Something you should go Something you should know is brought to you by Genesisgoldira dot com. That's also something you should know. You can put your retirement plan. I'm the gold Standard. Learn more and get a free Gold and Silver guide at Genesis gooldr dot com. Excited to have Chris Air join us today and we're going to talk about Jim Thorpe, lit by Lightning. This premiered on the History Channel earlier this week. It's available online right now,
and let's talk about this. How in the world did you get interested in this topic? To start with, Chris.
Well, I think as far back as I can remember, I heard the name Jim Thorpe, and I'll never forget my grandfather, who was born in the eighteen nineties, and I remember growing up in the seventies it was just one of those known things that when we talked about sports,
we regarded Jim Thorpe as the greatest athlete ever. And I'll never forget in grade school hearing the story about the guy who found shoes in a trash can that he used because his shoes had been stolen at the Olympics, and he took this mismatched two shoes and put them on from the trash can and he runs in the race and he wins the gold medal in the decathlon. And that was kind of one of those indelible stories that I was told in grade school where I said,
who is this guy? And years later, you know, as an adult, I'd find that, you know, he was Sakam Fox Indian, that his name was Jim Thorpe, and he was regarded as the greatest athlete ever.
It's an amazing story. And there's an image that is just a famous image of him standing there with two different colored shoes. What a crazy story, that's right.
One of the shoes was the different size. Not only were they mismatched shoes, but he used extra socks to actually make the shoe fit properly. And you know, if that's not a story of creativity and perseverance to win, then I don't know what is.
So how long did it take to put this together? And where do you even get started on a project like this?
Well, it probably took, like most projects like this, a year and a half or so. You know, from the time that we started talking about it. Lebron James who the Goat, and Maverick Carter and History Channel approached me and said, hey, would I be interested? And as a Native American I'm Southern Cheyenne and a rappa hooe filmmaker,
I said, where do I sign up? You know, Jim Thorpe is somebody that I'd always known about, and then when I started to look into you know, the specificity of the stories and the history with our team and archives and historians and interviewees, you know, it just became a whole different dynamic for me, which is who was
the man behind all these great achievements. His achievements stand in the record books and you can compare him and I think most of the time, including the Associated Press in two thousand, people come up with he was the greatest athlete ever.
Again, Jim Thorpe lit by Lightning. It premiered on the History Channel on Monday, and if folks missed it Monday, they can catch it in streaming as well.
Right, Yeah, it's be streaming on History in the future. I'm sure it'll be available wider and more places as time goes on.
Here, So, as you're doing a project like this, what is a process like Are there people around today who knew Jim Thorpe or what does it even look like to do a project like this.
I think the easier part was getting the factual elements together, getting the antidotes together, the people recall that are part of the public persona, and then the harder part is diving into who this person might have been, who they were. And that's really where I get turned on by a story, which is, you know, what made him run, what made him win? And as I look back on his story, you know, people can relate to where he grew up in his circumstance. He was born in eighteen eighty seven
in Oklahoma. He was raised on the Sack of Fox Indian Reservation. By age nine, his twin brother had died of pneumonia. He didn't have an easy easy time as a young person. Both of his parents passed away by the time he was eleven, and he was carted off to Indian boarding school, first Haskell in Kansas, and he ran away multiple times back home to Oklahoma, and then eventually he was taken to Carlisle, Pennsylvania because he couldn't run away, and he stayed there until he found athletics.
And that was really that changing point in his life where I think he found something that he could put himself into, potentially that anger. There was bias and racism certainly the time, and he needed something and I think sports probably saved him when he got to Haskell at age eleven.
Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. We appreciate it, sir, Thank you, and I hope people enjoy the show absolutely. Jim Thorpe lit by Lightning. It premiered on the History Channel Monday, and you can watch it now online on History dot com. Something you Should Know. Something you Should Know is brought to you by Genesisgoldra dot com. Put your retirement plan on the gold standard. Get a free gold and Silver guide now at Genesisgoldra dot com