Transcript of #281 Jeremy Slate - The Fatal Decisions That Doomed the Entire Roman Empire New

Sag mal, hast du bei der Steuer auch diesen Schulflashback? Einfach irgendwas raten und dann hoffen, dass es stimmt? Boah, nee, gar nicht.

Wieso Steuer ist so mein safe space?

Du meinst, damit ist alles sicher?

Ja, genau. Wieso Steuer ist so die Steuer-App, die dich einfach versteht. Egal ob Studium, Job oder Umzug.

Stimmt, krass. Fühlt sich gar nicht wie Steuern an. Steuern erledigt? Safe.

Mit Wieso Steuer. Kennst du dieses Gefühl, wenn du eine neue Brille aufsetzt? Genau. Und jetzt stell dir vor, du erlebst es gleich zweimal. Kauf zwei Brille oder Sonnenbrille in Seestärke and receive the more cheap or equal glass package as a gift.

This is for selected glasses. All day or sun.

Brille or sunbrille. It's your decision. Click on the banner and discover 2 for 1 by Apollo.

Started my business back in 2014. That was literally one of the first... I have no business background. One of the first books I read was 4 Our Work Week. That was pretty cool. Really? Yeah, I did his diet for a couple of years, too, with all the cold showers and stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Right on. Man, I found you last week. Yeah. So this is crazy.

Yeah, I was in Puerto Rico.

I was like, Holy shit.

I've been talking to Jeremy for a bit, and he's like, Hey, Sean's interested. I'm like, Oh, sweet.

Yeah, I sent him. He said he'd been chatting with you for some time, and at the beginning, at the end of last year, I was like, We should start getting into some history shit. Because I don't know anything.

I'm definitely not the world's top expert, but I can talk to regular people, which is what matters.

Yeah, I think that's what works. But yeah, I saw something. I can't even remember what it was, but I was like.

You had your pin post about the current scene, and I wrote a thread around that, about the fall of Rome and how it makes sense.

Yes, that is how we found it. That's how I felt. Yeah. Which post was it? Was it the one where I was going off about how the government's fallen to fraud, waste, and abuse?

It's that one, I believe. Then I quote-tweeted that and wrote a thread with it.

What did you say? I can't remember.

Just basically describing how Rome fell and how those processes mirror what we're dealing with today.

Yeah, that's what caught my attention.

It's a lot of crazy shit, man.

That It is definitely what caught my attention.

It's a pattern. It is. It's something that applies to literally any societal collapse. They screw with their money, they stop giving a shit about their borders, and politicians become short-sighted and just want to deal with what gives them power right now.

Wow. Yeah, that sounds very familiar.

But if you fix your money, you could do all the other stuff a lot longer.

Do you think we can fix our money? No. I don't either.

Ron Paul talks about the person that does is not going to be very popular because we're so far over our skis, it's going to be painful.

Man, I watched this way back in probably, I bet, 2008. I watched a documentary, and I think it was Ron Paul on the Federal Reserve. When we came off the gold standard. Yeah. And I was like, Holy shit.

That was a free license to do where they wanted.

Money, legitimately, is worth nothing. Yeah. And you see it. Look, I'm no economist. I don't know. I'm not either. I'm not But gold is at $5,000 an ounce.

This year, it went up like a thousand bucks, man.

$5,000 an ounce.

2025, yeah.

Silver went to what? Over $100 an ounce? When 2020 is when I started, because COVID stuff, right? Yeah. I started buying. That's when I started looking into precious metals.

We have physical gold, yeah.

Everybody was freaked out about everything, right? But I remember gold in 2020 was about $2,000 an ounce. So if It took thousands of years to get to $2,000 an ounce, and then five years, it goes to 5,000. It over doubles in five years. Then if you think about it, is gold really going up? It seems like gold would be-The price of everything is going down.

Gold is not changing.

That's what I think.

That's how inflation works. It's just your dollar doesn't go as far.

Because it's like the- Our money has... How do you say it? Our money is worth two and a half times less if you look at the gold. If you look at the price of gold today, in five years, our money is two and a half times less, or I guess six years, two and a half times less than what it was six years ago.

Because people don't get it because they just see, Oh, the prices are going up. It's not that the prices are going up. It's your dollar doesn't go as far. That's what I mean. The dollar is actually going down. The Federal Reserve uses the word... They like to use funny words, hoping people don't understand them. They use the word quantitative easing. What that means is they made more money. There's more of a quantity of money. They have different numbers for money supplies. There's the M1 money, which is older money. M2 money is the newer money, and it's like 80% of it was printed since COVID. It's like-80% of it? 80% of the M2 money supply was printed since COVID.

Wow. Have you seen... Are you following this Epstein stuff at all?

Yeah, pretty intensely, actually.

Have you watched the Epstein Epstein interview with Banon?

I have it bookmarked. I haven't watched it yet. I was watching the Rogan Mike Benz thing this morning.

How was that?

It's eye-opening because he goes through the networks of how they move all the money around and how Epstein was probably not just one country, but several countries. It's interesting.

Yeah, I know. He was talking about how Epstein was talking about, and I don't understand this shit, but he was talking about how most people don't understand money, and most world leaders are elected acted because of popularity, not because of their ability to run the country. He gives examples. Reagan was an actor.

That goes back to Rome, right? Because if you look at it, what would happen is In the late Empire, the guys that become Emperor are just military commanders. There were two things they would do. When they became Emperor, they would do something called a donative. Donative comes from the Latin word to give. They would give a giant bonus to all the military when they became Emperor, and then they would double their pay. So they end up becoming more loyal to that Emperor because he's the money guy. And that process continues again and again and again until the money is worth nothing.

Man, that actually sounds better than what we do because we don't pay our warrior shit. We just get it all over the city.

We don't take care of them, especially the VA.

We just pay everybody else's warriors that we fought, like the Taliban. But But we're paying those guys 87 million dollars a week.

Is that the number?

That's the number.

That's insane.

That's the number. That's insane. Forty to 87 million dollars a week. I wanted to talk. I've just been looking for somebody that can relate the Roman Empire to what we're seeing, the collapse of the Roman Empire to what we're seeing today. Everybody has these little nuggets, but it's not enough for a full-blown conversation.

I'm weird because if you ask me about literature, I don't know a ton about it. I know the history and the patterns, so it's like I can connect all those things. But I know a little bit about stoicism enough to talk about it, but I'm not an expert in it. I'm like, I get Roman history and how it works together.

Yeah, right on. Well, I got a hot question here for you. The Roman Empire existed during the time of Jesus and early Christianity. How did Rome's power and policies shape and shaped the spread of Christianity? And did the Romans realize how significant that movement would become?

I don't think initially, because you have to look during the time of Jesus, they couldn't tell the difference between Christianity and Judaism. There wasn't a big ability to tell a difference between that. They thought it was a sect of Judaism, and it's a small percentage of the actual empire. You're looking like 1% or less during the time of Christ. There's really only one Roman historian that actually even writes about Christ. His name is Titus Flavius Josephus. He was a Jewish historian that when Palestine is conquered and that area is conquered, he comes and lives in Rome and he works for the Emperor. If you read letters of the Emperors, I'm trying to remember which one it is. It might be Vespasian. He's writing to one of the governors, and he's trying to explain Christianity to him. He just doesn't understand it because he's like, Wait, they eat the body of someone? He just didn't understand it. He's I think it was plenty the younger that's writing to Vespasian. He's like, Well, what do we do with these guys? He's like, All right, just leave them alone. Because for the most part, unless you're causing upheaval, Rome was very permissive.

That's because they brought in gods from all the other empires and territories and things that they conquered.

They brought in gods from all the other empires?

Correct. You could live in Rome, but you might worship Isis, which is an Egyptian God, or you might worship Apollo because they had their traditional pantheon of 12 gods, but they also borrowed gods from other societies they conquered or basically annexed. It became very popular to do that.

When you say borrowed, do you mean accepted? Excepted. They accepted the gods. Basically, it was freedom of religion.

Yes and no, because the thing you have to look at is the Romans believed in this thing called the peace of the gods. When things were going well, it meant they'd achieve the peace of the gods. When things aren't going well, that's when you're going to have persecutions of Christians and other groups. You see this during the time of Nero. There's the great fire of Rome in 64 AD. Nero gets blamed very heavily for it. The thing he's going to do is persecute Christians because he has to blame it on someone. You move further down the road. In around 250 or 251, there's an Emperor named Decius, and they're experiencing climate change, so they don't know what to do about it. What? One of the things that allowed the Roman Empire to rise is called the Roman Climate Optimum. It means from 200 BC to about 280, they had perfect weather. They could grow food in areas that now you couldn't. As climate starts changing, as they start having difficulty with their borders, with money and things in the mid-third century, Decius makes a law that everyone has to sacrifice to the Roman gods because it'll restore the peace of the gods.

When Christians don't do that, there's a huge persecution of Christians that happens.

That's what triggered it. Yeah. So they They were open to it.

Unless things weren't going well, then they needed somebody to blame. So then Diocletian is going to do that again in the around 300. He's going to be persecuting Christians because he's trying to restore the peace of the gods. But anytime things aren't going Well, an Emperor thought he needed to restore the peace of the gods, which meant people needed to be on the same page with Roman religion. Wow. Because Romans couldn't see a difference between political life and religious life. To them, it was the same thing.

Interesting. Do you think the Roman Empire unintentionally widely spread Christianity by suppressing it?

I don't think that's really the case. There's a battle in 311 called Milvian Bridge. What ends up happening in that time period is you're getting out of the time period where people are declaring themselves emperors. They have an army behind them. They're fighting each other. But you have the end of this. You have Constantine, who wants to be the Emperor of the full Empire in the East. Then you have this guy named Maxentius in the West. But Constantine wants to rule the whole thing. He has this vision, and he sees a giant cross in the sky. Well, actually, it's the kai in the row, which is the Greek symbols for Christ. He hears the words, Under this sign, you will conquer. He wins that battle. Then he has this idea, Well, the Christian God is now supporting me. Then in 313 he's going to take Christianity. And though Romans hadn't went after Christians unless times were bad, Christianity was technically illegal. In 313, the Edict of Milan makes Christianity legal. And he will start to move it from being more of a pagan Empire to a Christian Empire. And it's going to be fully a Christian Empire in 380 under Theodosius when he names it the official Religion of Rome, and they get rid of their pagan gods.

Rome became- A Christian Empire in 380. A lot of people are saying, and I tend to believe it, that the more the government removes God from everything, from our culture, from our schools, from discussions, from government, from everything, it seems like they're trying to get him to disappear. Did the Roman Empire do that, too? Because now you have all this other shit that's popping, all these perversions, perverted shit that's happening.

That was actually the second and third century for Romans. When things aren't going well, you have a lot of the perversion and things like that. There's an Emperor in the early 220s He's a teenager, and his name is Elagabalus. He's the priest of a cult called Elagabel, which is from Syria, and they worship a conical black rock. He has a wedding for his black rock where it's carried through Rome in a chariot. He was personally pulled by a chariot of prostitutes. He married a Vestal virgin, and he put his hairdresser in charge of the grain supply. He was also having parties where he was pushing the Senate to basically have orgies, which they were not super happy about. So things are really bad in the third century. He's assassinated, and his body is actually drugged through the streets. But if you look at things actually improve, spirituality-wise, and it starts to become more of a Christian nation. But the problem is the West sins had been so deep, it was hard to fix. And if you look at Constantine, though he brings Christianity to a higher standing, the thing that's really important about him, which doesn't get talked about a ton, is he actually fixes the currency.

He takes and he'll repossess a lot of the pagan temples, and he starts minting gold coins from them. And in the year 314 in Trier, Germany, he mints less than gold coins. And he's going to actually follow that process until he dies in 336. And by the time he dies, Rome is now on a gold standard. He's done it gradually every year until he dies. That currency is going to go without inflation until about the year 1000. So that's actually the thing that helps the East to survive. But a lot of Rome's sins had been created when it was a pagan Empire. So just spirituality couldn't really fix that the levers of power were broken.

You don't need to overhaul your life to start investing. Just automate it. With Stash, your New Year money goals can quietly run in the background while you focus on everything else. Stash isn't just another investing app. It's a registered investment advisor that combines automated investing with expert, personalized guidance, so you don't have to worry about gambling or figuring it out on your own. Stash's smart portfolio helps you invest in a diversified balanced portfolio and on a regular schedule, which can help you build wealth over the long term. And with Stash Streaks, you get the motivation you need to turn steady investing into a habit, making it easier to start Start, stick with it, and stay invested over time. Don't let your money sit around. Put it to work with Stash. Go to get. Stash. Com/srs to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase end of view important disclosures. That's get. Stash. Com/srs. Get. Stash. Com/srs. Paid non-client endorsement. Not a guaranteed nor representative of all clients. Smart portfolios are discretionary managed accounts and subject to additional fees. See the Advisory Agreement and deposit account agreement for details. Investment Advisory Services offered by Stash Investments LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor.

Investing involves risk. This is going to be awesome. I'm pumped. All right, let me give you a proper introduction here. Jeremy Ryan Slate, CEO and co founder of Command Your Brand, a podcast PR agency, host of the Jeremy Ryan Slate show, which features work from your channels, hidden forces in history in the Roman pattern. Best-selling author, global speaker, and authority strategist. Husband to Breel, who is your co founder at Command Your Brand.

Yeah.

Then A couple of things here. I got a Patreon account. It's a subscription account, but they've been with me here since the beginning. To be honest with you, they're the reason I get to sit down here with you today. That's cool. They get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. This is Chad Paustian. My favorite story is that of Scorpio Africanus. Scipio. Scipio. Do you think the US and China are of Scipio and Hannibal? If so, who are we and how do we use that to our advantage?

That's a really difficult question because he's talking about the Punic Wars, which are in the late Republic, and there's three of them over about a 150-year period. I don't know if I would completely make the... Well, I guess maybe you could because if you look at one of the things that the Punic Wars do is they start to heavily Rome had always been a very military society, but it starts to become heavily militarized in that time period. I think if you look at... It's hard to say who is who, but I think we go more towards being Romans, because if you look at in a lot of ways, especially in the last 50 years, we've hyper-militarised in this country. It's a very big section of the economy, a very big section of what defines things. But I think in a lot of ways, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. I think it's hard to say exactly that we are Rome and China is Carthage. But I think those patterns are similar because what ends up happening is global events will happen because of certain things that are currently afoot. What I mean by that is if there is a constant state of war, well, decisions are going to be made to handle that situation.

If you look at a lot of what's happening with US and China relations right now, a lot of policy is made because of what's happening between the US and China. Even more in the last couple of years, it's also been the US and Russia. A lot of policy is made, often short-sighted because of the situation we're dealing with now, and that's a lot of how the Punic War was for Rome, the Willa Punic Wars, is It changed from more of a citizen soldier to becoming more of a standing private army, and people stopped having real allegiance to Rome and more to their commander. That's actually going to be one of the big things that causes the empire to rise and also the empire to fall because that is a very dangerous situation to be in where people aren't as loyal to the group that they're a part of, but more loyal to a person. I think if you look at that, that's a pattern that repeats. But I think it's hard to say, is the US Rome in this case, and is China Carthage in this case?

Makes sense. All right. One last thing. Yes, sir. Everybody gets a gift. There you go. Vigilance League, Gummy Bear, made in the USA, legal in all 50 states. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. You're welcome. You're ready to kick it off? Let's do it, man. All right, here we go.

I actually have something for you, too. Do you want me to... Oh, perfect.

Yeah.

So this is actually... I have a coin supplier I work with, Kinzer coins, by my friend, Dean Kinzer. He sent us a few things here. This is a Claudius Gothicus coin. The cool thing about this is if you see on the edge here, they use what's called a die to hammer them. When you have the bleed over on the edge, it means they made a lot of coins that year, so they're not a shark. That is a mid-third-century coin. This is Constantius II, who is the son of Constantine. That would have been mid-fourth century. This is a City of Rome coin, which is a coin that Constantine minted to basically solidify his coin, served a propagandic purpose, too. This was to really solidify his power. This is two different half coins, first century coins from Augustus and his top general, Agriba.

Man, this is cool. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you.

It's always nice to hold a piece of history. You have a lot of it here, too.

Yeah. These are going to look great here in the studio. I'll probably get them framed, hang them up. Thank you.

Cool. You got it, man.

Very kind. Thank you. In your opinion, why does Rome still matter for today?

Well, I think when you look at it, as I As I said earlier, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme in a lot of ways. I think if you understand patterns that happen in history, you can understand a lot of what's happening in your world today. Because I think we look at modern politics and we see the things that are happening and we try to say, Okay, well, if we just make this solution now, it'll solve it. If we look at earlier empires, especially Rome, it's something that those short-sighted solutions often don't fix things. When I look at Rome, I see something I like to call the Roman pattern. It's the three things that if you look at empires in decline, you can look at the Eastern Roman Empire, which historians in the 16th century start calling the Byzantine Empire. You can look at the Mongal Empire and a lot of how that collapses. It's similar patterns, even Weimar, Germany. There's three things that tend to happen most often and in different ways. But the first is they don't handle their money well. They start inflating it to a point that the money is absolutely useless.

There's a story about Weimar, Germany that when you wanted to buy a loaf of bread, you would fill your wheelbarrel with money and get to the store. And by the time you got to the store, there wasn't enough money in the wheelbarrel to buy the bread. Wow. And so inflation is something I think for a lot of people, they don't really understand. But it is the number one thing that causes empires and societies to collapse, because if your money is worth nothing, well, then you start to have nothing, right? And the other thing is immigration and poor border control, because if you're not handling your country or your empire, your civilization. There's a lot of people that don't define themselves by that civilization. Now, it's not to say you have to be the most American person out there, but it is to say you need to be loyal to the country that you're in. If you look at places like Minnesota and other places, they're starting to lose their identity as America. There's places the cops weren't even going at this point. Those are things you start to see in a societal collapse. The third is that politicians start getting so short-sighted that they just care about what's happening right now and how I'm going to handle this next election cycle.

When you start doing that, you're creating future time bombs for your civilization.

That's all happening right here, right now.

Yes. The thing people get upset with is saying, Oh, we're Rome. I'm not saying America is Rome, but I am saying it's a pattern that applies to how societies collapse.

How long was the Roman Empire? What was the run?

If you want to look at it, it's an over 2000-year history. It's founded in 753 BC as a kingdom, and there's traditionally seven kings of Rome from 753 to 509 BC. Because of those initial kings, Romans hated the idea of kinship. It comes to be the last king of Rome, the seventh, Tarkwen, the proud, is the most hated. His son is in the military, and there's another man in the military that he likes that man's wife because she's supposed to be the most upright and most chaste woman. He has his way with her. It's called the Rape of Lucretia. Because of this, it ends up really blowing up on Tarkwin. There is a family called the Brutus family, which is actually the same family that's going to assassinate Caesar, and that's an important point, that actually removes Tarquin and his son from Rome. Now, some people say he was killed, world. Others say he was just kicked out, but that's the end of the Kings of Rome. So the Romans hated the idea of kinship. Now, from 509 to 31 BC, it's a Republic. But it's not a Republic in the way that we think of Republic.

It's more of an oligarch in a lot of ways. The way you had power is having money and possessions and things like that. They voted- To today. Yeah, they voted not as individuals, but in what are called voting centuries. And the centuries are actually originally based off of the idea of military centuries. But the richest 10% of Rome held 90% of the vote. So they could basically decide no matter what who was going to have a political position. If you didn't have money or you weren't literate, you didn't have the ability to do a lot. So that goes until 31 BC. And then from 31 to 476 is the Empire. And the Empire in the West, in the East, we end up calling it the Byzantine Empire, but They wouldn't have called themselves that. They would have called themselves Romans. That goes until 1453. It's basically like a almost 2000-year history of what the Roman Empire was. Wow.

We're at 200 50 years.

Yeah. I think that's something to consider is we're not as old as... When I was studying in England, I studied New College, Oxford for a bit. If you look at a lot of the buildings there and just how old they are, and our oldest buildings aren't as old as their newest buildings a lot of times. American society isn't that old.

It's interesting to see... I think you're going to tie a lot of parallels to what we're seeing today towards the end of the Roman Empire. A lot of people do say history repeats itself, or like you say, it rimes. I think we see that.

It was actually Mark Twain that coined that phrase, too, so I can't take credit for that.

One question I have, just from diving into our own history, how accurate do you think history in the Roman Empire actually is? The reason I ask this is you see all these institutions, just in America, just in this lifetime, that are lying and changing history. Things are being recorded, not how they fucking happened. A lot of this is to protect the institution. You think about it, and I've just doven into a couple of institutions. There's probably, there's got to be close to a thousand institutions in this country, whether it's churches, government, whatever it is. Just in the SEAL teams, there's a lot of recorded history that is just a flat-out lie. It's like, Well, if the seal teams did it, then this did it, and this did it, and this did it. It's like, Okay, every institution is doing this. This is just one country. Then think about all the institutions in the world. Then you think if every institution in the world is doing this and lying and manipulating history, and we're just one little sliver in time that's infinite, how do you know? Because the Romans had to have been manipulating history as well, and the Greeks and everybody.

Well, that's a pattern that doesn't change. It's a pattern that doesn't change because it goes back to who's in power, right? It goes back into who's literate. If you look at Rome, less than 10% of their society is literate. If you're not literate, you're not going to be writing. I think that's an important point. If you look at a lot of the history you're getting, you have to understand what the power structure is at the time, because the power structure is going to dictate what the history you're getting is. You can look at that in any society. But if you look at... My degree is actually in the propaganda of the first Emperor Augustus because he had to basically make people think they were still living in a Republic, even though it didn't exist anymore. One of the major things he does is he starts commissioning works of literature. The Aneid is written during his time. The famous Roman historian We're in Livy who writes during that time, writes his Roman Histories during that time. There's a poet named David who wrote what's called erotic poetry, which Augustus didn't like because he was very naturally conservative.

So he's kicked out of Rome. So a lot of those things were very manicured in ways. So the history you're getting is often going to reflect the power structure it's written in because you don't want to piss off or upset the people in power, and you don't want to piss off or upset the You want it to be something that describes things to give people a certain vision. It's that way in the Republic, too. You want to show the Republic as a powerful, something that honors tradition. If things don't honor that, well, you're not going to write about them. The 476 fall date of Rome is often something that's heavily debated as well. As I said, Western Rome. The Emperor in the East, Justinian, in the late sixth and early seventh century, is going to decide that he wants to reconstitute the Roman Empire. The West, for some point in time, had fallen into being these kingdoms of just barbarian jungles. What he ends up doing is by force, under a general named Belisarius, tries to reconquer the Western Roman Empire. A lot of it is destroyed during this period of time. A lot of the writing you're getting that says Rome in 476, well, that's going to come from the east because Justinian is going to look bad if it says he burned down the empire to reunite the empire.

You have to look at the power structure that dictates the literature you're getting. I think very often Sometimes you're not going to write things that look bad for the group in power.

How much confidence do you have in Roman history?

Enough that we can understand what happened to a degree. That's the thing about ancient history is when you look at American history, we know, for the most part, because we have a lot of primary sources, exactly what happened during that time. We're going to still have the narratives of what people want to say. We know a lot more about it because it's more recent. We have more primary sources. Ancient history, there's a lot of sources missing because part of it is just they're writing on papyrus and things similar to that which just don't last as long. The other part of it is things going to be destroyed. The library of Alexandria has burned, I think, three times, one time under Caesar. There's just not enough work surviving. You'll get a lot of theories around ancient history, and those theories, the historians will say they're very correct, where another historian will have a different theory, and they're also very correct because we just don't have as much data as we'd like to have to actually know what happened. We can surmise we have some primary sources, but you have to also understand where your primary source is coming from and whose opinion are they and who do they support.

Got you. How much difference have you seen between people that have recorded it or contradictory?

You have to look at the time periods when people are writing, because if you look at a historian that's writing during the life of Nero, he's going to talk great about Nero because of the Emperor. But then if you look after he dies, the things about Nero are terrible. It's very often when people feel safe, they'll say what they really think. But when they don't feel safe because that person's in power, well, they're going to be a bit sycophantic and talk about the Emperor in glowing terms. You see this with bad emperors like Caligula, Caracala, Nero. The history you're getting has to make the person in power look good or your life is in peril.

Makes sense. Man, it's scary shit to think about. Everything we think we know, maybe-In a lot of ways, we don't.

In a lot of ways, we don't.

We find that no shit.

Plato has what's called the allegory of the cave. I don't know if you heard of this?

No.

The allegory of the cave is there's people that live their entire lives in a cave. The only thing that they know about life are the shadows they see on the walls. When they come outside, they can actually see what's happening and see what's occurring. But their whole life is by these shadows. A lot of what we get in history and in media and in Our opinion out there is just shadows. We don't always have the full background.

Man. I was watching two of my friends have a podcast last night, Ajay Gentile from the Y-Files and Tucker Carlson. They were talking about the pyramids.

Oh, I listened to that one. You listened to it? I did.

It was really good. I've been hell-bent on this history thing because I haven't even released this interview, but I interviewed this guy, and it was all about recent global war on terrorism lies. That really got me thinking about what I was just saying, Man, if it's just this institution, all these institutions do this.

When you look at around Egypt, the things we don't know and the things that have been altered because the opinion that- In the things that they fucking taught us that are complete bullshit.

I remember looking at pictures of slaves picking up these huge blocks with sticks in my history books. I'm like, Holy shit. This is just fucking garbage.

It might not be logistically possible. They didn't have the technology to do it.

Then I found out, I didn't even know this. Did you know a mummy? I guess you do because you watched it. They've never found a mummy in the pyramids.

I heard that in that episode. I did not know that until I heard that.

Me neither. It's just like, holy shit.

Is everything we know a fucking lie? Because he was saying maybe they came from an earlier civilization or something he was making the claim of.

A lot of this stuff, though, throughout the world. But one thing I think I want to start here with you. Most people misunderstand collapse as a moment and not a process.

When you look at that, when you're living through something, a lot of times, and this is the same for Romans. You're still paying your taxes, you're still going to work, you're still doing a lot of the things you usually do. That's what happens in these downsides. You just alter your daily life just enough to get by. If you look at even during civil war in certain countries, I went to Athens in 2013, and that's when they were having all the fires in the middle of Athens and they were protesting. As long as you didn't go to that little square section, life was normal. I think that's what people don't understand when things are starting to collapse, the thing you see is how much things cost, and you start to see getting a little dimmer about your future. But for the most part, life carries on as normal. I think for some reason, and a lot of it's propaganda, people have this idea that there's this moment, and after it, everything is different. But if you even look at when Rome falls in 476, it doesn't fall. It really fades in a lot of ways. Life is going to continue as normal.

They're still going to be wearing similar clothing. They're still going to be holding similar positions. The first barbarian king actually spends money to rebuild a lot of Roman temples and things like that because he wanted to keep the grandeour of the city. The system itself can fade away and change, but oftentimes we're getting our history in a postscript where we can see now at a 30,000-foot view, well, that was a really important moment of time. For people living in it, they don't exactly have that experience, and we see that in history. I think it's really important to understand the American Civil War. It wasn't like, Okay, so we are now at war because this battle happened. Well, something Something happens, something else happens. It's a 10-year period, and then finally, you're at war. I meant to say the American Revolution, but it's decades, not just something that happens suddenly. I think people watch a lot of movies, and they have this idea that there's these great cataclysms. Sure, those things might occur, but they're part of a broader spectrum of things that occur and lead you someplace. It's not often a cataclysmic event.

Makes sense. How long was the process for or Rome?

The most famous work on the Roman Empire is Edward Gibbons, Decline and Fall, the Roman Empire. It's written in 1776 in seven volumes. It's really great as a doorstop if you want them to hold your door open. But To understand Gibbon's world is important, too. He's born as a Catholic, but to get more political power, his father convinces him to convert to the Church of England. He's going to have a lot of problems the early Catholic Church that's rising in Rome, and that's actually in his work. He gives Christianity a lot of flack for the collapse of Rome, when in all honesty, it really had nothing to do with it. Now, the other thing he's dealing with at the same time is the American Revolution. So he's writing this in seven volumes. Initially, things are going really well for the British. Then they start going worse and worse and worse and worse. And that's going to affect how he's writing. So once again, it's important to understand the world of a writer. And when you look at that, though, the thing I he is right about, and that I do agree with wholeheartedly, is Marcus Aurelius is what's called the last of the five good emperors.

And the thing that they did differently is they didn't take their natural born son and make them the next Emperor. Because that had gotten you a whole mixed bag of emperors. You might have a good one like Vespasian, but then you get his son Domitian, who is terrible, or you might get a Caligula, or you might get a Nero because you don't know how qualified that next person The thing that they do is in ancient society, you could adopt an adult. What that meant is they got your titles, your name, your riches, and they would adopt the next closest qualified person. This works really well from 93 AD to around the death of Marcus Aurelius, which is 180 AD. They're called the Five Good Emperors. This is very often referred to as the Pax Romana or the Roman Peace. The thing that Aurelius does different, and at times you have to feel for him as well, is those other four didn't have natural-born sons. Aurelius does. He has this son, Commitus. He knows, though he's worked with Commitus, he's still not really qualified to be the next Emperor. But if he doesn't name him Emperor without killing him, he would probably raise an army and try to create a civil war in Rome.

So he names his son Commitus to be the next Emperor. And Gibben calls this the real downslide of the Empire. There's a quote from Decline and Fall, the Roman Empire. I'm paraphrasing here. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it's that Rome goes from a society of marble to one of steel and rust. That basically it's starting to disintegrate. It's like a 300-year downside, though. But it is a real process you can look at because the next Emperor after him really changes the way the Empire functions.

After Aurelius.

After Commitus. Commitus. Commitus dies in 192.

It started with Marcus Aurelius.

Well, Marcus Aurelius was seen as a good Emperor. His son, Commitus, who he names to be the next Emperor, is seen to not be such a great Emperor.

That was the That was the spark.

It was the spark. And there's Commitus is Emperor. The last year of his rule, he dies in 192, is what's called the Year of Five Emperors. And there's the Emperor right after him named Pertinax. The Praetorian Guard actually auctions the Empire to him. So he pays a certain price and he gets to be Emperor. After around 80 days, they kill him. They say, Hey, the Empire is for sale again. Who wants to be the next Emperor? Who's they? The Praetorian Guard, because they had become the power behind the throne. They're responsible for killing somewhere around 17 different emperors that we know of. If they weren't happy, they might kill the Emperor. This happens on a number of occasions.

Was this like a shadow government?

It's like a shadow government a lot of ways.

Did the citizens know about it?

For the most part, they would have known. The person in charge of the Praetorian Guard is the guy called the Praetorian Prefect. He would have been seen as the most powerful man in Rome because they were responsible for protecting the Emperor, but they also made and unmade emperors. In this year of five emperors, you have Pertinax being the first to buy the Empire. Then there's another named Didis Julianus that buys the Empire. Then the last one that comes in that year is a military commander named Septimius Severus. And he comes in with his legions and actually conquers Rome. The thing that he changes is he enlarges the Roman army. He's going to remove all the Praetorian guardsmen and put only his loyal men in the Praetarian Guard, so he's changing the guard. He's also going to double the pay of the legions. That's something that for the next 200 years, emperors after him are going to follow, is they're going to start doubling, quadrupling the pay of the legions. That's something that's going to start fueling inflation. There's other things fueling inflation, but that's one of the key things fueling inflations. When someone became Emperor, they would give a gift to the legions.

That's called a donative. It comes from the Latin word to give. They would give a bigger donative, and they would also double, triple, quadruple the pay. By the time you get to 284 AD, they're at 15,000% inflation. They're silver coins coin that was 95% pure in the first century, like those coins I gave you that are... Those are Bronze coins because they're 5% pure by the late 270s. So the money is worth almost nothing.

Holy shit.

So his death opens the door to this new pattern of how emperors are made. Now, he's not the first of what are called the Barrack emperors. It's going to be a guy named Maximina Thrax. But Barrack emperors meaning military barracks. These basically guys that they weren't politicians, they hadn't been through Roman office. They just have an army, a lot of steel, and a lot of power. That is basically how the third century is going to really start compounding this collapse.

So that's a bad thing.

That's a bad thing.

Bam, that's a bad... I would think it's a good thing.

Well, it's because what ends up happening is the power starts to centralize more more and more and more.

Let me tell you about something you carry every day, but probably haven't upgraded in years, your wallet. I didn't realize how overdue mine was until I switched to Ridge. My old wallet was stretched out, overstuffed, and just a pain to carry. Moving to Ridge was an immediate difference. It's a slim, modern design that still holds up to 12 cards plus cash without feeling like a brick in your pocket. It's built from premium materials like aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber, so it's made to last. Ridge also offers over 50 colors and styles, so you can find one that actually fits your look. I love that every Ridge wallet includes RFID blocking to protect against digital pickpockets, and it's backed by a lifetime warranty. This is genuinely the last wallet you'll need to buy, which explains the thousands of five-star reviews. If you're someone who's always misplacing things, the AirTag attachment is a game changer. Ridge also makes key cases and luggage with that same, sleek, durable design. For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off at Ridge by using code SRS at checkout. Just head to ridge. Com and use code SRS, and you're all set.

After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. Again, that's 10% off your order when you go to ridge. Com and use code SRS. The American Revolution didn't just happen. The colonists didn't just wake up one day in 1776 and decided to declare independence from the British. There's 150 years of history that made the American Revolution possible. If you're feeling behind on that time in American history, well, you're not alone. Fortunately, Hillsdale College has a brand new free mini-series on Colonial America. In a brand new six-part documentary series, Hillsdale College professors will teach you the religious, political, cultural, and economic ideas that shaped a uniquely American culture during the colonial period. You'll learn why the idea of liberty inspired the settlers of America to cross the Atlantic, how Americans organized local governments to rule and protect themselves, and why America has always been a land where virtue lead to peace and prosperity. This Hillsdale College mini-series is completely free and it's easy to access. Plus, Hillsdale offers more than 40 other free online courses, including a course on C. S. Lewis, The Stories in the Book of Genesis, the Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic, and you can go even deeper on the American founding in the Constitution, and it's all for free.

You all know I'm always trying to understand how we got here, and these lessons connect the dots in a way that actually makes sense to me. Go right now to hillsdale. Edu/srs to enroll. There's no cost, and it's easy to get started. That's hillsdale. Edu/srs to enroll for free. Hillsdale. Edu/srs. I'll tell you why I think it would be, in my opinion, why it's a good thing. I've always thought this. I thought it would be good to have somebody that's fought for the country, running the country.

I don't disagree with you.

Now you get these fucking scumbags.

They just show up. There's not much else you can say about that.

But Anyways. Well, no, I don't disagree with you. But that was bad in Rome.

It's bad because that goes back to the military reforms I talked about earlier. Because what ends up happening is their loyalty is just to that general, and it's not to Rome as a whole. So It ends up creating these fractures within how the society actually functions.

A transactional military.

Correct.

We're going over this later in the outline. But I think we're seeing that right now. I think we're seeing a transactional military right now. How would you describe a transactional military?

They're in it for the pay, and they're in it for the power. If you look at the military changes a lot in the second century, there had always been barbarian tribes that have fought in the Roman military. There's what's called the Roman Auxiliary. Caesar had his German guard that protected him. There, to a certain extent, had always been barbarians coming in the military. I guess to just handle that word barbarian, it comes from the Greek word because Greeks would hear barbarians saying bar, bar, bar, bar, because they didn't understand it. They spoke Greek. They would call them barbarians. Then in Latin, they used the word barbary for beard. They were these bearded guys is basically the thing because until the mid-second century, didn't really have beards. The Emperor Hadrian, who was from Spain, was the first person to actually be an Emperor and have a beard. It was good to shave your face in that period of time. So these bearded Germans were seen as barbarians. When you look at how the military changes over the third century, they start bringing more and more and more barbarians into the Roman legions. They start to become less and less and less Roman.

By the time you get to the end of the third century, Constantine is going to create a group called the Futteraradi, which are basically military but barbarians, and they don't have to follow Roman law, and they live on the borders. You start to have this real disintegration on what is a Roman and what is the Roman army. This is fucking crazy.

I'm still at transactional military and you're moving into immigration.

Well, because they work together.

This is at least what it sounds like?

They work together. They do.

Because I see in the way you just described a transactional military for money and for power. What do we see right now? I'm a military guy. I have friends that are still in. This is what I hear. This is what I hear from a lot of people. I'm just waiting for retirement.

Wow.

I don't even believe in what we're doing anymore. I'm just waiting for retirement because I have so many years in just waiting for retirement. Then on the other side, you have the flag officers who will do anything, lie to anybody, fuck anybody over, do anything they possibly can just to get that next star. We've covered that time and time and time and time again on the show, these fucking generals and admirals that will do anything they can to get that next star, which is transactional, and it works for them. I mean, look, our leaders are shit. So Well, they have been for quite a while.

But you could say that about the Roman military as well.

Well, that's drawing a parallel here.

Yeah, you could say that about the Roman military as well, because if you look at the third century, which to me is the most pivotal time in history, and nobody seems to talk about it. They talk about the fifth century of the fall and the first century, the end of the Republic. But they ignore the third century, which to me is the most vital time period. If you look at that, you do have that more transactional type of military military, where if you pay me more, hey, I'm your guy. You pay me less or your money is worth less, well, I'm not your guy. Have you ever heard the phrase 'worth your salt'?

No.

The phrase 'worth your salt', meaning you have value. One of the other things that military commanders did is they paid their men in a certain amount of salt because salt had a lot of value. It could add flavor to food, it could preserve food. They're paying them in coin and also in salt. If you could give them a lot of the right coin and your coin still had value, well, then that's great. But if your coin starts to not have value, you see loyalty start to change. You'll see a barbarian fighting in the Roman army one day, and now he's fighting with his tribe the other day. You see someone like Oleric, who is the Visigoth commander that sacked Rome in 410. He had worked in the Roman army, and he actually was trying to get a position in the Eastern army. The Eastern army and the Western Army had been using them against him, him against each other. Then eventually, he realizes neither of them are going to give him what he wants, so then he sacks Rome in 410. This is a pattern you're going to start to see of these loyalties that just change and shift based on what is the stuff you can give me and what is the money you can give me.

It becomes extremely transactional. When people also don't have the identity of being Roman, well, it becomes even more transactional and even easier to change that opinion.

Makes sense. Let's move into the immigration stuff that you were talking about. Can we start over there?

Yeah. If we're looking at the third century, it's a broad spectrum of things that we're looking at. If you're looking at, as I mentioned, there had always, to some extent, been barbarians in the Roman army, and there had always been people that weren't exactly Roman but might get citizenship at some point. If you fought in the Roman legions for 25 years, you could get citizenship.

People wanted citizenship.

It was a very valuable thing. Like today.

People want American citizenship.

When I had a conversation with your team before for Patreon, one of the questions he asked was, what was the most valuable thing for a Roman to have in its citizenship? Because if you look at Saint Paul in the Bible, well, he's a Roman citizen. Because of that, he had the right to address his grievances directly to the Emperor. He couldn't just be killed without getting to speak to the Emperor. That was a right they had. So citizenship has a ton of value. And so early on, when Rome is expanding, it's not quite an empire yet. It's a burgeoning Republic. One of the things they're going to do to enhance their military force is they're not going to ask for taxes. They're not going to ask for tribute. They're going to say, You give us a certain amount of military men and we'll protect you. Then later on, those conversations become about, Well, we want citizenship. If you look at the late Republic, the Latins were people that lived in Italy, but they weren't Roman. There was a big fight for, Can we have citizenship? Citizenship had a ton of value. As you get into the late Republic, it has even more value when things pop up like the Grain Dole.

The Grachai brothers in 133 BC, one of the reforms they do is they create something called the Grain Dole, which meant that Citizens were guaranteed a certain amount of grain to be able to feed their families. That's why the climate change I spoke about happening in the mid-third century is a real problem for that, because when grain prices start going up, well, that's going to fuel inflation even more because you have to feed everybody. As you get into the third century, in 212, the Emperor Karakala has basically bankrupted the treasury. Citizenship, though it had a lot of value to it, it also had a lot of taxes that were built into it. One of them was It was a big inheritance and death tax. He gives 30 million people citizenship overnight, what's called the Edict of Karakala. That, to me, is the moment when citizenship starts to lose its value even more.

30 million?

30 million people overnight. Now you're responsible for feeding those people, but you can tax them. That's great, right? It's those short-side solutions we talk about. If they work. If they work, yeah. That is a real problem. So citizenship had value, and people wanted to be a Roman citizen because you could live in a a territory like North Africa, but you could be a Roman holding Roman office. There was a pathway for you if you could get citizenship to be able to be in government, to be able to have certain jobs, to be able to advance certain ways in your career. Citizenship had a ton of value. People wanted that. It's going to start to lose its value later on because, well, if Rome doesn't really have coin and if Rome doesn't really have power, why do I care about being a citizen of it? That's something that's going to start to change. When we're looking at the immigration conversation, initially, they want to be part of Rome. Initially, they want to be part of Rome, and initially, they want to serve in the legions because that is a pathway for them to a better life.

What starts to happen in the third century is these Roman commanders, in a 50-year period, there's 27 different guys that are going to claim to be Emperor. It's called the crisis of the Third Century. They're basically going to have a military behind them and see whoever they can kill to become the next Emperor. You're going to have emperors that rule for months and just a couple of years. It's a very hectic period. What happens during that time period is the Empire in the West actually starts to break apart. The part of it in the West becomes what's called the Gallic Empire. This general named Poshimish just decides, Well, you can't stop me, and this is my land. He'll have the Roman Senate. He'll have everything. In the East, you're going to have a territory break off called Palmyra. There's a woman named Zenobia that actually manages to rule that for a period. The empire is starting to disintegrate, and the empire doesn't have money to really pay for a lot of these things. They start making agreements with barbarian tribes in the north of, You come here, we'll make you safe, we'll feed you. But then since they don't have the money and politicians are corrupt, they stop having the ability to keep those agreements.

That's where the Barbarian invasions start happening because Rome makes agreements, they can't keep the agreements, and the Barbarians start coming across. If you were living in that third century, it would have felt like your world was falling apart because the empire is disintegrating, you're starting to have more tribes coming in from the north, and the real, I guess, citizenship and immigration conversation is they were so busy fighting each other, like our politicians now. Maybe they're not- Our people. Maybe they're not raising an army against each other. But it's all our news is, right? Is this politician against that politician, or this about Lindsay Graham, or this about Barack Obama.

A propaganda war.

Correct. It's a propaganda war. It's more of that, I think General Flynn calls it, fifth-generational warfare. It's that more of a psychological type of warfare. It's a similar type of component when that's all they're worried about, well, your borders start to break apart. That's the real problem that Rome starts to have in the third century, is they just start having people pouring in because they're more worried about fighting each other. Wow. If you look at what we have now, how many million people do we have here that we don't know about?

I lost count.

Nobody actually knows. I am. If you look at even... Have you been in New York recently?

Mm-hmm.

There is, I think, is at the Roosevelt Hotel where they're hosting a lot of illegals?

I have no idea. There's actually- Out of there as fast as possible.

They get a lot of free... I live 40 minutes from there. They live One of the big places they house them is in these hotels that aren't really functioning anymore. If you walk past the Roosevelt Hotel- That shit's real. There's a dumpster out front with brand new things like schrollers and things that are just thrown They weren't even in there because they didn't even want them. It's like we're giving so much stuff to people that aren't even here legally. Well, that's causing an inflation problem, right? It's a similar pattern that you see in history.

We're just giving people free shit.

And they're throwing it in the dumpster. You can walk right down the street past the Roosevelt Hotel. There's a dumpster out front with stuff in it that is brand new. Wow. So it creates a situation where when the only reason people are here is for the stuff or the money, when the money doesn't have value, well, what loyalty do they have to the society? And that's where you see these enclaves start to break apart, like in Minnesota and Michigan and areas like that, where sure, they're here, or with all the stuff with the Somalians happening recently. I know you had had nick on not long ago talk about what's happening with Somalians. But they're here for the goodies they can get, and they're just going to rig the system until they can get them. That's a real problem when people start to be short-sighted and not worrying about, well, what is the future I'm creating for this system?

Wow. Let's talk about the road to an empire. Kingdom, Republic, Empire, World.

As I mentioned, Rome is traditionally a Kingdom first, and there's seven traditional kings, and that's from 753 to 509. Now, the Republic, as I mentioned, it's a bit more of an oligarchy, but it is a much better place to live under. The Republic itself starts to disintegrate in the last 100 years. It's what's called the There's an author named Ronald Seym, and he wrote a work called the Roman Revolution. That last 100 years is called the Roman Revolution. There's a lot that happens in that time period. I think often people hear about Caesar crossing the Rubicon in '49, and that's how it ended. But for the most part, it's a climate, if that makes sense. You have the Grokei brothers that start doing these more public-minded reforms. Then around the 100s, you have these two generals, Marius and Sala. Sala was actually a... Which Sala, by the way, is Elon Musk's favorite Roman. I don't know if that tells you anything about him or whatnot, if you hear a little bit more about Sala. But Marius was this commander, and Sala was a guy that fought under him. They're fighting against a barbarian tribe commander named Jogurtha.

Sala manages to capture Jogurtha Jagurtha, and Marius takes the credit by getting the Triumphal parade. The Roman Triumph was a parade where a military commander would march through the streets of Rome dressed as the God Jupiter with his face painted red, and all of the soldiers would be under arms because it was technically illegal to have weapons within the city walls because the city walls are considered sacred. But for a Triumphal parade, you could have that. They would also carry behind them the people they captured. So Jagurtha is going to be in this parade, and Marius is taking all the credit. Marius and Sala start to have this disagreement on who's the most powerful guy. Later on, as you go into the '80s BC, there's going to be a problem with pirates. Not that we don't modernly have a problem with piracy. These things seem to continue. And Sulla gets the console ship to basically go handle the pirates. But Marius uses his political connections to get that position taken away from Sulla and get that position himself. So then Sulla is going to raise arms against Marius, which has never happened before. You don't have Roman commanders fighting against each other.

Marius is going to flee to Greece. He's going to die. He's of old age at this point in time. He also held the political position of console seven times. Now, console is like if you looked at the idea of being president. Romans didn't like one man holding power because they hated Kings. So Every year, they'd have two consuls, and they would equally hold power so that not one man held power. You were supposed to hold that position every 10 years. Marius held it seven times. He didn't live to be 70 years old. He starts breaking this pattern of how do you get offices. You start to see this breakdown, right? Of first we're breaking down how the military functions, then we're breaking down how offices function, and then what Salah is What he's going to do in the year '78 is he's going to attack Rome. I'm sorry, '82, he's going to attack Rome, and he's going to get the title of dictator. Romans had this idea that if you have an emergency, having multiple people handling it was too much of a problem. For six months, you would get this power called dictator. After six months, you were expected to lay it on your arms.

Sula holds that power for four years. He starts to really break down again what an office means. He creates this process called proscriptions. Now, what proscriptions are was there was a list in the form of names, and all of those people were to be killed. If you brought that person's head to the forum, you would get their land, their goods, you could possibly get their titles. What ends up happening is people's names that weren't people Salah didn't like, but somebody else didn't like, would get their name on the list because somebody wanted their stuff. You start getting this breakdown of really what are societal mores and the way society functions. So Sulla is a really big breaking point. Now, on those lists of prescriptions, there's an 18-year-old named Julius Caesar. Caesar was supposed to be killed because Sulla wanted him to divorce his wife because he didn't like that Caesar was married to the wrong political person. So Caesar decides he's not going to do that. And Caesar's mother, who's actually very connected, gets him removed from the list. So Caesar survives the prescriptions. Sella is going to die in 82. Then if you go down the road, Julius Caesar takes political power in 59 BC.

He takes the consul ship in that year. The guy that's consul with him is this guy named Marcus Biblius. Marcus Biblius is basically a front man for another politician named Cato the Younger. Cato the Younger did not like Caesar. Anything he did politically, didn't matter if it was right, wrong, and different, he would block anything politically Caesar did.

Shit, this sounds just like today.

What ended up happening is they had basically political mobs in that point in time, and Marcus Biblius is forced out of the Senate and into his home for the rest of the year. They end up calling it the Consulship of Julius and Caesar because he rules the whole year by himself. After that period, he ends up getting what's called a Proconsulship. Proconsulship. Proconsulship is like a governor outside of the city of Rome. If you've heard of the Gallic Wars, that's where Caesar basically goes, kills about a million people and conquers deep into France. While he's in his last couple of years of this, he hears word at the Senate that Cato has decided that he's going to raise political charges on him. The way Roman society function, there's often this trope about it that you're The first year in political office, you were paying off your debts because these people were heavily indebted in order to raise the money to become politicians. The next year, you were building your wealth. The third year, you were building whatever you could to not get prosecuted with what you did during that year where you built your wealth.

Caesar owes a lot of money to a guy named Marcus Crassus. A lot of what he did in Gaul paid off those debts. But then back in Rome, Cato starts creating charges that he to bring Caesar up on when he gets back in Rome. When you're a council or a pro-consol, you can't be brought up on charges. You're immune from prosecution. Rome has a culture of... If any of this is redundant. You can always stop me. Rome has a culture of being elected in person. In order to be elected for council again, Caesar would have to show up in Rome to be voted for. He writes a letter to the Senate, and he gets something passed asked that he can be voted for in abstentia, which doesn't really happen because he has this idea, if I come back to Rome, were they going to arrest me for these crimes that may be real or not real? Cato manages to get that order rescinded. So now Caesar has to come back to Rome again, and that's a real problem. So this is where the idea of Caesar crossing the Rubicon comes in. The Rubicon is this river in Northern Italy.

Modernly, we don't actually know where it is because the The landscape has changed so much, but it was the northern border of Italy, likely somewhere near Milano in the north. Caesar has about 10 legions. He leaves nine of them at the river. In 49 BC, he crosses the river with a legion, and he marches on Rome. What ends up happening is those politicians, including Cato, Pompe, and a lot of others, they leave the city. Caesar comes into Rome, fights no one, and he has the city of Rome. The Senate had actually given Pompey the power to fight Caesar. Over the next couple of years, Caesar will be chasing Pompey around Europe and fighting him. Eventually, the Tolemay king is just going to be to Pompey and give his head to Caesar. That is how you get to the collapse of government. Because people often say about Caesar, of all the bad things he did. Now, I'm not saying he's a good guy, bad guy, but I am saying the people in political power did push to do what he did. You get what I'm saying? They created an environment where he had no choice, right, wrong, or indifferent.

They created a situation where he had no choice, but if I come to Rome, I'm going to be arrested. I'm going to be tried. It doesn't matter if these things are true or not true. So Cato is going to commit suicide by disemboweling himself. Pompey is going to be killed. And then you get to the situation where Caesar is now in control of Rome. So he's named Dictator. And later on in 44, he's going to be named Dictator for life, which is something unheard of. It's akin to a king. Now, if you remember, I mentioned earlier, the last king of Rome is killed by a man named Brutus. Caesar is going to be later assassinated by two assassins named Brutus and Cassius. When you look at family ties in Rome, not upsetting your ancestors is very important. A Roman house would actually have these wax death masks of people that lived before them to remind them of what their ancestors did. To Brutus, it was seen as a responsibility to remove someone they thought would be a monarch. When you look at how Rome collapses in that last 100 years, it heats up with Caesar, but it's a degrade into that position.

If you look at modernly, even what happened with Trump, pushing charges, pushing charges, pushing charges. Well, you put them in a position where what do you expect them to do? I think that is where the system can actually cause the system to collapse and become something else. Augustus Augustus, who's the first Emperor, walks into this situation of 100 years of civil war. He brings peace. Then I do think this is a bit of a ruse, but then he says, Okay, I'm going to retire. The Senate in '23 demands that he stay in power, and that's where they get him the title Augustus. It really is an interesting position to be in. It didn't become an empire because one man took power. It became an empire because political people fought for 100 years, and then the last man standing was actually asked to stay.

Interesting.

That was long winded. I apologize.

Where are we at? Are we an empire?

I think we've been an empire for a long time. How long? I think that because... Are you familiar with what happened in the year 1913? What happened? Under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson? It's a very pivotal year. There's three things that happened that year. The first is A lot of people will be familiar with the Jekyll Island meeting that created the Federal Reserve. That happens in 1913. The Federal Reserve Act is passed over the Christmas break when- Go into that.

Do you know about this?

I don't know a ton about it, but the famous banking families go off to Jekyll Island. The Warburg family, who's one of the German banking families, is there. The Rockefellers are there. They basically decide that they want to prop up a central bank because they want to protect their own assets. Because if you look at the Federal Reserve, it's not federal and it doesn't have any reserves. It's basically a cartel, and it's owned by member banks. And a lot of the member banks are banks you're aware of. And the bigger investor in them is the Biz or the Bank of International Settlements in Basel. So it is really a cartel of banking. So they established this thing in 1913. The other thing that passes that year is the 16th Amendment for Income Tax, because now, if you have this bank, you have to have a way to fund it, right? And they're going to fund it by taxing people. They had tried taxes after the Civil War to this extent, and it didn't last very long. But the Income Tax Amendment sticks. The other thing that passes is the 17th Amendment, and this gets almost- So this is not even drawn up by government?

Mm-mm. The other thing that passes that year, which no one seems to talk about, and this actually would have been pivotal during COVID. I was to Jeremy about this before we got started here. It's pivotal. The 17th Amendment makes it so senators are no longer selected by state legislatures. They're selected by popular vote. What that means is the Senate and the House are voted for in the same way. The reason that the Senate was voted for differently is so that states would have representation and the people would have representation. If you look during the pandemic, a lot of states, their state legislatures wanted to do something, but they couldn't because they didn't select their senators. The reason they were doing this was to solve corruption because governors were naming their friend or their biggest donor to be the senator, which to me, you handle the corruption. You don't change the system. But if you look at 1913, we become less and less of a Republic. The presidency of FDR is even more pivotal in that because he's the person that forms something totally different. He's elected presidency four times, creates the New Deal, starts ruling by more by executive order.

If you look at executive power now, the executive power far outweighs the other two branches of government. I liked Trump a lot when he got elected. I like him a little bit less now for how some things have been handled, especially the Epstein files, but he's also ruling by executive order. That's a big problem. Bush did it, Obama did it. Trump has done it. It That's a real problem because people didn't vote for executive orders. You're ruling by mandate. It's a dictatorship. In some ways, yeah. Pretty damn close. It becomes an imperial presidency. If you want to look at the moment that changed, Wilson is the moment it really starts to tip because I don't know if you're aware of this, but during the first World War, Wilson passed something called the Alien and Sedition Act, where he could lock you up for talking against the war efforts in America. Then you have FD We are that totally changes the system. To me, we haven't been a functional Republic in a very long time. If you look at early Roman Empire- Over 100 years. What's that?

Over 100 years.

Over 100 years. We haven't been a functional Republic in a very long time. There's still some remnants of it, some vestiges of it, but we have not been a functional Republic in a very long time. Wow.

Let's take a break. Let's take a quick break. We track our sleep, finetune our macros, and try every biohack under the sun. But the truth is, your peak performance starts at the cellular level. Amra Colostrum is nature's original superfood. Colostrum is packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients that fortify gut health, strengthen immune health, fuel performance, and more. Whether you're training for a race, working to balance your health, or simply striving to feel your best, Armura helps you operate at your highest level because your body deserves the same level of optimization as the rest of your life. For me, Armura has become a staple in my daily routine, and I'm impressed by the results. So we've worked out a special offer for my audience. Receive 30% off your first subscription order. Go to armra. Com/srs or enter srs to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's armra. Com/srs. Starting something new isn't just hard. It's terrifying. Before I launched the Sean Ryan show, those what ifs were loud. What if nobody listens? What if this fails? Walking away from what's familiar to build your own thing takes real faith, but it ended up being one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Whether you're starting a podcast or launching a store, it helps to have a partner like Shopify on your side to help ease those worries with their expertise and tools. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US. From household names like Figs to brands that are just getting started today, one of the biggest hurdles is efficiency, and Shopify helps you accelerate that. Whether you're uploading new products or trying to improve existing ones, the platform is packed with helpful AI tools that can write your product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography for you. They also allow you to tackle all your important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics. There's no need to juggle multiple websites. Everything is in one spot to make your operations smoother. You've definitely seen that iconic purple Shop Pay button is used by millions because Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. It helps boost your conversions, which means fewer abandoned carts and more sales for your business. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.

Com/srs. Go to Shopify. Com/srs. That's Shopify. Com/srs. All right, Jeremy, we're going on about how empires break, specifically the Roman Empire, and We've talked about a reoccurring pattern, monetary breakdown, debacement, inflation, loss of trust. How did that happen in the Roman Empire?

That ties back-It was a huge loss of trust in the American government. Well, it ties back to money, really, because the thing you have to look at is people weren't willing to accept the amount of money they were receiving because they know that the money doesn't have the value it did. So with those coins I gave you in the beginning, as I showed you, you could see on the coin that the die that's used to cut the coin was used so many times. It wasn't even cutting the coin properly anymore. That's why that happened. So they physically know that, well, this coin doesn't have the value. So you're going to have actually black markets popping up. This is a big problem. And Diocletian, that's going to do reforms in the end of the third century.

Like fake currency?

Not fake currency. People literally trading, going back to how they did things. You give me a sheep, I'll give you some grain. Like going back to black market trading. We were talking about gold prices earlier. In the late third century and earlier, they start hoarding gold because they know the, quote, unquote, silver they're using, which is now very obviously, bronze, doesn't have any value. So the gold isn't really in circulation because everybody's holding it. So you start to have this real problem of people not trusting money, and it starts to break the economy because now trade is breaking down. You also start to have the problem of people not knowing how long the person that's calling himself Emperor is going to be in power. That's also going to change loyalty these, because a lot of times you're going to have, I guess, people in their retinue, is an easy way to put it, that, no, if this guy becomes Emperor, I'm probably going to get this job. Those things are going to start to break down, and they're going to roll the dice with whoever they think has the most power.

Can we stop right there? When you're talking... How long was... It went from terms to just to life. What do you mean? With Caesar, correct?

Oh, okay. So, yes.

You went from you have X amount... Like today, what we have, you have eight years potential to be a president. Then Caesar comes along, and it's just a lifetime.

That is what ends up happening. But the thing you have to understand is it's First of all, the Roman Constitution wasn't written. It was an oral Constitution. Every time things changed, they would alter how they did things.

It was an oral Constitution.

It was an oral Constitution. Now, they were certain in the early Republic, there's something called the Twelve Tables, which are the basic laws of what the rich people couldn't do to the poor people. But it wasn't a written Constitution. It was oral. They were very much based in tradition. This is the way we've always done things. This is the way we're always going to do things. They would alter it when a crisis would Rome. And that's how you start to get some of these weird things happening. But Rome did not have a written Constitution.

Would it be... That seems like that would have been maybe a major reason reason for the downfall?

Yes and no.

If there's no written- But it worked for 400 years, right?

So it worked for 400 years. And it was only when you get someone like Gaius Marius saying, Well, you know what? I know you're supposed to wait 10 years before you have a console ship. I'm going to have seven of them. It held pretty true for a long time until you get people that start deciding they're going to break those norms of the way we do things. Because Romans were very based on tradition. Tradition was very, very important to them. Even political office, you couldn't just be console if you wanted to be console. They had something called the courses of norm. There was a list of political offices you would have to go through before you could actually be a console. Because of that, people would be more seasoned, I guess, by the time they get that political position. But that also starts breaking down because Pompey the Great, the great conqueror of Rome, was a subgeneral under Sala that we talked about earlier. He ends up becoming counsel without holding any of the other political offices because Sala just says you could be counsel. These norms start breaking down, but for a really long time, they held in place.

So yes, it wasn't written, but they were very much based in tradition of how we do things. You have to be 35 years old before you can do this, 40 years old before you can do this. You can only be a senator once you've already been a council. So they held very strongly to tradition. It really did tie them. But after those ties start to break, it becomes much, much easier to break them. And they even marked their years by who is in office that year. It wasn't like It's the year 2026. It was this is the year of Caesar and Biblius. That's how they mark their years. That's going to change under Caesar because he's actually the one that creates the Julian calendar. Because Romans had this problem where their calendar was missing 30 to 50 days. Every couple of years, the seasons would get way off. Their calendar would say it's summer when it's actually winter, and they'd have all these weird things. Caesar creates the Julian calendar to try and fix the calendar. That's one of the reforms that Caesar does in his time as dictator. After that, you are going to have people that are in office for life.

That's why when you have Emperor, if you have a bad Emperor, buckle up because you're going to be in it for a very long time period until either he dies of natural causes or somebody kills him. That's where the Praetarian Guard, being the power behind the throne, becomes very important. Because they can decide, Okay, we don't like this guy. We're going to kill him. That's what happens. The first Emperor for that to happen to is Caligula. Caligula, which, by the way, his father, Germanicus, was in the Roman army Caligula. Caligula's name would have been Gaius Germanicus, but Caligula, the name is actually a nickname. When his father was in the military, they dressed him up in a little military uniform. The name Caligai is the name for Roman boots. Caligula means bootekinds. So he's killed by the Praetorian Guard, and his uncle Claudius is put in his place. So you do have this things aren't going so well, the Praetorian Guard is going to take the guy in power.

So the Praetorian Guard, where do they get their decision-making from? Are they of the people? Are they the pulse of the people, or are they strictly a shadow government.

They were originally the private bodyguard of the Emperor Augustus, and they just become the protector of emperors. They wouldn't have cared what the people thought they would have cared about being so close to the wheels of power. So for them, that's why they're looking at, Well, this situation isn't going so well. This guy's crazy. I need to get rid of him.

Because they're the only ones that determine that the current Emperor, King, whatever, ruler is crazy. It's not It's not like there was a- They don't take into account the citizens of Rome.

It's not that there is even a process. They're just looking at political positioning. It's not like, Oh, things are going bad. Praetarian Guard is going to get rid of the Emperor. It's just they're looking at it and they're saying, Okay, this This is bad for our future. We're going to take out this guy. You do often have, if you look at the second Emperor, Tiberius, he has his Praetorian Prefect, Sejanus, actually tries to replace Tiberius with himself. Tiberius is a wild guy, by the way. He leaves Rome. He lives on the island of Capri, and he has a sex palace there. He would have prepubescent pois swimming in his pool that he called his little Fishes. He was abusing children. They look at why Calicala might have been so... Or Caligula might have been so crazy because he was living at Tiberius's palace. He likely saw a lot of things as a kid, in addition to he later had some a fever that they can't quite say what it is. But during this time period, Sejanus actually tries to position himself to be Emperor. All decisions have to go through him. All laws have to go through him because Tiberius is off not even caring about ruling the country.

He's off with his little fishes. It's a very weird system in the way it operates. There's no like, this is where the Emperor stops, and this is where the Pretorian Guard begins. It's where can I get political positioning and where can I I guess, set myself up to rule.

How do you get into the... How do you say it? The Praetarian Guard. Praetarian Guard. How do you get in there?

You're selected by the Emperor.

How many of them are there?

I don't know the number.

You're selected by the Emperor?

It changes Changes over the years, so I don't know the exact number. But the Praetorian Prefect would have been the most powerful of them.

Each Emperor picks the Praetorian Guard, and then they kill him?

He's going to pick new ones, right? You would have that position as your military position until you're retired. But he might add new ones. The only time that they totally change is when- So this would be like Supreme Court? It's like if The Supreme Court- When one's done, you get to pick another one, but you don't get to check them out. But it's also in terms of function, you could look at it as if the Supreme Court, the CIA, the FBI, and the Secret Service had a baby. It's like that. Sounds horrible. They did a lot of things. You could look at them really as the power or the deep state behind the throne.

Okay.

There are times when all of them are replaced. As I mentioned, Septimius Severus, after the death of Didius Julianus, replaces all of them and puts his own men in there. He executes a bunch of them and takes others and just kicks them out of Rome. In 311, when Constantine takes power, he's actually going to disband the Praetorian Guard. So that's the end of the guard. They had this stronghold called the Castor Praetoria, and it was like their military stronghold. So they really do become Almost like an empire of power within the empire.

Have you read Romans and the Bible? Yeah. In that, reading that, it sounds like you're reading what's happening today, too, I think, in my opinion.

I've made a lot of comparisons between what you're seeing happen with the FBI and what you're seeing happen with, I guess, Trump, for example. It's this people that have been there for a really long time. They've decided he's not going to do what he's going to do, and they're going to stop it. The Pretorian Guard would have been the same way. They have their own political leanings. They have their own things they want done, and they're responsible for protecting the Emperor. So they have the best opportunity to kill the Emperor.

Interesting. We talked about demographic and border pressure pretty much, my immigration. What are the people thinking of all of that? Do the people even matter at all in the Roman Empire?

You have to understand. There's not a lot of history about the people. There's one of my favorite... I like doing great courses. I don't know if you've ever done that before, but they're lecture series you can get a hold of. One of my favorite is by a guy named Dr. Gregory Aldreddi. He talks about in Roman history, one of the biggest missing pieces that we have is what did the regular people do during their lives? Because for them, it was survival. They were worried about flooding. The Tiber River would flood every year. They were worried about disease. They were worried about dying from random things. They were worried about being able to pay for things. They didn't really have time to care about those things. As you get into the later Empire, a lot of them would have never even seen an Emperor. Their life is just so drastically different than those that have money or those that have political power. They're just worried about survival. They lived in these giant apartments apartment buildings that were called Insoli. They were just these giant tenement-type buildings. When people think about going back to Rome, the thing that you wouldn't quite think of that would be a big deal is it would have smelled God awful at all times.

Yes, they had a sewer system, but it only worked in people's houses that had the money for it to work. There were sewers in the street, so people would go to the bathroom in copper pots, and they were expected to go down their apartment building and throw it in the drain. But that's a lot of floors to go down. They would dump it in the streets. If you've ever seen these imageries of people being carried around on these, they're called litters, carried around the city. It's literally because they didn't want to step in urine and excrement because it would have just been everywhere. That's why if you've ever been to Pompeii, the curbs are very high because the streets would have been filled with lots of urine and excrement and horse dung and all those sorts of things.

Like San Francisco.

Exactly. Exactly like San Francisco.

Centralization of power, emergency authority becomes permanent.

That's a really important point because as I mentioned earlier, Rome had an oral constitution. When a crisis arose, they would alter it to handle the crisis. But the problem is, once you do that, you don't go back. If you look at that with a lot of things we've experienced, the war on or 9/11 or a lot of these different things that happen, the Patriot Act has dramatically changed our lives. We're not going back. That exists. There's a lot of these different things that we've changed our society because of. Rome was very similar in a lot of ways. An Emperor gives away citizenship because he needs to handle the treasury, or Christians are being persecuted because they want to bring back the peace of the gods. They're trying to handle whatever is there right now because they couldn't think in the future. Because especially in the third century, these guys are living such a short period of time. They're thinking about, what do I have to do to live? What do I have to do to survive? One of the last emperors to even rule 20 years is Severus Alexander, who dies in 238. That doesn't happen again until 284 because these guys are, as I mentioned, 27 of them, at least.

There's been some research that they found coins of other emperors. That's how you would know somebody was emperors. You can find coins that prove they existed. You're not going to have somebody rule again for 20 years until Diocletian in 284. So these terms are so short, they're just thinking about survival, and that's when the empire starts to change dramatically. We can see that now with each crisis altering how we operate. You look at even with a lot of the woke stuff that's happened, like the verbiage we used to use, we can't use anymore.

That's what I was getting at in the Bible is a lot of the woke stuff, a lot of the gender stuff. That was all happening in Rome, correct? That was all happening in Rome.

Yeah. One of my favorite all-time movies is Tropic Thunder. You could never make that movie now. You couldn't because things have just changed so much. Robert Downey Jr. 'S character is hilarious, but you could never do that now. But if you look at, especially in the third century, we mentioned Elagabalus. There's even stories that he had his own genitalia removed because he wanted to be the other gender.

So there's all these All these things start to happen.

All these things start to happen where gender becomes more fluid, mores start to change and alter, morals start to change. We start to do whatever we have to do with our money right now. If you're debasing currency, you're not thinking about what's going to happen 10 years from now. So a lot of these one-time crisis handlings become a future solution. Emperor holding power by having a military behind him becomes the way things go after the crisis of the third century. So if you don't have the right military, you're not going to be Emperor. That's not how it worked early on.

What were people putting their money in to save value? Did they realize it was happening? Did they realize they had to?

Well, for regular people, there wouldn't have been much understanding. It's just, as I said, survival. For the rich, there was problems of them stealing public land for themselves and farming on it because there was nobody to really stop them because Rome had a lot of public lands. So that's something you're going to see. But you're also going to see they're putting their beans more in political power, right? Because they don't know where the money is going, but they're hoping that this next guy could be the guy that gives them something. So that's really what you're going to see in terms of where people are putting their money because the money is changing so dramatically. It's 15,000 % inflation by the 280s, which is insane. I I don't know what percentage we're at now, but it's not good. I know Thomas Massey wears that pin that shows the national debt just rolling over and over and over again.

It's worth nothing.

At this point, it is. The person that fixes it, if they did, isn't going to be very popular because we'd have to deal with what we've done. I think that's the point you get to.

Did they try to deal with it?

They did in a couple of different ways. There's the There's one successful way, and there's the successful way. The crisis of the third century, as I mentioned, goes from 238 to 284. That's where the empire breaks off in the east, breaks off in the west. You start to have more barbarians pushing in. In the 270s, there's this Emperor named Aurelian. In five years, he puts the whole thing back together. He brings the East back, he brings the West back, and he puts the borders back where they are. The gratitude he gets is he's killed by his secretary. Then the next gentleman that they pick is an old senile type person that does not want to be Emperor. He does not want the job. They basically Push him into being Emperor because it starts to become a death sentence. By the time you get to 284, when Diocletian takes over, he's a military man. He looks at how you run a country very different or a civilization very differently. He divides it up differently. The word diocese, which is used by the church now, is the actual divisions that he created within the empire. Earlier, and still at this point, they're going to have the larger sections, which are provinces, but then he breaks them down into military sections called dioceses.

He also puts the borders. He puts better control on the borders. Then he creates these two new positions. One is called a duke's, which is later going to become duke in the Middle Ages. The duke's is responsible for handling one of these dioceses militarily. Then on the borders, he puts these guard posts that are called comates, run by someone called the comes, which is later going to become the word count. He really starts to shore up the borders in this way. But the other thing he does is he creates something called the tetrarchy, which means rule by four. He creates two senior emperors, including himself, and two junior emperors, because this empire is too big for one person is what he realizes. He's still always the one that's the most senior, but now he has a colleague, and he has two junior colleagues. That's the thing they actually do to get to stabilize it. So the border stabilize, the civil wars start to stop, but what he does to fix other things doesn't really help. He does something called the Edict of Maximum Prices, which is price controls. And you can see that in any society when you put in price controls, that really doesn't work because that fuels the black market we were talking about earlier, even more.

So you're going to see the black market start to get even more prevalent. Another thing he's going to do is he's going to dramatically increase taxes because the empire needs more money. Another thing he's going to do is he's going to start making it so it's less easy to have social movement. So if your father is a farmer, well, you're now a farmer. So he starts to lock social positions. So you can see, and I've had some disagreements with medievalists about this, but you can start to see the beginnings of what becomes the Middle Ages, how some of these things start to function. We're not all the way there, but we start to get there. He also changes the way he's presented. He's the first one to wear a golden diadem, which is a crown. And that's something that you're going to see after this point, all emperors wear. He also changes the political class, and he greatly enlarges the political class and starts to have people that their jobs are just being professional politicians. It is the only job. Bureaucrats. Bureaucrats. He creates a massive bureaucracy. Now He's really started to- larger government. He started to build a court around himself, and he's actually going to move the power center from Rome to a city called Nicomedia in the east, which is closer to where he's from.

He's from a city called Split, which is in Croatia. You're going to see Rome become less and less important. Actually, by the late Empire, the Western Emperor is actually going to be based in Ravenna, which is in the swamps in Northern Italy. You really do see his reforms are an attempt to fix something. You can see what he's trying to do, but it doesn't actually fix anything long term. I think Constantine is really the better version of how you fix things. The number one thing he does, as I mentioned, is monetary reform. He puts them on a gold standard, and that really does help the East. He also understands that people need to believe in something. It is important to have people believing in something. I think he has this religious awakening, but I think that's also something he's considering, is that people need to have some cohesion. Christianity is a big part of creating this cohesion of the Eastern Empire. If you look at that, that's how you can to do it the right way versus the wrong way. But there are different ways that we're trying to restore the power.

How did Constantine do that? How did he bring in Christianity?

It's a gradual thing, but he has- How do you do that?

What Everybody's worshiping the Roman gods and the ones that they brought in.

And the ones that they brought in.

Then they try to bring in Christianity. How did they do that?

Christianity is somewhere between 2% and 5% of the empire at this point in time, so it's not a big, important thing. But by what he does, it makes it more important. I had mentioned earlier, after the Battle of Milvian Bridge, he has this vision, and he beats his Meccancius, who's the guy he's fighting about who's going to be Emperor. After that, the first thing he starts to do is he starts to put more Christians in political positions. That's going to start causing people to convert to Christianity for that. It is initially, I guess, more of a political move, but at the same time, he had to believe something happened. You know what I mean? It's often something that's cited that he believes that because of this spiritual awakening he had, he was able to be in his position. I guess the thing you have to look at is it has to be something God-given or something spiritual for something that is such a minor thing to become such a major thing. You know what I mean? How else does that happen?

Now I see how he did it, but this is a tale as old as time. Wars start because of religion, and then he's imposing Christianity on the Roman Empire. I'm curious how it went because generally, no matter what religion you're pushing, it does well.

It seems that it went well because less than 100 years, it's a Christian Empire. Yeah.

When was the Vatican introduced?

That's way down the road. Okay. You're looking towards the Church of St. John Latterin as one of the first main Vatican churches that's built. That's an early medieval church.

Okay. So we have this.

The current St. Peter's, I think, isn't built until after Julius II or something like that, Pope Julius II. So we're looking at the 15 or 1600. Okay. The medieval paper, the early... So this time period is called the late Antiquity when you're trying to classify it. Excuse me. The Pope during this point is really just another bishop, but he's the bishop of Rome. The way that he ends up becoming more powerful is you have all these other different Christian beliefs, and they're trying to agree like, what do we believe? They start using the bishop of Rome to to basically arbitrate between them. That's how the papacy starts getting more power, is people start looking to Rome to handle a lot of these other situations happening outside in the provinces.

With the immigration stuff, what's considered an immigrant in the Roman Empire? Are these lands they've conquered, and then they're bringing the people in? That's a very tough question. You're talking about readjusting borders and all this stuff. How are they readjusting borders? I wouldn't imagine they shrank. Yeah.

Well, the furthest extent of the empire is in 117 under Trajan, and they changed their policy of conquest after that because Rome had grown by continually conquering new land and bringing in new people. You have some that become slaves, some that are offered in to become more Roman in a way. So That's going to change in terms of how the Empire starts to change because the Empire is not conquering anymore. It's just trying to put things together. In the 120s, Hadrian is going to build the wall in Britain to keep the Picts out and a lot of those people in Scotland. That does change, number one, how wealth flows into Rome, because wealth would come in with conquest. But then as well, it's saying who is an immigrant is a very, very hard thing to do, because if you look If you look at it, Emperor Hadrian, he was born in Spain. Septimius Severus, he was born in North Africa. It's like these lands that start to get annexed while people with political families are going to have a pathway where they could be Emperor or be in the Roman legions or anything like that.

So saying what is an immigrant is actually very hard. I guess if you want to really say what is an immigrant in the third century and so, it starts to be the people that I don't want to be Roman, if that makes sense. Because those early ones are looking at it for what are the political positions I can achieve because there is a pathway for me. You look at somebody like Diocletian who was born out in Croatia. He shouldn't have had a path to be Emperor, but he did. Or you look at someone like Maximina Thrax. He's from the Greek city of Thrace. There was a pathway for these men to hold a position, but they're not Roman, but they are Roman by citizenship. I think saying what's an immigrant is a very difficult thing to say because Rome, in a lot of ways, is very cosmopolitan. But if you look in the third century, what starts to change is how the military is set up and how the borders are set up because now you have people starting to live within the borders and the outskirts of the borders that are living in their Visigoth tribe or their Ostrogoth tribe or whatever.

They're not really integrating. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does make sense.

It's a hard question to answer because a lot of people stop being Roman after a long time. You know what I mean? It starts incorporating other territories.

Let's talk about something that actually brings a lot of stress this time of year, banking. Most of us are used to the old-school banks that seem built for the 1% while they hit the rest of us with overdraft fees, monthly maintenance fees, and minimum balance requirements. Chime is changing the way people bank. They offer fee-free and smarter banking built for you. I look at what Chime is doing and think about how much my younger self would have benefited from this. They aren't just another app. They unlock smarter banking for everyday people. We're talking about products like MyPay, which lets you access up to $500 of your paycheck anytime and getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Some of those Traditional banks still don't do that. But the real game changer right now is the new CHIME card. It's the cashback card that helps you build credit history with your own money. Two things that usually don't come together. There are no annual fees, no interest, and no strings attached. Plus, when you get qualifying direct deposits, you get 1. 5% cashback on eligible CHIME card purchases. It makes your everyday spending work harder by delivering real rewards and actual financial progress.

Beyond that, you're looking at a savings APY that's seven times higher than traditional banks in five-star customer service with real humans available 24/7. It takes just a few minutes to switch, and it's an absolute upgrade to a smarter way of managing your money. Chime is not just smarter banking, it's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime. Com/srs. That's chime. Com/srs.

Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services, a secured Chime Visa credit card, and my pay line of credit, provided by the Bancor Bank NA or Stride Bank NA. Mypay eligibility requirements apply, and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See, chime. Com/feesinfo. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime plus status only. Otherwise, 1. 00% APY applies. No min balance required. Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See, chime. Com for details and applicable terms. Unsere empfehlung for deinen Podcast: Frisches Obst and Knackiges Gemüse von Aldi. Immer good, immer günstig, immer vielfältig. Kurz gesagt, frische für alle. Zum Aldi Preis. Diese Woche Zitron 750 Gram für nur 1,49 Euro oder helle, kernlose Tafeltrauben, 500 Gram, auch für nur 1,49 Euro. Entdecke jetzt viele weitere Angebote in deiner Aldi Nord-Filiale. Und weiter geht's. Einfach lauschen und genießen. Aldi. Gutes für alle.

Do you think that's part of... Did they get greedy with conquering? That's part of this whole thing, on how they collapsed? Because if you're saying it was an immigration problem, and the immigrants are people that don't want to be Roman anymore, but probably that means people that have been conquered that just... Do you know what I mean?

No, I know what you mean. Once again, it's a hard thing to answer because just because things change so much. It's like if you look at early on, if they fought in the legions, they could get citizenship. But then the legions need so many more men because these emperors are attacking each other. In the 160s AD, there's a plague called the Antonium plague where 10% of the empire dies. They're not quite sure what it is. It might have been smallpox, it might have been something like it. Now you have a much more of a need for people. There is just this also also need for people, along with this need for fighting men. It becomes a much more, I guess, a way to put it, a much more mercenary culture, if that makes sense.

This brings me to another point. What was the reproduction rate? Do we have any idea what the reproduction rate is? Because we see a lot of countries, we're getting close, look at Europe. Completely, totally different dynamic over there in the past decade than what it used to be. You see all these declining birth rates all around the world, and you see other demographics with rising birth rates. A lot of people say that will be the downfall of China, of Europe, of the US. What was the reproduction rate back then?

If you look at the early Empire, and this is actually... There was a big to-do on X not long ago between Elon Musk and and a guy named the Roman Helmet guy, and they were going back and forth about reproduction. Because if you look at it, it's actually an early Empire issue. One of the things that Augustus- What do you mean by that an early Empire issue? One of the things Augustus is trying to handle is that rich Romans had stopped having children. So he starts enforcing laws on trying to help people have children. Basically, we'll give you money. He starts enforcing marriage more. He's really trying to handle this problem. So towards In the late Republic, this is already a problem. And in the late Republic, I forget the name of the historian offhand, but he's saying that Romans were more concerned about their fishponds than about their actual running anything. You do have a lot of this in the late Republic. That issue is just going to continue to get worse, that Romans aren't having as many children in terms of the rich classes. But you also have to look at as well, there was, I think the woman's name was Claudia, Haneia, that she had 11 children.

It was the mother of the Grachai brothers, that she had 11 children, and the two brothers were one of only three that survived. You also have to look at that as birth rates are lower, but also there is a lot of danger to people not living to adulthood. That's a major problem. That's not really going to correct, and that becomes one of the reasons that they need to keep bringing in more people because you need to continue to repopulate. Exactly. If you look at what we're seeing now, well, people aren't having as many kids, especially in Europe. You look at what's happening in the UK right now. The UK is becoming less and less and less recognizable. Everywhere over there. You go to- Don't even recognize it. Well, you go to Italy because you want to be in Italy, or you go to France because you want to be in France. What happens is these countries are starting to lose their identity. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't come from a different country and be in a place, but that country should continue to have an identity or you start to lose a civilization.

You've systematically completely... You've changed your culture.

Correct.

It's just not...

Well, culture is what holds us together. We'll be at the same place. Culture is the glue that holds us together, and we don't have that.

You've introduced so much of a different culture into your country that the new culture now overwhelms The original culture. Yeah. And then everything completely changes.

Well, you don't have a glue holding together. You don't have an ethos. You don't have something that you live by. And that starts to become a real problem. And at that point in time, the only thing that matters is money and power. When money doesn't exist anymore, well, you don't have a civilization anymore. That's the point you get to towards the end of a decline.

How did people start to lose trust in the institutions? I mean, the state survives, but the legitimacy does not.

Well, because Rome couldn't care for them anymore. I think that's the biggest thing. You start to see, if you look at the last 100 years of the Western Roman Empire, after the 410 sack of Rome, the emperors really are men that are just held up by barbarian generals. It's well known that the Emperor isn't doing much that they care of them. The son of Emperor Theodosius in the late IV century, Hanoreus, is more worried about his chickens that he's raising than his actual people. That starts to become the problem you have where they couldn't care about the people that they're supposed to be responsible for. I think you see that a lot with our politicians now. They're more worried about, I guess, one part of this, protecting what they've done and don't want us to know about it. The other part about it is they couldn't give to, You know what's us regular people because it doesn't affect them. I think you start to develop this separation, and that becomes a real problem because they're making decisions for regular people that they're never going to have to live with. I think that's a major It's a major issue.

Wow. Where do we go from here?

Well, we got to fix our currency. I think that's the bigger problem. If we don't fix currency, we are absolutely screwed. We really are. I just don't know if we have the balls to do that. But that is the thing that has to happen. In terms of-How would we do that? I am not an economist, but-If we just talked about the Federal Reserve, which I actually knew that it Sounds like a government organization. It's like Federal Express, though.

But it's not. People don't know that. So how would you begin to fix it?

Well, I think one part of it is getting it-Other than paying off the national debt, which- Well, money has to mean something again. I think that's one part of it. And that's why when I look at some of the things that Trump started to do, they think the tariffs was more of trying to get production back in America. Because if you look at it, we're just a service-based economy. We don't really build anything. We don't really make anything. You look at the rust belt, wasn't always the rust belt, but now it's hollowed out. So I think one is getting industry back here. We need to produce things, make things, and that needs to exist. The other part of it is handling currency, because if you handle currency, then you have the ability to fix a lot of your sins. But we'd have to base our money on something. I don't know, I don't trust cryptocurrency or some of those so much. I'm more of a precious metals type of person. So could you get back on gold? I don't know. We might be too far over our skis. But I think the other bigger part that doesn't get enough play is education.

We're turning people that don't know how to do anything. I think that is a huge problem that we're starting to suffer with now because we have kids that have degrees, massive debt, and they don't exactly know how to do anything. I have a history degree. I got very lucky that somehow people cared about the Roman Empire, but it's not an actually very useful degree in the world. There's a lot of people getting degrees they're not going to use. There's a major thing that's missing in the world. If you look at the trades, they still have that. That's the idea of apprenticeships. Apprenticeships before the turn of the century, meaning that the 1900s, were a very big thing in a lot of different fields. It serves a couple of different purposes. The first, to give you experience, and the second is to help you decide, do I want to do this? Am I meant for this? But I think unless we handle education, we don't know people that know how to run the system. If you look at when aqueducts fell apart, it wasn't because people didn't care about having water. They cared about having water.

They lost the know-how to know what to do with them. I think that's the bigger problem we're going to run into is this brain drain and this inability to do things. Everyone eats. Everyone's got to have a place to sleep. But if they're not able to provide for themselves, it's not the government's job to provide for them.

I do think we still make stuff. I think I could be totally off here, but I think about this all the time, and I do manufacturing and all these things to come back. I think it's extremely important. But I don't think that the narrative that we don't make anything is 100% true because we are very good at tech, software, stuff like that. Sure. Then we sell this stuff to all these other countries. We are look at Silicon Valley, I mean, California.

I'm looking more at production and manufacturing. You're 100% correct about tech.

Yes. All I'm saying is that the world has evolved since then. Yeah. While we're not... I do want to be making all these. I want to be manufacturing, and I think that's important to come back, but I don't think it's necessarily fair to say, We don't... Maybe we don't make anything, but we do produce things. We have, in my opinion.

Well, no, I can agree to that because there are certain things we make, but we don't really have manufacturing anymore. For a lot of small towns, I grew up in a very small town, everybody worked in manufacturing, and the manufacturing isn't there anymore. Same here. Then what happens is the people aren't working as much, the drugs are coming in, the places start degrading. So it's like that, we either need a different way to look at things or we need to figure out how to bring manufacturing back in some ways, because that is how a lot of people do provide for themselves. And that does make the economy stronger.

Yeah.

Because then we're not so reliant on Mexico, where we get a lot of our automobiles from, and a lot of other places. It's about autonomy.

When the Romans were expanding the empire, were they going after strategic locations for resources and things like that, or was it just war, war, war?

It was very strategic. It was. For example, as I mentioned, Rome had to feed a lot of people. The best place for growing grain was actually Egypt and Asia. So that land, after Alexander the Great dies in 323 BC, his generals basically divide up his empire amongst themselves. The last remaining of those are the Tolemies, which is under one of his general's Tolemies. The famous Cleopatra, Cleopatra VII, is the final Tolemic ruler. After her Before death, the Romans basically take over this area, and that becomes the bread basket of the empire. What would happen is the Nile would flood every single year, and that delta would become very rich, and it was a great place for growing grain and other things that could feed people. They were looking at that. Or if you look at when Trajan conquered Dacia, he was conquering that because they were silver mines there. They're looking at where can we bring in resources? It's very strategic on places they're conquering. It's not just, Hey, we want land. It's, What are places that are very strategic for us? Caesar was a little bit of, We just want land and glory. But when they are conquering, they're looking at, What are these strategic resources we can have?

The Punic Wars. Carthage was the biggest shipping power in the world at that point in time. To have that area would make them much more powerful in shipping. Those are a lot of the things they're looking at, is how do we bring in more resources to run this empire?

Makes sense. What are we missing in the Roman Empire that parallels what we're seeing today?

I think that's a big part of it, man, is just if we can handle our currency, if we can fix our borders, but politicians have to start carrying again. I think that's a major problem. I don't exactly know how we fix that because electoral politics has really become more of a, whose team are you on every four years? I think That is a major problem because they don't care about fixing the other two. So I don't know how to fix that one, but that is a major problem.

When did the Empire realize that it had collapsed?

That's really hard to say because if you go back again to that regular person living in there, he would have noticed that he's still paying taxes because the Kings of Italy, after the Roman Empire, would have been charging you taxes, would have been charging you tribute. They hadn't seen an Emperor in years. I think to them, it's hard to say when they stop realizing they're an Empire. It's just more of a fade away than an actual collapse. One day, you just realized the civilization you lived in isn't here anymore. It's hard to say when that is. That's why, sure, 476 is an endpoint, but I don't know that people in that year would have felt any differently than they did in 400.

When do you think we'll know when a President becomes a tyrant?

That's a very good question. I think it's hard to know, honestly. I think you look at what happened in Germany in the '30s and '40s. People didn't really know how bad it was until they didn't have the ability to say things that Hitler didn't like, or he starts closing Jewish businesses and rounding people up. So I think that's something you really have to watch for. But at the at the same time, I think it's hard to know until you're there. It's not really something you can predict.

Do you think we're witnessing the fall?

I really hope not. I like my country. I like living here. I just think that if we don't handle the economy soon, at some point in time, it's going to end. The petro dollar is propping us up. But if that changes, then things could change on a dime. And next thing you know, your loaf of bread is $100. Those are the things you really got to worry about.

Yeah, man. Well, this was a fascinating conversation.

Yeah, I appreciate it, man.

Thank you. If you had three guests to recommend for the show, who would that be?

Three guests. Well, there's one I definitely have in mind. His name is nick McKinley, and he's doing a lot to protect kids online. There's another who's protection, and he works with a lot of really well-known people named Caleb Gilbert. Absolutely brilliant guy. I'm trying to think of who else would be a great...

Because of course- Give me another historian.

Another historian. I actually think he's not a historian, but he looks at cycles. He wrote the book The Fourth Turning. I'm trying to remember what his name is. I'd have to look it up for you, but he wrote the book The Fourth Turning. We'll look it up. The The guy is absolutely brilliant. He looks at economic cycles and how they change every 80 years, and it actually can predict what's coming next.

Oh, man. You got to do that. That's awesome. Right on. Well, Jeremy, thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

I hope to see you again. Yeah. Cheer. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts on Spotify and leave us a review.