#1091 - Daniele Bolelli

Joe Rogan (0:03)

Boom, and we're live. Daniele Bolelli, the man with the most beautiful accent in the world.

Daniele Bolelli (0:08)

I just read ightoon's review saying, it's kind of weird listening to this guy describing this horror story with the accent from, it sounds like he's making you pizza while he's talking. And they don't know, I am making them pizza while I'm talking, that is what's happening.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

Yeah, and if they could see you, you look like a professor that was kidnapped by a biker gang. Kim's in here with this red brotherhood jacket on, this leather jacket from these Native Americans with this big red fist on it. He's got a bandana on.

You're missing a motorcycle, that's all you're missing.

Daniele Bolelli (0:43)

Right, that's next.

Joe Rogan (0:45)

You could be in some Easy Rider type movie. Right. I could see it.

Daniele Bolelli (0:49)

Carrying a shotgun too, I dig that.

Joe Rogan (0:51)

So are you digging doing this podcast? Are you keeping me on fire?

Daniele Bolelli (0:55)

Oh man, I'm loving it. Well, let's put it that way. I love doing it.

It's a royal pain in the ass, the research.

Joe Rogan (1:03)

Your podcast, much like Dan Carlin's, is very different. I always feel ashamed calling my podcast a podcast, because you sit down and talk, but yours is like, it's an audio lesson on history, an in-depth audio lesson on very extreme aspects of history.

Daniele Bolelli (1:21)

Yeah, and that part I enjoy, because the storytelling part is awesome. You get to spin a story and make it exciting, connect it with pop culture, do something that's fun. That's the part that I love. Is the month prior to that of just brutal research, just combing through boring historical book after boring historical book to find those little nuggets that are amazing, and then spin it into a narrative?

That's the part that gets a little old sometimes, where you're like, man, do I really need to read 200 hours of stuff for this one thing? It's like, that's a lot.

Joe Rogan (1:54)

Yeah, I can only imagine. Now, when you do that, when you're going over, combing over all these different history books and all these different papers written on various times, are you extracting chunks and putting them in Microsoft Word and then going over it? And then, how do you form it? My question is, do you form it as a script, or how much of it? So everything is completely written out?

Daniele Bolelli (2:16)

No, not exactly, because otherwise, then it sounds like you're a guy reading a thing, and it's boring, and it doesn't sound right. I just take super-extensive notes, kind of like if you are to give a lecture that you've never given. You're not gonna sit down and read it, but you are going to, you know, you have something to keep you on track, to make sure it's like, oh, where am I going next? Okay, great, there's nothing.

So it's as detailed as possible without turning it into a dry guy reading his page type of stuff.

Joe Rogan (2:47)

Yeah, I mean, history is such a fucking awesome subject because people are crazy and throughout history, people have done so many crazy things that it's just, it's such a great thing to know. Like when you, if you only had today, like if we only had our current era and we're looking around on how fucking maniacal people are and how crazy the world is, we'd be like, God, how'd this happen?

How do we get here? And then you just listen to your podcast and you go, oh, this shit's been going on forever.

Daniele Bolelli (3:21)

Seriously.

Joe Rogan (3:22)

This is the good times.

Daniele Bolelli (3:23)

Exactly. This is, in case you are wondering, these good times.

Joe Rogan (3:28)

And yes, there's much to complain about. And yes, there's much we can do better, without a doubt, ladies and gentlemen. But this is as fucking good as it's ever been by far.

Daniele Bolelli (3:37)

Yeah, the human psyche is a very weird place because there's so much amazing stuff that human beings do. There's just so much.

And then there's the amount of horror that can be unleashed through, that has been unleashed throughout history by people against other people. It's just insane.

Joe Rogan (3:54)

Yeah, what is like when you go back and you go over history, what is the most confusing or disturbing era?

Daniele Bolelli (4:01)

You know, to me, it's not so much a particular period because the same patterns emerge a lot of the times at different point in time is more those moments, you know, when mob mentality takes over because the reality is the average person is not, I don't have the word viewer, I think the average person is evil. I don't think that. I think the average person is weak, which means that when in a conditions where everybody's pushing in one direction is very easy to jump on the bandwagon. And in some cases, then a very ordinary human being can do horrible actions. You meet them for dinner and you think pleasant person, good enough, but you put them in the wrong context and everything turns to shit. I just did, I just finished right now this two-part series. That's probably the most disturbing. Now I want to do a podcast about flowers and puppies because this one was heavy, man.