Welcome to Citizen, we've got a special guest today, Jeremy Ryan Slate. The thing that's

most notable about you to me and I think probably the most topical at this moment is that

you studied early Roman Empire propaganda, so because that's the question now for men is how often

do you think of the Roman Empire? You know, interestingly enough, I don't know. I've been seeing

that thread pop and op man, but like what actually got that whole thing going. Who the fuck knows?

I mean, it's like, here's what I think it is actually. Our parents generation,

at some point in their lives men became obsessed with World War II, and maybe it's just a function

of the history channel making all the content, you know, who knows. But that was a thing that happened,

and I am also, I mean, I was a soldier, so I'm obsessed with all warfare, but I think that

there's been this rediscovery of the Stoics maybe, and that's why people have become obsessed

with Roman culture again. I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting, because I feel like I was like

into that stuff before it was cool, if that makes sense. I was, I'm almost 37, and like I was into

that stuff as like a, you know, 10-year-old man, so it's like, for me, it's always been interesting,

and the way I, like what I studied in school was I was looking at actually the propaganda that

Augustus Caesar used to convince people he was divine, because if you get into that whole thing,

that's crazy interesting, man, of like how a politician, especially in that time period,

it's easier to do, but for instance, people he's God, like that's, that's crazy. Well, they were,

you know, polytheistic society, so I guess it's a little easier than to do it maybe,

than it would have been, although it wasn't terribly difficult for, you know,

for century Christians that convinced people that a carpenter was God either, so.

Well, because if you look at it this way, man, like I think the thing that's different is like

people then, like they thought like, you know, gods and men were walking around the same time,

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