show is, you know, I think me and Laura are being sort of mid career no, not hugely experienced in all of these subjects and then you know, going to absolute experts, it's really it's really wonderful because we're always scribbling away as well.

Many people see history as a subject that's often considered dry or boring how do you make history? Exciting, but also relevant for a modern audience?

00:25:18 Karen Bellinger

Yeah, that, that's the trick. That's why we're there, isn't it? So if you don't manage to do that, you fail. I and I will just harken back to what I said back at the beginning. You need to make people care. You need to reel them in, as it were. So there's always some elements of historical topic that resonates in the present day. And in fact, both of you will probably recall that in the interviews for working overtime when you were my guests, that was just a refrain. I just I was amazed at how I found myself saying with every interview with every guest. Oh, you know. Yeah.

And we would end up talking about the. Doesn't pay for a good amount of time. So Laura, in your case, cosmetics and how do we really know what we're putting onto our onto our bodies and into our bodies? And Laura, this whole idea of your Dublin beauties of the 17th and 18th century and now we've got influencers today and you know it's being able to make that connection. Now obviously the topic of factual history television show is really about the history and that is what you're going to focus on, but always anytime you can plant the flag in something very relatable, there are going to be several places. You can, I promise you, whatever the topic is, just give it a little think. And you'll say oh wow.

And to me, that's what makes history matter for everybody. It's not an arcane subject that only some people do care about or should care about. It's we live in a continuum. And humans, I can tell you as an anthropologist who's studied a lot of different people and places around the world, we are really repetitive beasts. You know, there's nothing new under the sun. You know, I get funny little messages. Some of them I wish were not sent because they aren't so lovely. But, you know, others are just genuinely. Wow. I didn't know I liked history. And you made this so exciting. Thank you. Well, that makes my day. You know that's really what I think. My job as a TV presenter of history topics is at the end of the day to to provide gateway history to the world.

00:27:41 Laura Fitzachary

So how has the digital age and the Internet influenced the way you research source information and engage with your audience when presenting historical content?

00:27:52 Karen Bellinger

Well, on the research side of things, it's night and day. I mean, I completed my dissertation sort of during this big emergence of the Internet as a place to find information academic information wasn't so well represented at that point, so I have to say it's i's really just been as a as a post educational professional that I've even had the Internet as an option for sourcing information. And you know, it's a great thing and it's a terrible thing because there's a lot of garbage out there and unfortunately, well, it's true of television as well. There are people who, for whatever the reason, really will take as truth. What they see presents it online or on television, so, you know, I think that's a danger. And I I think it's not a fair assumption that anybody and everybody should be able to judge the difference between good, solid fact based information and garbage. You know the sensationalism and unfortunately people do get very passionate about their little niche ideas or interests in the past. You know, for example, this whole idea that many ancient monuments that we can't quite explain from our modern day perspective in terms of technology and execution – well they must have been aliens, you know, particularly because they're in parts of the world that have been considered from the Western white colonialist viewpoint less sophisticated than would be required to produce such things and.

It's this is one of those sensitive topics that we were sort of talking about before, but you know, it's just an area ripe for abuse online, you know anybody can publish whatever they want. So yeah, I think it's a real mixed blessing and I think we as professionals in this field of popular media presentation need to really be constantly vigilant and pointing out problem sites and arguments whenever we find them and saying, you know, this is great, you're interested in this, but there are better sites you can you can look at For more information and that's where it actually becomes very powerful as a content producer and I'm nowhere near as organised on that or diligent as I, as I probably ought to be, or could be, I barely managed to keep a website going. I keep saying I'm going to put more information on I will someday, but it is a great place to communicate in short bites with people -to have longer forum blog posts as well so.

00:30:43 

Yeah, I just think like any good and bad technology it, it just needs careful management. Some years ago, Owen Rhys, a historian who also appeared on Working Overtime, he spoke about the the Greek mantis, the Oracles. Very exciting topic. But anyway he was just starting up his own online effort was called Bad History and it was great. It just basically called out fallacious information and offered you know pointer to -OK, this is this is a real subject matter. But this is not a legitimate explanation for it. Why don't you look over here instead?

And I think that's really important. I mean the the problem is you know how do you get those things in front of people, it's that there's not a Wikipedia website devoted to Owen was doing with Bad History. Maybe that would be a good initiative.

00:31:38 Lucy Jane Santos

Can you share some of your favourite moments or experiences from your career as a TV presenter and podcaster around that field of historical storytelling?

00:31:48 Karen Bellinger

Oh gosh, so many. Well, I like actually talk about the podcasting first, which interestingly, someone asked me back at the time when I was still hosting the podcast very regularly. And they said if you had to choose one or the other, you could only have one, which would it be? And I chose podcasting without even thinking twice.

And I think it's because of -to me there's a unique intimacy in the podcast medium. You know that it's someone in your ear, literally it. It feels even though you often cannot see the people. I mean, for example, my podcast did not have a video element and yet, I would just absolutely lose time and forget we were recording as I was interviewing guests like yourselves. You know it. It it, it's. It's lovely that way. So I have to say I loved every single episode I made on that podcast. All you know, 75 or whatever it was.

00:32:46 

But for the TV I have done a lot more of that in in a much broader range of experiences and my very favourite always is to be out in the field to be exploring a site and presenting, you know, as the presenter sort of bringing the audience along, looking over my shoulder and sharing each moment of discovery with them, that's the gold standard for me. That's what I love to do. Sadly, that is not often accounted for in TV production budgets. So the location work, while it's quite spectacular for me and I think I hope for the audiences as well, it tends to be more studio based.

What I've most enjoyed in those times, I have been lucky enough to be out in the field is that in in true form, just as I will say, all archaeological fields were without a camera trained on the work is nothing if not unpredictable. It's never what you expect I could just say there's not a single field project that I worked on. Where we, you know, I'm. I'm almost. I wouldn't quite say we didn't find where we actually found what we were looking for. You always find something. It's often not exactly what you were looking for. Sometimes it's even better or more useful. But it, you know, it's a process. And you, you have to really pivot and iterate as you go and TV's pretty much the same, even though there are these guardrails that don't exist in, say, an academic fields research projects, no guardrails. And as I've said before, there's always going to be a narrative through line they're going for. There are beats that need to be hit. There's a story we're telling, you know, it's not scripted by any means, but there is a framework that that kind of structures what you are reacting to and how you react to it. And I just love how one of these fields projects that I was lucky enough to do for What on Earth actually in Chile in the Atacama Desert, which is this absolutely spectacular, very desolate, very harsh, demanding landscape. We were centering an episode around a giant petroglyph. It's known as the Atacama Giant. It's almost 400 feet tall. It's really well known. He actually looks like an 8 bit gaming character you know, if you saw it, you might wonder. Wow, is that modern or is it you know ancient. Well, we think it dates to around 800 CE if there's some question it could be a little early, it could be a little later. But this story was trying to figure out who had made this petroglyph, and of course, petroglyphs, don’t have signatures like oil paintings. They're gigantic art made out of the landscape, so out of removing rocks and layers of sand, for example, to  reveal a different colour below or piling up rocks to create a visual distinction that way. But regardless they're really best appreciated from the air which makes them fertile territory for the alien lovers amongst us to speculate. But you know, I assure you that there are other explanations for it and that these things for example, the Atacama Giant is positioned on a on a slope, so he's visible for miles around and many different theories. It was a way post, it was something to do with the calendrical planning and at any rate it turns out that this petroglyph was very much related to local farming activities and farming in this arid desert was very fraught and the people living in this area developed a very sophisticated irrigation system.

00:36:34 

That it still is quite amazing to consider that they could survive in this area, but what we didn't know was where they lived. And you know, you see that the giant - look around, we found the remains of the irrigation channels as we expected to. But where are the people? Where are the people, where are the settlements you usually you see some sense of fruit for a settlement and assuming that we weren't to be able to talk about this at all, we're driving back from shooting in the irrigation fields inside of the giant.

And I'm looking out the window, I I said seeing these just weird piles that don't really make sense in this otherwise open landscape. We're driving along one of the dried riverbeds that once fed the irrigation fields, and I just pulled over. And sure enough, I get out. I'm climbing around in these piles of rubble and there's pottery, there's bone. I mean, there's no evidence of it sort of structure or any kind of foundation, but without a doubt, there were settlements and they were in a place that would make a lot of sense in relation to where these irrigation fields, where the giant was and that was a real mind blowing. Wow, you know, we were able to include that, you know, and that hadn't been that hadn't been planned, of course, because nobody knew where these sites were. So that by far was my my most exciting moment in the field.

00:38:09 Laura Fitzachary

Could literally listen to you talk about that all day, to be honest.

00:38:11 Lucy Jane Santos

It's it says a lot about what we keep talking about or you keep mentioning the storytelling or you know, the storytelling aspect about drawing people in and the hook.

00:38:21 Laura Fitzachary

So just to round up our questions, the two of us could listen to you all day. So thank you. What advice would you give to aspiring historians, presenters and podcasters who are passionate about sharing historical knowledge with the world?

00:38:35 Karen Bellinger

I think the first thing to do is to sign up with an agent who specialises in factual TV related to history, I honestly think it would be nearly impossible to break into this very strange little niche of edutainment. I hate that word. It's so gross. But that's kind of what it otherwise. Because you know the agent is the contact that networks are likely to reach out to, our producers now, occasionally I'll get a a cold contact from someone, but that's because they've seen me in other things. I personally have been with the Past Preservers agency for nine years now, and all of my jobs are several smaller ones have come through that door and Nigel Hetherington heads that up and serves as I think he describes it as the inter intermediary between academia, experts and the television industry and the connections that he has with the networks and with the television production companies are invaluable.

Because if they know they're producing a show and they need certain expertise, someone like Nigel is going to be their first call because there's going to be a selection of people to consider and they're all vetted. And I think possible one could back into it another way. But I don't really know how that would work it you occasionally will get a cold outreach, but it's somebody who has already seen me elsewhere, and you know, I think having an agent is good to help you advocate on your own behalf there are so many there are still many production companies that think that people would like to be on TV so much that they'd be glad to provide their time and expertise for free.

00:40:33 

Which you know, no one can make a living that way, of course. So you know, it's a tough business anyway. Not maybe not as well paid as people might imagine, seeing what actors make them. Not at all on that pay scale. I could tell you, but in terms of getting the best deal possible for your intellectual property, which is really what you're giving as an expert commentator on unscripted television, your best bet is to to have an agent on your side.

00:41:04 Laura Fitzachary

Oh yeah, as fellow Past Preservers ourselves, we can attest to that. And of course, Nigel's actually on this show on Season 2, so he's on a previous episode, so we'll actually have him on and then so.

00:41:18 Karen Bellinger

I would recommend that anybody interested in doing this, the TV historian, archaeologist, academic thing -go watch Nigel's episode. I'm sure it will be full of many, many tips and nuggets on the nuts and bolts of how to how to do that, but on the softer side in terms of personal preparation. Again, I I almost would say play a little bit, you know, don't take yourself so seriously as a historian.

I mean, we need to be accurate and careful in I mean. And actually I would almost argue more so than an academic because an academic is gonna get called out instantly by others who say no, that's wrong, or that's sloppy.

But you know, it's a real responsibility to have a mouthpiece on popular media. You're reaching millions of people as opposed to, let's say, dozens or hundreds that you might as an academic in writing. No, it's it's actually an awesome responsibility. You need to be very careful.

00:42:19 Speaker 3

About what you say. Because people will believe it. People will believe what you say and that's not in any sense like a power trip. It's it's it's, it's very humbling. I I feel very humbled by it and a great responsibility to getting it right, even while making it appealing, I honestly I do think about it almost as playing it. It's it's a little bit of a left brain, right brain thing and cultivating your inner storyteller is really, really important.

00:42:50 Laura Fitzachary

Absolutely. That could be a potential future topic, Lucy. The responsibility of an historian.

00:42:57 Lucy Jane Santos

It's something we touched on, you know, every episode. I think in a little bit isn't it? We're always been getting an agent thing I think is again something we've talked about a lot in terms of actually getting paid and having an agent and making sure that you get paid for your expertise. It's so much easier to ask production companies for money if you CC your agent into it, it's so much easier to, you know, do all.

00:43:20 Karen Bellinger

Ohh yeah, you don't have to ask.

I I love not having to. I'm not. I am not a very good advocator or negotiator on my own behalf. This is just not one my one of my superpowers, so I definitely had behind Nigel's skirts regularly, and I'm very glad that I can so it's good to have someone to go to bat for you, but but even more than that though, just even getting the opportunities to begin with, it's just being discovered by those who are looking to fill seats with experts, no, it's it's by far the the best way to do that.

00:43:57 Lucy Jane Santos

So we'll go on to the business clinic section now for this section. We pull from our mail bag of questions. And today we're obviously talking about presenting. So the first question we have here is from Person A and they've said that they've been asked to present some of their research as a talking head on camera, but they are extremely nervous do you have any tips for them?

00:44:19 Karen Bellinger

Uh, well, first I'd say if you weren't nervous, I'd be more worried because it is a different skill set. And just because you are the world expert on the topic doesn't mean you automatically are ready to successfully talk about it as a TV expert. But of course you can get to that point and you're already halfway there as possessing, you know, tremendous expertise, I'm sure, on your own research, subject. As I've said, my own process. Give it a whirl or something like it. Just step back from from the facts, a little bit. Kind of think about what are the, what are the very exciting nuggets in this factual body of material that I could string a compelling story together with and you know, you fit all your facts. I'm not saying drop the facts by any means, but tou know, think about how you would explain it in really simple terms to someone sitting at a bar or a coffee shop, I don't even drink that much. I don't know. I say a bar because that's sort of a stereotype, isn't it. But you know, maybe a good way to start that the first time would be to grab a willing friend or family member who would just sit and listen, listen to you talk through it.

00:45:36 

Try a couple of different ways of approaching the material. I suspect whatever. I mean, I don't know what the topic is, but whatever it is, I imagine there are a few different ways one could present the key point and don't try to present all the key points either you know the other thing, see how briefly you can tell that story.

00:46:00 Laura Fitzachary

Then we have Person B who asks should I use contemporary events to explain the past when I'm working on a TV show? Will that make my work relatable? And I think we've already answered that.

00:46:12 Karen Bellinger

Yeah, absolutely. I mean you know, it's not a matter of saying, well, it's just like this, but I think any way that you can make the past more immediate, feeling more relatable is is it's going to help you immensely. And as I said before, I mean it's my philosophy of history and why history matters and why everybody really should be an historian in in one respect or another is that we are living in the in the stream of history and making it every day. We're making history right now. I mean, it was a minute ago. There you go. So yes, absolutely. I think it will only strengthen your abilities as a presenter.

00:46:59 Laura Fitzachary

Absolutely. And thank you so much for earlier and for elaborating even further for us. It's very much appreciated. But I do think that the person who asked that question will probably get that as they were going along it can. It can only help. It can only be beneficial.

00:47:11 Karen Bellinger

Yeah, so long as it truly is relevant. I mean, you know, you just what I I mean I I guess I one caveat to say it is a little unfair sometimes to apply current standards to ancient behaviour, you know and they're there are just certain ways which things that are clearly not acceptable now and may or may not have been in the ancient, we don't know. We don't actually know if it wasn't commented upon so directly, but I I think as long as you've done it in a way that doesn't feel like you're actually trying to make a political statement today, but you're focused on explicating the historical events or topic then yeah, go to town.

00:47:58 Laura Fitzachary.

Absolutely. 

Whether it is given your thoughts as a talking head, developing a show or navigating public opinion, the life of a presenter can be a varied and fascinating one. 

Before we let you go, Karen, we ask our guests if you could choose a dream remote office anytime and anywhere, when and where would it be?

00:48:20 Karen Bellinger

Oh, I would make my office on the TARDIS. I thought that was going to be a hard question. I want to. 

00:48:28 Laura Fitzachary

Then you can go anywhere at any time. Why did no one else think of that?

00:48:29 Lucy Jane Santos

We haven't heard that one.

00:48:38 Karen Bellinger

And the sound I just. I love that sound. I I mean, I I I don't really believe it was that it was left in gear. I just that sound is too good. Yeah. You know that whole was it some River Songs? And yeah, that he left it in gear. It's what makes that. No, it just makes that sound, thank you.

00:48:57 Laura Fitzachary

Thank you for that. But thank you. Thank you very, very much to our wonderful guest. Karen, you have been truly fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you very much to our wonderful guest Karen and you can find her on….

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