Kevin Costner knows a good story when he hears one.
That’s why he said he was intrigued when he heard about an app designed to warn travelers of notable but often unnoticed sights on their trips.
“I’m the guy who drives across America…when you see those bronze markers along the way, I want to stop. I want to read what was there,” he said. “That’s history, and I remember being really excited about it.
An app that sends compelling, timely stories directly to him is appealing, he said, because “I’ve always been fascinated by a good story.”
Costner was loosely linked to the app’s creator, entrepreneur Woody Sears, through their children, Sears said. While the app was in its early stages, Costner agreed to tell several stories before eventually joining the company as a co-founder.
Dubbed HearHere, the app launched in August 2020 and happened to coincide with one of the biggest travel trends of the Covid-era: the revival of the road trip.
A Road Trip Story Guide
Similar to the past two years, road trips are likely to dominate this summer, according to a survey by travel website The Vacationer. According to a survey of nearly 1,100 Americans in March, nearly 80% of American adults — or roughly 206 million Americans — plan to take a supplement.
However, HearHere — which it bills as the “road trip story guide” — was in development before the pandemic, Sears said.
“The idea of travel had changed for a lot of people,” Sears said. “We happened to open our doors at the same time as the shift.”
Kevin Costner said an important part of the HearHere app is telling the stories of the people who first inhabited North America, a theme that is central to his Oscar-winning film, Dances with Wolves.
WIG productions | Archive Photos | Moviepix | Getty Images
Costner said he’s been involved with several startups, but this one “was in the wheelhouse of what I’m already doing in terms of storytelling and my kind of love of history,” Costner said.
From The Untouchables to JFK and Wyatt Earp, many of Costner’s best-known films have touched on key figures in American history. A key reason for his involvement with HearHere was his desire to tell the stories of the first people in North America. It’s a theme he explored in the Academy Award-winning 1990 film Dances With Wolves, which Costner starred, directed and produced.
“That was the foundation for me… who are the first humans? – because there is no here without knowing who was there before,” he said.
The Harder Truths
To date, HearHere has more than 9,000 stories on topics ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Janis Joplin and from the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky to the Nashville music scene.
But telling the harder truths about US history is also paramount for Costner.
“Our story isn’t always great. There was so much violence in America. We’re now watching violence unfold around the world… to believe that this didn’t happen — it did happen,” he said.
Stories of America’s Founding Fathers and the battlefields of the Civil War alternate with tales of Mississippi towns settled by slaves and black disenfranchisement.
“We have nothing to be ashamed of,” Costner said. “We can be a little embarrassed, but it’s even more embarrassing not to know.”
A surge in audio content
HearHere has been downloaded more than 400,000 times and has subscribers in every US state, Sears said. The company announced in February that it had raised $3.2 million in seed funding, led by American recreational vehicle company Camping World.
Though he’s at the helm of a new mobile app company, Costner has said he’s not particularly interested in technology. He said most mobile apps “fly over my head,” and via HearHere’s Twitter page, “I don’t even know where that comes from.”
HearHere co-founders: Woody Sears, Kevin Costner and Bill Werlin. “I’m not a figurehead … that’s my interest,” Costner said.
Source: Listen here
“I really grew up with wolves,” he said. “If I need to expand my life… I need to open my ears, I need to open my eyes. When I travel across the country, my nose doesn’t have to be in a computer – it has to look out.”
According to Sears, so-called “screen fatigue” is one of the reasons why audio content overtook video content in 2021. Audio entertainment is also easier to integrate into daily life as it can be consumed while “walking, driving and doing chores” as opposed to video mainly observed while stationary,” he said.
Demand for audio services surged during the pandemic, with companies like Amazon, Twitter and Facebook announcing expanded audio platforms in recent years.
Start in other countries?
As US-based stories continue to be added to HearHere, Costner said the company has a model that lends itself well to international expansion.
He said the company is still refining its business and listening to its customers, but “I like to quite honestly jump off the page…trying something new,” he said.
Costner says he takes a similar approach to his films.
“It’s easy to follow a trend – it’s much more difficult to try to be original. Trending or repeating something popular is a way to make big bucks,” he said. “Doing something classic — which hasn’t made anyone feel like they’ve never seen it before — can live forever.”