The Smart Way to Spend Money & History That Never Happened

Interactive Transcript

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spk_0 I do know that we share a lot of listeners, a lot of listeners who like this podcast

spk_0 like the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan is really good at getting his guests to open

spk_0 up and share great insights. Recently, he discussed modern romance scam tactics.

spk_0 I mean, that's the lowest of the low, but you've got to know about them so you can fight

spk_0 back against them. And another episode he did was about how society has engineered

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spk_0 Today on something you should know, the way you walk,

spk_0 what it says about you and what it does to you, then the art of spending money,

spk_0 then why so many people struggle with the money they have.

spk_0 And I think some people, ironically, who have the biggest problem with money are very

spk_0 high earners. The part of their personality that has led them to be high earners

spk_0 is the part of their personality that says it's never enough. And that's why they tend to be

spk_0 perpetually dissatisfied with what they have. Also, the trouble with lying and how the truth

spk_0 will set you free. And history you learned that isn't true, like the first video game

spk_0 was Pong. People in the Middle Ages were dirty. And the workers who built the

spk_0 pyramids were slaves.

spk_0 Relatively recently, they found the cities where those workers lived.

spk_0 Everything we found suggests that these workers were treated really, really well.

spk_0 And we have no evidence at all for them being slaves.

spk_0 All this today on something you should know.

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spk_0 Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts.

spk_0 And practical advice you can use in your life today.

spk_0 Something you should know with my carothers.

spk_0 Think for a moment about how you walk. Like when you walk down the street, what is that look like?

spk_0 Because it's important. Hi and welcome to this episode of something you should know.

spk_0 How you walk often indicates how you feel.

spk_0 If your shoulders are slumped and you're looking down, you're likely sad.

spk_0 And if you're bouncing along real happily, you're probably pretty happy.

spk_0 But now it appears that it works the other way as well.

spk_0 In a study, otherwise happy people were instructed in a way that to most people would appear sad.

spk_0 And then afterwards, those people reported that they actually felt sadder.

spk_0 People who were instructed to bounce along happily did not feel sadness afterwards.

spk_0 A happier walk produced a happier mood.

spk_0 So it appears your feelings affect your walk and your walk affects your feelings.

spk_0 Perhaps that's why the advice to go for a nice brisk walk if you're feeling blue may be excellent advice.

spk_0 And that is something you should know.

spk_0 There are a few topics that spark more tension or more fascination than money.

spk_0 We think it's about numbers and budgets and spreadsheets, but really money is about meaning.

spk_0 How we view it, how we spend it, and what we refuse to spend it on.

spk_0 And here's the kicker. There isn't one right way to spend it.

spk_0 Two people can make completely different choices with their money and both feel quite satisfied.

spk_0 Or both feel quite miserable.

spk_0 Which raises the real question, what is the smartest way for you to spend your money?

spk_0 Well, my guest, Morgan Howsell has thought deeply about this.

spk_0 He's a partner at the collaborative fund and an award-winning business journalist.

spk_0 He's author of a book called The Art of Spending Money.

spk_0 Simple choices for a richer life.

spk_0 Hi, Morgan, welcome.

spk_0 Thanks so much for having me, Mike. Appreciate it.

spk_0 So on some level, you would think that well, money is just a tool, right?

spk_0 You use money to trade for something you want.

spk_0 And that should sort of be the end of it, but that's really not the end of it.

spk_0 Money gets wrapped up in all different ways in our life.

spk_0 Some good, some not so good. So what's going on?

spk_0 Yeah, Mike, if you think of money as a tool, a tool to buy stuff, a tool to have a better life,

spk_0 but it's a very different kind of tool than something else.

spk_0 If you compare a tool like a screwdriver, a screwdriver has a very intended purpose.

spk_0 It's only used for that purpose. When we're done with it, we put it back in the drawer.

spk_0 It's a good tool, but it's a very simple tool.

spk_0 Money has this other element of not only is it a tool to buy stuff,

spk_0 is a tool that I can use to compare myself to you and to other people and to the rest of society.

spk_0 And that's when things go off the rails and get very, very messy.

spk_0 And so when it stops becoming a tool to live a better life,

spk_0 and it becomes a yardstick of status to measure yourself against others by,

spk_0 that is one of the very many kind of psychological holes that people go down and fall into

spk_0 that makes money a much more messy and emotional topic than it should be.

spk_0 Well, I guess it's hard not to compare yourself to other people,

spk_0 but I mean, I can remember when I, the last car I bought,

spk_0 I didn't buy it to try to keep up with the neighbors kind of thing.

spk_0 I bought it because that's the car I wanted.

spk_0 Objectively thought this would be a good car for me,

spk_0 or at least that's what I was telling myself.

spk_0 But I wasn't consciously trying to say,

spk_0 well, my neighbors have a better car or my friend has a better car,

spk_0 so I want to get as good a car.

spk_0 That's not how I do it.

spk_0 Yeah, I think what's true is that even if you do feel like you are living in your own head

spk_0 and you're not comparing yourself,

spk_0 you don't feel like you're actively envious or jealous of others,

spk_0 what is true about your statement that I fully agree with and I relate to myself,

spk_0 is that your definition of what is a good car.

spk_0 Even that alone is based off of things you've seen other people driving.

spk_0 And there's no such thing as an objective measure of wealth.

spk_0 Everything is just relative to what other people's have.

spk_0 And what's true today is that an average middle-class American family today

spk_0 lives a materially better life than even an upper-income household

spk_0 would have 100 years ago.

spk_0 I mean, John DeRoccafeller was the richest man in history during his era.

spk_0 He never had antibiotics.

spk_0 He never had Advil. He never had sunscreen.

spk_0 He didn't have electricity for most of his life or crying out loud.

spk_0 And so everything is just relative to other people.

spk_0 So even if you do feel like you are, you just have an internal benchmark

spk_0 of you're not comparing yourself to other people's external benchmarks,

spk_0 everyone's definition of what is good or bad or necessary or luxury or what not

spk_0 is based off of a comparison to other people.

spk_0 It's almost an unavoidable part of money.

spk_0 Well, I guess in some sense that kind of comparison that we make is human nature.

spk_0 But it's also the force that you try to do better, right?

spk_0 I mean, that keeping up with the Joneses does have a benefit.

spk_0 I think it's true that A, I want to live in a world in which most people

spk_0 wake up in the morning and say, I need more.

spk_0 This is not enough. I haven't achieved my goals.

spk_0 I need to go work harder and build better, more innovative products.

spk_0 I want to live in that world because that's what pushes the world forward.

spk_0 That's where innovation and technology comes from.

spk_0 That's why I think my kids will live a better life than I am right now.

spk_0 So that's good.

spk_0 At the whole, at the society level, it will always be like that.

spk_0 And I think that's good.

spk_0 At the individual level, I think you can take a step back and look at the game

spk_0 that's being played of social comparison and keeping up with the Joneses

spk_0 and moving the goal posts in your life and realize the futility of it

spk_0 if your goal is happiness.

spk_0 And happiness, I kind of caught myself right there, I think can often be the wrong word.

spk_0 People chase happiness without realizing that happiness is almost always

spk_0 for everybody a five minute emotion.

spk_0 People are rarely happy for more than a couple minutes at a time.

spk_0 I think what people would actually want out of their money

spk_0 and the most reasonable goal for your money is contentment.

spk_0 If I sit here and daydream about having a mansion or a private jet or whatever it might be,

spk_0 what I'm actually doing is imagining myself sitting in that mansion,

spk_0 that hypothetical mansion and saying, this is enough.

spk_0 I don't want any more.

spk_0 And that's the feeling that feels good.

spk_0 That's like the feeling that you're trying to chase is sitting in that mansion or that car

spk_0 whatever it might be and saying, I'm now saying this is good, this is enough.

spk_0 But what actually happens more often than not, of course, is that if you are sitting in that dream house,

spk_0 that dream car, your gaze starts going to other people.

spk_0 Oh, look at my neighbor's house.

spk_0 They're yards a little bit bigger.

spk_0 Oh, look at his car.

spk_0 It has a couple more horsepower than mine.

spk_0 And so it's that ceaseless pushing of the goal post and ratcheting of your expectations.

spk_0 That A leads to a world of advancement and technology that I like.

spk_0 But the individual level can kind of make you take a step back and say,

spk_0 look, if there's no satiation on my desires, I'm never going to be happy with my money.

spk_0 And Mike, I want more money.

spk_0 I want to work and make more money and save more money and have nicer things.

spk_0 This is not a plea to live like a monk.

spk_0 It's just this idea that all of wealth is the equation is what you have minus what you want.

spk_0 And almost all of our attention right now goes to the first part of just have more.

spk_0 And the second part of the equation, which is maintaining and measuring and keeping control over your desires,

spk_0 is actually a more important part of the equation that's easy to overlook.

spk_0 And so what is your message?

spk_0 Are you making a recommendation or just an observation?

spk_0 Or what are you trying to get people to grasp here?

spk_0 I intentionally do not give advice because I don't know you.

spk_0 I don't know your goals. I don't know your aspirations.

spk_0 I don't know your family dynamic.

spk_0 And so all of this, whether it's how you earn your money, how you save your money, how you invest,

spk_0 or how you spend your money, has to start with looking in the mirror and becoming introspective about what makes you happy

spk_0 and about your goals, your individual life.

spk_0 Most financial mistakes, I think that's not hyperbole.

spk_0 Most financial mistakes come from people chasing advice that is good for somebody else, but wrong for them individually.

spk_0 It is very easy to tell yourself that if you wake up every morning and say,

spk_0 I'm not satisfied with my life, I'm not happy with my life, it's very easy to tell yourself,

spk_0 if only I had more money, then these problems would go away.

spk_0 And sometimes that can be true, but it is very easy to lead to that conclusion.

spk_0 When there is a list of things that you can spend money on in a way that you can spend money that's going to make you happier

spk_0 and lead you to a better life, the list of things that money cannot do for you, I think, is longer.

spk_0 And so it's not until you dig into the psychology of your own envy, your own jealousy, your own ability to be content,

spk_0 that I think you can actually lead to a better system of spending money that's going to make you happier and more content.

spk_0 But is there an objective list of what money can and cannot do based on research or everybody is individual?

spk_0 You know, for many decades, there would be one study out of academia that would say,

spk_0 once you earn X dollars, you tend to be happier.

spk_0 Another study would come out and say the exact opposite.

spk_0 And no one could really agree on exactly what it was.

spk_0 Some of this in my mind has been clarified with some research in the last decade,

spk_0 which basically shows that if you are already an anxious and depressed person, earning more money and spending money is probably not going to make you happy.

spk_0 If you are starting out as a joyful content happy person with lots of friends, then earning more money will make you happier.

spk_0 Spending more money will make you happier.

spk_0 It's like it's just leveraging who you already were in either direction.

spk_0 And I think that's the bigger point of like, can buying a big house make you happy?

spk_0 I think the answer can be yes. If you are using that big house because it makes it easier to have friends and family over, then it can make you happier.

spk_0 But you have to realize that it's the friends and the family that are making you happy, not necessarily the house.

spk_0 Will travel make you happier? Maybe yes, if it leads to endless time with your friends and your family and your kids and your spouse.

spk_0 But the realization is that it's those things that are making you happy, not necessarily the money.

spk_0 So it's too easy to draw conclusion. Like, does spending money make you happy? Yes or no? It's never that simple.

spk_0 It's always a layer beneath that and leveraging who you already were.

spk_0 And so if you want to be happier with money, there is a list of other more important things in your life, your health, your friends, your family that have to come first before you can use it as a tool to become happier and more content.

spk_0 Well, it's interesting that everybody is so unique. And yet you often hear this very common advice for everyone about a certain percentage of your income should go for housing and a certain percentage.

spk_0 That should be your fund fund and a certain percentage should go for this. And so how can that be if you're saying everybody's different?

spk_0 I think those rules of thumbs can be helpful for people at the margins, but never taken as a science. And so some of those rules of thumb of X percent to housing, X percent to travel and fund and whatnot.

spk_0 I have had a unique, let's call it spending saving pattern for my entire adult life. I've been a very big saver and there are periods in my life where my wife and I would really not spend that much money.

spk_0 I would call this frugal. It was just that we just didn't really want that much. We spent quite a bit more now than we used to. But I used to have a lot of friends. This is not that long ago, five years ago maybe, who would really give me a hard time about it and give me a hard time about how cheap I was.

spk_0 And don't I want to want to a nicer car or a bigger house? And it was always interesting to me because the answer was no, I don't think I do.

spk_0 But my decision that was making my wife and I happy may have seemed crazy to them, but it made perfect sense to us. And so the individuality of this, I think is easy to overlook.

spk_0 And people understand that if we're talking about your taste in food or your taste in music, if you say you love Italian food and I don't, neither one of us is right or wrong. And people understand that. There's no debate about that. You know it's subjective.

spk_0 How people spend their money, I think people want to believe that there should be a science of spending money. And therefore you take when you watch other people doing it differently than you do. It's very easy to jump to the conclusion that they're doing it wrong.

spk_0 The idea that there should be a formula is very appealing, but the reality that is different for everyone is the truth.

spk_0 We're talking about spending money, probably talking about it in a way you haven't talked about it before. My guest is Morgan Howell. He's author of the book The Art of Spending Money, simple choices for a richer life.

spk_0 Hey, it's Hillary Frank from the Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex, ed, birth control, pregnancy, bodily autonomy. And of course, kids of all ages.

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spk_0 So Morgan, when I think about my life, I've never been a big car guy. I like cars, and I have a car. I have a nice new car. But for a long time, I had a car for years. I mean, I had, you know, 200,000 plus miles on it. And I felt people judging me for that. Like, well, why would you drive such an old car? And yeah, it did have a cassette deck in it.

spk_0 But a few years ago, I got a new car. But what, when I had the old car, I was happy with it. It wasn't falling apart. I kept it up fine. But I sensed people were making judgments about me. But it just wasn't important to me.

spk_0 Right. And I'm willing to bet that there's something in your life. I don't know what it is that you spend more money than those people on because you value it more than they do.

spk_0 My wife and I recently had this refluxation. This is just this summer. This is a recent thing where we finally came to terms with the fact that of the last probably five vacations we've been on, the best part of the vacation was coming home.

spk_0 And we were finally like, how many times we have to realize that before we say, maybe travel isn't for us at this phase of our life. We have young kids. I travel a lot for work. So my idea of vacation is not going somewhere. But what is virtually everyone in society tell you travel, travel, travel, spend money on experiences and whatnot.

spk_0 And at one point in our life, that was true. I think in a future point in our life, that would be true. It's not right now. And so I think this can be very frustrating for people that what works for you might not work for me.

spk_0 And what I value might not be what you value. And so we finally came to terms that spending money on travel is not just not what we want right now.

spk_0 And we had to kind of force ourselves into that realization because there are so many signals from peers and friends and the rest of the world from marketing that travel is the greatest thing that you can do with your money.

spk_0 And so realizing what is your thing is really important. There's a financial writer named Ramit Setty who talks about this a lot. And his unique version of this is he loves clothes.

spk_0 He loves expensive clothes. He's big into fashion. He dresses incredibly well. And like you though, he's not a car guy.

spk_0 So you can you can picture him driving around in his old Honda Accord or whatever it might be in a very expensive suit. And that's what works for him.

spk_0 And if I'm honest, I'm probably closer to the latter. I like Levi jeans and cheap t-shirts. And I do kind of like nice cars. And so everyone has to find their little unique thing and realize that there's no formula for it.

spk_0 I would imagine that your experiences, your financial experiences and and watching the people close to you like your parents handle money has a lot to do with what you think about money and what you do with your money.

spk_0 I came across this headline while doing the research for this book from a column in the Washington Post from 1929.

spk_0 So 1929 is the peak of the of the roaring 20s just before the crash and the Great Depression. And the title of the column I thought was so genius. The title was the more you were snubbed while poor, the more you enjoyed displaying being rich.

spk_0 And I think there are so many different versions of that that how you want to spend your money and display your money and signal to other people is based off of some kind of emotional experience that you've had.

spk_0 And there could be an endless range of that. There's a great financial writer, financial educator named Tiffany Ali she and she grew up she was at a different point in her life very poor. And now she's very successful. And she described what she calls post traumatic broke syndrome where she says it's very hard for her to spend her money because she remembers the pain and the agony of being where she used to be as a poor person. And she says today, even though she has millions of dollars.

spk_0 I can't ever go back terrified of going back to that spot. However that manifests with you, it can be there's a million different ways. The realization that spending money is not just a spreadsheet endeavor where it's like, oh, the bigger house is better, the faster car is better.

spk_0 There is always a psychological component based off of different experiences that we've had in our life. That's true for different generations. The generation that grew up with and endured the Great Depression in the 1930s very well documented for the rest of their life, even as as the economy recovered and became stronger than ever. And they were earning more money than ever. They were very cautious with their money.

spk_0 That was an emotional scar that they never recovered from. I think that can be true for the generation who graduated high school or graduated college during COVID with a broken jobs market, a crazy economy, but we're getting stimulus checks. The stock market was going crazy.

spk_0 There are so much that is out of our hands. And we want to think that we are all thinking independently and thinking rationally. But the truth is, I would think about money if I was born in a different generation and in a different country into different parents.

spk_0 And then went to a different school, whatever it might be. There's all these things that we are just products, if not even I would take prisoners of our past. And since my past is different than yours, we're never going to fully agree on what's right and wrong with spending money.

spk_0 Well, my sense has always been that there are two kinds of people. There are savers and there are spenders. And spenders wonder why people are saving and savers wonder why people are blowing all their money.

spk_0 And, you know, but it's just two different ways of looking at the world.

spk_0 One of the ways that I think about this is I've always been a big saver for my adult life. And if somebody were to ask me, what are you saving for? Are you saying for a new house? Are you saving for retirement? I would always say no. I'm saving for a world that is much more fragile than people want to believe.

spk_0 Because similar to what you just said, if I were to say, what are the odds that you and I, both of us, will experience at least one of these during the rest of our adult life. Major job loss, divorce, major medical illness, wayward children, lawsuits.

spk_0 What are the odds that we will experience at least one of those? I would, I would propose the odds are 100% that we will experience at least one of those that everybody will. And that's if you're lucky, a lot of people will experience all of those.

spk_0 And so, but it's hard to kind of look yourself in the mirror and get out of bed in the morning if you're honest about that.

spk_0 So I think there is like a rational amount of ignorance that people have just to want to have optimism about their future.

spk_0 How I've always thought about this is that I'm very optimistic that the world will get better. The economy will be bigger. The stock market will be higher 20 or 30 years from now.

spk_0 Very optimistic about that. Very confident in that. I am equally as confident that the path between now and then both for me individually and for the economy as a whole will be very treacherous with setback after setback and surprise after surprise.

spk_0 And you can believe both of those things at the same time, saving your money like a pessimist because you know the world is fragile, but investing your money and basing your career as an optimist that if you can survive and endure all those setbacks, the rewards for those who can stick around tend to be extraordinary.

spk_0 You know, we talk about this as if it is a universal problem that everybody struggles with money somehow. Is that true or do some people handle it really, really well?

spk_0 I actually think the people who have the least trouble with money are people who don't earn an extraordinary amount of money.

spk_0 They're people who might earn a modest, if not low amount of money, but they want nothing else. It's the unique kind of person who gets 100% of their joy from being in the garden and going for a walk and bird watching and talking to their friends.

spk_0 And I think some people ironically who have the biggest problem with money are very high earners. People who earn and have a lot of money, but the part of their personality that has led them to be high earners is the part of their money that says, is a part of their personality that says it's never enough.

spk_0 More, more, more, more. That's why they're successful and that's why they tend to be perpetually dissatisfied with what they have.

spk_0 And so I think there is an irony here that the trade-off between ambition and contentment is very stark.

spk_0 And so I think the people who are happiest with their money tend to people who have gotten so content with what they have that they just don't really think about it that much.

spk_0 Money to them is like oxygen. It's very important. It's essential to everyday living, but they always have enough and so they don't really think about it that much.

spk_0 And the people who I think ironically have the worst or the most painful relationship with money tend to be the extraordinarily rich people who there's a part of their personality where every single day they wake up and say, I don't care how much I have, I need more, more, more.

spk_0 I can admire those people for the companies and the products that they build. We'll also recognize that it's not necessarily a path to a good happy content life.

spk_0 Well, I also wonder too if the fear is not just that I want more, more, more, but what happens if I lose what I have? I have got so much. What if it all disappeared tomorrow?

spk_0 There's a very interesting interview recently with Steve Balmer who was the former CEO of Microsoft, you know, owns the LA Clippers.

spk_0 And he's one of the richest men in the world. His net worth is $150 billion, sent a billionaire. And there's a point in the interview where he doesn't say it directly. It's not for beta. I'm kind of sort of paraphrasing his mood, but he kind of hints at the effect that even him worth $150 billion is worried about losing all of his money.

spk_0 And so I think there is no level of wealth in which some people can say, I'm good forever. I'm set forever.

spk_0 And yet that very idea is what drives a lot of people to play the lottery because if I win hundreds of millions of dollars, I will never have to worry about money again.

spk_0 Actually, coming into a huge amount of money very suddenly, whether it's a bonus or a lottery or the investment or your investments, whatever it is, can actually be a disheartening experience.

spk_0 Because probably for your entire life, you told yourself, you daydreamed and you said, if only I had more money, my problems would go away. And then if you're fortunate enough to gain a lot of money, you probably realize that your relationship with your spouse is not any better. Maybe it's worse.

spk_0 Your kids don't love you anymore. Your friends start treating you differently in a way that you don't like. Your health probably isn't any better.

spk_0 And so all of these things that are major problems in your life that add a lot of grievance and annoyance to your day to day life did not change when you had more money.

spk_0 And therefore the hope that you had earlier in your life where you said, if only I had more money and that gave you hope, something to aspire to, suddenly the hope goes away.

spk_0 And you realize, like I said earlier, you can use money to be a happier person. But the list of things that cannot do for you is much longer.

spk_0 Well, you've made me feel so much better that I'd never win the lottery even when I play. But this is, this is really thought provoking and I think helps everybody think differently about their money.

spk_0 Morgan Howzel has been my guest. He is a partner at the collaborative fund and author of the book, the art of spending money, simple choices for a richer life. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. And Morgan, I appreciate you stopping by and talking about this. Thank you.

spk_0 Hey everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks and me Melissa D. Montz for Don't Blame me, but am I wrong?

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spk_0 We all learned history in school. And as you're about to hear, a lot of the history we were taught that we believe to be true and factual is actually not.

spk_0 Why? Well, there are a lot of reasons for that, which we will explore. But just the idea that much of what we thought to be true, we thought was part of the permanent record of history.

spk_0 Just just ain't so. Joining me to offer up some great examples of fake history is Yo headwig Tewysha, which is so not how you pronounce her name, but I practiced and that's as close as I can get.

spk_0 And yo, just so people understand how hard it is to pronounce your name for an American, English speaking person, you pronounce your name.

spk_0 Yo, he's Vich, Tewysha.

spk_0 There, see? So it's not easy. Anyway, yo is known as the fake history hunter and has been debunking fake historical facts on social media for over 20 years.

spk_0 She's author of a book called Fake History, 101 Things That Never Happened. Hi, yo, welcome to something you should know.

spk_0 Thank you. Glad to be here.

spk_0 Why do we have fake history? Because you would think that these things would be sorted out. Like, well, no, that's not true. That never happened. And some historian would fix it.

spk_0 But we have these stories that linger. Why do we have these stories that linger?

spk_0 Although there's a few reasons for it. One is because most of history we know nothing about. So we have to, you know, we make it up as we go along with a lot of history. We have a bit of evidence.

spk_0 A few, you know, a few hints, a few clues here and there, but we're not quite sure. So again, people are very tempted to make half of it up.

spk_0 And then there, of course, is a reason to make things up on purpose, spread me the fake history on purpose because you want, because you don't like the truth or you prefer the truth that can't be proven because it makes you or your people or your country appear better than they really were.

spk_0 So there's many reasons, but the main reason is usually lack of evidence or a lack of proper research.

spk_0 So give me an example, a story of maybe your favorite story of fake history.

spk_0 Well, my favorite fake history subject is the idea that medieval Europeans were absolutely disgusting and filthy and never bathed.

spk_0 And it's about, you know, having bath teeth or not knowing what soap was and toilets and all sorts of subjects.

spk_0 It keeps coming back because for some reason we really, really want to believe that the Middle Ages were dirty.

spk_0 And I sometimes catch myself wanting to believe that because somehow it just fits, you know, our image of the Middle Ages, it is dirty, narrow, dark streets full of mud and disgusting things that people throwing stuff out of windows.

spk_0 That's, that image is so baked into our, you know, our way of thinking about that time.

spk_0 But from all the records that we have and from the archaeology and from everything, we know that medieval people were pretty much obsessed with hygiene, like almost everyone else who ever lived.

spk_0 They washed their base, they had soap, they loved going to the bath houses.

spk_0 They had very, very severe rules and laws about pollution and if you dumped your waste in the street, you know, someone would come and give you a massive fine, like terrifyingly huge.

spk_0 And we have all these records.

spk_0 But if you look at all of history and humans in general, we have, there's one very simple fact that all humans who ever lived had a nose.

spk_0 And that means they had smells and they cared about smells and if you know, if you're a stinky boy, you don't get any kisses.

spk_0 That's the core of history of humans and hygiene.

spk_0 Well, that's really interesting because when I think about it, I think we all think that we're cleaner than everybody that's come before us.

spk_0 I mean, there's this sense that we're cleaner than people say from the early 1900s, the late 1800s and they are probably thinking they were cleaner and more hygienic.

spk_0 Like, than people from the 1700s, like, we all think we're cleaner than anybody before us.

spk_0 Yeah, it's a sort of chronological snobbery.

spk_0 We want to feel better than our ancestors because if they were not as bad as we thought, perhaps it means that we haven't made as much progress or that we are not as cool as we thought we were.

spk_0 So if I were to ask people, my guess is, you know, what was the very first video game?

spk_0 Most people, I would say and I think most people would say pong, but it's not, right?

spk_0 Yeah, and I must admit that I said that myself for a very long time and I was very proud of it because it was my first video game.

spk_0 And I used to say, you know, I'm as old as video games.

spk_0 But when you start to research, it's suddenly you realize that it's a lot older.

spk_0 It depends a little bit, of course, of your definition of video game.

spk_0 But we've been playing games with computers or self-thinking devices.

spk_0 Let's call it that. Since the 1930s.

spk_0 And, you know, it's very basic. It's devices that just turn on light switches on and off by itself and you can play tic-tac-toe or checkers and things like that.

spk_0 But even with screens and actual games, those go back to 1950s.

spk_0 Actual computer games as we would define them today.

spk_0 But few people could play them.

spk_0 Oh, oh yes, absolutely. There were just, there were in universities, there were just a few nerds in back rooms with computers that filled a half laboratory.

spk_0 And with, and it was just a few lights going on and off, but they were technically games.

spk_0 And they worked and they involved computer games and computer.

spk_0 So it really was a computer game.

spk_0 And there were a few public exhibits where members of the public could try them.

spk_0 So it's not that nobody got to play them.

spk_0 But they were, yeah, it was not something that you had in your living room.

spk_0 But Pong became so popular because it was in bars and restaurants and you could go in while you're waiting for your table and put a quarter in and play.

spk_0 It was very accessible. Was it was it the first accessible game?

spk_0 The problem is that we, when we think about these subjects, we look at our own memories first and we think what was the first game that I remember.

spk_0 And yeah, Pong and games like that in the early 70s were the first games that were available to, you know, to the public.

spk_0 And they were written about newspapers and magazines and on the television.

spk_0 So in our memory, it's the first game.

spk_0 But it wasn't.

spk_0 I want to talk about Santa Claus because I think everyone has heard the story that Santa Claus looks the way he looks because of Coca-Cola.

spk_0 Yeah, he doesn't.

spk_0 Sorry. No, Santa goes back many, many centuries and he was originally a medieval saint who was back then already wearing red clothes, by the way.

spk_0 And he was brought to the Americas by European immigrants and they brought the traditional celebrating St Nicholas who is still a very popular saint here in the Netherlands where I am at the moment.

spk_0 And he wore red clothes because that was, you know, his church uniform.

spk_0 And he was a very, very popular saint, especially for children and giving treats and things like that.

spk_0 And the Americans sort of adopted him mixed him up with a few with a father Christmas from Britain.

spk_0 And in the 1860s, there was an artist writer Thomas Nost, Nost, Nost, Nost, Nost, Nost, Nost, was his name.

spk_0 And he, yeah, Nost exactly. And he wrote a story about St Nicholas and he described him as wearing red.

spk_0 And very soon afterwards, people started illustrating books and stories, but also advertisements with that image of St Nicholas.

spk_0 So we've got pictures of Santa wearing the red suit, having a big belly exactly like he looked, looks today still.

spk_0 But going back to the 1880s and even the early 1900s, you see him everywhere looking exactly the same.

spk_0 So the only thing really was what Coca-Cola did was use that same image that was already popular and already used for advertisement and just spread it everywhere.

spk_0 Because they could, because you know, it's Coca-Cola.

spk_0 Was it Thomas Nost who was more responsible or was it Coca-Cola who was more responsible in modern day to really spread that image?

spk_0 Nost held everyone that this is what Santa looked like. And then everyone went with it.

spk_0 But Coca-Cola made it a global thing. I mean, even in the Netherlands, here in Europe where we still have St Nicholas,

spk_0 we now also have Santa, which is very confusing because they know Coca-Cola brought him back the way he looks to us.

spk_0 So now we've got two saints who we know are the same, but all the kids think are two different ones. It's very confusing.

spk_0 But I remember seeing, and I mean recently seeing, pictures of St Nicholas and he's not fat, he's thin.

spk_0 No. No, yeah, that's what the Americans did.

spk_0 Which is interesting. But yeah, they sort of combined father Christmas who in Britain was often portrayed as being rather rotund.

spk_0 So yeah, it's, I think Nost really just looked at all the stories he had read and heard and perhaps a few images that he had seen and just put them all together into one fresh news Santa.

spk_0 So everyone has heard some version of the story where Isaac Newton is sitting under a tree and an apple falls on his head and he figures out gravity. True?

spk_0 No. The annoying thing is is that the truth is that he was sitting in his garden and he saw an apple falling from a tree and that sort of made him think in a different way about gravity and all that sort of thing.

spk_0 But the issue is that someone a certain Mr. Euler, he was Swiss, he was also a physicist and he wrote in a letter to a friend maybe just as a joke or maybe he actually heard it that way.

spk_0 He wrote the story that the apple fell on his head, which is of course a lot more interesting and more fun.

spk_0 And his book ended up, his letter ended up in a very popular book and then another very popular writer copied it for his also very popular book.

spk_0 And before you know it, everyone is saying, you know, he got his ideas because an apple fell on his head.

spk_0 So it's just one, one person making up a story, a spreading a story and everyone picking it up and those it makes no sense. It just didn't happen.

spk_0 And we literally have friends of Newton who wrote down what Newton told him taught them what happened.

spk_0 So there's no confusing confusion that everyone knows what happened and it wasn't on his head, but one guy writing it and your your cook.

spk_0 So everyone's heard that Thomas Krapper invented the toilet, but you say no.

spk_0 No, he didn't.

spk_0 We have to, there's two different things here is did he invent the toilet or the mechanical flushing toilet because there's two different things that the flushing toilet goes back thousands of years.

spk_0 That's just throwing water after when you're done with your business.

spk_0 But what Krapper did, again, almost like Coca-Cola is he got what already existed and made it popular publicized it made sure it was known and seen everywhere he made he made it into a big business.

spk_0 And that's why people stick to that story, but also because of his lovely name that is so fitting.

spk_0 But mechanical mechanical toilets go back centuries. Most people think it was a sergerington who invented one in a 16th century.

spk_0 But very recently while I was writing the book, they discovered a mechanical toilet in a 13th century castle in York.

spk_0 And we don't really know how it worked, but there is a there is a toilet and there is some sort of shoot.

spk_0 There must have been some sort of door or a handle and the water would flow through that shoot.

spk_0 So we know that it goes back a lot further.

spk_0 But was is there a connection between his name and why we use the word crap the way we sometimes do.

spk_0 Not directly, but the word already existed, but his name was attached to it and it was printed on every toilet so it was really, really fitting.

spk_0 So the famous person that said the smart thing, I mean there's a lot of those if you could grab a few and in a succinct way, tell them.

spk_0 Everybody, especially petitions, love to quote Churchill.

spk_0 For instance, he said apparently they think he said you have enemies good. That means you stood for something in your life.

spk_0 That was not by Churchill. That was by fantasy author decades later.

spk_0 Churchill also apparently said if you're going through hell keep going, he didn't say that.

spk_0 There's no evidence at all for him saying that Einstein didn't say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results that actually comes from the 12 steps, 12 steps program.

spk_0 Oh, and there's one that I really like. There's businessmen love to quote this and it is if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more and your a leader.

spk_0 And they say that's a quote by John Quincy Adams, but it's actually a quote by Dolly Parton.

spk_0 So I've always thought that the pyramids were built by slaves. I think we've learned that in school that the slaves in Egypt built the pyramids.

spk_0 Yeah, it goes back very, very far. I mean we've had Greek writers like Herodotus writing vague stories that sort of make you think they're involved slavery.

spk_0 There's something in the Bible even that links to it in a way. And for a very, very long time historians and archaeologists all agreed that that was what happened.

spk_0 Just the idea of making of building something as massive as the pyramids of in a time when everyone had slaves. Of course you're going to use slaves that's you know that does that makes sense.

spk_0 But relatively recently they found the places where the cities where those workers lived.

spk_0 And while they were digging up these cities, they found really good housing. They found good food, you know bones from all sorts of animals.

spk_0 They also found graffiti that on the walls that talks about crews, you know crews of workers. And there was one that's really I love that one of them called themselves the drunkards of Macauro.

spk_0 And that is such a typical name for a group of workers to call themselves.

spk_0 And we have letters that write about how they have to pay by new clothes for the workers and the people who worked on the pyramids were buried very close to the pharaohs, which is you know a very honorable spot and their skeletons show good medical care.

spk_0 So everything we we found suggests that these workers were treated really really well. And we have no evidence at all for them being slaves. So I mean we can't say for 100% the best what happened but it all points towards that these are actually good work, good paid workers.

spk_0 So I have certainly heard that people at certain in certain places at certain times in history way back didn't drink the water because water was dangerous so they they drank beer they drank alcohol because alcohol kills germs so

spk_0 that's the theory right.

spk_0 Yeah and it it it goes back again to the idea of the Middle Ages being dirty and somehow always just in Europe for some reason.

spk_0 But medieval people were obsessed about clean water they had they had aqua ducts they had pipes with running water all those things that people think only the Romans had but medieval people had them as well.

spk_0 They were they knew that dirty water couldn't be trusted that you could get sick I mean that that's a lesson that you learn within minutes of drinking dirty water that you don't forget that lesson.

spk_0 And also thing that people forget is that if you want to make ill you know the sort of beer early medieval beer if you want to make that good ill you need clean water otherwise the process doesn't work.

spk_0 So people were always drinking water and they were always obsessed about the water that they drank being clean they drank beer because it's nice and you know nutritious and fun.

spk_0 And there's this other idea of that that maybe back at that same time in history that that spices were used to cover up the rotten meat that to make rotten meat taste good.

spk_0 Yeah and that again that is at first you hear that you think okay that might work but if you think a few more seconds about it you realize that it's a really stupid idea because if you eat that meat you're going to regret it no matter how many spices you cover it up with it's not going to go well for you you're going to spend the rest of the week on the toilet that's just been invented.

spk_0 So what are you going to do it's a really strange story but even where there is that spices back then very extremely expensive you know they had to be transported from all over the world.

spk_0 Spices were more expensive than meat so it makes no sense at all if you know just buy some new meat or don't eat meat but you're not going to waste expensive spices on it.

spk_0 What about the fashion brand Hugo boss and the connection to the Nazis that's history that I've heard before don't know if it's true.

spk_0 Well lots of people think that you go boss designed the Nazi uniforms and every time there's someone on social media famous person saying they're being sponsored by Hugo boss you can see in the comments people oh why are you doing that Hugo boss you know.

spk_0 He was made uniforms for the Nazis he designed all the uniforms and you see it even in documentaries even some museums have claimed this.

spk_0 But he didn't he was just another wartime poverty he had a little factory that made uniforms and he made uniforms for the Nazis lots of them but so did other manufacturing companies he was just giving you know he was the Nazi said can you make some uniforms here are what they look like and he said you know.

spk_0 Yeah sure and he made them and he didn't make use of slave labor and he did some pretty nasty things and he was a very very enthusiastic Nazi.

spk_0 But he didn't design them you know he didn't have that design talent because a lot of people think that the Nazi uniforms look really really cool and really really nice but he didn't design them just some Nazi designers did.

spk_0 Well this was kind of fun and interesting to hear about history that never happened and I appreciate you sharing the stories I've been speaking with yo headwink Tiawisha or it's pronounced something like that and she's author of the book fake history 101 things that never happened and if you'd like to read it there's a link to it at Amazon in the show notes yo thank you my pleasure if there's anything else you know what find me.

spk_0 Everybody lies once in a while how bad can it be well probably worse than you thought even little white lies can be bad for us according to research at Notre Dame the study there reveal that people who rarely lied were actually much healthier than average or problem liars.

spk_0 People who bend the truth withhold information or tell the occasional whopper often suffer in several ways symptoms range from physical problems such as headaches and sore throats to some serious emotional woes including feelings of sadness stress and even self loathing.

spk_0 So it does seem in fact that the truth will set you free and that is something you should know something you should know is produced by Jeff Havison Jennifer Brennan and the executive producer.

spk_0 I'm Mike Herrothers thank you for listening today to something you should know.

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