#19 Jack Weatherford | Mongolia, Genghis Khan & The Making Of The Modern World

Article On The Interview: https://atlasgeographica.com/jack-weatherford-genghis-khan/

Jack Weatherford is an American author and academic who has positioned the relevancy and importance of Genghis Khan front and centre of Western consciousness and pop culture.

Jack is the recipient of the 'Order Of The Polar Star' which is Mongolia's highest national honour for foreigners. He is the author of many brilliant books, the most notable of which is half the subject of today's conversation - Genghis Khan & The Making Of The Modern World.

My conversation with Jack Weatherford can be broken down into three sections.

A Bit About Jack, Mongolian Culture, Economy & Politics.
A Bit About Genghis Khan & How He Shaped The Modern World.
A Bit About Genghis Khan & A Bit About Mongolia - How Do They Influence One Another?

Ultimately I am extraordinarily humbled by this opportunity I had with Jack Weatherford. He was generous with his time and also with his candidness. He is an inspiration to me and also I imagine anyone else out there with a lofty ambition to write something that genuinely leaves its mark.

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Time Stamps

00:00 - Introduction
03:18 - Why Did You Go To Mongolia At The Collapse Of The USSR?
05:32 - How Did Your Experiences Travelling The Silk Road Inform Your Understanding Of Genghis Khan?
11:25 - How Do You Pronounce Genghis Khan?
12:11 - How Were You Received As An American In The Former Soviet Union In The 90's?
17:40 - What Else Contributed With You Falling In Love With Mongolia?
23:55 - What Are Mongolian Crime Rates?
26:14 - Does A Nomadic Culture Create Trust?
31:00 - More On The Great Jewel Of Mongolia Being Its Culture.
34:39 - Are The Mongols A Proud Culture?
42:50 - How Did You Manage To Learn Mongolian?
47:22 - How Do You See Mongolia Overcome Their Bad Economic Hand?
54:37 - How Did They Secure The Ger?
56:58 - What Does Jack Make Of China's Attempted 'Cultural Genocide' Of Mongolian Culture In Inner Mongolia?
1:06:51 - A Broad Macro Take On China's Ongoing Relationship With Mongolia.
1:14:33 - The Anti-Mongol Propaganda That Has Carried On Through The Centuries Since Genghis Khan - Starting With Voltaire...
1:33:05 - Comparing Genghis Khan With Other 'Great Men' Of History.
1:38:00 - Genghis Khan & Meritocracy.
1:45:05 - How Good Where The Mongols On Horseback? How Good Of Warrios Were They?
1:52:08 - Revisionist History: Did The Mongols Decimation Of 13th Century Islamic World Change The Course Of Relgious Influence In History?
1:57:39 - What Cultural Themes From Genghis Khan's 13th Century Exist Through To Today's Current Day Mongolia?
2:05:08 - What Is One Example Of A Good Thing The USSR Did For Mongolia?
2:07:15 - More On The Cultural Themes From Genghis Khan To Today: Environmental Worship?
2:16:45 - Cultural Themes Carried From Genghis To Today: An Abhorence For Speaking Of Sickness & Death.
2:29:30 - Jack Weatherford's Great Analogy For Genghis Khan That Puts Into Perspective His Exceptionalism.
2:37:37 - A Message Of Inspiration
2:45:30 - A Reflection On Genghis Khan's Surging Popularity.
2:49:40 - Jack Weatherford On The World Not Having A Vision
3:04:00 - What Are You Writing Now?
3:06:00 - What Country Are you Most Bullish On & What Are The Two People You Wish You Could Witness A Conversation Between?
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Links To Jack's Books

Genghis Khan & The Making Of The Modern World - amazon.com/gp/product/B000FCK206/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Links To The Rest Of Jack's Books Found Here - https://atlasgeographica.com/jack-weatherford-genghis-khan/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So the following podcast is between me and Jack Weatherford, as you would have seen. Now he was extremely generous with his time. He loves Mongolia. He absolutely fell in love with this country. And something that's super inspiring, um, for me at least, of Jack's story, is that he didn't discover Mongolia until he was in his fifties. So the guy at the fall, the Soviet Union, took up his interest in the Silk Road and went to Mongolia. And from there, he has completely carved out an entire new chapter of his life, which is going to stand alone and define his legacy going forward. He's written um the definitive biography on Genghis Khan. Obviously, there's the secret history of the Mongols, but uh in terms of looking at the Khans, their conquests, their influence on the modern world, uh Jack's book, Genghis Khan of the Making of the Modern World, is uh it's definitive in this sense. It was undoubtedly one of the um main books that Dan Khan leaned on for his story of Wrath of the Khans. Um, Tim Ferriss has said that it's one of the books he gifts most. Uh it's an incredible story, and it's written by this guy, Jack, who is such an incredible man. So the conversation is is uh is long as you have seen. It sort of is separated like this. The first hour is a discussion of Mongolia, the second hour is a little bit of a discussion about the Khans, and the third hour is a mix. Um, for me, my favorite part is at the end, speaking about some of the cultural traits that existed from the Khans that have carried all the way through to Modern Mongolia. I think that uh is for me at least the most interesting um thing we spoke about. Obviously, the topic of Genghis Khan and his Khan conquest and then his son and his grandson's conquest is fascinating. It's absolutely unreal. Um, you know, read Jack's book. Uh there's absolutely, you know, read it or listen to it. Um the narration on Audible is really good. But just to put into perspective what Jack did, he was awarded the Order of the Polar Star, which is Mongolia's highest Mongolia's highest award to foreigners. There is much I would like to say about the chat, but I'm afraid it would just be some self-indulgent waffle. So rather, here's the chat. You can see it's all time-stamped as well. Um, but the amazing Jack Weatherford. So I'm absolutely thrilled to have uh Jack Weatherford joining me here today and joining us here today as well. Um, he is an American who at the fall of the Soviet Union traveled to and then subsequently fell in love with Mongolia. I'm sure he'll be far too humble to agree, but uh Jack could well be the world's foremost expert on Genghis Khan and his empire. Uh he has authored three books on this subject: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, with a pronunciation change incoming, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, and Chinggis Khan and the Quest for God, as well as several other titles, which, while uh nonetheless very interesting, are not very Mongol-related. So Jack was awarded the Order of the Polar Star, which is Mongolia's highest national honor for foreigners. And when I initially reached out to Jack and was researching him, uh, I had read that he had retired to Mongolia. So, as Mongolia is his adopted country, we just have to start there. And so I wanted to first ask you, Jack, when you first traveled to Mongolia in 1997, just after the Soviet Empire collapsed, there's two things. What drew you there in the first place? And then also, how were you received as this big, bad capitalist American?

SPEAKER_05 3:37

Well, I wanted to go there because I was researching a book on this on the Silk Route, I thought. That's what I wanted to do. And I had this plan in my head that as a frame for the work, I would travel the whole Silk Route in about three months, just go from Mongolia. Uh at that time I wanted to end in Mostar. Uh in a place that was then resonating in history, it wasn't very important, on the Mediterranean, very close to the Mediterranean. So that was my goal. I came to Mongolia and the whole project pretty much fell apart because I fell in love so much with Mongolia. And I had to bargain with myself as, oh, how could you be? This is you're already 50 years old, you can't be learning a new language, you can't learn a new culture, just forget it, go on. So I said, okay, okay, go on with your summer, do the project, do everything that I said I was going to do, but if at the end of that you still want to do Mongolia, do it. And so I spent the next three months doing the project on the Silk Route. I traveled it, I finished it. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

I said, I'm I'm going back to Mongolia. I mean, that itself is such an adventure in the late 90s, because you don't speak Russian, right? You learned Mongolian um after, but how did you travel? Some Russians.

SPEAKER_05 5:00

Oh no, I was going mostly south. Okay. But but but uh Russian was still being used in some of the places like Kazakhstan and uh Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. So Russian was helpful. I did speak some Russian and uh I took I took a couple years at university. Oh so I I did have I did have that is uh helpful.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Uh is it helpful to it wasn't it sufficient but helpful. Tell me about some of the um experiences you had in that initial three-month journey on the research for doing the Silk Road.

SPEAKER_05 5:36

Well, all the half of my brain was on that project the way I had envisioned it about the Silk Road and the connected Europe and Asia and how that and I wanted to look at particularly at the tribal people and mostly at the Turkic people, because most of those uh groups are Turkic groups until you get to Iran. And you change, of course, to uh a very different kind of people with the Persian ancestors. But I that was half of my mind, but I kept thinking about Chinese Han the whole way because every time I would go to a city, the Mongols had conquered it at some point. Well, so one of the frustrating things was I was there, but there was nothing to see. I mean, from a conquest that passed through, sometimes you could see some ruins and they would say, Oh, that's left from Chingeth Han, or it'd be a mound of uh dirt. They said, well, under that was the old. There was nothing to see. And so it was very difficult to understand. Then I realized sort of conquest is conquest. You know, it doesn't really matter whether you're in the 20th century coming in with atomic bombs, or you're back then coming in with Mongol troops and a bow and arrow. It's about the same. But it's the life of the individuals that make a difference. And that's when I began to look at Chinggishan as a person. I was really looking at Mongol history and the Mongol Empire before that. And I slowly became interested. If I wanted to understand Silk Road, I had to understand the Mongols. If I wanted to understand Mongols, I had to understand uh Chinggis Han. And so that was a difficult task. How do you understand someone from 800 years ago?

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, of course. Incredibly difficult. And also, isn't it true that um, and this is maybe a bit of a um a bit of a tangent too early on, but isn't it true that really the only sort of recorded history that we had of um Chengis Khan's life was the secret history of the Mongols, which was um, you know, this document that was almost uh coded and it was um transcribed in uh by a Chinese scholar. And like this is kind of what you're working off. That there wasn't, like, say, with the history of the Romans, a body of work to sort of go mix this all together.

SPEAKER_05 7:46

Yes, for the life of Jingishan himself, yes, his early life, there's only that one source. Except that once he started conquering, everybody was recording the conquest. So you have uh Persian, Chinese, European, you have many different records about the conquest. And often they threw in things about his life, more often incorrect than correct, but nevertheless, they threw in things that at least told you the people's perception at that point. Uh often negative, but sometimes quite positive also. So I used all of that together. But for me, the main source was to use a secret history. That's a Mongolian document, the only part. Because our history is mostly written, we say it's written by the victors, by the winners, but that's not always true. It's written by the people who can write, first of all. So it's written by the by the Persians, by the Chinese, by the French, by then later by Americans. So I wanted to really stress the Mongolian secret history. And the way that I did it was to just take the book, the text quite literally, and you say it was took a long time for it to be transcribed, for it to be decoded, all of this. And unfortunately, that was done by some excellent scholars over a period of more than a hundred years, it took. Much longer even than the in secrecy as well, right? Yes, it had been done in secrecy, and it had to be transcribed uh in secret, and so it was a long, complicated process, but I benefited from that work. So I took the work and just went through Mongolia to the places identified to then get some sense of what's it like to be here. Because I realized, you know, the earth really speaks to you through your feet. You feel it when you get there. And so I have a story in there, for example, about the about the early kidnapping of of uh uh Temujin, as he was called as a boy, is Temujin's wife. And once I went to that place, I could tell immediately that it had happened in the winter, which is also logical by their assistant. I could tell immediately because the ground was too soft to echo the vibration of the horses, and they heard the vibration of the horses before they saw them. So sometimes a detail that's so small you would read through it a hundred times and never pay attention to the vibration of the horses. Well, what that's you know, and then all of a sudden, boom. You're there, you look around, and it's so obvious it hits you. There are many things like that, just knowing how deep the rivers are, how could they be crossed, what season could they be crossed, all these kinds of things. So I I benefited from, she said, this uh time of the opening up after the collapse of socialism, and and and so I benefited greatly from that to be able to travel in Mongolia and to be uh among the early scholars to be able to go there and actually go to those places themselves. And that became the the frame for my book, really, was going to those places.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

So you've you've come, you've flown into Ulambanta, uh, and you had the intention to research this book of the of riding the Silk Road connecting the Asia to Europe. Right. And you've been you've been distracted by uh the sort of the myth and the wonder of uh Shengis Khan as you've uh gone through. By the way, could you just say it slowly for most Shengis Khan?

SPEAKER_05 11:29

Okay. No, in Mongolian, Shingis Khan. But I yeah, but you see, I did Shengis Khan, I see. Okay, it's because it's more common.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yeah, to me, it's uh yeah. It's a straddle between Genghis and Shengus, but Khan will Yeah, it comes back and forth.

SPEAKER_05 11:49

It kind of depends on which sentence I'm formulated as to how it comes out.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

But you've you've been distracted. You've been knocked off your horse, so to say, by this myth, and you can't fully take on this journey um with a hundred percent focus. Can you describe this for us? Because the second half to the question was how were you received as this American, you know, after the fall of the Soviet Union? Wow. You know, what what what what were the experiences that that that made Genghis Khan so prominent uh in your mind? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:23

Actually, at first he wasn't so prominent. Even something about the history, what it was just the place, first, it was the place that seized me. I I arrived, of course, on a delayed flight. It was in the late spring, and we have so many dust storms, and so a flight was delayed in like six or seven hours, and I'd get into the city at, I don't know, four in the morning or something. And then I was supposed to meet, I had arranged to have a driver. I was only going to be there a few days. I wanted to go directly to see some points of interest to me, they didn't get out, you know, that's all get on with the rest of my trip. I arrived, and fortunately, I did not get to see the capital city because it was quite an ugly city at that time. It was in uh a lot of uh uh disrepair at that time. So I arrived. I didn't see much of the city. I got to the hotel, was able to clean up a little bit, uh, get something to eat, and then we took off out of the city before the sun came up. And then as the sun was coming up, as we were crossing the steppe, it's like this is a different world. First of all, the grass, it looks like so green. It's like Ireland. I thought, what where am I? I thought it was gonna be a desert out here. There are no trees and there's like and there are animals coming up. There was just something about it that began to just begin to percolate through my system. I was enjoying it. Well, the very first day we got stuck in a river trying to cross the Orkon River. Well, we got stuck about three times. Well, by the third time, it was almost dark, and we were we were trapped in the mud. And uh we were able to get some some pieces of wood to try to stop the vehicle from sinking, but we couldn't get it out. So I spent the night there and just uh on the seat, kind of cold, because I hadn't really prepared for how cold it would be at night, and the rest of my trip was going to be through deserts of Central Asia. And so I was unprepared in so many ways. And then what I was thinking that night, because I couldn't sleep too well, looking at the stars and my god, they're more beautiful than any stars I've ever seen in the world. And I would say, come on, it's jet lag. You think the grass is greener here, you think the stars are brighter. This is just, you know, come on, 50 some years old, you know, you can't be. And but then the next morning, when the sun started to come up, and here we were in the mud of this river. The river is reasonably shallow, but we were safe, but it stuck down in the mud. But I realized in these clumps of mud, when the sun came out, there were wild irises that opened up. And I felt like somebody's been here planting irises. What? And then a thousand cranes flew in. Just it was mating season, they all come from South Asia, and a couple golden ducks and other things. I'm surrounded by these birds by irises coming up out of the ground. And finally a nomad came on a horse and rescued us, and everything was fine. But it was I couldn't shake the experience. Nothing negative had happened. It was just opening a different world to me. And I think also with the nomad, uh I realized later that they have a responsibility for everybody in their world around them, you know. And he may not have liked me or known me or had any idea who I was. It was just his responsibility because I was somewhere in the vicinity of his gear, his home. And uh and so he sent out his son with an extra horse to get me and bring me back and pump me up with uh hot uh milk tea and salt. They knew exactly what to do, and they didn't allow me to say anything. Stuff like, oh, I don't prefer salt in my tea. He was like, Yeah. This is what we serve, you know. And I did the children laughing and giggling and trying to teach me Mongolian, and I was like, but I couldn't say anything, and it was just a wonderful family. It was a great experience. So that kind of it was an experience that seized me. And it was just only gradually that it was a larger culture, Mongolia, and then finally you think it's kind of himself.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

So it was a it sounds like that was an intensely environmental romanticization, right? Like because you maybe were exposed to uh a landscape and a connection with the environment that maybe you hadn't had before, but you grew up on a tobacco farm, right? So you you must have had many environmental experiences before, you know, uh because the the this experience, as you've just explained it, it it seems to have really almost started a new chapter of your life almost, you know? And that's such significant change. Um so I want to just try and do that more justice. So the environment's beautiful, the people are beautiful, you've been helped. What else is contributing to this really um falling in love with Mongolia? Because that experience, seemingly, now this is me being ignorant to the region, you know, could have happened in Kazakhstan or even just north in Russia. Oh, yeah. You know? So um I I just wonder maybe if there's anything to say on that.

SPEAKER_05 18:05

Well, I think ultimately I cannot say, to be honest. You know, at this point in my life, I had been traveling all of my life, mostly since I've been, you know, was able to do it. And I had been certainly already in more than 100 countries. And I fairly much like almost every country in some way. There are a couple where the experiences were just so negative that it's hard to think about. But basically I did, and I was often very impressed, and often I just had a wonderful feeling, but there was something about Mongolia that was it was just off the tart for my whole life. There was nothing I had ever felt like that. And I think part of it was I had never been in a place where you are totally free in the way that you are in Mongolia. You know, what I I thought I'd been to many different kinds of places. You know, I've been to to Beijing and I've been to London and studied in Berlin and uh all of you know all these different places. And even when you go to the countryside or you go to national parks, but I realized you're always on the road. You know, you can get off the road and hike and do a few things, but life is already set for you. You can't just walk across any land you want. The land has to be set aside for hiking. It has to be a park of some sort or a natural park or open to everything is regulated. There are signs on everything. Mongolia, even now, but especially then, it's just open. You go which way you want. The land is open to everybody. There's no fence to stop you. There's no wall. There's no sign. There's no bridge. There's no sign to tell you this is a crossing of animals. I mean, the country belongs to animals. And that kind of freedom to just sit there on a hill and look in four directions and not see any sign of human life, and know that it's up to you to go any way you want, north, south, east, or west. And that's a freedom that I've seen for a lot of people who come. It's really quite frightening. They just they do not like it. But there was something about it that it's the first time I had the feeling that maybe this is what it's like to be a no man. You go where you want with your animals. It's just this tiny little feeling of this is different, you know? Even when I'm in a beautiful city like Mombasa in Kenya or Timbuktu, you still have streets, you still have private property. Your people own the homes. In Mongolia, you walk in any home. You do not knock, you do not say a word. You just walk in. And sometimes you say, hold the dog, the dog's barking, but that's your right to do. And uh to knock on the door is almost rude.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Suggest that the host might not be so gracious.

SPEAKER_05 21:11

Yes, and also the the doorway is kind of a symbol of the family, the threshold is a symbol of the family, and to come in and start knocking on the symbol of the family, you know. So it it's a freedom that I'd never known before. And I think that's that's part of it. But but I'll be honest, Ryan, and have to say, I do not completely you know, I the only thing I can say it's like falling in love with my wife, you know? I can tell you a hundred things. Oh, she was funny, she was the most beautiful woman in the world, she was this, she was that, she liked me, she thought I was smart, she was uh you know, I can say everything. Yeah. And in the end, I don't know. I don't know why I fell in love with her. I'm I just fell in love with her and it never went away, you know. And so it's the same with Mongolia. I just fell in love with Mongolia. And I thought when I went back, okay, I'm gonna go back, let's give it a month, let's just go back for a month. It was like, okay, let's okay, three months, it's okay. Go ahead, indulge yourself three months. And then, okay, just doing year, what the heck? Just do it. And then finally I gave up bargaining with myself. And I said, Okay, you just love Mongolia, you just go with it. Stay as long as you want, do what you want, just go with this.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

It sounds really uh sort of invigorating, the type of adventurous uh invigoration that one gets when they do discover something that they've really never seen before. And anyone who's you know traveled to a place where they've been truly overwhelmed, maybe left with a lot of uncertainty, perhaps a tintillating sense of danger, but nonetheless there is safety. But it is something completely new. It it it strikes me as this sort of um experience and emotion that uh Mongolia really brought out of you. And it makes me want to go there terribly as well. Um, in preparation for this interview, learning more about Mongolia. I've I've I've pretty much set my sights on the country as soon as I can possibly go. Um and I think this is a um I think it's a terrific way to transition into the the sort of meat of what I really wanted to speak to you about today, because although I'm sure we will speak about Genghis Khan, um, I wanted to speak about Mongolia. I wanted to to give a snapshot or as as deep a dive as possible that we could do on Mongolia. So let's transition into that then. It sounds like it sounds like um the country is incredibly safe. Like, incredibly safe. Do they have really low crime rates? Yes.

SPEAKER_05 23:58

Yes. It's quite a safe pension. I think in almost every regard. I mean your biggest danger is having sometimes with accident, especially if uh some people go there think, oh yeah, I have this freedom to go anywhere. I'm just gonna get a motorbike or something. And then they drive a terrain, they don't go. And something goes wrong with the vehicle or with them, and they're on their own. I mean, you've got to find somebody. I mean, I've gone sometimes for uh more than two days without never seeing a sign of human habitation. Because depending on how the rain falls in one year or another, one area that's thickly populated in one year can be empty in the other and the next.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

And so the greatest danger is just self-inflicted danger. Well, great. I mean, that's that's not really any crime at all, is it? Uh, I'm thinking that perhaps there was maybe some sort of opium trade or some sort of illegal smuggling between China and Russia, or perhaps, you know, in the capital city, like in many places that have desperation, there is some sense of crime. Um is it comparable to like say a very um posh European Western city, this type of crime rates that there is?

SPEAKER_05 25:13

Oh, I think it's much lower, but I cannot exactly speak for the city now, you know, for the last uh eight years, really seven or eight, I haven't been living in the city, and uh, it's outside the city. And I do hear from foreigners all the time they're talking about pickpocketing and things, and I have never encountered it. And the people I hear I talked to, they didn't encounter it, but they heard about it. Okay. You know, somebody was going to this district and they were pickpocketing, they got the phone. Well, I can imagine that can't happen.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

That type of bad news spreads quickly.

SPEAKER_05 25:48

Yeah, but I have not heard about any type of assault, and I'm always even a little suspicious about the pickpocket. I'm sure it could go on. But I have found people to bend over backwards to be honest with you and helpful all the time. And that's my experience, and that's my honest experience, but I cannot speak for other people.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

So they're they're a population of three million, and they are the least densely populated, I think, sovereign nation was the stat, but they are they're just very sparsely populated, something like two people per square kilometer. Um this, in addition to a nomadic uh thousands of nomadic years of experience, do you think that it explains why there might be such a high level of trust within the culture? Because people have always really had to rely on one another, and there is, like you said, with the example of the nomadic man on the horse who's who came and freed you from the river, you could have been his enemy, but nonetheless, he sort of has this obligation to help you because he's in your land. Um, can you speak a bit about that and but then how that goes to inform a comment that you made that the great jewel of Mongolia is its culture? Like that is the great, unique jewel of Mongolia. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:06

I think you're right about the nomadic culture. I have been around nomads in other places, they're not always quite the same as a Mongolia, but I think generally you'll find with nomads there's a tremendous sense of hospitality. How it's structured varies a little bit from place to place. In Mongolia, it's the most open of all the places I've been. But yes, people have a responsibility uh to be hospitable, to take you in, to let you sneak there, to feed you. And the general kind of rule is you should not stay more than three days with somebody. Uh that's uh just uh advice form of politeness, but then you owe certain things to them, such as respect for one thing, but also uh news. They want to hear about your journey. And so you come in and you sit down, you know where you're to go, you have to go walk to your left, but it's to the right side of the tent of it. And you walk over there and you sit down in a certain place, you know, and uh not much is said, hearted. Maybe just how are you? Sign, sign by no, sign something like that. And then they start, they have to give you a hot drink first, um, hot tea or milk, something like that. So they prepare that, and uh they ask, you ask, oh, how are the animals this season? Like how are you wintering or how are you summering? Well it's almost always good answers, even if it's not so good, they give you uh good answers. And then after you had something to eat, then they ask you, you know, what is the news?

SPEAKER_04 28:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:41

You know, and then they want to hear about your your your trip. They want to know, like, did it rain somewhere along the way? What did you see along the way? Were there people living in that valley? Uh was there grass over there? They they want to know everything that they can know, and they're highly literate people. Higher literacy rate than the United States.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Yes, I saw that. 96%, I think I read.

SPEAKER_05 29:05

Yes, yes. Highly literate. Uh they're very well informed. I mean, you have to be to live that life out there. It's uh it's isolated socially, but but not uh from from intellect and not from knowledge. The whole way of thinking for a nomad is different than for a farmer. You know, the farmer, as you say, I grew up on it's a little tiny farm. You do tobacco on one side, cotton on the other, but and it's some food in the meeting, right? Uh it's the same every day. I mean, it's still the same. We still have it. I mean, that's still you know, been close to a hundred years or something. You're still growing tobacco. Not bad. No, no, no. I when I took the farm over, you know, I I uh just changed the trees. Okay. I thought, what can I do? And let's put something back to the earth. Let's put something back, let's just plant trees. So we planted all trees and now it belongs to my children. But it's the same. I go there, I know, you know, with the trees growing, I know everything about the place. Because it's the same every day, uh, except I mean slight difference, you know, the seasons and all. But with the nomad, every day is a decision about where am I going to be? What's the weather going to be over there and over there and over there? And should I go this way? And if yes, it's raining there and there'll be good pasture, but they're also flooding sometimes, and that the the lambs are young and they should. I should go this. You know, it's a decision every day. They have to be aware of the world around them in ways that we sedentary people don't have to be. And so they're constantly collecting knowledge about the world around them.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Constantly. Speak more about um your comment that the great jewel of Mongolia is its culture, if you could please.

SPEAKER_05 31:01

Yeah. I think that it's it's a nomadic that it's a country that has one culture, the nomadic culture. Even the people living in the city today, but now well over one billion live in the city, uh, perhaps as much as 40% of the country's population are there, uh, still their customs are based on the nomadic way of life. That exists in this day.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Oh, sure. Yeah. And do you see it remaining, or is there a fear that it's going to be lost as generations removed from the nomadic life?

SPEAKER_05 31:37

I think there are always going to be changes. Uh and a lot of people fear what just said. They they think, oh, everything's changing, and now all the young people are doing hip-hop and bling bling and wearing sunglasses and all. And that's all quite true, but the Mongols have been interacting with the world for a thousand years. You know, they have been everywhere from Beijing to Baghdad to Budapest. And they knew what to take home with them, and they knew what to absorb into their world, and they knew what to leave out. And ultimately, I trust their judgment on this. The nomadic way of life, certainly, is practiced in Mongolia, but it produces far more people than it needs to sustain the herds. So there's always been excess population. It's a small country, as you say, a little over three million. But uh, even in the time of Chingashan, it was maybe one million. But you didn't need a million people to handle that many animals. He probably had 20-some million animals about that time. It's amazing. But uh you didn't need a million people. And so they were always going off on raids, on hunting parties, on war parties, things like that. Then later, when the Mongol Empire ended and they were uh more confined within Mongolia, then Buddhism got started, and up to one third of all the males in the early part of the 20th century were monks in a monastery. So they were always being settled down, always being taken off of the countryside uh to put them to some use, whether it was hunting, warfare, raiding, or as Buddhist monks. And now that they're gathering in the city, they still seem to be pretty much to be Mongols. You don't feel like you're in any other city in the world once you get past the architecture and the cars and the streets. Uh certainly you don't feel like you're in Asia the way the people are. There's uh not the same sensibility.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Yeah, I I actually have noticed that. Um you said when we were talking before we started um uh recording that Australia is the biggest English-speaking influence in Mongolia, which I thought was remarkable. I've never had that before. But I did um actually at university was mates with a Mongolian guy, and um he was there as an exchange student, right? So he wasn't a uh Mongolian race in Australia or anything like that. And he was completely outgoing, you know, like you say, um, would you say refined, I think was your uh explanation of the other Asian cultures, or maybe, you know, like a little bit more formal, a little bit. Yeah, there was this, there was this like controlled wildness to him, which uh I you know I just thought was um is amazing and and it you know reflected very well in his culture. Um I I wanted to ask a little bit about uh Mongolians. Are they they very proud to be Mongols? Is there a lot of national pride? And is there a lot of then sort of defense of that pride in all the negative aspects? Like they would say expel the Chinese influence or expel the Russian influence, because Mongolia are in a bit of a pickle, right? They're the sandwich between two great superpowers and they're landlocked, and that creates a whole slew of economic problems from just being dealt a bad hand. You know, it's it's not their fault they're landlocked, but because they are, it severely restricts their ability to grow as an economy. But I'm asking too many things there. Speak about the pride.

SPEAKER_05 35:14

Yeah. Yeah. Well, they certainly are worried about uh foreign encroachment economically, politically, diplomatically, things like that. They worry about that. And they are, to go to your first point, they are extremely proud to be Mongol. Extremely proud. But it's not so much uh nationalism the way we think of it in the West, it's pride in their culture and in their heritage and in Qingis Han himself. Yeah. It's just tremendous pride in being that, and that we're only a few million people, and we did all of that way back then. And uh so they have a tremendous self-confidence in it. At the same time, they they do fear other people coming in because they have been conquered by other people. You know, they were under the rule of the Qing dynasty of China for a while, then they were under Soviet domination for a while, uh 70 years under the Soviets. But both countries are the neighbors, and they have benefited greatly from interactions with both countries. They've exchanged cultural things through the years, centuries, and so they're in a delicate position. But uh to be a Mongol is for them a great honor. And they're born, you know, with a blue spot at the base of the spine. And so you go to visit a Mongolian family, they show you the blue spots on their young children to make sure you know they're blue spot Mongols. They're so proud of being blue spot Mongols, you know. And it's it's not a but it's not a negative kind of pride. It's sometimes it can manifest itself that way in the city, I must say. Can you give an example? Sometimes a slight Well, there is tremendous fear, I think, of uh of uh Chinese encroachment because of the Qing Dynasty. And they recognize that they are so few people and China has so many. And yet at the same time, it's the greatest economic influence in the country on the greatest trading partner. So they walk a delicate line between being afraid of being absorbed into another country, as they have been in the past, and preserving their own culture. Mostly it does not come out in a negative way. Mostly it does not. But every country has some kind of racist negativity, and you can find some of it. But Mongolia doesn't allow, for example, dual citizenship. They're very, very strict with uh resident issues. Uh by the law, it should only be about 1% of foreign. So they're quite quite strict about meaning things. Could could you say that?

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Sorry, Jack, I I just didn't hear the last point you said.

SPEAKER_05 38:13

They are they limit the number of foreign people who can live there. Oh, okay. And that's all foreigners. Not not any one group, they limit the number of foreigners.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

And uh it's uh it's uh it's a they try to keep themselves distinct. It's a strong policy though, isn't it? Um it it it it's kind of informing a little bit what I wanted to ask in follow-up, which is, you know, like I think some of the negative aspects, negative aspects of having a lot of national pride and a lot of pride in your culture, because objectively that's a great thing to have because it is it informs you, it informs your story, it informs what identifies you within the world around you. But the negative aspects of it, when it becomes you start thinking that you have a superiority over another culture, right? And we can definitely see that manifest in any sort of populist movement. Uh, that is kind of the underlying, you know, uh motivation there. It's like our culture is better than this culture. But nonetheless, so I'm coming coming at from that angle as a as a negative inflection almost. Do you see this in the Mongolians sometimes? Um, because to then have a sort of a cap on how many foreigners can live in the country, uh it definitely is a signal that they're trying to withdraw a multicultural influence, for example.

SPEAKER_05 39:34

Well, they're trying to to limit certain influences in the country, that is true. However, they are quite open to internationalism. I mean, they feel like in a way they were the first international company. Uh sorry, international country. Oh, they created trade and postal service and did stuff, didn't they? Well, yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah, and with uh Chengus Hans Time, uh, it was uh they were bringing in all kinds of influences, and he welcomed uh all types of uh artisans, for example, because they recognize they know who they are, and they recognize that they have to have outside help. They don't want to grow crops too much, they don't want to actually mine the earth too much themselves, they don't want to do many things that we consider normal, and they know that they must depend upon foreigners for that. And they are they are open to it, they are open to it, but they want the people to abide by the law and the culture of that country. You know, they don't feel like everybody in the world should be Mongol. You know, when the Mongols ruled this huge empire, they did not allow other people to speak the Mongolian language or to wear Mongolian clothes or to take Mongolian names. They were quite restrictive even then when they ruled all the way from Russia to China.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

You know? And today I like they didn't want to impose their culture on others or make them adopt their culture. They just wanted to maintain what they had um to these.

SPEAKER_05 41:03

They did not allow it. Yeah. It wasn't a matter of imposing it, they did allow it. They didn't allow the teaching of their language to other people. Or and it was the same even with their religion, with like Qingit Han's religion. He felt that every religion was a path to to heaven or to God. Every every religion. But some people are given one path and others another. And he would say, you know, this is my religion, this is my path that I have. And that's how it is today. The Mongols they don't expect other people to be Mongol at all. But they have a saying that if you if you live in the put if you drink the water, you follow the custom. And and I think they expect the people to follow their custom in the country, but not to become one of them and not to settle down and try to be Mongol. Uh and I think you know one reason I things go so well for me is I try to follow the custom, but I don't try to be Mongol. You know, I am what I am, and I'm a foreigner, I'm an outsider, and I'm very glad of that, very proud of it, and very happy to be in Mongolia. But if you follow the custom and the etiquette, you're fine. You're pretty much fine. Let's uh Today if you speak any of the language, they like it. If you could speak any of the language today, they do like it. It's not like in the old days.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

And that is a that's actually something that I mean, I will give you enormous amounts of sort of compliments for, and something that you should, I'm sure you do receive many compliments for. After 50 years old, you went and learned probably one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, uh, which is fantastic, isn't it? Uh how was how did you manage to to do that?

SPEAKER_05 42:51

Well, well, I'm still on the way, still on the way all the time. No, no, no, I never took a course. But you know, part of that falling in love in like I say in your 50s, again, you don't think you can do it at your age. You don't think you can fall in love, whether it's with a new person or a new place. I was fortunate, I think, there was a place in my life and not a midlife crisis in a different way. But yeah, I fell in love with the place, and then slowly you begin to absorb the language. But I must say, it took me about three years, because it's here the first word that I could find, because the sounds are much different. The whole structure of the language is much different, and all the sounds are are much, much different. But the Mongols are excellent at speaking other languages. How is that a flex? Absolutely excellent.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Okay. Do they do most of them speak Russian and maybe Mandarin as well, and perhaps English?

SPEAKER_05 43:51

No. Most of them speak a couple languages. The most common today would be uh English, Korean, or Japanese, and Russian.

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 43:59

Those are the most That's like that's four different alphabets.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

That's four different tones. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_05 44:06

Yeah. Yeah. No, they're they're very skilled with and I've met many Mongolians in Mongolia who speak English uh as though kind of a generalized international accent, but no one would ever think they're Asian. Sure. And I think often English speakers assume that all Asians are going to have an accent of a certain type. You know, maybe it's Japanese accent Chinese accent. And uh people are usually quite surprised that Mongolians are able to speak. They can speak languages and they can sing. And that's just uh seem to be bored in every Mongolian that speaks languages.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

They have a terrific culture for music, don't they? Uh I remember a couple of years ago the video went super viral of a Mongolian death metal band. Um and then obviously the throat singing. I mean, there's the the first the it there are it kind of reminds me of Ireland a little bit in this manner. Ireland is five million people in their tiny little island, but their culture is everywhere, and they're distinctly Irish, they're distinctly different from the United Kingdom next to them. And then you've got Mongolia here, a country of three million people, yet Genghis Khan is is is ingrained within Western pop culture and Western consciousness. So we know about him. We know he's from Mongolia. We people might not know much about Mongolia, but they know that about him. It's like these tiny little countries that just have such powerful cultures, they impose themselves through their soft power on the world. Australia, you could even say, is kind of a little bit like that as well. But I mean, we've got 20 million. It's like um, I don't know, that thought just came to me, maybe. Mongolia has uh those sort of similarities going for it.

SPEAKER_05 45:51

Um sometimes when people, you know, that's what's a main export today. Is it copper or cash bean? And I usually say it's history.

SPEAKER_04 46:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 46:00

It's history also the sense also of culture. That um, yeah, I mean, this tiny little country, and you had uh I think the group you were talking about was probably the Who, uh the Mongolian uh group. And see, that name itself, it's the name of human being people from the time of the Huns. The Huns were their ancestors called the Hunu, the people of the sun, they call it Hulu. And now today you still use that name a lot. It's with the musical group. But yeah, they can all sing. Yeah, the musical traditions are their own, that throat singing and also long song, which is not so popular outside the monk. Okay, but long song and the horse head fiddle. And I mean, it's a little known fact, but you know, all of the instruments that they play today in the world with a bow, whether in China, in the violin, the cello, all of that derived from the Eurasian step, from the musicians of the Eurasian step. Wow. You look well, you I mean you look back at Greece and Rome, they were plucking on a harp, or they had a little uh wire going, they had things like that, or some drums. They had no string. It's about to go with them.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Because it's the horse hair is like yeah. Yeah, yeah, the case of the with the Mongolian church. Yeah. So Mongolia are in a, like I um mentioned before, they're in a sticky situation. 80% of their imports um come from China. Uh 80% of their energy comes from Russia. Uh 80% is too much. You know, that's way too many eggs in one basket. Now, Mongolia is landlocked and they don't, so therefore, they don't have a port. They can't trade elsewhere. They don't necessarily have like a thriving manufacturing industry, whether that's for geographical reasons or not. I uh read that Ulobantar is the coldest capital city in the world, which is something you wouldn't think. I mean, so harsh condition to live in, so maybe it doesn't foster so much manufacturing and um and kind of inflections that could prosper an economy. And so they're left with digging what they have out of the ground and then selling it north or south and then buying everything else already made from other countries. So this is a very like almost unsolvable conundrum for them. How do you see Mongolia uh uh either thrive independently economically, or or just how do you think about this this complicated um economical problem overall?

SPEAKER_05 48:38

Well, you're you're certainly right that it's complicated, right? It's very complicated, very difficult, but it is not new. The Mongols have been dealing with this uh for a very long time, both in their strong times and in their weak times, both when they're the victors and the victims of uh other powers. So they are somewhat accustomed to it. But I I think part of it, they still stick so much to their culture that we were talking about. But for example, today mining is uh Australia's great interest in Mongolia, and it's the largest single investment in Mongolia is from the Otinto. So you have this mining complex for for copper insegnated things. Well, you should probably say uh uh uh Canadian slash Australian venture in Mongolia, but the Mongolian people do not like to cut the earth. That's a big problem. If you look at the Mongolian gear, that tent or some people call it, but the gare, you look at that, that round thing that's sitting out there, it cannot scratch the earth. There's not one peg that goes into the earth. Really? Not one to hold a gut. No, not one top one. Top one. It must be made from totally natural material, from wool, leather, and wood. That's the only substances that could go into it, and nothing can pierce the earth. Now that's a whole different attitude. And so in the socialist times with Soviet domination, mining was started in a big way in Mongolia. Copper mining. And for the most part, the workers brought in were Kazakhs from the West, and they were handling the work. Now, today it's a very big issue with how to handle the mines, because the majority of Mongolians certainly will not work in the mines. Now, now there are a fair number of Mongolians who do. The pay is very good, and it's like other things that sometimes, especially young people, they have to sacrifice their virtue in order to feed the family. So, for example, in the nomadic way of life, they kill animals, and yet it's wrong to kill. That's how they see it. And so mostly it's young boys who do the killing, and they have to do it out of sight of the elders, out of sight of the gear. They have to do it out of sight of the front door, they have to do it preferably out of sight of the sun. But they are young and they have a chance in life to redeem themselves for having done that. And they were doing it to feed their family. And so there's that kind of sense.

SPEAKER_00 51:41

So sometimes when they go into mining, the younger people, it's the same You can justify it along similar lines, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 51:49

Yes. But the majority of people are very skeptical about it. It takes a lot of work. Now, the fact that the mines uh operated mostly today in the South Gobi, there are very few people there. So it makes it much easier for the companies to operate, but they are extremely dependent on Chinese energy, uh foreign technology, on foreign expertise, and in many cases foreign workers. It's always uncertain exactly how to do foreign workers, RPM. So it's an issue. It's an issue. So they you know the Mongolians have to struggle with these things, but they stay loyal to their culture. And even when they violate it, they find a way to violate it within their own culture. Like, okay, you do it as a young person, you feed your family, and then you spend a lot of time praying and doing good things to make up for having gone into the earth itself and committed this kind of an offense.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Yeah. So that sounds um like a very complicated issue, obviously, because if your traditional gear, as you say, the tent, um, can't even pierce the ground, yeah. I mean, how on earth are you gonna justify turning a mountain upside down to take what's out from under it?

SPEAKER_05 53:13

Umgolian children are never allowed to remove a rock. Really? For where it is. Yeah. If you rocks and bird in it's forbidden to move. So sometimes people they go there visiting the country and it's oh, it's so beautiful, oh, I found this rock, oh, it's so nice. And then they start showing it to other people, oh, I found this beautiful rock, look at this. Oh, I'm gonna take this home, my souvenir Mongolia. I'm gonna remember the go. And the people are horrified. If they have to move a rock, for example, where they build a fire, they use some rocks to do the thing. They do ask for permission from the earth and they say certain things and they treat it with respect, and then they have all kinds of rules about what they can do as a rock and not do with the rock, and uh how to burn the fire and everything. Uh it's a complicated thing. They have a great, great respect for even something as simple as a rock. And so the mining issue, it's necessary. It's it's it's the money today for the country. Yeah. But it's also a sacrifice in a way.

SPEAKER_00 54:29

How do because the the winds of the steps of the steppe is notoriously strong and gusty, how do they secure their their gear without um any sort of tent pegs?

SPEAKER_05 54:44

Okay. They have a rope in the middle hanging down in the middle of the room. And very often today you will see something like half of a car engine tied to that rope. Half of a car engine. You know, something like that. Extremely heavy, heavy object that's brought inside and tied to the rope in order to hold it down. Because there's no stake that you can put it on. You have stakes inside, but they're just holding it up by tension. You know, it's like a geodesic dome that's held by tension, nothing into the into the earth. And so you can't tie that rope to some thing that's rooted in the earth. No. You can you have to just put a heavy-weighted object, or the people themselves have to hold it down. And then still sometimes, of course, they lose it. Dust storms uh kill people in Mongolia.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

The dust storms are so so by pulling down on the central rope, you create a caught friction on all of the because it's a circular structure as well. I suppose there are wooden beams that that run around, and and that is enough to stop a big wind. I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 55:59

It's uh it not no usually yes, but not always. Yeah. Now at the bottom wall of the gear, the bottom part, which would be about the equivalent of uh, I don't know, three feet or something, four feet, is a lattice. It's a wooden lattice where covered in in uh in felt. And then above that are some beams across the ceiling that come to a round circle. They all plug into this round circle. So I mean, your tension torque is work that I think you're probably right. I'm just gonna say yes, but it's certainly something like yeah, I don't understand the engineering. Well, no, neither do I. Neither do I. It was just a word that sounded wrong. Yeah, look, I gotta go with it. I hope I uh but it but uh I've stayed there and you say I I've never been in an accident in a gear, but I do hear about them happening, unfortunately, every year.

SPEAKER_00 56:56

Uh Jack, I wanted to ask you about China uh specifically. So in Inner Mongolia, which is a sovereign region of China, but a cultural region of Mongolia, is that fair to say? Um in Inner Mongolia, there is been reported uh major efforts from the Chinese Communist Party to disallow the um speaking of Mongolian in these communities and especially the teaching of it in schools, um, which is in very clear um which is a very clear case of a an attempt to eliminate a culture. So this uh is obviously ringing huge alarm bells within Mongolia itself. Um, as a person who I suppose is a an adopted Mongolian, I don't know if you could call yourself a Mongolian. I I would like to, but nonetheless, how do you think about this and what are the conversations you're having with the Mongols? How are these going around this subject?

SPEAKER_05 57:57

Yes. It's a very sensitive and very emotional subject. Uh, because the Mongols have often had problems with the language, certainly under the Russians, there were many problems. They had to switch to the switch to the Cyrillic alphabet and give up their own alphabet for some time. And there have been many problems. But I at first I am not an expert in the details. So I read the same things you read, and so you hear all this stuff. But as I look at the situation in Inner Mongolia, uh, it certainly bothers me on one level, but I I don't think that they are that the government is trying to stamp out the language so much as to stamp it out or stop using it as an official language for school instruction other than the Mongolian language. So children can still learn the Mongolian language, but if they're taking physics or history or something, it has to be now in Mandarin Changese. And while that may not be something that I automatically embrace on life, I do recognize that it's this policy throughout China. It's not any one group certainly up the Mongols, but throughout China, they want to now they have this uh phase of reinforcing the use of Mandarin, whether it's in Hong Kong or whether it's in uh any other region of China. And I I can understand uh the logic behind it without fully agreeing with it. I can understand. But I think my experience with China is that on the one hand, there's this uh lingering fear about Mongolia, but overall they're rather proud of the connection. Uh I my books, for example, they do sell well in China. Okay. And they had to go through a censorship process in order, like every other publication. And in the case of the Queen's book, it took a couple of years, and I have no idea why, but it goes through a process, but they allowed the printing of it, uh, certainly in Chinese. They printed it all my books in Chinese, but also they allowed the printing in Mongolian script. And people do overlook that, whereas my country of Mongolia, that they used to call Outer Mongolia, they use uh the old script, but they also mostly use Cyrillic now for everyday life. It's based on the Cyrillic alphabet. But in Inner Mongolia, the people still use classical Mongolian script. And the people still learn it and they still can learn it in school. So on the one hand, they are making some changes, but on the other hand, they do preserve something. And I think, if anything, this controversy, yes, it's raised a lot of emotion in Mongolia, in Outer Mongolia, but I think it's made the Outer Mongolians also more aware of their own heritage of, you know what, we should be learning that script too. By law, every child is supposed to know it, and everything's supposed to be using the script, but uh, we tend to forget it. And I say that, you know, Chingathan, he gave the world sort of many things, but he gave Mongolia two things, the Mongolian people. He gave them their nation, he gave them their name, he created the Mongol nation, year uh 1206. He created it. But two years before that, he gave them a written language. He bought for the Uyghur people, the Uyghur script, the old Uyghur script, which was itself based on Songdian, which is his admitted script. And so he took that script and he he proclaimed that the people should learn it. Well, people in Mongolia today just kind of halfway learn it, but they haven't been so interested. And I think now this greater awareness of the threat to their language that they perceive as a threat is making them take it more seriously. There are far more people in Inner Mongolia who can read Mongolian script and read and write in it every day than are in Mongolia itself to country. I I don't want to say I endorse anything or that I want to criticize it because the situation is complicated. And while I may wish that everybody would learn Mongolian language and these kind of things, I recognize that it's probably uh not going to happen. And so I want to reserve judgment about Inner Mongolia. The party there has built the largest monument in the world to Chingis Han is in China. And it's operating, the government operates it on it. They built the monument.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:02

Well, really, where where is it?

SPEAKER_05 1:03:05

In Inner Mongolia, the Ordos region.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

Really? That's uh look, you just said that that's very interesting to understand. The fact that China, the CCP, paid for and constructed a cultural um symbol to someone who wasn't a Chinese person, but also um that the people in Inner Mongolia would actually speak the ancient language that Chenggis Khan created more so than the people within Mongolia itself. It's kind of that question of um your own culture is bolstered because you're surrounded by a bunch of people who like aren't your culture almost. You um but uh I I I think actually that's a really uh well said consideration of the issue, uh, because it's easy to just say this is totally unacceptable and uh should be stopped immediately, which might still be fair to say, but it's also uh good to consider that, well, it's actually reinforcing within Mongolia the importance of their culture, and so well.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:11

And I've seen there's a great deal of criticism for the removal of some things related to Mongolian history in Inner Mongolia. But it's my understanding, and I I have no way to know for sure, but just from the people I've spoken to, both uh inner Mongolians and uh that the government now is trying to do away with all of these unauthorized things. But the fact that they've authorized the largest monument in the world, I mean Chigis Han's largest monument, to him, people don't think about that. They look at this, oh, this pack was removed. While I may not like the idea that anything with Chiggis Han was removed, I want to reserve judgment about that. Give this time a little bit to play out. It's also new. It makes me quite nervous to even uh talk about it. But uh I think the Chinese people do consider Xingz Han one of them. They consider him the founder of the Yuan, the ancestral founder of the Yuan dynasty, the grandfather of Kublakan. And they are quite, quite proud of that. Uh uh it's a mixture. I mean, they're always like uh many Western people, they share the barbarian image, but on the other hand, they recognize uh what he did for China, that he created China. If you look at the Mongol China under Kublakan by the time uh he he died, it's about exactly the same as it is today. The size, the shape. Uh he helped greatly to unify that country. And uh and I find that the the people in China do recognize that. They recognize it. And I don't want to ascribe all all these recent actions as being anti-Mongol. Sure. I I I pray that it is not. And I think it's a certain kind of ethnic policy that is being applied across the board to all ethnic groups.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:13

I think what maybe I think what maybe uh strikes a little bit more fear into the um into the hearts of the Mongols and the people looking in from elsewhere from outside of the world is the fact that it's not an isolated incident. The CCP trying to eliminate or at least uh you know censor for sure um some of their cultural minorities that live within their borders. You mentioned the Uyghurs I mean that's a whole story for its own right. But um could you maybe comment on just quickly we don't have to linger on it long because I do want to get into Genghis Khan but could you um quickly comment on maybe just a broader macro view of Mongolia and their ongoing relationship with China how how how optimistic uh is Mongolia that China is not going to be sort of develop into an imperialistic threat or um you know even total economic threat because they can sanction Mongolia into some really hard times for example I think we have to be honest and say there's a lot of fear in Mongolia about China but I think mostly relates to the the Manchu domination in the Qing dynasty that there's a lot of fear of the domination politically economically and so on.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:29

However if you look at that from the other side where can Mongolia go? To whom can they turn you know Russia is right there too but the truth is Russia is far, far away because Mongolia is next to Siberia. Siberia doesn't have people you know Russia is far away and Russia is their ally and their friend and the Mongols love the Russians. There's no question about it. And I think part of the reason they can love them is because they're far away as a neighbor and with the Chinese they are afraid I think because of as I said what happened in the Qing dynasty and other things in their history they are afraid. But at the same time China doesn't have to worry about Mongolian bolting I mean all this mining that the Australians do it's from Chinese energy. They can't even generate their own electricity I mean Mongolia has one of the largest coal deposits in the world and here this great mining company from international or from other countries is there and they haven't been able to create their own energy source. They have to buy it all from China. So China supplied energy for the mines some China supplies transportation out to the world uh China buys the product China they don't need to own anything in Mongolia I mean what's the point why would you try to even occupy that country when the country can't go anywhere you know it's not like others that have four or five different neighbors and they can switch one to the other no they're economically dependent on China and all China has to do is just close the railroad there's only one railroad it goes from China through Mongolia to Russia China can close it in a moment uh there are no railroads they haven't allowed that but there are there is traffic across road traffic and and that can be closed in a moment the borders can be closed all the exports can be closed the permission to fly over the country can be ended everything so I I don't understand what China's interest or need would be to take over. But I do understand as a person who lives in Mongolia I do recognize the fear that the Mongolians have of that but I think that the the fear that they have uh I don't think is always justified by Chinese actions. The Chinese seem to be accommodating to Mongolia in many ways and I sound like I'm defending China and the truth is what I want to do is always to promote good relations and never for anyone to think my work is anyway anti-anybody anti-Russian anti-Chinese anti-Mong anti-anything I think that the way forward for Mongolia is to have good relations with everybody and that's what I'm trying to push in my work is respect for Mongolian culture. I believe if the world knows about it understands the culture that's we will respect it.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:50

And I've had lots of positive support from China and didn't you know they don't write negative things about my books they also said very kindly and I appreciate that very much that they allowed it they translated it the Mongol script and then in in my own Mongolia they then used that to publish it Mongolian script in Mongolia they'd already published it in uh Srilic script but I think then somebody was like oh yeah we should publish this in the script of Chikashan you know so they borrowed that from the it might be um it sounds like it's true that the Mongoli Mongolians maybe the Mongolian politicians might be really sort of expert diplomats um in part of the research for this I was reading about them having you know terrific relations with the United States Russia and China. I mean they're three countries that not many not many other countries in the world can claim to have great diplomatic relations with across the board.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:52

Yes so I I think that's a great thing about Mongolia and Mongolia is the only true democracy in that area. I mean if you look at it in a Western sense of the word a democracy with all the flaws that democracy has including in in our own countries since it's very flawed. And in Mongolian has its flaws but it is democratic compared to many countries that claim to be democratic but are not. So it's a democratic country that tries to get along with everyone in the world. Their greatest desire for so long was to join the United Nations until they finally were admitted recognized as a conflict and then since uh then they participate in almost every United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world. They go around to they have them right now they're in African countries in peacekeeping missions. They were before in uh the former Yugoslavian countries such as Bosnia on peacekeeping missions. They also joined the NATO effort in Afghanistan so they have tried to do everything they can for a small country of three million people to be participating in all of these events around the world it shows their commitment to internationalism. They were very proud to be Mongolian but they want to be a part of the world.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:13

I am uh really optimistic about the longevity of Mongolia and the fact that they do have one of the most stable politics in the region you know uh it it does sort of speak volumes because they're a tiny country with natural resources with giant geopolitical neighbors in most other parts of the world that recipe has resulted in a in an exploitative economy but not the case in Mongolia which is very good. And there's also more to be said about why South Korea and Japan are major cultural influences on the new generation and there's also so much to be said about just traveling throughout the country you have some wonderful anecdotes um in the afterwood of your book um you know riding when you ride 50 kilometers a day in a horse having to have the uh the traditional clothing like strapped very tight and sort of living off the land and um all these amazing sort of anecdotes and experiences but I am just conscious of the fact that people are are listening and so perhaps you know we we shouldn't drone on too long about those sort of things um uh because I do want to bring up um mr mr khan as well uh you know is there anything you you wanted to sort of say before I bring him in well no no no no I I follow you all right come on Ryan this is uh you're the boss here I'm following you so you said uh barbarian earlier uh in reference to the Huns one of the great uh sort of aha moments when I was reading the book is mentioning that the the image of the Mongol the image of the barbarian in Western consciousness is actually a manufactured one through a long line of propaganda it's not necessarily true that say Attildahan or Genghis Khan was the most evil bloodthirsty murderous person in history um and it all started with Voltaire who couldn't insult his own polit his own politicians directly so he indirectly positioned them as the Mongols and the Khans and perhaps you want to take it from there but could you document how Genghis Khan's image was totally distorted for hundreds and hundreds of years up until your book essentially it's been a back and forth journey for his image in history now the people who are conquered almost never like the conqueror I mean that's just I think just kind of natural in history I and so there's uh always some lines of of resistance.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:46

I mean uh Russia for example has mostly been very anti uh Chigishan anti-Mongolian history very much however at the same time there's always been a a Russian group that was always very pro-Mongolian in their research uh in their politics and so on so it works both ways also in China I would say more pro-Mongolian in a way than than Russia was and yet there's always a group that's going to be anti-Mongol that's true but what happened to after the conquest was that some people really embraced him very much and I go back to the simple fact he had one million people he had an army of a hundred thousand how do you conquer a hundred million people how if you conquer them how do you rule them it's not by force the Mongols conquered many cities by force but many cities joined the Mongols and those that were conquered often realize that they benefited more because of the trade the tax policies and many other policies of Chinese Han uh you don't rule people for a hundred years with an army of a hundred thousand people and the army did grew over time grew over time because uh they added in China they added Chinese and in in Iran or Persia they added Persians of course but for the Mongols themselves have such a small population they're not going to rule if there's no benefit to it. So the world benefited greatly from the Mongol rule and many people realized it. I look back in the Persian writers some of those were the most tolerant and the fairest towards Han they wrote some very positive things later they turned very negative against the Mongols and uh Arab Persian history later portrayed the Mongols as barbarian you look at Europe and you have on the one hand Russia from the beginning they were dominated by the Mongols but their ruling class had to accommodate they had to go to Mongolia to get instituted into office the great hero Alexander Nevsky for example was a great supporter of the Mongols today that's washed over in in Russian history and they sort of pretend so many people pretend like no we were just conquered it was the Mongol yoke as opposed to the golden horde and all so there was that tendency at the same time Jeffrey Chaucer the first writer in the English language for fun calling as Han the greatest lawyer there ever was so people say oh you to me you know oh you're a revisionist you're coming in you're not even a Mongol specialist you're a revisionist who comes in and I feel like no I'm upholding the tradition of Jeffrey Chaucer. There are other people along the way who are deeply impressed by the fact that it was under the Mongol Empire that so much out of China came including the negative part as you want to call it that the the gunpowder and explosives and artillery but also printing that it was printing that came out during this time. Also the compass came out during this time these are great revolutions that made possible in many ways the Renaissance and there were always some people who recognized it from the beginning certainly Marco Polo. Marco Polo everything he said was positive. And so yeah then we had this narrative start with people such as Voltaire going back to the barbarian image of the Mongols and all and then fortunately it also it had been preceded by some better work I think and that was that the first novel ever written by Chingis Han was written by a French woman and uh she was a huguenot who had been forced out of France because of her religion and she had to work as a well today we'd call a nanny taking care of children and she wrote in her past time and she wrote a novel. She had no history she had no access to much about him but she knew some things and I believe that it was because of the religious freedom issue probably that she chose him and she portrayed him as this great gallant person. It was a bestseller in many languages in Europe at that time. And also at the same time that we had a very great scholar in France Betty Delacroix he had been an ambassador you would say in Turkey and he did Persian and Turkish and Arabic he was quite a gifted scholar and he wrote the first true biography on Chingishan and it was called the Great Shingishan the Great I mean he started off right there and that was one of the favorite books for example of Ahmed Zephani copies of it he gave it to people he gave it to his own granddaughter to read uh he was very much impressed by this book. So there's always this tradition that recognized hand for for what he was at the Mongolian people for what they did. But then there was always the it created and I think it was made worse in the scientific revolution when they really they wanted to find scientific reasons to dislike the Asians. So they renamed all Asians Mongols you know they called them the Mongol race. So you had the African race and the European race and the Mongol race and then it was also the scientists who then decided okay if we the white people of Europe are the superior race to the world how can we have children who are not superior. We have children who are born with things like what we would today call Down syndrome or with other kinds of handicaps. How can that be? And they came up well it's because the Mongols raped white women when they came through and these children are throwbacks to the Mongols. They're mongoloids Mongoloids yeah exactly that's how that's how science and medicine were used to justify a virulent form of racism.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:18

When I look back to Petit de la Croix I look back to uh people such as Chaucer I I think of these people at Marco Polo as having given a much better view and I try to emphasize that in my in my life and in my I I think um the way you started that was uh a a way that I've never thought about it before but such a such a cle like a clear way to almost dispel the myth that it was a a rule through fear. How can a hundred thousand warriors rule over fear over a hundred million people the logistics of it just doesn't make sense I don't care how good the warriors are uh and so that's a really good way to put it um uh and then you you know obviously you go on to emphasize the the um uh the benefits of being under Mongol rule right you know you get access to trade so you increase the prosperity of your people you aren't going to be subject to any sort of um I don't know what would you call it you're not gonna be subject to their religion you can still practice your own religion very important one one you would dedicate an entire book to but how Jagis Khan was the um he he allowed freedom of religion really for all of the people that he was sub that was subject to him um yeah could you just to fit round out this point could you please um ex uh tell the anecdote of the Indian man in prison writing letters to his daughter I forget the name of him right now um that I'm asking the question but that that really stood out to me as well as a uh another person throughout history who had maybe recognized uh Shanghis Khan of this as this as this amazing figure in history and not just a bloodthirsty murderer.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:13

There was there the father of modern uh India and the father also Indira Gandhi and he was writing those letters from a British prison to his daughter Indira Gandhi was later of course herself assassinated unfortunately with uh sectarian issue and he was defending Chingis Han in the Mongols because he recognized that first it showed the contribution of Asia people to the world but also he was trying to give a strong message to his own daughter and to anybody else that is who might be listening to him about the need for India to overcome the great diversity of languages and religions and ethnicities and castes that it had. And I think he saw Chigishan as a good model for that. And so his words about it were very positive. And then from the moment of its independence India has been one of the staunchest steadiest ally of Mongolia it has never wavered and it has India is not a rich country at all but India still this year for example it donated vaccines to Mongolia and to Cambodia they always step in to try to help especially the case of Mongolia but also with Cambodia and a few other countries and when India came independence well the first thing they did was they had a uh academic conference on the secret history and they began the translation unfortunately they did not have access to the Mongolian scholars to translate from Mongolian so they translated it from Chinese and so it it wasn't uh um it was it wasn't necessarily accurate in every respect but they were the first to do it and they were a poor country to pay for something like that it showed their respect for this part of ancient history and it's the that kind of the globalism of Qingizhan that he was somebody who tried to unite the world even though in part by force but also in part by these other policies. And so in some other countries such as Japan that you mentioned and uh even Korea they have been much more positive in history towards the Mongols even though both were invaded successfully in the case of Korea unsuccessfully in the case of Japan they've been much more positive.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:49

So India uh Japan and and Korea have had a much steadier positive images and cooperation helped for Mongolia than uh many of the Western yeah and and on this this topic it is worth mentioning though also that uh Shengis Khan also and his Mongols uh were extraordinarily ruthless uh to take a city um and also to perhaps create fear in the survivors so the bad propaganda would spread and people would know that when Shanghis Khan comes knocking on your door you better let him in. Otherwise terrible things are going to happen to you. You know there's a particularly gruesome uh scene that I remember where the Mongols have a feast they've laid boards over the piles of dead people and they have a feast sitting on the boards with people dying underneath them. Uh and that you know maybe has been embellished throughout history and mightn't have been exactly as it occurred um but it is a it is a it is the type of scenery that could spread that fear and could Uh, you know, spread the bad propaganda to make sure that you become servile when this man doesn't open your door. Um, so it's also worth mentioning that as well, of course.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:10

Yeah, to speak to that scene in particular. This is a scene that was recorded by a Christian or uh Western Christian Roman Catholic priest uh who said that happened. And uh I don't know of any other sources, so I cannot deny it or cannot confirm it. But the Mongols, they certainly, the Mongols and this person did not see it. He reported it. Okay. And what the Mongols were very good at exactly what you said, propaganda. But I want to go directly to sit to the point about uh brutality and war and say, yes, there is no war ever that has not been brutal. None. And yes, when the Mongols conquered, they conquered efficiently, which means also brutally. However, they had a very structured system. And there are some people, I think like Attila the Han, I will not defend him. And uh they even like Tamar Lane to some extent, uh, they seemed to just sort of conquer and all. The Mongols had a simple system. They had to send in an ambassador, they had to, to the people and announce to them that if they surrender, no one will be hurt. No one. And their taxes will not change. That's a very strange thing. But and then a few other things like that. But if you resist, you will be killed. So that was the first step. And then if the people fought and the Mongols won, of course, as they did every single time, they won, then the Mongols killed the elite right away. They killed them all, all the rulers. Jingis Khan had been betrayed early on by some rulers whom he let live. And after that, no, the upper class is wiped out. There is no need for them. If they cannot defend their own people, then what good are they going to be to the Mongols? But every person who had a skill, if you could weave, if you could speak languages, if you could read and write, if you could make pottery, if you could do anything. Translate it, even if you could do translation, anything. You were saved. You were saved automatically. Now, uh you may not have much control over your life because you're not being granted the same freedoms that you would have if you had surrendered. So he was quite, quite fair. I feel like you compare that to what was going on in Europe at the time, he was extremely fair. But then what happened? He had no people to leave behind. He could not leave behind a governor, he couldn't leave behind an occupying Arden. He had too few people. So he would appoint local people to then take over administration. If they then revolted against him, he came back and he killed everybody. Well, it's true. And it happened in several cities. One of the most famous was the city of Nerv, which is now Turkmenistan.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:58

And with the medital cats and dogs as well, right? Like it was an absolute Yeah, I know. Oh, that was a different one.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:06

I do not know if that's true. No, no, no. That is said by the Persian uh chroniclers, yes. But again, we have this thing with the Mongols that when I say they killed everyone, they usually would allow a certain number of people, about 10%, to escape. Okay. Because they spread terror. And they wanted the terror to be spread, and they encouraged the spreading of these tales. I cannot imagine that tomorrow. Why would you take the time to kill a bunch of dogs and cats? I mean, first of all, if you really, I mean, the slaughter of people at that time, it's not like we're so efficient today with bombs. I mean, each one had to be, it's like, could you really kill a hundred thousand cows in a day? It's almost uh so I don't know that cats and dogs are true or not true. I don't know. But uh Mongol propaganda was great, and then they would exaggerate their own number.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:04

True.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:04

They let people say, oh yeah, killed a million people. There was no city of a million people to conquer. Never. But they would say, yeah, he killed a million people. And so the Mongols didn't try to control it. They used propaganda, and then in the end, it certainly affected his image. But you look at his priority was to save the lives of his soldiers. That was his first priority. He did not want to risk them in a battle. He did not want to risk them in going in on anything unnecessary. And if you look at the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was to save American soldiers' lives. They sacrificed the lives of Japanese women and children, and perhaps justified, perhaps not. That's many people have different opinions, but that is a fact of a modern civilized country. And I think almost any country would probably do the same. And that's what happened in the time of Shingus Hung. But with a hundred thousand men, you really can't kill that.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:08

No, I you have to think about it. Yeah, um, I totally agree. I I there was something that um popped in my mind as you were speaking, then you make a comparison to the European leaders at the time as well, or it's just perhaps Temer Lane or to Attila the Hunt and you know Napoleon, like throwing any uh great man of history, right? Um Genghis Khan strikes me as someone who was quite ego-less without ego. Um, he stepped into one of the conquered cities himself. He lived in the same clothes, conditions, and housing that he was born into. He never had his image recreated. There weren't grand paintings of him. He didn't brandish any coins, he didn't have books written about him. He was uh as on the uh you know the spectrum of leaders all the way at the extreme end of having no ego. And perhaps that is one of the crucial understandings of why his empire uh wasn't reliant on him, because as you document, you know, when he passed away, he he was surrounded by his his loved ones, his family. When Napoleon passed away, he was he was banished to one of the most remote islands of the Mediterranean. Um, and many other great leaders murdered in their sleep and so forth. So um, you know, d does does that strike uh uh resonance with you, the fact that maybe Genghis Khan was egoless?

SPEAKER_05 1:34:37

As close as well, I think everything you described about him is is is accurate in the sense of not allowing his portrait, uh or not doing any of the things we would think of having a palace, not having fancy clothes, not having a crown, uh not allowing a monument to be built for him, or even a a statue or a grave to be marked. Nothing, nothing. Um but you can say that eagle is you can also say, well, it's the height of extreme egoism that he's so confident in himself, he does not need the praise of people who've been subjected and defeated.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:15

You know?

SPEAKER_05 1:35:17

He he believed he had a personal relationship with his mountain, Bukhar Halto, and with the sky. And he wanted the blessing of those two. Those were very important to him. That was his relationship and to his own family, his own people, his great, great loyalty to the men who served him. Tremendous, not one of his his uh people who served him rebelled against him. Now some of the people in his own family did and resisted him, but not any of the men whom he so he had tremendous loyalty, and I think he took confidence in that, and he had no worry. When he heated life, you know, when he was in Afghanistan, there again, the world has had a lot of trouble conquering Afghanistan. You know, America has been there for now. We're going into the second generation of fighting one war. Russia was there, England, every Jesus Hunt came in one year, conquered. Loved the place. He absolutely loved the country. It was a bloody situation, however, I'm going to say in Afghanistan. And that's some of the worst that happened in his whole career, because his grandson was killed there. It was a very difficult time for them, emotionally, and for the people of Afghanistan who participated in that. However, he loved that country. He loved the landscape and the area. And he conquered all of these places. And so during this time, I think as a part because of the recovery process from his grandson, he had many, many religious scholars come to him from China, all the way from 15 years maybe. Uh, and of course, Muslim scholars around, and he talked with all of them and he encouraged them in their own way. But he always said, This is my way. This is the way that that God has shown me, the heaven has shown me. This is the way I learned from my mountain. And it worked. He conquered the world listening to his sky and his mountain. So I think he had a tremendous self-confidence, whether that's realisticism or I yeah, I don't know. But he he was a very confident man, but had a humble life, very humble life. He did not need people to make songs about him, to sing his praises, to write history about him. He probably wouldn't even approve of what I've done, you know, of writing a history about that. He he was so reserved in that way. Extremely, extremely modest in his way of life.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:56

Um he was he was um as true a as true an exponent of meritocracy as perhaps history has given us. Um you mentioned none of his soldiers ever turned around and betrayed him. One of his most senior generals was actually someone who fell him from a horse, right? Um, on the opposition army. And he was like, Well, that guy's a good uh a good archer, a good soldier. Here we go. I'm gonna pluck him and I'm going to bring him into my army. And when he would conquer cities, he would intentionally not kill the educated, the craftsman, because they had a merit, they had a value. Um and it's such an amazing thing, which is like so obvious to us that one should reward merit. But so many times in history, even right now, we're seeing in grand political institutions meritocracy isn't actually always given priority.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:53

Yes, yes. Well, you're right. I mean, the example that you use about uh the man whom Chingis Khan actually renamed he named it that which means uh the bow and arrow. But he shot the horse of Chingis Han. It was his act of bravery in shooting the horse of the commander, but also that when Ching Han said to the captured soldiers who did this, he came forward and meet it. That impressed Jingath Han, that he was honest and he was willing to come forward and die so as not to implicate any of his own men. Chingazan knew that man, you can trust him to the end of the earth. And it was true. He trusted him for the rest of his life, and he became one of the greatest generals of Chingazan. So, yes, his people were very loyal to him. And as I said before, he destroyed the aristocracy everywhere he went. He killed them off because they had betrayed him early on so often he got rid of them. He didn't do this kind of let's intermarry and let's become a mix. No, no. Those kings, their families, they were killed off. And it was people for the bottom who were about to rise up of every sort. Many of the officials in the Mongol rule in uh in Muslim lands were actually Christians or Jews or Jews. They had no problem. Mongols had no problem with that. But you know, in our life, our greatest virtue is also always our most vulnerable vice, I think. You know, and in the end of life, he favored his own sons. Over the meritocracy. He had all yeah, he he he favored his daughters first, and that I think was absolutely fine because they were better. They were better educated, they were better educated, and they did an excellent job at ministering uh many of the lands that he conquered. He relied on them tremendously, and he respected them, and at least uh one of them could read and write. We don't know what language she was reading and writing, first one's not recorded, but uh, she was the Chinese uh envoys marveled at this woman who was always doing the legal purpose by reading and writing as opposed to just sitting there and decreed it. So his daughters were excellent, uh, and I think they rose through very talking. He also chose excellent wives for his sons. They were extreme. He had a good taste in women. And yeah, he knew how to well, he was talented, I really think. When you have one million people, I mean, first of all, his mother raised him. He relied on her greatly. He relied on his wife, uh Bert, especially uh so it was I you know I don't see this ideological in any way. I just see it as a practical thing of we need every skill we can get. And he recognized women had skills men didn't have. They weren't the best in battle, so you don't send them off to war. But they were very good for commerce, uh, managing the silk route, uh, these other countries. And then, but in the end, he did turn the empire over to his sons. He turned Arias over to his daughters and to his wives, and I don't think he realized that by turning so much power over to his sons that they would soon squeeze out the female members of the family, which they did unfortunately. And I understand, you know, your family and your love for your own children can sometimes override your own principles. So at the end of life, he yielded and he gave power to his sons. And they did a good job for a while. They expanded the empire, went on for some time, and then when his son Gudehan died, and he was taken over by the daughter-in-law whom Chigis Han had chosen, Dorajin. She was perhaps the greatest of all of his successors. Doraj, I call her Dorajin the Great. She ruled for five years. She ruled the largest empire in the history of the world. It was even larger than that of Chingis Han. Wow. Because her husband, yes, oh she ruled. And it was a time of peace. There was no expansion under her. It was a time of great commercial advancement and peace. The world today, who's ever heard of Dorujin Hatun? Dorjatu, the great queen of Mongolia, the empress of the largest empire in the history of the world.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:28

Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:29

For any man, no man ever ruled a larger one, no woman ever ruled a larger one. I don't even remember her. But she was a daughter-in-law chosen for uh her husband by Chingitan, who chose her for his son. So he had great, excellent skills for deciding who was good and useful.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:51

But in the end, he yielded to the love. And I think also, again, in part, his grandson, whom he loved so much having been killed, his most capable grandson. I think it it it makes odd emotions, you know, not just mourning at all, but I think it made him more attached in some ways to his son and really regretting. All right, because late in life he tried to reteach his sons. He took them out to battles to discuss things. He tried to force them to work together. You two campaign this. And then when they would fight, he would try to he tried very hard. But they were past on middle-aged men. They're not trainable, you know. You can't train a middle-aged man. And you know, it's just uh I think it's one of the tragedies of his life is that personal drama.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:40

Just failing at the very end with his children to to pass the torch. But it's quite it's quite the um you know, it's quite the torch to to take, though, to carry, to walk in Chenggi's shoes. There probably was no one else who could have. Perhaps his uh daughter-in-law, this um this Empress Queen. But um, you know, um could you, Jack, so one of the one of the most I supp not fascinating, but one of the most exciting details of the Khans is just how good warriors they were. So could you commit a minute or two to how good they were on horseback, um, and then militarily how how they managed to conquer 100 million people with a hundred thousand warriors? And I know this is something that books can be committed to, but just like the the cliff notes, I'm sure something off the top of your head.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:35

Well, I think uh people often want to find the one thing, and they say, oh, it's the bow and arrow. Oh, it was what they call the Parthian shot, the ability to shoot forward and then to uh uh shoot in reverse. That's very unusual in the world. Uh yes, but they were by far excellent marksmen. They had these boats that were made with incredible uh accuracy, great technology uh behind it. They had all of that, but other people also could do that. These were unique. I think it's more the social organization and the way of life of these people that they grew up on a horse. You know, even today, the most the Mongolians uh they don't want to walk 20 meters, you know, if they can get on the horse and ride to 20 meters, they want to get on the horse, you know. And you can see they can do everything on a horse. I mean, out in the middle of nowhere, and I see somebody out there with a pair of binoculars standing up on the back of a horse looking around. What are you looking for? It's presumably for animals, but I know also they look for other things too, you know. And it it's uh it's just amazing what they could do on a horse, but they grow up. So that skill, it's like the horse, the bow and the arrow, and the man are one thing. That is one piece. It's almost like a one-man tank coming through, you know. And you look at other people in the world, they had excellent bows and arrows. Very good. But you look at the European way of fighting, first of all, only aristocrats had horses. And even they mostly used it for hunting and for this jousting, and uh, they weren't out there fighting, really. They were out there uh parading around on their horses. So they come to war. And then if the people with the bow and arrow, it's not the guy on the horse, he has a sword or a spear or something that he's gonna use very dramatically, and uh they're gonna bring prisoners, he's gonna whack up and hit. You know, it's it won't show than anything else. The cavalry in uh Europe was no formidable force. And the people, the artillery, the bow and arrow people, they would be brought out using a wagon to back up, and they had to dismount, even if they were on a horse, they had to dismount in order to shoot. So it's a whole different place. The Mongols there racing in, they race in, they race in, they race in, firing, firing, firing. They turn and race out, firing, firing, firing. It never stops. But they had also this solidarity of group that Chingdat Han created, you know, with his laws. You never leave behind a Mongol. Never. Never. You know, and so there's this great solidarity uh among the soldiers. And also all the laws must be discussed with the soldiers. They understand the strategy that you're going for. And they had to memorize many of the laws in a poetic form that they had to memorize. So they were more respected in a certain way, and they were expected to have 100% obedience, and they did not fail. If they're ordered to do it, they do it. You know, when they got to the castle in Alamut in northern Iran, where the assassins lived, the cult of the assassins, nobody could scale that mountain. I mean, it was a sheer cliff all the way up to their fortress. No one had been able to sail it, to scale it. And the Mongols arrived, and Bhuliku was commander, and he said, Okay, scale the mountain. They did. They scaled it on the most inaccessible side of all that no one was expecting anyone to ever even try, and they overcame the cult of the assassins. So the Mongols were quite dedicated to their task, they fulfilled it. You know, Chingaz Han always said, you know, your yes is your yes. And it's absolutely had it. You said yes, and you had to do it, no excuse. And uh so they had this sense of military discipline, and yet they were participating in the whole thing. They knew that at the end of the day, they were a Mongol, and when they won, they were still better than the people they had conquered. They weren't gonna have to kneel down before some foreign prince, they weren't gonna have to kneel down before foreign prince. Religion. No, no. They were Mongols, and they had great pride in that. And they could live on their horse for days. And they only every man had to have five horses.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:11

That's an interesting detail as well. Something that you don't think of when you can give the Mongols traveling through the land, there's five horses and one man. So there's hundreds of thousands of things.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:22

That's why it's yeah. This is another thing, the Mongol strategy. The Mongols had to send in an advanced party well in advance, sometimes two years in advance of the army, in order to clear out the people so that the land could just go to grass and they could have pasture for their animals. These were well, these weren't raiding exercises. These were well organized, of course, great campaigns, you know. And also expelling the people from the land provoked great havoc. They went to the city, they brought disease, they used up the water, the food, they they weakened the city before the Mongols even got there two years later with their fat and well-fed horses, you know. So, yeah, so the soldier went out there, but they didn't have to have hot food every day. They could live off of their dairy products, their dry dairy products, you know, that they kept in their pouch. And uh every man had to have certain things, including a needling threat. Every Mongol soldier had to be able to sew up whatever had to be sewn up, whether it was his clothes, his boots, or the wounds on his buddy's body. They had to be able to do it. I mean, it was well organized, but so efficient. They did not have to carry any baggage train. They didn't have supply line. As long as Tigatad was alive. Yeah, no supply line. Exactly. The supply line was ahead of them. They cleared the land, that was their pasture, their animals went with them, they had their food with them, they had their uh their mounts with them for reinforcement, they had everything. So it was a well-organized venture. And I think it was his ability to organize and to inspire his people with great devotion that was the key to his success, not just any one weapon.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:06

Can you speculate on a bit of revisionist history for us for a moment, Jack? Um because I think you may have said this, or maybe I heard this elsewhere in the book, um, that the Mongols decimated the Islamic world, more or less. And this was around the time when the Islamic world was one of the most prosperous places uh in the entire planet. And the Islamic world I'm referring to um Baghdad's um help me out a little bit here.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:39

I forget the uh the areas around Persia and Iraq.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:43

Yeah, yes, all of the and so the Mongols came in and kind of you know reset whatever progress they were making. Um can you give us a bit of revisionist history about whether there's any truth to this, and perhaps if there is truth to it, what the world might have looked like differently.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:58

Yeah. I think the negative aspect is the Mongols were very far from home. Here you are, you have a hundred thousand soldiers, you're far from home. Sikhatan had to divide his army, part goes to Afghanistan, part goes through Persia, and then up to the Caucasus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and into Russia. You know, so his army is quite small at this time. And a lot of people took advantage of it. The Mongols passed through, they said, yes, okay, the Mongols, yes, we obey the great Khan. We do everything, yes, yes, yes. As soon as the Mongols were gone, it was like, huh, no, we're blocking our walls, you know. Okay. Then the whole army turned around and they came back. And so, yes, uh a number of cities were. And Baghdad did uh the Baghdad conquest was after Chigashani's grandson, Pudigo. But it's still it's the same era, the same tactics, and so on. And the conquest of Baghdad, oh, people say all the uh the Tigris and Euphrates ran red with the blood of the people and black with the ink of the great books that were thrown in. Because the Mongols the Mongols knew the value of everything. Everything. They had a census of every book. They had a census of everything, every animal, every book. And they certainly knew the value of books. And there was a very excellent Persian official, Giovanni, who was appointed to head up this uh census taking of the books. Mongols did not throw books into the river, they were not about to waste it. And the thing about Baghdad that's so interesting, the Mongols did not enter Baghdad. The Mongols allowed their Christian allies, the Georgians and the Armenians, and also some Muslim minorities, to go in and pillage the city in an organized way. So, yes, there was a lot of killing, but to blame it all on the Mongols, also I think misses a great part of history. And yes, then this Muslim civilization had been radically changed. There's no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:09

They were radically changed. And the Mongols like there's no sort of um open question about whether they were or were not decimated. It's true that they were sort of reset almost.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:19

I think there was a resetting, but it was better than ever. The Mongols didn't occupy, they didn't, they didn't give a hoot about that. They didn't want to live in that city. They moved farther north into what was then Azeri territory and the Tabriz of northern Iran, and they made their capital there. They made it a great cultural center. That's where Marco Polo passed shoot. They had the greatest exchange from, especially from Iran and China. Europe was not so important in this, but Iran had a lot to offer, and they took to China, they brought a lot from China, including medicines, technology, trade, uh, uh, knowledge about calendars and astronomy. Both countries traded back and forth tremendously under the Mongol rules because they ruled Persia and they ruled China at the same time. Much of that is forgotten. Now, some of the Iranian scholars do recognize it, and some other foreign scholars of the great renaissance that came about under Mongol rule. And I use that word renaissance advisedly. I think it really was. It was a revitalization. And of all people, the Iranians perhaps have the most to thank to the Mongols, because until this time they were so dominated by Arab culture. And Persian culture was much, much older, much older. But back that was an Arab city, still is today. It was an Arab city that occupied and and and occupied much of their world, and the other part that wasn't occupied by the Arabs was occupied by the Uzbek Turks, who was called uh Churism at that time. So the Persians, their language was not prospering. Their language sort of chance to die out. And under the Mongols, all that was revived. They were given great religious freedom for the Shiites, who were also greatly oppressed by the Sunnis. People don't look back on all of that. So they they suffered greatly, but in the end, I do believe that they benefited perhaps more than almost any other people. And I don't think anybody in the Middle East would much agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:27

That's an interesting take on it, you know, just because um if you look at it very simplistically, you can say, oh wow, Islam was on this trajectory and they were reset. I wonder what the world would look differently now. Um, so Jack, I wanted to ask this to you, as someone who has studied the Khans, but also lives in current-day Mongolia and understands both the current culture and has, you know, as good as one can a grip on what the old culture was. And I wanted to know how many of the cultural themes from Genghis Khan's time still exist through to today? And specifically, I want to mention attitude towards women, um, problematic drinking, spiritual connection to the land, the relationship with horses, um, and also a really important one and abhorrence in mentioning illness and death. Uh, these are all traits that I think were very well embodied within Genghis Khan's time. I wonder how they've uh sort of translated into modern-day Mongolia.

SPEAKER_05 1:58:21

Yeah, mostly still there. Most of those are still there. You know, um uh between the horse, it's still the central part of Mongolian life and culture. Uh, it's a nation with million more horses than they will ever need for any purpose on earth. But people love it. And they love the horse milk. They love everything about the horse. When they have races, everybody comes out to try to touch the winning horse just to rub the sweat onto their head, which is the most sacred part of the body, or onto themselves. You know, that the horse is everything. And the person's soul is also, it's called hemo. It's your wind horse. It's like the horse that your soul rides. Everything is horse, horse, horse in Mongolia. So even though they live in the city, all the city people want to own horses. If they can, they have them out in the countryside. Uh they love to race horses. Uh Mongolians just uh its center of life is the horse. Well, one of the things that has changed certainly has they have still an international spirit, but they are not militaristic.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:35

You know, the army goes out on peacekeeping missions, the army's quite small, the army makes no effort to be involved in politics at all. There's nothing militaristic about Mongolian society. So the horse is important, uh, the military part is gone, but the internationalism lingers on, quite international still. Treatment of women, I think it's a little bit more nuanced, that they have certainly a very high standard compared to many countries in the world. I think overall, I hate to generalize about Asia, it's a big device, but I think the Mongolian women overall tend to rank higher than in many other countries in Asia and also in the West. But it's a it's an odd thing. As internationalism has come in in this capitalist way, I think it has done more to harm the status of women in Mongolia than the Mongolian culture. Some people come in and think, oh, look, the Mongolians didn't have this great prejudice against women and but I remember that even when I went to Mongolia when I first lived there, which is now well over 20 years ago in the 1990s, the major corporations, some of them were run by women, construction companies. These kind of companies that you don't think of as being run by women. And what had happened under socialism, of course, everything was run by the government. And women had a very prominent role under socialism, and they had a big position in politics. As soon as democracy came in in our style, women lost a lot in politics. And so I think many of them retreated into business to form these corporations. Well, then by the time you get to this century, you find international corporations are starting to get involved with Montfort. They're male-oriented. And I hate to be prejudiced against the mining industry because I do actually support the mining industry. I'll be not the criticism, I do support. But the mining industry has this kind of, yeah, yeah, we're real men. We kind of go out and we take the dirt and you know, we wear boots and hats, and we're real macho. The Western men are like that. They come in, they don't want to deal with a female construction cover. That's not, mmm, mmm, you know. And so they came in, and what happened? All of these companies became male dominated. And I've seen that just in my own lifetime within Mongolia. So it's a huge shift away from economic power of women at the top towards their sub uh sub, I don't even say subservia, but a lower position in the economic capitalism. We imposed that on them. That didn't come from them. But you look at other aspects of Mongolian society, we talked about high literacy rate, it's always higher for women than for men. Uh it's always valued more for women than for men. Well, overall, the Mongolian women are much better educated than the men, and they have great respect for that. Now, there are other problems for women, and that is with this increased alcohol has always been a problem in Mongolian history since the time of Tigas Han. I think prior to that, uh, drunkenness was wild and widespread at the end of milking season for about two months, but it didn't last very long because the milk ran out. Then once the Mongols started conquering other places, you can have wine all year, you can have rice wine, you can have all kinds of things. Then Figasan's sons all had drinking problems. And he tried very hard to control it. He tried very hard on uh, again, that's one of the things where he failed with his own family, which to control the head of drinking. The daughters and daughters-in-law, however, were much better about it, and they were much better at administering. So alcohol has been a problem. It has become, I will say, under socialism, it was also quite bad. Uh, the socialists did many very good things for the country, but under alcohol, I don't think that was a good thing. They increased the use because the Russians also used a tremendous amount of vodka, and that increased. And I think that now we have more violence towards women within the family because of alcohol more than any other thing. And some people just look at one aspect of violence and they don't see the other aspects, how women are better educated, and very often women end up marrying a man who's less educated than they are. But I've seen many, many families in which the woman runs a family, and it's quite common for the wife to be older than the man. Certainly in the case of Jingis Han, whose wife was older than he was. It was very common in Mongolian history to this day. And so it's often the woman who takes the lead in a relationship, and the man goes along, and they're quite loving and friendly. So it's not a universal problem. But alcoholism and violence go together. And I will say the violence is as much a man-on-man as man-on-woman, and sometimes woman on man. But you have to admit that the violence against women is a negative aspect. And I can't blame that entirely on the outside world or anything else. The way I blame some of the loss of women's status on the capitalist outside world. And I'm not anti-capitalist. I'm really not. But when socialism does a good job, you have to recognize they did a good job in some things. They did a uh capitalism does a much better job in other things.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:15

I don't want to take that down too much of a tangent, but what's an example of a good thing that um the Soviet Union provided for Mongolia?

SPEAKER_05 2:05:23

I think education and medical care. The fact that they were able to end up they left Mongolia in desperate shape in many, many regards, but they left it with a higher literacy rate than the United States of America. That's a great achievement for a country like that. Also, uh the venereal disease rate in Mongolia in the 1920s was one of the highest in the world. Oh, really? Yes. And and the uh Soviets wiped it out.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:57

Because it wiped out access to health care and um treatment.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:01

Yes, and it's not a sophisticated health care. Even to this day, Mongolian health care is not sophisticated in all the Western ways. You have some uh Western uh advantages, of course. But uh the Soviets didn't come in like that. They came in trying to get good general public health care and the people to know what to do and to give them the basic good care. And I I must uh say that the socialists were excellent with health care, with education, uh also with animal care. They centralized the animals, which wasn't a good policy. Um, they did many things with animals that were not good, but overall their veterinary care was good. And when they left, the veterinary care fell tremendously. Now Mongolia's been slowly raising it up so that they can export meat and dairy products. But most countries, uh, except for special circumstances, won't accept it because they they dropped the preventative care that they used to have for disease. So health care is one I think the status of women and also the um the education overall, those were, I think, very high under socialism.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:09

Um, what about the spiritual connection to the land? How how much has this cultural theme stayed throughout the years?

SPEAKER_05 2:07:17

I'd say absolutely 100% there.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:21

I mean, yeah, it it's still uh there. The people they leave the city whenever they can, they go out, sit in the grass, and they don't care. There's dog around them, the animals around them, they're they're happy as they can.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:34

And are they I mean they still like to go out there. Are they worshiping the eternal blue sky like Shengis Khan did or okay?

SPEAKER_05 2:07:41

Yeah, it's yeah. They worship the sky, and uh most Mongolian women they come out in the morning, certainly in the gear where they live. Even in the city, they come out with some horse milk and a certain kind of wooden spoon, and they toss milk in the directions for the spirits of the place. They worship the spirits of every place that you go to. I've been traveling with Mongolians, you'd be all stuck in this Russian van, you know, just all crowded together, hardly able to breathe. And all of a sudden they see some mountain that inspires a song. They stop the vehicle, everybody gets out, and they start stretching out their hands and singing the song together to pray to the mountain. And at first I was thinking, what is going on? I didn't understand, you know, and uh they're very, very serious with their with their prayers uh to every river. Every body of water that's a permanent body of water, like a river that doesn't dry up or a lake that doesn't dry up, it's called a queen. It's a female, and it's a and you treat that with so much respect. The Mongolians, uh the Chingas Han, they were not allowed to bathe in the water. And to this day, a few will swim in it today, they've learned the Western custom. But for the most part, you take the water to clean yourself or anything else, you take the water away from the river. And so the gear is almost always about a kilometer or so away. You don't keep the animals by the river, you don't live by the river, uh, you don't make a toilet near the river, uh, you don't wash yourself. You take water away, you wash yourself. I mean, that's very, very simple, very simple things that are so important. And I've seen many NGOs come in as a part of capitalism. I just think of them as a part of capital, even though they might say they're not. You know, they come in and they criticize the environment, we have to do more about this and all this. Mongolia has the lowest per capita water consumption in the world.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:51

Because people are just very conservative about the water usage.

SPEAKER_05 2:09:55

And they have to respect low. They have to even like let's pour water on a fire, totally forbidden. Totally forbidden. You would never desecrate the fire like that, you would never desecrate the water like that. And the rules are so strict that are just internal rules. These aren't laws, these are customs, cultural customs, yeah. Yes, exactly. And you go to any other country in the world and people are wasting. Mongolians don't like to put things in water to clean it, they like to put the water over the thing to clean it. You know, so they're not gonna fill up a big bathtub and then get in the bathtub. And there's a lot we can learn from the Mongolians. A lot. And you look at the environmental damage that has been done, and most of it is from mining, much of it illegal mining, I will say. I do think that the legal mines they tried very hard to follow the property.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:54

Because mining is a necessary um um uh function for world, for our world that we live in.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:02

Yes, it is. And Mongoli has a lot of uh rare metals, uh rare and they have a lot of copper, one of the largest deposits in the world.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:11

Uh and also a lot of coal, high quality. There's a lot of sand mining as well, I believe, that happens there for China to build uh the concrete cities.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:21

Yeah. Well, I I'll be honest, I don't know about I know in Inner Mongolia uh there's a great deal of sand. And it could be out or outer Mongolia too. Transportation might be an issue for the heavy loads of sand, but they do take a lot of coal out. But it's a so the mining has problems, but it's important. Mining is important. There are problems that we should continue to hold the mining community accountable, but still to be supportive, I think must be both. It seems we can't excuse any problem.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:55

Um it seems like the uh mon the Mongolians have this sort of high. environmentalism about them. Is it an official religion or are the Mongolians still Buddhists who just have a very heavy environmental inflection? You know, like what what's the is there a is there a name for this paganism? Like what is it?

SPEAKER_05 2:12:19

Well, I mean the anthropologists and scholars, you know, call it animism. Say it again. And sometimes people animism this worship of animism, okay. You know, that's a western and sometimes Mongolians have tried to put a modern name on it of such a Tingarism. In their traditional way, it's just the honoring of the spirits of the land, the ancestors and the spirits. And there's no name for the whole set of beliefs traditionally. Well a modern name like Tingarism could work. Or some people say shamanism because much of it is based around the shaman. But it's not all about shamans because the country is a Buddhist country. And the overwhelming majority except for the Cossacks in the far west the overwhelming majority are Buddhist. But it's a kind of Buddhism light. It mixes well with everything else with whether it's shamanism or Tingarism or the worship of the mountains. And Buddhism has a very strong environmental base in it anyway within the scripture. And in a country like Mongolia draws that out even more than you would see in perhaps some other Buddhist countries. They really emphasize and so the lamas have often the monks in Mongolia the lamas have often taken a lead in environmental issues trying to help. And certainly they take the lead in religious uh ceremonies to protect the environment and they participate in in in rituals that other Buddhists may not approve of as being orthodox Buddhism but they believe in all of these things and they allow all of it together. So Mongols are very open. And if you come in and you're a Christian or or you're you're Muslim or it's just fine with them. That's another way to God the way Jigas Hanud said and if they like something in your religion they will borrow that too. It's okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:14

True to the true to the ways of of Genghis Khan.

SPEAKER_05 2:14:18

Yeah that part hasn't changed that hasn't changed. But where I live in Mongolia in the countryside you know people come out there all the time for religious ceremonies. I mean sometimes late at night when I'm still hearing the drumming going on and it's a warm night and I have the windows all open and what fresh air and I hear people out there drumming and singing all night it gets a little tedious. You know but on the other hand I think you know what this is a these are the people doing it. It's not a religion coming in building a church and telling them no they worship where the spirit calls them to work. They worship the river and the tree and uh uh the mountain and they're still that way today and they just go there and worship they don't need a scripture to go with it they don't need a building to go with it. And Jingis Han once said the one time he went to a city that you mentioned Bukhara and he went in there. And he said yeah God gave you a book talking about the the Christian and the Muslim in this case particular Muslim Jewish people but people of the book he just kind of loved them all together because they were all people of the book God gave you a book and you don't follow it I worship the sky and I follow it you know and and he was right he felt that the people should follow their own religion but they should follow not just claim to be followed but use it for their own things quite open to subjugate others which is the history of major religions obviously yes and he saw you know he recognized among nomadic people the greatest cause of feuds was the stealing of women and the stealing of animals. His first law he became the head of Mongolia was to outlaw that because his mother had been kidnapped and his wife but when he came to the civilized world he saw that religion was a major source of conflict and his first law was the law of religious freedom not to give every religion the right to practice yes they had that but he made a law no one else had ever had in the history of the world he said every person has the right to choose and nobody can stop them from choosing and nobody can force them to choice. That was an idea of religious freedom nobody had they always thought it was the right of this religion to practice its own things and that but not of the individual still there among them today still there.

SPEAKER_00 2:16:44

Jack um what about the abhorrence in mentioning illness or death because this was a very strong thing for the Khans. Is it still the same now? Absolutely wow that's so fascinating how can that be rationalized in the 21st century when say grandma's at hospital and dying from cancer it's like you can't talk about it?

SPEAKER_05 2:17:04

Like how does this work well you certainly have euphemistic ways of referring to things you know but okay my wife was disabled for many many years in Mongolia and so we had a long life like that. While she was alive one of the most important things was nobody ever talked about nobody ever expressed sympathy. Nobody ever but the Mongols never expect you to say please or thank you or may I help you nothing like that. No they just help I mean they come in they serve food. If she needs help to eat they help to feed her uh if she's moving something they will rub her legs or her arms I mean they don't ask permission they just come in and this is their obligation as a human being but not to talk about it. And they never ask about disease or anything they ask about the health of the person. And then when my wife died then of course you can say two things among them or among you can say they say how is your wife and then I can answer with one of two things. One I can say she became God that's how they say it she became God he became God or they can say she completed her age she completed her age you know and then the Mongols don't usually mention the name they don't say anything at first I was very perplexed by this you know very perplexed but then I compared America to Mongolia for my own feelings and how so many people who came up in America well-meaning wonderful people say I'm so sorry for your loss and and I'm just I'm so sorry I know how you feel my mother died and I or I've even had people say my dog died I mean they say things that are irrelevant but also even in being sympathetic it automatically makes you a little bit sadder and you want to say something like okay well thank you but Yeah please don't make the fuss. It's an intimate it's not an intimate part of their life it's my life it's very intimate the most intimate thing maybe ever happened. It's just to sort of casually on the street oh I'm so sorry for your loss and you know it's I understand how well made it is but in Mongolia there's silence silence and even I was there when my mother died and I they're saying to that facts and the facts came and some people knew it long before I did and then they had to inform me when I returned to the city and somebody informed in a very formal way we've had a fax from your your wife and she informed us that their mother died or I forgot exactly what it used to be on end of it. Nothing more was said and people don't come up to and so I thought well how do you do this the person's gone and you love that person and you can't talk about but they believe that you wait that person is coming back soon. You wait. In about two years you never visit the grave you don't go there you don't take flowers you don't commemorate any you don't you just wait and you watch your children your grandchildren and that person comes back and they come back as a perfect being and that you know maybe your father died and he was a horrible alcoholic and he beat everybody and he never worked and he was awful to never say a word but now he's a beautiful child again he is perfect again.

SPEAKER_00 2:20:54

He just came from the world of the ancestors he gets to start over he still likes his same favorite food probably and and so on and he he he he has some of the same good traits but everything bad is gone and I began to see that for the people who survived it's a wonderful thing to know that your person is not gone is away for a couple of years he's coming back and he's gonna be better than ever surer than ever no sin no stain all starting over it's a different way of the world and so yes you get in a car and you don't talk about the accident you know you don't say oh drive careful we might have an accident no that's gonna cause it you're causing the accident to come you're saying accident accident come here come you know you don't talk about those things you don't mention anything like that was it tough for you to not um feel maybe comfortable to to grieve with your friends who who perhaps weren't didn't want to mention it or was the silence uh a sufficient way to grieve I found the silence sufficient now I will say that I said in a my wife died in America we left to go to a time you know uh about nine months before she died because I was very afraid we'd be able to fly on an airplane it's been would not but anyway so we went home and she died with our family our children were there I was there it was you know our family event and we had our own mourning for a long time before it came and it got worse after it happened I will say but with my family we had one way but after three months I went to Mongolia and then I stayed in the countryside for two years walking walking walking walking every day that's how I dealt with it everybody knew nobody said anything nobody asked and they gave me my space and it had a healing power I I can't say what it was but for me it worked it's not the kind of thing that oh you need to talk about your problems you need to let this out I didn't find it so you know my wife wasn't there she was the person I would want to talk to and and and somehow she was out of the social world there.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:27

People no longer mentioned it or mentioned her or mentioned incidents or and it seems strange but it was comforting in a way in part because it let me own her her memory completely she was gone and nobody was going to tell me anything that I didn't think or agree with about my wife or a story I didn't want to hear or something they thought was funny that I might not you know it was my it was my memory my life was something very powerful in debt very very powerful for me but I can't say for other people and uh and so I I felt that you know I was healed there my wife made me promise you will be happy and I thought yeah yeah don't worry don't worry well it was a very easy promise to make and I was certainly prepared in every legal way and every way I could be prepared but emotionally there is no preparation for something like that. There is no emotional preparation and I I find I found Mongolia at the pace that I was healed from that. And I was able to fulfill that promise to my wife to find happiness again.

SPEAKER_00 2:24:34

No that's it's very it's very beautiful and I was caught off guard in preparation doing um for this interview I witnessed an interview with uh that you were doing and you and you mentioned your wife and um um you mentioned that you didn't want her to feel guilty that she was stopping you from doing your work and you said a very very beautiful line that that death would have to work a little to find her. And then the interview concluded with the two of you holding hands leaning back next to a gear in a Mongolian sunset and it really was just um it was extraordinarily beautiful.

SPEAKER_05 2:25:10

There was a Mongolian journalist well by the way it's Mongolian journalist and I mean I'm sorry uh uh an Australian journalist an Australian yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's very you know yeah it was it was very nice but uh we were lucky people we were very lucky we were lucky to find Mongolia late in life and to benefit so much you know Mongolia has at that time horrible infrastructure not one sidewalk did more than three meters without it being broken but I didn't have to worry I could go out with my wife and every hand that was there would help lift her up and I saw so many times if their family's coming along and the the guy's got some earphones in boy grandma elbows him real quick he looks around and he doesn't have to say anything he knows he grabs and he helps me with the wheelchair we would go to the opera together and you have to go up a whole flight of stairs a whole flight of stairs no problem I just walk in immediately whatever young men are there they grab it four or six or whatever it takes they carry her up and nobody says they don't wait for thank you they don't nothing it's expected and if I just say oh thank you thank you then they feel like what do you think I wouldn't do that you think I have to forget thanks no no the Mongolians they don't say please and thank you and I'm sorry you you show it if you have to show it you show it you don't say it we feel like we could be excused for anything we do with I'm so sorry I really regret that I hope I didn't make you feel bad I'm sorry no no but you know what that doesn't ripe away and the Mongolians know that and they feel like oh you must do what's right to rectify the situation you must do it correctly and you respect people for their work and their job you go to their home they serve you they're being a good host you don't say thank you like oh I came here but I never expected you would actually give me tea oh come on be respectful this is their home you respect that they're going to be good people yeah it's a different way of handling the world I uh I love that one odd thing is if you touch them accidentally the way we sometimes do especially with the feet when you're walking or anytime they don't say a word but they always grab your hand it's like to show that there's still friendship or something. So sometimes that can be quite frightening to a foreigner who's walking down the street and they accidentally brush against a person and the person grabs the head and says nothing. You know and the foreigner's always oh excuse me I'm so sorry I'm sorry did I can't oh I'm so sorry you know and the person just grabs their hand and walks on.

SPEAKER_00 2:28:02

It's just to say no we're still free it's just it's okay nothing with it I I feel like that um because I haven't been to Mongolia but um Mexico has a very You will you I will absolutely there's absolutely no doubt about that but Mexico is a very soft spot for me in my heart and I I think I have I see that sort of similar approach to um manners differently like I think the United States has a very and England and maybe even Australia a bit though I hope not but there is a very like uh there's a rule book for manners and etiquette and you and it almost gets to the point when things become over etiquette uh you do things in expectation of something else and you would only do something because it is the expectation rather than uh like this ex this example of the men coming in and lifting up your wife to carry the flight of stairs it's just it it it it isn't even a question it isn't ever a consideration it's like there we go like this is what we do. It's a hard thing to quantify I guess maybe I just don't have the the right words to do it but it is like such an endearing part of a culture and you can distinctly see it in some countries and then not in others because then obviously like you said earlier bad experiences in some countries I've had that too I've been to places where I'm like well people wouldn't help you if you they they wouldn't they wouldn't dare try and help you unless you were going to pay for it for example you know or you know what's in it for them is the first thought rather than what's the right thing to do. But that's a whole tangent that one could go down. I still do want to sort of round off uh Shengus Khan um you make a great analogy to what he would be in America right just to sort of uh picture his empire a different way so he conquered twice as much as many other men in history and he occupied lands combined larger than the continent of Africa which alone is just unbelievably huge. You say this equivalent and I've taken it here uh without the direct quote so I'm sorry that I'm gonna butcher this quote but um it's an equivalent as if an enslaved person in America liberated themselves unified the people went on through sheer force of charisma and competency to create an alphabet write a constitution create freedom of religion invent a new warfare system and then march an army all the way from Canada down to Brazil with the entire range unified trade liberated in between it's like that was such a great way to um to picture what this man actually did and what his empire actually looked like because uh it seems quite comparable to what he did in the entire steppe of Europe and then into Asia.

SPEAKER_05 2:30:52

Well I I liked your summary of that I said I don't remember my own exact words uh at all I'm gonna wish that those are my exact words and uh I will claim what he said as my my words but I I do remember writing that but I don't remember all the details exactly as you said it but yes that's true he was enslaved as a child and then uh he went on to do all of these things that you mentioned and you know I mean everybody anybody watching even for five minutes knows I'm totally biased I don't claim to be I'm not trying to be the objective scholar who well on the one hand and on the other thought for Genghis but I'm biased because I didn't come to it that way. I mean it's something that developed over time and it is based on everything I know and everything I believe. If I'm wrong I'm wrong that's just but I I am biased towards Singhus Hunt I don't see anybody in the history of the world like him I see you know somebody like you say Napoleon or you can take uh Julius Caesar I think first of all they came to a literate society they didn't have to invent an alphabet for them they didn't have to give them that they came to a place with written laws they didn't have to give them that uh they were not slaves even though uh Napoleon was a low class person and started off as a corporal in the army he was not a slave he did not start at the bottom he was a literate person I mean he had all of these guys had great advantages Alexander the Great oh we hold him up as the greatest conqueror oh my oh Alexander the Great well yeah well first of all his teacher was Aristotle that's a good start in life yeah his father was a king okay when you start off with your father's a king and your teacher's Aristotle you have a couple of advantages going for you and he conquered an empire that was perhaps one fourth or one third the size of what Chigis Han conquered and the day Alexander died that empire died he never united it he never issued a set of laws it was divided up among his generals who were so disloyal to him and to his family that's such a good point as well the the fact the empire died with him and Khan's lived on for another hundred years and then it broke apart and parts lived on for a while uh so we can look at Alexander the Great and we can and actually I like Alexander the Great. Yeah me as well I do like great character we can look that oh yes it carried a Greek art writ here and Greek art writ there but our country learned written literacy from him for the first time literacy was already there. These countries had literacy these countries had written laws these countries had all of those things he didn't change that he didn't change it. And so the influence of Alexander the Great's empire and blow it up but it was really quite small Beyond a few very specific things. And the influence of Qingis Han was great on the on the diplomatic scene, on diplomacy, the uh the protection of ambassadors and uh and and uh diplomatic immunity, on his laws of religious freedom, on all of these things, on the economy, every aspect of commerce. He raised the status of merchants wherever he went and left them in a much higher position. So he changed the world in ways that we still benefit from today. That's why I call it the making of the modern world. Much of our modern world. You can even look at the map today. The Mongols pushed together these different parts of China that had not been united for centuries. They pushed together the different rival kingdoms of Korea. They pushed together. Russia had never been united. Never. Ukraine had been the greatest. They put it all together. You look at the map of the world today, a map of Eurasia, much of it was made by Chingis Han. Much of it. This influence is there. We still don't see it because we don't look for it. And you usually don't find what you don't look for.

SPEAKER_00 2:35:11

I think that might be a good way to round out Genghis Khan uh to it telling his story. I think that's a great place to leave it on because there is other stuff you could mention, obviously. Uh when I initially reached out to you, I mentioned the chapter on the plague and the Mongol's role in that is like it's it's it's history altering altering and it and it really is amazing. And then obviously we can, you know, like his childhood, for instance, uh the role that his mother played, the fact that he killed his own half-brother. Uh, you know, the man the man has so many details in his life, but I think one shouldn't uh release it all because there is absolutely nothing better than the original text itself. And so that should be the next book any person listening to this decides to purchase because it is just um it's a it's it's a biography of a man, definitely. But what it is more is just a brilliant snapshot of uh one story from history, and that's the Mongol story and the way it influenced the world. Um and now these days, uh at least maybe I'm just biased because it's within my sort of corner of the internet, but I see Genghis Khan becoming a very popular figure. Um, maybe more so than in 2004 when your book came out, or even before that. But I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with men like Joe Rogan, Dan Carlin, Tim Ferris. Who are these Andrew's people? Who are they? Joe Rogan, Tim Ferris, Dan Carlin. You don't know them. This is amazing, Jack. Look, these are men who are uh the biggest podcasters in the world, and they all love your book. And they all love Jengis Khan, and they speak a lot about it.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:56

So uh these are well, so I should I should say yes, I know them, I'd support them a hundred percent. So you know, I'll be honest, I live without telephone, I live without television, I live without car. Wow. I try to live a piece that I have a company. Do you have a horse? That's my only but to say do you have a horse does almost doesn't make sense. It's like everybody has more than one horse, but right. I have horses. Yes, yes. But uh I I do feel a little cut off sometimes from the mobile. Look, after age 60, you really are just an illegal alien. I don't care where you're from or where you are, you don't belong on this planet, you know? And once the year 200 got here, I was essentially lost.

SPEAKER_04 2:37:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:37:53

So that's why it took me an hour tonight to to get this thing rigged up so far. I kept going back in circles, and uh, you know, so I'm out of this world and I apologize for that.

SPEAKER_00 2:38:05

Oh, there's absolutely nothing to apologize about. It's just um it was a bit of a it was a bit of a preamble for me to introduce the question. Um uh but actually you say that. That's quite interesting because something that I also wanted to ask you at the beginning, but I wasn't sure whether it was worth going down or not, was you know, the the idea of you having distinct chapters of your life, because as a man who uh is in his 50s going to Mongolia and then really just kicking off a brand new adventure and and a very and a very exciting one at that as well, it's it it's very unusual, right? I mean, I know that my father hasn't done something like that, and it would knock my socks off if he decided to do something so bold, right? Um, because that that's a very interesting, but that's that's like a a commentary on your personality and your character, I suppose.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:53

And that and I think that brings us back to where we started with this, with falling in love with Mongolia. I think I was so excited to think I could fall in love again with something, a subject, a country, you know, at age in my 50s, it was so unexpected for me and so happy. Uh uh, it was just an incredible thing that happened to me. And I was just very, very fortunate to stumble into that. It was uh really just good fortune. I I cannot explain it in any other way. But also, Chinggis Han was well into his 40s before he started the conquest of the world.

SPEAKER_00 2:39:31

Yes, that's that was such an interesting point as well, actually. That I yeah, how amazing is that? Yeah, back in the 1200s. I mean life expectancy well could have been 40, 50.

SPEAKER_05 2:39:43

Yeah, well, it took him 20 years to conquer the Mongols. The rest of the world he did it in 10 years. No problem. But but uh the the hard part was conquering the Mongols.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:39:55

Yeah, so that in itself is inspiration. But uh uh the fact that we we every age had disadvantages, and every age has advantages, you know. You think about when you're 18, you remember, oh yeah, oh yeah, I, you know, and then but do you remember I had no money, I didn't know where I was going in life. I was still living with my parents in the basement. I'd they expect me to take out the garbage every you know, it's a mixture. There are good things about being 18 and they're bad things, and it's the same at every age, whether it's 50 or now I'm 75. You know, it's uh there are things about my life now I would not give up for anything in the world. Well, and even having lost my wife, you know, it's been eight years now, so I you learn to find that well, looking back, I was one lucky fool in this life to have that happen. Just be thankful. Just be so thankful. You only need it once in life, and it happened to you. You had that, you had that. Well, and so I'm so so appreciative of that. And then it late in life that you can find all kinds of things to love. And it doesn't have to just be golf or going back to the high school girl you once dated, and suddenly you're gonna go back to her. Or no. I mean, you can I think at any age you can start something new. And uh and it's it's harder. Some parts are harder. It's harder to learn a language, it's harder to hear the language, it's harder to pronounce it. Yes, it's harder. But on the other hand, you have a certain kind of familiarity with other things in life that make them easier. They used to be so stressful. I don't know how it got we got to this clear.

SPEAKER_00 2:41:44

No, but Jack, it is, it is really, it is really inspiring, you know, because I'm I'm a person who has every ambition to create books along the lines of the one you have. Different subject matter entirely, but something that requires, you know, a first-person investigation of something. And, you know, sometimes I feel like, god damn it, I'm never gonna have this opportunity to do it. And it's like, but you strolled into Mongolia in your 50s and turned in one of the greatest uh books on the topic ever written, and it's that's real inspiration for me.

SPEAKER_05 2:42:21

Yeah, and I have no idea how all this happened. And part of the, you know, the success of it is the success of the book, and it's like a part of it's separate from me in a certain way, you know. I have no idea how it is like your children go up, you know, and they do things and you don't know how they did it, whether it's rob a bank or become threatening bank. You don't quite know how it, you know. It's like that with the book anyway.

SPEAKER_03 2:42:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:42:45

But uh I want to tell you something else, though, that I did not have a good education. I did not at all. But I managed to get in college. I mean, my parents, they didn't even get too high, but anyway, uh we had no background. I failed English. I failed English in college. And I wish I could say, oh, I was drinking, I was partying. No, I was struggling with the English language, and I failed it. Legitimately and properly and legally failed it while trying to pass it. It was a huge struggle. It took me years before I got to the point. And for me, I was it was really my wife who, when we were first together in the first years, she had this great confidence in me and this love and respectfully, you know, and I finally confessed to her, she was the first person I ever confessed to that I had failed English and I wanted to write in my history. She didn't even take the confession seriously. She said, so what? So what do they know? They're teachers. Well, I was a teacher most of my life too, so I don't mean to insult the teachers, but you know, I thought, you know, it's true. It is true. I get to set my own agenda. Nobody sets it for me. You know, your parents don't set it, your teachers don't set it. You must set it for yourself. She gave me that lesson, she gave me that power. And I I I'm quite sure that I would not have accomplished in my life the speaker things that I did, but she was a driving force. She gave me the confidence. Just be yourself. She believed in me. You do what you want. If you want to do it, it's worth doing. You won't do it. And it worked out.

SPEAKER_00 2:44:36

It just worked out. Jack, so the question, the preamble that I had before, just very quickly, Joe Rogan has the biggest podcast in the world. He could well possibly be one of the biggest media brands globally. Huge. Tim Ferris, uh, biggest business podcast in the world, uh, equal to Joe Rogan, but on a lesser scale. And then Dan Carlin, fantastic historical podcast, who did a 15, 16-hour epic called Wrath of the Khans, where it was a very long uh look into sort of Genghis Khan and his um his The Mongol Conquest Conquest and the Legacy and so forth. Three men who are, you know, very well known, who obviously lean heavily on your work um and and mention it. But I just wanted to say that was the preamble to say now Genghis Khan is like kind of front of mind for people's for people uh people's awareness in the consciousness. Like there is more uh color being filled in beyond just the bloodthirsty conqueror. There is personality gear, there is um acknowledgement of um some of his finer abilities, which we've covered. Um so I just wanted to see how you reflect on his surging popularity within the Western consciousness. But it seems like maybe you haven't even noticed that it's had a surging popularity. But uh I don't know. What do you make of it?

SPEAKER_05 2:46:03

Uh yeah, I mean this is very surprising to me. I'm so happy to hear it. But uh I'll be quite honest, uh I uh I wasn't familiar with that. And uh I I I don't quite know what to say because you know, I I haven't seen a movie in 20 something years part. And I I I you know I'm just I live inside this other universe, whatever it is. Yeah, you know, it sounds like it. Very interesting. And uh but I but I I do know that my books have done well. I never know exactly how many, but it's in about 25 languages legally, and one or two. Yeah, legal. I I don't even I don't pay attention, to be honest, because the popularity, I certainly appreciate it. I love it, and and I I am so flattered and honored by. But people find what they want to find, you know, in the work. If they find something, I'm happy. But very often people write to me and they tell me what they found in my work, and I think, wow, I wish I'd found that. I never, you know, but I'm so happy. That's what makes me happy. Then I feel like, okay, I'm successful if somehow people found something I didn't see, you know, about their own life or their emotions or history or something like that. So I'm very happy with that. So that's all I have to judge by that. My sales have held up well in many different languages, and uh I'm very proud of that. That's uh but I never know exactly how many are even in English or a lot of audio sales and all of that. I'm very, very happy with it, very proud of it. Sure. Of every language means a lot to me. I think the most the last one was Tamil, I think. And I was so flattered, so honored deeply that that the Tamil people were published that book and read that book. And but the rest of it, I must say I don't know what to think. So be quite honest. I I I I don't know what to think about that. I am very very flattered that these uh these people that international education would have read the book. But um I didn't know that. I don't think I do that.

SPEAKER_00 2:48:32

Maybe my memory is so so bad somebody says, Oh, I wrote you and told you, but you know, I get these things and I don't remember everything, but I I'll I'll write to you after this um Wrath of the Khan's podcast series. Uh I think you'll get a kick out of it. Take care. Um just because it's well then Well, I'm not interviewed in there. No, no, no. It's it's uh it's an Oh, that's what it's uh independent work. It's um you know, he would use your book as a resource, but he also used many other resources. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And obviously we're at three hours now, so I I totally understand. If please tell me if I'm abusing your your good nature by uh offering the time.

SPEAKER_05 2:49:15

If you're promoting if you're promoting Mongolia, I'm amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:49:19

Well, yes, I definitely am. Um and I'm gonna get another guy on soon who is an expert on Mongolia. We're gonna speak about it more. But um anyway, so I I saw in uh the TED talk you did, Jack, you said that um the world doesn't have a vision. Can you r reflect or expand on that a little bit? What did you have in mind by contrasting Mongolia having a vision with the world not having a vision?

SPEAKER_05 2:49:49

Yes. Uh Tigasan's beliefs don't resonate very well with us. He believed in a world that should be ruled by by him, that he should conquer the world, because that was the will of heaven, and that all nations and people should be united under heaven, not homogenized into one religion or one language, but they should all be under one great law, as he called it, the great law. They all had their own law, but the great law, such as the outlaw kidnapping of women and no uh uh no harming of diplomats and things like that was a greater law. So he had a vision of the world and he sat out. And I think in history we have seen often we had religions that gave a vision. I think you look at early Islam, they had a vision of the world, and it helped to create the best. By the time Jingis Khan or the Mongols conquered them, they had lost a lot of that and they decayed tremendously already, the tailors and all. But they had a vision at the beginning with the Arab vision of the world. Or even early Christianity in many ways had a vision. You know, but today I look around the world, and who has a vision? They have slogans they say about democracy and development and sustainability and the environment and uh equal rights and human justice. And uh where is the vision? Where is the vision, you know? And I despair about that a little bit, because if there is a vision, we're gonna always disagree with much of it. And everybody would disagree with much of Chikatan's vision or the early Muslim vision. Any people would have great disagreement, but it's a vision that motivates people to doing things, and then out of that, there has been a lot of good. There has been a lot of warfare, but there's been a lot of good to have a vision. And I feel like in a country like the United States, there was a there was a lit a vision, at least for the country at the founding. There was not a world vision. They had no world vision. That's okay. George Washington said stay home, you know, don't get involved with entangling affairs and all. So they had that at least that much of a vision of the world, but they had a vision of something about society that took was unfulfilled. Slaves didn't have rights, and women didn't have rights. But in time, it led to some improvements. Today, a country such as the United States, and I think it can play to many of the countries, it's just floundering around. It's just floundering around. They have no vision, they just have a bunch of expressions, their words that just come out of everybody's mouth. And you can go to the most oppressive dictator in the world, and the words are gonna be more or less the same. Serving the people and democracy and freedom and human rights to killing people right and left, you know, robbing and stealing, but they're gonna say the same words. So we have the American leaders, or we have Australian or European leaders, right? They're all saying the same thing. And none of it represents a vision, none of them are moving in concert with one another. The world is not going forward now on the front of political activity. All advancement that's been made in recent times is mostly technological advancement, if it's advancement, and it is in most races. You know, uh, those are things that that came out of different sphere of life. Uh they're not coming out of a vision of of politics and society, a global vision. Jingaz Han had a vision. Whether we agree with it, both agree with it, he had a vision. And he followed it, he was loyal to it. And today I see no one, no pardon, nothing.

SPEAKER_00 2:53:51

Do you think that's a consequence of um sort of uh weak leaders? Because the world of Genghis Khan, for him to make his vision a reality, it required conquering. And today, um any sort of flirtation with a conquering, you know, rightly so, is immediately expelled and distinguished. So perhaps, you know, how how can how can we create this vision now? Because the big underlying themes of culture at the moment is obviously climate change, um, you know, a shift away from religion, and maybe some of the liberal issues, uh, like the social liberal issues as well. Um, you know, attitudes towards gender and so forth. But maybe climate change and shift away from religion, the two massive sort of undercurrents of culture. What would be in your eyes, like how can someone make a vision manifest, or how can someone even put their vision into the world, if not on the individual level? Because we all can individually, but um, you know, to to to think about the world having a vision, I don't know. Is this almost an insurmountable problem? Like we can't all be unified in a vision almost.

SPEAKER_05 2:55:08

No, we can't all entertain vision, but most of us do not have a world vision even for ourselves. We have a theme. We're onto the environment. That's my whole life. I do environment. I make sure I recycle everything. You know, or I'm into spiritualism and I meditate everything. You know, this is the kind of thinking that we have. And okay, you look at that. What we were saying is that these themes of our modern society. My country, the United States of America, has been at war almost every year of my life. We have fought in Korea, we have fought in uh in Vietnam, we have fought in Cambodia and in Laos, we have fought in Iraq, we have fought in Afghanistan, we have fought in Sudan, in in Libya, in Yemen. And we have all kinds of republics in South America, in and out at at our will. Yeah, we believe in democracy and peace and human rights. We are killing people every day. Well, maybe it's justified. Maybe that's the right thing. Well, at least let's be honest with what we are doing. We have been at war every year of my life, virtually, a few left. And we did not win one. Oh, but we're not conquerors. We don't want to impose anything. We don't want to conquer. We've been, as I say, now going on two generations in Afghanistan.

SPEAKER_00 2:56:34

What are you still doing that?

SPEAKER_05 2:56:36

We do it. I mean, okay, if it's justified, justify it. Say it honestly, openly, and proudly. If we're bombing people in Syria, admit it. Say it. We do this, and this is why we do it, because it's a part of our vision for this purpose. Don't sit there and lie to us. Oh, we don't believe in conquest. We believe in equal rights. We believe in democracy, transparency. And then turn around and kill people. That's what we do. That's what we do. And I love my country. I truly do. I am an American born and I my whole life. But I don't like this hypocrisy that we live under and this denial. And we need a vision of the world. We need a vision and we need to have an honest vision about the realities of what we do and how that fits with this.

SPEAKER_00 2:57:36

I'm just struggling, I'm just struggling to understand where the vision aspect comes into it, you know?

SPEAKER_05 2:57:42

I think it's when you have your set of ideals that you claim to believe in, whether you claim about democracy, then things should line up with those sets of beliefs. If you believe in self-determination, these your accents should line up. But our actions and our speech are totally separated. They should be integrated. It'll never be a perfect integration, but they should be integrated in some way. I'm trying to make a better world, and so I'm I hate to say recycling again. I'm recycling. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But you're paying taxes to kill people. Let's just be honest about who we are and let's try to find some reason for the world to move forward. I mean, should be we the United States and and those other Western countries be now great rivals and fighting with China or should they not? I don't have the answer to that. But we should try to articulate it all in an honest and open way and try to move forward. If possible, to find some unifying principles that we can agree upon.

SPEAKER_03 2:58:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:58:45

I mean, living here in Asia, uh there are things in the world that do worry me about attitudes towards Asia. And that just happens to be maybe my own thing for living here. But uh I think that we should try to understand one another and try to find a way to cooperate. This is not to be Pollyanna about it, but it's to find a way to have some things that we share with the world. United Nations was uh maybe a good idea, maybe not. It's been pretty ineffective in doing anything helpful in the world. But all this kind of stuff that we support. And yet our ideals, oh my God, our ideals is you say the wrong words. Oh, you said that word? Oh my God, you're an immoral person. We don't speak to you, we're not going to listen to you, you can't write for us, we won't allow anything to be said by you. You said that word. Oh my God, we don't say that word.

SPEAKER_00 2:59:43

We don't say that the it's like the the murky waters and and the double speak from from the top. Yeah. If we can have a vision out because we all have our own vision, but if we can have our own vision and then try and align it with maybe what the overall vision is. Because I'm trying to, you know, I'm thinking solution or sort of actionable rather than like just a nihilistic swell of like, oh, what can I do about it? But for instance, you you use the United States, which is um, you know, an extremely top of mind uh example because of their pure dominance over my lifetime and your lifetime as well. Um, yeah, so if they're going to do something like um stay in Afghanistan or uh decimate cities of Syria, you you're suggesting that if there was at least a transparency and an honesty, and even embedded within that honesty are truths that we don't like or uh a vision that we can't align onto uh fully. The fact that the honesty is there and the transparency in us being able to align our vision onto their vision is there. You you're sort of suggesting like this is a a right way forward. Uh so cliche to say the right way forward, but um in creating a bit of a unified vision.

SPEAKER_05 3:01:01

Yes, right. You said it better than I said it better. Yes, I agree. Um, Jack.

SPEAKER_00 3:01:06

Yes. I had to get a cheeky uh money question in. Um, and that's just because of the financial investing side of things, it's a dominant theme on this podcast. But you wrote a book in 1998 called The History of Money. And um we've established that perhaps you uh are not staying on top of the trends in the cryptocurrency these days, but nonetheless, it's a huge distribution to financial institutions and also the question of what is money. I just wanted to see if you had opinions on this um and how you think it will play out.

SPEAKER_05 3:01:41

Okay, that was before my era. I I think that certainly things like that are going to be in the future, they're gonna be controlled by governments. I do not think that there is yet a place for an independent uh and again the governments can cut that off so fast, they could just not allow the mining of it, they could cut off the electricity for it. It's happening already in some places, they could forbid the trading of it. Uh so that's my guess. But I'm not a, you know, I I can't read the future. And it it wasn't around when I even wrote that book. But I talked a lot about electronic money because you could see that that's what was coming was electronic money. And I didn't know then what form it's going to take, and I don't know now what the next step will be. But but I think that just kind of obsession about uh this independent currency, uh it's not going to work. It's not going to be independent. If it can be managed by some country or some power, I think it can work. But ultimately, there's going to be a power behind it because just to get the power to run the computers depends on governments and what they allow for electricity. That's a pretty basic thing right there. You don't have to understand about, oh, blockchain. Oh, you don't understand. Well, that's true. I don't understand. But I don't think without electricity or the internet, your blockchain is going to be that important. And governments do still control those resources.

SPEAKER_00 3:03:12

Yeah. I I I think um actually very similarly as well that the future will be in cryptocurrencies, but it will be a um government-managed and distributed individual cryptocurrency. Yeah, uh rather than with its own problems. Precisely. We have maybe maybe many similar problems to what the current fiat currencies have at the moment. But it won't be a it won't be a decentralized Bitcoin that you you know, me and Sweden and you and Mongolia are transacting on. We'll still be converting currencies and so forth. Um what are you working on at the moment, Jack? Is there anything top of mind that you're working on?

SPEAKER_05 3:03:50

I'm actually I am I'm I'm editing a book now that I've finished writing and editing it under contract with However General State. And I'm sorry to talk about it before you talk about I haven't talked about it, but but it is about the uh it's the the more the end of the Mongol world, but also it's the Mongol influence or the creation of the Chinese nation influence. Um people only know one thing, that is, they failed to invade Japan, or if they know two things, if they failed and played invade Japan two times, or they failed to invade Japan or to invade Vietnam or to invade Java. But they missed the crucial point. They controlled the sea. They controlled the sea for the first time when the Mongols ruled Iran, they ruled China and they controlled the sea. Marco Polo was on the first Mongol sea expedition to go all the way from China to Orloose. That's the first time one country has ever said, well, anyway, it's to tell that story of the origin of the deity under the Mongols, which sounds like a very it's all based with Chinese technology and all, so I'm not trying to say this is anything to do with the horse and the and the bow and the arrow. It's Chinese technology that they applied in a way that that that China had not applied it before. And they failed with it as a military weapon. They failed. Kublakan failed, there's no doubt about that. But at the end of life, I think he was beginning to weaken it. His friends hadn't took over. He changed to a totally different policy, a peace entry.

SPEAKER_00 3:05:37

Otherwise, they might have been able to overcome the Japanese on the third or fourth attempt.

SPEAKER_05 3:05:45

Well, I don't know. I they uh it's probably good for the world that Kublai Khan's uh uh uh fleets were not able to conquer other countries. But the Mongol techniques that were so effective on land were not so effective on the sea. And there were many things that he was using, like the organization of ships, the way you organize horses, well, it didn't work with the left and the right wing, and uh it just didn't work with ships. And they didn't have they just didn't have the ability to launch the army. And and the Mongols, as we said before, they carried everything with them. They carried their horses, which ate the grass. Okay, when you're on a ship, you've got to carry everything with you. If you carry horses, you have to carry feed, a huge amount of feed for the horses, you know, plus food for every person. It's a whole different game. The Mongols failed in fact.

SPEAKER_00 3:06:37

Was it the shogun um age in Japan when they tried invading? Wow, imagine the scenery of that.

SPEAKER_05 3:06:46

The samurai's yes, it's very dramatic and it's made a number of yes, because the Mongols had arrived with superior weapons by far. They even had explosives, what we call today probably hangar day. Oh, wow. Uh and uh explosive things. And uh, of course, it it terribly frightened the horses of of of uh Japan. You'd never heard explosives, and the soldiers also. But but the soldiers put up with the and today people won't say always the weather comes.

SPEAKER_00 3:07:15

The Japanese with Japanese, I have right better than the Mongols, you'd say, right? Maybe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:07:22

Well, in this case of a land invasion from the sea, they they both said and I think the Japanese wouldn't have credit for it more than it with the weather. That's a convenient excuse that's been used for a lot of things. But the weather was, you know, we we you know uh yeah, because that was the final blow. We've already got a problem by the time that typhoon hit. All right, Jack.

SPEAKER_00 3:07:45

So that's all that I um looking forward to the book. I got two really quick ones for you to finish it off. Yes. What and these are baselines that I ask every uh interview guest as well. What country are you most bullish on looking into the future?

SPEAKER_05 3:08:01

Yeah, I I hope probably the most for countries that that I love deeply, and what is it includes? Uh Mongolia, Campbellia, Bolivia, some countries like that that have had great struggles in the past that I hope would be forgot.

SPEAKER_00 3:08:17

The final question, Jack. Um, what two people in history would you witness a conversation between, dead or alive? Well, we know what.

SPEAKER_05 3:08:30

I thought as much. Yeah. I think it would probably be with Chigas Han and I would probably choose a religious leader because later in his life he was very interested. Whether it be uh the Prophet Muhammad or Jesus or the Buddha uh I would like at least for me it's something to think about. You know what would Jesus and Buddha say to one another. Um what would Jesus and Muhammad or Jesus said. So I think perhaps a religious leader. Because I can't think of any comparable political figure in history that's had the impact that these had comparable to those of religious leaders. You know, that history has been shaped much more by religious figures for the most part than by politicians or by the conquerors for the most part. So I'd love to see that perhaps. But I haven't thought about it, I've never thought about it.

SPEAKER_00 3:09:41

And Jack, that um that brings us to the end, and and I um I couldn't be more grateful that you've given me all this time, and and thank you so much for well, thank you for giving this time to exposing Mongolia.

SPEAKER_05 3:09:55

And if I said something wrong or offensive, I would apologize to Mongolia. Uh I want to to the rest of the world, I don't care too much, but I I worry what I say about Mongolia. I try to be honest, but I try to portray a positive and good but honest picture of Mongolia. I love Mongolia, I want them to prosper in the world, and we're gonna be waiting for you.

SPEAKER_00 3:10:18

Amazing. Yeah, I I can't wait to go, Jack. I'll definitely write you an email before I jump on the plane.

SPEAKER_05 3:10:25

Come on, you have a home, you have a home in.