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Speaker 1: All media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted

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Speaker 1: to let you know this is a compilation episode. So

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Speaker 1: every episode of the week that just happened is here

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Speaker 1: in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for

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Speaker 1: you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.

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Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,

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Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but

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Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions. There is America hit

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Speaker 1: by God in one of its softest spots. Its greatest

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Speaker 1: buildings were destroyed. Thank God for that. There is America

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Speaker 1: full of fear from its north to its south, from

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Speaker 1: its west to its east. Thank God for that. What

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Speaker 1: America is tasting now with something insignificant to what we

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Speaker 1: have tasted for scores of years. Our nation has been

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Speaker 1: tasting this humiliation and this degradation for more than eighty years.

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Speaker 1: Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries

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Speaker 1: are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds.

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Speaker 1: Those words, written by Osama bin Laden in October seventh,

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Speaker 1: two thousand and one, were part of his first statement

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Speaker 1: issued after the nine to eleven attacks. You might notice

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Speaker 1: a few things about that. One is, of course, the

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Speaker 1: glorying over the deaths of several thousand people, and another

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Speaker 1: is that when it comes to his analysis of the

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Speaker 1: cultural and psychological impact of nine to eleven on the

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Speaker 1: United States, he was more or less right. This is

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Speaker 1: it could happen here, a podcast about things falling apart

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Speaker 1: and nothing better embodies the slow, sometimes rapid collapse of

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Speaker 1: the United States as our reaction to nine to eleven

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Speaker 1: and our continuing responses to it. And so today I've

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Speaker 1: got in the studio. We don't actually have a studio.

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Speaker 1: I've got Mia, I've got James, and I've got Garrison,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about something you've probably encountered,

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Speaker 1: which is that a letter to America written by osamaban Lan,

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Speaker 1: which is a different piece from the one I started

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Speaker 1: this reading, but written along broadly similar lines, has started

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Speaker 1: to go viral on TikTok, and if you've seen the

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Speaker 1: reactions to it, it's a mix of a bunch of

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Speaker 1: you know, younger people on TikTok reading this letter for

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Speaker 1: the first time, where bin Laden explains why he did

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Speaker 1: he believed nine to eleven to be justified, and going wow,

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Speaker 1: he has a point some of them saying stuff that's

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Speaker 1: more unhinged than that even and then you've got this

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Speaker 1: chorus of responses from both kind of centrist you know,

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Speaker 1: media figures, cultural commentators, pundits, and of course right wing

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Speaker 1: shitheads who are all making this out to be the

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Speaker 1: left looves Osama bin Laden. We're going to get into

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Speaker 1: kind of where the truth lies in this and also

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Speaker 1: what is in the letter to America. But yeah, welcome,

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the pod everyone, Thanks Robert, horrible to be here.

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Speaker 1: How did you how did you all hear about this,

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Speaker 1: this new fun trend on the internet.

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Speaker 2: I returned from spending my evening volunteering the border in

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Speaker 2: Cucumber to find and a death of messages about an

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Speaker 2: Issama bin Laden letter or the speech that you just

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Speaker 2: read that I've a signed for probably a decade to

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Speaker 2: undergraduates without anyone losing their mind. And yeah, extremely confusing

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Speaker 2: vibes for me.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 4: The first time I heard about it was the first

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Speaker 4: post that I saw was it was only about a

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Speaker 4: million views. It wasn't even that viral, which I guess

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Speaker 4: might be true because TikTok is.

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Speaker 3: Nuts, But yeah, I think it.

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Speaker 4: I don't know, like I first ran into it on Twitter,

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Speaker 4: and I think by the time it hit Twitter, everyone

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Speaker 4: was just sort of in about eighteen directions completely losing

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Speaker 4: their minds, which is just yeahs it is now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean probably a couple of videos of

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Speaker 2: people dying.

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Speaker 1: Just that seems to pop up every time something discussed

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Speaker 1: on Twitter.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 1: I think that's an accurate description of kind of the

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Speaker 1: fallout to and as we're writing the or as we're

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Speaker 1: recording this. Most of these original TikTok videos people seem

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Speaker 1: to be reading off of the Guardians copy of a

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Speaker 1: Letter to America, which was I guess the most easy

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Speaker 1: to google prior to I think it was just the

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Speaker 1: easiest to google. When this all started rolling, the Guardian

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Speaker 1: took that down because they didn't want people reading it

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Speaker 1: outside of the context of the article it's in. This

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Speaker 1: was a horrible mistake. I have found a number of

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Speaker 1: comments being like, this is them. They're trying to stop

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Speaker 1: you from reading Ben Lawden's words. We're all going to

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Speaker 1: be on a watch list. They can't arrest all of us.

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Speaker 1: You can still access the Letter to America.

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Speaker 2: It's on the sentiment that you can't arrest one of

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Speaker 2: us suggested that many of these people were not alive,

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Speaker 2: and the Maybia off to moth of.

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Speaker 1: Fucking try. They did try. Just to be very clear,

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Speaker 1: you can still read this whole letter to yourself, and

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Speaker 1: so can everyone else. It's on wiki source. If you

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Speaker 1: just google Binladen Letter to America, it will bring up

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Speaker 1: the Wikipedia page that talks about this letter and its context,

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Speaker 1: and that will also give you a link at somewhere

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Speaker 1: at the bottom to the wiki source. That's just the

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Speaker 1: unedited translation of the letter to the American people. So

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Speaker 1: it is not like the Guardian's move was bad because

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Speaker 1: of they called the streisand principle right that if you

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Speaker 1: like try to hide something from people on the internet,

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Speaker 1: it just it just makes the problem worse. You never

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Speaker 1: do what the Guardian did. It's very dumb, it was

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Speaker 1: explain the Guardian.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, sur I was gonna say, yeah, they could

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Speaker 2: have blamed trans people.

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Speaker 1: I'm surprised he didn't get one of those in there.

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Speaker 1: They've been everyone's been trying to pivot very quickly to this.

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Speaker 1: So obviously you know, my like James, my opinions on

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Speaker 1: this are kind of complex. On one hand, I am

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Speaker 1: not an Osama bin Laden fan. He was a bad person.

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Speaker 1: He was a terrible person, and he did a lot

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Speaker 1: of damage, not just to the United States. That said,

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Speaker 1: I've also long been an advocate for like, he's probably

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Speaker 1: going to go down as one of the most effective

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Speaker 1: and intelligent military rategic minds of the twenty first century.

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Speaker 1: The September eleventh attacks worked in large part, right because

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Speaker 1: of how We're rereacted, because of the amount of money

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Speaker 1: that we spent, the amount of people that we killed,

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Speaker 1: the amount of anger that we engendered against the West,

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Speaker 1: and the amount of damage that we did to our

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Speaker 1: own society. A lot of the fallout that we're seeing

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Speaker 1: and all these you know, right wing street gangs and shit,

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Speaker 1: a lot of it traces back to fallout from the

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Speaker 1: wars that were started by the Bush administration after September eleventh. So,

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Speaker 1: and that was that was part of the stated goal, right,

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Speaker 1: that was one of the things he was looking to

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Speaker 1: provoke a reaction. So I'm both like glad hopefully some

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Speaker 1: people are going to come away from this with a

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Speaker 1: more nuanced understanding of the guy. And when I say nuanced,

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Speaker 1: I don't mean in a moral sense, because it's bad

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Speaker 1: to kill thousands of random people, but in the sense

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Speaker 1: of like, oh, this was not I think I need

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Speaker 1: to play something for you guys, because like as a

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Speaker 1: nine to eleven, like I was like nine or ten

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Speaker 1: when it happened, so I remember it all very well,

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Speaker 1: and I remember the reaction to it, and I remember

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Speaker 1: the propaganda we encountered. And there's this thing that you

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Speaker 1: will find written about fascists pretty regularly, which is that

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Speaker 1: they both need an all powerful enemy, but they also

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Speaker 1: need an enemy that's like fundamentally free of virtue, and

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Speaker 1: intelligence and skill are virtues. So both in the wake

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Speaker 1: of nine to eleven, you got this sort of al

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Speaker 1: Qaeda and you know, larger sort of Islamist movements were

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Speaker 1: considered this nefarious force as they are now in the

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Speaker 1: wake of the attacks by Hamas, right, this nefarious force

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Speaker 1: that is capable of infiltrating the US border and seeking

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Speaker 1: terrorist sales into the United States to hit anybody. And

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Speaker 1: at the same time they're like primitive idiots who are

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Speaker 1: bigots against who are you know, they hate women and

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Speaker 1: all this stuff, right, Like you can't you can't see

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Speaker 1: them as capable or intelligent, because then that would that

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Speaker 1: would be to give them a virtue that you reserve

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Speaker 1: for yourself anyway. I think a good example of that

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Speaker 1: is this parody song by John Valby that I am

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Speaker 1: countered in a Napster download when I was a child,

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Speaker 1: and this did not it's bin Laden.

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Speaker 3: Oh it's the other one.

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Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, yeah, this one's bad. Folks. You're gonna hear

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Speaker 1: something offensive. I'm playing it now because number one, I

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Speaker 1: think it's something people should remember or no, but also

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Speaker 1: because we're about to place these TikTok responses to this

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Speaker 1: bin Laden video and read some comments of people who

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Speaker 1: are very taken by it. And I want to set

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Speaker 1: up what the pre existing image of ben Laden was

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Speaker 1: and our culture kind of prior to this reappraisal of him,

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Speaker 1: because I think that is important. But this is unhinged

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Speaker 1: so and and it's pretty offensive. So just be aware people,

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Speaker 1: I'm about to play it now. Can't wait? Oh yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna have all right? Can you see the giant Confederate?

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Speaker 1: So this is from a John Valby album. I think

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Speaker 1: it was called Real Woman Do Play in Mud Puddles?

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Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe not. That may just be a

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Speaker 1: random image I did not check. There's like describe there's

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Speaker 1: the general lee as a mudding truck with a giant

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Speaker 1: Confederate flag behind it, and then with the Confederate flag

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Speaker 1: like colors the text real women do play in mud

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Speaker 1: puddles and it's as Southern girls serven girl on the

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Speaker 1: on the windshield of the truck. So I'm gonna start

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Speaker 1: playing this song. I'm not gonna play all of it,

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Speaker 1: but this should set up for you kind of what

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Speaker 1: the acceptable discourse on bin Laden was right after nine

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Speaker 1: to eleven.

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Speaker 5: Well, we come from Malabama, but we're in Afghanistan, Navy

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Speaker 5: seamer rays hunting for a man.

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Speaker 1: They say he has a beard and a diaper on

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Speaker 1: his head. I heard we won't be coming home until

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Speaker 1: that fucker's dead.

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Speaker 3: No, don't do.

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Speaker 4: I've come to fuck your fanny with some frax.

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Speaker 1: So had you guys heard that before?

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Speaker 3: No?

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Speaker 4: Unfortunately?

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Speaker 3: Yes?

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Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, see see.

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Speaker 2: The part of America that I midged growing up a

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Speaker 2: broad and yeah, never fully understand.

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Speaker 1: Now we freezed about thirty seconds into that minute and

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Speaker 1: thirty second song, but it was like playing random clips

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Speaker 1: of art to go along with the music, and the

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Speaker 1: one we paused on was Homer Simpson with an American

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Speaker 1: flag behind him, outlined and read with a pistol in

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Speaker 1: his hands aimed at a bug eyed Osama Bin Laden

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Speaker 1: So great nuanced discourse here, so.

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Speaker 4: Many memories like I don't know what it was. People

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Speaker 4: loved that, like bug ey'd Bin Luden thing.

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Speaker 1: This is like like, yeah, I know what, No, I

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Speaker 1: think I know. I'm pretty sure I know why. Which

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Speaker 1: is that? So One of the most popular pieces of

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Speaker 1: like media popular media in response in the nine to

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Speaker 1: eleven attacks was an episode of South Park that came

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Speaker 1: out literally like a week or two after the attacks,

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Speaker 1: which basically, up until fairly recently, TV was always made

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Speaker 1: on a significant delay, so there were no shows on

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Speaker 1: air that could pivot to comment on something really quickly.

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Speaker 1: The West Wing managed to kind of, but it was

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Speaker 1: like a dog shit episode. But the South Park guys

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Speaker 1: really pivoted and they put out this episode. It was

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Speaker 1: basically like a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Cartman as Bugs

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Speaker 1: Bunny and Osama Bin Ladden as Elmer Fudd right, and

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Speaker 1: there were a bunch of like scenes of him like

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Speaker 1: bug eyes bugging out when like shit would happen, and

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Speaker 1: it was It was weird because like the I think

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Speaker 1: the most people who watched it, including myself, took it

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Speaker 1: in the same manner of that song as like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: fuck these guys, these like you know, in ways that

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Speaker 1: were pretty bigoted. There was also like the episode opened

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Speaker 1: with an extended bit of kids in Afghanistan with everything

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Speaker 1: around them and all the adults getting murdered by US

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Speaker 1: airplanes for no seeming reason, which was like part of

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Speaker 1: the anyway whatever. I think one of the was like

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Speaker 1: what we're seeing in some of like why young people

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Speaker 1: are reacting to this letter by bin Laden so strongly

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Speaker 1: is they've never really gotten to appraise the guy objectively.

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Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that that's happening across the board now,

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Speaker 1: but I don't think the reactions are nearly as unreasonable

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Speaker 1: as they're being painted.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he kind of existed an avatar of evil and

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Speaker 2: like with zero nuance or complexity, just like, yeah, a

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Speaker 2: satanic sort of totem in American culture.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, which is why I've.

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Speaker 2: Always assigned it just like I think it behooves us

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Speaker 2: to understand.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree entirely. So I went through and I

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Speaker 1: looked at some of the tiktoks being made about this,

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Speaker 1: And first off, TikTok does seem to have taken some

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Speaker 1: action to try to stop this. I don't think it's

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Speaker 1: going to work either. But like when I typed in

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Speaker 1: letter to America recently, the text I got on TikTok

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Speaker 1: was this phrase may be associated with behavior or content

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Speaker 1: that violates our guidelines promoting a safe, positive experience as

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Speaker 1: TikTok's top priority. Yeah yeah, yah yah yah. You can

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Speaker 1: still find shit by like typing in bin Laden, but

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Speaker 1: it's not as much shit as findable right now, so

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Speaker 1: worth noting. One of the first things I came across

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Speaker 1: that was interesting is like, so there's this trend on TikTok.

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Speaker 1: If you're not a TikToker, I'm going to play what

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Speaker 1: are the people on TikTok. There's a lot of AI

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Speaker 1: videos where either the text will be read by AI

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Speaker 1: with like images and video clips on screen, or you'll

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Speaker 1: some there's some creepy instances of people just generating AI

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Speaker 1: faces sometimes of like actual murderers and criminals to talk

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Speaker 1: about the shit they did. It's really weird. But one

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Speaker 1: of the top videos I found on this from about

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Speaker 1: a little less than a day ago, is just the

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Speaker 1: entire text of bin Laden's letter to America being read

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Speaker 1: by an AI and it it sounds weird. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to just let everyone get a listen to this.

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Speaker 6: In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful,

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Speaker 6: permission to fight against disbelievers is given to those believers

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Speaker 6: who are thought against because they have been wronged, and

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Speaker 6: surely a law is able to give them. Believe Victoria.

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Speaker 1: I think it misses some of the some of the

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Speaker 1: stirring contexts the delivery. No, but you get the responses

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Speaker 1: of this, and like one of my favorite ones that

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Speaker 1: I've gotten the screen is is cheeky chicis Fressa saying

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Speaker 1: y'all are gonna hate me? But he kind of ate

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Speaker 1: And then the first response is no crumbs, which Garrison

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Speaker 1: has our gen Z insult. That means, like, I agree, basically,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's oh you're twenty one, now you're out

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Speaker 1: of touch.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, the first feeling old moment live.

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Speaker 7: I yeah, I think that means he like ate everything

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Speaker 7: and there's like no crumbs left.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: No, oh, okay, that's that's good. Very literal.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, I think I think that's what it means. But again,

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Speaker 7: this is this is very.

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Speaker 4: Very very particular culture here it's the bleeding edge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. The last comment following that is bizarre. Trump isn't

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Speaker 1: a good person either. The gay people have nothing to

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Speaker 1: do with me. This does not say book for Trump.

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Speaker 1: I think you can't read.

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Speaker 4: See you know it's it's and that's the.

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Speaker 1: Op responding to no crumbs. So I don't know what's

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Speaker 1: missing here.

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Speaker 4: It's really it's really hard to tell.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think these people may be in a parallel reality.

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Speaker 7: I don't think really anyone who's participating in this trend

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Speaker 7: is very intelligent or has or has very good media literacy,

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Speaker 7: or has really looked into like American imperialism very much.

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Speaker 1: No, but we will, we will.

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Speaker 4: We will get to that in a Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So the next comment is so much truth coming out

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Speaker 1: this season. And then I appreciated this from Walker. He

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Speaker 1: lost me at the end, he being bin laden with

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Speaker 1: the religiously charged homophobia, but that left out he was

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Speaker 1: right about everything else, justified and well said, see the

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Speaker 1: Voice of reason, the voice. Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Well, but also.

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Speaker 1: Also now we'll get through it. There's a few more

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Speaker 1: problems with the letter than that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm doing like you're doing nine to eleven,

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Speaker 2: but with a pride flag is yeah, perfect, and I

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Speaker 2: have no notes.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't.

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Speaker 7: You can't remove those things from the rest of the

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Speaker 7: letter and the action. Now, they actually do create a

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Speaker 7: complete hole. You can't actually pick and choose little parts

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Speaker 7: that you want. It's it's like trying to pick and

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Speaker 7: choose parts of qan On. You're like, yeah, well, actually

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Speaker 7: there are rich people who are pedophiles. You're like, well, yes,

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Speaker 7: but you can't, like, you can't. Yeah, that's not giving

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Speaker 7: qan On the benefit here.

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Speaker 4: This is these are totally different things.

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Speaker 1: And the thing that I think people should be doing,

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Speaker 1: just so we're clear on like my stands here is

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Speaker 1: seeing bin Laden as an incisive and intelligent actor who

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Speaker 1: had a significant degree of understanding of this country and

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Speaker 1: its culture, and the terrible things that he did were

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Speaker 1: as effective as they were because he understood things about

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Speaker 1: us that we should understand about us. Right, otherwise you

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Speaker 1: are not going to be able to successfully act within

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Speaker 1: this culture to improve things and reduce harms. You need

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Speaker 1: to understand why what he did worked as well as

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Speaker 1: it did, and you need to understand what he knew

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Speaker 1: about us, because it's pretty useful stuff to understand. That

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Speaker 1: is different from saying that what he is, Like, you

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Speaker 1: don't have to view it as the truth, right because

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's not like the truth in any moral sense,

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Speaker 1: but it's the truth in that Like if you if

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Speaker 1: you read some of Hitler's writings on democracy, Hitler accurately

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Speaker 1: understood the vulnerabilities of a democratic system and how to

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Speaker 1: exploit them. You should understand that you're not saying, wow,

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Speaker 1: he was spitting truth. You're just saying, yeah, well some

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Speaker 1: people are, Robert. That is a problem. Yeah, some people,

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Speaker 1: in fact are.

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Speaker 4: Do you know who else is spitting truth?

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Speaker 1: Robert our advertisers, Yes, that is right. We are. Are

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Speaker 1: we sponsored by the new predition of minkompf at this point? No,

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Speaker 1: we are sponsored by Albugdati. He's still alive, folks. Yeh

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Speaker 1: mm hmm, I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Here here's the ads. Okay, so we're back. I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: play another one of these, one of these zoomer Bin

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Speaker 1: Laden loving videos for you. Well, no you're not, No,

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Speaker 1: I'm not.

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Speaker 4: Lots of these videos have also been taken down recently.

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Speaker 1: I go, yeah, they which, yeah. I thought this one

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Speaker 1: was interesting because it was someone who was like really

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Speaker 1: pro bin Laden being like, yeah, you know, he was

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Speaker 1: completely right about everything. What a genius. So I love him.

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Speaker 1: But all of the comments were people being like, that's

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Speaker 1: fucking kind of crazy to say. Bro, Like, yeah, let's

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Speaker 1: take a step back.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: So the thing this reminds me of this, This is

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Speaker 4: a phenomenon I've run into with American maoists. We're like, Okay,

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Speaker 4: don't read Mao. They'll read MAO saying something that is,

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Speaker 4: you know, perfectly reasonable, like you should not talk about

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Speaker 4: something unless you've researched it first.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Now, any normal person has heard this when they were

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Speaker 4: like two, But these people apparently have never heard this,

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Speaker 4: and they run into it through MAO and they're like,

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Speaker 4: holy shit, Mao is like the greatest living theorist.

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Speaker 1: What's a brilliant thinker? Yeah?

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Speaker 4: Man, you guys need bid Launa to tell you the

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Speaker 4: US sucks, Like really.

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Speaker 1: Yes, people do because they get shit history education because

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Speaker 1: their education of nine to eleven was the video I

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Speaker 1: started this episode.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, like we failed as a country, like just completely.

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Speaker 1: No, seriously, Like I like a fucking like horse that

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Speaker 1: I will whip till it's dead.

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Speaker 3: Is that? Like?

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Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, there was this huge thing about we

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Speaker 2: need to teach history properly and media literacy. Right after

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Speaker 2: Donald Trump got elected, because a lot of people didn't

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Speaker 2: know what the fuck was going on, we just and

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Speaker 2: then we just stopped, and everyone was like, nah, fuck it,

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Speaker 2: why not, We'll just keep doing STEM STEM STEM and then,

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Speaker 2: like like teaching undergraduates often like intro courses for years,

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Speaker 2: it's become very clear that we are completely failing in

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Speaker 2: the United States to educate people or equipment with any

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Speaker 2: understanding of American history, and so they just get propaganda.

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Speaker 1: This is a big part of why I focus on

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Speaker 1: cryptos so much, because James, that is exactly where crypto

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Speaker 1: comes from, is we learned a lot of stemshit, but

399
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Speaker 1: we never learned any humanities or anything. So you get

400
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Speaker 1: people saying stuff like, well, the underlying technology buying crypto

401
00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:31,400
Speaker 1: is so impressive, and it's like, no, it's you can't

402
00:20:31,400 --> 00:20:34,000
Speaker 1: point to a single useful piece of work it's ever done.

403
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Speaker 1: You just find it impressive because there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: complex math problems and that's what you that's what you value, Like, yes,

405
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Speaker 1: it's the results of that, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: The yard stick of academic achievement or intelligence.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it anyway, speaking of people who are less intelligent

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Speaker 1: than a yardstick. It's not exactly what you said, James,

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Speaker 1: but I also wanted to play here's a right wing

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Speaker 1: influencer who's collected a bunch of these videos. I hadn't

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Speaker 1: run into this guy before. But oh no, did they

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Speaker 1: drop him too? Are they just purching everything?

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Speaker 7: So TikTok has been removing all of this, almost all

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Speaker 7: of the videos associated with this trend. You can you

415
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Speaker 7: can find the compilations on Twitter are really some of

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Speaker 7: the only ways that these videos are still alive.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a right wing guy. This was the

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Speaker 1: right wing guy making fun of it. But man, that's

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Speaker 1: interesting because this was, like I found this five minutes ago.

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Speaker 4: So I mean, I think this is the thing that like,

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Speaker 4: it's really hard to talk about this without it being

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Speaker 4: in like an insane right wing thing. But TikTok is

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Speaker 4: really Americans only encounter with the way that Chinese style

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Speaker 4: censorship works, which is they take a giant hammer and

425
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Speaker 4: they just like hit things with it. Yeah, as supposed like,

426
00:21:38,320 --> 00:21:41,600
Speaker 4: it's not it's not like targeted. It's like like we

427
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Speaker 4: found everyone who said the word been lauded and band

428
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Speaker 4: it right. Everything associated with the trend like yeah, you know,

429
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Speaker 4: like and this is this is the way that like

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Speaker 4: censorship stuff tends to work in China because it's kind

431
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Speaker 4: of easy to do and it covers your ass, and

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Speaker 4: so now Americans are like experiencing this.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm just enjoying seeing what Roberts have suggested

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Speaker 2: for other TikTok he might like, oh, thank goodness for

435
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Speaker 2: the shower's top shelf products.

436
00:22:06,560 --> 00:22:11,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, hashtag has talk. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I

437
00:22:11,320 --> 00:22:15,320
Speaker 1: think it's because of this person, ear earth Mother, Earth

438
00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:20,159
Speaker 1: earth Mother basically who actually I brought her up specifically

439
00:22:20,160 --> 00:22:24,080
Speaker 1: because she was an example of like the way this

440
00:22:24,119 --> 00:22:28,080
Speaker 1: is getting portrayed in kind of like particularly like Twitter

441
00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:30,919
Speaker 1: and more mainstream sort of descriptions of it is like

442
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,400
Speaker 1: all of these gen zers are full throat for Osama.

443
00:22:34,480 --> 00:22:37,320
Speaker 1: They've all gone crazy, and you can certainly find no

444
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:39,600
Speaker 1: shortage of those videos. I found a bunch of other

445
00:22:39,680 --> 00:22:41,760
Speaker 1: videos that are more critical. It is difficult for me

446
00:22:41,840 --> 00:22:45,280
Speaker 1: to tell what the preponderance of is because there's not

447
00:22:45,400 --> 00:22:47,880
Speaker 1: no one's basing what they're saying on a sentiment analysis.

448
00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:52,919
Speaker 1: They're basing it on what their timelines forwarded them based

449
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:55,720
Speaker 1: on their passion when they typed letter to America or

450
00:22:55,720 --> 00:22:59,159
Speaker 1: whatever into Twitter or into a TikTok. But like I

451
00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:02,480
Speaker 1: ran into this lady video and like so not plenty

452
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:04,720
Speaker 1: of these are and I found others like this. Plenty

453
00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:06,960
Speaker 1: of these are like a little more critical but not

454
00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:09,159
Speaker 1: but still, yeah, I'll just play it.

455
00:23:09,440 --> 00:23:12,320
Speaker 8: Hey, guys, just coming on here to remind y'all that

456
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:16,480
Speaker 8: Osama bin Laden was still bad personally. Crazy that I'm

457
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:19,840
Speaker 8: even having to get on here and say this, wee hello, obviously,

458
00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:22,199
Speaker 8: but I've been seeing a lot of people, you know,

459
00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:25,159
Speaker 8: say that they read Osamogan Laden's Letter to America. And

460
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:30,680
Speaker 8: I've read the letter, and I understand that a lot

461
00:23:30,680 --> 00:23:34,240
Speaker 8: of people are getting educated and kind of like deconstructing

462
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:37,240
Speaker 8: the propaganda that they've grown up in living in America.

463
00:23:37,400 --> 00:23:40,840
Speaker 8: But that does not mean that we should mystify these

464
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:44,719
Speaker 8: terrible people. But are also criticized the West and questions

465
00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:47,160
Speaker 8: in the West, and like how we operated over here,

466
00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:50,320
Speaker 8: Osam b and LANs doing the same thing. It doesn't

467
00:23:50,359 --> 00:23:52,879
Speaker 8: mean that they are necessarily wrong on what they're saying,

468
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:56,920
Speaker 8: but it doesn't take away the fact that they're sexist, fascist,

469
00:23:57,640 --> 00:23:59,400
Speaker 8: racist dictators.

470
00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like this lady. That's a video.

471
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:04,920
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think she kind of hits on one point

472
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:08,679
Speaker 7: that I've seen in some of the other like for

473
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 7: lack of a better term, promo Sama bin Laden, people.

474
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:16,280
Speaker 4: Have been saying how like.

475
00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:20,000
Speaker 7: Well like people have been talking about how like they're

476
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 7: like finally like seeing past US propaganda and they're deconstructing

477
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:27,920
Speaker 7: the lies that media has told them. And this kind

478
00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 7: of gets at something that we see a lot and

479
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:33,800
Speaker 7: kind of in like cult spaces, is that you rarely

480
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:39,000
Speaker 7: ever just completely disengage from some form of propaganda.

481
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:42,280
Speaker 4: You jump to a different form of propaganda, absolutely right.

482
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:46,200
Speaker 7: It's like reading this letter, you're not getting like disillusioned

483
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:49,880
Speaker 7: from US propaganda. You're now buying into someone else's propaganda.

484
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:53,119
Speaker 7: Like the letter to America is a completely other version

485
00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:57,399
Speaker 7: of conspiracy riddled propaganda that was put out for a

486
00:24:57,440 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 7: political purpose, and to try to engage with it in

487
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:03,159
Speaker 7: good faith is not the way to approach that text.

488
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:06,480
Speaker 7: And I think this is a big part of this

489
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:10,640
Speaker 7: problem is how people's education has worked the past few years,

490
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:14,680
Speaker 7: because they should have learned all of the various motivations

491
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:17,800
Speaker 7: and geopolitical factors that led to the nine to eleven attacks,

492
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 7: and instead having Islam bin Lan be characterized as this,

493
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 7: as this like cartoonish evil that hates America for freedom

494
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 7: and like hates America as a nation for its freedom.

495
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:34,199
Speaker 7: Like that, Yes, that is propaganda. And if that's all

496
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 7: you've had your whole life and you're you're now seeing

497
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:38,639
Speaker 7: this other side, this is probably like this is definitely

498
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:42,160
Speaker 7: like mind blowing, but like you can look into why

499
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 7: these things happen without just falling for someone else's extremist propaganda,

500
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:48,159
Speaker 7: like like yeah, you can. You can get into the

501
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:51,679
Speaker 7: actual reasons for why this happened, how how US imperialism

502
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:55,120
Speaker 7: has caused the geopolitical situation coming out of the nineties,

503
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:57,879
Speaker 7: Like it's it's lots of people have already done this

504
00:25:57,960 --> 00:26:00,439
Speaker 7: reading there's there's just plenty of people on line who have

505
00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:02,920
Speaker 7: not looked into this because they have life, they're doing whatever,

506
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 7: like right, they've not everyone like us and spends all

507
00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:09,400
Speaker 7: of our time reading like political extremist literature.

508
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, not all of us have strong opinions on the

509
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: different eras of bin Laden writing.

510
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 4: Yeah.

511
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:18,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like Tya Swift in that sense.

512
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think there's a there's another there's a

513
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 4: thing That's also important here too, which is I think

514
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:25,800
Speaker 4: you see this a lot in Americans, which is that

515
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:32,720
Speaker 4: Americans will have this moment where they realize that they've

516
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 4: been being lied to by the American media. And then

517
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:39,840
Speaker 4: the thing this convinces them of is that everyone else

518
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:44,600
Speaker 4: is telling the truth. Yes, and it's like, no, every

519
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 4: country is doing propaganda. All of their media is doing propaganda.

520
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 4: Like you can't just sort of ping pong from one

521
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:57,160
Speaker 4: like countries sort of prop media propaganda to another countries

522
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:01,680
Speaker 4: because they're all doing it and the stuff that they're

523
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:06,000
Speaker 4: saying also isn't true. You have to actually, like you

524
00:27:06,080 --> 00:27:09,040
Speaker 4: have to actually try to work out the sort of

525
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 4: the reality of history. You can't just rely on reading

526
00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:16,920
Speaker 4: like some other like some other propaganda's version of events.

527
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:19,520
Speaker 2: But this comes down to like a lack of basic

528
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 2: understanding of how we do history, which I think is

529
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:23,920
Speaker 2: not anyone's fault. It's because we don't teach you very

530
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 2: well at all in schools. But like the lack of

531
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 2: understanding of the difference between primary and secondary sources, right,

532
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:31,600
Speaker 2: and like people want to get straight to the source,

533
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 2: so they'll go and read one historical primary source without

534
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:38,399
Speaker 2: the adequate secondary context and suddenly be like oh shit,

535
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 2: and yeah, as you say, turned into a maoist or

536
00:27:41,359 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 2: apparently Memora of al Kaieda.

537
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:45,880
Speaker 1: This is why, like you know, journalists do a lot

538
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:48,639
Speaker 1: of gathering, you know, what they can in the moment

539
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 1: from a scene, from interviews and stuff. But academics there's

540
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:54,199
Speaker 1: always going to be if it's like a good academic,

541
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,679
Speaker 1: Like I'm reading a great book right now on trust

542
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:01,399
Speaker 1: in unstable societies. Society is like racked by war. So

543
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:04,720
Speaker 1: it's like the concept of it's written by a Gosen

544
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:07,919
Speaker 1: and it's about like how concepts of public trust fluctuate

545
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 1: during conflicts. And he's looking at Lebanon, he's looking at Syria,

546
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 1: he's looking at a rack, he's looking at Palestine. It's

547
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: very interesting. But like he's not just interviewing people. There's

548
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:21,959
Speaker 1: like a set of basically an algorithm that he runs

549
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 1: his different interviews and like the overall sentiments expressed in

550
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: them through in order to try and determine like here

551
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:31,199
Speaker 1: is the aggregate of like what I found as a

552
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: reaction to this question from like the people that I survey.

553
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: It's the same kind of stuff that you do in

554
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:37,159
Speaker 1: a survey to attempt to add a little bit more

555
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:39,600
Speaker 1: rigor than just saying, well, I talked to ten people

556
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:41,960
Speaker 1: and most of them said this, So clearly this is

557
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: a trend, right, which journalists are often guilty of, and

558
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 1: also just goes ab in part because of that. Twitter

559
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 1: goes wild with this kind of shit, just like well,

560
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: I looked through and I listened to twenty videos, and

561
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:56,760
Speaker 1: most of them the kids loved Bin Laden. So the

562
00:28:56,840 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 1: kids must love Bin Lodding now, which I don't think

563
00:28:59,920 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: is entirely fair, but I wanted to. I think it's

564
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:05,320
Speaker 1: probably a good time for us to go through the

565
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: Letter to America and talk about what is actually in

566
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 1: this thing, right, because you might as well know what's

567
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: in it. It's a good thing to read. Again, you

568
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 1: can find it on wiki source.

569
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 3: Yeah.

570
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:20,719
Speaker 1: So it starts with him kind of providing just some

571
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: kind of churonic justifications for the concept of fighting against

572
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: an aggressor fighting against like, you know, someone who is

573
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: actively attacking you, which is more essentially how he positions

574
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: like the relationship between the US and the Muslim world.

575
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 1: And he is a big you know, a big thing

576
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: that comes up over and over in this piece is

577
00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 1: him talking about how the Caliphate is being sort of

578
00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: like squashed and stopped from you know, existing in the

579
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 1: form that it should exist by this kind of constant

580
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: both attacks on not just Arab democracy but on like

581
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 1: sovereign Arab states as well as like support by the US.

582
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 1: For he complains about corrupt rulers in the Muslim world,

583
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: and he is talking about not just guys like Saddam,

584
00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 1: but like largely the Saudi royal family is a big

585
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 1: part of it. He talks a lot about Iran and

586
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 1: basically the uh So that's kind of like a bit

587
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:18,280
Speaker 1: where a lot of his like grievances start. He does

588
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 1: bring up and one of the videos, James that you

589
00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: posted earlier was like in Israeli man responding to this

590
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:29,680
Speaker 1: and basically characterizing in a very inaccurate form saying like, uh,

591
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:32,360
Speaker 1: there's no facts in this letter. Like he doesn't like

592
00:30:32,440 --> 00:30:38,719
Speaker 1: say anything true. Yeah, he's just angry at Israel in Palestine, right,

593
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: He's just angry at like at that. And he does

594
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 1: bring up Palestine multiple times. There's lines like the blood

595
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 1: pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. That's a

596
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:50,320
Speaker 1: significant part of his case. But he also lists a

597
00:30:50,320 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 1: lot of other areas right, he is not. It is

598
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:55,560
Speaker 1: not just what's happening. It's not just what Israel is

599
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 1: doing in Palestine that he's talking about. There's lines like,

600
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: you attacked us in Somalia, you supported Therussian atrocities against

601
00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 1: us in Chechnia, the Indian oppression against US in Kashmir,

602
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 1: and the Jewish aggression against US in Lebanon, and he

603
00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 1: brings all of those up several times. He also he

604
00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 1: does drop some facts in here. One of the more

605
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:15,480
Speaker 1: salient lines is you have starved the Muslims of Iraq,

606
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: where children die every year. It is a wonder that

607
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:20,000
Speaker 1: more than one point five million Iraqi children have died

608
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:22,040
Speaker 1: as a result of your sanctions, and you did not

609
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:24,880
Speaker 1: show concern yet when three thousand of your people died,

610
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 1: the entire world rises and has not yet set down.

611
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 1: And that's not an inaccurate thing to be That's not

612
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: an inaccurate statement or a thing to not be angry about. Now,

613
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 1: that's not the full context of it, right, because there

614
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:42,720
Speaker 1: is a bunch of stuff that is in here that

615
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 1: is like bidden laden culture, warshit that absolutely is not

616
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 1: reasonable or a reason to bomb people. Like there's a

617
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 1: point in the letter where he's like, what do we

618
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 1: want from you? The Americans like, what do we you know?

619
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: Al Kaida, the people who have attacked you. He's speaking

620
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 1: kind of broadly for the Uma here, what are we

621
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: asking from you? And the first thing we are is

622
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 1: that we are calling you to Islam, which I don't

623
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 1: think is likely to happen. The second thing is we

624
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 1: are calling on you to stop your repression, lies in

625
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 1: immorality and debauchery that has spread among you. We call

626
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: him for you to be a people of manners, principles, honor,

627
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 1: and purity, to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling,

628
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 1: and trading with interest. We call all of you this

629
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: that you might be freed from what you have already

630
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 1: been caught up in. That you might be freed from

631
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:33,160
Speaker 1: the deceptive lies that you are a great nation. And

632
00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 1: you may recognize that as a pretty insane reason to

633
00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 1: kill three thousand people. I mean there's gambling, Yeah, yeah.

634
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 7: I think a big part of the framing of this

635
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:47,000
Speaker 7: entire thing is like people are taking this as being like, oh,

636
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 7: look at all these justified reasons. Because the US was

637
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 7: complicent and active in mass violence in the Middle East.

638
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 7: But like he's not actually critiquing violence or political violence

639
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 7: because he is pro political violence. He is like that,

640
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 7: he look, what he is critiquing is Western degeneracy. Like

641
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 7: that is that is his actual thing. The first to

642
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 7: ask is to is to convert over to a fascistic

643
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 7: version of his religion. Yeah, like that's the primary thing

644
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 7: that this isn't about, like US imperialism in terms of

645
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 7: what his end project is.

646
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:28,040
Speaker 1: And he's also when he's angry about violence, it is

647
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:32,320
Speaker 1: specifically violence against Muslims, right, because again bin Laden is

648
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 1: fine with doing violence to and having the state potentially

649
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 1: do violence to non Muslims in his ideal state. He

650
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 1: also we read he is very right when he says

651
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 1: that the United States is complicit in the depths of

652
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: over a million Iraqis because of our sanctions. This is

653
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:50,280
Speaker 1: in the pre invasion period. One of the worst crimes

654
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: this country has been complicit in within our lifetimes. Absolutely

655
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:56,840
Speaker 1: a fucking nightmare. He devotes as much time to the

656
00:33:57,320 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: to that as he does to this next paragraph I'm

657
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 1: going to which is another one of his grievances. Who

658
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:05,160
Speaker 1: can forget your President Clinton's imral acts committed in the

659
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 1: official oval office. After that, you did not even bring

660
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 1: him to account other than that he made a mistake,

661
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:13,799
Speaker 1: after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a

662
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:15,799
Speaker 1: worse kind of event for which your name will go

663
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 1: down in history and be remembered by nations? He was, like,

664
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 1: it's fucked up that you killed a million people. The

665
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: worst thing you did was let your president get a blowjob,

666
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:28,319
Speaker 1: Like that is part of this letter, And that's a

667
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: crazy person thing to think. Yeah, Like that's just him

668
00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:39,200
Speaker 1: being an asshole, because not really a problem, right, there's

669
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:42,840
Speaker 1: personal problems, right, but on the scale of like American crimes,

670
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 1: the fact that we didn't forcepend or forced Clinton out

671
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,480
Speaker 1: of office not really on the list. Yeah, does not

672
00:34:48,560 --> 00:34:51,520
Speaker 1: really make the cut. Yeah, there is a long list,

673
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:54,919
Speaker 1: and that does not make it. Yeah, then of course

674
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:58,120
Speaker 1: he's got He also spends actually more time on the

675
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:00,839
Speaker 1: sex trade than he does on what the US did

676
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,319
Speaker 1: to Iraq. You are a nation that practices the trade

677
00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:05,880
Speaker 1: of sex and all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant

678
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 1: corporations and establishments are established on this under the name

679
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:12,319
Speaker 1: of art, entertainment, tourism, and freedom, and other deceptive names

680
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:14,360
Speaker 1: you attribute to it. And because of all this, you

681
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: have been described in history as a nation that spreads

682
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 1: diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go

683
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 1: ahead and boast to the nations of man that you

684
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:23,720
Speaker 1: brought aids as a satanic American invention.

685
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:28,239
Speaker 7: It's a very basic reactionary screen. It's like, yes, you

686
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:32,120
Speaker 7: can do the same thing with like sections of Hitler

687
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 7: speeches talking about like working conditions and factories. Right, you

688
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:38,360
Speaker 7: could take little sections, put them on TikTok, make it,

689
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 7: make it be read by an ai voice and be like,

690
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:42,879
Speaker 7: oh wow, this is a really good critique of capitalism.

691
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:46,919
Speaker 7: Like you're missing the entire point of what Hitler's actual

692
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 7: political project is. This is the exact same thing. It

693
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:54,440
Speaker 7: is exactly this is the this is the thing reactionaries do.

694
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:57,839
Speaker 7: This is like they will take a few of these

695
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:01,560
Speaker 7: points talking about imperialism, talking about capitalism, and then wrap

696
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:04,480
Speaker 7: it in a fascistic package like that. That is their

697
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,920
Speaker 7: entire political goal. It's it's it's the entire way they recruit,

698
00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 7: it's how they spread their propaganda. It's how they get

699
00:36:09,880 --> 00:36:11,320
Speaker 7: people to believe conspiracy theories.

700
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 3: Yeah.

701
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:16,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we American people especially will be incredibly vulnerable

702
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:19,759
Speaker 1: to it because they'll look at the critiques, which are

703
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,439
Speaker 1: in some cases reasonable, right, or if somebody's not wrong

704
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 1: about every critique he has, but the fact that he

705
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:30,160
Speaker 1: is valuing the murder through starvation of a million or

706
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 1: more people, which Bill Clinton getting the blow shop some

707
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:38,160
Speaker 1: it's not something you should miss in your interpretation of

708
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:40,440
Speaker 1: the validity of his points. Yeah, this is not a

709
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 1: This is not a guy you need to agree with.

710
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:47,960
Speaker 4: No, under no circumstances, have to.

711
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:50,320
Speaker 1: Once again drill.

712
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:56,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, it's certainly a weird one. The reaction

713
00:36:56,960 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 2: to it has been equally weird and equally misleading.

714
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:04,720
Speaker 1: And yeah, the reaction to the reaction like, yeah.

715
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:06,799
Speaker 2: It shouldn't be that fucking hard for us to be,

716
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 2: Like America shouldn't have three sanctions, killed millions of children

717
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:11,600
Speaker 2: and done then two war crimes out of the world

718
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 2: Asama bin Lad and bad dude. We can take that

719
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:15,319
Speaker 2: middle path.

720
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 1: I do want to get into a little more before

721
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:21,240
Speaker 1: we finish our talking about this, some of the lines

722
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:24,440
Speaker 1: that I think are really igniting some of these people

723
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: who are now pro bin laden TikTokers, because it makes

724
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:31,319
Speaker 1: sense to me that there are bits of this that

725
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 1: really grab people and I'm going to read a couple

726
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:35,520
Speaker 1: of them. One of them is this line here. The

727
00:37:35,520 --> 00:37:38,359
Speaker 1: freedom of democracy that you call to is for yourselves

728
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 1: and for white race only. As for the West of

729
00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 1: the world, you impose on them your monstrous, destructive policies

730
00:37:43,680 --> 00:37:46,960
Speaker 1: and governments, which you call the American friends. You prevent

731
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:50,200
Speaker 1: them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic Party in Algeria

732
00:37:50,239 --> 00:37:52,719
Speaker 1: wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you

733
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 1: unleashed your agents in the Algerian Army onto them and

734
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:57,799
Speaker 1: to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them

735
00:37:57,840 --> 00:38:00,439
Speaker 1: and torture them. A new lesson from the America Book

736
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:03,960
Speaker 1: of Democracy. And like, yeah, there's some valid stuff in

737
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:07,720
Speaker 1: that paragraph, right, there's some there's some points he's making

738
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 1: there that people who have started to get people who

739
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: have just gotten out of like their parents' bubble and

740
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 1: who are starting to become aware of the world and

741
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:19,760
Speaker 1: history in the US's place in it. I see why,

742
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 1: especially if they encounter stuff like that out of context,

743
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:26,880
Speaker 1: they will find that intriguing, because that's a fairly lucid

744
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:29,960
Speaker 1: and reasonable sentiment of a horrible thing that this country

745
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: has been involved in.

746
00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 7: It's also nothing that hasn't been said better by it.

747
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:36,400
Speaker 3: You can find it.

748
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: You can find it being said well ahead of bin

749
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:42,320
Speaker 1: Laden saying it by people who did not kill thousands.

750
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 4: I want to sort of, you know, maybe this is

751
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:47,719
Speaker 4: too late in this episode for anyone to still be

752
00:38:47,760 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 4: listening to this, but I want to sort of make

753
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 4: an appeal to people who are discovering anti colonialism for

754
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:55,160
Speaker 4: the first time. Yeah, sort of in the wake of

755
00:38:55,200 --> 00:38:57,760
Speaker 4: this and in the wake of Israel community and genocide

756
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:01,480
Speaker 4: and the thing that's the something very important to understand

757
00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:04,440
Speaker 4: about anti colonialism, which is that anti colonialism is not

758
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:08,440
Speaker 4: a single coherent set of politics. There are many, many

759
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:12,280
Speaker 4: different types of anti colonial politics, and those different versions

760
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 4: of anti colonialism wind up with completely different politics. And

761
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:19,480
Speaker 4: this is something you know internationally, there was a very

762
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 4: important distinction between made between left and right wing anti colonialisms.

763
00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:23,839
Speaker 3: In the US.

764
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:25,840
Speaker 4: I mean, we don't have this right like. This is

765
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:28,279
Speaker 4: sort of the problem with Americans encountering this for the

766
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 4: first time, is we don't have left and right wing

767
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:34,400
Speaker 4: anti colonialism because the US is the world's tremere colonial power.

768
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:36,839
Speaker 4: But in a lot of parts of the world there

769
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:40,959
Speaker 4: is right wing anti colonialism, and you know, The core

770
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 4: difference here is there are people who hate colonialism because

771
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:47,920
Speaker 4: of their sort of deep and abiding, principled opposition to

772
00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:51,080
Speaker 4: oppression and exploitation, and there are people who hate colonialism

773
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:53,160
Speaker 4: because their empire lost a war and they want to

774
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:53,880
Speaker 4: go back to being.

775
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:54,479
Speaker 3: An empire again.

776
00:39:56,000 --> 00:40:00,400
Speaker 4: And what kinds like which version of this politics people

777
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:02,759
Speaker 4: take up often has a lot to do with their

778
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,160
Speaker 4: class position, and they're you know, they're they're sort of

779
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:11,840
Speaker 4: like ethnic, racial, or position in the pre existing society's hierarchy.

780
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:14,279
Speaker 4: And that's something very important about bin Lauden that you

781
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 4: can't get from either the American nationalists they hate us

782
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:19,080
Speaker 4: for our freedom shit, and you also can't get from

783
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:23,200
Speaker 4: bin Laden's own description of his motivation. And the thing

784
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:26,840
Speaker 4: that's important here right is that you know, assamo'm bin

785
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:29,279
Speaker 4: Laden is not some Palestinian k who picked up an

786
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:32,280
Speaker 4: ak after the Israelis murdered his family. Assamo'm bin Laden

787
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:34,720
Speaker 4: is one of the heirs to Saudi bin Laden group.

788
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 4: And this is a second I need this style. We

789
00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 4: need to stop for a little bit and talk about

790
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:40,839
Speaker 4: the differences between American and Saudi capitalism, because they don't

791
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 4: they're not structured the same way And one of the

792
00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:47,000
Speaker 4: sort of big differences here is that the Saudi bin

793
00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:50,480
Speaker 4: Laden group isn't like it's not like a company, right,

794
00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:54,719
Speaker 4: it's a conglomerate. And what this means is that you know,

795
00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 4: is that bin Laden's family, like the people who own

796
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 4: the bin Laden Group, which is outed by his dad,

797
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 4: they don't own one company, they own five hundred companies.

798
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 4: The American equivalent to who bin Laden is is like

799
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:14,800
Speaker 4: it's it's it's imagine if one off Jeff Bezos' kids

800
00:41:14,840 --> 00:41:17,200
Speaker 4: went to like a church, like an Orthodox church of

801
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:20,360
Speaker 4: Ukraine's seminary school, and then god his dad to like

802
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:22,880
Speaker 4: go like pay for him to go do war tourism

803
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 4: in Ukraine and then got a group together to like

804
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 4: fly a plane into the Kremlin.

805
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 7: Yeah, and became like a weird like trad cat.

806
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 4: That would be kind of cool, it would be funny,

807
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 4: but like, but that's the thing. Like, he's not like

808
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 4: London is not a sort of moral authority on like

809
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:42,839
Speaker 4: Islamic reticizance to American imperialism. He's a rich, failed son

810
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:45,600
Speaker 4: who had this combination of like regurgitated say you'd cut up,

811
00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 4: and a bunch of his dad's money and like money

812
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 4: from Pakistani intelligence, and that allowed him to sort of

813
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:51,879
Speaker 4: you know, that allowed him to do everything that he did.

814
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,040
Speaker 4: Right that that that's the thing that allowed him and

815
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:57,399
Speaker 4: not you know, like that kid in like that that

816
00:41:57,400 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 4: that that kid in Gazo picked up an ak Like

817
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 4: that's the that allowed him to declare war in the US.

818
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 4: And I want to read his account of what he

819
00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 4: actually thinks happened to the US. This is this is,

820
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 4: this is from that same uh this this, this is

821
00:42:13,960 --> 00:42:17,320
Speaker 4: from that same letter. You are the nation that permits usury,

822
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 4: which has been forbidden by all religions, yet you build

823
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:23,520
Speaker 4: your economy and investments on usury. As a result of

824
00:42:23,560 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 4: this in all its different forms, and guys, is the

825
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:29,759
Speaker 4: Jews have taken over your economy, through which they have

826
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:32,399
Speaker 4: then taken control of your media and now control all

827
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 4: aspects of your life, making you their servants and achieving

828
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:38,960
Speaker 4: their aims at your expense, precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned

829
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:42,919
Speaker 4: you against. So I want to like, like like think

830
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:44,720
Speaker 4: for it. Like I wanted people to sort of stop

831
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 4: and look at what he's actually saying here. His argument

832
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:51,600
Speaker 4: for why the US is an imperialist power is that

833
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:54,480
Speaker 4: it is controlled by Jews who control the economy in

834
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:56,480
Speaker 4: the media and has enslaved the rest of the US

835
00:42:56,480 --> 00:42:58,640
Speaker 4: to do their will. And this is and I cannot

836
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 4: emphasize this enough word for word, a Nazi yes analysis

837
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 4: what happened to the US? And this is this is

838
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 4: what right wing anti colonialism is.

839
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 3: Right.

840
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 4: You look at like the sort of horrors of colonialism,

841
00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:12,279
Speaker 4: go oh, this is bad, and then when someone asks you, okay,

842
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 4: why is this happening, you unload this like utterly half

843
00:43:15,239 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 4: assed pile of anti Semitic conspiracy theories instead of like

844
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:21,080
Speaker 4: an analysis of capitalism, like he thinks the source of

845
00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:27,839
Speaker 4: like American like imperialism and capitalism is interest bearing loans. Yeah, yeah,

846
00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:29,440
Speaker 4: this is nonsense.

847
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 1: And that's what he means whenever he talks about usury, which, like,

848
00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: by the way, is a heads up. Every Muslim country

849
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:38,360
Speaker 1: that I am aware of has banks that do what

850
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 1: it fan does it. Yeah, and they do what is

851
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:44,560
Speaker 1: effectively usury. It's just okay. So if you know anything

852
00:43:44,600 --> 00:43:48,759
Speaker 1: about like orthodox Judaism, right, you are not supposed to

853
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 1: do anything on the Sabbath, and so some people do

854
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 1: keep that You're not even supposed to turn on a light, right,

855
00:43:53,719 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 1: like One of the old ways this was expressed is

856
00:43:55,560 --> 00:43:58,400
Speaker 1: like you would light candles the night before the Sabbath

857
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:00,600
Speaker 1: so that you could have some burning on the Sabbath.

858
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:03,880
Speaker 1: Today there are ways around it that are like you

859
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 1: get lights that are scheduled to go on and off

860
00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:09,439
Speaker 1: at certain hours, and it's it's always. It's kind of funny.

861
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 1: There's a lot of jokes about this you get from

862
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 1: the Jewish comedians being like, do you think God is

863
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:16,759
Speaker 1: like tricked by your rule slowering and stuff? But there

864
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 1: are banks in the Muslim world that are the banking

865
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 1: equivalent of that. Well, what they're doing isn't technically taking interest,

866
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:26,759
Speaker 1: but like it works out to be the same thing

867
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:29,640
Speaker 1: for them. They're just they're just getting around anyway. I

868
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:30,800
Speaker 1: think that's an important piece.

869
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 2: Of Catholic Church deciding that uh, fish and chicken on

870
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:35,879
Speaker 2: meat so you could eat right.

871
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:38,799
Speaker 1: Right right yeah, where it's like really God, Yeah, yeah,

872
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 1: do you think you think God is like, oh yeah, no,

873
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:45,120
Speaker 1: I never meant for those things to be meat? Damn

874
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 1: they got me with that chicken shit. That ain't a

875
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: cow God seeing it? Yeah, I do. Actually, you have

876
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:54,560
Speaker 1: to credit Chick fil A for being closed on Sunday

877
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:56,080
Speaker 1: a little, I guess. But I love the idea of

878
00:44:56,120 --> 00:44:59,319
Speaker 1: like God going to like watch a Catholic congregation go

879
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:02,919
Speaker 1: to breakfast and get their fucking like chicken sandwiches and going, ah,

880
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 1: you cut you crafty bastards. Got me again, guys. I

881
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:10,280
Speaker 1: didn't think you need those, guys, They're so gross.

882
00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 7: That is kind of how the Catholic God works far removed.

883
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:20,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like set up a little sudoku for you.

884
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:22,680
Speaker 1: He's just thrilled that you're getting.

885
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:26,959
Speaker 2: That to press a button to get its food.

886
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:29,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I want to.

887
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:30,880
Speaker 4: I want I want to bring it back to bin

888
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:33,399
Speaker 4: Laden for a second, because I think part of what's

889
00:45:33,440 --> 00:45:35,479
Speaker 4: going on here is something that.

890
00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:38,560
Speaker 3: Isn't I don't know.

891
00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 4: Bin Laden is a product of his specific context, right,

892
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:46,279
Speaker 4: And his specific context is that he grew up in

893
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:49,480
Speaker 4: one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia, and you know,

894
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:51,279
Speaker 4: and his you know, And I guess this is the

895
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:53,799
Speaker 4: thing we should actually I should actually mention I'm being

896
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:56,160
Speaker 4: slightly unfair to the Taliban when I when I talk

897
00:45:56,200 --> 00:45:59,239
Speaker 4: about them having loans because of the Taliban are from

898
00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 4: a different like school of Islamic jurisprudence. Then al Kaida

899
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:04,120
Speaker 4: is even though they sort of they kind of work

900
00:46:04,160 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 4: together sometimes, but like, you know, but the thing, like

901
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:11,080
Speaker 4: the sort of hobbyist school that like bin Laden is

902
00:46:11,200 --> 00:46:14,640
Speaker 4: from right, like he's the reason he has a right

903
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 4: wing anticlonial critique is he's absorbed this sort of like

904
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:21,400
Speaker 4: social mores and he's absorbed you know, the like the

905
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 4: the like involved in the slave trade, level of anti

906
00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 4: blackness that you get from the Souds, like from you know,

907
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:31,000
Speaker 4: like the the he's absorbed their anti Semitism. He's absorbed

908
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:33,160
Speaker 4: all of these things. And this is what he sort

909
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:38,400
Speaker 4: of like has constructed as the reason you know, and

910
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:41,760
Speaker 4: filtered through his sort of cobbling together of like different

911
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:44,439
Speaker 4: sort of like like of like so how you could

912
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 4: up and of sort of like different sort of Islamic thinkers,

913
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:49,759
Speaker 4: Like this is what he's assembled together. And it's this

914
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:54,360
Speaker 4: thing that it's not a stable, coherent critique of the US.

915
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 4: It's it's it's it's this like it's all of his

916
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:01,879
Speaker 4: sort of like weird prejudices and hang ups like grafted

917
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 4: onto anti colonialism and being able to tell the difference

918
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 4: between someone who is a genuine anti colonialist and someone

919
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:13,480
Speaker 4: who is doing this stuff or like who wants their

920
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:17,840
Speaker 4: empire back, or who is like, you know, like pissed

921
00:47:17,840 --> 00:47:19,959
Speaker 4: off that gay people exist like that. That is something

922
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:22,359
Speaker 4: that is genuinely very important, and it's something that's made

923
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:26,279
Speaker 4: enormously harder to do by the way that people like,

924
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:28,480
Speaker 4: you know, by by the American education system, by the

925
00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 4: way people are raised to think about media. Yeah, yeah,

926
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 4: this is this is, this is, this is, this is

927
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:36,640
Speaker 4: this has the bin Loden rant.

928
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: I we can always stand to do more ban Laden rants.

929
00:47:40,600 --> 00:47:42,799
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll do another episode on him on Bastards one

930
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:46,719
Speaker 1: of these days. But yeah, I uh, good stuff. I

931
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 1: do want to kind of close by reading another bit

932
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:53,799
Speaker 1: from from obl you know, our our friend of the pod.

933
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:56,879
Speaker 1: This one's from two thousand and four October twenty ninth,

934
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:01,279
Speaker 1: and I think it's relevant as we look at the

935
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:04,840
Speaker 1: different ways the current president of the United States, the

936
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 1: former and possibly future president of the United States are

937
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:12,640
Speaker 1: talking about dealing with problems like Islamic extremism. Because I

938
00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 1: think Bin Laden's words here are pretty salient and this

939
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:20,120
Speaker 1: comes from a common team made. It wound up airing

940
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:22,799
Speaker 1: on Al Jazeera criticizing George Bush ahead of the two

941
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:26,120
Speaker 1: thousand and four election. Your security is not in the

942
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:29,439
Speaker 1: hands of Democratic candidate John Kerry or President George Bush

943
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 1: or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands.

944
00:48:32,560 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 1: We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush in his

945
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half

946
00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:39,480
Speaker 1: of which are ruled by the military and the other

947
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:41,600
Speaker 1: half by the sons of kings. They have a lot

948
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:46,200
Speaker 1: of pride, arrogance, greed, and thievery, and again not wrong,

949
00:48:46,560 --> 00:48:50,319
Speaker 1: not wrong about most Muslim majority nations, and not wrong

950
00:48:50,360 --> 00:48:52,560
Speaker 1: about most Western nations.

951
00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 4: And it's a good And also is the Bushes too,

952
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 4: because yes, the Bushes were friends with the bin Laden family.

953
00:48:57,160 --> 00:49:00,160
Speaker 1: Yes, yes they are you and they are also as

954
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:04,320
Speaker 1: close as the US has to royalty as is Trump.

955
00:49:05,080 --> 00:49:09,000
Speaker 1: Maybe the kend maybe the Kennedy's. Kennedy's, but another presidential

956
00:49:09,080 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 1: candidate man, you know, complete with the insane, inbred guys

957
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 1: who anyway, anyone else got anything? I'm just baffled. Yeah,

958
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:26,239
Speaker 1: well I'm happy. I'm having a good time, you know.

959
00:49:26,320 --> 00:49:30,680
Speaker 1: Get on TikTok. Let people know that you love terrorism.

960
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:35,239
Speaker 1: Yeah it got wrong for you. Yeah, alternatively, get on

961
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:39,160
Speaker 1: Twitter or wherever YouTube and film an angry video in

962
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: your car about how all of gen z I ironically

963
00:49:43,840 --> 00:49:47,000
Speaker 1: and supports the mass killing of civilians. Do either. Those

964
00:49:47,040 --> 00:49:49,399
Speaker 1: seem to be the two primary things people are doing

965
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:51,360
Speaker 1: right now. So get out and join the herd. Everybody.

966
00:49:51,400 --> 00:50:12,440
Speaker 1: It's fun. What a great place. Ah, welcome back to

967
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:17,000
Speaker 1: it could happen here, a podcast that is now happening here.

968
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:21,440
Speaker 1: I could have done something with ear but we'll do

969
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 1: that next time. Just forget that I said that, and

970
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:27,640
Speaker 1: welcome Mia to the program. Mia, how are you doing today?

971
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 4: Not bad?

972
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 3: Not bad? I'm excited to be here.

973
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,760
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, We're going to be talking about a subject

974
00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:36,799
Speaker 1: that's near and dear to all of our hearts, by

975
00:50:36,800 --> 00:50:39,520
Speaker 1: which I mean the Roman Empire with a guest who

976
00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: is near and dear to our hearts, Mike Duncan. Mike,

977
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:43,919
Speaker 1: how are you doing?

978
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 3: Hello? Thank you for having me.

979
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 1: It is wonderful to have you.

980
00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:49,719
Speaker 3: Mike.

981
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:53,400
Speaker 1: You're a podcaster. You are kind of like the history

982
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:56,280
Speaker 1: podcaster as far as a lot of folks are concerned,

983
00:50:56,320 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 1: including me and you. Also, you've had some interesting interactions

984
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:06,920
Speaker 1: online with people as regards the Roman Empire recently.

985
00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:08,520
Speaker 3: Yeah.

986
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 5: Well, anytime the Roman Empire shows up on the cultural radar.

987
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 5: I am tagged into it by roughly ten thousand people. Yeah,

988
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 5: and then I come in and I do my bits,

989
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:22,200
Speaker 5: or if you know, if something comes through, you know,

990
00:51:22,239 --> 00:51:24,880
Speaker 5: it gets shared at me, you know, not shared with me,

991
00:51:24,920 --> 00:51:27,319
Speaker 5: but shared it at me. And then and then I

992
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:29,360
Speaker 5: take a look at it, and I get aggravated, and then,

993
00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:33,959
Speaker 5: you know, fire off a few salvos and retreat back

994
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:36,279
Speaker 5: out of the social media ecosystem, which is kind of

995
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:37,440
Speaker 5: the strategy these days.

996
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:38,560
Speaker 3: Yeah.

997
00:51:38,719 --> 00:51:41,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, we all have to like fight like an insurgent

998
00:51:42,239 --> 00:51:44,320
Speaker 1: when it comes to that sort of thing, because the

999
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:48,000
Speaker 1: alternative is to just get constantly stuck in this escalating

1000
00:51:48,040 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 1: world of beats with strangers on the internet who are

1001
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:53,000
Speaker 1: making money off of the beef.

1002
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1003
00:51:54,080 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 5: But yeah, but there are certain things that will get

1004
00:51:57,000 --> 00:51:59,320
Speaker 5: me to come out of my little hibernation, which I

1005
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:00,480
Speaker 5: think we're about to talk about.

1006
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:02,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, me, do you want to do you wanna

1007
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:03,440
Speaker 1: take it away?

1008
00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:04,720
Speaker 3: Yeah?

1009
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:07,319
Speaker 4: So one of the things that's been happening recently is

1010
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:12,000
Speaker 4: that so on October twenty fifth, the Republicans finally, after

1011
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:15,240
Speaker 4: an enormous amount of time, finally managed to electic Speaker

1012
00:52:15,280 --> 00:52:19,880
Speaker 4: of the House, and they picked this fairly unknown rep

1013
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:22,560
Speaker 4: named Mike Johnson, who's the guy from Louisiana, And they

1014
00:52:22,600 --> 00:52:25,879
Speaker 4: picked him effectively because nobody knew who he was. Yeah,

1015
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:28,600
Speaker 4: and so they picked this guy and they're like okay,

1016
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:32,719
Speaker 4: and Mike Johnson gets elected and immediately everyone starts trying

1017
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:34,319
Speaker 4: to figure out who this guy is, and they very

1018
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 4: quickly realize this guy is just a absolute incredible Christian

1019
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:44,200
Speaker 4: fundamentalist weirdo. He he doesn't have a bank account.

1020
00:52:45,160 --> 00:52:49,600
Speaker 1: Which is like, why, that's classic fundamentalism too, that's some

1021
00:52:49,640 --> 00:52:52,520
Speaker 1: of that old school stuff. Yeah, to see.

1022
00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:54,960
Speaker 4: It, it's really sort I mean, he's really sort of

1023
00:52:55,000 --> 00:52:56,359
Speaker 4: like he's like he's he's really a.

1024
00:52:56,320 --> 00:52:58,399
Speaker 3: Blast in the past with the Christian fundamentalist I.

1025
00:52:58,320 --> 00:53:01,600
Speaker 4: Mean he he he was a lawyer that represented like

1026
00:53:01,640 --> 00:53:04,640
Speaker 4: a bunch of Young Earth creationist museums.

1027
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:06,400
Speaker 3: He's really going into that old school stuff.

1028
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:08,920
Speaker 4: And one of the other things that some people dug

1029
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:13,759
Speaker 4: up is a podcast interview where he is talking about

1030
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:17,680
Speaker 4: how gay people cause the fall of Rome. So, Mike Duncan,

1031
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 4: I want to ask you the question that I think

1032
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:23,200
Speaker 4: all of our listeners are wondering. Can we as queer

1033
00:53:23,239 --> 00:53:26,560
Speaker 4: people take responsibility? Can we take any credit for the

1034
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:28,680
Speaker 4: fall of Rome, or are we stealing visigof Valor?

1035
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:31,319
Speaker 3: If we do that, you're stealing valor here.

1036
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:37,239
Speaker 5: But but I do I do agree that several of

1037
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:38,880
Speaker 5: the gays in my life are like, don't take this

1038
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:41,560
Speaker 5: from us. It's one of our proudest accomplishments. We brought

1039
00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:45,359
Speaker 5: down the Roman Empire. And I was like, but unfortunately,

1040
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:47,960
Speaker 5: it's just it's not the case. It's not even close

1041
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:50,200
Speaker 5: to the case. It's you know, you could you could

1042
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:54,239
Speaker 5: draw random words out of a hat and produce a

1043
00:53:54,320 --> 00:53:57,239
Speaker 5: sentence that was literally nonsensical, and that would be a

1044
00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:00,160
Speaker 5: better read of the end of the Roman Empire and

1045
00:54:00,200 --> 00:54:04,320
Speaker 5: saying gay people or homosexuality like, because it's all wrapped

1046
00:54:04,400 --> 00:54:06,880
Speaker 5: up in this sort of like it was decadence that

1047
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 5: caused the fall of the Roman Empire. They were too like,

1048
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 5: you know, they were just too life sensious, and they

1049
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:14,799
Speaker 5: just throw up some some vocabulary words.

1050
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:16,839
Speaker 3: And it just it just doesn't land at all.

1051
00:54:17,320 --> 00:54:19,200
Speaker 5: It doesn't land on the specifics, it doesn't land on

1052
00:54:19,239 --> 00:54:22,880
Speaker 5: the general it doesn't land chronologically, it doesn't land in

1053
00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:26,440
Speaker 5: any way, shape or form. It's just something they've decided

1054
00:54:26,560 --> 00:54:29,439
Speaker 5: is true and repeat to each other and that's the whole.

1055
00:54:29,520 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 5: That's the long and short of it.

1056
00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1057
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:34,839
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there's some interesting stuff there too, of

1058
00:54:34,920 --> 00:54:37,640
Speaker 4: like the stuff people talk about why when they like

1059
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:40,319
Speaker 4: I remember I was reading someone like writing about this

1060
00:54:40,360 --> 00:54:42,319
Speaker 4: and they started talking about Nero, and I was like,

1061
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:46,440
Speaker 4: do you know, like in what century the Roman Empire

1062
00:54:46,760 --> 00:54:50,400
Speaker 4: like collapse? Like why are you talking about Nero? I

1063
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:53,880
Speaker 4: don't know, it seems like there's this real I don't know,

1064
00:54:54,040 --> 00:54:57,200
Speaker 4: it seems like, you know, the the fall of Rome

1065
00:54:57,239 --> 00:54:59,040
Speaker 4: is one of these things that's become central to a

1066
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 4: lot of very weird in politics. And I remember, like

1067
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:02,960
Speaker 4: a few years ago, the big thing was like the

1068
00:55:03,200 --> 00:55:06,880
Speaker 4: Rome was called the fall of Rome was caused by immigration, Yeah, which.

1069
00:55:06,800 --> 00:55:08,200
Speaker 3: And that's also current as well.

1070
00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:11,000
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, And so I don't know, what is it

1071
00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 4: about like Rome with these people? The fall of Rome,

1072
00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:16,439
Speaker 4: these people are like so drawn to in a way

1073
00:55:16,480 --> 00:55:19,520
Speaker 4: that causes them not to think about what actually happened

1074
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:19,799
Speaker 4: at all.

1075
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:22,640
Speaker 5: I mean, well, I mean, just to go back a second,

1076
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:28,319
Speaker 5: it's like Rome in general, in their heads, is not

1077
00:55:28,760 --> 00:55:33,960
Speaker 5: a sort of temporarily dependent series of events that unfolded

1078
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:35,920
Speaker 5: over a thousand years. It's just this kind of like

1079
00:55:36,320 --> 00:55:41,000
Speaker 5: one eternal place that's like a pastiche in their minds,

1080
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 5: so like Nero can exist alongside Attila, can exist alongside

1081
00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:49,040
Speaker 5: you know, Scipio Africanus, and all of these people and

1082
00:55:49,080 --> 00:55:51,799
Speaker 5: events like just sort of are near each other in time,

1083
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:53,880
Speaker 5: the same way that they believe that, like you know,

1084
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:57,200
Speaker 5: dinosaurs and humans cohabitated the earth like it. It's that

1085
00:55:57,320 --> 00:55:59,759
Speaker 5: kind of same thing. And so if they think about

1086
00:55:59,840 --> 00:56:05,239
Speaker 5: somebody like Caligula or Nero running this like running these

1087
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 5: courts of decadence, like, it doesn't click to them that

1088
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:11,080
Speaker 5: this is like in the first century, and that the

1089
00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:13,839
Speaker 5: Roman Empire doesn't fall for four hundred years, five hundred years,

1090
00:56:13,880 --> 00:56:16,440
Speaker 5: and then the East keeps going for another thousand years.

1091
00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:19,759
Speaker 1: That's a huge part of it. It is interesting to me.

1092
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:21,920
Speaker 1: You you kind of made the statement there about in

1093
00:56:21,960 --> 00:56:26,040
Speaker 1: these guys' heads, Rome being this kind of eternal like

1094
00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:30,400
Speaker 1: continuing thing, And that's interesting to me because it that

1095
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:33,600
Speaker 1: that conception of Rome goes back so far, I mean

1096
00:56:33,719 --> 00:56:38,759
Speaker 1: very famously, Like when Russia became like an organized political entity,

1097
00:56:38,800 --> 00:56:41,799
Speaker 1: there was this widespread attitude that it was the third Rome, right,

1098
00:56:42,680 --> 00:56:46,040
Speaker 1: that still plays into a lot of Russian imperial politics

1099
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:47,759
Speaker 1: to this day, So it is. It is kind of

1100
00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:52,320
Speaker 1: fascinating how far that idea goes back, Like it says

1101
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:57,480
Speaker 1: something about the success of Roman propaganda, that it still

1102
00:56:57,520 --> 00:57:00,440
Speaker 1: has this place in so many people's minds.

1103
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:04,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I mean it has a place in my mind.

1104
00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:08,480
Speaker 5: I don't I don't think of that. Yeah, so do

1105
00:57:08,560 --> 00:57:11,200
Speaker 5: I so to many of us. And I don't think

1106
00:57:11,239 --> 00:57:14,800
Speaker 5: that the crime here is thinking about the fall of

1107
00:57:14,840 --> 00:57:18,800
Speaker 5: the Roman Empire or the trand or as you know,

1108
00:57:19,080 --> 00:57:21,760
Speaker 5: we would more properly call it the transition from late

1109
00:57:21,760 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 5: Antiquity to the eartal Medieval period, which is, you know,

1110
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:27,920
Speaker 5: unfolded and that didn't have a cataclysm, and you shouldn't

1111
00:57:27,960 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 5: necessarily be thought of as as an inherently negative thing,

1112
00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:36,640
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But organizing your worldview

1113
00:57:36,760 --> 00:57:43,320
Speaker 5: around utterly historically illiterate version of the Roman Empire that

1114
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:47,440
Speaker 5: is really just a vehicle for your own special bigotry.

1115
00:57:48,960 --> 00:57:52,840
Speaker 5: That's where they're really running a foul of me and

1116
00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:53,400
Speaker 5: my temper.

1117
00:57:54,960 --> 00:57:58,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's there's a lot that's really interesting about

1118
00:57:59,040 --> 00:58:02,280
Speaker 1: how they sort of choose to interpret like the causes

1119
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 1: of the fall. I think probably the least the least

1120
00:58:07,160 --> 00:58:10,040
Speaker 1: sensible argument they have is this idea that it had

1121
00:58:10,080 --> 00:58:14,040
Speaker 1: something to do with like degeneracy. But yeah, it's like

1122
00:58:14,440 --> 00:58:18,000
Speaker 1: you can find Romans in like the the Middle Republic

1123
00:58:18,080 --> 00:58:21,080
Speaker 1: period saying the same thing, that, like, we've become too degenerate,

1124
00:58:21,120 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 1: too lazy, because of like all of the you know,

1125
00:58:24,640 --> 00:58:28,280
Speaker 1: slaves automating, you know, the ruling classes tasks people have.

1126
00:58:29,320 --> 00:58:31,440
Speaker 1: You know, Romans are not like the Romans of our

1127
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:35,240
Speaker 1: forefathers and stuff anymore. And like, you know, the empire

1128
00:58:35,320 --> 00:58:38,120
Speaker 1: continued or the Republic and then the Empire still had

1129
00:58:38,440 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 1: centuries in the tank at that.

1130
00:58:39,960 --> 00:58:44,240
Speaker 5: Yeah, very very famously, the Romans started complaining about how

1131
00:58:44,520 --> 00:58:47,560
Speaker 5: it's not like the good old days round about the

1132
00:58:47,560 --> 00:58:51,720
Speaker 5: second century b c. Which is like three hundred years

1133
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:54,800
Speaker 5: before they hit what we all acknowledged to be the

1134
00:58:54,840 --> 00:58:57,920
Speaker 5: peak of Roman civilization. And this is like, this is

1135
00:58:57,920 --> 00:59:00,280
Speaker 5: when Cato the Elder gets into it. And the thing

1136
00:59:00,280 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 5: that those guys were griping about at the time, and

1137
00:59:01,920 --> 00:59:04,200
Speaker 5: there are there are little, you know, little connections here,

1138
00:59:04,320 --> 00:59:06,919
Speaker 5: just doesn't none of it shapes up. Is that what

1139
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:09,439
Speaker 5: Cato the Elder and people like him were complaining about

1140
00:59:09,520 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 5: way back in the second century was this is when

1141
00:59:11,480 --> 00:59:14,200
Speaker 5: the Romans come in contact with the Greeks, and there

1142
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:17,840
Speaker 5: was there was a kind of like a split between

1143
00:59:18,040 --> 00:59:25,040
Speaker 5: traditional Latin Romanness and then this like new Eastern Greaceness,

1144
00:59:25,080 --> 00:59:28,000
Speaker 5: which like they've got new ideas and like they sounds

1145
00:59:28,000 --> 00:59:30,560
Speaker 5: like they have sex with each other all the time.

1146
00:59:30,720 --> 00:59:32,480
Speaker 5: You know, they don't care if they're men or women,

1147
00:59:33,560 --> 00:59:36,920
Speaker 5: and so that's what they were pushing back against, and

1148
00:59:36,960 --> 00:59:38,960
Speaker 5: so that kind of language does that.

1149
00:59:39,120 --> 00:59:41,560
Speaker 3: This is where it kind of distills.

1150
00:59:41,400 --> 00:59:43,800
Speaker 5: Over the centuries and then over the millennia into this

1151
00:59:43,960 --> 00:59:47,200
Speaker 5: idea that the Roman Empire collapsed and was ruined by

1152
00:59:47,800 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 5: this kind of degeneracy without being able to really define

1153
00:59:51,680 --> 00:59:54,720
Speaker 5: what degeneracy means or how it could possibly impact the

1154
00:59:54,760 --> 00:59:57,560
Speaker 5: long term health of a of a large empire.

1155
00:59:58,720 --> 00:59:59,040
Speaker 3: You know.

1156
01:00:00,560 --> 01:00:03,760
Speaker 5: The fact that very bluntly right when you're saying this

1157
01:00:03,840 --> 01:00:07,320
Speaker 5: in one eighty six BC, you can't say that contact

1158
01:00:07,320 --> 01:00:11,680
Speaker 5: with Greek ideas brought the Roman Empire down. It just can't,

1159
01:00:11,800 --> 01:00:15,600
Speaker 5: because it just didn't get crushed by this, It didn't

1160
01:00:15,640 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 5: fall apart.

1161
01:00:16,880 --> 01:00:17,280
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1162
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:20,000
Speaker 1: I mean, my if I have to make an argument

1163
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:22,160
Speaker 1: as to like what thing that I can connect to

1164
01:00:22,200 --> 01:00:25,280
Speaker 1: modernity killed the modern Empire, I tend to claim that

1165
01:00:25,320 --> 01:00:28,760
Speaker 1: it's the concept of a reboot, right, because no sooner

1166
01:00:29,000 --> 01:00:32,480
Speaker 1: than did Augustus have Virgil reboot the story of the

1167
01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 1: Trojan War, than the inevitable path to the collapse of

1168
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:38,720
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire began. Right that the real sign that

1169
01:00:38,720 --> 01:00:41,440
Speaker 1: we're heading towards collapse is all these movie reboots.

1170
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:44,560
Speaker 3: Okay, great, well, the.

1171
01:00:44,680 --> 01:00:49,680
Speaker 5: Rule is, whatever your modern preoccupation is, that's what you

1172
01:00:49,880 --> 01:00:52,320
Speaker 5: use to explain the fall of the Roman Empire. So

1173
01:00:52,320 --> 01:00:55,360
Speaker 5: of course I have my preoccupations, and that's what I

1174
01:00:55,400 --> 01:00:59,080
Speaker 5: say caused the fall of the Roman Empire, which is

1175
01:00:59,080 --> 01:01:00,640
Speaker 5: that the Roman Empire and never found.

1176
01:01:00,680 --> 01:01:02,400
Speaker 3: We're all living in a hologram.

1177
01:01:04,920 --> 01:01:06,520
Speaker 5: And we know and we know this because if a

1178
01:01:06,560 --> 01:01:09,000
Speaker 5: woman visits me and brings me and brings me groceries

1179
01:01:09,040 --> 01:01:11,840
Speaker 5: and she's wearing a Jesus fish necklace, it can pop

1180
01:01:11,880 --> 01:01:13,440
Speaker 5: into my brain and I can know that we're.

1181
01:01:13,640 --> 01:01:16,200
Speaker 1: Living in We're still We're still in the Roman Empire. Yeah,

1182
01:01:16,240 --> 01:01:20,000
Speaker 1: the empire never ended, folks, Yeah, yeah, every politician is

1183
01:01:20,000 --> 01:01:20,720
Speaker 1: still Cato.

1184
01:01:21,560 --> 01:01:23,280
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1185
01:01:23,320 --> 01:01:25,960
Speaker 4: I mean, look, they you could also tell this because

1186
01:01:26,000 --> 01:01:28,240
Speaker 4: you know, it's like, in the same way that everything

1187
01:01:28,240 --> 01:01:31,000
Speaker 4: tastes like chicken. They haven't invented a new moral panic

1188
01:01:31,080 --> 01:01:34,440
Speaker 4: in two thousand years, So pretty clearly we're just we're

1189
01:01:34,480 --> 01:01:37,120
Speaker 4: just we're just recycling through exactly the same content over

1190
01:01:37,160 --> 01:01:37,760
Speaker 4: and over again.

1191
01:01:38,760 --> 01:01:42,440
Speaker 1: It does all of the the kind of similarities you

1192
01:01:42,480 --> 01:01:45,160
Speaker 1: can find, or at least seeming similarities you can find

1193
01:01:45,160 --> 01:01:49,520
Speaker 1: between stuff that different Roman politicians were complaining about, you know,

1194
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:53,800
Speaker 1: two thousand years ago, and stuff that's in our media today.

1195
01:01:54,400 --> 01:01:57,880
Speaker 1: I think does suggest part of why it's almost impossible

1196
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:01,360
Speaker 1: to not keep bringing Rome up, which is that like

1197
01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:04,360
Speaker 1: there are and I think that it's a mix of

1198
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:07,840
Speaker 1: like there are some legitimate similarities between our cultures, and

1199
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:12,120
Speaker 1: also our concept of Rome, which is often a historical

1200
01:02:12,200 --> 01:02:16,160
Speaker 1: but is based on generations of misconceptions, makes it seem

1201
01:02:16,360 --> 01:02:17,160
Speaker 1: even closer.

1202
01:02:18,640 --> 01:02:22,520
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we are a post Roman society and they

1203
01:02:22,600 --> 01:02:25,680
Speaker 5: are our forebears, whether we like it or not. Like

1204
01:02:25,760 --> 01:02:31,000
Speaker 5: any civilization that exists today that went through the Mediterranean world,

1205
01:02:32,000 --> 01:02:35,040
Speaker 5: you know, it had a Roman period, and the Romans

1206
01:02:35,080 --> 01:02:37,439
Speaker 5: made a strong imprint on all of us in terms

1207
01:02:37,480 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 5: of like our laws and how we think about money,

1208
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:42,560
Speaker 5: and how we think about family relationships, like all of

1209
01:02:42,600 --> 01:02:44,919
Speaker 5: these things are you know, we're living in a post

1210
01:02:45,000 --> 01:02:49,040
Speaker 5: Roman world, and that's why it's important to study the

1211
01:02:49,120 --> 01:02:52,160
Speaker 5: Roman Empire as an entity, but do it with some

1212
01:02:52,240 --> 01:02:55,600
Speaker 5: degree of rigor rather than just using it as a

1213
01:02:55,640 --> 01:03:00,720
Speaker 5: prop in the culture wars. Yeah, that was a great

1214
01:03:00,800 --> 01:03:02,560
Speaker 5: That was a great point I just made in so No,

1215
01:03:02,640 --> 01:03:06,240
Speaker 5: that was absolutely brought the conversation to a complete stance.

1216
01:03:06,280 --> 01:03:09,640
Speaker 5: So as everybody said, just chewed on this nugget wisdom

1217
01:03:09,760 --> 01:03:11,120
Speaker 5: that I have fruped at the table.

1218
01:03:13,000 --> 01:03:15,960
Speaker 1: I do kind of think it behooves people. Part of

1219
01:03:16,000 --> 01:03:18,640
Speaker 1: why it's valuable to do things like listen to the

1220
01:03:18,680 --> 01:03:24,480
Speaker 1: Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan is that you're this Rome

1221
01:03:24,560 --> 01:03:27,000
Speaker 1: isn't going to stop being brought up by these people

1222
01:03:27,040 --> 01:03:31,160
Speaker 1: and increasingly unhinged and inaccurate ways. And it's it's just like,

1223
01:03:31,200 --> 01:03:33,400
Speaker 1: it's helpful to have an actual understanding of who the

1224
01:03:33,440 --> 01:03:35,760
Speaker 1: Spartans were and what they did and did not do

1225
01:03:36,080 --> 01:03:38,320
Speaker 1: for the sake of these arguments. It's helpful to have

1226
01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:41,600
Speaker 1: a meaningful understanding of the Roman Empire. And I'm kind

1227
01:03:41,600 --> 01:03:45,680
Speaker 1: of wondering, like when you when you come into misconceptions

1228
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:48,560
Speaker 1: about Rome, what are some of like the top ones

1229
01:03:48,680 --> 01:03:51,600
Speaker 1: on your list that uh that that your brain just

1230
01:03:51,760 --> 01:03:52,920
Speaker 1: forces you to go in and.

1231
01:03:52,880 --> 01:03:55,960
Speaker 5: Correct, well, I mean this is a big one that

1232
01:03:56,040 --> 01:03:59,360
Speaker 5: because this one I feel like is deeply homophobic and

1233
01:04:00,400 --> 01:04:05,760
Speaker 5: principally used to attack the queer community rather than anything else.

1234
01:04:07,400 --> 01:04:07,520
Speaker 3: Is.

1235
01:04:07,800 --> 01:04:10,280
Speaker 5: And just to give your listeners, like some specifics here,

1236
01:04:10,280 --> 01:04:13,280
Speaker 5: it's like, you know, sexuality in the Roman world was

1237
01:04:13,400 --> 01:04:16,520
Speaker 5: very different than it was today, and there weren't even

1238
01:04:16,840 --> 01:04:19,680
Speaker 5: you know, the kind of binary conceptions of gender sexual

1239
01:04:19,720 --> 01:04:21,680
Speaker 5: relations that we have today. A lot of these things

1240
01:04:21,720 --> 01:04:23,920
Speaker 5: are very modern inventions. I'm sure a lot of people

1241
01:04:23,960 --> 01:04:27,920
Speaker 5: know this, but we can also point very specifically to like,

1242
01:04:28,840 --> 01:04:32,400
Speaker 5: you know, Hadrian, who is broadly considered and cited to

1243
01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:34,400
Speaker 5: be one of the greatest of the emperors who lived

1244
01:04:34,400 --> 01:04:35,640
Speaker 5: at the height of the Golden.

1245
01:04:35,360 --> 01:04:36,760
Speaker 3: Age, was gay.

1246
01:04:37,040 --> 01:04:39,640
Speaker 5: Like that's like, that's a full stop thing. And so

1247
01:04:40,320 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 5: it's just like there's no compatibility between these two ideas

1248
01:04:46,360 --> 01:04:50,480
Speaker 5: or really anyway, if you ask them to take this

1249
01:04:50,640 --> 01:04:53,480
Speaker 5: argument more than twenty five words deep, they're not going

1250
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:55,520
Speaker 5: to have a way to explain how it is that

1251
01:04:55,560 --> 01:04:58,919
Speaker 5: somebody engaged in gay sex in the four hundreds could

1252
01:04:58,960 --> 01:05:02,480
Speaker 5: have possibly been the reason why the Goths won a

1253
01:05:02,480 --> 01:05:04,440
Speaker 5: certain battle, or why Attila the Hunt was able to

1254
01:05:04,440 --> 01:05:07,880
Speaker 5: do what he did. All of it is just complete

1255
01:05:07,920 --> 01:05:11,120
Speaker 5: and utter ahistorical nonsense, and so I consider it, I

1256
01:05:11,160 --> 01:05:14,400
Speaker 5: consider it my duty as some kind of voice of

1257
01:05:14,440 --> 01:05:17,200
Speaker 5: authority on Roman history to not let people get away

1258
01:05:17,200 --> 01:05:20,040
Speaker 5: with this. The last, the last time I saw this

1259
01:05:20,080 --> 01:05:23,480
Speaker 5: pop up was actually uh Ben Carson, which is a

1260
01:05:23,520 --> 01:05:26,000
Speaker 5: little bit of a blast from the past at this point,

1261
01:05:26,080 --> 01:05:29,400
Speaker 5: but he he he wrote a book at one point

1262
01:05:29,400 --> 01:05:31,960
Speaker 5: where he dropped this stuff in there. And and the way

1263
01:05:32,000 --> 01:05:33,880
Speaker 5: they always couch it too is like as we all know,

1264
01:05:34,160 --> 01:05:36,440
Speaker 5: you know, it was homosexuality that really led to the

1265
01:05:36,560 --> 01:05:37,200
Speaker 5: generacy of.

1266
01:05:37,120 --> 01:05:40,040
Speaker 3: The lay like I'm so sick of you people.

1267
01:05:41,200 --> 01:05:43,680
Speaker 5: But the other, the other big one that really grinds

1268
01:05:43,760 --> 01:05:47,160
Speaker 5: my gears that really emerged. This this was not a

1269
01:05:47,160 --> 01:05:49,600
Speaker 5: preconception that I had going into doing the history of Rome,

1270
01:05:49,640 --> 01:05:52,960
Speaker 5: but something that I came away from after doing it

1271
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:55,320
Speaker 5: and studying, you know, the year by year history of

1272
01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:58,480
Speaker 5: the Empire, is that this notion that like sort of

1273
01:05:58,520 --> 01:06:03,200
Speaker 5: the Romans were this uh like like a like a

1274
01:06:03,800 --> 01:06:09,440
Speaker 5: like a nationality that then went forth and conquered the Mediterranean,

1275
01:06:09,480 --> 01:06:12,360
Speaker 5: that Romans were Romans as like an ethnic stock thing,

1276
01:06:12,880 --> 01:06:16,320
Speaker 5: and that it was when these other ethnicities started sort

1277
01:06:16,320 --> 01:06:18,560
Speaker 5: of pressing at the empire's borders, or as we said

1278
01:06:18,600 --> 01:06:21,120
Speaker 5: a little bit earlier, that it was immigration right that

1279
01:06:21,200 --> 01:06:23,320
Speaker 5: destroys the Roman Empire. That there was this kind of

1280
01:06:23,400 --> 01:06:27,400
Speaker 5: like pure noble Roman thing. This is essentially functioning as

1281
01:06:28,320 --> 01:06:31,120
Speaker 5: the white person in the ancient world, Like this is

1282
01:06:31,160 --> 01:06:32,960
Speaker 5: how we're connecting these things. The British did this, the

1283
01:06:32,960 --> 01:06:35,160
Speaker 5: French did this, Americans now do this today, that like

1284
01:06:35,400 --> 01:06:37,520
Speaker 5: the Romans are our stand in as sort of the

1285
01:06:37,560 --> 01:06:40,800
Speaker 5: white people, and the white people are civilized and all

1286
01:06:40,800 --> 01:06:44,600
Speaker 5: of these other like mongrel races are are uncivilized, and

1287
01:06:44,640 --> 01:06:46,640
Speaker 5: they were either civilized by the Romans that they were

1288
01:06:46,680 --> 01:06:48,360
Speaker 5: killed by the Romans or enslaved by the Romans. But

1289
01:06:48,400 --> 01:06:50,800
Speaker 5: this is all for the good because the Romans themselves

1290
01:06:50,840 --> 01:06:55,920
Speaker 5: were were like this this this superior stock of DNA somehow.

1291
01:06:56,440 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 5: And really, when you go through the empire, the h

1292
01:07:00,040 --> 01:07:04,120
Speaker 5: history of the Roman Empire, you find that there is

1293
01:07:04,200 --> 01:07:07,440
Speaker 5: that kind of conservative strain inside of like the patrician

1294
01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:09,640
Speaker 5: class and inside of the senatorial class that they're like,

1295
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:11,600
Speaker 5: we want this to be a closely held thing, Like

1296
01:07:11,640 --> 01:07:15,120
Speaker 5: the original Republic was a closely held oligarchy of Latin

1297
01:07:15,160 --> 01:07:17,400
Speaker 5: families who lived on the Palatine Hill, and that's what

1298
01:07:17,480 --> 01:07:20,280
Speaker 5: they wanted for themselves. And so when other people tried

1299
01:07:20,320 --> 01:07:22,960
Speaker 5: to push into the Republic, they tried to resist it.

1300
01:07:23,760 --> 01:07:26,240
Speaker 5: And so that is a running conflict that happens in

1301
01:07:26,800 --> 01:07:32,440
Speaker 5: Roman history. But any time that that tendency is overcome

1302
01:07:32,720 --> 01:07:37,160
Speaker 5: and a second prevailing force that says like, actually, Romanness

1303
01:07:37,200 --> 01:07:39,640
Speaker 5: is just an idea. Romanness is just a set of

1304
01:07:39,960 --> 01:07:43,200
Speaker 5: beliefs and practices and sort of daily habits of life

1305
01:07:43,200 --> 01:07:46,120
Speaker 5: and ideology that can really be held by anybody at

1306
01:07:46,120 --> 01:07:49,880
Speaker 5: any time. And if we let in say non Roman Italians,

1307
01:07:49,960 --> 01:07:52,680
Speaker 5: which is the first people who were considered non Roman

1308
01:07:52,720 --> 01:07:54,840
Speaker 5: who then came into the Empire, which then we look

1309
01:07:54,880 --> 01:07:57,200
Speaker 5: back and we're like, there was a time that Romans

1310
01:07:57,200 --> 01:07:59,920
Speaker 5: didn't think that people from what is today like Florin

1311
01:08:00,160 --> 01:08:03,160
Speaker 5: or Milan were not Italian or not Roman. Yeah, yeah,

1312
01:08:03,200 --> 01:08:06,680
Speaker 5: they were not considered Roman until you know, the very

1313
01:08:06,760 --> 01:08:08,640
Speaker 5: late stages of the Republic. I mean, I wrote a

1314
01:08:08,640 --> 01:08:10,560
Speaker 5: book about the later stage of the Republic, and the

1315
01:08:10,600 --> 01:08:14,320
Speaker 5: Social War is when this gets wrapped up. After hundreds

1316
01:08:14,320 --> 01:08:17,880
Speaker 5: of years being treated as second class citizens, there was

1317
01:08:17,880 --> 01:08:20,559
Speaker 5: a civil war that nearly destroyed the Republic before Caesar

1318
01:08:20,600 --> 01:08:24,200
Speaker 5: even came along. It was resolved by giving citizenship to

1319
01:08:24,200 --> 01:08:27,280
Speaker 5: the Italians, making them full members of the polity, and

1320
01:08:27,320 --> 01:08:29,799
Speaker 5: then having that just be a boon to Rome's fortunes.

1321
01:08:30,120 --> 01:08:32,599
Speaker 5: This happens in Gaul, this happens in Spain, this happens

1322
01:08:32,640 --> 01:08:36,840
Speaker 5: in Illyria, this happens in the Far East. That these

1323
01:08:36,880 --> 01:08:40,240
Speaker 5: people who the Romans encounter and yes, do conquer, because

1324
01:08:40,280 --> 01:08:44,200
Speaker 5: it's a very violent world of conquest and mutual conquest.

1325
01:08:44,360 --> 01:08:49,080
Speaker 5: That Romans in Gaul were as much Romans as Romans

1326
01:08:49,120 --> 01:08:55,240
Speaker 5: in Rome. And anytime I find Roman leaders resisting that idea,

1327
01:08:55,880 --> 01:09:00,439
Speaker 5: I find the empire starting to falter and commit miss steps.

1328
01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:03,000
Speaker 5: And anytime they're like, nah, let's just throw it open.

1329
01:09:03,160 --> 01:09:06,040
Speaker 5: You know, if you're good, if you're dedicated, if you're loyal,

1330
01:09:06,240 --> 01:09:08,120
Speaker 5: you can be a part of this project that we have.

1331
01:09:08,479 --> 01:09:11,639
Speaker 5: Then I find the Romans doing very very well. And

1332
01:09:11,920 --> 01:09:14,040
Speaker 5: I'm about to start not to just monologue here, but

1333
01:09:14,080 --> 01:09:17,120
Speaker 5: I'm about to start working on another book that is

1334
01:09:17,160 --> 01:09:20,519
Speaker 5: about the crisis of the third century. And by this time,

1335
01:09:20,600 --> 01:09:23,120
Speaker 5: we have emperors who are coming from North Africa. We

1336
01:09:23,200 --> 01:09:27,519
Speaker 5: have emperors who are tagged as being Arabian. We have

1337
01:09:27,880 --> 01:09:31,559
Speaker 5: the set of emperors who really help Rome emerge from

1338
01:09:31,680 --> 01:09:33,400
Speaker 5: this thing that is called the Crisis of the third

1339
01:09:33,400 --> 01:09:36,120
Speaker 5: century when the empire very nearly collapsed in the mid

1340
01:09:36,120 --> 01:09:38,960
Speaker 5: two hundreds. Is a bunch of guys from Alyria, which

1341
01:09:39,000 --> 01:09:41,080
Speaker 5: is today the Balkans. I mean, we're talking about guys

1342
01:09:41,080 --> 01:09:44,600
Speaker 5: who are coming from like Serbia and Croatia, or the

1343
01:09:44,680 --> 01:09:48,600
Speaker 5: emperors who are continuing the Roman legacy and keeping the

1344
01:09:48,640 --> 01:09:52,840
Speaker 5: empire intact. So this notion that like the Rome wasn't

1345
01:09:52,840 --> 01:09:55,960
Speaker 5: a multicultural empire, or that the arrival of new peoples

1346
01:09:56,040 --> 01:10:00,320
Speaker 5: was somehow bad for them is just disproven over and

1347
01:10:00,400 --> 01:10:02,479
Speaker 5: over and over again by the realities of Roman history.

1348
01:10:02,520 --> 01:10:04,760
Speaker 5: So that's the other one is this immigration caused the

1349
01:10:04,800 --> 01:10:07,439
Speaker 5: fall of the Roman Empire is just flat out incorrect.

1350
01:10:08,080 --> 01:10:10,000
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, one of the arguments that I've heard sort

1351
01:10:10,000 --> 01:10:13,200
Speaker 4: of against that, and I want to ask how true

1352
01:10:13,200 --> 01:10:15,040
Speaker 4: this is. But one of the things that I hear

1353
01:10:15,040 --> 01:10:17,360
Speaker 4: people sort of responding to this with is this argument

1354
01:10:17,479 --> 01:10:20,559
Speaker 4: that like part of what causes like the sack of

1355
01:10:20,640 --> 01:10:23,720
Speaker 4: Rome is that the Romans get into one of these

1356
01:10:23,800 --> 01:10:26,240
Speaker 4: nphobic streaks and they don't want to sort of try

1357
01:10:26,240 --> 01:10:30,600
Speaker 4: to observe the visigoths. Okay, so that that is, that's

1358
01:10:30,680 --> 01:10:32,439
Speaker 4: a that's essentially my position.

1359
01:10:32,720 --> 01:10:33,560
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1360
01:10:33,680 --> 01:10:36,320
Speaker 1: I was just going to bring up a guy who

1361
01:10:36,520 --> 01:10:39,920
Speaker 1: a historian, who has to come up anytime you talk

1362
01:10:39,960 --> 01:10:42,639
Speaker 1: about the way the right likes to use the image

1363
01:10:42,640 --> 01:10:48,480
Speaker 1: of Rome, particularly the collapse of Rome. Victor Davis Hansen. Yeah, yeah,

1364
01:10:48,520 --> 01:10:50,040
Speaker 1: he is. He is a guy you're going I mean,

1365
01:10:50,080 --> 01:10:52,960
Speaker 1: he was. He's my dad's favorite historian. I come from

1366
01:10:53,000 --> 01:10:56,519
Speaker 1: a very conservative family. And he wrote a book not

1367
01:10:56,640 --> 01:10:59,840
Speaker 1: all that long ago. No, actually it was twenty ten. Sorry,

1368
01:10:59,840 --> 01:11:01,920
Speaker 1: that still like five years ago to me. But it's

1369
01:11:02,040 --> 01:11:05,840
Speaker 1: not five years ago. It's much further away called Why

1370
01:11:05,880 --> 01:11:08,080
Speaker 1: did Rome Fall? And Why does It Matter Now? And

1371
01:11:08,479 --> 01:11:11,559
Speaker 1: there's a quote I found from a little article he

1372
01:11:11,600 --> 01:11:14,639
Speaker 1: wrote plugging it that I want to bring up here

1373
01:11:14,720 --> 01:11:18,000
Speaker 1: so we can chew over in short, what ruined Rome

1374
01:11:18,080 --> 01:11:20,759
Speaker 1: in the West. Lots of things, but clearly the pernicious

1375
01:11:20,760 --> 01:11:24,799
Speaker 1: effects of affluence and laxity warped Roman sensibility and created

1376
01:11:24,800 --> 01:11:27,839
Speaker 1: a culture of entitlement that was not justified by revenues

1377
01:11:27,920 --> 01:11:32,400
Speaker 1: or the creation of actual commensurate wealth, and the resulting debits, inflation,

1378
01:11:32,560 --> 01:11:36,360
Speaker 1: debased currency, and gradual state impoverishment gave the far more

1379
01:11:36,479 --> 01:11:39,920
Speaker 1: vulnerable Western Empire far less margin when the barbarians arrived.

1380
01:11:39,920 --> 01:11:45,880
Speaker 3: It's all bullshit, I know, it's.

1381
01:11:42,560 --> 01:11:47,080
Speaker 5: It's so it's so frustrating because this culture of dependence

1382
01:11:47,120 --> 01:11:49,200
Speaker 5: that can I swear on this podcast.

1383
01:11:49,040 --> 01:11:50,519
Speaker 1: Oh, absucking lutely for sure.

1384
01:11:50,520 --> 01:11:57,160
Speaker 5: This fucking these motherfuckers, this entitle this entitlement thing that

1385
01:11:57,200 --> 01:11:59,719
Speaker 5: they have because they don't like welfare because they're pricks,

1386
01:11:59,760 --> 01:12:03,040
Speaker 5: you know. And you know Victor Davis Hansen, you know,

1387
01:12:03,080 --> 01:12:05,040
Speaker 5: this is a guy who wrote a book called Like Mexifornia,

1388
01:12:05,080 --> 01:12:08,280
Speaker 5: which is like, oh my god, yeah, absolutely, this is

1389
01:12:08,280 --> 01:12:10,120
Speaker 5: where it comes from the nineties where he's like he's

1390
01:12:10,160 --> 01:12:12,120
Speaker 5: like California is going to be destroyed by all these

1391
01:12:12,160 --> 01:12:16,439
Speaker 5: Hispanic people. Like it's just loathsome shit that he writes. Anyway,

1392
01:12:17,400 --> 01:12:20,280
Speaker 5: this culture of entitlement, right, like oh, it was just

1393
01:12:20,400 --> 01:12:22,800
Speaker 5: bread and circuses and like the empire had to give

1394
01:12:22,840 --> 01:12:26,040
Speaker 5: all this money to like how many Like okay, great,

1395
01:12:26,080 --> 01:12:29,720
Speaker 5: the Roman Rome the city was like a million people, yeah, right,

1396
01:12:29,760 --> 01:12:33,000
Speaker 5: And there were a couple of large urban hubs that

1397
01:12:33,160 --> 01:12:35,960
Speaker 5: did have like grain doles because you needed to be

1398
01:12:35,960 --> 01:12:37,680
Speaker 5: able to feed the people in these cities. And this

1399
01:12:37,720 --> 01:12:40,160
Speaker 5: is you know, smart policy by the emperors. It's actually

1400
01:12:40,160 --> 01:12:43,040
Speaker 5: not bad on a humanitarian level. And then they also

1401
01:12:43,080 --> 01:12:46,360
Speaker 5: through games because this is what people do. Rich people

1402
01:12:46,520 --> 01:12:48,920
Speaker 5: throw parties to make themselves love like this is a

1403
01:12:49,040 --> 01:12:51,519
Speaker 5: very This happens today, This happens all the time, This

1404
01:12:51,560 --> 01:12:55,080
Speaker 5: happened during the medieval period, happens all the time. The

1405
01:12:55,200 --> 01:12:58,439
Speaker 5: number of people who are like benefiting from this like

1406
01:12:58,520 --> 01:13:02,720
Speaker 5: imperial largess, who have this like entitlement mentality is such

1407
01:13:02,720 --> 01:13:06,479
Speaker 5: a fraction, such a fraction of the total number of

1408
01:13:06,520 --> 01:13:09,439
Speaker 5: people who live in this empire, where we're talking about

1409
01:13:09,720 --> 01:13:12,599
Speaker 5: sixty sixty five million people maybe maybe give or take

1410
01:13:12,640 --> 01:13:16,080
Speaker 5: a little bit. Not that many people were on the

1411
01:13:16,200 --> 01:13:20,360
Speaker 5: dole in Rome. It was usually just the male head

1412
01:13:20,360 --> 01:13:23,640
Speaker 5: of the household got some grain. It was like it

1413
01:13:23,800 --> 01:13:27,519
Speaker 5: was it was a little bit of supplemental It's basically

1414
01:13:27,560 --> 01:13:30,519
Speaker 5: the equivalent of like supplemental income. It was absolutely not

1415
01:13:30,600 --> 01:13:35,280
Speaker 5: just they're rolling out banquets for these people every single day.

1416
01:13:35,640 --> 01:13:39,200
Speaker 5: Nor is it the case that that entitlement of Romans

1417
01:13:39,240 --> 01:13:42,160
Speaker 5: living in Rome in the two hundred's AD or something

1418
01:13:42,640 --> 01:13:47,320
Speaker 5: is like the reason why they couldn't sustain their border defenses. Right,

1419
01:13:47,400 --> 01:13:49,680
Speaker 5: This is the same arguments we get when it's like,

1420
01:13:50,439 --> 01:13:54,200
Speaker 5: you know, we can't afford social security because the you know,

1421
01:13:54,320 --> 01:13:59,080
Speaker 5: the National Endowment for the Sciences paid somebody two hundred

1422
01:13:59,080 --> 01:14:01,840
Speaker 5: and fifty thousand dollars to uh to look into the

1423
01:14:02,360 --> 01:14:05,000
Speaker 5: you know, be keeping habits.

1424
01:14:05,360 --> 01:14:05,599
Speaker 3: Uh.

1425
01:14:05,920 --> 01:14:09,840
Speaker 5: Like it's like people just don't have a way to

1426
01:14:09,960 --> 01:14:13,800
Speaker 5: compare a million dollars to a billion dollars to a

1427
01:14:13,840 --> 01:14:15,880
Speaker 5: trillion dollars because it's just a lot of money in

1428
01:14:15,920 --> 01:14:16,439
Speaker 5: our heads.

1429
01:14:16,920 --> 01:14:20,679
Speaker 3: So like this none of none of that is true.

1430
01:14:20,760 --> 01:14:21,639
Speaker 3: None of that that's true.

1431
01:14:21,640 --> 01:14:27,120
Speaker 1: It's it's it's fascinating to me, especially when you hear like, uh,

1432
01:14:27,640 --> 01:14:30,240
Speaker 1: this is like really popular amongst the Joe Rogan set,

1433
01:14:30,520 --> 01:14:32,839
Speaker 1: this idea that like, oh, you know, when an empire

1434
01:14:32,920 --> 01:14:34,479
Speaker 1: is at the end, that's when you get all the

1435
01:14:34,479 --> 01:14:38,400
Speaker 1: Britain circuses to distract people. And man, when the empire,

1436
01:14:38,600 --> 01:14:41,519
Speaker 1: like the Roman Empire, the entire period during which it

1437
01:14:41,600 --> 01:14:45,639
Speaker 1: was expanding like wildfire, was doing nothing but throwing giant

1438
01:14:45,640 --> 01:14:47,960
Speaker 1: fucking parties in the caps. All they did, Like that's

1439
01:14:48,000 --> 01:14:51,280
Speaker 1: all they did. You couldn't be in politics without going broke.

1440
01:14:51,320 --> 01:14:53,760
Speaker 1: Throwing parties like that was the That's why a lot

1441
01:14:53,800 --> 01:14:55,920
Speaker 1: of the conquest happened is because you have to throw

1442
01:14:55,960 --> 01:14:58,040
Speaker 1: these parties when you were earlier up on the on

1443
01:14:58,080 --> 01:15:00,160
Speaker 1: the curses and rum and then you would have to

1444
01:15:00,240 --> 01:15:03,280
Speaker 1: like go conquer someplace to pay for it, yep.

1445
01:15:03,400 --> 01:15:06,400
Speaker 5: And that was why Actually, when you get right down

1446
01:15:06,439 --> 01:15:09,360
Speaker 5: to it, you know, one of my you know, side

1447
01:15:09,400 --> 01:15:11,960
Speaker 5: opinions is that if you were a provincial inside of

1448
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:16,519
Speaker 5: these conquests, you know, conquered lands, life was much better

1449
01:15:16,600 --> 01:15:19,519
Speaker 5: under the Empire than it was under the Republic because

1450
01:15:19,560 --> 01:15:25,160
Speaker 5: there actually was some tightening and normalization of the bureaucratic

1451
01:15:25,200 --> 01:15:28,759
Speaker 5: regime under the Empire, like after Augustus comes along, rather

1452
01:15:28,840 --> 01:15:30,760
Speaker 5: than what was going on in the Republic, which is

1453
01:15:30,800 --> 01:15:34,000
Speaker 5: every single year a province was getting a new governor

1454
01:15:34,360 --> 01:15:36,759
Speaker 5: who was there to extract as much money for himself

1455
01:15:36,800 --> 01:15:39,320
Speaker 5: as possible because he had taken out tons and tons

1456
01:15:39,320 --> 01:15:42,559
Speaker 5: of loans to throw the biggest games that he possibly could,

1457
01:15:42,600 --> 01:15:45,080
Speaker 5: to build the biggest act, to build the biggest thing. Now,

1458
01:15:45,120 --> 01:15:47,320
Speaker 5: when you get into the later Empire, like are their

1459
01:15:47,400 --> 01:15:50,519
Speaker 5: financial difficulties of course, right, you don't get the kind

1460
01:15:50,560 --> 01:15:53,439
Speaker 5: of monument building and even aqueduct building and infrastructure projects

1461
01:15:53,439 --> 01:15:56,040
Speaker 5: you get in the later Empire, But like there are

1462
01:15:56,280 --> 01:16:01,919
Speaker 5: larger economic and structural reasons why they were suffering financial

1463
01:16:01,920 --> 01:16:04,639
Speaker 5: difficulties at the end of the empire that have nothing

1464
01:16:04,720 --> 01:16:08,080
Speaker 5: to do with these couple of grain doles that were

1465
01:16:08,080 --> 01:16:10,240
Speaker 5: going to a few major urban areas. Most of the

1466
01:16:10,280 --> 01:16:13,680
Speaker 5: population is rural subsistence peasants, like those people were not

1467
01:16:13,720 --> 01:16:14,680
Speaker 5: feeling entitled to.

1468
01:16:14,720 --> 01:16:17,720
Speaker 4: Shit, which I think is really funny because if you

1469
01:16:17,760 --> 01:16:21,519
Speaker 4: look at like, I am very confident if you actually

1470
01:16:21,520 --> 01:16:24,760
Speaker 4: did the math, US spends more money agricultural subsidies every

1471
01:16:24,840 --> 01:16:28,040
Speaker 4: year than like than the Romans did, like on the

1472
01:16:28,240 --> 01:16:29,080
Speaker 4: entire grain dole.

1473
01:16:29,439 --> 01:16:32,479
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a way the math is true. Like yeah,

1474
01:16:32,680 --> 01:16:34,760
Speaker 1: like we I mean, but in part not just like

1475
01:16:34,800 --> 01:16:36,439
Speaker 1: because who knows what the Romans would have done with

1476
01:16:36,479 --> 01:16:39,120
Speaker 1: a higher level of technology. Just wasn't possible to do

1477
01:16:39,200 --> 01:16:41,960
Speaker 1: that kind of thing outside of the major urban hubs,

1478
01:16:42,000 --> 01:16:42,559
Speaker 1: Like you can't.

1479
01:16:42,600 --> 01:16:45,519
Speaker 3: Also, you can't you couldn't do it, That's the thing.

1480
01:16:45,640 --> 01:16:47,639
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is the same thing where you get into

1481
01:16:47,680 --> 01:16:50,040
Speaker 5: like when people like to slip in the whole, like oh,

1482
01:16:50,080 --> 01:16:52,160
Speaker 5: there was lead in the in the in the pipes,

1483
01:16:53,320 --> 01:16:55,040
Speaker 5: and like there was lead in the pipes, and you know,

1484
01:16:55,080 --> 01:16:57,200
Speaker 5: maybe some of the leadership was a bit over led

1485
01:16:57,240 --> 01:17:00,360
Speaker 5: exposed like who knows, like maybe maybe, maybe, but like

1486
01:17:01,080 --> 01:17:04,400
Speaker 5: the vast majority of the population is not living in

1487
01:17:04,560 --> 01:17:07,800
Speaker 5: downtown Rome where this might be a problem, or in

1488
01:17:07,920 --> 01:17:10,480
Speaker 5: you know, one of the other you know, regional capitals

1489
01:17:11,120 --> 01:17:13,360
Speaker 5: that's just not where any of this is taking place.

1490
01:17:14,000 --> 01:17:16,840
Speaker 1: Well, people love to talk about stuff like that. It

1491
01:17:16,960 --> 01:17:19,080
Speaker 1: is like, you know, the fact that they're one of

1492
01:17:19,080 --> 01:17:22,160
Speaker 1: their major sweeteners included a lot of letters is always

1493
01:17:22,280 --> 01:17:25,840
Speaker 1: like interesting to bring up. But the thing that I mean,

1494
01:17:25,880 --> 01:17:28,280
Speaker 1: and this was this is also pure speculation, but that

1495
01:17:28,320 --> 01:17:30,760
Speaker 1: I always wonder more about, not just with Rome, but

1496
01:17:30,800 --> 01:17:35,240
Speaker 1: with like most postmodern societies and even like early modern societies,

1497
01:17:35,320 --> 01:17:38,040
Speaker 1: is like, what about like mild head injuries, because we

1498
01:17:38,120 --> 01:17:40,640
Speaker 1: know so much more now about how a bunch of

1499
01:17:40,680 --> 01:17:44,519
Speaker 1: little head injuries can permanently alter your behavior, and like,

1500
01:17:44,520 --> 01:17:46,439
Speaker 1: like that's a big thing when I think about when

1501
01:17:46,439 --> 01:17:48,479
Speaker 1: I think about like the World War one generation, is

1502
01:17:48,479 --> 01:17:51,400
Speaker 1: you've got millions of men who wind up becoming very

1503
01:17:51,400 --> 01:17:55,160
Speaker 1: influential in politics who are under artillery barrages and who

1504
01:17:55,200 --> 01:17:57,600
Speaker 1: are there's almost no way they're not walking away with

1505
01:17:57,640 --> 01:17:59,680
Speaker 1: some kind of cte based on what we know now

1506
01:17:59,680 --> 01:18:02,920
Speaker 1: about what being near artillery does to your brain. You

1507
01:18:02,960 --> 01:18:05,559
Speaker 1: know what does that do to Yeah, the ancient world

1508
01:18:05,640 --> 01:18:09,120
Speaker 1: was full of trauma and that's and that's a real thing.

1509
01:18:09,160 --> 01:18:13,519
Speaker 1: All of these guys were deeply, deeply traumatized. But like

1510
01:18:13,560 --> 01:18:15,880
Speaker 1: one of the other points about the whole like bread

1511
01:18:15,880 --> 01:18:18,719
Speaker 1: doll thing is this gets back to this is sneaky

1512
01:18:18,760 --> 01:18:22,519
Speaker 1: backdoor racism because the argument, the argument is that Rome

1513
01:18:22,640 --> 01:18:25,040
Speaker 1: was great when it was the Romans doing it like

1514
01:18:25,120 --> 01:18:28,800
Speaker 1: these actual like Latins who were coming from the environs

1515
01:18:28,840 --> 01:18:31,360
Speaker 1: of Rome in particular, and that it all started to

1516
01:18:31,400 --> 01:18:34,160
Speaker 1: go bad ones non Romans were in charge of things

1517
01:18:34,200 --> 01:18:38,120
Speaker 1: because the Romans themselves had had decayed into this like,

1518
01:18:38,160 --> 01:18:39,960
Speaker 1: oh well, we just want our bread and circuses and

1519
01:18:40,000 --> 01:18:41,840
Speaker 1: we're not going to join the legions. We'll just have

1520
01:18:41,960 --> 01:18:44,160
Speaker 1: Germans do our fighting for us, or Goths do our

1521
01:18:44,200 --> 01:18:48,759
Speaker 1: fighting for us. Which that is That is simply sneaky

1522
01:18:48,800 --> 01:18:51,640
Speaker 1: backdoor racism, because it's a way of saying that it

1523
01:18:51,760 --> 01:18:54,000
Speaker 1: was the reason why the Roman Empire was successful was

1524
01:18:54,000 --> 01:18:57,320
Speaker 1: because of this small population group and once they go away,

1525
01:18:57,720 --> 01:19:02,040
Speaker 1: other groups, these mongrel digs, will never be able to

1526
01:19:03,160 --> 01:19:05,960
Speaker 1: live up to or sustain civilization in the way that

1527
01:19:06,080 --> 01:19:09,719
Speaker 1: Romans did. The pure Romans did and so that's also

1528
01:19:09,760 --> 01:19:11,559
Speaker 1: a big reason why we need to push back on

1529
01:19:11,600 --> 01:19:14,160
Speaker 1: these things is because the Roman Empire was not just

1530
01:19:14,200 --> 01:19:18,959
Speaker 1: sustained but thrived and expanded by people who were not Romans.

1531
01:19:19,080 --> 01:19:22,800
Speaker 1: And the idea that you know, their civilization required this

1532
01:19:22,880 --> 01:19:26,200
Speaker 1: like little tiny speck of a DNA spark to keep

1533
01:19:26,240 --> 01:19:28,960
Speaker 1: it going is just you know, this is the kind

1534
01:19:28,960 --> 01:19:31,440
Speaker 1: of person who finishes writing that book and then immediately

1535
01:19:31,479 --> 01:19:34,120
Speaker 1: turns their attention to modern California politics and says, the

1536
01:19:34,120 --> 01:19:35,520
Speaker 1: big problem here is Hispanics.

1537
01:19:35,840 --> 01:19:39,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is also not true, by the way, I

1538
01:19:39,080 --> 01:19:39,800
Speaker 3: need to cut that up.

1539
01:19:40,040 --> 01:19:45,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, the big problem with California politics is California politicians.

1540
01:19:46,000 --> 01:19:47,520
Speaker 3: Right, It's not Latinos.

1541
01:19:47,840 --> 01:19:50,760
Speaker 1: You know, it's certainly not Latinos. You know.

1542
01:19:50,800 --> 01:19:53,640
Speaker 4: I wanted to kind of circle back around to the

1543
01:19:53,680 --> 01:19:56,719
Speaker 4: sort of degeneracy stuff because I think there's an interesting

1544
01:19:57,439 --> 01:19:59,720
Speaker 4: through line there too, with with not just sort of

1545
01:19:59,720 --> 01:20:03,439
Speaker 4: modern politics, but the politics of the period of the

1546
01:20:03,479 --> 01:20:05,599
Speaker 4: original rise of fascism, because you know, you look at

1547
01:20:05,600 --> 01:20:07,840
Speaker 4: these arguments and they're like, well, okay, it was like

1548
01:20:08,479 --> 01:20:11,200
Speaker 4: cultural decadence, and then they start talking about degeneracy and

1549
01:20:11,200 --> 01:20:14,040
Speaker 4: how homosexuality was this like degenerate thing. That brought down

1550
01:20:14,040 --> 01:20:16,320
Speaker 4: the empire, and like you go back and you like

1551
01:20:16,479 --> 01:20:21,439
Speaker 4: read the Nazis and they are also absolutely obsessed with,

1552
01:20:21,600 --> 01:20:24,000
Speaker 4: like you know, with this notion of like degenerate art

1553
01:20:24,000 --> 01:20:26,799
Speaker 4: and like cultural degeneracy is this force that's this internal

1554
01:20:26,840 --> 01:20:30,720
Speaker 4: force of subverting the empire. And you know, and like

1555
01:20:30,800 --> 01:20:34,680
Speaker 4: this is also I think another like reason to be

1556
01:20:36,160 --> 01:20:38,559
Speaker 4: reason to be interested in a better way about Rome

1557
01:20:38,680 --> 01:20:41,920
Speaker 4: was also the way that like the original Italian fascists art.

1558
01:20:42,320 --> 01:20:46,120
Speaker 4: I mean, like the word fascism is like derived you know,

1559
01:20:46,200 --> 01:20:49,200
Speaker 4: like from from Roman symbol symbols, right, and like you know,

1560
01:20:49,920 --> 01:20:52,400
Speaker 4: this is like Mussolini's entire thing is about turning the

1561
01:20:52,439 --> 01:20:55,680
Speaker 4: Vediterranean into the Roman lake. Blah blah blah blah.

1562
01:20:55,880 --> 01:20:59,120
Speaker 3: So the fascist is great. Not to get you know,

1563
01:21:00,040 --> 01:21:01,200
Speaker 3: to derail your point, keep.

1564
01:21:01,040 --> 01:21:04,040
Speaker 1: Talking, Just gonna cut that line out of the podcast.

1565
01:21:04,640 --> 01:21:09,719
Speaker 1: Mike Duncan says, fascist, it's great. The fascist is great.

1566
01:21:10,400 --> 01:21:13,080
Speaker 1: It's a great symbol. Go go, Like a lot of

1567
01:21:13,120 --> 01:21:15,320
Speaker 1: people don't actually even notice this. Maybe they do at

1568
01:21:15,320 --> 01:21:16,920
Speaker 1: this point this is no longer a fun fact.

1569
01:21:17,240 --> 01:21:18,400
Speaker 3: But you go. You go to the link.

1570
01:21:18,439 --> 01:21:19,800
Speaker 5: No, well, I mean not just Congress, but go to

1571
01:21:19,880 --> 01:21:21,840
Speaker 5: Lincoln Memorial look at the Lincoln Memorial. What are his

1572
01:21:21,840 --> 01:21:23,840
Speaker 5: hands resting on to a couple of fascists. It just

1573
01:21:23,960 --> 01:21:25,800
Speaker 5: is because you know what, a bundle of sticks is

1574
01:21:25,840 --> 01:21:29,280
Speaker 5: stronger together and that is a symbol of solidarity, and

1575
01:21:29,360 --> 01:21:32,240
Speaker 5: it is a symbol of group action being superior to

1576
01:21:32,360 --> 01:21:34,640
Speaker 5: individual attempts to do anything, and that the one, the

1577
01:21:34,680 --> 01:21:36,559
Speaker 5: one boo is going to break, but all of them

1578
01:21:36,560 --> 01:21:38,960
Speaker 5: together is good. Like none of this is like inherently bad.

1579
01:21:39,000 --> 01:21:43,479
Speaker 5: It's just a bunch of fascists claimed it for their own.

1580
01:21:43,520 --> 01:21:43,720
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1581
01:21:43,760 --> 01:21:46,960
Speaker 4: Well, and my memory of this is that I'm pretty

1582
01:21:46,960 --> 01:21:48,960
Speaker 4: sure there was a group of people who were like

1583
01:21:49,400 --> 01:21:53,599
Speaker 4: calling themselves fascis, like in in early like late eighteen hundreds,

1584
01:21:53,600 --> 01:21:56,600
Speaker 4: early nineteen hundred Italy, who weren't fascists, who were like,

1585
01:21:56,360 --> 01:22:00,400
Speaker 4: it's like basically left wingers. And then and then like, well, sorry, Notazis.

1586
01:22:00,479 --> 01:22:02,400
Speaker 5: Well I don't know if you know this, but Nazis

1587
01:22:02,400 --> 01:22:05,840
Speaker 5: are actually socialists. They're national socialists. And so a lot

1588
01:22:05,920 --> 01:22:08,320
Speaker 5: of people think that their right wing, but actually their

1589
01:22:08,400 --> 01:22:12,080
Speaker 5: left wing. And that's what it is. Hitler was. It

1590
01:22:12,280 --> 01:22:13,559
Speaker 5: was an Oberlin grad.

1591
01:22:14,000 --> 01:22:16,679
Speaker 1: This is where we q my thirty minute digression about

1592
01:22:16,680 --> 01:22:17,519
Speaker 1: stress rism.

1593
01:22:18,200 --> 01:22:24,040
Speaker 5: Oh god, but I think to you, I think to

1594
01:22:24,080 --> 01:22:25,800
Speaker 5: the point that you were trying to make or that

1595
01:22:25,880 --> 01:22:28,960
Speaker 5: you were making there though, is that they were you know,

1596
01:22:29,000 --> 01:22:31,519
Speaker 5: the Nazis did. And then we hear this repeated today

1597
01:22:31,840 --> 01:22:35,160
Speaker 5: that like that degeneracy is like a thing that is

1598
01:22:35,240 --> 01:22:37,759
Speaker 5: a force, like a physical force that can maybe even

1599
01:22:37,800 --> 01:22:39,760
Speaker 5: be measured, and if you don't have enough of it,

1600
01:22:39,880 --> 01:22:41,280
Speaker 5: or if you have too much of it, then your

1601
01:22:41,280 --> 01:22:43,400
Speaker 5: society is going to start to break apart or decay.

1602
01:22:43,960 --> 01:22:46,920
Speaker 5: Like it's just an idea, that's it. It's just sort

1603
01:22:46,920 --> 01:22:48,720
Speaker 5: of a way of thinking about something or a way

1604
01:22:48,760 --> 01:22:52,080
Speaker 5: of describing something. It's not actually a really real thing

1605
01:22:52,160 --> 01:22:54,640
Speaker 5: that is out there in the world. Like if you

1606
01:22:54,760 --> 01:22:59,120
Speaker 5: have a society that suddenly can't grow grain and you

1607
01:22:59,200 --> 01:23:01,679
Speaker 5: have a famine, like that's a real thing that will

1608
01:23:01,720 --> 01:23:04,320
Speaker 5: actually affect your society and bring it down. You have

1609
01:23:04,360 --> 01:23:07,280
Speaker 5: this other thing that is just like moral degeneracy. This

1610
01:23:07,400 --> 01:23:10,040
Speaker 5: is just like you listing things you don't like and

1611
01:23:10,160 --> 01:23:12,840
Speaker 5: saying that this is the reason why things are falling apart,

1612
01:23:12,880 --> 01:23:17,760
Speaker 5: because degeneracy can be anything to anybody. But really, you know,

1613
01:23:17,920 --> 01:23:21,320
Speaker 5: like people smoking cigarettes at four o'clock in the morning

1614
01:23:21,360 --> 01:23:23,919
Speaker 5: because they've been up all night, you know, doing drugs,

1615
01:23:23,960 --> 01:23:27,519
Speaker 5: like that's what kids do, what people have that people

1616
01:23:27,560 --> 01:23:29,920
Speaker 5: are always going to do this, This is always on

1617
01:23:30,000 --> 01:23:32,960
Speaker 5: the backgrounds and margins of any society. So like and

1618
01:23:33,080 --> 01:23:35,759
Speaker 5: rich people like they've always partied, they always will party.

1619
01:23:35,800 --> 01:23:38,840
Speaker 5: Like those kinds of things. You can't really then say like, oh,

1620
01:23:38,840 --> 01:23:43,479
Speaker 5: well we've accumulated too much degeneracy. Now our society is

1621
01:23:43,479 --> 01:23:45,160
Speaker 5: going to start to break apart, and this, you know,

1622
01:23:45,200 --> 01:23:48,040
Speaker 5: the things that we see today in terms of our

1623
01:23:48,080 --> 01:23:52,320
Speaker 5: own sort of faltering democratic republic. This is not because

1624
01:23:52,360 --> 01:23:54,760
Speaker 5: of degeneracy. This isn't because the kids are doing too

1625
01:23:54,800 --> 01:23:57,519
Speaker 5: many drugs, or like we legalize gay marriage, Like that's

1626
01:23:57,560 --> 01:24:00,120
Speaker 5: not That's not why any of this is happening. It's

1627
01:24:00,120 --> 01:24:02,639
Speaker 5: happening for other reasons. It's happening because of greed. It's

1628
01:24:02,640 --> 01:24:07,920
Speaker 5: happening because of sociopathic indifference to other people's lives. Those

1629
01:24:07,960 --> 01:24:11,080
Speaker 5: are the things that actually matter, not whether you stayed

1630
01:24:11,120 --> 01:24:12,920
Speaker 5: up all night drinking and partying.

1631
01:24:13,520 --> 01:24:16,680
Speaker 1: No, No, it's yeah, it's it's it's the kind like

1632
01:24:16,720 --> 01:24:18,879
Speaker 1: I tend to think, like talking about the Lata fundia

1633
01:24:18,920 --> 01:24:21,920
Speaker 1: is a lot more relevant to talking about like what

1634
01:24:22,080 --> 01:24:25,880
Speaker 1: happened to the elites under Rome and what's happened in

1635
01:24:25,920 --> 01:24:28,880
Speaker 1: our own society than bringing up like the parties and.

1636
01:24:28,880 --> 01:24:30,280
Speaker 3: Shit like yeah, it's this exactly.

1637
01:24:30,360 --> 01:24:33,080
Speaker 1: The centralization of wealth and power in a tinier and

1638
01:24:33,120 --> 01:24:35,840
Speaker 1: tinier number of men was responsible for a number of

1639
01:24:35,840 --> 01:24:37,920
Speaker 1: the problems that Rome encountered, as it aged.

1640
01:24:38,280 --> 01:24:40,880
Speaker 5: And they don't want to have that conversation out, so

1641
01:24:40,920 --> 01:24:44,479
Speaker 5: they want us to have this other conversation which flatters

1642
01:24:44,520 --> 01:24:45,240
Speaker 5: their bigotry.

1643
01:24:46,680 --> 01:24:48,439
Speaker 4: Well, and this I think comes back to the thing

1644
01:24:48,479 --> 01:24:50,200
Speaker 4: you were, you know, the joke you're making about like

1645
01:24:50,240 --> 01:24:52,080
Speaker 4: all of these these are all the same people who

1646
01:24:52,160 --> 01:24:54,200
Speaker 4: are like, oh, well, the Nazis were socialists.

1647
01:24:54,240 --> 01:24:56,120
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, you know.

1648
01:24:56,200 --> 01:24:59,920
Speaker 4: Like the point of like these arguments is so they

1649
01:25:00,160 --> 01:25:02,919
Speaker 4: you don't go back into the historical record and realize

1650
01:25:03,240 --> 01:25:04,920
Speaker 4: how much all the things are saying are wrong and

1651
01:25:04,960 --> 01:25:08,680
Speaker 4: how much they're making precisely the same arguments that you know,

1652
01:25:08,720 --> 01:25:10,519
Speaker 4: the Nazis were making, or that all of these sort

1653
01:25:10,560 --> 01:25:14,439
Speaker 4: of like you know, all all of the sort of

1654
01:25:15,120 --> 01:25:18,519
Speaker 4: past people who broadly is acknowledged did a bunch of

1655
01:25:18,600 --> 01:25:20,880
Speaker 4: terrible stuff, had the same opinions that they do.

1656
01:25:21,640 --> 01:25:26,320
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, well I don't know. I think that's

1657
01:25:26,560 --> 01:25:32,640
Speaker 1: what I've got to talk about today. I mean, this

1658
01:25:32,800 --> 01:25:37,000
Speaker 1: is like we could go on to the way in

1659
01:25:37,040 --> 01:25:41,400
Speaker 1: which like Sparta gets remembered and stuff and the cultural

1660
01:25:41,840 --> 01:25:44,719
Speaker 1: like right wing, but I think that's kind of moving

1661
01:25:45,040 --> 01:25:48,479
Speaker 1: sort of far afield. Although there's similarities, right, there's always

1662
01:25:48,479 --> 01:25:51,600
Speaker 1: this idea that like at this certain point when everybody

1663
01:25:51,640 --> 01:25:55,080
Speaker 1: looked the same, like that's when this historic empire was

1664
01:25:55,080 --> 01:25:58,800
Speaker 1: at their best. And when you know, degeneracy got entered

1665
01:25:58,800 --> 01:26:00,840
Speaker 1: into it, when immigrants got into into it, that's when

1666
01:26:00,840 --> 01:26:05,760
Speaker 1: it sort of fell apart. I guess some of that's

1667
01:26:05,800 --> 01:26:08,479
Speaker 1: mixed in with sort of like Frank Miller as opposed

1668
01:26:08,520 --> 01:26:11,599
Speaker 1: to any sort of real history. But that's always the case, right,

1669
01:26:11,840 --> 01:26:12,280
Speaker 1: I think a lot.

1670
01:26:12,880 --> 01:26:13,040
Speaker 7: Yeah.

1671
01:26:13,040 --> 01:26:15,320
Speaker 5: I mean in Frank Miller's working in a tradition that

1672
01:26:15,439 --> 01:26:18,240
Speaker 5: is very standard. You know, the you know, the kind

1673
01:26:18,240 --> 01:26:24,080
Speaker 5: of racist orioleentizing, orientalizing of you know, of anybody from

1674
01:26:24,120 --> 01:26:26,559
Speaker 5: the east, like that was all current, like you know,

1675
01:26:26,600 --> 01:26:28,479
Speaker 5: the Romans had those ideas. I mean that we get

1676
01:26:28,479 --> 01:26:30,360
Speaker 5: the word barb like the word like one of the

1677
01:26:30,360 --> 01:26:32,719
Speaker 5: points that I'm going to make probably in my book

1678
01:26:32,840 --> 01:26:36,200
Speaker 5: is that like so the word barbarian just means non Greek,

1679
01:26:36,479 --> 01:26:38,360
Speaker 5: like that's it, because the Greeks had a you know,

1680
01:26:38,439 --> 01:26:40,480
Speaker 5: a very sort of self centered.

1681
01:26:40,280 --> 01:26:43,000
Speaker 3: View of the world, as we all do. But that

1682
01:26:43,120 --> 01:26:45,400
Speaker 3: meant that the Romans are barbarians, you know, and that

1683
01:26:45,479 --> 01:26:48,680
Speaker 3: word is coined, and we're thinking about who the Romans are,

1684
01:26:48,720 --> 01:26:51,439
Speaker 3: like they were the civilized ones and then and then

1685
01:26:51,479 --> 01:26:53,200
Speaker 3: there are all these barbarians who are bad.

1686
01:26:53,240 --> 01:26:56,000
Speaker 5: But like from the Greek perspective, the Romans were as

1687
01:26:56,040 --> 01:27:00,360
Speaker 5: barbaric as you know, the Scythians were, and you know,

1688
01:27:00,439 --> 01:27:03,280
Speaker 5: probably and certainly less civilized than the Persians were when

1689
01:27:03,280 --> 01:27:05,519
Speaker 5: the Romans. When the Romans first appeared on the scene

1690
01:27:05,680 --> 01:27:07,599
Speaker 5: in Greece, they were like, who are they? These are

1691
01:27:07,600 --> 01:27:09,280
Speaker 5: just a bunch of guys who are obsessed with war

1692
01:27:09,560 --> 01:27:11,479
Speaker 5: and they have no culture, they have no ideas of

1693
01:27:11,520 --> 01:27:13,800
Speaker 5: their own. They just march around in squares and kill

1694
01:27:13,840 --> 01:27:16,720
Speaker 5: people like That's that was their interpretation of what the

1695
01:27:16,800 --> 01:27:20,679
Speaker 5: Romans were originally, which is not a you know, terrible

1696
01:27:20,720 --> 01:27:26,439
Speaker 5: interpretation of e really Roman history. But yeah, this just

1697
01:27:26,479 --> 01:27:30,160
Speaker 5: this sort of dividing between civilized peoples and barbaric peoples

1698
01:27:30,680 --> 01:27:33,560
Speaker 5: is something that then has been around for thousands of

1699
01:27:33,640 --> 01:27:35,800
Speaker 5: years and we're still doing it today. Like everything that

1700
01:27:35,840 --> 01:27:39,560
Speaker 5: we're seeing, you know, and I look at Israel and Palestine,

1701
01:27:39,600 --> 01:27:43,200
Speaker 5: there's a lot of this mapping of civilized versus uncivilized

1702
01:27:43,240 --> 01:27:47,720
Speaker 5: people onto this conflict that I see is rooted in

1703
01:27:47,760 --> 01:27:51,839
Speaker 5: a lot in these sort of Western traditions that informed

1704
01:27:51,920 --> 01:27:55,719
Speaker 5: nineteenth century racist ideas about how things you know, about

1705
01:27:55,720 --> 01:27:58,880
Speaker 5: how societies organize themselves, all of which needs to be

1706
01:27:59,000 --> 01:28:00,559
Speaker 5: deconstructed and thrown away.

1707
01:28:01,120 --> 01:28:04,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I always love it when people

1708
01:28:04,880 --> 01:28:08,479
Speaker 1: try to bring up like these sort of racial theories

1709
01:28:08,479 --> 01:28:11,800
Speaker 1: within the context of the Roman Empire, who had absolutely

1710
01:28:11,840 --> 01:28:14,600
Speaker 1: nothing that would be considered like a modern understanding of

1711
01:28:14,680 --> 01:28:17,759
Speaker 1: whiteness or race like was was completely absent.

1712
01:28:18,400 --> 01:28:21,920
Speaker 3: No, they they all had they all had group identity.

1713
01:28:22,120 --> 01:28:26,559
Speaker 1: No, they wets but yeah, different era, Yeah, exactly right.

1714
01:28:26,640 --> 01:28:28,960
Speaker 3: It was there's us and then there's everybody else.

1715
01:28:29,080 --> 01:28:33,479
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, the Romans differentiated a little bit

1716
01:28:33,600 --> 01:28:36,519
Speaker 5: between like there were Egyptians, and you know, they they

1717
01:28:36,520 --> 01:28:38,639
Speaker 5: were kind of you know, they were they were curious

1718
01:28:38,640 --> 01:28:41,680
Speaker 5: about how how the Jews worked, because the Jews were

1719
01:28:41,800 --> 01:28:44,000
Speaker 5: very old civilization, and so the Romans kind of took

1720
01:28:44,040 --> 01:28:46,719
Speaker 5: special note of that, and they really admired the Greeks,

1721
01:28:47,760 --> 01:28:49,920
Speaker 5: and so there are these like sort of like groupings

1722
01:28:49,960 --> 01:28:52,080
Speaker 5: that they all understood, but it's all just sort of

1723
01:28:52,080 --> 01:28:55,080
Speaker 5: that very self centered. You know, if you go through

1724
01:28:55,080 --> 01:28:58,200
Speaker 5: anthropological history of any group of people, their word for

1725
01:28:58,280 --> 01:29:00,280
Speaker 5: themselves is just the word for person.

1726
01:29:00,560 --> 01:29:00,760
Speaker 3: You know.

1727
01:29:00,800 --> 01:29:02,800
Speaker 5: We find this a lot, and the Romans were that

1728
01:29:02,840 --> 01:29:05,080
Speaker 5: way too, but not not in this way, not not

1729
01:29:05,240 --> 01:29:09,960
Speaker 5: sitting down and making like hierarchies of you know, who can, uh,

1730
01:29:10,040 --> 01:29:11,720
Speaker 5: you know, who can do what, and who should be

1731
01:29:11,760 --> 01:29:13,439
Speaker 5: on top and who should be on bottom, because you know,

1732
01:29:13,439 --> 01:29:15,800
Speaker 5: if you're a traditional ancient Chowvinus, you're like, well, my

1733
01:29:15,800 --> 01:29:17,439
Speaker 5: people should be on top, and that, you know, is

1734
01:29:17,479 --> 01:29:20,320
Speaker 5: self explanatory, and then we will we will fight for

1735
01:29:20,360 --> 01:29:23,960
Speaker 5: that that it's not because of yeah, these these racial hierarchies.

1736
01:29:25,200 --> 01:29:28,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think that's about all I had to

1737
01:29:29,000 --> 01:29:31,080
Speaker 1: get into, Mia. You have anything else you wanted to

1738
01:29:31,120 --> 01:29:32,040
Speaker 1: sort of touch on today?

1739
01:29:35,160 --> 01:29:36,840
Speaker 4: I I think I think I think we've about we

1740
01:29:36,880 --> 01:29:37,920
Speaker 4: think we've about covered it.

1741
01:29:38,920 --> 01:29:39,800
Speaker 1: Well, we got it.

1742
01:29:40,000 --> 01:29:42,400
Speaker 5: We have we've established that it's wrong to think that

1743
01:29:42,520 --> 01:29:44,439
Speaker 5: gays made the Roman Empire fall.

1744
01:29:45,080 --> 01:29:51,760
Speaker 1: No, No, although you can, yeah, there's a million more

1745
01:29:51,800 --> 01:29:54,720
Speaker 1: things to say about that, but but yeah, I think

1746
01:29:54,760 --> 01:29:59,120
Speaker 1: we've we've hit on the basics. Mike. You are a podcaster.

1747
01:29:59,320 --> 01:30:02,280
Speaker 1: Your Revolution podcast is one of the best things on

1748
01:30:02,320 --> 01:30:04,960
Speaker 1: the internet. You are also an author. Think of a

1749
01:30:05,000 --> 01:30:08,719
Speaker 1: whole bunch of books, The Storm Before the Storm, which

1750
01:30:08,760 --> 01:30:10,479
Speaker 1: is about a lot of the stuff we've been talking

1751
01:30:10,479 --> 01:30:16,120
Speaker 1: about today, Hero of Two Worlds, the History of Rome. Yeah, Mike,

1752
01:30:16,240 --> 01:30:17,479
Speaker 1: you have anything else you want to plug?

1753
01:30:18,960 --> 01:30:21,280
Speaker 5: Well, I am just about, as I said earlier, about

1754
01:30:21,320 --> 01:30:23,960
Speaker 5: to start work on a third book, which will be

1755
01:30:24,120 --> 01:30:27,240
Speaker 5: the Crisis of the Third Century. So if anybody out

1756
01:30:27,240 --> 01:30:28,920
Speaker 5: there who's listening to this has been like I wonder

1757
01:30:28,920 --> 01:30:30,360
Speaker 5: if Mike's ever going to write a book about the

1758
01:30:30,360 --> 01:30:34,080
Speaker 5: Crisis of the third Century, I will, and I am excellent.

1759
01:30:34,640 --> 01:30:37,200
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for being on the show, Mike, and

1760
01:30:37,520 --> 01:30:41,439
Speaker 1: yeah listeners until next time. If somebody brings up the

1761
01:30:41,520 --> 01:30:46,879
Speaker 1: Roman Empire in an attempt to attack various special interests

1762
01:30:46,960 --> 01:30:50,599
Speaker 1: in our modern political system by a Gladias, you know

1763
01:30:50,880 --> 01:30:53,200
Speaker 1: that still works the same way it did in the past,

1764
01:30:53,439 --> 01:30:56,320
Speaker 1: Just start swinging a Gladias. Remember it's God but blade

1765
01:30:56,400 --> 01:30:58,599
Speaker 1: on both sides, so you got to be careful when

1766
01:30:58,640 --> 01:31:04,400
Speaker 1: you swing a Gladias. Satire satire that's not actionable satire.

1767
01:31:20,160 --> 01:31:23,679
Speaker 9: Hello, everybody, Welcome to it could happen here. My name

1768
01:31:23,800 --> 01:31:28,000
Speaker 9: is Scharene, and today, as usual, I have a very

1769
01:31:28,040 --> 01:31:32,439
Speaker 9: serious topic to talk about. Today, I wanted to talk

1770
01:31:32,520 --> 01:31:38,040
Speaker 9: about corn. Yes, corn, the food. I think corn gets

1771
01:31:38,080 --> 01:31:42,439
Speaker 9: a really bad wrap these days, a starchy carb. Oh no, hi,

1772
01:31:42,520 --> 01:31:45,960
Speaker 9: fructose corn syrup, get away from me. But like, actually

1773
01:31:45,960 --> 01:31:47,840
Speaker 9: that shit is not good for you, so do eat

1774
01:31:47,880 --> 01:31:51,599
Speaker 9: it in moderation, if at all. But corn itself shouldn't

1775
01:31:51,600 --> 01:31:54,200
Speaker 9: be made into a death syrup in the first place.

1776
01:31:55,320 --> 01:31:58,200
Speaker 9: Corn isn't supposed to be eaten this way. It's meant

1777
01:31:58,240 --> 01:32:01,320
Speaker 9: to be eaten just as it is, or rather how

1778
01:32:01,400 --> 01:32:04,360
Speaker 9: it has come to be because of human intervention, which

1779
01:32:04,439 --> 01:32:09,799
Speaker 9: is delicious. I am obsessed with corn. My entire family

1780
01:32:10,120 --> 01:32:14,680
Speaker 9: is obsessed with corn. Corn boiled sweet corn in particular,

1781
01:32:15,040 --> 01:32:17,120
Speaker 9: is one of the most popular street foods in the

1782
01:32:17,120 --> 01:32:22,360
Speaker 9: Middle East and Syria. Street vendors have handfuls dozens of

1783
01:32:22,400 --> 01:32:26,040
Speaker 9: corn cobs boiling in these giant cauldrons at the side

1784
01:32:26,040 --> 01:32:30,519
Speaker 9: of the road, and the smell is intoxicating. Every time

1785
01:32:30,640 --> 01:32:33,040
Speaker 9: my family and I were in Syria, my uncle would

1786
01:32:33,080 --> 01:32:36,360
Speaker 9: stop by a vendor and grab bags full of corn

1787
01:32:36,439 --> 01:32:39,280
Speaker 9: for us, like it was right after getting picked up

1788
01:32:39,280 --> 01:32:43,639
Speaker 9: from the airport, our first stop always. Then we'd usually

1789
01:32:43,680 --> 01:32:46,280
Speaker 9: put the corn in the biggest pot my grandmother had

1790
01:32:46,600 --> 01:32:50,519
Speaker 9: and boil them fresh. And again the smell, you guys,

1791
01:32:51,160 --> 01:32:53,799
Speaker 9: it would fill up the entire apartment and it smelled

1792
01:32:54,160 --> 01:32:57,599
Speaker 9: so good. The corn would be steaming hot, and we'd

1793
01:32:57,680 --> 01:33:00,040
Speaker 9: move the couch in the living room in order to

1794
01:33:00,080 --> 01:33:02,080
Speaker 9: make room for the table that we can all eat

1795
01:33:02,120 --> 01:33:04,639
Speaker 9: on and gather around, and we would devour the corn.

1796
01:33:05,160 --> 01:33:08,639
Speaker 9: We would go to town, and in my thoughts about

1797
01:33:08,640 --> 01:33:11,599
Speaker 9: corn that I have quite often, I started wondering about

1798
01:33:11,640 --> 01:33:16,360
Speaker 9: how exactly did corn become a street food, because it's

1799
01:33:16,360 --> 01:33:19,320
Speaker 9: a street food in many cultures. Elote is one that

1800
01:33:19,360 --> 01:33:21,679
Speaker 9: comes to mind that is the most popular, I believe,

1801
01:33:22,880 --> 01:33:26,160
Speaker 9: But I wanted to know why and how how did

1802
01:33:26,240 --> 01:33:30,519
Speaker 9: it become so popular as street food. That's what I

1803
01:33:30,560 --> 01:33:34,519
Speaker 9: wanted to find out, and I did kind of. I

1804
01:33:34,640 --> 01:33:37,360
Speaker 9: ended up learning a lot about the history of corn

1805
01:33:37,600 --> 01:33:41,280
Speaker 9: and how exactly it ended up being in practically everything

1806
01:33:41,360 --> 01:33:44,839
Speaker 9: we eat, and that was fascinating to me, so maybe

1807
01:33:44,880 --> 01:33:48,760
Speaker 9: you'll find it fascinating too. Today corn is one of

1808
01:33:48,800 --> 01:33:53,440
Speaker 9: the world's most important crops. That is not news. Obviously,

1809
01:33:53,479 --> 01:33:55,839
Speaker 9: we eat corn, and it can also be turned into

1810
01:33:55,880 --> 01:34:00,800
Speaker 9: flour and syrup. It's fed to livestock, it's transformed to ethanol,

1811
01:34:01,080 --> 01:34:03,920
Speaker 9: and it can even be used to make plastic. More

1812
01:34:03,960 --> 01:34:07,200
Speaker 9: than one billion tons of corn are produced around the

1813
01:34:07,240 --> 01:34:11,080
Speaker 9: globe every year, and corn yields more than six percent

1814
01:34:11,400 --> 01:34:15,000
Speaker 9: of all food calories for humans, which is a big

1815
01:34:15,040 --> 01:34:19,200
Speaker 9: percent even though six is a small number. Let's talk

1816
01:34:19,240 --> 01:34:22,599
Speaker 9: about the history of corn. Corn as we know it

1817
01:34:22,640 --> 01:34:25,679
Speaker 9: today would not exist if it weren't for the humans

1818
01:34:25,720 --> 01:34:29,559
Speaker 9: that cultivated and developed it. It is a human invention,

1819
01:34:29,960 --> 01:34:32,679
Speaker 9: a plant that does not exist naturally in the wild.

1820
01:34:33,240 --> 01:34:37,440
Speaker 9: It can only survive if planted and protected by humans.

1821
01:34:37,960 --> 01:34:42,959
Speaker 9: Relatable scientists believe that people living in central Mexico developed

1822
01:34:43,000 --> 01:34:48,000
Speaker 9: corn about ten thousand years ago. Apparently, civilization got off

1823
01:34:48,000 --> 01:34:51,320
Speaker 9: to a slow start in Mexico, flagging about five thousand

1824
01:34:51,400 --> 01:34:55,439
Speaker 9: years behind civilization in what historians call the quote fertile

1825
01:34:55,479 --> 01:35:00,000
Speaker 9: Crescent of the Middle East. Hughitlas, a University of Wisconsin,

1826
01:35:00,000 --> 01:35:03,639
Speaker 9: the professor of botany, thinks this delay can be blamed

1827
01:35:03,680 --> 01:35:07,160
Speaker 9: on the differences in plants. He said, the New World

1828
01:35:07,160 --> 01:35:11,400
Speaker 9: civilization developed slowly because the basic food crop first cultivated

1829
01:35:11,439 --> 01:35:15,280
Speaker 9: in Mexico was corn. He said the process of deriving

1830
01:35:15,360 --> 01:35:19,160
Speaker 9: corn from wild plants was maybe fifty times more complex

1831
01:35:19,520 --> 01:35:22,040
Speaker 9: than the development of wheat and other crops in the

1832
01:35:22,080 --> 01:35:26,120
Speaker 9: Middle East. Las said agriculture in the Old World started

1833
01:35:26,160 --> 01:35:29,679
Speaker 9: ten thousand years ago with the sowing of wild plant seeds.

1834
01:35:30,360 --> 01:35:34,360
Speaker 9: With time, farmers selected grains with seed pods that didn't

1835
01:35:34,400 --> 01:35:37,400
Speaker 9: shatter as easily and that could be easily gathered and stored,

1836
01:35:38,360 --> 01:35:42,320
Speaker 9: And humans got plenty of lessons from animals too. He said.

1837
01:35:42,320 --> 01:35:46,120
Speaker 9: The early Old World farmers probably learned from golden hamsters

1838
01:35:46,160 --> 01:35:49,639
Speaker 9: and other little seed gathering mammals that lived in the area,

1839
01:35:50,000 --> 01:35:53,080
Speaker 9: and they learned this way to hoard seeds over the winter.

1840
01:35:53,880 --> 01:35:56,439
Speaker 9: What's kind of fucked up about that, though, is that

1841
01:35:56,520 --> 01:35:59,200
Speaker 9: Itlas said these humans may have even dug out some

1842
01:35:59,280 --> 01:36:02,439
Speaker 9: of the hamsters seeds stashes and taken those seeds from

1843
01:36:02,479 --> 01:36:07,400
Speaker 9: the hamsters route. But in comparison, the New World farmers

1844
01:36:07,439 --> 01:36:10,320
Speaker 9: did not have it so easy. There were no plants

1845
01:36:10,320 --> 01:36:13,600
Speaker 9: well suited to agriculture and no seed hoarding mammals to

1846
01:36:13,680 --> 01:36:17,439
Speaker 9: learn from. The only potential grain the New World people

1847
01:36:17,479 --> 01:36:21,360
Speaker 9: had to work with was an unpromising mutant plant derived

1848
01:36:21,360 --> 01:36:26,240
Speaker 9: from the plant called Teosinte. It took five, six, maybe

1849
01:36:26,280 --> 01:36:29,600
Speaker 9: seven thousand years for this plant to evolve into an

1850
01:36:29,680 --> 01:36:35,000
Speaker 9: integrated food producing plant. Taocinte is a wild grass and

1851
01:36:35,040 --> 01:36:38,559
Speaker 9: it looked very different from our corn today. The kernels

1852
01:36:38,600 --> 01:36:41,240
Speaker 9: were small and they were not placed together like the

1853
01:36:41,320 --> 01:36:45,120
Speaker 9: kernels we see on a modern ear of corn. Honestly,

1854
01:36:45,160 --> 01:36:48,320
Speaker 9: I found it kind of unsettling and disturbing if you

1855
01:36:48,360 --> 01:36:51,400
Speaker 9: wanted to look that up to each their own. And surprisingly,

1856
01:36:51,439 --> 01:36:54,360
Speaker 9: the original tiocente plant can still be found today, but

1857
01:36:54,560 --> 01:36:57,799
Speaker 9: only in one three acre area of the Hellisco region

1858
01:36:57,840 --> 01:37:03,560
Speaker 9: of Mexico. It said the plant is absolutely useless. Teocente

1859
01:37:03,640 --> 01:37:07,360
Speaker 9: seeds have a steel hard outer covering, and these seeds

1860
01:37:07,479 --> 01:37:11,599
Speaker 9: were virtually inedible except when they were green. Also, the

1861
01:37:11,600 --> 01:37:15,200
Speaker 9: Teocente plant only had six or twelve kernels on each

1862
01:37:15,280 --> 01:37:18,760
Speaker 9: tiny ear. It was said that the first step in

1863
01:37:18,800 --> 01:37:21,759
Speaker 9: the development of corn as we know it today involved

1864
01:37:21,800 --> 01:37:26,760
Speaker 9: a quote catastrophic sexual transmutation his words that converted the

1865
01:37:26,840 --> 01:37:31,360
Speaker 9: tip of some male tassels into the uniquely monstrous many

1866
01:37:31,520 --> 01:37:34,519
Speaker 9: ranked ears. Also his words that are now the edible

1867
01:37:34,600 --> 01:37:39,040
Speaker 9: female ears of corn. I did not know I've been

1868
01:37:39,080 --> 01:37:42,840
Speaker 9: eating female corn this whole time. But this is what

1869
01:37:43,040 --> 01:37:48,480
Speaker 9: researching a podcast can do. After this complex transformation, farmers

1870
01:37:48,520 --> 01:37:52,040
Speaker 9: then had to select mutant tiocente plants that were more

1871
01:37:52,200 --> 01:37:56,160
Speaker 9: edible and easier to cultivate. These changes were much more

1872
01:37:56,200 --> 01:37:59,879
Speaker 9: complex than the changes that made old world plants useful.

1873
01:38:00,880 --> 01:38:04,479
Speaker 9: Modern agriculture continues to tinker with corn and ti ucentae.

1874
01:38:05,360 --> 01:38:08,360
Speaker 9: It Liss said that plant breeders today are crossing the

1875
01:38:08,360 --> 01:38:13,160
Speaker 9: two plants together to derive perennial or enduring, long lasting

1876
01:38:13,240 --> 01:38:16,000
Speaker 9: corn that would not have to be planted each year

1877
01:38:16,280 --> 01:38:20,000
Speaker 9: and that would be resistant to viruses. Steve Price is

1878
01:38:20,040 --> 01:38:23,919
Speaker 9: a biotechnology researcher for the Standard Oil Company of Ohio,

1879
01:38:24,320 --> 01:38:27,400
Speaker 9: and he said that with genetic engineering techniques, it might

1880
01:38:27,439 --> 01:38:31,480
Speaker 9: take five years rather than five thousand years for contemporary

1881
01:38:31,560 --> 01:38:36,519
Speaker 9: humans to make a better corn plant. This time, from Mexico,

1882
01:38:36,800 --> 01:38:40,439
Speaker 9: corn spread north into the southwestern United States and then

1883
01:38:40,560 --> 01:38:45,200
Speaker 9: south down the coast to Peru. In Mexico, squash cultivation

1884
01:38:45,360 --> 01:38:48,360
Speaker 9: began ten thousand years ago, but corn had to wait

1885
01:38:48,400 --> 01:38:52,040
Speaker 9: for natural genetic mutations to be selected for in its

1886
01:38:52,160 --> 01:38:57,240
Speaker 9: wild ancestor, teocente. Wild corn like plants derived from theo

1887
01:38:57,320 --> 01:39:00,080
Speaker 9: cente appear to have been cultivated at least nine one

1888
01:39:00,120 --> 01:39:04,160
Speaker 9: thousand years ago. The first directly dated corn cob dates

1889
01:39:04,200 --> 01:39:07,320
Speaker 9: to only around five thousand and five hundred years ago.

1890
01:39:08,200 --> 01:39:12,200
Speaker 9: As corn reached North America, it cultivated sunflowers, and this

1891
01:39:12,320 --> 01:39:15,639
Speaker 9: is also when potato started growing in the Andes region

1892
01:39:15,920 --> 01:39:19,800
Speaker 9: of South America about one thousand years ago. As indigenous

1893
01:39:19,840 --> 01:39:23,040
Speaker 9: people migrated north to the eastern woodlands of present day

1894
01:39:23,080 --> 01:39:27,520
Speaker 9: North America, they brought corn with them. So when Europeans

1895
01:39:27,680 --> 01:39:31,479
Speaker 9: like Columbus, friend of the Show, made contact with people

1896
01:39:31,520 --> 01:39:34,439
Speaker 9: living in North and South America, corn was a major

1897
01:39:34,520 --> 01:39:38,040
Speaker 9: part of the diet of most native people. When Columbus

1898
01:39:38,200 --> 01:39:41,600
Speaker 9: quote unquote discovered or just like bumped into America, he

1899
01:39:41,680 --> 01:39:45,559
Speaker 9: also discovered corn for his people, because up to this time,

1900
01:39:45,680 --> 01:39:48,439
Speaker 9: people living in Europe did not know anything about corn.

1901
01:39:49,080 --> 01:39:52,360
Speaker 9: In fourteen ninety three, Christopher Columbus returned to Europe with

1902
01:39:52,439 --> 01:39:55,920
Speaker 9: apparently a pocket full of corn seeds, among other things.

1903
01:39:56,360 --> 01:39:58,679
Speaker 9: He learned a lot during his travels to the New World,

1904
01:39:59,360 --> 01:40:03,320
Speaker 9: killed and his people and stolar land, et cetera. But

1905
01:40:03,400 --> 01:40:06,120
Speaker 9: being exposed to this new grain he was unfamiliar with,

1906
01:40:06,320 --> 01:40:11,400
Speaker 9: seemed promising agriculturally for Europe. It was unfamiliar it was delicious.

1907
01:40:11,680 --> 01:40:15,679
Speaker 9: It was us Columbus romanticized at the time quote affixed

1908
01:40:15,760 --> 01:40:19,639
Speaker 9: by nature in a wondrous manner, and inform in size

1909
01:40:19,960 --> 01:40:24,640
Speaker 9: like garden peas. And it could, to corn's credit, if

1910
01:40:24,680 --> 01:40:28,360
Speaker 9: Europeans learned to farm it properly help feed a lot

1911
01:40:28,400 --> 01:40:32,479
Speaker 9: of people. The only problem was that Columbus had left

1912
01:40:32,479 --> 01:40:36,400
Speaker 9: behind a fairly important bit of information about said corn.

1913
01:40:37,360 --> 01:40:40,320
Speaker 9: He didn't take back the knowledge of how to process it.

1914
01:40:41,080 --> 01:40:44,719
Speaker 9: Betty Fusell is the author of Quote the Story of Corn,

1915
01:40:45,040 --> 01:40:49,439
Speaker 9: which chronicles corn's several thousand year history. She says it

1916
01:40:49,520 --> 01:40:53,320
Speaker 9: might sound innocuous, but the history of corn probably changed

1917
01:40:53,360 --> 01:40:57,679
Speaker 9: the course of humanity. According to her, the old world

1918
01:40:57,880 --> 01:41:00,680
Speaker 9: is a wheat culture. You know what else is a

1919
01:41:00,760 --> 01:41:07,439
Speaker 9: wheak culture. Ads, and we're back, okay. So, over the

1920
01:41:07,439 --> 01:41:11,160
Speaker 9: next few hundred years, most of Europe grew to misunderstand

1921
01:41:11,240 --> 01:41:16,519
Speaker 9: corn rather than embrace it. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, corn

1922
01:41:16,680 --> 01:41:20,080
Speaker 9: endured a different fate. It thrived and eventually found its

1923
01:41:20,080 --> 01:41:24,400
Speaker 9: way into the very center of the American diet. Until

1924
01:41:24,400 --> 01:41:27,679
Speaker 9: the eighteen hundreds, corn was eaten mostly by the poor.

1925
01:41:28,320 --> 01:41:32,160
Speaker 9: It was a cheap and prolific crop consumed by farmers

1926
01:41:32,160 --> 01:41:35,520
Speaker 9: and fed to prisoners, and used also as a commodity.

1927
01:41:36,240 --> 01:41:38,760
Speaker 9: As Michael Pollan wrote in his two thousand and six

1928
01:41:38,800 --> 01:41:43,080
Speaker 9: book The Omnivores Dilemma, corn was both the currency traders

1929
01:41:43,200 --> 01:41:46,000
Speaker 9: used to pay for slaves in Africa and the food

1930
01:41:46,120 --> 01:41:49,839
Speaker 9: upon which slaves subsisted on during their passage to America.

1931
01:41:51,200 --> 01:41:54,599
Speaker 9: But then came the Industrial Revolution and with it three

1932
01:41:54,800 --> 01:41:58,680
Speaker 9: essential technologies that helped corn thrive from being just the

1933
01:41:58,760 --> 01:42:02,200
Speaker 9: grain for poor people to being the grain for all people,

1934
01:42:02,600 --> 01:42:07,639
Speaker 9: consumed by everyone. The first invention was an iron plow,

1935
01:42:08,120 --> 01:42:11,160
Speaker 9: which allowed farmers to sow deep into the soil on

1936
01:42:11,240 --> 01:42:15,080
Speaker 9: much larger scales. The Midwest was planted with corn on

1937
01:42:15,120 --> 01:42:18,800
Speaker 9: a commercial basis precisely because of the iron plow, which,

1938
01:42:18,840 --> 01:42:23,040
Speaker 9: although it seems pretty simple, was a revolutionary tool. Two

1939
01:42:23,040 --> 01:42:26,559
Speaker 9: other advancements had an equally large effect, even though they

1940
01:42:26,680 --> 01:42:32,360
Speaker 9: touched corn production more tangentially. Fuselle said that one of

1941
01:42:32,400 --> 01:42:35,880
Speaker 9: the most important boons for corn might have been that

1942
01:42:35,920 --> 01:42:38,880
Speaker 9: the commercial farms in the Midwest grew up at the

1943
01:42:38,920 --> 01:42:43,839
Speaker 9: same time as the canneries and railroads. Until then, corn

1944
01:42:43,920 --> 01:42:47,800
Speaker 9: was mainly distributed locally, but trains helped move the grain

1945
01:42:47,920 --> 01:42:51,080
Speaker 9: far beyond just county limits, and along with the advent

1946
01:42:51,160 --> 01:42:54,400
Speaker 9: of canning, it meant that corn could keep for much longer.

1947
01:42:55,439 --> 01:42:59,040
Speaker 9: This allowed farmers to grow corn and other crops with

1948
01:42:59,240 --> 01:43:03,599
Speaker 9: hundreds of thousands of mauths in mind. In the coming decades,

1949
01:43:03,720 --> 01:43:07,280
Speaker 9: the amount of land dedicated to corn grew incredibly quickly,

1950
01:43:08,000 --> 01:43:10,960
Speaker 9: but it wouldn't be for another fifty years until corn

1951
01:43:11,040 --> 01:43:13,960
Speaker 9: actually made its way to the center of the American diet.

1952
01:43:14,960 --> 01:43:18,439
Speaker 9: Corn is what fu Cell calls a genetic monster because

1953
01:43:18,479 --> 01:43:22,439
Speaker 9: it's highly adaptable and easily manipulated, and there is perhaps

1954
01:43:22,520 --> 01:43:26,040
Speaker 9: no better example of its mutant like qualities than what

1955
01:43:26,120 --> 01:43:29,439
Speaker 9: happened shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. In

1956
01:43:29,479 --> 01:43:32,800
Speaker 9: the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, scientists discovered a way

1957
01:43:32,840 --> 01:43:36,760
Speaker 9: to boost corn production to a level that was previously unthinkable.

1958
01:43:37,560 --> 01:43:41,040
Speaker 9: They bred hybrid strains that had larger ears and could

1959
01:43:41,080 --> 01:43:44,320
Speaker 9: be grown closer together, which allowed farmers to produce a

1960
01:43:44,360 --> 01:43:48,599
Speaker 9: lot more corn without needing more land. This discovery, along

1961
01:43:48,640 --> 01:43:52,679
Speaker 9: with the introduction of new industrial fertilizers and more efficient

1962
01:43:52,720 --> 01:43:56,760
Speaker 9: farm tools like tractors, led to a huge increase of

1963
01:43:56,840 --> 01:44:00,920
Speaker 9: corn output. Paul Roberts wrote in his two thousand and

1964
01:44:01,000 --> 01:44:04,080
Speaker 9: nine book The End of Food that in the following

1965
01:44:04,160 --> 01:44:07,280
Speaker 9: decades the number of bushels of corn per acre doubled,

1966
01:44:07,439 --> 01:44:11,000
Speaker 9: and then it continued to rise each year. Corn yields

1967
01:44:11,000 --> 01:44:14,760
Speaker 9: have risen ever since then, with only brief interruptions due

1968
01:44:14,840 --> 01:44:19,599
Speaker 9: to sporadic droughts, but these interruptions are easily countered with

1969
01:44:19,760 --> 01:44:25,840
Speaker 9: further engineered corn. Advancements in farming, technology and science paved

1970
01:44:25,840 --> 01:44:29,720
Speaker 9: the way for corn's ascent into the American food system.

1971
01:44:30,080 --> 01:44:32,519
Speaker 9: But the main reason that corn has made its way

1972
01:44:32,600 --> 01:44:35,320
Speaker 9: into just about everything we eat and every food that

1973
01:44:35,360 --> 01:44:39,480
Speaker 9: Americans eat today is that, above all, it is inexpensive.

1974
01:44:40,520 --> 01:44:43,960
Speaker 9: Corn has and always will be cheap because it grows

1975
01:44:44,040 --> 01:44:47,800
Speaker 9: everywhere in the world. The most incredible thing about the

1976
01:44:47,840 --> 01:44:50,600
Speaker 9: corn grown in America today is how little of it

1977
01:44:50,760 --> 01:44:54,240
Speaker 9: we actually eat. This does not include people like me

1978
01:44:54,479 --> 01:44:56,960
Speaker 9: and my family who are obsessed with corn and eat

1979
01:44:56,960 --> 01:44:59,800
Speaker 9: it regularly, and also Sophie, who I know shares this

1980
01:45:00,040 --> 01:45:03,639
Speaker 9: corn obsession. But less than ten percent of the corn

1981
01:45:03,800 --> 01:45:07,240
Speaker 9: used in the United States is directly ingested by humans.

1982
01:45:07,920 --> 01:45:10,800
Speaker 9: The bulk is either turned into ethanol for use as

1983
01:45:10,800 --> 01:45:14,080
Speaker 9: fuel or fed to the hundreds of millions of animals

1984
01:45:14,320 --> 01:45:18,479
Speaker 9: that we subject to the factory system. Corn is fed

1985
01:45:18,479 --> 01:45:23,000
Speaker 9: to cows, chickens, pigs, and even fish. I had no idea.

1986
01:45:23,439 --> 01:45:26,519
Speaker 9: Apparently fish are given these little pellets that are largely

1987
01:45:26,520 --> 01:45:30,120
Speaker 9: made of corn, so it's everywhere. The relative cheapness of

1988
01:45:30,200 --> 01:45:33,719
Speaker 9: corn and general usefulness of it as a form of energy,

1989
01:45:34,000 --> 01:45:38,160
Speaker 9: both for living animals and living more generally, have proved

1990
01:45:38,200 --> 01:45:41,280
Speaker 9: important enough that the government subsidizes its production to the

1991
01:45:41,320 --> 01:45:44,559
Speaker 9: tune of some four point five billion dollars each year.

1992
01:45:45,479 --> 01:45:50,520
Speaker 9: The result is perpetuation of ambitious growing goals, farmers realizing

1993
01:45:50,600 --> 01:45:53,000
Speaker 9: the more efficient they are, the more money they will get,

1994
01:45:53,280 --> 01:45:56,240
Speaker 9: grow more and more corn. The more corn there is,

1995
01:45:56,360 --> 01:45:59,280
Speaker 9: the lower its price, and the greater the incentive is

1996
01:45:59,320 --> 01:46:02,720
Speaker 9: to use it in as many ways as possible. I

1997
01:46:02,760 --> 01:46:05,400
Speaker 9: want to talk now about the different varieties of corn,

1998
01:46:05,560 --> 01:46:10,080
Speaker 9: But first, do you know what else has variety? All

1999
01:46:10,120 --> 01:46:14,719
Speaker 9: the ways you can spend your money like these. Let's

2000
01:46:14,760 --> 01:46:17,960
Speaker 9: talk about the different varieties of corn. There are many types,

2001
01:46:18,000 --> 01:46:20,960
Speaker 9: but the most commonly eaten forms can be divided into

2002
01:46:21,040 --> 01:46:25,960
Speaker 9: three general categories. The first is sweet corn. Sweet corn

2003
01:46:26,080 --> 01:46:28,840
Speaker 9: is what Americans usually eat when they eat corn on

2004
01:46:28,880 --> 01:46:31,559
Speaker 9: the cob, or when they throw corn on the grill

2005
01:46:31,680 --> 01:46:33,640
Speaker 9: at a barbecue that you didn't want to go to.

2006
01:46:34,520 --> 01:46:37,799
Speaker 9: And this sweet corn accounts for only about one percent

2007
01:46:38,160 --> 01:46:42,960
Speaker 9: of the corn grown in America. Then there is flint corn.

2008
01:46:43,479 --> 01:46:46,719
Speaker 9: Flint corn has a soft center and harder outer shell,

2009
01:46:47,040 --> 01:46:51,200
Speaker 9: which most people know as popcorn. It became popular in

2010
01:46:51,200 --> 01:46:54,160
Speaker 9: the nineteen sixties after a Jiffy pop which cooked the

2011
01:46:54,240 --> 01:46:57,720
Speaker 9: kernels in aluminum foil on the stovetop, was introduced, and

2012
01:46:57,760 --> 01:47:01,320
Speaker 9: its popularity rose further in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties,

2013
01:47:01,560 --> 01:47:06,519
Speaker 9: shortly after the introduction of the microwave. Today, much like

2014
01:47:06,600 --> 01:47:10,560
Speaker 9: sweet corn, flint corn accounts for a steady but comparatively

2015
01:47:10,680 --> 01:47:15,360
Speaker 9: insignificant portion of the US corn crop. And then there's

2016
01:47:15,600 --> 01:47:19,800
Speaker 9: dent corn aka field corn, the most important kind of

2017
01:47:19,840 --> 01:47:23,519
Speaker 9: corn when it comes to production of it, not when

2018
01:47:23,520 --> 01:47:25,880
Speaker 9: it comes to me eating it, because I cannot do that.

2019
01:47:26,840 --> 01:47:30,120
Speaker 9: But dent corn accounts for the vast majority of corn

2020
01:47:30,200 --> 01:47:32,919
Speaker 9: grown in America today, as well as the vast majority

2021
01:47:32,960 --> 01:47:36,680
Speaker 9: of the corn Americans eat, just not on purpose. It's

2022
01:47:36,680 --> 01:47:39,519
Speaker 9: in most of the beverages we drink Surprise Surprise because

2023
01:47:39,520 --> 01:47:42,320
Speaker 9: of high frycto's corn syrup, and this is derived from

2024
01:47:42,320 --> 01:47:45,799
Speaker 9: flint corn and is the most commonly used commercial sweetener

2025
01:47:46,479 --> 01:47:51,120
Speaker 9: aka death syrup. It's in most animals people eat because

2026
01:47:51,120 --> 01:47:53,679
Speaker 9: it's fed to most animals that are raised for slaughter.

2027
01:47:54,400 --> 01:47:57,679
Speaker 9: It's even in our cheese because many cows are fed

2028
01:47:57,760 --> 01:48:01,519
Speaker 9: corn instead of being able to graze on grain. All

2029
01:48:01,560 --> 01:48:05,559
Speaker 9: of this makes corn virtually inseparable from the American diet.

2030
01:48:06,200 --> 01:48:09,920
Speaker 9: Reddy Fouseel says that people have this kind of nostalgic

2031
01:48:10,040 --> 01:48:13,280
Speaker 9: understanding of corn. They think of corn on the cob

2032
01:48:13,320 --> 01:48:16,920
Speaker 9: and popcorn. But the truth is that field corn is

2033
01:48:16,960 --> 01:48:19,240
Speaker 9: what we are really talking about when we talk about

2034
01:48:19,280 --> 01:48:22,479
Speaker 9: the dominance of corn in the United States. It's in

2035
01:48:22,560 --> 01:48:26,360
Speaker 9: almost every product in the supermarket today. That's no exaggeration.

2036
01:48:27,280 --> 01:48:32,160
Speaker 9: But obviously corn cannot be contained. American style processed food,

2037
01:48:32,200 --> 01:48:36,400
Speaker 9: which almost always relies on corn, has unpopularized in countries

2038
01:48:36,640 --> 01:48:40,320
Speaker 9: all around the world. Let's go back to Mexico, the

2039
01:48:40,479 --> 01:48:44,080
Speaker 9: birthplace of corn as we know it. How exactly did

2040
01:48:44,200 --> 01:48:48,160
Speaker 9: corn become such a popular street food. Mexican food is

2041
01:48:48,240 --> 01:48:51,680
Speaker 9: quite often literally built upon the tortilla, which is a

2042
01:48:51,720 --> 01:48:54,800
Speaker 9: lot of the times made of corn. The tortilla is

2043
01:48:54,840 --> 01:48:57,760
Speaker 9: a vehicle by which the country's most popular foods are

2044
01:48:57,800 --> 01:49:01,920
Speaker 9: eaten in chiladas, caesadillas, taos, tomalies. I can list food forever.

2045
01:49:02,600 --> 01:49:05,479
Speaker 9: Although wheat flour has grown in popularity here in the

2046
01:49:05,600 --> 01:49:10,200
Speaker 9: United States, which is actually the technical home of the burrito, Apparently,

2047
01:49:10,680 --> 01:49:15,040
Speaker 9: in Mexico, it's all about the corn. Mexico City is

2048
01:49:15,080 --> 01:49:17,840
Speaker 9: frequently praised as one of the most significant cities on

2049
01:49:17,960 --> 01:49:21,679
Speaker 9: Earth in terms of street food. Street food is referred

2050
01:49:21,720 --> 01:49:25,800
Speaker 9: to as antohitos in Spanish, which means little cravings, which

2051
01:49:25,840 --> 01:49:29,360
Speaker 9: I find very cute. Street dishes count corn as a

2052
01:49:29,400 --> 01:49:33,360
Speaker 9: near universal ingredient and sometimes, of course, it doesn't have

2053
01:49:33,400 --> 01:49:36,960
Speaker 9: to be processed to achieve its highest potential. Elote is

2054
01:49:37,000 --> 01:49:40,160
Speaker 9: perhaps the most recognized example, which is, for those not

2055
01:49:40,280 --> 01:49:42,720
Speaker 9: in the know, a full ear of corn that is

2056
01:49:42,800 --> 01:49:46,120
Speaker 9: grilled and slathered with a variety of toppings like butter,

2057
01:49:46,320 --> 01:49:51,320
Speaker 9: chili powder or taheen mayonnaise and cotiha cheese, among many

2058
01:49:51,439 --> 01:49:55,880
Speaker 9: other things. The final product, elote is served on a stick,

2059
01:49:56,120 --> 01:50:00,360
Speaker 9: providing an easy means for mobile consumption. Another common corn

2060
01:50:00,400 --> 01:50:05,080
Speaker 9: street food is asquitas, a Mexican sweet corn salad, although

2061
01:50:05,120 --> 01:50:08,799
Speaker 9: its true origin is not known. According to Nawadl stories,

2062
01:50:09,280 --> 01:50:12,760
Speaker 9: asquitas are credited by being created by a god, a

2063
01:50:12,840 --> 01:50:17,040
Speaker 9: deity with a name I cannot say or pronounce what

2064
01:50:17,160 --> 01:50:20,280
Speaker 9: It is long and looks cool, but I won't try

2065
01:50:20,320 --> 01:50:22,680
Speaker 9: to say it. But this god is also credited with

2066
01:50:22,760 --> 01:50:28,719
Speaker 9: creating Mexican corn, jelly corn. It's from the gods. Literally.

2067
01:50:30,000 --> 01:50:33,920
Speaker 9: As for me, there isn't some magical history of corn

2068
01:50:34,240 --> 01:50:38,240
Speaker 9: in the Middle East. I looked, I searched, I tried

2069
01:50:38,560 --> 01:50:42,599
Speaker 9: to find something, and I couldn't find one. No magical

2070
01:50:42,800 --> 01:50:47,240
Speaker 9: mystical history of my beloved corn. Like most things I

2071
01:50:47,280 --> 01:50:50,120
Speaker 9: have questions about, I asked my mom, and my mom

2072
01:50:50,200 --> 01:50:53,880
Speaker 9: said that when it's in season, street vendors sell corn.

2073
01:50:54,720 --> 01:50:55,160
Speaker 1: That's it.

2074
01:50:56,200 --> 01:50:58,519
Speaker 9: The same goes for other street foods that are popular

2075
01:50:58,560 --> 01:51:01,000
Speaker 9: in the Middle East, which you might find interesting, which

2076
01:51:01,040 --> 01:51:04,960
Speaker 9: is cactus fruit or the prickly pair. But no corn

2077
01:51:05,600 --> 01:51:09,240
Speaker 9: is magical. But it's only magical to me. And just

2078
01:51:09,280 --> 01:51:13,639
Speaker 9: because it's magical to me doesn't mean it is actually magical.

2079
01:51:14,720 --> 01:51:18,120
Speaker 9: And through researching for this episode, I have learned that.

2080
01:51:19,000 --> 01:51:22,400
Speaker 9: So what I'm saying is this episode has shattered my

2081
01:51:22,680 --> 01:51:27,640
Speaker 9: naive childhood dreams about a magical land of corn. But

2082
01:51:28,880 --> 01:51:30,960
Speaker 9: the job's a job, and someone has to do it.

2083
01:51:31,080 --> 01:51:35,840
Speaker 9: So that's it. Goodbye.

2084
01:51:37,200 --> 01:51:40,360
Speaker 1: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week

2085
01:51:40,439 --> 01:51:42,320
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the Universe.

2086
01:51:42,920 --> 01:51:45,439
Speaker 9: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

2087
01:51:45,520 --> 01:51:48,200
Speaker 9: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

2088
01:51:48,200 --> 01:51:50,439
Speaker 9: cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the

2089
01:51:50,479 --> 01:51:53,880
Speaker 9: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

2090
01:51:54,320 --> 01:51:56,400
Speaker 9: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated

2091
01:51:56,479 --> 01:52:00,559
Speaker 9: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.