The Joe Rogan Experience - #1091 - Daniele Bolelli

Episode Date: March 14, 2018

Daniele Bolelli is an Italian author, professor, and martial artist. His podcast is called “History on Fire," and his most recent book “Not Afraid” is available on Amazon (http://amzn.to/1SYRwpU).

Boom and we're live. Daniele Bolelli, the man with the most beautiful accent in the world. I just read an iTunes review saying, it's kind of weird listening to this guy describing this horror story with the accent from, it sounds like he's making you pizza while he's talking. And the thing they don't know is, I am making them pizza while I'm talking. That is what's happening. Yeah, and if they could see you, you look like a professor that was kidnapped by a biker gang. Kim's in here with this red brotherhood jacket on, this leather jacket from these Native Americans with this big red fist on it. He's got a bandana on. You're missing a motorcycle. That's all you're missing.

Right. That's next. You could be in some Easy Rider type movie. That's all you're missing. Right. That's next. You could be in some Easy Rider type movie. Right. I could see it. Carrying a shotgun, too. I dig that. So are you digging doing this podcast?

Are you kidding me? History on Fire? Oh, man. I'm loving it. Well, let's put it that way. I love doing it. It's a royal pain in the ass, the research. Well, your podcast, much like Dan Carlin's is very

different. I always feel ashamed calling my podcast a podcast because you just sit down and talk but yours is like it's an audio lesson on history an in-depth audio lesson on like very extreme aspects of history. Yeah it gets

and you know that part I enjoy because the storytelling part is awesome. You get to spin a story, make it exciting, connect it with pop culture, do something that's fun. That's the part that I love

is the month prior to that of just brutal research, just combing through boring historical book after boring historical book to find those little nuggets that are amazing. Yeah.

And then spin it into a narrative. That's the part that gets a little old sometimes where you're like, man, do I really need to read 200 hours of stuff for this one thing? It's like, that's a lot. Yeah, I can only imagine.

Now, when you do that, when you're going over, combing over all these different history books and all these different papers written on various times, are you extracting chunks and putting them in Microsoft Word and then going over it? Do you form it? My question is, do you form it as a script?

Or how much of it? So everything is completely written out? No. Not exactly. Because otherwise, then it sounds like you're a guy reading a thing. And it's boring. And it doesn't sound right. I just take super extensive notes,

kind of like if you are to give a lecture that you've never given, you're not going to sit down and read it, but you are going to, you know, you have something to keep you on track to make sure it's like, oh, where am I going next? Okay, great. There's that thing. So it's as detailed as possible without turning it into a dry guy reading his page type of stuff.

Yeah, I mean, history is such a fucking awesome subject because people are crazy. And throughout history, people have done so many crazy things. And it's just, it's such a great thing to know. If you only had today, if we only had our current era, and we're looking around at how fucking maniacal people are and how crazy the world is, we'd be like, God, how did this happen? How did we get here? And then you just listen to your podcast, and you go,

Oh, this shit's been going on forever. Seriously. This is the good times. Exactly. In case you were wondering wondering these good times and yes there's much to complain about yes there's much we can do better without a doubt ladies and gentlemen but this is as good as it's ever been by far yeah the human psyche is a very weird place because there's so much amazing stuff that human beings do they're just so much and then there's the amount of horror that can be unleashed throughout that has been unleashed throughout

history by people against other people is just insane yeah what is like when you go back and you you go over history what is the most confusing or disturbing era you to me, it's not so much a particular period because the same patterns emerge a lot of the times at different point in time. It's more those moments, you know, when mob mentality takes over because the reality is

the average person is not, I don't have the worldview where I think the average person is evil. I don't think that. I think the average person is weak, which means that when in a conditions where everybody's pushing in one direction, it's very easy to jump on the bandwagon. And in some cases, then a very ordinary human being can do horrible actions. You meet them for dinner and you think, pleasant person, good enough, but you put them in the wrong context and everything turns to shit i just did

i just finished right now this two-part series that's probably the most disturbing i now i want to do a podcast about flowers and puppies because this one was heavy man i did this series on kind of compare and contrast on the sand creek massacre of the cheyenne in colorado in the 1860s, and then My Lai in Vietnam in 1968. And actually I split it because I did the Sun Creek, and I had this guy, Daryl Cooper, who has the Martyr Made podcast. He's an amazing podcaster, and he covered My Lai. And then in the third episode, we're going to sit down and kind of chat about what does this all mean about the human nature.

Why do... The reason why that particular story, those two stories interest me is because it's a brutal massacre of civilians, but in both cases, there are soldiers who refuse to participate or actually try to stop it. They are not the majority.

They are a minority, but they are there and they try. So it's not just a story of people doing ugly stuff. It's like, what is that make one guy when all older, hey, go shoot that three-year-old. One guy goes, yes, sir, and does it. And the next guy goes, no, that's not who we are. Screw you. I'm not doing that.

That's what interests me. It's like the individual element of what make people in the exact same circumstances. One person go down a really dark path and somebody else instead having the balls to say no that's not who i am that's not what we do with the native american massacre what who was how many people were the ones that refused because you never hear about that all you hear about is the horrific actions of the soldiers yeah and which was the majority but there was also like there was this one guy um what's the guy's name silas soul he was talk about a guy with balls of iron because the guy, he and a couple of other officers refused to let the men under them because they were divided in different companies.

So their companies, they said, no, we're not participating in this. This is just straight up slaughter. These guys are not even our real targets. These are a bunch of civilians. So they refused. And then Silas Soul testified against his commander at the inquiry and then he was promptly murdered shortly after that.

So it's like, it's a crazy story. But still to this day, there are people from the Cheyenne tribe who every year they have a ceremony for Silas Soul because they said it not being for him, a lot more of us would have died on that day. And he did a really brave thing and paid a price for it. So, you know, if you're looking for heroism, you can do a lot worse than look at this guy's story,

because that guy was seriously, you know, stand up for his conviction under the most extreme circumstances. So it can't help but I admire that. Yeah, it had to be incredibly difficult to just imagine what those people were doing. I mean, when you hear some of the accounts of the slaughters of Native Americans, it's just terrifying that people can just look at someone and just decide that's not a person or that's not us. This is the other. They've got to be eliminated.

So we're just going to kill all these kids. We're going to kill all these women. And it happened all over the country. I mean, there's two things that happen to Native Americans. One, the big one is disease. Sure. And it wasn't on purpose. There's this big myth that people put like,

they put smallpox in blankets and that's all bullshit, right? It's pretty much been proven that they didn't really understand bacteria or diseases. There's one story that's possible, it's not a proven thing, because initially nobody understood bacteria and disease. So the first 100 plus years, completely unintentional. There's one tale about the French and Indian War where during a break, the British are talking about it, saying one of the commanders saying, hey, maybe we should give them some blankets from the smallpox hospital.

But, you know, while we do know that he suggested it, we have no proof whatsoever that it was actually done. So that's probably how the rumor got started, right? Probably. But in most cases, what happened is just that the Europeans came over and just inadvertently introduced Native Americans diseases and 90% of them were wiped out. Yeah. That's a crazy number if you really stop and think about it. It's considered probably the most dramatic demographic disaster in human history because, you know, never before you had a situation where a whole continent was not exposed to

a series of diseases. And so, of course, there's no immunity the first time they're exposed. Like, you know, you don't need to even have smallpox. You can sneeze on somebody and the next day half the village is dead you know yeah that's crazy it's just it's amazing that if a group of people just has not come in contact with something that other people come in contact with all the time and just god we got a cold you'd be fine just have some chicken soup take a nap meanwhile these people are just dead that's probably kills them off that's probably why aliens don't show up.

It's like, those motherfuckers are dirty. If we show up, they sneeze on us and our whole planet will die. Or maybe the opposite. They know they'll kill us. Exactly. Maybe they have like some super advanced diseases. That's the other possibility. I guess it's just an immune system thing, right?

If your immune system is not prepared for it. That's how it is. There's a great book by a guy named Dan Flores. Well, he wrote two, but one of them actually, and actually it was a paper that he wrote about the buffalo. And he's saying that it's really interesting because he compares the initial encounters that European settlers had and Europeanan travelers had um before the native americans were wiped out and they talk about how many animals were on the plains and they make a

direct account of it and then after the europeans had come and 90 of the native americans have been wiped out that's when the buffalo population increase goes through the roof and you're seeing these gigantic packs of mill it wouldn't be packs herds i guess of millions and millions of buffalo and he said that's directly attributed to the lack of predators of course which means lack of native americans because they were preying on these buffalo of course really interesting yeah that guy you had him on the podcast once right yeah i gotta get him on again i love that guy that was awesome his book coyote america yeah that one that was great that book changed the way i feel about coyotes yep i used to be like fuck those little rats i'll run them over and now i'm like those

little wolves man they're pretty badass yeah that was a great episode i enjoyed that one yeah they are so gangster one just stared me down the other day i I stopped my fucking car and just, you know, because he was in, it was kind of a, not a lot of people in this area. It was fairly late at night and he was on this road. I said, let me just pull over and just see what this coyote does. And he just fucking stood like 30 feet from my car just staring at me.

Just staring at me. That's badass right there. Just like, whatever dude, what are you going to do? I'm about to run into these woods. You're never going to see me again. Or I'll stick around. Maybe if you fuck up, I'll eat you. Right. I'm just trying to figure out what to do right here. Those guys don't mess around. It's crazy

that they just can live and be completely embedded in our society. We had a biologist. What was the gentleman's name that we had from the Department of Parks and Services? See if we can find this guy. But he's actually a biologist who tracks coyotes.

And he tracks them all over the state. And he even tracks mountain lions. They tag them and put those collars on them and stuff. But he said that there's a pack of coyotes that lives in downtown L.A. Yeah, I believe it. In the heat of everything. They found some abandoned building, and they denned up in this abandoned building, and that's where they live. Those guys are resilient.

They thrive in anything. They thrive. Yeah. Yeah. You like crazy animal stories, so check this out about a coyote. My mom went for a walk with her dog, and dog is a big mean dog, right? So they are walking and they see ahead of them, this little girl, probably 10 years old with this tiny little five pound dog type of thing.

And there's a coyote, maybe like 20 yards behind her. That's clearly stalking them. And the girl didn't see it. And he's obviously aiming for the five pound there. And it's just, and so my mom yelled at there like, Hey,

watch out. So the girl freaks out, pick up the her dog and she figures she's safe coyote doesn't give a fuck she's still stalking them down and so at that point my mom kind of let her dog go and the dog chased the coyote off and that was that but i was like man those guys are don't yeah you don't want to leave little dogs you don't want to leave little girls around i know it's like why a 10 year old is walking the dog by herself that's probably not the best idea they um there was a an instance that happened a few years back where a 19 year old girl was murdered not murdered killed partially

eaten uh by coyotes coyotes yeah i think they bit some chunks out of her, tore her apart, and she died in the hospital. I'm pretty sure that was the story. 19-year-old, an adult. Yeah. But it was unusual circumstances. And one of the unusual circumstances is that the coyotes in this area are very limited in terms of what game is available. Correct. So much so that they've been known to go after moose, that these little coyotes actually go after moose and have successfully taken moose out jesus yeah so these are gangster coyotes when you look at them they don't look that big they're like 50

pounds like really big ones like 50 pounds yeah yeah i watched a video the other day of a mother moose trying to uh stop these wolves from eating her cow or eating her calf yeah i've seen that same stuff horrific yeah she's running around stomping these wolves and they're circling her and then they just grab the calf and drag it away and she's fighting off the other wolves and stomping them she stomped the shit out of a few of them yeah she fucked a few of them up it's more satisfaction though yeah when yeah yeah i saw that one that one sucks because there he is justin brown that gentleman very nice guy he gave us a lot of interesting insights to like what happens in um you know like with biologists how they how they track these animals and what what some of the problems are but we we're

in such a unique place in southern california because there's such a massive population of people but there's all these predators that are sort of like entangled in our system, you know, like hawks everywhere. Everywhere you look, there's hawks swooping down, snatching doves and shit. Yeah. My, my daughter got a little dog. I always thought little dogs were nasty rats, but I started liking these things. So I'm like, okay, I'm changing my mind about it.

This is a cool dog, but it's still like eight pounds or something. So I'm like, you can't let him alone in the yard. Not because there's probably not coyotes in the yard, but there are definitely hawks around. There's definitely owls. That thing looks like a big rabbit. They are going to snatch it in three seconds. You cannot leave him in the yard like that.

Because, yeah, I mean, that's how it is. That's when you have predators around, you need to keep your eyes open. snatch it in three seconds you cannot leave him in the yard like that yeah because yeah i mean that's how it is that's when you have predators around you need to keep your eyes open yeah there's no getting around it there's no getting around it you know and when we look at how horrific the wild world is it's not a surprise that people who are just like recently civilized over the last you know like really realistically but that's the thing 10 000 years yeah everybody's like there's this really dark thing in people's minds where it's an option on the table most people are never gonna pull the trigger and go down there but that's part of who we are as uh as human beings and i think that's why i enjoy doing this the sun creek melee because

it's a story that's not trying to bash any side. It's not like, oh, look at those bad Americans doing these massacres. It's more, there were horrible people there. There were also great people belonging to the same side. So to me, it's not about one particular group of people, that one nation or that one ethnic group or anything being the bad guys is on an individual level what is that makes one guy go down this or in these horrible directions and other people instead choosing you know because that's what it boils down it's choice choosing not to be that person you know that's what fascinates me yeah you know it's just um there's a great book by sebastian younger called tribe have you read it you read that one great wasn't it interesting when they

talked about when he talked about all of the people that were kidnapped by Native Americans that chose to live with them? Yep. And then when they were taken back by the Americans, by the settlers, they were like, fuck this, I'm going back. I'm going back to the Native Americans.

And they went and lived with them again. But no one went the other way. No, not at all, which is really crazy. Say something not flattering about the Euro-American culture of the time. Yeah, there's a great Benjamin Franklin quote. I'm going to butcher it because I only remember the beginning. Something about no European was tasted savage life and then basically gone to come back to live in our settlements

or something like that. And I'm like, yeah let's see something about because it's fun yeah the way they're living they're camping right they're hunting and fishing every day and you go back and these are wearing powdered wigs and banging a wooden mallet on a table for everybody to pay attention off exactly you know that's hilarious but that's here here you and that's what i mean about cultures, right? People sometimes will then romanticize native cultures as like, oh, they're all, you know, hug trees and

talking with the furry creatures of the forest. And I'm like, well, yes and no. There are, like what you mentioned, right? If you are captured, especially in the East, when like French and Indian war or stuff like that were going on, if you are captured by doing a native raid, one of two things happen. The good one is that they like you and Indian war or stuff like that were going on, if you are captured by it within a native raid,

one of two things happen. The good one is that they like you and they decide to adopt you. And then you end up replacing one of their dead family members. So like if they lost a brother or a father, then you become that person for a purpose. That's a weird thing that they did. It's very weird. But the thing is the adoption process was so thorough that they love you like you're the real deal.

And you end up feeling like you're part of this family. And, you know, everything works out. Everything is great. If they don't like you, then they torture you to death over a three-day period. Oh, wonderful. And these are the same people, right? Yeah. They can be the sweetest, most awesome humans or really messed up.

Same culture, same individuals. Do you think that's just because people have evolved dealing with tribal warfare and just we have to have that switch? I think it's because the thing that's interesting about natives is that it wasn't a racial thing. They adopted anybody, right? It didn't matter what skin color you have. That they did not have a barrier to. But there is a big insider-outsider. You know, if you are part of our tribe, and you may become part of our tribe.

Race doesn't matter. You can become part of our tribe. But once you're part of our tribe, you're one of us. But if you're not part of our tribe, then, you know, the same rules do not apply to you. You are the other. You not apply to you you are the other you are an enemy you are and in that case that's when it gets really brutal yeah even with other native americans that's the thing that people need to really get in like we especially people that only have a peripheral understanding of native american culture like the reason why sue are called sue is because that's a

native american word for enemy. Yep. They call themselves Lakota people. Right. Exactly. So all the other Indians were like, fuck these crazy assholes. Of course. They're taking over. They're the enemy.

Yeah, totally. They were just dominating. Yeah. It's really fascinating when you consider that these people had these hunting grounds and they were trying to protect. And one of the things that they found is that there are areas where wildlife thrived. And the wildlife thrived in these gray areas. Because this one area would be one Native American tribe. And then their hunting grounds went to a specified distance.

Obviously, always in conflict. But then past that was another Native American tribe. But in the middle, that's where you'd find all the fucking animals. went to a specified distance yep no obviously always in conflict but then past that was another Native American tribes but in the middle that's where you'd find all the fucking animals of course they're like I get it nobody hunts me they are worried about killing each other in the danger zone so no totally it's crazy that they figured that out yeah it's like have you been to Yellowstone yeah it's beautiful right it's amazing one of the things that's really crazy is if you go around the tourist center, there's elk everywhere just lounging around.

They tell you don't get more than 20 yards closer to an elk because they will charge you occasionally. They're, like, tired of people taking fucking selfies. I've been sold that I've been trying to lean on them. Always the tourist guy, like, hey, look at me. Dude, I fucking did it, man. Of course. I did it. I was out there, and I've seen elk in the wild

wild, but they figured out that wolves don't come to the tourist center. So they're like, I got an idea. And then they realize these people are different than the people that hunt us. Somehow or another, they put it together. Like, one day, it all could go wrong, right?

Civilization could collapse, and you just go right to Yellowstone go to that fucking tourist center There's meat everywhere More down the air you need right hundreds of them on the lawn at the tourist center Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, but I don't know what it is like. What is the intellectual process that allows? An elk to understand that these people are not going to try to eat me and That the wolves are not going to understand that these people are not going to try to eat me and that the wolves are not going to be around these people it probably took some really stupid elk to stick around people

before they realized those were the good ones so that everybody was looking back and like hey they didn't get killed look at frank over there they're feeding them peanuts yeah we can try to yeah i wonder what it was i don't know know if we really know the mechanism that allows them all as a group to go, yeah, you could just chill out around these people. Right. Just lie down. They just lie down in front of us. You're right. It is funny.

All the national parks, you see the most animals right there. It's hilarious. But it's always fascinating that there's never been a non-warring successful group of humans. Because it only takes, you know, you can't really be a pacifist around somebody who isn't. Right. Because, yeah, you decide to go in this mellow, peaceful, happy society and you get your ass kicked by, there's a great story about the origins of, not even before the United States, like British colonies

and what will become the United States. Everybody hears about Plymouth Rock, right? There's the whole, the Puritans, they show up, all of that. What usually people don't hear, Thaddeus Russell played a little with this story in his book. There was this other settlement called Marymount

that was just down the street from Plymouth, but they were completely different. Their interpretation of Christianity was pretty much a pre-Christian paganism mixed with a couple of Christian ideas. They had the exact opposite approach of the Puritans. They were having drunken orgies with the native tribes. They were just, yeah, they were the equivalent of like the hippies of the 1600s, just kicking back, having fun. And the Puritans started getting edgy because when new people would show up on the coast, they would take a look at the Puritans. They would take a look at Marymount and be like, yeah, I'm going to Marymount.

Fuck the Puritans. These guys are whipping themselves and life sucks over there. And so, of course, that was bad competition. Even some Puritans were like, see you, honey, I'm gone for a couple of weeks. And so the hardcore guys decided, well, we can't have that. So they got their guns, showed up, and closed down Marymount. And that's the problem.

Had the Marymount guys not been so damn lazy hippies and actually got their act together and trained with guns and stuff, they would have been able to keep their community going with those values. All you just, you need that minimum of self-defense. Otherwise, somebody else squash you, which is exactly what happened. Was that from the name Loyola Marymount? Does it come from those people? I dubbed it because, you know what? I have no idea, so I'm going to lie.

But you know what the thing is? Because, you know, Loyola doesn't strike me exactly as a drunken orgyist with Nitties. No, not at all. That's why I was confused. Yeah, I'd never heard of that before. But it makes sense that there would be someone that would deviate. There's always someone who just looks at the way everyone else is doing it and just says, this is fucking not for me, man.

Totally. Yeah. But it always goes bad. Like, there's never been a cult where uh you know they got together formed a commune and just really were cool with each other we i'm actually fascinated with exactly the thing you said why why can what's so damn hard about power it's the one that's what it is one person in power the one person in the position of power is almost always um abusive and they almost always use that power to their own ego gratification and dominance they always

all the other guys wives yeah that's so they all father a bunch of children they take everyone's money you know it's i'm fascinated by that kind of stuff because one of the things that you see when you, if you become famous or if you do something that gets you a lot of notoriety is I know how I feel around certain famous people. Like I've talked about like first time I met Anthony Bourdain, who I respect a great deal. I was like a little school kid. I was like, I was just such a dork. I was like, dude, I fucking love your show. And I was like a little school kid. I was like, I was just such a dork. I was like, dude, I fucking love your show.

And I was like, I was, I was, it was genuine. And I love his writing too. Yeah. So I was genuinely excited to see him and meet him. You know,

it's still to this day when I talked to him, I'm a little dorked out. So when, you know, you take a person who's not, and I'm used to being around celebrities. I've been around a lot of them, but when you take someone who's not used to being around someone who is in this position

of adoration and they don't know how to handle it and they just give in to whatever beta tendencies they have and this alpha just takes over. There's a natural thing that human beings do in these small isolated groups that don't get checked and it almost always is the the man who is in charge of it winds up abusing everybody yeah yeah yeah which again it goes back to that part of human nature is why do you have to go down that path you can have a great life you can enjoy be nice to people making you are in a position of leadership use that to make sure the whole thing runs smoothly everybody's taken care of works that way yeah and it pisses me off because

you know that's weird to me is i mean i understand it and i don't understand it because i i mean i get it i've seen it enough times that i know you're exactly 100 right but at the same time i really don't get it because you can still have a great life. Nobody's denying you all the good things that you want. Just be a semi-decent human. It's not that hard. Come on. You would think it's not that hard, but when there's no one checking you, like you're in the Oregon woods and you've got this fucking yurt and everybody lives together and you just bang everybody and you make them give you all their gold. It's people for whatever reason, when there's a person that is the king or a person that is like some, you know, cult leader or whatever, Messiah, whatever you want to call them.

People just want that person to have the answers. They gravitate towards that. Yeah. And I think that's precisely one of the things that bugs me about a lot of people who are willing to put themselves in that position of like, I am your big leader. Yeah. To me, there's a way to be a leader that's awesome. That's great. Sort of the Taoist approach where people shouldn't even feel they are a leader, but you are like subtly moving things along to make sure everybody's taken care of. Right.

That's a leader. But that's not because it's not obvious. Most people need exactly what you said. They need their father figure to lay down the law, to be very dogmatic and certain in there. I know it all. Don't worry. I have all the answers. This is good. This is bad. And people love that. They love that in dictators. They love it in religious cult leaders. They love it in everything. That type of personality gathers a whole lot of followers who need somebody to look confident and sure of themselves. It doesn't matter whether they are or they aren't. If they put on a good show, people will buy it.

Yeah, it seems like a pattern that just sort of gets established in human beings from being a child and having your parents, don't touch that, that's hot, come with me, this is the way to go, this is what you have to do, this is how you put your shoes on, this is how you tie your shoe, this is how you get to work, this is how you do this, this is how you do that. And then all of a sudden you don't have anybody telling you what to do anymore.

And then all along comes the cult leader. Like, I've got the answers, guess what? They're coming straight from God, so fuck your parents. Your parents didn't know shit. But that's what's funny is that the same people who grow it up would be like your parents

tell you, hey, tie your shoes and you're like, fuck you. Suddenly somebody come along when they are 20 or 30, tie your shoe and you're like,

oh, you're so wise. Let me listen to you. This is the way to tie my shoe, oh great master. Exactly. This just, I don't know, man. It's just,

it was interesting. I don't know if man. It's just, it was interesting. I don't know if you have been following where Dan Carlin, the stuff that he has been saying about his other show, Common Sense. I haven't listened to it lately. Yeah, he hasn't been releasing an episode lately. That's probably why you haven't, because he has kind of shut down with that. It's not officially done, but in this thing is my approach, meaning Dan talking, my approach is to be somewhat subtle, somewhat like play and not be overly dogmatic one way or another, to think on my feet, to mix things together.

And that's something that most people don't want in the current climate. Most people want the very black and white type of approach. Now, I disagree with Dan because I think that still there is an enormous need for what he provides. And I don't think that just giving up is the solution, but I do get it because it really doesn't take much. You know, if you start screaming a very dogmatic, either super leftist or super conservative approach, you get automatically a bunch of followers. If you are thinking on your feet and just going this thing yeah you're right but let's look at the other side and constantly having you know what any

decent human being should do just being intellectually honest and thinking things do not people don't respond to that because it's not that easy or rather people do some people respond but it's a number wise is way a minority compared to what you get by being a black and white kind of guy yeah people desire very clear resolutions and very clear thinking in terms of like enemy friend this is a black and white issue there's but i think dan also just felt overwhelmed by the times. He was like, this just seems like everything's so fucked up. I'd rather not even talk about it and just sit back and see what is really happening. We were on the phone. I swear I spent like an hour on the phone with you.

We were back and forth. I was playing, in my mind I was playing, remember the second movie of Lord of the Rings where there's Frodo carrying the ring. He's all like, I can't do this anymore. And there's Sam going, oh, come on. You need to... I think I need to step up my game. I'm a shitty Sam

because I was trying to do that for Dan and just kind of motivate him and I miserably failed. I respect where he's coming from. He said that when he was on the show recently. He was talking about that sort of same thing that he's kind of put that podcast on hold long as he keeps doing his podcast hardcore history is just so important i think i think

him and you are providing you guys are providing an entertaining and interesting history lesson that really wasn't available before i mean before you could get a book on tape and it was really well written book and it was read by someone with good dramatic flair, it was exciting stuff, but nobody really got into it. I bet the numbers, if you consider the numbers of people that have listened to his podcast and your podcast in comparison to before you guys were around, there's probably a radically improved number of people that know a lot about history. Yeah, for sure. Particularly things like the Mongols.

I never even thought about the Mongols until I listened to his podcast, which apparently right now, if you're in the L.A. area in Simi Valley at the Ronald Reagan Museum. The Reagan Museum or library? What is it? There's a giant Genghis Khan exhibit. Really? Yeah. library what is it there's a giant genghis khan uh exhibit really yeah they have the bows and all the stuff they stole and yeah the textiles and all the different different things they wore in their yurts that they slept in all kinds of crazy shit awesome dude i want to go yeah i mean that

stuff's over a thousand years old right or close to it it was 1200s yeah 1200 so close to a thousand years old yeah but oh there it is right there yeah check that out they had bows that required 160 pounds

to pull back I know who the hell wear these guys who pulls 160 pound bow it's insane they must have been

animals they must have been so fucking strong yeah you pull 60 pounds and you're like holy hell this is heavy

160 is insane well I have a compound bow um a compound bow and the compound bow i don't have a regular like a recurve like these guys i believe they invented the recurve too they didn't invent it they were around in the era when the recurve was invented which just by the design of the bow it pulls it's it gives you uh more power more energy gets released through the arrow. But with a compound bow, there's a big letoff.

So it's only difficult. So if you had a 60-pound bow, it's only 60 pounds for like the first six inches or so of pulling it back. Then as you completely pull back, there's like an 85% letoff. So it's much easier to hold. They were pulling 160 the whole time. All the way. And at the way and it was harder yeah of course yeah and they could aim perfectly on horseback while riding in full gallop it's like who that i mean they apparently used to time the arrow release while the horse was in the air yeah

because then you don't have the unevenness of it those guys are freaks it's just that serious that dandy on the mongols is one of the greatest of all time of all time i urge people amazing it's i think it costs a dollar an episode just go through itunes get it for a dollar or i don't know what other um whatever it could be do you have if you're cheap but it's a dollar an episode and it's worth fucking hundreds of dollars it's amazing i've listened to it no no bullshit, at least six times. You know, I need to stop bringing up Dan

because by now people are accusing me of like, you know, you like Dan probably a little more than an heterosexual man should. That's okay.

I always give praise to him. He's a beautiful guy. He's awesome, man. There's nothing wrong with it. I love Dan. He's one of my favorite humans. Well, listen, your podcast is fucking awesome too, man.

And I really particularly enjoyed your first one because you talked about that one story that you brought up on here that freaked me the fuck out. Right, when at the end of Spartacus' rebellion, they capture all the remnants of Spartacus' army and crucify every single one of them

on the way between Naples and Capua, but next to Naples and Rome. Every, whatever, 30, 40 yards, there's a new guy crucified. 30 yards down another one kind of like lamp posts all the way between these two cities and how many miles is that that's like 120 something like that 120 miles of crucified people yeah where you have at every 30 to 40 yards there's's a new one, and then another one, and then another one. And it's, yeah, that's an intense kind of story. Since the last time you were on the podcast, I went to Rome.

Oh, yeah, I saw that. A travel. Italian trip, yeah, yeah. Dude, that's one of those things where you just have to, like, no one talk to me for a second. Let me try to process this. You know, like, we had a great guide who was a professor. It was really, it was really cool. Um, he guides people in the meantime and he was just so excited to talk to me because I was so into it, you know, because most of the time, you know, people are

just like barely curious about what he has to say. But, you know, we, we talked about the significance of the pineal gland and the pine cone and, the Vatican and you know he takes it you on a tour of all the different artifacts that's that's a trip that I feel like but just going there especially the Vatican going there the Colosseum was big too but going to the Vatican and just seeing all that artwork and getting an understanding of what those people were really up to for hundreds and hundreds of years, just conquering the world for hundreds and hundreds of years and all this artwork, seeing it live in person just sort of reset my perspective.

That's amazing. Yeah, Rome is a place that you have never, once in your lifetime, you got to do it. It's just, I don't know if you have been, there's a place, Castel Sant'Angelo, which is kind of close to the Vatican. But if you go to the top of this castle, you basically get a panoramic view of all of Rome from there. It's so spectacular. It's just, it's wild. You see the river, you see all the buildings, you see everything. And then you climb back down and you just do your walks.

And what was I seeing here? Oh, one scene that I saw in on that I was blown away by. You know this artist Caravaggio was the painter. That guy, I love that guy because basically what happens with this dude is he was around in the,

what was the end of the 1500s? Yeah, end of the 1500s, early 1600s. And Caravaggio was a straight up gangster. Like he was probably the best artist of the era. To me, he was probably the best artist of the era. To me, he's probably the best artist of all times. Like, you look at his paintings, and it's just insane what he could do with paint. But then he had his life on the street as a literal gangster.

He would just get—he at one point killed a guy in a duel, was wanted for murder. Every time, he would get close to power and you yep that's caravaggio for you look at how amazing that painting is yeah what year was this made around yep god look how good it is i know that's insane i mean that's that is so close to photographic and you think that this was in the 1600s and these people they couldn't even stand still for him i mean how do you think he did that did he have a guy pretend that he's getting choked did he do this all from his mind no i think he used models there was actually one of the scandals is that he was banging his models well of course but that was not the scandal did that right that

was part of the deal though the scandal part was the did that, right? That was part of the deal. Though the scandal part was the fact that, you know, the church was commissioning a lot of his work. But he clearly was not the most pious guy in their sense. His view of Christianity was, hey, these guys were Jesus and his followers were poor men from the street. They were not the cardinal in purple robes. So he used as models more than once for the Virgin Mary. He used the hookers that he was leaping with really and so the church was like you cannot use a hooker for the virgin mary that's just not okay and he would be like yeah yeah don't worry okay next time and again he does it again

see if he can get some of his paintings of the virgin mary so you find some of them yeah that's amazing it's hilarious there's one let me see if i remember that there's one where there's a naked baby jesus with mary squashing a snake uh see if that pops up that one is great because uh you know that was his big shot at making it big the church was trying okay keep it together be a good boy because you're the best painter there is but you're fucking crazy so please just tone it down and he turns in this painting where the Virgin Mary

has just big cleavage showing in a red dress she baby Jesus is butt naked squashing the snake supposed to symbolize

the devil and stuff and they were like yeah that's not what we meant so yeah that's the one that's the Virgin Mary yeah she looks like a freak.

I know. Well, she was his lover hooker. So, yes, that was part of the problem there. And the baby Jesus squashed a snake. Yeah. With his dick showing. Exactly. The other thing that this guy was explaining to me was the penis sizes of the Roman statues. They were all small because big penises were supposed to mean stupid people

and like aggressive animals that were just, you know, not a part of the civilized, amazing culture that Rome represented. So there was pride in the micro penis. Yeah. Well, it wasn't micro, but it was definitely not optimal. That's hilarious. Yeah. I was like, because I was asking. I was like,

what do you think that is? We were trying to figure it out. We were talking about it before the professor gave me an answer. And I was like, maybe they just had littler dicks back then. Maybe it was just how it went. And he's like, no. I think they probably associated

big dicks with rape. With the barbarians and the moors and all these people coming in and chopping people up and fucking the shit out of everybody. And like, no, no, no, we don't want that. We don't want that. Little tiny dicks, like sophisticated dicks. Dicks of people who write poetry.

You know what I'm saying? Vandalism, maybe? They stole the big dick. No, no, they didn't steal the big dicks. No, they were clearly made by the artist. One thing they did do, though, in certain er didn't steal the big dicks no they were they were clearly made by the artist one thing they did do though in certain eras they covered the dicks with leaves it wasn't initially what they would do and they went back on a lot of them and repurposed them and put new leaves over dicks i think you know right now that there are gonna be about seven

punk bands borrowing the name from you like sophisticated dicks will be the name of a new punk band coming out tomorrow. That would be a good band, Sophisticated Dicks. Yeah. I like that name. That's a good one. Yeah.

It's a weird thing that people have done throughout history. It's like sort of trying to control artistic expression and trying to have it represent the time. artistic expression and trying to have it represent the time you know and so you don't necessarily get a full version of what was going on then but you do get a version of the suppression which gives you insight into the full version of the times definitely you know that they're covering covering dicks with leaves and stuff so strange and sometimes they would have the painter giving the the edited version of the painting for public consumption. But then the same guy would commission.

He was like, okay, give me one for my private collection. So that's where they would have all the way more explicit stuff. Oh, yeah. I mean, they didn't have pornography back then. So they must have been beaten off to paintings and stuff. It had to be. Yeah. I mean, it had to be thought of as being arousal-inducing.

So much so that, what was it during the Victorian era where they put legs of tables? They would put dresses on them? Yeah. They would wrap the legs of the tables because, you know, they are legs. Yeah. And if they are bare, they may give you ideas, which I don't know about you, man, but, you know, look at the leg of the table. That really doesn't do it for me.

But there had to be something to it where people got so horny right the table leg look at this move but that's what you know you really have problems right when you look at the leg of a table and you got all excited it's like man yeah that's not good no you may want to revisit your life choices up until that point it's fascinating this people must have agreed to that, too. What's up, Jamie? I just looked it up. It says that it originates from a satire that was written and people, I guess, took it as truth. Oh, so it's not real? Yeah, supposedly not.

But they definitely did cover the legs. Yeah, I think they did, but the reason why is exaggerated. It says he was poking fun at Americans that did something like that. Oh, come on. Don't spoil the meat. The meat is too cool. That's Prosperous Farmhouse parlor in 1900s and that is a cover this is 1900s right this is um the victorian era is when they did this oh wait in 1839 an englishman wrote a satire of american tour he wrote the american propensity to use the word limb in place of leg

though he says the English do it too. Then he says that he visited a boarding school, young ladies, New York State, we saw a square piano fort with four limbs. The mistress of the establishment had dressed all these four limbs in modest trousers with frills at the bottom of them. He's exaggerating and not subject to speculation. He is certainly poking fun or whether Marriott is exaggerating or not is subject to speculation. He is certainly poking fun at Americans, but I can attest that having paged through dozens of books showing old black and white piano photos of Victorian interiors, I saw not one example of a table piano or

any other piece of furniture with skirts around the individual legs that's interesting because i had always heard that i like the legend so much better hadn't you always heard that i heard that from professors yeah i thought i'd heard it too i remember hearing that from a history professor i'm all of the you know between boring history and a fun legend always side with a fun legend yeah I would like to think that people were way more stupid than they were yeah sometimes makes me feel good about this era exactly we're in now yeah you'll be just um I mean you look at the dresses that people had to wear you know that went all the way down to the ground I mean it's not really much different than what we see in the Middle East yeah it's it's very simple I mean

what we see in the Middle East they have to cover their face the hijab and the whole deal and the head scarfs and that's a little little more extreme but not much yeah i mean they they wore they went all the way to the ground if you showed any ankle you would lose their mind it's an ankle oh my god yeah well you know repression does it yeah i wonder if they were more hypersexualized than we are i bet not i bet because of porn we're probably more hypersexualized right there's i think different arguments there because some people say the more you repress stuff the more than you're gonna obsess with it so that's all you think about all day whereas the one that's kind of indulge more in it is less likely to obsess. Then again, there are lots of people who are so addicted to internet porn that I don't know if that idea works.

But, you know, that's the... Well, internet porn is... The problem with internet porn is the availability. You don't even have to go somewhere. At least back in the day when you had VHS tapes or DVDs or something like that, you had to go to a store. You had to buy them. You had to put them in the TV. You had to sit back. You had to get the a store. You had to buy them. You had to put them into the TV. You had to sit back.

You had to get the remote control. It was a process. There was work involved. The minors of minor work. Yes. Right? Yes. Now it's just far too easy.

I mean, how many people that work, that have jobs, go into the bathroom, lock the door, and beat off? There's a lot of people listening right now. We're doing exactly that. Doing that right now. You're beating off right now. Stop it. Go back to work.

Jesus is watching. That's what I hear. Yeah, it's interesting. I guess if you have to think about it, they were trying to control those people and trying to control their urges because it was beneficial to society. It was beneficial to society that these people needed to do their fair share and get to work. And they

couldn't just be staring at legs all day and, you know, engaging in impure thoughts. But, you know, that's the problem with any kind of prohibition. It's completely misunderstanding how the human mind works. You do not say no to things as you are not going to do this. You're guaranteeing that people are going to obsess with this, right? It doesn't work. There's a Zen story that I heard once

that I thought it was hilarious. I can't remember where I heard it, but a guy goes to a Zen master saying, hey, you know, you recall a peace and happy. I want to be just like you. What do I need to do? Zen master says, okay, just for the next 24 hours, don't think about monkeys.

Guy's like, monkeys? Never thought about monkeys. How is that going to make me enlightened? Zen Master's like, shut up, go away, come back in 24 hours, don't think about monkeys. Guy's like, okay, well, becoming enlightened is going to be a piece of cake because all I have to do is not think about monkeys.

And of course, the next 24 hours become the most monkey-filled hours of his life because that's all he can think about, right? Point being, the more you make something a taboo, the more you guarantee that people are going to obsess with it. Yeah. It's like even think like drinking at 21 in the US, right? It's like growing up, I don't even know if there was an age in Italy where you are supposed to not drink. But it's not that glamorous, you know, it's what your grandparents have for lunch.

And, you know, you are maybe six years old and you want to try a little wine and they give you a tiny bit saying, if you have a little more, you got a headache. So just get it. And then one day you do got a little more, you got a and you go oh you are right okay yeah and you kind of learn how to drink rather than being like we got away cool now we got all these booze and people drink throw up all over themselves it's like that's just gross why are you doing that yeah i think there's definitely a healthier attitudes than americans attitudes about alcohol but also like wine is a good way to start. Like, you start off a kid with whiskey. That's not the way to start.

That's too potent. One of my first times I ever got drunk was on Jack Daniels. And it took years for me to smell Jack Daniels and not want to throw up. I'm sure. You get those triggers in your head where you smell it. Like Jägermeister. I used to smell Jägermeister. Like, and just be like yep because you just think about just getting violently ill where your body's

trying to purge it from your system so you don't die yeah it's to just to hide it from kids and tell them it's that that it's taboo but then you drink it and then they're like i can't wait until these fucking people can't tell me what to do anymore. I'll get myself a nice cold glass of whiskey. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like that goes also to education in general. You know, when if a parent has to come to the place where you say, these are the rules you live under my roof, you need to pay them. That's like raising the white flag and admitting I've lost already. I lost control. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

Because it's like, of course, all they are going to do is wait for you to turn around and do exactly the thing you're prohibiting. Because you're coming across as a dictator. You're coming across as an asshole. If instead you can teach somebody, like, look, man, you can do whatever you want. The goal here is we want to make sure, we both want to make sure that you're happy and you're safe. Simple enough. So let's figure out a strategy to make sure you can be happy and safe. And I'm on board, whatever.

That's a lot easier for people to respond to being like, okay, so you're not just a killjoy who's trying to squash my life. You're somebody who's concerned about me not ending up dead. Fair enough. We can work with that. Yeah, but parents have to work. Yeah. And they don't have any time. Exactly.

I don't have to tell you. You're a parent. You're like, just parents have to work. Yeah. And they don't have any time. Exactly. I don't have to tell you. You're a parent. Right. You're like, just fucking listen to me. Shut up. I'm busy. I'm writing my book over here.

I'm fucking getting my lectures ready. Your kid's like, hey, hey, hey, what about whiskey? Don't fucking touch that shit. Get out of there. Get out of that liquor cabinet. Right. Yeah, I remember when I was a kid, I couldn't wait to drink. Of course.

This is going to be fun. Of course. It's got to be. It's taboo. Yep. It's forbidden. Yep. But that's the problem with forbidden stuff.

Yeah. It never works. Well, it's also Italian food and wine seem to go hand in hand. And it's, I think, I mean, that used to be what they drank because they were concerned with getting sick, right? And one of the best ways to not get sick was to drink wine. The alcohol content. Well, yeah, the alcohol content would keep the water from, I mean, like if you just drink water all the time, especially if it's sitting still,

you could get some bad fucking water, right? You can get bad water from a lake. I mean, how many, they didn't know jack shit about parasites back then how many people got some terrible diseases from drinking puddle water and shit you know sure a lot oh yeah you just find some water like oh we're thirsty time to drink and or even a creek you drink in a creek and you think like oh this is a beautiful stream this is a clear water yeah but a beaver took a shit just 100 yards ahead. Exactly. You don't know about it.

You get what's called beaver fever. For real, that's what they call giardia. They call it beaver fever. Yeah, that can't be good. No, it's terrible. So they used to drink wine to prevent what they would call traveler's disease because people would take these, those, what are those things called, the leather things that they would carry wine in?

I want to say flask, but it's not a flask. What are those leather satchels that they would carry wine in? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I thought they used flask for that, but I'm not sure. Might be. There's a term. It's like a leather bag, and it had on the end like a cork, and they would just drink from that and that's

how they would hydrate yeah people must have been just hammered all day when you read the statistics of how much people used to drink it's amazing that anything ever got done because it's just people were drinking morning through night and they must have been horrific to each other yeah then just just imagine like a whole civilization that is a drunken bar at 1am angry drunk you know it's funny because i never and i mean i've seen it enough that i get it people get edgy and weird where when they drink too much but i never got it because to me it's like if i'm drunk it's like that's when i'm happy i want to hug people yeah why would i want to be in a bad mood this is awesome this well you're a nice guy that's what it is that comes out the yeah if

you're a asshole it shows up i see you're especially if you're just barely keeping that under the surface just barely you just want to stab everybody and club them and steal their women and then you get a couple of drinks in you. And alcohol is a great social lubricant, right? It's great for releasing inhibitions and letting people communicate with each other more freely and have fun. But it's also, it removes doubt. And that's not good.

I think doubt is critical. Doubt is one of the pieces of the great puzzle. Right. The great puzzle has many ingredients. And one of those ingredients is doubt. And doubt is important. You should look at anything you're about to contemplate and go, hmm, let me think about this. Let me think what could go wrong.

When you get a couple of drinks, fuck it. Let's do it. Let's go. And the next thing you know, you're on an internet meme. Hold my beer. Yeah, exactly. We talked about that yesterday, like some of the more ridiculous ones. But there's so many of those out there, and almost all of them have to do with alcohol.

Yeah. No, you're totally right. And I think what you're saying about that, there's a great... Alan Watts, the guy who popularizes Zen and Taoism and all of that stuff, he had this great line. He called it the wisdom of insecurity. You know, this idea of tread real careful. There's a wisdom there in not being overly dogmatic. And which doesn't mean the problem is then people take that concept too far and that turn it into having no balls and not being able to take a stand.

That's not a solution either. That's the other side of the problem. and not being able to take a stand. That's not the solution either. That's the other side of the problem. But there's a sweet spot in between where you can take stances, but they are careful stances. They are stances that are very willing

to be changed at the drop of a dime if you show the good evidence to change them. That to me is what intellectual honesty looks like. Yeah, I agree. I think it's good to be aware of all the possibilities i used to tell people that when i was uh teaching taekwondo like people that would compete if they were really really nervous i'd be like the really smart people are really nervous because you're aware of all the possibilities of everything that could go wrong the people that

aren't worried about it at all they they're usually dumb. There's that, but also to me there are some people, like I look at some of the people who are able to keep it together in this, like kind of like Chuck Liddell, right? Take a nap right before a fight kind of thing. I can't tell by look at those guys and just be like, you know something I don't know.

There's something there that you're doing. Confidence, for sure. I mean, Chuck had been knocking people unconscious for many, many years and he knew exactly what to do. And I think he knew he was good at doing. Confidence, for sure. I mean, Chuck had been knocking people unconscious for many, many years, and he knew exactly what to do. And he knew he was good at it. There's that, for sure. And I think there's the other side is knowing that, okay, if I have decided to do it, fear is not going to help me now.

It helped me to make decisions earlier, but right now it's not going to help me. So let's figure out. Man, it was hilarious. My girlfriend fights MMA professionally. Yeah, I've noticed that. Yeah, she's wild, man. I've been paying attention to your escapades online. Yeah.

She's crazy, huh? She's crazy. She literally had that Shackley Dell mode where she took a nap right before a fight. And, you know, like 45 minutes before you have to wake her up going like, hey, ready? And she's all like, ready to roll and i'm like i would not sleep for a week prior how do you manage to keep it together like it's good to do i used to do that i used to sleep before fights it's good that's awesome yeah but you just can get yourself into a more calm state it's it's so much better than um frantically running around and freaking out fretting plus it'sting. Plus, it freaks out your opponents.

I would sleep, like, right in the bleachers. I'd just go to sleep right there. And everybody else would be nervous and shit, and you're sleeping. Exactly. You look at that. I'm supposed to fight that guy? The guy was sleeping right before the fight? Hell no.

Like, the first match he did, man, it was nuts because, you know, you're in the locker room and there's the guy sitting next to you, out for his match come right back he said he split open covered in blood and they're telling you okay you get ready you're going next and i'm dying right i'm just seeking out the hell and she's all like la la la where'd you meet her uh jim uh no she literally live across the street from me that's crazy yeah that's just random and it was funny I used to say, this is where the universe has a sense of humor. Because I used to say all the time, like, I'm kind of, I can get along with anybody, but I don't necessarily click with a lot of people. So my thing was like, yeah, where do I find somebody I click with? Across the street.

And I said that like 10,000 times, right? One day I'm like, look at that. That's hilarious. Yeah, I know. It was, that's where I was looking at the universe going like, okay that that's hilarious yeah i know it was that's why i was looking at the universe going like okay that's funny haha but the there's definitely like little things that almost like slap you in the face but yeah there's a whole system going on stupid just yeah pay attention i know like i know you make fun of oprah but the secret might be real

motherfucker oprah's got three billion dollars the secret might be real, motherfucker. Oprah's got $3 billion. Seriously, man. There might be something to it all. Yeah, it seems completely preposterous, but, eh. Yeah. Intellectually, I always want to say, nah, you know,

things don't happen for a fucking reason. You decide they happen for a reason afterwards because it helps fit your sense of order. The funny thing is, I completely agree with that, and I also completely agree with the fact that sometimes things click in a way that you're like okay you're fucking with me this is just i think about people all the time out of nowhere i'll get an email from them like out of nowhere like i haven't talked to this guy in 10 fucking years and all of a sudden i get an email yep or you know you run into them somewhere like what how is it possible i'm running into you at the airport?

This doesn't even make sense. I know. You reconnect. It's very strange. Yeah. Those are the times when it really humbles you and makes you think, okay, the universe is such a weird place and what I understand is like probably 0.01% of what's out there.

Yeah. We're connected in some other weird, bizarre way that we haven't figured out yet and maybe we'll never will maybe we'll become symbiotes maybe we'll become like completely ingrained technologically before we figure out the biological connections that we share because i think there's i think there's like the obvious senses that we all have but i think there's some other stuff going on when you think about someone and then boom they're calling you on the phone yeah like that just to me is too coincidental sometimes sometimes it's random sure like say if it's someone that you talk to all the time and then

they call you that's just coincidence no big deal but there's some times man where you just you're talking about someone and also in the fucking phone rings and I'll go look at this this is crazy. You haven't talked to them in four years. Exactly. They're calling you right there. Exactly. There's something to that. Yep.

And you ask them, like, why'd you call me? Just stop right now. I'm not saying, like, why you call me now. Sure, sure, sure. I'm saying, like, what was going on? Like, what caused you to call me? I don't know. I just had a weird feeling.

What the fuck, man? That's crazy. I know. If it's all the time. It's crazy. Yeah. That's. Yeah. And you can also tell when people are creepy, too, man? That's crazy. I know. It happens all the time. It's crazy. That's. Yeah.

And you can also tell when people are creepy too, right? You can tell when someone's a creep. There's something weird. The vibe that you pick up. Weird vibe. What is that? What's that? I really do think that there's something that, you know, verbal communication is a very small way in which we communicate.

There's so much more to it. Because, you know, there are times when you walk into a room and you already know who you're going to like and who you don't. And the ones that you don't, then you need to spend the next whatever long it takes you to find the reason why you don't click. But you already know it. There's that

something there is going on. There's a smell. And I think most people trust their perceptions. So they're like, no, no, I need to find out the rational reason. Why would I have these preconceptions? To me, it's like, if you feel it, there's probably a good reason for it. You know, if you have a strong feeling about it, I would trust it rather than not. Fuck yeah.

Yeah. Trust it rather than not is a good way. And, you know, don't trust it like, that's definitely a witch. Yeah. No, not that. I knew it. Do not burn a good way. And, you know, don't trust it like, that's definitely a witch. Yeah, no, not that. Do not burn your people at the stake. That's a bad idea. Yeah. That was a weird time too, right?

It's just amazing to me that the United States is such a recent sort of experiment in self-government and that no one has done anything like that since then. That's what's kind of really amazing to me when I stop and think about all the wacky shit that's taken place in America over the last 300 plus years and then no one else has done that. No one else has said, look, we found a spot in Australia and the Australian government has allowed us

to carve off a big chunk. Right. Let's call it, you know, whatever. Danielialand. I'm all for it. And I swear I'll be a good leader. I won't. Screw all your wives.

Maybe. We'll see. It seems like what's also amazing is that the United States has managed to become the number one superpower in the world as a group of all crazy immigrants that all moved into one spot yep yeah no the story of the united states is fascinating because yeah you don't and probably is never going to happen again because you know that was the product of a war that did not know about oh there's this other con you know you find out it's new it's exciting it's everything now you know what's out there i mean mean, unless you go for space exploration,

nothing like this will happen in the history of planet Earth. The only way it can happen is a reset, a civilization reset. Like there'd have to be like a bunch of people die, like most people die. Apocalypse, most people lose the knowledge of what was going on before. Then yeah, sure, you can have a post-Graham Hancock kind of story. Yeah, post-Graham Hancock. That's entirely possible too. That's entirely possible. then yeah sure you can have a post graham hancock kind of story yeah yeah post graham hancock that's

entirely possible too that's entirely possible although i did read something very recently that they think um um what was the uh super volcano that killed most people on the planet 70 000 years ago they found one pocket of humans that actually survived and thrived in Africa. But they think that the entire population of human beings at that point in time, 70,000 years ago, the entire population in the world was only around 100,000 people. That's nothing. And then it dropped down to 10,000. Wow.

10,000 people because of the super volcano. So the super volcano blew. It wiped out most life. It wiped out most people. It plunged the earth into some sort of a nuclear winter. I forget where it was. I want to say it was Bali or Indonesia. Mount Toba.

Where was that? Indonesia. Indonesia. Sumatra. Sumatra. Killed literally 90 90 of the people and 10 000 were left so 70 000 years ago we were down at 10 000 humans which makes all the things about racism so silly dude that's uh that's a good show for kevin hart right not even that's a light

crowd for kevin hart exactly it's like 10 000 people yeah it's like a fucking blink 182 concert yeah 10 000 people man that's nothing you stop and think about that it's insane i've done 10 000 people in a night before in uh denver i did two shows there are 5 000 each that's 10 000 people that's the fucking entire population of earth and that now became 7 billion 70 000 years later it's nuts we're so weird we're such a weird animal like if you could study us without being us like if somehow or another you could remove all of your cultural conceptions and all the all the things that you've just sort of accepted and established as fact as a human and just look at it completely objective, you'd be like, what a nutty animal

this thing is. What the fuck are we doing? Yeah. That's why it never gets old to study the human psyche. Like what makes people choose this? Because that's the beauty of human beings. We have choices that, you know, a wolf is a wolf. There are only so many things you can choose as a wolf. You know, yeah, you could have a wolf that adopts one strategy, one another, but the range

of choices is pretty limited. As humans, we have this insane range of choices and it's fascinating to see what is that makes some people go in one direction and a completely different one. And it's fun. It is fun. And what's fascinating to me about human beings of today is I've never seen a time where people are more interested in other people doing what they want them to do. Like other people thinking the way they want them to think. Other people behaving the way they want them to think, other people behaving the way they want. People want, it seems to me, are more concerned with controlling people's expression

and thinking today than ever before. And even more so on the left, it seems like I'm seeing this interesting trend today where people like, it's almost like we don't like where things are headed we don't like what's happening we don't like who the president is so people are being real adamant about enforcing certain types of behavior and that in turn just like we're talking about suppressing people from drinking alcohol that in turn makes people rebel of course that's i feel like there's more people that are leaning right today than ever before and i i attribute it entirely to the people on the left but you know the thing that's funny about it is that most human beings even if you just look at the united states right most people

are not the extreme right or the extreme left no overwhelming majority are not right i think a lot of this stuff is also a little bit media created in the sense that he's like, let's find the most batshit crazy person on that side. Let's put the spotlight on them, which make everybody go like, what the fuck? Who are those crazy people? And that's how it's kind of like if you were to pick, you know, the Westboro Baptist church and make it be representative of Christianity. It's like, it's not, you know, but if you keep putting the spotlight there, you'll create this perception, will create a backlash. And it becomes this thing where, like, that's one of the funny thing that I was noticing, because I really don't like political correctness.

I really don't like academia. I really don't. You know, there are 10,000 of these things where I'm like, yeah, that's, I'm completely on board with not liking some of these things. But then there's another side where, you know, I have been teaching a university since 2001. Right. I don't think I've seen once a case of the kind of political correctness that I see in articles in media. Not once, you know, like I was doing the math.

I had probably maybe 11,000 students in my classes over the course of these years. And I haven't heard one person ever defend hardcore communism or make an argument, even among my colleagues, which I have issues for other reasons. That's never been one of the things. So I'm like, I keep hearing about it. I read it on papers but why is it that when i spend you know that's how i make my living i'm on college campuses all the time i hardly ever see it and so i'm thinking i'm not saying that it's not true of course it's i mean of course these stories are true there's no argument but what i'm wondering is how much do they get blown out of proportion

because you get clicks because it makes for an interesting narrative which then some people also leave off that kind of narrative and i'm like how much is it something where you are putting the spotlight on a rare exception and make it the norm versus how much it's a real thing because you know you would expect i mean i teach in southern california and some of the most you know santa monica is one of the most liberal places around. If this thing was as dominant as advertised, I should be running into it all the time, right? And I don't like that stuff. So I would be sensitive, you know, I would be paying attention and yet I don't see it. So I'm like, hmm, what's going on here? That's interesting. Well, I think the instances are more frequent than ever before. But I also think if you put it into perspective and think about how many universities there are across the country, I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of universities.

And if you have one incident that breaks out one month in one place. And it was about one conservative speaker that's going to give a lecture and everybody freaks out and goes crazy. And all the people with green hair fucking bang on the windows. It becomes something that people are worried about spreading. And so I think that's one of the reasons because I'm sure you're familiar with the story from Evergreen University, Evergreen State. Yeah. That was a fascinating story. And for people who are interested in it, Google Brett Weinstein and Evergreen State College,

and you can listen to him on my podcast. I had him on right after it all went down. What had happened was there was a thing called the Day of Absence that had traditionally been people of color would stay home just so that people would recognize that like oh when they're not there we miss them and we miss their contributions and they're an important part of our community i think that's a little silly to stay home to do that but i think it's not a bad thing for people to recognize that everybody plays a part and if these people feel marginalized give them a little extra juice that's fine but the real hardcore social justice warriors decide that's not enough.

Instead, what we want is all white people to stay home. And, like, you can't do that. Of course. Because now you're telling people to stay home versus allowing people to stay home in which case you miss them. Of course. This is the opposite. Exactly. You're telling these white people to fuck off.

So Brett, who is, like, a fiercely progressive person person, was telling people like, you are making a mistake here. You're getting out of line. This is not the way to do it. Right. And then they went crazy and they're fucking looking for him with baseball bats. And they literally kidnapped classes. They held a teacher. They held the principal or the president of the school in this room and

even when they went to the bathroom they escorted him to the restroom and then brought him back to the room they wouldn't let people leave the stories are amazing no I mean if that stuff is complete ratchet crazy like crazy we completely agree on that it's like that is ridiculous that has no place anywhere that's bullshit that you don't do stuff like that is just same thing stuff like that it's just same thing as like you know the jordan peterson thing in toronto yeah that policy was a stupid policy and he was right in arguing against it so i'm not arguing that those are that they are wrong

no i know you're not you're completely right my issue is from there to arguing that this is this super prevalent thing it's like from one story or one story there to say instead, you know, there's a communist conspiracy to brainwash us all. It's like, okay, we are starting from a completely understandable premise and taking it like 25 steps too far. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But I think that what's happening is more of these unusual situations are occurring.

And so people are terrified of this spreading like wildfire across the country. Because kids are very easily influenced, you know, and they're also idealistic. You know, they want to change the world. Maybe they grew up with a father who was an asshole and a racist and like, fuck this. No racism, no fascism. And they're calling everybody a Nazi and running down the street. And in fact, I have it as a question, not as something I'm sure of. But what I wonder is how much of this is media-fueled and how much is real?

I mean, some of it is real for sure. My question is how much is some? Well, most certainly media influences people and it influences people in a bunch of different ways it shows that you can get attention for doing certain things it shows that other people are in support of maybe what you thought were your radical ideas and you find other radical people as well but i mean that's also the argument for not publishing the name of school shooters right it's because a lot of these people think that this is media fueled by people that are seeking attention. I think they're probably right in a certain respect. But it's

also just a part of who we are. And I think it makes us really consider and take into responsibility what is significant about broadcasting ideas and how much influence these ideas have on people who absorb them for sure take them in for sure i think my issue with some of this thing is that often it becomes a partisan thing you become my guy when your guys do that and they show those totalitarian things then boo bad totalitarians when my guys do it i'll turn the other way and pretend it's not true to me in fact it's not true. To me, in fact, it's not a one particular ideology or another. It kind of goes back to what you were saying about human nature in general. Totalitarianism, you know, this idea that you want

to control what people think their choices is horrible, regardless of who's doing it. And in that case, nobody has a monopoly on this because you have seen hardcore religious fundamentalists push totalitarianism. You have seen atheist ideologies like communism pushing totalitarianism. Completely, right? You see people on the political left, people on the political right. Everybody has, it's a virus. It's a virus of the mind that when it take over, there's this desire to squash all other choices. And I find it equally horrible regardless of who's doing it yeah i'm a little suspicious when the narrative becomes look at those guys doing it and you're only picking one side it's like there are some guys where i see even they desperately try to be like no i'm fair look i

pick on my i was listening to somebody doing this thing. I think it was more right-wing oriented. And he was saying, oh, this time we are wrong. And I was like, oh, look at that. That's kind of a self-criticism. That's interesting. Let me listen. We are wrong because we are just like the left. And you should hear what the left...

And then for the next half hour, he goes on about the left. I'm like, that's not self-criticism, motherfucker. That's just, you're still a partisan shill, you know? That's like not being honest to me. And that, I think, what bugs me is when it's an ideological battle when you want to score points as opposed to saying, look, there are certain things that are fucked up, that are evil. Totalitarianism, regardless of which adjective is attached to it, is bad.

How about we agree on that, you know? is attached to it is bad. How about we agree on that? You know, that's kind of where sometime I feel a little sketchy in the way the narrative gets pushed, that it becomes a my tribe versus your tribe thing. Well, you would probably know better than most

because you've been teaching in universities for so long. I mean, you would see that you're on the battlefield. I think a lot of what it is is a lot of what you were talking about before about people doing horrific things is that they're cowards. And they just give in to the whims of those around them and the mob mentality. And I think that happens with the right-wing ideology that you see expressed in horrific ways like whether it's – I mean, fill in the blank.

you know, whether it's, you know, I mean, fill in the blank. It could be Charlottesville. Sure. It could be any of these horrific things that have happened where right-wing people got together and protested versus what happens with the left. I think it's a lot of it is just people wanting to be a part of a group, people wanting to be a part of this thing that gives them, they have this feeling of being in a tribe and solidarity and they go along with whatever the ideology is that tribe's pushing. Absolutely.

And that to me is such a danger because that sense of belonging is something that all human beings crave to one degree or another. And so it's the same thing that make people join cults. It's the same thing that make people join some hardcore political position. It's the same thing that make people join cults. It's the same thing that make people join some hardcore political position. It's the same thing that make people join biker gangs. It's the same mentality, right? It's we need to, as our tribe, our group, with the same clothes, with the same ideas, we stand for. Because it feels good to have other people who embrace you as one of them or treat you well as a result. But, of course, the price to pay is your individuality.

Right. Because you have to kind of sacrifice the complexity of who you are in order to fit in neatly into this box. Yeah. And you kind of have to look, you have to shut out objectivity. Because if you look at things objectively, you're going to say, well, we're fucked up too. And this doesn't make any sense. And these aren't my enemy. They're just people that are on a bad path.

Exactly. I could have gone down that road too if I lived over in that community. I've found myself in this one spot that leans left, and so I'm leaning left too. Right. Yeah. Well, how does that stop, though? This is my question about all that kind of stuff. Like what could ever happen?

What could you foresee happening in history where people could look past that and sort of figure it out and go, you know what? There has got to be a better way to behave and think, and this is probably one of our main concerns. Because if you really look at what – if you ask people, what's our main concern? Well, war. Okay, sure. The economy, that's big.

And then there's a host of other things that bother people crime and education all these different things well what what is causing all of this conflict what is what is causing it well a giant percentage of what we're talking about is some sort of a weird tribal behavior or you get a get a group you become a part of that group and then that's what you identify with. So that's what you reinforce. And then you get some sort of brownie points for reinforcing the ideologies of that group. And if you're the most rabid person, you're the Steve Bannon of that group.

Everybody rises up and gets behind you. This motherfucker's at the front of the line supporting our values. behind you this motherfucker's at the front of the line exactly supporting our values yep and then you know you find these communities online where people just they're constantly signaling to all these other people in that group that they're supporting this ideology and they get all these likes and me like i feel like likes on twitter and on instagram stuff like that i feel like that's shaping people's opinions and behavior way more than anyone has taken into consideration. I mean, even the fact that, you know, the algorithms make sure that you only see the stuff that you already click like. So you start seeing the same threads over and over the same topics.

It really is creating echo chambers. And that's really not good. It's fucking horrible. You know, it's weird. And it's weird what people like and what people don't like. A lot of what people like is just really stupid. I mean, how many girls are getting fake asses just for likes on Instagram? It's probably a lot, right? Yeah, definitely.

It's a very, very interesting time for human beings. I feel like for you as a person who is deeply knowledgeable about history and you study history and you have this history podcast. When you look at today, do you ever try to look at today in a perspective of someone in the future trying to teach about today? Yeah. And the thing is that as much as there are obviously cycles in history and there are patterns that are recognizable and all of that, today is also so damn unique because if you look at just, forget everything else, if you look at the way just technology has shaped us, the last 150 years are unlike the previous 200,000 years. You know, the stuff that has happened in the last 150 years from electricity, the refrigerator, internet, radio, TV, it's like the pace of technological development

is something that nobody has ever even come close in human history before. So we are in a place where we're really in uncharted territory. The human mind has evolved so much from where Happy Monk is running around. But now we have these tools to do stuff that we are really not prepared to deal with to a large degree. that we are really not prepared to deal with to a large degree. And so it's kind of a big open question. Where do we go from here? Because there's no previous model that you can say,

well, that one time 3,000 years ago when they invented the internet, they handled it this way. It's like there's nothing like it. You know, the tools we have at our disposal are unlike anything that has ever happened before so there's that's one of the cases where you know usually history you can see oh you learn this lesson you can definitely learn about human nature and how the human mind works but then from there you have to predict how the human mind will be applied to a context that's unlike anything any other context that ever faced ever faced as before.

And then the big concern is that the human mind will create an artificial mind that won't take into consideration any of the previous cultural ideals that we've supported and will just go run rampant. Yep. DARPA has created a robot that I've been raving about. It drives me crazy. It's called the Eater Robot, E-A-T-R. It operates on biological material meaning it is fueled by eating bodies okay what could possibly go wrong with that the idea is that on the battlefield i'm sure they're not talking about

this they've conveniently left this like one of the things like well maybe you could eat plants maybe you could eat a rabbit or something right or maybe give you fucking people yeah like my my number one concern with all this stuff is that i think it's happening so fast and so many things are taking place in so many different realms when it comes to innovation that this stuff will just catch up to us before we even recognize it's happened and it'll be too late for sure i mean even just forget everything else even just the whole uh atomic bombs issue out for the last ever since we started from the 1940s to today there have been some seriously close calls yeah you know there was um remember the one there was one in the 1980s i think right before the end of the cold war where there was in russia know, the guy goes to his boring job

where they are supposed to look for missiles from the United States, and nothing ever happened day after day after day. And then one day, there's a bleep on the radar, and they're like, oh, shit. And it's the guy's job to call his superiors. And then if he does, the odds are they are going to press the button.

And he's like, no, no, no, wait, let's calm down. Maybe he's wrong. Americans are not that stupid. They will not send one atomic bomb. If they do it, they send a bunch. So this must be a mistake. Let's all relax. Three minutes later, another blip, another blip, another blip.

He's like, oh shit, they are sending a bunch of atomic bombs. This is the real deal. And the guy still doesn't do what he's supposed to. He feels like if I make this call, nuclear war starts, I need to be 3,000% convinced. The evidence in front of me is pretty solid, but I still don't feel it.

And then five minutes later, all the bleeps go off. It was a mistake on the radar, and there was some random bleep. And the guy promptly drank a bottle of vodka straight, because he was like, you know. He almost caused World War III. Exactly.

Yeah. And, you know, most of us owe their lives now to some Russian dude in the 1980s who decided not to do what he was supposed to. And then all because of a stupid mistake, a stupid bug in the radar. That's unbelievable. That's when you know that the technologies we have are way too much for our decision making. Or way not enough because it should be better detection methods. Right, exactly. That's the other side, right?

Yeah, there's nothing. I mean, what was it, a flock of birds? What was it? I don't even know what the real thing was. Yeah, that kind of shit terrifies me. The ability to do something like that without the the understanding or the discipline to create it is really nuts i always liken it to like giving a baby a gun like the baby didn't figure out how to use that gun they didn't invent it they don't know how to

load a round but they can just fucking pull that trigger yep and people can die that that can happen people get killed by toddlers all the time. People leave their purse in their bag. Toddler picks it up, shoots himself, shoots someone else. It happens. All the time. All the time, yeah. Yeah, human beings have access to all sorts of technologies that we would never be able to figure out on our own.

on our own. Yeah. And we don't, with those great, with the great responsibility that comes with using those things, there should be some sort of

great knowledge that you have to acquire about the thing itself. Like some sort of, some reasonable facsimile of like what it took to create that thing. Mm-hmm.

Like some deep, intensive program. Like, hey, you want to, you want to learn how to drive a car? Like this is how an engine was developed. Right. This is,

this is how brakes work. This is how, and you gotta know you can't half ass this or, right. You know, the same should be said about guns. Same should be said about everything. We just have access to too much shit that we would never be able to figure out on our own.

And we're like, well, just fucking try it. Press that button. See what happens. The old MyBeer approach to things, right? It's like, learn how to use it, then we can talk about it. And they keep coming up with new ones. Didn't Russia come up with some new supersonic missile? Like just a few days ago they announced it? I didn't hear about it.

Better off. Yeah. You're better off not hearing about it. Scary stuff. Will all, you know, all the guests on the GRE

will be here now in your compound with float tanks and stuff to survive the apocalypse when the zombies attack? You don't want to be a survivor.

I mean, you maybe want your ancestors to survive, so you should survive, but your ancestors might get raped and eaten. Right. The process of surviving doesn't look like a fun one.

Right. Like if you were around in Indonesia 70,000 years ago when the big one blew and you were one of the survivors and you're, you know, picking through the wreckage of civilization. Not good times, definitely. Fuck, man. But then again, if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have Disneyland. Which is a very important point, yes. If it wasn't for them, no Netflix. Nope.

If it wasn't for them, no iPhone. All because of people in Indonesia, yes. All because those people did eat those dead people. Yep. All because those people did figure out a way to somehow or another get enough nutrients from whatever the fuck they ate to compensate for the fact they were involved in nuclear winter. That's nuts, man. Yeah.

It's crazy. But it makes you realize, just we, the people that are listening to this, the people that are alive today, we're not going to make it. Just we are not going to make it. Like, everyone's so hopeful that the human race is going to make it. And that's one of the reasons why we have offspring and loved ones and friends. And even if I'm gone, I want everyone else to be happy. You know, I had a great time while I'm here. Don't cry for me, but no one's making it. They're not going to make it either. You're just prolonging their life. Like everyone's life is going

to come to a wall. Everyone. That's how the game works. life is going to come to a wall. Everyone. That's how the game works. But we're cool with that. We're cool with grandma dying. Grandma died, but she was 97 years old when she died. She was a wonderful woman and she was loved by many.

Everybody's cool with that. You know what we're not cool with? Everybody dying all at once. The end? This is the end of the experiment? This is the end of the process? Fuck. No, it's not the end. It's just, everyone's going to die and then we're going to restart with monkeys.

It's going to take another few million years, but the chimps will eventually become people again. It's kind of what Graham says, that if anybody's going to survive,

it's going to be the people who are living close to hunting and gathering conditions today that are seen as, you know, the most backward people in the world

are the ones who actually have a shot at making it in an apocalyptic situation. Yeah, like people in the Amazon or something like that, they're probably the only ones that have a chance. What's the matter, Jamie? You see this going around the story about this new company that can upload your brain, but it kills you.

What? Yeah. A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is 100% fatal. I think they're taking people that are already terminal patients and whatnot. That's their first sort of test subject. They're going to give you some bullshit

scrambled version of what you're... It's going to be all swastikas. Like, we found Grandpa's brain and we're going to upload it now and you'll be able to look into his thoughts. Oh, it's all dicks. Grandpa's all dicks and Nazi memorabilia.

Preserve your brain and upload a company. Its chemical solution can keep a body intact for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, as a statue of frozen glass. What? and glass what the idea is that someday in the future scientists will scan your bricked brain and turn it into a computer simulation so they don't even know how to do it yet this is bullshit that way someone like a lot like you though not exactly you will smell the flowers again in a data server somewhere. What? What? Okay. The story's a grisly twist, though.

For Nectome's procedure to work, it's essential that the brain be fresh. The company says its plan is to connect people with terminal illnesses to a heart-lung machine in order to pump its mix of scientific and balming chemicals into the big cartoid arteries in their necks while they're still alive, though under general anesthesia. Thank God you put them under before you kill them, because we wouldn't want them to experience any pain before they go into the great frozen glass statue beyond.

There's a waiting list. Of course there's a waiting list. A bunch of fucking idiots. Jesus Christ, people are stupid. Oh, man. Hundreds of thousands of people signed up to die on Mars. Do you know that? To have the opportunity to be one of the first people to die on Mars? Hundreds of thousands of people

signed up. Yeah, you don't want to be the first. To be locked in a spaceship for six months with a bunch of other people so fucking stupid they're willing to die on Mars. Yeah. Then you get there. They're just talking about social justice the entire way. All the way over.

They're talking about veganism and social justice. Oh, man. Yeah. Elon Musk on first Mars Explorers. Good chance you'll die. Good chance. How about 100%? You're going to die with me?

Stay here. Yeah. Stay here. Good chance you'll die. You're dying. Everyone's dying. You're gonna die. That's the fucked up thing. We just don't want everybody to die all at once. We're cool with small groups of people that are brown that die in caves on the other part of the world. If we could be convinced they're primitive. They hold these ridiculous beliefs and we don't even know them. Right. So we're just going to kill them with robots.

Yeah, it's somebody out there. Who cares? It's not us. Yeah. I think just the rate of change is happening so fast. There's going to be a lot of dumb shit like this. It happens along the way. Of course.

Like the bell bottoms of technology. It's like, what the fuck were they thinking? And it's just going to keep happening like that. I mean, you think about even most of the stuff that we do today like which foods are okay to eat

and which ones not how many people like to go oh look at that Greg is gone he ate the wrong plant so let's make a note that we do not eat that plant

yeah are we sure that's all Greg ate yeah exactly he's like well maybe we should still eat it let's try one more time yeah

get Mike to eat it yeah he's got an iron stomach that still eat it let's try one more time yeah get Mike to eat it yeah he's got an iron stomach that dude eats old carcasses and shit I mean they had to like express it

somehow or another in a way that everybody would remember it too probably in songs and shit yeah yeah cause exactly that's the other thing how do you pass information

in a society that's not literate and yet people did it I mean when you think about things like the iliad or the odyssey you know these long gas compositions completely passed down orally you know without you know by the time they wrote them down was centuries down the road it's like that's some pretty insane thing that humans were able to do and like memorize all this stuff yeah really insane you know i was thinking the other day about songs like how crazy the technology of remembering things through songs are because if like you think of all the songs you could sing along to the words now think of how many poems you could recite it's like very few or stories you can yeah well poems

maybe because they rhyme but reciting a story verbatim, almost none. Very few. But we were at the comedy store the other day. We were talking about grammar and sentence structure and stuff like that. And I brought up those ABC after school things like conjunction, junction, what's your function? Hooking up words and phrases and clauses like you know what it is like you know i'm just a bill sitting here on capitol hill and like they explain of course these things in a way that you could remember fucking decades later you would never remember

you would never remember if it wasn't for those things. There was a guy named Arius who was like one of these, like back when they had the Council of Nicaea and they kind of decided what is real Christianity going to be and what we decide to be the fake stuff. Arius was on the losing side. But part of the thing that made him insanely popular is that he put on all his theology in songs, exactly like what you're saying. He put on all his theology in songs, exactly like what you're saying. So there would be this super complicated thing about, you know, Jesus being kind of like God the Father, but not really. And like really brainy stuff put on like a silly song that the guy would sing while he's making bread and stuff. And so he was ridiculously popular because he figured that's how people pick up stuff. It is how people pick up stuff. You know people pick up stuff you know i mean to this day right like pronouns i think that song pronouns take the

place of a noun because saying all those nouns over and over can really wear you down they didn't miss too many days at school good job that that stuff for whatever reason, sticks. Of course. I wonder why. Like, making things rhyme and putting them in song has a particularly profound effect on your memory. Yeah, it is funny because even when you look at babies, you know, they respond to music so much. They have that immediate, like, some sounds that click with the developing mind of a baby. You don't need to have culture. You don't need to have knowledge. You don't need to have... As a baby, need to have knowledge. You don't need to have as baby. You can still pick up things and remember them.

I mean, yeah. Or sometime, you know, somebody put some music and one note goes and the babies immediately recognize it. It's like, I know what this is. That's the one I enjoy.

And there's so a video the other day, by the way, it's fucking hilarious in, in Italy. This is this little kid is probably two or three years old. And the dad keeps trying to play like children's song and the baby's pissed off and he's like no no no and he's like what do you want and he says something and the dad is like okay fine we'll do this again and whole lotta love by led zeppelin start and the baby just lights up he's so happy he's like yes that's hilarious that's what we are talking about it would be amazing if that kid grows up to be like a big rock star right imagine yeah i'm into a whole

lot of love when he's a baby exactly that's to me is like i kind of did that a lot with my daughter because i'm like i hate to do this to you but you're my daughter and i want to listen to good shit. I don't want to listen to stupid baby stuff all the time. So it's like, even to this day, like, she goes too bad with Hendrix. Like, there's Hendrix as a lullaby. Of course, the mellow Hendrix is the hardcore stuff is for the day, but like, at night, when she wants to go to sleep, I'll put on, like, the more mellow things, like when Hendrix is playing acoustic guitar, or like, Little Wing, or something like that. mellow things like when andre's playing acoustic guitar or like

little wing or something like that and i'm like that i can tolerate don't give me any baby shit stuff because i just i mean right now she's not a baby but even when she was little i'm like sorry i can't do that they like it though the thing about baby stuff is like babies like baby stuff or even little kids like little kid stuff like my kids like a lot of really fucking dumb shows but they love them. It's like, what can you do? Can you say, no, you can't love that because it's too fucking stupid. But it's not stupid to them.

I can tolerate it if we balance it with something else. I'm like, okay, watch it. That's fine. I get it. It's part of your developmental stage. Good for you. Right. But give me something here.

Okay. Let's find a middle ground here where we can listen to the same music or watch something. And that's where I recognize I may have done irreparable damage to my offspring because I realized, like, the other day we watched a movie

and my daughter's comment basically said, this is the coolest thing ever, was like, it's as good as Conan the Barbarian. And I was like, yes. I'm glad you're my daughter. Was she talking about the books or was she talking about the movie, though?

All of it. She loves the one Conan that was good, Arnold, the original, the 1982. And, of course, I read her old Robert E. Howard stories. Wow. I changed the language slightly because sometimes the language is a little, like you need to really have a crazy vocabulary for an 80-year-old you know pick it up so i kind of tweak it a little but then you know all the good stuff is there and i feel like the best conan could have been jason momoa they just gave him a shit movie yeah the script was like momoa is so good he's very and he looks like

a fucking barbarian like you believe it perfect big giant guy and he's And he looks like a fucking barbarian. Like, you believe it. Perfect. Big, giant guy. And he's also not built like a bodybuilder. He's just built like a guy who's in really good shape, which you would think Conan would be. There he is. Right. I think he was the best Conan. He seemed to me to be the most realistic.

Maybe could he use a little bit more gym time. But nothing crazy. But the problem, yeah, the scripts. That's something that's sometimes frustrating when you see like all the elements are there and the screenwriting sucks you're just like come on man sucks screenwriting just straight dog shit but he was fucking great as conan like you believed it yep he just looked evil enough and it looked like a guy who really was a sword fighter, who really did live in that era. Whereas Conan, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, you're like, wait a minute.

This guy's got no armpit hair. Yeah, yeah. He's fucking... Completely shaved down. Yeah. Built like a brick shit. I was like, it just... He was freakishly big.

Yeah. That's actually a picture. He looks fairly reasonable there. Right. But he's like said you know now that i think about it he was actually quite a bit leaner in those days than he was in his bodybuilder day yeah yeah that one was just awesome but he was still this definitely the dude had been doing some bench pressing it wasn't uh someone just swang club bells around and you mean he didn't get those

muscles just by pushing the wheel of pain that was part of it too right there's definitely that a little bit of that too oh man on that note i've been um the last couple of years i've been playing a lot in the world with screenwriting and stuff i'm so excited with that i'm just getting because you know the thing that i enjoy like in history on fire and stuff like that is storytelling and i realized i end up doing that in whatever field i'm you know whether when i'm teaching most of it is storytelling. When I'm history on fire is storytelling. And so I started playing a little with screenwriting because I had good hookups. Man, I'm having so much fun.

What are you writing? Well, there's the stuff that looks, there are a few, like they are all mostly historical fiction kind of stories. mostly historical fiction kind of stories and one of them right now looks really damn promising but they have threatened me to chop off my balls and nail them to a tree if i talk about it so i can't really bring it up because that one actually has a shot at making it oh okay there are other things where um much more kind of early development like for example oh i saw you got outside the frank frasetta painting yeah so sarah the granddaughter of frank wants to develop one of the one of the characters that is she one of the frazetta girls yeah yeah she's the one who does it all yeah right yeah she's awesome she's super sweet and

and i and she started asking you know i showed her some of my writing we're chatting she liked it and so she want me to develop like one of those characters seem to create a word around it like a Game of Thrones meet Conan right thing and I'm like that's what you're asking me to do are you see that's like the dream job ever is like hell yeah I want to play with that that sound like fun it would be epic so I think those movies no shows when done correctly when executed correctly are some of the most entertaining and compelling things, whether it's Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings or just the Conan ones were just, Arnold did a great job and those are fun, but they're campy.

Yeah. I mean, the first one was good. The other ones were painful. They were really bad. They don't represent Robert E. Howard's work. Robert E. Howard's work is still to this day never really totally been captured. Yeah. I heard that

Amazon is going to be doing a Conan series. They're going to fuck it up! I'm just kidding. I don't know. They're not going to fuck it up. I don't know. Maybe they are.

If they're doing it who's going to play Conan? I have no idea. I don't think they picked it yet because they would have announced it. I think they were just saying it's in development.

They are going to try to stick to Robert E. Howard stories. So who knows? Let's see. They got the shekels. They are going to try to stick to Robert Howard stories. So who knows? Let's see. They got the shekels. They could pull out the big money and get Jason Momoa to get back in the hunt. I know.

He's the Conan, I think. You meet the guy. He's like six foot three. He's built like a brick shithouse. He looks like he would be a barbarian. He looks perfect. Like when he played Khal Drogo. Yeah, that was perfect, man.

He was perfect. Yeah. You buy it. You see him playing that role.go. Yeah, that was perfect, man. He was perfect. You buy it. You see him playing that role. You're like, oh, I buy that. He's a savage. He would be awesome. If they did that, man, that would be epic.

Yeah. They are doing a bunch of stuff. They are doing that. They are doing a prequel to Lord of the Rings on Amazon. Amazon is doing that? Jesus Christ. That Jeff Bezos guy's got a little too much cash. Hey, I'm all for it. It's like, do I more?

Yeah, do it all. Look, I mean, it's just, I mean, they have that really good Billy Bob Thornton show, too, that people keep telling me about. I haven't seen it either. But people, what is it called again? That Billy Bob Thornton show on Amazon? Jamie will find it. Sure.

I don't, I don't know what it's called but i know that people keep raving about it goliath goliath thank you third of it yeah it's supposed to be really good yeah and you know the problem with those here's what's weird more than half the households in this country have amazon i think amazon prime yep like right it's like 51% of the households. But how many people are actually watching those Amazon videos? That's a good question. I think once they start putting this kind of money on some of these big shows, the odds that that percentage is going to grow is pretty damn high. Let's find out this.

I don't know if Amazon releases their numbers. They don't? Probably not. Do they do it the same? Well, you don't know. They don't? Probably not. Do they do it the same?

Well, you don't know. Google, see how many people watch Goliath on Amazon. Maybe we'll find out. Because no one has any idea how many people are watching things on Netflix other than Netflix. And Netflix, they don't tell anybody nothing. And clearly must be a good number because they keep producing shows, putting a ton of money in it, so you know that it's working for them. Well, what they do know is how many people have subscribed

to Netflix, and that's an insane huge number. But the actual number of people that watch everything, they don't tell you shit. Like, I have a comedy special on Netflix, they don't tell you nothing. They go, great job. We like it. Right.

You have no idea. Well, you like it? Why? Well, it's great. People love it. Okay, well, how many people love it? Oh, lots. There's no fucking, they don't give you any data. Yeah.

Which they don't have to. And maybe that's good. Maybe people concentrate too much on the numbers. Right. You know, I mean, like someone was saying that the Oscars this year, the Oscars this year are down by, you know, 5 million people. They still got watched by 25 million people. Exactly.

Like, what are we doing here? Like, who cares? Why is that even a thing? Yeah, exactly. Why are we even concentrating on that? I can't find the viewers, but this is the kind of information they give out. Is the top-binged first season of a U.S.-produced Amazon original series ever over its

first 10 days? That doesn't mean shit. Yeah, that's... No other season... No other season one had a higher season completion rate through 10 days.

Well, that's interesting. That must mean it's a really good show. So people binged it the first season. Can you get Amazon Prime on Apple TV?

Is that a part on Apple TV? Is that a part of Apple TV? Or do you have to get one of those fire sticks? I can watch it through my TV. My TV has a thing, has a smart TV app on it that I can get it through there. And it says it arrives on Apple TV in over 100 countries as of December. So, yeah. Oh. So, last December?

December of 2017, yes. Okay, so we have it now. Hmm. But still, Netflix is just so much more popular. Mm-hmm. It's like Q-tips. Once it becomes the name. All right.

Like, give me a box of Q-tips. Do you want cotton swabs? No, motherfucker. I said Q-tips. You know? It's like, do you want to watch streaming video? I want to watch Netflix. All right.

But we have Amazon streaming video. Bitch to watch netflix right but uh we have amazon streaming video bitch netflix did i stutter but netflix only took over that recently right give me a fucking iphone it used to be i don't want your bullshit yeah fake smartphone nonsense iphone yeah it's pretty recent yeah just mail before like they took over blockbuster first and then they're like and now it's all streaming. Yeah. You can still get DVDs, I think, but I don't know how many. I do, because I'm a nerd.

You get DVDs still? Really? Because they don't have the same offerings. There's stuff that they do have on DVD that they don't have on streaming, and vice versa. So, like, for example, what was I watching? There was, I think, the last season of vikings for example i think that's what i was fighting yeah yeah i've been watching it now i'm on season two it's good that's the good you know it kind of oh don't tell me that don't tell me it goes downhill i'll go

crazy first two seasons are awesome son of a game of thrones that way through netflix for instance yeah yeah yeah you can rent the dvds of game of thrones exactly but So you can rent the DVDs of Game of Thrones and watch it but you couldn't watch it through their streaming app. You can only get Game of Thrones DVDs? Yeah. But you're paying an extra

like what, 10 bucks a month to rent those. That's what Netflix was when it started. One, two, three DVDs a month or whatever at a time. That's weird.

So Netflix DVDs has Game of Thrones. Netflix streaming does not. Exactly. They buy everything for any DVD you can get. That's weird. Yeah, they have a lot more on DVDs than they have just streaming.

There's a bunch of stuff that I want to watch, like, case in point, yeah, Game of Thrones, Vikings, some of that stuff is... I used to freak out at not having a physical DVD player in my laptop. Like, this is ridiculous. So I bought one of those ones that plugs in. I never used it once. It just sat there. Because by now you're just watching all on streaming all the time. Or I download them from

iTunes and they sit on my laptop. I don't... This is all so new, but yet we're so convinced that this is the future. This is it. Netflix, period. Everybody else, fuck off.

It's locked in. And I think they're doing comedy specials on Amazon as well. I'm pretty sure Amazon Prime did Bob Saget's new special and a few other people. And that's one of the cool things because Amazon is trying to compete with Netflix. So they are trying to come up. So they're going to put an insane amount of money in shows

and it's great for content because there's today there's probably more possibilities for people doing stuff than ever before you know there were before you had only so many studios producing only so many movies now there's so much more Brian Cowan's on there Joey Diaz is on

there Brian's on Netflix Jim Brewer's on there Joey Diaz is on there Brian's on Netflix Jim Brewer's on Netflix Who else? Tom Papa Tom Segura's old one Yeah Eddie Pepitone Greg Fitzsimmons

Wow Greg Fitzsimmons So there's quite a few Specials That are available On Amazon Jim Norton Very interesting

That might be where the What was that one That just closed That Yeah CISO Yeah maybe they just They have a lot of them On there now Yeah very interesting. That might be where the, what was that one that just closed that? Yeah. See, so yeah, maybe they just,

they have a lot of them on there now. Yeah. I bet that's exactly what it is. Yeah. Interesting. It says continue watching or watch from the beginning. That means that Jamie Vernon was watching it. Hmm.

Interesting. Yeah. I hope it works. I mean, I would love to see a bunch of different viable outlets for people to release films and TV shows and stuff like that. God knows Netflix has enough money. I know. And so does Amazon.

They have a ton of fucking money. So does Apple. Yeah. Apple's not doing that, though. Are they going to try to do that? Create original stuff? They have stuff. They have that one Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon show that's coming out soon.

Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. They had a game show, or not game show, but Planet of the Apps with Gwyneth Paltrow, Will.i.am, Gary Vee was on that. Again, they're trying to get me to throw up. Yeah. Not Gary Vee. I mean, they haven't all necessarily been successful, but they're trying.

I'm just kidding about throwing up. If you're a gal and you're into those ladies, just don't listen to me. I'm just fucking, just make it fun. Yeah, I think it's good. I mean, I would like to see more. I just think in terms of like your ability to sit down and do absolutely fucking nothing and zone out for days, there's never been a better time. Totally.

There's so much stuff available. Apple is reportedly investing $1 billion in original video content. Wow. Jesus Christ. Okay, so Apple is added to the mix. And that's Gary Vee with a big old smile on his face. How does that guy sleep? I don't think he does.

Where does he have the time? Planes. I'm pretty busy. Yeah, but that's exactly what people ask about you. It's like, how does he manage to do like 72 careers in one and go hunting and workout and do this and that? I don't know. I think human cloning. There are like really three Joe Rogans going around and you have downloaded your consciousness in three different bodies who are doing some of this stuff.

One of them would fuck up hardcore. If I did that, it's hard enough to manage my insanity with one life right five three lives going on one of them I definitely go off the rails with I think it's what I'm do is it's more of a it's an illusion that I'm as busy as people think I am it's not as busy it is busy but it's less busy with work than people think. Because the podcast is, you know, sitting here with a friend like you and talking for a few hours.

It's pretty easy. That's not really that hard. And then the working out, well, that's just mandatory. You just have to do that. And then there's the stand-up comedy. Well, that's kind of a passion project, and it's interesting. And I do it all the right like I know I have a time down like I'll hang out with my family till my kids go to bed which is usually

like you know 8ish and that's when I leave right and I go to the Comedy Store like I know I've have it pretty much locked in I get my podcast done before the kids get home from school so I'm hanging out with them I know how to do it I'm working out while they're at school for the most part. That's pretty impressive, though, because realistically you do have so much stuff on your plate. And the way you make it flow, that's something in terms of time management. I think there will be people willing to take courses from you on how to put it all together because that's a skill right there. You have to be really steadfast in what you want to do and what you don't want to do.

And when you don't want to do something, just don't do it. Right. But I wasn't able to do this until I really started working for myself. Like working for myself and the ability to, like if you have a bunch of different jobs, but you're beholden to other people's schedules, it's almost unmanaged. Yeah, it sucks. Then you can't do it. But that's one of the things I'm trying to do.

As much as I enjoy being in the classroom, I'm trying to be in the classroom less and less and just do more online and do more podcasts. Because I'm tired of being in somebody else's schedule. No, I imagine. I don't feel like driving. It's like, I don't mind if you put me in the classroom, that's great.

But if I have to drive an hour and a half to get there and then be stuck in traffic, it's like, fuck this. This is just not fun. Do you feel like there's opportunities, like real viable opportunities for people now to get an education online? I think it's – Legitimate full education? It's definitely emerging.

I mean, I think it's – part of the problem is that universities kind of have a monopoly on the diplomas, which is something that people sometimes need for their job. It's not that they choose, oh, I want to be educated. There are ways to do it. It's also they need that piece of paper. And, of course, so far only the official universities have that. But otherwise, yeah, there are a bunch of ways. There's like even when was he on? Like Thaddeus Russell had it on that he's starting to do his own thing.

Yeah, Thaddeus has got something called. I told him to change the name. He's calling it Renegade University. I'm like, stop, stop. People are going to think you're a douchebag. I've got to do, I've probably got to do a thing, I think. He asked me to do this about the history of martial arts. And I'm like, oh, man, I've done, actually, that's a course I've actually done at UCLA, and it was so much fun.

You taught it at UCLA? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no kidding. Check this out. This was hilarious. I only had an MA, and at UCLA, you need a PhD to teach. Okay. And I was a white guy going into an Asian-American studies department going, you know, yeah, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not Asian-American, and I do only have an MA, and I've never taken a course in Asian-American studies, but I would love to teach for you.

And here is why. By the time I was done with the pitch about history and philosophy of martial arts, they were like, yeah, you're hired. Let's go do it. Oh, wow. I was like, okay. Now, why would they want you to be Asian because you're teaching about an Asian subject? I mean, they don't want you to.

It kind of works that way because of the way, you know, most of the people who's taking a bunch of classes in ethnic studies, usually people who are from that particular ethnic group. In fact, I'm kind of, people always look at me like, huh, what's going on here? Because I do teach in an American Indian studies department. I have taught in an Asian American studies department. But when you look at everybody else,

usually they are people who are from that particular ethnic group who are passionate enough to dig in that much to be in that field. Is that an issue? Is there like pushback if you're not? I mean, it's kind of, to be fair, people have been really cool about it because, I mean, I've even had the situation where I taught as part of an ethnic studies class where there were like four people, right? And there's the African-American studies guys and African-American guy and the Chicano-Latino, Chicano-Latino. And that was the odd one out. I was teaching the American Indian studies section and they're like, you just replaced my friend, the native lady.

Who the fuck are you? White guy kind of thing. Right. But, you know, the thing was they want to check you. And then once I did my thing, the first few lessons, they were like, no, he's cool. We like him. It's all good. And then there I did my thing, the first few lessons, they were like, no, he's cool. We like him. It's all good. And then there was no bullshit. And like I would have expected to run into a lot more pushback.

That really wasn't. One thing in your favor about when it comes to martial arts, although it is mostly Asian in origin, it varies so widely. There's Chinese martial arts, Japanese, Korean. I mean, it goes on and on. Thai. There's so many different styles. Yep. And then, of course, South America, once Brazilian jiu-jitsu got into the mix.

Of course. I mean, they, in my opinion, have revolutionized martial arts more than any other group. I think that one part of the country, in South America and Brazil, they had more of an impact on martial arts, I think, than anyone because they essentially started, I mean, they started the Ultimate Fighting Championships just to see if their martial art was superior. And they proved it to be so, at least on its own, by itself. Yeah. At first, you know, before anybody knew about it. I think that stuff was, there's the whole period from when Japanese martial arts were kind of crashing because nobody was dressing as a samurai anymore. Doing that stuff didn't make sense anymore.

And jiu-jitsu was seen kind of as low-class activity for gangsters. And there was less and less popularity for that field. And then when Jigoro Kano, the creator of judo, started, he was this nerdish upper-class guy, but he was very passionate about judo started he was this nerdish upper class guy but he was very passionate about judo so he transformed the jiu-jitsu curriculum into judo gave it a whole new spin he's like no it's not this thing to beat people up like all the thugs you have seen so far we're using judo as a form of education and then i didn't know that yeah it's a super cool story and then he starts sending people all over the world to spread it and so so they go to Russia and then mix with Russian thing and they create Sambo and then come out here. And then with Brazilian jujitsu,

when Maeda goes down to Brazil and all of that. So it's like that whole story, how it spins is awesome. And then you end up with the joy of globalization where like when you see like Hoist going to fight against Sakuraba and you have, you know, Brazilian dude trained in what originally was an Asian martial arts transformed into this Brazilian thing wearing a gi going against Saku was more of a catch wrestler who had studied more through Western wrestling a whole lot. It was hilarious. It's like you have the Japanese guy was a more Western wrestling back then.

It's funny. That is crazy. back yeah but it's funny that is crazy the Japanese especially Sakuraba were way influenced by catch wrestling but which is American folk style wrestling yeah yeah now I didn't know that that jiu-jitsu was used by thugs yeah that was the part of the reason why was Japan Russian in popularity is because used to be sort of the samurai arts, right? You do that stuff. But then the samurai ended,

you know, by the 1870s or so, that was the collapse of the samurai. So there really wasn't a function for this stuff anymore. And the only people who trained were mostly gangsters and kind of rough guys who trained for,

because they got into fights on the street. And then Kano, because he was this kind of sickly child, they put him into training jujitsu to kind of build him up, give him some strength. And he was a complete nerd, but he loved jujitsu. And so he's like, no, no, no, don't put it down.

It's a great art for other reason. And he had this whole way of spinning it around to say, that was the old stuff. Yeah, to beat people up up what we do today is a form of education is a relationship with your body and it basically invented a new function for it so that japanese society went oh shit we can still do that stuff and now there's a better reason for it that's fitting the times that's not the same reason why we would train in the 1700s. Right. These actually fit the context of our time. Okay, let's do judo and then.

Do they have texts where you could see the techniques or where you could see what similarities? Yeah. Yeah, there are both ancient jiu-jitsu manuals where there are, you know, the drawings and stuff like that. And then by the time Kano comes around, they even start having footage after a while. Footage of actual films of utilization yeah they Lord drills they look goofy as hell because they're sped up and they move funny and stuff but they yeah there's great stuff and some of those guys are just bad asses from day one I mean some of the old judo guys they got the reputation for just being killers

yeah well for sure judo I don't I wonder how much jiu-jitsu has changed since then to now, because obviously in putting so much emphasis on the ground, the Brazilians really refined all the submission techniques to a razor-sharp edge and really changed a lot of the original setups and the way people enter into submissions. I would love to see what it used to look like. Even that's funny, because if you look at some old Judo, like Kozen Judo, where they have this very ground-oriented oriented those guys do leg locks really like you see these japanese guys

from the 1920s leg locking each other and you're like oh my god so the stuff that today is hot some of these guys were doing and probably wasn't as refined but it was like man they were doing it that's that's wrestling catch wrestling was all about leg locks. They were leg locking when, you know, Americans were really into Brazilian jiu-jitsu and stuff. Is this, what do you got here, Jamie? 1600 AD. The history of jiu-jitsu or yawara. Huh.

Wow. They dressed up in, like, aikido kimonos with the big flowing pants and the guy's like doing some weird sort of wrist lock. Go, go, stop scrolling. Go right up there. Was it like, yeah, it looks like... Yeah, he's wrist locking and getting the elbow in there. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. And then the other one it looks like he's got, looks like he's setting up a full Nelson. Yeah, he has a half Nelson on one side. And he's got an underhook on the other side. Probably going to spin around and slam him right on his face.

Yeah. Crazy that you get to look at it in these images. They were just trying to figure out what's the best way to manipulate the body. It's just amazing to me how much of it came from Japan. I mean, Japan, so many interesting techniques and that one area was so vital and so important when it came to the development of martial arts. Japan is that weird. Like the story between China and Japan is very similar to ancient Greece and ancient Rome. You know, a lot of the developments came from Greece. A lot of the developments came from China.

But then both the Roman and the Japanese took those ideas and then ran with it and systematized them, gave them a lot more of a structure, made them way easier to learn and to teach. Yeah. And then popularized them as a result. And it was like, yep, now this stuff works. It's a lot easier to own. Interesting, too, that they brought it to other countries. Yeah, that was part

of Kano's vision, because Kano was not a nationalist. He did not have this Japan, fuck you, everybody else. He had this idea of, like, it is universal brotherhood of mankind, so we need to bring our stuff so that everybody can benefit from it. And so he sent, yeah, he sent

people all over the world. That's amazing. There was even, I did a podcast, I did a three-part series on In History on Fire about Theodore Roosevelt because he was just such a crazy motherfucker, right? He's like the one American president that's the wildest dude out there. And he, in like 1905, somewhere right around there, he had a guy sent by Kano that taught judo to the United States president. And so Roosevelt was one of the very first Americans ever to learn some judo.

He was such an important president, man. If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have the national public lands we have today. Yep. He was awesome. You know, I generally speaking, when you talk about U.S. president, it's like different degrees of what I don't like. It's like, okay, I hate this guy. I mildly hate this guy.

I really hate this guy. Theodore Roosevelt was one of those dudes who I, I mean, there's some stuff that he didn't say that you're like, oh, shit, okay, that wasn't so good. But so much of it is awesome. What did he say that you don't like? Well, I mean, you got to give him a pass for when he lived. But, of course, his idea about race compared to what we would consider cool today, he had some pretty heavy race. He started a lot more racist than he ended. So I also give him credit for that, for being very adaptable and cool in that regard.

But clearly some of his writings was pretty freaky. And also he's one of the guys who just never saw a war he didn't like. You know, he's like, war, yes! Well, he was an adventurer, right? Yeah. The art of jiu-jitsu is worth more in every way than all of our athletics combined. President Theodore Roosevelt, 1905. I agree!

Yep. I agree. Me and Teddy Roosevelt, same page. Good old, you even see him, like, he lost sight in one eye while he was president because of sparring too hard. Really? He hit way too hard because he boxed all the time, right? So he lost his vision? He lost vision in one eye.

Somebody thumbed the president. Probably. Like, jam one in there. You motherfucker. Yeah. Wow. That's a gangster-ass president. Did a lot of big game hunting too man that guy went all over the world yep he did a wild guy really when you think about it my favorite roosevelt story speaking of badass is in 1912 he's running for president again as a third party candidate which was cool in itself

right because he was challenging both the Republican and Democrats. He is in his car waving to the people, and somebody shoots him from just a few feet away, just straight in his chest. But at the time, he had this 50-page speech he had prepared, so he had all the written notes in his pocket. He had his glass case in his pocket. So the bullet did hit him, but it was slowed down

by going through the glass case and the speech. But still, you just took a bullet to the chest. You're bleeding and stuff. And so everybody's like, oh, my God, we need to take him to the hospital. And Roosevelt coughed in his sand. He said that there's no blood coming out. So he said, OK, my lungs are intact. They haven't been pierced.

So what are you talking about hospital? I got a speech to give. And so he shows up with his shirt covered in blood and he goes like yeah ladies and gentlemen i don't know if you know i have been shot but it takes more than this to kill a bull moose wow and then deliver a 90 minute speech before some of his attendants find out like can we now go to the hospital please and they're like okay sure now we can go what was the hospital please? And they're like, okay, sure, now we can go. What was the hospital back then, though? You're probably better off not going.

I know, exactly. What the fuck did they do? They rubbed a dead chicken on your hole. Probably. What could they possibly do to fix that back then? Yeah. Yeah, wow. Yeah, I mean, hard times, right?

Hard times create hard men. Soft times create a lot of the weak bitches we're seeing flopping around on our streets today and that's exactly one of the things that roosevelt hammers on over and over he had this whole idea of the strenuous life the idea that you know he came from an upper class super elitist background and he realized and a lot of people back then were thinking you know our kids are growing up to be a bunch of wimps because they are too pampered. And so his solution, since he was a teenager, was boxing, wrestling, hunting, just these very tough, manly things. And so that's what he thrived on, this whole idea of like, yeah, you need to, he had a great quote about you have to keep your barbaric instincts in order to go along with civilization.

And I was like, that's perfect. That's the best of both worlds. And yeah, that guy's had a blast. I mean, I knew about him, but once you get to do a series, you really need to know your stuff in and out. So it was so fun to study his life because... Well, to stand out like that in the times that he did

in the early 1900s, I mean, really, really pretty significant. That's actually one of the things that I dig about, that I do a little different from the way Dan approaches hardcore history. Dan tends to look at things from the big picture. You know, he's telling you big picture stories. And I love that. But I also like jumping into, I like biographies. I like sometimes telling the story of this one guy and what he really meant to be this individual in this story. And so I did, you know, I did the Roosevelt.

I did one on Crazy Horse. I did one on Caravaggio, the painter we were talking about before. I got to catch up. I got to catch up on some of your stuff. One that you'll dig, I did Jack Johnson, you know, the first black heavyweight champion. That one is so fun. You know what my favorite jack

johnson story is he got pulled over yes of course of course tell the story you know what's funny that's exactly i was telling doug carlin oh i'm gonna do jack johnson and he said word by word what you said he said you know what's my favorite jack johnson story i wonder if those well tell the story so people know what happened was he gets pulled over in some southern state. I believe it was Georgia at the time when, you know, being at- I think it was Texas. Might have been Georgia. Everybody has their, you know, not many people had cars.

And Jack Johnson was one of the guys who love his fast cars. And he was speeding. So they pull him over and the cop is like, hey, boy, this is going to cost you. You owe me $50. And, you know, back then you could pay your ticket on the spot in cash. And Jack Johnson pull his cash out, start. It is $100. And the cop is like,

I don't have change for that kind of money. And he's like, no, no, no, no. Two hours from now, I'm going to be driving back the same way and I'm going to be doing the same speed. So I'm just paying you ahead. I hope that was true. I refuse to listen to anybody that tells me any different. Fuck that

story about the Victorian table legs. I'll give you that one. I'll let you take that one. But I want to keep that Jack Johnson story. Well, there are too many that he did in public that fit that persona to think. It fits. It's how it was. He was a dude with 1905,

1906, around that time, was making a living as a black guy beating up white guys in the ring and sleeping with white women. Yeah. And he figured it out. He did it. And he didn't get lynched, amazingly enough. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, how did they keep that from happening?

How did they keep that guy alive? I mean, with the racism that existed back then? I mean, you're talking about just a few decades after slavery. Yep. His parents were born in slavery. He was the first generation of somebody who was not born in slavery in his family. And, you know, they say that at times he did sleep with a gun under his pillow. They did say that.

At times? Yeah. Well, it'd be amazing if he didn't do it every fucking time. How the fuck could you i mean how could you even sleep back imagine being a black guy at the turn of the century back then who was just in the kind of racism i don't even think we can comprehend today it's something i mean think about the civil rights movement and all the the you know the hosing of the protesters stuff like that that was 60 years later that's the me and stuff like that, that was 60 years later.

Yeah, that's the mellow stuff. Yeah, everybody had chilled out by then. There was Taylor Roosevelt at Booker T. Washington for dinner at the White House, and it was the first time ever that a black guy was officially invited for dinner at a White House, right? After he had the dinner, there was such a backlash, like some senators from the south started flipping out and

i forget the exact quote but one of the guys at one point said you know after the president did this thing we are gonna now have to lynch a thousand niggers in our state to put them back in their place and they're like i'm sorry try that again that's the u.s senator from that and he was pretty accepted that was just how the la times about jack johnson said you know why didn't jim jeffries kill him that brutal beast that you know the stuff that you read the quotes are like come on somebody must have made it tough because they couldn't be that racist that was in the la times yeah god what year was that uh johnson won the title i believe in 1908 i want to say and uh but although even in the previous year she was making a reputation for being uh this badass fight just amazing that 110 years ago we were that fucked

up that's so recent well when uh when he had the fight with jim jeffries was the old undefeated white champion you know because when he won the fight with jim jeffries was the old undefeated white champion you know because when he won the title and then he started they started throwing a bunch of white guys at him that he crashes the great white hope right then eventually the writer jack london started this campaign to bring jim jeffries the undefeated white champion back from retirement to redeem the white race and jim jeffries was a beast right he was a hulk of a man strong and knocked out all of his opponents but he had been retired for a while and so he comes back they have this fight in reno nevada on july 4th 1910 by the time the fight is over

and jack johnson crushes him and wins the title you know defends his title easy there are riots in 25 states in 50 different cities. And by the time the riots are done, like dozens of people are dead. Jesus Christ. Because Jack Johnson had beaten Jim Jefferies. And were they listening to it over the radio at the time? There wasn't even really,

like they had like telegraph news sent to the newspaper and there would be a guy in this public square screaming, Johnson just landed a left hook. That's how they did it wow that is crazy it's in san francisco they had uh they had two boxers reenact the news of sent by telegraphs of what was going on everybody just walked around back then i mean look at these people just wandering through the streets even like when there was a a fight going on like there's no announcers so there's no commentary right yeah sit sit down and watch yeah this is not tv there's no no this is this is jeffrey's training this is clearly jeffrey's in training camp then yeah there it is there it is and back then you could clinch a lot in boxing which was kind of

jack johnson's whole style he would get like double bicep control usually he would keep you there so you can't hit him and then once in a while he would break free throw an uppercut and go back to clinching dude he was fucking jacked for the time yeah when you think about this time like people back then you know there was no fucking supplements yeah they barely knew how to work out exactly you know even when he's punching like his technique is very different yeah and also they had to be really concerned about breaking their hands because they were fighting with these little tiny ass gloves and they're basically like mma gloves with thumbs And some of these fights,

like they were scheduled for insane things. Like I believe this one was scheduled for 45 rounds. How many rounds did it go? I think 15. Fought at 2 p.m. in July in Nevada under 110 degree weather. It's like, who does that? 110 degree weather in's like wow who does that you know 110 degree in fucking reno yep crazy everyone the crowds were in the same hat that's a good point jamie look they all wore

those goofy ass fucking hats yep like why did everybody like i want to look sexy want to wear a nice hat while i watch the white race succeed. Like how many black people are in the audience? Not many. You can count on that. They say that the band, before Jack Johnson came onto the ring, shortly before they announced him and he came on,

the band was playing this popular song of the time called All Coons Look Alike to Me. Wow. That's right before he comes on. So this is like one of those things where people are hoping that the bad guy loses. So they're there, millions of people are paying attention because they want Jack Johnson

to lose. It's not that they are hoping a good fight takes place and let's see who wins. They wanted to get this guy off the throne. This wasn't even about boxing. This was about race. Yeah. Really kind of amazing that it went as long as it did.

Yeah. And here they are. They're in the 13th round. You ought to be a different kind of human to fight with those little gloves for as many rounds as these people fought. Yep. No, those guys were. Fascinating stuff.

Who else have you covered uh on on your podcast um biographies let me think that you really like it changed the way you feel about them jack johnson was awesome i had so much fun studying that way you know all the biographies done are some of my favorites did you see unforgivable blackness yeah yeah that was the first thing when i started the research that was the where i started i started watching the camberns documentary which was great and that kind of started watching the Ken Burns documentary, which was great. And that kind of gave me the basics of the story. And I'm like, okay, I see where all of it is going.

Now go back, do the tedious stuff of read every damn book about him and plug in all the information and stuff. But yeah, the documentary is great. I love that one. So who else have you done that really like kind of stood out for you? So the big ones have been uh crazy horse caravaggio the roosevelt jack johnson those are the biographies i've done crazy horses are fascinating one are they still doing that crazy south dakota sculpture of him yeah i mean i don't know how quickly do it forever because the guy who started the project is long dead so right it's like and

they depend on private money so they are not really moving at any kind of a speed. Well, it's also, isn't it kind of fucked because there was no pictures of Crazy Horse. We literally have no idea what he looked like. Nope. None whatsoever. So if you're doing this, you're just essentially like guessing. I mean, they could use your face. Completely.

Yeah. I think they should use my face. Why not? Yeah. Why not? But yeah, that's a better story right there. Because that was a guy, he kind of, he is almost like watching a Marvel thing about Wolverine. You know, he has this superpower.

The guy was a beast in warfare, but everyone he loved around him died. And so you have this kind of tragic figure of the guy who is a beast. But for all his powers, he can't protect the ones he loves. Well, he fought naked and cut little pieces of his body off. Like he cut chunks of flesh off all over his body. Like his entire body was like a mosaic of scars. There was, yeah, there was even before, like a couple of weeks before the Battle of the Little Begorn,

which is the famous battle with Custer and all of that. There was a sitting bull. One of the other main Lakota leaders participated in his Sundance and one of the things they did was kind of cut like 50 flesh offering on his arm where you kind of cut this like pin-sized needle of your

flesh but still. And the whole point is to go into these strands partially from the pain, partially from dehydration, partially prayer and all of it. And the stories that sitting bull then had this vision that they were gonna be attacked the troops were gonna reach their camp but they were gonna get crushed and so the vision was they even had a battle shortly thereafter and sitting bull was like

yeah this wasn't it this wasn't close to our camp the vision is they are attacking our camp and that's when supposedly the whole little begorn thing that's why they were feeling kind of like we can handle it we're good with this don't you wish you knew if that was true the whole you know vision yeah there's the thing about that kind of a culture where the stories that they say like a lot of the time in order to get a reputation for being the guy who can say hey i had a vision and people actually believe you you need to have proven something along the way. You need to have, because I mean, anybody can say, I had a vision and he's like, yeah, that's great. Show us. Can you now heal that dude? Yes or no? If you can't, shut up. You're just hallucinating. Well, can you say I have a vision and then it

comes true exactly as you said? Well, in that case, people are like, okay, now we're paying attention. Next time you have a vision, please tell us. But if you say, I had a vision that this happened and nothing happened, everybody's like, shut up. I just wish we knew that like him going into a state of mind where he was almost dying. Right. Like, what was that, A Man Called Horse? That movie where they do that thing where they put the barbs through your nipples and hang you from the ceiling. That's the Sundance.

I've been actually to, because that was illegal for a really long time, right? Then they brought it back in the open in the 1970s. And I've been to, I think, seven Sundances where they do that. You've watched people get suspended by their nipples? They usually don't get suspended and it's not nipples, It's just the chest muscle. Well, they don't go under the muscle.

It's just skin. But they go up on top. So they usually don't get suspended, but they dance, attach with their rope to the tree. And then when they want to break loose, they just rip right through. And, you know, you got like this quarter-sized scar out of it. And which, you know, when you think about the whole idea of sacrifice, it's something that they do in all religions pretty much to different degrees. You know, back in the day, animal sacrifice was huge.

That was one of the things. And, you know, these guys have it as you shed blood because that's your energy. That's the one thing. And that will give strength to your prayers and all of that stuff. But yeah, first time I ever saw it,

I was like, holy shit, this is intense. Don't you think there's probably also something to that where they're trying to put people through something

to make them stronger? Mm-hmm. There definitely is that aspect that is like, yeah, this is not something that somebody does willy-nilly like, I'm gonna Sundance tomorrow is like no you don't mess around it's now that this ritual in fact is probably to strengthen

their resolve and make them better warriors just by having experienced such a horrific ritual ritual ritual practice of ripping meat off your tits. The one story that they said about... That looks legit. Looks like a wet guy, though. I don't know. Ow! Yeah, it looks like a guy who's pretty annoying.

But he's on Venice Beach right now. Yeah, exactly. There's a story that they say about Crazy Horse that when he was a kid, to toughen him up, his dad had killed a turtle that they were going to eat.

But the story goes that the turtle heart keeps beating after it's dead for a while and carved out the turtle and pulled out this still beating heart and gave it to Corsiors to eat it through. And, yeah. Raw turtle heart? I don't recommend it. Still beating. Yeah. Meanwhile, what kind of fucking diseases do you get from turtle hearts but I would say cook that well done right that's the

only way to have some good turtle heart yeah I mean what kind of parasites and shit are in turtles turtles eat everything right but that's also what's fun is like when you think about like walls or you think about people who live super close to nature they could eat stuff that if we try today we're dead in 30 seconds right and they were fine look at that it's beating yep googled it and it came up right away wow turtle heart and just going off did you hear about that guy who just got fired i think he was in iowa he was a school teacher he fed a snapping turtle a puppy in the middle of the class what the hell yeah i Yeah, exactly. No, I did not hear that. Yeah, yeah.

He's currently suspended. That's what I wrote. You think? Yeah. Yeah, this guy, he had done some other dark shit in class before. Here it is. Teacher investigated for feeding puppies to snapping turtles in front of school. Go see the image of the guy in the beginning of the article again.

Go back to the video and pause on his face. They had a... There he is. Look at that fuck. Why doesn't it show his face again? Let me see his face. That goofy prick. He looks like a fucking complete psycho. Yeah. There he is. Look at him. Oh, well. You know, if you leave a puppy with a snapping hurdle, he will eat it.

He will. He will. I'll show you. I'll show you. Okay. Don't tell your mom. Yeah. Don't do that, dick.

We have animals that we like more than other animals. Yeah. That's a fact. And we like puppies a whole lot more than we like those dirty, fucking, stinky, hard-headed turtles. Yeah. Leave Harryisy alone. I like it. That's how it is.

Some animals are cool. Others, fuck them. We have a profound hypocrisy. Fine by me. Don't you think, do you, you're probably more aware of that than the average person because of your study of history. I mean, the hypocrisies of the human race are most exposed

by going over them and watching these patterns repeat themselves over and over and over again. Yeah, no, I mean, that's why to me I'm completely fascinated by the inner workings of the human mind. Because the way that people can spin stories to themselves to justify stuff that in another context would be considered completely insane, that kind of goes back to that, like, the average person is a flag in the wind that can go any way, you know? How ridiculous is it that, like, 200 years ago, if you tell people slavery, overwhelming majority of people would be like, of course, slavery is cool. What's wrong with slavery? What kind of a freak are you? You're anti-slavery? Are you insane? And if you say today, you know, you're going to have like 0.01% of the population would be cool

with it. And yet, we're the same people. 200 years have gone by, but suddenly what was completely normal at one point is considered batshit crazy today. Yeah, it is weird. It's weird, and it's constantly changing, you know, constantly evolving, and it doesn't always need to make sense.

It's just, this is what's the new thing. This is the new way of being. And, you know, there's always a small percentage of our population that's not going to go along with the program. That's going to be like, no, this is a stupid idea. But the average is just going to go wherever critical mass is tilting, they are going to go with it. Yeah.

Well, listen, man, I got to wrap this up, but always a beautiful thing to talk to you, my brother. You can go check out Daniele Bolelli's podcast. It's called History on Fire. It's available on iTunes, and you're on all the social media things. D. Bolelli on Twitter.

Are you D. Bolelli on Instagram as well? Instagram is the only one I don't do. You don't do that at all? No. Good for you. Twitter for you twitter and facebook that's fuck those shallow assholes like me all right thank you brother appreciate it man thank you so much