On this episode of History On Fire, we have special guest Daniele Bollelli on the show to talk about his new podcast, "History on Fire" and how he got into the biker scene. We also talk about how he came up with the name of his podcast and why he decided to take it to the next level. And of course, we talk about some of the craziest things that have ever happened in history and how we can all learn from the people who have done them. Enjoy the episode and don't forget to subscribe on your favorite streaming platform so you don't miss the next episode! History on Fire is a podcast about the crazy people that have done crazy things in history, and how they got away with it. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms! It helps spread the word to the rest of the world about this podcast! Thank you so much to everyone who has been a part of this amazing community! Love ya, bye! -DANIELE! XOXO, JUICY, JUDGLE, PODCASTING, P.S. -ROBERT & KELLY. -BON DAILY, JORDY & JONATHAN D. BONUS EPISODES! CHECK OUT THE EPISODE! ENJOYING IT? - RATE 5 STARTS TOMORROWENERGY AND PODDS! PODCASKEEP YA'LLY, RATE THEM A BECAUSE WE LOVE THEM? - JUDGY, RAY AND GOOGOOGLE'S TALKING ABOUT IT'S DADDY'S BABY! AND TALK TO ME AND I'LL TELL US ABOUT IT AND OTHER THAN THAT'S AVAILABLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND PASTORDS AND TAYLOR'S FAST AND POTTERY AND GOT A FRIENDS AND GASTRO'S MEDITORIALS AND FASTIE'S SONGS AND PEEPSYCH AND PEDI'S PRODCAST AND ACHIEVEMENTS AND TOTALLY COURSES AND PAPER BOY'LL TALK ABOUT IT!
00:00:05.000Daniele Bolelli, the man with the most beautiful accent in the world.
00:00:09.000I 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.
00:00:20.000And the thing they don't know is I am making them pizza while I'm talking.
00:01:32.000It's 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.
00:01:55.000Now 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, do you, are you like extracting chunks and like putting them in Microsoft Word and then going over it?
00:02:09.000And then like, how do you, do you form it?
00:02:10.000Well, my question is kind of like, do you form it as a script or how much of it, so everything is Completely written out?
00:02:17.000Not exactly, because otherwise then it sounds like you're a guy reading a thing and it's boring and it doesn't sound right.
00:02:23.000I 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?
00:03:03.000If you only had today, like 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'd this happen?
00:03:44.000And then there's the amount of horror that can be unleashed throughout, that has been unleashed throughout history by people against other people.
00:04:23.000I 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.
00:04:31.000And in some cases, then a very ordinary human being can do horrible actions.
00:04:37.000You meet them for dinner and you think, pleasant person, good enough, but you put them in the wrong context and everything turns to shit.
00:04:49.000Now I want to do a podcast about flowers and puppies because this one was heavy, man.
00:04:54.000I 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 Sun Creek and I had this guy,
00:05:11.000Daryl Cooper, who was the Martyr Made podcast.
00:05:13.000He's an amazing podcaster and he covered Milai.
00:05:15.000And 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?
00:05:24.000The reason why that particular story, those two stories, interests 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.
00:05:36.000They are not the majority, they are a minority, but they are there and they try.
00:05:39.000So it's not just a story of people doing ugly stuff, it's like, What is that make one guy when older, hey, go shoot that three-year-old.
00:05:55.000It'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 of in the balls to say, no, that's not who I am.
00:06:11.000All you hear about is the horrific actions of the soldiers.
00:06:14.000Yeah, which was the majority, but there was also, like, there was this one guy, what's the guy named, Silas Sol.
00:06:21.000He was, talk about a guy with bolts 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...
00:06:32.000Their companies, they say, no, we're not participating in this.
00:06:50.000But 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 had not been for him.
00:06:57.000A lot more of us would have died on that day, and he did a really brave thing and paid a price for it.
00:07:04.000So, 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.
00:07:17.000Yeah, that would be incredibly difficult to just imagine What those people were doing.
00:07:23.000I 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.
00:07:50.000There's this big myth that people put, like, They put smallpox in blankets, and that's all bullshit, right?
00:07:58.000It's pretty much been proven that they didn't really understand bacteria or diseases.
00:08:03.000There's one story that's possible, is not a proven thing, because initially nobody understood bacteria and disease, or the first hundred plus years, completely unintentional.
00:08:14.000There'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.
00:08:24.000But, you know, while we do know that he suggested it, we have no proof whatsoever that it was actually done.
00:08:30.000So that's probably how the rumor got started, right?
00:08:33.000But 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.
00:08:44.000That's a crazy number if you really stop and think about it.
00:08:47.000It'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.
00:08:58.000And so, of course, there's no immunity the first time they're exposed.
00:09:01.000Like, you know, you don't need to even have smallpox.
00:09:03.000You can sneeze on somebody and the next day half the village is dead, you know?
00:09:08.000It'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, oh, we've got a cold, you'll be fine, just have some chicken soup, take a nap.
00:09:20.000Meanwhile, these people are just dead.
00:09:42.000There's a great book by a guy named Dan Flores.
00:09:46.000Well, he wrote two, but one of them actually was a paper that he wrote about the buffalo.
00:09:53.000And he's saying that it's really interesting because he compares the Initial encounters that European settlers had and European travelers had before the Native Americans were wiped out.
00:10:08.000And they talk about how many animals were on the plains and they make a direct account of it.
00:10:13.000And then after the Europeans had come and 90% of the Native Americans had been wiped out, that's when the buffalo population increase goes through the roof.
00:10:26.000Gigantic herds, I guess, of millions and millions of buffalo.
00:10:30.000And he said that's directly attributed to the lack of predators, which means lack of Native Americans, because they were preying on these buffalo.
00:12:15.000You like crazy animal stories, so check this out about a coyote.
00:12:20.000My mom went for a walk with her dog, and her dog is a big, mean dog, right?
00:12:24.000So 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.
00:12:32.000And there's a coyote maybe like 20 yards behind her that's clearly stalking them and the girl didn't see it.
00:12:38.000And he's obviously aiming for the five pounder and it's just...
00:12:41.000And so my mom yelled at her like, hey, watch out.
00:12:43.000So the girl freaks out, pick up her dog and she figures she's safe.
00:13:08.000There was an instance that happened a few years back where a 19-year-old girl was murdered, not murdered, killed, partially eaten by coyotes.
00:14:05.000She'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.
00:14:13.000She stomped the shit out of a few of them, though.
00:14:27.000He gave us a lot of interesting insight as to what happens with biologists, how they track these animals and what some of the problems are.
00:14:37.000But 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?
00:15:32.000You 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 10,000 years...
00:15:45.000Yeah, everybody's like, there's this really dark thing in people's minds where it's an option on the table.
00:15:53.000Most people are never going to pull the trigger and go down there, but that's part of who we are as human beings.
00:16:00.000And I think that's why I enjoyed doing this, the Sun Creek Milai, because it's a story that's not trying to bash any side.
00:16:06.000It's not like, oh, look at those bad Americans doing these massacres.
00:16:09.000It's more there were horrible people there.
00:16:11.000There were also great people belonging to the same side.
00:16:14.000So 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.
00:16:22.000It's on an individual level what it is that makes one guy go down in these horrible directions and other people instead choosing.
00:17:05.000Say something not flattering about the Euro-American culture of the time.
00:17:09.000Yeah, there's a great Benjamin Franklin quote.
00:17:11.000I'm going to butcher it because I only remember the beginning.
00:17:14.000Something about no European who has tasted savage life and then basically gone to can bear to come back to live in our settlements or something like that.
00:17:54.000There are, like what you mentioned, right?
00:17:57.000If you were captured, especially in the East when, like, French and Indian war or stuff like that were going on, If you are captured by it during a native raid, one of two things happen.
00:18:07.000The 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.
00:18:14.000So like if they lost a brother or a father, then you become that person.
00:21:36.000Like, 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 be around these people.
00:21:48.000It probably took some really stupid elk to stick around people before they realized those were the good ones and that everybody was looking back and like, oh, they didn't get killed.
00:22:35.000Because, yeah, you decide to go in this mellow, peaceful, happy society and you get your ass kicked by...
00:22:41.000There's a great story about the origins of, not even before the United States, like British colonies in what will become the United States.
00:22:49.000Everybody hears about Plymouth Rock, right?
00:22:51.000There's the whole, the Puritans, they show up, all of that.
00:24:00.000Had 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.
00:25:01.000The one person in the position of power is almost always abusive and they almost always use that power to their own ego gratification and dominance.
00:25:12.000They always fuck all the other guys' wives.
00:25:21.000I'm fascinated by that kind of stuff because one of the things that you see 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.
00:25:37.000I've talked about the first time I met Anthony Bourdain, who I respect a great deal.
00:26:04.000When 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, you know, beta tendencies they have, and this alpha just takes over,
00:26:20.000there's a natural thing that human beings do in these small, isolated groups that don't get checked, and it almost always is the man who is in charge of it winds up abusing everybody.
00:27:12.000You 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.
00:27:22.000And you make them give you all their gold.
00:27:26.000People, for whatever reason, when there's a person that is the king or a person that is like some cult leader or whatever, messiah, whatever you want to call him, people just want that person to have the answers.
00:27:39.000And 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.
00:27:50.000To me, there's a way to be a leader that's awesome.
00:27:53.000Sort of the Taoist approach where people shouldn't even feel that you're a leader, but you're like subtly moving things along to make sure everybody's taken care of.
00:28:03.000Because it's not obvious, most people need exactly what you said.
00:28:07.000They need their father figure to lay down the law, to be very dogmatic and certain in their, I know it all, don't worry, I have all the answers.
00:29:33.000Yeah, he hasn't been releasing an episode lately.
00:29:34.000That's probably why you haven't, because he has kind of shut down with that.
00:29:38.000It's not officially done, but And 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.
00:29:54.000And that's something that most people don't want in the current climate.
00:29:58.000Most people want the very black and white type of approach.
00:30:02.000Now, I disagree with Dan because I think that still there is an enormous need for what he provides.
00:30:08.000And I don't think that just giving up is the solution.
00:30:11.000But I do get it because it really doesn't take much.
00:30:14.000You know, if you start screaming a very dogmatic, either super leftist or super conservative approach, you get automatically a bunch of followers.
00:30:23.000If you are thinking on your feet and just going, hmm, 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.
00:30:41.000Or rather, people do, some people respond, but number-wise, it's way a minority compared to what you get by being a black and white kind of guy.
00:30:50.000Yeah, people desire very clear resolutions and very clear thinking in terms of like enemy, friend, this is a black and white issue.
00:31:00.000But I think Dan also just felt overwhelmed by the times.
00:31:04.000He's 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.
00:32:10.000I bet the numbers, if you consider the numbers of people that have listened to his podcast and your podcast in comparison to like before you guys were around, there's probably a radically improved number of people that know a lot about history.
00:32:28.000I never even thought about the Mongols until I listened to his podcast, which apparently right now, if you're in the LA area in Simi Valley at the Ronald Reagan Museum, The Reagan Museum or library, what is it?
00:32:44.000Yeah, they have the bows and all the fucking stuff they stole and the textiles and all the different things they wore and their yurts that they slept in.
00:33:34.000They were around in the era when the recurve was invented, which just by the design of the bow, it gives you more power, more energy gets released through the arrow.
00:33:45.000But with a compound bow, there's a big let-off.
00:34:41.000I've listened to it, no bullshit, at least six times.
00:34:45.000You 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 a heterosexual man should.
00:34:59.000Well, listen, your podcast is fucking awesome too, man.
00:35:01.000And 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.
00:35:09.000Right, 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.
00:35:23.000Every, whatever, 30, 40 yards, there's a new guy crucified, and 30 yards down, another one.
00:35:28.000Kind of like lampposts all the way between these two cities.
00:36:32.000But 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,
00:36:50.000seeing it live in person sort of reset my perspective.
00:37:23.000Oh, one scene that I saw in Rome that I was blown away by.
00:37:25.000You know this artist, Caravaggio was the painter.
00:37:30.000I love that guy because basically what happens with this dude is he was around in the end of the 1500s, early 1600s and Caravaggio was a straight-up gangster.
00:37:43.000He was probably the best artist of the era.
00:37:46.000To me, he's probably the best artist of all times.
00:37:48.000You look at his paintings and it's just insane what he could do with paint.
00:37:52.000But then he had his life on the street as a literal gangster.
00:37:57.000He would just get, he at one point killed a guy in a duel, was wanted for murder.
00:38:02.000Every time he would get close to power and he would be, yep, that's Caravaggio for you.
00:38:42.000Though 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.
00:38:50.000His view of Christianity was, hey, these guys were Jesus and his followers were poor men from the street.
00:39:33.000That one is great because, you know, that was his big shot at making it big.
00:39:38.000The 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.
00:39:45.000And he turns in this painting where the Virgin Mary has just big cleavage showing in a red dress.
00:39:53.000Baby Jesus is butt naked, squashing these snakes, supposed to symbolize the devil and stuff.
00:39:58.000And they were like, yeah, that's not what we meant.
00:41:58.000Trying to control artistic expression and trying to have it represent the time.
00:42:04.000So 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.
00:44:21.000I'm not subject, uh, is exaggerating or not subject to speculation.
00:44:26.000He is certainly poking fun, or whether, whether Marriott is exaggerating or not is subject to speculation, he is certainly poking fun at Americans, but I can attest that having page two dozens of books showing old black and white piano photos of Victorian interiors,
00:44:42.000I saw not one example of a table Piano or any other piece of furniture with skirts around the individual legs.
00:45:24.000I mean, what we see in the Middle East, they have to cover their face, the hijab, and the whole deal, and the headscarves, and that's a little more extreme, but not much.
00:45:48.000I bet because of porn, we're probably more hyper-sexualized, right?
00:45:51.000There's, I think, different arguments there, because some people say the more you repress stuff, the more then you're going to obsess with it, so that's all you think about all day, whereas the one that's kind of indulged more in it is less likely to obsess.
00:46:03.000Then 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...
00:46:10.000Well, the problem with internet porn is the availability.
00:46:16.000At 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 remote control.
00:46:56.000I 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.
00:47:05.000It 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 engaging in pure thoughts.
00:47:16.000You know, that's the problem with any kind of prohibition.
00:47:20.000It's completely misunderstanding how the human mind works.
00:47:23.000You do not say no to things as, you are not going to do this.
00:47:27.000You are guaranteeing that people are going to obsess with this, right?
00:48:19.000Even think of drinking at 21 in the US. Growing up, I don't even know if there was an age in Italy where you're supposed to not drink, but it's not that glamorous.
00:48:31.000It's what your grandparents have for lunch, and 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 gotta...
00:48:41.000And then one day you do got a little more, you got a headache, and you go, oh, shit, you are right, okay.
00:48:46.000And you kind of learn how to drink, rather than being like, we got a weight, cool, now we got all these booze, and people drink, throw up all over themselves.
00:48:54.000It's like, that's just gross, why are you doing that?
00:48:57.000Yeah, I think there's definitely healthier attitudes than Americans' attitudes about alcohol.
00:49:02.000But also, like, wine is a good way to start.
00:49:05.000Like, you start off a kid with whiskey...
00:49:27.000Because you just think about just getting violently ill where your body's trying to purge it from your system so you don't die.
00:49:35.000To hide it from kids and tell them 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.
00:49:43.000Get myself a nice cold glass of whiskey.
00:49:48.000That goes also to education in general.
00:49:50.000If 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.
00:50:03.000Of 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.
00:50:11.000If instead you can teach somebody, look man, You can do whatever you want.
00:50:17.000The goal here is we want to make sure, we both want to make sure that you're happy and you're safe.
00:51:33.000Well, 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?
00:52:36.000There's a term, it's like a leather bag and it had like on the end like a cork and you just drink from that and that's how they would hydrate.
00:52:46.000People must have been just hammered all day.
00:52:49.000When 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.
00:52:58.000And they must have been horrific to each other.
00:53:01.000Just imagine a whole civilization that is a drunken bar at 1am.
00:54:28.000We 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.
00:55:23.000I think it's good to be aware of all the possibilities.
00:55:26.000I used to tell people that when I was 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 can go wrong.
00:55:40.000The people that aren't worried about it at all, they're usually dumb.
00:55:44.000There'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 Kind of like Chuck Liddell, right?
00:55:53.000Take a nap right before a fight kind of thing.
00:55:55.000I can tell by looking at those guys and just be like, you know something I don't know.
00:56:00.000There's something there that you're doing.
00:57:19.000The first match she did was nuts because you're in the locker room and there's the guy sitting next to you, goes out for his match, comes right back, he said he's split open, covered in blood, and they're telling you, okay, you get ready, you're going next.
00:57:44.000And it was funny because 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.
00:57:55.000So my thing was like, yeah, where do I find somebody I click with?
00:58:28.000Yeah, it seems completely preposterous, but...
00:58:31.000Intellectually, I always want to say, nah, you know, things don't happen for a fucking reason.
00:58:38.000You decide they happen for a reason afterwards because it helps fit your sense of order.
00:58:43.000The 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.
00:58:51.000I think about people all the time, out of nowhere, I'll get an email from them.
00:59:10.000Those 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.
00:59:56.000But there's some times, man, where you just, you're talking about someone, and all of a sudden the fucking phone rings, and I go, look at this.
01:01:34.000It's just amazing to me that the United States is such a recent...
01:01:41.000Sort of experiment in self-government and that no one has done anything like that since then.
01:01:46.000That'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 that no one else has done that.
01:01:56.000No one else has said, look, we found a spot in Australia, and the Australian government has allowed us to carve off a big chunk.
01:02:28.000Yeah, no, the story of the United States is fascinating because, yeah, you don't, and probably it's 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.
01:03:08.000Although I did read something very recently that they think What was the super volcano that killed most people on the planet 70,000 years ago?
01:03:21.000They found one pocket of humans that actually survived and thrived in Africa.
01:03:26.000But 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.
01:03:38.000Yeah, and then it dropped down to 10,000.
01:04:53.000Like, if you could study us without being us, like, if somehow or another you could remove all of your cultural conceptions and all the things that you've just sort of accepted and established as fact as a human and just look at it completely objective,
01:05:10.000you'd be like, what a nutty animal this thing is.
01:05:22.000Because that's the beauty of human beings.
01:05:24.000We have choices that, you know, a wolf is a wolf.
01:05:28.000There are only so many things you can choose as a wolf.
01:05:31.000You know, yeah, you could have a wolf that adopts one strategy, one another, but the range of choices is pretty limited.
01:05:36.000As humans, we have this insane range of choices, and it's fascinating to see what it is that makes some people go in one direction and a completely different one.
01:05:47.000And 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.
01:06:01.000Other people thinking the way they want them to think, other people behaving the way they want.
01:06:06.000People, it seems to me, are more concerned with controlling people's expression and thinking today than ever before.
01:06:15.000And 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.
01:06:41.000I feel like there's more people that are leaning right today than ever before, and I attribute it entirely to the people on the left.
01:06:49.000You 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.
01:07:01.000I think a lot of this stuff is also a little bit media created in the sense that it's like, let's find the most batshit crazy person on that side.
01:07:09.000Let's put the spotlight on them, which make everybody go like, what the fuck?
01:07:16.000And 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.
01:07:24.000It'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— That's one of the funny things that I was noticing because I really don't like political correctness.
01:07:40.000There are 10,000 of these things where I'm like, yeah, I'm completely on board with not liking some of these things.
01:07:48.000But then there's another side where, you know, I have been teaching a university since 2001. I don't think I've seen once a case of the kind of political correctness that I see in articles in media.
01:08:02.000I had probably maybe 11,000 students in my classes over the course of these years.
01:08:07.000And 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.
01:08:20.000So 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.
01:08:30.000And so I'm thinking, I'm not saying that it's not true.
01:08:36.000But 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.
01:08:47.000And 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?
01:08:57.000Because, 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.
01:09:04.000If this thing was as dominant as advertised, I should be running into it all the time, right?
01:09:10.000And 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.
01:09:15.000So I'm like, hmm, what's going on here?
01:09:18.000Well, 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.
01:09:32.000And if you have one incident that breaks out one month in one place...
01:09:40.000And 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.
01:09:50.000It becomes something that people are worried about spreading.
01:09:54.000And so I think that's one of the reasons, because I'm sure you're familiar with the story from Evergreen State.
01:10:04.000And for people who are interested in it, Google Brett Weinstein and Evergreen State College and you can listen to him on my podcast.
01:10:14.000I had him on right after it all went down.
01:10:17.000What 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.
01:10:30.000I think that's a little silly to stay home to do that.
01:10:35.000It's a good 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.
01:10:43.000But the real hardcore social justice warriors decide that's not enough.
01:10:47.000Instead, what we want is all white people to stay home.
01:12:16.000I 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.
01:12:29.000Kids are very easily influenced, you know, and they're also idealistic, you know, they want to change the world.
01:12:35.000Maybe 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.
01:12:43.000And 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?
01:12:59.000Well, most certainly, media influences people, and it influences people in a bunch of different ways.
01:13:07.000It shows that you can get attention for doing certain things.
01:13:09.000It shows that other people are in support of maybe what you thought were your radical ideas, and that you find other radical people as well.
01:13:16.000But, I mean, that's also the argument for not publishing the name of school shooters, right?
01:13:21.000It's because a lot of these people think that this is media fueled by people that are seeking attention.
01:13:26.000I think they're probably right in certain ways.
01:13:30.000But 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,
01:15:27.000And 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.
01:15:38.000Totalitarianism, regardless of which adjective it's attached to it, is bad.
01:15:46.000That's kind of where sometimes I feel a little sketchy in the way the narrative gets pushed, that it becomes a my tribe versus your tribe thing.
01:15:55.000Well, you would probably know better than most because you've been teaching in universities for so long.
01:15:59.000I mean, you would see that you're on the battlefield.
01:16:01.000I 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.
01:16:08.000And they just give in to the whims of those around them and the mob mentality.
01:16:13.000And I think that happens with the right-wing ideology that you see expressed in horrific ways, like, you know, whether it's...
01:16:25.000It could be any of these horrific things that have happened where right-wing people got together and protested versus what happens with the left.
01:16:34.000I 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.
01:16:51.000And that to me is such a danger because it's, you know, that sense of belonging is something that all human beings crave to one degree or another.
01:16:59.000And so it's the same thing that make people join cults.
01:17:02.000It's the same thing that make people join some hardcore political position.
01:17:06.000It's the same thing that make people join biker guys.
01:17:17.000Because it feels good to have other people who embrace you as one of them, who treat you well as a result, but of course the price to pay is your individuality.
01:17:26.000Because you have to kind of sacrifice the complexity of who you are in order to fit in neatly into this box.
01:17:33.000Yeah, and you kind of 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.
01:17:44.000They're just people that are on a bad path.
01:18:41.000Get 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 you know, if you're the most rabid person, you're the Steve Bannon of that group,
01:18:58.000everybody rises up and gets behind you, this motherfucker's at the front of the line!
01:19:04.000And 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.
01:19:17.000On Twitter and on Instagram and stuff like that, I feel like that's shaping people's opinions and behavior way more than anyone has taken into consideration.
01:19:27.000I mean, even the fact that, you know, the algorithms make sure that you only see the stuff that you already click like on, so you start seeing the same threads over and over the same topics.
01:19:35.000It really is creating echo chambers, and that's really not good.
01:19:54.000A very, very interesting time for human beings.
01:19:56.000I 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?
01:20:13.000Yeah, 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.
01:20:24.000If you look at the way just technology has shaped us, the last 150 years are unlike the previous 200,000 years.
01:20:32.000You know, the stuff that has happened in the last 150 years from electricity, the refrigerator, internet, radio, TV, it's like...
01:20:41.000The pace of technological development is something that nobody has ever even come close in human history before.
01:20:47.000So we are in a place where we're really in uncharted territory, where 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.
01:21:10.000Because 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.
01:21:20.000The tools we have at our disposal are unlike anything that has ever happened before.
01:21:27.000So, that's one of the cases where, you know, usually history, you can see, oh, you learned this lesson.
01:21:33.000You 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 I've ever faced before.
01:21:45.000And 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.
01:22:02.000It's called the Eater Robot, E-A-T-R. It operates on biological material, meaning it is fueled by eating bodies.
01:22:12.000Okay, what could possibly go wrong with that?
01:22:15.000The 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 that Well, maybe you could eat plants.
01:22:23.000Maybe you could eat a rabbit or something.
01:22:27.000My 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.
01:22:58.000There was one in the 1980s, I think, right before the end of the Cold War, where there was, in Russia, 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.
01:23:11.000And then one day there's a bleep on the radar and they're like, oh shit.
01:23:14.000And it's the guy's job to call his superiors.
01:23:17.000And 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.
01:25:16.000Human beings have access to all sorts of technologies that we would never be able to figure out on our own.
01:25:21.000With 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.
01:25:32.000Some reasonable facsimile of what it took to create that thing.
01:26:26.000Will 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?
01:26:50.000Like, 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 picking through the wreckage of...
01:27:19.000All 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.
01:28:24.000It's just, everyone's going to die, and then we're going to restart with monkeys.
01:28:28.000It's going to take another few million years, but the chimps will eventually become people again.
01:28:32.000It'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 the most backward people in the world, are the ones who actually have a shot at making it in an apocalyptic situation.
01:28:47.000Yeah, like people in the Amazon or something like that.
01:28:49.000They're probably the only ones that have a chance.
01:30:05.000Okay, the story's a grisly twist, though.
01:30:08.000For Nectome's procedure to work, it's essential that the brain be fresh.
01:30:14.000The company says its plan is to connect people with terminal illnesses to a heart-lung machine in order to pump its mix of scientific embalming chemicals into the big cartoid arteries in their necks!
01:32:45.000I mean, when you think about things like the Iliad or the Odyssey, you know, these long-ass compositions completely passed on orally, you know, without...
01:32:54.000You know, by the time they wrote them down, it was centuries down the road.
01:33:28.000Like, 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?
01:33:43.000Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.
01:33:59.000You would never remember if it wasn't for those things.
01:34:02.000There was a guy named Arius who was like one of these...
01:34:06.000Like 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...
01:34:15.000Arius was on the losing side, but part of the thing that made him insanely popular is that he put on all his theologian songs, exactly like what you're saying.
01:34:23.000So there would be this super complicated thing about, you know, Jesus, he's kind of like God the Father, but not really, and da-da-da, like really brainy stuff, put on like a silly song that the guy would sing while he's baking bread and stuff,
01:34:38.000and so he was ridiculously popular because he figured that's how people pick up stuff.
01:36:20.000I 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.
01:36:26.000I don't want to listen to stupid baby stuff all the time.
01:36:29.000So it's like, even to this day, like, she goes to bed with Hendrix.
01:37:22.000Let's find a middle ground here where we can listen to the same music or watch something.
01:37:27.000And 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 to basically say, this is the coolest thing ever, was like, it's as good as Conan the Barbarian.
01:37:42.000And I was like, yes, I'm glad you're my daughter.
01:37:45.000Was she talking about the books or was she talking about the movie, though?
01:37:59.000You know, I change the language slightly because sometimes the language is a little like you need to really have a crazy vocabulary for an eight-year-old.
01:38:58.000He 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.
01:40:15.000Well, there's the stuff that looks There are a few, like they are all 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.
01:40:34.000There are other scenes where much more kind of early development, like for example, oh I saw you got outside the Frank Frazetta painting, right?
01:40:44.000So Sarah, the granddaughter of Frank, wants to develop one of the characters.
01:40:57.000And she started asking, you know, I showed her some of my writing, we were chatting, she liked it, and so she wanted me to develop one of those characters into a create a world around it, like a Game of Thrones meet Conan kind of thing.
01:41:09.000And I'm like, That's what you're asking me to do?
01:41:18.000I think those movies and those shows, when done correctly, when executed correctly, are some of the most entertaining and compelling things.
01:41:27.000Whether it's Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings.
01:43:29.000I think once they start putting this kind of money on some of these big shows, the odds that that percentage is gonna grow is pretty damn high.
01:43:51.000Because no one has any idea how many people are watching things on Netflix other than Netflix.
01:43:57.000And Netflix, they just don't tell anybody nothing.
01:44:01.000And clearly it 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.
01:44:08.000Well, what they do know is how many people have subscribed to Netflix, and that's an insane, huge number.
01:44:15.000But the actual number of people that watch everything, they don't tell you shit.
01:44:18.000Like, I have a comedy special on Netflix, they don't tell you nothing.
01:48:08.000I think they're doing comedy specials on Amazon as well.
01:48:12.000I'm pretty sure Amazon Prime did Bob Saget's new special and a few other people.
01:48:19.000That'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.
01:48:26.000And it's great for content, because today there's probably more possibilities for people doing stuff than ever before.
01:48:35.000Before you had only so many studios producing only so many movies, now there's so much more.
01:48:40.000Brian Cowen's on there, Joey Diaz is on there.
01:48:42.000Brian's on Netflix, Jim Brewer's on Netflix.
01:50:12.000I just think in terms of your ability to sit down and do absolutely fucking nothing and zone out for days, there's never been a better time.
01:50:50.000I think human cloning, there are like really three Joe Rogans going around and there are like You have downloaded your consciousness in three different bodies who are doing some of this one of them would fuck up Hardcore if I did that like it's it's hard enough to manage my insanity with one life,
01:51:06.000If I had three lives going on and one of them I'd 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.
01:51:19.000It is busy But It's less busy with work than people think.
01:51:25.000Because the podcast is sitting here with a friend like you and talking for a few hours.
01:52:02.000I'm working out while they're at school for the most part.
01:52:05.000That'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.
01:52:15.000I 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.
01:52:43.000But that's one of the things I'm trying to do.
01:52:45.000As 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 and more...
01:52:52.000Because I'm tired of being in somebody else's schedule.
01:53:15.000Part of the problem is that universities kind of have a monopoly on the diplomas, which is something that people sometimes need for their job.
01:53:23.000It's not that they choose, oh, I want to be educated.
01:54:06.000And 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.
01:54:37.000It kind of works that way because of the way most of the people who's taking a bunch of classes in ethnic studies, usually people who are from that particular ethnic group.
01:54:51.000Because I do teach in an American Indian Studies department.
01:54:54.000I have taught in an Asian American Studies department.
01:54:56.000But 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...
01:55:09.000I 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?
01:55:28.000I was teaching the American Indian Studies section, and they're like, huh, you just replaced my friend, the native lady, who the fuck are you, white guy, kind of thing.
01:55:37.000But, 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.
01:56:06.000And then, of course, South America, once Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu got into the mix.
01:56:10.000I mean, they, in my opinion, have revolutionized martial arts more than any other group.
01:56:16.000I 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...
01:56:26.000They started the Ultimate Fighting Championships just to see if their martial art was superior.
01:56:31.000And they proved it to be so, at least on its own, by itself.
01:56:35.000At first, you know, before anybody knew about it.
01:56:38.000I think that stuff was, there's that whole period from When Japanese martial arts were kind of crashing because nobody was dressing as a samurai anymore, you know, doing that stuff didn't make sense anymore, and Jiu Jitsu was seen kind of as low-class activity for gangsters,
01:56:54.000and, you know, there was less and less popularity for that field.
01:56:57.000And then when Jigoro Kano, the creator of 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.
01:57:32.000That whole story, how it spins, is awesome.
01:57:35.000And then you end up with the joy of globalization, where, like, when you see, like, Hoyce 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,
01:57:52.000was more of a catch wrestler who had studied more through Western wrestling a whole lot.
01:58:43.000And then Kano, because he was this kind of sickly child, they put him into training jiu-jitsu to kind of build him up, give him some strength.
01:58:51.000And he was a complete nerd, but he loved jiu-jitsu.
01:58:54.000And so he's like, no, no, no, don't put it down.
02:00:01.000I 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.
02:00:18.000I would love to see what it used to look like.
02:00:20.000Even that's funny because if you look at like some old Judo like Kosen Judo where they have this very ground oriented, those guys do leg locks.
02:00:28.000It's like you see these Japanese guys from the 1920s leg-locking each other, and you're like, oh my god!
02:00:34.000So the stuff that today is hot, some of these guys were doing, and it probably wasn't as refined, but it was like, man, they were doing it.
02:01:34.000You get to look at it in these images.
02:01:36.000They were just trying to figure out...
02:01:38.000Like, what's the best way to manipulate the body?
02:01:40.000It's just amazing to me how much of it came from Japan.
02:01:44.000I 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.
02:01:58.000Like, the story between China and Japan is very similar to ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
02:02:03.000A lot of the developments came from Greece.
02:02:06.000A lot of the developments came from China.
02:02:08.000But 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, and then popularized them as a result.
02:02:21.000And it was like, yep, now this stuff works.
02:03:30.000Theodore 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.
02:03:44.000You 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.
02:03:54.000He started a lot more races than he ended, so I also give him credit for that, for being very adaptable and cool in that regard.
02:04:01.000But clearly, some of his writings was pretty freaky.
02:04:04.000And also, he's one of the guys who just never saw a war he didn't like.
02:04:51.000A wild guy, really, when you think about it.
02:04:53.000My 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?
02:05:02.000Because he was challenging both the Republican and Democrats.
02:05:43.000So 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.
02:06:26.000And that's exactly one of the things that Roosevelt hammers on over and over.
02:06:30.000He had this whole idea of the Streno's 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.
02:06:43.000And so his solution, since he was a teenager, was boxing, wrestling, hunting, just these very tough, manly things.
02:08:32.000Not many people had cars, and Jack Johnson was one of the guys who loved his fast cars, and he was speeding, so they pulled him over, and the cop is like, hey, boy, this is going to cost you.
02:09:22.000He was a dude in 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.
02:10:05.000I mean, how could you even sleep back?
02:10:07.000Imagine being a black guy at the turn of the century back then who was just in the kind of racism that I don't even think we can comprehend today.
02:10:29.000Theodore Roosevelt had 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?
02:10:39.000After 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 going to now have to lynch a thousand niggers in our state to put them back in their place.
02:10:57.000And they're like, I'm sorry, try that again?
02:11:07.000The LA Times about Jack Johnson said, you know, why didn't Jim Jeffries kill him?
02:11:12.000That brutal beast that, you know, the stuff that you read, the quotes are like, come on, somebody must have made it up because they couldn't be that racist.
02:11:40.000Well, when he had the fight with Jim Jeffries, who was the old undefeated white champion, you know, because when he won the title, and then he started throwing a bunch of white guys at him, that he crashed as the great white hope.
02:11:52.000Then eventually the writer, Jack London, started this campaign to bring Jim Jeffries, the undefeated white champion, back from retirement to redeem the white race.
02:12:11.000They 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.
02:12:22.000There are riots in 25 states in 50 different cities, and by the time the riots are done, like, dozens of people are dead.
02:12:32.000Because Jack Johnson had beaten Jim Jefferies.
02:12:34.000And were they listening to it over the radio at the time?
02:12:36.000There 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!
02:14:49.000They 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.
02:17:09.000The guy was a beast in warfare, but everyone he loved around him died.
02:17:13.000And 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.
02:17:21.000Well, he fought naked and cut little pieces of his body off, like he cut chunks of flesh off all over his body.
02:17:29.000Like his entire body was like a mosaic of scars.
02:17:32.000There was, yeah, there was even before, like a couple of weeks before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, which is the famous battle with Caster and all of that.
02:17:41.000There 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 this trance partially from the pain,
02:17:58.000partially from dehydration, partially prayer and all of it And the story is that Sitting Bull then had this vision that they were going to be attacked, the troops were going to reach their camp, but they were going to get crushed.
02:18:32.000The 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.
02:19:18.000What 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?
02:19:26.000I've been actually to, because that was illegal for a really long time, right?
02:19:30.000Then they brought it back in the opening in the 1970s.
02:19:34.000And I've been to, I think, seven sun dances where they do that.
02:19:38.000You've watched people get suspended by their nipples?
02:19:40.000They usually don't get suspended, and it's not nipples, it's just the chest muscle.
02:19:46.000Well, they don't go under the muscle, it's just skin, but they go up on top.
02:19:50.000So they usually don't get suspended, but they dance attached with their rope to the tree, and then when they want to break loose...
02:19:57.000They 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 is 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,
02:20:22.000because that's your energy, that's the one thing, and that will give strength to your prayers and all of that stuff.
02:20:28.000But, yeah, first time I ever saw it, I was like, holy shit, this is intense.
02:20:33.000Don't you think there's probably also something to that where they're trying to put people through something to make them stronger?
02:20:49.000No, that this ritual, in fact, is probably to strengthen their resolve and make them better warriors just by having experienced such a horrific ritual.
02:20:58.000Ritual practice of ripping meat off your tits.
02:21:18.000There'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.
02:21:25.000But 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 steel-beating heart and gave it to Crazy Horse to eat it through.
02:23:34.000You're probably more aware of that than the average person because of your study of history.
02:23:39.000I 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.
02:23:49.000Yeah, 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,
02:24:05.000like, the average person is a flag in the wind that can go any way, you know?
02:24:09.000How ridiculous is it that, like, 200 years ago, If you tell people slavery, overwhelming majority of people will be like, of course, slavery is cool.
02:24:47.000And you know, there's always a small percentage of our population that's not gonna go along with the program that's gonna be like, no, this is a stupid idea, but the average is just gonna go wherever critical mass is tilting, they are gonna go with it.