Episode 419 - Jeremy Slate - Is America Doomed To Fail Just Like Rome

Summary

Cleared Hot Podcast Episode 419: Is America Doomed To Fail Just Like Rome?

Host: Andy Stumpf
Guest: Jeremy Slate
Date: December 8, 2025

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Overview

This episode dives deeply into historical and contemporary parallels between the fall of the Roman Empire and present-day America. Jeremy Slate, a historian with a keen interest in both classical civilizations and modern politics, joins Andy Stumpf for a wide-ranging, thoughtful conversation about government overreach, inflation, immigration, the decay of civic engagement, and whether the US is headed down the same path as ancient Rome. The pair also engage in meaningful asides about education, the rise of podcasting, and the nature of personal and societal change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Banter & Setting the Stage

• The episode starts with friendly jokes (hair loss, aging, and pop culture references) that quickly shift to Slate’s early interest in politics and history.
  • [00:22] Slate describes being politically active from a young age, campaigning for Ron Paul, and growing up in an ultra-conservative household.

2. How Did We Get Here? The Progressive Era and 1913

• Slate dissects pivotal moments in US political history:
  • [04:00] “1913 is an extremely pivotal year because you get three things: income taxes, the Federal Reserve act, and the 17th amendment.” (Jeremy Slate)
  • The 17th Amendment and its impact on state versus popular election of Senators is discussed, positioning it as the loss of a vital check/balance.

3. Conspiracies, Government Bloat, and the Purpose of Government

• [06:08] Slate jokes he still thinks “the CIA created Bitcoin,” launching a sidebar on the pejorative nature of “conspiracy theorist.” Both agree real conspiracies exist, but not every conspiracy is valid.
• [06:57] The pair agree government has become far more expansive than intended, with Slate arguing, “If you look at our system since the Progressive era, that's really where we've gotten the type of government we have now.”

4. Congressional Dysfunction, Insider Trading and Term Limits

• Both discuss government shutdowns, congressional inaction, and the economic realities faced by military members and public servants.
  • [10:58] “Why are our elected officials treated differently? …they seem to do a really good job of taking care of themselves.” (Andy Stumpf)
• Slate adds that Congress legislates its own behavior and pay, leading to a lack of outside accountability.
  • [13:25] Notable quote about the impossibility of meaningful reform: “The body responsible for legislating Congress is Congress… They would all have to basically sign a bill that they don't want to make more money.” (JS)

5. Parallels: Rome’s Inflation and the US Economy

• [13:27] Slate draws strong economic parallels: “If you look at Rome in the late third century, in 284, there are 15,000% inflation…We can do it a lot faster.”
• Rome’s debasement of currency (diluting silver coins), the logic behind military pay increases, and comparisons to how the US left the gold standard are examined in detail.
• [16:17] “That's often the things politicians do is they try to use terms other people don't understand… to get one over on you.” (JS, on terms like ‘quantitative easing’)

6. Rome’s Fall: Three Strikes—Inflation, Immigration, Fragmentation of Power

• Slate outlines the core issues that led to Rome’s collapse:
  1. Loss of central power (competing Emperors/general fragmentation)
  2. Uncontrolled borders and influx of “barbarians”
  3. Economic collapse due to runaway inflation and unsustainable military spending
• [31:11–34:14] “Those are two things that really do destroy a society.” (JS, on uncontrolled spending and mass immigration)
• Stumpf wonders what modern "fragmentation" might look like, and both agree a literal military split is unlikely—but institutional and regional divides are growing.

7. Immigration, Representation, and Modern Political Dynamics

• The hosts highlight the tension between legal and illegal immigration, and the downstream effects on representation and the census:
  • [39:17] “A state like California has five to seven seats that it actually shouldn’t have based on the population…” (JS)
  • [40:28] Stumpf points out that even some who are permissive of illegal immigration take a completely different stance when discussing other countries.

8. Healthcare Costs, Education, and the Failure of Systems

• Candid, personal stories are exchanged about healthcare and the complexity of costs and insurance.
  • [47:20] “My mom had a pretty bad stroke about 15 years ago… it was $2.5 million for her care.” (JS)
  • [48:00] Both reflect that the system is broken in multiple, interconnected ways, not just one.
• Education gets similar criticism: Slate and Stumpf discuss whether the system prepares people for real life and emphasize the value of apprenticeships and the changing value proposition of formal higher education.

9. Parallels to Rome’s Slow Decline: Are We Already an Empire?

• [131:08] Slate’s core thesis: “I think to me, that was around the time period [Progressive Era] we ceased to be a functional republic... we’ve been more of an empire for a really long time.”
• Both discuss whether America is on an irreversible track—replay of democracy turning into monarchy, and the challenge of meaningful reform.

10. The Nature of Historical Change and Fading Empires

• Slate describes the actual “fall” of Rome as a slow fade, not a dramatic event, marked by changes in power structures and slow economic/social erosion.
  • [134:05] “It's not that Rome is conquered. It just gradually ceases to be less Roman and it just becomes something else.”
• They speculate on how this might play out in the US, and what (if anything) should be done to reverse it.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Government Overreach:

  “If you look at the purpose of government, it's to handle disputes between people... Governments gotten really, really big, especially since the Progressive era.” (Jeremy Slate, 03:54)

• On Insider Trading:

  “Maybe I want Pelosi to insider trade for my benefit. I want her to go to prison, of course.” (Andy Stumpf, 12:02)

• On Inflation (Roman Example):

  “The silver coin in the time of Augustus… is 95% pure. By the time you get to Aurelian, it's 5%.” (Jeremy Slate, 16:47)

• On Education Systems:

  “People are investing a lot of money for knowledge they're not going to use and they don't even know if they need yet.” (JS, 56:42)

• On Learning through Failure:

  “I love the story arc of—let me tell you how bad it got and what I did to grow out of it. This recovery arc. And I think there's something to be learned there for almost everybody.” (Andy Stumpf, 102:18)

• On America's Place in the Life-Cycle of Republics:

  “I think we've actually ceased to be a functional republic in a long time… we've been more of an empire for a really long time.” (JS, 131:08)

• On the “Fall” of Rome (Analogy to US):

  “Rome more fades away than falls… it really doesn't fall. It kind of fades into what's going to become the early Middle Ages.” (JS, 134:05)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Slate’s Background and Political Awakening: 00:22–03:35
• 1913 and Expansion of the State: 04:00–05:02
• Conspiracies, Government Growth & Dysfunction: 06:06–13:25
• Insider Trading in Congress / Clarity on Term Limits: 11:07–14:24
• Rome’s Inflation and Military Spending Parallels: 13:27–19:45
• Roman History and Why It Matters: 20:01–23:32
• Education System Critiques & Apprentice Model: 55:02–61:00
• Modern US Political Decay & the Path from Republic to Empire: 131:08–132:56
• The Actual “Fall” of Rome & Application to the US: 132:56–136:05

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Other Memorable Asides

• [45:47] Slate shares he gets contact lenses from Canada and his family does dental work in Mexico because of US healthcare costs.
• [84:08] Slate tells the bizarre story of the 13-year-old emperor Elagabalus marrying a rock, appointing a hairdresser to manage the grain supply, and holding forced orgies—a memorable illustration of Rome at its weirdest and most dysfunctional.
• [97:43] Stumpf marvels at the reach of modern podcasts vs. legacy media, referencing Trump’s epic appearance on Joe Rogan (“100 million in the first or second day”).
• [107:07] Both are shocked to learn that 27,000 new podcasts start daily, but the median episode gets fewer than 100 listens.

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Tone & Chemistry

Both Andy and Jeremy maintain a conversational, inquisitive tone—serious about the issues, but irreverent and humorous in their sidebars. The rapport is warm, intellectually curious, and not without healthy cynicism towards government and institutions.

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Closing Thoughts from Jeremy Slate

• “I think the thing is looking at, you know, what are the things that take away our function as a republic and how do we get those things back? …I would start with first repealing the 17th amendment… But it's not gonna be easy. You gotta cut the debt and you have to handle the currency. And if we don't do those things, then we're not in very good shape.” (137:36, 139:03)

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Where to Find Jeremy & His Work

• Personal handles: Jeremy Ryan Slate (all platforms)
• Brand/services: Command Your Brand – commandyourbrand.com

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This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the relationship between history and politics, the nuances of American decline, and the practical parallels between Roman and American institutions. The discussion is wide-ranging but focused, with both host and guest offering critical, solution-oriented perspectives on how to prevent the US from following Rome’s fate.

Transcript

[A]

Okay, I got the red smoke.

[B]

Sun runs north and south west of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Oh, wait a minute.

[A]

Give it to me.

[B]

I mean, it cleared hot.

[A]

Coffee cleared hot.

[B]

How long were you gone? Like six weeks.

[A]

Three. I'm sure for you it felt like six weeks because you missed me so much.

[B]

You know what it felt like for me? Not long enough. First day, I felt like I missed him. And then by the end of the first day, I was like, God, life is better.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I'm letting my hair grow right now, too, so I look a bad car salesman at the moment.

[B]

What's the reasoning behind that?

[A]

Going bald. So I'm just kind of covering it up, so.

[B]

Okay, hold on. Your strategy is to grow the front longer so you can comb it over the back?

[A]

I can kind of have like a. Like a Bradley Cooper thing going on.

[B]

No, I don't think that's what they call that.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Why not just lean into it?

[A]

I hit my head on a lot of things. It looks pretty bad. How old are you? 38.

[B]

It is a little bit old to be going bald. Do you have baldness in your family?

[A]

My dad is totally bald. He was by, like, 20.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. So I held on a lot longer, I think.

[B]

Now, this is a hairstyle. I know you.

[A]

I had a high and tight for a long time, but, like, it sort of looked pretty bad.

[B]

That's also unacceptable. I know you're steeped in history, which we'll talk about a lot. I think you should go with the Friar Tuck.

[A]

Just the big round ring.

[B]

Yes. Do you get that reference at all? Michael, bring it back.

[A]

I know what that haircut is. I don't know who Friar Tuck is.

[B]

How could you know what the haircut is but not know who?

[A]

You never saw the Disney movie when you were a kid, which one just.

[B]

Put in Friar Tots.

[A]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. My kids love that movie. Yeah.

[B]

Okay, so. Yeah, that's. Here's the thing, though.

Everybody kind of knows what you're doing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right. So are you gonna go straight back once you have the hair?

[A]

Probably. When I was. When I was in my 20s, it used to be like, a ponytail, but, like, haven't had long hair in a long time.

[B]

Yeah, I had a short period of time with long hair, and it was. It was not as awesome as I thought it would be. Especially in hot weather. It's a lot more maintenance. And then I went. I had a buzzed Hair for probably eight years. That was amazing. One drop pea size of shampoo and just done in seconds. But you were saying before we got in here, you were into politics when you were younger.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How deep are we talking into politics?

[A]

Just always somebody that's been really interested in it. So a lot of my content was around that. In 2012, when I was in college, I was campaigning for Ron Paul. It was like grassroots campaigning.

[B]

How did you get so deep into it? Because it seems to, for me, I would be the other side of the spectrum when I was that age. It's not that I didn't care, it's just that I didn't pay attention, which I think is a politician's delight.

[A]

Yeah, well, I guess here's that side. So I grew up in a household where my mom always had Rush Limbaugh playing in the House. So, like, it was a very, very, like, super ultra conservative house. And as I got older, I got a lot more into libertarian philosophy and things like that. I don't know how to classify myself politically. I'm like, homeless in some way, shape or form. I'm not a big fan of the left. I like the right a little bit more.

[B]

But so I struggle with this, too. I had a guest on who described himself, and I'll steal his words, it was Richard Ryan. He is a libertarian fringing on anarchy. And I'm kind of on board.

[A]

My friend Charlie Robinson says, I don't know if you know, Charlie.

[B]

I don't. But I want government to exist in certain things, but I also want them almost completely out of my life. I'm not looking for anarchy, so I'm talking about, like, political beliefs. But I want government to be like that tiny. That we're almost on the fringe of anarchy.

[A]

Well. Cause if you look at the purpose of government, it's to handle disputes between people. It's to make sure taxes, make sure commerce runs well. It's not supposed to be for taxes, but handle commerce in between states and things like that. Government's gotten really, really big, especially since the Progressive era. That was kind of the really big change that. And 1913 is an extremely pivotal year because you get three things that year. You get your income taxes, the Federal Reserve act, and then also the 17th amendment passes. And that's where states can no longer. The state legislatures no longer vote for senators. And they were trying to solve a corruption problem, which I understand somebody's brother is the governor and they're trying to give him the job. But the problem is the House and the Senate now serve the same purpose. They're both popularly elected, whereas the Senate was supposed to basically show what the states wanted and the House was supposed to show what the people wanted. And now we don't have that at all. So it's like if you look at our system since the Progressive era, that's really where we've gotten the type of government we have now. And you know, FDR builds everything up even more. But the big changes are really the turn of the century.

[B]

1913 is when income tax started.

[A]

Started in 1913. They did it over the Christmas holiday when nobody was there to really vote on it.

[B]

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[A]

I still think the CIA created it, but you know.

[B]

You think so? Oh boy. I agree that conspiracies exist. I don't know if I'm a full on conspiracy theorist.

[A]

Well, there's certain things I am and other things. I'm more of a realist, but that's one that's a little weird to me.

[B]

Joe Rogan has he talks about this really well. Yeah, the conspiracy theorist term was used super pejoratively and I think intentionally to begin with. And the reality is is that conspiracies 100% demonstrably have existed and still do exist. Yeah, but that doesn't Mean that Bigfoot's.

[A]

Real, you know, I agree.

[B]

So you have to kind of balance those two things. Yeah. So now I would go back to 1913 and maybe talk with those assholes about this income tax policy that maybe got a little bit out of control.

[A]

Well, they tried it after the Civil War too, but it didn't last very long because there was huge debts after the Civil War. So they tried a. It was the first direct income tax they did. It lasted a few years. I think it was like 1887 or somewhere around there. They tried to do it and it didn't last very long. So then income tax was kind of their second chance at trying that.

[B]

I wonder at this point. It's funny, we're talking about our government, the House and the Senate, neither of which currently doing their job.

[A]

They actually just today there was a bill that went up to vote on during the government shutdown if Congress shouldn't be paid. And apparently that bill did not pass.

[B]

Oh, that is so wild. I wonder how a bill on term limits would do.

[A]

It's needed. It really is.

[B]

You think?

[A]

Because if you look at even what Washington wanted for the country, there was a couple things that Washington really wanted. Number one is he wanted congressional representation to be for smaller groups of people, so you'd have a lot more congressmen, which is good because they wouldn't agree on much. And the other thing that he wanted was basically to do a couple years of service. Then you go back to whatever your career was. But for a lot of these guys, it's what they do for the rest of their life.

[B]

Yeah. And the net worths associated with the salaries which are publicly disclosed, the math gets a little bit askew on that as well. I don't. I think there needs to be some change. Again, I'm not an expert in government, but I think there needs to be some changes in our government. I mean, I was reading in the newspaper this morning, it's going to get really interesting in my opinion. So the f. The air traffic controllers just missed their first entire paycheck. I think it was trickling out until that point. The military, it's going to get close to that pretty soon, too.

[A]

And wasn't there a private donor that was going to be paying for some military salary?

[B]

So that was 130 million. The number I've seen is it costs per pay period for the military is $8 billion.

[A]

Oh my gosh.

[B]

Which I feel like that's a drop in the bucket. If you look at the total, you know, federal budget and I'M sure that they could find it and allocate it somewhere. But most military. And this is from personal experience. When you're like an E4, E5.

I spent a decade living paycheck to paycheck with kids.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

It's not fun. However, I also think people should experience that because you want to talk about a difference in appreciation and understanding and that feeling of I remember my kids will never know this, they'll never experience this. But floating paper checks, like I'll go to the grocery store Friday because we get paid Monday, we'll float that sucker across. Right. They're never going to have that experience because they've never written a check because they everything for them is debit card or just tapping with the, the little chip. But when the money impacts the military and the everyday person like travel, if travel. I mean if ATC shuts down.

[A]

Well, you look at what happened last year, right. When the computers went down. I, I got stuck. I was at the RNC last year when that happened and I was going to three different states after that to do podcasts and I got stuck in, I think in Twin Cities or something like that. In my connecting flight.

[B]

Yeah. And that, that extrapolate that over a week, 14 days. I don't know what that would look like, but I don't think people will stomach that. Yeah, very much so. I think we're starting, you know, because there's a lot of people out there posting. The government's been shut down for 20 plus days. Hasn't impacted my life at all. And true. However comma it might pretty soon. And when it does that, I'll be really curious to see where what type of pressure comes and what the resolution is going to be moving. They'll probably just kick it down the road for however many days, but.

[A]

Well, they'll do another one of those like omnibus bills or something to extend it a little bit further.

[B]

Yeah. And I think that every member of the House and Senate should immediately right now be uneligible for reelection.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean how about that? How about it's your job. We get that there's two sides of the aisle and sometimes you guys can agree on some things and you're someone was by doctrine not supposed to agree and not allow the other side to have any level of success. But you are our elected representatives to keep the government running. If I hired somebody to do a job, the coffee shop. If I hired you to throw coffee. Well, not. Listen, I don't hire anybody to throw coffee. Slide coffee.

[A]

Right.

[B]

If you're slinging lattes all day and you refuse to do. So guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna fire you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Why are our elected officials treated differently? I don't have an answer for that. Other than they seem to do a really good job of taking care of themselves.

[A]

Well, that's true. Just look at how net worths grow in their time in service. Right. You look at Pelosi or even there's been others recently that have been getting their bell rung about how their personal wealth has grown. It's a little crazy. Honestly. It is.

[B]

I do like the autopilot app though, because of this. I have not used it, so I have no. First off, I'm not a sophisticated investor. This is not financial advice. I have nothing to do with this platform.

[A]

I just invest in gold. So I am not very sophisticated.

[B]

You're going to probably be okay.

I was reading an article and it's basically an app that mirrors politicians portfolios. Oh. So there's a Pelosi tracker, there's a Crenshaw tracker, there's a variety of different things and you can mirror the trades that they have and they'll buy and sell. There's a little bit of a lag because they have a little bit of a time to declare, but they have a variety of different funds. And it, it, you know, not investment advice to anybody. I'm messing around with this with a very small amount of money. But it's like maybe I want Pelosi to insider trade for my benefit. I want her to go to prison, of course.

[A]

Well, I think it was Tim Burchett that was on Tucker two weeks ago, and he has a skateboard company apparently. And he was saying that it was really hard to get approved as a congressman to be running a company that sells skateboards. But it's very easy to insider trade. So it's like apparently they're just not looking at the right things.

[B]

How could you not catch them? Insider trading. This is what I don't understand. I. It's my understanding that it is Pelosi's husband who does the vast.

[A]

That's correct. Yeah.

[B]

I'm not a detective, but I feel like if Ray Charles was a detective, he could follow the bread, he could follow the breadcrumbs on this one. So it's not like they're hiding it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's not like we're doing anything about it, so why would they care?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know.

If there's no consequence for horrible behavior that everybody thinks is illegal, that you would get absolutely crushed for. If you weren't that person, what's to stop them?

[A]

Well, I guess the problem is, and the real problem with this is the body responsible for legislating Congress is Congress. So there's no third party that tells them they can't do that. If they want a pay raise, they're the one that votes on it. So that is a real problem. They would all have to basically sign a bill that they don't want to make more money.

[B]

Do you think it's solvable?

[A]

I don't know. Honestly, I really don't know. Because if you look at, you know, civilizations and how they fall, I think one of the biggest things is the economic side of things, right? If you look at Rome in the late third century, in 284, there are 15,000% inflation, right? And they didn't have computers like we do now. We can do it a lot faster. So I think the problem is we're not willing to cut the things that we need to cut. You know, Argentina is a great example of that, of what Milei's done. 17,000% inflation. When he took office and he cut so many things, they actually had a surplus.

[B]

What did he start with? I mean, how did.

[A]

Well, did you see the video where he's got the chainsaw and he's cutting government departments?

[B]

Yeah, man, but I also saw Elon with the chainsaw, too. He wasn't cutting shit.

[A]

No, it's true, it's true. But he did actually cut government departments. He cut a lot of welfare departments, he cut a lot of government workers because there's a lot of money going to things that don't actually produce anything. And I've been running a business for a decade, and if I have somebody that's not producing something, I'm gonna fire them. In government, we don't do that.

[B]

You know, honestly, at the risk of sounding dumb, but I'm speaking for myself here, there are oftentimes terms thrown around that I don't have an immense handle on. And honestly, I don't think a lot of people understand what inflation is and how it grows to that level. So maybe. Can you unpack that one? I mean, again, I actually think people are afraid to say. They'll be like, oh, inflation's so high. But if you were to ask them, well, what is inflation? They're like, I'll get back to you.

[A]

Well, it's the value of your dollar, right? It's the simple way to look at it. And if you look at. Let's say you were Buying gas or let's do an easier one, car repairs. Right. I had an Audi and the hourly rate on that could be expensive to do, but the repair rates ten years ago on that same car are more than double now. So when people look at costs, very oftentimes they'll say the cost of things are going up when actually it's that every single day your dollar is worth less.

[B]

And what causes that?

[A]

Generally a higher quantity of dollars. Honestly it's, you know, we're paying for a lot of these programs when they don't actually have money. The Federal Reserve creates more money and that's where the value that they're going to be using comes from. Have you ever heard the term quantitative easing before?

[B]

Yes, but that's going to be directly into a category of. I know how to say that word, but I don't know what it means.

[A]

So they talked about it a lot during the 2008 financial crisis. They talked about it a lot in the last five years of COVID and everything. Quantitative easing is a really simple way for saying printing more money. It's a complicated way to say a simple thing.

[B]

Do they? I mean, so there's no accident in that term existing.

[A]

No, because the normal easing, the quantity of it.

[B]

Yeah, but. But also normal people would ask a follow on question if you just said we're printing more money.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you say quantitative easing, what you do is you put up this little intellectual barrier.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

That most people aren't going to want to cross. To include myself, I'd be looking at that and be like, I don't want to be a part of whatever conversation is happening because I need to go to the bathroom and Google what that term means.

[A]

Yeah. But I think that's often the things that politicians do is they try to use terms that other people don't understand. They probably don't understand themselves, frankly, but they use them to get one over on you.

[B]

How did Rome. So how did Rome, in essence, in the modern era, when you say print more money, that's literally what we're doing is printing probably.

[A]

Well, we're not actually printing anything. We're just making more ones and zeros in a computer. Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Most of those dollars never be printed.

[B]

How about rum though? I mean, because they were using a hard currency at that point, like rare met. Yeah, yeah. How did they. Did they just dilute it?

[A]

So what they did is they took their. And I guess to give you an idea of this, the silver coin in the time of Augustus, that's first century is 95% pure.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

By the time you get to the time of AURELIAN, which is 274 AD, so you're, you know, 250 years down the road, it's 5% pure.

[B]

Oh. So they just diluted it and made more.

[A]

So what they would do is they would add other metals to coins. Adding copper was a good one. They would really raise, like, the bronze content of these coins. So what would happen is, for them, the actual inflation was a very physical thing. Right. Because they would have this coin that was worth one thing in one day and worth something else the next day. And it's driven by a lot of different things, but at the same time, they would clip off pieces of those coins to make new coins. And that is really the basis of it. And one of the biggest reasons for doing it is a lot of it actually has to do with the military, because the third century changes Rome dramatically, because the emperors in the third century no longer have these, I guess, great lineages of, you know, tying themselves to somebody famously known. So the way they would do it is it would be military commanders declaring themselves emperor. And there were two different things they would do. The first is called. What's it called? A donative. And dono comes from the Latin dono donare, which is to give. It's basically a gift. They would give soldiers when they became emperor, and every emperor would make that donative bigger and bigger and bigger. So they gave a gift to the military. And then what's something they would do as? Well, there's an emperor in 193. His name's Septimius Severus. He's the first African to be emperor, and he doubles the pay of the legions. And every emperor after that is going to follow that same process of doubling and tripling the pay of the legions.

[B]

That math adds up real fast.

[A]

Yeah. So you need coins to pay these people. So what are you going to do? You're going to dilute the coins because you only have so many coins. And the problem we have now in America is our money isn't backed by anything other than the good faith and credit of the U.S. economy. And getting off the gold standard was a real problem because now they can inflate money super easily.

[B]

Is there any standard that we could attach our currency back to, or is it too far gone?

[A]

That's hard, because I know Dr. Ron Paul has talked a lot about that. He said that he's a big. For the gold standard. Right. If we went back to that, which Nixon got us off, I think in 1970, how would we even do that?

[B]

What would the mechanism of that look like?

[A]

Well, I guess if you want an example of that Constantine, who's emperor in 312 until 333, I think, or 334, what he does is he mints a few gold coins every single year until he dies, and then it ends up getting on a gold standard over time. So. And then that gold standard is going to go for 700 years in the Eastern Roman Empire without inflation. So they go for quite a while without inflation. So it's something that could be done. But the problem is, especially with an economy like our economy is now, we're so far over our skis. Andy, there's. How would you handle that? Right?

[B]

Oh, we're on the snowboard now, we're off the skis.

[A]

We're going down the hill, man, at a rapid pace.

[B]

How'd you get so into Roman history? I mean, I know it's deeply into your wheelhouse and it is.

[A]

Would be.

[B]

The way to say it, not a common knowledge base.

[A]

It's nerdy, man. It's nerdy.

[B]

But I think it's fascinating. I mean, I'm not an incredible student of history. There's certain aspects that interest me more, but I know enough about it that I pretty sure human beings have not created anything unique in a real long time.

[A]

Well, I'm a big believer in saying that history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme, right? A lot of the same patterns will happen again. And we can choose to like one of those choose your own adventure books. We can choose a different way to do it, but you have to recognize the patterns when you see them. So for me, I was super obsessed with Alexander the Great in undergrad and I.

[B]

How'd you find that? Like, there's plenty of people in history. What was it about him?

[A]

So believe it or not, I've had two really good teachers in my life. I had a really good US History teacher in high school that I learned so much about government and civics and everything else. She passed a few years ago, but one of the best teachers I've ever had, I had this teacher in undergrad, Dr. Sean Lake, and he really got me to love history because he made it engaging, he made it fun. Like the guy would stand up in front of class and he would recite the Iliad from memory.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

And he'd make these one liner jokes too. Like there's this story that Romulus founds Rome because he saw six vultures rotating over the seven hills. And that's how he chose it. And the word for six in Latin is sex. And he goes, yeah, my band in high school is called Sex Vultures. It was stuff like that. There would always be these one liners that you're like, this guy's hilarious. And he looked and sounded like Neil Patrick Harris. Really, really great guy. So I took every class I could take from this professor. And he taught a lot of Greek civ classes in undergrad. And I just found Alexander the Great to be a really, really interesting character from the perspective of he's this philosopher king, he's this guy that wants to. He's a student of Aristotle, so he's very well read. And he has this idea that he's going to unite the world under his rule. But when you look at that type of power, he's also on a razor's edge. And he has the ability to become this diabolical individual later in his career. So I think if you look at that dichotomy, it's extremely interesting. So I was just very riveted about the guy. Read every book I could read in Alexander the Great. And then I read this really weird article when I was in undergrad about this. It was after the battle of Actium, which is when Augustus beats Mark Antony to basically become the first Roman emperor. He goes and prays in front of the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great. I'm like, that's really weird. Why did he do that? Because Alexander's been dead for about 300 years by this point. And I took a look at Augustus's career and I realized that as a propagandist he had looked at everything Alexander the Great did correct and then applied those same things to convince Romans they didn't have a king when they actually had one. So he was very brilliant in how he put things together. So for me, that's how I got into Rome is I saw Augustus doing what he did and I'm like, that's what Alexander the Great did, right? So he was kind of do these same things.

[B]

I mean, it's a fascinating period of time. Were you still, even in undergrad? Were you still viewing, I don't want to say viewing the world through a political lens, but were you still deeply involved in politics?

[A]

I've always been really interested. I've always read a lot of political theory. I've always, you know, I was reading Tom Clancy books at like 10 or 11, so I've always been very into that whole world. But undergrad I was a Catholic theology And Judaism double major. So I've always been somebody that's been interested in like, what makes people tick.

[B]

Okay.

What have you found makes most people tick?

[A]

Well, I think most people are inherently good and I think for that most percentage of people, it's actually making the lives of others around them better. But the problem is the type of people that want power are the ones that aren't always inherently good. And I think that's the thing that's pretty dangerous. It's not always the best of us that get into power.

[B]

Assume that thread, it goes through history. I was just going to say it bounces its way through history for sure.

God. And again, how do you stop that?

[A]

That's really hard. It's really hard because you would have to take government and make it more like Jury Duty where you get that summons in the mail. You're like, oh God, I really don't want to do this.

[B]

Nobody want. Well, actually, I take that back. There are people out there who want to go to jury duty.

[A]

Did you see that show on prime about jury duty?

[B]

No.

[A]

There is a show on prime and it's called Jury Duty. And basically there's only one person on the jury that actually thinks he's on jury duty and the whole show is playing a trick on him.

[B]

No way.

[A]

It is so good. If you get a chance to see it, it's on prime or Netflix.

[B]

It's called Jury Duty, I'm assuming, hopefully. Is this a scripted TV series or this is real life.

[A]

It's filmed like the Office, but this one guy actually thinks he's on jury duty because he's the one person they keep out of the story. So it's really good because it gets wild. They keep doing crazier and crazier things to see if he'll continue to believe it's Jury Duty.

[B]

My wife gets those summons. Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer's identity is about to be revealed during that perfect meditation flow? On Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad free podcast episodes. So you can stay completely immersed in.

[A]

Every story, every reveal, every breath.

[B]

Download the Amazon music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad free included with prime.

So often. And I never get them and she's just furious.

[A]

I got one a couple years ago and thankfully did not have to go, but I just couldn't see taking that much time off of work.

But if you made government more like Jury Duty, where people didn't really want it. I think then it would function. The problem is there's too much power that comes with it.

[B]

Where do you think that flipped in US Governance? Do you think it was ever. Do you think it was ever more along, using your vernacular, along the lines of jury duty? And if so, when do you think.

[A]

That changed with the founders? It definitely was. Like you look at somebody like John Adams, he's.

[B]

Yeah, they went back to their life.

[A]

He was vice president. He was president, and he goes back and has a law firm.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, Washington was somebody that. He didn't even want a second term. You know, people just demanded he do it. So I don't exactly know when that changes. Right. But I think you look at Biden.

[B]

And he's been serving for 174 years. Pelosi, the same thing. I mean, it shouldn't be possible that you could be in politics for longer than your life, than you have been outside of it.

[A]

Well, you look at somebody like Chuck Schumer in New York, he went right from law school into government. So it's like you have no life experience for the people you're governing. And I think that's a real disconnect between actually being in politics.

[B]

Yeah, I would have to agree.

Yeah. I don't. I have concerns. I don't have the understanding of our government system enough to even hypothesize how it would play out, but I have concerns that we are approaching a place without some massive sweeping changes, that it might be untenable.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I don't know what that looks like either. You know, a lot of people talk about civil war, which is a term I completely and utterly avoid. Nobody wants that. I don't even know what that looks like.

[A]

Well, I think people also online like to get a little spicy with that too, because it gets some clicks.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, you were talking about the Charlie Cook stuff on the way over here. That's, you know, some of the initial reactions from that were people using that same vernacular, like, guys, come on, and gals, obviously. I just, I don't think. I just don't think they understand what that would look like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I don't want anybody to have to experience that. And I don't. I don't know what it would take. I do ask myself in the U.S. what would it take for us to get to that point, though? And I don't have an answer for that either.

[A]

Well, I think the thing that's hard is if you look at the Civil War, it was geographic. Right. It was north versus south. And then you had kind of territories further west, like Kansas, that they kind of decided that what they were going to be a part of. But for us, it's kind of like, what would it be? Cities against country. Because at the same time, if you look at most of the places that are blue, they're just cities.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's not really states. I was watching a clip yesterday. Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking about gerrymandering. And if you look at the state of Massachusetts, Massachusetts is anywhere from 40 to 45% Republican, but they have no Republican people in Congress because of how the map is actually drawn. So cities have really gotten to control states through the way voting set up. And I think you have to wonder what would those. Those lines even look like? Because it really is cities versus country in a lot of ways.

[B]

Yeah. And what would be the spark that lit the fuse, you know, if. If Civil War 2.0 were to kick off?

[A]

Why?

[B]

What would be the reasoning behind that?

[A]

I don't quite know. Because in 2020, it seemed like we were there. Like, it seemed like there was some. Some. If you look at the George Floyd riot. Well, the George Floyd riots and a lot of those things. Right. Like, you couldn't gather because of COVID but at the same time, you could, you know, go out and riot and do all these other things. So it didn't seem like things were good at that point in time, but at the same time that also went away. So I don't really know.

[B]

I don't either. Yeah, I don't want to get anywhere near it, but.

Yeah, those are questions I ask myself, for sure. So what do you see based off your knowledge of the time period in history and the parallels to today? I've watched you talk on some other episodes about the parallels you're seeing and how falls of certain empires, to use your words. It's not as if this is a new template every single time. It actually seems to be a little bit more repetitive in nature than it does exploratory in nature. I'm just curious what you have seen in the past and what you see going on now and how you think, let's say unchecked, uncorrected, where you think it leads.

[A]

So the most famous book that's written on the Roman Empire is Edward Gibbon's Decline of the Fall of the Roman Empire. It's obnoxiously long.

[B]

Are we talking like 1500 pages?

[A]

No, it's single space. It's seven volumes. It's obnoxious if you do the audiobook. It's like a hundred and something hours. It's obnoxious.

[B]

Oh, my goodness.

[A]

So he puts together about 200 different reasons on why Rome fell.

[B]

So he dove in. He did not dip his toes. He cannonballed off.

[A]

The fifth story, it was written in 1776 in a way that it's very hard to read modernly because the language was, I don't know, much more beautiful, if that makes sense.

[B]

Romantic.

[A]

Yeah, romantic in a lot of ways. But if you take a look at that, one of the big things that he puts attention on is Christianity and what it did to the Roman Empire. Now, if you understand Gibbon, you understand that it's not a real reason. He was raised Catholic, and his father just makes him convert to the Church of England to get better political position. So he has to, in a lot of ways, make himself right. I don't think Christianity had anything to do with the fall of the Roman Empire. Now, the two things that I really look at are inflation and immigration. And if you look at any society we've had through time, those are the two major things you could point to for a lot of societies. Right. As I mentioned earlier, 15,000% inflation by 284. So if money doesn't have any value and the people living in a place aren't from that place, well, what do they actually have allegiance to? And I think that's the thing you really have to worry about, because if you look at Rome's third century, they have three major problems. A lack of central power. There's this time period called the third century crisis, where basically military commanders are declaring themselves Emperor and fighting each other.

[B]

Sweet.

[A]

And that goes from 238 to 284.

[B]

That's a really long time period to do that.

[A]

But there's 20 different. Over 20 different guys that they can confirm were Emperor during that time period, because it would be like months or weeks or there'd be several at once.

[B]

That's decades of fighting.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So get some.

[A]

There's a really bad central power problem. And it got to the point where when Aurelian is assassinated in 274, the guy that takes his place, Tacitus, doesn't want the job. He's like, please don't make me Emperor. I don't want to be Emperor. Because at that point in time, you're a target. Right. Because the next person wants the job. So it becomes related to military power. So this lack of central power is a really big part of it. The other thing is they weren't very good at handling their borders because they were fighting each other. And since they're fighting each other, what happens in the third century is half of the Roman Empire in the west breaks off and becomes what's called the Gallic Empire. Half of it breaks off in the east, which is called the Palmyran Empire. Then in the north, you have the barbarians coming in, which are the Huns and a lot of other groups. And the Romans are just fighting themselves and they're debasing their currency, fighting themselves. And so you have, you know, this. This real issue with lack of border control. And then if you look at earlier in the third century, since they need more military men, the. What are called barbarians had always been part of the Roman army, but what's called the auxiliary, meaning they would fight alongside of the Roman army, not as part of it. Yeah, but there's such a need for fighting men now because the. If you want to be in power, it's so important to have more legions. They start bringing barbarians into the legions, and then what you're gonna have is one day a guy is a Roman commander, the next day he's a barbarian commander attacking Rome. So this is a real problem you have is you just have this uncertainty of who's actually in control, what your money is worth and who is actually part of your society. And when you look at. We don't exactly have congressmen and senators raising against each other. I don't think they're qualified to do anything like that. But we do have a problem with controlling our borders right now. We don't know how many people are here or shouldn't be here or here legally. And then we also have the problem of we're just spending money we don't have. And those are two things that really do destroy a society.

[B]

Yeah, I think, you know, one. One difference, at least currently that exists, or what I was in as well, in the military, is I think it would be really hard to have military leaders carving out smaller sections of the military fighting each other. Yeah, it's a little bit more.

[A]

And I. I don't have any military experience, so I definitely can't speak to that.

[B]

Well, it's. I mean, for one, it's a different era to begin with.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The speed of communication, the ease of, you know what I mean, information flow, all of those things. I just can't imagine. I'm trying to. What would this look in real time like? Right, so there's a Westpac commander, the Western Pacific commander, and let's say There's a South Pac. And I don't know because I'm talking about naval boats at this point. I don't even. I can't fathom a world where those two. They're probably four stars, are like, okay, this is now my navy, and I'm gonna go. The east pack is gonna go attack the wet. I don't see that happening. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think it's highly improbable, probably because again, of just the communication ease of transferring information, and the instant that word of that got. You know what I mean? It would just transmit so quickly what you're talking about people breaking off on the eastern and western sides. What, are they going to send a carrier pigeon? Send a dude chewing cocaine to go run back literally, like, you know, the 45 days later word makes it back. It's like, sorry, man, that guy's been on the march for 45 days. That's. That's. I'm going to call that impossible in the modern.

[A]

Well, the structure is different though, too, because if you look at it, we have American citizens that are being paid by the US Government to be in the army. The thing that was different in Rome is if you look at the Punic wars were in the late Republic, Right. Where Rome was fighting Carthage. One of the major things that changes after that, they go from citizen soldiers to a professional army. And a lot of these generals actually had private armies where they're the ones now paying them. So they have loyalty not to Rome, but to their commander.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So if. If the guy that is in charge is paying you. Well, that does change how it functions.

[B]

Right.

[A]

We don't have in our military, which.

[B]

Which I think is beneficial because it. Absolutely it. You know, there's like, hey, there's, you know, private contractor, government contractor stuff that they pale in comparison and capability. I'm not saying it's not a real thing, but I think it's a good thing we have that different structure. The border one is interesting. I. I try not to be. I try not to catastrophize.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because there are really.

[A]

Well, it can become a political talking point too, 100%.

[B]

And there are a few things that are really a catastrophe. Right. If we use. And this is one of the things I hate about both sides of the aisle trying to use these sticky words like. And. Because I hear this one more often, you know, the fascist thing, like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or Nazis. Like, guys, if you call everybody a Nazi, nobody's a Nazi.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

It's really clear delineation in the 40s what we're talking about when it comes to the Nazi, like it's just, it doesn't work. So for catastrophes you can do the same thing. If everything is a catastrophe, nothing is, at least in my opinion. But the border, I don't.

I don't understand.

Why so many people don't care. And I'm not out on a picket line. We're 60 miles. 60 miles from the northern border.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Like I'm not out there patrolling the northern border, but I. And I'm a.

Totally supportive of immigration.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

With an asterisk legal through the proper channels. That is without that, I think we are falling in line with having no idea what allegiances are there. And there are examples in the US of areas that have far more allegiance to the places where these people came from than the U.S. we look at.

[A]

What'S happening in like, you know, Dearborn, Michigan or some of the places in Minnesota.

[B]

I was going to use Minneapolis as an example. It must be like the up there is a huge Somalian population. Nothing negative to say about Somalians, but you can go and look and see what level of influence and allegiance there is in some of those areas. And I don't. It's clear whether you dislike or like the current administration. It is very clear that a change in border policy can be effective when it comes to at least reducing currently the number of people illegally crossing the border, which is I feel like lends a normal person to ask the next question, which is why didn't they do that in the four years before and why was the narrative that it's not an issue, that this is just a talking point from the right. I don't understand that. And I also don't understand how so many people just bought that hook, line and sinker.

[A]

I also don't understand how people can think with it. Right. Because there's been one of the talking points on the other side has been no person is illegal. Well, it's like if you didn't follow the process to get here legally, sorry, but you, you are illegal. Right. It's just how it works. You know, there's. So if you look at congressional representation. I heard Tim Pool talking about this not long ago. If you look at a state like California, for example, congressional representation, they changed the census under Obama where they didn't want like I guess previously illegals were afraid of getting deported if they filled out the census. It made it not a crime to fill out a census and not be a citizen and be Deported for that.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And here's why it's interesting, because those people never have to actually vote. But congressional representation is based on the census.

[B]

Oh, interesting.

[A]

So a state like California has five to seven seats that it actually shouldn't have based on the population. And there was a congresswoman in, I think in Brooklyn or the Bronx last year that was talking about one of the reasons she wanted immigration is because it will get them more seats. So if you look at that, she.

[B]

Said the quiet part out loud.

[A]

She said the quiet part out loud. So I think when you.

[B]

How dare you.

[A]

When you look at it, you know, it doesn't even have to be that people will ever vote. But congressional representation is based off of how many people are in a state. So you have states with more seats than they should have based on that.

[B]

You know what I find fascinating too is, and I'll say this because I say it all the time and it's interesting, some people think I'm like this crazy right wing person and I'm like, absolutely not. I actually feel equally unrepresented by both parties. You know what I mean?

[A]

I'm a normal guy from 2010, man.

[B]

Yeah, like I said, probably libertarianism, that's bordering on anarchy. Not that I want anarchy. That's just what I'm talking about, the level of government involvement. A lot of the people who will say things along the lines of, well, nobody is illegal if you ask them.

Let's say you go and you are trying to emigrate to France or somewhere in Europe and you don't go there and go through the legal pathway and you encounter authorities, what would you expect them to do?

[A]

Deport you?

[B]

That's what they answer with. So there's this. And I don't understand that thought process where that shouldn't be the case, where you call home, but it's an acceptable outcome if you go somewhere where other people call. I just, I don't. I struggle with trying to put that Rubik's Cube together.

[A]

Yeah, well, and I guess the thing people don't understand too is how much that drives inflation as well. Because I forget the dollar amounts, but they were giving a certain dollar amount. I think it was like. The thing that sticks with me is $10,000 to people that were coming in as like, you know, hey, get your started money. Or if you look at. In New York City, I think it's. Is it. The Roosevelt Hotel's on 8th Avenue, but there's a dumpster out front with all of the new stuff that people are being given that they don't even want. They're given so much stuff, so they're being given a phone. A lot of them are able to get health care. So that's a real problem because those do raise costs for everyone else.

[B]

So the healthcare thing is an interesting talking point. And this kind of aligns with why the government is shut down right now.

If you listen to people on the left, they will say it is impossible for an illegal alien. Before I say an illegal alien, what is the correct term so we can respect everyone here?

[A]

Jeremy, I have no idea.

[B]

For somebody who did not come into the country following the.

[A]

Oh, they were using other words. They were saying migrants, I think was one of them. What was the other one? They were saying?

[B]

I'm gonna use the term illegal alien.

[A]

Yeah, it works for me.

[B]

Let's just go ahead and use that. What is that foundational term? And I'm not saying that to be mean, and I'm not saying you're a green space person. This is just the term that I understand and I think most people do. If you. One of the things that I'm hearing from those in politics on the left and the reason that they're holding their ground is they are claiming it is impossible for an illegal alien to access Medicare, Medicaid.

[A]

It isn't. It is impossible. But here's what's interesting. A lot of those people are cash pay, and they're never going to collect that cash pay. Right.

[B]

Oh, so they'll just go in and.

[A]

They'Ll go in and a hospital can't. A hospital can't refuse to service anyone. Now there's private, like those, like emergency centers and stuff. They can refuse to urgent cares. Urgent cares. They can refuse to service someone. But a hospital can't refuse service to someone. Now they're never going to collect that service. So sure, they're not getting health care, but you're still paying for it because somebody has to pay those doctors.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's probably going to fall onto the taxpayer.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. So I guess that would be an indirect way. God. It gets. And this is where it gets.

[A]

It's a web. It really is.

[B]

Yeah. And that's where it gets. I want to say dirty, but that's not the right word. It gets opaque. And the conversations don't ever seem to penetrate that opaqueness. Because that's not the conversation you're hearing in politics.

[A]

Well, because they're talking points. Right. Because that's all politicians can think with.

[B]

Man. I don't want people to. If they are having a medical emergency to not be able to receive the care that they need. But I also don't want to bankrupt our country. And I don't know the answer. Again, if somebody's coming to me for these.

[A]

I'm not super happy with the healthcare system as it is. It's kind of wild to me. Like, you know, I pay for insurance for my employees.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's nuts as a small company with 15 people would have to pay for health insurance and it's not even great insurance. Right.

[B]

I've had a few people on one of them. The most recent was Brigham Bueller, who is the founder of Ways to Wells and he started off as an Eli Lilly rep. You want to talk about an interesting look behind the curtain.

You know, just the budgets, the courtship, my words, not his, of the medical providers, the costs associated with it. And then I've had people on who are talking about, you know, the Affordable Care act, which actually took the number of providers and drastically reduced them down, siloed them in. But then also this behind the scenes control of big pharma from the pharmacies and the premiums and kickbacks. And meanwhile, like you said, you pay a tremendous amount of money on a premium and your service is trash.

[A]

Well, we went to medical sharing because at the same time it costs us a little bit less and it's actually better because a lot of times what you're doing is going into an office as a cash pay person and then the billing gets spread among all the other people that subscribe to the service. So it's actually frankly a better way to go.

[B]

Yeah. And then a buddy of mine, Scotty, owns CPI, which is a stem cell institute down in Tijuana. 200 bucks for an MRI.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Same day service.

[A]

But is it government subsidized there? I don't think so.

[B]

Yeah, I don't think so. Again, I never had him on or had these like incredible detailed conversations.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I have very close friends who have gone there and that was their cost. Like you could get in the same building, like world class medical treatment, run your credit card for probably. And I have no data to support this. Probably the cost of one of your monthly premiums.

[A]

We've gotten most of our dental work done in Mexico because it's kind of like.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah, my wife got a dental implant there. It's just a lot easier to get done. And it's high end service, man.

[B]

How, how is that the case? I do believe we are the still the greatest country on earth. Am I biased? Absolutely. Whatever. I'm not talking shit about any other country. Yeah, I love where.

[A]

No, I agree.

[B]

Yeah. I love what we stand for.

Are we flirting with the old FAFO theory? Perhaps. Do we need to make some improvements? Perhaps. But how could we allow our country to get to a place where a family was like, you know, it's time to go to Mexico because we need dental work. What are we doing?

[A]

Yeah, I get my contact lenses from Canada.

[B]

Yeah. Do they come in like a little maple syrup pouch?

[A]

They do not. It'd be cool if they did, though.

[B]

Do they give you any maple syrup with it or is it just straight contact?

[A]

It's just contact.

[B]

That's boring as hell.

[A]

But I guess when you look at health care, you know, I don't think that. I don't think a public option is necessarily the right way, but I also don't think the way things are being done privately is the right way. And I don't know what the right solution is, but I think if you look at medical costs, the one actually driving them up is the one in the middle, and that's the insurers. Because a lot of times doctors are charging the prices they're charging because their reimbursements are 50%, if that of what they're actually charging. So they have to raise the price to charge that. My mom had a pretty bad stroke about 15 years ago. She was in the hospital for a month and it was $2.5 million for her care.

[B]

What?

[A]

We negotiated that down and paid a much smaller amount, but it was $2.5 million for a month of medical care in ICU.

[B]

How is anybody supposed to pay that?

[A]

I believe medical debt is one of the number one reasons that people go into bankruptcy.

[B]

Indeed. Yeah. My mom passed from cancer in 2010 and my dad shut down his business after that. Yeah. For the same thing. I mean, it's, you know, it's protracted, long term, inpatient, outpatient hospital, like all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what else. What else are you going to do? It's.

[A]

Well, I guess the problem is then when you look at inflation, it's not just a one thing fixes it. There's all of these other things that cause this problem. So it's like, how do we fix the system? Because the system as a whole isn't working. And I think I thought DOGE was a great idea.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I was really excited and I've been very let down by the amount of spending I was hoping was going to get cut out of it.

[B]

Are they even Doging anymore.

[A]

It doesn't seem like it, because once Elon left, it was kind of like, you know, whatever.

[B]

Yeah, I actually really, really liked.

[A]

I was excited.

[B]

You know, one of the. One of the. The hot topics on that one was when they started looking at the VA and they were talking about.

A substantial reduction in headcount. People were up in arms about it because they immediately assumed that it would mean a reduction in care for veterans.

But just like any bureaucracy, it's wildly bloated. And I've talked. I have interfaced with the VA very infrequently, and my experiences have been good. I have a vast network of people that I know who. I'll say it's like 60, 40, 40, pretty good 60 some issues. But a lot of the times when it's on the 60% of the side trying to get a hold of the right person, you have to get 15 signatures for whatever it is. It's the bureaucracy. And I would rather let people go from the VA and increase the quality of care for veterans than just maintain the headcount status quo because everybody's afraid of going anywhere near veteran issues. Again, it's the same thing. Right. It's a talking point where the actual conversation is past the talking point. But, yeah, Doge.

I realized we were in trouble when Elon actually had a chainsaw in his hands. That's the point.

[A]

Well, and there was that salute he did, too, which got us a little concerned for a while there.

[B]

Yeah. But then there's a. I mean, it's pretty funny to see the Internet. I love that it lives forever. You can find a brief snippet and clip of variety of politicians making very similar movements. And again, guys, like, let's look at the intent behind this.

[A]

He got excited.

[B]

Yeah. Are we saying that Elon somehow has been this Nazi sympathizer who has somehow worked his way over time knowing he would get to the place that he did near the president? I also thought pretty early on that when those two blew out, which was only going to be a matter of time, that it wasn't gonna be great.

[A]

But he also knows where his bread's buttered, too. And I think that's the issue, because if you look at the Biden administration and the companies that they put money into for electric cars, one of them wasn't Tesla.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So he's looking at, well, they're shutting me out. Maybe this guy let me in. It's just knowing where your bread's buttered.

[B]

Yeah. But then when you leave saying, hey, my Your boss's name is on the Epstein list on the way out on the platform.

[A]

How do you come back from that? It seems like it's kind of chilled a bit.

[B]

I don't know. But that would be a really good study in human dynamics on how you were able to come back. Because he went. That was like nuclear level. That was DEFCON 5.

[A]

Like, hey, I know I said you were messing with kids, but I didn't really mean it.

[B]

It. Yeah. And I know I said it to a few million people, and by that, I mean hundreds of millions of people that retweeted that, that became its own ecosystem that spun off. Yeah, I.

I guess that you just have to get to a place where you realize that anything a politician tells you on the campaign trail is likely not going to happen, because that was one of the main talking points. We're going to come in here and we are going to take a broadsword to government and start clawing back which if. So, let me ask you this. When it comes to inflation, if Doge, let's say they still existed, they had a charter, and I would be the first to admit that I think a lot of the stuff they needed to do was more suited for a scalpel and not a broadsword. So I think they really could have been effective, actually, if they would have taken their time. You know what I mean? Not change what they're doing. If it needs to go, it needs to go. But sometimes. Let's just open up the tool thing a little bit. Put the hammer away. Here's his tweezers. You know what I mean? Here's a splinter problem, and here's one where you need to chop off the limb. I think they would have survived a little bit longer had they been able to do that.

[A]

Well, they started out in the right place. They looked at what countries are we funding. Right. Because I think that's the major thing to look at. We're throwing so much money in countries that aren't America. Well, that's the first place you would cut.

[B]

And is that going to have. When we go back to talking about inflation, is that one of the more effective ways to start reducing that galactically high percentage of inflation?

[A]

It's a good start. Right. Because it's one of the biggest places we're throwing things away.

[B]

I just mean the Doge model in general, taking a look at the systems and essentially exercising things that are not working but are just absorbing capital.

[A]

Well, I think it's. When you look at it, it's a three pronged approach, right? First is you have to cut your spending, because if you're not cutting spending, you're not going to fix anything. The other thing as well is you have to look at how the American economy's changed over the last hundred years. We don't really produce anything anymore. We've become mostly a digital economy in a lot of ways. You look at what's happened to places like the Rust Belt, right? We don't produce a lot of stuff anymore. So we need to have some sort of a economy upgrade where we actually build things here, which we've started to see some. There's been auto manufacturers that have started to talk about bringing production back here. And then the other is as well, is actually having money based off of something. But if we don't handle those three things, you're not really going to fix things. And I guess the question is, is it too far gone? I think is the thing you have.

[B]

To really look at, you know, the bringing production back. Buddy of mine, I don't have one of his. Oh, I do have. It's Montana knife companies, okay. They're just down the road in Frenchtown, and he's building a huge facility.

I think he's about 80% of everything being done in house. But he's trying to bring manufacturing back. And some of the equipment he has to buy is very expensive. And it's interesting because some of it is from countries that are heavily tariffed. So he's looking at, oh, my gosh, I want to buy the infrastructure. But the tariff on this means instead of buying four machines, I can buy two, which will. You know what I mean? So, yeah, he has that complication, which. That'll. That'll sort itself out naturally. But I wonder if bringing production back is the right thing to do or do we need to look in a completely. You know what I mean? Or build something. The next American economy 3.0 or whatever it may be. And I don't have the answer to this, but building infrastructure is going to take time. I mean, talking with Josh and many other people who are in those sectors, five to 10 years would be a reasonable timeline to bring these things back.

[A]

Because, well, cutting spending could give us time, right? It could. It could give us time.

[B]

Because even if Josh gets that stuff, let's say the machines, I think was like a polishing machine or something like that, probably misspeaking, but that doesn't mean you have the person who knows how to use it, the knowledge base here, you know what I mean? There's this extended timeline before he can vertically integrate and have all those things. And I think having some level of capacity is a great thing. But is that a rear view mirror looking approach? Should we be looking through the windshield and looking at. You know what I mean? I don't.

[A]

Yeah, no, Innovation maybe is what you're saying. But I think the other problem you have with that then is our education system. Right. If you look at our education system, super good.

[B]

What are you talking about?

[A]

What's that?

[B]

Super good.

[A]

Yeah, it's not so great. Right. They're kind of like hedge funds, the way they just kind of spend their endowments. But if you look at the Industrial Revolution, one of the things it changed in America is it changed education dramatically. The first World War and then also the Industrial Revolution were two major changes from America because we needed two things, factory workers and soldiers. So because of that, you don't need people to be. That's why the classics are dying in a lot of universities, because before the 20th century, people would have actually learned classics. Our founding fathers learned classics. When I went to grad school, Seton hall had gotten rid of their classics department. So I convinced them to let me move all the classics professors into the graduate history school and get a classics masters that way. But a lot of schools have gotten rid of classics. That's Rome and Greece and human civilization things.

[B]

What's their reasoning behind that?

[A]

They don't see a need in it. They don't get funding for it like they do for STEM and things like that. So. But the problem is, you look at what education has now, people don't have a worldview of past civilizations. They're not learning a lot of skills. You know, if they're going for like gender studies or something like that, they're not learning skills they can apply in the world. And if you look at how people used to function before the 20th century, somebody wasn't so defined by what they did for a living. Right? Yeah, they might be a welder or a blacksmith or something, but they had other things they did. They might be doing literature, they might also be trading in their local community. There was a lot more to what they did. They weren't so defined by their career. And now it's like you go to school to be a lawyer, you're a lawyer, or you get out and you go to school for something and there's no jobs in that, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So one of the things that existed, which still exists in the trades is apprenticeships. And apprenticeships are, you know, interesting because they serve two purposes. First is to be able to decide if you actually want to do something. Right. Like when people look at the seminary, they don't, they don't think everybody's going to it to be a priest, part of its discernment, like should I be here or shouldn't I be here? And an apprenticeship would solve part of that. The other part would be the experience. And if you look at universities, people are investing a lot of money for knowledge they're not going to use and they don't even know if they need yet. So I think honestly even having an apprenticeship like after high school would make way more sense because you'd either figure out what you want to do and where you need more information. But we don't have that system anymore unless you're going to the trades.

[B]

How old are your kids?

[A]

One and a half, four and just turned seven And I have a fourth on the way.

[B]

Nice. Congratulations.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

So I have three and mine are in a different phase of life.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But this goes to.

[A]

They're all homeschooled too, of course.

[B]

Well, you only have the four year.

[A]

Old and the seven year old are doing school.

[B]

You're probably making your four year old like read the Iliad, aren't you?

[A]

No, no, my wife doesn't do that with her now. No, she plays like counting games and stuff like that.

[B]

Writing in cursive with a quill pen she fashioned herself. So my oldest is 22 now. We just went through birthday season. So I have a 22 year old boy, a 20 year old boy and a 17 year old girl. My 20 year old is in Montana State going through an engineering program, Mechanical engineering. This kid is, I, I need a blood test because he is way smarter than me. Right. In every respect. And then there's my oldest and my daughter and what is interesting is their thoughts on education and the role and importance of education.

[A]

How so?

[B]

I remember.

And maybe my generation. How old are you?

[A]

38.

[B]

Okay, so I got a decade on you. Yeah. I'm sure this probably happened a little bit in your generation too, but it certainly happened in the generation before. Like my parents, you have to go to school, you have to go to college and then enter the career field.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Of whatever.

[A]

My parents pushed that on me. You know, my dad didn't finish high school, went back and got his GED later on. My mom didn't go to college. Big Irish family. So I was the first one in my family to go to college. But it was like always pushed on me like this is what you have to do.

[B]

I Think that narrative is starting to change.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

And I think it's. I'll be curious what it will be by the time my children have children. My daughter is in a welding program right now. She's already done a year of apprenticing in welding and she's getting her basic certificate. She's got, I think, six to eight months left. And I'm talking with her about the opportunities that are. I mean, you want to talk about write your own ticket.

[A]

Well, right now in the trades, absolutely.

[B]

And it's unbelievable. And again, it goes. There's the apprenticeship, which she did actually before starting the course, which has allowed her to accelerate a little bit and take some tests early because she already has some of the requisite basic knowledge. But now it's. It's kind of like, sweetheart, where do you want to live? Do you want to live by the ocean for the rest of your life? Because you could go specialize in whatever metals are generally used when it comes to maritime stuff, and you'll never have to, I mean, go live in fricking Hawaii if you want to. There's always somebody who wants a fishing pole rod made on their, you know, whatever it is.

[A]

Which is interesting because if you look at 30, 40 years ago, you'd be working in the local factory and that's what you'd be doing.

[B]

Yeah, but she. It's not that she doesn't value education. She sees the route that she is going down as equally, if not more valuable than the traditional route of academia. Academia, academia. Like my wife as an example. Her mom was a teacher. Guess what was primary across everything? School, school, school. When the economy is down, take out a student loan, go back and get another master's. Get another and just layer it on top and layer it on top. And what you get at the end of that are degrees, which I think are probably amazing, and the knowledge that comes from that. But you also have an amazing amount of debt that you cannot erase or get yourself out from underneath, especially if there's no job in the field.

[A]

Well, and I run a PR agency and I've interviewed people that have a master's in pr and it's not very useful.

[B]

What does that even mean, a master's in pr?

[A]

You feel really good about yourself, but it's not usable.

[B]

Well, do they get any real world experience in doing that along with.

[A]

They do projects that are like what they would be like if they're in the real world. But no, it's not real world experience.

[B]

Yeah, I made a model of the fucking Space shuttle one. Time. Time. It doesn't mean that Elon Musk is hitting me up for advice on this.

[A]

You know what I mean? But I think that is one of the major problems with schooling is there is no real world experience. Right. Like in. In high school.

[B]

What's starting to add to that is the. Is children. Which. It's amazing to me as I get older.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Apply that term to people in their 20s now. Like Michael is 23.

Whatever. We argue over how old he is. I'm not sure he knows he's a child.

[A]

Right.

[B]

When I'm 60, you'll be a child. At 38 years old, the narrative is shifting to.

Why do I want to do that? It doesn't net me what it is that I'm looking for in my life. And that's got to scare the crap out of these institutions.

[A]

Well, here's the thing. I'll tell you. So I was always terrible at math. My senior year of high school, I had a math teacher that was a retired electrical engineer for Jersey Central Power and Light. I learned math because he showed me how it worked in the real world. And I think that's one of the major disconnects we have between education is there's the theory of it, but there's no application of it. If you look at education, it has two parts, the theory and the application. But we skip application.

[B]

Do you think we do that because they don't feel like there's enough time or just the structure, the traditional structure of education never allowed for it.

[A]

I don't want to seem offensive, but I think at the same time, like, let's say a business school, for example, the most MBAs are employed by the US government. And I think if you look, that's correct.

[B]

At least they pass audits all the time.

[A]

But I think the thing is, if you were. Unless you were donating your time to do this as an extra thing you're doing, but if you're a business professor, would you be out running a growing business or would you be teaching in a school? So I think that's one of the things you have to look at, is who are we learning from.

[B]

This show is brought to you by BetterHelp, one of the easiest ad reads I could ever do. I have been very open about my own journey in talking with counselors and therapists. The impact that it's had on my life. I'm never gonna shut up about it because it has been so impactful. It's not magic. It is work. The work is done by you the work is facilitated by the person that you're talking to. Not everybody that you link up with is a great match, whether it's in person or whether in the digital age it's online. And some people are geographically limited in who they have access to. This is where something like BetterHelp comes into play. If you have an Internet connection and a device that can connect to it, you have the ability to establish a connection to a higher level of care when it comes to your emotional and mental health. BetterHelp therapists have helped over 5 million people worldwide on their mental health journeys. That's millions of stories, millions of journeys. And behind everyone is a therapist who showed up, listened and helped someone take a step, step forward. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and they're all fully licensed in the US and they have a therapist match commitment. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy. A short questionnaire helps you identify your needs and preferences. And their 12 plus years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate mean they typically get it right the first time. But if you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. BetterHelp works with over 30,000 therapists. Yes, you heard that correctly. It's the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. If you're ready to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey. What I'll end with is saying this. It's okay to look under the hood before the check engine light and all the other cluster gauges are flashing red at you. You. It's been immensely beneficial for me to get ahead of some problems in my life as opposed to playing catch up. Listeners are going to get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com Cleared Hot. That is better. H E L P help.com Cleared Hot. Back to the show.

[A]

Yeah, it might be a little offensive to some, but at the same time it's, you know, the old trope is those who who can't do teach.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, so I have precisely zero seconds of college.

[A]

Yeah. And I have more college than I need.

[B]

Which is awesome though. But also you have a depth of knowledge in a subject that is super fascinating to you. And I think it does have these echoes through time and repetitive. Like you said, Right. It may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

[A]

Well, I didn't use it for 15 years, so it makes it look like I kind of planned it, that it popped up in the news in the last couple years.

[B]

Yeah, but that's just the way life goes, you know what I mean? You never know what twists and turns.

But I talk with my. Again, so my real. I can't say understanding, but my exposure to somebody in the academic system is my wife. And she even will talk about, you know, people who will go from high school, then to college, then to a master's program, then to a PhD and then into teaching.

[A]

And, well, it's because you've always been a student, so it's a natural progression.

[B]

But then how can you. And I'm sure that. And I'm sure that there is nothing wrong with that cycle. But again, let's say we're talking business, which I would begrudgingly call myself an entrepreneur. I would be very interested in the CV of a business school teacher. And I would want to know what avenues have you dipped your toes into the water? Where have you. Not in a book, but where have you put your toes up on the line and worried, unable to sleep at night, staring at a goddamn ceiling fan, wondering if you're going to be able to pay your staff or have the money to be open the next day. Where did you learn these lessons? Now, do you have to have those to be able to teach the concepts of business? Probably not, but the instructor that I want to learn from is that person. I would agree with that. And in that cycle where you go through academia and then back to academia, I don't see how you have an opportunity to have that experience.

[A]

Well, I think, as well as I said, you know, to me, a good professor in a business school would be somebody that's run a great business and they're just, you know, hey, I retired and I want to give back. That would be a great professor to me, somebody who has, you know, I've had sleepless nights. I've had a lot of those things in my life.

[B]

Year one coursework is titled Listen up, dipshits.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[B]

And the guy whips out a note notebook from the 1940s and pencil writing and just goes alphabetically through all the mistakes that he's made.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Can you imagine how riveting that class would be?

[A]

Well, then that cuts your actual cost of time spent, money spent and everything else. So that has a ton of value.

[B]

I would be riveted in a class like that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like do you have any worse stories? Tell me most. What else should I not do?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like let's talk about debt. You guys.

[A]

When I bought Hey, I remember, you know, I started my company back in 2016. I remember those times where I had realized that 8 ACH payments take 2 days so I could pay several things at once because those ACHs weren't hitting right away.

[B]

So you found the digital version of the paper float. Yeah, that I used to commonly do at specifically what sticks out of my mind is grocery stores.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Friday, float that sucker to Monday. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. I don't want to poo poo education at all. But.

I.

The value proposition.

Has to be worth it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I think they're struggling right now. I agree to make. Unless you of course come from like if you're gonna be a brain surgeon, please for the love of God, go to every course that you're required to go to.

[A]

I don't want to die and perform well.

[B]

Right. Or an accountant. Right. I mean like if you have those hit those technical wickets, of course. But let's. I mean I look back at myself, 18 years old. Let's say I had gone to college, which I didn't. I went straight into the military. I don't know what I would have studied. I likely would have picked if I even attended class and didn't waste my parents money or my own. I would have looked at it and reverse engineered it from the lens of what is the fastest way to get from A to B. And then I would have gone from A to B and then had to figure out what it is I was gonna do beyond that and who I wanted to be. And I would have missed. I guess, I don't know. I guess that's the trade off of going into the world and not really knowing and getting some life experiences and touching your toes into some pools and figuring out what you do like and what you don't like. And it's one of the things looking back at my younger self is kind of how I try to be with my own kids. I have never asked my kids what do you want to be when you grow up. I just ask them what are you interested in?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And let's. Let's go like you tell me what you're interested in. Gas pedal. Let's my daughter with welding like first off A, the very male dominated field. So we're have a little talk about that. But B, if you're into this like let's go.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Foot on the gas. Mechanical engineering. For my son, I don't have a clue. We just went and saw his apartment in Bozeman, and he had some complicated math formula up on a whiteboard in his room, and to which I drew a massive penis on it. My wife is, like, real great. I'm sure his girlfriend appreciated that. I'm like, that's the only. I feel like that was the missing digit in the equation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You go up and around and you're going to cascade back down to the. Solving the problem. But that's all him. That's not me. And then my oldest son right now. I mean, he's selling cars for a living and absolutely crushing it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And working on communication, working on being told. I mean, the skills in that. Being told no time and time and time again, day and day and day. Like that is a skill in and of itself.

[A]

Sales is one of the best skills you can ever learn because it applies to everything in your life.

[B]

And he is largely an introvert. And you can tell he is crushed at the end of the day. Like, it does not fill his cup up. But he is forcing it through the day, doing well, getting better, getting reps, even though it's exhausting him. I'm sitting there looking at this like, this is gonna change your life, kid. And he's doing a great job with it, man.

[A]

Well, I think the problem is, too, is you have people commit that much time to school, and you have someone like me that I went to school. I get out. I'm a teacher for two years. I'm like, dear God, I hate this. I was not happy.

[B]

How quickly did you realize you hated it?

[A]

About a year and a half in. I lasted two years.

[B]

What were you teaching?

[A]

I was teaching history, honors, US History, Sociology, Criminology.

I was teaching at a Catholic school. So you don't really need much of an education background or to do that. Just, you know, some of the course knowledge. So I got burnt out really quick. And I taught in a part of New Jersey where it was rich kids, but the inner city school just closed, which was the Catholic school in the inner city. So I had the two dichotomies in my class, and they were very athletic. So basically, kids didn't have to do their work because they wanted to play. It was really frustrating. Right. And I got into teaching because I love learning, and for me, it didn't really translate. And I look at what I'm doing now. I'm actually teaching in a way that I actually really enjoy and people really enjoy as well. So I think sometimes you find that right thing, but you don't know it right away. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

My mom had a stroke in 2013, and I'm looking at what I'm doing. I'm like, you could teach me how to pick garbage and sell it on Etsy, and I would do that because I hate this job.

[B]

Wow. That.

[A]

And I went to. I sold life insurance for a couple years. I was pretty good at it, but I hated the idea of sitting down and talking to people about, so you're gonna die, you should probably buy this. So I tried lots of different things until I started my company in 2016. And I think for a lot of kids, they're missing that. They're missing that idea to explore, to look around. You're committing to something at 18, taking on a whole bunch of debt, and you may never do it.

[B]

Yeah. And whether you do it or not, guess what's coming in the mail every month.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And the interest rates are higher than your mortgage rate for most people.

[B]

It's so predatory.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, I've gotten a few loans in my life at this point, and let me tell you what they ask, as I'm sure you know, debt to income ratio.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where is that with educational loans when.

[A]

They'Re compounded daily on student loans, which is insane. Are they really compounded daily? So that's why people can pay them forever and never get out of them.

[B]

Yeah. Well, they want you to pay them forever and never get out of them.

[A]

It's indentured servitude. It's feudalism. Come back again, man.

[B]

Man. So what other parallels do you see between the Roman era and. I like to balance a little bit. Things come to me, and I'm just going to ask you questions because that's just how my brain works.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What are your thoughts on Europe? Europe has got a very interesting. Specifically, say, the UK immigration issue going on right now. What are your thoughts about what's going on over there?

[A]

Well, I think the hard part is similar to what we're seeing in Dearborn, Michigan, and also in Minneapolis as well. Is.

[B]

Would you say they are ahead of us or on par with us on that particular issue? Probably as a country, we're behind them, but maybe in those particular areas we might be on track.

[A]

I think they're ahead of us in a lot of ways. Cause I can remember going to Europe in, like, you know, 2010, 2008, and it was, you know, you're not seeing as many people that are from that country. Like, I remember Going to Italy and just seeing all the vendors all over the place, which are obviously from like northern Africa or something like that. So I do think they are quite ahead of us in a lot of ways.

The problem I think you're seeing there is, you know, so many more things are paid for for people there. So I think their economies are driving them to a bad place pretty quickly. So I don't know who gets there first. That's the question.

[B]

How's their debt looking? I've never once even considered, I don't.

[A]

Know, to be honest with you.

[B]

Michael, what's the. How would we look this up here?

[A]

It's like what, like $30 trillion stock? 38, 37. Because Thomas Massie has that pin that's spins every day when it's. It's covering the. It shows you that the speed the national debt's picking up.

[B]

Does he really?

[A]

He has a pen he wears. Yeah.

[B]

Well, how would we look this up though? It would be national debt of the uk.

[A]

Oh, uk. You'd have to look nation by nation.

[B]

Go Great Britain.

[A]

Well, the thing they have going for them though is they still have the pound. So the pound sterling right now is.

[B]

This is their currency still tied to the sterling.

[A]

It's I think 1.3 US dollars to a pound sterling. So dollar wise they're still doing better for us. They did not adopt the euro as like their top currency because that hurt a lot of countries too. Right. Because I remember going to four or five years ago, I went to Budapest and I remember spending money there like I was a king. Because our US dollar went so far there.

[B]

The UK's national debt is around 2.9 trillion. Those are rookie numbers. Yeah.

[A]

So we are going faster.

[B]

Well, we're also a lot bigger.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Can you fathom what it would be like in the US if our debt. Michael, please Google when was the US national debt 2.9 trillion.

[A]

What's the ratio to GDP right now too? I think we're like so far over that.

[B]

Yeah. Let's guess before the results come up. When do you think the national debt in the US was 2.9 trillion?

[A]

1970 maybe 68. Somewhere around there.

[B]

Okay, I'll say 69. Closest without going over.

Oh yes, I won because I picked one year on top of it.

[A]

1989.

[B]

Okay, that's more recent than I thought.

[A]

Wow, we're going really fast.

[B]

Can you imagine if our debt right now is 2.9 trillion? It'd be amazing.

[A]

Yeah, that could actually be paid off like over time obviously.

[B]

But do you Think it's possible to get. What were we at right now, Michael? Like 37, something like that? Let me see, 35 to 37.

[A]

One of the theories was to drive inflation so we can pay the national debt off with cheaper money.

38 trillion.

[B]

That sounds like an idea I would come up with because I don't understand what we're talking about. About. Oh, yeah, well, can't the printers at the treasury just stay on for 24 hours and then we'll just use that?

[A]

Yeah, we'll just use that. You know what I mean? We make more of it.

[B]

Yeah. What is it, Michael? 38.

[A]

38, yeah.

[B]

Oh, my God. Okay, so yeah, we have a delta of $35 trillion.

[A]

Yeah. In 30 years, give or take.

[B]

What would it take to stop it in place so it doesn't go any higher?

[A]

Massive cuts? You know, it would have to be.

[B]

I mean, is that really what it comes down to at this point? Yeah, we just have to. Well, actually, I say this all the time. Doesn't matter how much money you make, it matters what you spend.

[A]

So we have to reduce cuts, but it's also over inflated costs, right? Like, you know, the government pays way too much for things that in everyday business would not pay so much for. There was trying to remember this. There was a thing a bunch of years ago about NASA paying for like a $20,000 screw or something like that. Do you remember the story?

[B]

Well, what did the screw do? Did it keep the space shuttle door closed? Cause I might be on board with a $20,000.

[A]

But you know what I mean, like, government pays way too much for things that an everyday business would not pay that for. So I think even just reducing those costs would help us dramatically.

[B]

Yeah, I think the problem with that is there is so much pork baked into this stuff that again, it goes. We have. The people responsible for making this happen would have to vote against their personal interest to make this happen.

[A]

Part of the problem is the way appropriations work, though, because if you look at the way budgets are put together, they want to use, you know, each individual government body wants to use all their budget, otherwise they won't raise their budget next year.

[B]

So December was a great month in the military.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Well, the budget resets on October 1st. So I was a supply rep. And occasionally people would come up and say, you have 48 hours to spend over six figures because guess what happens if you lose it? Yeah, well, I don't even actually know if you would, because they never tested.

[A]

Never tested the theory.

[B]

They never tested the theory because the Theory was spend it or you will lose it. I never saw that play itself out. So the goal is to get your bank account to zero on the last day of September so the coffers can refill in October because that's. The military goes off October.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah, it's Fun to buy 400 pair of boots at a time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know.

[A]

Well, but if you, if you remember when Matt Gaetz led the charge to oust Kevin McCarthy, one of the big things he wanted when we got a new speaker, which didn't happen, was he wanted individual spending bills. Because what has, what ends up happening is they vote on this omnibus bill every year, which is basically everything to fund the government.

[B]

And I think that has to go away.

[A]

It has to be individual spending bills because then you can actually cut things. If you're voting on we have to vote for everything or, you know, we don't pay for defense. Well, what are you gonna do?

[B]

I think it should be individual bills from every aspect of it. Because I'm trying to remember it was recently they got dumped. I think it was 858 pages, 24 hours before there was.

[A]

No one could read that.

[B]

No. So what they do is they feed it into AI, which is what you and I would do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which is only going to be as effective as the searching terms that you are asking to spit it out. Because I've done this with large documents to see how different I could get the results based off of the tools that I put into it. And you'll miss entire sections if you tell it not to look for it. And maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, but to the people underneath you that you're supposed to represent, it could have a huge impact.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So they have.

[A]

Well, there's so many layers to that too, because you even look at lobbyists for different companies. If you cut lobbyists out, well, then your budget bills might shrink. You look at Lindsey Graham. The guy always has a hard on for invading every country in the world because he gets a lot of his money from government contractors or military contractors. So I think that's what you have to take a look at is who's paying your politicians. Why aren't we voting on individual spending bills? But you have to cut or we're not going to be able to fix things because we can't just cut pieces off of our penny. And then it actually costs more to make a penny than a penny is worth.

[B]

First off, why are we still making pennies?

[A]

That's a good point.

[B]

I mean, why Are we still making pennies?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When was the last time you used a penny?

[A]

So I went to this store once and I had one of those machines that crushes it and makes it into something cool. Of course, that's about the only problem.

[B]

Would be I wouldn't have a frickin penny on me. So I'd have to go break a dollar and get nine pennies or ten pennies, you know, and nine dimes.

[A]

My wife always yells at me because I don't have cash on me either.

[B]

So what are you buying? I mean, I have a little bit of cash on me from time to time, especially if I'm going to where I live.

[A]

A lot of things are paid for in cash because there's farm stores and stuff like that, or service industry.

[B]

Trust me, like the guy who cuts my hair, I pay him in cash.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I don't tell him not to report it on his taxes, but I hope he doesn't. You know, it's not like they've been a real good steward with our money. Yeah, but if we only gave them 3% more, they could, Jeremy, solve global warming. That's what they say.

[A]

Okay, but here's the thing, here's the thing I will tell you. Here's the thing I will tell you. This is a story as old as time. So in 251 A.D. under, this is a story under an emperor named Decius, he's dealing with two major problems. You know, the one is the border problem we already talked about in the third century. It's a problem for a lot of them. But one of the things that allows Roman civilization to rise is something called the Roman climate optimum. It goes from about 200 BC to around 200 AD and in Rome they had a policy that started in the late Republic where every person would get a certain amount of grain. That's where the idea of bread and circus comes from. It comes from if you were a citizen of Rome, you would get a certain amount of food like it was basically grain. So the empire gets so large that that's a lot of people to pay for grain for. Right. And in fact, in 50 years before, in 212, the Emperor Caracalla gives 30 million people citizenship overnight. He does this because he's bankrupted the treasury and it allows him to now tax those people to refill the treasury, but now he's also responsible for feeding them.

[B]

Yeah, I was going to say there's some downstream consequences.

[A]

Oh yeah, he's not thinking with that. He's thinking with any money Right now because I want to build this new temple or whatever it might be. So in 251, one of the. When you look at the mid to late empire as more grain is needed and Egypt becomes a part of the empire right after the, the Ptolemaic dynasty is conquered in the first century, it becomes part of the empire and most of the grain for the empire would come from Egypt. So the Nile river would flood every year. It would flood the delta and it would make the delta, you know, very good for growing things. In 251 it doesn't flood that year and then it'll go several years without flooding. So now grain prices double, triple, quadruple. So Decius has this great idea, he says, you know how we're going to stop climate change? I'm going to require all Romans to offer sacrifices to the gods, because that'll definitely fix it.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And he also then persecutes millions of Christians that refuse to sacrificed you Roman gods.

[B]

Oh boy. They believed some odd things.

[A]

They did.

[B]

You know.

[A]

One of my favorite is an emperor named Elagabalus. He's a 13 year old emperor that rules. What?

[B]

Yeah, that's a little too young.

[A]

The younger they are, the worse it is, you think? And he rules. I think around 221 is somewhere around here when he rules. I don't remember the exact day, but it's around that time period. And he's the priest of a cult from Syria called Elagabal. And they basically dance around this conical block rock and then he brings that rock to Rome and has a wedding for that rock to a statue and he makes everyone come to the wedding. The rock is carried around in a chariot like it's driving the chariot.

It gets better. Trust me, it gets better. He takes his hairdresser and puts his hairdresser in charge of the grain supply because. Why wouldn't you do that?

[B]

Well, there's a lot of crossover.

[A]

And then he has orgies that he forces the Senate to go to and they get pretty upset about this. It's one of the reasons that they kill him. He would advance men in political position by the length of their member. And he marries a vestal virgin. So he's a very interesting teenager.

[B]

How late into his teenage years did he live?

I'm thinking, I'm thinking 14.

[A]

I don't think he made it to 20. So I, his cousin Severus Alexander will take over and rule for about 20 years after him.

[B]

I mean what I get out of this story is that 13 year olds are crazy and I know that.

[A]

Can you imagine if you became emperor at 13?

[B]

No, because I remember myself at 13 vaguely. And all of my kids have recently passed through that age and if I would let them decide what they wanted the world to look like.

[A]

Whether you're into unsolved mysteries, solved mysteries.

[B]

Or creating your own mysteries, Amazon Music's.

[A]

Got millions of podcast episodes waiting.

[B]

Just download the Amazon Music app and.

[A]

Start listening to your favorite podcasts ad.

[B]

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[A]

No, that was one of the reasons Commodus happens. Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, becomes emperor at 17.

[B]

I mean, that's a little better, but still wholly unacceptable.

[A]

Well, and so when you. Marcus Aurelius, in my opinion, gets more historical credit than he should.

[B]

Really? How come?

[A]

So the Meditations, he often writes about his own struggles in life and it was his journal. It was never something that was. He intended to be published. He was somebody that was very into Stoicism. But he's the last of what are called the five good emperors. And the five good emperors have this policy of not giving their natural born son to be the next Roman Emperor. They would find the closest to them that was politically qualified and make them the next emperor. So during this period of, you know, around 100, 150 years, Rome is very stable. Now, there's a caveat to that. None of them actually had natural born sons, especially since one of them, Hadrian, was very well known as being a Greek boy lover. So Aurelius has a natural born son. So that's a caveat to that is if he didn't name his son Emperor, people would have thought it was weird. But in naming his child Emperor, it breaks this five good emperors trend. And Commodus, he takes the treasury and bankrupts it. He fights as a gladiator, he becomes extremely paranoid and starts killing any of the people around him. So teenagers don't really do well as Roman emperors. I might say that.

[B]

I would say.

Probably a little bit too young. Why do you think Marcus Aurelius was so into Stoicism? So his name is very directly associated with it. And he's obviously not like the origin or the. Who is the founder of Stoicism. How far back does this go?

[A]

Okay, Stoicism, I don't know as much about as like an art. I know Epictetus was one of the original Stoic writers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But Aurelius in his family, his mother was actually well versed in, you know, Stoicism and also different types of, you know, ideas like that. Yeah, so she's often, as him, for him, seen as credit as the person that gives him these ideas. He's raised in. He's also raised in the. In the house of Hadrian, who he's adopted by. And he doesn't follow him as emperor, but he's. He's two later, and in that house, he's also raised by a Greek tutor that also. Would have. Would have schooled him in Stoicism. So when you look at where that comes from, a lot of it would have come from that. But also the meditations are when he's written on campaign. He's basically fighting barbarian tribes for like 30 years of his life. And the Meditations, a lot of it are him trying to deal with how he's dealing with everyday life. It wasn't something he intended to publish. It was basically him journaling.

[B]

I cannot fathom being in that type of warfare for three decades of your life.

And being able to again. He wasn't trying to create something that was going to be. I'm sure he would have no idea that it would turn into what it is or be viewed as what it is now.

[A]

The people he was fighting were called the Marcomanni. They were like, basically a German tribe that was coming closer to what's modern day Hungary is where a lot of Aurelius's life was actually spent. He didn't spend most of his life in Rome.

[B]

That's wild. I think the journaling, if I had to bet, I would say that journaling actually helped him probably navigate all the stuff that he was dealing with. For sure.

[A]

I would say so, because you're actually playing out your thoughts rather than acting on impulse. So I think, to me, if you look at that as an action, it's much more sane than how a lot of other emperors are operating who are operating by impulse.

[B]

Yeah, Crazy time period, man. It's. Do you think they valued life more back then? What was the life expectancy back at that time? 40s, 50s?

[A]

I don't know, to be honest. You know, you did have a lot of guys that would live to be older. You know, if you look at the word senate, the word senate comes from senex, which means old man. So these were people after 40. So there were people living in their 50s, 60s and 70s. I would say, if you're looking at. When average people are living, 40 or 50 was probably pretty old at that point in time.

But how did they value life, I think is. It's kind of an interesting concept. Right, because for them you only have like 10% of the population that's literate, and you have about 90% of the population that's just trying to survive. So for them, life was like. Romans had this interesting way they looked at their ancestors. Their ancestors were. They didn't want to let them down. And they would have these death masks in their house. They're always reminded of death, and they would be the death mask of their ancestors. So for them, they were looking at these lives before them, and they would want to pass them or equal them or whatever it might be. So they had this idea that there was a real value in achievements, and you wanted to surpass the achievements of those before you. So if you look at Brutus, who's the man that's often credited as being one of the main assassins of Julius Caesar, the Brutus family, I guess, to kind of go back. Rome is three periods in time. It's a kingdom first, then it's a republic, and then it's an empire. The final king of the Roman kingdom, his name is Tarquin the Proud, and he's killed by a member of the Brutus. Well, he's not killed. He's kicked out of Rome by the member of the Brutus family. So for Marcus Junius Brutus to assassinate Caesar, well, he's fulfilling what his ancestors had done and preserving the republic. So for them, there was so much value in continuing the life's mission of those that came before them.

[B]

There's a lot of pressure associated with that, too.

[A]

It's a ton of pressure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And many of them didn't live up to it. You know, if you look at Cato the Younger, his relative Cato the Elder, is a very famous Roman writer and politician. And Cato the Younger, who is the politician that puts himself against Julius Caesar, is not really as great as his relative, you know, so he's trying to get political clout for himself in the way he goes after Caesar. So I think that's a ton of pressure. Right. Because you have to not just live up to that. You're expected to exceed that.

[B]

Yeah, man, the death masks in the house.

It'S creepy.

[A]

Yeah, but you were supposed to be reminded of your ancestors all the time.

[B]

I mean, I can remember the people that came before me without that shit on the walls.

[A]

Yeah, but do you have photos of your family in your house? Because they didn't. They didn't.

[B]

Okay, that's a good point.

[A]

They would have, you know, paintings on the walls and things like that, but they wouldn't have pictures of their family. They would have Death masks.

[B]

I would have gone with stick figures. I think it's just the limit.

[A]

Easier to draw.

[B]

Yeah. And it's just a little bit less creepy than a death mask. Those are. I mean, whatever. To each their own, man. What a crazy period in time. Man. 50, the average life expectancy of a man. I mean.

[A]

Well, and there were many that were living past that, but you have to remember, they're probably the wealthy classes that are doing that.

[B]

Yeah, I was gonna say not the 90% that was illiterate and just trying to survive.

[A]

You know, Thomas Hobbes, the famous philosopher, always said that life is nasty, brutish, and short. And he was referring to, you know, lower classes and how their. How their life was. And that would be often how it was for Romans that weren't born into the right family.

[B]

Yeah. How did you lateral this passion, obviously, for history into a PR agency? Where did. How did you start?

It's just. It's. I love it. Because one does not directly point at the other. Well, so in 2016, you started your business. I'm curious how you came around to that.

[A]

So I had put history on a shelf. Right. And I was doing all these different things, and it didn't really work out the way I wanted to. I ended up working a friend's marketing agency. And I've been a podcast fan for a long time. Like, I remember listening to Adam Curry's daily source code back in, I think, like, 2007, 2008.

[B]

Was that one of the early ones?

[A]

Was one of the. Adam Curry is actually the guy that invented podcasting.

[B]

Oh. Joe calls him the Pod.

[A]

The Pod Father.

[B]

That's correct.

[A]

I've had the pleasure of interviewing Adam a couple times. Really? He's a very cool dude.

[B]

Did he have any idea of what he was starting?

[A]

It doesn't really seem like that. Like, he was excited for the idea of, like, have Internet radio. I don't know that he would have had the idea. It's as. As big as it is. But I. I still listen to his show that he's been doing for. I think. I think they just hit 18 years. It's called no Agenda.

[B]

What episode is he on?

[A]

I think they just passed 1800 episodes.

[B]

Because they do two weeks smashing him.

[A]

Then they do two a week.

[B]

Have you ever seen JRE Number one?

[A]

I have not.

[B]

Michael.

This is a piece de resistance.

[A]

I am still trying to get Joe to do Roman Empire.

[B]

Yeah. This is.

Peak Internet savviness. I would go to YouTube, Michael, and look it up.

It is done from a Laptop.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

There are snowflakes. Digital snowflakes coming cascading down there.

[A]

But I remember, so podcasting back in like 2014 was like, you had to use Skype, which was terrible, and it always disconnected you. And he had to use call recorder. And you needed five adapters to make your microphone work on your computer. Like, that was wild, man.

[B]

Yeah. Come on, Michael.

[A]

Oh, my God. I have not seen number one.

[B]

Hit play on that biatch.

This is legitimately what was shown to the audience.

[A]

Why are there snowflakes?

[B]

Nobody knows.

And then.

Update. Update to Twitter.

Damn, this is slow as.

[A]

Oh, my God.

Go Bubbles.

[B]

See what bubbles look like. Bubbles.

[A]

Bubbles.

[B]

We'll add bubbles. And there.

I don't like that either.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Glow. Shall we glow? No, shall not Pixelate Pump art always look gross. How about this? I think that's enough, Michael.

[A]

That's insane. Yeah.

[B]

That is the most popular podcast on earth.

[A]

Are you serious?

[B]

No, not that episode.

[A]

Oh. But I was gonna say how many?

[B]

No. So that became. I don't know if Joe still is, but that became the most popular podcast. Not this, obviously this episode. Because this is two idiots trying to figure something out.

[A]

But I think that's the beauty of it. Right? Like is podcasts allow these long form conversations that could never happen anywhere else.

[B]

I wonder, I have to ask Joe next time I see him if he ever even fathomed that. So that's him and Brian Redban literally changing settings in real time in the first episode if it would become what he. Or what did.

[A]

What does the background say? Make more friends or make more.

[B]

Make me hard.

[A]

That's great. Oh, my God.

That'S incredible.

[B]

And now a lot of people credit him with like, helping Donald Trump win.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The election in 2024. Because he sat down and just had a reasonable conversation with the guy.

[A]

Yeah. Well. And I make my living off of it now. And I never thought that would be the case. Right. Like, yeah. I started a podcast back in 2014. I had failed a lot of different things and I'm like, well, what do I need? But what we were talking about earlier experience from those people that have actually done it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I had 10,000 listens in my first month as kind of somebody that was nobody. And I started getting people asking me for help and like, help with what? I just talked to people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we ended up starting the company and we've to. This time I think we've booked our clients in almost 10,000 podcasts. We've had a lot of fun helping our Clients, like, really get on great shows and tell a story. And I think the thing that's exciting to me is the world we're going into now where this is really how the future will look. You're looking at legacy media. I think one episode of the Joe Rogan Experience now is more than the nightly lineups of msnbc, CNN and MSNBC and Fox News combined.

[B]

Well, to go back to the Trump episode, which is incredible. I think it did 20 million before YouTube lost it for a while, 100.

[A]

Million in the first or second day. It was incredible.

[B]

Can you fathom how much CBS or Fox would pay for those type of ratings?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it was just. I mean, Trump's on there throwing F bombs, telling his people, like, I don't care what's next on the schedule, we're staying here. Like, Like Joe. Like. I mean, they would kill for that. What do you think it evolves into? This is something that I think. Yeah, too.

[A]

Because I think that's the hard part. Right. Like, because I think. And then going back this.

[B]

But actually, though, sorry to interrupt you.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

What we're doing.

Isn'T that far from that. You know what I mean? I mean, yes. Polished. Sure.

[A]

Yeah. Nice setup.

[B]

Why don't we have snowflakes? We can do real ones. We could get like. You could pull a string, Michael, in a little bag.

[A]

Someone last night.

[B]

Yeah. At the end of every episode, we could have like little balloons that come down or something. But point being, two people, in this instance, in the episode as it gets into it, they just sat there and they chatted.

[A]

Right.

[B]

We are still kind of doing that different medium for sure. We have individual cameras and they're better. And we don't have bubbles or snowflakes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But it hasn't evolved that much. I'm curious what you think it will become.

[A]

Well, I think the thing you have to look at, and this is going back to what Adam Curry has said. He said, I think the thing that legacy brands are fighting, are finding is it's hard to monetize the network. What I mean is, if you look at NPR and a lot of these, they try to come in and use the same type of. Of teams and costs and everything that they've done. And NPR has since downsized big time what they're spending on podcasts. So I think the old model is not going to be the direction this goes where it's giant networks that are doing things. I think the thing that's really cool is how person driven it is. So I think that's what's interesting to me and I think there's a lot of different things like even I guess to bring kind of the bitcoin technology back into this. Maybe people haven't NFTs and things related to shows. Right. So I think there's a lot of ability, especially since you own most of the ip, to be able to control it. And I think you lose so much of that with a lot of these large legacy networks. And so there's so much freedom in that. You know, even look at Rogan's first Spotify contract versus a second Spotify had to give him a lot of what he wanted in the second one because they realized they were missing so much. So I think the amount of creative control and ability to reach other people, there's nothing else like it.

[B]

He is still under contract on Spotify, isn't he?

[A]

Well, he had a second contract, I believe. Right.

[B]

So the first one though, because his.

[A]

Because now he's back on YouTube and a lot of.

[B]

That's what I was going to say.

[A]

They changed the terms.

[B]

I bet he's still got an excellent check.

[A]

Oh, I can only imagine.

[B]

I would like to one day imagine actually I don't even understand money like that. You know, I mean I would look at a checklist size and be like I'll buy two steaks instead of one. I mean I don't know. That's about as sophisticated actually. I would have a fleet of helicopters if I had a choice. But yeah, it they. Actually I think he is still under. I just saw him post on Instagram today and he said it is live on Spotify and then on all other channels. So I think he. It's not exclusive.

[A]

Well, it was exclusive. I believe it's a deal though.

[B]

His first three was exclusive and now.

[A]

It'S not, which is interesting.

[B]

That is really interesting because essentially there.

[A]

Has to be some kind of a rev share on that. I don't see how they allow it to happen with them missing out on everything.

[B]

Yeah, because goes back to the way. Because I don't consume it on Spotify. I don't know most of the time I'm. When I'm driving. So I just. And I have people give me a.

[A]

Hard time because I still use Apple podcasts, but I do too.

[B]

But it's. Is that fading off?

[A]

I don't really think it's fading off. There's been a lot of the other like smaller apps that have disappeared because there's hundreds of different apps. But I've always used Apple podcasts.

[B]

I Have, too, because it's native to the iPhone. I have. And most of the podcasts I consume is either when I'm driving or doing manual type labor.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So the video aspect is not.

[A]

I've never watched a video podcast. I've always listened. It's usually like, I'm doing a house project or I'm at the gym or something like that.

[B]

I'm the same. Yeah.

[A]

I binged on this whole series about medieval history where I was, like, painting rooms at my house right before my last child was born.

[B]

Dark and gloomy. And there's just a guy with this.

[A]

Scythe over there, Dan Jones. You ever get a chance to check him out? A very interesting historian.

[B]

Yeah. All right. So you had the idea we should actually. So people understand this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You and I met indirectly because people who work for your brand reached out and pitched some guests for the show.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And my litmus test is always, does this person sound interesting? If they do. Awesome. Let's go. It's one of the cool things about being a host is I guess you could play towards your bias if you want. I try not to. I just literally look at it and is this person's story interesting? It's almost like the same as the. If I was in college, what would I care the most about? I would care the most about the person's CV and experience in the world.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Kind of more interested in catastrophic failures because that's what it seems like my life is. Is just a roll.

[A]

You can learn a lot from that, though, because you can cut your learning curve.

[B]

Yes. And I love the story arc of. Let me tell you how bad it got and what I did to grow out of it. Right. This recovery arc. And I think there's something to be learned there for almost everybody. But you had. You've had a couple people reach out who have come on the show, and then you reached out directly. And so that's indirectly how we met was through your agency.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But how did that. How did you grow it over time? Because I'm assuming it was just you when you started.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Was it the idea of helping people get onto shows or what was the original idea of the business?

[A]

So we started with producing podcasts for People first, and we kind of talked about what the technology was like in 2013 and 2014. And what we found is a lot of our clients, like, they liked having their own show, but they actually really liked just going and having conversations more. So that was part of our service. We ended up cutting that off and just working on Getting our clients on shows.

[B]

What made you go that particular path? Are you talking about you'd get the raw files, the audio, all that stuff, and you would just push them the finished product.

[A]

It was super cost prohibitive at that point in time because, you know, we're going back, you know, 10, 15 years ago now. So it's like the cost, even that started. Yeah, the cost was so much higher. And now if you look at it, you get like three or four AI apps. You can have a podcast pretty quickly, but like the cost is. Was so much higher than that. People wanted to just have conversations. And the thing that I have going for me is I've been in business, my wife for 10 years and her degree is in PR and she's very good at what she does.

[B]

So it's the boss between the two of you.

[A]

Me though, if you ask my employees, she might be the boss.

[B]

Tough one to navigate.

[A]

She's the boss at home, I'll say that.

[B]

Who sits on the org chart at the time.

[A]

She handles anything family related. I will say that.

[B]

Yeah. Have you enjoyed it?

[A]

Yeah, it's. It's worked well from the perspective. And we get to travel a lot together. You know, we've been TO I think 15 or 20 different countries.

[B]

That's for podcasting.

[A]

For podcasts. I've got, I've done talks. I did a talk in Ukraine in 2019. I've done talks in London. So I've gotten to do a lot of really cool stuff. I did a speaking tour again across South America in 2015, which is pretty cool. Went to Peru, really. So I've gotten to do some really cool stuff related to podcasting. And so from that we've been able to go to some cool places. I spoke in Thailand two years ago. We got to bring my kids with us. They've never been to Thailand before. We have. Half of our employees are in the Philippines. We got to go hang out with them for a day. That was pretty cool. So we've gotten to do a lot because we work together. Right. Like we're going to Vegas next week.

[B]

What are your thoughts on? Because now, like you were talking, you were doing this long before I ever started. Now the barriers to entry, I think can only be described as low. If you from extreme.

[A]

If it from a technology, people only knew to put a thing into a thing to make your computer work. It was insane.

[B]

I mean, this is all you do. You get a podcast if you got one.

[A]

They even have. Adobe has an app now that you could take that file with Bad miking. And it makes it sound like you're on a microphone. Like it's insane.

[B]

And with that, there is an explosion of podcasts.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which I again, I want people, if you have an interest in it, go to town.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

People ask me all the time, what should I do? And I say, if you're interested, give it a try. If it. If it's challenging, don't necessarily give up just because it's challenging. But I will tell you, it is more work than you think it is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But it's super enjoyable. Like, I love sitting down and having conversations and relying on Michael to partially do his job semi. Well, notice he doesn't even have the microphone near him, so I don't accidentally.

[A]

Make noise into it. It's actually better. He's surfing YouTube over there.

[B]

Yeah. While he's surfing, he does under my account. So I can check later after the show what it is that he's looking at.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I probably have a felony record.

[A]

All inappropriate.

[B]

Yeah, I know. Felony record. The FBI agents waiting outside to cuff me. But I have heard that about a thousand podcasts are started per day.

[A]

That's insane.

[B]

That's flooding the zone, man.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I was curious your thoughts on the. The just rapidly exploding ecosystem.

[A]

Well, so when you look at podcasts, when I started, there were 250,000. Now there's, you know, an estimation 250 million. Now there's like Spotify likes to say there's somewhere between 4 and 5 million that checks out. So that's. That's about what we have. But the problem you have to look at is I think only about 20.

[B]

No way. Approximately 27,000 new podcasts are started daily.

[A]

They shocked me so much. There's no way. I don't know if this is.

[B]

But could this be correct? It doesn't mean that they keep doing.

[A]

It well, because there's this thing called pod fading, and that's where people before 20 episodes quit. But they keep paying. They keep having. They keep paying their hosting. So it's kind of like still out there. Like a ghost and.

[B]

Hit it, Michael.

27,000 a day.

[A]

That's insane.

[B]

It's at 80,000 every three days. Okay, 4.52.

[A]

So I'm pretty close.

[B]

In the US alone, 55% of the population, about 150.

[A]

It's like the top 5% are responsible for like 95% of the traffic, if not more.

[B]

Oh, I was going to say it's probably the top.

[A]

Well, the last stat I heard, and this was last year, that the top 5% were shows that get 100 listens or more.

[B]

What?

[A]

So that's a very low bar. It's a very low bar. But that means that 95% aren't even having 100 listeners.

[B]

Okay, here's a good one. 86.1 of people prefer to listen.

[A]

Okay, that makes sense.

[B]

Average podcasts usually lasts between 20 to 40 minutes. That's going to depend on your genre and whether or not you're telling a story or a narrative theme.

[A]

I love Dan Carlin show, like six hours.

[B]

Yeah. And again, that's what you're into, Right? Because that guy is so passionately committed to what it is he's putting out.

[A]

Puts out like one a year now.

[B]

Yeah, keep scrolling down. Michael, this is fascinating. Yep. The growth curve for sure.

Three days. How many people listen?

[A]

And I guess the question is, like, how many of them keep paying their hosting? Right? Are they using, like, Spotify's free hosting or something?

[B]

You know, this is interesting. Approximately 584.1 million people worldwide listened to podcasts in 2020. That is. I mean, what are we at? 8.5 billion people.

[A]

That is a very low percentage of the population.

[B]

Yeah, it's a very, very low percent, but it's a 6.83% rise year over year.

[A]

Well, there's Edison Research does this report every year called the Infinite Dial, which has some really good statistics on podcasts. They look at every industry, but they look at podcasts specifically.

[B]

Huh.

One in three use listen on YouTube. 26% prefer Spotify. 14% choose Apple. Podcasts 27 use other platforms.

[A]

Well, because there's so many other apps out there, too, that they just basically piggyback off Apple's feed.

[B]

Yeah, they're just scraping the RSS feed. Yeah, it populates. Okay. 27,000 a day.

[A]

That's. I had no idea. That much.

[B]

First off, we're in the wrong business. We need to be in a hosting business.

[A]

Yeah, but can you imagine the amount of bandwidth you have to pay for?

[B]

Yeah, but say you're charging these people even just 10 bucks.

[A]

Well, Spotify right now, they have a free hosting level that they have no limits on what you can do, and you can just buy into their monetization model.

[B]

I don't even know what I pay Spotify, if anything, to host this podcast.

[A]

We used Libsyn for years. They were.

[B]

I use Libsyn as the main one because podcast has their own backend called Anchor.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So it's a separate upload. There's like three different portals. You have. I use Libsyn for. That's what scrapes the RSS feed. Then I upload to.

Spotify through anchor, YouTube and then X. So it's four different tabs I essentially open up.

[A]

We've been using a company called Potatoes the last two years. We took our feed and moved it from Libsyn over to them because they do dynamic ad insertion, which is pretty cool.

[B]

Libsyn does that as. No.

[A]

Do they? Okay. They didn't at the time when I ended up moving.

[B]

I honestly think that any. They're playing the same game, everybody else is. What is our competition doing? And the next thing you know is so every leap that is made they'll trail a little bit. Unless they're the initiator of that leap.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But then if they are the initiator, within a few months they're all going to be doing the same thing. Yeah. At this point, the baking in of the ads Anchor does this or Spotify does exactly the same thing. YouTube will do the dynamic insertion. X is the only one that actually doesn't that I know of at the moment.

[A]

But you got to think they're going to do that at some point.

[B]

I would think so. But right now you can just upload. I think it's up to. It's a megabyte or gigabyte size. Not necessarily a time thing, but yeah. So for like for every episode I open up four tabs and just do the uploads and wow, we're good to go. I would have Michael do it, but I don't trust him, man. Poor guy probably constantly asked me why I don't have you do it. By the way.

[A]

I know I've offered multiple times.

[B]

I just. I'm aware of your top end performance.

[A]

My lack of skill. Just in general. I have a gigabit connection at home. So you like upload that thing in like a 10 seconds.

[B]

I don't have a gigabit connection at home. It doesn't taste anything. 10 seconds.

[A]

They don't have that out here.

[B]

We have running water and electricity, but slower Internet than you're going to have.

[A]

We got a fiber optic co op a few years ago, which has been great.

[B]

Good for you. I bet you that is just screaming.

[A]

Oh, it's a gig up and a gig down. It is fast.

[B]

That's impressive. Yeah, we don't have anything like that out here now. It's an interesting ecosystem I constantly am trying to think about not because I want to make a change, but I just kind of ponder what it will be.

I think the connection between two people, like the remote stuff is never as good as in person.

[A]

It's not quite the same. It isn't like I've done it that way for years, but I like doing in persons more, so I always jump at the opportunity.

[B]

And so sharing a physical space, it means you'll probably have a studio of some kind. I mean, so what does that limit you with? Can you play with backdrop? Could you play with lighting? You know what I mean? What does that turn into?

[A]

There's a lot of different ways.

[B]

I guess I just don't know what any of them are.

[A]

Well, because I think there's the interesting things or two are what people can do off the back end of them with building communities and things like that. So I think there's all these different ways you can monetize which creators couldn't do in the past.

[B]

Chris Williamson does a good job of that with his daily newsletter and all that stuff. Plus, he's British, so everything he says makes it sound smarter. Yeah, he actually admitted to that too. He goes, I'm not that smart, but I sound smart because I'm British. Son of a. He's a good dude. His success has been crazy to watch. He's openly talk about, Yeah, I uploaded episodes and I would get zero downloads for days.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And now I think he just crossed the thousand episode threshold and is like into the billions.

[A]

Well, it's interesting because podcasting is an interesting thing, especially like back in the day. You know what I mean as well is you don't really get more now, I would say, because there are so many more ways to connect with people. But there wasn't much of a feedback loop. So you didn't know early on if it was going well or not going well.

[B]

Oh, it was just transmit only.

[A]

Yeah, it was like you're putting stuff out, you're getting kind of your stats and stuff and eventually you start getting emails in and you start hearing from people. Or I was at the gym one time and some guy's like, hey, man, I listen to your show this morning. I was like, hi, I'm getting changed. So, like, awkward. It is a little awkward, but like, it's kind of interesting when that feedback loop starts to come back. But, you know, in the early days of podcasting, there wasn't a ton of that. You'd have to start to pick up some speed.

[B]

Yeah, I can see. What did you call it? Pod fading.

[A]

Pod fading. It's where you don't get the 20 episodes.

[B]

I love it. I love just the ad. The addition of pod to the beginning of it, and it goes away. Yeah. You got to stick with it. I mean, the advice I give people. And I'm a nobody. Right. Like, I enjoy what I do. I'm able to make a living off of it. And what I tell people is, it's going to be more work than you think it's going to be.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It'll probably be harder than you think it's gonna be. And you have to be consistent. Consistency is, I think, a large portion of it as well, especially if you're gonna build a community around it.

[A]

Well, one of the. Like when I'm talking to people that are about doing it, like, a lot of times they're like, oh, well, you know, I'm thinking about doing a podcast. I wanna think of how to monetize it. And the thing I always tell people, I always tell people, be willing to do this for a year to even decide if it's working or not. Like, I think that's what you really have to do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But people are often trying to figure out how to make money off this thing right away. And I just think it creates poor content. Right. And you're gonna quit by 20 episodes.

[B]

I think I did two or three years before an advertiser reached out to me because I didn't actually realize it was something that you could monetize. It was just me off in the wilderness. Not physical wilderness, but metaphorical wilderness, just messing around. And. Yeah. I mean, obviously, slowly that evolved over time. But.

Yeah.

I generally can hypothesize as to how their journey is going to go with. Within the first five minutes, they want to know about ads.

[A]

Those often aren't great conversations.

[B]

They're not great. And I am appreciative that whether they know it or don't, they are displaying to me their motivations up front. But.

[A]

Yeah, but you got to be willing to put in a lot of time before you realize to cut it or not cut it. Right. I tell people at least a year.

[B]

Yeah. And I think you have to have some semblance of two things. One is who you are, and the second one is what type of content do you want to put out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because if you don't know who you are, I think you'll be a little bit like a flagpole in the wind. And that goes against the consistency component as well.

[A]

Well, but I think as well, it's also realizing that it can change too. I think That's a really big component. But I think there's a lot of people out there that teach about podcasting. Like, well, you have to know who your avatar is and you're gonna give him a name. It's Jimmy. And this is what Jimmy likes and this is what he does. And I just, I find that so strange because to me, I look at what interests me, what is something that I feel like I can add value to other people from. And for me, it's changed a lot over the years. I was talking to, you know, best selling authors like Grant Cardone and, you know, former NFL guys and stuff, and I got, I got bored of that, honestly. So I do a lot of history based stuff now just because to me it's really interesting and I've been getting better feedback than I got before. So it's just about, can we have a great conversation that has value to other people?

[B]

What's been the key to getting people on shows? You said you've booked like 10,000 episodes.

[A]

Yeah, something. So you mentioned, like, the thing that interests you is like, does this look like a good conversation? And that's, I think one of the things that differentiates us from a lot of other people that do what we do is as a host, I'm remarkably picky, if that makes sense. So we're always trying to figure out, you have to be, because this is your platform you've built and people will be like, what is a good guess for me? Like, I don't know, I'll let you know when I see them. So oftentimes we're looking at answer, by the way. Well, it's, you know what I mean? Because I have to decide, like it's a true answer. I don't know. They're like, oh, well, you covered this, so you probably like this. And it's like, oh, God, I hate that. I don't like business coaches. But we're looking at what is the differentiator and what can be a really great conversation for the host. That's the thing we're really taking a look at. And there's a lot of people that, you know, do kind of put the cart before the horse and they're worrying about their ROI right out of the gate. Those aren't going to be typically people that work with us because we want to put people that have put the conversation first. So that's what we're really looking at is what makes this person unique? How are they different from anything else out there? And what's the, you know, the Real value in the conversation. There has to be value in the conversation or I'm not going to be able to get you booked on anything.

[B]

In this journey of getting people booked, there's got to be a few just catastrophes or horrible conversations. Let's talk as broadly as you want, but let's do like the top three. Like, oh, that sucked.

[A]

In terms of, like, hosting or just.

[B]

Like you try to. Yeah, both.

[A]

Or you get my worst conversation of all time and I didn't publish it and I don't even remember the guy's name. Somebody else pitched him to me. I'm like, ah, that sounds interesting enough. He's outside. I can hear airplanes going over ahead.

[B]

Oh, is he like screaming into his phone?

[A]

He's screaming into his phone. And it was kind of like when you go to the Burger King, drive through and it's like, you remember that Dane Cook joke? You drive through and it's like, I want Whopper Whopper. It was like similar to that. And then I get to the end and I try to still make it nice for him, like, so where could people find you? And he goes, google me. Like, I'm just trying to find out what your website is, man. Yeah, so like, that didn't publish that one.

[B]

How about with clients?

[A]

With clients.

[B]

Have you had just some train wrecks?

[A]

We've had a few people where it had more value to me to give them back every dollar they paid to me and let them to verbally abuse my team anymore. There's been a few of those. Really? Well, you're getting media, you do get divas, right? Everybody that thinks that they're the most important person on the Internet and the people that do really well are the ones that are doing this because they want to give back and help. The ones that are doing this because they want to be famous, they're train wrecks. And those have not been great conversations. So we've definitely had a few of those that we've had to tell to walk.

[B]

Hey, can you sniff them out earlier?

[A]

Now we know the right. In my sales conversations with our discovery calls, we know the right questions to ask. We know the correct questions to ask.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's not worth it, man. No amount of money is worth a certain level of headache.

[A]

We had a guy once that he got through his entire program and then tried to get a refund on his full program that he was happy with and then went to the Better Business Bureau and then we basically gave all our documents to the Better Business Bureau and they shut him down. It does happen. There are people out there that don't want to do even exchange.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. People are a mixed bag. People are.

[A]

You're in business, you see all kinds of kinds, man.

[B]

Unfortunately you do. Unfortunately you do. How do you think you'll continue to evolve your business?

[A]

Well, we've started doing more production work again just because the cost has changed so much that we've been able to offer people a lot more. So we've started doing that again in the last year and producing shows for people.

In terms of what we're doing, we're trying to develop higher level programs and things like that, but it's always just a great conversation. And I think if you're building great conversations, it's going to continue to build.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. At this point, it's almost from somebody who creates content. It's. Are you using the best equipment that's out there? Are you reducing time and workflow? You know what I mean? It's microscopic as opposed to. Oh, now we use an IMAX camera.

[A]

I don't even do that. The thing I've changed in my home studio, I just use my MacBook with an iPhone on continuity camera. It's actually pretty darn good.

[B]

Well, it's because the camera's with the right lighting.

[A]

I use one umbrella light. I have my Roman Empire map behind me and I just use an SM7B like this one and we get a really great shot. It doesn't have to be expensive to get a great shot.

[B]

Now these microphones, these SM7Bs.

I mean.

[A]

I've been using the same one for like 10 years. They go through the war, man.

[B]

I mean, I'm waiting for the SM8B or whatever it is, but.

[A]

You ever travel with them? No, they always get pulled at the airport. So I just pull them out now because they think they're tasers. Really?

[B]

Yeah. What does this thing look like on an X ray?

[A]

Apparently a taser. I don't know. They literally. I just literally take it out and put it on the belt now. Because they always take it out.

[B]

Do they? If they, if you didn't do that, did they at least recognize it when you. When they pull it out of your.

[A]

When they pull it out. Oh, it's a microphone.

[B]

Okay. Interesting.

[A]

I did have the TSA steal my external hard drive once. I don't know why, and I never got it back.

[B]

Was that before or after the show?

[A]

So it had about 500 episodes of shows on it that I'd already done and published. But I still like to have Backups, but did not get them back.

[B]

Oh, that's unacceptable.

[A]

Just got a letter in my bag that they had went through my bag and taken it. Don't know why.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

Just had podcasts on it.

[B]

Osama bin Jeremy.

Al Qaeda, you know, they were just checking to make sure. Yeah, the podcasting thing, 27,000 a day. My head.

[A]

Insane. I just, I had no idea it was that big.

[B]

Hosting platforms are making a lot of money. Of course they are. I mean, good for them.

[A]

Yeah. Especially when they're in ad buying and everything else.

[B]

Like. Yeah.

[A]

Because they take a very hefty cut when they're doing insertions for you.

[B]

The data back end data is interesting there. I feel like there is what the creator gets, like what the Libsyn backend will show you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then I feel like there is a much more parsed and rich upstream parcel of information that they don't share because it has value to them. Yeah, it's a pretty dirty ecosystem.

[A]

Well, for us, we don't even do straight ad buys. We do a lot of affiliate deals because we make way more money with promoting products on the show that I actually use and enjoy.

[B]

So what do you mean by an affiliate deal?

[A]

So one of my favorite products is I went to, as I mentioned, went to Peru a bunch of years ago, ate some ceviche, got something called liver flu. If you ever get a chance to Google it. There are these weird little things that eat your liver and I had all these weird body things going on. So I found this naturopath called Dr. Dean and started using his product to get the parasites out of my body. He's the best freaking product I've ever used. So he has a great affiliate deal. We promote his products on the show. We make really good money with promoting.

[B]

His products because they're like your link, essentially.

[A]

So we tend to do a lot more stuff like that. But at the same time, I'm not the biggest podcast out there.

[B]

There.

[A]

But that tends to work really well for us.

[B]

Okay. Yeah.

[A]

It's interesting because the CPMs on a lot of these are just really.

[B]

Ugh. Yeah. And for the listeners, that means cost per melee, which is basically a dollar amount that you charge per thousand downloads. And they're pretty low.

[A]

It's like 15, 25 bucks.

[B]

A lot of times it really depends on who you're working with. Yeah. And if you're going through a broker or doing it yourself, because everybody's going to. Anybody who touches it is going to get a scrape off the top as well. Yeah. Those Are again, I have had people.

In the first three minutes, they're asking about, they want to start a podcast and like, tell me about cpm.

[A]

Worry about that two years from now.

[B]

Yeah. And as you mentioned, a successful podcast is one that 30 days after publishing, has 100 downloads. CPM cost per Melee per 1000 downloads.

[A]

You need 10 episodes then. So maybe you can, like, share it across those 10.

[B]

I don't know. And I try to. You tell them. I actually do the same thing, like a year time. You need to build it first.

[A]

Well, you also don't know your own voice right away. Right. Like, it's. It's me as a host. I've changed so much in the way I communicate.

[B]

Yeah. What's your favorite character from the history. The character from and the time period. Obviously that is your genre.

[A]

So I guess here's the problem. Like, yeah, my background's in the Roman Empire, but I also go down rabbit holes. So right now I've been going into Tudor England and things like that and looking at the War of the Roses. So I've been reading this book by Dan Jones called the War of the Roses. So, like, Henry V is an extremely interesting character, or Edward IV is interesting. But if I had to look at my favorite historical character, Cesare Borgia. He is the son of Pope Alexander vi, and he is the first cardinal to decide he doesn't want to be a cardinal anymore. And he becomes something called a condottieri, which is kind of like a mercenary captain for hire. And it's quite a career field shift. He. He takes the papal army, unites it with the French army, conquers all of Italy, gets syphilis and loses all of Italy and then dies. But he's a very interesting character.

[B]

I mean, at least he spent the time that he had being busy.

[A]

Yeah, he makes it into his early 30s, has to wear a mask from all the syphilis in the last couple years of life. But he's a pretty interesting guy.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

The Prince by Machiavelli. I think chapter seven of the Prince and a lot of the Prince is actually about Cesare Borgia, because Machiavelli says that Borgia was the perfect prince, but he did not plan for his own sickness. Had he done that, he might have been the best prince.

[B]

Well, I don't think they had a cure for syphilis back then.

[A]

No, it was called the French disease in that point in time because they believe it came from the France and New World, because this is right after Alexander VI is actually the guy that divides the early America, between the Portuguese and the Spanish in that important time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

After the French disease.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, what did they know at the time? I want to know.

[A]

Well, mercury was one of the first.

[B]

Treatments for it, which I don't believe is a very healthy vitamin.

[A]

No, not.

[B]

Or vitamin, as they would like to call it over there. I wonder what Marcus Aurelius would think if he was dropped off at Central park just for a day, just go cruising.

[A]

He'd be alarmed by all the homeless people, I think.

[B]

Yeah, but I mean, like, imagine the concrete jungle. It's like. I'm sure we'd be the same if we had to fast forward, you know, 2,000 years into the future, if our planet even makes it that far, because we're idiots with nuclear weapons.

[A]

But we've lost a lot of aesthetics, though. I think that's the really interesting thing when you look at their construction versus ours, is we've lost skyscrapers. Sure. They're big and they hold up people. They're ugly as hell. I would agree. Like, we've lost the aesthetic quality of a lot of things. And I think that's the thing that's interesting you look at.

[B]

Do you think that's because the pace of life is different?

[A]

I think so. We have to build things so fast and so quick and to hold so many people that we're not looking at.

[B]

The aesthetic or not. There's no time to appreciate it or it's not taught to be appreciated. Yeah, I think that's one of the things about my group of my. My father is a brick and stone or was a brick and stone mason.

You get a little bit more being directly involved in the building and seeing the process and the slow speed by which a lot of that stuff is built. There's a little bit more appreciation in that. And I think that's just lost if you're always in fifth gear, just crushing through. Yeah, it's like, cool. Does the building. Is it safe for me to live in? Do I have a place to live in? Cool. I don't know.

[A]

Well, if you look at these buildings, they build them for years, right. Like, you know, they take a decade to build something, and I think it becomes a real art form. Like, every piece matters. Every way you look at it matters. You look at the.

Pantheon. The Pantheon is. It means the temple of all gods. It's. If you ever get. Have you ever been to Rome?

[B]

No.

[A]

It's near the Piazza Navona. But if you walk over, Michael's been there, you get a chance to look at It. It's not on the Piazza Navona, but it's near it. And it is this incredible building. It was originally built by Marcus Agrippa, who is the main general of Augustus, but it's rebuilt later on by Hadrian, and a dome is added and everything else. But the way they built it is they used different types of cement as they went up, because it got lighter and lighter and lighter as it went to the top, because the dome couldn't support itself. It was too heavy. So the ability. It's one of the most beautiful buildings ever. It became a church.

[B]

What year was that dome build?

[A]

It's built in the early.

Early second century, I believe. The building itself was built in the 1st century BC. It's rebuilt by Hadrian in the early 2nd century.

[B]

It is amazing they were able to do that at that time.

[A]

And so there's actually another church. There's a church in Florence, if you can look this one up. It's called Il Duomo.

[B]

Did you see that in person, Michael, when you were there?

[A]

It's. It's kind of funny because it's like you don't realize it's there until you're standing in front of it. Because it's just like, off a corner, you're like, whoa, where's that building? So this building, Il Duomo. So you see that steeple on the top, the big dome? So when it was first built, it didn't have a dome because they didn't know how. They had lost the technology and how to build the dome. So this is a Renaissance church. So the Medici family actually found a architect that had studied the Pantheon, and he's like, well, I think I can build this thing. And the Medici actually helped put the dome on that building, but it had no dome for years. It was just unfinished.

[B]

Look at the layout of that city.

[A]

I believe it was. The construction. The top of it was started under Cosimo de Medici, I believe.

[B]

Fascinating to me that they were able to build that level of complexity and sophistication.

[A]

Absolutely beautiful. And. And that's. We've lost a lot of that. And I think, to me, aesthetics has a real spiritual quality to it. I think it really communicates to you at a much deeper level than just seeing a skyscraper.

[B]

Are you a religious guy?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Did that come from. I mean, obviously you. It seemed like you were going down a religious path. I've. I mean, obviously it's not an uncommon statement, but you see it going one of two ways. And hyper religious families or over religious families, they either either all in or all out. For some people, it's like. It's like oil and vinegar. Yeah, essentially.

[A]

I was. I was raised Catholic. A lot of guilt, so. Not necessarily because you're one of the.

[B]

Few Catholics I've heard.

[A]

I was raised Baptist, and I went to Catholic school and decided I wanted to be Catholic.

[B]

How does that work? Do you just trade in, like, your license or.

[A]

Yeah, there's a bunch of courses and stuff you got to take.

[B]

And then do you get, like, a Costco card?

[A]

You do not get a Costco card.

[B]

I don't know. I'm not a religious guy. Like, it's like, yeah, I'm on the Dodgers, but I want to go play for the. The Giants. You got to switch out your jersey, you know?

[A]

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of doctrinal differences.

[B]

Yeah, man.

Well, what do you want to close it out with, man? We've been at it for almost two and a half hours.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. It's been that long?

[B]

Yeah. I don't know.

[A]

There's a lot of different things we could discuss, but I think the biggest thing to understand, what do we leave.

[B]

Out other than we're totally fucked. We're going to go down the same path as Rome.

[A]

So I think here's the one thing to point out is the discussion I have a lot is, as I mentioned, Rome has three periods in time. Four, if you want to count the East. It's a republic in a kingdom in 753 BC it becomes a republic in 509 BC and then an empire in 31. And then it falls in 476 AD.

But the Eastern Roman Empire goes until 1453 when it's conquered by the Ottomans. So you could really look at his four errors in time. The argument people often want to make. And the one that I hate the most is. Is Donald Trump. Julius Caesar. Well, number one, the guy's never led a military of any kind. But number two, if you look at where we are, I think we've actually ceased to be a functional republic in a long time. And this actually goes back to where we started. We talked about 1913 being a very pivotal year. And I think, if you look at it.

I think to me, that was around the time period we ceased to be a functional republic. Because if you look at it, the executive branch has started to kind of overrule the others. Right. Where there's not really three co equal branches of government anymore. And at the same time, the actual will of the people doesn't seem to matter all that much. Right.

[B]

I think most people agree with you on that.

[A]

Just kind of does that. So to me, I think we've been more of an empire for a really long time. And I think you have to decide, do I want to save the empire or do I want to try and bring back a republic? Which I think at this point in time, we're so far beyond that that I don't know if we can go back to that. So I think that's the real thing to be looking at is America ceased to be a functional republic. Sure, we are a name, but ceased to be a functional republic in a long time. And if you look at kind of the life cycle of. I know Plato talks about that, there's others that talk about it, but the life cycle of government, you can have a republic disintegrate to a democracy and that disintegrates eventually to monarchy. Right. So I think the problem is we've lost so much ability to do anything about where we're at. I think we really have to take a look at how things are built and take a look at figuring out how to get back to how things should be. Right.

[B]

What did the fall of Rome look like? Like, what did.

[A]

Logistically not what people want you to believe it did. Right. Like, because. So here's what you have to understand. Emperor Justinian is the Eastern Roman Emperor in the time period when Rome falls and well, not far after that, in the sixth century. And he has this idea he's going to reunite the Roman Empire. So he's going to do that by reconquering the West. And what had really happened is Rome is sacked in 410 by the Visigoths and they pay tribute to the Visigoths. That means they're basically paying them money every year to just kind of like leave us alone. And after that period of time, the last few emperors you're going to have from 410 to 476 are basically people that aren't super qualified. And a lot of child emperors. The last emperor of Rome is a guy named Romulus Augustulus. He's a teenager and the barbarian king of Italy at that time, his name is Odoacer, retires him, gives him a pension and says, hey, no more Roman emperors. And that's basically what happens, is Rome just falls into a barbarian kingdom. It's not that Rome is conquered, it just gradually ceases to be less Roman and it just becomes something else.

[B]

What did that look like day to day for people living in Rome? Just a Slow shift over time.

[A]

It's a slow shift over time. And you're going to see that, that if you're in the right field, meaning that you produce products that are needed, you're probably going to hold a lot of your position. If you still had a lot of land, you're going to keep a lot of that land. But it starts to look more like feudalism, if you're kind of looking at what it looks like. Early feudalism begins around 284. There's an emperor named Diocletian and he basically changes how the Roman Empire functions. And he creates these divisions called diocese, which the Church is going to use later on. He also creates these two positions. He breaks down Rome into, like military units because he didn't want commanders attacking each other anymore. And he has a person leading this unit called the dux. And it's where the word duke is going to come from. And then he's going to basically have these garrisons around that are controlled by guys named comites, which is where the word count comes from. So a lot of kind of early feudalism is going to start to build in this period. Now, it's looks nothing like what we would see in kind of the Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages, but it is kind of the formation of the next time of things. So Rome more fades away than falls. When we hear about falling, a lot of that comes from scribes that are going to be writing in the Eastern Roman Empire. Because Justinian doesn't want to look bad, right? Because he went in and invaded and tried to retake the thing, keeps it for a couple years and it disintegrates back to kingdoms again. So that's really what the fall of Rome looks like. And obviously there's going to be historians out there that are going to tell me I'm wrong, because it's one of the biggest debated things out there, right? People are going to claim there's different years for when Rome fell. Some will say 476, others will say 1453, because the Byzantine Empire, well, they would have always called themselves Romans. So when Charlemagne is crowned the Holy Roman emperor in 800, they would have been like, holy Roman Emperor, I'm the Roman Emperor. Who's this guy? So it is something often left up for debate. But I think that's an easier way to understand that it really doesn't fall. It kind of fades into what's going to become the early Middle Ages.

[B]

How would you apply that model to the US Say we're past Caesar or past the point of being an effective republic in practice. What do you think that would look like here?

[A]

That's tough to say. Right. Because I think if we could, you know, there's some amendments we'd have to change, like the Federal Reserve act, the income tax, the 17th Amendment. But it kind of feels like we're starting to move towards small. Not that I like it or agree with it, we're moving towards more towards a monarchy model. And I think that is something that concerns me. So I guess that's kind of to be continued and see where that goes. Because at the same time, if the United States ever broke up into smaller pieces, well, we would just be taken over by Canada and these other places. Right.

[B]

So I mean, let's not use Canada as an example. I'm not so sure they are.

[A]

Justin Trudeau is dating Katy Perry now. So, you know, I saw that.

[B]

Controversial.

It's funny how that's global news, but.

[A]

I think it's something that people don't consider is how much of united America keeps, maybe they're not our enemies, but other nations from taking advantage of us. If you look at kind of medieval Europe, of course, they're always nickel and diming each other to take advantage. Oh, well, this happened to Spain. Well, then England's gonna go in. Or this isn't going well for France. So it is kind of interesting to see how those things play out.

[B]

Yeah.

Yeah. I would not like to see our country descend into a monarchy based environment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't see the end of that looking so hot either.

[A]

So I think the thing is looking at, you know, what are the things that take away our function as a Republican, how do we get those things back? I think that's.

[B]

Where would you start?

[A]

I would start with first repealing the 17th amendment, but then also figuring out how do we not have somebody named their cousin Senator?

[B]

Yeah. Because I think what is the 17th amendment?

[A]

The 17th amendment makes it so that state legislatures no longer select senators.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

And that would have actually really helped us during the pandemic because the state legislatures didn't agree with a lot of governors and didn't agree with a lot of those. So they could have done something about that because they could have controlled the Senate. So I think that's a really big part as well, because if you remember, the reason that we had a House and a Senate, like an upper House and a lower House, was so that big states and small states would have equal voice. But what's really happened is now since it's all Pretty much a popular vote. We're run by cities, so I think that is something. If we get back to that, it starts to kind of equalize power a bit. I think that's actually a major movement to making the system function like it's supposed to.

[B]

Yeah. California's a good example of being run by the voting power of cities.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, it's basically San Diego, Louisiana. San Francisco.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. And I think if you. That's one part of it. But then also you have to handle the immigration problem of how are we getting congressmen. Right. And you have to actually base on American population, and that'll also affect things.

[B]

I didn't know that about the census. That was an interesting point that you brought up about. Yeah. They may not vote, but this determines how many seats we get. Correct.

[A]

Which is all you need.

[B]

Yeah. God, we're a fucking mess right now.

[A]

But it can be fixed, too. It's not gonna be easy. You gotta cut the debt and you have to handle the currency. And if we don't do those things, then we're not in very good shape.

[B]

What are your thoughts on Trump essentially running on two of those. The debt. Immigration. I would say the immigration. We're making progress.

[A]

Yeah, I think we're making progress. But the debt, I'm not happy about.

[B]

The debt has increased.

[A]

That's the thing that's taken away my political interests, honestly, is I've always been somebody that has looked at how the Federal Reserve operates and how our debt operates, and I fully understand that if we don't have control of our currency, we don't really run our country. So to me, I got really excited about the idea of cutting spending, because if we cut spending, we can actually fix this. And that's been really, really discouraging to me, that it's kind of like, well, everybody forgot about it. Let's move on to the next thing.

[B]

Yeah, it was. One of the main campaigning points is we were going to reduce the debt, and then it's gone up. It has gone up. And I've heard these lengthy conversations about how it going up actually means that it went down from people who were directly involved. And I'll be honest with you, I can't follow the reasoning.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it could be because my IQ deserves to sit more on a thermostat. You know what I mean? But I'm like, it went up, our debt went up. But that's good, because it's going to go down well, because we could pay.

[A]

It off for $2. Remember, just keep inflating and we'll just pay it off with funny money.

[B]

Let's get out of here before have the desire to just end it all.

Where can people find your services? Where can they find more about you, your podcast, all the good stuff?

[A]

Yeah. So they want to find me. I'm Jeremy Ryan. Slate on all platforms. People with three names are often done something wrong. But, yeah, me, somebody had the same name as me, so I'd use my middle name. If they're interested in command your brand, we have a great brand authority analysis that will kind of show them where they stand and where their gaps are. If they head over to commanderbrand.com they can grab that over there.

[B]

Sweet. Right on, man. Well, thank you for making the travel out from the east Coast.

[A]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[B]

When do you take off?

[A]

Tomorrow afternoon.

[B]

Okay. Drive around a little bit more. Go into Glacier national park if you have a chance.

[A]

Yeah, I want to do that tonight.

[B]

Okay, killer. Well, let's get you the chance. You still got an hour and a half of sun.

[A]

Let's stay. Stay light to, like after seven last night.

[B]

In the summer, it stays light until about midnight. Wow. So, yeah, you're getting short trains. Awesome. Thank you, man.

[A]

Yeah.