Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:14 This interview has us moving out of our wheelhouse a bed. We'd been listening to people who inhabit some sort of space in the Muslim or Muslim majority world. Our geographies have been loose, but they're about to get looser. We're talking to people who work in the public humanity space, and that's been a part of what we've been focusing on. So I think this is okay. So how do we make his history accessible? And why is it not simply a case of making more lecture videos available online, more archives available online? My core belief is that our communities deserve creative, beautiful work, which requires thought, and also facilitation of different spaces. Labor has also been at the heart of this series. How do we honor and finance the labor of those within our public humanities, public scholarship community. Welcome to knowledge and it's producers a limited series from the Maidana produced by me and Amy <inaudible>.
Speaker 1 00:01:08 In each episode, we'll be talking to people who are at the forefront of knowledge production, typically away from the traditional educational power structures. We'll be talking to people who curate, who edit, who run research centers, who write and more, my Hilda's Islamic studies, and we'll be talking to people who fit into the study of Islam and the Muslim majority world. But that doesn't necessarily mean there'll be Muslim themselves or Arabic or Turkish. It just means we don't have perfect terms for describing this big intersecting world. Not yet. The goal is to get a wide variety of people talking about different ways of accessing history ideas and more to uplift the people we're interviewing and to inspire you today, we'll be talking to the founders and editors of contingent magazine, mark Rayez, and Aaron Bertram contingent aims at making history accessible to all while supporting academics, who don't have job security.
Speaker 1 00:01:59 I hope you enjoy talking to them as much as I did. There's a lot of laughter in this interview note, Dole black is also a co-founder of contingent magazine, but he wasn't available for this interview and heads up. We will be using some acronyms in this episode and I didn't catch them while we were recording. The AHK is the American historical association. Uh, and you don't need to remember it specifically, but when this acronym comes up, just remember that the aha or other professional associations that turn up as acronyms throw yearly conferences, that kind of gather everyone in their field. This is a particularly pertinent question to the age we find ourselves living in. But what are you guys snacking on these days? What are your favorite snacks? Mark? You want to take this
Speaker 0 00:02:47 One first?
Speaker 2 00:02:48 Sure. I I've become, uh, I guess maybe a daily, uh, hold on. Um, I would say I'm snacking on the target version of peanut butter crackers and granola bars. So it's like, they're, it's like their, in-house one of their called market pantry. So pretty much every time I come into my, the back room that that is kind of our home office. I usually bring a peanut butter crackers and a granola bar with me, even if I don't eat them both. I just it's become kind of like, just anytime I go to work, I have to bring coffee or tea or something to snack on. Even like Erin, you know, as we were kind of joking earlier, even if it's not even if I shouldn't eat that every single time and it is something I need something crunchy at least nearby. It's your ritual. Yeah. Yeah. Aaron.
Speaker 3 00:03:44 Um, I am well I'm, I'm back at work and I work in a historic house museum, so I can't keep any food where I am. So I have to try to be really strategic and I've been trying to actually snack, like have better snacks during the day carving all the time. Um, but since it's mid-summer, I, I tend to go pick blueberries locally and I'll go two or three times a week in the evening and just sort of pick what I have. So I'll usually bring, you know, a pint of blueberries to work, um, which is why I was just making I've moved on from the just purely banana bread stage. Um, and I am enjoying, uh, some banana blueberry oatmeal muffins that I made, uh, this past week. So they're yeah. Um, they're really nice. And they had, uh, those, those smaller, um, mangoes that start with an a, I can't remember. And they had those on super sale at the grocery store the other day, and I've just been sort of snacking. I've been like limiting myself to one a day cause they're wonderful. Uh, trying to stretch them out, but yeah, it's summer and it's like the one time new England has fruit other than apples. So I'm trying to enjoy it.
Speaker 3 00:04:59 Yep. So, but it'll be, it'll be apple season soon and I'm, I'm excited.
Speaker 2 00:05:06 Yeah. Uh, do you guys go apple picking at all? I only went, I went a couple of times when I first got to Connecticut. Cause it did feel like it was something that was required by law or at least like yeah. Apple picking. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:05:29 I think apple picking is never a thing I did growing up. Like we had, there were lots of orchards and we would drive, you know, to get the exact Northern spies or roams or whatever my dad or grandfather wanted for pies. You know, we we'd drive a ways to get them. We never went and picked them on our own. We would pick berries and stuff like this. Uh, I, I think we're going to pick apples this fall, you know, for the kind of bunker mentality we're all. But, um, we will usually just go to the, to the orchard insider mail and like get a couple of packs of packs of the kind that we wanted. Um, the idea of going and picking those, like that seems like a, quite a production compared to blueberry picking.
Speaker 2 00:06:13 Yeah. Usually like around September, you'll just find, and not just grocery stores, but you know, side of the road stuff, there's you just can't go wrong with apple pie barrels of, you know, baskets of apples and apple cider. It's kind of, kind of everywhere. And I think the first year I was kind of like, oh, that's, that's cool, I guess. And then after a while it kind of dropped off, but now I really do, like, this summer has been like hitting me hard, just like all the things I miss about Connecticut and new England in general. Like, you know, it's, it's a very rural state. And so there are a lot of dairies and you can kind of go to any town and find, you know, the town ice cream parlor or also get milk. So it's kind of, you know, just so you can kind of keep exploring the state and then you just see, you know, this isn't obviously pre COVID terms, but you would find, you know, 20, 30, 50 people outside of one building and you'd wonder, oh, what's that? And then you'd find out people are just in line to get ice cream or milk, and then you could just keep hitting town after town. And it was always kind of great stuff it's it was, you know, I being from the Midwest, I feel like, yeah, we get a lot of credit for dairy here, but it's nothing like new England.
Speaker 3 00:07:26 Yeah. And a lot of people have, have been doing the, um, we've sort of increased local milk delivery and stuff like that. Um, so I think a lot of people have been taking advantage of that during, uh, during the pandemic. Um, but it's, we're just about to get to, you know, to apple season. And I remember mark a colleague of ours, Casey, who was from Louisiana originally sort of recounting that when she had first come, she'd gone to school in upstate New York and then been in Connecticut saying sort of to people like, I don't care. Why does it matter? Like it's just apples. Like what's the difference between apples. And of course, you know, in addition to just sort of like knowing the difference between eating apples and baking apples and all this kind of stuff that like, even within the eating apple, everybody has a very specific, so when people say, oh, it's apple season, I'm like, this is garbage. It's just Paula reds. This is early. We have to, we have to wait for the good stuff. So
Speaker 1 00:08:26 This sounds like a contingent article waiting to be produced about apple over the history of apple picking. So let's pivot from that. Take a hard pivot and let's go to, um, I mean, contingent is something that I've been familiar with since you guys started fundraising for the project. Um, we, can you tell our listeners in a sentence, please, what contingent is?
Speaker 3 00:08:53 I worked on a sentence to try to get it into one. So this isn't going to be complete mark, but you can, you can edit if necessary. Uh, it is a, a digital nonprofit magazine of history that publishes and pays non tenure track historians,
Speaker 1 00:09:14 Mark.
Speaker 2 00:09:15 I was, I too was working on a single for instance, practicing it. And I, I, my single sentence is contingent magazine is an online history magazine. That's interested in all types of history by all types of historians and also writing about the discipline and the profession.
Speaker 1 00:09:35 Yeah. That's, that's how I would, that's how I perceive contingent. I mean, you guys have all of these great pieces that follow researchers follow different types of researchers. And then also, I mean, mark, you have that wonderful mailbag where you break down sort of, um, where you break down.
Speaker 2 00:09:56 Yeah. White people. Why, why historians still have to, to actually go to archives and deal with physical sources? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:10:03 Yeah. I almost forgot about that even though you sent it to me while I was writing for you guys. Um, and I think about just also contingent, if I was putting in a word it's just creativity, it's this like brilliant platform for repackaging history. I mean, I was really inspired very early on by one of your field trips. That was a cartoon. Yeah. That first summer. So, um, let's go all the way back and tell me how contingent began.
Speaker 3 00:10:31 Ah, well, I'll start because, um, of the three of us mark mark was sort of the last to join, although it all happened in a very, in a very, uh, short order. Um, so I had obviously in the winter, early spring, I don't remember when it was technically of 2018 sort of rather publicly left academia in a way that many people sort of heard about. And, um, and so I had sort of found myself in a place with no real career future, but with a bunch of people wanting to talk to me about contingent labor and then bill in June of that year. So June of 2018 messaged me, he and I had known each other online and we'd met once at a conference the year before, uh, where he delivered a paper that made me and everyone in the room cry. It was so good.
Speaker 3 00:11:30 Um, but he messaged me like I have a really weird idea and I think you might be the person who, who I could work on it with. And, and so he sort of vaguely pitched this. Like what if we, what if instead of blogs and, and writing stuff for the Washington post made by history section that where you don't get paid? What if we sort of tried to make a magazine for contingent writers where they got paid? So, so the pay was kind of the central part from the beginning. And I think that shaped everything that grew out, uh, from that point. So we kind of sketched out a bunch of ideas and then we sort of reached out to a handful of people, um, who we knew, uh, grad students, contingent scholars, some early tenure track scholars. And, and just sort of said, we're thinking about this. What are your ideas? And people had all sorts of ideas. And mark said, I would like to do this with you, basically.
Speaker 2 00:12:37 I, yeah, I, I remember how I came into the story was I had, I had DMD Aaron one day in, I think, July of 2018. Cause I wanted her advice about publishing op-eds or, or writing for more mainstream publications. Like our Aaron was mentioning our colleague, bill black, you know, Bill's written stuff for the week and box and you see this a lot with grad students getting pieces published in like made by history or, or, uh, the Atlantic. And so I was curious about, you know, what, what, what would it be like to actually pitch? Because again, this isn't something that comes up in, in graduate school or any of your, you know, intro to methodology courses. Like how do you, how do you pitch a non journal? How do you, how do you develop something that, you know, a more general audience would be interested in?
Speaker 2 00:13:32 But I knew Aaron had had that experience. So I, I messaged her and she wrote back very quickly with the pros and cons of what it's like to, to publish. And I remember at the end, she said, she said, Hey, you know, this guy, bill black, I don't know if you know him, but we've been talking about this project. And she sent me this Google doc, which was called untitled project brain. And, uh, and she's like, you know, uh, could you look this over sometime, give your thoughts on this. And I was actually in July, 2018, I was about to leave Connecticut moved back to Missouri, where I'm talking to you from for a couple months and then head off to India, uh, for, uh, for research. And so I was like, you know what, I'll, I'll give this a look before I leave Connecticut and I'll put some comments in, but I remember reading through it and just thinking like, oh, this is a lot of really cool ideas.
Speaker 2 00:14:29 This would be really amazing. And I know it was, it was talked about as a magazine, but even then it wasn't like, you know, like a magazine to me is still something like, you think you pick up, you leave through, it has like this physical texture, but I knew, you know, whatever shape this was going to be, whether it's a website magazine, I, I just felt like this was one of those I didn't, you know, I didn't want to be like, you know, Pete, best from the Beatles. I didn't want to miss out, or I didn't want to be Pete best buy anything. So I was like, I don't know what this might be, but I, I, this sounds so cool. I I'd be a fool to not be involved, you know, for as long as I possibly can, because I kept thinking like, oh, you know, I might, you know, I'm going to go off to India. We'll see what happens. I'll, I'll help here and there, but it's just been, it's been incredible just seeing the last two years of doing this and seeing all the different people that the site touches and connects with. And, and so honestly it's just, uh, it's all one big cool surprise.
Speaker 3 00:15:27 Yeah. And I think one thing, you know, you asked me about, I remember this now you asked me about pitching and to be quite honest, I had, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. You know, I had talked to bill about how to pitch because, uh, you know, I was confronted upon leaving academia with sort of a half finished manuscript. And, you know, I, two weeks after I publicly said I was leaving, like I got an acceptance for a journal article that had been pending for a very long time, you know, like first round minimal revisions. And it was, and it was great, but kind of a day late and a dollar short, but I was sort of grappling with the fact. Um, and I remember having this reinforced for me at, at the shear conference that summer that I went to, um, as a, as a bit of a pariah, um, where it was very clear that there was not that, that magazines and newspapers and trade presses in general were not particularly interested in the kind of history that I wrote.
Speaker 3 00:16:29 Um, and this, this sort of general like, well, you can still publish it with a university press. And I wasn't going to do that. Like, I don't know why people sort of think like, oh, you can still publish a book like publishing an academic monograph is miserable. Like it's actually terrible and costs a lot of your time and money and why would I do it? Like, it's not worth it to me. It wasn't worth it to do that, but, but I was kind of confronted by the fact that there was nothing there's nothing else I could do. Um, because it wasn't about the right thing. And I had sort of always been that always been kind of hard to, to take. And we wonder, you know, how do people get into history and, and stuff like, I didn't get into history till quite late in my life because the kind of stuff I was interested in wasn't presented as valuable.
Speaker 3 00:17:19 So I, in some ways I ended up talking to bill early on about pitching because I hadn't quite grokked to the fact that it wasn't necessarily that I was pitching wrong, but that it was that the content that I was gonna pitch was wrong. Um, and there's also the fact that like, you'll notice, you know, there's these famous pieces of quit lit from me and Rebecca Schuman and all these other pieces, those, those aren't pieces that get published and go viral because they get pitched and accepted. They only get republished in big outlets because they were, they went viral on their own. Like I would never have pitched my piece of Quizlet and gotten it accepted. Um, so that there was just certain kinds of writing and certain conversations about the discipline and labor that were not you, weren't gonna, you, weren't going to get them accepted.
Speaker 3 00:18:11 And I know, I mean, cause we've tried over and over and over again and we still get that dude in the wall street journal who says, professors make a hundred thousand dollars a year. Um, so there was this idea that we could kind of have something that talked about that, uh, you know, we could, we could feature the kind of content that we thought really did have an audience, but maybe that audience hadn't had been told that history wasn't for them. Um, we could support these contingent scholars who had really great work and nowhere to publish it anymore. Um, and then we could also kind of talk about the doing of history, not history as a fact, but a process. Um, and so that's kind of where our, um, where our sort of three, uh, three sentence kind of motto came from. And to be quite honest, like I wrote those three sentences the night before I went to Chicago for aha, before we premiered. And they only, they only work because we had spent forever workshopping the idea and that's, we brought on Emily estin in that early fall, probably late summer, early fall to
Speaker 3 00:19:20 Be our kind of web designer and an all around tech person and just digital humanist in general. Um, so that was kind of once we had her on board, we could really start framing out like that this would be a real thing and, and what it would look like and how it would work.
Speaker 2 00:19:40 And it was funny, like Emily is a good example, hiring Emily and bringing her on is a good example of sort of the three of us having the same thought at the same time, because I had, I knew Emily via Twitter. And then I wanted to pitch a panel to OEH in 2018 and I, she agreed to be on it. And then she graduated with her ma and she was looking for work and she just tweeted one day in the fall of 2018. I was like, Hey, I'm looking for website design work. And I think all three of us had the same idea that like, we should, we should hire her. We should bring her on board. And I remember saying like, oh, I know Emily. I was just on a panel with her and she's, she was game to do it. And once she came on, it was, you know, this is how we build this website. This is what we have to do. These are the plugins we should consider investing in like it's, you know, but we all had the same idea. It was kind of nice.
Speaker 3 00:20:39 Yeah. And I think it sort of why a thing that was important to us from the start. Cause I think the other person that we hired early on with Hillary to do the graphic design and it had been really important for us from the start that if we said people get paid for their work, that means people get paid for their work. Even if they're doing, especially if they're doing web design and graphic design. Um, and, and mark actually is the one who connected us with Hillary, who, who created our, our amazing logo
Speaker 2 00:21:11 As a former student of mine. And I remember I'd reached out to a couple of others to see who they would suggest, and they both suggested her. And I remember that, that sort of, that I think it was like instead of we, at that time, we were always using Skype, but I remember Hillary wanted to use Google hangout. I remember the three of us for the four of us, you know, she was asking questions that we hadn't really, we hadn't considered deeply, but it was, it helped us flush out both the, the look of the site, but also the scope of the site. And at one point we were doing stuff when I was in India. So we were kind of operating on, you know, a couple of different continents and time zones and uh, times of the day, but you know, this, that's kind of, if you can do it that way, do it.
Speaker 3 00:21:58 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:21:59 It's interesting seeing how well a, how your team came together very organically. Um, but also, and through networks, of course, but also everything you're saying is now manifested in the features and the regular features that you run on the site. So of course, as Aaron was speaking about sort of wanting to highlight how history has done, you have that wonderful series that I love, um, how I do history, which features not only historians, but also people who are archivists, who are digital humanists and it's, it's, it's brilliant. Um, so I am curious how you all sat down together as a team to think through what features you wanted to run and how to define them, how to title them.
Speaker 3 00:22:43 We have never all been in the same room. Um, I mean, mark and I were at grad school together, but not even buried together, I'm considerably older than
Speaker 2 00:22:57 Aaron's last three semesters where my first three semesters.
Speaker 3 00:23:02 Um, so we, so it was, it was always it's, we've always worked in a virtual space. So this is why the sort of switch to doing everything digitally contingent is the only part of my life that hasn't been disrupted in any way.
Speaker 1 00:23:18 That's true. Um, okay. But when I, when I met with sort of the collaborative process of like brainstorming together, cause it seems like you all have these conversations via Twitter or text or email, and then they coagulate into ideas.
Speaker 3 00:23:37 Yeah. Our DM history is an archive in itself, uh, of, of, of panic. Um, I think w one thing we did at the start was, I mean, this, I think was really important for us. We essentially had to write a business plan. Um, and that was, that kind of prospectus was what we circulated to a lot of people. And one of the first things we had to do was figure out what sort of forms we wanted to have. And at the start, I, you know, what we really had was, were, were featured shorts, field trip, mailbag, and reviews. Um, and we've all the other stuff that we've kind of innovated has come since then. Um, but we, we read about how much people will read and we, we read about average pay per word, and we, you know, we talked to editors of other magazines, um, and we calculated in, okay, well, but how do we factor in the actual cost of doing this research?
Speaker 3 00:24:40 You know, this isn't just let me sit in my room and think about something, this is, this involves labor and travel and how do we, how do we recognize that? Um, you know, so, so outlining those forms was important at the start, if only because we want it to be able to make very clear to people because pitching is so hard and especially the money part is so awkward. Like, I didn't want anybody to have to worry about that. I wanted them to know what they were pitching and how much they could expect, because I actually don't like the, oh, just negotiate more like, cause I know who's at a disadvantage there and I just, I just wanted it to, for everyone to be able to know what they were going to get if they pitched us.
Speaker 1 00:25:24 Yeah. I think I appreciate it the most only because you're exactly right. People are certain types of people are disadvantaged at this because they don't feel like they should ask. And then there's also, and I think Erin, you've spoken about this before the fact that it's so drilled into our heads that like, you know, when you produce history it's for the public and that maybe you shouldn't be paid and then also there's this like, well, tenured scholars don't get paid for wash for the writing for the Washington post. It's sort of an honor. And it's, it's this totally skewed sense of labor. That is the same sort of logic that applies to the adjunctification of the profession. And that's what I really admire about contingent. I mean, you put it in, I mean, oftentimes people ask me what is contingent mean? And I'm like, well, it refers, it's a direct reference to the profession and the problems with it. Um, but it's also punchy. And I think I appreciate that about how you pick the title.
Speaker 3 00:26:18 I wish I could even remember how Hilary do you remember?
Speaker 2 00:26:25 I remember we came up with it by October, but I think contingent was your suggestion. I think we had some other ideas, but honestly I think once we heard that, that was it like that in any, any like possible titles, you know, just kinda come kind of pale in to that. But I remember you, I think that was, that was your call, but I, I was looking through old emails and by October, all of the emails go from, you know, untitled brainstorm possible website to contingent and it's been kind of, it's been that sense. So
Speaker 3 00:27:00 Yeah. And, and it was kind of to be able to talk about that to Hillary and then to have, you know, she sent us several different, um, sets of kind of design packages and, and I remember opening them and when I kind of scroll down and I saw the image that, that became our logo, like I remember tearing up because being able to see the idea of the magazine expressed visually, like that was just, it was, it was overwhelming. And then to be able to, like, she was the first check week cut, basically. She was the first person we, we paid and we did have to kind of make a decision at a certain point. Like we were going to have to pay, we're going to have to pay Emily for that work. We were going to have to pay Hillary for that work. It's a lot of money to start a nonprofit, like we had to incorporate and we had to become a public charity and all these different fees.
Speaker 3 00:27:54 And, you know, at that point we were a grad student of a VAP and, and an, an unemployed person who was teaching was just finishing teaching one adjunct class and had no, no future. And we sort of had to decide like, are we going to do this? And then I got accepted on a late breaking panel at the 2019 AAJ, uh, in, I think November, uh, a panel with bill Costin. Who's also now on our board. And, um, and once I knew I was going to be in Chicago for aha, it was kind of like, well, that let's premiere it then. And so then it was kind of a mad dash, including getting all of our swag printed up in the week between Chris, between Christmas and new year, which was the stupidest thing. Um, having, you know, hoping that, hoping that the package of stickers arrived at my house before I had to leave to go to Chicago next morning.
Speaker 3 00:28:48 Uh, and then the morning I got to aha, basically we set it to, to launch to premiere, like when I landed in, in Chicago and we had kept it very quiet. I mean, some people knew it was coming, but I can't say more than more than 20 people. And some of those were my parents who I'm not sure really knew what was going on. Um, so it was, it was like this we're gonna, we're going to have to take a leap. And then when people actually donated, I remember we all kind of simultaneously had this panic, like $2,500 raised in, oh God, we're going to have to do this. Now
Speaker 2 00:29:33 People get, you know, cause,
Speaker 3 00:29:34 Cause we'd had to, we'd had to set up a bank account. We'd had to set up Stripe and PayPal and find a donor management system and all of this infrastructure work. And then it was like, oh no people, people want us to do it crap. Now we have to,
Speaker 1 00:29:51 Um, it's funny, me and mark were just talking about this. We were talking about, um, sort of the adrenaline that comes with her and then like refreshing your donor box page and, and sending messages to the graduate students. I mean, I don't know if you guys did this. I was, when I fundraised for a project, I began, I wanted all the faculty to donate, of course, and not the grad students who have very little money. And I spent a lot of our fundraising period. DM-ing my friends were graduate students who were sending money being like, you're not supposed to donate
Speaker 3 00:30:24 Same. I remember, you know, you ask people for money. And then as soon as I saw people giving, I was like, no, you're an adjunct. They know you can't afford that. Don't give us money. Like I felt bad because I knew what it was to those people. Most of our donors are not tenure-track faculty. Most of our donors are adjuncts and grad students and friends and archivists.
Speaker 1 00:30:48 Um, what was I going to say? And then also, um, I just have to say Aaron, this might not actually go in the interview. Um, cause I've said this to mark before multiple times and I said this on Twitter multiple times, your stickers are gorgeous. My, I got a set after I, um, when mark sent me my check for the piece, I ran a few guys and my mother tried to cause they came to my mom's address. Cause I wasn't in the states. My mom tried to take them out of the chat, but she made more of a show of taking the stickers and putting them in her room because she could visualize that they're beautiful.
Speaker 2 00:31:20 That's, that's why I love it when people still, when they want a physical check, because that gives me an excuse to put the cards and stickers in there. I love being able to send those. And, and when you guys, when you guys send your stickers out, I I've never been a stickers on the laptop person, but I think I I've started to see them become more envious when I see laptops that are, you know, supporting, supporting something. So if you guys, when you guys get stickers, if you send them our way, yours will be the first I need to break that rule for, uh, where you put that on there. Probably. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:31:59 Well I have, that was, that was the really thrilling thing. Cause you know, I, I sort of got off the plane armed with, uh, you know, a bunch of, bunch of random crap in a bag. Like here's, here's a business cards and here's stickers. And so I started, you know, at that point, just kind of giving them out to people and by the end of ha to see them on people's laptops, um, was
Speaker 2 00:32:23 TSA stop you for that package or something?
Speaker 3 00:32:26 Yes they did. Yes they did. But it got inspected at Bradley. Bradley is the most low key airport fly
Speaker 2 00:32:34 Out.
Speaker 3 00:32:37 No, not at all. And I think it also snowed that morning on the way to the airport was it was a lot of things where I was like, we were cause you, I don't know if you were mark, were you in India then? Or were you?
Speaker 2 00:32:50 I was in India by then because I remember because we had a meeting on new year's Eve. That was like, it was like three hours away from midnight, but it was, it was like morning for you guys. So it was kind of like,
Speaker 3 00:33:05 And it was good because the, like the lead up to it, frankly being stretched out over time, I think it was 11 and a half hours between knee and mark and so 12 and a half, including bill. It meant that basically we had almost complete 24 hour coverage for all the stuff that had to get done in those last few days. Like I remember DM-ing being like, you know, cause I had a flight at six in the morning or whatever being like, all right, it's eight 30. I'm going to go to bed. Can you do this before I get up in the morning? You know? And then off we went, so it kind of worked to our advantage sometime. Um, and we had to be to talk about the forms a little more. Like we had, we had our, our first set of, uh, pieces kind of lined up once we knew we would be able to do it. We had some ideas about what kinds of things we wanted to feature. So, so we didn't that the first kind of month of pieces wasn't they weren't pitched, they were solicited. Um, so that was kind of how we, because we wanted those first set of pieces to really kind of frame out the kind of work we wanted to do.
Speaker 1 00:34:12 So tell me more about the distribution of labor. So how, who does, what and how I know that labor is really important to you guys. And I want to hear more about the sort of the checks and balances you use so that everyone is being appreciated. I think we have a sense of it. I just want to hear more about it.
Speaker 2 00:34:29 Sure.
Speaker 3 00:34:32 Uh, well we are technically, uh, one thing that's been important for us to keep in mind and I think, um, I've, we've, we've all done some kind of consulting for, for other people to help work them through this, that sort of contingent the organization. The nonprofit organization is separate from contingent, the magazine one exists to put the other out. Um, and so the three of us are the editorial board of the magazine, but we're also on the, on the actual board of the organization. So I don't really know why we picked, well, I know why we, I know why mark has treasurer cause he has a background in accounting and that's so he became that. I became president and bill became vice president secretary. That doesn't matter much other than, um, I mean it matters a lot for mark. It matters less, I think for me and bill, but those sort of mapped onto some of the things that we had to, to take care of, I would say, does that make sense, mark?
Speaker 3 00:35:33 Like, um, I think I, with mark sometimes when necessary tend to take care of for the organization, the, um, I don't even know what you'd call it. Like it's incorporated at my address. Cause I knew I was going to live here and the other two worlds are more mobile. Um, sort of, I take care of a lot more of the organizational like business stuff. Like making sure we stay in compliance. I kind of took the lead on our 5 0 1 C3 application, um, stuff like that. Phil sort of ended up defaulting to a little more of the, um, like he gets contracts out and he kind of refined that language and he keeps track of that kind of stuff. Um, you know, mark kind of has his hands full with the, with sort of our general accounting though. Each of us is sort of responsible for paying the, the people we edit, although while you were in India, we sort of bill and I switched off on that. Um, and so that's kind of separate from the editorial labor mark, you may have some sort of thoughts on, I think it ebbs and flows in is a little more organic, right?
Speaker 2 00:36:48 It, it, yeah, it's never been, uh, I would say I, you know, I wouldn't say it's so I think in the beginning, I think we felt like our first month where we loaded up a number of pieces, I think for awhile that our default was to do four, four pieces a month and it was kind of one piece per person. And then if, you know, maybe somebody would grab the fourth piece or we could work on it together. Like there was a piece the, our first summer that bill and I, there was a couple of pieces, I think bill and I worked on or, you know, if something comes up, we could say like, Hey Aaron, can you look this over? Um,
Speaker 3 00:37:26 I think the length, the length of the piece sort of editing, you know, I edited Eddie's dinosaur piece, which was very long and took a lot of editorial work, but I also did errands comic, which required a different kind of thing. So those two sort of evened out, so like no one is going to take, I mean, now we're sometimes dumb at it. Like I found myself in, I think may or June, maybe like somehow I had, we'd gotten ourselves backed up and I, I, I edited all of the pieces for the month, which hadn't originally all supposed to been coming out in that month. Um, and then like July, I had kind of an easier month, uh,
Speaker 2 00:38:07 Yeah, yeah. Some months or are, you know, the months just tend to be different on what we have like in the queue and what me, you know, if something, if something sounds better to come out now than later like that can, you know, where it can be done to get a piece out a little bit earlier. Uh, but it just, I mean, sometimes you just gravitate towards stuff that you find interesting or you want to learn a little bit more about and you, and at least for me, I, you know, I kind of get a protective or I get very sentimental about the field trips because it was something that, you know, we get a lot of pitches for features. Everybody wants to pitch a feature, we get a good amount of shorts, not as many reviews, but I think this year, we, for the beginning of the year, we didn't have any for field trips and those can be, you know, our, our joking phrase for those are, you know, it's, it's Mr. Rogers goes to the crayon factory, but for historian. So like where, where do all the interesting places historians go to? Well, they, you know, they go to libraries, go to archives to go to, you know, battlefields people, you know, historians go all sorts of interesting places. And so I kind of gravitate towards those and shorts, um, uh, you know,
Speaker 3 00:39:23 Yeah, you really, mark is kind of the editor for, for the, how I do history series. Um, he kind of takes the lead on, on that. Um, and, and I think when we do special things like bill kind of took the lead on the Forrest Gump series we did last year, um, I think kind of mark and I took a little more of the lead on the star wars series. So some sometimes it's just, you know, and I will, I will tend to pick pieces that are, that intersect with my own research interests in part, because I want to, I would rather have some grounding in the literature. Like these are not there's no, there's no full peer review here. We're not claiming to do that, but, but having at least, you know, some rootedness in, in the field, I think helps you. And, and I think we talked to each other too about, um, uh, you know, we're, we're among the three of us, we're kind of broadly familiar with certain literatures and less familiar with other things. Um, so we will periodically kind of ask people we know about, about arguments and about, you know, uh, about fields and things like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:40:42 It's been handed, you know, if there's terminology that I'm just, I don't encounter as a 20th century diplomatic historian that I think, oh, this is more of 19th century literature, Aaron, or bill might, they might immediately know what this is, as opposed to me kind of trying to decipher it. And, um, and also too, like, you know, that the pieces we've run that have had anything to do with India or south Asia I've, I've had my fingerprints on because it's either, it's either stuff that I am just incredibly fascinated with. Or like in the case of Noorani, bassoons mailbag about how to write a biography. I remember seeing stuff about Moranis biography, uh, while I was in India and I was thinking like, oh, I really wish I could, you know, I knew I had a connection to this person. I'd like to know more her.
Speaker 2 00:41:33 And then a friend of mine just kind of DMD the two of us and said like, oh, Noorani, you should talk to mark. Uh, I think, I think you guys might have a lot in common, so, uh, it's, it's just, you know, it's nice that we have, you know, readers and supporters that, you know, suggest us to, to people to pitch that people, you know, have offered to, to, uh, be sounding boards or, or offer advice. Like that's, that's a nice thing. I mean, it's, it's one thing for somebody to give money to the site and support, you know, the publication of a piece there's other ways people can support us to by, you know, offering their advice or counsel or just things that, Hey, you should, you should talk to this person or, you know, Hey, this is a good magazine you should pitch for. I know these people, they, they, they're looking for interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 00:42:21 So how else is the reception that, I mean, clearly, and I, I say this as someone who's written for you, I've definitely recommended you guys because the editorial process is smooth, getting paid as smooth. It's a great site to have your content featured amongst because you know, that the other pieces that you piece is amongst sort of represent this collage in some ways, but also a sort of seamless vision of, of the inclusion that we can have in our fields. Um, so I know as sort of a contributor, but also as a reader, um, on individual basis, but how has the reception been at large, from different facets of academia and also outside of academia? Because I think that's your primary goal.
Speaker 3 00:43:02 Yeah. I mean, I think we have a challenge that some other magazines don't have the thing that is at the core of our magazine, isn't a field or a chronological timeframe or a topic it's, it's kind of a, I hate to say a philosophy, but it's sort of centering labor issues and, and centering this kind of very particular mission that we have, which means it can be a challenge frankly, to market because it's not like, you know, we can kind of put clusters of pieces together that fit really well, but, but our pieces are very different from each other, even though there are really good connections between them. Um, so as a general magazine, uh, that can make it kind of tough. So Twitter really is our best, um, our best marketing space. And I think it, it really just helped there that, um, you know, the all three of us were, were already people in that space. Um, and that's where we're a piece can really, um, can really take off and, and get picked up in some, in some interesting spaces.
Speaker 2 00:44:15 Yeah. I remember a recent piece we had by Nashont Bisat about Curry before Columbus, you know, that, you know, I, I remember messaging with Nashont afterwards and he's like, oh, I've never had a piece get this kind of reception. You know, it just it's a feeling, but, you know, I think, I think either Aaron or bill found that it had been, uh, collected by, uh, an Indian, uh, magazine scroll. Like they're, like
Speaker 2 00:44:46 I was gonna say between Noorani, uh, mailbag and Nashont's piece, like, uh, just we can see where people are reading us. And, you know, of course we have, you know, the most, most of our readers are in the United States, some in the UK, some in Canada, but India is moving, moving fast up the, up the ladder there. So it's a, it's nice to see. And, you know, when I was, I did a little bit of traveling at the beginning of this year in the UK and Austria. So I was handing out contingent cards and telling people to pitch us. So, you know, it's, it's, I would say this year, last year, it was true, but this year alone we've had pitches from all parts of different countries in Africa and Asia and throughout Europe. And, uh, it's, it's nice to, to, to see us have a global reach or at least
Speaker 3 00:45:36 Yeah. I mean, I think one piece that really, uh, notably didn't, didn't do great numbers on Twitter and did incredible numbers on Facebook. And there are lots of reasons why, um, and it's newly relevant. Uh, again today, uh, Eduardo Torres is escape from New York and from Columbia university, um, to be quite honest, uh, us born academics had no interest in touching that, uh, the amount of the amount of reading it got. I mean, it just didn't, it got shared by two, uh, us, the two us born tenure faculty that I know of. And one of them was a former professor of both of ours, who was the one who encouraged us to pick up the piece in the first place. Um, but it did it all of a sudden the stats on the backend of the site were unintelligible because WordPress, sometimes there's a hard time parsing, um, the sources of international clicks.
Speaker 3 00:46:36 Um, and it it's because it was doing, it was being shared all over Facebook, um, among international grad students. Um, so to see that, um, you know, that I think is really exciting. And I think like with Nishant piece, the Curry piece, it's not that not that I didn't think the piece would do well, but sometimes you never know what piece is going to catch. Um, you know, we figured Charles is piece that, you know, the Triscuit Twitter thread response piece would do well. And it did well enough that it got picked up by pocket and it broke the website for a day
Speaker 2 00:47:13 Or Rachel Kirby's piece about Mr. Peanut has. Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:47:17 But Mr. Peanut. Yeah. But something like, like Mark's mailbag on, why do historians still have to go to archives? Like it did respectable business when it first came out, but then we'll just, we, you know, we throw up old pieces every once in a while and it caught a second wind for reasons. I can't really explain several months later.
Speaker 2 00:47:38 Yeah. It was like November. It's been like almost eight months since it, it first debuted. And,
Speaker 3 00:47:44 And I, I threw it into a tweet someday cause I was like, well, it's been a while since this came out, let's see what anybody thinks about it. And then it just sort of took off. So it's been, it's been interesting like Emily, uh, our web developer Emily's mom always wants to talk to her about what was in, um, I was surprised even my sister who was also a history major and is a librarian, um, she'll randomly sort of like text me about having read something. Like I remember her loving Bill's Nixon piece from early on, and I was sort of surprised about that. Um, it'll be interesting to see, just to see the piece, like not a retweeted, something from one of us, but just someone organically sharing it. I think those are the really exciting, uh, moments. Um, but the, the challenge can be converting those people into, uh, into repeat visitors. You know, lots of people read the thing about Triscuits will they come back and read anything else? Is I think the, a real challenge,
Speaker 1 00:48:47 I think a lot of your pieces have a staying power. They're not just, I mean, even the star wars pieces, which were obviously released to coincide with the movie, you wrote them so that they could be read in different contexts. Like not you wrote them, you, you, you, you collected them. Well, you wrote a piece Aaron for that collection, didn't you? Yeah. Yeah. Um, these pieces have staying power. They can be reassigned. People watch star wars constantly. I mean, um, the mailbag that I was confusing with Mark's, um, which is the one about contingency, which is so great. I see that popping up all the time on Twitter and I've sent it to people because they don't understand this whole system. I mean, it's, it's the kind of thing you can send to someone when they say, well, why can't you just walk down the street to this university and get a job there?
Speaker 3 00:49:33 Have you thought about sending your resume to Harvard dentistry? Well, that's, that's exactly what they're for in some senses, like they're meant to be, um, they're meant to be the pieces that you can in not in a condescending way, but kind of give to someone who, who wouldn't necessarily, uh, who doesn't want to read up or need to read a really big, long explanation of things, but, but kind of just, um, needs the perspective from practitioners to, to understand this, this weird system that we function in or don't function in this case maybe.
Speaker 1 00:50:13 Um, okay. So one other use that I've seen of contingent and something you've all encouraged is in the classroom, be it for K through 12 students, maybe not K I mean, you could try to read a contingent about the kindergarten, but for pre university students and for university students. And I've even, I've been told that pieces are on different syllabus for graduate students as well. Um, as I'm sure you've been told, so how are people using contingent in the classroom and what, how do you think generally about the future of education and pedagogy?
Speaker 3 00:50:52 I'm pulling up our teacher survey now. I mean, I can say right now I actually have a high school intern at the museum with me. And, um, so it's me and the director of collections. We're collaborating with this, with this young woman and she's putting together an exhibit case. And I actually gave her errands comic as like a primer on, on exhibit design. And, uh, Jody, my colleague hadn't seen it and I showed it to her and I was like, I'm sure there's something like better, like real museum study stuff. You can give her and she read it through and she's like, Nope, that pretty much, pretty much covers all the important stuff. So that piece, um, that piece is actually, uh, it's linked, I think, uh, in some Smithsonian lesson plans it's included, I think in the New York city grade five public school curriculum like materials, uh, all of them have to be an expedited version because I think the Smithsonian link says note contains the word app so that, uh, that's one, one kind of cool thing, like to be able to use that myself has been really, um, has been nice.
Speaker 3 00:52:00 Um, let's see, I'm looking, I'm actually looking right now at art educator survey. Um, so one person said that they had used it for students looking for topics for research papers. Like they looked around the site to see what was interesting as a way to kind of think outside of the box of what history can be, sort of to see what other people have been thinking about. Um, someone's used the trouble with Triscuits as a mini lesson in asking historical questions. Um, quite a few people I think have used the mailbag. I wrote this, this, someone had written right here. Um, the, what is revisionist history, uh, thing that I wrote on, on their syllabus. And it was weird. Someone messaged me that they were putting it on their syllabus alongside such and such other book in their methods class. And I was like, I read that book in my methods class in college. Um, and then, um, yeah, and this person here had, had actually used Aaron's comic to help them to help their students, um, curate an exhibit in their class.
Speaker 1 00:53:07 That's so cool. I mean, it must be so yeah, that must be super fulfilling. So how about how, I mean, do you, Hmm, do you at all commission piece that not commission? Sorry, my brain just broke. Um, do you, is there an approach to how you incorporate pedagogy onto the site? Like actual pieces about pedagogy? Because I've seen quite a few how I do histories about this?
Speaker 3 00:53:35 Oh, I wouldn't have even thought of them that way. We were sort of thinking about, we have some plans to do some more explicit pedagogically based stuff. Um, but I never really thought that, I guess we are doing some of that already. Well even museum. Yeah. I mean, well, yeah, the museums have, I mean, I think we'd really like to move in, in that direction. And the nice thing about the magazine is essentially the only thing that limits us is the money that we get from other people to pay writers. You know, we, we could put out more. Yeah. Uh, if there's more, I mean, that sounds very mercenary, but that was kind of the gamble that people said, we'd be willing to pay for this. And we said, okay, here's the opportunity. Um, and so like, if people decide they don't want to pay any more for the magazine, like then we won't have the magazine anymore and, and it'll be sad, but also like it's a lot of time and work. Um, so, so being able to expand to do more stuff on pedagogy and to do more guest mailbags and things like that. Um, but the ideas for the magazine are really limitless. Um, it's just, do we have the, do we have the funding?
Speaker 2 00:54:51 I remember, you know, when, when lockdown started and, and the pandemic really hidden March, you know, we, I think we were publishing more per week. We were usually publishing two things a week, even if, even if one was kind of a short piece because, you know, people were home, people, you know, were looking for something to read or something to do. Uh, and also, you know, people need an outlet, you know, like we would get someone would do a thread on Twitter or, you know, would kind of ask an interesting question and that's kind of thought like that that would be a great piece. And, you know, like, like what we were saying, if we can pay for it, we'll, we'll do it. But, you know, we, we would love, you know, we get a lot of pitches even when we're not open for pitches and you know, it it's, you know, there's stuff that we can kind of, oh, you know, we'll just put that off to the side. We'd love to be able to do it, but until we can guarantee a spot on the schedule, we know that we can pay that person. Like that's, that just has to wait. But
Speaker 3 00:55:49 I mean, we opened up for pitches in February for three weeks, four weeks, and basically built a full slate, true November. I mean, that's kind of where we, where we are, because like go figure people like to pitch a magazine where they get paid for it. And we don't want to be in the, in the situation where like, I, I feel bad sort of saying, like, we don't have a spot to publish this till October. Um, and knowing sometimes that, that, that might mean that the person decides they're going to, you know, take the piece somewhere else. Um, but I think we have a couple of pieces coming down the line. Um, I'm just finishing, editing a piece actually on tenure track hiring and the challenges of negotiation for scholars of color and women. Um, we have a piece on the AP on, on sort of the AP system more broadly, but the kind of debacle that happened this year, um, coming up as well.
Speaker 3 00:56:54 So those are the kinds of pieces we like to be able to take from Twitter threads. And, and from we, we sort of are very resistant to the hot take of the, this is, this is how Trump is like Nixon or Jackson or whoever. Um, but when, when somebody has an experience or, um, has a really creative framing of something, that's about sort of the work of history, those are the things we like to be able to pull in. And of course, people are constantly tagging us in and saying contingent, you should publish this. Um, you know, which I love and appreciate, but also like we would love to publish all of those things. We just won't publish things if we can't pay people.
Speaker 1 00:57:35 Yeah. So, I mean, I'm glad you brought that up sort of about sort of, you're not going to publish sort of the hot take on how is Trump like Nixon or whatever, um, because something you guys also do really well is coverage of recent events. Um, and when I say events, I mean sort of in the historical sphere, the sphere of sort of professional history and the implications that has and how that mirrors what's going on in greater society. So you ran two excellent pieces on the sheer conference and that one particular panel. And I thought it was so timely. And I wasn't surprised to see that you would run it. I, as a non, as an outsider to sheer had seen all the tweets and had seen the hashtag going around and I appreciated having this window into this other world. Um, mostly because the exact same thing was happening, um, at the American association of religion AAR's listserv, but also unbeknownst to many people, it was happening on another listserv that I am at have access to. And
Speaker 3 00:58:42 Was it on H was it on H France? Was it that one?
Speaker 1 00:58:45 Um, uh, I will tell you after recording which one it was,
Speaker 3 00:58:55 Well, you would say, you say as an outsider, the sheer sheer is like one of the primary conferences in my field. And it's a field that it's a conference that I often felt like an outsider at, which was part of why I was interested. And I think bill had seen the tweet thread going around, um, and we sort of commissioned, um, based on, on the tweet thread. Um, and we're able to like, that's the thing that were tons of think pieces published on that. And it was in the New York times and all this kind of stuff. And I knew that we, we could publish the piece we published, um, and that we hopefully that the scholar who wanted to say those things could feel like ours was a good site to have that viewpoint expressed and trust that the editorial process would, would honor what he wanted to say.
Speaker 2 00:59:49 Mark, you have anything to add? Oh, the only thing I would add is, you know, I remember kind of seeing this go on and in real time, because, you know, being from being at the university of Connecticut, you know, the, the big programs in, in the history department are foreign relations history and early America. So I, even though I, I don't do not study this time period in place. Most of a lot of my friends and colleagues, you know, there, that I know what they're doing in July, they're getting ready to go to shear. They're getting ready to either present there. Or, uh, you know, at least the few years I was in Connecticut, it was either, you know, in new Haven or it was not too far away. So it's, it's a big deal. So it's, it's one of those fields where I'm not connected to it closely, but I know enough people.
Speaker 2 01:00:37 I know that it's a, it's a big deal for, for this field. And I know, so seeing stuff both on Twitter and on Facebook, you can kind of jump back and forth and see what was going on. And it was just, it was, it was almost surreal. And then to see all these kinds of, uh, cause and effect situation where it's just like, oh man, this is, this is a, you know, what, what do we do? Like, there's so many things going on that we, we could be speaking to this. And, uh, that's just one of those, those instances where we, we think fast and you reach out and, and, you know, it comes together. It's, you know, something happens in two weeks later, we've got where a week later we've got a piece up and it's been, uh, heartening to see the people sharing it. And it, it, you know, it's kind of like Eduardo's op-ed, and that, you know, it's, it's been the places where it's been shared in the conversations that it's the larger conversations that it's, uh, um, generated have just been again, that's, that's kind of what a, what a, what a good publication can do.
Speaker 3 01:01:39 Yeah. And well, and I think that the, a similar one earlier in the summer, um, the round table that we did on, on being contingent during COVID in some ways came out of, I got asked, I was in the, I was in the one in the Chronicle back in March. Um, the one that I could tell nobody read before commenting on it, because they're like, there's not even any non-tenured people in here. And I was like, there were like five of us, um, and some like ed tech randos or whatever, you know, but, but we had that. And then we thought, well, let's do, you know, let's do this, uh, for contingent scholars. And I think that, that, that panel spoke to, or the way we constructed it, um, kind of reflect something else that we try really hard to do. Um, I mean, and I think I'm conscious of it in particular ways, um, because I know about sort of gender representation in fields, but we work very hard, um, on the, on the balance of contributors that we have.
Speaker 3 01:02:43 And so for that was one where I was sort of like, we don't to be representative of what is happening right now. We don't have one person talking about being a parent during this. And I think three or four of them talk about that because it was it's three or four out of seven worth of the stuff that people are worrying about. Um, you know, so we could, um, and we, you know, we had another, another scholar in there talking about the challenges of being an international grad student and having to make the choice to, to return to Mexico or to stay here. And now, you know, um, we were trying to highlight those things early on. Um, I think it was interesting sometime in, oh, I went to Agway that week. So it was probably sometime in may when like tenured faculty finally got it, like realized that they weren't going to get treated like adjuncts now too.
Speaker 3 01:03:40 And Twitter was just a bonfire for a full weekend. I mean, people just lost their shit. Sorry. I don't know if you can swear on this. Um, it was just like this moment of absolute panic, uh, you know, and my DMS were just sort of full of adjuncts being like welcome to our world. Um, but someone replied to something I said and was sort of like, wow, I didn't expect contingent to become the leading journal of the field so quickly that like we would now be the only thing. Um, because everyone's contingency felt so much closer to a bunch of people, all of a sudden. Um, and I think that that's why it's sort of been weird to ask for donations in the middle of a pandemic, cause there's a million other things, but like, it was always a good feeling to be able to pay contingent people. Cause like we knew how much I know how much adjuncts make, if anything, I have perhaps the most complete database of that from last year, like paying someone for a short $250 is a lot of money. And there are a lot of contingent people right now. I mean, there will just be no job market this year there, whatever was there is gone. Um, and like we were a small way so that the scholarship and the scholars aren't gone to.
Speaker 1 01:05:02 Yeah, I think there's been a lot of discussion, um, about the fact that this generation of scholars might not have venues to produce their work because they might be working other jobs where they can't necessarily pour all this time and energy into waiting for a peer review publication and getting bad comments back because we've all had that reviewer and,
Speaker 3 01:05:26 Or not being able, you know, the reviewer saying, why didn't you read this new book? Well, I don't have access to that. Exactly.
Speaker 1 01:05:32 Whereas I think I admire the fact that you all have a very even distribution, um, different professions are being highlighted, which I think is also something that people take some heart in. I mean, of course museum jobs have been massively hit by the pandemic as well, but I think it is also helping people imagine a life beyond the professor, the tenure track sort of, you know, um, shoot. Um, anyway, let's talk a little bit more about the future then. I mean, what do you, how do you want continue to develop? And is there anything on the site in the near and far future that you're excited about and that you can tease for us?
Speaker 3 01:06:20 Um, we mentioned the radical hope round table, which I think is coming up later in the month, we kind of, we got a bunch. I mean, it's also weird. Like sometimes we'll go to post something and like some catastrophic world event has just happened. So we kind of, we kind of got a little backed up, you know? Um, but so that'll be coming out cripes. I haven't even looked at what's coming down the road. Um, we'll pull up our, our publication schedule, like finding stuff, like air table to be able to manage pitches and stuff like this. We have a very good system when we get a bunch of pitches in, we each kind of blind review them and the system is want, want, what is it like really wants sort of like, sort of like, and don't watch, you know, and then we, uh, and then we, when we're all done, we sort of look at, uh, look at that. Um, what's coming up. I don't even know what some of these about, oh, we have some, we have some museum stuff. Oh, Aaron Cole was doing another comic for us. That'll come out later in the year.
Speaker 2 01:07:33 Um,
Speaker 3 01:07:36 Yeah, we have these sort of like very quick, uh, like two or three word descriptions of what the piece is. And I'm like, I don't remember what it was, the guitar, um, that already came out, mark has a field trip or a mailbag.
Speaker 2 01:07:54 I've got to finish a, a mailbag about, we talked about doing this kind of mini series within the mailbags about history cliches. And we asked people to, to submit, you know, some of their, their favorite slash least favorite history cliche. So I that's what I need to finish up there was, you know, that was the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3 01:08:15 Yeah. Mine was the one on don't. We have to judge people by the standards of their time. So that was my cliche.
Speaker 2 01:08:21 That that was something I, I was really glad when Aaron wrote that, because I, that takes me back to a lot of first year seminars where we we'd be talking about eugenics and Jim Crow and all these things. And it seemed like every class that, that idea came up of just like, you know, but, you know, but nobody really knew how bad this was or no, it's just like, and just to sort of, you know, again, when you're in the room and you're kind of new to this, you tend to be quiet. You don't know if, if you're the only one thinking this and, and so some of these mailbags have just been the questions that have been on people's lips, especially people that are not familiar with academia, or don't have a long history with it that you want to ask. But honestly, there's no signal that it's okay to. So oftentimes when,
Speaker 3 01:09:16 Oh, the people answering it loudly are also bad and the wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 2 01:09:22 That's why, I mean, when I, I just like with field trips, I often I find myself more encouraging people to, to pitch ideas for mailbags because you know, that, that quote, the one that I did about why historians still go to physical places, why they still have to look at sources. It's just, that was like a constant question that I was personally getting from family and friends. Like, why isn't, you know, it hasn't Google digitize those books, or, you know, isn't like, isn't that don't, don't presidential light. And so it's one of those things that every historian has at least one, you know, several questions that they get constantly. And, and what's the one thing that you can, you're an expert at answering. So, you know, that's, that's my encouragement to people who listen to this is pitch us, you know, these, these ideas, you know, on mailbags and mini essays, you know, if you've got, you know, something that you don't know where it will fit in, it's not long enough for an article pitch us. If there's a question you keep getting, uh, and you just want to answer it once and for all it's us about that.
Speaker 3 01:10:26 Or if you hear that question and you don't have a great answer for it, you know, that's what, like the mailbag is the page that has a submission form at the top for you to send stuff in. Um, so we would love to get those requests from people. I think one of the things, uh, we're sort of doing a bit of a low key fundraiser at the time, but one of the things we'd like to, you know, if we could just take in a hundred more dollars a month, we would like to have a commissioned mail bag every month. And so we do have one, um, I won't say who it's coming from, but there'll be a mailbag on historical fiction later in, uh, in the fall. Um, so, so I think we've got some cool stuff coming up there. I have an idea for a end of the year series that I want to do, but we haven't had like an editorial meeting to pitch it at.
Speaker 2 01:11:23 I've been meaning to message you about, you know, what do we want to sit down and talk about what December, 2020 it looks like?
Speaker 3 01:11:30 Yeah, because I think it's been, you know, uh, we've all had, so like bill has just gotten a new job and had to sort of move, not halfway across the country, but a good way across the country. So kind of at the moment, mark and I are handling a little bit more. Um, and so that's kind of what happens that we'll have each of us will have something that kind of occupies us for, for a period of time. And the other two will kind of, um, take the lead for a while. But, um, but we have to kind of sit down and think about, uh, about where we go going forward. The summer has been kind of an interesting time and we didn't plan. We planned for this content for the summer. I don't think we knew that it would be as relevant as it was some of this really hard stuff about, about what it, what it means to teach history and, and how do we actually do it?
Speaker 3 01:12:22 Um, I think has become relevant in ways we were not expecting. Um, I mean, I think one of our dreams would be in a sense we are kind of given our other jobs and personal obligations in some ways, a little bit close to, uh, about what we can manage editorially. I think what we'd love is to be in a position where we had to hire on somebody else, uh, as an editor and we get sort of a month, we, we sort of hemmed and hawed about it, but realized that we would have to pay ourselves a monthly stipend. And probably, I think it works out to like three 15 an hour or something at this point. Um, but I think we'd love to be in the position where we had enough. Um, we had enough financial stability to, to put out just a, just a skin, more content because I don't think people actually want to read, I don't think people want to read a piece a day from us. And I think things would get lost.
Speaker 2 01:13:17 I, I would like if we could permanently do two pieces a week, whether it's, you know, you know, two shorts or, you know, uh, a review and some kind of smaller piece, but I like where we, where we, especially like during the spring time where we were publishing about eight or nine pieces a month, um, because there was just, there was, we could, we could afford to do it. There was a lot of good ideas. Um, I know for me, I'd like to, there's like pitches we've gotten for projects that, that would involve some, you know, additional support. It would involve either, you know, some kind of software or, I mean, I, like I was saying earlier, you know, our, our logo was designed by a digital media design student and I got to teach in that department for a couple of years. So I got to meet all sorts of, you know, uh, interesting, innovative animators and filmmakers. And we'd love to be able to commission, you know, a short film or have a historian, write a script or produce a pizza. We'd love to be able to get into different. Like there was a piece that Aaron edited this spring that involved, um, that involved, uh, audio that involved. Uh, yeah. And that was just something that's just like, here's a piece, you know, there's texts here, but then you could also listen, it's one thing to describe, you know, singing and music. It's another thing to actually hear it and, you know,
Speaker 3 01:14:47 Yeah. So my, my roommate who also sends all of our newsletters and does all that kind of stuff, um, was in a position where as a professional musician, you know, her career, all of a sudden was just gone. Um, but the one thing, and the one thing she could do was go down the street to the church and, and record in that empty church safely. Um, and I think that was really fun. And, and Mark's been, has been pushing for, for some of this more innovative stuff from the start. And I actually did mark, just get introduced to a new post-doc in the department at Yukon, true. Somebody who, somebody who, some who knows contingent and supports us, but also knows that I live in Connecticut obviously. Um, so I, all of a sudden, I know I will meet this new person. Um, but I think, you know, one of the challenges, we had ideas that like our blue sky imagination period, as mark put it, like it's tough because all of a sudden it's like, well, everything, every grant has to be about COVID.
Speaker 3 01:15:48 And, and this is obviously I deal with this at the museum. Like us continuing to exist is about, COVID like, nothing is not about that right now, but we had thoughts of sort of, how can we pair up young illustrators with historians, because in some ways it's like people yell at historians, why don't they use different forms? And it's like, we also work our whole lives to be able to just do one form of communication effectively, like should a historian have to also then learn how to become a comic illustrator and learn how to make documentaries, or are there ways to just bring people together. And I think the star wars thing was a really great version of that, you know, that was just Audrey got those pieces. And she, and she illustrated from them. And all of those authors got to see, you know, when their, when their piece went up, they got to see an illustration. Um, and, and to be able to do, to, to fund those kinds of collaborations, I think would be amazing.
Speaker 1 01:16:54 Okay. So I, I mean, I'm a massive fan, as you both know, and I want to congratulate you on your success and of course, wish you future success. So thank you for sitting down and talking to me, it's been really it's, this has been a lot of
Speaker 3 01:17:06 Fun. Well, you didn't say what most said at our one year anniversary. The most common comment that I got was, wow. I actually didn't think it would work In a very positive way. And I was like, me either. I don't know what to tell you, but like, but I think that that expressed kind of, I took it in a really nice way because they, they knew what a lift it was going to be, and that the asking people for money for this, you know, was the hard thing. And I'm like, I also was surprised that this is just the thing that we do now.
Speaker 1 01:17:48 Oh, it's funny. I had no doubt in my mind because I followed you on Twitter for a while. And I was like, oh, if Aaron's behind it as this person who I admire from a distance, it's like, yeah, it's going to be like, this makes sense. I remember when the mouse became on like, okay, I'm going to retweet as much as I can. And then, you know, when I'm in a position to donate, I will, but also this is going to be a thing. Um, and it's going to be fantastic. And I mean, as soon as your first set of articles go up, went up. I was like, yeah, this is, this is
Speaker 3 01:18:18 Well, that is really lovely to hear. And a bomb on, on the kind of behind the scenes, panic and anxiety. Um, and that, that it only works because people, people like it and they share it. Um, and they share pieces like watching your piece gets shared and read. Like, it's, it's so exciting for us. It makes me so happy. Like, just like to see people's stuff, get loved and read.
Speaker 1 01:18:51 Thank you for listening. And again, a big thank you to Aaron. And to mark, you can follow contingent at contingent underscore mag on Twitter. Mark Rayez is at mark underscore. A underscore. Ray is 84 and Aaron Bartram is at Aaron underscore Bertram. Bill black is William R. Black. You can follow me at NAMM sort of 26, and you can follow the maiden at the me down on Twitter. The production team includes Micah Hughes, who you can follow at Micah, a Hughes and almond to Kelly Olu. Most importantly, um, I want to thank the audio editor who does our post-production. So a big thank you to the Luce foundation. Our music is by blue dot sessions. Be sure to subscribe or to follow the money down on social media for upcoming episodes and more in the my dad's selection of podcasts.
