2:00

with, you know, unicorns and you do all that stuff.

2:02

So like winged horses, of course, you're going into that

2:04

and then you get that deep dive into Greek mythology

2:06

and then somehow you discover the pyramids. And then I

2:09

was obsessed with Egypt for most

2:11

of my adolescence. And so kind of

2:13

just spawned off of that. And it

2:15

never, despite my mother's best efforts

2:17

to make me a lawyer, it just never went

2:19

away. I mean, I

2:22

would say based on comparing

2:24

the life and job satisfaction of the

2:27

archaeologists I know versus the lawyers I

2:29

know, I'm going to go ahead and

2:31

say you probably made the right decision.

2:33

Like there's the, like it's, I got

2:35

nothing against the law. I know many

2:38

wonderful lawyers, but none of them are

2:40

as satisfied with their lives as the

2:42

archaeologists that I've had the pleasure of

2:44

knowing. This is true, but

2:46

they have like financial security and

2:49

that is something that we all strive for.

2:52

That's true. That's true. Like being able to

2:54

kind of move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs

2:56

is nice. There's a lot to be said

2:58

for that. Yeah, exactly. Then

3:00

you can do the archaeology on the side. And

3:02

then we'll be, maybe some, we just, we got

3:05

a little bit wrong, but it's, you know, it

3:07

is something that you just get

3:09

really happy doing. And that's, it's that quality of

3:11

life that you're saying, like you just get very

3:13

satisfied with it. Yeah. Every once in a while

3:15

I find myself getting jealous of those like 19th

3:18

century antiquarians who had like independent landed wealth, and

3:20

then they would just go out and look for

3:22

cool stuff. Like that seems like maybe a more

3:24

sustainable model. Yes. A hundred

3:26

percent. But you know, they, if we could do

3:29

that again, but like for the right reasons and

3:31

with the best intentions

3:33

and working with the actual like, you know,

3:35

cultures that they were exploiting instead of like,

3:38

you know, instead of actually exploiting them, I'd

3:40

be very happy to bring that back. Yeah.

3:42

You don't, you don't want to pull an Elgin marbles

3:44

type of deal. No, no, you don't want to just

3:46

go there for the sake of going there. You want

3:49

to bring the money and benefit the community, but also

3:51

have your phone at the same time. There has to

3:53

be a happy medium somewhere. So

3:55

you mentioned that you spent a lot

3:57

of time thinking about Egypt. Do you

4:00

have a. particular favorite period of Egyptian

4:02

history? Oh,

4:04

that's difficult. I had

4:07

always planned to kind of do more

4:09

of the pre-Dynastic Egypt, but, the

4:13

pre-Dynastic I would say is really interesting

4:15

and fun because it's not as well

4:17

known and studied, but I do have

4:19

to say I'm a sucker for the

4:21

18th dynasty, like everyone else with

4:24

Hatshepsut and King Tut and everybody there,

4:26

like the Middle Kingdom is great, but

4:28

the New Kingdom just is

4:30

a reason why it's so popular, I would say.

4:33

So for Egypt, I am the basic person for

4:35

that. I am. Well,

4:37

the 18th dynasty is great. And because

4:39

on top of everything else, on top of

4:42

having the tomb of Tutankhamun and all of

4:44

those fantastic mortuary temples and whatnot, you've also

4:46

got just Akhenaten right there in the middle

4:48

of it, doing the wildest stuff you can

4:51

imagine. Yes, it's

4:53

just a wild time in Egyptian history. And

4:55

I know that's why it's the most studied

4:57

and you know it, but it is just,

4:59

it's really cool. And then, yeah,

5:02

I would say that's the biggest things really for

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columbia.com to learn more. You

6:08

do a lot of stuff on YouTube. What

6:10

does YouTube offer as a medium for

6:12

engaging the public? What made you decide

6:14

to do public facing work? What do

6:16

you like about it? For

6:19

me, the biggest thing is obviously the

6:21

accessibility of YouTube and being

6:23

able to connect

6:27

with people that necessarily

6:30

wouldn't have always had that

6:32

opportunity to engage with

6:35

the past or learn archaeology in that

6:37

sense. I started the channel actually

6:39

to try and make the videos

6:41

that I wanted as an undergrad way

6:44

back when. When YouTube was new

6:47

and exciting and people were doing weird things

6:49

on it, there were no videos on how

6:51

to decipher

6:54

half-life for carbon-14 dating or things that you

6:56

just needed on your midterm. Nowadays, you can

6:58

just put anything in and YouTube

7:01

will teach you, but there isn't a lot of

7:03

that for archaeology still and the basics of it.

7:05

That's how I started it going. These are the

7:07

videos that I wanted to make to

7:09

help other students thrive and pass the

7:11

midterm and do all of the homework

7:14

for them essentially. Then

7:16

it turned into being something

7:18

that I realized that I could reach a

7:21

lot more people and engage in different ways

7:23

and teach them more nuance about the past

7:25

because History Channel, all these things,

7:27

they always have an agenda. There's always one

7:29

angle on it. Most of

7:31

it is treasure or mysteries or

7:34

something fantastical, but there

7:37

is something about the magic and the mundane. I

7:40

love bringing that to

7:42

life and maybe using these bigger things as

7:44

jumping off points, but then bringing back in

7:46

that nuance and saying, yeah, this is really

7:48

cool, but here's the real reason why it's

7:50

really cool. I've been having

7:52

the best time over the last, God,

7:54

it must be eight years now, just

7:57

making funny videos and educating, but

7:59

then also just having a

10:00

little bit deeper. And that's why I always also put

10:02

links and things and resources. Like if you don't believe

10:04

me, if you want to try something, go on over

10:06

here. Here's all the resources. Here's

10:09

everything that's peer reviewed. Learn for yourself, think for

10:11

yourself, come to your own conclusions. And

10:13

that way we can all just kind of build a

10:15

better society. That sounds very,

10:18

very optimistic. I don't

10:21

think I can do that with my YouTube videos,

10:23

but we can try. Well, but but archaeology is

10:25

a wonderful thing and

10:27

history to a lesser extent. I think I

10:29

think archaeology like feeds into this

10:32

more. But like at the

10:34

most basic level, it gives you empathy for

10:36

other people and makes you

10:38

think about the world

10:40

from a perspective that is not your

10:42

own. Right. And the

10:45

pseudoscientific stuff, like

10:47

what I find so personally offensive about

10:49

it is that it erases that

10:52

sense of otherness in the past. Like

10:54

it's it's purely just you putting your

10:56

own present day nonsense onto

10:58

past people instead of trying to understand the

11:00

world from their perspective or see it as

11:02

they saw it or, you know, live as

11:04

they lived, like understand the decisions that they

11:06

made. Like that's what bothers me

11:08

so much about it on top of everything else.

11:11

It's like you're just erasing the actual people who

11:13

did this stuff. One

11:15

hundred percent, they really just go on for

11:17

this like they have an idea and they

11:20

did blanket on there and then everyone just

11:22

forgets the actual humans that

11:24

lived during these times and built these fantastical

11:26

structures. They just the

11:29

person itself is always taken out of the

11:31

equation. And that's what makes archaeology so great

11:33

is that we can put the people back

11:36

into these equations and really get to know

11:38

them on as much of a

11:40

personal level as we can and get that

11:42

connection that we need in order to properly

11:44

appreciate it and understand it. So

11:48

so kind of on that note, in

11:50

in both your your new book and your

11:52

YouTube content, you go all over the place

11:55

through space and time. Archaeology

11:57

as a discipline tends to be pretty

11:59

specialized. But what are the advantages of

12:01

not being specialized, of being able to

12:03

talk about different times, places, cultures? What

12:06

does that offer? I

12:11

would say it's actually a little bit harder

12:14

to become more of that specialist because you're

12:16

never obviously going to be able to read

12:20

every thing or different sort

12:22

of viewpoint or resource that

12:25

the specialists get to know. So you're never

12:27

gonna get to know as much, but I

12:29

love kind of having that more of a

12:31

general view because you get to kind

12:33

of see the bigger picture. You get

12:35

to sort of go, okay, I've done a little

12:37

bit of a deep dive into this

12:39

one culture in South America. And I

12:42

was gonna go all the way over

12:44

to East Asia and go into

12:46

this one. And then most people

12:48

who are so specialized, they

12:50

don't get to really look outside their

12:52

front door, really, sometimes even past the

12:55

end of their nose if they're really

12:57

specialized. And you might be missing

12:59

out on an idea or

13:01

some sort of concept, some sort of

13:04

crossover, perspective, connection, viewpoint, whatever you wanna

13:06

call it. There's these connections

13:08

that can sort of be made all

13:11

over the world with kind of examining it. And

13:13

you realize, of course, people have been the same

13:15

all over the place for thousands of years. We

13:18

haven't changed at all, maybe just our technology

13:21

and how we view things. But I

13:24

love being able to kind of just take what I've

13:26

known from

13:28

one section, like one area and bring

13:30

it to another, but not

13:33

using letting that like cloud my bias. I think

13:35

we get a lot of biases when we specialize

13:37

as well, because we think of like certain ways

13:39

things have already been done for the last 50

13:41

years within this area of archeology, or

13:44

how we always looked at certain

13:46

artifacts and different interpretations. And then if

13:48

you kind of come at it from

13:50

another perspective and you're able to allow

13:52

yourself to look outside the box and

13:55

use those comparisons, again, not to be like,

13:57

oh, the Olmec are the exact same as

13:59

the Navigator. habitians, but sort of just using

14:01

different schools of thought and different ways of

14:03

looking at things, you'll be able

14:06

to sort of take a step back and maybe

14:08

come up with something new and kind of just

14:11

get a better appreciation for the more, again,

14:13

more of those nuances. It

14:16

helps you ask better questions, right? When you're looking

14:18

at your evidence, it's really

14:20

easy when you're stuck in one particular

14:22

field or region or place

14:24

or time to have all of your questions

14:26

being dictated by the questions that other people

14:29

are asking about the material. So

14:31

like in early China, everybody's worried about

14:33

the state and like the

14:35

origins of Chinese civilization. And like, is that

14:38

actually the most interesting stuff that the evidence

14:40

has to tell us about that world? Not

14:43

at all. Like that's not anywhere

14:46

close to being the most interesting stuff. But

14:48

if you spend your entire life working in

14:51

the archaeology of early China, you're not

14:53

going to hear a lot about the

14:55

other concerns that people in other disciplines

14:58

have about you know, proto urbanism or,

15:00

you know, health outcomes or environmental

15:03

and ecological questions, stuff like that.

15:06

Oh, yeah, for sure. Everyone has their own

15:09

biases in their field. And you

15:11

kind of need to make sure you kind of look

15:13

outside every time to just check your bias and check

15:16

your way of working and understanding and learning. And

15:19

I do always appreciate like an

15:21

archaeologist who is very

15:24

niche and very specialized but isn't afraid to go

15:26

like have that conversation with

15:28

someone who's specialized in something completely different and

15:30

take something from that and bring it into

15:33

their own research. Pottery

15:35

guys get a bad rap, right? Because

15:38

that is so because that's so

15:40

specialized. And you know, like

15:42

if you get like being able to

15:44

pick up a fragment of pottery and tell

15:47

from the fabric and the shape and the

15:49

decoration, like when and where it comes

15:51

from down to a very precise way. That's

15:53

a really, really specialized skill. But like, I

15:56

always appreciate the pottery guys who have

15:58

who also look at other pottery outside. Everybody,

18:00

like every archeologist has

18:02

to have some kind of close encounter with

18:04

that pottery kind and then realize that they

18:06

don't want to be a pottery person. Yeah.

18:10

Yeah. It's like,

18:12

it's pretty, I get it. Like even as a ceramics

18:14

conservator, I look at some stuff and I'm like,

18:17

I could live without this. This

18:20

doesn't, I feel really bad saying that sometimes

18:23

I'll look at something like, that doesn't need

18:25

to be conserved. I don't like it. It's

18:27

kind of ugly. Usually it's not ancient stuff

18:29

just before any more archeologists come at me.

18:31

It's more historical things with really gaudy colors

18:34

and bulbous fruit, but still, I'd still be

18:36

like, no. I could have

18:38

done without this period. How bulbous does a

18:40

fruit need to be for you to call

18:42

it bulbous on a new pot? If

18:46

it's on one of those big ceramic plates,

18:48

even just the size of a plum is

18:50

quite bulbous to me. I'm like,

18:52

that's too much. It's too much for a

18:54

very large ornate plate. I just

18:56

don't like it. It's my preference. I apologize

18:59

to people who like it, but it's not

19:01

me. Well, look, there's nothing that says we

19:03

must grant people in the past, the agency,

19:05

not only to do great things, but also

19:07

to do stupid things and having bad taste

19:10

at various points in history. Like we have

19:12

to give them the agency to have had

19:14

bad taste. Yes. They need to

19:16

figure it out on their own. They have to experiment

19:19

like us. When we look back on our trends from

19:21

20 years ago, we're like, oh God. Hopefully

19:24

no one looks at something like ours and I could

19:26

be like, we could have done without that. Well,

19:29

we could have actually like juicy track seats could have. We could

19:31

have done without juicy track seats in the early 2000s. You're

19:34

talking about the scenery of my undergrad

19:36

years, right? Yeah.

19:39

I'm thinking about like medieval shoes, like the ones

19:41

that got real long and really pointed. And you're

19:43

like, oh, this is a mistake, man. It's

19:46

impractical. What are we doing? Yeah. Nobody

19:49

needs to like pen a 20

19:51

page defensive gene code genes. Like

19:54

we don't, we don't have to do that. No,

19:56

definitely not. It's

19:58

just, fashions are. I think it's mostly fashion

20:00

that I really look at for, like

20:03

even just for history. Like the really

20:05

tall shoes that were really popular in France, the

20:07

Chopines or whatever, that were like three meters tall.

20:09

And what was the point? You're

20:12

like on stilts for no reason. It's not comfortable.

20:16

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on your first three orders. So

21:44

to talk about your book, so the other

21:46

ancient civilizations, which I really enjoyed, I

21:49

loved how broadly it went, all the different

21:51

cultures it covered. You talk about

21:53

the Jomon of Japan, you talk about the Akkadian

21:56

empire, you talk about Great Zimbabwe. Other

21:59

than... The

24:00

Una teacher, it's a Czech word and it's just,

24:03

I can't do it. I have to look

24:05

it up every time. I think you nailed it.

24:07

You nailed it. That's an Una teacher. Una

24:10

teacher. Okay, good. Before

24:12

I really looked it up, I just was like, the Una

24:14

teacher, you know, whenever you're reading it out loud and you're

24:16

like, this is bad. But

24:18

the Una teacher were my

24:20

favorite. I was always obsessed with the

24:22

Nebra Sky disc, but I

24:25

never thought about the people

24:27

that made it, which

24:30

is another thing, I guess, with this book to you.

24:32

I see these artifacts and they're great and they're really

24:34

pretty and you just don't really get to, you go,

24:36

oh, it's from Germany. That's it. But

24:38

then you get to learn about the entire culture. That

24:41

one came out of me like really easily, I

24:44

guess, you know, writing certain chapters. They just are

24:46

really easy. I loved going

24:48

into it and learning more

24:50

about not just the Nebra Sky disc, but like the

24:52

whole culture of the

24:55

Una teacher and their,

24:57

you know, their bronze, but also

24:59

the amber beads and their trading

25:01

and their princely tombs were just

25:03

absolutely amazing. So

25:05

they were definitely one of the top ones. And

25:07

then another one that kind of

25:09

stuck up on me that I didn't expect to

25:12

just become obsessed with are

25:14

the Nok from Nigeria. You know,

25:16

we don't know too much about them, but just their

25:19

ceramics are absolutely stunning just that

25:21

the faces and the eyes, they

25:23

just look alive and hearing about

25:26

how they had iron

25:28

and they couldn't figure out how they had iron.

25:31

And it was just really cool to learn something like

25:33

that. Like I've never done that part of

25:36

Africa before. So kind of getting, again, out of your

25:38

comfort zone and learning about something

25:40

that you just never normally would have looked at.

25:42

And then you just become obsessed with it, which

25:44

is, you know, good and bad. That's

25:47

I mean, but that's that's the wonderful

25:49

benefit of these kinds of things is

25:51

finding something about what you knew

25:53

very little and being able to kind of sink

25:55

into it like a comfortable chair and just learn,

25:57

just to learn a whole new area. you

26:00

brought up the Una Teacha because speaking

26:02

of lesser known, even though this

26:04

is a culture of the European

26:06

Bronze Age, there's

26:09

no written records. There's no written sources that

26:11

talk about it. There's nobody even on the

26:13

fringes of that world that's literate and giving

26:15

us anything to go on whatsoever. All you

26:18

have is the archaeology. And

26:21

you wonder how different our

26:24

perception of that place and time might be. If

26:26

we did have written sources, would we be talking

26:28

about it the way we talk about China in

26:30

the same period where you've got legendary

26:33

later written sources that give you some idea

26:35

of what's going on? How much different would

26:37

our perception be if we had anything to

26:39

go on other than the material that came

26:41

out of the ground? Oh,

26:44

100%. That's what so many of the cultures

26:47

do. Because we don't have writing, a

26:49

lot of people don't think about it,

26:51

or they don't get their limelight because

26:53

it's not as easily accessible. And

26:55

that's the same thing goes for just ones

26:57

that have only really

27:00

had scholarship done in the

27:02

native language. If we

27:04

don't get it in English, unfortunately, just the

27:06

way the world is today, it's very hard

27:08

for it to get into the mainstream in

27:10

history and get it more widely known. And

27:13

that was a really big challenge, writing the

27:15

book is finding resources in English or ones

27:17

that I could easily translate without hopefully messing

27:19

up the translation. But

27:22

imagine, I would love to

27:24

have seen the Una Teache become

27:26

these really popular thing on TV

27:29

and stuff. They were just crazy. They

27:32

were bronze masters essentially of

27:34

Europe, but that time they ruled

27:36

the world in my mind for that little

27:38

blip in that area. And they

27:41

were really cool and powerful. It's the same with,

27:43

I would say, even the

27:46

mother schwara in Brazil,

27:48

where I'd

27:50

never heard about them before doing

27:53

this book. And because

27:55

a lot of it was in Spanish

27:57

or in Portuguese and they don't have

28:00

have a written record and we

28:02

do miss out on so much because of that written record.

28:04

We don't understand them as much. So it is harder to

28:07

disseminate that information to the public. And I know

28:09

that's why Egypt always gets a big thing in

28:11

Rome and Greece because we have those written documents.

28:13

It's easy for us to just

28:15

translate it, decipher it, and have those firsthand

28:18

accounts. But I think if

28:20

we just put in a little bit more effort,

28:22

we could do that with a lot of other

28:24

ones and have just as exciting stories come out

28:27

into mainstream history and archaeology. I

28:30

think there's always, I say

28:32

this as a historian. And so I was

28:34

trained to work with written stuff. The

28:37

written stuff is honestly, I think

28:40

it's quite overrated a lot of the time

28:42

because it gives you the illusion that you

28:44

know more than you do. The

28:47

written sources that we have are so

28:49

limited in their perspective. But

28:51

if that's what you have, that's what you use. And

28:53

so you end up writing an account that

28:56

feels very modern, but that at the end of the

28:58

day is just based on kind of

29:00

punching up something that a scribe

29:03

wrote 3,000 years ago. And

29:05

I think when all you have is the material culture, you

29:08

end up getting a lot of the

29:10

time a much more holistic view of

29:12

society because you're not constrained by the

29:14

biases and perspectives of your written sources

29:16

quite so much. A

29:19

hundred percent. Written sources

29:21

are usually written by a very,

29:23

very niche group of people, right? The

29:25

1% of the 1% that

29:27

have survived. And they're the

29:29

ones that are quote unquote educated and had

29:31

enough of a position in order for their

29:34

works to be copied throughout time. And

29:37

it really just shows one bias as well. History is

29:39

written by the victors as we all hear over

29:41

and over again when we're studying it. But

29:44

even with archaeology, we do get that more of a holistic

29:46

view of that everyday person and

29:48

a little bit more of the domestic life.

29:50

But even that is like a sliver. It's

29:53

like three pieces of the 500 piece puzzle that

29:55

we still won't even be able to understand. And

29:58

if we just tilt it. the right

30:00

way or a different way, suddenly it's a

30:03

completely different story and we'll never really know the

30:05

true one. But it does allow us to get

30:07

more granular and get to look at a

30:09

lot of the people who were

30:12

erased from written history, which

30:14

is also really great. I even like Mesopotamian

30:16

written resources, right? It's just people's random lists

30:18

on the cuneiform. And I

30:20

love that. We just hear random lists from that and

30:22

you're like, yeah, that's just an everyday guy going to

30:26

the market and trying to sell some sheep. And

30:28

we appreciate that man so much because we never

30:30

would have gotten that if we just had Cicero's

30:34

orations and whatever, whatever. There

30:37

is zero question that I would much rather

30:39

have somebody's shopping

30:42

list from ancient Rome

30:44

rather than another speech of Cicero's. Oh

30:46

my God, yes. Cicero

30:49

is honest to God, my least favorite person

30:51

in the entirety of history. I

30:54

cannot stand him. I find him

30:56

smug, self satisfied, arrogant, entirely overrated

30:59

as a Latin stylist, like the

31:01

bane of my existence for many

31:03

years. So I could

31:05

happily never read him again, but I would love to read

31:07

a shopping list. I'm sorry for

31:09

bringing him up. For me, that's Livy. I just cannot read

31:12

any. Look,

31:14

that's another good one. Like, oh, there's,

31:17

well, there's this very particular type

31:19

of like late Republic,

31:21

early empire smug, self satisfied

31:24

Roman guy. And

31:26

I just, I can't stand the entire, the

31:28

entire category. I'm just like, you guys all

31:30

suck. You guys are all insufferable. Like,

31:33

could you imagine having like going somewhere and having

31:35

a drink with one of those guys? They

31:39

wouldn't shut up. That's my, like, you just

31:41

know, you would have, it just would be horrible. And

31:43

all they talk about is themselves and you rescue a

31:45

question and then they come away and go away and

31:47

then write a speech about it. Yeah. And

31:50

somehow you're the bad guy in the speech. You're the

31:52

bad guy. You just sat there. You just sat there

31:54

nodding and suddenly you're

31:56

compliant in something.