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The Hero with a Thousand Holds

Sep 25, 2019

The Caucasus mountains, a 750-mile-long chain of rock and ice stretching between the Black and Caspian seas, have traditionally been regarded as one of the great cultural boundaries between Europe and Asia. Nestled among its towering peaks and valleys are a tapestry of diverse peoples, many of whom speak languages...


May 10, 2019

The traditional wrestling of Cambodia, Bok Cham Bab, has a history stretching back to the days when the Khmer Empire was the undisputed lord and master of the Southeast Asian mainland. At the height of the empire’s power, wrestling contests held a sufficiently meaningful role in their society that they chose...


Apr 10, 2019

In the western world, our conceptions of Vietnam are often limited to the Vietnam War – that prolonged and devastating conflict in the mid-20th century that resulted in the deaths of anywhere up to 4.2 million people. As undeniably ruinous as that war was, it was ultimately just two decades in the history of a nation...


Feb 7, 2019

The Chipewyan (Dënesųłı̨né), a First Nations people of northern Canada, historically had a deeply ingrained – and in many ways highly unique – wrestling tradition that was remarked upon by almost all of the early European settlers that they encountered. In this short episode, I briefly discuss the things that...


Jan 5, 2019

The Yaghan and the Selk'nam are – were – the southernmost peoples in the world; a scattered group of nomadic hunters living on the sub-antarctic inlets and islands of Tierra del Fuego. Yet despite being so isolated from the vast majority of the rest of humanity, and despite speaking a language entirely different...