Doug Stanhope
speaker
535 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Jun 2024
last heard Feb 2025
Doug Stanhope’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The Startup Ideas Podcast · 4 microSaaS ideas you can build to make $100k/month · 3 Feb 2025
podcast
God damn it. That guy was great. He's great. Done again. Yeah. I'm sorry. There's a million shout outs that I wanted to make on this and I didn't get to all of them. But that was nice because I've heard the name a million times. But to see that and then it was so confusing when he would like, are you playing Bill Maher on the fucking screen or is he doing it? He's doing that exact. He's that good.
Mike, what's his name? And Henry Phillips. Mike Judge? No, no, Mike. He's Mike McRae. Oh, yeah. He was the one who would be on Stern and could do a perfect... It's always great when they can do a perfect... A guy you don't know. Sorry, when you do that... I'm trying to get him to pull it up. Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney?
You almost voted for Mitt Romney because Mike McCrae could do this... How do you do someone who doesn't really sound like anything, but he could do it? And...
So Mike McCrae and Henry Phillips were on a podcast where he was doing Henry. Yeah. And it was back in the audio days. And you really couldn't tell who's talking to who. They're talking to each other.
The problem is no one remembers what Mitt Romney sounds like, so you can't do them. But to hear them back and back.
Let me go get my fucking... Oh, I got my bodega cat. That's all I came for. Hey, my special discount meet is free on YouTube, and this is the only podcast that I am doing promotion for it. Oh, my God. So if it fails, every click it doesn't get... It's on us.
You know what I didn't know? People give you money on YouTube comments. Is that right? I never read the comments, but then I'm like, yeah. You go through the comments, and it's like Czechoslovakia. I got like 1,000 Czechoslovakian nuggets or whatever they're called. Fucking dogs or wangs or whatever.
Yeah, it's a great one. I'm just looking at everything center, hall, theater, and then the egg. That's the one I would like.
Yeah. What's that? It's just a- Tell me off the air. I'll tell you off the air. I've tried to close this like five times.
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And then he gets murdered by his own guards at the age of 28. And in that time, he doesn't win any great military victories. He's not responsible for any great monuments. And yet, as you say, I mean, he has to be up there with Julius Caesar, Augustus.
Nero as one of the most famous Romans who's ever lived. And as you say, I mean, right up to the present day, complete byword for cruelty. And also for sexual depravity. Yeah. Because he was, what was it, that thing, that kind of sub-porn film. From the 70s. Where John Gilgit embarrassed himself by... Sitting in a bath.
So, yeah, so the kind of the flavour of scandal and depravity hangs over him. And some of the episodes from his life, I mean, you know, they're very well known. So he's said to have slept with his sisters, turned his palace into a brothel. Yep. He likes to humiliate senators, so he'll have them kind of run by his chariot or serve him at dinner, kind of dressed up as slaves.
The consuls forget his birthday, and so he sacks them. And probably the most notorious story of all at least this is how it's understood, is that he made his horse in Catartus a consul. Yes. Actually, that's not quite what Suetonius says, but we'll be looking at that and perhaps teasing out what that whole story might have been.
And when you were reading that, people on the YouTube will have been able to see that, but when you talked about having throats cut, you turned and kind of grinned at me in a menacing way. And I think there is a slight element of kind of very, very dark comedy there. About me or about Caligula, or are we the same?
About you, about Suetonius' account, and perhaps about Caligula himself, wouldn't you say? I mean, there's a kind of quality of grand guignol. About all three of these people. So I think Suetonius is clearly revealing. I think there's a certain quality of black humor there. And actually, when I was translating, I felt it very, very kind of vividly.
But it's clear that this is often Caligula's as well. So there was one particular account which I absolutely loved because it actually reminded me of the malevolent dwarf Quilp in Charles Dickens's old curiosity shop. And it's Suetonius' description of Caligula standing in front of a mirror.
Though he had a naturally off-putting and hideous face, he worked diligently in front of a mirror to make it even more so, contorting it into all kinds of fearsome expressions. Yeah, that's what I do. People who've watched the YouTube will be able to see. So I guess the question is, pretty much as it was where we were talking about Tiberius yesterday, is what is going on?
How do we explain all the horrors and the depravities and these kind of grotesque anecdotes that sometimes shade into the kind of the blackest kind of comedy? Did they actually happen? Yeah. If they did, what's the explanation? Was Caligula mad? Was he a sadist? Or is it a bit like we decided, I think, that Tiberius was? Has he been the victim of fake news?
Yeah. And I guess that's why Suetonius' portrait of Caligula has been so influential, because it absolutely that idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Caligula seems to be the model illustration of that. So since Suetonius is so important to our understanding of Caligula and it's played such an important role in propagating the image of him as the kind of ultimate mad, bad emperor.
Showing 321–340 of 535 · page 17 of 27
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