What connects the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the breaking of the NFL's color barrier, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, and Pixar's Toy Story? A single man: Woody Strode. This episode traces the extraordinary life of a six-foot-four, mixed-race decathlete born in 1914 Los Angeles — whose nude athletic portrait was so threatening to the Third Reich that the Nazis shut down the entire exhibition, who integrated the NFL with teammate Kenny Washington a full year before Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line, and whose shattered body from targeted violence on the gridiron forced him into professional wrestling, which accidentally became his acting school.

We follow Strode from degrading early Hollywood roles — including literally playing a non-speaking lion — through his breakthrough as the Ethiopian gladiator Draba in Spartacus, his deeply signific ...