Latest / Ridiculous History / Badass of the Week, Part 2: Rise of the Kung Fu Werewolf

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Badass of the Week, Part 2: Rise of the Kung Fu Werewolf · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. We're not gonna waste too much time
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Speaker 1: on housekeeping. Oh shout out to super producer Max Williams,
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Speaker 1: and shout out to you. No, I'm Ben. We're hanging
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Speaker 1: with another Ben today. This is part two where we
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Speaker 1: we got to hang out with the creator of Badass
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Speaker 1: of the Week.
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Speaker 2: That's right, mister Ben Thompson, a fellow Ben and fellow
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Speaker 2: historical spelunker. Yeah, I look it up. That's the word.
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Speaker 2: It's not dirty like it sounds. Promise.
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Speaker 3: It's a cave diving I think. So we're gonna do that.
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Speaker 2: We're gonna all join our history harnesses together to go
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Speaker 2: diving into.
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Speaker 3: The world of tai Jin the kung Fu werewolf of Shaolin.
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Speaker 4: Okay, let's pick up where we left off.
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Speaker 5: At some point the child is gets comes into the
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Speaker 5: possession of a Shaolin monk, whether this monk is wandering
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Speaker 5: the forest and finds the child, or whether some villager
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Speaker 5: or woodsman comes upon the child and brings him to
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Speaker 5: the monastery. At some point this child becomes is placed
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Speaker 5: in the care of the Shaolin Temple for Fukin Province,
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Speaker 5: and I like to call it the Fukin Shawin Temple,
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Speaker 5: even though the correct opinion currently is Fujin.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, but you came to the right place, no pun
1:52
Speaker 1: left behind it perfect.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: I couldn't go through this without getting that joke out.
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Speaker 2: You know, I think, you know, a lot of Western
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Speaker 2: concept of the Shaolin monks come from the Wu Tang
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Speaker 2: clan and the movies that the Wu Tang.
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Speaker 3: Members of the Wu Tang clan were obsessed with.
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Speaker 2: The Shaolin monks, you know, practice insane you know, precise
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Speaker 2: precision kung fu, you know in this rural kind of
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Speaker 2: like you know, separated kind of isolated area.
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Speaker 3: Is all of that accurate or is.
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Speaker 2: Are we kind of we kind of like you know,
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Speaker 2: they're not exactly shooting fireballs at each other, but they
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Speaker 2: were seriously disciplined, you know, practitioners of these martial arts, right.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean Taijian ain't nothing to with right like.
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Speaker 5: He Yeah, the Shallan temples were were you know, there
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Speaker 5: was there was the main Shalin temple it's called the
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Speaker 5: Northern Shahlin Temple that's up in Hinan Province, that's up north,
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Speaker 5: and this is a Fujin province, so we're talking kind
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Speaker 5: of just across the strait of Taiwan, so we're in
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Speaker 5: the south and there is this is one of these things. Right,
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Speaker 5: We're talking eighteen seventy, and we don't have good data
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Speaker 5: on this, right, for whatever reasons, there's not a lot
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Speaker 5: of great Like the Imperial Chinese government was very good
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Speaker 5: at marking how many bales of hay were transported on
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Speaker 5: this day and on this day, but they don't have
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Speaker 5: like a great accounting of where all of the kung
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Speaker 5: Fu temples were, which is kind of frustrating when you're
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Speaker 5: going through this as a historian trying to make any
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Speaker 5: sense of these legends.
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Speaker 1: Right, A lot of them are bureaucratic records, right.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, had very intense details on that stuff, but you know,
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Speaker 5: even trying to research old battles, it's like there were
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Speaker 5: one hundred thousand men on this side and one hundred
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Speaker 5: thousand men on this side, and one hundred thousand men
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Speaker 5: died and this side one, and it's like all right, hey, following.
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Speaker 1: The following five pages are about the amounts of hay
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Speaker 1: and wheat that they were delivered over the course of
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Speaker 1: the following weeks, right right.
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Speaker 5: And you're leading that and you're like, one hundred thousand
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Speaker 5: people didn't live in Europe at the time that this
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Speaker 5: hundred thousand people were killed. Like, can I get a
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Speaker 5: little more detail.
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Speaker 1: Let's let's focus on the important thing here, which is
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Speaker 1: of course the Hey. But okay, so it's it's weird
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Speaker 1: because there is this anomalous approach to historical records, right,
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Speaker 1: maybe different things are prioritized or documented in a in
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Speaker 1: a different way. That's that's one thing, Noel. You said
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Speaker 1: that's really interesting too, about how it's easy to think
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Speaker 1: this was ancient history, but again, history is so much
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Speaker 1: closer than it appears in the rear view mirror. I'm
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Speaker 1: saying all this to say, like Ben, there's pretty much
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Speaker 1: no chance that they would have known about Petras right now.
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Speaker 1: No villagers that.
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Speaker 5: Would have got that story would have gotten here. These
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Speaker 5: two people are occup there, These people are operating in silos.
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Speaker 5: So even though several hundred years later, there's no chance
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Speaker 5: that there was a communication on that way. But there
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Speaker 5: are reports of there being at least one Shalin temple
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Speaker 5: in the south. So Shalin is kind of the martial
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Speaker 5: arts one. There are a lot of Buddhist temples, a
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Speaker 5: lot of Buddhist practitioners all over the country, but the
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Speaker 5: Shaolin is a particular branch that does the Wu Tang
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Speaker 5: clan martial arts the Shaw Brothers nineteen seventies, like punch
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Speaker 5: a hole in your chest kind of stuff. And the
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Speaker 5: temple is is going to be burned to the ground
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Speaker 5: and there's no evidence of where it was, and nobody
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Speaker 5: and a lot of places down there are trying to
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Speaker 5: claim lineage and dissent from the Southern Shaolin temple, but
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Speaker 5: we don't know where it was or if it existed
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Speaker 5: for sure, but a lot of people talk about it
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Speaker 5: and mentioned it, and so I think it's I feel
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Speaker 5: comfortable saying there probably was a Shaolin temple in the South,
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Speaker 5: although I don't know, okay, you know what I mean.
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Speaker 5: It's always hard to kind of but anyway, but they're
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Speaker 5: likely likely, Yes, it's likely that there was one. So
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Speaker 5: he is training at this he's brought to this Shallin
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Speaker 5: temple where there are martial arts monks, and the temple.
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Speaker 5: I believe it was probably pretty close to like guan Jou.
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Speaker 5: Like know, we're talking straight at Taiwan, but there's this
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Speaker 5: little coastal village nearby where people live, and the monks
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Speaker 5: live a little bit away from them in their own
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Speaker 5: kind of private area where they do prayers and they
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Speaker 5: train martial arts as a way of kind of like
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Speaker 5: you know, very Buddhist, you know, training your mind and
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Speaker 5: your body to be disciplined. This is where you see
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Speaker 5: all of that flying sidekicks and fighting with a staff
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Speaker 5: and all this cool stuff that we love and has
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Speaker 5: inspired every good action movie ever.
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Speaker 1: Right, and a shout out to a shout out to
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Speaker 1: empty hand kung fu.
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Speaker 3: Right.
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Speaker 1: That's different varieties of what they're practicing, which we have
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Speaker 1: to understand would have been much more than just a
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Speaker 1: cool flex back then, given that there were oftentimes strict
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Speaker 1: laws about what sorts of weapons could be owned or
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Speaker 1: about someone's place in society. Because of these specificities, you
6:57
Speaker 1: would have to be able to deface yourself without the
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Speaker 1: advantage of some sort of implement like a uh oh,
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Speaker 1: like a cavalry broadsword. Did you go, yeah, yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 1: We didn't know what those were for a while.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: We just did an episode on Abraham Lincoln and his
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Speaker 2: uh not really popularized duel that involves swords where he
7:21
Speaker 2: basically just used his reach to intimidate the other guy
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Speaker 2: into giving up.
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Speaker 3: Really weird, flex you know, it's funny.
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Speaker 2: I just to realize something the we're going to get
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Speaker 2: to the further badassy in the story, but just occurred
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Speaker 2: to me. This story is basically the plot of Beverly
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Speaker 2: Hills Ninja, uh, starring Chris Farley, only instead of a
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Speaker 2: here suits child, it's just a fat kid.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, it's comfortable, and it's all It's all of these movies, right,
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Speaker 5: It's just the only difference is his parents abandoned him
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Speaker 5: rather than were killed dramatically by somebody that he has
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Speaker 5: to slay at the end of the story.
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Speaker 2: You knows, very Joseph Beverly Hill's Ninja, he is abandoned.
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Speaker 3: There he's in a basket Moses style or something like that.
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Speaker 3: I literally watched this very recently. Does not hold up,
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Speaker 3: by the way.
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Speaker 1: Fortunately, Yeah, it's a shame. Maybe we keep our memories
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Speaker 1: with us.
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Speaker 2: I just think, unfortunately, and I mean, yeah, not to
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Speaker 2: psychoanalyze Chris Farley, you know, posthumously, but I'm sure he
8:18
Speaker 2: did get to a point where he was a little
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Speaker 2: tired of doing that.
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Speaker 3: Hey, look at that fat guy falling down joke.
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Speaker 2: You know, as a as a fellow factory, I can
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Speaker 2: speak to that, and that would be a real bummer
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Speaker 2: for that to be the core of your hole, to.
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Speaker 1: Be type cast, to be fat cast. Yeah, and this
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Speaker 1: is like, this is something you know that ties in
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Speaker 1: already he's dealing with, according to the story, because he's
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Speaker 1: been type cast.
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Speaker 3: As a demon and he doesn't make it one. That's yeah,
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Speaker 3: that's so.
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Speaker 2: Do the monks think maybe he has some cool powers
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Speaker 2: that he can harness, make him like our demon?
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Speaker 3: Is there anything along those lines?
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Speaker 5: They're kind of like, you know, the Buddhist monks are
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Speaker 5: pretty chill, right, so they kind of all God's creatures
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Speaker 5: attitude towards anything, right, So so they raise him, and
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Speaker 5: what the first thing they try to do is get
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Speaker 5: him adopted out into into the town.
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Speaker 4: You know, Oh, we found this child. Somebody's brought us
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Speaker 4: a child.
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Speaker 5: Different accounts say a monk found him versus he was
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Speaker 5: brought into the monastery. But they want to find a
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Speaker 5: good home for this kid. So okay, you know, but
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Speaker 5: nobody wants him right because he's different and that's not cool,
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Speaker 5: and so so they can't adopt him now, and so
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Speaker 5: he ends up getting raised by the monks in the temple,
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Speaker 5: which is not common. They don't raise children there. You
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Speaker 5: bring your kid to them when you're ready for him
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Speaker 5: to enter holy orders and become a monk forever, right, right.
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Speaker 5: They don't usually get access to like them at age
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Speaker 5: three to start training them. And the story goes that
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Speaker 5: there are ten masters at this at this school, and
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Speaker 5: generally when you come in as a padawan or whatever
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Speaker 5: you want to call it, you know, you get a sign,
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Speaker 5: you get a teacher, and the teacher teaches you, and
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Speaker 5: he's your your sense.
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Speaker 1: For your entire career as a and so you're kind
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Speaker 1: of following their style right, right, And there might be
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Speaker 1: another man who has a different style, right and different
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Speaker 1: followers or paddawans, and your your styles will remain distinct.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, that's how you get those different styles. You're like, oh,
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Speaker 5: this is tiger crane style like that that. Oh, there's
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Speaker 5: a lot of that. But but one thing with ty
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Speaker 5: Jin is that he's growing up and he doesn't want
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Speaker 5: to go into town because regular people don't like him.
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Speaker 5: They think he's he's weird, or he's a demon, or
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Speaker 5: he's an animal or whatever. Other things, whatever problems they
10:27
Speaker 5: might have with the guy that is covered completely head
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Speaker 5: to toe in fur uh. And so he doesn't want
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Speaker 5: to go into town and do anything. He doesn't want
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Speaker 5: to get a job, he doesn't want to be a fisherman.
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Speaker 5: He doesn't want to go down to the market or anything.
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Speaker 5: So he stays at the temple for his whole life
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Speaker 5: and he just trains with these guys and all of
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Speaker 5: the different masters, like you know, these ten masters, they
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Speaker 5: have their padawans, but he's kind of all their kid, right,
10:49
Speaker 5: so as he's being as he's growing up, they're all
10:52
Speaker 5: kind of part of his childhood. So they all and
10:55
Speaker 5: you know, and he's always kind of hanging around and oh, hey,
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Speaker 5: can you show me this?
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Speaker 4: Okay, can you show me this? This? This here?
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Speaker 1: And it is a is adoptive parents. It's like instead
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Speaker 1: of what is instead of three men and a baby,
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Speaker 1: it's like ten kung fu masters and a were wolf.
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Speaker 3: So he basically gets all of the skills. Yeah, essentially, right.
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Speaker 5: The tutoring from ten masters all day long, every day
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Speaker 5: for his entire life, and he becomes the master of everything. Again,
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Speaker 5: Like we're going off of very difficult to track sources here,
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Speaker 5: But the idea is that he kind of becomes the
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Speaker 5: Wikipedia of Chinese martial arts. He can do two hundred
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Speaker 5: open hands systems, one hundred and forty weapons systems, which
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Speaker 5: I didn't even know there was such thing as two
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Speaker 5: hundred and forty weapons.
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Speaker 2: But can you be the five point palm exploding heart technique?
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Speaker 4: Yes, he literally can. It's called dim It's called the
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Speaker 4: death touch. I called them.
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Speaker 5: I called it the were wolf death touch in my
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Speaker 5: Badass of the Weak article, But it's not actually called that.
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Speaker 2: You know what.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I learned this from your work, Ben. I learned
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Speaker 1: that there was a real death touch. And then I
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Speaker 1: also I remember, and this is a while back, when
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Speaker 1: I was reading this, I remember thinking something along the
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Speaker 1: lines what you just said. I was like, one hundred
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Speaker 1: and fifty, one hundred and forty different weapons systems. I
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Speaker 1: was like, they can't all be amazing, you know what
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Speaker 1: I mean? There have to be like a couple of
12:25
Speaker 1: also rans, you.
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Speaker 5: Know, like that poor gladiator with the trident and the net,
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Speaker 5: and you're like, you, poor bastard, I won't give me
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Speaker 5: a sort of shield any day.
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Speaker 1: It's funny you're talking about that, because you know, as
12:36
Speaker 1: a fellow Dungeons and Dragons fan, you'll appreciate this when
12:40
Speaker 1: on a deep dive trying to learn whether tridents had
12:43
Speaker 1: ever actually been used as a normalized weapon of war,
12:48
Speaker 1: because the gladiators were so big on just novelty and
12:52
Speaker 1: spectacle and impractical stuff. Right, everybody bare chest except from
12:57
Speaker 1: my left shoulder, that's where the armor goes.
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Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, cool, look look at it shine like, Well,
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Speaker 6: the trident and net guy was a warrior of Poseidon,
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Speaker 6: so in the because they're all doing the gladiator stuff
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Speaker 6: for show, so they're all representing gods in different parts
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Speaker 6: of the.
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Speaker 5: World and things. So he's a warrior of Poseidon. So
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Speaker 5: the net and the trident are ocean things.
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Speaker 3: Super super inconvenient.
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Speaker 2: Great for like going fishing, you know, not for defending
13:23
Speaker 2: yourself against the lion.
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Speaker 1: But for costume parties, great for dragon cones, great for dragging.
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Speaker 5: But because to what you were saying earlier too, because
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Speaker 5: you were like you were talking about, you know, not
13:32
Speaker 5: having access to the good weapons, right, the peasantry of
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Speaker 5: of Fujin Province didn't have access to the good swords
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Speaker 5: and the good the good weapons and things. So you know,
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Speaker 5: in Japan it was illegal to have a sword in China,
13:45
Speaker 5: you could, but it was expensive.
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Speaker 4: It was prohibitively expensive and to have a weapon.
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Speaker 2: And so now we think of the countries that don't
13:53
Speaker 2: allow guns, is like everyone's got knives and that's.
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Speaker 3: The best they can do.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a time where swords was chechno. These
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Speaker 2: swords were technology, the height of it, the best ones,
14:04
Speaker 2: the sharpest steel they would hold that ads.
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Speaker 3: That was a big deal. Yeah.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, you gotta have something that can smelt that. You
14:09
Speaker 5: gotta have some way of forging that. You gotta have
14:11
Speaker 5: a guy that knows how to do that, right, And
14:13
Speaker 5: your blacksmith in town is making nails and horseshoes, right,
14:16
Speaker 5: he's not making chain mil armor and so yeah, so
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Speaker 5: I mean it's a lot of staff, spear that kind
14:22
Speaker 5: of stuff. But in an open hand fighting, like you said,
14:25
Speaker 5: because it's not like you don't need a sword. You
14:27
Speaker 5: need a sword at this time period more than you
14:29
Speaker 5: need arguably more than you need weapons today, because there
14:32
Speaker 5: are like literally bandits and literal wolves and wild animals.
14:36
Speaker 5: There's bears that like, there's pirates that there's all kinds
14:40
Speaker 5: of crazy stuff that will like you know, you are
14:42
Speaker 5: not immune in this time period in this part of
14:44
Speaker 5: the world from like bandits showing up and setting your
14:48
Speaker 5: village on fire, right.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And so now this kid is
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Speaker 1: becoming we're in that action montage, that training montage, yeah,
15:01
Speaker 1: towards the end of the first act, beginning his second
15:04
Speaker 1: act in our story, and now we see him, you know,
15:06
Speaker 1: now he seem to doing like manthis style, switching his
15:09
Speaker 1: some tiger crane. Somebody throws something behind his back and
15:13
Speaker 1: he catches it without turning on right.
15:16
Speaker 2: And then flash to he's he is a He's no
15:19
Speaker 2: longer a wolf boy. He's a wolf man, and he
15:24
Speaker 2: has given serious responsibility because of the fact that he
15:27
Speaker 2: has mastered all of these techniques and is essentially like
15:31
Speaker 2: the best one.
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Speaker 1: Oh the line the montage stops with someone saying, there's
15:36
Speaker 1: no more we can teach him.
15:37
Speaker 5: It's right, it cuts him and then the fan blows
15:40
Speaker 5: the fur like dramatically in.
15:42
Speaker 3: Front of him.
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Speaker 2: But what happens then, I mean he's he's at home
15:46
Speaker 2: in this monastery. Is that like when do the big
15:48
Speaker 2: bads come in that threaten their way of life? And
15:50
Speaker 2: then he has to step up and like, you know, lead,
15:54
Speaker 2: lead the way save the day.
15:56
Speaker 5: So there's a couple of really good stories, and you know,
15:59
Speaker 5: the the existence of this man is probable. These stories
16:05
Speaker 5: are almost certainly a little bit more legendary than than
16:10
Speaker 5: what we've already gotten into, right, Like, like I said,
16:14
Speaker 5: there is a photo. I've seen two photos that are
16:18
Speaker 5: purported to be of this guy. He's not wearing a
16:20
Speaker 5: Shallolin costume or anything in them. He's wearing like a suit.
16:23
Speaker 5: But you know, it's searchable. You can look up ty
16:26
Speaker 5: Jin and see a photo of this person, and we're
16:29
Speaker 5: pretty I'm pretty sure he existed for real. These stories
16:33
Speaker 5: are kind of when you're getting into and like, I
16:35
Speaker 5: don't know how this hasn't been a like Wu Tang
16:39
Speaker 5: Clan movie, but it should be, you know, all right, Yeah,
16:42
Speaker 5: I think we're kind of freestyling the script for it
16:44
Speaker 5: right now.
16:45
Speaker 1: So let's do it absolutely. Yeah, we got the mon guys.
16:48
Speaker 1: We nailed that montage.
16:50
Speaker 2: That was solid. Yeah, I think Rizzo would approve. Maybe
16:53
Speaker 2: he'll do the soundtrack.
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Speaker 5: Oh yeah, Okay, So there's a couple of stories about
16:56
Speaker 5: this guy. He becomes the first grand master of this
17:00
Speaker 5: temple and which might be the Southern Shaalann temple, like
17:04
Speaker 5: I said, I don't know about that, but he becomes
17:06
Speaker 5: the grand Master, the first one, because these ten masters
17:09
Speaker 5: have all combined their knowledge into this one.
17:12
Speaker 4: Super super guy.
17:14
Speaker 5: Okay, so this is where some of the really kind
17:16
Speaker 5: of out there stories come from, but I will tell
17:20
Speaker 5: them because they're cool. One of the stories that kind
17:22
Speaker 5: of illustrates how good tai Jin became at fighting and
17:27
Speaker 5: understanding the world around him is that he was entering
17:30
Speaker 5: a class and there were twelve different monks there that
17:35
Speaker 5: we're going to have this class with him, and he
17:36
Speaker 5: entered the classroom and then he pulls out a knife
17:39
Speaker 5: and he throws it up into the ceiling and some
17:41
Speaker 5: assassin like falls out of the rafters and he's like,
17:44
Speaker 5: He's like, I heard thirteen breaths when I entered the room.
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Speaker 4: There must have been someone else.
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Speaker 1: Here, which is also what a tough first day of class, like,
17:54
Speaker 1: he just punked the hell out all twelve of those folks.
17:58
Speaker 1: You know, how long were they in that room? Right? Wait?
18:02
Speaker 2: Wait, but these were these were these weren't like, this
18:05
Speaker 2: wasn't a test. These were actual ninja assassins.
18:07
Speaker 5: It was an actual assassin in the story has told
18:09
Speaker 5: it's an actual assassin. I like to think that he
18:11
Speaker 5: planted that guy there to intimidate his class.
18:14
Speaker 4: For day one of being like, you know.
18:16
Speaker 1: The guy's an action, you know, got he got a plant,
18:19
Speaker 1: and he just conveniently didn't tell him, hey, I'm going
18:22
Speaker 1: to kill you.
18:23
Speaker 5: At the end, probably was fine, he probably paid. I
18:30
Speaker 5: think the whole thing was no.
18:33
Speaker 1: Okay, but that that's a crazy impressive that's like, that's
18:39
Speaker 1: like did it happen level impressive.
18:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, almost certainly, not almost certainly, this didn't happen. But
18:44
Speaker 4: that's the story.
18:44
Speaker 5: That's a story associated with him. And like I said,
18:47
Speaker 5: we're gonna get into I'm going to get into a
18:48
Speaker 5: couple more of these. One of these stories says that
18:51
Speaker 5: he he would when he had run out of like
18:55
Speaker 5: viable sparring partners in the temple, he would go into
18:58
Speaker 5: the wilderness and like fight wild animals like wolves and
19:01
Speaker 5: bears and wrestling to kind of train himself. And and
19:04
Speaker 5: he'd like you know, punch trees to tighten up his
19:07
Speaker 5: knuckles and all of this kind of stuff that you
19:09
Speaker 5: read about with that's.
19:10
Speaker 2: All in the montage, right, Yeah, that's going.
19:17
Speaker 3: Have you seen that movie? Are r R?
19:19
Speaker 2: It's like Indian kind of giant action set piece film.
19:24
Speaker 2: Great for best song, It's fabulous, But there is a
19:27
Speaker 2: character who the first montage you see is him literally
19:31
Speaker 2: swinging through the jungle and like fighting tigers and bears
19:35
Speaker 2: for sport kind of you know, and it's makes me
19:38
Speaker 2: think of the stuff you're describing here. It is an
19:39
Speaker 2: excellent film. Highly recommend it also entirely mythology.
19:44
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is a jetly movie, like but one of
19:46
Speaker 5: the ones that he makes in Hong Kong for Chinese audiences,
19:49
Speaker 5: you know what I.
19:50
Speaker 1: Mean, And while and check that stuff out while you're
19:54
Speaker 1: waiting for Ridiculous History Studios to come out with h
20:00
Speaker 1: the Taijin Story, which I see as the first of
20:03
Speaker 1: a like a cinematic universe.
20:05
Speaker 3: To Kung Fu Werewolf franchise.
20:07
Speaker 5: There it is, right, yeah, and then you get you
20:09
Speaker 5: get like the Space Traveler one, and then you combine
20:11
Speaker 5: them in the third movie. For that's when that's when
20:13
Speaker 5: we all go to we were all astronauts.
20:17
Speaker 2: Okay, it's gonna be it's gonna make sense that he
20:19
Speaker 2: goes to space. It's all gonna make sense.
20:22
Speaker 3: We're gonna earn it.
20:23
Speaker 2: We're not just gonna chuck him into space just because no,
20:26
Speaker 2: we're gonna it's gonna be a cliffhanger on the previous thing,
20:28
Speaker 2: and there's villains space ninjas coming.
20:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, I must go.
20:32
Speaker 1: We know the guy who did the catering on the
20:34
Speaker 1: Leprechawn franchise. So this is like high art.
20:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, shooting for it. But but how did okay? So Taijan.
20:41
Speaker 1: This is just for a lot of these characters, uh,
20:45
Speaker 1: these semi apocryphal characters in the historical record, they often
20:49
Speaker 1: have one big story, you know what I mean, and
20:53
Speaker 1: this guy has several.
20:55
Speaker 5: Uh.
20:55
Speaker 1: It doesn't stop with this, Frankly, I don't I don't
20:59
Speaker 1: want to reuse the term. But it doesn't stop with
21:01
Speaker 1: this badass killing of an assassin on the ceiling, right.
21:04
Speaker 5: So the one of the big stories involving him is
21:07
Speaker 5: that this coastal village of people that was near his
21:11
Speaker 5: temple was coming under an attack from pirates. So there
21:17
Speaker 5: there's a word for these people there called tohu. It's
21:19
Speaker 5: a type of you know, the Chinese user to refer
21:22
Speaker 5: to Japanese pirates that are kind of raiding the coastline.
21:25
Speaker 5: And we don't know for sure if they're Japanese or whatever.
21:28
Speaker 5: They just kind of called anybody who was who was
21:31
Speaker 5: not Chinese who was raiding the coastline toho. But we
21:35
Speaker 5: do know that like across the way in across the
21:37
Speaker 5: Strait of Taiwan, Japan is moving into Taiwan. Okinawa is
21:42
Speaker 5: near ish to the area, So it wouldn't be that
21:45
Speaker 5: weird for there to be Japanese pirate raids along the
21:47
Speaker 5: coast here, and if not, it could just be bandits
21:50
Speaker 5: or just regular old Chinese pirates. But this is a
21:52
Speaker 5: thing that happened in coastal villages in the late nineteenth century.
21:58
Speaker 5: And one of the stories says that ty Gin and
22:01
Speaker 5: somebody led led his monks uh into combat against Japanese
22:05
Speaker 5: pirates who had kind of stopped to plunder the village.
22:09
Speaker 1: They went onto onto the high seas.
22:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, yeah, I don't know if he I don't
22:13
Speaker 5: know if he fought them on the coast or if
22:15
Speaker 5: he got onto their boats. I love the idea of
22:17
Speaker 5: thinking that he got onto their boats and was fighting boats.
22:21
Speaker 5: That's just amazing to me, right, defending, defending the village
22:24
Speaker 5: that didn't want him, nobody would adopt him, and and
22:26
Speaker 5: he's still going.
22:28
Speaker 2: Well again, he's bounding from boat to boat, taking people
22:32
Speaker 2: out as he goes, I mean.
22:33
Speaker 1: Inexplicably now, uh, in deep deep relationships with sharks.
22:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's ripping.
22:44
Speaker 5: Planks off the boats and they're sinking, you know, punching
22:47
Speaker 5: bolts in the halls.
22:48
Speaker 2: Bullet time shots of him like splintering wood.
22:51
Speaker 3: You know. Sorry, we got to think about this cinematically.
22:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, So we do actually have stories of shellon monks
22:57
Speaker 5: doing this kind of thing. So while we don't know
23:00
Speaker 5: for sure if this story is true, there's like, the
23:03
Speaker 5: only places this is mentioned is in very unreliable with
23:06
Speaker 5: very unreliable narrators. But there is a very real, confirmed
23:10
Speaker 5: story of shellon monks fighting these coastal raiders. It's a
23:14
Speaker 5: little bit up north, and it's a couple of hundred
23:17
Speaker 5: it's a couple of hundred years before this, but there
23:19
Speaker 5: was a story of stories where the monks would come
23:23
Speaker 5: to the aid of villages that were in trouble. And
23:26
Speaker 5: in one particular of these stories, it was in the
23:28
Speaker 5: fifteen fifty something, the one hundred pirates had come ashore
23:34
Speaker 5: to plunder this town, and the monks showed up, and
23:38
Speaker 5: there were about one hundred monks that showed up and
23:39
Speaker 5: they fought these guys and they beat down the pirates
23:43
Speaker 5: and the pirates are running for it, and the Shellon
23:45
Speaker 5: monks chased them for ten days across twenty miles of
23:49
Speaker 5: swampland before and they don't stop until they've killed every
23:53
Speaker 5: pirate that was involved in the raid. They lose four
23:56
Speaker 5: monks in the battle.
23:57
Speaker 1: That's what people don't think of when they think of Buddhism. Yeah,
24:02
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So wait, there were only
24:06
Speaker 1: four monks.
24:07
Speaker 5: Only well, there were one hundred monks only four months die,
24:10
Speaker 5: but one hundred only four Yeah, yeah, Like warrior monks
24:14
Speaker 5: are crazy.
24:15
Speaker 4: You know.
24:16
Speaker 5: Japan has a huge culture of like warrior monks who
24:20
Speaker 5: resisted the emperor of you know, fighting with naginadas and
24:24
Speaker 5: stuff like that, and I mean just really tough guys.
24:27
Speaker 5: And they lived up in these mountains that you couldn't
24:28
Speaker 5: get up to them. And there was a temple of
24:31
Speaker 5: of Buddhist monks in Japan that they were able to
24:36
Speaker 5: resist Nobunaga for like thirty days or something. He couldn't
24:39
Speaker 5: take there, couldn't take their fort.
24:41
Speaker 4: Wow, it's really cool stuff.
24:43
Speaker 1: This is making me think that it's quite possible the
24:47
Speaker 1: individual taij in may have become sort of an historical
24:52
Speaker 1: repository for these true stories about many different people.
24:56
Speaker 4: It seems that way.
24:57
Speaker 5: That's how I feel about it, and that's kind of
24:59
Speaker 5: why I don't have too much of a problem talking
25:01
Speaker 5: about them, because I, like you said, I like to
25:03
Speaker 5: back up the stories and review the sources and all
25:05
Speaker 5: of that, and something like this is kind of it's
25:08
Speaker 5: such a cool story, but it's so like, it's kind
25:11
Speaker 5: of so out there and it's so hard to verify
25:14
Speaker 5: any of this stuff. I like it as an opportunity
25:16
Speaker 5: to talk about the history of were wolves and the
25:19
Speaker 5: history of Fred Petris and of this skin condition, and
25:24
Speaker 5: of showIn monks in general, warrior monk culture. Like it's
25:27
Speaker 5: cool stuff, kung fu like everything well.
25:29
Speaker 2: On our other podcast Ben and I do with our
25:32
Speaker 2: buddy Matt called stuff they Don't want you to know.
25:34
Speaker 2: It's a critical thinking conspiracy podcast. A lot of times
25:37
Speaker 2: conspiracies and conspiracy theories are a way in to talk
25:41
Speaker 2: about a larger question, you know, whether it be existential
25:45
Speaker 2: or historical or like, what's at play here?
25:47
Speaker 3: Why do people think this? You know?
25:49
Speaker 2: And we're not here to tell you yes, this conspiracy
25:52
Speaker 2: is true. Yes, we're debunking this or whatever. But it's
25:55
Speaker 2: just always a fun way in so, even if we
25:57
Speaker 2: take it with a grain of salt and are very
25:59
Speaker 2: transparent about it, is a fun thought experiment and conversation.
26:03
Speaker 2: And speaking of that with Tai Jim, what's all this
26:06
Speaker 2: about him burning down at temple? Yeah, that doesn't sound
26:09
Speaker 2: like good guy behavior.
26:11
Speaker 1: No, that's our that's our third act twist, I think.
26:21
Speaker 4: See this is the third act twist. Yeah, exactly.
26:23
Speaker 5: He's fighting off monks, and I do like this story
26:26
Speaker 5: of like, you know, the hundred monks running and I'm
26:28
Speaker 5: picturing them with bostaffs, right because they probably didn't run.
26:31
Speaker 3: Down crouching tiger stuff. Yeah, just flying.
26:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what, forget the historical accuracy. They
26:39
Speaker 1: are doing parkour.
26:41
Speaker 3: They're very visibly do it.
26:43
Speaker 1: Like shallan spider man is what I want us to
26:46
Speaker 1: tell the cinematographer.
26:51
Speaker 5: But yeah, so it's kind of what I was saying
26:53
Speaker 5: with those the Japanese monks who resisted Nobunaga. One problem
26:58
Speaker 5: with Buddhist monks in the eye of the emperor is
27:01
Speaker 5: that the emperor of China and Japan and any other place,
27:04
Speaker 5: the shogun, the warlords, they don't want you to be
27:07
Speaker 5: paying attention to some worshiping some other god. The emperor
27:11
Speaker 5: is all that you need, right, Like, these guys have
27:13
Speaker 5: their own code, they have their own ideas, they think
27:16
Speaker 5: about this. They're not in the system right and so
27:19
Speaker 5: in a lot of a lot of ways their trouble
27:23
Speaker 5: and so they can cause problems. Sometimes the emperors used them.
27:27
Speaker 5: There was a battle in like six hundred when the
27:30
Speaker 5: Tong dynasty was being formed, and he recruited Shaolin monks
27:34
Speaker 5: to have battles in the mountains against his enemies. And
27:38
Speaker 5: he was like, oh, well, I'll give you, like you know,
27:40
Speaker 5: I'll give you some concessions. You guys can kind of
27:42
Speaker 5: be autonomous and do your own thing, but you have
27:44
Speaker 5: to help me win win the empire.
27:46
Speaker 4: And they did, and they go into battle and.
27:48
Speaker 5: They beat up all of these bad guys and are
27:50
Speaker 5: bad guys, but they beat up all of the enemies
27:52
Speaker 5: of the future Tong emperor.
27:54
Speaker 1: It reminds me a little bit in some ways of
27:57
Speaker 1: the relationship that the Temple Knights had with the bluling
28:02
Speaker 1: powers of their day. Right where they would be they
28:05
Speaker 1: were useful as special forces essentially, but then if they
28:11
Speaker 1: became ideologically problematic. There wasn't really anything to stop the
28:17
Speaker 1: ruler from saying, these folks.
28:18
Speaker 3: Are verboting, you're out. It's exactly, do not pass go Okay. Yeah,
28:23
Speaker 3: So they.
28:23
Speaker 5: They're useful because and you can predict what they're gonna
28:26
Speaker 5: do because they have a code of conduct that they
28:28
Speaker 5: don't want to shake. So it's it's predictable, you know
28:31
Speaker 5: what they're going to do. So yeah, they're very good.
28:33
Speaker 5: Shalon monks have been used in battle by emperors or
28:36
Speaker 5: want to be emperors. Uh, you know they're not gonna
28:39
Speaker 5: you don't want to put them in front of a
28:40
Speaker 5: cavalry charge. But if you've got to like fight some
28:42
Speaker 5: guys on some tough terrain in the mountains, or you know,
28:45
Speaker 5: you want to ambush some people who aren't really ready
28:47
Speaker 5: for it, or have them hold a pass like they
28:50
Speaker 5: they're they're very effective at what they do, which is
28:52
Speaker 5: fight hand to hand.
28:54
Speaker 1: We need monks, Yeah, absolutely, we need like a crew
28:57
Speaker 1: of Shaolin monks.
28:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, like on retainer.
29:01
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, anyone to go around the grocery store with
29:04
Speaker 5: me and kind of make sure the aisles are clear.
29:09
Speaker 1: I okay, poist to bin for the specificity on that
29:13
Speaker 1: one I don't know what happened to you in Asle
29:15
Speaker 1: nine man, but they've.
29:17
Speaker 3: Really left the mark.
29:18
Speaker 5: They're just always stocking the thing that I need, or
29:21
Speaker 5: it's it's always some slow person with a double cart
29:24
Speaker 5: trying to and if.
29:26
Speaker 1: They're stocking, you have to do the thing with the
29:28
Speaker 1: forced conversation where you're like, oh, hey, I just.
29:33
Speaker 5: Need to in here a second and look at this
29:35
Speaker 5: display because I don't actually know what I want yet,
29:37
Speaker 5: So I'm just gonna stand over you for a minute.
29:40
Speaker 3: You know, you get in there, right.
29:44
Speaker 5: I don't know if I need the extra extra pimento
29:46
Speaker 5: for the olives or what do I need black green?
29:49
Speaker 4: I don't know.
29:49
Speaker 5: Wouldn't it be easier to just get tied into roundhouse,
29:51
Speaker 5: kick that dude in the head, and then you have
29:52
Speaker 5: plenty of time to stand there and make your decision.
29:55
Speaker 3: The story is true. Villains, I would argue solution oriented though.
30:01
Speaker 1: I like it because it feels like it's it feels
30:04
Speaker 1: like something that's happened to a lot of us has
30:06
Speaker 1: nothing due tize in. But you know, you've been in
30:09
Speaker 1: this situation where you're thinking, I don't really want a
30:12
Speaker 1: bunch of extra conversations, so while this really slow person
30:17
Speaker 1: is apparently having an existential crisis about this tomato sauce.
30:22
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stand next to them and look like I'm
30:24
Speaker 1: interested in something I know I'm not.
30:26
Speaker 2: I just don't think this would meet the code of
30:29
Speaker 2: the challenge. I just don't think this would fit the
30:32
Speaker 2: bill for them. They would probably have to have to
30:34
Speaker 2: be a pass for them.
30:35
Speaker 1: They might they might, you know what, they might have
30:37
Speaker 1: follow up questions. They might say, like, well, which grocery
30:40
Speaker 1: store is it? Because we respect the code of trader.
30:43
Speaker 2: Joe, Yeah, exactly, but public's is the public's their game?
30:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, see in that in that instance, I have to do.
30:49
Speaker 5: I have to become the emperor of China here, because
30:52
Speaker 5: the emperor at this point, he's the We're in the
30:54
Speaker 5: Chin Dynasty, which is run by a group of people
30:57
Speaker 5: called the Manchus who are up north there, not ethnic
31:01
Speaker 5: Han Chinese, and so the ethnic Han Chinese don't like
31:04
Speaker 5: them as much, and they're kind of cracking down a
31:08
Speaker 5: little bit on some of the Buddhism stuff, and the
31:10
Speaker 5: monks don't like it, and the monks speak out against
31:13
Speaker 5: the Chin dynasty. And if you are the emperor of
31:15
Speaker 5: the Chin dynasty. You got to get rid of these guys, right,
31:18
Speaker 5: they're a problem. You're you're useful until you're not useful
31:20
Speaker 5: to me, and now you're a problem. So the Chin
31:23
Speaker 5: dynasty sends troops to burn this monastery to the ground,
31:28
Speaker 5: and so ti Jin is not the problem here. There's
31:30
Speaker 5: there's two guys that kind of run this monastery as
31:33
Speaker 5: as with them, assuming it was run the same way
31:36
Speaker 5: as the regular Shellin monastery up north, which is you
31:39
Speaker 5: have like a spiritual leader who kind of runs the
31:41
Speaker 5: whole show, and then ty Jin is the is the
31:44
Speaker 5: combat instructor. He's the main fighting guy, but he's not
31:48
Speaker 5: the spiritual head of the of the thing. And so
31:51
Speaker 5: for whatever reason, politics get involved, and the temple has
31:54
Speaker 5: a problem with the emperor, and the emperor decides that
31:56
Speaker 5: these guys got to go, and he sends an army
32:00
Speaker 5: and there's a there's a battle.
32:01
Speaker 4: The monks try to.
32:02
Speaker 5: Fight these guys off, but it's hard, right, I mean,
32:05
Speaker 5: they've got armor and swords and horses and all these things.
32:08
Speaker 5: And so what ends up happening is the monastery kind
32:12
Speaker 5: of partly under tai Jin's direction, they clear all their
32:17
Speaker 5: stuff out, they clear their people out, a group of
32:20
Speaker 5: monks stays to try to buy them time, some kind
32:23
Speaker 5: of like a little last stand. Various sources argue on this,
32:28
Speaker 5: like some say they they stood and fought, and only
32:30
Speaker 5: a handful survived thirteen, sometimes say five. Some say thirteen.
32:34
Speaker 5: A small group of monks survived this battle. Others say
32:38
Speaker 5: that everybody just left before the emperor got there. And
32:42
Speaker 5: in whatever happens in this battle, Taijin survives, and the
32:46
Speaker 5: temple was burned to the ground, and we don't know,
32:48
Speaker 5: we've never found it, we don't really know where it is.
32:51
Speaker 2: I love the idea of the preemptive torching. I think
32:54
Speaker 2: that's yeah, that's very very clever. Yeah, you know, doesn't
32:57
Speaker 2: exactly make sense. They could have just taken their stuff
33:00
Speaker 2: and then you know, hit the road. But it's a
33:02
Speaker 2: nice flourish when, like, you know, I get these soldiers
33:05
Speaker 2: just ready to burn some to the ground and they
33:07
Speaker 2: get their weight at what it's already burning.
33:12
Speaker 5: Too.
33:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess we'll go back home.
33:14
Speaker 1: I mean, that's pretty that's pretty metal. Very bad ass, Yeah,
33:18
Speaker 1: very bad ass.
33:19
Speaker 4: So let's recap infant born super hairy.
33:23
Speaker 2: Uh.
33:24
Speaker 5: They think it's a demon. They leave him in the forest,
33:26
Speaker 5: he's rescued by Shlin monks. He learns from all of
33:29
Speaker 5: the great masters of this monastery, becomes the first true
33:31
Speaker 5: grand master, defends the village, does some fights of bear,
33:36
Speaker 5: and then at the end he's the only grand master
33:38
Speaker 5: that this temple will ever have because he burns the
33:40
Speaker 5: whole place to the ground on.
33:41
Speaker 4: His way at the door.
33:43
Speaker 1: Epic epic. That's our log line. And this is okay,
33:46
Speaker 1: so and again the late eighteen hundreds right by this,
33:51
Speaker 1: there's a photograph of this guy.
33:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, like that's how recent.
33:56
Speaker 3: He is and so wild.
33:58
Speaker 1: So I remember that there is a bit of a denument,
34:04
Speaker 1: as we would say here. He does survive all these
34:09
Speaker 1: trials and tribulations. According to according to the story, he
34:14
Speaker 1: lives well into old age, Isn't that correct?
34:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, The story goes that he dies in nineteen twenty
34:19
Speaker 5: eight at the age of seventy nine. The monks kind
34:21
Speaker 5: of disperse and like continue their teachings, but not in
34:25
Speaker 5: like an organized fashion. Again, and so that's the story.
34:30
Speaker 5: Like I said, the sources on here are very unreliable
34:32
Speaker 5: and very bad, and a lot of it is you know,
34:37
Speaker 5: has to be taken with a ton of salt. One
34:41
Speaker 5: of the things that I like to joke about is
34:43
Speaker 5: that they're the One of the Horde priest trainers in
34:47
Speaker 5: the world of warcraft is named tai Jin and she
34:51
Speaker 5: has a much longer WOWPDA.
34:54
Speaker 4: Entry than Tijin as Wikipedia entry.
34:57
Speaker 1: So speaking of here, here are other things that happened
35:01
Speaker 1: right around this time, the time of this guy's death,
35:03
Speaker 1: just to give us the historical context. No, I know
35:07
Speaker 1: you and I are both endlessly fascinated with nineteen twenty
35:11
Speaker 1: eight when when he passes away at the age of
35:14
Speaker 1: seventy nine. Here are some things that are believed to
35:17
Speaker 1: be invented that year, the recliner, like the lazy Boy,
35:22
Speaker 1: ice cube trays, bubble gum, clip on ties, and the
35:27
Speaker 1: electric razor.
35:28
Speaker 2: I mean, hell, my dad was born only ten years
35:31
Speaker 2: later than this, and he was pretty old.
35:33
Speaker 3: But that's wild.
35:35
Speaker 2: And again, the details of the story, because of its isolation,
35:38
Speaker 2: really does read like an epic, you know, kind of
35:42
Speaker 2: fantasy Kung Fu crouch t.
35:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is.
35:47
Speaker 2: And does it all feel separate from history in its
35:49
Speaker 2: own way. It's like in its own little bubble.
35:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
35:51
Speaker 5: And that's what you said about feeling ancient, right, because
35:54
Speaker 5: when you picture Shaalin kung fu monk fighting pirates. You
35:57
Speaker 5: don't picturing so like eighteen you know, let's say he
36:00
Speaker 5: was in his thirties when this happened. And I do
36:02
Speaker 5: think that there is a lot of what we were
36:04
Speaker 5: talking about before of like ascribing things that everything that
36:08
Speaker 5: every badass monk did to this guy, because like now this, Yeah,
36:12
Speaker 5: it's like if he's in his thirties, right, So let's
36:15
Speaker 5: say let's say we're looking at like eighteen eighty, uh,
36:18
Speaker 5: when those pirates show up and he has to like
36:20
Speaker 5: defend the coastline against the pirates. The Japanese had bolt
36:23
Speaker 5: action rifles in eighteen eighty, you know, like we're not
36:27
Speaker 5: talking swords, you know, So like I don't know, I
36:30
Speaker 5: think it makes it harder to buy that this happened
36:33
Speaker 5: the way that it was written. But you know, but
36:36
Speaker 5: the Arisaka rifle was like introduced around that time period.
36:39
Speaker 1: And we can't you know, it's so attempting to compare
36:42
Speaker 1: apples and oranges, like like, I'm I will be honest
36:46
Speaker 1: with you guys, I never thought about it, but I
36:48
Speaker 1: find myself looking down on the inventor of the clip
36:50
Speaker 1: on tie a little bit because you lived in the
36:52
Speaker 1: same world as this guy, and your contribution is that
36:56
Speaker 1: I can't talk.
36:57
Speaker 3: Man.
36:58
Speaker 1: One time, I fell asleep trying to put out a pants.
37:00
Speaker 1: People are out here changing the world.
37:02
Speaker 3: Is important to certain people.
37:03
Speaker 2: You know. I have to look up a YouTube video
37:05
Speaker 2: every time I tie a tie. But I would never
37:08
Speaker 2: be cut dead in a clip on. I will look
37:10
Speaker 2: up that YouTube video.
37:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll tell you though. Uh I I
37:15
Speaker 1: feel like I may be unfairly denegrading this well meaning
37:19
Speaker 1: inventor who is just trying to save time for children.
37:22
Speaker 3: Let's just think of it as for children. Okay, you're right,
37:24
Speaker 3: You're right. I'd be really.
37:25
Speaker 5: Rough on the thing that comes up for me a
37:27
Speaker 5: lot is that. Like, you know, so I do Badass
37:29
Speaker 5: of the Week. I got the podcast, I got the website.
37:32
Speaker 3: It's a badass.
37:33
Speaker 5: And so people come to People will sometimes get kind
37:37
Speaker 5: of their back up and be like, what.
37:38
Speaker 4: Do you what's so badass about you? Dude? Nothing? Nothing,
37:42
Speaker 4: man Like I can't talk to you about it? Yeah, let.
37:47
Speaker 5: Yeah, you go have your conquest. I'll be I'll be stonius.
37:51
Speaker 5: I'll write the story when you get back, but please
37:53
Speaker 5: don't hit me.
37:54
Speaker 2: Right, it's a little easier for us because people ask
37:57
Speaker 2: us what's they don't have to ask us what's so
37:58
Speaker 2: ridiculous about it?
37:59
Speaker 3: Because it's clear. Yeah, and we walk into a room
38:02
Speaker 3: there it is.
38:03
Speaker 1: Messed up that we can vote, that's true. So this
38:07
Speaker 1: is the uh So this is where I think we
38:09
Speaker 1: begin to wrap the story a little bit then, because
38:12
Speaker 1: people are going to have to learn more by going
38:15
Speaker 1: to the podcast bad Ass of the Week, which.
38:20
Speaker 2: Exists wherever you get your fine podcast material really quickly
38:24
Speaker 2: that I wanted to point something out that you did
38:25
Speaker 2: mention in the article on the website that this condition.
38:28
Speaker 4: This uh hypercusis.
38:31
Speaker 2: That's the one is typically life threatening. Oh that's right, right,
38:35
Speaker 2: And like this this guy lived to the ripe old
38:38
Speaker 2: age of roughly seventy nine.
38:40
Speaker 3: You know, they don't, we know. And it's rare in.
38:43
Speaker 2: The first place, So how much even more rare must
38:45
Speaker 2: it be to have the version of it that you
38:47
Speaker 2: can basically lived and.
38:49
Speaker 3: Then even those days that was a that was a
38:51
Speaker 3: long life.
38:51
Speaker 5: And he's fighting pirates and bears too, right, Like that's
38:53
Speaker 5: that's not good for your and he's an enemy of
38:55
Speaker 5: the emperor. It's not great for longevity. But yeah, like
38:58
Speaker 5: we've got maybe fifty people. Well, I think over the
39:00
Speaker 5: course of like, you know, because this is a thing
39:02
Speaker 5: that is documented pretty well, because they'll be like, oh
39:04
Speaker 5: do this guy at all, you know, and you can
39:06
Speaker 5: run into some really bad stuff with this.
39:08
Speaker 4: I think, you know, they like a lot of like
39:10
Speaker 4: sideshow kind of stuff.
39:11
Speaker 5: From the eighties, eighteen eighties, you know, like the Jojo,
39:14
Speaker 5: the dog faced boy and you're like, oh god, I
39:17
Speaker 5: don't want to say that out loud, but it's worth
39:19
Speaker 5: mentioning in context with hyper trickosis because that's how these
39:24
Speaker 5: people were viewed by by the societies and at the time, right,
39:28
Speaker 5: Like and so.
39:29
Speaker 1: It's he's playing life on hard mode, right.
39:31
Speaker 5: And it's cool that he was able to have so
39:33
Speaker 5: much success with it, which you know, it's inspiring, right.
39:36
Speaker 1: And and couldn't be couldn't be happier to have you
39:40
Speaker 1: join us this week on on our Little show Man again,
39:45
Speaker 1: as you said off here, big big fans, and thank
39:48
Speaker 1: you so much.
39:49
Speaker 3: Ben.
39:49
Speaker 1: Where can people learn more? Not just about the podcast,
39:53
Speaker 1: which as we say, is available everywhere you find your
39:55
Speaker 1: favorite shows, but where can where can our fellow ridiculous
39:58
Speaker 1: historians learn more about your work? Learn more about your books?
40:02
Speaker 3: And so on.
40:04
Speaker 5: Okay, so the website is Badass of theweek dot com.
40:07
Speaker 5: It's all one word and it should should pop up
40:12
Speaker 5: and then all them books are on Amazon or whatever
40:14
Speaker 5: else and.
40:15
Speaker 3: Hey, you get busy.
40:17
Speaker 2: Well, thanks again for hanging with us, man, and look
40:20
Speaker 2: forward to hopefully having you back again, or maybe we
40:22
Speaker 2: can I don't know, continue this ridiculous history love fest
40:27
Speaker 2: in the future.
40:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you guys so much. I'm a fan of
40:29
Speaker 4: your guys as well. I'm a I'm a longtime.
40:31
Speaker 1: Subscriber, so oh gret was really.
40:34
Speaker 5: A good opportunity for me to be on here, so
40:36
Speaker 5: I'm very happy about it.
40:37
Speaker 3: Do you hear that?
40:38
Speaker 4: Bill?
40:38
Speaker 1: We're coming up in the world. Maybe it's time to
40:40
Speaker 1: buy some clip on ties. Never, I agreed, I agreed.
40:45
Speaker 3: We'll see you next time, folks.
40:53
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
40:57
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.