The Jocular Pugilists

Venice, Italy. A breathtaking city built on water, a republic once ruled by powerful merchants, and apparently a place where you can enjoy incredible pasta while your waiter openly despises you.

In this episode of The Jocular Pugilists, Phil and Tomas take a hilarious, history-filled journey through one of the world's most extraordinary cities. Fresh from his Italian adventure, Phil recounts a honeymoon travel nightmare involving canceled flights, missing luggage, a mad dash through Heathrow Airport, and a waiter who seemed personally offended by his existence.

But beneath Venice's romantic canals and magnificent architecture lies an even more fascinating story: a city built on wooden foundations, a powerful maritime republic, and a secretive Council of Ten that made political enemies disappear from history.

Along the way, Tomas revisits his own Venetian honeymoon with a little help from Tracy's decades-old travel journal, proving that some travel memories are priceless… and others are better left forgotten.

In this episode, discover:

• The incredible engineering of Venice: How an entire city was built on wooden foundations in a lagoon.
• The dark secrets of the Venetian Republic: Powerful doges, political intrigue, spies, and the feared Council of Ten.
• A honeymoon travel disaster: How Phil and Stacy nearly missed Venice entirely after their connecting flight was canceled.
• The truth about Italian dining: Spectacular pasta, disappointing meals, and waiters who may or may not hate Americans.
• Venice then and now: How two honeymoon experiences, separated by decades, reveal a changing city.
• The Bridge of Sighs and Doge's Palace: A glimpse into the darker side of Venetian history.
• Can Venice survive? Rising sea levels, historic flooding, and the engineering efforts protecting this remarkable city.

It's part history lesson, part Italian travel adventure, and part comedy of errors—with enough questionable observations, friendly insults, and unexpected detours to make you wonder how these two ever made it out of the airport.

Grab an espresso, say "Andiamo!" and join The Jocular Pugilists for a trip through Venice, Italy—where the streets are canals, the history is unbelievable, and the customer service is occasionally negotiable.

Visit thejocularpugilists.com for more episodes, and follow the show on your favorite podcast platform.

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

Tomas and Phil welcome Lars from Best in Tesla back to The Jocular Pugilists for a wide-ranging conversation about Tesla, electric vehicles, and the future of energy.

After years of researching and test-driving EVs, Tomas and his wife, Tracey, have finally purchased a new Model Y. Tomas explains why Tesla’s software, supervised self-driving, integrated ecosystem, and improved refinement ultimately won them over—and why the vehicle feels like the first step toward building a “family energy moat.”

The conversation expands from the driveway to the electrical grid: solar power, home batteries, vehicle-to-home charging, virtual power plants, battery recycling, solid-state technology, and the possibility that millions of cars and homes could work together as a distributed energy network.

Can an ordinary family gain greater control over its energy future? Will growing demand from AI and electrification create scarcity, or are we approaching an era of energy abundance? And what has genuinely changed since Lars last joined the podcast in 2022?

It’s a conversation about cars—but even more about resilience, optimism, and how we might power the future.

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

What really determines the relationship you have with your brothers and sisters? Birth order? Parenting? Favoritism? Personality? Or simply surviving childhood together?

This week on The Jocular Pugilists, Phil welcomes a very special guest—his younger brother Lou—for a funny, personal and surprisingly revealing conversation about siblings, sibling rivalry, birth order and family dynamics.

With 13 years separating them, Phil and Lou grew up in the same family but experienced their parents—and childhood itself—in very different ways. From being the oldest, middle or youngest child to wondering whether parents secretly have a favorite, they look at how our place in the family may influence the adults we eventually become.

Along the way, they revisit childhood fights, questionable parenting decisions, musical influences, brotherly protection, family legends and what happens when your older siblings occasionally act more like additional parents.

In this episode:

• How birth order may influence personality and behavior
• Why firstborn, middle and youngest children can have very different childhoods
• Whether parents really have a favorite child
• What causes sibling rivalry
• Why some brothers and sisters become lifelong friends while others grow apart
• How parents change their parenting style from the first child to the last
• How older siblings can become role models, protectors—and occasionally terrible influences
• Why shared childhood experiences can create powerful lifelong bonds
• How technology, social media and changing family life may be affecting sibling relationships
• And several Giangrande family stories that probably should have remained private

From Cain and Abel to fighting over bikes, bedrooms and parental attention, sibling rivalry may be one of the oldest family dynamics in human history—but so is brotherly love.

If you grew up with brothers or sisters—or you're raising siblings of your own—this episode may have you looking at your family very differently.

The Jocular Pugilists explores the strange, funny and occasionally ridiculous forces that shape our lives, culture and relationships.

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

There was a time when nobody wore seatbelts, teachers could hit you, smoking was everywhere, and apparently handing kids handling explosives was considered perfectly reasonable parenting.

Tomas and Phil look back at the things that seemed completely normal growing up—and seem completely insane now. Tennis-ball cannons, Catholic school, corporal punishment, bucket seats, smoking in restaurants, dangerous playgrounds, and the brilliant idea of grabbing onto a friend's car while riding a skateboard because you saw it in Back to the Future.

Were we tougher back then, or were we all just incredibly lucky to survive?

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

While Phil and Stacey celebrate their honeymoon in Italy, we’re raising a glass to the newlyweds with an encore of another adventure they shared: a trip to Scotland’s Edinburgh Castle.

Join Phil and Tomas for a ramble through the castle’s Gothic chapels and historic halls, swapping travel stories and exploring the fascinating—and sometimes creepy—history of one of Edinburgh’s most iconic landmarks. Expect curiosity, laughs, and questionable commentary as our intrepid travelers stumble through the ruins of their historical knowledge.

Congratulations, Phil and Stacey—here’s to a lifetime of adventures together!

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

Healthy eating shouldn’t mean filling your cart with foods you don’t enjoy and hoping willpower gets you through the week.

In this episode, the Jocular Pugilists explore how to shop for a way of eating that is both healthy and genuinely delicious. We compare fresh and frozen foods, affordable and premium proteins, conventional and organic produce, convenient ingredients, satisfying snacks, and the products that are—or aren’t—worth the extra money.

Along the way, we discuss food safety and processing standards, identify nutritious grocery-store bargains, and determine where spending a little more can make healthy meals easier and more enjoyable. We also build our ideal grocery carts and put popular foods through a rapid-fire round of Buy It, Leave It, or It Depends.

The goal isn’t to create the cheapest cart or the most restrictive diet. It’s to bring home flavorful, nourishing food you’ll actually look forward to eating.

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

Are we truly better together? Inspired by a celebration of his parents’ 65th wedding anniversary, Tomas and Phil explore why human beings form lasting partnerships—and what having somebody beside us can add to our lives.

They discuss companionship, pair bonding, intimacy, shared identity, and the difference between facing a problem alone and saying, “We’ll figure it out together.” They also examine research suggesting that strong social relationships may support better health and a longer life.

But is any relationship better than being single? The conversation also considers why the quality of a partnership matters—and whether an unhealthy relationship can be worse than being alone.

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

Going out to dinner used to be simple: sit down, order food, eat, pay, leave.

Apparently, we’ve made it much more complicated.

What happens when your friend shows up 25 minutes late? Do you wait to order—or are the appetizers already coming?

Should the person who ordered four martinis really expect everyone else to split the check evenly?

Can you send back a steak that’s overcooked? What about a dish you simply don’t like? How much are we tipping now? Is 20% still good, or has society quietly moved the goalposts while nobody was looking?

And perhaps the most important question of all:

Can everybody PLEASE put their phones away for one meal?

In this episode of The Jocular Pugilists, Phil and Tomas dive into the unwritten rules of restaurant etiquette—and discover that dining out may contain more social landmines than international diplomacy.

They debate the behaviors that make servers crazy, customers furious, friends uncomfortable and dinner tabs considerably more complicated than they need to be.

In this episode:

• The Great Check-Splitting Debate: Should everyone pay equally when one person ordered considerably more?
• The Late Friend Rule: How late is too late for a dinner reservation?
• Tipping in 2026: Is 20% still a good tip—or are expectations getting out of control?
• Sending Food Back: When you absolutely should—and when you probably shouldn't.
• Who’s Responsible When Dinner Goes Wrong: The server, the kitchen...or you?
• Phones at the Table: Harmless habit or the death of human conversation?
• Kids in Restaurants: What parents owe the other people trying to enjoy their dinner.
• The “When Harry Met Sally” Problem: How many substitutions are too many?
• Shared Appetizer Politics: Do you have to pay if you didn't eat any?
• Double-Dipping: Somehow we still need to discuss this.
• The Last Slice Rule: Can you just take it—or must you offer it around first?
• Ordering Right Before Closing: Technically legal. Morally questionable.
• Canceling Reservations at the Last Minute: Acceptable or unforgivable?
• Bringing Your Own Birthday Cake: Celebration...or restaurant faux pas?
• And the restaurant behavior that may tell you everything you need to know about a person: how they treat the staff.

Along the way, Tomas recounts an extraordinary example of hospitality at Gramercy Tavern, Phil draws on his years working in restaurants, and both men slowly confront an uncomfortable possibility:

They may be turning into the two old guys from The Muppet Show.

So grab a table, put your phone away, don't steal the restaurant's pen and for the love of God, don't eat all the cheese off the nachos.

Listen now to The Jocular Pugilists and decide for yourself:

Which restaurant rules are legitimate etiquette—and which ones are just two increasingly cranky men yelling at the dining room?

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

Groceries. Housing. Insurance. Taxes. It seems like everything costs more—and everyone has an explanation for why.

But what if we’re diagnosing the problem with the wrong data?

In this episode, we dig into some of the most popular claims about CEO pay, worker wages, productivity, corporate profits, and stock buybacks. We look at how perfectly real statistics can be cherry-picked or framed to tell a misleading story—and how a bad diagnosis can lead to even worse economic prescriptions.

The cost-of-living problem is real. The question is: Do we actually understand what’s causing it?

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

We love a good comeback story. Rocky gets knocked down? We’re cheering for him to get back up. But when someone hurts us? Suddenly, redemption gets a whole lot more complicated.

This week on The Jocular Pugilists, Phil and Tomas tackle the messy, uncomfortable question: Does everyone deserve a second chance?

From friendships and family to bosses, employees, celebrities—and even ourselves—the Pugilists debate where forgiveness ends and good judgment begins.

Along the way, they get into:

• Why forgiving someone doesn’t mean forgetting what happened
• The difference between a real apology and the infuriating “I’m sorry you feel that way”
• When a mistake deserves forgiveness—and when it starts revealing someone’s character
• Why changed behavior matters more than words
• Whether you can love someone and still decide they don’t belong in your inner circle
• Why disagreement doesn’t have to destroy a friendship
• The surprisingly difficult question of giving yourself another chance
• Whether we can—or should—separate the artist from the art
• Mel Gibson, Michael Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Johnny Depp, Eric Clapton and the complicated world of celebrity redemption

Because second chances probably shouldn’t be automatic.

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

[email protected]

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com