“Thoroughly Modern History with Robb Coles” Isn’t Just A Podcast; It’s A Time Machine
By Matt Levy
The year is 1990. Simpsons mania is at an all-time high and everyone is doing the Bartman. Paula Abdul is one of the biggest pop stars in the world long before American Idol. The short-lived first Iraq War (called Desert Storm colloquially) is underway. It’s a scary time to watch 24-hour cable news — especially for a kid.
That’s what happened to young Robb Coles though.
One fateful day, Coles plopped down and watched a news segment he couldn’t unsee. It featured a British family living in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion. The Hussein administration had taken 800 citizens of the United States, Great Britain, and other foreign countries hostage. Coles recalled that, “Saddam would take entire families hostage. To build propaganda, he would visit the hostages with camera crews and air it nightly on Iraqi TV to show he was a benevolent leader.”
The image from that broadcast that burned into his brain was footage of Hussein ruffling a little British boy’s hair.
Coles said, “This was a huge story in 1990 but most people barely remember it now.” However, as a little boy in 1990, that small moment was the scariest thing he had ever seen.
At the time, Robb was a regular kid, growing up in the suburbs in states as varied as Indiana, Colorado and Minnesota. Now, he resides in Astoria, Queens in New York and identifies as a news and history junkie, but when he was young moving across the country, he wasn’t that interested in what was going on internationally. Still, the image of Hussein and that young boy that could have been him lingered in his mind.
Thirty years later, Coles was inspired to make a podcast about this moment and other forgotten artifacts of recent 1980s and 90s history called Thoroughly Modern History with Robb Coles. The serialized show started with Coles’ curiosity escalating while in quarantine. First, he bought a few books about the subject, including the little boy’s mother’s memoir which informed his podcast. He also gathered information from scholar Matthew Gailani’s dissertation. He then researched and recorded interviews about what led up to the moment of that once infamous meeting and turned it into a six-part serialized podcast made up of 25-minute episodes.
This creative venture makes sense for Coles because he had always been interested in documentaries, works of nonfiction and biographies. On top of that, this seemed like the perfect moment because he felt like, “there’s so many things that happened in the world when Millennials/Xennials were children, that we seem to just barely know about. We were too busy playing Skip It and Hungry Hungry Hippos to pay attention.” Coles wanted to be the one to shine a light on these oft-forgotten but once headline-grabbing tales of our recent past. Imagine if VH1’s I Love the 80s had substance and a desire to educate. That’s what Coles wants to bring to the cultural conversation.
Still, he wanted to do it his way. Coles listens to a number of podcasts, but wanted to build one with a different format than most. Instead of talking about historical events, he wanted to create a “bingeable show where you feel like you’re there, walking through the story, witnessing history.” While many podcasts feature the host talking about a subject or news story, Coles narrates and conducts interviews giving it more of a storytelling vibe rather than your typical free-flowing or conversational podcast. As Robb says, “It’s a longer journey to get the whole story over the course of six episodes, but with many short bursts of excitement and plot, each episode builds suspense.”
Coles’ style is most informed by Mo Rocca’s storytelling and also added that he “has a bizarre fondness for PBS documentaries.” He giddily continued, “They did one about Hedy Lemar that was incredible. I like a low res PBS doc where the audio/video has a bit of a buzz to it, and the people are wearing ugly 90’s ties. Men’s ties in the 90’s were hideous.”
It wouldn’t be easy to replicate a documentary though. Coles explained that producing a history documentary is time consuming and expensive, but since a history podcast doesn’t require shooting or licensing footage, it’s much more achievable. He just needed a mic, Zoom interviews, and $15/month for royalty free music and sound effects. Once all that was in place, Robb did quite a bit of heavy lifting this first season attracting high profile guests to the show such as the aforementioned Matthew Gailani, who wrote his Masters dissertation at Columbia on Hussein’s Hostage Policy as well as author Bacil Donovan Warren who served in Desert Storm as a Tank Gunner; both give the show an impressive air of authenticity.
Given how impressive this all is, it’s even more remarkable that this was Coles’ first podcast experience other than appearing as a guest on his friends’ shows. As easy as Coles makes this sound, he says there was a steep learning curve. He had to teach himself how to edit audio and create a workflow that worked for him. He learned quickly that the best strategy was to, “Spend more time writing, spend less time recording.” Coles explained, “If I can get the script and story nailed down in a Word doc, the recording time is cut in half.” He joked, “The only real setback I’ve had so far is I live on a street that seems to only have construction when I turn on my mic to record.”
All this hard work led to Coles’ proudest moment when Thoroughly Modern History launched. He saw his logo on his Apple podcast app next to all the other podcasts he listens to and knew he was on the right track. All the positive acclaim that came after was the proverbial cherry on top.
So far, that cherry on top has been a unanimously positive reaction from fans. In fact, Coles had a friend message him after the first episode was released and say, “It was so nice to feel like I had been transported to a different time.” Other listeners say, “The show has the intrigue and slow burn of Serial, but with whimsy and humor.” In fact, a lot of listeners told Coles the podcast has a whimsical aura which took Coles by surprise since he feels like his comparable contemporaries are the fairly straightforward American History Tellers and Tides of History.
At the outset of the project, Coles thought his fan base would be made up of mostly Millennials since it’s about news stories we didn’t pay attention to as kids, but he’s had a higher number of Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers listen than he expected, all reaching out and raving about how much they’re enjoying the serialized series.
It should be mentioned the first season also features other stories from the Desert Storm era, including an odd and terrifying tale about a British Airways flight that stopped to refuel in Kuwait City right as Iraq took control of the airport.
Thoroughly Modern History truly is the perfect escape for our current times with everyone adapting to our new cooped up quarantine lifestyles. Coles said, “I feel like people are staring at screens so much between working, Zooming, and streaming shows. It’s nice to close your eyes, listen to a podcast and let your mind create it’s own pictures.”
You can listen to the six-episode first season of Thoroughly Modern History on Spotify to be sent back to 1990. It’s also available on Apple, Stitcher, and on the show’s website. For additional content, follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. If you want to meet the creator and host, follow Robb on Instagram.
Coles is currently working on Season Two. As always with Robb, the storyline will be a familiar surprise.
