Speaker 1: Ye confession. I believe that I may have the perfect
Speaker 1: socks for today's episode. There's some socks that a friend
Speaker 1: of mine got me from his travels in Japan, and
Speaker 1: they have separations in the in the fabric for the toes.
Speaker 1: I feel much more agile than I would be wearing
Speaker 1: just normal socks bands. So they're like Ninja socks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the way to put up. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the division for the sandals. Picture every Western film you've
Speaker 1: seen in the nineties or something that featured ninja. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've got the I've got these. Uh, it's weird.
Speaker 1: I took my shoes off and showed showed you and
Speaker 1: our super producer, Casey Pegram these socks before we hit
Speaker 1: the air. I feel somewhat more athletic in these. Well, Ben,
Speaker 1: we are in a tiny shipping container type box. Did
Speaker 1: you put your shoes back on? Yeah? Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: tell Noll, you can tell that I put my shoes
Speaker 1: back on. I think I think being in a small
Speaker 1: area with your shoes off like that in a work environment,
Speaker 1: it would be kind of rude. No, it's poor. It's
Speaker 1: poor podcast etiquette, to be sure. Yeah, like loudly eating
Speaker 1: or something. Gosh, Ben, are you being passive aggressive to me?
Speaker 1: I'm a loud on Mike eating. No, you're not eating something.
Speaker 1: I'm not right now. But you know, I've been known
Speaker 1: to have a snack occasionally, but I try to do
Speaker 1: it off my contract. You usually do it when we're
Speaker 1: not on air. That's true. That's a good point. Although
Speaker 1: I gotta say sometimes I find it charming when I
Speaker 1: when a podcaster has a little snack on there. I
Speaker 1: think it's a personal choice, personal preference. So back to
Speaker 1: this this idea. I am not a professional as fleet
Speaker 1: and you and I know each other pretty well. You
Speaker 1: are currently not a professional athlete. I'm barely a professional anything.
Speaker 1: We're barely professional podcasters right. Actually updated my my Instagram
Speaker 1: bio to be a semi pro podcast geek. So that's
Speaker 1: that's what I consider my safe semi pro. There you go.
Speaker 1: We do know that the world of professional athleticism is
Speaker 1: obviously an enormous, enormous deal. It's a huge industry. Billions
Speaker 1: and billions of dollars are spent every year, and billions
Speaker 1: of dollars are generated every year through various athletic endeavors
Speaker 1: around the world, and for Peak Behind the Curtain is
Speaker 1: the three of us record today's episode of Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1: We are on the verge of two very big and
Speaker 1: unusual things for our fair metropolis of Atlanta. The first
Speaker 1: is a definite that's the super Bowl, and the second
Speaker 1: is possible storm, a snowstorm. So we're looking for the
Speaker 1: the snowpocalypse super Bowl traffic jam coming our way pretty soon, right,
Speaker 1: which became a Facebook event that a lot of people
Speaker 1: in town checked in on. Right, did you do that?
Speaker 1: Not yet? So we started thinking about the world of
Speaker 1: professional athletes, and we kicked around the idea of maybe
Speaker 1: doing the history of Super Bowls, which could be a
Speaker 1: cool notion for a future episode. But we also asked
Speaker 1: ourselves a surprisingly fascinating question, who was the highest paid athlete,
Speaker 1: not not just this year, but in history. Yeah, it's true,
Speaker 1: And it turns out that somebody else, uh, someone with
Speaker 1: a little bit more of a historical pedigree than we have,
Speaker 1: a guy by the name of Dr Peter struck who's
Speaker 1: professor at the University of Pennsylvania UM. In an article
Speaker 1: he wrote for Laham's Quarterly, struck Um went into great
Speaker 1: detail about his discovery that turns out, the highest paid
Speaker 1: athlete of all time was not like a footballer or
Speaker 1: or a basketball or wasn't you know some some football player.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Michael Jordan's, wasn't Joe Montana. Joe Montana. That's a
Speaker 1: football players remember him from from video games, mainly I
Speaker 1: like he had. He was known for his effective but
Speaker 1: just very ugly throws. But he had a big old arm, right,
Speaker 1: He was like an armed guy. Most of them do.
Speaker 1: They are very few. Peyton Manning, he's a he's a
Speaker 1: good He's worth a lot of Jakins. And then the refrigerator.
Speaker 1: But no, none of those guys. Turns out it was
Speaker 1: a I'm gonna say, charioteer. Yeah, a charioteer named gas
Speaker 1: Apollius Diocles. Well done. Well, we'll probably shift around in
Speaker 1: that in that pronunciation times. Uh. This is a very
Speaker 1: very interesting guy. He was from an area of what
Speaker 1: is now modern day Spain in Portugal. He was most
Speaker 1: likely illiterate, but man, his chariot game was on fire.
Speaker 1: So there's an inscription set up in the city of
Speaker 1: Rome that was originally created in one forty six CE
Speaker 1: or a d however you prefer, uh, And it tells
Speaker 1: us exactly how much this charioteer from the province of
Speaker 1: Lusitania earned during his oh what was it an old
Speaker 1: twenty four years as an athlete, as a charioteer. Yes,
Speaker 1: and let's not sweep under the rug the fact that
Speaker 1: that is an awful long time to survive in such
Speaker 1: a intense and brutal and strenuous and dangerous for even spectators,
Speaker 1: let alone the people right in the thick of it
Speaker 1: profession I mean, we're talking like these chariots being drawn
Speaker 1: by up to ten horses. He had like the reins
Speaker 1: tied around his waist, you know, and I can imagine
Speaker 1: a mishap, you know, tearing him him from limb. But
Speaker 1: he was able to maintain this career twenty four years,
Speaker 1: which is, oh gosh, at least four times the length
Speaker 1: I would say of an average you know, football or
Speaker 1: basketball player's career. Yeah, even in these our modern days,
Speaker 1: ongoing studies show us that being an athlete can be
Speaker 1: tremendously damaging to the body and punishing to the mind,
Speaker 1: especially when you get in the world of boxing and
Speaker 1: US football, which you know, leave the door wide open
Speaker 1: to concussions, you know. And I just kind of pulled
Speaker 1: that out of my ear. But it's about apparently, according
Speaker 1: to Business Insider, the average span of an NBA basketball
Speaker 1: player is about four point eight years, right, right, It's true.
Speaker 1: It's uh. Now, this can be longer for some some individuals,
Speaker 1: and of course it can be longer in some sports, right, uh,
Speaker 1: some Olympic sports, you may have a longer lifespan. But
Speaker 1: professionally speak king again, we are at our best only humans.
Speaker 1: So this guy is doing a tremendous job. Back in
Speaker 1: his time as as a chariot's here roll? What what
Speaker 1: exactly would his would his sport have been comprised? Well,
Speaker 1: like I said, he would have been piloting a I
Speaker 1: guess a two wheeled chariot, right, how many wheels around
Speaker 1: to chariot? Is it four? I feel I pictured it
Speaker 1: as being reared back on two wheels, two wheels with
Speaker 1: a team of horses, like said, up to ten reins
Speaker 1: used to kind of encourage them to go faster or
Speaker 1: slow up. And like I said, he actually had them
Speaker 1: tied around his body so he could use his whole
Speaker 1: body to kind of control the horses. And he was
Speaker 1: racing specifically and dirty tricks and in chariot racing. I
Speaker 1: guess I think of maybe cartoon examples of chariot racing
Speaker 1: where all of a sudden, like one of the wheels
Speaker 1: would have like a blade on it or something like that,
Speaker 1: and they'd kind of go up close to the other
Speaker 1: participants and to that blade to kind of grind up
Speaker 1: at their wheel. And I think people would stop at
Speaker 1: nothing to uh to you know, defeat the competition, no
Speaker 1: matter what it took, right. Yeah, And chariot racing was
Speaker 1: a huge, huge deal. It was bigger than NASCAR is now.
Speaker 1: The classes would be divided primarily by how many horses
Speaker 1: were pulling the chariot. A two horse team, a four
Speaker 1: horse team, a six horse team. The earliest account of
Speaker 1: a chariot race occurs in Homer's description of the funeral
Speaker 1: of Patrick Less. These these races were one of the
Speaker 1: big ticket items of the ancient Olympic Games. They would
Speaker 1: happen during religious festivals. Essentially, civilizations at the time view
Speaker 1: chariot races as a really cool thing to add to
Speaker 1: almost any public event, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: like a a a citywide festival or contest. And normally
Speaker 1: these chariot races would proceed thusly, there would be four
Speaker 1: to six different chariots they would compete in a single race,
Speaker 1: and the race would usually be around seven laps around
Speaker 1: what was called the circus, the circus maximus. These chariots,
Speaker 1: we should emphasize, were very light affairs, because you know,
Speaker 1: you wanted to get the maximum power in the minimum
Speaker 1: amount of weight. This also means that they were super fragile.
Speaker 1: So we're a collision to occur. You were up the
Speaker 1: wrong creek without a paddle. Yeah. And to that end,
Speaker 1: most of the folks that piloted these chariots um only
Speaker 1: lived till about twenty four years old, whereas Diocles retired
Speaker 1: which is very unusual at the ripe old age of
Speaker 1: forty two, at which point he was worth a whole
Speaker 1: lot of money. Doctor Struck found that diocles Is total
Speaker 1: earnings would have equated to roughly fifteen billion dollars in
Speaker 1: modern terms. Fifteen billion with the B. You can also
Speaker 1: see another great write up of this in History Collection.
Speaker 1: There's an article by Alexander Mettings that we would recommend this.
Speaker 1: This is strange because these were all net earnings to
Speaker 1: the charioteer didn't have to pay promoters didn't have to
Speaker 1: pay you know, a marketing team or support is I
Speaker 1: don't know, entourage or shell out cash for sponsorship. He
Speaker 1: probably had it pretty good. You know, what would he
Speaker 1: have what would he have done personally with that? And
Speaker 1: how did professor Struck figure out this number? On that
Speaker 1: inscription ban that you mentioned, It has his his earnings
Speaker 1: in the currency of the time, which is sastercy, and
Speaker 1: that would have been thirty five million, eight hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty three thousand, one hundred and twenty And Struck figured
Speaker 1: out that for the time that would have been enough
Speaker 1: to buy grain to fee the entirety of Rome for
Speaker 1: one year um and also was about five times higher
Speaker 1: a salary than any of the highest paid officials in
Speaker 1: the land and also could have paid for every single
Speaker 1: Roman soldier for a fifth of a year. And that
Speaker 1: was when Rome was at its peak in terms of
Speaker 1: its military MTE. Yeah, running from Scotland all the way
Speaker 1: in the far north, Egypt in the south, Spain in
Speaker 1: the western, the Euphrates in the east. He clearly busted
Speaker 1: his hump for this money. And to compare him to
Speaker 1: let's say the highest paid governmental authorities in two months,
Speaker 1: he would earn what Rome's highest paid provincial governor could
Speaker 1: expect to earn in one year, and there was a
Speaker 1: great amount of risk with this. We mentioned the horses
Speaker 1: reins being tied physically to the athlete. When those fragile
Speaker 1: vehicles collided with something, it often resulted in the death
Speaker 1: or serious injury of a charioteer because the horses kept going.
Speaker 1: That's right, there's a lot of a lot of trampling
Speaker 1: um and ben we were trying to get to the
Speaker 1: conversion method. We always plug numbers into our handy dandy
Speaker 1: inflation calculator here on ridiculous history. But those um figures
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier were on are on the Stone inscription,
Speaker 1: listening the idea of being able to bankroll the Roman
Speaker 1: army for a fifth of a year. So Struck was
Speaker 1: able to extrapolate a modern estimate UM based on what
Speaker 1: it would cost to pay for our military UM. So
Speaker 1: it's obviously not a perfect one to one, but would
Speaker 1: have been a pretty good educated guess. Absolutely, And oh
Speaker 1: you know what we should do. We should read the
Speaker 1: actual inscription. So here it goes. In the English translation,
Speaker 1: it begins with gayas Appolus Diocles charioteer of the Red Stable,
Speaker 1: Hallusitanian Spaniard by birth age forty two years, seven months,
Speaker 1: twenty three days, and the monument says he raced four
Speaker 1: horse chariots for twenty four years, so we get some
Speaker 1: valuable numbers there. We also know that given his fame,
Speaker 1: there was a snowball effect. He started turning down races,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It had to be worth
Speaker 1: his time, so he would race in the most high end,
Speaker 1: high profile races that had the most potential to win
Speaker 1: a large amount of money. He started in this, according
Speaker 1: to the inscription, in four thousand, two hundred fifty seven
Speaker 1: races he won one thousand, four hundred sixty three times,
Speaker 1: and the inscription says that translates to him winning ninety
Speaker 1: two major prizes. Of these, thirty two were of thirty
Speaker 1: thousand sisters, three of them with six worse teams, two
Speaker 1: in races with six worse chariots, one with a seven
Speaker 1: horse chariot. Uh he tied with because they had these
Speaker 1: different factions. Right, he was a red stable, right, and
Speaker 1: he tied a Blue stable ten times, a Green stable
Speaker 1: ninety one. And the the this inscription, the thing that's
Speaker 1: invaluable about it is that it maps out his stats
Speaker 1: the same way that a baseball card, back when those
Speaker 1: were a big deal. A baseball card would map out
Speaker 1: the stats of your favorite, uh, your favorite baseball player. Man,
Speaker 1: would these have been like alongside gladiator events or would
Speaker 1: those have been like two different things, because I feel
Speaker 1: like this would have almost been like a like the
Speaker 1: gladiator thing might have been the main event. This might
Speaker 1: have been like a side event, or were they completely separate.
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, you know, there's that's a good question. Well,
Speaker 1: there's probably a situation again wherein there were large public
Speaker 1: events that involved this stuff, and they were definitely chariots
Speaker 1: in gladiatorial combat. Its right, Sometimes there could have been
Speaker 1: probably gladiator matches on chariot where they're like coming at
Speaker 1: each other, swinging weapons as they pass. Right. So let's
Speaker 1: let's go back for a second to the earlier comparison
Speaker 1: in the world of animation and cartoons, right, how exaggerated
Speaker 1: or how accurate was this depiction of chariot racing. It
Speaker 1: turns out that it's not completely off base. It's not
Speaker 1: completely cartoonish or made up, because these knives on the
Speaker 1: wheels were a real thing, and the charioteers would attempt
Speaker 1: to ram their arrivals into the media at the center
Speaker 1: of the track called the spin at, and then they
Speaker 1: would come crashing into these hairpin turns. They also I
Speaker 1: thought you would find just the pure spectacle of this fascinating.
Speaker 1: During races, it was very common for the three chariots
Speaker 1: representing each faction to team up with one another to
Speaker 1: bring down a very unpopular rival or a very strong
Speaker 1: one like diac les, and bring down in this sense
Speaker 1: means literally grind them into the dust. This violence is
Speaker 1: part of why chariot races were so incredibly popular. Like,
Speaker 1: think about how many people love the Super Bowl. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's an income brackett to get a ticket because
Speaker 1: those things are thousands of dollars, But millions and millions
Speaker 1: of people in this country watch the Super Bowl and
Speaker 1: pull for a team they love, regardless of, you know,
Speaker 1: their individual demographic. Chariot races were the same way. But
Speaker 1: before television, that's true, and you can also probably expect
Speaker 1: to see someone get really horribly injured, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and and ideally that's less the case with modern American football.
Speaker 1: Or they're trying to pase that out and make it
Speaker 1: less of an attraction. But I still think that's largely
Speaker 1: what people not not not to like taste blood. But
Speaker 1: you it's all about the steaks, right. What's the point
Speaker 1: of like being all in with this if there aren't
Speaker 1: like real steaks. You don't feel like these people have
Speaker 1: something to lose beyond just like glory or being shamed
Speaker 1: or whatever. That's a great that's a great question. I
Speaker 1: wrote a thing a long time ago that wasn't wasn't
Speaker 1: part of how stuff works, about the social role of
Speaker 1: sports as a substitute for actual warfare. It hits all
Speaker 1: the same notes of tribalism, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: and identifying with something larger than oneself. This this is
Speaker 1: making me a miss car stuff. No, because we have
Speaker 1: to mention these chariot races were also dangerous for the
Speaker 1: audience because the rivalry went beyond lighthearted competition. It became
Speaker 1: as high risk as the races themselves. Think of soccer hooligans. Okay,
Speaker 1: there were chariot hooligans, charioteer hooligans. One guy learned about
Speaker 1: the death of one of the best charioteers in the
Speaker 1: Red faction, and he threw himself on the funeral pyre
Speaker 1: to be burned alongside his sports idol. Dude, that's like that,
Speaker 1: like sports as a stand in for not only warfare,
Speaker 1: but like religion. Yeah, yeah, good call. In sixty nine
Speaker 1: a d or c e. The Emperor Vitellius had some
Speaker 1: commoners executed because they talked trash about the Blue Faction
Speaker 1: and the emperor loved them. He was personally offended, so
Speaker 1: he had them put to death. And it also reminds
Speaker 1: me of sort of the early days of auto racing,
Speaker 1: like the Laman. Remember we did an episode on that
Speaker 1: where it was absolutely very dangerous just physically to be
Speaker 1: a spectator because if there was a fiery crash, bits
Speaker 1: of flaming debris could go shooting out into the crowd,
Speaker 1: potentially injuring or even killing people. There were several accounts
Speaker 1: of folks being killed at those races, and such as
Speaker 1: the case for these chariot races of you know, if
Speaker 1: you'd have the potential for people in the stands getting
Speaker 1: hit by you know, pieces of flying off of the chariots.
Speaker 1: Twenty four hour Lament. Yeah, we have a ridiculous history
Speaker 1: on that. We have something about the history of the
Speaker 1: race in a series on car stuff too, if you
Speaker 1: if you'd like to learn more about the oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: the utter, utterly horrific accidents that happened in those races.
Speaker 1: We have to say, you know, we we have to
Speaker 1: speculate a bit on the psychology of the audience, because
Speaker 1: maybe that was part of the appeal to be right
Speaker 1: down there in the thick of it, as close to
Speaker 1: the chariots as possible, despite the risk, or to have
Speaker 1: this social identification that was so strong that you would
Speaker 1: want to physically harm someone because they were a Green
Speaker 1: and you were a Blue. It's strange too because Diacles
Speaker 1: was chasing glory along with money, but he was definitely
Speaker 1: chasing the glory, chasing the fame because he switched his factions.
Speaker 1: He began his career as a White and then he
Speaker 1: moved over to the Greens because of all the teams,
Speaker 1: the Greens and the Blues were the most successful in
Speaker 1: the most popular right and think of them like the
Speaker 1: New England Patriots if you're a football fan. But then
Speaker 1: he made a switch, He made a switch rue a
Speaker 1: plot twist, you see, he transferred to the less popular
Speaker 1: Red faction and this would have made pretty good financial
Speaker 1: sense to him, maybe have given him some more time
Speaker 1: to shine. You would have been a bigger fish in
Speaker 1: a smaller pond. Because you see Diocles when he was
Speaker 1: on the Green team, he was just one of many
Speaker 1: very popular charioteers. You know, he was possibly a footnote
Speaker 1: in history, but he could become a main character in
Speaker 1: history if he went with the reds. And that's what
Speaker 1: he did. And despite what you might assume, he was
Speaker 1: not the he was not the charioteer who won the
Speaker 1: most racist. He just got the most money. As Professor
Speaker 1: Robert B. Keybreak points out, in the career of Diocles
Speaker 1: room and charioteer, his victories paled in comparison to those
Speaker 1: of other charity tears, such as Scorpus, who had two thousand,
Speaker 1: forty eight victories, or Pompeius, most closest, who had three thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred and fifty nine victories. But he made it.
Speaker 1: He won the game right he retired, as we said,
Speaker 1: he lived a pretty sedate, fun life after that. You know.
Speaker 1: From so he was born approximately one oh four CE,
Speaker 1: and he passed away some time after one forty six CE.
Speaker 1: But I believe his death was relatively peaceful or unremarked upon, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially given the profession. Right, so, um, by that point
Speaker 1: he I think it was just kind of unusual for
Speaker 1: anyone in such a violent, inherently violent line of work
Speaker 1: to be able to retire. And even though he didn't
Speaker 1: win the most maybe that's because he he was looking
Speaker 1: he was playing the long game right then. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was like protecting himself and maybe not being quite
Speaker 1: as reckless, but he certainly knew how to show off
Speaker 1: and have some flourishes. He had his own signature style
Speaker 1: almost like you know, tiger style or like something out
Speaker 1: of like a street fighter game, and it was called
Speaker 1: the strong final dash. Oh nice, because he he could
Speaker 1: just pull out all the stops in the end. That
Speaker 1: maybe means he would bide his time a little bit
Speaker 1: and stay out of harm's way and like protect himself,
Speaker 1: but then at the end he would like come up
Speaker 1: ahead of the pack. But yeah, it's crazy, man, that
Speaker 1: he was able to just relaxingly drift away as an
Speaker 1: old man of what was he like fifty years old.
Speaker 1: He passed away on his estate in the Italian countryside
Speaker 1: near modern day Palestrina, and he lived out the remainder
Speaker 1: of his days in a quiet life. Live in the
Speaker 1: quiet life. You know, he had a son and a
Speaker 1: daughter who later erected a memorial to him at the site,
Speaker 1: and there he remains in history as the highest paid
Speaker 1: athlete of all time. But you know what, my spiky
Speaker 1: sense is telling me that several of our fellow ridiculous
Speaker 1: historians are having a come on you guys moment when
Speaker 1: you say, Okay, so diakles was was really balling back
Speaker 1: in the days of ancient Rome, But who is the
Speaker 1: world's highest paid athlete? Now? It turns out we do
Speaker 1: have the answer, or an answer, because some of this
Speaker 1: depends on how you calculate it. Casey, help us out
Speaker 1: with a drum roll here, if you would be so kind.
Speaker 1: The highest paid athlete in the modern world is it's
Speaker 1: it's Floyd Mayweather, who's um, non American boxer, problematic figure.
Speaker 1: He's gotten some trouble with the law, but he's managed
Speaker 1: to exceed the total of the other of himself and
Speaker 1: the other two top earning athletes in the world, who
Speaker 1: are Lebron James, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo UM and
Speaker 1: that those three had a combined earning total of two
Speaker 1: nine million dollars for a season's worth of work. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that also includes like endorsements and partnerships and things
Speaker 1: like that. And this is reported by Forbes magazine. But um,
Speaker 1: Mayweather knocked all of that out of the water with
Speaker 1: something that happened very recently, right, that's correct, that's correct.
Speaker 1: He earned the top spot. You said a little north
Speaker 1: of two and fifty mill total. For those other three
Speaker 1: Between June one, seventeen and June one, eighteen, Floyd Mayweather
Speaker 1: earned two hundred and seventy five million dollars. This comes
Speaker 1: to us from a Great Money dot Com article by
Speaker 1: Mike Ayers. Here's the kicker. He earned that not across
Speaker 1: the year. Here in that for one night of work
Speaker 1: when he fought Connor McGregor on August seven, two thousand eighteen. Uh.
Speaker 1: Add in his total ten million dollars worth of additional
Speaker 1: endorsements and we get up two hundred and eight five million.
Speaker 1: This is not his first time topping the list. He
Speaker 1: has topped at four times in the last seven years.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's quite a princely sum. But all the
Speaker 1: money in the world. UH, still, with our current level
Speaker 1: of medical technology, will not help you fully recover from
Speaker 1: uh decades of brutal concussions. So you win some, you
Speaker 1: lose some. And at this point still according to doctors Struck,
Speaker 1: no one has beaten the record that die at least
Speaker 1: the charioteer established way back in ancient Rome. Makes you think,
Speaker 1: would you do a chariot race? No, man, the two
Speaker 1: wheel thing freaks me out. I would totally do it.
Speaker 1: He always it seems like it would be so easy
Speaker 1: to flip over. Those horses have to counterbalance the you
Speaker 1: into the whole time, and if you if you lose
Speaker 1: the slack on the reins, it seems like your whole
Speaker 1: front end would go into the dirt, or if they've
Speaker 1: reared up a little too much, you'd flip over backwards.
Speaker 1: It just seems like a fool's Errand to me, sir,
Speaker 1: you know, I I see where you're coming from. To
Speaker 1: each their own, I think it would be a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. So if you know where I could I
Speaker 1: could just ride some chariots around. Please please let me
Speaker 1: know you can. You can hit us on our Facebook
Speaker 1: group Ridiculous Historians. You can hit me up on Instagram
Speaker 1: directly at ben Boland. Surely there's some kind of chariot
Speaker 1: simulator you could try before jumping full bore into the
Speaker 1: circus Maximus. I want to go for the gusto man,
Speaker 1: all right, Man, I respect that, I really do. Um.
Speaker 1: You can check me out on Instagram at Embryonic Insider
Speaker 1: and Ben, I think you had a comic recommendation today.
Speaker 1: I do have a comic recommendation today. I am a
Speaker 1: fan of a comic series called Britannia, which studies the
Speaker 1: story of someone named Antonius Axia, the Empire's finest. You'll
Speaker 1: love this word, folks, did tection er. He is applying
Speaker 1: scientific scrutiny and rational thought too various mysteries, usually mysteries
Speaker 1: that he is tasked with solving by the mad Emperor Nero.
Speaker 1: It's a great read. It's highly recommended. Uh let us
Speaker 1: know if you've read it and what you think about it.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, of course, thank you for checking out
Speaker 1: today show, and thank you to Casey Pegram. As always,
Speaker 1: thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Thanks to
Speaker 1: our amazing research associate Gabe Um and thanks to you
Speaker 1: Ben Boland, my friend. Hey, thanks to you Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: I got a question for you. Is this uh, this
Speaker 1: comic recommendation is sort of an alternate historical account, kind
Speaker 1: of like um like manifest destiny or one of those
Speaker 1: kind of deals without all of the tinges of supernatural stuff.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's a mystery comic and it's it's a winter.
Speaker 1: It's well done. Let us know what you think. Man,
Speaker 1: Please be sure and join us for the next episode
Speaker 1: of ridiculous History. See you next time.