June 29, 2023 • 41 mins
Everyone can agree the story of T'ai Djin is amazing -- he was born afflicted with a rare genetic condition that made him look like a werewolf, was adopted by Shaolin monks and became the most badass guy in China -- but how much of the story is fact, and how much is fiction? In part two of this week's series, the guys chat with Badass of the Week creator Ben Thompson about T'ai Djin, the nature of heroism, myth, and much, much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. We're not gonna waste too much time
on housekeeping. Oh shout out to super producer Max Williams,
and shout out to you. No, I'm Ben. We're hanging
with another Ben today. This is part two where we
we got to hang out with the creator of Badass
(00:49):
of the Week.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
That's right, mister Ben Thompson, a fellow Ben and fellow
historical spelunker. Yeah, I look it up. That's the word.
It's not dirty like it sounds. Promise.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
It's a cave diving I think. So we're gonna do that.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We're gonna all join our history harnesses together to go
diving into.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The world of tai Jin the kung Fu werewolf of Shaolin.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Okay, let's pick up where we left off.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
At some point the child is gets comes into the
possession of a Shaolin monk, whether this monk is wandering
the forest and finds the child, or whether some villager
or woodsman comes upon the child and brings him to
the monastery. At some point this child becomes is placed
in the care of the Shaolin Temple for Fukin Province,
(01:42):
and I like to call it the Fukin Shawin Temple,
even though the correct opinion currently is Fujin.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, but you came to the right place, no pun
left behind it perfect.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I couldn't go through this without getting that joke out.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You know, I think, you know, a lot of Western
concept of the Shaolin monks come from the Wu Tang
clan and the movies that the Wu Tang.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Members of the Wu Tang clan were obsessed with.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The Shaolin monks, you know, practice insane you know, precise
precision kung fu, you know in this rural kind of
like you know, separated kind of isolated area.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Is all of that accurate or is.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Are we kind of we kind of like you know,
they're not exactly shooting fireballs at each other, but they
were seriously disciplined, you know, practitioners of these martial arts, right.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Yeah, I mean Taijian ain't nothing to with right like.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
He Yeah, the Shallan temples were were you know, there
was there was the main Shalin temple it's called the
Northern Shahlin Temple that's up in Hinan Province, that's up north,
and this is a Fujin province, so we're talking kind
of just across the strait of Taiwan, so we're in
the south and there is this is one of these things. Right,
(02:59):
We're talking eighteen seventy, and we don't have good data
on this, right, for whatever reasons, there's not a lot
of great Like the Imperial Chinese government was very good
at marking how many bales of hay were transported on
this day and on this day, but they don't have
like a great accounting of where all of the kung
Fu temples were, which is kind of frustrating when you're
(03:19):
going through this as a historian trying to make any
sense of these legends.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Right, A lot of them are bureaucratic records, right.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
Yeah, had very intense details on that stuff, but you know,
even trying to research old battles, it's like there were
one hundred thousand men on this side and one hundred
thousand men on this side, and one hundred thousand men
died and this side one, and it's like all right, hey, following.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
The following five pages are about the amounts of hay
and wheat that they were delivered over the course of
the following weeks, right right.
Speaker 5 (03:52):
And you're leading that and you're like, one hundred thousand
people didn't live in Europe at the time that this
hundred thousand people were killed. Like, can I get a
little more detail.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Let's let's focus on the important thing here, which is
of course the Hey. But okay, so it's it's weird
because there is this anomalous approach to historical records, right,
maybe different things are prioritized or documented in a in
a different way. That's that's one thing, Noel. You said
(04:22):
that's really interesting too, about how it's easy to think
this was ancient history, but again, history is so much
closer than it appears in the rear view mirror. I'm
saying all this to say, like Ben, there's pretty much
no chance that they would have known about Petras right now.
(04:42):
No villagers that.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
Would have got that story would have gotten here. These
two people are occup there, These people are operating in silos.
So even though several hundred years later, there's no chance
that there was a communication on that way. But there
are reports of there being at least one Shalin temple
in the south. So Shalin is kind of the martial
arts one. There are a lot of Buddhist temples, a
(05:04):
lot of Buddhist practitioners all over the country, but the
Shaolin is a particular branch that does the Wu Tang
clan martial arts the Shaw Brothers nineteen seventies, like punch
a hole in your chest kind of stuff. And the
temple is is going to be burned to the ground
and there's no evidence of where it was, and nobody
and a lot of places down there are trying to
(05:25):
claim lineage and dissent from the Southern Shaolin temple, but
we don't know where it was or if it existed
for sure, but a lot of people talk about it
and mentioned it, and so I think it's I feel
comfortable saying there probably was a Shaolin temple in the South,
although I don't know, okay, you know what I mean.
It's always hard to kind of but anyway, but they're
(05:45):
likely likely, Yes, it's likely that there was one. So
he is training at this he's brought to this Shallin
temple where there are martial arts monks, and the temple.
I believe it was probably pretty close to like guan Jou.
Like know, we're talking straight at Taiwan, but there's this
little coastal village nearby where people live, and the monks
(06:05):
live a little bit away from them in their own
kind of private area where they do prayers and they
train martial arts as a way of kind of like
you know, very Buddhist, you know, training your mind and
your body to be disciplined. This is where you see
all of that flying sidekicks and fighting with a staff
and all this cool stuff that we love and has
(06:26):
inspired every good action movie ever.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Right, and a shout out to a shout out to
empty hand kung fu.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That's different varieties of what they're practicing, which we have
to understand would have been much more than just a
cool flex back then, given that there were oftentimes strict
laws about what sorts of weapons could be owned or
about someone's place in society. Because of these specificities, you
(06:57):
would have to be able to deface yourself without the
advantage of some sort of implement like a uh oh,
like a cavalry broadsword. Did you go, yeah, yeah, exactly.
We didn't know what those were for a while.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
We just did an episode on Abraham Lincoln and his
uh not really popularized duel that involves swords where he
basically just used his reach to intimidate the other guy
into giving up.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Really weird, flex you know, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
I just to realize something the we're going to get
to the further badassy in the story, but just occurred
to me. This story is basically the plot of Beverly
Hills Ninja, uh, starring Chris Farley, only instead of a
here suits child, it's just a fat kid.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Yeah, it's comfortable, and it's all It's all of these movies, right,
It's just the only difference is his parents abandoned him
rather than were killed dramatically by somebody that he has
to slay at the end of the story.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
You knows, very Joseph Beverly Hill's Ninja, he is abandoned.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
There he's in a basket Moses style or something like that.
I literally watched this very recently. Does not hold up,
by the way.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Fortunately, Yeah, it's a shame. Maybe we keep our memories
with us.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I just think, unfortunately, and I mean, yeah, not to
psychoanalyze Chris Farley, you know, posthumously, but I'm sure he
did get to a point where he was a little
tired of doing that.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Hey, look at that fat guy falling down joke.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You know, as a as a fellow factory, I can
speak to that, and that would be a real bummer
for that to be the core of your hole, to.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Be type cast, to be fat cast. Yeah, and this
is like, this is something you know that ties in
already he's dealing with, according to the story, because he's
been type cast.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
As a demon and he doesn't make it one. That's yeah,
that's so.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Do the monks think maybe he has some cool powers
that he can harness, make him like our demon?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Is there anything along those lines?
Speaker 5 (08:49):
They're kind of like, you know, the Buddhist monks are
pretty chill, right, so they kind of all God's creatures
attitude towards anything, right, So so they raise him, and
what the first thing they try to do is get
him adopted out into into the town.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
You know, Oh, we found this child. Somebody's brought us
a child.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Different accounts say a monk found him versus he was
brought into the monastery. But they want to find a
good home for this kid. So okay, you know, but
nobody wants him right because he's different and that's not cool,
and so so they can't adopt him now, and so
he ends up getting raised by the monks in the temple,
which is not common. They don't raise children there. You
(09:29):
bring your kid to them when you're ready for him
to enter holy orders and become a monk forever, right, right.
They don't usually get access to like them at age
three to start training them. And the story goes that
there are ten masters at this at this school, and
generally when you come in as a padawan or whatever
you want to call it, you know, you get a sign,
(09:50):
you get a teacher, and the teacher teaches you, and
he's your your sense.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
For your entire career as a and so you're kind
of following their style right, right, And there might be
another man who has a different style, right and different
followers or paddawans, and your your styles will remain distinct.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Yeah, that's how you get those different styles. You're like, oh,
this is tiger crane style like that that. Oh, there's
a lot of that. But but one thing with ty
Jin is that he's growing up and he doesn't want
to go into town because regular people don't like him.
They think he's he's weird, or he's a demon, or
he's an animal or whatever. Other things, whatever problems they
might have with the guy that is covered completely head
(10:30):
to toe in fur uh. And so he doesn't want
to go into town and do anything. He doesn't want
to get a job, he doesn't want to be a fisherman.
He doesn't want to go down to the market or anything.
So he stays at the temple for his whole life
and he just trains with these guys and all of
the different masters, like you know, these ten masters, they
have their padawans, but he's kind of all their kid, right,
so as he's being as he's growing up, they're all
(10:52):
kind of part of his childhood. So they all and
you know, and he's always kind of hanging around and oh, hey,
can you show me this?
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Okay, can you show me this? This? This here?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And it is a is adoptive parents. It's like instead
of what is instead of three men and a baby,
it's like ten kung fu masters and a were wolf.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
So he basically gets all of the skills. Yeah, essentially, right.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
The tutoring from ten masters all day long, every day
for his entire life, and he becomes the master of everything. Again,
Like we're going off of very difficult to track sources here,
But the idea is that he kind of becomes the
(11:36):
Wikipedia of Chinese martial arts. He can do two hundred
open hands systems, one hundred and forty weapons systems, which
I didn't even know there was such thing as two
hundred and forty weapons.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
But can you be the five point palm exploding heart technique?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
Yes, he literally can. It's called dim It's called the
death touch. I called them.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
I called it the were wolf death touch in my
Badass of the Weak article, But it's not actually called that.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, I learned this from your work, Ben. I learned
that there was a real death touch. And then I
also I remember, and this is a while back, when
I was reading this, I remember thinking something along the
lines what you just said. I was like, one hundred
and fifty, one hundred and forty different weapons systems. I
was like, they can't all be amazing, you know what
(12:21):
I mean? There have to be like a couple of
also rans, you.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Know, like that poor gladiator with the trident and the net,
and you're like, you, poor bastard, I won't give me
a sort of shield any day.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
It's funny you're talking about that, because you know, as
a fellow Dungeons and Dragons fan, you'll appreciate this when
on a deep dive trying to learn whether tridents had
ever actually been used as a normalized weapon of war,
because the gladiators were so big on just novelty and
spectacle and impractical stuff. Right, everybody bare chest except from
(12:57):
my left shoulder, that's where the armor goes.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
Yeah, okay, cool, look look at it shine like, Well,
the trident and net guy was a warrior of Poseidon,
so in the because they're all doing the gladiator stuff
for show, so they're all representing gods in different parts
of the.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
World and things. So he's a warrior of Poseidon. So
the net and the trident are ocean things.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Super super inconvenient.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Great for like going fishing, you know, not for defending
yourself against the lion.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
But for costume parties, great for dragon cones, great for dragging.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
But because to what you were saying earlier too, because
you were like you were talking about, you know, not
having access to the good weapons, right, the peasantry of
of Fujin Province didn't have access to the good swords
and the good the good weapons and things. So you know,
in Japan it was illegal to have a sword in China,
you could, but it was expensive.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
It was prohibitively expensive and to have a weapon.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And so now we think of the countries that don't
allow guns, is like everyone's got knives and that's.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
The best they can do.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, there was a time where swords was chechno. These
swords were technology, the height of it, the best ones,
the sharpest steel they would hold that ads.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
That was a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
Yeah, you gotta have something that can smelt that. You
gotta have some way of forging that. You gotta have
a guy that knows how to do that, right, And
your blacksmith in town is making nails and horseshoes, right,
he's not making chain mil armor and so yeah, so
I mean it's a lot of staff, spear that kind
of stuff. But in an open hand fighting, like you said,
because it's not like you don't need a sword. You
need a sword at this time period more than you
(14:29):
need arguably more than you need weapons today, because there
are like literally bandits and literal wolves and wild animals.
There's bears that like, there's pirates that there's all kinds
of crazy stuff that will like you know, you are
not immune in this time period in this part of
the world from like bandits showing up and setting your
village on fire, right.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And so now this kid is
becoming we're in that action montage, that training montage, yeah,
towards the end of the first act, beginning his second
act in our story, and now we see him, you know,
now he seem to doing like manthis style, switching his
(15:09):
some tiger crane. Somebody throws something behind his back and
he catches it without turning on right.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And then flash to he's he is a He's no
longer a wolf boy. He's a wolf man, and he
has given serious responsibility because of the fact that he
has mastered all of these techniques and is essentially like
the best one.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Oh the line the montage stops with someone saying, there's
no more we can teach him.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
It's right, it cuts him and then the fan blows
the fur like dramatically in.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Front of him.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
But what happens then, I mean he's he's at home
in this monastery. Is that like when do the big
bads come in that threaten their way of life? And
then he has to step up and like, you know, lead,
lead the way save the day.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
So there's a couple of really good stories, and you know,
the the existence of this man is probable. These stories
are almost certainly a little bit more legendary than than
what we've already gotten into, right, Like, like I said,
there is a photo. I've seen two photos that are
(16:18):
purported to be of this guy. He's not wearing a
Shallolin costume or anything in them. He's wearing like a suit.
But you know, it's searchable. You can look up ty
Jin and see a photo of this person, and we're
pretty I'm pretty sure he existed for real. These stories
are kind of when you're getting into and like, I
don't know how this hasn't been a like Wu Tang
(16:39):
Clan movie, but it should be, you know, all right, Yeah,
I think we're kind of freestyling the script for it
right now.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So let's do it absolutely. Yeah, we got the mon guys.
We nailed that montage.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
That was solid. Yeah, I think Rizzo would approve. Maybe
he'll do the soundtrack.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
Oh yeah, Okay, So there's a couple of stories about
this guy. He becomes the first grand master of this
temple and which might be the Southern Shaalann temple, like
I said, I don't know about that, but he becomes
the grand Master, the first one, because these ten masters
have all combined their knowledge into this one.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Super super guy.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
Okay, so this is where some of the really kind
of out there stories come from, but I will tell
them because they're cool. One of the stories that kind
of illustrates how good tai Jin became at fighting and
understanding the world around him is that he was entering
a class and there were twelve different monks there that
(17:35):
we're going to have this class with him, and he
entered the classroom and then he pulls out a knife
and he throws it up into the ceiling and some
assassin like falls out of the rafters and he's like,
He's like, I heard thirteen breaths when I entered the room.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
There must have been someone else.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Here, which is also what a tough first day of class, like,
he just punked the hell out all twelve of those folks.
You know, how long were they in that room? Right? Wait?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Wait, but these were these were these weren't like, this
wasn't a test. These were actual ninja assassins.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
It was an actual assassin in the story has told
it's an actual assassin. I like to think that he
planted that guy there to intimidate his class.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
For day one of being like, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The guy's an action, you know, got he got a plant,
and he just conveniently didn't tell him, hey, I'm going
to kill you.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
At the end, probably was fine, he probably paid. I
think the whole thing was no.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Okay, but that that's a crazy impressive that's like, that's
like did it happen level impressive.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Yeah, almost certainly, not almost certainly, this didn't happen. But
that's the story.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
That's a story associated with him. And like I said,
we're gonna get into I'm going to get into a
couple more of these. One of these stories says that
he he would when he had run out of like
viable sparring partners in the temple, he would go into
the wilderness and like fight wild animals like wolves and
bears and wrestling to kind of train himself. And and
he'd like you know, punch trees to tighten up his
(19:07):
knuckles and all of this kind of stuff that you
read about with that's.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
All in the montage, right, Yeah, that's going.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Have you seen that movie? Are r R?
Speaker 2 (19:19):
It's like Indian kind of giant action set piece film.
Great for best song, It's fabulous, But there is a
character who the first montage you see is him literally
swinging through the jungle and like fighting tigers and bears
for sport kind of you know, and it's makes me
think of the stuff you're describing here. It is an
(19:39):
excellent film. Highly recommend it also entirely mythology.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
Yeah, this is a jetly movie, like but one of
the ones that he makes in Hong Kong for Chinese audiences,
you know what I.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Mean, And while and check that stuff out while you're
waiting for Ridiculous History Studios to come out with h
the Taijin Story, which I see as the first of
a like a cinematic universe.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
To Kung Fu Werewolf franchise.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
There it is, right, yeah, and then you get you
get like the Space Traveler one, and then you combine
them in the third movie. For that's when that's when
we all go to we were all astronauts.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Okay, it's gonna be it's gonna make sense that he
goes to space. It's all gonna make sense.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
We're gonna earn it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
We're not just gonna chuck him into space just because no,
we're gonna it's gonna be a cliffhanger on the previous thing,
and there's villains space ninjas coming.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, I must go.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
We know the guy who did the catering on the
Leprechawn franchise. So this is like high art.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, shooting for it. But but how did okay? So Taijan.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
This is just for a lot of these characters, uh,
these semi apocryphal characters in the historical record, they often
have one big story, you know what I mean, and
this guy has several.
Speaker 5 (20:55):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
It doesn't stop with this, Frankly, I don't I don't
want to reuse the term. But it doesn't stop with
this badass killing of an assassin on the ceiling, right.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
So the one of the big stories involving him is
that this coastal village of people that was near his
temple was coming under an attack from pirates. So there
there's a word for these people there called tohu. It's
a type of you know, the Chinese user to refer
to Japanese pirates that are kind of raiding the coastline.
(21:25):
And we don't know for sure if they're Japanese or whatever.
They just kind of called anybody who was who was
not Chinese who was raiding the coastline toho. But we
do know that like across the way in across the
Strait of Taiwan, Japan is moving into Taiwan. Okinawa is
near ish to the area, So it wouldn't be that
weird for there to be Japanese pirate raids along the
(21:47):
coast here, and if not, it could just be bandits
or just regular old Chinese pirates. But this is a
thing that happened in coastal villages in the late nineteenth century.
And one of the stories says that ty Gin and
somebody led led his monks uh into combat against Japanese
pirates who had kind of stopped to plunder the village.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
They went onto onto the high seas.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
Yeah, well, yeah, I don't know if he I don't
know if he fought them on the coast or if
he got onto their boats. I love the idea of
thinking that he got onto their boats and was fighting boats.
That's just amazing to me, right, defending, defending the village
that didn't want him, nobody would adopt him, and and
he's still going.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well again, he's bounding from boat to boat, taking people
out as he goes, I mean.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Inexplicably now, uh, in deep deep relationships with sharks.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Yeah, he's ripping.
Speaker 5 (22:44):
Planks off the boats and they're sinking, you know, punching
bolts in the halls.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Bullet time shots of him like splintering wood.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
You know. Sorry, we got to think about this cinematically.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
Yeah, So we do actually have stories of shellon monks
doing this kind of thing. So while we don't know
for sure if this story is true, there's like, the
only places this is mentioned is in very unreliable with
very unreliable narrators. But there is a very real, confirmed
story of shellon monks fighting these coastal raiders. It's a
(23:14):
little bit up north, and it's a couple of hundred
it's a couple of hundred years before this, but there
was a story of stories where the monks would come
to the aid of villages that were in trouble. And
in one particular of these stories, it was in the
fifteen fifty something, the one hundred pirates had come ashore
to plunder this town, and the monks showed up, and
(23:38):
there were about one hundred monks that showed up and
they fought these guys and they beat down the pirates
and the pirates are running for it, and the Shellon
monks chased them for ten days across twenty miles of
swampland before and they don't stop until they've killed every
pirate that was involved in the raid. They lose four
monks in the battle.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
That's what people don't think of when they think of Buddhism. Yeah,
you know what I mean. So wait, there were only
four monks.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
Only well, there were one hundred monks only four months die,
but one hundred only four Yeah, yeah, Like warrior monks
are crazy.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
You know.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Japan has a huge culture of like warrior monks who
resisted the emperor of you know, fighting with naginadas and
stuff like that, and I mean just really tough guys.
And they lived up in these mountains that you couldn't
get up to them. And there was a temple of
of Buddhist monks in Japan that they were able to
(24:36):
resist Nobunaga for like thirty days or something. He couldn't
take there, couldn't take their fort.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Wow, it's really cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
This is making me think that it's quite possible the
individual taij in may have become sort of an historical
repository for these true stories about many different people.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
It seems that way.
Speaker 5 (24:57):
That's how I feel about it, and that's kind of
why I don't have too much of a problem talking
about them, because I, like you said, I like to
back up the stories and review the sources and all
of that, and something like this is kind of it's
such a cool story, but it's so like, it's kind
of so out there and it's so hard to verify
any of this stuff. I like it as an opportunity
to talk about the history of were wolves and the
(25:19):
history of Fred Petris and of this skin condition, and
of showIn monks in general, warrior monk culture. Like it's
cool stuff, kung fu like everything well.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
On our other podcast Ben and I do with our
buddy Matt called stuff they Don't want you to know.
It's a critical thinking conspiracy podcast. A lot of times
conspiracies and conspiracy theories are a way in to talk
about a larger question, you know, whether it be existential
or historical or like, what's at play here?
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Why do people think this? You know?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
And we're not here to tell you yes, this conspiracy
is true. Yes, we're debunking this or whatever. But it's
just always a fun way in so, even if we
take it with a grain of salt and are very
transparent about it, is a fun thought experiment and conversation.
And speaking of that with Tai Jim, what's all this
about him burning down at temple? Yeah, that doesn't sound
(26:09):
like good guy behavior.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
No, that's our that's our third act twist, I think.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
See this is the third act twist. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
He's fighting off monks, and I do like this story
of like, you know, the hundred monks running and I'm
picturing them with bostaffs, right because they probably didn't run.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Down crouching tiger stuff. Yeah, just flying.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, and you know what, forget the historical accuracy. They
are doing parkour.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
They're very visibly do it.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Like shallan spider man is what I want us to
tell the cinematographer.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
But yeah, so it's kind of what I was saying
with those the Japanese monks who resisted Nobunaga. One problem
with Buddhist monks in the eye of the emperor is
that the emperor of China and Japan and any other place,
the shogun, the warlords, they don't want you to be
paying attention to some worshiping some other god. The emperor
is all that you need, right, Like, these guys have
(27:13):
their own code, they have their own ideas, they think
about this. They're not in the system right and so
in a lot of a lot of ways their trouble
and so they can cause problems. Sometimes the emperors used them.
There was a battle in like six hundred when the
Tong dynasty was being formed, and he recruited Shaolin monks
(27:34):
to have battles in the mountains against his enemies. And
he was like, oh, well, I'll give you, like you know,
I'll give you some concessions. You guys can kind of
be autonomous and do your own thing, but you have
to help me win win the empire.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
And they did, and they go into battle and.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
They beat up all of these bad guys and are
bad guys, but they beat up all of the enemies
of the future Tong emperor.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
It reminds me a little bit in some ways of
the relationship that the Temple Knights had with the bluling
powers of their day. Right where they would be they
were useful as special forces essentially, but then if they
became ideologically problematic. There wasn't really anything to stop the
(28:17):
ruler from saying, these folks.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Are verboting, you're out. It's exactly, do not pass go Okay. Yeah,
So they.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
They're useful because and you can predict what they're gonna
do because they have a code of conduct that they
don't want to shake. So it's it's predictable, you know
what they're going to do. So yeah, they're very good.
Shalon monks have been used in battle by emperors or
want to be emperors. Uh, you know they're not gonna
you don't want to put them in front of a
cavalry charge. But if you've got to like fight some
guys on some tough terrain in the mountains, or you know,
(28:45):
you want to ambush some people who aren't really ready
for it, or have them hold a pass like they
they're they're very effective at what they do, which is
fight hand to hand.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
We need monks, Yeah, absolutely, we need like a crew
of Shaolin monks.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Yeah, like on retainer.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
Yes, yeah, anyone to go around the grocery store with
me and kind of make sure the aisles are clear.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
I okay, poist to bin for the specificity on that
one I don't know what happened to you in Asle
nine man, but they've.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Really left the mark.
Speaker 5 (29:18):
They're just always stocking the thing that I need, or
it's it's always some slow person with a double cart
trying to and if.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
They're stocking, you have to do the thing with the
forced conversation where you're like, oh, hey, I just.
Speaker 5 (29:33):
Need to in here a second and look at this
display because I don't actually know what I want yet,
So I'm just gonna stand over you for a minute.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
You know, you get in there, right.
Speaker 5 (29:44):
I don't know if I need the extra extra pimento
for the olives or what do I need black green?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
Wouldn't it be easier to just get tied into roundhouse,
kick that dude in the head, and then you have
plenty of time to stand there and make your decision.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
The story is true. Villains, I would argue solution oriented though.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
I like it because it feels like it's it feels
like something that's happened to a lot of us has
nothing due tize in. But you know, you've been in
this situation where you're thinking, I don't really want a
bunch of extra conversations, so while this really slow person
is apparently having an existential crisis about this tomato sauce.
(30:22):
I'm gonna stand next to them and look like I'm
interested in something I know I'm not.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I just don't think this would meet the code of
the challenge. I just don't think this would fit the
bill for them. They would probably have to have to
be a pass for them.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
They might they might, you know what, they might have
follow up questions. They might say, like, well, which grocery
store is it? Because we respect the code of trader.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Joe, Yeah, exactly, but public's is the public's their game?
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Yeah, see in that in that instance, I have to do.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
I have to become the emperor of China here, because
the emperor at this point, he's the We're in the
Chin Dynasty, which is run by a group of people
called the Manchus who are up north there, not ethnic
Han Chinese, and so the ethnic Han Chinese don't like
them as much, and they're kind of cracking down a
little bit on some of the Buddhism stuff, and the
(31:10):
monks don't like it, and the monks speak out against
the Chin dynasty. And if you are the emperor of
the Chin dynasty. You got to get rid of these guys, right,
they're a problem. You're you're useful until you're not useful
to me, and now you're a problem. So the Chin
dynasty sends troops to burn this monastery to the ground,
and so ti Jin is not the problem here. There's
(31:30):
there's two guys that kind of run this monastery as
as with them, assuming it was run the same way
as the regular Shellin monastery up north, which is you
have like a spiritual leader who kind of runs the
whole show, and then ty Jin is the is the
combat instructor. He's the main fighting guy, but he's not
the spiritual head of the of the thing. And so
(31:51):
for whatever reason, politics get involved, and the temple has
a problem with the emperor, and the emperor decides that
these guys got to go, and he sends an army
and there's a there's a battle.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
The monks try to.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Fight these guys off, but it's hard, right, I mean,
they've got armor and swords and horses and all these things.
And so what ends up happening is the monastery kind
of partly under tai Jin's direction, they clear all their
stuff out, they clear their people out, a group of
monks stays to try to buy them time, some kind
(32:23):
of like a little last stand. Various sources argue on this,
like some say they they stood and fought, and only
a handful survived thirteen, sometimes say five. Some say thirteen.
A small group of monks survived this battle. Others say
that everybody just left before the emperor got there. And
in whatever happens in this battle, Taijin survives, and the
(32:46):
temple was burned to the ground, and we don't know,
we've never found it, we don't really know where it is.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I love the idea of the preemptive torching. I think
that's yeah, that's very very clever. Yeah, you know, doesn't
exactly make sense. They could have just taken their stuff
and then you know, hit the road. But it's a
nice flourish when, like, you know, I get these soldiers
just ready to burn some to the ground and they
get their weight at what it's already burning.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Too.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yeah, I guess we'll go back home.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I mean, that's pretty that's pretty metal. Very bad ass, Yeah,
very bad ass.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
So let's recap infant born super hairy.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
They think it's a demon. They leave him in the forest,
he's rescued by Shlin monks. He learns from all of
the great masters of this monastery, becomes the first true
grand master, defends the village, does some fights of bear,
and then at the end he's the only grand master
that this temple will ever have because he burns the
whole place to the ground on.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
His way at the door.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Epic epic. That's our log line. And this is okay,
so and again the late eighteen hundreds right by this,
there's a photograph of this guy.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah, like that's how recent.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
He is and so wild.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So I remember that there is a bit of a denument,
as we would say here. He does survive all these
trials and tribulations. According to according to the story, he
lives well into old age, Isn't that correct?
Speaker 5 (34:16):
Yeah, The story goes that he dies in nineteen twenty
eight at the age of seventy nine. The monks kind
of disperse and like continue their teachings, but not in
like an organized fashion. Again, and so that's the story.
Like I said, the sources on here are very unreliable
and very bad, and a lot of it is you know,
(34:37):
has to be taken with a ton of salt. One
of the things that I like to joke about is
that they're the One of the Horde priest trainers in
the world of warcraft is named tai Jin and she
has a much longer WOWPDA.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
Entry than Tijin as Wikipedia entry.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So speaking of here, here are other things that happened
right around this time, the time of this guy's death,
just to give us the historical context. No, I know
you and I are both endlessly fascinated with nineteen twenty
eight when when he passes away at the age of
seventy nine. Here are some things that are believed to
(35:17):
be invented that year, the recliner, like the lazy Boy,
ice cube trays, bubble gum, clip on ties, and the
electric razor.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I mean, hell, my dad was born only ten years
later than this, and he was pretty old.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
But that's wild.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
And again, the details of the story, because of its isolation,
really does read like an epic, you know, kind of
fantasy Kung Fu crouch t.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
And does it all feel separate from history in its
own way. It's like in its own little bubble.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (35:51):
And that's what you said about feeling ancient, right, because
when you picture Shaalin kung fu monk fighting pirates. You
don't picturing so like eighteen you know, let's say he
was in his thirties when this happened. And I do
think that there is a lot of what we were
talking about before of like ascribing things that everything that
every badass monk did to this guy, because like now this, Yeah,
(36:12):
it's like if he's in his thirties, right, So let's
say let's say we're looking at like eighteen eighty, uh,
when those pirates show up and he has to like
defend the coastline against the pirates. The Japanese had bolt
action rifles in eighteen eighty, you know, like we're not
talking swords, you know, So like I don't know, I
think it makes it harder to buy that this happened
(36:33):
the way that it was written. But you know, but
the Arisaka rifle was like introduced around that time period.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
And we can't you know, it's so attempting to compare
apples and oranges, like like, I'm I will be honest
with you guys, I never thought about it, but I
find myself looking down on the inventor of the clip
on tie a little bit because you lived in the
same world as this guy, and your contribution is that
I can't talk.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Man.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
One time, I fell asleep trying to put out a pants.
People are out here changing the world.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Is important to certain people.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
You know. I have to look up a YouTube video
every time I tie a tie. But I would never
be cut dead in a clip on. I will look
up that YouTube video.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll tell you though. Uh I I
feel like I may be unfairly denegrading this well meaning
inventor who is just trying to save time for children.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Let's just think of it as for children. Okay, you're right,
You're right. I'd be really.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
Rough on the thing that comes up for me a
lot is that. Like, you know, so I do Badass
of the Week. I got the podcast, I got the website.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
It's a badass.
Speaker 5 (37:33):
And so people come to People will sometimes get kind
of their back up and be like, what.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Do you what's so badass about you? Dude? Nothing? Nothing,
man Like I can't talk to you about it? Yeah, let.
Speaker 5 (37:47):
Yeah, you go have your conquest. I'll be I'll be stonius.
I'll write the story when you get back, but please
don't hit me.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Right, it's a little easier for us because people ask
us what's they don't have to ask us what's so
ridiculous about it?
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Because it's clear. Yeah, and we walk into a room
there it is.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Messed up that we can vote, that's true. So this
is the uh So this is where I think we
begin to wrap the story a little bit then, because
people are going to have to learn more by going
to the podcast bad Ass of the Week, which.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Exists wherever you get your fine podcast material really quickly
that I wanted to point something out that you did
mention in the article on the website that this condition.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
This uh hypercusis.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
That's the one is typically life threatening. Oh that's right, right,
And like this this guy lived to the ripe old
age of roughly seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
You know, they don't, we know. And it's rare in.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
The first place, So how much even more rare must
it be to have the version of it that you
can basically lived and.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Then even those days that was a that was a
long life.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
And he's fighting pirates and bears too, right, Like that's
that's not good for your and he's an enemy of
the emperor. It's not great for longevity. But yeah, like
we've got maybe fifty people. Well, I think over the
course of like, you know, because this is a thing
that is documented pretty well, because they'll be like, oh
do this guy at all, you know, and you can
run into some really bad stuff with this.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
I think, you know, they like a lot of like
sideshow kind of stuff.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
From the eighties, eighteen eighties, you know, like the Jojo,
the dog faced boy and you're like, oh god, I
don't want to say that out loud, but it's worth
mentioning in context with hyper trickosis because that's how these
people were viewed by by the societies and at the time, right,
Like and so.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
It's he's playing life on hard mode, right.
Speaker 5 (39:31):
And it's cool that he was able to have so
much success with it, which you know, it's inspiring, right.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
And and couldn't be couldn't be happier to have you
join us this week on on our Little show Man again,
as you said off here, big big fans, and thank
you so much.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Ben.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Where can people learn more? Not just about the podcast,
which as we say, is available everywhere you find your
favorite shows, but where can where can our fellow ridiculous
historians learn more about your work? Learn more about your books?
Speaker 3 (40:02):
And so on.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
Okay, so the website is Badass of theweek dot com.
It's all one word and it should should pop up
and then all them books are on Amazon or whatever
else and.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Hey, you get busy.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Well, thanks again for hanging with us, man, and look
forward to hopefully having you back again, or maybe we
can I don't know, continue this ridiculous history love fest
in the future.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
Yeah, thank you guys so much. I'm a fan of
your guys as well. I'm a I'm a longtime.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Subscriber, so oh gret was really.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
A good opportunity for me to be on here, so
I'm very happy about it.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Do you hear that?
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Bill?
Speaker 1 (40:38):
We're coming up in the world. Maybe it's time to
buy some clip on ties. Never, I agreed, I agreed.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. We're not gonna waste too much time
on housekeeping. Oh shout out to super producer Max Williams,
and shout out to you. No, I'm Ben. We're hanging
with another Ben today. This is part two where we
we got to hang out with the creator of Badass
(00:49):
of the Week.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
That's right, mister Ben Thompson, a fellow Ben and fellow
historical spelunker. Yeah, I look it up. That's the word.
It's not dirty like it sounds. Promise.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
It's a cave diving I think. So we're gonna do that.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We're gonna all join our history harnesses together to go
diving into.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The world of tai Jin the kung Fu werewolf of Shaolin.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Okay, let's pick up where we left off.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
At some point the child is gets comes into the
possession of a Shaolin monk, whether this monk is wandering
the forest and finds the child, or whether some villager
or woodsman comes upon the child and brings him to
the monastery. At some point this child becomes is placed
in the care of the Shaolin Temple for Fukin Province,
(01:42):
and I like to call it the Fukin Shawin Temple,
even though the correct opinion currently is Fujin.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, but you came to the right place, no pun
left behind it perfect.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I couldn't go through this without getting that joke out.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You know, I think, you know, a lot of Western
concept of the Shaolin monks come from the Wu Tang
clan and the movies that the Wu Tang.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Members of the Wu Tang clan were obsessed with.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The Shaolin monks, you know, practice insane you know, precise
precision kung fu, you know in this rural kind of
like you know, separated kind of isolated area.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Is all of that accurate or is.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Are we kind of we kind of like you know,
they're not exactly shooting fireballs at each other, but they
were seriously disciplined, you know, practitioners of these martial arts, right.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Yeah, I mean Taijian ain't nothing to with right like.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
He Yeah, the Shallan temples were were you know, there
was there was the main Shalin temple it's called the
Northern Shahlin Temple that's up in Hinan Province, that's up north,
and this is a Fujin province, so we're talking kind
of just across the strait of Taiwan, so we're in
the south and there is this is one of these things. Right,
(02:59):
We're talking eighteen seventy, and we don't have good data
on this, right, for whatever reasons, there's not a lot
of great Like the Imperial Chinese government was very good
at marking how many bales of hay were transported on
this day and on this day, but they don't have
like a great accounting of where all of the kung
Fu temples were, which is kind of frustrating when you're
(03:19):
going through this as a historian trying to make any
sense of these legends.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Right, A lot of them are bureaucratic records, right.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
Yeah, had very intense details on that stuff, but you know,
even trying to research old battles, it's like there were
one hundred thousand men on this side and one hundred
thousand men on this side, and one hundred thousand men
died and this side one, and it's like all right, hey, following.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
The following five pages are about the amounts of hay
and wheat that they were delivered over the course of
the following weeks, right right.
Speaker 5 (03:52):
And you're leading that and you're like, one hundred thousand
people didn't live in Europe at the time that this
hundred thousand people were killed. Like, can I get a
little more detail.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Let's let's focus on the important thing here, which is
of course the Hey. But okay, so it's it's weird
because there is this anomalous approach to historical records, right,
maybe different things are prioritized or documented in a in
a different way. That's that's one thing, Noel. You said
(04:22):
that's really interesting too, about how it's easy to think
this was ancient history, but again, history is so much
closer than it appears in the rear view mirror. I'm
saying all this to say, like Ben, there's pretty much
no chance that they would have known about Petras right now.
(04:42):
No villagers that.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
Would have got that story would have gotten here. These
two people are occup there, These people are operating in silos.
So even though several hundred years later, there's no chance
that there was a communication on that way. But there
are reports of there being at least one Shalin temple
in the south. So Shalin is kind of the martial
arts one. There are a lot of Buddhist temples, a
(05:04):
lot of Buddhist practitioners all over the country, but the
Shaolin is a particular branch that does the Wu Tang
clan martial arts the Shaw Brothers nineteen seventies, like punch
a hole in your chest kind of stuff. And the
temple is is going to be burned to the ground
and there's no evidence of where it was, and nobody
and a lot of places down there are trying to
(05:25):
claim lineage and dissent from the Southern Shaolin temple, but
we don't know where it was or if it existed
for sure, but a lot of people talk about it
and mentioned it, and so I think it's I feel
comfortable saying there probably was a Shaolin temple in the South,
although I don't know, okay, you know what I mean.
It's always hard to kind of but anyway, but they're
(05:45):
likely likely, Yes, it's likely that there was one. So
he is training at this he's brought to this Shallin
temple where there are martial arts monks, and the temple.
I believe it was probably pretty close to like guan Jou.
Like know, we're talking straight at Taiwan, but there's this
little coastal village nearby where people live, and the monks
(06:05):
live a little bit away from them in their own
kind of private area where they do prayers and they
train martial arts as a way of kind of like
you know, very Buddhist, you know, training your mind and
your body to be disciplined. This is where you see
all of that flying sidekicks and fighting with a staff
and all this cool stuff that we love and has
(06:26):
inspired every good action movie ever.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Right, and a shout out to a shout out to
empty hand kung fu.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That's different varieties of what they're practicing, which we have
to understand would have been much more than just a
cool flex back then, given that there were oftentimes strict
laws about what sorts of weapons could be owned or
about someone's place in society. Because of these specificities, you
(06:57):
would have to be able to deface yourself without the
advantage of some sort of implement like a uh oh,
like a cavalry broadsword. Did you go, yeah, yeah, exactly.
We didn't know what those were for a while.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
We just did an episode on Abraham Lincoln and his
uh not really popularized duel that involves swords where he
basically just used his reach to intimidate the other guy
into giving up.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Really weird, flex you know, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
I just to realize something the we're going to get
to the further badassy in the story, but just occurred
to me. This story is basically the plot of Beverly
Hills Ninja, uh, starring Chris Farley, only instead of a
here suits child, it's just a fat kid.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Yeah, it's comfortable, and it's all It's all of these movies, right,
It's just the only difference is his parents abandoned him
rather than were killed dramatically by somebody that he has
to slay at the end of the story.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
You knows, very Joseph Beverly Hill's Ninja, he is abandoned.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
There he's in a basket Moses style or something like that.
I literally watched this very recently. Does not hold up,
by the way.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Fortunately, Yeah, it's a shame. Maybe we keep our memories
with us.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I just think, unfortunately, and I mean, yeah, not to
psychoanalyze Chris Farley, you know, posthumously, but I'm sure he
did get to a point where he was a little
tired of doing that.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Hey, look at that fat guy falling down joke.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You know, as a as a fellow factory, I can
speak to that, and that would be a real bummer
for that to be the core of your hole, to.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Be type cast, to be fat cast. Yeah, and this
is like, this is something you know that ties in
already he's dealing with, according to the story, because he's
been type cast.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
As a demon and he doesn't make it one. That's yeah,
that's so.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Do the monks think maybe he has some cool powers
that he can harness, make him like our demon?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Is there anything along those lines?
Speaker 5 (08:49):
They're kind of like, you know, the Buddhist monks are
pretty chill, right, so they kind of all God's creatures
attitude towards anything, right, So so they raise him, and
what the first thing they try to do is get
him adopted out into into the town.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
You know, Oh, we found this child. Somebody's brought us
a child.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Different accounts say a monk found him versus he was
brought into the monastery. But they want to find a
good home for this kid. So okay, you know, but
nobody wants him right because he's different and that's not cool,
and so so they can't adopt him now, and so
he ends up getting raised by the monks in the temple,
which is not common. They don't raise children there. You
(09:29):
bring your kid to them when you're ready for him
to enter holy orders and become a monk forever, right, right.
They don't usually get access to like them at age
three to start training them. And the story goes that
there are ten masters at this at this school, and
generally when you come in as a padawan or whatever
you want to call it, you know, you get a sign,
(09:50):
you get a teacher, and the teacher teaches you, and
he's your your sense.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
For your entire career as a and so you're kind
of following their style right, right, And there might be
another man who has a different style, right and different
followers or paddawans, and your your styles will remain distinct.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Yeah, that's how you get those different styles. You're like, oh,
this is tiger crane style like that that. Oh, there's
a lot of that. But but one thing with ty
Jin is that he's growing up and he doesn't want
to go into town because regular people don't like him.
They think he's he's weird, or he's a demon, or
he's an animal or whatever. Other things, whatever problems they
might have with the guy that is covered completely head
(10:30):
to toe in fur uh. And so he doesn't want
to go into town and do anything. He doesn't want
to get a job, he doesn't want to be a fisherman.
He doesn't want to go down to the market or anything.
So he stays at the temple for his whole life
and he just trains with these guys and all of
the different masters, like you know, these ten masters, they
have their padawans, but he's kind of all their kid, right,
so as he's being as he's growing up, they're all
(10:52):
kind of part of his childhood. So they all and
you know, and he's always kind of hanging around and oh, hey,
can you show me this?
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Okay, can you show me this? This? This here?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And it is a is adoptive parents. It's like instead
of what is instead of three men and a baby,
it's like ten kung fu masters and a were wolf.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
So he basically gets all of the skills. Yeah, essentially, right.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
The tutoring from ten masters all day long, every day
for his entire life, and he becomes the master of everything. Again,
Like we're going off of very difficult to track sources here,
But the idea is that he kind of becomes the
(11:36):
Wikipedia of Chinese martial arts. He can do two hundred
open hands systems, one hundred and forty weapons systems, which
I didn't even know there was such thing as two
hundred and forty weapons.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
But can you be the five point palm exploding heart technique?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
Yes, he literally can. It's called dim It's called the
death touch. I called them.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
I called it the were wolf death touch in my
Badass of the Weak article, But it's not actually called that.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, I learned this from your work, Ben. I learned
that there was a real death touch. And then I
also I remember, and this is a while back, when
I was reading this, I remember thinking something along the
lines what you just said. I was like, one hundred
and fifty, one hundred and forty different weapons systems. I
was like, they can't all be amazing, you know what
(12:21):
I mean? There have to be like a couple of
also rans, you.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Know, like that poor gladiator with the trident and the net,
and you're like, you, poor bastard, I won't give me
a sort of shield any day.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
It's funny you're talking about that, because you know, as
a fellow Dungeons and Dragons fan, you'll appreciate this when
on a deep dive trying to learn whether tridents had
ever actually been used as a normalized weapon of war,
because the gladiators were so big on just novelty and
spectacle and impractical stuff. Right, everybody bare chest except from
(12:57):
my left shoulder, that's where the armor goes.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
Yeah, okay, cool, look look at it shine like, Well,
the trident and net guy was a warrior of Poseidon,
so in the because they're all doing the gladiator stuff
for show, so they're all representing gods in different parts
of the.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
World and things. So he's a warrior of Poseidon. So
the net and the trident are ocean things.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Super super inconvenient.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Great for like going fishing, you know, not for defending
yourself against the lion.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
But for costume parties, great for dragon cones, great for dragging.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
But because to what you were saying earlier too, because
you were like you were talking about, you know, not
having access to the good weapons, right, the peasantry of
of Fujin Province didn't have access to the good swords
and the good the good weapons and things. So you know,
in Japan it was illegal to have a sword in China,
you could, but it was expensive.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
It was prohibitively expensive and to have a weapon.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And so now we think of the countries that don't
allow guns, is like everyone's got knives and that's.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
The best they can do.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, there was a time where swords was chechno. These
swords were technology, the height of it, the best ones,
the sharpest steel they would hold that ads.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
That was a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
Yeah, you gotta have something that can smelt that. You
gotta have some way of forging that. You gotta have
a guy that knows how to do that, right, And
your blacksmith in town is making nails and horseshoes, right,
he's not making chain mil armor and so yeah, so
I mean it's a lot of staff, spear that kind
of stuff. But in an open hand fighting, like you said,
because it's not like you don't need a sword. You
need a sword at this time period more than you
(14:29):
need arguably more than you need weapons today, because there
are like literally bandits and literal wolves and wild animals.
There's bears that like, there's pirates that there's all kinds
of crazy stuff that will like you know, you are
not immune in this time period in this part of
the world from like bandits showing up and setting your
village on fire, right.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And so now this kid is
becoming we're in that action montage, that training montage, yeah,
towards the end of the first act, beginning his second
act in our story, and now we see him, you know,
now he seem to doing like manthis style, switching his
(15:09):
some tiger crane. Somebody throws something behind his back and
he catches it without turning on right.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And then flash to he's he is a He's no
longer a wolf boy. He's a wolf man, and he
has given serious responsibility because of the fact that he
has mastered all of these techniques and is essentially like
the best one.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Oh the line the montage stops with someone saying, there's
no more we can teach him.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
It's right, it cuts him and then the fan blows
the fur like dramatically in.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Front of him.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
But what happens then, I mean he's he's at home
in this monastery. Is that like when do the big
bads come in that threaten their way of life? And
then he has to step up and like, you know, lead,
lead the way save the day.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
So there's a couple of really good stories, and you know,
the the existence of this man is probable. These stories
are almost certainly a little bit more legendary than than
what we've already gotten into, right, Like, like I said,
there is a photo. I've seen two photos that are
(16:18):
purported to be of this guy. He's not wearing a
Shallolin costume or anything in them. He's wearing like a suit.
But you know, it's searchable. You can look up ty
Jin and see a photo of this person, and we're
pretty I'm pretty sure he existed for real. These stories
are kind of when you're getting into and like, I
don't know how this hasn't been a like Wu Tang
(16:39):
Clan movie, but it should be, you know, all right, Yeah,
I think we're kind of freestyling the script for it
right now.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So let's do it absolutely. Yeah, we got the mon guys.
We nailed that montage.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
That was solid. Yeah, I think Rizzo would approve. Maybe
he'll do the soundtrack.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
Oh yeah, Okay, So there's a couple of stories about
this guy. He becomes the first grand master of this
temple and which might be the Southern Shaalann temple, like
I said, I don't know about that, but he becomes
the grand Master, the first one, because these ten masters
have all combined their knowledge into this one.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Super super guy.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
Okay, so this is where some of the really kind
of out there stories come from, but I will tell
them because they're cool. One of the stories that kind
of illustrates how good tai Jin became at fighting and
understanding the world around him is that he was entering
a class and there were twelve different monks there that
(17:35):
we're going to have this class with him, and he
entered the classroom and then he pulls out a knife
and he throws it up into the ceiling and some
assassin like falls out of the rafters and he's like,
He's like, I heard thirteen breaths when I entered the room.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
There must have been someone else.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Here, which is also what a tough first day of class, like,
he just punked the hell out all twelve of those folks.
You know, how long were they in that room? Right? Wait?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Wait, but these were these were these weren't like, this
wasn't a test. These were actual ninja assassins.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
It was an actual assassin in the story has told
it's an actual assassin. I like to think that he
planted that guy there to intimidate his class.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
For day one of being like, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The guy's an action, you know, got he got a plant,
and he just conveniently didn't tell him, hey, I'm going
to kill you.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
At the end, probably was fine, he probably paid. I
think the whole thing was no.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Okay, but that that's a crazy impressive that's like, that's
like did it happen level impressive.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Yeah, almost certainly, not almost certainly, this didn't happen. But
that's the story.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
That's a story associated with him. And like I said,
we're gonna get into I'm going to get into a
couple more of these. One of these stories says that
he he would when he had run out of like
viable sparring partners in the temple, he would go into
the wilderness and like fight wild animals like wolves and
bears and wrestling to kind of train himself. And and
he'd like you know, punch trees to tighten up his
(19:07):
knuckles and all of this kind of stuff that you
read about with that's.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
All in the montage, right, Yeah, that's going.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Have you seen that movie? Are r R?
Speaker 2 (19:19):
It's like Indian kind of giant action set piece film.
Great for best song, It's fabulous, But there is a
character who the first montage you see is him literally
swinging through the jungle and like fighting tigers and bears
for sport kind of you know, and it's makes me
think of the stuff you're describing here. It is an
(19:39):
excellent film. Highly recommend it also entirely mythology.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
Yeah, this is a jetly movie, like but one of
the ones that he makes in Hong Kong for Chinese audiences,
you know what I.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Mean, And while and check that stuff out while you're
waiting for Ridiculous History Studios to come out with h
the Taijin Story, which I see as the first of
a like a cinematic universe.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
To Kung Fu Werewolf franchise.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
There it is, right, yeah, and then you get you
get like the Space Traveler one, and then you combine
them in the third movie. For that's when that's when
we all go to we were all astronauts.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Okay, it's gonna be it's gonna make sense that he
goes to space. It's all gonna make sense.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
We're gonna earn it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
We're not just gonna chuck him into space just because no,
we're gonna it's gonna be a cliffhanger on the previous thing,
and there's villains space ninjas coming.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, I must go.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
We know the guy who did the catering on the
Leprechawn franchise. So this is like high art.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, shooting for it. But but how did okay? So Taijan.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
This is just for a lot of these characters, uh,
these semi apocryphal characters in the historical record, they often
have one big story, you know what I mean, and
this guy has several.
Speaker 5 (20:55):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
It doesn't stop with this, Frankly, I don't I don't
want to reuse the term. But it doesn't stop with
this badass killing of an assassin on the ceiling, right.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
So the one of the big stories involving him is
that this coastal village of people that was near his
temple was coming under an attack from pirates. So there
there's a word for these people there called tohu. It's
a type of you know, the Chinese user to refer
to Japanese pirates that are kind of raiding the coastline.
(21:25):
And we don't know for sure if they're Japanese or whatever.
They just kind of called anybody who was who was
not Chinese who was raiding the coastline toho. But we
do know that like across the way in across the
Strait of Taiwan, Japan is moving into Taiwan. Okinawa is
near ish to the area, So it wouldn't be that
weird for there to be Japanese pirate raids along the
(21:47):
coast here, and if not, it could just be bandits
or just regular old Chinese pirates. But this is a
thing that happened in coastal villages in the late nineteenth century.
And one of the stories says that ty Gin and
somebody led led his monks uh into combat against Japanese
pirates who had kind of stopped to plunder the village.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
They went onto onto the high seas.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
Yeah, well, yeah, I don't know if he I don't
know if he fought them on the coast or if
he got onto their boats. I love the idea of
thinking that he got onto their boats and was fighting boats.
That's just amazing to me, right, defending, defending the village
that didn't want him, nobody would adopt him, and and
he's still going.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well again, he's bounding from boat to boat, taking people
out as he goes, I mean.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Inexplicably now, uh, in deep deep relationships with sharks.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Yeah, he's ripping.
Speaker 5 (22:44):
Planks off the boats and they're sinking, you know, punching
bolts in the halls.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Bullet time shots of him like splintering wood.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
You know. Sorry, we got to think about this cinematically.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
Yeah, So we do actually have stories of shellon monks
doing this kind of thing. So while we don't know
for sure if this story is true, there's like, the
only places this is mentioned is in very unreliable with
very unreliable narrators. But there is a very real, confirmed
story of shellon monks fighting these coastal raiders. It's a
(23:14):
little bit up north, and it's a couple of hundred
it's a couple of hundred years before this, but there
was a story of stories where the monks would come
to the aid of villages that were in trouble. And
in one particular of these stories, it was in the
fifteen fifty something, the one hundred pirates had come ashore
to plunder this town, and the monks showed up, and
(23:38):
there were about one hundred monks that showed up and
they fought these guys and they beat down the pirates
and the pirates are running for it, and the Shellon
monks chased them for ten days across twenty miles of
swampland before and they don't stop until they've killed every
pirate that was involved in the raid. They lose four
monks in the battle.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
That's what people don't think of when they think of Buddhism. Yeah,
you know what I mean. So wait, there were only
four monks.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
Only well, there were one hundred monks only four months die,
but one hundred only four Yeah, yeah, Like warrior monks
are crazy.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
You know.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Japan has a huge culture of like warrior monks who
resisted the emperor of you know, fighting with naginadas and
stuff like that, and I mean just really tough guys.
And they lived up in these mountains that you couldn't
get up to them. And there was a temple of
of Buddhist monks in Japan that they were able to
(24:36):
resist Nobunaga for like thirty days or something. He couldn't
take there, couldn't take their fort.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Wow, it's really cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
This is making me think that it's quite possible the
individual taij in may have become sort of an historical
repository for these true stories about many different people.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
It seems that way.
Speaker 5 (24:57):
That's how I feel about it, and that's kind of
why I don't have too much of a problem talking
about them, because I, like you said, I like to
back up the stories and review the sources and all
of that, and something like this is kind of it's
such a cool story, but it's so like, it's kind
of so out there and it's so hard to verify
any of this stuff. I like it as an opportunity
to talk about the history of were wolves and the
(25:19):
history of Fred Petris and of this skin condition, and
of showIn monks in general, warrior monk culture. Like it's
cool stuff, kung fu like everything well.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
On our other podcast Ben and I do with our
buddy Matt called stuff they Don't want you to know.
It's a critical thinking conspiracy podcast. A lot of times
conspiracies and conspiracy theories are a way in to talk
about a larger question, you know, whether it be existential
or historical or like, what's at play here?
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Why do people think this? You know?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
And we're not here to tell you yes, this conspiracy
is true. Yes, we're debunking this or whatever. But it's
just always a fun way in so, even if we
take it with a grain of salt and are very
transparent about it, is a fun thought experiment and conversation.
And speaking of that with Tai Jim, what's all this
about him burning down at temple? Yeah, that doesn't sound
(26:09):
like good guy behavior.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
No, that's our that's our third act twist, I think.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
See this is the third act twist. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
He's fighting off monks, and I do like this story
of like, you know, the hundred monks running and I'm
picturing them with bostaffs, right because they probably didn't run.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Down crouching tiger stuff. Yeah, just flying.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, and you know what, forget the historical accuracy. They
are doing parkour.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
They're very visibly do it.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Like shallan spider man is what I want us to
tell the cinematographer.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
But yeah, so it's kind of what I was saying
with those the Japanese monks who resisted Nobunaga. One problem
with Buddhist monks in the eye of the emperor is
that the emperor of China and Japan and any other place,
the shogun, the warlords, they don't want you to be
paying attention to some worshiping some other god. The emperor
is all that you need, right, Like, these guys have
(27:13):
their own code, they have their own ideas, they think
about this. They're not in the system right and so
in a lot of a lot of ways their trouble
and so they can cause problems. Sometimes the emperors used them.
There was a battle in like six hundred when the
Tong dynasty was being formed, and he recruited Shaolin monks
(27:34):
to have battles in the mountains against his enemies. And
he was like, oh, well, I'll give you, like you know,
I'll give you some concessions. You guys can kind of
be autonomous and do your own thing, but you have
to help me win win the empire.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
And they did, and they go into battle and.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
They beat up all of these bad guys and are
bad guys, but they beat up all of the enemies
of the future Tong emperor.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
It reminds me a little bit in some ways of
the relationship that the Temple Knights had with the bluling
powers of their day. Right where they would be they
were useful as special forces essentially, but then if they
became ideologically problematic. There wasn't really anything to stop the
(28:17):
ruler from saying, these folks.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Are verboting, you're out. It's exactly, do not pass go Okay. Yeah,
So they.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
They're useful because and you can predict what they're gonna
do because they have a code of conduct that they
don't want to shake. So it's it's predictable, you know
what they're going to do. So yeah, they're very good.
Shalon monks have been used in battle by emperors or
want to be emperors. Uh, you know they're not gonna
you don't want to put them in front of a
cavalry charge. But if you've got to like fight some
guys on some tough terrain in the mountains, or you know,
(28:45):
you want to ambush some people who aren't really ready
for it, or have them hold a pass like they
they're they're very effective at what they do, which is
fight hand to hand.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
We need monks, Yeah, absolutely, we need like a crew
of Shaolin monks.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Yeah, like on retainer.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
Yes, yeah, anyone to go around the grocery store with
me and kind of make sure the aisles are clear.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
I okay, poist to bin for the specificity on that
one I don't know what happened to you in Asle
nine man, but they've.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Really left the mark.
Speaker 5 (29:18):
They're just always stocking the thing that I need, or
it's it's always some slow person with a double cart
trying to and if.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
They're stocking, you have to do the thing with the
forced conversation where you're like, oh, hey, I just.
Speaker 5 (29:33):
Need to in here a second and look at this
display because I don't actually know what I want yet,
So I'm just gonna stand over you for a minute.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
You know, you get in there, right.
Speaker 5 (29:44):
I don't know if I need the extra extra pimento
for the olives or what do I need black green?
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
Wouldn't it be easier to just get tied into roundhouse,
kick that dude in the head, and then you have
plenty of time to stand there and make your decision.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
The story is true. Villains, I would argue solution oriented though.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
I like it because it feels like it's it feels
like something that's happened to a lot of us has
nothing due tize in. But you know, you've been in
this situation where you're thinking, I don't really want a
bunch of extra conversations, so while this really slow person
is apparently having an existential crisis about this tomato sauce.
(30:22):
I'm gonna stand next to them and look like I'm
interested in something I know I'm not.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I just don't think this would meet the code of
the challenge. I just don't think this would fit the
bill for them. They would probably have to have to
be a pass for them.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
They might they might, you know what, they might have
follow up questions. They might say, like, well, which grocery
store is it? Because we respect the code of trader.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Joe, Yeah, exactly, but public's is the public's their game?
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Yeah, see in that in that instance, I have to do.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
I have to become the emperor of China here, because
the emperor at this point, he's the We're in the
Chin Dynasty, which is run by a group of people
called the Manchus who are up north there, not ethnic
Han Chinese, and so the ethnic Han Chinese don't like
them as much, and they're kind of cracking down a
little bit on some of the Buddhism stuff, and the
(31:10):
monks don't like it, and the monks speak out against
the Chin dynasty. And if you are the emperor of
the Chin dynasty. You got to get rid of these guys, right,
they're a problem. You're you're useful until you're not useful
to me, and now you're a problem. So the Chin
dynasty sends troops to burn this monastery to the ground,
and so ti Jin is not the problem here. There's
(31:30):
there's two guys that kind of run this monastery as
as with them, assuming it was run the same way
as the regular Shellin monastery up north, which is you
have like a spiritual leader who kind of runs the
whole show, and then ty Jin is the is the
combat instructor. He's the main fighting guy, but he's not
the spiritual head of the of the thing. And so
(31:51):
for whatever reason, politics get involved, and the temple has
a problem with the emperor, and the emperor decides that
these guys got to go, and he sends an army
and there's a there's a battle.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
The monks try to.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Fight these guys off, but it's hard, right, I mean,
they've got armor and swords and horses and all these things.
And so what ends up happening is the monastery kind
of partly under tai Jin's direction, they clear all their
stuff out, they clear their people out, a group of
monks stays to try to buy them time, some kind
(32:23):
of like a little last stand. Various sources argue on this,
like some say they they stood and fought, and only
a handful survived thirteen, sometimes say five. Some say thirteen.
A small group of monks survived this battle. Others say
that everybody just left before the emperor got there. And
in whatever happens in this battle, Taijin survives, and the
(32:46):
temple was burned to the ground, and we don't know,
we've never found it, we don't really know where it is.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I love the idea of the preemptive torching. I think
that's yeah, that's very very clever. Yeah, you know, doesn't
exactly make sense. They could have just taken their stuff
and then you know, hit the road. But it's a
nice flourish when, like, you know, I get these soldiers
just ready to burn some to the ground and they
get their weight at what it's already burning.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Too.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yeah, I guess we'll go back home.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I mean, that's pretty that's pretty metal. Very bad ass, Yeah,
very bad ass.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
So let's recap infant born super hairy.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
They think it's a demon. They leave him in the forest,
he's rescued by Shlin monks. He learns from all of
the great masters of this monastery, becomes the first true
grand master, defends the village, does some fights of bear,
and then at the end he's the only grand master
that this temple will ever have because he burns the
whole place to the ground on.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
His way at the door.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Epic epic. That's our log line. And this is okay,
so and again the late eighteen hundreds right by this,
there's a photograph of this guy.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah, like that's how recent.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
He is and so wild.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So I remember that there is a bit of a denument,
as we would say here. He does survive all these
trials and tribulations. According to according to the story, he
lives well into old age, Isn't that correct?
Speaker 5 (34:16):
Yeah, The story goes that he dies in nineteen twenty
eight at the age of seventy nine. The monks kind
of disperse and like continue their teachings, but not in
like an organized fashion. Again, and so that's the story.
Like I said, the sources on here are very unreliable
and very bad, and a lot of it is you know,
(34:37):
has to be taken with a ton of salt. One
of the things that I like to joke about is
that they're the One of the Horde priest trainers in
the world of warcraft is named tai Jin and she
has a much longer WOWPDA.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
Entry than Tijin as Wikipedia entry.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So speaking of here, here are other things that happened
right around this time, the time of this guy's death,
just to give us the historical context. No, I know
you and I are both endlessly fascinated with nineteen twenty
eight when when he passes away at the age of
seventy nine. Here are some things that are believed to
(35:17):
be invented that year, the recliner, like the lazy Boy,
ice cube trays, bubble gum, clip on ties, and the
electric razor.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I mean, hell, my dad was born only ten years
later than this, and he was pretty old.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
But that's wild.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
And again, the details of the story, because of its isolation,
really does read like an epic, you know, kind of
fantasy Kung Fu crouch t.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
And does it all feel separate from history in its
own way. It's like in its own little bubble.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (35:51):
And that's what you said about feeling ancient, right, because
when you picture Shaalin kung fu monk fighting pirates. You
don't picturing so like eighteen you know, let's say he
was in his thirties when this happened. And I do
think that there is a lot of what we were
talking about before of like ascribing things that everything that
every badass monk did to this guy, because like now this, Yeah,
(36:12):
it's like if he's in his thirties, right, So let's
say let's say we're looking at like eighteen eighty, uh,
when those pirates show up and he has to like
defend the coastline against the pirates. The Japanese had bolt
action rifles in eighteen eighty, you know, like we're not
talking swords, you know, So like I don't know, I
think it makes it harder to buy that this happened
(36:33):
the way that it was written. But you know, but
the Arisaka rifle was like introduced around that time period.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
And we can't you know, it's so attempting to compare
apples and oranges, like like, I'm I will be honest
with you guys, I never thought about it, but I
find myself looking down on the inventor of the clip
on tie a little bit because you lived in the
same world as this guy, and your contribution is that
I can't talk.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Man.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
One time, I fell asleep trying to put out a pants.
People are out here changing the world.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Is important to certain people.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
You know. I have to look up a YouTube video
every time I tie a tie. But I would never
be cut dead in a clip on. I will look
up that YouTube video.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll tell you though. Uh I I
feel like I may be unfairly denegrading this well meaning
inventor who is just trying to save time for children.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Let's just think of it as for children. Okay, you're right,
You're right. I'd be really.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
Rough on the thing that comes up for me a
lot is that. Like, you know, so I do Badass
of the Week. I got the podcast, I got the website.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
It's a badass.
Speaker 5 (37:33):
And so people come to People will sometimes get kind
of their back up and be like, what.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Do you what's so badass about you? Dude? Nothing? Nothing,
man Like I can't talk to you about it? Yeah, let.
Speaker 5 (37:47):
Yeah, you go have your conquest. I'll be I'll be stonius.
I'll write the story when you get back, but please
don't hit me.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Right, it's a little easier for us because people ask
us what's they don't have to ask us what's so
ridiculous about it?
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Because it's clear. Yeah, and we walk into a room
there it is.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Messed up that we can vote, that's true. So this
is the uh So this is where I think we
begin to wrap the story a little bit then, because
people are going to have to learn more by going
to the podcast bad Ass of the Week, which.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Exists wherever you get your fine podcast material really quickly
that I wanted to point something out that you did
mention in the article on the website that this condition.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
This uh hypercusis.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
That's the one is typically life threatening. Oh that's right, right,
And like this this guy lived to the ripe old
age of roughly seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
You know, they don't, we know. And it's rare in.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
The first place, So how much even more rare must
it be to have the version of it that you
can basically lived and.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Then even those days that was a that was a
long life.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
And he's fighting pirates and bears too, right, Like that's
that's not good for your and he's an enemy of
the emperor. It's not great for longevity. But yeah, like
we've got maybe fifty people. Well, I think over the
course of like, you know, because this is a thing
that is documented pretty well, because they'll be like, oh
do this guy at all, you know, and you can
run into some really bad stuff with this.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
I think, you know, they like a lot of like
sideshow kind of stuff.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
From the eighties, eighteen eighties, you know, like the Jojo,
the dog faced boy and you're like, oh god, I
don't want to say that out loud, but it's worth
mentioning in context with hyper trickosis because that's how these
people were viewed by by the societies and at the time, right,
Like and so.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
It's he's playing life on hard mode, right.
Speaker 5 (39:31):
And it's cool that he was able to have so
much success with it, which you know, it's inspiring, right.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
And and couldn't be couldn't be happier to have you
join us this week on on our Little show Man again,
as you said off here, big big fans, and thank
you so much.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Ben.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Where can people learn more? Not just about the podcast,
which as we say, is available everywhere you find your
favorite shows, but where can where can our fellow ridiculous
historians learn more about your work? Learn more about your books?
Speaker 3 (40:02):
And so on.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
Okay, so the website is Badass of theweek dot com.
It's all one word and it should should pop up
and then all them books are on Amazon or whatever
else and.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Hey, you get busy.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Well, thanks again for hanging with us, man, and look
forward to hopefully having you back again, or maybe we
can I don't know, continue this ridiculous history love fest
in the future.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
Yeah, thank you guys so much. I'm a fan of
your guys as well. I'm a I'm a longtime.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Subscriber, so oh gret was really.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
A good opportunity for me to be on here, so
I'm very happy about it.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Do you hear that?
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Bill?
Speaker 1 (40:38):
We're coming up in the world. Maybe it's time to
buy some clip on ties. Never, I agreed, I agreed.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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