And we have a special hone guest today. He's an American political commentator. He calls himself an amateur historian, but I wouldn't really consider him that. He's a podcaster, former radio show host. And Dan Carlin.
How you doing, Dan, I'm well, thank you for having me on the show.
Oh you bet.
First of all, I have to say how pleased I am that you're talking to us today. I'm a real big fan of yours, and I hope to turn some of our listeners onto you and they'll become your fans as well.
Well, we would love that you do two podcasts.
I'm going to start out first by talking about the one you do more often, which is called common Sense, and then we'll get right into the hardcore history, which we're going to focus on today.
A little bit.
About common Sense from I listened to all of it now. I mean I started out listening to you with the hardcore history, and then I got involved in the common Sense and I'm telling you some of the things you uncover, it just makes me wonder, why isn't anyone doing something about this?
Can you talk about that?
You know? Actually, I think that's the most interesting aspect. And we actually talk about that all the time here. We don't understand why no one else is talking about it either, And I feel like it's a real I mean, on a personal sense, it's a blessing because it's great
to have no competition. In another sense, though, I mean, if you're really worried about some of these problems we talk about, it'd be a little bit more encouraging to think that there was a whole lot more people talking about it, just that talking about things from a typical Republican or Democrat talking point. I think all that stuff's hurting is more than helping us these days.
And you think you see more of that out there in the.
Old mainstream media. But maybe we're benefiting from the fact you don't.
Yeah, So I just want to tell you, speaking of this podcast in particular, are common sense. It's called I listened to a YouTube earlier. There's a podcast that you did back in two thousand and seven when you totally predicted the economic crash that was about to happen.
How did you do that?
Well, you know, really that's just a function of history. I mean, eventually, I mean, I think we human beings get stuck in this idea that the way things are are. We just plan on that if you go to a meeting with your financial advisor, for example, as you have one, they're going to sit down and they're going to show you a graph of how the American economy has been
doing since the Second World War. And of course what I always say back to them is, you know, there was an economy before the Second World War, and once you realize that, you see, oh, you know, everything goes up and down in cycles. Just because we haven't had something really bad happen to us, history show is just
going to happen again. So I think I was more citing with history in that sense, just saying, you know, it's like people who said that the tech bubble would never burst as stocks and you just sit there and go, really, it's going to go on forever. So I mean, I think we just got lucky in predicting a typical cycle that we're always living.
There right right now?
Do you use a lot of historical events and you're thinking when you do those particular podcasts, I'm.
Actually stuck that way. I mean, I think we all organize our framework for thinking differently, and in my case, I just sort of base everything on history. That's how my mind operates, for better or for worse. I think that gives me other blind spots too. But we always brought a lot of history into our political current events show, and that's what gave someone else the idea that maybe we could do a history show too. It wasn't my idea that just heard a lot of history in our
common sense shows. So yeah, I've always used that as sort of one of the foundations that we try to work off of.
I was looking at your Wikipedia page and it says that you're an amateur historian. Now that just just means that you don't have a degree in history.
Is that?
Is that what it means by that.
I do actually have a degree in history.
It's just a.
BA University of Colorado. And when you want to call yourself a historian, by our modern standards, you really should have a PhD.
I see.
And so I don't want any historians to get mad at me. I like to consider myself in the vein of you know, what they used to call an oral historian. And you can go back and it's like the minstrels in medieval times or the traditional storytellers that you'll see in tribal societies where they will relate the stories of the past to the young people with all its grandeur and drama. You know, people sometimes, you know.
One of the criticisms I hear about our show.
Is that it's a little melo dramatic.
And the way I answer that is that I'm.
Specifically choosing topics that are wonderfully dramatic, and I'm trying.
To get away from the names and the days and.
All that and give people a sense for how dramatic these events really were. And so I think that's why. I think that's why the whole thing works.
Okay, so let's jump right into this hardcore history. And again that's how I found you. I was actually found your podcast by going into iTunes and just looking for anything history related. The one thing I got to say about I really love the out of the box thinking you have when you're doing your podcasts. Do you have to plan way ahead on doing a particular podcast.
It's a little different for each show. The Common Sense Show is a version of a program I used to do on radio, and my lifestyle is almost a tune to it. While I'm reading things, I'm marketing and cutting things out. So I've got that kind of down to a science, and that doesn't take that much work. That history show is a lot more labor intensive. We work very hard on it, and it's hard on us mentally.
I wish sometimes I had a bigger you know, like one of those aliens with a giant head, who with an IQ of three hundred, because sometimes I literally feel like I'm pushing my men to the limits. But I'm sure it's a.
Lot of work, and a lot of the stuff you talk about it just simply couldn't be found in text.
Where do you come up with all this information?
You know, one of the places, Because that's a very broad question. I'm not sure I have the answer, but.
I do know that when I was a history major.
Back in college, and you would you would have conversations with the other history majors. This is the kind of weird stuff we would all talk about. I mean, when you're a history geek, there are certain you know, you can go to our websites out there that discuss things like alternative history, what if the Germans had won the Second World War or something like that.
That's fascinating.
Yeah, that's all the stuff that history geeks geek out on and I think a lot of those kinds of thinking are people. You know, history majors will talk about this stuff amongst themselves.
I like the show you did of effects on alcohol and drugs on past events. I mean, that's something I don't think too many people would have ever thought of.
It really makes sense.
You know, And truthfully, that came from a couple of stories that I had read. One was a question about whether Napoleon had been influenced by taking opium.
The night before for some painful ailment of his And they were just a couple of those stories out there.
Like that, and I thought, how weird is it to think that we can talk about how much of an effect things like alcohol or tobacco or anything like that has on our modern culture, but just because the sources aren't telling us about it in the past. I mean, you've got to think that those people were at least as affected as we are.
And I think you start wondering, well, if they were, does that explain.
You know, by Napoleon's conduct at Waterloo that day? For example? Yeah, that was a fun one.
H Yeah, that was great, It was great.
And another one I really enjoyed or just never really thought deeply about it, but was slavery you know, you think about slavery more in contemporary terms when I say contemporary in the last three three hundred years, but you went way way back, and if I can quote you, I believe you said something along the lines of we all have slaves flood running through our veins, you.
Know, And that was It was funny because while I was doing the research for that show, and maybe it's because we're here in the United States and we're and and when you talk about slavery, our slavery was so relatively recent in historical times that it still dominates all of our conversation about it, except that it's such an age old human institution that if you want to sort of give the long view of it, well, most of us have been slaves at one time or another, with the way we're all related.
In the way that different societies, I mean, the.
Romans used to enslaved all sorts of people. We don't think of in the United States as having ever been slaves.
And I think if i'm you know, the while now since we did that show, but I think we were talking about slavery as the original labor saving device yes, you call it, and how that once upon a time in caveman times, not quite cave man times, but really early the history of people slavey may actually have been some sort of a human rights advancement, because the way you got slaves was by not killing some prisoner on the battlefield, and you'd make a deal with them and say.
Okay, I won't kill you, but you have to do what I say the rest of your life.
Strange to think of history as some sort of a human progression in morality or civilization, isn't it? Yes?
And I do recall you pointing out that it was a stagnation as far as developing inventions and things, right because they just relied on slaves to do the work.
Well, that's the theory. There were all these stories about how, for example, in some of the slave areas in South America, they didn't develop water systems and plumbing until later than the surrounding areas because they had slaves to go get the water for them, so there was never any need to be filled. That's fascinating right.
Now, speaking along those lines, what would make someone remain a slave just fear of being killed?
Basically the way.
I think I think that's a tough question for modern minds. Yeah, I think, first of all, I think the situation differs in different situations. I mean, that's the ones here in the United States were particularly horrifying and cruel, but there are tribal societies where being a slave is sometimes almost
like being an extended member of the family. If you were a Greek slave in Roman times and you weren't working in a mine or one of those terrible jobs, you might be employed as a tutor in the household. I mean, it's not a wonderful life per se, but it's not what we always associate with, say, you know, channel slavery in the US South or something, so maybe
that has something to do with it. But even then Rome had huge uprising with hundreds of thousands of armed slaves fighting against you know, Rome's armies at times, so I don't think people always did put up.
With that's amazing, amazing. And then you did a segment on World War Two, which.
I thought, because I've know a good part of the twentieth century, with the least half of it, I don't think of it as being that brutal, but it really was. Some of the things you point out between the Russians and the Germans were just amazing the way they brutalized each other.
I think history is certainly going to record that the twentieth century is the most brutal century there ever was. It depends on how you can measure it, but in terms of like overall human sufferings, the twentieth century is a pretty bad one. And yeah, we chose the Eastern Front, specifically the war between the Germans and the Russians, because most of us here in the United States don't focus
on that. We like to focus on our involvement, and you know, conversely, the Russians like to focus on their involvement. But it's a whole part of that war that if you took it out of the context of the Second World War, just what we call the Eastern Trust, that's just like the biggest war in history.
All by itself, right, right.
It was a massive amount of people, and it was a war to the absolute finish in a way that I don't think the United States, I don't think we've ever fought away like that, where it was a war for the absolute finish. And on the Eastern Front, you really got a chance to see what man's in humanity demand needs.
Right, right?
A lot of times I think you get into these real brutal subjects, but you know, that's that's what war was.
It was very cruel and brutal.
I guess that's one of the things that fascinates me. But it's the extremes of human experience.
And that's why I can't enjoy fiction.
Anymore, because it's one thing to sit in your house and write about the extremes of human situations.
It's another thing to read about people that actually had to live through it.
Right now, what do you have on the horizon coming up?
I'm stuck in a long series we're going to probably do on the fall of the Roman Republic. And it's following a typical pattern with me where I completely pick a wrong topic that's going to be too big that I'm never going to be able to and finish. And so I've just done it again. So I figure I'm trapped for a while here in this Roman Republic stuff.
Wow, And do you have people helping you with the research you do on this that's classified?
I don't blame you.
I'll just say that it's no more than one if it is. Indeed, one, and it's not Ben right, I can't say anything about that.
I was going to ask you about then, but yeah.
I know he's everybody wants to know. I'm sorry. Dan.
Let's talk a little bit about your discussion board. That's a very active, very active sight.
Yes, you know, and.
And and having no experience with it, I'm a little
surprised by how it's turned out. I have to say that sometimes I feel like a parent where you almost feel like you know you've created something that's going to go off on its own to college now and have its own life because the people that have gone to the discussion board, it's this wonderful place to be in terms of if you want to discuss political events or things in an atmosphere with a wide variety of people who try to be somewhat polite night that has little
to do with me, and yet you we post this thing. It's it's that's a fun development as part of the new meeting.
So it's just taken off on its own really now.
Well we helped it along initially like a kid, but I mean now it's the people who are there that make.
It what it is right right now.
One thing I know from experience when I'm talking on these podcasts or when I'm doing anything, even when it comes to cataloging antiques, you name it. People love to certain people, I should say, love to pick out out your mistakes that must happen.
Oh yeah, well listen, there's no question about that.
I mean, how do you mention that? I mean we get of course, we.
Get tons of email from people you must pronounce this. Oh yeah, I don't think you and offering tons of advice and all kinds of things. I mean that comes with the territory.
Well, I talked to a guy that does historical maritime paintings and when he's doing the painting of the Harvard he tries to research even erosion on the shoreline and everything to get it just right. And he says sometimes someone will contact him and say the building was over looks like maybe three or fourth feet to the left a little bit. You know, let's just take apart everything. So yeah, it's interesting.
Well, especially if you try to just talk and not have everything written down, you're going to make mistakes just by this year nature. You know, we're all people and things come out wrong, and your choices are to you know, just continue to focus on perfection or to sit there and say but in the audience knows what people do, and most people aren't bothered by that stuff. Hopefully, I have my fingers crossed.
Now, you've had a couple of good interviews yourself, that you've talked to people.
Burke was on the phone, right.
Oh, yeah, he was great. I mean, if you talk about people that I pay money to sit and have lunch with, that guy, James Burke, he's as high of my list as anybody.
Yes, yes, And I heard you mentioned Shelby Foot the other day. He was the person I would have loved to have listened to.
Yes, I have a soft spot in my heart for all those kind of people, if only because you know, I mean, you sit there and Shelby's foot. I mean, think of the story that he'd be able to relate the graces of a war historian. And it's not just that it's not just that they can relate all this stuff because they have the knowledge, but the way that they convey it is, Yes, is you know you're at rapt attention the whole time by their style.
Yeah, he was my favorite in ken Burns a series.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, he was great. He was great.
Now, have you ever considered doing anything like the American Revolution or anything like that, or the Civil War? Or do you think those have just touched on too often?
Well, you know, part of the problem of doing these things and people request things all the time, and they think I have knowledge enough to take their request and actually turn them into a program. But everything we talk about on the show is something that I already have a certain base amount of knowledge off of. Otherwise there'd be no way to educate myself enough to do the podcast within the time limit. So when people bring up something like the Civil War, I know there's a ton
of people who'd love to hear that. It's just not a subject that I'm strong enough in to do a good enough job to meet anyone's expectations.
So I'm living that is by my own.
Limitations like that mm hm.
But I'm sure if you did something like that, you'd probably take your typical approach.
Well, the fun I mean the fun you know, when you're talking about events like this, the word fund doesn't really fit. But the fun part, the fun part about the Civil Wars is that there's always and we'll get into this in the in the one on the Roman Republic that we're doing now, because.
There are a bunch of civil wars in that too.
The interesting part is to look at the brother versus brother aspect or how, how, how how unbelievably repressed these people are in terms of being angry at their own countrymen and how that sometimes comes out and what happens. And truthfully, the US Civil War was gentlemanly compared to things like the Roman one.
Oh really wow, Well.
They had scores to settle, believe, politics turned deadly violent in the in the Roman Republic.
M Now, I'm just going to ask you, do you collect anything yourself?
Because I know you collect books, don't you.
Yes, well, my wife would say obsessively collective. I just feel like I buy them and never throw them away. I don't know if that's collecting or not. I definitely have a bit of a book fetish.
I guess other things as well, are just books.
Well, you know, people send me stuff, really, and it's amazing. A lot of them are German. For some reason, German listeners feel like they need to send you stuff, and I'm glad they do because I'll get all these little historical knicknacks from people. Wow, guys. Yet the last guy sent me a little piece of a broken clay you know, those big clay jars with the narrownecks that in ancient
times would hold wine or olive oil or something. I guess there's a big site in North Africa or something where these things are all piled up in giant garbage from ancient times. And so he got me one of the ones that's twenty four hundred years old or something stamped by an archaeologist, and that sits on my shelter. It just looks like a broken piece of track. You never know how old the human hands where the oldest thing in my community. Probably now the side benefit.
To what we do, sure, sure, Now, how did you when you first took the leap out of radio jumping into doing this on the internet. Were you a little nervous at first?
Well that's harder to point out, because I got into radio years ago when radio was a really good profession for the host to be in, and while I was in it got to watch his decline to a place where, you know, radio wasn't really very much fun to do anymore, And so I was looking as a lot of other people were too for Okay, how can I continue to do what it is I do and do it in a way different from what corporate radio has become. So
I was looking for me and revitalized me. I was looking at not continuing radio at all just because of what it has become in terms of creativity or the latitude you would have to try new and different things.
I felt really stifled by that. And once you got the opportunity to do podcasting, it was like getting a blank white, you know, creative board to start playing on, no rule, no one you had to go on, you know, confirm what you wanted to do with no no judge who had to say this is or isn't good enough to show to an audience. I mean I felt the whole thing was revitalizing. Wow. Wow.
I think a few other people share that. We had Adam Carolla on here a while back, and you know, he's he had to believe he has the number one podcast that there is.
I'm pretty sure he does, or one of them.
You know, He's really taken this thing and taken off with it, you know, and I think it's a great idea, and that's kind of how I got into it. You know, there was no one doing anything on auctions and antiques and art.
And stuff like that all in one.
You know, there was one guy focusing on like eBay auctions and stuff like that, so might as well try.
It right and now. And what ended up happening After a while, You you create your own little digital space, you know, where you've become the auction guy and it becomes part of you know, if people want to listen to a podcast, you're known, and you're the one with the reviews, you're the one. I mean, that's what we're really enjoying. We compared it to the Oklahoma land Rush once and early on we thought, okay, it's just about going and finding your little space in the Internet world
and then defending it. You know. Yeah, so do we have our little history space and our little politics and Corona event space, you have your auction space.
That was a the Oklahoma land Rush. I saw something on that one time where they just the line came down at twelve noon and they all just ran and grabbed their spot right listen.
Can you imagine if we could do that again today?
That'd be awesome.
A lot of happy people.
Yeah, we could probably do it, like in somewhere we wouldn't want to be still.
Well, well, I listened Oklahoma at the time was a little hostile and dangerous, and those people weren't going to have an easy time of it. The free land is free land.
Isn't it right?
Right?
Do you have like a year from now I'm going to get into this type of historic podcast or anything like that. I mean, how how far I know I'm jumping around here, but how far in advance do you have things planned?
Well? Part of the problem is we go so slowly that I mean, it takes us so long to do each episode, and then I'll do these multi part episodes, so all you have to have is five or six things planned, and you're you're looking at the next two years or something. So I have a lot of great stories to tell, and they're all super dramatic, and they fall along similar lines, I think, to what we've done already. But someday I'd like to do the Crusades, or at
least the first Crusades. And I always like to try to pick something where it tries to shed a little light on the current situation as possible. Yeah, and so I think the Crusades would be fun. But to me, that's just like jumping into another black hole. Just like all these other subjects that are really too big to cover, you end up when you add up all the episodes
you did. Unlike that German Russian podcast you talked about, I mean, that becomes like a mini book after a while, and so I mean, you're really almost doing a surialized book. And so I'm still learning, I think, how to do the history podcast. And what they ought to mean is the political one is so much more like radio or a regular podcast. It's easier to understand. We don't even know still what the plan is with hardcore history, but certainly I'll get to crusade at some.
Point, now, I know. I wait patiently. Every it's about every two months, right for hardcore.
History it is, and then and everybody gets on me. I'm really an everybody dog house all the time.
You just get emails from people like where is it? Where is it?
I get I get people that just go I got one the other day where somebody just send an email and all I said it had no actual message, was just a subject line that when with a big explanation, you know, so hey, listen, those are blessings though, right, I mean, yeah, they could be thank don't give me anymore, and then where would we be right right now?
Do you do you have you must have listeners worldwide? Guess yeah, don't you have?
I think all podcast dude, don't that? Yeah?
I know, but you was you were saying earlier you get things from Germany, so places you would think of other languages.
You know, you're still getting people listening to all over.
I know I have one listener in Korea, but I can't think of any other, you know, language barrier countries.
At this though.
I think that's one of the things that makes it that would make.
It hard to go back and do traditional radio again, because you feel like, once you've been broadcasting to potentially anywhere, you know, if you go back on a radio somewhere, you're only reaching as far as the transmitter reaches. I've become, you know, I'm enjoying being able to talk to anybody anywhere. It's real.
It's a real cool thing.
I did a show once where I was talking about Nigeria and I was I was talking about corruption, and I said that if the United States isn't careful, someday we'll be like, oh, I looked at the corruption list online and Nigeria is down at the very bottom. So I said, we might be like Nigeria. And then I said my apologies to any.
Nigerian listeners, to like three Nigerian listeners, and I got an email from a guy who said, okay, okay, I'm Nigerian and I listened with my Nigerian friend and all I want to.
Know is who's the third Nigerians? And then that happened.
You think, oh, going back to radio, even if you were.
In New York City would be like a demotion.
After that at this point, wow, yeah, that's a really good point.
So where do you think the future of all this is going podcasting?
Well, you know, I get a little scared, and I tend to be a little conspiratorial and pessimistic, so take this with a grain of solve. But I get a little scared about all the net neutrality questions because for most people that sort of stuff doesn't mean anything, but for podcasters that I mean when they talk about slowing down delivery of some kinds of content, I mean, we're the kinds of content you're talking about, the people that don't pay them a lot of money. So I've become
a little worried about things like that. For the future podcasting, I think without those kind of problems, the future podcasting is unlimited and you're going to see more and more niche market serve. That was telling my wife the other day. It won't be very long before every school has their own podcast and they can keep informed on what's going on there and every little league league and they'll talk about what happened in those most recent games and what
you can get at a snack stand on sale. You're gonna see podcasts reaching into narrower and narrower, more niche markets, and that's you know, like I said, if things don't happen at a higher level with the rise from Google and quests and at and t that that that hurt you ability of us to get our podcast to our audience.
Wow, yeah, it's just going to be like diluted almost like that, or.
Or like you know, I saw ones where they said that the regular published Internet will just be this ad late thing where nobody wants to go unless you have to. And you know, the people that will be able to deliver podcasts at a reasonable speed will be like ESPN and The New York Times and it'll take eighteen hours to get fine in your works.
Oh wow, I.
Don't know if that don't really happen, don't can talk about my paranoid fears at night. That's what I'm afraid of.
Well, let's look back in history. Is anything like that happen in history?
Actually, I look at radio. You know, radio when it first came out, you used to be able to walk with a transmitter. It was this giant, big, bulky backpack looking things. But you could walk around with a transmitter on your back and broadcast and you know you're going to range like three or four miles, which in a place like New York City, you'd have an audience, and they had to make something illegal because they crossed over.
Once you sold legitimate signals to legitimate radio stations, you couldn't have all these guys with radio backpacks, you know, transmitting and screwing up your signal. So once upon a time radio was like the internet.
Well yeah, back, wasn't it Armstrong and all those guys doing different things with radio?
I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, so, Dan, one of the questions I had when I was thinking of after I listened to your podcast, it seems like you're totally saying everything right off the cuff, like you don't have any papers you're looking at, and it's just a very good oration.
Is that is that kind of what you do? You just think of what you're gonna say, and you.
Just you just talked for the for the for the Common Sense show, that is what I do. That is yes, and so the for the History Show. I don't know that we've even got that down to the science. I don't know that we have a specific myth if we do it all the time. A lot of times I try to just start talking and go as far as I can before the narration wills to say, and then we'll usually say that, and then I'll try to pick up where we stop to keep going, and then we edit those things together.
Oh I see, uh huh uh up in front of me, probably not in front of you.
I have the list of the the hardcore history episodes that you had.
I'm just going to touch a little bit on them, and you can just tell me a little bit about what they're were about, if that's.
Okay, Sure, Okay, we'll start all the way back.
I tried to find your earlier podcast and I couldn't find them on iTunes.
But all the way back to episode number one, Alexander.
This is the title topic, Alexander Versus Hitler.
That was the first one we ever did not quite sure what we were trying to do either, if you notice, it's only fifteen minutes long. And now they're like these mammoth productions. I think I thought I'd be able to just whip out one of these shows every week or two. And I think we could really hear almost our treatment if you were going to try to sell the show to a TV network. That's like an example of one of our shows when we didn't know what the heck we were doing.
Uh huh, Yeah, my first show was really really bad.
I hope no one even listens to it.
Actually, well, and you know, not that it's so bad, but that we didn't know what we were trying to. I mean, I always say that each podcast is like a TV series, and it takes a few shows sometimes it's like ten to evolve into what you're going to be. And you know that's the famous true, certainly for hardcore history.
All right, now, I'm just going to go through a couple and pick out a couple more let's see Romancing the try Ah.
That was a that was a show where we found two figures, uh that One was an Indian chief name to come up right. Another was a Celtic leader named Jerking Gheericks, and the similarities between these guys lived centuries apart, and yet both of them tried to rally tribesmen around to resist, you know, the threat of you know, the Gallic chieftain was.
Worried about the Romans and the Indian chieftain was.
Worried about the American expansion. And so these were two guys who lived a millennia of parts that it seemed to be the same person. Reborn Alow had fun preparing and trapping them.
See that's what I'm talking about when I say that you have such an interesting take on parts of history. I think that's what I find the most fascinating. And while I'm giving a little praise, I also like the way you you asked questions on your on your podcasts. Pose a question that's really funny, and.
Then the question asking. I mean, that's just because I don't oh, I mean, I think it's one of the freedoms of being a fan rather than an expert. I think if you're an expert, saying you don't know doesn't sound that good. I obviously have no problem saying it because I really don't know, So I think it makes ask me questions easy sometimes.
Uh huh, okay. And number eight was Stars of the Great War.
Wow, that's the one we did. You know, Actually we did that about the First World War. And I thought about it because I remember Foss from college where we were learning about it, and the professor brought in lives of medical photographs taken people who were injured in the First World War, and then these black and white pictures that are absolutely unbelievable. I mean, one was and I
don't even know how that guy lived. It literally showed a guy who had a hole through his head so you could see what was behind him, and he was fine walking around in the nineteen twenties, but it was his war wound. And those people were all walking around Europe at this time like living reminders of that terrible, par rible First World War. And so we went into sort of the overtones of this thing without really getting into the war itself. During branch.
Wow, you can really see through that guy. Huh.
It was the most unbelievable photo, like like like that I've ever seen?
Wow, is that something?
And then you get into the Bronze Age and number nine darkness buries the Bronze Age.
That's the story about these invasions. The Bronze Age is one of those periods where you know, human civilizations spiked up for a while on the civilizations graft, and then it came to an end rather abruptly, and you can.
Almost see all the little.
Lights twinkling out of these civilizations as some sort of malevolent force moves across the mass from either north to south or west to east, and.
No one really knows what happened.
So we were talking about some of the theories and some of the records that did exist and what it must have been like, and of course asking a bount of questions.
Mmmmm, Punic Nightmares. That was a very good, good one.
There was the first one where we started getting into real trouble though, because it becomes a multi part episode. Yes, and it turns what was I mean? You know, putting a podcast together anyone who's done it knows is a little like a chess game when you're putting all the pieces together and making it all work. That's turned into like a three dimensional chess game because you had to remember what was going on in the first episode where we were still doing the third and make it all work.
I'm glad you liked it. That one was a I still hurt.
I think somewhere from that one took a lot out of your home.
Yes, I'm permanently starry.
Well, Dan, this is great.
Now, I just want to ask you, do you have time to do anything else besides these podcasts.
I have to honestly say, I've never been as busy as I am now, and it's one of those deals where you enjoy it, so it makes it a lot easier. But I never had a job, either when I was in news or radio or anything when I've worked as many hours as I work now. And there's so and you'll know, there's so much to this that the average person doesn't see because they consume the podcast that keeps you and keeps me and keeps all the other podcasters popping all the time behind the scenes. So I have no time.
You have no time, But do you really you can tell you really enjoy doing it?
Your question about radio a lot.
I mean, I think I enjoy doing it.
I mean, I know podcasters who are hoping to get a radio gig out of their podcast, and I always feel sorry.
For them because they don't know what I mean.
They're in the better men, They're in the better place now, and I think that if there is any enthusiasm, it's the fact that this is a really fun place to be in a creative sense right now. And by the way, i'd encourage any of your audience members has ever been thinking.
About doing anything like this.
It's tough, it's a lot of work, but there's a lot of really satisfying parts to it. And if I want to do it, I do it now before before the net neutrality shuts us all down for the lack of net.
Neutrality, right right, Okay, Dan, Well, let's give out your your website.
Just go to Dan Harlan dot com. You can get the current shows, the old shows, pretty much everything we do sort of headlines there, or you can always go to iTunes.
iTunes and podcast Ali and this on and on and on and ghost well and listen.
I'm glad to see here. You guys are going strong. I mean, I really root for the podcasters.
Yes, well, thank you and it's been a real pleasure.
Dan.
This is Martin Willis with Dan Carlin and we're signing off