Civics in the Classroom: Liz Covart

This is Civics in the Classroom, a podcast series from the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Civics in the Classroom is part of the A250 Summer Teacher Seminar, America's First Principles. This program to promote innovative K-12 instruction in U.S. history and civics was designed by the Center for Presidential History with support from the U.S. Department of Education and in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. In the first year of this three-year project, our workshops and lectures will focus on the causes and context of the movement for U.S. independence and the production and legacy of its most famous document, the Declaration of Independence.  

This episode is the last in our series, and features a conversation with Dr. Liz Covart. Liz is a historian of the American Revolution, and while she wears many hats, she's probably best known as the creator of the award-winning podcast, Ben Franklin's World: a podcast about early American history. She is also the founding director of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios, as well as co-founder of Clio Digital Media, a 501 C3 nonprofit that uses digital media to foster better, more robust understandings of history. And this year, she'll be launching Scholar DIY, a public benefit company that empowers scholars to transform their expertise into compelling digital stories. 

The music for this series comes from the album K2 by Blue Dot Sessions under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. 

Transcript

LIZ COVART: People were saying, no one's interested in history. We still hear that today, right? No one's interested in history. But what they were saying never jibed with my experience.

SUSIE PENMAN: This is Civics in the Classroom, a podcast series from the Center for Presidential History Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. I’m Susie Penman, assistant Director at SMU Center for Presidential History. This episode is the last in our series, and features a conversation with Dr. Liz Covart. Liz is a historian of the American Revolution, and while she wears many hats, she's probably best known as the creator of the award-winning podcast, Ben Franklin's World, a podcast about early American history. In addition to that, this year Liz is launching Scholar DIY, a public benefit company that empowers scholars to transform their expertise into compelling digital stories. Keep listening to hear us talk more about that. To start us off, I want you to take us back 15 years. You just finished at UC Davis, is that correct? 

LIZ COVART: That's correct. 

PENMAN: And so you got your PhD in history in 2011, and I want you to talk a little bit about how you perceived the podcast landscape in that moment. 

COVART: Well in 2011 I had just, like a good historian, I read about podcasts in a book 

and I thought that they would be an interesting medium to listen to. And you know, I finished grad school and realizing that being a college professor just wasn't for me. I had worked as an undergrad. I spent my summers and school vacations working as an interpretive ranger at the Boston National Historical Park. And then as I was writing my dissertation, I was volunteering at the New York State Museum and the Albany Institute of History and Art. My dissertation was about Albany in the early period. And I just really fell in love with public history, but I loved the research and I liked the writing. So I thought, I had to figure out what it was I was going to do. So after grad school, I think like a lot of people, I spent some time trying to figure out like if a full-time career in public history made sense for me. And what I decided in the end that I was going to do was research and write a lot of books as an independent scholar, maybe freelance write. And I said that was good, but that's so scholarly. I needed a public history outlet. And at that time, I'd been listening to so many podcasts about new things like social media, which was still pretty new then, and how to build a website and platform. And I then said, wouldn't it be great if there were a history podcast about early America? And I started looking for one and I couldn't find one about early America. And then I mostly heard dudes who'd read a lot of books, who weren't even citing these books. But they'd read a lot of books and they'd tell you about them. And that was their episode. And I said, wow, wouldn't it be interesting to just have a real conversation about new work that's out there and make that accessible? Plus, at the time, people were saying, no one's interested in history. We still hear that today, right? No one's interested in history. But what they were saying never jibed with my experience at the Boston National Historical Park and the Albany Museum or the people I was now leading tours on for Boston by Foot. I had found that people are inherently interested in history. They usually just don't know where to find the good stuff. Like what are the reputable works on history? What are those works that they can trust? And so when I decided I needed a public history outlet, I was like, you know what? I can't find an early American History podcast I want to listen to, so I'm going to create it. So we created really the first podcast dedicated to early American history and the first one that interviewed historians on a regular basis. And that was almost 12 years ago we launched, because like a good historian, I researched podcasting for 18 months to figure out how to do it, what made the medium tick well. And my podcast is like a unicorn story. It had 248 downloads its very first month. And by month three we had 60,000 downloads because we had a iTunes, it was iTunes at the time, “new and noteworthy” front-page plug. And then with no back catalog, like you basically see go. And then I was averaging 25 to 30,000 downloads a month. So podcasting became my job and I really love it because I get to blend the scholarly history that I love so much with the public history that I love so much. And helping to connect the two and bring more awareness about the great work that's going on is just amazing. 

PENMAN: That is a unicorn story. I was going to ask you how you got it off the ground. Because I feel like podcasts, they're one of those things people think, oh, let's start a podcast and you can. But then you have to get it going and that's where I think a lot of the work is. So can you talk a little bit about how you got it started and what sort of support you needed and what sort of support you got?

COVART: Sure. So this was an independent project. I wasn't affiliated anywhere. I was living the independent scholar life. And like I said, I researched it for 18 months, which is probably more than I needed to do, but I wanted to find out what makes the medium so great. And if you think about it, we are hardwired through evolution as human beings to be responsive to oral storytelling. And what is history but a bunch of stories that historians can get around and they can talk about. And if you think about the act of listening to a podcast, right, if you're like me, you're listening to podcasts as you're doing something else. I like to stick my earbuds in and do my laundry or walk my dogs or go for a walk to an appointment or something. And it’s just me and my favorite podcast hosts. So it's a really intimate listening experience. And then I learned some tricks from people who had done radio, for a long time in radio. And they say, everybody at the time I started was like, they want to be a fly on the wall for the conversation. And I was like, no, they don't want to be a fly on the wall. They want to be part of that conversation. So just usingm instead of “listeners” and “we” – if you use like “we,” as in like “you and I” or when you're talking to ,you just want to pretend you're talking to one person, not many people, you can really connect with listeners and that's what happened. And so I did a lot of research. 

I also knew how to work at the time that Apple, the Apple iTunes algorithm. And so what I did was I launched my first four episodes. And then after those had aired for a month, I loaded the podcast into iTunes and that really helped the algorithm. So I expected to do okay in the history category, never expected that front page “new and noteworthy” that kind of gave us that huge dramatic boost at the end of December of 2014. And yeah, it just kind of launched the career. And from there, I know a lot of podcasters ask for ratings and reviews, and those are great things. They really do help podcasters. I always tend to ask for them to recommend the podcast, and I would attribute most of the growth to Ben Franklin's World of consistency – knock on wood here on my wooden desk. I have not missed an episode in 12 years, just about. So we've always released content when we said we were going to release content. And always working to get better at it, right? Trying to make this, if this is my scholarship, it's going to be the best that I can make it. And asking listeners to share the show. I have a saying at the end, friends tell friends about their favorite podcast. So if you love this episode, please tell your friends and family about it. But it's really serious, because that's how you help your favorite podcasters grow their shows. Think about how many movies you've seen or books you've read because a friend told you it was a good investment of your time. So that's what I really ask listeners for and I can't credit them enough for helping out and spreading the word.

PENMAN: I want to talk a little bit about your scholarship in regard to podcasting and why you think podcasting, and you've answered this a little bit, but why it’s a good medium for historians who are interested in doing digital media and public history. What makes it work so well? 

COVART: I do think there is that component of how we listen and how it can be very intimate and how we're hardwired for human storytelling. I also think podcasting is great because you can be doing something else while you're doing it. I know YouTube is the thing – and Clio Digital Media and Ben Franklin's World, we're going to get into YouTube, not with our standard Ben Franklin's World show, but by creating other video content later this year because there's a huge audience out there for it. But I won't be bringing Ben Franklin's World into video because it works so well as an audio program. And I think it's, again, because like you can be enriching time that is, I don't want to say throwaway time, it's productive time. Like I'm always doing the dishes or folding laundry or walking my dog. But I'm enriching that time by learning something that I want to learn about. And I think that's the power of podcasts. And in fact, when I think about YouTube, I actually pay for the subscription so I can listen to it like a podcast. I don't want to be glued to a screen. I want to be able to do something else. And there have been studies that show you retain more while you're exercising, while you're getting out there and walking. You’ve been to history conferences, I'm sure. You go there and a lot of people are knitting and that's how they're paying attention. But like the physical act of keeping their hands and things busy helps them really listen and retain the information. And I think at least for me, I have a bit of that. So I like to be detached from my screen and being able to listen to the podcast. 

PENMAN: You're touching upon something relevant to why we're talking today, which is this summer seminar, and thinking about teachers who want to break podcasting into the classroom as a tool to whether it's kids who actually want to work in podcasting or just want to improve their interviewing skills or digital media skills, whatever that looks like. Can you talk a little bit about how you think podcasting could fit into the classroom in that way? 

COVART: I can tell you a couple ways that I've seen it. So one way that teachers have been using it, and I admit, our podcast is designed for people like I met at the Park Service. It's designed for adults, not K through 12 classes, but I know a lot of K through 12 teachers who listen. And one way they bring podcasting in is they take the knowledge that we impart and then they work it into their lesson plans. When you get to like eighth grade and up where the kids are a little bit more mature, some teachers have been assigning segments of the podcast for the kids to listen to. In college classrooms and in an, like honors level, AP style high school, they might assign whole podcast episodes for the students to listen to. 

Another way that I’ve seen people bring in, which is more interactive, is the students create podcasts. There are some other teachers who I've seen in the K through 12 space, they have their kids, they can create a video, they can create a podcast, something other than writing an essay or a term paper, right? And those kids will create media based, kind of like a thesis report that you would write in that era. And what's funny is I would gather to wager that those kids are researching and writing just as much as they would because they want to get their podcast right. But they're not thinking about it of, oh my God, I have to write this term paper. Which seems, you know, you used to get nervous about it and be like, okay, I'm going to have to do that work. And it seemed like a lot of work. But somehow producing digital media, it offers enough creativity that it doesn't feel like I have to sit at my desk and just write another term paper.

PENMAN: As I mentioned earlier, you've just finished your 437th, or just published rather, your 437th episode of Ben Franklin's World, and you're launching, this year, Scholar DIY. Can you tell us what's next for Ben Franklin's World and tell us a little bit more about this new project you have in the works?

COVART: Yeah, so in February of 2025, I left Colonial Williamsburg and started a nonprofit with two colleagues I'd actually worked on the podcast with at the Omohundro Institute, Karin Wulf and Joseph Adelman. And we brought the podcast into the nonprofit space so that we're listener supported. And we are figuring out a way to keep the podcast going through listener support, some underwriting support, and then I've been learning a lot about corporate sponsorships as well to see about bringing that kind of work in as well. Plus, when grants reappear, and I think they will at some point, we're in a position as a nonprofit where we can apply for grants. So we are keeping Ben Franklin's World going. This year is 2026. We're a podcast about early American history and we are all in on the revolution. So different aspects of the revolution is what you'll hear this year, but next year we'll go back to covering the whole gamut of early America. And we've expanded our offerings as well. We have two newsletters plus our new episode release newsletter. But every other Sunday, we are trying to work it up to weekly, we feature scholars who – this year, especially this year in 2026 – we can't feature on the podcast because they don't have a revolution project. Or even if they do, it's a story that just doesn't fit well with the other stories that we're telling on the podcast. So Sally Franklin's bookshelf – Sally Franklin, of course, the daughter of Benjamin Franklin, she was an avid reader as well. So we use that to offer text-based interviews with scholars. So you get a little bit of a flavor of the show, but if you actually prefer to read, and sometimes I do prefer to read, you can get an interview there and learn more about other work. And then we have our History Behind the Headlines newsletter, which I write, and that comes out every Friday that I can. I've been traveling a lot for 2026 opportunities, including to this teacher workshop in June. So when I can, every Friday I put out a new newsletter and I take a modern-day story headline. Like last week we were talking about the SAVE Act and looking at the history of voting rights and qualifications in early America. And now we're, we are very convinced as a society that citizenship should be a primary qualifier for voting. In colonial British America, and then when the Constitution went into effect, it was all about property rights and who was paying their taxes and then looking at the change of that over time. So that's how we do that. We pluck something that's relevant today and show you that like it has this long history and it was relevant to early America. And the early American story helps inform what's going on today. So that's what's going on for Ben Franklin's world. We will be adding video. I'm going to be working on turning those History Behind the Headlines newsletter into 10 minute, seven to 10 minute videos on YouTube. 

But yeah, so Scholar DIY. That was the other part really the main part of your question. When I struck out on my own, my first goal was to get Ben Franklin's World situated. We have a big audience for that. That work is important. It's not only the audience that relies on it, the profession relies on it, so I wanted to make sure that got settled. But I also get asked by a lot of scholars, how do I do this? And I've done workshops in the past, and Scholar DIY is really going to be kind of a educational consultancy where I help other experts find audiences for their work, build platforms for their work and revenue streams, for their work because I think there is a crisis in higher education and just like civics and history and music classes don't get funded enough at the K through 12 level, scholars aren't being funded to do the research that they once did. And a lot of scholars aren't even being hired in tenure track positions that provided that research support anymore. So we all have to figure out how we can support our research projects and the generation of new scholarships. And I do think developing a digital media presentation not only adds more high quality information out in the world, but it could be something, a side hustle, so to speak, that would allow scholars to raise some monies that they could use, not only to support their digital content work, but their research going forward. And I guess the last point on that is, I know I've talked about the monetization a little bit, but all this great content is free to consume, but it is decidedly not free to produce. On Ben Franklin's World side – and I admit we are super highly produced. That's just how it happened because I became paranoid, like if this is my scholarship and I'm not able to write all these books and articles that I want, then my podcast will be the best that it can be. So we micro-edit and things I would not recommend and will not recommend to people. But we produce, we spend an hour of labor per minute here on the show. That's how the work breaks down between the preparation for doing the interview, the editing, and the labor that goes into making transcripts and things like that. It's a lot of work. So Scholar DIY won't be to teach you how I do Ben Franklin's World, even though there'll be lessons, but it'll be like, mimic this because this really works, and don't do this because this is not sustainable. And I'm not, I don't want you to learn that. 

PENMAN: I think that's a great note to end on because we’re talking about podcasts as this, like very accessible thing for teachers to bring into the classroom. But as you point out, there’s a really big spectrum when it comes to how much time you want to put into it versus what you're going to get out of it. And I think it's important for people to realize you can still create a good podcast with sort of these stripped down tools. And you could also pursue your passion and edit to your heart's content if you want to. 

COVART: Yeah, it can take as much or as little time as you want. And it's not just podcasting, that's video creation. It's any type of content creation. Because in ways, it's a creative and intellectual labor and these ideas and stuff they're what excite us. And so you can spend as little or as much time as you want. And I think most people will end up spending more time than they think on it. But yeah, there's tips and tricks for how to produce a high-quality show without doing like all the work that we do on Ben Franklin's World. 

PENMAN: Well, Scholar DIY sounds like a really exciting, venture and I know that people will have more questions about it. But for now, I just want to say thank you so much for taking time out of your insane schedule and I'm so excited to have you here in June. And for listeners, I just want to remind them that there are hundreds of episodes of Ben Franklin's World to go and catch up on.  

COVART: Thank you. And if you are listening to the podcast, you can find us at benfranklinsworld.com. You can start anywhere in the catalog you want because you want, because every episode stands alone. So just browse through the topics and listen to what fascinates you. 

PENMAN: All right, thanks Liz. That’s it for “Civics in the Classroom.” Thanks for listening in — and for those of you joining us next week for our summer teacher seminar, we’ll see you soon in Dallas!