The Jocular Pugilists Podcast

It's Halloween, and the Jocular Pugilists are digging into the history, mystery, and madness of everyone's favorite spooky holiday!

From ancient traditions and wandering spirits to costumes, candy, and trick-or-treating, Tomas and Phil explore how Halloween became the celebration we know today.

Along the way, they encounter scary clowns, Gene Simmons, razor blades in apples, and some questionable face-painting skills. Plus, Tomas finally catches up with horror classics The Birds, Psycho, and The Shining—giving Phil yet another opportunity to question his knowledge of popular culture.

And just when you think it's safe, Phil closes the show with a couple of frightening tales.

A Halloween favorite from the Jocular Pugilists vault!

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

thejocularpugilists@gmail.com

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

Venice, Italy. A breathtaking city built on water, a republic once ruled by powerful merchants, and apparently a place where you can enjoy incredible pasta while your waiter openly despises you.

In this episode of The Jocular Pugilists, Phil and Tomas take a hilarious, history-filled journey through one of the world's most extraordinary cities. Fresh from his Italian adventure, Phil recounts a honeymoon travel nightmare involving canceled flights, missing luggage, a mad dash through Heathrow Airport, and a waiter who seemed personally offended by his existence.

But beneath Venice's romantic canals and magnificent architecture lies an even more fascinating story: a city built on wooden foundations, a powerful maritime republic, and a secretive Council of Ten that made political enemies disappear from history.

Along the way, Tomas revisits his own Venetian honeymoon with a little help from Tracy's decades-old travel journal, proving that some travel memories are priceless… and others are better left forgotten.

In this episode, discover:

• The incredible engineering of Venice: How an entire city was built on wooden foundations in a lagoon.
• The dark secrets of the Venetian Republic: Powerful doges, political intrigue, spies, and the feared Council of Ten.
• A honeymoon travel disaster: How Phil and Stacy nearly missed Venice entirely after their connecting flight was canceled.
• The truth about Italian dining: Spectacular pasta, disappointing meals, and waiters who may or may not hate Americans.
• Venice then and now: How two honeymoon experiences, separated by decades, reveal a changing city.
• The Bridge of Sighs and Doge's Palace: A glimpse into the darker side of Venetian history.
• Can Venice survive? Rising sea levels, historic flooding, and the engineering efforts protecting this remarkable city.

It's part history lesson, part Italian travel adventure, and part comedy of errors—with enough questionable observations, friendly insults, and unexpected detours to make you wonder how these two ever made it out of the airport.

Grab an espresso, say "Andiamo!" and join The Jocular Pugilists for a trip through Venice, Italy—where the streets are canals, the history is unbelievable, and the customer service is occasionally negotiable.

Visit thejocularpugilists.com for more episodes, and follow the show on your favorite podcast platform.

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

thejocularpugilists@gmail.com

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

Tomas and Phil welcome Lars from Best in Tesla back to The Jocular Pugilists for a wide-ranging conversation about Tesla, electric vehicles, and the future of energy.

After years of researching and test-driving EVs, Tomas and his wife, Tracey, have finally purchased a new Model Y. Tomas explains why Tesla’s software, supervised self-driving, integrated ecosystem, and improved refinement ultimately won them over—and why the vehicle feels like the first step toward building a “family energy moat.”

The conversation expands from the driveway to the electrical grid: solar power, home batteries, vehicle-to-home charging, virtual power plants, battery recycling, solid-state technology, and the possibility that millions of cars and homes could work together as a distributed energy network.

Can an ordinary family gain greater control over its energy future? Will growing demand from AI and electrification create scarcity, or are we approaching an era of energy abundance? And what has genuinely changed since Lars last joined the podcast in 2022?

It’s a conversation about cars—but even more about resilience, optimism, and how we might power the future.

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

thejocularpugilists@gmail.com

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

What really determines the relationship you have with your brothers and sisters? Birth order? Parenting? Favoritism? Personality? Or simply surviving childhood together?

This week on The Jocular Pugilists, Phil welcomes a very special guest—his younger brother Lou—for a funny, personal and surprisingly revealing conversation about siblings, sibling rivalry, birth order and family dynamics.

With 13 years separating them, Phil and Lou grew up in the same family but experienced their parents—and childhood itself—in very different ways. From being the oldest, middle or youngest child to wondering whether parents secretly have a favorite, they look at how our place in the family may influence the adults we eventually become.

Along the way, they revisit childhood fights, questionable parenting decisions, musical influences, brotherly protection, family legends and what happens when your older siblings occasionally act more like additional parents.

In this episode:

• How birth order may influence personality and behavior
• Why firstborn, middle and youngest children can have very different childhoods
• Whether parents really have a favorite child
• What causes sibling rivalry
• Why some brothers and sisters become lifelong friends while others grow apart
• How parents change their parenting style from the first child to the last
• How older siblings can become role models, protectors—and occasionally terrible influences
• Why shared childhood experiences can create powerful lifelong bonds
• How technology, social media and changing family life may be affecting sibling relationships
• And several Giangrande family stories that probably should have remained private

From Cain and Abel to fighting over bikes, bedrooms and parental attention, sibling rivalry may be one of the oldest family dynamics in human history—but so is brotherly love.

If you grew up with brothers or sisters—or you're raising siblings of your own—this episode may have you looking at your family very differently.

The Jocular Pugilists explores the strange, funny and occasionally ridiculous forces that shape our lives, culture and relationships.

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

thejocularpugilists@gmail.com

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com

There was a time when nobody wore seatbelts, teachers could hit you, smoking was everywhere, and apparently handing kids handling explosives was considered perfectly reasonable parenting.

Tomas and Phil look back at the things that seemed completely normal growing up—and seem completely insane now. Tennis-ball cannons, Catholic school, corporal punishment, bucket seats, smoking in restaurants, dangerous playgrounds, and the brilliant idea of grabbing onto a friend's car while riding a skateboard because you saw it in Back to the Future.

Were we tougher back then, or were we all just incredibly lucky to survive?

Let us know what you think.

Email Phil or Tomas at: 

thejocularpugilists@gmail.com

And check out our website at: thejocularpugilists.com