Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Revisionist History Works

Episode Date: April 29, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, perhaps you equate the term to conspiracy theories and Holocaust denials, but revisionism is a genuine discipline in the field of historical study. And thanks to revisionists, we now include a lot more reality - and previously unsung people - in the history of our nations. Learn about historians determined that history is far from set in stone in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everybody, and welcome to this weekend's edition of S-Y-S-K Selects. This is Chuck here. I picked out Revisionist History, basically, because it was just a pretty darn good episode

for my recollection, but of course I didn't go back and listen to it, because why would I do that to myself? But I'd love for you to. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant with his Nazi soda. What?

Your orange phanta? That's not exactly true. No, okay, well let's talk about this, because this is a pretty good podcast or episode to discuss this, if you ask me. Oh yeah, Revisionist History, I guess. Yeah, we're talking Revisionist History, and for the time being, we're talking about the origin

of orange phanta, because there is a rumor out there that orange phanta is a Nazi soda that it was created by the Nazis. Yeah, that isn't quite true. Like there are Nazi products like Hugo Boss, Volkswagen, Siemens, IBM. Mercedes, I think is one too. No, Mercedes wasn't.

Well, Volkswagen definitely, the Beetle, was created to look like the SS helmet from what I understand. Yeah, but phanta orange was created by a Coke employee in Nazi Germany. Coca-Cola Germany, which was supposedly, well, that was the name of the company, and it was supposedly cut off

from its parent company during the war. Yeah, so they didn't have the supplies they needed to make Coke, so this guy was kind of mixed together a potion and created phanta orange. Yeah. He went out back and dug up a bunch of roots and squeezed a red-headed kid.

But apparently, he wasn't a member of the Nazi party, and it wasn't created for Nazis, but it was enjoyed by Nazis. Okay, so that's where I think you can reasonably call it a Nazi drink. Like it was born out of the Nazi regime in Germany as a result of, directly, because Coca-Cola dried up because of the embargo on the Nazi regime.

Yeah, Hitler loved Coke, too, by the way. Did he? Yeah, but I wouldn't put it in the category of Nazi products like Volkswagen and Hugo Boss. And so Coca-Cola, the way it has it spelled out, and I mean, it depends. This story is about as good as Coca-Cola can come off looking while still admitting

that phanta is a Coke product that was created in Nazi Germany. But basically, their spiel is that Coke was cut off from... Their spiel? Their spiel was that Coke was cut off, Germany was cut off from the parent company because Coke wasn't doing business. And then as a result of the war ending,

Coke was like, wow, this did really well. Come back into the fold, and we'll just keep selling phanta. And way to go for keeping the company alive in the face of these Nazi war pigs. That's apparently the company line. I don't know. It could be revisionist history.

There are some American companies that definitely did business illegally in Nazi Germany. Most prominent among them is IBM, who literally created not only the machines, but also the programs to tally the people in concentration camps. That is not revisionist history. No, that's absolutely true.

I didn't even know when I brought this drink in here that it would be such a great setup for the show. I just enjoyed phanta orange. It turned out pretty well. So Chuck, there's this really great article that Conga wrote called How Revisionist History Works. I sent her an email today. Tell her how good it was. I mean, it is good, and she ignored me.

It's a top-notch article, and she starts out with a pretty great intro that I don't feel can be much improved on because it demonstrates this whole thing pretty well. Conga talks about George Washington, how as a little boy, he was maybe a little aggressive, and he got ahold of an axe,

and his father's axe, I believe, and he gave a cherry tree 40 wax. Then when he saw what he had done, he gave it another 41, and ended up chopping down the cherry tree. I may have mixed legends here. When his father came out and saw that he had just chopped down a cherry tree,

a perfectly good money-producing cherry tree. Because these things were like gold back then. He said, George, what did you do? Did you cut this down? And George Washington looked at the axe, looked at the tree, looked at his father, looked at his feet, thought about maybe a sandwich later.

So I'm going to be present when they shut up. Yeah, and he said, so I should probably be like every other president and not tell a lie, instead tell the truth, because that's what our presidents do. And he said, father, I cannot tell a lie. I did chop down this cherry tree.

What are you going to do about it? I never understood the point of that story. Was it that he was honest? Yes. Honest, forthright, upstanding, was willing to accept the heat for what he'd done. He was accountable.

There's a lot of stuff wrapped up in just that one little fable. Good with an axe? Exactly. Handy, his dad had cherry trees, so he came from a wealthy background. Wrong. But the problem is, is all of it's made up. Yeah.

And we've talked about this before. I don't remember what, I think it was maybe how much money is there in the world. We talked about how Washington's biographer made up a bunch of stuff. Remember in throwing a silver dollar all the way across the Potomac? The problem is there weren't silver dollars back

when Washington was younger. And I've seen the Potomac, that's impossible. Yeah, right, exactly. But the point is Mason Weems, Mason Lock Weems, who was Washington's early biographer, just made up a bunch of stuff. And what is kind of a black eye or egg

on the face of historians for a century or so that followed, they just kind of bought these things, hook, line, and sinker. And it actually, the cherry tree story was in our textbooks. This total fable, completely made up fable, was told to school children as the truth. I bet it still is in some classrooms.

Maybe in the Ozarks. Yeah. You know? But typically outside, it has been revised. Right. Because they found out, I think in 2008, that there were no cherry trees on Washington's family childhood home.

Right. So Ergo... He's cut them all down. Right, exactly. But there was not even evidence of cut down cherry trees. Right. So they had to go back and say, hey, we need to take this out of the textbooks.

They did, and nobody really was bothered by it. Yeah, it's pretty minor. It is. It's not like saying Christopher Columbus discovered America and proved the world wasn't round and didn't commit mass genocide and tortured and raped people, right? Yeah, that he and his men didn't sharpen their knives

on the skulls of live Indians they encountered. Yeah, it's amazing to me that we still have Columbus Day when we know the deal now. No one mentioned it. Well, I think people are starting to pull their heads from their butts. Yeah, I feel like this year marked the true beginning of the end for Columbus Day. I do not think it's going to be around much longer.

It shouldn't be. It's just too... History is... That man is too complicated. Yeah. And he did too many horrific things, even culturally relativistically. Yeah.

He did horrible things, and I feel like he's not going to be honored too far from now. Yeah, my friend Jerry in Portland is a school teacher and there was a thing going on Facebook about Columbus and I shared it, of course. And Jerry said, you know, the past three years I've been able to teach this version. So there's at least like 180 kids in Portland

that are now like scarred for life with the truth. And I was like, man, that's great. It's about how sad is that you even have to say this version instead of real history, you know? Right. Well, I mean, that's part of the problem is history, as they figured out in maybe the, I think, late 19th, early 20th century,

it's objective, or subjective. Yeah. It's not objective. Yes. And people thought that it was and that it just kind of... History happened. You talked about it and that was that.

Like, there were... It was just history. Yeah. It wasn't continuous, and like once something happened, it happened, and then once it was written down, that's how it was. Right.

It was... It's a subjective, ever-evolving thing and we figured it out, and we'll talk about when we figured it out. But first, I mean, what we're talking about overall, this idea that history is meant to be modified, as new facts come to light, as attitudes change,

it is called revisionism, and it's not necessarily a dirty word. Yeah, we'll get into that. It definitely has a negative connotation when you say, well, that's revisionist history. Exactly. And that's one lens to look at revisionist history through.

Well, let's talk about the three major parts of revisionist history. Well, this is the three ways you can look at revisionist history. Yeah. One is a theoretical perspective. Basically, let's say looking at it through the lens of African-Americans

instead of old white men or women or any other minority. That's one example. That's like when people say, get on the right side of history. Yeah. That's basically somebody being aware that there is a cultural, social lens of revisionism.

Sure. That what's going on is going to change. The attitude towards something is going to change, and you're going to look like a pretty horrible person when there's a picture of you 50 years from now holding a sign that's... It says out of Columbus. Right, right.

Exactly. One of the others is fact-checking. That's basically just the get-it-right lens. Yeah, like new facts come to life. Yeah. You change the history books. And finally, the negative perspective that sees revisionism as an effort

to falsify or skew things for, you know, usually political motives. Right. Let's talk about one of those. Conker gives another good example of like all three of these. Wrapped up in one guy, one Thomas Jefferson. Yeah.

So factually, Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States. Yep. He wrote the Constitution. Yeah, wrote the Declaration of Independence, like from word A to Z. Yes. Yes, you're right.

Might have had some help. I don't know. I think other people are revised this history. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, yes, he was a founding father. There's a lot of stuff that we know. For fact, Jefferson did. Right?

Sure. But there's also other stuff, in particular, that he had a slave with who was also his mistress. Yeah. And her name was Sally Hemmings. That's right. And he had children with her.

And for many, many years, this was viewed by negative revisionists. It's just a dirty rumor. Yeah, which is incredibly insulting. It is. To say, because they were in love. Well, yeah. Nick Nolte.

It wasn't like, oh, he just had his way with his slaves. He was in love with Sally Hemmings. Okay. And it's very insulting to say that that's a blight on America that our president would stoop so low as to be in love with a black woman. Right, exactly. Exactly. So the people who looked at this through the negative view of revisionism.

Jerks. That it was meant to sully. Yeah. We're on the wrong side of history. Agreed. The late 1990s, I think maybe 1997. I don't remember. Incontrovertible DNA evidence showed that Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson had children together.

They did it. More than one. Yeah. Yes, which does imply that they did it. They did it a bunch. Yeah, because the first time, I mean, come on. So with that, we have these three different lenses coming to play. The social theoretical lens.

Sure. Which is, okay, well, now we can go back and look at history and say maybe Jefferson wasn't the only one to have a slave mistress. Right. Maybe there was a lot of this stuff going on and maybe black folks and white folks were commingling more than we thought. Right, exactly. Maybe at some point along the way, we meaning like the mid 20th century people of America

put our own racist hang-ups on the people before it during this era. And we changed history unwittingly. It changed it back with this fact that came to life. Yes. Then there was the fact version, which is like maybe this is something we should put in textbooks. Right. Or more to the point, now we can't not put this in textbooks. Yeah, or the very least, biographies.

Sure. But textbooks, too. Come on. Right. There was the idea of revisionism, which kind of was dispelled when this incontrovertible DNA evidence came to light. Yeah. Because up to that point, you could be like, no, no, no.

And then once the DNA came out, it was like, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay. I see what you're doing. If you're going to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me.

Yeah. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. So historians, they have a car comparison to journalists, which is I think pretty spot on. There's a responsibility there to get it right and to not use your own skewed perspective like, you know, take the civil war if you still today, if you go out in the sticks of

Georgia and ask them one about the civil war, they're probably going to have some opinion. Yeah. That may not be quite right. I don't think, I don't know if people at North even care about that stuff anymore. I think the South has all the hangups because we lost. They were the ones, yeah, the losers and the ones who wanted to secede. Yeah. Up North, it's just like, what happened?

But it's amazing that like this many years later, there's still that skewed political perspective because of your personal beliefs in history, maybe family history. Right. You know? Yeah. So let's talk about modern revisionism, which pretty much started after World War One when the onus was put on historians to suss it out and say like, all right, World War One happened, so that happened.

We now have an obligation to record this and teach the world about it, but there were a lot of different opinions about it. Right. Which makes it tough. And the term revisionist history was actually coined a couple decades before World War One by Marxists who were grappling with whether or not the revolution was inevitable and how to put that down in the history books. And revisionism was coined around this time by those people, but it really didn't come

into play worldwide until after World War One. And at this time, scholars started to realize that this is when people figured out history is objective. Like seriously, up to this point. It's objective, you mean? Yes. Thank you. I don't know why I can't get this straight today.

But up to this point, historians, mainstream historians overall, typically believe that history was objective. And now, something like World War One happened, with all the world involved, everyone had a stake in it because what is history besides looking good? Sure. No one wants to look bad in the history books. Right. Or making someone look bad.

Sure. On purpose. Right. And historians started to realize, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's kind of up to us what goes in the history books. And this is such a complicated, complex event that maybe history is an objective. Yeah. In 1931, a speech was given at the American Historical Association by President Carl Becker.

And he was kind of the first guy to really come out in public and say, you know what? It's a living, evolving thing. It is very much subjective. And it's subjective because it's human's memory, basically, telling the story. Definitely fallible. Yeah. Or their perspective as individuals, and like I said, politics is usually one of the big reasons how it gets skewed.

But not just politics, nationalism. Everybody wants their country to be the winner or look like the good guy or what have you. But yeah, Becker was the first to say it's subjective, and therefore it's subject to revision. Yeah. And one was the thing that kicked it off. Like we said, the Treaty of Versailles really, really strongly punished Germany, re-drew its boundaries, and basically said, Germany, you're responsible for World War One.

You guys were the aggressor, and everybody else was reacting. And then as time wore on, new documents were released that showed that, no, it wasn't just Germany. There were a lot of other factors involved, including among the allies that contributed directly to the beginning of World War One. And Germany was kind of punished unfairly. So in 1925, the League of Nations basically said, hey, we need some sort of guidelines for writing historical textbooks.

And they came up with that. And from that point on, revisionism was born. And then in 1931, Karl Becker said, yeah, here in America we agree. History is subjective, and it can be revised. Yeah. And declassification of documents is a big way that things can be revised because if you don't have, it's not just someone's opinion. If you don't have actual documentation and peer-reviewed stuff, then you can't revise

history. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So that brings us to World War Two when what is called the age of historical consensus officially began. And I get the idea that that was just when people, sort of, historians banded together a little bit more than ever before.

Yeah. Can you get that feeling? Yeah. There was a lot of patriotism, nationalism. And basically everybody said, if there's anything that happened in World War Two, is that the US emerged victorious and saved the world. Jingoism, perhaps? Yeah, very much so.

Toby Keith. But this is among historians. Yeah. And if all historians basically are on the same page that America is awesome and kicks ass, then that's what the history books are going to reflect. Yeah, and that held pretty strong until the 1960s, which, as anyone who knows anything about American history knows, it was a pretty tumultuous time. Quite a few things.

The Vietnam War, civil rights movement, feminist movement, globalization, the Cold War, they all combined to basically quell that nationalism a little bit, maybe? Yeah, for sure. I mean, all of a sudden. The US went from this sunny, happy, suburban, white picket fence, Nazi butt-kicking country to one that was coming apart at the seams internally. And the historians of the time of the 60s said, wait a minute, if history is this ever-evolving dialogue that's able to be revised, how are we going to document this?

And what they figured out very wisely was, well, we need to tell everybody's story. Yeah, through four lenses. Yeah, well, at least, I think six maybe that emerged from the 60s, that basically history became more inclusive. It wasn't just about the leaders anymore. It wasn't just about how great America was. It was the whole picture. That's what historians strove to get to.

Right. The four major lenses from the 60s on are political, economic, racial, and sexual. That's four. It's not six. You should make two more up. We could probably come up with a couple that aren't fully covered here. We'll work on that. Political ends, though, obviously has to do with foreign policy, nationalism.

In the 1960s, I believe you already mentioned, the Marxist revisionism outlined more of a struggle between the classes, and maybe it took an approach that gave the lower classes a little bit more their due. Right. I think just because somebody was a prominent leader doesn't mean they were a great person necessarily. Right. Yeah, that was a huge radical change, especially compared to that age of consensus among historians.

The economic lens, Charles A. Beard, a historian, had a pretty radical idea that, hey, the Founding Fathers were writing the Constitution to sort of look out for wealthy white dudes. Yeah. I think he's probably right. Yeah. Yeah. He wrote that in, I think, 1913, and it took until the tumulti of the 60s before anybody ever really championed it.

Tumulti? I think that's right. Really? I am a descriptivist at the moment. Not just tumult? Yeah. But doesn't tumulti roll off the tongue a little more? Well, tumulti would be the adjective.

That was very tumulti. No, that'd be tumulti-wiss. I know. That's my point. Anyway, Beard's idea was that the framers of the Constitution said, hey, let's protect ourselves, and the landowners who owed money to the framers basically led a revolution in 1800 that was led by the election of Thomas Jefferson, and that's what we live in today. But we may have had much more of an elite society, or basically we have an elite society.

Now we just would have had one for longer. So the racial ends obviously strove to cast a light on minorities a little more that were largely ignored thanks to the civil rights movement against momentum. I remember being in school and not learning about Malcolm X or Huey P. Newton. Who? Yeah. I wasn't taught those things in classes. Yeah.

In high school, I had to read about them on my own afterward. College does a much better job, for sure. Right. I mean, this was a while ago for me, and this was in the 80s. Do you remember being... I'd like to think it's gotten a little better. Do you remember when you learned, hopefully at least in high school, about the Native Americans, the plight of Native Americans in the U.S.?

I don't remember, man. I remember, ninth grade, finally taking a history class where they spoke frankly about it. Really? Like your friend in Portland. I don't remember getting to that. I mean, just being blown because I was like, well, wait a minute. What about everything I had learned the last eight years?

Like, oh, that's just total BS, like it completely is contradicted by what you're saying. Not only was this stuff left out, I learned the opposite, you know, that they basically just went away on their own because the white man came and they were like, oh, this place is yours. And I remember being in ninth grade, just learning this like, wow, that was a big eye opener for me. I think that's probably why I got into history, because I was like, this is pretty interesting stuff.

You like there's more out there? Sure. I want to know the whole thing. Under the racial lens, also now you could learn about dudes like the Tuskegee Airmen or Japanese internment camps, which I never heard of until... We did that episode on it? Yeah, until three years ago. But that raises another good point, Chuck.

With the Japanese internment camps, it wasn't in the history books before, and then it comes out maybe in the 90s, I think, or it's put into the history books in the 90s. And that kind of reflects why people struggle against revisionism, or some people do, because history is ultimately zero sum, right? If you put that in the history book, the Japanese Americans who were put into internment camps, their plight is honored just through recognition. This happened to you people, and now everybody knows about it. But at the same time, the US government looks bad.

Yeah, and reparations are all of a sudden on the table, and they don't want that. So it's impossible to shine a light on something, and it not have almost always, I can't think of one instance, also a negative impact on something else. Because what is history, again, if it's not somebody screwing somebody else over? Is that all it is? Yeah. I mean, at least world history, political history. Yeah.

And the final lens, of course, is the sexual lens, which shown a light on women, and said, hey, history is not just about old white men. There were a lot of ladies like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. And I think the only black woman I ever remember reading about, of course, was Harriet Tubman. It's like one person, are you really? That's the only African American female in history that made any difference was Harriet Tubman. Right, and think about it.

The most recent one that's mentioned here is Elizabeth Cady Stanton. So apparently, we ran out of producing great women in the early 20th century, whereas the rest of them. But apparently, we're still struggling with that sexual lens of revisionist history. Yeah. I think women are definitely still fighting that fight. Yeah, I saw a cool thing the other day on, I think it went sort of viral, where this woman had her daughter, you know, like little girls by dress-up and stuff, little boys do

too. But instead of dressing the daughter up like, you know, I'm a Disney princess. She dressed her up like famous women in history and took pictures and just had a blast. And it's really neat. It's like a little photo series of this girl dressed up as all these, like, great women in history. Nice. And it was a very cool, very cool thing to do.

I feel like I saw that. Yeah, it was just a couple of weeks ago, so you probably didn't. Good for her is what I say. Yeah, good for her. I guess now maybe is a good time to do a message break. Yeah. And afterward, we're going to get into correcting the facts, which is my favorite part. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear, and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

So tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuckers. Yeah. Um, we're talking about revisionism as a means of correcting the facts. Yeah.

Like the game of telephone, the old adage, and that's basically what history was. You start with a story and it gets passed down orally, uh, or maybe even it was written down and it's just like a game of telephone. Things get mixed up and in the end you end up with what is probably not the way it really happened. Right. Purple monkey dishwasher. Like, like Pocahontas is her example.

Yeah. About she had this, it was a great love story between Captain John Smith and Pocahontas and Jamestown. So crazy. And Disney made a movie about it. It seems like I'm picking on Disney a lot. And it's, well, it's the same thing. Like Disney took this, this idea and ran with it and created like a new, well, not a care,

a new character, but created a character who fell in love with John Smith and they had a wacky courtship and overcame all the odds and wacky courtship. Jamestown would say, I think he falls down at some point, maybe, and there's maybe a talking animal. Yeah. There was one problem with this though is Pocahontas was 11 years old and James Smith was not a, um, Petarast. Well, Petarast is exclusively with boys.

Oh, is it? I don't think I knew that. Yeah. So I guess he'd be a pedophile. Yeah. Let's just generally say pedophile. Yeah. Uh, yeah.

And even though things, you know, people courted younger back then, 11 was not his game. Right. So it's not true. Pocahontas actually married a widower named John Rolfe. She died when she was about 21. She did help. She did introduce. Yeah.

The colonists to her tribe. Yeah. The thing is, and like, she did play a role in saving Jamestown. Yeah. Um, but yeah, she didn't fall in love with Captain John Smith. No. And thanks to modern times, we have things like anthropology and forensic science and archaeology and, uh, people coming out like, uh, the deep throat, Mark felt finally revealing

I was deep throat or I don't think he revealed himself though, did he? No, he was uncovered, I believe. Yeah. Documents becoming declassified like as time marches on and we get a little bit more modern. Yeah. We, we get the facts more correct. Uh, again, with declassified information, um, you know, if something's a secret, it can't be part of history.

Right. But then once it's declassified, these things definitely have an effect on history and impact on history. CIA did give LSD to unwitting Americans. Yeah. The Star Wars program did very much help usher in the end of the Cold War. Yeah. All of these come from declassified documents that show, yeah, this, this actually happened

this way. Yeah. Go back and re-write the movie. They really had alien autopsies in area 51. Right. Right. That's all on TV. Did you hear that, um, Mulder and Scully are down for making another movie?

Oh, are they? Don't know if it'll happen, but I mean, if they're both game, why not? Especially her. Yeah. And we're about due for the nineties to come back in vogue. So you just look at your fit bit. Yeah. Things aren't working.

Or does it have a clock on there? No. Oh, okay. It just shows I don't have 4,000 steps yet today. But you just tapped it so it thinks you're walking. I'm just shaking my wrist the whole time. I tapped it. Watch TV.

Uh, because there's nothing like cheating yourself out of exercise. Right. Out of health. Um, so like we said, updating biographies and more importantly, uh, for me, textbooks is a big part of this, um, but it's not so easy. It's not like, Hey, let's just throw in a new chapter, uh, on Jefferson. Um, you have to actually go through quite a process, uh, scholars and researchers, uh, you know, the first they develop these theories and thesis, they publish them, they're reviewed

by academics and teachers, uh, textbook authors, meet at conferences and see the new recommendations. It's a kind of a long and ball process to, to make a substantial change in a textbook. Right. Uh, and there's an actual Institute for International Textbook Research that analyzes all this stuff and make sure that textbooks are diversified and, uh, don't just tell the history of, you know, wealthy white dudes. Right. Exactly.

This is ideal. This is the ideal process. Yeah. There's another really big, um, factor in this that we've talked about before where the biggest states are the states with the most students and therefore by the most textbooks are the ones who ultimately get to write the textbooks, which is why Texas has such an outsize, uh, influence on what the rest of the country learns because they write the textbooks and the publishers aren't going to make different textbooks for each state.

Yeah. They're going to make them for the biggest state and then go sell them to the rest of the state. So there are flaws in this process and including that there's also, you know, it's, it doesn't keep up in real time very well. No, you can't just economically, you can't publish a new textbook every year. Right. I think they try to have about a 10 year life on a textbook.

Right. It's a long time. But I mean, can't they just email history teachers and be like, Hey, I'm page 42. Yeah. It says that Jefferson did not have kids with Sally Hemmings. Yeah. Don't teach that part. Teach the opposite.

Yeah. And I wonder, I'm sure it varies from county to county. I wonder how much freedom teachers have to develop their own curriculum. I know there are standards, but I wonder how much they can do their own thing. I'm under the impression there isn't teaching any longer. Like all this is a moot point when we're talking about textbooks. That's not true. Sorry.

Sorry, teachers. I just realized how many of you listened to this. No. And you weren't saying that in spiteful way. You're saying that like it's sad that yes, exactly teaching is, you know, stuff to get teachers these days. Thank you. It's almost like a public service, you know, what teaching these days.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it always has been, you know, yeah, I think that the constraints put on teachers has really tied their hands to the point where they aren't able to teach like they should or like they want to. Yeah. But I think it remains a public service. I just think our education system is in the need of some real reform.

Well, it is. And it's sad that I think a lot of teachers these days to treat it like a public service in, and it's not bad, but I'm saying sometimes teachers these days will be like, you know, I'm going to go teach for four or five years because people are in need of teachers, not necessarily I want to be a teacher for my entire career. Yeah. And what they're finding out is this generation is going to be short on teachers because people are teaching for a shorter amount of time.

You know what? I'm interested in this and we should do an episode on that. But in the meantime, we're going to do a pre listener mail call out and ask for any teachers out there who are in there on the front lines, email us and tell us what can be done to solve the problems with the public school system. There's easy, complex, whatever. I'm very curious and totally down to help in any way we can, you know, um, all right. So where were we?

Textbooks. Sometimes you'll publish, um, sometimes you'll publish supplemental material that's like not every 10 years just to get things right, right? Um, yeah, because 10 years is a long time to go between discovering acceptance of a new historical fact and teaching it to kids. Yeah. That's too long. But people got up in arms.

The American Historical Association, um, submitted it's, it's, or updated its national history standards in 1994. Yeah. Textbooks. And they got negative feedback because they were like, well, where's Daniel Boone and who's this Harriet Tubman? Yeah. Why is she getting so much attention?

A black woman. Unbelievable. Yeah. So even when they get it right, they still get guff. It's a, it's a really good point. It's a good segue to the negativism. Yeah. Um, even when it's true, it's still going to encounter resistance.

Yeah. Part of it is that people hang on to their national pride, their national stories, stuff they learned as a kid. Yeah. People are fearful of new things and change. Um, but another part of it- What does that mean about me, you know? Exactly. Like, I, I dress like Daniel Boone and go out in public.

So what, what happens if everybody doesn't know who Daniel Boone is and I just look like a weirdo? Yeah. But, but another part of it is because of the bad name that revisionism has, has been given by hacks and crackpots over the years. Yeah. That's true. Yeah.

Uh, I remember in 2003, uh, President Bush used the term, uh, revisionist history, historians talking about the media, uh, and their coverage of the war in Iraq, basically saying that, you know, some reporters are questioning the reasons that we invaded Iraq and had sway over the public's opinion about this. Right. And a lot of historians- It's crazy for the media to have- Yeah.

And a lot of historians weren't too keen on that, you know, like, hey, you shouldn't really say that. Yeah. Because that's kind of knocking, studying history, the academic field of history. Or the fact that history is able to be revised. He was, he was making it a negative thing. Yeah. Same with, um, Florida, apparently in 2006, they, uh, outlawed the teaching of any postmodernist

or revisionist history, and kids were only allowed to learn the facts, which is number one impossible. Yeah. And number two, um, it says implicitly that revisionist history is not facts and what's the opposite of facts, well, lies. Yeah. Man, that's sad. It is.

Because it's basically saying, we refuse to progress. Yeah. I will not progress, not only in bad stuff, but in good stuff too. Yeah. No. We are quite happy with that whole post war age of consensus thing, we're going to stay right there. Yeah.

So rest of the country, rest of the world, you go progress without us. Yeah. Well, that's, it's crazy. It is crazy. You just can't do that. You can't dig in your heels in, in history, it just won't happen. Yeah. You look like you're on the wrong side of history.

That's going to be one of our new t-shirts. Yeah. With you like pointing. Right. But one reason though, revisionist history has negative connotations because people wrongly tie it to things like Holocaust deniers. That is not revisionist history. That is called negationism.

Right. And it's not the same thing. No. So if you know someone who says the Holocaust didn't happen, they're not revising history. They're crackpots. Yeah. And probably a troll too. Yeah.

Yeah. So you can just kind of remove the whole Holocaust denial from revisionist history. Yes. The problem is in the public image, those two things go very much hand in hand. Yeah. Same with conspiracy theories. Oh, yeah. But Cunger kind of gives this little thumbnail handy dandy guide to separating the wheat

from the chaff as far as revisionist history goes. So if you're encountering something like a moon landing conspiracy or a Kennedy assassination conspiracy, you have to ask yourself number one, is this a professional historian or an amateur historian? Is it on a blog? Yeah. That's a good one. Is this historian out for the truth or fame and money?

So is it just sensationalized? Right. And we ran into something like we almost did the 1421 article about, did the Chinese beat Columbus? Yeah. That's a good example of somebody who is a historian. I don't, I think it seems Gavin Menzies. There's just a theory.

Yeah. And there's like all this really tiny crumbs of circumstantial evidence here or there that the Chinese did beat Columbus to the New World. The problem is at this moment, it is just a crackpot theory. He has almost nothing to back it up. Yeah. Is he looking just to sell books? He sold a bunch of books.

Well, that's a pretty red, pretty big red flag. It is. It is interesting. And you can't say that somewhere down the road that we won't find that the Chinese did visit the New World before Columbus. Yeah. But as it stands, like that is so far outside of the mainstream, it's just a crackpot idea at this point.

Yeah. You know? That some guy wove into a pretty interesting book. Yeah. And she also points out, which is totally true, that we tend to be more skeptical of revisionist history that we have a, feel like we have a stake in. Right. Or are very familiar with.

Like maybe I'm resistant to that because I was raised the idea that Columbus discovered the New World, whereas if I, it was from Ghana, I'd be like, yeah, maybe the Chinese did do it. Who cares? Exactly. Uh, so basically a very small number of revisionist histories are factual or not factual, but accepted as fact in the end is just tough to pull off. Yeah.

Like Gavin Menzies is another good example of that. Yeah. But here's the thing, revisionist history, it has a, um, unearned bad name. Right. It's an actual. Worried. We're not, we're not saying this is a fringe idea that's been brought into the mainstream. This is a mainstream, um, part of the study of history.

Yeah. Right. Um, and that some fringe dwellers have adopted like here or there, but for the most part, like, like revisionist history is a real part of the discipline of history. And it's a good part of it, in my opinion, because like conger points out, it levels the playing field. It's inclusive. Like when revisionist history became a thing, history became more inclusive and it started

to tell everybody's story. Yeah. I can't wait to hear from historians. They're going to be like, Oh dude, thank you. Yeah. Or boys, do you guys screw this up? Yeah. My revisionist history is nothing but crackpots.

Like, where'd you get the idea of what? No. Um, so you got any more? I got nothing else. Thank you for, uh, let me stay all pepped up about this one. You know, I was a history major and like this is like great stuff. I know, I usually just throw the wet blanket on you. Uh, that is not true.

Uh, since we said a wet blanket or chuck did, that triggers me to say if you want to learn more about revisionist history, go to the website, type that in in the handy search bar. And then since I said handy search bar, we've got kind of a Rube Goldberg thing going here. That triggers, uh, listener mail. That's right. I'm going to call this, uh, handwriting analysis from a handwriting analyst. Nice. And this is my favorite thing is when we hear from the actual people.

Yeah. And they either say, Hey, did a good job or you didn't do such a good job. I don't mind this. I was surprised to hear we did so good about the Maori. That's great. Yeah. Boy, those Kiwis love a little light shine in their way. I love it.

Uh, hey guys, just finished episode on handwriting analysis as I arrived to work as a handwriting analyst. Or as we call ourselves forensic document examiners, uh, when I got to my car at home and saw the title of the episode, I had already begun a mental checklist about the misconceptions you might pass on about the field. Um, oh, that's a negative. Uh, I have to deal with them all the time. However, I'm delighted to say you guys absolutely nailed it.

Exclamation point. I don't have a single criticism or correction in this case. Uh, each lab has its own specialty, but at the homeland security investigations, forensic laboratory where I work, we specialize in travel and identity documents. Uh, most of my work is determining if certain passport screen cards, driver's licenses and visas are counterfeit or altered, but I'm trained to do handwriting examinations as well. I spent months of my training in handwriting and it is not for everyone, let me say.

Uh, it is a difficult task. It takes a lot of natural ability to accomplish. Uh, the first thing we did in training was to take a form blindness test to make sure we had that natural ability. Before I started the job I have now though, I actually worked for the secret service on the fish database that you mentioned. Uh, fish is a lot like AFIS for handwriting. The secret service processed a lot of anonymous threat letters and I would put them into the

database to see if I could come up with any matches. You could probably imagine how fun it was to find a hit. Uh, there were a few times this happened for me during the year I worked there and, uh, it always amazed me how well the system worked. All right, and that is from Jordan, the handwriting analyst. That's pretty awesome. I like hearing from the actual people too. It's great.

Thanks Jordan. Yeah, thanks a lot Jordan. Um, let's see, we already asked for it, but I think it bears asking for again. If you are a teacher and you have some ideas about how to fix the cracks and flaws of the public education system or education system in general, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast, you can join us on, uh, facebook.com, slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastediscovery.com, and you can join us at our home on the web,

stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

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