History Extra: Unlock the past for iPhone

I’m Gen Z and recently turned 25 and woke up realizing I had given so much of my conscious attention away to algorithmically generated advertisements and horrors. History Extra is a way that lets me get the satisfaction of finding something genuinely interesting on my phone without opening a social media app at all.

There are no subtitles or captions for me cause I’m Deaf. I’m so disappointed because I paid $. I really love history and read History Extra magazines so often.

Terrible app. They should have spent some of the $$$ they’ve spent on advertising on functionality. No memory of where you left off in an audio file, or even what you last listened to or watched. Video subtitles run for the wrong videos (not the one you are actually watching). No ability to queue up a playlist, or even auto play the next in a series. Truly a disservice to the hardworking researchers and presenters.

Review

Hello, I hope your having a great day. And I would like to submit one of the flaws I have for this application. As a history nerd and history lover, I got this app to learn more about wars like The Seven Years’ War, The Punic Wars, and others. But I noticed that I had to subscribe to almost everything (like articles, videos, podcasts, et). Now, do be noted that this was only a few things, so take that with a grain of salt. But I personally think you shouldn’t need to really subscribe to much just to learn history. Because people (like me) shouldn’t need to just watch YouTube about history, anyways. Sorry for the sloppy review, but that is my flaw with this app, I hope you can fix it (maybe some sort of way to have a free 1-2 week long plan that’s free, idk if you have that), and yeah. That’s all, other than that flaw, I would definitely use again. 👍

BBC has ignited my interest in world history. This is a very valuable resource for everyone. The editor and producers created a podcast that allows subscribers to organize content according to their interests. My library is building and allows me to access content whenever and wherever I may be. Brilliant concept BBC…thank you for your creativity.

This app is so clunky. There is no way to search between podcast and video and article. It is all jumbled together with a huge font, and no filters beyond genre. I subscribed to avoid the ads. But any other podcast app is better than this. There’s no way to set a sleep timer or change the speed of the podcast. There is no way I can find to see a chronology of all the podcasts thru the years. Some are set up as collections & you can individually search by historic era, but you have to click on each item to see if it is audio, video, or print. This is one of my favorite podcasts, and I hate the ads, but I cannot figure out how to navigate this ad-free interface effectively.

I am a history nerd and love reading the articles to relax before bed. The app however is buggy. It crashes often and takes a while to load. Would give 5 stars for an update on the app and bugs to be resolved. Otherwise there’s a ton of well written and thoughtful content on tons of things I thought I knew but had barely scratched the surface on.

BBC History Extra podcast is by far my favorite podcast. I would love to subscribe and listen to it. ad-free on the app, but I can’t seem to find a simple chronological list of all podcasts in the app. Everything is pre-categorized, there are giant pictures, so you have to scroll and scroll. This is particularly challenging in the car, where I do most of my podcast listening. I don’t mind that they have all that fancy-schmancy user interface, but somewhere, there needs to be just that simple chronological list for bingers like me who just want to listen to one right after the other, in the order that they were broadcast. As it stands, I will continue to listen on Spotify (and pay Spotify) and put up with the ads, because the interface is better. BBC History Extra does AMAZING history, but their skill level is kind of mediocre when it comes to podcast GUI in an iPhone.

Love the articles and topics and podcasts!