Episode · The Shawn Ryan Show · 2026-11-02
Shawn Ryan & Dr. Thomas Madden: books mentioned on The Shawn Ryan Show #353
#353 Dr. Thomas Madden - Rome Historian Reveals the 7 Warning Signs of a Dying Republic
Dr. Thomas Madden is a historian, author, and professor of history at Saint Louis University whose work focuses on the ancient and medieval worlds, the Crusades, Venice, and the history of republics.
Shawn Ryan discussed The Fall of Republics by Thomas F. Madden.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Fall of Republics
Discussed“In your latest book, The Fall of Republics, you examine what America's founders learned from failed republics and how they designed the Constitution to avoid the same fate.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (7) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Plugged The Fall of Republics
“And as I argue in my book, it's really in the period after 146 BC that partisanship in Rome within the Roman Republic becomes so fierce.”
Plugged The Fall of Republics
“Yeah, I think this is one of the most important arguments that I make in the book is that without an existential enemy, I mean a real enemy, the republican system in the case of Rome was severely strained.”
Plugged The Fall of Republics
“But remember, and this is one thing I tried to bring up in the book, is that the founding fathers, the people that wrote the constitution, all of these people were very well educated in the classics and in the history of ancient Greece and Rome.”
Plugged The Fall of Republics
“And so in the book what I really wanted to look at is, you know, what were those things, what lessons did they draw, how do they manifest themselves in the constitution, and how well those safeguards that they put in, you know, held up.”
Plugged The Fall of Republics
“In fact, in this book what I do is I'm looking at what I call the great republics, which are republics that last more than their first century.”
Plugged The Fall of Republics
“I think that in the book I actually look at if we looked at 146 BC for Rome, let's say we were tracking the Roman case.”
Plugged The Fall of Republics
“Is this what I call in the book the prosecutorial politics, where you prosecute your political enemies all the time.”