Welcome to Talk With History.

I'm your host Scott here with my wife and historian Jen.

Hello.

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history inspired world travels

YouTube channel journey, and examine history through deeper conversations

with the curious, the explorers, and the history lovers out there.

All right, Jen.

So the title of this podcast episode is probably pretty obvious about what we're

gonna talk about, 2026 in advance, the 250th anniversary of this great nation.

before we get into 2026, we want to briefly recap 2025.

it was a big year for us.

we finally hit 50,000.

So that was the year that we hit 50 K, almost crossed at 55.

I think by the time this comes out we may be there, but that

was a big milestone for us.

I think kind of halfway to that, that a hundred K mark man, maybe

we'll get lucky this year, and this will be the year that we hit that.

So 2025, we did a whole bunch of stuff.

You started working for American Cruise Lines, so you got a lot of opportunities

that kind of came out because of that.

For some interesting content.

and we had some, we started building some plans for the upcoming,

I'd say like next year or two.

Yes.

So we wanna say thank you to those 50,000.

Everyone who follows us supports us.

We are so appreciative.

We are one of these slower growing channels.

But it's really grassroots and we appreciate all of you because I

feel like it's very authentic and we just appreciate everyone has

come along this journey with us.

working for American Cruise Line has been fantastic.

I am the historian on the cruise, so I do a history talk every night about

where we're going, and then the next day we spend the day in that area.

I've been able to make content.

In those areas and some places that would be a little bit harder to travel to.

this year, looking forward, I have all new places to go and it

coincides with a lot of this 250th anniversary of America stuff.

So it's gonna be really great.

one of the things we started This year was the lifetime

membership option to support us.

I've toyed with different things over the past couple years about

subscriptions and newsletters

I decided to consolidate it all, make it easy on you.

the listener and the watcher and have one lifetime membership.

you don't have to pay for a lifetime membership.

you can just, you know, tip us a couple bucks if you wanna

just buy us a cup of coffee.

but if you go to the history road trip.com, because that's really

what we are inspired to do is, is get out there, see the history for

ourselves, go to the locations and we want you to do the same thing.

So if you go to the history roadtrip.com, you can see a way

to buy us a cup of coffee, tank of gas, pay for a lifetime membership.

And we may even have some higher tiers in the future.

But that is one place that we've really started support and we got our

first few lifetime members on there.

we really want to say thank you to those lifetime members who joined us.

it's a one time thing.

I was kind of tired of the subscription model.

I'm not wild about that.

And so we wanna do a one-time fee.

Now that fee may go up in the future, Now is the time where

it's ever gonna be the lowest?

it's probably only gonna go up.

'cause as we grow, there's bigger things that we wanna do.

but it is one time thing.

You pay for it once the folks who've already paid.

That's it as long as we're doing this, they'll get that behind the scenes access.

we have a private Facebook group just for the lifetime members.

I've started posting some things there, on some future long-term plans.

Our lifetime members will have access to that as well as any other

kind of exclusive future content.

whenever we can make it and fit it in.

sometimes it'll be live from a historic location or Something that doesn't

quite fit in a structured video.

Or a structured podcast.

Yeah, and think about our whole mission is to get you out into history.

Our whole mission is to get people outside into the history

that's in your own backyard.

Get active, get off the screen, connect with your family, connect with

friends, connect with other history lovers like you The whole point of

us doing this is not just explore locations, which is great, but as a

historian, as a credited historian, I tell you why this matters to you.

how does this impact you?

Why should you care about this?

I give you the facts behind the places you're visiting, you could be like, I

always wondered about this location.

I always wondered why this was so important.

Well, I explained to you why that is so important and it just coincides

with the really great year of American history, the 250th birthday.

we plan to kick off the 4th of July in St. Louis at the gateway arches, the gateway

to the West because we are starting this amazing road trip of Route 66.

it's the hundredth year anniversary of Route 66.

these anniversaries just coincide.

So this is the gateway to the west.

This is the road that took Americans Across America.

And so we're gonna do the history of that and take you to those locations.

Again, why should you care?

Why does this matter to you?

What impact did Route 66 actually have on America?

And what was it born from?

We're gonna be doing all of that in this coming year.

if you wanna support us just know that everything you give to

the channel goes to the channel.

And, and, you know, this is the labor of love and we really, really

appreciate all the support we get.

So, what else are we doing, Scott?

yeah.

So the road trip is the big one, right?

That's the big project.

I'm gonna take a couple weeks off work.

I try to do that every.

Five years if I can.

I would love to do that more often, but the Navy doesn't, always allow that.

so the road trip is the big one.

if you're not following us, if you're watching, if you're

listening, definitely follow along.

we're gonna start that in July, film it for a couple weeks and,

and then obviously the content will start coming out after that.

Some of the other things that we're doing in the, within the local

area, I'd say the mid south, type area is we're expanding our radius

around the Memphis, Tennessee area.

So we're going up to Arkansas.

I'm excited to do some Johnny Cash history.

Yes.

I think you said Tennessee Williams.

you had a whole list of things that you wanted to do.

We're gonna be hitting this radius, so we're gonna be doing

some Mark Twain Little Rock nine.

We're gonna do, Johnny Cash, we're gonna do some Meridian Mississippi.

So Mississippi burning.

So a lot of the civil rights stuff, 'cause in Memphis there's

a lot of civil rights influences.

Here, Ida B. Wells, she's from Holly Springs.

people love to talk about Ida B. Wells for Women's History Month,

but not know a lot about her, so I wanted to get more into her life.

Helen Keller is from close by here.

We're gonna do Harper Lee.

And so just gonna be a lot of stuff with the radius here of, the Memphis area.

But, with the American cruise line, I hope to expand on some Lewis and Clark.

Yeah, so that'll be really great.

Maine.

It'd be my first time going into Maine.

if you have any suggestions about Maine or what you're interested in seeing

in the state of Maine, let me know.

we're gonna do Ohio River, so it'll be Kentucky Derby, some Pittsburgh,

which we have some Pittsburgh videos, but more and of course, long Island

I visited Long Island when we did Michael Murphy and when we talked about he's the

only Penn Stater to receive the Medal of Honor from the movie Lone Survivor.

I drove out to Long Island.

it was my first time ever doing that as an adult, and I realized how much

Revolutionary War history is out there.

Yeah.

In the Long Island

area.

It was amazing.

And so I asked for one of those cruises.

So I will be doing one of those cruises, doing some 250th Revolutionary War

history out there, and just know that that's where, Washington's greatest

defeat was during the Revolutionary War.

We'll talk about that, I'm also doing the Chesapeake Bay,

If you're a fan of the channel, you know the Chesapeake Bay, like the back

of our hand, So it'll be Jamestown, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Annapolis,

all those things we know so well.

But really center them more on the 250th anniversary of, America.

I was on a podcast with John Kiriaku and if you know anything

about him, he's a former CIA agent.

The podcast is called Deep Focus

and he was actually on Joe Rogan's podcast talking about his time in the CIA and he

has suggested we do a video together of CIA agents who are buried in Arlington.

So when I'm up there, we're actually gonna make a video together.

if you're interested in some of those stars.

In Langley, we're gonna be talking about some of those people who are

buried in Arlington and some of their career that we can actually talk about.

And, and I'm gonna do it with an actual CIA agent.

So if you, if you are interested in that, that's coming this year as well.

So you've been on a few podcasts this past year.

You've started doing more speaking engagements, so

that's something that we hope.

we can continue.

I know we have one coming up in March.

I think both you and I like a museum association type thing,

so that's, that's fun stuff.

And if you guys, watching or listening ever.

Work in that industry or interested in, in having one of us out, or having us

speak You can reach out to us if you, you can contact us through the show

notes if you're watching or listening and want to provide input on things

you want to see us do on the channel.

I was able to snag a pretty cool URLA pretty cool website

called i ask history.com.

and right now we have a survey that's live over there.

It's very short.

It's like two minutes.

And it's a freeway to support us, go to iask history.com and you just

kinda tell us what history you like.

Seven questions takes less than two minutes.

When you finish it, there's actually a, like a link to a never before

scenes video of Jen's, quick Tour.

It's a very short tour of London's Tower Bridge.

And so that was actually pretty neat because we never published that one.

It it was always been unlisted, but if you go and do that.

survey over@iaskhistory.com.

you can finish it in about two minutes.

You can watch this other, quick video.

It's like a two minute tour and within five minutes you'll have helped us

out and you got to see a free video.

So, I ask history.com.

And we always do those things 'cause we're always surprised by what

videos really resonate with you guys.

I had done Dick Winter's grave and I happened to be in Gettysburg.

I wanted to pay my respects to, major Dick Winters.

And that video was very popular.

And so we just wanna understand more what content you'd like to see.

And so.

That's important to us, right?

because history is important to you, it's important to us.

It's the 250th anniversary of America.

We wanna make sure that we're giving you the content that you actually

want to be a part of and, engage with.

thank you for everything.

We're looking forward to 2026.

Happy Birthday America.

we're gonna celebrate all year long, and we just thank you for

coming on this journey with us.

Yeah.

thank you so much to our lifetime members who are supporting us financially.

If you want to, help us out and either way, and take a look at the

links that we mentioned earlier.

Look in the podcast show notes or the video description down below,

happy Birthday America in advance and we'll talk to you guys next time.

Yeah.

On to our Next Walk with history.

This has been a Walk with History, production Talk with History is

created and hosted by me, Scott Benny episode Researched by Jennifer Benny.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode.

Talk With History is supported by our community at the history road trip.com.

Our eternal thanks go out to our lifetime members to help keep us going.

Thank you to Doug Liberty, Larry Meyers.

Patrick Benny, Gail Cooper, Christie Coates, Calvin Gifford, corny Sini, Jean

Noah, Larry Mitchell, Tommy Anderson, Susan Selis, Bruce Lynch, William

Garner, Mark Barrett, and Don Kennedy.

Make sure you hit that follow button in that podcast player

and we'll talk to you next time.