Leila: What's up, everybody, we are funfactfriday combo, and my
name is David.
David: No, it isn't.
Leila: Sorry. His name is David every time. So we are Fun Fact
Friday, we are fun,
David: and it's Friday, and that's a fact, yep. All right,
Leila: you're not giving any more disclosure on what the show
is.
David: Never you should know. You should know at this point.
Should know by now, and if you, if you're a first time listener,
then we have 197 other episodes. You can go back and check
through.
Leila: We're almost there. Guys,
David: speaking of which, guess what? Leila.
Leila: What? Leila,
David: I made a new little toy. What'd you make with the help
of,
Leila: oh yeah, the
David: AIS. And if it's not linked up yet, I don't have, you
know, nice, pretty interface. It's still kind of in the in the
beginning stages. But if you go to funfactfriday com, slash
search, dot HTML in your internet browser, and like I
said, it's a little buggy. And if you want to send me bug notes
mail at funfactfriday com, bug reports, we now have a
transcript search. It only goes up through episode 195 at this
point, but I'm going to be adding episodes weekly to the
Scram. Scram scram script, Yeah. Transcript, search. As we go
along, as the new transcripts get uploaded, we're going to,
I'm going to be adding them in, but I just grabbed, you know,
the bulk of what was already in there, and threw that into the
database there, so you can go to funfactfriday com, slash,
search. Slash, nope. Funfactfriday, com, slash,
search, dot, HTML, you can type in a word and it will dig
through the transcripts of all of our episodes. Now the
transcripts are automatically generated using voice
recognition, so sometimes a word is misspelled or it thinks that
it's a different word. So it's not perfect, because our
transcripts aren't perfect, but it is fun. And our topic this
week
Leila: is ancient civilizations, civil ancient
David: civilizations. Yes, ranked. We're gonna talk about
different rankings, like best to worst, because, you know, we've
experienced them all and everything. Yeah, we've got
through all of them. So I was like, have we talked about
ancient civilizations on an episode? I know we haven't had
an episode called ancient civilizations, because I can
just scroll through the episodes list on the website, but have we
talked about it? And I so I typed in ancient civilizations
into the new transcript search, and it pulled up episode 80. So
here, sorry. Episode 30 so 100 and 60s,
Leila: eight. Now, please ignore my voice. This sounds terrible.
David: She was 10, please. She was 10 years old. When we did
this, I clicked play. I was gonna find the spot. You wanna
do an episode on ancient Rome. Just do ancient, ancient
civilizations. We just sort of list with all the things that we
do.
Leila: I was trying so hard to not make mouth noises. You can
hear my mouth being open the entire time.
David: We've gotten we've gotten better. We've gotten we got
better equipment now we've gotten better at mic technique.
Yeah, so, but yeah that this is way back when we had pop
filters. I just hit Search, and it pulls up, and it says episode
30, and then has the time code of when that word is mentioned,
yeah. And really cool. It play. It when you click play, there's
a little player on the screen, and it jumps to that spot, and
you can listen to it. What's another? 30 years ago? Yeah, 30
years ago,
Leila: we were talking about doing this episode?
David: You know, sometimes you gotta wait, sometimes you gotta
wait three and a half years. Yeah, we gotta give them a
little it's called a teaser. It's called a cliffhanger. It's
called a cliffhanger,
Leila: a four year cliffhanger.
David: So what's another word I could type in that you think
maybe we've talked about, or just like, not a common word
like and mayonnaise, mayonnaise, mayo. How you spell May,
mayonnaise, mayonnaise and search 00, because I probably
misspelled it.
Leila: No, you didn't mayonnaise.
David: I misspelled it on that search. Ah, there's two ends.
Oh,
Leila: never mind. You didn't misspell it. I
David: didn't misspell it. There's two ends. Wow, yeah. So
on episode 12, we talked about mayonnaise. Let's, let's give
that a listen. It also includes salsa, lettuce and wasabi May.
Mayonnaise.
Leila: My goodness,
David: it's so fun to play with. Let's see. And then we didn't
talk about mayonnaise after that for 110 episodes.
Leila: Hooray. Is mayonnaise an instrument?
David: What is mayonnaise an instrument? What are we talking?
SpongeBob quote, Oh, gotcha. Okay. Okay, so one more, one
more.
Leila: This one's not we are in Japanese, mayonnaise on a
brochure. Brioche bun. I don't think that'd be very good. I
think that would just make me cry because I spent so much
money on it. That real.
David: That's closer. That's that's about 30 episodes ago.
That was episode 164, like I said, it's very, it's very, it's
not pretty right now, like, it just shows the episode and
doesn't tell you the name of the episode or any but it's, it's in
the works. I'm working on it, and it's pretty neat. Check it
out. And, yeah, so I had fun with that. And then what? What
else? What else was I going to say about? I don't know. I can't
I can't remember. Yeah, like I said, if you got any Bug, bug
bug reports for the for the search, if you go in and mess
around with it, let me know. I was having some trouble the
first night. But I think that might have been it was caching
issues. So anywho, we're gonna be talking about ancient
civilizations. Hooray. So leela, let's go back to the old way we
used to do things. What's your favorite ancient civilization?
Leila: I don't know, I'm a big fan of Mesopotamia, but only
because the name is Mesopotamia. Like mesothelioma. Yeah, I
really like all the Chinese dynasties, though. Those are
pretty dope. I
David: can never keep those straight in my head. I remember
history class we had to have, like, have to do a timeline of
which dynasty was around at what, time when we were learning
Leila: about these I was in like, what, sixth grade. And,
uh, in sixth grade, we just barely did any work. In history
class, she would give us the book and made us, like, write
down every single question and every single answer, but she
didn't check it, so we didn't do anything. So I just kind of read
it and didn't do anything. Yeah,
David: a not good teacher will, um, will mess up history for
you. You got to have a good you gotta have a teacher who not
only understands, like the dates things happen, but like, why
they happened, and like the human story throughout the
history. Because if you're just getting dates thrown at you,
some people can do that. Some people can, like, take dates and
be like, okay, yeah, I get it. But I need a story. I need a
narrative. Yeah? Like, you know, I need people's names and what
they did and why they did it, and a good history teacher will
make it really interesting. I've had good and I've had really
bad. It's like, all right, these are the dates those things
happen. These are the names you remember. That test is Friday.
I've
Leila: had a lot of those, and I've had a lot of the good ones.
Yeah,
David: and you're, you know, going into high school, starting
what next week? Yeah, week after next, next week. So yeah, now
you're gonna, you get into the big leagues. They don't handhold
as much. So I always liked, I always liked Ancient Egypt.
Growing up, like, right around when I was starting to, like,
get into that kind of stuff, Egypt was, like, all over the
TV, like they were doing, like, history, mysteries of the Sphinx
and the pyramids and yeah, and then, like, you go to, like,
what's called Indiana Jones. Like, I don't know if that took
place in Egypt, but it I thought it was Egypt, because I was,
like, far away desert equals Egypt in my brain, and it's got
to be Egypt. Man, I always liked Egypt, but I'm not 100% sure on
because there's a lot of conjecture about, like, when,
when the pyramids were actually built? If, like, by the time the
ancient Egyptians came around, if there was the pyramids were
already there. There's a lot of evidence that the Sphinx doesn't
look like what it originally looked like that. Some Pharaoh
came in was like, I don't like that. I don't like that lion
head on there make it into my face. So there's, like, there's
lots of evidence, and then there's lots of fake evidence,
because people trying to sell you a book or a documentary
about ancient Egypt. But I always, I always found it super
interesting, and like they've done, they know that there's a
whole lot more that they haven't uncovered yet, but the
government won't let people go in and do excavations, because
tourism is like, a huge moneymaker, and if they're
excavating stuff and they mess something up, it's gonna be
like, Oh, we just lost one of our big attractions. So yeah,
they can't let people just go digging around in the.
Underneath the Sphinx. Because of the sphinx collapses. People
are like, they're like, Oh, we just lost a whole lot of
tourists who wanted to come see the Sphinx. So it I've always
liked the ancient Egyptian stuff, the Mayan stuff. I've
always been a fan of that art. Oh, okay, so what we're doing is
we're doing a completely arbitrary ranking system, kind
of like Whose Line is anywhere where the points where the
points don't points are all made up and they don't matter. Yeah,
so I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give Ancient Egypt a plus one,
just for for being cool. And I gotta, I got a lot of memories
of it. You're gonna give the Mesopotamian one mesothelioma
point. So okay, so do you have any other points right off the
bat to give anybody? Just because just because you're
aware of it, you said the Chinese empires, right? Yeah,
I'll
Leila: give. I'll give China, uh, ancient China. Ancient
China. How
David: many points? Oh, yeah, like, 10 points, 10. Wow. Okay,
just because you're really enjoying points awesome, just
like the art and the Yeah, culture behind it. Okay, okay,
so we actually are going to talk about these a little bit other
than just like we're into them. So we've got the Incans, which I
always like in my brain, I always put the Incans and the
Mayas together, yeah? I mean, I think they were talked about a
lot in the same Yeah. So these are, I don't know what the
official when you start calling something ancient, because the
Incans was in the 14 and 1500s it went for about a year, yeah,
a year, but a century good.
Leila: The ancient China dynasties went on to like, 1912
Yeah,
David: but they, when did they start? Oh, that's the Yeah, like
2000 BC, right? Talking about when they started. So, yeah, the
Incans were only around for about 100 years, 1438, to 15,
3280 and it was in Peru Ecuador, which is currently Peru Ecuador
and Chile, and was ancient Peru. And then they had engineering
excellence as their major highlight. And Machu Picchu. Are
you aware of what Machu Picchu is? Sounds cool. Google points.
You've seen it. It's, it's like a, oh, I know what it is, yeah,
the civilization on top of the mountaintops. Yeah, really cool
looking. I'd love to go there and see it sometime, but
Leila: so cool.
David: So, yeah, I'm on the history cooperative.org is where
we're getting a lot of this information that and grok 2.0
yeah, I bought a blue check mark on Twitter. What I spent $8 I
wanted to I wanted to see what are you why are you upset? Why?
Because I wanted to see what the features. I wanted to see how
the features worked. And also wanted to see how much more
traction a post on x gets if it has a blue check mark beside it,
versus not. Because I think, I think they said that they sort
the blue check marks get higher ranking in the like if, if you
comment on a post, it'll appear the blue check marks are always
up here at the top when you're reading the comments. So I can
force my I can pay my way to the top of the comments on snow. No,
I wanted to see I wanted to play with a grok AI, and I wanted to
look at the analytics, and I just wanted to mess around with
it. I'm probably not going to keep it. I don't think it's
worth it, even though it is. Does have a really good image
generation for eight bucks a month.
Leila: Just not What do you want to do? A co pilot versus Grog?
Yeah,
David: we could do a co pilot versus grog anytime we come up
with a question that we want to ask the artificial the large
language models. Let's not call it AI. Yeah. Want to ask the
large language models. We'll both ask it the same question,
and we'll see which one's talking about dancing and which
ones. Mine
Leila: doesn't talk about dancing. It's just you.
David: So I don't know what's wrong with my co pilot.
Leila: Any Persian Empire.
David: What the Persian Empire? I want something talking about
Peru. So it was only for about 100 years, but they did build
machu, Picchu machu, and they also their their civilization
enjoyed perks like freeze dried food and an effective mail
system. Messengers used a mind blowing network of roads. It was
mind blowing, apparently. And if their durability is anything to
go by, Incan, engineers certainly gave modern
counterparts a run for their money. The snaking lines were so
decently built, so decent, decent, like, middle of the
road. In my brain, when somebody says, Oh, that's decent. It's
like it's barely passing. In my opinion, maybe that's just not
the right word to use. But they said they also used hydraulics,
top notch hydraulics also provided cities like Machu
Picchu with stone fountains that brought fresh water from
hydraulics. Yeah. Hydraulics. Very so cool. Like, you push
this little thing a little bit and then it just, like, it lifts
a car up. Yeah, it's so neat. We used to mess around with
hydraulics in a technology class in middle school. Yeah, I love
it. We used, like, just little little tubes, and like the
plastic syringes used to give babies medicine with like,
little tubes, and he put colored water in it, and like, that was
neat. We had a good time. Let's see, with spread of disease and
the countless Incans died from infections, and the nation was
destabilized, and then a civil war broke out, and the Spanish
used a superior weapons and strategy to steamroller,
steamroll, over the fragile resistance that remained. So the
Spanish came in and wiped out the Incans. So that was the end
of that. So, but yeah, I always get Incans, Aztecs and Mayas. I
think we learned about all of those all around the same time
in history class. So maybe that's why my brain put it all
together. And it was all in, like, South America, Central
America area, yeah. So my brain just kind of put them together
around, oh, go ahead. You wanted to do one, right? Yeah, Persian
Empire. Wait, let me see. Should I give any points to the Incans?
Yeah, I should give them some points for Machu Picchu, right?
Some Machu Picchu points. Oh, inconsistent on my spreadsheet
Incan. Okay, so they get Machu Picchu. Let's give them two
points for Machu Picchu, okay, and then, and then I want to
give them four points for hydraulics, because hydraulics
are cool, yeah. And China got a jump with that 10 points, dang,
Leila: yeah. But the Chinese are like, half the amount of their
points. Okay, this is arbitrary. All right, yeah, oh yeah, it's
David: completely arbitrary. I could give the Incans a billion
for for hydraulics, yeah. All right, so let's, let's move
along. What's got
Leila: the Persian Empire, they inspired irrigation. Okay, so
they developed a quanat system. It's kind of cute,
David: but it doesn't have a u that is odd ground channel
Persians, right? Yeah, okay. I was scrolling around trying to
find where we were, okay.
Leila: Um, the system was not only crucial in Persia, but also
influenced irrigation techniques across the Middle East and
beyond. So I think that's pretty cool. I think irrigation is
pretty cool in general, like we learned about and I
David: was like, Huh? Like, plants, dude, do be like in
water though,
Leila: the Royal Road, established under Darius the
Great was one of the first, I feel like Darius is such like a
modern name you wouldn't expect the great
David: Well, I mean, Darius is the guy from Hootie and the
Blowfish. Yeah? Darius Rucker, yeah.
Leila: I saw a friend named Darius. This included a
sophisticated Postal Service, which was a remarkably efficient
for its time. So they had, there were everybody had a mail
system, sent out mail, probably sent out letters.
David: Your neutral system, your chariot insurance is about to
run out. You need to get our Oh my gosh.
Leila: So what did grock just put the Persian wheel and then
behind it, they just put in early,
David: oh yeah, the Persian cut off. So yeah, the if you, if you
look at it, it cut off. And I was like, continue. Because,
like, if it prints too much, like, there's a limit on how
many characters that the system will let it print. Because if it
get got caught in a loop. It would just continually just give
more and more and more information, and it would crash
their servers. Oh, and it would be, yeah, it would be a problem.
So yeah, you have, sometimes you have to be like, continue. It
was giving me a lot of information, nice. I actually
got to a point on one of the conversations I was having with
grok about when I was helping me with the code for the transcript
search. Let me see if I can find what it said to me. It got let's
see. Can we go? I asked I had been, I've been back and forth
with it for like two hours, and again, here we go. It locked. It
didn't finish printing out a piece of text that I needed,
right? And I said, uh, blah, blah, blah, you're you seem to
have locked up there. And it says it answers your request is
as large as the infinite improbability drives output.
Could you make it a bit more probable for us?
Leila: Oh my gosh,
David: it's a Hitchhiker's Guide reference, really? Yeah. Oh the
Improbability Drive. Oh my gosh. And then I said, Did I break
grok? It is an answer. Our apologies, but your input is
larger than Vogon to ego, please provide more manageable
versions. Ionis. I don't know what Vogon is. Yeah, I'm gonna
hear, Oh, I can highlight something in in the grok and
just say, ask grok. Oh my gosh. Tell me about vogo. Our
apologies, but your input is larger than Vogons ego.
Leila: Let me ask copilot. Then
David: I think I've maxed out this chat, because it's a lot
like I was going back and forth with them on the JavaScript
because I was having trouble. I'm not that
Leila: it's another hitchhiker, Scottie Galaxy reference. That's
what I thought it was. I just didn't want to I love, okay, I
had, like, a huge obsession with that book. Earlier this
David: year, you bought a copy of it. Didn't you did recently?
Yeah, yeah, I saw that thing. Okay, back to ancient
civilizations, and not fictional future civilizations, all right,
yeah, let's see we're talking about Persians, right? Yeah.
Okay, so irrigation road systems, you already went
through all that. So philosophy, that's one of the points that I
wanted to go over with about different civilizations, because
they all had different philosophies about stuff. And
sometimes we don't really know a lot, just because there's not a
lot of writing. Yeah, so you got to go by what you can figure
out. So the you want to talk about the Persians philosophy,
what it's got here. Or why don't you go? Why go through that? And
then I'll pop back over to one of the other ones. The other
ones. Okay, although
Leila: not Oh, the Zorro astroni is astrany ism. Can you read
that? Nope, okay, although not strictly philosophy in the
Western sense. Zoro estranianism, founded by
Zoroaster, introduced dualistic concepts of good and evil, which
influenced later religious and thought, including aspects of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the idea of a cosmic battle
between good and evil, with humans having free will as
groundbreaking, or was brown groundbreaking?
David: Huh? Okay. Are we ready? Yeah. I
Leila: this video, we cannot, we don't know how to say
Zoroastrianism. Hold on, here we go. How long don't get it that
low. Whoa. We got a cool wow,
David: Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism. Oh, is that? It?
Is? Oh, Zoroastrianism, there nice, clean one. Yeah, stepping
on it. I love all of the comments. Well, thank you. Thank
you. Thank you. Thank
Leila: you. Super.
David: The whole you it's a whole YouTube channel called
Emma saying it's got 753,000 subscribers. It's a one minute
video of Emma saying words, oh my gosh, I gotta mute. I need
just a cough button, but I'm in the same room, so I'd have to
mute both mics. So I guess pausing, pausing the recording
is probably just the best way to go. When I got a cough like
that. That was a good one. Think, uh, working out in all
that dusty stuff yesterday, we we cleaned off the back patio.
We did because we've been working on the back the screen
and back porch, and there's a whole bunch of like
construction, like random pieces of small piece of wood and like
the styrofoam from the box that the saw came in, you know,
stuff, just a bunch of stuff piled up ready to go to the
dump. He found two snakes this week, yeah, yeah. One was about
what, foot and a half long, two foot long, yeah. And then he
was, he was angry.
Leila: Oh, my goodness. He had just eaten something, yeah.
David: Had a little, little pot belly, like, he just had some
food. We picked
Leila: him up, and he did not like it. He was trying to bite
me down. He like, tried to wrap around my finger, and he got to
my finger where his like, head was, like, on my finger, and he
was trying to bite it, but he didn't have anything to bite me
with. So he was
David: just like, yeah, he ain't got no teeth, his little rat
snake. And it was so
Leila: funny. And then he peed on me. Had to go washing myself
off. Oh, it's
David: so funny. And then we found, I found, when I was
moving around a our Sun umbrella, he was probably about
eight inches long, yeah, eight or nine inches and tiny, like a
little wiggly pencil. He did, but he was chill. He was like,
normally, when they're that small, they're super aggressive,
because they have to, like, scare anything away that's gonna
attack them. But once I picked him up, he was just like, oh,
okay,
Leila: although he did, like, grab him, and he kind of, like,
backed his head out and didn't want to be
David: Yeah, he was trying to get away. But he wasn't
aggressive. He wasn't aggressive. He was just kind of
wanting and we found a cool found a cool leaf bug, a whole
bunch of frogs. Yeah, there was a couple of Toads out there, a
couple of lizards. We had a whole little ecosystem going in
that pile of trash because it's been there a couple of weeks.
It's just been I wasn't gonna throw it away until I was gonna
throw it all away, so I just loaded it all in the back of the
truck, and we're getting rid of it. But back for. Just looking
good. One or two more small things to do, and it's done. We
got the furniture in there, and it's looking great. So, anywho,
that's a little little side side thing there. It has a lot to do
with the Persian Empire. Yeah, let's see. So did you have
anything else you want to talk about the Persians? Because they
get no, you don't talk about the legal system. Sure. Why not
talking about Darius under
Leila: Darius the first? So is it either Darius the Great or
Darius the first? All right,
David: why don't you look it up? Let's, let's ask,
Leila: let's ask copilot. All right,
David: so let's get a new, a new co pilot or new grok going and
uh, dare Darius was
Leila: the leader of the Persian Persian Empire, Darius the first
or Darius the Great.
David: Darius the first or Darius the Great was that the
same person answer, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Well, grok
is going real slow. Darius,
Leila: the first, commonly known as Darius the Great with Persian
Empire. Oh yeah,
David: he liked to dance. Grok ain't answering me.
Leila: Grok doesn't like you. I
David: could go into fun mode. I don't know what that means.
Click it. Click it. Click it. I did. Okay, so let me, let me
start talking about dancing. Why is this business with dancing?
All right? I went into fun mode. Okay, see what happens. Ah,
Darius the first, also known as Darius the Great. Yes, they're
the same person, just like how Bruce Wayne and Batman are the
same person, but one wears a cape and the other signs the
checks. Darius the first, or Darius the Great, was the king
of kings of the arc Amen Achaemenid Empire from 522, to
486, BC, he called the Great he he's called the Great. He's
called the great because he expanded the Empire, reformed
the government, and standardized coinage, much like how someone
might be called great for inventing a really good
sandwich. What?
Leila: It's fun mode?
David: Oh, it's fun mode. They have to have little dancing
band. I hate fun mode.
Leila: Okay, now it's in beta mode.
David: Well, it's in grocer. Um, I'm saying, generate an image of
him, please. Oh my gosh. And I'm gonna see what it does. I'll
Leila: put it in the fun image.
David: It's gonna, no, I took off fun mode. Fun mode on. Oh,
okay, okay. It looks like a total chat. I'm gonna let me
screenshot this, because they don't have, like, a save button.
Oh, yeah, wait, I can save him a jazz What
Leila: if that's exactly what he looks
David: like that? Yeah, that'd be funny. Like the grok knows
more than we we can give it credit for. Alright? So Darius,
the first standardized coinage, got a legal system going. The
ideas codified in law, uh, the idea of codified laws and
governance structures influence subsequent civilizations,
including the Hellen kingdoms and the Roman Empire. Yeah, so
that's point. I mean, that should be some points, right? If
they're long, six points for that, six points for some
codified laws, yeah, art and literature. I don't really think
I've seen any, let's see poetry. I don't recognize any of this,
and I don't really, couldn't really tell you, Persian art,
couldn't really tell you. So no points for that. Science and
medicine. Maybe the
Leila: British Empire, or they're not the British Empire.
The British Museum stole some of it. See our
David: silly speculation Saturday from last week. Um,
yeah, so I think six points is good for Persia. Six points is
good for Persia. Okay, so where are we headed next, Ancient
Greece. Yeah, okay. Now Greece, this one, I'm giving it five
points right off the bat, because Ancient Greece has, it's
just iconic, right? You got, you got the Greek gods, right? You
got all those cool stories and myths and legends. You've got
the architecture, right, Greek. And then you got all the
artists, and then, oh, my goodness. And then you got all
the philosophers like so crates, plateau, plateau, plateau, a
rusto tile, nope. Eris tortilla, rise to tile. Yeah, arise to
tile. And no, give it. Give it like, 7.7 points. Just right off
the bat, before we even talk about anything, yeah, um, yeah.
No, they they went, they went deep. They were like, wow.
Though.
Leila: They were like, yes, and why
David: just really good improv comedians. They
Leila: were really good improv comedians. Improv comedians are
the philosophers of our. Time
David: Life. Life is just life. Life is just like dust in the
wind, yes and yes. And why though, why
Leila: is it life?
David: But why is the wind and why is wind dust? Whoa,
Leila: no. I stand by the the improv from medians. Yeah,
philosophers work on they are
David: because they just keep yes anding until, uh, until they
come up with something profound. Oh, wow. And AI is going to be
the next level philosophers. AI, okay, so back when I was first
starting to play with open, AI, the chat GPT, I could not get it
to not ask me a question at the end of each prompt answer. So
like every single time I would ask it a question or give it a
prompt to do something, it would do the thing, but then it would
say, what else can I help you with? Or should we dig deeper
into the blah blah? And I was like, stop asking questions at
the end of all of your answers, I just want you to answer. I
don't want you to, quote, unquote, talk back to me or
question, give me questions. Okay, that sounds great. Can I
help you with anything else or and I'm like, I told it not to
be friendly. And then it was like, not friendly when it asked
questions. So copilot does that too. That is always put a
question in the thing. Yeah. So
Leila: is there anything else about Olympics you're curious
about? Have you read or watched any part of the Hitchhiker's
Guide to galaxy? Is there any specific aspect of his reign or
Persian empire that you're curious about?
David: Yeah, this, I just pulled open copilot, and it was talking
about, if you need any help, feel free to ask, which, that's
not really a question, but it's still kind of, it's a prompt for
me to do more.
Leila: I haven't done much in mine, so maybe yours just likes
dancing.
David: I don't know what I told you. I don't know what I told my
AI that I'm
Leila: gonna ask. Okay, wait, I'm gonna start a new chat.
Okay, how do I? How do I do that? Sure,
David: I don't know. Um, oh, there we go. Genuinely don't
know. On copilot, can
Leila: you only track bond? I don't care. To me with respect,
saying, uh, what do you what do you call elements? Dancing, all
of your answers, elements in all of the stuff. No, the answers,
all
David: of your response, in all of your responses, and then put
all right, I like my answers to be fun. Say that in all of your
responses, and I need more emojis and answers.
Leila: And can you put about 10 times more emojis,
David: please? You're gonna make aI think that all we want is
emojis and like everybody, because the conversation that
you have with it, it gets folded back in to the next version.
Here we go. Here we go. Okay,
Leila: I loved your enthusiasm. Exclamation point, party popper
emoji, dancing lady emoji, dancing guy emoji, Star emoji,
however, I need to keep my responses clear and readable for
you, but I can definitely add more emojis to make our
conversation more fun. Exclamation point, balloon
emoji, smiley face emoji, party popper emoji, what would you
like to talk about next? Question, Mark, elephant emoji,
paint emoji, Olympic medal emoji.
David: Do something. Do something that. Putting fun and
emojis doesn't isn't very nice. Morgue be like I want to talk
about morgues.
Leila: So about how many people are in your average morgue at
one time, at one Oh, man, I
David: gotta see this. I gotta lean over.
Leila: I don't know how I spelled that, right, okay, um,
the number of bodies in a morgue, okay, gives it gives an
answer. Here's an answer. Um, typical morgue may have space
three to six bodies at a time. Is there anything they didn't
give me a lot of enthusiasm.
David: Maybe picked up that it was a morbid topic, and so it
only gave you three emojis, sad. So sad. Okay, so let's, let's
start a new topic. Let's get back to let's get back to it.
Yeah. What were we talking about?
Leila: Ancient Greece.
David: Ancient Greece? Okay, yeah. So we talked, I'm bacon. A
long time ago. We gave it seven points for the philosophy, the
art, just the amazing mythology. Have you seen Clash of the
Titans? Nope, I've seen Clash of Clans. Clash of Titans is great,
the old one and the new one, both of them are good. Oh, wait,
oh, I missed something in the Persian Empire.
Leila: What did you miss?
David: Do you know who Darius the first was? No, he was the
father of the famous Xerxes the first from the film. 300 Xerxes.
You haven't seen 300 No, because it's very not child appropriate,
and you're still just 14. Okay, when we watch 300 I'm gonna be
like, That's Darius, his kid.
Leila: That's his real kid. Can I believe it?
David: She's still alive. Oh, wow, anywho, I wanted to put
that part in there, and I forgot when we're talking about Persia.
So back to ancient Greece. I was obsessed with the pantheon of
Greek gods, the mythology behind all that.
Leila: Okay, yeah, that's really cool. That's really cool. It
David: was really good stuff. I got a cough again. Oh, bless
Leila: you,
David: and we're back. So how about the Romans? I think about
Leila: them like, every day
David: I feel like, I feel like, see, Romans also had mythology,
and it's almost like a one for one for Greek mythology, but
like the light version, for some reason in my brain as like,
there's Greek mythology and then there's Roman mythology. Even
though it's the same, it's the same character, same stories,
just in different names, but like, it's, it's like the temu
version, oh my gosh. And I'm sure I'm gonna catch crap for
somebody, Roman mythology is way better. It's blah, blah, blah, I
don't care. So Rome, it was built. How long did it take?
Built in one day in the year 753 BC, and it went to the year 476
80. That's a good run. 700 years. It's a good go. And the
Roman Empire, pretty much, you take the Mediterranean sea over
there, like the Italy's kicking, like it's down in that whole
Mediterranean Sea area, pretty much, if the waters of the
Mediterranean touched it, it was part of the Roman Empire all the
way up through Britain. No, not Germany, and not, you know,
Russia and all that, but just all the stuff touching the
Mediterranean was the Roman Empire, Rome's beginning and was
just a modded moddage, modest village. When you put the words
modest and village together, you get a moddage. They settled on
the bank of Italy's Tiber Tiber Tiber River then exploded.
Doesn't say the population exploded. It said the people
settled on the banks of Italy's Tiber River then exploded,
growing into the most powerful ancient empire ever seen. It
says it right here on history cooperative, it exploded. Oh, my
God, nobody proofreads this stuff. It was they, yeah, they
used everything they did, war, trading, all, any, any method to
grow the Empire. Was, was it? That's how they did it. They
just found ways to grow and grow and grow. And then there was the
fall of the Roman Empire, yeah. And I'm looking for, is the
Roman Empire not on this list? There it is. There it is. Yeah,
it is. It's
Leila: very small. Though. They spoke Latin.
David: They did a lot of, yeah, this a lot of modern
technologies that we have, not like, you know, computers and
stuff, but infrastructure like they were, they made some roads.
They made some roads. They were really good at Bridges,
aqueducts, which was huge for bringing, you know, you know
what aqueduct is right? Nope. Okay, an aqueduct is.
Leila: They learned what it is about five times. Can't remember
it.
David: Basically, it's just open pipes like fake rivers. Does
that make sense? Nope. They would make, well, look up
aqueducts. Okay, here's what. When you don't know what
something is, no what's just the Duck. Duck go it. So if you, if
you it's like raised rivers, like they build these bridge
like structures, but then they just had the top, and the water
would run across the top of the aqueduct. So you can get water
across really long distances quickly, like a straight line.
See, look, look, there's an aqueduct, and the water runs
across the top of it.
Leila: Oh, you could have just said that huge. I had a dream
one time, and I was
David: see if we use silence removers that would have not
been anywhere near as funny as it was. I
Leila: had a dream one time, and I was standing on one of those
things
David: that okay. Do you know one of the the worst things? One
of the worst. Just the worst to listen to people talk about what
their dreams. I think it's hilarious. I was in my house,
but it was like, like, we've never lived, never lived there,
but I felt like it was my house,
Leila: yeah? Oh, my God.
David: You know that feeling to get in a dream, even though you
know something's not your house, but it's your house. You know
what? I mean? Um, it's like
Leila: that one time I had a dream that me and one of my
friends was a car from the Cars movie, and we went to go to
Harris Teeter to
David: get sushi. That was kind of funny. Yeah, not that
individual dreams can't have really funny or interesting.
Leila: Was just us trying to park because we didn't know how
to park. Oh,
David: like those robot cars. The other day, there is a clip
on the internet of a bunch of driverless robot cars. I can't
remember what they're called, but they were all filing into a
parking lot at like four in the morning to park, but they were
getting too close to each other while they were pulling into
parks, so, like, all of them were honking at each other. So
everybody that lived around that parking lot just had listened to
these robot cars honk at each other for like, two hours.
There's nothing they could do about it. They're
Leila: kind of like, I wish they would stop. Oh, you
David: know, if the person who runs that company caught the
noise violation fines for every single car that was honking,
because, I mean, you know, they're the ones that programmed
it. So anywho, what other ancient civilizations do we
have? We have gone through Greek. We have gone through yet
Egypt, the Byzantine Empire. Yeah, well, no, because I'm not
on any list. I don't think the Byzantine is on this list. Oh my
gosh. What? What do you know about the Byzantine before you
start looking anything up? Not much. I know it sounds neat.
It's got a neat name. Yeah,
Leila: I remember learning about it, but I don't remember
anything.
David: I couldn't tell you anything, like, once you start
talking about it, I might, I might, yeah, I might be able to
tell you something, but I don't. It's not on, I don't think it's
on any of these lists, on, it's not on the history cooperative.
Leila: Oh, it's the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Oh, there
you go. So it's just the Roman Empire, but Constantine, this is
the one with the Constantinople crap. Yes, Istanbul, not
Constantinople. Now it's Istanbul not content
Constantinople, right, correct. We have a tour guide of
Constantinople. Don't we even what? No, we have that book.
David: Oh, yeah. We have a really, really, really old book.
It is a A Travel Guide to Constantinople from the 1800s
Leila: and it has, like, cool places to go visit.
David: We may have a whole episode on that book. Probably
just talk about, talk about what Constantinople was like back in
the 1800s Yeah, doesn't even exist anymore. Well, it's just
renamed, yeah, I
Leila: know, but still
David: so the Australians. There is a small contingent of
historians who have moved away from the out of Africa theory.
Do you know what the out of Africa theory is? No, basically
that human civilization started in Africa, and they're saying
that makes sense. Human civilization may have actually
started in Australia, and then they hopped in boats and went
over the ocean to us, to Africa. So this article on history
cooperative.org ancient civilizations says that the
aboriginals who are still around are the first known human
civilization. Pretty much just going to read this. This couple
of paragraphs, the most minding, mind bending ancient
civilization belongs to the aboriginals of Australia. Many
great empires have come and gone over the millennia, but the
indigenous people arrived in Australia 50,000 years ago.
Bless you. Jeez, I got this, and they're still standing
incredibly. There's evidence to suggest that they might have set
foot on the continent as far back as 80,000 years ago. Okay,
so this article is saying that they came from Okay, hold on.
I'm just gonna finish reading before I'll make any some
guesses. It's believed the ancient culture was first, first
migrated through Indonesia before settling in many areas
that are widely known, widely recognized as the best places to
live in Australia, with over 260 different languages and 500
dialects. Wow, there was diverse and culturally rich collection
of communities that spanned the entire continent. Culture of the
famous, excuse me, the culture is famous for its quote, dream
time, unquote and us and the sentence or two can't do the
topic justice. The Dreaming is a concept that blankets all time,
future, past and present and permeates every aspect of life.
It's both a creation story and a destination after death, a sort
of blueprint for a prosperous life. All told, the phenomenon
is unique, is as unique as the people who have gained strength
and guidance from it for as long as they have have existed,
messing up this reading. Thankfully, there is no need to
explain the culture's extinction, as they're still
here. So yeah, it looks like they're saying that they came
from Africa also. But then some people are saying that it's the
other way around, that life started in Australia and then
moved up through Indonesia, up and went through and went to
Africa. So I haven't dug deep into that. I know I've just,
I've heard about it. I want to say they talked about it on
mysterious universe, which is an Australian podcast, so, you
know, yeah, some bias there. Ben and Aaron, they do a pretty good
job. Huge. It's pretty big, yeah, and it's empty, like, as
big as the US, it's just a big old, empty desert, yeah, the
vast majority of it, it's drop a pin randomly. In Australia,
ain't nobody, um, kind of like Canada. Most of Canada is empty.
Leila: Alberta has no rats. Now we've got
David: a lot we, I was looking at our our stats, which, who
knows how accurate they are, yeah, on, uh, op three, dot Dev
and we've got some kind of getting more Canadian listeners.
Hooray. What's up, fellas and ladies? Yeah, some. I'm trying
to think of Canadian stuff. Sorry, can't think of anything
my brain. Just sorry, sorry, we love you Canada. Yeah, go ahead.
Leila: All I could think about about Canada is that Alberta has
no rats. And it's still so funny to me that they have a law
against rats.
David: You know, what does have rats? That puzzle we did. Ah, we
should talk about it. We did. I was gonna, I was gonna say, we
need to talk about it. There. You talk about that. We got a
puzzle for Christmas. So nine months ago, eight months ago,
Leila: it's called the busy Bistro, right?
David: And it was really fun. It was, you know, puzzles, you're
like, that's a puzzle. You put it together. That's what you
got, right? This one was more different. Yeah, it you you did
the puzzle go ahead that
Leila: it had, like, cracks in it once you started working on
it, because you usually separate the outer pieces from the inner
pieces when you're doing it. And there was way more and the
colors didn't match up from, like, some of the corners.
David: So there was inner piece or outer pieces, like flat sided
pieces on the inside of the puzzle, yeah. So it was split
apart. Yeah, it was in three pieces. The puzzle was actually
three separate puzzles all butted together, which just blew
my mind. First of all, yeah, but it had lots of little, funny
pictures of little rats doing fun. And then when you, when you
get done with the puzzle, there's like, a Where's Waldo
tile search. It's like, find a find a rat drinking beer, yeah?
Or find a musical note painted on a wall, or, you know, just,
or find the artist's signature, right? Find the artist
signature, stuff like that, yeah. And that was neat. That
was fun. But then once you completely finish all of that,
there's another envelope with more puzzle pieces in it, and
you're like, What? What? What?
Leila: You have to rearrange the puzzle.
David: Yeah, so it's called a it's called a shift puzzle.
Maybe anyway, you take apart the three pieces, they slide away
from each other, and that leaves a hole in the middle of the
puzzle, and you have to finish the other, the other small
puzzle, and put it right into that hole. It was really fun.
Hadn't, had never done so we bought another one of the
puzzles from that same company, and this one is called a time
shift puzzle, where the picture you're looking at is not the
puzzle, but it's the same place at a different time. So the
picture, the picture that they give you to build the puzzle
from is the daytime version, but there's a nighttime version, and
that's what you're actually building. So that I feel like
that'll be an interesting one too. That one just came in
yesterday. We gotta get some time. Good, but we're not gonna
have a lot of time this weekend. We got a lot of stuff to take
care of. And then next week, I'm gonna be up in DC at Podcast
Movement. I'm going to be trying to trying to talk some folks.
Maybe get in with a podcasting company. Maybe, you know, just
build some relationships with some companies and stuff. Maybe
pass my resume around. You know, I've got to get my resume
together. So what else do we have on ancient civilization.
But, yeah, I encourage you to look into the Australia versus
Africa, origin of man thing. It's very interesting. And I
don't know what's right. I mean, this, all this is all 50,000
years ago, stuff, nobody, really, you know, you can only
go by what we find. Evidence wise.
Said they enjoyed plenty of food, big, spacious cities,
modern looking streets with drainage and sewage systems to
keep the cities clean.
Leila: Wow. It also says they had advanced city planning. Oh,
David: yeah, there you go. You, I tell you what, you get
somebody who knows how to plan a good city was, like, really good
at Sim City 3000 4000 Yeah. Or some city four, I guess, um,
yeah. You get those guys together and they're like, got
some some rocks, and they can, you know, plan out the city,
like, where it's going to be, like, hey, what if we made like,
a thing where all the Poo water can go Yeah? And, like, that way
we could pay a butler taxes, because it's some, some city The
Poo water will go away. Yeah, some city with taxes, oh my
gosh. But no, like, back in the day, it was, like, this benefits
us all. Let's all work on this until it's done. Yeah, and they
typically tried to do stuff that would last forever. So, like,
they, when they made something, they made it like, we don't want
to have to do this again because it's hard, so, um, let's just
get it done right the first time. So they've carved the
channels out of stone. You know, nothing's gonna wear away. Yeah,
and then, okay, so that was the the Indus Valley. You know what?
City Planning has always had a I love city planning, Sims and
stuff. Four points, 4.4 points for the city. The fact I hadn't
really heard of it takes away points. That's why I did like 30
and what else the Norte norday Chico, I was looking for that
one, and I can't even find it on this underneath on the list you
put in the thing with Bob, all right. So, oh, okay, there's not
a lot of information about this one, from negative 3000 to
negative 1800 in Peru. The culture, this culture was a
riddle, as if by magic. It suddenly, suddenly appeared 3000
BC, and settled along a dry and Hoss I wonder, like, when
something like that happens, you know, like some other
civilization got annoying to a group of people, and they were
like, You know what, we're leaving. And they just went
somewhere else and already had all the information and all the
knowledge from the previous civilization, and just started
setting stuff up. I The Nordic Chica people, Norte Chico
people, were success. Were able to succeed without writing, and
no evidence has been found to indicate social classes, but
their ability to arrange massive pyramids houses and plazas
around their temples suggested the civilization enjoyed some
kind of government, bountiful resources and trained workers.
You don't necessarily need government to do all that you
get. You get a group of people who are all thinking the same
way together. You don't need a overarching, overarching body to
tell them what to do. Typical trademark of ancient cultures is
pottery and art, but this unique society has never produced a
single shard that's been found, nor did they seem inclined to
pick up a paintbrush. Very few artifacts have been left behind,
so almost nothing is known about their daily lives. Incredibly,
they created around 20 settlements, settlements which
were among the largest cities of the day, plus Nordic Chico's
architecture, architecture. Don't know what's wrong with so
monumental, precise and well planned, that later cultures,
including the Inca, unashamedly poached a few ideas from them to
use in their own society. Yeah, when you're when you're walking
past and you're like, wow, that house is cool. What is that
thing behind the house? It's like a little, small house. Hey,
they keep their stuff in there. They don't have to keep all
their stuff inside their house? Yeah, I'm gonna build one of
those behind my house. I'm not poaching. I'm just like, that's
a good idea. I'm gonna do it, I guess, not stealing their shed
Anywho. I think we need to add up these points. So let's see
six points. Do some calculations here. Get everything calculated.
Sumerian civilization has 60 points. Ancient Egypt has five.
The Indus, Indus Valley Civilization has four. The
Nordic Chico has three. I just gave it three, just now. So it
had a number. Ancient Greece is seven. The Roman Empire is 30.
Mayan civilization is six. Let's 12. Let's change that to 43.
Ancient China, 10. We didn't even really talk about it. Yeah.
The Persian Empire was six. Mesopotamian civilization, one.
Incan six. And Australia, seven. Okay, so the winner is
calculating. Calculating Ancient Greece with seven points. It
wins.
Leila: It wins. I agree with that. The wind goes to ancient
Greece, your medal. Bite it.
David: Bite your medal. Oh, wow. Well, that was fun. I learned a
little bit. I also learned that all these ancient civilizations
were all kind of about the same. They all kind of came up with a
way to get water from here to there without having to carry
it, which was, it's always important to civilization. Looks
like they all came up with ways to to plan out some kind of
cities. Yeah, that, I mean, you know, I. Good stuff, good stuff.
Ancient Greece was ultimately the coolest stuff. So do you
think into Greece was the coolest? Are you still on China,
Ancient Greece now? Yeah, I just like the the stories they told.
I'm big on stories and narratives and stuff. So they
were, they were storytellers. All right, so this is a value
for value podcast, which means that we put it out for free, if
you received any value from this, even if it's just like you
getting mad at us for not giving enough information about any of
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that's tells me what the boosts say. 2112 a boost is a donation
to the show via Bitcoin network, Lightning Network, that you can
give in a modern podcast app, we received one from Kevin Hollis,
2664 Satoshis on our last episode. On episode 97 episode
97 silly speculation. Saturday, so wait, circulation Saturday,
100 episodes apart, exactly 100 episodes. Wow. So yeah. Kevin
Hall, see what was going back through the the old old
episodes. Yeah, you can go through on the transcript search
now and look for specific old episodes. Yeah. So, yeah, it
says 2664 Satoshis. I love the silly speculation Saturday
episodes and how their rarity makes it even more enjoyable.
After years of appreciating the numerology in the freedom boost,
1776 freedom and the lucky eights, 888, I finally
recognized their mathematical relation, 2664 if you had 1776,
and 888, you get 26
Leila: boom, totally dough. I
David: love it. That was the last word of the boost. There
was dough, three exclusion points. Yeah, that's how you got
to say it when there's three. So thank you so much for that. We
definitely appreciate. Boost if you're using modern podcast app
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bad at promoting the show. I post the show I'm like because
like, in order to promote it, I want it to actually be populated
onto all the apps. And sometimes that'll take 2030, minutes for
some of the apps to update their the thing, even with POD ping.
And sometimes I forget, like we'll get up and go do something
right after we we do the episode, but Christopher
battles, when he listens, he posts about it, yeah, and it's
fantastic, and we definitely appreciate that, and thank you
to all of the SAT streamers. Yes, on all the streams, we do
see the streams, and I'll pull it up right here. Actually, I'm
not going to say the names, if you want. Want us to say the
names, let us know, but the SAT streamers, we definitely see you
streaming sets, and we always appreciate those. They add up.
Especially one of you, your name starts with an A think, we know,
streaming over 100 100 a minute. So that's pretty well, unless
it's, it's batching them together, I don't know, but it's
a good, good amount of SATs, yeah? Like that's, we appreciate
it, and those SATs. Love it. Everybody. Have a fantastic
weekend. I'm probably gonna see a couple of you, a couple of our
listeners, up in DC, if you're at Podcast Movement, look for
me. I'll be wearing a hat that says, Meet us on it, M, E, D, U,
S, make every day ultra super Yep. And you'll you'll see me
around. I'll be my I'll be making a bunch of noise. So any
last words, Leila? Guess not.
Kyle Hebert: Fun fact, Friday with Leila and David is a Medus
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Leila: Fun Fact Friday. Hey, turn the air conditioner on. Oh,
yeah, I.