"Secret BANKERS!" - Roman Empire Expert on Alexander, BLOODLINES & The Vatican | Jeremy Slate • 418
Julian Dorey · 6 May 2026 · 3h 1m
Guest: Jeremy Slate · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
A history-focused conversation between the host and a guest who studied classics and ancient religion traces threads from Alexander the Great through the Roman Empire and into modern political and financial anxieties. The guest lays out how Alexander's conquests fused Greek, Persian, and Babylonian ideas of divine kingship, how Augustus later borrowed that model to legitimize one-man rule in Rome, and how Rome's own mythology, religious flexibility, and treatment of conquered peoples shaped its long arc. A large stretch of the discussion covers the third-century crisis, currency debasement, coin design as propaganda, and the emperors who tried and failed to fix inflation, with the guest arguing that monetary collapse, loss of border and cultural identity, and short-term political thinking are the three recurring drivers of civilizational decline. The conversation moves into the Council of Nicaea, the slow spread of Christianity, and the shift of imperial power away from Rome toward Constantinople. From there the pair draw explicit comparisons to contemporary America: the 17th Amendment's effect on state representation, the Federal Reserve, generational theory (the Fourth Turning), banking dynasties like the Fuggers and Medicis, and the Epstein files as a modern illustration of elite impunity. Throughout, both speakers stress that historical patterns are suggestive rather than deterministic, and that local action and cultural cohesion matter more than obsessing over national politics.
Ask this show a question Watch on YouTube
What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- Alexander the Great and Hephaestion
- Hellenization and Roman religious pluralism
- Alexander's rise, divinity, and proskynesis
- Augustus consolidating imperial power
- Sources and reliability of ancient histories
- Bloodlines, inbreeding, and royal intermarriage
- Roman monetary debasement and the crisis of the third century
- Epstein files as modern elite corruption
- Constantine, Christianity's legalization, and the Council of Nicaea
- The five good emperors and Marcus Aurelius
- Fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476
- The Fourth Turning and generational cycles
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“Romans were at 15,000% inflation by 284 AD.”
“there is no greater example of where the evil of that comes in than what we are seeing in these Epstein files.”