Oxford Professor Teaches the Craft of Writing (Diarmaid MacCulloch Interview)

This episode is brought to you by Basecamp, the world’s simplest, most effective project management platform. Check them out at https://basecamp.com and tell them David Perell sent you. Diarmaid MacCulloch is an author, a professor at Oxford, and he's obsessed with history. A real expert who's been studying it for decades. In this episode, we talked about how to do history, the role of a historian in society, and how to take everything you learn in the research phase and turn it into clear, vivid, and entertaining writing. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:26 The role of historians 00:04:09 Core principles of history 00:06:23 Diarmaid's writing routine 00:08:17 Primary vs secondary sources 00:12:33 The keys to beautiful writing 00:14:26 Famous books that got facts wrong 00:16:09 Historical facts vs anecdotal stories 00:23:13 Sense of place 00:32:07 Is history really written by the victors? 00:35:06 Tell readers your biases 00:37:16 What should historians be? 00:42:26 Advice for young writers About the host Hey! I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible. Follow me Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... YouTube:    / @davidperellchannel   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSbo... X: https://x.com/david_perell