The Ancient System Controlling Modern Culture

Summary

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Camp Gagnon: "The Ancient System Controlling Modern Culture"

Host: Mark Gagnon
Guest: John (Medieval Mindset)
Date: April 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Camp Gagnon, host Mark Gagnon welcomes John from the YouTube channel Medieval Mindset. Together, they dive into the idea that many seemingly “unprecedented” modern trends—like online gambling, looksmaxing, shortcut medicine, and the digital quest for meaning—are actually echoes of ancient and medieval impulses. Drawing on history, especially the Song Dynasty and medieval Europe, John reveals striking parallels between past and present.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Are Our “New” Problems Actually Old?

• Mark opens by listing phenomena that feel uniquely modern: online gambling, obsession with self-optimization, experimental medicine, technology’s promises.
• He questions: “Are these modern day cultural trends actually new? Or are they things that have repeated themselves over and over again throughout history?” (00:57)

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2. Gambling as Escape: Ancient China & Modern Young Men

• Parallel drawn: The explosion of online gambling among young men today echoes high-risk gambling in medieval China, especially during times of social change.
  • “Gambling among young men, especially in times of social change or when people… are looking for a way to exert control… becomes a big one.” — John (03:25)
• Context: In Song Dynasty China, young men faced near-impossible exam systems for social mobility; failing it meant bleak prospects. Gambling and pleasure districts became both escape and a chance at luck.
• Today’s twist: Friction is gone—gambling is on your phone, without shame or physical risk.
  • “You don’t even have to leave bed. You can Uber Eats to your bed and gamble your whole life savings.” — John (09:58)
• Mark’s insight: “High gambling cultures probably do indicate some type of destitution or like a lack of optimism in the future.” (08:29)

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3. Looksmaxing: Status, Aesthetics, and Self-Modifying the Body

• Modern form: Gen Z men pursuing extreme self-optimization (looksmaxing, surgeries, “clavicular” culture).
• Historical echoes:
  • Warriors in medieval China would intentionally scar or roughen hands to look like “real fighters”—a purely aesthetic display for status (05:58).
  • Scholarly class showed status through pale skin and thinness, avoiding sun/work.
• Europe/Japan parallels: Samurai, knights, even Louis XVI and French monarchs wore heels and armor designed to exaggerate stature and presence—all ancient “looksmaxing”.
• Mark’s perspective:
  • “White dudes are realizing that looking nice isn’t gay… Now with Clavicular, it’s like, oh, no, we should be handsome.” (20:40)
  • Looksmaxing has always existed—different cultures just did it differently (19:23).

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4. Experimental Medicine, Peptides, and Ancient Remedies

• Modern trend: Widespread experimenting with peptides, GLP-1 drugs (like Ozempic), testosterone—shortcuts to beauty/"health".
  • “It is interesting that there is very much an obsession with basically, like. I don't know what it is specifically…” — Mark (27:10)
• Historical roots:
  • Ancient Chinese medicine involved concoctions for strength, beauty, longevity.
  • Ancient/medieval societies had their versions of “shortcut medicine”—herbal remedies, early cosmetics, magic.
• Mark’s take: Current “miracle” drugs are the commercial/technological descendants of these old practices.

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5. The Problem of Friction, Dopamine, and the Loop of Convenience

• Dopamine and effort: Human cultures once tied reward to effort; now convenience short-circuits that, causing an “endless dopamine loop.”
  • “The process is a shortcut.” — Mark (07:55)
• Mark references Christopher Ryan’s Civilized to Death on how convenience erodes cultural resilience and antifragility.
• “Human beings as organisms were not designed for convenience… a base level of hardship is actually good for us.” — Mark (18:19)

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6. Status, Media, and Beauty: Morality Through Physical Appearance

• Historical morality: In the Middle Ages and biblical times, physical beauty indicated divine favor or moral virtue; ugliness or illness could be seen as punishment.
• Medieval literature often describes bad kings as physically repugnant, linking body and soul.
  • “Who you are as a person, and… your worth is tied to your physical appearance.” — John (25:04)

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7. Alchemy and AI: The Dream of Playing God

• AI = Alchemy: Today’s AI hype mirrors medieval alchemy—mysterious processes, magic-sounding results, promises of utopia.
• “Even the people who design these large language models don’t necessarily understand how they work…” — John (38:02)
• Prediction, not understanding: Like alchemy, AI’s workings are obscure even to its creators—parallels in unpredictability, mystical optimism, and unforeseen consequences.
• Modern-day Faustian bargains: Using new tech/drugs for shortcut improvements always comes at an unseen cost.

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8. The Printing Press & AI: Paradigm Shifts and Hope for Renaissance

• Mark and John compare post-printing press Europe to the digital age—periods of information explosion, confusion, and new frauds/opportunities.
• After initial excitement/distrust, both eras normalize new media, establish trust indicators, and birth new forms of art and knowledge.
  • “Anytime there’s a major challenge or disruption, like human beings do find a way.” — John (42:29)
• John predicts an artistic “renaissance” where human authenticity and hand-crafted work increase in value.

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9. Medieval Illiteracy vs. Modern Media Illiteracy

• Most people in the Middle Ages were illiterate, relying on visuals (church art, plays) for education—a parallel to today’s scrolling, meme culture.
• Gen Alpha faces a new form of illiteracy: can “sound out” words but can’t comprehend, reflecting our shift away from deep reading to image-based info.
• Mark: “Stations of the Cross is literally like… a comic book.” (55:50)
• John: “It’s meant to educate the illiterate.” (55:54)

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10. Protestantism, the Renaissance, and Revising History

• Much of our negative view of the Middle Ages comes from Renaissance/Enlightenment thinkers (and later, Protestant-influenced American narratives) casting the era as backward, anti-progress.
  • “America is founded by Protestants. It’s set up freakin’ Protestants… There has always been an anti-Catholic background.” — John (65:05)
• The idea that the medieval church suppressed knowledge is challenged—John asserts that the church preserved, extended, and funded learning.
  • “They kept the lights on basically for a thousand years.” (67:16)
• Protestant Reformation, printing press, and the rise of individualism/atheism: discussed as pivotal cultural changes echoing through to modern atomization.

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11. Architecture & The Soul: Loss of Beauty

• Modern architecture prioritizes financial efficiency over transcendence.
• In the past, societies built towards God—cathedrals, mosques, temples—now we build for cost-effectiveness.
  • “Now you kind of build things that are the most cost effective. And, like, the new God is sort of financial… you build toward this lifeless…” — Mark (74:11)
• John: Brutalist, uniform spaces make us feel insignificant, while gothic spaces “lift your soul up to the heavens.” (74:14)

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12. Tradwife Trend and The Myth of “Going Back”

• Trendy returns to traditional gender roles (“tradwives”) are more performance and nostalgia for historical “glitches” (e.g. nuclear family, 1950s housewife) than genuine restorations.
• Most of history, men and women worked as a household economic unit; both worked at home/farm. The breadwinner/housewife split is a relatively recent phenomenon.
• “Things we hearken back to, they're not natural… they were a human reaction to certain forces. You know, a post-war boom in the US. Or a television set in every home that enables monoculture… that was just like a glitch in the timeline.” — John (81:18)

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13. Race, Identity, and the Medieval Mind

• “Whiteness” and “blackness” as broad categories are modern—medieval people saw identity in terms of tribe, city, region, or religion, not skin color.
• Foreigners were foreigners, not defined by phenotypical race.
  • “It’s hard for Americans… to imagine an unracialized world, which was the majority of human existence.” — Mark (92:33)

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14. Arranged Marriage, Courtly Love, and the Roots of Romance

• Hotness mattered morally, not just romantically; portraits were used as proto-Tinder for arranged marriages.
• “What you did in your free time [adultery, romance] was… what you did in your free time.” — John (96:13)
• The myth of “true love” breaking arranged matches originated as a cultural coping mechanism (and became the narrative for much of Western romance).

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15. Lessons from History & Predictions (Will Durant Moment)

• “Human nature doesn’t change. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.” — John (104:10)
• The flood of information paralyzes—John advises choosing local, acting in your community, and unplugging regularly.
  • “Choose something you can influence and control and like influence your local community.” (104:10)
• He predicts a “new renaissance” marked by:
  • A return to local/community
  • The loss of monoculture
  • A hunger for authenticity and “raw, unfiltered humanity”
  • Social media and AI-generated content will grow tiresome; real-life communities and handmade art will rebound

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On gambling then and now:

  • “You could still go to the Watsi and get a prostitute and gamble and do all these things. But there was friction. Now, there’s no friction at all.” — John (09:58)

• On shortcut medicine:

  • “I don’t know if it’s like we are just a culture of excess… we are a pill addicted culture that wants the fastest route… And that because it’s commercially viable…” — Mark (28:16)

• On AI and alchemy:

  • “Even the people who design these large language models don’t necessarily understand how they work.” — John (38:02)
  • “I think human-made things… will have a label: ‘this was human made’... and that will like, increase its value.” — John (44:37)

• On the coming renaissance:

  • “The new Renaissance will not be televised. It’s already happening, driven by youth… and Medieval Mindset on YouTube!” — John (106:22)
  • “To be cringe is to be free.” — John (101:19)

• On rejecting monoculture:

  • “Things have never been that way. That was a glitch in the 20th century… it was a human reaction to certain forces.” — John (81:18)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• Modern issues/ancient parallels intro: 00:57–03:25
• Gambling, Song Dynasty, modern escapism: 03:25–12:00
• Looksmaxing & self-modification cultures: 19:23–26:40
• Experimental medicine, shortcut culture: 27:00–36:00
• AI as alchemy, unpredictability: 38:02–42:30
• Printing press, information booms, hope: 42:30–46:00
• Media illiteracy and image-based culture: 55:50–59:00
• Protestant Reformation, church history: 65:00–68:00
• Architecture, beauty, and modern loss: 74:11–75:52
• Tradwives and historical misconceptions: 77:00–81:50
• Race/identity in the medieval world: 87:21–93:02
• Arranged marriage, romance, and the roots of love: 93:39–96:26
• Historical lessons, predictions for the 2030s: 104:10–106:22

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Final Reflections

Mark and John conclude by emphasizing that while technology, fashion, and cultural forms may change, the underlying impulses—seeking control, pleasure, status, beauty, community, and meaning—remain deeply human and timeless. Our attempts to escape the chaos of modernity often reflect ancient patterns; perhaps the wisdom is neither to reject the past nor idolize it, but to take the best of both for a genuinely new renaissance.

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Find John on YouTube: Medieval Mindset

Notable:

“We have the same hardware as our medieval ancestors, but our software is expected to operate in a totally different way because we’re dealing with so many inputs and information.” — John (82:50)

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For full context, see the original episode.

Transcript

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[A]

It feels like the world is in a weird place. The explosion of online gambling, the obsession with looks and self optimization and looks maxing, the rise of experimental shortcut medicine, even the way technology promises to solve all of our problems. To me, it feels like we're living in completely unprecedented times. But what if we're not? What if these same patterns, these same impulses have all played out before? As Mark Twain says, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. From young men risking everything in pursuit of a better life to entire cultures chasing status, beauty and control, history might be a lot more familiar than we think. So are these modern day cultural trends and issues actually new? Or are they just things that have repeated themselves over and over again throughout history? Well, today I have my good friend John from Medieval Mindset here to answer that exact question, bringing his expertise in this area and really breaking down the surprising parallels between today's world and the medieval past. And once you see them, you might realize that, yeah, the world we're living in is weird. But it's been weird for a long time. John is absolutely amazing. He's a brilliant storyteller and just, just a really great guy and is such a fun expert in this specific area of medieval history. And I really hope you guys enjoy this episode. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. John. What's up dude?

[B]

What's up, man?

[A]

I wanted to say, and I've said it once before and I will say it again, I love your YouTube channel.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[A]

Medieval mindset is, it's, it's growing, I mean, quite quickly right here on YouTube. And I think the slogan summarizes it pretty well. The medieval Past isn't gone, it's just waiting to be rediscovered.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Yeah. It's great. I mean, you've gone viral with a few of these videos. This is the first one that I ever saw of yours. Why Gen Z culture is basically medieval China. Yeah, yeah. And it is like my favorite things all in one video. Like this whole series because you have a bunch of these, like, you know, predicting a new renaissance. Like, you know, AI is alchemy. And basically this comparative analysis between modern cultural trends and medieval history, it's doing all the stuff that I love. And like, they're. They're like, not super long. It's really dense. It's really well researched, and you present it in such a perfect way. And I'm so excited to kind of just dive in and explore more of these themes. So I'm curious, how is Gen Z and the current, I guess, movements that are happening within Gen Z first? What are you noticing and how has this happened before?

[B]

Yeah, so, like, with. I think the big thing, and I talked about this in the video, and I think it kind of got a big response that seemed to be what a lot of the comments were centered around is if you watch the super bowl this year or if you've watched any sporting event in the last, like two years, they're really pushing gambling, especially on young men. And like, even in my life, I'm 29 and my friends are all around the same age. Like, everybody's got a parlay going every weekend. Everybody's on draftkings. Like gambling all of a sudden in the last few years has this huge thing. And one of the, like, early contrasts I kind of saw when I was just. I wasn't necessarily planning to do a video about, you know, the Song dynasty in China or any of these specific topics, but I noticed that, like, gambling among young men, especially in times of, like, social change or when people, young people especially, are looking for a way to exert control over circumstances that they feel are out of their control, gambling becomes a big one because it's like, well, screw it. Like, you can look around today and say, the housing market is screwed. You know, World War 3 is at our doorstep. Why would I not put everything on this crazy parlay and see if it pays off? And it's the same thing, like social mobility in medieval China, the exam system was extremely difficult. It was very, very hard. You had to study for these exams and it was a really low passing rate. And basically if you didn't pass, like, your prospects were kind of screwed. For the future, it was, it was basically a bad bet. Whereas if you could go to these pleasure districts in these different cities and you know, bet on dice or bet on, you know, any, any kind of games that they were playing, you could much better chance at hitting it big. And I just saw a parallel there between, you know, young people of the past and young people now, like when you're faced with uncertainty in your future. And then also a big obsession with physical looks, I think with young people. I mean, that's been a thing since Adonis and the Greeks. And you know, young people care about how they look, but this idea of doing something to yourself that might seem physically injurious to like bring about a desired result is obviously right now looks maxing clavicular. It's super, super popular. And bone smashing seems to be like sign of this new nihilistic generation that will do whatever to get ahead and get clicks on social media. And then I noticed like you had your warrior class in the Song dynasty and your scholarly class and both of them would do things to their physical bodies to show off their status. So like the, the warriors would like purposely kind of have a scar visible or they would like punch wood or one of the things they did was put their hands in rice and like twist or rocks. And so the like friction against your fist would build up your forear and that would show that you work with your arms and you work, you know, you're a fighter, you're a warrior.

[A]

And it was purely aesthetic.

[B]

Mostly. Yeah, purely aesthetic. This is like for city life, for like walking around and like showing the ladies. Because you would have your own training as a warrior that would like, you know, form your body in a certain way. But this was like, what could you show, like visibly to show off?

[A]

Yeah, you might be a great warrior, but you don't look hot.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. What could I do to look hot? And it was the same thing with the scholarly class. Like you want to show the opposite. You want to show like, I sit inside and I use my mind. So they would apply like lead based white makeup. They would, you know, eat very limited diets. It's because they wanted to be thinner. Because like a fullness of body would suggest that you were, you worked outside, you were a warrior, you were a farmer or something like that. So I just saw these kind of parallels and the more I looked, the more parallels I saw. And yeah, even down to like this sort of ancient Chinese medicine, the big thing right now with Gen Z and fitness culture is peptides, Peptides are everywhere. They seem to be, at least to me. I poorly understand exactly which ones people are just taking anything. Like at this point they're kind of research chemicals. A lot of them haven't been approved by the fda. I think Ozempic kind of blew the door open on this thing and then now people are sort of willing to take whatever, but none of them are really manufactured in the US at this point because they're not like something like Reddit. True Tide is not USDA approved, so you have to get it from China. So there's already a connection there. But then also that a lot of this ancient Chinese medicine was sort of a similar thing, like putting something in your. Putting a unique mixture in your body to sort of get some desired aesthetic result or you know, some, some health, increasing strength, increasing result. And also a shortcut, because that is what it is. I know people will come for me about that with peptides because it's like you do also have to exercise. It's like steroids. You can't just take steroids and get jacked. But.

[A]

But a shortcut is a shortcut. Yeah, that's not really controversial. Like maybe if you said like cheating or something, it's like one thing.

[B]

But people are, people are crazy about the peptides though. It's. I don't know. Yeah, they're. I see harsh defenders about the peptides, but.

[A]

Take peptides. Who gives a. But it's like it is a kind of a shortcut. Like you're trying to speed up the process.

[B]

100 and out.

[A]

The process is a shortcut.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

So I guess to start with the gambling thing, that's fascinating that as a cultural phenomenon makes a lot of sense. Right? Because if you're going to tell a dude in like the 50s, like hey, do you want to gamble? He'd be like, well, if I just save all my money for the next year, I can buy a house.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then I'm set for life. So. No.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But if you're telling some. The same exact dude, especially if you're. Okay, let's say you're telling a 29 year old in the 50s, he already has two kids, he's married and he owns a house, is about to buy a house, he has a job that's like, he's got a pension.

[B]

Like makes no sense.

[A]

Why would you gamble? Yeah, it's like you could. You're gonna throw all this away. Like the upside is sure you can get a bunch of money if you gamble or you lose all like you lose Your house, you lose all the stuff. But if you're telling a 29 year old today, it's like, well, I have no kids, not gonna get married, probably I'm never gonna buy a house, so yeah, why not? Like, there's nothing really to lose. And so, yeah, I might lose like a thousand bucks or I could get 50,000. Yeah, 50,000 will change my whole life. Maybe then I will get married. Yeah, like it's, it is an interesting paradigm where like high gambling cultures probably do indicate some type of destitution or like a lack of optimism in the future.

[B]

Yeah, no, I definitely, I definitely agree.

[A]

I think the, that Chinese exam example makes a ton of sense where it's okay, I have a high stress situation, maybe this goes my way. Or it doesn't. I'm feeling unhopeful about the future because of my prospects of passing this thing. The pressure is just eating me alive. Or I can go to this little district and like play some cards, play some mahjong. If that was even a thing back then and the prostitution was a thing in that space, I'm assuming. So it's like, all right, I can feel good right now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Especially because I'm gonna feel bad later probably anyway. Or at the very least, the pressure is just killing me. So I might as well gamble in like this controlled environment and be able to control my life a little more than this existential thing that I'm not going to be able to control at all. Yeah, that's. Is there other, other parallels in the gambling sense?

[B]

Well, I think what's interesting, I mean, even just drawing the American parallels, like up until recently, gambling sort of tied in with prostitution. It's like a taboo. It's like you go to Vegas for that and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Like you're not gambling in your living room. So it was a taboo thing. And it was like, that's like a weekend of. That's not what you're doing to like fund your lifestyle for the most part. And if you are that, you're like an outlier. That's bizarre, a bizarre thing to do. And it was kind of the same thing. It was a little bit more socially accepted, like in Song dynasty era China. But it was still a. There were these pleasure districts in certain cities called the Watsi. And it was like a, it was like a mini little Vegas or a mini like red light district that you would go to if you were a soldier off duty. You got your, you got your pay for the month, you're going to Go to the watsi and you're going to gamble, you're going to get a prostitute, you're going to do these things. And sort of also A, what happens in the watsi state in the Wati. B, it's a physical location you have to go to. And C, it's like taboo. Like you're not telling your family. Yeah, you're not telling your family. I'm going, maybe you'd bring your boys with you, like a Vegas trip in the 80s or something, but you wouldn't be like, I'm going to the Watsi to try and like earn our future. So I think the big difference now is the accessibility, the lack of taboo and the fact that it seems to be like a total, like I can gamble my whole life save I can lose everything in seconds on my phone without even getting out of bed. It's crazy, like a crazy paradigm. But the point I wanted to draw in the video is like just talking about the young male mind and like we're impulsive and we want things quickly and you know, we want shortcuts, we want peptides, we want DraftKings. But like there used to be up until very recently, like quite a bit of friction. Like you could still indulge those things. You could still go to the watsi and get a prostitute and gamble and do all these things. But there was friction. You had to go in person, you had to deal with the shame of that. You had to leave your house to go do it. And there was also danger you get robbed in the watsi, all these things. Whereas in now there's no friction at all. You don't even have to leave bed. You can Uber eats to your bed and gamble your whole life savings. I wonder if the whole thing started with like shorting GameStop and like also Bitcoin. In the early 2010s, like was where this like chronically online gambling culture started to come around. And then once all these apps went mainstream and you could advertise on tv, it's just been like a complete gold rush. Now streaming Disney invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exciting exclusive six episode docu series.

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[A]

Yeah. I do think, like the WallStreetBets sort of like Reddit subculture did kind of. It did. I wonder if it like, brought it into, like the mainstream for the first time because it's funny because I'll talk to you guys that grew up either like, connected to the mob or they were in the mob themselves. And the way that they talk about gambling is so funny because they're like, this is. I went to prison for this. They're like, I went to jail because I was running a numbers game. And now it's just. Every government is just running legal, sanctioned gambling. Like, what is going on? And it is crazy. That went from like this kind of seedy thing where you had to know a guy and it was a bookie and he was off the thing. Like, it was like this fringe and now it's just fully in the mainstream. And you have a list actors that are just like, download this app.

[B]

I don't need Kevin Hart to tell me. Well, it's like, yeah, it's like even just watching the Sopranos, which is like 20 years ago, like these. The gambling is like something that happens in a motel room. And it's like degenerates who are paying ten grand to the mob to like buy into these high stakes poker games. Yeah. Whereas now it's totally acceptable and accessible. And it happens so quickly. I don't know, I feel like, like the. On in the song dynasty, basically it was this period of prosperity that was uninterrupted by the Mongol invasion. And I do wonder if, like, so basically there's this huge, like, cultural and social shift that now happens because the Mongols have taken power. This kind of idea of like our cultural supremacy that we can't be defeated has now been destroyed. Like, and I, I wonder if there are certain things like that maybe like a 911 or Covid or things that have really disrupted our national. Yeah, our national, like, sense of. Yeah. I actually, I'm thinking now maybe, I mean, something like an attack on U. S. Soil, Vietnam, like losing a major war kind of. Especially after World War I and 2 in Korea.

[A]

I see Vietnam as like the central focal point of the lack of institutional trust that like, conspiratorial thinking comes post Vietnam. I mean, like, there's so much that happens as a cultural residual from Vietnam that to me, like that whole era, because you get like, the assassination of MLK, JFK, RFK plus Vietnam all happening within 10 years, that's really that chunk. But Vietnam, I think is significant because it is the first time where it's like, why are we here? Yeah, we're all coming home with like, mental scarring. Society's fundamentally different. You have like crime syndicates and gangs and stuff that all come out. Like, it's a crazy moment that I think erodes the trust. And that's for the first time in the American consciousness where it's like, are

[B]

we the bad guys?

[A]

Are we out of control? Yeah. Can we trust them? Yeah. And I don't know if this maps with the Song dynasty, but even though it's not on American soil, the residual is on American soil, right?

[B]

Yeah. No. And I think too these sorts of things, especially if you're living really at any time in history, because this is like with the Roman Empire as well, it. It feels like you're part of something eternal that has always been and will always be. And the idea of that thing going away is unthinkable. And I think now, like, with the American empire, it's the same thing. Like, of course, like, America is the worth the top dogs. We've been the top dogs for all living memory and we will be forever. And like, this kind of situation will never change. Something like Covid too, I see as like, instrumental to this change in Gen Z culture and consciousness. Because so often we see things that are going on, on the news and it's like they're these crises and they're usually happening overseas. Like what's happening in Iran right now. Like that, like, I'm going about my daily life, like most Americans are going about their daily life. Like, that's just the unfortunate reality of like being plugged into world news. You know, these things don't necessarily affect you. I think for a lot of people, especially young people that grew up in, you know, just pretty normal American circumstances, to have something like that was on the news now have a major impact in your daily life. Covid. Schools shut down, you can't go to work, you have to stay in your house. All these things. I feel like it like rattled a generation in this weird way that they've had a tough time recovering from. And I think there are all these conclusions people try to Draw about Gen Z. The gambling thing is obviously very real. There's the whole thing that like Gen Z doesn't drink anymore. That's a big point of conversation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's like, what does that say? Because even in the Song dynasty, you'd have soldiers, they'd go to the Watsi and get a prostitute and they'd gamble and they'd drink and it was like a, it was like a release valve from everyday life. But what happens when your release valve is everyday life is your release valve. You're unemployed. Like most. Like Gen Z has a huge unemployment crisis. You're addicted to and scrolling Instagram and you, you know, probably have like a weed pen. Everybody's got the weed pen. And you have DraftKings on your phone. Like it's just like this endless dopamine loop. So again, it's like the same male mental from a thousand years ago. Like mental the psyche. But now it's like the complete lack of friction and having like everything you could possibly imagine at your fingertips. I think there's going to have to be a real concerted effort to like figure out how to deal with this new situation because it's all happened so quickly.

[A]

Yeah. My buddy Ethan, Ethan Simmons Patterson is a brilliant comedian. He has this really funny joke where he's basically like, he's like, yeah, I talk to all these young dudes that are just like, like, you know, subscribing to onlyfans girls and they love bitcoin and they're all betting on parlays and then they're coming to me being like, yeah, man, I'm just depressed. It's like, yeah, bro, nothing you believe is real. Yeah. You know, like everything you like is not a real thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This girl you like doesn't know you exist. The money you invest in isn't real. Like it's all fake. Yeah. And I think it's just an astute observation. Like, yeah, no, yeah. There's a. This guy, Christopher Ryan, he's a author, like a kind of a pop anthropology writer. And he wrote a book called Civilized Death. And I thought it was a really fun read that kind of gives his perspective on how convenience is slowly like eroding our culture and the desire to have everything immediately. That human beings as, as organisms were not designed for convenience and that the opposite is actually true. Like our anti fragility makes us really resistant and by having more hardship we actually like get stronger. And so a base level of hardship is actually good for us. Like, like having to go find food or, like, I mean, like, there's so many. He puts it together. A really good perspective in the book, but it's kind of in relationship to this that, like, dopamine back in the day was kind of connected to effort.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And now it is not. And I think it's seen through all the things you just mentioned, whether it's Uber eats or gambling apps or anything.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Look, maxing is a really interesting one because I find it to be a strange. The. The premium that's put on it is strange to me where it's like, what's up with Gen Z men, like, all trying to be hot? And I'm like, well. Well, first off, every culture in history has kind of look maxed. Yeah, yeah. Like, I think there's some more than others. But, like, whether it's like, a tribal woman that's, like, extending her neck by pushing her collarbones down or, like, you know, like an African woman that puts, like, a ring in her lips to have, like, a larger lip, or like, people in England trying to stay pale, like, they're all kind of versions of looks maxing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, and there's, like. I mean, women in, like, oriental China or, you know, like, binding their feet.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Like, that is directly connected to mutilating your body. I mean, in my opinion. I'm sorry. And trying to look more beautiful.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I'm like, it's always kind of existed. On top of that, all my other friends, like, my black friends, my Latino friends, they've been trying to look handsome for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I was talking about black one. I was like, yeah, dude, there looks Max. And, like, what is that? Like, you know, like, guys will, like, get haircuts and.

[B]

Yeah. Like, the lineup have nice shoes existed for a long time.

[A]

And all my blindfolds, like, yeah, yeah, we've been doing this. Yeah. Like, that's the. You guys make fun of us for this. And so it's really just like, white dudes are realizing that looking nice isn't gay. Like, I think that's really what looks.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because if you, like, tried to look good, it was gay, so that you can't do that. And now with, like, clavicular, it's like, oh, no, we should be handsome. Right. And so that, to me, is, like. It seems like it's overblown, but I don't know. That's just my perspective on the phenomena. So, like, what do you say about looks maxing? And are there other cultures, even outside of medieval China, where you Find looks maxing has, has existed in history.

[B]

Yeah. I mean looks maxing, especially for younger men has, like you said, always been a thing. It hasn't always necessarily been some kind of like permanent thing you're doing to your body. It's more so reflected especially in Europe in the middle ages, in the Renaissance and even in like feudal Japan with the samurai in the clothes that you wear. Like for example, I, I talked about this in one of my recent videos about like what did medieval people think about height? Because height maxing is a big thing with Clavicular. He wears lifts shoes and he says if you're not 6ft, you should height max.

[A]

There's a hilarious video. I don't know if you've seen this.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

It's so good. Like, okay, so a couple things. If anyone's not aware, looks maxing is basically the deliberate attempt for men to look desirable and that ultimately the zenith of morality. Like the only thing that really matters is being handsome. And so you should do everything in your power to be as handsome as possible. It's like sort of a critical lens that puts beauty as paramount to everything else. And, and so that's that Clavicular is sort of like the, the high priest of this, this movement. He's like a 20 year old handsome kid that streams all day and the viewer gets to basically live as a hot guy. That's to me like what the real,

[B]

like that is what the streams are.

[A]

That's what the stream is about. Like I'm, I feel kind of like a loser. I shouldn't characterize all his fans like that. But at least one fan is a loser. And he watches Clavicular and Cliff is like talking to a girl at a club and he's like, wow, this is what it's like. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like I, that's what, that's what it would be like if I was, if I was him. Like that's what my life would be. And so it becomes this sort of like proxy parasocial thing where you get to be a hot dude for a night.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Maybe people like him for other reasons. I don't know. Regardless, it's. He has this video where he talks about having different vantage points. So he's like, okay, so you wearing your lifts, you go to a girl's apartment, you guys are about to hook up up. Here's the issue. You take your shoes off, she's going to realize that you're actually shorter than you said. So what do you do? You Assemble different points in your home or in her home when she's not looking to keep the height. So let's say you put a book down near the couch. Let's say you put, like, a pillow near the kitchen.

[B]

He is funny.

[A]

He's very funny. It's like. It's like Kramer. It's like. Like Castanza being like, hey, I got this plan, right? This girl's coming over. Here's what I'm going to do.

[B]

Jerry, A book.

[A]

Jerry, look. You get a book. You're standing. I'm six three now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so he's just, like, going from one high spot, going to another one, going to another one. Then he's like, as soon as you're horizontal, you're fine. Yeah. So it's just the funniest thing. That's a digression. But regardless.

[B]

No. Yeah. I mean, it's.

[A]

It's.

[B]

It's a tale as old as time. Yeah, but, like, your average just based on, like, skeletal remains, like, Japanese man in feudal China was like, sorry, feudal Japan was, like, 5 foot 2. But as a samurai warrior, you wanted to be physically imposing. That was seen as, like, a sign of your status and a sign of your, like, military prowess. So if you look at samurai armor, first of all, if you've ever seen a helmet, they have, like, those big horn things that's to increase, like, your height and your. What would. There would be, like, the shadow you give off, like, the. You know, your outline. Like, you would look more intimidating. Their, like, shoulder pieces are super broad. The hip pieces are super broad. And they would wear these sandals that actually, like, you can see in, like, anime about, like, samurai or whatever, they wear these. It's like a horizontal piece of wood and then two vertical pieces of wood, like those sandals. So they would wear those, like, into battle, which would be extremely impractical. But it's like, it's to be tall. Like, not as high up as you'll see in the anime, but, like, versions of that to look taller. Because it's psychological warfare as well. Same thing in medieval Europe. Knights, specifically for jousting tournaments, but also, like, in real battlefield engagements, would wear armor that was specifically designed to give you that, like, that, like, V shape, broader shoulders. Famously, a little bit outside of the Middle Ages, Henry VIII was gifted a set of armor. And the armor, I think it's in the British Museum or something, but it's. The cod piece on the armor is enormous. It's, like, huge. And who knows what the real. It could have been a joke. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you give your friends something, like a big dick on or something, but it's also like. Like, could have been totally serious. And it's like, that's body. He. He would wear that and you would see that. And it's like, there's your body. That guy's.

[A]

He's got a piece.

[B]

Yeah, he's got a piece. And he's the king. Like, there you go.

[A]

So it's stuffing, right? You put a sock in your pants.

[B]

And interestingly, too, medieval. So, like, trying to get into the psychology of, like, different figures throughout history. One thing you see a lot with medieval chroniclers when they're talking about a king is that they express their approval or disapproval or, like, the public's approval or disapproval of the king in the physical description of him. So if, like, people don't like this guy, the taxes have been bad, we've involved in a lot of foreign wars. He's described as fat with bad eyesight, and he's balding, and he's, you know, barely leaves his chambers, and his mistress is. Cheers. His queen is cheating on him with a. With a young knight. They're always being cuckled at. If they're a bad guy, that's a sign of being a bad guy. In medieval literature or someone that's meant to be laughed at, you get cuckolded. But if you're thought of as a virtuous king, Charlemagne's kind of the archetype for this of, like, the goat, like, medieval ruler, Christian ruler that everybody loves Charlemagne. They found his skeleton, and it's. He was, like, 6ft tall, which would have been very tall then anyway, but he's described as, like, six. Like, there is this one medieval account where he shows up at a castle for a siege, and he's so large that he blots out the sun on horseback. So it's like these crazy descriptions, but, like, the truth of it doesn't matter. Your morality, like, who you are as a person, and, like, your worth is tied to your physical appearance. So it's like something that Klavikir is talking about. It's like there's a real aspect of the human psyche that's a play that's been there for a long time.

[A]

Time, yeah.

[B]

Except now it would be like, I will break my legs surgically to get as tall as Charlemagne, whereas back then it would just be like, damn, that guy was special.

[A]

Yeah. Let me put on my heels.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I mean, what. Louis xvi basically, like, every French monarch had high heels.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they say, like. Oh, so that when they were stepping through horse poop, like, they were. Come on.

[B]

They were high maxing.

[A]

Yeah, they were for sure high maxing. Like the high heels were invented by

[B]

dudes to hype Max. Yeah, for sure.

[A]

And then women, slowly, they call it. They took from us. Yeah, yeah. But we started it for us, that is.

[B]

And we need to bring it back.

[A]

We need to bring it back. Exactly. I mean, it is funny that, like, it just. It all goes back around.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The other one you brought up was peptides and like experimental medicine, maybe that's, that's. I think that's fair to say. Yeah, it's an experimental treatment.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And yeah, it is interesting that there is very much an obsession with basically, like. I don't know what it is specifically, just speaking about, like, the current cultural implications, the, the widespread use of GLP1s and Ozempics, being kind of like the leader in this. It is an interesting phenomena where it's like, I've heard some people say. I've heard so many different justifications on both sides. Where I hear people say, look, the food that we eat is bad. Our society is corrupt. Capitalism has got its tendrils into every aspect of our lives, and so the food is just completely ripped of its nutrients. So as a result, people are fat. In order to help them, we're going to use that same mechanism to counteract the mechanism that caused in the first place, which is this commercialized pharmaceutical that then will make people say skinny. And so to me, it's like, I don't know, you're kind of like fighting fire with fire a little like, I don't know what the implications of that are. Like, I guess someone being thin is better than them, like being unhealthy. You know what I mean? Like, let me rephrase that. I like it. I think it's better if someone is in a healthier disposition rather than an unhealthy disposition. Right. So if you're morbidly obese and 600 pounds, it's probably better for you to not be that.

[B]

Right, Right.

[A]

So I'm like, okay, there's probably like a, A general benefit, but it is interesting that it's so widespread and that everyone's kind of like down for it. And then the peptide thing just in addition to that, and it's just like, yeah, you can get strong, you can get hot. Like, you can be like. I mean, testosterone therapy is like widespread. I have friends that are my age, younger than me, that are just like, Yeah, I just, I do HRT. I'm like, you're 27, like the peak of your testosterone, like. Yeah, just more. Yeah. And so I don't know if it's like we are just a culture of excess. We are a pill addicted culture that wants the fastest route to things. And that because it's commercially viable, you can and you know, there's a financial incentive to giving people shortcuts. I don't know really what the. I don't know what the singular reason is, but it is interesting that it has existed in other historical paradigms. And so could you elaborate on I guess the, the Chinese medicinal version of this? Within that period you tell yourself no

[B]

one wants your college era band tees,

[A]

but on Depop, people are searching for exactly what you've done got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Depop, just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would be a money making machine. Your style can make you cash start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste.

[B]

Yeah. So I mean there's a lot of, I mean a lot of the knowledge of, of traditional, well, what's now known as traditional Chinese medicine back then would have just been like, apparently traditional Chinese medicine, I found this out after I posted the video, is like a new term that's been applied in the 1900s and like prior to that it like specifically is referring to like practices that have been propagated in the last 100 years. So older than that is just like a different type of like ancient Chinese medicine.

[A]

But I also don't imagine the Chinese called it Chinese medicine.

[B]

No, no, they just call it medicine. That's how Chinese they are. But yeah, basically there's this big trend on TikTok right now of people trying to bring back these like Chinese methods. So one of them is like drinking hot water, which is apparently you should never drink cold water. You should always drink warm chi because you are warm.

[A]

Exactly. Drinking warm.

[B]

Yeah. All of this comes back to kind of ancient Chinese techniques of like maneuvering your chi and maneuvering your body's energy. And there have kind of been forms of this in every culture. There's like the whole thing that's big now with people with like breath work. A lot of that is like written about an ancient and even like medieval Chinese text texts as like manipulating your spiritual life force. The Hindus wrote about it, early Christian mystics wrote about it. And so sort of you see the idea of almost these like pharmaceutical chemical concoctions that can change your inner makeup for certain purposes. Like, and of course that's always existed as medicine for like, medical purposes. But this is like a society that's like Song dynasty China material materially wealthy enough to have like a significantly sized leisure and luxury class. Like, that's usually the sign of like an advanced civilization with like some level of like stability, safety. Like the Roman Empire would have had that. Like high medieval cultures would have had that, the Byzantine Empire, ancient Egypt. So basically what that means is like now people are having like aesthetic pursuits. First of all, this is like the birth of nightlife in China. Like, specific. Not, not just the Wot Sea, but like specific, like the restaurant district, the theater district. Like, this is like a new thing that's coming about what years. This is like what would have been the high Middle ages in Europe. So between like 900 to 1100 around A.D. i mean, this type of restaurant district and it sound modern.

[A]

Is it predating Europe's version of that?

[B]

I mean, tavern culture would have been around, but like, if you, if you read like Chinese primary source accounts, it's like you go in, there's a hostess, like, you order multiple like rounds of food, like it's a multicourse meal. And like the hostess is also like an entertainer. I don't know, it just sounds like very similar to something you would get at like a super fancy restaurant. It sounds very modern in a way that, yeah, I don't think tavern culture can really be. So yeah, definitely, I would say. But all of that to say that using some sort of like external force, like a manufactured chemical or something along those lines, an herbal remedy for purely aesthetic purposes, to lose weight, to have better skin, to do these things, that's something that's kind of coming about in this time period. And of course it's like there are, I'm sure recipes on tablets in Babylon that talk about, you know, ancient techniques for making your skin clearer. Like, these things have been around forever, but just this idea, even in like Europe, the idea of like magic or the idea of different spells and incantations you can say to get rid of wrinkles or things like that, like this exists as well. And there's also in the late Middle ages in Europe, like cosmetic handbooks became like pretty popular, which were basically like, for women specifically, how to like beautify yourself using things around the house and how to have like, better manners and how to, to like stand so you look better but you're not taller than your husband. And things like this. Like it was this whole. This idea we have of like Victorian European or Victorian English, like etiquette, you know, when you think like older, like the pinky out and like nobility, like that's when this is sort of starting to come around and all the looks maxing and like even something like a corset which. Which came along a little bit later but was starting to be developed in the middle ages and similar things started to be used. Comes from or even something like foot binding or like this idea of changing your physical for a purely aesthetic purpose that has no medical. No medical thing. So it's the same thing now I think with peptides or there are people that are taking those epic for. For actual medical purposes. Like they need to lose weight, they're morbidly obese. And then there's plenty of people. I have a friend who will not be named that was like a couple pounds overweight and just did like a 3 month ozempic regimen. Lost like 15 pounds. And then like that was it. There was no medical really need to do it. But it was like purely esthetic.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And now he looks great.

[A]

I bet you could train track like GLP1 use with the seasons.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like I'm sure like from now to,

[B]

you know, it might be time to

[A]

walk in May like dude, I bet you like it goes crazy.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Which would indicate to me that there is a. A social component more than a medical.

[B]

Okay, well that's what's interesting about this whole thing that, That I was thinking about was the same way that like gambling and all of this, even something like an only fans could be seen as like a form of online. It's not like in person, but it's like it is like a prostitution or like a. There's like that aspect of it that if you int. If you told somebody in the 90s about this concept of like cam girls, they would be like shocked. It would feel taboo.

[A]

There's a sex work component at the very least.

[B]

Yeah. So now that all of this has become so normalized. Gambling used to be something you had to go to Vegas to do. You did it under the table. You had a bookie all you didn't tell your wife about it. All these things. Now it's normalized. Same thing with like even five or ten years ago, like telling people like there's. There's this popular medication. You have to use a needle to inject it. Like the fear of the needle in the like Modern consciousness is. Was very real. Like, that would be insane. Like, that's for, like. Like, addicts and people. That's, like, for. It's either a vaccine or you're an addict.

[A]

But the fear of being ugly is

[B]

so much stronger, but it does away with those t. Those social taboos and actually changes social norms, which.

[A]

Yeah. There's also another component here. I've heard people do jokes about this. So this is. I'm going to invoke jester's privilege here.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Just as a comedian, this is a joke that I've heard. Okay. But it is funny that, like, body positivity did go away with the advent of the GLP1.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That for a good part of the. The. The O's, the teens, we were told, like, big is beautiful. And then the second there was a pill to get rid of big, it was like, yeah, you should be skinny. Immediately everyone was like, nah.

[B]

And now emaciated is back. Like Kate Moss. That look is back.

[A]

The heroin chic. Yeah. Yeah. Which people have even pointed out that there's, like, a, like, a OIC face. You've seen this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Where, like, you can tell when someone's, like, losing weight naturally. Because, like, this is what people said. Again, I don't even really, really know, because I. My understanding is that Oz. Epic. Basically just, like, what is it? It basically disrupts your hunger. Like, what is it? Ghrelin, I think, and basically just makes you not eat as much. So I would assume that the effects would be the same as if you were, like, fasting or, like, eating Right. Healthy. But people say, like, oh, you can see, like, muscle deterioration, like, the face and stuff.

[B]

Yeah. I feel like you're losing weight so quickly, right?

[A]

Yeah, maybe. But I'm like, if you just fasted, wouldn't that also do the same thing?

[B]

Right. Yeah, I'm not really sure, like, the. The. The chemical mechanisms. My friend who took, like, did. Did his, like, OIC regimen for three months was, like, shocked at how effective it was.

[A]

Right.

[B]

He's like, I literally go. The whole, like, food used to be the center of my day. Like, I could not even have a sleeve of Oreos in the house. It would be gone in seconds. He's like, I. I will go, like, 14 hours without eating and, like, forget that I was supposed to have eaten.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Which is crazy. I don't know. Sometimes it's like, maybe this is. It just seems crazy to. But if it works, it works.

[A]

That's the thing. I'm also big on. I'm big. On f. Fasting. I love fasting.

[B]

Oh, me too.

[A]

Yeah. Like, I'm like, this came to me through a bunch of different ways, but, like, I love reading, like, religious literature because basically every religious practice around the world has a fasting component, which indicates to me, like, all right, there's some utility here. Like, the fact that this is codified through every divine lens means that, like, it's beneficial for humans. And so I fast all the time and I love it. And my thing with oic, though, is I'm like, I don't know if it's free. You know what I mean? Like, anytime there's like a pill to, like, supply, there's a trade off.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm like, I don't know what it is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, I don't. Like, I. I doubt that it's free. Like, even, like, you know, I'll drink coffee all the time. Like, it gives me a boost. I'm like, that's not free, though.

[B]

Yeah. I still comes with anxiety.

[A]

Yeah. Like, yeah, of course. Like, I'm like, cracked out. Like, I don't think it's unethical, but I'm like, I don't think it's free. So for me, I'm just like, you know, I'm just. I like sticking with my fasting and working out. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about another. Another thing. The AI alchemy video that you did. This is fascinating. Could you kind of just explain to the audience why you see a parallel with AI in the current age and sort of how people viewed alchemy in the medieval ages?

[B]

Yeah, well, I think alchemy in the Middle Ages was kind of this poorly understood. It was basically four super educated people that had the means to kind of pursue this secret science of turning lead into gold or turning kind of any metal into gold. And basically it was poorly understood. And sort of the definition of what didn't. It didn't count as alchemy was kind of nebulous. And also the results of this alchemy experiment in a lot of cases, didn't really lead to anything that was immediately practical, but down the road it had positive side effects. But essentially what I saw with alchemy was that even the alchemists themselves, if they did get some kind of result from their experiment, first of all, they were attempting to play God by, like, reorganizing and changing the natural world to fit their whims, either to turn lead into gold or, like, influence, like, how human beings, like, grow in the womb and these kind of crazy ideas that they had basically this idea that you can have a role in like, divine creation and that you can, as a human being exert some kind of influence on what previously would have been thought of as only God's domain to be doing those things. And that whichever way this turns out, it. It was ordained by God to turn out that way. So if I have lead and I burn it at a certain temperature and I do, this whole process becomes gold. Like, that has been blessed, obviously, because here it is and I'm not going to question it. And it's the same thing I see a lot with AI. I said in the video, very controversially, this was like the number one comment driver was that even the people who design these large language language models don't necessarily understand how they work. And I had a bunch of like, poindexters in the comments being like, well, actually, but the reality is If I open ChatGPT and I'm like, hey, I'm depressed and my life sucks and this is what's going on. Like, can you give me a plan of action to help help? And it gives me the plan of action. These engineers can understand what I put in and they can understand what came out, but they can't like, fundamentally understand, like, they can't lay out why it arrived at these specific conclusions or why it used this information to answer my question or gave me this precise answer. It's unpredictable.

[A]

It's a prediction model based off of data.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And you can put an input in and it's going to give you the next thing in the code, like another token.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And you can, you can retroactively understand it, but you can't know with 100% certainty what it will spit out.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so that, I think, is what you were implying by that, which is like, yeah, they don't, they don't know what's going to happen next.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

They know what could happen next, but they don't know with 100% certainty.

[B]

Yeah, it's the same thing with alchemy too. Again with this idea. I think you see it with kind of like a Sam Altman type figure or like Jensen Huang or any of these kind of new pioneers of AI is that they are pitching, like, there's a marketing aspect to it as well. Like Sam Altman specifically is like pitching this to the public as like the next step in human evolution that like AI will cure cancer, AI will solve all of our problems. Like, none of us will need to work and like, AI will, will do all these things. It'll create A utopian Earth. And it was the same thing with a lot of the alchemists. They're like, if we can figure out. Because even at its core, if you're just turning lead from gold, that means human beings can influence the natural world in a way, like God. So if you can transmute a substance like that, the implications are endless. Like, you. You have like divine power and that sense. So it's this whole idea that we've been through before and even like going back to Ozempic, like this Faustian bargain like you are, no matter how good it seems, you're paying for it in some way. With AI right now, we're paying for it and, you know, these data centers. And also it's already disrupting the job force and all these things. And I'm not necessarily anti. I think it has its uses, but it's just interesting to see kind of this same, Same almost blind spot in the human psyche repeating itself, that there's never any free lunch and there's no magic solution to all of our problems. And anytime somebody's telling you that there is, you should be very wary of it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's a really interesting. Yeah, it's really interesting. I think, like, in the video, you even talk about, like, you're not as doomist about AI than I've heard a lot of people sort of suggest. And I wonder if your historical perspectives kind of informed that where. And I forget which video it might have been this one or another one. It might be the Renaissance video where you talk about AI and how there's like, yeah, it's going to, like, do some good stuff and do some bad stuff, but, like, there actually might be an artistic boon that happens from AI. Could you expand on that idea and why you're not terrified of AI taking your job or, you know, destroying the moral core of what humans are about.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, I think at its core, anytime, just from studying history, like, anytime there's like a major challenge or disruption, like human beings do find a way. And so that's something that just fundamentally, with any, like, major societal change, I think we're still figuring it out with the Internet. Like, we still haven't really figured out the Internet and social media. And then now we're introducing like, this whole crazy new variable, and it's going to take a little while to sort it all out. But what I was talking about in my Renaissance video was I was comparing it in the late Middle Ages to the invention of the printing press, which was this kind of major Disruption in the spread of knowledge, literacy in Europe, who could access what. And it kind of changed everything. Like in the space of like 20 or 30 years. Years, which back then that was like a very short period. Like now a lot can happen in 30 years. But for a lot to happen in 30 years in the late 1400s was like a big deal. Like, like now anybody could print a pamphlet saying anything. So before, like the church and like very specific sources had a monopoly on what information you got. Just like, like up until the Internet, like a few television networks had a monopoly over what you were allowed to see and know. And then now it's like the floodgate has been opened. And what had to happen with the printing press was that there was a period of time, time where first of all, people implicitly trusted everything they saw. If it was printed, that means it was legit, because for a thousand years, you know, anything that was written down was important. So even if it's some crazy guy in your neighborhood who just printed a pamphlet, because you can do that now, you would take it as fact because it's printed. Then there was a period where everybody distrusted everything that was printed. And it's like all of this is nonsense, which I think we're all going through now with AI in a very compressed form. And then it kind of became like certain ways, like certain legislature was introduced and like you kind of have to have official certifications to be able print. Like not everybody can just have a printing press in their house. Things like that. That kind of smoothed out. But it was a process of people being like, no way. I believe all of this. I believe none of it. And then it's like, okay, more nuanced. And I think that's what's going to happen now with this AI boom is that the flood of information, especially the flood of deep fakes, is going to need you. You see it now on Instagram, but it's not perfect where it'll say like, this was AI generated or something in the corner, corner. But there's tons of AI videos that don't have that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But at least they're trying to like stamp it with something. I do love to see that OpenAI just got rid of Sora like yesterday. Yeah. So it's like that's a big step in the right direction because I feel like fundamentally there's no use. There's no use case for it for me, just for my perspective. And then the other part of it is that I think human made things, I think in the video or maybe I did this or somebody else did this and it got all mixed up. But it'll be similar to like organic food. Like, it'll have a, like a label on it, like, this was human made. And that will like, increase its value value. And who knows if it could trickle down to more in person performances. Because that can't be AI'd. Even if I go to the movie theater, that could all be AI. But if I go see a comic in person, like, that has to be real and like, by nature. If I open up social media and everything I see on my Instagram feed is AI slop, my motivation is like, I want to go see something real. It's like part of the human spirit.

[A]

Exactly. Mark Ag on Live this year.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Check the tour dates. But so I don't know. I just always have hope that. And I see a lot of promising young, young voices in the space.

[A]

And I think you're exactly right on this. Like, that's how I look at it. I'm not like, I'm not doom and gloom. Like, I think AI exists as like a threat to certain things. Like, is it possible it could destabilize, like, like security systems? Can we have like a financial crisis?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Like, is it gonna gain like this AGI sentience that people are talking about? I think Jensen Huang literally just said recently that they have AGI guy. Is it going to like, then co opt itself to like, destroy humanity? I'm like, terminator thing sounds a little far fetched. It could happen, but I'm like, that's not the thing that's threatening to me. To me, it's going to be a similar shift categorically to social media, where it does a lot of great things, where it connects families and it creates careers. Like, you know, you and me. Or it, you know, like, even just like, is entertaining. And it will also at the same time simultaneously be like an avenue for crime and destruction and rumors and information issues and like, and, you know, depression, all this stuff. And both things are happening at the same time. So it's just sort of bifurcating the human experience and it's like pushing us in either direction. The same thing with the advent of like, money, like fractional reserve banking or the financialization of our economies. Like, I can buy a house on credit, but I can also get enslaved to debt. It's like, is it good or bad? It just is like, I think ascribing these like, moral labels to things kind of loses the complexity. And I think AI is probably the same way where it's going to do a lot of great things and it might solve some types of cancers or it might be an early detector for, you know, some type of diseases. But also it will create this information implosion and like, potentially create this mushy softness in the spirits of men where, like, our brains just turn to nothing because we don't think for ourselves and it's like an external organ. Who knows? Yeah, but I think it's both a lot. And that's why I'm kind of like, all right, like, we will prevail. And I do think with AI Art specifically, it's going to lose the human element that will make human art, that organic art that you're talking about, so much more valuable. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I just got a cheat code that I want to tell you guys. All right? I am at an age in my life where unfortunately, a normal night out has consequences. Not like, not even crazy drinking. Like just a couple of drinks in the next next day. I'm wrecked. My sleep score is bad, My head feels bad. On my whoop. It tells me, hey, you slept like crap. And that's why I use Cheers Restore. This is basically a dual action after alcohol aid that supports both my brain and my liver. And it's created after research on a compound called dhm, designed for how alcohol actually affects your body. Before, I would just drink a bunch of water and hope, but now Cheers was store actually gives you the actual chemicals to make you feel better. It's been on Shark Tank, it's sold over 30,000 stores, and it's backed by doctors and clinicians. And the promise is pretty simple. You're going to feel 50% better the next day or your money back. All you need to do is take three capsules after your last drink or before bed. And this isn't for going crazy, all right? But if you're just like a normal adult having a few drinks, it really helps. So the viewers of this channel, great news for you. You're going to get 20% off when you use the code camp. That's C A M. P at cheers. Help health.com go to cheershealth.com use the code camp, get 20% off. You're going to go out, have just as much fun and feel way better the next morning to get after it and tell them the good folks over at Camp Gagnon sent you. Let's get back to the show. I always think about like the four minute mile or like even like, why is a four minute mile when it was broken, why is that so interesting? If a car can also do a four minute mile, it's because a human did it. And a human reflects you and your own personal ego that you get to project onto this achievement. And you go, wow, this person is capable of great things. We're genetically the same thing. So that means I'm capable of great things. And it's inspiring. Thus why we watch it like Michelangelo's David. You look at it and you go, wow, what a beautiful piece of art. He did it at a time when it was so hard to do. He overcame so many odds to create this piece of art. And that's inspiring to me. You're not looking at it being like this great Jewish king of Israel, you know what I mean? You're looking at it being like, look at what Michelangelo did. And so ultimately the human component was, with its complexity, imperfections and imperfections is ultimately what makes art interesting. Yeah. And so, yeah, AI art would be cool in a, in an extent because like maybe it like serves some like very legitimate like crucial function where it's like branding for like a taco shop or something. And like they use AI whatever. But if you really want to like mo move people through art, whether it's movies or anything else, it needs to have a human component. Which is why I think, think that future will probably be a mixture of like human beings plus AI. But human beings will always be intrinsic to that process, which I do think will create a renaissance type thing where you have AI in collaboration with human ingenuity. And there's such a premium on the human component plus a scalability with the AI component that I do think it will erupt. And I didn't really think about it in this way until I saw your video where I was like, yeah, I think that there will be a return to the humanness. I just think that AI will probably be more of a part of that.

[C]

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[A]

Yeah, you know, no.

[B]

Yeah, I think. And I feel like most normal people have a healthy skepticism of AI. I know there's like, the trope of, like, your boomer parents seeing, like a slop on their Facebook and believing it, but I feel like most people, I also have boomer parents and, like, they're able to recognize that Donald Trump can't dump dunk a basketball on their Instagram reels. So, you know, I think there's a healthy skepticism. And most people do, at least at this point, seem to view it as a tool as opposed to, like, something that can do all of your thinking for you. And I do wonder if you're talking about, like, the bifurcation of, you know, this thing comes along and people either go one way or another. There will be certain people that, like, maybe their brains will turn to mush and they'll be like, oh, wow, I can outsource everything to AI. And I think the sign of, like, those who will succeed in the new reality or those who are able to resist that and use AI for, you know, purposes that are advancing to them or advancing to the people around them, but don't necessarily succumb to this, you know, craziness around it or this ability to. It can really do everything for you now, especially in, like a. If you. You're like a white collar worker, it can do spreadsheets, it can do emails, it can do all that stuff. So it's like, where do you draw the line, I think is what is going to separate those who succeed in the AI paradigm from those who don't. Yeah, it's just. It's obviously a huge paradigm shifter and a huge change coming upon us. And I see a lot of doom and gloom about it online. And I think that's simply because the algorithm rewards that. There are a lot of doom and gloom pamphlets about the end of the world being circulated when the printing press came about. And those were super, super popular. And attacks on the church were super popular in those pamphlets. So were, like, religious writings, books of the hours, prayer books. Like, all those positive things also came out of the printing press as well.

[A]

I mean, the Gutenberg Bible.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Became accessible to people. And so there's a lot of nuance to things. And one thing that surprised me about the success of my Renaissance video is that it's hopeful and that yet. Yet people watched it and the algorithm pushed it. So maybe that's even signal signaling some change, you know, because it felt like for a long time the algorithm only pushed, like, really divisive, upsetting stuff. And a couple people have, like, kind of done their own version of that video. It's been somewhat influential. And those videos have done well in the algorithm too, which I'm fine with because it's like, I want more people to know about this. Yeah.

[A]

It is ironic that an AI powered algorithm is promoting content that is so critical to AI, you know what I mean?

[B]

It just cares about the ad revenue and the clicks. At the end of the day, something

[A]

was respectful about it, you know what I mean? Like, hey, you can just shit on me, you know what I mean? You can destroy my reputation, but spurgeon my name. But it's the right kind of content. It's what we need.

[B]

It's what the people.

[A]

It's what they want, you know, so I'll even do it at my own expense. I can, I can actually, you know what? I invite our AI.

[B]

Yeah, I respect it. Yeah.

[A]

What other ways are we currently living in the medieval times or in ancient history in some way?

[B]

Yeah, well, I think everything that's happening right now just with the advancements in technology and kind of the rate at which the modern world, like, the speed at which it functions, everything's happening in like a collapse. So it's like a single decade. The Middle Ages were a thousand years, but like, a single decade could mirror the Middle Ages and a single decade could mirror 200 years of renaissance. Because things move so quickly. And just a lot of parallels between the Middle Ages and now, first and foremost, like, most people were not literate in the Middle Ages for a variety of reasons. And now you see a Gen Alpha literacy crisis because they're giving these kids iPads as soon as, like, they're old enough to like, sit up on their own. They have Chromebooks in school. And so there's all of these statistics. There's these statistics coming out about how like Gen Alpha, they can sound out the words, but they can't comprehend the sentence. Like, it's a different kind of reading. So it's like they can recognize the individual words, but they can't, like, explain to you what the passage means, which is like a big part of reading comprehension. So there's a literacy crisis. Most people. Most people don't read for pleasure anymore. That's totally gone by the wayside. I mean, that started, like, 80 years ago or 60 years ago with the television and then now with, like, Instagram. Why would you ever read a book? And that hearkens back to the Middle Ages, because in a time when most people couldn't read, they got their information visually. So, like, important. If you walk into a medieval church, important religious concepts about, like, salvation or about Jesus or about hell would be painted on the wall very explicitly. So, like, anybody could understand, like, there is the devil consuming your body. There is, like, sinners screaming in flames. I mean, these are, like, on the walls of church. Here's Christ, like, in his kingdom with angels. That's where a lot of this, like, beautiful medieval art comes from. It's, like, sending a theological message. It's meant to educate the illiterate.

[A]

The Stations of the Cross is literally like, here's what happened in the Bible.

[B]

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

It's a comic book.

[B]

You don't have to know how to read. Exactly. And the same thing. What became really popular in late medieval Catholicism were what were called passion plays, where, like, a troop of actors would come to your town and act out scenes from the Gospels, and that's how people would learn. And also people in the Middle Ages, historians have described them as, like, almost childlike, just in the way that they're described in contemporary chronicles and in the way that their emotions are expressed. Just from what we can tell from what survived from the time period that there was a lot more. More. I don't know, the things that we would think of today as cringe or kind of the impact of, like, Puritanism on Western culture and, like, how much more reserved we all are. But that was not a thing in medieval Catholicism. And, like, you read these contemporary accounts and, like, everybody's weeping as the priest raises the Eucharist, and there's a procession around town on Easter with the risen Christ. And, you know, people are, like, screaming and dropping to their knees, and the procession goes on for three days and nobody eats. And it's, like, crazy. It's craziness. And, I don't know, maybe some of that's, like, some of the algorithmic fervor you see now of people going, like, super crazy over these things that maybe they might not even fully understand. Especially people on social media that, like, really rally behind a cause but aren't ne. Like, they make it their whole identity, but they don't. If you, like, ask them, they couldn't really explain it super in depth. So if you learned most of your theology from, like, a church wall, like, you couldn't you know, you're biblical. Like, ability to explain, like, dense theological concepts might not be as. As, you know, fleshed out.

[A]

Yeah, that's so interesting. Yeah. I can imagine asking like a medieval person. I'm like, okay, so you believe in one God, but also the Trinity. How does that make sense? And they'd be like, bro, just look at the stained glass. Like, that's what I believe. Like, I'm not. Come on, I'm not a theologian. Right. In the same way you could ask someone, like, a deep cut, like, political thing where they're like, oh, like, you're a good Christian Republican. Like, explain, explain. Like, Trump has got some bad stuff. They'd be like, he had this slogan, you know, like, they've kind of, like, the hat. Yeah. Like, they're kind of, like, invoking the same thing. Or like, you see clips of people being like, oh, to the river, to the sea. Like, which one?

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

And then they're like, I don't just look, they're doing the bad. Like, they don't know really what they're talking about. And it's like the same thing. We're sort of invoking the slogan and the icon because they, in the olden days lacked a literal literacy, and now they're kind of lacking perhaps a political literacy, you know, a media literacy. Yeah, it's a big thing, and it's a really interesting crossover that you. Has that always been a thing, though? Is that just a human condition?

[B]

Yeah, I think also. Well, just like, if just looking at, like, the Bible, because there's a very clear before and after of. Of people in Europe having access to, like, a Bible they can have in their house and they can read. Like, that happens after the advent of the printing press and the Protestant Reformation. Before that, the Bible is something that the priest reads to you in church. He would deliver a homily in, like, the common tongue. The rest of the Mass would be in Latin, but the homily would be in your common tongue. And then you would see passion plays. You would see there would be, like, a lot of oral traditions. In a way, weirdly, medieval Catholics would know the bi. Maybe they couldn't explain the Trinity as, like. As conceptually as we can, but they, like, lived and breathed Scripture. Like, they. Everything in their life was related to a story of Solomon or David or Saul or, you know, the. The Gospels were part of, like, everyday expression. Like, they could quote at length, you know, so these were people who really lived and breathed Scripture. So in a way, they had a biblical Literacy that we now lack. And then also with the Bible, I think, or with religion or really with anything. Even now with like media literacy, it's like there's, there's these YouTubers, I mean there's a lot of them, there's like a whole genre of like, who break down movies and point out like all the inaccuracies and all the plot holes or whatever and it like ruins the movie. It's like you have to be able to have, I don't want to say mysticism in this sense, but like you have to be willing to suspend your imagination, like feel something and like tap into that and like we don't have to over intellectualize everything and it's the same thing. Like medieval people saw the Bible, they heard the Bible and they lived the Bible. They saw themselves as like they're the archetypes of these characters that they read about so much. Like they're part of this grand story that's still being told. And I think now in the modern day we over intellectualize everything to the point that no wonder like media literacy is dead because we take everything literally. I mean, even now people are like, well, it's impossible to make the world in seven days. And it's like, well, medieval people would have known that was a metaphor. Like in a way that they were, they were more intelligent than we were because they were willing to have some sense of like mysticism and mystical and metaphorical understanding of things, whereas we're so literal and of kind concrete that now with this newer generation, it's like destroying their media literacy.

[A]

Right, that's interesting.

[B]

So many like actors, I mean, how many actors now have gotten some social media campaign against them because they misphrase something in a. Or they play a character in a movie that's like problematic and then that's like now that's. Or whatever.

[A]

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, there's not, I guess there's not room is maybe is a good, interesting way to put it where it's like now there's no room. It's like you say the wrong thing. Like it's possible people get mad. Whereas I wonder if in a different time there's like space for metaphor. There's a thing that I've heard, I forget who I was talking to. There's some historian that was talking to specifically about the Middle Middle Ages and his sort of general thesis is like, there's a lot of anti medieval propaganda that goes on where like the flat earth thing, for example, he was telling me like no one really thought, yeah, no one.

[B]

Yeah, that had been known since, like, classical times.

[A]

And that this was kind of a propaganda campaign that was put on by. I forget who exactly could you speak to that whole idea of the flat earth.

[B]

Yeah, well, so, I mean, where a lot of that propaganda starts to come from is from the early Renaissance. I mean, there are these Italian guys, Petrarch is the most kind of famous who starts writing about the Middle Age. He starts calling it the Middle Age. That's where that starts to come from. Of, like, there was this time of antiquity of the Greeks and the Romans.

[A]

And it was good.

[B]

Yeah, it was good. Then there's this Middle Age, a thousand years of brutality calls it that was bad. And then now, us, this small group of Italian guys, we are bringing back the light. We are bringing into, you know, something new. So he's the first one that kind of starts to, like, cast this negative view on the Middle Ages. And really, in that context, it's to separate himself and what he's doing and what his friends are doing as something new and different, as opposed to, like, what everybody else is doing. And then later, in the Enlightenment, it's kind of a similar thing. Like, we are progressive. We are bringing forward a new future. And to do that, we have to contrast ourselves with our ancestors. So we have to paint them as very, like, barbaric and brutal or. And that. Us, by contrast, like, look at us. We have constitutions and we have, you know, actual, like, organized government and complex economies or whatever. So we have to, like, paint them a certain way. And then really, in the 19th century, like, is when historians started to think about history and write about history in the way we understand it now as, like, eras, because that wasn't really a thing before. So it's like, first there was the Roman Republic, then the Roman Empire, then there were the Dark Ages, then there was the High and Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Like. Like, somebody a thousand years ago wouldn't have thought in, like, eras that same way. It was a lot blurrier and a lot more general. So it's like a. It's a. There's a lot of things going on, and I. I think there's a lot of different reasons for it, but I think a lot of it comes from a lack of understanding of that time period.

[A]

I heard it was the same thing with, like, Galileo, for example. When we were talking, you were saying that, like, the Church is seen as, like, very rigid and dogmatic and, like, legalistic in our current memory, but it wasn't really that way. Like, they obviously had lines you shouldn't cross. And I believe. And I'm going to probably butcher some parts of this, but Galileo is basically talking about heliocentrism, and he was building on the work of Copernicus. And so Galileo is like, I'm going to publish this whole thing about heliocentrism and how the sun is actually the center of the universe and the Earth goes around it, as opposed to the geocentric model where the puts God's jewel, the creation of mankind, at the sun center. And the Pope, I forget who it was, was basically like, hey, Galileo, you can publish this if you want. Just do me a favor. Make sure you say that, like, the Earth has a creation. You can't say that it's eternal because then that kind of, like, undermines God. Also, while you're at it, make sure that, like, you just put God, like, at the center of this. Like, God put the sun here. Like, just make it about God. Like, you don't. And he was kind of like, broken a deal in Galile. Was like, yeah, for sure, sure. I got you. And then when Galileo publishes this specific text, he does it in a dialogue, and he makes Galileo himself, and then he makes the dumb guy that he's interlocuting with. Yeah, the Pope.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so then, as a result, the Pope is like, bro, like, I just. I just told you, like, be cool about this. Yeah, I'll. You can publish your thing and send. The Pope had to come down on and be like, all right, bro, like, you're under house arrest. Yeah. And then locks him up. Yeah. And when you hear it in that way, you're like, oh, Galileo was kind of. Of being a. Yeah, yeah. Whereas the story that we're kind of told is like, Galilee was fighting for the truth and the church was trying to suppress freedom and that it was. The church is the bad guy. And they look stupid when it's kind of that, but not really.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is that a fair retelling? You can.

[B]

Yeah, no, that's like. That's. That's pretty much totally accurate. And I think a lot of it has to do well. I mean, this is now getting, like, tinfoil hack conspiracy theory. But, like, obviously, America. America. America is founded by, like, Protestant settlers. It's set up freaking Protestants. These Protestants, dude. That's the root of it all.

[A]

Did you grow up. Up Catholic?

[B]

No, I'm an adult convert. I grew up Protestant, actually.

[A]

You're Catholic now?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No. When did you convert?

[B]

Two years ago.

[A]

Let's go, dude.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When did you get confirmed

[B]

last Easter.

[A]

No way.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Hell yeah, dude. Yeah. An adult convert. Dutch convert, too. That's wild.

[B]

Caused some ripples in the family.

[A]

No way.

[B]

Not really. I didn't really care.

[A]

That's.

[B]

But it was just like an interesting, like, why did he do that type of thing?

[A]

That's what I'm thinking. Like, I. I grew up Catholic my whole life, so the idea of like a. A converted adult is.

[B]

Well, yeah, I think the more I. The more I started studying, the more I was like, I think this is the way I wanted to go. Plus, I just. I loved Mass and I loved everything kind of just about the history and the theology and just made sense to me.

[A]

Well, whatever you're about to say here, I'm so excited to hear you defend the medieval church. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Well, so basically, I feel like so much of the, like, am American culture, American pop culture, and the American education system was decided by Protestants. Like, that's who built this country. It's who ran this country for a long time. So it's like always. There has always been an anti Catholic background to, like, everything. There were like anti Catholic leagues in the United states for like 200 years. Like, this was like, Catholics were seen in the same camp as, like, atheists and like Jews and Muslims and like, it's like Protestants versus everybody.

[A]

You're getting. My mom is so happy here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

My mom always tells me, she's like, you know, Mark, the biggest lynching in American history. Catholics. Well, yeah. All right. Yeah.

[B]

So it's.

[A]

I'm not going to compare the Catholic plight to black people's play, but I hear what you're saying. It was the Catholics, it was Italians.

[B]

Yeah. So the Italians and the Irish, they had at the worst stories. But yeah, so it's, It's. I think a lot of that has trickled down into, like, popular perception of things and also what. What you're taught in public school. Because I was taught that exact same thing, that the Middle Ages were bad because the evil Catholic Church suppressed knowledge, even though they were the keepers of knowledge and propagators of knowledge and charity houses and hospitals and universities and all the things that brought the world forward. They kept knowledge, they grew knowledge. In the Middle Age ages, they kept the lights on basically for a thousand years and progressed knowledge from the classical world. And also. Yeah, a lot of the, A lot of the ways things are spun. Galileo is a great example, is that, you know, that they were evil and suppressing knowledge, but they had no reason to do that. They funded knowledge that Was the whole thing.

[A]

Oh, they accidentally founded Western civilization. Sorry. Yeah, sorry everybody.

[B]

Yeah, that's crazy.

[A]

Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, but that's the story that was told. And then this guy comes along, he's like, no, what was his name? The Italian professor. I feel so bad for his name, but he broke this down. I was like, oh that. But that makes more sense to me like. Cuz I never experienced like. I mean granted the medieval church is very different and like the selling of indulgences was probably a bad move. But all that to say like everything I've ever read about like the church in that time period was like, it was kind of flexible. Like there was like. Yeah, they were kind of doing like the everyday magic you were talking about. They were down with like, yeah, you can change science. Like they're funding scientific exploits. And then to come down super hard on this guy seemed out of character.

[B]

Yeah. And it's. I think a lot of people also have like this misconception, like the medieval church was just like killing people all the time. Like they were burning people at the stake all the time.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That was like super, super rare. And also what we think of today is like the witch trials and all that. I see a lot of people miss like label that as medieval, but that was well, that was well after the witch trials were like a process.

[A]

Nothing to do with it.

[B]

Yeah, that was a Protestant thing.

[A]

That was the protest. Yeah, that was the process going after. After. Yeah.

[B]

Pope Urban, they watered everything down. Protestants. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Ivano del Prete, Italian astronomer. This guy's awesome. He's a ledge.

[B]

It's got a great name.

[A]

Oh, it's the best name I ever do. And he's a piece handsome guy. Professor at Yale.

[B]

I think Italians, they age well.

[A]

Everybody scroll down a little. Oh yeah, he's pretty sure. Yeah. Legend. But yeah, that's just such a. It is a funny perception which I guess does come from, you know, like protestant kind of thinking specifically when it comes to. Yeah. The formation of America. I also heard an interesting thing that came out of like the printing press. That the printing press fundamentally not only changes how people are interacting with information, but like a whole school of thought. Because with the printing press comes like high literacy. With the printing press comes the 95 theses of Martin Luther. With that brings a. A decentralized understanding of faith. With this high literacy and decentralized understanding of faith and the religion basically getting exported and growing really quickly into England, Scotland, especially with King Henry VII's decree that the Trors no longer has any jurisdiction in England, that he's now the head of the church. It invents the Scottish Enlightenment. From the Scottish Enlightenment, you get John Smith, who writes wealth of nations, that basically invents modern calculations, capitalism. And it all kind of trickles from this invention of the printing press and like from that version of capitalism, creates the American economic system, kind of creates the global economic system, creates like puritanical American manifest destiny by prosperity gospels. That all kind of trickles from that one moment. Yeah, the butterfly effect of that and how it's affected the entire world. World is pretty drastic.

[B]

Yeah, it's crazy. No, I know. And I think the way sometimes things can be viewed historically in retrospect is that once X happened, then Y was inevitable. So once the printing press comes about and literacy kind of starts to trickle down from the noble classes to like everyday people, like, okay, this was inevitable, but actually that's not the truth. And if you look especially like just taking late medieval England as an example, like prior to the Reformation in England, which was forceful at the hands of Henry viii, it wasn't like some natural uprising of the people. It was a forceful stripping of Catholicism. Catholicism was like, beloved. It was like the center of people's lives. It had like a rich history. It was a rich cultural tradition. In England, people loved their local saints and the liturgy and the Mass. And like, if you existed outside of that paradigm, it was very rare. Like you were an outlier. Like, there wasn't a big. There were the Lollards who were like, mostly university guys who were like, screw the Pope. But most everyday people were like, very deeply devoted to the Catholic faith and it was forcibly taken away from them. And actually in England, the printing press was more mostly used to publish Catholic devotional works. So the types of things that would have been too expensive for a normal person to get their hands on 100 years before because it had to be hand illustrated and handwritten like a book of the hour. So you could do the daily liturgy or, you know, something to bring with you to Mass. You could read along to the Gospels now that could be printed for everyone. And so their devotion to Catholicism deepened instead of it tearing them away from the church. So there's a. Yeah. And also people talk about, like, with the US there's a thousand different directions you can go of like the ripple effect of the Protestant Reformation. I'm not going to say it was all bad or all this or nothing history, black and white. But there's the Protestant work ethic which built America. But I think now a lot of people bemoan as, like, it turned up until at least the Reformation, like, you live. You work to live, you didn't live to work. Like, that concept was completely foreign. Like, medieval people. There's this meme that medieval people worked less hours than we do, which there's a lot of nuance to that. But, like, you were expected to do as much as you needed to do to, like, sow and reap the harvest. And, like, you had a lot more free time now. You had to spend that free time gathering food, fixing your house, sewing clothes, like, things we don't have to do. So they were occupied during those hours. But it was an attitude of, like, you do these things every day, like this cluster of things so you can live your life, whereas now it's like, you work for most of the day so you can have, like, two hours to yourself at night. And I think a lot of that comes from. And my final point on that will be that in the wake of the Reformation, it was like a total toppling of the central authority that had stood in Europe for a thousand years at the Catholic Church that everybody knew as, like, the premier. Like, what they say goes. They have ultimate spiritual power. And then now you've, like, stripped them apart. You've, you know, you've all these guys going in different directions saying, you know, this is true, this is true. Martin Luther, John Wycliffe, these guys that are Jan Hus who are preaching all of these different doctrines. And a lot of people now that the Catholic Church, in their eyes, have had been, you know, stripped apart instead of now becoming Protestant, they're like, oh, I just don't believe any of it now because, like, we. This was like an unassailable institution for a thousand years. You just told me it's all nonsense. I'm not now going to come follow your institution. I'm just not going to do anything. Like, screw it. Like, the. The. It. It was the beginning of, like, modern atheism and agnosticism, which would have been, like, unthinkable to the medieval mind. And I think a modern loss of God, which I think has been ultimately damaging. I'm not like a religious nut or anything that thinks everybody needs to, like, believe in God or whatever, but I do think it's impacted, like, our attitude towards beauty that you can see in our architecture. We don't build towards God. We don't build for eternity. We don't think of eternity. And even going back to, like, gambling apps and Uber Eats and, I mean, These are symptomatic of a society that, like, has shifted its. Its ideals.

[A]

Yeah, I think that is. I think that is an astute observation. I mean, yeah, so much of, like, the great architecture that was ever done developed in Europe, really, anywhere in the world. I mean, go to the Muslim world or the Hindu world. The greatest architecture is built for God because it financially makes no sense. Right, right. Like, you're losing money on this to. There's no way you can fund these things if you're trying to make money. And so now you kind of build things that are the most cost effective. And, like, the new God is sort of financial. Right. So as a result, you build toward this sort of, you know, lifeless.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Kind of like white boxes. And you're like, all right, I get.

[B]

Yeah. Which does. It does something to your soul. I don't know. It feels like it's. Instead of a. Like, a massive gothic cathedral would lift your soul up to the heavens, especially if you're attending mass there. There's incense, there's chant. It's all designed to bring you somewhere mentally and spiritually. That's the whole point of it. No matter what social class you're from, you're welcome in there. In medieval Europe. And now it feels like the architecture, it's, like, designed to make you feel, like, small and insignificant. Like, whereas Gothic architecture is like, you exist within this heavenly order, and, like, this is your role. And, like, look at what God. Like, look what we do to recognize, reach God. And then now it's like, at the. Here at the DMV or something. It's like brutalist architecture, fluorescent lighting. I understand there's, like. It's economical. Like, it's. It's.

[A]

Yeah, there's a reason.

[B]

Yeah. But I just. I wonder what it does to you.

[A]

Yeah, well, you've seen, like, with fast food restaurants or, like, any type of, you know, commercial sort of chain, like, the way that they're building structures now are completely uniform and have no external indicator or marking.

[B]

Where's the ball pit?

[A]

We lost the ball pit.

[B]

And that's when America started to fall apart.

[A]

It's like people moved away from, like, the Pizza Hut ification, because if there was something that was a Pizza Hut, it looked like a Pizza Hut forever. And so the resale value on that property was so low. So now you just build a Chipotle, but you make it a box because you still own the land. And then you lease it to a, you know, chase bank in 10 years, and you can just change the sign right Whereas if it's a Pizza Hut, you got to change the whole building. It's very cost ineffective. So now everything's just kind of like these different module, like hermit crab boxes that you just put in your things in. And it kind of loses the soul of it. Yeah. I don't know. I do think there's something to be said for like cultural beauty that has been lost in the modern era.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The financialization of the world.

[B]

Yeah. And like, especially like now that, I mean, I make videos on medieval Catholicism and I talk about Catholicism on my Instagram and there's some sort of, who knows, like the actual truth of the numbers. But like the Gen Z religious revival and a lot of these young Gen Z people seem to be gravitating towards like orthodox Christianity or Catholic Catholicism as opposed to like mega church non denominationalism because they're drawn to like the beauty and the tradition and the history and the theology. But it also can sometimes have like this bent, first of all, like a crusades callback or like there's a political aspect to it. And sometimes I think the, the pendulum can kind of swing a little bit too far towards like some kind of extremism or like we need to go back to medieval Christianity or medieval Europe when everybody was Christian and if you weren't like you were exile. And it's just like, I just feel like having some sense of eternity and some sense of like we're not just like bags of flesh or like accidents of evolution. Like we have souls and we have like a purpose here. Like that's like we don't. It doesn't need to be this whole thing. Like we just need to like recognize our own innate worth and then get rid of some of that nihilism that's, that's created, I think this current culture.

[A]

Yeah. Do you feel like the trad wife trend is connected to the medieval times times at all?

[B]

Yeah, I made a video about that actually. Sort of. Well, obviously it's like most closely connected to like 50s and 60s. That's like the whole aesthetic that it's drawing from. So you have like these influencers and they'll dress up like a 50s housewife and it's like the husband's at work and I'm gonna bake sourdough from scratch because he said he wanted a sandwich or something like that or I'm gonna churn the butter and then I'm gonna, you know, whatever. I think a, some of it's sort of like a rejection of technology because it seems to have A lot to do with like homesteading and like off the grid living is like tied in with the whole trout of wife thing. So I think some of it is almost just like a natural human reaction to like, too much has changed too fast. I'm going to go back to living the way my ancestors did. But what I see in the conversation around like trad wives and like the role of women in the household is that it's a reversion to like, basically up until very recently, this is how things were for the entirety of human history. The man went to work, the woman stayed home, took care of the children, and that's how it always was. But even just looking at like medieval household economies, like, imagine you're a peasant farmer. You, you work from home, like you live on the farm and you're out in the field and your wife is helping you pick carrot, like, you know, take things out of the ground or, or help prepare the tools and you're. The kids are out there working with you. Like it's a family economic unit.

[A]

You live on like a fiefdom.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's some noble that owns all the land. Right. You're farming it for him. Right. Giving him a lot of it.

[B]

You live together and even, let's say in the late Middle Ages, like you're living in the city and you're a merchant or you're a banker or you're a textile worker. Your shop, you run it with your wife, maybe she works the front desk and you're in the back, like sewing. But when you work and live in the shop to get like you do everything together. So it's like there is a household economic unit. And then I think kind of starting with the industrial Industrial revolution is when it starts to be like the breadwinner leaves the house for eight to ten hours or more a day to go do some task and then comes back. And that's how it's supposed to be in. The woman stays home and has this role. But back in the Middle Ages, even like in guilds, a lot of guilds in the cities accepted women and had like large cohorts of women that were doing things, even like blacksmithing, that would be typically associated with men. So it's, it's. I don't know, I think sometimes people have like a modern political objective that they want to press onto the past. But like history doesn't really work that way. And if anything, we should be talking about like bringing back the household economic unit, maybe working from home and all that has brought that back. Into small way. But I mean, that's. I feel like that's a. That's the natural order of things. We're all working together towards something.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

It's interesting that the. It is sort of invoking something that like, kind of didn't ever exist. Because the trad wife thing is interesting because like you. You see a few versions of it and I'm speaking from someone that like my. I have a child and I'm 29 and my wife looks after the child and I go to work. And that's kind of like how our dynamic is. It wasn't with any type of like political bent or anything. That's just kind of like what worked for. For us. But it's interesting because you see a lot of women making trad wife content, which you come to find out many of which are not married. So that's purely this performative.

[B]

They're selling something. Yeah, it's always. Yeah.

[A]

Like they're basically creating like this fictionalized version of a submissive woman that like men are attracted to or they are married without kids, which I'm like, I don't know how many trad wives like, don't have children. Again, I don't think whole women are obligated to have kids, but I feel like. Feel like that it kind of goes with it. You know what I mean? Like, being able to be a picturesque woman in a pink dress, like making sourdough. Right. Necessitates that you don't have young children. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know any. Any moms that are just like, I can't wait to cook for my. Like they do it, but it's like, it's a hard job taking care of children. Like, it's a difficult thing to do. So then it's like, all right, what exactly are they trying to hearken back to? It's like kind of this 50s thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But even that, I don't even think what they're doing is what was. What woman's life was like in the 50s. It certainly wasn't like in the 8, 1550s. Right. Definitely. I don't think was like it in the 1950s, at least. Again, I'm not an expert in.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, mid. Mid century.

[B]

I mean, you could even say actually that as opposed to these trad wives, like, emulating the 50s and 60s, they are seeing it as they're going back to like the norm, the historical and cultural norm. But actually the real truth is that the housewife of the 50s and 60s. Whether or not that was even like, really as real as we think it was, that was like a historical glitch. That was like, that was like the rare time in history because even now, like, most households need two breadwinners. Like, it's not a great economy, not a great job market. Like, even the idea of like one spouse works and the other stays at home. Like some people, that's changing now too.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So I think it's, it's same with like monoculture, like this one unified pop culture we all had or have. Or had that's going away too. But that's how things, things have never been that way. That was a historical glitch in the 20th century. So it's like these things we hearken back to, they're not natural. They were like a human reaction to certain forces. You know, a post war boom in the US Right? Or a television set in every home that enables monoculture. And then that was just like a glitch in the timeline. I'm like, we're going back to like, maybe how things are supposed to be in a way. And like, that's, that's not something to be afraid of. That's like, okay, yeah.

[A]

It's also hard to go back to a glitch. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, even if you're like, well, it was a glitch, but we should go back. I'm like, it's right. It's already like the monoculture thing is done. Right. Like, it was never really like that. Like, to your point. Yeah. But also, there's no way to go back. I don't know what the. How would you go back to everyone believing the same thing?

[B]

No, I know. Especially because it's because information was so filtered, whereas now, like, you have access to whatever information you want. It could be correct, it could be incorrect. But back, you know, there was a time when it was like just the nightly news and everybody watched the same thing and that was it. But yeah, no, it's, it's, it's an interesting time we live in. And I don't know, I mean, again, coming back to the original point, like, we have the same hardware as our medieval ancestors, but our software is expected to operate in a totally different way because we're dealing with so many different inputs and information. And I just feel like that's what's creating so much of this almost like schism in the mind of modern man. Like, it's, it's difficult to deal with these things because we're still operating with The. The same, you know, systems our ancestors had, but, yeah, in a totally different reality.

[A]

I mean, that's how I've always approached it, like, just on a personal basis. Like, I do a lot of the things that I make fun of, you know what I mean? Like, I like to live, like, a simple life as much as I can. And, like, I, like my wife and I had our baby at home. You know what I mean? Like, we're hippies. I don't know really what I would characterize it as, but my general, like, broad scale philosophy is, like, human beings have lived most of our existence, if you believe in some type of, like, evolutionary model, for hundreds, thousands, like, maybe like tens of thousands of years, mostly nomadic, living in, like, small bands of people. If you reject the evolutionary model, like, if you're a religious person, perhaps most religion stories are created with, like, God putting Adam and Eve naked into a garden. So it's like, maybe even metaphorically, there's something to be said for, like, us being in touch with nature, living in small bands.

[B]

Right?

[A]

You know what I mean? So I'm like, that's probably, like, where it starts. And then anything that deviates from that, I think adds strain to our biological conditioning for, like, kind of how we started. So I'm like, okay, if, like, I should try to live as much as possible like a hunter gatherer in my brain, which, again, it's dumb because there's no way to go back. And also, I don't really want all of it. I just want some of it. But, like, there's little things where it's like, you know, like, just not being on my phone. Like, obviously, I think everyone knows that's bad. Like, access to Internet pornography is obviously destructive to the human spirit as well as, like, dopamine rush and affects relationships. And then I'm like, okay, the food that we eat, like, why am I eating food that is processed in any way? I just don't think this is good for you. Like, sleeping on the ground. I'm like, I think actually having to get up and down from a bed that's, like, somewhat firm is better than, like, this cushy, amorphous. Like, there's so many little things that I consider. I'm, like, getting exposure to fresh air every single day and not being inside. So my general perspective, it was like, yeah, I try to go back to that as much as I can. And then on top of that, you're familiar with Dunbar's number, like, that human beings are supposed to operate with a specific, like, roughly A range of people. So if you get, like, hunter gatherers, they're in, like, this Traveling Band.

[B]

It's 150, right?

[A]

130. 150. Okay. And once it gets above that, it fractures. So once you get to, like, 200 people, you're going to get a fracture. And so then it just forms another group. And my mind, it goes like. I don't know if we're ever supposed to. To have one person that's in charge of a million people. Like, I don't know if, like, our human brains can, like, compute the scale of that and then much less. I don't think the one person should be in charge of, like, a billion people. I just don't think our brains can understand what that even means. Yeah, so I'm like, the whole nature of, like, our political systems and our society is kind of predicated on biology. That is not fair fit for it. So I'm like, I don't know. No wonder, like, we're sick and like a frustrated society ever since, like, the agrarian revolution. But on top of that, I'm not going back, right? You know what I mean? Like, I'm not gonna, like, I'm not gonna reject modernity because, yeah, I had

[B]

a really good smoothie this morning.

[A]

That's what I'm saying. Like, it's so comfortable. Like, this is far. Like, I'm not gonna die. My kids probably not gonna get, you know, like, rickets. Like, yeah, I'm not going back. Right. But at the same time, in my brain, I'm like, it's probably better.

[B]

Yeah, well, yeah, that's. I mean, one of the things I want to. I. I think there's a lot of sometimes misconception. My comment section that I'm saying, like, we need to go back to the Middle Ages in my videos or something like that. But I think what I'm really trying to get across is, like, we don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like, we can look at our medieval ancestors and be like, there were some things they did that we clearly show. We should not be burning people at the stake. Beheadings can probably stay in the past, but, like, there were certain practices and things they understood, especially emotionally and spiritually and in the way they interacted with the people in the world around them that are worth, like, revisiting in the modern world. And I, I, again, my hope, with this new renaissance and with, you know, the death of monoculture and everybody splintering, like, right now, the consequences of that is that everybody's kind of siloed in their algorithm and that's led to a lot of political division in the U.S. my hope would be that it would continue. It would like morph with this chronically offline movement that's becoming sexy and like people get more invested in their local and regional culture. Like you start going to like local bands and you start hanging out like, like cheers at the bar and like you make friends with people and you know, like the idea of not knowing your neighbors names would be like baffling to him. Medieval person because you grow up, you live and die in the same village. That's why exile is always seen as this horrible punishment in medieval movies and TV shows because like that was the equivalent of death. If you were cast out from your village, like another village isn't going to take you. That's like a cohesive unit. They'd wonder why you were exiled. So it's, it's. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I just, maybe that's part of the new renaissance. Like people kind of getting back to how things the hunter gather. Like your tribe. What's your tribe?

[A]

Yeah, I hope, I hope that it becomes more localized. Actually. I wanted to ask you, I don't know if you have a good answer for this, but what could you tell me about race in the medieval times and the way people perceived ethnicity?

[B]

Yeah, well, it's interesting. Your physical appearance. Well, I'll just speak to medieval Europe specifically. Your physical appearance carried like a moral weight to it actually almost kind of going back to looks maxing. But it's the same thing. Like if you read in any kind of medieval literature or even like going back to biblical literature, literature like leprosy, if you were a leper, you were like an untouchable and like you probably had leprosy because you had done something wrong. And like there's a moral failing in you and it's the same thing. Like people with birth defects, people with you know, like horrible skin disfigurations, like they're thought of as like morally wrong and the same thing. I mean especially in like Crusades era literature and thinking in medieval Europe. One of the most famous examples is the Song of Roland, which is like the, it's written right after the first Crusade, it's an epic poem and it's described by this last stand of Charlemagne's like right hand man against this gang of like evil Saracens in this mountain pass in Spain. And it's like totally fictionalized, but like they are like demonized like one of the negative descriptions of them is they're like, their skin is black as pitch and, like, they're dark as night. And, like, that's like, they're evil, like, because they're not like us. In major city centers, especially later in the Middle Ages, like, you would have seen traders from the Middle east. You would have seen monks coming from Ethiopia to visit a monastery. Like, there were were. You would have seen people of other races. But it definitely was, like, a time when there was actually something I feel like we've forgotten about in the modern era, but it's pretty recent in the U.S. like, white people used to be racist against other white people. Like, it. And, like, you see that in medieval literature, like, even going back to, like, late Roman Empire, when the Romans encounter the Picts, who are like an ancient Scottish people living in what would now be modern day Scott, Scotland. Like, they're like, these are barbaric, horrific people. They had tattoos. They hated that. They're like, they're lesser. Their skulls slope forward and they have broad feet and noses and. And so it's like, yeah, but they're both. Their skin of the Roman soldiers and the Pics are both white.

[A]

Because whiteness isn't really a thing.

[B]

No. Yeah. It's not thought of in the same way. I think that's like a later. That's like 19 or 1800s, like, where

[A]

it's like, specifically, like, American chattel slavery that, like, develops this idea where it's like, okay, we have. Have all these, like, free people that are here in America from all these different countries, and then we have, like, these unfree people. They're white and black. And like, that became the delineator where for most of human history, it was not that at all.

[B]

Right. Yeah. And it's. Yeah. Your ethnic identity in. In a, like, cultures that are not as, like, multicultural as, like, let's say, America today. So, like, medieval England, you. It was like, 99% white. So. But people, like, you got to get racist. Like, people just love being racist. So it's like, you have to find something. So people kind of forget that England for, like, a thousand years was like a melting pot. You had the original Brightons that lived there. Then the Romans came, then the Anglo Saxons came, then the Normans came. There were Viking raiders also that came and mixed in. So it was like this ethnic melting pot. And that's how you. You could be like, well, he's a Viking stock, and I'm of Anglo. I'm og. Anglo Saxon stock. And then the Brighton guy could be like, we were here even before you. So it's like, you see that more so than, like, skin color racism, but both Arab and European sources, like, the. You see in Muslim sources, they'll criticize. Like, they'll. They'll use, like, the pale white skin of the invader as, like, a sign of his moral degeneracy. Like that. He's like, these. They can't even be in the sun. Like.

[A]

Like vampiric.

[B]

Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah.

[A]

That's so funny.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, it's just. It's also, like, almost a. A shame in a way. Way that, like, the American. Not only, like, the moral failings of slavery, but, like, the. That it creates these racialized classes that then we export to other countries that don't really make sense. Right. Like, my friend Christos over here. Are you white?

[C]

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[B]

I think Greeks are considered white.

[A]

See, but even that answer, he's like, it's hesitation. I'm actually Greek. And it's like, no, no, but you're white. You're like, I'm not. Why? I'm Greek. And then, like, asking. I was talking to buddy of mine from Sudan, and he was. He always talks about his dad. He was like, yeah, my dad doesn't think he's black. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, no, he says, I'm Sudanese. Yeah. Like, being black is this American creation that you're trying to put on me. Like, I am from this kingdom that goes back thousands of years. We built temples.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We built massive pyramids. Like, what do you mean I'm black? I'm. I'm.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm from this nation.

[B]

It almost feels like you're, like, minimizing.

[A]

Yeah. Like, that's what he felt. And so it's just funny. And it's unfortunately a failing because ultimately, it's like, a creation of cutting people off from their historical roots when they're brought here from West Africa. But it's an interesting paradigm because, like, it's hard for Americans really to imagine an unracialized world.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Which was the majority of human existence. Is unracialized.

[B]

Right?

[A]

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Like, yeah. No, in the, in the medieval world, either you would be like a Saracen, so it's like. Or you're like a foreigner. Like, that's really. It's not like they're. Hey, look, look at that. Like, like, let's say there's an Ethiopian monk visiting your village. Like, you're not like, that's a black guy. You're like, that's a foreigner. He's from the faraway lands where people walk backwards. And you know, because medieval people had all kinds of like, crazy ideas about, like, what people did in other parts of the world.

[A]

Right?

[B]

But yeah, so that's. It's really more. So it was really just from, like, a lack of knowledge. Whereas, I guess now we don't really have that excuse.

[A]

I want to ask you two more things.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

One is a small aside that connects to looksmaxing. I'm thinking about this. I feel like most marriages were, like, arranged in some way back in the day, whether it's medieval China, medieval Europe. So why would there be such a high premium on being hot if there's not mate selection out in the wild? If it's just like, all right, you two, we're getting married. To connect these lands, whatever. Like, do you know why people would want to be hot?

[B]

Well, a, it connects back to the kind of medieval view of your beauty, beauty as a moral imperative, and that your beauty is connected to your divinity and your morality. So, like, one of the trends for late medieval women, especially in, like, court culture, was they would pluck their hairlines very, very high up on their heads. If you see any portraits of medieval women, like, if you look up the Madonna of the Mulun diptych, she's a great example. M E L U N diptych. But her hairline is all the way back here. She's like one lock of hair coming down. And it's to give you a more. More oval shaped, angelic face. Certain beauty standards that introduce white. This is kind of the beginning of that era. A certain, like, curvature, like skinny waist, like a Kim Kardashian type of look. All these things that are meant to, like, God formed you perfectly. Like, it almost has like a theological significance, your beauty. So that's part of it. And then the other part of it is in most of these, like, noble marriages, looks were not considered. And that was actually like a point of contention sometimes where a bride would arrive at court and the king, I'm thinking maybe Philip the Bold. It was a Duke of Burke. Burgundy. This was around the late middle. This was in the late Middle ages, around when, like, portraiture was becoming a big deal. And you would have a traveling court painter and they would basically use these guys like Tinder. Like, okay, I. I want to, like, arrange my household with like, the. The Princess of Aragon. So can you go to her court and like, do a portrait of her but say it's. Say it's for art and then bring it back so I can look and see if she's hot? No way. Yeah. So you could see her. It's kind of blurry, but you see her hairline starts all the way. Look how big her forehead is.

[A]

Yeah, she got like a Pee Wee Herman type vibe.

[B]

Yeah. But the snatch. She's got the snatched one. Waist. She's got like, kind of like a corset type thing going on.

[A]

Supple.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

With all due respect, I mean, of course, probably someone's mom.

[B]

Shout out. She was actually the king's mistress.

[A]

She's.

[B]

She's portrayed here as the Virgin Mary, but she was based off of the king's mistress, Agnes Sorel. But yeah. So anyway, a lot of times there were. Oh, well, that's actually also where courtly love culture comes from. So you see this idea of like, chivalry developing in high medieval France, so like 1000 AD to like 1300 AD of like this trope in literature and in real life of the, like, the woman, the noble woman, being unhappily married to her husband, who she. It's an arranged marriage or vice versa. And so she starts a covert affair with a handsome young knight. And, like, that's real love. And it's like this desperate forbidden love and that becomes like chivalrous love and signs of devotion and it's like, influenced medieval fantasy and Princess Bride and all that stuff.

[A]

And it probably creates like Disney movies.

[B]

But it was real. Like, that was like if, you know, people, people are people. So even within arranged marriages, if there was somebody at court you thought was hot, like.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You're going to go for it. So.

[A]

Oh, that's interesting.

[B]

But yeah, there was a lot. Like arranged marriages. Marriage was mostly seen as a religious and business proposal as opposed. And then like, what you did in your free time was, you know, what you did in your free time. Shlov. You know, the. The handsome young knight. Oh, wow.

[A]

Interesting. I mean, if it's. If it's Heath Ledger.

[B]

Yeah, There you go.

[A]

From A Knight's Tale, right?

[B]

Good looking guy. Yeah, I guess you did a Video

[A]

basically saying that the 2000 and 30s will be a new renaissance. Can you explain why?

[B]

Yeah, I mean there's the whole, there's the thing with AI which does not like we, we're all aware and hopefully it means that it'll, we'll drive back towards human, human experiences, human products. There's all this data suggesting now that millennials and Gen Z choose to spend their money on experiences and not things increasingly, which I think is a positive sign. But also one of the things, and I've noticed this with my younger brother brothers that's become so real because of social media is like this insane self awareness and the rise of cringe culture, which I feel like it will take maybe decades for like historians and anthropologists to realize the effect that this has had on a generation. But like when I was in college, like Snapchat was around and Facebook and Instagram, but it was not like it is today. And like you could go to a party and go crazy and have fun and like you didn't worry that you would end up with like on barstool sports, tick tock with a million people laughing at you because of some, something you did. Now the self awareness is very real, but I see a refreshing move towards authenticity. I think Alyssa Liu is a great example. She seemed to like inspire all of Gen Z with her like unabashedly alternative appearance. Her whole attitude of like, I'm not chasing a medal, I'm here to have fun and to express my artistry. And people really seem to resonate with that. And the example I used in the video too, I know there's. He's been controversial lately as Timothy Chalamet. He gave a speech last year, an acceptance speech for his Bob Dylan movie where he was like, I want to be one of the greatest. Like I am chasing greatness. I'm not just here to participate. Like I want to be the best. And that's a very renaissance viewpoint of being the, the ultimate man, the Renaissance man, the man who can do it all. And you're chasing almost like a divinity here on earth. And I feel like cringe culture and this, I, this like self consciousness has kind of made us made like a younger generation small. And they don't like, they, they just don't want to be seen and they don't want to be perceived because all they do all day on their phones is perceive others and it makes them self conscious. But I see hopeful movement away from that. And it's honestly with the historical renaissance, it was driven by like individuals. It Wasn't like everybody woke up one day and was like, it's the Renaissance. It was individual people like doing great things and pursuing greatness in a way that made sense to them. And everybody caught up to that and it changed the world. So I think my idea of the 2000-30s Renaissance is that those people, our new Michelangelo, Leonardo, they're out there now probably making TikToks or Instagrams or something. And it's, it's, it's coming. The Renaissance is it's coming or it's already here.

[A]

That is, that does make me feel good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's an inspirational idea, right. That hopefully there's a counter reaction. I think typically things are, you know, they, they swing and that there is a massive over perception where everything is being seen. And I think slowly people will kind of shift back where they're like, you know what? I can just have fun. I can, I don't need to be worried about scrutiny because everyone now has dirt on them. We've all blackmailed ourselves. And once everyone has dirt, I think it will hopefully remove that feeling a little bit and either it'll be, I actually don't know if like the self imposing it through external channels like the no phone party, like I think it's too small scale to really be like a movement. Like I think people will do it in like you know, a little like here and there, but I don't think it's going to be a wide blown national thing. I think that will come, come from a psychological shift where everyone goes, yeah, we are all chronically online too much and we need to stop caring. And I think people like Alyssa will come through and break that and it'll happen in you know, like bigger and bigger scales. Like eventually the President will have an embarrassing TikTok.

[B]

Yeah, of course.

[A]

And we're like, I don't even know.

[B]

Trump's got a lot of embarrassing footage, doesn't it?

[A]

That's fair, that's fair. But it might be like a kid, like it might be within like two decades that you're going to be like, oh yeah, he posted this on.

[B]

Yeah, I remember when he was on vine or something.

[A]

And it's going to be like, oh yeah, yeah.

[B]

When Logan. Logan Paul, 2036, you know. No, but yeah, it's really interesting too. So what we were talking about at the very beginning with gambling and the Watsi and medieval China, I think there's this attitude now of. And I've seen like videos with titles like this on my YouTube feed made by young gen Z kids being like, everything's screwed. The job market's screwed. I have a college degree and I can't get a job. I'm going to take the risk. I'm going to start the business. I'm going to post the YouTube video. I'm going to make this painting like, screw it. So the same. I think I can go go two ways. The same impulse that might make you say, screw it. I'm going to put everything on this parlay could also make you say, all right, we're all being observed 24 7. Anything could be put on your TikTok in a certain way and portrayed a certain way. Like, screw it. Like, if. If everything is perception, everything's cringe, then I'm just going to be cringe. And to be cringe is to be free. I've seen people see that, say that, and I feel like that's. That's one of the stories, the cultural stories of the. Of the2030s is like. To be cringe is like actual real authenticity and feeling emotions without having to, like, layer it in irony and sarcasm and all this that we have now, like, that's. I feel like that's so important to the human experience.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And if we can bring that back

[A]

and I will come back, I think there'll be an etiquette around perception on top of that. Like, oh, I shouldn't be filming this.

[B]

Yeah, hopefully.

[A]

I think that there's. There was a moment where it's like, you should be documenting everything because why not?

[B]

Like, yeah, world star.

[A]

Yeah. Like, we can film, so we should. And at least for me, like, I'll have moments that I film because I'm like, this is the craziest night ever. Like, me and all my friends are having the best time. This is amazing. Then you film it and you watch it the next day and it's worse. You're like, oh, this was awful. And we sounded so bad and I didn't make any sense. Like, it's almost embarrassing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Whereas I would almost rather the memory exist. I don't want the memory to be destroyed by reality.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, I would rather you and I go to a wedding. We're like, dude, we're tearing it up. Yeah.

[B]

And let's remember it that way.

[A]

Because remembering it that way, I think is actually better for your psyche than seeing the footage going, like, I looked that stupid. Like, oh, this is so embarrassing. And I hope that by enough people having that feeling, because it's inevitable that people will be like, you know what? I am going to dance at this wedding. And I'm not going to film that guy because he's going to film me. And like we're both mutually accepting that we might look silly and we might be cringe. Yeah. So no one's going to film and then hopefully that will be the release. I don't think it's going to happen. Happen through some type of external litigation. Like no phones at the party. It's going to happen from everyone being like, we shouldn't have phones at the party in order for everyone to enjoy it.

[B]

Plus you have to be embarrassing first. Like, you're going to anything you do. And this is like a trite concept at this point, but you're going to suck. Initially, my first few YouTube videos are God awful. They're still on my channel, but they're terrible. Like, I. Da Vinci didn't come out of the womb, like sketching perfect anatomically. Like, it's okay.

[A]

Like, that's Rob Graves. Right, right, exactly.

[B]

There you go. Yeah. And so I like, feel, feel like there's. Because on social media, so many kids are growing up only seeing the finished product of people's effort that they're losing out on, like the beauty of the process. And I hope now that everything, now that we're a big on like Twitch streaming and clavicular and that's like a new level of like 24 7, the cameras rolling on him. It's like raw, unfiltered reality. And in that you have to see the. The mistakes and you have to see the. You know what I mean? And hopefully that inspires people to be like, that could be my process too. It doesn't have to be perfect.

[A]

Yeah. I wanted to ask you before we wrap up, I like reading Will Durant and his Lessons of History with his wife Ariel, who always gets left out whenever you talk about them. But he basically kind of writes this big anthology about everything that's ever happened in history and then puts together a very small book that says, here are all the lessons that we can take away. What are the big lessons for you when doing all of your historical research? And if you can, what predictions do you make for the next 10 years? If, as we said, history rhymes, what happens next?

[B]

Well, a couple things would be that obviously human nature doesn't change, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. And that you actually really can, especially in the age of the Internet. I mean, even in these last couple weeks, people with the Iran conflict and everything that's kind of popping off internationally, like, there's a lot of chaos and confusion and uncertainty. But it's like you can kind of, if you can learn to recognize the historical patterns, that doesn't necessarily mean the same exact thing is going to happen, but you can at least understand the parallels and the potential motivations for what's going on. And I think that can influence your mindset because I've talked to people who are like chronically online, but I've talked to them in real life and they're just like besieged by this news item and this is what's going on in this city. And did you hear about this? Did you hear about that? And it's almost like first of all, this is way more information than anybody in history would ever have had to deal with. And second of all, like, you as a human being cannot care about this many things. Like choose something. My lesson would be like, choose local. Like choose something you can influence and control and like influence your local community. Because that's how up until the 20th century, like that's how human beings operated, especially in the middle ages. And I see that as the sort of prediction like as the AI slop increases, as more and more people become aware and I see it really with Gen Z of the negative effects of social media, the negative effects of high screen time and TikTok and porn, porn and gambling, like of movement towards getting involved in your local community, starting things, finding your tribe actually like discord servers are awesome, all that stuff is awesome. But like your real life tribe and I think raw, unfiltered humanity is my prediction for the next 10 years. That that's, I, I honestly think it'll happen on that like concentrated of a time scale that people will like social media will lose its allure. If I open my Instagram feed and it's all I, I'm going to close it right away and I'm going to go outside. Hopefully that's what people do. So that's my, that's my thing. And I think it's already starting now. I think the renaissance is starting now. I think it's happening quietly and I think it's happening because we don't have monoculture and a central like television that everybody watches or something. It's difficult to notice it because it's everything so fractured now. But I think that this new renaissance will not be televised. And I think it's already happening and I think it'll be driven, driven by the youth and by medieval mindset on YouTube. Check me out.

[A]

I think you're right, John, you're the man. I appreciate you. And thank you for joining me in the campsite.

[B]

Yeah, of course.

[A]

You want to talk about a return to. To back in the day? Yeah. We're camping as far back as you go. Yeah, this is pre agrarian. We're somewhere deep in Iraq, in the mountains somewhere. You know what I mean? That's. That's what it's all about. But I appreciate this so much, dude. I will be tapping in with all your videos, of course. Big fan, and I'm excited to see what you do next.

[B]

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

[C]

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[A]

Thank you.