“You must still have chaos in yourself to be able to give birth to a dancing star” Friedrich Nietzsche

“History as well as life itself is complicated—neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.”

Jared Diamond

He was the first American to receive a brown belt in Judo. 

He won the largest percentage of the vote ever by a third-party candidate.

He once took a bullet to the chest shot at point blank range, and rather than going to the hospital went to deliver a 90 minute speech. 

He survived tragedies that would break lesser men.

He spent his life fighting against the inner demons trying to destroy him. 

He was a perfect embodiment of what Nietzsche probably had in mind when he wrote, “You must still have chaos in yourself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." 

He was a warmonger with a diplomatic tact. He was a hunter and an environmentalist. He was a nerd and an athlete. He flirted with white supremacist ideas and yet was very progressive about race by the standards of his day. He was a big proponent of personal responsibility and supported quasi-Socialist policies.

Love him or hate him, he was larger than life.

He was Theodore Roosevelt.

In this episode:

-A sickly child discovers the joys of the strenuous life

-Defeating fear by facing fear

-Having the woman you love die in your arms; into the Dakota wilderness

-“A six year old child on steroids”

-"Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough"

-“Theodore had to hold on to his optimism very tight, otherwise he couldn’t get through the shadows, the darknesses, surrounding him”

-Marriage # 2

-Why telling Roosevelt “It will break you. You will yield. You are but human;” is a bad idea

-The Rough Riders

-Going to war against his own party

-How Thomas Platt’s plan to eliminate Roosevelt gave him the presidency

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During a visit to a church in Sicily, a priest offered Caravaggio “holy water”. Caravaggio asked the old priest what it was for. “It will cancel your venial sins, my son,” replied the priest. “Then it’s no use—Caravaggio commented—My sins are all mortal.”

Giles Lambert about Caravaggio and his friends “They provoked the Papal police, hung around with the many Roman women of easy virtue, drank excessively and frightened the bourgeoisie.”

He was the greatest artist of his age, and also an outlaw whose passion for hookers was only second to his propensity for ending up in jail. Caravaggio was equally talented with paint and canvas as he was with the sword and with the art of breaking out prison. With the same hand with which he painted the most amazing masterpieces of the Renaissance, he stabbed pimps and bludgeoned cops. His art was as scandalous as his life: he brought a lowbrow brand of violent realism and sexuality to the traditional religious subjects that were commissioned by the Church: imagine Quentin Tarantino painting scenes from the Bible. But the more the elite hated him, the more the common people adored him. No painter of his day—and probably ever—was able to have such a magnetic effect on masses of people.

This second and last part of the tale includes battles in the streets of Rome, Caravaggio’s revolutionary take on the origins of Christianity, the rivalry with Giovanni Baglione, Renaissance diss tracks, attempted murder over artichokes, the dubious diplomatic tact of using prostitutes as models for the Virgin Mary, the parallels between Caravaggio and Tupac, Caravaggio settling a grievance… with an ax, “Madonna dei Palafranieri”—Caravaggio’s middle finger to the Vatican, the duel with Ranuccio Tommassoni, a death sentence, ending up on the run, becoming a Knight of Malta, Mafia art thefts, breaking out jail, the attack in Naples, and becoming a legend. Caravaggio would have been able to relate to Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.”

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During a visit to a church in Sicily, a priest offered Caravaggio “holy water”. Caravaggio asked the old priest what it was for. “It will cancel your venial sins, my son,” replied the priest. “Then it’s no use—Caravaggio commented—My sins are all mortal.”

Giles Lambert about Caravaggio and his friends “They provoked the Papal police, hung around with the many Roman women of easy virtue, drank excessively and frightened the bourgeoisie.”

He was the greatest artist of his age, and also an outlaw whose passion for hookers was only second to his propensity for ending up in jail. Caravaggio was equally talented with paint and canvas as he was with the sword and with the art of breaking out prison. With the same hand with which he painted the most amazing masterpieces of the Renaissance, he stabbed pimps and bludgeoned cops. His art was as scandalous as his life: he brought a lowbrow brand of violent realism and sexuality to the traditional religious subjects that were commissioned by the Church: imagine Quentin Tarantino painting scenes from the Bible. But the more the elite hated him, the more the common people adored him. No painter of his day—and probably ever—was able to have such a magnetic effect on masses of people.

This first part of the tale features a plague killing most of Caravaggio’s family, attempts at theocracy in the Milan of the late 1500s, the Italian Robin Hood Marco di Sciarra, street life in Rome, “no hope-no fear”, the Cenci execution, and Caravaggio becoming a superstar of the Roman art scene.

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“In your presence they feel small, and their baseness glimmers and glows against you with hidden vengeance.” Friedrich Nietzsche

“Let me go, my friend—you have hurt me enough.” Crazy Horse

In this last chapter of the Crazy Horse series, we’ll see Crazy Horse hunting miners in the Black Hills, a Lakota leader shaking hands with one hand while holding his guts in with the other, fighting at Slim Buttes, cutting horses open and hiding babies inside them to keep them from freezing, saying farewell to Sitting Bull, surrendering, Crook and his lies, the jealousy of petty chiefs, a hot ‘brown eyed girl’, a shining example of Lakota-American cooperation in setting up a murder, the end of history, Crazy Horse Mountain.

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of http://www.amazon.com/Dakota-Warrior-Story-James-R-Weddell/dp/1495963853

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“Hold on, my friends! Be strong! Remember the helpless! This is a good day to die!” Crazy Horse

Everything we have seen so far in Crazy Horse’s life was a warm-up. In Episode 9, things really heat up: leadership, a legend in intertribal warfare, a bison apocalypse, Black Buffalo Woman, a bullet in the face, heartbreak sets up home in Crazy Horse’s tepee, drowning pain into an ocean of blood, taking on the Northern Pacific Railroad, round one with George Armstrong Custer, the thieves’ road, fighting on—in the face of hopelessness, Sun Dancing, against the Army at Rosebud and at the Little Bighorn. Plus, the story of the poor man who decided it was a good day to go hunting ducks, and instead run into Crazy Horse. 

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of http://www.amazon.com/Dakota-Warrior-Story-James-R-Weddell/dp/1495963853

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“There were many bullets, but there were more arrows—so many that it was like a cloud of grasshoppers all above and around the soldiers” Fire Thunder

In Episode 8, we pause the blow by blow narration of Crazy Horse’s life to focus on the larger context: the war between Lakota & Cheyenne and the United States in the mid-1860s. In this episode: things heat up with battles at Platte River Station and Red Buttes, “the yellow metal that makes the wasichus crazy”, just for fun Crazy Horse lets soldiers shoot at him, the 1866 State of the Union address misses the target by a mile, painting the Bozeman Trail red with blood, the head of a photographer rolling in a wagon, Captain Brown’s obsession with scalps, the winkte prophet, spirits could use math tutoring, making arrowheads from a frying pan, Lakota warriors honoring a soldier they killed, and after the battle… a dreadful silence, Hieronymus Bosch, and coyotes & crows. Also, General Sherman’s diplomatic reaction (“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux even to their extermination—men, women and children”), the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, and setting fire to the forts.

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of http://www.amazon.com/Dakota-Warrior-Story-James-R-Weddell/dp/1495963853

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"What good is power if you cannot protect the ones you love?" muses Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. I can’t think of a more appropriate question to discuss the life of 19th century Lakota hero Crazy Horse. His undeniable power as a warrior, in fact, didn’t spare him from having tragedy visit him time and time again. Taking place against the backdrop of the Lakota-U.S. conflict in the second half of the 1800s, his life was the quintessential tale where epic, heartbreak, bravery, and horror mix freely. His people were one of the last Native American tribes to stand in the face of American expansion. And Crazy Horse was always in the thick of the action, throughout over twenty years of intermittent warfare. In the first of this four-part series, we’ll cover the first couple of decades of Crazy Horse’s story, the first dramatic clash between Lakota warriors and the U.S. Army, vision quests, thunder-dreaming, earning the ‘Crazy Horse’ name, Sand Creek Massacre, and calling for revenge.

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of http://www.amazon.com/Dakota-Warrior-Story-James-R-Weddell/dp/1495963853

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On July 11, 1804, the vice-president of the United States (Aaron Burr) and the first Secretary of the Treasury (Alexander Hamilton) decided to settle their grievances by drawing their pistols and trying to shoot each other dead. This is the story of the events leading Burr and Hamilton to stop exchanging words and begin exchanging lead. Also, in this episode: the good old days when killing people in a duel was no obstacle to gaining high political office (just ask Andrew Jackson), Abraham Lincoln and his freakish long reach, when the Senate floor was washed in blood, Hamilton’s mom was “whoring with everyone”, Burr’s obsession for women, “Great souls have little use for small morals”, Thomas Jefferson and Vito Corleaone’s advice, Plan B: take over Mexico, when the President wanted to hang his former vice-president, a perfect plan to get Americans more interested in politics.

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In this second and last part of this two-part series, we find out why it is a very bad idea to get on the wrong side of Parysatis, one of the most ruthless queens of the ancient world. We will also run into betrayal, prophetic dreams, epic battles, Xenophon’s rise to leadership, heartbreaking moments, tribal guerrillas in the mountains, poisoned honey, athletic competitions, sweet revenge, and the planting of the seeds for Alexander the Great’s campaigns.

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Legendary historian Will Durant has described the subject of this episode as “One of the great adventures in human history”. In the first part of this two-part series, we meet the main characters of our tale, when a band of over 10,000 Greek mercenaries agree to serve under the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger in a fratricidal civil war against Cyrus’ brother, King Artaxerxes II. This episode will also include a brief history of the Persian empire, tattooed, head-hunting + marijuana-consuming + sweat lodge-partaking tribal peoples, plagues, a cameo by Socrates, Machiavellian political games, the great battle of Cunaxa, and a eunuch worthy of Game of Thrones.

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