The Jeremy Ryan Slate Show

Most people imagine the Roman Empire collapsing in a single moment.

Barbarians at the gates.

Cities burning.

The empire ending overnight.

But that’s not what actually happened.

In the year 260 AD, Rome didn’t fall.

It split.

After the capture of Emperor Valerian by the Persian king Shapur I, the Roman world fractured into three rival states.

In the west, the general Postumus created the Gallic Empire, ruling Gaul, Britain, and Spain with stronger borders and better money than Rome itself.

In the east, the wealthy trading city of Palmyra rose under Odaenathus and later Queen Zenobia, controlling the empire’s richest trade routes and eventually seizing Egypt.

What remained in the center was a weakened Roman state struggling with civil war, currency collapse, and a rapidly shrinking tax base.

For nearly fifteen years, the Roman Empire existed as three separate empires.

This is the Roman Pattern.

When a central state can no longer provide security, stable money, and legitimate authority, the edges stop listening.

They build their own systems.

In this episode we explore:

• The capture of Emperor Valerian  

• The creation of the Gallic Empire  

• The rise of Zenobia and Palmyra  

• Rome’s catastrophic currency debasement  

• How Aurelian violently reunited the empire  

• Why the Rome that survived was never the same  

History doesn’t repeat.

But it rhymes.

Subscribe for more episodes exploring the hidden forces behind Rome’s rise and fall.

Inside London is a one-square-mile entity older than Parliament itself. It has its own mayor. Its own police. Its own flag. And a permanent representative embedded inside the British legislature who has never been elected.

This is the City of London Corporation — and for centuries, it financed the British Empire.

But when that empire collapsed after World War II, something unusual happened. The land empire ended. The financial empire didn't.

In 1957, a quiet regulatory decision birthed the Eurodollar market — and the City reinvented itself as the center of global offshore banking. Using jurisdictions like Jersey, Cayman, and the British Virgin Islands, it built what researchers call "the spider's web": a hidden empire for moving capital outside normal regulation.

The old empire ruled territory. The new empire rules liquidity.

This episode investigates:

• The medieval charter that still protects the Square Mile

• The Remembrancer — the City's unelected agent inside Parliament

• How the Eurodollar market rewired global finance

• The birth of offshore banking and the spider's web

• Why the British Empire didn't disappear — it went underground

In March of 235 AD, the murder of Emperor Severus Alexander sparked the Crisis of the Third Century—a 50-year free fall that nearly destroyed the Roman Empire. It wasn't just an assassination; it was the moment the Roman army realized its true power: if they could make an emperor, they could unmake one.

What followed was a half-century of chaos that redefined the ancient world. This video covers the brutal timeline of Rome’s near-collapse:

• 26 Emperors in 50 Years: The era of the "Barracks Emperors."

• Hyperinflation & Currency Debasement: When silver was washed off copper coins to pay debts.

• Civil War: Rome splitting into the Gallic Empire, the Palmyrene Empire, and the Central Empire.

• The Alemanni Invasion: When the German tribes crossed the Rhine.

This was Rome’s 50-year free fall. And it started because one leader tried to solve a hard border crisis with a soft solution. The Roman Pattern is simple: Under stress, civilizations adapt. But some adaptations hollow out the system from within.

Was Severus Alexander weak? Or did the Roman system destroy itself reacting to him?

History doesn’t repeat. But it does rhyme.

If you search the Rothschild name online, you’ll find a cartoon villain.

A secret cabal.

A shadow government.

A family that supposedly controls the weather.

That story is fiction.

The real story is more unsettling — because it doesn’t rely on magic.

It relies on systems.

In this episode, we trace how the Rothschild family built the architecture of modern finance:

• A private intelligence network that moved information faster than kings

• Cross-border gold logistics during the Napoleonic Wars

• Financing the defeat of Napoleon

• Inventing the sovereign bond market

• Saving the Bank of England during the 1825 crisis

They didn’t rule Europe by secret handshake.

They industrialized government debt.

And for a brief window in the 19th century, if a king wanted to fight a war — he needed their capital.

This isn’t a conspiracy story.

It’s a blueprint story.

And the blueprint outlived the family.

Rome didn’t collapse overnight.

It made a decision.

In 211 AD, Emperor Septimius Severus gave his sons a final piece of advice:

“Enrich the soldiers and despise all others.”

That sentence rewired the Roman economy.

Military pay exploded. Silver coins were quietly debased. Taxes strained. Inflation spiraled. And within fifty years, Rome’s currency was mostly copper wearing a thin silver mask.

This wasn’t an accident. It was arithmetic.

In this episode, we break down:

• The Praetorian Guard auctioning the empire  

• The 50% pay raise that destabilized the treasury  

• How Roman currency debasement really worked  

• Caracalla’s Antoninianus and hidden inflation  

• Why the Third Century Crisis began with payroll  

Rome didn’t fall because of barbarians.

It fell because it taught itself that money was negotiable.

History doesn’t repeat. But it does rhyme.

Subscribe to see the pattern before it repeats again.

Are we actually less capable of handling collapse than past generations—or are we just adapted for a different kind of world?

In this conversation, Dan Carlin (Hardcore History / The End Is Always Near) breaks down why modern society may be more fragile than we think: not only because of disease, war, or shortages—but because fear and system dependence can stop essential services fast. We talk about the Spanish Flu (1918–1920), “toughness” as a moving target, and how complexity creates new failure points.

In this episode:

• Why fear can break society before disease does

• Spanish Flu as a warning for modern cities

• What “toughness” actually means (and why it’s hard to define)

• Redundancy vs complexity: why modern systems fail differently

• Collapse scenarios we can’t predict—until they arrive

Question for you: If something major hit tomorrow, what breaks first—social trust, supply chains, policing, or healthcare?

Subscribe for more investigations into the hidden forces behind history—same playbook, different century.

Most people think collapse is an explosion.

A wall falls. A city burns. A single date on a timeline.

But that’s almost never how it happens.

Rome didn’t “fall in 476.” That’s the lie.

Rome faded — slowly — through a series of rational “fixes” that hollowed the system from the inside.

In this flagship episode, I explain what I call **The Roman Pattern**:

When a civilization gets stressed, it adapts… and those adaptations repeat in predictable ways.

Rome’s pressure points were always the same:

1) Money (debasement → inflation → trust collapse)

2) Borders & people (migration stress → deals → fragmentation)

3) Power (emergency authority → permanent rule by decree)

And here’s the twist:

Rome survived again and again — by becoming something else.

Until “Roman” stopped meaning anything real.

If you want to spot collapse signals in real-time — and understand what today is rhyming with — this is the foundation.

Subscribe for more episodes breaking down the patterns of empire decline.

👇 QUESTION FOR YOU:

Are we living in our own “Third Century”… or are we already closer to Rome in 470?

In 1938, Nazi officials stripped the Warburg name from a Hamburg bank.

At the same time, another Warburg was embedded inside the architecture of the American financial system.

This episode investigates how one banking family helped design the operating system of modern money—and why that system outlived empires, republics, and dictatorships.

From merchant banking in Hamburg, to German war finance, to the creation of the Federal Reserve, the Warburg story reveals a quieter form of power:

• Design the rules of credit

• Build institutions labeled “independent”

• Become indispensable to every regime

They served the Kaiser.

They navigated Weimar.

They were persecuted by the Nazis.

They returned after the war.

And the central banking system they helped shape became the backbone of the world’s reserve currency.

This isn’t a story about conspiracy.

It’s a story about incentives, institutions, and survival.

Same playbook. Different century.

In 260 AD, the unthinkable happened.

A Roman emperor was captured alive by a foreign enemy.

Not killed in battle.

Not ransomed.

Not executed.

Instead, Emperor Valerian was publicly humiliated—forced to kneel while the Persian king used him as a human footstool.

This wasn’t just a personal tragedy. It was a symbol of something far bigger: the Roman Empire was breaking.

This video takes you inside the Third Century Crisis, when Rome was collapsing under:

• Hyperinflation caused by currency debasement

• Endless wars on every frontier

• A devastating plague killing thousands per day

• Political chaos and emperors murdered by their own armies

Valerian’s capture shocked the ancient world and shattered the myth of Roman invincibility.

And here’s the disturbing part:

The patterns that destroyed Rome didn’t disappear.

They repeat.

Watch to understand how Rome reached this moment, what happened to Valerian after his capture, and why this humiliation marked the beginning of the end.

History doesn’t repeat.

But it does rhyme.

Subscribe to see the empire fall in real time.

On September 21st, 1327, King Edward II of England was officially murdered at Berkeley Castle in one of the most infamous executions in medieval history.

But there’s a problem.

No one ever saw his face at the funeral.

His own brother believed he was still alive—and was executed for trying to rescue him.  

Senior nobles and clergy believed the same.  

And a letter from an Italian bishop claims Edward escaped and lived for years as a hermit in Europe.

So what really happened?

In this investigation, we examine the evidence behind one of medieval England’s greatest conspiracies—and why the official story may have been staged to protect power, legitimacy, and control.

More importantly, we trace the *playbook*:

• Remove the threat  

• Control the narrative  

• Prevent independent verification  

• Eliminate anyone who questions it  

• Lock the story in place  

This isn’t ancient history.

It’s a system that still works.

Same playbook. Different century.

👇 Drop your theory in the comments:

Did Edward II die at Berkeley Castle—or was his death staged?

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