How We Lie to Ourselves About History

By artappraiser on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 3:25am |

The educational podcast "You're Wrong About" presents a kind of Schadenfreude theatre; you get to hear someone get absolutely schooled, in real time, as they make the journey from ignorance to insight. https://t.co/DjWO5cTkUB
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) January 4, 2021

URL:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/19/how-we-lie-to-ourselves-about-history

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I knew Genovese - school me on the others

Mistreated by Politics (Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky), Mistreated by Media (Kitty Genovese, Anna Nicole Smith), Mistreated by Capitalism (Tonya Harding, Janet Jackson), and Mistreated by Religion (Tammy Faye Bakker, Terri Schiavo).

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 12:31pm

Thanks for this news item. I intend to give the site a try. Rather than the list of episodes which are not on subjects I particularly want to know more about, I am most interested in the idea that they discuss how or why debunkable stories are believed.

I highly recommend another history podcast that I find informative and entertaining. It is Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History”. He is not a historian in the sense of having diplomas on his wall but rather a good audible storyteller who has read and studied a hell of a lot of history.

by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 5:33pm

you're welcome, lulu. but just a warning that they focus on popular American cultural stories, the kind of thing that ended up being discussed at everyone's dinner table or the water cooler. you probably aren't gonna find them doing a lot on hard core international relations.

by artappraiser on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 5:40pm

Agreed, I am not interested enough in the titles available to go there on that basis but if its real subject isn’t so much about facts [about Princess Diana for instance] as the critique says but rather the process by which we absorb them and it adds to or corrects what I think about that subject it will be a good find.

by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 5:59pm

gawd, Princess Diana is such a good example! every dinner table and every water cooler in the world!

by artappraiser on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 7:20pm

speaking of that kind of shit

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are getting a divorce: 'She's done' https://t.co/dABBXz6t01 pic.twitter.com/Rsmyp4Gkpo
— Page Six (@PageSix) January 5, 2021

by artappraiser on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 7:26pm

I can see that my response could be misunderstood, I put a parenthetical clause in the wrong place. I intended to make it clear in my agreement with you about my little interest in American popular cultural stories such as that one. Princess Diana is a subject I do not, and never did, have much interest in, so 'around every table' is off by at least one. But, if there is a widely accepted story about her that the podcast, "Your Wrong About", debunks and then has something intelligent to say why the wrong story is still believed, then I will be interested in hearing it.

by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 8:19pm

That said, I had way more interest in her then I have in the Kardashians.

by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 8:24pm

I presumed that. Furthermore, I suspect everyone here would agree!

by artappraiser on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 10:05pm

I totally got that the first time

by artappraiser on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 10:04pm

they might really have their work cut out for them as time goes by, this thread a colleague just re-tweeted is a good example:

Guys, something insane happened to me today.

I am on a text chain with my teenage nieces and nephews along with my mom (their grandma) and today my mom asked them if they knew who Helen Keller was...

And their response was that Helen Keller was a fraud who didn't exist.
— Daniel Kunka (@unikunka) January 5, 2021

by artappraiser on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 7:16pm

The Helen Keller most know is a fraud that didn't exist. The real Helen Keller was a radical true blue socialist

by ocean-kat on Tue, 01/05/2021 - 8:17pm

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