Xenophon: The March Through Madness

To follow up our episode with The Smashing Machine, Mark Kerr - we're diving into the archive to replay our deeper dive into the story of Milo of Croton. -- --  Step into the arena with Milo of Croton, the ancient Greek strongman whose feats of strength turned him into a living legend. In this episode, Ben and Pat explore how Milo went from an Olympic champion to a battlefield hero, carrying entire armies on his back—literally. From wrestling lions to tearing trees apart with his bare hands, Milo’s life was a nonstop display of raw power and unmatched swagger. Join us as we uncover the epic tale of history’s ultimate flex and the man who redefined what it meant to be strong.

In the savage early days of MMA, before the bright lights and billion-dollar paydays, there was one man who fought like a force of nature. Mark Kerr wasn’t just a wrestler — he was a six-foot-one, 250-pound experiment in human willpower. A world champion who walked into underground Brazilian cage fights, broke his hand mid-match, and kept fighting with his head. They called him The Smashing Machine. In today's episode, Ben and Mark go blow-by-blow through the glory, the pain, and the redemption of one of combat sports’ most feared and fascinating pioneers.

Xenophon was a philosophy student, a Socratic thinker, and a pampered Athenian aristocrat who signed up for a mercenary road trip into Persia and accidentally became one of the greatest battlefield leaders in Greek history. When his army’s generals were betrayed and slaughtered, Xenophon—who had never commanded a single soldier—rallied 10,000 stranded warriors and led them on a 4,000-mile retreat through enemy territory, across deserts, mountains, and hostile kingdoms, surviving ambushes, starvation, and snowblindness. This is the story of how a student of Socrates marched his way into legend—and inspired everyone from Alexander the Great to the creators of cult classic movie The Warriors.  Can you dig it?!

Before he was smashing Nazi airfields and punching his way through the deserts of North Africa, Lieutenant Colonel Blair “Paddy” Mayne was an amateur boxing champion, a rugby international, and the kind of guy who could drink you under the table, flip the table, and then win the bar fight that followed. This week, Ben and Andrew dive into the myth and madness of one of the founding members of the Special Air Service—an Irish warrior-poet with a short fuse and a long list of enemies. From brawling with commanding officers to rewriting the playbook on guerrilla warfare, Mayne was chaos incarnate… and one of the most decorated soldiers of World War II.

In today's episode, Ben and Pat dive into the outrageous, swashbuckling life of Baron Frederick von der Trenck -- a Prussian nobleman, cavalry officer, prison escape artist, sword-fighting heartthrob, and the original “most interesting man in the world.” Born into military aristocracy, Trenck risked it all for love, dueled his way across Europe, got imprisoned (twice) by a furious Frederick the Great, and escaped in ways that feel ripped straight from a Dumas novel. From secret affairs with royalty to hand-digging escape tunnels with broken shackles, this is the true story of a man too bold to break—and too badass to disappear quietly.

In the middle of Somalia’s civil war, when the world was falling apart, Dr. Hawa Abdi started building. On her family’s land outside Mogadishu, she created a hospital, a school, a legal aid clinic, and eventually a sanctuary for tens of thousands of people fleeing violence and famine. Armed militias tried to take it. She told them to get off her front lawn. And they did. This is the story of a doctor who held the line when no one else could, and turned one patch of earth into a beacon of hope for an entire nation.

In 1905, a Russian battleship crew said “enough.” Starving, abused, and fed up with maggot-ridden meat and brutal officers, the sailors aboard the Potemkin launched one of the most famous mutinies in naval history—an act of defiance that sent shockwaves through the Russian Empire. What followed was a chaotic, bloody standoff that played out across the Black Sea and the port of Odessa, inspiring revolutionaries and terrifying the Tsar. In today's episode Ben and Andrew tell the story of how one battleship became a symbol of resistance, rebellion, and revolutionary firepower.

August 2010. Deep beneath the Atacama Desert, thirty-three Chilean miners are buried alive under thousands of tons of rock—half a mile underground. With only two days of food, no light, and no way out, their survival seems impossible. On the surface, desperate families build a city of hope, engineers and drillers from around the world converge, and NASA lends a hand. In today's episode Ben and Pat tell a story of leadership, faith, and pure badass perseverance, as the world unites to pull off one of the most daring rescues in history.

In today's episode Ben and Pat are joined by Robin Pierson, host of The History of Byzantium to discuss Nikephoros Phokas was a man who didn’t look like he belonged on a battlefield—balding, pale, with a face better suited to an icon in a monastery. But when he put on his armor, he became the Byzantine Empire’s ultimate nightmare machine. Known as the “Pale Death of the Saracens,” he crushed enemy armies, reclaimed lost lands, and rode his warhorse straight into the history books. Along the way, he outwitted rivals, seized the throne, and married into the imperial family. But in the scheming, backstabbing world of Constantinople, victories on the battlefield didn’t guarantee survival in the palace—and Nikephoros would learn the hard way that the sharpest daggers aren’t always carried by soldiers.

Carl Akeley was an artist, scientist, inventor, conservationist, and the godfather of modern taxidermy—but don’t let the job title fool you. This dude once fist-fought a full-grown leopard with one hand, got body-slammed by an elephant and survived, invented a concrete-blasting cannon, and crossed a crocodile-infested river using a dead crocodile as a raft. All in the name of conservation. Alongside guest Michael Alm, Ben Thompson dives into the insane, inspiring, and occasionally insane-again life of the man who literally shaped how the world saw nature—and who wasn’t about to let a little thing like being gored, clawed, or trampled stop him.