New York City History Is Alive in 'The Bowery Boys' Podcast

Part of a series of interviews with the makers of our favorite history podcasts.

Listening to The Bowery Boys history podcast is like an intimate hang session with a couple of your friends that respect the hell out of a solid pun, and get that you’re into the cool, quirky nature of New York City. The Bowery Boys duo consists of Tom Meyers and Greg Young, two friends who script a witty history banter focused on New York City. Their episodes range from general histories, such as that of the garment district, to more obscure events, like the September day in 1915 when Seventh Avenue collapsed during rush hour traffic, or the real story behind Typhoid Mary.

The Creators Project asked Meyers and Young about their own histories and how The Bowery Boys all began.

The Creators Project: What's the story behind your podcast name?

Tom Meyers (TM): We chose the name back in 2007 when we were both living in the Lower East Side near the Bowery, a main thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan. The original Bowery Boys were a 19th century gang of hooligans who dressed a bit like dandies. We’d later come to understand that the original gang was violently nativist and vehemently anti-Irish. They made life miserable for newly arrived immigrants. Later in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, a gang of actors adopted the name for the theater, film, and TV. So, it seemed like a fun, retro, and ridiculous name for the two of us.

How did you develop your unique conversational style?

Greg Young (GY): We’ve been friends for a great many years so our banter is fairly natural, not really anything that’s constructed. We do have a unique way of breaking up our topics, switching off between aspects of a story.

How much is improv and how much is script?

TM: A little of both. For each episode Greg makes a simple outline and we divvy up the four main sections. We take our own notes and try to find details that will actually surprise the other host. For the most part, jokes and puns are never planned. They usually flow a bit easier once we’ve poured ourselves a glass of wine (which only happens after the commercial break).

Do either of you have a background in history?

GY: Tom’s background is travel and European studies and mine is American history. The podcast is really a combination of those concepts, and I think that’s why people listen to it for the history and listen to it as a show about a travel destination. There’s a usefulness to it that I think people respond to. Of course a background in history doesn’t really prepare for the ways we have to put our shows together. Sometimes it’s very much like I’m in college again except I’m the professor and the student!

How did you guys meet and when did you decide to launch a podcast?

TM: I’ve known Greg since I was in high school and he was my sister’s roommate at the University of Missouri. We both moved to New York in 1993, became fast friends, and spent a lot of time exploring our new city together. We’d played with the idea of doing some sort of radio show together, we’d both had shows as students, but we couldn’t figure out who in New York would ever want to listen to us! Many years later, in the summer of 2007, Greg bought a MacBook that came loaded with GarageBand, a program that can record and publish podcasts. We pulled out a karaoke mic from my closet and hit record.

What challenges did you face early on versus the challenges you face now?

GY: Relatively speaking, there were almost no challenges at first. We had no expectations of it being successful, and so in many ways, that’s why I think it was. The challenges now really involve the show’s potential and how we can manage to push it forward while also maintaining other jobs. Ideally, this would be self-supportive but, well, this being New York City and all, that’s a bit of an uphill battle!

  Photo courtesy TBB

How do you choose your topics? Where do you source your material from? 

TM: We wish that we could say that we have topics for all of our shows lined up like rational, organized people. But really, we have only a loose idea of what we want to record for the next two or three shows. We keep it flexible, because maybe something will come up in the news such as the history of Wall Street, recorded during the financial crisis, or like the 100th anniversary of the Black Tom Explosion, or we’ll suddenly become inspired to tackle some oddball topic such as Mae West’s arrest for indecency.

Once selected, Greg makes the outline and we both do our own research. We try to cram a book into our research, if there’s time, and I like to kick around at the New York Public Library and the archives of the New-York Historical Society. The New York Times online archive nearly always comes in handy too.

We usually record on Monday or Tuesday nights, and the session tends to go about 90 minutes for a show that will cut down to a little over 50 minutes. There are some rules. Wine is not allowed to be consumed until after the mid-episode commercial break. (This was not the case in the early days… and you can tell.)

We share editing duties. I edited our last episode, while Greg is editing this week’s. It’s a time-consuming process. Using the editing program Audacity, we go through the show, cutting out all the “ums” and “uhs,” inserting breaths, and adjusting levels (sometimes we’re so excited that we’re literally screaming at each other. Once it’s cut, we usually export a rough cut for the other to listen to. This “sanity check” helps ensure that some crazy error hasn’t sneaked its way in. We then upload to our servers and publish it to iTunes—always by midnight on Thursday night. And it’s live.

You have a book coming out called Adventures in Old New York. What does it consist of and what will we find inside?

GY: The book came about from the question—how do you turn a podcast into a book? At the core are tales that we’ve already told before — the history of New Amsterdam, the Triangle Factory Fire, Times Square. But we wanted to make something that would be equally useful as not just as a history, but as a resource of exploration. From there, we expanded it to include those original stories but in the context of the neighborhoods where they belong. We hope it's something that resonates with locals and those who don’t live here, a book that brings the past into the present.

What do you each do outside of The Bowery Boys?

GY: Tom runs a European budget travel website called EuroCheapo.com and frequently disappears for a show or two while he’s traveling on an assignment. And I’ve been working in the music industry forever while doing some freelancing on the side. Hobbies? What’s that?

To learn more about The Bowery Boys and check out their upcoming book, click here. You can also download free episodes on iTunes.

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