A Shoutout to the BS Historian

In the realm of skeptical inquiry, science is well represented. There are archaeology podcasts and astronomy podcasts that take time to debunk myths. Whole books are devoted to the fine art of baloney detection as done by Carl Sagan and his fellow physicists.

That’s fair, but it does leave historical myths in the wind. There are listicals dealing with history that has been gotten wrong, but finding someone willing to dive into context and explain where a story came from is a bit harder. And it is shocking how much mythology is made out of history.

Some of the myth-making is because history as a study is relatively young. It started to be a science in the early 1800’s, and it went through some growing pains. Anyone studying Medieval history knows the pain of the Victorians taking an interest in your field. Like, the Iron Maiden was a Victorian invention. And they were notorious for putting funny hats on people- Viking horns and Pilgrims buckle hats were from the 1800’s.

But cut them a little slack- it was the first time that people studied the past by reading, say, trial transcripts or household inventories. I have a book about German history from the 1890’s that was so proud of this innovation it bragged about it in the introduction. Previously, everyone seemed to rely on chronicles, and these were shockingly inaccurate, not to mention often written to justify land grabs. That was the entire point of a monastery chronicle I wrote about in my forgery post.

So a lot of nonsense has been inherited. Margaret Murray popularizing the witch cult hypothesis didn’t help. Nor did the History Channel.

So, when I got an update from the BS Historian, it was a treat. He commented on the accuracy of a documentary about werewolves that he was in.

Now I need to do a post about werewolves. I even have an outline and some sources lined up.

But most importantly, I need to congratulate him on his keeping up the good fight. Context is so hard to get in this world of listicles and sound bites. Definitely enjoyed this: https://bshistorian.wordpress.com/2023/12/31/call-of-the-werewolf/#respond

Also, while I am at it: Our Fake History’s three-part podcast on Salem was great.

To the werewolves! ‘Cause it is always spooky season in my heart.