Roman Empire Expert Warns America Is Repeating the Mistakes That Destroyed Rome | Ep. 313

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[UNKNOWN]: In order to fight in the Roman military, there was a requirement to own a certain amount of land.

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[UNKNOWN]: But there was a lot of landless poor and no way to actually fight in the military.

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[UNKNOWN]: So the military was having trouble filling itself.

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[UNKNOWN]: a general named Gius Mars.

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[UNKNOWN]: He changes that law and now the army starts to be filled with landless bull.

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[UNKNOWN]: The reason this is important is because before this point, men were looking at this as I'm fighting for Rome, right?

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[UNKNOWN]: Because I'm somebody that owns land in Rome, I'm fighting for Rome.

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[UNKNOWN]: After this point, they now saw

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[UNKNOWN]: their general as more important than Rome because that general would now be the man that was responsible for their pay and their retirement after they fallen.

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[UNKNOWN]: The military changed dramatically.

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[UNKNOWN]: We're now their oil to a general not to Rome.

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[UNKNOWN]: Sulla is a really, really pivotal guy because he's going to use this personal military loyalty and he's going to create something entirely different from that because he's the first man to march on Rome.

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[UNKNOWN]: Did the Empire strengthen after that or was it a 400 year downturn?

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[UNKNOWN]: Well, it was strengthened because they continued to conquer.

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[UNKNOWN]: Ladies and gentlemen, as always, it's both an honor and a pleasure to welcome my next guest.

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[UNKNOWN]: Two of the podcasts, he's the creator of The Roman Pattern, the host of The Roman Pattern, Hidden Forces and History, and The Jeremy Ryan Slate Show, he's the CEO and co-founder of Command or Brand.

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[UNKNOWN]: What I would call the expert on Rome, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage, Jeremy Ryan Slate.

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[UNKNOWN]: Hey, thank you so much for having me, man.

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[UNKNOWN]: I appreciate it.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, thanks for coming, man.

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[UNKNOWN]: I've, thanks for coming, man.

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[UNKNOWN]: I've been a warrior for a long time and like a lot of Americans, apparently, that think about the Roman Empire way more than people realized I find myself doing it to the, I think for me the catalyst for that was actually looking at the influence from our founding fathers and the kind of depth with which how well read they were and kind of interested and influenced by

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[UNKNOWN]: Greek and Roman, you know, time period, so such a fascinating topic, and I just really appreciate you coming to share your story.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I've just been somebody that's always been in the history.

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[UNKNOWN]: I didn't really get into a wrong, it's a realm in a very normal fashion.

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[UNKNOWN]: I was absolutely obsessed with Greece and more.

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[UNKNOWN]: specifically Alexander the Great and Macedonia and undergrad and I read a really weird article about the first Roman Emperor Augustus and basically him kneeling and praying before the sarcophagus of Alexander who'd been dead for 300 years and like there's got to be something there and I really just studied kind of that first century for my entire school term and

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[UNKNOWN]: And then the past, I don't know, a few years, I've started looking a lot more hundreds of years later, like what is declining collapse and things like that look like.

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[UNKNOWN]: And it's really revealing when you see a lot of the similar patterns happening in our world right now.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: I mean, it's terrifying, especially when there are multiple examples throughout human history of that exact same formula taking place, you know.

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[UNKNOWN]: Before we get into kind of the meeting potatoes of that lightning round-wise, what's the last book that you've read?

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[UNKNOWN]: I just finished, it's actually the second time I've read it.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm somebody that reads books more than once, because I find I've picked up a lot of different things.

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[UNKNOWN]: Storm before the storm, by Mike Duncan, and it's actually about the fall of the Roman Republic, because I've actually focused a lot on kind of the early empire, and even the fall of the empire.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I didn't know as much as I would like to about the republic, so in the last, I'd say probably two years, I've been diving a lot into learning what are those sequences look like?

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[UNKNOWN]: So that was the last book I read.

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[UNKNOWN]: at what point did it transfer from empire to republican do you know so the thing that's hard to say is there's territorial empire and there's political empire and if you look at kind of around the punic wars which is around the third second and I guess you could say second centuries BC that's kind of more when it becomes a territorial empire right because it starts conquering a lot of the Italian states it conquers a lot of the

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[UNKNOWN]: Hellenistic kingdoms that have been around from Alex into the great, and then it goes up against Carthage, and then it has several Macedonian wars after the Punic Wars, so if you want to look at the territorial empire, you're kind of looking somewhere around 200 BC to 100 BC.

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[UNKNOWN]: If you're looking at the actual political empire,

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[UNKNOWN]: The debate around the date is, it is what it is, but very often you could say it's somewhere between 31 BC and 27 BC of what it actually becomes a political empire.

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[UNKNOWN]: Though people didn't realize they were living in one yet.

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[UNKNOWN]: and in terms of empire transitioning to a republic is there a definitive period where that happened.

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[UNKNOWN]: So there's one of my favorite books is called the Roman Revolution.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's by Dr. Ronald Sim.

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[UNKNOWN]: And because I think very often times when people think of civil wars, I think of revolutions, they think of either

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[UNKNOWN]: you know, the poor rising up or, you know, one party fighting other party and the thing that's interesting about this last hundred years of the Republic and and Sime details this dramatically is it's actually precedent breaking.

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[UNKNOWN]: So Romans didn't have a written constitution.

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[UNKNOWN]: They had something they followed called the most myorum or the ways of the ancestors.

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[UNKNOWN]: We do it this way because it was always done this way.

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[UNKNOWN]: So the thing that's interesting is when an emergency arose, it became very easy to add something new onto the way we've always done

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[UNKNOWN]: And if you look at that last hundred years, you could go from 1, 33 with the Grock-Eye brothers that basically want to do land distribution and add a grain doll to all the way down to Caesar when he dies in 44 as kind of being this period where each person breaks a few more laws than the one before them and then those breaking of laws become precedent so that precedent becomes much easier to do so you could kind of look at that hundred-year period of kind of the transformation of

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[UNKNOWN]: men looking at what they personally want need and looking at the power structure and just kind of taking it and that's how you see a Republic fall to a political empire.

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[UNKNOWN]: It is eerily similar to executive power within the presidency of our country for as long as we've had one I guess, but well that's the struggle I've had Mike because I think if you look at it I've always said you know hey we are we are late wrong you know we are.

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[UNKNOWN]: when I say, late, Roman Empire, but the struggle I see is it's actually two things happening at once.

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[UNKNOWN]: We kind of see the economic system and the power structure going through a fall of an empire, but the political system is actually going through if the fall of a public, so it's kind of two of those separate things happening at once, which we haven't ever seen that happen in history before.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's kind of a wild thing to experience.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's for sure terrifying, which we'll get even heavier into it here in a little bit.

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[UNKNOWN]: Do you have a favorite quote?

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[UNKNOWN]: So this quote is often been attributed to Mark Twain.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I've heard people say he did say it didn't say it, but it's that history.

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[UNKNOWN]: doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's not like that map in the mall that you walk up to that says you are here.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's very often you can see observable patterns and because of that, you know, a result that may occur, but it doesn't mean that result will occur.

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[UNKNOWN]: So the history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.

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[UNKNOWN]: Man, I love that.

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[UNKNOWN]: So true as well.

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[UNKNOWN]: What was your favorite thing to do growing up?

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[UNKNOWN]: baseball.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I was my dad played.

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[UNKNOWN]: He was kind of all state, all county, all everything and baseball.

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[UNKNOWN]: He's only five, ten in a pitcher so your body can't take a lot of doing that.

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[UNKNOWN]: So he tried, he tried playing unaffiliated ball for a few years, trying to get into the to minor leagues, but didn't really

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[UNKNOWN]: go anywhere because it was a lot of wear and tear in your body, being a shorter guy, so baseball is always huge in my house.

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[UNKNOWN]: I was a short stop for a long time, and then I was on a team where the coaches kid was a short stop, and he was terrible, but because he was the coaches kid, I even had a conversation with the coach about it and he goes, well he's the heart and soul of the team, so he's going to play.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, but he's got more errors than out in most games.

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[UNKNOWN]: So I actually learned how to play center field, and I

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[UNKNOWN]: became the best center field around the team.

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[UNKNOWN]: I just I love baseball.

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[UNKNOWN]: Didn't really pursue it after high school, but it's something, you know, I didn't even miss the ankle game last night.

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[UNKNOWN]: I don't don't miss out on baseball.

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[UNKNOWN]: So the Yankees are your team.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yankees are my team and your anti-red socks to say at least.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm kind of in Bivalent, you know what I mean?

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm not really more of a rivalry guy.

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[UNKNOWN]: I just want to see my team do well.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, it was nice to see the red socks finally win something after not winning for a hundred and hundred and eight years or something like that.

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[UNKNOWN]: So I don't know.

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[UNKNOWN]: I just I love baseball.

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[UNKNOWN]: Well, it seems like both of them will be in the playoffs this year, so it should be in the playoffs.

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[UNKNOWN]: They're going to play to the next week.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: An exciting postseason, essentially.

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[UNKNOWN]: So in terms of kind of the catalysts that got you into what you do for a living, and kind of what you've spent the majority of your adult life doing, was there a, I guess a window into that or any inspiration as a child growing up, like was it something that you were even interested in, or how did it kind of transpire into that from your childhood?

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[UNKNOWN]: So when I look at it, like history was just always a big part of my life, and I think the thing that gets forgotten about New Jersey is so much of the American Revolution happening New Jersey.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, I have Washington's headquarters in Morris town.

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[UNKNOWN]: You have the crossing of the Delaware at Trenton, and so where I live, revolutionary war history is massive.

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[UNKNOWN]: So when I was a kid, whether it was my parents or school, we were always going around to different places that the revolution was.

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[UNKNOWN]: We even have

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[UNKNOWN]: This place called Waterloo Village, and it's a place where they do like reenactments of like what were things like in the 16th and 17th century.

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[UNKNOWN]: So history was just always a huge part of my life.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I remember back in the days when PlayStation 2 was a thing.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'd be playing PlayStation 2.

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[UNKNOWN]: I would be playing a Madden franchise on mute and I'd be listening to an audiobook.

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[UNKNOWN]: I've just always kind of been that weird kid that loved history.

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[UNKNOWN]: Going around to some of these sites and New Jersey from that time period, did you ever get into kind of the

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[UNKNOWN]: the pine barons new jersey devil any hauntings of of a ghost from battle fields and anything like that I can't say I got any of that I did there we have a magazine that's pretty famous new jersey it's called weird new jersey they even write books and so that everybody knows about the jersey devil the pine barons have you ever seen that a soprano's episode where

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[UNKNOWN]: Christopher and Paul, they get lost in the pine bar and just one of the best episodes as a prognosis ever.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: Didn't really get into that.

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[UNKNOWN]: But I did read a lot about it because weird New Jersey is like a, it's a real thing.

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[UNKNOWN]: There's a lot of legends and lore around the state of New Jersey.

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[UNKNOWN]: Do you buy any of it?

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[UNKNOWN]: I don't know.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's hard to say, right?

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[UNKNOWN]: Because I think that's hard to say.

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[UNKNOWN]: I don't know that I buy any of it.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's fun now.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: From high school and going into college, at what point did the bug kind of catch you for that first century BC Rome kind of focus?

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[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think life is a lot about having really great teachers and

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, I don't want to talk badly about all the teachers I've had, but I've had two really great ones in my life.

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[UNKNOWN]: In high school, I had a teacher named Sharon Zuckerman that was my history teacher.

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[UNKNOWN]: I had her three different times for US1, US2 and government.

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[UNKNOWN]: She was somebody that we were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but she would always challenge me.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I really gave me a love even more for history because of that.

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[UNKNOWN]: In undergrad, I met a professor named Dr. Sean Lake.

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[UNKNOWN]: He was teaching a course about Alex and other great.

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[UNKNOWN]: I enjoyed his class so much because the man looks like and sounds like Neil Patrick Harris.

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[UNKNOWN]: He's he is he get up there and he'd make some of these quips and these jokes and he's talking about the sign of the birds in the sky when Romulus decide he's going to found Rome and it's the idea that there's six cultures above him he goes well sex cultures of course that was the name of my band in high school like it just it was a very fun and engaging class so I took every class that I taught like I think five or six classes

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[UNKNOWN]: And then when it came time to graduate, Seaton Hall had gotten rid of its classics masters, because classics is basically if you want to study Roman Greece, so you get a degree in classics.

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[UNKNOWN]: So I ended up staying at Seaton Hall for that degree, but doing a history degree.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I read this one really weird obscure article because I was reading everything I cut in Alexander about Augustus after the Battle of Actium in 31BC, that he goes in praise before the sarcophagus of Alexander.

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[UNKNOWN]: And there's a joke about it that he may or may not have broken the nose off of the sarcophagus.

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[UNKNOWN]: We don't know, but it was kind of like, why is he doing that?

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[UNKNOWN]: That's incredibly weird.

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[UNKNOWN]: And what I ended up studying is what are the propaganda tools that he used to convince people of his own divinity.

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[UNKNOWN]: And it's extremely interesting to look at even tracing his lineage to the goddess Venus, the coinage he used.

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[UNKNOWN]: the statues of himself were never more than 30 years old, so he was a very intentional propagandaist, and he looked at several different things to decide that.

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[UNKNOWN]: There was kind of this competition for power and admiration between Pompeii the Great and Julius Caesar.

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[UNKNOWN]: And Julius Caesar manages to go the direction where people want thinking he wants to be a king, and that gets him killed.

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[UNKNOWN]: Pompeii,

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[UNKNOWN]: only dies because he crossed a Caesar but the people loved him.

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[UNKNOWN]: So Augustus is observing this and he's the adopted great nephew of Julius Caesar and he says, I can see what it pompeted right.

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[UNKNOWN]: I can see what Caesar did wrong and I can see that they were following a framework that was actually put together by Alexander the Great.

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[UNKNOWN]: So for me that's actually what got me extremely interesting Rome because I'd always been somebody that was obsessed with

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[UNKNOWN]: 15 different books of Alexander have a bust of Alexander on the desk next to me, so it's just been something remarkably interesting to me.

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[UNKNOWN]: Is there a singular thing that stands out about him that made you so obsessed and interested with him?

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[UNKNOWN]: There's a couple different things.

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[UNKNOWN]: I think one is when you look at true genius and true success, it's kind of on a razor's edge.

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[UNKNOWN]: And if you look at Alexander,

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[UNKNOWN]: He has this real idea he wants to be this philosopher king, and he wants to bring learning and teaching and fair rule to people.

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[UNKNOWN]: But then you have this other side of him that is a maniacal murderous, you know, I want to be a bigger and better than anybody else.

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[UNKNOWN]: And he's manages for quite a while to stand on the edge of that razor.

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[UNKNOWN]: And then later in life he falls off the edge and he actually kills

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[UNKNOWN]: one of his top Lutinets, like I named Clitus the Black, because Clitus is challenging him in the direction he's going.

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[UNKNOWN]: And that's kind of where you see this maniacal slide on Alexander.

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[UNKNOWN]: So for me, I think it's an interesting case study on what amount of power someone can handle, and at the same time, you know, can someone keep that goodness in them, long enough to achieve a good ends.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I think in Alexander, we see that that didn't really work.

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[UNKNOWN]: George Washington, but he also walks away, right?

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[UNKNOWN]: And I think that's really important.

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[UNKNOWN]: I think that's the part that's important is, you see someone that's willing to solve a situation, do what has to be done and walk away.

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[UNKNOWN]: Alexander was never willing to walk away.

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[UNKNOWN]: He went through Persia, he went into India.

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[UNKNOWN]: His goal was to go all the way through India and is far into Europe as he could.

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[UNKNOWN]: And that's what ends up killing him.

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[UNKNOWN]: So I think it's understanding

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[UNKNOWN]: When have I achieved enough, and when is it time to walk away?

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[UNKNOWN]: And I think to me, if you look at someone like George Washington, maybe that's one of the best examples we have.

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[UNKNOWN]: And that's oftentimes where he's called the American Cincinnati.

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[UNKNOWN]: Cincinnati is this famous man in Rome.

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[UNKNOWN]: Rome had this office of the dictator.

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[UNKNOWN]: And the dictator only existed during times of trouble.

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[UNKNOWN]: And it lasted for six months or the end of that actual crisis they're going through it.

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[UNKNOWN]: Cincinnati serves as a dictator twice in his life.

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[UNKNOWN]: the first time he's farming they go find him he says I'll cry I'm going to solve the situation he goes back to farming later in life the very same situation so he's very honored as being this man that serves his country solves the situation and just goes back to life and I think that's you see a lot of that in Washington.

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[UNKNOWN]: From your perspective, is the walking away part of the crucial single point of failure element that has to exist for that to be the case?

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[UNKNOWN]: I think it's hard to say that's the only one, but I think it's one of the key ones.

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[UNKNOWN]: Because at the same time, then you're looking at.

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[UNKNOWN]: And you can see this in a lot of Roman emperors because there's a lot of presidents, this idea that I need to preserve power at all costs.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I think that's what happens when you get past the point of where you need to walk away.

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[UNKNOWN]: So to me, I think it's really one of the key points of knowing when to lay power down.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: from the, well, I guess before I ask you this, would you put Marcus Aurelius in that similar category or not so much?

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[UNKNOWN]: Well, he didn't really have a choice to walk away because Emperor's once your named Emperor, Emperor for life.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I think that the difficulty around Marcus Aurelius is,

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[UNKNOWN]: We're often taught about markets really as more from, I guess, the pop culture viewpoint than what his life was actually like.

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[UNKNOWN]: And he's living in this time period where some of the issues that would plague were on the rest of his existence are starting to pop up.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, there's a plague that pops up called the Antonine Plague, and it kills about 10% of the population.

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[UNKNOWN]: So, he's having trouble actually filling the military and that's causing the treasury to go bankrupt.

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[UNKNOWN]: So, he's actually selling his wife's jewelry.

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[UNKNOWN]: He spends so much of his life on campaign on the Danube fighting barbarian tribes.

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[UNKNOWN]: And the meditations, when you look at those, those were his private journals.

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[UNKNOWN]: He didn't intend for them to be something that was published, and this is a man.

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[UNKNOWN]: in his writing, working out how he's feeling about the death and destruction and things he's dealing with and that's for him how he's able to work it out.

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[UNKNOWN]: So I don't know that Marcus really is really a great example of that because he doesn't have a decision to walk away, it's over when he dies, which he does in 180.

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[UNKNOWN]: I guess the one thing that stands out is that it doesn't seem like

18:49.274 --> 19:02.443
[UNKNOWN]: power corrupted him though it he was thoughtful you know um and it's such a fascinating thing I'm curious what what do you think he would think of his popularity thousands of years later the way that it is today?

19:03.378 --> 19:09.304
[UNKNOWN]: I think kind of knowing his philosophy and knowing kind of reading his philosophy, I think he wouldn't want it.

19:09.984 --> 19:15.730
[UNKNOWN]: I think, honestly, if you look at it, he wouldn't want the popularity he received, because for him he was doing a duty to Rome.

19:16.290 --> 19:17.972
[UNKNOWN]: And that wasn't typical of a lot of emperors.

19:18.112 --> 19:20.754
[UNKNOWN]: A lot of it were doing a lot of them were doing it for a duty to themselves.

19:21.415 --> 19:24.578
[UNKNOWN]: So he's very different in the ways put together.

19:24.598 --> 19:28.742
[UNKNOWN]: I think that is something that shines through and a lot of what we see in modern culture about him.

19:28.922 --> 19:29.122
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

19:29.302 --> 19:43.271
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I certainly, you know, love reading, you know, a lot of what he put out, and I do find it it's probably why it's so popular and fascinating is because he didn't intend for it to be, you know, put out there at all, but not.

19:43.291 --> 19:47.314
[UNKNOWN]: Well, it's a latent to his private world, and that's not something that we get, especially with it.

19:47.334 --> 19:55.039
[UNKNOWN]: There weren't emperors that were writing, you know, if there's writing from Augustus's time, it's good because he paid someone to write propaganda about him and make him look good.

19:55.539 --> 20:00.982
[UNKNOWN]: or we look even during the time of Justinian, where he's procopious, who's the major historian that writes in that time.

20:01.262 --> 20:03.123
[UNKNOWN]: If he didn't write the right things, he was going to die.

20:03.303 --> 20:09.346
[UNKNOWN]: So he actually even published a work called The Secret History, which published after he died at how he really felt about Justinian.

20:09.886 --> 20:17.851
[UNKNOWN]: So we're getting with Marcus Aurelius is actually his own thoughts, his own feelings, and he really did care about this empire he was running.

20:17.871 --> 20:20.412
[UNKNOWN]: And I think you couldn't say that about every single emperor.

20:21.355 --> 20:26.814
[UNKNOWN]: Speaking of emperors, which emperor do you think in modern daytime would abuse TikTok the most?

20:28.003 --> 20:31.726
[UNKNOWN]: Neuro probably, you know, he even want to see himself playing his liar.

20:31.766 --> 20:33.287
[UNKNOWN]: He would want to see himself dancing.

20:33.928 --> 20:35.108
[UNKNOWN]: He loved to drive chariots.

20:35.589 --> 20:37.810
[UNKNOWN]: I could only imagine what that streaming would be like.

20:39.031 --> 20:40.272
[UNKNOWN]: And he would want to force people to watch it.

20:40.292 --> 20:41.173
[UNKNOWN]: That would be perfect.

20:41.313 --> 20:45.736
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, execute people for not not a file on him on there.

20:45.756 --> 20:46.177
[UNKNOWN]: Exactly.

20:47.117 --> 20:47.538
[UNKNOWN]: All right.

20:47.558 --> 20:57.045
[UNKNOWN]: So if you can kind of walk us through as you finish college and kind of that next steps into getting even further into into the weeds on it.

20:57.565 --> 21:05.834
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so I guess for me after I got out of grad school, I got a master's degree, I applied to one PhD program, which was NYU, I didn't get in.

21:06.415 --> 21:08.737
[UNKNOWN]: So now you have a master's degree and it's like, well, what do you do with this?

21:09.478 --> 21:12.081
[UNKNOWN]: You can't actually teach in public school because it's not a teaching degree.

21:12.802 --> 21:13.923
[UNKNOWN]: And you're too qualified.

21:14.764 --> 21:17.786
[UNKNOWN]: to do any job, but actually under qualified from the world of experience.

21:18.387 --> 21:23.711
[UNKNOWN]: So I end up teaching in Catholic school, where you don't need any degree other than the college, you're going to be breathing.

21:26.113 --> 21:37.441
[UNKNOWN]: And I taught for three years, and it was interesting because, you know, I love sports as I was mentioned in TV before, but it was kind of all about,

21:38.578 --> 21:39.478
[UNKNOWN]: winning it all costs.

21:39.498 --> 21:40.839
[UNKNOWN]: They've gotten rid of number grades.

21:41.599 --> 21:49.001
[UNKNOWN]: They only had letter grades and kids kind of realized by past one thing and fail everything I get a I get a a D for this the quarter and I'm good.

21:49.581 --> 21:51.341
[UNKNOWN]: And that's not to say they weren't overachiever.

21:51.361 --> 21:52.382
[UNKNOWN]: So that was always exist.

21:52.822 --> 21:56.303
[UNKNOWN]: But it just wasn't a fun experience because it wasn't really bad education.

21:56.823 --> 22:01.564
[UNKNOWN]: So I burned out pretty quick and in 2013 my mom had a really bad stroke.

22:02.144 --> 22:04.585
[UNKNOWN]: And it made me look at a lot of different things I'm doing my life and I'm like.

22:05.365 --> 22:06.246
[UNKNOWN]: I'm miserable, man.

22:06.486 --> 22:07.527
[UNKNOWN]: I don't want to be doing this.

22:08.407 --> 22:11.289
[UNKNOWN]: And from there, actually quit on a whim.

22:12.310 --> 22:14.151
[UNKNOWN]: And I tried just about anything I could.

22:14.211 --> 22:19.074
[UNKNOWN]: I did network marketing for a couple of years, which was interesting to say the least.

22:19.114 --> 22:22.757
[UNKNOWN]: I sold life insurance, which I was good at, but hated the conversations about dying.

22:23.598 --> 22:26.359
[UNKNOWN]: And I started a podcast in 2014 as a hobby.

22:27.260 --> 22:30.963
[UNKNOWN]: And we had 10,000 listens on our first month, you know, me being nobody.

22:31.703 --> 22:36.667
[UNKNOWN]: and people started asking me for help and that's actually where our agency Commander Brand came from.

22:36.847 --> 22:40.730
[UNKNOWN]: That was kind of what I was doing until about 2022.

22:40.990 --> 22:48.816
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I've been podcasting and looking at other people on podcast for the past, you know, eight to 10 years at that point in time.

22:50.025 --> 22:55.327
[UNKNOWN]: And I had a conversation on one show where it was in my bio that I studied the Roman Empire.

22:55.727 --> 22:57.508
[UNKNOWN]: And he was like, well, tell me about the Roman Empire.

22:58.048 --> 23:00.188
[UNKNOWN]: And next thing you know, that's all people wanted to talk to me about.

23:00.649 --> 23:03.570
[UNKNOWN]: So then it led to me studying more and reading more.

23:03.630 --> 23:07.591
[UNKNOWN]: And I become even more obsessive about Rome than I was in school.

23:08.371 --> 23:12.093
[UNKNOWN]: And it made me look at our modern world and say, well, do I see any similarities?

23:12.953 --> 23:15.534
[UNKNOWN]: And I've created this framework, I call the Roman pattern.

23:20.787 --> 23:27.894
[UNKNOWN]: lack of border control and central power that really favors incompetence over competence.

23:28.094 --> 23:29.055
[UNKNOWN]: You have a real problem.

23:29.656 --> 23:31.958
[UNKNOWN]: And when I look at our modern world, I see a lot of that.

23:32.558 --> 23:37.183
[UNKNOWN]: And that's the real concern, really conversations have been having the last four or five years.

23:38.215 --> 23:40.017
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's such a fascinating path.

23:40.497 --> 23:48.725
[UNKNOWN]: One thing that we didn't talk about before we really get into the chronological timeline of the empire and the fall is powerlifting.

23:48.845 --> 23:52.208
[UNKNOWN]: Is that something that you got into in college or what ended up that?

23:52.228 --> 23:54.690
[UNKNOWN]: So when you're, I was a big wrestler in school.

23:54.710 --> 23:57.432
[UNKNOWN]: Like wrestling in New Jersey is a real thing.

23:57.592 --> 24:02.077
[UNKNOWN]: So I wrestled all the way from, you know, when I was a young kid in like third grade all the way through high school.

24:02.257 --> 24:02.557
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, really.

24:03.798 --> 24:19.933
[UNKNOWN]: you know I was always like I was a pretty good wrestler my my brother my wife's brother was outstanding it was like a state finalist all four years high school and everything else but wrestling's a big deal right live and you get done and you're like where do I channel this and working at it always been a big part of things so I actually

24:20.894 --> 24:25.557
[UNKNOWN]: started doing a lot of, a lot of gyms will have like small competitions.

24:25.978 --> 24:29.020
[UNKNOWN]: So I started going around New Jersey and doing these powerlifting competitions.

24:29.540 --> 24:36.365
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm not a big guy, but at that point in time I was five, seven, uh, eight percent body fat and I was weighing in around two, 15.

24:37.046 --> 24:43.550
[UNKNOWN]: So I was bench-pressing 455 for a single squatting 705 for a single and, uh, deadlifting 635.

24:43.590 --> 24:45.232
[UNKNOWN]: And I even did a,

24:46.152 --> 24:54.080
[UNKNOWN]: fundraiser back in 2014 for the Wounded Warrior project where they put a tank on the back of an 18 wheeler they put it in neutral hook a rope to the bumper and say, all right pull it.

24:54.560 --> 24:56.502
[UNKNOWN]: So I had to pull that tank 12 feet.

24:57.163 --> 25:05.191
[UNKNOWN]: So I had a lot of fun man like and I still do you know big weight stuff now, but I'm I'm a lot later I'm 160 pounds.

25:05.231 --> 25:09.415
[UNKNOWN]: I like to fit nice clothes, but I can still pull 500 under that left, which is which is good

25:09.807 --> 25:12.108
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's impressive.

25:12.248 --> 25:15.911
[UNKNOWN]: It's interesting, the wrestling thing, because it's religion where I'm from, from Iowa.

25:16.011 --> 25:16.751
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah, man.

25:17.852 --> 25:19.032
[UNKNOWN]: It's such a big deal there.

25:19.713 --> 25:23.995
[UNKNOWN]: I'm curious, did you have you followed Gabel Stevens's UFC career?

25:24.136 --> 25:24.816
[UNKNOWN]: Did you see that?

25:24.856 --> 25:26.717
[UNKNOWN]: I could never really get into UFC.

25:26.977 --> 25:28.938
[UNKNOWN]: For me, I just, it didn't interest me as much.

25:29.199 --> 25:29.319
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

25:29.419 --> 25:30.719
[UNKNOWN]: I've always followed college wrestling.

25:30.759 --> 25:34.442
[UNKNOWN]: So I've, you know, went to the NCAAs a bunch of times, especially when they're in Madison Square Garden.

25:35.342 --> 25:38.483
[UNKNOWN]: Um, but I've kind of just followed college wrestling and not really UFC.

25:38.923 --> 25:43.484
[UNKNOWN]: Do you think that Oklahoma State can give Penn State a run for their money?

25:44.664 --> 25:55.847
[UNKNOWN]: Ah, so I've always got a place in my heart for Penn State at the same time because, um, in my district, um, there was a wrestler named Dan Valemot, best wrestler I've ever ever wrestled in my entire life.

25:56.407 --> 26:02.368
[UNKNOWN]: We're both 140 and every time I got the districts or regions, I didn't have to wrestle him in the bracket, he kicked my butt.

26:05.730 --> 26:18.467
[UNKNOWN]: Fourteen points on me didn't get the 15th attack for all me and I'm pinned me in the third period He won two national championships at Penn State and I think he's still wrestling too He's been trying to do Olympic trials and stuff like that, so what's his last name?

26:18.727 --> 26:19.188
[UNKNOWN]: Valmont

26:20.731 --> 26:47.850
[UNKNOWN]: some reason that doesn't ring a bell which I mean I've been a huge fan of college wrestling might my whole life and certainly keep up with it now but yeah Penn State man what a wild dynasty I mean it reminds me of Iowa and the 80s and the 80s and growing up in Iowa was cool to see that kind of transpire as a kid being you know because there's no professional sports team in the entire state of Iowa of any sport you know so football and wrestling are kind

26:50.511 --> 27:00.855
[UNKNOWN]: You know, seeing kale take over after Iowa State and it's just like man that I see that going for another ten plus years probably of that level of dominance.

27:01.135 --> 27:03.876
[UNKNOWN]: It's a huge character build it or two man because you're on that mat.

27:03.916 --> 27:06.657
[UNKNOWN]: There isn't anybody that's helping you other than you.

27:07.357 --> 27:14.159
[UNKNOWN]: And you know, you might get in some positions where you make the decision do I give up or do I forget how to get through this and yeah.

27:14.719 --> 27:16.500
[UNKNOWN]: Did you have a most successful take down?

27:17.400 --> 27:27.907
[UNKNOWN]: So I was a leg wrestler, so for me a lot of times I'd get him in a tree top, so I get somebody's heel up, kick their legs out, get him on the ground, get a leg bar in, and then try and roll them over that way.

27:28.167 --> 27:29.808
[UNKNOWN]: So I was a leg wrestler.

27:29.908 --> 27:32.310
[UNKNOWN]: Any time I get him in the ground, I was going to try and figure what to do with my legs.

27:32.650 --> 27:35.552
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, with that, I mean, did you ever get into freestyle?

27:35.652 --> 27:36.693
[UNKNOWN]: That'd be in the kind of...

27:37.088 --> 27:44.371
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't really wrestle after high school, but I'd go back when the coach would ask me to practice this to help out, but yeah.

27:44.411 --> 27:45.432
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's awesome.

27:46.292 --> 27:50.094
[UNKNOWN]: All right, so there's to be a long window to answer.

27:50.114 --> 27:52.275
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm going to sit down.

27:52.295 --> 27:55.017
[UNKNOWN]: There's going to be a lot of those today, so I apologize as I've answered.

27:55.057 --> 27:56.297
[UNKNOWN]: No, no, I love it.

27:56.337 --> 27:57.278
[UNKNOWN]: Makes my job easier.

27:59.179 --> 28:18.373
[UNKNOWN]: Is there a way to kind of readers digest summarise the entire scope of what's relevant as it relates to the Roman Empire and Republican in that kind of grand scope and just walk it through kind of like you're talking to an eight-year-old and wanting to explain the entire process?

28:18.873 --> 28:27.076
[UNKNOWN]: And I think as well, so that I'm going to capture this a little bit and say in history and especially in classics, we have areas of expertise.

28:27.636 --> 28:33.078
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm not an expert in everything, so there might be people out there that say, hey, you missed this.

28:33.378 --> 28:35.999
[UNKNOWN]: There will be two years off on this, whatever it might be.

28:37.379 --> 28:41.742
[UNKNOWN]: My focus is actually in the first century, but I'm kind of well-versed in the whole thing.

28:42.162 --> 28:45.284
[UNKNOWN]: So I think the thing that's important to understand when people say Rome, what is Rome?

28:45.964 --> 28:52.068
[UNKNOWN]: And when you look at it, Rome actually comes out of kind of the early civilizations of Italy.

28:52.088 --> 28:55.950
[UNKNOWN]: You look at people like the Atruscans and a lot of these kind of early peoples in Italy.

28:56.991 --> 29:01.874
[UNKNOWN]: And it's a kingdom first, then it's a republic, and then it's an empire.

29:02.674 --> 29:06.637
[UNKNOWN]: Because very often, I think when people talk about Rome, they're very, they're just talking about the empire.

29:07.137 --> 29:19.647
[UNKNOWN]: But it's found that as a republic in 753 BC, so around the 8th century BC, it lasts until 509 BC as a kingdom, and then it becomes a republic in 509.

29:20.307 --> 29:28.633
[UNKNOWN]: It goes from being a republic in 509 to ending somewhere between 31 and 27, at which time it becomes a political empire.

29:29.274 --> 29:30.415
[UNKNOWN]: People in that early empire,

29:31.315 --> 29:37.403
[UNKNOWN]: wouldn't have known they were living in an empire and it was a lot to do with the propaganda of Augustus.

29:37.664 --> 29:40.948
[UNKNOWN]: He wanted people to believe they were living in a republic.

29:40.968 --> 29:42.690
[UNKNOWN]: It would be many years before they would understand that.

29:43.351 --> 29:47.256
[UNKNOWN]: So I think that framework is important to understand up front when we say what is wrong.

29:48.037 --> 29:52.758
[UNKNOWN]: because the funny thing people think is, you know, Julius Caesar, the first emperor, and it's like, well, no, he wasn't.

29:52.778 --> 30:05.381
[UNKNOWN]: He was actually one of the last characters that ends the republic, but he's not ever an emperor, though that name, because he adopts Gius Octavius, who will become Augustus, is a name that will eventually become a title.

30:06.021 --> 30:09.382
[UNKNOWN]: So when we look at kind of how it matters to us,

30:10.302 --> 30:18.585
[UNKNOWN]: I think the things that should matter is looking at inflation, right, as I mentioned 15,000 percent inflation by 284 AD.

30:19.365 --> 30:26.828
[UNKNOWN]: They have borders that have become so porous that now even the people that were on the borders, then are using to fight the people on the borders.

30:26.868 --> 30:28.509
[UNKNOWN]: So they've becoming part of the Roman military.

30:29.289 --> 30:31.630
[UNKNOWN]: And then you have politicians that basically,

30:33.259 --> 30:35.480
[UNKNOWN]: aren't willing to solve anything because it's a threat to them.

30:35.520 --> 30:41.102
[UNKNOWN]: I often think of the Emperor Hanorius in the early 400s AD.

30:41.782 --> 30:55.107
[UNKNOWN]: Hanorius is somebody that he's the son of the Adosius who is the Adosius, the great one of the greatest emperors in Roman history, but he's a very lackluster individual, and he's ruling the West, and he's not very competent.

30:55.127 --> 30:56.708
[UNKNOWN]: His court's basically doing everything.

30:57.628 --> 31:01.070
[UNKNOWN]: And there's a man in the court of Hanorius named Olympius.

31:02.291 --> 31:06.076
[UNKNOWN]: Olympius is somebody that wants to grab as much power for himself as he can.

31:06.717 --> 31:13.568
[UNKNOWN]: He starts to become jealous of a general named Flavius Stilico, because Stilico is basically keeping the Western Empire together.

31:14.169 --> 31:15.491
[UNKNOWN]: He's fighting off the barbarians.

31:15.511 --> 31:16.953
[UNKNOWN]: He's winning again and again and again.

31:17.734 --> 31:21.838
[UNKNOWN]: So he goes to Hanorias and convinces Hanorias that still echoes a threat.

31:22.379 --> 31:26.743
[UNKNOWN]: So in 408, Hanorias puts still a code of death.

31:27.363 --> 31:35.231
[UNKNOWN]: Two years later, in 410, Rome will be sacked by the Vizagoths, because this man that was the most competent and the best at what he did was not there to protect them.

31:35.545 --> 31:39.851
[UNKNOWN]: Sleep is one of those things you don't fully appreciate until something fixes it.

31:40.151 --> 31:47.040
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32:13.592 --> 32:17.916
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32:18.116 --> 32:23.120
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32:23.741 --> 32:27.644
[UNKNOWN]: So when I look at what we should be learning from, it's very often those things.

32:27.764 --> 32:29.806
[UNKNOWN]: Are we destroying our money because we absolutely are?

32:30.346 --> 32:31.407
[UNKNOWN]: Are we controlling our borders?

32:31.447 --> 32:34.710
[UNKNOWN]: Well, we're trying, but there's still a lot that has to be done.

32:35.550 --> 32:41.575
[UNKNOWN]: And for a lot of our politicians, the ones that would have to fix anything are the ones actually benefiting from the current situation.

32:42.396 --> 32:50.655
[UNKNOWN]: So, and we can kind of go deeper in every individual part that you want to, but that to me that's what I look at and see as the major thing we should be learning.

32:51.493 --> 33:05.059
[UNKNOWN]: Where do you kind of categorize the beginning of the end for Rome as an empire where it was really like the kind of the point of no return is is there a point that you would characterize that?

33:05.079 --> 33:16.444
[UNKNOWN]: So the difficulty in that is one of the most famous works on the Roman Empire is decline of all the Roman Empire that's written by Edward Gibbon in 1776 and he's actually writing it

33:17.324 --> 33:18.684
[UNKNOWN]: parallel to the American Revolution.

33:19.105 --> 33:28.387
[UNKNOWN]: And you can kind of see in his writing that, how he's feeling about Rome and how he's feeling about America are things that are kind of echoing each other as it's getting more and more obvious that Britain isn't going to win this war.

33:29.408 --> 33:33.449
[UNKNOWN]: And he actually takes a look at Commodus, who's the son of Marcus Aurelius.

33:33.609 --> 33:35.650
[UNKNOWN]: And he says that this is the point of no return.

33:36.270 --> 33:38.991
[UNKNOWN]: He says the greatest time to ever live is the time of the Antonites.

33:39.031 --> 33:41.351
[UNKNOWN]: That's Marcus Aurelius and all the Emperors before him.

33:42.332 --> 33:42.572
[UNKNOWN]: And you

33:43.832 --> 33:55.356
[UNKNOWN]: The thing about Commodus is he bankrupts the treasury, he has no interest in ruling, and people hate him to the point that he's actually, there's several assassination attempts on him.

33:56.016 --> 34:02.098
[UNKNOWN]: They attempt to poison him, which doesn't work, and then his concubine actually pays a wrestler to strangle him.

34:03.232 --> 34:05.916
[UNKNOWN]: And after that, you have a pattern that takes shape.

34:06.557 --> 34:10.623
[UNKNOWN]: That's going to shape how the next 300 years of Roman history are going to go.

34:11.385 --> 34:13.207
[UNKNOWN]: It's what's called the year of five emperors.

34:13.848 --> 34:17.474
[UNKNOWN]: The first being comedist, then you have

34:19.096 --> 34:20.658
[UNKNOWN]: Pertnacks that takes over for him.

34:20.718 --> 34:27.664
[UNKNOWN]: Pertnacks is actually killed by a Victorian guard and then the Praetorian guard auction off the empire to the highest bidder.

34:28.084 --> 34:36.051
[UNKNOWN]: So there's a man named Ditya Juliana's that offers 25,000 sistercies per Praetorian guard member for the empire.

34:36.091 --> 34:36.832
[UNKNOWN]: So he comes emperor.

34:38.103 --> 34:43.387
[UNKNOWN]: There's a general out in North Africa, named Septimius Severus that gets word of this.

34:44.008 --> 34:51.594
[UNKNOWN]: So he actually comes into Rome with a legion, kills Diddish Juliana's, and he creates the pattern that emperors after him what emulate.

34:52.294 --> 34:55.797
[UNKNOWN]: He doubles the size of the legions and doubles their pay.

34:57.183 --> 35:00.365
[UNKNOWN]: and he also disbands the Praetorian Garden and fills it with his loyal men.

35:01.426 --> 35:10.511
[UNKNOWN]: So Emperors, after Hammer going to enlarge the legions and enlarge their pay, and that's where this debasement process really starts to kick in, because when you look at debasement, what does that mean?

35:10.932 --> 35:15.475
[UNKNOWN]: It means taking a coin and adding other base metals to it to get it to go further.

35:16.095 --> 35:24.900
[UNKNOWN]: So you have a coin in the first century AD in the time of Augustus that's 95% pure by the time you get to the 270s that coin is about 5% pure.

35:25.821 --> 35:27.603
[UNKNOWN]: it's like coke dealers with their product.

35:27.743 --> 35:28.324
[UNKNOWN]: Exactly.

35:28.464 --> 35:33.550
[UNKNOWN]: It's it's so much more in cities than the inflation we're dealing with now because it's ones in zeros in a computer.

35:34.091 --> 35:43.282
[UNKNOWN]: You know you go to the gas pump and it's obnoxious right now whatever whatever the price might be no matter where you are, but to us it doesn't feel like it's...

35:44.083 --> 35:46.925
[UNKNOWN]: things actually, the money losing value, which is actually what's happening.

35:47.626 --> 35:50.268
[UNKNOWN]: It's not that things are getting more expensive if their money is worth less.

35:50.808 --> 35:59.015
[UNKNOWN]: And this is what the pattern that's going to happen with each successive emperor and late Rome is their watering down the money to pay for things.

35:59.575 --> 36:01.837
[UNKNOWN]: And there's so many permutations that come out of that.

36:02.317 --> 36:09.683
[UNKNOWN]: The first is going to be that the prices are going to rise, but the second is going to be that people don't have faith in the money to continue to use it.

36:09.743 --> 36:11.304
[UNKNOWN]: And it's actually going to create a black market.

36:11.865 --> 36:14.807
[UNKNOWN]: And it's going to create people hoarding good money.

36:15.307 --> 36:17.549
[UNKNOWN]: So there was gold and circulation a lot before this.

36:17.729 --> 36:19.371
[UNKNOWN]: Well, people are going to take that gold and bury it.

36:19.851 --> 36:26.196
[UNKNOWN]: So that ends up becoming a huge crisis of confidence of what do we actually have confidence in?

36:27.445 --> 36:43.996
[UNKNOWN]: The interesting thing about the parallel to today for me, at least, is a lot of people get hung up on the left versus right or the partisan aspect of it, and it's becoming more and more clear that it has nothing to do with it.

36:44.417 --> 36:51.782
[UNKNOWN]: Reminds me of the added, you know, birds of a feather, you know, the left wing and the right wing are on the same bird, you know, is that

36:52.722 --> 37:08.152
[UNKNOWN]: it's really about those in power and in the elites versus everybody else did you get a sense that and I know it wasn't left versus right necessarily in those days but but that there there was a similar kind of partisan power that way

37:09.889 --> 37:13.073
[UNKNOWN]: So I think that's hard to say, and that's because their system is different.

37:13.093 --> 37:21.583
[UNKNOWN]: And the left right paradigm, by the way, that comes out of the French Revolution, where the people on the right were supporting the monarchs, the people on the left were supporting the revolution.

37:21.603 --> 37:25.808
[UNKNOWN]: So we use our modern analogy from basically from the French Revolution.

37:25.848 --> 37:26.569
[UNKNOWN]: But if you look at it,

37:27.355 --> 37:31.538
[UNKNOWN]: the Roman Empire in the way it worked, and even just Rome as a civilization.

37:32.199 --> 37:35.321
[UNKNOWN]: They had a system called Clientella, which is a client system.

37:35.801 --> 37:37.422
[UNKNOWN]: And you can look at a lot like the Mafia, honestly.

37:38.303 --> 37:40.225
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I do something for you.

37:40.265 --> 37:41.305
[UNKNOWN]: You now owe me a favor.

37:41.746 --> 37:42.466
[UNKNOWN]: And a lot of these,

37:43.887 --> 37:51.296
[UNKNOWN]: rich and wealthy men would be patrons, and they would have hundreds of clients, and these clients would make sure people voted for them correctly.

37:51.797 --> 37:53.378
[UNKNOWN]: They would make sure they got the correct deals.

37:53.839 --> 37:57.603
[UNKNOWN]: They would make sure they were aware of anything that could happen for them politically.

37:58.244 --> 38:00.066
[UNKNOWN]: And the way a Roman household was set up,

38:00.967 --> 38:12.351
[UNKNOWN]: is when people would walk in, the further you were led into the house, it meant the better you were as a client or the more necessary you were as a client, the clients would basically show up at somebody's house every day and say, all right, what's the job part today boss?

38:12.391 --> 38:13.512
[UNKNOWN]: You know, what's expected from me?

38:14.512 --> 38:21.835
[UNKNOWN]: And it's hard to put that on a political system because it's more of a idea of personal power.

38:22.855 --> 38:28.560
[UNKNOWN]: rather than an idea of political party, any time that people would band together, it'd be for factions to solve one thing.

38:29.461 --> 38:33.824
[UNKNOWN]: If that guy becomes console, it's good for me, it's good for you, and it's good for him, so let's work together for that.

38:34.124 --> 38:35.285
[UNKNOWN]: But after that, randomies again.

38:35.826 --> 38:47.435
[UNKNOWN]: So it's hard to say that it's really a political system, so much more as it's a bunch of oligarchs using a client system to create better position and better things for themselves.

38:49.317 --> 38:53.300
[UNKNOWN]: You mentioned the year of five emperors, what year or what period was that?

38:53.480 --> 38:54.400
[UNKNOWN]: So that's 193 AD.

38:54.421 --> 39:01.706
[UNKNOWN]: It's basically going to kick off sometime around December of 192 and end towards the end of 193.

39:02.747 --> 39:04.688
[UNKNOWN]: I'm certainly not trying to put you on the spot here.

39:04.708 --> 39:07.770
[UNKNOWN]: Do you off the cuff memory wise?

39:08.791 --> 39:11.674
[UNKNOWN]: Can you list like all of the emperors?

39:11.915 --> 39:16.319
[UNKNOWN]: No, no, I can list them for specific periods, but like I can't list them all off.

39:16.339 --> 39:21.064
[UNKNOWN]: There's so many, and as you get into the third century crisis, they end up serving for months or weeks.

39:21.084 --> 39:29.293
[UNKNOWN]: So you have 26,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

39:29.773 --> 39:38.355
[UNKNOWN]: From an AD and BC standpoint, you know, not that this is, you know, a religious podcast, per se.

39:38.375 --> 39:50.017
[UNKNOWN]: But I'm curious from your research and education, how much of a focus was put on Jesus' role in that time period.

39:50.037 --> 39:53.518
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, there's the obvious story of his build up to the crucifixion.

39:54.378 --> 39:57.781
[UNKNOWN]: and the aftermath and neuro-persecute and Christians afterwards.

39:57.981 --> 40:04.667
[UNKNOWN]: How much of your kind of education and study was done on the impacts of Christianity during that period?

40:05.067 --> 40:11.793
[UNKNOWN]: So, I guess the thing that's hard to say is for Romans he's kind of less impactful during his lifetime.

40:12.454 --> 40:19.219
[UNKNOWN]: He's going to become much more impactful as you get to the early 4th century when Rome transforms him and being a pagan society to a Christian society.

40:20.040 --> 40:33.735
[UNKNOWN]: But early on, and I guess to understand kind of how Romans looked at the world, they looked as this thing called Pakistan or the peace of the gods, and they believed that Rome was growing and Rome was doing well because the gods were happy with them.

40:34.036 --> 40:36.298
[UNKNOWN]: They had reached this Pakistan or the peace of the gods.

40:37.039 --> 40:46.767
[UNKNOWN]: And when things aren't going well, that's when you see a lot of Christian persecutions, because it would mean that, well, these people that aren't sacrificing to the pagan gods, they're a problem.

40:47.307 --> 41:03.060
[UNKNOWN]: And you see sacrifices, our persecutions, I'm sorry, after the fire of Rome in 64 AD, under Neuro, you see them again in the 250s when Emperor Trajan Deshis is trying to handle climate change, borders,

41:05.582 --> 41:08.063
[UNKNOWN]: money to basement and you can handle it with sacrifice and Christians.

41:08.683 --> 41:14.847
[UNKNOWN]: You also see this under the Diocletian in the late 200s, early 300s.

41:16.087 --> 41:22.831
[UNKNOWN]: And a lot of people in Central Europe tend to call this the time of the martyrs, because Diocletian was so severe on Christianity.

41:23.311 --> 41:23.752
[UNKNOWN]: So I think...

41:24.812 --> 41:32.160
[UNKNOWN]: The thing to understand about Rome is for the most part it was very permissive of other religions and they'd often pull in religious traditions of other places.

41:32.600 --> 41:36.985
[UNKNOWN]: You know, there would be Romans that are worshiped Apollo or worshiped ISIS or whatever it might be.

41:38.126 --> 41:43.471
[UNKNOWN]: But for the most part, during his life Christ didn't have a huge impact on Rome.

41:44.713 --> 41:50.358
[UNKNOWN]: You will see that as Christianity becomes more important, it has a massive impact.

41:51.259 --> 41:56.704
[UNKNOWN]: After the Battle of Milvian Bridge, I believe that's around 3-11.

41:57.265 --> 42:02.790
[UNKNOWN]: It's when Constantine has the vision of the Kai and the Rho in the Sky, and under the Samuel Conquer.

42:05.738 --> 42:08.060
[UNKNOWN]: He becomes a Christian after that point.

42:08.100 --> 42:19.508
[UNKNOWN]: Now I think the important caveat to that he doesn't get baptized until his deathbed, which it was pretty traditional in that time period because they believed they were washing off the sins of their life at the end of their life rather than just become a good person.

42:20.068 --> 42:23.571
[UNKNOWN]: And if you look at even Constantine's life, he killed his own sons.

42:23.591 --> 42:25.913
[UNKNOWN]: He did some things that weren't really acceptable.

42:26.953 --> 42:31.914
[UNKNOWN]: But then it becomes the official religion of the empire in 380 under the Adosius.

42:32.355 --> 42:39.796
[UNKNOWN]: So that is kind of this massive change and even when Constantine picks Christianity up, it's only somewhere between two and four percent of the empire is actually Christian.

42:40.297 --> 42:44.058
[UNKNOWN]: It was actually a large amount of the Roman legions because they're coming from all different places.

42:44.338 --> 42:45.478
[UNKNOWN]: We're pulling in a lot of Christians.

42:47.008 --> 42:51.956
[UNKNOWN]: That's the entire thing is just such a fascinating process.

42:53.138 --> 43:01.611
[UNKNOWN]: Is there a time period or even a specific year where in your mind the Roman Empire has completely fallen?

43:03.245 --> 43:08.890
[UNKNOWN]: I look at 410 a lot to say that after, because the traditional date that the Western Roman Empire falls is 476.

43:09.030 --> 43:14.816
[UNKNOWN]: I will couch that by saying the Eastern Roman Empire Constantinople, that will go to 1453.

43:15.256 --> 43:17.859
[UNKNOWN]: They are a lot more Greek, but they are still very Roman.

43:17.999 --> 43:19.900
[UNKNOWN]: We talk about the fall of Rome, we're talking about the West.

43:22.022 --> 43:44.402
[UNKNOWN]: 476 is that traditional fall date, but what actually happens then is that there is a barbarian general named Odookker, and Odookker is basically running this small teenage boy named Romulus Augusta Lasas, the last emperor, and he basically retires him, gives him a pension, sends the imperial regalia to Constantinople, and tells Emperor Zeno, well we don't need

43:45.823 --> 43:46.483
[UNKNOWN]: and Emperor any more.

43:47.143 --> 44:08.089
[UNKNOWN]: I'm basically going to serve at he initially he tells him I'm going to serve you in your interest here but then he makes himself king and that's kind of the fall of Rome it's not a great final battle there's no fire and brimstone in the street it's really more or less just a contract and the regalia sent back but four ten is this real pivotal date and even if you go earlier 378 is even more pivotal.

44:11.558 --> 44:14.562
[UNKNOWN]: So go to the 378 for date first, and then go to 410.

44:15.123 --> 44:22.973
[UNKNOWN]: The hunds kind of come out nowhere into the central European steps, and they start to push a lot of our barbarian tribes west.

44:23.153 --> 44:27.438
[UNKNOWN]: So now Rome has on its borders, more of our barbarians than they've ever seen before.

44:28.159 --> 44:28.420
[UNKNOWN]: And in 376,

44:30.566 --> 44:37.372
[UNKNOWN]: Romans let 200,000 barbarians enter the empire with the idea that they're going to protect them, give them food, give them shelter.

44:37.733 --> 44:47.402
[UNKNOWN]: But what Romans actually end up doing to them is taking their children in exchange for dog meat, so they're basically breaking their agreement with them.

44:47.982 --> 44:55.610
[UNKNOWN]: So in 378, those barbarians are going to come together and actually attack Rome, not the city of Rome, but the empire.

44:56.391 --> 45:04.118
[UNKNOWN]: And you're going to have the Roman Emperor Valens at a battle called Adrian Opel in 378 that actually falls in battle.

45:04.859 --> 45:06.220
[UNKNOWN]: to these barbarians.

45:06.660 --> 45:10.901
[UNKNOWN]: So now it shows that Rome can be defeated and even a Roman emperor can be taken down.

45:11.481 --> 45:16.103
[UNKNOWN]: And as you go further along this timeline, I mentioned the death of Silicone in 408.

45:16.763 --> 45:24.566
[UNKNOWN]: For 10, you have all erected visigoth, a tax Rome, and that's something that was thought unimaginable.

45:25.146 --> 45:26.407
[UNKNOWN]: And after that point in time,

45:27.772 --> 45:32.278
[UNKNOWN]: Romans are actually paying tribute to the visgoth to just not attack the many more.

45:32.818 --> 45:41.709
[UNKNOWN]: And I think when you look at that, once you're paying someone out through your own existence, you don't really have a country, an empire, whatever you want to call it at that point in time.

45:42.370 --> 45:43.411
[UNKNOWN]: And even those last...

45:44.352 --> 45:55.415
[UNKNOWN]: 75 years or so of Emperors are really just getting their power because of our barbarian commander says they can have it and there's a lot of dealings that aren't really political dealings at Romans would have done.

45:55.575 --> 46:03.558
[UNKNOWN]: So really 410 to me is that pivotal year, the 378 is extremely important as well because it shows that Rome can fall.

46:04.702 --> 46:06.905
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47:41.085 --> 47:50.730
[UNKNOWN]: Can you snap shot where we're at as if you want to call us an empire of where we're at in the timeline of of Rome's falling?

47:52.073 --> 48:01.759
[UNKNOWN]: So, and this kind of goes back to what I was telling the beginning, like I think we have this struggle of we're seeing the fall of a public and the fall of an empire kind of play out at the same time.

48:02.520 --> 48:09.565
[UNKNOWN]: But if you want to look at when America became an empire, which is a think of an important point, 1913 is an incredibly pivotal year.

48:10.265 --> 48:11.705
[UNKNOWN]: And there's three things that happen that year.

48:12.726 --> 48:18.587
[UNKNOWN]: First is that the 17th Amendment passes, which means state legislatures no longer elect the Senate.

48:19.107 --> 48:21.087
[UNKNOWN]: So now the Senate and the House essentially do the same thing.

48:21.167 --> 48:22.127
[UNKNOWN]: They're both popular vote.

48:22.908 --> 48:25.648
[UNKNOWN]: And you have no interest of states being put out there.

48:25.668 --> 48:33.110
[UNKNOWN]: And I think even during the pandemic, this would have been vital because you had certain state legislatures that were saying, well, we don't want restrictions.

48:33.130 --> 48:34.350
[UNKNOWN]: And we do want restrictions.

48:34.930 --> 48:38.831
[UNKNOWN]: And it would have been the responsibility of the Senate to make sure the will of that state legislature

48:39.971 --> 48:47.705
[UNKNOWN]: And now that that layer just isn't there, you also have the 16th Amendment that passes that year, which is the income tax amendment.

48:48.066 --> 48:51.011
[UNKNOWN]: So now we don't have the ability to keep all the money we make.

48:52.173 --> 49:00.300
[UNKNOWN]: you also have in December of that year, though they've been working on it for about a decade at that point, the Federal Reserve Act passes.

49:00.560 --> 49:02.581
[UNKNOWN]: So now we no longer have sovereignty over our money.

49:03.142 --> 49:08.606
[UNKNOWN]: And I think if you look at that, it's kind of a point where we become less of a public and more of an empire.

49:08.626 --> 49:17.393
[UNKNOWN]: I think even looking at the Second World War and kind of how America rose in the power very similar to how Rome rose over Carthage in the Punic Wars.

49:18.214 --> 49:22.018
[UNKNOWN]: You have more of this political empire thing.

49:22.918 --> 49:40.474
[UNKNOWN]: And when I look at where we are, I think we're not to the point of kind of an all-out third-century crisis yet, so looking at kind of after 200 AD, the crisis really kicks off around 235 with the death of Severus Alexander.

49:41.487 --> 49:50.529
[UNKNOWN]: And in that time period, you would have men raising an army, declaring themselves emperor attacking Rome or attacking other claimants, and then being emperor as long as they couldn't till they died.

49:51.189 --> 49:55.710
[UNKNOWN]: We don't really have anything like that happening, and that's not to say we ever will, right?

49:55.730 --> 49:59.691
[UNKNOWN]: It's not to say we will have congressmen and senators raising armies and attacking each other, though.

50:00.151 --> 50:09.713
[UNKNOWN]: I think in some ways it might be entertaining, because some of them have never had to really, you know, some have never really had to see battle of any kind whatsoever, but they're very happy to push others into it.

50:11.713 --> 50:22.596
[UNKNOWN]: I think we're somewhere before that point because if you look at where our money is at we're not at 15,000% inflation But the problem with our inflationary numbers is they're reported year-over-year They're not cumulative.

50:23.316 --> 50:40.581
[UNKNOWN]: I would love to know what the cumulative numbers are and we don't include certain things like building materials Which really would show you what real inflation looks like so if you did the real math We're probably somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 percent inflation now from 1800 to now So I think we're we're kind of somewhere in our

50:41.965 --> 50:49.427
[UNKNOWN]: early third century moment and it doesn't mean that we're going to go into this kind of depths of a third century.

50:49.447 --> 50:50.347
[UNKNOWN]: It could be different for us.

50:51.268 --> 50:54.189
[UNKNOWN]: And then we also have borders that are totally out of control.

50:54.329 --> 50:58.590
[UNKNOWN]: I know we've been trying but there's millions of people here that shouldn't be here.

50:59.090 --> 51:02.731
[UNKNOWN]: And that creates a lot of instability for the system because it taxes the welfare system.

51:03.451 --> 51:07.312
[UNKNOWN]: And it also negates what it means to be a citizen, right?

51:07.332 --> 51:07.832
[UNKNOWN]: Because a lot of

51:09.953 --> 51:34.339
[UNKNOWN]: There was something I read this morning about Gavin Newsom in California and now how it's created a whole economy for a lot of the illegal is coming into California because they're getting a cell phone which they can now sell, they're getting free healthcare, they're getting money, they're getting food and shelter and you see regular Americans, their money doesn't go as far, they're working hard just to feed their family and they can barely do that, credit card debt

51:41.821 --> 51:47.943
[UNKNOWN]: As you put, or said early on in the show, history doesn't rhyme, it doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes.

51:48.363 --> 51:58.707
[UNKNOWN]: It's kind of an example of that, there's not a one-for-one comparison, but looking at kind of the lessons learned from the fall of the Roman Empire and

51:59.647 --> 52:09.372
[UNKNOWN]: how much of that we have repeated, put yourself in the President's shoes, or maybe that's not enough executive power to even even pull it off.

52:09.412 --> 52:20.638
[UNKNOWN]: But let's say you could imagine, wave a magic wand and change certain things to prevent the fall repeating the Roman Empire model.

52:20.778 --> 52:23.099
[UNKNOWN]: What would you change and how would you enact it?

52:23.391 --> 52:28.596
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I guess the number one thing and the hard part is I'm not an economist, but the number one thing is money.

52:29.297 --> 52:33.501
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't think that there's enough appetite to actually do anything about it.

52:34.842 --> 52:38.045
[UNKNOWN]: I think our national debt was at last week, just hit 100% of GDP.

52:38.606 --> 52:41.949
[UNKNOWN]: So now our national debt matches our gross domestic product.

52:41.969 --> 52:42.689
[UNKNOWN]: That's a huge problem.

52:43.610 --> 52:48.295
[UNKNOWN]: Somebody might have to fact check me on that a red and article last week, it didn't check the source, but anyway, it's bad.

52:48.656 --> 52:57.737
[UNKNOWN]: Well, in that same realm, the interest is more than the National Defense Budget at the point now, which is another kind of key factor to falling.

52:58.292 --> 53:02.716
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and so I think the number one thing I would look at is monetary reform, some shape reform.

53:03.376 --> 53:10.883
[UNKNOWN]: And I think the hard part is, because Ron Paul has talked about this for years, if anybody ever successfully did that, that person is not going to be popular.

53:11.423 --> 53:15.427
[UNKNOWN]: And we see how popular, no matter what present it is, how popular they want to be.

53:15.447 --> 53:16.528
[UNKNOWN]: They want people to like them.

53:16.548 --> 53:20.351
[UNKNOWN]: I think there is, in order to get in that position, you have to be a little narcissistic, right?

53:21.452 --> 53:22.633
[UNKNOWN]: So I don't know that there is,

53:24.542 --> 53:29.545
[UNKNOWN]: the real hunger to do anything about it or kind of the real need to do anything about that.

53:30.045 --> 53:32.366
[UNKNOWN]: But to me, monetary is the number one thing.

53:32.847 --> 53:36.449
[UNKNOWN]: Now, I don't know if that means money based on gold.

53:36.829 --> 53:38.350
[UNKNOWN]: We might be too far worse, skis for that.

53:38.430 --> 53:42.472
[UNKNOWN]: It might not be enough gold for the amount of debt that we have and the value of our money.

53:43.905 --> 53:47.327
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know if it's a cryptocurrency, which I don't know how you are on that.

53:47.387 --> 53:56.732
[UNKNOWN]: It still kind of scares me a little bit because I'm a little worried about money that has things written down about everything that's ever done and it's electronic, but maybe it's something like that.

53:56.952 --> 54:02.996
[UNKNOWN]: There has to be something our money is based on rather than just how much oil we're able to get.

54:04.206 --> 54:20.764
[UNKNOWN]: I agree, I mean, the switch to the Petro dollar from gold, I think, is a key failure that put us in the position of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act and taxing, obviously, started the downfall, like you mentioned.

54:20.784 --> 54:23.527
[UNKNOWN]: But the crypto thing is tricky, because

54:25.795 --> 54:42.505
[UNKNOWN]: In theory, I think there is a system or a path where you could transform the entire deficit and national debt in kind of demonetized as maybe the right word.

54:43.465 --> 54:50.911
[UNKNOWN]: But transfer it over to where essentially the U.S. government buys a cryptocurrency, say XRP as an example.

54:51.971 --> 54:56.895
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it has an ability to kind of transform the debt and essentially wipe it out in that case.

54:58.259 --> 55:06.461
[UNKNOWN]: I don't pretend to understand it well enough to know how exactly that works if it's inaction viable outcome or not.

55:07.182 --> 55:14.404
[UNKNOWN]: But I'm with you and that just something as simple as the combination of AI and quantum computing.

55:15.304 --> 55:24.452
[UNKNOWN]: of being able to hack something that's right now essentially unhackable like I don't know that's my concern right because you even look at like Let's say the you know our power grid.

55:24.792 --> 55:35.521
[UNKNOWN]: It's built on technology that is sold I was just interviewing a security expert in this recently and she was just talking about how old the technology is in that grid.

55:35.581 --> 55:38.923
[UNKNOWN]: So to me You know in order for crypto to work there has to be power

55:39.804 --> 55:45.108
[UNKNOWN]: So if we can figure out a way to handle some of these negatives about it, then it could be an answer.

55:45.568 --> 55:48.130
[UNKNOWN]: But Native Americans traded sea shells.

55:48.290 --> 55:57.156
[UNKNOWN]: Like we have to have something finite rather than just these greenbacks that we use, which for a lot of people that I've been using that anymore, like we become more of a cashless society.

55:57.897 --> 55:59.378
[UNKNOWN]: I'm just as guilty of as anybody else.

55:59.418 --> 56:00.879
[UNKNOWN]: I hardly ever have cash on anymore.

56:01.559 --> 56:08.304
[UNKNOWN]: And so I think we do have to look at a monetary reform as the number one thing, because if we don't have strong currency,

56:09.313 --> 56:09.973
[UNKNOWN]: than we're in trouble.

56:09.993 --> 56:13.256
[UNKNOWN]: But then if you look at a monetary reform, the other side of that is industry.

56:14.076 --> 56:15.917
[UNKNOWN]: And we don't have a ton of it here anymore.

56:16.698 --> 56:18.919
[UNKNOWN]: And the Rust Belt wasn't always the Rust Belt.

56:19.300 --> 56:20.981
[UNKNOWN]: It was the industry of America.

56:21.501 --> 56:25.304
[UNKNOWN]: So I think we have to be producing some things here.

56:25.424 --> 56:29.987
[UNKNOWN]: And to some extent tariffs have helped with that, some of us we have seen some of the manufacturing come back here.

56:30.928 --> 56:35.471
[UNKNOWN]: But if we're going to fix currency, we also need a strong manufacturing economy.

56:35.891 --> 56:37.352
[UNKNOWN]: And we can't depend on other countries

56:39.894 --> 56:59.979
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I agree 100%, I think the, again, goal kind of in theory is going back to a finite, a more finite basis, as such, as goal to mean yes, technically it's not, it's kind of not finite because it's continually being mined and they're mining more of it every year, but

57:00.579 --> 57:05.383
[UNKNOWN]: But there's a little enough amount of it to where it's more controllable that way.

57:05.703 --> 57:19.792
[UNKNOWN]: I do tend to think your concern is probably accurate, and it's probably too late for that, which I think is why the appeal for a cryptocurrency, especially like Bitcoin, because it's so more finite than all of the other ones.

57:19.813 --> 57:21.834
[UNKNOWN]: There's far fewer of them than anything else.

57:22.082 --> 57:24.004
[UNKNOWN]: Well, even a lot of the gold bugs have talked about that, too.

57:24.044 --> 57:35.033
[UNKNOWN]: Like, if let's say we went on a gold standard, the standard of living would plummet immediately, because we're so far over our skis, we have to actually live through a period of time like that.

57:35.553 --> 57:39.977
[UNKNOWN]: And I guess the interesting part about that is, the Roman East actually did that.

57:40.457 --> 57:43.880
[UNKNOWN]: You know, we talked about the West having this mass-enary massive inflationary problem.

57:44.341 --> 57:47.904
[UNKNOWN]: The East actually managed to get through that and do it with a gold standard.

57:48.404 --> 57:50.065
[UNKNOWN]: But Constantine did it gradually.

57:50.906 --> 58:14.542
[UNKNOWN]: from 314 until the mid 320s and he minted a few gold coins every single year because he was repossessing a lot of pagan temples and so there was this new influx of gold so that gold currency is going to go almost 700 years without inflation until around the year 1000 so like the 11th century so it has been done before I just don't know you know they weren't running numbers like

58:20.125 --> 58:36.155
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I don't know that it is, and I think to your earlier point on doing the things that are necessary to accomplish that would be so unpopular that it would take too long to accomplish it for somebody to be able to do it in one term, because that's for sure all they're going to get.

58:36.555 --> 58:45.761
[UNKNOWN]: I don't think the American public frankly has the stomach to fix the country that we are for that same reason, so it may not even matter.

58:47.622 --> 59:15.269
[UNKNOWN]: Going back to kind of the early formations of Rome as well you were asking to the I guess the things I would do There's one more I would do yeah, and the other is an immigration moratorium I think for a period of time maybe five years or whatever it might be I think we need to have some sort of a halt to immigration It's not because hey my family came here just like a lot of other families But I think we need to figure out how many people are actually here how much of a tax on our system.

59:15.289 --> 59:16.969
[UNKNOWN]: It is and figure out

59:17.790 --> 59:24.981
[UNKNOWN]: If they should be here, or shouldn't be there, I think that's also another big key part is some sort of a more Victorian for a period of time.

59:25.001 --> 59:30.630
[UNKNOWN]: It doesn't to be forever, but I think we need to kind of solve that situation too because it becomes a drag down on the system as a whole.

59:31.341 --> 59:32.262
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I agree.

59:32.962 --> 59:41.909
[UNKNOWN]: I actually couldn't agree more and that there is a finite amount of people that can live in the United States, the way that we all want to live.

59:42.450 --> 59:58.342
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't know what that number is, but you can't continue to let millions of people legally and tens of millions illegally into the country year over year, and expect everything to stay the way everybody wants it to and the standard of living to remain the same.

59:58.502 --> 01:00:11.548
[UNKNOWN]: Well, because even it becomes a tax on a string, I guess is a better way to say it on things like Medicaid, because a lot of people that come in end up getting access to Medicaid and other things on our system, so our system is not built to support that.

01:00:12.108 --> 01:00:19.852
[UNKNOWN]: It's built to support from people paying in that have worked in the system, and it just becomes a bigger pull on this system that's already crashing.

01:00:22.093 --> 01:00:28.958
[UNKNOWN]: I want to go back to the formation of Rome as we understand it, is it accurate to say that

01:00:30.328 --> 01:00:37.310
[UNKNOWN]: the kind of inception of Rome was vastly different from any other civilization on earth previous to that.

01:00:38.251 --> 01:00:41.272
[UNKNOWN]: Romans would like you to believe that because it makes them feel really good about themselves.

01:00:41.892 --> 01:00:44.033
[UNKNOWN]: And so I think here's the hard thing about it too.

01:00:44.593 --> 01:00:49.474
[UNKNOWN]: Is when we look at ancient history, we have very few sources that actually survive.

01:00:49.534 --> 01:00:50.955
[UNKNOWN]: You know, what we actually have is probably

01:00:51.775 --> 01:00:53.798
[UNKNOWN]: 20% or 30% of what existed.

01:00:53.818 --> 01:00:55.480
[UNKNOWN]: There's so much that doesn't exist anymore.

01:00:56.140 --> 01:01:02.068
[UNKNOWN]: And even some of the writers that are ancient writers are reading now, they're pulling on sources that we can't find anymore.

01:01:02.648 --> 01:01:05.452
[UNKNOWN]: So a lot of it actually comes down to legend.

01:01:06.193 --> 01:01:06.313
[UNKNOWN]: And

01:01:08.003 --> 01:01:21.334
[UNKNOWN]: When Augustus took Rome from Republic to an Empire, one of the things that he was very key on is having a written down Roman myth or kind of ethos of where we came from.

01:01:21.954 --> 01:01:24.156
[UNKNOWN]: And that's actually when Virgil writes the a need.

01:01:24.717 --> 01:01:35.425
[UNKNOWN]: And the a need is this idea that this man and Nius who's fighting for the Trojans in the Trojan War, after Troy Falls takes his father as Sganius on his back

01:01:38.128 --> 01:01:42.117
[UNKNOWN]: all the way down into Italy and ends up in an area called Albalonga.

01:01:42.736 --> 01:01:45.016
[UNKNOWN]: When October hits, we all feel the shifts.

01:01:45.417 --> 01:01:51.278
[UNKNOWN]: The days get shorter, the mornings are dark, and your body is playing catch up with the season changing around you.

01:01:51.538 --> 01:01:59.239
[UNKNOWN]: You've still got the same workload, the same training, the same everything, but the energy to meet all of it doesn't always show up on cue.

01:01:59.559 --> 01:02:02.700
[UNKNOWN]: That's where my AG1 routine does its job.

01:02:02.900 --> 01:02:06.361
[UNKNOWN]: One scoop, cold water, every single morning before anything else.

01:02:06.681 --> 01:02:08.041
[UNKNOWN]: I've been doing it long enough now.

01:02:08.501 --> 01:02:10.422
[UNKNOWN]: that's skipping it actually feels off.

01:02:10.742 --> 01:02:12.583
[UNKNOWN]: It's just part of how I start the day.

01:02:13.003 --> 01:02:31.033
[UNKNOWN]: AG1 next gen has 75 plus ingredients, vitamins, minerals, pre and probiotics, superfoods backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials, not one study, four independent studies with key nutrient levels improving within three months of consistent use.

01:02:31.353 --> 01:02:32.855
[UNKNOWN]: That's the part that actually matters.

01:02:32.955 --> 01:02:36.658
[UNKNOWN]: It's not a one-day thing, it's what happens when you stay consistent.

01:02:36.819 --> 01:02:40.402
[UNKNOWN]: In this time of year, especially immune support earns its place.

01:02:40.883 --> 01:02:48.250
[UNKNOWN]: A.G.1 next-gen is specifically formulated to support immune defense so you're staying ahead of the season, not reacting to it.

01:02:48.590 --> 01:02:51.093
[UNKNOWN]: I use this every single day and you should too.

01:02:51.413 --> 01:03:07.980
[UNKNOWN]: go to ag1.com slash mic drop and for a limited time get a free immune support bundle including a bottle of omega-3 fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 next gen or AG1 pro.

01:03:08.240 --> 01:03:11.381
[UNKNOWN]: That's drinkag1.com slash mic drop.

01:03:13.182 --> 01:03:18.564
[UNKNOWN]: And that's actually where Romans will say that Ramulus and Remus came from is this city called

01:03:20.343 --> 01:03:27.807
[UNKNOWN]: And Albalanga, in the period of time, Romus and Remus are living, is ruled by a king named Numator.

01:03:28.627 --> 01:03:35.430
[UNKNOWN]: And Numator has a daughter named Reys Silva that will later be the father of the mother of Romulus and Remus.

01:03:37.171 --> 01:03:41.713
[UNKNOWN]: Numator is overthrown by his brother Emulius, who turns out to be not such a good guy.

01:03:42.593 --> 01:03:43.474
[UNKNOWN]: So he takes,

01:03:45.302 --> 01:03:51.247
[UNKNOWN]: Numerator keeps him out of power and takes Reyes Silva, the daughter, and makes her into a vestal virgin.

01:03:51.428 --> 01:03:58.114
[UNKNOWN]: And that's important because now she can't marry, she's not supposed to have progeny, and that will be the end of Numerator's line.

01:03:58.154 --> 01:04:00.436
[UNKNOWN]: So basically, amulious can rule forever.

01:04:01.617 --> 01:04:11.446
[UNKNOWN]: So supposedly, Reyes Silva can see his two children from the God Mars and those two children are Ramulus and Remus.

01:04:12.482 --> 01:04:15.323
[UNKNOWN]: And this part of the myth is going to sound a lot like other parts we first.

01:04:15.343 --> 01:04:17.965
[UNKNOWN]: She puts them in a basket and floats them down a river.

01:04:19.125 --> 01:04:21.867
[UNKNOWN]: And they're actually picked up by a she-wolf.

01:04:22.147 --> 01:04:24.488
[UNKNOWN]: And they're suckled by a she-wolf for a period of time.

01:04:25.048 --> 01:04:26.929
[UNKNOWN]: A farmer will later pick their up and raise them.

01:04:28.961 --> 01:04:47.378
[UNKNOWN]: As they become adults, they become very strong warriors, and they decide that they're going to make the country side safer, so they're getting rid of brigands, they're handling the roads, and then they hear about this king amulious and albalanga, and they decide they're going to remove amulious.

01:04:47.418 --> 01:04:53.643
[UNKNOWN]: Now, they don't know at this time that race overs, their mother, they don't know that pneumatores, their grandfather,

01:04:54.264 --> 01:04:58.045
[UNKNOWN]: but they remove amulious and restore new batores king.

01:04:59.285 --> 01:05:03.247
[UNKNOWN]: And they basically find out through this process that they're his grandchildren.

01:05:04.347 --> 01:05:05.347
[UNKNOWN]: So now they get kind of bored.

01:05:05.587 --> 01:05:06.427
[UNKNOWN]: They've restored the king.

01:05:06.447 --> 01:05:07.308
[UNKNOWN]: They don't know what they're going to do.

01:05:07.888 --> 01:05:11.209
[UNKNOWN]: So they move into Italy and decide they're going to found a city.

01:05:12.529 --> 01:05:15.110
[UNKNOWN]: And there's many different versions of what happens next.

01:05:15.150 --> 01:05:17.411
[UNKNOWN]: But I'm just going to go with the one that I know best.

01:05:18.431 --> 01:05:18.571
[UNKNOWN]: And

01:05:21.415 --> 01:05:26.179
[UNKNOWN]: Remis decides he wants to found his city on the room's built on seven hills.

01:05:26.640 --> 01:05:32.325
[UNKNOWN]: He wants to found his city on the Aventine Hill and Aventines actually the name of my youngest daughter.

01:05:32.846 --> 01:05:34.807
[UNKNOWN]: We pick a lot of our children's names from history.

01:05:35.968 --> 01:05:39.331
[UNKNOWN]: Romulus decides he wants to found his city on the Palantine Hill.

01:05:40.212 --> 01:05:44.114
[UNKNOWN]: And in Rome, there was something called Augury, which is the science of birds.

01:05:44.554 --> 01:05:48.876
[UNKNOWN]: He observed the bird signs, if the bird signs look good, we're going to do the thing we're going to do.

01:05:49.816 --> 01:05:56.839
[UNKNOWN]: And Romulus sees six voltures going back to what my professor said about his band, the sex voltures.

01:05:57.379 --> 01:06:03.782
[UNKNOWN]: He sees six voltures around the palentine hill and decides this is where the city is going to be founded.

01:06:04.402 --> 01:06:05.643
[UNKNOWN]: So he starts building his city.

01:06:06.463 --> 01:06:16.061
[UNKNOWN]: and Romulus and Remus start bickering to the point that Remus is jumping over Romulus' city walls and complaining about how they're not that high, so Romulus kills his brother.

01:06:17.427 --> 01:06:21.672
[UNKNOWN]: And then Romulus will be the man that found the city of Rome.

01:06:21.972 --> 01:06:25.296
[UNKNOWN]: Maybe we would have called it the city of Rome if the other brothers are alive.

01:06:25.356 --> 01:06:30.542
[UNKNOWN]: But that's a very simplified version of kind of how Rome's foundation happens.

01:06:30.562 --> 01:06:36.569
[UNKNOWN]: And Romulus will be the first king in the seven traditional kings of the Italian kingdom.

01:06:38.200 --> 01:06:40.462
[UNKNOWN]: So, in short, it's impossible to know.

01:06:40.482 --> 01:06:45.825
[UNKNOWN]: It's impossible to know, but that's our best thoughts and what Romans thought happened to.

01:06:47.246 --> 01:07:07.441
[UNKNOWN]: I have no doubt that there's a huge disparity between what the day and the life was like in early Rome versus hundreds of years later, but maybe kind of at the height of the Roman Empire through your education and research, could you pay in a picture of what an average day in the life of a Roman citizen would have looked like?

01:07:07.661 --> 01:07:09.744
[UNKNOWN]: Well, it would depend on who you are, right?

01:07:09.764 --> 01:07:16.735
[UNKNOWN]: If you look at kind of the sanitorial class, they didn't want to get their hands dirty, doing things like work.

01:07:17.116 --> 01:07:18.418
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why they had all these clients.

01:07:19.279 --> 01:07:22.404
[UNKNOWN]: Then you would have this kind of like,

01:07:23.165 --> 01:07:24.685
[UNKNOWN]: upper class, but they weren't really political.

01:07:24.705 --> 01:07:25.786
[UNKNOWN]: They were called the equities.

01:07:25.866 --> 01:07:27.366
[UNKNOWN]: It comes from the word meeting nights.

01:07:27.806 --> 01:07:33.608
[UNKNOWN]: So when Rome was more of a citizen army, they could afford a horse and afford the right and horseback.

01:07:34.228 --> 01:07:36.208
[UNKNOWN]: But the equities were kind of more of the merchant class.

01:07:36.949 --> 01:07:44.371
[UNKNOWN]: And they had this weird portion of what they did called public honey, and it basically means tax farming.

01:07:44.931 --> 01:07:48.472
[UNKNOWN]: So what they would do is they would go into a territory that Rome had just taken over.

01:07:51.687 --> 01:08:01.132
[UNKNOWN]: say what they would, the contract for taxes would be, the Senate would accept that, and then they got to keep anything above what they promised the Senate and paid them up front for taxes.

01:08:01.652 --> 01:08:08.095
[UNKNOWN]: So that the public economy were more of these people squeezed in money out of people and keeping anything over top of them.

01:08:08.555 --> 01:08:20.001
[UNKNOWN]: So you have this merchant class underneath that, and then you have just the regular people that were working to feed their families, they were barely subsistence, and that's really most of what Rome was.

01:08:20.621 --> 01:08:25.244
[UNKNOWN]: Early on, it's a very agrarian economy where you would have more people that their farm was their life.

01:08:26.204 --> 01:08:40.853
[UNKNOWN]: But after the kind of late Republic, you do have it more of this system, where the senator O'class isn't really working, you have more of the equities doing a lot of the merchant activities, collecting taxes, and just the regular people working to kind of survive.

01:08:43.214 --> 01:09:00.261
[UNKNOWN]: Technology-wise, there are some pretty fascinating things that were developed from an engineering and, again, from kind of a technology standpoint, are there things that stand out to you as being transformational that were developed during that time period that you could share?

01:09:00.581 --> 01:09:06.487
[UNKNOWN]: Well, indoor plumbing was a big part of it, but once again, you had to be very well off to actually even have access to that.

01:09:07.688 --> 01:09:12.773
[UNKNOWN]: Regular people would live in what are called insolai, meaning they were these big wooden apartment buildings.

01:09:13.374 --> 01:09:19.840
[UNKNOWN]: So they would go to the bathroom in a copper pot, and they were expected to go down to the street and dump it into the sewer, but they typically dump it out the window.

01:09:20.541 --> 01:09:27.727
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why a lot of the rich people, if you've ever seen the images of somebody being carried around, that thing they're carried on is called the litter.

01:09:28.288 --> 01:09:33.632
[UNKNOWN]: They were carried on it because they didn't want to be walking in the human excrement and urine and things like that that were in the streets.

01:09:34.373 --> 01:09:37.356
[UNKNOWN]: But for the more wealthy, they would have indoor plumbing.

01:09:37.996 --> 01:09:46.765
[UNKNOWN]: They had heated water, they had heat pipes that would go underneath the floor and actually heat their floors for anybody that's got heated floors in their home now.

01:09:47.586 --> 01:09:52.391
[UNKNOWN]: They had these amazing bath complexes that they had a process for.

01:09:53.392 --> 01:10:03.038
[UNKNOWN]: not cleaning the water and that was one of the reasons that disease spread, but they had a great process for heating the water and making these baths a really wonderful thing.

01:10:03.599 --> 01:10:10.723
[UNKNOWN]: So the plumbing and the technology around water was incredible and even aqueducts the ability to carry water around the empire.

01:10:10.743 --> 01:10:18.148
[UNKNOWN]: Like these things like that did not exist before and one of the trouble is you get into kind of post-Roman worlds.

01:10:19.408 --> 01:10:22.671
[UNKNOWN]: we hear people discussing, you know, the dark ages.

01:10:23.472 --> 01:10:28.196
[UNKNOWN]: And the simplicity of some of it is the people that were working actually couldn't read Latin anymore.

01:10:28.216 --> 01:10:29.877
[UNKNOWN]: It was a lot of just clarity that could read Latin.

01:10:30.358 --> 01:10:32.700
[UNKNOWN]: So it wasn't that the knowledge was lost.

01:10:33.240 --> 01:10:38.005
[UNKNOWN]: It was the ability of the men that would use the knowledge, lost the ability to read the knowledge that existed.

01:10:38.585 --> 01:10:41.508
[UNKNOWN]: So there's so much that existed.

01:10:41.928 --> 01:10:44.891
[UNKNOWN]: One of the funnier ones is a lot of public restrooms,

01:10:46.634 --> 01:10:49.676
[UNKNOWN]: like a wooden box and there'd be a row of benches and people would go to the bathroom in them.

01:10:50.597 --> 01:11:01.205
[UNKNOWN]: They didn't quite understand proper clenliness and sanitation, so everybody would use this stick with a communal sponge on it to wipe their rump when they were going to the bathroom.

01:11:01.585 --> 01:11:10.972
[UNKNOWN]: So I can't imagine how disgusting and how much disease that must have spread, and even the Roman baths, a lot of Roman doctors if someone wasn't feeling well.

01:11:11.632 --> 01:11:15.318
[UNKNOWN]: their advice was to go to the baths, but that would also once again spread disease.

01:11:15.798 --> 01:11:25.593
[UNKNOWN]: So they had a lot of these technological advances, but they also didn't have the ability to understand how disease was spreading, which sanitation was a massive problem.

01:11:26.534 --> 01:11:36.365
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, the basic hygiene thing is a while, I mean, to us seems like such common sense, but, you know, when I went to China, you went to the bathroom and a hole in the ground, but you weren't using a communal sponge.

01:11:37.285 --> 01:11:42.711
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, no, the middle east is the same way, you know, the toilet's there, just, yeah, it's holes in the ground.

01:11:42.731 --> 01:11:48.538
[UNKNOWN]: But, do you understand how the indoor plumbing worked?

01:11:49.635 --> 01:11:51.356
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know as much of how that worked.

01:11:52.116 --> 01:11:55.898
[UNKNOWN]: There's a lot of great videos out there on it, but that's not something I was much of an expert on.

01:11:56.758 --> 01:12:05.242
[UNKNOWN]: I know the lead in the pipes is very often talked about, but it's a little bit more conspiratorial to say that the Rome felt because people weren't crazy from lead in their pipes.

01:12:05.282 --> 01:12:06.302
[UNKNOWN]: It probably wasn't good for them.

01:12:06.503 --> 01:12:14.086
[UNKNOWN]: And you know, probably created a lot more physical issues, but I don't know that it's something that leads to Rome falling because people weren't crazy.

01:12:14.306 --> 01:12:15.467
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:12:16.387 --> 01:12:32.234
[UNKNOWN]: From a nutrition standpoint, I've actually before I ask that, this will kind of piggyback onto your answer probably, is there a movie show series that you think depicts the Roman Empire the most accurately?

01:12:34.008 --> 01:12:39.211
[UNKNOWN]: Um, and I know there's different periods, but just one that you've seen nails, what it's depicting the best.

01:12:39.231 --> 01:12:45.675
[UNKNOWN]: So it's not really Roman Empire, but more late Republic as you're going into an empire, but actually the HBO series, Rome, was very well done.

01:12:47.035 --> 01:12:53.859
[UNKNOWN]: They kind of speed up the timeline of the second season, because I think they ran it a funding and didn't get a third season, so they took what would have been the third and second season and shoved it together.

01:12:54.579 --> 01:12:58.141
[UNKNOWN]: But if you watch that, you kind of get a really good idea of what life would have been like.

01:12:59.122 --> 01:12:59.302
[UNKNOWN]: Um,

01:13:01.317 --> 01:13:04.380
[UNKNOWN]: Some of the other series out there, they're just kind of more written for a modern audience.

01:13:04.460 --> 01:13:10.044
[UNKNOWN]: They take a lot of liberties, like Gladiators, a great movie, but there was not a guy named Maximus.

01:13:11.205 --> 01:13:12.906
[UNKNOWN]: He did not kill Comedus.

01:13:14.748 --> 01:13:16.369
[UNKNOWN]: Gladiators, too, was a bit of a tragedy.

01:13:17.310 --> 01:13:19.612
[UNKNOWN]: It's a great, it's visually well done.

01:13:20.292 --> 01:13:23.475
[UNKNOWN]: And there's some things that are historically accurate in the visuals.

01:13:23.975 --> 01:13:26.517
[UNKNOWN]: But I think with a lot of those, they're making them more for,

01:13:27.378 --> 01:13:33.641
[UNKNOWN]: a modern audience, which isn't going to notice a lot of the nuance, yes.

01:13:33.681 --> 01:13:43.346
[UNKNOWN]: I would say HBO's realm is kind of the best, obviously, it's not 100% historic, accurate again, but it's kind of the best depiction of what life would have been like.

01:13:44.446 --> 01:13:50.229
[UNKNOWN]: But you see so many of these different series, and they'll take the armor and put it in the wrong period or whatever it might be.

01:13:52.190 --> 01:13:57.192
[UNKNOWN]: We always think of Roman armor that the famous Roman armor is called the lorca sigmentata.

01:13:57.352 --> 01:14:00.494
[UNKNOWN]: It's kind of the three-piece armor that we see.

01:14:01.014 --> 01:14:08.958
[UNKNOWN]: It's literally only used about the early first century to the early second century, but we see it used entirely through Rome.

01:14:09.478 --> 01:14:10.938
[UNKNOWN]: Or we see depictions of late Rome.

01:14:10.958 --> 01:14:14.240
[UNKNOWN]: They'll be using it, but they probably would have looked more like Greeks.

01:14:14.520 --> 01:14:18.322
[UNKNOWN]: So it's hard to kind of get a real modern

01:14:19.718 --> 01:14:23.059
[UNKNOWN]: idea on that, too, because there are certain things that modern audiences look for right, and they want.

01:14:23.299 --> 01:14:23.499
[UNKNOWN]: Right.

01:14:24.120 --> 01:14:40.546
[UNKNOWN]: I recently read something I'm curious if you think it's accurate or not, and I'll probably butcher even the premise behind it, but it was essentially saying that even though it's spoken and Latin, but that the, you know, Marcus is really us, and, and, you know,

01:14:40.706 --> 01:15:02.962
[UNKNOWN]: and kind of the the overall scope of the entire empire from an accent standpoint would have been more like an Indian or Pakistan, he kind of kind of accent than the British or you know tradition even even Latin accent that you hear in so many movies and shows do you have any um well I definitely wouldn't have been like a British accent I guess you have to look at their closer to

01:15:04.718 --> 01:15:06.099
[UNKNOWN]: Italy is closer to the Mediterranean.

01:15:06.119 --> 01:15:07.260
[UNKNOWN]: It's also closer to the Levant.

01:15:07.440 --> 01:15:11.923
[UNKNOWN]: The Levant is kind of like, where Israel and Jerusalem and a lot of those areas are.

01:15:11.983 --> 01:15:16.146
[UNKNOWN]: So you would have a lot more, like, semetic influence on that.

01:15:18.027 --> 01:15:18.648
[UNKNOWN]: I can't tell you.

01:15:18.668 --> 01:15:20.089
[UNKNOWN]: I would know what they would sound like.

01:15:20.109 --> 01:15:27.134
[UNKNOWN]: I can't tell you that I know a lot of rich Romans actually spoke more often in Greek than they would speak more often in Latin.

01:15:27.714 --> 01:15:28.315
[UNKNOWN]: They would write,

01:15:29.013 --> 01:15:32.357
[UNKNOWN]: Law and things like that in Latin, but they would write poetry and things in Greek.

01:15:32.377 --> 01:15:34.119
[UNKNOWN]: And they would speak to each other a lot of times in Greek.

01:15:34.139 --> 01:15:39.606
[UNKNOWN]: So Greek was this kind of, it's a push pull.

01:15:39.866 --> 01:15:41.648
[UNKNOWN]: They know there were certain parts of,

01:15:43.100 --> 01:15:46.662
[UNKNOWN]: Rome that loved the idea of Hellenization of becoming more Greek and would speak it more often.

01:15:46.682 --> 01:15:58.809
[UNKNOWN]: And there were others that said would say, like the family of Cato, Cato kind of this famous guy of being the staunch conservative, where we will not have a Greek to or in my household, we will not speak Greek.

01:15:58.829 --> 01:16:00.030
[UNKNOWN]: We will only speak Latin.

01:16:00.430 --> 01:16:01.831
[UNKNOWN]: We will dress in a simple toga.

01:16:01.871 --> 01:16:07.395
[UNKNOWN]: So it was a bit of a push poll, but you would see a lot more spoken Greek in culture.

01:16:08.370 --> 01:16:11.554
[UNKNOWN]: You know, when I was in the teams, nobody really thought about life insurance.

01:16:12.074 --> 01:16:13.155
[UNKNOWN]: You don't want to think about it.

01:16:13.436 --> 01:16:16.078
[UNKNOWN]: You're focused on the mission, you're focused on getting home.

01:16:16.339 --> 01:16:22.686
[UNKNOWN]: But then you get out, you've got a family, you've got a mortgage, and you realize you've never actually had that conversation.

01:16:23.046 --> 01:16:29.153
[UNKNOWN]: I had a buddy of mine who got out before me, healthy guy early 40s, and then gone, just like that.

01:16:29.433 --> 01:16:34.197
[UNKNOWN]: and what he left behind was a family that had to figure everything out without him, that hits different.

01:16:34.358 --> 01:16:38.661
[UNKNOWN]: So I finally went and got life insurance, and the thing that surprised me was how easy it was.

01:16:39.022 --> 01:16:44.627
[UNKNOWN]: I went through ethos, I got a quote in seconds, applied in minutes, and got same day coverage.

01:16:44.887 --> 01:16:48.389
[UNKNOWN]: There's no medical exam, you just answer a few health questions online.

01:16:48.649 --> 01:16:50.770
[UNKNOWN]: I'm talking up to 3 million in coverage.

01:16:51.030 --> 01:16:54.432
[UNKNOWN]: Some policies starting as low as 30 bucks a month.

01:16:54.492 --> 01:16:58.954
[UNKNOWN]: 4.9 out of 5 stars on trust pilot with over 5,500 reviews.

01:16:59.374 --> 01:17:03.616
[UNKNOWN]: If you've got people depending on you, there's no reason to keep putting this off.

01:17:03.876 --> 01:17:05.537
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01:17:05.917 --> 01:17:10.058
[UNKNOWN]: So take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through ethos.

01:17:10.398 --> 01:17:13.759
[UNKNOWN]: Get your free quote at ethos.com slash mic drop.

01:17:14.120 --> 01:17:18.141
[UNKNOWN]: That's ETHOS.com slash mic drop.

01:17:18.561 --> 01:17:23.442
[UNKNOWN]: Application times may vary, rates may vary, trust pilot rating as of 81226.

01:17:27.180 --> 01:17:31.341
[UNKNOWN]: I wanted to ask about food and tradition and nutrition.

01:17:31.881 --> 01:17:40.864
[UNKNOWN]: Is that anything that you guys focused on in terms of, again, the depiction of what was Eaton and staple diets versus what actually was?

01:17:41.124 --> 01:17:48.206
[UNKNOWN]: One of my favorite things, and my seven year old, we actually just read a book about this recently, so she's really excited to tell people about it.

01:17:48.546 --> 01:17:55.168
[UNKNOWN]: So they had this thing they very often actually, it was one of the most popular things that he was called the Garam and Garam is fish sauce.

01:17:55.988 --> 01:18:02.940
[UNKNOWN]: They would take rotted fish and mix it with herbs and salt and all sorts of things and they'd put it on everything.

01:18:03.121 --> 01:18:05.325
[UNKNOWN]: Fish sauce was extremely popular.

01:18:06.547 --> 01:18:08.390
[UNKNOWN]: But then other than that, it was a lot of...

01:18:09.914 --> 01:18:16.535
[UNKNOWN]: you know, they weren't having the, the average person wasn't having these massive meals like we have, you know, where they're getting their carbs and they're getting their protein.

01:18:16.555 --> 01:18:23.017
[UNKNOWN]: It was a lot of cheeses and a lot of very simple breads and a lot of, you know, fatty meats and things like that.

01:18:23.537 --> 01:18:27.438
[UNKNOWN]: And then, of course, they're getting their olives and things such as that.

01:18:28.078 --> 01:18:31.439
[UNKNOWN]: I'm definitely not an expert on the nutrition of what they're eating, I'm kind of more

01:18:32.579 --> 01:18:57.977
[UNKNOWN]: a political collapse I guess expert but but fish saucer or garm is one of the more interesting things is it was culturally extremely popular I didn't make them sick I don't know to be honest but it was it was extremely popular and even like Pompeii was one of the most famous places that made a lot of the garm it was like this spoiled fish that they would just put all these different spices and things and put it on everything yeah that's why

01:18:59.343 --> 01:19:00.604
[UNKNOWN]: That's so gross.

01:19:01.084 --> 01:19:07.407
[UNKNOWN]: Well, and meat was far more of a delicacy than it's typically represented in shows and movies.

01:19:07.427 --> 01:19:08.208
[UNKNOWN]: No, absolutely.

01:19:08.868 --> 01:19:12.090
[UNKNOWN]: For most people, I talked earlier about the grandle.

01:19:12.850 --> 01:19:19.254
[UNKNOWN]: And it took a lot of grain to actually feed Rome, because for most people, they would be eating very simple breads.

01:19:19.294 --> 01:19:21.135
[UNKNOWN]: They would be eating very simple cereals.

01:19:21.655 --> 01:19:23.936
[UNKNOWN]: If they got some protein, it was a big deal.

01:19:24.377 --> 01:19:27.578
[UNKNOWN]: But they were very, I guess, to say,

01:19:28.699 --> 01:19:32.743
[UNKNOWN]: You know, grain and cereal have the economy because that's how you could feed a lot of people.

01:19:33.244 --> 01:19:42.213
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why even the late empire Egypt is extremely important because Egypt is the area where it's kind of different than that it is now.

01:19:43.033 --> 01:19:45.196
[UNKNOWN]: The Nile was a lot more fertile than Nile Delta.

01:19:45.216 --> 01:19:49.880
[UNKNOWN]: So a lot of that grain would be grown in there and then brought from the port in Alexandria.

01:19:50.781 --> 01:19:51.302
[UNKNOWN]: into Rome.

01:19:52.082 --> 01:19:57.807
[UNKNOWN]: The Nile River would flood every single year, and that would actually make the Nile Delta extremely fertile.

01:19:58.368 --> 01:20:03.452
[UNKNOWN]: And this is actually, I talked earlier about Disha's trade in one of the the famous Christian persecutions.

01:20:04.113 --> 01:20:06.715
[UNKNOWN]: He's also dealing with climate change.

01:20:07.856 --> 01:20:12.077
[UNKNOWN]: One of the things that helps the Roman Empire to rise is something called the Roman climate optimum.

01:20:12.538 --> 01:20:18.859
[UNKNOWN]: From about 200 BC to 280, they have perfect weather for growing crops across that entire region.

01:20:19.300 --> 01:20:23.261
[UNKNOWN]: So there's areas now where grain couldn't be grown, grapes couldn't be grown.

01:20:23.281 --> 01:20:27.442
[UNKNOWN]: They could even grow things like higher on hills and mountains than you could now moderately.

01:20:28.122 --> 01:20:28.643
[UNKNOWN]: But around 250,

01:20:30.343 --> 01:20:34.084
[UNKNOWN]: the Nile doesn't flood that year, and then it starts going several years without flooding.

01:20:34.504 --> 01:20:48.968
[UNKNOWN]: So now there's this massive problem of we don't have enough grain, so grain prices are skyrocketing, people are going hungry, and so grain was a huge piece of, you know, what actually fed people, and that's why the grain dole, which is this idea that,

01:20:50.228 --> 01:20:57.955
[UNKNOWN]: people were entitled to a certain amount of sustenance from the Roman government was such a important, important, vital thing actually running this empire.

01:20:58.956 --> 01:21:12.329
[UNKNOWN]: Early on in kind of the second century BC it starts as just a discount grain, but as you get into the the Roman Revolution period in the first century BC it becomes free grain because that's how you can buy votes.

01:21:14.421 --> 01:21:21.344
[UNKNOWN]: Even back then, whether it's grain back then or phones now, buying votes has always been a thing.

01:21:22.164 --> 01:21:27.807
[UNKNOWN]: Any idea, probably beyond the scope of your expertise, but why there was that climate change?

01:21:27.827 --> 01:21:30.448
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I'm sure fossil fuels play a big role in that.

01:21:31.568 --> 01:21:31.969
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know.

01:21:32.149 --> 01:21:32.529
[UNKNOWN]: I don't.

01:21:32.609 --> 01:21:34.651
[UNKNOWN]: So I've heard different ideas on this.

01:21:35.873 --> 01:21:47.765
[UNKNOWN]: One of them I've heard is, you know, Romans were cutting down so many trees and, you know, that doesn't replace the oxygen and things like that in the atmosphere, but there's also climate-goaster cycles as well.

01:21:48.805 --> 01:21:58.492
[UNKNOWN]: So, it's hard to say what's going to cause something like that, but we can show his historically that temperatures did change, rain did change.

01:21:59.093 --> 01:22:03.836
[UNKNOWN]: To me, it's less to think that it's man-made than it's just kind of the earth goes through different cycles.

01:22:03.976 --> 01:22:06.938
[UNKNOWN]: Any idea how long that kind of Nile drought lasted?

01:22:09.686 --> 01:22:21.994
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know to be honest, I just know that it starts around 250 and then it starts to become a problem and the Levant doesn't, we don't call it the Levant anymore, but that area doesn't look now anything like it did before that.

01:22:22.054 --> 01:22:28.719
[UNKNOWN]: So I think you could say that climate change was quite permanent after that point and they have to kind of find a different way to get sustenance.

01:22:30.520 --> 01:22:38.591
[UNKNOWN]: Is there a thing or things that are kind of the most misconceived about the Roman Empire from your experience?

01:22:39.832 --> 01:22:43.877
[UNKNOWN]: I would say that the whole joyous seizure was the first emperor thing.

01:22:44.038 --> 01:22:46.761
[UNKNOWN]: It's something that I hear so much and they often want to compare.

01:22:47.797 --> 01:22:51.099
[UNKNOWN]: modern political figures and even political figures to a history to joyous Caesar.

01:22:52.340 --> 01:22:58.583
[UNKNOWN]: But he was not, he was one of the last great characters of the Roman Republic.

01:22:59.183 --> 01:23:09.969
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't know, I feel like I'm doing a little bit of fixing the character of Caesar if that makes sense, because I feel like we often make him the criminal if that makes sense.

01:23:10.009 --> 01:23:10.890
[UNKNOWN]: But I think he actually

01:23:12.678 --> 01:23:15.599
[UNKNOWN]: not to say that he totally was, but in some ways it might have been the good guy if that makes sense.

01:23:17.099 --> 01:23:23.841
[UNKNOWN]: Because a lot of what was done to stop him is what created the situation to cause him if that makes sense.

01:23:25.321 --> 01:23:27.462
[UNKNOWN]: There's a longer explanation in that if you want me to go into it.

01:23:28.702 --> 01:23:35.004
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I think it's relevant because I think there are parallels with even political figures today.

01:23:35.124 --> 01:23:36.624
[UNKNOWN]: In terms of that being a,

01:23:38.085 --> 01:23:39.846
[UNKNOWN]: the principal problem that exists.

01:23:39.886 --> 01:23:41.207
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, I'd love to hear it.

01:23:41.367 --> 01:23:44.229
[UNKNOWN]: So I guess let me do the backdrop of the Roman Revolution.

01:23:44.249 --> 01:23:49.132
[UNKNOWN]: And I apologize this is going to be a little long-winded, but it's going to make everything make sense.

01:23:49.753 --> 01:23:54.896
[UNKNOWN]: So in 133 BC, you have a man named Tiberius Grakis.

01:23:55.597 --> 01:23:59.379
[UNKNOWN]: And Tiberius Grakis is coming home from the Punic Wars.

01:24:00.160 --> 01:24:01.340
[UNKNOWN]: And he's observing that.

01:24:02.381 --> 01:24:09.988
[UNKNOWN]: these men have been off fighting for a while and either they've lost their farms, their farms have been sold, and they're coming home and they have nothing to come home to.

01:24:10.869 --> 01:24:16.834
[UNKNOWN]: And what he wants to do is redistribute land to veterans that are basically coming back from the Pinoch Wars.

01:24:17.594 --> 01:24:25.321
[UNKNOWN]: And part of the problem had been there was a law from about a hundred years before that that

01:24:26.702 --> 01:24:34.147
[UNKNOWN]: There was public land called Agar Publicuss, and only a certain amount of that was allowed to be farmed by the rich individuals.

01:24:34.687 --> 01:24:37.529
[UNKNOWN]: But what happened was they were just scooping it up because nobody was stopping them.

01:24:38.189 --> 01:24:42.672
[UNKNOWN]: And they were also scooping up a lot of these small farms that these soldiers had owned when they're going off to war.

01:24:43.273 --> 01:24:49.657
[UNKNOWN]: So all he wants to do initially, this is gonna get a little bit more complex as things go on.

01:24:50.157 --> 01:24:53.479
[UNKNOWN]: But initially all he wants to do is have that law from about a hundred years before.

01:24:54.480 --> 01:24:59.183
[UNKNOWN]: enforced so that these men aren't losing their land and the rich aren't taking the public land and farming it.

01:25:00.224 --> 01:25:04.046
[UNKNOWN]: And he's going to use the office of tribute of the plebs to do this.

01:25:05.087 --> 01:25:10.970
[UNKNOWN]: And there's a lot of the political class that don't want this to happen.

01:25:11.010 --> 01:25:15.914
[UNKNOWN]: The political class of the senator of class, they call themselves the optimates or the great ones.

01:25:16.834 --> 01:25:19.976
[UNKNOWN]: And the kind of regular people are

01:25:25.059 --> 01:25:27.961
[UNKNOWN]: There's a push back on him to get him to stop doing this.

01:25:28.581 --> 01:25:40.707
[UNKNOWN]: And there is another tribune named Octavius that's going to use his power to veto the bill to put the land redistribution into action.

01:25:41.648 --> 01:25:47.151
[UNKNOWN]: So then, Grakis is going to go to the people and use the power of the tribune to get the people to vote on something.

01:25:48.287 --> 01:25:51.650
[UNKNOWN]: And for the first time ever, have another Tribune removed from office.

01:25:51.670 --> 01:25:53.431
[UNKNOWN]: And he's going to have Octavius removed from office.

01:25:54.672 --> 01:25:58.876
[UNKNOWN]: He's then going to run for Tribune to the plebs again, which you're not supposed to do.

01:25:58.896 --> 01:26:01.338
[UNKNOWN]: You're supposed to wait a period of time before you run for that office again.

01:26:02.592 --> 01:26:04.132
[UNKNOWN]: So then the Senate kind of freaks out.

01:26:04.793 --> 01:26:06.753
[UNKNOWN]: They have discussions about what do we do about this?

01:26:07.733 --> 01:26:13.275
[UNKNOWN]: And the Pontifex Maximus, who is the chief priest of Rome, actually leads a group out into the streets.

01:26:14.055 --> 01:26:18.176
[UNKNOWN]: They rip the, because you're not supposed to have weapons inside the walls of the city of Rome.

01:26:18.696 --> 01:26:21.997
[UNKNOWN]: They rip the legs off of their benches and bludgeoning in the death.

01:26:22.778 --> 01:26:24.358
[UNKNOWN]: So then Tiberius Grokis is killed.

01:26:24.958 --> 01:26:31.080
[UNKNOWN]: This is a major political interruption, because somebody's now been killed for politics in Rome.

01:26:31.884 --> 01:26:55.193
[UNKNOWN]: about a decade later, you're going to have his brother Gaius, who is Gaius Grakus, who he in some ways, he's quite different than Tiberius, because now he doesn't just want land reform, he wants land reform, he wants a grain doll, and he wants other political reforms, because there's idea that Gaius looked at the situation and thought he could make himself a king.

01:26:56.345 --> 01:27:03.009
[UNKNOWN]: Guy is going to end up much the same way of his brother where he's killed after his office and tripping of the plabs and running again.

01:27:03.629 --> 01:27:08.352
[UNKNOWN]: So this is a major kind of moment in the 130s to 120s, you have these two brothers.

01:27:09.610 --> 01:27:16.877
[UNKNOWN]: You're going to get further down the road to about, I think it's 107 and you're going to have a general named Gaias Marius.

01:27:17.618 --> 01:27:20.701
[UNKNOWN]: Gaias Marius is what's known as a novice homo or a new man.

01:27:21.442 --> 01:27:25.426
[UNKNOWN]: He comes from a city called Apulia, which is outside of Italy, so he wouldn't have been

01:27:26.487 --> 01:27:31.451
[UNKNOWN]: in an area that would have allowed him to actually get Sanitoro power, that's why he's called a novice homo or a new man.

01:27:31.791 --> 01:27:33.953
[UNKNOWN]: So he's not one of the traditional Roman families.

01:27:35.013 --> 01:27:41.658
[UNKNOWN]: And he manages during that time period to use his

01:27:42.839 --> 01:27:53.081
[UNKNOWN]: power as a good soldier to kind of climb the ranks and get the office of console, which for a novice homo, it's not going to never happen, but it almost never happens.

01:27:53.921 --> 01:28:02.743
[UNKNOWN]: So console, there was two of them every year, and it was like having two presidents, because as I mentioned Roman had been a kingdom, so they didn't want one man to have too much power.

01:28:03.664 --> 01:28:04.704
[UNKNOWN]: So he manages to get this

01:28:10.330 --> 01:28:12.831
[UNKNOWN]: Well, he holds that office seven times.

01:28:13.851 --> 01:28:17.933
[UNKNOWN]: So every time as an emergency, they're going to make him consult because Mars is going to save us.

01:28:18.273 --> 01:28:19.594
[UNKNOWN]: And he does for a period of time.

01:28:20.334 --> 01:28:23.055
[UNKNOWN]: He also reforms the Roman military dramatically.

01:28:24.056 --> 01:28:26.517
[UNKNOWN]: If you see the Roman eagle, I guess, kind of like the one on my shirt.

01:28:27.257 --> 01:28:30.920
[UNKNOWN]: He was the one that comes up the Roman eagle standard, that idea.

01:28:31.680 --> 01:28:41.007
[UNKNOWN]: Before this Rome had fought in kind of a Greek phalanx, so the lines later, they start fighting and what's called a maniple, maniple meeting the hands.

01:28:41.067 --> 01:28:42.008
[UNKNOWN]: They would fight in a circle.

01:28:42.649 --> 01:28:45.531
[UNKNOWN]: He actually creates the more modern Roman fighting method.

01:28:46.291 --> 01:28:54.597
[UNKNOWN]: The other thing he changes, which is pivotal, is in order to fight in the Roman military, there was a requirement to own a certain amount of land.

01:28:55.875 --> 01:29:04.781
[UNKNOWN]: But since, as we've seen with the Grakai brothers, there was a lot of landless poor, there were a lot of men with nothing to do, and no way to actually fight in the military.

01:29:04.801 --> 01:29:06.782
[UNKNOWN]: So the military was having trouble filling itself.

01:29:07.763 --> 01:29:12.446
[UNKNOWN]: So he changes that law, and now the army starts to be filled with landless poor.

01:29:13.286 --> 01:29:21.192
[UNKNOWN]: The reason this is important is because before this point, men were looking at this as I'm fighting for Rome, right?

01:29:21.212 --> 01:29:24.055
[UNKNOWN]: Because I'm somebody that owns land in Rome, I'm fighting for Rome.

01:29:24.695 --> 01:29:30.299
[UNKNOWN]: After this point, they now saw their general as more important than Rome.

01:29:30.319 --> 01:29:35.844
[UNKNOWN]: Because that general would now be the man that was responsible for their pay and their retirement after they fought.

01:29:36.364 --> 01:29:37.905
[UNKNOWN]: So this is a kind of a very pivotal point.

01:29:38.866 --> 01:29:40.728
[UNKNOWN]: There's going to be a war a little bit later.

01:29:41.942 --> 01:29:49.389
[UNKNOWN]: in North Africa and a kingdom called Numeria where Marius is sent to conquer a king named Giertha.

01:29:49.749 --> 01:29:53.252
[UNKNOWN]: And that's a whole little backstory so I won't get too deep into that.

01:29:53.713 --> 01:29:57.636
[UNKNOWN]: But in this, there is a man that is fighting for

01:29:58.812 --> 01:30:01.375
[UNKNOWN]: Marius and his name is Lucius Cornelius Sella.

01:30:02.155 --> 01:30:07.961
[UNKNOWN]: And Sella is actually going to capture Degurtha and take the credit for the capture of Degurtha.

01:30:09.042 --> 01:30:13.426
[UNKNOWN]: And this is a rivalry that's going to pop up between these two men.

01:30:13.867 --> 01:30:15.949
[UNKNOWN]: So if you follow it along, we have

01:30:17.328 --> 01:30:22.772
[UNKNOWN]: Political violence, we have the military changes dramatically, we're now their oil to a general and not to roam.

01:30:23.452 --> 01:30:29.056
[UNKNOWN]: And now we're at this point where the console ship, there really isn't a term limit on it, and hold as many times as you want.

01:30:30.217 --> 01:30:36.161
[UNKNOWN]: Sulla is a really, really pivotal guy, because he's going to use this personal military loyalty.

01:30:36.822 --> 01:30:40.745
[UNKNOWN]: He's going to use not really honoring terms of office.

01:30:41.525 --> 01:30:53.591
[UNKNOWN]: and he's going to create something entirely different from that because he's the first man to march on Rome because he's given a console ship, but Marius wants the console ship to fight the pirate method 80s.

01:30:54.311 --> 01:31:00.974
[UNKNOWN]: So Marius uses political methods to actually get the position taken away from Sulla, which isn't supposed to happen and given to him.

01:31:01.915 --> 01:31:05.637
[UNKNOWN]: So then Sulla raises his army and he marches in the city of Rome.

01:31:06.577 --> 01:31:10.859
[UNKNOWN]: and then Marius is actually going to leave the city and he's going to die not too long after that in Greece.

01:31:11.559 --> 01:31:17.602
[UNKNOWN]: Owning a home is one of the best things until something breaks, and it always breaks the worst possible time.

01:31:17.943 --> 01:31:26.687
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01:31:26.967 --> 01:31:31.149
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01:31:31.509 --> 01:31:43.040
[UNKNOWN]: Most people don't realize that regular homeowners insurance typically doesn't cover day-to-day stuff, plumbing failures, HVAC breakdowns, electrical issues, you're often on your own for those.

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[UNKNOWN]: Savings compared to renewal price, void in Florida.

01:32:47.120 --> 01:32:48.581
[UNKNOWN]: Salah is going to march in the city twice.

01:32:49.241 --> 01:32:52.702
[UNKNOWN]: The second time he comes back, he introduces new political forms.

01:32:52.802 --> 01:32:58.905
[UNKNOWN]: He basically neuters the office of trippin of the plebs because he's seen powerful men like the Grakai, use it to put themselves into bad position.

01:32:59.866 --> 01:33:13.571
[UNKNOWN]: He's also going to remove a number of the Senate and fill them with people loyal to him through a process called Periscription, where he writes names on a tablet, puts them in the forum, you get a bounty if you bring that person, bring that person's head to Salah.

01:33:15.548 --> 01:33:21.912
[UNKNOWN]: He's going to hold this office, I mentioned, debtictatorship, where you're supposed to only hold it for six months, just solve an emergency.

01:33:22.552 --> 01:33:23.893
[UNKNOWN]: He's going to hold it for almost two years.

01:33:24.653 --> 01:33:26.134
[UNKNOWN]: So he really breaks that precedent.

01:33:26.815 --> 01:33:29.536
[UNKNOWN]: So then he's this really pivotal point.

01:33:30.377 --> 01:33:31.778
[UNKNOWN]: And then somebody fighting for him,

01:33:32.986 --> 01:33:39.329
[UNKNOWN]: is a guy named Pompey the Great and Pompey the Great holds every political office at an age well younger than he's supposed to.

01:33:39.389 --> 01:33:40.850
[UNKNOWN]: So we're breaking tradition again.

01:33:41.670 --> 01:33:47.073
[UNKNOWN]: So you have all of these things that happen and that is the world that Julius Caesar walks into.

01:33:47.713 --> 01:33:55.316
[UNKNOWN]: We're now if I have a legion, if I have money, if I have the ability to give people something, I can get whatever I want.

01:33:56.177 --> 01:33:56.277
[UNKNOWN]: And

01:33:57.674 --> 01:34:08.176
[UNKNOWN]: He will hold the console ship in 59 BC, and he actually manages the console ship years where they would use the name of the two consoles to actually name the year.

01:34:08.897 --> 01:34:11.397
[UNKNOWN]: So his co-consoles and he made Marcus Biblius.

01:34:11.937 --> 01:34:15.538
[UNKNOWN]: So it should have been called the console ship of Biblius and Caesar.

01:34:16.278 --> 01:34:22.640
[UNKNOWN]: But he actually manages to use the will of the people to force Biblius into his home for the

01:34:28.641 --> 01:34:30.902
[UNKNOWN]: that people call it the Consulship of Julius and Caesar.

01:34:31.363 --> 01:34:37.985
[UNKNOWN]: And this is where he's going to partner with Marcus Crasis, the richest man in Rome, and Pompey the Great to form the first triumph of it.

01:34:38.946 --> 01:34:43.387
[UNKNOWN]: And in that year, Caesar pushes many, many populous reforms.

01:34:44.028 --> 01:34:48.750
[UNKNOWN]: And then for nine years after that, he holds what's called the Pro-Consulship, and he goes out and conquers Gaul.

01:34:49.750 --> 01:34:54.012
[UNKNOWN]: So while he's in Gaul, he hears that Cato the younger,

01:34:58.998 --> 01:35:05.585
[UNKNOWN]: The person that Marcus Biblius was a client of has these charges he wants to bring him up on.

01:35:06.466 --> 01:35:11.090
[UNKNOWN]: And Rome has a culture where you have to actually go in person to get elected.

01:35:11.771 --> 01:35:17.056
[UNKNOWN]: And there had been numerous times where before that someone could get voted for an abstentia if they just petitioned the Senate.

01:35:18.033 --> 01:35:22.215
[UNKNOWN]: So Caesar doesn't want to go into the city because he hears that Cato may have these charges for him.

01:35:23.015 --> 01:35:25.356
[UNKNOWN]: So he petitions the Senate to get voted for an abstentia.

01:35:25.776 --> 01:35:26.337
[UNKNOWN]: That's past.

01:35:27.597 --> 01:35:29.078
[UNKNOWN]: Cato has that bill vetoed.

01:35:30.264 --> 01:35:32.064
[UNKNOWN]: And because of that, Caesar has to enter the city.

01:35:32.445 --> 01:35:37.006
[UNKNOWN]: When Caesar enters the city, Cato, Pompey, and anybody that could have stopped Caesar leave.

01:35:37.846 --> 01:35:43.047
[UNKNOWN]: And over the next period of years, those men are going to die out slowly, and Caesar is literally the last one standing.

01:35:43.627 --> 01:35:50.709
[UNKNOWN]: So it's very much, in my opinion, the things they did to stop Caesar and the political climate he's in created Caesar.

01:35:50.789 --> 01:35:52.889
[UNKNOWN]: Any one of those men in that 100 years could have been him.

01:35:53.749 --> 01:35:54.730
[UNKNOWN]: I apologize I was long-winded.

01:35:56.830 --> 01:35:57.470
[UNKNOWN]: And a lot of names.

01:35:58.231 --> 01:36:20.340
[UNKNOWN]: No, but to me, it's a great context on, at least from me listening to that, I guess two questions that all of those dominoes that kind of had to fall to create him coming into power to me sound like also the same thing is that essentially are the beginning

01:36:25.162 --> 01:36:33.447
[UNKNOWN]: From your perspective, did the empire grow and strengthen after Caesar or was it a continual slow downturn?

01:36:33.467 --> 01:36:52.640
[UNKNOWN]: Because to me, those things specifically, the soldiers, now not fighting for land, but being essentially conscripts or excuse me, you know, almost mercenary like, you know, the hired guns to the highest bidder and they'll fight whoever they're paid to fight kind of thing.

01:36:53.340 --> 01:37:03.684
[UNKNOWN]: To me, if I had to pinpoint one most drastic thing that would change an entire society and their ability to at least maintain an empire let alone grow, it's that.

01:37:05.465 --> 01:37:08.906
[UNKNOWN]: But I guess I didn't realize that it happened that early on.

01:37:09.387 --> 01:37:12.148
[UNKNOWN]: Those things that created the environment for season to come to power.

01:37:12.608 --> 01:37:20.071
[UNKNOWN]: So I guess I'm curious, from your perspective, did the Empire strengthen after that or was it a 400 year downturn?

01:37:20.131 --> 01:37:22.973
[UNKNOWN]: Well, it was strengthened because they continued to conquer, right?

01:37:23.013 --> 01:37:25.374
[UNKNOWN]: So if they brought a new land, they brought a new wealth that was important.

01:37:26.075 --> 01:37:33.319
[UNKNOWN]: And you also have the first emperor Augustus is observing problems like a lowering, birth rate, and things like that.

01:37:33.339 --> 01:37:39.463
[UNKNOWN]: And he's actually has these lexjulial laws where he's actually enforcing penalties on people that don't marry and don't have children.

01:37:39.924 --> 01:37:41.224
[UNKNOWN]: So he's trying to force in

01:37:42.205 --> 01:37:50.088
[UNKNOWN]: a lot of things that he thinks are needed, but conquest for the most part, because the early empire is the machine that grows off of conquest.

01:37:50.628 --> 01:37:52.228
[UNKNOWN]: It hides a lot of those problems.

01:37:52.809 --> 01:38:02.092
[UNKNOWN]: But if you even look at, when I talked about Septimius Severus earlier, you know, doubling the legionary pay, doubling the legions, the men are personally loyal to him and that's why he's able to tack Rome.

01:38:03.132 --> 01:38:10.719
[UNKNOWN]: that piece that Marius created will be a piece that will later on cause the collapse, but it takes hundreds of years to get there.

01:38:11.379 --> 01:38:17.204
[UNKNOWN]: But the conquest part is what actually kind of makes things run well.

01:38:17.925 --> 01:38:22.228
[UNKNOWN]: And that's going to change under Emperor Trajan in 1117.

01:38:22.849 --> 01:38:27.473
[UNKNOWN]: He conquered Deisha, he conquered a lot of areas kind of towards northern Macedonia in that area.

01:38:28.153 --> 01:38:30.937
[UNKNOWN]: But after that point in time, Rome is going to get no larger.

01:38:31.398 --> 01:38:41.053
[UNKNOWN]: And the Emperor, after him, Hadrian, is actually the one, if you're familiar with Hadrian's Wall and Britain, he's the one that builds the wall to keep the picks out and kind of northern England.

01:38:43.764 --> 01:38:49.730
[UNKNOWN]: And he's the one that decides we're not going to grow this empire anymore, we're just going to preserve it.

01:38:50.471 --> 01:39:00.482
[UNKNOWN]: And when you stop bringing in that wealth, that's a key point that's going to make any weaknesses or any cracks like those pieces you're talking about, Caesar, become real problems.

01:39:01.022 --> 01:39:04.903
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why I often talk about monetary reforms so strongly, because good money can hide a lot of things.

01:39:05.443 --> 01:39:14.046
[UNKNOWN]: And the fact that Rome kept bringing in new wealth, new people, and new workers and whatever it might be, that hides a lot of these problems.

01:39:14.386 --> 01:39:16.947
[UNKNOWN]: But when that stops and when that growth stops,

01:39:17.607 --> 01:39:36.246
[UNKNOWN]: well now you actually have to deal with those problems you had you know your chickens have come home to roost in a lot of ways chickens have come home to roost Bobby Bouché do you know ballpark what the silver purity of currency was at at Caesar's time was it still in that 95%

01:39:37.729 --> 01:39:42.235
[UNKNOWN]: Um, it's around that because the denarius didn't really fluctuate that that much.

01:39:43.556 --> 01:39:49.483
[UNKNOWN]: And from then until when did it plummet to 4% what span of time was that?

01:39:49.764 --> 01:39:52.427
[UNKNOWN]: So I don't know all the percentages off hand.

01:39:53.668 --> 01:39:56.790
[UNKNOWN]: definitely tell people to look up a graph on Google because it's pretty nuts.

01:39:56.810 --> 01:40:03.254
[UNKNOWN]: You kind of see how it's stable until, you know, it's gradually going down after about neuro, but then it's pretty stable.

01:40:03.815 --> 01:40:09.558
[UNKNOWN]: And then you see it plummet after Severus and then it kind of just falls off a cliff in the third century.

01:40:10.018 --> 01:40:15.962
[UNKNOWN]: But it's actually somewhat stable all through the first and early second century.

01:40:17.443 --> 01:40:19.765
[UNKNOWN]: Because even when we go back to Edward Gibbon,

01:40:20.705 --> 01:40:22.607
[UNKNOWN]: He eats says the greatest time to live.

01:40:22.647 --> 01:40:24.409
[UNKNOWN]: I had mentioned earlier as a time of the Antonyne.

01:40:24.509 --> 01:40:27.713
[UNKNOWN]: But what he's actually referring to is a time period called the five good emperors.

01:40:28.654 --> 01:40:30.856
[UNKNOWN]: That's from 98 to about 180.

01:40:30.916 --> 01:40:36.322
[UNKNOWN]: So it's Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonyne's Pious, and Markets are really us being the last one.

01:40:36.883 --> 01:40:38.424
[UNKNOWN]: And the thing that's different about them.

01:40:39.405 --> 01:40:42.008
[UNKNOWN]: is they actually adopted the person closest to them.

01:40:42.709 --> 01:40:45.271
[UNKNOWN]: That was qualified and named them their successor.

01:40:45.291 --> 01:40:46.453
[UNKNOWN]: They weren't a natural born son.

01:40:46.973 --> 01:40:50.877
[UNKNOWN]: Because they had seen, through all the emperors before that, it's a very mixed bag.

01:40:50.917 --> 01:40:53.660
[UNKNOWN]: We're very often the first person you get in the dynasty is great.

01:40:54.501 --> 01:40:56.303
[UNKNOWN]: Everyone you get after them, not so great.

01:40:56.904 --> 01:40:57.624
[UNKNOWN]: You get a gustous.

01:40:58.952 --> 01:41:01.474
[UNKNOWN]: Great, Tiberius, not so great.

01:41:02.195 --> 01:41:06.918
[UNKNOWN]: And then you fall along through Caligula, Claudius, Neuro, it's kind of bad.

01:41:06.938 --> 01:41:08.219
[UNKNOWN]: Those are the Degelial Claudians.

01:41:08.900 --> 01:41:16.345
[UNKNOWN]: Then you get your dynasty after that, the Flavians, which the Coliseum's called the Flavian Ampitheira, because it's built by the Flavians.

01:41:16.786 --> 01:41:18.947
[UNKNOWN]: Vespasion being your first one, he's great.

01:41:19.328 --> 01:41:21.670
[UNKNOWN]: His son Titus is pretty good, but dies young.

01:41:22.350 --> 01:41:28.193
[UNKNOWN]: His brother Domitian that lives the longest is one of historically considered to be one of the worst emperors in Roman history.

01:41:28.973 --> 01:41:32.674
[UNKNOWN]: So very often you get a great first one and everyone after that is not so good.

01:41:33.295 --> 01:41:39.718
[UNKNOWN]: So they, the five good emperors create this process that we're going to find someone that's the best qualified and name them their successor.

01:41:40.298 --> 01:41:43.699
[UNKNOWN]: Now for a caveat, many of them didn't have children.

01:41:44.119 --> 01:41:48.321
[UNKNOWN]: So they didn't have the problem that Marcus Aurelius would have where now I have a natural

01:41:50.302 --> 01:42:00.685
[UNKNOWN]: But it was one of the, you know, according to Gibbon, one of the best times to live because it was a very stable and growing empire, you know, a pox Ramana in a lot of ways.

01:42:00.865 --> 01:42:01.866
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:42:01.926 --> 01:42:05.727
[UNKNOWN]: Who did you say was generally considered the worst number of of all?

01:42:05.867 --> 01:42:12.649
[UNKNOWN]: One of the worst, you know, you could kind of make a case for a lot of them who is the worst, but don't mission, who is the son of the best patient.

01:42:14.011 --> 01:42:33.731
[UNKNOWN]: is it's seen as one of the worse and there's a trope about him that he was so cruel and so evil that he used to sit in his room and rip the wings off of flies just to see their pain and they would say who's with the emperor they said no one not even a fly because he was a very often thought to be just torturing creatures in his room because he's considered to be so evil.

01:42:34.071 --> 01:42:36.434
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, colloquial is one of the worst two, right?

01:42:36.695 --> 01:42:44.283
[UNKNOWN]: Caligula, but I can't take Caligula seriously, because the Roman military, the shoes they were, were called Caliguy.

01:42:45.242 --> 01:42:51.146
[UNKNOWN]: And his name would have actually been Geist Germanicus, his birth name, Caligula's a nickname.

01:42:51.867 --> 01:42:56.070
[UNKNOWN]: When he was a child, his father Germanicus is one of the best generals that Rome ever had.

01:42:56.090 --> 01:42:59.152
[UNKNOWN]: And he was supposed to be an emperor, but he ends up dying young.

01:42:59.952 --> 01:43:06.137
[UNKNOWN]: But when he's in these military camps, he would bring his young son into these camps and dress him in a little military uniform.

01:43:07.135 --> 01:43:15.378
[UNKNOWN]: And Caligula is a nickname that basically means little boots or booty-kins, and that's where the nickname came from.

01:43:15.418 --> 01:43:19.160
[UNKNOWN]: But I think the thing that's interesting about Caligula.

01:43:20.201 --> 01:43:22.102
[UNKNOWN]: is there's several things.

01:43:22.142 --> 01:43:35.388
[UNKNOWN]: The first being, he has this high fever at one point in his life, and then after that fever, he comes back, crazed and a bit maniacal, so there are thoughts that he had brain damage, did the fever even happen.

01:43:36.009 --> 01:43:43.132
[UNKNOWN]: But I think the thing that's interesting about Caligula, Niro, and even who's the other one is thinking of Demision.

01:43:43.612 --> 01:43:45.613
[UNKNOWN]: They're actually very anti-centitorial.

01:43:49.736 --> 01:44:08.913
[UNKNOWN]: You know, oversight in a lot of ways and you have to think of what class is writing the history and it would be the Senate that's writing the history So it becomes really hard to tell what's true what's just slander and and a lot of what is But don't mission was often considered to be one of the worst colligula considered to be one of the worst, but once again the Senate writes the history

01:44:09.493 --> 01:44:10.313
[UNKNOWN]: Wow, it's fascinating.

01:44:10.934 --> 01:44:12.014
[UNKNOWN]: Some things never change.

01:44:12.314 --> 01:44:20.257
[UNKNOWN]: Because you imagine, I'm so afraid of Emperor Bootykins.

01:44:20.797 --> 01:44:28.900
[UNKNOWN]: So, I know stoicism is not your area of expertise, but, you know, whether it's Marcus Aurelius or Seneca Epictetus, you know, there's so many...

01:44:30.161 --> 01:44:50.891
[UNKNOWN]: men from that period of history that have such a profound impact on a lot of things and I would argue even a big resurgence in the last better part of a decade in Western society, specifically here in the United States, I know something as simple as like the daily stoic or any of these kind of cliff notes books on stoicism.

01:44:51.691 --> 01:45:19.088
[UNKNOWN]: To me, what's fascinating is, is A that it's so timeless, is that, you know, even, you know, in a time where technology is so prevalent in our society and our day-to-day life, which none of which existed back then, but the human condition and the struggles and the, you know, difficulty in disciplining oneself or staying disciplined and choosing hardship and

01:45:19.828 --> 01:45:36.587
[UNKNOWN]: living below your means, and you know so many of these things that plagued them even then, you know, and kind of became this philosophical benchmark for how to live your life and because the individual ultimately is kind of the lowest.

01:45:37.167 --> 01:45:39.050
[UNKNOWN]: common denominator of any society.

01:45:39.090 --> 01:45:43.516
[UNKNOWN]: It's like mastering oneself as the key to a successful civilization.

01:45:44.818 --> 01:45:52.368
[UNKNOWN]: How do you look at stoicism and the influences from the Roman Empire and how they kind of apply to today?

01:45:52.898 --> 01:46:00.622
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think the thing that's interesting, I go back to a concept that's a very uniquely Roman concept, and that's the word Virtus.

01:46:01.182 --> 01:46:06.964
[UNKNOWN]: It's actually where we get our modern word Virtu from, but it doesn't really encapsulate the Roman meaning of it.

01:46:07.565 --> 01:46:09.626
[UNKNOWN]: And Virtus is this idea of,

01:46:10.826 --> 01:46:32.877
[UNKNOWN]: the ultimate idea of masculinity, and it comes in the perspective of, you know, being somebody that's well-read, you know, reading the classics, being informed, being somebody that's very politically active, you know, putting country overself, taking care of your family, like it was seen as one of the ultimate things for a Roman man to have was this idea of a virtuous.

01:46:33.718 --> 01:46:39.421
[UNKNOWN]: And I think the thing that bastardizes that a lot and something that we're going to see

01:46:40.481 --> 01:47:06.710
[UNKNOWN]: kind of become more prevalent as Rome starts to kind of go the wrong way is another word called octoritas and that's kind of your personal authority or your personal power and that's where we see kind of less of influence on virtue or virtues and more of an influence on is this enhancing my personal power, my personal credibility, the way I'm enhanced.

01:47:09.391 --> 01:47:31.387
[UNKNOWN]: a good leader or even a good father, you know, a good husband, a good community member, is somebody that isn't in it for the gratification, they aren't in it because they want to see their face on billboards, they're in it because they want to see others do well, they want to see their civilization succeed, and I think that's one of the things, I think the pandemic was a huge part of this.

01:47:31.967 --> 01:47:36.831
[UNKNOWN]: We've seen a lot of people realize things aren't happening with their schools the way they want.

01:47:37.471 --> 01:47:41.033
[UNKNOWN]: things are being done to them that they don't want done on a national level.

01:47:41.594 --> 01:47:44.716
[UNKNOWN]: And they're realizing that the buck kind of stops the main.

01:47:44.736 --> 01:47:48.238
[UNKNOWN]: I think that actually is a really important thing to take forward.

01:47:48.258 --> 01:47:51.140
[UNKNOWN]: And I think when we look at even the Meditations of Markets are really us.

01:47:51.860 --> 01:47:57.123
[UNKNOWN]: You realize this is a good man that's looking at all these horrible things he's dealing with in his life.

01:47:57.383 --> 01:47:58.924
[UNKNOWN]: He's looking at a collapsing economy.

01:47:58.944 --> 01:48:01.926
[UNKNOWN]: He's looking at wars most of his life.

01:48:01.946 --> 01:48:02.366
[UNKNOWN]: He's living.

01:48:03.446 --> 01:48:07.630
[UNKNOWN]: The last years of his life more on the Danube somewhere near Hungary than he is in actually Rome.

01:48:08.491 --> 01:48:13.876
[UNKNOWN]: He's dealing with a son that isn't really turning out the way he wants.

01:48:14.096 --> 01:48:17.639
[UNKNOWN]: And he's writing down, how do I feel about this and how do I think about this?

01:48:17.659 --> 01:48:19.441
[UNKNOWN]: Because he's trying to make the right decisions.

01:48:20.101 --> 01:48:21.703
[UNKNOWN]: And I think when it comes down to it,

01:48:24.003 --> 01:48:27.584
[UNKNOWN]: We need to do what makes our community in our world better.

01:48:27.884 --> 01:48:33.105
[UNKNOWN]: And I think a lot of times we look at national politics and we think, well, if this party wins, we're going to be better.

01:48:33.305 --> 01:48:35.265
[UNKNOWN]: Or if this party wins, we're going to be better.

01:48:35.665 --> 01:48:36.865
[UNKNOWN]: Or if this one wins, we're screwed.

01:48:37.385 --> 01:48:43.807
[UNKNOWN]: And I think a lot of times we forget that real victory is uniquely local.

01:48:43.887 --> 01:48:45.107
[UNKNOWN]: Are you active in your community?

01:48:45.747 --> 01:48:47.527
[UNKNOWN]: Are you active on your schoolward?

01:48:47.927 --> 01:48:49.768
[UNKNOWN]: Are you trying to be a good father and good husband?

01:48:52.795 --> 01:49:02.904
[UNKNOWN]: it's more inspiring when kind of taken on individual level like that and not somebody just doing it for you know the visuals they're trying to get, you know the idea of October toss my personal authority.

01:49:03.204 --> 01:49:18.198
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, do you ever have you ever come across any of the any writings that kind of discuss or conceptualize the the frustration of how can me as one person

01:49:18.998 --> 01:49:27.124
[UNKNOWN]: Make a change in a society that's collapsing and be ever come across any any echoed sentiment that you hear so often now back then I was gonna save you turn on the TV lately.

01:49:27.144 --> 01:49:45.536
[UNKNOWN]: I think I can hear it on just about every station, man Well, no, I think the the thing that I look at And you have to understand where your history is coming from right a lot of times We don't see this as much in our modern world right because we're living a lot of the history in our countries and that old it's 200 years old so

01:49:46.336 --> 01:49:53.042
[UNKNOWN]: But a lot of this history is being written by people that are in the class they want to be in.

01:49:53.742 --> 01:49:57.165
[UNKNOWN]: They're writing it because they don't want to look bad.

01:49:57.506 --> 01:49:59.007
[UNKNOWN]: So they want to give a certain perspective.

01:49:59.427 --> 01:50:01.289
[UNKNOWN]: And that's one of the challenges in ancient history.

01:50:01.809 --> 01:50:06.093
[UNKNOWN]: One of the challenges in ancient history is we have to figure out what actually happened and what's opinion.

01:50:06.793 --> 01:50:12.518
[UNKNOWN]: And even one of the most famous Roman historians Titus Livius or Livi,

01:50:13.399 --> 01:50:15.061
[UNKNOWN]: His histories are meant to teach a lesson.

01:50:15.621 --> 01:50:17.624
[UNKNOWN]: So he's going to make the bad people look really bad.

01:50:17.764 --> 01:50:19.566
[UNKNOWN]: And the good people look really good and virtuous.

01:50:20.086 --> 01:50:27.434
[UNKNOWN]: So it becomes a real struggle to really get a perspective on what do people feel or what do people think.

01:50:27.454 --> 01:50:29.957
[UNKNOWN]: And I think literacy rate plays a huge part in that too.

01:50:30.617 --> 01:50:33.720
[UNKNOWN]: Because you're looking at five to 10% of the populations, actually, they're at.

01:50:34.281 --> 01:50:37.983
[UNKNOWN]: So the ones that are writing are the ones that are going to be in that point in time, the wealthiest.

01:50:38.543 --> 01:50:41.024
[UNKNOWN]: So it's, you don't get a real perspective in this.

01:50:41.064 --> 01:50:44.705
[UNKNOWN]: We did a piece on my YouTube channel, the Roman pattern.

01:50:44.725 --> 01:50:48.687
[UNKNOWN]: We take different sections of Roman history and try to tell a story long term.

01:50:48.727 --> 01:50:56.130
[UNKNOWN]: So we took nine months and did post-Septimia Severus all the way through Charlemagne.

01:50:56.150 --> 01:50:59.371
[UNKNOWN]: So like, you know, almost 1500 years of history to show us how we get here.

01:50:59.932 --> 01:51:02.833
[UNKNOWN]: And one of the things that was actually one of the hardest pieces we've written,

01:51:03.673 --> 01:51:10.438
[UNKNOWN]: was what did normal people do during the crisis of the third century?

01:51:10.458 --> 01:51:12.079
[UNKNOWN]: Like, how did they deal with a 50-year collapse?

01:51:12.660 --> 01:51:17.824
[UNKNOWN]: And the thing we had to look at is, while they were hiding their money, because they were afraid their money wasn't worth anything.

01:51:18.384 --> 01:51:31.074
[UNKNOWN]: We were seeing the church start to fill gaps because the government couldn't support them anymore, and that was a lot of how the early Christian church came to prominence, as they were literally just filling gaps that the government couldn't afford to do anymore, and they were doing it.

01:51:33.158 --> 01:51:36.659
[UNKNOWN]: That was one of the hardest things to write about because the source is just don't exist.

01:51:36.679 --> 01:51:42.400
[UNKNOWN]: Do you have to just look at his storyography of what's actually happening and that could be one of the hardest things to see?

01:51:42.420 --> 01:51:42.940
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:51:43.741 --> 01:51:46.561
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean it's history is written by the winner, right?

01:51:46.721 --> 01:51:49.562
[UNKNOWN]: I mean it's been that way forever.

01:51:49.622 --> 01:51:56.704
[UNKNOWN]: It gives you a different perspective on historical events that are closer to our era of being alive.

01:51:56.764 --> 01:52:01.025
[UNKNOWN]: But that is an important context for sure.

01:52:01.310 --> 01:52:09.435
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think one of the more interesting pieces that, too, is, and there are a lot of historic historians are highly critical of the source, so I will couch that.

01:52:10.155 --> 01:52:16.278
[UNKNOWN]: But the historian, Procopius, who's kind of the official scribe of the Emperor, Justinian.

01:52:16.298 --> 01:52:20.481
[UNKNOWN]: So Justinian decides in 535, you know, the West is fallen.

01:52:21.301 --> 01:52:23.644
[UNKNOWN]: Um, you know, 75 years ago, I'm going to go take it back.

01:52:24.145 --> 01:52:34.699
[UNKNOWN]: So he actually details Justinian going back and re-conquering the West and for a period of time, Justinian's going to claim that he's holding a Roman Empire that's been rejoined East and West.

01:52:35.380 --> 01:52:35.460
[UNKNOWN]: And

01:52:36.441 --> 01:52:42.003
[UNKNOWN]: Procopius has this version of the history, and then he also has a version of the history called the secret histories.

01:52:42.183 --> 01:52:48.746
[UNKNOWN]: And the secret histories actually published after he dies because he's afraid of what will happen to him if Justinian reads these.

01:52:48.786 --> 01:53:04.131
[UNKNOWN]: But a lot of historians are extremely critical of the secret histories because he's also trying to make himself look good personally in those, well, but we kind of do get a perspective of what he was thinking versus what he was wanting Justinian to think about what he was writing.

01:53:04.151 --> 01:53:05.852
[UNKNOWN]: So I think that's highly interesting in that way.

01:53:06.119 --> 01:53:17.461
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, getting back into some of the stoics, are you familiar enough with them to where if I was to say, okay, we've talked about Marcus the earliest at Depth Epictetus, which you take on him?

01:53:17.882 --> 01:53:22.002
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not super well-versed in a stoics, I apologize.

01:53:22.042 --> 01:53:24.223
[UNKNOWN]: No, no, no.

01:53:24.323 --> 01:53:33.945
[UNKNOWN]: I guess, dub tailing on the thing that you just mentioned, do you have an understanding of how any of their writings and other than the scribe that you just mentioned,

01:53:34.672 --> 01:53:46.178
[UNKNOWN]: how their stories and writings and publications lasted and kind of made it to modern day, to even be something that we're aware of.

01:53:46.759 --> 01:53:54.143
[UNKNOWN]: Well, and that's the trouble, too, because there's a couple different parts that one you have, the Library of Alexandria, which is one of the,

01:53:55.283 --> 01:53:56.505
[UNKNOWN]: greatest libraries in history.

01:53:56.525 --> 01:53:56.945
[UNKNOWN]: It's burned.

01:53:56.965 --> 01:53:59.128
[UNKNOWN]: I think it's two or three times.

01:53:59.588 --> 01:54:07.397
[UNKNOWN]: So you're losing a lot of those things There was a discovery recently And I'd have to find the article on this, but there was a discovery recently.

01:54:07.417 --> 01:54:11.361
[UNKNOWN]: They might have found some of Caesar's personal library, which was kind of exciting.

01:54:11.381 --> 01:54:14.825
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know much more about the story in that, but maybe there's some more information there

01:54:16.707 --> 01:54:19.988
[UNKNOWN]: But also like what these things were written on is the real struggle, too.

01:54:20.008 --> 01:54:24.370
[UNKNOWN]: You know, some of them are written on Pyrus, some of them are written on Vellum, which is like a type of lamb skin.

01:54:24.730 --> 01:54:27.431
[UNKNOWN]: So even the material doesn't survive incredibly well.

01:54:27.631 --> 01:54:27.891
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:54:28.191 --> 01:54:30.032
[UNKNOWN]: Like there's one of the famous works.

01:54:33.283 --> 01:54:41.065
[UNKNOWN]: of Augustus about his life and it's basically that the English translation of it is just some things I did.

01:54:41.345 --> 01:54:44.826
[UNKNOWN]: It's like to basically like I did this, I did that, I did this about his life.

01:54:45.506 --> 01:54:48.086
[UNKNOWN]: The only reason we had the translation is I think it was in Turkey.

01:54:48.106 --> 01:54:50.367
[UNKNOWN]: It was found scrolled on a wall.

01:54:50.967 --> 01:54:54.928
[UNKNOWN]: It actually survives so that the trouble is

01:54:56.048 --> 01:54:58.010
[UNKNOWN]: finding some of these things that exist.

01:54:58.090 --> 01:55:08.878
[UNKNOWN]: Or even in the city of Rome, there's a stone with the word rex on it, and then a bunch of language we can't decipher, because it's actually a language older than Latin.

01:55:09.358 --> 01:55:16.543
[UNKNOWN]: So part of it's even what was it written into, because as you get before a certain period of time, there were written languages.

01:55:16.583 --> 01:55:23.969
[UNKNOWN]: Like I think it was at the Mycenians, which were kind of like early protogreeks, so they're kind of in the Mediterranean,

01:55:25.503 --> 01:55:27.644
[UNKNOWN]: We call their language linear B, but we can't read it.

01:55:28.084 --> 01:55:32.006
[UNKNOWN]: So it becomes a real struggle of is it written in language we can understand?

01:55:32.606 --> 01:55:34.887
[UNKNOWN]: Is it written on something that continues to exist?

01:55:35.927 --> 01:55:38.408
[UNKNOWN]: Or here's an even another thing.

01:55:39.189 --> 01:55:41.330
[UNKNOWN]: Did somebody else use it as a source, right?

01:55:41.350 --> 01:55:42.750
[UNKNOWN]: Because we can get information.

01:55:43.550 --> 01:55:51.994
[UNKNOWN]: There's a lot of sources that no longer exist, but in Cicero's writing, we know a lot about sources that exist before Cicero, because you

01:55:55.790 --> 01:56:01.392
[UNKNOWN]: He's one of the most preserved writers in Roman history, sister O'Bing, a kind of a late Republican character.

01:56:02.133 --> 01:56:08.655
[UNKNOWN]: I always like to say that sister O'Lubbed to hear himself talk, because there's just so many documented everything he did.

01:56:09.276 --> 01:56:12.137
[UNKNOWN]: So that becomes the real struggle, is how well documented of it.

01:56:13.415 --> 01:56:15.537
[UNKNOWN]: also did it disagree with someone, right?

01:56:15.838 --> 01:56:19.742
[UNKNOWN]: If it was a extreme disagreement with whoever's in power, they could destroy it too.

01:56:20.482 --> 01:56:27.390
[UNKNOWN]: So just that a piece survives is a miracle in itself because there's so many things that could make it not last.

01:56:28.733 --> 01:56:34.875
[UNKNOWN]: It makes it difficult to kind of trust almost everything we've heard in a way.

01:56:35.296 --> 01:56:36.796
[UNKNOWN]: Well, that's the trouble with ancient history.

01:56:36.816 --> 01:56:40.218
[UNKNOWN]: There's a lot of ancient historians will fight with each other about, well, this is right, and this is wrong.

01:56:40.698 --> 01:56:41.858
[UNKNOWN]: It's actually just a lot of opinion.

01:56:42.358 --> 01:56:44.399
[UNKNOWN]: Because I've kind of read this fragment and that fragment.

01:56:46.680 --> 01:57:04.573
[UNKNOWN]: We were looking at a graph earlier showing kind of the collapse of currency and one of the major things in that root there is in the year 212, the Emperor Caracola issues an edict that takes all the free people living in the Roman Empire and gives them citizenship.

01:57:04.973 --> 01:57:07.155
[UNKNOWN]: So there's about 30 million people who come citizens overnight.

01:57:07.715 --> 01:57:08.235
[UNKNOWN]: But guess what?

01:57:08.375 --> 01:57:09.076
[UNKNOWN]: It's a fragment.

01:57:09.236 --> 01:57:10.857
[UNKNOWN]: We're missing the rest of the document.

01:57:10.877 --> 01:57:12.298
[UNKNOWN]: We don't know 100% know why he did it.

01:57:12.318 --> 01:57:12.899
[UNKNOWN]: We can gas.

01:57:12.939 --> 01:57:14.300
[UNKNOWN]: You know, the Treasury wasn't doing so well.

01:57:14.900 --> 01:57:18.623
[UNKNOWN]: So it becomes a real struggle of what even exists or how does it exist?

01:57:18.823 --> 01:57:20.244
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:57:21.345 --> 01:57:22.786
[UNKNOWN]: You talked about virtues.

01:57:24.026 --> 01:57:30.191
[UNKNOWN]: There's a few other terms that I wanted to kind of circulate that are kind of in that same train of thought.

01:57:31.071 --> 01:57:32.632
[UNKNOWN]: I'll probably miss pronounced all of them.

01:57:33.493 --> 01:57:39.319
[UNKNOWN]: Don't worry, I get yelled at because I don't use a classical Latin pronunciation, which uses hard seas.

01:57:39.359 --> 01:57:41.161
[UNKNOWN]: I use more of a medieval, so whatever.

01:57:42.382 --> 01:57:43.844
[UNKNOWN]: So that's quite the problem to have.

01:57:44.064 --> 01:57:44.885
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:57:45.685 --> 01:57:45.866
[UNKNOWN]: P.A.

01:57:45.986 --> 01:57:46.907
[UNKNOWN]: does, P.A.

01:57:47.507 --> 01:57:47.627
[UNKNOWN]: does.

01:57:47.667 --> 01:57:48.208
[UNKNOWN]: P.A.

01:57:48.348 --> 01:57:48.548
[UNKNOWN]: does.

01:57:48.568 --> 01:57:49.049
[UNKNOWN]: P.A.

01:57:49.189 --> 01:57:49.429
[UNKNOWN]: does.

01:57:49.469 --> 01:57:57.137
[UNKNOWN]: There's more like humility and the idea of not wanting to be overpromotional of yourself and things like that.

01:57:58.923 --> 01:58:07.289
[UNKNOWN]: Grab a toss and I'll give you just kind of the short definition I have and I'd love to get your kind of take on how it applies or what your perception is.

01:58:07.890 --> 01:58:11.693
[UNKNOWN]: Grab a toss, wait, seriousness, the quality of a man who's word-held.

01:58:13.854 --> 01:58:15.896
[UNKNOWN]: Is that something that you see as a recurring theme?

01:58:16.203 --> 01:58:29.808
[UNKNOWN]: It's definitely a recurring theme, and I think it's really obvious in kind of the late Republic, where I had mentioned there's the struggle between kind of the optimate days and kind of the lower orders, if you want to use that term.

01:58:30.628 --> 01:58:42.112
[UNKNOWN]: And there was very often men would be suspect of people using offices like the tribune of the plebs, like that group would be called popular, it's using the power of the populist

01:58:45.489 --> 01:58:54.464
[UNKNOWN]: people become suspect in each other's actions because they're not really seen to be serious actors where if you look at kind of the classical republic, you know, kind of the republic of the historian polybius.

01:58:55.718 --> 01:59:06.626
[UNKNOWN]: Those would be seen as very serious man, you know, you look at someone like, since an artist who, once again, may or may not have existed, he's kind of this Roman paradigm, but he's seen to be a man of great gravitas.

01:59:06.646 --> 01:59:13.912
[UNKNOWN]: He's wanting to preserve this, you know, this republic and he will be the dictator for six months and then lay it down.

01:59:14.572 --> 01:59:18.936
[UNKNOWN]: But you start to see, I think, less of that as you get into the late republic because

01:59:20.482 --> 01:59:22.609
[UNKNOWN]: You're not going to really be able to believe what a man's saying.

01:59:22.849 --> 01:59:27.765
[UNKNOWN]: You have to look at his actions and that really isn't showing much gravitas at that makes sense.

01:59:27.885 --> 01:59:28.106
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:59:28.304 --> 01:59:29.065
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, absolutely.

01:59:29.385 --> 01:59:31.726
[UNKNOWN]: I think you mentioned this already.

01:59:32.187 --> 01:59:33.988
[UNKNOWN]: Pattern, or pattern familiar.

01:59:34.088 --> 01:59:38.691
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't mention it, but it's an important position because that kind of really ties in with with fear too, quite well.

01:59:39.192 --> 01:59:42.194
[UNKNOWN]: So the Potter familiar is kind of the role the father in the household.

01:59:42.734 --> 01:59:45.936
[UNKNOWN]: And it's the idea that the state wasn't providing for his family he was.

01:59:46.637 --> 01:59:52.041
[UNKNOWN]: And there's also a few things about it that are a little weird like he did have the power of life and death that we're a family member.

01:59:52.661 --> 01:59:56.003
[UNKNOWN]: So if his son got a little out of her hand, legally he was led to kill him.

01:59:56.523 --> 02:00:03.428
[UNKNOWN]: So I don't know how great of an idea that is, but the Potter familiarist was seen at this role of the state doesn't provide for my family, I do.

02:00:03.908 --> 02:00:07.150
[UNKNOWN]: I make sure they're safe, I make sure they're cared for, I make sure they're fed.

02:00:07.930 --> 02:00:15.155
[UNKNOWN]: I am representing my family to the state, but the Potter familiarist is a really important role, and it is something that

02:00:16.530 --> 02:00:21.332
[UNKNOWN]: becomes a less important role as the state takes on more powers, right?

02:00:21.352 --> 02:00:25.853
[UNKNOWN]: Like once the state is feeding everyone, well, now the potter familiar isn't responsible for feeding.

02:00:26.893 --> 02:00:29.514
[UNKNOWN]: The potter familiar is what also decide who is children or marrying.

02:00:30.014 --> 02:00:34.496
[UNKNOWN]: Well, that's going to become less an issue later on because it's now what is the state want you to do.

02:00:34.976 --> 02:00:42.098
[UNKNOWN]: So the potter familiar is in some ways, as you get into the second third centuries, really becomes neutered and really matters very little.

02:00:42.782 --> 02:01:03.457
[UNKNOWN]: To me, as you're describing that, I see a huge parallel to the history of this country in that same way, where, you know, upon its inception, it was much more that way, not the, you can go ahead and kill your kids if you want, but- Yeah, not the great plan, but just, you know, that, like, as each decade progresses,

02:01:05.438 --> 02:01:14.260
[UNKNOWN]: the family and all the way down to the individual, seems like it becomes more dependent on the state than how it originally was by quite a bit.

02:01:14.580 --> 02:01:17.060
[UNKNOWN]: Well, and family was really, really important to Romans.

02:01:17.140 --> 02:01:22.421
[UNKNOWN]: You know, number one, because they wanted to tie themselves to a great name, like names had so much value.

02:01:22.801 --> 02:01:31.043
[UNKNOWN]: You know, if you had a family that had many consoles, and there was a better chance you were going to be console, or you could be in a better political position because of the family you came from.

02:01:31.463 --> 02:01:37.386
[UNKNOWN]: Like we even look at someone like Julia Caesar, the Julia I were a great name, but they didn't have any money.

02:01:37.426 --> 02:01:44.489
[UNKNOWN]: His father was broke, so a lot of the decisions he makes in his life are because he owes a lot of money to other people in order to make that next political move.

02:01:45.090 --> 02:01:52.753
[UNKNOWN]: But even how their families were structured, and we don't really see this here anymore, but families would often live in the same house, even after they got married.

02:01:52.993 --> 02:01:57.175
[UNKNOWN]: So you'd have one, two, three generations living together where, you know, maybe the grandparents

02:02:01.336 --> 02:02:07.081
[UNKNOWN]: Father would still be holding the role of potter familiar, even though his 35-year-old son and his wife lived in their household.

02:02:07.121 --> 02:02:10.044
[UNKNOWN]: But that clan was very, very important to them.

02:02:10.484 --> 02:02:14.527
[UNKNOWN]: And I think now, we've lost a lot of that, right?

02:02:14.568 --> 02:02:20.933
[UNKNOWN]: Because if he comes harder to get child care, it becomes harder to do certain things as a family would do.

02:02:21.013 --> 02:02:23.455
[UNKNOWN]: You know, housing costs, like, can people afford housing?

02:02:23.996 --> 02:02:26.978
[UNKNOWN]: And that's not to say, like, you know, we shouldn't all have our own autonomy.

02:02:27.018 --> 02:02:28.419
[UNKNOWN]: But I also think it's not bad.

02:02:29.120 --> 02:02:31.842
[UNKNOWN]: to have a, you know, kind of extended family that cares for each other.

02:02:32.022 --> 02:02:32.222
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:02:33.022 --> 02:02:33.623
[UNKNOWN]: I agree.

02:02:33.663 --> 02:02:38.746
[UNKNOWN]: I think it's crucial in the break down of the nuclear family.

02:02:38.766 --> 02:02:47.951
[UNKNOWN]: And here in this country, I think, is you could argue has been one of if not the biggest shift into the downfall of our society.

02:02:47.971 --> 02:02:48.311
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.

02:02:48.431 --> 02:02:51.252
[UNKNOWN]: It would have been very normal for many generations still together.

02:02:51.292 --> 02:02:53.373
[UNKNOWN]: They kind of like that TV show, the Walton's, right?

02:02:53.654 --> 02:02:57.015
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it would be how a family is put together.

02:02:57.035 --> 02:03:00.857
[UNKNOWN]: They're all caring for this family business, or the family farm that they have.

02:03:02.017 --> 02:03:05.359
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and it would be something that the family would have for sustenance.

02:03:05.579 --> 02:03:07.140
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah.

02:03:09.025 --> 02:03:14.772
[UNKNOWN]: one of the things that I read also is to a Roman being a man and being brave as the same word.

02:03:15.352 --> 02:03:16.594
[UNKNOWN]: That's where Virtu says.

02:03:16.774 --> 02:03:29.588
[UNKNOWN]: Virtu says really this idea of bravery and this idea of others before self, which is going to start to lose its value over time, you know, as kind of this idea of personal authority becomes more important, but it is definitely the same word.

02:03:30.114 --> 02:03:47.866
[UNKNOWN]: I find it fascinating that man and brave is the same thing, you know, and that not only was that water down and became less, you know, apparent over time, but that those are essentially interchangeable, I think, which says so much about

02:03:48.526 --> 02:04:08.495
[UNKNOWN]: their view of not just how men are kind of regarded and looked at, but I think more importantly what's expected of you, you know, because the backbone of the Roman Empire from my perspective kind of hinged on brave men continuing to not just maintain it, but expand it.

02:04:09.436 --> 02:04:11.777
[UNKNOWN]: I know we've kind of already talked a little bit about

02:04:12.337 --> 02:04:13.458
[UNKNOWN]: when that changed.

02:04:14.078 --> 02:04:23.142
[UNKNOWN]: Do you see that that change at the same time is all of the other kind of dominoes that fill downs are all kind of the at the same time happening.

02:04:23.790 --> 02:04:25.890
[UNKNOWN]: And I think that's the struggle when we look at collapse.

02:04:25.931 --> 02:04:29.971
[UNKNOWN]: I think we often look at collapse like this thing happened here than the next thing and the next thing.

02:04:30.491 --> 02:04:34.372
[UNKNOWN]: And I know Elon Musk's even talked a lot about, well, Rome fell because birth rates fell.

02:04:34.872 --> 02:04:39.633
[UNKNOWN]: And it's like to a certain extent that's true, but history's never monoclesal, right?

02:04:39.653 --> 02:04:43.414
[UNKNOWN]: There's so many things happening in concert for something that happened.

02:04:43.434 --> 02:04:45.995
[UNKNOWN]: So of course, if there's less brave men,

02:04:47.115 --> 02:04:48.056
[UNKNOWN]: things aren't going to go well.

02:04:48.076 --> 02:04:56.763
[UNKNOWN]: And I think the thing I often think about is when you get a world where incompetence rains, competence is seen as dangerous.

02:04:57.384 --> 02:05:02.187
[UNKNOWN]: And that's where I think you really look at, we're not getting a lot of competent men in important roles.

02:05:02.868 --> 02:05:14.432
[UNKNOWN]: because the men that would put them there are quite incompetent and we really look at these competent men and we want to sideline them and it really puts men in a position of, you know, what is my mission?

02:05:14.612 --> 02:05:15.553
[UNKNOWN]: What is my purpose?

02:05:15.613 --> 02:05:16.973
[UNKNOWN]: You know, what am I doing with my life?

02:05:17.013 --> 02:05:23.156
[UNKNOWN]: Because what your mission is to be brave and to be have virtues and to be a potter familiar.

02:05:23.196 --> 02:05:25.377
[UNKNOWN]: Just, you know, don't harm your kids.

02:05:25.997 --> 02:05:28.678
[UNKNOWN]: But at the same time, it's to be competent.

02:05:29.518 --> 02:05:35.942
[UNKNOWN]: But I think also our modern system isn't set up to achieve competence, right?

02:05:35.962 --> 02:05:44.968
[UNKNOWN]: Because if you look at even going to Roman times or medieval times, one of the biggest things that's missing in our modern world is the idea of apprenticeships.

02:05:45.168 --> 02:05:50.972
[UNKNOWN]: You know, we sure we have internships where you go get people coffee or whatever it is if you're going to go work at a company.

02:05:51.552 --> 02:06:00.417
[UNKNOWN]: But in a apprenticeship, you would work with someone for a period of time to gain that skill, to gain that confidence, to get competence, to be able to actually do something.

02:06:00.437 --> 02:06:05.460
[UNKNOWN]: And even, I think I went to Catholic College, so I would just go a lot of seminarians.

02:06:06.160 --> 02:06:11.704
[UNKNOWN]: People think of the seminary, like, the purpose of it is, you come in, you come out of priest.

02:06:12.164 --> 02:06:13.565
[UNKNOWN]: And it's not actually the case.

02:06:13.765 --> 02:06:15.586
[UNKNOWN]: The case is discernment as well.

02:06:16.066 --> 02:06:17.727
[UNKNOWN]: Like deciding, do I want to do this?

02:06:17.787 --> 02:06:18.948
[UNKNOWN]: And I think if you look at

02:06:20.260 --> 02:06:25.807
[UNKNOWN]: a real apprenticeship, it's also helping you decide if you want to commit your life to whatever this thing is that you're doing.

02:06:26.307 --> 02:06:35.178
[UNKNOWN]: So I think societally we're not really set up for men to find a real role and to actually achieve competence and competence as vital.

02:06:36.610 --> 02:06:59.188
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, you see it everywhere, and I think the part of the problem is technology becoming so advanced that the necessity for men to be truly competent and also successful are less hinged together, which is a strange time to be alive, but you see it all over the place.

02:07:07.852 --> 02:07:35.792
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know if I see that as much because at the same time you know sure we are fighting in a lot of wars we are in a lot of different places I guess thing you could say is Romans had military bases everywhere and so do we but nobody had bases there right so it's it does kind of show more of a position of empire I guess it's hard for me to say number one because I didn't serve so it's kind of hard for me to have that internal viewpoint.

02:07:36.444 --> 02:08:00.912
[UNKNOWN]: I guess from a foreign policy standpoint, I certainly can see some of those maybe parallels between over expansion and defending your homeland is that, you know, I think most American soldiers sign up for wanting to serve their country and in whatever capacity their country sees fit.

02:08:05.995 --> 02:08:16.441
[UNKNOWN]: all the way around the world, you know, under the hate to use the word guys, but it does kind of feel that way of existential threat.

02:08:17.201 --> 02:08:21.684
[UNKNOWN]: That's a tough thing to prove because so much of it is intent based.

02:08:22.462 --> 02:08:50.043
[UNKNOWN]: But I do wonder, you know, the American soldiers paid by the taxpayer, essentially, and the American government, do you see a scenario, and maybe this is outside your lane, but I'll ask anyway, where it starts to kind of turn into that, you know, people will do it because it's a job and it has benefits and health care and they can take care of their family, even if fighting all over the world, you know, not really or technically defending the homeland is really even part of it.

02:08:50.357 --> 02:08:54.400
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I guess that I can go from personal experience because I grew up in a small town.

02:08:54.860 --> 02:08:56.201
[UNKNOWN]: It's five eighths of my one size.

02:08:56.702 --> 02:08:57.563
[UNKNOWN]: We don't have a stop light.

02:08:58.083 --> 02:09:01.706
[UNKNOWN]: Not a lot happens there and for a lot of guys that we didn't have a lot of opportunity.

02:09:02.306 --> 02:09:04.067
[UNKNOWN]: There's a lot of drugs in the area that I grew up.

02:09:04.908 --> 02:09:13.194
[UNKNOWN]: A lot of guys would use the military in order to kind of change their position in life and they come back and a lot of them are cops and things like that.

02:09:13.234 --> 02:09:13.675
[UNKNOWN]: So I think,

02:09:14.315 --> 02:09:21.198
[UNKNOWN]: To some extent, I think that does exist and in some ways it's a good thing, right, to give people a way to improve their condition.

02:09:22.178 --> 02:09:25.299
[UNKNOWN]: But you always want people to do things for the right reason, too, right?

02:09:25.379 --> 02:09:26.760
[UNKNOWN]: And I think that becomes the struggle.

02:09:26.780 --> 02:09:29.341
[UNKNOWN]: Am I doing this just for the opportunity, or am I doing this for the reason?

02:09:29.661 --> 02:09:31.081
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:09:31.942 --> 02:09:37.684
[UNKNOWN]: I guess going back to a little bit of the husband father, pattern familiar type of mentality.

02:09:46.093 --> 02:09:51.299
[UNKNOWN]: He would owe his family that they're all morally above reproach, right?

02:09:51.580 --> 02:09:55.985
[UNKNOWN]: Like Caesar divorces his wife, not because she cheated on him, but because his story she might have.

02:09:56.526 --> 02:09:59.850
[UNKNOWN]: And he thought that the wife of Caesar should be above reproach.

02:10:00.431 --> 02:10:05.156
[UNKNOWN]: So they were a very conservative, very moralistic society, so that would have been very important to them.

02:10:05.757 --> 02:10:16.904
[UNKNOWN]: they would have also expected that their children would have opportunities because they created those opportunities for them and doesn't mean they're giving them something but it means that they're putting them in a position that they will do something and hopefully exceed them.

02:10:18.145 --> 02:10:21.087
[UNKNOWN]: They would expect them to have shelter for their family.

02:10:21.587 --> 02:10:29.312
[UNKNOWN]: Like any of those things would have been deeply embarrassing to them if they could not provide those things and I think that's also really important in our modern world is

02:10:31.333 --> 02:10:36.495
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know how to say this, but I don't know if enough men are embarrassed if they can't do the things they should be able to do.

02:10:37.515 --> 02:10:45.438
[UNKNOWN]: And that's not to downplay anyone, but I think it is really important that sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to take care of your family, obviously within the law.

02:10:45.978 --> 02:10:50.120
[UNKNOWN]: But I think we have to be willing to be uncomfortable to do

02:10:51.579 --> 02:10:55.504
[UNKNOWN]: longer days than we should have to work harder than we should have to because we have to provide for our family.

02:10:55.524 --> 02:10:59.548
[UNKNOWN]: And I know there are a lot of men out there hearing that and saying, yes, I did that and that's that's great.

02:10:59.588 --> 02:11:07.597
[UNKNOWN]: But I think not we live in a society where kind of the you know, the the the the cycle influence of everything will say, you know,

02:11:08.673 --> 02:11:21.897
[UNKNOWN]: So, you don't have to feel bad about yourself, you know, it's, you know, just that you're depressed or whatever it might be, but I think a lot of times our own self esteem comes from our achievements and our ability to do things and sometimes when you feel bad about yourself is because you're just not doing enough.

02:11:23.032 --> 02:11:26.395
[UNKNOWN]: Agreed, yeah, I mean, I don't know that was the direction you're looking for.

02:11:26.535 --> 02:11:28.737
[UNKNOWN]: No, for sure it is.

02:11:28.757 --> 02:11:47.835
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I think that ties into the stoicism piece, you know, enormously whether you intended or even realize it is the, you know, choosing the hard path on purpose, you know, is this is that, you know, I've interviewed so many veterans over the years and no tons of them, many of whom have,

02:11:48.615 --> 02:11:59.200
[UNKNOWN]: really struggled with that transition out of the military, and when I look at guys who don't struggle and are ultimately successful, contrasted to the ones that are the opposite of that.

02:12:00.100 --> 02:12:07.603
[UNKNOWN]: The one thing I always see as a recurring theme is either purpose and fulfillment or a lack of those things.

02:12:08.523 --> 02:12:12.865
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and to your point of, you know, people aren't embarrassed enough.

02:12:12.885 --> 02:12:16.887
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, to me, the basic tenon of being able to protect and provide

02:12:17.607 --> 02:12:32.623
[UNKNOWN]: and lead, you know, whether it's your own family or a business, a community, and me whatever, that is kind of the bedrock of what, you know, the necessary level of skill set and competency has to be out at a bare minimum.

02:12:33.163 --> 02:12:38.986
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think there's too many participation trophies, there's too many, you know, it's okay, you didn't win.

02:12:39.086 --> 02:12:41.047
[UNKNOWN]: Well, you know, figure out how to win next time.

02:12:41.067 --> 02:12:43.668
[UNKNOWN]: Like losing is not a bad thing if you learn a lesson from it.

02:12:44.388 --> 02:12:47.570
[UNKNOWN]: But I think we, we kind of live in a society now modernly.

02:12:48.270 --> 02:12:51.253
[UNKNOWN]: where we're told, you know, like you were saying, you don't have to struggle.

02:12:51.714 --> 02:12:53.175
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's somebody else's fault.

02:12:53.315 --> 02:12:54.456
[UNKNOWN]: Somebody's going to save you.

02:12:54.857 --> 02:13:04.887
[UNKNOWN]: And I think if you create a society of not just men, but people in general, where they think someone else is going to save them, and somebody else's agency for them, well, you've neutered all of society.

02:13:05.127 --> 02:13:05.327
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:13:06.048 --> 02:13:11.233
[UNKNOWN]: So with that, I mean, do you think that the modern man is soft or just untrained?

02:13:12.297 --> 02:13:29.347
[UNKNOWN]: I think he's untrained, I think that's a way to say it because he's been, we've been feminized, I think in a lot of ways in our society we've been hyper feminized and we've been coddled in a lot of ways, you know, but I think it's, I look at my own life and you know, with what happened with my mom.

02:13:30.187 --> 02:13:31.969
[UNKNOWN]: That was one of the worst things that ever happened to me.

02:13:32.169 --> 02:13:37.754
[UNKNOWN]: But at the same time, I'm a better person because that happened because I had to figure out how do I help my family pay the bills?

02:13:38.154 --> 02:13:39.595
[UNKNOWN]: How do I help my dad take care of my mom?

02:13:39.996 --> 02:13:42.698
[UNKNOWN]: You know, how do I figure out what I want to do with my life?

02:13:42.718 --> 02:13:45.020
[UNKNOWN]: So I think a lot of times we don't look at...

02:13:46.061 --> 02:14:06.808
[UNKNOWN]: the value in true adversity, you know, there's adversity, there's a friend of my Marcus Aurelius Anderson actually, he's a stoic guy and he calls adversity a gift and I think it really is, it's having bad things happen, it's just your perspective on them, you know, what can you get out of those, what can you learn from those, how can you become better?

02:14:07.388 --> 02:14:12.229
[UNKNOWN]: And I think we look at our modern man, we shy away from things that are painful, we shy away from things

02:14:14.650 --> 02:14:14.870
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:14:15.731 --> 02:14:17.933
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you see it with with young kids.

02:14:17.993 --> 02:14:19.215
[UNKNOWN]: You've got several kids, correct?

02:14:19.315 --> 02:14:19.795
[UNKNOWN]: Four girls.

02:14:19.815 --> 02:14:20.256
[UNKNOWN]: Four girls.

02:14:20.276 --> 02:14:20.376
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:14:20.396 --> 02:14:22.198
[UNKNOWN]: They're kind of like Amazon's in a lot of ways, though.

02:14:22.458 --> 02:14:28.304
[UNKNOWN]: What's the seven, five, two and almost five months?

02:14:28.344 --> 02:14:28.584
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:14:28.965 --> 02:14:30.746
[UNKNOWN]: So I mean, I'm sure you've seen that.

02:14:33.088 --> 02:14:49.956
[UNKNOWN]: kind of you stress of or you stress approach to challenging them enough to where it is a challenge, it's stressful, but it's manageable and seeing them overcome that and the strength and confidence that

02:14:50.516 --> 02:15:02.222
[UNKNOWN]: Builds from that and that they gain from going through those experiences is really what kind of calcifies them into Young strong adults and other still pretty young, but yeah, but yeah, have you see?

02:15:02.342 --> 02:15:14.189
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, absolutely because I look at even so we home school first of all because we're a little terrified of the school system But my my my my seven year old even two nights ago we we do Of course you go to bed.

02:15:14.209 --> 02:15:16.490
[UNKNOWN]: She she reads me a me or my wife a book

02:15:17.250 --> 02:15:27.442
[UNKNOWN]: and you know you work with her will like hey okay you said the wrong word they're sounded out and you get to the she gets the end and she is so happy that she got through that book and she read that book and it was like that's real confidence or even

02:15:28.671 --> 02:15:31.753
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I wouldn't say we live on a farm, but we have four acres.

02:15:31.773 --> 02:15:33.434
[UNKNOWN]: We've got a bunch of chickens and things like that.

02:15:33.494 --> 02:15:34.734
[UNKNOWN]: We're cut fire with every winter.

02:15:35.775 --> 02:15:40.317
[UNKNOWN]: We just did 15 tons of gravel on my driveway, and even the two-year-old was helping shovel.

02:15:40.577 --> 02:15:45.820
[UNKNOWN]: Like that thing has a lot of value, or the seven-year-old and the five-year-old got to the barn and get the eggs in the morning.

02:15:46.300 --> 02:15:50.202
[UNKNOWN]: So those things are things that they can do to contribute.

02:15:50.222 --> 02:15:52.924
[UNKNOWN]: And I think when you look at kids, a lot of times,

02:15:54.591 --> 02:15:59.605
[UNKNOWN]: we're telling them they can't contribute, like don't do that or, you know, don't touch that.

02:16:00.026 --> 02:16:01.611
[UNKNOWN]: When a lot of times they do figure out what.

02:16:02.588 --> 02:16:05.169
[UNKNOWN]: they also want to feel like how can they add to the family, right?

02:16:05.629 --> 02:16:11.170
[UNKNOWN]: And when you take somebody and take away their ability to exchange, you make them a criminal, right?

02:16:11.210 --> 02:16:13.150
[UNKNOWN]: Because now they feel like they can't exchange with others.

02:16:13.170 --> 02:16:15.871
[UNKNOWN]: And that's in a kid that's such an important thing to put in.

02:16:16.631 --> 02:16:20.012
[UNKNOWN]: Even if it's not helping that much, they feel like they're exchanging with you.

02:16:20.592 --> 02:16:21.972
[UNKNOWN]: And exchange is life, right?

02:16:21.992 --> 02:16:24.213
[UNKNOWN]: Like to be a high-quality level of exchange,

02:16:25.313 --> 02:16:53.985
[UNKNOWN]: is so important right because they're going to go to work and they're going to work hard or they create something they're going to create the best thing they can create whereas if you don't allow someone to exchange that's how you create a person that is a criminal Yeah, I think that's true with you know kids employees you know coach with their athlete students with their teachers and employee with uh or I'm sorry employer with employees I mean you know that sense of having skin in the game and in a buy-in to the outcome

02:16:55.026 --> 02:17:03.552
[UNKNOWN]: really is kind of the crucial aspect of people wanting to do it and feeling purposeful and fulfilled.

02:17:04.312 --> 02:17:15.160
[UNKNOWN]: In terms of kind of a man leading his family, one thing that seems like it can be a bit of a fine line is where strength ends and control begins.

02:17:16.461 --> 02:17:17.702
[UNKNOWN]: Do you have a perspective on that?

02:17:18.257 --> 02:17:21.985
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think strength this force control is not, right?

02:17:22.005 --> 02:17:25.893
[UNKNOWN]: Like, and I think that's what's really important because you can look at something and say,

02:17:27.598 --> 02:17:29.739
[UNKNOWN]: How do I handle this with a calm voice and a calm demeanor?

02:17:29.759 --> 02:17:31.039
[UNKNOWN]: And I think that's actually a control.

02:17:31.599 --> 02:17:36.480
[UNKNOWN]: Whereas you look at strength and that's where violence goes and harm and things like that.

02:17:37.020 --> 02:17:42.302
[UNKNOWN]: And I think especially with kids, you have to understand that's conditioning you're creating for them for the rest of their life.

02:17:42.342 --> 02:17:44.082
[UNKNOWN]: And that's how they're going to handle situations.

02:17:44.802 --> 02:17:47.123
[UNKNOWN]: So is it always perfect now?

02:17:47.543 --> 02:17:51.484
[UNKNOWN]: My two-year-old pooped on the floor that are today, hand-to-me-hered diaper and say, hey, guess what I pooped?

02:17:53.408 --> 02:18:19.389
[UNKNOWN]: great job honey let's go clean that up like you got to do the best you can am i always perfect no but i think you have to realize the way you respond to situations the way you can control yourself in situations is something you are teaching them right they're watching everything um i i realized the other day i need to swear a little bit less because my two-year-old has started dropping f-bombs so you know you have to realize they're always watching and they're gonna model yeah that's uh that is the truth because uh kids are

02:18:22.631 --> 02:18:27.536
[UNKNOWN]: They're hyper-observing and total sponges when it comes to their parents' behavior for sure.

02:18:28.537 --> 02:18:44.635
[UNKNOWN]: All right, so we talked a little bit about a fair bit about the currency aspect and the parallel between how big of an issue of monetary policy was and the fall of the Roman Empire and seeing those patterns repeat themselves today.

02:18:45.355 --> 02:18:47.016
[UNKNOWN]: What are some other things that you see?

02:18:47.036 --> 02:18:55.421
[UNKNOWN]: I know we talked about borders, but are there other parallels to the Roman Empire falling that you see taking place that we haven't discussed?

02:18:55.681 --> 02:18:57.782
[UNKNOWN]: Well before we get on that, can I just show you some coins?

02:18:57.862 --> 02:18:59.563
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah before we get off of currency for good?

02:18:59.583 --> 02:19:04.967
[UNKNOWN]: So, just so you can kind of see an example of what some stuff would have looked like.

02:19:05.993 --> 02:19:09.776
[UNKNOWN]: So first of all, this is not a Roman coin, but it's a gift for you.

02:19:10.437 --> 02:19:15.221
[UNKNOWN]: This is a coin of Philip III, so he would have been the brother of Alexander the Great.

02:19:15.241 --> 02:19:17.964
[UNKNOWN]: This is for you, this is a pure silver coin.

02:19:18.284 --> 02:19:19.025
[UNKNOWN]: And thank you very much.

02:19:19.045 --> 02:19:20.846
[UNKNOWN]: And that's courtesy of my friend, Dean Kinzer.

02:19:20.866 --> 02:19:23.309
[UNKNOWN]: Kinzer, Quinzer, Quinzer.

02:19:23.349 --> 02:19:27.012
[UNKNOWN]: He's my coin guy that gets all these things rated and everything.

02:19:27.545 --> 02:19:41.998
[UNKNOWN]: that is so kind thank you very absolutely and that's cool that's um he was a short-lived ruler but he did take over Alexander the King Kingdom for a period of time after he died in 323 so filibaridias would have been his name

02:19:43.865 --> 02:19:45.706
[UNKNOWN]: How does this little off topic?

02:19:45.786 --> 02:19:48.126
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, how do they validate that these are real?

02:19:48.466 --> 02:19:56.509
[UNKNOWN]: So they know what to look for, you know, where what the color of them would have been in terms of, you know, what would the marking that I'm going to look like?

02:19:57.869 --> 02:19:59.609
[UNKNOWN]: So there are certain things that are looking at.

02:19:59.649 --> 02:20:06.051
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I know Dean could probably speak to it a lot better than I can, because he can kind of talk about this stuff in his sleep.

02:20:06.071 --> 02:20:09.112
[UNKNOWN]: Like I sent him a picture of a Byzantine coin in here.

02:20:10.203 --> 02:20:12.965
[UNKNOWN]: I sent him a picture of this yesterday and I'm like, dude, tell me what this is.

02:20:13.085 --> 02:20:15.147
[UNKNOWN]: And he gives me like a full background in this coin.

02:20:15.167 --> 02:20:16.247
[UNKNOWN]: You could see nothing on this coin.

02:20:16.447 --> 02:20:16.648
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:20:16.928 --> 02:20:18.429
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:20:18.449 --> 02:20:21.331
[UNKNOWN]: That looks like a certain on the floor of the boundary or something.

02:20:21.471 --> 02:20:27.335
[UNKNOWN]: But if you want to kind of see some examples, well, first of all, this isn't a Roman coin, but this is a coin of the macabees.

02:20:27.555 --> 02:20:30.798
[UNKNOWN]: So this is a Biblical coin from the second century BC.

02:20:31.618 --> 02:20:32.639
[UNKNOWN]: Two far apart.

02:20:33.139 --> 02:20:33.379
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:20:34.000 --> 02:20:34.180
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:20:34.320 --> 02:20:34.880
[UNKNOWN]: A little closer.

02:20:41.624 --> 02:20:51.331
[UNKNOWN]: I'm going to show my age here and put on the glasses to see this, but you can see some differences and some of those other ones I'm going to show you on silver quality.

02:20:52.132 --> 02:20:53.233
[UNKNOWN]: Wow, that's tiny.

02:20:55.294 --> 02:20:57.676
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's like a widow's might would be the type of coin.

02:21:00.193 --> 02:21:04.756
[UNKNOWN]: So if we want to look at, I guess we'll do these in numerical order so that we're making sure we handle these properly.

02:21:05.457 --> 02:21:08.099
[UNKNOWN]: So this is early in the third century crisis.

02:21:08.119 --> 02:21:09.780
[UNKNOWN]: This is a trade and decious coin.

02:21:10.100 --> 02:21:12.302
[UNKNOWN]: The guy that loved climate change, this is from 250.

02:21:12.702 --> 02:21:14.844
[UNKNOWN]: You can see that it's got pretty high silver content.

02:21:15.684 --> 02:21:16.025
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, wow.

02:21:17.626 --> 02:21:19.967
[UNKNOWN]: And we're looking at a graph earlier that kind of shows you.

02:21:19.987 --> 02:21:23.450
[UNKNOWN]: That's about when you're going to see a crash, but that's a very high silver content coin.

02:21:24.431 --> 02:21:25.632
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, it's obvious too.

02:21:29.865 --> 02:21:39.813
[UNKNOWN]: And if we go a little bit later here, this is Valerian, so that's an interesting one.

02:21:39.853 --> 02:21:41.414
[UNKNOWN]: It's still got a pretty high silver content.

02:21:42.715 --> 02:21:47.859
[UNKNOWN]: And he's a really interesting one because Valerian is the first Roman Emperor to be captured alive.

02:21:49.060 --> 02:21:53.143
[UNKNOWN]: He's fighting against the sassanid Persians and they're king-shepor the first.

02:21:53.163 --> 02:21:53.903
[UNKNOWN]: He's defeated.

02:21:54.524 --> 02:21:57.926
[UNKNOWN]: And support uses him as a footstool to get on this horse the rest of his life.

02:22:00.798 --> 02:22:01.759
[UNKNOWN]: And it's fascinating.

02:22:02.300 --> 02:22:05.043
[UNKNOWN]: Now here is not too far after this is a realian.

02:22:06.047 --> 02:22:09.288
[UNKNOWN]: And he has the nickname Restutor Orbus, or a sore of the world.

02:22:10.228 --> 02:22:22.930
[UNKNOWN]: And because Rome had broken into three pieces after Valeria and died, and over a 15-year period he reunites them, he tries to fix the currency at that point in time, which has been slowly collapsed, and you can see how bronze that coin is.

02:22:23.610 --> 02:22:26.791
[UNKNOWN]: It would have had like a silver coating on top of it, which is, are not there anymore.

02:22:27.791 --> 02:22:28.031
[UNKNOWN]: Whoa.

02:22:28.751 --> 02:22:31.332
[UNKNOWN]: And then here's progress, which is right after a really

02:22:37.296 --> 02:22:39.217
[UNKNOWN]: So this is the 5% silver material.

02:22:39.257 --> 02:22:43.038
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's that's right in the heart of the lowest silver value of it.

02:22:43.859 --> 02:22:44.879
[UNKNOWN]: That's how bad they would have looked.

02:22:45.619 --> 02:22:49.921
[UNKNOWN]: And I imagine value of these coins reflects.

02:22:50.801 --> 02:22:51.462
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, let's go bronze.

02:22:51.482 --> 02:22:53.462
[UNKNOWN]: You can get like 25, 50 bucks.

02:22:53.803 --> 02:22:54.563
[UNKNOWN]: They don't have a ton of.

02:22:56.445 --> 02:22:57.886
[UNKNOWN]: It's kind of a monetary value.

02:22:58.827 --> 02:22:59.588
[UNKNOWN]: That's super cool.

02:23:00.468 --> 02:23:01.389
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you for this, man.

02:23:01.409 --> 02:23:02.130
[UNKNOWN]: This is amazing.

02:23:02.150 --> 02:23:03.511
[UNKNOWN]: That's amazing.

02:23:03.591 --> 02:23:05.052
[UNKNOWN]: It's a pure silver coin.

02:23:05.072 --> 02:23:05.733
[UNKNOWN]: It's quite so heavy.

02:23:05.993 --> 02:23:15.520
[UNKNOWN]: That's a late Macedonian coin, kind of late Hellenistic or early Hellenistic coin, late Macedonian coin.

02:23:15.601 --> 02:23:23.847
[UNKNOWN]: So it's kind of the end of the Macedonian kingdom and where we kind of get into what's called the Hellenistic age or the age of the successors of Alexander.

02:23:26.930 --> 02:23:32.474
[UNKNOWN]: While we're in the giving mood, I have a coin for you too.

02:23:32.554 --> 02:23:34.015
[UNKNOWN]: It has zero silver.

02:23:35.235 --> 02:23:38.238
[UNKNOWN]: I've been talking about Marcus really, it's awesome.

02:23:38.258 --> 02:23:39.018
[UNKNOWN]: This is cool.

02:23:39.839 --> 02:23:42.080
[UNKNOWN]: It's got the Roman shield markings on it too, that's cool.

02:23:42.401 --> 02:23:46.604
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, just a little parting gift for the show, but.

02:23:46.944 --> 02:23:47.464
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, thank you.

02:23:47.624 --> 02:23:48.325
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, appreciate it.

02:23:48.345 --> 02:23:49.766
[UNKNOWN]: Man, that coin is amazing.

02:23:50.506 --> 02:23:51.187
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you very much.

02:23:55.869 --> 02:23:56.750
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's super cool.

02:23:56.770 --> 02:23:57.130
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.

02:23:58.130 --> 02:24:01.832
[UNKNOWN]: All right, so Monta, Monta, I wanted to mention that before we got off of it.

02:24:01.872 --> 02:24:02.873
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:24:02.953 --> 02:24:05.374
[UNKNOWN]: We talked about Monta Terry policy, poorest borders.

02:24:05.935 --> 02:24:10.417
[UNKNOWN]: What are some other things, maybe even culturally, that you see as a shift in any parallels?

02:24:10.637 --> 02:24:18.902
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think a big piece of it as well is kind of this, I guess cultural malaise is a good word for it, of where

02:24:22.052 --> 02:24:30.499
[UNKNOWN]: I guess the American Revolution, as a kind of a great example of this, is 1776, you have the declaration of independence.

02:24:30.519 --> 02:24:32.341
[UNKNOWN]: It doesn't mean we're free, right?

02:24:32.401 --> 02:24:35.423
[UNKNOWN]: And it probably took 30 years to even get to that point.

02:24:36.204 --> 02:24:40.308
[UNKNOWN]: And then it takes another few years before we even have a president or a country, whatever it might be.

02:24:40.888 --> 02:24:44.231
[UNKNOWN]: And I think when you look at it, it's realizing these things are over generations.

02:24:44.872 --> 02:24:46.873
[UNKNOWN]: Like collapse is not a sudden moment.

02:24:47.614 --> 02:24:48.555
[UNKNOWN]: It's looking at

02:24:50.159 --> 02:24:57.088
[UNKNOWN]: Your children's life is going to be a little bit worse than yours, and a little bit worse than yours, and a little bit worse than yours.

02:24:57.629 --> 02:25:00.012
[UNKNOWN]: So you kind of get this situation where over decades,

02:25:01.303 --> 02:25:11.106
[UNKNOWN]: If there was a man living in 350, and then somehow was able to be alive in 450, he would look at the world around him and be shocked by how dramatically different it is.

02:25:11.666 --> 02:25:13.967
[UNKNOWN]: But collapse is actually a very gradual thing.

02:25:14.007 --> 02:25:16.268
[UNKNOWN]: It's kind of like the frog in the pot of boiling water.

02:25:17.288 --> 02:25:19.829
[UNKNOWN]: And I think that's the real hard part about it.

02:25:19.849 --> 02:25:20.850
[UNKNOWN]: It's looking at it like that.

02:25:21.150 --> 02:25:22.550
[UNKNOWN]: It's such a gradual thing.

02:25:23.230 --> 02:25:27.792
[UNKNOWN]: So I think when you look at the kind of the cultural malaise, it's people start losing hope.

02:25:28.772 --> 02:25:34.458
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why I talk about Constantine and the Eastern Empire money being a huge part of it.

02:25:35.219 --> 02:25:40.744
[UNKNOWN]: But also, he brings Christianity as a legal religion to Rome.

02:25:40.764 --> 02:25:44.008
[UNKNOWN]: The Edict of Milan in 313 takes Christianity and makes it legal.

02:25:44.068 --> 02:25:47.711
[UNKNOWN]: Before that, obviously, in less times or bad, they were going to leave Christians alone.

02:25:48.432 --> 02:25:49.433
[UNKNOWN]: But before that, it was illegal.

02:25:50.033 --> 02:25:51.814
[UNKNOWN]: So men needed something.

02:25:52.074 --> 02:25:53.215
[UNKNOWN]: They needed something to unite under.

02:25:53.235 --> 02:25:58.678
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why Christianity was such an important part for the East and its survival.

02:25:58.718 --> 02:26:00.259
[UNKNOWN]: There's a kind of a spiritual life there.

02:26:00.299 --> 02:26:05.342
[UNKNOWN]: But you see, as collapse is happening, there's a spiritual death that occurs.

02:26:05.402 --> 02:26:06.343
[UNKNOWN]: Times are getting worse.

02:26:06.383 --> 02:26:07.564
[UNKNOWN]: There's no hope for the future.

02:26:08.064 --> 02:26:08.864
[UNKNOWN]: People need hope.

02:26:09.605 --> 02:26:17.270
[UNKNOWN]: And I think one of the things that's exciting to me right now, Mike, as I think we live in an age where spiritual enlightenment is happening.

02:26:18.070 --> 02:26:21.431
[UNKNOWN]: people are going to church and we're seeing it more than ever.

02:26:21.471 --> 02:26:25.873
[UNKNOWN]: We're even seeing impod cast like people are openly talking about religion very often.

02:26:25.893 --> 02:26:26.954
[UNKNOWN]: I think that's just so important.

02:26:26.974 --> 02:26:33.777
[UNKNOWN]: So to me, I see that and that gives me hope for kind of our modern world as we're seeing Christianity coming back.

02:26:34.317 --> 02:26:35.317
[UNKNOWN]: We're seeing kind of those

02:26:37.799 --> 02:26:42.565
[UNKNOWN]: And we're not being pushed into this society that, you know, you have one life and it's over and that's the end of it.

02:26:43.106 --> 02:26:50.415
[UNKNOWN]: So I think when you look at the cultural malaise, I think that's kind of a bigger point behind everything and I think that's one of the hardest things to come back.

02:26:51.133 --> 02:26:51.953
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I agree.

02:26:51.973 --> 02:26:59.255
[UNKNOWN]: It is both fascinating and super encouraging to see that spirituality shift.

02:26:59.615 --> 02:27:12.778
[UNKNOWN]: You know, if you had told me even five years ago that there would be this enormous resurgence, especially in younger millennials and Gen Z, like seeing my believe Gen Z is going to church like more than millennials now.

02:27:12.958 --> 02:27:25.006
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you know, the kind of 16 to 24 age group, like how many kids are kind of rediscovering it and coming back to that.

02:27:25.066 --> 02:27:29.609
[UNKNOWN]: Like, especially 10 years ago, if you had said that would happen, I would have said there's no way.

02:27:30.303 --> 02:27:44.516
[UNKNOWN]: Okay, it just seemed like we were on this runaway train collision course into just the spiritual death and almost he then like, you know, society that just values nothing.

02:27:44.736 --> 02:27:47.358
[UNKNOWN]: Well, that's how people in the third century would have felt, right?

02:27:47.378 --> 02:27:49.941
[UNKNOWN]: Like their world is collapsing, their money has no value.

02:27:50.361 --> 02:27:53.084
[UNKNOWN]: So I think that aspect of it is something that gets skipped.

02:27:53.624 --> 02:27:55.625
[UNKNOWN]: And I think that aspects actually vital, right?

02:27:55.645 --> 02:27:59.527
[UNKNOWN]: Because you could fix the money, you could fix the borders, maybe you could fix the political power.

02:28:00.007 --> 02:28:07.970
[UNKNOWN]: But if people don't feel better about the system they're living in and they don't feel spiritually alive, it's likely not gonna work.

02:28:08.631 --> 02:28:12.812
[UNKNOWN]: I know there's not a right or wrong answer to this, it's just your opinion.

02:28:16.025 --> 02:28:42.746
[UNKNOWN]: If I was to say, how to, you know, a faith that Rome persecuted and up running it, beyond the vision in the sky that Constantine had prior to the battle that they ended up winning, and kind of what you just mentioned about, you know, a loss of hope and this kind of feeling of impending doom, is there more to it than that, or do you think it's those two things

02:28:43.987 --> 02:28:46.229
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think it was a spiritual aspect to it as well, right?

02:28:46.249 --> 02:28:54.596
[UNKNOWN]: Like I think we're obviously talking historically here, but I think there's also a spiritual aspect to it as well where God wants to see as people do well, right?

02:28:54.616 --> 02:28:56.217
[UNKNOWN]: So I think opportunities are put out there.

02:28:56.757 --> 02:29:07.186
[UNKNOWN]: So I, and there's also the other side of it and it's more of a historical viewpoint, but the military, since it's pulling from so many parts of the Roman Empire, had become highly Christianized.

02:29:07.766 --> 02:29:14.973
[UNKNOWN]: So, and you're seeing a lot of these later emperors come from the military, so it's kind of the pool, it's also being pulled from.

02:29:16.775 --> 02:29:23.902
[UNKNOWN]: It's encouraging to see for sure, and the parallels are on Canis, no doubt about it.

02:29:23.922 --> 02:29:30.529
[UNKNOWN]: So, monetary policy, cultural malaise, poorest borders, anything else that you see as a parallel.

02:29:34.375 --> 02:29:36.217
[UNKNOWN]: And to me, those are really the key ones.

02:29:36.357 --> 02:29:55.112
[UNKNOWN]: I think also a respect for life is really important as well, because as I think people care less about life, it also shows more of that cultural malaise and kind of how they're feeling about the condition they're in, because people don't want to bring children into a world they don't feel good about, and Rome was always trying to handle collapsing birth rates.

02:29:55.813 --> 02:29:56.553
[UNKNOWN]: So I think that,

02:29:57.634 --> 02:30:05.119
[UNKNOWN]: When you see kind of more vibrance and more life, because you look at the West right now, our birth rates doesn't matter what country you're looking at are plummeting.

02:30:05.740 --> 02:30:13.445
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why I think you see a lot of countries bringing in people from other countries, because they're trying to just replace all the people that they're not creating.

02:30:13.965 --> 02:30:20.107
[UNKNOWN]: So I think that's also a key piece as well because then that replacement starts to happen where we need to get people from somewhere.

02:30:20.648 --> 02:30:24.389
[UNKNOWN]: Otherwise kind of the system is going to collapse because the system needs people to exist.

02:30:24.949 --> 02:30:27.590
[UNKNOWN]: So that's also a really key component to it.

02:30:27.750 --> 02:30:29.831
[UNKNOWN]: So birth rates are really important.

02:30:30.451 --> 02:30:34.473
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't know, maybe I live in a bubble, but a lot of my friends are having a lot of kids.

02:30:34.513 --> 02:30:35.253
[UNKNOWN]: We have four.

02:30:35.413 --> 02:30:36.633
[UNKNOWN]: My neighbors on the street have four.

02:30:38.114 --> 02:30:44.098
[UNKNOWN]: I have other friends that have five, so maybe it's the bubble I live in, but to me, it seems like people are also having more children now, which is a good thing.

02:30:44.258 --> 02:30:44.779
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, for sure.

02:30:45.299 --> 02:30:48.261
[UNKNOWN]: Our producer in the room has a pretty healthy stable himself.

02:30:48.521 --> 02:30:49.241
[UNKNOWN]: How do you got 12?

02:30:50.082 --> 02:30:50.863
[UNKNOWN]: No, but five.

02:30:51.843 --> 02:30:52.444
[UNKNOWN]: I got five.

02:30:52.564 --> 02:30:53.664
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, wait a go, man.

02:30:53.905 --> 02:30:56.206
[UNKNOWN]: And just barely 30, right?

02:30:57.507 --> 02:30:58.107
[UNKNOWN]: Just turned 30.

02:30:58.147 --> 02:30:58.868
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, man, you got me.

02:30:58.888 --> 02:31:00.429
[UNKNOWN]: I'll be 40 in a couple months.

02:31:00.749 --> 02:31:04.392
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so yeah, I mean, it's, again, it's amazing to see for sure.

02:31:05.962 --> 02:31:08.083
[UNKNOWN]: But those are things that are encouraging to me, actually.

02:31:08.203 --> 02:31:13.687
[UNKNOWN]: And I think when you look at kind of a lot of the things that are going wrong, there are also things that are going right.

02:31:13.807 --> 02:31:17.249
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.

02:31:17.269 --> 02:31:18.770
[UNKNOWN]: It doesn't mean we have to go that way.

02:31:19.050 --> 02:31:19.571
[UNKNOWN]: There is hope.

02:31:19.731 --> 02:31:19.931
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:31:20.932 --> 02:31:26.335
[UNKNOWN]: I am curious about political and leadership corruption.

02:31:26.435 --> 02:31:29.257
[UNKNOWN]: It's always been a thing throughout all of human history.

02:31:29.317 --> 02:31:32.139
[UNKNOWN]: But you correct me if I'm wrong.

02:31:32.179 --> 02:31:33.400
[UNKNOWN]: It seems as though,

02:31:34.220 --> 02:31:45.382
[UNKNOWN]: political corruption at the highest levels in the Roman Empire increased as time went on while it's, you know, in its downfall, like the political corruption got worse and worse.

02:31:46.182 --> 02:32:00.205
[UNKNOWN]: From my perspective, it seems like that's the same case in this country is that there's always been corruption, but it's either more blatant, they're less worried about trying to hide it or it's just unequivocally considerably worse now.

02:32:00.225 --> 02:32:02.025
[UNKNOWN]: Do you see that as being a component?

02:32:02.085 --> 02:32:04.266
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think the thing that's hard to say is it's not a straight line.

02:32:04.606 --> 02:32:08.989
[UNKNOWN]: It's not like a graph that keeps going up and we're at 90% corruption on now, 95.

02:32:09.489 --> 02:32:12.230
[UNKNOWN]: I think you have times when it's better and times when it's worse.

02:32:12.270 --> 02:32:17.493
[UNKNOWN]: During the time of the five good emperors, they generally were men that wanted to see Rome do well.

02:32:17.513 --> 02:32:23.857
[UNKNOWN]: You likely at the highest level had less corruption, but then, you know, I mentioned the public on here, the tax farmers are there.

02:32:24.457 --> 02:32:26.258
[UNKNOWN]: That's not a great profession to be in.

02:32:26.598 --> 02:32:32.360
[UNKNOWN]: Like how the public honey worked is they would say, okay, so Macedonia is a new territory.

02:32:32.980 --> 02:32:37.321
[UNKNOWN]: I will promise you we can get 100,000 cisterci out of Macedonia.

02:32:38.002 --> 02:32:43.984
[UNKNOWN]: And the Roman Senate would say great, give us 100,000 cisterci, good, now go collect it and anything over what you collect to get to keep.

02:32:44.744 --> 02:32:48.530
[UNKNOWN]: That's not a great job because there's no actual tax.

02:32:48.970 --> 02:32:51.274
[UNKNOWN]: It's just I have to get 100,000 or anything more than that to keep.

02:32:51.754 --> 02:32:58.905
[UNKNOWN]: So I think in certain professions, you're going to see a lot more corruption in others, and gambling in the background is always a big part of...

02:32:59.746 --> 02:33:01.487
[UNKNOWN]: of Rome and gets worse and worse and worse.

02:33:02.228 --> 02:33:14.618
[UNKNOWN]: And, you know, you're going to see it early in the circus Maximus, you're going to see it get worse when the flame and amphitheater that we call the Coliseum Opens, and you'd have people bedding their entire savings, hoping it was going to change your life.

02:33:14.638 --> 02:33:18.261
[UNKNOWN]: And that's, well, I'm kind of terrified of all these gambling apps that are out there right now.

02:33:18.281 --> 02:33:20.603
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know how you feel about that, but no.

02:33:20.703 --> 02:33:25.627
[UNKNOWN]: I'm kind of, there's way too many of them and it kind of concerns me about what it says about where we are socially.

02:33:26.147 --> 02:33:32.233
[UNKNOWN]: So I think you see kind of corruption in various places because you didn't see, you know, races could get fixed.

02:33:32.253 --> 02:33:38.239
[UNKNOWN]: Or even, we mentioned the grain dole and kind of have, there was a responsibility to feed every person.

02:33:38.819 --> 02:33:42.343
[UNKNOWN]: Well, one of the most important men in Rome became the man in charge of the grain supply.

02:33:43.023 --> 02:33:47.449
[UNKNOWN]: And you might see people that would politically maneuver themselves in there and make sure that their clients got more.

02:33:48.050 --> 02:33:55.459
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why even this client system is kind of an interesting part of corruption because you're going to always make sure your people do better.

02:33:56.100 --> 02:33:58.583
[UNKNOWN]: And it just naturally breeds more corruption.

02:33:59.190 --> 02:34:14.942
[UNKNOWN]: agreed and i'm a hundred percent on the same page with the betting apps and just gambling in general there's been a number of that have tried to sponsor the show and i won't do it you know because i just i appreciate that i don't agree with them and i think you know polymarkid is is that on steroids right is that

02:34:15.840 --> 02:34:21.044
[UNKNOWN]: You know, the things that you can bet on in there are actually shifting policy even.

02:34:21.324 --> 02:34:30.552
[UNKNOWN]: Well, there was George Santos recently that a couple of years ago he'd bet on himself not going to, whether to say to the union or something like that, but he knew it wasn't going to go, he was able to bet on himself.

02:34:30.872 --> 02:34:31.052
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:34:32.353 --> 02:34:48.083
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, with Polly Market, I mean, it's, again, it's even shifting, I think, some decision-making in Washington, foreign policy, what is where there's people betting on things that they have either insider info on, or they're a part of it, and they know it's going to happen, or not going to happen.

02:34:48.103 --> 02:34:53.647
[UNKNOWN]: Was it the guy that picked up Maduro, that had, had bet on when Maduro is going to get picked up?

02:34:54.247 --> 02:35:06.742
[UNKNOWN]: Well, something like that was some military service member that bet on some part of that operation, which, yeah, just, you know, to me that is indicative and reflective of kind of where we're at.

02:35:06.942 --> 02:35:10.787
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and I guess with Rome, it's hard to say, like I said, it's hard to say it's a straight line.

02:35:11.227 --> 02:35:13.368
[UNKNOWN]: There's times where it gets better and there's times where it gets worse.

02:35:13.848 --> 02:35:17.749
[UNKNOWN]: You have times when it's the worse and Rome pushes back on it and things improve for a little bit.

02:35:17.769 --> 02:35:21.169
[UNKNOWN]: So I think of Eligaboulos as a really good example of this.

02:35:21.930 --> 02:35:24.050
[UNKNOWN]: He's a teenager that manages to become emperor.

02:35:25.010 --> 02:35:34.812
[UNKNOWN]: His path there is not exactly straight because he may or may not have been the illegitimate son of the emperor Caracola, but his mother claims he is.

02:35:35.233 --> 02:35:36.513
[UNKNOWN]: So he manages to become emperor.

02:35:37.273 --> 02:35:42.375
[UNKNOWN]: And he's the priest of a cult called Eligabble, where they dance around a conical black rock.

02:35:43.535 --> 02:35:48.276
[UNKNOWN]: And he sends a picture of himself dancing around this black rock to Rome before he arrives there.

02:35:48.977 --> 02:35:55.419
[UNKNOWN]: Once he arrives, he has a wedding for this rock to one of the Roman sacred statues and demands everybody come to the wedding.

02:35:55.959 --> 02:35:59.160
[UNKNOWN]: The rock is pulled in a chariot that people are assuming it's driving.

02:36:00.800 --> 02:36:06.221
[UNKNOWN]: He has himself pulled around the city and a chariot pulled by prostitutes.

02:36:06.762 --> 02:36:08.082
[UNKNOWN]: He marries a vestal virgin.

02:36:08.702 --> 02:36:12.883
[UNKNOWN]: He advances men in their political position based on the length of their member.

02:36:13.583 --> 02:36:15.744
[UNKNOWN]: And he puts his hairdresser in charge of the grain supply.

02:36:16.144 --> 02:36:18.264
[UNKNOWN]: So obviously people are really going to rebel against that.

02:36:18.284 --> 02:36:22.225
[UNKNOWN]: And he even forces orgies onto the Senate, which they don't want.

02:36:22.605 --> 02:36:24.786
[UNKNOWN]: So I think like it's ebs and flows, right?

02:36:24.806 --> 02:36:25.586
[UNKNOWN]: Because then things,

02:36:26.783 --> 02:36:30.766
[UNKNOWN]: you know push back on that and he's one of the few emperors to be dragged through the streets of the city of Rome.

02:36:30.986 --> 02:36:37.250
[UNKNOWN]: So it's never a straight line but I'd corruption is a huge problem and does continue to get worse in Rome.

02:36:37.290 --> 02:36:46.837
[UNKNOWN]: Would you say that corruption may be similar like looking at a stock market graph where it's not linear but it even though it gets better and worse the overtime it does.

02:36:46.857 --> 02:36:52.861
[UNKNOWN]: I would say so yeah it's you know you're going to see if you watch the trend the trend is it is definitely in an affluence if you kind of pull

02:36:53.982 --> 02:37:02.508
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, if you look at 100 years of the stock market, it's massively up, it's just, yeah, there's been crashes in times where it's been way higher than others.

02:37:04.189 --> 02:37:11.374
[UNKNOWN]: If the United States is in third century Rome equivalent, what does your average man need to do tomorrow morning when they wake up?

02:37:11.814 --> 02:37:27.669
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I would say it gets back to the role of the potter familiar and it's the idea of what can you do to be self-reliant, you know, taking care of your family, handling any debts you've got because that also takes away your ability to protect yourself and protect your family.

02:37:28.650 --> 02:37:30.712
[UNKNOWN]: I would also say getting involved in your local community.

02:37:31.492 --> 02:37:36.155
[UNKNOWN]: to the point of when a new neighbor moves in, have somebody making brownies, right?

02:37:36.175 --> 02:37:36.896
[UNKNOWN]: Like, you know what I mean?

02:37:37.036 --> 02:37:38.437
[UNKNOWN]: We don't do the top brownies.

02:37:38.617 --> 02:37:39.257
[UNKNOWN]: Not pop brownies.

02:37:39.618 --> 02:37:41.239
[UNKNOWN]: But like, we don't do those things anymore.

02:37:41.279 --> 02:37:44.961
[UNKNOWN]: Like it's about doing things on a local level and we can all do that.

02:37:45.021 --> 02:37:49.685
[UNKNOWN]: We are not powerless, get involved in your school board, run for mayor of your town.

02:37:51.151 --> 02:37:58.595
[UNKNOWN]: coach your kids baseball team like those are all things we can do, you know, don't pull away and say kind of all is lost because it's not.

02:37:59.095 --> 02:38:06.179
[UNKNOWN]: And if millions of people on a local level take that level of responsibility, we can raise the responsibility level of the country.

02:38:06.359 --> 02:38:06.539
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:38:06.679 --> 02:38:08.640
[UNKNOWN]: I would say to any guy out there, that's what you can do.

02:38:09.261 --> 02:38:09.401
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:38:09.501 --> 02:38:10.181
[UNKNOWN]: Amen.

02:38:10.401 --> 02:38:13.263
[UNKNOWN]: What's the one Roman habit every man should steal?

02:38:18.225 --> 02:38:22.566
[UNKNOWN]: So Rome put a lot of influence on ancestors.

02:38:22.606 --> 02:38:25.287
[UNKNOWN]: And maybe this won't work for everybody because maybe your ancestors weren't so great.

02:38:26.167 --> 02:38:27.488
[UNKNOWN]: But hey, maybe did better with your life.

02:38:28.668 --> 02:38:30.589
[UNKNOWN]: But they put a lot of influence on ancestors.

02:38:31.369 --> 02:38:34.950
[UNKNOWN]: And looking at it was a little creeping the way it was done.

02:38:34.990 --> 02:38:36.310
[UNKNOWN]: So I wouldn't suggest doing it this way.

02:38:36.330 --> 02:38:41.952
[UNKNOWN]: They had the wax death masks of all their ancestors in their house to remind them what they would have done with their life.

02:38:42.512 --> 02:38:43.732
[UNKNOWN]: But they took value in a name.

02:38:44.412 --> 02:38:45.633
[UNKNOWN]: And I think in looking at that,

02:38:46.662 --> 02:38:49.548
[UNKNOWN]: thinking of the actions I'm going to take.

02:38:50.009 --> 02:38:51.332
[UNKNOWN]: Are they going to improve?

02:38:52.492 --> 02:38:58.573
[UNKNOWN]: my family and the kind of the story of my family, and also my community, or are they going to harm it?

02:38:59.013 --> 02:39:04.695
[UNKNOWN]: And I think if you're looking at that way of doing things, it would change the way you function, right?

02:39:04.715 --> 02:39:06.315
[UNKNOWN]: Am I bringing honoured to my family?

02:39:06.355 --> 02:39:08.996
[UNKNOWN]: You know, maybe kind of more of a Japanese concept.

02:39:09.356 --> 02:39:11.336
[UNKNOWN]: Am I creating more honoured for my family?

02:39:11.856 --> 02:39:13.817
[UNKNOWN]: Am I creating more reverence for my family?

02:39:13.837 --> 02:39:15.497
[UNKNOWN]: Because I am doing good things.

02:39:16.057 --> 02:39:18.358
[UNKNOWN]: I think if we look at that and look at kind of the,

02:39:20.880 --> 02:39:22.281
[UNKNOWN]: Reputation we're creating.

02:39:22.781 --> 02:39:27.826
[UNKNOWN]: I think that's really important because it's going to affect your actions and you're hopefully going to be a little bit more ethical in your thoughts.

02:39:29.208 --> 02:39:30.409
[UNKNOWN]: I love it and couldn't agree more.

02:39:31.090 --> 02:39:32.411
[UNKNOWN]: The Roman Empire is gone.

02:39:32.671 --> 02:39:34.333
[UNKNOWN]: What of it actually lasted?

02:39:35.460 --> 02:39:40.746
[UNKNOWN]: A lot of words, a lot of words, like the word inauguration.

02:39:41.587 --> 02:39:43.509
[UNKNOWN]: We mentioned Augury the Bird Science earlier.

02:39:43.529 --> 02:39:45.691
[UNKNOWN]: They look at the birds and kind of see as a good day to do things.

02:39:45.751 --> 02:39:48.674
[UNKNOWN]: Or maybe they look at the liver of an animal and say, is this a good day to do things?

02:39:49.235 --> 02:39:52.938
[UNKNOWN]: So inauguration was the day they would look at the augurs and say, is this a good day to do things?

02:39:53.199 --> 02:39:55.801
[UNKNOWN]: So that's now the day we take political office because the signs look good.

02:39:57.462 --> 02:40:08.665
[UNKNOWN]: The word worth your salt, the phrase, or I'm sorry, the word salary comes from the idea of salary and the amount of salt that a soldier was paid when money was losing a lot of its value.

02:40:09.045 --> 02:40:17.268
[UNKNOWN]: So the idea of being worth your salt, or even a lot of Catholic church structure comes out of what's left of the Roman Empire.

02:40:17.288 --> 02:40:22.029
[UNKNOWN]: And I think there's a viewpoint that looks at this a little insidiously and I think it's

02:40:26.022 --> 02:40:27.103
[UNKNOWN]: Rome kind of falls apart.

02:40:27.504 --> 02:40:31.248
[UNKNOWN]: The last one left to open the doors, the pope, and say, hey, I guess I'm the only one left to live here.

02:40:31.769 --> 02:40:35.974
[UNKNOWN]: And so the church kind of gets a lot of it's early power, just because Rome doesn't exist anymore.

02:40:37.396 --> 02:40:45.286
[UNKNOWN]: But even a lot of the word Pontifix, or the word Pontif, comes from the word Pontifix Maximus, the chief priest of Rome.

02:40:46.126 --> 02:40:57.411
[UNKNOWN]: or the word diocese, diocese comes from the word's diacletion used when he divided the empire into smaller pieces in the two 80s and two 90s.

02:40:57.851 --> 02:41:00.812
[UNKNOWN]: So it comes from the Greek version of his name diacletes.

02:41:01.432 --> 02:41:02.993
[UNKNOWN]: So that's where the diocese comes from.

02:41:03.033 --> 02:41:09.435
[UNKNOWN]: So a lot of the things we do words wise and things we still speak to this day come from Rome.

02:41:10.496 --> 02:41:12.096
[UNKNOWN]: Some of our government traditions come from them.

02:41:12.116 --> 02:41:13.957
[UNKNOWN]: I think very often people think that

02:41:15.328 --> 02:41:18.691
[UNKNOWN]: Our government is entirely based on a lot of Roman Republic things.

02:41:19.011 --> 02:41:25.256
[UNKNOWN]: It's more that our founders looked at the best pieces of Republic, democracy, and monarchy, and say, what pieces do we need?

02:41:26.397 --> 02:41:28.699
[UNKNOWN]: But I think there is so much Roman influence in our life today.

02:41:29.299 --> 02:41:29.960
[UNKNOWN]: For sure, there is.

02:41:30.060 --> 02:41:33.743
[UNKNOWN]: I mentioned, I guess I didn't mention the name of the book.

02:41:33.763 --> 02:41:36.565
[UNKNOWN]: It's called the First Principles, or you familiar with that book.

02:41:36.885 --> 02:41:39.328
[UNKNOWN]: I've heard the name before, but I'm not personally familiar.

02:41:39.468 --> 02:41:40.889
[UNKNOWN]: I think you would enjoy it.

02:41:41.010 --> 02:41:46.355
[UNKNOWN]: It gets in pretty heavy to Greek and Roman influence of the founding fathers.

02:41:46.395 --> 02:41:55.065
[UNKNOWN]: And kind of talks about each one of them and what parts of it influence them and how it kind of translated into some of their actions were.

02:41:56.082 --> 02:42:17.926
[UNKNOWN]: uh... you know foundations that that they laid for uh... for the the beginnings of this country so it's a fascinating read for sure and uh... learned a lot about that i i just was not aware of but as i was reading as like mass makes a ton of sense but um... fascinating just path and journey and topic of discussion is there anything that i haven't asked you that i should have

02:42:18.984 --> 02:42:24.308
[UNKNOWN]: We covered a lot of stuff people don't typically ask me so this is a lot of I got talk about fish sauce and every talk about fish sauce.

02:42:24.488 --> 02:42:26.050
[UNKNOWN]: Who doesn't love a good fish sauce?

02:42:26.490 --> 02:42:27.891
[UNKNOWN]: He's some garam in our life, man.

02:42:28.031 --> 02:42:35.277
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, apparently not make that way make you throw up though You know, maybe they just had iron guts back then there used to eat and stuff that was pretty dicey

02:42:36.500 --> 02:42:41.882
[UNKNOWN]: Well man, I can't thank enough for coming and sharing your knowledge and story and just it's been a fascinating discussion.

02:42:41.902 --> 02:42:44.163
[UNKNOWN]: I appreciate you coming Mike, thank you for those for having me.

02:42:44.223 --> 02:42:50.165
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, to the listeners last year I hope you enjoyed it if you didn't you can choke yourself and until next time this is my dream