Dallas Podcaster Lindsay Graham Is Making History Fun

Lindsay Graham is still shocked by his monstrous success as a podcaster and historian.

“I would characterize the last eight years of my life as a whole bunch of accidents and self-realizations that have stacked in my favor,” Graham tells us over the phone.

The Dallas native first rose to prominence in January 2018, when the podcast he hosts, American History Tellers, premiered at number one on the Apple Podcast charts. What started as an exploration of the Cold War was the first of 82 subsequent seasons that would follow. Over the span of 433 episodes to date, Graham and his team have covered topics like the Gold Rush, the Space Race, Prohibition and the Titanic.

After the popularity of American History Tellers, Graham began hosting related podcasts like History Daily and American Scandal. His company, Airship, also produces shows like History That Doesn’t Suck and American Criminal.

“I’m so happy to work on all these podcasts,” says Graham. “But you can’t plan for this stuff. I never imagined I would be working in this profession. It’s all an accident.”

Graham’s happy accident was actually born out of an embarrassing incident when another career didn't quite pan out.

“I had come off this almost embarrassing episode of getting fired in marketing, starting an audio company, that company failing, then going back to marketing with my tail between my legs,” he says.

Graham had always been attracted to history when he was at school. When he first arrived at college, he majored in the subject, although he did eventually switch to business. Aside from history, storytelling was one of Graham’s biggest interests.

“I’ve always been in creative or artistic circles," he says. "I was always striving to be a struggling artist of some sort, but I never really made a true effort at it.”

He immersed himself in the Dallas music scene for years. At first, he was always either singing or playing an instrument in bands, but by the early 2000s, he was producing musicians in the same recording studio he now records podcasts in. At the same time, Graham was doing marketing for insurance companies. Eventually, he sought to turn his love of audio into a profession. But soon after launching his first audiobook company, Graham realized that he and his co-founder didn’t see eye to eye, so he had to return to the world of marketing.

Despite the creative differences, Graham still produced Terms, a political thriller audiobook. After Terms was nominated for a Podcast Movement award, Graham was introduced to Hernan Lopez, the CEO of Wondery, one of the biggest podcast publishers in the country.

“I actually wrote and read ads for a Wondery show [called] Dirty John," Graham says. "Then Hernan asked if I wanted to host and sound design my own history podcast.”

Lopez wanted Graham to take a first-person approach to "American History Tellers" by guiding listeners from the perspective of someone approachable.

“History is often told from the halls of power," Graham says. "We really wanted to make it more approachable and put you in the shoes of everyday people.”

This meant not only did Graham have to be a narrator, but he’d have to play each of the characters, something that terrified him, as he had never actually acted before.

“I knew I wasn’t going to put on any voices — that would be just too silly and take people out of the story," he says. "Instead, I knew I wanted the style of storytelling to feel like it was a story being told around a campfire or a bedtime story."

Still burned by the failure of his first audiobook company, Graham kept his job in the Southern Methodist University marketing department while moonlighting on American History Tellers. He juggled his day job with working alongside a writer on the podcast's script and an editor at Wondery — he composed the music and did the sound design himself.

“It was grueling,” admits Graham.

It paid off, however. American History Tellers quickly shot to the top of the podcast charts.

By September 2018, Graham had begun work on American Scandal, a podcast about the biggest scandals in American history. The podcast proved to be even more popular than its predecessor.

“That allowed me to actually quit my day job and become a full-time podcaster," he says. "Since then, it’s been my ambition to expand the portfolio.”

Graham insists that luck is the reason why his initial shows proved to be so popular.

"It was a feat of immaculate timing," he says. "At that moment, people wanted a well-produced, splashy history show.”

Despite his early success, though, he insists that the podcast world has changed too much for that to happen again now.

“There’s too much competition," says Graham. "It’s very difficult to find an audience and too expensive to get it in front of people’s attention.”

In order to maintain an audience, Graham and his Airship team constantly seek to depict history that’s still relevant today. They picked the Cold War for the first episodes of American History Tellers because, at the time, President Donald Trump had just started a saber-rattle with North Korea and Putin over nuclear weapons.

“We plan series arcs six to nine months ahead of time," he says. "The real magic trick of history is that, no matter what story I tell you from 50 to 500 years ago, it will be applicable today.”

As his shows have grown in the seven years since American History Tellers launched, Graham has had many surreal moments with big-name listeners. While listening to Smartless — a podcast hosted by actors Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes — Graham heard Oscar-winning actor George Clooney admit he fell asleep to American History Tellers. Then, Ryan Reynolds reached out to Graham via Twitter to express that he was a huge fan of History Daily. From there, Reynolds would end up pranking listeners by hosting the April 1, 2023, episode.

Looking ahead, Graham wants to continue telling stories from different perspectives.

"Podcasts are now in the mainstream and are very persuasive," he admits. "There’s a responsibility that comes with that.”

Ultimately, though, he wants to ensure that his output is as “educational as [it is] entertaining.” Despite the popularity of his shows, Graham’s biggest rush comes from the thanks of teachers and everyday listeners who thank him for making history fun again.

“I take great pride when I hear that school teachers are playing episodes in class, that parents listen with their kids on their way to school, that people have had their passion for history and learning reignited, or they are discovering that for the first time," Graham says. "I really want to keep that feeling going — I want to grow that passion even more.”