How to Write Rigorously Well — Diarmaid MacCulloch

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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.

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