RPTM Podcast Episode Thirty-Four: Comic Books, Oregon Trail, Post Office, and the Telegraph

Pseudohistory Claims there's a CONSPIRACY to suppress their ideas. These include Ancient aliens, ethnocentric revisionism, and historical revisionism. This podcast provides students with critical tools to identify and debunk these attractive and pervasive modern myths. Popular media, especially television, is filled with wild claims of secret origins, hidden discoveries, and forgotten ancestors. From ancient aliens to destroyed civilizations, we are used to being told we have been either lied to by governments or scientists willfully blind themselves to the "truth." Why do history and archeology so easily inspire endless theories about aliens, lost civilizations, dark conspiracies, apocalyptic predictions, and mysterious technologies? How do we tell the truth from the bunk?

Misinformation has found a new natural habitat in the digital age. Thousands of forums, blogs, and alternative news sources amplify fake news and inaccurate information to such a degree that it impacts our collective intelligence. Researchers and policymakers are troubled by misinformation because it is presumed to energize or even carry false narratives that can motivate poor decision-making and dangerous behaviors. Yet, while a growing body of research has focused on how viral misinformation spreads, little work has examined how false narratives are constructed. In this podcast, we move beyond contagion-inspired approaches to explore how people build a false narrative. The history is based primarily on reinterpretations of conventional and scholarly sources and then provides an alternate account of unfolding events. I conclude that the link between misinformation, traditional knowledge, and false narratives is more complex than is often presumed.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Nakahama Manjirō was one of the first Japanese people to visit the United States and an essential translator during the Opening of Japan. 
• A central bank would enhance the federal government's power at the expense of the states, bestow benefits on a financial elite, and undermine the cause of sound money. Tyler wanted nothing to do with it. At 2:00 a.m. on August 18, a drunken mob gathered outside the White House portico. It was the most violent demonstration ever to occur at the White House complex.
• The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck was done by Switzerland's Rudolphe Töpffer, who has been considered as the creator of the comic book. 
• The Oregon Trail was a roughly 2,000-mile route from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon, used by hundreds of thousands of American pioneers in the mid-1800s to emigrate West. 
• The American Mail Company was founded in 1844 by Lysander Spooner. 
• On May 24, 1844, the line was officially opened as Morse sent the now-famous words, "What hath God wrought," from the Supreme Court chamber in the basement of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., to the B&O's Mount Clare Station in Baltimore. 

CHAPTERS
0:37 Intro
2:52 Nakahama Manjirō
8:42 White House Riot
13:45 The First Comic Book
17:14 The Oregon Trail
25:41 Lysander Spooner
31:06 What Hath God Wrought?
37:30 Outro

RESOURCES
Manjiro Nakahama/Origin
Nakahama Manjirō
The Most Violent Demonstration Ever to Occur at the White House
Read The Very First Comic Book: The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck (1837)
Oregon Trail
Samuel Morse
Samuel Morse (1791-1872)