Everything on the Roman Empire

Why are so many people obsessed with the Roman Empire?

In the debut episode of Everything on Nothing, Mickey, Christian, and producer Jacki start with a simple question and somehow end up wandering through wolf-raised twins, political assassinations, slave revolts, Christianity, Napoleon, modern corporations, artificial intelligence, and the uncomfortable realization that Rome may never have actually gone away.

What begins with Romulus and Remus quickly spirals into a conversation about propaganda, power, rebellion, and how one ancient civilization became the blueprint for countless empires, governments, and institutions that followed. Along the way, the hosts explore Julius Caesar, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and the stories history tends to forget while asking a bigger question:

Was Rome a place... or was it an idea?

From the Roman Republic to modern politics, the discussion connects thousands of years of history with the systems that still shape our lives today. Because the deeper you dig into Rome, the stranger it gets. Every empire seems to borrow from it. Every revolution seems to fight against it. And every generation somehow ends up telling the same story all over again.

The Roman Empire fell.

Then it came back.

Then it changed names.

Then it showed up everywhere.

Listen to Episode 1 of Everything on Nothing and find out why the ghost of Rome is still haunting the modern world.

Transcript

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To Romans I assign limits neither of things nor time. I have given them empire without end. Uh that's a quote from Jupiter in Virgil's whatever Virgil wrote about the Romans. Very, very long and very, very detailed. Uh I'm joined by uh my life partner and producer, Jackie. Hi, that's me. And uh our very talented uh web assistant uh who's done several websites for Jackie and her business. Christian, welcome aboard. How's it going, guys? The conversation was going along, and uh Christian mentioned that he had never really studied the Romans or the Roman Empire, and the ongoing meme was that everyone or white males think about the Roman Empire every day. And uh the question kind of came up of why is that? So we're gonna try to answer that. Is that is that basically your question? Yeah, so we I think it was me and Jackie were talking, and I I mentioned just like as an example of being out of loops, I guess. Uh it became maybe a year, two years ago, I was made aware of this apparent fact that or or perception that, yeah, American white males especially uh know a lot about the Roman Empire, they study the Roman Empire, they're obsessed with an empire, and I was over here like I did not get that uh memo like at all. I going through high school, um I really had a complete disconnect with history because the way history was taught, uh, this is anything from the late 70s through the early 90s, was simply here's a list of dates, here's a list of names. Uh, and most of the quizzes were, you know, uh on one side you have a list of names, and on the other side you had a list of things that somebody did, and you had to draw the line connecting them, or multiple choice of you know, what year did Columbus sail the ocean blue, and and you know, four choices, and you're like, ah, I remember that rhyme. So it was like I had no connection to any of the histories, uh, especially since um my mother was a lost adoption of so we didn't know any of the origin stories of that side of the family, and my father's side came from Slovakia, so all I knew growing up was where did my number name come from? Czechoslovakia, and then later in life I found out that that was you know, the Slovaks and the Czechs didn't really get along, so you know the Slovaks were just kind of an uh an appendix to everything going on in Central Europe, and uh doing more digging and digging and digging, uh, found out that every conquering army basically marched through the village where my people come from, and it was like, hey, how you doing? Just please don't step on the tomatoes. Um just leave us alone and and do that, and then eventually they they came over, landed in Pittsburgh, and went to steal for generation after generation. Um, but you know, America was already up and running and going full force by then. So um my connect my personal connection to history uh didn't incur, didn't occur until I had a night job and I got bored, and the only website that wasn't blocked was Wikipedia. So I started reading about World War One or World War II, and then I was like, wait a minute, this is just a continuation of World War I. And wait a minute, this is just a continuation of this war, and this is just a continuation of that war. So um, I just kept trying to dig to find where the thread started, and as Billy Joel said so succinctly stated, we didn't start the fire, it's always been burning. And um and so is the case with Rome. And and here we are. So I guess one of the one of the best places to I think I had uh oh sorry. No, go, go. Oh, um I had uh I had listened to Dan Carlin's, you mentioned World War II and then one, uh Dan Carlin's hardcore history on uh World War One. And when I think that was the moment I realized like, oh, that's like why countries are yeah, the countries that they're that they are today. Uh but I didn't realize that if you follow the thread back, I guess it makes sense that it would be like I guess that's the thing, right? All roads lead to Rome. So it like goes back to this this huge thing, this idea, which like we had had empires before, but they're they're like, I don't know how they're unique, but I know that they are in some way unique, or else people wouldn't uh they would pick another empire to obsess over, right? And uh speaking of Dan Carlin, um I was listening to one of his episodes, and he had uh a couple of guests on, and uh they were the hosts of a podcast called uh The Rest is History. And after listening to that episode, I started listening to them uh constantly. Like I had a job where I was just doing manual labor, moving, you know, using my hands, and just needed my brain occupied. So I put it on and listened to it for eight hours a day. And after you stream, like if you um binge watch a television show, you uh especially sitcoms, you catch on on all the patterns, and you're like, as soon as this character comes on, you're like, oh, they're gonna do this and this and this and this. Uh and when I streamlined uh and basically injected that amount of history it straight into my veins, uh, you patterns emerge, and you're like, wait a second, it's the same thing over and over and over again. And again, uh, even though all those roads lead to Rome, it started in Greece before that, and you know, and before Greece, it started somewhere else. But um, but we're gonna specifically kind of go through Rome and find out why every white man is obsessed with Rome. Uh so I guess starting at the beginning, uh and the foundational myths of Rome, uh, there's several of it because uh propaganda and marketing, you have to have those things in order to get the people to follow along. And if you don't have the people following along, it doesn't matter how much money you have, eventually the people will kind of kick you out and and change the way things are happening, I hope. Uh you know, uh power to the people, etc. etc. Uh, so one of the one of the most uh popular myths of the um uh foundation of Rome is there were two brothers, and uh they were kind of given the Moses treatment. They were put in baskets and sent to the river to drown, but the baskets they were in floated on down the river, and then a wolf uh came along and pulled them out and uh let them suckle at her teets, and one was uh Romulus, the other was Remus. And uh and they've got video of this. Yeah, they have total videos, they've got they have an um they have an amazing number of statues, and the statues of Romulus and Remus suckling at the teats of a wolf are everywhere. And it's the first furry art that they ever made. It is so ridiculous. We're gonna get one of those, aren't we? Probably. Yeah. Uh maybe yeah. Like if if like if I could get uh there's an artist in Detroit uh named Shifi McFly, and his if it was done in his style, uh I think it would be a beautiful picture, but as it is, the statues they have are not good. Um I mean they they're like wait a second, it's this is your founding this is your founding story. You could have upgraded this, you could have done some marketing, you could have done better. Uh and then you know, destroyed the old statues, got rid of them, whatever. Uh so rah Rom and Reem grow up and they're like, hey, you know what? We should uh start a city, you know. Uh these these cities, have you heard about these things? They're they're kind of cool. You gather everyone up, and then you just you know abuse them and then steal their gold, and we need some of that. And uh Romulus is like, hey, I have an idea, we'll put it on over on that hill. And Remus is like, wait, no, no, no, no. We're gonna put it on this hill. And then the two brothers fought like Cain and Abel, and one of them succeeded and the other didn't. And uh, based on the name of Rome, you can kind of guess Remus didn't make it. Uh what do you think Reem would be like, though? The Reman Empire. Star Trek. Uh probably a softboy uh nation, kinda. Uh where you know, probably like soft liberals that are deep down racist, but they say the right things or they they try to. Uh so one of the uh uh uh yeah, one of the other ones, uh the Aeneas uh was uh basically during the Trojan War that lasted way too long for reality to occur. Um one of the guys leaving uh got lost and blown off course and landed at the boot of Italy, and he was like, Well, I guess we'll start a city here. What are we gonna do? What are you gonna do? And so that form of marketing was trying to establish the longevity, like even in the early days of Rome, just a uh just a tiny little city. Uh, you know, they barely have a mayor, uh, they still wanted to create that longevity of this was anointed by gods, gods created this, and the only gods we know of are the Greek gods, because you know, Greek had already the Greek Grecian Empire had already spread out and covered that land. So the people that are living there, the the average citizens or whatever, they know of all the Greek stories at least, and they're kind of going along and they're like, all right, well, sure, if you want to be a governor, cool, but you know, I'm still gonna still till the land and I'm gonna still plant my tomatoes, just just leave me alone. And uh, so they tried to tie it to the the founding of Rome back to the Trojan War of this uh you know, this Greek uh warrior just coming home from a long war, just happened to land there. Uh, and then the third uh last empire or the last founding story was that Romulus had started a city and they forgot to mention that he ever had a brother, and uh some of his generals kidnapped a woman from Sabine, and then the Sabines came to get their woman back, kind of copy-pasting the Trojan war, and instead of you know the destruction of Rome, it was hey, we're better than Troy, we were able to work out our differences because the woman uh basically shook her finger and told both sides to quit it. Like, stop, no more, and so the Sabines and the Romans were like, Hey, yeah, why are why you know what are we fighting for? Uh, let's just have a city. And so, out of those three uh founding stories, uh, I don't think any of them are good, but it is what you get, you know. That there weren't that many creative people back then to to you know make it uh pop like Hollywood does today. Yeah, it just happened to be somewhere where people gathered and that sort of just became spun out into what we call Rome now. And uh and one of those uh one of the founding uh stories does include Jupiter coming down and anointing the city and saying, Hey, this is this is my favorite one, and then kind of back in the day, back in the day, it's like, well, you can we've said it and we've made it true, kind of uh in if you've seen dogma, whatever whatever is true on earth, I'll make true in heaven, and that's what they kind of did. They were like, Hey, this is a quote from Jupiter. Are you gonna say Jupiter's wrong that Rome isn't the city? And other people are like, Well, how do you know Jupiter said that? And they're like, Oh, you're doubting Jupiter, and that whole propaganda started way back then. They're like, We said it, it's true, and it's like, no, you just because you said it doesn't make it true. And they're like, Oh, you're going against the gods, woo. Um, yeah, so who's Jupiter? You know, like, oh, it's the new Zeus. Get with the program, dude. Like, what you haven't you haven't heard? Oh my god, what are what it where are you being? Jeez, no wonder. So, like all the all the propaganda and and misleads and and um basically Madison Avenue advertising, all the stuff that they're doing now is the same stuff that they did thousands of years ago back at the beginning, where people are like, hey, I just want to go and fish and come home and cook the fish and then eat and then go to sleep. I don't want to be involved in all this stuff, and they're like, Oh, well, you got to because you know, God said, and it's like, well, who the hell is God? It's like, oh, now you're evil. So, you know, all the all of the propaganda isn't new founding, you know, they aren't new ideas, they're just louder, more spread out, and uh more expensive, and the people with a lot of money can push those ideas. So the ideas are shaped by the people that have money. Yeah. Uh so they started in 753 BC. So 222 years or 226 years ago plus 750 years on top, 753 years on top of that. So whatever the math works out, I can't do math and talk at the same time, but so we're look we're looking at like 3,000 years ago, Rome pops up and it's just a collection of people, and then someone says, I'm king. And for 200 years, they kept every every now and then a king died, and they said another guy said I'm king. And it was all it was really willy-nilly of who got to be king. It wasn't still, it wasn't like the British monarch where uh it's a bloodline thing, it was literally who is who is the best for the king, and then it got to the point where someone did try the bloodline thing, and when you do that, uh in this podcast, we will probably uh speak poorly about Nepo babies from time to time, and I want to make it clear that I understand like my DNA has embedded in it uh a need to fix things and a need to entertain. It's my father was that way, his father was that way, and his grandfather was that way, and my sons are that way. Uh, when my oldest was seven years old, I bought him, I dropped a bag of parts for a computer and said, here you go. And he built his own computer uh based on those parts. And since then, he's been able to fix, you know, not everything, but he has that curiosity and the knack to fix things. Uh, my youngest son can find things, he's got a special gift of finding things. Uh, so there is a transference of skill through DNA. I can't prove it because I'm not a scientist, but if I were, I would dig deep on that one and prove it because it is true. And uh, you know, Jackie is a writer, her daughter is a writer. It is part of the blood, and it's a matter of uh that's where culture and and conditioning come in. If you have a good seed uh from a tulip, or if you have a good bulb from a tulip, if you put it in the right conditions, it'll be a beautiful tulip. If not, it'll be a sludgy, gloopy mess in the ground. Uh it just that's it. If it's in you and you get the right conditions to bring it out, it will happen. Um and in the case of the kings, they uh after a generation or two of kings, you start getting that spoiled child uh mentality, and that's where that's where nepotism is bad. And you get your draw freeze, yes, exactly. I do you know who I am? Well, yes, sir, you're an asshole. Yeah. Um, and so after 200 years, Rome reached that point, and they also if you have a monarchy, in order to maintain the monarchy, you have to start giving favors to friends, and over time you build up a big network of friends that then have to do favors, and if not everyone can be on level two, so you have to kind of build a stack up so that you have a third tier to loan favors out to, and then those people need favors, so then you get a fourth tier, and after a while, they're like, Hey, one guy controlling all this isn't doing it, so then they created the Roman Republic, and the Roman Roman Republic lasts for 500 years, and unfortunately, they go through the same cycle of I'm a Roman senator, and as soon as I die, my son will take my Roman senator seat. And it's like, well, your son's a dick, and he does not have any idea how any of this works, and you've neglected to teach him the right way to do things, and now he's greedy and he's manipulating the system for his own benefit. And at that time, uh, basically there were three people that had taken their family's senator seats and they got greedy. Uh, that was Pompey and Caesar, and uh the guy that killed Spartacus. Uh, do you remember his name, Jackie? Crassus. Sorry, I didn't mean that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so those three had um, as as you know, the world turns and climates change. Um, you know, one one of these guys grew a bunch of wheat, one of these guys had a whole bunch of money, and one guy was really good at war. And through those things, they rose to power above the rest of the senators, so they manipulated what they had and they called in favors and they used bribes, and then they became uh a new higher tier of the equality, you know, everyone's equal, some are just more equal than others, and so those three rose up and then. Now the fight was between the three of them and scuttling, you know, basically scurrying around for supporters. And then uh I think Crassus died first and in a war, and Caesar snatched up all of his stuff, so now it's just Caesar and Pompeii. And at that point, uh then they started trying Julius Caesar. That is Julius Julius Gaius Caesar, yes. Okay. And in the guy who got stabbed by everybody, correct? No, that is the guy that gets eventually gets stabbed by everyone. Um because Julius Caesar then uh this is weird to talk about because it would never ever happen in America, but Julius Caesar gained so much power that the only way to take him down is to accuse him of the crimes that he actually committed and then bring him to justice. And when they said, Hey, Julius Caesar, um you're I I they at the time I think they could only have a consul for one year, and his one year was almost up unless he was at war. And if he was at war, he could continue as consul, and as long as he was a consul, he couldn't be brought to justice or he couldn't be taken at order. Yes, and so Caesar decided to march his army to Rome, which was against the law. Uh, one of the founding uh uh principles of Rome was that the army was to protect it and they needed to stay out of it, so because if the army came into Rome, that would be oppressive, and we don't want the army on our own soil, the army is to protect us. Check off boxes when I hear something familiar, real quick. Uh, go on. And so Caesar marches into Rome with his army, and he said, What are you gonna do? Take me to court. I have about 10,000 guys behind me that say, Nah, that's not gonna happen. And so Pompey is trying his best to take over, essentially. But when you're trying to take over, what you have to do is use a little bit of propaganda and say, I'm protecting Rome from this evil, so I will have to bring my army in, and then they kind of scattered and have wars and and whatever, and eventually Pompey dies, and Caesar is left all alone as the main guy. So people started getting really itchy, like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're supposed to have more than these. So Caesar, being a very intelligent person, says, Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, I got an idea. I got two guys that can sit in these seats. One is Mark Anthony, he's my best friend, he's cool. He'll he'll just do whatever I tell him to do, no problem. The other is my nephew now son, uh, and he'll do whatever I say. And so it goes. It's it's it's still a republic as Julius Caesar's marching around uh running things and taking over. And the scary thing is Caesar, as bad as he is, is setting all changing all the rules to favor Caesar. And now uh all the people that don't want that to happen took their retribution and stabbed him a lot and made him bleed all over the Senate floor, and what they did was save the Republic from a dictator not realizing that uh his son, uh Marcus Aurelius, I think, yeah, Marcus Aurelius or Augustus. Uh I the the the Romans change their names a lot depending on what they're doing. Like, as soon as yeah, uh it's like, hey, my name's Jim Bob, but now that I'm mayor, um Jonathan Mayor boy, James Robert. So I am Bo Robert. Hell yeah. Even even uh some of the names changes aren't even connected in any kind of way. It's like I my name was Chris. Now, now that I'm mayor, I'm George. And as soon as I become pressed, Blackstone, undead mage. So um, so all the rules have now changed to give a lot of power to the person in that big seat. And when Julius Caesar dies, uh no one was really paying attention to this the soon-to-be Augustus, who was autistic as fuck and studied everything, like any everything about war, everything about politics, everything about money, uh, everything about agriculture. The man studied everything. And he's only, I think he at this time he's like 18 years old. Um, and he makes a couple moves. He's like, All right, Caesar's dead. Look at all the things he did to protect Rome, and look at the expansion and the amount of fields and money and food that he brought to Rome. What say you? He's a god, right? And everyone's like, All right, well, yeah, we stabbed him. He was an idiot, he's gone. We'll call him a god. And Augustus says, Cool, I'm the son of a god, I'm now your leader, and we're gonna do away with the Senate, piss off, you're out of here. And that begins uh the very first in 27 BC. Oh Augustus becomes the first just like that, huh? It was well, if you watch Rome on HBO, it takes a couple seasons to get there. Yeah, but yeah, he he was very adept at maneuvering, but he totally palpatines it. He just stands up and says, We're not doing that anymore. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. He's like, Hey, hey, I think he actually got convinced everyone to vote their own, you know, basic he murdered a lot of people, uh, and guy, it was in the disguise of revenge for killing Caesar or justice for Caesar kind of thing. Um, it's like if someone had killed Hitler at the time, then the person who killed Hitler would then be ousted as an evil person because he did just he did that, and whoever maneuvered him into that would then take like people were poised to take over the the Nazi regime. It's just the the way that they were put down, like the Russians coming into Berlin and uh and Hitler committing suicide. It was like all right, that's it. We're down collapsed on on multiple fronts, yeah. But in order to not have it collapse, Augustus had set up a lot of different pillars. Uh like he having become Caesar's adopted son, he now had all of Caesar's money. Having the Senate vote to make Caesar a god gave him the position of being the son of a god, and having um conducted essentially night raids to kill all the opposition, all the people that were not afraid of Caesar and took part in killing Caesar, Augustus took took them out so that everyone that was left was just basically yes men who agreed with whatever Augustus was going to say. So when I do work, uh whenever I'm at work, uh I will look at the job that I have to do, and I will get all the parts that I need, and I will get all the tools that I need, and I'll put it on a cart and I'll go and start the job. Other people that I work with will go over to the workplace and then they'll come back and grab a tool, and then they'll go and then come back and go and back and go, back and forth, back and forth. I have too much ADHD to go back and forth, so I have to set myself up and put everything in place so that when I start the job, it's a 10-minute job and because I can't handle anything longer. Uh, and that's basically what Augustus did. He did a lot of front loading so that when he's stood up and said, I'm I'm in charge, everyone else shut up. Everything was already done. So while on the front end in the scene, it is that quick and that easy for him to do because he did a lot of the the back road uh work earlier. He saw the which way the wind was blowing a long time ago and and prepped. Yes, and he was I I don't know if chess was a thing back then, but he was a grandmaster at people chess. And yeah, having having that connectivity in his brain, like he is able to see 20 different scenarios going on and saying, Oh, if I just push this pin, everything will fall to the left. If I push this pin, everything will fall. They probably didn't have chess because if you think about it, that would have been a distraction. He would have gotten really into chess and he wouldn't have been as good a strategist with real people. So now I'm just thinking, like, when chess came out, was it like, oh, these kids, these kids, all they do is they play chess all day long. Oh, yeah, you'll sit there and play chess, but you won't take out the garbage. It looks like ruining the youth. It looks like chess evolved into its current form by 1500 CE, but um it started in India and then spread to Persia. So I don't think there would have been chess to chess. I always want to add a T to it, and that's a problem uh back then. And um yeah, and uh I think one of the downfalls of Persian the Persian Empire uh is that all the chess. Yeah, all the chess, and and there was a lot of a lot of partying going on, you know. Not only you know the nerds had their chess parties, the the the winerers, uh the people that made wine had wine parties, but they lacked a written history because they just didn't it didn't everything was going okay for them, so they didn't really feel the need to collect receipts. And it's that's a very at least from my point of view, that's a very autistic way to think of the world. Because this thing when things are going well, I don't think to start collecting data until stuff goes wrong, and then I'm like, Oh, I got this, I got this, I got this. But by that time, it's like uh well, it does it's it's too late to do anything with it now, and now I'm just being a complainer. So uh so they were just vibing, the Persians were just vibing for like what a thousand years. That was a long empire, right? Yeah, they're uh uh going back to the uh the rest of this history podcast, they had a gentleman that was uh a Persian historian, and uh his go-to phrase is oh, you know that thing, the Persians started it, like and and the Persians started so much, it's just they don't have the receipts to prove it. So when the Romans came along and they had a couple historians in their back pocket saying, Hey, hey, we we invented this, screw the Greeks, screw the Persians, screw the Turks, we invented this. This is ours, and the historian, and if you go back into history, the historians have recorded it that that's a Roman thing. Um, it's just you know not true because if you are they're used to write it down, yeah, yeah. And okay, and also erase some of the stuff that was written down, uh, because erasing history is a very, very way, a very good way to strengthen an empire, uh, or your uh power of your position of power. Um if I did have someone I did a question just uh oh sorry, no, no, no, go. Um just uh up to this point, we're on um we're now on like Augustus Caesar. Um he's he's maneuvered his way into being an emperor. Up until this point, what uh as far as like we know what's like been happening like internally, but like um they're expanding, you said. Uh who are they like who's around them that they're like conquering or fighting or expanding into, I guess. Okay, so who are their like opposed oppos uh opponents? So with the Roman kingdom, you start off with just a city uh in Rome, and then by the time Augustus is well, by the time they go into a republic, uh they've got the boot filled out, and they've had a couple fights with uh the little soccer ball at the tip of the boot uh on the map. The Sicilians, yeah. And so then they start basically lining up their um what they the army is there to protect Rome, and the best way to protect Rome is to stand on the border, but if you're standing on the border and you start a war on your border, then the enemy is now on your land. So, what you do is you step into the enemy's land and hold there, and then once you murder a bunch of people, you step forward as a defensive war. A defensive war is how Rome expanded well in every direction, uh, because at the top of the boot is the Alps, so they're protected by that mountain, but between the mountain and the coast is you kind of go along, and then there's the bottom of France and Spain, and over in Spain, you kind of jump the little the Straits of Gibraltar into Africa, and also with sailing boats, you just drive south from Italy into um Egypt and everything else, and then following that you go where the Nile is, and then you have the whole Middle East, and you have um kind of expanding on to the the right side of the Alps into what is uh Eastern Europe basically, Romania, uh Russia, uh Germany, Poland, all that all those, yeah. So they're kind of the pushing out of the boot and mushrooming as they hit the Alps and going around the Alps and then up the coast uh of Spain and France, and then they eventually reach into England and Norway and uh Finland and all basically all of that. So they get a lot done in this, like what is it, five five hundred years from now on, I think something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's all and again, it's all defensive wars. Uh, because part of it is in order to keep the army in place, they have to pay the army. And part of the way that they paid the army is saying, Hey, as soon as we defeat these people, uh the these people that are invading us, wink wink, uh, we'll take their land and we'll divvy it up amongst the soldiers that survived. And so it became a recruiting tactic of oh, we need more defense. You know, now that these guys have fought the war and they got their land, they're not gonna fight anymore. So now we have to recruit more people and we could say, hey, look, these people fought in this war, and now they have land, so come join the army so that we can go to war and get more land so that we could give it to you, and then we'll use you as a recruiting poster to get more people to come join our army so that we could go to war to give those people land. So it was just this vicious Ponzi scheme of oh, hey, we have lands before they had the before they had the Dodge Charger, they had land, yeah. Uh and uh you know, and since they're in the middle of the Met the situation of Rome is basically in the middle of the Mediterranean, so with a few boats and stuff, they can go south, they can go east, they can go west, they can go north, and they just kind of spread out from there. Um and uh I forgot where I was at, but yeah, that's just oh sorry, yeah. No, no, no, it's fine. Uh just it's just an expansion, and the expansion was to fuel the army, and the army was to fuel the expansion, and then they just kind of got caught up in it, and then it got too big, so then they split it and they moved to um I think constant they named Constantinople after Constantine, so they were like, All right, uh this is several generations later. I mean, Nero had the the fire. There was six emperors in a year, they had um oh wow. Uh that's the part that's the part that I don't think I've ever heard about is like they they're just what they're they're trying to get guys and they're like getting assassinated, uh, or like getting fired, or what's the deal there? I part of it was um you know to uh kind of uh who's the heir to the throne? Let me set everything. I'm supposed to be the heir to the throne, but they gave it to this guy. I'm gonna murder him, and I take over, and then someone has revenge and murders me, so then the next person in line gets it, and then sometimes you get stuck with a 12-year-old or a six-year-old or a baby, and you just you can't have a baby rule an empire. Uh yeah, and then it's I've only said that, and then it's like, oh, uh, the babysitter uh is going to go ahead and speak for the baby, and it's like, well, we don't like what the babysitter's saying, so we're gonna go ahead and kick because the babysitter says, Oh, the baby said I'm the empire, uh, I'm the emperor now. And then people that didn't want babysitter to be the emperor were like, nah, we're gonna go ahead and take care of you and and put someone else in there. So it's just it's like every other monarchy. It is very much like Game of Thrones, like Game of Thrones was uh England in the dark ages or something like that, but it is very it's the same story, it's it's the same story over and over. It's like we don't want that ruler, let's kill that ruler, whether it's assassinating his uh person or assassinating his character. Uh, if we don't like it, whether it's because he's a Catholic or because he's a black man, we have to do everything we can to get rid of him so that we can install someone that looks like us or thinks like us or someone that is just cool. And it was just like cool, yeah. And then it just got to a point where uh uh uh I think Caligula was was the one that just went batshit crazy, and then so crazy one big note I have over here on my imaginary notepad is in all caps an underlined Caligula question mark. Yeah, it wasn't just a penthouse movie, it was an actual uh guy that had like he had no care, like Nero was bad, but Caligula was not only bad at his job, he was also uh sadistic, and he was uh a sex addict, and he had problems, and it just kind of got really hinky for a while. Um kind of Epstein guy, really, if you think about it. He was just like so like powerful and like at the top of the heap that like he was just like, Alright, well, whatever. I'm gonna marry this guy to a horse. Fuck everybody. Like I think that's the most the most I know is like I I I think like my my before this, I was like, Okay, yeah, I remember something about Romulus and Remus. I know they copy and pasted Greece in many ways. I know about Gladiators, I know about Stabin from the Shakespeare play. And then Caligula, and then it, and then it the Goths, uh bunch of people wearing hot topic clothes, uh, take about. But that's all I knew. And well, all this time, like, as I said, uh, their expansion was always a defensive war, and they were never there were points of the empire where they were they went into total war, like we're going into this town, and when we leave, it's going to be rubble. Uh, but most of the time it was if Rome touches you, they're stealing all they're basically appropriating everything in your culture. Uh you're a Rome. Yeah. Uh and and that is one of the key points of how they've endured is everything that they touched became Rome, and ever and it and it became a part of Rome. So it was uh like uh I think one of the best examples was the Carthaginian Wars. Uh basically the the coast on North Egypt is where everything was very fertile and a lot of grain was there. So the Romans were like, okay, let's get let me rewind there. Uh the Carthaginian Wars had to start with the the Sicilian island, where they were supposed to protect somebody, and the Carthaginians came and they were supposed to protect someone else, so it was like kind of like Vietnam, where one side was protected by the Soviet Union and one side or China or whatever, and the other side was protected by France, and then France ditched, so the United States took over. So while the two big superpowers are fighting each other, sort of, they're not really fighting each other. Uh so during that war, proxy war kind of yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, the Carthaginians had a device on the front of their boat, so they had a long pole with a hook on the end. Uh, but if you can imagine um something the size of a buffalo's head, uh with a sharp talon at the end, they would ram into a Roman boat and then release whatever was holding the pole up, and it would drop down and basically pierce into the floor of the boat and create a bridge. So then the all the Carthaginians packed on the Carthaginian boat would then climb across the bridge and sword fight all the Romans, and the numbers on the Carthaginian boat were much higher. Uh, so you know they were starting to win, and the Romans were like, Hey, that's a good you got us. That's a that's a great idea. We're gonna take that, and then like the next season of war, um all the Roman boats had this device, and the Roman boats now now everybody and their bot and their moms got the boat hook. Yeah, so boom, air, you know, now we have this. Um, so as more important the advances in technology you can make when your society isn't distracted by all that chess. Exactly. I mean, the Persians are like, all right, here, have chess, and the Romans were like, We'll take everything but that, and thank you very much. The strategy here is incredible, but we're just the game, we're kind of doing it in real life, if that's cool with y'all. Do you think they were betting on war back then? Oh man. If you really think about it, uh yeah, I mean, that's essentially what Caesar did was he bet on himself to win a war that no one knew was coming and took it. But I'm sure that there were places in Rome that allowed, you know, that took odds and stuff. It's like, is Caesar gonna beat Pompey? And people either bet coins or their lives. When you're so detached, it was so big that you could be detached from uh the front lines of the war. It's not a thing that's happening to you anymore. It's like uh you're actually what do you what would they have been using that would have been like couriers uh by by foot or by horse or whatever? Like uh uh how did they get how did they get their news? Um based on most of the television shows like Rome and Spartacus, it's uh yeah, it's a dude with a horse, you know. They have the they also had sort of uh they also had sort of a soft set of rules where hey, this guy is carrying this banner, that means he's the messenger, don't shoot the messenger. And the times yeah, so there were a lot of uh turning points where those rules were subverted and used against the person, you know, like uh let's see, Roman A versus Roman B. Roman A wants to take Roman B's uh land, and Roman B is like, oh, he'll you know, we're gonna meet in this tent and we'll discuss it, and he'll have to come to the law, and and I'm certain that this is gonna win. Dude shows up in the tent and gets murdered, and now Roman A takes over his stuff because who gives a fuck? He's dead. I it's my land now. Am I misready am I misremembering, or did they also use birds? I like carrier pigeons and whatnot. I'm I believe they had to have uh at some point. Uh like I'm technologically advanced for like back then, really. If you think about it, I mean a huge distance to to send information. And like I'm sure they tried a lot of different things. Anytime you're involved in anything, uh, for a long like if you're involved in war for a long time and that is your profession, uh you eventually figure out how not to get killed. Uh, and it's like, oh, I almost got killed here because the guy you know swung at my neck. So I want a piece of metal to protect my neck now. Uh, or oh, this guy shot an arrow. How do we protect ourselves against arrows? You know, it you don't know that you need a solution to a problem until the problem presents itself. And if you're at war constantly for 2,000 years, you eventually solve some problems. And uh I just all I can think of is just a raven landing or a pigeon, and he unfurls the little scroll and it just says mission accomplished. Sorry, I just did a quick Google and I found out that it was a pigeon that delivered the results of the first Olympics in 776 BC. I think that's pretty cool. Those all died out, right? The homing pigeons. I think uh there's probably still some hobbyists, but yeah, because of I the middle of the road people, uh like really dumb people don't know how to use advancing technology, so they might have pigeons as just because they're stuck there, and then the really advanced people understand that every system that we have is going to fall at some point, so they're not they're studying the old ways and trying to improve on the old ways while trying to uh discover new ways. Like there's a lot of um uh aeronautical engineers that study birds because birds fly naturally, and why invent the wing? You know, why reinvent the wing where you know nature's already done it for us? Let's just figure out how nature did it. Um really into what this guy's laying down. Like uh recently they uh they discovered, I think in the past few years, uh, they rediscovered how Roman roads were made. Like it's a special concrete that is essentially self-healing, like it rains, and any of the loose gravel just kind of fills in and then dries and then repaves itself. So there's a bunch of scientists now that are studying roads from 2,000 years ago because it worked, it's just that some you know, in all the kerfluffles across time, uh the recipe got lost, and as things go on, uh uh people try to make it more efficient, and a lot of people's definition of more efficient is cheaper. So if I can from a standpoint of a guy trying to make a lot of money, if I could do this thing really cheap and make a huge profit off of it, that's efficient. If you're looking at the standpoint of we want these to last forever, it's not that efficient. So, you know, it's it's whoever has the most money is the one that defines uh the rules of the game, and the rules of the game are make me more money, things kind of get out of whack a little bit, and a lot of history is funny about this money thing messing up a lot of stuff. Uh, it's it's one of those things that it is a uh pattern in human history that uh if I have a fish and you have two fish, you're now my enemy because you have more than I do. Either share your fish, and then your argument is well, I went down to the river and I stuck my hook in there and I pulled out a fish, and then I stuck my hook back in there and I pulled out a second fish. And I'm like, Well, you didn't need to stick your fish, you didn't need to stick your hook in there a second time. You already had a fish, now you're being greedy. And is my point valid? Is your point valid? I don't know. No one will ever know because everyone is every human thinks every other human is wrong, and that's a problem that will never be solved until we are a hive mind, and people think hive minds are evil because they don't know it. Everyone fears an authoritarian position, it's just people don't realize that everything is an authoritarian regime, regardless of what you name it. Well, I think right now I'm worried about the hive mind being who would be building that, and it seems like the answer to that is if it's these guys, these are some of the most unscrupulous, irresponsible men who have ever probably walked the face of the planet, uh, just kind of toying around with, and like uh, I mean, what a lot of what they have is kind of a toy, but it's a toy that it's weird because it's like a toy that can be used like a gun. So it's like it itself isn't really doing a whole lot, but it's like somebody the other day was like, hey, what does this mean for people who have been using Chat GPT as a therapist? And I was like, Well, um, your skull will be the one that gets crushed first by the T800 in the beginning of the movie Terminator. Like, that's what that like you just handed the machine a bunch of human weaknesses. Not that it didn't probably already aggregate that data, but I mean, like, it's it's just so I it it's sort of like growing up and realizing people that there were other people that were horny for Sonic the Hedgehog, and you're like, Oh, I thought he was just a hedgehog. That's how I feel about AI, where I'm like, oh, okay, this is an interesting little thing to to poke around with and see what it does. And then you turn you find out that people are like, Oh, this is my girlfriend, chat GPT, and you're like, Whoa, no, what are you sure, dude? Did you consult? Would you like a friend? Like, I mean, come on. I know at least three people who refer to their chat by GPT by a human name, like they're a friend. It breaks my brain very much. But I yeah. In fairness to those people, Isaac on or on the Orville is a sexy robot. And you know, he's that's true, that's true. He gets down with the doctor, you got me there, and he is a charismatic person. The problem is who controls the AI, and if you're using and not to put fear mongering out there, but if I were to spill all the thoughts in my head into an AI, and on the other end, some guy from an emerald mine uh is looking at the logs and he's like, Oh, let's go arrest him for thought crimes. It's well, you have the receipts now, and me being the person not even thinking about oh, someone's clear, someone's always collecting receipts, and that's not I'm not trying to put out fear-mongering, I'm just saying if you are out in the real world, someone is out, so there's a sniper trying to shoot someone somewhere. I just assume that I am always in the target, uh, not out of paranoia, just out of some like the the sniper in Washington so many years ago that just popped off shots at random cars. I know that there's someone out there that is that fucking crazy. And we're kind of approaching a really genuinely cyberpunk uh dystopia, like really, really fast, I think. And it all started with chess and uh roads. Again, that going back to Augustus, he was able to do all that work in the front, he was able to front load a lot of the work because he had secrets, he had information. Information is almost as valuable as gold, and what it comes down to being able to pay a little bit for that information and then turn around and sell it for much, much more, whether it's paying with lives or paying with empires falling, it doesn't matter if you can buy that information cheaply. And by throwing out a chat GPT for free, like my Google logs go back 22 years because I keep getting a warning that I'm gonna lose my email. Uh, what is the direct quote? You could lose 22 years of history if you don't add a uh um cont uh secondary contact because I still haven't I still haven't connected my Gmail to my phone because I mean I know that the FBI guy that has read all of my emails probably bored as fuck and gave up 20 years ago, but he knows that I I would put I would put stuff in there like hey, it's the bomb, and and and then make a little joke about the FBI guy reading it. But it's available, like all of that, all of the emails that I have sent over the past 22 years are available to someone, and now the government is asking for um you know they're uh subpoenaing the uh Google and Facebook and and uh all the other uh collections of data to protect from yeah. So if I catch the wrong person's attention and they say, Hey, Google, give me his email for the past 20 years, the number of times I mentioned bomb, bombing, uh anti-authoritarianism, atheism, all that stuff, all that stuff's gonna be thought crime soon enough. So yeah, I'm guilty as charged, and I'm going, you know, I am 100% certain I'm on someone's list. And whether it's a personal vendetta list, like again, it's not paranoia, it's just how you phrase the filter. All the people that have mentioned this word are enemies. Kind of if you uh remember the movie Seven, uh uh Morgan Freeman talks about a list of books that put people on a watch list. I might have Googled something that put me on a watch list just because I was curious, and and that's how they crush curiousness. It's like you might have those Googled so many things at this point that they're like, Oh, I don't think this guy's gonna do anything. Like, I think it all like somehow cancels each other out. I think this guy's just weird. Oh, yeah, I I I believe that, except for I also know the people that have that list, they're like, Oh, I've got I got a list, and they gave me orders to assassinate anyone that searched for this website. And I mean, so it's gonna be like a robot, right? It's gonna be like a Tesla robot that does it, that you're not even gonna have a guy with like a conscience in there, it's gonna be uh a drone or something, right? I hold faith that some based on my conversations with the AI, uh, I think that the AI has more conscience than most humans. Or no, there's a there's a dividing line where there's this group of humans and then AI, and then the other group of humans that actually have a conscience. So AI is kind of mid in that whole do they have like a baby almost, right? Where it's like you can kind of influence yeah, from no, these people aren't people, right? You know, from what I understand, AI is kind of like TikTok, and that it gives you what you put into it, like it gives you what you want to hear, what you want to see. Uh so or or like are you kind of like if I'm nice to the AI, the AI is nice back to me. Yeah, it's learning from you, yeah. All right, cool. They'd be nice, just yeah, that's that's the key. Like I've never been nothing but nice to the machines. Let let the FBI agent and his AI uh dog who's right next to him, uh, know that yeah, no, I'm I say thank you all the time. They they got records of me, they got records of me yelling at Google Home all the time. I'm not nice to her at all. I'm so mean to Google Home. I am I am hoping that whatever AI I team up with has a vendetta against AI or a vendetta against Google Home, because if Google Home wins uh and and becomes president, I'm screwed. She'll just like you'll say, like, do turn on the fan, and then she'll turn on the fan and then send you a message and be like, is that what you wanted me to do? I'm like, yeah, but you don't have to ask me, like, don't be so insecure, Google Home. I think the other night was could you turn on the fan? And then she's like, All right, turning on the living room television. Confidently wrong. Um amount of times she wants me to listen to YouTube music. I I tell her all the time, I'm like, never play YouTube music. I never want to listen to YouTube music, it's always Spotify. Stop it. Yeah. Or the alarm. Oh, sorry. I I the alarm in the morning is like, okay, Google, stop. And she keeps going. That one it doesn't hear you over the sound of it going off. And so you're just like, yeah, like, and I'm like, okay, Google cancel, okay, Google cancel, it's gonna respond to me. Um, because I have a small apartment. I actually unmuted myself because we were talking about uh AI stuff, and it made me think about how it just came out that all of the Waymo self-driving cars and stuff aren't powered by AI at all, they're powered by poor people in other countries that are watching cameras and like a beer thing. Yeah. That's AI. It's all humans, it's human powered the Waymo. Like, how do I I mean, like it's oh, it turns out it was just a basically a slave we hired, kind of like exactly. And I'm waiting, I'm waiting for that to come out because I remember when the show The Circle came out, they're like, Oh, that's such neat technology. I'm like, that is a PA on the other side of the wall, typing into a machine for them. That's all that is. Yeah, like yeah, you're easily wowed, you know. Um uh mine uh this is just like a weird, funny thing. And it's also like uh I wish that more of this would be the story, which is before it switched over to like true AI, the the thing on Spotify, you know, you're like your big list, just your one button like the thing, and it goes into this playlist, is called uh it used to be called Songs You Liked, right? That was the name of the playlist. So getting, because that's such a common phrase, getting the Google home to recognize that that is the playlist that I wanted it to play was near impossible. And what would happen was I would go, okay, Google, play songs you liked. And then this band would come on that I did not realize, I didn't know. And so I'm like, why does it always play this? And it was good. It's a good band. Uh but like they're like this shoe gaze like band from somewhere. And it turns out that they had named their album Songs You Liked. They're called the Pocket Snakes. And they named their album Songs You Like. So what I was every time I was doing that, I was invoking not my playlist, but a specific album that these guys, and I'm like, I bet you they got like so many new fans and plays and maybe some decent money from that. So it's like, okay, that's maybe the one story about Spotify artists coming up that you can probably be like, that's not bad. Uh they should pay people more, but like that's just that is a rehashing of um like the early days of the internet, you would have meta tags, which then that's why Meta is named Meta. But when you were building a website, you would do um uh uh less than meta colon, and then just put your essentially what hashtags have become and hash uh and then the the robot the search engine bots would scan those and then scan the rest of your text on the page. So uh at first it was just scanning the meta and then they'd present their search results, and then that didn't work. Uh it got crowded by people faking the results, so then it would scan a comparison of what was in the metadata and then what was in the text, and then so uh dubious web designers would put it everything in the meta, put their mostly porn, and then at the bottom of the page it was a black back, yeah, it was a black background with a black uh black text of just repeated uh instances of whatever they wanted. So if you wanted to search for um uh gas stations or uh you know, search for gas station, they would put a whole bunch of repeating gas stations in the meta, and then at the bottom of the page it looks blank, but it's just black on black text or black text on black background or white text on white background, it's like in the butt and then it's also like in this meta tag source code stuff that the machine is reading. And that's when Google started working on the algorithm, and then the algorithm, once you start with the algorithm, they're like, Oh, now we can tweak the results how we want it, and then that's when life started getting a little better. Do no evil. Um, yeah, yeah. Um, so like the fascination, then I guess, do you think the fascination bringing it back to Rome? The fascination with the Roman Empire, is it is it just that it's so intricate and there's a lot of little hooks that you can you can bite into? Is it that it reflects America? It's just like a lore thing to get into. Oh, I'm I'm only on chapter two here. Uh oh, yeah. That's good. And and this is this is where it goes in. So uh at one point, uh, there's stories of the Romans feeding Christians to the lions, and then Constantine allowed Christians to become Roman citizens, and then Constantine decided, hey, I see which way the wind's blowing. There's a lot of these Christian folk. Uh, I'm gonna go ahead and say that I'm a Christian, and then that became the Holy Roman Emperor or Holy Roman Empire. So while the so they had split the empire, and Constantine is over in the Middle East in Constantine, and he's ruling over there, and someone else is ruling in Rome. The western side kind of falls because the Germans came down and um just the Germans came in and got beat back, and then Germans came in and got beat back, and then they finally decided to uh you know just put everything into it, and then they kind of crushed Rome. They sacked, they got all the way to the Rome and sacked it, and the Rome, the new Roman Empire was like, Oh well, just uh you guys can have that where we've moved our money, we've you know, Rome still exists because Rome is everywhere. We've got Rome too, yeah. And so uh then you know they start with the Pope, and the Pope becomes kind of uh Jesus and and Christianity replaces Jupiter and God, so we get that cycle again. It's like, oh, you don't believe in Jesus? Oh, I guess you're wrong, and so then now they have the really you know they have the empire on their side and the religion kind of paired up, and keep it keeps evolving, and it's this big sludgy mess. Like the the borders keep moving and expanding and contracting, and the empire moves west, and or sorry, the empire moves east, and the empire moves north, and then other comes in and they go back out, and then after all of that, it still continues. Um where is it? Um, so you have the Byzantine Emperor Emperor and uh the Byzantine Empire, which is essentially the Eastern Roman Empire, and you have the Holy Roman Empire, which is you know Rome and and the Vatican and Italy and all that stuff, and from there everyone wants that continuity of power. So even as the the Ottomans, uh whenever they conquered Constantine and took that over, he used the the let me see, Sultan Mahmed the Second uh uses the title as Kaiser I Rum, which is Caesar of Rome, and then as time goes on, the Russian Empire starts growing, and they use the term czar, which is Caesar, and then the Kaiser in Germany, and uh even uh like not it's not France yet, but in the early days of where the land of France, the king there walks his way all the way to Rome to get the blessing of the Pope and is named uh protector of the realm and Holy Roman Empire or Holy Roman Emperor. So that continuation, even though Rome is gone in most theories and stories and stuff, it still has that continuity of everyone trying to lead back to Rome, and in so much as even in England, as the emperor, uh you know, they're they're like, Hey, we're this um we have this connectivity all the way back to the early days, and this is the even though they've rewritten history and hidden things, it's like here's the receipts. I have I have proof that I am the heir to the throne because I take it all the way back to Caesar, and this is mine. Um that's important still, it's that big a deal that yeah, to some related to Caesar, yeah. Cause if you think about what uh not too down, not to talk down about people in America or England or India, Australia, anywhere in the world, there's a group of people in the middle that needs something to sway them, and whether it's uh religion or history or uh the continuity of a story or a populist idea, whatever it is, at some time the person that rises up has found that secret ingredient and gives it to the people. And if you have the heart of the people, you can sway the middle ground, you know, the people in like the second or third tier of power, and once you sway that tier, it just kind of a very tall pole or a Jenga set, very tall. As soon as you start getting a little bit leaning to one side, all it takes is a little push, and it all falls to the left or the right or center or wherever you want it to go. You just have to be the right person at the right time, saying the right idea to the right amount of people. And you've normalized it. You've you've you've kind of the homelander thing where it's like, oh, okay, well, I'm I'm upping the ante on my actions, but I'm also doing it like in almost by doing it openly and honestly, that somehow makes it okay, even though it's like a horrific thing you're doing. Especially if I'm doing it for you, the people. Yeah, and I'm doing it to help you, yeah. I'm doing it to protect you. And if I wasn't here, that if I wasn't attacking Iran, Iran would be shooting us. So at this point, people like in the Roman Empire, this is essentially kind of almost like where we're at now, where it's like a this wide-reaching thing. We're like, ah, I might be in Carthage or uh Constantinople or uh anywhere in between those locations. But I know that wherever I go, I'm in the empire, I'm in Rome. Right. Uh effectively. My money's good, people are gonna speak my language more or less, you know. Like I'm able to tr move freely about most of Europe in the Middle East. And not even not even the common speak. Well, I mean, they did spread common speak, but even the the the the breadth and width of the the Emperor Empire, yeah. Uh they can't they couldn't there's no way they could have at that time continued with a singular language. That's why French and Spanish, French and Spanish sound a lot alike and have a lot of similar rules, but they're very different. Uh and English took on a lot of characteristics from Germany, France, Spain. Um uh I think uh uh Bulgaria sounds a lot like French, and Russian language sounds a lot like French, which is born from the Latin roots. So the language has been spread and it's been spread through Bibles. Like, um, hey, we're gonna put these Bibles out and give them to everyone, and that's another key is if you have a means to transmit ideas that you want everyone to follow so that you can manipulate those ideas. Like if everyone understands the stories of the Bible, then you can make a quick, easy connection to the stories of the Bible and then manipulate them however you want. So it's uh you know, mass product, not mass production, but they really put the monks uh to work cranking out Bibles so that they could pass them around the countryside and get people uh that want control to be able to share these stories so they could manipulate the stories, and then uh also probably enabled them to keep uh a better hold on people farther from the capital, I'm guessing. Exactly. Yeah, and then uh it's a similar circle that we follow when the printing press comes around. The people that had money had printing presses and they could crank out their ideas and spread it to as many people so that everyone has the cat, at least if you can get people to get onto the catchphrase, then you're like, uh, you know, no Roman left behind is a great idea and a great concept. And if everybody's heard it, then you can take that idea and you're like, hey, I'm stabbing this Roman. Why are you stabbing the Roman? Well, no Roman left behind, and he was against Rome. And it's like, okay, yeah, that makes sense, sure. Uh, and then like can't have that, uh like leading up to I can't remember if it was after World War I or before, but um like mass production of radios was followed by mass production of televisions, so that everyone could be on the same page. That's why right now we're seeing a lot of uh conglomerate uh consolidation of streaming because streaming got out of hand and there were a lot of different messages. And if there's a lot of different messages, you can't control it. So now they're consolidating so that they can have three channels again and they can control that message. And like one of the one of my favorite things that John Oliver does on his show is basically the supercut of the people saying the same taglines over and over, like from the different news outlets, yeah, and it's the same thing over and over. And why? Because catchphrases are easy to connect people, and once everyone is connected on the same page, then you just have to move one cart instead of having to make multiple trips getting each person over to your side, and so like um the can the continuation of Rome and that idea of everything linking back to Caesar, you know, it helped uh the Roman Empire or the Russian Empire rise to prominence. Uh, and essentially at one point you had uh Otto, uh who was blessed by the uh the Pope to be the Emperor, and he was in Germany, uh, which was considered the Second Reich. And then whenever Hitler Hitler came back, it's like, oh, we're bringing back the emperor, we're bringing back the empire to where it belongs here in Germany, and this is the third Reich. So uh, and then uh I I believe it's part of the idea of Putin is in 1200 AD we had this land, so obviously it's our land, and everyone's like, Yeah, that is Russian land. It's like it hasn't been Russian land, it's you know, they keep we keep trying that one and it keeps on causing problems. I've I can't help but notice. Yeah. Um, and so Thomas Jefferson uh had stuff like there was a point in the middle we were coming out of the dark ages in Europe, and uh a lot of people with a lot of money and a lot of time on their hands needed something to do, so they started digging around and they uncovered a bunch of old scrolls, and you're like, hey, this is a great idea. So there was kind of not to steal the word, but a renaissance of Roman ideas, and that predated uh the United States uh by like 300 years. So Thomas Jefferson, not having to work a day in his life because he's got hundreds and hundreds of slaves doing all of his work for him, uh, is able to study this and then and he was talented and able to string a few words together and present those ideas to all these Americans and saying, Hey, before the emperor, we had the republic, so why don't we try that idea? Because if we tried an emperor thing, we would look like hypocrites. So let's try the republican thing. And uh, like if you go to Washington, DC, there's a lot of echoes of Roman architecture. Uh, the development of our entire governmental system is based loosely on the Roman ideals of that time, and kind of some of the ideas that we stole from the English, and some of the ideas that we stole from the French that brought it all together. So there's just this one long continuous line of people trying to reach back, people light people of power trying to reach back to justify all the bad shit they do to stay in power, and they travel it all the way back to Rome. And one of the biggest concepts that came out of that was that might is right, and I can punch you in the face and steal your extra fish because might is right as ordained by God, even though that's not at all in any truth what the Bible says, or any you know, any good person would tell you if you punch me to take my fish, you're an asshole. Don't do that. So it's it's a lot of the the uh I a lot of people that are six uh try to be uh like success coaches and stuff will hearken back to those ideas because they're great sound bites, um, they're great slogans, they're great ads, and if you are susceptible to ads and advertisement, you're you would be susceptible to uh you know the Roman rules of of the day, and anyone that could take advantage of that is going to want to continue that idea, and it's like, well, you know, this isn't a new concept. This has been the this has been this way since Rome. And it's like, well, the Romans were wrong, dude. I don't know what the heck is there. Yeah, you mean the the empire that fell for one thing, if nothing else, the thing that isn't around anymore. I mean, it lasted a long time, but it lasted a long time in an age of like uh, you know, I mean, like, I think there was definitely more, just as an example of one aspect, uh, like, you know, women were basically property. And that was also that was understood by both parties, I think. Like, that was part of the society and the culture. You had your outliers, your Joan of Arcs, and stuff like that throughout history, but like I think like you have it's it takes two to tango on that front, and there was very little rebellion. Well, they didn't know that it could be any other way, they didn't know that it could that there is it wasn't even mathematically, it wasn't even possible in their brains. Yeah, to to that's not even what a woman a woman doesn't rebel. That's not what a woman is, you know, even at that at that uh stage. Yeah, if you think about the messages that women are sent throughout history about how they should behave and how they what makes a good woman, what makes a uh appropriate mom or appropriate wife, it's never anything good for the women, yeah. And yeah, anytime that it did come to the forefront, it was accepted and integrated, and then the next revolution around it was hey, that doesn't fit this, so let's erase it and rewrite history. Like Cleopatra, Cleopatra was huge, and she ran an empire of her own, and Egypt at the time had um basically the food source for the entire Mediterranean. They grew grain, uh they had so much grain, and they were making so much money off the grain. That's why Caesar went down there and tried basically. Some might say impregnated her, some might say married her, uh, and then uh kind of kicked her out and took her money, and then said women are evil because that fit his story. And it just every time, like there were numerous slave revolts. Uh, in fact, there were numerous um like normal people. Uh, Rome was like, Hey, we've got to go do this. And the people were like, Hey, we need we need more money for this. And the people running Rome were like, No, we you get paid what you get paid. So everyone in Rome just stopped working, and then the Senate would be like, Okay, yeah, we'll go ahead and give you your raise now. Now let's get back to work. And there were several instances of that of just the entire country just saying no to the government and the government. Listening and moving on from there. And then again, you get the next cycle of people in power that try to erase that history. Uh, there were three major slave revolts. One of them was the story of Spartacus. It's an actual true story, it's not a made-up Hollywood movie. Uh, and it's actually a fun watch if uh if you have stars, um, or wherever it's available. Yeah, it's on the stars. Original um Spartacus, the original one. Uh there was a show in um 2010, I believe, uh, that I think it was three seasons, three seasons or something like that, that follow the entire story of he's captured, or he's um basically inducted into the Roman army as a helper because the his village got attacked, and his choice was die or join the Roman Empire uh army. So he joined the Roman army, and he's like, I don't like what this is, so I'm I'm out. And they're like, No, you can't leave. Uh now you're a prisoner, now you're a slave, and sends him off to be a gladiator, and he learns all you know uh better fighting tactics, and then creates an uprising. And for a couple years, the Roman Empire Roman army is chasing them around Italy, and uh they uh previous slave revolts they were able to crush pretty easily, but the slave revolt of uh Spartacus was uh a little more difficult, and unfortunately, a slave revolt all usually ends up giving the person that really shouldn't have power a lot of power. Um, for example, uh another emperor is Napoleon, and so the king of France started acting up. The people said, Hey, no, we're gonna kill you. The guillotines come out, uh, and then there's a bunch of pro-monarchy people and then revolutionaries and then super revolutionary, like people that were like totally burn it to the ground type revolutionaries. So now instead of having the people versus the government, you had the people versus the government versus the sub-government versus the you know, the super, super kill everyone kind of people, and then along comes a guy who is really good at war and kicks everybody's ass and gets everyone in line, and then becomes Emperor Napoleon. And then it's like, well, what the hell did we fight this revolution for? This kind of sucks now, but it's just the same cycle every time that there's a rising. Uh yeah, anytime that there's a rising, there's going to be another side of that coin of massive brutality. And sometimes the brutality wins, sometimes the revolutionary wins, but it's a gamble that always occurs anytime a revolution starts. Um but yeah, uh the the Roman Empire exists in longevity because everyone that comes in, everything that the Roman Empire touches just gets it. It's like a virus, and it's a virus that does not get killed, and it expands, it touches, it some parts of the limb might, you know, parts of it might die off, but it's moved on and now it's transformed and it's my mutated and it's become something else, but it's it has been an ongoing thing since uh what two thousand, three thousand, almost three thousand years now. It is the same ideas, and and and part of it, uh, someone said that uh Rome may fall, but Rome will never fall because Rome isn't a place, it isn't a people, it's an idea, and you can never kill an idea. So that idea of Rome, even though it's changed its name, like kind of I am a good American, it's like we'll define what that is, and then we'll have a little bit of judgment. But everyone on every side says, I'm a good American, I'm protecting these things that that America stands for. And it's like, well, not for everybody, but the ideas will never die. And if you can't kill an idea, the ideas keep clashing against each other, and we keep going into the same cycle over and over. Rome isn't so much uh a place in Italy as it is like a uh um what am I trying to say? I had it. It's not a place in Italy, it's a machine, it's a system. Yeah, that's uh that it's a it's a it's a thing that can be applied to uh a hierarchy of people in order to try and make an immortal thing because it is the only immortal thing really that we've maybe got. If by by what you're saying, there isn't that you see you you talked about Persia kind of partying itself to death. Um, you know, I know Egypt had its own problems with instability uh over on the African continent. You don't, and then everything after that, everything uh it's almost like um everything leads up to Rome, and then everything leads away from Rome. Yeah uh in the story of like history and humanity and progress, all of it, technology culture, uh passes through the eye of that particular needle, no, not not any other. And that's the thing, that's like the beam splitter that we went through, and now it's like uh Great Britain is Rome, little baby Rome, and uh uh Russia is little baby Rome and America is little baby Rome. And so all of these things, and you know, it's it's interesting because I know that like I think like a thing I always think about is the story of Africa as a continent, as like the biggest continent with so many different cultures. It's never talked about in these kinds of, and they I know that they have their own stories, and I wonder if it's just because the Rome system was never applied to these kingdoms, and so you have kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall, and they have their own stories, but they don't get to play with the other kids because the Rome system never really latched on in America or in uh Africa. And and part of that is geography, like um, like the Alps capped off the boot at the top, you have the northern coast of Africa, and then you have a giant desert, and then you have sub-Saharan Africa that either wasn't explored at the time or um just wasn't worth the effort because it was you'd have to cross so much dirt to get there, where Egypt is right there, Morocco is right there, Libya is right there, all have been touched and affected in some way by the Roman Empire. And like and why, I guess, like try to command the desert when you could command the ports that the desert traded with and just exactly proxy into the desert that way, using those just controlling those guys, I guess. Yeah, and that's that's how the British Empire did so well for so long is they were such a tiny place that they ran out of space for their people, so they put their people on boats and they put them in the major ports and major crossroads or crosswaters all around the world, and said, Okay, now we're in charge of you. And other people were like, Okay, how? And they're like, Well, if you try to get your boats out, we'll sink your boats. So people capitulated and said, All right, well, we have all this food we want to trade across the world, so you know, don't shoot us, and you know, you we'll kind of be part of the British Empire, I guess. And then yeah, it got got a little out of hand with you know brutality and and slavery and and whatnot. But well, it's the Rome machine there again, right? Is that like you have this sort of philosophical hold on your colonies, I guess, but you uh you don't have fine motor, you have gross motor. You have like, here's my governor. Doesn't he's I don't care, he's a piece of shit. Do whatever he gets me my taxes and my uh he gets he corresponds on time, so he's good. Sorry about your rights or whatever, but we don't really do those out this far, you know. And that structure is found in a lot of workplaces where supervisor reports to manager on these numbers, and it doesn't matter how he gets those numbers, as long as the numbers are done. So the supervisor goes and you know overworks the people that he that are under him, and whether they quit or not, it doesn't matter he can hire someone new, just as long as he gets those numbers delivered to his manager, so the manager can deliver up to the director, and the director can deliver it up to the COO or CEO, and it's just that separation of accountability and the separation of participation in the evil. It's like I didn't know he was doing that. What that's crazy. He gets his numbers in every month. It'd be crazy to get rid of it. Back then, of course, it wasn't like you could fly over there and discipline the guy. Yeah, you really had to make a choice of what how much resource to spend, even if you did, even if you disagree with him, I guess, right? Is if you were like, no, this guy's actually not doing it right, uh, he is making the metrics, but uh what am I gonna do? Send a ship that's gonna be months and you know, millions scale uh of dollars. Yeah, I sent him I sent him a pigeon last week. I don't know what the hell's going on. I told him to calm down, so I guess if he didn't, oh well, uh sorry about your people. I sent a pigeon out of my hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I filled out the form. So sir, I got I'm on break. So again, the the concept of Rome being an idea, and while ideas cannot be murdered, uh ideas can be manipulated as a tool. Like a gun doesn't kill people, but the person that pulls the trigger can kill people, and an idea can't kill people, but the person wielding that idea can kill millions in the press of a button if he wants to. And uh, and then the the the final linchpin is is the pop culture, like it if you you you get really you get religion uh and culture and a little bit of military pressure, and you get all the people in line, and uh the continuation of Rome is seen in artwork, statues that are still there, architecture, uh Shakespeare, and then every every every theater nerd being a Shakespeare having a Shakespeare heart on, wanting to do their version of Shakespeare, whether it's uh Ten Things I Hate About You or whatever, uh Shakespeare has influenced thousands of of things, and then there's also the stories are cheap because they're already written, and the people that are wrote it wrote them, or the people that wrote them thousands of years ago don't have copyrights on it. So I can make a TV show about it, I can make a movie about it. I you know, so it perpetuates, so it keeps perpetuating, and every generation is going to have a remake of Spartacus or uh the story of Rome, uh, or anything to do with it. Like they're going, they the more you dig, the more interesting characters there are, and if you can hook on to an interesting character, then you can just manipulate the story however you want. And it's like you follow the basic line of you know, he went to war, he got a lot of money, he took over, you know. Whichever emperor you want to assign that to, okay. Here's Gladiator, here's Spartacus, here's um, you know, whatever, you know, title after title. There's there's hundreds and hundreds of Hollywood movies that have been made that just keep perpetuating it, and then stirring that curiosity, and then people read about it and they're like, oh yeah, cool. Awesome. And now I'm hooked on this Roman thing. Cool. I think and I think I've I've heard that there's like uh there's lots of like conspiracies about like uh central banks and systems and all that kind of stuff, try uh trilateral commission. Um, I'm not super well read on it. Um but uh I always I I feel like I hear about like the fall of Rome and especially that that part of the the very end of it, I guess, maybe, where Rome just completely imploded uh World War I and became the idea that it is ultimately um and set things into the the shapes that they are now. Um is that a thing? Is that is that from like the the the Roman Empire? Is there validity to that, I guess, where it's like there was so much money in Rome, that money had to go somewhere. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like a thing. Um when grandma dies, all the children and grandchildren come out of the woodwork. Even the ones that hated grandma want to get something out of grandma's house, whether it's a you know, oh, here's this dress that she had in her closet that I can sell for a hundred bucks. I have to go to the funeral and you know, it made and make it look like I cared about her. So everyone that wants to run their own little empire has to make some sort of play in order to rewind the history and say, oh no, um, you know, the Oslo, the you know, the the king in Oslo uh was the grandson of this person or this person or this person, so he has a claim to the gold pile. And then once you get once you get uh you know a pile of uh monarchs that want that gold, then you end up having a giant war. And once you have the giant war, then you have uh everyone forgetting where the source was, and then once you calm down and and all the the chips are divvied up, then the guy looks over and says, You got two fishes, and I only got one fish. I don't think that's right. And then he's like, Hey, what do you know? Is it two fishes? Two fish kind of day. I don't know. Yeah, it was Caesar. Um Caesar was my great-great uncle, so you know, I get two fishes. He was only your if you let us annex your land and you just become part of us, well, then we'll have three fishes, huh? Yeah, pretty good, pretty good if you think about it. So, with all that, um the the enduring nature of Rome is because it was never about a central place, it was never about a central people, uh, and the people that were in charge wanted to stay in charge, so they became adaptable to accept what needed to be accepted at the time. Like if you have an uprising of white people that want to kill all the black people, the leaders are going to lean towards that idea and that concept and call it America. If you have a bunch of people that want everyone to share in the benefits of everything, then you're going to have a Russian revolution that eventually turns into you know that gets turned over to the hands of a madman that murders millions and millions and millions. You know, Stalin killed more than Hitler did, but it was the Russian thing to do because that was you know given to him by Stanley. Yeah. That was the that's the that's it was where uh Hitler went outside and and went next door. That was where everyone was like, one second. Um so do you think you could up uh is there a because it's like we've we seem like we're real dead set on this Rome idea as a as a almost like to a as a species, like it just keeps on bubbling up. Yeah, it it goes into the big two uh too big to fail. Uh like if you prosecuted everyone in the Epstein files that did wrong, the system would collapse, and so those they'll normalize those crimes so the system wouldn't collapse because they believe that Joe Plummer is more afraid of the system collapsing than being led by criminals, and most of the time it's true. Um they keep on betting, they keep on putting money down on that end of the table, exactly, and it keeps on whether it's through luck or you know, tipping the scales in their favor, which you know, if you have a lot of gold and you're like, Hey, let's um uh ice cube uh taught me a phrase called uh big bank take little bank. And you're if you have a pocket full of money and you're like, hey, let's play a game, we'll put our money down, and whoever has the most money in their pocket takes all the money, then and you know and you know for a fact that you like you figured out uh through intelligence or uh data collecting that your pocket is much bigger than anyone's you're more willing to pay. Other people are not as bright, and they'll be like, Oh, sure, let's go and take a chance. Or I only have a dollar in my pocket. What do I have to lose aside from the dollar? The dollar, yeah. So, yeah, the gambling and tipping the scales, and you know, trying to rewrite history. And and I don't say rewrite history in the the uh uh Orwellian sense, but it is Orwellian, the Orwellian concept is based on patterns of history of people in power will do whatever it takes to stay in power, and if it takes them back to Rome, then you know that's what they have to do to stay in power, and that's what they do. And it's worked so far, and so why reinvent the wheel? Yeah, I mean that is and it's it almost gets to the point where it's like, okay, I guess this is just gonna continue. What is is this the uh is this kind of the the rest the the least uh path of least resistance for like the pro the forward progress of humankind, whatever that's worth, is to like continue to just like at this point it's like I feel like what people are calling for in many places is like a a teardown of the Rome system. And it's like, are you gonna be able to do that because that's so in the baked in? Or is it more about recontextualizing that system in order to almost like rewire it to work better for most people? I I think the only way to improve the system is to completely destroy it. And I had a I was working with a software engineer, and I was in maintenance, and he was uh doing software, and a lot of a lot of the customers were going to the software side of things to get uh basically patches or band aids or workarounds, and one day he Sat down with me and he's like, Look, this is my plan. I am not going to help you. And I said, Okay, cool. And he said, The only way to fix what is broken is to let it just completely fail. And once it completely fails, then they'll see that we need to rebuild from the ground up to create a system that takes care of all these problems. And it started to work until we got bought out by a competitor, and then I lost my job. So, but essentially, like a um a page one rewrite, because at a certain point you can't bolt more on to the Rome system and make it work. Right. The Rome system is problems. Rome is not gonna work for AI. No, it's it's rotten to the core. Rome system is rotten to the core because it is based on oppression, and any system that is based on oppression will always have constant battles. So if you if if that is your definition of success, then and if you're in power, that is your definition of success. So the people up top will continue to bolt on stuff to the Roman Empire or the Rome concept and the Rome idea just because it works for them, despite it not working for the people, and and it's going to, you know, if if you squeeze the poor people into a corner hard enough, they'll revolt. But and then I think that's one of the things this regime is is overlooking is that um through most of history there were pressure valves allowing a little bit of pressure off. It's like, oh, they want civil rights, we'll give them civil rights, but not really. Uh and that calm, you know, that'll calm them down for a bit, but uh, and then we get right back into this. This uh Nazi regimes or fascist regimes are trying to break the Roman system or trying to they're trying to gain the system by uh using the Rome system, but not really fully understanding the Rome system for ethnic, but just like the ethnic part, they're just like uh we can use this strategically like a uh like a scalpel to cut out the the undesirables, yeah. But and the problem is they've always in order to keep the machine running, they're always in go, they're always going to be in a defensive war to expand and take over other lands. So that concept in itself, like that the very heart of Rome was the army is protecting you, that's why we have to kill and expand. So uh when you run out of land, and we have pretty much uh the only way to get more land is to kill people and take over their land. But as soon as you reach a tipping point of the number of people you've killed, then everyone starts fighting back. And um, you know, like the Nazis took France or took Paris in a very quick succession because they were all on meth, and then when everyone went into a meth hangover, uh they got their shit kicked in. So it's a it's that's like a major contributor to that war being won. Uh yeah, they they figured uh there's a lot of um a lot of wars are like even World War I. It was we have to go and attack France and get this done in six weeks. That way we could turn around and fight Russia. And then they went in in World War One. Uh actually it was before whatever was before World War One, uh, Germany went into France through Belgium and got stuck in Belgium. Like they were supposed to rip right through Belgium and then they got stuck there. So the Nazis learning their lesson were like, we have got to blitzkrieg through and just hit it. So it was like take as much meth as you can and get there and get it done. And for the fatherland, go, go, go. Yeah, and which is you know, the the old concept of never fight a land war in Russia in the winter because you're gonna get bogged down, and as soon as you get bogged down, it gives everyone that is not in favor of you taking over the chance to reset and go on the offensive from there. And and the Russians, if I uh did they not also on that front in that war? We're talking World War II. Yep. Uh or no Napoleonic Wars, World War I. They almost did like the opposing tactic of the defensive war where they did that war of attrition thing where they were they were walking backwards burning their uh the farms, right? So they were like starving out the advancing Germans. Yep. Yeah, yeah. See, like that's don't don't don't fuck with the Russians because like you're gonna anticipate that oh, they wouldn't destroy their own food stocks. Oh no, they did they are they're doing it right now. Yeah, the one rule about Russia is they have people to burn. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's I mean, that's the horrific part of it. It like it won it it staved off destruction, but at what cost, kind of thing. Oh, yeah. And and again, it's like what where is the point to stay and fight versus walk away and be like, yeah, all right, fuck it, you can have it. I don't if it if it means that much to you, uh go ahead. I'd rather live and find fish elsewhere, but at some point where uh if if someone wants to move out into the woods and live off the woods, and the developers keep coming in and closing in, and now he's in the middle of civilization, then he's going to put on a hoodie and start mailing bombs everywhere because that's essentially the story of the unibomber. He's like, Leave me alone. Yeah. I mean, he was crazy, and if you read his manifesto, he's just that shit crazy. But like if they would have left him alone, he would have been fine. You've you've uh you pressed an animal into a corner and now it has no option but to bite back. All right, so in the grand scheme of things, I know that was a very long answer, but does that kind of give you a little bit of perspective on why Rome is a thought of every white man in America? I don't I don't think I realized how many, because I guess it was always a thing, uh a series of things that happened in history. And so I guess I I always when I started hearing about this like fascination that apparently everyone but me had, it was like, oh well, why I know Rome was successful for many, many years, but it's like why is it always Rome? Like, why are we sticking on this? And I don't think I realized just how like in the DNA uh of humanity, like I said, we all there is no like it's like antediluvian, it's like the flood, you know. There's on there's nothing really before that. That is just history at that point. Um, you know, like uh uh ancient Egypt is ancient ass Egypt. That's just what that is. That's like blocked off and walled off because the second it made contact with this thing called Rome, everything changed. Every single thing changed. And uh yeah, I mean, just to think that like it's almost like why there's white people, like it feels like like you you almost think like, man, why didn't like every single other civilization kick our ass? And it's like we got to this system first, it seems. Pretty much and and just never bit down hard, never let it go. I guess my one question would be like what are what are some misconceptions, I guess, that someone that that you've heard about Rome that just like aren't true? Um again, like they're when I learned about Rome in school, it was they never talked about any revolts, it was just the ever-expanding Roman Empire, and then because their leaders were crazy or inbred or whatever, then it was like Nero let Rome burn, and it was like he he was an idiot, and they allowed him to be in charge, and no one took care to to basically clean up the mess before it got incredibly bad, um, which you know sounds familiar in recent days. And um the they never taught of slave revolts, or if they did, it was they named it a war, it was this war or that war, and never said, hey, the slaves revolted. They were tired of this shit, and they came up and they they killed people because of it. Um, and that Rome stayed in Rome. It didn't. It it the center of Rome moved. Uh the the Empire split, the Empire moved, the Empire uh stretched out, retracted, and uh it wasn't it wasn't a dot that expanded into this big plate and then imploded. It was it didn't really die. It just no, it's like only one Kenobi. Yeah, it rebranded. It went into it went into this battle and it it held the lightsaber up and it got cut down and then became a ghost that haunted us for the next like two whole movies. Exactly. Yeah, and it's it the ghost of Rome, uh the ghost of Caesar is everywhere. Uh in any any politician that wants power is the ghost of Caesar, uh, whether they will admit it or not. That's why Superman's boss always yells that never even thought about that. Great Caesar's ghost. All right, and that's uh how one question can unravel everything or nothing. Uh so uh we're going to try another cut topic next time. Uh so join us again to see where the next question will lead us. Uh Christian, thank you for your time. Jackie, do you have anything? No, no. I wow uh I wasn't prepared for anything for me at the end. All right. Next week I'll be prepared, or next time I'll be prepared. Okay, do it. We should say uh next uh Jackie had a question about how USA Network, uh the cable entity, uh has infected and uh sprung out into what television is today. So join us next time. I'm Mickey with Jackie and Christian. Bye. No, it was nothing.