Andrew Schulz

300.

Yeah, where the Greeks repel the Persians.

And then that causes this explosion of Greek identity and thought and imagination and philosophy.

There's so much.

It's the birth of comedy itself happens right after that.

The first stand-up comics in the world are in Athens, in the theater of Athens in Greece.

And it was such a separation from the ancient world that existed before that.

It was the only time where you had these people who were not ruled over by a king.

They're ruled over by politicians who are elected, or maybe they assassinate all their political rivals and they become elected.

But they could...

everyone you would announce when there would be a show there'd be some you know you'd go watch plays like all day long some of them would be an actual theatrical play some of them would be like a comedy stand-up thing this was big in alexandria they would have they would have comics like stand up and just rip on the emperor of rome like all day long and people get together and just say the most heinous jokes about the emperor of rome and the word would get back to the emperor and he'd come down and just slaughter like 20 000 people

Yeah, because of, you know... Cancel culture, bro.

Cancel culture.

We're doing all right.

In Athens, you could stand out in the theater and you could wear... Everybody would wear a mask and a robe so you wouldn't quite know who is saying what.

And so you could stand out there and you could make jokes criticizing your own politicians to their face as they're sitting in the crowd and have the whole crowd erupt.

And it was like... It was just a...

It's just this revolutionary way of thought in the ancient world that happens in Greece.

And it spreads through there.

So Alexandria is like the most powerful, wealthy culmination of all of that where you have, you know, it's gone from just like naturalistic philosophy of what is nature itself to categorizing philosophy to coming up with different genres of study and they're organized and then, you know, it becomes like similar to a modern day university.