Does Steven Seagal really know karate?
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January 31, 2025
TLDR: Podcast discusses whether Steven Seagal actually knows martial arts and explores how this question's confusions relate to navigating 2025.

The intriguing debate about whether actor and martial artist Steven Seagal truly possesses martial arts skills has sparked discussions across internet communities for years. This podcast episode explores Seagal’s martial arts credentials, his unique persona, and the cultural phenomenon surrounding his legacy.
The Mystery of Steven Seagal
Who is Steven Seagal?
- A prominent figure in 90s action films, known for movies like Under Siege and Marked for Death.
- Notable for his role as a blues musician and for his peculiar personality quirks that have rendered him a subject of online obsession.
- The host questions Seagal's legacy, noting his different background compared to other action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis.
Martial Arts: Reality vs. Film
The Central Question
The podcast centers around one core question: Does Steven Seagal know actual martial arts? While he claims to be a master in Aikido and has a black belt, skepticism exists regarding the authenticity of these claims.
Expert Opinions
- An interview with Scott Gregoni, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, reveals insights on Seagal’s techniques:
- Demonstrations vs. Real Combat: Scott emphasizes that while Seagal’s Aikido techniques work in demonstrations, their effectiveness in a real fight is questionable, especially against trained fighters.
- Entertainment or Martial Arts? Scott describes Seagal's more impressive moves as appearing effective in movies but notes they often rely heavily on cooperation from opponents.
The Enigmatic Personality of Seagal
A Complicated Legacy
- Seagal's personal narrative is filled with contradictions and controversies—from dodging the Vietnam draft to his purported connections with the CIA and the Yakuza. These aspects have contributed to his enigmatic aura.
- The podcast emphasizes that many of Seagal’s stories seem exaggerated or unfounded, leading to accusations of him being a "pathological liar."
Seagal in Current Events
- Recently, Seagal has aligned himself politically with Russia, further complicating his image. The conversation shifts to how this association might mirror behaviors seen in public figures today, including Donald Trump.
Cultural Implications and Takeaways
The Reflection on Truth and Persona
- As the discussion draws to a close, the hosts reflect on how Seagal’s story encapsulates broader themes of truth in public personas. They challenge listeners to consider how to deal with individuals whose narratives diverge from reality.
- While the show starts light-hearted, it transitions into a deep reflection on truth, reality, and the moral complexities surrounding public figures in Hollywood.
Final Thoughts
- The podcast suggests that while Seagal may have legitimate martial arts training, much of his persona stems from exaggerated claims and the cinema's portrayal of martial arts.
- Takeaways for listeners: It’s vital to critically assess the narratives we consume and understand the distinction between skill in martial arts and performance in entertainment.
In conclusion, the episode entertains while shedding light on the layers of truth and myth surrounding one of Hollywood's most controversial figures. Whether one views Seagal as a true martial artist or a master of illusion depends on personal interpretations of his life and works.
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W.B.U.R. Podcasts. Boston. Emory, do you know Kung Fu? Nope. Karate. Not a move. Not a kick. Jujitsu? Nope. Tai Chi? No. Are you more of like a scratch and bop them on the nose approach?
Yeah, I took a boxing class for a while. All right. So I can sock them where it hurts. You can sock them. But not with any sort of prestige or real finesse. OK, so I'm going to ask you, have you seen any of these films? And I want you to say, after each one, whether you've seen it or not. Simple yes or no answer, OK? Yep. Hard to kill. No. Marked for death. No. Out for justice. No. Above the law. No. Beyond the law. No. China salesmen.
On deadly ground? No. Exit wounds. No. Under siege. No. End of a gun. No. A dangerous man. That sounds familiar, but no. A good man. No. How about this one? Sheep impact. Yes, no.
Sheep Impact is a four-minute short about friends Craig and Paul who are charged with bringing meat to the lovely Sarah's barbecue party so that they can have a chance with her and how they may have to resort to desperate measures. So Sheep Impact, you haven't seen that one? All that in four minutes, huh? And a bag of chips? No. These are all as you may be able to guess. Steven Seagal films? Yes.
So when you, Amory, meditate upon the grandeur that is the actor, the blues guitar genius, the minor deity that is Steven Segal, in your mind's eye, who do you see? Can you describe him to me?
In my mind, I'm seeing like a more probably more of a present day, Steven Seagal. So he's stocky. He looks like like a stereotypical mob boss maybe. I'm picturing him in like ponytail. You see in the ponytail.
Oh, sure, sure, yeah. Yeah, okay, you're seeing the leather. Okay, that's good. These all generally fit his description. So, Steven Seagal is in some ways on this list of huge action hero names from the 1990s, one might say. A decade when action heroes were kind of a big thing, the kind of bread and muscle-bound butter of American cinema. I'm talking about people like,
Jean-Claude Van Dam. Chuck Norris. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bruce Willy.
You are not on Bruce Willy terms with Bruce Willis. You're in your dead cell. But I might be on Bruce Willy terms with Liam Neesons. Anyway, okay. Stephen Segal is different. And he's different in a number of ways, not least of which is he is the only person on this list who has performed as the lead guitarist of a blues band called Thunderbox. Would you like to hear some Thunderbox? Of course.
Alright, what do you think? It's your standard blues guitar fare. As a fellow musician, you would say. From what I heard thus far, it sounds like he is competently executing blues guitar in a way that is unremarkable but tip a hat too.
Nothing wrong with it. No nodes. Okay, moving on. The reason we are talking about Stephen Seagal today is that he really is a unique character in American culture, and he is the topic of much discussion on the internet. I noticed this about a year and a half ago, that there were some burgeoning and raging debates about Stephen Seagal, about his ancestry.
I'm Russian Mongolian, and we don't really know which tribe it is. And about whether or not he is a good guy. He did exactly what I said and exactly what I wanted to happen happened. And about whether he is the worst host to ever host Saturday Night Live. And perhaps, Emory, the most important and crucial for Stephen Segal's personal brand, debates and conspiracy theories about this action hero's knowledge of martial arts.
Many people consider me, you know, one of the great masters in my own field. Hi, I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Severson, and you're listening to Endless Thread. We're coming to you from Boston's Dojo in the Buddhist Enlightened Astral Plane. WBUR, today's episode, does Steven Segal know karate?
All right, so as I mentioned, I was on the Stephen Seagull conspiracy thing early. I swear to God, I was early. It was at least a year ago, maybe a year and a half. I saw conversations about him popping off on X and Reddit.
And then I saw some things on YouTube, mostly revolving around this question of whether or not Seagal actually can perform martial arts if he's the real deal. And I want to show you a little video and ask you to react to this, okay? Okay. You're about to witness the most lethal mixed martial artists in the world in action. All right. Got Steven Seagal in the fighting square. He is kicking ass someone.
Ooh, and then we got a young Steven Segal. Looks very different. Also kicking ass.
but like not really kicking ass. He's just, this looks very staged. He's just kind of like, boop, throw you down, boop, throw you down, boop, throw you down. These people are, they're in on it. They're willingly being tossed to the ground with a gentle nudge from Steven Segal. That's a perfect description. So there's this raging debate online about Segal's credentials and whether they're indeed legit. And I know very little about martial arts or the martial arts world. You've boxed, so you already know more than me.
My sense is that in this world, credentials are extremely important, right? Like who you trained with, where you trained. The belts. How many belts? Exactly. What color? What color the belts are. This stuff is important, right? Yeah. So I was curious about this. I wanted to know more, but I'm not going to lie. At the time, a year and a half ago, I kept scrolling without diving deep on Stephen Segal. And then just before this holiday season,
Stephen Seagal, round house kicked back into my feed. There is a viral picture of him on a subreddit called Ukraine War Video Report, which is effectively a community where people post a lot of video and photos from the war in Ukraine. I'm going to show you this picture. Okay. How would you describe his body type and just looking at him right now, how would you without
was creating too much shame, describe your impression of his level of fitness. He's chilling. So not necessarily in fighting shape, as they say. Nope. I mean, who knows? I'm not going to underestimate him, but no, he looks like he's been chilling. The top comment on this is that chair is the hardest fighter in all of Russia. Oh, no.
holding up Stephen Seagal, who seems to be pretty out of shape. Look, he doesn't look like an action hero in these photos. He's older now, I mean, he's 72 years old, according to the internet. I hedged that because Seagal's got a lot of suspicious information about him on the internet. What jumped out to me was that Seagal was apparently fighting, or at least sitting, on the side of Russia in this fight. Why do I think he's Russian?
This is a great question and we're gonna get to that. Okay. I want you to put your karate ghee on. I want you to tighten that yellow belt.
and come with me on this rabbit hole. That's a really advanced one, right? I think mine's white still. Let us start at Seagull's origins. So you asked if he was Russian or not. Wait, is he Russian? So I want to shout out a YouTuber here. His name is Patrick Gavia, who put together a real supercut of the Seagull Mystery Stew, comedic supercut, I should say.
And this is from that supercut, and it's Steven Seagal talking about his own origins. I was born from a mother who was found in a shoebox when she was born. My mother was an American Indian. You have Italian? I have some Italian on my mother's side and some French. My mother was a Mohawk. I think that my mother's side is probably Irish. My grandmother surely looks pure Mohawk.
And I'm pretty sure she is. Grandmother in Yolani if that is Mongolian? It looks like Russian Mongols, but I don't know what they are, but they're something Asian. Father is a Russian Mongol. Part of his family are from Texas, so let's put it this way. I'm Russian. I'm a lot more Asian than I am.
American. I'm a Russian Mongolian. I'm Russian Mongolian, and we don't really know which tribe it is, and all of those people are dead now, so I can't ask them. Asian, I don't know what the hell I have been in. Am I allowed to cuss on this show? Wow. Wow. He's... Like when I saw this... He's a man of the people then.
Suffice it to say, even the beginnings of Steven Seagal are mysterious, perhaps even to him. Apparently his dad was a math teacher, his mom was a medical technician, Irish and Jewish descent, according to a documentary from the Discovery Channel. I really became first aware of Seagal right after the time of his big Hollywood movie, which I described earlier under siege.
Maybe the only other thing I really knew about him at the time was that he was connected to Native American issues, and I think was outspoken about this. According to the stories he tells about himself, Segal lives in California for a while as a teenager. He's born in Michigan and he moves to California. During Vietnam, Segal apparently moves to Japan and marries a woman there to avoid the Vietnam draft. Hmm.
which is maybe strange behavior considering his action career, there he apparently picks up a black belt in Aikido. According to Sagal himself, he trains the CIA in Japan to go after the Japanese mob, the Yakuza. There's not a lot of sources for that beyond Sagal himself in interviews on David Letterman and elsewhere.
Did you or did you not work with the CIA? Did I make that up or people just saying that to be funnier? Did you actually have a job with the Central Intelligence Agency? I like the way you say that. Well, you know, it's kind of a personal thing, Dave. It's a little tough to talk about. You can't talk about it? So that means you were with the CIA. Because if you weren't, you could talk about anything you wanted.
Well, if you want to put it that way, it's pretty embarrassing. And I wouldn't like to talk about it because it's kind of a painful memory, you know. Also, apparently he's been interested in music since jump. He has said, and I quote, I've been playing since I was a baby. A little baby blues guitar. So he has also said, and I quote, I don't know what color I am. But I was the only one who knew that wasn't black who played exactly like them.
Oh boy, okay. So what are you getting a sense of, you know, from Siegel's narration of his own life and how much we can depend on that? He lives in a fantasy world. He does not know fact from fiction anymore and he is constructing his personal narrative brick by brick by the day and rearranging bricks along the way.
There's just a lot of strange narratives coming out of Stephen Skoll. I think you're right. A lot of them don't make sense or they're in competition with each other. What we do have evidence of is that he returns from Japan eventually and begins to do combat choreography in Hollywood. He apparently breaks Sean Connery's wrist showing him how to do Ikea. And he was really, very, very good and everything. And I got a little cocky because I thought I knew what I was doing because
You know, the principle is it's defense, so it's a pyramid and I got a bit flash and I did that and he broke my wrist. Wow. And this is another whole strange narrative in the Segal lore, by the way, that he hurts people he works with on screen. There's a compendium of complaints that some people have about how Segal treats them on set, how he's dangerous in his fight scenes, it's a whole thing. And it's an important thing to say because it's part of the story that does not come directly from Segal himself.
He starts crossing over from movie star choreographer to an actual movie star, an eye-watering list of Seagal movies get made. Apparently some of his movies get funded in part, by the way, by the mob here in the US. Oh boy. There's an extortion case involving the Genovese crime family in New York. Did you expect the mob to be involved in Stephen Seagal's story? I mean, why not? Why not? Just toss it in there. Yeah, toss it in.
Okay, last and same thing to mention for now, Steven Seagal at the height of his fame gets to host SNL.
this is a job if you want to host SNL, you must be able to poke fun at yourself, right? And so we're going to give you a hint about whether or not Steven Segal can laugh at himself, can take himself not seriously from Rob Schneider, the actor. Finally, Steven Segal emerges from one of the other anterior rooms in the mobile home and he comes out and he said,
I just read the greatest script I've ever written in my life. Really? Who wrote it? I did. So, that clip from Rob Schneider.
should tell you about Stephen Segal's opinion of himself and also maybe give you a sense of whether or not Stephen Segal can poke fun at himself as the host of SNL. Spoiler alert for that episode of SNL, which came out over 30 years ago in 1991.
I'm not sure the answer is yes. According to reports of Stephen Segal's demands, most of his skits featured a lot of him just beating people up, including ExxonMobil executives who were in the news at the time. This is what happens when you pollute the planets.
I mean, I don't know if I hate the results, but I'm not sure it's that funny. Lauren Michaels had a jab at Sigal years later. Worshows by lapped every bad host. But whether or not he's a good actor isn't the question we are tackling here, right? What we're tackling is whether or not his martial arts are legit.
So we have to go to who we talked to first about this. Someone with their own fighting credentials. Uncle Ron. Oh. Uncle Ronnie, who is the uncle of producer, Grace Tatter's boyfriend. OK.
I mean, that's how we source endless thread. Come on, guys. Uncle Ronnie was interviewed during the holidays by Grace's boyfriend because he used to be a bouncer in Springfield, Massachusetts. I want to give you an impression of Ronnie's first impressions of Steven Segal. He runs like a wounded giraffe. You ever see him run in his movies?
I can't say I know what a wounded giraffe runs like, but we'll go with it, Ronnie. Okay, here's Ronnie in what I assume is a baby, which considering all the things Sigal accomplished as a baby, apparently, feels relevant, giving some more impressions of Steven Sigal.
Steven Seagal has never had a real fight ever. Not once. It looks good in the movies. We could make a movie and have somebody show us the movies. We would look like Steven Seagal. They just swapped me out. I just need a standing over there. Not even there. You don't have the long legs from me. You don't need them?
He looks good with those long legs. He looks good with those long legs. Like a giraffe. Like a wounded giraffe. Okay, so let's get some more work experience relevant takes from Uncle Ronnie here, who is talking about his work experience as a bouncer. And DJ in Massachusetts. Yeah. And DJ in a bar bouncing. Right. I kicked more people, knocked about punch them. One shot, took them out. Right.
And I've even had a black vote. I haven't voted my pants up, but I still win because of the street. You learn how to fight the street. But I probably can't at least 25 people took them out. See, I wouldn't be as scared as he was at all. I've nobody's ever seen a fight. I'd take a shot at him. And I'm 70 years old for crying out.
Michael J. White, you couldn't pay me to attempt to fight him. Never, or John Claude Van Dam. And Chuck Morris, 80-something years old, I wouldn't fight him.
Is that Grace's boyfriend saying right? Right? He is not getting a job as a journalist, I'm going to say, because he is just... But he did gather some amazing tape from Uncle Ronnie. Absolutely, absolutely. Ronnie sounds like a gem and I wouldn't want to challenge him. He's street. He's street. He's street. You just learn it in the street. You could be his 26th person. You're not careful coming at Uncle Ronnie.
Okay, so we have now heard a lot from me, Amory, on Steven Seagal. We have heard from Uncle Rami. But I think we need to actually get someone in here who knows what the heck they're talking about from a professional standpoint. And we are going to judge whether or not Steven Seagal actually knows karate after the break.
I have two text groups of just trading funny facts about Steven Seagal. What? Well, that's how this kind of came. I was talking to my buddy, Jay, and then, you know, it was like a link up, cross friendships, whatever. And he's like, I got just the guy that might be excited to do this. And I will very much was. And we do like a trade. Like, did you know he's a musician? And then the next thing from like under siege, like, do you know, he's a big, like a pastry chef? Because there's a scene. Yeah. What is it? It's like you could bake a cake and a microwave 15 minutes on high.
You know, I went to school for this. That's why I wanted to use that as a segment.
All right, so we're trying to answer an important question. Does actor Steven Segal actually know karate, or martial arts in general? Sometimes karate is used as a sort of catch-all term for martial arts. We asked a local expert to help us. I'm Scott Gregoni, and I'm from Shirley Mass, and I work and train at MassPJ, and that's an actin.
Mass BJJ or Mass Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Scott's a first-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He's been training for 16 years. He's the MMA coach, the head striking coach, and the less self-explanatory grappling coach.
grappling. It's like wrestling with submissions. So pick them up, put them down, hold them down and try to submit them. What about something like Aikido? As I understand it is like a martial art that has a lot to do with like throwing and sort of falling and it's sort of more of a tumbling martial art in some ways. Yeah, I see what you're saying.
Just looking at it and you're like, oh, for what you're seeing, it's working. But there's a play. There's demonstration, right? Like when you're fighting, there's the fighter's chance. Anything could happen. Like I'm not saying I would ever want to do this, but you and I fight and now let's say it's just striking. There's a chance you clip my chin, I get knocked out. And I don't know how much training you have, but I think it will lapse you a little bit. But it could happen. You could throw a fist, maybe I'm being lax. I'm not paying attention. You clip my jaw and it's over.
Watching Steve is a gone doing his stuff, you know, it's demonstration. So the goal is to promote and show what he's doing and make it look good. If I said, hey, let me grab your wrist. Okay. No, no, grab this wrist. No, this part of my wrist. Okay. Now I'm going to bend the holy hell out of it.
You're gonna make me look good and it's gonna hurt you and I get to demonstrate. And when you're demonstrating, there's a little bit of that. Now, how applicable is that life in a setting? Or how efficient can it be? It's tough to tell. But are you gonna do like a forward flip in the air and fall on the ground and not get back up? I bend your wrist and you go flying over you. So the idea of that is if you bend it hard enough,
I have to unwind it. I can maybe spin or roll. And if yes, if I flip, it looks even cooler, right? But yes, there's a way of falling or you can fall that way. But is that going to happen? I mean, I put a D1 wrestler in front of that guy. He's going up and over his head and hitting the ground. He's not bending anything. Yeah. The joke on the internet is bullshido bullshido.
Scott told us that he watched Steven Seagal movies growing up, long before he himself started practicing martial arts. So I wondered, does he watch them with different eyes now, given his own expertise?
Yes, and honestly it becomes more of a comedy. It's awesome Is it bullshido a lot of it? Yeah, I mean I mean I don't want to discredit like every martial art has It's moments and advantages the question is how much fair so let's um
Let's watch some video of him. I'm excited. OK, cool. This is a immediate result of, I think, a simple search, which was Steven Segal kicking ass. And this, I think, was the top result.
Can you just grab what you're seeing, Scott? Yeah, so part of the Akido stuff is using their energy, which a lot of martial arts. Absolutely. Their momentum, use it against him, get them to fall. And yeah, he's passing the person through, passing their arm, getting their limb out of the way so he can use their momentum to throw them. Obviously, if you hit someone in the throat, it's going to be very effective. But yeah, that's all he's doing. He's just using their energy against them and then using it to flip them or trip them.
A lot of people flipping over seemingly at one point of contact from Steven Seagal on their body. So he touches their throat and they throw themselves over a display of wine. This is definitely movie TV show footage. It's good for movies, right? It's good for movies.
Do you see anything in here of what you're watching that feels like an actual convincing move? Well, just that one little funny part, he had this wrist twisted, he brought it around his back and that becomes like a wrist lock slash shoulder lock and it hurts. So let's look at a quote unquote real life example of Stincigal doing his thing.
So can you just grab what you're seeing? So he has his arm locked out, so therefore when he turned his hips, it put pressure on his elbow, which means he's going to have to go in that direction. So is this a demonstration? This is martial arts demonstration. Definitely. There's a bunch of people. There's like a ring and a bunch of people standing around the ring. They're all students presumably or, you know,
They are definitely demonstrating. I would not consider that them fighting. Interesting. So demonstration-wise, he's doing some stuff that is legit, but your suggestion here is that, again, it's a demonstration in other words, the person who he's going up against. They're giving it to him. They're giving him the chance. He's supposed to win. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You can't make Stephen Segal look bad. He's a god. How would this translate in a real-life fight?
Do you think this kind of real life fight if they were untrained? I think Stevens ago will play the mountain and try to figure something out I mean if I grabbed your finger and just try to bend the hell out of it I'm sure I'm gonna make you move or if you did to me you're gonna make me move very weird yeah um
a trained guy, he's not going to give him the chance to grab their arm like that. And if he does, then yeah, you might get a glimpse of, oh, his arm looks like it's under stress. So a question, I guess, is if you were to judge on a scale of like legit action star slash, you know,
actual master. How strong is this martial arts one to 10 and is he legit or is he mostly faking it? When I watch him, I could just see maybe he was like, okay in class, did all right, well enough. And then he got into movies and he's just how he is. So you're
You should be able to poke fun at yourself. And I mean, I'm not trying to tell anyone how to live, but like, he is so serious and he is so like, you couldn't hurt me. It's like, come on, dude. Like, I think there's more to martial arts than just the physical stuff. Calm down. So I'm going to give him a three.
I mean, honestly, you watch the comparison of his movies. You ever watch a John Wick movie? Yeah. I mean, that's like, it could be a whole... You're seeing the key on news on another level. He trains, and I've seen him train, and he actually goes shooting. He's actually pretty damn good, too. I've seen some of his... I forget what it's called, but you...
I think it's like rifle, shotgun, pistol, like... Oh, I see, yeah, yeah. It seems pretty legit. Yeah. Like, pretty legit. I think as far as the keto goes, as far as like what you could do in a ring with the keto, small percentage. Is he an a keto master? Sure. He got his black belt. I'm sure he worked hard for it. I'm sure there's legitimacy there. But out of the whole thing we're talking about, I'd give him a three.
Well, Scott, thank you so much for seriously taking a look at Steven Seagal's skills. I hope I did all right for you guys. I am. You did great, man. That was fun. You were awesome.
Okay, so Amory, I think we have kind of an answer for our question of whether or not Steven Seagal has martial arts creds. And I think where we've landed, tell me if this feels right to you, is that he did study Aikido heavily. He was a strong practitioner of that martial art back in the day, but maybe hasn't stayed in fighting shape, so to speak, or acting shape.
Who among us has stayed in fighting shape? Oh, among us. Exactly. If it's 72, I'm in fighting shape, I'll be thrilled. Same. And perhaps, according to Scott's assessment, Seagal wouldn't do that well in the ring if it was a real fight and not a demonstration. Fair to say. Yes. A three? Yes.
But in the larger mystery of Stephen Seagal's travels through the world and why he's currently living in Russia, why he has recently been pictured in part of the Russia-Ukraine battlefront, I wanna go back to this question or this long story of Stephen Seagal because it connects to something I haven't told you yet about Stephen Seagal.
Oh, the apparent reason why Steven Seagal is no longer an American action hero, according to some, or retired American action hero living in America, is potentially a more serious reason. There have been multiple allegations of sexual misconduct from several actresses, including Jenny McCarthy, Portia de Rossi. And now, as you said, there are two other women who are coming forward and they held a news conference this morning.
Oh, you hate to hear it. You hate to hear it. Here is actor Regina Simons who worked with Segal in the movie on Deadly Ground. She was a teenager at the time of this thing that she says happened in 1993. I started kissing my neck and taking off my clothes. I was in shock. Whoa. So.
Obviously, super messed up. A big part of the reason we don't hear about Steven Segal much anymore, I think, is that he has effectively fled the country. This happened six years ago. Back in like 2018, these allegations came out.
I think this is a very important part of Stephen Seagal's story because what we've learned over time is that the story Seagal tells about himself are potentially suspect. But the stories other people tell about Seagal and working with Seagal as stunt people, as women who have been in his films, these are stories that are the stories we should perhaps believe a little bit more. So I want to ask you a question.
When you think about Stephen Segal and how he's been dubbed a narcissist, a pathological liar who's outsized stories about himself or not likely to be true in some cases, maybe many cases, someone who dodged the draft in Vietnam, who is cosied up to Vladimir Putin, who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault. Who does this remind you of? Donald Trump. Yeah.
So I know that this conversation started in the silly place, a funny place, and I understand that listeners come to us sometimes to escape the news. And yet, I think we're in this moment as Donald Trump has become our new president, where I think it's important to think about how we deal with people who, no matter what your politics are, represent a lot of problematic behavior and complexity on screen and off.
How do we deal with someone whose statements don't necessarily represent observed reality and truth? How do we think about the systems and industries that gave them agency and power? How do we preserve our own sanity when it feels harder and harder to know what is real and what is, shall we say, a demonstration of an idea?
And I guess this is what had me thinking about Steven Segal in some ways. I was intrigued by the mystery of, does he actually know karate? This is just kind of a funny concept. But then the more I learned, the more I was like, wow, this is a person who actually, in some ways, really matches up with the person who is now leading the country in interesting ways.
I don't have any like answers or like deep wisdom to impart about this, but I think it makes sense to think carefully and intentionally about the world that we're entering into and like how we deal with that reality. Yeah, I can't say I have deep wisdom to offer myself on this, but I do think that
It doesn't behoove us to discard people altogether, write them off altogether. I think that from having just worked on a series where truth and memory and the twisting of truth is very much at the center of it. I think that oftentimes these things just snowball. You start with
with one fib, and it turns into two, and to three, and to four, until you really do become detached from reality and truth. And if that is- And you don't have consequences, right? You're sort of like, oh, this is fine. I can just do this. Yeah. And you lose the plot yourself. So I guess my thought, my big question would be,
What good, if any, is Stephen Seagal doing in the world while all these other potential mistruths are floating around him and are being perpetuated by him potentially? Is there some good that he is doing despite it all so that you can say, yeah, there's this and this and this and this and this, but
He started a foundation for blah, blah, blah. He's working with refugees and blah, blah, blah. None of that might exist, but I guess that's as much of a deep thought as I can offer is that's how I think about people like that is people who get carried away kind of like your ego just keeps like eating itself and growing and
to say nothing of the accusations of misconduct. I see what you're saying. It doesn't excuse it one bit, but is there some good that he is already doing or he can do and will he do? Yeah. That would be what I'd want to know. It's a really good question and I don't have answers for that. The stuff that I've seen that he is supposedly doing great work on is like teaching people how to fight, which
I don't know how to feel about that. Touch them at one point of contact and make them fall to the ground. Yeah, and I think if anything to me, the usefulness at this moment is just a reminder that
There are people in the world who are willing to say anything about themselves and their impact on the world and thinking carefully about that as you come into contact with those stories that they're telling is really important in a world where you can't necessarily trust what people say.
So, check your facts, people. I don't know. I don't know what to say to listeners other than, thank you for coming on this wild ride. And, you know, take care of yourselves. And maybe learn some my kiddo, right? Yeah. But don't break anybody's wrists.
No, don't go break in wrists. Please stick to the... Please stick to the roundhouse kips and jabs and uppercuts that you're used to. That's my deep closing thought. Yeah, give yourself some TLC as they say. That's good. That's good.
This episode was produced by me, Ben Brock Johnson, and Roundhouse kicking in from the mixed booth production manager Paul Vicus.
Who, it turns out, is not just a black belt in sound design, but also in finding legit martial arts mavens like Scott. This episode was co-hosted by me, Emery Seibertson, and Sound Design by Paul. The rest of our team is managing producer's summit to Joshi, Dean Russell, Franny Monahan, Grace Tatter, Katelyn Herrop, and Emily Cenkowski.
If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or another wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. EndlessThread at wbr.org. EndlessThread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and... JAB! Uppercut! Hook!
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