The History Buffs

The History Buffs Podcast: A collaborative podcast project featuring New York State history. 

History Buffs was a podcast project created in 2015 by seven history graduate students at the University at Buffalo. The podcast was dedicated to bringing history to a general listening public, with special emphasis on the history of New York State and Buffalo in particular. With episodes on the Burning of Buffalo during the War of 1812, to an exploration of how Buffalonians reacted to the attack on Pearl Harbor, to the history of that Buffalo delicacy, the Butter Lamb, the podcast sought to explore the weird and wonderful history of our city. The project received a Good History award from the American Association of State and Local History in 2017 for its telling of local history.

In 2017, the seven producers of the History Buffs disbanded and the four remaining producers rebranded the project into Dig: A History Podcast. Dig takes a feminist approach to history, seeking to tell the stories of people and issues that are often left out of mainstream history media. Each episode takes historical scholarship on a particular topic – past episodes have tackled subjects such as birth control, space exploration, and slave insurrections – and uses storytelling and more than a little humor to make these important topics accessible to public audiences. The podcast is also used as a classroom resource for teachers and professors across the United States and Canada. In Spring 2019, Dig episodes were assigned by professors at Muhlenberg College, Binghamton University, NYU, Houston Community College, Kennesaw State, Georgia State, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Oakland Community College, University of Lethbridge (Canada), University of New Mexico, the University of Regina (Canada), Wake Forest University, University of Montana, University of Albany, and Anoka-Hennepin High School in Minnesota. Dig strives to fill the need for open-source, high-quality, accessible historical narratives, both in the public, and in college and K-12 classrooms around the world

Sarah Handley-Cousins was born, raised, and educated in New York, with degrees from Wells College, Niagara University, and the University at Buffalo. Sarah’s scholarly research centers on disability in the Civil War era. Her first book, Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North, was published by University of Georgia Press in 2019. Sarah also continues her involvement in digital public history. In addition to her work as a producer of Dig: A History Podcast, Sarah has served as an editor of the history blog, Nursing Clio. Sarah is a clinical assistant professor of History and the associate director of the Center for Disability Studies at the University at Buffalo.