Congratulations to Vesuvius Challenge, the deciphering this project to decipher the Herculaneum scrolls, the papyri that were flash frozen or rather fried when Vesuvius mountain volcano erupt year 79, and this is big stash. As you may know, much of ancient literature lost to mankind, most of Pindar, for example, lost to mankind, and many other ancient authors who have beautiful work lost, most of their work is lost. And who knows what else is hidden in these scrolls, this burnt library that is now being rediscovered. I think this is a major thing, and how it was done, the means by which this was done, I think also very wonderful, Nat Friedman, who is CEO, ex-CEO of GitHub, and also before Before that he developed technologies having to do with Linux and such things.

I think he made Gnome and such. Anyway, Silicon Valley guy, I don't know the detail, but he made contest with prize money for who could decipher these scrolls. And I think his best example in the recent memory of Renaissance type philanthropy. It's not dreary, wretched charity. It's not some, you know, when magnates today try to send mosquito net to Africa or build school for laptop masturbation or send school lunches, more school lunches, pizza school, you know, other dreary, bleak thing like that that ultimately only has to do with the needs of the stomach, the perpetuation of bad life. But this is much different. It's something that actually makes historical difference in the end and the way it's being

done with intersection of science, technology, Indiana Jones type spirit of discovery of lost ancient texts, the recovery of antiquity and the humanistic knowledge, which, you know my opinions on this, Greco-Roman antiquity, the most important period of man's biological history from which new worlds of spirit are from time to time tapped and rediscovered. Maybe it will be surpassed sometime in future. Maybe it was equaled in the Renaissance Italy, which is my continuing subject on this series. I continue now, this is Caribbean Rhythms, episode 154, this continuation of my series on Renaissance Italy. But let's see what else they find, this very promising. And yes, congratulations, Vesuvius Challenge, let's hope it inspires more such philanthropy

from the only place you could hope for it is maybe Silicon Valley, you know, just announce prize money for discovery of Washukane, ancient capital of Mitanni, or other such thing, or or Holy Grail, or lost cities in Amazon, or Shambhala, many such, why not? Someone who can resurrect arts of voodoo zombie mind control, I don't know. But yes, this Caribbean Rhythms episode 154, and as I say, I have continuing series on the Renaissance, but as always in first part of episode I discuss this week's news, this debates, the things that in this case have blown up on Twitter regarding food. Steve Saylor is indeed the shark Jaws putting fear into jellied pseudo spines of libtards. It looks like Twitter is blowing up again with debate over migration and race because

there is one such non-entity, I will not say his name, see that's the thing because nobody knew this guy. So his name will Stansell but nobody knows him. Why do you even have to know his name now because They use controversy like this to raise their social media profile And it's probably the most attention this maroon has ever gotten and he's been doing it Just repeating shit lip boilerplate about the race IQ migration and so on but he gets into debates with Steve Saylor. Who's great and Twitter blows up again and many are enjoying them And they selves are enjoying themselves taking turns using this washed out hick lib will stencil as a golden shower receptacle. I'm sorry if this is a bad thing to say on the beginning of the show if you have to use such imagery.

But this man is a hick lib. This phenomenon explains a lot, especially in his obsessions about food, authentic food, the great benefits that his otherwise provincial area is getting from immigrants introducing they foods, you know, this argument, you know, the food obsession that is broken out on Twitter again as it does every few months, massive arguments every few months about cuisine, which styles are best, whether America or Europe has the best. These type of tribal arguments, you know, that fundamentally aren't about what they appear to be. Food happens to be just a demotic. It's a popular thing, a people's thing, you know, everyone can feel qualified to comment on food. And then there's the stock argument of migration people including unfortunately some well-known

libertarians – I will not say their name out of politeness – but who again cannot stop talking about the supposed great benefits that new migrants in your city bring with regards to food variety, restaurants. But a lot of this argument about food in general has to do with resentment and envy of Europe Europe, and specifically of European high tradition, not only from nationalistic people of color who are motivated by feeling excluded and dissed because French food gets such praise, but some of it is also an old Anglo or Anglo-American disdain for the French, something actually that's shared with people from all of other Europe, who on one hand, for example, the The Russian nigger or the East Europe nigger, they always looked up to Paris as the place,

the capital of culture and excitement and a real high social life. And they tried to ape the French in manners and dress, especially to spend time in Paris if they could, to live there. Much of the Polish or Russian nobility ended up doing that, in fact, living in France, living in Paris. Let's say in modern times there are many people in these nations, East Europe, Russia, whatever, for one reason or another they find this attitude to be objectionable, they react against it. You can imagine many reasons why they would, why they find Francophilia maybe repulsive. Some reasons good, some bad. Some of them don't like Francophilia, love of the French, because they're just nationalistic to an extreme degree. Others may find the local appreciation of the French to be foppy or effete or in some

cases especially those decades when the local pretenders to French style when they do it badly because you can admire a foreign culture well or badly. Take someone I mention often, Schopenhauer, who had lived in England when he was a school boy and had lifelong appreciation of English culture, English literature. Schopenhauer modeled his writing style on Hume, who reads more like English philosophy. I'm talking about Schopenhauer, his style maybe is more like English philosophy than what you're used to from German philosophy. But even so as a lifelong trans-Anglo, because he did it well, because he knew what Englishness authentically was, he had contempt for what he calls somewhere, he calls the stiff German

Fritz, you know, the German hick lib, the stiff German Fritz who wears an English suit awkwardly and tries to import English parliamentaryism and other political institutions that are not his own and ends up making a mockery of it all. So there are good and bad ways of doing it, of appropriating other culture, right? And I can see, for example, how someone who grew up in East Bloc, as I did, and who found the local toffs, who loved France there, so intolerable that he'd react against French culture emotionally. Maybe he'd even come to find refinement in manner of that type to be fake and gay, just because the local sorry excuse for an elite that still affects those kinds of, oh, did you listen to the French Chansonné, or I grew up eating wine and cheese, I could just

do that all day, you know, please, you know, it's gross, you can see that. And it's a guy who grew up drinking vodka or raki and passing out under a table and he says to you those things. It's obvious bullshit and you can see why someone would have a reaction against that kind of attitude even though I think it's ultimately self-defeating and unjustified because you are actually cutting yourself off from a genuinely high culture of both sublime beauty and sensual enjoyment. But you could say that's not a bad reason at least or understandable, legitimate. But then there are very bad reasons and I'm saying that as an aside to say that in the Anglo world a similar attitude you can think exists about all of the French fops.

And this is in relation to the fact that every few weeks it seems, if not maybe every month or two, huge debates come out on Twitter, but I think elsewhere also in media where some people say that French food is the best, other people say European food much inferior to American food or what actually exists in America, which is variety of foods from all all over the world, including highly spiced slops or stews from India, Mexico, Thailand, which aside from local variations in spice, by the way, I think they're more or less homogenous. But this kind of debate always breaks out. I don't think that French food actually exists. I like the empanadas stuffed with beef gristle stew and so on. So this is what I'm trying to explain now that there could be actually legitimate reasons

for the, it's not just POC who grew up eating salami stew with Chef Boyardee reduction sauce. It's not just them who resent French food and so on. an old Anglo dislike for French foppishness, which exists also in some parts of East Europe or Russia, but I mean to say there are also some very bad reasons, let's say East Europe or Russia, to hate on the French, such as, for example, a local who has genuinely coarse tastes or who doesn't maybe have money to enjoy French or Frenchified food, who comes to hate it for that reason, you know, as a reminder of, you know, and this describes again most of the people with Bantoid taste buds, you know, the kind of people who just enjoy Chicken McNugget drizzled in sugar sauce all day.

But anyway, it's always America and Europe, you know, just those two. Whenever arguments about food, politicized arguments about food, when they come out, it's always considered just America versus Europe, who has the better. And it's never asked, I made this case some episode back, whether in fact Tokyo has the best food in the world, which it does. And I explained that a lot of that has to do with the economics of the place. If you want to get into where at any one time you find the best food or the best restaurants to eat. In Tokyo, the fact that people eat out a lot because they work all day in this huge urban maze and they don't go home to eat and their apartments, in any case, are very small. Even the rich have somewhat sparse apartments in Tokyo and they're not really equipped to

entertain parties and so on. But I mean, yes, very little attention is ever focused concretely on the economics of a place and the fact that the food as such is one thing, whereas the life of a city or a nation, its economic condition mainly, but not only that, but it's this that determines that cuisine finds its expression, whether it does or not. So you know, one decade, for example, Lisbon can have quite atrocious food. And I was very happy when I was there in the early 2000s to eat in a very basic Chinese restaurant downtown, Lisbon. It was hardly authentic Chinese, but better than what existed in most restaurants in Lisbon at that time, at least what I could afford. And then now and before just the pandemic, Lisbon's naturally good culinary traditions had a revival.

So you could see, oh wow, this is actually what Portuguese food is like. I didn't know it could be like this because in fact it wasn't. It was like that in a recipe book or in history maybe, but you couldn't find it really very easily at all before that in a Portuguese restaurant. But the same laws apply in general to whether a cuisine is, you know, little thought ever goes into such things in these debates, you know, whether there's competition in a city that leads to the restaurants there being better than in another city. Argentine beef, for example, it's a product that as such has the potential to be the best beef in the world, the tastiest for all kinds of reasons. The abundance of pasture land means you can get grass-fed beef that's still very tender

the cows don't have to walk so much and the high nitrogen content of the soil makes unusual tasty beefy I like but if you go now to Argentina because the economy is so bad unless you go to a very small number of restaurants that only I know or to certain butcheries you will get very bad steak actually so I've known many tourists to come away from Argentina despite the country's fame for meat. You know, we will put our meat in your mouth. But they come away feeling disappointed, you know, but that's not Argentine food. And then second, because the tastes in Argentina are for various historical reasons so infantile that, well, for example, you go there, you see the Argentines have kept the cold-cut traditions. I'm trying to get to something here, please have patience.

But you will see where I go with my meandering thoughts. But the Argentines have brought the cold cut traditions or maybe, as I suspect, they imported them after the fact from their ancestral Italy and Spain. And yet, although Spain, I think, has best cold cuts in the world and Italy a close second, but the cold cuts in Argentina are atrocious. It's all salt and there's no cured taste. I don't think they actually even know how to cure meat for the most part. and their methods in Argentina of raising pigs generally are industrial, industrial cruelty and so on, and do not lead to good pork's taste, again, unless you know one or two places where to look. But because of this, even you have a case where Italian Spanish people, heirs to the

two greatest culinary traditions in the world maybe, along with the French, but they only have a very denatured version of these two foods and where furthermore a restaurant that is good can even close because it's good. I've never seen that in any other city, I'm sure it happens, but because it has strong flavors, you know, because they have strong flavors the locals don't go to eat it, so it closes. It's when people will just spit something, for example, like Southeast Asian food, if it has real Southeast Asian flavors, they will spit it out. They're used to extreme bland things. So my point is, if you consider the economics of a place in relation to supply and demand for certain foods, and think for a moment about the class dynamics in the United States

of say, a hick lib, right, this is a liberal from a hick location who wants to rid himself of what he sees as his parochial prison, but he doesn't have the money or the drive to to just leave the place and then move to cosmopolitan city such as he desires or imagines. So instead he engages in this annoying spitting on his neighbors and their supposed backwardness and maybe even tries. I mean imagine if one of those East European hick lib analogs who could not for example could not move to Paris or something like this could not, but imagine if he had the option of importing Paris or Parisians have access to them in that way, to lord over his neighbors in that way. And my friend the poster, Tantum, had a good description of what's going on with all

of these food debates, which are centered almost exclusively in the United States. So it's a side product dynamic of American class conflict, American class insecurity rather. So Tokyo has good restaurants with chefs who can read a recipe, right? Let's just start from that. Because from that point of view, you can think why do you need migrants to have varied and high-class food scene in your city. You can send, as the Japanese do, young chefs to learn a foreign cuisine, Japanese chefs do that with French and Italian especially. But of course that's all true, and then my friend Tantum has this explanation for why you keep seeing these constant food debates on Twitter. He says, the authentic cuisine thing is incomprehensible outside of American class dynamics. Let me explain. Typically,

when foreign cuisine moves to a new country, it takes on local touches. It appeals to the local tastes and uses fresher local ingredients. Then upper class people flex about how the food they had in Paris, Rome or Beijing was so much better. This is what authenticity means. The point is to flex on how your neighbours are provincial. Upper middle class people would like to flex on lower middle class people in the same way, but they are too poor to travel abroad very much. The only way they can have the same experience is if someone will open a restaurant in their neighbourhood that makes food their neighbours find distasteful. The economics of opening such restaurants are obviously cursed. So there it is, there

is your answer. To ensure a steady supply of food that is too bland or too spicy or too fishy or too dirty for the standard American palate, to ensure that that's available to people who can't fly to find it abroad, you need to import entire immigrant shantytowns. The end. So yes, you see, I think he's right. And I will add, though, an own variation on this insight, because in fact the best argument regarding need for immigrant to have, let's say, unusual foods, right, because it's interesting that about 10 years ago liberals invented cultural appropriation meme and the race essentialist cooking meme because in the era of the internet you need to invent reasons why the horizontal transfer of ideas and techniques and perspectives cannot just happen remotely and requires the

physical translocation of large numbers of people. How did anime become popular? Was it through massive Japanese immigration? These are the words of my friend Blokey, he is right too. So let's concede all this, okay, that's all true. That aside, there is something though to this idea. I've noticed in many travels and I do have a hankering personally for unusual foods. I believe if you don't know what it is, you eat it and I've noticed that without a sizable expat community in whatever city, there's often no taste or market for unusual cuisine in question. So, for example, without a large enough Chinese population, it's very hard or impossible to find a real spicy Szechuan or other such specialties. I happen to actually

like unusual foods, by the way. I don't pursue them status reasons. I feel crave sometimes for fried pork intestine or given Szechuan treatment, intestine is super spicy chili oil or served with pickled vegetables, Chinese hot pot spice fire, I like this. Many times I'm in a foreign city, I cannot find it because there are not Chinese people around who would buy it. You can go, for example, Lisbon, and even though they had Portuguese colony in Macau, You can't find even Macanese, if that's what it's called, food in Lisbon, and no real Chinese food. All the Chinese food in Lisbon is made for European taste, and it's not very good, actually, but I used to eat it, as I've told you. But I think there is something to this, it's true, assuming that you actually enjoy the

food taste. This is an argument that sometimes even ingredients for certain cuisines like galangal or whatever won't be available for, that's used in Southeast Asian cuisine if you want to make that according to original taste or if you want sheep's head. For the same reason, though, it goes the other way. Attempts at American food abroad are often atrocious. For example, if you try American barbecue in a place like Madrid, otherwise Otherwise Madrid has great food scene. Maybe there are people now who say Spain has the best food in Europe. It's overtaken Paris. But if you try American barbecue in Madrid, it will be a disaster. Most burgers are disaster. Foreigners don't know how to make burgers and if there is not a sizable American expat community, you won't get good burger.

You might get one at Five Guys or something like that. But such problems, if you want to think this is problem, but the truth is it's not really a problem, right? There are very few people, I think, who are genuinely, oh, I need this now. Like I am genuinely food-obsessed. I drive half the night in the United States looking for a kilo of pie at three in the morning. Sorry, I hate saying that. I shouldn't. Three a.m. I don't like it when people say in the morning. I don't know why I said that. It's very depressing to me to be up all night, which I frequently am, and then the dawn is coming, and it makes me very depressed. I react violently when people say, three in the morning, four in the morning, no, it is the middle of the night, thank you. But I do drive at three, two at night.

I drive for key lime pie. I've done that in the United States, but not many people have such specific pregnant woman tastes like I do. But such things are usually resolved if you want to consider these genuine problems. But they're usually resolved only if you have cosmopolitan commercial mega city like New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo. In these kinds of cities, there's combination both expats and money and it leads to very varied high quality food scene. A word on the Tokyo thing, by the way, yes, it's true that you can find foreign foods in Tokyo, in many cases as good as in their native countries, without them having to bring an immigrant chef, you know. They are very good, for example, at French and Italian food.

They do not need immigrants for that. That said, there are immigrant communities in Tokyo and they do have their own food, so you can find Burmese or Sri Lankan or such restaurants in areas where these live. I never tried them when I was there. I ate once in an Uzbek place. There are Uzbeks, for whatever reason, in Tokyo, and I like Central Asian foods with skewer's meat and many such things as plov, rice lamb, and many such. But by the way, the Uzbek one in Tokyo isn't good even though it's run by an Uzbek woman. I'm sorry. The argument is also rather strange, by the way, in regards to the United States because of the cooks and the people who actually work in the restaurant are Oaxacans or Hondurans, you know, they're Central Americans.

So it's not even that you need them to make the food, that you need the original migrants to make the food usually. It's more these other things that they need to be there to provide a market for it. But anyway, regarding Tokyo, this food variety is a bit overstated because aside from French or Italian or such high cuisine, if you try, for example, Hungarian place in Tokyo and you'd find any nationality I'd imagine in Tokyo because there's always some eccentric Japanese, you know, he will become obsessed with Hungarian culture or obsessed with Romanian culture and he will go live in those countries and come back and make a restaurant. But these are usually unfortunately not very good in part, again, because there is no local

market for comparison or competition, the Tokyo food scene thrives on competition. That's why the food there is so good. If you try serve bland food Tokyo, you'll go out of business. But also maybe in part local, you know, the Japanese eccentric who makes Hungarian or Slovak restaurant or whatever, he does not get it quite right because of personal palate reasons or whatever. But the point is that even in Tokyo, it's not like Tokyo or especially Hong Kong are homogenous cities. Today friend tell me that Hong Kong is only maybe 5% foreigner, which I found surprising because you see round eyes everywhere in Hong Kong and you hear English spoken everywhere. But I guess outside central Hong Kong that place is central, Wan Chai and Kowloon Central

maybe and it's outside of that area it's all like in movie The Moustache where he goes to small part, village in other part of Ireland and it's highly Chinese. But anyway that's the standard in my opinion for a commercial cosmopolitan mega city. It has its own set character, it has a national majority, but it has a sizeable expat minority, it makes things somewhat interesting. The problem is that such cities are rare, and this leaves, as my friend Tantum says, it leaves hick libs feeling, you know, they're left out of it. They can't, you know, so you see what they mean? I mean, if they go to American or East European small town, if you go to small town Slovakia, I don't puff myself up there going there and asking where is the authentic tacos and empanadas

And why is there no authentic, I don't know, African coconut milk stew here in rural Slovakia or whatever? That would be insane, right? But if you are a hick lib and you resent being stuck in a place like that, and you see like Tantum Sena way, so they try to be like those elegant places so-called by importing the same type of varied expat scene, but it's like trying to make it rain by making the street wet. A large international contingent comes to Hong Kong or wherever such cities to work and make money. And then the food scene is a side effect of that. By contrast, diversity such people exist in Wills Stancil or some other hick libs neighborhood only because local hick lib wanted to be fancy and so on. Similar, if you go to Helsinki, let me give you an analogy.

There's a nice five-star hotel in downtown Helsinki called Hotel Camp. It will serve proudly on its bar. It serves caviar and champagne. That's its signature. It's like a French nigga thing that you'd find the same thing in Moscow, of course. The Finns will say that's very different from the Russians. But it's a barbarian place where they will serve this proudly. It's like, you know, French new pretensions were invoked sometimes back in Helsinki. And so the downtown of what would otherwise be a quaint provincial capital, because Helsinki looks not much bigger than, for example, Vigo, Vigo is a third tier Spanish port, it used to be the main entry point of cocaine into Europe in the 1980s, I think, but it's just, it's not even a second tier Spanish city, it's a third tier one.

And it's almost exactly the same size, at least the downtown area, same size as Helsinki and looks much the same. It's laid out in a very similar way, I found it odd. But a city of that size like Helsinki, which should be a small quaint city, but it's packed with third world beige loiterers and they serve no economic purpose there. But what I need to tell you is they serve the same purpose that the champagne and caviar did in that hotel formerly. In other words, to make the people running the place feel like they're also a real fancy city like Paris or Hong Kong, you know, Paris again has always played this role for East Euros and Russians and provincials like me from East Europe in general and so on.

This impulse in mankind is not harmless, but what I mean to tell you is that it's not enough to talk about Kalergi's secret plan supposedly achieved by coercion or imposed upon a virtuous or otherwise nationalistic mass that rejects migration. It's unfortunately the case that many people feel like this Will Stancil for a combination of reasons having to do not only with humanitarian morality of empathy, but also it's their aspirations, their need for distinctions, their envy, their parvenus, snob status. So I don't know how to solve this. It's not enough to encourage people like Will Stancil to actually try to make it in their nations capital, or in the regional capital, which I guess there would be Chicago, or in the case of East euros to go to Paris or London.

Many won't do it and the ones that stay will do things like the city council of Minneapolis does or many other such city councils who feel the need to make a pronouncement on global warming or Trump or the Pali-Israeli conflict or many such. I think the only way to get around this, encouraged by the internet it's been, but the way to get around this maybe is relentless mockery, is how you blow these people out of the water, you know. And since this is segment on, this is a show segment on tractor food debates, Steve Saylor had great kill shot on this hick lib maroon that we're talking about. He say, Will Stancil, but it's not about Stancil, right? He's a type. And so, look, it's so full of types like him and just all repeating boilerplate dogma from libtard orthodoxy from 10 years ago.

But Steve Saylor say something like, Will Stancil magnanimously wants Italy to be overrun by immigrants so that Bologna and Brindisi, Milan and Messina can each enjoy the cuisine diversity that the global cosmopolite like him enjoys whenever he visits the Bloomington, Minnesota Mall of America food court, which is frequently. So yes, isn't that good? And it gets to where jelly brain people, jellyfish brain people like this can, unless someone was spoofing it, this man, Will Stancil, was saying he would enjoy his empanadas in response to a migration restriction statement from some big conservative who was making a migration restriction case pointing out that illegal immigrants had raped people in his neighborhood.

And so this libtard says, well, the empanadas are worth it, they're worth the rape, right? So much of this is maybe just to push buttons, you know, empanadas, America has its own version of empanadas, by the way, England has very good empanadas, they're called pasties, steak and kidney pie and such thing. The empanada is a descendant of Galician empanada from northwest Spain, which is more of a meat pie. Usually it's made with tuna and pepper and tomato and onion and such. I think it's better than the Latin American empanada, but I mean it's so bleak because you take something as basic as dough filled with meat or other fillings, which nearly every culture on earth has this, and then because it's called an empanada, it makes

you feel, the vulgar demotism of the open borders argument, which is based on this idiotic food discourse, when why don't you ever hear from them, I support migrants not because of the food, but because I want access to diversity of conversation with these migrants. I learned much talking to them. I learned their languages. I learned their ideas. They are teaching me a lot about their religions. I have started to dress. I am curious about the campesino fashions. at the dress and the fashions of these Oaxacans, I like, I really like the cut of the pants of that four foot seven day labourer outside the 7-11 with the thin moustache and the facial scarification ritual memories. I need those pants. I want him around because I want to

talk to him about the Mayan calendar and Senegalese day labourers. I am wearing many jewels and African yellow and green colours like a Senegalese. I've learned to dress like them. No, it's all and only about the food. Why is that so great? Why not even the alcohol? Why not jinkum? Why not the drinking traditions of, do you not enjoy drinking with these people? You know where I'm going with this? Why not the sex ores? I want to import these migrants because I want to fuck them. I want to have sex ores with all of them from different countries. Of course, it's never so many countries because in the suburb where Stancil-type hick libs there is usually just one or two wretched minorities, they cannot sustain a large population

of any kind at all, diverse or not. But why not sex, Mr. Hicklin, why don't you make that argument? Well, anyway, these are unsavory topics for unsavory times and peoples. So yes, this is Caribbean Rhythms and I continue my series on the Renaissance on next segment. On the time of flowering of actual culture, I mean the cultivation of human nature to what it could actually be so that it grows great and exotic and brilliant rather than stunted and utilitarian beast of burden. This what means Renaissance humanism. It's a rather tame sounding phrase, humanism, but it's for the great ancient Greek and Roman project of making man into a glorious, not a pathetic being, although now it's being done more deliberately and maybe with even greater boldness than in ancient times.

by now I mean in the Renaissance, and requiring a type of man very different from what I've just discussed on this segment, not a petty, fart-huffing status seeker with his little wants and subterranean disingenuous selfishness, but how far away is the generous nature of genius like who I described on last episode, Leon Battista Alberti or Da Vinci, and who who are actually open and unabashed monsters of will, seeking everlasting fame unapologetically and also ravenous enjoyers of life, of discovery and exploration, glorifiers of the world and of man through their demoniac art. And if you want an image of this, you see, as I say in the book, the image of Benvenuto Cellini, the Renaissance, although toward the end of high Renaissance, the creative

genius at work as he's making the Perseus, Benvenuto Cellini making the Perseus bronze statue, and the materials are running out for him, so he desperately seeks various things that then he throws to fill the burning mold of this timeless statue. And such wonderful image of the mind subordinating matter to the formation and bringing out of idea into this world, mixed with the mad willfulness of artists, the voracious desires. I say this because, okay, excuse another tangent, but it has to do with what I've been talking about so far on this segment, the dreary example of the modern half-pissed dry man of our time. Because actually very similar man to the libtard I discussed, Willis Dancil, is Steven Pinker,

who for all of Steven Pinker's supposed embrace of realism on matters of biological sex and such. I don't know if he's evolutionary, I think he's neurobiologist, or a commenter on that at least, Steven Pinker. It's always welcome, realism on matters of biological sex and so forth, but I remember actually using Mr. Pinker's lectures to eat ice cream, and he would say stupid things like that chimpanzees have white skin, and that race doesn't exist because it's a matter of skin color, so it's good that he's changed his mind, but he was a grown man saying stupid things like that and then other stupid things such as it was a revelation to him at maybe 40 years of age that music could have a significance of any kind, you know this type of person

okay and he wrote out a stupidity on a recent interview, here actually I'll read this out so you can see just how absurd this is. I'm going to read this out. Jerome Lanier, I guess that's his interviewer, is speaking. I'd like to hypothesize one civilizing force, which is the perception of multiple overlapping hierarchies of status. I've observed this to be helpful in work dealing with rehabilitating gang members in Oakland. When there are multiple overlapping hierarchies of status, there is more of a chance of people not fighting their superior within the status chain. And the more severe the imposition of the single hierarchy in people's lives, the more likely they are to engage in conflict with one another.

Part of America's success is the confusion factor of understanding how to assess somebody's status. Steven Pinker responds, That's a profound observation. There are studies showing that violence is more common when people are confined to one pecking order, and all of their social worth depends on whether they are in that hierarchy, whereas if they belong to multiple overlapping groups, they can seek affirmations of worth elsewhere. For example, if I do something stupid when I'm driving and somebody gives me the finger and calls me an asshole, it's not the end of the world. Now listen to this, okay? I think to myself, I'm a tenured professor at Harvard. On the other hand, if status among men in the street was my only source of worth in life, I might have road rage and pull out a gun.

Modernity comprises a lot of things, and it's hard to tease them apart. But I suspect that when you're not confined to a village or a clan, and you can seek your fortunes in a wide world, that is a pacifying force for exactly that reason." Okay, so you see what he say, and how pathetic is that? So on one hand, he's just channeling some of the sociological insights of Anglo mid-century sociology regarding modernization, differentiation process and such things. Neither of these men who I just read now are the ones who came up with these ideas. They should really attribute them to Anglo sociologists. But on the other hand, if you look aside from just the substance of what he's saying, he's really telling on himself. You're proud because you're a Harvard professor and therefore,

you know, you are exempt from a challenge having to do it because you're a professor. And what have you achieved that allows you to be above the callings of natural manliness, right? Because he's saying, yeah, he's saying I couldn't really bust the cap in that mo fog's ass if I wanted, but I restrained myself because I, you know, I have this supposed status, you know, they like this word status, and it's just, you know, he's making excuses for being a pussy, you know, and Benvenuto Cellini, who I just talked about, who is a celebrity in his own life, a real celebrity, nobody actually knows who Steven Pinker is aside from, you know, Benvenuto Cellini was a celebrity in his own life, he glorified himself with maybe the first great autobiography called My Life, a Renaissance artist genius

of everlasting fame made beautiful, objectively awe-inspiring statues. Do you think anyone will read Steven Pinker in 10 or 20 years, even that? And Cellini, a timeless man, prided himself, however, on personally killing his brother's murderer with his own hands. And that's a great thing. That's something that both an Afghan fighter and an ancient Greek man would get. You see, Mr. Pinker, even a great ancient Greek thinker and artist would get that. He killed his brother's murderer with his own hands. You see, so what's this, this is absurd. This is what I'm talking about. It's a different breed of man that gives rise to the Renaissance or 17th century France, as opposed to this nibbling small dwarf man who's now proud because he's a glorified shopkeeper or clerk professor.

You know, and the flip side of that, The complement of the ravenous genius of will is what I will discuss on this next segment of this episode. The negative of this type, but really the complement of this individual, but the inevitable companion of the genius, and I would say even his prerequisite, is the criminal, the great criminal, the egotistic tyrant of political genius and untrammeled mad appetites. And the Renaissance is full of such. And I will be right back to discuss more on many such things. I love animals, I like to post them. Do you know who else loved animals? Voltaire, Schopenhauer and Hitler and the Nazis. Yes, but do you know who else? The Renaissance Italians of the period in question here, their most vital and creative period that left legacy for all history of mankind.

They were obsessed with animals. Let me tell you a couple of short animal stories from Renaissance. The various princes of Italian states kept menageries of wild animals from various parts of the world, some imported from Africa. For example, a Portuguese king sent Pope Leo, the Medici pope, he sent the rhinoceron, an elephant. But there are many other examples, not just from papal court. They all kept menageries of animal, especially were fond of lions. Borso of Este, this is a Borso ruler of Ferrara. He liked to make his lions fight boars and bulls wild bears in public spectacle and many other such spectacles in other states between giraffes in 1459 for example as there was special event in Florence in their main big plaza Piazza

della Signoria they had reception ceremony for the Pope and the Sforza ruler of Milan. The Sforzas are like others discussed on this episode mercenary military leaders who took over their states, but when these came to Florence, the Sforza, ruler of Milan and the Pope, a big show was put on with a giraffe, bulls, many other wild animals intended to fight lions, but the lions would not fight. They were being lazy, they went to sleep and the Florentines, but they kept many other such things. They kept and bred leopards especially, and I think the lion was one of Florence's mascots, But other states which didn't have the lion as on their heraldry, they also highly sought lion but the Florentines on top of that also as leopard.

Basically all the big states of Italy, the important courts, were eager to have a lion's den which was sometimes used for political executions. And also maybe the people of the state enjoyed, there was this prospect of releasing the wild lions in the city and it kept the people in fear and a wild awe, I think it was remarked upon this as a prospect, and they bred the cubs, they bred lions, if the lions actually bred in captivity and gave cubs, this was seen as an omen of great fortune for the city and then the cubs were given as presents to other rulers or to mercenaries and soldiers of great note and distinction as a present or as payment. Lion cub, would you accept the lion cub as a payment? In Rome, on the capital, there was Lion's Den.

In other states like Florence and Perugia, the Lion's Den was very near the central government buildings. I do not respect governments that don't do such things. I want the rule of the jaguar and for the, you know. But yes, Borsa of Este, this is ruler of Ferrara, excuse me, in the 1400s, especially noted for shows in which lions fought boars, they fought wild dogs and many such. And in other cases they kept, it wasn't only exotic, tropical and immule, they kept wild big birds, birds of prey from North Europe. Apparently the Visconti in Milan spent thousands of gold pieces a month to maintain the bestiary of birds. These were the mercenary rulers of Milan, the Visconti in the 1300s and early 1400s. And they kept, you know, just a huge expense per month, thousands of gold pieces a month

to maintain, I guess it's not bestiary of birds, aviary, what is it called, of birds of prey that they trained. And in Mantua, it was a great horse breeding center. Francesco Gonzaga, the tyrant of Mantua, became the most celebrated horse breeder in all of Europe. And I wonder if the breeding of modern racehorses began in Mantua in earnest. Because in Italy, this practice was encouraged by prizes. the breeder got the winnings of the race, same as in ancient Greeks, same as in England later which also had this interest, natural history, natural knowledge. Steve Saylor remarks that it was out of these insights and orientation that English gentry of much concern with horse breeding and such and observation of breeding of livestock and also of wild animal that Darwin emerged.

as Steve Saylor believes. And I'd argue that other important things emerged out of this same orientation in antiquity as well. But yes, at the court of Mantua, the breedings of, let's say he kept Francesco Gonzaga, kept the tyrant of Mantua, kept a wide array of studs from all over the world. There was, you know, noted horses, whether it was from Anatolia, and to import them from Anatolia, from southern Anatolia, Cilicia, ancient region. He kept a friendship with the sultans. Also, the sultans sent lions and many other things to other rulers. They had a gift friendship, exchange of gift friendship. But from there and from Ireland, Spain, Africa, many other such place, he imported horse specimen for studs and every possible experiment combination was made

trying to breed superior specimens of horse for all types of purposes, display, war horse, race horse, and so on. And then there were human menageries, also similar kept, you see. Some rulers kept specimens collected from humans around the world in this same spirit at the court of the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, I think this is in the 1500s, 1530s. He kept North African skirmishers. He kept Negro Black Moor wrestlers, Indian divers, Turks and many such and paraded around with them and treated them well and then when this Cardinal, he kept this weird court and he died prematurely and then they, his human zoo, carried his body from nearby to Rome and there was great commotion. All the people wondered that, you know, he had tried to collect the most impressive specimens

from all races and all the people wondered at this, at the barbaric tumult during the funeral. They all wept for him and they exclaimed each of them in their own languages. So do you like this, a human zoo? But it was this orientation that led to much interest in zoology and botany, which I'm not discussing, but they did the same thing with plants. And this flowering of natural knowledge of interest in the natural world, but it had a flip side of course, you could say a dark side too. You may have guessed from the mention of public executions by means of lion. I mean there was a dark side to the animal obsession. They did executions of criminals and political executions by lion. Or from the public beastly

gladiatorial combats, you may gain that there's a kind of edge to this. There's a kind of dark side where they make animal fights. It's a resurrection of ancient Roman practice. Let's have a boar, a wild boar fight a lion. For example, there are other even, let's say more unsavory things that not family show. The Borgia Pope Alexander, besides his human orgies and appetites, let's say, he had a quite unnatural or maybe very natural curiosities about any mule, he liked to watch horses fuck. Is this okay? I will read for you. On Monday, the 11th of November, a peasant leading two mares laden with wood entered the city. When they arrived in the place of Saint Peter, the Pope's men ran towards them, cut the

saddle bands and the ropes, threw down the wood and led the mares, that's mares, that's female horse, not mares, the female horses to a small place inside the palace. Therefore stallions, freed from rains and brittles, were sent from the palace. They ran after the mares and with great struggle and noise, fighting with tooth and hoof, jumped upon the mares and mated with them, tearing and hurting them severely. The Pope stood together with Lucretia, his daughter, under a window. Both of them looked at what was going on there with loud laughter and much pleasure. Does this titillate you? Do you like this? You know, it's funny, I posted this passage from an ancient chronicle on Twitter some time ago

saying that in the same spirit as Pope Borgia, Pope Alexander, I hired a female courtesan and a male rent boy and I watched them copulate and I was thinking this might cause a chimp out against me. You know, it happens sometimes. I wanted it to happen in this case but it's very odd, you know, on this very thing. How odd for me to admit this naughty thing and yet on this very thing it was all but ignored. Zoomers indeed. They're zoomers, right, with such discipline, you see, because of course the reason it was not touched is because of the mention of a Holy Father and his goings on in this same regard of horse-fucking, but zoomers indeed. So disciplined, you know. They're all 30-something or late 20s political animal brown-noses. Political animal, I don't

mean that as a compliment, but that K Street wannabe brown-noses in D.C. or wanting to be in D.C., and lately they've taken to making memes glorifying Karl Rove, you know, there's your Zoomer groupers, right? The only Zoomers among them are a few homosexual Filipinos, the rest are bizarre, like if you hear them talking, they sound like 30-something consultant wannabes, and it came out during a trial in England, that compact magazine, you may have seen this so-called dissident, it pretends to be a dissident right post-liberal magazine compact run by Sohrab Amari and others, but it turns out that workers there had groiper accounts. Right, so this is a fake post-liberal, they call themselves, it's a Christ-cucked

Marxist magazine, apparently it's funded by Soros, and the people working there had groiper accounts, okay, you know, zoomers, you know, we're not norwards, you know, we're zoomers, we're young, do not reduce the name of the Holy Father, Vermeuleau's orders. By the way, why does the Soros Foundation, the Open Society so-called, fund so-called dissident magazines and dissident figures, by the way, is there any curiosity about that? Not a bleep, not any interest from conspiracy tards, either on the right or left about this, Why Soros is involved? The post-liberal or the dissident, you know? But anyway, yes, to those of you who don't keep up with online disputes, you must not know or care what I'm talking about. Back to the Renaissance.

Do you like to watch horses fucking like Pope Alexander and his daughters did? There are even worse sides of this impulse, you know? There is the insane ruler of Milan, Giovanni Maria Visconti, right? This is around the year 1400 or so. He kept a large troop of dogs. Originally, they had been kept by the founder of the Visconti dynasty some 50 years before. They had been kept for boar hunting. And Bernabeu, who Burghardt likens Bernabeu Visconti to the worst of the Roman emperors. This is the founder of the Visconti despotism in Milan, okay, around the year 1350. Originally, he had been a soldier mercenary and he kept 5,000 boar hounds after taking over Milan than anyone who interfered with this boar hunting, with which he was obsessed

with hunting boars. Anyone who interfered with this in any way was put to death by torture. Enormous taxes and exactions were put on the population of Milan to pay for 5,000 hounds and care for them. It's like a dog tyranny. The same way that the others were lion tyrannies, it's a dog tyranny. Do you like the tyranny of canine supremacy? And he also did things like make the people revere his mistress or such, but okay, but his eventual successor to the Visconti tyranny, Giovanni Maria Visconti, this is around the year 1400 now, he used to enjoy watching Annie Mool, but to enjoy watching his dogs tearing up people, not wild boars. Do you like this? He watched dogs eat people, he was an insane tyrant, he told his mercenaries one time to

just massacre the people in 14 – I don't remember – 1409 or 1410, they had gone out in public, they were starving, the people of Milan, they asked for peace, and Pache, Pache, they asked in public square, and he just had them massacred, obviously not all but hundreds of people were killed. And after that he forbade the utterance of the words peace and war, even during church services when they're part of mass and it got so bad, his insanity about the dogs and banning words, that he was assassinated very soon after this in a church as so many of the despots of that time were assassinated in churches. Maybe even most assassinations or assassination attempts of tyrants of the time were in churches because that was one of the few times when a prince like this was not well defended.

And of the Visconti successors in Milan, which were the Sforzas, other very impressive mercenary leaders who came to power purely by their own talents, but they were essentially illegitimate tyrants. And I think all of them were murdered in churches. And the very famous one, Ludovico Il Moro, was not murdered in the church, but attempted. He only escaped assassination in the church because he came in through a wrong door. And it wasn't done out of blasphemous intent again, it was only opportunity, very often also the conspirators asked for the local saint of that church for blessing in that enterprise. It wasn't being done out of apostasy or blasphemy, you know. But yes, do you like these mens? Burkhart remarks that next to such men, when you get a guy like Coladi Rienzi, who I did

an episode on him before, I praised him and Wagner has opera, Rienzi. But Rienzi, who sought to, he wanted to refound the Roman Republic in the 1300s. But Borcat remarks that next to such actual rulers of that time, like the Visconti, Rienzi just comes off as this poor, deluded fool, you know, like naive, he probably was putting his trust in the corrupt people of Rome and so on. Savonarola was probably the same type of delusional, you know, despite the very different religious dispositions of these two men, they were probably delusional idealists. But anyway, do you like this? Using dogs, jerking off watching wild dogs tear apart people. I mean, the Game of Thrones got it from this. But there was also Roman Emperor Valentinian, I think, who liked to watch the same with bears.

And the name of his bears became dreaded, much like the name of the mad Viscontes, people devouring dogs. They had actual names that the people learned to fear as monsters. But it was such, look, this is what I'm saying here. This is the flip side of the strong individualism of that time and that I was talking last episode the flip side of having wild universal man, universal man geniuses, unconstrained man geniuses, artistic, scientific geniuses like Leon Battista Alberti, but their twin and accompaniment is I believe this kind of ruler and there are political and probably biological reasons why both occur at the same times in history which is quite rare. It's not like sufficient, right, I mean you can have an insane and lustful despot who are just that in a more or less cultural vacuum.

So even today these exist of course, the ruler of Turkmenistan changes calendar to name a month after his mother, or he has large gigantic actually statue of himself made of bronze or gold or something, it's a revolving statue on top of a restaurant. I mentioned Kirsten Ilyumzhinov, the despot of Kalmykia and the Russian Federation. He can build the runway for the UFO and such things. In his case, he could say he's a patron of the arts because he bought the presidency of the World Chess Federation, he built the chess palace, but even Saddam was like this to a certain extent. But anyway, yes, it's obviously not enough to just have a criminal tyrant, but it does seem however to go with, even in the Italian Renaissance, by the way, it's not enough.

to give you some more colorful examples of great criminal crime. The Tyrant of Siena around 1490, I forget his name, but he liked to... His main pastime hobby, his hobby, this is mad, this is a typical example of Mediterranean insanity was to go nearby Big Mountain near Siena and roll down huge boulders without caring who or what they hit, houses, people, whatever. He terrorized his subjects with random murders, but it is said he was under influence of an astrology professor. Do you like this kind of government? I believe in this. Also in the political uses of astrology. But anyway, one of the most criminal regimes of that time was the Aragonese dynasty in Naples. They were Spanish, but they ended up being kings of Naples. The original founder had been Alfonso from Spain,

king of Naples against Spain, technically owned Naples and Sicily, right, but Alfonso came to be king of Naples. He was a good ruler, though. He made his kingdom strong and rich. He was apparently friendly with regular people. He was a popular ruler, as were, by the way, all the tyrants, to some extent, when they were not popular, they locked themselves in their palace for security reasons. But they would never, in the Italian case, I mean, the types who just hung out with the nobility or something like that. In these Italian city-states, even the nobility felt they needed to prove themselves in action and merit, real merit. They needed to actually do things in the real world and all the tyrants who, let's say,

became well-known did not keep such strict separation between themselves and the people at large. When such things did exist, they were done for security reasons, not for so-called status reasons. But Alfonso, King of Naples, was an affable ruler, popular in the daily sense, met people in person and so on. He was a womanizer, a lover of luxuries. But apparently because of his love of expensive women, financiers became very powerful at the Neapolitan court until he just had them robbed and eventually neutralized. you see, should rulers treat bankers and financiers this way? I don't know. It's attractive, right, but I have a euro-right friend who replied to this event and says, very based path to based shithole. You know, I think you can do that once or twice and then money starts

to leave your country when people see that. But Alfonso's successors in Naples anyway were not the same as him. Ferrante of Naples is the most famous ruler of Naples of this time and one of the most famous kings or leaders of the Italian Renaissance. He was his bastard by, it was said by a noble woman, but apparently his mother, his real mother was a Marano lady from Valencia, Spain. So he was, you know, he was a Michelin and Ferrante was maybe the most feared ruler in Europe of his day, extreme treacherous. He was king of Naples from around 1460 to 1490, a man of consummate skills, of conspiracy and dissimulation, and also a lust of vengeance, which he gained in his struggles with the barons and so on.

Because south of Rome, Italy remained even into the early 1400s, mid 1400s, it was more rural and feudal, it had baronies and so on. The rest of Italy is a very urban character, it led to a different, I'll talk about that in a moment. But here, in his struggles with his barons, Ferrante gained all of these very subtle, violent political skills, you know, and gained a reputation in all Europe as a man of consummate political instincts, consummate judgment, was widely feared, widely consulted. He kept, however, a menagerie also, but very different and dark one, a museum of corpses. He had his opponents killed and then bombed and then dressed in the same dress they used in daily life, mummification, dollification, right? He made a museum dungeon of them

and he did not hide the existence of this from people at all and, you know, he died of mental insanity eventually anyway but, you know, this kind of thing, I see these example and that of the crazed ruler of Siena with the boulders because their courts were not especially notable for the arts, you know. In the case of Naples, there was some, but it was just done for vulgar display. On the other hand, in quite a few other cases, the famous phrase you may know, that Switzerland had a thousand years of peace and invented the cuckoo clock, and Italy had a thousand years of war and invented Leonardo da Vinci, of war and strife, and in connection to other places in Italy, this becomes much clearer, this claim, and undeniable. You take, for example, Sigismondo Malatesta.

This is a man who Burckhardt calls a bold pagan condottiere, a mercenary leader who is a bold pagan. But bold, not just because he is a pagan, he is extremely brave in battle. He became ruler of Rimini, northeast Italy, at the age of 15, okay, and I mean he led people into battle at that age and soon after won victories despite odds being against him. And he became known as one of the best military leaders in Italy and he was used mainly in employment of Venice. Venice hired him to fight its enemies and yes, he defeated the Ottomans, the Turks in the Peloponnese in the service of Venice in big battle. But eventually the Pope excommunicated him and launched essentially a crusade against this one leader, right? And there's a nice passage about his evil, which I will read now.

A thirst for blood for its own sake, a devilish delight in destruction, is exemplified best in the case of the Spaniard Cesare Borgia, whose cruelties were certainly out of all proportion to the end he had in view. A similar disinterested love of evil may be detected in Sigismondo Malatesta, Tyrant of Rimini. not only the Roman Curia, but the verdict of history that convicts him of repeated murder, rape, adultery, incest, sacrilege, perjury and treason. But the most shocking crime of all, the unnatural attempt on his own son Roberto, who frustrated it with his drawn dagger, may well have been the result not merely of moral corruption but perhaps of some magical or astrological superstition. The same conjecture has been made to account for the rape of the Bishop of Fano by Pierluigi

Farneseo Parma, son of Paul III. Yes, rape by astrology, do you like this? But this man's court in Rimini, Malatesta's court, as crazy and criminal as he was, and brave soldier who was basically insane, but that flourished a love of learning humanistic artistic production and scholarship at his court, you see, all done with the most joyful contempt for law, morality, and religion, and the temple that he built, okay, he built a temple to his mistress. But who was it who built this temple? It was Leon Battista Alberti, the great prototype of the Renaissance genius. I read and discussed him on last episode, and he designed this building, the Tempio Malatestiano, is decorated with sculptures and paintings of other great artists of the

time inside, but the building itself apparently was the first to make use of Roman art during the Renaissance built in 1450, and the humanists and scholars and cranks who were swarming this court of Rimini, I think some were interred also in this mausoleum, which wasn't really a church but a pagan temple actually. It must have been an amazing sight what was going on at his court with these types of people and their philosophical disputations and the art they produced. They wrote poems in Latin celebrating his love for his mistress, a court in Rimini of many philosophical discussions and revival of antiquity, a man of great daring, Malatesta, who, as you can see, was patron, yes, you know, Borchardt does call him a monster, but

in remarks it may be hard for modern mind to accept it, but this monster loved learning and knowledge and art so much that his entire life of his court reflects this and even the The pope who excommunicated him conceded Sigismondo's love of history and philosophy. But it was not just patronage, okay, is what I'm trying to tell you. It wasn't just, oh, this tyrant has money and so on, and I'm an artist, I better go and get paid reluctantly. No, they got along well. The great geniuses like Alberti and da Vinci wanted to work and to live with men like this, or in da Vinci's case with Cesare Borgia and Ludovico il Moro. It was the larger than life personality, the freedom from convention and constraint, the

unique character, the great realm of possibilities and wild hopes of antiquity reopened. And I believe there was a political structural precedent for this, you know, as in you have or rather prerequisite for this. You have these very small states, the city-states, very urban environment where you couldn't rely on social class or tradition but have to make it on your own intelligence and boldness. in a highly competitive environment where the competition was for initially in the 1300s and so on, very early 1400s, it was for who would rule this particular state who would own the whole state, right? The stakes are very high and there were a lot of bastards of the ruling men and the bastards competed with each other for supremacy in these small states.

And I mentioned on last episode how once you had power, it was a lot of power, but you You didn't know how long you'd enjoy it, and you had no legitimacy whatsoever that was recognized by anyone. In some cases, like the Medici, it was again the merchant class people who took over the state. I think this mix of circumstances led to a very fruitful flowering of culture. It led, first of all, to an alliance with men of intellect, with men of genius, because there was no one else who would be of any use to you. In other words, they weren't just doing patronage for flashy display as was done in Naples, for example. Oh, I'm a rich man. I'm doing this as adornment for people to clap at me. The court in Naples somewhat was like that.

They supported the arts, but for, again, gaudy, public, flashy, nigger display. I think in the other cases, it was a genuine attraction to intellect, to wanting to surround yourself with other men like you who had similar trajectory in life, except in their case in the arts or in scholarship who had achieved what they had by the power of their own brains and wills and who yes so you could use because a lot of these scholars right they would be translating Plato or Aristotle on some part of the week but some other part of the week or the next month they would get commissioned to be a diplomat a diplomat for the tyrant things to go to some other state to negotiate treaty or they were entrusted with some other similar political task. So the partnership of these two kindred types,

the Sigismondo Malatesta military tyrant genius ruler, with then Leon Battista Alberti, the artist scholar genius, this type of duo occurs again and again during the Renaissance. The other courts, there were many small to medium-sized courts that were very brilliant. The ones at Urbino, at Mantua, and Ferrara are not so much known by people today, but at that time they were much known, they respected all over Europe for their fostering of the arts and sciences. Not all of them were as flashy or criminal, right, as the Malatestas or the Borgias. The Estes of Ferrara were quite criminal, I think, but Ferrara was also first modern state. It had professional civil service, urban center of state fostered by political action, extreme

political centralization, you could think of it maybe first streamlined, professionally run modern city like Singapore, with a huge treasury that it prided itself on. Of course, now you have to go to Singapore to find that many cities in the world today are no longer run so professionally. But yes, these despotisms varied in that level of showy criminality. Not all of them were as insane as some of the more colorful examples I've given so far. The courts at Urbino and Mantua are probably some of the best run. Women by the way were very important at these courts. They ran essentially half the state and they ran salons and they supported artists. Many were very strong-willed, virago type women, but it was the state as a work of art. But again, some were very well run and not that criminal.

But at places like Ferrara and Perugia, although at Ferrara, again, the state very, the most professionally run, but both the Este family that ruled Ferrara and the Baglioni that ruled Perugia were quite unstable and criminal, not as showily and with as interesting examples as what I've talked about so far, but there was certainly the usual intrigues and murders you might imagine in the Renaissance Italian court. And there's a second way that I will show you now in which this type of life fostered genius and the works of genius. Okay, so these courts that I've just mentioned, you might wonder what, who cares, or Urbino and this, you know, but they supported great artists you've heard of, all of these courts. Okay, so Raphael was a boy of 12 in Perugia.

He was working in a workshop as apprentice just, and there was a coup attempt in the the city of Perugia, against the Baglioni, the ruling family, the exiles, people they had exiled came back, tried to take over the city, I think. There's a public battle in the city square and Simonetto and Astora Baglioni, two of the sons of the Baglioni family, they are huge and brave men, ended up almost like in superhero movie, they were stabbed 40 times, you know, fighting off multiple attackers And even after they had been stabbed, I think Simonetto was stabbed 40 times, like in movie Old Boy, he gets back up, gets on top of horse fighting, and just such fiery scenes of heroism in front of the whole city, in front of Raphael, who was a boy, not a small boy. He was 12 at that time.

So I read for you, at that time, Raphael, a boy of 12, was in the workshop of Pietro Perugino. The impressions of these days are perhaps immortalized in the small early pictures of Saint Michael and Saint George. Something of them, it may be, lives eternally in the large painting of Saint Michael. And if Astoria Baglione has anywhere found his apotheosis, it is in the figure of the heavenly horseman in the Heliodorus. Some of these are famous paintings and works of Raphael that are in the Louvre in Paris and so on. So you can see how, okay, I'll give you a more detailed example, so you see, a later event when mother of criminal tyrant pretender also served this mother as an inspiration for Raphael. And because this is such beautiful writing from Burkhardt,

who is otherwise a restrained, calm writer, I will read for you. So you get local time flavor. So you see the second way in which this kind of tumultuous political situation leads to salutary conditions for the works of genius, but I am reading now. As the corpses of Astora and Simonetto lay in the street, the spectators, and especially the foreign students, compared Astora to an ancient Roman, so great and imposing did he seem. And the features of Simonetto could still be traced the audacity and defiance that death itself had not tamed. The victors went round among the friends of the family and did their best to recommend themselves. all in tears and preparing to leave for the country. Meantime, the escaped Baglioni collected forces outside the city and on the following day

with Gianpaolo at their head forced their way in and speedily found adherents among others whom Barciglia had been threatening with death. Barciglia is one of the usurpers in this coup that I'm describing now. When Griffone fell into their hands near San Tercolana, Griffone being another conspirator against the Baglioni, who they came back and deposed. When Griffone fell into their hands near Sant'Ercolano, Gianpaolo Baglione handed him over for execution to his followers. Barciglia and Pena fed Camarino to Varano, the chief author of the tragedy, Varano the ruler of Camarino. He had made some intrigue in this city of Pelugia, trying to take over from within by essentially funding and stirring up exiles to come back and try to overthrow the Baglioni ruling family of Perugia.

Anyway, so the exiles failed and Griffone, one of the people who was trying to do the coup was captured. I continue reading. And in the moment, almost without loss, Gianpaolo Baglione became master of the city. Atalanta, the still young and beautiful mother of Griffone, who the day before had withdrawn to a country house with the latter's wife Zenobia and two children of Gianpaolo, and who more than once had repulsed her son with a mother's curse, now returned with her daughter-in-law in search of the dying man. All to the side as the two women approached, each man shrinking from being recognized as the slayer of Griffone and dreading the malediction of the mother, but they were deceived. She herself besought her son to pardon him who had dealt the fatal blow, and he died

with her blessing. The eyes of the crowd followed the two women reverently, as they crossed the square with blood-stained garments. It was for Atalanta that Raphael later painted the famous deposition, with which she laid her own sorrow at the feet of the highest and holiest of maternal sorrows." Okay, so you see what I mean? A great artist like Raphael, a great mind that does amazing work, literature, or in this case painting. You need big dramatic events like this. I believe this. You can't just have a nation right of, I mentioned Singapore, but Singapore is like a mall nation. You can't just have this stolid, boring, shopkeeper life. You can't have the life of a so-called English, Lockean individualism of God forbid, Rawlsian individualism, right? The dwarf animal

of equal rights and claims and the kind of Chinese leveling of all life that occurs in such small-souled states and situations as that, as we live in today. You can't have that and then expect great art to be made. You need events such as you see here, what I've described with this mother cursing her dying son, excusing his murderer for the good of the city. It needs to inspire, you need that kind of grand drama on a huge stage. It's the material for Raphael's actually religious-themed art, although it's much more than and religious, but you need similarly a Napoleon to inspire a generation of writers like Stendhal or other such, or Napoleon who made Goethe's heart become awake at the prospects for Europe. Who do we have now? We have Trump. Without Trump, what would there be?

There'd be literally sclerotic men like Biden and McCain. is a great deliverance, right, and he's not quite exactly the kind of dramatic thing that I've been describing so far, but for our time, without him there would be nothing, we'd be living Hillary, you know, in the time of the absolute last man. But this is another way, I mean, in which a tumultuous and even insane political life is the natural companion of creativity and genius. excitement that Raphael must have felt, could he have made these paintings without scenes like what I've just described. But I will close this episode reading again from Burkhart, who really is the bureaucrat rightly says all 14 to 18 year olds should be made, forced to read Burkhart's books.

The book on ancient Greek culture and then this one on Italian Renaissance. But I'll read now because again he show you concrete the claim about Italy's crazy war-like political tunnels producing men like Leonardo da Vinci. And you can see directly how a man like da Vinci is the twin companion of certain other men. Here I will read. Galeazzo Maria, who ruled from 1466 to 1476, a sforza, Galeazzo Maria Sforza in Milan, a master of appearances, took pride in the beauty of his hands, in the high salaries he paid, in the financial credit he enjoyed, in his treasure of two million pieces of gold, a distinguished people who surrounded him and in the army and birds of chase which he maintained. He was fond of the sound of his own voice and spoke well, most fluently perhaps, when

he had the chance of insulting a Venetian ambassador. He was subject to caprices such as having a room painted with figures in a single night, and what was worse, to fits of senseless debauchery and revolting cruelty to his nearest friends. To a few fanatics he seemed to possess all the characteristics of a tyrant. They murdered him and thereby delivered the state, Milan, into the power of his brothers, one of whom, Lodovico il Moro, the Moor, because he has somewhat dark complexion, Lodovico il Moro threw his nephew into prison and took the government of Milan into his own hands. This is Lodovico's forza. From this usurpation followed the intervention of the French and the disaster that befell the whole of Italy.

invaded, essentially, invaded Italy and basically somewhat ended the Renaissance or put it on pause, you know, not quite but put it on pause. Ill moral Ludovico Sforza is the most perfect type of despot of that age, this why I'm reading this passage, and as a kind of natural phenomenon almost disarms our moral judgment. He practiced a profound immorality with perfect ingeniousness and probably no one would have been more astonished than he to learn that man is morally responsible for means he chooses as well as the ends. Indeed he would have reckoned it as a singular virtue that so far as possible he had abstained from too free a use of punishment by death. He had accepted as no more than his due the almost fabulous respect of the Italians for his political genius.

In 1496 he boasted that Pope Alexander was his chaplain, Emperor Maximilian his condottiere, Venice's chamberlain, and the King of France's courier, who must come and go at his bidding. With marvellous presence of mind he weighed, even in his last extremity, in 1499, when he had to leave, all possible means of escape, and at length decided to his honour to trust to the goodness of human nature. Because of a former quarrel, he rejected the offer of his brother, Cardinal Lascagno, who wished to remain in the citadel of Milan. Monsignor, take it not ill, but I trust you not, brother, though you be, and appointed to the command of the castle as pledge of his return, a man to whom he had always done good, but who betrayed him.

At home, Ilmoro…" I interject for a moment here. He's describing an event when the Lodovico Sforza left Milan an expectation that the people would welcome him back, that he'd be able to return ruling, which certain other rulers in Renaissance Italy, when for example Cesare Borgia had invaded their domains, they didn't bother to fight him because they didn't want to wreck their beautiful city, even defending it. And they trusted, as Borchardt says here, trusting to the goodness of human nature, they trusted actually and won by trusting in it because they left, they knew the people loved them so much that they would be welcome back anyway, and they didn't want to put up a long defense that would kill people, that would ruin their city.

So Lodovica Sforza tried the same, but it didn't work out for him because actually he was not as loved at home as he had hoped. He had many enemies. Anyway, I continue reading. At home, Il Moro, Lodovica Sforza, was a good and useful ruler, and to the last he reckoned on his popularity both in Milan and in Como. In later years, after 1496, he overstrained the resources of his state, and at Cremona ordered, out of pure expediency, a respected citizen who had spoke against the new taxes to be quietly strangled. And from that time, when holding audiences, he kept his visitors away from his person by means of a bar, so that in conversing with him they were compelled to speak at the top of their voices. At his court, the most brilliant in Europe since that of Burgundy had ceased to exist,

immorality of the worst kind was prevalent. Daughter was sold by father, wife by husband, sister by brother. The prince himself was always active and as son of his own deeds claimed relationship with all who, like himself, stood on their own personal merits. Scholars, poets, artists and musicians. The Academy he founded served rather for his own purposes than for the instruction of scholars. Nor was it the fame of the distinguished men who surrounded him that he required so much as their society and their services. It is certain that Bramante was scantily paid at first. Leonardo da Vinci, on the other hand, who was up to 1496 suitably remunerated, and what kept him at the court, if not his own free will.

The world lay open to him, to da Vinci, as perhaps to no other mortal of that day, and if proof for wanting of the loftier element in the nature of L'Odovico il Moro Sforza, leader he's describing. It is found in the long stay of the enigmatic Master Leonardo da Vinci at his court that Leonardo later entered the service of Cesare Borgia and Francis the first was probably due again to the interest he felt in the unusual and striking character of these men. Yes, do you like this? The striking character of these men? That's individualism, real individualism, and you need a A crazy condition of insane political competition to allow for that. If you want a literary illustration of what I've been talking about on this segment,

if you want it in the form of a book, of a novel, this relationship between the genius and the tyrant prince, read Parr Lagarkvist's The Dwarf. There is a kind of da Vinci character in that book as well. A perfect book, by the way. Not a sentence out of place in it. Helios Panoptes recommended it to me long ago. Yes. But yes, ages of political instability, even dissolution, can be found of great culture, I think almost uniquely are. The ages of great cultural production aren't necessarily those of great civilization. Civilization being rather the taming of man, right? The 17th century in France is similar, extreme intellectual, artistic, literary creativity, but time of extreme troubles, political troubles.

It's the eruption of criminality, real criminality of the greatest kind I mean, and on the greatest stage that allows the tropical bestiary of great specimens loose upon the world that frees them from the constraints and lies of custom and religion and the demands of mummies and of the sub-men, of the sub-humans, the demands on their energies. I believe in this. I believe in the return of great crime that will break and renew the world. Let loose the leopards on the city.