Is Drunk History Accurate?

Everyone knows that booze improves judgment, decision-making, and recall. That's why when you get blackout drunk, you can't remember anything once you're sober — all the smartness wore off. In fact, the B in "BAC" stands for "brilliant," and drunk driving was actually banned due to an epidemic of smart cars getting so jealous of their intoxicated drivers that the vehicles crashed themselves out of spite. Some of these assertions might sound a tad inaccurate, but that's probably because you aren't drunk enough to remember the history of traffic laws correctly. 

That same sober skepticism might make you question the accuracy of Drunk History, a show in which people get drunk and describe historical events while famous actors dressed as the stars of those historical stories mouth the narrator's slurred words in comedic reenactments.

You might not expect sloppy-drunk retellings of history to be 100 percent inerrant, in-depth explorations of the nooks and crannies of the past, especially on a comedy show. Well, guess what: that's right. Speaking with NPR, show creator Derek Waters (above) weighed in on how much the series gets right: "I would say 92 percent. Every date is accurate." The guest narrators consume the correct information before consuming alcohol and receive instructions on what details they must get right, "but obviously the dialogue is the stuff that is not accurate." 

Waters distills history in this uniquely funny way because he had a teacher who presented the past in entertaining ways. Drunk History has more than covered its bar tab because the show was greenlit for a sixth season in December 2018. The show will likely die of liver cirrhosis one day, and when it does, you won't need to pour a 40 out in its honor because the narrator would probably prefer to drink it.