It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 108

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of riot. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. search. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less

ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. There is America, hit by God in one of its softest spots. Its greatest buildings were destroyed. Thank God for that. There is America, full of fear from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that. What America is tasting now is something insignificant to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our nation has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds.

Those words, written by Osama bin Laden in October 7th, 2001, were part of his first statement issued after the 9-11 attacks. You might notice a few things about that. One is, of course, the glorying over the deaths of several thousand people. And another is that when it comes to his analysis of the cultural and psychological impact of 9-11 on the United States, he was more or less right. This Is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart, and nothing better embodies the slow, sometimes rapid, collapse of the United

States as our reaction to 9-11 and our continuing responses to it. And so today I've got in the studio, we don't actually have a studio, I've got Mia, I've got James, and I've got Garrison. And we're going to talk about something you've probably encountered, which is that a letter to America written by Osama bin Laden, which is a different piece from the one I started this reading, but written along broadly similar lines, has started to go viral on TikTok. And if you've seen the reactions to it, it's a mix of a bunch of younger people on TikTok reading this letter for the first time where bin Laden explains why he believed 9-11 to be justified and going, wow, he has a point. Some of them saying stuff that's more unhinged than that even. from both kind of centrist, you know, media figures, cultural commentators, pundits, and of course, right wing shitheads who are all making this out to be the left loves Osama

bin Laden. We're going to get into kind of where the truth lies in this and also what is in the letter to America. But yeah, welcome. Welcome to the pod, everyone. Thanks, Robert. Horrible to be here. How did you how did you all hear about about this new fun trend on the internet?

I returned from spending my evening volunteering at the border in Hukumba to find a dearth of messages about an Osama bin Laden letter or the speech that you just read that I've assigned for probably a decade to undergraduates without anyone losing their mind. And yeah, extremely confusing vibes for me. Yeah, yeah. The first time I heard about it was the first post that I saw was it was only about a million views. It wasn't even that viral, which I guess might be true because TikTok is nuts. But yeah, I think it, I don't know.

Like I first ran into it on Twitter and I think by the time it hit Twitter, everyone was just sort of in about 18 directions, completely losing their minds, which is just what that site is now. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, probably a couple of videos of people dying just seems to pop up every time. Something that's discussed on Twitter now.

I think that's an accurate description of kind of the fallout to it. As we're writing or as we're recording this, most of these original TikTok videos, people seem to be reading off of the Guardian's copy of Letter to America, which was, I guess, the most easy to Google prior to. I think it was the easiest to Google when this all started rolling. The Guardian took that down because they didn't want people reading it outside of the context of the article it's in. This was a horrible mistake. I have found a number of comments being like,

this is them. They're trying to stop you from reading Bin Laden's words. We're all going to be on a watch list. They can't arrest all of us. You can still access the letter to America. Also, the sentiment that you can't arrest all of us. You can still access the letter to America. Also, the sentiment that you can't arrest all of us suggests that many of these people were not alive

in the immediate aftermath of 9-11-2001. Which is certainly true. They will fucking try. They did try. Just to be very clear, you can still read this whole letter to yourself and so can everyone else. It's on Wikisource.

If you just Google Bin Laden letter to America, it will bring up the Wikipedia page that talks about this letter and its context. And that will also give you a link somewhere at the bottom to the Wikisource that's just the unedited translation of the letter to the American people. So it is not – like the Guardian's move was bad because of, they call it the Streisand principle, right? That if you like try to hide something from people on the internet, it just makes the problem worse. You never do what the Guardian did. It's very dumb. Yeah, it was extraordinary.

Of course not. Why are we expecting reasonable actions in the TERF colony? I was going to say, yeah, they could have blamed trans people. I'm surprised we didn't get one of those in there. Everyone's been trying to pivot very quickly to this. So obviously, you know, like James, my opinions on this are kind of complex.

On one hand, I am not an Osama bin Laden fan. He was a bad person. He was a terrible person. And he did a lot of damage, not just to the United States. That said, I've also long been an advocate for like, he's probably going to go down as one of the most effective and intelligent military strategic minds of the 21st century. 11th attacks worked in large part, right? Because of how we reacted, because of the amount of money that we spent, the amount of people that we killed, the amount of anger that we engendered against the West, and the amount of damage that we did to our own society. A lot of the fallout that we're seeing and all these right-wing street gangs and shit, a lot of it traces back to fallout from the wars that were started by the Bush administration after

September 11th. So and that was that was part of the stated goal, right? That was one of the things he was looking to provoke a reaction. So I'm, I'm both like glad, hopefully, some people are going to come away from this with a more nuanced understanding of the guy. And when I say nuanced, I don't mean in a moral sense because it's bad to kill thousands of random people. But in the sense of like, oh, this was not – I think I need to play something for you guys. Because like as a 9-11 – like I was like 9 or 10 when it happened. So I remember it all very well. And I remember the reaction to it.

And I remember the propaganda we encountered. And there's this thing that you will find written about fascists pretty regularly, which is that they both need an all-powerful enemy, but they also need an enemy that's like fundamentally free of virtue and intelligence and skill are virtues. So both in the wake of 9-11, you got this sort of Al-Qaeda and larger sort of Islamist movements were considered this nefarious force, as they are now in the wake of the attacks by Hamas, right? This nefarious force that is capable of infiltrating the US border and seeking terrorist cells into the United States to hit anybody. And at the same time, they're like primitive idiots who are bigots against – who are – they hate women and all this stuff, right? Like you can't, you can't see them as capable or intelligent because then that would, that would be to give them a virtue that you reserve for yourself. Anyway, I think a good example of that is this parody song by John Valby that I encountered in a Napster download when I was a child. And I'm playing this.

Is it Oben Laden? Did not, it's Oben Laden. Oh, it's the other one. Okay. Okay. Yeah. This one's bad, folks. You're going to hear something offensive. It's Oben Laden. Oh, it's the other one. Okay. Yeah. This one's bad, folks. You're going to hear something offensive. I'm playing it now because number one, I think it's something people should remember or know,

but also because we're about to play these TikTok responses to this Bin Laden video and read some comments of people who are very taken by it. And I want to set up what the pre-existing image of bin Laden was and our culture kind of prior to this reappraisal of him because I think that is important. But this is unhinged, and it's pretty offensive. So just be aware, people. I'm about to play it now.

Can't wait. Oh, yeah. No, you're going to have – all right. Can you see the giant confederate flag? This is from a John Valby album. I think it was called real women do play in mud puddles i don't know maybe not that may just be a random image i did not check but there's like describe this there's the general lee as a mudding truck with a giant confederate flag

behind it and then with the confederate flag like colors the, real women do play in mud puddles. Then it says Southern Girl. Southern Girl on the windshield of the truck. So I'm going to start playing this song. I'm not going to play all of it, but this should set up for you kind of what the acceptable discourse on Bin Laden was right after 9-11. till that fucker's dead. Oh, bin Laden, oh, don't you die too quick. I've come to fuck your fanny with some anthrax on my dick. So,

had you guys heard that before? No. Unfortunately. Yeah. No, wow. Yeah. This is the part of America that I missed growing up abroad

and will never fully understand. Now, we freezed about 30 seconds into that minute and 30 second song, but it was like playing random clips of art to go along with the music. And the one we paused on was Homer Simpson with an American flag behind him outlined in red with a pistol in his hands aimed at a bug-eyed Osama bin Laden. So great nuanced discourse here. So many memories. Like, I don't know what it was.

People loved that like bug-eyed bin Laden thing. This is like, like everyone. I don't know why. No, I think I know. I'm pretty sure I know why, which is that. So one of the most popular pieces of like media, popular media in response to the 9-11 attacks was an episode of South Park that came out literally like a week or two after the attacks, which

basically up until fairly recently, TV was always made on a significant delay. So there were no shows on air that could pivot to comment on something really quickly. The West Wing managed to kind of, but it was like a dog shit episode. But the South Park guys really pivoted and they put out this episode that was basically like a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Cartman as Bugs Bunny and Osama bin Laden as Elmer Fudd, right?

And there were a bunch of like scenes of him, like bug eyes bugging out when like shit would happen. And it was weird because like the, I think the most people who watched it, including myself, took it in the same manner of that song as like, yeah, fuck these guys. These like, you know, in ways that were pretty bigoted. There was also like the episode opened with an extended bit of kids in Afghanistan with everything around them and all the adults getting murdered by U.S. airplanes for no seeming reason, which was like part of the anyway, whatever.

I think one of the like what we're seeing in some of like why young people are reacting to this letter by bin Laden so strongly is they've never really gotten to appraise the guy objectively. And I'm not saying that that's happening across the board now, but I don't think the reactions are nearly as unreasonable as they're being painted. Yeah, he kind of existed

as an avatar of evil and like with zero nuance or complexity, just like a satanic sort of totem in American culture. Yeah. Which is why I've always

assigned it, just like I think it behooves us to understand. Yeah, I agree entirely. So I went through and I looked at some of the TikToks being made about this. And first off, TikTok does seem to have taken some action to try to stop this. I don't think it's going to work either. But like when I typed in letter to America recently, the text I got on TikTok was this phrase may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines. Promoting a safe, positive experience is TikTok's top priority.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can still find shit by typing in Bin Laden, but it's not as much shit is findable right now. So worth noting. One of the first things I came across that was interesting is like, so there's this trend on TikTok, if you're not a TikToker. One sec, I'm going to play. What do these people do on TikTok? There's a lot of AI videos where either the text will be read by AI with like images and video clips on screen, or there's some creepy instances of people just generating AI faces, sometimes of like actual murderers and criminals to talk about the shit they did. It's really weird. But one of the top videos I found on this

from about a little less than a day ago is just the entire text of bin Laden's letter to America being read by an AI. And it sounds weird. I'm gonna just let everyone get a listen to this. In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful, permission to fight against disbelievers is given to those believers who are fought against because they have been wronged.

And surely Allah is able to give them believers victory. I think it misses some of the stirring context. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great rhetorical delivery. No, but you get the responses of this and like one of my favorite ones that I've got on the screen is Cheekus Fressa saying,

y'all are going to hate me, but he kind of ate. And then the first response is, no crumbs, which Garrison, as our Gen Z consultant, that means like I agree, basically. You know, it's hard to say.

Oh, you're 21 now. You're out of touch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their first feeling old moment. basically? You know, it's hard to say. Oh, you're 21 now. You're out of touch. Their first feeling old moment captured live. Yeah, I think that means he ate everything and there's no crumbs left.

Yeah, no crumbs. Oh, okay. That's good. Very literal. I think that's what it means. But again, this is this is. I think you can't read. See, you know, it's... And that's the OP responding to no crumbs. So I don't know what's missing here. It's really hard to tell. Yeah, I think these people may be in a parallel reality.

I don't think really anyone who's participating in this trend is very intelligent or has very good media literacy or has really looked into American imperialism very much. No. But we will get to that in a second.

Yeah, so the next comment is so much truth coming out this season. And then I appreciated this from Walker. He lost me at the end, he being bin Laden, with the religiously charged homophobia, but that left out, he was right about everything else, justified and well said. The voice of reason.

The voice of reason. Yeah, well, but also... Also now, we'll get through it. There's a few more problems with the letter than that. Yeah, I'm sorry. Doing 9-11, but with a pride flag is perfect, and I have no doubt. You can't remove those things from the rest of the letter

and the action because they actually do create a complete whole. You can't actually pick and choose little parts that you want. It's like trying to pick and choose parts of QAnon. You're like, well, actually, there are rich people who are pedAnon. You're like, well, actually, there are rich people who are pedophiles. You're like, well, yes, but you can't, like, you can't. That's not giving QAnon the benefit here. These are totally different things. And the thing that I think people should be doing, just so we're clear on, like, my stance here, is seeing bin Laden as an incisive and intelligent actor who had a significant

degree of understanding of this country and its culture and the terrible things that he did were as effective as they were because he understood things about us that we should understand about us right otherwise you are not going to be able to successfully act within this culture to improve things and reduce harms. You need to understand why what he did worked as well as it did. And you need to understand what he knew about us because it's pretty useful stuff to understand. That is different from saying that what he – like you don't have to view it as the truth, right? Because it's not like the truth in any moral sense, but it's the truth in that, like, if you read some of Hitler's writings on democracy, Hitler accurately understood the

vulnerabilities of a democratic system and how to exploit them. You should understand that. You're not saying, wow, he was spitting truth. You're just saying, yeah, well, some people are, Robert. That is a problem. Yeah, some people, in fact, are. Do you know who else is spitting truth, Robert? Our advertisers? Yes. That is right. Are we sponsored by the new print edition of Mein Kampf at this point?

No, we are sponsored by Al-Baghdadi. He's still alive, folks. Yeah. Pouring one out for that. I don't know. I don't know. Here's the ads. Okay, so we're back I'm going to play another one of these

Zoomer Bin Laden loving videos for you No you're not No I'm not Lots of these videos have also been Taken down recently Oh yeah They trimmed that thing I thought this one

was interesting because it was someone who was like really pro Bin Laden being like yeah you know he was completely right about everything

what a genius I love him but all of the comments were people being like that's fucking kind of crazy to say bro like yeah

let's take a step back yeah the thing this reminds me of is this is a phenomenon I've run into with American Maoists. Yeah. Where like, okay, they'll read Mao saying something that is, you know, perfectly reasonable. Like, you should not talk about something unless you've researched it first. Yeah.

Now, any normal person has heard this when they were like two. But these people apparently have never heard this. And they run into it through Mao. And they're like, holy shit. Mao is like the greatest living theorist. What a brilliant thinker. You guys need Bin Laden to tell you the US sucks? Like, really?

Yes, people do. Because they get bullshit history education in high school. Their education of 9-11 was the video I started this episode with. Yeah, it's true. It's like we failed as a country, like just completely. No, seriously, like a fucking horse that I will whip till it's dead is that like in 2016, there was this huge thing about we need to teach history properly in media literacy, right?

After Donald Trump got elected because a lot of people didn't know what the fuck was going on. And then we just stopped. And everyone was like, nah, fuck it, why not? We'll just keep doing STEM, STEM, STEM. And then teaching undergraduates, often intro courses for years, it's become very clear that we are completely failing in the United States to educate people

or equip them with any understanding of American history. And so they just get propaganda. This is a big part of why I focus on crypto so much, because James, that is exactly where crypto comes from is we learned a lot of STEM shit, but we never learned any humanities or anything. So you get people saying stuff like, well, the underlying technology behind crypto is so impressive. And it's like, no, you can't point to a single useful piece of work it's ever done. You just find it impressive because there's a lot of complex math problems and that's what you value.

Yes, because that is the yardstick of academic achievement or intelligence. Anyway, speaking of people who are less intelligent than a yardstick, it's not exactly what you said, James, but I also wanted to play, here's a right-wing influencer who's collected a bunch of these videos. I hadn't run into this guy before, but oh no, did they drop him too? Are they just purging everything?

TikTok has been removing almost all of the videos associated with this trend. You can find the compilations on Twitter are really some of the only ways that these videos are still alive. Yeah. And this was a right-wing guy making fun of it.

But man, that's interesting because this was like, I found this five minutes ago. So, I mean, I think this is the thing that like, it's really hard to talk about this without it being like an insane right-wing thing. But TikTok is really Americans only encounter with the way the Chinese style censorship works

which is they take a giant hammer and they just like hit things with it yeah it's not like targeted it's like we found everyone who said the word bin Laden and we banned it right everything associated with the trend like yeah you know

like and this is the way that censorship stuff tends to work in China because it's kind of easy to do and it covers your ass. And so now Americans are experiencing this. I'm sorry. I'm just enjoying seeing what Roberts has suggested for other TikToks you might like.

Oh, yeah. Thank goodness for the shower's top shelf products. Yeah. Hashtag a hair talk. Yep. I'm a bigag hair talk. Yep. I'm a big fan of hair. I think it's because of this person, Earfmother. Earfmother.

Okay. Earfmother, basically. Yeah. Who actually, I brought her up specifically because she was an example of like, the way this is getting portrayed in kind of like particularly like Twitter and more mainstream sort of descriptions of it is like all of these Gen Zers are full throat for Osama. They've all gone crazy. And you can certainly find no shortage of those videos. I found a bunch of other videos that are more critical.

It is difficult for me to tell what the preponderance of it is because there's not – no one's basing what they're saying on a sentiment analysis. of is because there's not no one's basing what they're saying on a sentiment analysis they're basing it on what their timelines forwarded them based on their passion when they typed letter to america or whatever into twitter or into a tiktok but like i ran into this lady's video and like so not plenty of these are and i found others like this plenty of these are like a little more critical but not but still yeah i'll just play it hey guys just coming on here to remind y'all that osama bin laden was still a bad person crazy that i'm even having to get on here and say this because like hello obviously but i've been seeing a lot of people you know say that they read osama bin laden's letter to america and i've read the letter and i understand that a lot of people are

getting educated and kind of like deconstructing the propaganda that they've grown up in living in america but that does not mean that we should mystify these terrible people but they're also criticized the west and questioned the west and like how we operated over here osama bin laden's doing the same thing it doesn't mean that they are necessarily wrong on what they're saying but it doesn't take away the fact that they're sexist fascist racist dictator yeah i like this lady that's a good video um yeah i think she kind of hits on one point that i've i've seen in some of the other like for lack of a better term,

pro-Sama Bin Laden TikTok videos. Pro-Bin Laden TikTok, yes, of course. People have been saying how, like... Bintok. Yeah. Well, like, people have been talking about how, like, they're, like, finally, like, seeing past US propaganda. They're deconstructing the lies that media has told them.

And this kind of gets at something that we see a lot and kind of in like cult spaces yeah is that you rarely ever just completely disengage from some form of propaganda you jump to a different form of propaganda absolutely right it's like reading this letter you're not getting like disillusioned from u.s propaganda you're now buying into someone else's propaganda like the letter to america is a completely other version of conspiracy riddled propaganda that was put out for a political purpose and to try to engage with it in good faith is not the way to approach that text yes um and i think this is a big part of this problem is

how people's education has worked the past few years because they should have learned all of the various motivations and geopolitical factors that led to the 9-11 attacks. And instead, having Osama bin Laden be characterized as this cartoonish evil that hates America for freedom and america as a nation for its freedom like that yes that is propaganda um and if that's all you've had your whole life and you're you're now seeing seeing this other side this is probably like this is definitely like mind-blowing but like yeah you can look into why these things happen without just falling for someone else's extremist propaganda like like yeah you can you can get into the actual reasons for why this happened, how U.S. imperialism has caused

the geopolitical situation coming out of the 90s. Like, lots of people have already done this reading. There's just plenty of people online who have not looked into this because they have life. They're doing whatever, like, right? Not everyone is like us and spends all of our time

reading, like, political extremist literature. Yeah, not all of us have strong opinions on the different eras of Bin Laden writing. Yeah. He's like Taylor Swift in that sense. Yeah, yeah. I think there's another, there's a thing that's also important here too, which is I think you see this a lot in Americans, which is that Americans will have this moment where they realize that they've been being lied to by the American media. And then the thing this convinces them of is that everyone else is telling

the truth. Yes. And it's like, no, like every country is doing propaganda. All of the media is doing propaganda. Like you can't just sort of ping pong from one like countries sort of media propaganda to another countries because they're all doing it and the stuff that they're saying also isn't true you have to actually

like you have to actually try to work out the sort of the reality of history you can't just rely on reading like some other like some other propagandist version of events but this comes down to like a lack of a basic understanding of how we do history which i think it's not anyone's fault it's because we don't teach it very well at all in schools but like the lack of understanding of the difference between primary and secondary sources, right? And like people want to like get straight to the source. So they'll go and read

one historical primary source without the adequate secondary context and suddenly be like, oh shit. And yeah, it turned into a Maoist or apparently a member of Al-Qaeda. This is why like, you know, journalists do a lot of gathering, you know, what they can in the moment

from a scene, from interviews and stuff. But academics, there's always going to be if it's like a good academic, like I'm reading a great book right now on trust in unstable societies, societies like racked by war. So it's like the concept of it's written by a Gazan. And it's about like, how concepts of public trust fluctuate during conflicts. And he's looking at Lebanon. He's looking at Syria. He's looking at Iraq. He's looking at Palestine.

It's very interesting. But like he's not just interviewing people. like the overall sentiments expressed in them through in order to try and determine like, here is the aggregate of like what I found as a reaction to this question from like the people that I surveyed. It's the same kind of stuff that you do in a survey to attempt to add a little bit more rigor than just saying, well, I talked to 10 people and most of them said this. So clearly this is a trend, right? Which journalists are often guilty of. And also just goes absent in part because of that Twitter goes wild with this kind of shit, just like, well, I looked through and I listened to 20 videos and most of them, the kids loved Bin Laden.

So the kids must love Bin Laden now, which I don't think is entirely fair. But I wanted to I think it's probably a good time for us to go through the letter to America and talk about what is actually in this thing, right? Because you might as well know what's in it. It's a good thing to read. Again, you can find it on Wikisource. Yeah. So it starts with him kind of providing just some kind of Quranic justifications for the concept of fighting against an aggressor, fighting against someone who is actively attacking you, which is more essentially how he positions the relationship between the US and the Muslim world.

And he has a big thing that comes up over and over in this piece is him talking about how the caliphate is being sort of squashed and stopped from existing in the form that it should exist by this kind of constant both attacks on not just Arab democracy, but on like sovereign Arab states, as well as like support by the US for he complains a lot about corrupt rulers in the Muslim world. And he is talking about not just guys like Saddam, but like largely the Saudi royal family is a big part of it. He talks a lot about Iran and basically the so so that's kind of like a bit where a lot of his like grievances start. He does bring up and one of the videos, James, that you posted earlier was like an Israeli man responding to this and basically characterizing in a very inaccurate form.

Yes. Form saying like, there's no facts in this letter. Like he doesn't like say anything true. Yeah, where are his footnotes? Yeah, he's just angry at Israel and Palestine, right? He's just angry at like at that. And he does bring up Palestine multiple times.

There's lines like the blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenge. That's a significant part of his case. But he also lists a lot of other areas, right? He is not it is not just what's happening. It's not just what Israel is doing in Palestine that he's talking about. There's lines like you attacked us in Somalia. You supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon. And he brings all of those up several times. He also, he does drop some facts in here. One of the more salient lines is, you have starved the Muslims of Iraq where children die every year. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3,000 of

your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet set down and that's not an inaccurate thing to be that's not an inaccurate statement or a thing to not be angry about um now that's not the full context of it right um because there is a bunch of stuff that is in here that is like bin laden culture war shit um that absolutely is not reasonable or a reason to bomb people. Like, there's a point in the letter where he's like, what do we want from you, the Americans? Like, what do we, you know, Al Qaeda, the people who have attacked you, he's speaking kind of broadly for the Ummah here. What are we asking from you? And the first thing is that we are calling you to Islam, which I don't think is likely to happen. The second thing is we are calling on you to stop your oppression, lies and immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

We call for you to be a people of manners, principles, honor and purity, to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling and trading with interest. We call all of you that this that you might be freed from what you have already been caught up in, that you might be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation. And you may recognize that as a pretty insane reason to kill 3000 people. There's gambling. is like people are taking this as being like, oh, look at all these justified reasons because the US was complicit and active in mass violence in the Middle East. But like, he's not actually critiquing violence

or political violence because he is pro-political violence. What he is critiquing is Western degeneracy. That is his actual thing. The first ask is to convert over to a fascistic version of

his religion. That's the primary thing. This isn't about US imperialism in terms of what his end project is. And he's also, when he's angry about violence, it is specifically violence against Muslims, right?

Because again, bin Laden is fine with doing violence and having the state potentially do violence to non-Muslims in his ideal state. He also, we read, he is very right when he says that the United States is complicit in the deaths of over a million Iraqis because of our sanctions. This is in the pre-invasion period. One of the worst crimes this country has been complicit in the deaths of over a million Iraqis because of our sanctions. This is in the pre-invasion period. One of the worst crimes this country has been complicit in within our lifetimes.

Absolutely a fucking nightmare. He devotes as much time to that as he does to this next paragraph I'm going to read you, which is another one of his grievances. Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval Office? After that, you did not even bring him to account, other than that he made a mistake, after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and be remembered by nations?

He's like, it's fucked up that you killed a million people. The worst thing you did was let your president get a blowjob. That is part of this letter, and that's a crazy person thing to think yeah like that's that that's just him being an asshole um because not really a problem right there's personal problems right but on the scale of like american crimes the fact that we didn't force bin lot or force clinton out of office not really on the list. Yeah. Does not really make the cut. Yeah.

There is a long list and that does not make it. Yeah. Then, of course, he's got, he also spends actually more time on the sex trade than he does on what the U.S. did to Iraq. You are a nation that practices

the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this under the name of art, entertainment, tourism, and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it. And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past.

Go ahead and boast to the nations of man that you brought AIDS as a satanic American invention. Yeah, it's a very basic reactionary screed. It's like, you could do the same thing with like sections of Hitler speeches talking about like working conditions in factories right you could take little sections put them on TikTok make it be

read by an AI voice and be like oh wow this is a really good critique of capitalism and be like you're missing the entire point of what Hitler's actual political project is this is the exact same thing it is this is exactly this is this is the thing reactionaries do this this is like they will take a few of these points talking about imperialism talking about capitalism and then wrap it in a fascistic package like that that is their entire political goal it's it's the

entire way they recruit it's how they spread their propaganda. It's how they get people to believe conspiracy theories. Yeah. Yeah. And we, American people especially, will be incredibly vulnerable to it because they'll look at the critiques, which are in some cases reasonable, right?

Yeah, he's not wrong about every critique he has. But the fact that he is valuing the murder through starvation of a million or more people with bill clinton getting a blow job is is some is not something you should miss in your interpretation of the validity of his points yeah this is not a this is not a guy you need to agree with no under no circumstances do you have to hand it to Osama bin Laden. Once again, drill. Yeah, it's certainly a weird one.

It is. The reaction to it has been equally weird and equally misleading. Yeah. And the reaction to the reaction, like... Yeah, it shouldn't be that fucking hard for us to be like, America shouldn't have, through sanctions, killed millions of children and done a bunch of war crimes all over the world. Osama bin Laden, bad dude. We can take that middle path. I do want to get into a little more before we finish our talking about this.

Some of the lines that I think are really igniting some of these people who are are now pro bin Laden Laden TikTokers, because it makes sense to me that there are bits of this that really grab people. And I'm going to read a couple of them. One of them is this line here. The freedom of democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only. As for the West of the world, you impose on them your monstrous, destructive policies and governments, which you call the American friends. You prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them and torture them.

A new lesson from the American book of democracy. And like, yeah, there's some valid stuff in that paragraph, right? There's some points he's making there that people who have started to get – people who have just gotten out of like their parents' bubble and who are starting to become aware of the world and history and the US's place in it. I see why, especially if they encounter stuff like that out of context, they will find that intriguing because that's a fairly lucid and reasonable sentiment of a horrible thing that this country has been involved in. There's a couple- It's also nothing that hasn't been said better by other people. You can find it being said well ahead of bin Laden saying it by people who did not kill thousands. I want to sort of, maybe this is too late in this episode for anyone to still be listening to this, but I want to sort of make an appeal to people who are discovering anti-colonialism for the

first time, sort of in the wake of this and in the wake of Israel committing a genocide. And the thing that's, there's something very important to understand about anti-colonialism, which is that anti-colonialism is not a single coherent set of politics. There are many, many different types of anti-colonial politics. And those different versions of anti-colonialism wind up with completely different politics. And this is something, you know, internationally,

there was a very important distinction to be made between left and right-wing anti-colonialisms. Yeah. In the US, I mean, we don't have this, right? Like this is sort of the problem with Americans encountering this for the first time is we don't have left and right-wing anti-colonialism because the US is the world's premier colonial power. But in a lot of parts of the world, there is right-wing anti-colonialism. There are people who hate colonialism because of their sort of deep and abiding principled opposition to oppression and exploitation. And there are people who hate colonialism because their empire lost a war and they want to go back to being an empire again.

Yeah. And what kinds like which version of this politics people take up often has a lot to do with their class position and their, you know, their sort of like ethnic, racial, or positioned in the pre-existing society's hierarchy. And that's something very important about bin Laden that you can't get from either the American nationalists. They hate us for our freedom shit. And you also can't get from bin Laden's own description of his motivation. And the thing that's important here, right, is that Osama bin Laden isestinian kid who picked up an ak after the israelis murdered his family osama bin laden is one of the heirs to the saudi bin laden group and this is a second i need to stop we need to stop for a little bit and talk about the differences between american and saudi capitalism because they don't they're not structured the same

way yeah um and one of the one of the sort of big differences here is that the saudi bin laden group isn't like it's not like a company right it's a conglomerate and what this means is that you know is that bin laden's family the like the the people who own the bin laden group which is founded by his dad they don't own one company they own 500 companies the the american equivalent to who bin laden is is like it's it's it's imagine if one of jeff bezos's kids went to like a church like an orthodox church of ukraine seminary school and then got his dad to like go like pay for him to go do war tourism in ukraine and then got a group together to like fly a plane to the Kremlin. Yeah. And became like a weird, like trad Nazi extremist. That would be kind of cool.

It would be funny, but like, but that's the thing. Like he's not like Bin Laden is not a sort of moral authority on like Islamic resistance to American imperialism. He's a rich fail son who had this combination of like regurgitated Saeed Qutb and a bunch of his dad's money and like money from Pakistani intelligence.

And that allowed him to do everything that he did. That's the thing that allowed him and not that kid in Gaza who picked up an AK. That's the thing that allowed him to declare war on the US. And I want to read his account of what he actually thinks happened to the u.s this is this is this is from that same uh this this is from that same letter you are the nation that permits usury which has

been forbidden by all religions yet you build your economy and investments on usury as a result of this in all its different forms and guises the the Jews have taken over your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media and now control all aspects of your life, making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense. Precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against. So I want to like, like, like, think for like, I want people to sort of stop and like, look at what he's actually saying here. people to sort of stop and like look at what he's actually saying here his argument for why the u.s is an imperialist power is that it is controlled by jews who control the economy and the media and has enslaved the rest of the u.s to do their will and this is and i cannot emphasize this enough word for word a nazi yes analysis of what happened to the u.s and this is this is what right wing anti-colonialism is right you look at like the sort of horrors of colonialism go, oh, this is bad.

And then when someone asks you, OK, why is this happening? You unload this like utterly half ass pile of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories instead of like an analysis of capitalism. Like he thinks the source of like American like imperialism and capitalism is interest bearing loans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is nonsense. And that's what he means whenever he talks about usury, which like, by the way, as a heads up,

every Muslim country that I am aware of has banks that do what is- The fucking Taliban does it. Yeah. And they do what is effectively usury. It's just, okay. So if you know anything about

like Orthodox Judaism, right? You are not supposed to do anything on the Sabbath. And so some people do keep that. You're not even supposed to turn on a light, right? Like one of the old ways this was expressed is like you would light candles the night before the Sabbath so that you could have some burning on the Sabbath. Today, there are ways around it that are like you get lights that are scheduled to go on and off at certain hours. And it's always it's always, it's kind of funny.

There's a lot of jokes about this. You get from like Jewish comedians being like, do you think God is like tricked by your rules lawyering and stuff? But there are banks in the Muslim world that are the banking equivalent of that, where what they're doing isn't technically taking interest, but like it works out to be the same thing for them. They've just,

they're just getting around. Anyway, I think that's an important piece of context. It's like the Catholic church deciding that like fish and chicken aren't meat. So you can eat them. Right, right, right.

Yeah. Where it's like, really guys? Do you think God is like, oh yeah, no, I never meant for those things to be meat. Just pigs.

It's like, oh damn, they got me with that chicken shit. That ain't a cow. God's seeing it. Yeah. He's like, oh damn, they got me with that chicken shit. That ain't a cow. God seeing it. Yeah, I do actually, you have to credit Chick-fil-A

for being closed on Sunday a little, I guess, but I love the idea of like God going to like watch a Catholic congregation go to breakfast and get their fucking

like chicken sandwiches and going, ah, you crafty bastards. Got me again, guys. I didn't think you'd those guys they're so gross that is kind of how the catholic god works

far removed yeah he's like set up a little sudoku for you he's just thrilled that you're getting that yeah look when the hamster has to press a button to get its food. Yeah. Yeah. I want to, I want to bring it back to bin Laden for a second, because I think part of what's going on here is something that isn't, I don't know, but bin Laden is a product of, of his specific context,

right? And his specific context is that he grew up in one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia. And, you know, and his, you know, and I guess this is the thing i think we should actually i should actually mention i'm being slightly unfair to the taliban when i when i talk about them having loans because the taliban are from a different like school of islamic jurisprudence than al-qaeda is even though they sort of they kind of work together sometimes but like you know but the thing like the sort of wahhabi school that like bin laden is from right like he's the reason he has a right-wing anti-colonial critique is

he's absorbed this sort of like social mores and he's absorbed you know the the like the the like involved in the slave trade level of anti-blackness that you get from the sauds like from you know like the the he's absorbed their anti-semitism he's absorbed all of these things and this is what he sort of like has constructed as the reason you know and filtered through his sort of cobbling together of like different sort of like like of like saeed kuddub and of sort of like different sort of islamic thinkers like yeah this is what he's assembled together. And it's this thing that it's not a stable,

coherent critique of the U S it's, it's, it's, it's this, like, it's all of his sort of like weird prejudices and hangups, like grafted onto anti-colonialism and being able to tell the difference between someone who is a genuine anti-colonialist and someone who is doing this stuff or like who wants their empire back or who is like you know

like pissed off that gay people exist like that that is something that is genuinely very important and it's something that's made enormously harder to do by the way that he like you know by by the american education system by the way people are raised to think about media yeah yeah well this is this is this is this is this is this is the bin laden rant yeah i i we can always stand to do more bin laden rants maybe i'll do another episode on him on bastards one of these days but yeah i uh good stuff i do want to kind of close by reading another bit from OBL, our friend of the pod. This one's and possibly future president of the United States are talking about dealing with problems like Islamic extremism, because I think bin Laden's words here are pretty salient. And this comes from a comment he made. It wound up airing on Al Jazeera, criticizing George Bush ahead of the 2004 election. Your security is not in the hands of Democratic candidate John Kerry or President George Bush or Al Qaeda.

Your security is in your own hands. We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush and his administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half by the sons of kings. They have a lot of pride, arrogance, greed and thievery. And again, not wrong, not wrong about mostlim majority nations and not wrong about most western nations and it's a good analysis of the bushes too because yes the bushes were friends with the bin laden family yes yes they are you and they are also as close as the u.s has to royalty um as is trump uh maybe the kennedy's maybe Maybe the Kennedys. Yeah, Kennedys. But another presidential candidate, Mia. Complete with the insane inbred guy who's losing his mind.

Yes. Anyway, anyone else got anything? No, I'm just baffled. Yeah. Well, I'm happy. I'm having a good time. You know, get on TikTok. Let people know that you love terrorism

yeah it can't go wrong for you yeah alternatively get on Twitter or wherever YouTube and film an angry video in your car about how all of Gen Z unironically loves Osama Bin Laden and supports the mass killing of civilians

do either those seem to be the two primary things people are doing right now so get out and join the herd killing of civilians. Do either. Those seem to be the two primary things people are doing right now. So get out and join the herd, everybody. It's fun. What a great place. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series the running interview show

where i run with celebrities athletes entrepreneurs and more after those runs the conversations keep going that's what my podcast post run high is all about it's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories their, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora, an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors

that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Ah, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that is now happening here. I could have done something with ear, but we'll do that next time. Just forget that I said that. And welcome Mia to the program. Mia, how are you doing today? Not bad, not bad.

I'm excited to be here. Mia, how are you doing today? Not bad, not bad. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, yeah. We're going to be talking about a subject that's near and dear to all of our hearts, by which I mean the Roman Empire, with a guest who is near and dear to our hearts, Mike Duncan. Mike, how are you doing? Hello. Thank you for having me. It is wonderful to have you. Mike, you're a podcaster. You are kind of like the history podcaster, as far as a lot of folks are concerned, including me. And you also, you've had some interesting interactions online with people as regards the Roman Empire recently.

As regards the Roman empire recently. Yeah. Well, anytime the Roman empire shows up on the cultural radar, I am tagged into it by roughly 10,000 people. Yeah. And then I come in and I do my bits or, or if, you know,

if, if something comes through, you know, it gets shared at me, you know, not shared with me, but shared at me. And then,

and then I take a look at it and I get aggravated and then, you know, fire off a few salvos and retreat back out of the social media ecosystem, which is kind of the strategy these days. Yeah. Yeah. We all have to fight like an insurgent when it comes to that sort of thing, because the alternative is to just get constantly stuck in this escalating world of beefs with strangers on the internet who are making money off of the beef yeah but if but yeah but there's there are certain things that will get me to come out of my little hibernation um which i think we're about to talk about yeah

yeah mia do you want to do you want to take it away yeah so one of the things that's been happening recently is that so on october 25th the republicans finally after an enormous amount of time finally managed to elect a speaker of the house and they picked this fairly unknown rep named mike johnson who's this guy from louisiana and they picked him effectively because nobody knew who he was yeah and so they picked this guy and they're like okay and mike and Mike Johnson gets elected. And immediately everyone starts trying to figure out who this guy is. And they very quickly realize this guy is just a absolute, incredible Christian fundamentalist weirdo.

He he doesn't have a bank account, which is like wild. That's classic fundamentalism, too. That's some of that old school stuff. Yeah. Love to see it. It's really silly. I mean, he's really sort of like, he's like, he's really a blast from the past with Christian fundamentalists. I mean, he was a lawyer that represented like a bunch of young earth creationist museums.

He's really going into that old school stuff. And one of the other things that some people dug up is a podcast interview where he is talking about how gay people caused the fall of Rome. So, Mike Duncan, I want to ask you the question that I think all of our listeners are wondering, can we as queer people take responsibility? Can we take any credit for the fall of Rome or are we stealing Visigoth valor if we do that? You're stealing valor here. But I do agree that several of the gays in my life are like, don't take this from us. It's one of our proudest accomplishments. We brought down the Roman Empire. And I was like, but unfortunately, it's just, it's not the case. It's not even close to the case. It's, you know, you could, you could draw random words out of a hat and produce a sentence that was literally nonsensical. And that would be a better read of the end of the Roman empire than saying

gay people or homosexuality, like, because it's all wrapped up in this sort of like, it was decadence that caused the fall of the Roman empire. They were too like, you know, they were just too like uh you know they were just too licentious and they just throw up some some vocabulary words um and it just it just doesn't land at all um it doesn't land on the specifics it doesn't land on the general it doesn't land chronologically it doesn't land in any way shape or form it's just something they've decided is true and repeat to each other and that that's the whole, that's the long and short of it. Yeah.

Yeah. I think there's some interesting stuff there too, of like the stuff people talk about when they, when they, like, I remember I was reading someone like writing about this and they started talking about Nero. And I was like,

do you know, like in what century the Roman empire like collapsed? Like what, why are you talking about Nero? I don't know. It seems like there about nero i i don't know it seems like there's this real i don't know it seems like you know the the fall of rome is one of these things that's become central to a lot of very weird right wing politics i remember like a few years ago the big thing was like the rome was caught the fall of rome was caused by immigration

yeah which and that's also as well yeah yeah and so i don't know what what is it about like rome with these people the fall of rome these people are like so drawn to in a way that causes them not to think about what actually happened at all i mean well i mean just to go back a second it's like um but rome in general in their heads is not a sort of temporally dependent series of events that unfolded over a thousand years. It's just this kind of like one eternal place that's like a pastiche in their mind. So like Nero can exist alongside Attila, can exist alongside, you know, Scipio, Africanus and all of these people and events like just sort of are near each other in time, the same way that they believe that like, you know, dinosaurs and humans co habitated the earth, like, it's that kind of same thing. And so if they think about somebody like

Caligula, or Nero, running this, like running these courts of decadence, like it doesn't click to them that this is like in the first century and that the Roman empire doesn't fall for 400 years, 500 years. And then the East keeps going for another thousand years. That's a huge part of it. It is interesting to me. You, you, you kind of made the statement there about in these guys' heads, Rome being this kind of eternal, like continuing thing. And that's interesting to me because that conception of Rome goes back so far. I mean, very famously, like when Russia became like an organized political entity, there was this widespread attitude that it was the third Rome, right? That still plays

into a lot of Russian imperial politics to this day. So it is kind of fascinating how far that idea goes back. It says something about the success of Roman propaganda, that it still has this place in so many people's minds. Yeah. And I mean, it has a place in my mind. Sure. Yeah. I think about it daily. Yeah. So do I. So do many of us. And I don't think that it daily. Yeah, so do I. So do many of us. And I don't think that the crime here is thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire or, as we would more properly call it, the transition from late antiquity to the early medieval period, which has unfolded and didn't have a cataclysm. And you shouldn't necessarily be thought of as an inherently negative thing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But organizing your worldview around utterly historically illiterate version of the Roman

empire that is really just a vehicle for your own special bigotry, that's where they're really running afoul of me and my temper. Yeah. And there's a lot that's really interesting about how they sort of choose to interpret the causes of the fall. I think probably the least sensible argument they have is this idea that it had something to do with like degeneracy. Yeah, exactly. You can find Romans in like the Middle Republic period saying the same thing that like we've become too degenerate, too lazy because of like all of the, you know, slaves automating, you know, the ruling classes tasks people have, you know, Romans are not like the Romans of our forefathers and stuff century bc which is like 300 years before they hit

what we all acknowledge to be the peak of roman civilization uh and this is like this is when cato the elder gets into it and the big thing that those guys were griping about at the time and there are there are little you know little connections here just doesn't none of it shapes up is that what cato the elder and people like him were complaining about way back in the second century was this is when the Romans come in contact with the Greeks. And there was, there was a kind of like a, a split between traditional Latin Roman ness, and then this like new Eastern, uh, Greece ness, which like, they've got new ideas and like, they sounds like they have sex with each other all the time you know they don't care if they're men or women um and so that's what they were pushing

back against and so that kind of language does this is where it kind of distills over the centuries and then over the millennia into this idea that the roman empire collapsed and was ruined by this kind of degeneracy without being able to really define what degeneracy means or how it could possibly impact the long-term health of a large empire. Or the fact that very bluntly, when you're saying this in 186 BC, you can't say that contact with Greek ideas brought the Roman Empire down. You just can't because it just didn't get crushed by this. It didn't fall apart. Yeah. I mean, if I have to make an argument as to like what thing that I can connect to

modernity killed the modern empire, I tend to claim that it's the concept of a reboot, right? Because no sooner did Augustus have Virgil reboot the story of the Trojan War, then the inevitable path to the collapse of the Roman Empire began, right? The real sign that we're heading towards collapse is all these movie reboots. Okay, great. Well, the rule is whatever your modern preoccupation is that's what you use to explain the fall of the roman empire so of course i have my preoccupations and that's what i say caused the fall of the roman empire um which is that the roman empire in fact never fell and we're all living in a hologram and we know and we know this because if a woman visits me and brings me and brings me groceries

and she's wearing a jesus fish necklace it can pop into my brain and I can know that we're living in fantasy. We're still in the Roman Empire, yeah. The empire never ended, folks. Yeah, yeah. Every politician is still Cato. Yeah. I mean, look, you could also tell this because it's like in the same way that everything tastes like chicken, they haven't invented a new moral panic in 2000 years. So pretty clearly, we're just recycling through exactly the same content over and over again. It does. All of the kind of

similarities you can find, or at least seeming similarities you can find between stuff that different Roman politicians were complaining about, you know, 2000 years ago and stuff that different Roman politicians were complaining about 2,000 years ago and stuff that's in our media today, I think does suggest part of why it's almost impossible to not keep bringing Rome up, which is that there are, and I think it's a mix of there are some legitimate similarities between our cultures and also our concept of Rome, which is often a historical, but is based on generations of misconceptions makes it seem even closer. Yeah.

And we are a post Roman society. And I, they are our forebears, whether we like it or not, like any civilization that exists today that went through the Mediterranean world, it had a Roman period. And the Romans made a strong imprint on all of us in terms of our laws and how we think about money and how we think about family relationships. All of these things are, we're living in a post-Roman world. And that's why it's important to, to study the Roman empire as an entity,

but do it with some degree of rigor rather than just using it as a prop in the culture wars. Yeah. That was a great, that was a great point I just made and so devastating. It absolutely brought the conversation to a complete standstill as everybody just chewed on this nugget of wisdom that I had brought to the table. I do kind of think it behooves people, part of why it's valuable to do things like listen to the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan. That's right. Is that you're – this – Rome isn't going to stop being brought up by these people in increasingly unhinged and inaccurate ways.

to stop being brought up by these people in increasingly unhinged and inaccurate ways. And it's just like it's helpful to have an actual understanding of who the Spartans were and what they did and did not do for the sake of these arguments. It's helpful to have a meaningful understanding of the Roman Empire. And I'm kind of wondering, like, when you come into misconceptions about Rome, what are some of like the top ones on your list that your brain just forces you to go in and correct? Well, I mean, this is a big one because this one I feel like is deeply homophobic and principally used to attack the queer community rather than anything else. And just to give your listeners like some specifics here it's like you know

sexuality in the roman world was very different than it was today and there weren't even you know the kind of binary conceptions of gender sexual relations that we have today a lot of these things are very modern inventions i'm sure a lot of people know this um but we can also point very specifically to like uh you know hadrian who is broadly considered and cited to be one of the greatest of the emperors who lived at the height of the Golden Age, was gay. Like, that's a full stop thing. two ideas or really any way if you if you ask them to take this argument more than 25 words deep they're not going to have a way to explain how it is that somebody engaged in gay sex in the 400s could have possibly been the reason why the goths won a certain battle or why attila the hun was able to do what he did um all of it is just complete and utter a historical nonsense and so i consider it i consider it my

duty as some kind of voice of authority on roman history to not let people get away with this um the last the last time i saw this pop up was actually uh ben carson which is a little bit of a blast from the past at this point but um he he wrote a book at one point where he dropped this stuff in there and and the way they always couch it too is like as we all know you know it was homosexuality that really led to the degeneracy of the lady like i'm so sick of you people um but the other the other big one that really grinds my gears that really emerged this this was not a preconception that i had going into doing the history of rome but something that i came away um from after doing it and studying you know the year-by-year history of the empire is that this notion that like sort of the romans were this uh like like a like a like

a nationality that then went forth and conquered the Mediterranean, that Romans were Romans as like an ethnic stock thing. And that it was when these other ethnicities started sort of pressing at the empire's borders, or as we said a little bit earlier, that it was immigration, right? That destroys the Roman empire, that there was this kind of like pure noble Roman thing. This is essentially functioning as the white person in the ancient world. This is how we're connecting these things. The British did this, the French did this, Americans now do this today. The Romans are our stand-in as the white people, and the white people are civilized, and all of these other mongrel races are uncivilized. They were either civilized by

the Romans or they were killed by the Romans or enslaved by the Romans. But this is all for the good because the Romans themselves were like this superior stock of DNA somehow. And really, when you go through the empire, the history of the Roman Empire, you find that there is that kind of conservative strain inside of like the patrician class and inside of the senatorial class that they're like, we want this to be a closely held thing. Like the original Republic was a closely held oligarchy of Latin families who lived on the Palatine Hill. And that's what they wanted for themselves. And so when other people tried to push into the Republic, they tried to resist it. And so that is a running conflict that happens in Roman history. But any time that that tendency is overcome, and a second prevailing force that says, actually, Roman-ness is just an idea, Roman-ness is just a set of beliefs and practices and daily habits of life and ideology that can really be held by anybody at any time. And if we let in, say, non-Roman Italians, which is the first people

who were considered non-Roman who then came into the empire, which then we look back and we're like, there was a time that Romans didn't think that people from what is today like Florence or Milan were not Italian or not Roman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were not considered Roman until the very late stages of the Republic. I mean, I wrote a book about the later stages of the Republic and the social war is when this gets wrapped up. Yeah. After hundreds of years of being treated as second class citizens, there was a civil war that nearly destroyed the Republic

before Caesar even came along that was resolved by giving citizenship to the Italians, making them full members of the polity, and then having that just be a boon to Rome's fortunes. This happens in Gaul. This happens in Spain. This happens in Illyria. This happens in the Far East. That these people who the Romans encounter, and yes, do conquer because it's a very violent world of conquest and mutual conquest, that Romans in Gaul were as much Romans as Romans in Rome. And Romans in Gaul were as much Romans as Romans in Rome. And anytime I find Roman leaders resisting that idea, I find the empire starting to falter and commit missteps. And anytime they're like, nah, let's just throw it open. If you're good, if you're dedicated, if you're loyal, you can be a part of this project that we have. Then I find the Romans doing very, very well. And I'm about to start not to just monologue here, but I'm about to start working on another book that is about the set of emperors who really help Rome emerge from this thing that is called the crisis of the third century when the empire very nearly collapsed in the mid-200s.

There's a bunch of guys from Illyria, which is today the Balkans. I mean, we're talking about guys who are coming from Serbia and Croatia, or the emperors who are continuing the Roman legacy and keeping the empire intact. So this notion that Rome wasn't a multicultural empire or that the arrival of new peoples was somehow bad for them is just disproven over and over and over again by the realities of Roman history. So that's the other one. It's this immigration caused the fall of the Roman empire is just flat out incorrect. One of the arguments that I've heard sort of against that, and I want to ask how true this is,

but one of the things that I hear people sort of responding to this with is this argument that like part of what causes like the sack of Rome is that the Romans get into one of these xenophobic streaks and they don't want to sort of try to absorb the Visigoths. Okay, so that is- That's essentially myoths. Okay. So that, that, that is, that's, that's a,

that's essentially my position. Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to bring up a guy who, a historian who has to come up anytime you talk about the way the right likes to use the image of Rome, particularly the collapse of Rome, Victor Davis Hanson.

Yeah. Yeah. He is, he is a guy you're going, I mean, he was, he's my dad's favorite historian. I come from a very conservative family. And he wrote a book not all that long ago. No, actually, it was 2010. Sorry, that's still like five years ago to me, but it's not five years ago. It's much further away, called Why Did Rome Fall and Why Does It Matter Now? And there's a quote I found from a little article he wrote plugging it

that I want to bring up here so we can chew over. In short, what ruined Rome in the West? Lots of things, but clearly the pernicious effects of affluence and laxity warped Roman sensibility and created a culture of entitlement that was not justified by revenues or the creation of actual commensurate wealth and the resulting debits inflation debased currency and gradual state impoverishment gave the far more vulnerable western empire far less margin when the barbarians arrived it's all bullshit i know it's nonsense it's so it's so it's so frustrating because this culture of dependence

that can i swear on this podcast oh absa fucking lutely for sure fucking these motherfuckers um the this entitled this entitlement thing that they have because they don't like welfare because they're pricks you know um and you know victor davis hansen you know this is a guy who wrote a book called like mexifornia which is like oh my god yeah absolutely this is where it comes from the nineties where he's like, he's like, California is going to be destroyed by all these Hispanic people. Like it's just loathsome shit that he writes. Anyway,

this culture of entitlement, right? Like, Oh, it was just bread and circuses. And like the empire had to give all this money to like, how many, like,

okay, great. The Roman Rome, the city was like a million people. Yeah. Right. And there were a couple of large urban hubs that did have like grain doles because you needed to be able to feed

the people in these cities and this is you know smart policy by the emperors it's actually not bad on a humanitarian level um and then they also threw games because this is what people do rich people throw parties to make themselves love like this is a very this happens today this happens all the time this happened during the medieval period happens all the time um the number of people who are like benefiting from this like imperial largesse who have this like entitlement mentality is such a fraction such a fraction of the total number of people who live in this empire where we're talking about 60 65 million people maybe maybe give or take a little bit not that many people were on the dole in rome

uh it was usually just the male head of the household got some grain it was like it was um it was a little bit of supplemental in it's basically the equivalent of like supplemental income it was absolutely not just they're rolling out uh uh banquets for these people every single day nor is it the case that that entitlement of romans living in rome in the 200s a.d or something is like the reason why they couldn't sustain their border defenses right this is this this is the same arguments we get when it's like uh you know we can't afford Social Security because the you know the National endowment for the sciences paid somebody 250 000 to um uh to look into the you know bee keeping habits uh like it's like people just don't have a way to compare a million dollars to a billion dollars to a trillion dollars because it's just a lot of money in our heads so like this none of none of

that is true none of that's true it's um it's it's fascinating to me especially when you hear like uh this is like really popular amongst the Joe Rogan set. This idea that like, oh, you know, when an empire's at the end, that's when you get all the bread and circuses to distract people. When the empire, like the Roman empire, the entire period during which it was expanding

like wildfire was doing nothing but throwing giant fucking parties in the capital. That's all they did. That's all they did. You couldn't be in politics without going broke, throwing parties like that was the, that's why a lot of the conquest happened is because you have to throw these parties when you were earlier up on the,

on the cursus honorum. And then you would have to like go conquer someplace to pay for it. Yep. And that was why actually, when you get right down to it, you know, one of my, you know,

a little side opinions is that if you were a provincial inside, one of my, you know, little side opinions is that if you were a provincial inside of these conquests, you know, conquered lands, life was much better under the empire than it was under the Republic, because there actually was some tightening and normalization

of the bureaucratic regime under the empire, like after Augustus comes along, rather than what was going on in the Republic, which is every single year, a province was getting a new governor who was there to extract as much money for himself as possible because he had taken out tons and tons of loans to throw the biggest games that he possibly could to build the biggest act, to build the biggest thing. Now, when you get into the later empire, like are there financial difficulties?

Of course, right? You don't get the kind of monument building and even aqueduct building and infrastructure projects you get in the later empire. But like, there are larger economic and structural reasons why they were suffering financial difficulties at the end of the empire that have nothing to do with these couple of grain doles that were going to a few major urban areas. Most of the population is rural subsistent peasants like those people were not feeling entitled to shit which which i think is really funny because if you look at like i i am very confident if you

actually did the math the u.s spends more money agricultural subsidies every year than like than the romans did like on the entire grain dole i mean there's almost no way that's not true like yeah like we i mean in part not just like because who knows what the romans would have done with a higher level of technology just wasn't possible to do that kind of thing outside of the major urban hubs like you can't you can't you couldn't do it that's the thing yeah um this is the same thing where you get into like when people like to slip in the whole like, oh, there was lead in the pipes. And like there was lead in the pipes. And, you know, maybe some of the leadership was a bit over lead exposed.

Like, who knows? Like, maybe, maybe, maybe. But like the vast majority of the population is not living in downtown Rome where this might be a problem or in, you know, one of the other, you know, regional capitals. That's just not where any of this is taking place. Well, people love to talk about stuff like that. It is like, you know, the fact that they're one of their major sweeteners included a lot of lettuce is always like interesting to bring up. But the thing that I mean, and this was this is also pure speculation, but that I always

wonder more about, not just with Rome, but with most postmodern societies and even early modern societies is like, what about mild head injuries? Because we know so much more now about how a bunch of little head injuries can permanently alter your behavior. big thing when I think about when I think about like the World War One generation is you've got millions of men who wind up becoming very influential in politics who are under artillery barrages and who are there's almost no way they're not walking away with some kind of CTE based on what we know now about what being near artillery does to your brain. You know, what does that do? Yeah, the ancient world was full of trauma. Yeah, of course. And that's and that's a real thing all of these guys were deeply deeply traumatized um but like one of the other points about the the whole like bread doll thing is this gets back to this is sneaky backdoor racism because the argument the argument is that rome was great when it was the romans doing it like these actual like latins who were coming from the environs of Rome in particular,

and that it all started to go bad once non-Romans were in charge of things because the Romans themselves had decayed into this like, oh, well, we just want our bread and circuses and we're not going to join the legions. We'll just have Germans do our fighting for us or Goths do our fighting for us, which that is simply sneaky backdoor, because it's a way of saying that it was the reason why the Roman empire was successful was because of this small population group. And once they go away, other groups, these mongrel races, um, will never be able to, uh, live up to or sustain civilization in the way that Romans did, the pure Romans did. And so that's also a big reason why we need to push back on these things is because the Roman empire was not just sustained, but thrived and expanded by people who were not Romans. And the idea that their civilization required this little tiny speck of a DNA spark to keep it going is just, this is the kind of person who finishes writing that book and then immediately turns their attention to modern it going is just, you know, this is the kind of person who finishes writing

that book and then immediately turns their attention to modern California politics and says the big problem here is Hispanics. Yeah. Which is also not true, by the way. No, no, no. The big problem with California politics is California politicians. Right. It's not Latinos. It's certainly not Latinos. politicians. Right. It's not Latinos. It's certainly not Latinos. I wanted to circle back around to the degeneracy stuff, because I think there's an interesting through line there too, with not just modern politics, but the politics of the period of the original rise of fascism. Because you look at these arguments and they're like, well, okay, it was cultural decadence. And then they start talking about degeneracy and how homosexuality was this like degenerate thing that

brought down the empire and like you go back and you like read the nazis and they are also absolutely obsessed with like you know with this notion of like degenerate art and like cultural degeneracy is this force that's this internal force of subverting the empire and you know and like this is also i think another like reason to be reason to be interested in a better way about rome was also the way that like the original italian fascists are i mean like the word fascism is like derived you know like from from roman symbol symbols right and like you know this is like musolini's entire thing is about turning the mediterranean into the roman lake blah blah blah

so the fascist is great not to get yeah you know not to derail your point keep talking just gonna cut that line out of the podcast mike duncan says fashion is great. The fascist is great. It's a great symbol. Go, go. Like a lot of people don't actually even notice this. Maybe they do at this point. This is no longer a fun fact, but you go, you go to the link. No.

Well, I mean, not just Congress, but go to Lincoln Memorial. Look at the Lincoln Memorial. What are his hands resting on? It's a couple of fascists. It just is because you know what? A bundle of sticks is stronger together. And that is a symbol of solidarity. And it is a symbol of group action being superior to individual attempts to do anything and that the one the one bow is going to

break but all of them together is good like none of this is like inherently bad it's just a bunch of um fascists claimed it took further yeah well and my memory of this is that i'm pretty sure there was a group of people who were calling themselves fascists in early, like, late 1800s, early 1900s Italy, who weren't fascists, who were basically left-wingers. Sorry, not the Nazis.

I don't know if you know this, but Nazis are actually socialists. They're national socialists. And so a lot of people think that they're right-wing, but actually they're left-wing, and that's what it is. Hitler was was an Oberlin grad. This is where we cue my 30 minute digression about stressorism. to make or that you were making there though, is that they were, you know, the Nazis did. And then we hear this repeated today that like the degeneracy is like a thing that is a force, like a physical force that can maybe even be measured. And if you don't have enough of it,

or if you have too much of it, then your society is going to start to break apart or decay. Like it's just an idea. That's it. It's just sort of a way of thinking about something or a way of describing something. It's not actually a really real thing that is out there in the world. If you have a society that suddenly can't grow grain and you have a famine, that's a real thing that will actually affect your society and bring it down. If you have this other thing that is just like moral degeneracy, this is just like you listing things you don't like and saying that this is the reason why things are falling apart because degeneracy can be anything to anybody. But really, you know, like people smoking cigarettes at four o'clock in the morning

because they've been up all night, you know, doing drugs like that's what kids do. What people have that people are always going to do this. This is always on the backgrounds and margins of any society. So like, and rich people, like they've always partied. They always will party like those kinds of things. You can't really then say like, oh, well, we've accumulated too much degeneracy now. Our society is going to start to break apart. And this, you know, the things that we see today in terms of our own sort of faltering

Democratic Republic, this is not because of degeneracy. you know the things that we see today in terms of our own sort of um faltering democratic republic this is not because of degeneracy this isn't because the kids are doing too many drugs or like we legalize gay marriage like that's not that's not why any of this is happening it's happening for other reasons it's happening because of greed it's happening uh because of sociopathic indifference to other people's lives. Those are the things that actually matter. Um, not whether you stayed up all night, uh, drinking and partying.

No, no, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's the, like,

I, I tend to think like talking about the Latifundia is a lot more relevant to talking about like what happened to the elites under Rome and what's happened, uh, in our own society than, than bringing up like the parties and shit. Like it's this,

exactly. The centralization of wealth and power and a tinier and tinier number of men was responsible for a number of the problems that rome encountered as it aged and they don't want to have that conversation no so they want us to have this other conversation which flatters their bigotry well and and this i think comes back to the thing you were you know the joke you're making about like all these these are all the same people who are like oh well the nazis were socialists and it's like yeah you know like the point of like these arguments is so that you don't go back into the historical record and realize how much all the things you're saying are wrong and how much they're making precisely the same arguments that you know the naz Nazis were making or that all of these sort of like,

you know, all, all of the sort of past people who broadly is acknowledged, did a bunch of terrible stuff, had the same opinions that they do. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well,

I, I don't know. I think that's what I've got to talk about today. I, I mean, this is like we could go on to the way in which like Sparta gets remembered and stuff and the cultural like right wing. But I think that's kind of moving sort of far afield, although there's there's similarities, right? sort of far afield. Although there's similarities, right? There's always this idea that at this certain point when everybody looked the same, that's when this historic empire was at their best. And when degeneracy got entered into it, when immigrants got entered into it, that's when it sort of fell apart. I guess some of that's mixed in with sort of like

Frank Miller as opposed to any sort of real history. But that's always the case, right? I think a lot of – Yeah, I mean, and Frank Miller's working in a tradition that is very standard, the kind of racist orientalizing of anybody from the East. That was all current. The Romans had those ideas. I mean, we get the word barb. Like one of the points that I'm going to make probably in my book is like, so the word barbarian just means non-Greek. Like that's it. Because the Greeks had a, you know, a very sort of self-centered view of the world as we all do.

But that meant that the Romans are barbarians. You know, and that word is coined and we're thinking about who the Romans are. Like they were the civilized ones. And then there are all these barbarians who are bad. But from the Greek perspective, the Romans were as barbaric as the Scy are just a bunch of guys who are obsessed with war and they have no culture. They have no ideas of their own. They just march around in squares and kill people like that. That was their interpretation of what the Romans were originally, which is not a terrible interpretation of early Roman history. But yeah, this just this sort of dividing between civilized peoples and barbaric peoples is something that then has been around for thousands of years.

And we're still doing it today. conflict that I see is rooted in a lot in these sort of Western traditions that inform 19th century racist ideas about how things, you know, about how societies organize themselves, all of which needs to be deconstructed and thrown away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I always love it when people try to bring up like these sort of racial theories within the context of the roman empire who had absolutely nothing that would be considered like a modern understanding of whiteness or race like was was completely absent no they they all had they all had group identity no yeah they were chauvinists but yeah yeah different era yeah exactly right it was there's

us and then there's everybody else yeah um and you know the romans differentiated a little bit between like there were egyptians and you know they were kind of you know they were they were curious about how the how the jews worked because the jews were very old civilization and so the romans kind of took special note of that and they really admired the greeks um and so there are these like sort of like groupings that they all understood, but it's all just sort of that very self-centered. If you go through anthropological history of any group of people, their word for themselves is just the word for person. We find this a lot. And the Romans were that way too, but not in this way, not sitting down and making like hierarchies of, you know, who can, you know,

who can do what and who should be on top and who should be on bottom. Because, you know, if you're a traditional ancient chauvinist, you're like, well, my people should be on top. And that,

you know, is self-explanatory. And then we will, we will fight for that, but it's not because of, yeah, these, these racial hierarchies.

Yeah. Well, I think that's about all I had to get into. Mia, you have anything else you wanted to sort of touch on today? I think I think we've about we think we've about covered it. Well, we got it. We've established that it's wrong to think that gays made the Roman Empire fall. No, no. Although you can, yeah. There's a million more things to say about that. But yeah, I think we've hit on the basics. Mike, you are a podcaster. Your Revolutions podcast is one of the best things on the internet. You are also an author of a whole bunch of books, The Storm Before the Storm, which is about a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today, Hero of Two Worlds, The History of Rome. Yeah. Mike, you have anything

else you want to plug? Well, I am just about, as I said earlier, about to start work on a third book, which will be The Crisis of the Third Century. So if anybody out there who's listening to this has been like, I wonder if Mike's ever going to write a book about the crisis of the third century. So if anybody out there who's listening to this has been like, I wonder if Mike's ever going to write a book about the crisis of the third century, I will, and I am. Excellent. Well, thank you for being on the show, Mike. And yeah, listeners, until next time, if somebody brings up the Roman Empire in an attempt to attack various special interests in our modern political system, buy a Gladius, you know? That still works the same way it did in the past. Just start swinging a Gladius.

But remember, it's got a blade on both sides, so you gotta be careful when you swing a Gladius. Easy to hear yourself. Satire. Satire. Legally not actionable. Satire. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series,

The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast post run high is all about it's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories their journeys and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together you know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout well that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.

It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators

sharing their stories, struggles and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.

Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Shereen, and today, as usual, I have a very serious topic to talk about. Today, I wanted to talk about corn. Yes, corn the food. I think corn gets a really bad rap these days. A starchy carb. Oh no, high fructose corn syrup. Get away from me. But like actually that shit is not good for you so do eat it in moderation if at all. But corn itself shouldn't be made into a death syrup in the first place. Corn isn't supposed to be eaten this way. It's meant to be eaten just as it is, or rather how it has come to be because of human intervention, which is delicious. I am obsessed with corn.

My entire family is obsessed with corn. Corn, boiled sweet corn in particular, is one of the most popular street foods in the Middle East and Syria. Street vendors have handfuls, dozens of corn cobs boiling in these giant cauldrons at the side of the road, and the smell is intoxicating. Every time my family and I were in Syria, my uncle would stop by a vendor and grab bags full of corn for us. Like, it was right after getting picked up from the airport, our first stop, always. Then we'd usually put the corn in the biggest pot my grandmother had and boil them fresh. And again, the smell, you guys, it would fill up the entire apartment and it smelled so good. The corn would be steaming hot and we'd move the couch in the living room in order to make room for the table that we can all eat on and gather around.

And we would devour the corn. We would go to town. And in my thoughts about corn that I have quite often, I started wondering about how exactly did corn become a street food? Because it's a street food in many cultures. Elote is one that comes to mind. That is the most popular, I believe. But I wanted to know why and how. How did it become so popular as street food? That's what I wanted to find out. And I did. Kind of. I ended up learning a lot about the history of corn and how exactly it ended up being in practically everything we eat. And that was fascinating to me. So maybe you'll find it fascinating too. Today, corn is one of the world's

most important crops. That is not news. Obviously, we eat corn, and it can also be turned into flour and syrup. It's fed to livestock, it's transformed into ethanol, and it can even be used to make plastic. More than 1 billion tons of corn are produced around the globe every year, and corn yields more than 6% of all food calories for humans, which is a big percent, even though 6 is a small number. Let's talk about the history of corn. Corn as we know it today would not exist if it weren't for the humans that cultivated and developed it. It is a human invention, a plant that does not exist naturally in the wild. Scientists believe that people living in central Mexico developed corn about 10,000 years ago.

Apparently, civilization got off to a slow start in Mexico, lagging about 5,000 years behind civilization in what historians call the quote, fertile crescent of the Middle East. Hugh Itlis, a University of Wisconsin professor of botany, thinks this delay can be blamed on the differences in plants. He said the New World civilization developed slowly because the basic food crop first cultivated in Mexico was corn. slowly because the basic food crop first cultivated in Mexico was corn. He said the process of deriving corn from wild plants was maybe 50 times more complex than the development of wheat and other crops in the Middle East. Itlis said agriculture in the old world started 10,000 years ago with the sowing of wild plant seeds. With time, farmers selected grains with seed pods that didn't shatter as easily and that could be easily gathered and stored. And humans got plenty of lessons from

animals too. He said the early old world farmers probably learned from golden hamsters and other little seed-gathering mammals that lived in the area, and they learned this way to hoard seeds over the winter. What's kind of fucked up about that, though, is that Ittlis said these humans may have even dug out some of the hamster seed stashes and taken those seeds from the hamsters. Rude. But in comparison, the New World farmers did not have it so easy. There were no plants well-suited to agriculture, and no seed-hoarding mammals to learn from. The only potential grain the New World people had to work with was an unpromising mutant plant derived from the plant called teosinte. It took 5, 6, maybe 7,000 years for this plant to

evolve into an integrated food-producing plant. Teosinte is a wild grass, and it looked very different from our corn today. The kernels were small, and they were not placed together like the kernels we see on a modern ear of corn. Honestly, I found it kind of unsettling and disturbing, if you wanted to look that up. To each their own. And surprisingly, the original Teosinte plant can still be found today, but only in one three-acre area of the Jalisco region of Mexico. Itlas said the plant is absolutely useless. Teosinte seeds have a steel-hard outer covering, and these seeds were virtually inedible except when they were green. Also, the Teosinte plant only had six or twelve kernels on

each tiny ear. Itlis said that the first step in the development of corn as we know it today involved a, quote, catastrophic sexual transmutation, his words, that converted the tip of some male tassels into the uniquely monstrous many-ranked ears, also his words, that are now the edible female ears of corn. I did not know I've been eating female corn this whole time, but this is what researching a podcast can do. After this complex transformation, farmers then had to select mutant Yosente plants that were more edible and easier to cultivate. These changes were much more complex than the changes that made old world plants useful. Modern agriculture continues to tinker with corn and Teosinte. Itlis said that plant breeders today

are crossing the two plants together to derive perennial or enduring long-lasting corn that would not have to be planted each year and that would be resistant to viruses. Steve Price is a biotechnology researcher for the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, and he said that with genetic engineering techniques, it might take five years, rather than 5,000 years, for contemporary humans to make a better corn plant this time. From Mexico, corn spread north into the southwestern United States, and then south down the coast to Peru. In Mexico, squash cultivation began 10,000 years ago, but corn had to wait for natural genetic mutations to be selected for in its wild ancestor, Teosinte. While corn-like plants derived from Teosinte appear to have been cultivated at least 9,000 years ago,

the first directly dated corn cob dates to only around 5,500 years ago. As corn reached North America, it cultivated sunflowers, and this is also when potato started growing in the Andes region of South America. About a thousand years ago, as indigenous people migrated north to the eastern woodlands of present-day North America, they brought corn with them. So when Europeans like Columbus, friend of the show, made contact with people living in North and South America, corn was a major part of the diet of most native people. When Columbus, quote-unquote, discovered or just like bumped into America, he also discovered corn for his people, because up to this time, people living in Europe did not know anything about corn. In 1493, Christopher Columbus returned to Europe with apparently a pocket full of corn seeds,

among other things. He learned a lot during his travels to the New World. He killed indigenous people and stole their land, etc. But being exposed to this new grain he was unfamiliar with seemed promising agriculturally for Europe. It was unfamiliar. It was delicious. It was, as Columbus romanticized at the time, quote, affixed by nature in a wondrous manner and in form and size like garden peas. And it could, to Korn's credit, if Europeans learned to farm it properly, help feed a lot of people. The only problem was that Columbus had left behind a fairly important bit of information about said corn. He didn't take back the knowledge of how to process it. Betty Fussell

is the author of, quote, The Story of Corn, which chronicles corn's several thousand year history. She says it might sound innocuous, but the history of corn probably changed the course of humanity. According to her, the old world is a wheat culture. Do you know what else is a wheat culture? Ads. And we're back. Okay. So, over the next few hundred years, most of Europe grew to misunderstand corn rather than embrace it. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic,

corn endured a different fate. It thrived and eventually found its way into the very center of the American diet. Until the 1800s, corn was eaten mostly by the poor. It was a cheap and prolific crop, consumed by farmers and fed to prisoners, and used also as a commodity. As Michael Pollan wrote in his 2006 book The Omnivore's Dilemma, corn was both the currency traders used to pay for slaves in Africa and the food upon which slaves subsisted on during their passage to America. during their passage to America. But then came the Industrial Revolution, and with it, three essential technologies that helped corn thrive from being just the grain for poor people to being the grain for all people, consumed by everyone. The first invention was an iron plow, which allowed farmers to sow deep into the soil on much larger scales. The Midwest was planted with corn on a commercial basis precisely because of the iron plow, which although it seems pretty simple, was a revolutionary tool. Two other advancements had an equally large effect, even though they

touched corn production more tangentially. Fussell said that, quote, one of the most important boons for corn might have been that the commercial farms in the Midwest grew up at the same time as the canneries and railroads. Until then, corn was mainly distributed locally, but trains helped move the grain far beyond just county limits, and along with the advent of canning, it meant that corn could keep for much longer. This allowed farmers to grow corn and other crops with hundreds of thousands of mouths in mind. In the coming decades, the amount of land dedicated to corn grew incredibly quickly, but it wouldn't be for another 50 years until corn actually made its way to the center of the American diet. Corn is what Fussell calls a genetic monster because it's highly adaptable and easily manipulated, and there is perhaps no better example of its mutant-like qualities

than what happened shortly after the turn of the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists discovered a way to boost corn production to a level that was previously unthinkable. They bred hybrid strains that had larger ears and could be grown closer together, which allowed farmers to produce a lot more corn without needing more land. This discovery, along with the introduction of new industrial fertilizers and more efficient farm tools like tractors, led to a huge increase of corn output. Paul Roberts wrote in his 2009 book The End of Food that in the following decades the number of bushels of corn per acre doubled and then it continued to rise each year. Corn yields have risen ever since then, with only brief interruptions due to sporadic droughts. But these interruptions are easily countered with further engineered corn.

Advancements in farming technology and science paved the way for corn's ascent into the American food system. But the main reason that corn has made its way into just about everything we eat and every food that Americans eat today is that, above all, it is inexpensive. Corn has and always will be cheap because it grows everywhere in the world. The most incredible thing about the corn grown in America today is how little of it we actually eat. This does not include people like me and my family who are obsessed with corn and eat it regularly, and also Sophie, who I know shares this corn obsession. But less than 10% of the corn used in the United States is directly ingested by humans. The bulk is either turned into ethanol for use as fuel or fed to the hundreds of millions of animals that we subject to the factory system.

Corn is fed to cows, chickens, pigs, and even fish! I had no idea. Apparently fish are given these little pellets that are largely made of corn, so it's everywhere. The relative cheapness of corn and general usefulness of it as a form of energy, both for living animals and living more generally, have proved important enough that the government subsidizes its production to the tune of some $4.5 billion each year. The result is perpetuation of ambitious growing goals. Farmers, realizing the more efficient they are, the more money they will get, grow more and more corn. The more corn there is, the lower its price, and the greater the incentive is to use it in as many ways as possible. I want to talk now about the different varieties of corn, but first, do you know what else has variety? All the ways you can spend your money. Like these. Let's talk about the different varieties of corn.

There are many types, but the most commonly eaten forms can be divided into three general categories. The first is sweet corn. Sweet corn is what Americans usually eat when they eat corn on the cob or when they throw corn on the grill at a barbecue that you didn't want to go to. And this sweet corn accounts for only about one percent of the corn grown in America. Then there is flint corn. Flint corn has a soft center and harder outer shell, which most people know as popcorn. It became popular in the 1960s after Jiffy Pop, which cooked the kernels in aluminum foil on the stovetop, was introduced, and its popularity rose further in the 1970s and 1980s,

shortly after the introduction of the microwave. Today, much like sweet corn, flint corn accounts for a steady but comparatively insignificant portion of the U.S. corn crop. And then there's dent corn, aka field corn, the most important kind of corn when it comes to production of it. Not when it comes to me eating it because I cannot do that. But dent corn accounts for the vast majority of corn grown in America today, as well as the vast majority of the corn Americans eat, just not on purpose. It's in most of the beverages we drink, surprise surprise, because of high fructose corn syrup, and this is derived from flint corn and is the most commonly used commercial sweetener, aka death syrup. It's in most animals people eat, because it's fed to

most animals that are raised for slaughter. It's even in our cheese eat because it's fed to most animals that are raised for slaughter It's even in our cheese because many cows are fed corn instead of being able to graze on grass All of this makes corn virtually inseparable from the American diet Betty Fussell says that people have this kind of nostalgic understanding of corn They think of corn on the cob and popcorn. But the truth is that field corn is what we are really talking about when we talk about the dominance of corn in the United States. It's in almost every product in the supermarket today, that's no exaggeration. But obviously, corn cannot be contained. American-style processed food,

which almost always relies on corn, has been popularized in countries all around the world. Let's go back to Mexico, the birthplace of corn as we know it. How exactly did corn become such a popular street food? Mexican food is quite often literally built upon the tortilla, which is a lot of the times made of corn. The tortilla is a vehicle by which the country's most popular foods are eaten. Enchiladas, quesadillas, tacos, tamales, I can list food forever. Although wheat flour has grown in popularity here in the United States, which is actually the technical home of the burrito, apparently,

in Mexico, it's all about the corn. Mexico City is frequently praised as one of the most significant cities on earth in terms of street food. Street food is referred to as antojitos in Spanish, which means little cravings, which I find very cute. Street dishes count corn as a near universal ingredient. And sometimes, of course, it doesn't have to be processed to achieve its highest potential. Elote is perhaps the most recognized example, which is, for those not in the know, a full ear of corn that is grilled and slathered with a variety of toppings like butter, chili powder, or tahini, mayonnaise, and cotija cheese, among many other things. The final product, elote, is served on a stick,

providing an easy means for mobile consumption. Another common corn street food is esquites, a Mexican sweet corn salad. Although its true origin is not known, according to Nahuatl stories, esquites are credited by being created by a god, a deity, with a name I cannot say or pronounce, but it is long and looks cool, but I won't try to say it. But this god is also credited with creating Mexican corn jelly. Corn. It's from the gods. Literally. As for me, there isn't some magical history of corn in the Middle East. I looked, I searched, I tried to find something, and I couldn't find one. No magical, mystical history of my beloved corn. Like most things I have questions about, I asked my mom, and my mom said that when it's in season, street vendors sell corn. That's it.

The same goes for other street foods that are popular in the Middle East, which you might find interesting, which is cactus fruit or the prickly pear. But no, corn is magical, but it's only magical to me. And just because it's magical to me doesn't mean it is actually magical. And through researching for this episode, I have learned that. So what I'm saying is this episode has shattered my naive childhood dreams about a magic land of corn. But a job's a job and someone has to do it. So that's it. Goodbye.

Bye. A job's a job and someone has to do it. So that's it. Goodbye. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once

we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. of Fright, an anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.