Episode 849 - Rapid Fire Q&A #25

In this episode, Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams take on a special edition of the Rapid Fire Question and Answers.

Rapid Fire Q&A #25 - Episode 849

Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams tackle a series of questions, comments, and reviews from you, the listeners, and some guests in the form of a Rapid Fire Q&A. Here are some of the questions they tried to answer:

• What's the relevance of Enter the Dragon to today's White Belts?

• How many villains from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can you name in 5 minutes?

• Listen to the episode for more questions!

After listening to the questions and answers, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section below!

Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below.

Jeremy:

Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome, this is Whistlekick martial arts radio. Today, Andrew and I are tackling our 25th installment of the Q&A format. Super fun and glad that you're here for it. Now, if you don't know about these Q&As, we're gonna tell you in a moment how you can submit a question for me to answer live on air in this fun condensed time format. And remember, I am unstumpable. So, That's a throwback to like what, the seventh one that we did. But if you, if you happen to be new or perhaps just want a reminder, we do a lot of great stuff for traditional martial artists worldwide, whether you're a school owner or a student, maybe you practice on your own, you're part of a large organization. Maybe you love competition, maybe you don't, really doesn't matter to us. We love traditional martial arts here as an organization and we want to support you in whatever your martial arts journey is. And the best thing to do, go to whistlekick.com. We're gonna talk more about what's at that website in a little while, but just go check it out. Pick something up. You know, we both have Whistlekick clothing

Andrew:

Thanks for watching!

Jeremy:

on. You can buy something with the code podcast15, see 15%. That is the biggest discount that we do publicly. How much you get a better discount? Well, some of them always send better discounts with our email list. Not often, but you can sign up for that at whistlekick.com as well. And... Yeah, if you want to throw a question at us with this pretty simple, Andrew at whistlekick.com. He has a new and updated email address as we moved things. And our social media is at Whistlekick because we keep it easy. Anything else I'm supposed to say, Andrew? I think that's it.

Andrew:

No,

Jeremy:

We're good.

Andrew:

that was good.

Jeremy:

Awesome. All right. Well, here we are

Andrew:

Thank you.

Jeremy:

doing another Q&A, and

Andrew:

That's right.

Jeremy:

I love doing these. And I know I know you enjoy them, too, because

Andrew:

Yeah,

Jeremy:

you get

Andrew:

they're

Jeremy:

to see

Andrew:

fun.

Jeremy:

the questions ahead of time. I don't see the questions. And I think everyone knows me well enough now, assuming you've been around, to know that I'm not lying about that. We just show up and Andrew's got a list of questions and he's like, ha ha.

Andrew:

Yep. And the last, we haven't done a Q and A episode since the middle of June. And it's partly because

Jeremy:

It's over two months,

Andrew:

I,

Jeremy:

yeah.

Andrew:

yeah, it's a couple of months, partly because I haven't gotten cues from people. So.

Jeremy:

Oh, people, we know you have questions. You ask

Andrew:

I

Jeremy:

me

Andrew:

know,

Jeremy:

questions in,

Andrew:

people

Jeremy:

I get

Andrew:

seem

Jeremy:

questions

Andrew:

to really like these.

Jeremy:

all the time. I get questions on TikTok. I get questions on Instagram. I get tagged in Facebook posts. People ask me questions frequently. Now, if you want me to answer in a super short form without a whole lot of thought or additional perspective from Andrew, then yeah, keep doing what you're doing. But if you want something that's a little more rounded and if especially if you think other people would benefit from it because this is by far our Broadest reaching platform then please send that question to Andrew Andrew. It's okay calm

Andrew:

Yeah. And I today did call a bunch of questions from a handful of people. There's a big theme to these four questions. That's

Jeremy:

Uh

Andrew:

OK?

Jeremy:

oh. Am

Andrew:

Oh,

Jeremy:

I supposed to guess the theme or is it obvious? Okay.

Andrew:

it's pretty obvious. All right, so you ready for your first question?

Jeremy:

And just to let everyone know, if my voice sounds different, it's because I'm fighting something off. I actually really like the way my voice sounds right now. Here, this is me very close to the microphone.

Andrew:

I'm going to go to bed.

Jeremy:

Should we record in this way with this cadence and this tone of voice all the time?

Andrew:

No.

Jeremy:

Does this sound like a martial arts show?

Andrew:

It's too Vermont Public Radio for me.

Jeremy:

coming back after the break. We'll have. Dino Nuggets. It seems like everyone's obsessed with dino nuggets

Andrew:

I don't

Jeremy:

recently,

Andrew:

even know what

Jeremy:

and

Andrew:

those are.

Jeremy:

I've never had... They're chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, which sounds like a thing that I should love, but I've just never had them.

Andrew:

Okay, sounds good. Do

Jeremy:

There

Andrew:

they taste

Jeremy:

we go.

Andrew:

better because they're in Dinosaur form?

Jeremy:

They have to. They're

Andrew:

Okay.

Jeremy:

dinosaurs. Everything about... Did you know? Did the audience know that until I was 16, I was going to be a paleontologist?

Andrew:

Ooh, I didn't

Jeremy:

That was

Andrew:

know

Jeremy:

the track.

Andrew:

that.

Jeremy:

Yeah. That was the track. I went on digs. Yeah.

Andrew:

All right, question number one. This comes from Stacy.

Jeremy:

Shout out to Stacy.

Andrew:

Say shout out to Stacy. What's the relevance of Enter the Dragon to today's White Belts?

Jeremy:

He's like, wow, that is a great and specific question. Okay, and I have five minutes and I assume you're running a clock.

Andrew:

Five minutes, yes. Go.

Jeremy:

It is relevant in, I think, a couple ways. It's relevant in a cultural way, because as a white belt, you're starting into something that has a historic and what I would call institutionalized culture. And it has relevance as... I guess everything can lump under that heading. So when you start doing something that is more than just... hobby, right? Like, martial arts is more than just a hobby. There is historical context here. Even the most modern approaches to martial arts training, at least that I've seen, will have some acknowledgement of this happened before, this person did this, this comes from here, right? We acknowledge that there's a lineage that happens. And one of the things that a lot of people who train enjoy is becoming part of something. whether you're part of something because you're in school, you're part of something because now you're gonna go compete, doesn't matter what it is, you're part of something. And we did an episode that, as of the recording of this has not aired, but will air right before

Andrew:

It will have aired.

Jeremy:

this one, talking about Bruce Lee, and when we title that, it's time to let Bruce Lee go. Something like that.

Andrew:

Is it time to let Bruce Lee go? Gosh.

Jeremy:

Something like that. Is it time to let Bruce Lee go? Because he was a great man who made wonderful contributions. You can go back and you can check out that episode. But because so many people still hold on to him, there's a good chance that if you start training, if you become a white belt, that at least some of the people around you, probably your instructor and some of the higher ranks, have at least some affinity for Bruce Lee and probably his movies. And Enter the Dragon is generally held up as the best of his movies. And on top of that, the guest stars, well, not really stars, but the people who are in that film. you'll probably recognize some. And if you go check out the IMDB, you'll recognize some names in there. So it becomes this interesting cross-section of, yes, it's a movie, and yes, it opened the door. We've talked about this on multiple episodes. It opened the door for Asian acting in the West, and it opened the door for martial arts films in the West. And it allowed us to... see a completely different way, right? Like in order to fully understand the cultural impact of Adventure of the Dragon, you have to watch movies before that. You have to watch the movies of the sixties and see that they fight scenes were slow and they were boring. And here all of a sudden we have these much faster, much more dramatic and creative martial arts fight scenes rather than just, you know, bar fight sort of stuff. And I think that that's really important for people to, maybe not. personally experienced, but at least acknowledged it exists.

Andrew:

Hmm. The only thing I would push back on what you said is that they, meaning White Belts of today, would recognize names in the movie. They wouldn't. They're

Jeremy:

That's a great point. They may

Andrew:

white

Jeremy:

not.

Andrew:

belts. They have no idea who Bob Wall is. I mean, they will likely know who Bruce Lee is because he has surpassed martial art circles to be well known,

Jeremy:

Yeah,

Andrew:

but people

Jeremy:

yeah,

Andrew:

aren't gonna

Jeremy:

not

Andrew:

know

Jeremy:

everybody's

Andrew:

who Bob

Jeremy:

gonna

Andrew:

Wall

Jeremy:

know who

Andrew:

is.

Jeremy:

Jim Kelly is. So there may be some names in there that people would.

Andrew:

All right. Yeah, I

Jeremy:

It's,

Andrew:

dig it.

Jeremy:

it's, and you know, here we have the 50th anniversary.

Andrew:

That

Jeremy:

It's

Andrew:

was just

Jeremy:

been

Andrew:

gonna say.

Jeremy:

re-released, I think in 4K.

Andrew:

Yep, I think so.

Jeremy:

I plan to get it because, you know, watching that film on a big screen in 4K, like I've never done that. You know what, I wanna check that out.

Andrew:

Yeah, yeah, pretty cool. I think, I think so much of what we do to, and we talked about this in our episode, episode 843, which was Time to Let Bruce Lee Go. That was the title of the episode, which came out a few weeks ago, probably about a month ago now. You know, one of the things we discussed was that, you know, so much of what martial artists do today have some semblance of, not semblance, some... impact on what they do stemmed from what Bruce Lee did. And, you know, I think the relevance is that this is where it came from. This is history, you know, and there's nothing wrong with knowing your history.

Jeremy:

Right, right, and we've had plenty of people on the show who would suggest that not only is there nothing wrong with it that you have a responsibility for it, I don't feel that strongly about it, but I think if you want to get as much as possible out of your time and experience with martial arts training, understanding the history of what you do and what we do, and I don't mean we whistle-click, I mean we martial artists, I think is of value.

Andrew:

Yeah, awesome. Now, what we do as Whistlekick can be found through our website,

Jeremy:

Whistlekick.com

Andrew:

whistlekick.com.

Jeremy:

Yeah, there's a lot over there. And I was just making some changes over the last few days because we were updating some things and we're constantly doing these new projects. And when we record these episodes, the term we use is evergreen. We don't know when you're gonna listen to or watch this episode. And we try to make sure that if you watch or listen in the future, that it will be just as relevant to you. So I'm gonna break that a little bit and then I'm gonna talk about some of the things that are over there. Like if you go to whistlekick.com right now, you'll be able to find... excuse me, pages and references in the navigation to the Never Settle Awards, which we just opened nominations and by the time you listen to or watch this, the nominations will be closed, but voting will probably still be open from getting my timing right. The Never Settle Awards or All-in-Weekend event or the Free Training Day events or the Marshall Summit event, we've got all that stuff over there as well as all the products that we make from training programs to protective equipment, which I have. I have gear I've got to ship out today to apparel that we already mentioned. And we've worked hard to keep whistlekick.com as our, I refer to it as our digital hub, our online home, you know, that sort of thing. And we're going to talk at the next break, we're going to talk a little bit about martial arts radio and why that gets a separate website. But here's my recommendation to you. If you like what we do, and this isn't even about supporting us, this is about you getting value out of what we do. If you like what we do, if you find that you are continually tuning in. You must like what we do because there are a billion podcasts that you can watch or listen to and you choose to spend some time with us If you're not visiting whistlekick.com on at least a monthly basis, I think you're missing out Because it changes about that often and I don't just mean like oh, you know We updated this product or we made a typo here. So we fix it I mean actual real changes as we roll out new efforts and you know what's going on within the next month in fact, maybe even by the time this airs we have a Massive thing that we are launching. I'm not going to talk about it because I'm not 100% sure But I will dangle the carrot to say it is the future of this country

Andrew:

Awesome. All right, you ready for question number two?

Jeremy:

I am born ready.

Andrew:

All

Jeremy:

Unstumpable.

Andrew:

right, this question comes from, well, these questions aren't ones that are really going to stump you these next, well, yeah, maybe, no, not really.

Jeremy:

I know. All the more reason to claim that title.

Andrew:

This question comes from Victor. Victor Corrino. His question is, what are your top five martial arts TV shows and why?

Jeremy:

I don't even think I have five. All right, so I think the first one that comes to mind, and it was horribly underrated in the moment, and I think people who saw it love it now. Into the Badlands is number one. Absolutely wonderful show. If you have not seen it, we had three of the actors on. One of my proudest moments was talking to Daniel Wu and Emily Beecham when we did promo for the second season. I mean, they reached out to us. That was so great. And then for... It didn't even come from them. Sherman Augustus reached out. His team reached out and wanted to have him on the show. And he came in for, I think it was season three. And... Had a blast talking to him. He's a great guy

Andrew:

Hmm.

Jeremy:

And I loved the show before that. There's even an episode if you go way back Where I said We need to support this show. We're not going to it's not going to make it as far as it could It's probably going to be great and I hate you all for letting that happen Uh, I don't actually hate anyone but Uh, I just I saw what was going to happen with it as it was going to get picked apart by martial artists and it did so Uh, number one if you haven't checked it out check it out. Uh, number two going way back martial law with Sam Ohau.

Andrew:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy:

Did you ever see that?

Andrew:

I've seen some episodes of it, yeah.

Jeremy:

great show. It was, you know, growing up as a martial artist. My mother also trained, but we didn't agree on much television-wise. She would make me watch MASH, you know, it was back in the days when, you know, before I had my own TV. And I'm not a MASH fan, but we could agree on it. Andrew's giving me a thumbs down. Martial Law was a great show. It was just genuinely a great show. I'm trying to think of other shows that I would classify. Oh, Warrior is a wonderful show.

Andrew:

Yep.

Jeremy:

It, you know, that came out of Bruce Lee and Shannon Lee put that forward and Shannon came on the show to help promote it. And I really enjoy it. I really do.

Andrew:

The newest season is out, is on Showtime right now.

Jeremy:

Okay, I haven't seen the new season. Have you? How

Andrew:

I have

Jeremy:

is it?

Andrew:

not, I'm waiting for

Jeremy:

Okay.

Andrew:

the to be completely released and then I'm

Jeremy:

Uh,

Andrew:

just

Jeremy:

so you

Andrew:

gonna

Jeremy:

can binge it?

Andrew:

yeah.

Jeremy:

Yeah. No, I get that. Um... What am I missing?

Andrew:

I can't answer this question for you. Victor asked me to ask you what your

Jeremy:

Okay.

Andrew:

top five martial arts TV shows were.

Jeremy:

I'm gonna

Andrew:

You've got three.

Jeremy:

look this up. Okay.

Andrew:

You've got, by the way, here's your running time right now.

Jeremy:

Oh, I got plenty of time. Two and a half minutes.

Andrew:

But yeah.

Jeremy:

Arts TV shows. I guess I have to say Cobra Kai.

Andrew:

You don't have to say anything.

Jeremy:

I... It is a martial arts TV show. And if we were talking strictly about the first season, maybe even the first two seasons, it probably would have been at the top. The first season of Cobra Kai is one of the best pieces of TV I've ever seen in my life. And it's wonderful. It faded for me. But we'll put that on the list too. For the audience, if I didn't mention at the top, with my voice being different, it's because I'm unwell. and my brain is not running at 100%. You know, I'm still of the age where when I think TV, I don't generally, my brain doesn't initially go to streaming. I go to broadcast, right? So that's kind of the challenge I'm having. So we could think about the four Marvel series. Daredevil, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, and

Andrew:

Luke Cage.

Jeremy:

Luke Cage, thank you. Those are all great.

Andrew:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy:

Let me... anything so I'm at four three four

Andrew:

Well, if you include those, that's five.

Jeremy:

I'll include I'll include Cobra Kai

Andrew:

Okay, so that's five.

Jeremy:

And you know what?

Andrew:

Bonus one?

Jeremy:

Ninja Turtles.

Andrew:

Uh... Yeah,

Jeremy:

I'm

Andrew:

sure.

Jeremy:

gonna go Ninja Turtles because Ninja Turtles for me as a child, and I'll say it out for purposes of SEO, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, let me transcribe this. validated me as a kid doing.

Andrew:

Yeah. Me as well. I mean, you probably know a lot about TMNT.

Jeremy:

The original series, absolutely. There have been quite a few iterations over the years. I don't know much about those. But the original series, yeah.

Andrew:

All right, so that's your five minutes.

Jeremy:

So there's my five.

Andrew:

Yeah, which actually you give six. You give a bonus.

Jeremy:

What do you think? What would you throw in there?

Andrew:

Um, I remember watching as a kid and enjoying, um, so I have seen episodes of the original Kung Fu TV show. Um, it was before my time, but I, but you know, I started training martial arts and was like eating everything I could, you know, consuming everything I could in terms of martial arts stuff. Um, and so I had seen some episodes of the original TV show, but I also remember watching Kung Fu, the Legend Continues. which was with David in the show, Kwai-Chen Kang's son, who I don't remember who played the actor, but David Carradine was in it as well. It was fun, it was enjoyable. I don't know how, it's years ago, it would have been in the 80s. So I don't know how much I would consider it a quote, martial arts TV show. I would have to rewatch it to really see, but I remember enjoying it. So that might've been in there. Definitely Warrior. definitely into the Badlands. TMNT. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. And I liked Cobra Kai, even as this, I know you and I differ on this. I know you loved the first couple of seasons and you kind of petered off after that. I've loved every season, regardless of how unrealistic a lot of it became. I still enjoy it. And I'm still anxiously awaiting season six coming out soon.

Jeremy:

which is the final season of Eracle.

Andrew:

That is correct. Yep. All right. So a little bit ago, we talked about whistlekick.com. But Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio has its own website. We gave it its own thing. Let's talk about that a little bit.

Jeremy:

Yeah, so early on I had the dilemma, does the podcast get its own website or not? And we're going back, because we're eight plus years into recording the show. So it's hard for me to remember exactly how big that dilemma was, but I remember it being a big dilemma. Because when you sit, not that everybody who watches or listens to the show goes to the website, but a good chunk do from time to time. And so breaking that into a separate thing was really, did I really wanna do that? And ultimately I'm glad that we did. And the reason that I'm glad that we did is because there was so much going on there that to try to manage that as a subset of, especially with, you know, whistlekick.com is ultimately an e-commerce platform. We run it on Shopify. And it works well for doing the things that we do over there. But this is... 800 and whatever episodes, which means there are 800 and whatever pages plus all of the other pages, you know, there's close to a thousand pages in whistlekick martial arts radio.com and trying to manage that collectively Within Shopify just wasn't going to work. So Why do we do that? I think is probably the first question because there's stuff that we can't put in the show notes There's there's stuff that you know, we can't put a transcript in the show notes. We transcribe every episode

Andrew:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy:

And sometimes, you know, there's often a delay but There are transcripts and why are there transcripts? For three reasons. One, not everyone can hear. And it was important to me early on that, and it still is, that anyone who possibly wants to consume what we do be able to do so. And if you can't hear, you can probably read. And so that's why we have that. And we do some episodes, we clean up those transcripts and throw them out as books. You can, you know, we'll talk about that a bit later. but we also often get videos and links and things that just don't land well in the show notes. We can put links in show notes. And if you've never checked, if you're like show notes, what are show notes Jeremy? It's the stuff, if you look at the more or the description or the whatever in your podcast player, if you listen to us or in the description stuff on YouTube, if you watch us, that's what I'm talking about. Some stuff doesn't work there, right? We can't embed a video there, but if... I'm talking to a guest and they mentioned this thing that they did and they send over a video, we embed that. So one of the things I recommend if you have the ability to, if you're walking around your house listening, have the show notes page up at whistlekickmarshmarchradio.com because you're like, oh, what's he talking about? And then go and refer to it. Or at least check it out after. A lot of times these guests put a little... quite a bit of time into sending us all these links so you can follow them and everything. Follow them if you can.

Andrew:

Yeah.

Jeremy:

What else is over there?

Andrew:

One of

Jeremy:

Go

Andrew:

the

Jeremy:

ahead.

Andrew:

things I used to use a lot was the search feature on

Jeremy:

Yeah.

Andrew:

the website. Be because we have had, you know, this episode we're recording right now is going to be like 851 or 49, something like that. Like, and when someone would reach out to me, say, hey, have you had person X on the show before? To be completely honest, I wouldn't know unless it's the last hundred or 200 people. Uh, like I will remember their name and say, yes, we've had.

Jeremy:

Ahem.

Andrew:

You didn't mute your cough, by the way.

Jeremy:

I didn't?

Andrew:

Nope, we all heard you cough. Sorry.

Jeremy:

It said it was muted!

Andrew:

It

Jeremy:

Hold

Andrew:

wasn't.

Jeremy:

on. You can hear this?

Andrew:

Yep, yep. Your mute button's broken.

Jeremy:

I'm using the wrong mic.

Andrew:

There you go.

Jeremy:

I'm using the wrong mic. This whole time I've been using the wrong mic.

Andrew:

That's funny.

Jeremy:

That's funny.

Andrew:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeremy:

Oh, that's right. So the...

Andrew:

That's rough. That's okay. That's great.

Jeremy:

Oh

Andrew:

You're human.

Jeremy:

That means when I've been clearing my throat and my nose and everything, everybody's heard that. All right, hi everyone. Welcome to Jeremy, who's, you know, under the weather. Okay.

Andrew:

So the search feature, like I would have to go in and look like

Jeremy:

Yeah.

Andrew:

did person X come on the show? I don't know

Jeremy:

Yeah, so short version, search stopped working for Squarespace. We use Squarespace as our martial arts radio website platform. And I love it as a platform, but search broke somewhere along the way. And I get, I get emails about it once in a while, usually from Andrew saying, this isn't working and it's frustrating me.

Andrew:

because I'm using

Jeremy:

And

Andrew:

it a lot.

Jeremy:

because you're using it a lot and there's nothing I can do. And I've dug in and I've looked and it's a Squarespace thing and I don't know why, but here's a workaround. And I just shared this with you, Andrew. I... I apologize for not sharing this with you sooner, but this isn't just for us, this is for any website. So here's a hack for you, all of you out there. If you wanna search the text of a website, you have, I mean, you can search that page, but what if it's something like us where you have a whole bunch of pages? You're not gonna go one by one. You can do Control-F for what is it, F3 in most web browsers to search through things, but that's only gonna be the page you're on, and it's only the text that has loaded. So if you go to google.com and you type site, S-I-T-E, colon, no space, whistlekickmarshallarchradio.com, then a space and whatever you're searching for. It'll search for it. So let's say I wanna figure out how many times Craig has been on the show, or at least has been discussed. I can type site, colon, whistlekickmarshallarchradio.com, space, Craig. and it will return all of the results. And actually, you know what? I can even do this right now. There's a way to share this. So I'm gonna do this right now. So let me get it loaded up.

Andrew:

Technology.

Jeremy:

So if I share my screen...

Andrew:

which will only be useful for those watching on YouTube.

Jeremy:

That's right, but we're describing it. So if I do this and I hit Google search, right? 782.

Andrew:

And it, because

Jeremy:

and a

Andrew:

you

Jeremy:

different

Andrew:

type,

Jeremy:

Craig.

Andrew:

yeah,

Jeremy:

Yeah,

Andrew:

I

Jeremy:

I

Andrew:

was

Jeremy:

typed

Andrew:

going to

Jeremy:

Craig.

Andrew:

say because we typed in

Jeremy:

So

Andrew:

Craig.

Jeremy:

I'm gonna redo it with Wareham because

Andrew:

Yep.

Jeremy:

122 with Craig Sargent, great guy. So here we go. 782 and 807 and 523 and 835 and 781 and 751 and 700 and 619.

Andrew:

Yep, yep, they all come up.

Jeremy:

So here we go. You can use that on anything. You've got to go to Google.com first. It might work in your browser if you do it that way, but maybe, maybe not depending on your browser. So there is your life tip of the day from what's okay.

Andrew:

Awesome.

Jeremy:

Is there anything else at the website?

Andrew:

No. Oh, is there?

Jeremy:

So that's

Andrew:

Yep.

Jeremy:

why we do the transcripts. And then the only other thing over there that I think would be of interest to people who are really engaged with what we do is we have a guest submission form. So if there's somebody that you wanna recommend for the show, that's the best way is you fill out that form.

Andrew:

Yep. All right, you ready for your third question? OK, this question comes from Mark Warner.

Jeremy:

shout out to me.

Andrew:

Yep, shout out to Mark. And you may have noticed the theme

Jeremy:

and

Andrew:

is,

Jeremy:

Stacy and Victor.

Andrew:

yeah, yeah. The theme of these questions is clearly TV and movies. Don't worry, best of the best is not in this question anywhere.

Jeremy:

It's good. Cause I don't, that means I don't have to end the episode abruptly.

Andrew:

All right, so Mark Warner's question, why aren't more martial arts movies from China, Japan, Hong Kong, et cetera, more popular with American martial artists?

Jeremy:

I think there's a few layers to that answer. And the first one is exposure. We have to hunt to get access to those movies. They're available, but they're not gonna show up on Netflix very often. And they, when they do, they're not generally done for an American audience. You know, one of the things that we don't realize as Americans and... You know, I recognize that not everyone who watches or listens to this show is American, but you probably speak English. And that means you're probably in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia or New Zealand. And culturally for those countries, the US and specifically Hollywood, the US TV and movie engine is what drives what we have exposure to. And there's a certain style. There's a certain presentation that happens with that. Longtime audience members know Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is my favorite martial arts film. And did very well at the box office, not because it was presented in an American way, but because it just, it hit at the right time. You could have done that movie 50 other ways, 50 other times, and it wouldn't have been the success it was. It was a lightning in a bottle. It was one time. There were a lot of variables there. Because also, it's subtitled. I remember currently, it was also the highest grossing subtitle movie. There are tons of those films out there. we don't watch them because we don't know about them because no one talks about them because we don't watch them because no one talks about them

Andrew:

Hmm.

Jeremy:

because we don't right like there's a loop there and there was so much available for us to watch now, right? Like if you can sit down on your couch and pull up your remote and have more than you would ever be able to watch available to you, and good stuff, there's a lot of great stuff, maybe not, most of it's not martial arts related, but it's really easy to find something to, you know, dull your brain and watch seven seasons of from time to time. It doesn't inspire the hunting. that would be required to pull up those films. people try, right? Like, in my opinion, Warrior is kind of along those lines, right? Like, it has a little bit of that flavor to it.

Andrew:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy:

And they struggled. They almost didn't come back for season two, as wonderful as that TV series is. The fact that it was... I'm sad to say this, I think, because so many of the actors are Asian, right? Like, they're And I'm not saying that because this has anything to do with my opinion, but what was the... Crazy Rich Asians, right? We've talked about that on this show with, I think, two different guests of Asian descent, who mentioned how pivotal that film being taken up by Hollywood and put out and doing well was for Asian American actors. And so I think that we're still kind of moving through that. And I think we're getting there, but I think 80 to 90% of the, if you wanna call it a problem, has to do with exposure and just the sheer volume of content available.

Andrew:

Gotcha. Yeah, I could see that. I also think to some degree they're made, they are often subtitled and traditionally subtitled movies don't do as well. Obviously, there are outliers like Crouching Tiger. But I think for a lot of people, they just don't want to sit down and watch a movie and have to read the movie.

Jeremy:

It's a lot of work. I know people who watch TV with subtitles on by default. I don't know why. When I do that, it takes me out of the movie.

Andrew:

Yeah, yeah, I will typically just go in and turn it on if there's a scene that I have a hard time hearing, I'll rewind it and just put it on, but yeah, I don't leave it on. Yeah, yeah, speaking of reading.

Jeremy:

speaking of reading.

Andrew:

books

Jeremy:

We have a book division, yeah, and not everyone knows that. No, we've done, we kind of have two flavors of books. We have books that are, I don't wanna say heavily edited, heavily cleaned up transcripts, because a lot of our transcripts are, over the years they've been done economically, right? For me to hire someone that is a native martial artist, native English speaker, also martial artist, to do the transcript. That is cost prohibitive.

Andrew:

Yeah, I mean,

Jeremy:

And we

Andrew:

just

Jeremy:

have.

Andrew:

think of Weichiru. Someone says Weichiru. If you're not a martial arts practitioner, how do you spell Weichiru?

Jeremy:

And most people even who are probably don't know how to spell it by the way. It's U E C H I

Andrew:

Yeah.

Jeremy:

hyphen R Y U. So we were never gonna put a ton of money into that. But it was important to me that we get them done as best we can, right? And so that's what we did. But when we have maybe a prominent person or a collection of prominent people or a subject or something, we'll get those cleaned up and we roll them out as a book. And I think the most recent one we did on that, there were two that came out at similar times. There was a collection of prominent women that we had on the show that we did. And there was also... What did we call it? Legends?

Andrew:

Legends.

Jeremy:

Where we

Andrew:

Yep.

Jeremy:

had like Don Wilson and Bill Wallace. I don't

Andrew:

Jeff Speakman,

Jeremy:

remember who the...

Andrew:

Fumio Demura,

Jeremy:

Yep,

Andrew:

Jun

Jeremy:

yep.

Andrew:

Rhee.

Jeremy:

Oh, that's right. And that, by the way, that book, we did something we've never done before and it worked awesome, with the exception of Jim Ray because he passed years ago. And I'm probably gonna get a little emotional here. We got the other four to give us... like quotes about the five. So we, in that book, we have Bill Wallace talking about Junereen from your Debra and. But she on Demeril passed just as we finished that project. It was like two weeks after we got those quotes from him. And... I'm glad we didn't wait. because everybody said great things about the others. And that book, I had virtually nothing to do with it. It's one of my proudest moments is that the team did this, Andrew, you were involved in that, getting those quotes, and Jenny did a wonderful job on it. And so that book's available at Amazon. And it was kind of our way of bringing that information out, but also trying to extend it and add some value to it by saying, what did Jeff Speakman say about...

Andrew:

And the wrathrock.

Jeremy:

Don Wilson, Cynthia Rath, right? Like it's a cool book, okay? But the other books that we have are, I would call them a little more traditional, right? Like Marshall Artie's Handbook, we're working on version two, but it's not out yet. It's not gonna be out for a little while. Version one has things that will not be in version two. We've already established that. So you should check out that book. That's the book that we sell the most of. But then we've also got things like how not to hold a tournament, which is all about martial arts events. And if you've been to a whistle kick event, you know that I know a little bit about throwing an event. It's something I'm kind of good at. So that stuff's in the book. And then the novel I wrote, Faith, and there's just, there's a bunch of stuff out there. So

Andrew:

Yeah.

Jeremy:

yeah, the bat, thank you. This is the challenge of my brain, not rolling it 100%. The Chronicles of Master Hop Kick, and we recently rolled out the Mat Chat Guide, which you can... you know, martial arts instructors are using that, you know, at the end of class, they'll read a chapter and there's discussion questions in there. So there's, we're constantly doing cool stuff. This is why at the beginning I said, go to whistlekick.com because I don't remember all the things that are going on.

Andrew:

Thank

Jeremy:

And

Andrew:

you.

Jeremy:

the best way, if you want to check out the books is to go to Amazon and just search Whistlekick because most of what you're going to find there is books.

Andrew:

All right, we have come to our last question.

Jeremy:

Dun, dun, dun.

Andrew:

that we had a little foreshadowing with an earlier question.

Jeremy:

Does this change my voice when I do this? Does this change this dramatically?

Andrew:

No, not really.

Jeremy:

Interesting, so it's recording from here, but my headphones are coming off the good mic.

Andrew:

Your troubleshooting.

Jeremy:

So I have actually no idea what this sounds like to you. Son of a,

Andrew:

It sounds fine. It sounds good.

Jeremy:

well, I'm glad.

Andrew:

Okay, you ready? Your last question.

Jeremy:

Last question, then I can fix my mic.

Andrew:

In five minutes, name as many villains from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as you can.

Jeremy:

Shredder Crang, Rocksteady, Bebop, Casey Jones when he first appeared. The Rat King. Um, there was that robot turtle, like mecha turtle thing that they did.

Andrew:

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy:

Uh... There was an episode where, I think it was Raph, kind of went off on his own, and they, I seem to remember they were fighting with him. I mean there's the foot soldiers, there's like all the different kinds of foot soldiers. I don't know if Krang counts in as different ones with all of his different bodies and platforms. You know, there's the, is it the pterodome? Is it

Andrew:

Yep, yep, the

Jeremy:

the

Andrew:

terror

Jeremy:

ship

Andrew:

drone.

Jeremy:

thing that he made? I don't know if that counts as separate, you know, do villains have to be human?

Andrew:

You're

Jeremy:

Oh,

Andrew:

doing

Jeremy:

the

Andrew:

pretty

Jeremy:

alligator

Andrew:

good.

Jeremy:

dude. There's the alligator dude.

Andrew:

Yep, leatherhead.

Jeremy:

Leatherhead.

Andrew:

Yep, that was the alligator dude.

Jeremy:

another one I'm trying to There was that mole guy. Mole man? Can't be mole man. There was another one there. I think that's all I've got.

Andrew:

So I have a list. So that was, you did those

Jeremy:

Okay.

Andrew:

in just under two minutes. I did about as good as you. Like

Jeremy:

Okay, yeah.

Andrew:

there were two that I remember that you didn't,

Jeremy:

Okay, which two?

Andrew:

which were Toca and Rezar

Jeremy:

Are

Andrew:

from

Jeremy:

they

Andrew:

one of

Jeremy:

from

Andrew:

the

Jeremy:

the

Andrew:

movies.

Jeremy:

originals? Okay, see in my brain, I mentioned when we talked about turtles, I know the original series and that's mostly what I know.

Andrew:

Yeah. And then there were some from the comic books, the original comic books, like the Triceratons. Yeah, yeah, but here's what I found. So I found a list of the top 26 TMNT villains and I'm just gonna read through the list and if there's any that you're like who is that and you want to know more about Just say so and I'll tell

Jeremy:

Okay.

Andrew:

you So from the top Shredder, Krang, Baxter Stockman. He's the other one I remember

Jeremy:

He was, yeah, he did the Mausers.

Andrew:

Yep, yep. Rocksteady, bebop, Karai, the foot, Hun, Aloplex, Toca and Rezar, the foot elite soldiers, whatever. Master Tatsu, that was Shredder's right-hand man in the original movie.

Jeremy:

Okay, end of movie.

Andrew:

The Rat King, Leatherhead, Danny Pennington, that was a dumb one. He was the kid in the first movie that became a good guy, but like at first he was part of the gang. He wanted to join the

Jeremy:

Okay.

Andrew:

football team. Slash, Triceratons, Tiger Claw,

Jeremy:

Who's Slash?

Andrew:

80s.

Jeremy:

Remind

Andrew:

What's

Jeremy:

me

Andrew:

that?

Jeremy:

who Slash is. Slash.

Andrew:

Slash, okay. Slash

Jeremy:

Cause Slash

Andrew:

was... It

Jeremy:

takes my brain to transformers.

Andrew:

was 1987 cartoon, episode 83. Bebop became something of a demented version of a ninja turtle after getting mutated. In the 2002 series, he was originally Raphael's pet turtle. That was Slash, Triceratons, Tiger Claw, Agent Bishop, Purple Dragons, General Trag, J, which is spelled J-E-I, Stone Generals, New Trailzers, Zanaron, Pizza Monsters, and the most interesting one they listed. This was actually number, I took it out of the list in order. That was in order, 1-26. But I pulled out number four. This was on the number four villain of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And it's so funny, I'm actually gonna pull it up and read the full thing because it's hilarious. Okay, number four, the producers of Ninja Turtles, The Next Mutation. These villains might be the absolute worst because they exist in real life. This short-lived live-action show tried, but failed, to emulate the Power Rangers, even crossing over with Power Rangers in space at one point. The turtle costumes look cheap, the series introduces a new female turtle that doesn't mesh well with the crew, and the primary villain is a lizard monster that looks like it's made out of rubber. The next mutation is a stain on the brand that will hopefully be forgotten someday.

Jeremy:

Now I want to watch that.

Andrew:

I kind of do too. I haven't seen it. I kind of want to

Jeremy:

Great. That's a good question. I like that. That was a lot of fun.

Andrew:

So there you go. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villains. That concludes our episode for today. That was fun.

Jeremy:

Who said that in?

Andrew:

Sorry, I don't think I said so. Chris Rickard.

Jeremy:

Okay, thank you Chris, that was great. Alright. Yeah, so if you want to submit a question for the next episode, because we like to do these monthly, hit up Andrew at whistlekick.com. Don't send it to me, I don't want to see him ahead of time. That's what makes it fun for me. And if you want to support us, you know the best thing you can do is go to whistlekick.com, buy something on the Code Podcast 155, or check out the other stuff we do, come to an event, tell people about us, buy a book. And don't forget, transcripts and that search hack, site colon, whatever site, whistlekickmarchmarchrader.com space, whatever you're searching for. Like if you wanna know, who are all the people who've been on the show who mentioned Kempo? Or have we had anyone on the show before who does Arnees? Right, like that's why you would use that and that's part of why we do the transcripts. And just as an aside, you are welcome to take copy. put those on your Kindle, anything that you wanna do. If there's an episode, here's my last thing before we roll out. If there's an episode that you find you listen to periodically, because there are episodes out there that certain people tell me they find really powerful. And if you find yourself listening to that or watching that over and over again, grab the transcript, throw it on your Kindle or on your website and read as you listen. And the brain processes that information differently and better. It retains it. that much more. So just something to keep in mind. All right. Anything else? Andrew? Before

Andrew:

No, that's going to do it.

Jeremy:

we go. All right. Cool. Thank you everyone. Appreciate you being here until next time. Train hard,

Andrew:

Train hard, smile,

Jeremy:

smile

Andrew:

have a great

Jeremy:

and

Andrew:

day.

Jeremy:

have a great day.