The premiere podcast features Michael Jai-White. Born in 1967, on the day Lulu’s titular song from Sidney Poitier’s movie To Sir with Love was number one in America and raised by a single mother educator in the rough sections of New York City’s (NYC) Brooklyn, at an early age, White taught himself how to fight and survive the streets. Learning Jiu-Jitsu at seven, being on his own since 14 and realizing anger has a short shelf live, White earned black belts in seven different arts, and before studying acting at Greenwich Village’s H.B. Studio and Yale University, he was a history teacher and taught emotionally disturbed children. He went on to become the first African American man to play the role of a superhero in Spawn (1987) and was Black Belt Magazine’s 2014 Man of the Year. From Singh’s perspective, as White being a seeker of the best martial arts on the planet, martial arts aren’t about fighting, they’re about as White posits, “Overcoming yourself.”

From the annals of his unwritten diary of fighting and philosophy, White elucidates through a treasure trove of personal life stories and experiences of learning, training, and sparring with some of the most legendary boxers and martial arts fighters of our times, yet all the while being mindful of what martial arts has taught him.

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Back in the early 1970’s three important tenets of Bruce Lee’s martial philosophy were to master at least three unstoppable techniques, accept the way to lose or as Lee also analogized, “Learn the art of dying,” and fight with as many different martial arts stylists as possible. White speaks about the significance of these strategies and elaborates on the additional notions of honing your weapons, and the wealth of things that come from sparring such as how to absorb other people’s abilities, improve your weaker skills, avoid telegraphing your technique and the need to capitalize on yours and someone’s else flaws.

He emphasizes that martial arts were designed for self-defense and why that aspect over the years has become diluted and how to reverse the trend, while additionally accentuating the premises of mindset, respect for others and in his view, what truly makes a person a hero and a good martial artist as he continues his never-ending quest to apply martial arts to his lifestyle and how to make it a way of life.