From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They called me Bed. We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul Mission Control Decat most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Tonight's episode is going to be a little bit different. It's a meditation, an extended conversation about themes we had explored in earlier evenings. You know, the future of censorship. We did that a few years ago, and then the idea of whether any book should be banned.
And I believe in that conversation all three of us walked way saying, well, we're against censorship, but yeah, maybe some books shouldn't be out there.
Yeah, like you know, a list of procedures in assassinating somebody and disposing of a body, you know, things like that, probably not great, or just recipes for bombs.
Maybe not the best.
But also you can argue that it's just like it's just it's sort of like we have the old rules of the head shops back in the day. This is only for tobacco use, right, It's all on how you use it well.
And today we're talking about the dangers of books, words, concepts, and ideas that are written that are potentially very dangerous for the future. But they're mostly written about the past.
That's correct. We are exploring something related. It's a consequence of what you can call narrative control. Companning books help people empower control the past. Is it possible that powerful forces in the modern day can literally erase history, rewriting it to suit their own ends. As George Orwell famously said, who controls the past controls the future in nineteen eighty four, and you know, maybe nineteen eighty four isn't so long ago, and maybe nineteen eighty four is or Well saw it
is on the way as we record. Here are the facts. Look, there's another great book that's kind of about this or involves this, by the legendary author Neil Stephenson. It's called Anathem. In both of those books, these very shadowy, very potent forces conspire to control everything the public knows about the past. We've always been at war with East Asia. We've also always been at war with Eurasia. And you know, you'll just have the double think your way around it in
anathem without spoiling it too much. A renegade or secretive cabal of monks. They're a little less sinister, they're greater good type dudes, but they're no less powerful. And it's strange because these are both works of fiction for now, but they point toward a very real thing, this ongoing debate about history and who owns it.
Well.
I think it's interesting too.
We've been doing a lot of these kind of book and media recommendations on the Instagram and youtubes and stuff, and I think one thing that I think we all probably think about when we're recommending a book, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, is whether or not it gives you It empowers you as a reader to kind of reset your thinking around these types of questions. You know, who controls the narrative? You know, nineteen eighty four is a
work of fiction, but more prescient now than ever. You could argue that in some ways works of fiction can be just as dangerous, if not more so, as works of nonfiction. For those in power, because they do have the ability to kind of change minds, even if it's just a little bit over time.
Sure, same reason music gets banned pretty often. It's weird. Okay. So our word for the day or word for the evening is such a very English language word. Historiography history, graphy, history, history of history. It's the study of history and the methodology of history as a discipline. So it's like it's like studying the tech. It's like not studying the symbolism of tarot cards, but studying the margins of printing that were used on tarot cards throughout history.
It's very tough.
Oh, very nice. Hey you guys. I just learned the collective noun for historians. Ooh, and I'm just going to shout out before I even say what it is. I want to shout out James M. Banner Junior, who wrote a book titled The Ever Changing Past why all history is revisionist history? But he states the collective down for historians is an argumentation.
Ooh, well, see it's my perspective, right.
I mean, you know, we all see things and experience things and process things differently. Something that isn't happening right now that we're not looking at as it occurs. There is inherently within the retelling a bias, and I guess you could argue that the best historian sort of throw that are better at, you know, contending with that bias. But I love that. I think that actually is the
best way I've heard it described. That it is sort of like, well, here's this school of thought, here's this school of thought, here's the way we think.
It went down.
But it's not even about an argument over event, it's about what they mean.
Yeah, it also reminds me. I try not to quote it too often, but it also reminds me of that William Faulkner quote the past is never dead, it's not even the past. Something like that. It's true. And we have to love the English language other you know, it feels like peak English to have a word heard about historian studying history. And as meta and weirdly extra as that sounds, it's extremely important now more than ever to steal the line from Fox News. Understanding the objective truth
of the past. It's a pretty tricky thing and it always has been, I mean for thousands of years, right, basically since people started peopling. They've disagreed on various narratives, various aspects of origin, stories, explanations of the natural world, what happens when object A meets object B, all kinds of stuff, and increasingly some members of humanity started to lie about some facts, to bend some truths for agendas of their own. And it didn't start out, it didn't
start out as a purposeful conspiracy. There was no malevolence. I mean, we talk about this some ridiculous history. We've talked about it here. Back in the day, people disagreed about what we consider objective facts at this point. And they weren't stupid, they weren't evil. They just didn't have access to the same kind of information we have access to today.
You mean, like in terms of religious explanations for history and religious explanations for the way the world works.
Yeah, man like, And that might be a hot take for some folks, but let's explore it together. Imagine way way back, thousands of years ago, just hypothetical tribes. There's a tribe in one part of the world, say they're way up in the mountains. They have a completely different understanding of the past than another tribe hundreds of miles away in the plains in the valleys. To your point, they have very different religious beliefs, different socioeconomic practices. And
imagine now they meet for the first time. This is for them, this is like meeting aliens, and they're trying to communicate, right, they have their best intentions. They're telling each other the fundamental, inarguable truth of the world as they see it. And each person in that conversation, each side they think the other one is crazy. Yeah, of course, there are lots of gods. The sun is the main god. People always came from mud mixed with water, and the
other guys like you, ding bat. Yeah, sure, the sun is a god, it is not the main, dude, by any stretch. And if you don't know that you come from corn, then you must not be human. As a matter of fact, this lake belongs to us, now wow.
Well yeah, well, And then imagine that escalates into those two tribes fighting and essentially obliterating each other. Right, so
there's not much left of either one. Then imagine, you know, an historian or an anthropologist or somebody stumbles upon this scene, let's say a thousand years later, maybe just one hundred years later, and sees what's left on that battlefield, what's left of the houses, the writing that's in the houses, and you know, then has to interpret what happened because nobody's there to say, oh, this group and this group
they disagreed over some stuff and they all died. The historian or the anthropologist has to make stuff up basically or interpret the signs, read the tea leaves that are there, and also is applying their own understanding of the world to that situation.
Right, absolutely well put, because then and where these are all hypotheticals. But then imagine in that case, the historian looking into this or the archaeologists looking into this, they say, well, I study arrowheads, and so my paper is going to be about the tremendous role that arrowheads played in both of these civilizations. Now that's not wrong, but that might be making the wrong thing the main character. If that makes sense. Sure, so it happens, and it happens again
with good intentions. Histories not set in stone as we record. It's true, governments have suppressed archaeological digs in the past. Humanity has lost entire cities. Concepts like phantom time still get a lot of attention, which I absolutely love.
You're living in the seventeen hundreds right now. I saw that on Instagram's reels like yesterday.
Wasn't that in the plot of an m Night Shaymalan movie too? Or maybe that was a little different.
It's village similar. Yeah, I like the village.
Yeah, it's fine. And I also liked his new one, The What the Cabin at the End of the World.
I preferred the book much more like the I think the film missed some things.
It sort of romanticized some things and did a little bit of an easier to digest ending but by Paul Tremblay, who apparently listens to the show and reposted a video that we we posted about one of his books, which was very sweet. I wanted to mention too, Ben, how do you feel that this figures into like and I know we'll probably get into this in terms of the history of it, like you know, the South, the perspective of you know, who won the war and all that.
I mean, we know who won the war, but in certain parts of the country there are things in history books that might be soft pedaled a little bit. But what about that whole debate over like should evolution be included in science books? You know, in places that are maybe governed a little bit more by more religious kind of thinking.
Yeah, yeah, we're going to get to that in depth. I think, like the crazy thing here is, for thousands of thousands of years, people didn't really know what the heck was going on scientifically, so you had to have a cultural framework, usually religious. And now after millennia, human beings today do have a little bit better idea of what happened in the past, a little bit better and a big part of that success, yeah, it came from
advances in technology. But I would pause it to your question that perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle was the removal of religion and ideology from the realm of science. Now, all of a sudden, you don't have to bend objective discoveries to suit the narratives of people or institutions and power. Now you can just tell the truth. You can be like, hey, Earth orbits the sun, and people won't execute you, which is a big win.
People won't execute you just for like expressing that, right right, Yeah, Yeah.
But isn't that interesting, though, Ben?
I mean, I think it goes without saying that We've talked about it a lot, that that kind of perspective. Just speaking it into the world is such a threat to the powers that be, you know, in a time where we were living, you know, in a heliocentric view of the world or whatever, or like flat Earth or whatever. I like, when someone breaks those norms and speaks out and has credibility behind them, that is dangerous.
Yeah, it's weird. It makes me guys. I just recently watched the twenty sixteen movie Arrival.
Academy very very good, yea beautiful.
Super good. And I'm gonna throw a spoiler in right here, So if you have not seen the movie Arrival, do yourself a favor and skip forward fifteen seconds. That movie is amazing because in the end, the weapon that the extraterrestrials are attempting to give to humanity is a language, a language that allows the mind whoever can wield that language to see time differently, right, And so it's literally I'm just thinking. The reason I'm thinking about this is
just language as a weapon when wielded. When when you use history as your like medium, or I don't know your battle your battlefield, I.
Guess this, Felu. No, No, you're right, you're right.
It just feels like that. I don't know, I don't know why I got one of those visions. Amy Adams gets visions right.
You hit it right in the head.
I mean, that is exactly what that movie is trying to express. I think, is that the biggest, the greatest weapon of all can be language. There's even like a dumb money Python sketch about like this weaponized joke that's so funny that at any time it's used, it kills anyone that hears it, and they have to like keep it in parts, and one time accidentally someone got both parts and it killed a whole room of generals or whatever.
I just think that's great satire, and you know, and the Villanov movie is just taking that to the next level and making it about like time and space and our place in the universe.
And without sounding like a broken record. The short story it's based on is also really good, and the Arrival is really faithful adaptation of it.
Yeah.
I think in a previous episode we may mention that language is technology. Language is one of the oldest technologies, quite possibly predating fire right, which is still pretty popular. So our idea is that you don't ideally you no
longer have to bend the truth. You no longer have to dilute the objective veracity of a thing to please a power structure, or do you The question tonight is could powerful people or institutions in the present day, could they control narratives such that they alter the public's understanding of history? And if they are doing that, if that is the case, then why at this point maybe we pause for a word from our sponsors and get into some deep water that will be edited years later. Here's
where it gets crazy. Okay, so what do you think? And people still rewrite the past.
It's happening all the time before our very eyes.
People rewrite last week, people rewrite yesterday. It's it's it's rhetoric. It's absolutely happening now more than ever, and it's easier to do because of the Internet. And people just kind of believe the take that they see when they see it.
Yeah. I In writing for The New York Times, Max Fisher back in January of this year, he talked about right now, there are a bunch of leaders, both autocratic and democratic alike, who are attempting to shift narratives in the public sphere of actual historical events right to and they're doing this to benefit themselves, whether it's in an election or whether it's in you know, keeping their own
power in a country. And it's happening more and more and more, and it seems to be more and more effective, you know, at a way to sway a populace.
Oh yeah, yeah. And then go to this this real banger of a scholarly paper called Power, Freedom and the Censorship of History, which aligns with the New York Times article you side of Matt. It's by a guy named Professor Antune Debates from the Netherlands. And this guy also says, you know, you can't be too precious about your current ideological identifications because quote censorship of history has been practiced in all modes, genres, fields, categories, and periods of history,
and in all countries. To begin with, it ranges over all modes of the historiographical operation. All right, Well, lost the translation at the end, but there's the end.
Well, it's true that that guy I mentioned earlier who
wrote a book, James M. Banner Junior. One of the first points he makes in his book and he wrote a really great piece you can find right now for the National Endowment for the Humanities he talks about the first historical revisionism literally occurred the first time a couple of guys in ancient Greece got around to figure out what history is and like basically define it and change just the past, you know, things that happened, to the stories of the things that happened.
It was wild man. Oh, that must have been such a time being in historian back then, because you could just say I heard about it, and you know, none of you reading this are going to leave thirty miles from where you were born. So this is what a hippo looks like, you know what I mean?
Well, yeah, and this is my interpretation of what is actually in the Iliad and the historical events surrounding the myth that is that thing, Right.
Ben, you brought a really incredible book that I'd heard talked about for years but it never actually seen it to one of these video shoots we did the other day, the Codex Sarafineous. I believe it's called right, yeah, you're.
A weird pronunciation, Sarah.
Point is it's this completely legit looking tomb of presumably history, science, drawings.
All of this, but it's but it's all Bolt.
Beautiful Bolt it's all art man, it's.
But my point is, like I think there was a time even where some people were like the thought it was some kind of artifact or whatever.
You know.
I don't know if that was the intent, like Blair witch marketing style or whatever, but I think the point is with any kind of retelling, if you say it with enough authority, and you say it enough times and you make it feel legitimate enough enough people are gonna believe it. They're gonna repeat it, sure, and then then it's just gonna keep carrying on. And then you have
these conflicting narratives. But now, because it's so easy to proliferate false narratives, there's so many one of them floating out around there, and you really have to do your due diligence to figure out which one's at least somewhat close to the truth.
And that is quickly becoming a full time profession. This paper from eight, just like the Banner junior book that you're citing there, met this paper is pretty fascinating because it's like an insult comic. It's no holds barred, it's not married to any particular political ideology. This guy looks at different regimes power structures to determine what people are allowed to know about their past. And of course we all know dictators, autocrats, demagogues, they're going to be big,
big fans of censorship and control. But we cannot make the mistake in assuming that democracies are necessarily better. He breaks down the process of how this stuff happens. And these are two rough categories. There's pre censorship, which is one of the Well, that's the one. I think that's the sleeper hit. Maybe we describe what we mean by pre censorship.
Oh, I'll tell you what the in my head, what I see the movie Good Morning Vietnam, And there are twins that work in the censorship room where any and all intel that's coming into the radio station or the base where the radio station is. They decide what can or cannot be told right as news. And for me, that's true, that's all real. I mean, it's based on real events. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a telling. It's historical revisionism about the actual people like Adrian Cronauer.
But still what I'm what I mean is I see those two guys in my head, like deciding what can go out there. But I guess that's just censorship. What is pre censorship?
That's more like having your work pre tweaked before it even is released. It's not banning books. It's augmenting things like manuscripts or like a press releases or public statements.
And this really happens. We know, this happens, you know, I mean less so with books.
But you might have a situation where you're writing a tell all and you've got some source and it's a real risk to include that source in a certain way. So your public might be pre censoring.
Some of that.
But that's not quite the same, But that is an example that could happen in real life.
No, I think it's very much the same, you know, because pre censorship, when successful, is invisible to the public.
That's right.
It's also not just cutting off at the past a paper written before it publishes, also cutting off at the past a direction of research. These are very interesting ideas, but I am under the impression you would like to continue your career at the university.
So we're really that your research, but we are going to take that research pop it over here to our Darbale I mean our secret government.
Vintion Secrecy Act. Yeah, cough cough. So this and like you said, it gets tweaked. Things are kept secret, maybe they're destroyed, maybe the authors are threatened. That makes total
sense for dictatorships. But also to that point you made before anybody in the US gets on our high horse about this, we have to remember that if you're a former intelligence agent in the United States, you have to jump through a lot of hoops before you make a public statement, before you publish a book, like Jake Hanrahan said, or Pal Jake, I don't know if those people really retire, you know what I mean. So then there's the other one. Obviously,
this is the more famous of the two. Post censorship. Something comes out, it gets banned because it's either it's dangerous for some reason, whether that's threatening the status quo, whether that is putting a group of people in a community at risk, you know, or it might just be changed.
Yeah, I think about just restricting access to certain websites or search key terms or you know, things that you could do to control the Internet nowadays as a way to take part in post censorship.
Or like what happened with that Goofy seth Rogen movie where they had the you know, Kim jong Il's face being melted off. Remember, there was some presensorship involved in that because they didn't want it to cause an international incident. But then the movie ended up being just so much less remarkable and offensive than anyone might have thought. And and then it got more boost probably from all the talk of censorship than about anything that was actually in the movie.
But there was post censorship too, right, Like.
There was, but maybe I'm misremembering, but I do feel like there was some demand to like, you know, censor what was in there before it came out. And also, by the way, I mean, we know this happens all the time in other countries with American films, like I believe, like in the Barbie movie, there's a map that was showing some ben you're nodding, I think, you know, you know, this is the geopolitical thing, but it was like a
territory that was in dispute Vietnam. Perhaps it was showing this thing, this body of land as part of a country that that was in dispute or something like that. And to that point, they were like, you know, enraged, and they insisted they wouldn't release it unless that was taken out.
Yeah, the map controversies there. There's also a standing policy, going back to our episode on the Chinese film industry, there's a standing policy not to depict other countries' landmarks or there are a lot of rules around it. So if the statue of liberty is in a film, then that gets worked around.
Don't they have a policy against ghosts? Yes? Two? Is that a thing that I means? Okay, that's wild? Any more specific?
Uh, that's in the in the episode. What we talk about there is sort of their reasoning behind these things. Right, we'd have to get back into it, but if you're interested in learning more, please do check out our episode on the Chinese film industry. It's a eye opening and here's hoping we can still clear customs.
By the way, if you're interested in that Barbie map thing, look up nine dash line. That is a very specific thing.
And it was Vietnam who bannit.
Yeah, apparently the movie Crimson Peak didn't get released in China because it had too many spooky ghosts in it, and like Ghostbusters, never got released in China. It's a long standing party line, the communist party line not to depict. I think it must have to do with ancestor worship kind of stuff that they.
Say it's disrespectful, Yeah, ancestor warship. And then tamping down religion in favor of atheism, because what was it? Was it old old Mao. Uncle Mao said that religion is opiate for the masses, or his administration did. So if if something is supernatural that see, that might be a little too close to the line of religion. But anyway, this this kind of stuff post censorship, pre censorship, it makes sense for dictators.
Uh.
And I do want to point out poor Ghostbusters too. It's an amazing film, but it has two strikes against it. First it's got ghost and then spoilers. The statue of liberty plays a huge role. Oh no, how is the policy on ooze okay? With I think they're I think they're fine with Oo's. I think they're Ooh's neutral. So here's the way to put it. And I was up late when I was thinking of this, so it might wax a little poetic. But if you were a dick natorial regime, then propaganda is kind of your loud gun
and censorship is your knife. It's silent, but they are both dangerous and they're both used to keep people in line. And while you might not see academics popping Kalishnikov's or aks in the trenches, make no mistake, they are always going to be some of the first people targeted in a coup, in a military coup, especially for good reason,
along with journalists, along with authors. I mean, shout out to the numerous If you don't think nerds can throw down, shout out to the numerous Central and Latin American academics who became revolutionaries to fight fascism and to fight honestly, a lot of US supported forces. You don't hear their stories often because those are, to quote Al Gore inconvenient truths. He help, I'm being suppressed exactly.
We did a lot of study on Fidel Castro up a while ago, but honestly, I didn't learn a ton about his personal history, and that's just making me think I want to learn more about that and learn more about FARK and some of these other groups. It's like the history of the individual leaders because I do not know that stuff.
Yeah, yeah, well, I wish luck on your journey, Matt. They're not perfect people, oh.
Who is right? But again, like there's not a single human being on this planet. It's perfect. Sorry, that's how we're that's how we're born.
It was a perfect phone call.
It was.
Me.
Yeah, you know, mister Rogers probably like haunted somewhat in traffic. So I guess because we all got to aim for something. We'll see if the Rico lass stands up now that itself is being eroded.
So of your theory there, but maybe not the time, but immediately interesting what better time.
I mean, just a quick sidebar. There's a Rico case being against a lot.
Of the opposition to this whole cop city movement here in Atlanta, and it's I don't even understand how they're using it, but.
There it's a clearly egregious use of Rico law. To be absolutely transparent about this, I think we can speak as a unified show here we support the stop cop City movement. Militarization of police has led to many, many things in the past, and none of those things have been good.
That's what's kind off we're talking about here too, that that militarizerization of the police is what allows nineteen eighty four totalitarian type situations to flourish. And what's happening is these people are being targeted literally for spreading information, for trying to protest a thing, for you know, activating people
resigning a petition. So Ben's theory is, though that they're using this, that it may well be such an egregious misuse that another very prominent use of RICO law might be called into.
Ques right erode the credibility of RICO and we'll see how that works out. Look forward to your thoughts on that. Just objectively would that work anyway? There are tons of examples of people controlling history as we record. To your point, Matt, ask Cuba what they think led to those US embargoes, you know, get their side of the story. Read the North Korean version of what the US calls the Korean War. In DPRK they call it the Fatherland Liberation War. So
you can already see there's some dividing narratives. You'll hear a very different version of that than the one you hear in South Korea. Are okay or the or the rest of the world. And to that question all about the Civil War, this trend applies to pretty much any war in history then and tonight. That's why we did that episode on textbooks.
Well, yeah, that's why in Britain the Revolutionary War is titled the Peasant Uprising the pesky Peasants seventeen hundreds.
So inconvenient those peasants with their needs for bread and water, ab sustenance and shelter.
Ough, And it goes so small too. Just to light in the mood a little bit, you can go to almost any historical article about the Middle East ernie, oh god forbid, any geopolitical article about the Middle East. You can go to the Wikipedia entry and click on the talk tab and just bring some popcorn because people are still fighting over that. And then even it goes even unto food, because food is a huge part of culture. Ask people who invented what particular dish? Who can claim hummus?
Who is the first to knock that lemon in those chickpeas together?
Oh man, I can't remember who it was, but it was somebody like a food historian, or maybe it was literally just like a chef on the Splendid Table or Milk Street or one of those NPR shows, and they were talking about that exact thing, about how like there it's impossible because these things are part of the oral tradition. They're carried around you know, and they're they're made, they're improved and changed and by the time it gets to
the final form, like whatever that even is. You know, no one knows who actually really truly invented the thing.
Not to mention like that.
You know, chicken tika masala is the national dish of the UK.
That's just that's freaking imperialism.
It's so good to me. Well, that makes me think.
Of like who won colonialism. I was talking with a I was talking with an Indian American friend of mine about this. She was in town recently, and uh, and you know, we had to point it out. She spent some time in the UK as well. We had to point out, what does it say about regional British cuisine that your national dish is from India? You know what I mean. It's it's a statement, no offense. One of my favorite restaurants does kind of reimagine British cuisine, Saint John's out in London.
Someone imagining it kind of terrible on itself.
Shout out to Fergus Henderson. Also, he's an awesome writer.
You can either have chicken tacon masala or spotted dick you chuse, Yeah, I think.
They shot themselves in the foot a little bit with the names you know what I mean, barley water, what did I do wrong? Bangers and or mash So another example would be palm free, don't call them French fries in Belgium. And these things might seem innocuous, but it goes much much further into much more dangerous waters of cultural erasure. Humans have only ever been the sum of the stories they tell themselves, and as a result, those
stories are extremely important. They're mission critical to any government from the ancient past to the modern day. A government is just made up of humans so far, and so also in a large part, it is a story it tells its collective self. Shout out to the American dream, right, That's one of the most popular narratives around here. And
this makes us think about the historical trends. We've only name checked a few examples, but there are many, many, many, many other examples, virtually countless because this is so common, and why should we care? Why should we care? In twenty twenty three, we'll take a pause for a word from our sponsor and we'll tell you. And we have returned these examples, Like we said, they're part of a larger, sadly recurrent trend through all cultures, all civilizations, all time periods.
No single country has gotten away clean. Everyone, every force at some point has told you a story that they prefer you to believe. And it used to be much simpler. You know, if you wanted to retroactively edit history, you just had to kill the people who were there when it happened, right.
Yes, pretty simple, Just eradicate a bunch of people, or it's not maybe it's not that many people, maybe it's just one.
And when the written word arrived, things got a little more complicated. You had to create a class system and restrict access to literacy, right, A priestly class, a noble class, a monastic class, or something like that. And the problem is that never works, because literacy is a cognitive virus. People will inevitably learn to read, and if they are prevented from learning the language of the in class, they'll find a workaround. They'll make something that they can.
Understand, yeah, and use it as a weapon to fight back.
Right.
Yeah, Well, you know you could talk about the Vulgate Bible, why that was controversial, right, or there are modern examples that we don't have to get into.
But okay, well, maintaining how about maintaining a language in a like a smaller community or in an uprising, you know group, you maintain a specific language that you can communicate in that you know your oppressors or the person you're fighting against cannot speak or read.
Mm hmmm.
Yeah, that's a huge part of it, a barrier to access. And then let's say, you know, because literacy will inevitably arise in some form, that means books or something like books will begin to exist. So now it's complicated. You can't just kill the people. You have to somehow destroy the note in the books, so burn them, prevent them from being written, ban them, et cetera. And then at the same time you propagate the version of the truth that you want out there, like building an urban legend.
It's exactly like that, Ben, I think that's spot on.
It also makes me think of how another important technology I guess of warfare is cracking codes. You know, what was it the operation that actually won US World War One?
I think it was touring cracking the Enigma codes, right.
Yeah, because again there was they were you know, using language, using information, siloing information, and then transmitting it over publicly available channels, disguising it right, and then once you have that cipher, then you have the upper hand, you know, I mean, language in so many ways.
Is such a weapon in and of itself.
I mean, I think it's you know, not to belabor the point, but I just I find it fascinating.
I think we all do agreed, agreed. So you've got you've got your state approved version of the truth. You're getting rid of any alternative or revisionist viewpoints, and you can reward the people who fall in line by not murdering them mainly. And so back when the average person lived and died within what around thirty miles of where they were born, they had very little chance of seeing the wider world unless they were a merchant, unless they
were sent to war, or they went on a religious pilgrimage. Right, otherwise they're going to be pretty local. And this was a very this was a nearly full proof proposition. It was easier to change the past. There were fewer people and they had fewer avenues of access to knowledge. So now it wouldn't be crazy to assume that the dawn of the information age would end this grift. Right like now, everybody with a phone can read any.
Yay, it's so weird. It's so weird. Okay, guys, I'm thinking, I don't want to politicize this, but just I want to use this as an example because I think it's pretty prescient. That same article that I meant I mentioned
Max Fisher before writing for The New York Times. It's titled in a Race to shape the future, history is under new pressure, and he cites the January sixth thing and the election of current President Joe Biden as like one of these flashpoints where historical revisionism is like occurring
in real time. Yes, where there are fact there are As an individual, you have to decide who to believe about what actually occurred, Like you have to make the decision to believe in something, and whichever one you believe is the objective truth for you, right, and everybody else is lying or has a motivation to tell you that lies.
But doesn't it also depend on like your belief in the people's intent. I mean, we know that people broke into the Capitol, We know that people did some bad things. The question then becomes were they justified in doing that? Or were they acting as terrorists?
Domestic terrorists because it goes back to was the election false, right, and it was it stolen? Or was there freed someone messing with it?
Right? Terrorists?
So I mean, but but we as individuals now face this in so many avenues, so many moments in history as we go along, Ben, you're talking about just like when you get to the age of the internet and you can read literally anything. We are now we're having to make a choice to believe everything. There is no
ministry of truth. There is no like somebody who's telling the you know, humanity or an uber historian who's like, ah, yes, this is what this is the consensus we've all come to about what has happened and what has not happened, things.
That are past, have passed or yet to come.
And there's no like way to you know, we're talking about use of deep fake video for example, like what to even believe with your eyes and how can we get around that? There would have to be some sort of watermark or way to authenticate, you know, to to prove positive that what you're seeing is real footage. Such things do not exist for text and facts, you know.
Yeah, the only way that I will not assume something is a deep fake is if I see the person in the video choosing fire hydrants from a selection of nine pictures, right, because robots can't do that.
But there's no way to attach any kind of authentication methods to truth because it's so much more complex than that. Like you can even say it, no, that's not a lie and believe it. And if you believe it enough and say it with enough authority, as far as you're concerned, it's not a lie. I think there are even arguments being made, you know, in terms of the charges against former President Trump, that if he really believed the election was stolen from him, then he didn't do anything wrong.
It's about the nature of belief and objective truth, and it's becoming harder and harder to decide what is objectively.
True right the so called post truth world. Here's the thing about the information age. Everybody got so excited, very few people read the fine print. The reality is that not all information is good, by which we mean not all information is created equal. People have not really changed in terms of motivation. I think that's what we're all three talking about here. You can see concerted efforts to rewrite history all around the world. Not just on the
macro level. It's not just Russian propaganda. It's not just Ira and the KSA beefing over the history of Islam. And it's not just America's selling movies every summer about World War II. The micro level happens. You've seen it with your loved ones. They're telling themselves a narrative of the past. It's not even necessarily related to divisive political ideology.
They just maybe they have a different memory of who broke the cookie jar in nineteen seventy two, Right, And they are ten toes down on that opinion because to them it is a fact and Uncle Roy is a flyer. Right, couldn't be right?
This was Uncle Roy.
Uncle Roy is the guy who broke the cookie to I don't know, poor family. I hope they work it out so that leads us to the future. Right, And we are on the cusp of witnessing I would pause it unprecedented events in the attempt to rewrite history. More and more people get their news from this global font the Internet. It's the oasis in the desert, right, and that means that there are tons of new tools that can be leveraged and are being leveraged to control any
even narrative. I mean, think about the show over vaccines. It immediately became a thematic football from the big dogs of world powers. Right did Russia, China and the US when they made statements about other countries vaccination or COVID efforts? How much of their motivation was purely well intentioned and how much of their motivation was ulterior? Right, was propagandistic or some sort of hearts and minds attack? Fortunately, we have to ask those questions. And again we've got to think.
Local Florida just cracked down on how black history is taught in public colleges and universities. And remember the academics were always the first ones targeted, just like the priests thousands of years back.
So yeah, let's take a minute to talk about this law. I think it's a great example of what we're talking about here. SB two sixty six forbids teachers to teach that systematic racism is quote inherent in.
The institutions of the United States.
They also can't teach that it was designed to quote maintain social, political, and economic inequities. Now this is interesting to me because that is again an example of how do you interpret like some people might argue that we've gotten past that, that it is no longer that. Sure it was established when this was a thing, and these laws were written with these things in mind, but that as a country we've moved past that we're living in
a post racial society. So you could argue from a law making level that to teach that systematic racism is inherent in the institutions of the United States is false because that's making a judgment saying that we have failed in trying to.
Shed these mistakes of the past.
Yeah, it's well put. And again, of course people are going to be sensitive about this because there is a primal identification for some people that can feel like an attack to tell ugly truth about history and less this sound like partisan winging. Got to shout out these two great historians who aree this article for the Conversation, professors Rochelle and Davis and Eileen Kin. They said, look, we're professors. We teach modern history of the Middle East and Eastern Europe,
so not even Florida. They're not even teaching Florida Floridian history. They said, we know even democratically elected governments will suppress histories of their own nations that don't fit their ideology totally. Yeah, and they go on. It is very much worth reading, you know, even if you don't live in Florida, because the point they're making is control of the past has never been the sole domain of dictatorships. It's not about right or left ideologies. It never has been controlling the past.
Basically gas lighting the public to make them more docile. It's an age old practice because it works just like assassination or excuse me, targeted killing. Whatever the thing is now.
Guys, I'm jumping back to Max Fisher one more time. He is saying the same thing talking about this is what he's saying. I'm going to give you a quote from him. The goals are sweeping to re engineer society, starting at its most basic understanding of its collective heritage. It's collective heritage, right, So it's exactly what you're talking about, Ben, the idea of needing to have your history reflect in the identity that you feel, reflect feeling of identity rather than actual identity.
Right to include people. The American experiment has done something quite impressive, and not a lot of other countries have been successful throughout history. In this maybe the Roman Empire, maybe the Ottomans, but not really the United States. The proposal on paper was you were unified not by your biology, not by your geography necessarily, not by your religion, your creed, whatever. You are instead unified by the concept of being part of this story, this story called the United States. And
that's a tall order. It's pretty impressive. I don't know if you could pull it off today, if i'm If I'm being honest, it's.
More than a modest proposal, you know what I mean, You're going to start talking about eating babies there.
I don't know if we're at that point. I hope not. So there's another way to think about this. If you are editing the past to control a populace, and if governments and people are to arch degree just the stories they tell themselves. And when you do this, you're not killing a single person, you're killing an entire version of the past, and you're replacing it with a doppelganger, right, with a change link that is just so, And it's usually going to be a story where in your group
for some reason looks like the hero. Why would you do this? You do this to justify the current power structure, or you do it to rationalize something you're about to do or something.
You just did.
We blew up, yeah, we blew up. You know this clearly civilian gathering and insert country here, but we did it because of insert reasons.
Do you guys might if I read a quick quote from a song that's just been basing my brain, please, it's I think it's a Elvis Costello song is the first track off of his nineteen eighty two album Imperial Bedroom.
It's called Beyond Belief.
And I just think this is some incredible wordplay, and it is kind of sums up some of the stuff to me, at least a little bit. History repeats, the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats, keep your finger on important issues with crocodile tears and a pocket full of tissues. I'm just the oily slick on the wind up world of the nervous tick in a very fashionable hovel. It kind of makes me weep. It's so good like the wordplay. Man, I was gonna tell you.
I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna be honest with you. He's my second favorite Elvis, my first favorite el No My first favorite Elvis is a guy in a remote town in East Tennessee.
Cool.
They got weird names. But yeah, that's I think that's quite apropos nol. I think that's a really good thing for us to take with us because the results are in. It is true, the democratization of information and technology, it could have led to a better, more universally honest interpretation of the past, but it didn't. There's a paradox. Feels like there are more voices out there, but not maybe not as many as we'd like to think. It's the grocery store paradox. That's what I would call it. We
talked about it before. Right, you go to a grocery store. You're in the cereal aisle. It looks like there are thirty different kinds of cereal.
All the choices. We have, the choice information. We must be smarter, right, Yeah, this is.
The reason why Matt says, I insist on pretending to like Raisin Brand.
I love Raising Brand. Dude, are you serious? Out of town? I love it?
Mean, guy, you chase it with some grape nuts?
Really?
Do you have a box of just the original r B downstairs scoops? Yeah?
Is it two?
Scoops always scoops to scoop.
First of all, I want to I want a number. I want to number you.
They show you on the box, there's a here's a scoop, here's another.
B free. But the idea here, even though it seems as small as your grocery store, those serial brands are ultimately owned by a much smaller handful of holding companies. And that's kind of what happens with the Internet. And they keep those brands alive from the grocery store to the Internet because they know you dig the illusion of choice.
People are sensitive to the stories told about themselves. To your point, Matt, people want to feel that they are choosing the correct narrative, that they are doing so for objective reasons. History is not just riddled with conspiracy. It's chock full of some profoundly disgusting truths, way more than two scoops. And the question is similar to that old story from Plato and the allegory of the Cave. It's the choice in the matrix. Do you want to know
what really happened? Or do you prefer the tales told to you by the authorities.
Guys, do you think there's a meme opportunity and like photoshopping, like a little plastic container of playto but having it have plato on it. I'm trying to think of that. That has to be an additional twist. Enough.
Yeah, that's a good starting point at point.
Yeah, let us know what you think if there's a good way to push that into the over the top and the mimisphere.
And while you're thinking about that, let's end tonight's journey with this. We talked a little bit about modern politics. Modern politics are ephemeral, to be quite honest with you, regardless of religion, regardless of creed, personal ideological leanings, and so on, we have to ask ourselves, doesn't everyone at least deserve a choice matrix style between the truth and
convenient lies. Shouldn't every human being, by the virtue of their humanity, be able to choose for themselves between an ugly truth and you know, a smoothed up deception.
I don't know.
It sounds nice, right, It sounds nice that we should be able to have that. I just don't think I don't think every and I don't think anybody's ever going to get that.
I think we're no one you're going to agree on what it is.
Well yeah, yeah, yeah, Oh my god, you got to get on the same page to figure that out.
First, totally, God, to weigh the things. I mean again, that's just you started it off so beautifully.
Ben.
It's just the nature of discourse. It's the nature of history as a storytelling mechanism. It is a storytelling enterprise.
You know.
It's not the same as science. You're not gathering data per se. You're not gathering vials of things and analyzing them. It's all about context. It's all about the eye of the beholder.
It's I thought that was a Dungeons and Dragons reference for just the second, nol and I want to thank you for that.
I don't know what you're talking about.
That is definitely a reference to a beholder.
Come come on, dude, the eye of the beholder. Yeah, the single eyes is super cool.
Of the beholder.
We did a super cool reference.
Good. It's got really powerful magic. Be careful of it. Can I give a quote from a UC Berkeley's associate professor named Andrew Little quote, We want to believe. We want to believe that we are capable and decent, and that our friends and our favorite relatives share the same traits and that the groups we belong to are on the right side of conflicts. And that's just that's the
quote here. So if there is a narrative being sold to us, whether it's about the future, about what's happening right now, or something that happened in the past, that makes us feel all of those things, that we are decent, good people, that our friends, our groups are decent, good people, and we didn't do anything bad in the past, we are going to buy that story more often than not.
Sure, we want to build consensus. It's very difficult to be the tenth person in the conversation who contradicts a lie that everyone has chosen to believe. And that's that's a question. You know that everyone is going to quarrel with. We would love to hear your thoughts. We would love to We'd love to get your take on this.
Folks.
Are we being overly alarmist about this idea of rewriting history? Is it less possible now or is it more possible now? What do you think? Let us know. We try to be easy to find on the internets.
That's right.
You can find us at the handle conspiracy stuff on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, nay X. I don't know if I'm using nay right there, but I'm gonna keep it up. I sed toll call Twitter. You know what. I actually saw a post form Elon must the other day where he referred to it as x fka Twitter, So.
I think, yeah, I think I think it would be x nay.
N twitterh yeah, yeah that I hate putting X first, but it is what it is again, conspiracy stuff on those platforms, Conspiracy stuff show on Instagram and TikTok, where we've got a ton of fun stuff popping pretty much a couple times a week, I think, right.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Did you guys see the rumor that Elon Musk prevented nuclear war? Yeah?
He uh, that explained some of those texts he was sending me.
No, but for real, the he allegedly turned off the Starlink system.
Yes, oh but that but just as a petty like penny pinching maneuver, right, because he was supposed to give them like free internet, and then they were not paying him or something, and then he basically just said, you know what, we're cutting this off. And yes, it did lead to some issues on the battlefield, but he wasn't doing it benevolently.
He also had again recently spoken with Vlad.
Well, yeah, so this is the week again. This is like the revisionist history thing that's occurring in real time at all times nowadays. Like the one story is that he got some intel from from Russia basically and prevented an attack on some military naval vessels.
Russian naval vessels.
Yes, and that preventing that attack prevented tactical nukes from being deployed.
That's a lot, it's crazy, but it also goes to show just how somebody doing something completely self serving and petty could ultimately lead to you know, if you're operating at such a high level, ultimately lead to something like that.
And then it just becomes about the narrative twist.
It's the butterfly effect, you know, because I used because I used Cheddar in my casadia. The red panda is no longer endangered. Whatever. It's a you could if then your way on all sa sorts of interesting limbs, not saying it's not true, but to your point, it's definitely an interpretation. What about your interpretation, folks? Why didn't give us a phone call?
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