Unsubscribe Podcast - Roman Empire Expert On The Fall of Rome & Why America Is In Trouble | Unsubscribe Podcast 260

Episode Date: April 19, 2026

Grab some awesome products and support our autism charity month! https://www.bunkerbranding.com/pages/unsubscribe-podcast https://drinkechelon.com This week we are joined by Roman Empire expert Jeremy Ryan Slate, and our favorite fish man King Trout for lots of nerdy conversations about history! Watch this episode ad-free and uncensored on Pepperbox! https://www.pepperbox.tv/ WATCH THE AFTERSHOW & BTS ON PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/UnsubscribePodcast 👕 Merch & Shoes https://bunkerbranding.com/pages/unsubscribe-podcast 🔋 Energy Drinks https://drinkechelon.com P.O BOX: Unsubscribe Podcast 17503 La Cantera Pkwy Ste 104 Box 624 San Antonio TX 78257 ------------------------------ THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! SHOPIFY Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at https://shopify.com/unsubpod with promo code: unsubpod. MANSCAPED Get 15% OFF your entire order @MANSCAPED with promo code “UNSUB” at https://manscaped.com #ManscapedPartner #TCSociety CASH APP Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/5u7gm6rr #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. FABLETICS Shop now at https://fabletics.com/UNSUB to get 80% off everything when you sign up as a new VIP—take the style quiz and select UNSUB to unlock your discount. This is a limited-time offer, so don't wait. PONCHO OUTDOORS Go to https://ponchoutdoors.com/unsub for $10 off your first order and free shipping on lightweight, comfortable shirts for spring and summer from Poncho Outdoors. ------------------------------ FOLLOW OUR SOCIALS! Unsubscribe Podcast https://www.instagram.com/unsubscribepodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@unsubscribepodcast https://x.com/unsubscribecast Eli Doubletap https://www.instagram.com/eli_doubletap/ https://x.com/Eli_Doubletap https://www.youtube.com/c/EliDoubletap Brandon Herrera https://www.youtube.com/@BrandonHerrera https://x.com/TheAKGuy https://www.instagram.com/realbrandonherrera Donut Operator https://www.youtube.com/@DonutOperator https://x.com/DonutOperator https://www.instagram.com/donutoperator The Fat Electrician https://www.youtube.com/@the_fat_electrician https://thefatelectrician.com/ https://www.instagram.com/the_fat_electrician https://www.tiktok.com/@the_fat_electrician ------------------------------ unsubscribe pod podcast episode ep unsub funny comedy military army comedian texas podcasts #podcast #comedy #funnypodcast Chapters: 0:00 Welcome To Unsub! 0:40 Autism Month Fundraiser 1:09 The Piss Tax 8:52 Roman Empire History 21:12 Julius Caesar 29:41 American History 33:46 Nic’s History Videos 44:46 Korean War 49:24 The Fall of the Roman Empire Vs Modern America 52:19 Crypto 1:00:57 Do Judges Have Too Much Power? 1:05:21 Justice Is Backwards Now 1:14:07 Inflation & The Fall Of The Roman Empire 1:31:44 The War In Iran Continues 1:34:55 Weird Gun Laws 1:42:58 The Scariest Moments In History 1:55:00 Nick Shirley’s Investigations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And he's like, oh, we're going to tax urine where people go to the bathroom. This is why they're always trying to get us to drink more water so they can tax more piss. Used to be a bad neighborhood, but ever since all these gay emperors came in. Gay! All right, FDR was the worst president. He confiscated the gold. Look at that. Is this common sense, right?

Everyone gets this. Nah. I'm glad Alexander Hamilton's dead, you bastard. Say hi to Eli. He's racially ambiguous. Brandon, his hair is fucking fabulous. Don't I, a dark joke disposition, and there's a fat electrician.

Welcome to unsubscribe. Hello, everyone. Hello. Right, and what's today? April 15th. What happens on April 15th? April 15 is my birthday where I turned 15. You turned 15 today?

No, you didn't. You know, I should just leave the building. You're just teasing. Are you teasing daddy? I did want to record today because it is halfway through Autism Awareness Month, but it is Little Man's birthday, and he wanted to be on camera today, didn't you? Yeah. You wanted to say thank you for everyone for the birthday wishes.

Thank you for the birthday wishes. How much did you appreciate it? Oh, that much. Only one arm. Oh my God, that's so much. Thank you guys and guys so much, just for being amazing. He knows he is loved by so many people, and I want to change a thing in this life. Would I?

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100% of the profits from anything autism-related, and a portion of all profits on our website. We'll be going towards this amazing, amazing cause at the end of the month. We're just trying to blow last year's $235,000 out of the water. Change some lives. Right, riding? Also a portion of anything you buy over at drink echelon.com will be going towards this also. We have some amazing giveaways from Neil from Exodus Knives.

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Three. Crack this open here on three. You don't have to drink it. Just got to crack it for the audio. Right by the mic. Ready? Three, two, one. Hi everyone and welcome to the unsubscribe podcast.

I'm joined today as always by say hi himself, Eli Double Tap, Iowa Zone, Nick, the Fat Electrician, and ancient Roman history expert Jeremy Slate, as well as myself, Fishman, King Trout. Fishman. What's up? Tell me about the Pistex. I've been waiting to ask you this for weeks. The Piss tax. The Pistax.

So Emperor Vespasian is trying to. He's trying to basically put money back in the treasury since he hasn't completed building the Coliseum, but he's put a lot of money into it. And he's talking to his son Domitian about taxes. Hold on. The Coliseum is funded by Piss. No, the Coliseum is funded by the conquest of Jerusalem. Okay.

The replenishing of the funds is sponsored by Piss. Correct. So he's talking to Domitian. This is why they're always trying to get us to drink more water so they can tax more piss. It's a conspiracy by the Roman industry. Big piss. Yeah, big piss. Big toilets and out to get him. So for 30 seconds, I'll let you know this is not the same as Sean Ryan. So they're talking about, totally get it. He was like, where am I? No, I was on Sam Tripoli's show, so trust me, I get it. But he's talking to him about like this tax they're going to

do. And he's like, oh, we're going to tax urine where people go to the bathroom. And And Domitian's kind of like, why would you do that? He goes, he gives hands him a coin. He says, smell this. And he smells it. And he goes, does it smell like piss to you? He says, no, it smells like money. He goes, exactly.

That's a very big paraphrase. It's California. Has him smell the coin to ask him if it smells like piss. How specifically are they taxing piss? So they would, they were the public restrooms. They were, you ever been to France? No. You want to go to France and you want to use the toilet.

I don't. You got to put a coin in to use the toilet. It's the same thing. So they would basically ask for money to use a public toilet. Oh, okay. I misunderstood. I thought it was like they were using piss for like leather tanning and stuff, and they were taxing it after the fact.

No, no, they were literally, they were just taxing public bathrooms. Oh. Yeah. We're going to learn. They don't have somebody staring over your shoulder watching and be like, that looks like six ounces. I was going to say, I was wondering if it was volume based. I was like, I can, I'm horribly dehydrated.

Just lie. Nobody's drinking water. How much did you piss today? None. Nope. The slave was watching. You saw you can't afford a pot to piss in. I can't afford to piss. Okay. So here's a better. Here's a better one. Like when people talk about like wanting to go back in time to Rome, you really don't want to because it would have smelled terrible? So have you ever seen like when? I imagine it smells like Europe. When people get carried around like rich people get carried around and these things are called litters. So the reason they would do that is because poor people lived in what are called insuli. They were these big apartment buildings. And everybody would go to the bathroom in a copper pot and you were supposed to take it down and dump it in the sewer.

but they're really high off the ground. They don't want to do that. So they would dump it out the window. And the reason the curbs are so high, like if you've ever been to Pompeii, the curbs are really high and they're like hard to step off of, it's because the street would be filled

with piss and shit. So the rich people didn't want to walk in it. That's why other people carried them, not because they didn't want to walk. Damn, fair enough. Dude. Give a quick synops of Jeremy. Because I think,

Hold on. I got one for yourself because everyone's like, I got more piss thing for you. Guys, no, that's more piss. Shut up. I got back. One more piss thing. Okay, go on the piss.

There's really interesting ways that emperors die, right? And Emperor Caracalla, like, have you seen a new gladiator movie? No, because I was... Okay, totally historically inaccurate, but actually a pretty decent movie. And they make Caracalla in this, like, blonde guy with, like, the pretty silver teeth. Yeah. He wouldn't have looked like that. He was from North Africa, so he would have looked like darker skinned or, but not quite black.

Anyway, he is on. On campaign, he steps off his horse to take a piss, and his Praetorian Prefect, the guy that ran the Praetorian Guard for him, kills him while he's taking a piss. Rude? Yeah. Bad way to go. So did you have to pay taxes on that? He did not. The tax was over at that point because it was 100 years after, but he gets killed while taking a piss.

Man, yeah, that is a wild time when you can just hop off. You have guards around you. Multiple. No, but the guy responsible for guarding him is the one that makes sure he died. It's like a secret service. What happened? I was thinking about this the other day, how like everybody is like, oh, it's just every, everybody today is such a better person than they were back in history.

And it's like, hear me out. There's never been a moment in your life where you were caught off by traffic where if you knew for a fact that you could have just ran their ass off the road and completely got away with it for sure you wouldn't have done it. It's like, we might not be better people. There's just better consequences keeping us all in line. Right? Like, I've not given out a lot of ass whoopens specifically because I didn't want to get in trouble. But if you stole something and cut your hand off, you wouldn't steal something again.

Yeah, but you got to catch me. I can steal one more thing. It's not. I still got my bad hand. Yeah, I still got my good hand. Oh, was that Mr. Deeds? Take my strong hand. Oh, scary movie.

Scary movie. Take my strong. Well, that's one of the Mandela effect things that he doesn't actually even say that in the movie. No, it's a weird. Yeah. what does he say that i can't remember i hate when we do that don't do this

it's the fruit of the loom chick-fil-a with a k that whole thing curious george there's a cornucopia there is a cornucopia curious george has a tail there's definitely a cornucopia and houston we have a problem i'm sorry curious george doesn't have a tail now

yeah correct what fucking time and there was no movie named shazam nope also false oh dude well i swear i watched that movie our new autism shirts the the NASA one

It's like Houston, we have a problem. I had to text Darius and was like, hey, that's not the saying. He's like, yeah, it is. Quote, sent it from the movie. He's like, oh, holy f***. What is the saying? Houston, we've... Houston, rut row.

We've got a problem. It's just changed different. This is bullshit. Quote, Barrenstein Bears as shit. Yeah. Houston, we have a problem is the misquote. And it's actually... ah, Houston, we've had a problem.

Instead of we have a problem. We've had a problem. That's the only difference. I hate everything. Okay, so the problem's completed. Yeah, they're good. No more worries, but. Tom Cruise killed it.

Your, Tom Cruise, I don't know, Tom Hanks, there we can. It's like, well, it's not, you actually, your entire lifestyle is about Roman history. That's what really rocketed you into social media and podcast. Podcasting and everything, right? Well, technically no. So my master's is in early Roman Empire propaganda. I studied. Hold on, hold on.

And then I taught high school for a couple years. I sold personal training door to door. I was a competitive power lifter for a bit. And I started a podcast in 2014 for like fun. Hold on. Back up. Yeah. Door to door personal training.

People pay when you train them in home. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. You said door to door. And I imagine you like. No, no, I would knock doors. I was. Being like, are you fat as f***?

Do you want me to show you how to do this push? No, so what I would do is I would look at the most expensive zip codes and then I would go to the condo communities because I knew people paid more for their condos in that area and I would knock on doors. That's really smart. And I would do a fitness survey, ask them questions and sometimes they would hire me. Other times they tell me to fuck off and leave, but I got enough people that I made money. And that's a disposable income in those area.

Correct. So you're just rolling. You look at the zip codes. You don't just go anywhere. Smart man. That's a really smart man. I was saying, well, I'd seen you on different other, like, interviews and podcasts you've done or whatever where you're always wearing like a suit. And then when he showed up to lunch day, I was like, holy shit, this guy's jacked.

The joke about going to college and going into Roman studies, but actually turning it into something. It's one of those, I went to school for Roman studies. You're like, ah, loser. You made a career out of that. Yeah. Unintentionally, though, because it was that men think about the Roman Empire thing popped up. And I had been doing, like, you know, keynotes and media for years. And my wife's like, honey, this is like your time to shine.

Like you have a degree in this. You could do something with it. And I ended up doing a show with Cal Fussman. He's a guy that's interviewed like Larry King, like a lot of like well-known people. Your wife felt like she hit the fucking lottery when that meme came out. You're like, finally, I've been listening to a rant about Clitoris the emperor for years. She's in her glory right now. Nobody could find him.

Dominus Clitoris. My favorite Roman Emperor. No one was able to find him. Funny enough, I actually got into Rome because I was really interested in Alexander the Great. And then Roman emperors were obsessed with Alexander the Great. I'm like, oh, why is that? And it's what got me like looking into Rome a lot more. You're like, fuck this.

I'm doing seven years of school for this. Six? Early Roman Empire propaganda. How did you even like decide to settle on that? So I went to Seton Hall University and they had gotten rid of their classics program in grad school, and they only had a history master's, which I just found out last month they also got rid of their history master's. They only have a history undergrad program now. But I had read this weird article about the first Emperor Augustus after he wins the Battle of Acteum

in 31 BC, and he goes and prays before the sarcophagus of Alexander the grade at that point in time. And there's like a funny story about it that he apparently breaks the nose off or something like that. But I was like, why did he do that? That's really weird. So then I studied his life, and I I basically discovered that he was using Alexander the Great as a model because Alexander the Great had convinced people he was God to kind of do a very similar thing in his own life. And that was, I finished my degree in 2011, did nothing until about three years ago. And now I just talk about Rome all the time. Hell yeah.

That's the most dude shit. I finished my degree in Roman history, then decided to go door to door and show people how to pick up heavy stuff for a living. Well, I taught high school for two years after. teach high school in the meantime. History, I'm assuming, right? Yeah, I saw honors U.S. history and sociology. Damn.

What was that experience with actually having the opportunity to use that random degree and it paying on? Because that had to have been, it's a joke. It's like always one of those meetings. It's like I did Gothic studies or whatnot. Women studies. Yeah, you're going to go work at the Roman History Factory upstate. It's not a degree.

It's not a degree I would recommend anybody get because you're literally. not going to do anything with it. This is like a moonshot to actually happen. But it was pretty cool that I get to do that because even when we travel places, I'll be like reading the inscriptions and like all of a sudden there's like all these retired people crowding around us. My wife's like, oh, we're doing a tour. What's happening? Oh, what are you talking about? Turn around and you're like, let me tell you a tale. Five dollars. This is the Blue Place special tour. I just put the money in the basket. I think through all of our years in business, on the internet we've all used Shopify. I've used it for merch and my skate shop and a couple

other businesses. I will actually agree 100% on that. Everything we do is run through Shopify. Even bunkers run through Shopify. Our shoes, which is a separate company, is run through Shopify and they talk together because of Shopify. Shopify runs the world. Did you know Shopify will actually help you design a website also, Cody? I know I didn't know about starting an online store when I started my career online and Shopify just made it super, super easy for my dumb and bring it what happens if people haven't heard about my brand, no. That's actually easy, Eli. Shopify helps you find your customers with easy to use email and social media campaigns. Step Cody, what I do? Booze if I get stuck. Shopify is always around to share advice with their

award-winning 24-7 customer service. Step support, bro, you got my back. And your front. Shopify helps millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. sold names like Mattel or Jim Shark to new brands just getting started. On some shoes, unsubmerch, bunker. No shit, we've all been doing this for over a decade and Shopify's the easiest e-commerce platform we've ever used. I think every single one of us has used Shopify at one point. I think all our businesses right now are using Shopify.

No, except mine, but that's because it's guns. Can't do that. Just one of them can't. Turn those dreams into SFX, Cha-ching, Shopify New Sell Sound. And give them the best shop. a success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash unsubbod.

Shopify.com slash unsubbod. Alexander the Great. You studied him first. In undergrad, I studied a lot of him. And what was one of the craziest I love this period of history because a lot of people don't know it. I know that's why we brought Mr. King Trout on today. He was like, oh, I actually know some of this shit.

Also a lot about Alexander the Great. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Alexander of Macedon. Nick is the historian for generals and everything. There's no guns involved. I don't know shit.

So what was the big hook out the gate that was like, okay, I'm really interested in this? Because the interesting thing about him is he wants to be the philosopher king. Like he wants to be somebody that kind of like brings literacy and makes the world a better place. And then he kind of like goes over this knife's edge and he's like, I'm just going to maniacally kill everybody. And I'm kind of like, what makes somebody like that? I find that really interesting. And the hard thing about him, he kind of starts drinking his own sauce,

if you know what I mean? Like, he gets to the point where his mother growing up, his mother Olympias is telling him, oh, well, you're not the son of Philip II, who's his father of Philip II of Macedon. You're actually, you come from the line of Heracles, which is what the Romans would call Hercules. He's like, oh, okay, well, you know,

I got this divine thing going. And then after he conquers Egypt, he enters this temple called Zeus-A-Mond. He's greeted as greeting son of God. And after that point, he starts really believing that Philip isn't his father. He starts kind of believing he is kind of divinely the person ruling. And when he conquers Babylon, there's this thing they do called proscenesis. And that's where you don't bow before somebody, you put your entire body on the ground. He starts making his generals and the guys under him do that.

and they're kind of like, we grew up with you. This is weird. Like, why are you doing this? And Clydes the Black, who had been his father's top general and kind of one of his sub-guies starts yelling at him at a dinner party, Alexander's drunk and just kills the guy. So he gets to this point where he's started believing this so hard that now he's going to do anything he can do to start living as a human god. And I'm like, how does somebody get like that?

So when I read this article about Augustus and already knowing what I know about Alexander, I'm like, well, this guy knew something. Like, he understood propaganda and how it works. It's like, Kim Jong-un. It's like, I can't even grab my head around. You're having homies, like, unsub. We've all together. And then one day, Nick's like, hey, why aren't you guys bowing to me?

Bro, it's Kim Jong-un. He's like, I planted every tree in this country. Also, I invented brittos. And golf. And 18 holes in one. Yeah, 18 holes in one, the 27 under par or whatever the fuck it was. 99.6% of the vote. Those other 0.4%.

They're dead. Nick starts this and then immediately beginning of the next episode. We had a part with Nick. I'm so sorry. No, it's straight up like I invented britos. Nick, no, you didn't.

Bang. King Trout. Nick invented britos, guys. I had no idea. I really like being alive. I'm pretty sure this dude invented burritos. The next episode opens. You guys are just both on the ground

in front of him bowing. I said based on Alexander the Great's history too, I would have to be Nick's twink boyfriend. Oh, you're Hefeistian. Yeah. Didn't he get killed? And Alexander had like the people who killed him, like their entire village completely raised to the ground, or am I misremembering? No, you're not wrong. It was, uh, Batis was the king that actually is leading the army that gets him killed.

And, um, the weird thing about Alexander is he was really, really into the Iliad. and there was this story in Plutarch that he slept with a copy of the Iliad like under his pillow because he was so into the Iliad and if you look at the different things that he does in his life, he's trying to be...

Explanation of Iliad just really quickly. So it's a... It's a song that's made into a book. It's supposedly written by this guy named Homer, but if you were looking to it, Homer's actually like somewhere between three and nine people and it's a story that's passed down over time. And it's about this Greek hero Achilles

at the Trojan War. and Alexander like tries really hard to be Achilles like in different things he does in his life and Achilles after he kills Hector he drags the body behind his chariot so Alexander kills Bates and he pulled him behind his chariot because he's trying to be like Achilles so a lot of the things he does in his life is to be like Achilles no shit yeah so when that happens with Hefeistian he kills Bates and drags him behind his chariot. Hmm and And who, this is a tweaked boyfriend?

Well, it's his male life partner. They were real good friends. You've never seen the Oliver Stones Alexander with Jared Leto? I've never, I never watched anything with Jared Leto. Is it like the new Napoleon? No, it's actually really good, but they make the relationship between

Colin Farrow, who's Alexander and Hefeisty and that's Jared Letto incredibly weird. It probably was less close they're lovers in the movie. And it would have been less like that, though there might have been some of that, if that makes sense.

I'm getting two conflicting stories right now. Trout thinks, homie like the wean, and you're saying? Wasn't it like, wasn't it kind of, it was like, yeah, he's my boy and sometimes we we fuck each other in the ass. But that was Greece in that period of time. The city of Thebes had the most

powerful military in Greece at that point in time, because Greece isn't like a united territory. It's a bunch of city-states. It's why the Greeks couldn't really conquer anything, because they were all kind of like fighting each other. Spartans, Athenians, but the best military force was the Thebans, and they had this group of 100 men that were called the Sacred Band, and it was 50 gay lovers.

That's why we, that's unsub. And I guess so. And the reason that they supposedly did that is because they would fight harder for the man next to them for that particular reason, rather than just, you know, hey, this is my buddy. I mean, I kind of, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I would not.

That would be a weird military thing. just showing up to base and like, okay, that guy above you, you're fucking him. Yeah. Hey. Huh? Yeah. I think they were, I think they were, my battle buddy's ugly. I think they were already gay. So it's kind of the concept of like, they didn't recruit.

They're like, so guess what? It's kind of the concept of like, imagine how much harder you would fight if Savannah was on the battlefield with you. You know what I mean? That's the point. That's the point. It's like, it's basically you're fighting so your girlfriend doesn't die. That's the point. What are those posters?

A gay club? Like an old gay club and that's the recruiting station. Can you do ten pull-ups? Yeah. In Greek civilization though, not that it was okay. There was a lot more of that than there wasn't Roman civilization. And Rome becomes a lot more, so the Greeks called themselves Helens, right? That was their name for themselves.

So in the second century, Rome becomes more Hellenized or more like the Greeks. But early on, like during the Roman Republic, they, saw Greeks as like feminine men. So to be called Greek for a certain period of time was an insult. Later on, that's going to change because they're kind of all a little Greek, if that makes sense. And that's what in Hellenite. Dude, the Hellenites is a good shirt. You just don't know what it means. So there's this, the best time in Rome, the famous historian Edward Gibbon calls the five good emper is the best time in Rome. And the reason they were different is because they didn't have any natural born sons

to be the next emperor because a lot of them were playing for the other team a little bit. The one that was really famous for that was Hadrian and he had a male lover named Antinuous

and everybody kind of knew about this and when Antinous died. Sorry, they had five gay emperors back to back. Maybe, maybe not. I bet the property values through the fucking roof. The last one's Marcus Aurelius though.

The last one's Marcus Aurelius though and he had a kid. What was the real estate value of the Colosseum? How much did it go on? during that time period. Gentrified Rome. Used to be a bad neighborhood,

but ever since all these gay emperors came in. But they didn't have natural, beautiful, a lot of booty coffee shops with a coliseum that kills each other. They invited Lindsay Graham because it was in Disneyland. The Emperor's new groove.

They just went home for Easter what used to be the hood. A lot of pride flags, a lot of coffee shops. They do good work. But the thing that they did different is since they didn't have any sons, they would find the next closest person to them and adopt them to be the next emperor. So for five emperors that worked really, really well, but like Hadrian was kind of very much playing for the other team, if that makes sense. Yeah. Oh, we got it. He built that wall to keep all the women out.

Well, because didn't Julius, he didn't have any choice? He adopted his nephew, Augustus, right? So Julius Caesar didn't have any children. Augustus was his great nephew. He's Gaius Octavius. Oh, great nephew. Julius Caesar is an interesting one, though, because there was, and I forget the king's name, but in his youth, he was at this one local king's court a lot, like not a Roman, but like a provincial.

When you say he was at his court. And that was the legend about him that they would, because Caesar was also a womanizer. So they would say he was a husband to every woman. and a wife to every man. That was one of the things they would use to kind of like really, that was one of the propaganda things about Caesar that his enemies would use to talk about him because he was very often to this king's court,

and they kind of didn't know what was happening at the court, so, you know, maybe, maybe not. So he's a man that just blows you get plowed. I don't know. That sounds like they could just be hanging out playing video games or whatever. I don't know that's true. Genesis was very notorious.

It was very important. I talked about this. Sonic. Whatever they played back. I talked about this the other day. There was a new article that came out and the headline was oldest gay couple ever discovered

and it was like Pompeii or some shit. It was like two bodies and they like did the forensics and they're like oh, they're men and they died hugging. But they were running from a volcano. They got fossilized and it's like this is why men don't show emotions. You know what I mean?

Like you're running from a volcano. You're gonna die. There's an ash storm rolling in. Didn't know what a volcano was. It was, and we thought the world was ending, and I hugged my bro, and then they dig us up 3,000 years. Gay! Gay! I know what I'm doing if you guys die together.

Running the other way? I was like, they were gay. There's that famous meme, like, of that, the discovery of them or whatever, that same article. And it's like, you're, you know, your bro fucking entered Latin name here, you fought arm and arm with him for, you know, 25 years in the, as I said, And your children are named or your firstborn son is named after him. Ash cloud barreling in at hundreds of miles an hour. You know that death is coming. Embrace your brother one last time.

2,000 years later, they dig up your skeletons. Ha, gay. Gotta love it. It's so f***ing dope. What are your... Hold on. We're still on Julia Caesar. Oh, yeah.

Go on. Is the story about him. getting kidnapped and then criticizing his kidnappers true? Yes. So he's kidnapped by pirates. And the weird thing about it too, because this is in like Plutarch, the writer talks about this a lot. And the weird thing is like, I have this picture in my head of them like living on a

beach, like working out together because they talk about like the way he's like, he's kind of like buddies with them after they kidnap him. And then he's kind of like would joke with him, ha ha, I'm going to have you crucified. I'm going to have you crucified one day. So he gets rescued. And he petitions the Senate to have these. guys crucified because they have to keep his promise and the Senate says no. So he raises private money and has them crucified. Wasn't I, so the part that I always remembered was I thought

that he was like upset with how much they asked for ransom and then yeah. Yeah, they asked for, they asked for ransom and he was kind of like, you know, Caesar is worth much more than that. So he asked them to raise the ransom. So sad. I just love the concept of being on sale. Yeah. When is the price? I'm Julian Caesar. Being on a ship with your kidnappers and being like, we're having fun now, but I'm going to have you all brutally murdered. The funny thing about Caesar, though, is like, so he has a patrician name,

meaning like he has like a rich name, but his father was like a land speculator, and he lost all the family's wealth. So Caesar's actually broke his entire career, and he's actually living in the poor part of Rome. And his entire career, he's actually borrowing money in order to do the things he's doing. one of the big people he borrows it from is Marcus Crassus. And a lot of the move Caesar makes in his career is because if I lose this election, I owe that guy all that money I don't have.

So he keeps making moves because he's broke as a joke, and he has to pay this guy for everything he owes him. Because you'd basically raise money, you'd bribe people, you'd get elected, and then while you're elected, you'd do corrupt things to make more money, and then you would pay off the people that gave you the money to get elected. Thankfully, that doesn't happen anymore. It doesn't. Amen.

Was it Caesar? Was it Caesar who kept just like repeatedly setting off on campaigns, like one after the other after the other just to like build up his name? So it wasn't one after the other after the other. So in 59 BC he's what's called a consul. And Rome had this idea that one man shouldn't have power because it had previously been a kingdom before it's a republic. And he was one of the consoles.

You would have power for a year. And then he becomes what's called a pro consular, a console outside of Rome. and he uses nine years to then go conquer Gaul. And he wants to run for consul again because you could run for consul every 10 years, but Rome has a culture of getting elected in person. And his political rival, Cato the Younger, has basically been like trumping up these charges.

Like, you come back to Rome, we're going to arrest you. What was he charged with? Corruption, because there was a trope about Rome in terms of the way the politics work, that your first year was to get out of debt. Your second year was to build wealth and your third year was to avoid prosecution for the wealth that you built because they were all kind of playing the same dirty game. But he petitions the Senate to get elected not having to do it in person. And Cato has that canceled. He's like, you know, you still have to come back to Rome. And that's

where the whole idea of coming across the Rubicon comes from. Oh, okay. Because he comes across the Rubicon with one of his legions. He has nine legions at that point in time. time. He leaves eight of them, takes his nine across the river, and then when he gets into Rome, his enemies just leave. And he basically gets the city. But that was, it wasn't a bunch of campaigns. It was one extended campaign. Okay. Gaul being like modern day France, right? France, parts of Germany, parts of Belgium. It's kind of all like in this similar area for him. Did you know one man every hour, every day is diagnosed with testicular cancer? And 2026, some women. But it's April. You know what that means?

Ball Cancer Month. Boom! That's why we wanted to take a second and talk about the importance of men health issues and what Manscape actually does to help with that or combat it. Manscaped is putting their money where their mouth is and donating $50,000 to the Testicular Cancer Society to help save lives and promote self-checks. I just gave Brandon a check. Didn't need to use so much tongue though.

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I'm sure. But he wasn't Roman Empire. He was Roman Republic. Didn't he, that was going to be my question. Didn't he shift it into the empire or when does that begin? So the last hundred years of Rome, there's a historian named Ronald Seim, and he calls the last hundred years the Roman Civil War. Because what happens for that hundred years is it's a bunch of politicians basically

just breaking the law and they're all fighting each other in the streets. And Caesar's kind of the last man to come up on top, but he gets assassinated. And then his great nephew Augustus, who he adopts in his will, and Mark Antony, go after the assassins of Caesar and have them killed. So now there's two of them left. So then Augustus goes after Antony. He's killed. And he becomes the man on top. So Augustus is actually the one that creates what the empire becomes.

But it had been a power vacuum for 100 years before that. Oh, really? Yeah. So prior to, you said it was a kingdom in the beginning? Like, what time frame are we working with here? So 753 BC, it's founded as a kingdom. Okay. 509, it becomes a republic.

And then it becomes an empire. This is debated, but somewhere between 31 and 23 BC. And then it's a... With Augustus. It's an empire until 476 AD. The Eastern Roman Empire, which becomes the Byzantine Empire, they wouldn't have called themselves Byzantines. They would have called themselves Romans.

That goes till 1453. Oh, yeah. Yeah, until World War, or not World War I. the, um, it's like we were talking about beforehand, like the Holy Roman Empire was actually like, the Pope looking at the fact that there's a power vacuum in the West

and he could kind of be the guy on top so he would crowned Charlemagne and now he's on top. Right. missed everything because my, let's have a way to be like, his prompts. My brain was just like, focus,

fix, what going wrong. Is it all Roman history? You like any other history, like eras? I love lots of history. Lots of history. Like,

we just did some Civil War history of my kids. We took them to Gettysburg, which is fun. That's dope. And they're not old. So it's like, we take them to Gettysburg and it's like we took them to Devil's Den. Oh, look, the field. I took him to Devil's Den and we took them a little roundtop because like, we're going to skip everything in the middle. We're just going to show you where it started and where it finished because that's what you have the attention span for. Really smart.

What's your favorite part of history and American history? American history. I don't know, because I also like the conspiratorial. real side of things as well. You know what I mean? Go on. My other channel is called Hidden Forces and History. So we look at the power structures behind history. So like, the Jews got it. No. So Charles V, who's a Holy Roman Emperor. The way you become Holy Roman Emperor is there seven Prince Electors that elect you. And the guy he's running against doesn't have the same backing he does. He has a guy behind him who's a banker named Johann Fuga. But if you actually look at his name, it's Jacob Fugger, is the way it's actually spelled. But the German pronunciation

is Yaakov Fuga. Old Jake Fugger. He actually, he's a Catholic priest that decides he doesn't want to be a priest, and he becomes this like money man. And so basically he bribes the seven prince electors, gets Charles V elected. And then all the weird things he does in his career, you're like, why do you do that? Well, Jakob Fuga was going to make money off it. So like, if you look at kind of history, there's so many things behind what you're observing that happen for weird reasons, right? So I think for me, that's what I'm always looking at is why do weird things happen in history the way they happen? Gotcha.

Speaking of words being pronounced differently through translation, I had a question for Connor. Oh, God. I don't, I just saw this on a thread. I have not checked to see if it's real, but I thought it was very funny. Apparently, you know how in the Bible when angels appear, they always say, don't be afraid. Be not afraid. Be not afraid. Apparently a more literal translation to what they said was, stop screaming, it's fine.

which I hope is true because it's so much funnier that doesn't sound right to me when you know what they look like like instant terror like you just imagine like a jaded angel like yes yes I know how I look stop screaming it's fine

every time and angels you turn around all happy because you think angel and it's floating eyeballs with a mouth and wings shooting everywhere you're like

16 wheels rotating around each other. Seekiel did see the wheel. Get this every time. Chill, bro. Are we done? I got to tell you something really important. Why would you choose that for?

Wanted to be relatable. I don't even know what the wheel is for. Shortly after the wheel was invented. Fucking terror. Terror. What? You got do you watch any of Nick's content?

I don't, I apologize. Oh, dude. Good, perfect. These, so Nick is our historian for, especially anything with guns, as he said. It's a war and there's pew-pues. If there's a story about a farm boy from somewhere in America

that went over to Europe and killed a bunch of people, Nick will talk about it. I probably know it, yeah. And that's my whole thing. I do like super close up, like biographies, kind of war heroes. It's like the sniper character from Save a Prime Ryan.

uh yeah which is like an amalgamation of a lot of different people so like the the i the scope shot is based off carlos hathcock and i'm actually me and pew of you one of my best friends are one of the people that went and actually recreated that shot for the first time ever because myth busters thought it'd be cool to fuck it up three times in a row so yeah stuff like that it's a good time well what's uh what's your latest video that you just released uh ones that are coming up also that would So I did Hershey Miamara, the only Medal of Honor that was classified as top secret. That was my latest video. And then right now I'm working on.

Yeah. Yeah. How do we're rewarding you this medal for. Shh. We can't say. During the Korean war, I mean, he's got like a whole story, but he was attached to the 442nd in World War II, never got to see combat. World War II ended.

He decided to be an army reserve. And then Korea starts. He ships off to Korea. goes through a bunch of training, gets sent out to Korea, has multiple combat experiences, and then he goes out to Hungnam to help evacuate the Marines from the chosen reservoir, and then they send them back out. And at this point in the war, they're basically just like trying to hold the perimeter of South Korea for peace negotiations to occur. Okay, got you.

So they stick him out overlooking this river. And they had, they'd penetrated into North Korea, and then they had to backtrack to this river, and they were going to try to hold them at this river. So they left him and he was a squad leader for a machine gun element. So he had like, I think he had his machine gun element, which was him plus 12 guys. And then he had four extra riflemen with him. And they're just overlooking this fucking ridge, overlooking a river. And the Chikam's attack at night, just overwhelming numbers.

Half of his machine gunners dip and abandon him. And he's stuck there with the other half. and his his original machine gunner is just like I'm leaving and bales so he manned that machine gun by himself

and he's credited with killing like 40 guys by himself with this machine gun position Wow and then the gun jams he can't get it on jammed so he blows it up with a hand grenade and then jumps out of the trench

and there was like 10 guys left in the wave kills 10 dudes by himself with an M1 grand and a bayonet runs over to his secondary machine gun position his guys are still there, but some of them have abandoned. And the guys that abandoned were the ones that knew how to operate the machine gun efficiently. So he starts manning that machine gun.

And then once it becomes apparent that, like, they're not going to be able to hold this position. He tells his other guys to dip. And he holds off the enemy as long as he can. And he holds them off so long by himself that they assume he's dead and start dropping white phosphorus rounds on his location. So then he has to abandon his position. And it's dark as shit out. night. So he takes off running, runs into another communist guy. He said it was the biggest guy he's ever seen in his life, kills that guy with a bayonet, takes grenade shrapnel in this fight.

And then he ends up getting caught up in a barbed wire entanglement and then is just trying to hide at this point. And then they end up capturing him. And he ends up spending 26 months in a POW camp in North Korea. And because they never found his body, but they found all the fucking dead people. Like his, his dudes made it out. So all of his guys were like, last time we saw him, he was engaging a hundred enemies by himself.

And then they went back and they're like, oh, there's the 60 dead dudes, but Hershey's not here. He might still be alive. So he got awarded the Medal of Honor, but there was a slight chance that he was a POW. So they had it classified as top secret.

And then 26 months later, he gets brought back. and makes it ends up coming back home. And they're like, what the, this guy's alive. Yeah. And you can't tell anybody's got the metal bonner. Well, no, he can now. It was, it was just, they made it top secret just so.

Because obviously if they were doing press releases and shit of like, oh, hey, the one Japanese guy killed 50 people. And he was a POW. The North Koreans had taken out on him. Yeah, absolutely. He's Japanese. He's classified. But once he was brought back, it was declassified. And then he was a hero.

Gee, yeah. Yeah, that would have sucked me. And he's like, oh. And then news everywhere. It's like, Medal of Water recipient. No, no, no, no, no. I'm in the actual prison right now. This is not yet.

Negotiated ship. Murder torture. So much more badass than ancient battles. Like, Alexander the Great was so good because he made his spears 19 feet long. So it's kind of like, we can stab them from further away. Like, we can poke you from further away. We're this guy's like stabbing guys with a bayonet. And he's like, no, our spears are just longer.

That's why we win. So we've invented longer stick. The furthest I ever go back is the Revolutionary War. And I've been trying to do a, I've wanted to do a video on this guy forever. But there's like no information on him and half of its myth. But I finally tracked down this old-ass book. I had to pay an outrageous amount of money to get it. But there was a journalist that started working on it in 1945 and worked on everything he could find about this guy for 40 years.

So I'm halfway through the book now. I'm hoping there's enough to get a video out of it. Sitting on the table. Peter Francisco, the Virginia giant, aka America's Hercules, Washington's Hercules, six foot six foot six, two hundred and seventy pounds. The Aaron Judge. The average, the average soldier at this point in time was five, five. And he's six foot six to 60.

He was an orphan from a Pacific Island. No, he's an orphan from an island. He's Portuguese. and he just like shows up at a dock in Virginia one day and gets adopted by a judge and turns into this fucking mammoth of a dude and ends up fighting in the American Revolution. George Washington knows him by name. George Washington said we might not won the revolution without him. And according to legend, we can't a bunch of museums, or the museum that supposedly had his sword said they lost it in a fire. but apparently George Washington had a

flammar made for Peter Francisco that was five feet long and the average man couldn't unsheathe it he's just shopping dudes in half apparently he killed

your flashlight's on boomer the chair hits my pocket I have a like the replica of the sword it's fucking massive but apparently he killed 11 dragoons at the Battle of Guilford's court

house with it. Yeah. What's a dragoon? It's horse mounted. Horse mounted infantry. Basically, like they ride up to battle and then demount and go to the battle. So like mechanized infantry of the day, basically. They don't fight on horseback necessarily.

Dope. That's the replica of what they think the sword looked like. Wow. It's like almost taller than that guy. Yeah, it's five foot tall broad sword. It's a wait. That's taller than five feet. I'd be 5'3.

It's probably like a six foot blade altogether. Let me see. Like, how tall is that guy? 55, probably. I don't know. 5.6? Doesn't look too horribly tall. Dude,

look at the background. Look at that chair. I can't imagine because just a regular box is heavy. That's like a six foot blade. So the legends are anywhere from five to six feet. I'm being conservative in saying five feet. But yeah, five to six foot broadsword that George Washington

had commissioned for him. And then, you know, you know Eddie, Eddie Hall and Brian Shaw, the strong men? So they had a show a couple years ago on like Discovery Channel or something. And the whole thing of the show was like four of the strongest men in the world and they would travel around the world and try to recreate,

recreate famous feats of strength. So they would do like the shit that circus strongmen would do and all this different stuff. One of the challenges they have is to carry a fucking cannon on their shoulder up the hill because apparently Peter Francisco did that. Like the yoke on the cannon got hit, but the cannon was still good.

How much is the barrel of a cannon way? Allegedly 1100 pounds. Fuck off. I don't know. But it's like one of those things where it's like, I don't know, you hear all the stories of like the mom that lifted and moved a car to save her kid or whatever. Like in the heat of the moment, dude that fucking big.

Maybe. But so, I don't know. I'm still like doing all the research on it, but it's a. I could I can imagine, like, how do you do that? Like, I've deadlifted some heavy stuff, but throwing a cannon on your shoulder? At 1100 pounds. Just throw a Harley Davidson up on my shoulder and then walk up that hill. Nick, tell us about your cash app experiences, but keep it clean.

I use it to sell my sister money sometimes. That's pretty clean, yeah. Kind of helping you have a more interesting story, but no, that's cool. That's fine. I use cash app all the time, you know, genuinely, whether it's... Sometimes me and Brandon go out for dinner and drinks to have a great time. He doesn't consider it a date. He calls it friends hanging out. I consider it a date and I take that a little bit personally. So when we leave, I bill him on Cash App. Which is weird because I pay for the bill anyway. Think of it like a fishing license. What? King Trout. Boy am I the catch.

Anyway, all of this is possible through Cash App. How interesting you bring up Cash App, Brandon. I have so many things to say about it. Cash App just released a new status program to follow the way people spend money called Cash App Green. It unlocks new ways for you to pay, get rewarded, and easily grow or manage your money on your terms. Now when you spend at least $500 a month on Cash App pay or the Cash App card, you unlock Cash App Green. That unlocks benefits including up to $200 in free overdraft coverage. Higher borrow limits and custom personalized cashback offers every Friday at places you love to shop. Turn everyday shopping into status with Cash App Green.

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Visit Cash.com slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. prior to modern media, a lot of that shit gets kind of romanticized. Makes me think a sling blade. Well, that's the thing that's, that's the thing that's like difficult about it. Why I haven't done the video yet is like there's so much like, okay, maybe that's a myth. Maybe it's not. I'm sure it's been, you know. I was going to say, because that probably comes up a shitload in like ancient history.

Oh, absolutely. Well, and aren't there a bunch of historians that we'll talk about? I can't remember. I know there were like a few big historians at the time, but they were like telling stories. basically. It's like, my uncle heard a story from a guy who he heard from somebody else that this happened. The writer, I was talking about Plutarch. He's Greek by background, but he's writing about Greeks and Romans. And the purpose in his stories he's telling is to teach a lesson. So he'd alter the story, like if he thought the guy was a bad guy to show you how bad he is, or if he's

a good guy to show you how good he is. So they would alter the story. And part of the problem is, too, especially with Roman history, is a lot of it's written, like, if you look at the first Emperor Augustus. Titus Livia's famous Roman history is written during that time. The Aeneid's written during that time. They're written to make the emperor look good. And that's one of the problems with history is if the person who's in power is being talked about negatively, well, you could die. Right? That's a real problem. So looking at ancient history, the problem we have is a lot of the history we have is likely to make somebody else look good or bad. And 90% of it doesn't exist anymore because it's written on things that don't survive.

I think about this all the time. I can't wait till 500 years from now, and there's somebody like you that has a degree in memes from the 2010s. Like, based on the quantity of negative versus positive memes, he was a very controversial figure. Everybody loved this guy. You look at like Kim Jong-un. If you, every other piece of history was instantly deleted,

other than the North Korean bits. of history. The greatest golfer that ever lived. That's what everybody was like, damn, this guy was fucking dope. 18. Who's this one for? That might be mine. Did you imagine if the only thing that survives about Trump is like the

are the deal or something like that? You have all that? He was writing books. Even, uh, he was a scholar. A gentleman and a scholar. Korean war. I don't, just going back to that line that they had. held. I don't think a lot of people realize it was if you watch the wave of troops,

US, South Korea, we push through. We almost get to China and then the million man army hits. Yeah, China shows up to party. And then they come down and then you hit that line. I'm guessing it was probably right around that. Yeah. So it was it was a or the DMZ. So like they pushed in. They cut the Marines off at the chosen reservoir and he was part of the evacuation that got them out. And then there's kind of like, there's kind of a lull because it's in winter. So like his battle happens like

as winter's ending and like their big spring offensive is kicking back off and that's what shoves a line back to like where it is now. So like I mean it was literally just Marines and army dudes sitting on top of hills with recoilless rifles and machine guns mowing down wall after wall of people until they came to an agreement.

The forgotten war. We haven't done any wars like that And God knows how long Thank God. Yeah. Thank God. We actually haven't had a war since World War II. Do you know how mad I would be

If I was an infantry dude in Korea? Oh. Just the notion of like, I'm sorry. I'm freezing my balls off on top of this hill with a machine gun And you motherfuckers have nuclear warheads and could just end this. What are we doing right now? Like I'd be pissed. Who was that?

Anything? Who was the general? Was that MacArthur? Yeah, I wanted an irradiated sea of cobalt, which I was talking to my grandpa served during Korea. He wasn't in Korea. I literally can't say what he was doing during the time because I'm pretty sure it's still top secret.

But I remember my grandma was telling me she would check the news like every day during the Korean War just to kind of keep updated on it. And at the time, everybody understood MacArthur to be like a fucking insane person. Didn't you want to drive to China? MacArthur was, MacArthur was extremely unpopular ever since he, like abandoned his guys at the Philippines.

Like a lot of World War II vets still call him dug out dug. That was the nickname they gave him when he fucking dipped on his guys. And a lot of like the positive PR and fanboys that you see now are after, after he came out with his book and all of his bullshit self-aggrandizing himself.

I know, I know a decent amount about Truman and I know Truman hated his, God. Yeah, Truman couldn't fucking stand him. It's like, I don't know. I still get heat in the comment sections from MacArthur fanboys. Like, he didn't abandon his men.

He was ordered to leave. Like, I don't give a fuck. Like, he was also ordered not to march the military within 40 miles of China and cause the entire issue with the Korean War. But he did. Like, no shit. But I think that's one of the major problems with history is like, number one, how it's told. and number two, like, do we actually know what happened, right? Like, I think so often it's either to make somebody look good or bad or whatever it might be,

and we don't know what actually occurred a lot of times. Because this is the first time we actually get to see it live because it's hard to hide it when, and they still are doing a fantastic job of pushing narratives. So it was like, look, look, look. The classic Norm McDonald bit where he's sitting there and he goes, I was reading a history book, and wouldn't you know it, the good guys won every time. So I always hate, I always, because like all my shit's like very pro America, rah, whatever. So like the argument I always get when I'm arguing with like communist sympathizers or the people that are like, oh, the USSR actually won World War II or whatever.

It's always, well, that's just the American sources and you're trusting the Americans. And I think it's cool being an American that you actually have a decent rebuttal to that, to the winner's right history argument. because America is kind of the first instance ever in human history that I'm aware of. I can get on Amazon right now and I can have copies of war memoirs written by German generals from World War II shipped to my house in 48 hours and hear the entire war from their perspective. Like this is the first time in human history where you can, you're allowed to just publish and get that information and read all the perspectives. So like I don't think you can claim, oh, you're just listening to Winner's version of history. because like, no, we're not. And we can read their perspective, too.

It's just they fucking lost. Sorry. I was wanting to bring this up so much because I was wondering if, if y'all would butt heads on it. But I know you've talked about how like the fall of the Roman Empire kind of mirrors what's going on in modern day America. I just was wondering if you could expand on that and then see next opinion because I know Nick will disagree with you.

Is he going to crush me? No. I don't know. I have to hear the opinion. I don't know where this would be going. Well, so like, but I'm also a believer that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, right? So I don't think it's an exact, an exact foil. Like when people ask me, is this the fall of the republic or the fall of the empire?

And this might be where you disagree with me. I don't know. I tend to think we've been an empire for quite a while. And when I look at the, like at 1913 is kind of a pivotal year for that because there's three key things that happened that year. The Federal Reserve Act passes. the 17th Amendment passes, which means state legislatures no longer vote for senators, and income tax passes that year. And Wilson was probably our worst president. But the progressive error

dramatically changes America. And what's happened since... Might be FDR, but go ahead. Wilson. Woodrow Wilson is the devil. No, FDR is pretty bad, but Wilson kind of started the ball rolling. For sure. That makes sense. Yeah. And the sad part is some of that is you can blame Teddy Roosevelt for that because he runs third party, but it is what it is. But so in my opinion, I think we are kind of more in an empire stage. And if you look at that, once again, not a direct foil, but if you look at what was happening in Rome in their third century, because Rome falls in the fifth century, but the third century is kind of what makes everything go wrong.

They're at 15,000 percent inflation by 284 AD. They are no longer controlling their borders. And the politicians are no longer doing things that are good for the future. They're doing things that are good for right now. And when I look at that, I do see a lot of those things happening now. that is one of the things that concerns me, because we're not at 15,000 percent inflation, but also how we report the inflationary numbers isn't correct. We do year-over-year inflation, and there's a lot of things we don't include.

Like, we don't include building materials. There's other things we don't include, which would show us the actual numbers. And if you wanted to look at, I think, like, when I ran the math, it was like 1790 to this year, we're somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 percent inflation. So we're not at 15,000 percent, but we are destroying our money. And our currency doesn't really have any real value. we can't control our borders and we have politicians

that are just kind of fighting amongst each other so when I look at that to me it reminds me a lot of what you saw in kind of the late stage role when it's in this like decay period I don't disagree with that but don't worry we're gonna shift over to crypto it'll be fine

so wouldn't it be more like analogous to you crypto fan or not a crypto fan? I think it's gonna go horribly wrong I like the idea I think it's like a you know I don't trust because we don't know who Nakamura was. Like I just, I'm not a big fan of particular.

I don't think it's going to be Bitcoin. I'm not like, crypto scares me because you also look at what they're doing in China with currency where it's like, oh, you're a bad little China man today. You can't like get on the bus. You know what I mean? Like it's like it's a real problem. I think they're gonna replace a Swift banking system with stable coins and then offload trillions of dollars of debt to the entire global economy.

They started replacing Swift last year. Did you hear about that? They launched something called the Fed Now system to get off of, could get the US off of SWIFT. And it basically is a digital currency, which they're starting to push over the next few years. They did a press conference and everything to announce it. It's called the Fed Now system. And it's to move over to more of a digital system and the SWIF system. I think they're going to try to use this to replace the petrol dollar.

And then they're going to try to make the entire world runoff of U.S. currency for everything. I could see that happening. Right. Because like you could go pretty much anywhere in the world and U.S. cash, people will take it right now. At the moment. So if you were to just swap it out and have U.S. stable coins where a cryptocurrency where every dollar is an American dollar. You're saying like have the federal government implement a cryptocurrency?

Yes. Okay. They're doing that in Europe. They're doing the digital Europe. Have the federal government implement a U.S. dollar cryptocurrency. And then you allow all these people in countries that would, their currency is worthless. And then it becomes, oh, if you have a smartphone, you can invest in U.S. dollars. You can buy, it's a safer form of buying power than anything else that these people have access to.

So it's the bond system, but with digital currency. But what happens if there's an EMP? But on an individual level, right? Because right now, you can restrict it like a, kind of electrician in wherever in South America, he can't get his hands on all that shit. Whereas right now, or if you were to do this, if he has a smartphone, he can get on the internet and buy US dollars and keep it on. on his phone and his government can't take it from him. His government can't do anything about it.

And then he can order shit online or do whatever with his money. And then you basically just increased the amount of people carrying U.S. dollars, which is just U.S. debt at this point. So then you offload trillions of dollars of debt. You get everybody working on your system. And then the swift banking system, you could turn off that for a country. Now you could turn it off. This is the downside.

Well, that's where bricks came from. Because a lot of the countries were looking at what was happening with, US kind of weaponizing currency and they're like, all right, well, we'll form the bricks. Now they're not trading in treasury bonds or anything yet, but that would be kind of the next level, but bricks is something. Right, but this is why I think it's going to be awful

is because then you can weaponize the monetary system on an individual level. If you get everybody in the world using the same currency and it's all digital, that's when you can start implementing all the crazy plans that you hear about with like the economic forum of like, oh, actually... Dysopin as fuck.

15 minutes cities type of stuff. Right, but it's going to be one of those. things where it's like, oh, they can track everything. They can track what you're buying. And it's like, oh, you've already bought 12 pounds of hamburger. And that's your meat quota for the month. So now your money won't work for buying meat. You just terrified.

You just terrified George Orwell. He's scared. Yeah. Weren't you just pushing this a moment ago? No. I said, I like the idea. I don't think it's going to end well. Oh, yeah.

The implementation is terrifying. They just did that with the grocery store in Australia where it tracks each individual that comes in. It knows because they sold it to the government. for facial recognition so they can track people's data of when you're in that store, they know exactly who you are, and then they're just monitoring exactly what you buy. That's terrifying. Speaking of Australia.

They could be like you hit your meat quota this month. Sorry. Literally, that's terrifying. It's, oh, this person like this, this, this is how we can market to that individual specifically when they walk into this store. And it's all tracked on all the cameras. It's like social media made in a currency. That's terrifying.

And the government and that grocery store, it'd be pretty much our H-E-B teamed up to make that possible. Now that it's finally spring, I've been outside so much more than you have. Walking around, going for hikes, getting my exercise in. He does it for smoke breaks. What were you wearing? Funny you should ask, Nick. I was wearing fabletics. Does it smell like smoke?

It smells like something. You take a whiff. Smells fabulous. Thank you. Turns out he loves the smell of my... They're soft. breathable and built to last. I think I did actually use Fabletics shorts during my boxing match.

Did you win? Yes. Good, that's all that matters. It's because of Fabletics. I want clothes that actually keep up with my heavily active lifestyle on my smoke breaks. And that's why I signed up as a Fabletics VIP. The f*** does that do? Funny you should ask, Nick. It means you actually can get 80% off everything.

Doctor gave me that when I was born. May not be long, but at least it's thin. New VIPs unlock major savings on their first purchase. So trying new pieces feels... even more doable. Which you can do right now if you go to fabletics.com, use the code unsub and sign up as a VIP. They're going to do a quick quiz for you

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Again, that's fabletics.com slash unsub to get 80% off. sent off as a new VIP member. I think my balls would feel nice in these. Speaking of Australia, they just arrested their most decorated war hero. What? What for? War crimes from 12 years ago.

What did you do? Allegedly he like shot people that he was interrogating or something 12 years ago after he received the Victorian Cross, which is their equivalent of the Medal of Honor. Most decorated soldier for Australia alive. And they arrested him for some shit that he allegedly did 12

years ago with no forensic evidence or fucking anything. Just some people said you did this. Eddie Gallagher. This is Eddie Gallagher. When Cody did that video about Eddie Gallagher, and I read it, I was in L.A. at the time talking with Freddie. Freddy kicked it to me. He's like, what do you think

on this? I was like, what? Pulled it up. It was Eddie Gallagher. War crimes killed those. What was the kid with the Trake? Yeah. Oh, he killed him. And then his teammates were saying he was just shooting innocent people. women, kids, if they would cross this bridge

and reading it, my first response was, well, no, this is a couple of people that was under him that just didn't like him because his leadership stuff. Yeah, because it was, oh, we would change his zero every day so he could, so he would miss those innocent people. You would know if somebody fucked with your rifle. Especially if you're a Navy SEAL sniper.

Yeah. You really know. And I'm just some asses. Every day you're like that's weird Someone's with my optic So you read through that and then they still went after him They threw him in jail and the only reason he got out was because Oh holy shit they the prosecution

Attached a Trojan virus on their team against Eddie Gallagher's so when they opened it up they're like wait This is tracking everything we sent this is a hundred percent illegal they brought it to the judge. Like, hey, prosecution's literally trying to hack us. They're forging documents. They're making shit up.

Here's proof. They had to drop all the charges. That was the only reason it got dropped. Who was prosecuting him? The Navy. Oh. Oh. Shit.

It was the Navy and a two seals that were under him. Just like I thought. And they were just like, we don't like him. Hmm. Wow. And the only reason he got off was

because they had hey look what they're doing they're even hacking our systems to just try to get all this information and dirt on him. That's wild. Yeah. So then they dropped it. But the prosecution, zero trouble. They didn't get in any trouble for doing that.

For committing crimes. Yep. Zero fucking trouble. Navy was pissed that they couldn't go after him. Jag was really into that to nail him to have a win under their belt. Didn't Jag get in like a bunch of trouble because they found out that

they knew information that they shouldn't have known and then they were able to trace it back to one of the lawyers having a Trojan horse on his computer that yeah insane it's fucking wild to do that and then again no trouble

they're like okay I hate well sorry oops we got caught I hate the gamification of the legal system it's my least favorite thing like my I don't think please I don't think plea bargains should be a thing. I hate them.

Like, if you're going to try to, try to convict me of what you can prove I did. And when they do this shit where they're like, we're going to try to convict you for something way higher that we can't prove, but we're going to use that with a life sentence to scare you into just taking the plea bargain. So I get to put you behind bars for five years. And then it counts as a win on my record.

It's got to drag on for forever because we don't have a right to a speech. and fair trial. That's why. I didn't even realize the rule against judge, just judges can't be touched. They can fuck up as might as can release a murder. That dude can go right back out, kill somebody else. Judges cannot be held accountable.

That is like, period. But they got Al Capone on tax evasion. Like, it's not like they haven't been doing this for a long time. You know what I mean? Well, I was just talking to somebody about this. I can't remember who about, there was some judge in, shit, I can't remember. Somewhere in northern Texas

and a bunch of stuff came out about him and he's just, like nothing necessarily illegal, but he's just like a moody douchebag. So there was a whole bunch of clips. I wish I could remember who I was talking to about this. But a whole bunch of clips, essentially, it's like if he's in a bad mood that day, like you're, instead of going to jail for, you know,

six months or whatever community service, It's like you're going to prison for 20 years, like the full extent of the charges. And I think the only like repercussions that you can bring down upon a judge is you can file a complaint to there's like a board essentially. But there's no like guarantee anything will come of that. It's like they are the be all end all granted. It's, you know, an elected position. But still if if that guy's just in a bad mood that day. Sounds like you shouldn't have a job.

Right. Yeah. What's it called? I got to find what it is called. Like, dramatically. the outcome of people's lives. I don't understand the power of judges. And I don't think anybody does, and it scares me.

To levy judgment. Like, well, there's, well, no, but there's like the new joke of like, or if, uh, who, who do we kill the leader of Iran? Kalamimi. Solomini. Solem, whatever the fuck. Yeah, Kamini. There was the mean.

There was a meme that went viral on Twitter where it was like, U.S. federal district court judge says. he's not dead after and it's referencing to just like how how many district judges come out and like no this law can't happen and it's like and it turns into like an eight year thing it's like can any federal district court judge just fucking no I don't want to for everything even if they're not supposed to have jurisdiction yeah judicial immunity is a form of sovereign immunity which protects judges and others employed by uh the judiciary judiciary there we go from liabilities. resulting in anything any actions. So no, they just can't be held accountable. Yep. It was my brother and sister-in-law,

not that it matters, but I remembered who I was talking to about this. Dude, it's, wow, that's why that one in California I was reading about, it was like, holy shit. It was somebody got, a 20-year-old, 24-year-old killed a grandpa, and then she said, okay, well, he'll serve five years.

years, but, or five years have been served for good behavior. No time. Well, it would be a, this part is what killed me, pointed out that Watson was not a danger to society and that he had expressed sorrow for the pain he caused, saying probation would serve him better than jail time. All he did was kill somebody. That is one time. The second one, uh, serial arsonist.

several smash and grabs, car break-ins, and billings pled guilty, except it's not five years. In fact, Miller will solve zero prison time because of same judge. This judge did this multiple times. But I also agree with you on the plea bargain thing because it's like, especially if you're getting a plea bargain because you're turning somebody else in because it's like, hey, there's something in it for me. Of course you're right. Like that's kind of ridiculous.

Like you'll say whatever they want you to say. Like that's kind of a problem. Yeah. Well, I mean, I just hate the. There shouldn't be any gambling in the justice system. Like if you're going to come out and say that you think you got me on charges for murder one, fucking prove it or I'm innocent. There shouldn't be any.

Okay, well, it's not really going my way. And I'm not going to be able to prove this. And I know that. So instead of getting 20 years in prison, I'll give you a plea bargain for manslaughter instead. And then you can only serve five years. And now you're putting some dude that's a dad with two kids and a wife in a position where he's like,

do I risk seeing my kids when I'm 60 or do I just bite the bullet and I can still be at their high school graduation? And it's like that's bullshit. Fripping prove they did it or don't. And it's all just because lawyers want to be able to be like I've never lost a case. But it also seems like you're kind of guilty until proven innocent now rather than innocent until proven guilty. Oh, 100%. Now you're just crucified instantly. Afterwards, yeah, it's like they're innocent.

No one's paying attention at that point. It is correct. Oh, shit. You've lost sponsorship. going to jail. Or just Scott free, or you've lost family, friends. Oh, well, I was innocent. Huh?

No, you're that piece of shit that. Somebody. No, I was innocent of that. Nope. No one knows that part of it. Court of public opinion and everything. Yeah. Well, that and I was like, or Rich isn't here, but like the way that, again,

innocent until proven guilty, the way that it kind of works backwards now, where, like, defending yourself, knowing if I was accused of murder right now, I know I didn't kill anybody. The first fucking thing I'm going to do is get an attorney and not talk to anybody. But that makes you look guilty. Exactly. Well, that's what the police will tell you. And they're allowed to lie to you.

Fun fact. Oh, it's wild. Cops aren't your friends. Love you, Rich. I don't talk to cops. The shitty thing about that is even if it is a good cop that genuinely does want to help you, the DA, if they're an asshole, can still use anything the cop finds out against you,

whether the cop has like a rationale or reasoning behind it. And then the DA can also make it so the cop can't testify on your behalf. So like Rich, Rich could have shown up like, I don't know. I get in a car wreck and my son dies and I get out and beat the person to death. And Rich is like, this motherfucker was drunk and high on heroin and I think he did it on purpose and all this stuff.

Dude had a mental break. I don't think he's violent. They could just be like, I'm not going to let you testify on this guy's behalf as the first reporting officer, which is fucking insane to me, which is a gamification where it's like I don't care about the truth. I don't care about justice. I care about winning and my career track record,

which is bullshit. I've put away a thousand murderers, whether or not they actually committed murder. Well, I mean, you know they brag about stats like it's fucking football. Like I've got 90% conviction. rate or whatever, you know? I mean, there's one of the officers that work

at the gym we go to. He's talked about like, man, it's wild. You seeing a murderer on the street the next week after arresting because they got Bell. And it's for a low $5,000 or something. And they're on the street already.

Well, they're not convicted yet. They've been accused of murder. So I get that. You should be able to But he's like, these people like, they have rap. Yeah. This is wild. I was like, no, we all know. The problem with that is, though, it creates, like, a current situation like we have

now where we're not quite there, but we're closer to anarcho tyranny, where it's the good people don't want to do what they should do because they're afraid of what could happen to them, and the bad people are just allowed to do what they want to do. Like, it does create a system where, you know, that guy on the subway in New York City. I was just going to bring that one out. It's perfect example. He's, he was a Marine, is that correct? Yep.

He sees the situation. He does the right thing in the situation, and he's untrified. for murder, but he was trying to protect the people around him. What's the story? I've seen some homeless people, like I lived in L.A. for a year. I've seen some homeless people do some crazy shit. I literally saw a guy walking down the street swinging two swords. Don't know where he got them from, but he had two swords.

I have three kids of me. Of course, I'm going the other way. But like at the same time, like, if you take responsibility, you're now the bad guy. That's a problem. There was a Marine on a subway with a homeless guy. I believe he had a knife and was threatening people. And he put him in a rear naked choke. and ended up killing the guy with a rear naked choke after he was threatening to kill people with a

knife and like acting like he was going to do it. Daniel Penny was his name. Now that guy's had to go through court for murder charges. Yeah, New York City, right? Lost his job. Got charged. Got charged. It gets off.

But like, you know, is his life ruined now? I think he, I think was it somebody in the president's administration offered him a job or something like that or one of his donors or something? I think they exonerated him, right? That's the thing. It doesn't matter anymore. And then he's plastered all over the media. Right. Yeah, that guy, essentially.

That's like a state law type thing, though, because it's like Texas or where I'm from Indiana. If somebody did something like that, I'd be like, well, like the Greenville Mall shooting. It was a, you know, no gun zone or whatever. And then Eli. Yeah, Eli was carrying his 1911, and that fucking kid came out and started killing people in the food court,

whipped out his pistol and dropped him. And he's lauded as a hero as he should be because he saved potentially dozens, you know, 100 lives, because there's just a mass murderer coming out. But if that happened, like, this man used his bare hands to subdue someone with a weapon. And now he's on trial for murder. Well, it's like even, I'm in New Jersey,

and it's like, I think they call it reverse Castle Doctrine, where if somebody comes in your home, yeah, we're allowed to have guns. You can only buy one handgun every six months and you're limited on a number of long guns you can have. but if somebody comes into your home, you're expected to leave your home because if you harm them, you could be charged for harming them

entering your home even though you live there. You have to flee if I remember, unless, like, you have to be in a room and you can't go anywhere and that's the only reason you can actually engage the target. That's insane though. Like that's your home. You should be able to protect it.

Oh, true. 10,000 percent. I have three beds like that. Three bedside guns. Hi. We all have bedside guns multiple. I was pretty with an arm's reach. It's just one of those.

But like when the system goes in that condition, like it's an arcot tyranny. It's where the bad people are good and the good people are bad and it makes people not take responsibility. Oh, you mean like arresting your most decorated war hero? Like that, yeah. How do, like, what? Who said something like, we need to look at this? They're going to start, they're going to start treating good men the same way. they treat guns. That's what's going to happen. And then you know what happens? No more good men.

Oh yeah. And then hard times. Exactly. Braddon, what shirt are you wearing? Well, I'm glad you asked Eli, I'm wearing my poncho shirt. It's not what a poncho looks like. It looks lightweight and breathable. It is lightweight and breathable. It's also fantastic for summer because, like said, it does breathe. It's very lightweight. And it also offers SPF protection. You mean UPF. That's what I said. Oh, okay. Bad hearing. Legitimately, on the campaign trail, these ponchos were basically my everyday attire. It's just the perfect mix between looking professional,

feeling good, and just being fairly casual. Is that the Western style? I'm just guessing because of the pearls. It is. Once you go Pearl Snap, you never go back. The best promo for this, they weren't our sponsor. The guys and all of us wore them before. Oh, we sought them out as a sponsor. We were already in love with the shirts, and we were asking them, money, please.

That's the best sell pitch. It's the best endorsement I can give. So if you're looking for a lightweight, comfortable shirt for the spring or summer, look no further than poncho. Go to poncho outdoors.com slash unsub for $10 off your first order. Poncho outdoors.com slash unsub. Go check it out. Even going to Conner's question with everything like how you see America repeating certain elements, we were talking about over there. He brought coins. Thank you so much for the amazing coins. Yeah, shout out to Kinzer Coins who sent them to me to give to you guys.

We pop them over there. So we got some actual Roman coins that are what, two, three thousand years old? Two thousand years old. Wild. But the currency being like the precious metals getting reduced year by year. And that's even we see that now with quarter silver dollars. I think how it's done now is kind of more insidious. You know what I mean?

Because inflation, the way it works now is a tax on the money you already have. Well, like even explain the money how much was reduced from the people. pure the purity of it. Sorry, I know this is a bad idea. I think Connor's going to be able to tell me why it's a bad idea. Let's hear it. I think that we should just get rid of taxes and the government can just print the fucking money that it needs.

And then we all pay a flat tax as inflation. I'm fine with flat tax. I'm fine with the flat tax. It's fair. I'm saying the flat tax is the inflation though. Like, don't even collect money. Just print the money you need and my money devalue. is it functions as a flat tax.

It's only going to last so long, though. Eventually, it's all going to class. I'm aware, but that's everything. You'll be dead by that. Yeah, exactly. I have the exact same thought process, too, because we're trillions of dollars in debt to the rest of the world. I think we should just restart from zero and go.

What are they just a trillion dollar coin? Isn't that how it works? Or we just tell China, we're not paying. We just default on it. It's no big deal. What are they going to do? I've brought this up before. America runs on the lead standard.

You keep loaning money to the homeless guy and he owes you a lot of money, but he's just been buying guns. What are you going to do? It's just, just live stream America. Be like, okay. Zero. Yeah. Enter. No more next day prime delivery. Good news. No more trillion dollar debt.

They should do what they did in medieval society. Have you heard of the concept of a Jubilee? Every hundred years, they'd wipe out all debts. Go on. And they did this in the Middle Ages. It was done through the Catholic Church when it kind of like ruled everything. Every hundred years, they'd wipe out all the debts. I have a stupid question.

Is this where the concept of a 99-year lease comes from? That I don't know. Okay. I don't know why my brain went there. I wish I knew, but I don't know. Is it like from 100 years when you first started that, or is it like on home? No, it's just done. You're just buying down again because you're just buying everything.

No, it was every hundred years. So it's like, you know, if you didn't live long enough, it sucks to be you. But like, if you were alive when that happened, hey, great guy kind of be alive. No shit. The debt jubilee. I like it. I don't say let's run that back. I'll throw that letter

Black Rock's going to let that happen Black Rock's like hell no But like I guess if you want to look at how inflation works Right I think just to explain the concept Modernly to people The Federal Reserve likes to use great words for this to confuse the hell out of you

But they use the word quantitative easing Which they shortened to QE QE1 QE2 That just means they printed more money So the dollar in your pocket is worth less Quantity Quantity money Money and explain.

Money bring turnover. There you go. But quantitative easing is just the idea that we print more money. So every time that we need to pay for something, we don't have the money, we just print more money. Like even when we did a lot of that stuff during the pandemic where they were giving people money, it's because they were just making money out of thin air. And it's because our money isn't backed by anything. You can thank Richard Nixon for doing that in 1970 and taking us off the gold standard.

But I think that's a lot more insidious because most people don't understand it. They just think, oh, things are getting more expensive. And in reality, sure, costs do raise, but they don't raise them the way that you feel it. They raise because your dollar now buys less, so somebody else needs more dollars to buy something. In Rome, it wasn't quite as insidious because they had, like, this is a silver coin here, this is Valerian. He's, everyone will see that, he's the Roman emperor that's captured by the Persians and used as a footstool. He's the first Roman emperor to be captured. Footstool, Nick's question.

Well, there's two, there's two theories about. that too there's one that he was captured using the footstool one that he was a footstool for a while then they flayed him and hung on the wall but the thing that's more insidious about that that less insidious about how the romans did it is their silver coin in the first century was 95% pure um your silver silver silver because the dinarius their main coin was silver base they had gold coin but the problem they had is if somebody got a gold coin they'd keep it because they're not going to spend it because it's worth something so they were was hoarding of gold that was a real problem. So what would happen with the silver, and this really

starts after the death of Commodus, who's the son of Marcus Aurelius. Waukeen Phoenix. Joaquin Phoenix, yeah, cleft lip and everything. But he, the guy that takes over, it's called the year of five emperors. The last guy to come out on top is this guy named Septimius Severus. And the thing he does is he doubles legionary pay, and he gives them the largest gift ever. because every time someone would become emperor, they'd give a gift to the military. They called it a donative. And each emperor after that is going to use that pattern

of then doubling military pay. So the way they do that then is by adding other metals to the silver to dilute it. So by the time you get to the 270s, so we're like less than 300 years down the road, that same coin is somewhere between 2% and 5% pure. Connor? Yes, Mr. Slate.

Yes. What percent? You over there? How did the military service work at this point in time? Was it mandatory or voluntary? That's a good question. Thank you. You're welcome.

Sorry, I'm in teacher mode. So in the Roman Republic, Rome was mainly a citizen army. Like you were defending your country because it was your country. In the late Republic, there's a guy named Gaius Marius, and he does these major military reforms. One of the first is he creates the Roman standard, the eagle that you always see as the symbol of Rome. he's a guy that creates that.

He also changes fighting styles a little bit, but he takes and makes it a private military force, meaning that, well, not private, but like a professional military force. And so now your career was you were in the military. You weren't like a farmer that was going to go defend your country and then you go back to farming out when you're done. Full-time jobs.

Right. And what that does is it starts to create loyalty to generals versus loyalty to the country. Because now if their general is successful and he makes more plunder or whatever it is, they make more money because they would get to split part of what they took. So this is going to become more of a problem as in the third century when I was talking about Severus, he's a governor, he's not becomes a general later on, but he's a governor that basically takes his own troops

and attacks Rome and declares himself emperor. So if your general's emperor, it's a really good thing for you. So in the third century, what you start having is military regiments start declaring their general to be emperor. And all of these guys start attacking each other. So in a 50-year period, you have somewhere between 25 and 30 guys claiming to the emperor. And the problem you're going to have with that is it going to drive inflation harder. So it doesn't start as a problem, but it becomes a problem because how the function works. Because they get to split the bounty or whatever it is.

And if they're guys, the emperor, which is the new route to becoming emperor, that's a real problem. I'm just thinking how wild that would be of going deploying overseas and like by the way whatever we take we keep and we get a split going on wild brother you much oil you'd have bro

how would you take that home with you are the guys who rated uh... flasks Hussein's Palace all the gold that they found at Saddam Hussein's Palace oh Evan he was there so he has like pictures of him laying in dump trucks that are just piled with gold bars, just laying on the fucking gold bars. They would take out lambos.

They were just ripping around. Just green brays having the best. But the reason I was talking about it being like less insidious then is because for them, they saw their coins getting lighter. They saw the color changing. And by the time you get to the late third century, so in like, you know, the two 80s, two 70s, it would be a bronze coin with like a silver coating on it. and that would actually flake off in someone's hand.

So they would see it and they would feel it and they would know that their currency is changing. I just don't think a lot of people know that here. They think that things are just getting more expensive when in reality, sure, prices do change. But for the most part, if your dollar is worth less and it doesn't go as far, it's a tax that you don't realize you're paying

and most people don't know that. Oh, you did, yeah. Increased taxes, that will fix everything. Yeah. I can balance any budget. as long as you legalize me stealing these people. It's my official policy. But I think as well, too, like,

even getting back to the idea of, like, you know, military service as well, like in the Roman Republic and also in the early to mid-empirate, these politicians and even later emperors would be the ones leading their armies. And I just think that if politicians, like, you know, Lindsey Graham, like if they had to think about, what they were doing and they had to be a part of it, they would look at it differently, right?

And they would also treat their troops differently, too. So I think things like that would change function a lot. I want to go back to when politicians were fighting each other. My favorite meme is somebody took Lindsay Graham's head and they stuck one of those World War I German army helmets with the point on it. You got to go, you got to go dying Iran, everybody. I just,

it's not even that. It's just they're too old to understand anything. Well, I think they'd also value life more, right? Like, you know, they would look at the decisions they're making because they had to be a part of them. You know, I think that's also a big part of it. Yes, I just get frustrated watching like Mark Zuckerberg getting interviewed by my, the leaders of the free world and they're like, is the Wi-Fi connected to my phone? Yeah.

Like what? Or what are you talking about? You see the one in court where when everybody had to go to court virtually because the pandemic and everything and the judge had turned himself into a dog and he didn't know how to turn it off? Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's like a cat. Or the lawyer, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I just saw one the other day. It was like, the guy attends court. The judge is like, you're a dog. He's like, I know, and I don't know how to stop. I saw one. The guy, the guy's attending his, like, court hearing. And the guy, the judge goes, your name is Robert Smith, correct? And he's like, yes, sir.

Yes, your honor. And he goes, so it's not but for six thousand. Because his little name tag on the bottom, didn't realize. But so they did, because I was going to ask that follow up, You said he was the Persian footstool. Yes. So he got captured, obviously. How?

He was leading troops into battle? So he was leading troops into battle. We're at. This was assassinated Persia. So it's like part of modern Iran, not the whole thing. Because the Persian empire was a lot larger. And over time, it gradually kind of shrinks and becomes other states and things like that. But Rome and Persia have a long track of kind of going back and forth.

and there's kind of early Persian empires that they deal with, but the one that they're dealing with that time is called the assassinids, and they were like an upstart, if that makes sense, because Persia had been kind of dormant for a while. And then there's this guy named Shapur I, who basically decides since Rome's going through a problem right now in its third century where the center is becoming really weak. So the West breaks off and forms its own empire, called the Golic Empire.

The East breaks off and forms its own empire called the Palm Iron Empire. So the empire itself is starting to kind of fall apart. Now it doesn't fall apart into those three pieces until after Valerian is captured, but there starts to be signs of kind of what's happening and that Rome's very weak. So Persia decides the assassinate Persians that they're going to invade Rome because they realize Rome can't stop them. So Valerian leads troops in the battle. He's captured and he's used as a footstool for the rest of his life.

There's actually a statue of this in Tehran. and it was kind of in pop culture, I think, in like December of like, hey, we've got a statue here of the Roman emperor being used as a footstool. So he's basically captured by the Shepur I first. And the reason it's the ultimate embarrassment to Rome is because if Rome was the superpower it had always been, they just go and take them back. They can't take their own emperor back. They just declare a new emperor. The next guy is a guy named Galeenis. So it does be, yeah, you love that.

You love the name. There's another one you really love. They had an emperor named Gay Anus. You love this one. The one of the emperors, that year of five emperors, one of him, his name is Didius Julianus.

And he loved, he loved baby oil. But it does, but it shows, it shows, it shows how weak Rome is at this point in time that they can't even go capture their own emperor. And this was in,

you said, middle third century. This is 260 is when he's captured. Right on. When did it, When did it like the Byzantine split occur? So that's going to be much later on. So in the two 80s, there's a guy that takes over his name's Diocles.

He takes the name Diocletian and he kind of reestablishes Rome. But he forms it in this new way. It's called the Tetrarchy, so it's ruled by four. He creates two senior emperors, one being himself and two junior emperors. So the east and the west don't split, but they start to kind of function apart from each other. and you're going to see in the late 5th century Theodosius the Great. He's actually the emperor that makes Christianity the official religion of Rome in 380. So,

Constantin? I thought it was called. No. Constantine in 313, Edict of Milan. And just to correct myself, late 4th century. But as I said early second century in another podcast, I got roasted. You fool, you're a buffoon. You can't be wrong or the comments teach you alive. Autism.

I'm aware. Yeah. We've all experienced it. I try not to read comments most of the time. Try talking about a plane or a tank. Did you make a mistake? It's terrible. Like you make one mistake that's even very slight and they're like, you know nothing.

You know nothing, John Snow. Well, Jeremy, actually. You go to a podcast, yeah. The edits when you're like, I'm pretty sure that this happened at this time and then the like supercut edits will cut out the, I'm pretty sure. and so it just sounds like you're so confident about all the information. Bastard made me look like a... I don't even know where I was going with a show.

Every YouTube shirt. I'm aware. Mix very aware. Sorry. I don't even know where I was going with us. I lost my train of thought. Talking about the East versus West, the four.

So Theodosius, the great, is the, he makes Christianity the official religion of Rome. Now, Constantine, that was your question. So when he becomes, he becomes emperor of a united Rome after 311, he defeats the other emperor named Maxentius at that. point in time after a battle called Milvian Bridge. In 313, he issues the Edict of Milan.

The edict of Milan, it doesn't make Christianity the official religion of Rome. It just makes it legal. It just makes it legal. Because though you could practice it, unless you were a pain in the butt, they wouldn't do anything about you. He makes it legal. So Theodosius makes it the official religion of the empire. But Theodosius is the last emperor to rule United Rome. There is a time period later on in the late 5th century when Justinian, who's the Eastern Roman Empire emperor, is going to reconquer the West and kind of, for a little period of time,

rule both again. But that split really happens after Theodosius. Theodosius takes his two sons. He puts Hanorius in charge of the West. I can't remember the name of his other son that he puts in charge of the East, but that really starts to be the division because these two brothers don't get along.

And then what they start doing, since they don't like each other, they start playing barbarian generals against each other. They're like, oh, I'm going to use this general against you. And it really starts to make this division pretty solid. Wild. Royal family.

And after Rome sacked in 410, the Visigoths sack Rome in 410, they go to tell Honoreas that what's just happened, and he's like, doesn't want to be bothered because he wants to go deal with his chickens. He raises chickens in the palace now, and he wants to worry about his chickens and not the fact that his city's on fire.

So those two brothers battling internally with each other was what led to the fall of Rome? Technically theodosius, you could say, he divides it between his sons. And just kind of their disdain for each other is what causes them to be separate. They're not really fighting each other. You know, they would play a barbarian against each other. Paying Germans to kill your brother.

Yeah. Tail as old as time. Because the problem you have after Diocletian, Rome has a lot of trouble defending its borders. So he comes up with a new system called the Federati. And what the Federati are is, or they are barbarian troops that are basically protecting the borders for Rome. and Rome's paying them and giving them a place to live. What ends up happening is their loyalties will shift. So you might be a barbarian general one day,

you'll be a Roman general the next day. And that could go from east to west too. Like, oh, I'm with the Eastern Roman Empire now. I'm with the Western Roman Empire now, depending on like what's better for them. So that's something he does that's effective at the moment, that becomes a real problem with the system later on. How often are they in war?

Because this... All the time? Seems like it is... All the time? Like in the... Even during the quote-unquote Pax Romana, they're still fighting people all the time. They're just kind of things are good for people in Rome, if that makes sense.

But in that type of a culture, you're always fighting. That's what your culture is built on. Oh, I would not want to be in the Army. So, hey, no, you remember the last. Yeah, you're in a culture built on fighting wars. I was just going to say war on terror. And you were in the army. I'm here now.

What is it? Is it 18 years in the history of the U.S.? That wasn't? I believe that's the case. We're really good at it. Yeah, but we don't take territory. I think we should. Canada, sitting up there.

Yeah, we don't take territory. We just make the entire world buy oil using U.S. dollars. We can take Greenland. I think we should paint the map. Go full Roman Empire, England in the 16, 1700s. They do it through banking now, though. And we do steal presidents, though. Bro, I saw the, oh, that's a good one.

I saw the... Do you get used as a footstone? It was a threat. from like 2022 and it was just some dude being like I'm so sick of how people portray special forces guys from the U.S.

military. They make them seem like their space marines from Warhammer 40K. They can't just send in 12 special forces guys and capture an enemy president. They would all get beheaded on TV and then it's Newsflash retard. Three years later

he comes back and there's an edit. Apparently I was wrong guys. Sorry. But they had the discombobobulator now, so they're good. This is true. Discombobulator, Ray. It is wild watching that level of power we do have. Like, our military power is just the next level.

And the other countries, like, or Reddit, Connor just to enjoy it like I do where you see. They're like, Iran won this one. That was, yeah. That's like the exchange right now. They're saying it's like, I ran. Oh, watching. Yeah, but the ceasefire is over already. Watching.

Yeah. Because the Israelis attacked Iran because they said it didn't apply to them. Who saw that coming? So now, so now Iran said, hey, guess what? The Strait of Hormuz is closed again. My text. I had this conversation last night with somebody who would not like to be named on camera, but I fucking said, I was like, this will last for her.

I give it 12 hours until Israel bombs Iran. My text to the group. Well, because the first thing was is Israel said it didn't apply to Lebanon. and then I don't know if any military action actually happened with Lebanon, but then not too long after that, they started bombing Iran. What, Israel sound of loophole? I believe there was a press conference today from Netanyahu that was talking about it. 8.23 p.m. yesterday. My text, can we also say it was reading the, hey, we're ceasefire, blah, blah, blah. Can we also say, also if Israel breaks the ceasefire, we get a bomb.

the fuck out of them too. That way both sides stick to the plan. That was last night. At 8 p.m. I was like, this is probably what's kidding. I'd be looking to my crystal balls. Oh, wow. Didn't see Israel? Breaks a ceasefire?

What? Fuck. I love all the people that are like, America spending that much money and equipment and manpower to rescue one pilot shows how weak they are. I was like, I don't, that's weapon. grade cope. I'm sorry. That's, dude, I saw a thing and it was like, it was a tweet to the effect of that.

It was like the fact that America is spending potentially millions of dollars, all this manpower and risking all this equipment to save one person. Why would you even do that? And the response was the fact that you even think this proves that being an American is not just a piece of paper. Like, leave no fucking man behind. We don't give it shit what it takes, which is awesome, like, from the military side or veteran. I mean, that is awesome to read. We're like, oh, shit. Just captured.

They're coming to get me. I don't know. Yeah, no. Oh, no, you were telling a story at a lunch earlier about, there you go. Here's the quote from Netanyahu. Our finger is on the trigger. This is not the end of our campaign. Super cool.

Thanks, man. Yeah, you were telling the story, really. related to the, we're gonna go save an American when, I think you were talking about you and your wife and brother-in-law. I think we're in China. I went to China in 2014, and it's annoying to get the visa to you. It's like go to New York City and they run a background check

on you or anything. So we did our whole China tour and you like really shouldn't drink the water there, but their beer's like 2% alcohol. So we just walked around the backpacks of beer all day and drank that right in the water. Singao, yeah. And we're getting back on the plane to come home and they had a piece of paper that had my brother-in-law's face

on it, but some Chinese guy's name under it. So they try to grab him to pull them off the plane until they realize, I think he's Hungarian, not Chinese. But he almost didn't make it home. Oh, he's Hungarian? It was half-Hungarian, yeah. Oh, I assumed he was American.

But they were literally going to pull him off the plane. I don't know why. They were going to disappear him. They were going to disappear him. He thought they were that, they thought he was that person because they had his picture with somebody else's name on it. Like faking documents.

You're going to the Never Again Camp. And then they went, wait, white guy. This is why I don't leave America. This is why I don't leave America. Yeah, you just, Nick's never going anywhere now. How do you say that vacation, Marks and Kekos? Turks in Kekos.

That one story about the dad that got busted and was like in prison there for a year. Well, with a bullet? Yeah. It's such a bullshit. Like he had a bullet floating around in his duffel bag because it was also his hunting bag. So they tried to put him in prison for 15 years for smuggling. firearms into the country. That story haunts my mother because she knows how much I

like shoot. And so every time I travel, she's like, you don't have any bullets in your bag, do you? I'm like, no, I'm like, range bag over here, travel bag, over here. Oh, my God. Some people are worried about like flying in America with a, like, are you sure you don't have a knife or anything in your

is that? I don't know. I was going to where you go to security and then they just, you're like fuck. I was going through TSA last night. And I had, like, I was using this bag last week when I was driving. someplace and I had my knife in it and I'm going through TSA is where I'm like I really hope I remember to take that knife out of my bag.

I think I said it was like shot show one year. I'm like make sure all guns are like we we didn't pack any guns blah. Okay everything's good. Cool, cool. Boom we land get to the hotel open up the check-in and there is a gun with a round of the chamber right there. It's like, yo what the I thought we went through this. Oh, huh. I'm like we are so. We are

So lucky that what the fuck. The TSAs never caught anyone. I have a very American follow-up story to that. I just pure blind, thank you God luck, forgot that I had a gun in my glove box because there's a lot laying around. And just for whatever reason, opened my glove box and was like, oh, okay, I left a pistol in here, close it. I got pulled over for speeding. Ended up getting a warning. But got pulled over it.

And I was like, had I not seen that hours before? So obviously I did the, you know, the proper, like, officer before we even again want to let you know, there is a firearm in the glove box. That's where the paperwork is. So he asked, you know, he's like, can I go and take it out, unload it? I was like, of course, sir. But had I not double-checked that, it would have been like, let me grab the registration. Thunk. Pistol.

Slow turning look. Yeah. Let me get you. my one. Well, there was once, so like New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, they all like meet in the same spot. And there was a woman from Pennsylvania. It was like 10 years ago and she's driving into New York State. She gets pulled over for speeding and they search her car and find the gun, which she can legally have in her own state, but she's in New York State now. Screwed. Oh, if you, gun laws are fucking stupid. You shouldn't, it should be universal gun law. Like the fact that you can,

I live 30 miles from the Minnesota border and it's like I can't legally because I don't have a Minnesota permit. You know what I mean? It's like you can cross the Minnesota border on 300 gravel roads between Iowa and Minnesota. It's like I shouldn't be up for federal prison time. Because I crossed a fucking imaginary line. Yeah. When I moved down to Texas from Indiana,

I literally had to route my trip through Tennessee and around, excuse me, the state of Illinois because of my rifles. It was like, I checked the, which my buddy made a joke about it, but I checked the route. If I cut through Illinois, it was, you know, 20 hours and 20 minutes. And if I did the other route through Tennessee and around, it was like 20 hours and 40 minutes. And he was like, 20 minutes on your road trip might save you 25 years in federal prison or in seat prison. I didn't realize Griff wants us to go hunting in Hawaii. So I was like, fuck, yeah.

Send him a picture of the rifle I just built for hunting. I was like, oh, no. not in fucking Hawaii well it's well it's a bolt so like cool he's like now you can't bring the suppressor he's like no I'm good it's like I've done all the paper he's like no those are a hundred percent illegal in Hawaii suppressors being illegal

so dumb this thing on the planet and people watch too many fucking England in England they're required yeah that's what would you have guns in England suppressors uh you have to be a member of a club for hunting and shit you have really yeah a member of a hunting club order but like Australia definitely can't a lot of places in Europe in general, you're required to use a suppressor for hunting so you don't annoy people.

That's, well, and the state law in Indiana, they're trying to pass to make suppressors essentially like the same legal status as they are in Texas. The way that the congressman proposed it or state congressman proposed it in Indiana was, it was for the protection of hunting dogs hearing because everybody loves dogs. Yeah. So it's like, it's for the children. Exactly. He's like, no, it's good for dogs' ears.

Like, whatever works, brother. Yeah, gun laws are one of the weirdest things. Shouldn't it just be a federal issue because it's like... No. Second Amendment legal? Well, yeah, on that regard. Like, shouldn't a state not be able to like... Dude, it is, I...

Like, certain things are definitely states' rights, but guns are federally legal. Why should states be allowed to regulate them? All states rights! I'm glad Alexander Hamilton's dead, you bastard. Aaron Burr shot you in the chest, you bitch. I just want to get elected... I want to get elected to state Senate and I want to start implementing gun laws for cars

and see how fast people get fucking pissed at me. What do you mean? I want a background check. Felons can't buy cars. You know what I mean? Like, I just want to start doing shit like that. It is a deadly weapon.

I want to fucking ban mufflers. Like, ban mufflers. You need to get a tax stamp if you want a muffler. Yeah. Like, that's what I want to do.

See how stupid these laws are? No. No. Like, what the fuck? It's a crime now. O2 sensors, banned. Oh, my God. I want to have maximum capacities on vehicles, like, everything. That's a high limit gas can.

Yeah. Or gas dig. Just real quick, cars. Do you see what Ford did for the Nurebergh? No. Ford, awesome. Good job, guys. They came in and destroyed the fucking record by a goddamn margin.

What did they do? The Nerbergring. there's only I think 12 cars that have done a sub seven minute lap American just last year at the end of last year with the Corvette and the Mustang GtD were the first ones to break a sub seven for American cars never happened before and then you have Porsche the McLaren't P1 like these million dollar cars and then Mercedes AMG one which is it's like a ten million dollar prototype EV slash gas boom they've owned that

Porsche's own the Nureberg ring but that was untouchable America's like ah it's fucking America Ford decided to send their GT like the GT40 is the GT4 version of that

no electric engine just pure muscle American muscle the fastest again you have 12 cars that ever have done a 7 sub 7 every

GT did it in six minutes, 51 seconds. The Corvette ZRX did it in 649, and then the Porsche GT3, or GT2 did it in 645, and the AMG 1, 630. Flivening fast, lightning fast. Ford shows up, does it in 615. Good.

Everyone's just like, oh, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, food is smoke. Not 15 seconds. Maybe I'm building. 80% of the bombers for World War II. Maybe I'm about to smoke your ass in a fucking race. You never know what I'm up to.

Dude, everyone's just like, well, they just dethroned everything. And that car is a $1 million car, but it just destroyed like $20 million cars. By 15 seconds, the closest one of his fucking jobs. I mean, good job for it. America. America.

Fucking morality. What is one of the scariest moments for you now when reflecting on history? When you look at it, you're like, Well, that's my biggest red flag. That's tough because it's like, I look at the border issue and that's a major problem. I was like, he's going to say the 19th Amendment. I know it.

No. No, not that. I don't know if you ever met women. No. So there's a lot of bad things that happen in the progressive era. I don't think that's one of them. I do. But the thing I would say is like the immigration problem to me is a real problem because, number one,

we don't know how many people are here is a big problem. is a big part of it. But at the same time, the immigration problem also feeds the inflation problem because of the amount of money federally we give people that are here illegally. That's a big problem. Like they're being given debit cards

with tens of thousands of dollars on my, I know at least in New York stay, I don't know about the rest of the country. Plus remittances. Also, here's the one people don't think about. What if I autistically screech it's a human right? Does that make you feel better? Absolutely.

No person is illegal. It'll disarm me in any way. Yeah. Good. They are people too. I'm glad I can help. The thing people don't consider either, though, is also the medical system. Because a lot of times they can just walk away from medical bills.

Have you considered that that's also a human right? It might be. I don't know. I hate this version of Nick. What if I told you it's a human right? Can we just die his hair blue? Nick with a bob cut. Communist Nick.

Pierce this boy's nose. So I think the immigration issue is a huge problem, but I think the money problem's worse. Because if you have a strong currency, you can actually deal with the other problems for a longer period of time. Like good money buys you time. And I think when you don't handle your currency, the thing you have to look at, right? So we have a lot of people that are here illegally. If the money isn't worth anything, what are they here for? Right? They're here for the ability to be in America and have our currency. And that's a similar problem that you see in Rome. Rome doesn't fall. It doesn't collapse. It kind of slowly slides into being something else.

Because by the time they get to their money being worth nothing, most of the people fighting in the military at that point aren't even Roman anymore. And after the sack of Roman 410, most of the Roman emperors are just basically being propped up by barbarian generals. The last emperor of Rome is a teenage boy named Romulus Augustulus, and he's deposed by a barbarian king named Odo Walker, and he gives him a pension, he retires him, pays him every year until he dies.

He probably lives sometime into the sixth century. We don't quite know when he dies. He just kind of falls off the historical map at some point. But he takes the imperial regalia, sends it back to the Eastern Roman Empire, said, hey, there's no emperors anymore. I'm the king of Italy now. And when you look at it when money is worth nothing

and the people that are in a place are there just for the goodies or the currency, whatever it is, that's when you kind of cease to have a civilization. So to me, ethics of politicians isn't great. You know, illegal immigration isn't great. But if you don't fix your currency, you're absolutely screwed. And that's the thing that concerns me more

because we're just spending money like drunken sailors. And I don't really see a way out. Because even if our money was backed by something again, unless we did the cryptocurrency thing, I don't know, unless our money was backed by something, then you can't really have a strong currency, right? It's backed by the full faith and credit the American government right now,

which isn't a whole lot if you look at how we spend money. And if it was based on something, we'd be in good shape, but at the same time, to play the other side of it, how do we get it based on something again? Because we're so far over our skis, right? Like, if you look at one of the main reasons that the Eastern Roman Empire survives,

in 314, the Emperor Constantine, mince a few hundred gold coins. Every year until he dies, he's minting gold coins. By the time he dies, the Eastern Empire is on a gold standard. And that's actually going to go without inflation until about the year 1,000. So almost 700 years without inflation. Oh, damn. Constantinople was also really, really hard to attack because it's surrounded by water.

climate had changed and they didn't have the same ability to grow grain. But if we fix our currency, we're in better shape. I just don't know how you do that. And I think that's the major problem. Sorry to give you a problem without a solution. I don't fix it. It's kind of above my pay grade, but I see it as the major problem. Because if you have a strong currency, you can deal with the other problems.

What if we made currency a human right? It would just fix everything. What if we just traded seashells again? We went back to Wop them. Will we be fine? Beads. Yes. Like, do you think that the, having the, like I agree with

having the gold standard, but do you think that I don't know if we can go back to that, though. We're so far over. We have it, though. They just won't show us, but it's definitely there. We definitely have a live stream for Knox. What happened to that? My favorite part about that is, do you know

what all the value that's supposedly in the U.S. Treasury is valued at or how it's written down on the books? Yeah, it's based off of, we talked about this, other day. No, it's based off of the standard that they set in like 1940. It's based off the standard they did when they confiscated it. So I think it's like $42 an ounce is how they're how it's written on the American books. So like gold is like 40, 50, 400? It's closing $5,000. Yeah.

No, on the American books, it's still considered $42 in hours. All right, FDR was the worst president. Don't you. Look it. Look at that. I confiscated the gold. I stand by. Didn't he actually make it illegal to hold gold for a while? He made it in 1934. And he confiscated. He confiscated it for $24 an ounce. And then the next year after they'd confiscated everything, they issued the Gold Reserve Currency Act, I think it was, where they basically said gold is now worth $35 an ounce. Now that we have it all.

Yeah, now that we have it all, it's also worth more. Go f*** yourselves. I hate FDR. Here's a piece of paper, though. Let me introduce you to Woodrow Wilson. No. Woodrow Wilson was a piece of shit.

He's literally a bill. Pretty bad. I always have more. room for hate in my heart. Woodrow Wilson, it's everything that has happened wrong. You know, like the last few months of his life, his wife was the president, right? Yeah. He had a stroke and his wife

was basically like making all decisions for him. He's on, he's on tour to like pass the League of Nations and he has a stroke. I sat down on a weird mom. I'm talking about Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson. What's going on? Woodrow Wilson. He's the

League of Nations. He's the devil, mama. The only reason that he became president was because of Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt ran as the bull Moose party and it split the vote. Yeah, the, what would it have been? If there was a singular Republican candidate. Was it Rutherford? I don't remember. Yeah, Rutherford B. Hayes.

And then the Republicans and Bull Moose, it was like 75% of the vote. But they split the vote. So Wilson won. Fucking bastard. Interesting. And the first movie he played at the White House was, Birth of a Nation. And he's not a good guy.

No, was he, uh, was it Cambridge? He went through. Princeton. Oh, Princeton, yeah. He was from the South, but he taught at Princeton, so he was the governor of New Jersey. I don't want him. You can have him. Like I said, nothing good comes from New Jersey.

Come on. Ouch. Ouch. Our guest. It's okay. You're Texan now. You're good now. Why don't you think we can go to any, like, go back to the gold standard or anything?

How would you, though? Because what would you do with, what are we? like $34 trillion or closing in a $40 trillion in debt? Like, how do you handle that? Like, I guess that's the problem. And that's the part I don't understand. Because if you did that, how would you crash the system? You know what I mean?

I guess that's the real problem is like, are we so far over that there's no way back? I guess is the real problem. I don't have a solution. I don't know. Cryptocurrency, telling you. I mean, we had that a sky a few months ago where it was just investing because some of the individuals in charge are starting their own cryptos, right? Yes.

And that's always a good indicator for what to invest in. But the simple way, too, is also just cutting, right? Like what we're doing with? Elon's. Yeah, what was it they had cut? Like all the aid we were given to other countries. It wasn't the State Department. USAID.

There we go. USAID. That was like a good first move. But at the same time, they moved some of the, spending on the State Department. We're still doing it. But so, like, we have to cut so we can actually fix it. And even the spending bills we do, we do these giant omnibus spills rather than individual spending bills. And you make these things that nobody can read. And it's like 9,000 pages,

you have 30 minutes vote on it. Like, that's a problem. Like, that's a real problem. It's one thing we've talked about. So it's like, I guess the first thing is you have to cut and then you kind of got to see where you stand. Can we cut stupid research? I get so annoyed by that. Like the one where they were doing with the dogs with Fauci? Any of them. I'm so sick of seeing... I just paid the P-Tax. I'm so sick.

I'm so sick of seeing like... Like, gender studies in Indonesia and like... A new study confirms, insert some common sense shit that we've known forever. Somebody with a PhD got a doctorate degree to figure out if it hurts to slam your dick in a car door for seven years. I think that would probably hurt. The news article where it's like, scientists conclude die included in Doritos can turn mice. invisible and then the top comment is, is this good? What are we supposed to do with that?

Nobody knows I'm eating them. I don't think a lot of people realize that. The main thing is they do not realize how much money we waste goes to fraud or just over. So in California, did you see the thing that came out of California like last week? Which one? It was the latest one where they looked into. The tunnel? No, no, no, no.

The one. Oh gosh, what do they call it? The counseling. it when you're dying, there's a name for it. Oh, hospice? Hospice, thank you. They looked into hospices in California.

And there are all these hospices where there's survival rates like 80%. You go into hospice like you typically die. Yeah, when you're dying. Like typically, I think it's like 15% survival rate for hospice. Like there is a survival rate. But they started looking into these hospices that they had, I think like 80 something percent survival rates. And they found out because they didn't have any people in hospice.

They were just taking the money. And then we look at what's happening. Minnesota. In Minnesota, they had these giant empty buildings. They were getting all this money. They had the Learing Center. So it's like you have things like that we're wasting billions of dollars. When I was an electrician, we had, I was remodeling a VA clinic and they were. And that's where we don't spend money and we should. They were changing a bunch of, this is how stupid the government is, though, like they were changing a bunch of like office and board meeting rooms into a bigger room for physical therapy. So I was going in, ripping out all these, you know, like commercial throw up walls,

redoing all the electrical, redoing the lighting, building this physical therapy room. And the person running the VA comes in and we were talking. And she's like, yeah, we're never going to use it. I go, what do you mean? She goes, oh, we're also building a new clinic that's going to be done. And we're going to move into that clinic before this is done. But we have to spend the money. But we have to spend the money because we allotted it two years ago.

So we have to spend the money on it. Because if you don't spend it, you lose it. And your budget goes down. Exactly. That's a problem. That's fucking stupid. There should be a reward for your budget going down. We just have this conversation.

Literally you just had this conversation. Hey, you cut your budget. You get to keep 10% of it. Yeah. When this is logical, it's wild to me. And it's not being applied. It's like, hey, this is this common sense, right? Everyone gets this.

Nah, we need to that. Yeah, they don't want their appropriations to go down. So Nick Shirley, that's the next thing he did after the Minnesota. was like, oh, there's a lot of these places in California. Hospice centers. And it's just a hotel essentially. With an 86% survival rate, they have really good hospice services. No one's there.

If I'm dying, it's all moved to California. And bring you back to life. With Ryden for looking for just a facility for ABA in Seattle, it was wild because baby mom was going and asking these things. She's like, man, this feels like a scam. I'm just letting you know. I was like, huh, weird. And then they start adding on.

I'm like, oh, they're expecting, this is not private. They're expecting government to pay where I'm paying out of pocket. So they're just trying to hit with $3,000 for a single session and then showing up just to view the place with a grand. Well, then New Jersey, I think it's Lakewood, New Jersey. It's like central New Jersey. It's where all the Hasidic Jewish communities are. They claim to have more.

kids than they have for the tax deduction. Like, this stuff is a problem. Like, that's a real problem. And we're talking about the national debt and that people can't buy food and we're doing this. Like, that's a real problem. And it's not millions. This is like billions and trillions of dollars that go towards this each of year.

I love the Weigart Tower in California. What's the Weigart Tower? The Weigart Tower is the high-rise, the high-rise homeless shelter. Oh, where they built them all studio apartments for $165 million for 275 apartments, meaning that is $600,000 per studio apartment. Let me guess the contractor donated to the governor in the same. I'm sure the idea, but I just rewatched there's a clip on the unsubbed clips channel of me ranting about when I was in California with Jake.

And I looked at this building and I was like, what the fuck is this building? Because all of this, it's this giant glass tower. And it looks like Mad Max. Like the windows are busted out. They're literally one of them. There's a flat screen TV dangling by the power cable blowing in the wind. And I was like, what is this? And he told me it's that.

It's that high-rise building that they built for the homeless people, which apparently did not work out. It looks. Yeah, it looks like a third. Like, it looks like it was, I think it was six months old at this time. And it looks like, you know, like a dystopian futuristic. movie where all the windows are blown out and there's graffiti all over everything. But I just saw some breakdown of the financial spending that California or lost, I think it was Los Angeles County specifically, had spent on attempting to solve the homelessness crisis

in the last maybe five years. I'm pulling this out of my ass. Like five years. And it was a few hundred million dollars. And when you break it down, this guy's going through like what they could have bought instead. of, you know, how they wasted this money, like on that tower. Well, that was a few hundred million dollars. So maybe it was in the billions.

I think it was eight billion. I know the stat you're looking at. Yeah. So at the end of it, it's like they literally could have given each homeless person like $180,000 cash. You got to pull that. Well, how about this one? $161,000 per person.

Because, oh, what's better about the $24 billion bill when they were building all these apartments, they spent $600,000. million and they go, oh, we don't have enough. Scrap it. Walk away. That's what they did. They just walked away. So I'm in like the metro area for New York City, right?

Like I'm like 45 minutes to an hour from the city without traffic. You know, with traffic, it's a couple hours. But the Roosevelt Hotel is where they're keeping a lot of the, like it's not a hotel anymore. They're using as a shelter for a lot of the illegals that are coming here. If you walk out front of it, there's a dumpster standing out front. People don't believe me until they walk down the street. just text me about this today. He's like, it's real. It's there. There's a dumpster out front

where all of the stuff they're collecting to like give to the illegals, like the new stuff, there's brand new strollers, kids stuff just thrown in a dumpster. Your tax dollars bought that stuff that's sitting in the dumpster. Like, oh, we have so much other stuff. We don't want this other brand new stuff you're giving us. Like there's so much wasted money. It's a real problem. Can't go to Americans, God forbid. Like people don't believe me until they go to the city. They look at the Roosevelt Hotel. They see the dumpster out front. They're like, that stroller still has the tags on it. What is happening? Your tax dollars bought that stroller that they didn't want that's in that dumpster. It's the wild thing and it's hard to show

because you will have that blind faith. The government's good. They love you and they would never do that. And if you present it, you're just racist or whatever. Was it Ronald Reagan said that the scariest words are I'm from the government and I'm here to help. But it's just crazy. That is a problem and still not addressed in any ways. But this goes back to Rome, right? Like, if you destroy your money, you know, you can, like, the other two problems that I talk about that you see in collapsing societies, they aren't great, but you can work around them if you have a strong currency. What are the other two problems, sorry? So the other two are a border control issue, like in the third century, Rome stopped caring by their borders,

and then also politicians get short-sighted and just care about now. They don't care about the future. They don't care about what they're creating for future generations. But if you destroy your money like this, especially with all this wasteful spending that nobody's doing anything about. They're just allowing to do it. You're in big trouble. You really are. You're right. We should let everybody vote on it. What? That's the clip. I never said that. I didn't see it. We got a communist Mick. Famed communist, communism lover because it's a human right? Yeah. Fuck it. Why not? I think, well, I just, you know, the older I get, the less cool democracy sounds. I can tell you the moment I lost faith in democracy.

When's that? I was in a Verizon. And I'm sitting there getting a new phone. Oh. And this woman walks in and she's got a surge protector power strip with like the seven plugins in one hand and her phone charger in the other hand. And she storms up to the guy that's helping me. and he's like, can't help you, ma'am?

She goes, yeah, I was just here the other day, and I bought this phone charger. He goes, okay. And she goes, it doesn't work. And he goes, like when you plug it in, it doesn't charge the phone. She goes, I can't even plug it in. He goes, what do you mean?

And she grabs the brick and the receptacle. And you know how they have the fold-in prongs now? Oh, she couldn't fold them out? They were folded in still, and she just smacks two pieces of plastic together like he's a f***ing idiot. And he grabs it and folds out the prongs and plugs it in for her. And then she feels dumb and goes, thanks and storms out.

And I was just like, her vote counts for as much as mine. Nick's told this story before. I have. Yeah. I used to work at a Verizon store. Trust me, the amount of people I would sell them a cell phone. And then they would come in and they'd be like, my Facebook doesn't work. And I'm like, what?

They're like, Facebook doesn't work. Just boomers. and I would have to, I'd be like, okay, so they don't know how to log into Facebook. What do you mean you don't know my Facebook password? That's what would happen. It's on the cell phone. You're the cell phone guy. It's my job to sell you the fucking phone.

I don't, it's on you to figure out how to fucking work it. They're so intuitive. We're literally, deja vu. We've had this exact conversation before. They're so intuitive. You can see videos of like people on missions. in like sub-Saharan Africa and they hand like some kid

in a grass skirt an iPad and they figure it out like instantaneously. It's very intuitive. People struggle. I'm trying to find the one where it was against Elon and it was an upvoted comment of Elon could give

everyone 1.2 million. Every United States Citizen. Citizen. 1.2 million dollars. And he would still have millions for himself. That's how selfish he is. And it's upvoted to the top.

I'm like, oh my God, this means. She thinks he has all that money liquid. It's not even that. He doesn't even have that much money. It's simple division. Oh, that's right. The real math was like $1,000 per day. It was insane.

And the math was wrong, the concept's wrong. And the amount of grown-ass adults that genuinely think Elon Musk has $700 billion sitting in a checking account. that he's just not giving to the federal government is fucking insane to me. You guys stupid to me if you had it just sitting in a checking account? Oh, Lord. When I was 10...

Bank goes under, he's broke. When I was 10 and found out that they didn't just have a mountain of gold in the vault holding on to the... Like Scrooge McDuck. $8,000 in my account. What do you mean?

You don't have a drawer with 8,000 of my dollars in it. So, kid, we're going to talk about something called fractional reserve banking. This is going to hurt a little bit. Oh, man. But trust me, Afterwards, you'll feel better.

Jeremy, before we move to the after show, where do the people find you? So I'm on all socials at, I'm at Jeremy Ryan Slate. My company is Commander Brand. We help our clients to get on podcasts. And I have two YouTube channels, the Roman Pattern and Hidden Forces in History. It has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming in.

This is got tism for two hours. I love the back and forth between modern day rants and ancient. rolling history. It constantly road to roller coaster. It works, though. Oh, that's going to do real good. It was like, autism for two hours. Piss tax.

The best tax. How we all started out? I have unmedicated ADHD. That's what Booze is for. Thank you once again for joining us today on the unsubscribe podcast. As always, I was joined by Eli Double Tap, Nick the Fat Electrician, and Mr. Jeremy Ryan Slate, as well as myself, King Trout.

Thanks for hanging around. around. Fishman. Stay strong. Around for the after show. We've done one story at the beginning and you'll see the rest. We love you.