Something You Should Know - The Smart Way to Spend Money & History That Never Happened

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

How you walk doesn’t just reflect your mood — it can actually shape it. Research shows that adjusting your stride can boost happiness, and even a short walk outside could be the smartest thing you do today. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141015143259.htm When it comes to spending money, one-size-fits-all advice doesn’t work. Should you spend on experiences? Travel? Things? The truth is, the way money makes you happy depends on you. Joining me to explore this is Morgan Housel, partner at The Collaborative Fund, award-winning journalist, and author of The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life (https://amzn.to/4gxSGrd). He reveals how your spending choices can bring real joy — or quietly sabotage your happiness. History is full of stories we’ve all been told — and many of them are flat-out wrong. Did slaves build the pyramids? Was Pong the first video game? Were people in the Middle Ages dirty and unwashed? Not even close. My guest, Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse — better known as The Fake History Hunter — has been debunking false historical “facts” for more than 20 years. She’s the author of Fake History: 101 Things that Never Happened (https://amzn.to/46tN7FC), and she’s here to set the record straight. And finally, what’s the real cost of a little white lie? You might think small lies are harmless, but science shows even tiny untruths can damage your health and relationships. I’ll explain why honesty really is the best policy. https://research.nd.edu/news/32485-study-telling-fewer-lies-linked-to-better-health-relationships/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! DELL: Your new Dell PC with Intel Core Ultra helps you handle a lot when your holiday to-dos get to be…a lot. Upgrade today by visiting⁠⁠⁠ https://Dell.com/Deals⁠⁠⁠ QUINCE: Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! SHOPIFY: Shopify is the commerce platform for millions of businesses around the world! To start selling today, sign up for your $1 per month trial at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since you're a listener to something you should know, you are, by definition, the curious type. You like to discover new ways to improve your life. And if I've got that about right, there is another podcast I want you to check out called The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. It's a podcast that can help you think sharper, feel better, maybe even live longer. Dave Asprey is a best-selling author. He's the guy who created the biohacking movement. and his podcast explores how to optimize human performance and longevity. He talks with top experts about cognitive enhancers,

the right way to use nicotine, and how psychedelics are being used to rewire the brain. You'll also learn the science behind things like fasting, cold plunges, saunas, and how blue light from your screens might actually be draining your energy. Dave asked great questions, and every episode gives you something that, you can apply right away. So if you're ready to start taking control of your biology, search for the human upgrade with Dave Asprey, wherever you get your podcasts. Today, on something you should know, the way you walk, what it says about you and what it does to you. Then the art of spending money, and why so many people struggle with the money they have.

And I think some people, ironically, who have the biggest problem with money are very high earners. The part of their personality that has led them to be high earners is the part of their personality that says it's never enough. And that's why they tend to be perpetually dissatisfied with what they have. Also, the trouble with lying and how the truth will set you free. And history you learned that isn't true, like the first video game was Pong. People in the Middle Ages were dirty, and the workers who built the pyramids were slaves. Relatively recently, they found the cities where those workers lived. Everything we found suggests that these workers were treated really, really well,

and we have no evidence at all for them being slaves. All this today on Something You Should Know. Hi there, Fred Greenhalj here, director of audio dramas like DC high-volume Batman and Star Trek Khan. However, my one true love remains all things spooky, and I'm excited to say there's a new season of my horror podcast, Undertoe. This season is called Familiar Haunts, standalone horror tales that reveal how the past is never true. gone and humanity may be the most ruthless monster of them all. Familiar haunts is available now.

Find it by subscribing to Undertoe wherever you get your podcasts, such as the app where you're listening to me right now. Search for Undertoe. Something you should know. Fascinating Intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Think for a moment about how you walk.

you walk down the street. What does that look like? Because it's important. Hi, and welcome to this episode of something you should know. How you walk often indicates how you feel. If your shoulders are slumped and you're looking down, you're likely sad. And if you're bouncing along real happily, you're probably pretty happy. But now it appears that it works the other way as well. In a study, otherwise happy people were instructed in a way that to most people would appear sad. And then afterwards, those people reported that they actually felt sadder. People who were instructed to bounce along happily did not feel sadness afterwards. A happier walk produced a happier mood.

So it appears your feelings affect your walk, and your walk affects your feelings. Perhaps that's why the advice to go for a nice, brisk walk if you're feeling blue, may be excellent advice. And that is something you should know. There are few topics that spark more tension or more fascination than money. We think it's about numbers and budgets and spreadsheets, but really money is about meaning, how we view it, how we spend it, and what we refuse to spend it on. And here's the kicker. There isn't one right way to spend it. Two people can make completely different choices with their money and both feel quite satisfied, or both feel quite miserable. Which raises the real question, what is the smartest way for you to spend your money? Well, my guest Morgan Housel has thought deeply about this. He's a partner at the Collaborative Fund and an award-winning business journalist. He's author of a book called The Art of Spending Money. simple choices for a richer life.

Hi, Morgan. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Mike. Appreciate it. So on some level, you would think that, well, money is just a tool, right? You use money to trade for something you want, and, you know, that should sort of be the end of it, but that's really not the end of it. Money gets wrapped up in all different kind of ways in our life, some good, some not so good. So what's going on? Yeah, Mike, if you think of money as a tool, a tool,

to buy stuff, a tool to have a better life. But it's a very different kind of tool than something else. If you compare it to a tool like a screwdriver, a screwdriver has a very intended purpose. It's only used for that purpose. When we're done with it, we put it back in the drawer. It's a good tool, but it's a very simple tool. Money has this other element of not only is it a tool to buy stuff, is a tool that I can use to compare myself to you and to other people and to the rest of society. And that's when things go off the rails and get very, very messy. And so when it stops becoming a tool to live a better life, and it becomes a yardstick of status to measure yourself against others by. That is one of the very many kind of psychological holes that people

go down and fall into that makes money a much more messy and emotional topic than it should be. Well, I guess it's hard not to compare yourself to other people, but I mean, I can remember when I, the last car I bought, I didn't buy it to try to keep up with the neighbors kind of thing. I bought it because that's the car I wanted. Objectively thought this would be a good car for me. Or at least that's what I was telling myself. But I wasn't consciously trying to say, well, my neighbors have a better car or my friend has a better car, so I want to get as good a car. I just, that's not how I do it.

Yeah, I think what's true is that even if you do feel like you are living in your own head and you're not comparing yourself, you don't feel like you're actively envious. or jealous of others. What is true about your statement that I fully agree with and I relate to myself is that your definition of what is a good car. Even that alone is based off of things you've seen other people driving. And there's no such thing as an objective measure of wealth. Everything is just relative to what other people have. And what's true today is that an average middle class American family today lives a materially better life than even an upper income household would have 100 years ago. I mean, John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in history during his era. He never had antibiotics. He never had Advil. He never had sunscreen.

He didn't have electricity for most of his life for crying out loud. And so everything is just relative to other people. So even if you do feel like you are, you just have an internal benchmark of you're not comparing yourself to other people's external benchmarks. Everyone's definition of what is good or bad or necessary or luxury or whatnot is based off of a comparison to other people. It's almost an unavoidable part of money. Well, I guess in some sense, that kind of comparison that we make is human nature, but it's also the force that you try to do better, right? I mean, that keeping up with the Joneses does have a benefit. I think it's true that, A, I want to live in a world in which most people wake up in the morning and say, I need more.

This is not enough. I haven't achieved my goals. I need to go work harder and build better, more innovative products. I want to live in that world because that's what pushes the world forward. That's where innovation and technology comes from. That's why I think my kids will live a better life than I am right now. So that's good. At the whole, at the society level, it will always be like that. And I think that's good. At the individual level, I think you can take a step back and look at the game that's being played of social comparison and keeping up with the Joneses and moving the goalposts in your life and realize the futility of it if your goal is happiness. And happiness, I kind of caught myself right there, I think can often be the wrong word.

People chase happiness without realizing that happiness is almost always for everybody a five-minute emotion. Like, people are rarely happy for more than a couple minutes at a time. I think what people actually want out of their money and the best, the most reasonable goal for your money is contentment. If I sit here in daydream about having a mansion or a private jet or whatever it might be, what I'm actually doing is imagining myself sitting in that mansion, that hypothetical mansion, and saying, this is enough.

I don't want any more. And that's the feeling that feels good. That's like the feeling that you're trying to chase is sitting in that mansion or that car, whatever might be, and saying, I'm now saying this is good. This is enough. But what actually happens more often than not, of course, is that if you are sitting in that dream house, that dream car, your gaze starts going to other people. Oh, look at my neighbor's house.

Like, their yard's a little bit bigger. Oh, look at his car. has a couple more horsepower than mine. And so it's that ceaseless pushing of the goalpost and ratcheting of your expectations that A, leads to a world of advancement and technology that I like, but the individual level can kind of make you take a step back and say, look, if there's no satiation on my desires, I'm never going to be happy with my money. And Mike, I want more money.

I want to work and make more money and save more money and have nicer things. This is not a plea to live like a monk. It's just this idea that all of wealth is, the equation is what you have minus what you want. And almost all of our attention right now goes to the first part of just have more. And the second part of the equation, which is maintaining and measuring

and keeping control over your desires, is actually a more important part of the equation that's easy to overlook. And so what is your message? Are you making a recommendation or just an observation or what are you trying to get people to grasp here? I intentionally do not give advice because I don't know you. I don't know your goals.

I don't know your aspirations. I don't know your family dynamic. And so all of this, whether it's how you earn your money, how you save your money, how you save your money, how you invest, or how you spend your money, has to start with looking in the mirror and becoming introspective about what makes you happy and about your goals, your individual life. Most financial mistakes, I think that's not hyperbole, most financial. mistakes come from people chasing advice that is good for somebody else, but wrong for them

individually. It is very easy to tell yourself that if you wake up every morning and say, I'm not satisfied with my life, I'm not happy with my life. It's very easy to tell yourself, if only I had more money, then these problems would go away. And sometimes that can be true, but it is very easy to leap to that conclusion. When there is a list of things that you can spend money on in a way that you can spend money that's going to make you happier and lead you to a better life. The list of things that money cannot do for you, I think, is longer. And so it's not until you dig into the psychology of your own envy, your own jealousy, your own ability to be content that I think you can actually lead to a better system of spending money that's going to make you

happier and more content. But is there an objective list of what money can and cannot do based on research or everybody is individual? You know, for many decades, there would be one study out of academia that would say, once you earn X dollars, you tend to be happier. Another study would come out and say the exact opposite. And no one could really agree on exactly what it was. Some of this in my mind has been clarified with some research in the last decade, which basically shows that if you are already an anxious and depressed person,

earning more money and spending money is probably not going to make you happy. if you are starting out as a joyful, content, happy person with lots of friends, then earning more money will make you happier. Spending more money will make you happier. It's like it's just leveraging who you already were in either direction. And I think that's the bigger point of like, can buying a big house make you happy? I think the answer can be yes. If you are using that big house because it makes it easier to have friends and family over,

then it can make you happier. But you have to realize that it's the friends and the family that are making you happy. not necessarily the house. Will travel make you happier? Maybe yes, if it leads to endless time with your friends and your family and your and your kids and your spouse. But the realization is that it's those things that are making you happy, not necessarily the money. So it's too easy to draw a conclusion. Like does spending money make you happy yes or no? It's never that simple. It's always a layer beneath that and leveraging who you already were. And so if you want to be happier with money. There is a list of other more important things in your life, your health, your

friends, your family that have to come first before you can use it as a tool to become happier and more content. Well, it's interesting that everybody is so unique. And yet you often hear this very common advice for everyone about, you know, a certain percentage of your income should go for housing and a certain percentage. That should be your fund fund and a certain percent should go for this. And so how can that be if you're saying everybody's different? I think those rules of thumbs can be helpful for people at the margins, but never taken as a science.

And so some of those rules of thumb of X percent to housing, X percent to travel and fun and whatnot, I have had a unique, let's call it spending, saving pattern for my entire adult life. I've been a very big saver, and there are periods in my life where my wife and I would really not spend that much money. I would call us frugal. It was just that we just didn't really want that much. We spent quite a bit more now than we used to. But I used to have a lot of friends, this is not that long ago, five years ago maybe, who would really give me a hard time about it and give me a hard time about how cheap I was. And don't I want a nicer car or a bigger house?

And it was always interesting to me because the answer was, no, I don't think I do. But my decision that was making my wife and I happy may have seemed crazy to them, but it made perfect sense to us. And so the individuality of this, I think, is easy to overlook. And people understand that if we're talking about your taste in food or your taste in music. If you say you love Italian food and I don't, neither one of us is right or wrong. And people understand that. There's no debate about that. You know it's subjective. How people spend their money, I think people want to believe that there should be a science of spending money. And therefore, you take, when you watch other people doing it differently than you do, it's very easy to jump to the conclusion that they're doing it

wrong. The idea that there should be a formula is very appealing, but the reality that it is different for everyone is the truth. We're talking about spending money, probably talking about it in a way you haven't talked about it before. My guest is Morgan Housel. He's author of the book The Art of Spending Money, Simple Choices for a Richer Life. Hi, I'm Adam Gidwitz, host of Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmist. On every episode, we tell a grim fairy tale. Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many times. No, we tell the real grim fairy tales. They're funny.

They're weird. Sometimes they're a little bit scary. But don't worry, we rate every episode grim, grimmer, or grimist. So you, your child, your family can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you. Tune in to Grim, Grimmer, grimist, and our new season, available now. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa D.Montz, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong. Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows.

And Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. So, Morgan, when I think about my life, I've never been a big car guy. I like cars, and I have a car. I have a nice new car,

but for a long time, I had a car for years. I mean, I had, you know, there were 200,000 plus miles on it, and I felt people judging me for that like well why would you drive such an old car and yeah it did have it did have a cassette deck in it but a few years ago I got a new car but when I had the old car I was happy with it it wasn't falling apart I kept it up fine but I sensed people were making judgments about me but it just wasn't important to me right and I'm willing to bet that there's something in your life, I don't know what it is, that you spend more money than those people on because you value it more than they do. My wife and I recently had this realization. This is just this summer. This is a recent thing where we finally came to terms with the fact that of the last

probably five vacations we've been on, the best part of the vacation was coming home. And we were finally like, how many times do we have to realize that before we say, maybe travel isn't for us at this phase of our life. We have young kids. I travel a lot for work. So my idea of vacation is not going somewhere. But what does virtually everyone in society tell you? Travel, travel, travel, spend money on experiences and whatnot. And at one point in our life, that was true. I think in a future point in our life, that will be true. It's not right now. And so I think it can be very frustrating for people that what works for you might not work for me and what I value might not be what you value. And so we finally came to terms that spending money on travel is just not what

we want right now. And we had to kind of force ourselves into that realization because there are so many signals from peers and friends and the rest of the world from marketing that travel is the greatest thing that you can do with your money. And so realizing what is your thing is really important. There's a financial writer named Ramit Setti who talks about this a lot. And his unique version of this is he loves clothes. He loves expensive clothes. He's big into fashion. He dresses incredibly well. And like you, though, he's not a car guy. So you can you can picture him driving around in his old Honda Accord or whatever it might be in a very expensive suit. And that's what works for him. And if I'm honest, I'm probably closer to the latter. I like

Levi jeans and cheap t-shirts. And I do kind of like nice cars. And so everyone has to find their little unique thing and realize that there's no formula for it. I would imagine that your experiences, your financial experiences and watching the people close to you like your parents handle money has a lot to do with what you think about money and what you do with your money. I came across this headline while doing the research for this book from a column in the Washington Post from 1929. So 1929 is the peak of the roaring 20s

just before the crash in the Great Depression. And the title of the column I thought was so genius. The title was, the more you were snubbed while poor, the more you enjoy displaying being rich. and I think there are so many different versions of that that how you want to spend your money and display your money and signal to other people

is based off of some kind of emotional experience that you've had and there could be an endless range of that there's a great financial writer financial educator named Tiffany Ali Shea and she grew up she was at a different point in her life very poor and now she's very successful and she described what she calls post-traumatic broke syndrome where she says it's very hard for her to spend her money because she remembers the pain and the agony of being where she used to be as a poor person.

And she says today, even though she has millions of dollars, I can't ever go back, terrified of going back to that spot. However that manifests with you, there's a million different ways. The realization that spending money is not just a spreadsheet endeavor where it's like, oh, the bigger house is better, the faster car is better. There is always a psychological component based off of different experiences that we've had in our life. That's true for different generations. The generation that grew up with and endured the Great Depression in the 1930s, very well documented for the rest of their life, even as the economy recovered and became stronger than ever and they were earning more money than ever, they were very cautious with their money.

That was an emotional scar that they never recovered from. I think that can be true for the generation who graduated high school or graduated college during COVID with a broken jobs market, a crazy economy. People were getting stimulus checks. The stock market was going crazy. there are so much that is out of our hands and we want to think that we are all thinking independently and thinking rationally but the truth is I would think about money if I was born in a different generation and in a different country and to different parents and went to a different school whatever it might be there's all these things that we are just products if not even I would

say prisoners of our past and since my past is different than yours we're never going to fully agree on what's right and wrong with spending money well my sense has always been that you know there are two kinds of people. There are savers and there are spenders. And spenders wonder why people are saving and savers wonder why people are blowing all their money. And, you know, but it's just two different ways of looking at the world. One of the ways that I think about this is I've always been a big saver for my adult life. And if somebody were to ask me, what are you saving for? Are you saving for a new house? Are you saving for retirement? I would always say no. I'm saving for a world that is much more fragile than people want to believe. Because similar to what

you just said, if I were to say, what are the odds that you and I, both of us, will experience at least one of these during the rest of our adult life? Major job loss, divorce, major medical illness, wayward children, lawsuits. What are the odds that we will experience at least one of those? I would propose the odds are 100 percent that we will experience at least one of those, that everybody will. And that's if you're lucky. A lot of people will experience all of those. And so, but it's hard to kind of look yourself in the mirror and get out of bed in the morning if you're honest about that. So I think there is like a rational amount of ignorance that people have just to want to have optimism about their future. How I've always thought about this is

that I'm very optimistic that the world will get better. The economy will be bigger. The stock market will be higher 20 or 30 years from now. Very optimistic about that. Very confident in that. I am equally as confident that the path between now and then, both for me individually and for the economy as a whole, will be very treacherous with setback after setback and surprise after surprise. And you can believe both of those things at the same time, saving your money like a pessimist because you know the world is fragile, but investing your money and basing your career as an optimist that if you can survive and endure all those setbacks, the rewards for those who can stick around tend to be extraordinary. You know, we talk about this as if it is a universal problem, that everybody struggles with money somehow. Is that true, or do some people handle it really, really well? I actually think the people who have the least trouble with money are people who don't earn an extraordinary amount of money. They're people who might earn a modest, if not low amount of money, but they want nothing else.

It's the unique kind of person who gets 100% of their joy from being in the garden and going for a walk and birdwalk. watching and talking to their friends. And I think some people, ironically, who have the biggest problem with money are very high earners. People who earn and have a lot of money, but the part of their personality that has led them to be high earners is the part of their money that says, is a part of their personality that says it's never enough. More, more, more, more, more. That's why they're successful. And that's why they tend to be perpetually dissatisfied with what they have. And so I think there is an irony here that the tradeoff between ambition and contentment is is is very stark and and so that I think the people who are happiest

with their money tend to be people who have gotten so content with what they have that they just don't really think about it that much money to them is is like oxygen it's very important it's essential to everyday living but they they always have enough and so they don't really think about it that much and the people who I think ironically have the worst or the kind of the most painful relationship with money tend to be the extraordinary ordinarily rich people who there's a part of their personality where every single day they wake up and say, I don't care how much I have. I need more, more, more, more. I can admire those people for the companies and the products that they build will also recognize that, like, that's not necessarily

a path to a good, happy, content life. Well, I also wonder, too, if the fear is not just that I want more, more, more, but what happens if I lose what I have? I have got so much. What if it all disappeared tomorrow? There's a very interesting interview recently with Steve Ballmer, who was the former CEO of Microsoft, he owns the L.A. Clippers. And he's one of the richest men in the world. His net worth is $150 billion, a cent a billionaire. And there's a point in the interview where he doesn't say it directly. It's not verbatim. I'm kind of sort of paraphrasing his mood. But he kind of hints at the effect that even him worth $150 billion is worried about losing all of his money. And so I think there is no level of wealth. in which some people can say, I'm good forever. I'm set forever. And yet that very idea is what drives a lot of people to play the lottery, because, boy, if I win hundreds of millions of dollars, I will never have to worry about money again. Actually, coming into a huge amount of money very suddenly, whether it's a bonus or a lottery

or your investments, whatever it is, can actually be a disheartening experience. Because probably for your entire life, you told yourself, you daydreamed and you said, if only I had more money, my problems would go away. And then if you're fortunate enough to gain a lot of money, you probably realize that your relationship with your spouse is not any better. Maybe it's worse. Your kids don't love you anymore. Your friends start treating you differently in a way that you don't like. Your health probably isn't any better. And so all of these things that are major problems in your life that add a lot of grievance and annoyance to your day-to-day life did not change when you had more money. And therefore, the hope that you had earlier in your life where you said, if only I had more money,

and that gave you hope, something to aspire to, suddenly the hope goes away. And you realize, like I said earlier, you can use money to be a happier person. But the list of things that cannot do for you is much longer. Well, you've made me feel so much better that I never win the lottery even when I play. This is really thought-provoking and I think helps everybody think differently about their money. Morgan Housel has been my guest. He is a partner at the Collaborative Fund and author of the book, The Art of Spending Money.

Simple Choices for a Richer Life. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. And Morgan, I appreciate you stopping by and talking about this. Thank you. Thanks a lot. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime.

That's the powerful backing of Amex. Presale tickets for future events subject to availability. and vary by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca. slash Y Annex. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love

our hit podcast Disney Countdown. I'm Megan the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney theme games,

and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney Magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcast. We all learned history in school. And as you're about to hear, a lot of the history

we were taught that we believe to be true and factual is actually not. Why? Well, well, there are a lot of reasons for that, which we will explore. But just the idea that much of what we thought to be true we thought was part of the permanent record of history,

just ain't so. Joining me to offer up some great examples of fake history is Yo Hedwig Tiawisha, which is so not how you pronounce her name, but I've practiced and that's as close as I can get. And yo, just so people understand how hard it is to pronounce your name for an American English-speaking person, you pronounce your name.

Yo, Hedvig, Dewe's she. There, see? So it's not easy. Anyway, Yo is known as the fake history hunter

and has been debunking fake historical facts on social media for over 20 years. She's author of a book called Fake History,

101 things that never happened. Hi, Yo, welcome to something you should know. Thank you. Glad to be here. Why do we have

fake history? Because you would think that these things would be sorted out. Like, well, no, that's not true. That never happened. And some historian would fix it. But we have these stories that linger.

Why do we have these stories that linger? Although there's a few reasons for it. One is because most of history, we know nothing about. So we have to, you know, we make it up as we go along. With a lot of history, we have a bit of evidence, a few, you know, a few hints, a few clues here and there. But we're not quite sure. So, again, people are very tempted.

to make half of it up. And then, of course, it's a reason to mix things up on purpose, spread fake history on purpose, because you don't like the truth or you prefer the truth that can't be proven because it makes you or your people or your country appear better than they really were. So there's many reasons, but the main reason is usually a lack of evidence or a lack of proper research. So give me an example, a story of maybe your favorite story of fake history. Well, my favorite fake history subject is the idea that medieval Europeans were absolutely disgusting and filthy and never bathed. And it's about, you know, having bad teeth or

not knowing what soap was and toilets and all sorts of subjects. It keeps coming back because for some reason we really, really want to believe that the Middle Ages were dirty and I sometimes catch myself wanting to believe that because somehow it just fits our image of the Middle Ages. It is dirty, narrow, dark streets full of mud and disgusting things and people throwing stuff out of windows. That image is so baked into our way of thinking about that time. But from all the records that we have and from the archaeology and from everything, we know that medieval people were pretty much obsessed with hygiene, like almost everyone else who ever lived.

They washed their base, they had soap, they loved going to the bathhouses. They had very, very severe rules and laws about pollution, and if you dumped your waste in the street, you know, someone would come and give you a massive fine, like terrifyingly huge. we have all these records. But if you look at all of history and humans in general, we have, there's one very simple fact that is that all humans who ever lived have had a nose. And that means they had smells and they cared about smells. And if you're, you know, if you're a stinky boy, you don't get any kisses. That's, that's the core of history of humans and hygiene. Well, that's really interesting. Because when I think about it, I think we all think that we're

cleaner than everybody that's come before us. I mean, there's this sense that we're cleaner than people, say, from the early 1900s, the late 1800s, and they are probably thinking they were cleaner and more hygienic than people from the 1700s. Like, we all think we're cleaner than anybody before us. Yeah, it's a sort of chronological snobbery. We want to feel better than our ancestors, because if they were not as bad as we thought, perhaps it means that we haven't made as much progress or that we are not as cool as we thought we were. So if I were to ask people, my guess is,

you know, what was the very first video game? Most people, I would say, and I think most people would say Pong, but it's not, right? Yeah, and I must admit that I said that myself for a very long time, and I was very proud of it because it was my first video game.

And I used to say, you know, I'm as old as video games. But when you start to research, suddenly you realize that it's a lot older. It depends a little bit, of course, of your definition of video game. But we've been playing games with computers or self-thinking devices, let's call it that, since the 1930s. And, you know, it's very basic.

It's devices that just turn on light switches on and off by itself, and you can play tic-tac-toe or checkers and things like that. But even with screens and actual games, those go back to, the 1950s, actual computer games as we would define them today. But few people could play them. Oh, yes, absolutely. They were just, they were in universities, there were just a few nerds in backrooms with computers that filled half a laboratory and with, and it was just a few lights going on

and off, but they were technically games. They worked and they involved computer games, a computer, so it really was a computer game. And there were a few public exhibits where members of the public could try them. So it's not that nobody got to play them. But they were, yeah, it was not something that you had in your living room. But Pong became so popular because it was in bars and restaurants and you could go in while you're waiting for your table and put a quarter in and play. It was very accessible. Was it the first accessible game? The problem is that we, we, we, we, we, When we think about these subjects, we look at our own memories first, and we think, what was the first game that I remember?

And yeah, Hong and games like that in the early 70s were the first games that were available to, you know, to the public. And they were written about in newspapers and magazines and on the television. So in our memory, it's the first game. But it wasn't. I want to talk about Santa Claus, because I think everyone has heard. the story that Santa Claus looks the way he looks because of Coca-Cola? Yeah, he doesn't. Sorry.

No, Santa goes back many, many centuries, and he was originally a medieval saint, who was back then already wearing red clothes, by the way. And he was brought to the Americas by European immigrants, and they brought their traditional celebrating St. Nicholas, who is still a... a very popular saint here in the Netherlands where I am at the moment and he wore red clothes because that was his church uniform

and he was a very popular saint especially for children and giving treats and things like that and the Americans sort of adopted him mixed him up with a few with Father Christmas from Britain and in the 1860s there was an artist, a writer

Thomas Nast Nost, Nest, Nest, it was his name. Nest. And he wrote, yeah, Ness, exactly. And he wrote a story about St. Nicholas, and he described him as wearing red. And very soon afterwards, people started illustrating books and stories, but also advertisements with that image of St. Nicholas. So we've got pictures of Santa wearing the red suit, having a big belly, exactly like he looks today still.

but going back to the 1880s and even the early 1900s you see them everywhere looking exactly the same so the only thing really was what Coca-Cola did was use that same image that was already popular and already used for advertisement and just spread it everywhere because they could because you know it's Coca-Cola was it Thomas Nast who was more responsible or was it Coca-Cola who was more responsible in modern day to really spread that image. NAST told everyone that this is what Santa looked like, and then everyone went with it. But Coca-Cola made it a global thing. I mean, even in the Netherlands here in Europe, where we still have St. Nicholas,

we now also have Santa, which is very confusing, because Coca-Cola brought him back the way he looks to us. So now we've got two saints who we know are the same. but all the kids think are two different ones. It's very confusing. But I remember seeing, and I mean recently seeing pictures of St. Nicholas, and he's not fat. He's thin. No. Yeah, that's what the Americans did, which is interesting.

But yeah, they sort of combined Father Christmas, who in Britain was often portrayed as being rather rotund. So, yeah, I think Nast really just looked. at all the stories he had read and heard and perhaps a few images that he had seen and just put them all together into one fresh new Santa. So everyone has heard some version

of the story where Isaac Newton is sitting under a tree and an apple falls on his head and he figures out gravity. True? Nope. The annoying thing is that the truth is that he was sitting in his garden and he saw an apple

falling from a tree, and that sort of made him think in a different way about gravity and all that sort of thing. But the issue is that someone, a certain Mr. Uler, he was a Swiss, he was also a physicist, and he wrote in a letter to a friend, maybe just as a joke, or maybe he actually heard it that way. He wrote the story that the apple fell on his head, which is, of course, a lot more interesting and more fun. And his letter ended up in a very popular book. And then another very popular writer copied it for his also a very popular book

and before you know it everyone is saying he got his ideas because an apple fell on his head so it's just one person making up a story or spreading a story and everyone picking it up

and it makes no sense it just didn't happen and we literally have friends of Newton who wrote down what Newton told him told them what happened so there's no

confusing confusion that everyone knows what happened and it wasn't on his head but one guy writing it and you're cooked so everyone's heard that Thomas Crapper invented the toilet but you say no no you didn't

we have to there's two different things here is did he invent the toilet or the mechanical flushing toilet because there's two different things the flushing toilet goes back thousands of years that's just you know throwing water after when you're done

what your business. But what Crapper did, again, almost like Coca-Cola, is he got what already existed and made it popular, publicized it, made sure it was known and seen everywhere. He made it into a big business. And that's why people stick to that story, but also because of his lovely name that is so fitting. But mechanical toilets go back centuries.

Most people think it was Sir Harrington, who invented one in the 16th century but very recently while I was writing the book they discovered a mechanical toilet in a 13th century castle in York and we don't really know how it worked but there

is a toilet and there is some sort of shoot there must have been some sort of door or a handle and the water would flow through that shoot so we know that it goes back a lot further but was is there a connection

between his name and why we use the word crap the way we sometimes do? Not directly, but the word already existed. But his name was attached to it and it was printed on every toilet. So it was really, really fitting. So the famous person that said the smart thing, I mean, there's a lot of those, if you could grab a few and in a succinct way, tell them. Everybody, especially politicians, love to quote Churchill. For instance, he said, apparently they think he said, you have enemies good.

That means you stood for something in your life. That was not by Churchill. That was by a fantasy author decades later. Churchill also apparently said, if you're going through hell, keep going, he didn't say that. There's no evidence at all for him saying that. Einstein didn't say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. that actually comes from the 12 steps program. Oh, and there's one that I really like.

There's businessmen love to quote this. And it is, if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more. And you're a leader. And they say that's a quote by John Quincy Adams, but it's actually a quote by Dolly Parton. So I've always thought that the pyramids were built by slaves. I think we've learned that in school, that the slaves in Egypt built the pyramids. Yeah, it goes back very, very far. I mean, we've had Greek writers like Herodotus writing vague stories that sort of make you think they're involved slavery.

There's something in the Bible even that links to it in a way. And for a very, very long time, historians and archaeologists all agreed that that was what happened, just the idea of building something as massive as the pyramids in a time when everyone had slaves. Of course you're going to use slaves. That makes sense. But relatively recently, they found the places where the cities where those workers lived. and while they were digging up these cities they found really good housing they found good food bones from all sorts of animals they also found graffiti that on the walls

that talks about crews you know crews of workers and there was one that's really I love that one of them called themselves the drunkards of Meccawra and that is such a typical name for a group of workers to call themselves.

And we have letters that write about how they have to buy new clothes for the workers. And the people who worked on the pyramids were buried very close to the pharaohs, which is a very honorable spot. And their skeletons show good medical care. So everything we found suggests that these workers were treated really, really well. And we have no evidence at all for them being slaves. So, I mean, we can't say it. for 100%, that that's what happened.

But it all points towards that these are actually good work, good paid workers. So I have certainly heard that people in certain places at certain times in history way back didn't drink the water because water was dangerous. So they drank beer. They drank alcohol because alcohol kills germs. So that's the theory, right? Yeah, and it goes back again to the idea of the Middle Age as being dirty and somehow always just in Europe for some reason

but medieval people were obsessed about clean water they had aqueducts, they had pipes with running water all those things that people think only the Romans had but medieval people had them as well they knew that dirty water couldn't be trusted that you could get sick I mean, that's a lesson that you learn within minutes of drinking dirty water, that you don't forget that lesson. And also a thing that people forget is that if you want to make ill, you know, the sort of beer, early medieval beer, if you want to make that good ill, you need clean water.

Otherwise, the process doesn't work. So people were always drinking water and they were always obsessed about the water that they drank being clean. They drank beer because it's nice and, you know, nutritious and very. fun. And there's this other idea of that maybe back at that same time in history that spices were used to cover up the rotten meat, to make rotten meat taste good. Yeah. And again, that is, at first you hear that you think, okay, that might work.

But if you think a few more seconds about it, you realize that it's a really stupid idea. Because if you eat that meat, you're going to. regret it. No matter how many spices you cover it up with, it's not going to go well for you. You're going to spend the rest of the week on the toilet. That's just been invented. So what are you going to do? It's a really strange story. But even weirder is that spices back then were extremely expensive. You know, they had to be transported from all over the world. Spices were more expensive than meat. So it makes no sense at all. If you, you know, just buy. some new meat or don't eat meat, but you're not going to waste expensive spices on it.

What about the fashion brand Hugo Boss and the connection to the Nazis? That's history that I've heard before. Don't know if it's true. Well, lots of people think that Hugo Bosch designed the Nazi uniforms. And every time there's someone on social media, a famous person saying they're being sponsored by Hugo Boss, you can see in the comments, people, oh, why are you doing that? Hugo Boss, you know, it was made uniforms for the Nazis. He designed all the uniforms.

You see it even in documentaries, even some museums have claimed this. But he didn't. He was just another wartime profiteer. He had a little factory that made uniforms. And he made uniforms for the Nazis, lots of them, but so did other manufacturing companies. He was just giving, you know, the Nazi said, can you make some uniforms? Here are what they look like. And he said, yeah, sure, and he made them.

And he did make use of slave labor and he did some pretty nasty things. And he was a very, very enthusiastic Nazi. But he didn't design them. You know, he didn't have that design talent because a lot of people think that the Nazi uniforms look really, really cool and really nice. But he didn't design them, just some Nazi designers. well this was kind of fun and interesting to hear about history that never happened and i appreciate you sharing the stories i've been speaking with yo headwig tiawisha or it's pronounced something like that and she's author of the book fake history 101 things that never happened and if you'd like

to read it there's a link to it at amazon and the show notes yo thank you my pleasure if there's anything else you know where you find me Everybody lies once in a while. How bad can it be? Well, probably worse than you thought. Even little white lies can be bad for us, according to research at Notre Dame. The study there revealed that people who rarely lied

were actually much healthier than average or problem liars. People who bend the truth, withhold information, or tell the occasional whopper often suffer in several ways. symptoms range from physical problems such as headaches and sore throats to some serious emotional woes including feelings of sadness, stress, and even self-loathing. So it does seem, in fact, that the truth will set you free. And that is something you should know. Something You Should Know is produced by Jeff Havison, Jennifer Brennan,

and the executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Hurruthers. Thank you for listening today to Something You Should Know. You know, a lot of the guests who appear on something you should know have their own TED Talk. And did you know that TED has a podcast that drops a new TED Talk every day? If you love hearing fascinating stories, insights about human behavior, and mind-blowing concepts that weren't even on your radar before, I recommend you check out TED Talks daily.

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what podcast do I listen to? And I actually have an eclectic taste and I jump around, try different ones. But I will say that I have a couple of things. I'm very consistent about, and one of them is the Jordan Harbinger Show. It's kind of a little like something you should know, but Jordan goes in interestingly different directions. I do know that we share a lot of listeners, a lot of listeners who like this podcast like

the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan is really good at getting his guest to open up and share great insights. Recently, he discussed modern romance scam tactics. I mean, that's the lowest of the low, but you've got to know about them so you can fight back against them. And another episode he did was about how society has engineered a generation of lonely men. The show covers a lot of great topics, which, well, like I said, if you like this show, you're going to like his show. There's so much here. Check out the Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.