Pod Insights Something You Should Know The Smart Way to Spend Money & History That Never Happened About this episode 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/
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Mike Carruthers? Hiring the wrong person is expensive, but it's also exhausting. Because now you haven't solved your problem, you've created a new one. You've spent time interviewing and training somebody, but it's the wrong person. And it's just not working. So when you're hiring, you don't just need a person, you need the right person. And that is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Sponsored Jobs helps you reach candidates with the skills and experience and other qualifications you're looking for, and boosts your job and search results, so the right people are more likely to see it.
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1:23 Mike Carruthers? Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. 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.
1:56 Speaker 01 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.
2:10 Mike Carruthers? 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.
2:25 Speaker 02 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.
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3:21 Mike Carruthers? So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for, and track your orders all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with a thousand chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million shop cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.
4:09 Speaker 03 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.
4:22 Mike Carruthers? Think for a moment about how you walk. Like when 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.
5:05 Mike Carruthers? 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.
5:33 Mike Carruthers? 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.
6:17 Mike Carruthers? He's author of a book called The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life. Hi, Morgan, welcome.
6:25 Speaker 01 Thanks so much for having me, Mike. Appreciate it.
6:27 Mike Carruthers? 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 kinds of ways in our life. Some good, some not so good. So what's, what's going on?
6:47 Speaker 01 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 it 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
7:30 Speaker 01 that makes money a much more messy and emotional topic than it should be.
7:34 Mike Carruthers? Well, I guess it's hard not to compare yourself to other people. But, I mean, I, you know, 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. I objectively thought this would be a good car for me. Or at least that's what I was telling myself. But I wasn't, 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.
8:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think, 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, 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's 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.
8:50 Speaker 01 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.
9:16 Mike Carruthers? 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.
9:30 Speaker 01 I think it's, 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, 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.
10:12 Speaker 01 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 of minutes at a time. I think what people would actually want out of their money, and the best, the most reasonable goal for your money, is contentment. If I sit here and 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 That mansion, that hypothetical mansion and saying, this is enough. I don't want anymore. That 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 it might be and saying, I'm now saying this is good.
10:57 Speaker 01 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, their yard's a little bit bigger. Oh, look at his car. It 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 in technology that I like, but the individual level can kind of make you take a step back and say, look, if, 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, 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
11:42 Speaker 01 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.
11:58 Mike Carruthers? 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?
12:09 Speaker 01 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 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
12:52 Speaker 01 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.
13:23 Mike Carruthers? But is there an objective list of what money can and cannot do based on research or everybody is individual?
13:31 Speaker 01 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, can buying a big house make you happy?
14:15 Speaker 01 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. And but, 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 many, 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's like, there is a list of other more important things in your life, your health, your friends, your family.
14:58 Speaker 01 That have to come first before you can use it as a tool to become happier and more content.
15:03 Mike Carruthers? 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 fun fund, and a certain percent should go for this. And so, how can that be if you're saying everybody's different?
15:26 Speaker 01 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 wouldn't call this frugal, it was just that we just didn't really want that much. We spend 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?
16:09 Speaker 01 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.
16:53 Mike Carruthers? 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.
17:09 Speaker 04 Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.
17:36 Speaker 05 This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
18:05 Mike Carruthers? 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, 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.
18:48 Speaker 01 Right. And I'm willing to bet that there is 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 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 is 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.
19:33 Speaker 01 And so I think this, 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 not, just not what we want right now. And we had to, 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 Sethi 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
20:19 Speaker 01 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.
20:35 Mike Carruthers? I would imagine that your experiences, your financial experiences and, 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.
20:50 Speaker 01 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, of the roaring twenties, just before the crash and the Great Depression. And the title of the column I thought was so genius. The title was, "The more you are 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 Alishay, and she grew up, she was at a different point in her life, very poor. And now she's very successful.
21:35 Speaker 01 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, and 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
22:16 Speaker 01 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's 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 then 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
22:59 Speaker 01 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.
23:06 Mike Carruthers? 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.
23:24 Speaker 01 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, I would propose the odds are 100% that we will experience at least one of those, that everybody will. And, and that's if you're lucky. A lot of people will experience all of those.
24:09 Speaker 01 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, 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
24:52 Speaker 01 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.
25:01 Mike Carruthers? 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?
25:13 Speaker 01 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 bird 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. That's why they're successful. And that's why they tend to be perpetually dissatisfied with what they have.
25:57 Speaker 01 And so I think there is an irony here that the trade off between ambition and contentment is very stark. And, and so 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.
26:14 Mike Carruthers? Yeah.
26:14 Speaker 01 Money to them 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 extraordinarily 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. We'll also recognize that like, that's not necessarily a path to a good, happy, content life.
26:48 Mike Carruthers? 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?
26:59 Speaker 01 There's a very interesting interview recently with Steve Ballmer, who was the former CEO of Microsoft. He owns the LA 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, 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, in which some people can say, I'm good forever. I'm set forever.
27:35 Mike Carruthers? And yet, that very idea is what drives a lot of people to play the lottery. Because, well, if I win hundreds of millions of dollars, I will never have to worry about money again.
27:45 Speaker 01 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.
28:27 Speaker 01 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 it cannot do for you is much longer.
28:43 Mike Carruthers? Well, you've made me feel so much better that I'd 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.
29:10 Speaker 01 Thanks a lot.
29:13 Speaker 04 Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you, based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.
29:40 Speaker 05 This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
30:11 Mike Carruthers? We all learned history in school. And as you're about to hear, a lot of the history we were taught, that we believed to be true and factual, is actually not. Why? 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 Tewishah, 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
30:56 Mike Carruthers? English-speaking person, you pronounce your name.
31:00 Speaker 02 Yo Hedwig Tewishah.
31:03 Mike Carruthers? 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.
31:23 Speaker 02 Thank you. Glad to be here.
31:25 Mike Carruthers? 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?
31:40 Speaker 02 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, is a reason to mix things up on purpose, spread fake history on purpose, because you want, 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
32:23 Speaker 02 a lack of evidence or a lack of proper research.
32:27 Mike Carruthers? So give me an example, a story of maybe your favorite story of fake history.
32:33 Speaker 02 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, you know, our image of the Middle Ages. It just, it is dirty, narrow, dark streets, full of mud and disgusting things, that people throwing stuff out of windows.
33:13 Speaker 02 That's, that image is so baked into our, you know, 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, they bathed, 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, uh, you know, someone would come and give you a massive fine, like terrifyingly huge. And we have all these records. But if you look at all of history and humans in general, we have, there's, there's one very
33:56 Speaker 02 simple fact, and that is that all humans who ever lived have had a nose. And that means they had smells and they cared about smells. And uh, 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.
34:10 Mike Carruthers? 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.
34:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, it's, 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.
34:51 Mike Carruthers? 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?
35:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, and, and I must admit that I, 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, and I used to say, you know, I'm, I'm as old as video games. But when you start to research it, suddenly you realize that it's a lot older. Uh, it, it, 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.
35:42 Speaker 02 Uh, but even with screens and actual games, uh, those go back to the 1950s, actual computer games as we would define them today.
35:52 Mike Carruthers? But few people could play them.
35:54 Speaker 02 Oh, oh, yes, absolutely. They were just, they were in universities, there were just a few nerds in, in back rooms with computers that filled half a laboratory. And with, with, and it was just a few lights going on and off, but they were technically games. And they worked and they involved computer games, computers. 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, it's not that nobody got to play them. But they were, yeah, it was not something that you had in your, in your living room.
36:29 Mike Carruthers? 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, and play. It was very accessible. Was it, was it the first accessible game?
36:44 Speaker 02 The problem is that 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, Pong and games like that in, in the early seventies were the first games that were available to, you know, to the, 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.
37:12 Mike Carruthers? 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.
37:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, he doesn't. Sorry. No, his Santa goes back many, many centuries. And he was originally a medieval saint who was back then already wearing red clothes, by the way.
37:37 Speaker 02 And he was brought to the Americas by European immigrants. And they brought their traditional celebrating Saint Nicholas, who is still a very popular saint here in the Netherlands where I am at the moment. And he wore red clothes because that was, you know, his church uniform. And, and he, he was a very, very popular saint, especially for children and giving treats and things like that. And uh the Americans sort of adopted him, mixed him up with a few with Father Christmas from the from Britain. And in the eighteen sixties, there was a an artist, a writer, Thomas Nast, Nast, Nast, Nast, Nast, what's his name?
38:17 Mike Carruthers? Nast.
38:18 Speaker 02 And he, yeah, Nast, exactly. And he wrote a story about Saint Nicholas and he described him as wearing red. And very soon afterwards, people started illustrating uh books and stories, but but also advertisements with that image of Saint Nicholas. So we've got pictures of Santa wearing the red suit, having a big belly, um e- exactly like he looked, looks today still. But going back to the eighteen eighties and even the early nineteen hundreds, you see him everywhere, looking exactly the same. So the only thing really was what Coca-Cola did was use that same image that was already
38:57 Speaker 02 popular and already used for advertisement and just spread it everywhere because they could, because, you know, it's Coca-Cola.
39:06 Mike Carruthers? 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?
39:15 Speaker 02 Um, Nast taught 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 Saint Nicholas, we now also have Santa, which is very confusing because they, you know, 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.
39:44 Mike Carruthers? But I I remember seeing, and I I mean recently seeing, pictures of Saint Nicholas and he's not fat, he's thin.
39:51 Speaker 02 No.
39:52 Mike Carruthers? So.
39:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's that, that's, that's what the Americans did, which is, you know, interesting. But yeah, they, they, they sort of combined Father Christmas, who in Britain was often portrayed as being rather rotund. Um, so, yeah, it's, it's, I, 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 uh Santa.
40:20 Mike Carruthers? 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?
40:32 Speaker 02 Nope. The annoying thing is, is that the truth is that he was sitting in his garden and he saw, 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. Uller, he was 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 book ended up, his, his letter ended up in a very popular book and then another very popular writer copied it for his also very popular book.
41:14 Speaker 02 And before you know it, everyone is saying, you know, he, he got his ideas because an apple fell on his head. So it's just one, one person making up a story or spreading a story and everyone picking it up and there's, it makes no sense, it just didn't happen. And we, we literally have friends of Newton who wrote down what Newton taught him, taught them what happened. So there, 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, you're cooked.
41:48 Mike Carruthers? So everyone's heard that Thomas Crapper invented the toilet, but you say no.
41:53 Speaker 02 Nope, he didn't. And we have to, there's, there's two different things here. Um, 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. There's just, you know, throwing water after, when you're done with your business. Um, 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, he made it into a big business.
42:27 Speaker 02 And that's why people stick to that story, but also because of his lovely name that is so fitting. But mechanical, 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, there is a toilet and there is some sort of chute. There must have been some sort of door or a handle and the water would flow through that chute. So we know that it goes back a lot further.
43:07 Mike Carruthers? But was, is there a connection between his name and why we use the word crap the way we sometimes do?
43:15 Speaker 02 Not directly, but the word already existed, but his, his name was attached to it and it was printed on every toilet. So it was really, really fitting.
43:25 Mike Carruthers? So the famous person that said the smart thing, I mean, there's a lot of those. If you could grab a few and, and in a succinct way, tell them.
43:35 Speaker 02 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, 12 steps program. Oh, and there's one that I really like. There's businessmen love to quote this.
44:16 Speaker 02 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.
44:33 Mike Carruthers? So I've always thought that the pyramids were built by slaves. I think we've learned that in school, that slaves in Egypt built the pyramids.
44:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, it goes back very, very far. I mean, we've had Greek writers like Herodotus writing fake stories that sort of make you think they 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 making, of building something as massive as the pyramids in a time when everyone had slaves, of course you're gonna use slaves. That's, you know, that makes sense. But relatively recently, they found the places where, the cities where those workers lived.
45:27 Speaker 02 And while they were digging up these cities, they found really good housing, they found good food, you know, bones from all sorts of animals.
45:39 Speaker 02 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 Mecca. 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 pay, buy new clothes for the workers. And the people who worked on the pyramids were buried very close to the pharaohs, which is, you know, 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.
46:24 Speaker 02 So, I mean, we can't say for 100% that that's what happened, but it all points towards that these are actually good work, good paid workers.
46:35 Mike Carruthers? So I have certainly heard that people at certain, 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?
46:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, and it it it goes back again to the idea of the Middle Ages being dirty. And somehow always just in Europe for some reason. Um, but medieval people were obsessed about clean water. They had they had aqueducts, they had pipes with running water, all those things that people think only the Romans had, but middle medieval people had them as well. Um, they were 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 that you don't forget that lesson. And also a thing that people forget is that if you wanna make ale, you know, the sort of beer, early medieval beer. If you wanna make that good ale, you need clean water.
47:41 Speaker 02 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 fun.
47:55 Mike Carruthers? And there's this other idea of that that maybe back at that same time in history that that spices were used to cover up the rotten meat, that to make rotten meat taste good.
48:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that that 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 you realize that it's a really stupid idea, because if you eat bad meat, you're going to regret it, no matter how many spices you cover it up with. Uh, it's not gonna go well for you. You're gonna spend the rest of the week on the toilet. That's just been invented. So what are you gonna do? It 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,
48:53 Speaker 02 just buy some new meat or don't eat meat, but you're not going to waste expensive spices on it.
48:59 Mike Carruthers? 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.
49:10 Speaker 02 Well, lots of people think that Hugo Boss 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 the 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.
49:52 Speaker 02 He was just giving, you know, he was, 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, really nice. But he didn't design them, just some Nazi designers did.
50:22 Mike Carruthers? 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 Hedwig Tiawishe, 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 in the show notes. Yo, thank you.
50:45 Speaker 02 My pleasure. If there's anything else, you know where to find me.
50:52 Mike Carruthers? 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.
51:36 Mike Carruthers? 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 Heruthers. Thank you for listening today to Something You Should Know.
51:51 Speaker 04 Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you, based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.
52:18 Speaker 05 This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
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