Born from a stone egg on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, Sun Wukong crowned himself the Handsome Monkey King, learned the 72 transformations and the cloud somersault from a Taoist master, and then set about breaking every rule in the cosmos. This episode traces his rampage through the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West: extorting a magic staff from the Dragon King, crossing his own name out of the Book of Life and Death, eating the Queen Mother's immortality peaches, and defeating an army of 100,000 celestial warriors before the Buddha finally humbles him with a single wager.

We also dig into the folklore behind the character, including Li Tianfei's Southern Ape and Northern Monkey hypothesis and a Song dynasty prototype with a far more visceral fighting style. From there the story turns to redemption: 500 years pinned under  ...