Welcome to the show! In Season One: Voices of Historical Martial Arts, I interview interesting sword people from around the globe.
The Mission:
This podcast is a tactic in the service of a larger goal, namely to encourage diversity in historical martial arts. The first rule of the podcast is there must be at least 50% female guests. Fortunately there are no shortage of women practising swordswomanship! But representation doesn’t end there. I have also found guests from a range of martial backgrounds (Airrion Scott started out swinging light-sabres, Siobhan Richardson started out in stage combat), cultural backgrounds (there are guests from Asia, South America, Europe, and North America), and ethnicities.
My goal is that eventually anyone, from any culture, of any race, sexual identity, height, weight, health status, and any other demographic data point you can think of, can find a historical martial arts role model on this podcast. That may encourage them to take up the Art, and so historical martial arts will become more diverse, and therefore deeper and stronger. This might not make much difference to many people, but I know for sure that it will make some difference to some people, and that is a whole lot more than nothing.
This is of course an ethical standpoint, but it’s also a practical one. Getting opinions from a diverse range of people makes for better outcomes. Matthew Syed makes the case for this phenomenon in his book Rebel Ideas, which I highly recommend. A rising tide lifts all boats, so if your overall goal is improving the practice of historical martial arts as a whole, it makes sense to get as many different minds on the problem as possible.
I know that some people will feel that I ought to just interview the “best” hma practitioners. The famous ones, the ones with big followings, the ones with the most books out. (I know it because they've written and told me so!) I will, and I do, as you can see from the guest list. But if we only hear from them, we will tend to hear mostly from middle aged white men (like me), because this field was founded mostly by people like me. But it has grown beyond that rather narrow beginning (thank goddess!) and there are very many people out there worth listening to. Some of them don’t even do swords! I have a medieval historian lined up for episode 16….
How you can help:
What began as a side project is swiftly taking over a great deal of my time, and costing me some money, so to support the show I have created a Patreon account here: https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy. If you think this show is a good idea, please demonstrate it by throwing some coins in the hat. Every little helps. I would like to be able to add transcriptions of each show to the shownotes, as well as invest in better equipment. Patrons will get first dibs on suggesting guests to interview, and I will also try to offer some Patron-only content such as audio AMAs with me. I’ll also be asking the Patrons for any questions they particularly want me to ask my guests- so they will also find out who’s coming on the show before anyone else. Right now there’s only one patron-only post up, but it does include the audio file for episode 13… There are also t-shirts and stickers for the higher tiers.
Sound like your sort of thing? Then toddle along to https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy
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The Episodes:
31: Damon Young
30: Elena Muzurina
29: Rory Miller
28: Nora Cannaday
27: Maxime Chouinard
26: Claire Mead
25: David Ito
24: Maija Soderholm
23: Da'Mon Stith
22: Brittany Reeves
20: Lois Spangler
19: Jake Norwood
18: Kendra Brown
17: Tony Wolf
15: Robyn Alman
14: Kirk, the Knight of Green.
13: Alina Boyden
12: Rigel Ng
10: Tomas Suazo
6: Tan Smith
3: Sam Swords
2: Fran Lacuata
1: Jess Finley
Subscribe wherever you normally listen, such as: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | TuneIn | Spotify | RSS |