People I Like: Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook

"The Rest is History"

Tom Holland, left, and Dominic Sandbrook

This spring, my older son joined a new travel soccer team. Which is good! But, the practices — 4 days a week! — are 45 minutes away (at least) from where we live. Which is bad!

My son is 15. He is, um, not a big talker — at least to his dad. He mostly watches YouTube or plays “Brawl Stars.” (We DO talk from time to time — but I don’t push it. It’s usually on his terms.)

Which has left me with, well, a lot of time on my hands.

Enter Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook.

I have never met these two British historians and authors. But I feel like I know them. Because they host “The Rest is History” — a history podcast (duh) that covers everything from the Helen of Troy to history’s most famous monkeys and back.

Before we go any further, a confession: I barely took any history classes in college. And the ones I did take were, mostly, boring. A dry recitation of battles and family trees.

Tom and Dominic — we’re old friends by this point so I can call them by their first names 😉 — are the opposite of dry and boring.

From them I have learned:

• Martin Luther would have been a prolific tweeter

• Lord Byron slept with his half-sister

• George Custer shot his horse through the head while trying to kill a buffalo

• The 3rd class passengers on the Titanic were locked down below in the boat because of American regulations aimed at limiting the spread of disease

• Unity Mitford was a terrible, terrible person

And lots and lots more. They make history interesting. Exciting. And, yes, fun. (I regularly laugh out loud when listening — prompting my son to look at me quizzically.)

In an interview with Time magazine in 2023, Sandbrook explained the show’s appeal this way:

There's a sense that history is some sort of hideous breakfast gruel that you are forced to eat in a Victorian workhouse because it will improve you. And we actually think history should be fun. If you don't make it enjoyable, if you don't relish in the characters, the stories, then you will never get kids interested in it.

Yes! All of that. I actually think my favorite part of the show is when, at the start of each episode, either Holland or Sandbrook does a dramatic reading related to the topic. Holland doing George Custer was epic.

I am FAR from alone in loving “The Rest is History.” It’s the most popular history podcast out there — with more than 200 million downloads to date. (Tom Hanks is a big fan — and has been on the show!)

There’s also a series of spinoffs — my favorite of which is “The Rest is Football” hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Micah Richards.

But it’s “The Rest is History” that I find myself pulling up each time I settle in to make the drive to (and from) soccer practice. Because I learn while laughing. What could be better than that?

So, thank you to Tom and Dominic. They have more than 400 episodes of “The Rest is History.” I am going to need all of them — I’ve got a whole soccer year to get through.

This is one in an occasional series of posts about, well, people I like. The last person I liked was Mark Leibovich. Read about him here.