Latest / Normal Men / Episode 57 - Bracketology

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Episode 57 - Bracketology · Normal Men

• 0:00
  Propter: For coming. We are super excited, super excited to have you on normal, man. You're taking the place of, of, of Ed, who is in Japan and who is unavailable.
• 0:11
  Patrick: Oh, yeah, well, I, I, I would, I would hope so given the time difference. Y', all, y' all trying to plan recording sessions across, across the international dateline is no easy feat.
• 0:20
  George: Hey, I have recorded from Europe twice for this podcast. I've done it from Puerto Rico. Like, we know we make it happen when we really want to, but Ed is entitled to a week off once in a while.
• 0:33
  Lowtax: Ed found a camera store and a Carl's Jr.
• 0:38
  Patrick: Wait, I didn't know Carl's Jr. Was in Tokyo. What? This is what. This is huge news for those of us who have like 17 fast food apps downloaded on our phone, as I do.
• 0:51
  Lowtax: He just texted us at our group chat that he found a Carl's Jr. In Tokyo.
• 0:56
  Patrick: Okay. I mean, I have so many questions. I want to know about the menu items. Also, like, my, my wife is a works in PR and her main client is McDonald's of America and McDonald's of Southern California. So, like, I spend a lot of time hearing about the ins and outs of the beverage treat space and like, which that is. It's a phrase I heard. I was walking past her desk one day. She was on a phone, she was on a call. And this woman very seriously is like, you know, we've really started, we've really got to start making more inroads in the beverage treat space. And that phrase is now stuck in my head. The rest of existence. I will never be able to get it out. I'm like, oh, we fighting over the beverage treat space, huh?
• 1:38
  George: I'm assuming the beverage treat space is the broader adult milkshake universe that Starbucks has so thoroughly.
• 1:45
  Patrick: Yes, that is exactly correct. But it also includes what I would think of as, as like things like Slurpees and, and I like, like where I'm like, that feels like an older and more honorable category.
• 1:57
  Propter: Yeah, right.
• 1:58
  Patrick: Like you have brought shame and dishonor by including a frozen Coke in the beverage treat space that it feels. I'm not a fan. Not a fan.
• 2:07
  George: Where's your whereas your bog standard fridge cigarette? That's not the beverage treat space. That's just hydration for many Americans.
• 2:13
  Patrick: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's correct.
• 2:16
  Propter: You've got, you've also got recent like back from the diaspora colonization from boba tea and the like. So it's, it's become contestant.
• 2:24
  Patrick: It's a, it's a global the beverage treat. Space is globalized. Yes, this is, this is absolutely. We are subject to the pressures of international markets and, and ideas here.
• 2:34
  Propter: Well, I got to say, I was, I was feeling pretty bearish about the American empire, but now that I found out that we have Carl's Jr. In Tokyo, we're back.
• 2:41
  Patrick: Things are, things are looking up, man. This is, you know, Donald Trump can't, it can't take everything away from us.
• 2:47
  Lowtax: That's right.
• 2:48
  George: So if you're listening in, listeners, the fourth voice that you're hearing is not your usual irritable Mainer who is on the western edge of the Pacific this week. We may force him to record next week tbd. Instead, we've got everyone's favorite history guy and just all round normal dude Patrick Wyman joining us today. And if you're not familiar with his work, his 10 year run on Tides of History, right. The podcast of some acclaim ended this year, actually a couple weeks ago now. And he's got a new project which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point. And he's also got a book out, Lost Worlds, which is about prehistory and how the human race sort of became, became the human race. So some really cool stuff to talk about with his work. But, you know, we'll get to that because as you can tell from this intro and the sheer number of fast food apps this man keeps on his phone, Patrick has the claim to be, I think, the most normal man I know on the Internet. We pride ourselves on normalcy, but we've already got him talking about his wife's career, fast food apps and, you know, intraday treats of the beverage variety. So I think, I think you're starting to get a piece of the picture. So, Patrick, welcome to Normal Men. You are seen by your fellow normal men as an extremely normal man.
• 4:09
  Patrick: I can't tell you how safe I feel here. This is, this is, I like the, even the fact that I'm mentioning the fast food apps lets you know how comfortable I am because that's, that's, you know how you swipe through the screens on your phone. They're all on the last page. Like, that's. Nobody who gets access to my phone is seeing the fast food apps immediately like Chipotle and Whataburger in uncomfortable conjunction right next to each other. It's, it's, nobody's happy about this, but here we are.
• 4:37
  George: Look, it's, I'm not above a quick scroll through the Taco Bell app to see what the most recent special Menu items are. They have a very good looking menu this year. We've got high hopes for some of these things. We've talked about it on the podcast. So, you know, again, very much a safe space. Welcome, brother. Welcome.
• 4:55
  Patrick: Okay, so I have a, I have a question here because I was never a Taco Bell guy. It was, it was just not the most convenient fast food option. So most of my experiences with Taco Bell were using the parking lot as a place to buy weed from a guy who drove in from a national forest. Like, he, he lived off the grid in a national forest somewhere up in the foothills of the Cascades. And when we needed something, he would just make the trek in. But like, obviously because he lived off the grid, he wanted to Taco Bell. Like, we totally understand. So like, but, but so like, we would just end up in this Taco Bell parking lot at like 10:30 on a Friday night waiting for a guy who driven in from the national forest. And so like, in my head, Taco Bell is now always associated with this dude. It's made me like less, less likely than I should be, frankly, to enjoy the, you know, the, the fruits of the Taco Bell menu.
• 5:46
  George: Wait, hold on. So it's a pejorative association because this sounds.
• 5:49
  Patrick: No, no, it's, it's, it's more like I don't know if I'm worthy. Like, I don't, I don't know if I've got quite the. I don't know if I've got quite the cojones for, for Taco Bell.
• 6:02
  George: No, Taco Bell welcomes all, brother. Even anyone, even pretending to be normal man or woman or anything else. If, if you like a bit of greasy, cheesy, zesty, doughy, crispy, crunchy deliciousness, you are welcome at Taco Bell and they have something for you on their menu.
• 6:25
  Patrick: I mean, I don't know how I could be any more in with the sales pitch like that.
• 6:30
  Propter: On the topic of Taco Bell, I'll say that I feel very strongly that if insect protein comes to the United States in quantity, Taco Bell is going to be the entry vector because the beef is already bad and you can put pretty much anything in there. There's, there's a plausible cultural hook with, you know, grasshoppers in Mexico. And I don't know, I would, I would eat a grasshopper taco from Taco Bell. I would, I would do the thing.
• 6:54
  Patrick: Look like we, we've, we're already accustomed to the slop bowl as, as an item. I mean, I I've been a proponent of the slop bowl for decades now. I feel like I was an early adopter, in fact, and the. And now, like, we've all become accustomed to the idea of just tossing a bunch of shit in there and going with it. So, like, it feels like Taco Bell really could get out ahead of that if they wanted to. And, you know, like, from your lips to God's ears, brother.
• 7:19
  George: The nice thing about Taco Bell is that it's a slop bowl, but structured in a less messy way. So, you know, like a crunchwrap supreme is functionally a self contained slop bowl, which is really nice. I mean, I think they're doing really good work down there.
• 7:31
  Patrick: Yeah, that's. Yeah, we love to see it.
• 7:33
  Propter: Yeah. Possibly a ravioli. I'm not sure how we would classify that.
• 7:39
  Patrick: This, for those of us who remember the great Is a hot dog, a sandwich debate of, of the early 2010s. We can just have that all the time now.
• 7:46
  George: Yeah. Handheld food morphology is a whole area of study on your favorite social media app. Whether that's Blue sky or any of the other ones, trust me, those people are out there. They're getting into the salt mines.
• 7:57
  Patrick: It's, it's, it's real. Like, it makes me understand the shortcomings of my philosophy education that I don't feel like I can properly engage with those debates where I'm like, I don't understand the classificatory schemes we're working with here. I'm not smart enough to understand this. Or I'm like, I, I will leave that to those more qualified.
• 8:14
  George: Is that a philosophy thing or a mathematics thing? Like, because at a certain point you're, you're blending the two when it comes to the whole hot dog sandwich debate.
• 8:23
  Patrick: I can't do either. So that's, they're, they're, they're both, they're both way. As far as I'm concerned. They're both like, things that people who are smarter than me do. And I'm, I'm okay with that. I'll take, like, I'll take your word for it. I don't know how QR code works. Like, you tell me there's math in there. I assume you're probably right.
• 8:40
  George: Like, unfortunately, Ed isn't here to tell us how a QR code works. Do that.
• 8:46
  Lowtax: I believe that is fortunate that Ed is not here to tell us how
• 8:49
  George: a QR code works. Ed actually does have in inventory at his home a hyper concentrated Baja Blast flavor thing. Like, you know, if you. If you had enough sugar water, you could. And carbonize it, it would make Baja Blast. But it's just. Just the flavor profile, which apparently on its own is. Is quite. Quite horrid as imagine without any sugar or water to dilute it. So. Yeah. So Ed. Ed would appreciate that aspect of this conversation.
• 9:21
  Patrick: Yeah, I. I've been recently getting into Code red, Mountain Dew, SodaStream. And let me. Let me tell you, things are looking good. Things are looking co. Zer. Code Diet, Code Red, of course. So, you know, you got to keep the calories down.
• 9:35
  George: We're all in our 30s. Well, close enough. We're all in our 30s here. That's fine.
• 9:41
  Propter: We all.
• 9:41
  George: We're on the diet soda train. I will ask you, Pat, what's the status of the dirty soda craze in Arizona? Has Utah infected y' all earlier than the rest of the country? Because that showed up on my local Taco Bell's menu, and I was quite horrified to be okay.
• 9:56
  Patrick: So this is. This is an area that I'm trying hard to get into more. So I recently did a road trip where we went through the heart of Mormondom. We drove from Portland through Boise, through Utah, spent a night in Salt Lake City and came down. And the one thing I wanted to do in Salt Lake City was get a dirty soda. I'm like, I want to. I want to understand the cultural landscape that is adjacent to my state. And we didn't end up doing it. It slipped our minds. We were. We were too busy taking in the rest of the culture of Salt Lake City. Like, very, very young, married women going out and, like, clearly cheating on their husbands. And I'm like, the rest of us sowed our wild oats before we were married, I think. So I had some questions about that. But I did miss out on the dirty soda. I know that there are chains here, but, like, Phoenix is weird because geographically, the Mormon population is highly concentrated in a couple of suburbs like Gilbert and Chandler. So if you go there, it's basically Salt Lake City, but the rest of us don't really go there. So, like, there. So it's this. It's a kind of a weird thing where, like. And. And because Phoenix is so sprawling, like, it's. It's the quintessential sprawling metro. Like, that's like 25 miles. Like, that's a long way from where I live if I wanted to go to get a dirty soda. And here is a little, like, the part that I'm in is a little more what I would describe as like culturally Midwestern. Like, it's like a cultural outpost of the Midwest. Kind of plop down. Like we have Culver's gotcha here.
• 11:27
  George: Yeah.
• 11:28
  Patrick: And so, like there. It's weird that, like different parts of American regional culture have, have put down their roots in Phoenix, in different suburbs, and the rest of us just like, don't go to them. It's. It's a very odd phenomenon, like in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a city, even though it is a city of separate cities. And like you live in Santa Monica, maybe you go to Burbank or you go like whatever. You're, you're traveling around, you're getting the feel of the city here.
• 11:53
  George: Like the, Obviously with the traffic, right? Like, that's the whole thing. Like you take the 410 to the whole bit.
• 11:59
  Patrick: Yeah. Oh, buddy, I can do all of that in my head still. I can, I can tell you exactly how to get there.
• 12:04
  George: The five to the 405 to the.
• 12:05
  Patrick: Yeah. Five to the 405 to the 101 to the. Yeah.
• 12:11
  George: I actually know what that route looks like in my head, now that I think about it.
• 12:14
  Patrick: It's not good. Like, I was. I was. After recording the Lost Worlds audiobook, I left LA because I really wanted to get home at like 3 o' clock on a Friday. It took me six hours to get to Palm Springs. It was the worst experience. Just sitting in, in bumper to bumper traffic on the freeway, driving through fucking San Bernardino. It was like, if that's not the American dream, I don't know what is. I. Oh my God. Yeah.
• 12:38
  George: Anyway, it's kind of unfortunate that LA stopped for at least a decade and it's just like endless sprawl outward during the global financial crisis. And, you know, they stopped pushing just inexorably further because it would have been cool to see what a metro centered on Rancho Cucamonga would have looked like.
• 12:56
  Patrick: I mean, that's what, that's what I'm talking about.
• 12:58
  Propter: The Inland Empire is the thing, man. Like, like, that's.
• 13:01
  Patrick: Oh, I know. I.
• 13:02
  George: A guy in my dorm, freshman year was from Rancho Cucamonga.
• 13:05
  Patrick: Oh, nice guy. I. I mean, I, I just want to say Rancho Cucamonga. Like, I never went there. Oh, no, I did go to Rancho Cucamonga one time. I was hungover. I was 19. I was living with. I was planning on living with a bunch of guys my sophomore year of college. So we borrowed a truck from his. This guy's girlfriend's sorority sister. We pile into this truck and none of Us should be driving it at this point. I can't, I can't emphasize that highly enough along Southern California freeways to go pick up a 70 inch projection TV that. On which the green gun didn't work. So everything on the TV was deeply red tinted. So. So we drove, we drove the 80 mile round trip out to Rancho Cucamonga to get this thing. We destroyed the case. Getting it into the truck. Could not. And we could never. The, the plan was to get the green gun replaced so that we could watch, you know, ESPN News in all of its, in all of its glory. Could not get that done. So we just watched red tinted TV in this apartment the next year with a TV blocking the window. So we got no light into the apartment.
• 14:12
  George: That's demonic lighting in there with the TV on.
• 14:15
  Patrick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like. And I had this, this was not one of my roommates but was a friend of my roommates. A deep idiot. Deep idiot who was just there playing Madden. Red tinted all the time. And. Like this is, this is the part of the early 2000s. They're leaving out of the nostalgia films now. I think we've all missed that.
• 14:40
  George: College roommates are just. And that whole vibe. We moved into a three bedroom apartment my senior year just off campus the first three years I lived on campus and the third or the fourth year it's me and a guy who was basically doing a victory lap year and a fourth guy who, whose prior claim to fame is that he like broke his knee while playing basketball interning in D.C. one summer in the midst of trying to plan a charity basketball tournament involving the White House. So sterling work from this fella. Anyhow, we move in and so we do the big IKEA or Target run or whatever and we. It's a standard issue near college apartments. So there's no. When you move in they've taken down all the shower curtains and all that kind of stuff, right? So we get them a shower curtain. We don't think anymore. But fast forward eight months or nine months and we're moving out and we realize that this fella has been using his door. The wooden like door to the bathroom opened into the bathroom and he'd been using that as a shower curtain all year and it was covered, oh my God, was covered in black mold. And the best part is the shower curtain when we, when we're in the process of moving out and we discover this. And I think he had left at that point. So it's just me and the other guy going like what the Hell, the shower curtain was in the bathroom unopened.
• 16:11
  Patrick: That's. You could just like, I, you need to tell that story and just put it on Instagram in a reel with just, with the block letters that say men. And it would. I'm telling, I'm telling you. That would do numbers for you on, on that platform. Like, it's true.
• 16:27
  George: You're pretty active on Instagram, right? Is that. Am I right in saying I, I know you plug it in your, in your podcast.
• 16:32
  Patrick: I, I dabble. I'm. I would say I mostly shit post on Instagram. It's like, I, I like. I, I think it's a, It's a fun platform to get to interact with people privately. I would say, like, it's, it's fun to have conversations with people. I find it easier to, to like, talk to people who like my work on there than I do on Blue sky or definitely on Twitter at this point. Like, you couldn't, you couldn't pay me to spend more than five minutes on Twitter. Like, there's not an amount of money in the world. But, like, yeah, I find it's just like, people are, I think people are more willing to like, DM you on Instagram. And so if somebody just wants to say, hey, what's up? Or wants to say, like, I really enjoyed this, I find it, I kind of find it easier. So I like it for that aspect of it. I've dabbled in like, making content and I don't think my content is very Good.
• 17:21
  George: Well, your TikTok content is certainly niche and in a, in a good way that I think could take off on that app, that the way their FYP algorithms work, that this sort of stuff always. And for those of you that haven't had the good fortune of seeing Pat's TikTok content, it's him just posting an edited. But, you know, just here are the lifts I did today video. But instead of talking about his workout, he's like giving a history lesson, which rules. It's just the most normal man coded content imaginable. Like, here's a big beefy brother, like, snatching some stuff and talking about how, you know, historical event fits into today's news. It's just, it's great.
• 18:00
  Patrick: It's. This is just stuff I like doing. I like working out and I like history. And like, I don't have any ulterior motives. I like, there's. I have a, I have a friend who, who has become relatively famous in his field. He's won a. He's Won some Emmys. He's like, he's, he's really good at what he does, but he has a, he has a theory on like the maximal correct level of fame, which is that you want to be, you want to be famous enough to get invited to the parties where they serve really good finger food for free and anything. And that's, that's number one. And number two, you want to be able to like, call and talk to the people you want to call and talk to. And anything above that is a massive problem. Like, you don't want to be any more famous than that. You want, you want finger food and you want the Rolodex. Anything more than that and famous fame is terrible. Like, and that's, that's kind of where I want to settle in. I want the finger food. Yeah.
• 18:54
  George: Who doesn't want. I want finger food right now. And I've had three meals already today.
• 18:57
  Patrick: Yeah, give me, like you could squeeze an empanada in there. Just, just a little guy, just a little thing.
• 19:02
  George: Maybe a little chocolate ones from Taco Bell. I can walk to the 10 years taco bell, by the way. Like, I can literally. It's a 10 minute walk.
• 19:07
  Patrick: That's, that's dangerous, brother. That's. That, that could be a problem.
• 19:13
  Propter: 10 minutes out, 15 back right there.
• 19:16
  Patrick: Well, I mean, I think it depends on how, how long you're staying. Stopover in the stall there is like, based on, based on what your consumption was.
• 19:26
  George: I'm a lot more moderate than I was when I was sharing an apartment with somebody who used a bathroom door as their shower curtains.
• 19:35
  Lowtax: I have a question on that, George. Like, how did you guys not ever notice this?
• 19:41
  George: We didn't ever have a reason to go in his room because each, each room had their own bathroom. Right? It was, they were all. So we didn't ever have a reason to go in there. You, you know, like, you could see into his room. He, it's not like he had the door closed all the time into his, into his bedroom. But there wasn't. It's not like there was a smell emanating from it or whatever. Like there was nothing to investigate ever. We really wanted to know what, you know, the. I'm not going to get into numbers, but the women he brought over through the year, you know, thought of that because it was clearly a problem for a while, given what it was.
• 20:13
  Patrick: I mean, maybe, maybe we should have all been tipped off by the fact that they, all of them, all of those women ended up at the health center with a Toxic mold related illness afterward. But you know, we just, we just were not putting A and B together at that point. Yeah, man.
• 20:29
  George: I don't know how that was explained away, but it nevertheless.
• 20:33
  Patrick: Did you get the deposit back?
• 20:36
  George: That's a no. Thinking about it, if we did, it was a fraction. Really pissed at this guy because the rest of the apartment was fine.
• 20:49
  Patrick: It was just, just the mold door. I like. What's, what's one mold door among friends?
• 20:54
  George: Yeah, I think, you know, in, in Durham, North Carolina in 2012, a new door was probably going for about 400 bucks. Installed seems about right. So I think that would have been at least half our security deposit, which, you know, I mean this is landlord that's marketing to college seniors like they know what they're signing up for.
• 21:12
  Patrick: For. Yeah, I mean frankly, the fact that it was just one mold door seems like, seems like a real win for that guy. I,
• 21:21
  Propter: all right, I got a, I got an apartment. I, I, I have an apartment security deposit story that I want to tell in brief here. And it's also a Southern California story which I, I hope Patrick can appreciate, which is that after I, after I graduated college, I spent a year living in Eagle Rock, which is Los Angeles. And Eagle Rock has a number of apartment buildings that are like these four or five story things that are walk ups but then have rooftop balconies. They're basically places to go put a grill. Anyway, my then roommate and I went to go buy a couch and we bought this great long couch because the layout was like this two tier loft, like my bedroom was a loft over the rest of it. And we discovered that we could not get the couch up the hallway into our apartment. So our only recourse was to take the couch all the way up to the roof, shove it over the divide between, you know, one rooftop balcony and another to get it into our rooftop balcony, and then use a rope to lower it down into the living room from the loft. Obvious. But there was a problem, which is that when it came time to leave the apartment, we could not get the couch out of the apartment. We had not anticipated this failure case.
• 22:36
  Patrick: You weren't, you were planning on living there forever. And the, the, the idea of the, the idea of the couch needing to leave at some. No, it just lives there now. I mean, I think.
• 22:44
  George: Wait, you couldn't rope it back up or.
• 22:46
  Propter: No, we couldn't rope. It was actually kind of a, it was actually kind of, kind of a deal to rope it down. Like, like my friend who was helping with the couch Was a big dude and we had him like standing like cruciform in a doorway up there, bracing while we lower this 12 down down
• 23:03
  Patrick: in a 12 foot couch.
• 23:04
  Propter: I mean, this was, this was a long. This was a terrible idea. But we were very excited that we figured out a way to get it into the apartment.
• 23:11
  Patrick: This. And were you, were you. Let me just to double check. You were in your early 20s at the time?
• 23:15
  Propter: Yes. Yes, I was.
• 23:16
  Patrick: Is that correct? Okay. Yeah. This is the most early 20s dude shit I've ever heard.
• 23:19
  George: Could have been pat. Come on.
• 23:21
  Patrick: I do. Okay. So this is the thing. I, I love looking back at my early 20s and being like, God, I was. It is a miracle I made it through that. Like, they're like, I should not be here. Like, I should probably should have gone to jail a couple of times. Like that. There is. Looking back on it, I'm like, it is. We got real lucky that, that worse things did not happen. For example, like every, like, I don't think I know a man who hasn't at some point at least strongly contemplated the idea of roping a couch into an apartment. Like we, my dad and I did that we had to dump it. We had to dump one over a balcony. Luckily we were getting rid of it, but we did dump the couch over a balcony. Like it did fall a substantial way. This is a canon experience to have.
• 24:06
  Propter: It's a very satisfying solution to what is essentially a geometrical problem.
• 24:13
  Patrick: Couch go up. Couch go up. No, we avoid hard angle down. This is I, I appreciate a, like, like the brute force solution which is I lift high, go down. This is. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm here for this.
• 24:31
  Lowtax: I'm. All I can think here is that I'm really glad I was with my wife when I was in college already and that we lived together and I had someone who would have been there to do, to say, no, don't do that for brains. Going to lose our security deposit.
• 24:48
  Patrick: This was the prop. Nobody was telling me that. And, and many people needed to like there, there was, there was a lot of need for that. Like when I, I lived in Ireland from When I was 22 to 24, I got a master's degree in Galway. And the number of times I got lost whilst drunk wandering around Galway, fell down some stairs in the middle of, in the middle of an evening. Almost got robbed by a couple of gypsy kids like that. You could just like, I, I tried to take a shortcut through the traveler's campsite on my way back to My apartment. I had my ipod out. It was, I, it was Thanksgiving and I'm like, it's Ireland. Nobody else is like drunk on Thanksgiving. It's just me. It's a, it's a, it's a Thursday night. I'm wandering home at midnight through the travelers encampment, like all of these very silly things. And somehow, somehow I survived. Like, no, like somebody should have told me. Like, are you sure? Maybe cab tonight. Tonight might be a cab night. And nobody was there. Nobody was there for that.
• 25:50
  George: Let's be honest though. If the four of us were trying to get involved in some sort of harebrained couch levitation scheme, Proctor would be the one devising it, me and Pat would be the dumb muscle and Lotax would be in the corner ripping a cig going, guys, that's a bad idea. And I have nothing to do with this.
• 26:06
  Lowtax: That's correct.
• 26:10
  Patrick: Yeah. Like I, when it comes to a scheme, I am suggestible. I'll be real honest. I am, I am open to a scheme. Like harebrained. Even better. Yeah. Oh yeah.
• 26:21
  George: I mean, especially if it involves some combination of lifting something heavy, transporting an object. Especially if my truck is involved. Involved and maybe the promise of a cold beer after. You can pretty much talk me into anything if those three elements are present.
• 26:35
  Patrick: Yeah. Speaking of trucks, is there anything better than the feeling of like tying down a load in the back of a truck? Like you got a tarp, you got some ropes and you like, you step back from it after you're done, you say isn't going anywhere. Like that's, it's the, it's the most satisfying feeling I have ever had in my life. And all of the sudden like so much more of my dad's personality like snapped into place. Once, once I had that experience for myself. I'm like, I see the high you were chasing for all those years. I see it makes sense.
• 27:03
  George: That is when you stack it on top of starting the loadout process and realizing that you have carefully wrapped all of your tie down straps into the perfect little ovals and they're exactly where they're supposed to be and just are ready to rock. If you could stack those two things that, that start to the loading up and then the finish of, of that, that satisfaction together, you are going to be riding that high for weeks to come. And you're going to make sure that everyone in your orbit, whether it's children, spouse, friends, neighbors, they're all going to know about it. They're all going to know about it.
• 27:36
  Lowtax: Oh, dude.
• 27:37
  Patrick: Another real underrated. 1. Properly coiling a loop of rope after you've used it. Oh, you know, you get it. You get it around the elbow, up and up and up and up. Then you figure eight it. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It's like crack. It's like crack. I would like sometimes, Sometimes you just gotta open up a rope just to loop it. Just to give yourself a little. Just to give yourself that little rush.
• 27:57
  George: Yep.
• 27:59
  Patrick: Okay, just out of curiosity, is this. Am I being normal enough? Is this normal man enough for the. Okay. I just wanted, I just wanted to be sure I was, I was, I was in the right, right wheelhouse here.
• 28:08
  George: Although I think this is one of the most normal 28 minutes of recording we've had the history of the podcast.
• 28:16
  Lowtax: So the bar is in hell, but yes,
• 28:19
  George: it's aspirational.
• 28:23
  Propter: So, Patrick, I don't know if George briefed you on that this was going to be a topic of conversation. I hope he did. But one of the very, very specific reasons that I was extremely thrilled that you were gonna be on is that you might be the single most qualified person in the world to talk about the brawl of the presidents.
• 28:39
  Patrick: Oh, I love Bradley of brawling presidents.
• 28:41
  Propter: If we had, if we had either a Royal Rumble or, you know, bracket bracketed tournament style, I'm, I'm open to different formats. A physical fight between the presidents of the United States. And I'm, I'm also open to whether or not we're doing this as at their, at their actual physical peak or at their physical peak during their presidency.
• 29:00
  Patrick: Who would win? Okay, so this is a fantastic question. And I, we. There are layers to this that we can get into. I would say. You gotta, you gotta start. We gotta start by thinking about who are the most physically imposing candidates. Right? Okay, so you gotta go, you gotta go. Lincoln. That reach, that's. I mean, and, and he was like, guys who are built like that, in my experience, just, it's like the Fight Club quote. Like they just fight until they're hamburger. Like, they're hard to hurt. Like, guy like those long, lean, rangy dudes, they're, they're tough to hurt. And we know Lincoln had a combat sports background. We know he was, he was a fantastic wrestler. Strong as hell. Like, great build for, for a scrap in the backwoods, I would say.
• 29:44
  Propter: Orangutan, yes.
• 29:46
  George: Established success too. He was 299 and 1 in his wrestling career. So this guy had some chops.
• 29:52
  Patrick: And, and like, if you're, if you're wrestling in the Kinds of environments that Abraham Lincoln was wrestling in. Like the culture of like folk style wrestling in the 19th century was, was vicious. I mean there's a lot of crossover between that and the kind of like no holds barred scene that you would get if you were going to get into a fight in a tavern where like there's eye gouging, fish hooking, hair pulling. There, there are stories about guys who would grow out, who would just grow out one fingernail and use that as a, as an eye gouging implement. So like this is the environment in which Abraham Lincoln is learning to tussle. So he's, he's very close to the top of my list. I think in terms of pure killer instinct, Theodore Roosevelt might have been our, our, our most bloodthirsty president like that. Loved killing. He loved killing things. He loved killing animals. The way he writes about killing a human being after the battle of San Juan Hill is, is frankly disturbing. The amount of like joy he took in the act of ending another person's life. Again, really well rounded combat sports background. So when guy like he had judo specialists come to the White House and work with him, that's how Roosevelt lost the sight in one eye, if memory serves. He was like messing, he was messing around with this guy and for the rest of his life TR was just half blind. This was while he was in the White House. So he was like 50 at this point. And he's going with like a world renowned judo specialist who was making a world tour to spread judo around. Yeah, Theodore Roosevelt definitely up there. We know he could box, he could wrestle, he messed around with judo. Smaller guy, firearms small, but not as small as you would think. He was actually 5, 10. I went and I looked this up the other day. So pretty, pretty reasonable size for the time. Hail hardy fit. We know he was tough. We know he could endurance too.
• 31:39
  George: There's a story from when he before he was fully invested in his political career where he went on an elk hunt near where I grew up in, in British Columbia. And he hunting elk is, is really challenging because they operate at pretty high altitudes, very mountainous environments and they're enormous animals. Right? Like an elk is not like a deer. Like if you're thinking, oh, you know, hunting deer or whatever, it's those little things that can mess up the front of your car. No, no, no, no, no. You're much more into moose territory. You're not, you're not at the moose size, but you're, you're in that general neighborhood. And so they go and they get an elk. And they're packed, they're. He whips out his. His Tiffany silver hunting knife to gut the. And dress the animal. And of course, there is quite a lot of opprobrium over the fact that he's using a Tiffany silver hunting knife. But then he loads up by far the largest portion of the. Of the pack out and just doesn't take any breaks and just storms out with it and sets the pace. And the guides are like, what is wrong with this guy? We can't keep up with him. Like, what are we doing here? And so, yes, he was from this, like, very privileged background and very wealthy man, but dude had some horses, but he had a motor.
• 32:51
  Patrick: So he's like, he might be our most built different president. And like, I, I use that phrase very specifically, right? Where like George Washington, given his, given his background and like the life experiences that he had, it's not that hard to see how George Washington ends up being who he's being or ends up being who he is. Abraham Lincoln, again, it kind of makes sense. Like, the idea of like the, the untutored backwoods lawyer who's lived a rough life, like, that's not that out of the ordinary. Teddy Roosevelt's life story is weird. Like, that guy, that guy went and just found, like, what is the most difficult possible thing that I can do right now. And he went and he consistently did it. He performed well at those things and was also just a sociopath who loved killing on some level. Like, there's. It's. He is. He's just an odd character. And you could see him. He would. He's one of our past presidents who I think would do just fine in the 21st century. He would be. He would be totally fine. Okay.
• 33:51
  George: Other be a huge deal on Instagram. Like, I don't know what he'd be doing, but he would be a huge deal on Instagram.
• 33:56
  Patrick: It would. He would. Content would be great. I would, I would love to see him. Like, I just caught these outlaws. Like, just. He's got the selfie stick and he's like, hey, George, tell him where you're from. Tell him what you did and why I've got you roped up here next to the horses. George. Like, I could see Teddy doing that. Andrew. Andrew Jackson is another one that unfortunately, I think we have to put in the elite category. Anybody who gets slashed with a sword and ends up becoming like a kind of a legendary hard man, the way that Andrew Jackson was, I think has to belong in that. Even though we all know Andrew Jackson sucks for a variety of reasons. He was still a tough guy on pure physicality. We probably got to put Gerald Ford in there, don't you think?
• 34:41
  Propter: Yeah, certainly, certainly. He's, you know, our top eight ish seeds.
• 34:46
  George: Probably top seed from after World War II. Has to be.
• 34:50
  Propter: Have.
• 34:50
  George: Has to be top seed after World War II. Probably second seed from the 20th century after Teddy.
• 34:56
  Patrick: Yeah, yeah, because he's like. Because like, he was an all American. He was an all American in Michigan, right? Yeah. So. And, and he was. He. He was in the military, wasn't he? I'm not. During World War II, was he in the Navy?
• 35:10
  Propter: He must have served. I mean, he's.
• 35:12
  Patrick: He has to. He was of the age to. It was he? 1913. Ford was born. Am I making that up?
• 35:19
  Propter: Yeah, you got that exactly right.
• 35:21
  Lowtax: Well done.
• 35:22
  Patrick: Okay, okay, so he.
• 35:24
  Propter: Yeah. Military service.
• 35:26
  Patrick: Yeah. Okay, so I don't. He. He doesn't qualify as one of our most bloodthirsty presidents or one of our most experienced combat sports athletes. But on. On pure size and physicality, I think we gotta. Ford. Ford needs a mention in the, in the elite ranks.
• 35:41
  Propter: You got. You've got another set of big men who, who have maybe limited combat sports backgrounds. Like Bill Clinton's sport for his Rhodes scholarship was rugby. So. So he's got. He's got at least some background there. Taft when he was skinny.
• 35:59
  Patrick: Yeah.
• 36:00
  Propter: Also a.
• 36:01
  George: Or, or honestly. Or. Well, well, he wasn't so skinny.
• 36:04
  Patrick: Maybe, Maybe like, you got it. You got him for a minute when he is. And if you can survive that minute, you're gonna win, but that minute's gonna be tough. Like, my son went through a whole phase where he was obsessed with the book. President Taft is stuck in the bath. So, like, he, he brought it. He brought it for show and tell. He thought he. He had a whole parallel narrative going alongside about whether Taft really did get stuck in the bath or not. Like, he was. He was real big on this. So, like. But Taft was also an accomplished wrestler. Like, and I. If we're, if we're talking about favorite presidents to put in there, you know, wrestling has to be the base. Wrestling has always got to be your combat sports base. So I think on. On size, strength, acumen, Taft's got to be up there. We can raise some questions about conditioning, though.
• 36:52
  George: What do we think about Eisenhower?
• 36:55
  Patrick: Oh, man. How long does he have to plan? Say a month. Okay. Eisenhower with a month to plan. There's got to be some stratagems in there that anybody who can who can oversee Operation Overlord, I gotta think, has a, can think of a way to defeat Gerald Ford in unarmed combat. That came off way harsher than Ford than it needed. Than it needed to. But I just think the parallel is pretty striking there. If we're talking about the ability to handle a large scale deployment.
• 37:26
  George: Yeah. I mean, also, obviously lots of military experience, like anyone that's got. Maybe it's not as good as backwoods wrestling, but if you've got military experience, you're probably going to have the basics of hand to hand combat down to a certain degree.
• 37:37
  Propter: So, yeah, Howard's the Batman of this Justice League brawl. If you let him prepare, it's going to be a problem.
• 37:44
  Patrick: Okay, now I have a flyer for you. This one's going to come out of left field a little bit, but bear with me on pure cussedness alone, where do we put Harry Truman?
• 37:53
  George: Oh, I was thinking about Harry, but wasn't Truman a banker? Like, like, do we really.
• 37:59
  Patrick: He served in the artillery in World War I. He, I, he was, he was present during a gas attack. So he's like. So he'd seen some stuff. He also, let's not forget, made the decision to drop the atomic bomb. And in the context of, of a fight, the willingness to just do a thing matters a lot. So even though he's not physically imposing, maybe doesn't have the background, I think, on pure meanness like you got, and like the willingness to do a hard thing, I think Truman has kind of got to be in there whether you want him to or not.
• 38:35
  George: Like, on that metric, do you rank him above or below Ulysses S. Grant?
• 38:40
  Patrick: Below. I mean, I think like anybody who can battle alcoholism for that long, I think deserves it, deserves a lot of credit for fortitude. Also, my great, great grandfather served under Ulysses S. Grant for most, for during, for most of Grant's time in the West. And I feel like I gotta at least rep the man. And again, this is a, this is a planning thing, right? Like, we know Ulysses S. Grant understands a battle of attrition. You put him in there with Taft, he's just gonna wear Taft out.
• 39:06
  George: Right?
• 39:07
  Propter: So let's say, so let's say we're swatting Truman as like a dangerous, dangerous 10 or a 12C, you know?
• 39:11
  Patrick: Yeah, he's, he's a, he's a dark horse. But I, but I think he belongs in the conversation.
• 39:16
  Lowtax: Okay, now there's a name that we, we do need to discuss here because he's a little guy, but he did prompt the phrase badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds. And that is Richard Nixon.
• 39:38
  Patrick: Okay, so I think, okay, so this is a question. This. To, to properly evaluate Nixon's place in this tournament, we need to understand the rule sets. And if there are no rules to break, then we can't rank Nixon all that highly. If there are rules to break, then, then we got to move Nixon up the list because we know Nixon is going to do whatever it takes to win. We know that if he suffers a defeat, he's the only guy who's going to come back stronger. And, and also we know he's got that paranoid style, so he's going to put in a lot of time training to, to make it. Now is he? I think the. Here's the question I almost feel bad for asking this is, is Nix. Is it possible that Nixon could be matched, matched up with a Democrat in this? If so, then we got, we got to give him extra points is if the bout, if the bout takes place at the Watergate Hotel. How are we handicapping that? I, you start getting into some, some extra stuff with Nixon.
• 40:34
  Propter: Yeah, I mean, I, I think we have to separate, you know, pre realignment Democrats from post realignment Democrats. Yeah, I mean, he does kind of straddle, but, but, but it's an issue. I wonder if the Quaker background could be a handicap for him there.
• 40:48
  George: It was in politics, though. True.
• 40:50
  Patrick: So, yeah, yeah, we know, we know he was willing to, we know he was willing to go bare knuckle in those regards.
• 40:57
  Propter: We haven't talked about George Washington. Do we need to talk about George Washington?
• 41:00
  Patrick: Yeah. Okay, so big dude, strong guy, lots of experience. You can assume, even, even if this isn't like a big part of his biographical stories, it's usually told he spent a lot of time in spaces where dudes were brawling, and so I think he would have a good sense for when violence is about to erupt. Also very calm, very good under pressure. We know that about him. And that matters a lot in a scrap kitten, like, are you capable of keeping your head? And we know maybe more than any other president, Washington had that characteristic. He had it in spades. So I think, like, it's easy to overlook Washington because he's the first and we all know the legend of George Washington. But yeah, he actually would have been a pretty formidable guy, I think. I, I mean, now you start fish hooking, you get into that, those teeth, then we're, we're in interesting territory. Like, like what are the rules around Pulling out dentures. I don't know. How sensitive are his gums? We got some questions there. We're going to need to evaluate.
• 42:00
  George: If you land the right angle on those teeth, man, I mean, that's it.
• 42:05
  Patrick: You get shrapnel, man. They could splinter. Like, that's.
• 42:10
  George: All right, so a preliminary list here. I have Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Ford as our top three. I've then got a blank space. Then Eisenhower, Taft, Grant, Grant, Washington, Clinton, Truman, Nixon.
• 42:24
  Propter: I think Jackson's.
• 42:25
  George: That's our.
• 42:25
  Propter: Jackson's in that.
• 42:26
  George: Oh, Jackson. So before or after Eisenhower, Maybe maybe put him fourth. That's convenient.
• 42:35
  Patrick: I would, I would actually. Let's. Let's put. I would move Washington up the list. I would, I would. I would say we gotta. On that basis, we gotta make Washington. I think Washington's gotta be the 4 seed because he's got the size, he's got the experience. I think Ford is a fine three. Like, physically. I don't know if there's been a president who could match Ford. Like, he's. He. And, and we all know athleticism is on some level, King. Anybody who's ever sparred a former, like, professional athlete knows what the levels are. And we know Ford was. We know which side of that Ford was on that. I think that's a good top four. I would. Jackson maybe five. Somewhere in that range.
• 43:14
  George: So then first seed Lincoln, second seed Roosevelt, third seed Ford, fourth seed Washington. Jackson in at five, Eisenhower right behind him at six. Then we've got Taft, Grant, Clinton, Truman, and Nixon.
• 43:27
  Patrick: I think give. The give is Grant drinking.
• 43:33
  George: Whatever makes him more lethal. I like.
• 43:35
  Propter: Right.
• 43:35
  Patrick: Okay.
• 43:36
  Lowtax: I think you have to have him drinking.
• 43:38
  Patrick: Yeah, yeah. That makes. That would make sense. Then I would say that. I would say Grant right after Eisenhower.
• 43:42
  George: Okay, so I'll flip Grant and Taft then. Because. Because again, yeah, that's tap Taft.
• 43:47
  Patrick: The conditioning is just such a question mark. You just. You never know what kind of shape he's going to show up in for the fight.
• 43:52
  George: Yeah. So then. So then as we get further down
• 43:56
  Patrick: the seating, the Tyson fury of presidents, if you will.
• 44:00
  Lowtax: Taft is the. Taft is the Oklahoma.
• 44:03
  George: Of this committee ranking. Oh, Jesus.
• 44:09
  Patrick: Oh, my God. Okay, so. And then after. After that, we got.
• 44:13
  George: Because. Because there's a large number of presidents who. Frankly, it's not even worth discussing. Right. Like, I'm sorry, Adams. Like, no, you're toast, dude. Like, there's not. It's not worth discussing. You don't have the killer instinct. You don't have the physique. You don't have the skills.
• 44:26
  Patrick: No, not, not unless you can get the British soldiers he was defending in. In 1771 to come. To come help him out. In that case, different conversation.
• 44:34
  George: No, it's solo. Solo only. Solo only.
• 44:36
  Patrick: Yeah. Thomas Jefferson obviously doesn't belong. James Madison was a manlet Monroe. I don't think he's outstanding enough. Quincy Adams, definitely not the, the, the, the Magic Dutchman, you know, Martin Van Buren. I don't think he need Zachary Taylor.
• 44:52
  Propter: That's an interesting.
• 44:54
  Patrick: So our. If, if we can keep him away from infectious disease, he might have a chance.
• 45:03
  George: I'll put him in at 12 with a question mark.
• 45:05
  Patrick: Yeah, you don't get to be called ol rough and ready unless there's like a kernel of truth there.
• 45:12
  George: Right.
• 45:13
  Patrick: What about.
• 45:14
  George: So that takes us what, to 1830?
• 45:19
  Patrick: With Taylor, we're at 1848. So then we've got. We don't need Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, Buchanan. No. Polk. No. None of the bewhiskered gentlemen of this. Of the 1870s and 80s. I don't think Skip a name.
• 45:34
  George: Who, who for cussedness could. I don't think he's as cussed as, as Truman or some of these other examples. But I do think we have to at least mention Andrew Johnson. Oh. As a low seed. I mean, I, I think, I think he deserves to be in the conversation in a way that some of these guys don't. I mean if you grew up in the backcountry in Tennessee and are that big of a tool, then like you're probably going to be somewhat useful.
• 46:01
  Patrick: Yeah. Like that guy has. There's. You cannot tell me that Andrew Johnson was not punched in the face like repeatedly over the course of his life. Like so do not get to be
• 46:09
  George: that way without some serious consequences to your visage.
• 46:13
  Patrick: Exactly. Yeah. Like that. I mean now I want to go look at a picture of Andrew Johnson. Be like, how broken was his nose? Do we see any evidence of cauliflower ear? I got questions. But yeah, I would say he's more in the, like a tough out as a 16 seed in the first round of the tournament, you know, like he is. I don't, I don't know that we really need to consider him as a contender. But like he's, he's going to give somebody a tough, a tough matchup.
• 46:38
  George: Well, so at this point then we've got, if we, if we keep Johnson, he's, he's a teen somewhere somewhere below 12. So then we've got three other. 13, 14, 15, 16. We got to fill three spots there. So Hoover, it's. I'm skipping a few here, but Hoover, really hard to see anything there. You know, Jimmy Carter. Sorry, brother. Love Jimmy Carter. Big fan, great guy. This is not the venue for his skills. I also think that Reagan would have been absolutely terrible in this, in this format.
• 47:13
  Patrick: I don't think anybody. Yeah, nobody. And like Reagan does not strike me as a man who got punched in the face often enough. And like there's. It's same deal with our, with our current president. A man who really would have benefited from getting punched in the face early in life.
• 47:28
  George: Correct.
• 47:29
  Patrick: Like Obama. He's got some. He's got some height. He's got. We know he's got above average athleticism, but I don't. But no fighting experience that we know of.
• 47:37
  George: I might put Obama as a 16 Dean seed just because he's fast and fairly large and relatively well nourished compared to some of these other.
• 47:47
  Lowtax: I think Obama is. Obama's your James Madison.
• 47:50
  Propter: Yeah, famous. Famously all elbows on the court.
• 47:53
  Lowtax: So he's not making it to the second round. But.
• 47:56
  George: Yeah, but put him at 15 or 16 and it's defensible. So we're too short. We just need two more names for this list. I actually think I'm going to put Johnson at 13. I. I think he. I think he has seen some stuff. So we need a 14 and a 15 from the remaining pantheon.
• 48:13
  Propter: I'm going to make. I'm going to make a. I'm going to make a controversial pitch here, which is that if you get pre polio fdr, I think he's got a shot.
• 48:21
  Patrick: Wow. I like that. I like that take. I like that take a lot.
• 48:25
  George: What leads you to say that?
• 48:26
  Propter: Proctor, he was an athlete at. I forget which ivy he attended. I think it was. I think it was Harvard. But he was a club athlete at a time when that was kind of a big deal, when that was the equivalent of pro sports and was apparently pretty good at it. He was big, tall guy, strong. I don't think there was a combat sports background.
• 48:48
  Patrick: But, you know, I also think that's a case where mentality matters a lot. Right. Like you can see like FDR was a guy who was willing to do what it took to win and you can't take that for granted in a scrap. Like somebody like the. Again, this is like decision making. Like the. I remember talking to a very famous MMA coach. She's trained champion after champion after champion after champion over decades. And we were talking about a guy that he trained we were talking Jon Jones, who's. Has never been beaten in a fight. The coach is Greg Jackson, who's, who's in Albuquerque. Great dude, really fascinating guy. And we were talking about this one day and I'm like, what, like, what is it that makes Jon Jones different? I'm like, is the athleticism? Is it, is it skills? Is it this or that? He's like, no, it's none of those things. It's just that when you're presented with five things that you could do in a really high pressure situation, do you pick the right one? And Jon Jones was a guy who just always made the right decision. And fdr, by and large, whenever he was backed into a corner, was a guy who made the right decision. And I think there's, there's a lot to be said for that. Like Lincoln too. Like a lot of these, A lot of these people. This is actually turning it into an interesting kind of personality profile for presidents where like, you can see that when they were, when, when the heat was on, they did the right thing. So, like jfk, I don't know how we're handicapping him with a back injury. JFK proved like he could hang in a situation that was like far beyond most people. And like I. The PT 109 story is, I think, because of how JFK's life ended and the womanizing and the, and the drug use and that. Dallas, like, yeah, he's got a bit
• 50:30
  George: of a glass jaw.
• 50:35
  Propter: Too soon? Can't be too soon.
• 50:36
  Patrick: Okay.
• 50:37
  George: Almost 70 years ago.
• 50:40
  Patrick: Is this a spoiler alert situation? Yeah, I mean, I just, I think because we know how all that ended, we kind of underrate, like, how actually wild it was what he did with PT109 during World War II. And like, that is, that is serious business to have survived an incident like that. And JFK made it through. Oh, okay, here's another one. We completely left this off. George H.W. bush. Speaking of, speaking of people with people who know pressure and know how to survive in, in, in a difficult environment, how many combat missions did he fly during World War II?
• 51:17
  Propter: And then he was a stone cold spook for years. I mean.
• 51:20
  George: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I think we got to put him in either 14 or 15. I think put him in between FDR and Obama.
• 51:27
  Patrick: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm in for that. Because again, not a physically imposing guy.
• 51:30
  George: W. Bush doesn't. No, nothing there but Pappy.
• 51:34
  Propter: Pappy. Pappy sneaks in.
• 51:35
  Patrick: Yeah, yeah, I would put, I would put Barbara Bush in Ahead of W. Like, just. Just purely. Purely on the basis of her Rolodex and her ability to, like, suss out the weaknesses of the people that she's fighting against. Like, I would put Barbara high on that list. She's like, I know that you had surgery on that left knee in 1973 and it never healed right. Like, that's. That's the kind of knowledge that Barbara Bush is bringing to this. So would it even be fair to have HW Knowing that Barbara's the only
• 52:02
  Lowtax: one I'm putting behind HW it would have been Jeb.
• 52:10
  George: I mean, Jeb's got at least one gun, right? We know he had that.
• 52:14
  Patrick: Please clap. So please clap.
• 52:16
  George: Please clap. All right, so then the official normal men rundown seating of the Battle of the Presidents. And not to say that no one not who isn't on this list would have any chance, but it's just not really worth getting into. Number one presumptive number one overall seed. I don't think there's any debate about this. We've got Abraham Lincoln, number two, Teddy Roosevelt, number three, Gerald Ford, George Washington. At number four, Andrew Jackson, number five, Dwight David Eisenhower, number six, Grant takes the seven seed. Taft at eight, Bubba Bill Clinton, number nine, Truman at 10, Nixon at 11, Zachary Taylor, number 12. The 13 seed goes to Andrew Johnson, FDR, the real sleeper of this discussion, I gotta say. At the 14 seed, George W. Bush. At the 15 seed, largely on account of his spookery. And at number 16, he's long live and quick. But we don't know how he would do once he got punched in the mouth. That'd be Barack Obama. So I love this list. I think this is unassailable.
• 53:21
  Propter: You know, Lincoln, Obama and Taft Clinton are both intriguing round one matchups.
• 53:25
  Lowtax: Yes, I think so. I'm going to give it to Lincoln. But I like that we have Nixon at 11 because that was also, I think, where the Miami Hurricanes ranked this past year. And that's fitting. So I think. I think Nixon makes it all the way to the championship and then gets beat by Lincoln.
• 53:49
  George: I. Ooh, really?
• 53:51
  Lowtax: Lincoln is our Indiana
• 53:55
  George: spent a lot of time in that part of the country.
• 53:57
  Lowtax: That's right.
• 54:00
  Patrick: Okay, so, okay, so wait. Our two. Our 215 matchup then is TR versus W. Bush. Ooh, I think Roosevelt makes mincemeat of him. But W. But H.W. shanks him at some point with a hidden blade. Yeah, like very, very, very 1973 Chile vibes going on there in the. In. In that one. Sorry. Too probably too soon for that. For our Chilean listeners, I deeply apologize. So that's. But that is an intriguing match. I really, I really like Obama. Lincoln. I think they might just stop at some point and have a nice conversation and then get back to. And then get back to fighting.
• 54:38
  George: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:39
  Patrick: Like, yeah, like, they're, they're definitely hugging it out between rounds. Yeah.
• 54:44
  Lowtax: Abe, let me be clear. You are going to beat me if we have this match.
• 54:53
  Patrick: Oh, Jesus.
• 54:54
  Propter: Oh, God.
• 54:55
  Patrick: You broke me. You broke me. God, that's a. Okay, so what's. What's our, what's our 13 4.
• 55:01
  George: Our 134 is Johnson and Washington, and I think. I think Washington takes that pretty comfortably, but it's not a foregone conclusion. Gerald Ford versus FDR would also be quite entertaining, I gotta say.
• 55:14
  Patrick: Yep. I want FDR to show up in the wheelchair and then get up out of it. That's. That's, that's how I want him to enter for that.
• 55:23
  George: If that happened, FDR would win. Right. Like, how do you come back from that psychological blow? Like, oh, I get to beat up a guy in a wheelchair. No, you don't. Oh, God.
• 55:37
  Patrick: Oh, Jesus.
• 55:38
  George: The 512 seed is Jackson versus Zachary Taylor. Eisenhower is Nixon's first round matchup. Grant takes on Truman and Taft and Clinton in the eight.
• 55:51
  Patrick: Nine. Okay, so I love that we set up Nixon and Eisenhower.
• 55:54
  George: That's.
• 55:55
  Patrick: That. What an. What an unintentionally hilarious seating for the, for this tournament. I kind of. I think I'm going to go Nixon in the upset there. I think he's just got. I think he's got a lot of bitterness that he's going to be working out in the ring there like these
• 56:09
  Lowtax: and Ike, I can't plan for Nixon.
• 56:12
  Patrick: You can't plan for Nixon? No, no, this is absolutely. That, that is an excellent point. Tough stylistic matchup for Dwight D. Eisenhower there.
• 56:19
  Lowtax: That's right.
• 56:20
  Propter: Nixon. Nixon has already spent years thinking about Eisenhower dying, so.
• 56:29
  George: Oh, God.
• 56:32
  Patrick: We're getting put on some sort of list for this. I. I don't know what kind of list, but it's some list. There's. There's somebody listening to this at the. Deep in the bowels of Cash Patel's FBI inscribing our names on a bourbon bottle.
• 56:48
  Lowtax: Hopefully it's Cash Patel because he'll forget it by tomorrow morning.
• 56:51
  Patrick: Yeah, that's. That's true. Yeah. Deep in the midst of a blackout, Cash Patel listens to this podcast is not. It's not likely, but there's not a zero percent chance Either. I could actually see him having strong and really stupid opinions on which president would win and would win this tournament.
• 57:09
  Propter: Yeah, I mean.
• 57:09
  Lowtax: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 57:11
  Propter: We didn't cede Trump. I feel like, I feel like that's gotta be the official answer of the apparatus.
• 57:16
  Patrick: I cannot get over that polling that says that 4 in 10 Republican men think Donald Trump would beat them in a fight.
• 57:22
  George: Like I hadn't seen that. That's the most cucked thing I've ever heard of.
• 57:27
  Patrick: It's like all I could think of when I was reading through these things was the videos of the like McDojo guys who are. When they touch one of their students and they just fall down, like there's been a gunshot. And that's all I could think of when I was reading, when I was reading that. Like, do they. It really is just a cult. Like I. That is bizarre that. What a bizarre thing to. To admit to another human being that you think Donald Trump would beat you in a fight.
• 57:54
  George: Yeah, yeah. When I will say he, up until 2024, he had never shown any evidence of any ability to be physically resilient. Getting shot and then, you know, like the whole hand up thing, like, you know that we can oversell the political iconography of that, but you have to give the man at least a tiny bit a scant of respect for taking a bullet to the head. Granted, it was a very minor graze, but he did technically take a bullet to the head and, and you know, get off the stage. Other than that though, there is no evidence of physical resiliency whatsoever.
• 58:28
  Patrick: Yeah, this is very much a drill situation where like you do not under any circumstances have to hand it the terror group isil. But like there, the picture of him with his hand up. And I know the guy who took that picture, Evan Vucci, the White House photographer, he's a longtime jiu jitsu guy. He's like, I've, I've known him in, in MMA and MMA adjacent circles for like 12 years. So Evan Vucci took that picture and it really is a baller picture. I think we can all agree on some level without handing it to Donald Trump that that was the coolest thing he could have possibly done. May in fact be the only cool thing he's ever done. And it really is unfortunate that that saddled us with him for another four years.
• 59:07
  Lowtax: So in Trump's defense, he is quite large.
• 59:13
  Patrick: Yep.
• 59:14
  Lowtax: And I think when he was young he actually was kind of athletic. Like, wasn't he a decent baseball player as a kid?
• 59:22
  George: He says he was Was he?
• 59:24
  Patrick: Yeah, I, I don't know.
• 59:26
  Lowtax: Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Also, I think I recall he fought his teacher at one point because he went to, yeah, he got, he went to that military academy.
• 59:37
  Patrick: Oh, shit. I, is okay, this is a, this is a weird, kind of a weird tangent here, but I feel like it's strange that we don't know more about Donald Trump's like, childhood and adolescence, that we don't have more, more stories of, like, stuff that he did. Considering his fame over the last 80 years, over the last, you know, 60 years in this country, we've known who Donald Trump is. I feel like it's weird that we don't have more of these incidents where like, oh yeah, Donald Trump killed somebody's pet thing or did this or did, like, so did they pay to cover it all up? Did he genuinely not do those things? I, I'm like, are, do people just not talk about it? I'm really curious because, like, given his adult patterns of behavior, you would think that there are things that extend backwards into his childhood, right?
• 1:00:22
  Propter: Like we've got an entire trail of like flayed cats or something going back.
• 1:00:26
  Patrick: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:28
  Propter: I mean, the good news is I think that over the next few years we might hear it directly from his own lips as he
• 1:00:36
  Patrick: just RFK Jr style spitting out, so I found the bear and I chopped off its penis.
• 1:00:42
  George: I'm imagining the space station and interstellar, that they blow out the airlock and the space station's falling apart and it's spinning and there's just like stuff flying off in, in like this sort of cloud around his spirals that's basically the President's brain for the next three years or so, assuming he makes it that long.
• 1:00:59
  Patrick: It's just going to be us getting like, we would love to hear more about, like, the deep, dark psychological things. And what we're going to end up with is stories about him getting hand jobs at Studio 54 there. Spectacular waitress at Studio 54, she worked it. It was a corkscrew motion. I'd never seen that before.
• 1:01:18
  Lowtax: Like, that's, it was Paula Abdul. She was very interested, very strongly interested.
• 1:01:26
  Patrick: I, I, I mean, I do love the idea that we're just going to hear at great length about all the celebrities that Donald Trump almost had sex with.
• 1:01:38
  George: While we've been talking here, I have been sketching out a bracket. So I no one check my ranking of the different seatings too closely here, but just, just go with it. So our first round matchup with Lincoln And Obama. I've got Lincoln winning. I think that's, that's a, that's a gimme. The 89 game would be Taft versus Clinton, do we think? I think Clinton takes that, but not by a lot. Unconvincing victory for Clinton setting him up against Abe in, in round two. Does that sound right?
• 1:02:06
  Patrick: Yeah, I think I, I go with that. Yeah, sure, I believe it.
• 1:02:09
  George: That brings us to the 412 game of Wash. Or 412 matchup of Washington and Tampa Taylor. I think Washington handles Taylor pretty easily. Yeah. Okay, so then we've got Nixon versus Eisenhower. So do we, do we think Tricky Dick pulls it off or, or does, does.
• 1:02:24
  Patrick: I give Tricky. I, I give Tricky that specific matchup. I think we, we gotta, we gotta go with the grudge angle and, and I think give Nixon credit for it.
• 1:02:33
  George: Okay, so the big upset goes to 11 seated Nixon over six seated Eisenhower in round one. Jackson versus Taylor. I, I, oh, sorry. I've got Taylor twice here where. 413.
• 1:02:45
  Patrick: The, I think it should have been Washington versus Johnson. Yeah. And, and we're giving, we're giving that one to Washington for sure. And so Taylor, Taylor versus Jackson and Jackson, I think. Yeah, Jackson better, better version. Better. What, what does Zachary Taylor do better than Andrew Jackson? Racism, Indian removal, Jackson all day ability to take a sword blow. Jackson. I don't, I don't see, I don't see a path to victory for, for the illustrious old rough and ready in this matchup. I'm sorry, I just don't.
• 1:03:23
  George: Zach, Zachary Taylor being broke. Boy, Andrew Jackson is like
• 1:03:28
  Patrick: homeless man's Andrew Jackson.
• 1:03:32
  George: So Ford versus fdr. I, I think we gotta hand that one to Ford. I don't think FDR has the, has the meat for that. So then Grant versus Truman. I've got Grant winning that matchup. But maybe there's some debate there.
• 1:03:44
  Patrick: No, I, other circumstances. Maybe we could, we could find some interesting aspects of the matchup. But I would say, I'd say we gotta give that to Grant too much. All right? So he could just rejoice to him if, if, if all else fails.
• 1:04:00
  George: I can't believe you throw me out of this tournament. I can take Grant.
• 1:04:08
  Patrick: Yeah. Oh, he'd be spitting and fighting all the way to the end. I mean like Grant's gonna have to put him down. Like there's, this is not going to be a, there's no decision victory here. This is gonna have to be a finish. The buck stops here.
• 1:04:26
  George: Skip, Skip. The box drops here. Skip.
• 1:04:31
  Patrick: I do think that if you had put him in a room with MacArthur, Truman would have beaten the absolute ever loving out of him. Like, it just, there's no question in my mind on that one. Like, speaking of grudge matches.
• 1:04:43
  George: So then our second round matchups. Lincoln demolishes Clinton. I'm sorry to say it, bubba. You're toast.
• 1:04:49
  Patrick: Not close.
• 1:04:49
  George: That leaves us with the Washington Nixon matchup. I again, I think Washington handles this, but high seeds willing to entertain opinions.
• 1:04:58
  Propter: No, I think, I think the high seeds. Gary Ed here.
• 1:05:00
  Patrick: Yep.
• 1:05:01
  George: Okay.
• 1:05:01
  Patrick: Yeah, I think so.
• 1:05:03
  George: So then that leaves us with Jackson and Ford in the next second round matchup. That is a tough one.
• 1:05:11
  Patrick: Yeah. So, so this is really a question of firsthand experience versus physical tools and like, but though I don't think Jackson is as physically outmatched as we might assume here. Jackson, pretty big guy, if memory serves. He's, he was over six feet at a time when that was uncommon. So I'm, I'm kind of leaning Jackson on this one.
• 1:05:34
  George: I, I, I, I think, you know, the, the 20th century smooths a man and I, I, I just don't. I, I think Jackson as well.
• 1:05:44
  Patrick: The 20th century smooths a man is a hell of a phrase, by the way.
• 1:05:49
  George: Wow.
• 1:05:50
  Patrick: Wow. Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  Propter: I think, I think this one, I think I, I think this one's close. I think that the bull case for Ford is that he probably has more experience with unarmed fighting specifically than, than Jackson does. Jackson. Jackson is, is famously a weapons era guy. And that's a good point.
• 1:06:08
  Patrick: That's a good point.
• 1:06:08
  Lowtax: Good point.
• 1:06:10
  Propter: And you know, Ford doesn't have the direct combat background, but, but he, I mean, college football at the time he played college football was, was a combat sport. Those guys were really getting in there.
• 1:06:24
  Patrick: So you're kind of, you're kind of selling me on this. You're kind of selling me on Ford here.
• 1:06:30
  Propter: I am absolutely willing to believe on Jackson. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna stand in the way of the, of the committee on this one.
• 1:06:36
  Patrick: But the weapons thing really makes sense because Jackson was a famous duelist, loved to duel, loved to challenge people to duels, loved to participate in duels. So I don't know if we know how he would have done when it, if it came to hands. That's a really excellent point. Okay, I'm switching it. I'm going forward. I'm going forward in this matchup. You've convinced me.
• 1:06:55
  George: Okay.
• 1:06:55
  Lowtax: Gerald Ford, I'm going Jackson, just for sheer lunatic nature.
• 1:07:03
  Propter: That's true.
• 1:07:03
  Patrick: Was mean. He was mean as. Yeah, like he was a mean guy.
• 1:07:07
  Lowtax: And Ford, I mean if you're willing to have people shoot at you routinely, then you've got the psychosis needed to win a match, I think.
• 1:07:16
  Patrick: Yeah, that's tough.
• 1:07:17
  Propter: Gerald Ford was, was famously a genial man. You know, he sort of ascended through. Through being everybody's. Everybody satisficing choice.
• 1:07:28
  George: You can't say that about Andrew Jackson.
• 1:07:31
  Patrick: No, very much the opposite.
• 1:07:33
  George: All right, so what's the ruling then? Are we, are we. Are we going with Jackson?
• 1:07:38
  Patrick: This. God, I keep vacillating.
• 1:07:42
  Propter: Patrick, you're the guest call.
• 1:07:46
  Patrick: Pains me.
• 1:07:46
  George: We can put a pin in it and decide the last second round matchup and come back to it. How about we do that?
• 1:07:51
  Patrick: Yeah, let's cogitate.
• 1:07:53
  George: We got Ulysses S. Grant versus Roosevelt versus Teddy Roosevelt. And I don't I much respect to Grant, one of my favorite presidents. No chance in hell, buddy.
• 1:08:02
  Patrick: No, huh. T.R. t.R.
• 1:08:04
  George: All right, so then who faces T.R. in the semifinals here? Is it. Is it Jackson or Gerald Ford? Wow.
• 1:08:13
  Patrick: Okay, so I'm going to suggest that we go with Jackson just because that makes this matchup more interesting. Yeah, I would say. I agree. Yes. That's okay.
• 1:08:21
  George: So Lincoln, Washington vs Lincoln and Washington on one side and then Jackson, Roosevelt and the other. So I think Lincoln and Washington is easier. I think Lincoln handles Washington quite easily. But what do you all think?
• 1:08:35
  Propter: Lincoln's an alien. I mean that's. Yeah, that's the basic problem is that he's. This is. But this is making the rounds on Blue sky again the other week I think because I brought it into a similar discussion. But there's that story about him holding an ax out at arm's length by the butt of the ax. He did that a week before he got shot like he was 50 something when he was holding his arm out motionless ax full extension. That is not an easy thing to do.
• 1:09:01
  Patrick: No.
• 1:09:01
  Propter: For a young man. And you've got, you know, 55 year old Lincoln just doing that on the battlefield also.
• 1:09:10
  Patrick: We know he, we know he could handle the pressure. We know he was a cool head. I mean he's really everything you want in your. In your champion. Not just, not just in a contender. I mean I think Lincoln. I'll take Lincoln.
• 1:09:23
  George: Yeah. So then Jackson vs Roosevelt, almost as academic because I really. Regardless who wins that matchup and I think it's probably Teddy, but not by a lot. I think Jackson versus Roosevelt is very compelling television. If we're able to beam this out into the universe, neither one of them are going to come close. To beating Lincoln. I, I just, I don't see it.
• 1:09:41
  Patrick: The size advantage is just too much. I mean, we're talking about, we're talking about six inches that Lincoln has on that, that Lincoln has on TR we know he is, we know he's harder personally than Jackson is. I think, I don't think there's any question about that in my mind. Like, nobody who, okay, this, this is a take, but I don't think you can be a slave owner and be the toughest guy. I, I, that's, yeah, yeah. I, I think you, there, there is a level on which if you, if you own other people and make them do work for you, you are too soft at the end of the day. And so I'm, I'm going TR. I think he, I think TR Is the kind of guy who would keep getting back up after Andrew Jackson thought he wasn't getting back up anymore.
• 1:10:30
  George: Yeah.
• 1:10:31
  Patrick: And I, I think the res. Like, we know he was resilient. We know he was cross trained. We know he had the endurance. Also. I like my presidents who didn't get cut by a British officer's sword, but that's also tr.
• 1:10:46
  Lowtax: TR the guy who, he has a bunch of advantages and he can match Jackson on the psychosis.
• 1:10:53
  Patrick: Yeah. If. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
• 1:10:55
  George: It's a totally different expression. Just.
• 1:10:56
  Lowtax: Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:10:58
  Patrick: Ironic that maybe we've ended up with a matchup here of the two presidents who most personally enjoyed killing.
• 1:11:03
  George: Yeah, I think that's right. I just had to do some math there for a bit, but, yeah, I think, I think that's right.
• 1:11:09
  Patrick: Okay, so our final matchup is TR Lincoln.
• 1:11:12
  George: And Lincoln dominates Teddy Roosevelt. I'm sorry, I just, I don't.
• 1:11:17
  Patrick: TR Makes it interesting for a little while. He's bouncing around, he's popping a jab. He knows how to dig for underhooks when they clinch up. Like, he's, he's fighting. He just doesn't, he just doesn't have the horsepower to go with a guy, with a guy with those physical tools.
• 1:11:31
  Propter: I gotta say that it's aesthetically pleasing to me that we have three quarters of Mount Rushmore in our final.
• 1:11:42
  Patrick: And Jefferson, Jefferson, the odd man out, he's like, I just, I just like books, guys. I just like.
• 1:11:49
  George: You want to talk about a good example of somebody who owns slaves not being very, not, not really being able to do the thing.
• 1:11:54
  Patrick: Yeah, I like your guy there. Yeah. Jefferson is such an endlessly fascinating character for so many reasons because, like, on the one hand, he's he's obviously a genius on. In every possible way that you can be a genius, but also just an evil person. There. There's no way around. You can't treat people the way that he did. And, like, it will forever be the most interesting thing in American history that the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence also did the things that Jefferson did. Like, I. It's. It's. It's kind of like the real two genders of America right there in. In one package. I. Yeah.
• 1:12:32
  George: There are two genders. Ooh, Not. Not. Oh, those. Don't love those.
• 1:12:37
  Patrick: Or there are two wolves fighting inside of you and the. Yeah, if you prefer.
• 1:12:42
  George: Yeah, for sure. Well, Pat, you met. You may. You talked a bit about slavery in that last little vignette, and I think that's a nice transition into talking a little bit about your Patreon project, because you did your first season of Past Lives, which is your podcast based on Patreon. There are public episodes as well, but there's a bunch of stuff on Patreon that was all about slavery and slavery not in the United States alone, although the United States was, of course mentioned, but also back through time before that, dating back thousands of years. And, you know, I thought it was a super interesting project, super interesting start to a longer project for past lives in general. So where did you get the idea to sort of focus on slavery as, like, the opening approach to this new look you're using to, you know, spread history to people?
• 1:13:35
  Patrick: Well, thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. And I mean, I think for me, slavery, what is one of those truly foundational things that is still somehow alien? And we treat it as if it's other, as if it belongs in a distant past, as if it is a kind of thing that only other people do. And so one of the things I wanted to get at in this season, I mean, I think really my. I think really my impetus for it was realizing how normal slavery has been at so many different times and places in the human past and the kind of mental world it takes for you to operate as an owner in that context and what that does to the people whose lives are not remembered or are actively forgotten. And it's hard to write about enslaved people. And I think that was part of what made it interesting for me, was I knew I was going to be working with scraps in a lot of cases and having to try to maximize the scraps. So I thought it was an interesting test case for the idea of doing a show that's all about Ordinary people in the past, like, how much can I do with scraps, number one? But also because I think, I think it's genuinely important. I think unfreedom as a, as a category is kind of underexplored. Like, it's so often treated as a binary. Like either you're a slave or you're not. And unfreedom is a spectrum of possibilities that goes all the way from the person who is completely in control of their labor, their, their resources, to someone who is living in conditions that we think of that that to us is kind of definitively slavery. And the definitively slavery cases like, like slavery in the American south, those are really extreme. And they did exist in the human past. And millions of people experience those conditions. And we should understand that. But there's also a whole array of other experiences that fall under, that fall under the category of unfreedom that we should probably understand a lot better than we did. And a lot of those seemingly less extreme cases were still terrible in their own right. And we don't treat them as, as though they were as terrible as they actually were. Because in the case of Roman slavery, for example, we know lots of people were manumitted, right? Like, we know lots of people were freed. There are other, like indentured servitude, another thing, like, very bad, but, you know, those people were going to be freed. Or there are other cases like the, the indigenous slave trade in the Americas that barely get discussed at all that are if anything, larger in, in volume and scale than the, than the African slave trade. Like certainly in the, in the continental United States, in terms of the sheer number of people who were being moved around, I think the indigenous slave trade is probably bigger certainly in the, in the, in the 17th and 18th centuries than it is, than the African slave trade is like. So there are all of these times and places where slavery mattered a lot, but it's not slavery as we normally think of it. And where bringing slavery back in and bringing in the experience of enslaved people suddenly sheds those society makes those societies much more legible to us. It makes them much more alien, but it also makes them hue. Much closer to the actual lived reality that people experience experienced. Like, there's. You can't talk about Rome without slavery. I would like, I was just there with my kids and my spouse, and we were. The oldest bridge in Rome dates back to the 2nd century BC and it's just a couple of arches and there's a nice modern bridge right next to it. But as we were walking past and I looked at that bridge, all I could think about was the fact that it was paid for through the. Through military campaigns that were profitable because they brought back enslaved people. People. All I could think about was the fact that the laborers who cut the stone, the laborers who did all of the extreme work of putting that bridge together in the middle of the Tiber, they were almost certainly enslaved. And so, like, you look at this bridge and you're like, oh, what a cool remnant of ancient Rome. But when you know this stuff, you can't look at it the same way. And that. That's true not just for, you know, the heart of ancient Rome, but for an almost countless number of times and places in the human past that only exist because of the labor of enslaved people, because of, frankly, the suffering of enslaved people. And I didn't want it to be like a lacrimose history where all we do is. Is lament how terrible it is. I wanted us to understand how the terrible is foundational, too. And so I thought it was an interesting challenge. I thought that these were. These were people whose lives deserve to be talked about more. And from the vantage point that we're sitting at in the present, we can actually do that in ways that didn't used to be possible. Like, these are. These are things that we can understand in ways that would have been really hard 30 or even 30 or 40 years ago.
• 1:18:17
  Propter: That sounds really cool, man. I haven't listened to this, and I definitely need to. I. I guess what that's a little. Who we made me think of is how lucky we are to be living in the moment that we're living in right now. Because. Because that sort of casts in high relief how the condition of unfreedom is one that has adhered to humanity in. In so many places for such a long time, in so many ways that. I mean, would you say. Would you say that this is. That that has been the rule more than the exception?
• 1:18:49
  Patrick: I would say that if we are looking at sophisticated or like, what we would call complex societies, so societies with social hierarchy, with specialized craft production. So, like, complex societies go back 7, 8, 9,000 years somewhere, somewhere in that range, depending on what part of the world we're looking at. And I would say that. I would guess a majority of those societies have had some form of unfreedom with prehistory. It's hard to tell. You're kind of inferring social status from. From burials and the state and, like, the health status of human remains. But certainly in documented historical societies, there have almost always been multiple varieties of freedom, some of which are freer than others. And the, and so like ancient Assyria, ancient Babylonia, the Persian Empire, basically every place that was ever connected to the Greeks, the Romans, the Viking age, you know, medieval Europe is kind of a weird outlier because of, because serfdom doesn't, doesn't always fit neatly. But serfdom's on freedom, right? And so like basically anywhere you look before you know, the Enlightenment, you're going to find it like the rule is identity is based on identity. So like how you're treated. There are no general rules for how you're treated. There are specific identity rules. Like economists talk about this a lot, right? That whether you have general rules in, in an institutional system or whether you have identity rules and almost every society is identity rules based before the Enlightenment. And so whether they have slavery or not, they're certainly capable of countenancing it and adapting it to their circumstances. And like, as far as its, its relevance in the present, when I look at the landscapes of employment that are, that are everywhere around us, I see things like, I worry about things like NDAs and non compete clauses and how those provide the institutional basis for stopping people from doing what they want, work wise. And I look at that and I'm like, I can see how there's a story in which in you know, x or Y amount of time, somewhere way long down the road we can end up with that blossoming into unfreedom. And I'm like, you should, we need to keep an eye out on things like that. Like, not that I'm saying we're on the cusp of being forced into like some sort of techno feudal regime where we're, where we're all indentured. But like that the potential for that always exists and we got to be aware of it.
• 1:21:13
  George: I mean, I mean like feudalism was not a system that just sprang up overnight. It took centuries of evolution to get to that point. And I think you're exactly right. Like those sorts of legal arrangements are the sorts of things that when you elongate the timeframe and allow them to build up into just sort of a part of the air we breathe or the water we swim in, they can become extremely dangerous and you really can imagine a really, really bad outcome there. Even though of course that is contingent and not like a forecast or whatever, but you can imagine it.
• 1:21:46
  Patrick: Yeah, this is, this is by no in no way shape or form a prediction. I'm not making a prediction about anything. But like, but there it has made me extremely wary Even warier than I already was of legal regimes and institutional mechanisms that force people to work in particular ways or be beholden to particular powers that be. And like, where I'm like lots of really bad things started with seemingly logical arrangements that grew out, that grew out of existing legal profiles like race slave, like racialized chattel slavery did not exist in 1619. You know, like that was the, like that was a series of institutional arrangements that grew up over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries for reasons that made a lot of sense at the time in those times and places. And we are still dealing with the legacies of racialized chattel slavery today in ways that nobody would have predicted in 1619. I mean, like whatever you want to make of the particulars of the 1619 Project, I think focusing on that as a date when none of this was set in stone makes a ton of sense. And like this is one of the things that I really, that I really enjoy about doing history is the way your perspective shifts when, when you just change where you're standing. When you change your point of identification from, you know, kind of person who is not involved in slavery whatsoever to person who is enslaved. Your understanding of a society that includes slavery changes when you change your perspective from the 21st century. Looking back to 1619, you and like, things change, your understanding of those processes change. They look much more contingent and you start to understand how you can disrupt the chains that eventually lead to this institutional arrangement becoming, you know, the thing you really don't like. You see how those little steps can lead you to places you really don't want to go. Yeah.
• 1:23:38
  Propter: And you know, you brought up non competes and it's easy to see how sort of the framework of a non compete which if you're not steeped in that particular area of the law and how it's evolved in recent years, started as something to protect companies intellectual property primarily, but has now trickled down to the point where you have chains like Jimmy John's that are occasionally enforcing non competes on their frontline workers where. But it's pretty questionable whether or not the value of the intellectual property that those workers might take to a competitor is all that high. But it's clear that there's a competitive advantage to be gained by saying, okay, if you worked at Jimmy John's, you got to get out of the food service industry entirely if you're going to not work for us.
• 1:24:22
  Lowtax: I don't know. Have you had the bread at Firehouse though?
• 1:24:26
  George: It's not great, not ideal
• 1:24:31
  Propter: and particularly when that intersects with things like binding arbitration clauses, you have these sort of separate corporatized systems of justice that get carved out that I think are worrisome to me as a consumer and as
• 1:24:46
  Patrick: a worker because those look to me like the kind of identity rules that if you belong to X, Y or Z category, then different rules apply to you, different laws apply to you. And like, you know, I am, I am very much not one of the George Mason econ guys, right? Like, this is, this is not my perspective on things, but I, I do think that that, like, so that. So Mark Koyama, who's a economist at gmu a couple of years ago, he, he and a collaborator whose name I don't remember, he, Koyama wrote a book that's just purely about general rules versus identity rules and the ways in which those contribute to economic growth over the long run, the ways in which those play into how you build institutions and systems. And I think Koyama is absolutely right, even though he's much more in the kind of libertarian vein than I am. That like the moment that you start saying that we are going to treat you differently because of, because of this specific characteristic, then things are troublesome. Like, and that does not mean, I think you should get rid of affirmative action. That doesn't mean, I think, like none of that stuff. Like, I'm not, I am not talking in any way, shape or form about, you know, the, the systems that we have developed to try to rectify, you know, racial oppression in this country. But when, but when you start to apply different rule sets to different people, then it becomes very easy to build a multi tiered society. And it kind of seems to me like again, this is not a prediction, but like we're kind of there already and it's a question of what kind of multi tiered society we want to build where. Like, it already seems to me like we are operating with increasingly clear distinctions between categories of citizen in the United States and that at some point we're going to have to come to terms with how we got to that point. And if we, if, if that's what we want and if not, how do we sweep it away and move to a more, to a system of more general rules? Because like things like non compete clauses and NDAs and binding arbitration, I'm really glad you mentioned that don't seem like a big deal individually, but when you layer them, when you stack them up, you can make an alternative institutional regime that is affecting millions upon millions upon millions of people. That's probably more salient to their professional lives than, than like the actual, you know, legal regime that they're living under.
• 1:27:10
  Propter: And obviously we're seeing that two tier legal regime play out with immigrants in the United States right now. Yes, that you can do a lot routing people through immigration court, that you can't routing them through either civil or criminal court. That it's an entirely separate system of justice.
• 1:27:25
  George: Calling it a system of justice is. Yeah, I was gonna say. Yeah, you got that.
• 1:27:29
  Patrick: Yeah. I mean it's like this is a terrible time to have any knowledge of how the Holy Roman Empire works. Worked because it's where it's just like competing levels of authority and jurisdiction.
• 1:27:43
  George: You don't want a man who thinks about the Roman Empire. You want a man who thinks about the Holy Roman Empire.
• 1:27:47
  Patrick: Yeah, he's. He's going to take you to, he's going to take you on much stranger vacations, I can promise you. But yeah, it's like, it's a weird time to know things about medieval Europe, which is the quintessential example of having multiple overlapping legal and institutional regimes operating in any given place at any given time. The Holy Roman Empire is only the most insane example of that where in any given spot you've got the local lord, the Holy Roman Emperor, the local bishop, the parish priest, for some example, for some reason has some say in what happens in this village. We don't know why, but that's the tradition and like that. It's only when you, you are fully aware of how sideways those things can go at different, different points in time where you're like, maybe we need to clear out a little bit of this. Where you start to have some sympathy for Napoleon in ways that you probably shouldn't. Where you'. No, okay, no, I do, I do understand why you got rid of that. That sucked. That was just God awful. Like now is what you've put in place better. I like the metric system, but otherwise maybe not so much. But you can, you can kind of see for a minute where you're like, oh, that was really messy. Like if, if you're the, the 30 years war, heads among us are like, yeah, sectarian division, multiple legal regimes. That's bad.
• 1:29:04
  George: Yeah. Don't love that for anyone involved.
• 1:29:06
  Patrick: No, no.
• 1:29:08
  George: So one of the things that Patrick is so impressive about is that, I mean, obviously we have talked about presidents, we've talked about medieval Europe, we've talked about the ancient world, we've talked. He's mentioned prehistory, we've talked about survey of slavery. Like, like you, your Latest book, and I'll plug it again here explicitly, is Lost Worlds. This was what out last Friday?
• 1:29:29
  Patrick: Last Tuesday. Last Tuesday, May 5th.
• 1:29:31
  George: Recording this May 10th.
• 1:29:32
  Patrick: Yeah.
• 1:29:32
  George: So out last week. My copy, I did not pre order it because I'm a bad person, but I did order it on launch day.
• 1:29:38
  Patrick: Son of pub day.
• 1:29:40
  George: So I was literally like in the airport being like, oh, I forgot to pre order.
• 1:29:44
  Patrick: I gotta order this today. So it actually doesn't make any difference if you pre order or you order the first week. Publishers make a really big deal about pre orders and that determines a lot of how they go about marketing. Marketing and publicizing the book. But in terms of the number that actually matters, which is whether you end up on the bestseller list or not, that lumps together pre orders and first week sales. So you haven't screwed me, even though you might have. Yeah, well, that one sale, that one sale could have been the difference.
• 1:30:10
  George: George did, did my best. I mean, I, well, I'm not talking about like just, just the one. I mean, I've got three boxes of these things in my garage now.
• 1:30:17
  Patrick: So. No, I, I joke, I joke. But sincerely, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate, appreciate that regardless of
• 1:30:26
  George: where how it impacts the bestseller lists, go order Lost Worlds because it's a really cool. Basically turned into a book, a series that Pat did in his podcast investigating prehistory and how much we've learned in the past, what, like 20 years probably, or 10 years?
• 1:30:44
  Patrick: Really, like 20 years. It's, it's all the last 20 years. Yeah.
• 1:30:47
  George: So I mean, I'd like to talk a little bit about that, but before we even get to that point, like, like, dude, how I, I consider myself to be a very, very strong thinker in the mile wide inch deep category.
• 1:30:59
  Patrick: Right?
• 1:30:59
  George: Like, I know a huge amount of stuff about a really wide range of topics, but like, I'm not really an expert on any one thing. And yet you seem to take that and go, haha, you are like little baby.
• 1:31:10
  Patrick: And
• 1:31:14
  George: how you, how are you doing this, man? Cuz like, like you're talking about ancient genetics, you're talking about archeology, you're talking about textual sources, you're talking about wildly different time periods, wildly different. And you're doing all this while translating it into the sort of language that people who listen to this podcast will be able to pick up and not really think twice about. Like, like how are you managing that?
• 1:31:36
  Patrick: Well, that's really kind of you to say, and I really appreciate that. I mean, I think the biggest thing is I Just like I put in the, I put in the background work. And so the, what I always want my work to be is an iceberg. I want whatever you're seeing of my work. So whether that's an individual sentence in a podcast or you know, a paragraph in a book, I want you to listen to that or read that and know that I could have said 17 other things about it, that, that it's the act of selection to me, the act of curation of and, and being able to critically evaluate your material, that that makes it valuable. And so for me, that is the baseline thing that I have to do to, for me to feel like I have anything worthwhile to say about a topic. Like, there's, there's also, like, there's all sorts of things I'm interested in that, that I just don't talk about because I don't think I know enough to like, I, like, I know way too much about the, the, you know, ballistic characteristics of various, like, 19th century hunting ammunition. Like, that's like, I don't know. I don't know why. I don't know why, but I do. I do. I could tell you, I could tell you all you want to know about 500 Black Powder Express, the one of the preferred big game hunting rounds in, in Africa in the 19th century. Like, but this is like, when I, when I get into a topic, I get really into it and you know, like, I don't know whether I'm like mildly on the spectrum and these are just like hyper fixations that I get. And I managed to find a way of like channeling my hyper fixations into, into something viable, but when I find a topic, I'm just going to sit on Google Scholar and chase footnotes from one citation to the next. I will do that for hours and hours and hours at a time. And so by the end of it, I'll end up with a list of 30 or 40 PDFs on a topic, and most of which I will have at least read the abstract of, if not the, if not the whole thing. This was a, this was a fun one for me to do because I was constantly jumping from one time and place to the next. Like, I had this lovely advisor in graduate school who informed me in no uncertain terms that I probably wasn't cut out to be like a proper academic. And she says, Patrick, you are an academic magpie. You're just collecting different topics. And, and I'm like, shoot, in fairness, she wasn't wrong. Like, she wasn't wrong at all. And I Think I'm just incredibly lucky that I've managed to find a career that. Where I can kind of like, monetize my, like, my obsessions with different topics. Where, like, if I really want to spend a couple of weeks diving into, you know, historical martial arts of the Renaissance, like, I can probably find a way to turn that into a thing to do. I have the books. I have the books. Don't judge me. I do. I have the books. I have the books. I. Yeah. So, like, basically, I'm incredibly lucky that I've managed to build this career where if I find something interesting, I can probably find a way to talk about it that is interesting enough for other people to also be interested and, like. But that just starts with applying the skills I learned in grad school and chasing footnotes. And really, like, I just prepare for these as if I were going to do a lecture to grad students on a topic. And the register that I'm speaking in is different than if I were doing a lecture for grad students, but the underlying informational content is exactly the same because I do not ever want my audience to feel like I am speaking down to them because I. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not speaking down to them. Right? We are. We're speaking across. We are on entirely the same level. I might have access to information that, that my listeners don't, but my capacities are not any greater than theirs. It's just I can. It's like, you're not any smarter than someone just because you go to a country where you can speak the language and they can't, it just means you can speak the language. Language. Right. And so my. My major concern is always how can I. How can I get that information across, transfer it laterally without having to. Without having to move down in complexity? And I think to the extent that I have an actual skill set, that's it. It's. It's that I think I'm. I'm pretty decent at being able to explain things that are normally only conveyed in complex technical language in. In ways that. That anybody who. Anybody with a certain background is capable of getting. And, like, that's all I want. I just think this stuff is cool as hell and I want people to know about it. And like, I'm really lucky that I'm at the intersection of enough different worlds that I can. That I can interact with all of them and move the information across and hopefully in ways that are entertaining to people.
• 1:36:10
  Propter: I want to dig a little bit deeper on that because you've teased, you've teased on Blue Sky a couple times. I, I don't think I'm breaking news here that you have a children's podcast upcoming that you're working on, which I'm tremendously excited about. I've got a 12 year old and a 9 year old. How, how do you square talking to an audience that is literal children with trying to maintain that same audience to audience to to speaker parody.
• 1:36:35
  Patrick: So I'm still, I'm still trying to figure that out and the way that I'm trying to do it is by going and talking to classes at my kids schools and I'm just kind of testing things out. So with one class, I did a talk on St. Patrick. They were first graders and I talked to them about St. Patrick and the end of the Roman Empire and slavery. And it was around St. Patrick's Day. They had already kind of gotten a version of the St. Patrick story. So I'm like, okay, this is a topic that I know they're at least a little bit familiar with and let me see how I can talk to them about it. And it went really well. I went and I talked to a second grade class about the Civil War, talk to them about my great great grandfather who fought in the Civil War, who was, who had been an immigrant. And so I'm like, I'm trying to find ways of structuring stories, providing information and not feeling like children can't deal with things that are difficult. Because you, we, those of us who have kids, know that nothing turns off a kid faster than thinking that they're being talked down to. Especially the kind of kid who would be interested in listening to a history podcast. The idea of, of the host not thinking that they can handle the information is going to be, I think, the number one thing that makes them not want to listen. And you know, there's this great quote from Maurice Sendak, you know, where the Wild Things Are, where he was asked, you know, what do you think is appropriate material for a children's story? And his answer is, anything that could happen to a child. And like a lot of things could happen to a child, many of them not good things. And I don't know if I would go quick quite that far, but I do think that like you can talk to a first grader about slavery, you can talk to a third grader about genocide.
• 1:38:13
  George: Like my three year old is asking about death, which has been, you know, quite a roller coaster. But yeah, this they need, she needs to know about it, right?
• 1:38:21
  Patrick: Yeah, like you can't not. I mean, I think like I told like one of my son's friends was asking me questions about this and he's, he's a sharp little lad and he was, he was asking me questions about basically like infant mortality. And I, and he, he mentioned something, he's like, why, you know, why are there so many. Like if you go to a cemetery, why are there so many little kids? And I'm like, well, okay, nine year old, I hope you're strap in for this. I gave, I gave it like I, I kind of told him as gently as possible about, you know, how difficult life was in pre modern times for, for, for kids and he handled it just fine afterwards. My spouse was like, you know, his parents probably have never talked to him about anything like that. That. Right. And I was like, I had not realized that, but I probably should have beforehand.
• 1:39:07
  George: I mean, but someone, someone's gonna tell him about stuff. Like he's gonna learn like, especially in the era of smartphones and the Internet. Like it's all out there, man.
• 1:39:17
  Propter: Like, and, and you've got, you've got different shapes of parents on that too, right? Like, I mean there are some parents where if you teach their kids something that's, that's something you've taken from them in some way or something that they're. And you've got other parents who are like, hell yeah, go for it.
• 1:39:31
  Patrick: Yeah. I mean I think that's kind of the, like the short answer to, to a question that I've been thinking about like a lot is I'm still trying to figure out what the right tone is. And like that's so I'm really trying to take our time to get this show spun up because there's, there's a, like, I've made enough shows to know that like you can just make a thing and put it out there and people might like it, but that's not necessarily the best way to go about it. And for like, especially for this one, I really want to get it right. I really, I would much rather put in the time on, on the front end and really like, and really try to nail the tone and understand the register that I'm speaking in and how to do it in a way that pulls kids in without overwhelming them. Like, I really want to get it right. It matters to me a lot. Like my, my son is, is nine and he's just mainlining history documentaries and he's asking me a thousand different questions. Who was better, Hannibal or Scipio Africanus? Like, man, I like, I Got takes. But I mean we're gonna. Do you really want to talk about Polybius? And so like I am being inundated by questions about this all the time and my kids friends are really interested and so like I want to give them a thing that is good enough to make them enjoy history as much as I think people should enjoy history. Not that I'm biased on that front or anything like that, that. But I really want to get it right. And so like I am open to, I am open to ideas and suggestions. Like I. This one really matters to me. Like I really want to nail it. And so I think I would rather take longer to get it going. It's very much in the works. We're having meetings and talking about it, but I'm. And I'm like kind of test running different ideas, but I don't think it's ready for public consumption yet. I don't feel, I don't feel comfortable.
• 1:41:17
  Propter: Well, the proctor, the proper Malone household is rooting for you and, and kids Malone are, are very excited about.
• 1:41:23
  Patrick: Thank you. I hope. I really, I. I think we're going to try and get it out for the new school year in the fall. My hope is that we've got episodes that are ready to come out as kind of as kids are going back to school. And I think that'd be a good time for it. So we'll see. But I am, I'm really, I, I feel really passionately that like there's a market for it, that there are a lot of kids who, who want things that are age appropriate, that, that are not. That are not childish. You know, like age appropriate, like 4 kids but not childish is kind of a hard needle to thread. And I think that's kind of what we're shooting for. So I'm hopeful that we can get there. I'm hopeful we can figure it out. But yeah, kids stuff is. Kid stuff is hard like it is. I have so much respect for people who make really good children's literature and children's tv. Like, like Bluey is.
• 1:42:14
  George: Bluey is a masterpiece. I don't know.
• 1:42:16
  Patrick: Yeah, I'm preaching to the converted here. But like the ability to do an A, B and C plot in a seven minute episode is a feat of writing. Like there are sitcom writers who can't do an A, B and C plot in a 22 minute episode. And like Daniel Tiger at a basic level is just a well crafted piece of tv. And so I'm constantly kind of in awe at the ability of people who work who produce work for children to be able to do that. And I know I'm not there yet, and until I feel like I'm there, I'm not gonna put it out.
• 1:42:51
  George: Well, we're all looking forward to seeing it when it does come out. If you want to see some of Patrick's other work, we're gonna link his Patreon in the show notes. And also make sure you go out and order lost worlds if you haven't done so already. If you're late to the boat, like I almost was, go out and get a copy of that. Patman, you are certified normal. And I'm. I really am glad you were able to come on. And we didn't even talk about weightlifting that much, so, like, imagine how much more normal we could have done with it.
• 1:43:18
  Patrick: There's. There's so much space for additional normalcy here. You could. You could fit. So. You could fit so much more normalcy under the hood of this bad boy. This was. No, this was. This was some of the most fun I have had in a very long time. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate y' all having me on. It was just a pleasure. Anytime you want me back, I will be here with bells on, I promise you.
• 1:43:38
  Propter: That means so much, Patrick. We had a tremendous time.
• 1:43:42
  Patrick: Thanks.
• 1:43:43
  George: For normal men. In Charlotte, I'm George.
• 1:43:45
  Propter: In dc, I'm Proctor.
• 1:43:48
  Lowtax: In outer Florida, I'm low tax speedrun enjoyer.
• 1:43:51
  George: Stay normal, y'. All.