Badass of the Week

Olympias: Snakes, Curses, and the Birth of an Empire

Empires don’t begin with heroes — they begin with mothers who refuse to lose.
Olympias ruled from the shadows using fear, religion, and assassination, making sure history remembered her son as a god and forgot anyone who stood in his way. If Alexander conquered the world with a sword, Olympias conquered history with snakes, curses, and a body count. Hosted by Ben Thompson, with co-host Dr. Patricia Larash, this episode unpacks how power really worked in ancient Macedonia — and why Olympias may have been the most dangerous person in the room.

Marguerite de la Rocque: Alone on the Island of Demons

In 1542, a teenage French noblewoman is marooned on a frozen island off the coast of Newfoundland - deliberately abandoned by her own family, left with a failing matchlock gun, a handful of supplies, and no hope of rescue. Over the next two years, Marguerite de la Rocque watches everyone she loves die, survives brutal winters, hunts seals, and kills polar bears with a weapon that takes minutes to reload - knowing one mistake means death.
This week on Badass of the Week, Ben Thompson is joined by New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman, whose novel Isola resurrects one of the most insane survival stories in history: a woman written off as dead who endured the Island of Demons - and came back changed forever.

Gilgamesh: Immortal Power, Very Mortal Consequences

Five thousand years before Batman brooded, before Achilles sulked, before Hercules punched a god in the mouth, there was Epic of Gilgamesh - the original badass origin story. Gilgamesh starts as a tyrant king with godlike strength, a legendary temper, and absolutely zero chill, until the gods drop another unstoppable force into his life: Enkidu. What follows is a saga of monster-slaying, divine beef, catastrophic hubris, and one of the earliest -and most brutal - lessons ever recorded about friendship, loss, and mortality.
Host Ben Thompson is joined by mythologist and storyteller Dr. John Bucher, Executive Director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, to break down how Gilgamesh isn’t just the first epic hero - but the blueprint for every action movie, superhero arc, and hero’s journey that followed. It’s a story about conquering everything… except death - and why that realization still hits just as hard 5,000 years later.

Butch Cassidy: The West’s Smoothest Criminal

Outlaws don’t usually get remembered for being smart—but Butch Cassidy was something different. He robbed banks and trains with minimal bloodshed, outwitted the Pinkertons for years, and built a criminal crew that operated more like a well-run business than a gang of desperados.
This week on Badass of the Week, we’re joined by Todd Weiser, co-host of the Heist Club podcast, to break down what made Cassidy’s robberies so effective, why charm was his most dangerous weapon, and how one outlaw managed to turn crime into legend. And then there’s the ending—because depending on who you believe, Butch Cassidy either died in Bolivia… or pulled off the cleanest escape of his life. 

Daniel Morgan: 499 Problems, the Crown Ain’t One

Powdered wigs didn’t win the American Revolution... scarred knuckles did.
Host Ben Thompson is joined by David Schmidt, director of The American Revolution with Ken Burns, to tell the story of Daniel Morgan - a frontier brawler who survived 500 lashes, took a musket ball through the face, and learned to fight the British in ways they couldn’t understand or stop. Morgan didn’t look like a Founding Father and he didn’t fight like a gentleman. He hunted officers from the treeline, turned militia panic into strategy, and delivered one of the most decisive victories of the war at Cowpens.
This episode strips the American Revolution down to its rawest form:  mud, blood, rifle smoke, and a man with 499 reasons to never surrender.

Petty Officer Robert J Thomas: The Last Bullet Is His.

During a brutal Vietnam firefight that spiraled into a forty-five-minute running battle, Robert J. Thomas was shot, shredded by shrapnel, and left barely able to stand. Instead of evacuating, he crawled forward, emptied his pistol into enemy positions, then climbed onto the door gun of a helicopter that had already been hit more than a hundred times.
On this episode, host Ben Thompson is joined by Matt Fratus of Late Night History to break down Thomas’s stand - a fight that saved multiple wounded teammates, kept the helicopter in the air, and only ended when the aircraft physically had to leave. Thomas later woke up in a medevac hospital with his face wired back together.
Despite being nominated twice for the Medal of Honor, Thomas received the Navy Cross, returned to Vietnam to finish his tour, and went on to help create the Navy SEAL sniper program that shaped modern special operations. This is a story about refusing extraction, precision under fire, and a man who never stopped fighting when everyone else was already out. 

St. Moses the Black: From Outlaw to Saint

History doesn’t usually leave room for men like St. Moses the Black - a violent outlaw, gang leader, and feared killer who somehow became one of the most respected monks of the early Christian world. His life wasn’t a gentle conversion story. It was brutal, uncomfortable, and earned the hard way through discipline, humility, and blood-soaked consequences.
Joining the show is Matti Leshem, co-creator of Fox Nation's The Saints, to break down why Moses’s transformation still matters and why this might be the most intense Christmas story you’ve never heard. This is a holiday episode about redemption that doesn’t come wrapped in a bow — it comes with scars.

The Trưng Sisters: When Sisters Ruled an Empire

History doesn’t usually begin with two sisters on war elephants — but this one does. In 40 AD, the Trưng Sisters ignited a violent break from Han Dynasty rule, led armies commanded by women, seized more than sixty citadels, and ruled Vietnam as queens for three hard-fought years.
In today's episode Ben is joined by Dr. Pat Larish to chart the rise, rule, and last stand of the women who turned occupation into identity — and became the blueprint for two thousand years of Vietnamese resistance.

The Taiping Rebellion: The Cult Leader Who Nearly Toppled an Empire

A failed civil-service exam. A month-long fever dream. And a man who woke up convinced he was Jesus Christ’s Chinese younger brother... This week, Ben teams up with historian and History on Fire host Daniele Bolelli to tell one of the wildest, bloodiest, most unbelievable stories in human history: the Taiping Rebellion, the second-deadliest war the world has ever seen.
What begins as one man’s psychotic break spirals into a doomsday-level holy war that engulfs 17 provinces, kills tens of millions, topples cities, shatters dynasties, draws in Western empires, and sets China on a collision course with its modern future.
Strap in — this one goes way off the rails.

Pearl Harbor: The Cook, the Drunks, and the Battleship That Wouldn’t Die

On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was hit with fire, chaos, and a surprise attack that should have shattered the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Instead, it produced some of the wildest, most unlikely heroes in American history. In this episode, Ben Thompson is joined by Navy veteran and comedian Rob Mayfield to break down the stories of the men who refused to fold - from mess attendant Doris “Dorie” Miller dropping enemy planes with a .50-cal he’d never been trained to fire, to two hungover fighter pilots who rolled out of bed, ignored every order, and took on the entire Japanese strike force, to the boatswain who literally dove into the harbor to keep a battleship from going down. 
It’s Pearl Harbor like you’ve never heard it - intense, unbelievable, and absolutely badass.