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Comment by emptyfile | Hacker News Reader

Just keep in mind to take everything he says with a big grain of salt.

Quite a few times I've been mesmerized by his podcasts only to find out later its either mostly made up or a "classic" but totally discredited version of the story.

He really doesn't bother reading up on the latest and most accurate material for his topics.

It's the main reason why I stopped listening to him (the smaller one is that I will never get used to his grating accent).

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Oh - interesting, I never knew that was a claimed levied against him - that his history wasn't necessarily accurate. That is a bummer. Still like what he is doing for getting the concept out there that history is worth studying and should be "cool," and you can't blame a generalist for not being 100% up-to-date on the latest findings / understandings by experts... so if its just that, I get it - if its more storytelling and embellishment - that is unfortunate.

I was disappointed when listening about WWI how wrong the numbers were and gave up.

do you have some examples?

I read https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ppmsm/thoug...

To be fair, he always states: "I am not a historian". So if you listen to him as a storyteller, you will have a great time, and you might learn something along the way.

Absolutely, he's the kind of guy that should fire up your interest and make you buy a real book to learn more.

However, never take the book he's actually using...most of the time it's plain outdated.

As you say, you can't really blame a guy who says 5 times per episode that he's "not a historian", but plenty of times I just can't help and wonder why didn't he spend 30 minutes extra researching a topic and choosing better material and sources. The only answer I got is that bad material makes for better stories.

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