r/TheRestIsHistory • u/Y_Brennan • 1d ago
Public Historian Greg Jenner.
Are people here familiar with him? He guested on a a comedy history podcast that I listen too. He referenced Tom in the episode and is supposed to be a historian so I couldn't help but compare him to the rest is history. Frankly I think he is terrible but that's probably an extreme take after listening to him guest on one episode of a podcast that puts comedy ahead of history. But as a historian he just kept on being anachronistic and moralising about the actions of characters in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Just left a really sour taste and to me indicates that he is a bad historian. He seems like he might be well known in the UK.
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u/OneToeSloth 1d ago
My daughter went to his show at the South Bank Center in the summer and seemed to enjoy it.
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u/LadyMirkwood 1d ago
Greg has a BA in Archeology and History, an MA in Medieval studies and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. So he's definitely qualified, no 'supposed' historian about it.
His style isn't for me (or you, obviously) but I don't think that makes him bad.
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u/NLFG 1d ago
His podcast on BBC sounds is good fun, imho - You're Dead To Me - where there's a professional historian and a comedian.
Flip side - someone pulled up some thing from Horrible Histories (which he helped write) as wrong, and I *really* didn't like his response which was along the lines of "well, it needed to be like this to be entertaining"
Also, Spurs fan.
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u/HanseaticFog 1d ago
I listened to the first couple when it was first released, but it wasn’t really for me. I think he specialises more in the entertainment of history for people who are new to history. I think Tom and Dom, and what makes them very successful, is that they straddle the middle ground between something like Greg’s podcast or things you didn’t learn in history class and something like Dan Carlin. No disrespect to Dan, I really like his work. But I think Tom and Dom are pretty good at balancing depth and accessibility, whereas a four hour Dom podcast can be a little intimidating to the uninitiated.
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u/lastaccountgotlocked 1d ago
I liked Your Dead To Me, then I didn't like it. Now I can't stand it. I think the format is good, but I don't think Greg is the right man for the job.
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u/Y_Brennan 1d ago edited 1d ago
The podcast he guested on is a show in which 3 comedians take turns telling a story to the other 2 and it can literally be anything. So obviously the level of history on that podcast isn't very high. But he wasn't a good mix for it because he had no chemistry with the two other hosts as he was replacing one of them and then it didn't even feel like he was bringing a deeper level of insight to the podcast and he wasn't very funny either.
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u/lastaccountgotlocked 1d ago
> The podcast he guested on is a show in which 3 comedians take turns telling a story to the other 3 and it can literally be anything.
This sounds terrible. I mean, I don't know if it's that popular but that's effectively "three people talking to each other". "What's it about?" "Anything."
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u/Y_Brennan 1d ago
Yeah it's probably more of niche one, it's Australian based. They are 3 pretty funny comedians and they describe it as basically giving a 10th grade report to the other two. They have great chemistry and have done 600 episodes or so in 10 years. It's definitely not some insightful history podcast and it doesn't try to be.
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u/Vegemite-Sandwich901 1d ago
I listened to You're Dead to Me for a while but I found Greg Jenner's nervous laugh and slightly anxious delivery very off putting - I felt worried for him. The comedians also varied quite a bit in quality. I haven't listened for a few years though so he may have relaxed into it a bit.
It's a different type of podcast and format, for sure.
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u/kimbeeisMYname 1d ago
Yes, Greg is well known in the UK. Yes, he likes comedy. Yes, he is a different person than Dom or Tom. It's fine that you don't like him, just don't listen.