Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium.

Episode 69.

Lost to the West.

I want you to imagine that you're having a party and all your friends and family and

colleagues and teammates are there.

Everyone's having a good time and you decide to make a speech and you stand up in front

of all of them and say, I dare the universe to strike me down or do something bad to me.

Come on, do your worst.

Now if you ignore the part where everyone you know now thinks you're crazy, does that

sound like something you could do?

Would you be comfortable doing that?

Or let me ask you a different question.

Do you believe that a certain combination of words said aloud could bring about disaster

on an individual?

Do you believe that if I made you read some words off a piece of paper that a tree might

fall on your car or your house might become infested or that you would be mugged on your

way home?

I'm assuming that most of you don't believe that.

We live in a supposedly rational, secular age.

We look for evidence and we know that people say terrible things all the time and nothing

bad seems to happen.

Would you yourself want to stand up and say, I dare you?

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