This video was made possible by Audible. With their special holiday offer, get unlimited
audiobooks for $4.95 a month for six months at audible.com/HAI or text “HAI” to 500-500. This is Switzerland—where the cheese has
holes, the knives have screwdrivers, and the flags teach you math—and this is the city
of Bern, famous for blue waters, a flag whose bear probably didn’t need to be that anatomically
correct, and of course, for being Switzerland’s capital. But I’m gonna let you in on a little secret:
you’re adopted. Wait, wrong secret. Bern isn’t Switzerland’s capital. “But Sam,” you ask, “if Bern isn’t
Switzerland’s capital, what is?” To that I would say, “ask your birth parents,”
but… well, you know… so instead, I’ll tell you: Switzerland doesn’t have a capital. You see, nowhere in Switzerland's constitution,
whether you look at the 1848 original, the 1874 revision, or the critically panned remake,
Tyler Perry’s: A Madea Constitution, do you find a specific location named for the
nation's capital, and that's weird, because basically every other country in the world
has either a law or constitutional provision naming their capital. Take the United States for example: according
to the documentary Hamilton, in 1790, following a rap battle, we passed a law declaring that
our capital was going to be Washington DC: a sinking swamp city in the middle of nowhere. Switzerland, on the other hand, never passed
any such law, probably because they did yodeling battles instead, where the true loser is everyone. But never actually naming a capital wasn’t
just a trivial slip-up we found on a list of weird, useless facts on Wikipedia that
I figured I could make money off of with five-minute sponsored YouTube videos published six or
seven times monthly. Nope, instead, Switzerland’s lack of a capital
serves as a microcosm for how Italy’s hat works. Back in the day, before people thought Switzerland
was cool because of skiing and chocolate and questionable banking practices, it was kind
of a backwater that other empires didn’t even bother trying to control, because of
the mountains and difficult terrain and annoying accents. Left to their own middle-of-nowhere devices,
cute little baby states, called cantons, took shape across the region, and some of these
cantons figured, “hey, rather than always doing war to each other, maybe we could do
not that, and get along sometimes,” and so they formed cute little alliances, called
confederations. Then, in Europe and the Americas, people started
making nations, and not wanting to be left out, cantons from across present-day Switzerland
said, “hey let’s be even more friendly and do even less wars and start a nation,
too.” And thus, there was Switzerland. But unlike most nation-states, Switzerland
pumped the brakes on all that “one nation, indivisible,” fraternity stuff, and said
“look, um, you guys are cool and all, but let’s not get too carried away here with
all this unified blood and soil stuff—it’s getting kind of weird.” And so, to avoid early-onset H.P.W, hyper-patriotic
weirdness, the Swiss decided to keep the cantons around as powerful, semi-sovereign states
tied loosely together under the umbrella of Switzerland. That meant the industrious cantons could keep
speaking German, the pretentious cantons could keep speaking French, and the spicy meatball
cantons could keep speaking Italian. The point is, without a particularly strong
or centralized federal government, the process of creating a nation that wouldn’t tear
itself apart came down to balancing power between the cantons. So, they chose not to have a capital to ensure
that no single canton or city was more important than the rest, and all the Swiss went on to
build lots of clocks, invent velcro, be the “very fine people on both sides” of countries
in every major world conflict, and live happily ever after, the end. Okay, okay, I can already hear you asking,
“but Sam, everything I’ve ever read or watched my whole entire life outside of this
single video told me that Bern is the capital of Switzerland.” To which I say, “why has everything you’ve
ever read or watched mentioned what the capital of Switzerland is? What sort of freaky streaming site are you
subscribed to?” The truth is, Bern is inaccurately referred
to as the capital because it is home to federal government buildings. This is because while balancing power across
a decentralized Switzerland was an idea that all the cantons could get behind, the nation
still needed at least some sort of federal government, and they needed to put that government
somewhere. So, in true rom-com fashion, the Swiss picked
a quiet, unassuming city who doesn’t see how beautiful she really is, as the home of
the federal assembly. This was okay with all the cantons because
unlike the larger cities of Geneva, Lucerne, and Zurich, the smaller Bern didn’t come
off as intimidating—after all, they wore short skirts, Bern wore t-shirts, they were
cheer captain while Bern was on the bleachers, et cetera. Not all federal buildings are located in Bern,
though. For those who have broken Swiss law—maybe
you dropped your bread in the fondu or only got a Bronze medal in bobsled—you’ll end
up in the Federal Criminal Court, located in the Italian-speaking city of Bellinzona. If you’re less criminal, though, and more
supreme, the Swiss Supreme Court is in the French-speaking city of Lausanne. So, while Bern gets the star and bold font
on all the maps, federal government functions are spread across the country in order to
maintain a balance of power. So the next time you hear someone on the street
say that Bern is the capital of Switzerland, now you know what you need to do: stop whatever
you’re up to, call them an idiot, yell at them in front of their family, don’t stop
until they’ve started crying, tell them to go watch this video, and then, finally,
and most importantly, give them this link for six months of unlimited Audiobooks on
Audible. You see, you’re probably used to how Audible
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i know this is likely an old joke but i cant stop myself so here it is.
the capital of switzerland is S
But it still is.
Even most Swiss say Zurich is the capital most of the time and a second after they correct themselves. Hah
fuck you network admin!!