the hosts

Matt "Old Fuss and Feathers" callery

Matt Josephs

Creator and a founding partner of GettysBike Tours, podcast host, videographer and photographer, Matt's love of Civil War history starts as a toddler while visiting his family in Northern Virginia. Between his uncle's relic collection dug from local properties and the proximity to the Manassas, Fredericksburg, Wilderness, etc., battlefields, Matt was immediately swept up in the romanticism and pageantry of the war. As he grew older and was able to fully understand the gravity of warfare, he quickly became awed by the bravery and "brass ones" it took to fight a war. 
   
 In high school, Matt learned why people think history is "boring". It's a very simple reason: most history teachers are boring and, therefore, they teach it in a boring way.His military history teacher, Mr. Foreso, was not one of those teachers. He had a passion for the subject and he couldn't help but show it with every word from his mouth. He made history come alive. He even did something that could NEVER be done today, especially in a state like New Jersey. Mr. Foreso had a complete uniform, including the weaponry, that he was allowed to bring into the classroom to show the students when they entered a new era of American military history. Can you imagine a teacher doing that today? Ya know, being allowed to actually educate and reach students like Mr. Foreso was allowed to do? Unfathomable. 

Mr. Foreso took the class on a day trip to Gettysburg and Matt never looked back. Annual trips with his father would lead to Matt moving there to open his first business, GettysBike Tours, in 2005.
   
It was during this time when Matt did his first podcast which lasted almost two years before he took a break.
   
After moving back to New Jersey in 2010, Matt immediately missed Gettysburg and teamed up with fellow budding-filmmaker, Eric Koval, to make a documentary about the history of the town since the battle and the peculiar tourist attractions that have come and gone. Naturally, they ran into the typical obstacles one meet when trying to produce a film and the project faded away.
   
Eventually, in 2015, Matt would start a new podcast called "Checked Out with Matt and Pete", which was later shortened to simply "Checked Out".
   
It was around this time that Matt noticed the Facebook page for his film "Addressing Gettysburg" kept gaining followers despite the fact that no one had been working the page since the project ended. This told him that there is a hunger out there for all things Gettysburg. 
 
​  Bringing this to the attention of his podcast co-host, Peter, they decided that they should change the scope of the project from a film to a podcast. The time just needed to be right. Somehow, the time suddenly became right in the last months of 2017 when Matt determined to figure out a way to make the podcast come to life. It just so happened that he was burning out on the show he was doing at the time and his passion for Gettysburg was reignited. So, he got Peter on board and recruited his old pal, author and Licensed Battlefield Guide,  Eric Lindblade, to come aboard as the resident expert. Thus, Addressing Gettysburg Podcast was born. ​

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Bob "The Superb" Steenstra

Peter Bonfanti

       Peter Bonfanti has loyally (some might say foolishly) gone along with most of Matt's harebrained adventures. In 2005, Peter joined Matt on his first entreprenerial venture called GettysBike Tours. After helping Matt get it off the ground, Peter moved back to his homestate of New Jersey to marry the girl of his dreams, but he left with a passion for the Battle of Gettysburg too. As time went on, his fondness for the memories he made in Gettysburg and his interest in the battle grew. 

Along the way, Peter his natural skills an on-air personality. He and Matt started "Checked Out" in 2015 and grew the scope of the show, its audience, sponsorship and honed their talents as hosts until 2018 when they ended the show so they could devote all of their time to "Addressing Gettysburg".

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The experts