Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Allaway. Tracy, do you remember the episode that we did was not long after the election at the time and maybe still is one of our biggest most popular Odd Lots ever. Oh, it's definitely one of my personal favorites. And it was one of the earliest odd Lots episodes as well. Right, I guess maybe at the time being the biggest at the time is not saying as much, but nonetheless it was.
It was very popular. We talked to an archaeologist about civilizational collapse, right, not just any archaeologists, though, one who has been called at various times the real life Indiana Jones. Right. So, I was like right after the election, and of course, like half the country was really freak out. You know, half the country is probably thrilled. They half the country that was really freaking out was very interested in this idea, like, oh God, what does the end of civilization looks like?
Look like? Because maybe that's what we're seeing now, right, And so we brought on an expert, a literal expert in the end or collapses of civilizations, right, And so very all the ominous signs we walked through it. He's an expert on the collapse of the minds. And you know what parallels, if any, there are between then and what we're seeing in modern society in the US, Well, we have them back. That is very exciting. Exactly. So we were once again talking about collapse and ancient civilizations,
but our guests this time. He has been doing more work lately, specifically on like parallels to kind of the business world and sort of taking theories from management and ekenn mix and applying them to see what parallels there are between that and again the what causes an organization
to collapse? So I find this really interesting because at the moment, in particular, you have a lot of handwringing over what's going on with the big tech firms, and of course, for technology, culture is such an embedded aspect of a tech firm, and so people are talking about whether or not those tech firms are maybe not going to collapse, although I guess you know there's a question mark over things like we work, but whether or not they're heading for hard times and how that culture is
feeding into that and even if you don't get outright collapse Like this idea of sort of endemic cultural problems that lead to rot, I think is a really important phenomenon across all kinds of businesses beyond tech. Like just think about banks and or think about a bank like Wells Fargo that has had numerous fines and scandals over the years. Despite the best efforts of management to root out all that stuff. It should extraordinarily difficult, it seems to undo the rot that can form and set a
complex organization. Right, So, how does that culture, how does that organizational structure within a company actually impact its business, and how does it change over time? And what can we learn from the mayans to preserve the robustness of companies? All right, So, without further ado, we want to bring back for a repeat performance on odd LODs. Arthur Demrist. He's the Ingram Professor of Anthropology and director at Vanderbilt's
Institute of Mesoamerican Archaeology. Arthur, thank you very much for joining us. Hi. Yeah, I'm happy to be on here. You know, this is an audience that I think matters. Thank you, It's it's good to be on here. I make one quick correction that that collapsed got little to do with Trump. I've been doing this since eighty nine and it's been building slowly, and then in the last ten years, all of a sudden, I'm in great demand everywhere to give talk. So I didn't mean that you
just started jumping on the collapsed bandwagon. I do think that helped explain the interest. At least you know that there. I think it's the stuff that I worry about is more serious, as as the information technology people and business people, and of course it's the global warming issue and uh, but there's really I was surprised, that's one reason why I'm doing this, that the interest was coming from beyond academics and for people who can actually make a difference.
And so I sort of shifted over to communicating on these kind of venues. And then I learned that business strategic management theory, partnership theory, these things work really well on looking at ancient civilizations. And so you know, me and my collaborators, who one of them isn't expert in
strategic management. It became a feedback cycle, you know, where we're providing information, we're trying to we have articles submitted to business journals and on the other hand, um, we're using that for my archaeology journals to try to explain collapse, although I'm getting, you know, some plaque on that because business is bad, it's evil capitalists like you guys. So thanks, uh so, Arthur, maybe just to begin with, can you walk us through the parallels between a society like the
Mayan civilization and what we see in business today? Wow? Well I will, that's my that's a book. But um, a civilizations people don't think if they sort of think like a bunch of people who kind of do the same things. Civilizations that their core networks they're primarily political and economic networks because the ideas and the religion, the idiot, that's tradition that continues even after collapse and so on. But their networks and the political and economic networks are,
you know, as today are always almost inseparable. So you start to look at why whole networks can collapse, and then how how responses are because most collapses don't happen the government's corporations whatever, they're problem solving institutions. So there are responses and you can see which ones succeed or fail. And of course that leads right into the kind of theory that everyone is doing in management, strategic management, investment.
I mean, you guys are in the you know, your channels in the prediction business, which is what I'm kind of into. So a lot of that applies a lot of the same thing partnership networks. We were using it to explain the relationships between cities economically, in trade and politics, and then ways in which those go bad and you have, uh,
basically the equivalent of bankruptcies. Before we get into like I want to like really sort of pull on some of these reads here and the similarities and how you can use management theory to understand archaeology and vice versa.
But before we dive down into that, Tracy mentioned in the intro that people call you the real life Indiana Jones, and so just to set the scene a little bit more, like you're a real archaeologist in terms of what people have in their heads, or you go to some remote location and you squat down a lot and you dig up dirt and you look at stuff, probably mostly pottery
and things like that. I'm guessing, just sort of talk to us about what you've been up to a little bit in terms of your day to day life since the last time you appeared on the show. Well, you know what, I I the Indiana Jones thing. I don't mind it. I used to not like it that, you know, I was told that once by Harrison Ford, and that I discovered that it's good for business. You guys know about that. I would be so flattered if Harrison Ford call me Indiana Jones. Yeah, I'm sorry. It helps to
get the port. But I do exploratory archaeology. I accidentally started working during the Civil War in El Salvador as a graduate student, and because very few people are crazy, I ended up being one of two archaeologists and then finally just one of one, and I had a whole kind of country to myself that was not much explored,
and I discovered it. Well, I mean that led to a very accelerated career and so ever since then, I actually go to those areas where nothing has been done before, very little, and I do explore exploration and then we do large scale, multi disciplinary projects. And that's the part that's not like the Indiana Jones thing. I mean, you don't like, you know, read the glyphs and kissed the girl and shoot the guns and all that. I mean, it's always and one ninety, but I'd say sixty. Extent
of it is lab work. But we study ancient cities and right now, my entire project for the last twenty years is studying an ancient economic network that holds together. And we're following I mean, we're literally the research design
is we do neutron activation other analyzes. We discovered that pottery, jade or city in the volcanic glass is coming from another place, so we go and dig that place, and then we dig what we see about that and week so we've we've actually covered I don't know, a thousand square kilometers. But it isn't just the usual regional We
are following an economic, an economic network. So there's I mean, we do have we do dig lost cities in the jungle, and we do have shootouts with the bad guys and open tombs and all that, but that's just, you know, that's just what you have to do to get started. Then it becomes essentially the study of economy, politics, and sociology of of cities and regions and networks. Uh. And as as that work's gotten bigger, it's gotten more and
more parallel to contemporary economic networks. And I don't know multinational corporations. So talk to us about what you've discovered then, because you know, I remember a little bit from the previous episode, but the mind civilization was quite unique in many ways, and I remember you were talking about how they developed a big trade network where goods were distributed all over the jungle. What does that have to do
with modern corporations or the modern economy? Well, um, and again academic there's I've learned that there's a great range of business theory and academic strategic management theory and so on is probably a little different. But their break their studies than lead to uh, you know, the CFOs reading
about it and lead to something else. But one of the things that they've been talking about for a long time is just just an example, community networks, which would be like the EU or or even the Western economy, where you have partnerships that are based on multiple partners. They have an ideology that they develop and business practices have to be within a range of legitimation and all
of that, and those kinds of community networks. A very tight one is what was developing in the jungle between all these different cities and then it's stabilized and there was great wealth. But just as today when you when you read these journals about UH innovation network, those are very profitable, but that kind of slows and they have a tendency to fall behind. So then you have uh some firms or in this case city states that make
breakaway networks which are very high risk. Uh. It's it's very much like the initial trading with China, you know, which is a very high risk but very profitable. There's high there's high gains, but there's high risk. We're seeing right now in dealing with culture societies, economic systems that have a different ethic, that have a different economic culture, and reading about that, that is exactly what happened with
this great city state Conquent. They they were the big center for trade and of city and all sorts of things coming from the highlands. The Maya economic network that was so successful, this community network, all interacting with each other very stable, started to have a lot of problems and the rulers and the nobles of this city part of the South made a decision to kind of turn away.
And it was very surprising. I mean, in the terms of today it would be like China and given transport more and they started trading with long distance partners in other areas, forming you know, initially it's like dietic relationships that they say. It's just like you know, on city with another city. It doesn't have the stability of a
multi partner network. They were they in forty years. They just boomed into this incredibly wealthy center and there was this giant it's like Venice, this giant purely commercial, non non territorial kingdom, and uh it ben crashed and the whole story is just just just like stuff out of
your journal. So, Arthur, how did how did Conquin manage to sort of um differentiate itself from the rest of the mind civilization Because often when people think about big companies, big multinationals, there's a lot of conformity there, and there's a sort of organ organizational structure that encourages, I guess, cohesiveness. You're not necessarily rewarded for taking a risk and going off and doing something completely different. Conformity tends to be rewarded.
So how did this particular city managed to break away? Well, again, this is where this is where the theories coming from management schools really help. You know, this institutional entrepreneurship where you have entrepreneurship. But it changes. It's like it changes the game. It's playing a different game. And that's one thing people don't realize. It is very high risk. And these rulers were not stupid. You know, they would make
these innovations. And the scary part about responding to collapse is that they would do the right thing, but it would usually fail because of this legitimacy because both you know, the consumers and the other firms, let's say, would would not buy into it. Give me, what's an example. Okay, so when you say they did the right thing when confronted with the risk of collapse, but it but it didn't work. It failed what specifically given? Give an example
of Okay, here's give an example. If you're talking about again, well again, you know there's I am just written something on four different and using a straw tgic Man with my colleague, I collaborate with UH Endowed Share and Strategic Management and and khon Quent for example. I can tell you about four four other states we just wrote on this, but in khon quin the decision was too first shift away in terms of their trading partners and what happens
when you have throughout history. When you have new trading partners, Uh, there's these risks and stuff, but new ideas come in, not just products, but new ideas about structuring, uh, your own economic system. And when the Maya of kahn Quin started trading with Mexican states that were far away and had more market oriented economy. Every time they added a new trading partner, the structure and economic system at khon Quin changed. And one of the things is this vertical integration.
They were shipping stuff out, you know, in and out, they were import exports. Then they started instead processing it, first stage processing it, which of course increases the value, and then they were shipping it out semi processed. And then later they started whole new industries in like the production of jade, and again preliminary state, not the final product, but sort of reforms and uh, and they did it. They started doing mass production, I mean just uge. It's
the largest jade workshop ever found in the Americas. And so you see these business ideas coming in and again studies of business architecture, you see it in everything. You see the palace changing from a great royal residence over forty years as eight reconstructions to a giant almost like an office building. It's just like like Venice, the nobles are rising in power. They are they are almost they
the merchants involved. The king uh and his family eventually get sort of pushed literally to the side of the palace and the rest of it is like offices. And this is very nice. But you know he is now kind of legitimate or in chief. He's like head of marketing, and it seems that he doesn't really have that much power and it's divided up so and you see it
in the architecture. In order to win over these foreign partners and to uh, you know, legitimate these new relationships, they build architectural things within their center that are of the religious system of their new partners. So you know, like there's this giant ball court. The Maya ball game was so important that you know that the game that was a sacred and it was also entertainment. It was it was it was worse than Brazil. Is that the one where they killed the losers? Now? Oh that that
that's the killing or the not of the losers? Is there's so many I mean, all that stuff comes from a thousand years later in another region. You know, it's uh the Maya ball game is kind of like wish you would say that. You know, with baseball cricket, you know that it varied and transformed into different things. But this kind of ball court is not like that. It's
not sort of a sacred religious thing. It's a big, giant, open ball court with eating vessels and broken you know, probably corn beer vessels all around it, like some modern stadium. And you don't find that anywhere in the Maya, you know, lowland civilization. And so where does it come from? It? Where do you find it in the area up in the highlands where the jade comes from, where the jade sources is. So they're you know, they're cultivating these relationships
by creating religious similarities. It's it's actually marketing. So, if I understand it correctly, in moving away from the mind civilization or in trying to build new relationships with new trading partners, this particular city starts introducing new elements of different societies, and eventually that starts undermining its own previous
rituals and legitimacy of its authorities. Is that, right, there's just a gigantic boom and then there is a bust, I mean a one day destruction, and the analysis of the spearheads and so on from that show that it
was their trading partners they went too far. And this is a real This is something that when we're responding to all the crises today, I hear a lot of you know, people saying the right things we should do, except they're not going to succeed because you you really, you know, you have to change economic cultures and so all this construction of these different ideological systems, and it was too much, it was too fast, and it led
to this boom. But you know, in the end, there's a kind of lack of sincerity perhaps in this the local regional, subregional population may not have been happy with all of these other practices, and it was it just really was a sudden It was like a bankruptcy, but with the ritual sacrifice. They sacrifice the king and the queen and all of the nobles. Though some bankruptcies can
be like that. Yes, so if you know, businesses want to hear from you, and uh, you know, I know you're skeptical of all of them, and you know they're all going to fail. Nonetheless, they want to I don't think that you know, people think that. I mean, it's just I'm like a coroner. I mean, this is my job, you know what I mean. But along the way they are positive. Okay, well what is it? What is the
lesson in terms of balancing risk and reward. The city is changing its economic model, it's opening up to new trading partners, but it didn't work. So what kind of management or within an organization take away from that to make a better informed decisions about new strategic ventures. Well, I should defend con Quinn by saying that they did really well, and the others also they you know, they went down more slowly, so but yeah, what you were.
The first thing that I've discovered is people don't really believe in collapse. So that's the first thing you have to get that. And then the other is what I just said, that the right thing to do is not necessarily going to be successful. But what is positive is that some of these collapses didn't happen, and that is as problems were developing. Uh, they anticipated it, as con quin tried to do, and they did some other things. Those are high risk, but it's just like in business investment.
If you got that right, the other things it led to success, and they didn't do it. This is the problem to They didn't do it because oh they want to save the world and they want to save the civilization or whatever. They did it for their own success. And yet it can be the right thing to do. And so that kind of thing which worked short term in the case of conquent we see examples. I mean, it's not as exciting to talk about non collapses, but
you know, we study. When I say we, there's a there's maybe twenty people who have gradually joined collapse studies. I've been doing it, I think longer than anybody. But it's not a field. If you anticipate those things, you can make changes that lead to success. And that's sort of what we're working on now. Because again I'm I really, I've done this all my life. I want to see I don't want to give talks on campus or publishing
a journal nobody reads. The people that can make a difference are people in business and government who first and foremost are interested in their own success. So let's stipulate that most entities will ultimately probably fail. Nonetheless, it sounds like a key thing is this idea of taking the risk of collapse seriously, and you hear a lot from business leaders like, oh, we're always paranoid, and there's like the sort of pride in being paranoid. Only the paranoid survive.
I think that's a famous book from a founder of Intel. Uh. Nonetheless, it sounds like what you're saying is that maybe people give lip service to the risk of collapse, but they
don't really internalize it. So I mean, I would starved by asking what are the signs of internal organizational collapse that if you're a business leader, you're like, actually, we should really take the fear of collapse seriously, so that it goes beyond just being a motivational mantra, so to speak, Well, I should say that the like, there's a lot more positive lessons. I was about to talk about non collapses, but I mean a lot of it's very obvious right now.
I think I may have talked to about this in the lectional, but hypercoherence is our biggest problem, bigger than global warming um because it inhibits responses and that like a lot of these you know, eventual causes of collapse is a great thing. It's it's just it leads to success, but eventually it can go too far and lead to crises. And right now, the degree of integration of corporate systems, of overall economic systems, of medical systems, is military systems
worldwide is fantastic. It leads to greater profits, that helps this, that and the other. But it is also dangerous because something that happens in one place radiates through the system. And you see this every day. You just saw it. I mean that you know, hey, fifty years ago, who would give a damn if some plant and Staudi Arabia blew up or drones hit it. Now everything radiates through this system and that makes it very difficult to respond. And we see it every day. Every I fly a lot.
Every time I fly, the system is down. Um. Once there was a storm in New England and we couldn't get from Hong Kong to Kuala Lampour because you know, there weren't enough The planes were tied up somewhere. Uh. And every time, you know, the system is down. Just here all the time, Arthur, I was going to ask, I mean a lot of people will look at global integration or kype hypo coherent excuse me um as evidence of progress. Right, this is how the world is supposed
to go. We're supposed to be heading towards more integration, more connections with other people. So how do you how do you walk that back? Because once that gets set in motion, it feels like it becomes very, very difficult to make the argument that actually, maybe we need to reconsider some aspects of that. Well, that's that's the legitimation problem that that leads to, which I don't think is
taken seriously enough. I mean, what you just said not not this thing and that thing, but the ideology that is so hard to accept. And that's really what you have to work at. But the secret of success is success. So you look at some of these things where you they are predictable, you make modifications, you invest in those.
It's going to be middle term or long term. But you know, Warren Buffett says, that's you know, the way to do it, and and then you can see that there are profits to be made in that at the same time or mitigation of losses, and at the same time it helps the system be less hyper coherent. I mean, I'm just the you know, guru type. I mean the people who would I hesitate to talk about specific operationalizing things.
But the transport system is really in trouble, and the communication systems in trouble, and so a lot of people have said things like eat local and all of that, um, But there is something to be said in restructuring things so that there's more regional autonomy. I want to go back to a question that I sometimes wonder with businesses, which is, you know, obviously sometimes business leaders management guru types they talk about they talk a lot about pivoting.
Are they sensing an opportunity and rotating the business and way to take advantage of that? And it's the site historical examples of oh, maybe some tech company shifted to the internet at just the right time or whatever it is.
But I'm curious, like, how much of when a when a you know, in your work and your archaeological work, and you see a city, you see some network shift its focus, how much was it the result of some intentional choice to do something new versus a sort of sequence of maybe haphazard or accidental decisions that sort of firmed formed in an emergent basis where no one really made the decision, but some sort of natural order progressed and took the organization into a new direction. We'll both
happened and both happened today. I mean this discussion about you know that this has been noticed by people, and there are people doing it to some degree. But I think there's a tendency to look back on these divine kings and so on and not realized that they were smart. Uh, and they had. I mean in the case of khn Quinn, I think that he was the chief of marketing for I mean that this office building there are offices for different nobles and they I think that most of this,
in the case of khn Quine, it's surprised me. I think almost all of that was conscious. It happened too fast. I mean, you don't like to say, oh, well, we're gonna build a ball court in this weirdass style that just happens to be that of the where the jade comes from, or we're going to start using our caves for you know, hill and hill worship to a greater degree than normal, and that just happens to be the form of religion, uh, in one of the places that's
right on a major nexus of trade routes. It's clearly conscious and you see that in and I mean I've been working on this lay in about four cases, and they do different things, and each of the different things they do correspond to contemporary decisions in business strategy and the fact that you know, I talked about collapses, so I'm talking about when that fails, but it usually succeeds. I mean, there was a maya near collapse around two fifty.
They had grown, it was a big boom, but they were using an agricultural system of this slash and burn agriculture. You cut down the jungle, you burn it. It makes ash that allows for production. They were doing too much of it, and then they started to have a crisis, uh, and some of the city's really declined, some almost ended, others kind of continued. But during the subsequent years they
shifted their agricultural system. They and that was a lot of that was probably decision making at the level of villages and communities, but they're also built giant reservoirs for the rainy season and a lot of things that would require labor. Had done that before, but they really intensified it.
And what happened then is that there was a recovery and the giant boom, which we call the Late Classic period, you know, starting around six hundred or so, just this incredible boom and industry and grow well their versions of it, I mean jade workshops and all that, and you structures, and it was a big boom. Uh. But you know
a lot of the collapses I study. We've labeled them, that's me and my strategic management expert as appage collapses, apag slash collapses where you can see this incredible progress and identify a bunch of symptoms that indicate that it might totally collapse. And most people have this model of rome.
That's the big one. You know, there's going to be these signs and decline, and but it can be very sudden, especially if a lot of the problems are inherent in this tremendous prog sts and the things that are making stuff successful, which makes it hard to change. But it also makes hard to change what you guys just talked about the legitimacy getting people to to buy into this idea of making these changes that in the short term
might cause you know, less impressive constructions. And then the other thing, and this is true with my economic leaders and then anger and everywhere and with us, is that short term thinking is a problem. And again I'm not, you know, the warrant about the lots of people. They tell you that, but also that, um, you you get these feedback cycles. In crisis, leaders tend to do more of what they do and that's what a lot of the you know, they do temples in war, and the
temples get the support of the gods. So they intensify this and it looks like, I mean, my colleagues talk about it, Wow, the Great Golden Age, But it was really a way of they knew what was coming, they saw signs there were dietary problems, and they were intensifying what they do and it was counterproductive, so sort of spinning their wheels ever faster and getting in more trouble
that way. So just on the short term incentive part, I mean, that feels like a real issue for societies and civilizations and also for corporates in very similar ways. How how would you actually go about changing that thinking because we can all identify that short termism is a problem, but it feels very very hard to actually counteract that it is. And you know, when you get to be specific,
I really believe in the collaboration. When I talk about these these digs of the big cities in this trade network. I mean that's like forty people, and there's all these different experts, and I really believe that the ideas we have I have to collaborate with, you know, people in business and strategic management. But one of the big of thems today and it's it's the main problem with war is that that CEOs and so on are being judged really short term, and the changes for legitimation, the changes
and investments. It can't like be oh, let's change everything, you know. I mean, it could be a part of your investment in these future things. And then as some of that starts to have success, you don't have to force people to do it. Like I said, when they avoided the collapse, uh, you know in the around two fifty years three hundred and they had a big recession you could say, and a recovery that I don't think that was because they didn't have a concept of civil
They weren't trying to save the world. They were trying to succeed in their own areas. And then some places did and and started doing pretty well, and some farmers and of course the others saw that and began to ship. It was a small percentage that started doing that probably in the beginning. So you know, as you know, nothing succeeds like success. You don't have to just put all your eggs in one path and do some cosmic change. Just as you said, that would really be hard. It does.
It does seem like in terms of the things that have allowed these companies to grow at an extraordinary rate are currently the very things that threaten, you know, to be their undoing and so obviously liberal use of individual data and is breaking norms regarding privacy has obviously allowed a lot of these companies to grow, make incredible profits, and grow extremely fast. Now those are the very things
that are causing people to freak out. What were some examples of, as you said, some places they thrived for a while, they staved off near collapse by doing something different, by sort of recognizing that the existing trajectory was unsustainable. What were some pivots that the successful entities did to hold off on collapse a little while longer. Rulers are very conscious of and when I say rulers, they always think it's the king that does this, because that's the
guy recorded. But we know from Konquin there's a lot of other people and economic advisors and economic agents. But if they you know, they can see what's going on below and its effect on them. And so you know, decisions were made at the local level but also at the higher level to respond. And uh, that's a very specific decisions. You know, when they you dig its gigantic reservoir, it takes an enormous amount of labor. It's a giant investment. It's kind of a high risk investment. But you can
see there are water issues developing. So you go in that direction, and the states that did that became very successful. Now you just pinpoint it a real problem. And the thing about these appage collapses where right at the peak suddenly everything falls apart, those are the most dramatic ones.
Are not all like that. But one of the things you just mentioned is what again, if this weren't confusing enough to my colleagues, the strength slash weakness, The strength of a civilization in that kind of collapse are the very things that over time become weaknesses as the impact of them develops more and more. And uh, those are really hard to change because they look at it and they say, as you just said, this is the key
to progress, This is the key to success. But again, if some if some people start doing these other things and they're successful at it, you won't have to you know, you were mentioned. I mean there's lessons of collapse. It's almost always finger shaking, you know, when you just go, oh, yes, you guys, should you know you should stop doing that. You should wear a hair shirt. It ain't gonna work. And so that, you know, you have to be stick accessible in some ways and then attract more people. But
it isn't going to be easy. Arthur. The last time we had you on, we did we focused on this idea of the collapse of civilizations and you were sort of, I guess pessimistic about a lot of things. Um, what do you think now? You know this is uh what is it two or three years after the original podcast recording. When you look at civilization or society, Now, what are you seeing and how does it relate to your area
of expertise? Well, it's I'm doing this because you know, I'm writing for these journals and being on this channel. It doesn't help my career and academics. It's like, what are you doing? These evil capitalists? But I think we can I feel like we can make a difference because people are listening to me. People are now and I didn't really feel that. I felt it a little bit. But the reaction has been quite interesting since that last show. And um, and you know the Journal of of of
the Journal of Academy Management. We just submitted an article. They had a doomsday issue. They have a special upcoming doomsday issue, and it's like wow, and it's about negative scenarios in grand schemes and how you know, how they can ess. I'm curious to see what else comes in. I think maybe we helped inspire that a little bit, because of course those people listen to this show and other things like it. But so I'm feeling a little more optimistic. But you sound more optimistic than the last
time you were on the show. So maybe that's a good place to end it on an optimistic note. For once, Arthur Demerist. It's always fascinating to talk to you. We'll have you back on again in three years, maybe after the next election. Uh you know, if we're still around in three years, if civilization is still around, we can't wait to uh have you back. Really appreciate your joining. Thank you, Thank you guys. Uh So Joe I found
that conversation fascinating, as always with Arthur. But I have to say I had no idea that archaeological academia hated us so much. Yeah, I didn't either, I thought like that, but I think there is I don't know much much about it academia, but I do think, uh, I do sometimes get the impression that they look down upon anyone whose ideas are able to be digested by the public. Let's put it for the record, we like archaeological academia. Do you ever? You know what I was thinking about
that conversation. It's like you could really tell all that stuff from like shards of pottery. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, right, So, one thing I found really fascinating was when he was talking about con Quin and the development of this sort of big office building and how you could see that the space allocated to royalty got progressively smaller as their legitimacy changed or deteriorated. Yeah. And I love this idea of the city sort of building
monument to their trading partners culture. And I think that's that feels very modern as a phenomenon. Or you like, go to Las Vegas and there's obviously all kinds of things that are built, like specifically with Chinese tourists in mind, things like that where trade is certainly becomes the conduit
for ideas, for better or worse. And in some cases that's good, but in other cases you could see how that could eventually become a problem, right, and you could see how society would sort of eventually maybe revolt against
that idea or that change. But I think the most disturbing aspect of these conversations that we end up having with Arthur is the notion of societies or civilizations or entities thinking that they're doing the right thing, but then just going about it in the wrong way or getting it wrong, and then causing their own collapse. Well, you know what I was gonna say that I didn't find to be disturbing, is this idea that to stave off collapse.
What's not needed for someone to say like, oh, we're collapsing, we got to do something about this, per se, but rather for a new success model to emerge, and so that the way to stave off collapse is not just to reverse what you're doing or to stop what you're doing, but to take a take a totally different turn and to show people that some other way of organizing society, some other way of farming, some other way of creating
a product, whatever it is, can thrive. So it's kind of a hopeful idea just that success could be contagious and replicable once someone shows the way, right, you don't have to convince people that this is necessarily the right thing to do, because it just sort of unfolds and becomes obvious in a way. All right, Well, on that happy note again, this has been another edition of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway, and I'm Joe wi Isn't Thal.
You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. And you should follow our producer on Twitter, Laura Carlson. She's at Laura M. Carlson. And check out all of the Bloomberg podcasts on Twitter at the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening.