The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall, one of the most insightful minds and systems
thinkers in the martial arts world. He's a black belt in Jiu Jitsu, accomplished competitor,
an MMA fighter undefeated in the UFC, and truly a philosopher who seeks to understand
the underlying principles of the martial arts. Jiu Jitsu is such an important part of who I am,
and I was hoping to share that with folks who might know me only as a researcher.
I think there's no better person to do that with than Ryan, who somehow remarkably I can say is a
friend, and also a modern-day warrior philosopher of the Miyamoto Masashi line of especially dangerous
and brilliant humans. Also, his amazing wife, Jen Hall, was there as well, so if you hear a
kind of voice of wisdom coming from above, you know who it is. Quick summary of the sponsors,
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robotics and STEM education for young people around the world. And now here's my conversation
with Ryan Hall. Who in your view is the greatest warrior in history, ancient or modern?
That's a tough question. And again, I'm no historian by any measure. So I'll probably
do the worst. What are your best bands ever? I'm like Metallica. Metallica just came out with a
new album, by the way, with the entire orchestra. That's kind of cool. Metallica will always be
one of the greatest. I agree with that example. They were a well-known yet awesome band. Let me
say it's like Nickelback or something like that. But I feel that feels cheap because everyone makes
fun of Nickelback. I don't know. I guess it depends on how you want to define warrior,
something that I think about when it comes to trying to evaluate various people or situations
or things that I've read about or heard about are the circumstances that they were involved in.
Because I think a lot of times it's easy to look at the outcomes. And obviously, we live in an
outcome-driven world and outcomes do matter. But at the same time, you look at, let's say,
what Cuba has been able to pull off from a combat sports perspective. It's staggering,
you know, like the amount of successful Olympic level competitors they have in wrestling, boxing,
judo. I mean, they're a tiny little island with no money and no people. It's shocking,
you know, when you think about the Olympics and the United States doing well. Of course,
we should do well. I mean, Russia should do well. China should do well. India should do better than
they do. Honestly, obviously, it means like they're not into it as much or at least certain sports
because they have the resources people-wise. So talent's not going to be an issue.
So there's something to like where the starting point is. Like that's the argument with like
why people say Maradona, if I don't know if you're into soccer. They say Maradona is better
than Messi because he basically carried the team and won the World Cup with a team that
wouldn't otherwise win the World Cup. And then Messi was only successful in Barcelona because
he has like superstars. He's playing with other superstars. Right.
Yeah, that's fair to say. I mean, like, you know, there's a lot of factors that go into,
let's say, winning a soccer game. And, you know, obviously Barcelona, you know,
particularly for various points in time at a ridiculous all-star squad of world-class players,
but, you know, let's say for instance, maybe they didn't have the creative players in Argentina,
they needed to get the ball up to Messi, you know, they didn't have like the NES,
the, and, you know, the, you know, the, again, the backing there in the midfield. But because
obviously Argentina has always had ridiculous attacking players, like even alongside Messi,
but they're like the three killers up front and then a little less behind.
So it's interesting, you say that, depends how you define warrior, because you can probably take
like some of the civil rights leaders, you can go into that direction like leaders in general.
But if we just look at like the greatest martial artists in history in that direction,
do you have somebody in mind? I would say at least three, three that pop into my head and would be
Hannibal, Alexander the Great, and then maybe Miyamoto Musashi, you know, the two commanders,
and then one, you know, guy. But so it's interesting. And then, again, you mentioned warriors being
able to make a lot out of a little, you know, Musashi is famous for winning duels, you know,
that were oftentimes one, there were one on one, you know, the Alexander and Hannibal were, you
know, military commanders and one of them faced Rome. And that was an interesting thing. Oftentimes,
you know, coming up with novel tactics, different strategies, sometimes under
resourced doing, having to do novel and crazy things, there's skin in the game. That's an
interesting thing too. I think a lot of times, you know, it's a, if you're playing a video game,
I don't think you can be a warrior because there's, there's no skin in the game. You get
hurt, you lose, it's a bummer, it stings a little bit, maybe it makes you feel slightly
disappointed, but you know, Musashi loses, he loses, Hannibal loses, he loses, Alexander loses,
he loses, and they lose, I guess the people around them lose. So that's almost like you could use,
even from a combat sports perspective, Muhammad Ali, I mean, you consider also their quality of
opposition. Musashi was fighting high quality opposition, obviously Hannibal and Alexander,
particularly Hannibal were fighting unbelievable opposition. Muhammad Ali fought phenomenal
opposition, but he had skin in the game, both in the ring and out, and that actually meshes with,
as you mentioned, like a civil rights, you know, type of situation where you are under
resourced, you're pushing the stone uphill. And that was a neat thing, I think, about Muhammad
Ali was how much, you know, personal conviction the man had to have in order to pull off what he
was able to pull off both in and outside of the ring. And that reminds me of, of again,
some of the other great leaders or great fighters throughout history.
So what do you make of the kind of very difficult idea that some of these conquerors like Alexander
the Great, and somebody that if you listen to Hardcore History, Odin Carlin, who apparently
Elon Musk is also a big fan of is the Genghis Khan episode. You know, a large
percentage of the world is is a can call Genghis Khan an ancestor. So the difficult truth is
about some of these conquerors is that there's a lot of murder and rape and pillage and stealing
of resources and all that kind of stuff. And yet, they're often remembered as quite honorable.
I mean, in the case of Genghis Khan, there's a lot of people who argue, if you look at the,
historically, the ways described in full context, is he was ultimately,
given the time, he was a liberator. He was a progressive, I should say, you know,
like in terms of the violence and atrocities he committed, he at least in the stories has always
provided the option of not to do that. It's only if you resist to, you basically have the option,
do you want to join us or do you want to die and die horribly? And so that's the progressive sort
of, that's the Bernie Sanders of the era. Nice. So what do you make of that? That there's so much
of these great conquerors, there's so much murder that to us now would just seem insane.
It's funny you mentioned it. I think that maybe it's a human nature thing that we want to,
or maybe a misunderstanding thing that we want to cast all of our characters and ourselves,
maybe as entirely good or as entirely negative when, I guess the phrase or the saying,
one man's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist, is accurate. And a lot of times,
I think you can understand as long as you're able to look from various people's perspective.
Like if you look at the TV show The Wire, which was obviously, you know, widely everybody loves
The Wire, I thought that there were everyone, I'm not saying anything that's not been said before,
compelling characters from all angles, whether you like the character, dislike the character,
you were able to understand the motivations of people doing various things, even if they did
wrongly, they did rightly. You know, we want to cast all of the demons throughout history as
completely inhuman when I think that makes it difficult for us to understand them. And we want
to look back at the people that we think of as great and entirely great. And I think that we're,
you know, we're experiencing the problems with this, you know, even right now socially and
politically as we're trying to look back and decide the people we thought were good or not good or
people we thought were bad are now good, rather than going, hey, there's good and bad to all things.
And there are, as you mentioned, the Genghis Khan thing, you don't have to fight back.
You do, I respect you for it, but then we're going to have a conflict and then we'll see
what happens. And if you lose, you're going to be sorry that you did because I have to make it that
way. If I want to continue utilizing this, this kind of MO because I need to discourage the next
guy from doing what you're doing right now. And ultimately, though, I guess that's an interesting
thing. Imagine you put every single person on planet Earth in a cage, crime drops, you know,
all sorts, there are certain positives to that. And it's just things are as they are, it's difficult,
but that is ultimately more the law of the jungle. And I think that we're able to supersede
some of that now in modern times. And I think we're fortunate. But as you mentioned, we look back
and say, oh, this is horrible. Say, no, that, that just is what it is. That's how life is at a base
level. And, you know, again, if you're a lion and I'm a gazelle, I don't, I don't really like it very
much, but we don't call the lion the bad guy. We don't sanctify the gazelle or the other way
around. So it's just, it's interesting when you pull back some of the controls that we put on
our behavior. And, you know, in modern life, which I think are generally speaking positive,
you know, we get down to how things often are. And at the same time, we could, modern life was
built by people like Genghis Khan. So then you get down to the ends, justifying the means is a
tough question. These aren't things with easy answers, or at least if they are, I certainly
don't have the smarts to figure out the answers to them. But it's difficult, I would just say
people in the world are complicated and layered. And depending upon which side of the line you're
standing on at various times, you know, you may like or dislike someone. But I can't remember,
it's, I can't remember whose, whose idea was this is killing me, but it's the veil of ignorance,
I guess, the philosophical, you know, you know, idea of the veil of ignorance where I go is,
is sticking everyone in the cage the right thing to do, I say, or everyone, me and I say, well,
no, why? Well, it would make my life easier if I just went over and took all of your stuff,
as long as you couldn't stop me. I mean, of course, that's a great idea. That's what everyone does
in every video game. But in Skyrim, you steal stuff when people aren't around. But ultimately,
you go, well, this isn't the right thing to do, because if I were on the other side of it,
I would, I would not appreciate it. It's, it's inherently not a good thing to do. I'm only
doing it because I think I'm going to win. And that's a fine way to be, but you don't have the
white hat on, I guess I would say. So I think without those philosophical underpinnings to
reign us in, you know, I guess morally speaking, it's very difficult to say what's right or wrong,
and you'd say certain actions have a reaction, almost like a physics sense. If you kill everyone
in your way for as long as you're able to, your life will be easier. I mean, you're sitting
at the table for someone doing the same to you when you're no longer the tough guy, but it is
what it is. Yeah, if you look at like the Instagram channel, Nature's Metal, it hurts my heart to
watch, to remind me a comfortable descendant of ape, how vicious nature is, just unapologetically,
just, I mean, there's a, there's a process to it where the bad guy always wins. The,
the violence is the solution to most problems or the flip side of that running away from violence
is the solution, depending on your skill set. And it's funny to think of us humans with our
extra little piece of brain that we're somehow trying to figure out, like you said in the
philosophical way, how to supersede that, how to like move past the viciousness, the cruelty, the
just the cold exchange of nature. But perhaps it's not so, maybe that is nature, maybe that's
the way of life. Maybe we're trying too hard to, we're being too egotistical and thinking
we're somehow separate from nature, we're somehow distant from that very thing.
I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I think actually Orson Scott Card, you know,
was the writer of a great book called Ender's Game, was, this was a statement that the main
character, you know, Ender made in the book, his brother was brilliant. His brother was
like kind of sociopathic, brilliant kid that was ended up kicked out of the school that they were
all into for battle commander. Dealing with his brother taught him that ultimately strength,
courage, the ability to do violence for all the good and the bad of that is one of the
fundamental most important things to be able to do in life. Because if you can't cause destruction,
if you can't cause pain, you will be forever subject to those who can. And I think that you
mentioned egotism, I think that that that's a disease that could obviously strike any of us.
But it's something that we're looking at now. We're, you know, I think we should be unbelievably
thankful as people that live in the world that we do, that we can walk down the street without
having to worry that I'm like, well, don't worry that that six foot six, 270 pound person over
there is just gonna leave me alone. And I have a Rolex on, but whatever, I'll be fine. Because
that person is deciding to leave me alone because we've all agreed to live in this relatively,
you know, sane and or, you know, constrained society because it benefits all of us. And
we're doing it because of a philosophical underpinning, not because nature dictates it be that way,
because nature dictates it going a very, very different direction. And the only person,
the only thing stopping that person from doing something to me is either me, that person,
or someone else that will stand in between us. And if I can't do it, and there's no one that
will stand in between us, then the only thing stopping that person is that person. And I have
to hope that they're either disinterested or disinclined to do that sort of thing. And I think
that, you know, it's keeping in mind that that is the fundamental nature of the world,
whether we like it or not, is important. And I think the quest to fundamentally alter human
nature is going to be ultimately fruitless. And then also, it's just a little bit egotistical.
A lion does what a lion does, you know, we can try to box it in and we can try to, you know,
guide this direction, that direction. But, you know, nature is as it is, and as it always will
be unless we want to start to constrain it significantly. But now I'm starting to get into
individual rights. Who put me in charge? Who says that I should be the one to make the choices
constraining? Because many of the most awful things that have happened throughout history,
one group or one person has decided to constrain others. And we don't like Genghis Khan doing
that. Well, I'll do that on a little level. Are there going to be benefits and beneficiaries?
Absolutely. But there'll be losers in that too. So I guess it's a dangerous game. It's almost
like putting on the one ring. You remember when Frodo offered the one ring to Gandalf?
And Gandalf said, no, no, I would take it away. I would put it on. I would use it out of the
desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power so terrible you can't imagine.
I think that's the big question for anyone that decides that's able to have reach
and able to have power. I mean, obviously, I can't speak to that. But imagine you did have
national level, global level power. How would you use it? Would you try to change the world?
Would you be glad that you did down the line? I don't know.
Yeah, there's, I mean, that's the thing we're struggling now as a society. Maybe it'd be
nice to get your quick comment on that, which is the people who have traditionally been powerless
are now seeking a fairer society, a more equal society. And in attaining more power,
more justly, there's also a realization, at least from my perspective, that power corrupts
everyone. Even if you're, even if the flag you wave is that of justice, right? And so,
you know, not to overuse the term, but it'd be nice if you have thoughts about the whole idea
of cancel culture and the internet and Twitter and so on, where there's nuanced, difficult
discussions of race, of gender, of fairness, equality, justice, all of these kinds of things.
There's a shouting down, oftentimes, of nuanced discussion, of kind of trying to reason through
these very difficult issues through our history, through what our future looks like. Do you have
thoughts about the internet discourse that's going on now? Is there something positive
that we can pull out of this? It's an interesting thing to see, I guess. As you mentioned,
anytime you're wielding power, whomever you are, doing so carefully is important. And
it's very, very easy to look at the people that have power and that are using it poorly
or have used it poorly and go, hey, you're the bad guy, and then go, well, of course,
if I had power, I'll use it properly. And I may intend to use it properly, and maybe I will.
But at the same time, we see a lot of times, people are people are people. I think that
a lot of the, I think if you believe that human beings are all one, which I do, you know,
no matter whether you're here, you're there, you got two arms, two legs, a heart, a brain,
we all live a similar experience, you know, and obviously we have variations on a theme.
But, you know, you're no less a human being if you're a person I've never met from China than
some person in Virginia. We're all people. And I guess ultimately, if I believe that human beings
are corruptible and that power corrupts and that we're all fallible and we say and do things that
either intentionally or unintentionally, that we wish we'd not, I think that
that I have to allow for a space, I guess with the word, it's almost a religious term,
but I guess it would just say grace. And that's something that I see disappearing from
discourse in the public, or maybe it wasn't there, I'm not sure, but it's interesting,
you know, watching this occur on the internet, because also now no longer are you and I just
having a talk sitting on a bus stop, it's now in writing, everything's in writing, the old saying,
like, don't put that in writing, you're like, don't put anything in writing, that's how you get
in trouble. And basically, you know, with the degree to which everything is recorded, but
recorded in tiny little bites, it's very, very easy for me to wave every last little foolish,
ignorant, incorrect or correct thing that someone has ever said or done in their face to support
whatever argument that I'm trying to make about them or a situation. And I think that you mentioned
cancel culture, or, you know, as it seems to exist, obviously this is poisonous on its face,
this is poisonous. It's the sort of thing that doesn't incentivize proper behavior.
I mean, you look at, let's say, one of the great monsters of history, Adolf Hitler,
obviously, who's done awful, awful things, but also for anyone that's even a minor student
of history, did some positive things as well. We don't have to, I don't have to
embroider this person's crimes, I don't have to act as if there was nothing good a monster has
ever done and nothing bad that a great person throughout history has ever done. But imagine
the ghost of Adolf Hitler were to pop up and go, oh my gosh, guys, I'm so sorry. I know what I've done,
but I'd like to apologize and start to make it right. Well, I mean, you'd hope that, you know,
if he popped up over here, you go, well, I don't really like what you've done. And I don't like
you. But at the same time, I'm glad to hear that you're attempting to make this right and push in
a positive direction even if you can't make it right. Because otherwise, what am I doing? I'm
disincentivizing, change for the better. I'm looking to wield whatever power I have in a punitive
fashion, which does not encourage people to do anything other than double down on the wrongs
that they've made, knowing that at least they're going to have some support from the people that
support that. And I guess I want to, you'd hopefully look at the use of the internet as a tool that
can educate, and I guess I don't like the word empower, but empower people to do various things,
extend their reach, but educate and learn rather than to further solidify little tribal things
that exist, which I think everyone in humanity and human history is vulnerable to. I mean,
look at the course of human history. It's deeply tribal. And the tribes are the groups that have
been on top at various points in time have done a lot of times bad things to the ones that have not.
And you'd hope that we could learn lessons from the past. And rather than, you know, committing
the crimes that were, you know, that were committed against us, recommitted them when we slide into
the top position, say, you know, I could do this now, but I'll not. You know, I understand the urge
to seek vengeance is strong of anyone that says differently. I wouldn't trust, you know. But at
the same time, we go, we have enough experience in history, enough experience in life, enough,
hopefully wisdom, you know, time in to go, this isn't the right answer. This is only going to
replay the things, the worst parts of our history, not the best. And I want to encourage positive
behavior. And if I just, again, further lash out at people, although understandably done
understandably, I'm simply just going to just perpetuate the cycle that's gone on to this point.
So you hope that even though we're seeing a lot of turmoil societally at the moment and globally
at the moment, that I guess our better angels can prevail at a certain point, but it's going to take
a great deal of leadership. And I think that we're, we're sorely missing like a Martin Luther King
style character at the moment, or a great leader. And I just, I'm hoping that one will show up.
For sure. And by the way, a word I don't hear often, and I think it's the beautiful one,
which is grace. That's a really interesting word. I'm going to have to think about that.
It is, there is a religious component to it, but it's exactly right. It, you have to somehow
walk the line between, you know, you mentioned Hitler, I've been reading
the rise and fall of the third Reich. I'm really thinking about the 1930s.
And what, what it's like to have economic, my concern is the economic pain that people are
feeling now quietly is really a suffering that's not being heard. And there's echoes of that
in the, in the 20s and the 30s with the Great Depression. And there's a hunger for a charismatic
leader. Like you said, there's a leader that could walk with grace, could inspire, could,
could bring people together with, with sort of dreams of a better future. That's positive.
But Hitler did exactly everything that I just said, except for the word positive,
which is he did give a dream to the German people who were a great people, who are great people
of, of a better future. It's just that a certain point that quickly turned into the better future
requires literally expansion of more land. It started with, well, if we want to build a great
Germany, we need a little bit more land. And so we need to kind of get Austria, then we need to kind
of get France, mostly because France doesn't understand that more land is really useful,
so we need to get rid of them. And look what they did to us in Versailles anyway.
But so the Jew, the Jewish, the Holocaust is a separate thing. I don't know.
Well, I don't know. I don't know what to think of it because, so me being Jewish and
having a lot of the echoes of the suffering is in my family and the people that are lost.
I don't know because Hitler wrote all about it in Mein Kampf, so I don't know if the evil he
committed was there all along. I mean, and that, that's where the question of forgiveness.
I mean, Hitler is such a difficult person to talk about, but it's the question of
on cancer culture, who is deserving of forgiveness and who is not like the Holocaust survivors
that I've read about, that I've heard the interviews with. They've often spoken about the fact that
the way for them to let go, to overcome the atrocities that they've experienced is to forgive.
Like forgiveness is the way out for them. It's interesting to think about. I don't know. I don't
know. I don't know if we're even a society ready to even contemplate an idea of forgiveness for
Hitler. It's an interesting idea though. It's a good thought exercise at the very least to think
about all these people that are being canceled for doing bad things of different degrees.
Think of like Louis C.K. or somebody like that for being not a good person, but what is the path
for forgiveness? And also, what's a good person? What is the good person? If that's a sliding scale
that we could all find ourselves looking at the uncomfortable end of a gun on,
you know, particularly down the line. I mean, you hope for the best, but these definitions,
I guess, like you said, are important and who's doing the canceling, who's being canceled. I'm
not necessarily, as you said, saying that that's entirely unjustified or certainly not, it's
certainly understandable. And particularly, you mentioned like a monster like an Adolf Hitler,
but it's also interesting. I couldn't help but notice like you mentioned, as a society, us
being able to apply forgiveness to someone who's done so much horror. But people who were personal,
I mean, of course, many that so many people in person affected, but directly personally affected,
someone, a survivor of the Holocaust, being able to let go on that. I'm nowhere near big enough
a person for that sort of thing. But I guess that's an interesting thing, you know, being the person
who was physically there, potentially able to able to let go. I don't know, that's unbelievably
powerful. It's interesting. I guess you have to wonder sometimes, and this isn't obviously in
regards to that, to the Holocaust, but why I'm holding on to various things? What is it doing
for me? And what is it doing to me? Is it facilitative? Is it not? And I guess that's something
else that I really enjoy when I was on Ultimate Fighter. They don't let you have any music or
any books out in religious text. So I brought a Bible and I brought a Quran and I started to read
them side by side. And it was really interesting reading. The Bible's a little drier, Quran's
more interesting, at least written. But I think something that was consistently brought up was
the way, most merciful, people want, I don't think any of us want justice. We think we want
justice, but I don't think we want justice. Justice is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous game,
because maybe this person's wronged me deeply and I want justice. I want to balance it out,
because what is justice? It's not a balancing of the scales. And sometimes you can understand it
and on a societal level, I think it's fine. I mean, there's crime and punishment and
we can go for the benefits and the drawbacks of that. But I think what any of us want is mercy
within reason. Grace, as you mentioned, because justice is a very, very, very dangerous thing.
And it's a valuable and important thing. But who gets to decide what's just, what justice is
actually meted out? Maybe I get to meet out justice, but I don't get my comeuppance. Well,
that sounds great. But what happens when it's pointed back at me? And I guess that comes back
to the veil of ignorance, the idea that one day I will have to live in the world in which I've
envisioned the world in which I've created. I think that a lot of times people love the idea of
they're a judge for your crimes and a lawyer for theirs. And I heard that the other day,
I thought it was great. And I think that's a dangerous thing. And hopefully it gives us all
pause before, rightly or wrongly, but always understandably, you know, wielding, wielding
serious power. Yeah, justice is a kind of drug. So if you look at history,
also been reading a lot about Stalin, I mean, all those folks really, I don't know, I don't know
what was inside Hitler's head, actually, that he's a tricky one. Because I think he was legitimately
insane. Stalin was not. And Stalin was like, he literally thought he's doing a good thing.
He literally thought for the entirety of the time that communism is going to bring like,
that's the utopia. And he's going to create a happy world. And in his, in his mind were ideas of
justice, of fairness, of happiness, of, of, yeah, human flourishing. And that's, that's a drug.
And it's somehow sadly, pollutes the mind when you start thinking like that, what's good for society,
and believing that you have a good sense of what's good for society. That's intoxicating,
especially when others around you are feeling the same way. And then you start, like, building
up this movement. And you forget that you were just like a, you're, you're like, barely recently
evolved from an ape. Like, you don't know what the hell you're doing. And then you start like,
killing witches or whatever, like you start, you start doing, they did math, let's be honest,
though. I mean, sometimes you got a witch has to go. Yeah, we can all agree that a witch,
a witch has to go. If it floats or sinks, which one, I forget, which one, whichever one we need
at the time. Floating it should have sunk. Yeah, but yeah, we can definitely agree that witches
have to go. Because you brought it up, I tweeted recently, but also just, one of the things I'm
really ashamed of in my life is I haven't really read almost any of the sci-fi classics. Really?
Yeah. So like, my whole journey through reading was through, like, the literary philosophers,
I would say, like Camus, Hesse, Dostoevsky, Kafka, like that place. Like, that's a kind of sci-fi world
in itself. But it's, it just, it creates a world in which the, the deepest questions about human
nature can be explored. I didn't realize this, but the sci-fi world is the same. It just puts it in a,
it like, removes it from any kind of historical context where you can explore those same ideas
in like space somewhere else, where in a different time, in different place,
it allows you almost like more freedom to like, construct these artificial things where you can
just do crazy, crazy kind of human experiments. So I'm now working through it. The books on my list
are the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, Dune, Snow Crash by Neil Stevenson, and Ender's Game,
like you mentioned. That's just kind of, and then, so I posted that, and then of course,
like Elon Musk, John Carmack, I don't know if you know him, creator of Doom and Quake and all
that stuff. See, they all pitched in. These nerds, these ultra nerds just started like going, like
these, you need to read this, that, and the other. So I've like started working out, okay,
but it seems like the list I've mentioned holds up somewhat. Is there a book, is there sci-fi
books or series or authors that, that you find are just amazing? Maybe another way to ask that is
like, what's the greatest sci-fi book of all time? Well, I'd like to start by sharing something
that I'm embarrassed about, is that I haven't read anything other than, you know, Orson Scott
Card, JR Tolkien, Frank Herbert Tolkien. Yeah, I'm aware through Wikipedia and through surface
reading of things that like a book called The Republic was written once. There were some other
other good ones. So you're a prolific reader of Wikipedia articles? Well.
Or occasional. Okay, exactly. And in between whatever else it is that I waste my time on.
But yeah, so I also, I should say, I posted on Reddit questions for
Ryan Hall, and there's like a million questions. But like, half of them have to do with Dune,
not really. But like, people bring up Dune. I don't understand why I, did you mention Dune
before? Well, actually, we actually have a showy role actually made us a Dune themed
Dune one time, which I thought was kind of cool. Like, I'll send you one, I'll give you one,
we got extras. But actually, to your point, actually, this is Orson Scott Card quote,
actually, the writer of Ender's Game, fiction because it's not about somebody who actually
lived in the real world always has the possibility of being about oneself. And I think that's a
neat thing because I have heard, you know, other people whom I respect and very sharp people,
actually every now and then dig their heels and go in, I don't like fiction, I only like
nonfiction. It's more, it's more instructive. And I would go, I completely disagree with that.
I think we have a hard enough time figuring out what happened at 7-11 three hours ago
that, let me tell you what happened, 600 years BC. I'm like, hey, I'm interested,
but don't tell me this isn't a story too. There's actual, there's factual components,
I have no doubt. But we struggle sometimes to like, I guess what I like about fiction
is that you can tell me a story, it's all about people. I mean, every now and there's more and
less believable things. And I think Dune would be an unbelievably well-written, in my opinion,
for whatever, you know, what do I know, but I really like Dune, I'll say that, well-written
example of, you know, human beings interacting with one another, the political component to that,
the emotional, the intellectual, the relationship components to all of that. And I think that Dune
is neat because it's a sci-fi novel, but only in the, only in the loosest sense. It's really a story
about religion, about group dynamics, about human potential, about belief, learning, politics,
governance, ecology. It's a, the best stories remind me of history, the same way history,
hopefully, is not just a list of facts that I try to be able to recall or factoids that I try to
recall, but a story that I can understand and see how, how the threads of time kind of came together
and created certain things. And a lot of times, like we say, I'm like, ah, how the heck is what's
going on right now, or a hundred years from now, or a hundred years in the past happened. And you
can look back far enough, if we had accurate knowledge, if we had that, like that hypothetical,
perfect pool shot, you know, at the beginning of time, we would see an unbroken chain of events
that led us to where we are, and where we are will potentially lead us to where we're going,
which is, again, why hindsight's helpful. But I think it's neat, like, I guess I really enjoy,
for instance, a book like Dune, and they're actually making a movie out of it, which I'm
skeptical of, to be honest, because it's, it's going to be difficult to, to bring that to the
screen for a variety of reasons. But one of the- Yeah, there's at least a hundred questions.
Ask Ryan, what do you think about the new Dune movie?
I am not enough of an authority to have any sort of decent opinion, but I guess what I would say
is so much of it goes on in the character's mind, like how much of any of our day is, is
any lived experience, as it were, is internal. The majority, how many times are people walking
around, and, you know, they can be like, hey, what do you see right now? I'm like, oh, well,
I see this picture, I see a wall, hey, there's Lex. But really, what I was paying attention to
was what was going on inside of my head for a moment, and almost the rest of the world
tuned out and kind of dimmed. And I guess that, I think that's going to be a struggle to anytime
you want to bring that type of a written story to, to a visual medium, I think it's going to
be more difficult. But it'll be interesting. It's definitely one of my favorite stories,
and it's been, it's honestly helped me become better at life, in my opinion, better at martial
arts. And I think the writer, I think Frank Herbert was absolutely brilliant, whether those
were all his ideas, which in reality, none of us are, all of our good ideas aren't ours,
we're a combination. Maybe he came up with something, you're a curator of other good
ideas and some things you borrowed from somewhere without even realizing it. But I think the way,
the messages and the themes and the ideas that were conveyed, particularly in the original
novel are just absolutely brilliant. Is that, is that to you one of the greats?
And the flip side of that, like, or another way to ask that is like,
if somebody's new to sci-fi, is that something you would recommend that that is an entry point?
I'm not well read enough in the sci-fi world. I haven't read a lot of like Isaac Asimov or
anything like that. But I just, I'll recommend Dune. I'll be an obnoxious, like evangelist
for Dune to anyone who'll listen. So yeah, I would strongly recommend it.
So the other thing you mentioned, now I should probably be talking to you about much more
important things, but the other thing you mentioned is Skyrim. Do you play video games?
What's your favorite game? What's, what would you say is the greatest video game of all time?
Because I'm a huge fan of Elder Scrolls. Skyrim.
Yeah, I mean, I play a little bit at this point, you know, a little less,
finally moves into a new house. So you're like an adult?
No, no, no, I'm like a better funded 12 year old.
Yeah, that's, yeah, that's entirely, that's entirely accurate, better funded 12 year old.
But somewhat better funded 12 year old, not as well funded as I wish.
But is it like you play video games?
Oh yeah, I played as a kid. You know, again, I've always liked playing sports and liked reading,
and I always enjoyed video games. But my favorite video game I think I've ever played
was Knights of the Old Republic. It was a Star Wars game, a huge Star Wars fan until
it become less so, so recently, Disney. You don't like the, I haven't watched it yet.
Mandalorian? Oh, actually I like Mandalorian. That was actually pretty cool, yeah.
Waving this off, canceled. Yeah, if I could cancel one thing,
I would cancel Disney Star Wars. I'm going to edit that part out.
Okay, let's go to the next one. This is where, if people are wondering,
if you're watching this on YouTube and like the dislike amount is like 80%,
it's because of that comment. So, good job. Good job for making the internet hate you.
I regret nothing. What about Baby Yoda?
Yeah, I guess, yeah, he's like, he's little, he's got ears, and he uses the force sometimes,
and he passes out. Nope, no qualms with Baby Yoda. Yeah.
You don't have a heart. Okay.
Let's go to Jiu-Jitsu if it's okay.
So the audience of this podcast may not know much about Jiu-Jitsu.
Or they do, because it's really part of the culture now, but they don't really know much.
They see that so many people have fallen in love with it, have been transformed through it,
but they don't know much about like, what is this thing? Is there a way you could sort of
try to explain the, what is Jiu-Jitsu? What is the essence of this martial art that's captured
the minds and hearts of so many people in the world?
I think that Jiu-Jitsu is a philosophy that's expressed physically, and that it's the kind
of development of the mental capacity and physical capacity working in unison to move efficiently
and almost flowingly, unresistingly, with a given situation, with a physically-resisting
opponent. Learning how to generate force on your own and how to steal force from the floor,
how to steal force from the other person, and move in concert with it as opposed to clash
against, which if you watch two untrained people fight, it's almost entirely a clash.
It's a runaway and clash, a runaway and clash. If you watch Jiu-Jitsu done well, it looks like
water moving around a solid structure. And I think that that is expressed physically,
and I think that all of the things that anyone has really been able to do very, very well in
Jiu-Jitsu end up kind of exemplifying that. But I think that that's true of martial arts in
general. I think that a lot of times, like the clashing that we see going on and working well
is just the fact that you get very, very physically powerful people every now and then.
They're able to get away with this, but I don't think that that's fantastic.
Because ultimately, it's a results-driven thing, but I think that the essence of the
martial arts is learning how to make more out of less and how to move with and be yielding.
You know, almost like real-life Aikido. So you think of martial arts, Jiu-Jitsu
as like water or flowing, so Aikido, so moving around the force as opposed to
sort of maybe the wrestling mindset is finding a leverage where you can apply an exceptional
amount of force, so like maximizing the application of force.
I guess maybe that's a better way to, I'd like to marry the two ideas, you know,
because I think you flow until the point at which you are the greater force, at which point in time
you can apply. But if you look at the best wrestlers, and then when I say best, I don't necessarily mean
most successful, although of course most successful are always very, very good,
throughout the course of history in boxing, in wrestling, in Judo, they're magical. They disappear
and reappear. It's like fighting a ghost that is like incorporeal when you want to find it,
but then when you don't want it to find it, when you don't want to find it, it finds you.
And I think that we see that in the, like the Buvaisar cites of wrestling.
And, you know, I guess you could look at Floyd Mayweather or Willie Pep
or, you know, Pernell Whitaker in boxing as brilliant examples of disappearing and
reappearing. And when you're strong, it's almost like Guerrilla Warfare. When you're strong,
I'm nowhere to be found. When you're weak, you can't get rid of me. And I think that's what
we're looking for. Yes, the tier brothers are incredible at that. They just, they look like
skinny Starbucks baristas and they just manhandle everybody like effortlessly. They look like they
just kind of woke up, rolled out of bed, fighting for like the gold medal at the Olympics and just
effortlessly throw like there's a match against you. I guess Yolvar Mero.
Yeah. So like you, you know, if you look at like who is the guy who's like intimidating in this case
and terrifying looking, it's, it's Yolvar Mero, just like a physical specimen, obviously like a
super accomplished wrestler. I think this is for the gold medal. Yeah. And 2000. 2000. Yeah,
and then they're, this is the year you all took silver. And what you just like, just to show
you like there's a inside trip effortless Uchi, he does it again. You know, it's a really creative
kind of wrestling where it's organic. Yeah, you throw in all of these kinds of things. This is
just a mix of judo, a mix of like weird kind of moves. It's not like as funky as Ben Askren.
It's, it's just like legitimate, basic. It's not funky for funky sake. And I'm not poking Ben
Askren to imply that that's what he's doing. But it's like, it's funny. It's like a lot of times
it's almost like a Musashi talked a lot about that, you know, that the only goal of combat is
to win is the outcome is it's outcome driven versus like flourishing, you know, cool looking
movements. It's like, unless that had a utilitarian purpose, like what are you wasting your time with
that? Both in the fight and also, you know, in practice. But, but as you mentioned, it's almost
like it looks like judo, it looks like wrestling, it looks like jujitsu, it's almost like, I guess
that reminds me all of the martial arts is again, deeply tribal as well. I want to learn
Lex Fridman martial arts. And then I want to learn another, you know, I guess transcendent
person's martial arts. And it just happened to be the set of movements that you tended to do most
of the time, thanks to your body type and your opposition and whatnot. But then I try to codify
that and force those to work as opposed to going, I want to understand how the body works in concert
and in Congress with something else and other forces and move appropriately. And that's why
it's like it always struck me that the Scythe Brothers are great examples of just moving like
water. But to use Bruce Lee, which is a little trite, but again, he's brilliant. It's like
water can flow or water can crash and they would crash when they needed to crash and they would
flow when they needed to flow. But they would flow for the purpose of dissipating and then crash
when they would win. And at the right moment, then go back to flowing the second that the other
person found them. And it's just beautiful to watch, it's artistic. And I think that that great
expression of anything physical is ultimately studied as a science, but expressed as an art.
And I think that that's something that gets lost in jujitsu a lot of times when it gets a little
bit, a little nerdy, like do this hand here, hand here, like if the more details I have,
the better. One in reality, that's just not in my experience, how it's done.
It might be a fun exercise of saying like, what are the main positions and submissions in the art
of jujitsu? You don't have to be complete. That's a ridiculously, I apologize for putting you on a
spot like this, but it might be a nice exercise to think through it.
Sure. I mean, I would just say that you have your arms bend in various ways. You have
key lock, Americana, straight arm locks, Kimura omoplata. Omoplata is a Kimura Kimura's
personal plot that's just executed. Submission. So like, breaking off
your arm in all kinds of ways. But ultimately, the question is, let's say you were a terminator,
like a robot, which of course you are. Go on. Go on. It's like, all right, it's a work being
completely literal. And I couldn't harm you with any of these things. Would I still use these
positions? The answer is yes. They create leverage, they create control, they create shapes that I
can affect and that can affect me, and they can be affected through other forces than other
objects or structures like the ground or the wall. I really enjoy mixed martial arts because
there's another component rather than just me and you and the floor. There's me, you,
the floor and the wall. And it's another player in the game that doesn't exist
in a grappling context with a non-enclosed, I guess, area of combat. But you can strangle me
or choke me, what do you call it, without my arms being involved or you can use one of my
shoulders to pin one side of my, one carotid artery off and you can enclose the other.
You can turn my knee in the exact same ways that you can turn my arm straight this way and that way.
You can add a rotation to that or it can be directly linear against the joint. So I guess
what I would say is the more that I've been able to understand jiu-jitsu, the more that I've been,
it's given me a look into how we learn language where rather than learning five
bazillion adjectives, I go, I understand what an adjective is. And of course, we are all read into
some degree of vocabulary. I understand what an adverb does. And I understand what an adverb is.
I know what a noun is. I know what the component parts of a sentence are. I know what, you know,
I guess a clause, a contraction, any of these things. And it allows you to be
interesting and artistic with your language to the extent that you can. But I can't,
like I can speak a degree of Spanish, but I'm not even slightly artistic in Spanish. I would be
something, I speak like a child with a head injury. And anyway, the-
Your basic understanding of the English language allows you to then be a student of Spanish.
100%. But I'm limited by my experience. I'm limited by my understanding of
techniques. I'm limited by my understanding, almost like, let's say, techniques are like
vocabulary. So even if I kind of sort of grasp the sentence structure and the thought process and
the thought patterns of Spanish, which it's interesting because just even the orientation
and the organization of a language, and I've thought about this a great deal,
you know, the way that I perceive the world is affected deeply by the language that I learned.
Again, if I learned, I have no idea how the Chinese language structures,
but I can only imagine that it would be, that it would affect, it's like a different lens.
We're looking at the same thing, but I have a different set of sunglasses on than you do.
And that's very, very interesting. I'll use the Quran as an example.
Apparently, it's unbelievably poetic in Arabic. Still neat and was interesting reading in English,
but I'm told by people that I trust that it just one doesn't bear a resemblance to the other. And
I think that's a very interesting thing that you may be able to say the same thing, but in a more,
I guess, in a different way, in a more artistic way that may not translate on a one-for-one kind
of fidelity. But the more that we're able to understand about how the body works, the more
examples of the body working this way, the body working that way, the body working that way,
the more that I'm able to eventually become an artist. But it has to be studied as a science
first. And it does start with technique collection, vocabulary collection, the same way we learn
in school, where you remember how to say quickly, 17 different ways. And let's say I speak Spanish,
I'm only, I only know three. So you might use quickly, you might use an adjective like quickly
in Spanish, but use one of the many, many options to describe that that I don't understand. And
now I sit there and go like, wait, what? I can't be artistic. I can't be as organic with the languages
I like. So I believe that jujitsu a lot of times starts with the acquisition of a lot of, hey,
do this, this, this drill, this technique, here's an Americana, Americana to an arm lock,
arm lock to a triangle. But the problem with that is oftentimes we get stuck in that phase.
And I, people eventually become move collectors or sequence collectors. And I noticed this when
I'm trying to do DVDs, or I guess like an instructional series now, or even teaching in
class, I don't believe in that form of learning anymore. Not that it's not valuable, but I don't
believe, I don't understand jujitsu on that level anymore. So what I'm trying to do is get across
the basic ideas to people and say, Hey, you need to fill in the gaps with going to class all the
time, you need to go, Hey, learn this move, learn that technique, learn that technique, because
otherwise I'm basically just throwing at you like 75 different words that you could use.
But that hasn't really taught you how to, how to speak a language. Whereas if you give me the
language structure, you can fill in these pieces on your own and then eventually speak organically
in lex form, which will be ultimately unique to you. Because otherwise you just end up being
like a weird facsimile of whatever it is that I'm doing for mostly the worst, I'd say.
But yeah, that's what people, I mean, people comment like, is this, especially people have
haven't listened to me before. Is this guy drunk or high? Does he, does MIT really allow slow people
to be like, what's wrong with him? Is he getting sleep? Are you okay? And does he need help?
So that's similar with my jiu jitsu is like, is this guy, is this guy really whatever rank I was
throughout? I remember just like, is this guy really this rank? I just have a very kind of
certain way of sitting and being slow and lazy looking that there was ultimately the language
that I had to discover. And it was, it was, yeah, it was a very liberating moment, I think,
of probably a few years of getting my ass kicked, especially with open guard and butterfly to where
you really allow yourself to take in the entirety of the language and realize that
that I'm not, I'm different, I'm a unique, I'm unique. And like, I have a very, I have a language,
I have a set of techniques, a way I move my body that needs that I'm the one to discover,
like it's, you can only, you can learn specific techniques and so on, but you really have to
understand your own body. And that's the beautiful thing about jiu jitsu, like you said, is like the,
the connection about your philosophy, your view of the world with the physical, and like connecting
those two things, how you perceive the world, how you interpret ideas of the world about exhaustion,
about force, about effortlessness, like what it really means to relax, all these kinds of loose
concepts, and then actually teach your body to like do those things. And like, you know, and be
able to apply force and spurts, be able to relax and spurts and like figure all that stuff out
for my, for your, my individual body. But it's, as you mentioned, that's, I couldn't agree with
you more, it's a discovery process and no one can cheat that process, which is at the same time,
it's almost to imagine I want to start writing books in second grade, unless maybe I'm like
staggeringly brilliant, like, which I can only conceptualize someone being able to do that,
but maybe a Mozart of the English language where you're out there doing it. But for most of us,
we don't have enough knowledge, enough information, enough experience to be able to be, to express
ourselves. So we have to basically input repeat, which is important, but it's the process, as you
say, of going through that of getting your ass kicked to just like, well, that didn't work,
well, that didn't work, that felt right. But I don't know, nobody else does that. I guess I
don't believe in that. Versus eventually going, I don't know, I'll just try going my own way and
see what happens. And now I'll get yelled at and people won't like me. And if it works,
they'll say, I got lucky. And if it doesn't work, they'll say, I was dumb. But which one,
maybe all is right. But basically, you know, going through that iterative process that,
that allows you to eventually find yourself expression and find your voice so that you,
you fight the same way that you speak, the same way that you write, the same way that you think
in a way that, that is uniquely you, that will also ultimately allow you to understand other
people being uniquely them. Because even if you can only conceptualize, and I think about this a
lot for society stuff, right? Well, this is how I feel about this. But am I objectively right,
maybe about a couple of things, but that's a small box that I have to be very, very careful about
what I think is objective versus what's not. And I have to be open to the possibility of all the
things that I think are objectively correct may or may not be. And that should allow me to have
some degree of compassion or consideration for other people, both in their martial arts journey
and in their, in their journey, you know, as people, as human beings, because I understand
that they're on a, it's a, we're all on a path where it's all in, again, an iterative process
of eventual self expression. But I think that's one of the things that we see having trouble when
we see tribalism, which I mean, racism, expression of that political affiliation to expression of
that, all of these things that can go in really uncomfortable directions, people are looking
for, Hey, where do I plant my feet over here? Where's, where's the thing that I know is right?
And we can all agree on the following. And I think that we see that in martial arts. We're
like, Oh, I do this style. Well, I do that style. I do that style. It's like, Hey, man, we're all
just pushing forward in a certain direction here, trying to do our best. And I understand why you
feel the way you do. I may have felt like that at one point too. But, you know, we're, I'm just
trying to learn and understand versus I've already acquired enough knowledge, let me cross my arms
and start to look who's fucking up around here. And I think that that's an, it's an interesting
trap that I think is very human trap to fall into, but it definitely happens early on. It's,
I mean, it's a joke in the jitsu world, right? Like, oh, the blue belt that knows everything.
Well, initially it's like, what, I know nothing. And I at least think I know nothing. Then I'd
learn a little bit. And I think it's a lot bit. And then, you know, the more you learn, the more
you go like, I don't even know what I'm doing. Yeah, that's exactly right. We kind of talked
about it a little bit. But once again, a lot of people that listen to this have never been on
the mat, have never tried jitsu, but are really curious about it. Everybody at all positions,
like, I think Elon Musk's kids are not doing jiu-jitsu. Andrew Yang is like, they're all,
you know, the world is curious. It's a, it's a nice, it seems to be a nice methodology by which
to humble your ego, which to grow intellectually and physically. So people are curious about it.
So the natural question is, if they're curious about it, how would you recommend they get started?
Maybe like, what do you recommend the first day, week, month, year, first couple of years look
like? Like, how do you ease into it and make sure that it's a positive experience and you progress
in the most optimal and positive way? The first thing you can do is, is simply ask yourself why,
why you want to be involved. And, you know, I remember the first day that I walked into
Ronan Athletics in New York City to train under my godfather, my son now, Christian Montes.
And I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I played baseball through high school,
and I wanted, I was at Manhattan College in the Bronx, and I wanted to go and learn martial arts,
because it was always something that was interesting to me, but it was never something
that was, that I knew was accessible, and it definitely wasn't really around in Northern
Virginia where I grew up, whereas then you stick yourself in Manhattan and there's stuff everywhere.
So anyway, I guess I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know if I was going to get beat up,
if people were going to be nice, if people were not going to be nice. But what I began with was,
I think, expectation management. And I think that that's something that I would,
that'd be the first thing that I would start is almost imagining, what is it that I'm getting
myself into? Because I love the martial arts. The martial arts has given me everything in life,
and I'm so thankful. I wouldn't be sitting here without that experience, that journey of the
people that I've met, the places that I've gone, I could never, ever, have ever imagined.
And I'm just unbelievably thankful for that. But I think that the thing that helped me most of all
was starting with, you know, my mom said something to me one time, and she said,
you know, there's two types of people in various situations. There's why and there's why not.
And, you know, it's understandable to have questions, concerns, things like that.
But maybe sometimes it's a little bit easier when you're younger to just trust people or just say,
I don't know, you know. But we'd go, hey, you want to climb that rock? I'm like, yeah, why not?
Let's go. Hey, you want to jump in that river? Yeah, why not? Sure. Versus, if I have to reason
my way into everything, if I have to be talked into everything, a lot of times I'll talk myself
out of it. And I think that a lot of times this is the thinker's disease. You want to figure out
what's going to happen and what you should expect to have happen before you get involved versus going
using the old Bruce Lee saying, again, it's like no amount of thinking or training on the side of
the river will teach you how to swim. You have to jump in. And there are risks associated with that.
And so, I guess, psychological are usually the biggest ones. That's the biggest hurdle and physical.
But the biggest thing that I guess I would suggest to anyone to say, well, why do you want to do
this? You're like, well, I want to challenge myself. I would like to learn to fight. I wanted to
learn to fight so that I could protect myself. And if anything else, other people, if only when the
arms reach, I perceive that if I had some small degree of power, I generally wouldn't use it,
which is why I was like, yeah, I'll give it a try. I'll try to be reasonable. And hopefully,
if I make a mistake, I'll apologize to people. But basically, I said, yeah, I'd like to have that.
I'd like to have that. And I want to, I know this is going to be challenging, and we'll see what
happens. And that means that getting beat up, and I didn't get like hurt, but getting roughed up,
getting my arm bent this way or that way, getting choked, I was like, well, this is all supposed
to happen. That's no big deal. It would be like going and joining the army during peacetime.
And then going, oh, I'm just doing this for a college education. You're like, okay, that's cool,
man. And then all of a sudden, war breaks out, and they want to send me somewhere. And I'm like,
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I didn't sign up for that gig. Actually, you did, whether you
realize it or not, you may not have thought that you did, but you did. So getting your mind right,
and just going, what are my expectations of this activity? What is it that I'm looking to do? And
of course, you're going into a gym, you're going into a place that you don't know people, or you
probably don't know people, and you don't know the coach. And even if you do want to, hey, how you
do and shake your hand type of level, 95% of my students don't know me. Not really. I'll try to
be polite and not annoy them too much, but they don't know me, and I don't know them. I understand
if they don't trust me, I wouldn't trust me either, if I were them. But at the same time,
someone has to take that leap. And one of the things that I've noticed as a martial arts
instructor, that's the biggest struggle with dealing with adults, which is why a lot of people
like to teach kids is because kids don't ask, don't argue. Now, that also means there's all
sorts of pitfalls with that sort of thing. And that can be an issue. But I guess a lot of times,
people get to a point in their life, in their 20s, early 30s, where now I'm a manager now,
I know what I'm doing. No one talks to me like that. First, it's like, hey, man, you go join
boot camp, I don't care if you are Elon Musk, they're going to shut up and do push-ups. And
that's what's great about it. So you are taking a leap of faith into a world that you're going to
be a tiny fish. And you got to hope that the people who are guiding you in that journey
are going to have, I can't even say your best interest at heart because they don't even know
you, but they'll try to do no harm and they'll try to help you in the way that they would
understand. And I guess that's, for instance, that's what I would try to do with anyone that
comes into my gym. I would try to help them in the way that I understand they need as best I can
and as safe and reasonable a way as possible. But sometimes in a way that's going to make them
uncomfortable, particularly if physical combat and it's not something they've done before.
If they've, a lot of people go in without even having played, you know, contact sports.
And so that can be a big jump. And you have to understand if that's where you're starting from.
No worries, but you're going to have to kind of work your way to it and it's going to be uncomfortable
and that's okay. It's part of the process. And you're going to have some bumps and bruises
and you're not going to want to roll with that guy in the corner because that person's rough
and they beat you up and they're like, okay, but is this a big hurt or is it a little hurt?
If it's a big hurt, okay. If it's a little hurt, need you to set it up a little bit.
Yeah. It's such an interesting balance because to find, I think one of the most important things
as in anything I think in life is the selection of the people that you put around you. I mean,
that's true with like getting married. That's true with like if you go to, if people ask me,
like graduate students, like your PhD advisor can be the difference. It's everything. It's like
you spend five years with somebody they're going to basically define the more impact on you than
anybody you marry, anybody you hang out with, there's a huge impact. And the same with the
coach selection, which is like the school selection is, it's going to be really important about
in terms of like who you select will define how happy, like the trajectory of your growth and
how happy you are with the entirety of the experience. And yet, like the flip side of
that is, especially if you have an ego, especially if you are the manager, then you still let go
some stuff, you're going to feel like shit with the good, with the best kind of coach. That's
what you need, but there's a night, there's a weird balance there to find like, I mean, like,
and everybody needs a different thing. Like I'm much more, I enjoy being sort of like,
sounds weird, but like, I'm, you know, from the wrestling background, I enjoy feeling like crap,
in the sense like the coach, like getting beat up. I don't actually enjoy it. It's not like some
masochistic thing or whatever. It's like, it's the growth, like I like the anxiety, I like
feeling like like shit when I go home, like emotionally, physically, it's a growth, like
it's growth. It's a sign of growth, right? Like you're not having to feel those things,
you're probably in your comfort zone, which is fine, but that's not your growth zone, right?
And everybody has a different threshold for that. And I mean, the beautiful thing about
Jiu Jitsu is like, it's also has like a yoga feel to it, like you're learning about your body.
So depending on the gym and depending on, in fact, the coaches, the people around you,
within the gym, you can select little groups too, kind of like the people with who you roll,
like if you're a smaller person, it doesn't mean you have to go against big people. You can go
against the people who like smoke a lot of weed in their chill, or you can go against like that
crazy ripped blue belt competitor who's like out to destroy everybody. And depending on like,
what your mindset is, you can kind of select that. It's such a fascinating journey of like,
basically self-discovery. I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, what you need may change over
time, right? Maybe what you needed, what you need today could change six months from now or a year
from now. And that's something that I experienced. I'll use my first coach, Christian, again, as a
great example of someone who I really look up to and respect and someone who helped me a lot.
Like at a time when I really needed some guidance and I needed to learn martial arts, but get into
Hensel Gracie's gym was right down the street from where Christian was teaching.
And Christian was a blue belt at the time. He was teaching at a place called Fight House,
which is this awesome like, you know, like 90s, early 2000s, you know, warehouse area down on
Fashion Avenue in Manhattan off of like, between 7th and 8th. And it was like two basketball courts,
why? But like, there was the Sambo guys over here. There was the Kali guys over there. There was a
Wing Chun over there. There was Jits in the corner. And Hensel was one of the most famous
academies in the world at that time, still is. And I just didn't know what Hensel Gracie was.
And I mean, it's a great gym and it's a fantastic place for people to train.
But I think what was right for me at the time was to, I stumbled into, you know, like a two
person elevator up and found a place where six people trained at that time. And I had someone
that could give me some, like in addition to martial arts advice, like personal guidance.
And that made a big difference. And then when initially we would have like competitions or
like intra gym competitions with the Sambo guys, we would compete, we would roll with them. And
like, again, it was great because they were just a bunch of like Russian dudes from like Brighton
Beach and they would come down and then we would all fight and then everyone would train and
would all drink tea and then go home. And anyway, what was it was super, super tough. And they were
like, again, just a tough group of people. It was great. And then I remember when I decided
after like four or five months, my men, I really want to try to take this seriously. And I told
Christian about that. And he's like, well, hey, I think you need to do the following. And it was,
you know, like, hey, here's there was a guy named Jeff Ruth, who was a part belt at the time,
which was a much bigger deal in this now, but it was 10 and always an MMA fighter,
a lot of amateur box spirit, super tough dude. And Jeff was the best person at that time that
I'd ever trained with it. I just got squashed. Christian used to beat me up too. But like,
Jeff would just absolutely kick the crap out of me. And I was like, this is awesome. And this was
back when I was at home, I went home for the summer for that. And Chris is like, Hey, I think
you should stay. Because I told him that's what I was thinking. And this was a coach that, you
know, when it's like, when initially was exactly what I needed. And then he's like, well, hey,
that's not what I'm doing here. Maybe they're going to be able to help you onto a path that's,
that's kind of commensurate with what your goals are at the moment. And then, you know,
that was an, that was an interesting thing. And I really got, I feel that I was fortunate to start
at a place where my coach was able to transition role and, and, and do so comfortably. And I think
that that also was probably a factor of the fact that, you know, where he'd done some of his training
prior, like there have been issues with, with the coach there, we're like, not supporting,
not having the support, you know, feeling like, Hey, like, I'm going to hold on to my students,
I'm going to hold on to my best guy or my best girl, even if I can't take them where they need
to go. So that was an interesting thing. And just recognizing also, though, that the people,
like the same way you're an individual going into a gym, and you don't know what you're getting into,
your coach is a person too. And he or she, you know, they may have been doing this activity longer
than you, but they're not, they're not some weird little, you know, all knowing God, they don't
know anything, they're, they may say something that pisses you off, they may bum, they may yell at
you, they may help you, they may inadvertently cause you some sort of, you know, some sort of
issue. And just being able to recognize that even though I say this to people, and I've said this
to people in my gym, I'm like, you know, we're in the service industry, man, but I'm not at your
service. Like, don't get it twisted. Like, I will absolutely do my best to help people. I'm there to
do my best as a martial arts coach, but I'm here to do my best as a martial arts coach. And I'll
do my best. And periodically, I make mistakes, and I own apology or two, and I'll try to give them
out when I can. But we're not McDonald's. It's not, oh, you gave me 100 bucks, so you do whatever
you want in here. This is my house. This is my gym. This is my dojo. This is, this is the
martial arts. This is not a basketball team. Yeah, there's something beautiful about
martial arts, like exactly as you said, is the coach, like in wrestling and at least collegiate,
like high level wrestling, it's like, there's a dictatorship aspect to a coach that is very
important to have, like this, this ridiculous sometimes nature of like master and so on,
and bowing all these traditions. There's something, it seems ridiculous from the outside,
perhaps, but there's something really powerful to that. Because that process of you said,
why not, of letting go of the leap of faith, requires you to believe that the coach has
your best interest in mind and just give yourself over to their ideas of how, how you should grow.
And that's an interesting thing. I mean, I've never been able to really see coaches I've had as
human. They're always, you always, it's like a father figure or like this, you always put them
in this position of power. And I think that's, I think, at least for me, it's been a very,
it's been a very useful way to see the coach because it allows you to not think and let go
and really allow yourself to grow and emotionally deal with all the beatings.
They'll push you where past oftentimes where you would have stopped yourself, right,
which is great. And then hopefully they know they, if they're paying attention and they're,
they're still a person, they can make mistakes, but they'll push you further than you would have
gone, but not so far that it's not facilitative, right? That's something that I can say, like
Faraz Zahabi, the head coach at TriStar, my head coach for MMA, Kenny Florian, one of the head
coaches for MMA, have both been phenomenal influences. Paul Schreiner, who's the, one of the
assistants at Marcelo Garcia's Academy, coached me in Jiu Jitsu for a long time, brilliant instructor,
they've all been able to do that. And I think what's interesting about all of those guys,
they're very sharp, but they, they're very intuitive as well. And I think that Faraz actually,
you know, told me about some of the John Wooden said, John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball
coach, just a simple philosophical idea. Just he said, some people's life is a bowl of shit.
They need some whipped cream in it. Some people's life is a bowl of whipped cream,
needs a little bit of shit in it, just to balance it out. And it's an interesting thing,
coaching everyone the same way doesn't work. You know, that's, I think the difference between
a coach and an instructor. And a lot of times people think they want to coach, but they really
want an instructor. I'm like, Hey, like, tell me what to do, not how to do it. And then other times,
people think they want, you know, an instructor and they really want to coach. And I'm like, man,
this guy's just giving me information. A coach is so much more than an instructor. And that's a huge
leap. And that's something that I think that people need to understand when they're going into
martial arts. And I understand, and I can totally grasp why they don't, because how, how would they
know? But I think about this a lot, like me giving you $150 for a month, which is not nothing,
that's for sure. That does not, that pays for instructor really. Coach is a relationship that
gets developed. Because can you imagine, like just the amount of emotional investment and time
thinking away from, from like, Oh, Alex isn't here anymore, but what can I do to help him? What
does he need? Like that's, that's serious. And that's the difference between that's, that's so
oftentimes the difference that getting, getting over the hump in various situations. So it's a,
it's an interesting, you know, bargain that's being made, like commitment by the, by the
instructor who becomes a coach, commitment by the student, you know, like there's a financial
transaction, there's a lot of things going on there. But I feel very fortunate to have had
not just instructors in my time, but coaches. And that means sometimes we've butted heads.
And sometimes I look back and I think I was right. And other times I look back at my own,
no, they were definitely right. But there was always the trust, with the exception of one time
that I feel that trust was greatly betrayed, that rightly or wrongly, whether mistakes mistakes
will be made, but everyone is attempting to do, do the right thing under no circumstances would I
intentionally do anything malicious, you know, versus Hey, I might have done, I might have burnt
your house down, but you can be darn sure it wasn't on purpose. And I think that as long as
there's that mutual understanding and mutual belief of goodwill, which again, doesn't just magic up
out of nowhere, I understand. I think that that's when then great things can happen. And I look
at all the athletes that I know, you know, the guys and girls that I've watched become fantastic
in various places, almost invariably, they never happened alone. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really torn about
that. Like, maybe you can help. Have you seen the movie whiplash? So it's a, I would say from an
outsider's perspective, people should watch it. It's a, I guess, jazz band of, it's a movie about
a drummer and the instructor. And he, it's a basically, I would say from the outsider's
perspective, it's a toxic relationship. But he's really the coach, whatever we call him, pushes
the musician, the drummer to his limits, like to where he just feels like shit emotionally.
It looks like a toxic relationship, but it's one that ultimately is very productive for
the improvement of the musician. I have the same, like in my own experience, I had,
I got a chance to train at a couple of places regularly. And so one of my coaches, who is
a great human being, a lot of people love them. But when I was a blue belt, he was pushing me
a lot for competition. And every time I stepped on the mat, I was anxious and almost afraid of
training because of like the places I'm going to have to go. And then the, I can't, I don't know
what's good or bad because I think I've become a better person because of that experience,
like I needed that. And on the flip side, like the place I got my black belt from,
balance studios, I remember also a blue belt, the coach sitting down and I was going to competition
and he saw something in me where he said, you know, like good luck, but win or lose,
we always love you. Like I, I really, I remember that because I really needed that at that time.
Like I was putting so much pressure on myself, like I'm not an actual professional competitor,
you know, I just competed like I'm a PhD student, like, but like it was clearly having
a psychological effect on me. And that's what a great coach does is like, you know, it's like
life is more important than jujitsu. It's bigger. So they find you use jujitsu when you need it to
grow as a person. And when it overwhelms you, you have to pull that person out, like look at the
bigger picture, always look at the bigger picture. It's fascinating. And I don't know what to make
of it. I don't think I would have it any other way is both the anxiety and the, and the love.
Yeah, I think that I couldn't, that's a really interesting thing that you're describing that
I guess it kind of brings me back to a lot of the other things we've been discussing is
just almost like the reciprocal nature of everything where no pressure. That's great.
Everyone's happy all the time. I mean, let's use an example of sci-fi movies to say The Matrix,
which of course, the first one was amazing. And then each subsequent movie made the series
worse. But basically- They're working on a new one, by the way.
Yeah, I've heard. We'll see. I'm hoping for the best. But basically, you know, I'd say,
hey, we started, our first initial world, Agent Smith says to Neo, he's like, our first world
was a utopia where everyone was happy and nothing ever went wrong. It's like your primitive
cerebrum rejected it. And I think that there's obviously, I mean, what do I think? But I guess,
well, I'm here, so I might as well say what I think. I guess great things are fantastic. A kind,
gentle place is fantastic. And this is, again, why I love Dune, because I think Dune does such a
great job of expressing. Frank Herbert does such a great job of expressing, again, the reciprocal
nature of these ideas. Look at Sparta, for instance, or at least what I understand Sparta
from the reading and also watching 300. And reading the Wikipedia.
And reading the Wikipedia article about the movie, not the place. But that's a hard, brutal place.
And was there benefit to that? Absolutely. Was there drawback to that? Absolutely. Is it
sustainable? I would think probably not. I mean, granted, it hasn't sustained. But I mean, that
type of a thing, it burns too hot almost. And it destroys the host at a certain point.
And I guess that type of unforgiving nature, but entirely permissive has its own issues. And I
guess coming back to your description of describing a toxic relationship is a very dangerous and
tricky thing, because it's almost like bird's eye view. You see, let's say a husband and a wife
arguing. You're like, all right, well, sort of somebody hitting somebody. I need to keep myself
out of this, because I have no idea what I'm seeing something, but I don't know what's going on or
why specifically. And again, short of it going to a place that's just out a lot of bounds,
I don't know who's right here. I don't know who's wrong. And I don't know what phase of this
things are in. So I guess coming back. And in the long term, what's good for
both people. Right. It's dangerous. So if I want to put my finger on the scale,
I can understand the desire to do them. Like, hey, guys, let's break it up.
But and that may be the right thing at the time. But at the same time, I'm not sure. So I think
back to all of the times that, you know, that, like you mentioned, your coach is pushing you
when very, very hard. And then other times going like, hey, let's put it in perspective here.
I think that's an interesting thing for high performance. And I think that we're seeing that
again, societally, you know, now or at least maybe that's just pops up on my internet feed
periodically. But coaches shouldn't be allowed to do this or yell at this person to yell at that
person. Like, well, have you ever been Google Boxing Gym? It's not a commercial entity, not
really a real box, not LA Boxing, not a USC Gym, like a real place. You're going to see what things
are like when it's entirely performance based, go to wrestling room at a high level. You know,
again, there's there's left and right limits. And there are such things obviously as abuse,
of course, but and that should never be tolerated. But it's not a commercial entity.
I don't need to be sweet to you if you're if you're screwing up to drop in the ball. And in fact,
recognizing that I'm not doing you a favor or the team a favor by by being permissive of that type
of behavior, I think is important. Everything in its context and at its time is important. And I
guess I can think again, at the times that I've been put put or had put on me like a great deal
of pressure to do X, Y or Z or succeed, or to push for success. And I can't look back fondly
enough on those times. They were tough at the time. But without that, I'm not sitting here.
Without that, I don't go from growing up in a very nice family in the suburbs to fighting at
the highest level in Jiu Jitsu, G, Nogi and now in mixed martial arts, starting a career at age 27.
You know, I don't it just doesn't happen because people generally speaking from that
background don't get pushed hard enough physically to be able to make that transition.
And that has benefits and it has drawbacks, you know, when you stare into the abyss,
it stares back. And I think that that's an important thing to understand. You know,
you stare long enough, you can become something that you don't that you would be sorry that
you did. You don't look enough and you don't have perspective either. You know, and I think that
that's an interesting thing. I can speak to someone who's relative to being someone who's
relatively articulate and reasonable. I try to be reasonable. But you know, I'll say in sparring,
if people get crazy with me, they get a warning and then I'm a crack them. And what do they expect?
Oh, they hear the guy on an interview. But who did they think they were meeting? Because
there's also the guy in the ring. And there's layers there too. I remember training with you
was kind of funny. There's like, there's, well, you didn't know who I was. I mean, you still like.
I have a really good straight ankle up, by the way.
So I don't remember what rank I was, but it might have been purple or something like that. And
I did some, like I, you had this look on your face, which I've often seen in black belts.
It's like, here he goes again. Like here, here's him trying this thing. And then when I kind of
annoyed you a little bit with it, now I get that it was a good, like I, you know, I did something
somewhat effective, like some, like maybe a little bit off balance. There's, I just peeled off a
little layer of Ryan Hall to where I was like, okay, let me, let me like, there, there's like
layers underneath my Tyson's somewhere in there. Like, so it was like, okay, this like new guy
rolls in here. He thinks he can do this stupid thing. And then, and then you started to beat the
hell out of me. But the point is there's layers here from the guy who was being interviewed now
to like Genghis Khan. But it's all in the same body. Right. But it's like, all of us are like that,
right? In various different directions and recognizing that's okay. It's just, there are
consequences to all, every choice that we make has a consequence. Sometimes there's like objectively
wrong or objectively right, but at least in my mind, that's a pretty small box. Everything else is
just, there's a consequence to that. Do you like that consequence? Do you not? And who do I want
to become? What do I want to try to hone myself or anyone else into? And also, like, this is
something I've screwed up as a coach plenty of times. You know, like if someone says, if you're,
if like, I come to like Lex, I really, really want to take, you know, research very seriously,
like, okay, I believe you. Now, I haven't shown you that, but I believe you like, okay,
and now me not showing up to research or to study or not being up until three in the morning
thinking about this is no longer acceptable. There was a time like five seconds before me
making that statement that if I went to bed without reading the book that I needed to read,
no worries. But the second that I made that statement, your expectations for me changed.
And maybe it's something that's something that I've screwed up a whole bunch of times in my,
as a teacher, because it's an interesting thing. Obviously, you know, being a, like running a
martial arts school as your principally an athlete is sometimes I don't pay enough attention to what
people are doing. I just go, okay, you say X, Y, Z. I'm like, Roger that, I believe you're cool.
I will now put you in category X. And whether rightly or wrongly, like maybe this person didn't
understand what they were asking for, or I didn't express this or the other. And it just,
it caused cross wires. And then most times you just, you hash it out, you have a discussion,
you figure out, get to the bottom of what people are trying to do or what they want.
But if I was paying more attention, I think I could have been a lot more effective,
or if I had more experience. And sometimes maybe I'm not sharp enough, or I don't,
I'm not perceptive enough to be able to, to see what's going on. And maybe with years more down
the line, I'll be able to have a sharper perception. But I think that's another one of those interesting
things that some, that sometimes I would caution or not caution, but just inform a perspective
martial arts student, depending upon where you're going. You know, this you, both you and also your
coach or other people in the room, they wear many hats. And sometimes there's a, I had the wrong
hat on, you were talking to me as Lex the guy, I didn't realize you were talking to me, I thought
she was talking to me as Lex the guy, I didn't realize you're talking to me as Lex the martial
artist. I'm like, Oh crap, I was talking to the wrong person. So it's almost like if you had a,
like I run my gym with my wife, she's a black belt. So she's my wife. She's my peers as a
martial artist in jiu-jitsu. He's here, by the way, in judging. So exactly. All right. Well,
but a fellow black belt and I guess like another microphone so you can't hear all the trash she's
talking. Exactly. But it can be tough and that's something we've had to work through a lot. And
it's like looking back and it's like now being where I'm at now, and it's easy for me to say that
because she's in the room and I don't want her to stab me, just continue to slowly poison me over
time. Yeah. Which frankly, I understand. You know, it's the sort of thing that is now way more
effective than anything else I could really reasonably expect to have. But there were times
when, when both of us, you know, were justifiably annoyed at the other because of crossed wires.
And sometimes, you know, you just have a disagreement anywhere or misunderstanding anyway.
But again, like I've, I coach some of my friends. I've coached my friend who I've known since I
was four years old. You know, sometimes I don't go, Hey, buddy, how you doing? Sometimes I'm like,
What the fuck are you doing? Put your hand over there? How many times we talked about this?
And then you walk away and you can see him look at your crooked and you're like, Oh,
crap. Oh yeah. He thought I was talking to his friend. Yeah. Well, all right, let, we need to
talk this one out, hashing out and not he's wrong. How could he possibly think that way?
Like, Oh, no, I totally understand that. But if I was 22, doesn't he know I'm a purple belt?
Some nonsense like that. And it's, and it doesn't come from a bad place. But it's just,
I guess that comes back to society to anything. People only have the perspective that they have
and the awareness that we have. And so again, going back and going, Hey, guys, grace, like,
I don't expect it's not fair for me to go, I fight UFC. Why doesn't this guy who came in
as an attorney understand how hardcore this needs to be? And like, how could he?
And at the same time, though, if I'm using the language of someone that is interested in at
least performance from a martial arts perspective, I understand how that could be off putting,
let's say, for instance, someone that's like, all of that will be out of bounds in their normal
workplace. But if they think of the gym as my office, then whether they agree or disagree with
what's going on, they go, Okay, I hear why I see why that might happen. Let's talk about this.
And we can again, all push forward in a positive direction that benefits, I guess,
everyone's journey throughout the activity. And on top of all that, there's moods.
I mean, especially lately, I think two days ago, maybe yesterday, no, two days ago,
I've never been that cranky in my life. I think I don't know what it was,
but I wanted to tell everybody how much they annoyed me. It was like, I was just very conscious
of this feeling of like, why, why is this happening right now? So I consciously decided,
as I usually do in those cases, to not say anything to anybody. How do you do that?
Well, I, you know, it's, it's, yeah, meditate, because it's not, I tend to, I tend to then
visualize what's going to happen in the next, like, how is this going to make my life better?
Like, if I say something that mean to somebody else, I have just started a conflict that will just
escalate or will continue, will add more conflict to my life. It will make things,
I just don't like the feeling it will create. And so you live enough life to know that, like,
it's just like with street fighting. I would get into a lot of fights when I was younger,
just on the street. But then you realize, like, it's not like a jiu-jitsu match or something
like that. It's not ill-escalate. It might come back at you. Like, that person might find you
again. But more importantly, the anxiety of it, of having created little enemies in this world,
distorts the way you see the world. So I've noticed that, like, if I am shitty to people
on the internet, which I haven't been, I think, in a long time, is like, it, it somehow brings
the shittiness to you more and more. It escalates. Like, the more love you put out there, the more,
like, the people who put love out, like, surround you.
Well, you mentioned forgiveness as well. Like you said, forgiveness. Like, I guess back to the
original, you know, the Holocaust survivor scenario, where, like, oh my god, like, you think of the
ultimate in, like, I've never experienced one, one billionth of that level of, of pain and horror.
And it's like, and I can't let this little thing go. You know, I guess that's an interesting thing.
I think you're just making the point in your personal life, I guess, the same way, right?
Yeah, there, yeah. And on the internet, it's hard. I've somehow gotten, I mean, you've,
you've had a level of celebrity for a while. I've recently gotten some level of, like,
celebrity. And, like, these people who are just shitty for no reason come out from all,
from all places, like, calling me a fraud or anything else.
It was a giant silent bob. Strike back. They find out a movie is going to be made about them and
people are talking shit on the internet and they're like, what's the internet? And then
someone shows them and they're like, what? And they go to a message board and they go to Hollywood
to try to stop it from being made. And they eventually get money for their likeness and
they use the money to buy plane tickets and fly around and beat the shit out of all the people
that talk bad about them. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, it's, I'm having trouble with it because
there's people like, yeah, there's, you know, there's posts and forums and like heated discussions
about his legs for even a fraud. I don't know. What has he really done? And there's like,
and then there's people like, well, I think he's an all right guy, but I'm not sure.
Like there's like literal discussions. And I'm like, like, no, but like, if you increase the
level of celebrity, there's going to be like, one of the things that hurts my heart a little bit is
like some level of toxicity around Joe Rogan, for example, there's like communities of people that
now like talk about him selling out, for example, all that kind of stuff. And I don't, you know,
and Joe, I've talked to him about it is amazing that he, he says, don't read the comments,
he legitimately doesn't read the comments. His heart and his soul doesn't give a damn about
the comments. All he gives a damn about is his friends. Like one of the things that's really
inspiring to me. And that's, I've had a conversation with him offline about Spotify and
the removed episodes. People are curious. It's a thing on the internet where I think you can
play Taylor Swift songs on, but you can also now play Joe Rogan podcast. Oh, cool. And they gave him
$100 million. So that that's, you know, that's awesome. Good for Joe. It's, yeah. But the thing
I've had a discussion with him, and I made a video about it that I took down because the
toxicity is like, it's hard to put into words, but he will give away the $100 million in a second
if he ever has to compromise who he is. Like he doesn't, I mean, he already said, as he talked
about, he's made quote unquote, fuck you money a long time ago. He doesn't need any more money.
He doesn't care. It's nice to have money, whatever, but he'll give it away. So the,
it's nice to see when people like him at a level of celebrity, level of success and financial
success, don't change at all. They're just the same thing that makes you happy is talking,
in his case, talking shit with his friends. In the case of most of us really, just hanging out
with friends, doing the things you love. In his case, doing the things he loves without any,
like, you know, the Texas way, the freedom, like without any corporate bureaucracy bullshit that
rolls in and says, well, maybe you shouldn't say fuck, you know, like more than 20 times a podcast
or something like that. Like those kinds of like rules, like people, like he says in a suit and tie
that show up and say stuff. Oddly enough, people that could never have done what he's done. Yeah,
exactly. And it's kind of inspiring to see that. And I hope people, I hope people realize how special
of a human he is. He's inspired, like people like me, like I'm just, I'm a scientist, right? So
he inspired somebody like me from a very different walk of life to be like kind to others, to be
open-minded. I don't know. That is a special dude. So like people need to support that and treasure
that as opposed to, as opposed to be toxic about it. I mean, what I, because people really for a
long time have told me that it would be awesome if Ryan Hall goes on Joe Rogan. I definitely
think that would be an awesome thing. Have you listened to Joe? Has he been a part of your life
in some kind of way? You know, well, Joe's always, I remember watching Joe on Fear Factor when I was
a little kid, which is cool. So I've actually gotten a like from a bird's eye view, watch, you
know, his kind of just path through life. Yeah. But one of the things that I always appreciate,
and again, I barely know Joe other than to shake his hand, he interviewed me briefly in the ring
after the BJ Pan fight. But one of the things that I've always admired about Joe is that I think
he had fucking money from the start. I think that $0 is fucking money for Joe. I think,
and that's something I respect about him a great deal. Because as you say, it's interesting to
watch. It's like, you hope that George St. Pierre is like this. It's really neat. I'm not super
close to George, but we're teammates at TriStar and he's never been anything but a gentleman.
And he's one of those people that if you didn't know George was famous, when you walked in the gym,
you'd never know idea. He's not holding court, not doing it. He's just, you know, training and
how about an amateur doing this? If you have a question for him, he'll help me. Like, I'm nobody,
man. He would give me advice and train me. It was super cool. And he didn't kill me, which I
really appreciated. He's a gentleman. But, you know, it's like you meet someone and you go,
man, I'm so, it's so cool that this is the guy who's the best, that this is the guy who's been
successful. And then you go, well, why are they successful? Like I said, true to what they're
doing, they haven't changed. They're the same as they've been. And I remember I got to TriStar in
2012 and George was already George St. Pierre. But I remember watching and talking to people
and they're like, oh man, George is the same as he's always been. And it's neat. I see him in
the gym training now. And again, giving advice now. And it seems like Joe has always been consistent.
And it's neat to watch someone not compromise on their values and not change who they are and not,
you know, periodically, like, you know, again, we all make mistakes, like you have a bad day or
this or that and an apology needs to be issued or even my bad or this or that. And you're like,
yeah, they just move on that they're not afraid to be themselves and they're not afraid to be
wrong. They're not afraid to make a mistake. As you mentioned, open mind and some like,
so what are the correct beliefs to have about this that I know going in, everyone's going to be
okay with what I'm saying, which is usually the beginning of a conversation that's going to go
nowhere, right? And it's neat to see the things, I guess, that he's created on his own as a result
of the authenticity that's there. And that reminds me of like Dave Chappelle. And again,
I don't know, I've never met Dave, but it's neat to see someone that's clearly, again, authentic
in their own way, doing their own thing. And because of that, they're above the corporate
nonsense. But what's funny, I think the message behind all of it is, hey, guys, we all are,
I can't promise you that I'm going to have money. Joe couldn't promise you that he's going to have
money. Now it ended up working out. But he was above that nonsense from the jump. And he just
continued to be above it by never giving it any mind and just going like, yeah, I'm going to be a
reasonable person, I'm going to try to learn, I'm going to try to grow. And if I say something
annoying, you can come and talk to me about it, we can get to the bottom of it. And I'm like,
if I need to say my bad, thanks, appreciate it. You know, I will. And if I don't need to, I'm
like, hey, I still appreciate the talk. Thanks, man. Shake your hand and we carry on and we go
our separate ways. And hopefully I'll treat you with respect, you treat me with respect.
And that's about it. And I guess, I think it's a lesson that it can work out no matter what.
You don't have to count out to like these weird powers that be. And whether you're at this level
or at this level, but you can live your life the way that you want. And as you mentioned,
talk to your friends, hang out, be happy. And it just so happens that that resonates with people.
It actually reminds me of like speaking at MIT and being in Boston is like a goodwill hunting.
You know, like, again, that's what he really wanted to do. He could have gone this way,
could have gone that way. And it was an interesting story, but it's like,
this person wants to hang out with his buddies and wants to do other things. And again,
it happens to be brilliant and happens to be able to do all these other things. But there was,
I guess it's like at least in my mind, a story of authenticity as well. And it was both the same
thing in the Robin Williams character. And I just think that that's a message because watching
things occur on the internet as they do now things, so many things playing out in the public eye,
I feel like so many private or otherwise formally private discussions and disputes and, you know,
interactions now become, they all have a, well, what is this going to say when it goes public?
So how can I couch what I'm saying? Or how can I word this in a way that's going to get people
on my side or use the right buzzwords or not use the wrong buzzwords? And it's just neat to see
people, you know, in their own way flip the bird to that, because I just think that that's,
that's just not how a human being is meant to think or interact.
I'm curious what you think about the thing that recently has, you know, me, like hosting this
podcast, I sometimes think about like, who should I talk to and not in terms of like, it's the old
Hitler question. Now, Hitler, I would definitely talk to because post World War II, because
everyone knows he's evil. The question whether you talk to Hitler in 1937, like when people who
are really students of what's going on understand that this is a very dangerous human being.
But a large number of part of the world are like, well, he's a leader who cares for Germany.
So the question I have, it's interesting to me, it involves a particular person named,
who also lives in Austin, Texas named Alex Jones. I don't know if you're familiar with the guy.
I am familiar with Mr. Jones. I've actually recently just listened to
Infra Wars, like one episode of his show, I guess he does every day. And it kind of reminds me
of a time in college when I drank too much tequila. There's no turning back. Like,
no, it's like, like the mistakes you make that like, it's, I mean, you don't know where you're
going to wake up. You don't know who you're going to kill or not kill or steal or rob.
It's unclear. So that it felt like I was getting pulled into a dark place where
pretty much everybody is a pedophile that's trying to control the world. So Bill Gates
definitely is a pedophile. Everybody in power, anybody in power, there's a kind of a deep skepticism
about power and a conspiratorial way to see the world where everything is like dark forces in
all corners. It's like the way you feel when you're a kid, that there's a monster hiding in the closet.
Which is also why you leap over the bed from like four feet away.
There's a strategy. Yes. So, but he says that you're just being weak. You need to look under the bed.
Under the bed, there's monsters and we need to be aware of them because they're growing,
they're multiplying. You should be, and they're touching children. They're touching children
exactly. So it all connects. But the, the, I, when I listened to him and I thought about like,
do I want to talk to him on this podcast, for example, when I listened to his conversation with
Joe Rogan the two times he talked on there, to me, it was somehow entertaining. Like it was fun to
listen to. It's fun to listen to a madman go on for four hours because it's almost like theater.
Like this is what I talked to Joe about when people try to censor Alex Jones. Joe says that
the people who try to censor him don't give enough credit to the intelligence of human beings to
like understand like that. Like what a person says on a large platform does not necessarily is not
the truth. You can be a madman and say crazy things and people are intelligent enough to hear
certain things. When they're said like the earth is flat, they can, they can be intelligent enough
not to all of a sudden start believing that the earth is flat. Like they're intelligent enough to
sort of select different ideas and be able to enjoy the theater of a particular ridiculous over
the top conversation without being sort of influenced to where they start believing like
toxic set of beliefs. Now there's a lot of sort of other kinds of people, especially now with
cancer culture that say well you don't want to give platform to crazy people that ultimately
whose beliefs might lead to dangerous consequences. Like and I see it very often now with conspiracy
theories that go that go like way too far. Like for example, I'm not, I haven't looked into it so
I'm sorry, I will look into it. But it hurts my heart to see that on Bill Gates, in my opinion,
the person who has saved and improved more lives than probably any human in history, literally,
because of the money he's invested in helping like just, just the work he's done on like malaria
in Africa. The number of people he's helped is huge. And yet every interview, anything you see
now on Bill Gates, everyone is calling him, I believe, I haven't looked into it, but I believe
everyone's calling him a pedophile. I don't know the full structure of it, but it's just a very,
it feels like an army of like, it feels like it's hundreds of thousands of people. That's
what it feels like. It might be a much smaller percentage, but it feels like a huge number
of people are calling him a pedophile. So that's the, that's the flip side. If you allow, if you
give platform to conspiracy theories like that, then you start to have bigger and bigger percent
of the population believe in these crazy things. I just, I wanted to put it out there because I
don't know what to think of that. If you put yourself in Joe Rogan shoes, if you put yourself
in my shoes, if you put yourself just in your own shoes, I mean, I'm in my shoes right now.
Great. If you're staying in your shoes, just staying in your shoes. Can I have yours? Would
you talk, would you give platform to people like Alex Jones? Would, would you talk to somebody like
Alex Jones or, or not? Yes, I would. And I feel very strongly about this, honestly.
Well, I think that it's, it's an interesting thing. And I, I would just say a lot of times,
I can understand, you know, very, very clearly why people would take issue with the idea of,
I guess, what they proceed to be amplifying this man's voice, this man's reach,
you know, as, as a demonstrable negative. But I think, you know, when you take a step back further,
the, the cure is more damaging than the disease and significantly so. I guess, I think that
I'm very, very wary of, I think being wary, you mentioned Alex Jones being wary of power and people
with it. That's, a lot of times there's a lot of truth and validity to crazy things that people
say. It's the conspiracy theories that stick are the ones that sound credible, at least quasi-credible
in some aspect. And it's almost like it seems to me like an anchor in people's mind. And it is also
funny to me, obviously the Bill Gates, it's a funny to tar people with things like pedophile,
racist, rapist. Like these are things that we're basically trying to pick words that no one can
ever support someone who does these things. And that's, you know, and that changes year by year.
Oh, yeah. Currently, pedophile is totally in as a thing to call somebody just, just as a, it used
to be communist or Marxist. Cleveland Browns fan, you know, like, come on. You know, who would want that?
Actually, nobody likes the Browns. So I'll agree with you. That's why I picked them. That's the
trick is you find a group of people that nobody likes. We're good here. All right, that's the move.
But yeah, that's a creepy thing though, because that is, that is the creepy thing. It's like,
people are always looking for groups of people are always looking for and I find this really
deeply disturbing. Like, hey, so who's the guy that we can all get away with, you know, just
treating like dirt? Who's the guy that I can be a dick to, I can just walk up and punch in the face
and no one's going to say anything. And it's, even if I, you know, people do that with, whether
it's literal Nazis or someone that I call Nazi, you know, I guess what's the bigger issue? This
person's ridiculous beliefs or what I'm doing. And you mentioned Hitler before and obviously
Mein Kampf being a, you know, like the outline for some of the things they did later and when
the evil was it always there? Did it, did it take root later on or flourish later on? But was,
was Adolf Hitler a problem because he had crazy ideas or because he did things? I think it's
because it's not, I think I know it's because he did things. Now, if I'm going to start punishing
thought crime, I, I'm going to have to start punishing thought crime. And that's a terrifying
concept. Even if I'm right about the certain, about the objectively correct about the things
that I decide to call out of bounds, who put me in charge and made me arbiter of good taste,
and how long until I decide that something else is, is out of bounds, it's always a sliding scale
or it's always a sliding standard. And I find that, that, you know, to be more of a concern than
people doing crazy things, because I guess if you mentioned Alex Jones, you know, putting out
ridiculous, ridiculous ideas, ridiculous theories, I think that most people don't look at Alex Jones
as a credible person. Now I'm not going to pretend to be deeply read into all of his beliefs or the
things that he's trying to peddle. But there's plenty of things that are quasi mainstream that
I think on, with this side or that side, that maybe not comparably ridiculous, but are, you
know, particularly in hindsight or, you know, are, we're not, are silly. And I guess the idea of,
of getting a group of people together to decide what we're not going to tolerate is a very,
very tricky thing. And I think that, you know, it reminds me of law or, you know, even, you know,
religion when it gets to like, what are the things that we don't like? How do we feel about
rape? It's like, no, under no circumstances is that an acceptable behavior. Murder. No, that's
not acceptable behavior. Killing. No, kind of depends on the situation. Are you at war? Were
you justified? Were you acting in self defense? Okay, so it's not, now murder is a specific type
of killing the same way, you know, other things should be a specific type of something else.
But I guess we, we draw the line of murder. We say, if you want to exist in our society,
you can't do this. This cannot be done. And then we go theft. If someone said, hey,
I murdered that guy, can you understand where I'm coming from? I might say, yeah, I'll hear you out.
Doesn't mean that I think you're right. But I'm like, have you ever been wronged so deeply that
you could imagine that you could kill someone? I'm like, no, I haven't. But I could conceptualize
someone doing that. And I'm like, yeah, okay, and you still need to go, you still need to face,
you know, criminal justice as we have it in our system. At least that's how we've decided.
Yeah, it's interesting. You have to be able to, like there's, if you look at the history of discourse
in this country, I think it's still true, but I'm not sure it's changed since 911 is it used to be
impossible to criticize a soldier. It was easier to criticize war. It was harder to
criticize soldiers for allowing themselves to be the tools of war. I tend to be, maybe it's the
Russian upbringing, it's the combat thing. I tend to romanticize war and soldiers. I see soldiers
as heroes, but I've also heard people that not only say that soldiers are, war is bad, they say
soldiers are bad. What's their argument? It's, it's the kind of a libertarian view that they're
basically slaves to evil, right? War is evil. And they're, they're given, they are suspending their
moral and ethical, like as like duties as a human being to become the tools of evil.
That's sort of the argument, if you see war as evil. I mean, I think it's useful to hear that,
but there's for a long part in history, that was completely unacceptable. Same with abortion.
If you see abortion as murder, I mean, if I classified in that, if I put it in that, in that
basket. It starts, we're living in the midst of like a genocide.
Looked at from that perspective, could you feel how people could be deeply upset by abortion?
You go, of course, looked at from a different perspective, you say, I don't believe it to
be murder. That's not how I see it. Then you go, well, if that's the genesis of your thought
process, then you're like, yeah, okay, now, now I see how we can come to a different thing. But
I guess we go, well, abortion is murder period. Therefore, if you support it, you support murder.
That's a convenient way for me to tar you, right? But I guess that's kind of coming back to the
Alec Jones. It's a nuance. You have to have the nuance in these kinds of conversations.
And I have to be willing to have the conversation and I have to be willing to sit down. If I can't
sit down across from like the most violently racist, angry, hypothetical internet, conceived
person that none of us have ever actually met in real life, but or hopefully not, you know,
and go like, well, of course, I believe that this person's wrong, but allow me to change,
do my best, I'll hear them out and I'll go, no, I can go point by point and explain where this
guy or this girl is wrong and hopefully bring them over to a more reasonable position where
they will have better beliefs and they will like objectively better beliefs and beliefs that will
and they'll treat other people better. Why would I want to marginalize this person? I might not
want to talk, I might not want to invite them to my barbecue if they're acting like a jerk all the
time. But how could I, would it not make the world a better place if I'd hear them out and
they go, look, if you're going to sit down and talk with me, we're going to have to have a discussion.
I'll hear what you have to say. And if I can't explain to someone why their ridiculous belief
is wrong, then I might, I must not be so confident in my position. And I guess that's where I come
back to the Alex Jones thing. As you mentioned, you know, with Bill Gates and you're much more
familiar with the specifics of all the good that he's done. But, you know, again, he's been an
unbelievable force for good, you know, in this world, you can list A, B, C, D, things that the man
has done, that his foundation has done, and, you know, positive things. And then the other people
could speculate about ridiculous, crazy levels of evil, but you can't produce any evidence for
that sort of thing. Because if you could, the man will find himself in trouble, you know. And
anyway, I guess what I would say is that why, you can't force me to accept the truth the same
way you could write down two plus two equals four on a piece of paper and show me how it works. And
I could say, nah, but that doesn't make it not true. And you've still given yourself an opportunity
to present your case, you've presented it to me. And you've also, for anyone listening and watching,
you know, you've been able to critically assess what's gone on, you know, or critically address
back and forth, you know, kind of the discourse. And I think that you almost, you're making your
case for the public. So I guess like, you know, when it comes to just never not engaging with
these people, that seems to me to be cowardly. And I think that that's a something that we're
seeing in society right now. I think we're seeing a crisis of courage in society all over the place.
And I think that's where we're seeing poor leadership. I think we're seeing
understandable things happening everywhere. But we need stronger voices and stronger,
stronger beliefs that have a conviction and are willing to engage with others,
not just turning into a shouting contest and not I didn't win because there's more of me. Oh,
I voted out voted you. That's nice too. But that's a stand in for bullets. That's saying I won because
there's more of me. That doesn't mean that I'm right. Because plenty of horrible and unpopular
now things have been very, very deeply popular in the past and would have won a popular vote.
Does that make them right? God said clearly not. So I guess you'd hope that we engage with these
people and that you can do your best to bring them over to a more reasonable position if you
believe that you have one. And if you can't, well, at least you made the effort. And I think
that that's something where martial arts shows the value. It's like, do you know if you're going
to go win your next fight? I'm like, I have no idea. I will proceed forward with full effort.
And, you know, I will fight with dignity. I'll fight with honor and I'll fight with courage.
And I'll use everything that I have and I will play within the bounds of the game. And that's
that. And the result will be what it'll be. But I will walk into and out of that ring with my
head held high because I will know that I did my part. I did my job. The outcome, the specific
outcome is not in my control. It's just strongly in my influence. And I think that that's something
that helped me that martial arts has taught me because other times, even when I was successful
or unsuccessful, I would focus on if I won, I won, therefore, I'm good. I lost, therefore,
I'm bad. This other guy won or lost, therefore, as opposed to evaluating their method. And I
think it's so easy when we're taking a bird's eye view of things to not evaluate how someone's doing
things. You're not evaluating my process. You're simply evaluating my outcome. And I could have
stumbled into something very, very good or very, very bad. And we can look back and I think that's
the value of history. I mean, I don't mean to get on my dang high horse, but it's like this,
evaluate history as we can see the unbroken chain or the chain of events that led us somewhere.
And then only with only with the eyes of history, can we truly evaluate things unless we're in the
room watching it happen. And I guess that's again, where we start to go most of the big,
bad, scary things that have happened in history that are done, particularly on an industrial
scale, which implies governmental power and things like that, or these the equivalent,
involve groups of people getting together and going, Hey, we're not going to deal with that guy,
giant groups of people. So maybe we're right this time, but maybe we're wrong next time.
And I guess I would be back to the Gandalf putting on the one ring, I would be very,
very hesitant, even if we thought we were in the right to simply try to try to marginalize
just on general principle, even people like Alex Jones, whom on their face are pretty ridiculous.
Like you said, you should sit down with Adolf Hitler and talk to the man.
I agree with you to play a little devil's advocate is Alex Jones might be a bad example,
but if we look at because he has a face, he is a human. He's a real person.
There is also trolls on the internet for Chan. The worry I have with those folks is that,
and there might be parallels to martial arts, is they practice guerrilla warfare,
meaning they don't necessarily want to arrive at the truth. They just always want to
to cut at the ankles of the powerful. Like they want to always break down the powerful.
And even if they, I mean, it's, they turn everything into a game. So they, let's see
if we can make the world, let's see if we can make a trend that Bill Gates is a pedophile.
Right. They make it into a game. They get excited about this game. They see the powerful.
Let's see if we can convince that, like, who is the most positive person we can think of?
Let's see if we can turn them into evil. And they've tried that with, like,
everybody. And it seems to stick and they're good at it.
Sam would argue, whatever you think about our current president, that he has some elements
of that, which is he's figured out whatever this music of social discourse that's going on,
he's figured out how to always troll the mainstream, like flow of consciousness.
That's the media. He always kind of says stuff that annoys a very large number of people.
And he enjoys that because it's like taking the powerful, taking the way things were before.
And he like shakes it up by saying the most inappropriate thing, almost on purpose or
instinctually and so on. The problem I have with that is that doesn't, the powerful thing there
is it brings the power, those in power down a notch. That's a great thing.
The negative thing is it doesn't push us closer to a nuanced, careful, rigorous discourse towards
truth. It's like showing up to a party and just like starting to yell. It doesn't create a good
conversation. It just makes everything into a game where truth doesn't even seem like a thing
we can even hope to achieve. That makes sense. And I guess as you mentioned,
we'll come back to another movie because I don't do books or do movies. Some people just want to
watch the world burn, right? And I guess that's a creepy, creepy kind of urge that some people
have. And then also is some people, you're like, hey, would you like to throw a brick through
that glass window? You're like, yeah, sure. No, I'm not going to do that because I think about
what's going to occur, like something's going to be hurt, someone's property, not going to do it
versus, hey, you want to see what will happen? Like, yeah, sure. Kids are always like, my son,
he just grabbed Spider-Man and dropped him off the table. Spider-Man fell. Spider-Man didn't
fall, Sean. He dropped him. You knocked him off the table and he'll grin. And basically,
it's an interesting thing. Like you said, playing that these people are appealing to and also almost
like the little dog factor of like, people do want to watch the powerful get taken down a
notch for all the good and the not good of that. Just plenty of people, it seems to me that have
found their way to incredibly high positions. Some have just found themselves there and many,
many, many, many, many people, men and women of all backgrounds are brilliant and have worked hard.
And yeah, of course, there's luck and there's luck into everything. LeBron James, in spite of
being the best basketball player on God's green earth, is fortunate that he didn't get hit by a
car. It's fortunate that he didn't tear his knee, but thankfully, we get to see all these things.
You know, but I guess if people don't have any skin in the game, you never know what they're
going to do. And I think that's the problem with the internet, you know, that people get to be
nameless, be faceless. That's why guerrilla fighters are outside of the bounds of war. Like, you don't
have a uniform on. You're like, I don't know who you're from. You don't get the same treatment
that a soldier gets. Well, that's crazy. And actually, there's reasons for this. Because
otherwise, people are able to assail things. And there's no, there's no one responsible. There's
no way to go and say, Hey, where did this come from? What's the root of this? How can I address
this? And I think that's the problem of the internet's problem of Twitter, this problem
of places like 4chan. I wouldn't mind seeing that type of stuff go away, if I'm frank. But that's
not the same thing as people with a face, people with people who are willing to stand there and
say, Hi, my name is so and so, even if I have ridiculous beliefs, hopefully, you know, people
will hear me out. And then if I'm wrong, educate me. But I guess you hope that the real, I guess,
in my mind, antidote to all of this silliness is education. And I think that that's something that
were, you know, critical thinking is not necessarily I went to school in America. And I'll, you know,
I feel very fortunate. But critical thinking is not something that's focused on. I mean,
and it's tough. It's almost like talking about jujitsu. It's tough to teach critical thinking
when I don't know any words. You have to teach me techniques. You can't teach me to be an artist.
But recognize that the techniques are the beginning, not the end. Ultimately, it's the
artistry that we are searching for, not just the, not just the science or there are the
bi-wrote memorization. And I guess, you know, you'd hope that people's ability to think critically
and recognize that majority rule or whoever's loudest does not mean that they're right by any
stretch of the imagination. And we don't appeal to that. And we don't bow to that. We'll help them
to help inoculate them against the ridiculous things that come out of these places, these dark
places that are objectively not great. But the, I guess, all circling back, if even if we swatted
these, you know, these bad things out of existence right now, we've got to be very, very careful
doing that because it's who's doing the swatting. This political group that's in power right now,
the people that support a current president, would maybe feel a certain way. The people that
support another option would feel differently as to what exactly defines toxic. And, you know,
I guess that that's what gives me pause. Yeah. And but also the grace thing,
I tend to believe that the technology, you said education, but the platforms we use like Twitter
and the Reddit and all these platforms have a role to play to teach us grace, meaning they
should help us incentivize the kind of behavior that is incentivized in real life. Like being a
dick in real life is not incentivized. Like one-on-one interaction. Like there's cases where it
is, but usually being kind to each other is incentivized. On the internet, it's not. Like
you get likes for being, for mocking people in a funny, in a humorous way. And it could be dark
kind of mocking, depending on the community. You can go, you can go to the appearance. If somebody
is a little fat or a little too skinny, you can comment on their appearance, the hair,
the way their hair looks, like the appearance stuff. It could be on the people comment all
the time on the level of eloquence of my speech. Go fuck yourself. I like it. It's creepy though
watching, watching previously, like this used to be lowbrow though, like people doing this type
of stuff. It's creepy watching like our political figures get into this type of game. Yes. But
again, it's a little bit refreshing, right? My hope with Donald Trump was,
is that he would shake up the people who wear suits usually. Like if you're from DC,
I remember like showing up. I actually didn't wear what I usually wear in DC because I was like,
everybody's wearing a suit and tie when I was like giving talks and stuff. Except for Mudge,
who wears jeans and a T-shirt. Mudge doesn't give a damn. Mudge is a forever renegade.
But I don't even remember what, oh yeah. So my hope with Trump was the huge shake up that system
to say like, to inject new ideas, to inject new energy. Of course, the way it turned out
is different. But like there's, it turns out that you might want to have somebody who's like
an Andrew Yang type character who is full of ideas that are very different and inject the energy,
new energy into the system through youthful new ideas versus through the troll that like,
that's very good at sort of mocking and like playing outside the rules of the game.
But Trump did reveal powerfully, I don't know what to think of it, that it's just a game and you
don't have to play by the rules. That's both inspiring and dark.
Deeply depressing, right?
Yeah. And I don't know what to do with it. I don't, I mean the same, I'm not drawing parallels,
not drawing parallels between our president and Adolf Hitler. But it's certainly, and there's a lot
of, in history, a lot of positive and a lot of negative things happen when charismatic leaders
realize they don't have to play by the rules. You can just flip the table. It's that Kevin
Spacey show. Oh, House of Cards.
House of Cards where you just flip the table or whatever. You don't have to play by the rules
of the chess game. You can flip the table.
One wonders if that's always been done in private, you know? I guess, because that's,
I mean, even look, obviously, in the United States as a republic, but we had Bush, then we had
Clinton, then we had more Bush, then we had President Obama, then we were about to have
another Clinton. That's fairly creepy, even on its own.
But now we added another, I mean, I'm sure we'll have a generation of Trumps. No.
Gee. I'm Russian, so I think we humans like kings still and queens. There's something
we're attracted to the thing we talked about, coaches. There's something in us that longs
towards that authoritarian control. One of the beautiful things about America,
the Second Amendment, is we also like individual freedom. That's one of the unique aspects
at the founding of this country and still, and for me is the beacon of hope that somehow there's
the fire of freedom burns in like that Texas feel. That gives me hope. The FU energy that revolts
against the power, which as we discussed, power corrupts and ultimately leads to sort of degradation
of whoever's ruling the people. It's interesting though, it seems to me, maybe I'm just,
I don't know if I'm reading this properly when I see it, but it seems to me that like you said,
that flip the bird, I'm going to do me within reason. As long as I'm not hurting you,
is idea that very much at least in my mind defines the American ideal or at least part
of the consciousness of the United States is under attack to a certain extent.
And if only like I can think to maybe a generation behind us, it's becoming more
collectivist for all the good and also the not good of that. And it's not in terms of policy
at this point, but just in terms of like a consciousness. And I wonder if that's an internet
thing. People are more in touch with one another than they've, as far as I'm concerned,
ever been or at least more than in my lifetime. And the rest of the world seems much closer
than it did. Living in Virginia, California seems very far away. Being on the internet,
it's just right there. I can hear about it. I can see it. I can interact with people from there.
I remember being in Tennessee at one time and then reading about events taking place in the
Middle East. And that just seemed like a mile away. It seemed like a unbelievably far distance.
And then another time when you're in DC, you just feel like, oh, you read about
something happening in Paris. And it just feels like it's just right around the corner
because DC is a seat of power where things are just occurring all the time.
And I guess you wonder about that's where I come back to the group decisions to
not listen to this person or to cancel this. The moral majority shall do the following as
opposed to as long as you're not hurting me and long as you're not hurting anyone else,
I have to let you be on general principle. Even if I don't like you, I'm very free to not like you.
I'm free to speak out against you, but it is not within my right. And I would not be right
to attempt to attack you. And that is an interesting thing though when we see words being
redefined or words being defined, whether it's toxicity, whether it's violence. If I think that
what you're saying is your speech is by itself a violence or a precursor to violence, I'm
justified in doing all sorts of things. And that creeps me out significantly because again,
even if it ends up being pointed in a good direction initially, it's only a matter of
time. And actually, that brings me to another...
Dune quote?
Yeah, I guess all day.
How much are they paying you?
But we have about say the Frank Herbert estate, not enough, frankly.
Let's see.
And how many books are there in Dune?
That's a Jen question.
You're also a fan of Jen.
I read the whole series, but not a couple of the... I read all the prequels as well with
the exception of a couple.
Is there a book one for Dune?
Dune. It would be book one and even the prequels, it's still all better if you start.
Like I read Dune and then read the original, what is it, six? And then I went back and started
to read some of the prequels.
It's just like watching Star Wars. You want to start at episode four or whatever?
Yeah, I think so.
That's the way, that's the move. And then stop at six, call it a day, watch The Mandalorian.
Well, I thought you're not walking back here.
No, I like The Mandalorian.
Yeah, that's not what...
That is what I said.
I was told that I was harmless for not liking Baby Yoda, who I...
We don't talk about a couple of the movies, not including The Mandalorian. The Mandalorian's fine.
It's the more recent movies that we don't like to talk about.
Oh, the, what's his name, the goofy guy?
Ryan...
No, no. No, the creature, the goofy creature with the...
Jar Jar?
Yeah, Jar Jar.
Do you ever see the Jar Jar Binks is actually like the Dark Lord of the Sith theory that fixed
the whole initial trilogy? Because he's goofing around and making it all the way through battles
and when you're like, wait a minute, he oops his way, walks over to a pool, does a triple backflip,
falls in, you're like, it's just bizarre that you...
This is the Alex Jones theory of Star Wars.
Yeah, but the one also, he was the one that actually was like,
hey, we should vote in Chancellor Palpatine or Senator Palpatine.
Like right before, they put Jar Jar in charge.
First off, what did they think was going to happen?
And second off, that was, I think that'd be great.
You're like, oops, oh man, I guess he's the Emperor now.
That would have been great.
But actually to the, to the cancel and all the other stuff, again,
it's just, you'd hope that it gives pause.
And I think about this for fighting because a lot of times I'll use this as an example.
People in, people like fight fans and, you know, like UFC, they love people that run out and try to
murder each other and it's entertaining and it's super entertaining.
But, you know, Floyd Mayweather doesn't resonate with people as much.
It's like people started, I remember the time when Floyd was not as popular.
Now people think people love Floyd because he's 50 and no Floyd.
And oh man, finally he had so much success that we all can't help but recognize the man's
genius and greatness.
But prior to that, oh, he's boring, he's this, he's that.
He fights, you know, with his circumspect, he's cautious, he's pressing.
He's intelligent, deeply intelligent.
And when you watch people go out and try to murder each other, you can flip a coin 100
times and, you know, you can get, you could be lucky enough to get 100 heads, but it's
still a coin flip.
And I think that that's what's going on all the time is, you know, people are getting an
outcome that they want, but it wasn't a well thought out situation.
And that's why you'll win by five in a row by knockout and then lose three in a row and
then people will go, well, what happened to that guy?
He used to be so great and you're like, no, he's doing what he's always been doing.
It's just, it was getting great outcomes on a coin flip prior and it's getting negative
outcomes on a coin flip now.
But I guess what I would say is it's interesting watching, you know, I guess societal beliefs
become such a thing that we're almost adopting on a religious level if we're not careful.
If, when I say religious level, I mean like pan life, like this is guiding all of my choices
for all the good and the bad of that.
And this is a dune quote, is when religion and politics travel in the same car, the
riders believe that nothing can stand in their way.
Their movements become headlong faster and faster and faster.
They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that the precipice does not show itself
to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.
And I think that that's, again, the pause.
We go, oh man, thank goodness, we have this guy that wants to rebuild Germany.
He'll put us back where we need to be.
And you stop questioning your own judgment, your own, just you start, you stop thinking,
essentially.
Right.
I'm not allowed to question this.
So, of course, this is correct.
Of course, of course I'm right.
I intended to do right.
So, of course, my actions are correct.
I mean, how many times have any of us intended to do something helpful and ended up doing
something less?
And plenty of people who intend to do harm could, by accident, do something decent.
And I guess it's, I'm not saying anything terribly, terribly insightful, but it's just
one of those where it's hard to say in the moment.
And that's where you hopefully caution, you would counsel some degree of caution.
And that's what worries me with people deciding that we're also right about this or we're also
right about that and attempting to, rather than win the argument, silence the counter-argument,
no matter how crazy it may seem.
Because I just think that that idea, even when it's pointed in a good direction initially,
it's only a matter of time.
You're amongst many things a Jiu Jitsu black belt.
One of the things that people are really curious about, white belts and blue belts in
Jiu Jitsu, but also people haven't tried the art, is what does it take to be a Jiu Jitsu black belt?
I think that everyone's journey is a little bit different.
But the one thing that the Calvin Coolidge quote, determination, persistence is the only
thing that will win in the end.
It will always win in the end.
Not brilliance, not toughness, not education, it's persistence.
And I think that having the belief that no matter what happens to me, I will proceed forward.
And I will figure out how to make this happen, how our high water, I think is the one thing
that ties together all of the people that I've ever met that made it through whatever it was
that they were going through, because sometimes you can get lucky and you can have an easy time
or and that luck could be, you had a good situation.
It could be, I mean, in the obvious sense of where you're living, where you're training,
what's going on, you had a good situation, you're unbelievably athletic.
Oh, you're going to be an astronaut.
You're brilliant and an Olympic athlete.
You know, like, well, that's a fantastic situation.
You know, you won the genetic lottery and I'm sure you were taught as well, but you also won
the genetic lottery.
It's determination is the one thing though, because that person could have a very easy
go of it initially and then tear their knee.
And then they're no longer the superhuman physical specimen that they were.
The only thing that will keep them going is persistence.
And I think that that, I would just say that persistence, I say, I'll just put one foot
in front of the other and sometimes I can see the path ahead.
And sometimes it's beyond my vision, but I will not stop.
I may even slow down, but I won't stop.
And that's the only thing that I can say that I've seen tie everyone together,
because there's so many ways to the top of any mountain and there's so many different
personalities and skills and backgrounds involved.
But everyone, everyone carries on.
So at the core, the foundational advice is just don't quit.
Just keep going.
That's the lesson of martial arts, I think.
You know, we think it's like how to be strong or how to win.
But in reality, it's like how to persist, how to endure.
Because it's all of us have been beaten so many times and gotten beaten up so many times
and thought about quitting.
Have I ever thought about quitting?
Absolutely.
Have I ever quit?
Never.
I will never ever quit.
Ever.
I can say, you might knock me out.
I won't be damned if I quit.
What's the darkest moment?
Is it injury related?
Like is it, so like to me, like two possibilities.
I've fortunately never been seriously injured.
But I think that's a dark place to be like having to be out for many months for,
as Jen was saying, like with a head injury, especially like the uncertainty.
That's one.
And then the other side is if you have big ambitions as a competitor,
you're realizing that you're not as good.
Like those doubts were like, I kind of suck.
How am I supposed to be a world, the greatest fighter of all time,
if like several people in the gym are kicking my ass?
Those are the two things that paralyze you.
I think that everyone's darkest moment is maybe different.
Looking from the outside for Ryan, I wouldn't say that he's had injuries.
And he's had bad ones.
I wouldn't say that was his darkest moment.
I think for me, I would say my head injury was my darkest moment.
Absolutely.
And I've torn my ACL twice.
I've torn my shoulders four times.
I've had lots of surgeries.
For me, the orthopedic injuries were not the most difficult.
It was the brain injury.
For others, that might be the case for them.
Maybe they've never experienced an injury.
And maybe for them, that's their darkest moment from the outside.
Obviously, Ryan can speak to this more.
But for Ryan, I think it was the inability to perform at certain points,
to the missing of opportunities that for him,
from my perspective, watching him go through and having seen various points
of his growth from early purple belt on,
I think the hardest time for him looking in obviously was
when he would hit moments where he wasn't able to perform for various reasons.
He couldn't get fights.
He was having difficulties there.
I think that was the hardest point for him.
Did you think with the head injury that you might not never be able to jiu-jitsu again?
Yeah.
I mean, mine was really bad and it was just the one hit.
But I had a looping memory for seven months.
Didn't know it because when your brain's messed up,
you're not even aware that you're a looping.
And so, I saw two different neurologists.
I finally, it took a very long time.
I didn't know if I was going to be able to have linear thoughts or read a book.
I didn't know at certain points if I could listen to music again
without making my head hurt.
And so, it was almost two years before I woke up in the morning without a headache,
just waking up before I even start my day.
So that's even bigger than jiu-jitsu.
That's your biggest headache.
Jiu-jitsu, that's just life.
That's just hard.
And I think that you can experience so many things.
I've had all these injuries.
We lost a baby when I was 15 weeks.
We've had all these experiences and what the hardest point for me,
not saying all of those things weren't hard,
but it's kind of like, as you go through these, you just realize life goes on
and you have to keep working at it and you have to keep going.
And you asked me earlier offline, did I feel depressed?
And not for my head injury.
I don't think that, at least in the moment, I had any recognition of that.
It's kind of like, but I think different people's personalities,
I have kind of the like, buckle down and just keep going.
And sometimes it's not until lots of time later that you realize, wow, that was really hard
because you're just struggling to live and function and do the things that you need to do along the path.
Do you mind jumping on just like this part of the conversation just for a few minutes?
Do you mind just sitting together?
Oh, no, no.
Just for a little bit.
Sorry about that, I didn't mean to jump in here.
It'd be cool if we put a face to it, you know.
Is it okay with you?
Yeah, it's fine with me, it's fine with you.
By the way, what was the head injury, if you don't mind sharing?
Someone had dropped their knee on the back of my head during training.
It was a lot bigger than me.
So one strike to the back of the head is too much for someone.
There's a reason that's outlawed in MMA, right?
Someone 50 pounds everything and drops their knee on the back of your head once and it's...
It's the funny thing about getting hit, right?
You never can really be sure what's going to happen.
I think that's actually one of the magical parts about jiu-jitsu,
where like if you choke me, we know what's going to occur.
You hit someone, they might be completely unharmed.
Like you might be punching Tony Ferguson in the face
and like you need to hit him with a sledgehammer to affect this man.
And then other people, they could get really badly hurt,
which I guess it's back to your point about street fighting and things like that
and the serious, serious potential second, third order consequences of any action that we take.
But yeah, that's a tricky thing about getting hit.
How does it make you feel that the really shitty thing about injuries to me was that like
you start thinking like, well, if I did this one little thing different,
like this wouldn't have happened today.
Like one moment changes your entire life.
Do you think that way or is that totally counterproductive?
You can't help but think that way.
When you've had them on injuries, I've had more than most people's fair share.
As my orthopedic says, you don't want to win that.
You don't want to win the contest of who's had the most.
But since you have, that's built me a pool.
But I think you can't help but think that way sometimes,
but I definitely don't think it's, I think it can be facilitated
if you don't put yourself up too much.
Because thinking about why have I been subject to so many injuries
and a lot of it comes to just almost all of mine,
in particular, people a lot heavier than me.
But if I've been training martial arts 15 years,
I'm obviously on the much smaller side.
I'm a woman.
I've done thousands and thousands of rounds with people 50 pounds plus heavier than me.
I've been on years not training with anyone less than 50 pounds,
which is 50 pounds is almost half my body weight.
And when you also add testosterone and the natural physiological advantages of men,
not just are they heavier with more mass,
they're faster, they're more explosive, they're stronger,
if they're the same size.
And so I think that the willingness to be in that environment over and over and over again
creates a lot of strength, resiliency, willingness to continue.
But it also, in order to do that, you almost have to, for me, the way I was approaching
was like pretend like I wasn't more vulnerable.
And just be willing to step in and step in and step in and step in.
Take it until you make it kind of thing.
Take it until you make it kind of, yeah, like I'll just one day I'll be strong enough.
And you avoided injury for most?
For most of those rounds I would injury.
The problem that Ryan points out is that you could do thousands of rounds,
but if one person that size, that strength, that hover reacts in a way that you don't expect,
it doesn't, it's not like an oops, it's like always major.
Do you regret any of it?
Like?
I think that most, no one I know has experienced the degree of injuries that I've experienced.
And I started it at a time when in 2005 it was very different than now,
where you have, the coaches have more control over what you're doing.
They're more aware in general about a lot of the injuries.
There's just a lot more people who are hobbyists than when I started.
There were hobbyists, but it was different kind of hobbyists than now.
Now our girls can train with other girls.
They don't have to do thousands of rounds with somebody significantly more powerful than them.
And for the drawbacks and the benefits of that, as with anything.
So I think that I don't think I would go back and change it.
There were times after one of my injuries where I said to Ryan, I said, I quit, I'm done.
I'm not doing this anymore.
I probably said it more than once, but there was one time I was really serious in 2012.
I was really serious.
I tore my shoulder.
I had, I was looking at missing a big competition again in the world for my second or third year
in a row after injuries.
And I said, I'd quit my job two years before and I'm like, I'm done.
And Ryan, before that had always been, you know, keep me focused.
And then he kind of said, okay, if you want to be done, be done.
Just, just have a good time.
No, I'm really done.
I didn't want to train anymore.
Okay, okay.
And then, you know, I think he helped facilitate a moment for me to go visit a friend, some friends,
some girls that were doing a girls camp who were close to my size or some friends of mine
to go train and I was like, oh wait, I do love this thing.
It's just harder for me on a daily basis, but that doesn't mean I don't love this thing.
And it really helped change my mind.
I started to connect with some other people, travel more myself because previously he had
done that, but I hadn't really done that.
I think there was a point where when I started YouTube, it was just for fun.
I just wanted to sport after college.
I played sports as a kid.
I want to, I just want to exercise.
I wasn't into the martial arts.
He used to give me a hard time about it because he was always very good.
How can you not care about martial arts?
I don't know.
I just want to play sports.
And Ryan was really big into kind of the philosophy side of the martial arts aspect.
He used to give me a hard time.
And I think after that moment, this moment where I looked at myself and I said,
do I want to keep doing this, is when I started to appreciate Jiu-Jitsu.
It took off some of the pressure I'd been feeling, I think, as Ryan's girlfriend,
but I had a full-time job a long time.
It was never my goal to be a Jiu-Jitsu world champion.
And I think after that moment where I was like, you know, I really do like this.
I really do want to keep this.
I had this moment like anytime where you're like, I'm doing this for me.
I'm not doing this for him.
And I think that that's, I think that that was really lucky for me because
how often in our lives do we have a kind of a challenge where we have to stop
and we have to say, is this really what I want?
How often in a relationship do you do that?
How often in any type of lifestyle or job do you stop and do you really ask yourself,
is something really difficult happen that you look and you go,
am I just doing this because it's convenient and easy or is this what I really want to do?
Yeah. I've had those moments.
Like this, this podcast is one of those things is like you, you stop and think like,
I actually love this.
And it's a, I had that with Jiu-Jitsu too.
I don't think I had set until like brown belt that I stop.
I mean, yeah, it's when you first face real challenges.
You think like, why am I doing this?
It's, I think most of my progression was, why not?
I think that's the right, the leap of faith.
And then at a certain point you think like, what, why am I doing this?
And if you can answer honestly that because I love it, it's kind of a liberating feeling.
It's a, it's a, yeah, it's so, it's so powerful.
Thankful for the opportunity to be there.
Right. Because you love it.
And man, I, it's great gratitude.
It's yeah. So, it's, it's ultimately gratitude.
Yeah. Let me ask you this.
So, Ryan said like, what, what is it?
I took over your thing.
Yeah. This is no, nobody cares about Ryan.
I wouldn't.
I'll, I'll photoshop them out or whatever.
However you edit it.
Put Sean Connery's head.
Just like a dune ad.
Exactly.
Sean Connery, I can get down that.
Is that the sexiest man in Sean Connery?
In the dune universe. That's my understanding.
I think in any universe.
Yeah. Well, mind gossing.
We actually named our son after Sean Connery.
Oh, yeah.
We did.
He was in the rock.
I love all those lame.
Nicholas Cage. Oh, yeah.
Connery's probably the greatest movie of all time.
Dude, his accent in Connery was so awesome.
I don't know where it's from. Alabama, I guess, or something.
I love that they got like Steve Buscemi in there.
Like we need Steve Buscemi in this thing.
We got him. Dave Chappelle?
Yeah, that's right.
He's a prisoner in there.
Eight ball.
Yep. Greatest movie of all time.
Dave Chappelle also in Blue Street with Martin Lawrence.
And then what do you call it?
Robin Hood Men in Tights?
Oh, Robin Hood in Tights was one of my favorites as a kid.
Half-baked.
Yeah, that's a good...
Wow.
We just listed off some really bad 90s movies.
You take that back.
We're telling our age.
Speak for yourself.
In your view,
I don't mean to...
from a smaller person, I guess.
That's an interesting thing while Jiu-Jitsu is like...
that...
Hopefully it's not a bad thing.
Elf.
Elves are taller.
With all these like...
bigger people,
you can still enjoy the art.
What does it take to get a black belt
to excel to
quote unquote, master the art?
Gosh, everyone has such a different path.
Ryan's promoted
six, seven people.
And I think about half of them
have had...
have kids,
have families, have other careers.
At the time, some of them
competed a lot. Some of them have never
competed or rarely competed.
Some haven't competed a long time.
Some had started different places.
Everyone's had different journeys,
even in our own little group of seven.
I think only...
maybe only two or three
were high-level competitors
of that group.
At the higher belts, very like brown
black, maybe.
And so, it's just different
for every person. And that's something that, you know,
we try to tell. Since we have 400 students
and...
do we have a... we don't really have anyone
who's, you know, a stated...
other than like other coaches,
like Adam, but we don't have anyone
who's like a stated high-level competitor
as a student at the moment.
People look at our gym and go,
it's lots of competitors. It's not lots of competitors.
It's never been lots of competitors.
And we've had ones and twos here and there.
But really, everybody's
in it for the long term, if they're in it.
Sometimes the high-level competitors are the ones
that are more likely to drop off because they
have a bit of success, particularly at
blue or purple, and then they realize
how hard it is at brown and black,
and then they have a hard time continuing
to look at themselves as a non-competitive,
hard time continuing with Jiu-Jitsu, I think.
Whereas sometimes it's the guy
who comes in as a white belt, and he trains,
you know, twice a week, every week,
and the next thing you know, he's been there for
two or three years, like, oh, he's a blue belt,
he's a purple belt, he's a brown belt,
and he's just consistent over a long
period of time and willing to take the path.
And no two people's path
is exactly the same. No two people's lives
are exactly the same.
We have students who started
out as a, you know, a young adult
with no, you know, no
responsibilities, and they train all the time,
and then they have a job, you know,
then they graduate college, then they have a job,
then they have married, then they have kids,
then they have different points in their careers,
and at different points in your life,
Jiu-Jitsu will be there, you know,
for whatever way that you're willing to accept
it. It's a place, I think.
Well, that's actually kind of what, back to the
initial question we discussed about, you know,
what makes a warrior, you know,
what makes something or someone, you know,
particularly impressive in my mind, is like
what they make out of what they have.
You know, one of my favorite
movies ever is Forrest Gump, and it's obviously
it's just, if you can't,
because I've heard people are going,
Forrest Gump sucks, I'm like, I don't like you as a person.
And like, you have no heart at all.
But basically,
it's the story of someone that tries hard,
and it's like, yeah, but it's
funny movie, but it's like, you know,
I guess you meet each
person where they are, you know, and
obviously, you want everyone needs to
be pushed. We all need to be pushed. We need
friends and people around us that push us to
be better versions of ourselves all the
time. And as you mentioned, the people you
spend all of your time around deeply impact
you. And we
have to be willing to be pushed. It takes a leap of
faith for me to trust, for me to put
some of my self in
my, you know, I guess my ability
and my control, my personal agency as
it were in the hands of someone else
that I trust and that I respect.
But if
I can do that, well, again, maybe I never
become, you know, high level black
belt competitor. But, you know, I had
four of the things I was doing in my life. I also
have a family. I have this. I have that. You know, what
that person was able to accomplish in the martial arts
relative to what they were able to put in this phenomenal.
You know, other times someone could be
a very successful black belt and it might be a bum
because they could have been a lot more.
And, you know, they could have done more.
They could have focused more. And
there's no shame in deciding that you don't
want to do that. But whatever it is that you're
invested in, I remember
the Take It Uneasy podcast
and that I loved
because, you know, I'll just chill out.
I like resting. It's like vacation. Oh, who wants to go on
vacation? Yeah, I'll go on vacation for a day or two. You want to spend
three weeks on vacation. Like, I kill myself. Like, get me out
of here. Like, this is horrible. This is, I'm
a waste of life. I'm not doing anything useful.
You're technically on vacation right now.
Right. Well, this is fun though. This is like a one day
vacation. Exactly. But, you know, it's if you
had to, I would, I'm sure you're thinking about
jumping off of the building right now. But if you had
to, if you had to talk to me for, you know, like
three days, I'm sure you'd probably shut me off
the building. I don't blame you. I'll be dead. People.
Five hours in. But, you know, it's
like you want to be pushing towards
something. Because otherwise, what's the purpose
of being here? You know, it's not just
a college. It's doing something
useful. Building, growing as a person,
helping others do the same if that's within your power
at any given time. But I think
that's kind of the neat thing about martial arts is
it can be many, many different things to many different
people. You know, I finally, for instance, was
able to get a college degree this year.
That which, I mean, it's not a big deal
for most people. But for me, it was a big deal because
I was. Going back and finish. Yeah.
And I never envisioned ever going back. And.
That's a hard step to
go back and finish. That's a.
It was. It weighs heavy on you if you don't.
It's interesting. I was just,
I was more proud of that than most things have ever done
if I'm honest. You know, and it was neat and I really enjoyed
it. And it was the process of doing it. But
you know, or my academic
credentials impressive, like not in the least.
But for me, it's like it was
a big deal for me personally to take
that step and to go back and do that.
And I was, I was proud of the
direction and because it would have been easy.
Like, do I need to do it? Like, no, I'm, you know, I'm
business. I'll do okay. I'll try. I'll keep fighting.
But I was happy to
take the time in between fights when I was
when I was unbooked for an opponent
to do something productive rather than just
I'll just hang out, you know, like I can still train every single
day, but I can also train and go to school. People
go to the Olympics while going to school. I can
I can do martial arts and go to school.
One thing
I got to ask is,
you know, a bunch of
women listen to this podcast.
If they haven't done jiu-jitsu,
I think it'd be kind of intimidating
to step on the mat
with a bunch of bros
that like enjoy somehow
killing each other.
Like, how do you succeed
in that environment to where you can
learn this art, learn how to beat all those
people up?
Oh, gosh.
Is there any advice? I mean, another way to
ask that is like, if
any women listening to this are interested in
starting jiu-jitsu, like, is there advice for that
journey? Honestly, I think it's just
walking in the door and starting.
Sometimes I don't know how to respond to that because
I'm not, I don't view myself
as typically anxious, particularly
in
interactions with other people or new people.
Shy is
not a word that has been used
for me by, if you ask
my family and they
joke because our son talks a lot. He's
advanced verbally and they're always like, oh,
we know where he gets that from. Like,
he just doesn't stop talking. He narrates
everything he does.
And so they always tease because that's
like, I'm known for
kind of talking a lot.
But so I haven't been typically
I'm not, I don't consider myself a shy person.
So for me going into
a new room, a new
group of people is, you know, there's
always, you don't really know who they are,
how they're going to treat you, but I
don't have a lot of anxiety
with that. So I don't, if that's
something that's going to put something up, I don't
really know how to
address that particular feeling.
But in terms of all of the rooms I've
been in, I have popped into jiu-jitsu
gyms before I knew Ryan
in Florida. Like, I traveled from my
job zone in Germany and Florida
and California and places where
I don't know anyone, they don't know me.
And I have never once
had anyone be anything
other than kind
and solicitous and helpful
and long before when I was a white bell
and a blue bell and didn't know anything
and didn't know anyone. And
I just think
that it's a community of
people that it's so cool that no matter
where you go in the world
I walked into a gym
in Prague one time where only two people spoke
English. And
it was just... Yeah, it's weird.
It's weird. It's weird that like...
Part of a group and they're like, oh, let me tell you what...
Part of a cult, right? Yeah.
But it's like a positive cult.
That's what we would say as cultists.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true. I mean,
we do need to murder everybody who practice
Aikido. I mean, yeah.
That's this cult
deeply believes it. No, but there is a...
Like, if you look at different kinds of games, like
chess and so on, like...
There's a skepticism.
I mean, there's not a brotherhood, sisterhood
feeling. With Jiu Jitsu, it's like you can roll into
most places. Even like with Judo.
Like, I can see the contrast.
Like, because I've trained in Judo places
it...
It's more like
tribal. Like, you walk in
and like,
who is this?
Like, there's that kind of feeling. With Jiu Jitsu, there's
less so. There is a little bit
with the competitors. There's always like
the competitors feeling each other out.
Usually like the blue belts.
But like, outside of that
in terms of if you don't get the...
If you walk in with the vibes of just
loving the art
and just wanting to have
a good time, you're like, welcome.
It's really cool. It's really fascinating.
It's a really great
thing. I think as a woman, I think
you think you're walking into these rooms
of these, you know, big, strong,
tough guys.
If anything, I would say that
they're almost like much more solicitous
when a woman comes in there.
And not like they're just like hitting on you all the time.
You know, it's just that
you walk in and everyone is like, oh cool.
You want to do this thing that I love.
Let me make sure you have a good experience
and take care of you. And I think that's
an experience that I hope
people have when they come into our gym.
And I've always felt when I walked into other
gyms and so, you know, we try our best
to make that comfortable.
And it can be a little uncomfortable because there are
when you walk into a male-dominated
environment, there's
conversations and topics.
There's a different style of camaraderie
and joking that a lot of men will do that
maybe some women are more uncomfortable
with. I grew up with four brothers,
so I kind of maybe was a little more
desensitized to that.
And I worked for the department of defense
for a while too. So, before I
I just used to do full time.
Yeah, so I did that
I'm already skeptical.
I laughed.
I'm not going to ask you about UFOs
then because you're not going to tell me the truth.
No, they exist.
Oh, yeah.
No, you just freaked out a lot of people.
Okay.
By the way, where's your school?
Because people always ask like where
are you? Well, we're outside
of Washington DC in Northern Virginia in Falls
Church. You always want to pick like what's
the best school if I try out a list place
or if I want to move to this place.
Well, I mean, obviously we're biased.
But yeah, we're in the Washington DC area.
The best.
Okay, we just took a little break. Now we're back.
Let me ask you one thing that
a bunch of people are curious about.
You're one of the innovators
first of all, you're one of the great innovators
and philosophers and thinkers
in Jiu Jitsu, right?
But you're also one of the innovators
in terms of leg locks
and the 50-50 position
and just like
the fact that legs have something to do
in Jiu Jitsu.
The other
popularizer, innovator
in the space is John Donahar
and his whole group of guys. Do you have
thoughts about their whole system
of leg locks and their
ideas about Jiu Jitsu and so on?
Sure. I guess
obviously, John
and the students at HENZO have been able to do
fantastic things competitively in the past
number of years.
You mentioned innovators in that
kind of
section of Jiu Jitsu.
I'd love to bring up some guys like Dean Lister
of course.
Masakaze Minari. In fact, a lot of what was going on
in like 90s Japan
like combat submission wrestling, there was some
crazy gnarly stuff that it's on
the VHS tape.
But stuff that if people were doing now, they'd go,
oh my god, that's brand new.
I think these are things that have been around
for a while in various places.
I first learned the 50-50 position
just like the leg entanglement of it
from Brandon Vera, actually
at a seminar at Lord Urban's Martial Arts
in 2005. He learned it from Dean Lister
who used it to submit
Alexandria Kakareko, a really, really tough
no-gi guy at ADCC
in the run that Dean made
to the gold medal in the Absolute Division
which was a great performance at the time,
first American to do that.
And
I actually saw a video, I mean first a boss
Rootin actually broke. I think Guy Mezger's
foot with a 50-50
heel hook, he actually grabbed his heel
and his toes and went,
and in pancreas, it's back when they had like the
man panties and the high boots on.
And that was gnarly. Boss Rootin is under
appreciated.
Like he double grabbed like
you know, his leverage is leverage.
That's like a toe hold that goes the other way
and it's like it either doesn't work or breaks in half
and
people don't often think of Boss Rootin
as an innovator, but he is
in a way.
He
talked about Elon Musk and first principles thinking
in terms of physics. He
just feels like he just gets the job.
He figures out like the simplest way to get
the job done of breaking things
and establishing control and hurting people.
Remember that was back in the
if you listen to Boss Rootin do any like commentary
for any of the big MMA shows or any
MMA show way back when any time Guy's
were clenching, he was like, the guy should roll for a knee bar.
He was saying that way back when and now people are doing it
all the time with varying degrees of success.
It's funny. It's like it's also tough to be
I think like a breakaway thinker.
I mean, you know, group think is a real thing
in group inertia and it's neat
to see, you know,
particularly at a time when maybe that type
of stuff was less accepted.
You know, someone going, hey, I'm
going to run off in this other direction.
I think, you know, whoever, you know, the inventor
of electricity in my mind is a lot more
impressive than whomever.
Not to say that the person down the line is an impressive
that comes up with an interesting way to use it.
Both are cool, but
when you think about just
can you imagine we're sitting here and we're like, yeah, people, I'm going to build
an airplane. You're like, what are you talking about?
People don't fly. I'm like, no, I'm going to do
it. And of course, it's not going to be as good as the airplane
down the line, the iterative things that happen later on.
But
just being able to go to dream something
into existence that you haven't seen before
and then make it happen, like takes an unbelievable
strength of character
almost like a force of will, because
you have, you're blazing
a trail that hasn't been walked
before. That's the BJ Penn factor in,
you know, winning the Jiu-Jitsu World Championship
first non-Brazilian to do that. It was back
in 2001. And then Rafael Lovato
later on, it's like, he's,
you know, both of those guys are so unbelievably impressive
in my mind for the same reason, you know,
because they were out there
winning at a time when that wasn't
a common thing. Not that it's easy to win
now. It's just, there's not a psychological
hurdle that needs to be left. I remember
you know, when I was early in Jiu-Jitsu, like Americans
weren't winning the World Championships at any
belt. I mean, BJ, we all knew BJ Penn because
BJ Penn did it, but it was really,
really uncommon. Now it happens, you know,
on a semi-regular basis, of course, the Brazilians are
so strong, Europeans are so strong,
but in Australians are coming on as well.
But it's definitely
kind of an interesting thing. So to come back
to, you know, John Danahar and the
Hensel team, obviously they're doing fantastic
things. John's has some really, really great
innovation there. And the
systematization and the methodology
that they're using is great
and it's neat to see that it's getting out there.
I would just also
I would encourage people to
make sure that they're, you know, catching up on their
history because obviously, you know, John's a brilliant
instructor and has done things, you know, for the sport
that are fantastic
that haven't been done before, but, you know, none of us
exist in a vacuum and I've learned things from everywhere
else. So, you know, John would say the same, I'm sure.
And, you know, Dean Lister would
say the same and it's just neat when you can
kind of trace the history of all of this happening
because we've had humanity's had two arms
and two legs for some time, at least as long
as I've been alive. But you mentioned, like, airplanes.
Do you think there's something totally new
to be invented in Jiu Jitsu? Still
not totally new, but
like the, you know, flying isn't
new, but airplanes nevertheless
made that much more efficient.
Is there, like, new ideas
to be discovered in Jiu Jitsu still?
I'd say, the reason I'd
say yes is the same reason I would say I believe
in alchemy, even though I don't. No, I'm serious.
I've got some backing
for this. Okay. You know, I guess
I talk about this with a buddy of mine a lot,
like, and
facilitative versus not facilitative
beliefs. And
if I don't believe something is possible
and I do no investigation towards it,
I'll never find something even if it's there.
It's almost like it's no different than me walking
up on a group of people and going, like, oh,
man, look at these jerks. This is going to suck.
Versus me going, oh, I wonder what these guys are up to.
I'm about to have two very different conversations,
even though the players in the game are no different.
My internal constitution has changed because
of how I've decided
to approach the situation. So although I wouldn't
personally want to spend all my time
trying to turn lead into gold because I don't
believe that it's likely to work, only
a person who's willing to spend his or her life
in that pursuit will actually get to the bottom
of that. And also in the pursuit
of that, they're likely to find
other things. So I think a lot of times the idea
is that humanity is pushed forward by,
you know, again, it's another Orson-Scott-Carbone.
It's like, you know, human beings are in this slog,
it's paraphrasing just in this slog over
time. And then periodically,
humanity gives birth to genius, like someone
that invents the wheel, invents electricity,
pushes us forward, you know, comes up
with the idea of governance that doesn't,
you know, just start and end with the point of
a sword, you know. And,
you know, these aren't common things. These
are unbelievable advancements that,
you know, that, me sitting here, I didn't come up
with them, but I just get the benefit of it. So I guess
what I would say is a lot of times these ideas are
called crazy, you know, like as we discussed
on kind of offline, it's like, you know, Einstein
was brilliant in his 20s.
And it was brilliant before that, I would suspect.
But basically, you know, gets
recognized later on in life. And of course
we all thought those were great ideas. The man
probably roundly mocked for giant chunks of his
life. And I guess so
it's neat to, I would say there's definitely
in my mind things that, even if it's
just combinations and new to me,
new ways to see things, new ways to understand
different depth of understanding, possibly
new things, new positions, new ideas.
Because even if that's
not true, the
process of going through and acting as if it is
and believing like that and focusing
and trying to investigate will make
any of us, will push us all forward.
We're sitting there, you know,
obsessing over the cult of our current knowledge
I think is the biggest
danger and the biggest cause
of stagnation that exists anywhere.
Yeah, and it starts with believing
the impossible, which is kind of interesting.
One of the things that's really inspiring to me is to
see people out there which
sadly are rare, who kind of
have
a combination of two things. One is
they have a world view that
involves, that includes a lot of
ideas that are crazy.
And the second part is
they're exceptionally focused and confident
in bringing that
whatever the ideas in that world view
to reality. So there's certainly a lot of people
with crazy ideas, you know, there's a lot of
conspiracy theories, they have way out there
beliefs about things, but they're not
doing much
to like make the, like
build stuff grounded and like
they're not engineers or whatever.
They're just like espousing different crazy ideas,
but that's why you get like the
Elon Musk type characters and the reason I bring him up
a lot is because like there's not many others
to bring up. It's like
there's not many examples of it
through history. The people, I mean
the guys convinced that we're going
to colonize Mars
and basically
everybody
on earth thinks that's insane.
Everyone except the guy that's going to do it, right?
Except that's going to do it. And like
you can imagine
like a couple hundred years from now
people will
I mean, first of all
they won't, certainly won't remember the haters
they won't remember all the people
if they do remember them
they'll remember them in a sense like
people are silly to think that this isn't
the obvious
path forward. Like from a perspective
that's what
Elon talks about. Like it's obvious
that we're going to expand throughout
the universe.
From his perspective.
But to me it is also
obvious because
either we destroy ourselves
or we'll
expand beyond earth.
There's not many, well
maybe it's not completely obvious. I guess
I share that worldview. There's the other
possibility that we humans
find a sort of
an inner peace where the forces
of capitalism will calm down
and we'll all just meditate and do yoga
and jiu-jitsu and like relax with this whole tech
thing where we keep building new technologies.
But it's cool to have
those kinds of people that just
believe the big, ambitious
crazy dreams. Because that's where
it starts. If you want to build something
you have to first believe.
When you also have to believe strongly enough
that you're not vulnerable and I'm
speculating but it's like I can only imagine how many
people have told Elon
what he's doing is crazy. So not only
he dreamed it up, he dreamed it up, went with
it and also went with it in the face of
being told that it's not
going to work. And then
also stepped away from the bitterness because he's
done a series of really crazy impressive
things and that's only those little
things that I'm aware of. And also
staying away from the bitterness of every single time
you did something good, initially all
I do is talk down about you and then
eventually I act as of course, of course, I
never apologize. And yet
you don't let that dampen your spirits for the next
innovation, which is pretty incredible
to me to watch. Yeah, it's kind of cool.
I mean, it's contagious to
spend time with the guy because
he's not, Rogan has
the same look to him, which is interesting
about these people is
like
there's like a
hater shield
that he's like, he doesn't even like sense
them. It feels like
he thinks
to Elon, it's
obvious. I mean, he keeps calling
it like first principles thinking
like physics says it's true, therefore it's
true, like he's convinced himself
that like his beliefs
are grounded in the fundamental fabric
of the way the universe works,
therefore the haters don't matter. Right.
And I mean, that's kind of like a system
of thought he developed himself through
all the difficulty, through all the doubt, he's able
to take huge risks with
basically putting everything he owes on the
line multiple times throughout his life
amidst all the drama, amidst all
the doubts, amidst all like the
he's still able to make just
clear, clear headed decisions.
I don't know what to make
of it, but it's inspiring as hell. Well,
I think it's something funny. I think like
I can only imagine the, you know, history
will look back on him as a brilliant person,
but that's not the only, there's a lot of
maybe not, not statistically speaking,
but a lot numerically on a giant planet
of, you know, billions of people, a lot of brilliant people.
Well, you know, time, place,
luck, fortune, all that other stuff, but at the
same time, that clearly isn't
the only determining thing
in making Elon Musk, Elon Musk, and obviously
I don't know the guy from Adam and
but it's an interesting thing that
it's not just his intellect, his belief
system, his structure, how he's
viewing the world, like that's
did he reason his way to that?
Did he not? What other factors came in?
I'm really curious about that because I guess coming
up, it's, again, I
feel really strongly about
people's belief structure and
how they view the world
being more important than the engine
behind it, you know, it makes
someone resilient or not, it makes someone
positive or not because you could have
10,000, I think about this for competitive stuff,
you could have 10,000 things going properly
and one thing going improperly, if you focus on the
improper, you'll probably fix it at a certain
point, which is good, facilitative for
development in the long term, but if you had
to try to perform a task in the next five
minutes and you're focusing on the negative,
your confidence and your belief
in the positive outcome of the future
is likely to be damaged, whereas you could
have 25 things going wrong, but you go,
man, I'm sure I'm happy to be alive, how fortunate
I am, this is great, I have problems to solve,
this is awesome, versus
I list the problems and I start bishing about
them, both of them are technically accurate
but it's, I guess, different lenses and I think
that's a really neat thing to see, you know,
someone exemplifying that for us.
So maybe to look at the
fighting world,
there's a million questions I can
ask here, like one, you mentioned B.J.
Penn, you, first of all,
you're undefeated in the UFC and one of
the fights you've had is against
B.J. Penn, which is
kind of an incredible fight,
you won performance at the night,
what did it feel like
to face
B.J. Penn and to beat him definitively
as he did,
what's that whole experience like?
I'll be honest, I didn't know if I was going to
ever be able to fight again after
beating Graham Maynard in 2016,
you know, I've had a couple periods
of those, I was about to join the army,
actually, and when I was 30
before the, for the UFC,
Jen sent me over to Ultimate Fighter,
I didn't want to go, because I was like, one, they're
never going to pit me, two, I'd be terrible for TV,
three, I'll probably say something and I'm going to get,
you know, I'm like, this isn't a great idea.
And then she said, well, go out there,
see what happens, do it anyway,
you'll regret it if you didn't,
and then I ended up doing Ultimate Fighter,
and then so I fought three times on the show,
and then I fought
for the finale,
so those four times in like five
or six months, which was great,
and then it took me a year to get another opponent,
and that was Graham Maynard,
and then Graham was obviously a very tough guy,
managed to get a good outcome there,
two years to fight B.J. Penn,
and that was, you know,
obviously I'm training all the time, every single day,
and that never stops, but that was,
I'll be honest, like pretty deeply frustrating,
because you know, as a human being, as an athlete,
you know, I think as an athlete, you die twice,
like you have an athletic peak or area,
and then you go on with the rest of your life,
but it is a microcosm for the rest of your life,
it's like you're seeing the sand
tick away in the hourglass or drop away,
and you're going, man, this is,
these are years between 31, 32, 33,
like I'll be at my best at this time,
my absolute best physically.
Now, not technically, I'm a lot better now
than I was before on a plan,
but at a certain point, you will,
unless you're Bernard Hopkins,
you will reach diminishing returns,
and I guess that-
The long wait, you can feel the clock ticking,
is this frustrating?
Why did it take two years for B.J.?
That's the question people ask a lot,
it's like, why does nobody want to fight, right?
I don't know, they probably think
I don't blame them,
but I would-
Me, you're a really tough opponent,
it's the bottom line.
I'll say that, I'm different,
maybe they perceive that the threat
is greater than the reward,
I'm hoping that now that we're ranked number 12
in the UFC rankings,
that that will change,
and I know that if we're one more win,
and then we're in the top 10,
that now you're there,
but what I've consistently found
is that if I wanted to just fight anybody,
I could go down to a waffle house and yell
until DMX shows up and we can fight,
because they'll be at the waffle house too,
I really want to hang out with DMX,
but you know, it's like,
when I had the opportunity,
I would never fight DMX,
we'd be on the same team,
but anyway,
I guess
I accepted fights against,
I got asked about Lamas,
I got asked about Dennis Promutas,
you know, like long periods of time,
and at that time,
between 2016 and 2018,
I was struggling
to have opponents who would sign up,
and I haven't turned down fights,
I've just said, hey,
I don't care about fighting the randoms,
and it's just...
You have a successful school,
you're a martial artist,
broadly speaking,
so it doesn't make sense to take fights
that aren't like...
that fit a certain kind of trajectory
for your career.
And that's when BJ Penn,
they said, well, BJ's looking for an opponent,
and I was like, I'm your guy,
and I think that BJ accepted that fight,
because another Jiu-Jitsu guy,
I don't think he perceived that I was much of a threat
on the feet,
and you know,
it was neat to get it to compete
against someone who's one of my heroes,
one of the people I looked up to in MMA
for the longest time.
No, I love competing.
I don't really get nervous or scared before fights.
I'm not afraid to get hurt and not afraid to win.
I'm not afraid to lose.
I'm just excited for the...
I feel thankful for the opportunity to compete
and the opportunity to play when it matters.
You know, I just...
That's the only time I'm interested in playing anymore
is when it matters, when the opposition is...
I know that it's funny,
because people pick on a lot of...
some opponents, particularly after the fact.
Like, if you get a good outcome,
then, ah, of course, let's beat that guy.
That guy wasn't that good. I'm like, well, I was...
That's after the fact. I get to say that.
And also, as the person in the ring,
BJ Penn has hurt a lot of people
in mixed martial arts cage,
and I could actually absolutely have been on that list.
So, it was neat
to get to compete against someone that I really respect,
someone that I looked up to for a long time,
someone who has a great skill set,
and also I went up and wait to fight him
in his weight class. He didn't have to come down to mine,
which is where he'd take... It was lightweight.
I'm generally a featherweight.
I walk around at like 158 pounds.
What's lightweight and featherweight?
Lightweight is 155,
with a day before weighing, and featherweight is 145
with a day before weighing.
So, I'm a little bit more properly sized for featherweight.
But anyway,
I didn't feel like...
Obviously, he was giving up a couple years of age,
but I was giving up size
and all this other stuff.
I was just excited to have the opportunity
to step in against someone like BJ.
We managed to get out of there
with a good outcome without getting too banged up.
But it was cool
because we tied up on the fence,
and just even the second,
is when you're rolling with somebody and you touch
and you can feel what they're doing, you go,
oh, man, this guy's really good.
You can feel the calm, you can feel the small, minor adjustments
that they're making, the subtle things that they're doing.
And that was one of those things that was really neat
and gratifying because you never know.
Sometimes people that you've heard of
are a little bit less technically proficient
because you'll meet some guy that you're training like,
who the hell is this guy? How have I not heard of this person?
And BJ was exactly
as a jiu-jitsu guy what I would have thought.
And another thing that's another thing
to bug me about how people reacted after the fight
is, you know, basically going,
oh, BJ screwed up this, screwed up that.
And I'm like, all right, yeah, tell...
That's so interesting. That's sad.
That was, you know,
one of the...
To me, I mean, as a fan of both,
that was a beautiful moment
as a kind of passing of a torch
in a sense of
an exceptional performance.
Like, another one that stands out to me,
maybe you can comment, is
I don't understand
what maybe I do, why Conor McGregor gets
as much hate as he does.
He probably revels in it.
But I think
he doesn't get enough credit
for
Jose Aldo.
For the...
For, like, for basically, you know,
knocking him out in
the first few
seconds of
a fight. I mean,
Jose is like one of the greatest fighters ever.
That's true.
Maybe some people can put him in the top 10.
No question.
And the...
I don't understand why
it doesn't get as much...
Like, Conor McGregor doesn't get as much credit
as I think he deserves
for that.
And for Eddie Alvarez and all the fights.
For some reason, whenever
Conor McGregor beats somebody,
well,
they were not that good then.
Like, it means like they were...
There's something was off.
Right. That's convenient, isn't it?
Yeah. It's quite strange to me.
But, I mean, what are your thoughts on
Conor McGregor?
Maybe one way to ask that, I'm rushing some,
obviously also a Khabib fan,
but I'm also a Conor fan. It seems like
there's not many of us who are like fans of both.
Right.
You and Artem Lobov.
The two of us, which also is a good fight.
Tough dude.
Yeah, really, really tough dude.
It's like five languages, really interesting cat.
Oh, so like, oh, wow, I didn't know that side of it.
There's a brain there.
Well, on the Khabib versus Conor,
what do you make of their first fight?
What do you... Do you agree with me that
they should fight again?
Because I think it would be awesome if they fought again
in Moscow.
And do you agree with me?
I'm just going to say things that piss people off,
but I believe, is that Conor
actually has a chance to beat Khabib?
One, that Conor absolutely has a chance
to beat Khabib. Conor has a chance to beat anyone
that he steps into that ring with, and not just like
a mathematical chance. You're like, oh, one of the billion,
but like, you know, he absolutely...
It's funny because I won't pretend to know Conor
really well, but I first met Conor in 2010
when I was teaching a seminar
at Straitless, Jim Ireland, in Dublin.
And that's actually where I first met
all of the coaches that ended up being on
Conor's team.
You know, John Kavana, Owen Roddy,
Gunnar Nelson, you know, so for...
I actually... I enjoyed being an ultimate fighter
and being on a URI favors team
and getting a train with all the guys there,
but at the same time, the people that I was actually...
I knew better were actually the European side,
all of Conor's coaches.
And that was a neat
thing because I got to... I met Conor,
I didn't know who Conor... Conor wasn't Conor
at that point. Yeah, that was before his UFC
division. Oh, yeah, well before, yeah. I think
he got in like 2014, maybe something like that.
Yeah, and anyway,
but he was doing well in Cage Warriors, winning the titles
there, I think prior to that. You know, I remember
going, seeing him on the show and
also then getting to see him train
because I competed...
I was initially slated to fight David Tamer
for the ultimate fighter finale before
getting put into fight autumn for the title
for the show. So I went over to Ireland
to train for a couple days and
basically it was neat to watch him work.
I mean, man, he's focused and trains
a lot and he's very, very smart
and very, very hardworking and I think a lot
of times people get stuck in the...
in this, you know,
and they almost
want to believe that this was lucky or
this person, you know, like they're not
working that hard, they're just out there, they got there
with their mouth and that's
that's just not the case and
you know, I don't know what it's like, you know, obviously Conor
is very well off right now and I don't know how hard, how
seriously he's training, what he's doing, I can't speak to any of that
but there's no question
that he has skills to be dangerous and one
of the funny things, obviously the Khabib fight went
his way, Khabib was a great fighter and also
has the chance to beat anyone in that ring
at any given time but
there was an... Conor,
you know, it's
one that he can
put anybody away and as you mentioned, I think that
he doesn't get the credit for the Eddie Alvarez fight,
he doesn't get the credit for the Jose Aldo fight because it was almost so much
of a let down. I remember that happened the same weekend
that I did the Ultimate Fighter finale
and you're like, all right, wait, what?
Yeah, it almost
doesn't feel like a fight happened but we mentioned Miyamoto
Musashi, I mean, Musashi was famous
for the way he poked and prodded the people
with what he was doing, whether overtly or not, it's like
oh, we're supposed to fight to the death in
you know, at 3pm tomorrow, great
4pm rolls around, I'm just not there
5, I mean, you remember all the antics
and nonsense that Conor was pulling prior to that, like
speaking personally, that's not something
I would feel comfortable doing but it's like everyone's
different and the effect that it had on
Jose was, I mean, beyond evident. When was the
last time Jose started the fight
with leaping left hand, leaping
right hand, you're like, wait, what? And then
he was obviously
living rent free in Jose's
head at that point and that was
a combination of psychological
ability and wherewithal
and then physical and it reminded me of the way
Muhammad Ali would bother people and whatnot
and the fact
that he's a polarizing figure
I think makes some people not give him
his due and then at the same time, sometimes
certain fans maybe go overboard
but they remember the knee
that Ben Asgerin got knocked out with
by Mosserdahl, I mean, that was an amazing
unbelievable thing but
3 inches to the right, 3 inches to the left, I guess
whichever side his head wasn't, it could have been
squareer but
and that fight starts with Ben Asgerin on top
of you in the first 5 seconds
well, Connor ran in through a knee just
like that, it could be
got right around it, that could have easily
gone the other way, can you imagine what would have happened
after coming back from boxing
after coming back from the May
weather fight, Connor in
the first 10 seconds it's over and you're like
he would
it would have been intolerable
but basically
but see here's the thing, let me actually push
back slightly
to the fans
correct me if I'm wrong
but Connor seems
to, because I've competed a lot
there's a tension, there's a negativity
sometimes depending on the opponent
and there's a respect
afterwards that happens, like when you
understand that there's a deep
respect and almost like a love for each other
I've always seen that in Connor, all the
trash talk afterwards
it's a subtle thing
you can't always see it, but there's a respect
I agree
I almost on the
Khabib side
I almost feel like Khabib
really took it personally
he lost the respect for Connor
I thought the whole time Connor
had the respect, so what I wanted to say is
if Connor won that fight
like Rock Khabib, I could see
like
I wouldn't see trash talking
I could see trash talking stop right there
but at the same time, I'm sure you recall
Connor crossing some pretty personal
territory, both religiously
and also familiarly with Khabib
and it's
I think it's the sort of thing that
it's an interesting, that's one of the reasons
it depends, you have to know the difference
obviously I know
the Khabib, the Dagestani people
they don't play around like that
they don't play around like that
they take offense to
basically, I mean you don't do
that, so
so like Connor didn't
maybe he did it on purpose
or maybe he wasn't even just aware
of
cultural differences
like you can talk to Floyd Mayweather
you can go anywhere with him
you can say the most offensive things
but with
Khabib
hard lines
but you
I mean a lot of people ask, I know you're a featherweight
but if you were to
face, it feels like Khabib
was one of the hardest puzzles to solve
in all mixed martial arts
if you were to face Khabib
do you think
how would you go about solving that puzzle
like almost, the question is almost from
a jiu-jitsu perspective too
what do you do with a guy that's
exceptionally good at controlling position
especially on top, very good at
wrestling and taking down and controlling position
like
let's say, so forget maybe
striking on the ground
how do you solve
that guy, like what do you do with your guard
if you get taken down or do you
create an entire system of not getting
taken down or escaping
what ideas do you have for that
well I guess I would say in my mind fighting is a game
of trading energy
kind of
there's two things, there's damage in those energy
so like when I say energy
I mean like tired, not tired
how much gas you've got
and then damage counts obviously as well
you could be feeling
great and then you get to kick me in the head
hard three times, it doesn't matter that I could get up
and run a mile, I can't get up
so anyway
I think what Khabib does is
so well is he makes the fight look like
a Khabib and a Magamado fight
he does a great job of avoiding damage
on the feet for the most part
and really sucking the life out of people
while suffocating and oppressive as his control is
his chain wrestling
is as good as anyone we've ever seen in the UFC
it's fantastic
but
that poses a really serious threat for people that need to
maintain a certain amount of space
and try to hurt him on the feet because
unless they're able to inflict an adequate amount of damage
they're going to
each time, let's say for instance, let's say him taking them down
as a foregone conclusion at some point
if every single time Khabib
takes you down, you get right back up
in the field because it's actually more
we've all experienced this, let's say
you and I are rolling, he tapped me 15 times in one round
who's more tired?
probably you are
my ask so badly that it's like you're the only one working
but
if you're comfortable with the up and down of it
like being taken down
if you don't get
hurt badly or tired on the bottom
you have a chance
but that doesn't involve just cracking him
on the feet before he gets a hold of you
that's a lot to ask
that's difficult to do
it seemed actually like Connor
it seemed like it when he was being
kind of taken down or the take down
attempts against Khabib
he seemed to be somewhat relaxed the whole thing
I thought he was doing well actually
particularly for the first round I thought he did a very good job
it's just one of those things that I think
like
the fight's taking place in Khabib's world
in large part
and I mean set aside that one giant
that was at right hand that Khabib hit Connor with
and by the way Connor reacted like an absolute champion
he got crushed by that overhand
and then
his eyes went right back on Khabib
it was immediate positive great response
so even though that was I think
that was a bit of a surprising thing
Connor reacted really really well but if you're going to be on bottom
with Khabib for four rounds
that's going to be tough and also Connor's a way better grappler
than people like to give him credit for
but he's not the type of grappler that can do
that's too tall of an order
but there are grapplers that could do that
or at least would have a much much better shot
at being able to weather that type of a storm
do you see yourself being able to be relaxed
through that kind of storm?
yes
well I guess
remember being punchy
being savagely beaten is very relaxing
the timing of that
answer was like
okay
that's a dumb question
that's ultimately
the goal of Jiu Jitsu is to
be relaxed through the fire
for sure and remember like every UFC fighter
I win all hypothetical matchups
for sure
that's true
since
I want to ask ridiculous questions
and we've been talking about
sci-fi and all that kind of stuff
let me ask the kind of big question that everybody disagrees about
certainly with me
is who are the top five greatest
MMA fighters of all time
and
why is Fedor number one?
okay well first off Fedor is number one
oh really? I agree right there with you
really? oh yeah
talk about people that just get completely underappreciated
even though he's never been like
he's never succeeded in the UFC
it's not his fault it came along after him
at the time that Fedor was at his height
the UFC was not where it was at
for heavyweight fighting
I mean not that there weren't good heavyweights there
but Fedor was unbelievable
I mean
Minotaur Nogara was a massive fan of him
I still remember watching
Pride 2004 when Nogara fought
CroCup and got blasted with that left
kick and dropped with like
seconds left in the first round
Pride was great because it was a 10 minute first round
which again materially alters the fight
big time and you know just the texture of the fight
because it's totally borderline different sport
you know then getting a 5
a pause and a 5
but anyway similar sports
they have 9 gold medals for different types of swimming
right but still swimming but anyway
um
they would disagree
they specialize in that
it's totally true 10 minutes is different
than 5 minutes
don't drown me swimmers
I don't swim very well
it's easy for me to downplay it
but anyway
so better than John Jones
like the modern era
well I guess it's tough to compare
it would be like going and saying
like oh man how would
such and such great grappler from today
fair against someone from 1995
I'm like well probably
pretty well depending upon
who they are what's going on
you know there's some people that with their skill sets
might transition across eras but a lot of times
not but that's not fair
they'll be like comparing Spartans to
modern day you know like
army guys they're like well who's gonna win
like well did modern day army guys get modern day weapons
yeah but who's the toughest
ruggedest group of people at the very least
so I guess it's tough to say but at least in my mind
the people that I think about for great fighters
their quality of opposition
um
their level of like lasting and like
success their level of lasting innovation
like the courage that they have to demonstrate
because again it's like being a big fish in a small pond
takes no courage doesn't mean that there's nothing there
but it just requires
something a little bit different so Kizushi Sakuraba
is one of my guys too
BJ Penn also I mean BJ Penn fought
Lyoto Machida that's insane
you know it's that was a time
it was a different sport it was a different time in the
sport where you know they were some guys were
bouncing around doing different things but let's
so I guess the Gracie family
it's I mean they never had an
in like obviously Hoist was there
um but they never and that was a definitely
a different sport weight classes being open things like that
yeah but you have to say that Hoist is up there
oh no question one of the greatest ever
I think so too and and again I wouldn't be
sitting here talking to you
if it weren't for him so the Gracie family
as a whole but I mean who's the better
I mean I think
Hoist would tell you himself probably that Hixon
would have handled business back then but they didn't
put him in so again he's the greatest fighter
the greatest fighter the greatest fighter that we saw do his
business so Hoist up there for sure
what about so this is like
nobody seems to agree with me on this but like this
connects to Sakuraba again and messy
it seems that people value
like how long
you've been a champion how many
like defenses
of the championship that you've
had successfully to me
I highly value
singular moments of genius
so like
I don't like if you look at Conor McGregor
he hasn't I guess held
been a champion very long very much
well he didn't defend either title right he didn't defend
any other either of the titles
but like if you
and same with messy if you look at
Lionel Messi
there's just moments of brilliance
unlike any other in history
for both Conor and Messi
and people don't seem to give credits like well how many World Cups
have you on but to me
like why is it about this arbitrary World Cup
thing or championship thing
I think it's easier for people to wrap their head around right it's like the NFL
Combine
numbers yeah numbers it's something
well again if I go and if I pick Tom Brady in the
first round you know
and it works out they call me a genius
if I pick Tom Brady in the first round
after his Combine and it doesn't work out
I get fired and I'm never hired again I have to work
work somewhere else but it's like I'm
insulating myself from criticism
I think almost if I go by the numbers
well he had more bench presses it's like how
how many times have the guys that are like the super
studs in the
in the NFL Combine ever been on the greatest players
in the NFL history in NFL
history like zero or close to zero
and even if even if there's some
it's certainly not a one-to-one correlation
so it's so funny though I think it's just like
how many how long how many days did he hold the
title your title reign was X times longer
that means nothing so if we
wanted to find greatest fighter ever like you said I think
individual moments of like you're like that was
transcended that was different that was
something else because people can win or lose for
any number of different reasons and that
it's an interesting thing again I don't blame
Argentina not winning the World Cup
on Messi you know it that's not
fair you know how many times
as you know I mean I use the
I remember when Trent Dilfer was the quarterback
for the Baltimore Ravens
and they had such a strong defense I'm not trying
to pick on Trent Dilfer but it's like they had such
a strong defense that they were to make
that was the Ray Lewis you know Chris
McAllister era you know and
they won the Super Bowl
I don't think anyone is going to
say that you know Trent Dilfer
is a better quarterback than
you know or put him in the same category as
Damarino but he
got the W he's got the he's got the Super
I'm trying how many times a let's use Marge Mannas
or Super Bowl I love it like that guy always makes
the finals but he just never gets it done
so let me get this straight getting the finals
nine times doesn't count because you didn't
win the end game on that is saying it wouldn't
be better but that guy won the game once he
got over the hump how many other times was
in the finals 0 it's
interesting well we yeah
that we were obsessed with these numbers
like well because we can't
assess their method right well I think most
of the time most of us can't assess
And it's like, oh, look at that guy do X, Y swimming.
I'm like, how do I know Michael Phelps is great?
I don't know.
It was faster.
I can't look at his technique and say anything other than, well, that's way better than anything
I know how to do.
But I can't say the difference between him and the next guy.
So I guess that's, I wonder if it's like, I need a concrete identifier.
And a lot of times people don't like saying, I don't know.
And most people won't put like around the Rousey in the top even 20 or 50 of, but like
she changed more than, more than almost anybody else.
She changed the martial arts history.
I don't know if that even, I don't think I'm over exaggerating that.
She, she made it okay for women to be fighters.
Yeah.
And it, and like changed the way we see, like she's one of the great feminists of our time.
In her own way, yeah.
In a weird kind of way that like, I don't know, maybe I'm just a Ron the Rousey fan.
But the, yeah, the, but she's not in the conversation because then you start converting
into numbers.
Well, how many did she win?
Is she among the greatest fighters or did she do the greatest things?
You know what I mean?
I don't, I think it's something, I mean, obviously Ronda is a great judoka who is
competing in MMA at a time when a lot of the girls like, where did you get your skills?
In the Olympics, where'd you get yours?
High school?
You're like, yeah, you're going to, Olympic girls going to beat you up.
But I guess that, that doesn't diminish her.
Just that accomplishment is what it is.
I don't have to, I don't, Fedor is not diminished by the fact that he would, like if he were
to fight steep and meoches right now, it probably wouldn't go great or that John Jones exists.
I don't now have to like knock Fedor's accomplishments down or say, oh, because BJ Penn or someone,
so let's say he has a mixed record at this point that somehow invalidates the things that
they've done before.
I guess it kind of brings us back to a lot of the other people we've talked about, the
fact that the, the brilliant people throughout history that we love or some of the monsters
throughout history that we rightly revile in a lot of cases were complicated people and
their legacy is more than just one thing.
And someone doing something amazing doesn't, doesn't mean they didn't do anything bad.
And someone doing terrible things doesn't, doesn't mean that, doesn't invalidate the,
the positives that they did.
But I guess we're fighting the urge to put people in one category and same with ourselves.
I think that's why people get depressed.
Oh, I'm good right now.
Oh, I'm bad right now versus say we're all of work in progress and we're trying to do X number
of things and legacy is a tough thing to figure out anyway.
And it's all speculative.
Last time or no, on Reddit, you said that last time too, that you don't experience much fear
before fights.
I'd like to ask you a couple of Mike Tyson things if it's okay.
It's just interesting to me, maybe I'm just weird.
So there's a, I don't know if you've seen this clip of Tyson talking about how he feels
leading up to a fight that he's kind of overtaken with fear as he gets closer and closer and
closer to the ring, his confidence grows.
Have you seen the clip?
I'm aware of it.
Okay.
I haven't seen it in a while.
Here, let me play it for you.
George St. Pierce said something similar to me one time.
While I'm in the dressing room, five minutes before I come out, my gloves are laced up.
I'm breaking my gloves down.
I'm pushing the level of the back of my leg, breaking the middle of the gloves on my
knuckle, pierced to the left.
I feel my knuckle piercing against the tight leather gloves on that last box angle.
And I come out, I have supreme confidence, but I'm scared to death.
I'm totally afraid.
I'm afraid of everything.
I'm afraid of those.
I'm afraid of being humiliated, but I'm just totally confident.
The closer I get to the ring, the more confidence I get.
The closer, the more confidence I get.
The closer, the more confidence I get.
All during my training, I've been afraid of this man.
I thought this man might be capable to beat me.
I've dreamed of him beating me with that rope, but I always stayed afraid of him.
But it was closer.
You tell me, I'm more confident.
Once I'm in the ring, I'm a God.
No one could beat me.
I'm a God.
First of all, he's cognizant of both his demons and whatever the hell ideas he has
about violence is so interesting.
Is there something about the tension that he's describing about being confident and
scared that resonates with you, or do you hold to this idea that you've kind of
spoken about before that you're really not afraid?
No, I can appreciate what he's saying.
I can speak to feeling concerned about, let's say, for instance, if you feel a certain way,
I think people are a lot more like computers than we like to admit.
And just because a lot of times I can't parse what's going on and why,
doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense.
I see.
And I think that, at least in the times of if I'm concerned about a situation or about a person
or about something happening prior to the fight, or I'm like, there's a reason.
There was a reason.
I don't have to push that down and bury it.
There's a reason, like, why?
What have I not thought about?
What have I not done?
What am I missing?
Why am I feeling this way?
As you mentioned, for yourself prior, you'd be like, why am I feeling like this?
I don't do this very well in certain aspects of my life if not that I mentioned it or not.
I think about it.
But when it comes to competing, I think I do an all right job and I'm trying to learn to be
better and it's going like, well, why do I, if I feel this way, there's a reason.
Okay, am I thinking about this the wrong way?
Have I not adequately prepared for something?
I have to address it.
And then maybe I'll be up for four hours that night, like extra hours thinking,
when have I not addressed watching sparring, watching this, watching that.
And then when I'm thinking about things more accurately or when I've addressed what that
concern was, I feel any of that concern kind of dissipate.
And I guess, if I honestly thought that, when it comes to, I know I'm going to die at a certain
point, obviously, I'm going to get hurt, pain happens.
But the pain of loss would be nothing compared to the, or the pain of injury would be nothing
compared to the pain of running away.
And so I guess if I think about where's my value, it's like, I feel like I'm a winner
every single time I step into that ring and fight with everything that I have, I can't promise
that I'll win my next fight.
I know that I have the skills and the tools to beat anyone in grappling or in mixed martial
arts at this point.
It's just, I know that for certain, I've trained with enough people, I compete with enough people,
I know where I stand.
But I also know that I'm not perfect.
And also the better fighter, even if I perceive that I was that thing, doesn't win on the night.
The man who fights better wins on the night.
And if I give credence in my mind to only the person that's one has value versus going,
what's your process?
What's your path through this?
How are you going about this?
How are you thinking about this?
How are you behaving?
Then if I can focus on the process, then I will respect my opponent and I will respect
myself and I'll respect anyone that behaves with a certain level of consistency to that.
And they could win.
There's plenty of winners in history that are shitbags and there's plenty of losers
that are not.
But winning doesn't make you a bad or good person and losing doesn't make you good by
the fault either or bad by the fault.
So, and I think that that can be the truth socially.
That can be the truth, athletically and academically.
So, I guess-
But is there a primal fear though, like a primal fear of getting hurt, the running away and not
facing the threat long-term is the bigger pain than any pain you can experience in the fight?
That's pretty powerful.
But what about the violence of-
I mean, you don't have that on your face, but like the-
I don't know if you've also seen Tyson talk about-
He was on Rogan recently and he was talking about-
He was trying to psychoanalyze himself about why he enjoys violence so much.
I mean, he called it orgasmic.
I don't know.
Have you seen that clip?
I haven't.
Okay, we're playing it because I can-
I need to-
Because Trump also retweeted it, which is hilarious.
I don't know how to contextualize-
Yeah, that's-
That our president retweeted the clip of Tyson saying-
That's just-
Maybe he's just doing the like-
They're not gonna-
It's like, I'm gonna throw him a curveball.
No one's gonna have any idea what that is.
But yeah, he did no explanation just here you go.
There you go.
So, well, I think that's kind of like what you were describing.
It's like, if I give you an answer, it has to be a good one.
Better to just let your imagination run.
Exactly.
Yeah, he's-
Yeah, he's like the Kubrick of our time.
You know what's really interesting?
That sometimes, period, it's not real, but sometimes I struggle with the fact of why
is the possibility I can really hurt somebody.
Like you don't want to hurt them.
What do you mean by you struggle with the possibility that you could hurt them?
That is sometimes, I thought, gathmic sometimes.
Yeah.
Like some fights, like particularly like Tyrell Biggs or someone that you had problems with,
someone that you-
Joe's not getting it.
You had animosity towards.
So, when you finally get your hands on them.
Hey, what does it mean when fighting gets you erect?
What does that mean?
It's a good question.
It means you're getting excited.
Yeah.
So, that's going through your mind right now.
Well, that's how I get when I was a kid.
And I, you know, sometimes I get the twinkle.
The twinkle.
Yeah.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
It's like you reached a state as a human being, as a champion, as a ferocious fighter.
You reached a state of ability and of accomplishment that very few humans will ever, ever touch and feel.
That's why I'm asking you when you're running, when you're hitting the bag, when that heart's
beating again, and that you know who you are, you're Mike motherfucking Tyson.
So, when you're doing all this shit again, you're still Mike Tyson.
Those thoughts have got to be burning inside you again.
It's got to be pretty wild.
I don't know.
It's wild, but I believe it's rightfully so to be that way.
And I just know how to, I don't think I'm mastered, but I just know how to deal with it.
I don't let it overwhelm me.
I mean, he goes on to try to, they don't ever, like Joe doesn't bite.
Well, the interesting thing about that conversation is Mike was trying to figure himself out.
Yeah.
Like he's trying on the spot, like why do I feel this way?
To me, it was like, to me, it's so real and honest to feel like pleasure from hurting somebody.
Like that, you rarely hear that in this society.
It's like, you rarely like talk about like, you feel pleasure from winning.
You feel pleasure from like the relief of overcoming like all the stress you have to go
through pleasure from just like the specifics of the fight, the techniques you use, the
maybe overcoming, being down a couple of rounds.
But like how often do you hear somebody say, I just enjoyed, he's not even saying because
I hate the opponent, he's saying like, I enjoyed purely the violence of it.
That's crazy.
I mean, I don't know, it's honest.
It made me ask like, I wonder how many of us are cognizant of that?
I'd say Mike is uncommonly, seemingly honest.
I think athletes make a full-time job out of lying.
You know, I think people make a full-time job out of lying.
To themselves perhaps too.
That's fair.
I mean, you tell yourself or you tell others what you feel you need to or maybe whether
you even know what you feel you need to, but why should he not?
I mean, again, did he run up and just hit somebody that didn't sign up for this?
Now they sign it to be there.
Well, that's the interesting thing about Dyson is there's that weird, like, non-standard behavior.
I mean, like, your fighting style is non-standard.
He's non-standard to another degree of like, who else has that?
Injujitsu, Polaris has this kind of weirdness, like, what's in there?
Like, there's a fear that I think most opponents would have, because it's like, it's no longer
about, like, it takes you out of the realm of its game.
It takes us back to the thing we were talking about, like, before, is it strips away that,
like, several layers of Ryan Hall, the podcast guest, Ryan Hall, the Jiu-Jitsu instructor,
Ryan Hall, the Jiu-Jitsu competitor, it keeps going down to a point where, like, Ryan Hall,
the murderer of all things that get in his way, that lies underneath all of it, seemingly.
Like, if we're, like, in this society, we put all that aside, but it makes you wonder,
like, now society's being tested in many ways.
It makes you wonder, like, what's underneath there?
Well, do we want, do we want the answer to that?
Because I guess it's, what is it, are you seeing Paul Fiction, you know, the best character in
the movie and in the best scene in the movie?
He's like, if my questions, here, if you're, what do you call it, my answer's scary,
you should cease asking scary questions, you know?
And I guess you wonder, I mean, all of us, that's something that I think it's funny,
we go, oh, that's not okay.
I mean, versus maybe not appropriate for situation X, Y, or Z, but what should make
any of us think?
I mean, humanity is a different place now, and I'm not saying anything crazy out there,
but it can manage a different place now than we were 5,000 years ago, where all of us are
descended from people who have killed things with their teeth and fingernails in order to be
where we are.
And whether it was in, whether it was an animal or it was in conflict with another person,
I mean, think about it, the chances of dying by violence now are so slim, at least in most
countries and most places, like shockingly small, thankfully.
But there was a period of time, like the most period of time where dying by violence was
mostly how it went down.
And I guess what would be facilitative, what would allow you to win back to Ender's Game,
you know, what allows you, if you can't do that, you are forever subject to people who can.
And that's a real thing.
And, you know, we're fortunate to find ourselves in a situation where we don't,
where other things matter.
But that is a funny thing periodically, where people, you'll see people,
like kind of jawing at each other, like in videos or out in the world,
that clearly neither of them expect this to get serious.
Like, I'm just going to yell at you, you're going to yell at me, and it's like this weird
larping thing where we're both going to go on our own separate way.
All it takes is one person to be like, well, I wasn't kidding.
And it's like, oh, you'll go to jail.
I'm like, oh, I know.
You're going to go to the morgue.
And that can happen like that, like society.
I mean, obviously, anyway, you could jump across the table, stab me in the eye.
I mean, I appreciate it.
I hope if you don't, and there will be consequences if you do, but not from me,
from the rest of society will potentially get you at a certain point.
But you can decide to not play by the rules anytime you want.
It's fascinating that we've created rules based on which we all behave.
But underneath there, there's things that doesn't,
there's motivations and forces that don't play by the rules.
And it's still there.
Nature's metal is under the surface.
Seriously.
And again, I pull out my phone and I'm basically saying like, hey,
you're going to get caught.
But really, I'm further antagonizing you, rightly or wrongly.
You know what I mean?
Like, and that's an interesting thing.
And I feel like just people need to remember, any of us need to remember,
just for any reason, just that's one step away at all, at all times.
You ever, I've had people say to me before like, oh, I don't feel safe.
I'm like, you're not safe.
I'll kill you before you get out of this room.
Nothing you do stop that.
Nothing.
I mean, but don't worry, you can do the same to me.
Which means I'm like, oh, thank goodness.
Can you imagine like how many guns are there are in this country?
Like, I mean, everywhere.
I mean, seriously, everywhere.
But that's a heartening thought, not the other way.
Because people usually freak out and go, oh my God, gun violence, gun violence.
And gun violence is like really not a serious issue in the United States compared to what
it could be.
Because it means that, I mean, with the amount of guns and the amount of bullets that are
out there that are in circulation, can you imagine if like one in every thousand was
used in anger each day?
I mean, this would be a terrifying place to live.
You couldn't go anywhere.
So, I mean, although you could say, hey, this is more than we'd like or X, Y, Z,
it actually means that people are much more reasonable and sane than we're saying.
Or then sometimes I might argue.
So, I guess what I mean is like, oh, man, I walked to 7-Eleven and I didn't get stabbed.
I'm like, oh, well, that's good because not because I protected myself with my karate.
It's basically no one decided to run over and stab me because I wasn't protecting myself.
They stopped.
So, I guess we're all fortunate to live in a society that like you said, nature being
metal doesn't become that big of an issue all the time.
But it is funny when you get people in the ring and you go, hey, let's peel back from
Mr. Tyson, many layers of that and say, hey, now it's okay.
And it's cool that, I mean, that's what society is doing.
So, I've lived in Harvard Square for a while and we add extra layers of what safe means.
Like, now there's a discourse about safe spaces, about like ideas being violence or
like, yeah, ideas or minor slights against your personality being violence.
But that's all like extra layers around the nature is metal thing that it's cool.
That's what progress is, but we can't forget that like underneath it is still the thing
that will murder at the drop of in any at any moment if aroused.
One thing that I find funny though, or ironic maybe about the words of violence,
offenses, violence thing is that of course, that if that the belief in that then justifies
my violence, like my, and whether maybe not physical violence, but my response to my
aggressive response to things.
And I guess like, which again be gets a further aggressive response and like a kind of a tit
for tat sort of situation or it goes to like, well, there's 10 of me and there's one of you,
so we'll get you and you can't do anything about it.
But that's not morality.
That's just saying that's might makes right.
So, I guess again, you can understand why people do it and there are certain there
is a progress aspect to it.
But again, I guess without proper examination, I'm effectively with my 10 friends,
you know, and the force of the law, Mike Tysoning people, but not admitting to myself what I'm
doing and at least Mike Tyson again is honest.
Are you afraid of death?
I mean, it's easy for me to say no, as I sit here, probably not about to die.
But is this the UFC question?
Can you defeat any opponent?
Exactly, the answer is, of course, yes.
And I don't have, they're not around, they're not here, are they?
Yeah, exactly.
But I mean, do you ponder your own mortality?
Maybe another context to that is you mentioned two deaths for martial artists.
I think that's actually why, honestly, even though at a relatively young age,
I think mortality is something that I'm aware of, maybe more than the average person,
I think probably most athletes can speak to this and anyone that's had,
I've managed to slide out of a couple of near-death experiences personally,
mostly river-related, because I'm an idiot.
But I regret nothing.
But yeah, thank God we're here.
But yeah, it is an interesting seeing the end and seeing going, well, what's going to happen?
I guess I think it comes back to kind of what we're discussing about belief structure and belief
system.
I think a lot of times, if I recognize that no matter what I do, it's all going to end one day.
And then you go, well, why were we here?
What would I do?
Am I going to make it to 40?
I have no idea.
I'd like to hope so.
I had no idea that I was going to make it to the age that I am now.
Am I going to make it to 80?
How much of that is in my control?
Much of it is not.
I mean, it's so funny.
It's an interesting, back to the belief structure, again, locus of internal and external locus of
control, what's facilitative versus what's true?
And I think accepting personal responsibility for more than is on my control is probably a positive.
But at the same time, recognizing that much is not in my control.
I was fortunate enough to be born in the United States, fortunate enough to knock on wood,
have a serious disease that I'm not aware of right now.
I didn't do any of that.
I just showed up.
That was really fortunate.
And I guess that doesn't diminish the fact that I try to make decent choices,
but it works in concert with it.
And I guess when you go, is death what I want right now?
No.
No, I should think not.
And again, it's easier for me to be relatively calm about it as I'm not staring it in the face.
But what I would care a lot more about is how you live.
That's what's in my control.
And I can't control as I walk out of this building, a helicopter falls on me.
Worrying about that.
I can't control.
Maybe I have cancer now and I don't know it.
And I really hope not.
There's something about meditating on the fact that it could end today.
Outside of your control, they can clarify your thinking about the fact that life is amazing.
Like just kind of helping you enjoy this moment.
Even if life was horrible, let's say for instance, you live at one of those times or places
in this place that still exists in this world today, that life is brutal and metal and whatever
all and short and painful, would you still want it?
And again, as I'm sitting here not on fire physically, it's easy to say yes.
But I would, I'm confident I still, I'll plant my feet and say yes.
Any life is amazing and beautiful and a gift and unbelievable gift that none of us have earned
for the record.
I hate the word earned.
A lot of times earned, yeah, you earned, but it's like, there's a lot of good fortune
and earning.
And that's back to do I want justice or do I want grace?
And I guess we're all fortunate to be where we are no matter where we are.
And hopefully it should give us some sense of perspective, some sense of compassion for
other people.
But also, like you said, a sense of peace.
If it all ended right now, would I be happy with life to this point?
I mean, of course, would you like to live a little longer?
Yeah, I would try to do more and try to live rightly to the best that I know how,
which over time will hopefully continue to evolve in a positive direction.
But if the answer to that is no, I guess that's always, that's a sign that what I'm
doing is not what I'm meant to be doing.
And I mean, you're familiar with the Tecumseh?
Before, I've got one actually, if you could give me 10 seconds, I'll read this one out.
This is a personal favorite, basically.
And I think it sums up, I mean, again, it's one of those quotes on the internet,
like when Abraham Lincoln said, don't believe everything you read online.
But this is, again, attributed.
But it's like, so live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion.
Respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life.
Perfect your life.
Beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or sign a salute when meeting or passing a friend,
even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
Abuse no one and no thing.
For abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death,
so that when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over
again in a different way, sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
Powerful words.
I don't think there's a better way to end it.
Let me just say, we've spoke maybe five, six years ago.
I don't even remember when, but I'm not exaggerating saying,
like you had a huge impact on my life because of the podcast.
You're the reason I was doing the podcast as long as I have.
You're the reason I'm doing this podcast.
It's a little, it's a stupid little meeting that you probably didn't know who I was.
I didn't really know who you are.
It was just like a magical moment.
It's a flap of a butterfly wing kind of situation.
And yeah, I'm forever grateful.
You're one of the most inspiring people in my life.
So it's a huge honor that you would come here, Jen, and talk with me and waste all this time.
I really appreciate it.
It was amazing.
Thank you so much, Lex.
It's just been a pleasure.
I really appreciate you having us on.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ryan Hall and thank you to our sponsors,
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Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast.
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple podcast,
follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
And now let me leave you with some words from Frank Herbert in Dune.
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense.
But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.