There is a quiet lie we tell ourselves about momentum. We convince ourselves that if we just keep moving, keep posting, keep filling the calendar, progress will somehow take care of itself.
History, of course, laughs at that idea.
Motion is not the same thing as movement. Activity is not the same thing as growth.
Empires learned that the hard way. So do historians.
In the new year, I am making a change to how I deliver Dave Does History. I will no longer necessarily be posting daily. Instead, the rhythm will slower, more deliberate and unapologetic. Overall, there will be fewer posts each week, but more thought and debate.
One of those posts each week will be the radio show, Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, which remains the conversational heartbeat of this project. The others will be deeper studies, longer reads, more demanding work. Both for me, and possibly for you, as well.
As I work (albeit very slowly) toward my degree in History, it becomes necessary for me to become more focused and have more depth in my research and writing.
This project has been an education in ways I did not anticipate. When I started more than two years ago, the challenge before me was learning how to stitch together tools that historians of earlier generations never had. Writing, audio, images, timing, platforms, promotion, production. It felt like standing in a workshop full of unfamiliar instruments, trying to figure out which ones made music and which ones were just noise. That learning curve was steep, humbling, and ultimately, exhilarating.
But learning has a shelf life. Eventually, if you are honest with yourself, you realize when you are no longer learning and are simply repeating. The posts get done. The calendar gets filled. The machine hums along. That is not failure, but it is a warning sign. History teaches us to pay attention to those moments. Civilizations stagnate not because they stop working, but because they stop asking harder questions.
Daily posting did what it was supposed to do, at least for me. It built discipline. It forced consistency. It proved that I could show up every day, even when the topic was obscure, the audience small, or the energy thin. That matters. But repetition without challenge turns craft into habit, and habit into autopilot. That is not where good history lives.
Good history demands friction. It requires time to wrestle with sources, to sit with contradictions, to follow a thread that does not resolve neatly by lunchtime. It asks the historian to slow down, to read more than they write, to think longer than they speak. That is harder to do on a daily treadmill.
So this change is not about doing less. It is about doing better. It is about giving ideas room to breathe, arguments room to sharpen, and stories room to unfold properly. The radio show will continue to be the place where history sounds like conversation, like debate, like a voice across the table. The additional pieces will dig deeper, take risks, and sometimes take longer to land.
There is also a personal honesty in this shift. Any creative project that runs long enough reveals something uncomfortable. You can either keep feeding the machine, or you can step back and ask whether it is still serving the purpose you set out with. This project was never about volume. It was about understanding, about connecting past and present without turning either into a slogan.
I hope you understand the change. More than that, I hope you feel it in the work. Fewer posts, but stronger ones. Less noise, more signal. History does not need to be shouted daily to matter. Sometimes it needs to be spoken carefully, a few times a week, by someone willing to slow down and listen to it properly.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening. The work continues, just at a pace that allows it to grow instead of merely repeat.
The times change, and we are changed by them…
DAVE DOES HISTORY 
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