I first found out about the podcast when I was looking for podcasts to listen to on Reddit. This is one of the most recommended ones, but the time always put me off from listening to it. Earlier this week, I decided to go ahead and listen to part I of his latest series, Supernova in the East. We also heard about this podcast earlier in the semester, from the episode about podcast pioneers. From listening to the soundbyte of Dan Carlin’s intro there, I would say you could get a sense of how much history he actually covers.

The episode is literally just Dan Carlin talking the entire time, by himself, for the 4:30 hours of the podcast, not to mention the three other 4 hour shows in the series so far. The first sounds are kind of intense, as there’s like a shrill through his opening soundbyte. It’s a series of audio clips from significant events in history, and a kind of epic radio announcer voice talking over the audio clips.

With the length of the podcast, it’s probably designed to be listened to almost like an audiobook: you listen to it in multiple sessions, or maybe on a really long drive like a roadtrip. I listened to it while playing a game, like I do for a lot of my podcasts, as it’s a way I can learn something while doing an almost mindless activity. I’m not sure what the format is like through all four shows, but at least in this one, it’s a relatively linear story that goes and talks about Japanese interaction with the West in the 1800s, and then how they tried to modernize themselves with a colonial mindset. Eventually, it gets to how this colonial mindset develops into an extremist mindset, and their actions toward China in what some people refer to as the start of World War II.

There’s no music or anything, just Dan Carlin talking. It does seem a bit like a lecture, but the subject matter was very interesting to me, so I kept listening. It’s also part of the reason why I was playing a game at the same time: if I was just listening to the podcast, I would probably get bored and leave it. I would describe it as reading (or I guess listening to) a very interesting commentary or book about some topic in history, which, depending on the topic, I’m fascinated by. There isn’t really a payoff at the end here, mainly because it’s 1/4 of the way through and I (at least) 12 hours left to listen to.