Latest / Ridiculous History / Badass of the Week, Part 1: An Origin Story

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Badass of the Week, Part 1: An Origin Story · 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. Let's hear it for the Man, the Myth,
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Speaker 1: the Legend, a resident Badass of the Week super producer,
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Speaker 1: mister Max.
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Speaker 2: Oh, that was me, Bang, I'm banging at the Max.
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Speaker 1: And uh, you're Noel Brown and I'm Ben Bowley.
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Speaker 2: And we're both somewhat here here. Suit your suit.
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Speaker 1: I have the words, you know, I recently moved and
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Speaker 1: I've got to find that box with my shaving kit.
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Speaker 3: Man.
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Speaker 4: You just use a scissor, you know. I'm at the
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Speaker 4: point where I could just use he's a scissor. That's
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Speaker 4: crazy calling it a scissor. I mean, it is one thing.
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Speaker 4: It's two things that one thing make. Like a pair
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Speaker 4: of pants. I like to call pants a pant.
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Speaker 1: I've heard fashion fashion forward people call them pants.
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Speaker 4: I thought you were going to say the way fascists
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Speaker 4: talk about pants. That's a whole different.
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Speaker 1: That's a whole different episode. But we are going to
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Speaker 1: talk about something. You and I are both huge, huge
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Speaker 1: fans of badasses, and there might be a little language
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Speaker 1: in this one because we can't bleep out saying Badass.
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Speaker 4: No, it's necessary. Honestly, think Badass is totally PG. I
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Speaker 4: think it's PG not even PG thirteen.
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Speaker 1: Well, we're about to talk with an authority on that
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Speaker 1: very question and many other subjects. Of full disclosure, we
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Speaker 1: have been fans of this guest work for many, many years.
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Speaker 1: You know him as the creator of Badass of the Week.
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Speaker 1: You also know him through his numerous books he's written,
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Speaker 1: including things like Epic, the Epic Fails series, Guts and Glory,
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Speaker 1: you name it, follow Ridiculous Historians Welcome the world expert
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Speaker 1: on badassory, Ben Topsy.
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Speaker 3: Hey, guys, thank you so much for having me on
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Speaker 3: the show. I'm gonna say that I'm ridiculously happy to
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Speaker 3: be here. Has that joke been made a bunch? Or
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Speaker 3: is never the first? Am already off the note? We'll
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Speaker 3: give you another shot.
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Speaker 4: No, It's It's pretty cool though, man, because we kind
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Speaker 4: of come from the same like Internet one point zero
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Speaker 4: kind of background like with how stuff works, you know,
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Speaker 4: and just this sort of edutainment sort of like realm
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Speaker 4: of like articles that are trying to explain either history
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Speaker 4: or science or whatever in an approachable way. So we're
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Speaker 4: definitely kindred in that respect. How stuff works was maybe
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Speaker 4: a little little more reverent. Let's just say the badass
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Speaker 4: of the week. But you gotta tell us. I mean,
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Speaker 4: you just said before we came on the you know
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Speaker 4: that you've been running the site for like going on
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Speaker 4: twenty plus years.
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Speaker 3: So yeah, it's like nineteen years, been coming up on
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Speaker 3: twenty next year. So yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy to
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Speaker 3: be thinking about that.
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Speaker 1: What inspired it? I mean, I'm sure it's a question
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Speaker 1: get all the time, but like, what's the origin story?
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Speaker 1: Were you walking by somewhere and someone did something really badass?
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Speaker 3: No? I just you know, I studied history in college.
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Speaker 3: I've always just kind of loved these types of stories, right,
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Speaker 3: and you know, my dad was a big history guy,
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Speaker 3: so he was really into you know, he had like
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Speaker 3: this awesome like weapons and armor collection and would be like, oh,
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Speaker 3: this is an old like this is a Roman, you know,
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Speaker 3: replica of a Roman Gladius, and here's how you would
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Speaker 3: have fought with it. You stick them in like this.
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Speaker 3: And I thought that stuff was cool. And he'd start
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Speaker 3: telling me like fun little stories about things, and you know,
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Speaker 3: I kind of always think that anybody who loves history
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Speaker 3: had somebody who could make it real for you.
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Speaker 1: You know.
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Speaker 3: Yes, I do a lot of talks at schools for
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Speaker 3: the Guts and Glory series, and I always say that,
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Speaker 3: you know, a lot of history is just a bunch
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Speaker 3: of old, dead white guys and you have to memorize
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Speaker 3: their birthdays. And so if you can make it more
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Speaker 3: than that, I think that's really cool. And that's something
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Speaker 3: that you know, for me, I was just I had
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Speaker 3: done history in college, and I liked these stories and
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Speaker 3: I would read them for fun. And I was working
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Speaker 3: some cubicle job, think like Neo and the Matrix or
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Speaker 3: like you know, office space they think is kind of
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Speaker 3: the best analogy to what I was doing, and I
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Speaker 3: just had free time and I would just post these
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Speaker 3: little things on the internet, and you know, I'd get
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Speaker 3: four hits a week on my website and it would
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Speaker 3: be me three times, and then my mom and you know, and.
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Speaker 2: Then when when did it kind of turn?
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Speaker 1: Though?
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Speaker 4: Like when was that moment where you're like, oh, wait
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Speaker 4: a minute, now, what's going on here?
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Speaker 3: It kind of came out of nowhere. Yeah, I mean
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Speaker 3: it really did. Like I remember the first time somebody
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Speaker 3: I'd never met before set me an email because this
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Speaker 3: is even this pre dates Facebook and YouTube and all
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Speaker 3: that stuff, right, two thousand and four, and so remember
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Speaker 3: somebody sent me an email. I was like, hey, your
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Speaker 3: website's pretty cool. I was like so happy. I printed
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Speaker 3: it out and like thumbtack to the cubicle wall. I
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Speaker 3: thought that was cool. And then uh yeah, then it
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Speaker 3: was that it was like I was getting ten hits
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Speaker 3: a week and one hundred, and then at some point
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Speaker 3: it's just kind of went nuts. And one day it
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Speaker 3: was just like I'm getting a million hits a month
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Speaker 3: on my website and I'm just some idiot typing stuff
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Speaker 3: up on my computer.
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Speaker 4: And you know, welcome, welcome to the club. We're all
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Speaker 4: just some idiot to somebody. We are very special, you know.
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Speaker 4: I mean, I mean, as a consumer all of us,
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Speaker 4: I think of podcasts and internet writing.
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Speaker 2: I think, you know, there.
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Speaker 4: Are we have relationships with these folks that make them
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Speaker 4: almost feel like celebrities in our minds. Like there's a
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Speaker 4: handful of podcasts that I follow that if I met
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Speaker 4: the person who I spend you know, a bunch of
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Speaker 4: my week listening to, I would fanboy out, you know,
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Speaker 4: And it's not a famous person it's literally some idiot
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Speaker 4: on the internet, and like, this is my idiot.
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Speaker 1: Though you know, I fanboyed a little. We should be
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Speaker 1: we should be clear with the with our fellow ridiculous
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Speaker 1: historians tuning in today. It was off air, but I
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Speaker 1: fanboyd just because Ben. We're both named Ben.
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Speaker 2: All right.
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Speaker 1: Off to a great start and have been reading your
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Speaker 1: website for some time, and I think you really nailed
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Speaker 1: it when you said, we're sort of we're humanizing history, right,
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Speaker 1: We're giving you the soul behind the names and the dates.
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Speaker 1: And when we were talking and figured out we were
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Speaker 1: lucky enough to have you on thanks to the podcast
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Speaker 1: that you're working on with us. You gave us a
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Speaker 1: couple of different folks, a couple like a short list
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Speaker 1: draft picks of that ass is that a lot of
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Speaker 1: people may not have heard of. And there's one that
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Speaker 1: stood out to us for a couple of different reasons.
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Speaker 1: I might surprise people. We have to ask tai Jin.
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Speaker 1: Is that how it's pronounced?
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Speaker 2: Guess?
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Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure there's accent marks there that I
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Speaker 3: wasn't able to find the character.
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Speaker 4: The most important and easier to pronounce part is the
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Speaker 4: kung fu wear wolf let's just can't be confused with
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Speaker 4: the CNA Ti Jen, which is good, yeah, or the
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Speaker 4: teen Wolf or the teen Wolf, although it probably was
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Speaker 4: a bit of a teen when he got started, but
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Speaker 4: I got it before we did dive into the story
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Speaker 4: of Tai Jen. Do you have like a badass checklist?
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Speaker 4: Like what what doth a badass make? Or what doth
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Speaker 4: make a badass?
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Speaker 3: That was a really hard one for me, right because
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Speaker 3: you know, I'd been doing the website for maybe ten
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Speaker 3: years or so, and when I guess it was the
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Speaker 3: book came out in two thousand and nine, so I
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Speaker 3: guess I've been doing the website for five years. And
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Speaker 3: I wrote the book, and I'd written forty chapters for
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Speaker 3: the first Badass book, and then my editor was like, okay,
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Speaker 3: well now you need an introduction where you define what
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Speaker 3: a badass is. And I was like, I was like,
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Speaker 3: I don't know, this isn't read this story, isn't this
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Speaker 3: a badass? I don't know what to tell you, man, Like,
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Speaker 3: so I had to kind of sit there and look
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Speaker 3: at like, Okay, I've got Leonidas, I've got Vladdian Paler,
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Speaker 3: I've got Joan of Arc and I've got Horatio Nelson, Like,
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Speaker 3: what do all of these people have in common? Right?
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Speaker 3: You know, what does George Patton have in common with
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Speaker 3: Genghis Khan? I guess that's an easy one, but like,
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Speaker 3: you know, what does he have in common with Nicola Tesla?
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Speaker 3: I don't know, right, And so I had to really
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Speaker 3: sit down and think about it, and I think the
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Speaker 3: answer was perseverance of just just you know, it doesn't
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Speaker 3: really matter what it is you're trying to accomplish, as
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Speaker 3: long as you just go all out, like balls to
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Speaker 3: the wall all the time for it and you know,
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Speaker 3: get knocked down. Yeah, it's a nasty that's a that's
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Speaker 3: a that's a better word.
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Speaker 4: Because some of these figures you wouldn't necessarily consider like
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Speaker 4: the good guys of history. Some of these folks are
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Speaker 4: flawed and possibly quite on.
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Speaker 2: The evil side of things, you know.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that was it, right? Jan of RK's
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Speaker 3: a Roman Catholic saint, and Vladian Tylor was criminally insane.
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Speaker 1: Right right? And this is like this is strange too,
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Speaker 1: because one thing that I really respect about your mission here,
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Speaker 1: Ben is that it never right. There's always like, once
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Speaker 1: you've got that metric, you're describing or that kind of checklist.
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Speaker 1: As Noel said, then you can find the most amazing
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Speaker 1: acts of bad assory in all corners of the world,
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Speaker 1: throughout all cultures. And that's something that you know when
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Speaker 1: you were starting this, did you think I'm gonna run
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Speaker 1: out of bad asses or did you think this is
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Speaker 1: gonna continue? I mean, I'm sure you get suggestions all
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Speaker 1: the time from people who are like, hey, you know
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Speaker 1: who is a badass? My uncle Larry.
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Speaker 3: I do get a lot of that. I get a
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Speaker 3: lot of Really, my grandpa fought in World War two,
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Speaker 3: and I have some letters from him whenld you write
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Speaker 3: about him and it's like, yeah, I mean maybe I'll
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Speaker 3: look into it, right, And so yeah, I get tons
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Speaker 3: of suggestions. I have just an inexhaustible list and forget
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Speaker 3: about just like you know, there's all there's the big
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Speaker 3: ones you have to hit, the main guys in women
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Speaker 3: that you have to talk about the great badasses of history.
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Speaker 3: But it was also weird behind the scenes stuff and
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Speaker 3: role players and little mini stories and things that get uncovered.
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Speaker 3: And on top of that, like people are doing badass
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Speaker 3: stuff all the time. So a lot of stuff has
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Speaker 3: happened since two thousand and four. That was badass that
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Speaker 3: I probably could just make this like a news show
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Speaker 3: about the badass thing that happened this week. You know,
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Speaker 3: there's all kinds of green happening all the time.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, screenlt.
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Speaker 4: I think what has our cutoff been? Apartheid? Roughly ninety Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 4: mid nineties.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
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Speaker 4: I was sort of arbitrary, but we did the story
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Speaker 4: about this the gorilla that was sort of like a
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Speaker 4: hero gorilla in South Africa during apartheid, and I personally
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Speaker 4: was woefully underread on apartheid, and then realize what an absolute,
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Speaker 4: you know, monstrous event it was historically speaking, like on
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Speaker 4: the scale of something like a World war, like a
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Speaker 4: Holocaust situation, and then to realize that that was happening
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Speaker 4: like in our modern era. Basically we were alive for it,
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Speaker 4: and we were like, you know what, we're cutting it
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Speaker 4: off here.
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Speaker 2: Nothing past nineteen ninety four shall go in the show.
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Speaker 4: And of course we can move that scale as time progresses.
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Speaker 4: But I do think it's interesting the idea of what
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Speaker 4: is history? Obviously you always quote what is it?
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Speaker 2: Falconer? Yeah, history has never passed.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the past, the past has thought over the past
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Speaker 1: isn't even pasted right something like that.
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Speaker 2: I mean history, we're in it right now, you know,
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Speaker 2: we're living it right now.
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Speaker 4: But there's you know, for the purposes of curating a show,
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Speaker 4: probably smart to have some rules.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, but there is always stuff though, right, Like I mean,
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Speaker 3: a part time is pretty brutal, and there's a lot
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Speaker 3: of like examples of really deep and heavy and kind
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Speaker 3: of dark stuff to get in date like I wouldn't
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Speaker 3: it's kind of be on the scope of what I'm
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Speaker 3: trying to do with badass and what you guys, I think,
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Speaker 3: are probably trying to do too. But there are heroic
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Speaker 3: stories in there, right Like you can look at what's
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Speaker 3: happening in Ukraine right now. There's some really heroic stuff
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Speaker 3: happening right now. And even though it's kind of a
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Speaker 3: dark chapter. But yeah, what you said, right, you gotta
11:53
Speaker 3: you gotta call it somewhere.
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Speaker 1: I think this is our way in guys, because another
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Speaker 1: thing that you do is you approach this with scholarship,
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Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, I'm sure in some
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Speaker 1: of those cases, you know, you said something really interesting,
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Speaker 1: he said, I will read the letter, you know, Like sure,
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Speaker 1: I'll read the correspondence I'll check it out. But you
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Speaker 1: also are very upfront about what can and cannot be confirmed.
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Speaker 1: You interrogate the sources as well. We respect that, and
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Speaker 1: that is in a way part of part of why
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Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about the Kung Fu wear Wolf.
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Speaker 1: It's just like what a name. When I was a kid,
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Speaker 1: when I was younger been my dream job was to
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Speaker 1: be a werewolf astronaut on the moon. I was not
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Speaker 1: a very clever child.
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Speaker 4: You got the beard. Now you're halfway there. I'm shaving
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Speaker 4: this as soon as I find.
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Speaker 2: And only then will I stop talking about God.
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Speaker 4: No, but where's That's the way Kung Fu were Wolf reads.
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Speaker 2: It's like a b move.
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Speaker 3: Really like so, I mean that's the sequel to the movie.
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Speaker 3: That's the sequel to the Kung Fu Werewolf movie? Is
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Speaker 3: kung Fu Werewolf astronaut or Koko.
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Speaker 2: Like Leprechaun? You know, like he went all kinds of places?
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Speaker 4: So I think now is the perfect time, Like you said,
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Speaker 4: then we talked about some of the research and how
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Speaker 4: you know, sometimes the sources can be a little thin,
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Speaker 4: but sometimes that's what makes a story into almost more
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Speaker 4: like lore than it is, like actually a historical account,
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Speaker 4: and I think we run into stories like that all
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Speaker 4: the time, and the Kung Fu Werewolf of Shaolin at
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Speaker 4: that part myself, is just such a tale, and I
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Speaker 4: think this is a great time to really get right
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Speaker 4: into it. So Ben, give us the broad strokes, like
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Speaker 4: how can PETI even set the story up?
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Speaker 3: Okay, So I am going to preface this by saying
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Speaker 3: that the sources here are a mess. So I've started
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Speaker 3: up a podcast of my own Badass of the Week
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Speaker 3: through through your Guys' network, through iHeart and my co
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Speaker 3: host there she is a professor of history, so she's
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Speaker 3: kind of good at fact checking me on this as well,
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Speaker 3: which kind of helps. But okay, yes, for kung Fu
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Speaker 3: were Wolf tai Jin, Yeah, it's a mess. This is
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Speaker 3: a kind of a disaster of sources that are you know,
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Speaker 3: all over the place. You know, I'm gonna tell the
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Speaker 3: good parts that are in there, even though I can't
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Speaker 3: verify a lot of them, and I'll try to stipulate
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Speaker 3: where and when I'm kind of providing something that is
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Speaker 3: probably more along the lines of mythology and legend and
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Speaker 3: possibly the you know. The source here was some basically
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Speaker 3: action novel that was written in the late eighteen hundreds,
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Speaker 3: and you know, maybe it's based off a true story.
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Speaker 3: It says it's a based off a true story, but
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Speaker 3: so does Tarzan, So I.
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Speaker 1: Don't know, you know, fair point.
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Speaker 3: So it's gonna be kind of a mess, but it
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Speaker 3: is going to be an opportunity for us to talk
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Speaker 3: were wolves, shellon, munks, kung fu, you know, anchient China uh,
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Speaker 3: and skincare issues or skin diseases.
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Speaker 1: So for everyone who's wondering how those threads come together,
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Speaker 1: they we gotcha.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So ti Jin he was born in the
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Speaker 3: province of Fuki in China in eighteen forty nine to
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Speaker 3: a family of peasant farmers, and he as a very
15:26
Speaker 3: young child coming out he is afflicted with a real
15:31
Speaker 3: life a disease that we now know today as hypertrichosis,
15:35
Speaker 3: which you know, the beard thing is a great segue
15:38
Speaker 3: into this because hypertrichosis just means it's a broad term
15:41
Speaker 3: that just means a lot of body hair or a
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Speaker 3: lot of hair somewhere. So the clinical term for what
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Speaker 3: this child had was congenital hypertrichosis lanuguinosa, which is just
15:53
Speaker 3: when you have you're just totally covered in hair everywhere
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Speaker 3: your entire body, entire body, face, like some people get
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Speaker 3: it on their eye lids. It affects men and women.
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Speaker 3: It's the real thing that people suffer from. There's maybe
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Speaker 3: only about fifty documented cases of it in human history,
16:11
Speaker 3: but it is like genetics, so you people who have
16:15
Speaker 3: it can pass it on, which is kind of any.
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Speaker 4: There was a family in Latin America. I want to say, yes,
16:21
Speaker 4: I also had this.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. His name was Petro's Gonzales, and he was a
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Speaker 3: small child that was on the Canary Islands and he
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Speaker 3: was found by an Italian king and brought to this
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Speaker 3: court in Italy and he same thing, had hair covering
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Speaker 3: his entire body, and the uh.
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Speaker 4: There's images of him wearing kind of like Elizabethan like
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Speaker 4: ruffs and stuff, right.
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Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah, paintings of him so he
16:48
Speaker 3: was so interesting. Yeah, they had they had paintings made
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Speaker 3: of him. So he's in sorry, excuse me, it wasn't Italy.
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Speaker 3: He goes to France, so he is presented to King
16:58
Speaker 3: Henry the third of France, who's just kind of like
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Speaker 3: mind blown. I guess the French found this kid on
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Speaker 3: the Canary Islands, where like this is cool, took him
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Speaker 3: from his home and gave him to the King of France.
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Speaker 3: And the King of France was like, this is interesting.
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Speaker 3: That's a pretty That's something they don't see every day.
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Speaker 1: That's so weird too, just to think about being presented
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Speaker 1: to the king. It's like, you're the you're the king
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Speaker 1: of this world power, but you also somehow are still
17:24
Speaker 1: doing a variety late night show, you know what I mean.
17:28
Speaker 1: It's like and our next guest like get in a
17:30
Speaker 1: Hillary situation.
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Speaker 4: Whoever brought him out had to have like some sort
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Speaker 4: of serious preamble. It's now presented for the pleasure of
17:38
Speaker 4: his majesty, the seventh Wander of the world, the Wolfman
17:43
Speaker 4: of Borneo.
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Speaker 2: Or whatever you know.
17:45
Speaker 1: And then after and then we will be followed by
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Speaker 1: a cheese course, a juggler, and a.
17:51
Speaker 2: Fool and then proceed to the vomitory. Exactly.
17:56
Speaker 3: It's totally that though. I mean, that's one hundred percent
17:57
Speaker 3: of what it was, right weird.
17:59
Speaker 2: These people are are like children, that's all I'm saying.
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Speaker 3: Sorry, Garrett, And they didn't have TV. What are you
18:03
Speaker 3: gonna do all day? You're rich? You got no, you
18:05
Speaker 3: don't you don't work it? Right?
18:07
Speaker 1: What are the presentations that grow wary.
18:12
Speaker 3: You don't have like video games on your phone. I
18:14
Speaker 3: don't know what you do. I don't know what to
18:15
Speaker 3: do back then.
18:17
Speaker 1: So there's this real guy and this guy is a
18:20
Speaker 1: I've heard a little bit about this guy. So he
18:22
Speaker 1: is who's originally enslaved, I think, which is how they
18:27
Speaker 1: how they got him in the first place. But I
18:30
Speaker 1: had heard and Ben, maybe you can, uh, you can
18:33
Speaker 1: tell us how likely or unlikely this is. I had
18:35
Speaker 1: heard this guy Petrus might have been a part of
18:40
Speaker 1: the inspiration for stories like Beauty and the Beast. Is
18:43
Speaker 1: there any Santaz?
18:45
Speaker 3: So there's some of that. So he's interesting because the
18:49
Speaker 3: King of France decides that he wants you were right,
18:52
Speaker 3: he was enslaved, and the King of France wants him
18:56
Speaker 3: to go to school. He's like, give him a formal education.
19:00
Speaker 3: And I mean, this is a thing that comes up
19:02
Speaker 3: a lot, and we're doing a little bit with the
19:04
Speaker 3: Kung Fu werewolf thing, but like he's a he's a
19:07
Speaker 3: real person. He's a human being, and people are kind
19:10
Speaker 3: of are like, is he an animal? Is he what?
19:12
Speaker 3: Is he's a missing leak kind of thing? Is here?
19:15
Speaker 3: Is he had? Is he had is this some kind
19:17
Speaker 3: of satanic thing happening? There is all kinds of weird speculation.
19:21
Speaker 3: He's getting poked and prodded by all these doctors who
19:23
Speaker 3: are trying to figure out what's happening here because we
19:26
Speaker 3: now know that it's a mutation of the X chromosome,
19:29
Speaker 3: but they weren't quite there yet in fifteen sixty five
19:32
Speaker 3: or whatever, right, right, right, And so the King's like, oh,
19:37
Speaker 3: let's give him a formal education and see if he
19:39
Speaker 3: can learn, like just to see if we can do that.
19:42
Speaker 3: And and he can. He's a person, right, He he
19:45
Speaker 3: speaks French and Latin, he learns court etiquette, He dresses,
19:49
Speaker 3: you know, in those fancy clothes we see. He marries
19:51
Speaker 3: like he gets married to like a nice French woman
19:53
Speaker 3: and has kids who are also harry a boy and
19:56
Speaker 3: a girl, and they both have the same thing. He's
19:58
Speaker 3: passed it on to them and they they're covered in hair. Also,
20:01
Speaker 3: So there exists in places like yeah, like he got
20:04
Speaker 3: his portrait painted, but there's.
20:07
Speaker 1: Picture and he looks quite gangster in this. It looks
20:14
Speaker 1: like is you know, you have to wonder how history
20:17
Speaker 1: would treat him if there was a single drawing of
20:20
Speaker 1: him smiling.
20:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is not.
20:23
Speaker 1: He's always like, I mean, he had a hard life.
20:25
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, right, he's here just kind of broody, I think.
20:27
Speaker 3: Plus, back then you have to deal with like the
20:30
Speaker 3: old timey cameras and the old portraits and stuff.
20:32
Speaker 2: They're rarely completely still.
20:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got a hold totally still. Right, So even
20:37
Speaker 3: if you had a smile, you can't keep like the
20:38
Speaker 3: same dumb smile on your face for the twelve hours
20:42
Speaker 3: it takes this guy to paint your portrait. You just
20:44
Speaker 3: got to be able to stand there pretty motionless.
20:46
Speaker 4: And so you you might argue that there is more
20:49
Speaker 4: historical context and evidence around Gonzales than there is about
20:55
Speaker 4: the Gung Fu wear wolf.
20:56
Speaker 3: Right, way more, because I mean, we have people that
21:06
Speaker 3: went to their house like they were they were operating
21:08
Speaker 3: in Italy and in France. And he becomes known as
21:12
Speaker 3: Don Pietro because he gets like, you know, everybody likes him.
21:16
Speaker 3: Once he gets the chance to schmooze with the royalty.
21:18
Speaker 3: They all like him. Get he has a family. They're
21:21
Speaker 3: kind of like professional people who hang around medieval courts
21:25
Speaker 3: in the fifteen hundreds or whatever. And yeah, and he
21:28
Speaker 3: has kids, and people will go and draw him. There's
21:30
Speaker 3: lots of drawings of his children and stuff, and yeah,
21:33
Speaker 3: they do.
21:34
Speaker 2: His kids have the same condition you mentioned that being genetically.
21:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, both of his son and his daughter had it.
21:40
Speaker 3: And so there's pictures of a little girl wearing Elizabethan
21:43
Speaker 3: costume and she's got hair all over her face and
21:46
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, right, like there's it's pretty wild. But yeah,
21:51
Speaker 3: they hang around in castles, and in addition to Beauty
21:54
Speaker 3: and the Beast, there's a chance that they kind of
21:57
Speaker 3: lean into the the actual like werewolf mythology as we
22:01
Speaker 3: know it, because wherewolf mythology dates back to ancient Greece, right,
22:06
Speaker 3: the the the werewolves h the werewolf the original the
22:10
Speaker 3: o g werewolf story is a guy named like Chaon
22:14
Speaker 3: who who tried to appease Zeus by killing his own
22:19
Speaker 3: son and offering the entrails to Zeus and that made
22:21
Speaker 3: Zeus mad and yeah, like you have presented incorrectly.
22:27
Speaker 1: I need a different presentation.
22:30
Speaker 2: Different organ please, like aanthropy right right, Yeah.
22:34
Speaker 3: So he became like known as Zeus like chaos because
22:37
Speaker 3: like Cane was the king of a place called like Hostra,
22:41
Speaker 3: and the Zeus of that town turned people into wolves.
22:44
Speaker 3: If you offered them in trails, or if you killed,
22:47
Speaker 3: if you tried to eat people or stuff like that.
22:49
Speaker 3: And the deal like that.
22:50
Speaker 1: You pointing out. I like that you're pointing out the
22:52
Speaker 1: Zeus of that town. Yes, I might surprise some people.
22:56
Speaker 1: What do we mean by that?
22:58
Speaker 3: Because there's a different different in different towns where everybody
23:02
Speaker 3: was was capable of worshiping Zeus in their own special ways,
23:07
Speaker 3: and so the different towns had the different chapels and
23:09
Speaker 3: temples or whatever that that had different ways of worshiping Zeus.
23:13
Speaker 2: And I can respect that styling on it a little bit.
23:16
Speaker 1: We all crap our pants in this town for Zeus.
23:19
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and as long as you're putting money in
23:22
Speaker 3: the offering plate, like he.
23:23
Speaker 1: Don't care, thank you for coming to the annual.
23:26
Speaker 4: Craping pants are our number one export is pants.
23:30
Speaker 1: In pairs and singles and singles.
23:34
Speaker 3: So yeah, So that's where the like chanthropy comes from,
23:36
Speaker 3: is that that Zeus. And the deal was you turned
23:38
Speaker 3: into a wolf for nine years, and if you could
23:40
Speaker 3: stay a wolf for nine years without eating anybody, you
23:43
Speaker 3: got turned back into a human. What I don't know,
23:46
Speaker 3: you don't like you or whatever?
23:49
Speaker 4: Okay, people but there was no none of the whole
23:54
Speaker 4: like transformation based on a lunar cycle was.
23:58
Speaker 3: Nothing like that you were for you or a person
24:01
Speaker 3: even like Saint Augustine at one point said, which is,
24:03
Speaker 3: we're capable of turning people into wolves and back again.
24:06
Speaker 3: But there was no hybrid mix except for like that
24:10
Speaker 3: starts to show up around this time. And there's a
24:13
Speaker 3: dude in who is in France at the same time
24:18
Speaker 3: as Petris. He's named Giles Garnier. He's called the werewolf
24:24
Speaker 3: of Dolay because he killed an eight, like a half
24:26
Speaker 3: dozen children and people said he could like turn into
24:29
Speaker 3: a wolf and back again. And he was this crazy
24:31
Speaker 3: hermit that was killing and eating kids. And he is
24:34
Speaker 3: existing close to Petrius Gonzalez around the same time as him.
24:39
Speaker 3: And there's some discussion as to whether this is where
24:42
Speaker 3: the wolfman hybrid idea comes from, but we don't know.
24:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something else we see in other countries
24:50
Speaker 1: in Europe. Who's that guy Germany? Peter Stump I believe
24:55
Speaker 1: from a previous previous thing we did on stuff they
24:58
Speaker 1: don't want you to know about, like Canton Uh. He
25:01
Speaker 1: is also an alleged you know, canibal serial killer very
25:05
Speaker 1: nasty customer. But how does this Okay, so how does
25:09
Speaker 1: this all work out for our boy Petris before we
25:12
Speaker 1: even get to tij In. Like Petris is, he's gonna
25:15
Speaker 1: get lumped in with these folks, right.
25:17
Speaker 3: Not as much as you'd think, because I was trying
25:20
Speaker 3: to find a link there too. He's more like the
25:22
Speaker 3: beast and beauty and the beast, but this is kind
25:24
Speaker 3: of like but he does exist in this world and
25:26
Speaker 3: in this space where this is happening, and you know,
25:29
Speaker 3: and there's also like there's it's also entirely possible. There's
25:32
Speaker 3: no connection. Right when you were talking about Germany, like
25:35
Speaker 3: the Vikings and the Germans, they wore like wolf press
25:37
Speaker 3: into battle as berserkers. Yeah, and so that could be
25:40
Speaker 3: where the wolfman thing comes from. We don't know for
25:42
Speaker 3: sure any of this stuff, but but it is interesting
25:45
Speaker 3: that this guy Garnier was literally burned at the steak
25:49
Speaker 3: for being a werewolf during the lifetime of Petris Gonzalez.
25:53
Speaker 1: So I don't know that's that's gonna be. That's gonna
25:57
Speaker 1: be nuts too, for Petris and for the people in
25:59
Speaker 1: the court because imagine, you know, at this time in
26:02
Speaker 1: Europe you've probably seen a wolf. You've definitely seen a dude,
26:08
Speaker 1: and so people working with the information at the time,
26:11
Speaker 1: of course you would think he's a ware wolf.
26:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean remember the whole story of the Beast
26:14
Speaker 4: of yea Brotherhood of the Wolf, Brotherhood of the Wolf.
26:18
Speaker 4: Obviously wayt style on that story, but it's the same
26:21
Speaker 4: thing we run into all the time, and stuff they
26:23
Speaker 4: don't want you to know. When it comes to cryptids.
26:25
Speaker 4: It's usually the misidentification of a commonly seen thing, or
26:30
Speaker 4: there's some weird religious context that's wrapped up in it,
26:33
Speaker 4: or some kind of paranoia or superstition that turns some
26:37
Speaker 4: eyewitness account of like what is ultimately just kind of
26:40
Speaker 4: a burly wolf into like some sort of monstrous beasts.
26:43
Speaker 2: And that kind of thinking.
26:45
Speaker 4: While it seems like surprisingly I guess this was during
26:48
Speaker 4: kind of Enlightenment era, they were pretty nice to this guy.
26:51
Speaker 4: I mean like they raised him up in the court
26:53
Speaker 4: and treated him like a human if if he was
26:56
Speaker 4: presented at first more like an oddity, that ultimately kind
26:59
Speaker 4: of went away and you would not typically think of,
27:02
Speaker 4: you know, historical Europeans being quite so open minded as that, right.
27:07
Speaker 3: Right, right exactly, because that would be it was my
27:09
Speaker 3: thought too. It's like, oh, this must be like, you know, related,
27:11
Speaker 3: but no, no, I mean he seems like, you know,
27:13
Speaker 3: he kind of was able to overcome people's initial reaction
27:16
Speaker 3: to him and kind of just carve out in ordinary
27:19
Speaker 3: life as a as a guy who lives in the
27:24
Speaker 3: hangs out with the aristocracy of France and Italy, which
27:26
Speaker 3: is cool, which is kind of a good segue back
27:29
Speaker 3: into our guy ties in that we want to talk about.
27:32
Speaker 1: I got to say this right before we switch. It
27:35
Speaker 1: just hit me our boy Petris must have been an
27:39
Speaker 1: amazing people person Like this guy must have had a
27:43
Speaker 1: real personality that doesn't come across in the drawings, because
27:47
Speaker 1: he must convince he convinced France that he was cool.
27:51
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, I know where wolves will be getting
27:54
Speaker 1: a lot of bad press, right, but uh but the
27:57
Speaker 1: were wolf of the people think of me as like
28:00
Speaker 1: a where dude.
28:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, you can all hang seventeen charisma.
28:04
Speaker 1: You know, it's just there.
28:05
Speaker 2: It's kind of fantastic.
28:07
Speaker 4: So I think you you picked the exact right time
28:09
Speaker 4: to segue back into and again we switchep this up
28:12
Speaker 4: as talking about ti Jen, but I think in general,
28:14
Speaker 4: where it was talking about cool where dudes, uh history,
28:18
Speaker 4: and there aren't a ton of them, as he pointed out,
28:21
Speaker 4: But Tijen, you know, he is born.
28:23
Speaker 3: And was able to make at it was starting point
28:27
Speaker 3: guard in high school. Right.
28:28
Speaker 4: That was by the way, I was googling a little
28:31
Speaker 4: bit about this stuff, and you know how it'll tell
28:32
Speaker 4: you suggested or other people asked, it says what was
28:36
Speaker 4: movie about high school were Wolf? And the answers to
28:40
Speaker 4: is teen Wolf. Oh, it's also teen Wolf too, which
28:42
Speaker 4: was which had a Jason Bateman was in teen Wolf Too,
28:46
Speaker 4: that race from Memory Purpose. Yeah, he was a very young,
28:50
Speaker 4: up and coming actor at the time. People forget about
28:52
Speaker 4: that though. But ti Jen born in ancient China, again,
28:56
Speaker 4: a civilization society very much focused on things like evil spirits,
29:01
Speaker 4: things like malevolent forces, and probably a little bit of
29:05
Speaker 4: a oh shit moment when you know your your wife
29:09
Speaker 4: gives birth to a completely hairy infant. You might think
29:13
Speaker 4: maybe it wasn't even human at all. I meant, it
29:17
Speaker 4: comes out right who you've been hanging out with. But seriously,
29:20
Speaker 4: what how did that go over in this birthing situation?
29:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's eighteen seventy six, so it's it's a
29:28
Speaker 3: couple hundred years after Petris. So there's a photograph that
29:31
Speaker 3: is purported to be of this guy. So he's he's
29:33
Speaker 3: kind of like post Civil War is like the time
29:36
Speaker 3: period that we're in. But we're also in very rural China.
29:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, and and I'd like to correct myself. I
29:42
Speaker 4: did say ancient China, but I guess in my mind,
29:45
Speaker 4: when you're in that rural part of that part of
29:47
Speaker 4: the similar for all intensive purposes, you're operating with some
29:51
Speaker 4: of the same machinery, both literally and figuratively, as you
29:55
Speaker 4: were in those days.
29:56
Speaker 3: Absolutely, either way, they didn't have access to the American
29:59
Speaker 3: Journal of Human Genetics article of that kind of explains
30:02
Speaker 3: that this is that this is the mutation on the
30:04
Speaker 3: X chromosome. Yeah, you're right, you nailed it. They thought
30:07
Speaker 3: demon this is the work of demons or something, and
30:10
Speaker 3: so they left the baby out into the forest to die.
30:14
Speaker 3: And that was the indid okay.
30:16
Speaker 1: What they call exposure, yes, which which we've seen in
30:21
Speaker 1: other other cultures. If a if a member of a
30:25
Speaker 1: community is seen as too aberrant, or if they're seen
30:28
Speaker 1: as maybe too much of a liability, then it would
30:32
Speaker 1: be common or not infrequent for those people to be
30:36
Speaker 1: left in the woods, and it was seen as more
30:37
Speaker 1: humane than actually killing them.
30:39
Speaker 4: And it's the stuff of myth and fable these when
30:43
Speaker 4: these babies are found and then raised by wolves or whomever.
30:50
Speaker 2: Exactly.
30:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, but okay, so we've got so this kid infant
30:58
Speaker 1: really is left out in wild in in rural China.
31:03
Speaker 1: Obviously it's defenseless. Uh, given that it's just been introduced
31:07
Speaker 1: to life, things aren't looking good.
31:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, as the parents of like a little a little
31:13
Speaker 3: a little two year old, now, like I can't like
31:15
Speaker 3: kids are kids are worthless for the first like six months.
31:18
Speaker 3: I don't know how and I don't know how any
31:20
Speaker 3: humans ever managed to like walk this earth and make
31:23
Speaker 3: it past that first stage. But but yeah, so yeah,
31:26
Speaker 3: two things happen. You die of exposure or you accidentally
31:28
Speaker 3: create a Spartan warrior, which is what's going to happen here.
31:32
Speaker 1: And we've got to uh, we've got to hold the
31:34
Speaker 1: phone here, We've got a.
31:36
Speaker 2: Pause holding it. Yeah.
31:38
Speaker 1: Uh, we had such a good time that we we
31:42
Speaker 1: knew we would have to spend more time with our
31:45
Speaker 1: pal Ben.
31:46
Speaker 2: Yeah.
31:46
Speaker 4: More or less preemptive two parter, I would say, I mean, maybe, okay,
31:50
Speaker 4: maybe we could. Maybe we didn't know going But then
31:53
Speaker 4: as we started watching the clock and seeing how the
31:55
Speaker 4: conversation progressed, and then it kind of neatly snipped out
31:59
Speaker 4: into two sort of discreete conversations, we figured we would
32:03
Speaker 4: do that and make it be Badass of.
32:05
Speaker 1: The Week week Badass of the Week week on Ridiculous History. Big,
32:10
Speaker 1: big thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Big
32:13
Speaker 1: thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister.
32:16
Speaker 2: Oh h what my wolf? Y'all?
32:18
Speaker 1: Big thanks to kung Fu Howls, big thanks to what
32:23
Speaker 1: would that be? Where Wolf kung Fu would be like howlf.
32:25
Speaker 4: Kung Fu pandas and monks Wu Tang you.
32:31
Speaker 2: Know, unclear if any of these references land. These may
32:33
Speaker 2: not have occurred.
32:35
Speaker 4: It's okay, we're doing a little bit of stage setting,
32:38
Speaker 4: a little bit of foreshadowing, but yeah, huge thanks to you, Ben,
32:42
Speaker 4: and also to Badass Ben for being our guest.
32:46
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks.
32:54
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
32:58
Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
33:00
Speaker 2: It was