Hooked on history: Shea LaFountaine’s podcast on the past is positively addictive

Shea LaFontaine smiles in her Kill Devil Hills home studio on Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (Photo by Corinne Saunders)

By Corinne Saunders

Edited by Matt Walker

Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the winter issue (Issue 14.4) of Outer Banks Milepost, currently on newsstands; find a list of distribution points by clicking here: https://www.outerbanksmilepost.com/outposts/.

History has always moved Shea LaFountaine. Even as a child. Once, on a family trip to Tryon Palace in New Bern — North Carolina’s first capitol — she remembers visualizing the different lives of 18th century schoolgirls.

“Most seven-year-olds would be bored to tears,” she recalls. “I was moved to tears. But history has always been this visceral experience for me.”

Today, the 37-year-old helps make it a captivating experience for others via her podcast, “History Fix.”

Each week, LaFountaine sits down in front of her computer webcam, fires up a fancy studio

microphone, and records an account of some famous past event or figure. Come early Sunday morning, she’ll share the presentation on her website — as well as YouTube and all the major podcast platforms — for a growing fanbase of roughly 4,000 weekly listeners from across the world.

In fact, since March 2023, she’s produced more than 130 episodes on everything from natural disasters to ancient civilizations, Richard the III to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

No matter the topic they all share a few common threads: Reversing the stereotype that history is all memorizing facts and “stuffy portraits of old guys in powdered wigs”; and a commitment to updating the record for accuracy and equality, especially when it comes to historically excluded groups like women and people of color.

“Certain stories weren’t recorded, or they were recorded inaccurately,” LaFountaine says, “because they were recorded by someone who didn’t understand, and [they] weren’t part of that group.”

Perhaps most importantly, the podcasts all feature an engaging, approachable tone, best emphasized by the start of each episode, where she poses a potential historical error or quandary, then launches the discussion with a cheeky, “Let’s fix that!”

“The name is kind of this dual meaning,” LaFountaine explains. “Like, if you’re a history fan, get your fix; but then it’s also like, let’s actually fix or correct these holes in the narrative.”

LaFountaine earned her bachelor’s degree in K-6 elementary education with a Spanish minor from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — and later taught fourth grade for more than seven years. But she credits her fascination with the past in large part to her mom, a school speech therapist who regularly took her siblings and her to historical treasure troves, such as Roanoke Island Festival Park, the Wright Brothers National Memorial and area lighthouses.

“She instilled in us the love of learning,” LaFountaine says. “That really brought about my love of history.”

So, when she went looking for history podcasts to love and came away disappointed — “they were either way too boring or way too cringy” — she began recording her own. And while she left the classroom in 2021 to work as a curriculum developer for upper elementary school teachers, she’s never lost the love of imparting new knowledge — nor the contagious energy of an inspired educator.

“I think I do a good job of explaining things well but also keeping it moving, keeping it

engaging,” she says. “It’s at a level where a 10-year-old can listen and understand and stay

engaged. And I think that works for adults too.”

One reviewer even called History Fix “the ‘Crime Junkie’ of history podcasts,” because LaFountaine digs deep in each episode to reveal past mistakes or ask thorny questions in a conversational style.

Want to know why Magellan got credit for circumnavigating the globe — even though he died before the journey was complete? Try Episode 119. Curious about the conspiracy theories surrounding William Shakespeare’s massive volume of work — despite his limited education Hark! Here comes Episode 130.

Often, she’ll look to past events and trends and tie them to a modern times, whether it’s showing how “fake news” led to the French Revolution, or connecting centuries of social injustice to current problems.

“I don’t think a lot of people realize how much [the past] informs the present,” she says.

No matter the subject, they all take plenty of effort. LaFountaine dedicates the equivalent of two work shifts a week to the endeavor, researching and writing each new episode on Friday and recording and editing the final products on Saturday. And yet, after nearly three years, there’s no guarantees as to which topics will go big.

Her discussion of the infamous Khmer Rouge — “a violent group in Cambodia that came about kind of right after the Vietnam War...and honestly because of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War” — was a bloody big hit. But then so was her two-part series on the Lost Colony of Roanoke. And folks really lost their heads over her two-part series on the six wives of Henry VIII, a former king of England.

“Anything Tudor-related blows up,” she says. “They can’t get enough.”

She’s also covered social history, diving into the story behind how products like coffee, rum and salt became household items — “this everyday thing that we don’t really think about but has a really rich history.” And she’s explored the history of drugs like cannabis and LSD.

For the latter, she traced the substance’s wild journey from its accidental creation and ingestion to its testing at universities and rise in use among the anti-Vietnam War movement — as well as the “clandestine CIA experiments” using it, before the feds made it illegal.

“It’s ironic that it’s the government that’s actually using it in the unethical way, because it’s also the government that eventually bans it outright,” she says.

It’s that combo of investigative approach and variety of topics that keeps inspiring new fans and platforms. In fact, she recently monetized her YouTube channel of over 7,000 subscribers and started recording video versions of podcasts, where she incorporates visual elements that she discusses. Meanwhile, a Patreon site lets subscribers can access additional content, like “mini fixes.”

But it’s her Instagram page that really bustles, where more than 22,000 followers stand ready to discuss recent editions or send suggestions for episodes. Some even tell her how much her work means to them. She’s been pleased to hear from several high school history teachers who assign her podcasts in the classroom. One person said the podcast inspired them to return to school for a history degree.

“The responses that I get are what keep me going,” she says. “But the number one goal of the pod is to come at history from a really engaging angle: ‘I’m just going to tell you a really interesting story — and you’re going to love it.’”

Find episodes, social media links and more at www.historyfixpodcast.com.

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