0:00 Robert LeRoy Parker was born on April thirteenth, 1866.0:04 It’s a name that means almost nothing, a line in a dusty ledger in Beaver, Utah.0:10 But the alias he took—Butch Cassidy—that name became a legend, a ghost that still haunts the American West.0:19 And looking back, you realize the legend wasn’t about the man.0:24 It was about the moment.0:26 It was about a country changing so fast it was breaking its own heart, and the desperate, romantic, and violent attempt to hold on to a freedom that was already gone.0:40 What a journey this week has been.0:42 We've been walking through these strange, beautiful hallways of history together, and every single day has offered up some new surprise, some new connection that feels… electric.0:57 April thirteenth is no exception.0:59 It’s a day of rebels and geniuses, of saints and sinners, all leaving their mark.1:06 For instance, on this day in 1963, Garry Kasparov was born.1:11 The man who would become arguably the greatest chess player of all time.1:17 We remember him for his ferocious, dominating style, but looking back from now, his true historical moment wasn't just winning championships.1:28 It was his battle against the machine.1:31 His 1997 match against IBM's Deep Blue computer was a turning point.1:37 We saw it then as man versus machine.1:40 But now?1:40 We see it as the very first conversation we had about what intelligence even is.1:47 Kasparov lost the match, but he was the first human to truly grapple, in public, with an artificial mind that was both alien and brilliant.1:58 We are all living in the world that match created.2:02 And the birthdays keep coming!2:04 Ron Perlman, born 1950.2:06 An actor whose entire career is a testament to the power of transformation.2:12 From a noble beast in a fairy tale to the cigar-chomping demon Hellboy.2:18 He’s a character actor in the truest sense of the word, a craftsman of delightful strangeness.2:26 And Peabo Bryson, the singer, born 1951, whose voice basically defined the sound of the big, sweeping animated movie ballad for an entire generation.2:38 If you grew up in the nineties, his voice is part of your DNA.2:43 But April thirteenth goes much, much deeper than that.2:47 The currents of power shift on this day.2:50 In 1111, Henry the Fifth is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.2:55 Not given the title.2:56 Crowned.2:57 You can almost feel the weight of the metal, the cold stone of the church, the silent transfer of immense, continent-spanning power.3:08 This wasn't just a ceremony.3:10 It was a declaration.3:12 A line drawn on the map of the world in ink and steel.3:16 This is how empires are solidified.3:19 One man, one crown, one moment where everyone in the room agrees on who holds the power.3:26 At least for a little while.3:28 And then, just a few centuries earlier, you have the opposite.3:33 In 945, Hugues de Provence, the King of Italy, abdicates his throne in favor of his son.3:41 He just… gives it up.3:42 An emperor is crowned, a king steps down.3:46 Power is never static.3:47 It’s a tide, always coming in, always going out.3:51 And most of history is just us, standing on the shore, watching it happen.3:57 But the two stories from this day that I can’t shake… the two figures that seem to be speaking to each other across the centuries… are both outlaws.4:09 One is a saint.4:10 The other is a bank robber.4:13 Let’s start with the one we think we know.4:16 Butch Cassidy.4:17 Robert LeRoy Parker.4:19 He leads a gang called the Wild Bunch.4:22 They are famous, charming, and very, very good at robbing trains and banks.4:28 They are the rock stars of their era.4:31 Newspapers print breathless accounts of their exploits.4:35 They even pose for a famous photograph, all dressed up in suits and bowler hats, looking more like bankers than the men who rob them.4:46 There is a genuine delight in their story, isn't there?4:51 A Robin Hood fantasy played out against the backdrop of the vast, empty American landscape.4:58 But if we look back with the clarity of hindsight, what was actually happening?5:04 The world of the small rancher, the cowboy, the frontiersman… it was ending.5:11 The railroad, the telegraph, the barbed wire fence—they were carving up the open range and turning freedom into property.5:20 The banks and the railroad tycoons, men like E.H.5:24 Harriman, were the new emperors.5:27 They were consolidating power, not with a crown, but with stock certificates and legal documents.5:35 So when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed a Union Pacific train, they weren't just stealing money.5:43 They were punching an empire in the nose.5:47 They were a rebellion.5:48 A futile one, a violent one, absolutely.5:52 But they were resisting a force that was crushing their way of life.5:57 And we romanticize them, I think, because we recognize the fight.6:02 We see a system becoming too big, too powerful, too impersonal, and we feel a thrill seeing someone, anyone, refuse to bow.6:12 We call him an outlaw, but what we’re really celebrating is the defiance.6:18 Now, let’s travel back another twelve hundred years.6:23 To the seventh century.6:24 The Byzantine Empire is the superpower of the world.6:29 And the emperor, Constans the Second, has a problem.6:33 A theological one.6:34 A debate is raging about the nature of Christ, a heresy called Monothelitism.6:41 It’s complicated, but the short version is, the Emperor wants everyone to just shut up about it for the sake of political unity.6:51 He issues an edict.6:52 This debate is over.6:54 But the Pope in Rome, a man named Martin the First, refuses.6:59 He believes the Emperor is wrong, that this isn't a political issue to be solved by decree, but a fundamental truth of faith.7:09 So he calls a council, right in Rome, and formally condemns the Emperor's position.7:16 He pokes the bear.7:17 He punches the empire in the nose.7:20 The Emperor’s response is swift and brutal.7:23 In the year 653, he sends soldiers to Rome.7:27 They kidnap the Pope from the altar of a basilica, drag him onto a ship, and haul him to Constantinople in chains.7:36 He's publicly humiliated, imprisoned, and eventually exiled to the Crimea, a forgotten edge of the empire.7:45 He dies there two years later from starvation and abuse.7:49 His last letters are heartbreaking, begging for food, abandoned by almost everyone.7:56 On April thirteenth, the church marks the feast day of Pope Saint Martin the First.8:03 He was, by the laws of his time, an outlaw.8:06 A traitor who defied the direct order of the supreme ruler.8:11 He was crushed by the system.8:13 Utterly.8:14 So here they are.8:15 Our two April thirteenth outlaws.8:18 Butch Cassidy and Pope Martin.8:21 One who fought the system for money and a vanishing way of life, and became a romantic folk hero.8:28 The other fought the system for an idea about the nature of God, and became a martyr and a saint.8:36 From the vantage point of their own time, one was a common criminal, the other a political traitor.8:44 Their endings were bleak.8:46 Cassidy, likely killed in a shootout in Bolivia.8:50 Martin, starved to death in exile.8:53 The empire always wins.8:55 Or does it?8:56 Because what’s remarkable, looking back now, is that we don't remember the railroad baron E.H.9:03 Harriman with any affection.9:06 And almost nobody remembers the Byzantine Emperor Constans the Second at all.9:12 But we tell stories about Butch Cassidy.9:15 We name churches after Saint Martin.9:18 History, it turns out, has a very long memory, and a very strange sense of justice.9:25 It’s not about who wins in the moment.9:28 It’s about whose story lasts.9:30 The stories that last are the ones about defiance.9:34 The ones that prove that even the most powerful empires, whether they're built on rails or on imperial edicts, have cracks.9:44 And it’s in those cracks that the light gets in.9:48 It's in those moments of refusal, of saying "no," that we see the true shape of the human spirit.9:56 April thirteenth gives us the bank robber and the pope, the chess master and the actor, the crowning and the abdication.10:06 It’s a day that reminds us that history isn't a straight line of kings and dates.10:12 It's a chaotic, beautiful, and often hilarious collection of human beings who refused to do what they were told.10:21 They are the ones who show us the shape of the world.
