#1019 - Fin Taylor & Horatio Gould - History is a Freakshow

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2025

⏱️ 92 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Fin Taylor is an English comedian, writer and podcaster. Horatio Gould is also an English comedian, writer, and podcaster. History is basically one long reminder that no matter how bad your day is, someone in the past was probably getting catapulted off a castle wall. Feel better? Good. Humanity may be a litany of disasters, but the past is packed with lessons, even some dark humor, if you look closely enough. Expect to learn what makes the Japanese unique and why so many Japanese people practiced Seppuku, why post-war Europe was the funniest time in modern history, wether life was better in the past or just way, way worse than we imagined, why there is a rise of pro-Hitler media across social media, if too much irony is a bad thing, why racism is so ingrained in modern science, if fertility and embryo science has gone too far and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	you are historians now.
0:02.2	Yes, very much so.
0:03.4	Big pivot.
0:04.3	Yeah, hard pivot. Into academia. I mean, this is what the man of sphere has come to. Yeah. If you're speaking to historians, you'll get us on to talk. It doesn't matter. We can say what we want. And there are people going to be like, what, really? Podcasts that need academic guests. They use all of them. This is how low the barrel is that I'm scraping.
0:21.4	This is how your business model works.
0:22.7	Once you've had whatever whatever What's his name? Graham. Graham Hancock You've had it on four times You have to get a new guy's on. The legitimacy has declined so much That it's got to you guys. Yeah, I agree. It's not clicky enough. Graham Hancock is just not... Yeah, people are used to it.
0:37.7	They need to get these guys on.
0:38.5	They need someone who's really pushing the boundaries. Have you been any more capable of predicting the future now with all of your illustrious studying of the past? Has it given you any insights about what's going on in the modern world? It's made me calmer about it. Yeah. It's just always fucked. That's true
0:53.3	History for me has always been quite like a soothing thing
0:56.9	It's been always fucked. That's true.
0:56.9	History for me has always been quite like a soothing thing.
0:58.3	It's been a lot worse.
1:00.6	And it was going to carry on being like this.
1:02.1	Yes, like ASMR.
1:05.6	Because people keep saying like, you know, back in the day, what do you mean back in the day?
1:05.8	Yeah.
1:06.7	It was awful.
1:08.0	It was always awful.
1:09.6	This is the best it's ever been.
1:10.8	The 90s was always awful. This is the best it's ever been. The 90s was slightly better.
1:12.2	But yeah, there's four years.
1:25.7	Human's gone like this. It's gone like this. And now it's like that. No, I reckon it went like that. And then it was like in between Diana and 9-11. And then it's just been. Yeah, exactly. It's been going down. But people, it is still like, step back. it's unreal.
	...

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