📄 Extracted Text (22,844 words)
[00:00:05] started my business back in 2014. That
[00:00:07] was like literally one of the first I
[00:00:08] have no business background. One of the
[00:00:10] first books I read was 4-hour work
[00:00:11] weeks. That was pretty cool.
[00:00:12] >> Really?
[00:00:13] >> Yeah. I did his uh his diet for a couple
[00:00:16] years with all the cold showers and
[00:00:17] stuff.
[00:00:17] >> Yeah.
[00:00:18] >> Yeah.
[00:00:19] >> Right on. Yeah, man. I found you like
[00:00:23] last week.
[00:00:24] >> Yeah.
[00:00:25] >> So, this is crazy.
[00:00:26] >> Yeah. I was in Puerto Rico
[00:00:27] >> quick. I was like, "Holy shit." But um
[00:00:30] well,
[00:00:30] >> I've been talking to Jeremy for a bit
[00:00:32] and he's like, "Hey, Sean's interested."
[00:00:33] I'm like, "Oh, sweet."
[00:00:34] >> That's what Yeah. I sent him uh he said
[00:00:37] he'd been chatting with you for some
[00:00:38] time and I um at the beginning at the
[00:00:41] end of last year, I was like, "We should
[00:00:42] start getting into some history shit."
[00:00:44] >> Yeah.
[00:00:44] >> And uh cuz I I don't know anything.
[00:00:46] >> I'm definitely not like the world's top
[00:00:48] expert, but I can talk to regular
[00:00:50] people, which is what matters.
[00:00:51] >> Yeah. Well, I think that's what works.
[00:00:53] >> Yeah.
[00:00:53] >> But um but yeah, I saw your I saw
[00:00:56] something. I can't even remember what it
[00:00:57] was, but I was like,
[00:00:58] >> you had your pin post about um like kind
[00:01:00] of the current scene.
[00:01:02] >> Yeah.
[00:01:02] >> And uh I wrote a thread around that
[00:01:04] about like the fall of Rome and how it
[00:01:05] makes sense.
[00:01:06] >> Yes, that is how we found each. That's
[00:01:08] how I found Yeah. You wrote which which
[00:01:11] post was it? Was it the one where I was
[00:01:12] going off about how the uh the
[00:01:16] government's fallen to fraud, waste, and
[00:01:18] abuse?
[00:01:19] >> It's that one, I believe. And then I
[00:01:20] like quote tweeted that and wrote a a
[00:01:22] thread with it.
[00:01:22] >> What' you say? I can't remember. just
[00:01:24] basically describing how Rome fell and
[00:01:27] kind of how those processes mirror like
[00:01:29] like what we're dealing with today.
[00:01:30] >> Yep. That's what got my attention.
[00:01:32] >> Crazy [ __ ] man.
[00:01:33] >> That is definitely
[00:01:34] >> It's a pattern. It is like it's it's
[00:01:37] something that applies to to literally
[00:01:38] any societal collapse. They screw with
[00:01:40] their money. They stop giving a [ __ ]
[00:01:42] about their borders and politicians
[00:01:44] become shortsighted and just kind of
[00:01:45] want to deal with what gives them power
[00:01:46] right now.
[00:01:48] >> Wow. Yeah, that sounds very familiar.
[00:01:52] But if you fix your money, you could do
[00:01:53] all the other stuff a lot longer.
[00:01:56] >> Do you think we can fix our money?
[00:01:57] >> No,
[00:01:58] >> I don't either. No, I don't.
[00:02:00] >> Ron Paul talks about like the person
[00:02:01] that does is not going to be very
[00:02:03] popular because we're so far over our
[00:02:04] skis. It's going to be painful.
[00:02:05] >> Man, I watched this way back in probably
[00:02:08] like
[00:02:10] I'll bet like 2008.
[00:02:13] I watched a documentary and I think I
[00:02:15] think it was Ron Paul on the on the
[00:02:17] Federal Reserve and when we came off the
[00:02:19] gold standard.
[00:02:20] >> Yeah. And I was like, "Holy shit."
[00:02:23] >> Well, that was a free license to do what
[00:02:24] they want.
[00:02:25] >> Legitimately is worth nothing.
[00:02:26] >> Yeah.
[00:02:27] >> And you kind of see it. You got I mean,
[00:02:30] I'm Look, I'm no economist. I don't
[00:02:32] know.
[00:02:32] >> I'm not either.
[00:02:33] >> I'm not. But gold is at $5,000 an ounce
[00:02:38] >> this year. It went up like a,000 bucks,
[00:02:39] man.
[00:02:40] >> $5,000. 2025. Yeah.
[00:02:42] >> Silver went to what? Over $100 an ounce
[00:02:45] from when 2020 is when I started cuz co
[00:02:48] stuff, right? I started buying
[00:02:52] that's when I started looking into
[00:02:53] precious metals.
[00:02:54] >> We have physical gold. Yeah.
[00:02:55] >> Everybody was freaked out about
[00:02:56] everything, right?
[00:02:58] >> And I I but I remember gold in 2020 was
[00:03:01] about $2,000 an ounce. So if it took
[00:03:04] thousands of years to get to $2,000 an
[00:03:09] ounce and then five years it goes to
[00:03:12] 5,000, you know, it it over doubles in
[00:03:15] five years. I mean, and then if you
[00:03:17] think about it, is gold really going up?
[00:03:20] It seems like gold
[00:03:21] >> price of everything is going down.
[00:03:23] Gold's not changing.
[00:03:24] >> That's what I'm That's what I think.
[00:03:25] >> That's how inflation works. It's just
[00:03:26] your dollar doesn't go as far
[00:03:29] cuz it's like the
[00:03:30] >> So, our money has
[00:03:32] how do you say it? Our
[00:03:35] our money is worth two and a half times
[00:03:38] less if you look at the gold. Yeah. If
[00:03:40] you look at the price of gold today, in
[00:03:43] five years, our our money is two and a
[00:03:45] half times less or I guess six years.
[00:03:47] Two and a half times less than what it
[00:03:49] was 6 years ago.
[00:03:50] >> Well, cuz people don't get it cuz they
[00:03:51] just see, oh, the prices are going up.
[00:03:53] It's not that the prices are going up is
[00:03:54] your dollar go as far.
[00:03:56] >> That's what I mean.
[00:03:56] >> And the Federal Reserve uses the word um
[00:03:58] they like like to use funny words hoping
[00:04:00] people don't understand them.
[00:04:02] >> They use the word quantitative easing.
[00:04:04] What that means is they made more money.
[00:04:05] there's a more of a quantity of money
[00:04:07] and they have different numbers for
[00:04:09] money supplies. Like there's the M1
[00:04:11] money which is like older money. M2
[00:04:13] money is kind of the the newer money and
[00:04:16] it's like 80% of it was printed since co
[00:04:19] so it's like
[00:04:20] >> 80%
[00:04:21] >> 80% of the M2 money supply was printed
[00:04:22] since co
[00:04:24] >> Wow. Have you have you seen um
[00:04:28] are you following this Epstein stuff at
[00:04:29] all?
[00:04:30] >> Yeah, pretty intensely actually. Have
[00:04:32] you watched the Epstein interview with
[00:04:35] Bannon?
[00:04:36] >> I have it bookmarked. I haven't watched
[00:04:38] it yet. I was watching the uh the Rogan
[00:04:40] Mike Benz thing this morning.
[00:04:41] >> How was that?
[00:04:42] >> It's eye opening because he goes through
[00:04:44] the networks of how they like move all
[00:04:45] the money around and how Epstein was
[00:04:47] probably not just one country but
[00:04:49] several countries. And it's it's
[00:04:50] interesting.
[00:04:51] >> Yeah, I know. I know. He was talking
[00:04:53] about how
[00:04:55] Epstein was talking about, and I don't
[00:04:57] understand this [ __ ] but he was talking
[00:04:58] about how B most people don't understand
[00:05:00] money and most world leaders are elected
[00:05:04] because of popularity, not because of of
[00:05:07] their ability to run the country and he
[00:05:10] he gives examples, you know, uh Reagan
[00:05:12] was an act. I mean,
[00:05:14] >> but that goes back to Rome, right?
[00:05:15] Because like if you look at it people
[00:05:17] like um what would happen is
[00:05:19] >> in the late empire
[00:05:21] >> the guys that kind of become emperor
[00:05:24] just military commanders.
[00:05:25] >> Mhm.
[00:05:25] >> And there were two things they would do
[00:05:27] when they became emperor. They would do
[00:05:29] something called a donative. Um donative
[00:05:31] comes from the Latin word to give and
[00:05:33] they would give a giant bonus to all the
[00:05:35] military when they became emperor and
[00:05:37] then they would double their pay. M.
[00:05:39] >> So they end up becoming more loyal to
[00:05:43] that emperor because he's the money guy.
[00:05:46] >> And that process continues again and
[00:05:48] again and again until the money's worth
[00:05:49] nothing.
[00:05:50] >> Man, you know, I mean that actually
[00:05:53] sounds better than what we do cuz we
[00:05:55] don't pay our warriors [ __ ] We just
[00:05:57] give it all over.
[00:05:58] >> Especially the VA.
[00:05:59] >> We just pay everybody else's warriors.
[00:06:00] Yeah.
[00:06:01] >> That we fought like the Taliban.
[00:06:03] >> Yeah.
[00:06:03] >> But um you know, we're paying those guys
[00:06:06] $87 million a week.
[00:06:09] Is that the number?
[00:06:10] >> That's the number.
[00:06:11] >> That's insane.
[00:06:12] >> That's the number. 40 to87 million a
[00:06:14] week.
[00:06:15] >> But um but yeah, that that's So yeah, I
[00:06:18] wanted to talk I've been just been
[00:06:19] looking for somebody that can relate the
[00:06:21] Roman Empire to kind of what we're
[00:06:23] seeing, the collapse of the Roman Empire
[00:06:25] to what we're seeing today. And
[00:06:27] everybody has like these little nuggets.
[00:06:29] >> Yeah.
[00:06:30] >> You know, but it's not enough for a
[00:06:32] full-blown conversation.
[00:06:33] >> Yeah. I'm like weird cuz it's like if
[00:06:35] you ask me about like literature, I
[00:06:37] don't know a ton about it. I know the
[00:06:38] history and the patterns. So, it's like
[00:06:40] I can connect all those things, but like
[00:06:42] I know a little bit about stoicism
[00:06:44] enough to talk about it, but like I'm
[00:06:45] not an expert in it. I'm kind of like I
[00:06:47] get Roman history and how it works
[00:06:49] together, you know?
[00:06:50] >> Yep. Yep. Right on. Well, I got a I got
[00:06:54] a hot question here for you. The Roman
[00:06:56] the Roman Empire existed during the time
[00:06:58] of Jesus and early Christianity. How did
[00:07:01] Rome's power and policies shape and
[00:07:04] shape the spread of Christianity? And
[00:07:06] did the Romans realize how significant
[00:07:09] that movement would become?
[00:07:11] >> So I don't think initially because you
[00:07:12] have to look during the time of Jesus,
[00:07:14] they couldn't tell the difference
[00:07:15] between
[00:07:17] Christianity and Judaism. There wasn't a
[00:07:19] big ability to tell a difference between
[00:07:20] that. They they thought it was kind of a
[00:07:22] sect of Judaism. And it's a small
[00:07:24] percentage of the actual empire. You're
[00:07:26] looking like 1% or less during the time
[00:07:29] of Christ. And um and there's really
[00:07:32] only one Roman historian that actually
[00:07:34] even writes about Christ. He's uh his
[00:07:36] name is Titus Fabius Josephus. He was a
[00:07:38] Jewish historian that when Palestine is
[00:07:42] conquered in that area is conquered, he
[00:07:44] comes and lives in Rome and he works for
[00:07:45] the emperor. And if you read letters of
[00:07:48] the emperors, I'm trying to remember
[00:07:50] which one it is. It might be Vespasian.
[00:07:52] and he's writing to one of the governors
[00:07:54] and he's trying to explain Christianity
[00:07:56] to him and he just doesn't understand it
[00:07:58] cuz he's like wait they they're they eat
[00:08:00] the the body of someone and like he just
[00:08:03] didn't understand it and he's like well
[00:08:04] what I think it was plenty the the
[00:08:06] younger that's writing to Vespasian and
[00:08:08] he's like well what do we do with these
[00:08:10] guys he's like just leave them alone
[00:08:11] because for the most part unless you're
[00:08:14] causing upheaval Rome was very
[00:08:15] permissive and that's because they
[00:08:17] brought in gods from all the other
[00:08:18] empires and territories and things that
[00:08:20] they conquered
[00:08:21] >> they brought ing gods from all the other
[00:08:23] empires.
[00:08:24] >> Correct. So you would have you could
[00:08:26] live in Rome, but you might worship
[00:08:27] Isis, which is an Egyptian god, or you
[00:08:29] might worship Apollo because they had
[00:08:31] their traditional pantheon of 12 gods,
[00:08:34] but they also borrowed gods from other
[00:08:37] societies they conquered or or basically
[00:08:39] annexed. So it became very popular to do
[00:08:42] that. Now,
[00:08:43] >> when you say borrowed, do you mean
[00:08:44] accepted? They accepted the gods.
[00:08:47] >> You could have indiv.
[00:08:47] >> Basically, it was freedom of religion.
[00:08:49] >> It was yes and no. Because the thing you
[00:08:51] have to look at is the Romans believed
[00:08:53] in this thing called the peace of the
[00:08:54] gods. And when things were going well,
[00:08:57] it meant they'd achieved the peace of
[00:08:58] the gods. So when things aren't going
[00:09:00] well, that's when you're going to have
[00:09:03] persecutions of Christians and other
[00:09:05] groups. So like you see this during the
[00:09:06] time of Nero. There's the great fire of
[00:09:08] Rome in 64 AD. And Nero gets blamed very
[00:09:13] heavily for it. So the thing he's going
[00:09:14] to do is persecute Christians because he
[00:09:16] has to blame it on someone. And you move
[00:09:18] further down the road and in around 250
[00:09:22] or 251 there's an emperor named Dishius
[00:09:25] and they're experiencing climate change.
[00:09:28] So they don't kind of know what to do
[00:09:29] about it.
[00:09:31] >> One of the things that allowed the Roman
[00:09:32] Empire to rise is something called the
[00:09:34] Roman climate optimum. It means from 200
[00:09:37] BC to about 200 AD they had perfect
[00:09:39] weather. So they could grow food in
[00:09:41] areas that now you couldn't. And as
[00:09:43] climate starts changing, as they start
[00:09:45] having difficulty with their borders,
[00:09:47] with money and things in the mid- 3rd
[00:09:49] century, Dishius makes a law that
[00:09:52] everyone has to sacrifice to the Roman
[00:09:55] gods because it'll restore the peace of
[00:09:56] the gods.
[00:09:58] >> And when Christians don't do that,
[00:09:59] there's a huge persecution of Christians
[00:10:01] that happens.
[00:10:02] >> That's what triggered it.
[00:10:03] >> Yeah.
[00:10:03] >> So, they were open to it.
[00:10:05] >> Unless things weren't going well, then
[00:10:07] they kind of needed somebody to blame.
[00:10:08] So, then
[00:10:09] >> Dlesian is going to do that again in the
[00:10:11] the 280. Well, around 300 he's going to
[00:10:14] be persecuting Christians because he's
[00:10:15] trying to restore the peace of the gods.
[00:10:17] But anytime things aren't going well, an
[00:10:19] emperor thought he needed to restore the
[00:10:20] peace of the gods, which meant people
[00:10:22] needed to be the on the same page with
[00:10:24] Roman religion.
[00:10:25] >> Wow.
[00:10:26] >> Because Romans couldn't see a difference
[00:10:28] between political life and religious
[00:10:30] life. To them, it was the same thing.
[00:10:33] >> Interesting. Do you think the Roman
[00:10:35] Empire unintentionally
[00:10:38] spread wildly spread Christianity by
[00:10:41] suppressing it?
[00:10:43] >> I don't think that's really the case.
[00:10:44] Um, there's a battle in
[00:10:48] 311 called Milvian Bridge. And what ends
[00:10:52] up happening in that time period is
[00:10:54] you're kind of getting out of the time
[00:10:56] period where people are declaring
[00:10:57] themselves emperors. They have an army
[00:10:58] behind them. They're fighting each
[00:10:59] other. But you have the end of this. You
[00:11:02] have Constantine who wants to be the
[00:11:04] emperor, emperor of the full empire in
[00:11:06] the east and then you have this guy
[00:11:08] named Maxentius in the west. But
[00:11:10] Constantine wants to rule the whole
[00:11:11] thing. So he has this vision and he sees
[00:11:16] a giant cross in the sky. Um well
[00:11:18] actually it's the the kai and the row
[00:11:20] which is the the Greek symbols for
[00:11:22] Christ. And he hears the words under
[00:11:25] this sign you will conquer. And he wins
[00:11:27] that battle. So then he has this idea,
[00:11:30] well the Christian God is now supporting
[00:11:31] me. So then in 313 AD, he's going to
[00:11:34] take Christianity and though Romans
[00:11:37] hadn't
[00:11:39] went after Christians unless times were
[00:11:40] bad, Christianity was technically
[00:11:42] illegal. In 313, the edict of Milan
[00:11:45] makes Christianity legal and he will
[00:11:48] start to
[00:11:50] move it from being more of a pagan
[00:11:52] empire to a Christian empire. And it's
[00:11:54] going to be fully a Christian empire in
[00:11:57] 380 under Theodocious when he names it
[00:11:59] the official religion of Rome and they
[00:12:01] get rid of their pagan gods.
[00:12:04] So Rome became
[00:12:06] >> a Christian empire in 380.
[00:12:07] >> A lot of people are saying and I I I
[00:12:10] tend to believe it that the more the
[00:12:11] government removes
[00:12:13] God from from our from our c from
[00:12:17] everything from our culture from our
[00:12:19] schools from discussions from from
[00:12:22] government from everything.
[00:12:23] >> Yeah. you know, he's he's he's
[00:12:27] seems like they're trying to get him to
[00:12:28] disappear. Did the Roman Empire do that,
[00:12:30] too?
[00:12:31] >> Um,
[00:12:32] >> now you have all this other [ __ ] all
[00:12:34] these perversions, perverted [ __ ] that's
[00:12:36] happening.
[00:12:37] >> So, that that was actually the second
[00:12:38] and third century for Romans, like
[00:12:40] things are not go when things aren't
[00:12:41] going well.
[00:12:43] >> Um, you have a lot of the perversion and
[00:12:45] things like that. There's a emperor in
[00:12:47] the early 220s. Um he's a teenager and
[00:12:50] his name's Elgabilus and he
[00:12:56] has he's the priest of a cult called
[00:12:58] Elgabel which is from Syria and they
[00:13:00] worship a conicle black rock. So he has
[00:13:02] a wedding for his black rock where it's
[00:13:04] carried through Rome in a chariot. He
[00:13:06] was personally pulled by a chariot of
[00:13:08] prostitutes. He married a vestal virgin
[00:13:11] and he put his hairdresser in charge of
[00:13:13] the grain supply. So he's a he was also
[00:13:16] having parties where um he was pushing
[00:13:19] the Senate to basically have orgies
[00:13:20] which they were not super happy about.
[00:13:22] So things are really bad in the third
[00:13:24] century. He's assassinated and his body
[00:13:26] is actually drugged through the streets.
[00:13:28] >> But if you look at things actually
[00:13:32] improve
[00:13:34] um spirituality wise and it starts to
[00:13:36] become more of a Christian nation. But
[00:13:37] the problem is the west sins had been so
[00:13:39] deep it was hard to fix. And if you look
[00:13:42] at Constantine, though he brings
[00:13:44] Christianity to to a higher standing,
[00:13:47] the thing that's really important about
[00:13:48] him, which doesn't get talked about a
[00:13:50] ton, is he actually fixes the currency.
[00:13:52] He takes and he'll repossess a lot of
[00:13:55] the pagan temples and he starts minting
[00:13:58] gold coins from them. And in the year
[00:14:00] 314 in Triair, Germany, he mints less
[00:14:03] than 100 gold coins. And he's going to
[00:14:05] actually follow that process until he
[00:14:07] dies in 336.
[00:14:09] And by the time he dies, Rome is now on
[00:14:11] a gold standard. He's done it gradually
[00:14:13] every year until he dies. That currency
[00:14:15] is going to go without inflation till
[00:14:17] about the year 1000. So that's actually
[00:14:20] the thing that helps the east to
[00:14:22] survive. But a lot of Rome's sins have
[00:14:24] been created when it was a pagan empire.
[00:14:28] So just spirituality couldn't really fix
[00:14:30] that. The kind of levers of power were
[00:14:32] broken.
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[00:16:03] This is going to be awesome. I'm pumped.
[00:16:05] All right, let me give you a proper
[00:16:07] introduction here. Jeremy Ryan Slate,
[00:16:10] CEO and co-founder of Command Your
[00:16:12] Brand, a PR agency, a a podcast PR
[00:16:16] agency, host of the Jeremy Ryan Slate
[00:16:18] Show, which features work from your
[00:16:20] channels, hidden forces in history in
[00:16:22] the Roman pattern, best-selling author,
[00:16:25] global speaker, and authority
[00:16:27] strategist, husband to Belle, who is
[00:16:29] your co-founder at Command Your Brand.
[00:16:32] Yeah. And then couple things here. I got
[00:16:35] a uh Patreon account. It's a
[00:16:38] subscription account, but they've been
[00:16:39] with me here since the beginning. And uh
[00:16:42] to be honest with you, they're the
[00:16:43] reason I get to sit down here with you
[00:16:45] today. Um so they get the opportunity to
[00:16:49] ask every single guest a question. This
[00:16:51] is Chad
[00:16:54] Pian. My favorite story is that of
[00:16:57] Scorpio Africanis.
[00:16:59] >> Scipio.
[00:17:00] >> Scipio. Do you think the US and China
[00:17:03] are parallel of Scipio and Hannibal? If
[00:17:06] so, who are we and how do we use that to
[00:17:10] our advantage? So that's a really
[00:17:13] difficult question because he's talking
[00:17:14] about the Punic Wars which are in the
[00:17:16] late republic and there's three of them
[00:17:18] over about 150 year period and
[00:17:23] I don't know if I would comp completely
[00:17:25] make the well I guess maybe you could
[00:17:28] because if you look at one of the things
[00:17:30] that the Punic Wars do is they start to
[00:17:33] heavily Rome had always been a very
[00:17:35] military society but it starts to become
[00:17:37] heavily militarized in that time period.
[00:17:40] And I think if you look at,
[00:17:42] it's hard to say who is who, but I think
[00:17:44] we go more towards being Romans because
[00:17:47] if you look at in a lot of ways,
[00:17:50] especially in the last 50 years, we've
[00:17:52] hypermilitarized in this country. It's a
[00:17:54] very big section of the economy, a very
[00:17:56] big section of what defines things.
[00:18:00] But I think in a lot of ways, history
[00:18:02] doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme,
[00:18:03] right? So I think it's hard to say
[00:18:05] exactly that we are Rome and and and
[00:18:08] China is Carthage but I think those
[00:18:10] patterns are similar because what ends
[00:18:12] up happening is global events will
[00:18:15] happen because of certain things that
[00:18:18] are currently a foot and what I mean by
[00:18:19] that is if there is a constant state of
[00:18:22] war well decisions are going to be made
[00:18:24] to handle that situation right and if
[00:18:26] you look at a lot of what's happening
[00:18:27] with with US and China relations right
[00:18:29] now a lot of policy is made because of
[00:18:32] what's happening between the US and
[00:18:33] China and even more in the last couple
[00:18:36] years. It's also been the US and Russia,
[00:18:37] right? So, a lot of policy is made often
[00:18:41] shortsighted because of the situation
[00:18:42] we're dealing with now. And that's a lot
[00:18:44] of how the Punic War was for Rome. Well,
[00:18:46] the Punic Wars is it changed from more
[00:18:50] of a citizen soldiery to becoming more
[00:18:53] of a standing private army. And people
[00:18:56] stop having real allegiance to Rome and
[00:18:59] more their commander. And that's
[00:19:00] actually going to be one of the big
[00:19:01] things that causes the empire to rise
[00:19:03] and also the empire to fall because that
[00:19:05] is a very dangerous situation to be in
[00:19:07] where people aren't as loyal to the
[00:19:11] group that they're part of but more
[00:19:12] loyal to a person. And so I think if you
[00:19:15] look at that that's a pattern that
[00:19:16] repeats but I think it's hard to say is
[00:19:19] the US Rome in this case and is China
[00:19:22] Carthage in this case.
[00:19:24] >> Makes sense. Makes sense. All right. One
[00:19:28] last thing.
[00:19:28] >> Yes sir. Everybody gets a gift.
[00:19:33] >> There you go. V Jones Elite Gummy Bears.
[00:19:36] Made in the USA. Legal in all 50 states.
[00:19:38] >> Thank you, sir.
[00:19:39] >> You're welcome. You're welcome. You
[00:19:41] ready to kick it off?
[00:19:42] >> Let's do it, man.
[00:19:42] >> All right. Here we go. So,
[00:19:44] >> we actually have something for you, too.
[00:19:45] Did you want me to
[00:19:46] >> Oh, perfect.
[00:19:47] >> Yeah. So, this is actually I have a a
[00:19:48] coin supplier I work with, uh, Kinser
[00:19:51] Coins, by my friend Dean Kinszer, and he
[00:19:53] sent us a few things here. This is a
[00:19:55] Claudius Gothicus coin. And the cool
[00:19:58] thing about this is if you see on the
[00:19:59] edge here, they use what's called a die
[00:20:01] to hammer them. And when they have the
[00:20:03] bleed over on the edge, it means they
[00:20:04] made a lot of coins that year. So
[00:20:05] they're not as sharp.
[00:20:06] >> Wow.
[00:20:07] >> So that is a mid-3rd century coin. This
[00:20:10] is Constantius II, who is the son of
[00:20:12] Constantine.
[00:20:14] So that would have been mid-4th century.
[00:20:18] And this is a city of Rome coin which is
[00:20:20] a coin that Constantine minted to
[00:20:22] basically solidify his coins served a
[00:20:26] propagandic purpose too. So this was to
[00:20:28] really solidify his power. And this is
[00:20:30] two different half coins, first century
[00:20:32] coins from Augustus and his top general
[00:20:34] Grippa.
[00:20:36] >> Man, this is cool.
[00:20:38] >> Thank you.
[00:20:39] >> Yes, sir.
[00:20:39] >> Thank you.
[00:20:40] >> It's always nice to hold a piece of
[00:20:41] history and you have a lot of it here,
[00:20:42] too.
[00:20:43] >> Yeah. Yeah. Look, these are going to
[00:20:45] look great here in the studio. I'll
[00:20:47] probably get him framed, hang them up.
[00:20:48] Thank you.
[00:20:49] >> Oh, you got it, man.
[00:20:50] >> Very, very, very kind. Thank you.
[00:20:54] >> So, why does, in your opinion, why does
[00:20:58] why does Rome still matter for today?
[00:21:01] >> Well, I think when you look at it, as I
[00:21:04] said earlier, history doesn't repeat,
[00:21:05] but it does rhyme in a lot of ways. And
[00:21:07] I think if you understand patterns that
[00:21:10] happen in history, you can understand a
[00:21:12] lot of what's happening in your world
[00:21:13] today. Because I think we look at modern
[00:21:16] politics and we see the things that are
[00:21:19] happening and we try to say, "Okay,
[00:21:20] well, if we just make this solution now,
[00:21:23] it'll solve it." And if we look at
[00:21:25] earlier empires, especially Rome, it's
[00:21:27] something that those short-sighted
[00:21:30] solutions often don't fix things. And
[00:21:32] when I look at Rome, I see something I
[00:21:34] like to call the Roman pattern. It's the
[00:21:36] three things that if you look at empires
[00:21:37] in decline, you can look at the Eastern
[00:21:40] Roman Empire, which historians in the
[00:21:42] 16th century start calling the Byzantine
[00:21:44] Empire. You can look at the Mongol
[00:21:46] Empire and a lot of how that collapses.
[00:21:48] It's similar patterns. Even VHimar
[00:21:50] Germany, and there's three things that
[00:21:52] that tend to happen most often and in
[00:21:54] different ways. But the first is they
[00:21:57] don't handle their money well, right?
[00:21:58] They start inflating it to a point that
[00:22:00] the money is absolutely useless. There's
[00:22:03] a story about Vimar, Germany, that when
[00:22:06] you wanted to buy a loaf of bread, you
[00:22:08] would fill your wheelbarrow with money
[00:22:09] and get to the store and by the time you
[00:22:11] got to the store, there wasn't enough
[00:22:13] money in the wheelbarrow to buy the
[00:22:14] bread.
[00:22:14] >> Wow.
[00:22:15] >> And so inflation is something I think
[00:22:17] for a lot of people, they don't really
[00:22:18] understand, but it is the number one
[00:22:20] thing that causes empires and societies
[00:22:23] to collapse because if your money is
[00:22:24] worth nothing, well then you start to
[00:22:27] have nothing, right? And the other thing
[00:22:29] is immigration and poor border control
[00:22:31] because if you're not handling
[00:22:35] your country or your empire, your
[00:22:36] civilization, and there's a lot of
[00:22:38] people that don't define themselves by
[00:22:40] that civilization. And that's not to
[00:22:42] say, you know, you have to be the most,
[00:22:45] you know, American person out there, but
[00:22:47] it is to say you need to be loyal to the
[00:22:49] country that you're in. If you look at
[00:22:50] places like Minnesota and other places,
[00:22:53] they're they're starting to lose their
[00:22:54] identity as America. There's places the
[00:22:56] cops won't even go in at this point. So
[00:22:59] those are things you start to see in a
[00:23:01] societal collapse. And the the the third
[00:23:02] is that politicians
[00:23:06] start getting so shortsighted that they
[00:23:08] just care about, you know, what's
[00:23:09] happening right now and how I'm going to
[00:23:11] handle this next election cycle. And
[00:23:13] when you start doing that, you're
[00:23:14] creating future time bombs for your
[00:23:16] civilization.
[00:23:17] >> That's all happening right here, right
[00:23:20] now.
[00:23:20] >> Yes. And the thing people get upset with
[00:23:23] is saying, "Oh, we're Rome." I'm not
[00:23:24] saying America is Rome, but I am saying
[00:23:26] it's a pattern that applies to to how
[00:23:27] societies collapse.
[00:23:29] >> How long was the Roman Empire? What was
[00:23:31] the R?
[00:23:31] >> So, if you you want to look at it, um,
[00:23:33] it's an over 2,000-year history. It's
[00:23:36] founded in 753 BC as a kingdom. And
[00:23:40] there's traditionally seven kings of
[00:23:42] Rome from 753 to 509 BC. And because of
[00:23:47] those initial kings, Romans hated the
[00:23:49] idea of kingship. And it comes to be the
[00:23:52] last king of Rome, the seventh, Tarwin
[00:23:54] the proud, is the most hated. His son um
[00:23:58] is in the military and he there's
[00:24:01] another man in the military that he he
[00:24:03] likes that w that man's wife and because
[00:24:07] she's supposed to be the most upright
[00:24:08] and most chased woman. So he has his way
[00:24:13] with her. It's called the the the rape
[00:24:14] of Lucricia. And because of this, it
[00:24:17] ends up really blowing up on Tarwin. And
[00:24:20] there is a family called the Brutus
[00:24:23] family, which is actually the same
[00:24:24] family that's going to assassinate
[00:24:26] Caesar. And that's an important point
[00:24:28] that actually removes Tarquin and his
[00:24:31] son from Rome. Now, some people say he
[00:24:33] was killed, others say he was just
[00:24:35] kicked out, but that's the end of the
[00:24:36] kings of Rome. So, the Romans hated the
[00:24:38] idea of kingship. Now from 509 to 31 BC
[00:24:42] it's a republic but it's not a republic
[00:24:45] in the way that we think of republics.
[00:24:47] It's more of an oligarchy in a lot of
[00:24:49] ways. The way you had power is having
[00:24:52] money and possessions and things like
[00:24:54] that. They they voted
[00:24:56] >> to today.
[00:24:56] >> Yeah. They voted not as individuals but
[00:24:58] in what are called um voting centuries.
[00:25:01] And the centuries are actually
[00:25:02] originally based off of the idea of like
[00:25:04] military centuries. But the richest 10%
[00:25:09] of Rome held 90% of the vote. So they
[00:25:12] could basically decide no matter what
[00:25:13] who was going to have a political
[00:25:14] position. If you didn't have money or
[00:25:16] you weren't literate, you didn't have
[00:25:17] the ability to kind of do a lot. So that
[00:25:20] goes until 31 BC. And then from 31 to
[00:25:24] 476 is the empire. And the empire um in
[00:25:29] the west in the east we end up calling
[00:25:31] it the Byzantine Empire, but they
[00:25:34] wouldn't have called themselves that.
[00:25:35] they would have called themselves
[00:25:36] Romans. That goes until 1453. So, it's
[00:25:38] basically like a almost 2,000-year
[00:25:41] history. Wow.
[00:25:42] >> Of of what the Roman Empire was.
[00:25:44] >> Wow. Wow.
[00:25:47] And we're at 250 years.
[00:25:50] >> Yeah. I think that's something to
[00:25:52] consider is we're we're not as old as um
[00:25:56] when I was studying in uh in England, I
[00:25:58] I studied at New College Oxford for a
[00:26:00] bit. And if you look at a lot of the
[00:26:02] buildings there and just how old they
[00:26:03] are and our oldest buildings aren't as
[00:26:05] old as their their newest buildings a
[00:26:07] lot of times. It's
[00:26:08] >> American society just isn't that old.
[00:26:10] >> Yeah. Yeah. Just it's interesting to
[00:26:13] see. I mean
[00:26:16] I think you're going to tie a lot of
[00:26:17] parallels to what we're seeing today
[00:26:19] towards the end
[00:26:21] >> of the Roman Empire. And a lot of people
[00:26:23] do say you know history history repeats
[00:26:26] itself or like you say it rhymes. And I
[00:26:28] think we see that. You know,
[00:26:30] >> it was actually Mark Twain that coined
[00:26:31] that phrase phrase, too. So, I can't
[00:26:33] take credit for that.
[00:26:34] >> Um, you know, one question I have just
[00:26:38] from diving into our own history.
[00:26:40] >> Yeah.
[00:26:41] >> How accurate do you think history in the
[00:26:45] Roman Empire actually is? And the reason
[00:26:47] I asked this is
[00:26:48] >> you see all these institutions
[00:26:52] >> just in America, just in
[00:26:57] >> this lifetime that are lying and
[00:27:00] changing history. Things are being
[00:27:03] recorded not how they [ __ ] happened.
[00:27:05] you and and and a lot of this is to
[00:27:09] protect the institution, you know, and
[00:27:12] you think about it and I've just dove
[00:27:13] into a couple of institutions, but
[00:27:15] there's
[00:27:16] >> probably there's got to be close to a
[00:27:19] thousand institutions in this country.
[00:27:20] Yeah. whether it's churches, government,
[00:27:24] what
[00:27:26] whatever it is. And and I'm in and in in
[00:27:29] just in just in the SEAL teams, there's
[00:27:31] a lot of recorded history that is just a
[00:27:34] flatout lie,
[00:27:36] >> you know, and and so it's like, well, if
[00:27:38] the SEAL teams did it, then this did it,
[00:27:40] and this did it, and this did. It's just
[00:27:42] it's like, okay, every institution is
[00:27:44] doing this. This is just one country. So
[00:27:48] then think about all the institutions in
[00:27:49] the world
[00:27:51] and then you think if every institution
[00:27:54] in the world is doing this and lying and
[00:27:56] manipulating history and we're just this
[00:27:59] we're just one little sliver in time
[00:28:02] that's that's infinite.
[00:28:05] How do you know?
[00:28:08] >> Cuz the Romans had to have been
[00:28:09] manipulating history as well in the
[00:28:11] >> pattern doesn't change. It's a pattern
[00:28:13] that doesn't change because it goes back
[00:28:14] to
[00:28:16] who's in power, right? And it goes back
[00:28:19] into who's literate, right? If you look
[00:28:21] at look at Rome, less than 10% of their
[00:28:24] society is literate, right? So, if
[00:28:26] you're not literate, you're not going to
[00:28:27] be writing. And I think that's an
[00:28:28] important point. So, if you look at a
[00:28:32] lot of the history you're getting, you
[00:28:33] have to understand what the power
[00:28:34] structure is at the time because the
[00:28:36] power structure is going to dictate what
[00:28:38] the history you're getting is. And you
[00:28:39] can look at that in in any society. But
[00:28:42] if you look at I my my degree is
[00:28:44] actually in the the propaganda of the
[00:28:46] first emperor Augustus because he had to
[00:28:47] take basically make people think they
[00:28:50] were still living in a republic even
[00:28:52] though it didn't exist anymore. So one
[00:28:55] of the the one of the major things he
[00:28:56] does is he starts commissioning works of
[00:28:59] literature. So the Aniad is written
[00:29:01] during his time. Um the famous Roman
[00:29:03] historian uh Libby who writes during
[00:29:06] that time writes his Roman histories
[00:29:07] during that time. Um there's a poet
[00:29:11] named Avid who wrote um what's called
[00:29:14] erotic poetry which Augustus didn't like
[00:29:16] because he was very naturally
[00:29:17] conservative. So he's kicked out of
[00:29:19] Rome. So a lot of those things were very
[00:29:22] manicured in ways. So that the history
[00:29:24] you're getting is often going to reflect
[00:29:26] the power structure it's written in
[00:29:28] because you don't want to piss off or
[00:29:31] upset the people in power and you don't
[00:29:32] want to piss off or upset the emperor,
[00:29:34] right? We want it to be something that
[00:29:36] describes things to give people a
[00:29:38] certain vision. It's that way in the
[00:29:40] Republic, too. You want to show the
[00:29:42] Republic as a powerful um something that
[00:29:45] honors tradition. And if things don't
[00:29:49] honor that, well, you're not going to
[00:29:50] write about them, right? You want to The
[00:29:54] 476 fall date of Rome is often something
[00:29:58] that's heavily debated as well. And as I
[00:29:59] said, Western Rome,
[00:30:02] the emperor in the east, Justinian, in
[00:30:05] the late 5th and early, well, late sixth
[00:30:08] and early 7th century is going to decide
[00:30:11] that he wants to reconstitute the Roman
[00:30:13] Empire. And the West for some point in
[00:30:15] time had fallen into being these
[00:30:17] kingdoms of just barbarian kingdoms. So
[00:30:20] what he ends up doing is by force under
[00:30:23] a general named Bellisarius tries to
[00:30:25] reconquer the Western Roman Empire. And
[00:30:28] a lot of it is destroyed during this
[00:30:30] period of time. So a lot of the writing
[00:30:32] you're getting that says Rome fell in
[00:30:34] 476, well that's going to come from the
[00:30:36] east because Justinian's going to look
[00:30:38] bad if it says, you know, he burned down
[00:30:40] the empire to reunite the empire. So you
[00:30:42] have to look at the power structure that
[00:30:44] dictates the literature you're getting.
[00:30:47] And I think very often times you're not
[00:30:49] going to write things that look bad for
[00:30:51] the group in power.
[00:30:55] >> And so how how
[00:30:58] How much confidence do you have in Roman
[00:31:00] history?
[00:31:02] >> Enough that we can understand what
[00:31:03] happened to a degree. And that's the
[00:31:05] thing about ancient history is when you
[00:31:07] look at American history, we know for
[00:31:10] the most part because we have a lot of
[00:31:12] primary sources exactly what happened
[00:31:14] during that time. You know, we're going
[00:31:15] to still have the narratives of what
[00:31:17] people want to say. We know a lot more
[00:31:18] about it because it's more recent. We
[00:31:20] have more primary sources.
[00:31:22] Ancient history, there's a lot of
[00:31:24] sources missing. There's because part of
[00:31:27] it is just they're writing on papyrus
[00:31:29] and things similar to that which just
[00:31:31] don't last as long. The other part of it
[00:31:33] is things are going to be destroyed. The
[00:31:35] library of Alexandria is burned I think
[00:31:36] three times. One time under Caesar. So
[00:31:40] there's just not enough work surviving.
[00:31:42] So you'll get a lot of theories around
[00:31:45] ancient history and those theories the
[00:31:47] historians will say they're very correct
[00:31:49] when another historian will have a
[00:31:51] different theory and they're also very
[00:31:52] correct because we just don't have as
[00:31:54] much data as we'd like to have to
[00:31:56] actually know what happened. So we can
[00:31:58] kind of surmise we have some primary
[00:32:00] sources but you have to also understand
[00:32:02] where are your primary sources coming
[00:32:03] from and whose opinion are they and who
[00:32:06] do they support.
[00:32:07] >> Gotcha. Gotcha. How how how much how
[00:32:11] much difference have you seen between
[00:32:14] between people that have recorded it or
[00:32:16] contradictory?
[00:32:18] >> So it look you have to look at the time
[00:32:19] periods when people are writing because
[00:32:21] if you look at a historian that's
[00:32:22] writing during the life of Nero, he's
[00:32:25] going to talk great about Nero because
[00:32:26] he's the emperor. But then if you look
[00:32:28] after he dies, the things about Nero are
[00:32:30] terrible. So it's very often when people
[00:32:33] feel safe, they'll say what they really
[00:32:36] think. But when they don't feel safe
[00:32:38] because that person's in power, well,
[00:32:40] they're going to be a bit sick of fantic
[00:32:41] and and kind of talk about the emperor
[00:32:43] in in glowing terms. And and you see
[00:32:45] this with bad emperors like Caligula,
[00:32:48] Kakala, Nero. So the history you're
[00:32:52] getting has to make the person in power
[00:32:54] look good or your life is kind of in
[00:32:56] peril.
[00:32:59] >> Makes sense, man. It's like scary [ __ ]
[00:33:02] to think about. You know, the everything
[00:33:04] we think we know maybe Well, in a lot of
[00:33:07] ways we don't. In a lot of ways we
[00:33:08] don't.
[00:33:08] >> You might not know [ __ ]
[00:33:09] >> We It's There's the Plato has what's
[00:33:13] called the allegory of the cave. I don't
[00:33:14] know if you heard of this.
[00:33:15] >> No.
[00:33:16] >> So the allegory of the cave is there's
[00:33:18] people that live their entire lives in a
[00:33:20] cave and the only thing that they know
[00:33:22] about life are the shadows they see on
[00:33:23] the walls and when they come outside
[00:33:25] they can actually see what's happening
[00:33:27] and see what's occurring. But their
[00:33:28] whole life is by these shadows. A lot of
[00:33:31] what we get in history and in media and
[00:33:33] in opinion out there is just shadows. We
[00:33:36] don't always have the full background.
[00:33:38] >> Man, you know, I was I was just I was
[00:33:40] watching I was watching two of my
[00:33:44] friends have a podcast yesterday last
[00:33:46] night. AJ Gentile from the W Files and
[00:33:49] Tucker Carlson.
[00:33:50] >> Mhm.
[00:33:50] >> And they were talking about the pyramids
[00:33:53] and
[00:33:54] >> Oh, I listened to that one.
[00:33:55] >> You listen? I did. It was really good.
[00:33:56] I've been hellbent on this history thing
[00:33:58] cuz I haven't even released this
[00:33:59] interview, but I interviewed this guy
[00:34:01] and it was all about kind of recent
[00:34:03] >> global war on terrorism lies
[00:34:05] >> and uh and so that really got me
[00:34:07] thinking about what I was just saying
[00:34:09] like man it's just if it's just this
[00:34:11] institution all these
[00:34:13] >> you look around Egypt like the things we
[00:34:14] don't know and the things that have been
[00:34:16] altered because the opinion that
[00:34:17] >> and the things that they [ __ ] taught
[00:34:19] us that are complete [ __ ] I
[00:34:22] remember looking at pictures of slaves
[00:34:26] picking up these
[00:34:28] huge blocks with sticks in my history
[00:34:32] books. Yeah.
[00:34:32] >> And I'm like, "Holy shit." Like, "This
[00:34:34] is just [ __ ] garbage."
[00:34:36] >> Well, it might not be logistically
[00:34:37] possible.
[00:34:37] >> Yeah. It's like
[00:34:38] >> they didn't have the technology to do
[00:34:39] it.
[00:34:40] >> And then I And then uh just in in I
[00:34:42] found out I didn't even know this that
[00:34:44] Did you know a mummy I guess you do cuz
[00:34:46] you watched it. They've never found a
[00:34:47] mummy in the pyramids.
[00:34:49] >> I heard that in that episode. I did not
[00:34:50] know that until I heard that.
[00:34:52] >> Me neither. And so it's just like holy
[00:34:54] [ __ ]
[00:34:55] >> He was saying like maybe they came from
[00:34:57] earlier.
[00:34:58] >> Yeah. Maybe they came from an earlier
[00:34:59] civilization or something. He was making
[00:35:01] the claim of
[00:35:02] >> a lot of this stuff though throughout
[00:35:03] the world. But you know one one thing I
[00:35:06] think I want to start here with you most
[00:35:08] people misunderstand collapse as a
[00:35:11] moment and not a process.
[00:35:13] >> Yeah. So when you look at that when
[00:35:16] you're living through something a lot of
[00:35:18] times like and this is the same for
[00:35:19] Romans you're still paying your taxes
[00:35:21] you're still going to work you're still
[00:35:23] doing a lot of the things you usually do
[00:35:25] and that's what happens in these these
[00:35:26] downslides you just kind of alter your
[00:35:29] daily life just enough to get by right
[00:35:32] like if you look at even during civil
[00:35:33] war in certain countries
[00:35:35] um I went to to Athens in 2013 and
[00:35:40] that's when they were having all the
[00:35:41] fires in the middle of Athens and they
[00:35:42] were protesting
[00:35:44] As long as you didn't go to that little
[00:35:45] square section, life was normal. And I
[00:35:48] think that's what people don't
[00:35:49] understand when
[00:35:51] things are starting to collapse, the
[00:35:54] thing you see is the how much things
[00:35:56] cost and you start to see um getting a
[00:36:00] little dimmer about your future. But for
[00:36:01] the most part, life carries on as
[00:36:03] normal. I think for some reason and a
[00:36:07] lot of its propaganda, people have this
[00:36:09] idea that there's this moment and after
[00:36:12] it everything is different. But if you
[00:36:14] even look at when Rome falls in 476, it
[00:36:18] doesn't fall. It really fades in a lot
[00:36:20] of ways. And life is going to continue
[00:36:22] as normal. They're still going to be
[00:36:23] wearing similar clothing. They're still
[00:36:25] going to be holding similar positions.
[00:36:28] the first barbarian king actually spends
[00:36:31] money to rebuild a lot of Roman temples
[00:36:33] and things like that because he wanted
[00:36:35] to keep the grandeur of the city. So the
[00:36:39] system itself can fade away and change,
[00:36:41] but often times we're getting our
[00:36:44] history in a postcript where we can see
[00:36:46] now at a 30,000 foot view. Well, that
[00:36:48] was a really important moment of time
[00:36:49] for people living in it. They don't
[00:36:51] exactly have that experience and we see
[00:36:53] that in history, right? I I think it's
[00:36:55] really important to understand like the
[00:36:56] American Civil War, it wasn't like,
[00:36:59] okay, so we are now at war because this
[00:37:01] battle happened. Well, something
[00:37:04] happens, something else happens. It's a
[00:37:05] 10-year period and then finally you're
[00:37:07] you're at war. I meant say the American
[00:37:09] Revolution, but
[00:37:10] >> it's very it's decades, not just
[00:37:14] >> something that happens suddenly. I think
[00:37:16] people watch a lot of movies and they
[00:37:17] have these idea that there's these great
[00:37:18] cataclysms. Sure, those things might
[00:37:21] occur, but they're part of a broader
[00:37:23] spectrum of things that occur and lead
[00:37:24] you someplace. It's not often a
[00:37:26] cataclysmic event.
[00:37:29] >> Makes sense. And so how how long was the
[00:37:32] process for Rome?
[00:37:34] >> So the most famous work on the Roman
[00:37:38] Empire is Edward Gibbons Decline and
[00:37:39] Fall of the Roman Empire. It's written
[00:37:41] in 1776
[00:37:43] um in seven volumes. So it's like really
[00:37:45] great as a doors stop if you want
[00:37:46] someone to hold your door open. But um
[00:37:49] you have to it's to understand Gibbon's
[00:37:51] world is important too. He's born as a
[00:37:54] Catholic, but to get more political
[00:37:57] power, his father conver convinces him
[00:38:00] to convert to the Church of England. So,
[00:38:02] he's going to have a lot of problems
[00:38:03] with the early Catholic Church that's
[00:38:05] rising in Rome. And that's actually in
[00:38:06] his work. And he gives Christianity
[00:38:09] um a lot of flack for the collapse of
[00:38:10] Rome when in all honesty, it really had
[00:38:13] nothing to do with it. Now, the other
[00:38:15] thing he's dealing with at the same time
[00:38:17] is the American Revolution. So, he's
[00:38:19] writing this in seven volumes. Initially
[00:38:22] things are going really well for the
[00:38:23] British then they start going worse and
[00:38:25] worse and worse and worse and that's
[00:38:26] going to affect how he's writing. So
[00:38:28] once again it's important to understand
[00:38:30] the world of a writer and when you look
[00:38:32] at that though the thing I think he is
[00:38:34] right about and that I do agree with
[00:38:36] wholeheartedly is Marcus Aurelius is
[00:38:40] what's called the last of the five good
[00:38:41] emperors. And the thing that they did
[00:38:43] differently is they didn't take their
[00:38:46] natural-born son and make the next
[00:38:48] emperor because that had gotten you a
[00:38:50] whole mixed bag of emperors. You might
[00:38:52] have um a good one like Vespasian but
[00:38:55] then you get a son domission who is
[00:38:58] terrible or you might get a Caligula or
[00:39:00] you might get a Nero because you don't
[00:39:02] know how qualified that next person is.
[00:39:04] The thing that they do is in ancient
[00:39:06] society you could adopt an adult. What
[00:39:09] that meant is they got your titles, your
[00:39:11] name, your riches, and they would adopt
[00:39:14] the next closest qualified person. And
[00:39:16] this works really well from 93 AD to
[00:39:21] around the death of Marcus Aurelius,
[00:39:22] which is 180 AD. They're called the five
[00:39:24] good emperors. This is very often
[00:39:26] referred to as the Pax Romana or the
[00:39:28] Roman peace. The thing that Aurelius
[00:39:32] does different, and at times you have to
[00:39:33] feel for him as well, is those other
[00:39:36] four didn't have natural-born sons.
[00:39:40] Aurelius does. He has this son, Comedus,
[00:39:42] and he knows though he's worked with
[00:39:45] Comedus, he's still not really qualified
[00:39:47] to be the next emperor, but if he
[00:39:48] doesn't name him emperor without killing
[00:39:51] him, he would probably raise an army and
[00:39:54] try to create a civil war in Rome. So,
[00:39:56] he names his son Comeodus to be the next
[00:39:58] emperor. And Gibbon calls this the real
[00:40:02] downslide of the empire. There's a a
[00:40:05] quote from decline and fall of the Roman
[00:40:06] Empire. I'm paraphrasing here. I don't
[00:40:08] remember exactly what it was, but it's
[00:40:10] that Rome goes from a society of marble
[00:40:14] to one of steel and rust that basically
[00:40:17] it's starting to disintegrate. So, it's
[00:40:19] like a 300year downslide though. But it
[00:40:22] is a real process you can look at
[00:40:24] because the next emperor after him
[00:40:27] really changes the way the empire
[00:40:30] >> after
[00:40:30] >> after Comeodus.
[00:40:32] >> Comeodus.
[00:40:32] >> Comeodus dies in 192. And
[00:40:36] >> so it started with Marcus Aurelius.
[00:40:38] >> Well, Marcus Aurelius was was a was seen
[00:40:40] as a good emperor.
[00:40:41] >> His son Comeodus, who he names to be the
[00:40:44] next emperor, is seen to not be such a
[00:40:45] great emperor.
[00:40:46] >> So that was the that was the that was
[00:40:48] the that was the spark.
[00:40:49] >> It was the spark. And there's the
[00:40:51] cometus is emperor. The last year of his
[00:40:54] rule, he dies in 192 is what's called
[00:40:56] the year of five emperors. And there's
[00:41:00] the emperor right after him named
[00:41:01] Pertinax. The Ptorian guard actually
[00:41:05] auctions the empire to him. So he pays a
[00:41:08] certain price and he gets to be emperor.
[00:41:10] And after around 80 days, they kill him
[00:41:13] and they say, "Hey, the empire is for
[00:41:14] sale again. Who wants to be the next
[00:41:16] emperor?"
[00:41:16] >> Who's they?
[00:41:17] >> The pritorian guard. because they had
[00:41:19] become the power behind the throne and
[00:41:21] they're responsible for killing
[00:41:22] somewhere around 17 different emperors
[00:41:25] that we know of. You know, if they
[00:41:27] weren't happy, they might kill the
[00:41:28] emperor and this happens on a number of
[00:41:30] occasions.
[00:41:30] >> So, was this like a shadow government?
[00:41:32] >> It's like a shadow government in a lot
[00:41:34] of ways.
[00:41:34] >> Do the citizens know about it?
[00:41:36] >> For the most part, they would have
[00:41:37] known. The person in charge of the
[00:41:39] Ptorian Guard is the guy called the
[00:41:41] Ptorian Prefect. and he would have been
[00:41:43] seen as kind of the most powerful man in
[00:41:45] Rome because they were responsible for
[00:41:47] protecting the emperor but they also
[00:41:49] made and unmade emperors. So in this
[00:41:51] year of five emperors you have pertinax
[00:41:54] being the first to buy the empire. Then
[00:41:56] there's another named Ddidius Giulianis
[00:41:58] that buys the empire and the last one
[00:42:00] that comes in that year is a military
[00:42:02] commander named Septimus Seis and he
[00:42:04] comes in with his legions and actually
[00:42:06] conquers Rome. And the thing that he
[00:42:09] changes is he enlarges the Roman army.
[00:42:15] He's going to remove all the Ptorian
[00:42:18] guardsmen and put only his loyal men in
[00:42:19] the Ptorian Guard. So he's changing the
[00:42:21] guard. And he's also going to double the
[00:42:25] pay of the legions. And that's something
[00:42:27] that for the next 200 years, emperors
[00:42:30] after him are going to follow is they're
[00:42:32] going to start doubling, tripling,
[00:42:34] quadrupling the pay of the legions. And
[00:42:36] that's something that's going to start
[00:42:37] fueling inflation. There's other things
[00:42:39] fueling inflation, but that's one of the
[00:42:41] key things fueling inflations. And when
[00:42:44] someone became emperor, they would give
[00:42:46] a gift to the legions. That's called a
[00:42:48] donative. It comes from the Latin word
[00:42:50] to give. So they would give a bigger
[00:42:52] donative and they would also double,
[00:42:54] triple, quadruple the pay. So by the
[00:42:57] time you get to 284 AD, they're at
[00:42:59] 15,000% inflation.
[00:43:02] their silver coin that was 95% pure in
[00:43:05] the first century. Like those coins I
[00:43:08] gave you that are those are bronze coins
[00:43:09] because they're 5% pure by the late
[00:43:12] 270s. So the money is worth almost
[00:43:15] nothing.
[00:43:17] >> Holy [ __ ]
[00:43:18] >> So he kind of his death opens the door
[00:43:22] to this new pattern of how emperors are
[00:43:24] made.
[00:43:25] Now he now he's not the first of what
[00:43:27] are called the Bareric emperors. It's
[00:43:29] going to be a guy named Maximus Thrax.
[00:43:32] But barrack emperors, meaning military
[00:43:33] barracks. These basically guys that they
[00:43:36] weren't politicians. They hadn't been
[00:43:38] through Roman office. They just have an
[00:43:40] army, a lot of steel, and a lot of and a
[00:43:43] lot of power. And that is basically how
[00:43:45] the third century is going to really
[00:43:47] start compounding this collapse.
[00:43:49] >> Do you So that's a bad thing.
[00:43:51] >> That's a bad thing.
[00:43:53] >> Bam. That's
[00:43:56] I would think it's a good thing. Well,
[00:43:58] it's cuz what ends up happening is power
[00:44:02] starts to centralize more and more and
[00:44:04] more.
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[00:47:24] I I'll tell you why I think it would be
[00:47:26] in my opinion why it's a good thing is I
[00:47:30] just I just I've always thought this. I
[00:47:33] thought it would be good to have
[00:47:35] somebody that's fought for the country
[00:47:36] running the country.
[00:47:37] >> I don't disagree with you. Now you get
[00:47:38] these [ __ ] scumbags that, you know,
[00:47:43] >> they just show up.
[00:47:44] >> Not much else you can say about that.
[00:47:48] >> But anyways,
[00:47:49] >> well, no, I I don't
[00:47:50] >> That was bad in Rome.
[00:47:52] >> It's It's bad because that goes back to
[00:47:54] the military reforms I talked about
[00:47:55] earlier
[00:47:57] >> because what ends up happening is their
[00:47:58] loyalty is just to that general
[00:48:01] >> and it's not to Rome as a whole.
[00:48:03] >> So it ends up creating these fractures
[00:48:05] within how the society actually
[00:48:07] functions. transactional military.
[00:48:09] >> Correct.
[00:48:10] >> We we're going over this later in the
[00:48:12] outline, but I think we're seeing that
[00:48:14] right now. I mean, I think we're seeing
[00:48:16] a transactional military right now. How
[00:48:18] would you describe a transactional
[00:48:19] military?
[00:48:20] >> They're in it for, you know, the pay and
[00:48:23] they're in it for the power, right? And
[00:48:24] if you look at the military changes a
[00:48:28] lot in the second century, there had
[00:48:30] always been barbarian tribes that have
[00:48:32] fought in the Roman military. There's
[00:48:34] what's called the Roman auxiliary. So,
[00:48:37] and Caesar had his German guard that
[00:48:39] protected him. So, there to a certain
[00:48:40] extent had always been
[00:48:43] barbarians coming in the military. And I
[00:48:45] guess to just handle that word
[00:48:46] barbarian, um it comes from the Greek
[00:48:49] word
[00:48:51] because Greeks would hear the hear
[00:48:52] barbarians saying barar barb bar because
[00:48:54] they didn't understand it. They spoke
[00:48:55] Greek. So, they would call them
[00:48:56] barbarians. So, then in Latin they use
[00:48:58] the word barbar for beard. So they were
[00:49:01] these bearded guys is basically the
[00:49:03] thing because Romans until the
[00:49:04] mid-second century didn't really have
[00:49:06] beards. The emperor Hadrien who was from
[00:49:09] Spain was the first person to actually
[00:49:10] be an emperor and have a beard. Um you
[00:49:13] it was good to shave your face in that
[00:49:15] period of time. So these bearded Germans
[00:49:18] were seen as barbarians. And when you
[00:49:21] look at how the military changes over
[00:49:24] the over the third century,
[00:49:26] they start bringing more and more and
[00:49:29] more
[00:49:30] barbarians into the Roman legions. So
[00:49:32] they start to become less and less and
[00:49:33] less Roman. And by the time you get to
[00:49:35] the end of the 3rd century, Constantine
[00:49:37] is going to create a group called the
[00:49:38] Futurati, which are basically
[00:49:41] military
[00:49:43] but barbarians, and they don't have to
[00:49:45] follow Roman law, and they live on the
[00:49:47] borders. So you start to have this real
[00:49:50] disintegration on what is a Roman and
[00:49:52] what is the Roman army.
[00:49:53] >> [ __ ] crazy. You're going so I'm still
[00:49:56] at transactional military and you're
[00:49:57] moving into immigration.
[00:49:59] >> Well, because it sounds like
[00:50:01] >> they work together. They do
[00:50:03] >> cuz I see trans trans in the way you
[00:50:06] just described a transactional military
[00:50:09] for money and for power. And what do we
[00:50:12] see right now? This is
[00:50:14] >> I'm a military guy. Mhm.
[00:50:15] >> I have friends that are still in. This
[00:50:17] is what I hear. This is what I hear from
[00:50:20] from a lot of people. I'm just waiting
[00:50:22] for retirement.
[00:50:23] >> Wow.
[00:50:24] >> I don't even believe in what we're doing
[00:50:25] anymore. I'm just waiting for
[00:50:27] retirement.
[00:50:28] >> Wow.
[00:50:28] >> Because I have so many years in. Just
[00:50:30] waiting for retirement. And then on the
[00:50:33] other side, you have the the the the the
[00:50:37] flag officers who will do anything, lie
[00:50:40] to anybody, [ __ ] anybody over, do
[00:50:42] anything they possibly can just to get
[00:50:44] that next star.
[00:50:45] >> Wow.
[00:50:45] >> And we've we've we've covered that time
[00:50:48] and time and time and time again on the
[00:50:50] show. These [ __ ] generals and
[00:50:52] admirals that will do anything they can
[00:50:55] to get that next star, which is
[00:50:57] transactional
[00:50:58] >> and it works for them. Yeah. I mean,
[00:51:00] look, Our leaders are [ __ ]
[00:51:03] >> Yeah.
[00:51:03] >> So they have been for quite a while. But
[00:51:06] um
[00:51:07] >> but you could say that about the Roman
[00:51:08] military as well.
[00:51:09] >> Well, that's drawing a parallel here.
[00:51:11] >> Yeah. You could you could say that about
[00:51:12] the Roman military as well because if
[00:51:13] you look at
[00:51:15] the 3rd century, which to me is the most
[00:51:18] pivotal time in in history and nobody
[00:51:20] seems to talk about it. They talk about
[00:51:21] the fifth century, the fall, and the
[00:51:23] first century, the end of the republic,
[00:51:25] but they ignore the 3rd century, which
[00:51:28] to me is the most vital time period. And
[00:51:30] if you look at that, you do have that
[00:51:32] more transactional type of military
[00:51:34] where if you pay me more, hey, I'm your
[00:51:37] guy. You pay me less or your money's
[00:51:39] worth less, well, I'm not your guy. Um,
[00:51:42] have you ever heard the phrase worth
[00:51:43] your salt?
[00:51:44] >> No.
[00:51:45] >> Um, so the phrase worth your salt,
[00:51:47] meaning you have value. One of the other
[00:51:50] things that military commanders did is
[00:51:51] they they paid their men in a certain
[00:51:53] amount of salt because salt had a lot of
[00:51:55] value. It could add flavor to food. It
[00:51:57] could preserve food. So they're paying
[00:51:59] them in coin and also in salt. So if you
[00:52:02] could give them a lot of the right coin
[00:52:05] and your coin still had value, well then
[00:52:07] that's great. But if your coin starts to
[00:52:09] not have value, you see loyalty start to
[00:52:12] change and you'll see a barbarian
[00:52:16] fighting in the Roman army one day and
[00:52:18] now he's fighting with his tribe the
[00:52:20] other day. So you see someone like like
[00:52:22] Olarich who is the Visigothth commander
[00:52:24] that sacked Rome in 410. He had worked
[00:52:27] in the Roman army and he had actually
[00:52:30] was trying to get a position in the
[00:52:32] eastern army and the eastern army and
[00:52:35] the ro and the western army had been
[00:52:36] using them against him him against each
[00:52:38] other and then eventually he realizes
[00:52:41] neither of them are going to give him
[00:52:42] what he wants. So then he sacks Roman
[00:52:44] 410 and this is a pattern you're going
[00:52:46] to start to see of these loyalties that
[00:52:48] just change and shift based on what are
[00:52:50] the stuff you can give me and what is
[00:52:52] the money you can give me. It becomes
[00:52:53] extremely transactional. And when people
[00:52:56] also don't have the identity of being
[00:52:58] Roman, well, it becomes even more
[00:52:59] transactional and even easier to change
[00:53:01] that opinion.
[00:53:04] >> Makes sense. Makes sense. Let's move
[00:53:07] into the
[00:53:10] immigration stuff that you were talking
[00:53:12] about.
[00:53:13] >> Can we start over there?
[00:53:15] >> Yeah. So, so if we're looking at
[00:53:18] the 3rd century, um it's kind of a a
[00:53:22] broad spectrum of things that we're
[00:53:23] looking at. If you're looking at, as I
[00:53:26] mentioned, there had always to some
[00:53:27] extent been barbarians in the Roman
[00:53:30] army, and there had always been people
[00:53:31] that weren't exactly Roman, but might
[00:53:34] get citizenship at some point. And if
[00:53:36] you fought in the Roman legions for 25
[00:53:38] years, you could get citizenship.
[00:53:41] people wanted citizenship.
[00:53:42] >> It was a very valuable thing
[00:53:44] >> like today.
[00:53:45] >> Yeah.
[00:53:45] >> People want American citizenship.
[00:53:46] >> When when I had a conversation uh with
[00:53:48] your team before for for Patreon, one of
[00:53:50] the questions he asked was what was the
[00:53:53] most valuable thing for a Roman to have?
[00:53:54] And it's citizenship. Because if you
[00:53:56] even look at St. Paul in the Bible,
[00:53:58] well, he's a Roman citizen. And because
[00:54:00] of that, he had the right to address his
[00:54:01] grievances directly to the emperor. And
[00:54:04] he couldn't just be killed without
[00:54:05] getting to speak to the emperor. That
[00:54:06] was a right they had. So citizenship has
[00:54:09] a ton of value. And so early on when
[00:54:13] Rome is expanding.
[00:54:15] It's not quite an empire yet. It's a a
[00:54:17] burgeoning republic. And one of the
[00:54:20] things they're going to do to enhance
[00:54:22] their military force is they're not
[00:54:24] going to ask for taxes. They're not
[00:54:26] going to ask for tribute. They're going
[00:54:28] to say, "You give us a certain amount of
[00:54:30] military men and we'll protect you." And
[00:54:33] then later on those conversations become
[00:54:35] about, well, we want citizenship. And if
[00:54:37] you look at the the late republic, the
[00:54:40] the Latins were people that lived in
[00:54:42] Italy, but they weren't Roman. So there
[00:54:44] was a big fight for can we have
[00:54:46] citizenship. So citizenship had a ton of
[00:54:48] value. And as you get into the late
[00:54:50] republic, it has even more value when
[00:54:52] things pop up like the grain dole. The
[00:54:54] Groey brothers in 133 BC, one of the
[00:54:58] reforms they do is they create something
[00:55:01] called the grain dole, which meant that
[00:55:03] citizens were guaranteed a certain
[00:55:05] amount of grain to be able to feed their
[00:55:07] families. And that's why the climate
[00:55:09] change I spoke about happening in the
[00:55:11] mid-range is a real problem for that
[00:55:13] because when grain prices start going
[00:55:14] up, well, that's going to fuel inflation
[00:55:16] even more because you have to feed
[00:55:17] everybody. So as you get into the 3rd
[00:55:19] century in 212 the emperor Kakala has
[00:55:23] basically bankrupted the treasury and
[00:55:27] citizenship though it had a lot of value
[00:55:30] to it also had a lot of taxes that were
[00:55:32] built into it. One of them was a was a
[00:55:34] big inheritance and death tax. So he
[00:55:36] gives 30 million people citizenship
[00:55:38] overnight. What's called the edict of
[00:55:40] Kakala. So that to me is the moment when
[00:55:43] citizenship starts to lose its value
[00:55:44] even more. 30 million
[00:55:46] >> 30 million people overnight. So now
[00:55:48] you're responsible for feeding those
[00:55:49] people, but you can tax them. So that's
[00:55:51] great, right? So those short-sighted
[00:55:53] solutions work out
[00:55:54] >> if they work. Yeah.
[00:55:56] >> So that is a real problem. So
[00:55:58] citizenship had value and people wanted
[00:56:00] to be a Roman citizen
[00:56:02] >> because you could live in a territory
[00:56:04] like North Africa, but you could be a
[00:56:07] Roman holding Roman office. So there was
[00:56:09] a pathway for you if you could get
[00:56:11] citizenship to be able to be in
[00:56:14] government to be able to have certain
[00:56:16] jobs to be able to advance certain ways
[00:56:18] in your career. So citizenship had a ton
[00:56:21] of value. So people wanted that and it's
[00:56:24] going to start to lose its value later
[00:56:26] on because
[00:56:28] well if Rome doesn't really have coin
[00:56:30] and if Rome doesn't really have power,
[00:56:32] why do I care about being a citizen of
[00:56:33] it? So that's something that's going to
[00:56:35] start to change. So we're looking at the
[00:56:38] immigration conversation.
[00:56:42] Initially they want to be part of Rome
[00:56:45] and initially they want to serve in the
[00:56:48] legions because that is a pathway for
[00:56:50] them to a better life. What starts to
[00:56:52] happen in the 3rd century is these Roman
[00:56:55] commanders. There's in a 50-year period
[00:56:58] there's 27 different guys that are going
[00:57:00] to claim to be emperor. It's called the
[00:57:02] crisis of the third century. and they're
[00:57:04] basically going to have a military
[00:57:05] behind them and see whoever they can
[00:57:07] kill to become the next emperor. You're
[00:57:09] going to have emperors that rule for
[00:57:10] months and just a couple years. So, it's
[00:57:12] a very hectic period. And what happens
[00:57:15] during that time period is the empire in
[00:57:18] the west actually starts to break apart.
[00:57:20] The part of it in the west becomes
[00:57:22] what's called the Golic Empire. This
[00:57:24] general named Posumus just decides,
[00:57:26] well, you can't stop me and this is my
[00:57:28] land. He'll have a Roman Senate. He'll
[00:57:30] have everything. In the east, you're
[00:57:31] going to have a territory break off
[00:57:32] called Palmyra, and there's a woman
[00:57:35] named Zenobia that actually manages to
[00:57:37] rule that for for a period. So, the
[00:57:39] empire is starting to disintegrate, and
[00:57:42] the empire doesn't have money to really
[00:57:44] pay for a lot of these things. So, they
[00:57:46] start making agreements with barbarian
[00:57:48] tribes in the north of you come here,
[00:57:50] we'll make you safe, we'll feed you. But
[00:57:52] then, since they don't have the money
[00:57:53] and politicians are corrupt, they stop
[00:57:55] having the ability to keep those
[00:57:56] agreements. So that's where your the
[00:57:59] quote unquote barbarian invasions start
[00:58:00] happening because Rome makes agreements,
[00:58:02] they can't keep the agreements and the
[00:58:05] barbarians start coming across. So it's
[00:58:08] if you were living in that 3rd century,
[00:58:09] it would have felt like your world was
[00:58:11] falling apart because the empire is
[00:58:13] disintegrating. You're starting to have
[00:58:15] more tribes coming in from the north.
[00:58:17] And the real, I guess, citizenship and
[00:58:21] and immigration conversation is they
[00:58:23] were so busy fighting each other like
[00:58:25] our politicians now. You know, maybe
[00:58:27] they're not
[00:58:28] >> and our people.
[00:58:29] >> Maybe they're not raising an army
[00:58:30] against each other, but we're that's all
[00:58:32] our news is, right? Is this politician
[00:58:34] against that politician or this about
[00:58:35] Lindsey Graham or this about Barack
[00:58:37] Obama?
[00:58:38] >> A propaganda war.
[00:58:40] >> Correct. It's a propaganda war. The way
[00:58:41] it's it's more of that um I think
[00:58:43] General Flynn calls it fifth
[00:58:45] generational warfare. It's kind of that
[00:58:46] more of a psychological type of warfare.
[00:58:49] So, it's a similar type of component
[00:58:51] when that's all they're worried about.
[00:58:54] Well, your borders start to break apart.
[00:58:56] And that's the real problem that Rome
[00:58:58] starts to have in the third century is
[00:59:00] they just start having people pouring in
[00:59:02] because they're more worried about
[00:59:04] fighting each other.
[00:59:06] >> Wow.
[00:59:06] >> And if you look at what we have now, how
[00:59:08] many million people do we have here that
[00:59:10] we don't know about?
[00:59:12] >> I lost count.
[00:59:14] >> Nobody actually knows. I am.
[00:59:15] >> And if you look at even Have you been to
[00:59:18] New York recently?
[00:59:20] >> Mhm.
[00:59:21] >> There is I think is it the Roosevelt
[00:59:23] Hotel where they're they're hosting a
[00:59:24] lot of uh like illegals?
[00:59:27] >> Uh I have no idea out of there as fast
[00:59:30] as possible.
[00:59:30] >> They get a lot of free I I live like 40
[00:59:32] minutes from there. So like they live a
[00:59:34] lot they one of the big places they
[00:59:36] house them is in these hotels that
[00:59:37] aren't really functioning anymore. If
[00:59:40] you walk past the Roosevelt Hotel,
[00:59:41] >> that shit's real. There's a dumpster out
[00:59:44] front with brand new things like
[00:59:47] strollers and things that are just
[00:59:48] thrown in there because they didn't even
[00:59:49] want them. So, it's like we're getting
[00:59:52] giving so much stuff to people that
[00:59:54] aren't even here legally. Well, that's
[00:59:58] causing an inflation problem, right? So,
[01:00:00] it's it's a similar pattern that you see
[01:00:02] in history.
[01:00:02] >> We're just giving people free [ __ ] in
[01:00:04] their
[01:00:05] >> You can walk right down the street past
[01:00:06] the Roosevelt Hotel. There's a dumpster
[01:00:08] out front with stuff in it that is brand
[01:00:10] new.
[01:00:13] Wow.
[01:00:16] So it's it creates a situation where
[01:00:19] when the only reason people are here is
[01:00:21] for the stuff mean or the money when the
[01:00:24] money doesn't have value. Well, what
[01:00:26] loyalty do they have to society and
[01:00:28] that's where you see these enclaves
[01:00:29] start to break apart like in Minnesota
[01:00:32] and Michigan and areas like that where
[01:00:35] sure they're here or you know with all
[01:00:37] the stuff with the Somalians happening
[01:00:38] recently. I know you had had uh Nick on
[01:00:40] not long ago talk about what's happening
[01:00:41] with Somalians.
[01:00:42] >> Well, they're here for the goodies they
[01:00:44] can get and they're just going to rig
[01:00:45] the system till they can get them.
[01:00:47] >> And that's a real problem when people
[01:00:48] start to be shortsighted and not
[01:00:51] worrying about, well, what is the future
[01:00:52] I'm creating for this system?
[01:00:59] Wow.
[01:01:01] Let's talk about the road to an empire.
[01:01:05] Kingdom, Republic, Empire, world.
[01:01:07] >> Yeah. So, as I mentioned, uh, Rome is
[01:01:10] traditionally a kingdom first, and
[01:01:11] there's there's seven traditional kings,
[01:01:14] and that's from 753 to 509. Um, now the
[01:01:20] republic, as I mentioned, it's a bit
[01:01:21] more of an oligarchy, but it is a much
[01:01:25] better place to live under.
[01:01:27] The
[01:01:29] republic itself starts to disintegrate
[01:01:31] in the last hundred years. It's what's
[01:01:33] called the uh there's a author named
[01:01:35] Ronald Simon. and he wrote a work called
[01:01:37] the Roman Revolution and that last 100
[01:01:40] years is called the Roman Revolution.
[01:01:42] There's a lot that happens in that time
[01:01:43] period. I think often people hear about
[01:01:46] Caesar crossing the Rubicon in 49 and
[01:01:48] that's how it ended. But for the most
[01:01:50] part, it's a climate if that makes
[01:01:52] sense. You have the Groey brothers that
[01:01:55] start doing these more um public-minded
[01:01:58] reforms. Then in the
[01:02:02] around the 100s, you have uh these two
[01:02:04] generals, Marius and Salah. And Salah
[01:02:07] was actually a which Salah by the way is
[01:02:10] uh Elon Musk's favorite Roman. Um, so I
[01:02:14] don't know if that tells you anything
[01:02:15] about him or or what not if you if you
[01:02:16] hear a little bit more about Solo, but
[01:02:18] um, Marius and was this commander and
[01:02:22] Sullah was a guy that fought under him
[01:02:24] and they're fighting against a barbarian
[01:02:27] tribe commander named Jaggera. And
[01:02:31] Sullah manages to capture Jagartha and
[01:02:36] Marius takes the credit by getting the
[01:02:37] triumphal parade. Uh, the Roman Triumph
[01:02:40] was a parade where a military commander
[01:02:42] would march through the streets of Rome
[01:02:44] dressed as the god Jupiter with his face
[01:02:46] painted red and all of the soldiers
[01:02:49] would be under arms because it was
[01:02:51] technically illegal to have weapons
[01:02:53] within the city walls because the city
[01:02:55] walls are considered sacred. But for a
[01:02:57] triumphal parade, you could have that.
[01:02:58] And they would also carry behind them
[01:03:01] the people they captured. So, Jagartha
[01:03:03] is going to be paraded in this parade
[01:03:04] and Marius is taking all the credit. So
[01:03:07] Marius and Salah start to have this
[01:03:10] disagreement on who's the most powerful
[01:03:12] guy. Later on as you go into the 80s BC,
[01:03:18] there's going to be a problem with
[01:03:19] pirates. Not that we don't modernly have
[01:03:21] a problem with piracy, right? These
[01:03:22] these things seem to continue. And
[01:03:26] Sullah gets the console ship to
[01:03:28] basically go handle the pirates. But
[01:03:30] Marius uses his political connections to
[01:03:33] get that position taken away from Salah
[01:03:35] and get that position himself. So then
[01:03:37] Salah is going to raise arms against
[01:03:39] Marius, which has never happened before.
[01:03:41] You don't have Roman commanders fighting
[01:03:42] against each other. So Marius is going
[01:03:45] to flee to Greece. He's going to die.
[01:03:47] He's he's of old age at this point in
[01:03:48] time. And he also held
[01:03:52] the political position of console seven
[01:03:54] times. Now console is kind of like if
[01:03:58] you looked at the idea of being
[01:03:59] president.
[01:04:00] >> Romans didn't like one man holding power
[01:04:02] because they hated kings. So every year
[01:04:04] they'd have two consoles and they would
[01:04:06] equally hold power so that not one man
[01:04:08] held power. You were supposed to hold
[01:04:11] that position every 10 years. Marius
[01:04:14] held it seven times. He didn't live to
[01:04:16] be 70 years old. So he starts breaking
[01:04:18] this pattern of how do you get offices.
[01:04:20] So you start to see this this breakdown,
[01:04:22] right, of first we're we're breaking
[01:04:25] down how the military functions, then
[01:04:27] we're breaking down how offices
[01:04:28] function, and then what
[01:04:33] Sullah is going to do in the year 78 is
[01:04:35] he's going to attack Rome. I'm sorry,
[01:04:37] 82, he's going to attack Rome, and he's
[01:04:39] going to get the title of dictator.
[01:04:41] Romans had this idea that if you have an
[01:04:44] emergency,
[01:04:46] having multiple people handling it was
[01:04:48] too much of a problem. So for 6 months
[01:04:50] you would get this power called dictator
[01:04:53] and after 6 months you were expected to
[01:04:55] lay down your arms. Sullah holds that
[01:04:57] power for four years. So he starts to
[01:05:00] really break down again what an office
[01:05:02] means and he creates this process called
[01:05:05] prescriptions. Now what prescriptions
[01:05:08] are was there was a list in the form of
[01:05:10] names and all of those people were to be
[01:05:12] killed and if you brought that person's
[01:05:15] head to the forum you would get their
[01:05:18] land, their goods, you could possibly
[01:05:21] get their titles. So what ends up
[01:05:22] happening is people's names that weren't
[01:05:26] people Solid didn't like but somebody
[01:05:27] else didn't like would get their name on
[01:05:29] the list because somebody wanted their
[01:05:30] stuff. So you start getting this
[01:05:32] breakdown of really what are societal
[01:05:35] mores and the way society functions. So
[01:05:38] so is a really big breaking point. Now
[01:05:42] on those list of prescriptions there's
[01:05:44] an 18-year-old named Julius Caesar.
[01:05:48] Caesar was supposed to be killed because
[01:05:50] Sullah wanted him to divorce his wife
[01:05:52] because he didn't like that Caesar was
[01:05:55] married to the wrong political person.
[01:05:57] So Caesar decides he's not going to do
[01:05:59] that and Caesar's mother, who's actually
[01:06:01] very connected, gets him removed from
[01:06:02] the list. So Caesar survives the
[01:06:04] prescriptions.
[01:06:06] Cella's going to die in 82. And then if
[01:06:09] you go down the road,
[01:06:11] Julius Caesar takes political power in
[01:06:13] 59 BC.
[01:06:15] He takes the console ship in that year.
[01:06:18] And the guy that's console with him is
[01:06:21] this guy named Marcus Biblas. And Marcus
[01:06:24] Biblas is basically a frontman for
[01:06:26] another politician named Kato the
[01:06:27] Younger. And Ko the Younger did not like
[01:06:30] Caesar. So anything he did politically,
[01:06:33] didn't matter if it was right, wrong,
[01:06:34] indifferent, he would block anything
[01:06:37] politically Caesar did.
[01:06:38] >> [ __ ] this sounds just like today.
[01:06:40] >> So what ended up happening is they had
[01:06:44] basically political mobs in that point
[01:06:45] in time and Marcus Biblas is forced out
[01:06:49] of the Senate and into his home for the
[01:06:51] rest of the year. So they end up calling
[01:06:53] it the console ship of Julius and Caesar
[01:06:56] because he rules the whole year by
[01:06:57] himself. And
[01:07:00] after that period he ends up getting
[01:07:02] what's called a proconsul ship. So
[01:07:04] proconsul ship is like a governor
[01:07:06] outside of the city of Rome. And that's
[01:07:08] if you've heard of the golic wars that's
[01:07:09] where Caesar basically goes kills about
[01:07:11] a million people and conquers deep into
[01:07:14] France.
[01:07:16] While he's in his last couple years of
[01:07:19] this, he hears word at the Senate that
[01:07:22] Kato has decided that he's going to
[01:07:24] raise political charges on him. And
[01:07:28] the way Roman society functioned,
[01:07:30] there's often this this trope about it
[01:07:32] that your first year in political
[01:07:36] office, you were paying off your debts
[01:07:38] because these people were heavily
[01:07:39] indebted in order to raise the money to
[01:07:41] become politicians. The next year, you
[01:07:43] were building your wealth. And the third
[01:07:45] year you were building whatever you
[01:07:46] could to not get prosecuted what you did
[01:07:48] during that year where you built your
[01:07:50] wealth. So Caesar owes a lot of money to
[01:07:53] a guy named Marcus Cassus. And a lot of
[01:07:57] what he did in Gaul paid off those
[01:07:58] debts. But then back in Rome, Ko starts
[01:08:02] creating charges that he wants to bring
[01:08:04] Caesar up on when he gets back into
[01:08:06] Rome. And when you're console or
[01:08:08] proconsul, you can't be brought up on
[01:08:10] charges. You're immune from prosecution.
[01:08:14] So
[01:08:15] Rome has a culture of, and if any of
[01:08:18] this is redundant, you can always stop
[01:08:20] me, but Rome has a culture of being
[01:08:22] elected in person.
[01:08:23] >> So in order to be elected for console
[01:08:26] again, Caesar would have to show up in
[01:08:28] Rome to be voted for. So he writes a
[01:08:31] letter to the Senate and he gets
[01:08:33] something passed that he can be voted
[01:08:35] for in abstentia which doesn't really
[01:08:37] happen because he has this idea if I
[01:08:39] come back to Rome where they're going to
[01:08:41] arrest me for these crimes that may be
[01:08:43] real or not real.
[01:08:46] Ko manages to get that order rescended.
[01:08:50] So now Caesar has to come back to Rome
[01:08:51] again. And that's a that's a real
[01:08:53] problem. So this is where the idea of
[01:08:56] Caesar crossing the Rubicon comes in.
[01:08:58] The Rubicon is this river in northern
[01:09:00] Italy. Modernly, we don't actually know
[01:09:02] where it is um because the landscape has
[01:09:04] changed so much, but it was the the
[01:09:06] northern border of Italy, likely
[01:09:08] somewhere near Milano in the north. So
[01:09:12] Caesar has about 10 legions. He leaves
[01:09:14] nine of them at the river and in 49 BC
[01:09:17] he crosses the river with a legion and
[01:09:19] he marches on Rome. So what ends up
[01:09:22] happening is those politicians including
[01:09:25] um Ko Pompy and a lot of others they
[01:09:29] leave the city. So Caesar comes into
[01:09:31] Rome, fights no one and he has the city
[01:09:33] of Rome and the
[01:09:38] Senate had actually given Pompy the
[01:09:40] power to fight Caesar. So over the next
[01:09:41] couple years, Caesar will be chasing
[01:09:43] Pompy around Europe and fighting him.
[01:09:45] And eventually the toll king is just
[01:09:48] going to behead Pompy and give and give
[01:09:50] his head to Caesar. So that is how you
[01:09:52] kind of get to the collapse of
[01:09:53] government. And cuz people will often
[01:09:56] say about Caesar of all the bad things
[01:09:58] he did, now I'm not saying he's a good
[01:09:59] guy, bad guy, but I am saying the people
[01:10:02] in political power did push him to do
[01:10:04] what he did.
[01:10:05] >> You get what I'm saying? They created an
[01:10:06] environment where he had no choice.
[01:10:08] >> Right, wrong, or indifferent. They
[01:10:10] created a situation where he had no
[01:10:13] choice but if I come to Rome, I'm gonna
[01:10:15] be arrested. I'm gonna be tried. Doesn't
[01:10:16] matter if these things are true or not
[01:10:18] true.
[01:10:19] So Ko is going to commit suicide by
[01:10:21] disembowing himself. Pompy's going to be
[01:10:24] killed. And then you get to the
[01:10:25] situation where Caesar is now in control
[01:10:28] of Rome. So he's named dictator. And
[01:10:31] later on in 44, he's going to be named
[01:10:33] dictator for life, which is something
[01:10:35] unheard of. It's akin to a king. Now, if
[01:10:38] you remember, I mentioned earlier, the
[01:10:39] last king of Rome is killed by a man
[01:10:42] named Brutus. Caesar is going to be
[01:10:45] later assassinated by two assassins
[01:10:47] named Brutus and Cases.
[01:10:50] When you look at family ties in Rome,
[01:10:52] not upsetting your ancestors is very
[01:10:54] important. A Roman house would actually
[01:10:57] have these wax death masks of people
[01:10:59] that have lived before them to remind
[01:11:01] them of what their ancestors did. M
[01:11:03] >> so to Brutus it was seen as a
[01:11:05] responsibility to remove someone they
[01:11:07] thought would be a monarch and when you
[01:11:09] look at how Rome collapses in that last
[01:11:11] 100 years it heats up with Caesar but
[01:11:14] it's a degrade into that position and if
[01:11:16] you look at modernly
[01:11:18] even what happened with Trump you know
[01:11:20] they pushing charges pushing charges
[01:11:22] pushing charges well you put him in a
[01:11:24] position where what do you expect him to
[01:11:26] do and I think that is where the system
[01:11:29] can actually cause the system to
[01:11:31] collapse and become something else. And
[01:11:33] Augustus, who's the first emperor, walks
[01:11:36] into this situation of 100 years of
[01:11:38] civil war. He brings peace and then I do
[01:11:42] think this is a bit of a a ruse, but
[01:11:44] then he says, "Okay, I'm going to
[01:11:44] retire." And the Senate in 23 demands
[01:11:49] that he stay in power and that's where
[01:11:51] they give him the title Augustus. So, it
[01:11:54] it really is kind of an interesting
[01:11:57] position to be in. It didn't become an
[01:11:59] empire because one man took power. It
[01:12:02] became an empire because political
[01:12:04] people fought for 100 years and then the
[01:12:06] last man standing was actually asked to
[01:12:09] stay.
[01:12:11] >> Interesting.
[01:12:12] >> That was long-winded. I apologize.
[01:12:15] >> Where are we at? Are we are we an
[01:12:18] empire?
[01:12:18] >> I think we've been an empire for a long
[01:12:20] time. And I think that because um are
[01:12:23] you familiar with what happened in the
[01:12:25] year 1913? what happened under the
[01:12:27] presidency of Woodro Wilson. It's a very
[01:12:29] pivotal year. There's three things that
[01:12:31] happened that year. The first is,
[01:12:35] you know, a lot of people be familiar
[01:12:36] with the Jackal Island meeting that
[01:12:37] created the Federal Reserve. That
[01:12:39] happens in 1913 and the Federal Reserve
[01:12:43] Act is passed over the Christmas break
[01:12:45] when
[01:12:45] >> go into that. Do you know about this?
[01:12:47] >> I don't know a ton about it, but the
[01:12:49] famous banking families um go off to
[01:12:51] Jackal Island. Um
[01:12:54] the Warberg family, who's one of the
[01:12:56] German banking families, is there um the
[01:12:59] Rockefellers are there. Um and they
[01:13:01] basically decide that they want to prop
[01:13:03] up a central bank because they want to
[01:13:06] protect their own assets because if you
[01:13:08] look at the Federal Reserve, it's not
[01:13:10] federal and it's not, you know, it
[01:13:11] doesn't have any reserves. It's
[01:13:13] basically a a cartel and it's owned by
[01:13:17] member banks and a lot of the member
[01:13:18] banks are banks you're aware of. And the
[01:13:21] bigger investor in them is the biz or
[01:13:24] the bank of international settlements in
[01:13:25] Basil. So it is really a cartel of
[01:13:28] banking. So they establish this thing in
[01:13:31] 1913. The other thing that passes that
[01:13:33] year is the 16th amendment for income
[01:13:36] tax because now if you have this bank,
[01:13:39] you have to have a way to fund it,
[01:13:40] right? And they're going to fund it by
[01:13:42] taxing people. They had tried taxes
[01:13:44] after the Civil War to this extent and
[01:13:46] it didn't last very long. But the income
[01:13:48] tax amendment sticks. The other thing
[01:13:51] that passes is the 17th amendment and
[01:13:53] this gets
[01:13:54] >> this is not even drawn up by government.
[01:13:58] >> The other thing that passes that year
[01:13:59] which no one seems to talk about and
[01:14:01] this actually would have been pivotal
[01:14:03] during co I was talking to to Jeremy
[01:14:04] about this before we got started here.
[01:14:06] Um it's pivotal. The 17th amendment
[01:14:10] makes it so so senators are no longer
[01:14:12] selected by state legislators. They're
[01:14:14] selected by popular vote. So what that
[01:14:17] means is the Senate and the House are
[01:14:19] voted for in the same way. And the
[01:14:21] reason that the Senate was voted for
[01:14:23] differently is so that states would have
[01:14:25] representation and the people would have
[01:14:26] representation. And if you look during
[01:14:29] the pandemic,
[01:14:31] a lot of states, their state legislators
[01:14:33] wanted to do something, but they
[01:14:35] couldn't because they didn't select
[01:14:36] their senators. And the reason they were
[01:14:40] doing this was to solve corruption
[01:14:41] because governors were naming their
[01:14:44] friend or their biggest donor to be the
[01:14:46] senator, which to me, you handle the
[01:14:48] corruption. You don't change the system.
[01:14:50] But if you look at 1913,
[01:14:52] we become less and less of a republic.
[01:14:55] And the presidency of FDR is even more
[01:14:59] pivotal in that because he's kind of the
[01:15:00] person that forms something totally
[01:15:02] different. He's elected to the
[01:15:04] presidency four times, creates the New
[01:15:06] Deal, starts ruling by more by executive
[01:15:08] order. And if you look at executive
[01:15:10] power now, the executive power far
[01:15:12] outweighs the other two branches of
[01:15:15] government. And
[01:15:17] you know, I I I liked Trump a lot when
[01:15:20] he got elected. I I like him a little
[01:15:22] bit less now for how some things have
[01:15:23] been handled, especially the Epstein
[01:15:24] files. But he's also ruling by executive
[01:15:27] order.
[01:15:27] >> I was going to say,
[01:15:28] >> and that's a big problem.
[01:15:30] >> Bush did it. Obama did it. Trump has
[01:15:32] done it and it's that's a real problem
[01:15:36] because people didn't vote for executive
[01:15:37] orders. you're ruling by mandate and and
[01:15:40] dictatorship it's in some ways yeah
[01:15:42] >> pretty damn close
[01:15:43] >> it becomes an imperial presidency and if
[01:15:45] you want to look at the moment that
[01:15:46] changed
[01:15:47] >> Wilson is kind of the moment really
[01:15:49] starts to tip because
[01:15:50] >> I don't know if you you're aware of this
[01:15:52] but during the first world war Wilson
[01:15:54] passed come something called the alien
[01:15:56] and sedition acts where he could lock
[01:15:58] you up for talking against the war
[01:16:00] efforts in America and then you have FDR
[01:16:04] that totally changes the system so to me
[01:16:07] we haven't a functional republic in a
[01:16:09] very long time. And if you look look at
[01:16:11] early
[01:16:12] >> Roman Empire,
[01:16:13] >> what's that?
[01:16:14] >> Over a hundred years.
[01:16:15] >> Over 100 years.
[01:16:17] So we haven't been a functional republic
[01:16:18] in a very long time. There's still some
[01:16:20] remnants of it, some vestigages of it,
[01:16:22] but we have not been a functional
[01:16:24] republic in a very long time.
[01:16:30] >> Wow.
[01:16:32] Let's take a break. Let's take a quick
[01:16:34] break.
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[01:19:39] All
[01:19:42] right, Jeremy, we're going on about how
[01:19:45] empires break, specifically the Roman
[01:19:47] Empire. And we we've talked about
[01:19:50] reoccurring pattern, monetary breakdown,
[01:19:53] debasement, inflation, loss of trust.
[01:19:57] >> Mhm.
[01:19:58] >> How was the how did that happen in the
[01:20:00] Roman Empire?
[01:20:01] >> Well, it goes that kind of ties back
[01:20:03] >> a huge loss of trust
[01:20:05] >> in American government. Well, it ties
[01:20:07] back to money really because the thing
[01:20:09] you have to look at is people weren't
[01:20:12] willing to accept the amount of money
[01:20:14] they were receiving because they know
[01:20:16] that the money doesn't have the value it
[01:20:18] did. So like with those coins I gave you
[01:20:20] in the beginning as I showed you like
[01:20:24] you could see on the coin that the dye
[01:20:28] that's used to cut the coin was used so
[01:20:30] many times it wasn't even cutting the
[01:20:31] coin properly anymore.
[01:20:32] >> That's why that happened. So they
[01:20:33] physically know that well this coin
[01:20:36] doesn't have the value right. So you're
[01:20:39] going to have actually black markets
[01:20:40] popping up like this is a big problem
[01:20:42] and um dialesian that's going to do
[01:20:45] reforms in the the end of the third
[01:20:46] century.
[01:20:47] >> Fake currency
[01:20:48] >> not not not fake currency like people
[01:20:50] literally trading
[01:20:53] going back to how they did things. You
[01:20:54] give me a sheep I'll give you some grain
[01:20:56] like going back to black market trading.
[01:20:58] Um, and people are, we were talking
[01:21:00] about gold prices earlier in the late
[01:21:02] 3rd century and and earlier, they start
[01:21:04] hoarding gold because they know this,
[01:21:06] the quote unquote silver they're using,
[01:21:08] which is now very obviously bronze,
[01:21:10] doesn't have any value. So, the gold
[01:21:12] isn't really in circulation because
[01:21:14] everybody's holding it. So, you start to
[01:21:16] have this real problem of people not
[01:21:17] trusting money and it starts to break
[01:21:19] the economy because now trade is
[01:21:21] breaking down. Um, you also start to
[01:21:23] have the the problem of
[01:21:26] people not knowing how long the person
[01:21:28] that's calling himself emperor is going
[01:21:29] to be in power. So that's also going to
[01:21:32] change loyalties because a lot of times
[01:21:35] you're going to have, I guess, people in
[01:21:37] their retinue is an easy way to put it
[01:21:38] that know if this guy becomes emperor,
[01:21:40] I'm probably going to get this job. So
[01:21:42] those things are going to start to break
[01:21:44] down and they're going to kind of roll
[01:21:45] the dice with whoever they think has the
[01:21:46] most power.
[01:21:47] >> Uh, can we stop right there? when you're
[01:21:49] talking. So, how long was So, it went to
[01:21:52] it went from terms to just to life.
[01:21:57] >> What do you mean
[01:21:58] >> with Caesar? Correct.
[01:22:00] >> Oh, okay. So, yes,
[01:22:01] >> you went from you went from you have x
[01:22:03] amount of like like today what we have
[01:22:05] you have,
[01:22:06] >> you know, eight years potential be a
[01:22:09] president,
[01:22:09] >> right?
[01:22:10] >> And then Caesar comes along and it's
[01:22:13] just a lifetime. That is what ends up
[01:22:16] happening that but the the thing you
[01:22:17] have to understand is it's kind of so
[01:22:19] first of all the Roman constitution
[01:22:21] wasn't written it was an oral
[01:22:22] constitution and every time things
[01:22:24] changed they would alter how they did
[01:22:27] things right
[01:22:28] >> it was an oral constitution
[01:22:29] >> was an oral constitution now there were
[01:22:30] certain in the early republic there's
[01:22:33] something called the 12 tables which are
[01:22:34] kind of the basic laws of what the rich
[01:22:36] people couldn't do to the poor people
[01:22:38] >> but it wasn't a written constitution it
[01:22:40] was oral they were very much based in
[01:22:41] tradition so that's this is the way
[01:22:44] we've always done things. This is the
[01:22:45] way we're always going to do things. And
[01:22:47] they would alter it when a crisis would
[01:22:48] come and that's how you start to get
[01:22:50] some of these weird things happening.
[01:22:51] But there Rome did not have a written
[01:22:52] constitution.
[01:22:55] >> Would it be
[01:22:59] >> that seems like that would have been
[01:23:01] maybe a major major reason for the
[01:23:04] downfall?
[01:23:05] >> Yes.
[01:23:05] >> I mean, if there's no written
[01:23:07] >> but it worked for 400 years, right? So
[01:23:09] it's it's it worked for 400 years and it
[01:23:11] was only when you get someone like Gas
[01:23:14] Marius saying, "Well, you know what? I
[01:23:16] know you're supposed to wait 10 years
[01:23:17] before you have a console ship. I'm
[01:23:19] going to have seven of them." So it's it
[01:23:21] held pretty true for a long time until
[01:23:24] you get people that start deciding
[01:23:25] they're going to break those norms of
[01:23:28] the way we do things because Romans were
[01:23:30] very based on tradition. Tradition was
[01:23:33] very, very important to them. And even
[01:23:35] political office, you couldn't just be
[01:23:38] console if you wanted to be console.
[01:23:40] They had something called the corsorum.
[01:23:42] And there was a a list of political
[01:23:44] offices you would have to go through
[01:23:45] before you could actually be a console.
[01:23:47] And so because of that, people would be
[01:23:50] more seasoned, I guess, by the time they
[01:23:52] get that political position. But that
[01:23:54] also starts breaking down because um
[01:23:57] Pompy the Great, the the great conqueror
[01:23:59] of Rome um was a kind of subgeneral
[01:24:04] under Sullah that we talked about
[01:24:06] earlier and he ends up becoming console
[01:24:09] without holding any of the other
[01:24:11] political offices because Sullah just
[01:24:13] says you could be console. So these
[01:24:16] norms start breaking down but for a
[01:24:18] really long time they held in place. Um,
[01:24:21] so yes, it wasn't written, but they were
[01:24:23] very much based in tradition of how we
[01:24:25] do things. You know, you have to be 35
[01:24:28] years old before you can do this, 40
[01:24:29] years old before you can do this. You
[01:24:31] can only be a a senator once you've
[01:24:33] already been a console. So they held
[01:24:36] very strongly to tradition. It really
[01:24:37] did tie them. But after those ties start
[01:24:40] to break, it becomes much much easier to
[01:24:43] break them. So and they even marked
[01:24:45] their years by who was in office that
[01:24:48] year. It wasn't like it's the year 2026.
[01:24:50] It was this is the year of Caesar and
[01:24:52] Biblius. That's how they mark their
[01:24:54] years. Um that's going to change under
[01:24:57] Caesar because he's actually the one
[01:24:58] that creates the um the Julian calendar.
[01:25:02] Um because Romans had this problem where
[01:25:05] their calendar
[01:25:07] was missing like 30 to 50 days. So every
[01:25:11] couple years the seasons would get way
[01:25:13] off. Like they their calendar would say
[01:25:16] it's summer when it's actually winter.
[01:25:17] and they'd have all these kind of weird
[01:25:19] things. So, so Caesar creates the Julian
[01:25:21] calendar to try and fix the calendar.
[01:25:23] That's one of the the reforms that
[01:25:24] Caesar does in his his time as dictator.
[01:25:27] So
[01:25:29] after that, you are going to have people
[01:25:31] that are in office for life. And that's
[01:25:33] why when you have an emperor, if you
[01:25:35] have a bad emperor, you know, kind of
[01:25:37] buckle up because you're going to be in
[01:25:39] it for a very long time period until
[01:25:41] either he dies of natural causes or
[01:25:43] somebody kills him. And that's where the
[01:25:45] Ptorian guard being the power behind the
[01:25:47] throne becomes very important because
[01:25:49] they can decide, okay, we don't like
[01:25:51] this guy. We're going to kill him. And
[01:25:53] that's what happens. The the first
[01:25:54] emperor for that to happen to is uh
[01:25:57] Caligula. And Caligula, which by the
[01:26:00] way, his father Germanicus was in the
[01:26:03] Roman army. And um Caligula's name would
[01:26:06] have been uh Gas Germanicus, but
[01:26:10] Caligula the name is actually a
[01:26:11] nickname. when his father was in the
[01:26:13] military, they dressed him up in a
[01:26:14] little military uniform. And the name
[01:26:16] Caligi is the name for Roman boots. So
[01:26:20] Caligula Caligula means bootance. So
[01:26:23] he's killed by the Ptorian Guard and his
[01:26:27] uncle Claudius is put in his place. So
[01:26:29] you do have kind of this things aren't
[01:26:32] going so well. The Ptorian Guard's going
[01:26:33] to take out the guy in power.
[01:26:35] >> So the Ptorian Guard
[01:26:36] >> Mhm.
[01:26:37] >> are they
[01:26:39] where do they get their decision-m from?
[01:26:41] Are they are they are they of the
[01:26:43] people?
[01:26:44] >> So they are the
[01:26:45] >> are they the pulse of the people or are
[01:26:47] they strictly a shadow government?
[01:26:50] >> So they were originally the private
[01:26:52] bodyguard of the emperor Augustus
[01:26:54] >> and they just become the protector of
[01:26:55] emperors.
[01:26:56] >> They wouldn't have cared what the people
[01:26:58] thought. They would have cared about
[01:27:00] being so close to the wheels of power.
[01:27:02] >> So for them that's why they're looking
[01:27:05] at well this situation isn't going so
[01:27:06] well. This guy's crazy. I need to get
[01:27:08] rid of them because
[01:27:09] >> so they're the only ones that determine
[01:27:11] that the current emperor, king, whatever
[01:27:15] ruler is crazy.
[01:27:17] >> Not it's not take into account the
[01:27:21] citizens of Rome.
[01:27:23] >> It's it's not that there is even a
[01:27:24] process. They're just looking at
[01:27:26] political positioning, right? It's not
[01:27:28] like, oh, things are going bad. Ptorian
[01:27:30] guard's going to get rid of the emperor.
[01:27:31] It's just they're looking at it and
[01:27:32] they're saying, okay, this is bad for
[01:27:34] our future. we're going to take out this
[01:27:37] guy. And you do often have um like if
[01:27:40] you look at the second emperor,
[01:27:40] Tiberius,
[01:27:42] he has uh his Ptorian prefect Senus
[01:27:46] actually tries to replace Tiberius with
[01:27:49] himself. And uh Tiberius is a wild guy,
[01:27:52] by the way. He lives on the he leaves
[01:27:54] Rome. He lives on the island of Capri
[01:27:56] and he has like a sex palace there. And
[01:27:59] he would have preubescent poise swimming
[01:28:01] in his pool that he called his little
[01:28:03] fishes. And so he was abusing children.
[01:28:06] They look at why Caracala might have
[01:28:08] been so or Cleula made him so crazy
[01:28:10] because he was living at Tiberius's
[01:28:12] palace. So he likely saw a lot of things
[01:28:15] as as a kid in addition to he later had
[01:28:18] some sort of a a fever that they can't
[01:28:20] quite say what it is. But during this
[01:28:23] time period, Suganis actually tries to
[01:28:25] position himself to be emperor. All
[01:28:28] decisions have to go through him. All
[01:28:30] laws have to go through him because
[01:28:32] Tiberius is off not even caring about
[01:28:34] ruling the country. He's off with his
[01:28:36] little fishes. So, it's a very
[01:28:40] weird system in the way it operates.
[01:28:42] There's no like this is where the
[01:28:43] emperor stops and this is where the
[01:28:44] Ptorian guard begins. It's where can I
[01:28:47] get political positioning and where can
[01:28:48] I guess set myself up to to rule.
[01:28:52] >> How do you get into the how do you say
[01:28:54] it?
[01:28:55] >> The Ptorian Guard.
[01:28:56] >> Ptorian Guard. How do you get in there?
[01:28:58] >> You're selected by the emperor. How many
[01:28:59] of them are there?
[01:29:01] >> I don't know the number that changes
[01:29:02] >> selected by the emperor.
[01:29:03] >> It changes changes over the years. So I
[01:29:05] don't know the the exact number, but the
[01:29:08] pritorian prefect would have been the
[01:29:09] most powerful of them.
[01:29:10] >> So each emperor picks the ptorian guard
[01:29:13] and then they kill.
[01:29:14] >> Well, he's going to predict he's going
[01:29:15] to he's going to pick new ones, right?
[01:29:17] You would have that position kind of as
[01:29:19] your military position until you're
[01:29:20] retired, but he might add new ones. The
[01:29:23] only time that they totally change is
[01:29:25] when
[01:29:26] >> So this would be kind of like
[01:29:29] Supreme Court.
[01:29:31] >> Uh,
[01:29:32] it's kind of like if the Supreme Court
[01:29:35] >> one's done, you get to pick another one,
[01:29:37] but you don't get to pick them out.
[01:29:38] >> But it's also like in in terms of
[01:29:40] function, you could look at it as if the
[01:29:43] Supreme Court, the CIA, the FBI, and and
[01:29:45] the Secret Service had a baby. You know,
[01:29:47] it's kind of like
[01:29:47] >> Sounds horrible.
[01:29:49] >> It's kind They did a lot of things like
[01:29:51] you could look at them really as the the
[01:29:53] power of the deep state behind the
[01:29:55] throne.
[01:29:56] >> Okay.
[01:29:57] Okay.
[01:29:59] >> And there are times when all of them are
[01:30:01] replaced like as I mentioned uh
[01:30:02] Septimius Seis after the death of um
[01:30:06] after the death of uh Ddius Giulianus
[01:30:10] um replaces all of them and puts his own
[01:30:12] men in there and he executes a bunch of
[01:30:14] them and lets and and takes others and
[01:30:16] just kicks them out of Rome. And in 30
[01:30:21] 311 when Constantine takes power he's
[01:30:23] actually going to disband the Ptorian
[01:30:25] Guard. So that's the end of the guard.
[01:30:27] They had this stronghold called the
[01:30:29] Castro Pritoria and it was kind of like
[01:30:31] their military stronghold. So they
[01:30:33] really do become almost like an empire
[01:30:35] of power within the empire.
[01:30:42] You know, if you read Romans and the
[01:30:45] Bible Yeah.
[01:30:50] in that reading that it sounds like
[01:30:52] you're reading what's happening today,
[01:30:55] too. I think in my opinion,
[01:30:57] >> I I've made a lot of comparisons between
[01:31:01] what you're seeing happen with the FBI
[01:31:03] and what you're seeing happen with, I
[01:31:04] guess, Trump, for example.
[01:31:06] >> You know, it's this people that have
[01:31:08] been there for a really long time.
[01:31:09] They've decided he's not going to do
[01:31:10] what he's going to do and they're going
[01:31:12] to stop it.
[01:31:12] >> The Ptorian Guard would have been the
[01:31:14] same way. They have their own political
[01:31:15] leanings. They have their own things
[01:31:16] they want done and they're responsible
[01:31:19] for protecting the emperor. So they have
[01:31:22] the best opportunity to kill the
[01:31:23] emperor.
[01:31:25] >> Interesting.
[01:31:31] We talked about demographic and border
[01:31:33] pressure pretty much m im immigration. I
[01:31:36] mean what are the people thinking of all
[01:31:38] of that? Do the people even matter at
[01:31:40] all?
[01:31:41] >> So you have to understand like there's
[01:31:43] not a lot of history about the people.
[01:31:44] And there's one of my favorite um like I
[01:31:47] like doing great courses. I don't know
[01:31:48] if you've ever done that before, but
[01:31:49] they're like lecture series you can get
[01:31:51] a hold of. And one of my favorite is by
[01:31:52] a guy named uh Dr. Gregory Aldrey. And
[01:31:55] he talks about in Roman history, one of
[01:31:58] the biggest missing pieces that we have
[01:32:00] is
[01:32:01] what did the regular people do during
[01:32:03] their lives? Because for them it was
[01:32:05] survival. They were worried about
[01:32:07] flooding. The Tyber River would flood
[01:32:09] every year. They were worried about
[01:32:10] disease. They were worried about dying
[01:32:12] from random things. They were worried
[01:32:14] about being able to pay for things. They
[01:32:16] didn't really have time to care about
[01:32:18] those things. And as you get into the
[01:32:20] later empire, a lot of them would have
[01:32:22] never even seen an emperor, right? So,
[01:32:24] it's their life is just so drastically
[01:32:27] different than those that have money or
[01:32:29] those that have political power. They're
[01:32:30] just worried about survival. They lived
[01:32:32] in these giant apartment buildings that
[01:32:34] were called insuli. And they were just
[01:32:37] these giant like tenement type
[01:32:39] buildings. And when people think about
[01:32:42] going back to Rome, the thing that you
[01:32:45] wouldn't quite think of that would be a
[01:32:47] big deal is it would have smelled god
[01:32:49] awful at all times.
[01:32:52] Yes, they had a sewer system, but it
[01:32:54] only worked in people's houses that had
[01:32:56] the money for it to work. There were
[01:32:58] sewers in the street, so people would go
[01:33:00] to the bathroom in copper pots, and they
[01:33:02] were expected to go down their apartment
[01:33:04] building and throw it in the drain. But
[01:33:07] that's a lot of floors to go down. they
[01:33:08] would dump it in the streets. So, if
[01:33:10] you've ever seen these imageries of
[01:33:12] people being carried around on these,
[01:33:14] they're called litters, carried around
[01:33:15] the city, it's literally because they
[01:33:17] didn't want to step in urine and
[01:33:18] excrement because it would have just
[01:33:20] been everywhere. That's why the if
[01:33:22] you've ever been to Pompei, the curbs
[01:33:24] are like very high because the the
[01:33:26] streets would have been filled with lots
[01:33:28] of urine and excrement
[01:33:31] and horse dung and all their sorts of
[01:33:33] things
[01:33:34] >> like San Francisco.
[01:33:35] >> Exactly. Exactly like San Francisco.
[01:33:40] centralization of power, emergency
[01:33:42] authority becomes permanent.
[01:33:46] >> So that's a really important point
[01:33:47] because as I mentioned earlier, Rome had
[01:33:50] an oral constitution and when a crisis
[01:33:53] arose,
[01:33:54] they would alter it to handle the
[01:33:56] crisis. But the problem is once you do
[01:33:58] that, you don't go back. And if you look
[01:34:00] at that with a lot of things we've
[01:34:01] experienced,
[01:34:03] the war on terror or 9/11 or a lot of
[01:34:06] these different things that happened,
[01:34:08] the Patriot Act has dramatically changed
[01:34:09] our lives. We're not going back. Like
[01:34:11] that exists. And there's a lot of these
[01:34:13] different things that we've changed our
[01:34:15] society because of, you know, Rome was
[01:34:17] very similar in a lot of ways. you know,
[01:34:19] uh, an emperor gives away citizenship
[01:34:22] because he needs to handle the treasury
[01:34:24] or Christians are being persecuted
[01:34:26] because they want to bring back the
[01:34:28] peace of the gods. So, they're trying to
[01:34:30] handle whatever is there right now
[01:34:31] because they couldn't think in the
[01:34:33] future, right? Because especially in the
[01:34:34] 3rd century, these guys are living such
[01:34:36] a short period of time. They're thinking
[01:34:39] about what do I have to do to live? What
[01:34:40] do I have to do to survive? One of the
[01:34:43] last emperors to even rule 20 years um
[01:34:46] is Seis Alexander who dies in 238. That
[01:34:49] doesn't happen again until 284 because
[01:34:52] these guys, as I mentioned, 27 of them.
[01:34:55] >> Wow.
[01:34:55] >> At least. There there's been some
[01:34:57] research that they found coins of other
[01:35:00] emperors. That's how you would know
[01:35:01] somebody was emperor. You can find coins
[01:35:03] that that prove they existed.
[01:35:05] >> So,
[01:35:07] you're not going to have somebody rule
[01:35:08] again for 20 years until Dialesian in
[01:35:10] 284. So these terms are so short,
[01:35:13] they're just thinking about survival.
[01:35:14] And that's when the empire starts to
[01:35:16] change dramatically. And we can see that
[01:35:18] now with each crisis altering how we
[01:35:20] operate, right? You look at
[01:35:22] >> even with a lot of the the woke stuff
[01:35:24] that's happened. Like the verbiage we
[01:35:25] used to use, we can't use anymore.
[01:35:27] >> That's what I was kind of getting at in
[01:35:28] the Bible is a lot of the woke stuff, a
[01:35:30] lot of the gender stuff, a lot that was
[01:35:33] all happening in Rome. Correct. That was
[01:35:35] all happening in Rome.
[01:35:37] >> Yeah. Like one of my favorite all-time
[01:35:39] movies is Tropic Thunder. And you could
[01:35:41] never make that movie now. You couldn't
[01:35:43] because because things have just changed
[01:35:45] so much. Like Robert Downey Jr.'s
[01:35:46] character is hilarious, but you could
[01:35:48] never do that now.
[01:35:49] >> But if you look at
[01:35:51] especially in the third century, we
[01:35:53] mentioned Elgabilus like he's
[01:35:56] there's even stories that he had his own
[01:35:58] genitalia removed because he wanted to
[01:36:00] be the other gender. So there's
[01:36:03] >> all these things start
[01:36:04] >> all these things start to happen where
[01:36:06] you know gender becomes more fluid. Um
[01:36:10] mores start to change and and and alter
[01:36:12] morals start to change. We start to do
[01:36:14] whatever we have to do with our money
[01:36:16] right now. Right? If you're debasing
[01:36:17] currency you're not thinking about
[01:36:18] what's going to happen 10 years from
[01:36:19] now. So a lot of these one-time crisis
[01:36:23] handlings become a future solution. you
[01:36:25] know, a a emperor holding power by
[01:36:28] having a military behind him becomes the
[01:36:31] way things go after the after the crisis
[01:36:34] of the third century. So, if you don't
[01:36:35] have the right military, you're not
[01:36:37] going to be emperor. That's not how it
[01:36:39] worked early on.
[01:36:40] >> What were people putting their putting
[01:36:42] their money in to save value? Did they
[01:36:45] realize it was happening? Did they
[01:36:46] realize they had to have?
[01:36:48] >> Well, for regular people, um, there
[01:36:51] wouldn't have been much understanding.
[01:36:52] is just as I said survival for the the
[01:36:55] rich. There was problems of them
[01:37:00] stealing public land for themselves and
[01:37:01] farming on it because there was nobody
[01:37:03] to really stop them
[01:37:04] >> because Rome had a lot of like public
[01:37:06] lands. So that's something you're going
[01:37:09] to see. But you're also going to see
[01:37:10] they're putting their their beans more
[01:37:13] in political power, right? Because
[01:37:15] >> they don't know where the money's going,
[01:37:16] but they're hoping that this next guy
[01:37:18] could be the guy that gives them
[01:37:19] something. So that's really what you're
[01:37:21] going to see in terms of like where
[01:37:23] people are putting their money because
[01:37:25] the money is changing so dramatically.
[01:37:27] It's 15,000% inflation by the 280s,
[01:37:30] which is insane.
[01:37:33] I I don't know what percentage we're at
[01:37:35] now, but it's it's not good. I know
[01:37:37] Thomas Massie wears that pin that shows
[01:37:40] the national debt just rolling over and
[01:37:41] over and over again.
[01:37:45] >> It's worth nothing
[01:37:47] >> at this point. It is. is and and if the
[01:37:49] the person that fixes it, if they did,
[01:37:51] isn't going to be very popular because
[01:37:53] we'd have to deal with what we've done.
[01:37:55] And I think that's the the point you get
[01:37:57] to.
[01:37:58] >> Did they try to deal with it?
[01:38:00] >> They did um in a couple different ways.
[01:38:03] There's the unsuccessful way and there's
[01:38:05] the successful way. Um so the crisis of
[01:38:07] the 3rd century, as I mentioned, goes
[01:38:09] from 238 to 284. And that's where
[01:38:14] the empire breaks off in the east,
[01:38:15] breaks off in the west. you start to
[01:38:16] have more barbarians pushing in. And in
[01:38:20] the 270s, there's this emperor named
[01:38:22] Aurelion. And in 5 years, he puts the
[01:38:24] whole thing back together. He brings the
[01:38:26] east back. He brings the West back. And
[01:38:29] he puts the borders back where they are.
[01:38:31] So the gratitude he gets is he's killed
[01:38:35] by his secretary.
[01:38:37] And then the next gentleman that they
[01:38:39] pick is
[01:38:42] an old scenile type person that does not
[01:38:45] want to be emperor. He does not want the
[01:38:47] job. So they basically push him into
[01:38:49] being emperor because it starts to
[01:38:51] become a death sentence. By the time you
[01:38:53] get to 284 when Dialesian takes over,
[01:38:57] he's a military man. So he looks at how
[01:38:59] you run a country very different or you
[01:39:02] know a civilization very differently.
[01:39:05] And so he divides it up differently. The
[01:39:08] word dascese uh which is used by the
[01:39:11] church now is is the actual divisions
[01:39:13] that he created within the empire. Um
[01:39:16] earlier and still at this point they're
[01:39:18] going to have the larger sections which
[01:39:19] are provinces but then he breaks them
[01:39:22] down into military sections called
[01:39:23] dascese
[01:39:25] and he also puts the borders uh he puts
[01:39:28] better control in the borders. So then
[01:39:30] he he creates these two new positions.
[01:39:32] One is called uh a dukes which is later
[01:39:35] going to become duke in the middle the
[01:39:37] middle ages and the dukes is responsible
[01:39:40] for handling one of these dioces
[01:39:42] militarily and then on the borders he
[01:39:45] puts these
[01:39:47] uh guard post that are called kates run
[01:39:49] by someone called the kes which is later
[01:39:52] going to become the word count. So he
[01:39:54] really starts to sh up the borders in
[01:39:55] this way but the other thing he does is
[01:39:58] he creates something called the
[01:39:59] tetrarchy which means rule by four. So
[01:40:03] he creates two senior emperors including
[01:40:05] himself and two junior emperors because
[01:40:07] this empire is too big for one person is
[01:40:09] what he realizes and he's still always
[01:40:12] the one that's the most senior but now
[01:40:14] he has a colleague and he has two junior
[01:40:16] colleagues and that's the thing they
[01:40:18] actually do to get to stabilize it. So
[01:40:20] the borders stabilize the civil wars
[01:40:23] start to stop but what he does to fix
[01:40:27] other things doesn't really help. like
[01:40:29] he does something called the edict of
[01:40:31] maximum prices which is price controls
[01:40:33] and you can see that in any society when
[01:40:35] you put in price controls that really
[01:40:37] doesn't work because that fuels the
[01:40:39] black market we were talking about
[01:40:40] earlier even more so you're going to see
[01:40:42] the black market start to get even more
[01:40:45] prevalent. Another thing he's going to
[01:40:47] do is he's going to dramatically
[01:40:49] increase taxes
[01:40:51] because the empire needs more money.
[01:40:53] Another thing he's going to do is he's
[01:40:56] going to start making it so it's less
[01:40:58] easy to have like social movement. So if
[01:41:01] your father is a farmer, well, you're
[01:41:04] now a farmer. So he starts to lock
[01:41:06] social positions. So you can kind of
[01:41:08] see, and I've had some disagreements
[01:41:11] with medievalists about this, but you
[01:41:12] can start to see the beginnings of what
[01:41:14] becomes the Middle Ages, right? How some
[01:41:16] of these things start to function. We're
[01:41:17] not all the way there, but we we we
[01:41:19] start to get there. He also changes the
[01:41:21] way he's presented. Um he's the first
[01:41:24] one to wear um a golden diadem which is
[01:41:26] a crown and that's something that you're
[01:41:28] going to see after this point all
[01:41:29] emperors wear. He also changes the
[01:41:35] kind of political class and he greatly
[01:41:37] enlarges the political class and starts
[01:41:39] to have people that their jobs are just
[01:41:41] being professional politicians. It is
[01:41:44] their bureaucrats bureaucrats. He
[01:41:46] creates a massive bureaucracy. So now
[01:41:49] he's really started
[01:41:50] >> he's started to build a court around
[01:41:52] himself and he's actually going to move
[01:41:55] the power center
[01:41:57] from Rome to a city called Nicamedia in
[01:41:59] the east which is closer to where he's
[01:42:01] from. He's from uh a city called Split
[01:42:04] which is in Croatia. So you're going to
[01:42:08] see Rome become less and less important.
[01:42:10] And actually by the late empire the
[01:42:12] western emperor is actually going to be
[01:42:14] based in Ravena which is in the swamps
[01:42:15] in kind of northern Italy. So you really
[01:42:19] do see his reforms are an attempt to fix
[01:42:22] something. You can see what he's trying
[01:42:24] to do, but it doesn't actually fix
[01:42:26] anything long term. Now I think
[01:42:28] Constantine is really the better version
[01:42:30] of how you fix things. Um the number one
[01:42:33] thing he does, as I mentioned, is
[01:42:34] monetary reform. He puts them on a gold
[01:42:36] standard and that really does help the
[01:42:39] East. He also understands that
[01:42:42] people need to believe in something like
[01:42:44] it is important to have people believing
[01:42:46] in something and I think that's he has
[01:42:48] this religious awakening but I think
[01:42:50] that's also something he's considering
[01:42:51] is that people need to have some
[01:42:53] cohesion. So Christianity is a big part
[01:42:56] of creating this cohesion of the Eastern
[01:42:59] Empire. So if you look at that that's
[01:43:02] how you know you can kind of do it the
[01:43:04] right way versus the wrong way. But
[01:43:05] there are different ways that were tried
[01:43:07] to restore the power.
[01:43:09] How did Constantine do that? How did he
[01:43:11] bring in Christianity?
[01:43:13] >> So, it's kind of a gradual thing, but he
[01:43:14] has
[01:43:15] >> How do you do that? How do you I mean,
[01:43:16] so what was the what everybody's
[01:43:19] worshiping the Roman gods and the ones
[01:43:22] that they brought in?
[01:43:23] >> And the ones that they brought in
[01:43:24] >> and then they and then they try to bring
[01:43:26] in Christianity. How how did they do
[01:43:28] that?
[01:43:28] >> So, Christianity is about somewhere
[01:43:31] between 2 and 5% of the empire at this
[01:43:33] point in time. So, it's not like a a big
[01:43:36] important thing, but by what he does, it
[01:43:38] it makes it more important. Um, I'd
[01:43:40] mentioned earlier after the battle of
[01:43:42] Milvian Bridge, he has this vision and
[01:43:44] he he beats his his uh Miss Maxentious,
[01:43:49] who's the guy he's not in he's fighting
[01:43:51] about who's going to be emperor. And
[01:43:54] after that, he the first thing he starts
[01:43:56] to do is he starts to put more
[01:43:59] Christians in political positions. So
[01:44:01] that's going to start causing people to
[01:44:04] convert to Christianity for that. Um, so
[01:44:07] it is initially I guess more of a
[01:44:09] political move, but at the same time
[01:44:13] he had to believe something happened.
[01:44:14] You know what I mean? And it's it's it's
[01:44:16] often something that that's cited that
[01:44:18] he believes that because of this
[01:44:21] spiritual awakening he had, he was able
[01:44:23] to be in his position. And I guess the
[01:44:25] thing you have to look at
[01:44:27] is
[01:44:29] it has to be something
[01:44:32] God-given or something spiritual for
[01:44:34] something that is such a minor thing to
[01:44:36] become such a major thing. Do you know
[01:44:37] what I mean? It's
[01:44:38] >> well
[01:44:40] I mean introducing I mean I see now I
[01:44:44] see how he did it but I mean this is
[01:44:46] this is a tale as old as time. I mean,
[01:44:49] wars start because of religion and then
[01:44:52] he's imposing Christianity on
[01:44:55] >> the Roman Empire. I was I'm curious how
[01:44:57] it went because generally no no matter
[01:45:00] what religion you're
[01:45:01] >> seems it went well because less than 100
[01:45:03] years it's a Christian empire.
[01:45:04] >> Yeah. When was the when was the Vatican
[01:45:07] introduced?
[01:45:08] >> That's way down the road. Um okay.
[01:45:10] >> So that's you're looking towards
[01:45:13] >> um
[01:45:15] the church of John St. John Lateran is
[01:45:17] one of the first like main Vatican
[01:45:18] churches that's built. That's a like a
[01:45:21] early medieval church.
[01:45:22] >> Okay. So,
[01:45:23] >> the current St. Peters I think isn't
[01:45:24] built until it's like after Julius II or
[01:45:28] something like that. Pope Julius II. So,
[01:45:30] we're looking at like the 15 or 1600s.
[01:45:32] So,
[01:45:32] >> okay.
[01:45:33] >> So, it's and the medieval pap like the
[01:45:36] early so this time period is called the
[01:45:39] late antiquity when you when you when
[01:45:40] you're trying to classify it. And
[01:45:44] excuse me, the um
[01:45:47] the pope during this point is is really
[01:45:49] just another bishop, but he's the bishop
[01:45:51] of Rome. The the way that he ends up
[01:45:53] becoming more powerful is you have all
[01:45:56] these other different Christian beliefs
[01:45:58] and they're trying to agree like what do
[01:46:00] we believe? And they start using the
[01:46:02] bishop of Rome to
[01:46:05] basically arbitrate between them. So
[01:46:07] that's how the the papacy starts getting
[01:46:09] more power is people start looking to
[01:46:11] Rome to handle a lot of these other
[01:46:13] situations happening outside in kind of
[01:46:15] the the provinces
[01:46:19] >> with the immigration stuff.
[01:46:21] >> Yeah.
[01:46:25] >> What's considered an immigrant in the
[01:46:27] Roman Empire? These are these lands
[01:46:30] they've conquered and then they're
[01:46:32] bringing the people in. That's a very
[01:46:35] >> readjusting borders and all this stuff.
[01:46:37] So I mean how how are they how are they
[01:46:39] readjusting borders? I wouldn't imagine
[01:46:41] they shrank.
[01:46:42] >> Yeah. Well, the furthest extent of the
[01:46:45] empire is in 117 under Traan and they
[01:46:49] kind of changed their policy of conquest
[01:46:50] after that because Rome had grown by
[01:46:53] continually conquering new land and
[01:46:54] bringing in new people and you have some
[01:46:57] that become slaves, some that are
[01:46:59] offered in to become, you know, more
[01:47:00] Roman in a way. So
[01:47:04] that's going to change in terms of, you
[01:47:07] know, how the empire starts to change
[01:47:09] because the empire is not conquering
[01:47:10] anymore. It's just trying to put things
[01:47:11] together. And in the 120s, um, Hrien's
[01:47:14] going to build the wall in Britain to
[01:47:15] kind of keep the picss out and and a lot
[01:47:17] of those people in in Scotland. So that
[01:47:21] does change number one how wealth flows
[01:47:23] into Rome because wealth would come in
[01:47:25] with conquest. But then as well it's
[01:47:28] saying who is an immigrant is a very
[01:47:31] very hard thing to do because if you
[01:47:33] look at it
[01:47:35] Emperor Hadrien well he was born in
[01:47:38] Spain uh Septimius Seis he was born in
[01:47:41] North Africa right so it's like
[01:47:43] >> these lands that start to get annexed
[01:47:45] well people with political families are
[01:47:48] going to have a pathway where they could
[01:47:50] be emperor or be in the the Roman
[01:47:52] legions or anything like that. So saying
[01:47:54] what is an immigrant is actually very
[01:47:56] hard I guess if you want to to really
[01:47:59] say what is an immigrant like in the 3rd
[01:48:00] century and so it starts to be the
[01:48:03] people that don't want to be Roman if
[01:48:05] that makes sense because those early
[01:48:07] ones are looking at it for what are the
[01:48:10] political positions I can achieve
[01:48:11] because there is a pathway for me right
[01:48:13] you look at somebody like Dialesian who
[01:48:16] was born out in in uh Croatia like he
[01:48:18] shouldn't have had a path to be emperor
[01:48:20] but he did or you look at someone like
[01:48:23] um Maxaminus Thrax he's from the Greek
[01:48:25] city of Thrace. So there was a pathway
[01:48:28] for these men to hold position but
[01:48:31] they're not they're not Roman but they
[01:48:33] are Roman by citizenship right so I
[01:48:34] think saying what's an immigrant is a
[01:48:36] very difficult thing to say because Rome
[01:48:39] in a lot of ways is very cosmopolitan
[01:48:41] but if you look in the third century
[01:48:44] what starts to change is kind of how the
[01:48:47] military is set up and how the borders
[01:48:49] are set up because now you have people
[01:48:51] starting to live within the borders on
[01:48:53] the outskirts of the borders that are
[01:48:55] living in their visit Goth tribe or
[01:48:57] their Ostrogoth tribe or whatever.
[01:48:58] They're not really integrating. Does
[01:49:00] that make sense?
[01:49:01] >> Yeah. Yeah, does make sense.
[01:49:04] >> So, it's kind of a it's it's a hard
[01:49:05] question to answer because
[01:49:09] a lot of people stop being Roman after a
[01:49:10] long time. You know what I mean? It's it
[01:49:12] starts incorporating other territories.
[01:49:21] Do you think that's part of I mean did
[01:49:24] they get greedy with conquering and
[01:49:26] that's that's part of this whole thing
[01:49:28] >> um
[01:49:29] >> how they collapsed because if it if it
[01:49:31] if you're saying it was an immigration
[01:49:32] problem and the immigrants are
[01:49:36] people that don't want to be Roman
[01:49:37] anymore but but probably that means
[01:49:39] people that have been conquered that
[01:49:41] just
[01:49:43] do you know what I mean?
[01:49:43] >> No, I know what you mean. Um
[01:49:46] it once again it's kind of a hard thing
[01:49:48] to answer because just cuz things change
[01:49:50] so much right so it's like if you look
[01:49:52] at early on if they fought in the
[01:49:55] legions they could get citizenship but
[01:49:58] then the legions need so many more p so
[01:50:01] many more men because these emperors are
[01:50:03] attacking each other in the 160s AD
[01:50:07] there's a plague called the antine
[01:50:08] plague where 10% of the empire dies
[01:50:11] they're not quite sure what it is might
[01:50:12] have been smallox might have been
[01:50:14] something like
[01:50:15] So now you have a much more of a need
[01:50:16] for people. So there is just this also
[01:50:19] need for people along with this need for
[01:50:21] fighting men. So it becomes a much more
[01:50:24] I guess a way to put it a much more
[01:50:25] mercenary culture
[01:50:27] if that makes sense.
[01:50:28] >> So this all this brings me to another
[01:50:30] point. I mean what was the reproduction
[01:50:32] rate? Do we have any idea what the
[01:50:34] reproduction rate is? I mean because we
[01:50:36] see a lot of countries
[01:50:38] we're getting close. Look at Europe.
[01:50:41] >> Mhm.
[01:50:41] um completely totally different dynamic
[01:50:45] over there in the past decade than what
[01:50:46] it used to be. I mean, you see all these
[01:50:49] declining birth rates
[01:50:52] all around the world and you see, you
[01:50:55] know, other demographics with rising
[01:50:57] birth rates and and and a lot of people
[01:51:00] say that will be the downfall of of
[01:51:03] China, of Europe, of the US, of you
[01:51:06] know, I mean, so was what was the what
[01:51:09] was the reproduction rate back then? So,
[01:51:11] if you look at kind of the early empire,
[01:51:13] and this is actually um there was a big
[01:51:15] to-do on on X not long ago between uh
[01:51:18] Elon Musk and and a guy named the Roman
[01:51:19] helmet guy, and they were going back and
[01:51:21] forth about reproduction because if you
[01:51:23] look at it, it's actually an early
[01:51:24] empire issue. One of the things that
[01:51:29] >> August mean that an early empire issue?
[01:51:31] >> One of the things Augustus is trying to
[01:51:32] handle is that rich Romans had stopped
[01:51:35] having children. So he starts in in
[01:51:38] enforcing laws on trying to help people
[01:51:41] have children. Basically we'll give you
[01:51:43] money, we will uh he starts enforcing
[01:51:45] marriage more. He's really trying to
[01:51:47] handle this problem. So towards the late
[01:51:49] republic, this is already a problem. Um
[01:51:51] and in the late republic, I forget the
[01:51:54] name of the the historian offhand. Um
[01:51:57] but he's saying that Romans were more
[01:51:59] concerned about their fish ponds than
[01:52:01] about their actual, you know, running
[01:52:03] anything. So you do have a lot of this
[01:52:06] in the late republic and that issue is
[01:52:09] just going to continue to get worse that
[01:52:10] that Romans aren't having as many
[01:52:11] children in terms of the rich classes.
[01:52:13] But you also have to look at as well
[01:52:16] there was um I think the woman's name
[01:52:18] was Claudia that she had 11 children. It
[01:52:21] was the the mother of the Groey brothers
[01:52:26] that she had 11 children and the two
[01:52:28] brothers were one of only three that
[01:52:30] survived. So you also have to look at
[01:52:32] that is birth rates are lower but also
[01:52:36] there is a lot of danger to people not
[01:52:37] living to adulthood. So this it that's a
[01:52:40] major problem. So that's not really
[01:52:42] going to correct and that becomes one of
[01:52:44] the reasons that they need to keep
[01:52:45] bringing in more people because you need
[01:52:48] to continue to repopulate. And if you
[01:52:49] look at what we're seeing now well you
[01:52:52] know people aren't having as many kids
[01:52:54] especially in in Europe. You look at
[01:52:55] what's happening in the UK right now.
[01:52:57] the UK is becoming less and less and
[01:52:59] less recognizable
[01:53:00] >> everywhere over there.
[01:53:01] >> And
[01:53:03] you go to
[01:53:04] >> don't even recognize it.
[01:53:06] >> Well, you go to to to Italy because you
[01:53:07] want to be in Italy or you go to France
[01:53:09] because you want to be in France. And
[01:53:10] what happens is these countries are
[01:53:11] starting to lose their identity.
[01:53:13] >> Yep.
[01:53:13] >> Now, that doesn't mean that you can't
[01:53:16] come from a different country and be in
[01:53:17] a place, but that country should
[01:53:19] continue to have an identity or you
[01:53:21] start to lose a civilization. You've
[01:53:22] systematically completely I mean you've
[01:53:25] you've changed your culture.
[01:53:27] >> Correct.
[01:53:28] >> It's it's it's just not
[01:53:31] >> Well, culture is what holds us together.
[01:53:33] >> Culture is is the glue that holds us
[01:53:36] together. And we don't have that.
[01:53:37] >> You've introduced so much of a different
[01:53:40] culture into your into your country that
[01:53:44] the that that the new culture now
[01:53:47] overwhelms
[01:53:50] the original culture. Yeah.
[01:53:52] >> And then it everything completely
[01:53:54] changes.
[01:53:54] >> Well, and it's you don't have a glue
[01:53:56] holding together. You don't have an
[01:53:57] ethos, right? You don't have something
[01:53:58] that you live by.
[01:53:59] >> And and that starts to become a real
[01:54:01] problem. And and in that point in time,
[01:54:03] the only thing that matters is money and
[01:54:05] power. And when money doesn't exist
[01:54:06] anymore, well, you don't have a
[01:54:08] civilization anymore, right? Like that's
[01:54:09] that's the point you get to towards the
[01:54:11] end of a decline.
[01:54:18] How did people start to lose trust in
[01:54:20] the in the um in the institutions? I
[01:54:23] mean the the state survives but the
[01:54:25] legitimacy does not. Is it
[01:54:27] >> well because Rome couldn't care for them
[01:54:29] anymore. I think that's the biggest
[01:54:30] thing like you start to see if you look
[01:54:32] at the last 100 years of the Western
[01:54:34] Roman Empire the after the 410 sack of
[01:54:38] Rome the emperors really are men that
[01:54:41] are just held up by barbarian generals.
[01:54:44] So, it's well known that the emperor
[01:54:47] isn't doing much to take care of them.
[01:54:48] The the son of Emperor Theodocious
[01:54:51] um in the late 4th century, Hanorius is
[01:54:56] more worried about his chickens that
[01:54:58] he's raising than his actual people. And
[01:55:00] that starts to become the problem you
[01:55:02] have where they couldn't care about the
[01:55:03] people that they're supposed to be
[01:55:04] responsible for. And I think you see
[01:55:06] that a lot with our politicians now.
[01:55:08] They're more worried about I guess one
[01:55:12] part of us protecting what they've done
[01:55:13] and don't want us to know about it. The
[01:55:15] other part about it is they couldn't
[01:55:17] give two you know whats about us regular
[01:55:19] people
[01:55:20] >> because it doesn't affect them. And I
[01:55:22] think that's you start to develop this
[01:55:23] separation and that becomes a real
[01:55:25] problem
[01:55:26] >> because they're making decisions for
[01:55:29] regular people that they're never going
[01:55:31] to have to live with. And I think that's
[01:55:33] a major major issue.
[01:55:37] >> Wow. Where do we go from here?
[01:55:40] >> Well, we got to fix our currency. I
[01:55:41] think that's the the bigger problem. If
[01:55:43] we don't fix currency, we are absolutely
[01:55:46] screwed. We really are. And I just don't
[01:55:48] know if we have the balls to do that.
[01:55:51] But that is the thing that has to happen
[01:55:53] in terms of I mean, how would we do
[01:55:55] that?
[01:55:56] >> I am not an economist, but uh I
[01:55:59] >> mean, if we just talked about, you know,
[01:56:00] the Federal Reserve, which I actually
[01:56:02] knew that was it sounds like a
[01:56:05] government organization. It's kind of
[01:56:06] like Federal Express though.
[01:56:08] >> But it's, you know, but it it's not.
[01:56:10] Yeah. And people don't know that.
[01:56:12] >> And
[01:56:14] so how would you begin to fix it?
[01:56:16] >> Well, I think one part of it is getting
[01:56:18] >> paying off the national debt, which
[01:56:21] >> well, money has to mean something again.
[01:56:23] I think that's one part of it. And
[01:56:24] that's why like when I look at some of
[01:56:26] the things that that Trump started to
[01:56:28] do, like they think the tariffs was more
[01:56:30] of trying to get production back in
[01:56:33] America because if you look at it, we're
[01:56:34] just a service-based economy. Mhm.
[01:56:36] >> We don't really build anything. We don't
[01:56:37] really make anything. You look at the
[01:56:39] the rust belt wasn't always the rust
[01:56:40] belt, but now it's it's hollowed out.
[01:56:42] So, I think one is getting industry back
[01:56:44] here. Like, we need to we need to
[01:56:46] produce things, make things, and that
[01:56:48] that needs to exist. The other part of
[01:56:50] it is handling currency because if you
[01:56:52] handle currency, then, you know, you
[01:56:55] have the ability to fix a lot of your
[01:56:57] sins, but we'd have to base our money on
[01:56:59] something. And I don't know, I don't
[01:57:02] trust cryptocurrency or some of those so
[01:57:04] much. I'm more of a a precious metals
[01:57:06] type of person. So, could you get back
[01:57:08] on gold? I don't know. We might be too
[01:57:10] far over our skis. But I think the other
[01:57:12] bigger part that doesn't get enough play
[01:57:14] is education. Like, we're
[01:57:18] turning out people that don't know how
[01:57:20] to do anything. And I think that is a
[01:57:22] huge problem that we're starting to
[01:57:23] suffer with now because we have kids
[01:57:25] that have degrees, massive debt, and
[01:57:29] they don't exactly know how to do
[01:57:31] anything. Right? I have a history
[01:57:32] degree. I got very lucky that somehow
[01:57:34] people cared about the Roman Empire, but
[01:57:36] it's not an actually very useful degree
[01:57:37] in in the world. And there's a lot of
[01:57:39] people
[01:57:41] getting degrees they're not going to
[01:57:42] use. There's a major thing that's
[01:57:44] missing in the world. And if you look at
[01:57:46] the trades, they still have that and
[01:57:47] that's the idea of apprenticeships. And
[01:57:49] apprenticeships
[01:57:52] before the kind of turn of the century,
[01:57:54] meaning that the 1900s, were a very big
[01:57:57] thing in a lot of different fields. And
[01:57:59] it serves a couple different purposes.
[01:58:01] the first to give you experience and the
[01:58:03] second is to help you decide do I want
[01:58:05] to do this right am I am I meant for
[01:58:07] this but I think unless we handle
[01:58:11] education we don't know people that know
[01:58:13] how to run the system right if you look
[01:58:14] at when aqueducts fell apart it wasn't
[01:58:18] because
[01:58:20] um people didn't care about having water
[01:58:21] they cared about having water they lost
[01:58:23] the knowhow to know what to do with them
[01:58:25] and I think that's the biggest problem
[01:58:27] we're going to run into is this brain
[01:58:29] drain and this inability to do things
[01:58:31] and everyone eats. Everyone's got to
[01:58:34] have a place to sleep. But if they're
[01:58:35] not able to provide for themselves, it's
[01:58:37] not the government's job to provide for
[01:58:38] them.
[01:58:40] >> I do think we still make stuff. I think
[01:58:42] it and I could be totally off here, but
[01:58:44] I think about this all the time and
[01:58:48] >> and I do want manufacturing and all
[01:58:50] these things to come back. I think it's
[01:58:51] extremely important. But I do I don't
[01:58:54] think that the narrative that we don't
[01:58:57] make anything is 100% true because we
[01:59:00] are very good at tech software
[01:59:05] stuff like that. Sure.
[01:59:06] >> You know and uh and and so and then we
[01:59:09] we sell this stuff to all these other
[01:59:12] countries and and so we are kind of look
[01:59:15] at Silicon Valley in California.
[01:59:16] >> Well, I'm looking more at like
[01:59:18] production and manufacturing like you're
[01:59:19] 100% correct about tech. Yes. And all
[01:59:23] I'm saying is that, you know, the world
[01:59:25] has evolved since then. Yeah. And so,
[01:59:28] >> yeah, while we're not
[01:59:30] >> and I do want to be making all these,
[01:59:31] you know, I want to be manufacturing and
[01:59:33] I think that's important to come back,
[01:59:35] but I don't think it's necessarily fair
[01:59:37] to say we don't produ maybe we don't
[01:59:40] make anything. We don't but we do
[01:59:41] produce things.
[01:59:43] >> We we have in my opinion
[01:59:45] >> Well, no, I can agree to that because
[01:59:46] there are certain things we make, but we
[01:59:48] just we don't really have manufacturing
[01:59:49] anymore. Mhm.
[01:59:50] >> And for a lot of like
[01:59:53] a lot of small towns, like I grew up in
[01:59:54] a very small town, everybody worked in
[01:59:57] manufacturing and the manufacturing
[01:59:58] isn't there anymore.
[01:59:59] >> Same here.
[02:00:00] >> So then what happens is, you know, the
[02:00:02] the people aren't working as much, the
[02:00:03] drugs are coming in, the places start
[02:00:05] degrading. So it's like that we either
[02:00:08] need a different way to look at things
[02:00:11] or we need to figure out how to bring
[02:00:12] manufacturing back in some ways because
[02:00:13] that is how a lot of people do provide
[02:00:15] for themselves.
[02:00:16] >> And that does make the economy stronger.
[02:00:18] >> Yeah. because then we're not so reliant
[02:00:20] on Mexico where we get a lot of our
[02:00:22] automobiles from and a lot of other
[02:00:23] places.
[02:00:27] It's about autonomy. You know,
[02:00:32] when the Romans were expanding the
[02:00:34] empire, were they
[02:00:37] were they going after strategic
[02:00:39] locations for resources and things like
[02:00:41] that or was it just
[02:00:43] >> It was very strategic. It was
[02:00:45] >> for example um as I mentioned Rome had
[02:00:48] to feed a lot of people. The best place
[02:00:52] for growing grain was actually Egypt and
[02:00:53] Asia. So that land um after Alexander
[02:00:58] the Great dies um in 323 BC
[02:01:02] his generals um basically divide up his
[02:01:05] empire amongst themselves. The last
[02:01:07] remaining of those um are the toolies
[02:01:10] which is under one of his generals
[02:01:11] Tomle. So the famous Cleopatra or
[02:01:13] Cleopatra II is the final tomic ruler
[02:01:17] and after her death the Romans basically
[02:01:21] take over this area and that becomes the
[02:01:23] bread basket of the empire and what
[02:01:26] would happen is the Nile would flood
[02:01:28] every single year and that delta would
[02:01:30] become very rich and it was a great
[02:01:31] place for growing grain and other things
[02:01:33] that could feed people. So they were
[02:01:35] looking at that. Or if you look at when
[02:01:38] Trejan conquered Disha, he was
[02:01:40] conquering that because there were
[02:01:41] silver mines there. So they're looking
[02:01:43] at where can we bring in resources? Like
[02:01:46] it's very strategic on places they're
[02:01:48] conquering. It's not just hey, we want
[02:01:49] land. It's what are places that are very
[02:01:52] strategic for us. Caesar was a little
[02:01:54] bit of we just want land and glory, but
[02:01:56] when they are conquering, they're
[02:01:58] looking at what are these strategic
[02:02:00] resources we can have. um the Punic Wars
[02:02:03] um Carthage was the biggest shipping
[02:02:05] power in the world at that point in time
[02:02:08] and to have that area would make them
[02:02:10] much more powerful in shipping. So those
[02:02:12] are a lot of the things they're looking
[02:02:14] at is how do we bring in more resources
[02:02:17] to run this empire?
[02:02:20] >> Makes sense. Makes sense.
[02:02:23] What are we missing in the Roman Empire
[02:02:25] that that parallels what we're seeing
[02:02:27] today?
[02:02:29] >> I think that's a big a big part of it,
[02:02:31] man. And it's just if we can handle our
[02:02:33] currency, if we can fix our borders, but
[02:02:36] politicians have to start carrying
[02:02:37] again. And I think that's a major
[02:02:38] problem. And
[02:02:41] I don't exactly know how we fix that
[02:02:43] because electoral politics has really
[02:02:44] become more of a whose team are you on
[02:02:47] every four years. So I think that is a
[02:02:50] major problem because they don't care
[02:02:52] about fixing the other two. So I I don't
[02:02:55] know how to fix that one, but that is a
[02:02:57] major problem. When did the empire
[02:02:59] realize that it had collapsed?
[02:03:03] >> That's really hard to say because if you
[02:03:05] go back again to
[02:03:07] that regular person living in there, he
[02:03:10] would have noticed that he's still
[02:03:11] paying taxes because the kings of Italy
[02:03:13] after the Roman Empire would have been
[02:03:15] charging you taxes, would have been
[02:03:17] charging you tribute. They hadn't seen
[02:03:19] an emperor in years. So I think to them
[02:03:22] it's hard to say when they when they
[02:03:24] stop realizing they're an emperor. It's
[02:03:26] just, you know, more of a fade away than
[02:03:28] an actual collapse. You know, one day
[02:03:30] you just realize the civilization you
[02:03:32] lived in isn't here anymore. It's it's
[02:03:34] hard to say when that is. And that's
[02:03:36] why, sure, 476 is an end point, but I
[02:03:40] don't know that people in that year
[02:03:41] would have felt any differently than
[02:03:42] they did in 400.
[02:03:49] >> When do you think we'll know when a
[02:03:50] president becomes a tyrant?
[02:03:53] >> That's a very good question. Um,
[02:03:56] I think it's hard to know, honestly. I
[02:03:58] think it's you look at what happened in
[02:04:00] in Germany in in the 30s and 40s. You
[02:04:03] know, people didn't really know how bad
[02:04:05] it was until
[02:04:07] they didn't have the ability to say
[02:04:08] things that Hitler didn't like or, you
[02:04:11] know, he starts closing Jewish
[02:04:13] businesses and rounding people up. So, I
[02:04:15] think that's something you really have
[02:04:17] to have to watch for, but at the same
[02:04:19] time, I think it's hard to know till
[02:04:21] you're there. Like, it's not really
[02:04:22] something you can predict. Do you think
[02:04:24] we're witnessing the fall?
[02:04:26] >> I really hope not. I I like my country.
[02:04:29] I like living here. I just think that if
[02:04:32] we don't handle the economy soon, at
[02:04:34] some point in time, it's going to end.
[02:04:35] Like the petro dollar is is propping us
[02:04:37] up. But if that changes, then things
[02:04:40] could change on a dime and next thing
[02:04:42] you know, your loaf of bread is $100.
[02:04:44] Yeah.
[02:04:45] >> Those are the things you really got to
[02:04:46] worry about.
[02:04:46] >> Yeah, man. Well, this was a fascinating
[02:04:50] conversation.
[02:04:51] >> Yeah. I appreciate it, man. Thank you.
[02:04:53] If you had three guests to recommend for
[02:04:56] the show, who would they be? Om,
[02:05:06] three guests. Um,
[02:05:08] well, there's one I definitely have in
[02:05:10] mind. His name is Nick Nick McKinley,
[02:05:12] and he's doing a lot to protect kids
[02:05:14] online.
[02:05:15] Um,
[02:05:17] there's another who's in protection and
[02:05:19] he works with a lot of like really
[02:05:21] well-known people named Caleb Gilbert.
[02:05:24] >> Um, absolutely brilliant guy. Um, I'm
[02:05:27] trying to think of who else would be a
[02:05:29] great
[02:05:30] >> cuz of course
[02:05:31] >> Give me another historian.
[02:05:32] >> Another historian.
[02:05:37] I actually think he's not a historian,
[02:05:39] but he looks at cycles. Um, he wrote the
[02:05:41] book The Fourth Turning. I'm trying to
[02:05:44] remember what his name is. I'd have to
[02:05:45] look it up for you, but he wrote the
[02:05:46] book The Fourth Turning.
[02:05:47] >> We'll look it up.
[02:05:48] >> And the guy is absolutely brilliant. He
[02:05:50] looks at economic cycles and how they
[02:05:52] change every 40 every 80 years. And it
[02:05:54] actually can predict what's coming next.
[02:05:57] >> Oh man, you got to do that. That's
[02:06:00] awesome. Right on. Well, Jeremy, thank
[02:06:03] you. Thank you for coming. I hope to see
[02:06:06] you again.
[02:06:07] >> Yeah. Cheers.
[02:06:19] No matter where you're watching the
[02:06:21] Shaun Ryan Show from, if you get
[02:06:23] anything out of this at all, anything,
[02:06:26] please like, comment, and subscribe. And
[02:06:30] most importantly, share this everywhere
[02:06:34] you possibly can. And if you're feeling
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