Badass of the Week

Badass of the Week

Throughout the course of human civilization certain individuals have stood out as being completely f***ing awesome. From ninjas and gunfighters to pirates and Vikings, to explorers, scientists and great leaders, these people - true badasses - completely obliterated anything that stood in their path, routinely overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and ultimately altered the course of history through their actions. Be it glory, conquest, or survival, these hardcore men and women all had one specific goal in life - and they didn’t let anything stand between themselves and their mission. They refused to back down even when the odds seemed hopelessly stacked against them, they came back from the brink of failure to achieve ultimate success, and they beat the fucking hell out of anyone stupid enough to have stood in their way. Badass of the Week is a weekly (duh) podcast, that dives into new stories of badasses every week.

Episodes

October 29, 2026 • 62 mins
How do you go from carrying the king’s spear to running the biggest empire on Earth? A palace coup, a suspiciously well-timed horse, and some truly monumental self-promotion. Ben Thompson and Dr. Pat Larash follow Darius the Great’s bloody rise to power, the rebellions that threatened to tear Persia apart, and the roads, riches, and royal propaganda that held it together. From the wild stories of Herodotus to a royal ré...
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A woman is kidnapped by terrorists. The official rescue effort stalls. And the person who knows the territory is a former Green Beret who thought his missions were behind him. When Abu Sayyaf abducted Evelyn Chang during a deadly raid on an island resort, Gene Yu had a personal reason to act: Evelyn was a friend of his mother’s. The West Point graduate and former Special Forces officer put his own money on the line, called o...
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Quanah Parker was born between worlds—and became a master of both. As the last great war chief of the Quahadi Comanche, he led one of the final armed resistances on the Southern Plains, charging into the gunfire at Adobe Walls and fighting an industrial war machine with speed, terrain, and sheer nerve. When military victory became impossible, Quanah launched an equally audacious second act: statesman, cattle baron, political...
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Before the Green Berets or Navy SEALs, there were Rogers’ Rangers. During the French and Indian War, Major Robert Rogers forged an unconventional fighting force that could snowshoe through blizzards, operate deep behind enemy lines, and turn wilderness survival into a weapon. Then bestselling author Scott Sigler joins the show to discuss Beasts Beyond the River, his historical-horror novel that throws hardened colonial Range...
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At the Battle of Changban, Zhao Yun turned his horse around and rode back into the teeth of Cao Cao’s advancing army to rescue Liu Bei’s infant son. It was the defining act of a warrior celebrated not merely for his skill with a spear, but for his courage, loyalty, and unbreakable code of honor. This week, longtime producer Ian Jacobs steps out from behind the soundboard to explore the history and legend of Zhao Yun...
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Five-foot-four, barely a hundred pounds, and armed with enough intellectual firepower to reshape a nation, James Madison brought a pen to a political knife fight... and made it everybody else’s problem. For Constitution Day, Ben welcomes back Dr. Greg Jackson of History That Doesn’t Suck to meet the unlikely heavyweight who helped write America’s rulebook, and then fought like hell over how to use it. From the pr...
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Six surgeries. Nearly eighty pounds lost. And a touchdown that deserves its own damn movie. Britt Redman was a high school wide receiver in the middle of a playoff run when advanced testicular cancer turned his world upside down. Football gave way to chemotherapy, operating rooms, and the brutal work of getting through another day. After everything his body endured, returning to the field would have been remarkable. Britt made it ...
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History remembers Catherine de’ Medici as the black-clad poison queen of Renaissance France—an Italian schemer who kept a vial in one hand and a dagger in the other. The truth is messier, bloodier, and way more interesting. Orphaned as a baby, married off at fourteen, and dropped into a French royal court that treated her like a foreign spare part, Catherine survived humiliation, dynastic disaster, and one spectacularl...
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On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami turned the Japanese city of Ishinomaki into a freezing, debris-choked nightmare. Most people would take one look at that and head for the hills. Hideaki Akaiwa grabbed a wetsuit and diving gear and went straight in. He fought his way through flooded streets to rescue his trapped wife, went back out to find his missing mother, and then kept searching for neighbors and survivors. This week...
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On today’s episode, Ben is joined by special guest Paul Jacobs to tell the story of Karl von Müller and the SMS Emden, the German warship that unleashed absolute chaos across the Indian Ocean during World War I. Outnumbered, outgunned, and thousands of miles from home, Müller used speed, deception, and sheer audacity to capture or destroy dozens of Allied ships, cripple vital shipping routes, and send warships from five nati...
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During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, First Lieutenant Brian Chontosh and his Marines were caught in a coordinated ambush on Route 1. With the road blocked and fire closing in around them, Chontosh ordered his Humvee toward the attack, broke through the enemy’s defenses, and led a fight through the trench line -- an extraordinary action that earned him the Navy Cross. But an award citation can’t tell the whole story. In a ...
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Semiramis did not come to the ancient world to sit quietly on a throne and wave at peasants. She came to rule. With an army at her back, a crown on her head, and the kind of ambition that makes neighboring kingdoms extremely nervous, this legendary queen became a towering symbol of military power, conquest, and royal authority. In today's episode Ben and Pat are joined by Dr. Amy Pistone to charge headfirst into the larger-than...
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in part two of our crossover with Ridiculous History, Ben and Pat join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown to follow Louis-Antoine de Bougainville—a mathematician, soldier, explorer, and the first Frenchman to sail around the world—into the biggest naval battle of the American Revolution. Commanding the 80-gun Auguste at the front of the French fleet, Bougainville charges out of Chesapeake Bay to face the Royal Navy in a cannon-s...
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In part one of our crossover with Ridiculous History, Ben and Pat join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown for one of the most insane military road trips of the American Revolution. With roughly 170 exhausted frontiersmen, no reliable supply line, and miles of freezing floodwater between him and British-held Fort Sackville, George Rogers Clark decides to attack immediately. What follows is an 18-day death march through the drowned Illinoi...
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Winning the Trojan War was the easy part. Odysseus helped destroy the most powerful city in the ancient world with a giant wooden horse—and then spent the next ten years getting absolutely wrecked on the commute home. This week, Ben and Pat are joined by Jon Bucher to dive into the legend of the king of Ithaca: warrior, con man, professional liar, and perhaps the most dangerously clever hero in Greek mythology. Along the way,...
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Getting ready to watch The Odyssey? Well here's the prequel... When Paris steals Helen and brings the armies of Greece crashing down on Troy, it falls to his older brother Hector to clean up the mess. Hector is Troy’s greatest warrior, its future king, and its last line of defense—a devoted husband and father who knows the gods have already written his ending. This week, Ben is joined by Dr. Pat Larash to enter the I...
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This Fourth of July, we’re telling the story of one of the greatest American heroes almost nobody remembers. Before he became George Washington’s trusted general and America’s first Secretary of War, Henry Knox was an overweight Boston bookseller with no formal military training—and a completely insane idea. In the dead of winter, Knox volunteered to haul 60 tons of captured cannons more than 300 miles thro...
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A soccer game so legendary it inspired a Hollywood blockbuster… but did it really happen the way we’ve all heard? During the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, a ragtag team of former professional footballers took the field against a series of German military teams, culminating in a match that would become known as “The Death Match.” According to legend, they were ordered to lose. They refused. And they paid with...
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History is full of master thieves, daring outlaws, and legendary escape artists... but few ever combined all three quite like Vassili Paleokostas. A small-town Greek electrician turned folk hero, Paleokostas spent decades robbing banks, kidnapping wealthy industrialists, humiliating police, and giving away portions of his loot to struggling families. To some, he was a dangerous criminal. To others, he was a modern-day Robin Hood s...
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When most people hear the name William Bligh, they think of a tyrant. Thanks to generations of books and movies, the captain of the HMS Bounty has gone down in history as the cruel, power-mad villain whose crew finally rose up and mutinied. The real story is far more complicated—and far more impressive. Long before the mutiny, Bligh had established himself as one of the finest navigators in the British Navy. And after being...
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