History Teacher Becomes Podcast Celebrity (original) (raw)

On Education

Lars Brownworth takes a question in his classroom at the Stony Brook School. The projection is from his podcast subject, the Byzantine Empire.Credit...Kirk Condyles for The New York Times

Jan. 31, 2007

STONY BROOK, N.Y.

Fourth period on a midwinter Thursday, Christmas vacation a fading memory by now, and Lars Brownworth took his accustomed place in front of an American history class at the Stony Brook School here. He had been guiding these seniors through the Gilded Age lately, and for this session he planned to personify the era in the form of the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller.

For 45 minutes, Mr. Brownworth deftly orchestrated lecture, discussion and archival photographs to evoke Rockefeller in both his rapacious capitalism and social conscience. When the bell rang, out shuffled the audience, a dozen teenagers who might or might not remember any of this material beyond the next exam. In its satisfactions and its limits, such was the life Mr. Brownworth, the son of teachers, had gladly chosen.

That night, though, Mr. Brownworth, 31, set to work in his own apartment, writing an essay about Alexius I Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118. After revision and rehearsal, the text would become the script for the latest installment of Mr. Brownworth’s podcast. And if form held, something like 140,000 listeners from Afghanistan to White Plains would hear it.

In barely 18 months, Mr. Brownworth’s podcast, “12 Byzantine Rulers” (at http://www.anders.com/lectures/lars\_brownworth/12\_byzantine\_rulers/), has become one of the phenomena of the podcasting world. A survey of 1,200 years of rather abstruse history, starting with Diocletian in 284 and finishing with Constantine XI Palaeologus in 1453, “12 Byzantine Rulers” routinely ranks in the top five educational podcasts on iTunes, and in the top 50 of all podcasts.

In the digital era, this self-taught amateur has emerged as a figure somewhat akin to Will Durant in books or Jacob Bronowski on public television, an effective and engaging popularizer. Mr. Brownworth’s podcast competes favorably with far more conventional and credentialed online fare university courses in beginning French or Psychology 101, test-prep drills for the SAT. Even the other highly rated personal podcasts, like “Word Nerds” and “Grammar Girl,” appeal to dependably large audiences for etymology and grammar.

“It’s a slightly frightening idea to think there are so many people,” Mr. Brownworth said. “But without question it’s the most exciting part of my professional life. We’re in the middle of a revolution, and I feel incredibly blessed to be part of it.”

While listeners address him in their e-mail messages with the respectful honorific “Professor,” Mr. Brownworth, in fact, holds only a bachelor’s degree in history, from Houghton College in upstate New York. He started teaching at Stony Brook, an independent school, only in 1999, and his initial assignment was in the science department. To the extent that he had any specialty as an undergraduate, it was the Battle of Hastings, a long way from Constantinople.

What Mr. Brownworth always possessed was a sweeping intellectual curiosity about antiquity, which inspired him while he was growing up on Long Island to learn to read hieroglyphics and sound out the Greek inscriptions in the ruins of Herculaneum. He also had a talent for dramatizing himself, whether donning the set of armor owned by family friends or imitating characters from a firefighter to a gorilla in a series of home movies called “Lars’s World.”

Still, Mr. Brownworth had fallen into the passive assumption that between Rome’s fall and the Renaissance there existed nothing but barbarism. It took a casual mention of a Byzantine empress in a book about Charlemagne that he read a few years ago for Mr. Brownworth’s curiosity to be kindled. He followed it into such standard texts as “A History of the Byzantine State” by George Ostrogorsky and “The Fall of Constantinople” by Steven Runciman. On a school trip to Turkey, he walked into the very church where every Byzantine emperor had been crowned.

“There was something mysterious about the Byzantine empire to me, this sense that it was lost history,” Mr. Brownworth recalled. “America is very much a Protestant country, and we really don’t feel like we’re connected to the Eastern world, that we don’t share values. But it’s not a coincidence that the Renaissance kicks off after the fall of Constantinople. A lot of those Greek-speaking intellectuals fled to the West, bringing their knowledge of the classics. That knowledge had been kept alive with the Byzantines.”

BEYOND all the highbrow stuff, Mr. Brownworth also found plenty of blood and gore. He shared much of it with his older brother, Anders. Did he know that after the Bulgarians killed the Byzantine emperor Romanus they used his skull as a mug? (Cool!) Did he know that Emperor Basil gouged out the eyes of his Bulgarian enemies, leaving just a handful with sight to lead the defeated army back home. (Awesome, dude!)

An executive at a technology company in North Carolina, Anders persuaded his brother in 2004 to write and record a brief lecture giving an overview of the Byzantine era. Then Anders posted it on his personal Web site. And nobody in the outside world paid the slightest attention.

But on the day in June 2005 when Apple began presenting podcasts on iTunes, while Lars was on an archaeological dig in Jordan, Anders put up the recording. A month later, 1,392 people downloaded it, and Anders told Lars, “I think you better do another show.” By July 2006, 41,031 listeners subscribed. Last December, after being cited by both Apple and Wired magazine as one of the nation’s most influential podcasts, “12 Byzantine Rulers” drew 140,910 hits.

One listener is Christopher Roe, who was helping to build fire stations in the Afghan province of Khost last July when he alighted on “12 Byzantine Rulers.” After listening to a half-dozen segments, he decided to enroll for a master’s degree in history, concentrating on the Byzantine Empire. Now back in the United States, he is doing exactly that at Central Michigan University.

And there is Howard Moskowitz, a marketing executive in White Plains, always eager for something diverting to listen to on the treadmill or in the dentist’s chair. “This was the most marvelous series,” he said of Mr. Brownworth’s podcasts. “The English is exquisite. It’s not florid, it’s not self-indulgent. It’s a fascinating period of time no one pays attention to. And it’s free. Let’s not ignore homo economicus.”

With 13 episodes completed, Mr. Brownworth said he expected to complete and post the last four by the summer. Some other topic, he’s not yet sure what, will come next. For someone used to teaching students by the dozen, life as a cyberspace star still feels strange.

“I can’t believe it’s that many people,” he said of his global audience. “I always thought the only one listening was going to be me.”

E-mail: sgfreedman@nytimes.com

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