Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #214 Danieli Bolelli

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

Danieli Bolelli and I play catch up on all things “History on Fire”. His incredible podcast on Luminary. Most of the written history is about war and the more climactic events. Danieli has a few nuggets of more “loving” stories from history. Tune in and enjoy y’all! Connect with Danieli:   Website: www.danielebolelli.com  Instagram: @danieli_bolelli  Podcast: historyonfirepodcast.com                  thedrunkentaoist.com  Show Notes:   EPISODE 45 Sex, Sake and Zen: The Life of Ikkyu Sojun (Part 1)  Sponsors:   Bioptimizers has done it again! For the best blood sugar regulating supp in the game head to bloodsugarbreakthrough.health/kingsbu and/or use code “KINGSBU10” at checkout. Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! BLUblox head over to www.blublox.com for the best blue light blocking glasses in the game! Use code “KKP” and get 10% off any and everything there!  Soul CBD Head to mysoulcbd.com  and punch in “KKP” at checkout for 15% off the best in the CBD biz. Connect with Kyle:   Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com    Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Welcome back, everybody. We've got Daniele Bolelli, The Return. I think it's been two, three years. I don't know. We tried to estimate it on the podcast. It really doesn't matter. It's been too long, damn it. That's what it boils down to. It has been too long with my buddy Daniele Bolelli. Since our podcast, when I was out in LA, he's moved. The world has unraveled a little bit. We don't talk too much about that. We just talk about how his life has changed and the things that he's up to. And we get into his other podcast that he has, History on Fire, which is super dope

because we got to dive in. I never liked history in high school. We do talk about this on the podcast, but one thing I love is learning from historians who actually take the deep dive and don't have to prescribe you a particular narrative about what it was like in this country during a certain time or who the good guys were versus the bad guys,

that kind of stuff. It's been said before that history is taught to us by the winners. So I really appreciate Daniele Bolelli and the work that he's doing because it's cool. It's really cool. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of time, and he puts it up. He puts it in. This is what's coming through. And yeah, I love this podcast. It was great. It was very impromptu. Ob hit me up and he was like, yo, Daniele, Bill Ailey's in town.

He's going to be on my podcast. You want to have him? I was like, fuck yeah, let's do it, buddy. Super pumped about that. So anywho, that is it. Support this podcast by supporting our sponsors. They make a world of difference and they keep this thing going.

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That's KKP for 15% off everything at MySoulCBD.com. And without further ado, my dude, Daniele Bolelli. Officially, we're here. Daniele Bolelli, thank you for joining us, brother. Thank you so much for having me. We are making it fitting, like down to the second I arrive, let's start forecasting. Perfect.

Yeah, I got to see you. Av told me you're coming to town. And I was like, fuck yeah, dude. Is he looking for people to podcast with? And he's like, yeah, man. He wants to do one. And I was like, oh, that's great. Let's play.

I remember it's been two, maybe three years. It's been two years. Yeah, you were up at my house in LA. Yeah, it was last year and a half I moved outside of LA. I'm like an hour and a half out in this place. Oh, hi. It's a pretty sweet,

smaller place, but that where I was living, wasn't a bad spot either. So I remember us sitting down there and that was fun. That was a good day. I mean, we, I'm trying to,

trying to remember that. It's funny because it's, it's gone like, uh, the, the whole weekend seems like a blur, right? It's like two years ago for 20 kind of thing.

We were hanging out watching the McGregor and Poirier fight. You can't even call it the McGregor fight at this point. The Poirier win. And I had a bit of ketamine as I have at the fights before, but it's been so long. No, nobody noticed. Really? It had been so long no nobody noticed really it had been so long sober i i sat down in a in a on a couch and i i remember looking at the screen but like transporting into it somewhat where i was like oh am i walking out and then the nerves kind of kicked in

oh that's i was like no that's screen. But then it fully dissolved like all dimensions. I've had interesting, somebody's told me before that the experiences you have in any medicine can kind of open up a stronger portal or stronger bridge. And one thing that's cool about ketamine in particular is that you can access those other portals and bridges. So I think when I was coming out of it, I jokingly said, ketamine is the opposite of the sword of discernment. It just dissolves all boundaries. You don't know what the fuck is real or not real, where you start, where you end. And thankfully I was able to come back to reality for the last few fights. I think I watched Wonderboy on his back for the first round and that brought confusion too because i was like didn't he train with chris weidman for so many years and now he can't get up like he should be able to get up and

that was like the most confusing piece was staring at him for five minutes on his back and then i was like oh okay yeah weidman left and then i started having more memories and i was like you know gilbert burns might just be a really good wrestler. That's a possible ability too, you know? He got up once, but even then, you know, Gilbert Burns still had the double under hook. He's still, you know, just, Burns is fantastic. Yeah, he's damn good to watch.

I think last time we were talking jujitsu, your daughter, your partner, lots of stuff like that. I haven't even had time to retrace that podcast and think about it. What the hell were we talking about? So you, it's cool. Your podcast, you have at least one podcast right now that's on Luminary, is that right?

Yeah, exactly. So I host two podcasts. One is more of a chatty interviews kind of thing, the one you were on, which is The Drunken Taoist. And then History on Fire is one where basically it's just me researching like a madman, reading a zillion, usually really boring books, but with great facts in there somewhere.

And my job is kind of like, I see it as almost pending for gold, right? You're just swishing all this mud around to get those nuggets that then you string together into something that people actually want to listen to. So then, you know, yeah, History on Fire is just me essentially telling a story.

It happens to be a real story. It's based on evidence and history and stuff, but it's me just making history a little bit feeling like you watch Game of Thrones kind of thing. Except the last season, that sucks. But other than that, yes. I was going to ask you.

Yeah, not that one. You didn't care for it, huh? Nah. I didn't mind it. I think it helped having, for whatever reason to do to travel or something like that. I had to wait a couple of weeks

before we watched the finale. And I had heard so much shit talking that it lowered my expectations. So I was like, yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, yeah, all right. I saw kind of the why behind it. I'm sure you talked to Aubrey about that. He had all kinds of philosophy

on why that had to be the case. He couldn't have done it another way. And that was the truest way to end the show. And I was like, yeah, I mean, in any regard, I got it. But yeah, those are essentially the stuff that I do. Those are it. And the Luminary thing is interesting

because they did leave a whole bunch of episodes for free out there. So while technically Luminary is behind the paywall, so a lot of my new episodes are behind the paywall, there's a mountain of stuff out there for free. So your Apple podcast or whatever you find. So for people who want to check it out, they can check out a lot of free material

before they ever have to make the decision, oh, I actually want to sign up for five bucks a month or whatever that is. And so- That's awesome. I feel better about that. Because when, you know, going behind the paywall, I was like, eh, you know, going behind the paywall, I was like,

you know, I don't like disappearing from, but that's not the scenario. You know what though? I mean, all podcasts need, if you're, if you're doing it

and you're doing it well, it has to generate revenue because it's such a time constraint. People are like, oh, you know, it's just an hour long or it's just two hours long.

It's like, no, I mean like, Paul, I talk about Paul Cech a lot on this podcast. When he does a solo cast, I've done many solo casts, but they're not even close to as detailed as him.

He's printed out his outline. He has references to everything. He lets you know which episodes to listen to that go over the details, which books to read, that back up what he's talking about, the science, all of it. And so, yeah, it's a full-time deal. You know what I'm saying? If you want it to be, and it's talking about, the science, all of it. And so, yeah, it's a full-time

deal. You know what I'm saying? If you want it to be, and it's got to pay the bills, but that's, I had just gotten Luminary because of Russell Brand. Oh yeah, of course. And I've loved, obviously, you know, we've from last time until this time, a lot has transpired in the world at large. Right. And we can, we can dive into that, what life has been like. And certainly I can understand why you would get out of LA and move to Ohio with everything that's transpired. But yeah, Russell Brands had some very interesting takes and he's had some fantastic people on throughout this sea of madness

we've experienced for the last 18 or so months, including Vonda Neshiva. That was the one where I was like, all right, I'm signing up for Luminary. I'm going for it, okay. She wrote Oneness versus the 1%. Brilliant lady. I've seen her on Gaia.

She was on Food Inc years ago, but just a brilliant woman. I think she has a PhD in quantum theory, quantum physics. And so she's got the out there and she's got the down here in the 3D realm because she's glued to the soil. She works with farmers and highly educated in many respects. So her writing that book,

not from a conspiracy theorist standpoint, but from a, hey, this is what we know. This is the science, right? Yeah, and just really fantastic. So I was like, yeah, that episode got me on Illuminary. So now I'm excited because I got more podcasts to listen to on Illuminary. Yeah, they just signed David Chappelle as a podcast.

That's right. Giles was telling me that. And he's using sound effects and storytelling and doing all sorts of cool shit, I guess, is a different style. So that's the gig. Hell yeah. It's interesting because, I mean, with podcasting,

as you are saying, it's such a, I mean, it's not new-new, but it's a relatively new medium where there are all these models to how to make it work. Because it's like, how do you make it profitable for something that's out there for free? That's kind of a tricky process. People try listener donations or people try through Patreon or they try your Amazon link or sponsors or the paywall or selling old episodes. There are all these models and none of them are perfect. It's kind of we're sort of groping in the dark, trying to figure out overall as an industry, like how is that going to work?

And it's tricky. And I think Luminary figured they are going to try one experiment, which is sort of create the Netflix of podcasting, have this idea that you pay a fairly small fee. I think it's really five bucks a month or something. I think it's even less if you sign up for a year. So it's fairly nominal, the amount of money,

but then you get these, let's say 40 podcasts or whatever money they have right now. And it's a gamble, of course, because nobody knows if the Netflix of podcasting work or if people respond to it or not when they are used to having it for free. So it's interesting how that, I like that the experiment is happening

because clearly that needs to be figured out. What is, if you have a solid enough audience, how do you make sure that it keeps you, that keeps the lights on and everything else? And it's a hard one because especially when people are used to getting stuff for free, even the idea of putting money in it,

even if it's small money, people are like, what? I have to pay for content? It's like, kind of, because it's free, but it's not, you you know people put a lot of time and energy into it so it's even education you know i thought about that before like uh working as a coach and then still paying my coaches i i thought of like some of the work that uh that i do is is important work and i shouldn't necessarily it's icky to feel like I should attach a dollar to that. But then at the

same time, if I'm teaching somebody something that I've spent years of my life investing in, and I have to continue that investment, I want to continue that investment. I don't have to. But if I'm going to go out and pay $30,000 in a year for my continued education, then yeah, I got to subsidize that at the very least, right? Absolutely. And that comes through on the podcast and everything else, not even just a dollar for time type deal. There's actual extras that come into that. Yeah, it's inevitable. Because as you said, especially with some certain kind of podcast,

the amount of energy you put into it to make it happen. I calculated for me, typically for one episode, I have probably anywhere between 100 to 200 hours of work behind it. Damn! Because you have to become kind of an instant expert on the thing. So if I'm talking about, I don't know, Theodore Roosevelt, well, there's a lot written out there about Theodore Roosevelt. Even if I just pick the top books, the top sources,

I may have to read 10 books. So 4,000 pages seen just reading and taking notes, you already put a lot of time in. And then you have to put together the notes, condense them, make them more interesting for people, kind of semi-write a script. It's time consuming, man. Which is fun, absolutely fun,

but clearly that means you don't have time to do other things to pay the bills, so that needs to pay the bills. I'm curious to see where podcasting is going to go as an industry, as what's going to be the model that prevails. It's interesting too, I had a guy

who wants to get... There's a lot of people that work on the business side of podcasts where they work with a group of podcasts. They handle the sponsors. They take a percentage of the sponsorship. They also work to get your numbers up, different things like that. And I've, I've talked to, uh, you know, buddies in the game, like, um, Simon Rex, you know, and different, you know, who plays Dirt Nasty in his stage life and different people like that who have worked with some of these different companies.

And there are pros and cons to any of this stuff, you know, but I was talking to a guy who recently, he wants to get on or get like our first sexual toy sponsor. And I'm like, I think that'll crush, dude. I think that'll crush. Like think that'll crush like yeah man we've never had one we've had dr chris ryan dr wednesday martin we've had jamie wheel on who just wrote a whole book on sex magic i mean we've got we've had great guests that are pushing for all of this right and certainly you know receptive you know like those those shows all did very well

from the listenership standpoint so it'll be it'll be cool to see if they can, if we can get in with them. But yeah, that's a whole thing, right? Like, all right, cool. We're going to do sponsors. How do you want to do that? Do it at the beginning of the episode, like Rogan, or do you take more money to do it mid mid roll? Does that pan out?

Do you do dynamic insertion where it somehow gets magically plugged into every episode you've ever done? All those things. And that, that the business side of things can take the fun out sometimes. It really does sometimes. It is nice to have somebody else handle the business and just show up and do the damn thing the way you want it.

Exactly. Yeah, I appreciate that. But yeah, it is very much in the infancy. And think about that, like those guys, that team in particular came from a radio background so a lot of people that are trying to take the radio template and apply it yeah and even see that like in in like the sound boards and shit where you know it's like yeah wipe out you know like these little fucking gag reels and shit like that some of the different podcasts and it's like

that was cool on radio but this is is, I like, I like the intimate conversation, you know, where it's like less, less perfect, perfected in the post production and everything else like that. I like it. I like that style a little bit more. Me too. So tell me what's been going on. Last time we talked so much about jujitsu and I've recently heard that you got your third stripe brown belt now. Is that right? Fuck yeah, dude. You know, the thing with jujitsu is funny because I started training a million years ago, right? But I always was, I knew that I would never have the time in my life

to be the guy who's there five days a week kind of thing. It's like, realistically, I'm going to be able to train two to three times a week. That's all I'm ever going to have. So it's kind of like, you know that you're not gonna be as good as quickly as somebody who can put in the everyday type of stuff but I was like yeah who cares for me it's like it's a long-term thing it's not uh I'm not in a rush I'm not doing it

competitively I'm having fun so I'm here for the long haul and you know over time you see it pan out and you're like oh shit i'm actually getting decent at this game so it's uh it's fun but you know it's what's fun is like i notice my my instincts are so lazy in jujitsu because i got way way back in the day before it was popular i realized i figured out the hack that many people are not that good at leg locks back then. Today it's changing, of course. So I made a figure, okay, all I have to do is take the grappling situation to a leg lock entanglement. And then if I make myself a specialist there, well, now I can compete with people who are better than me.

And so now sometime I'm like, do I really want to pass guard, get position, work? Fuck this, I'm just going to take a leg. So sometimes I have to give myself the handicaps of like, no, you're not going to leg lock this guy. You're going to try to work the rest of your game because otherwise it just becomes, I do the same stuff over and over. Yeah, you get perfected,

especially when it's the same guys you're going with, right? Yeah, because I mean- That's the argument to train outside the gym and to compete every now and then. So you get those different tests. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's fun. Jiu-Jitsu is fantastic. I've been trying to get back in for a while and I've been waiting.

We finally got Curtis Hembroff, who is one of Eddie Bravo's first black belts. He was at Tennis Planet Jiu-Jitsu. He left when all the nonsense pandemic started. He went up to Alaska where he's from, had a kid. I think he was going to be a fisherman. I'll probably have him on the podcast to give me the full story, but he's back now. I've been hearing he was coming back. He's back now. And so I had been hurt a couple of times training and it was just like, what the fuck am I doing this for? You know, I'm not, I'm not competing anymore. I'm not getting paid to do this. And I had to tell my son as a three-year-old that he can't run. I have to walk for a year. Right. Because of a torn from a leg lock, right. From a torn knee. And I had stem cells in it,

then re-hurt it. So it was like three grand down the fucking drain. The stem cells worked great, but I jumped back on the mat too quick. And so anyway, long story short, I want to take that approach. I want to take the approach of I'm not in a rush. There is no end goal. I'm only going to do it a couple of days a week because I had a five hour, I've been doing the sheep dog with Tim Kennedy and his guys. And it's awesome because you do probably a three or four hour orientation on Friday night. Then Saturday and Sunday, you spend five hours of jujitsu, five hours of weapons training. And the five hours of jujitsu is phenomenal. He's got buddies, Chantry's this fucking giant teddy bear, who's also a badass seven-year special forces, 15-year SWAT. I think

he's a brown belt as well, but he's an inch shorter than me and like 20 pounds heavier. So I can't out-muscle him. I can't cheat. I can't do anything. There's no gifts that I have that he doesn't have. And even though I got my black belt in 2016, he's been way more consistent in the last five years. And that makes a difference. Yeah, it makes a big difference. But I had such a blast rolling with those guys and also was uh metering myself in a way where I would you know avoid injury at all costs yeah exactly you know like let me check my ego here avoid injury at all costs and then uh be able to roll again and that experience was awesome because it like reinvigorated that oh this is something I could still do a couple days a week and yeah for fun enjoyment. With Curtis back and the emphasis on

all sorts of shit that I don't know. I remember our first jiu-jitsu coach, he didn't want us to train legs because he was teaching guys for MMA. And it's like, oh, if you go to the leg, then you get punched in the face, that kind of shit. And now jiu-jitsu has evolved so much, especially at Tennis Planet.

Yeah. Leg locks are a huge part, right? So I'm like, oh shit, it's like learning the second language. I got to get back in there just to figure out that part of the game. You know, there's a trippy story. I don't know if you've heard it, that why there was such a prejudice against leg locks. And you know, there are a few theories about it, but one of the theories, which is fantastic, is that what happened, there was the Gracie lineage, but that wasn't the only

jujitsu lineage in Brazil. There was also Osvaldo Fada, who took it in a direction that was completely different, because the Gracies were primarily teaching upper-class, kind of targeting population that was somewhat scared of urban crime, so there was this idea, we'll teach you how to defend yourself against the criminal poor people. Fada went the other route. He was the Robin Hood guy. So he went like straight up in the favelas and he really believed in the idea

of jiu-jitsu as helping form people and kind of help them become better human beings. So he taught for, you know, if somebody had money, they paid. If they didn't, they didn't. He would make geese out of rice sacks. I mean, he was like as ghetto as it gets, right?

But with a very kind of noble attitude behind it. At one point, I think he was in the 50s. Don't quote me on that because I don't remember the exact timeframe, but like the two schools in a very respectful way, but decided to have a showdown. And the father guys beat the Gracie guys 12 to zero. Like every match they won by leg lock.

And one of the things that like some of the Gracie guys then add is like leg locks, it's cheating. You know, that's like, and also because there was clearly some racism within Brazilian society. Some of them had like, oh, that's the black guy's technique. That's like, they have to do that because they are not as good at jujitsu.

They are cheating, right? So then from there on, there was kind of this prejudice against leg locks. It's like, ah, that's plain dirty. That's not the real thing. That's such a crazy story because my coach originally before the Vieto brothers came in,

he got his black belt from Half Gracie. Oh, right, right. That makes total sense why he would have been anti. Right. You know, not really looking. Kind of that tradition. And who knows, you know, you hear these stories and I'm sure there's some mythology attached to it,

but I'm like, makes sense. I can see that. So it's fun. That's hilarious. Yeah, I remember we've had, so my coach, a.k.a. Leandro Vieira, is the youngest of the three brothers they would bring in guys

once he had his own gym out in Milpitas San Jose kind of area they'd bring in all the checkmate guys and there were so many great ones but I remember them coming through and all the stories were from the favelas so that's another thing that resonates

out of that story was like one of them I forget his name he was talking about growing up there and when he was young everybody wanted it was like soccer was your way out and then he remembered when it clicked for him that jujitsu was a potential as a way out and it was only been just one avenue was you get great at soccer and that's it right you don't make your way out right now it was like oh you could do jujitsu too. Right. And he said they would roll on dirt, the dirt floor.

That was their living room. And there was one guy in the neighborhood who had a sponsor. So he had one gi and the one gi that he had, he didn't have a belt yet. Couldn't even get his white belt, but he had that one gi sponsored. And so they would take turns getting to use the gi for the different grips. But I was like, that is so awesome.

And he shared the gi because he wanted them to be able to experience it. The other guys too. Super cool thinking about that. Like the difference in, it's something we get. I remember Henry Rollins talking about that. Like why travel is so important because you break out of the mold of the small town or the small state or the small country or whatever that is. And you get to see how other people live with less or more for that matter, you know, and like, what is the history in these places and how do they get down?

And just the mental image of that is, is a really refreshing thing to see like, yeah, fuck yeah, dude, there's people doing jujitsu on third floor somewhere in the world right this second. And there's people that became world champion that started off like that. That's awesome. Yeah, it's fantastic. In fact, that's why to me, the Osvaldo Fanda story is one of those great jujitsu story that people kind of know, but not that much. I'm like, man, there should be way more spotlight on that story because it's a happy one. You know, like so often you hear these guys where you hear a story and you're like, oh, that's kind of cool.

And then you dig a little deeper and like, oh, there's some really dark stuff there. You know, that's a little disturbing. Fada seemed like just an all around good story. Now, if you guys know more and there's something terrible, please don't tell me, don't spoil my fantasy because I like it. But, you know, that's what it seemed like from the outside. So

I'm like, oh, I dig that. Have you done any of the history shows on jujitsu yet? I've done one. I did two episodes on like the transition from Japanese jujitsu to judo. So I did kind of the Jigoro Kano story and the creation of judo and then the influence that has on martial arts as a whole. I did, of course, in speaking of judo, bring up jujitsu a little bit, but it was like a side note. It was like a 10 minute thing about just where, where judo goes and the variation and what it creates. But that was, it wasn't specific on jujitsu, but, uh, you got, you got plenty there then. Yeah. There's a lot there. Tell me, tell me about some of your favorite episodes that you've done on history. So, uh, here's a lot there. Tell me about some of your favorite episodes that you've done on history.

So here's a bunch, because I mean, the beautiful thing about being your own boss in that regard is that I don't have anybody telling me, like I only cover topics that I think are gonna be cool and I'm gonna enjoy spending 100 hours researching. So it's, but some of the ones, let's say, so I did a few kind of combat sports one that were one i did about jack johnson that's a fantastic story first uh african-american heavyweight

champion in boxing at a time where racism was off the chart and jack johnson is just such a fun guy over the top there's a story about about Jack Johnson that everybody uses because it captures him so perfectly. It's how I opened this three-part podcast. Jack Johnson, after he started making his money, he'd like driving fast cars at the time when cars were barely new kind of thing. And he got stopped by a cop and was like,

hey boy, you know, you were speeding. You owe us money now. And back then you could pay your fine on the spot, which I'm sure it gave no rise to any corruption or anything. But like, so Johnson's like, how much do I owe you? The guy's like, $50. He's like, here is a hundred. He's like, no, I don't have change for, no, no, no.

At two hours from now, I'm going to be driving the same way and I'm going to be doing the same speed. So let me pay your head. Can you imagine a black dude in the 1910 or something doing this? It's like, whoa, that's powerful. So Johnson was fun because he's such a defiant character. Then there's, I did the Jigoro Kano one

and I just did, I just released a couple of episodes on the Bruce Lee story, which I find fantastic. Like Bruce Lee's biography is just really tricky. Yeah, we saw that and it was funny because one of the, you know, Ryan Giles and Ian and I were looking up recent stuff. And it's funny because, I mean, Ian had seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

from Quentin Tarantantino but he hadn't he hadn't caught that that was like supposed to be bruce lee right right in the film yeah and this is huge you know i remember when this came up and um was it shannon yeah that yeah shannon understandably pissed right because of this but unpack that for us because i think this is this is a this is a funny thing but i I wanted to know, obviously you side with the Lees on that, but unpack that because I think it's a fabulous movie. I love Tarantino's movies. I like the movie.

I am heavily biased on this story because I'm friends with Shannon and all of that. So that may be, that may taint my perception, but like the way I see it is, you know, in the movie, the way they play it is they have Bruce Lee being a ridiculously cocky, arrogant, he comes across as a Conor McGregor kind of guy in the latest with this very,

and he gets into a fight with the stuntman and they kind of end up even in a way where it's even, but it looks like the stunt, the vibe is the stuntman is doing great kind of thing that's what they and the that's the Brad Pitt character who played it now the thing that I found weird that to me was uncalled for is that you could have that scene

like if you want to build the Brad Pitt character as a badass you can absolutely you can even put Bruce Lee in there you can even win well with Bruce Lee. There was no need to make Lee sound like a complete asshole, you know, especially because the way I see it is there aren't that many people in the world that across the board people love, right? You know, somebody's hero is always somebody else's villain kind of thing.

Bruce Lee is one of those rare cases that you go anywhere and people like him, kind of like, oh, Bruce Lee, of course, how can you villain kind of thing. Bruce Lee is one of those rare cases that you go anywhere and people like him, kind of like, oh, Bruce Lee, of course, how can you not type of thing. So he's like, why do you have to turn to one guy? Like there are so few already. Why do we have to, especially when it's not necessary for the story.

You know, you could do the exact same thing, having him more, he can be cocky. That's fine because he was cocky. But from what I've read, from what the vibe I've got from all the sources is that while he definitely was cocky, he did not have this asshole vibe. Like one of the things that he was renowned for,

at least in Hong Kong, the American side is, there's more of a question mark, is that like Jackie Chan used to say that Lee was the opposite of all the movie stars because he would treat everybody on the set, the workers and stuff as good as anybody could ever treat them. And he would always be fighting with the bosses. You know, he was always kind of arguing with the top executive about where we're going with the movie, this and that. But with the people quote-unquote

below him he was always cool always pleasant always so kind of to turn him almost into the opposite of that to me seems like a stretch and you know there are stars like uh you know jean labelle tells of like yeah he did on a movie set pick up bruce lee and bruce lee got really mad and was like let me go go or I'll kill you. And he's like, no, because if I let you go, you will kill me. But that's more like a joke. And he did not have that asshole-ish vibe to it all.

So I did not understand why Tarantino had to go there and double down on it. Because in the Rogan interview, he just went like, you know, you don't expect history from Tarantino. It's fine, you know, he had a movie where Brad Pitt kills Hitler, right? He's like, so I'm not expecting accurate history, but then he doubles down and he's like,

no, no, that's how it was. That I'm like, that seemed like a stretch. That was my vibe on it. But what was yours? Yeah, no, I mean, honestly, like I, everything, the biggest piece I think is, and not, I haven't done a ton of research into Lee. My first foray into mixed martial arts with proper training

was from a Jeet Kune Do guy, VPM, Vince Perez Mazzola out in Scottsdale, who trained under Dan Inosanto, who, as you know, of course, is one of Bruce Lee's best students. And so like that lineage. And then from there, started to dive into some of more of the philosophy behind him, you know,

and like see who is the spiritual side of Bruce Lee, right? And I've gained so much from that, so much from that. And he has, it's funny, because you talk about like, if you want to win an argument or a debate, have like a Gatling gun of one-liners that are just ready for you. Ready to go, yeah.

Right, and so like in coaching people, so many come from Bruce Lee. Like it's not enough to know we must do. Right. There's things like that that just roll off the tongue that hit something well beyond what your ears perceive. You know, And so many of those are there for me when it's like, yeah, I know to wake up in the morning early so I can

get in the sauna and the ice bath before my kids get up. And before I have to parent and do all the shit before I have to go to work and do all that stuff and do everything in between. And it's like, I know all those things, but unless I'm doing them, I'm missing out on the embodiment of that action. Right. And so like, that's one example of probably a million that I've gained from him, you know? So when it went down, I've sided with Shannon

on a lot of things, you know, when it comes to how we view, because she's a living, she's right there. Yep. Right. It's not like she's the great, great, great granddaughter or some shit like that. It's a very direct connection. Yeah.

When Dan Carlin did The Wrath of a Khan, he talked in the first episode about how far removed we were from Genghis Khan, we could actually do that. And he mentioned that at some point, there could be a series like this on Hitler and Nazi Germany, but it's too close to us right now to do it, right? Like she's not Genghis Khan removed. She's right there, right?

So like we have to value that and take, and I think that's important. And at the same time, the movie was awesome. The music was awesome. But precisely for that, I felt he was uncool. Like to me sometimes- If it didn't need to be in that way, then why did we do it that way?

And it's kind of the same thing on the Game of Thrones thing for me. It was like, you could run that storyline, but you like skip about six passages to go from point A to point B that makes it like, what were you in a hurry to finish? Come on, it's like,

give the character a little more reasoning for why there's this turn, you know? Like show me a little more. Like, so I don't- You're talking about with Daenerys getting killed by Jon Snow? Or Arya Stark. Like, she spent like six, how many seasons? Like, just for vengeance.

And then she gets there and the other dude is like, look, you're going to die if you do that. And she's like, oh, you're right. I'm going to go. And he's like, what? Yeah, yeah. She has done that for her. Give her a little more reason. If you want her to go, you're right. I'm going to go. And he's like, what? Yeah. Yeah. She has done that for her. Give her a little more reason.

If you want her to go, that's fine. But build it up a little, you know? Yeah. She just turns the pieces out. Yeah. He's like, ah, okay. That's cool. I didn't mind that she,

that that's how the king of the White Walkers died. No, that was fine. I didn't mind that at all. I was cool until that episode. Yeah. Until that, the first three, I was still cool. But to me, it's like, that's character building. That's like storytelling.

In any storytelling, you need to have good reasons why the characters are doing what they are doing. And we need to click. And so to me, when I see something that is there in an unnecessary kind of way, or where downright it seems counter to the character because you skip some steps, I feel like, what the hell? And in the Tarantino thing I feel what the hell because

you are doing something clearly provocative that's gonna piss people off for no particular reason because you could have done you could have built your movie around you without that controversy including so I'm like why you know what's the what's needed but again Tarantino's fantastic you know his movies are great kill beat is one of the greatest things ever so it's like you know it is what it is you you got to take the good with the bad right it's like so but yeah but then other episodes of then the combat sports one that's kind of one trend I've done a whole lot of Native American history I've done a series on a biography of Crazy Horse. I did one

on the clash, the war for the Black Hills, Little Begone, and all that stuff. Have you done anything on Quanah Parker? No yet, I won't. There was Midnight and the Summer Moon. That one is a weird one.

It was funny because I had multiple guests on the podcast tell me, you got to read this one. It's like the real history of Texas and all this shit, and I'm living here. And I've loved Native American tales and things of that nature, just in connecting in many ways through the plant medicines and things like that, not just here in North America, but Central and South America. So I've always had that draw. My boxing coach when I was in MMA was a Mayan elder as well. And he'd take me to the Native American reservation in Northern

California for traditional sweat lodges and plant medicine ceremonies. So always had that connection. And I read the book and they talked about the Comanche is like really having no spiritual practice of all the, the tribes, you know, being nomadic. And, and, you know, if Savage applied to any of the tribes that applied to the Comanche, that type of feel. Right. Yeah. And I was talking with Dr. Will Tagle, who is probably, you know, less percentage of native American than is necessary for a college grant, but he still has the blood and he studied under Bearheart Williams. He's been on my podcast and Bearheart was a mentor

of his and a very close friend. He's written several books, PhD in psychology, PhD in physics, brilliant, brilliant dude. And an elder in every sense of the word, he's 81 now. So literally and figuratively, he's an elder, right? He meets all the criteria. And when I told him about that book, he said, you know, one thing that was curious to me was the author never sat with a Comanche elder to verify any of this. And I was like, how do you write a book about the Comanche and you don't interview a Comanche elder?

Like that is insane. I'm afraid the answer is because that book is kind of a hit piece. Like he's written in a way that, I mean, nevermind the fact that there's a lot of stuff in there that's historically inaccurate, that just flat out wrong, you know?

So I think the book has had a lot of success because it's well-written. So that's a plus, but it's really more historical fiction than reality because there's a bunch of things that he threw in. He at one point mentioned the Comanche were the only tribes to ever breed the new kind of horse,

totally not true than as Perse did before and in a big way. He mentioned like a Spanish defeat being the greatest loss of life they ever had and not even close to what I... So there are so many that are so easily verifiable where he decided to go a wrong way. I have no idea why, if it's for laziness or what,

but I'm like, okay, so there are multiple warning signals there that there's something less than precise about the nature of the historical research. And then some of it are kind of what you're describing, which is there's a sort of a veiled racism pervading the book where at one point he speaks about like the first kind of Anglo settlement in Texas and he refers to it as the first human settlement in Texas. And you're like,

whoa, time out. No, that tells something about where you're coming from. That's kind of a problem. Or he does have a thing where he speak about Comanche practices as like barbarism before the light of Christianity arrive. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not what you do with history. There's way too judgmental, way too. And the feeling that I get is that when there are multiple historical sources

telling different stories about a Comanche, he unfailingly picks the one that put the accent on the most absolute savage aspect of it all. And I'm not advocating that one should sugarcoat seeing so romanticized cultures, because clearly in Comanche culture, there was a lot of heavy, tough shit that we would

look at it today and go like damn these guys were a little intense in a disturbing kind of way but there's also a ton of other stuff so if you isolate like 20% of the culture and that's all you do and then you hype it up even more than reality I'm like

that to me looks more like a hit job than good history I you know? Yeah. So yeah. I think Will Tegel had also talked to me about even like scalping, like that had been learned from Europeans.

I think the scalping part was honestly kind of universal. Like a lot of people did it. Like in native culture, there was scalping before Europeans did Europeans also encourage it with bounties on scalp for sure but as having been here before yeah he was here before not just here

though like if you look at like Siberia you had scalping in Siberia among tribes you had so that's one of the I think scalping is kind of funny actually because because what it is, is essentially is the tradition of taking your enemy's head. You know, you need to log around the whole head.

That's a pain in the ass. Can we just scalp? It's a lot of weight. Can we just scalp? It's not economical when you're traveling big distances. Yeah, yeah. It's like, you know,

you're in the Scythians or other like ancient Indo-European tribes. You're in this thing about like the enemy skull, you drink out of your enemy skull kind of thing. Somebody got lazy in the process. It's like, how about we just do a scalp? It's close enough. But yeah, that's kind of a universal.

You find it all over the place. So that doesn't, to me it's like, yeah, you do find cases of scalping in North America before contact with Europeans and you find it archeologically where you can tell that somebody was scalped. Big deal. That doesn't mean that, I think that's the problem,

that sometimes it's so black and white that people are either, oh, natives always hug trees and kiss each other and there was never any issue, or they are these bloodthirsty savages that are so disgustingly evil that it's like they are people you know they fought they had their wars they did bloody things when you compare it to what was going on

in Europe way less than what was going on there but it's not to say nothing you know what I mean it's like so people tend to like when they find the seed of truth somewhere then I don't know why the way human mind works that way. They want to take it to the absolute extreme where it's no longer reality.

So it's like- Well, it's funny too, I think in Europe, like I remember going, I fought in Nottingham, England, it was my only fight in Europe. And having the majority, the vast majority of my heritage comes from the UK. I was like, this is fucking rad.

We're riding around on trains and the underground. And we're out in Nottingham. It was beautiful because it was so much countryside. I was really happy. I got to stay there for a week. And then we did a few days in London for the tourist shit, but being out in the countryside, you know, going to Sherwood forest, seeing the major Oak meditating next to that thing, like seeing, like feeling thousands of years in the presence of that Robin hood, all of that. But then we went to, we went to like a, an old dungeon that had like different types of torture devices. And I remember Aubrey talking about this and I think Rogan talked about this too, um, in different places in Europe. But when I was in England looking at this, it blew my mind. I walked through with Tosh and it was before we had kids, obviously.

It blew my mind how many torture devices had to do with sex organs. Oh yeah. I was like, fuck, dude. This is way, way fucking beyond cutting someone's scalp off. This is fucking way beyond. Even when Jocko did the raping of Nan King

and he talks about you know pregnant women being bayoneted yep in the city courtyard and all the family members lined up and forced to watch as she's raped to death with the with it sorry if there's children listening um with the unborn child spilled out of her belly yeah that is as gnarly as it gets right yeah but then when you see like the torture devices it's like hey like hey, like I'm not saying, I'm not saying the raping of Nan King is, there's no order. No, when you get to that point, it's all evil to the 10th degree. But the planning to create a device.

Yeah. Right? Like the time that would go into that of this is what we'll do with our enemies. This is how we'll get the answers. This is how we'll do with our enemies. This is how we'll get the answers. This is how we'll torture. I mean, like people talk bad about what's the little spot in Cuba, Guantanamo bear, right? I've been to Guantanamo.

I haven't been on the bad side of Guantanamo in terms of being interrogated, but you know, like they're not doing that. No, that's amateur hour compared to this stuff. And you're right. Like it makes you wonder about the psychology there. It's kind of like, hey, honey, are you coming too bad? It's like, no, sorry. I need to stay up to plan a little more.

I work at a torture people. So I need to turn in these designs soon to the prince. So let me work. Yeah, it's like princess bride. You know, the guy that's the torturer, right? The torturer guy. But stretching someone on a table, that's not, that's the micro dose. Yes.

Like that's what they start off with. Like, hey, we're going to stretch you out. Right. And then we'll go to your penis. Yeah. And your balls and your butthole and everything else with spikes. And it's like, fuck, dude. Like the holy shit.

This happened for thousands of years. People, by the way, Princess Bride, greatest movie ever. But yes, that shit is disturbing how often the human mind goes into these really dark places. And then you wonder about these people because it's like, how do you go from doing that to then living your day-to-day life, being a parent to your kid, being, I'm sure, having sometimes pleasant interaction with people,

being a good friend to somebody, and then you go torture. It's like, what the hell? How do you? It's disturbing. It's like it would be a gear shift. Even thinking of like the person who would engage in beheading likely has a switch that's flipped when they put the mask on. Sure.

Right? Like there's something like, okay know, like, okay, I'm going to, once this mask comes on, I enter into a different mode of being and it's compartmentalized as opposed to, you know, cause you couldn't live in darkness. You'd probably end your own life. Absolutely. You know, or you've made pleasure out of that thing, out of torturing somebody so that it truly is something where it's like, oh man, I've eaten this Wellington pie

or beef Wellington or whatever, and then, and that's okay. But tonight when I get to torture this guy, that's the dessert. That's why I live. Wow. Yeah. There's some weird stuff there. It's cause yeah, the executioner at least is like, eh, you know, I'm cutting somebody's side off. It's not exactly friendly, but it's a quick death.

If they are sentenced to death anyway, somebody got to do it. But torture, that's a whole different level. That's where you're really just working on making somebody miserable. It's like, whoa, that's an entirely different psychological process. But yeah, yeah. One of the things, okay, actually, this is another one. So because so many episodes in

history tend to be disturbing, you know, so much of history is the record of warfare and conflict and this, that, and the other. Once in a while, I do find the need to just light it up a little. So one thing that I was chatting with over yesterday about, like one couple of my favorite episodes ever had basically no violence in it, which is rare because so many of them are very violent. And there's the life of this one guy, Ikkyu Sojun,

who was the illegitimate son of the emperor of Japan in the late 1300s. And he becomes this fantastic Zen master who's as unorthodox as it gets because his priority was very clear. His priority were, he likes Zen, he also like women a lot,

and he liked to drink. And to him, all of those were paths to spirituality. You know, he did not see, because his whole thing is there is no separation if you approach it in a certain way between sacred and profane. Ordinary life can be as sacred as the biggest ceremony if you approach it with a certain consciousness. So to him, the separation was completely artificial. It kind of made fun of all the very strict Zen approach to certain things, only of course to do it behind everybody's back kind of

thing because that's usually how it works when you create a hypocrisy that you can live with but like the dude is so funny he's like everything you read about him he's hilarious he has a huge impact on japanese cultural history managed to have a great time in the process managed to make people around him happy so he's not like the know, kind of brain cult leader kind of thing. No, he's a sweet guy. I was like, ah, for once, just a pleasant, happy tale. You know, I can use a break from the heavy stuff sometimes. So that one, I had a blast.

That's awesome. Which number is the episode? It's 40 something. I want to say 45. So that's the one in the freebies. Yeah, it is. Cool, we'll link to that in the show notes for people. Yeah, that one is, it's a mellow one, you know,

is listen with your kids unless you have issues about sex because there's a lot of sexuality in that one because he really likes sex. That's awesome. Well, I know you got a jam here shortly, but what have you got on the horizon? What do you wanna speak to that's fresh and what's alive in you right now?

What's coming up? So speaking of lighthearted stuff, I have a nice three-part series of the wars of religion in France between Catholics and Protestants and decides that their theology is a little bit different. So of course the way to solve it is by murdering each other for a few decades.

So that's a happy one. That's where, by the way, there's the real red wedding where they invite, they try to make peace by having this Protestant prince marry this Catholic princess. It's like, oh, it's gonna work out.

They have the wedding and immediately after they kill all the Protestants. So it's like, yeah, it's some weird stuff they have the wedding and immediately after they kill all the Protestants so it's like wow yeah it's it's some weird stuff so there's that I'm doing

I'm doing one that I think I raised some serious question in my daughter's mind because she was like hey do you have time to do this with me now and I'm like

I will give me half hour because I'm finishing something with this super tough sweaty 300 gay guys, but I'm going to be, and she's like, huh, what? And it's a trippy story about ancient Greece where you have this in the city of Thebes,

they create this elite corps, like they are top-notch infantry where these 300 guys were actually 150 homosexual couples. And the theory behind it is that nobody wanted to look bad in front of their lover. So on the battlefield, they are going to be braver than anybody because they want to look their best in front of the one they're into. So I was like, wow, that raises so much trippy stuff about gender roles and the way people conceive of gender roles today and stuff.

So that's kind of fun. Yeah, that's super interesting. So those are, what else do I got? Oh, one that's gonna be fun is, there's a tale of a siege of Jerusalem back when the Assyrians were kind of peace because the Jewish people stopped paying tributes. So the Assyrians were pretty peace.

And the Assyrians wiped out everybody at the time. You know, they were the best army in the world at the time. And so they show up and they destroy the entire countryside. They already destroyed 20 years earlier. There were two Jewish kingdom. They destroyed the first one. Those guys basically disappear from history as the 10 lost tribes.

There are only two tribes left. And they destroyed their entire country. Now it's only down to Jerusalem. If they take over Jerusalem as everything said they should, based on logic, there will be no Judaism. There will be no Christianity.

There will be no Islam. And it's only because something happens and there's debate on what happens and they decide to lift the siege that Judaism survive and as such you then have Christianity and Islam and it's one of those what ifs that really blows

your mind because it's like these all rolled over one siege and one siege gone differently basically the entire history of the world after that would be completely different because can you imagine like what the war today would be without the three big Western religions?

It's like, you can't even begin, right? Because there are so many repercussions that whenever you touch, you would have been affected. And you're like, our calendar day-to-day shit. Yeah.

Day-to-day shit, big shit, philosophical stuff, attitudes. It's insane. And to think that all of history could flip basically on a coin toss of

one event that today nobody remembers, you know, you need to be some real serious nerd to, oh yeah, that siege clearly is like, who knows about that stuff, right? And all of history changes because of that. Did you ever see the show Sliders? No, I didn't. It was on in the 90s i think jerry o'connell was the

star do you remember that show giles so it'd be like same world different dimension right and it's earth uh they travel through some portal and they basically take one historical thing like no asteroid impacts the earth dinosaurs still exist but humanity has somehow evolved together with them um or hitler wins and the entire world is held under a one world government, which is really kind of how this is shaping right now, right? But they have, you know, that's the premise of the show, but I think that would have been a hell of an episode.

That would have been just teed up. That's exactly right. That's like the what if, because if you can bring it back to like one pivotal moment in history that changes everything, that's a pretty big one. Yeah, yeah. So, you know,

and that's what I mean about history on fire is I get to play with so much different stuff. I get to play with very, Bruce Lee, that's like 1970s. And then you go back to 2700 years ago and then you go back to the 1500s and you get to, you know, each series is its

own thing so I get to kind of I have all of history sort of spread out in front of me and I can go I want to go here now okay how much how much sorry to cut you off but how much of this as you get through it goes against the common narrative of what you were taught growing up because I remember at 19 year I think it was the same week. No, it couldn't have been the same week, but it was the same year. I was in junior college. It was the same year that 9-11 was.

And they had Indigenous Peoples Day. And I was like, oh, cool. Let me go check that out. And it was on Columbus Day. And they rewrote everything that I had been taught about Christopher Columbus. And I was like, what the fuck? Yeah.

What the fuck? Yeah. Like that was like a paradigm shift. Like this dude was hanging people by their wrists above boiling water and steaming them slowly to death. Like, you know, like that's a whole different, like nobody's getting taught that in school. None of that. So I wonder how much of history as you take the deep dive actually goes against what we're taught growing up. I think I was kind of a nerd as a kid.

So I read a lot of history. So I would kind of stumble into things that maybe like were not the stuff that was in school, but I would, so to me it was less surprising because it's like, oh, of course, doesn't everybody know that? And then I go like, oh no, because that's not how it's done in school.

So there are definitely stuff like that. And in many cases, in some cases, it's like your Christopher Columbus example where it's a complete paradigm shift. In other cases, it's weird. Like it's just they know two pieces of information and they lack. Like once I was talking with Dan Carlin because I told him one series I've done that I love was about Caravaggio, the Italian painter.

And Dan was like, I mean, he's a good artist, but what's the hook there? And I was like, oh, wait, wait, wait. Don't think Italian painter, think Tupac. And Tupac being an Italian painter in the 1600s, and Dan was like, okay, tell no more, I got it. That makes perfect sense. Because Caravaggio was a gangster.

He killed a guy in a duel, was wanted for murder, and at the same time painted the greatest masterpiece of the end of the Renaissance. And so he's like, it's like, so even growing up in Italy, I knew Caravaggio, but I was like, oh, he's the guy who painted that stuff. It's cool, I like it. And then when I started diving into the background story,

I'm like, oh my God, this is so much more interesting than I thought. So you do get that a lot sometimes. That's awesome. You have a little bit of knowledge and you dive deeper and you're like, oh, there's a whole world behind a little bit I knew. And that makes it fun.

Hell yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for making the time. I know we had to squeeze it and fit it in, but this is phenomenal, brother. I always love getting to sit down with you. This was fun. And man, we did it.

We squeezed so much in one hour. We made it happen and I can still make my flight now. We are good. Awesome, brother. Thank you.