 Hey, I don't have a joke for this cold, open, let's just go. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay, so I just got finished reading The End Is Always Near by Dan Carlin, and I really liked it. I mean, it's a bit of a departure from what I normally do on this channel, from what I normally read, but it was a fun little diversion. So basically, it is kind of a historical non-fiction book, sort of. So if you're not familiar, Dan Carlin is a podcast host, and one of the podcasts he hosts is called Hardcore History. And while he isn't a historian, he is pretty well versed in this sort of thing, and so he just will pick topics that interest him and talk about it a lot, and he will usually come at it from a different angle than what a normal historian would, and he does a very good job of trying to get into the minds of people that were around during these events and into the mindsets, and into what it really would have been like to be a person at that time. And in The End Is Always Near, he's specifically talking about the end of civilizations and the end of societies, because while we tend to think of the end of the world or the end of civilization as being something in the future, as being a result of nuclear war or something, that's already happened plenty of times in the past. Like, there have been big civilizations that have been around for hundreds or thousands of years and then collapsed very quickly, or not necessarily quickly, but they have collapsed and left a big vacuum, and then people have to pick up the pieces. That's something that's happened plenty of times before. And basically the thesis of this book, if there can even be a thesis, is that, well, most of them didn't think that the end was gonna be coming anytime soon, but it still happened, and what would that be like for us if that were to happen today? And he tackles this from a couple of different angles. Like, he looks at it from a barbarian invasion perspective, barbarian invasion perspective, and specifically looks at the end of the Roman Empire. He looks at nuclear war, or the possibility of nuclear war, basically from the end of World War II up until today. He looks at the Bronze Age collapse, he looks at the collapse of the Assyrian Empire, he looks at the Black Death, and all of these are pretty well contained and they're not super long or anything. And that's both this book's probably biggest strength and it's biggest weakness at the same time, because on, okay, so Dan, like I said, is not a historian. And if you listen to his podcast, which I think you should, I think it's pretty good, if you've listened to it, he is very, well, he's very good at getting emotion out there and getting the intensity of certain moments across with his voice. But as a writer, he's not nearly as good. Now, let's not to say he's bad necessarily, because this is written more for an average person or for someone who's somewhat knowledgeable about history, but it's not a historian, because I personally have read plenty of history stuff and a lot of it is just really, really dry and even if it's important information that's there, it's difficult to get across to your average person because it's just confusing and dense and he manages to bypass that. Like he gets information to you in an easy to read, easy to understand, easy to digest way. But at the same time, he's only really scratching the surface of a lot of this. So just keep that in mind as you're going. And honestly, I would say that about a lot of popular history stuff, like especially on YouTube, they mostly just scratch the surface, they don't go that deep into it, but you know, there's other resources out there for you. But anyways, yeah, so Dan only scratches the surface with his writing, which is good because it makes it easy to get through. But at the same time, it's just, it's not that great at getting across a whole lot of information at once, I should say. Because there is hardly a page in here that does not have an asterisk or two or three on there and then have a big note at the bottom. And while that's fine in moderation, it is all over this book. And I had to continuously like read something, oh, here's something else to say and then look at the note at the bottom and then back and forth and back and forth. And sometimes it's necessary, don't get me wrong, but other times like it could have just been put in the sentence that the asterisk goes in. And I think this is partially due to his past as a radio presenter and his present as a podcast host because when you're speaking to someone, you can have a quick aside like, and oh, that also reminds me of this thing and then go off on that for just a sentence or two and then switch right back and that's fine. But when you're reading, it doesn't work quite as well. Another issue I had with this is that most of the subjects he covers here is stuff he's already covered on his podcast. So there wasn't a whole lot here that was new for me. Like if you have not heard his podcast or if you have not listened to very much of it, then a lot of this would probably still be new, but I was disappointed by that. And it's not a very long book either, and a huge part of it is just him talking about nuclear war. I think like a third of the book is just nuclear war stuff. And don't get me wrong, that's kind of interesting at first, but it really, really drags on. And it was frustrating because there were other parts that I wish he had talked more about. I wish he had talked much more about plagues because believe me, it's specifically the Black Death in Europe. You really cannot understate just how much that changed society and how much that changed the church and how much that led to other things that happened in the future. It was a huge, huge deal. And he only talks about that a little bit, so I was disappointed by that. And well, there aren't any other subjects in here that I wish he went into more detail on, but my personal favorite out of all of them was the Bronze Age Collapse because that one... I mean, I just like that subject. You know, it's a very mysterious thing that happened, and he was looking at it sort of from a modern perspective and looking at, well, hey, if something like this happened today, here's what it might be the equivalent of back then. And so that was neat. The only thing that I really wish this book had put more effort into, or the only other thing that I wish this book had put more effort into, is just trying to get into the mindsets of people that lived at the times he's talking about because he does that a little bit and he's much better at it on his podcast. Don't get me wrong, but in this you could spend a lot more time talking about how, for example, the ancient Egyptians viewed the world or you could talk about how medieval Europeans viewed the world and how the Black Death affected that view of the world or something like that. And he does that somewhat near the end when he's talking about World War II and stuff because I think those are people that are much more similar to us, culturally and societally. Societally is that word, whatever. Those are people that in a lot of cases are still alive, so we can understand them a bit better and it's just like looking at, we'll look at the circumstances they were in and here's why they acted the way they acted, but I just wish there had been more of that. That's about all I have to say though. This is a quick read. It's easy to get through and I think if you're a fan of history but you're also not a history major or an actual historian or anything, you would probably like this just fine. It's not a super focused book and it's not the best I've ever read, but I really liked it. And you know, it's a bit of a departure for me, like I said. It's nonfiction and all that, but it's still neat to get this guy's perspective on things because he's not a historian. So thanks for watching. Please like, comment, subscribe. Thanks to all of my patrons, especially Appo Savalainen, Brothers Santodes, Christopher Hawkins, Joseph Pendergraft, and Tobacco Crow. You guys are pretty cool. 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