June 6, 2014 • 37 mins
Why do some people believe the Middle Ages never happened? Can we really trust our calendars? Do current world powers have a compelling interest in suppressing our knowledge of the past? Listen in and learn more with Matt and Ben.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to Now, everybody,
welcome to the show on Matt and I'm Ben, and
today we're gonna look at the history of history and
(00:23):
the changes inside and of course the stuff they don't
want you to know. Matt, I started out when we
were working on this podcast beforehand. I started out wanting
to have a quotation about history. We've mentioned the Faulkner
quotation at nauseum. Uh, you know Bob Dylan's at the
(00:43):
times they are changing. And that's a pretty good one
because as we're going to see, history changes as often
as the present apparently. Um. But out of all those
quotations um inside of one of the best things that
I could do, at least is just start off with
the most basic thing. A definition of history. History the
(01:08):
study of past events, usually human events, right, Yeah, that's
what we usually mean, and the branch of knowledge dealing
with this. Um. People, being an inherently self interested species,
have always been interested in the past, the stories about ourselves. Yeah,
we're storytellers because we're the only animals that record in
(01:31):
any way the things that happened previously to us. Yeah,
well we're the only ones proven to do so. Yes, absolutely,
because you know, as we find, the first histories were
oral histories, right, the just told I would if I
was a person way back in the day and something
really interesting happening to me, involving a caribou and a
(01:54):
broken spear or something, I would want to express that
to my friends because I thought it was a really
fun and thing that happened, So I just tell them
or yeah. Or there could also be a song and
in that song someone has the lineage from which they derive,
you know, oh yeah, or a tale of gods and creation, Yeah, exactly.
(02:16):
And a lot of these things were mythical, right, They
were instructional things of one way or another. In some cases,
very very old histories contain uh values of a culture, right,
and history often back at this point in time, when
it was a world tradition, was one gigantic game of telephone. Now,
(02:39):
for our younger listeners, let's go ahead and say with
the game of telephone is okay, So the game of
telephone would be if there are a bunch of us
sitting in a circle and We started with let's say myself,
I told small story, maybe even just a sentence or two,
and then I would whisper it in the ear of
the person to my let's say left, and then that
(02:59):
would continue around until it got back to me, perhaps
a person sitting to my right, and then whatever that
person they would have to recite whatever it is that
they heard, and the change that occurs as it goes
around the circle. That is the game of telephone. Right. Yeah,
nobody really wins the game of telephone often too. I
suspected that there were people throwing a wrench in there
(03:23):
and purposefully saying something completely different. We're trying to make
it dirty. Yeah, isn't it weird that we just explained
telephone and there might actually be someone listening that had
never heard of that before. Uh, you know, I bet
it could happen, But I want to be honest. I
was one of those guys who would you know, when
I was in first or second grade, I would totally
(03:44):
switch up yeah, oh yeah, and then look to my
left and right when when they revealed the wrong message.
Classic bowling. I learned a lot. I become a little
bit of a better person, But the game of the
game of telephone is um instructive. It's a good framework
for us to look at the history of history, as
(04:07):
you said, right, So, uh, one thing that became known
as the first critical work of history that was written
down was called, in a burst of creativity, the histories
is by this uh, this cat named Herodotus. Right. Uh. Well,
here's the thing. It's full of errors, right, but it's
it's better than nothing. And this whole thing about stories
(04:29):
being full of errors, rife with exaggerations, outright fabrications and everything,
that was the rule instead of the exception for a
very very very very very long time. Well. Yeah, the
people writing these histories were a lot of time very
closely knit to the power structures at the time, no
matter what kind of power structure you have, So there's
(04:52):
a lot of times an attempt to make that guy
or that group look maybe a little better than they
actually or or a little bit worse. So exactly, that's why,
that's why we get all these strange, outlandish stories that
seem to make no sense at the time. Right. Uh.
(05:12):
For instance, the old canard that Napoleon was a really
short dude. No, there were slightly different measuring systems but
also it was a little bit of propaganda. Yeah he's
fairly short, but you know, it's like within average height
for that time. Um or the lurid tales, semi pornographic
tales that some um European writers would spin about the
(05:37):
New World and they would say, oh, yeah, hey, ladies
love me in South America, which isn't really true because
as we know, they were they were not there to uh,
they were not there to be friendly. So yeah, So
so basically a lot of times we think of history
as just this this known thing that occurred or known
(05:59):
set of things that occurred, and that's just how it is.
That's what happened on that date. Now we know, But
we we find more and more that it's more of
this weird amorphous conversation of of events that just continues,
and you can history gets changed past long long ago.
(06:21):
Past history gets changed all the time even now. Yeah,
like that thing that's happened recently about whether the Brontosaurus
is a dinosaur. That's a tough one for me to one.
I know, man, I know, but but I love that.
I love that you make that comparison, because, yeah, different
voices constantly interrupting each other, and anything. No, well, not anything,
(06:43):
but virtually anything could be up for grabs if evidence
that contradicts our accepted view comes in. And this is not,
by any means a new thing, and it's not, by
any means an outdated practice. Listeners, I assure you, regardless
of what country you were in, your country's history textbooks
(07:06):
are in in disagreement with at least several other countries textbooks.
That's not that's just the nature of the world. North
Korea's account of the Korean War is going to be way,
way different UH in comparison to even the Republic of
Korea or the United States. Of course, especially if you
(07:27):
look at big events like wars like World War Two.
The differences in oh my god, you were you were
saying something a while ago about Japan and China. He
had an earlier conversation. Their accounts World War Two are
hugely different, right, and create political tensions today are used
as an outlet for political tensions. Of course, it's no
(07:50):
surprise to anyone that Middle Eastern textbooks UH disagree on
quite a few things. And I don't mean just the
status of UH countries like Israel, or the role of
the Europe or the United States and colonization and UH
overthrowing governments, but also religious matters Shia Sunni and so on.
(08:14):
But I I don't have the means currently to read
textbooks um that are in in Arabic anything. But I'd
love to see the I guess the history of the
Crusades in that time. I'd love to see you with
the other what the other side of that story says? Yeah,
and uh Russian UH textbooks also would have a difference
(08:36):
in comparison to the rest of Europe. So so even now,
even now, what we're saying is that historians across the
world or countries across the world don't agree with each
other about what actually happened and why we are where
we are today. This leads us to the evolution of
(08:58):
historical study or the big question is this revisionist history
we're talking about or is it pseudo history? Pseudo history?
Is that is that completely made up? Is that what
pseudo is implying, Well, it's a yeah, pseudo is implying
that it is history. That it's a tall tale disguised
(09:22):
his history, made by people with an agenda or with
a pre existing conclusion. Right, So we saw a pseudo
we've seen pseudo history. Uh. Maybe one of the easiest examples,
which we've used before is in the early European explorers
(09:42):
of the African continent when they would say, oh, well,
here's the ruins of this great empire. I guess obviously
there was some white people living here at some point,
which is which just shows that even if it flies
in the face of all evidence, some people will never
sacrifice their pet theory for the facts. But then the
(10:06):
idea of revisionist history is a little bit different. Let's
get into that, all right. We've kind of talked about
the history of changing history already, Um, but it really
goes back to the to these ancient Greek and Roman
scholars that you're looking at Plutarch and uh Tacitus and
really people have been editing history. Again, it's kind of
(10:27):
what we've been talking about. But but modern historical revision,
this thing that we call historical revision that didn't originate
until the twentieth century and really was after the first
major global military conflicts, so World War One obviously, so
that's when there were multiple groups who wanted history to
(10:48):
reflect a certain you know story, right, Yeah, this is
where we start dealing with something you'll hear about often
in pr propaganda today, and that's the concept of narrative.
So how would we depict this conflict decades later? Right
for the children of the survivors, how did countries become
(11:09):
involved in the war contribute to it? Um As they
were starting to twiddle their fingers at the fringes of
this Gordian not historians realized that it was impossible to
be objective because even deciding what you should leave out
or put in becomes itself inherently subjective. Right, So we
(11:31):
know that historical revisionism has to occur because a researcher
can find a glaring inconsistency or something that's totally wrong.
Because let us not forget that for centuries people were
writing pretty much fictitious stuff and it was quoted as facts. So,
(11:51):
for instance, we mentioned a lot of things about US
history that are often misunderstood. Um, here's one you with
George Washington and cherry tree, pretty hard, concrete data that
he did not chop down a cherry tree and say
he couldn't tell a lie. It's a fun story. It's
a little bit weird that it's about. It's a it's
(12:12):
a lie about a guy being honest. You know, it
seems legendary. Yeah, that's a nice little Matroshka doll. Right,
But so okay, So here's the biggest thing for me.
History is it's just complicated. It's super complicated because everybody's
identity is connected up to their history, back to our
(12:33):
oral history days, right exactly. And you know, nobody wants
to look terrible. Everyone has a reputation and that goes
that goes out to from the individual person to a
group of people, to an entire state and the way
you feel about this group or state that you're a
part of. And nobody wants to be made a fool
(12:55):
or look bad or look like the evil bad guy. Yeah,
and uh, because of this, it can be tough to
navigate things. Going back to our example about China and Japan. Uh,
the the huge argument about comfort women, right, remember that one. Yeah,
and that is uh. That deals with the horrendous activities
(13:18):
of the Japanese Imperial Army during its invasion occupation of
Manchuria and other parts of China. Now, are we saying
that those were bad guys totally? Are we saying that
there were good guys in war. No, I don't know
if you can. I don't know if you can say
they're they're clear cut good guys, are good entities in
(13:42):
the war. But what we can say is that even now,
the status of what happened to these women is a
very hot button issue. And in um Japan, some politicians
leverage this. You could say their cynical or you could
say they really believe it, but they leverage this because
they don't want it to be a a loss of
(14:03):
face for the army or humiliating for the people that
are regarded often as heroes, you know what I mean.
So you have to be very careful how you look
at that. And historical revisionism usually does a couple of
different things. Um Or it has I guess lenses we
could think about. So it has a social or theoretical
(14:25):
perspective to re examine the past through a different framework.
So Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, Yeah,
I really enjoyed it, um People. One of the criticisms
I've heard before is that Howard Zenn has an agenda,
to which my answer is he clearly has an agenda. Right.
(14:46):
There's also a fact checking perspective that that you can
take to try and make corrections on some of the
errors that have been laid into history. Sure, yeah, uh.
And then there's also uh going back to that negative
perspective and the people who say, hey, it's not broke,
don't fix it. Why are you digging into all these
(15:08):
records about you know, Unit thirty one or whatever. Why
do you why do you care, uh what the United
States may or may not have done with Nazi scientists
after the war. Why are you trying to push your
I don't know it would be in that case, your
anti Nazi agenda, um, you know, your anti Catholic agenda.
(15:32):
If you say that they had ratlines helping people escape,
that is that's an interesting perspective to me. The idea
of going back through another country's history to try and
dig up dirt on them, I don't I don't often
think about that unless I'm thinking of from a spy
perspective or an intelligence perspective. Well, there's it's great that
(15:52):
you say that, because the historical revisionism or the um
the attempts to change the past through perpurgation, that it
her in things like four or in some instances in
the days of the s s R. These are things
that can really happen and can intentionally occur. Four, of course,
(16:14):
is fiction. But recently uh an event in China, the
anniversary of the A Tenement Square incidents, showed us that
historical revisionism in the negative sense is alive and well.
And then our video, one of our videos recently you
did that orwell quote that he who controls the president
(16:39):
controls the past, You controls the past, controls the future,
and it's scary because that's true. Funny story. Well, okay,
so to sew that up. Those are the three ways
in which historical revisionists can approach existing history. Right. Historians
like to refer to the years immediately after World War
Two as the age of his storeal Consensus, because people
(17:03):
were trying to build this concept, this meme of unified America, stronger,
number one, superpower, Get at me bro. That kind of
stuff didn't last long, last until about the sixties, and
then people started reading maybe no, I don't know, I
don't know. I couldn't tell you exactly what happened to
(17:24):
change that. I think that part of it would be
counterculture movements, and then also the struggle for quality in
the United States really gave lie to some of the
more rose tinted glass kind of stuff. And sometimes though
revisionist history does deserve its negative connotation, right well yeah,
(17:44):
well yes, because well it's associated with highly contentious things.
So one of the biggest examples would be holocaust denialism. Um.
And we we don't just mean at least I don't
just mean, uh, denial of a holocaust in Europe, right,
because the German Holocaust is often the one that people
(18:09):
think of, but also the Armenian Holocaust, yeah, which is
still a subject of intense revisionism between Armenia and Turkey today.
Oh yeah. And you'll have people on either side of
that believe wholeheartedly that they're correct and the other side
is just lying and it's it's a Those are both
(18:30):
two really tough subjects that I hopefully we're not going
to be touching on too much, right yeah. And also, um,
well there's another example right all the way across the world.
We could just go back to Japan, uh, and the
idea that Japan was bullied into Pearl Harbor by the
United States and did the combat as a defensive measure,
(18:52):
that was forced to do this by you know, progressively
more prohibitive trade sanctions or embargo was right, and now
it's time that for us to do one of my
favorite parts of the show. Let's get weird with it, Nolan,
could we have some music. Here's where it gets crazy.
(19:13):
Historical revisionism the way we're talking about it right now,
which is very PC and very reasonable and very fox Molder.
You know, I just want to find the truth, right,
But there are people who want to revise the concept
of history of the human story so much so that
they think we have had gotten entire centuries wrong, as
(19:37):
in made them up. Yes, the phantom time hypothesis, it's
the idea that our timeline has some holes in it
that were filled in historically, just with some junk that
wasn't true, some ideas, some stories, the idea that the
ruling class made some changes to make us think that
(19:59):
we're in different year calendar year at least than we
actually are. Psych your mind, that's right. People used to
say that once upon a time. Yeah, it's it's strange
because you know, as you said, it's a group of theories. Uh.
This French jesuit named Jean how Don I'm totally mispronouncing
that by the way, uh, he started, He's the one
(20:23):
really dropped the beat on this first. Um. He believed
that art and literature from ancient Greece and Rome were
all forgeries in century and a lot of stuff that
we think happened in Greece, in Rome and those empires
never occurred. And other people believed him. That's right. Uh.
(20:45):
A Russian mathematician named Anatotly flamenco I he he in
the nineteen eighties. He really thought there was something to this.
So this guy, Flamenco he used he used this thing
statistical analysis, this to look at texts and mathematical ideas,
(21:06):
and even even though he's looking at astronomy astronomical observations
of the time, and he basically showed that this guy
wasn't very far off and that perhaps the Jesuits had
kind of forged up some of this stuff. But not
just European history, right, Oh no, no, you're looking at
Greek history, Roman history, Chinese, Arabic, even Egyptian history just
(21:29):
made it up. Let's well again, that's what this guy
is saying, right right, yeah, I'm not accusing you, okay, Um,
but there's there's even another one been. Oh yeah, the
more specific phantom time claimed that that you and I
talked about in our original episode. Uh, phantom time where
oh I got h I got one thing wrong and
(21:50):
this is my bad. I want to I'll annotate the
video on this because something I got wrong everyone should
know about. Uh. I say in there that North Korea
counts there years from the foundation in their country. Essentially
they counted from the birthday of Kim Il sung. So
that's a slight correction. Now I'll annotate, but you know,
as always welcome corrections, and we're really glad whenever we
(22:14):
get an opportunity to make the show better. So this
more specific phantom time claim that we mentioned in our
video is it comes from two Germans, heribert Illig and
Hans Ulyric Nemts. They think our current calendar was filled
with almost three hundred years of utter total absolute Matt
(22:34):
helped me out here, right, and uh, they think that
the Catholic Church did this for for different reasons. And
when it was two thousand and twelve, they thought was
seventeen fifteen. So we're recording in which means right now
they think it is two thousand or they think it
(22:54):
is seventeen seventeen. And don't forget that's just going by
the Gregorian calendar, right, Yeah, the Gregorian calendar one of
one of the many calendars that the people of the
world use. Right, that's right. It keeps us on track
relatively well. Um, I was adopted in fifteen eighty two
(23:16):
because primarily because the church wanted to keep Easter in
the right place. Well, yeah, that's one of the most
important dates his Easter. Right that if you don't have
that right, then what the heck do you have? Right? Right?
And previously the church had been using what was called
the Julian calendar system, and during this time Easter had
(23:39):
drifted for ten days. Right. The Julian system was simpler,
it had a leap year every four years, was also
less accurate. The guy who ordered this this is interesting
because this really is a little bit of phantom time, right.
The guy who ordered this Pope Gregory the Um one
(23:59):
day on October four fifty two. Then instead of going
to October five, they went straight to October. People went crazy, dude.
People were not happy. They felt like the pope was
stealing days from their lives. Literally, you know, some of
their concert tickets couldn't be refunded. I mean, it was
just bad. The eggs went bad. I mean, the plague
(24:22):
doctor is supposed to show up on the ninth good luck,
I guess this next year. But um, all jokes aside,
all jokes aside, this was something that really upset a
lot of people. And if you think about it, you know,
we practiced daylight saving time in many parts of the world,
and the it's still kind of weird when you feel
(24:43):
like you gained or lost an hour just because this
system of measurement we use has changed slightly. So anyway,
ill right, Yeah, So he's as he's looking back over
these eighty two years, he's he's counting up the leap years, right,
and he basically realizes that the ten day error that
they thought existed was actually too small, and it appears
(25:05):
to be a thirteen day error. And he said, there's
only one possible explanation. The only possible explanation is that
the Pope somehow faked three full centuries, almost full centuries
of recorded history. Yuh, classic Pope, classic Pope movement. Alright, Um,
I'm kidding. I'm not accusing the Pope of being some
(25:27):
sort of doctor Whovian time thief. But both of these camps,
these two camps of phantom timers that we mentioned, they're
not by any means the entire group of fringe theories
about this, but they have some things in common when
it comes to their claims. So they claim that there's
a lack of archaeological and documentary evidence from centuries in
(25:50):
the first millennium. And this is uh, they say, you know,
in these relics and artifacts and this corroberating evidence is
rare or doesn't exist because of the centuries never happened.
But um, this is often explained by saying there wasn't
very much construction or literature at the time, one thing,
(26:12):
because of the right yeah, right, which I think is
already kind of calling something the dark Ages. It's a
little bit of a sweeping generalization. But they also say that, um,
Charlemagne was made up. Yeah, yeah, I'm not not really
sure about that. So what's the idea they made him
(26:34):
up to or the Church made up Charlemagne in order
to support the existence of that century like that, that's
the whole reason that Charlemagne as a character existed, and
a lot of evidence from the time that does remain
is uh, you know, in some way related to Charlemagne.
So how fascinating would be if that was true. If
that was true, I would love it. There's a there's
(26:56):
a book. I can't remember the author's name, maybe Octovio
pa Is. No, I'm getting it wrong, but he wrote
a book named uh the same the same guy who
wrote for Co's Pendulum wrote a book called Bodolino, which
is about this this guy who works with his friends
to completely bs parts of history, you know, and they're
(27:17):
they're making up different Uh. This is not a spoiler.
One of the things they do very often is they
make fake relics of saints Knife and Baudolino, like Body
badela Um. But it's a good read for anyone who
wants to see a fairly tongue in cheek look at
(27:38):
how people treated history and accuracy. Uh. So the problem
with that kind of stuff is they're saying that the
absence of evidence is proof, right, what of the most
most of the world's other historians dismiss this because they say, well,
what about radiometric data? What about den dro chronology. Yeah,
(27:59):
dendro can chronology is the study of rings on a
tree to find the age, right, and and it's fairly simple.
You probably did it as a student somewhere or maybe
in some kind of scouting troop and count the rings
and that gives you the age. Yeah, exactly, And it's
and it's fairly reliable. Trees grow in a certain way.
(28:20):
You can also show you when a big event happened.
And the more sophisticated your analysis can be, the more
you can learn about the world around that tree at
the time it was alive. So then this guy Famenko,
he completely rejects the radiocarbon dating that was used UM.
Kind of he's pointing out it's the same thing that
(28:42):
young Earth creationists point out. All right, So the people
who believe that the Earth is only six thousand or
so years old, I don't know where where else to
go here, Ben, I don't I don't want I don't
want to offend anybody. But my personal belief is that
UM that the Earth is billions of years old. Yeah, understood. Well.
(29:03):
The reason that they use a similar method of disagreement here,
the creationist Dan Famenco is that specific radiometric dating UM
is only approximate, right, and and and it's only it
only really works for items have a certain age threshold
(29:24):
because the isotopes that are measured are they need to
be in certain proportions, So there has to be there's
a sweet spot for radiometric dating, right. So Famenco takes
it a step even further bean and he's alleging that
there's purposeful conspiring going on between these guys who are
doing the dating and the people who want to have
(29:48):
a different story or want to perpetuate the idea, the
archaeological powers that be rent working in concert with the
pope um. Also, this is not to mention the other
things Flamenco does address point by point many of the
prevailing rebuttals of his argument, right, or the proof that
(30:09):
time as we know it exists in the chronology in
which we know his idea is something called the new chronology.
And and this goes back to pseudo history. A lot
of people tell you as pseudo history. But he he
also mentions that the astronomy doesn't add up for him.
He has he has all these reasons. People say he's
(30:31):
cherry picking data. Um. However, the truth is, ultimately this
kind of stuff can't exactly beat disproven because of the
nature of the way the argument is constructed. And we
should mention that Anatoly Fomenco is uh crazy popular, especially
(30:52):
in Russia. He's published and sold over one million copies
of his books. Um. Other people have joined in on
the internet trying to help him. Uh So. Critics say
that his version of history has this sort of nationalist
Russian agenda, right, and people people like to read it
because history, as you said earlier, being bound into one's
(31:15):
identity makes you feel better about yourself. Definitely. So. Gary
Kasparov also likes Famenko. Yeah, you might remember that name.
He's a world chess champion. There are a couple other people,
but we don't have to go into all that. Um,
well we should. We should mention that one of the
(31:36):
things about the Dark Ages, it's just that so we
say that. We often say, we've heard that the Dark
Ages were time in which culture just dropped off right,
plagues left and right. People just had to deal with
what was right in front of him and trying to eat.
I don't have time to make a tapestry, you know
(31:58):
what I mean, that's the idea. Um And so Flamanco
and people who support him, like hasproff believe that this
stuff um that that's sort of a yellow flag about
the missing time, the phantom time, because of course nothing
happened because those centuries didn't happen, or in their view,
(32:19):
I guess maybe there's nothing recorded at that time because
it all got burned. M m m. That's true. But
at this point, with with all these with all these
things together, you and I have had a heck of
a time looking at history at large. You know, we
also talked about the theories regarding the Sphinx, which we
(32:41):
unfortunately don't have time to get into today. I think
it's its own podcast. What do you think? Oh, definitely.
I think Ancient Egypt and just the archaeology of Egypt
is a whole series maybe. And I want to be
completely fair and point out this um first off, Matt.
(33:01):
While I'm not convinced by Illeg's arguments and Fimenco's arguments,
I am entirely certain that within our lifetimes we are
going to weaving human beings, maybe you and I, maybe
you listeners, we will discover something that completely blows our
current understanding human history out of the water. We found
(33:25):
fossils of humans and your humans that sound like total
mythological clap trap when you when you mentioned it earlier.
You know, we found real life hobbits, student, they're real.
We found other versions of early Man. We have found
human civilizations thousands and thousands of years older than we
ever thought possible. So I think we're going to discover
(33:48):
more and more stuff. I I don't know if you
can suppress it. I don't know how you would, especially
with the Internet, if we can keep that open and
freec Yeah, But that question is how how will historical
revisionism work in the future when there's so many different
points of maintaining track of the history, of what current
(34:11):
events and what's going on. How is somebody going to
go through and change all of that? And is it
even possible now? Maybe if it's that's a very good question.
I don't know. You you know, you and I have
talked a lot about that, the ways in which the
ease of information is changing the human experience. Um, you know,
(34:34):
I'm sorry to go back on the SEC thing and
net neutrality, but if if only certain websites are able
to be reached at certain speeds, and then all of
the other ones that may be considered fringe or not
as trafficked or don't at least don't have enough money
to get into the Usain Bolt lane in in Okay.
(35:00):
So then all you'd have to do is control the
information that is inside the fast lane. Right, that's true.
So I don't know that. Maybe that's just something I
was thinking about yesterday. That's a really good point, because
I don't think it would be sustainable. This might be
some a story for another day. I don't I don't
know if it's sustainable to perpetrate that sort of inequality,
(35:22):
because what we're talking about then is an inequality of information,
a segregation of information, to be honest, and I'm not
I know that those could be loaded words for some people,
but that's what it is. It's kind of information apartheid.
And maybe not that the goal. Um, I think the
goal ultimately is going to be an opportunity to profit. Yeah,
(35:43):
I don't think it's necessarily in cities thing. But what
does something they would say, ben is is it? Yeah?
A s M I s M I said before. Maybe
you and I are secretly agents, right, I promise we're not.
If we are, we're still undercover that we don't know
where we're Manchurian candidates, or maybe we're like Manchurion interns.
That's it. So one line from skep Toy that I
(36:05):
thought was interesting is that the author said, these phantom
time hypotheses cannot be disproven because any evidence offered to
show that they're wrong is simply called fake or unreliable.
No evidence, it seems, no matter how well supported, is
good enough. And that's where I want to pass the
question on to our listeners. Do you think that the
(36:27):
current human understanding of history is right wrong on a
scale of one to ten, ten being perfect? You know
where where we at? Where do we fall? How do
we get closer to ten? That's really great man. If
you have any ideas, send them to us at Facebook
we are conspiracy Stuff. There were also at conspiracy Stuff
(36:50):
on Twitter. We would love to hear from you what
you have to say and what you think, because honestly
we don't quite know how we feel exactly. We'd love
to share some thoughts with you. Check out Stuff they
Don't want you to Know dot com. You can write
Facebook messages to us there, and lastly, go ahead and
uh send us an email if you want to. Our
addresses conspiracy at how stuff works dot com for more
(37:18):
on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon. Visit test tube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch
on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to Now, everybody,
welcome to the show on Matt and I'm Ben, and
today we're gonna look at the history of history and
(00:23):
the changes inside and of course the stuff they don't
want you to know. Matt, I started out when we
were working on this podcast beforehand. I started out wanting
to have a quotation about history. We've mentioned the Faulkner
quotation at nauseum. Uh, you know Bob Dylan's at the
(00:43):
times they are changing. And that's a pretty good one
because as we're going to see, history changes as often
as the present apparently. Um. But out of all those
quotations um inside of one of the best things that
I could do, at least is just start off with
the most basic thing. A definition of history. History the
(01:08):
study of past events, usually human events, right, Yeah, that's
what we usually mean, and the branch of knowledge dealing
with this. Um. People, being an inherently self interested species,
have always been interested in the past, the stories about ourselves. Yeah,
we're storytellers because we're the only animals that record in
(01:31):
any way the things that happened previously to us. Yeah,
well we're the only ones proven to do so. Yes, absolutely,
because you know, as we find, the first histories were
oral histories, right, the just told I would if I
was a person way back in the day and something
really interesting happening to me, involving a caribou and a
(01:54):
broken spear or something, I would want to express that
to my friends because I thought it was a really
fun and thing that happened, So I just tell them
or yeah. Or there could also be a song and
in that song someone has the lineage from which they derive,
you know, oh yeah, or a tale of gods and creation, Yeah, exactly.
(02:16):
And a lot of these things were mythical, right, They
were instructional things of one way or another. In some cases,
very very old histories contain uh values of a culture, right,
and history often back at this point in time, when
it was a world tradition, was one gigantic game of telephone. Now,
(02:39):
for our younger listeners, let's go ahead and say with
the game of telephone is okay, So the game of
telephone would be if there are a bunch of us
sitting in a circle and We started with let's say myself,
I told small story, maybe even just a sentence or two,
and then I would whisper it in the ear of
the person to my let's say left, and then that
(02:59):
would continue around until it got back to me, perhaps
a person sitting to my right, and then whatever that
person they would have to recite whatever it is that
they heard, and the change that occurs as it goes
around the circle. That is the game of telephone. Right. Yeah,
nobody really wins the game of telephone often too. I
suspected that there were people throwing a wrench in there
(03:23):
and purposefully saying something completely different. We're trying to make
it dirty. Yeah, isn't it weird that we just explained
telephone and there might actually be someone listening that had
never heard of that before. Uh, you know, I bet
it could happen, But I want to be honest. I
was one of those guys who would you know, when
I was in first or second grade, I would totally
(03:44):
switch up yeah, oh yeah, and then look to my
left and right when when they revealed the wrong message.
Classic bowling. I learned a lot. I become a little
bit of a better person, But the game of the
game of telephone is um instructive. It's a good framework
for us to look at the history of history, as
(04:07):
you said, right, So, uh, one thing that became known
as the first critical work of history that was written
down was called, in a burst of creativity, the histories
is by this uh, this cat named Herodotus. Right. Uh. Well,
here's the thing. It's full of errors, right, but it's
it's better than nothing. And this whole thing about stories
(04:29):
being full of errors, rife with exaggerations, outright fabrications and everything,
that was the rule instead of the exception for a
very very very very very long time. Well. Yeah, the
people writing these histories were a lot of time very
closely knit to the power structures at the time, no
matter what kind of power structure you have, So there's
(04:52):
a lot of times an attempt to make that guy
or that group look maybe a little better than they
actually or or a little bit worse. So exactly, that's why,
that's why we get all these strange, outlandish stories that
seem to make no sense at the time. Right. Uh.
(05:12):
For instance, the old canard that Napoleon was a really
short dude. No, there were slightly different measuring systems but
also it was a little bit of propaganda. Yeah he's
fairly short, but you know, it's like within average height
for that time. Um or the lurid tales, semi pornographic
tales that some um European writers would spin about the
(05:37):
New World and they would say, oh, yeah, hey, ladies
love me in South America, which isn't really true because
as we know, they were they were not there to uh,
they were not there to be friendly. So yeah, So
so basically a lot of times we think of history
as just this this known thing that occurred or known
(05:59):
set of things that occurred, and that's just how it is.
That's what happened on that date. Now we know, But
we we find more and more that it's more of
this weird amorphous conversation of of events that just continues,
and you can history gets changed past long long ago.
(06:21):
Past history gets changed all the time even now. Yeah,
like that thing that's happened recently about whether the Brontosaurus
is a dinosaur. That's a tough one for me to one.
I know, man, I know, but but I love that.
I love that you make that comparison, because, yeah, different
voices constantly interrupting each other, and anything. No, well, not anything,
(06:43):
but virtually anything could be up for grabs if evidence
that contradicts our accepted view comes in. And this is not,
by any means a new thing, and it's not, by
any means an outdated practice. Listeners, I assure you, regardless
of what country you were in, your country's history textbooks
(07:06):
are in in disagreement with at least several other countries textbooks.
That's not that's just the nature of the world. North
Korea's account of the Korean War is going to be way,
way different UH in comparison to even the Republic of
Korea or the United States. Of course, especially if you
(07:27):
look at big events like wars like World War Two.
The differences in oh my god, you were you were
saying something a while ago about Japan and China. He
had an earlier conversation. Their accounts World War Two are
hugely different, right, and create political tensions today are used
as an outlet for political tensions. Of course, it's no
(07:50):
surprise to anyone that Middle Eastern textbooks UH disagree on
quite a few things. And I don't mean just the
status of UH countries like Israel, or the role of
the Europe or the United States and colonization and UH
overthrowing governments, but also religious matters Shia Sunni and so on.
(08:14):
But I I don't have the means currently to read
textbooks um that are in in Arabic anything. But I'd
love to see the I guess the history of the
Crusades in that time. I'd love to see you with
the other what the other side of that story says? Yeah,
and uh Russian UH textbooks also would have a difference
(08:36):
in comparison to the rest of Europe. So so even now,
even now, what we're saying is that historians across the
world or countries across the world don't agree with each
other about what actually happened and why we are where
we are today. This leads us to the evolution of
(08:58):
historical study or the big question is this revisionist history
we're talking about or is it pseudo history? Pseudo history?
Is that is that completely made up? Is that what
pseudo is implying, Well, it's a yeah, pseudo is implying
that it is history. That it's a tall tale disguised
(09:22):
his history, made by people with an agenda or with
a pre existing conclusion. Right, So we saw a pseudo
we've seen pseudo history. Uh. Maybe one of the easiest examples,
which we've used before is in the early European explorers
(09:42):
of the African continent when they would say, oh, well,
here's the ruins of this great empire. I guess obviously
there was some white people living here at some point,
which is which just shows that even if it flies
in the face of all evidence, some people will never
sacrifice their pet theory for the facts. But then the
(10:06):
idea of revisionist history is a little bit different. Let's
get into that, all right. We've kind of talked about
the history of changing history already, Um, but it really
goes back to the to these ancient Greek and Roman
scholars that you're looking at Plutarch and uh Tacitus and
really people have been editing history. Again, it's kind of
(10:27):
what we've been talking about. But but modern historical revision,
this thing that we call historical revision that didn't originate
until the twentieth century and really was after the first
major global military conflicts, so World War One obviously, so
that's when there were multiple groups who wanted history to
(10:48):
reflect a certain you know story, right, Yeah, this is
where we start dealing with something you'll hear about often
in pr propaganda today, and that's the concept of narrative.
So how would we depict this conflict decades later? Right
for the children of the survivors, how did countries become
(11:09):
involved in the war contribute to it? Um As they
were starting to twiddle their fingers at the fringes of
this Gordian not historians realized that it was impossible to
be objective because even deciding what you should leave out
or put in becomes itself inherently subjective. Right, So we
(11:31):
know that historical revisionism has to occur because a researcher
can find a glaring inconsistency or something that's totally wrong.
Because let us not forget that for centuries people were
writing pretty much fictitious stuff and it was quoted as facts. So,
(11:51):
for instance, we mentioned a lot of things about US
history that are often misunderstood. Um, here's one you with
George Washington and cherry tree, pretty hard, concrete data that
he did not chop down a cherry tree and say
he couldn't tell a lie. It's a fun story. It's
a little bit weird that it's about. It's a it's
(12:12):
a lie about a guy being honest. You know, it
seems legendary. Yeah, that's a nice little Matroshka doll. Right,
But so okay, So here's the biggest thing for me.
History is it's just complicated. It's super complicated because everybody's
identity is connected up to their history, back to our
(12:33):
oral history days, right exactly. And you know, nobody wants
to look terrible. Everyone has a reputation and that goes
that goes out to from the individual person to a
group of people, to an entire state and the way
you feel about this group or state that you're a
part of. And nobody wants to be made a fool
(12:55):
or look bad or look like the evil bad guy. Yeah,
and uh, because of this, it can be tough to
navigate things. Going back to our example about China and Japan. Uh,
the the huge argument about comfort women, right, remember that one. Yeah,
and that is uh. That deals with the horrendous activities
(13:18):
of the Japanese Imperial Army during its invasion occupation of
Manchuria and other parts of China. Now, are we saying
that those were bad guys totally? Are we saying that
there were good guys in war. No, I don't know
if you can. I don't know if you can say
they're they're clear cut good guys, are good entities in
(13:42):
the war. But what we can say is that even now,
the status of what happened to these women is a
very hot button issue. And in um Japan, some politicians
leverage this. You could say their cynical or you could
say they really believe it, but they leverage this because
they don't want it to be a a loss of
(14:03):
face for the army or humiliating for the people that
are regarded often as heroes, you know what I mean.
So you have to be very careful how you look
at that. And historical revisionism usually does a couple of
different things. Um Or it has I guess lenses we
could think about. So it has a social or theoretical
(14:25):
perspective to re examine the past through a different framework.
So Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, Yeah,
I really enjoyed it, um People. One of the criticisms
I've heard before is that Howard Zenn has an agenda,
to which my answer is he clearly has an agenda. Right.
(14:46):
There's also a fact checking perspective that that you can
take to try and make corrections on some of the
errors that have been laid into history. Sure, yeah, uh.
And then there's also uh going back to that negative
perspective and the people who say, hey, it's not broke,
don't fix it. Why are you digging into all these
(15:08):
records about you know, Unit thirty one or whatever. Why
do you why do you care, uh what the United
States may or may not have done with Nazi scientists
after the war. Why are you trying to push your
I don't know it would be in that case, your
anti Nazi agenda, um, you know, your anti Catholic agenda.
(15:32):
If you say that they had ratlines helping people escape,
that is that's an interesting perspective to me. The idea
of going back through another country's history to try and
dig up dirt on them, I don't I don't often
think about that unless I'm thinking of from a spy
perspective or an intelligence perspective. Well, there's it's great that
(15:52):
you say that, because the historical revisionism or the um
the attempts to change the past through perpurgation, that it
her in things like four or in some instances in
the days of the s s R. These are things
that can really happen and can intentionally occur. Four, of course,
(16:14):
is fiction. But recently uh an event in China, the
anniversary of the A Tenement Square incidents, showed us that
historical revisionism in the negative sense is alive and well.
And then our video, one of our videos recently you
did that orwell quote that he who controls the president
(16:39):
controls the past, You controls the past, controls the future,
and it's scary because that's true. Funny story. Well, okay,
so to sew that up. Those are the three ways
in which historical revisionists can approach existing history. Right. Historians
like to refer to the years immediately after World War
Two as the age of his storeal Consensus, because people
(17:03):
were trying to build this concept, this meme of unified America, stronger,
number one, superpower, Get at me bro. That kind of
stuff didn't last long, last until about the sixties, and
then people started reading maybe no, I don't know, I
don't know. I couldn't tell you exactly what happened to
(17:24):
change that. I think that part of it would be
counterculture movements, and then also the struggle for quality in
the United States really gave lie to some of the
more rose tinted glass kind of stuff. And sometimes though
revisionist history does deserve its negative connotation, right well yeah,
(17:44):
well yes, because well it's associated with highly contentious things.
So one of the biggest examples would be holocaust denialism. Um.
And we we don't just mean at least I don't
just mean, uh, denial of a holocaust in Europe, right,
because the German Holocaust is often the one that people
(18:09):
think of, but also the Armenian Holocaust, yeah, which is
still a subject of intense revisionism between Armenia and Turkey today.
Oh yeah. And you'll have people on either side of
that believe wholeheartedly that they're correct and the other side
is just lying and it's it's a Those are both
(18:30):
two really tough subjects that I hopefully we're not going
to be touching on too much, right yeah. And also, um,
well there's another example right all the way across the world.
We could just go back to Japan, uh, and the
idea that Japan was bullied into Pearl Harbor by the
United States and did the combat as a defensive measure,
(18:52):
that was forced to do this by you know, progressively
more prohibitive trade sanctions or embargo was right, and now
it's time that for us to do one of my
favorite parts of the show. Let's get weird with it, Nolan,
could we have some music. Here's where it gets crazy.
(19:13):
Historical revisionism the way we're talking about it right now,
which is very PC and very reasonable and very fox Molder.
You know, I just want to find the truth, right,
But there are people who want to revise the concept
of history of the human story so much so that
they think we have had gotten entire centuries wrong, as
(19:37):
in made them up. Yes, the phantom time hypothesis, it's
the idea that our timeline has some holes in it
that were filled in historically, just with some junk that
wasn't true, some ideas, some stories, the idea that the
ruling class made some changes to make us think that
(19:59):
we're in different year calendar year at least than we
actually are. Psych your mind, that's right. People used to
say that once upon a time. Yeah, it's it's strange
because you know, as you said, it's a group of theories. Uh.
This French jesuit named Jean how Don I'm totally mispronouncing
that by the way, uh, he started, He's the one
(20:23):
really dropped the beat on this first. Um. He believed
that art and literature from ancient Greece and Rome were
all forgeries in century and a lot of stuff that
we think happened in Greece, in Rome and those empires
never occurred. And other people believed him. That's right. Uh.
(20:45):
A Russian mathematician named Anatotly flamenco I he he in
the nineteen eighties. He really thought there was something to this.
So this guy, Flamenco he used he used this thing
statistical analysis, this to look at texts and mathematical ideas,
(21:06):
and even even though he's looking at astronomy astronomical observations
of the time, and he basically showed that this guy
wasn't very far off and that perhaps the Jesuits had
kind of forged up some of this stuff. But not
just European history, right, Oh no, no, you're looking at
Greek history, Roman history, Chinese, Arabic, even Egyptian history just
(21:29):
made it up. Let's well again, that's what this guy
is saying, right right, yeah, I'm not accusing you, okay, Um,
but there's there's even another one been. Oh yeah, the
more specific phantom time claimed that that you and I
talked about in our original episode. Uh, phantom time where
oh I got h I got one thing wrong and
(21:50):
this is my bad. I want to I'll annotate the
video on this because something I got wrong everyone should
know about. Uh. I say in there that North Korea
counts there years from the foundation in their country. Essentially
they counted from the birthday of Kim Il sung. So
that's a slight correction. Now I'll annotate, but you know,
as always welcome corrections, and we're really glad whenever we
(22:14):
get an opportunity to make the show better. So this
more specific phantom time claim that we mentioned in our
video is it comes from two Germans, heribert Illig and
Hans Ulyric Nemts. They think our current calendar was filled
with almost three hundred years of utter total absolute Matt
(22:34):
helped me out here, right, and uh, they think that
the Catholic Church did this for for different reasons. And
when it was two thousand and twelve, they thought was
seventeen fifteen. So we're recording in which means right now
they think it is two thousand or they think it
(22:54):
is seventeen seventeen. And don't forget that's just going by
the Gregorian calendar, right, Yeah, the Gregorian calendar one of
one of the many calendars that the people of the
world use. Right, that's right. It keeps us on track
relatively well. Um, I was adopted in fifteen eighty two
(23:16):
because primarily because the church wanted to keep Easter in
the right place. Well, yeah, that's one of the most
important dates his Easter. Right that if you don't have
that right, then what the heck do you have? Right? Right?
And previously the church had been using what was called
the Julian calendar system, and during this time Easter had
(23:39):
drifted for ten days. Right. The Julian system was simpler,
it had a leap year every four years, was also
less accurate. The guy who ordered this this is interesting
because this really is a little bit of phantom time, right.
The guy who ordered this Pope Gregory the Um one
(23:59):
day on October four fifty two. Then instead of going
to October five, they went straight to October. People went crazy, dude.
People were not happy. They felt like the pope was
stealing days from their lives. Literally, you know, some of
their concert tickets couldn't be refunded. I mean, it was
just bad. The eggs went bad. I mean, the plague
(24:22):
doctor is supposed to show up on the ninth good luck,
I guess this next year. But um, all jokes aside,
all jokes aside, this was something that really upset a
lot of people. And if you think about it, you know,
we practiced daylight saving time in many parts of the world,
and the it's still kind of weird when you feel
(24:43):
like you gained or lost an hour just because this
system of measurement we use has changed slightly. So anyway,
ill right, Yeah, So he's as he's looking back over
these eighty two years, he's he's counting up the leap years, right,
and he basically realizes that the ten day error that
they thought existed was actually too small, and it appears
(25:05):
to be a thirteen day error. And he said, there's
only one possible explanation. The only possible explanation is that
the Pope somehow faked three full centuries, almost full centuries
of recorded history. Yuh, classic Pope, classic Pope movement. Alright, Um,
I'm kidding. I'm not accusing the Pope of being some
(25:27):
sort of doctor Whovian time thief. But both of these camps,
these two camps of phantom timers that we mentioned, they're
not by any means the entire group of fringe theories
about this, but they have some things in common when
it comes to their claims. So they claim that there's
a lack of archaeological and documentary evidence from centuries in
(25:50):
the first millennium. And this is uh, they say, you know,
in these relics and artifacts and this corroberating evidence is
rare or doesn't exist because of the centuries never happened.
But um, this is often explained by saying there wasn't
very much construction or literature at the time, one thing,
(26:12):
because of the right yeah, right, which I think is
already kind of calling something the dark Ages. It's a
little bit of a sweeping generalization. But they also say that, um,
Charlemagne was made up. Yeah, yeah, I'm not not really
sure about that. So what's the idea they made him
(26:34):
up to or the Church made up Charlemagne in order
to support the existence of that century like that, that's
the whole reason that Charlemagne as a character existed, and
a lot of evidence from the time that does remain
is uh, you know, in some way related to Charlemagne.
So how fascinating would be if that was true. If
that was true, I would love it. There's a there's
(26:56):
a book. I can't remember the author's name, maybe Octovio
pa Is. No, I'm getting it wrong, but he wrote
a book named uh the same the same guy who
wrote for Co's Pendulum wrote a book called Bodolino, which
is about this this guy who works with his friends
to completely bs parts of history, you know, and they're
(27:17):
they're making up different Uh. This is not a spoiler.
One of the things they do very often is they
make fake relics of saints Knife and Baudolino, like Body
badela Um. But it's a good read for anyone who
wants to see a fairly tongue in cheek look at
(27:38):
how people treated history and accuracy. Uh. So the problem
with that kind of stuff is they're saying that the
absence of evidence is proof, right, what of the most
most of the world's other historians dismiss this because they say, well,
what about radiometric data? What about den dro chronology. Yeah,
(27:59):
dendro can chronology is the study of rings on a
tree to find the age, right, and and it's fairly simple.
You probably did it as a student somewhere or maybe
in some kind of scouting troop and count the rings
and that gives you the age. Yeah, exactly, And it's
and it's fairly reliable. Trees grow in a certain way.
(28:20):
You can also show you when a big event happened.
And the more sophisticated your analysis can be, the more
you can learn about the world around that tree at
the time it was alive. So then this guy Famenko,
he completely rejects the radiocarbon dating that was used UM.
Kind of he's pointing out it's the same thing that
(28:42):
young Earth creationists point out. All right, So the people
who believe that the Earth is only six thousand or
so years old, I don't know where where else to
go here, Ben, I don't I don't want I don't
want to offend anybody. But my personal belief is that
UM that the Earth is billions of years old. Yeah, understood. Well.
(29:03):
The reason that they use a similar method of disagreement here,
the creationist Dan Famenco is that specific radiometric dating UM
is only approximate, right, and and and it's only it
only really works for items have a certain age threshold
(29:24):
because the isotopes that are measured are they need to
be in certain proportions, So there has to be there's
a sweet spot for radiometric dating, right. So Famenco takes
it a step even further bean and he's alleging that
there's purposeful conspiring going on between these guys who are
doing the dating and the people who want to have
(29:48):
a different story or want to perpetuate the idea, the
archaeological powers that be rent working in concert with the
pope um. Also, this is not to mention the other
things Flamenco does address point by point many of the
prevailing rebuttals of his argument, right, or the proof that
(30:09):
time as we know it exists in the chronology in
which we know his idea is something called the new chronology.
And and this goes back to pseudo history. A lot
of people tell you as pseudo history. But he he
also mentions that the astronomy doesn't add up for him.
He has he has all these reasons. People say he's
(30:31):
cherry picking data. Um. However, the truth is, ultimately this
kind of stuff can't exactly beat disproven because of the
nature of the way the argument is constructed. And we
should mention that Anatoly Fomenco is uh crazy popular, especially
(30:52):
in Russia. He's published and sold over one million copies
of his books. Um. Other people have joined in on
the internet trying to help him. Uh So. Critics say
that his version of history has this sort of nationalist
Russian agenda, right, and people people like to read it
because history, as you said earlier, being bound into one's
(31:15):
identity makes you feel better about yourself. Definitely. So. Gary
Kasparov also likes Famenko. Yeah, you might remember that name.
He's a world chess champion. There are a couple other people,
but we don't have to go into all that. Um,
well we should. We should mention that one of the
(31:36):
things about the Dark Ages, it's just that so we
say that. We often say, we've heard that the Dark
Ages were time in which culture just dropped off right,
plagues left and right. People just had to deal with
what was right in front of him and trying to eat.
I don't have time to make a tapestry, you know
(31:58):
what I mean, that's the idea. Um And so Flamanco
and people who support him, like hasproff believe that this
stuff um that that's sort of a yellow flag about
the missing time, the phantom time, because of course nothing
happened because those centuries didn't happen, or in their view,
(32:19):
I guess maybe there's nothing recorded at that time because
it all got burned. M m m. That's true. But
at this point, with with all these with all these
things together, you and I have had a heck of
a time looking at history at large. You know, we
also talked about the theories regarding the Sphinx, which we
(32:41):
unfortunately don't have time to get into today. I think
it's its own podcast. What do you think? Oh, definitely.
I think Ancient Egypt and just the archaeology of Egypt
is a whole series maybe. And I want to be
completely fair and point out this um first off, Matt.
(33:01):
While I'm not convinced by Illeg's arguments and Fimenco's arguments,
I am entirely certain that within our lifetimes we are
going to weaving human beings, maybe you and I, maybe
you listeners, we will discover something that completely blows our
current understanding human history out of the water. We found
(33:25):
fossils of humans and your humans that sound like total
mythological clap trap when you when you mentioned it earlier.
You know, we found real life hobbits, student, they're real.
We found other versions of early Man. We have found
human civilizations thousands and thousands of years older than we
ever thought possible. So I think we're going to discover
(33:48):
more and more stuff. I I don't know if you
can suppress it. I don't know how you would, especially
with the Internet, if we can keep that open and
freec Yeah, But that question is how how will historical
revisionism work in the future when there's so many different
points of maintaining track of the history, of what current
(34:11):
events and what's going on. How is somebody going to
go through and change all of that? And is it
even possible now? Maybe if it's that's a very good question.
I don't know. You you know, you and I have
talked a lot about that, the ways in which the
ease of information is changing the human experience. Um, you know,
(34:34):
I'm sorry to go back on the SEC thing and
net neutrality, but if if only certain websites are able
to be reached at certain speeds, and then all of
the other ones that may be considered fringe or not
as trafficked or don't at least don't have enough money
to get into the Usain Bolt lane in in Okay.
(35:00):
So then all you'd have to do is control the
information that is inside the fast lane. Right, that's true.
So I don't know that. Maybe that's just something I
was thinking about yesterday. That's a really good point, because
I don't think it would be sustainable. This might be
some a story for another day. I don't I don't
know if it's sustainable to perpetrate that sort of inequality,
(35:22):
because what we're talking about then is an inequality of information,
a segregation of information, to be honest, and I'm not
I know that those could be loaded words for some people,
but that's what it is. It's kind of information apartheid.
And maybe not that the goal. Um, I think the
goal ultimately is going to be an opportunity to profit. Yeah,
(35:43):
I don't think it's necessarily in cities thing. But what
does something they would say, ben is is it? Yeah?
A s M I s M I said before. Maybe
you and I are secretly agents, right, I promise we're not.
If we are, we're still undercover that we don't know
where we're Manchurian candidates, or maybe we're like Manchurion interns.
That's it. So one line from skep Toy that I
(36:05):
thought was interesting is that the author said, these phantom
time hypotheses cannot be disproven because any evidence offered to
show that they're wrong is simply called fake or unreliable.
No evidence, it seems, no matter how well supported, is
good enough. And that's where I want to pass the
question on to our listeners. Do you think that the
(36:27):
current human understanding of history is right wrong on a
scale of one to ten, ten being perfect? You know
where where we at? Where do we fall? How do
we get closer to ten? That's really great man. If
you have any ideas, send them to us at Facebook
we are conspiracy Stuff. There were also at conspiracy Stuff
(36:50):
on Twitter. We would love to hear from you what
you have to say and what you think, because honestly
we don't quite know how we feel exactly. We'd love
to share some thoughts with you. Check out Stuff they
Don't want you to Know dot com. You can write
Facebook messages to us there, and lastly, go ahead and
uh send us an email if you want to. Our
addresses conspiracy at how stuff works dot com for more
(37:18):
on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon. Visit test tube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch
on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
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