History is a Freakshow - Fin Taylor & Horatio Gould - #1019

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
You are historians now.

**Fin Taylor** (0:02)
Yes, very much so.

**Horatio Gould** (0:03)
Big pivot.

**Chris Williamson** (0:04)
Yeah, hard pivot.

**Horatio Gould** (0:05)
Into academia.

**Fin Taylor** (0:06)
I mean, this is what the manosphere has come to. If you're speaking to historians, you'll get us on to talk. It doesn't matter. We can say what we want, and then people will be like, what, really?

**Horatio Gould** (0:16)
Podcasts that need academic guests, as they use all of them.

**Chris Williamson** (0:19)
This is how low the barrel is that I'm scraping.

**Horatio Gould** (0:21)
This is how your business model works, is once you've had whatever, what's his name, Graham?

**Fin Taylor** (0:25)
Graham Hancock.

**Horatio Gould** (0:26)
You've had him on four times. You have to get a new guy on.

**Chris Williamson** (0:29)
The legitimacy has declined so much that it's got to you guys.

**Fin Taylor** (0:34)
It's not clicky enough. Graham Hancock is just not...

**Horatio Gould** (0:37)
People are used to it.

**Fin Taylor** (0:37)
They need someone who's really pushing the boundaries.

**Chris Williamson** (0:41)
Have you been any more capable of predicting the future now with all of your illustrious studying of the past? Has it given you any insights about what's going on in the modern world?

**Horatio Gould** (0:49)
It's made me calmer about it.

**Chris Williamson** (0:51)
Yeah.

**Horatio Gould** (0:51)
That's just always fucked.

**Fin Taylor** (0:52)
That's true.
History for me has always been quite like a soothing thing. It's been a lot worse and it was going to carry on being like this.

**Horatio Gould** (1:01)
It's like ASMR.

**Fin Taylor** (1:02)
Because people keep saying like, you know, back in the day. What do you mean back in the day? It was awful.

**Chris Williamson** (1:07)
It's been awful.

**Horatio Gould** (1:08)
This is the best it's ever been.

**Fin Taylor** (1:09)
The nineties were slightly better.

**Horatio Gould** (1:11)
Yeah, there's four years.

**Fin Taylor** (1:12)
It's been, humans gone like this. It's gone like this and now it's like that.

**Horatio Gould** (1:15)
No, I reckon it went like that. And then it was like in between Diana and 9-11 and then it's just been.

**Fin Taylor** (1:20)
Yeah, exactly. It's been going down, but people is still like step back. It's unreal.

**Horatio Gould** (1:26)
There is coffee.

**Fin Taylor** (1:26)
I mean, you got Neutonic now.

**Chris Williamson** (1:28)
Look at that.

**Fin Taylor** (1:30)
You don't have this in the middle ages.

**Horatio Gould** (1:31)
People didn't even have that 10 years ago.

**Fin Taylor** (1:36)
Oh, we're living in the Neutonic age.

**Horatio Gould** (1:39)
This is the Neutonic age to place this for anyone listening.

**Chris Williamson** (1:42)
That is true. That is very true indeed. No, it's an interesting one. I think the fact that both America and maybe the UK as well had such a little golden era, 80s, 90s-ish, where everybody felt like living standards, stuff's getting better.

**Horatio Gould** (1:58)
End of history.

**Chris Williamson** (2:00)
But just that you have this felt pullback from then until now, but you had probably steady incline. Careful doing that.

**Horatio Gould** (2:10)
We're on the wrong set.

**Chris Williamson** (2:12)
Steady incline kind of up until then. When you compare us between that, I think everyone looks at the golden era that parents had and thinks, oh, well, wouldn't it have been lovely to have grown up in the 80s and the 90s?

**Fin Taylor** (2:22)
Yeah, I think it's before social media and stuff. And I guess that there's just a little sweet spot. But I guess if you just do history a lot, you just look at it much broader. And so you just take a much bigger step back. And it's just like, you know.

**Horatio Gould** (2:34)
Yeah, I mean, we're more likely to die naturally now than ever before.

**Chris Williamson** (2:38)
What do you mean?

**Horatio Gould** (2:39)
Well, as in like not die. I mean, obviously, there are people in your orbit who don't want to die. And that's the new frontier to conquer.

**Fin Taylor** (2:47)
People won't die.

**Horatio Gould** (2:48)
People won't die. Yeah. Good on them.

**Fin Taylor** (2:50)
They refuse to get off the fucking...

**Horatio Gould** (2:52)
I'm looking forward to it, frankly. I would like to die at some point. It's not before my time, but I do think there's a time to die.

**Fin Taylor** (2:58)
There's a time and a place.

**Horatio Gould** (3:00)
It's a time and a place. But as in, the way you would die up until about 100 years ago was probably very bad compared to now.

**Fin Taylor** (3:09)