#428: The Life of a Dragon — The Untold Story of Bruce Lee

The Art of Manliness

Society & Culture, Education, Philosophy

4.7 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2018

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you were like most boys, you probably went through a karate phase as a kid. When I went through my karate phase as a 5- and 6-year-old, I demanded that my family called me “Daniel-san.” Unfortunately, they did not comply. There’s one man you can thank for your karate phase: Bruce Lee. As my guest will show us today, Bruce Lee nearly single-handedly popularized martial arts in America thanks to his breakout Hong Kong kung fu movies in the early 1970s. My guest's name is Matthew Polly and he’s the author of the new definitive biography of Bruce Lee called Bruce Lee: A Life. Today on the show, Matthew and I explore the creation of the legend that is Bruce Lee, starting with his unique family history that had him straddling Eastern and Western cultures his entire life. Matthew gives us vignettes into Lee’s early life that show his fire, scrappiness, and love of martial arts, including his rise as a child star in Hong Kong and his love of street brawling. We then discuss how Lee started formal kung fu training as a teenager and how his ambition caused him to bump heads with his teachers. Matthew then shares how coming to America helped Lee refine and reinvent his martial arts practice, how Lee got his break in Hollywood, and how he ended up teaching kung fu to movie stars like Steve McQueen and James Coburn. Along the way, Matthew shares details of Lee’s relentless fitness routine and talks about Lee’s personal library of over 2,500 books that included a lot of philosophy and psychology. We end our conversation discussing Lee’s legacy and how he changed not only cinema, but our idea of manhood in America. Get the show notes at aom.is/brucelee.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of the Art of Manly's podcast is brought to you by the Strenuous Life,
0:03.0	the Strenuous Life is an online platform that we created to help you put into action all the things
0:06.8	we've been writing about on the Art of Manliness, talking about on the podcast for the past 10 years.
0:10.7	And we've done that by creating 50 different badges based around 50 different skills.
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0:22.8	some soft skills as well. In addition to that, we have weekly challenges that we send out to you once
0:27.2	a week for 52 weeks. And we also put you in a group of other men to hold you accountable. There's
0:31.6	physical fitness requirements, good deed requirements, the whole goal of this to help you take action on
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0:58.9	get your name on the waiting list. And I hope to see you at the end of March and our next enrollment.
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1:40.5	Now if you're like most boys, you probably went through a karate phase as a kid. When I went
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