Some questions students ask us!

What is this show about?

The Last Archive is a show about how we know things. It asks big questions about knowledge, evidence and proof. Each episode attempts to solve a mystery. But since The Last Archive is also a show about history, it’s about the history of how we know things, and how that changes over time.

How do we know things?

Listen to season one to find out! Here in The Last Archive, we really believe in old-fashioned empiricism: documentary proof, observation, scientific experimentation, eyewitnesses, corroboration. The real deal. Most of the rules of evidence, in all kinds of realms of knowledge, come, originally, from the law. We talk about that a bit in Episode 2. But, really, we talk about that all season. How do you know things? How do you find something out? How do you verify it? What rules do you use? Where do those rules come from? Oh wait, we are supposed to be answering the questions, not asking them. 

Is this a history show?

Yes! There’s a lot of history in this podcast. The host is a history professor! She can’t help it! But there’s also a lot of other stuff in this podcast. Because history isn’t just something that’s … out there, or something creaking and dusty and ancient. It’s everywhere, and tied together with everything else: science, the news, politics, literature, your breakfast, YouTube, TikTok. Everything has a history, so history is actually everything. That also means, it’s hard to understand much of anything, now, without understanding its history. We have a big poster inside The Last Archive that says that. EVERYTHING=HISTORY. 

What’s your evidence? 

If you want to know, “Hey, how does the podcast know what it says it knows?” Usually, you can find out on the episode pages on the show’s website. We’ve posted historical documents and photographs—stuff we found in the archives—to show you our sources. “Put your cards on the table!” is a good rule, when writing history, or producing a podcast about history. If you think we’ve forgotten a few cards, let us know, and we’ll throw them down!

Is this stuff true? 

Sometimes, in telling a story about something that happened in the past, we use what’s called “archival sound”—actual recordings made in the past. Whenever we can find it, that’s what we use. So: vinyl albums, cassette tapes, TV shows, FBI surveillance recordings. Sometimes, though, there is no archival sound, either because the story we’re telling happened before people figured out how to record sound, or else because the thing we’re talking about wasn’t recorded, or because it was recorded, but the recording has since disappeared. In those cases, if we were able to find historical documents that tell us what happened—like, say, the transcript of a Congressional hearing, or the record of a trial—we hired actors, the Foolproof Players, to read that stuff and we recorded it. Then we “treated” the tape to make it sound as though it’s old. We’re not trying to trick anyone: It’s clear on the episode web pages where we got the stuff we used to make the re-creations. Do you think this is OK? If everything our Foolproof Players say comes from a historical document, but the recording is something we made, how “real” are those recordings?  If you were making the rules, what rules would you make? One of our big rules: We’re not trying to pass anything off as real that’s fake. Still, we’re trying to make it sound as real as it can. What would you do?

Why are all the stories from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? Don’t you know any other history?

We do know more history! You do, too! The reason the show is mainly about the last hundred years, well, there are two reasons. First, a set of ideas about truth and evidence started to topple about a century ago. And second, the recording of sound really only began to be widespread about a century ago. If you were starting a history podcast, what period of history would you want to talk about? If you’re telling the history of something, you want to tell the part where stuff happens, where change happens. The last hundred years is where truth got murdered. Or maybe it isn’t? But that was our gambit. What would yours be?

Is there really a Last Archive?

Um, no. It’s, like, a bedroom closet. With a big microphone in it, and some old winter coats. Mice-gnawed boxes. I think I lost a hat in there once.