Rick Harrison : Roman Empire, Pawn Stars & Politics | DSH #1434

Yeah, no, but it's just the facts.

I mean, like, like, let's, you know, like,

I mean, the whole Ukraine thing, it has bothered me so much.

Like, let's just end the fucking war and have people stop.

Yeah, and let's just have stop people stop fucking dying.

Let's come with an ages.

Let's figure out an agreement because one could be made.

You know, some people have to be humbled and say, like, no, okay, yeah, we're going to have to give up this.

You're going to have to.

Okay, guys, Rick from Ponstar's roles are reversed today.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm here.

You're here.

You brought a, how old is that bracelet?

1,200 years old.

1,200 years old.

Yeah, like, yeah, right around 800 AD.

Jeez.

And it's,

you know, they've x-rays it and everything.

So the gold is identical to 8th century gold coins that were made in England.

They didn't have great refining

capabilities back then.

Actually, it was worse than the Romans were better, but, you know, everything got worse when that fell apart.

But it's identical to the coins they used, the gold they were getting for coins.

And we have, I got a bunch of other paperwork on it.

So

yeah, it's one of my cool things.

I got a lot of weird cool things.

Yeah, that's super cool.

Did you buy that on the show?

Yeah, I actually bought it on the show.

Nice.

So you just came in and you were like, I want that.

Yeah, I'm like, damn, that's kind of cool.

Yeah.

You like the ancient stuff.

I liked it.

I just like weird stuff, like weird stuff that's got a story.

Okay.

Cause no one buys the thing.

They buy the story with it.

Right.

What's the oldest artifact or thing you have, you think?

Oh, I got some like fossils and like dinosaur bones, but like

things that were man-made.

I have like

I have a gold coin from Alexander the Great.

It's like 432 BC.

That's crazy.

How much was that?

That's like 18 grand, something like that.

Jeez.

Was that graded or raw?

I actually bought it graded.

So, yeah, so

I forget what I paid for it, but it's one of my little treasures.

I have the oldest stained glass window in the western hemisphere in my house.

I have a manual for trying witches.

Trying witches?

Yeah, putting witches on trial.

It tells you how to, you know, convict them and everything like that.

Wow.

Which is

really weird.

It's also printed in English, which is kind of cool.

So,

yeah, but like, just literally, if someone has a dream, like in this manual, it literally tells you if someone had a dream that you're a witch, that could be considered evidence.

Really?

Yeah.

Damn.

You and I talked about dreams last time.

Yeah.

You have some crazy dreams.

Yeah.

So I, yeah, I, I, I'm just a weird guy.

I really am.

I mean, like, you know, my whole life, I've been able to do like lucid dreaming.

So I can just like hang out in a dream sometimes.

So I like that you own it because I think we're all weird.

Some people just don't show it.

No, I mean,

I don't know.

I think it's a lot to do with the phones and the social media and everything.

It seems like

there's so many, especially young people, they're just not comfortable in their own skin.

You know, and it's just find your little gig in life and do it and you know people are way too concerned about what other people think about them 100 i see a lot of young people pretending to be someone they're not

um yeah and i just don't get it just be happy with who you are dude yeah i mean like you'll be happy that way you know uh

i truly i mean it's that should be your goal in life it's just like it's not to impress other people just be happy yeah be happy with what you are with what you do and everything like that um and i tell people all the time i'm the happiest man in the world.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, my idea, the definition of rich is like, if you got a bunch of money, would it change your life?

And I'm like, no, so I guess I'm rich.

Yeah, because I still like to ride my motorcycles, work on my cars, you know, hang out with my kids.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Happiest person in the world.

When did that happen?

Was it just from childhood?

It's always been that way.

I mean, I love being around my kids.

I love, you know, like just working.

It's just,

like any people that are miserable and all negative, I fire them right away to work for me.

Yeah.

Cause I just don't want it because it's poison.

It poisons everybody around them.

Um, and I just don't, I just don't hang around negative people or anything like that.

I just don't want to do it because it just, why?

Yeah.

Be happy.

Yeah.

You be happy.

Yeah.

That's important.

I think a lot of people surround themselves with the wrong people.

Yeah.

So if I don't like it, I mean, like, buy me each and I don't like you.

Yeah, you'll never see me again.

You'll cut them off.

Yeah, I don't care if they got all kinds of money or they're

politicians or anything.

I'm not going to hang out with someone I don't like.

Respect.

So turning 60 recently, getting married again.

Yes.

I love being married.

You love it, man.

No cleanups.

No, I'm just just just I'm just happy.

That's the whole thing.

It's all about being happy.

You know, found out, I mean, I met Angie a year and a half ago.

She's absolutely wonderful.

And like, you know, let's get married.

I mean, it's, and

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Because, you know, it's a lot of

when you have a large estate and something ever happened to me, it's the government doesn't get it all.

Oh, so it's strategic too?

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

I like that you don't let your previous marriages affect your love, your love life now.

Yeah, no, it's like I said, it's all about being happy.

You're getting married, right?

I'm getting married.

First one.

Hopefully it's the only one.

Okay.

Father had two and he didn't want to go for three.

Yeah.

Nope.

I'm happy.

That's all that matters.

Yeah.

Fake items.

You've bought quite a few of those.

Well, no,

it's the nature of the game.

No guts, no glory.

Okay.

And I can't know everything about everything.

And sometimes you make mistakes.

It's just plain and simple.

you know you something cool comes in you don't know anybody that knows anything about it or you can't get a hold of them you just take a shot and sometimes you it it it works out.

Sometimes it doesn't.

But then in the meantime of the time, it works out.

But every once in a while, and it's happened to everybody in this business.

Anyone in this business tell you if they've never bought anything fake, they're lying to you.

What's the most you've dropped on a fake item?

I don't know, like 40, 50 grand, probably.

Was it a Rolex?

No, not that much.

God, I think it was,

you know, I think it was some artwork.

Yeah, I know I just have things that come to mind.

I've spent like $12,000 on a shoeless Joe Jackson autograph that ended up being fake.

There's been plenty of things over the years, but it's just part of the business.

I mean, and like anyone in this business that tells you they've never bought anything fake, they're lying to you.

And they're probably not happy.

Do you usually get the money back when that happens?

No.

Really?

No.

You just got to eat that.

You got to eat it.

Yeah.

And that's, I mean, it's, it's like I said, it's the nature of my business.

Okay.

I've bought stuff before that ended up being stolen.

I got to give it back.

I lose all the money.

Damn, stolen stuff.

Yeah, I'm sure that's more common than fit stuff.

Well, you got to be kind of an idiot to see what I'm saying.

You know, like on my show, where I say, let's go do some paperwork.

Everything I buy, I turn into the FBI and Metro Police.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, it's the law I'm supposed to, but like, you know, but detail, you know, I, because,

and they got to show ID.

And if it's something expensive, I get their fingerprint.

So you're kind of stupid if you do it.

And someone actually did that?

Well, plenty of people have done it over the years.

Like P.T.

Barnum said,

no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of some people.

Some people really want the eyeballs.

They'll do anything.

Yeah, no, it's

it just, like I said, it's the nature.

All, you know, it's, it's small business.

There's a ton of risk with every business, even your business.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

You could have spent rent on this place and all this equipment, you know, the place could burn down.

That happened in a previous studio, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Suddenly no one likes you anymore and you don't get any viewers and you got to go out of business and start all over again.

Who knows?

Cancel culture.

You never know what's going to happen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The cancel.

I think the cancel culture is sort of dying down a little bit.

It's not as insane as it was.

Yeah, it just, it got to a point there where it just

was like, oh, you looked at somebody wrong.

Cancel them.

There's still there's still some, but it's not as strong.

For instance, i google when i was preparing for this interview i looked you up on youtube it says you're serving a life sentence right now oh i know we i actually had to do like you know because i started a podcast like six months ago me and jump actually sit down and did a whole thing about i'm not in jail well i mean but uh but then i have a publicist and my publicist it's kind of a good thing because if they can't find out anything to write about you they'll just write something about you that means you're really famous yeah how many times have has canceled culture come for you at this point uh not really because i don't give a shit you know what i mean like uh i i i don't you know i've uh

i just i i think i think the biggest mistake with all these hollywood actors is they do something and they then they get on then they put out a press release and a video and all this well i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry it just makes you look like a weak idiot you know and especially if it's a joke or something like that just tell her like you know what grow up i'm not a fan of those apology videos i feel like they never work out i i think think it's way, way worse when you do the apology video.

I think it really, really is.

It just shows, I mean, they're so

they're not sincere.

Yeah.

Now, you, you dove into politics.

You said in 2015 you started endorsing Trump.

I endorse Trump.

Yeah.

I'm a big libertarian.

I mean, there's plenty of things that Trump does that I don't agree with.

One of the greatest political quotes ever was the mayor of New York, Ed Koch, back in the day.

I might not have the quote exactly right, but he basically said, if you believe in eight out of 12 things I stand for, vote for me.

If you believe in 12 out of 12, have your head examined.

I actually love that.

No, I'm,

you know, I'm not an ideologue, but I just believe

less government and capitalism is what made everybody, it made this the greatest country of the world.

I've been, I don't know how many, I've been all over the world, but, you know, performance famous, wall and famous, everything like that.

And like, trust me, everybody wants to come here.

Okay.

Everywhere.

I have not been into a country where they wouldn't prefer to be in the United States.

Wow.

Yeah.

And it's,

yeah, but it's capitalism works.

I mean, like, we have the, you know, I don't care what kind of studies people say.

We're like, this country's, we have the highest standard of living in the world.

And it's because

capitalism works and socialism doesn't.

Every country that's tried, there's like the socialism thing and more and more government, it just fails.

and

it's like this one guy running for mayor in New York.

I mean, it's like super,

it doesn't work.

You know what I mean?

If you do rent control, no one's going to build another building.

So then there's like, you know, you might have controlled rent prices, but no one's renting anything and no one's building anything.

So there's going to be next to no housing.

It's,

you know, like one of the examples I give all the time about it is, so

right around 1850, like the de facto watch capital of the world was London, England.

But right around that time, inexpensive machine tools came along.

You know, it's the Industrial Revolution.

So little watch companies started popping up all around the United States.

And by the 1890s, the best watches in the world, hands down, were American watches.

And like European watch companies were like literally trying to put American sounding names on their watches.

That's why Congress had to pass a law saying, you know, right at the the bottom of the watch where the watch was made,

on the face of the watch.

And that's because it took 17 different unions to make a watch in London.

Wow.

So there wasn't no innovation.

I mean, like you would have to get 17 different unions to agree to make a change in a watch.

So like in the 1890s, they were still trying to make watches that they were making in 1830.

And

so American watches became the, you know, the best watches in the world.

And then it's funny because, and then the English watch industry was just decimated.

They basically stopped making watches, you know, but like there were still Swiss watchmakers and stuff like that, but they couldn't sell pocketwatches because the Americans were the best pocketwatch.

Everyone wanted an American pocketwatch.

So they started making wristwatches.

But no one in this country, no guy in this country will wear a wristwatch.

Well, only women will wear wristwatches.

Guys wear a pocketwatch.

So in a brilliant move of capitalism, a consortium of Swiss watchmakers came to Hollywood.

I hope you guys are enjoying the show.

Please don't forget to like and subscribe.

It helps the show a lot with the algorithm.

Thank you.

With a briefcase full of watches and a briefcase full of cash and got all the actors to start wearing them.

But within a couple of years, every guy goes like, I don't wear a pocketwatch.

That's what old guys wear.

I wear a wristwatch.

And then the American

watchmakers couldn't catch up and they all went out of business.

Wow.

Yeah.

Business is Darwinism.

But in the long run, everyone has a better life because of it.

That is so fascinating.

I did not know that story about watches.

Yeah.

No, it's, you know, so I just like, that's my thing.

I want less government.

The last thing in the world I want is government health care

because I'm a product of

government health care.

You know, I had epilepsy when I was a kid.

My dad was in the Navy, so military doctors and,

oh, they screwed me up like, no, tomorrow.

So

you want all sorts of meds, right?

Yeah, they were, they put me on phenobarbitol, which was the cheapest epilepsy medicine that was out there.

But they knew if they gave it to kids, it would screw your bone growth up, but they gave it to me anyway.

So I have the trunk of a 6'4 guy, the legs of a 5'5 guy.

I have short little T-Rex arms.

This arm's an inch and a half shorter than this arm.

Wow.

And this leg's an inch shorter than this leg.

And that's just because, you know,

it was like government health care and they didn't give a damn.

Holy crap.

It wasn't like I could go to the other doctor.

They were just the doctor that I was assigned to, which changed every three months.

I wonder what the solution is because insurance is so expensive.

There were solutions.

I mean, they had a great solution in Texas years ago, but Obamacare basically made it illegal.

There was this one company.

They had an amazing system.

It was like $100 a month, and it was like

another $40 a month for each dependent.

I don't know the exact number, what the price was.

And it was just like one of these mega clinics where they had their own MRI machines.

They had their own pharmacy.

They had had their own x-ray equipment, they had their own lab.

And then you would get yourself a catastrophic insurance plan for like a $10,000 deductible for that was really inexpensive.

And you could basically go to this clinic and get everything done.

And since everything was done in-house, they were able to do it.

It was really inexpensive medical, quality and expensive medical care.

It was a great system.

But Obamacare just basically made systems like that unavailable.

Yeah, I pay like a thousand a month right now for mine.

And I'm still paying out of pocket all the time.

Because the entire

Obamacare bill,

that was, had nothing to do with medical care.

It was just insurance.

Insurance companies wrote that bill.

They thought it would make them a fortune, but then they screwed up and it cost them a fortune.

What do you think, Cove?

Oh, go ahead.

No, I just think that

if

there's no, there's no perfect system.

That's the problem.

You will always, people, you know, you'll always find that one person that fell between the cracks and, you know, everyone like, oh, we got to fix this.

We got to, but like, throwing more government, it just screws it up.

It doesn't work.

It doesn't, it doesn't.

Look at all the money they get for so many different programs, homelessness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, look how well the DMV works out.

I hate going there.

I'll do it all night as much as possible.

Yeah, but like, it's literally, it's the whole joke.

I mean, like, somewhere in the uh, somewhere in every DMV office, there's a, there's a door in the back somewhere that goes straight to hell.

Yeah.

Probably.

Yeah.

No, no, it's um

when you have a situation where people cannot get fired and they don't, you know,

and it's the only game in town, it's you're not going to have a good product.

Yeah, less government.

There's like, what, 400 government agencies?

Oh, God, it's probably way more than that.

I know there's like 30 some, just with the federal government, law enforcement agencies.

Yeah.

30 just in law enforcement?

Yeah, like federal law enforcement.

You know, there's the postal police.

There's the capital police.

There is the Supreme Court Police.

And

there's the BLM Police.

There's the National Forest Service.

It just goes on and on and on.

They all have their own police forces.

And it's just

because

once a government agency is established, it's very difficult to get rid of it.

It wasn't like till like 2002 or 2003.

I mean, this is a typical example of government.

So when we had the Spanish-American War,

the federal government came along and said, we need some way to help pay for this.

So they put

a tax on your phone bill

and they didn't get rid of it until like 2003.

Yeah.

So they're sneaky with it.

Well, no, it's just everything with government.

It just stays around forever.

What do you think of Elon?

What did he try to do with Doge?

I thought it was amazing.

I don't understand the whole crazy

fight they got in with each other.

I think he is one of the, I think he's one of the most brilliant men alive.

I've joked around for years that he's either a time traveler or an alien because no one gets, I mean, like,

you know, he comes along, you know, I mean, I think his parents had a little money or whatever, but, you know, wasn't super rich.

You know, starts PayPal, makes a fortune.

Then he goes like, well, I'm going to build rockets that land themselves.

You know, and NASA says, well, that'll take 50 to 100 years to come up with that technology.

He does it right away.

He goes, I'm going to build an electric car company.

Everyone's tried and failed.

He does that.

Neurolink, the boring company,

it just goes, everything he touches turns to turns.

I mean, like Grok, Twitter,

or X now, yeah.

Yeah.

Him and Trump are beefing, man.

I don't like it.

I don't like it either.

You know, I can understand why,

you know, the big, beautiful bill.

I mean, there's plenty.

We should have less spending.

You know, like

there's going to be a point eventually where, where

we have to pay for all this debt and it's not going to be pretty.

It's not going to be pretty at all.

Printing of money leads to hyperinflation always has.

Yeah, a lot of people got wrecked during that time.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, like,

that's why there used to be like a gold standard and everything like that, you know, where you couldn't, you know, like, that's how governments worked.

I mean, they paid for everything in gold.

There was no gold left.

They couldn't buy.

They couldn't spend no more money.

Can you believe believe how expensive gold is right now?

No, I completely believe it.

Yeah.

Because when you first started the shop, you were buying it for like one-tenth of the price.

Well, no, yeah.

I mean, back when I started the shop, gold was right around 300 bucks an ounce.

You just have to think of gold as a different currency.

It's the currency that's always been around.

An analogy with a gold coin is like, you want to get

a custom suit made?

It's going to cost you an ounce of gold.

120 years ago, cost an ounce of gold.

You know, 50 years ago, it cost you an ounce of gold.

Today, it'll cost you an ounce of gold.

Yeah.

It's a great hedge against inflation.

Yeah, I don't, I don't, I have as minimal dollars as possible.

I use it to get by, but.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's just

the nature of our insane Federal Reserve System.

You know, they literally want inflation every year.

Oh, we want like 2% inflation every year.

Well, why do you want inflation at all?

Now they're going to switch to digital currencies.

Oh, God, I hope not.

You don't like those?

No, I don't want the government to know what I spend my money on.

It's another fucking business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, we, I mean, like, also, like, these things that track, I mean, we, we, you know, we're idiots.

We carry around our own tracker around with them all the time, and it knows everything about us.

It listens to us.

Um, and I know for a fact your phones listen to you because

I was talking to someone I know about a pharmaceutical company and I was thinking about investing in some other stuff like that.

And we were literally talking about laboratory environmental systems.

Okay.

We were discussing, you know, the price of those and their things like that.

And then the next day, I'm looking on my phone.

I get an ad come.

I got ads popping up for laboratory environmental systems.

You know, so that is 100% proof the phone phone listens to you.

That's happened to me, too, so many times.

Random things I'll be talking about.

Yeah.

They're solving crimes now based off where your phone's at.

Oh, I know.

It's,

I mean, I just don't think the government needs to know where you're at.

I mean, it's just, and like, but like, if there's a digital, if there's a digital

currency, you know, literally the government could say, uh, you know what?

We think he might be doing something bad, whether it is or not.

Cut his money off.

They're already, yeah, they're already doing that with certain crypto coins.

Yeah, I mean, just like literally, just

cut his money off.

Yeah.

You know what?

We don't, you know, like, you know, uh, we don't like him.

Make it so he can't buy airplane tickets.

Yeah.

Um, you know what?

We, uh,

we don't want to leave him town.

Don't let him buy gas.

And they could, they could, the government, because like,

governments just have a tendency to start to abuse their power and they need to be kept in in check.

And with the digital currency, I mean, like, that's just, that's just way too far.

Yeah.

And I know you've studied a lot of like history, so you can see how governments fail over time.

Are you seeing any similar patterns right now?

Well, you know, the whole fall of Rome.

I believe

that there was two things that was the fault that I've created the fall of Rome, their welfare system.

There was a complete welfare system in

the Roman Empire.

Like in England, they still call the welfare system the dole.

It was the dole in Rome.

They gave out free bread,

and

it just started off, it was for the poor.

And then, next thing you know, everybody was getting free bread.

And suddenly, they had to start importing all their bread.

And it was breaking the economy of the Roman Empire.

And the other thing was,

right around

in the first century BC, they discovered lead acetate.

So apparently lead acetate, I mean, if you take a lead pot and you put some grape juice in it and you simmer it for a while, it turns in the sweetest, most wonderful tasting thing in the world, but it was really expensive to make.

So all the aristocracy were drinking sweetened wine with lead acetate.

And like you've heard of Caligula, right?

Yeah.

He drank like three or four bottles of that a day.

Jeez.

And that's why he was bad shit crazy.

And no one was, none of the rich people were having kids.

And that's what like sort of the downfall of it.

But like the welfare system,

because once you start giving welfare, you can't stop

because you're buying the votes.

The emperors bought the love of the people

because the Roman Empire, if the people didn't love you, there was going to be revolts and things like that.

But that's what we keep on giving more out, more out, more out.

And then

everybody expects more.

You can't take it away.

So would the modern day version of that be universal basic income?

Well, yeah, universal basic income.

I mean,

you can go, I mean, you know, I believe in a social safety diet.

I really do.

But to go to,

to take your food stamp card and go to McDonald's is a step too far.

You know,

you shouldn't be able to buy lobster with your

food stamp card.

You know, like, hey, these are the basic necessities we can get you until you can get back on your feet.

You know, like, they should not be used for lobster and, you know,

like, you know what?

Give me the rib eyes.

You know, that should, you know, there should be a limit on certain things.

Yeah, I'd love more transparency to see where the tax dollars go to.

Because I'm paying millions and it's like, is that actually helping anyone, you know?

Yeah, the government's, I imagine that.

I can't even imagine all the waste.

I think Doge probably just scratched the surface.

Yeah.

You know, know, and then,

yeah, the military industrial complex, that's another thing.

That's a whole nother rabbit hole thing.

Because when they talk about all this money went to Ukraine, no, like the majority of that money went to North Adgram and Raytheon and everything else like that.

Wow, I didn't know that.

Well, no, because it was all, it was all military supplies, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so where do those go?

I mean, I can give you a quick little history of Ukraine and why it's so screwed up.

I believe Putin's an evil, evil person, but I can tell you why he invaded Ukraine.

Okay, so it all goes back to, it all goes back to 1959.

Khrushchev,

you know, the

Soviet premier,

he gave Crimea

to the Ukraine for a bookkeeping, for bookkeeping.

Basically, that's what it was.

Crimea is not connected

to

old-school Soviet Union, Russia.

Okay.

But it was part of Russia for over 400 years.

But it is connected to Ukraine.

So Khrushchev, and Ukraine was under the Soviet thumb.

You know, Ukraine was basically part of the Soviet.

So they gave Crimea to him.

So when the Soviet Union broke up, they took Crimea along with them.

So that's where.

And then

when the Soviet Union broke up,

there was a deal

that

the bordering countries to Russia would not join NATO or the European Union.

And

the reason why they didn't want them joining the European Union was like, ever since the European Union was formed in 1959, there has been plans for a European Union army.

And

you have to think of this, okay?

Like, why do they want not, why are they so against Ukraine joining NATO?

Well, what would we do if the

if the Russians put a military base right on our border with Mexico?

Kind of freak us out, right?

Yeah.

And you also have to think of the Russian mindset where one out of eight people died during World War II.

Jeez.

One out of eight.

There was 200 million, yeah, there was two million orphans at the end of World War II

in the Soviet Union.

And if you're going to invade Russia, you go through Ukraine.

Okay, Moscow is 400 miles from the border.

And that's where it's always been invaded through.

That's where Napoleon went.

That's where the Germans went and everything like that.

So you can understand why they didn't want that.

But we kept on breaking the rules,

added more countries, added more companies, Russia getting mad.

And Putin

put his foot down, like, if it happens.

in Ukraine, I'm going to invade.

So

a democratically elected leader of Ukraine says like, you know what?

I see the writing on the wall.

This was like 2013.

I'm not,

you know what?

We're going to have an economic alliance with Russia because that's who we do so much business with, you know, with oil and pipelines and everything like that.

And militarily, we're just going to be neutral.

We're going to be the next Switzerland.

And everybody was cool with that, except the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State,

spent $50 million with the

National Endowment for Democracy, I think it's called.

I might have that a little bit wrong.

It's solely funded by the CIA.

They created a coup in Ukraine.

Wow.

Got a new leader in there that was all, oh, yeah.

New leader says we're going to join

NATO.

We're going to join the European Union.

The Russians invade.

They take Crimea.

They make a little peace deal.

Trump comes in office, says, you know, it's not going to happen.

They're not going to join NATO.

Everything was fine.

The second Biden went into office

was,

you guys got to join NATO and you got to join the European Union.

Basically, the leaders that are American puppets said, yeah, that's what we're going to do.

And Putin invaded.

Wow.

Okay.

I'm not saying that Putin's a good guy or should have invaded or anything like that, but the writing was on the wall.

This would happen.

But everyone let it happen.

And we know who wanted it to happen.

That was the military-industrial complex because it's a great business model for them.

Because you sell them a bomb, they only get to use it once, and then you go buy another one.

Makes you wonder how many of these wars have been orchestrated like that.

Oh, no, it's always been like that.

I mean, it's like you know, it's the old adage: follow the money.

A lot of money in wars.

Oh, there's a ton of money.

And also, the other thing is

if Ukraine joined NATO,

I mean, because their entire military, all their equipment is

old Soviet Union stuff.

If you join NATO, you got to be NATO compliant.

You got to get rid of those AK-47s.

You got to buy M4s.

Wow.

Okay, and then you have to change all your ammo.

You need 10 billion rounds of ammo for those guns.

You need NATO-style tanks.

You need NATO-style artillery.

They have to buy all that stuff.

And that's one of the reasons why they wanted him to join NATO.

So NATO's just a business.

Yeah.

They're just trying to make money yeah

um

you know because

if everybody's doing trade and everybody's happy there is no war but like you know people make money off wars it's it's a screwed up country it's been that way forever that's that's pretty concerning because there's so many people that want to join the military to honor their country but they don't know what's actually going on behind the scenes so um hopefully you know

You know, hopefully they can just straighten this out.

And also, just the way the borderlines were in Ukraine, the

eastern Ukraine, it is mostly Russian.

So, like, no, I hope they can come.

And that's what bothered me so long during the Biden administration is like, Ukraine's got to win.

I'm like, no, the fucking war's got to end.

Let's just have people stop dying.

Why don't that be our goal instead of like taking sides?

Let's just stop the goddamn war.

Yeah.

But no one would say that.

And it was every politician, oh, Ukraine's got to win this.

Like, no,

Russians got nukes.

I mean, it's not going to end badly.

And well, let's just like just like end the war.

Anyway, that's my little politics thing.

I can see why people try to cancel you for that.

Yeah, no, but it's just the facts.

I mean, like, like, let's, you know, like,

I mean, the whole Ukraine thing, it has bothered me so much.

Like, let's just end the fucking war and have people stop.

Yeah, let's have stop, people stop fucking dying.

Let's come with a, let's figure out an agreement because one could be made.

You know, some people have to be humbled and say, like, okay, yeah, we're going to have to give up this.

I know ending all the wars was a big thing Trump ran on this term, but I wonder if he actually has that influence to do that.

Let's hope.

I mean, like, you know,

it's, it's the insanity of the world.

And you have

like, take Iran or something like that.

You know, they're probably going to put a hit out on me for this.

But you,

it's the way politicians work around the world.

I mean, like,

say you live in Iran.

Okay.

Your life sucks.

Okay.

It's, this is the analogy of I give of Iran.

Okay.

So

you're going to, you're 16 years old, you're poor, you're on the bus to your shitty job at McDonald's.

You look out the window, you see another 16-year-old.

He's in a brand new convertible Mustang.

You automatically hate him.

Okay.

You take like people Iran, which is an oil-rich country.

Okay.

And they see the Americans doing so well.

The government's not going to come along and say, well, you know, we're not doing well because the government runs everything like shit.

They're going to say, it's the Americans keeping us down.

They're ruining our lives.

Okay.

So, and they just pound it in their head, hate America because the government does a shitty job.

And,

you know, and the government does so much evil stuff.

You can never change the government because if they do change the government, everybody in the government is going to be executed.

So you pay a lot of attention to politics.

I read a lot.

Yeah.

I'm kind of a nerd.

Who's your favorite president to read about?

Ah, God, that's tough.

I mean, Abraham Lincoln was absolutely amazing.

George Washington was one of the most amazing men to ever live.

He really, really was.

I mean, this guy, he was the richest man in America.

Most people don't realize that.

I didn't know that, actually.

As a percent of GDP, he was richer than Trump.

So he's like the Trump of a

George Washington passed away, he was the richest man in the United States.

Wow.

The reason why, when he was young, he was a surveyor and he bought land and who knew how to divide it, subdivide it and sell it off.

He got real estate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was the first big real estate tycoon.

But so you got to think, the richest man

in the United States, okay, in the colonies, and he was willing to risk all of that

for

the revolution.

Because if it went the other way, he would have been executed all of his land.

Everything he owned would have been taken away from him.

Wow.

The stories you read about him, I mean, the real stories,

but like

if he was in his tent eating dinner and a corporal walked in the door, he would not eat in front of him because it was rude.

Just everything about him was pretty amazing.

I mean,

he did not cut down a cherry tree, but he was an incredibly honest man, a very moral man.

He saw,

you know, he saw the potential of a great country.

Wish they taught this in history class.

Yeah, there's so much stuff you'll never hear in history class about

like

the Boston Tea Party.

Everybody thought it was a terrible act.

Didn't become patriotic till like the 1820s.

That's because John Hancock was a straight-up gangster.

Was he?

Oh, 100%.

Oh, they didn't teach that.

Yeah, they definitely didn't mention that.

He made all of his money off smuggling tea

okay so all right i'm

you know uh i'm sure that's not the podcast you imagine but i love talking about my weird my weird stories so uh

john hancock was a smuggler that was his main business was smuggling um

the way it worked and um with the whole british colony system the british east india company would go to India, they would get tea.

And then the way the law was, they would actually literally, they couldn't go straight from India to the colonies.

They had to go take the ship to

Britain.

Okay.

They would look at the tea, tax the tea, and then they could bring it to the United States.

But the British East India Company was the only company that could sell tea to the United States.

And it was very expensive.

The Dutch were selling tea for like 50% less than the British.

And every American drank like a gallon of tea a day.

Wow.

Well, they had to

because they knew if they drank water, they'd get sick, but if they drank tea, they wouldn't.

No one sat around and says, Well, you got to boil the water to make tea.

So that was so.

So he made all of his money.

And he was actually brought to court once for smuggling, but

everyone knew, you know,

try to convict a gangster because something bad will happen to you.

So he never got convicted of it.

So

these three ships come into Boston Harbor full of tea

with a proclamation from

the British government.

You know what?

We've taken all the taxes off it.

Okay.

We've taken all the old taxes off.

Now there's just a small stamp tax.

It's coming straight from

India, so it's a lot less money.

And literally, this tea was like priced at less than what he bought his warehouses full of tea from the Dutch.

He gets Sam Adams, who was like kind of his muscle.

And

they dress up like Indians because Indians walked all around the streets and everything like that.

So it was just a convenient disguise.

And they threw all the tea overboard.

He did it.

He did it 100% out of greed.

He didn't want his tea being worth less.

And everyone was really, really upset about it.

Like even George Washington wrote about it saying it was a terrible crime.

You know, they Britain, but the British government, the way they retaliated against us because of it was really bad.

They said like all the business owners in Boston had to pay for the tea and all this other stuff.

John Hancock threw that tea overboard strictly out of greed.

And it wasn't until like

probably the 1820s that suddenly it was a patriotic thing.

Wow.

That is crazy.

The real Boston tea story.

Yeah, that's the real Boston Tea Party story.

Yeah, so like there's a million stories like that in politics.

Yeah, but it's all how they frame it in the history books, right?

Yeah, so that's why John Hancock's signature was so big on the Declaration of Independence, because he was the president of the Continental Congress.

And by the time this whole Continental Congress thing had got along,

British had issued a warrant for his arrest.

It's never been confirmed, but the rumor was that

when General Howell went to Lexington and Concord to seize the arms, he also had a warrant in his pocket.

for the arrest of John Hancock and Sam Adams.

Wow.

So John Hancock had to join this revolution thing because it would work out for him if they won.

If they didn't, it was going to be really bad for him.

He had no other choice.

Yeah, and that's why, but his signature was so big because he was the president of the Continental Congress.

We had presidents before George Washington.

Oh, we did.

Yeah, George Washington was the first president under our current constitution.

We had the Continental Congress that had, I think, like 12 different presidents.

Then we had the Articles of Confederation, and then we had the Constitution.

Wow.

Yeah.

They always taught us George was the first.

Oh, yeah.

We had other people.

I mean, that's the first of like the country formed underneath the

our Constitution, but we had guys before that.

If you could live in any time period, what would you choose?

Oh, that'd be so tough.

Probably the Roman Empire.

Really?

Yeah.

You didn't live long back then, though.

I know, but it was just...

God, it was such an amazing...

If I had my choice, it would really be today, but if I had to choose a different point, it would be the Roman Empire.

It was such an

I mean, the things they did, it was just absolutely amazing.

I mean, the things that they were able to build, the,

I don't know, I just think I've just been fascinated with Rome my whole life.

Yeah, we can't even recreate some of those buildings today, right?

Look at the Pantheon.

There wasn't a domed building until like

the late 1800s.

I mean, the Roman sewer systems weren't duplicated until the 20th century.

Wow.

Why do you think they they were so ahead of their time?

They had good government.

It was because

this is really, like, this is another thing you don't read here in school.

The Roman government was basically a religion.

Okay.

And

up until, let's say, like

100 BC,

They were always afraid of getting conquered.

So they always had to do well.

I mean, we have to build stuff right.

We have to do this right.

We have to fit out the army correctly.

You know, we can't have any grapher stealing stuff because there's all these other people always trying to kill us.

We had that

Carthage,

you know, the Gauls.

I mean, everybody like that.

So they had to be really, really good in order to survive.

And then

right around 100, right around 180, there was no one left that could beat them.

And they continued to grow and everything for like, you know,

like another 200 years.

But like after that, it just began to fall apart.

Too much bureaucracy and too much lead poisoning and

too much welfare.

And they tried to go out too far.

There was a lot of different things.

Yeah.

Wow.

Did they ever find out it was lead poisoning or they had no idea?

Oh, no, they had no idea.

They had no clue.

They did not understand the scientific method yet.

Let's give 100 sheep wine with no lead in it.

Let's give 100 sheep with lead in it.

You know, if they ever did that study, they would have found out, oh, yeah, a lot of things bad.

Damn, that's crazy.

Roman Empire.

Okay.

That's a good answer.

You would have lived like 30, maybe 40, but

there was a lot of people that lived a long time.

I think

Augustus lived into his 70s.

Yeah.

Oh, shit.

Okay.

Would have been a sweet life.

Wow.

You still doing a lot of reading?

These days.

You're still doing a lot of reading.

Yeah.

What are you reading about right now?

What topics?

I just read

the saga of the vacuum tube.

What's that about?

History of vacuum tubes.

Vacuum tubes.

That's so specific.

I read a lot of weird stuff like that.

What stood out from that book for you?

I don't know.

It's just very interesting, like, you know, basically the chronology of electronics and stuff like that.

Yeah.

It is a good invention, the vacuum.

Yeah.

I use it, you know, every couple of weeks.

Yeah, no, so, but it was the vacuum tube that,

you know, gave us like modern electronics that, you know, gave us radio, gave us, that eventually turned into these.

Vacuums turned into these?

Huh?

How did that happen?

Well, no, I mean, the first,

the first, like, like the first computer was made with vacuum tubes.

Because before we had transistors and resistors and things like that, we had vacuum tubes that did all that stuff.

Mind you, like a

the first computer that was made with vacuum tubes by like IBM in the early 50s.

It was like 8K would have been like the size of this desk.

Jeez.

Yeah, but it was all there.

Each little vacuum tube was like one bit of information.

But the vacuum tubes, and we did this for

tuning radios.

That's the first thing we got, like variable circuits and things like that.

So vacuum tubes eventually

led to the transistors, which eventually went to microchips.

Have you read into like nanotechnology yet?

Not really.

No.

What about AI?

I was planning on starting to read about that because I think Grok and all that's amazing.

I use AI every day.

It blows my mind.

I mean,

I think it's the future personally.

Hold on one second.

Yeah, dude.

I forgot I had lunch with someone today.

Running a

little late.

What you got to wrap this up.

Yeah, I got to wrap this up.

Yeah, we'll get it going.

Well, I guess you got a podcast now, too, right?

I've got a podcast, Pawn After Dark.

It's

doing really well, I think.

I'm having a lot of fun doing it.

And I only do things that are fun because if it made me miserable, I would want to do it.

I would be really bad on it.

But I do it with Chum.

And Chum's sort of the star of the show.

And I'm just sort of hanging out.

But like,

Chum is really, really good at it.

He is really good at interviewing people.

He's got good social skills.

Yeah, it's uh, he can talk and talk and talk, and he can make people laugh.

But uh, no, we're having a good time with it, and uh,

you know, uh, still filming different things and just all kinds of stuff.

It's fun, life is great.

Nice.

Stay tuned, guys.

We'll link the podcast below.

Anything else you want to close off with here?

Um,

no, I think that's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Come down to the pawn shop.

Yeah, come down.

Buy a chubby t-shirt.

Yeah, buy a shirt.

Buy some candy, pawn after dark, guys.

Thanks for coming on Eric.

Thanks.

See you guys.