Today on TheCuriousMansPodcast, we're joined by award-winning author and historian Ann Bausum, whose powerful new work, White Lies, examines one of the most consequential misinformation campaigns in American history: the rewriting of the Civil War. Bausum unpacks how the South — with help from surprising allies in the North — transformed defeat into mythology, recasting slavery, secession, and rebellion into a romanticized story of honor and heroism.
In this conversation, we explore how those false narratives took root, how they shaped generations of American education and public memory, and why confronting them today is essential to understanding race, democracy, and truth itself. This episode is a deep dive into how history gets made — and unmade — and why the stories we choose to believe still shape the world we live in.
Stay with us.
