Closing Remarks and Future Episodes

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Handwritten, a photo, or even a sticky note is all you need Keep your jobs moving faster and on budget at lows. dollid through seventy eight while supplies last. Selection varies by location. Roman bondage, Voodoo Macbeth, and the weird legacy of Bunga Bunga All that and more on this bonus episode of O Fake History. Roll the bonus theme Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of our fake History My name is Sebastian Major and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine What's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told On these bonus episodes, I like to take questions from my amazing listeners and answer them as best I can It's been a minute since we've done a bonus episode. So on today's show, I am going to be answering questions about the last threeree topics that we have covered on our fake history On episode number two hundred forty nine, we looked at the issue of Roman slavery with Dror Emma Souven And then on episode two fifty, we talked about the curse the Shakespeare play Beth Finally, on the most recent episode, number two hundred fifty one, we explored the audacious prank known as the Dreadnot Hoax, which involved Britain's most famous warship in nineteen ten and a group of ridiculous upper crust hoaxers, including Virginia Wolf. Obviously, these were three very different episodes. I liked about this run of three is that it demonstrated the breadth of our fake history If you've been listening for a while, then you've probably noticed that I've had to stretch the definition of what counts as fake history. When I began this show, the parameters were very simple. I was exploring historical myths, those stories that had been wrapped into the historical record, which probably weren't true. over the years, I've tried to make my understanding of what counts as fake history a little bit more elastic. This has just been so I can talk about more stuff and explore more interesting stories on the show So now I also deal with historical misconceptions, historical controversies. I love famous fakes and famous hoaxes And generally things that we get wrong about the past. Now I'm very conscious that I can only push this stuff so far before people will start going. Wait, what is this show anymore? Is this even about fake history? I get it. I am conscious of that. I am aware of it. Every time I approach a new topic, I'm always thinking, what is the fake history angle here? What is the historical myth I am busting? or what type of misconception am I addressing in this show Now that I'm eleven years deep, I have exhausted many of the most obvious historical myths and misconceptions that are out there. notot all of them and One of the things I have learned on this journey is that almost every single historical event is in some way contested or has given birth to some kind of a myth. Luckily for us, human history is as broad as it is deep. so I'm not too worried about running out of things to talk about on the show So once again, I just want to thank you for coming on this journey with me and indulging me as I've expanded the parameters of our fake history so we can tell more weird and entertaining stories from the past Okay, let's get into your questions. Our first question comes to us from Damen on Patreon This is just a reminder that I always go to Patreon first when I am looking for questions for these bonus shows. If you want to be a patron, go to patreon dot com slash our fake history. Damian's question has to do with slavery in the Roman Empire He asks I have a possibly easy question. Did the transition from republic to empire have any impact at all on the institution of slavery Thanks for that question, Damian This was an interesting one because, believe it or not, I actually asked doror Emma Southern something along these lines when I did my interview with her ended up cutting that question and her answer out of the final show And here's why I cut it out. She basically said, No, the transition from repepublic to empire didn't have a serious impact on the institution of slavery in Rome I chose to cut that question because I found the answer to be not particularly illuminating and we covered many of the other things that she addressed in her answer at other points on the show While the institution of slavery did not change when Rome went from being a republic to an empire I think you could say that the influx of slaves contributed to Rome's transition from repepublic to empire There are many reasons why the Roman Republic was eventually supplanted by a more autocratic system that we call the emmpire, which was headed by a single emperor with quite a lot One of the reasons has to do with the huge amounts of wealth that were flowing into Rome and into the hands of a select group of people. There was a small elite class who was benefiting considerably more from Rome's expansion than the rest of the population These super elite Romans who would end up fighting each other in the civil wars were also Rome's biggest slave holders For instance, if we just look at the rise of a figure like Julius Caesar One of the key steps towards him becoming dictator for life and setting the groundwork for what would become the emperor were his conquests in Gaul, in what is today France and the Netherlands and that whole part of Europe The conquests in Gaul sent not only a lot of material wealth back to Rome, but thousands upon thousands of human beings who had been taken as slaves. You could make the argument that the personal power and prestige of a person like Julius Caesar was deeply connected to his role in the slave trade. In this way, the growth of slavery sort of mirrored the decline of the Republican system The more wealth and slaves that were being brought in by the expansion of the empire, the harder it was to maintain what had been the existing political order Individuals like Caesar and Pompey who were out there enslaving Huge chunks of the European population would eventually be doing battle for control of Rome But it seems like the day to day existence of an enslaved person did not change all that much from the Republican era into the early Empire era, at least accccording to Dr. Sven Our next question concerning the episode on Roman slavery comes to us from Cole on Patreon Cole rights. Hey, loved the chat You two discussed how Roman historians were quite moralizing in their history writing I think moralizing historians are a common theme across history and have come up on the show. See the Victorians My first question is that I feel like history was taught pretty amorally when I was in school compared to other points of history I graduated high school in twenty fifteen for context teacher, do you feel this is true or is it just my personal bias because those lessons aligned with my moral worldview Secondly can and should we be teaching history without moral lessons? curious what you think from your teaching experience, loveo the show and I look forward to each new episode drop Thanks Cole, this is a fascinating question and one that I thought about all the time when I was teaching full time and one that I continue to think about as I create this podcast Should the teaching of history have a moral Pon it One thing that the ancient historians would do was the events of the past into a very specific prescribed moral framework and When a moment from the past did not fit within that framework, they would either explain it away, ignore it, or they would come up with invented details to help it fit within a moral framework The ancient Roman historians would also do things like crereate long speeches and put them in the mouths of historical figures specifically to teach moral lessons And that is a trope of historical history writing that I don't think we need to bring back We don't need to pretend ancient figures or any figure from the past said something that they didn't actually say Nor should we change the facts of the past to fit within a particular moral framework We should be crystal clear about There is evidence of and what there is not evidence of I believe when we teach history, we should be clear eyed and honest about However, that does not then prescribe how we should feel about those things I do believe that in the world of history education, there should be a lot of room for individual students to make up their own minds about whether or not a historical event was a good thing or a bad thing or an evil thing, or a triumphant thing The issue becomes when things are not allowed to be taught because they might make a certain nation or certain powerful people or a certain ideology look bad The facts are the facts and students should be exposed to them. With that said, there are certain issues where I don't think it's wrong to give a certain amount of moral guidance to your students For instance, if you're teaching about any one of history's many atrocities and as a teacher, you just sort of shrug your shoulders at it and go, hey, you kids make up your own mind if this was a good thing or a bad thing I think that can give the wrong impression to students suggests that being like, oh yeah, maybe this atrocity was alright is A morally justifiable position So when we're teaching history, I think it's allright to sort of create some moral boundaries around our teaching, but to be also very clear about what they are. tryry to be extremely explicit to your students and say like You know, this class values human rights. That was something that I used to say that human rights are a value that I have, is something that I care about and that in this classroom The idea that every human being has certain inalienable rights is going to be baked into the cake of how We teach this history and how you willll be learning about this history Thankfully, that was not a particularly controversial position to take while I was teaching. It's interesting you say you graduated in twenty fifteen. That means that you could have been one of my high school students. I think by simply staking out that ground I was creating a moral framework And I was teaching from that position So I think it's impossible to completely purge yourself of bias to completely you know teach entirely objectively, I don't think human beings actually do that and by doing that, you might give the impression that certain horrendous acts are morally neutral. And I don't believe that is true Personally in the classroom, I tried to do what I do on this podcast, which is tellell you what my biases are when they are relevant try to check myself and make sure my biases are not getting in the way. Or if I feel like it's a story where I need to stake out some moral ground, let's say, I'm very clear about it. I lay it out. I make it very obvious what my opinions are and where my moral stances are Now. I find it interesting that you believe that you were taught history in an amoral kind of way Now I don't know where you grew up. I don't know where you went to high school You may have had a wonderfully objective set of history teachers But my instincts tell me that you were not taught history in a totally amoral way I believe that you were probably taught history in a way that reflected the values of the society in which you grew up. You were told stories which reinforced those values in a way that was not so overbearing that you noticed them You see, every history textbook that's ever been written E the very good ones have a narrative that they are trying to communicate about history Even if your teachers just stuck to whatever textbook they had been given, they were then teaching that narrative, even if they weren't consciously thinking about it So I think the most important thing to remember is that These narratives are everywhere. They are being constructed. And we just have to think about them critically. It doesn't even mean that the narratives are always wrong just means that even the right narratives are being built because to create a story out of wild diverse reality of experience. requires editing, it requires selection And it is necessarily guided. Bye. values All of this is to say that yes, we should use our understanding of morality to guide our interpretation of history However, we should not use our understanding of morality to edit our history Those are my thoughts on that one Today's episode of Our Fake History is being brought to you by Shopify Picture this, it's late at night and you're scrolling through your feeds when all of a sudden you see it, that one product that you've been looking for. You click the link, addd to cart, maybe even shop around a little more before finally hitting C checkout As you're filling in your address, you realize you don't have your card anywhere near you That's when you see it, that purple pay button that has all of your information saved, making checking out as simple as a tap on your screen Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and ten percent of all e commerce in the United States from household names like Mattel and Gyms Shark brands just getting started. With Shopify, you can get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. You can easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling See less carts go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their Shop pay button Sign up for your one dollar per month trial today at shhopify d. com slash fake go to shhopify. com slash fake. 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Get your tickets today at Crayolaexperience dot com Let's move on to some questions about Macbeth and the curse that allegedly haunts that play I got an amazing and lengthy email from a patron named Stehven and I want to share some big chunks of it. Now Stehven also helps answer a few of our other patrons questions here. So I'm going to start with the first chunk of Stehven's email And then we'll hear some other questions and then we will return to Stehven's email to help answer some of the queries that came from other curious listeners All right Stephven writes You know I love you and our fake history. Like an Orson Wells movie, What's Not too loveve Speaking of Orson Wells, one of the most famous Pse of the Scottish Play stories was perpetuated by him its spooky dum spread even further On the verge of his break in Hollywood with his masterpiece Citizen Cane, Wells directed a seminal version of the play in nineteen thirty six for the Federal Theater Project, part of the Worers Project addministration of FDR's New Deal later became a victim of the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings about communist activities in the United States Welles set his version of Macers during the Haiti slave revolt using a slave turned king, Henri Christopf as the model for the title character Theater goers were stunned with an all black cast on Broadway, and the show later toured the country The entire run was sold out and the performance is a great landmark in theater history notot just in terms of casting. also an early entry into setting Shakespeare's works in different times and places, and the hardcore realistic acting style Wells introduced in his early movies Dubbed Voodoo Macbeth Wells hired musicians versed in African voodoo rituals and so called which doctors from Sierra Leone Due to scheduling conflicts, the one hundred and fifty member cast began their rehearsals at midnight, continuing through the witching hours until daybreak Race issues, acting style and the size of the show caused some notable critics to give poor reviews. That's where the Scottish play curse comes in Percy Hammond of the Herald Tribune was one of those critics who panned the show In response, it was reported that the drummers met in the theater Following a performance Rumor has it that a live chicken was brought into the space but never left Erson Wells later tells the story One drummer had offered to quote, make Barry Barry on this bad man He told the story that a voodoo doll was created in Hammond's effigy and stuck with pins. Wells states that he found this funny until just a few days later Percy Hammond died Oh Old dark magic Stehven's email goes on from there, but Wow. I had heard of the so called Voodoo Macbeth. It came up in the research that I was doing for this show. However, I did not come across the story that a well known theater critic was dispatched via voodoo doll Once again, this sounds like more theater lore and Wells himself was a notorious myth maker He was known to fudge the facts to make a better story. Honestly, this version of Macbeth sounds awesome And my suspicion is that the critics of the day just weren't ready for the unorthodox approach that they brought to the material I for one am not a purist when it comes to Shakespeare I think that if we want these plays to remain vital, we need to be constantly reimagining them And that's the beauty of art. We can take things, we can mess with them, we can twist them around And it's cool to know that Orson Wells and his all Back cast were at the forefront of this in the nineteen thirties I'm really glad that Stehven shared this story because it's clear that this Orson Wells production was a key part of the growth of the Scottish play curse mythos. And unfortunately, I did not address it on the main podcast, so I'm glad we were able to talk about it here Our next question comes to us from Rachel on Patreon, Rachel Wites. I've heard that one of the reasons Macers seems cursed is that it's the most difficult play from a technical standpoint whichich means that more can go wrong Did you come across this in your research as well? Is there any truth to that All right, Rachel, good question Yes, I did come across this It's not that Macbeth is the most difficult play that one can perform. There are certainly many more modern plays that have more special effects or more complicated stage directions or things like that that make them objectively harder to do. Beth does involve a lot of stage combat. and some special effects that are usually employed during the scenes with the witches This does not make Macbeth all that much more technically challenging than many other plays that were written in the sixteen hundreds On stage special effects were quite common in the so called gunpowder plays, which were written in the wake of the gunpowder plot In the episode, I made reference to a contemporary play where demons were being summoned on stage and one would come on stage riding something that looked like a dragon Anyone that knows their Shakespeare can also tell you that stage combat is incredibly common in his plays. Macbeth is certainly not the only Shakespeare play with sword fights. Beth does have some big ones and anytime you have stage combat, you are going to run the risk of injury. It seems to me that once the idea of the Cse of Macbeth got established in the early twentieth century Any injury that happened during the run of the play got chalked up to the curse Those injuries tended to be better remembered and tended to be talked about more As soon as you look at the production history of any play, you will quickly discover that there are many stories of calamity and injury that occurred, especially in plays that have stage combat And to help prove this point, I'm going to turn it back to our man, Stehven and his super long email. He writes The other thing I wanted to note about cursed plays in my almost forty years in theater, the real cursed play in my opinion, is Romeo and Juliet Maybe it's the intense sword fight in A three, scene one that sets itself up for tragedy. Every production I've been involved with involves emergency room action. Juliet tripping on the scenery and spraining her ankle. Romeo's nose busted open on stage and bleeding profusely. Atlanta staged the ballet version years ago. During one performance, an actor's chest plate slipped beneath his costume and he was actually stabbed on stage I was the backstage manager during what is likely the worst theater story you'll ever hear You could do a whole hour fake history episode on this one performance The last show of the season at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, a mediocre Romeo and Juliet was actually exceptional been the heat lightning going off above the outdoor venue or just closing night magic Granted, someone's sword broke in two and hit the feet of the wife of the season's biggest sponsor The man who paid for the patron trip to London Still, the show was amazing as it had never been before At the top of act three, where the big fight scene happens, there was a literal bath of blood or summer theater is full of sweaty actors. Perhaps this is why Benvolio lost control of his knife Lee Harvey Oswald's magic bullet had nothing on this dagger The knife blunted first stage combat, but still dangerous when something goes wrong Romeo in the face, lacerated his lip over an inch and knocked out six teeth Three of which were permanently lost Door still wears dentures and has an incredible scar on his cheek The dagger continued and hit another actor in the temple causing more blood wasasn't done The knife ricocheted and hit a British lady in the face, breaking her glasses but leaving her uninjured. The stage was evacuated of bodies so quickly that the stage manager over the headset mumbled, U, what just happened empty stage except for one person, Benvolio He collapsed on Juliette's bed, hidden in a below space in view of the audience and proceeded to wail a mournful, unearthly wail of pain and horror. My great contribution, I poked out and closed the curtain on the bed. A That way the audience couldn't see him only hear his banshee cry keening through the dark August night. And no, the show did not go on They are staging Romeo and Juliet at the same theater this summer. I think I'll instead get me to a nunnery And he's got more for us here, two friends. I'm just going to keep going because this is an amazing email. Decades later, one of the actors in that show told me that he'd gone to New York City and was hanging out after the show with actors in a Broadway play. We always share theater stories and someone began, Hey, you guys know Robert? He was playing Romeo in this show in Illinois. My friends stopp them Sorry, that's actually my story. I was there and he related his version of the tragedy An entire group of actors a thousand miles and twenty years away were perpetuating a story which evidently is lore in backstages across the globe just goes to show. You've got your memes, your pseudo science, your fake news and truth socials. But if you want a real piece of dramatic history with all the smoke, mirrors, and daggers Just ask a theater person to tell you a story about their time on stage Love the show, love you. Thanks for leading the charge to live your dreams Stehven, I love you too, man. That is an amazing story But I think his point is clear, right I bet if we went back and looked at the production history of Romeo and Juliet and added up all the crazy things that happened on stage, it would be easy to make the case That play was actually the one with the curse on it Of course, that's just not how the mythology unfolded Stephven, thanks again. I know that was an epic email, but man, I thought everyone would enjoy hearing that story All right, we've got one more question about the Scottish play. This one comes from Beth on Patreon Beth writes more of a statement than a question, Yes, I work in higher education. please don't undersell the mild snark of season one of O fake History. Would I listen to a longer more nuanced version of the Shakespeare episode? Yes. But sometimes there needs to be a bit of snark. seeee, lying sex witch Hey, Bh don't worry, the snark's not going anywhere She continues And now an actual question. I have not seen or heard of this curse transferring to the movie sets, I'm thinking of Denzel Washington's film from twenty twenty one. But I know there have been others is the curse a stage specific belief? any production. Thanks as always for all you do Thanks so much for that question, Beth. So Those who believe in the curse believe that you should not say Macbeth in a theater, especially when you are not actively performing the play. The one time it's allright to say Macbeth is if you are performing Macbeth and it is one of the lines in the play But it's funny that you bring up the Denzel Washington film from twenty twenty one You see During the Oscars that year Chris Rock was on stage And before he made his fateful joke about Jada Pinkett Smith congratulated Denzel Washington on his performance in Macbeth Thus uttering the word Macbeth inside of a theater and then just Moments later, he was slapped across the face by Will Smith Was this once again the curse of Macbeth I mean, An I don't really think so. U but I love that that's out there. People believe that the infamous slap that happened between Chris Rock and Will Smith. occurred because of the curse of Macbeth. So Cew on that one All right, now let's take a couple questions about the most recent episode on the Dreadnot Hoax. This next question comes from Andre Andre Wites, excellent episode. I have two questions Do you know if the German press reported on it and what was their take wondering if the lack of repercussions was also an effort to diminish its perceived impact on the Germans And the next question The hoaxers were not officially punished were the Navy members. Thanks for the questions, Andre Now, I was not able to find any German press reports that had been translated into English about this particular event is a great question because we know how the British reported on the Captain of Hopenik scam Longtime fans might remember that a few seasons back, we looked at the story of the man in Germany who dressed up as a fake military captain and robbed a small town hall outside of Berlin while impersonating an officer Interestingly, when the Dreadnot Hoax happened, many of the British newspapers immediately compared it to the Ctain of Kopeniic imposture I hope one day to compare these two things because the press at the time did perceive these two Scams, pranks, hoaxes, whatever you want to call them as two sides of the same coin. But sadly, I was not able to see how the German press reported on the Dreadnot hoax. German listeners, if you want to get into the newspaper archives and do some translating for me, I'd love to know I have a feeling that the German papers probably loved it the same way that the British papers loved the story of the Captain of Kopenic As for the second part of your question, no, no one in the Navy was punished. The most severe punishment that turned up in my research was a dressing down that Admiral May gave to one of the officers on the Dreadnot who said that he thought One of the people that came aboard was wearing a false beard Specifically, he thought the beard on Adrianne Stehven, who was playing the German translator looked a little fake And Admiral May was so annoyed that this man didn't say anything at the time And As I said on the episode, the rules of decorum were such that Trying to call someone out for wearing a fake beard in that moment would have been incredibly impolite and you would not have wanted to be wrong I understand why that particular officer kept his mouth shut All right, this next question comes to us from Alex on Patreon and just a word of warning, this question deals with some sexual content. So if you are listening with younger people and you do not want them exposed to that, You may want to skip ahead or just End the episode here I promiseed not to be explicit, but I just thought I'd give everyone listening a heads up. Alex writes Former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi famously hosted sex parties that were popularly referred to as bungaunga parties. Is there any connection between this phrase and the use of bungab bunga in the Dreadnot hoax All right, thanks for that question, Alex So for those who do not know, Silvio Berlusconi was Prime Minister of Italy on three separate occasions. He was prrime mininister from may nineteen ninety four to january nineteen ninety five And then his longest tenure from june two thousand one to may two thousand six. and then he was prime Minister again from may two thousand eight to november twenty eleven Now I'm not going to pretend like I've got an incredible grasp on all the nuances of Italian politics, but I can tell you this, to me, Silvio Berlosconi seemed like a particularly corrupt and disgusting politician. I know hot takes. you didn't expect hot Italian political takes today on our fake history, but let it be known that our fake history is Anti Silvio Berlusconi Anyway, one of the many scandals which plagued Berlusconi's time as prrime mininister involved these illicit parties which happened at his properties that were very abpstein esque, quite frankly. You can go find out all the details about this stuff if you are curious But what concerns us is that apparently these gatherings were called bunga bunga parties Now I did some research and I discovered that these parties got their name from a dirty joke that was told to Berlusconei. Allegedly by former Libyan dictator Momar Gaddafi Yes, apparently Gaddafi had a joke that he loved telling where the punchline was you will be killed by Bunga Bunga, which Basically was like death by sex. If I'm understanding the joke correctly, I've never heard this one before. It sounds kind of gross and honestly sounds pretty racist. So there isn't a direct connection between the Dreadnot hoax and the term bunga bunga and Fl Lascony's Bunga bunga parties O than The phrase