The History Of `The Stuff You Missed In History Class Podcast

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IHeart Media

e duo behind IHeart Media’s IHRT hit podcast Stuff You Missed In History Class (SYMIHC), Tracy B. Wilson and Holly Frey, joined forces in 2013 after encountering their boss at HowStuff Works, Conal Byrne, at a corporate event held by the online media company.

“One day, we were just running our mouths at an employee party. Conal overheard this conversation and said, `I think the two of you need a podcast,”‘ said Wilson, who said she was a casual acquittance with Frey before they started working together.

Added Frey: “We were both a little worried that we might be in trouble the next morning when he said `Can I see you in my office?'”

Byrne, now the head of IHeart Media’s Podcast business, kept his word to Wilson and Frey, and the two soon proved his hunch to be correct. They grew SYMIHC’s audience by about 10-fold. Listeners download the show nearly 10 million times a month, making it one of the most popular shows in the Heart podcast lineup. Before the Covid-19 pandemic caused the world to grind to a halt, Wilson and Frey ran overseas

travel tours and held live events in U.S. cities.

 “Their chemistry is awesome,” Byrne said in an interview. “(The show) crushes it with history fans. I mean, it didn’t become weighty and mission-driven necessarily. Still, it took on a purpose that it just didn’t have before them co-hosting it. Suddenly, it felt very meaningful, as well as being enjoyable and quirky.”

Indeed, SYMIHC is a favorite among history teachers and history buffs of all sorts. According to Frey and Wilson, they have broad discretion in picking their topics for their twice-weekly show. The process of researching a topic and writing a 3,000 or so word script can take between 20 and 24 hours. Often, when Wilson and Frey investigate one topic, they come across ideas for numerous other episodes. Both have long to-do lists.

 “Sometimes the hard part is going `no, no brain let’s stick to this thing we are working on right now,” joked Frey.

During the past few weeks, the show covered everything from the short story writer O. Henry to famed athlete Jim Thorpe to a history of waffles to the backstory behind Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer’s creation. 

“I don’t think there’s ever been a time that someone has said you can’t do that topic,” Wilson said.

The duo is not afraid to broach controversial issues from the past on SYMIH that continue to reverberate today, like the so-called Lost Cause believers behind the construction of Confederate war memorials in the South and of the naming military bases for generals who took up arms against the United States. Supporters of the Lost Cause, mainly White southerners, argue that the Confederacy was a just cause. They also downplay the role slavery played in the Civil War. 

“Because we have a history show, we have the luxury of not having to address head-on current events,” Frey said. “I think a lot of people aren’t always necessarily cognizant of the fact that really nothing is new. I mean, we’re technologically more advanced than we used to be, but humans are still dealing with a lot of the same issues, making a lot of the same mistakes, engaging in a lot of the same conflicts.”