‘History Guys’ take on joblessness

National unemployment is at its highest level in 25 years, and two University of Virginia history professors and the president of the University of Richmond are figuring it out — historically speaking.

“Looking for Work: A History of Unemployment” will be taped live at UVa’s Miller Center of Public Affairs on Friday. The three academics host “BackStory with the American History Guys,” a public radio show that looks at how modern problems were dealt with in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

“It’s going to be [about] the human experience of looking for work,” said Tony Field, one of the show’s producers.

Field said the Miller Center appearance is part of a summer forum series hosted by the center. Having a live performance at the Miller Center is a natural fit, Field said. The center is a financial supporter of the show and shares the mission of making scholarly debates and ideals accessible to the public. The producers had been looking to share the energy they feel during recording sessions, and the Miller Center comes with a “built-in audience,” Field said.

“It’s like being on a road trip with the three [Guys],” Field said. “You just get to be a fly on the wall.”

A unique aspect of the show is how Web-based the production is, said Field, who also produced the first National Public Radio show made available as a podcast. Each topic the Guys cover is posted, with a description, on the show’s Web site. Listeners can post questions and comments that the Guys address during the show. Field said they often invite people who make posts to call in when the Guys open the phone lines.

“BackStory” started about three years ago when Andrew Wyndham, the show’s executive producer, listened to Peter Onuf and Ed Ayers, both of whom were fellows at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the time, and became intrigued with their approach to history — emphasizing the meaning of historical events rather than the names and dates.

Wyndham said what sets them apart is their ability to provide accessibility along with the depth that the Guys’ more than 100 years of cumulative teaching experience brings. It took more than a year for Wyndham to get the show on air.

The theme of the show, said Brian Balogh, history professor at UVa and the show’s 20th century expert, is to take a modern problem and see how that problem was dealt with over three centuries of history.

They put “a little old back into the news,” Field said. He said the biggest problem he faces as a producer is containing their chemistry and finding beginning and ending points for the show.

“We do feel that we’re sitting around the kitchen table,” Balogh said.

With Onuf, the 18th century expert, spending much of the past year in Oxford, England, and Ayers, who is the president of the University of Richmond, the job of containing their chemistry has only gotten more complicated.

“We were not sure we could pull it off at first,” Wyndham said.

But Ayers, the 19th century expert, was able to build a studio in his Richmond home, and thanks to the wonders of technology, Onuf has been able to join in from England, without a time delay. Field said that recording from three different places forces the Guys to really listen to each other rather than rely on visual cues. That makes for better radio, he said. And making better radio helps the Guys move ever closer to realizing their dream.

“Our dream is to hijack people who think they don’t like history at every opportunity,” Ayers said.