Hi, this is the first of hopefully many podcasts where myself and my friend James are going
to discuss a number of topics over the coming weeks.
One which I feel that some people may take for granted.
We kind of want to ask the questions why and kind of get to the bottom of why things are
the way they are and get people's views and opinions on how they feel about those certain
things.
So I'm Nick and this is my friend James.
Say hi James.
Hi everybody.
Yeah, hoping to have some good conversations, hoping that you will enjoy listening to them
and that through interaction we can expand on these topics as I feel debate is a bit
of a dead art form and discussion as well and respectfully disagreeing are also in low
supply nowadays.
Anyway, sorry, you just told me to say hello.
Hello everybody.
You're all good.
No, you're absolutely right.
I think debate is a very, very under exercised tool that's gone unused for a long time and
I think a lot of people need to feel a bit more happy just to have their opinion but
know how to go about putting that across in a way that's constructive so that people can
respect that but also know that they're free to have their own opinion as well.
So I thought we'd start with a soft topic, I know that I'm aiming for us to discuss certain
stronger topics down the road but I thought we'd start with something a little bit softer.
So we're going to start discussing royalty, its origins, why it kind of exists and what
it means to people and because I know through growing up in the UK, we've got a royal family
and it is highly respected throughout the world but I've always just grown up with it
being there.
It's a thing that has always been there and I know a lot of people around me don't necessarily
respect the royal family.
I mean, I don't personally have a problem with the fact that they're there.
I've always been one of those people that kind of go, why is this one family kind of
like apparently ruling the world or ruling the country and the Commonwealth or whatever
else?
So it's very much a symbolic kind of position at the moment but sorry, we'll get to that
in a minute.
It's interesting that technically we are a dictatorship but I know for a fact the moment
the royals step too far out of line, they would be deposed.
I imagine it's actually not a pleasant life for them, it's very much a gilded cage and
the moment you step off that knife edge you fall and it's, for example, like the controversy
around Meghan and Harry, I'm not going to say they've done nothing wrong but what I'm
going to say in the grand scheme of royalty, in the grand, in the historical context of
what deposed princes or members of the direct royal family can do, the controversy surrounding
them at the moment is entirely a man-made, well any controversy is man-made but it's
very much a generated media storm about very little, if I'm honest with you.
I would actually go as far to say possibly nothing, you know?
I mean if you think about it from, let's revise the humanity of the matter and this is a man
and his wife who, like the man was born into this family with no real claim, especially
now that William has had children, no real claim to any kind of rites of passage, shall
we say, that has married his love and wants to live his life and for doing so has been,
like the media has painted a certain picture of almost like borderline treachery for his
position as a prince and the royal family.
I can't help but think sometimes that if I was a royal, I'm a very strongly opinionated
person as I'm sure you'll come to learn over the coming weeks, I would really struggle
in Harry's position not to stand on the hilltop and kind of scream, who the hell do you think
you are to tell me that I shouldn't be living my life, you know?
There are different avenues for doing that and I guess his free part book deal and documentary
series with Netflix is his own way of doing that but it's kind of frustrating that there
is a monetary connection there, that he is going to be paid for doing this and it just
kind of, it's annoying because Harry has fought in our military, he has fought in our wars
but it's just like if he really wanted privacy and stuff then he wouldn't use these tools
as a way of making money, you know what I mean?
Yeah absolutely.
I think growing up, if you think about the two boys when they were growing up, William
was very much growing into the middle to upper class icon, very approachable, down to earth
but stately and Harry was very much the lad, he was the commonest person, wasn't he?
Much like his mother, not that she was the commonest person but she was very down to
earth, she was all too happy to get her hands dirty and get on, for lack of a better term,
the commonest level with them and Harry was very much the same, he showed that, for Christ's
sake he dressed up as a Nazi at a fancy dress party one year didn't he?
Got in so much trouble for that.
Yeah, he did.
The weird thing is, back then it wouldn't surprise me if other people did the same thing
and it's all about context isn't it?
If you go to a local and let's all dress up as historical figures and you show up as
gobbles but you know it's a context where everyone's going to be fine with it, then
it's fine.
Yeah.
However, walking to there, if you pass somebody in the street who chooses to punch you in
the face, that's a grey area.
Absolutely.
I guess it's frustrating because...
Well let's be fair, he didn't dress up as Hitler, he didn't dress up as THE Nazi, he
dressed up as A Nazi, symbolising the movement, a movement which still exists to this day
I might add.
Annoyingly, England did have a Nazi party run by somebody who was first a conservative,
then a labour, then chose to use that vehicle of fascism as a way of doing it.
We'll call him indecisive.
Yeah, yeah, you know what, passionately indecisive.
So I've got a question for you.
Do you know, and this is something that I was avidly looking up, which is what led to
me asking you if you wanted to get on board with a few podcasts, but do you know who was
the first ever royal leader, not of the UK but the first historical, the first person
that was a king or leader of some description of like, monocle power, first one of history?
Okay, so I know from my own readings of the Bible I know a lot of old kings, so I can
tell you who it's definitely not, annoyingly, it doesn't actually go back as far to say
the first one.
Now is it the first person who called themselves a king at all, or like an emperor?
Like I don't know, because there's so many titles where somebody claims to be royal,
I guess the whole invention of title would have, the first one would have been chief,
and then chieftain.
I think if you go back as far as what we know in historical contexts, when you're building
it based on tribes and things like that, obviously like the way that we picture that humanity
evolved, then yeah, I suppose the leaders would have been chieftains or grand chiefs
or whoever.
But no, I'm talking an actual person that was a king, for lack of a better term, a ruler,
and is the first person that is known to be a leader outside of mythological past.
So this is kind of on the borderline of mythology, like that's how old he is.
But we know he was a real person because we found the grave and we found the scriptures
that put him where he was.
Do you know who that was?
I will be honest with you, I don't have a clue.
The first acknowledged ruler in history that isn't mythology was Sargon of Akkad, so obviously
the Akkadian Empire in Sumeria and Mesopotamia.
Okay, so like modern day Iraq and Syria.
Yeah, like 23rd century BC he died.
So we're going back prior to the days of Moses.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
So a long, long time ago and this is, yeah, he reigned from like 23rd century, 2334 to
2279 BC, I've got it written here.
Yeah, was the first leader of the Akkadian Empire.
Okay, and what, sorry, let's repeat his name and then go on to explain.
Sargon.
Yeah.
That's a brilliant name.
That literally sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings.
Yeah.
But I do, you know, sorry, that is history for you and I do like that Sargon.
Okay, other than the fact that he was the first king, do you know much about his rule
or what he did?
So he was the first, he was one of the first great empire builders, it says, so he conquered
all of southern Mesopotamia, like Syria, parts of Syria, Anatolia as it was, and Elam, which
is part of western Iran.
So yeah, that kind of, where they hypothesize the Garden of Eden was that area there.
Well, it does, again, in like the Book of Genesis, it does talk about the Tigris and
the Euphrates.
So that really puts like a solid location and you can always argue like the poeticness
of these things, but we'll get on to that at a different thing.
Yeah, yeah.
That's interesting though.
Okay.
Yeah.
So he was the first king, but obviously that was the first king in the world.
So the first king that we've got that, as I said, wasn't mythological.
But I also quite heavily lean on mythology as well.
I think there's always elements of truth within mythology as well.
Yeah, well, I've heard that a lot of the Greek pantheon was based on tribal leaders of those
original settlements, so like there was a Theena or Athena at some point.
There was Ares, there were these people.
Absolutely.
And if you're talking Greeks, then obviously if you go along the line of Plato, he told
us about the ancient, what now is classed as the mythological cities of like Atlantis
and that, and Atlantis was apparently built by the god Poseidon and was led by the king
Atlas, which was his son, his first son.
Actually he had seven sons and the seven cities of Atlantis were all led by his sons, but
the main capital was kinged by Atlas.
And on another interesting note, the first king of Mauritania in Sahara, like that, quite
a very own Africa, his name, the first ever king of Mauritania was Atlas.
Interesting.
Hence why you have the Atlas Mountains along the northern ridge of Africa.
Well, that's brilliant.
I will just throw out a fact here just because you've clearly done a lot of good research
here and I'm obviously on a bit of a back foot, so I definitely am going to prepare
more for the next one.
I find interesting that the word Sahara literally means desert.
So when people say the Sahara desert, you're literally saying the desert desert.
And like apparently there's several other things where that is the case, but it really
doesn't, it somewhat surprises me that the king Sargon was like Mesopotamian.
I kind of would have assumed that the first king would have been African.
Yeah, but I think-
I don't know, genetically we mankind started in Africa.
They say the birthplace of humanity was in Africa, don't they?
Yeah, exactly.
Whereas the oldest civilization or signs of civilization is actually around Turkey and
Syria and that area.
I don't know if you've heard of Gobekli Tepe.
I haven't.
I know that there's a donkey jaw which has the first signs of marks in it, which seems
to be a counting system.
So Stonehenge, the upright stones that were placed, they're about 6,000 years old.
Well, there's Gobekli Tepe is a construct like a city almost of upright stones in Turkey.
And they've carbon dated.
The best thing about it is that this entire city of 20 tons stones that have been perfectly
placed in the ground and oriented north, which going back as far as they were, was almost
unfathomable, is actually 11,000 years old.
It is incredible.
Crazy.
The fact that they had the-
So do you think that although Sargon is the closest thing that we have to a historical
truth of a king, they must have had some form of government?
Absolutely.
This is why I go kind of like towards mythological past because I think relying purely-
Those times did exist.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, there has to have been civilization before.
If you think 14,000 years ago, we were coming to the end of the ice age, how much change
went on in the world during that time?
I mean, for the next 2000 years, there was pockmarked with other comet impacts apparently,
which caused massive floods all over the world.
How much land was washed away and how much civilization was washed away?
If what we're looking at now is civilization starting, say 11,000 years ago, then that
ties in with the end of what they call the Young Adryas, which is like the end of the
ice age.
There was a 2000 year period where temperatures were fluctuating.
There were a lot of floods and stuff, and then it ended and it started to get warm about
11,000 years ago.
If you think how much would have been stripped away and lost in that period of chaos, then
history really would have only had a chance to be started again 11,000 years ago, which
means it's an open book before that, isn't it?
All you've got is this word of mouth, as I said, about Plato's scriptures on Atlantis
and what we've heard in mythology of Lemuria and other continents that were said to have
existed.
Obviously, there's things that science are looking at now that actually there may well
have been a massive continent that connected Madagascar, India, and Australia all together,
that's now lost to sea.
Was it Pangaea?
Was that the original mega continent?
I don't know exactly.
I know that history says that Pangaea, the original continents were all together.
I know that the continents weren't necessarily all together and all land at the same time,
so it might well have been that they were all together.
All that you see now that is land would have been formed together in its own way, but it's
not necessarily that it was all one continent above land.
There may well have been rivers and seas that are now countries that are above land.
Continents in their own rights are now completely lost under the ocean, which as I said is part
of that land mass that was between Madagascar, India, and Australia, which is why you've
got linking fauna and flora that are similar in Madagascar as you have in Australia.
Some of the most unique wildlife in the entire world in two of the most untouched places
in the entire world.
The fact that humans existed in Australia when nobody had been there kind of makes you
go, well, did somebody fly them there and just drop them off or did they have some other
means to cross from where civilization was into this country and then get stranded there?
I think that there are loads of ancient stories of ancient chieftains who sail across seas
in order to get places.
It wouldn't surprise me if there was a slow migration to Australia.
You've got Indonesia and Malaysia are like the world's, I'm not sure if they're the largest
acapella goes, but you've got loads of little islands there and it wouldn't surprise me
if over the course of thousands of years.
They say that all of that was actually just, it was continent.
It was land that was above the sea.
And then through the tectonic shifts of the planet, it got lost under the sea and all
that you've got left now is, as you said, the acapella goes of Papua New Guinea and
Malaysia and all of that.
Okay.
Yeah, really interesting stuff.
That's a fair point.
I'm not sure if, you know what, we'll talk about Aboriginal culture and other things.
They're actually one of my favorite native people groups.
Just generally their culture of dream time stuff, which in itself, even the wording of
it, you know what, I don't want to...
Yeah, well, we'll put a pin in that one because it sounds like a really good topic to go over
and we'll cover that in another podcast.
Going back onto the royalty, obviously the royalty, there's always been leadership in
society, as far back as we know, obviously with Sargon of Akkad, with the Akkadian Empire.
As soon as there was leadership, there was domination, there was dynasty, there was amazing
things.
If we look at mythological terms, they say that leaders in the very beginning of humanity,
outside of religion, shall we say, but inside of spirituality, they say that the royalty,
the leaders, they were the oldest of the spirits that would guide souls into the physical
realm, into the physical being, and help that soul then adjust into that physical realm.
That was their job.
That was why they were so important because they'd been in their physical form for so
long and they had more experience than these newer souls that were just coming into being
and they were given that status.
That sounds a lot almost like...power and knowledge have always been revered in...well,
I don't know, I can't think of a single culture which has a disdain for either of those things,
for knowledge or for power.
It sounds a lot there, like what you described, although that may very well have been the
first royals, that almost sounds like a tribal elder.
Yeah, I mean, I think you've got to go back to the point before, you can't think of civilization,
ancient civilization in the same way that we think about civilization now.
Where there's quite a clear hierarchy to our leaders now, before it would have been completely
different.
But it would have been, I should imagine, it would have been more spiritual than it
would have been like dominance, shall we say, or like you said earlier, dictatorship.
It would have been almost like teachers, spiritual, spiritual guiders.
And that's why they were looked up to.
That's why they were revered, because they had the knowledge that you wanted and you
needed to survive.
Which absolutely makes sense, I suppose, when you think about science, in the survival of
the fittest, those with knowledge and those with intelligence would have had the power
in themselves to survive better than those without it.
So they would have been looked up to and would have been respected and kind of, in turn,
placed on their own proverbial pedestal.
No, it's an interesting thing.
Is that a direct translation from which language is that taken from?
I don't know, which culture?
It's based on, there's Sumerian, I want to say Sumerian texts that kind of put it along
those lines, but I can't be sure.
It's one of those things that I read a long time ago and it kind of stuck in my head,
but where it came from has kind of slipped away with time.
But the fact that it was beyond, it was almost like those fables, word of mouth kind of tellings.
Okay, that's interesting.
It's also interesting that that sounds somewhat credible, because the first recorded or the
first king that we have solid evidence of, King Sargon, was also from around that same
area.
Not the same place.
If I have just offended anyone, I don't mean to be by saying those two places are the same.
But if you look at it globally, geographically, Sumeria was fairly close to Mesopotamia.
That's interesting there.
Okay, and when do you think this idea evolved?
So what, the idea of royalty?
Yeah, so when did it become less of a almost spiritual parent?
I think along those lines, I think you've got to kind of bring in what we know of the
human nature.
So that would be when selfishness, shall we say, took over.
Because royalty-
That's pretty early on then.
Yeah, royalty, I mean, it's part of human nature, isn't it?
It's very subtle.
Humans, by their very nature, are self-serving.
And I don't mean that in an offensive way.
I mean, it's survival of the fittest.
So I think it's almost instinctual to be that if you end up being put on that pedestal,
then you end up self-elevating, don't you?
And after a while, that culture will grow into this, I am a god and I am above you,
and therefore you are peasants and you are below me.
And that's kind of where it would psychologically lead.
I don't know whether that would have happened over a hundred years or whether that would
have happened over 10,000 years.
It's almost cause and effect, I suppose, where if you give someone, if you give a person
or a line of people that power, then inevitably at some point somebody will abuse that and
turn it into dominance or an act of dominance in itself.
But it's not to say, I mean, it sounds like I absolutely go against royalty, not at all.
I think royalty itself has brought some marvelous things into the world.
It's also given those that need leadership leadership in order to do great and amazing
things.
They've also done some incredibly stupid things over their time so that they're not immune
to that.
Order in and of itself, like...
Okay, so order generally is good, I think, but, and then this is probably another topic
for another thing, but order, I always see it as something which expands the potential
for what's already there.
If you've got a good heart and, or if you've got a lot of good people and you expand order,
what you get is people who are able to give more because things are more organized.
If you've got people, if you've got a lot of aggressive people, then order enables them
to become organized and you get, I don't know, you get your first military units at that
point, or your first kind of raiding parties and things like that of other cultures.
I don't know, I think that I like order, but I also like freedom and you know what, I don't
want to go too much off on a tangent here.
I agree with you in that I like royalty because there's a clear...
It's not just a, oh well, what decision are we going to make?
Well we're going to have a massive debate and then we're going to compromise and then
we're going to come up with something that's half effective.
With royalty and with classical royalty, it's just like, well what's the empire going to
do?
Well the emperor hasn't spoken yet when he's, we'll bring it before him and we'll see what
he decides.
Yeah, yeah exactly.
Yeah, I mean you think along the lines of like court itself, and I don't mean court
as in the judge and jury kind of court, I mean court as in royal court, people would
bring problems to the king and the king would go, well we're going to do this.
So even during those times of, should we say dictatorship by royalty, there was reverence
and almost dependency on that stately figure to guide and help the nation and it was their
responsibility to support and lead their subjects as it were.
So it wasn't, I don't think it's always been, there have been a number of bad leaders over
the years, but with power will always come those people that take it too far.
But I think when you end up with the leaders like we had, our queen obviously that passed
away recently, she was possibly the most personal queen that we've, or leader that we've ever
had, somebody that sought to lead the country with her heart more than with the iron fist
of leadership as it were.
Or at least that's the air that she gave off.
Well it's very interesting that, I hate to admit how much I've learnt by watching seasons
one to Three of the Crown.
I hate the fact that I have genuinely learnt things from that.
I'm not going to indict, I'm not going to endorse, but it's interesting that in that
show they talk about the efficient, which is parliament, and the dignified, which is
kind of like the whole, the removing of royalty from the day to day dealings with governance.
There are times when that can even be used to defang someone, like in the case of Mount
Baton, who was literally promoted to the point where he no longer had any control over the
military because he was the head of the British military, weirdly enough, at the same time.
But anyway, sorry, I'm not going to go do off one.
But I, yeah, I've got a lot of respect for our departed queen.
I realised that she wasn't perfect.
She was somebody who was born, wasn't she born in the 30s?
Like, you know, so she would have...
Yeah, she was born in the 30s.
She was 94 or 95 when she died.
And she'd reigned for 70, I think 72 years.
I don't think we're going to get anyone top that for at least a while.
Definitely not Charles anyway.
Definitely not.
It's interesting with Elizabeth, I've got a lot of respect because she, the times that
she got involved, like she, you know, there's not a huge...
The things that she did, she very much kind of had, she didn't get involved.
And a lot of me, I'm worried that people like hundreds of years from now will see her as
a terrible queen, because she let countries walk out of the Commonwealth and out of what
was left of the British Empire.
I actually have a huge amount of respect for that.
Absolutely.
And to be able to let go is good.
I think if sociological mentality stayed as it was, I suppose, 50 years ago, then she
could have been looked at or even further than that, say 100 years ago.
If sociological mentality stayed the way it was 100 years ago, like she would have been
deposed, I suppose, because of that relinquishing of power.
But 21st century, it very much, absolutely very much, I think there's numerous reasons
why she made the right decisions.
You know, they are a people in their own right and they were a subject of the Commonwealth
probably for the wrong reasons, really, because of the way that they were conquered.
Well, we'll talk about, I imagine we'll talk about slavery, the Triangular Trade, the gutting
of Africa, because it's interesting.
Sorry, you know what?
Just really, really quickly.
Before the slave trade, there's no way in hell we could have invaded the African nations.
They were strong.
There was too many of them, too few of us, all of that lot.
And it's just really interesting how, you know what?
No, we're going to touch upon that upon another time and also don't want to get your thing
banned.
At some point, we will cover that when we know the ground that we stand on and we know
how far we can kind of go with our discussions, then we'll go into a bit more tongue in cheek
discussions because I've got a lot, a lot that I want to bring up.
As I said, the main point of these podcasts is to challenge, not necessarily to say you're
wrong, but to say this is a topic that not many people know or not many people question,
but we're going to really challenge it.
We're going to get into the nitty gritty of it.
So it is definitely something that we'll go into, but let's tread carefully for now anyway.
Exactly.
Okay.
Let's bring it back to something a bit more jovial.
I had a look at some silly rules that were brought in.
I don't know if you want to hear some of those.
So leaders that have some of the stupidest laws.
So Edward the third, did you know that he banned football?
Was that something to try and get people to do more archery or is it because he was?
You're on the right line.
You're definitely on the right line.
So football back then was a very violent game.
There weren't the rules that there are today in the premier league, et cetera.
It was a very aggressive and violent game and there was no set like pitch size.
Sometimes the pitches were two miles long and they would be played with sometimes 50
or 60 people on the pitch.
It was almost a mini war with a ball, like a bladder of a dead animal runner that was
being kicked about on this.
And there were full blown riots and fights that would happen.
This bloke wanted to go to war.
Edward the third wanted to go to war, but so many of his people were being injured by
playing football and so many of his people had died because of the black death that he
banned football because he couldn't risk losing more because he wanted to use them.
He wanted to use them in the war, which I thought was absolutely hilarious that he wanted
to go to war so he had to ban football.
I love it because at that point it's almost like, well, violence is wrong unless you're
doing it in my name.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That's a whole other pitch.
You're not allowed to have sports and beat the crap out of each other.
Unless you're going to go and have sport on a battlefield for me and do something for
me.
Ball breakers, interestingly, would receive six days in prison if they were seen playing
football, which is relative to getting a red card, I suppose.
Not much has changed.
I wonder how many people had a gallbladder of a goat or something just slammed on their
training trading table and then were wrongly accused of it.
Yeah, exactly.
But anyway.
On the topic of sport, Henry VIII was a big tennis fan.
Did not know that.
No, neither did I.
And James I made it illegal.
This is on a par with sport, but it's really interesting and absolutely ridiculous.
But he made it illegal for you to blow your nose in the street.
And I think there's a line where you kind of go, I can see, you know, Covid recently,
I can kind of understand.
Do you want to know why?
Was it a plague?
No.
Was it a plague?
No.
Really?
No, it wasn't because of the plague.
It was because he wanted to protect the horses for Newmarket.
I've got several things I can say about that, but I'm not going to because we're going to
keep this civil.
What can I say?
Power really goes to some people's heads, right?
It's interesting, you know, like when you've got these fictitious books, like, yeah, like
any of the Terry Pratchett stuff, they make jokes about these sorts of things where a
king would, yeah, a king saw a cloud that offended him.
So he demanded that his archers open fire upon it.
64 people died in the city underneath the cloud.
Jesus Christ.
You know, like you get those sorts of things.
It's just it's annoying that it's a caricature, but it's not too far removed.
Yeah, yeah.
What's the third?
Like these things normally come in freeze.
Like what's the what's the next ridiculous law that has been made up?
So and I hope this isn't a trend that continues with the Charles's Charles the second banned
coffee.
OK, was there was that because too much of our money was going was kind of filtering
back to the Middle East or like the use of the words there?
But no, no, unintentional.
Charles the second banned coffee and the use of coffee houses because he thought it led
to conspiracies and people beginning cohorts against him.
So he gave people too much time to talk.
And when they talked, they they realized that he was a bit of an idiot and he didn't like
that.
He felt threatened.
So he banned coffee.
You might as well ban telling jokes because you feel insecure that when laughing, they're
laughing at you.
Absolutely, absolutely.
But I thought that was I thought that was I thought that was quite apt.
I used to used to be a barista in a coffee shop.
And that was one of the quotes of the day was that King Charles the second banned coffee.
Thank God he didn't it didn't stand till today because otherwise I wouldn't have had a job
at that time.
Yeah, I thought that was that was some of the some of the most silliest of of rules
that were brought out over history specifically by royalty.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, let's just say not all things that they've brought in brought us have been good.
And war obviously aside, some of their rules have been rather ridiculous, too.
Well, that's it.
That's it.
It's just it's kind of I love it as well, because when it comes to when it comes to
war, when it comes to rules, when it comes to all of these things, it's always what you
can get most people to obey or at the very least to tolerate.
And that's where I think there's there's a massive change between what is seen as acceptable
monarchy nowadays and what what isn't, you know, like in in ancient times, you'd literally
you had the king of was it Nebuchadnezzar?
I think it was Nebuchadnezzar literally demanded that everybody bow down and worship a statue
that he made.
And if you didn't, the punishment was death or King Herod, who literally killed all of
the babies under two years old in a certain city.
Yeah.
And I was like, you know, the king, you try and pull that shit.
You know, King Herod also murdered his own two sons.
Did not know that.
I know that Herod the Great had three sons, which annoyingly he named so many of the ancient
lines do this as well in order to create consistency.
They named their sons the same name, which just creates so much confusion, like Cleopatra,
the one that's famous was in fact Cleopatra the seventh.
And then you think, well, what happened to all the other Cleopatra's?
Some of them died.
Some of them were sisters.
Some of them were cousins.
But all of the people in that female line at the same bloody name.
Yeah.
So like I saw I'm wondering Herod killed his sons.
Which one?
I guess you know what I mean?
So no, two of his sons he murdered, but I didn't know he had three.
But that shows, doesn't it?
You look at certain research and it covers certain points, but not everything, you know,
which is why it's so important when you do your research and things like that, that you
look at multiple points because multiple sources because in the middle of all of these perspectives
is the truth and you'll never find you'll never find the truth directly from one source.
So do you know how many sovereign states there are currently in the world?
Oh, fantastic.
Okay.
So is this recognized by the UN or not recognized by the UN?
This is this is recognized by the UN.
Okay.
And these this is anything where there is a sovereign state.
Yeah, as in King, Sultar, you know, Sheikh, I think, is one of the leaders.
Yeah.
I'm gonna.
You know what?
Although there are a lot of countries which are no, you know what?
Sorry, the 18th century.
Sorry, the 18th 19th century happened.
I'm going to 137.
137.
No, there are there are 43 recognized sovereign states in the world.
Get out of town.
That few.
There's around there's over 200 countries.
Yeah, there are 13 in Asia.
There are 12 in Europe.
There are nine in the Americas, six in Oceania and three in Africa.
Only three in Africa.
That's really surprising.
I could name them, but I'm not going to bore you with 43 different names.
Needless to say.
Do you have the three in Africa?
What are the three remaining?
Let me see.
This relies heavily on me knowing geography.
Is Maui still a is it Maui?
Is Maui still a.
Maui.
Yeah.
Is that still a sovereign state because.
No.
On Malay in Malaysia.
Yes.
Okay.
They've got a.
Let me see here.
They have got a semi constitutional monarchy.
All right.
Well, one thing I guess I wanted to cover with you as well.
Like I realize we will probably end up going massively over time.
But you said it's something about this podcast is you want to kind of like look at how things
are the way they are.
Yeah.
Okay.
So something that I know or something that my brother is massively into is the formation
of England.
Yeah.
As a country out of the four states of.
Mercia, Wessex, West, yeah, exactly.
Waste, East Angola, Northumbria.
Yeah.
Like those ones all forming together under a single family, although interestingly like
that family in itself really struggled to.
It was under.
That's it.
King Appelstone.
Yeah.
King Appelstone.
And it's just like.
So at one point you had everybody who owned several tribes calling themselves a king,
which I'm not.
I don't know.
I actually kind of I kind of get that.
Like everybody needed some kind of order and there was very little order you could provide.
But simply knowing that a land, I guess it comes with the ideas of identity, but the
fact that you had kingdoms changing, the land underneath it staying the same, but the people
who live on the land identify themselves as a certain country.
And because they identify themselves as a certain country, they then turn to a certain
individual.
Absolutely.
In order in order to rule them.
Yeah.
I mean, that's even that.
If you think about Mercia and Northamere and Wessex and East Anglia, like they were all
countries post post-Roman Empire.
So like they were Anglo-Saxon.
They were were they Anglo-Saxon?
Am I thinking wrong?
They would have.
They would have been a mixture because it's really interesting to know that the Welsh
were very, very resistant to being Romanized.
But once they were Romanized, they also held on to it fiercely, which is why they're reluctant
to change.
Well, exactly.
But like they they held on to that culture as well.
And it's it's very interesting when like people say, oh, England, you went all over the place
and robbed the world and you're all evil oppressors and blood over.
And I'm just like, that's so historically short sighted.
Absolutely.
I mean, yes.
Yes, absolutely.
The Great Britain, like as an empire did that.
Yep.
So did the Mongols.
So did the Romans.
You know, all we did was we just we just copied.
You know, we just copied type.
So let's not necessarily judge the English for that.
It's interesting, though, that like when you talk about what is English culture, part of
it is that monarchy.
But that monarchy in itself has changed hands so many times.
Yeah.
Even the monarchy isn't isn't thoroughbred English.
If there is anything that you can say is thoroughbred English.
I'm pretty sure in my bloodline, I've got numerous different genetic codes from numerous
different places in the world.
And that is what I think of as as English.
That's what I think of as British.
The fact that we are a mixing pot.
I guess where I was going was with the earlier thing is that we were invaded, yes, by the
Anglo-Saxons, but also by the Normans, by a lot of Germanic tribes.
Yeah.
Like the way look at look at the Vikings.
I mean, just just the point that I don't know.
Many people don't actually know.
But you know, the Battle of Norr, Battle of Normandy 1066, the Battle of Hastings 1066.
Yeah.
So we were invaded by the Normans then.
Do you know that the fall of the Viking Empire or the fall of the Vikings, the end of the
Vikings happened a mere couple of weeks before that?
Get out of town.
In the Battle of Stamford Bridge, King Harold, the last king of Norway, was killed at the
Battle of Stamford Bridge in England in 1066.
Wow.
But because it's yet we remember the alphabet.
Absolutely.
Because like because we like it happened to us.
Who cares if it happens to the Vikings?
They invaded us.
Who cares?
But like because the Battle of Hastings happened to us, we were invaded, we were attacked and
we were the ones that suffered.
Didn't our king get killed at battle?
I can't remember his name now, but yeah, I'm pretty sure he got...
Wasn't it King Harold?
No, King Harold, as I said, King Harold was that...
No, it was because it was King Harold of Norway fighting with King Harold of England.
And then King Harold of England battled the Norman King who was that...
And was shot in the eye, wasn't he?
He was shot in the eye.
Yeah.
So, yeah, but many people just completely overlook the fact that literally, as I said,
two weeks before the Battle of Hastings of 1066, there was a Battle of Stamford Bridge,
which ended an entire Viking race, shall we say, for lack of a better term.
We've all got Viking blood in us now and of course the Norse are still very much a strong
bloodline.
So they still exist, but that royalty, that royal line, shall we say, ended just two weeks
before the Battle of Hastings.
That's interesting.
Okay.
Well, I don't want to go too far over, but there's a lot of topics here.
One thing I did want to actually ask you, because I've got answers for these myself.
Yeah, go on.
Who is your favourite ruler in history?
Or favourite, I guess if we'll use the term king, emperor, I don't know, emir or whatever
you want to call it, even like if it was a pharaoh, go for a pharaoh, but like who was
your favourite historical ruler?
I think my favourite historical ruler, if I was going to go with anyone, once again,
I steep myself in mythology.
I do believe there is a lot of truth in mythology and I think if I'm going to go with any ruler
in time, it would be King Arthur.
Well, yeah.
Okay, yeah.
He's a famous one, isn't he?
Yeah.
And you know, he was Welsh, Camelot itself, it's that side of the country, isn't it?
Or the islands.
They're very proud of that and rightly so.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, I have no doubt there was truth in that.
I mean, the fact that, I don't know, I know this is like a bit off topic, but you know
that Hitler actually started to look for the Holy Grail based on the mythology of King
Arthur and his knights, because I think one of his knights, I can't remember his name,
I think it might have been Gallahad, he actually looked for the Holy Grail and it said that
he found it, looked upon it and turned to stone and died on the spot with a look of
bliss on his face because he'd looked upon the thing he'd sought.
And that was something that Hitler used when he was searching for the Holy Grail himself
because he wanted weapons that no one else had.
But that's another topic for another day.
Again, like you hear all sorts of things.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, there's a...
No, no, okay, I've got stuff to talk about on that one, but we'll touch upon that another
day.
But King Arthur, to answer your question, King Arthur, I think was absolutely fantastic.
His mythological story has always entranced me ever since I was a child.
The whole round table thing where most tables square, the fact that the idea of if you're
one of my knights, if you fight with me, then you are my equal.
So the round table, the fact that he was, you know, like very much a warrior king is
always going to grab your attention growing up.
It's also, it comes from the days of the brigades, doesn't it?
The day at the Bloomin that used to rule or like with the tribal force that were on the
islands of the UK before the Romans came.
And there was so much mythological like magic, like the druids and things like that as well,
which kind of adds that other element of magic, I suppose, for lack of a better term.
Well, absolutely.
Mysticism, for lack of, I don't mean to undermine anyone.
If you are listening to this and you are a druid, I don't mean to undermine you here,
but also like the idea of mysticism, glamour, any of that lot, kind of really adds to it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, there's so much to it.
Anything that is half remembered or forgotten is, always has that element of interest to
it.
It's kind of sad that if you want something to be seen as uncool or if you want people
to lose interest in something, teach it out of school.
You know, again, that's another, I hate to say it, that's another topic for another thing.
And again, I don't mean to insult any educators there, but the moment something is the status
quo or seem to be the status quo.
Yeah, yeah, I think we're going to cover a lot that will make people question what they
grew up learning.
And not necessarily for the wrong reasons.
I think there's nothing wrong with teachers teaching those things that is the way it is.
But I mean, you come back to the cancer law where doctors are only allowed to treat what
they're told they can use to treat.
So that in itself is school, isn't it?
You're only allowed to teach what you're told you're allowed to teach, whether you know
something else to be true, whether a circle is a circle, like that is what you're told
to go for, that's what you will teach.
Like just as you were a barista and well done for working that up, I spent 12 years on tables,
I got to the barista bit.
Sorry, that's another story for another time.
I did work in a school and that is exactly as it is you are told to put elements of yourself.
Like you leave quite a lot of yourself at home or you leave quite a lot of it in your
car when you walk into that building.
But like, again, also, there are elements of that, which is fair enough, like you're
not allowed to put your own views on other people.
I completely agree with that.
However, the fact that you're not allowed to even admit to certain views or to talk
about certain views is something which...
Even if you know there to be more basis for fact in that perspective, you're not allowed
to.
It's not the mainstream view, therefore.
You know?
Exactly.
It's kind of interesting that...
It was weird.
I went to this art show about 10 years ago and this woman was like sharing a poem that
she'd written.
And like up until the point where she said, I am a strong black woman, I agreed with everything
she was saying.
And she was talking about how everyone's free to be whoever they are as long as it's not
themselves.
And she was kind of talking about how everybody needs to take...
Everybody has to give up elements of themselves, of their own culture, or of their own beliefs
in order to partake in society as a whole.
I don't know.
All right.
Sorry.
That's a whole other thing for a whole other time.
No, I completely agree though.
I do completely agree.
And as I said, that's a subject that we can cover in a later podcast.
I've got a couple of statements which we'll come out with at a later point and discuss
those which kind of summon those up.
Really back quickly, glad to know that your favorite thing is King Arthur.
My favorite ruler was the King of Mali back, I think in some time...
It was quite early on, but it was like some time between 1200 and 1500.
And the reason why he's my favorite ruler is because...
First off, he was a ruler and a philosopher.
So like either he paid a load of poets to come out with some really good shit that is
still being peddled today, or he genuinely did write some really good stuff.
Like just some really basic advice, like the most valuable thing you can give someone is
their time, or sorry, is your time and attention.
He wrote a load of really good stuff.
What I love about him as well is he was the richest man in the world at the time, to the
point where his net worth was way beyond Bezos, way beyond anything we've got today.
And it's to the point where he was a devout Muslim, he went on a pilgrimage and took God
knows how many servants with him.
But this is the thing that I like.
He was a devout Muslim and he gave money to the poor wherever he went.
However, because he was incredibly wealthy and didn't necessarily know what was an appropriate
amount to give or what would give the local economy a boost, he actually caused every
town that he went through to have an economic collapse because he'd give them so much gold.
He gave them so much gold, gold became worthless.
At that point, money became worthless.
Because scarcity creates value, doesn't it?
Exactly.
And I know it's such a cruel and horrible thing, but what I like about that is that
throughout history, you get people who cause disasters because they're seeking power, because
they're seeking control, because they're seeking dominance.
Whereas he caused disasters because he was being generous and kind.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly that.
And it's just...
Oh, you've got to love it.
Yes, and that's why he's one of...
That's why he's...
It's just the irony.
But I was trying to help.
Exactly.
Like he just...
Yeah.
Don't you know how the economy works, man?
The annoying thing is he...
He obviously did because he was incredibly rich.
Exactly.
But it's just like...
Maybe that was his ploy.
Well, I'm really hoping it's not.
Because it's just like...
In which case then, I think it might be one of the first successful en masse things of...
En masse examples of financial warfare and using money as a weapon.
I don't think it was though.
I think it genuinely was.
I think it was just naivety.
A little bit of naivety, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
A man who's absolutely plastered in gold more than Mr. T.
Incredible.
Yeah, incredible.
Not realizing that giving someone one of his gold chains is going to destroy the power
structure within that community.
Absolutely amazing.
It's also the fact that this was a long-term effect.
The value of gold did not return in Cairo until several hundred years after it had been
there.
Yeah.
So that gives you an idea of how much he must have given away.
It makes me wonder, did people have a golden spoon?
Did everyone in the villages where he went through have golden spoons because they'd
melted it down to try and just make it use it as stuff?
But anyway, sorry.
He's my favorite.
He was an amazing person.
Just the fact that outside of stories of saints or like almost godly warriors just having
a bloke who tried to do their best and it went tits up, I kind of can relate to that.
Not that I'm a rich man and not that I'm nearly good enough, not that I give to charity nearly
as much as that, but just the story.
I just I see it's a good story.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think I want to, obviously we're going to round off a little bit.
I just want to finish off with one more thing that I had, which I wanted to just go over
the top three and this is the top three, the top three mad kings or queens, the top three
kings because they are kings or leaders, shall we say, male leaders of history.
OK, so the top three most.
Are we talking about like insane?
And are we talking about insane, insane decisions or terrible?
OK, just terrible people.
So third on the list, which I thought was quite interesting that he stood out third
given who he is, was Ivan the Terrible Ivan IV of Russia.
He's got literally the title The Terrible.
He yeah, I mean, he was a terrible, terrible person.
As in like it says here, his main fault was his unstable temperament, which manifested
itself in bouts of rage and cruelty.
And he would he accidentally killed his own son by hitting him over the head with appointed
staff because that was going to go well.
Anybody that opposed him, he would kill instantly.
And eventually.
Yeah, I think that literally.
Yeah, that brings to light kind of the things you were saying earlier about if you lift
someone up all of their life, yeah, and they're going to go wrong.
Yeah.
And he was, as I said, as the name implies, he was terrible.
People genuinely didn't lead.
He didn't lead with love.
He led with fear and people were terrified of that bloke, genuinely terrified.
You hear the king is coming.
It's not all great.
Maybe we can get stuff done.
It's a oh shit.
I'd everyone hide.
Yeah.
So second on the list is actually two leaders.
But because they're so closely related, I thought I would put them into one and related
as in one is the son of the other.
However, they were rulers of different countries.
So you had Charles, Charles, the sixth of France, who was known as the beloved.
However, at the age of 32, he started to suffer bouts of insanity where he killed four of
his own knights and attacked his brother and then would have continual bouts of insanity
going forwards, which would lead to him having numerous outbursts and killing other people
and became known as the Mad King.
And this, they believe, was due to as is rife within royal bloodlines, it was due to incestuous
incestuous.
I was wondering if we were going to if we were going to touch upon that because I know
the most inbred person in history was I think it might have been Charles, the second of
Spain.
He was the last of the Hamburg line who had been marrying cousins to cousins, aunts to
nieces, uncles to nephews.
And they've been doing that all the time.
When they looked back at his disguise, family tree, like they realized that his own family.
Well, that's exactly it.
He is in fact more more inbred than somebody who had than a brother and a sister.
Yeah, a brother and a sister had.
I don't even know how that's that's possible to get more inbred than that.
But I guess it's generational.
I mean, if you look at there's a there's a I think it's called charts or useful charts
or something, there's a website somewhere where they actually have done the the the
kings and queens of the UK or Britain since Anglo-Saxon since Charlemagne, I believe it
was.
And it goes like, oh, there's this line that carries on.
And then this person has a son.
And then then like down the line, you're like, oh, but then they married that person who
was actually the granddaughter of this person back here and was connected to this person
by four different bloodlines.
But another interesting fact, of course, is the fact that, you know, your your niece or
your nephew, you share 25 percent of their DNA.
Yeah, you share 25 percent of your core DNA, which is why people are like, oh, what about
like cousins and second cousins between you and your second cousin?
You share less than one percent of your DNA.
So it's not very distant that it has to go before you're then safe, like biologically
to like to like to breed, shall we say, and not have that risk of insanity of insanity
through through being inbred.
So yeah, you just have to look at like general maths, I suppose.
It's quite obvious that if you're that closely related to to your, I suppose, spouse in some
ways, then you're going to you're going to cause problems because you're not actually
bringing enough diversity into your DNA, which now we know is a massive thing.
But obviously, back then, they didn't.
They just they just wanted to keep the bloodline pure.
They wanted to keep the wealth within a single household.
It's human nature, isn't it?
It's human nature.
It's quite big in all cultures, I think, is keeping money where money is and power where
power is.
But anyway, Charles the Sixth actually had a son.
His name was Henry the Sixth.
And Henry the Sixth was actually the leader in the War of the Roses.
And I'm sure you know about the War of the Roses.
It was one of the bloodiest times in English England's history.
And he also was quite an insane king due to his father's incestuous behavior and his
intern.
But I'll move on to the most insane ruler of all time.
Number one on the list is I take some guesses.
You go on.
Go on.
You can have it.
I've now I've now I've now said it.
So I'll.
King Xerxes.
Xerxes, no.
Of Greece.
No.
OK.
I can think of a lot of bad kings, but I can't actually.
Well, let's not say king.
OK.
Was it Vlad the Impaler?
No.
Terrible.
But no, not him.
This is someone that I think quite possibly is I mean, I've read quite a lot about this
bloke over time and genuinely deserves to be number one on this list.
Right.
OK.
It wasn't.
What was the last King of France's name?
No, it wasn't the King of France.
It wasn't King Louis.
Was it Louis?
No, it wasn't King Louis.
No.
All right.
So who was going to give up?
Who was it?
It was the Emperor Caligula.
Yes.
So Caligula was so insane, he used to kill men for sport, just for fun.
He would have intercourse with his own sisters.
He was demanding people to worship him as a god.
And he absolutely plummeted his own empire into financial crisis.
Our bloke was insane.
And eventually he was assassinated.
So he got what was coming to him, I suppose.
Good old Joffrey.
Yeah, absolutely.
Sorry, I've held back on those throughout this whole conversation.
You know, I don't want to.
I do want this to genuinely be about facts rather than about fiction.
But it's just like, yeah, there's only so far you can push people.
Yeah.
And I think there are a lot of good rulers get killed because people disagree with them.
Like, you know, how much of a dick do you have to be before people who were for you
are against you?
Yeah.
I mean, he wasn't necessarily a ruler, but he was certainly a leader of a man.
But Martin Luther King, of course, one of the most prolific assassinations.
As I said, he was a full title is Dr. Reverend.
Yeah, like he was a doctor.
Was it English literature?
He had a doctorate.
He was a practicing minister.
Like yeah, like he did some amazing stuff.
And he.
Yeah, he got killed because of institutional racism.
Justifying people thinking that they're better than other people.
Yeah, absolutely.
And final point, I just want to go over this as the final point.
This is the last thing that we'll be saying on this podcast.
But do you know what the rule of the rule of separation by seven is?
Isn't that you?
You in fact are connected to everyone else in the world by seven degrees of separation.
Yeah.
So there's always I'm going to I'm sorry, I'm going to count with my fingers here.
You know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone
who knows someone who knows someone.
And through that connection, you are connected to everyone else, everyone else in the world,
which is crazy when you think about it, because it means that if you rob someone like especially
if you're in your local area, it's going to be what like three or four.
You know what I mean?
It's not going to go all the way to seven.
Exactly that.
And the main thing there, of course, is you might be quite a recluse and only know two
or three people.
But within three or four separations, you'll reach what we call a hyper social point where
somebody knows a lot of people.
And that's where it goes massive.
You know, but the main reason why I bring up the degrees of separation is because your
family tree, if you go backwards through your family tree, you go to your you have your
mom and dad.
So there's one goes into two.
Yeah.
And then mom and dad have mom and dad.
So then two goes into four.
Yeah.
And so on and so forth.
It's exponential and it genuinely does escalate like very quickly.
You know, so the reason I'm saying this is because if you trace your own genetics and
it's the same with myself and it's the same with nearly everybody, I would say, as a matter
of fact, I would say hands down, everybody in the UK, if you trace your heritage all
the way back, you are connected to Charlemagne, which means in turn you are royalty.
I see what you mean.
Yeah.
So where does royalty come from?
Royalty is you.
And I think a lot more people in the world would do well to think of themselves in a
better light.
I can't argue with that point.
That's a very, that's a very positive point and a good thing to end on.
Well, thank you very much, all of you for listening.
And until next time, goodbye from me.
And goodbye from me.
Take care, guys.