Jason Bockman of Strange Donut talks about Julius Caesar, Dante's Inferno | ATCF | Episode 14

About this episode

An unplanned, loosely structured "As the Crowe Flies" episode: Vance calls his friend Jason Bachman ("Big J Bird," owner of Strange Donuts) on short notice after realizing he had no prepared content for the week. What follows is a free-ranging conversation about books, culture, and how old stories stay relevant. Vance introduces the "Lindy effect" — the idea that the longer a cultural artifact has survived, the longer it's likely to keep surviving — and announces a book club starting with Dante's Inferno. Jason suggests using Instagram Live's split-screen guest feature to run the club, and the two riff on social media's echo-chamber effect, ad-supported feeds versus paid ad-free platforms, and Instagram's tendency to surface things you already like. The back half of the episode turns into an extended, enthusiastic retelling by Jason of Julius Caesar's rise — Gaul, the Rubicon, Pompey, Cleopatra, and Caesar's eventual dictatorship — used as an example of "Lindy" storytelling: ancient narratives that still carry timeless lessons about strategy and character. Vance connects this to his own talk about the deep evolutionary age of storytelling (speech emerged roughly 50,000 years ago) and petroglyphs as the earliest form of "capturing an idea so it can live on beyond the author." The episode ends with Vance giving Jason a book as a gift for his kids.

“Once they developed speech, everything changed for them because now they could start communicating concepts and coordinating between the other apes, right? Like there may, it's not, it's no longer are you reliant on your instincts. Now you can communicate a message to tell somebody, wait, avoid that and lemme tell you why.”

“That's why when you read a story, you're like sitting there, it doesn't even matter if they're talking about a fairy princess or a spaceship guy or anything. You're sitting there being like, what is this? What is the inner meaning here that I can pull away, that I can learn from, that I can have wisdom.”

Key moments

• Vance explains the episode's origin — no planned content, so he called Jason on the fly instead of skipping the week.
• Vance introduces the Lindy effect and picks Dante's Inferno as the first book club selection.
• Jason suggests running the book club via Instagram Live's split-screen guest feature.
• Riff on social media's echo-chamber problem — Vance: "I don't want Twitter giving me ideas... I want an uninterrupted feed."
• Discussion of paid ad-free platforms (Apple TV, Netflix, YouTube Premium) as the future default, with ads reserved for those who "can't pay to get rid of them."
• The 50,000-years-of-speech framework — Vance's argument that storytelling is one of humanity's oldest and deepest technologies.
• Petroglyphs described as "the original capture of an idea so it can live on beyond the author."
• middle ~55% to late ~90%: Jason's long-form retelling of Julius Caesar's career — exile, conquest of Gaul, crossing the Rubicon, defeat of Pompey, Egypt/Cleopatra, and return to Rome as dictator — framed as a "Lindy" example of timeless strategic and character lessons.
• Jason commits to joining the book club; Vance gives him a book as a gift for his children.

Notable quotes

“Caesar, July is named after Julius Caesar... Caesar had seizures, right? The dude was epileptic.”

“I don't want Twitter giving me ideas... I don't want somebody else controlling what I would see. I want an uninterrupted feed.”

“That's why when you read a story... you're sitting there being like, what is this? What is the inner meaning here that I can pull away, that I can learn from, that I can have wisdom.”

“Not only are you not dead, I forgive you... let that be a lesson as to how we will rule.”