Dan Snow's History Hit - Greg Jenner: Ask a Historian

Episode Date: November 21, 2021

When and why did we start keeping hamsters as pets? When was sign language first used in the UK? If you were planning a bank heist, which historical figures would you call on? These are just some of the burning historical questions that public historian and podcaster, Greg Jenner, is tackling in his new book, Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know.In this episode, Greg joins Dan to explain the motivations behind the book, how he sees the role of public history in society as well as reveal some of the more surprising questions he was asked.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I've got a proper legend on the podcast today, Greg Jenner. He is known to everybody. He's a great TV guy. He makes historical advice to horrible histories. He is a podcast legend. He's got it all going on and he's a wonderful public historian, very active on social media. He likes to hunt down the fake history. He likes to provide context, likes to get involved. In fact, I don't think he ever sleeps. He tweets so much, so regularly around the clock. It's a bit suspicious. He may have developed an AI tweet, but I should have asked him in this long interview that I conducted. You always think of things you should have said. The French call that l'émeu d'escalier, words on the stairs, stair words. When you're leaving an

interview, you're walking down the stairs thinking, oh, I should have said something much more impressive. Or you're leaving the interview and you think, I could have said this witty thing in reply, instead of just goggling like a fool. Anyway, Greg Jenner. So he came on the podcast to talk about his new book, which is Ask a Historian's Brilliant Idea. He sourced questions from normal people, civilians, folks, people out there on the internet. And they asked him things and he went and researched it because he's a great historian. So good fun. I'm reading it to my daughter at the moment. She's loving it. His podcasts are great for all the family. He's just a great guy. Lovely guy. So great talking to him about history. We talked about some myths. We talked about some

misconceptions. We talked about some of the things he's found out for this book. So enjoy. If you wish to go and buy some Christmas stuff, you can do so at historyhit.com slash shop. We've got the famous historical hoodies back. We have got the knitted horned helmet headwear. No Vikings wore horned helmets, we know that, but this is an amusing knitted helmet with horns on it. I'm not saying it's anything to do with the Vikings. That's you saying that, but I'm just saying that's what we sell. It's fine. It's an homage to Wagner's set designer in the 19th century who invented horned helmets. Whatever, just go and buy one. And also, if you're worried about supply chain, if you're worried about HGV drivers, your carbon footprint, you've got a

digital gift. It's a beautiful thing. A subscription to History Hit TV. You go to the shop or you go to historyhit.tv, you can get yourself a little gift, you can give a gift to somebody else. The hard-to-buy-for auntie who loves history. Projecting, because I have a very... She's not hard-to-buy-for, but I've got an auntie who loves history. Trust me. And she would love a History Hit subscription. That's what she's going to get. Historyhit.tv.

Go and check it out. It's the world's best history channel. We've got a documentary on everything from the Ice Age right the way to the Digital Age. It's all happening at historyhit.tv. We've got some big adventures we're planning next year. We're going to be digging some big holes in the ground and we're going to be going to some of the most inaccessible places on planet Earth. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying, and you heard it here first. But in the meantime, folks, here's Greg Jenner being brilliant.

Greg, thanks for coming on the podcast, bud. Pleasure. Maybe as the child of journalists, I came to history in a very current affairs. I'm not particularly interested in Henry VIII's codpiece. I'm really interested in why there is a war in Israel-Palestine, Syria, why certain borders are drawn with weird squiggles in the Whitehall in the 1920s. But it's amazing how many questions are just pure history. They just want to know.

Some of them are about those things, but a lot of them are just like, what was going on with Louis XIV's shoes? Like I mean it's amazing there is that just fascination for the encapsulated history. It's everything, which means that it's the history of hats and shoes and underpants as much as it is the history of treaties and wars and imperialism. And so what I'm trying to do in the book a bit is scoop up a bit of everything. History of meringues is one of the questions that someone asked me, which I just loved as a question because it's so specifically like, tell me about meringues. And it's like, yeah, all right. Actually, it's a great history because it's your history of sugar. It's the history of changing culinary diets and recipe books. It's also about high status foods gradually

becoming democratized down towards middle classes, and then gradually anyone can buy meringue. So you can kind of pick anything and track it. And I tend to find that the objects, the ordinary objects, we don't give them a second thought. They're often really interesting when you actually explore them. I mean, you have to convince people. You have to sometimes go, bear with me on this. But I do really enjoy the kind of ordinary and the banal, because I tend to find that those are really good ways to understand the bigger picture. Totally. And you're so brilliant at that. You've made it your own. And what's so interesting is the way you talk about yourself as a public historian. And this is interesting because you can't possibly be an expert in all these different things.

In a way, you've cleverly shown you're working as a, you're like a, I'm someone who is familiar with sources, familiar with ways to research. You ask me things you want me to learn and I'll go and learn them. You know, you're not like, hey, I'm the oracle. No, I mean, in the book I have to ask historians sometimes. The book is called Ask a Historian and sometimes I have to go, I don't know, I'll ask a historian. Yeah, because no one can know everything. Of course not, it's impossible. But, you know, we're trained historians. We know what a reliable source sort of looks like. We know roughly where to look. We can ask people. In our line of work, we get to meet people all the time. So I'm very lucky to have a network of scholars who are experts in things. And I can sometimes

go to them and go, is that legit? And they'll go, no. And you go, all right, scratch that. But yeah, I tend to see my job as a public historian as to be a kind of cheerleader for history and also to be a kind of, increasingly, what I'm trying to do actually is to step out of the conversation and bring other people in with me. So when I'm doing podcasts, I'm bringing historians in with me rather than doing the talking on their behalf, because I can't know all this stuff. You just can't know all this stuff. And I think that's good. I think it's nice to be able to say, I don't know all this stuff. You just can't know all this stuff. And I think that's good. I think it's nice to be able to say, I don't know everything, but here's what I found. Here's

the reading I did. Here's the reading you can do as a reader if you want to follow up on it. There's something I think quite important in admitting our gaps in our knowledge. You know, one of the questions I was asked in the book was about the history of sign language and the history of deafness and the history of assistive technology, hearing aids and so forth. And I knew very little. And it really struck me as like a hole in my knowledge. It's like, well, hang on a minute. This is a huge history, right? There have always been deaf people and there have always been people who have different communication needs and different ways of interacting with others. And I've just never really studied them, I've never looked at them, probably don't even know many people from history who were deaf. I mean, Beethoven, you know, you kind of run out of

names after three or four. It felt like a blind spot, pardon the pun, but it felt like an area in my knowledge where I was suddenly aware of my own absence of knowledge. So I was really lucky to be able to go to Dr. Jaipurit Verdi, who's a specialist scholar in the USA, and she helped me. And I did lots of reading and I was able to sort of go, all right, okay, so we can get this, we've got a bit of this, we've got some sources here in ancient Greece, but really it's in the 16th century where we're getting some really fascinating actual records, marriage records, where wedding ceremonies are happening in sign language. And this is okay.

And we have in the Old Bailey in the 1700s, we have the courts accepting sign language and interpreters as witnesses in legal trials. And so sign language, BSL, only became an official language very, very, very recently in our lifetime. And yet in the 18th century, it was accepted in the court of law. So the history of sign language sort of went backwards a bit because there were kind of regressive moves in the 19th century to sort of squash it and to teach deaf people or people who are hearing impaired to speak so they could fit in with society you know they were shamed in some way so that to me felt like a

history I didn't know enough about I was really grateful to the person asking the question because I got to educate myself and then I got to put that stuff in a book and hopefully other people can read it too so I welcome having my ignorance pointed out because it's a good opportunity yeah same we're peacing the pod buddy on that note my dad who's deaf says that the best tool too. So I welcome having my ignorance pointed out because it's a good opportunity. Yeah, same. We're peacing the pod, buddy. On that note, my dad who's deaf says that the best tool ever invented was like a big hearing trumpet thing. And to this day, he has all the mod cons. They put little things in his ears and he goes, much the best thing is still holding up one of those. Extraordinary. And actually, the dark truth, of course, is that we all know academics have to teach

courses that they don't know anything about as well. And they go away, because they have stories. They're really good at it. They do the reading. They do everything. And then they go and teach it to students. You're not doing something deeply transgressive here. I hope not.

No, I mean, obviously, I mean, Mary Beard knows everything about everything. But like, yeah, sure. Most scholars, most people, when you're going to university or whatever, the people who are teaching you are learning themselves as they go. They're developing, they're adding new knowledge, they're reading new books and new journal articles, they're going to conferences. The whole point of being a historian is to keep adding to your knowledge

and also revising what you think you know. And if you come up with something and you look at it and go, I used to believe that, but I'm not sure it's true anymore, or someone's come along and challenged it, then you have to revise your opinion on things. You're writing history there. You're writing history. But that's the whole point, isn't it? I mean, the whole point of the historian is to rewrite history. That's what we do. come along and challenged it, then you have to revise your opinion on things. Rewriting history, dangerous business. But that's the whole point, isn't it? I mean, the whole point of the historian is to rewrite

history. That's what we do. That's the whole point of history, is that if there was just a sort of set concrete edifice of facts, we could just sort of go, you know, ding, ding, ding, bang, a couple more in and walk off. That's not what you do, is it? I mean, history is the rewriting of what we think the past was. It's not the changing of the past. It's the changing of our understanding of the past based on the questions we want to ask now, which reflect who we are and who we want to be as a society. So it's an ongoing discourse. It's everything. It's more than just, it's not just sort of saying Lord Nelson was a bad man. He used to be a good man, but he's a bad man now. You know, we're not doing that. It's about saying,

but there's this. Have we looked at this before? No. Okay, well, let's now consider this. So rewriting the past, rewriting history, it's why we're here. That definitely is fascinating. What are some of the other ones that you really enjoyed writing in this? I mean, there are a couple of just really fun open-ended ones. So someone asked me which people from history would best be recruited to pull off a casino heist. And that's the kind of show you can spend hours, days, months just sort of going, oh, well, not that person, not this person. So that was fun because you can just assemble your own motley crew from history. Presumably you do need Alan Turing in there just to do some quick... I went with Su Song. So he was the sort of Tang Dynasty Chinese scholar who was your sort of inventive tech genius. I mean, yes, he's slightly

pre-Wi-Fi, but I reckon he'd figure it out in an afternoon. Well, the great Tang, you know, industrial revolution. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, he was working on clocks and engines and also, you know, water engines, and he was a mapmaker and a scholar and a poet. He was just sort of this brilliant, he was sort of a Da Vinci type, a Leonardo type, but earlier and in China, and I thought, well, he'd be pretty good at cracking a security system. And then, you know, we've got ancient Egyptian tomb robbers. So Amun Penefer was an actual Egyptian tomb robber. So he's your safe cracker. Diocles, the charioteer, you know, the most highly paid sports person in history. He would be your getaway driver. I mean, it's quite easy once you start doing it. I briefly considered Stalin because he'd been a bank robber in his youth,

but he'd obviously shoot us all at the end of the film. And I just didn't want to, you know. I take Harold Hardrada to be the muscle. Yeah, you might want a sort of big, beefy fella. But I also went with Josephine Baker because she'd been a spy for the French resistance in World War II. And so she's glamorous and talented and funny and smart brave as hell but also she used her celebrity to get past the guards so she's your sort of you know she can get you through it's that sort of whole Julia Roberts meta joke in oceans 12 or whatever it is a much better game than the very tiresome game

that I get asked on a bi-weekly basis about who your historical dinner party would be oh yeah I mean that's a standard question isn't it who would you have to a historical dinner party well I? Oh yeah I mean that's a standard question isn't it? Who would you have to a historical dinner party? Well I would have... I'm twitching now. So what's else in that you like? I enjoyed writing about the history of hay fever because that's one of the ones where you just sort of go well surely it's modern though and to a certain extent yes but the earliest reference we have is from medieval Persia. It's Al-Razi you know the Persian scholar writing a thousand years ago. He's describing the symptoms and he's theorizing it's perhaps to do with the blooming of the rose bushes.

So you kind of go, oh, that sounds about right. But in the 19th century, oddly, hay fever becomes a source of racial pride. So it was misunderstood. So it was very quickly identified in the 1800s as being caused by pollen. But the problem is the guy who isolates this, he does a lot of interesting sort of experiments and sort of goes, I think it's pollen. And everyone goes, oh, well done. And then he says, and I think it only affects very rich white men who are intelligent. And everyone goes, yeah, that sounds legit. So the theory basically put forward was that hay fever was a neurological disease that affected people of superior breeding and that it was a proof of supremacy of the white race,

particularly the martial male, so women didn't get it so much. And so it's understood as being something that a sort of upper middle class white British man might get, but not his servants. Only real men can't go out on a summer's day weeping and sneezing. The guy who isolated this, he noted that sort of farm workers weren't getting it. And he was so close to sort of going, well, maybe it's because they're exposed to pollen and they've developed immune strategies. But he sort of went, no, no, it's because they're low class. And this chap over here, fancy, therefore. So you end up actually with this curious sort of racial hierarchy whereby hay fever is a proof of your higher status. It's like that bonkers milk thing you see

people doing on the internet today. There's like a fascist milk meme. There's a fascist meme for everything, isn't there? Yeah, but Anglo-Saxons can drink milk or something. Well, yeah, because that's to do with the genetic distribution of the lactase persistence, which develops out of the Neolithic, where in the Neolithic there is a sort of evolutionary random mutation whereby people can suddenly process animal milk. Some people can and some people can't. And obviously that gene gets passed on and it gets spread through Europe.

And then gradually it spreads through the world in certain places. So in parts of Africa, some people have it. In parts of Africa, they don't. In China, it's often not that common. So there are more people in the world who are lactose intolerant than there are people in the world who can drink milk. So I drink milk quite happily, but I'm in the minority in terms of the global population.

So yes, there are ways of sort of understanding that in a very racist kind of way, but it's just pure random mutation. It's just a random quirk that kicked in, you know, 6,000 years ago in the Neolithic. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm talking to Greg Jenner. More coming up. There are stories to tell, myths to explore, legends that shaped the medieval world to captivate the imagination. I'm Matt Lewis, and with my co-host, Dr Kat Jarman, I've gone medieval. We're waiting here for you to join us.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and let everyone know that you've gone medieval. We're waiting here for you to join us. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and let everyone know that you've gone medieval with History Hit. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.

Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Okay, Hugo, there's one that I love, which is a bit of a military issue one, which is, what is the least consequential but most famous battle that's entered the public consciousness? Ian, you naughty man. Go on, Ian has asked that. As I answer in the book, I cannot even give an answer without people throwing bricks at my head because this is the question that so many people get very, very passionate about. Military history, overrated battles, there's entire corners of the internet dedicated to

it. You know way more than me about military history. It's a thing that is more of your passion. I've always enjoyed it at a distance, but I'm more of a social historian. I like the kind of, you know, the smaller stuff, but I'm half French. And so growing up, my mum and I would always sort of tease each other a bit about, you know, Nelson, Napoleon, Waterloo, and Agincourt, as my mum would call it, Agincourt to the Brits. And I would argue, and I have indeed argued very recklessly, and

I'm sure I'll be canceled now, but I would argue that Agincourt is wildly overrated, but extremely famous. It's a huge military victory. I'm not in any way saying it's not a big win. It's a huge win. Why do you hate the veterans so much? No, it's a big battle, and it's a crushing defeat. Crushing defeat, thousands killed, the cream of the royal family mullered. The truth is that the consequences of that in terms of the politics of France, in terms of the politics of what Henry V is trying to achieve, it swings the pendulum so far in one direction that it swings back more progressively the other way.

He goes from being embroiled in this slugfest of a war. The Hundred Years' War has been going for, what, 70 years or something by the time he gets there. And he is trying his best to grab an advantage. He's a talented young soldier. Obviously, we know this. He's very, very impressive on the battlefield. But he gets all this funding from Westminster. And he splurges it all on ships and arrows and wagons and men. And he takes them off to France and he wins this sort of back foot battle where he's basically trying to run away and the French intercept him, catch him, but they, you know, the bad weather, bad tactics, Welsh longboard, hooray, et cetera, et cetera. We know the story, but the truth is, is that once he wins that battle and once the cogs

change in French political machinations and you get, you know, obviously there's been a split between the two factions in France. And so you've got, you know, the Burgundians on the one side who sort of hate the Armagnacs, and they're sort of siding with the English a bit. And so he manages to divide these two French political parties, but he then loses his funding from London. He loses Westminster, all that cash,

because he now becomes a French problem. Because as soon as he becomes the heir to the French throne, the English are like, we don't care. Also, there's a massive pause. After Agincourt, he goes home. And then he invades the whole... The invasion of Normandy and the conquest of Normandy is like a whole separate campaign. Obviously, the French are weakened. But I have to say, I think I might agree with you. I think if you really wanted to go absolutely bonkers, in the British context, there's lots of classical battles which overwrites. But I think I might agree with you. I think if you really wanted to go absolutely bonkers, in the British context, there's lots of classical battles which overrides, but I think if you start, if you touch the third rail of Trafalgar and Waterloo, which I think you could do,

you could put quite a persuasive argument, then you would just, it would cause a grid failure. See, I would argue Waterloo is decisive and is important. I think Trafalgar similarly is one of those ones where you just can't necessarily play out. I mean, okay, one question I will throw at you, Dan. In the book, I argue vociferously against what-if history. And I argue that what-if history is enormously flawed and massively problematic and very enjoyable for a pub chat, but is hugely, hugely railroaded down these lateral logical endpoints that we derive from what actually happened and which doesn't have any of the messy chaos that we can't predict.

No, it's like what they all do is go, moment of messy chaos, like Union soldier finds Lee's lost order wrapped in a cigar before a major battle, right? And then from that point, brilliant historians then go, this will happen, that will happen, blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, but you're ignoring the whole proposition, which is the messiness of the original. Exactly. It's so bizarre, isn't it? Exactly. And so I argue in the book that the problem with what-if history or virtual history, as it's called, I know it's a fascinating sort of hypothetical way of teasing out variables. I mean, there's plenty to enjoy. I'm not anti the idea of sort of doing it gently. But what happens is the moment you deviate away from the

actual known, we just can't help become storytellers who are stuck in these sort of scriptwritery patterns of saying, well, this, ergo that, therefore this, therefore that. But it's a very determinative, it's very kind of domino falls, domino falls, domino falls. And you just haven't got the chaos or the random or the chaos. So the example i give in the book is a very silly one i'm being a bit silly in it but i i argue that you know had a different soldier been you know survived the first world war you might have a different pop star who ends up as the king instead of elvis you know and you might have had elvis die because actually the british malaya rubber industry uh goes through a slightly different tweak because the first world war this and that and that means that Elvis crashes his truck and he never becomes a pop star which

means you never get you know and you can just go a billion ways in every direction on every single question because history is chaos you know and every single thing leads to everything else. Hitler should have died in the First World War. Multiple wounds for some reason survived. The cockroach. It's madness. But, you know, now that military restaurant, you could even, I mean, it's so naughty I can't even say it, but you could even talk about the sun there, couldn't you, as well? Yeah. You know, I think the reason I chose Agincourt, A, because it's funny for me. It's the naughtiest.

It's the naughtiest because I'm part French. It's a fun joke. But also, Agincourt has this long cultural heritage in the First World War, you know, because the 500th anniversary happens during the First World War. So you get this secondary wave of people kind of, you know, valorizing the heroic English-Welsh victory in 1415, as they are, of course, once again, in the field of Flanders, the field of France in 1915. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and then you get the Angel of Mons and all that. And so the reason I sort of chose it is because Shakespeare and then the First World War are going to give it this sort of big oomph. And then you get the Angel of Mons and all that. And so the reason I sort of chose it is because Shakespeare and then the First World War are going to give it this sort of big oomph. And then you get Larry Olivier and the movie, and that's World War II. That's the whole D-Day propaganda campaign.

The film came out slightly afterwards, but it was designed to come out before D-Day. The idea of using Agincourt as this martial, rousing kind of, you know, we've done it before, lads, we can do it again. And yet, actually, Britain lost the war, England lost the war, you know, it's not, you know, the Hundred Years' War ends with the French victorious, and Charles on the throne, Joan of Arc, all that. So these stories we tell about our own nations, about ourselves, they're fascinating, I enjoy them, they're great, but they can sometimes, we can slide into very easy ways of thinking. And it's sometimes it's quite useful to just go yeah but no. On a side

note it's amazing how many battles we celebrate which are crushing tactical victories but ended up being the winner ends up losing the war. Yeah. It's actually a completely extraordinary thing but let's not go down that. I've got some questions. I thought about this because you're an Ask a Historian. There are definitely questions you should never ask a historian. You're tweeting about the Dark Ages and why the Dark Ages are dark. Don't mention the Dark Ages. Don't mention the Dark Ages. They go bonkers. We get so angry, particularly the medievalists.

Yeah. Never say, did Vikings wear horned helmets? That is my, that one goes straight through me, that one. Yeah, that hurts. Quickly explain why. Well, firstly, massively impractical. I mean, if you got hit in the head with a horn, it would just go straight through your skull, you'd be killed instantly.

But yeah, they don't have them. It's a 19th century opera tradition. It's Wagner. It's completely Ring Cycle. Was Julius Caesar born from a caesarean? So that's an interesting one, isn't it? Because at least you can see there's a sort of, you know, linguistic link, but no. And Caesar salad also, not him. That's from Tijuana. That was a restaurant owner in Tijuana, I think. Did medieval people

believe the world was flat? No, and that's a really common one. And we're seeing that coming back. People keep saying to me, yeah, but you know, people, they thought the world was flat. It's like, no, they didn't. I mean, the Greeks knew it was a sphere. I mean, even just a navigator, anyone gets on a ship, they can see the horizon dip down if you get onto the, you know. It was just easy to prove with your eyes. You didn't even need mathematics or astrolabes or anything. But no, people knew the world wasn't flat, although Columbus did think the world was

slightly pear-shaped. But, you know, we don't love Columbus. He was a bit of a jerk. Speaking of Chris Columbus, did he discover America, Greg? God, I'm going to get cancelled, aren't I? No. I mean, he's looking for India. He blunders into Cuba. He thinks it's Japan. I mean, he doesn't discover America. He discovers the Americas. He thinks it's India. He thinks it's the Indies. He never sets foot in North America. I mean, the Vikings get there long before him, of course, but you know, it's still important I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about him. But yeah, well the Victorians prudish. No, no, they were filthy the Victorians

I mean goodness me. I don't know if you've ever seen Victorian pornography, but it's full-on They know they love jokes. They love slapstick. They love puns. They were quite naughty. They were very inventive And if you look at early Victorian cinema, it's very very clever and shrewd and funny and and you know This is 1895 96. They've literally invented the camera, you know The moving footage camera like that year and they're already doing really inventive things with it including kissing You know, they're they're quite risque and yeah Victorian porn is you know, it's not just sort of people's ankles So no, did the Napoleon have small man syndrome? He was average height. I mean, come on. I mean, we know this. I don't know how tall you are,

but you tower over me. So I guess in comparison, I should have small man syndrome. But I don't even know if there is such a thing. You know, I think when we look at Napoleon, we see someone who is sort of driven by this impulse to conquer and be glorious. But a lot of that we can track to his childhood. And the fact he grows up reading obsessively about Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. And even when he's in Egypt, he's sort of fanboying about all the places that his heroes have trod.

So as a boy, when he was very small, in fairness, he was already an egomaniac. He's already on that path. It's relatable, unfortunately, for me. Did Newton discover gravity when an apple fell on his head? So this is where we get into sort of, nearly, but not entirely. I mean, obviously, the story is told to us from Newton's friend, whose name's escaping me for a second, but it's an antiquarian who tells the story of sitting in a garden with Newton and saying that was the tree where the apple fell when I first thought about it. So, you know, we're in a sort of ballpark sort of fair,

but it's not quite true kind of territory. Okay, other questions. This is, excuse me, how bizarre these are, but this is just a thing that's happening, Graham. What's the last question about history that left you completely stumped? So I do mention it in the introduction to the book. Someone asked me,

has anyone ever painted a tunnel on the side of a mountain and convinced someone to drive into it? Which I loved. And the only thing I could imagine was that Wiley Coyote write that question, because it's a brilliant thing. And I was like, oh my God, where do I start? And I started looking into the history of early cinema and Cecil B. DeMille in the hope that someone, a set designer, had accidentally drawn a road tunnel on. I just couldn't find anything. So I was stumped by that. Fully stumped. Yeah.

Give us another question that got left out of your book, Ask a Historian. I was once asked by a child, was Jesus sad that all the dinosaurs had died? And I had no idea how to understand it. Theologically, I just went, oh my word, that's so sophisticated. It was a small girl. She asked it in a big crowd of people. Everyone laughed. And then everyone silent and went, oh, that's a really good question, actually. Good

point. Let's all just move on. So yeah, don't know how to answer that one. When you were young, what big questions of history did you want to know the answer that you couldn't find? So when I was a kid, I wanted to know how did knights go to the toilet in their armour? I've answered that in the book. When I was an archaeology student, I wanted to know how can you tell if a hand axe is a hand axe or a bit of rock? I've answered that in the book as well because actually that one I spoke to Dr Becky Ragsikes, who's a Neanderthal expert, and she sort of walked me through how we do actually identify it.

So that was nice. I finally got to answer that question. If you could spend five minutes with one object lost from history on a table in front of you, what would it be? Object? Ooh. That is very difficult, isn't it? Oh, that's very frustrating because I've been tantalized by so many things that are lost now. I would really like to see Plato's alarm clock.

So 2,400 years ago, Plato apparently invented a mechanical water-based alarm clock apparently to wake up his lazy students as far as we can tell but we don't know what it looked like and I'm just yeah I just I'm intrigued I just want to know how much effort did he go to surely just clang a kettle he just bang it next to their heads get up but yeah I'd like to see Plato's alarm clock please. What's the weirdest place you've been recognized? I don't get recognized very often, thankfully, which is very nice, because I just don't know what to do.

I get very weird. But occasionally, I have been recognized in slightly odd sort of historical locations where you're hoping people don't recognize you. That's the best place. You just go and hang out at National Trust properties. This is Greg Jenner, by the way. The Globe Theatre probably would be the one. Yeah.

OK. So if you had a time machine, would would use it to travel to the past or the future? Oh Well, the future is gonna be a kind of apocalyptic hellhole, right? It's gonna be like super hot and you know sandstorms and a nightmare. So the past sounds safer Although you know plague less fun. I'm gonna go back I think 1968 some like that. I want to go back. I want to see Jimi Hendrix play. It feels like a sort of fun time to be young, going out to London, go see some bands. The fashion is pretty good. Yeah. Who is one person alive today that we talked about in 500 years' time?

Interesting. And that's a really difficult question to answer because I think, well, I think one of the problems of being historians We just don't know how future generations will remember us and in the book I've tried to answer that someone asked me what we've known as what will our generation be called? You know, are we the Elizabethans? Are we there? You know the internet people the internet age are we gonna be called the you know, the screw-ups? And so it's really hard to know who will be famous in medieval times, right? Chaucer, Boccaccio, and so on, they are clinging to the idea of glory and fame.

And they're hoping that they will be known 500 years from now. That's what they were aiming for. So I guess if you were to apply that kind of model, I guess Elon Musk would love to be known 500 years time. But who will be known? Tough, isn't it? I would have said Neil Armstrong while he was alive. Because Neil Armstrong is one of those fascinating, like, he was so famous,

and then he was completely not famous for a bit. Buzz Aldrin ended up working in a car dealership, and it was extraordinary. He walked the moon, and he ended up selling used cars. And there's a kind of bizarre drop-off, the intensity of being ludicrously famous and then the plummeting off. So fame is a really odd one.

My last book was about the history of celebrity. And I'm fascinated by those peaks and troughs where people get rediscovered. So 500 years from now, Trump is perhaps the most famous person on the planet right now. You'd hope. We hope, yeah. Unless he starts a nuclear war or something. But that's the problem, isn't it? I mean, and who's going to get remembered in 500 years? Are we still here in 500 years? I mean, you hope so. Presumably, there could be someone alive today that no one's heard of who will be the first

person to live till 200 or 1,000 years old, in which case, they'll be the person. Maybe. So I think it feels to me like a science and engineering. Yeah, probably. I can imagine that ultimately, there's, I don't know, Greta Thunberg may save the planet. Jeff Bezos, if I'm like- Well, yeah, he might just found his own colony. Yeah.

And I think if he succeed, yeah, who knows? It's a difficult one. Too soon to tell. If he renames the moon Bezos Moon, and we go live on it, then maybe... If he just ends up as a dictator for life in the US, then I think it'll be him. Who is the person for whom you'd like to sit down with a pint? I'm a teetotaler, so I would have a lemonade. But I would absolutely love to spend an evening with Nell Gwynn.

I think she's hugely underrated. People think of her as salty, pretty witty Nell Gwynn. I think she's hugely underrated. People sort of think of her as sort of salty, you know, pretty witty Nell, she was called. But she was extremely funny, very, very charismatic, completely understood comic timing, which is a rare skill that people have or they don't have. And she was just sort of fascinating and very kind of courageous and just natural charm. And I suspect spending an evening with her just would be like being hit by kind of, you know, a blast of just charm, charisma, wit. You know, obviously she was pretty beautiful as well, but I think there's something

about her that everyone just loved her. And I'd love to spend some time being in that aura, I think. If you could be a Flandreau of a particular moment in history, what would it be? Jimi Hendrix? Well, no, I mean, I'd love to see him play, but fly on the wall, oof, that's hard, isn't it? What would you go with? I'm going to throw it back at you. Come on. I would have seen, I'd like to have seen a big naval battle. Okay. The idea of over 40 ships the size of HMS Victory all sailing around each other.

So sort of the golden age of sailing. Yeah, just like a bizarre, like a totally extraordinary spectacle. Yeah, and the storms you get afterwards as well. Whereas I'd probably go for something a lot more tedious. I'd probably go for something small and intimate. I'd love to see the moment that Leonardo da Vinci as a young apprentice painted a hand and Verrocchio went, holy crap. It's all right, kids go again. Or 5th century BC Athens, or I don't know.

It's an impossible question. It's painful to even ask it. There's a billion answers you could give. Sorry, man. What historical era would you find least appealing as a tourist? That is a good question i mean i think i would be fascinated by everything of course because we're historians but i suppose i'm not particularly drawn to the 20th century i tend to you know i do a lot of my work as pre 20th century because i tend to think 20th century is very well covered by other historians who are

much better than me at that stuff. So I don't really have any huge inkling or inclination to go back to any of the kind of big landmark moments of the 20th century other than seeing Jimi Hendrix play. That's a night out. That's not me. And, Daphne, as the final question, if you hadn't become a historian, what job would you be doing? Oh, I always thought I'd be fascinated by neuroscience. So I'm interested in what makes people tick. I think historians are. We are nosy. We are puzzled by human motivation and behavior,

all those emotions of guilt and rage and ego and all that. And I think I'd like to know the chemical processes and the pathways and patterns that give rise to those sorts of things. So yeah, I'd probably go into brain science or something. Greg, I'm very glad you became a historian, though. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Cheers. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks. You've reached the history of our country, all work out. And finish. Thanks, folks. You've reached the end of another episode. Hope you're still awake. Appreciate your loyalty. Sticking through to the end. If you fancied doing us a favour here at History Hit,

I would be incredibly grateful if you would go and wherever you get these pods, give it a rating, five stars or its equivalent. A review would be great. Please head over there and do that it really does make a huge difference it's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account so please head over there do that really really appreciate it