DO MEN REALLY THINK ABOUT THE ROMAN EMPIRE ALL DAY? (And Other Fun Facts) | Jeremy Ryan Slate

25:42And then you have the Republic that basically goes from 509 until 31, which is when Augustus basically creates the empire. So almost 500 years. that's pretty remarkable considering you know i'm sure at that time i mean there was a lot of things in the in the wrong republic there was um you know checks and balances there's there's all these features of like what the united states has today i don't know if there were elections were there elections so there were elections and there were but there were also like it depend on like what class you could you were in depending on if you could vote or not so like there was um like there were two two consuls every year consuls were kind of like the guys in charge because they didn't want to have one guy in charge and you know those were named by election but then you also had tribunes so tribunes were the guys in in uh charge of like protecting the city and there was a originally there was not what's called a tribune of the plebs the plebs were the plebeians or the poor people but eventually they got the ability to to have themselves represented in government by having a tribune of the plebs so all the poor people could basically vote for um you know this Tribune of the Plebs, but you had to be what's called a knight or above.

26:54A knight was one of the lowest parts of the patrician class in order to actually vote for who was going to control your Roman government. But I feel like there was, I don't want to say freedom of speech because I don't really know, but there were times during the Roman Republic that the lower classes were demanding more political power. Yes. And that's the last, like you're looking around the second century BC, so like the year 100-ish, there's these two brothers, the Gracchi brothers, Gaius Gracchus and Tiberius Gracchus, and they're basically pushing for more things for the people, more grain, more different things, and their actual murder is one of the things that leads to kind of the 130 years of civil war, or 100 years of civil war, which leads to the end of Rome, or the end of the republic, basically.

27:43Okay, so I always thought the republic ended because basically Julius Caesar, who was very popular in Rome from his military efforts, he basically became a consul and then declared himself emperor or dictator or whatever. And that's what ended the Republic. Not necessarily. So if you look at the last, the last hundred years of Rome are kind of crazy. So you have around one, I think it's around 130 that the Gaius Crocus, who's the last Gracchi brother is killed. Then you have in that hundred years, you have Gaius Marius actually raises an army and attacks Rome and basically declares himself in charge of the city.

28:25Then after that, you have Lucius Cornelius Sulla, which then does the same thing and says, hey, I'm in charge of Rome. And then you have 43 where Caesar crosses the Rubicon and then he comes in and says, hey, those guys did it. So I'm going to do it too. So now he's in charge of Rome. And then he declares himself a dictator for life. And the thing you have to understand is to do that is actually very offensive to the Romans because in Rome, there was an office called dictator. And what dictator was is if there's a period of civil strife or military strife, they had the idea that a bunch of people can't agree fast enough in order to solve a situation.

29:01So you would name a dictator that could actually do that. And a dictator would have power for six months and that's all, and they would lay their power down. And legend has it that there's this guy named Cincinnatus And Cincinnatus basically takes up the dictator, solves the problem. Six months, he lays it down and goes back to farming. And that's why George Washington is always called the American Cincinnatus, basically, because he laid down after the revolution. He decided he didn't want to do things anymore. It was elections that basically made him president. But so to say I'm dictator for life was offensive to Romans.

29:32And that's actually what leads to Brutus and Cassius later, you know, killing Caesar. Now, we're still in kind of a civil war period. And after that time period, in his will, Caesar names Gaius Octavius his adopted son. And adoption was weird in that time period because you could take somebody that's a total adult and say, I'm adopting you because it gave the person your name and title and money. and then you have one of Caesar's military guys, Mark Antony, that is, you know, like, well, if Caesar dies, then I'm the next in line. So you have this battle that comes about between Gaius Octavius, who later becomes Augustus, and you have Mark Antony.

30:18And the final battle of this in 31 is the Battle of Actium, and that's where, in a naval battle, Augustus, who's, you know, not Augustus yet, These guys, Octavius, routes Mark Antony, who's hanging out with Cleopatra at that point in time. And they're routed and later Mark Antony is killed. And then Augustus actually brings Cleopatra back to Rome as part of his triumph. Triumphs were like these parades that would happen after military battles and where the general would bring in captured prisoners and all these different things. And then historically, she just kind of fades out. At some point in time, in that time period, she dies.

30:58Oh, he didn't kill her? Like, where does she live? Like, what happened to her? I don't really know what happens to Cleopatra. I just know she's brought into the triumph. I don't know what happens in the sources after that. I haven't really paid much attention to what happens after that point in time. But then, so then Augustus comes in, and he basically says, okay, you know, I'm going to lay down this dictator position because I've solved the situation. And people were so freaked out by the 100 years of civil war that they just experienced that basically they demand he stay in that office. So then Augustus is actually the one to be the first person to control it.

31:36But he doesn't want a title of king. He doesn't want a title of emperor because those titles aren't acceptable to Romans. So he names himself first citizen of Rome. And that's actually what happens. And then the Senate calls him Augustus. So he becomes Augustus, first citizen of Rome. And then he kept the peace for a really long time, like 60, 70 years, something like that. He was the longest serving person. And that was actually really important to why Rome was able to transition from a republic to an empire. Because basically by the time he dies, there's nobody really living that remembers what it was like to live in a republic.

32:10And correct me if I'm wrong, because I really don't know anything. But when he took power, he basically killed off all his enemies. Like all the aristocrats in the Senate who could potentially oppose him. just like they opposed Caesar. And he took all their land and wealth and so on. So he was like by far the richest person in Rome. And he used that to kind of give gifts and get people to like him. Yes, but he also didn't live in opulence, which was really important as well. He had a very plain diet and he dressed in like very normal clothing, whereas emperors after him were a lot more like, you know, wearing purple, which was seen to be like, you know, more of a connection to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or the main god of Rome.

32:51And so he was actually a very simple guy living as first citizen. So it seemed like the Republic was still operating, but there was just kind of this first citizen in charge running a lot of things. So he had a lot of the money, he had a lot of the power. He was able to position it in such a way that he didn't look like a despot, which really made things function well. And, you know, it's interesting because everyone says it was this reign of peace, but he achieved that by killing all his enemies. So he was a psychopath just like the rest of them probably. He was, but he was also brilliant from the perspective, because this is actually what I wrote my grad thesis on, is on why people worshipped Augustus.

33:27Because Augustus was the one that actually figured out how to use propaganda to create ruler worship. And he looked at, in this kind of whole ending of the Republic, there's this kind of, it's not really a battle, but it's like a kind of a popularity contest between Pompey the Great, who conquers Asia, Africa, and Europe, and Julius Caesar, who conquers all of Gaul, which isn't as big as Africa, Europe, and Asia, but he wrote a book about it. So the fact that he wrote a book about it makes him look really smart. And - It's funny, because then we talked about John F. Kennedy earlier. John F. Kennedy, quote unquote, wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and it really portrayed him as this intellectual that he wrote a book that won the Pulitzer Prize, and it was about all these American heroes who spoke up in a time when you couldn't really speak up, and just like now, really.

34:20And it's interesting that that's used throughout history as a technique. It's a great technique because it's, you know, it's able to show Caesar to this, Caesar to that, Caesar to this, and because it's in writing, you're able to look at that. So that's one thing that's important. But also, like, there's techniques both of them use too. Pompey positions himself kind of as the new Alexander. So he actually goes out and he finds the breastplate of Alexander the Great and he wears it and he would, you know, do these different things to make people think he was Alexander the Great. He'd spend all these money on the people.

34:51He would, you know, build a new building for them or do this or have a parade or give them money. So people really loved Pompey because he did all these great things for him. And people actually started praising Pompey in a semi-divine way because of this. Caesar, he was much more aggressive and he would be like, well, I'm related to the god Venus, so of course I'm divine. And then he would just be very aggressive in all of his actions. So Augustus is kind of watching this whole thing, and he's like, well, I can see why my adopted father is smart, but I can also see why people love Pompey. So then after the Battle of Actium, Actium's actually where the sarcophagus, because at that point in time he was mummified, the body of Alexander the Great is held.

35:31So he actually, Augustus kneels down in prayer before the body of Alexander. And then he spends the next, you know, 60 years of his life showing people how I'm just like Alexander the Great. And using that positioning is how he was able to actually create the worship cult of Roman emperors. And during the Republic, they were also doing military expansion and invading other places like Egypt and so on. Did the emperors do a better job of expanding Rome or did the Republic do a better job of expanding Rome? Well, in the Republic, it was more of a citizen army. So they kind of just took up things that look like they're the problem.

36:10It was more of an established army under the empire. And that's what made conquest a lot better and a lot more efficient. But they only really had conquest till about 130, which is when Emperor Hadrian builds the wall of Hadrian, which is in Britain. And basically they said, we're not going to expand any further. And that's actually one of the things that will cause the future. I know it's hundreds of years, but one of the things that actually causes the fall of Rome, because the more expansion, the more conquering is the more wealth that comes in, the more you can fund everything. And so once you kind of cut off that funding, you've cut off the flow of money.

36:44So you're saying Hadrian, because it was a big source of revenues for them, conquering other places. Yes. And so because Hadrian basically, So why did Hadrian shut the door on that? Because it just became too hard. You know, the barbarian tribes would just again and again and again. And if you look at kind of future emperors, you know, Marcus Aurelius, most of his writing was actually written while he was serving in the military trying to stop the barbarian tribes. And that becomes one of the major things that causes the fall of the Western Empire. It's just barbarian invasion, barbarian invasion, barbarian invasion.

37:18So it becomes hard. And Hadrian basically says, we're going to build a wall and we're going to hold this position. This is where we're going to stop things now, right or wrong, you know, it's, it's still lasted another, you know, we're one 30. It, it, it fell in, um, you know, four 76. So like, it's still a long time. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, altogether, and we were talking earlier, the Roman, the Roman Republic slash empire, the Roman Rome as a country or whatever, a civilization, they lasted about a thousand years. Yeah. And the U S in contrast right now is, is about, I don't know, 250 years?

37:57Like what's - Somewhere in that, yeah. 1976 was the bicentennial. So whatever it's been since 76. Although I always wonder about that. 1776 is when they always say the US was created, but George Washington didn't become president until 16 or 17 years later. Yes. Like what was, they never really teach us in school when I was an undergrad, not an undergrad, when I was in high school or elementary school, they never really teach us what happened in these mysterious years between 1776 and 1792? A lot of failed forms of government, man. There was the Articles of Confederation. They were basically trying to figure out, like, how do you manage this thing?

38:31And I think we do a really bad job teaching history in schools. We do a really bad job. And I got in a disagreement with one of my college professors about this. I think that when you look at history, it's more important to learn it as a narrative. But I think the way we like to teach it is kind of this great man theory of history. like this guy did this, this guy did this, this guy did this. And it's really hard to remember it that way. But when you can kind of remember like the motions of things, it's easier to kind of put the people in place.

39:14What similarities? I mean, everybody's talking about, and this is not a new thing. I feel like every decade this happens, but everyone's kind of talking that the U.S. is in decline. But the U.S. always sort of pulls success out of a hat. And I think that's because of technological innovation. I mean, of course, you could argue the U.S. is going around trying to conquer countries, but the U.S. doesn't really... It's not like how the Roman Empire would conquer a country where they would take all the wealth and install a governor. there's not really a lot of instances of that in the world in general.

39:47I mean, there's isolated cases. You could make a case for South America in a lot of ways. Actually, that's true. I mean, Theodore Roosevelt - You know, if you've ever read Confessions of an Economic Hitman, like, look what we've done to South America. Right. Well, basically, I guess you could say the dollar is our weapon. So we would lend countries money. And by the way, this is what China is now doing with Africa. You would lend countries money and we lent all of South America. We didn't want South America to be dependent on any other country, like the Soviet Union, for instance. So we lent South America a lot of money.

40:18They, of course, never were able to pay it back. So we essentially nationalized South America and took over everything. And all of their resources belonged to U.S. corporations, more or less. Not completely. I've oversimplified it. But you're right. So South America, in some sense, is a weird kind of vassal of the U.S. but you know what similarities do you see you know in terms of the decline of the roman empire with the u.s right now and i'm not saying the u.s is declining i don't really think it is um but but i agree with you i think you're right there and i actually so i was um i'm still really good as one of my good friends of one of my uh college professors is actually my thesis advisor so i was talking about this yesterday i think there's actually two comparisons you could make because there's no real direct comparison right because history is different how the u.s has operated how Rome is operating is different, right?

41:08They're just, it's not a direct comparison. You could say that one part of it is we're very similar to how the Republic fell and the empire rose. Like you could say that because things have been very tumultuous. There's been kind of more of a populist rising in ways where, you know, the right power vacuum could bring somebody and there could be control. But I actually think as well, we're very similar to Rome's crisis of the third century. And to me, I think that's the greater similarity of where we are. So the third century, and how we got there is kind of a little funny. So you have Marcus Aurelius' son Commodus, who's absolutely crazy.

41:43And he does a lot of strange stuff. So the guard actually ends up getting so mad, they end up killing him. So he reigns for a long period of time, but then they end up killing him. And you have a lot of upheaval for this period of time. There's another crazy emperor in there, which is Emperor Caracalla. It's another like, hey, I'm a really good emperor. I'm going to name my kid emperor too, which doesn't really seem to turn out well in history. So Caracalla is crazy in that time period. And then you have a lot of like emperors that really don't last long. The final of which is this guy named Elagabalus.

42:17And Elagabalus was nuts. He goes, so I'm in this worship cult where we all worship a rock. So my rock's going to get married to this other rock and you all have to watch it. We're all going to go to this wedding. And he would dress in women's dresses and do all these weird things. Like Elagabalus was nuts. So eventually you have kind of him leading to a series of basically military emperors because the military realized, okay, things aren't really going so well. If I attack the city and name my general in charge, so you have what's called the year of five emperors. So there's basically five emperors in a year.

42:51There's a lot of upheaval. So we're going from like, this starts around 200. This goes till 284. We have Diocletian actually come in. and Diocletian comes in and he says, okay, things are not going so hot. We're going to do some reforms. So he actually comes in and he creates a standard coin, which is called the soleus. It's the gold coin that's created. He creates a standard silver coin as well. I can't remember what the name of it is off top hand. So he really standardized his money. The other thing he does is he creates something called a tetrarchy because he looks at it and he says, Rome is just way too big.

43:21It's too big. How do you manage this damn thing? So he creates a senior. By the way, I was reading that the Rome at this time had around 140 million people. all together across its east and west, across all of its like, you know, whatever you call it, sub-countries. It's huge. You have Rome and then you have everything else that are called the Roman provinces. So he names a senior emperor in the west and a senior emperor in the east. And they call the senior emperors Augustuses and they each has a junior emperor and they're called Caesars. So now there's basically four emperors. So that's the thing he tries to do to manage it because it's just too big.

43:57You can't manage it. And the other thing as well is under one of the other crazy emperors, Caracalla, in 212, he does what's called the Edict of Caracalla, and he names everyone living in the province as a citizen. So now, like, citizenship doesn't have any real value anymore. So then Diocletian looks at that too, and he actually does some military reforms to try and handle that because a lot of these guys had the benefits of citizenship, but you used to have to serve in what's called the Roman auxiliary if you weren't Roman to get Roman citizenship. And after you served for like 20 years, you could be a Roman.

44:29What was the benefits of citizenship? Like, why was this a problem? Because, number one, you got more ability to have grain and things like that. You could actually vote. You could actually control an area. You could get political power. but if you didn't have Roman citizenship, you couldn't do any of those things. And to actually have, like what would end up happening is these guys would be in the Roman auxiliary. Auxiliary was like military, but just not for people that weren't Roman. They would serve for 10, 20, 30 years, whatever it is, you know, over time that went up. And by the time the auxiliary was gone, you had to serve for 30 years.

45:02At the end of it, they would be named a Roman citizen and now they could go serve in government. And the thing that was nice about that is you could take that citizenship. You could be like, my son is a citizen now. His whole family as a citizen now. So there was a lot of value in that and you had to earn it. But after 212 and the Edict of Caracalla, so now Rome's supporting all these different people and all these different tribes and things like that, that didn't have to actually earn that citizenship. So it loses a lot of value. So Diocletian does all these reforms and it actually stabilizes the empire in 284.

45:32And that's actually the thing that makes it last till 476. and and but ultimately what happens like their how did their did their army fall apart like they got i mean it's history what we learn again in grade school like what the average person knows what i know is too many barbarian invasions and finally they couldn't handle it anymore and they collapsed well that's it's that and also like weak rulers after that time period because um there was a couple different ways that that rulers were done so in early rome you have Augustus was the first emperor then he names his adopted son who names his adopted son so you have this kind of way that it's named through families after Commodus because he was so crazy Commodus was Marcus Aurelius' son you have military commanders that start being named emperor and then by the way why did Marcus Aurelius given how smart he was and how wise he was and I do believe this was a wise person and his meditations of Marcus Aurelius is a must read.

46:35But why did he basically then name his son who became one of the worst emperors in history? So he names him his co-emperor. So they actually served together as emperor for a bit. So I think he was hoping like, maybe Junior can shape up and do a good job. And I think the thing you have to look at modernly too is like, I'm sure you know people that have money and things like that, that spoil their kids, right? Like, and it's just, you have to, I think also making people earn something, you know, makes them kind of come up to the level they need to be to get it done. And Commodus is just a spoiled kid that becomes an adult.

47:08So he does all these weird things where he decides he wants to be a gladiator and he's going to kill animals in gladiatorial games. But he does them from a stand high above them because he doesn't want them to actually hurt him. So he does a lot of this like crazy stuff. He starts killing people that threaten him. So to me, I just think that's what happens when the spoil kid gets in charge. I think Marcus Aurelius should have made him earn that more, and he didn't really do that. Now, did Marcus Aurelius, did he do anything bad or evil? No, he was actually the last of what's considered the five good emperors because they had all served for a long period of time, like 10 to 20 years or longer, and they created a lot of Roman stability.

47:49But he's the last of the five good emperors and then gives birth to Commodus, who's nuts. And so Hadrian or Diocletian splits apart the empire, right? Yes. Into west and east. And then he actually moves to the east. Why does he do that? Did he retire or did he become the emperor of the eastern side? So he becomes the emperor in the east in a place called Nicomedia. We haven't gotten to Constantinople yet. We don't get there till Constantine, which is well after this. But he becomes the emperor in the east because once again, they liked the east. There was more worship culture. There was more money.

48:23They were seen as more wealth. So he wanted to be in the East. That was just where it was, where it seemed to be. And he actually retires. He doesn't, he, he, he's one of the few Roman emperors to, um, at that time period, not be killed or, or not die. He actually retires and names his successor. So, um, he, he looks at it and he creates, I create some stability. Things are going pretty good. I think I'm going to retire now. And, and he then wasn't worried about being killed by the new emperor. I guess not. He ends up naming Constantine's father, Constantius, to actually be in charge. And then he later leads to Constantine, who's the first guy to kind of bring Christianity as the Roman religion.

49:03And why do you think the eastern part, the Byzantine Empire became called, why do you think that lasted another thousand years? I mean, that lasted basically until 1453 AD. I think you have Justinian to thank for that. He has a lot more structure. The Justinian law code is what we still use today. so I think the fact that he put so much more structure into it and also frankly they didn't have as much threat from barbarians you know like mainland Europe was just getting hammered I think was the east to get hammered as hard as the west got hammered I think they would have had a harder time because if you look at it once in 1453 when they get attacked by oh gosh what was the name of the empire that ended up taking them down I'm trying to remember off the top of my head do you remember?

49:47I'm looking here oh gosh i'm trying to remember top of top hand um germanic uh no no in 1453 it's a it's a muslim empire um oh gosh not the ottoman empire it was the ottoman empire there we go so it's the ottomans that i'm taking them down um and you know by that point in time the you know the money is gone the wealth is gone the city isn't really doing so well and um why wouldn't the barbarians go after them given that every other like the barbarians were basically from you know all over europe but eastern europe as well so why didn't they do what all the other like what like what alexander the great did what what the romans did why did they go for the east so there's different viewpoints on this um there's kind of the traditional viewpoint of of edward gibbon who wrote the decline and fall of the empire in in 1776 and um he looks at it as you know basically the barbarians were kind of happy where they were and they didn't want to go further.

50:48But there's a kind of a more modern historian that writes about this. And his name's Dr. Brian Ward Perkins. And he has a different idea on it. So after Alaric sacks Rome in 410, the Romans actually pay tribute. So tribute is an amount of money that's paid to a group every single year. So because of that, the East never paid tribute to the barbarian tribes. The West paid tribute. So basically they're like, oh, well, we control these guys now. So the last kind of 60 years of Rome, they're actually paying money to barbarians every year to just stop attacking them. I see. So then the barbarians were just happy, like— They got money.

51:22Why do they care? Yeah. But you also—you also, in the East, too, you had the Mongols in that time period, too, and the Mongols kind of just left Byzantium alone, and they were kind of coming across the steps through Russia and attacking Europe. Yeah, why did they leave—again, since the Byzantine Empire was so wealthy, why did they leave it alone? Maybe because the Byzantine Empire had the one army that could potentially defeat them or cause a challenge. They were actually one of the best established trading posts in that area. So I think trade through Byzantium was a big part of it. It created a lot of wealth for other parts of the world.

51:54So it was more valuable to them to have the trade there and have the ability to get these different things. So interesting. I really didn't know anything. So again, why do you think that it's become a meme? How much do you think about the Roman Empire? Like seven hours a day. So there's two different viewpoints on this. So my favorite Roman historian is a woman named Dr. Mary Beard. She actually has a great series on Prime right now about Roman emperors, about the Roman Empire, if you get a chance to watch it. Oh, yeah. But she has a viewpoint on it, and mine's a little bit different. But what she says is basically that Rome, people had this idea that men could be macho, which actually wasn't really 100 % true because most Roman emperors weren't going and fighting battles and things like that.

52:41So the way people look at history and the way it was are actually very different. to me, I look at it as it's kind of more of a late stage empire thing. People look at it like, well, things aren't really going so well right now. You know, remember, remember how great things were going in Rome? Imagine if we could be like Rome. So to me, I think it's more of people looking at, you know, is America a late stage empire? To me, I look at it, you know, once again, I think this is our crisis of the third century. I think with the right repairs, we got another couple hundred years and we can kind of keep doing this.

53:09But, you know, her viewpoint is like, you know, men feel like they're not macho. They're stuck in these corporate jobs. They're not really doing things that matter, which I think is also a big part of it as well. Oh, so you think basically jobs, like the modern economy, has demasculated men? Yeah, because if you look at it, like, you know, you're going to go to school for a bunch of years, and then you're going to go to a job where life doesn't really matter, and you want to kind of feel like, you know, you have an effect on things. And, you know, in Rome, you could have, you could even look at a lot of the Roman emperors, like, there were people that were born, born, you know, not as slaves, but as very poor people that would end up being being emperor.

53:47And that had happened. That happened with Emperor Hadrian. He was a guy that was born in the provinces. He was born to a poor family. And he ends up becoming emperor because he's put in the right political position. And I think people look at that and they're like, well, I don't really see how there's a path for me. I don't really see how there's a future for me. And it's, you know, you wrote an article a few years ago about is New York City dead forever? And I think people look at the economy and they're like, you know, things aren't really going so great right now. Kids are getting out of school and they're paying for an education that that education didn't actually teach them how to do anything.

54:16So they have a mortgage without a house and you have the government telling you, Hey, we're not in a recession. We just changed the definition of it. Things are going great. So people are looking at it and like, I want opportunity. And I think that's really the biggest frustration for people right now. I see. So, so to some extent, the Roman empire and Republic might've been more upwardly mobile than people are feeling right now. I think so. And because people, as much as we want to say there aren't kind of established classes here, I think it really has started to become the political class and everyone else.

54:49And that's, I don't care if you're on the right or the left, James, they're both corrupt as hell. And they both kind of do whatever serves them. And I think for the rest of us, we don't have as much mobility as we do. I think entrepreneurship gives us mobility. And I think that gives us the ability to do a lot. But I do think it's becoming increasingly closed off because of the political class. So if there's like one lesson from the decline of the Roman Empire that you would look at, what should the U.S. be worried about as a society, as a culture? More solid monetary policy. I think that is the number one thing that's killing us.

55:22I know you've been big on talking about cryptos and things like that. And I think we need to take a look at our monetary policy because you can thank Richard Nixon for taking us off the gold standard and they're able to do fractional reserve banking and things like that now. So I think unless we handle our monetary policy, we are in a lot of trouble. And that was one of the biggest things that Diocletian handled is he's like, there's two standard Roman pieces of money. We have a gold coin and a silver coin, and this is the exact size they are and the exact weight they are and how they're traded.

55:53But I think the problem here is people don't have, if you look at the American dollar, it's not backed by gold. It's backed by the faith and credit of the American economy. And I think people are losing the full faith and credit of the American economy. So I think unless we can solve that and unless we stop, you know, using our money as a weapon around the world, we're hurting ourselves because you're looking at what's happening with BRICS. And, you know, like we have countries that are starting to trade for oil and Chinese yuan and things like that. So I think unless we handle our monetary policy, man, we're in a lot of trouble.

56:23So interesting how basically that becomes the cornerstone of an empire slash country slash kingdom, whatever, is the monetary policy. it's more important than the military it's how you treat your dollars versus how you treat your soldiers and we're doing it for the same reasons which is interesting because you know one of the big things that that became the problem in the third century was they needed to pay for like basically Rome had started a grain dole so they were feeding grain for everybody in the empire like hey you get free food if you live here so you had that was happening they were trying to fund the military and emperors when they realized that they got their power from the military well they kept giving the military these giant raises every year, 30%, 60%.

57:03Because if they kept the troops happy, they were happy. But in order to give more money, they needed more money. So they started devaluing dollars. And you look at it here, that's exactly what we were doing. You know, I got some car repairs recently. And the hourly rate for those car repairs versus those same repairs I had on a different car in 2007 were triple for the hourly rate. So it's like your dollar is losing value so fast because we're just printing more of them. That's what, you know, people hear the idea of quantitative easing. They don't know what that means. That means that the Fed just fired up the printing press and made some more money.

57:35So we try to pay for things by just creating money. And it's like, you can't do that. Yeah. And I guess, I guess you could do that if the economy was growing faster than the amount of money. That's right. Like after 2020, between 2020 and now 40 % of all the money created in history was created in the U S and the economy certainly didn't grow by 40%. It grows, you know, like one or 2 % a year, but you know, maybe now, because it's still coming back from COVID, it'll grow a little faster because it was coming back from lows, but, uh, uh, it's, it's, it's a very scary situation with$34 trillion in debt.

58:11I haven't really wrapped my head around it about what it means. Like our, the U S is interest payments amount to about 4 % of GDP a year. So if you say, Oh, your mortgage and your debt payments on your credit cards and your house and so on is 4 % of your income per year. That's not so bad. It doesn't seem so bad. So there's like different viewpoints about how bad our debt is. And when I was speaking to David Rubenstein, who's the head of the Carlisle group and a really, you know, obviously a super smart investor, you know, he does think there's going to be a problem when, when all of us get older and social security can't pay for it all.

58:47And that that's when he, he, as he put it on my podcast, he said he'll be dead by then. So he doesn't care as much, but it is going to be a problem, I think. Well, I think we're hurtling towards like a lot of entitlements we can't pay for. Now that doesn't mean that we need to get rid of them, but I think we do need to restructure how we're paying for them because we're just not doing things the right way, man. Things are out of control. Yeah. Particularly if interest rates go up, if other countries lose faith in the dollar. So that's when, because normally the U.S. can just roll over the debt.

59:17Like they could borrow more money to pay back the old money. And because of inflation, they're borrowing cheaper dollars to pay back the more expensive loans that they took 30 years earlier. But if other countries lose faith in the dollar, then interest rates will go up. They'll basically charge a higher interest to lend to the US. And that's when things can get into, that's when things can spiral into a problem. And I think that our banks also have to start behaving here too. Like if you watch it, like, you know, a big part of what caused Silicon Valley Bank to fall is, you know, they have the the Fed window is kind of the last place they can go to get money when things aren't going so well.

59:53And they can borrow money from the Fed against Treasury bills. But the problem is those Treasury bills don't actually gain value. So then they try to sell those off to other banks to handle things. And it's just a shell game, man. And it ends up being a bank collapses because there was no money in the first place. Yeah. I mean, the good thing about it, the weird thing about Treasury bills is that they lose value during times of inflation. But you do get, if you hold for the long-term, the US government does at least historically pay back every dollar owed to those treasury bill holders. So that's why they're sort of treating the treasury, like from the purposes of keeping the bank alive, they're treating the fed, the treasury bills as if they have the full value, even though if you try to sell them, they don't have the full value.

1:00:36So the federal reserve is basically willing to scoop up all those treasury bills and hold them. but you know, again, that just seems like a bandaid and it's unclear how that will work in the long run. Yeah. But Jeremy Ryan Slate, author of Unremarkable to Extraordinary. Thank you so much. You basically, it's one of the most educational podcasts I've ever done. I learned a huge amount, but I have never given any interest in, in the Roman empire at all. Maybe I should have to, to learn more history. But I was fascinated after I did love the TV show Rome on HBO, which I know is not his a hundred percent historically accurate, but it's, it's a little historically accurate.

1:01:18And it was great, great actors in that, in that show. And then you suggested we, we talk about this and I've learned a huge amount doing some reading before this podcast and then you answering all my questions on it. So thank you so much for, for coming on. If you ever want to come on again and talk about something else, let me know. Absolutely. I really appreciate having me, James. I was really looking forward to this. I actually, I read a lot more this week too, just to make sure all of my knowledge gaps made sense. And I think we had a great conversation today, man. Excellent. Thank you.