John Phipps

The world’s greatest podcast: Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History reviewed

Dan Carlin’s is the only podcast that unites my Gen Z brother and 93-year-old grandmother in admiration

Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda in the Philippines jungle, receiving orders from his former commanding officer to surrender in 1974. Image: Asahi Shimbun / Getty Images

It’s well known that you should never meet your heroes because they will only disappoint you. Less commonly said, but equally true, is that you should never google your favourite podcast hosts, because their face will not match their voice. I have just finished looking at photos of Dan Carlin, the host and sole narrator of Hardcore History — the world’s greatest podcast — and I find myself disappointed. He’s a perfectly nice-looking man: bald, medium build, squarish of face. But he doesn’t look like I want him to.

Why do we think we can imagine someone’s face just from the sound of their voice? It’s a mysterious but enduring illusion, like the image you have of a place before you visit, which you never quite forget. Since Dan Carlin’s low American growl is one of the world’s best voices, let me tell you how I imagine him: in my mind he has a thick beard and deep-set gimlet eyes. Broadcasting into a metal microphone from a bunker in the American wilderness, he wears old combat fatigues that are frayed and patched at the elbows. On the desk beside him, alongside a pile of maps and military encyclopaedias, is a survivalist’s tin of beans, from which he stops every now and then to eat with a whittled wooden spoon before resuming his narration.

Dan Carlin’s is the only podcast that unites my Gen Z brother and 93-year-old grandmother in admiration

If that sounds rather detailed to you, then it’s because I have spent an inordinately long time listening to this man speak. There are no interviews on Hardcore History, no music and almost no soundbites or recordings from elsewhere. It’s just Dan Carlin, talking about history. Yet it is the only podcast that unites my Gen Z brother and 93-year-old grandmother in admiration.

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