A British teacher & history podcaster in Bucharest proves every day is worth remembering

Scott Allsop delivers a daily dose of historical trivia from his Bucharest home.

Scott Allsop, a British history teacher living in Romania, sits in a Bucharest cafe on November 24, 2016. On the same day in 1859, the English naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species”, considered by many the foundation of evolutionary biology. Most probably, I wouldn’t have known that if it weren’t for Scott Allsop’s daily podcast Historypod.net. In 3-minute pieces, the Bucharest-based teacher and podcaster Scott Allsop aims to deliver a “daily dose of historical trivia”. The 36-year old man has recently finished his debut book called “366 days”, which he launched on December 12, at the Anthony Frost English Bookshop in Bucharest. Scott has been living in Romania for over two years, teaching history at the British School of Bucharest. He studied at the University of Cambridge and had previously been shortlisted for the UK’s national Teaching Awards and the BBC History Magazine/Historical Association History Teacher of the Year award. In the past, he even ran a website dedicated to abandoned shopping lists, which has been featured in the Times Educational Supplement and The Guardian. Scott takes a sip of the big lemonade he had ordered to freshen him up in the Bucharest cafe where we meet. It’s been a long day for him. At 5 am the podcast on Charles Darwin went live. He has a lot of listeners in Australia, and that’s a good hour for them. He had prepared several episodes in advance. The teacher normally wakes up when his two young kids wake up. “Hopefully not before 6 am, but sometimes before 6 am,” Scott says laughing. This morning wasn’t so bad. He got up at half past six. His history classes at the British School of Bucharest start at 8.20 am, but he arrives an hour before that. His class today was about the pre-established conditions that led to the rise of Hitler in Germany. Imagine teaching that to 17, 18-year old teenagers: not the easiest task in the world. But Scott knows his way around in making bored teenagers care about history, usually by playing the devil’s advocate. He sets a question, an inquiry, a mystery. “History is about solving mysteries, being an investigator,” he says. When he was in his early twenties, Scott had to come up with something more ingenious.