Hunting Fake History with Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse

Ever come across a really amazing historical fact on the internet or in school, and tell it to all your friends, only to find out that it actually isn’t true? This week on The Medieval Podcast, Danièle speaks with Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse (aka the Fake History Hunter) about things that never happened, what it’s like to hunt fake history, and what really grinds her gears.
Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse is a Dutch historian and historical consultant who works for museums, authors and film & tv productions. You can learn more about her book 'Fake History: 101 things that never happened' at www.medievalis...
You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to / medievalists

[@molochi]

Correcting people on the internet is fun. Sometimes someone corrects my correction and I learn something new too.

[@gonefishing167]

And they can be vicious also. It’s scary. Good when you learn something though, it’s exciting. It’s all in the approach 🙏🙏👵🇦🇺

[@xezazase]

That is incorrect.

[@nilianstroy]

The people that can't fathom painted castles definitely hate the Palacio da Pena in Portugal...

[@kevincasey5035]

Do a deep dive on the Battle of Hastings - there's at least 5 sites that claimed to be the real location

[@shootgunMarvel]

Ohhhhhh... 😭 This kind of my dream job... Ohh the envy im feeling now... 😢😢😢😢, im Portuguese and its so difficulty to find someone who is into History, i mean, there are a lot but almost all people you randomly pop up, just chat, if you start introducing History, any kind any era.. just anything 90% of chance is getting the "im so bored face" just in first minutes of the conversation... lol 😂, i would love to cash in making something like this, coz people don't study/read much about History but they like to believe in the most stupid and crazy theories and they never go check if it's true or fake, they just go with the flow.. and, most beautiful thing is getting mad if someone correct it .. hahahaha.. - one thing i learned over the years was if you are interesting on learning and don't just boost their ego is important if someone correct you, you just accept the criticism, and hear carefully and try to understand it and see if its true, bcoz you can only increase your knowledge and learn new stuff if you have a predisposition to learn, it takes some humility to assimilate new subjects. - This is so actual.., people believing in crazy theories, spreading them on social media, don't even check anything they are posting and get angry, upset and go over their heads if someone correct them... 😂 Oh God! The Contemporary.... 😘

[@coyotemojo]

I was hoping for more examples, but it inspired me to do a search on it and filled a play list. I'd really like to know where in the world they haven't heard of Romans., though.

[@garethley66]

Shockingly, some people deny the Romans/ Roman Empire actually existed!

[@angela_merkeI]

Props to her when she has the energy for it (on Twitter of all places even). The limited interaction I have with afrocentrists and people spouting nonsense about mediaeval hygiene already push me to my breaking point😂 And to add to it all, my country's public broadcaster's "history" instagram profile so often posts outright falsehoods on a weekily basis that it's driving me nuts. For example like they stated the myth Herodotus wrote that the locals of an Egyptian town had about their city (whose main goddess was Bastet) being conquered because the Persian Cambyses used a horde of cats as historical fact. Completely uncritically. And the list goes on and on with the sloppily researched/misconstrued posts being spread by a public broadcaster.

[@nilianstroy]

"The limited interaction I have with afrocentrists " ?

[@angela_merkeI]

@@nilianstroy It's not often that my insta feed shows me posts about ancient Egypt (because everything history-related is bs on Insta so I usually ignore/block it) but every time there are people claiming that modern Egyptians are fake, that ancient Egyptians all were black and that Cleopatra was black.