Fake History! with THE Fake History Hunter

Gary: Thank you very much for being on the show. Jo Teuwisse, otherwise known as the Fake History Hunter. There is a lot to discuss today. You have a fantastic book out, Fake History 101 Things That Never Happened. And it's got quite a lot of praise. And I do want to jump right into your book. But before we get into that, you had some thoughts on the new Napoleon movie.

Jo: Don't get me started.

Gary: Oh, I want to.

Jo: Oh, well, you know, to be to be fair, we've only seen the trailer and there were already a couple of rather strange errors in there. But, you know, it's not that much of a problem because everyone makes mistakes. And even if he did it just because his view or his fantasy was looked cooler or, you know, just more exciting, and that's perfectly fine. You know, we shouldn't tell artists what to do if you wants to make a film that's not historically correct, that's he can do that. But he responded in such a childish manner that that was really kind of, well, pathetic, to be honest.

Gary: Yes. He said that for those who are criticizing the historical accuracy to get a life.

Jo: Yeah. And he also said, how do you know where you there mean that that is that is how the teenagers are correct on Twitter respond. That's now it should have just owned it. If he had said, yeah, I know, but I don't care because it made the film better, everyone would have gone, fair enough. But oh yeah, that's embarrassing.

Gary: I suppose that's the difference between the Ridley Scott approach and the Quentin Tarantino approach, because spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the film Inglourious Basterds, but he just decided, hey, I'm going to kill Hitler. Why not? It's a feel good moment. Doesn't matter if it's historically accurate, but him getting killed in France, you know who doesn't want to see that?

Jo: Yeah, exactly. If you if you want to tell your own story, just do it and then own it. And, you know, be honest about it. Ridley Scott is responding to me. Sounds like he tried to get it right and he didn't know he got it wrong and now he can't handle it. This makes it very suspicious. This makes it look like he just got it wrong. Instead of purposely choosing something that he thought was cool.

Gary: Well, this is why you are here. To inform us of all of the falsities in history that people believe, and there are many. So let's dive right into your book. You have a lot of great chapters on historical falsities, which many people believe. And as we go along, I'll start asking some deeper questions. For now, let's dive right into the book by looking at the ones which are relevant to France. First up, tell me all about how Napoleon shot the nose off of the Sphinx.

Jo: Yeah, no, he didn't he didn't do that. But yeah, it is a myth that's been going around for a very long time. But it's quite easy to debunk because we literally have pictures, no drawings, etchings, and even people writing about the swings, not having a nose centuries before Napoleon was even born. And that is a pretty good alibi. Unless, you know, he had a time machine, he couldn't have done it even if he wanted to. So it's a really strange story that makes no sense whatsoever.

Gary: Napoleon with a time machine sounds like Ridley Scott's next great epic.

Jo: Oh, I totally watch that.

Gary: So how did this myth get started?

Jo: Um, I am not sure. I think I think it may have started with an overenthusiastic guide in Egypt guiding a bunch of Europeans, showing them the Sphinx and going, why? You know, people asking where's the knows what happened? And he just made up that story on the spot. Or maybe, maybe even earlier, someone thought it happened or they confused it with the battle that happened near the pyramids. I don't think we know where it came from, but I think it's quite old.

Gary: So then why did this? Why does this myth live on? Why is. Why do I see you countering it every other day on Twitter?

Jo: Well, on the internet, quite a lot of people are using it as an example of of whitewashing and of racism. And, you know, because they think they like to think they they're telling the story that Napoleon not just did that for fun. He didn't just shoot the nose off because he wanted to, but he did it because he couldn't stand the idea that it had a very African. If you can say that an African appearance, an African nose, which, you know, I was taught, that's not something you should be, should be saying. But when you get on the internet, there are people saying this is the way they are hiding the African heritage or origin of the statue and of the ancient Egyptians and all that sort of thing. So it becomes this whole race thing, people saying, you know, our ancestors were the ancient Egyptians and others saying, no, our ancestors were ancient Egyptians, and everyone's saying the Europeans were racist bastards. ET cetera. So they're using this story to somehow back up their claim that there was some sort of racial or superior supremacist motive behind shooting the nose of the statue, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, and there's no evidence that it was done by Napoleon or any other European at all, if the most likely suspect at the moment is an early medieval Muslim who did it because he didn't like the locals worshipping the statue. But even that is not certain, because archaeological evidence has shown that it probably happened at a different time than when this guy was alive. So the truth is that we don't really know what happened to the nose. And anyone who says they know for sure, you know, they're making things up. We have suspects. We have a prime suspect, but we just don't really know. But we know it wasn't done with a cannon because you can see, you know, you can see that. You can see that it wasn't done with a cannon. Archaeologists and scientists have researched it, and they say there are chisel marks. It was, you know, primed of and we can sort of know when it happened. But as long as people were writing about it before Napoleon was even born, at least he got off the hook.

Gary: This ties into another myth that Europeans did not know how to bathe, and had to be taught how to do so by the Moors. This is, without question the single most frequent myth that I've seen you debunking online. Yet no matter how often you do it, there are still people who believe that Europeans, white people, had to be taught how to clean themselves by the Moors. Tell us all about it.

Jo: Yeah, it's. To be honest, I did not know about this till I joined Twitter. It was a massive shock to me. I did not realize that people seriously believe this. I know that a lot of people think that medieval people didn't bathe very much, which is also myth, by the way. But the idea that Europeans had no idea what soap was and weren't bathing before 711 AD when the Moors invaded Spain. That to me, mate, absolutely no sense. And it is an example of a severe lack of basic history knowledge. This is, you know, this is stuff that you should have been taught in primary school because of course, before 711 AD in Europe, we had the Romans and the Greeks and the Celts and the Visigoths, and they were all bathing like mad. We all know the Roman bathhouse. As we know the Greeks had bathhouses. They had running water. They're famous for it. Yet? Yet somehow there are people who think that didn't happen. There are people who think that Europeans were literally not making this up. They are actually telling me that they believe this, that Europeans were living in caves and didn't know how to do anything before 711 AD. Part of the problem where this comes from is that it's religious propaganda. It's I think it's in part because of the Nation of Islam, but also other YouTube channels and TikTok channels and other groups that are spreading these stories based on a some sort of. A story about Europeans being created by someone, and it makes absolutely no sense. But when you are taught this, when you are spoon fed, this story is very hard to debunk it because it's, you know, this person. These people are not thinking logically about it. You can say, listen, here is the evidence, but they've been taught this and they will just say, oh no, you're lying. Everything you're saying is, is a lie. But it is very strange. And but we literally have Romans writing about those barbaric Western tribes bathing every day and using soap, which was, by the way, something the Romans didn't know about. So it was it was those European barbarians who introduced soap to the Romans. But we have the we have literally half the bath houses. We have the pipes for the running water. We have bathtubs in our museums that are 2000 years old. It is so strange and it's so difficult to get through to these people that it doesn't make sense. And some say Europeans forgot all about bathing after the Romans left, which is also not true. Very strange idea. But even if it was true, especially in Spain, the bit the Moors invaded after the Romans were followed up by the Visigoths. And these guys, although they, you know, we we know them as goth, and we think that the Goths were also all barbaric. But the physicals in Spain, physicals, not the physicals, they're a bit fizzy, but they were, you know, they were continuing the bathing culture of the Romans. They were even building aqueducts. So especially in the part that the Moors invaded, people were still bathing like the Romans did and washing. And there was soap makers, guilds and all that stuff. So it makes absolutely no sense. And it's so strange to have to deal with that. But yeah, they're taught that and they're shown videos by people that they trust and belief. So you really have to, you know, break through that barrier.

Gary: Yeah. I just wanted to bring this up to get into why people believe what they believe. Because this is a quite pervasive view. So can you explain why this is that this is something you have to deal with on a daily basis?

Jo: I think it's there are two parts. I think a big part is that especially in the United States history, education is very flawed in general, especially when it comes to black history. There are I know I'm talking to these guys on Twitter, and I know that they're not taught anything about what happened before Columbus. There's very little history. They're not taught everything, taught anything about cultures and civilizations in Africa. And that's the thing. That's the stuff that they want to know about, which makes absolute sense. They want to know where they're from, and they want to know. They want to hear good and cool and impressive stories about African history. And there are so many of those. So they should they should just be taught that. But they're not. So they start looking on the internet. And so they want to find these stories, and then they find these websites that tell them stories that make them feel better, that make them feel better than other people. And that is that is something that most humans are very tempted to want to believe. And we all have that. I mean, Europeans have that. Everyone has that. If you read a story that makes you or your ancestors look cool or better than someone else, that it just feels good. And I think that's also a big problem here. Um, there are people who are marginalized who don't get the history education they deserve. And then they found find online something that that says your ancestors were better than those people and that that must, you know, that's comforting that that feels that that's nice to hear. So they want to believe that. And if you want to believe something suddenly all the evidence and sources you're shown that support that becomes more reliable, more believable, and the evidence that clashes with that, you know, you don't trust, you don't want to trust it. And that happens with anyone and everyone and all the all the myths I have to debunk are or many of them anyway, are based on that. People don't want to believe it. And those are the myths that are too difficult, that are very difficult to debunk because it makes them believing, it makes them happy. And so I think that's that's mainly where all this is coming from.

Gary: Yeah, it does get to a big part of being a professional historian in that there are people who can believe false things for truly sympathetic reasons. I mean, in this case, we have this problem that many African Americans were not taught about the incredible history of Nubia or Mali or historical Ghana. And so now they're looking at just sort of anything that it is an incredibly still Eurocentric view, but they're looking at any European accomplishment and saying that, no, it's actually Africans who did it. And this is how we end up with, let's say, recently, Netflix's Black Cleopatra, or now Denzel Washington is going to play Hannibal. So yeah.

Jo: It is very peculiar, but I totally understand the hunger they have. They have this hunger for knowledge and nobody is. Nobody's giving them the books or the information that they need, because even the Moors, you can talk. There are so many impressive things about the Moors that you can tell. And I sometimes I have a discussion with someone, and I notice that they're open minded enough and they're willing to learn, and they're willing to accept that perhaps something they believed was wrong. And then I try to show them, listen, you know, here is a good website or a good article or a good book that tells you about the culture and the history of the Moors and the impressive things they did that are actually true, because if they would go online and say, well, you know, it was the most that introduced paper to Europe, which was very important then, you know, that's a pretty good statement to make. That's perfectly fine to say. And there wouldn't be an argument, but instead they bring the one thing that makes absolutely no sense, and that anyone who can Google for five minutes can debunk and then attack them with. So you know, and I sometimes I know I see their discussions and I see that they are debating white supremacists and racists and morons. And I want, you know, I don't want to correct them. I want to correct them and help them so they can win the conversation. So sometimes I do it with DMs, you know? So listen, you're wrong about that. And they know it and they can debunk you. But if you use this stuff you go win. And that's quite satisfying to watch.

Gary: Yeah. It is funny what this has inadvertently produced because there is such a movement to depict. I mean, on the one hand, there is the sort of traditional European based racism which is to depict any great figure in history as white, whether it is, of course, famously Jesus Christ, which, spoiler alert, he probably was not a California hippie, although that's generally how he's depicted so. And not only that, but I think there was that movie. Was it Ridley Scott who made the movie? Um, Gods and King or something like that? But it was, um, Christian Bale played Moses.

Jo: Yeah, I can vaguely remember something about that that was quite amusing.

Gary: So we're back to Ridley Scott again. But yeah, so you have, on the one hand, the Europeans who have traditionally made everybody white, but then on the other, now we have sort of the backlash. And now all people from Africa are being depicted as black, whether it is Cleopatra and the recent Netflix film Who is black or Denzel Washington as Hannibal Barca, you know it. It makes me feel bad for North African peoples because I don't know if you saw, but there was one time where, uh, Oscar winning actor Rami Malek.

Jo: Yes.

Gary: Being criticized. Yes. He was being criticized on Twitter for playing an Egyptian because he's not black. But the thing is, he is Egyptian. He's literally Egyptian background.

Jo: Yeah. I mean, Africa as a continent has the most, most different, biggest collection of different skin colors of any continent in the world, from white to very black and everything in between. But people seem to think that it's just just one color, which is also very, very strange. But again, it comes back to this lack of knowledge about certain things and certain cultures and not being able to go, listen, we have our own thing that we can be proud of. And if, you know, I would say that because I'm a history addict and obsessed with history, but if people had better history lessons and a higher level of history knowledge. This wouldn't be happening because people would think, you know, we know what happened there and then we can be Nubian history. It's fantastic. We can make movies about that. That is brilliant. And we can have actors that portray those roles, but they don't know. And and on the other hand, other hand, I think anyone can can cast anyone for any film role, even if it's a historical drama. But when they start doing it in documentaries like with Cleopatra, then it's then it gets really tricky because how do you know people are going to believe that? And you're going to have to say that thing that you saw that cost millions to make, made by Famous people, broadcast by Netflix, is wrong. You're going to have to cross a much higher threshold to convince people to not take that so seriously.

Gary: Well, if this podcast does anything, hopefully it will get more roles in films for North African peoples. Until then, Rami Malek is going to have to carry it on his shoulders. Now, getting back to possibly a less controversial myth and one that directly ties into France. Another false story which you have encountered on the internet and which became a viral meme, is about an American guy who carried a donkey through a minefield. What is the fake story and what is the truth?

Jo: Well, it sort of became a meme or a very viral story during when the pandemic, the Covid pandemic, started, because this picture was shown online of a soldier carrying a donkey on his back. And the story around it says, this is a Second World War soldier, and he's carrying a donkey. And both sides of the discussion back then were using this story to show that the other side was being the donkey. You know the saying, if you wear a mask or ignore looking, you are the donkey because you're endangering everyone else. So we have to carry you while the other, the other side said, if you are not wearing masks or if you are wearing a mask and following, you are the donkey. It was. It was very silly, but the story was very interesting and ironically, the photo is real. It's not from the Second World War, it's from much later. It was. There were French troops, there were the Foreign Legion, and they were carrying this, found this donkey, you know, these big, strong guys, some of the most well known soldiers. And they're very fierce. And they found this donkey, little fowl, a little baby donkey, which is why they could carry it, because, you know, donkeys are pretty big and heavy, and it was hungry and alone and abandoned, and they decided to adopt it and carry it home. And it became their mascot. And they started they were teaching it to drink. And it was a very it's a very lovely story. It's a crazy animal. Things got out of hand. Um. But the image is the opposite. It's not of soldiers in a minefield having to carry someone, or in this case, a donkey, because it was stupid and ignorant and it would endanger everyone else. It was a story of people caring for each other and looking after someone and, you know, helping each other and helping this donkey that needed help. So this the real the real story is much lovelier and much nicer. And it didn't fit anyone's claim that they were making during Covid about other people. It was very, very cute.

Gary: One of the few heartwarming stories to come out of the Algerian War. Your book isn't afraid to get a bit naughty at times, and you talk about where the European screw you sign comes from, the one where a person holds up their index and middle finger, something which just looks like a V to an American but is horribly offensive to Europeans. The myth is that this comes from the famous Battle of Agincourt, one of the greatest victories of the English over the French. What's the myth and where did it come from?

Jo: Well, the myth is. And it's a very popular one, especially in England. The myth is that the when the French would. The French were threatening the English, that if they would capture an archer, that they would cut off the two fingers, because that would make them make it unable for them to fire along. But of the shooter longbow. And so then the English heard about this, and every time there was a battle, the archers would go forward and they would do this gesture and show those two fingers to the French to show that they still got them, and they were going to use them. Which is it is a wonderful story. It's such a great story, especially in connection to that famous battle. You know, it's wonderful. And sometimes I'm sorry. Sometimes I wish it was true, but it isn't. It is. For starters, I mean, I've, I've, I've shot a medieval longbow and you need three fingers for it, so it already doesn't make sense. You really need your three fingers for it. So why would they not cut three fingers off and then show those three fingers as the gesture. So that's already doesn't make sense. But also, why would why would anyone care if you are a French soldier or a knight and you've just captured a bunch of English archers, why would you go to the trouble of cutting off two fingers on every single one of them and then letting them go? Just kill them all? Or just cut off the entire hand because it's much faster. It's just it's just such a hassle. I mean, these men aren't worth anything. They're usually often just farmers and, you know, not professional soldiers. So it's a very, very strange story. I mean, the was there were some threats being made in propaganda at the time. So the basis of the story, there is something there. And we know that there were also rude gestures being made with those fingers that that was also happening at that time. But there's really no connection and no logic in the idea that it had any connection to the Battle of Agincourt.

Gary: Many of the myths that you discuss have to do with the medieval period. Many people seem to think that medieval people were profoundly stupid. So let's go to the most popular of these myths. Medieval people burned witches all the time. Medieval people threw human waste out of windows onto the street. They had bad teeth and they thought that the world was flat.

Jo: Yeah. Oh, God. Yes, there's a lot of. There's a lot there. The witches, although witches were killed en masse. But this happened mostly after the Middle Ages. This was not a medieval thing. And when they were killed, they were usually hung, not burned. That was that was that was that was special, special treatment for heretics, not for witches. During most of the Middle Ages, the official church point of view was that witches didn't exist. There was no such thing. And if you said someone was a witch, the church would look suspicious at you because they would think maybe you were, you know, were the victim of some sort of magic in your head because witchcraft isn't real. So maybe you're doing something you shouldn't know. You had to prove. You had to literally prove someone's guilt instead of the suspected which prove their innocence. Those things changed after the Middle Ages. You know, the Renaissance, the enlightened era that everyone seems to be very excited about. That's when things got really bad for, for witches. And loads of them were killed and tortured, but not millions, which some people seem to think. So, as with many, many of these myths, it's the story is sort of true. But it's not about the Middle Ages. It's about a different, different era. And but somehow we really like the Middle Ages as a scapegoat. It everything negative that we want to believe really fits our image of that era. And when you think of the Middle Ages, you see the narrow streets, you see the dirt, you see the people emptying a chamber pot out of a window. Above we have this image that's in our head, partially because of Hollywood and television and Victorian stories and things like that. But it's more than that. For some reason, we really we really cling to this image for the same reason that we cling to an image of the Romans that is glorified. We think of the clean streets and white lanes and, you know, art and white pillars and all that sort of thing. And the same is for the Renaissance. We think of the art and the we have images about errors that we cling on to, and we don't like that image changing. Um, and another story, of course, is that people had terrible teeth. And I think the main, the main culprit here is Hollywood. Um, until very recently, we literally have films being made where they have to where they are painting the teeth of the actors. They are putting little yellowish stains on people's teeth. As recently. I think as a film, I see a film two, three years made 2 or 3 years ago where they did that and it is so ridiculous. I mean, I understand that people think this. We all assume that. Toothpaste and good trusty dentists are a recent thing, and that's sort of true. But what we don't realize is that medieval people. They brush their teeth. They had products for their teeth. They even used whiteness. Of course not. The chemical stuff, the artificial stuff that we use today, but natural. They really cared about their teeth. But also their diet was very different from ours. It was a lot less damaging to their teeth. They didn't have modern, modern. Starch, for instance. We have a lot of starch in everything, crisps and things like that, but also no tobacco to stain our teeth, no coffee to stain our teeth. But above all, they didn't have access to cheap. Commercial sugar. Sugar during the Middle Ages was very, very expensive. It was rare. If you wanted something sweet, you got that from honey. Which was also not that. Not that affordable. So most people didn't have as much damage done to their teeth as we do today. So there's no reason for them to have had such bad teeth. And we know that to be a fact because of all the skeletons that have been dug up. We literally have cemeteries full of medieval skeletons, and they all have pretty, pretty good teeth. Of course, if they if something did get wrong and they, they had a lot of plaque or they had a, you know. Uh, cavities and things like that. Then they had a big problem. This could get out of hand. It could have infections. You know, we have skeletons with really serious, awful teeth damage. It could. It could actually kill people so that, you know, we should absolutely be happy that we have modern dentistry. But the idea of these black, yellowish teeth or no teeth at all, people losing all their teeth at the age of 30, that is just absolute nonsense.

Gary: And finally the world being flat. Is that not true?

Jo: No. It's not. Sorry. Mean we don't really know what the most. Most people thought. Of course. Because what? What? Your average person in the world back then was thinking about these things that wasn't written down. There were no books about that. But there is no real evidence of people en masse, you know, in large quantities, thinking that the world was flat. We know that from the written sources that survived, that the Greeks were already knew that the earth was round or a globe, and that they had done measurements. I mean, you can see that the Earth is round in certain ways. If you know, if you're high up or if you're on, on, on a ship at sea, you can see that things disappear behind the horizon. It's not that complicated. And from the medieval world, we have images of round of round worlds. We have people writing about it. We even have one guy mocking another guy for thinking that the world is round. So of course there were some people who thought it, but there is no evidence whatsoever that this was something that a lot of people believed it from what we have. It seems that the generally people thought it was round, and which is not something we can say about 2023.

Gary: Yeah, that is a really interesting thing, that there is this myth that medieval people, of course, being the idiots that they were, believed that the earth was flat, when in reality that view might be more popular today. And people like Shaquille O'Neal and the rapper Bobby and a few other famous people actively endorse the idea that the world is flat.

Jo: Yeah, and of course, the problem that we have today is that if you if you if you were a medieval peasant who was a bit dim and who said that the earth was flat, it would it would just be your neighbors who would hear that, and they'd shake their head and ignore you. But today we have the internet. And if you go on the internet and you say the earth is flat, you will find a couple of people who think that as well. And then suddenly you are in a group and that is that is the problem. We can't say that most medieval people didn't think that the world was flat, but there's no evidence for it. And unlike today.

Gary: Yup. Well hopefully Kyrie Irving. Tila Tequila will listen to this episode and find out that the Earth is in fact, not flat. I assume that Millie Bobby Brown must follow you on Twitter or something, because she not too long ago said that she has accepted that the world is round. So you are doing good work. Indeed.

Jo: One for us.

Gary: One fun myth you talk about that is directly relevant to this podcast, since I am covering the First Crusade, is the notion that Crusaders made their wives wear chastity belts while they went off to fight for Jesus. True or false?

Jo: Also false. This is a fun one, because it is one of those myths that if you think about it for a bit longer than just a few seconds, it starts. You should be able to think there's something wrong with it. Just just imagine. Imagine being wearing iron underpants for weeks, if not months, perhaps years. Imagine what that will do to your skin, to your nether regions. You go to the toilet. You have a bath. Have you not heard of rust? This is metal on skin. This is going to be absolutely awful. By the time the husband returns from the Crusades, his wife is going to be must have all these ghastly infections or most likely will just have died. So it makes no sense. It just it doesn't. It wouldn't work. And of course, you know those medieval pat logs, they're not that good. And they're not going to come between someone who wants to make love with a stable boy. It's not going to stop. It's not going to stop them. So it makes no sense. The story may have may have originated with someone writing a joke because there is a medieval source for it, but he sort of writes the women in that city, they have metal underpants, which is which. If you read it like that, it's most likely a joke about the women. They're being a bit prudish or, you know, difficult to seduce. They don't they don't cheat on their husbands, that sort of thing. You know, it's not literal, literally. So if it's a fun one. But we believed it for such a long time, in part probably due to the Victorians, because they had this. They had an obsession with the Middle Ages, which I completely understand. But they were also crazy about stories that involved sex and all sorts of naughty, sexy stuff. So this was the perfect story for the Victorians. They loved reading about this. So when this first story first appeared, suddenly these antique shops started, said, oh, look what I happened to find in the attic. Here is the original, you know, chastity belt belonged to this and this princess. The people would buy it and sell it, and then one museum would have it. And of course, all those Victorians who consider themselves very civilised and polite and decent, they would come running to come and see this weird thing. And then other museums. Museums also wanted one. And then before you knew it, all these antique shops suddenly were finding all these original real medieval chastity belts everywhere and selling them for good money. Um, but, you know, when historians started saying we don't really have any evidence for this, museums, some brave museums decided to do tests, and they realized that these things were indeed not old at all. You know, they were Victorian. They were handmade. There's no there's no evidence for them being real.

Gary: One final medieval myth which we have to mark off the list is the notion that people drank beer instead of water because it was cleaner. Now we know this is false for France because they would be drinking wine, right?

Jo: Well, the French were also drinking beer. They loved it. They still do.

Gary: Maybe in Normandy.

Jo: But my my experience with drunk Frenchmen, that's for a different podcast. But yeah, it is a very common story. But again, it doesn't make much sense if you think about it a bit longer. You need clean water. It's that simple. Especially medieval people, Roman people, Renaissance people. You need clean water not just to drink, but also to make beer, to make ale with dirty, polluted water. You can't make good beer or ale. It just doesn't work. Um, so there's already something there that doesn't make much sense. But we also know that people needed this water for so many other things for doing the laundry, for cleaning, for washing, for making food at every settlement pretty much throughout history except a few extreme cases. Every settlement started by a water source, a river, a canal, a lake. People needed fresh water, clean water. They always have. They always will. So, well, not always will. But you know, they used to anyway. And people knew that water, if it was, they didn't know about microbes and that sort of thing. But they knew they weren't. They weren't stupid. If water was dirty, if it smelled, if there was something suspicious about it, they avoided it. They they wouldn't drink it. This is why they made sure that the water that they drank was not polluted. They had very strict laws about where you would were allowed to walk your animals not too close to the true well or the river that was used for drinking. You weren't allowed to throw rubbish in there, even though we see that again in every Hollywood movie. They were very strict about that sort of thing, and they drank water a lot. They loved drinking water. It was very normal. It was very common. And they did drink a lot of beer and ill of. Absolutely. And they also had the it was often very watered down or very light anyway, so they were drinking it all day. The children were also drinking it. But you can compare the beer that they drank during the day with what we, you know, a light beer, almost no alcohol. So they will at the most they would get a little bit of a bus maybe, but they weren't running around drunk and there was clean water everywhere. And they even and we know this from the Romans, and everyone knows the Romans had their aqueducts and but medieval people had them as well, and they had their conduits and they had canals and they had pipes with running water. And when you tell people that they're confused, they they didn't know that. They didn't realize that there were even in them, even made wooden logs. They hollowed them out and use those as to transport clean water underneath the streets of their cities. And that is I mean, I have to admit, when I first read about it, I was amazed as well. And when I thought when I read a few about a few of these cases, I decided to make a list of all the towns and villages that I could find in medieval Europe that had a way to transport clean water to the houses, and that list is growing almost daily. And it was. It's much more than I to expected, I have to admit that. But it is very simple. People needed clean water and they have done for most of history. So why wouldn't the Middle Ages? Why would they suddenly stop caring? It makes no sense.

Gary: So the takeaway from this book is that everything that you know about the medieval period is false.

Jo: Pretty much at least a lot.

Gary: I don't want to go into any more myths, as I don't want to spoil all these great chapters in your book, but would you like to briefly mention any favorite myths which we didn't cover?

Jo: Um, let me think. What's a good one?

Gary: I think there are a lot of good ones.

Jo: Yeah, that's the problem. There's 101 of them. Which one do I choose? I don't know. Um, well, we can do maybe just Santam the Santa one.

Gary: Tell us all about Santa.

Jo: Because, you know, when is this being broadcast?

Gary: Uh, not too long, but, you know, the stores are already putting up there. Yeah, it's.

Jo: It's almost here. Well, it is it is a common, common misconception that's also still quite alive. I think I had to correct 12 people about this yesterday. Um, a lot of people seem to think that Santa looks the way he does, especially the color of his clothing. The red because of Coca Cola, that Coca Cola designed him that way, that they created Santa. And that's nonsense as well. Of course Santa, of course, he really does exist. Just in case any kids are listening. Um, but he used to be called Saint Nicholas, and he was a medieval saint. And he did some really cool, amazing things. Um, he saved some murdered boys. Yes, you heard that right. They were already murdered. And then he saved them and then became alive again, which is quite something. Um. And he gave away money, gold coins to a poor family, which is also very nice. So he was a great guy. Um, and he worked for the church, and he was wearing he was already wearing red clothes, then a red cloak. So it was part of the costume. And when Dutch and German immigrants went to America, they brought this tradition of celebrating his saints, Saints Day. Is a holiday brought them to the Americas. So. Saint Nicholas was already being celebrated in America. For a very, very long time, long before Coca Cola was even invented. And then people started to sort of mix and match a few things, because the English, of course, at their own Father Christmas, who is who was who did look quite different. So they started combining all these traditions and cultures from all over, mostly Europe. Um. And they started to design him. He started to be depicted in many ways. And there was this story. There was a book published, I think, 1860s, by a guy called Thomas Nast, and he described Santa as we know him today, except very small, but the red clothes and the boots and things like that. And people started to illustrate their stories with this image of Santa. And you can find pictures of Santa looking exactly like he does today as going as far back as I think the 1890s. Now he was popular. He was already very popular, and he was ironically, he was already being used to sell stuff and even sodas, you know, soft drinks. And that was happening long before Coca-Cola got involved. And the problem here is that people confuse Coca Cola, throwing their massive publicity machine into the into the, into the thing, making it popular everywhere and flooding the world with the image of coca, of Coca Cola and Santa. And they confuse that with them actually inventing it. But they they just used him as advertising, just like everyone else. They just did it more. And that's why people still think to this day that Santa is, is is a Coca Cola creation.

Gary: Well, Coca Cola may not have invented Santa, but I'm pretty sure they invented polar bears to push their product. Let's talk about mythmaking for a second. In all your years encountering false histories, where do you think these notions come from? Where do they originate, and how do they proliferate?

Jo: Well, they come from different places. Some are made up on purpose because people want to want to tell a fake story, because sometimes a fake story is more exciting, it's more fun. It gets more clicks, they get more readers, get more shares. Sometimes people make it up because they don't know and they're too lazy to research. They just can't be bothered. They see a picture and they think, oh, I think that's happening. So they just lie about it. Some people think they know that. Just look at it and think they know because it's obvious to them and they're just wrong. Sometimes they just repeat what someone else told them, but they make a mistake, you know? You go to a museum, you read something and you think, oh, when I come back, I want to tell others about it. But you get a little mistake. You may get a little detail wrong. There are many ways in how stories can be spread wrongly. It's not always on purpose. Sometimes it's just an honest mistake. Or, you know it can happen so easily.

Gary: Your very last myth, which you deal with, involves an AI generated photo by the program Midjourney. How has technology challenged our understanding of what really happened?

Jo: It is a very double edged sword. Anyone can make very convincing images that can fool pretty much everyone else. You can make a photo that looks very old and you can say, this is this person doing that and people will believe it. It it is so easily done. You can fake fake away and people will be fooled by it. Not that long ago, only people who are very good at Photoshop could do it. Before that, people had to be really good at editing photos. Literally in a dark room with with a little knife and a little pencil because, you know, faking history. It's something that we've been doing since prehistoric times. Cave. Cave paintings. I bet there's a bunch of lies on those walls as well, but because of technology, it now becomes so much easier for people with absolutely no training or expertise. And then, of course, thanks to the internet, it will be seen by a million people before teatime. So that is quite dangerous. And but on the other hand, because everyone now has this experience, because this is available to everyone, people also become more critical. They they no longer automatically believe what they're being shown. So that is a little bit of a bright side to this flood of fake history and fake images. People are perhaps becoming a bit more suspicious, although we have to be careful that that doesn't go too far, because we also have a lot of people that just don't believe anything anymore. You know, you can be a medical expert that tells you something about health. You can be a scientist that says, we've done the research, we've done the tests. We know this is true. And people will still say, no, it's a conspiracy. You're lying. We don't trust you. It's fake. So the balance is very difficult. But at least with images we have, people are developing this sort of healthy mistrust of pictures that perhaps aren't true. There's something dodgy about them, but thanks. Thankfully, all this pretty much every AI thing that I've tested is still really bad at doing history research. So it's if you have a picture, an old picture, there's usually a historian running around going, hang on a minute, there's something wrong there that doesn't make sense. Those clothes are from a different era. The you know, the architecture is wrong. There's we can still see it's wrong, but it's becoming harder day by day.

Gary: There's no better way to end than by asking, can you give our listeners any tips on how to identify real history and debunk false history?

Jo: Well, of course, the best advice is to just follow me, ask me. But the best way to debunk it kind of depends on what kind of fake history it is. If it's an image, there are several tools that allow you to check if something is AI generated. They're not foolproof. They sometimes get it wrong, but they're pretty good at it. Generally. Search engines also have this option that allows you to reverse search an image, so you can try and find out what the source is. This is really, really handy because sometimes when you look for the first time someone posted a picture, and this is often an archive or a museum that tells you so you can figure out what the truth is. Or it is a person that says, look what I've just made with AI, which is also quite handy. So that really helps. And with other stories. You just have to, you know, dive into the archives and look if you can find where it came from. And sometimes it's very difficult, sometimes a bit tricky. But if you have you hear a story and you hear you see an image and little voice in the back of your head says, something's iffy here, listen to it. You know, do your own research because you shouldn't trust anyone blindly on the internet, not even me. You just try and figure out where it came from and the sources are there. And if someone is telling you a story and they've written it on a website and it looks very convincing, but if there are no sources, no references, no links, you should automatically dismiss it. Because if they can prove what they say, they would have proven it. They would have shared the information. Um, you know, always ask, how do you know where does your what is your source? Where does it come from? Keep asking critical questions. That is, I think, the best lesson you can give any kid in school, even though it will make the kid very annoying to teachers and parents. But ask critical questions. Don't just automatically assume that something is true because you want it to be true because someone who tells you is convincing. Um. Try and do some research, be it be a detective. See if you can find where it came from.

Gary: The book is Fake History 101 Things That Never Happened. Thank you for joining us.

Jo: You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.