The word "secret" is spreading, getting into all sorts of places where it doesn't belong, like the titles of halfway-good TV on historical topics with no blatantly non-historians among the talking heads. The thing is, historians don't keep secrets about the things they study. In fact, it's their job to do the opposite, to bring things to light, things which very often were never kept secret by any one at any time. Don't get me wrong: occasionally, people do keep secrets, and sometimes the people who expose those secrets are historians. It's just not their full-time job. Typically, the information which historians gather was never held secret by anyone, it just hadn't been recorded, and/or the records hadn't been published, and/or the information on one particular topic hadn't been gathered together into one place, and/or every one of those things had already happened, in books which had been forgotten, gathering dust for a while, and/or etc etc.
Beyond that, often enough, none of the information, exactly 0% of it, on a TV show on an historical topic with a title that starts "Secrets of[...]" is secret to anyone who's taken some trouble to research the topic. Often, a lot of the information on the show is bullshit, but that's not the same as secrets.
A lot of people have a very difficult time in life. It may sometimes feel as if there are secrets and conspiracies all around them. Kind people can help them by explaining how things really are. That's what real historians do, full time. Assholes who make crap shows for the so-called "History Channel" do exactly the opposite: they exploit people's anxiety. They say:
Yes, you're right, there ARE secrets and conspiracies all around you! (Aliens too!) But that's okay, because there are CODES to UNLOCK all of these secrets! So, chin up, because who knows, you might dig up the Holy Grail* in that woods over there right next to your home!
*There is no Holy Grail, it was invented by Chretien de Troyes in the 12th century in a fictional poem about King Arthur and his Knights. Good poem -- but fictional.
Well, it's no secret that you can sell crap to morons. I don't know if more crap is posing as history today than a few decades ago or if the decades-old crap has just steadily faded away, to be constantly replaced on a conveyor-belt of crap in crap factories. 40 years ago there was no so-called "History Channel," but The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berlitz was huge bestselling book, and Uri Geller was making a fortune bending spoons. But not nearly as much as he claimed to be earning, apparently. Uri, this is Donald, he's running for President, he's yuge, you 2 have a lot in common.
"DaDa ist schön wie die Nacht, die den jungen Tag in ihren Armen wiegt." - Hans Arp
"Was wir DaDa nennen, ist ein Narrenspiel aus dem Nichts, in das alle höheren Fragen verwickelt sind." - Hugo Ball
"DADA spricht mit Dir, es ist alles, es umfaßt alles, es gehört allen Religionen an, kann weder Sieg noch Niederlage sein, es lebt im Raum und nicht in der Zeit." - Francis Picabia
"Dada ist die Sonne, Dada ist das Ei. Dada ist die Polizei der Polizei." - Richard Huelsenbeck
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