The Smart Way to Spend Money & History That Never Happened

Experience a membership that backs your business journey with American Express Business Platinum.

Earn five times membership rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels booked on amxtravel.com.

Plus, enjoy a welcome offer of 200,000 points after you spend $20,000 on purchases on the card within your first three months of membership.

American Express Business Platinum.

There's nothing like it.

Terms apply.

Learn more at AmericanExpress.com/slash business dash platinum.

Today, on something you should know: the way you walk, what it says about you, and what it does to you, then the art of spending money, and why so many people struggle with the money they have.

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

The part of their personality that has led them to be high earners is the part of their personality that says it's never enough, and that's why they tend to be perpetually dissatisfied with what they have.

Also, the trouble with lying and and how the truth will set you free.

And history you learn that isn't true.

Like the first video game was Pong.

People in the Middle Ages were dirty.

And the workers who built the pyramids were slaves.

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

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

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

All this today on something you should know.

One thing I've learned about running a business is this.

Just because you can run a business doesn't mean you're good at hiring.

Hiring is a skill all its own and if you get it wrong, it costs you time, money, and momentum.

I've been there.

That's why I recommend Indeed because they make the whole process faster, easier, and they deliver better outcomes.

When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.

Instead of struggling to get your job post noticed, Indeed's sponsored jobs helps you stand out.

So what happens is your listing jumps right to the top of the page for the right candidates so you reach the people you actually want to reach faster.

And the difference is real.

According to Indeed Data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.

I mean, that's huge.

And to give you an idea of just how fast it works, in the minute I've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed, according to Indeed Data, worldwide.

No wonder more than 3.5 million employers already use it.

There's no need to wait any longer.

Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com/slash something.

Just go to Indeed.com/slash something right now and support this show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

Indeed.com slash something.

Terms and conditions apply.

Hiring, indeed, is all you need.

Something you should know.

Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today.

Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

Think for a moment about how you walk.

Like when you walk down the street, what does that look like?

Because it's important.

Hi, and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know.

How you walk often indicates how you feel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A happier walk produced a happier mood.

So it appears your feelings affect your walk.

and your walk affects your feelings.

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

And that is something you should know.

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

We think it's about numbers and budgets and spreadsheets, but really money is about meaning, how we view it, how we spend it, and what we refuse to spend it on.

And here's the kicker, there isn't one right way to spend it.

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

Or both feel quite miserable.

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

Well, my guest Morgan Hausel has thought deeply about this.

He's a partner at the Collaborative Fund and an award-winning business journalist.

He's author of a book called The Art of Spending Money, Simple Choices for a Richer Life.

Hi, Morgan.

Welcome.

Thanks so much for having me, Mike.

Appreciate it.

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

You use money to trade for something you want, and, you know, that should sort of be the end of it, but that's really not the end of it.

Money gets wrapped up in all different kind of ways in our life, some good, some not so good.

So

what's going on?

Yeah, Mike, if you think of money as a tool, a tool to buy stuff, a tool to have a better life, but it's a very different kind of tool than something else.

If you compare it to a tool like a screwdriver, a screwdriver has a very intended purpose, it's only used for that purpose.

When we're done with it, we put it back in the drawer.

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

Money has this other element of not only is it a tool to buy stuff, it is a tool that I can use to compare myself to you and to other people and to the rest of society.

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

And so, when it stops becoming a tool to live a better life and it becomes a yardstick of status to measure yourself against others by, that is one of the very many kind of psychological holes that people go down and fall into that makes money a much more messy and emotional topic than it should be.

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

But I mean, you know, I can remember when I, the last car I bought, I didn't buy it to try to keep up with the neighbors kind of thing.

I bought it because

that's the car I wanted.

I objectively thought this would be a good car for me, or at least that's what I was telling myself.

But

I wasn't consciously trying to say, well, my neighbors have a better car or my friend has a better car.

So I want to get as good a car.

I just, that's not how I do it.

Yeah, I think what's true is that even if you do feel like you are living in your own head and you're not comparing yourself, you don't feel like you're actively envious or jealous of others.

What is true about your statement that I fully agree with and I

relate to myself is that your definition of what is a good car, even that alone is based off of things you've seen other people driving.

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

Everything is just relative to what other peoples have.

And what's true today is that an average middle-class American family today lives a materially better life than even an upper-income household would have 100 years ago.

I mean, John D.

Rockefeller was the richest man in history during his era.

He never had antibiotics.

He never had Advil.

He never had sunscreen.

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

And so everything is just relative to other people.

So even if you do feel like you are, you just have an internal benchmark of you're not comparing yourself to other people's external benchmarks, everyone's definition of what is good or bad or necessary or luxury or whatnot is based off of a comparison to other people.

It's almost an unavoidable part of money.

Well, I guess in some sense, that kind of comparison that we make is human nature, but it's also the force that you try to do better, right?

I mean, that keeping up with the Joneses

does have a benefit.

I think it's true that A, I want to live in a world in which most people wake up in the morning and say, I need more.

This is not enough.

I haven't achieved my goals.

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

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

That's where innovation and technology comes from.

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

So that's good.

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

And I think that's good.

At the individual level, I think you can take a step back and look at the game that's being played of social comparison and keeping up with the Joneses and moving the goalposts in your life and realize the futility of it if your goal is happiness.

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

People chase happiness without realizing that happiness is almost always for everybody, a five-minute emotion.

Like people are are rarely happy for more than a couple minutes at a time.

I think what people would actually want out of their money and the best, the most reasonable goal for your money is contentment.

If I sit here and daydream about having a mansion or a private jet or whatever it might be, what I'm actually doing is imagining myself.

Sitting in that mansion, that hypothetical mansion and saying, this is enough.

I don't want any more.

And that's the feeling that feels good.

That's like the feeling that you're trying to chase is sitting in that mansion or that car, whatever it might be, and saying, I'm now saying this is good.

This is enough.

But what actually happens more often than not, of course, is that if you are sitting in that dream house, that dream car, your gaze starts going to other people.

Oh, look at my neighbor's house.

Like their yard's a little bit bigger.

Oh, look at his car.

It has a couple more horsepower than mine.

And so it's that

ceaseless pushing of the goalpost and ratcheting of your expectations that A, leads to a world of advancement in technology that I like, but the individual level can kind of make you take a step back and say, look, if there's no satiation on my desires, I'm never going to be happy with my money.

And Mike, I want more money.

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

This is not a plea to live like a monk.

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

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

And the second part of the equation, which is

maintaining and measuring and keeping control over your desires is actually a more important part of the equation that's easy to overlook.

And so what is your message?

Are you making a recommendation or just an observation?

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

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

I don't know your goals.

I don't know your aspirations.

I don't know your family dynamic.

And so all of this, whether it's how you earn your money, how you save your money, how you invest or how you spend your money, has to start with

looking in the mirror and becoming introspective about what makes you happy and about your goals, your individual life.

Most financial mistakes, I think that's not hyperbole, most financial mistakes come from people chasing advice that is good for somebody else, but wrong for them individually.

It is very easy to tell yourself that if you wake up every morning and say, I'm not satisfied with my life, I'm not happy with my life.

It's very easy to tell yourself, if only I had more money, then these problems would go away.

And sometimes that can be true, but it is very easy to leap to that conclusion when there is a list of things that you can spend money on in a way that you can spend money that's going to make you happier and lead you to a better life.

The list of things that money cannot do for you, I think, is longer.

And so it's not until you dig into the psychology of your own envy, your own jealousy, your own ability to be content, that I think you can actually lead to a better system of spending money that's going to make you happier and more content.

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

You know, for many decades, there would be one study out of academia that would say, once you earn X dollars, you tend to be happier.

Another study would come out and say the exact opposite, and no one could really agree on exactly what it was.

Some of this, in my mind, has been clarified with some research in the last decade, which basically shows that if you are already an anxious and depressed person, earning more money and spending money is probably probably not going to make you happy.

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

Spending more money will make you happier.

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

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

I think the answer can be yes.

If you are using that big house because it makes it easier to have friends and family over, then it can make you happier.

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

Will travel make you happier?

Maybe yes, if it leads to endless time with your friends and your family and your kids and your spouse.

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

So it's too easy to draw a conclusion.

Like,

does spending money make you happy?

Yes or no?

It's never that simple.

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

And so if you want to be happier with money,

there 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.

Well, it's interesting that everybody is so unique.

And yet, you often hear this very common advice for everyone about, you know, a certain percentage of your income should go for housing, and a certain percent that should be your fun fund, and a certain percent should go for

this.

And

so, how how can that be if you're saying everybody's different?

I think those rules of thumbs can be helpful for people at the margins, but never taken as a science.

And so some of those rules of thumb of X percent to housing, X percent to travel and fun and whatnot.

I have had a unique, let's call it spending saving pattern for my entire adult life.

I've been a very big saver.

And there are periods in my life where my wife and I would really not spend that much money.

I wouldn't call us frugal.

It was just that we just didn't really want that much.

We spend quite a bit more now than we used to.

But I used to have a lot of friends.

This is not that long ago, five years ago, maybe, who would really give me a hard time about it and give me a hard time about how cheap I was.

And don't I want a nicer car or a bigger house?

And it was always interesting to me because the answer was, no, I don't think I do.

But

my decision that was making my wife and I happy may have seemed crazy to them, but it made perfect sense to us.

And so the individuality of this, I think is easy to overlook.

And people understand that if we're talking about your taste in food or your taste in music, if you say you love Italian food and I don't, neither one of us is right or wrong.

And people understand that.

There's no debate about that.

You know it's subjective.

How people spend their money, I think people want to believe that there should be a science of spending money.

And therefore, you take...

When you watch other people doing it differently than you do, it's very easy to jump to the conclusion that they're doing it wrong.

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

We're talking about spending money, probably talking about it in a way you haven't talked about it before.

My guest is Morgan Hausel.

He's author of the book, The Art of Spending Money, Simple Choices for a Richer Life.

Introducing your new Dell PC powered by the Intel Core Ultra Processor.

It helps you handle a lot, even when your holiday to-do list gets to be a lot.

Because it's built with all-day battery, plus powerful AI features that help you do it all with ease.

From editing images to drafting emails to summarizing large documents to multitasking.

So you can organize your holiday shopping and make custom holiday decor and search for great holiday deals and respond to holiday requests and customer questions and customers requesting custom things and plan the perfect holiday dinner for vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, and Uncle Mike's carnivore diet.

Luckily, you can get a PC that helps you do it all faster.

So you can get it all done.

That's the power of a Dell PC with Intel inside, backed by Dell's price match guarantee.

Get yours today at dell.com slash deals.

Terms and conditions apply.

See dell.com for details.

As the weather cools, I'm getting clothes that are warm, durable, and built to last.

And for me, the only place to get them is quintce.

They've become my go-to for fall staples.

My favorites, their pants, cashmere sweaters, and their polo shirts.

I mean, the quality is first rate, and I find myself reaching for my Quince clothes more than anything else in my closet.

Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just 60 bucks, which is incredible when you realize how soft and well-made they are.

And their polo shirts, they just have a better fit than any other I've ever tried.

And if you're looking looking for outerwear, Quince has classic fit denim, real leather, and wool pieces that look sharp and are built to last.

And I've got my eye on this suede trucker jacket.

It's casual, but still really polished, and it's perfect for layering this fall.

Here's what makes Quince different.

They work directly with ethical factories and top artisans, cutting out the middlemen, so you get premium quality at half the cost of similar brands.

And it's not just clothes.

Quince has has expanded into bedding, bath, cookware, even travel accessories with the same focus on quality and value.

Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look.

Go to quince.com/slash sysk for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

Now available in Canada too.

That's Q-U-I-N-C-E quince.com/slash SYSK.

Free shipping and 365-day

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.

But a few years ago, I got a new car.

But when I had the old car, I was happy with it.

It wasn't falling apart.

I kept it up fine.

But I sensed people were making judgments about me, but it just wasn't important to me.

Right.

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

My wife and I recently had this realization.

This is just this summer.

This is a recent thing, where we finally came to terms with the fact that of the last probably five vacations we've been on, the best part of the vacation was coming home.

And we were finally like, how many times do 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 a vacation is not going somewhere.

But what is virtually everyone in society tell you?

Travel, travel, travel, spend money on experiences and whatnot.

And at one point in our life, that was true.

I think at in a future point in our life, that will be true.

It's not right now.

And so I think this, it can be very frustrating for people that what works for you might not work for me and what I value might not be what you value.

And so we finally came to terms that spending money on travel is not just not what we want right now.

And

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

And so realizing what is your thing thing is really important.

There's a financial writer named Ramit Seti who talks about this a lot.

And his unique version of this is he loves clothes.

He loves expensive clothes.

He's big into fashion.

He dresses incredibly well.

And like you, though, he's not a car guy.

So you can, you can picture him driving around in his old Honda Accord or whatever it might be in a very expensive suit.

And that's what works for him.

And if I'm honest, I'm probably closer to the latter.

I like Levi jeans and cheap t-shirts, and I do kind of like nice nice cars.

And so everyone has to find their little unique thing and realize that there's no formula for it.

I would imagine that your experiences, your financial experiences, 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.

I came across this headline while doing the research for this book from

a column in the Washington Post from 1929.

So 1929 is the peak of the 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 Are Snubbed While Poor, The More You Enjoy Displaying Being Rich.

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

And there could be an endless range of that.

There's a great financial writer, financial educator named Tiffany Alishe, 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, I can't ever go back terrified of going back to that spot.

However, that manifests with you,

there's a million different ways.

The realization that spending money is not just a spreadsheet endeavor where it's like, oh, the bigger house is better, the faster car is better.

There is always a psychological component based off of different experiences that we've had in our life.

That's true for different generations.

The generation that grew up with and endured the Great Depression in the 1930s, very well documented for the rest of their life, even as the economy recovered and became stronger than ever, and they were earning more money than ever, they were very cautious with their money.

That was an emotional scar that they never recovered from.

I think that can be true for the generation who graduated high school or graduated college during COVID with a broken jobs market, a crazy economy.

People were getting stimulus checks.

The stock market was going crazy.

There is so much that is out of our hands.

And we want to think that we are all thinking independently and thinking rationally.

But the truth is, I would think about money if I was born in a different generation and in a different country and to different parents and then went to a different school, whatever it might be.

There's all these things that we are just products, if not even, I would say prisoners 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.

Well, my sense has always been that, you know, there are two kinds of people.

There are savers and there are spenders.

And

spenders wonder why people are saving and savers wonder why people are blowing all their money.

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

One of the ways that I think about this is I've always been a big saver for my adult life.

And if somebody were to ask me, what are you saving for?

Are you saving for a new house?

Are you saving for retirement?

I would always say, no, I'm saving for a world that is much more fragile than people want to believe.

Because similar to what you just said, if I were to say, what are the odds that you and I, both of us, will experience at least one of these during the rest of our adult life?

Major job loss, divorce.

major medical illness, wayward children, lawsuits.

What are the odds that we will experience at least one of those?

I would 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.

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

So I think there is like a rational amount of ignorance that people have just to

want to have optimism about their future.

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

Very optimistic about that, very confident in that.

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

And you can believe both of those things at the same time.

Saving your money like a pessimist because you know the world is fragile, but investing 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.

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?

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

They're people who might earn a modest, if not low amount of money, but they want nothing else.

It's the unique kind of person who gets 100% of their joy from being in the garden and going for a walk and bird watching and talking to their friends.

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

More, more, more, more.

That's why they're successful.

And that's why they tend to be perpetually dissatisfied with what they have.

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

very stark.

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

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.

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

I need more, more, more, more.

I can admire those people for the companies and the products that they build.

We'll also recognize that like that's not necessarily a path to a good, happy, content life.

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?

There's a very interesting interview recently with Steve Ballmer, who was the former CEO of Microsoft.

He now owns the LA Clippers, and he's one of the richest men in the world.

His net worth is $150 billion, a cent a billionaire.

And there's a point in the interview where he doesn't say it directly.

It's not verbatim.

I'm kind of sort of paraphrasing his mood, but he kind of hints at the fact that even him, worth $150 billion, is worried about losing all of his money.

And so I think there is no level of wealth

in some people can say, I'm good forever.

I'm set forever.

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

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 because probably for your entire life, you told yourself, you daydreamed and you said if only i had more money my problems would go away and then if you're fortunate enough to gain a lot of money you probably realize that your relationship with your spouse is not any better maybe it's worse your kids don't love you anymore your friends start treating you differently in a in a way that you don't like your health probably isn't any better and so all of these things that are major problems in your life that add a lot of grievance and annoyance to your day-to-day life did not change when you had more money and therefore the hope that you had earlier in your life where you said, if only I had more money, and that gave you hope, something to aspire to, suddenly the hope goes away.

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

Well, you've made me feel so much better that I never win the lottery, even when I play.

But this is really thought-provoking and I think helps everybody think differently about their money.

Morgan Hausel has been my guest.

He is a partner at the Collaborative Fund and author of 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.

Thanks a lot.

You chose to hit play on this podcast today.

Smart Choice.

Progressive loves to help people make smart choices.

That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you.

Give it a try after this episode at progressive.com, progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, not available in all states or situations.

Prices vary based on how you buy.

If you've shopped online, it's extremely likely that you've bought from a business powered by Shopify.

You know that purple shop pay button you see at checkout?

The one that makes the process from, I think I'm ready to buy, to, I can't wait till it gets here, so incredibly easy.

That's Shopify.

And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it, because Shopify makes it easy to start and run your business.

Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e-commerce in the US, from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started.

It gives you a leg up from the very beginning with hundreds of beautiful, ready-to-go templates to express your brand style so you don't have to spend time coding a website.

Shopify allows you to tackle all the important tasks in one place, from from inventory to payments to analytics and more.

Plus, they have built-in marketing and email tools to help find and keep new customers so you can easily spread your brand's word.

And did I mention that iconic purple Shop Pay button that's used by millions of businesses around the world?

It's the reason why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet.

Your customers already know it, love it, and actually use it.

If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify.

Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash realm.

Go to shopify.com slash realm.

Shopify.com slash realm.

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.

Why?

Well, there are a lot of reasons for that, which we will explore.

But just the idea that much of what we thought to be true, we thought was part of the permanent record of history, just

ain't so.

Joining me to offer up some great examples of fake history is Yo Hedwig Teowisha, which is so not how you pronounce her name.

but I've practiced and that's as close as I can get.

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

Yo

Hetzvich Derwische.

There, see, so it's not easy.

Anyway, Yo is known as the fake history hunter and has been debunking fake historical facts on social media for over 20 years.

She's author of a book called Fake History.

101 Things That Never Happened.

Hi, Yo.

Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

Why do we have fake history?

Because you would think that these things would be sorted out.

Like, well, no, that's not true.

That never happened.

And some historian would fix it.

But we have these stories that linger.

Why do we have these stories that linger?

Well, there's a few reasons for it.

One is because most of history we know nothing about.

So we have to, you know, we make it up as we go along.

With a lot of history, we have a bit of evidence, a few, you know, a few hints, a few clues here and there, but we're not quite sure.

So, again, people are very tempted to make half of it up.

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

So, there's many reasons, but the main reason is usually

a lack of evidence or a lack of proper research.

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

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

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

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

And I sometimes

catch myself wanting to believe that because somehow it just fits, you know, our image of the Middle Ages.

It just,

it is dirty, narrow, dark streets full of mud and disgusting things and people throwing stuff out of windows.

That image is so baked into our

way of thinking about that time.

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

They washed, they bathed, they had soap, they loved going to the bathhouses.

They had very, very severe rules and laws about pollution.

And if you dumped your waste in the street, you know, someone would come and give you a massive fine, like terrifyingly huge.

And we have all these records.

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

And that means they had smells and they cared about smells.

And if you, you know, if you're a stinky boy, you don't get any kisses.

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

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

I mean, there's this sense that we're cleaner than people, say, from the early 1900s, the late 1800s, and they are probably thinking they were cleaner and more hygienic than people from the 1700s.

Like we all think we're cleaner than anybody before us.

Yeah,

it's a sort of chronological snobbery.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

But we've been playing games with computers or self-thinking devices, let's call it that, since the 1930s.

And, you know, it's very basic.

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

But even with screens and actual games, those go back to the 1950s, actual computer games as we would define them today.

But few people could play them.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

They were just, they were in universities, there were just a few nerds in back rooms with computers that filled half a laboratory.

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

They worked and they involved computer games, computers.

So it really was a computer game.

There were a few public exhibits where members of the public could try them.

So it's not that nobody got to play them, but they were, yeah, it was not something that you had in your living room.

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.

It was very accessible.

Was it the first accessible game?

The problem is that when we...

think about these subjects, we look at our own memories first and we think, what was the first game that I remember?

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

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

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

But it wasn't.

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.

Yeah,

he doesn't.

Sorry.

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

And he was brought to the Americas by European immigrants.

And they brought their tradition of celebrating Saint Nicholas, who is still a very popular saint here in the Netherlands, where I am at the moment.

And he wore red clothes because that was, you know, his church uniform and and he he was a very very popular saint for especially for children and giving treats and things like that

and the Americans sort of adopted him mixed him up with a few with Father Christmas from the from Britain and in the 1860s there was a an artist a writer Thomas Nast Nost Nast Nast Nest was his name Nast and he wrote yeah Nast exactly and he wrote a story about saint nicholas and he described him as wearing red.

And

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

So we've got pictures of Santa wearing the red suit, having a big belly,

exactly like he looks today still.

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

So the only thing really was what Coca-Cola did was use that same image that was already popular and already used for advertisement and just spread it everywhere because they could because you know it's Coca-Cola.

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

Nast told everyone that this is what Santa looked like and then everyone went with it.

But Coca-Cola made it a global thing.

I mean, even in the Netherlands, here in Europe, where we still have Saint Nicholas, we now also have Santa, which is very confusing because they, you know, Coca-Cola brought him back the way he looks to us.

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

It's very confusing.

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

He's thin.

No.

So yeah,

that's what the Americans did,

which is interesting.

But yeah,

they sort of combined Father Christmas, who in Britain was often portrayed as being rather rotund.

So yeah,

I think Nast really just looked at all the stories he had read and heard and perhaps a few images that he had seen and just put them all together into one fresh new

Santa.

So everyone has heard some version of of the story where Isaac Newton is sitting under a tree and an apple falls on his head and

he figures out gravity.

True?

Nope.

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.

But the issue is that someone,

a certain Mr.

Uller, he was Swiss, he was also a physicist, and he wrote in a letter to a friend, maybe just as a joke, or maybe he actually heard it that way.

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

And his book ended up, his letter ended up in a very popular book.

And then another very popular writer copied it for his also a very popular book.

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

So it's just one person making up a story or spreading a story and everyone picking it up.

And

it makes no sense.

It just didn't happen.

And we literally have friends of Newton who wrote down what Newton

told them what happened.

So there's no

confusion that everyone knows what happened and it wasn't on his head, but one guy writing it and

you're cooked.

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

No, he didn't.

We have to, there's two different things here.

Did he invent the toilet or the mechanical flushing toilet?

Because there's two different things.

The flushing toilet goes back thousands of years.

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

But what Crapper did, again, almost like Coca-Cola, is he got what already existed and made it popular, publicized it, made sure it was known and seen everywhere.

He made it into a big business.

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

But

mechanical toilets go back centuries.

Most people think it was Sir Harrington who invented one in the 16th century.

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

And we don't really know how it worked, but there there is a toilet and there is some sort of chute with there must have been some sort of door or a handle and the water would flow through that chute

so we know that it goes back a lot further but was is there a connection between his name and why we use the word crap the way we sometimes do

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

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.

Everybody, especially politicians, love to quote Churchill.

For instance, he said, apparently they think he said, you have enemies, good.

That means you stood for something in your life.

That was not by Churchill.

That was by a fantasy author decades later.

Churchill also apparently said, if you're going through hell, keep going.

He didn't say that.

There's no evidence at all for him saying that.

Einstein didn't say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

That actually comes from the

12 steps program.

Oh, and there's one that I really like.

Businessmen love to quote this.

And it is, if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, and you're a leader.

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

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.

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 involved slavery.

There's something in the Bible, even that

links to it in a way.

And for a very, very long time, historians and archaeologists all agreed that that was what happened.

Just the idea of making, of building something as massive as the pyramids

in a time when everyone had slaves, of course, you're going to use slaves.

That's, you know, that does that makes sense.

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

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.

They also found graffiti

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 Mekaura.

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

And we have letters that write about how they have to pay, buy new clothes for the workers.

And the people who worked on the pyramids were buried very close to the pharaohs, which is, you know, a very honorable spot.

And their skeletons show good medical care.

So everything we found.

suggests that these workers were treated really, really well.

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

So, I mean, we can't say it for 100% that that's what happened.

But it all points towards that these are actually good work, good paid workers.

So,

I have certainly heard that people

in certain places at certain times in history, way back,

didn't drink the water because water was dangerous.

So, they drank beer.

They drank alcohol because alcohol kills germs.

So,

that's the theory, right?

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

But medieval people were obsessed about clean water.

They had aqueducts, they had pipes with running water, all those things that people think only the Romans had, but medieval people had them as well.

They knew that dirty water couldn't be trusted, that you could get sick.

I mean, that's a lesson that you learn within minutes of drinking dirty water.

You don't forget that lesson.

And also, a 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.

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.

And there's this other idea of

that maybe back at that same time in history that spices were used to cover up the rotten meat, to make rotten meat taste good.

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 bad 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 so what are you going to do it's a really strange story but even weirder is that spices back then were extremely expensive you know they had to be transported from all over the world

Spices were more expensive than meat.

So it makes no sense at all if you, you know, just buy some new meat or don't eat beet, but you're not going to waste expensive spices on it.

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.

Well, lots of people think that Hugo Boss designed the Nazi uniforms.

And every time there's someone on social media, a famous person saying they're being sponsored by Hugo boss you can see in the comments people oh

why are you doing that hugo boss you know it was made uniforms for the nazis he designed all the uniforms um you see it even in documentaries even some museums have claimed this um but he didn't he was just another wartime proverb 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, giving, you know, he was, the Nazis said, can you make some uniforms?

Here are what they look like.

And he said, yeah, sure.

And he made them.

And he did make use of slave labor.

And he did some pretty nasty things.

And he was a very, very enthusiastic Nazi.

But he didn't design them.

You know, he didn't have that design talent because a lot of people think that the Nazi uniforms look really, really cool and really, really nice.

But he didn't design them just some Nazi designers did.

Well, this was kind of fun and interesting to hear about history that never happened.

And I appreciate you sharing the stories.

I've been speaking with Yo Hedwig 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 where to find me.

Everybody Everybody lies once in a while.

How bad can it be?

Well,

probably worse than you thought.

Even little white lies can be bad for us, according to research at Notre Dame.

The study there revealed that people who rarely lied were actually much healthier than average or problem liars.

People who bend the truth, withhold information, or tell the occasional whopper often suffer in several ways.

Symptoms range from physical problems such as headaches and sore throats to some serious emotional woes, including feelings of sadness, stress, and even self-loathing.

So it does seem, in fact, that the truth will set you free.

And that is Something You Should Know.

Something You Should Know is produced by Jeff Havison, Jennifer Brennan, and the executive producer is Ken Williams.

I'm Mike Carruthers.

Thank you for listening today to Something You Should Know.

You know, a lot of the guests who appear on Something You Should Know have their own TED Talk.

And did you know that TED has a podcast that drops a new TED Talk every day?

If you love hearing fascinating stories, insights about human behavior, and mind-blowing concepts that weren't even on your radar before, I recommend you check out TED Talks Daily.

You'll hear hot takes and deep dives from the world's leading thinkers and learn answers to questions like, how do I stop caring about what other people think?

Or is my partner the one?

Do aliens actually exist?

Don't miss out on your daily dose of inspiration.

Listen to TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm often asked, as you might imagine, what podcasts do I listen to?

And I actually have an eclectic taste and I jump around, try different ones.

But I will say that I have a couple I'm very consistent about, and one of them is the Jordan Harbinger Show.

It's kind of a little like something you should know, but Jordan goes in interestingly different directions.

I do know that we share a lot of listeners, a lot of listeners who like this podcast like the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Jordan is really good at getting his guests to open up and share great insights.

Recently, he discussed modern romance scam tactics.

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

And another episode he did was about how society has engineered a generation of lonely men.

The show covers a lot of great topics, which, well, like I said, if you like this show, you're going to like his show.

There's so much here.

Check out the Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.