The History of China

Hi— generally huge fan of the podcast through the mid Qing episodes. That said, around episode 303 it becomes pretty clear that the scripts are a SIGNIFICANTLY lower quality than earlier episodes, which is sad as a longtime supporter of the podcast. I sincerely hope Chris addresses the fairly clear use of AI in his recent episodes and commits to a return to his own writing as before. It’s just sad to get so deep into a podcast and have it rendered unlistenable out of nowhere. 5/5 rating for earlier episodes, 1/5 for the new AI slop episodes. We listen for your personal voice and your generally very strong narrative choices, not for regurgitated wikipedia facts poorly strung together by chatgpt. Hopefully this isn’t needlessly harsh because there is SO much I love about the earlier podcast installments, but it has impacted the quality enough that I feel like it needed to be said.

Like previous users I have noticed a drop in quality lately. It felt like multiple episodes were covering the same events, and it was hard to keep the chronology straight. Then I noticed that Chris was speaking in a way reminiscent of AI. For instance he would have strings of vague adjectives or would use “It’s not just x, it’s y” language formulations. Then I came on here and saw two other reviews noting the AI use. I don’t object to the AI by itself, but the drop in quality is quite startling and honestly a bit depressing. Chris started this project in 2013. I have gone through thousands of years of Chinese history with him. And now, near the end, he is destroying that legacy. I deleted the remaining episodes from my podcast player and likely won’t listen again. Wish he would somehow scrub and re-record the AI episodes but I know that likely won’t happen. Just a very sad turn of events.

As a long time listener, I am lowering my rating to 3 stars due to the clear (and poor) use of AI for the latest episodes. Content is clearly repetitive and poorly formatted, this drop in quality is not obvious to Chris is beyond me. Prior to this I would have rated the show 4.5 stars.

The host is friendly and information is well presented

I used to love the show, but for a while now something has changed. You are constantly repeating the same information using the exact same wording. I’m don’t remember you doing that in your earlier episodes but now it’s starting to grate. Please change back to your old way of writing your scripts. Thanks