From time to time one discovers a person so good at his job that it is almost impossible to imagine him doing anything else. I recently had this experience listening to Dan Carlin’s podcast Hardcore History. Carlin’s way of speaking is so in tune with his subject, and his enthusiasm so contagious, that one can’t help feeling he was born to do this work (think Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone).

Carlin is not a professional historian—just a “history geek” with an undergraduate degree in the subject—but he could well be the most engaging history professor on earth. His series on WWI is simply a masterpiece—made all the more impressive by the informal, meandering way he leads the listener from poignancy to horror and back again. Carlin is doing something truly extraordinary in this medium. He deserves a wide audience. And you deserve the pleasure of listening to him.