Julian Dorey Podcast - #44 - Gavin Adin: Guns; Gender; Masculinity; White Privilege; Victim Culture; & Powerlifting
Episode Date: April 21, 2021Gavin Adin is an Internationally-Top-Ranked Powerlifter who competes in the 93 kg (205 lbs) division. He recently squatted 716 lbs. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 7:00 - Energy Drinks & FDA regulation; Co...nsumer responsibility; Risk vs. Safety 29:30 - What Elon Musk & Alan in The Hangover have in common; Trusting “everything” a thought leader says; cults 33:41 - “What does it mean to be a man anymore?”; Jordan Peterson & Masculinity; Gender fluidity; The biological mental equality of both genders; Why society’s gone “soft” and the lack of war/struggle 48:24 - “The Fourth Turning” & why society’s at an inflection point; Misinformation & the Repetition problem; Tribalism; the inherent evil that can exist in all humans; Criminal Justice & Desperate Environments; Why Candace Owens annoys Julian; Victim Culture 1:20:02 - Conor McGregor & “toxic masculinity”; People trying to be what they think others want them to be; Matthew McConaughey & his hero; The fine-line between self-love & narcissism; The problem with “No regrets” 1:36:09 - Why Julian thinks it’s hard to be a woman today; Gender roles and their changes over time; The Intersectionality Curve; Transgender Male to Females competing in women’s sports & the Cancelling of women who speak out against it 1:47:55 - White Privilege; The lack of nuance in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) vs Blue Lives Matter Standoff; Gavin gives a speech on victimhood; The fine line between validating trauma and encouraging a perpetual victim mindset 2:07:26 - Gun Rights & Second Amendment talk; Gavin tells a story about a close-call his sister had; The inevitable existence of evil people in the world; the critical importance of gun training for gun owners; the attitudes and beliefs of gun owners in states like Texas 2:32:01 - The economic and social explosion happening in Austin, Texas with the tech community; How Gavin got into Powerlifting; Squat Depth & Confidence in Performance 2:49:52 - Steroids in Powerlifting; Transparency regarding Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) 2:57:34 - Gavin’s recent squat in Miami; Mentality, Patience, & Consistency ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q ~ Show Notes: https://www.trendifier.com/podcastnotes TRENDIFIER Website: https://www.trendifier.com Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey
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Yes, there's the literal sense of you were a victim of a crime, of a trauma,
of something like rape. But you said it yourself, the reality is that the rapist wins. And also,
who gives a fuck about the rapist? At the end of the day, it's your life that matters, right?
Do you win if you let it hold you down your whole life and it's your whole life extremely difficult look like you said i could never imagine never never ever yeah i can't judge what that would
be like i can't judge but the reality is it's our response by the way it's our responsibility as men
to hold other men accountable number one number two help women who have been victims of that get
through it that's where we need to be
you can't do that when you have a victim mentality thinking like and by the way that's us as men
thinking like oh well the world sucks and i guess this is just this is gonna happen to you and blah
blah blah no you gotta fucking grab that shit by the reins and say no motherfucker i'm gonna help
you get out of this i'm gonna help you learn to trust men again i'm gonna help you that's what a
father by the way a good father should do. A good brother should do. What's cooking everybody. I am joined in the bunker today
by Mr. Gavin Aiden. Gavin is an internationally top rank power lifter. And I got to tell you,
we didn't talk a whole lot about that.
I assumed when Gavin came in here,
we were going to talk about that powerlifting career of his
and talk about things like staying healthy
during the COVID pandemic and discipline
and anything like that.
We did not.
I think we did touch a little bit of discipline,
but instead,
Gavin brought a whole bunch of very, very hot button
social issues to the table. He went right at all the hard ones and brought them here for us to
discuss and go back and forth on. So there were times we agreed, times we disagreed. And frankly,
that is for a guest to do that. That is exactly, exactly what I want. So I would encourage you to
listen to the full
context of the different subjects we talk on today because they go all over. I mean, it is really
like, I can speak for myself, my head hurt while we were talking about this stuff. I was trying to
figure out exactly where we were or like where I even stood on some issues and they're hard.
And some of these are even like the controversial things. I'm not going to go into what it was,
you can see the timestamps, but these are the exact types of conversations i want
to happen here and furthermore totally coincidentally but i just recorded this episode with gavin and
then right after that i recorded what's going to be next week's episode and similarly to gavin i'm
not going to say who next week's guest is yet, but similarly to Gavin, I expected the conversation to be strictly on their expertise, like what they do.
And once again, it went to a lot of social issues, not for all of it, but for much of it.
And it just so happens that Gavin happens to be a guy who leans to the right, and my next guest is going to be a guy who leans to the left.
And this is also something that is exactly what i
want to happen here i want a forum that introduces all ideas from across the political spectrum
provided that they're not evil in which case we don't have any time for that but all different
ideas for us to have discussions about it you guys to listen and make your own judgments i always tell
people if you agree with everything I say or everything even a
guest says, that's probably not great. And that's probably not possible. There are so many difficult
issues out there, billions, trillions of them, that the chances of all of us agreeing on something
are so slim. And especially with me, I am all over the place. I am all over the place. So there's no
way you can agree with me on everything. So we don't want to turn this into any kind of echo chamber or anything like that. This is
something that really I should have said in an intro a long time ago. I know I've talked about
like nuance and things like that, but to be very, very clear, I want you to disagree with what
happens here in some of these conversations. And it could be with either me, the guest or both.
So these next two episodes, I think,
are going to be a great symbolism for that
because, again, we touched some touchy, touchy things.
So thank you to Gavin for bringing this up,
and I'll thank my next guest next week as well
for him bringing this stuff up.
But I thoroughly enjoyed this one,
and this is what makes this job awesome.
Anyway, one quick announcement this week.
One quick announcement.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're sponsored.
So I thought I was going to go into a lot of detail about this.
I'm going to keep it lighter right now.
I'll probably give a little more detail next week.
And I'm going to do some sort of social post on Instagram to run through it and actually
make it a nice little full announcement. But we are sponsored by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep is the
company that Alexander Horowitz from number 17 and 18 is the chief of staff at and they are a
mattress company. They make robot mattresses. That's the best way to put it. Essentially, the Pod Pro, which is their premium mattress product, takes six hours of sleep and due to
the technology makes it feel like you got eight. I can't say it any better than that. I have used
the product, used it for a while now. It is absolutely phenomenal in every single thing
that they say it is. So would highly recommend you guys getting that. We'll talk about it more.
Essentially,
what you're going to see is an affiliate link within my show descriptions and probably on my socials. And you'll be able to go on there and use the code name Trendifier, T-R-E-N-D-I-F-I-E-R,
and get money off of your orders. I'm going to give the full details on exactly how much money
and specifically what products you will get that off on. Did I say that right? Yeah, get that off on. But just want to make
the announcement now and thank the 8 Sleep team for being the first official sponsor of the show.
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i'm julian d, and this is Dreadnought Fire.
Let's go.
This is one of the great questions in our culture.
Where is the news?
You're giving opinions and calling them facts.
You feel me?
Everyone understands this, but few seem to do it.
If you don't like the status quo start asking questions
all right what kind of energy drink we got here this is rain body fuel do you know who uh half
thor bjornson big big brawly dude uh strong man was in game of Yes, yes, I know who that is. He's sponsored. So Monster Energy Drink, they own Rain.
And this was like their way of, I guess,
like branching their energy drink vibe or energy into fitness.
So he's sponsored by them.
So therefore, I'm thinking if I drink these,
I'm going to get as strong as him.
So there we go.
And they taste pretty good.
That's awesome.
And how long has this been around?
Oh, man, dude.
Maybe like since quarantine, at least, I want to say.
They blew up within the last year.
I'll give you that.
Like that, yeah.
You know, it's tough, too, because a lot of these, like, energy drink, energy drinks in general, but also the companies themselves, they tend to be, like, trendy, right?
Yeah.
So it's like, it's easy for them to make it oops it's easy for them to make up make it but it's
hard for them to last and sustain you know what i'm saying so like why is that because everybody
wants a new thing dude like it's like bang you know bang energy right okay do i know bang energy
right exactly i got my bang baby you must have had some rain right definitely
wasn't a bang because you wouldn't have that much energy if you had every basic like 13 year old
influencer is already like cracked out on every drug known to man was drinking bang energy so
yeah i kind of did that and if you went to if you went to like the expos like i went to the arnold
with my girlfriend and they make it like a club. Like they got two stages right across, right across from each other.
And they got blasting music, hot girls, like everything.
Right.
They got to do it right.
They're just throwing shit.
Yeah.
So, but now they're kind of phasing out.
So.
Dude, you can market anything.
Oh, absolutely.
I remember in Greece, like they still have that same shit for like camel cigarettes and stuff.
Really?
Oh yeah, man.
Oh.
So like people are, no matter what it is and
then you know they do it it's something like the arnold where you know it's supposed to be like
everyone into fitness and whatever no matter what it is like they're gonna market it and then what
ends up happening you talk about them being trendy but half these things i'm always skeptical of them
because half of them are just shit man i mean like like what's in this one that makes it pretty good
so i like i trust you so i mean well see here's the thing i i like like what's in this one that makes it pretty good so i like i trust you
so i mean well see here's the thing i i like this one because it has 300 milligrams of caffeine
which is probably not not good right you don't want to have i mean you know look if you're
stacking that with cough which i do with coffee pre-workout all that other stuff by the end of
you're having like i don't know at least a gram of caffeine like a thousand milligrams of caffeine uh but this stuff i mean it has some vitamins in it it says apparently b vitamins b3 b6
b12 to be exact love the bees says increased concentration so that's great reduced fatigue
i mean is b6 biotin it might be biotin there's like a b complex i think bison is in that got it yeah but uh some electrolytes
and it's pretty much zero calories which you know if you're in fitness that's wait it's got
zero calories it's got 10 but 10 is basically zero you can do you have any more of those bad
boys oh my god dude of course let's let's check this thing out see i like i was never a big monster
guy ever or anything like that and obviously like that's the shittiest example and like i like i was never a big monster guy ever or anything like that and obviously like that's
the shittiest example and like i said i wasn't a bang guy but i never really did any of this
stuff either the only pre-workout i ever used was like the basic bitch stuff like c4 yeah don't
use c4 don't why why do you say no so all those mainstream pre-workout companies their job is to
sell product and have the biggest margin they can. Right. So they're
going to put a whole bunch of fill it. I know it's crazy, crazy. They have so much crap stuff
into that fillers, all that stuff. And it's just not good for you. I mean, half the time, because
none of this stuff is regulated. Right. So half the time, what you're getting isn't even what
the label says. It's bullshit. So the supplement companies that i go to now are the ones that
have been kind of like tried and true lots of reviews on them um go out of their way to get
third-party testing stuff like that now how does that work like third party third-party testing
because this is this is very interesting that you brought this up real fast just like how it's
unregulated because people think about you know the fda
regulating drugs and stuff and then foods being regulated and everything but it's it's always
interesting to me that when you get into like energy drinks and i don't even know what the
fuck you call this stuff as far as like what the official tagline on it is but it's such a wild west
and yet we live in this society that expects everything to be like stamped, organic approved,
whatever.
We are kings of marketing, man.
I mean, for third party.
So like, think of it this way.
Let's say you're a plant, you're a manufacturer, you make this stuff for companies, right?
So now how do you make more money?
Well, you could say, you know what?
Not only will we produce your stuff, we'll distribute it, we'll pack it, and we'll test
it for you.
So you have a stamp of approval saying,
hey guys, look, this is what's in it. It's coming straight from a manufacturer. So it's almost like
everything's kept in house. Now, would they ever tell the company that they're creating the product
for that? Hey, there's something bad in here. No, right? So it's a feedback loop. But with that
said, that's, I mean, it just, like I said, it's that extra stamp. It's that extra comfort that
you have. And what's the alternative?
Something that's not tested, you know?
So, so I wish, I wish I knew the true ins and outs of it.
However, unfortunately, like I feel like they purposefully keep it very under wraps.
Like the whole supplement industry in general, like energy drinks, protein supplements,
creatine, all that stuff.
It's very vague and it's vague for a reason, you know?
And like, so I have a psychology background and I studied pharmacology for a little bit, right? So we- Pharmacology? It's like for a reason you know and like so i have a psychology background
and i studied pharmacology for a little bit right so we pharmacology it's like psychopharmacology
like drugs like adderall ritalin like all these different drugs right one of the things that we
talked about was how how jam-packed the fda truly is like they don't have enough people oh no so you
throw in stuff like supplement they could barely handle what's already on the market.
I mean,
so many companies are putting out drugs and testing and stuff.
They can't handle supplements in order.
They care to handle them,
you know?
So it's going to stay unregulated for a really long time until they get a
lawsuit on it.
That,
yeah,
that,
or,
or honestly,
until like enough people say,
Hey,
what the fuck?
Like I'm not,
why are,
why is this allowed?
You know,
this is,
this shouldn't be okay.
It's so funny
when you look at our top-down society over time i mean you can even go back to the 1910s 1920s
whatever everything is just based on reaction you know not even response just straight up reaction
to stuff like we don't worry about something until the bubble pops i mean you can look at it economically but i look at it with things like this and you bring up the fda
the corruption in organizations like that and maybe corruption isn't even the word though there
is that too the the total just like this is how we do things this is how it's done all right whatever
check a box society that it is is crazy because then it takes people dying from something you know some bullshit energy drink or
some terrible supplement that shriveled them up and they died like it takes something like that
for suddenly the documentary people to come out make the documentary get it all over the news
have the media go nuts create this whole hysteria and then boom now the fda is going to do something yeah and yet it's still also a government agency which inherently just by
definition is going to be totally correct yeah it's not going to be organized right so it's
it's amazing to me that we still can't even get our hands around like drug problems and stuff
like that and then yet we can have conversations about stuff like this like energy drinks and no just accept the fact that like yeah nothing's gonna be done about it
for now yeah i you know i think i mean people like to blame it on like capitalism and just
like the greed and yes i'm sure that plays a role but you also have to think about like necessity
as the mother of invention right so like it's it's not until there's a problem why are you
gonna fix it you know know, like I studied
CNS or central nervous system fatigue. I was trying to figure out what it was. So when I say
CNS fatigue, like, you know, when you're sore, right? You know, when you're tired, when you're
lazy, somehow caffeine, like, I mean, we know the mechanisms, but caffeine makes you more alert.
Now, all of a sudden you have energy, right? But what's going on when you're, you just feel weak,
you feel hollow, like you got enough sleep,
you've been, stress has been fine, whatever it is, you go into the weight room, let's say,
right? Or you're playing sports, you're on the field, and you just feel like shit, like you just
can't move, you don't feel as strong. That's your CNS, that's your central nervous system, right?
So I tried to figure out, well, what's that fatigue like? And ultimately, it's like, well,
first of all, it's very difficult to define. But at the same time, nobody really cares because it's
like, well, there's nothing wrong, like you just get over it. And then the next day,
you're probably better, right? And so it's the same thing with like a lot of the drugs and
supplements we take. What do you mean you're probably better?
Like, you're going to wait it out. It's almost like when you're really tired or you're lethargic,
you're like, you're not going to go to the doctor. You're not going to take something. You're like,
okay, well, you know what? Hopefully tomorrow I feel better, right?
What if it never goes away though?
That's why I was looking at it. Because it because it's like dude you have these spurts three
four days that then turn into months and then years and you have what i would see as long-term
depression as a result of it right imagine always feeling like always feeling weak feeling
tired and energy drinks can't fix that so i think the bigger issue is like, I mean, I don't mind where everything's
at right now. But I do think that if there's a push for innovation for people to regulate,
right, then there needs to be like a necessity, so to speak. And that unfortunately ends up being
like, oh, well, a lot of people are dying from this. A lot of people are clinically depressed
because of this. So let's look into it. What was that exact line? Innovation and necessity is the mother of invention.
That's deep. Yeah, that's really I like that a lot. It's because you're getting at and I think
you're you're already kind of touching on this, but it's that circle that terrible circle of
society where we like everything that's new until something bad happens with it and then suddenly we want to
it's it's zero to a hundred it's like okay let's go back to zero right like i always talk about
the example of self-driving cars you know you drove here today yep that's ridiculous it's
ridiculous that you and i in all likelihood based on the data that we don't really see because it's
still fucking behind the scenes here in all likelihood
it is ridiculous on a statistical basis that human beings in this country are still driving cars
because if you put human beings up against the current self-driving car technology out of a
hundred times i don't know what the percentage is because again the data is like kind of behind the
books but it is reasonable to say that for every x number of deaths that
you'd get by human beings on an average day on an american roadway with all cars that are self-driven
x is going to be less yeah and yet why don't we have it we don't have it yet because in washington
and all these local governments everywhere they required 50 million pieces of red tape from a
bunch of people who have never
built shit in their life don't understand how innovation works and are in a cover your ass
society and so instead of like okay the science is clearly showing that x is happening and let's
get there you know we believe all science right no no you got to get trillions of miles of data
these companies these teslas these googles they got to get trillions of miles of data
just to get a legislature of miles of data just to
get a legislature to be like all right we'll we'll allow a few on the road well okay and i'm gonna
play devil's advocate i agree with you yeah yeah but would what would suck more like it taking an
extra 50 years to get to robots driving cars or you jump right to it think you have enough data
and all of a sudden like you know people are dying because that merge between human drivers and machine drivers, because it's not going to happen overnight, right?
You're not going to have all cars be just self-driving.
That merge causes conflict, right?
And so would you rather be more patient?
It takes more time, but you're going to have a much better efficient self-driving system a much more a much better conversion right or obviously
not take the time but at this you know you're going to risk I guess deaths or lives or car
accidents or whatever I think I think it has its place but I do agree though too it is super
regulated it's a great question you ask it's a great question I think that's honestly that's
a question that gets asked for like literally everything, right? Like same thing
with the space stuff that Elon Musk is doing. Like, you know, all the nuclear energy research
that we should be doing is not being done simply because of a lot of what happened, you know,
with Hiroshima and how we use and abused nuclear energy. Like, you know, there are a lot of benefits
to things that are dangerous. Can you give people some background on that as well? Because are you just referring specifically
to when we dropped the bomb over there? Yeah, I think, well, yes.
Or the stuff after as well? I think both. I think, really,
it's not so much necessarily the specific event itself. It's the use of tools in a way that might
be malicious or in any event could also be beneficial right so
it's like think about a hammer right hammers are used to build things they can also potentially be
used to kill someone right okay so really it's not the tool it's the mechanic okay and that's
literally the case 99.9 percent of the time so instead of shaming for example energy drinks or
uh nuclear energy all things that could be useful
instead look at the mechanic who's the asshole right who dies from an energy drink the guy who
drinks six cans a day right which is hypothetically speaking irresponsible or the person who understands
that they're a tool to feel more alive more alert right and only drinks one a day right and
prioritize asleep nutrition other healthy habits so again i think
it's the mechanic who has the responsibility it's not the tool and so in essence that same that same
uh concept can be applied to everything the self-driving cars everything the self-driving
cars themselves are just a tool right so then where do you go from there there's a lot of jobs
by the way that you would lose too if you did kind of rip apart the whole, you know, so it's like, where are they going to go? What are they going to do? So yeah,
I think it's like a domino effect. But at the end of the day, if we all just recognize who's truly
responsible, then you can find solutions for a lot of these things. It's just a matter of
actually working to find the solutions, you know, as opposed to just like band-aids, band-aids,
band-aids. You're raising the point of the two sides of every coin of every issue which is and and that's
what we forget and i did mention in that one answer the zero to a hundred models yes and that's
that's what i was trying to get at too because we always answer everything as black or white
and we don't answer it gray and look are there things in this
world that are binary like this is killing somebody is bad okay yeah yeah if you killed
that person in cold blood that's pretty bad that's that's pretty binary right so it's not
you don't want to be one of these guys like well let's just question everything right yeah but
you do want to look at it from a sense of okay well what's what's the common sense point here
and like i always you know we use the example of politics all the time too just like with our want to look at it from a sense of, okay, well, what's the common sense point here? And like,
I always, you know, we use the example of politics all the time too, just like with our discourse today. And I always look at it and so many things I see, like I'm kind of all over the place and
I'll be like, well, no, that's not the answer. And then I'll be like, well, no, that's not the
answer either. And then I start thinking about it. I'm like, well, the answer, I mean, hypothetically,
it must be somewhere in the middle, right right and so whenever we have these situations this whole
rabbit hole started with going talking about the lack of regulation around energy drinks
it becomes when those lawsuits happen when the mechanic misuses the energy drink which maybe
was a bad energy drink in that way but they took eight of them a day and died or whatever it now becomes well now none of them can exist exactly and that's the problem that's
where i have a problem yeah and there's a fear like and you can see that totally with the pandemic
as well right like you've got you've got so much going on with covid with and we can say fake news
we can say people that propaganda even you've got so much going on so much misinformation,
people are scared, dude. And like, what are they going to do? And we're herd animals, right? And so
it's so difficult to a be an outlier and be find the outliers, right? So like, for example,
in a world of misinformation in a world where everybody's reacting to one another,
and wherever that first domino was doesn't even fucking matter after a while right where when are people going to step up and where are you
going to find them right and so it's elon musk in my opinion is one of those people so i think it
was obama that stopped nasa's uh space launches or something like that he put in a policy you're
gonna have to double check me on your google screen but i'm pretty sure he was the one who
put that in and then uh i think trump reinstated it, obviously, because we just recently launched.
I don't know, maybe like six or eight months ago, right?
It was over the summer or something like that.
One thing about Trump is that, and I don't understand this.
I think just he liked rockets or whatever.
Like I said, it was probably that simple.
But, you know, every president almost since we got on the moon has in a lot of ways deprioritized our space program.
It's really weird.
So I hope Biden continues what Trump was doing there because one thing I did like about that is he was like empowering guys like Elon to be like, yo, tell us what to do.
Dude, 100%.
And it took the lack thereof for guys like Elon Musk, the outliers, to step up.
And then again, it's like, okay, can we find those people?
Because those are the people we want to be led by, or at least some of us do, right?
So rather than be afraid, scared of the unknown, look at someone like Elon Musk, and it's like, okay, this is someone that I don't want to say aspire to be like, but you can definitely be led by in some sense.
And I'm just pulling up that thing.
I'm pulling up the official space policy of the Barack
Obama administration. I saw something on the preview here. Whenever we're doing something
like this complicated, it can be a little bit hard to find while we're recording. So the preview
on Google was that from the 2010 NASA budget request and bipartisan Congress refused to fund it any longer.
Gotcha.
And that was just some basic NASA funding.
So it sounds like it was a full Washington problem.
Yeah.
Like they were all – and that's consistent because we've had Republican and Democrat presidents for the last 50 years, right?
And they've all kind of deprioritized it but you
it's funny you bring up the space example because this is not this has come up a few times on this
podcast with different people in in different contexts but the same issue which is this is
arising out of the the risk that you're willing to take right right? It's very risky to go to space.
It's risky to try to go to Mars.
It's risky to put people out of this atmosphere.
It's risky to build things that can blow up in an instant, right?
And I think it's Naval Rabikant especially has talked about this a lot over the last few years.
But in the 2000s, we've had tremendous innovation in software in in things you can't touch right in
the internet in the ether things that don't like can't kill you but our physical world innovation
has been hurting because we're afraid to take risks we're afraid to risk one life or whatever
but when you and what was that one more time what was that phrase the
necessity is the mother of invention i'm gonna have to write that might be on hanging on the
wall after this that's pretty phenomenal i'm gonna send you a plaque after this i'm gonna
i'm gonna forget it again but necessity is the mother of invention i i guess if i'm reading that
correctly people over time have had to figure out how to do shit. So they invent stuff to do it and they take risks to do it.
Like there were probably cavemen that died trying to get fire.
Absolutely.
Right.
But there are more cavemen that died not having the fire.
Correct.
And that's,
that's the whole point here.
So you kind of just answered the question I was going to pose,
but it seems to me like we're at that point now where we have to question,
well,
Hey,
we don't want to be assholes
here and be like yeah you know what fuck it people are going to die whatever but you do want to go
into things and say like all right let's try to find new territory on whatever it is and look you
know it's risky so people that want to do this are going to be are going to have to be people
that actually really believe in it because you know you're trying to move forward humanity but
you're taking a risk no dude absolutely and the thing is too like it's funny because it always comes full circle like
anything that you're really passionate about you're going to have a natural drive to excel in
it beyond that you're going to have a natural drive not even like to compete but to be around
people that feel the same way right because as Because as humans, we have this innate feeling to,
or this innate need to belong, right?
Yeah.
So really what we need is to encourage people
to follow through on the things they're passionate about.
Fuck all the material bullshit, all the man-made bullshit.
That stuff will always be there.
Follow and pursue the things that you really care about
because in time, you will find the cure to cancer. You will be the things that you really care about. Because in time,
you will find the cure to cancer. You will be the one who's up in the spaceship. It's just that
that's literally how it goes as a power lifter. Like there's a time when I'm just working out in
the gym. I have a dream of becoming a world champion. And all I do is put in the work.
Dude, that's it. It's just consistency and discipline. Why was I able to do it? Just
because of passion, bro. Like I'm i'm passionate about i find other people are passionate about it i learned from them right and so that's literally
it like you're doing a physical thing too oh yeah yeah absolutely absolutely that because give
yourself credit here you're you're risking getting hurt all the time yeah you know no for sure and
then you can't if you do like you pop a hamstring, you're out for six months.
Yeah, you're out for a while.
Yeah.
And that's, but so what pushes you to do it?
Like what, for someone like myself, John, for example, right?
Who you had on the podcast, CEO of Stu Knighted.
What's going to push him to fund every round when he knows his neck's on the line, when
he knows there's money, like real people's money's on the line, right?
And all of his hard work.
What's pushing him is his
passion he has a vision he has a dream a dream for something better a higher standard that's
literally all this is someone like elon musk is no different than you or i like there's a bigger
vision a dream of something more i know the guy might happen to be 10 times smarter just saying
a little bit richer but if i were betting on an alien yeah that's a first round
draft pick so we're saying it now elon musk is an alien that's that's the dude i always joke that
if i were betting on the aliens elon musk and trump for wildly different reasons but really
yeah that's an interesting pair exactly because they have nothing in common but that's fair i
feel like like and i don't any don't take
me seriously here people but i feel like with with musk there's just something yeah there's
something clicking there i think he's just more on the spectrum than most but still has the social
capabilities more so than most that would be on the on the spectrum if that makes sense
no that's that's an interesting point he just when you watch him it's every time you watch him talk about anything it's almost like
in the hangover remember when alan is like looking at all the numbers in the sky and whatever and
like he's actually like dead ass figuring it out so true that's almost like elon even when he's
talking about like a meme like he's calculating everything that you and I absolutely yeah you know yeah now I'm thinking about it now that's
that's hysterical that's a great way to put it even like on it on the podcast too like he'll
be talking about something like just trivial like hey like what's your favorite baseball team
I don't really know I uh I never really about that. I was sitting in my dorm room at Penn,
and I was thinking about fostering the future of humanity.
You don't have much time for baseball.
I could listen to him talk all day.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I love it, dude.
He's one of the few people that are...
Look, obviously, I don't know him personally,
but he's one of the few people who I'm okay with listening to in terms of like guidance, not just like, oh, let me throw on a podcast.
It's like, what's his take on this?
And whatever it is, I'm probably going to back it.
You know, I'm more comfortable because he's very self-reflective.
And he's very, in order to do what he's done in the way that he's done it you have to be extremely accountable and anyone who's extremely accountable i think for the most part you should be able to trust
or at least trust that they're going to try to do the right thing you know do you worry about
because the the line you said there like i'm i go into it thinking yeah i'm probably going to
agree with this it's a natural human thing by the way for people that we like right like i go into
stuff with people all the time including him and that that is kind of the net or not net the base way
that i feel i do try to pull myself back like i try to be self-aware now like okay i'm going to
listen or watch someone i really like right now i need to go in and hear what they have to say
though and not just assume they're going to be right because look if you're going to pick someone that you're going to assume that with elon musk's probably the top
of that list i agree with you a thousand percent but do you think a lot of people now just find
like you talked about tribes earlier too people just kind of find their people that they they
like and then suddenly boom no matter what they say it's all correct and they never think for themselves on it? There's definitely cults and there's definitely very dense groups of people that truly do relate
to each other. And because of the intensity of the emotional connections, for example,
let's say like emo culture, right? Those are very strong emotional ties it's a smaller community but it's
so strong because it's grounded in emotion like people feeling a certain type of way about their
life whether it be depression suicide where they grew up in abusive homes these are real traumatic
you know and and so when you find other people that are going through it you now have people to
go through it with that's much stronger than being like like, yo, you like rain, I like rain, cool, let's be buds, you know what I mean? So,
I think that there's definitely those populations, but it also spreads out. Like, I love metal music,
I love metalcore, I go to the concerts, but I can't say that I, you know, I identify with that
super dense subgroup of people that would consider themselves like emo, right? So, and I think it's
healthy because it balances out society. So to answer your question,
I definitely do think that there are like, you know, there's definitely room for those really
intense, like loyal groups of people. But I don't, I think it's as you age, as you get older,
like you said, you should start to learn, okay, I can can listen to this i can be here and enjoy people's
company in this group but it doesn't mean that everything they say is like my gospel you know
what i mean that takes a lot of maturity by the way because you have to trust you have to trust
yourself to do because like even as like a 23 year old guy dude like and especially with the way
society is now i i don't even know what the means to be a guy anymore you know like what does it mean to be a man like what is that you know who am i offending when i say
that you know and it's and it's no disrespect to anybody but it is kind of like a confusing thing
for a lot of for a lot of men right so referring to like masculinity yeah yeah i feel like there's
an attack on masculinity um or at least a reconstruction of it and the problem is like
that's fine like we can go through that.
Totally fine. Again, necessity is the mother invention. Maybe there are things that need to
be changed and need to be addressed. Absolutely. The problem is there's nobody stepping up to guide
anyone. So it's like you're telling, it's like this, you're telling the young boys, young men,
hey, there's something wrong with you, right? Or your people. But I'm not going to tell you, I'm going to tell you what it is, but I'm not gonna tell you I'm gonna tell
you what it is but I'm not gonna tell you how to fix it and I'm also not gonna
tell you what would be the result of you trying to fix it right it's just all up
in the air so we're in this like transition phase of trying to pick out
problems but there's no solutions and so you know Jordan Peterson of course all
right that's why I love him because he's making an attempt to do that whether
he's right or wrong doesn't matter I don't even care what what side they lie on doesn't matter all
that matters is that he's actually making an attempt to guide people to guide young how how
is he doing that in your estimation well i think he's taking hard stances people are afraid to take
sides so he's saying like listen men and women have biological sex differences against the status
quo you're saying again well it could be against or for but usually in this case it would be against
right yeah the difference is that he's telling me he's like hey gav listen you can be it's okay to
feel aggressive why because it's literally in you that's how you were hardwired that gives me some
clarity so now i don't feel like a piece of shit every single time my anger flares up because
i don't know somebody said something to me or something stupid happened, right? So, and, or on the same token, he might say's not coming from a place of, oh, that's a woman's job, right?
To him, he's coming from a very scientific approach.
And so I think he offers a lot, a lot more than people give him credit for.
And as a young man, like, look, I want to do right.
I have women in my life who I absolutely love.
I have a sister.
I have my mom, my girlfriend.
And so it's really, it's more so like, how do I be the best version of myself, right?
And use the things that are innately mine, right?
To do best, not just for myself, but also for society.
And I feel like there's a lack of direction with that.
That is a dense, dense topic.
But it's, we haven't really talked about this.
No, really.
You know, that's actually kind of surprising like jordan's obviously come up a few different times because different guests have
identified with some of the things he says but when we talk about masculinity it's like this
dangerous thing oh yeah absolutely look i find that to be bullshit i think that regardless of
who you are what your background is what your political affiliation is, what,
you know, what your family life is like, what your environment's like, I think there are some,
some things that we should be able to say, well, no, this is, this is a way that I think you said
hardwired, like, this is a way things are hardwired to be, you know, like, I don't think it's a
problem. If we look at the other side, too side too and say it's more likely that a female is
really going to want to be a nurse like there are some hardwired care abilities in women that
you hit it on the head that frankly like it'd be great if men had that yeah we don't right like
that is not exactly what we are and and not to cut you off no no but it's good but the reality
of it is too it's okay to blend and to teach men to be more caretaker-ish,
right?
And to teach women to be more go-getters aggressive, like, fuck the family.
Like, it's okay.
You could do that.
Problem is this.
How good is a hybrid car, right?
Electric and gas compared to an all-gas or an all-electric?
And all I'm trying to say by that is, it's okay.
You can have a hybrid, but don't expect anything special. It's like powerlifting, right? Or weightlifting, right? Let's say you play baseball,
okay? If all you do is lift heavy weights in the gym, do you really think that's going to help you
on the field? No, it's not. Playing more baseball might, right? Or at least it's a better alternative.
As a powerlifter, playing baseball on the side, is that going to help me in my sport? No.
If I want to be a hybrid, sure, that's great. But if I'm trying to be a world champion and the best I could possibly be,
right, which one should I go with? I should go with the one that's more specified
to what my advantages are. And as a man and a woman, I definitely do think that there are innate,
like you said, women are literally, I mean, they're hardwired to be genuinely kind and to
be caretakers and to take and raise children and at i mean maybe this
comes from like you know the whole oh well 2 000 years ago we had we had hunters and gatherers and
maybe that's it or maybe it is truly biological like innate whatever it is you do feel that you
know and there and because of those sex differences like men will never truly be able to understand
women and their perspective and women will never truly be able to understand women and their perspective. And women
will never truly be able to understand men and their perspective. And that's why we're always
going to have this clash and this divide. What we're experiencing now, though, is that, you know,
now we have a bunch of different genders and stuff like that. So everything's so fluid. So you have no
definitions anymore. And so now it's like, well, what's a woman? What's a man? Like, it's funny.
And I mean, we might piss some people off with this but it is what it is my mom said something really funny the other day she was like look you want to call
yourself whatever like call yourself whatever i don't care but i think it was time magazine
one of the magazines had a woman of the year but it was a trans so it was a man who trans i guess
whatever transitioned into a woman she was like but that person will never have a period will never have to give birth these are
things that are like freaking like pivotal things for a woman to go through right so can you truly
call can you take the credit of being a woman in a way going through what a woman goes through
without actually or saying you go through it without actually going through it right
and so i think there's all these like really messed up convoluted issues
that are grounded in all of this. And unfortunately, like, or maybe not, unfortunately,
but men are kind of like the, uh, it's like the, the, the, the, the garbage pail, like,
just put it all there. Just put it all there. It's called the intersectionality curve.
Yep. And they're at the top of it. Yeah. There is a lot to unpack there. First of all, I agree
with your mom. I, my attitude is I don't there. First of all, I agree with your mom. My
attitude is I don't care. I want people to be able to do what they want to do. I also think we're
going to be at a point, and I say this as not an expert, but just like some of the things I've read
and then also like kind of guessing in your head as far as innovation goes and stuff like that.
We will be at a point where eventually, and I don't know how this looks for the world or how
good this is or whatever, but we'll be at a point, maybe it's 20 years from now, 30 years from now,
where people can legitimately change sexes. And so I think somebody that, you know, if you are
a female who feels like you're a male trapped in that body and it's like legit, you're not like
seven years old and like, oh, you know, mommy, I think I'm a guy right that's that's that's a hill i'll die on we could talk about that but if if you're older and that's how you
felt your whole life and you can make that decision and it and it goes the full way great
do it the other way around as well male female great do it right now we're not there to where
when you do it you are fully of the other gender right so we talk about hills
i would die on like there's just so many things to go at and what you just said so we'll get to
some of it we won't get to some of it but two things in particularly when i see males who
transition to females then setting records in female sports that pisses me off yeah and and
by the way it i'm not pissed at the person doing that i'm pissed at the system that tells them they're allowed to do that.
They're going to do what they're going to do, right?
Like, well, yeah, I want to play this.
Cool.
No problem.
That's a hill I'll die on because that person lived as a male and had biological differences.
Like, we can agree that, first of all, the female and the male brains work very differently.
They fire on different neurons, which is not the medical way to say it so don't take me literally but if you study the
psychology of it they do what they have in common though is they have the same intellectual capacity
it's not like males are smarter than females or females are smarter than males no no it's they
have the same intellectual capability that's the thing that really matters at the end of the day
the second layer to it though and this is where some of the biology comes in some of the quote-unquote evolution is that physically it is
a scientific fact that the average male is physically more dominant and has more abilities
than a female because they have different evolutionary drives different things that over
time human beings had to do as communities to survive females played critical
roles but those roles weren't going out and fucking killing dinner correct you know so i am
a strong believer in that whole like live off the land like how we are we're naturally animals dude
the two of us would have been fucking killing each other 7 000 years ago and like and grunting at
each other you know to survive right and now we're and and i
always relate this point like do i think it's great wow there's a lot in this one sorry but
oh you're good i love it do i think it's great that we value human life at a higher level than
we ever have in human history absolutely but it's the same zero to a hundred two side of the coin
type thing do i think that it's great that we do it so much
that we live afraid to die rather than to live? No, I don't. So I think our ancestors, for example,
when they look at something like COVID, which was definitely a threat and is way worse than the
regular flu and is something that was clearly dangerous. And you and I are both from North
Jersey and we saw how that looked at the beginning and New Yorkork like you know it like it's it's it's not a hoax by any
stretch like it's a real thing but the level to which we took it in society was so far that our
ancestors would be looking at us like are you fucking kidding me oh yeah i walked out of the
cave every day wondering if i was going to get mauled by a
goddamn bear i'm not saying that that is the world that should exist i think that's crazy right and
i'm glad we evolved from that but the answer is not to then going right back to our original safety
point with innovation the answer is not to just constantly live on your knees and be like no no
well this could kill you oh my god that could give you cancer oh my god you can die from this oh my god you could get hit by a bus dude when it ends it ends yeah if i walk
outside right after this and get hit by a bus oh well that sucks you know what the chances are
someone's gonna get get hit by a bus though pretty fucking slim yeah yeah i think what you're talking
about can be pretty much like boiled down to one word, and it's soft.
Like, we as a society are fucking soft, dude.
And like, I am not at all one of those people that said, oh, we should be at war and, you know, we should have drafts.
But I am going to acknowledge the fact that we have enjoyed a very long, almost, almost 100 years.
Almost 100 years of no war, of no crazy war what what do you we're like
40 we're about 40 years away so we're looking at we're looking at another like 40 maybe 30
because well vietnam ended beginning of 70s okay okay all right it ended mid 70s so i take that
back i take that back half a century we've enjoyed at least half a century that's fair yeah yeah
sorry about that so we take we've been enjoying at least half a century of i i don't want to say
peace but of no crazy anti-climate like just insane world level catastrophe let me let me hedge
for you for one second because i agree with what you're saying i just want to make sure you're not
misunderstood obviously we have a consistent problem of always finding a fucking war to be in yes like that's
why yes yeah but the difference between warfare now and what we do versus warfare in the 40s and
in the 60s and stuff when there was a draft and fucking right tens of thousands went over there
you know you'd be picked up off the street and you had to go fight versus now where it's people
who elect to be in the military there are less bodies needed in specific places, right?
Like, as an example, the Iraq war.
I don't remember the exact number, but we all agree it's this horrible – well, most of us agree.
It was a horrible war and something that still fucking is dragging on in some ways, and it's sickening that we lost so many soldiers.
But in the context of history of losing soldiers, we lost a lot less.
Really, what we're trying to get at – So, yeah. What I mean is – I'm just hedging for you. so many soldiers but in the context of history of losing soldiers we lost a lot less really what
we're trying to get yeah what i mean is i'm just hedging for you yeah it wasn't life or death in
terms of the country itself yes yes so you have yeah we have our select group of people who are
trained or whatever who elected to be there sure what i really want to get down to is the fact that
we have so many in our country who have not had to appreciate the gravity of real life threatening uh events or or anything
like that right so like we're protected like china korea north korea like you're looking at and russia
you're looking at entities that would love to serve us up on a platter like would love to
but they can't why because america's strong right and because so far we have peace we've cultivated
peace but if that all went away just magically went away what would we do right and because so far we have peace we've cultivated peace but if that all went away just
magically went away what would we do right and so the whole point that i'm trying to make is i have
so i have a grandfather who served in the korean war and his his mom was a single mother of nine
and raised children through the great depression she couldn't even speak english she ran a grocery
store that kind of thing we don't have to do that i don't have to do that right and so the
difference is so like my grandfather worked three jobs and whatever. And as it goes on, it goes on.
Point is they had no choice, but to be tough. We get to choose. We have people who choose to go
serve. Right. I've, unfortunately I do think that that's cultivated just a lot of soft mindsets and
a lot of soft attitudes and, and which I think to an extent is it can be beneficial to a society to have that more like
caretaker you know like this is um we want to cultivate a sense of like belonging and love
and that's 100 i definitely do think that's needed i think we're just having like a surplus of it now
do you think that because we started it this part of the conversation, with the masculinity question.
Do you think that the lack of necessity in have to fight in a war or something they are
content to just explore and suddenly decide like oh no i don't need to be this or oh no i don't
need to be that or you know what that's how we always define something it doesn't need to be
defined now yeah absolutely 100 i mean look the reality is if you like think about the laws even
just the laws any state you go to it's illegal to get murdered right it's illegal to to to hurt anybody to have intent of harm or anything like that so when you walk outside for
the most part you're you're not thinking like oh my god i might get murdered today right instead
you're thinking about your normal daily tasks i gotta get to work on time oh i gotta feed the kids
oh i gotta take the kids to practice whatever it is and so at the end of the day like you have to
think about what it was like a hundred years ago so in the 1920s, I mean, obviously, in the 1920s, things were great. But then as soon as 1930s hit, it was like, boom,
Great Depression. Now, all of a sudden, it's like, holy shit, like I have kids I cannot feed.
It's not it's like you think COVID is bad, like that was horrible. So you're talking about two
totally different times with two totally different sets of technology. And I think as a result of not
having to step up, we've grown soft. It's like muscles. It always goes back to muscles.
Yeah. With you.
I mean, I barely have any, so yeah.
Yeah. I have it on my mug. Does this guy even lift?
I love it. Yeah. You got to toss that. Does it on this one too?
No, it's not.
So we got to switch cups, dude.
I got the marker over there.
Come on.
Don't rub it in my face. Go ahead, though.
It's like muscle, right?
If you want to build muscle, you have to tear it down.
And when you tear it down, what does it have to do?
It has to repair, recover, and grow back bigger and stronger.
That's it.
That's the essence of life in a nutshell, dude.
So I think what's the saying?
It's like hard times make strong men.
Strong men make easy times. Easy times make weak men. men make easy times easy times make weak men
weak men make hard times that's the cycle that's all i'm trying to say these cycles
are usually supposed to be based off economics more than anything and the thing is it's more
than that and it has a lot to do with the war aspect unfortunately that you brought up
originally well violence in general exactly if you are fearing for your survival on something
and it's not something where the government with covid tells you to go inside and just wait for it
if you are fearing what another man or another woman can do to you because of whatever the circumstances in the
environment are your biological instincts that is an entirely separate type of thing and what what
does that do like it it drives you right so like that i've heard a lot of people and i don't know
if i totally agree with this but i've heard a lot of people talk about how covid covid smoked people
out like it smoked out all the people that aren't really into
it don't really want it right and really they were talking about the context of entrepreneurship like
how bad do you really want to be successful right well covet happened i can't like that was the kind
of thing i don't totally agree with that i think some people just really like i mean how much can
you take you know um but to that extent like you've gotta if you have a family if you have
responsibilities if you have obligations right like you have a family, if you have responsibilities,
if you have obligations, right?
Like, you have a responsibility, not just to yourself, to your family, to society.
You have to step up.
And I think the beautiful part about, so like, you're talking about war and stuff like that.
I think it's just safety in general creates a comfort, right?
So like, erase, forget COVID ever even happened.
We're safe, right?
Economy was doing well. For the most part, everything was going great. right so like erase forget covet ever even happened we're safe right economic economy
was doing well for the most part everything was going great but then all of a sudden safety gets
compromised and so now we're scared right and so now all of a sudden we're vulnerable we saw exactly
what happened we folded society folded the government tells you oh stay inside it's an
invisible threat it's an invisible threat for sure man or invisible threat for sure. It's not a man or a woman. It's not like we were being invaded or had to go fight in a war, right?
100%.
So your original point of your grandfather growing up in the Depression, and some of us who have grandparents who are still alive can still see that with our grandparents and how they're wired from that period and how they look at the world and it's not all wrong because the difference like the
reason i was bringing up it's supposed to go back to economics and they say warfare but really like
yes economics is the driver of everything if you can't pay for anything in your life it's
a fucking problem yeah but above that that whole threat society it's so true because
there's this book called the fourth turning. You ever read that? No.
You will love that book based on this conversation we're having.
And I don't want to go into the full context right now,
but these guys in 1996 or 1997 were sociologist historians
who did the one thing, the one controllable thing that most historians don't do.
Most historians, when they go to predict the future, get it very wrong because they get the ego of oh we know the whole past so we can figure out
what's going to happen next and they change the narrative all these guys did in the fourth turning
is say yo we're not going to touch shit we figured out a pattern that basically society happens over
80 year cycles and four generations 80 to 85 cycles, four generations of 21 to 25 years, right?
Or, yeah, like 21 or 22 years, whatever it is, of these different generations that have different patterns in each part of the cycle.
And when the 80 years is up, they simply repeat in a new environment, a new world right but you look at the great depression that was spurred by the october 29th
i think it was october 29 1929 crash in the stock market and then you fast forward 80 years later
to 2008 2009 yeah when the stock market went straight down great point and the difference
there is that in the great depression america was still coming into itself. And when that happened, and this is not a good thing, people were, there was no government support.
None. People were literally left on the street with nothing. No food, no nothing. And people
died in the streets. That would never humanely happen today, right? So, 2008 happens, you know,
there's at least some government backstop. It's not like people didn't get crushed of course they did but it's this
different world and then there's also at the time because we weren't the preeminent world power
necessarily then we were like kind of coming into it there's all these other threats around the
world and there's all these other things happening and now suddenly like warfare is this whole lot of
men against a lot of men go onto a field and shoot each other yeah different world now you know and then you can even look at that like i'm talking
about it in the context of america i always talk about like world war ii hitler i should say
happened because of what happened in the economy yes that's 100 true all the money that the the the weimar republic printed during
world war one caused then then they lost the war and the whole world basically had them by
the balls it took all their currency and devalued it through the floor so people were burning deutsch
marks for fire in the street and so what happens hungry dogs get desperate and they turn to desperate measures yeah
yeah that's why hitler was it was so easy for him to rise to power you're hitting it on the
money i mean that's why he rose to power so easily because people were famished man people needed
something anything right everything was going so he's like look follow me man i know the way
right and then the rest is history you said something earlier too i'm bringing a lot full circle because there's just been yeah i like this i love it yeah but you said something about like
repeating things to people or like constant repetition or maybe you just hinted at it and
i thought of it in my head i can't remember but you were talking about like the fake news and
stuff like that yeah and so the amazing thing about fake news now is is it exists on every part of the political spectrum there is misinformation
from every wing and every possible end of politics there is and a lot of it by the way emanates from
outside our country people just fucking injecting gasoline onto the fire and what happens when you
do that with the power of the internet and these algorithms that read what you like?
They keep giving it to you.
A hundred percent.
They keep repeating it.
They keep telling you over and over and over again.
Yep.
Hitler was a pre-internet phenomenon in the sense that, okay, he didn't have the power of the internet, where he riled people up in a way like he was an angry speaker during an angry time where people were pissed off.
So he riled people up, got them behind him, and then he just kept repeating things, and he would just keep adding more layers.
And eventually, a lot of people, and I think Jordan Peterson talks about this too, like everyone has the ability technically, unfortunately, inherently to become a Hitler or something like that.
Yeah, I love that.
So let's get into – I want you to explain that to people in a sec.
But he would keep on adding these layers and then eventually people who started good suddenly were wearing the fucking sociopathic swastika and saying horrible things about certain races of people. You know, so it scares me that now there is a weapon
that can be used to do that at mass scale,
which is the internet and the connectivity we have on social media.
Well, to that point, again, another devil's advocate moment.
To that point, I think it was more powerful back then
to be a guy like Hitler than it is today
without the internet and social media.
Why? You impact one or two two people it's word of mouth and as we know the
stories go on stories gone it becomes more grandiose more grandiose and now
all of a sudden you have fantasy it's like dude that guy Hitler man he's a god
I mean he's given money to the poor he's he's he's making Germany a powerhouse and
Hitler never said any of that oh well, well, that's just what my friends, you know.
So the, how do I put it?
Everything gets lost in translation in a way, right?
And so everything has the potential to become that much more powerful.
And how many sources can you hear from?
The only ones that are talking to you.
The internet, though.
Do people read, though?
Yeah.
Well, back then, probably not if they couldn't afford it.
No, not back then.
Now.
Oh, do people read now? I understand the point you you're making i actually agree with some of it but how much
like we talk about being lost in translation how much do people just read the headline now
that's a very good point i would say 99.9 of the time the only benefit is and this is i'm coming
full circle to the devil's advocate point the only benefit is yes it's more accessible you're
more you have more access to misinformation and propaganda, but you also have more access to
people who are trying to lead you down the right path. Right. And so to, to good information,
the only thing you have to do is start to just try and decide for yourself, which one's the right
one, which one's the wrong one. Right. And to me, the only way to do that is to listen to it all
and to take it all in and to then start to realize like okay if i listen to fox and i listen to cnn try and find the middle ground what are they
inconsequently agreeing right if there is any yeah good for you you know but i can't do any it's you
know it's tough though but i to my point i i basically i i think i definitely do think that
now it's kind of like it's so much harder to tell a story.
Think about the Bible.
Who was going to contest the Bible?
Who could back then?
There was no social media, no internet, no nothing.
You just had to take it for what it was.
It's the same thing with other people who were talking about, let's say, Hitler at the time.
If somebody tells you something, you've got no other source, so you better listen to them.
Otherwise, where are you going?
What else do you have to believe in?
I definitely do think there was a lot more power to your words back then to your writings, like you have Nietzsche, you have all these other people, all these prominent philosophers, where it gets to a point where it's just like, well, he's the guy. Whereas today, you have Jordan Peterson, you could pick from a whole host of people that are talking and writing books and whatnot. And whereas back then i don't think you could have you know here's an issue with that too and my head's exploding right now is there's and i love the devil's advocate because there's a devil's advocate to
almost every sentence out of our mouth everything that we've stated today but when it comes to like
individual people it's another tribe thing people will find their their
individuals that they like so much and hang on every word and every belief that they have that
they then form their beliefs around that individual and then fight for it on the internet and they
find a lot of other people to find common ground with but instead of like we always complain about
or at least i do won't speak for you but i always complain about the two parties and the two-party system and
how ridiculous it is at this point but at least on those you know like i am on washington it's
one or the other right with all these now with this world and the internet and all these little sub communities the range of and spectrum
of thought around certain thought leaders is tremendous and what's bad is that a some of those
thought leaders are not good people and b depending on who it is right and b it creates way more
tribes and so it creates way more disdain. So people are more likely to
find things that piss them off about being different with another person, rather than
finding the things that should make them happy about being the same. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
I think, you know, I think the other issue too, is there's not enough introspection.
So like, dude, it all comes down to education and a willingness right it's so easy for me to sit
here and say oh well just hold yourself accountable start being introspective start reflecting and
start looking in the mirror and start thinking to yourself like well is there really that big
of a difference is it should you even look at something like it's easy for me to sit here and
say that because i have parents that are both together i've had no major deaths in my family
and although when i was you know i was born and raised during the time my dad was in medical school. So my parents were on
welfare and food stamps at the time. Now, we don't we're not poor. We're not I'm not homeless. And
I'm not going to pretend like I am right. So I it's easy for me to say, hey, look in the fucking
mirror. It starts with you, right? And if everybody did that, as ideal as that sounds, if everybody
did that, the world would sounds if everybody did that the world
would be a different place right so martin luther king jr says it perfectly right what do you say is
that it's not uh it's the not the color of your skin the content of your character i totally
butchered that but something along those lines right i think that was it that was it the content
of your character not by the yep there it is probably much more eloquent than the way i said
it he said it he said it beautifully oh absolutely so, that's it. That's literally fucking it, dude.
But it's easy for me to look and say that when I haven't had to experience, for example, a lot of the things that some people may have, right?
And so, I'm not going to sit here and be that guy and pretend like, oh, well, you got to do this.
All I'm going to say is just acknowledge the fact that if there was more introspection more acknowledgement that you have to hold yourself
accountable period period dude it comes down to you whether you like it or not
if everybody did that the world would be a different place i think your self-awareness
on your environment is really important that you you led with that and that's obviously like
something you realize because a lot
of people don't think about that they have their beliefs and they're like well if i did it this way
fucking everyone can right and so the second part of it about that accountability net or i don't know
if net's the word but on on the surface i completely agree with that and i don't think we have enough of
it in society at all i think there is way too much just default to finger pointing and not putting some responsibility on your shoulders and
figuring shit out for yourself think there's way too much of it i also don't think the answer is
far off the other end and saying all right personal responsibility on everything which
now it gets a little complicated but the reason i say that is
because there are so many different environments yeah you know and and i i get so whipped around
my whole life that's why i've been you know i talk about on this podcast all the time i've been
somebody who's been left i've been right like i've been all over the place and now i just am kind of
pissed off but you know you look at all these different problems that we have, and it all stems from a different problem in the environment.
It could be the kid who grew up in a broken home because his dad walked out when he was four years old and never came back.
Think about how that affects your psychology the rest of your life and then the decisions you make with that and the abilities you have with whatever talents or abilities you have.
The upside to use those things, I should say.
Think about somebody who grows up completely on welfare and food stamps, never gets off it,
right? Like you said at the beginning, obviously it was like that, but then eventually your dad
was successful, which is great. But there's people who grow up in environments where there's no hope
for that. Think about people who are, you don't choose the environment you're born into. You're
born into a really bad
situation could be a broken home like i said could be low welfare or whatever and you have no good
schooling you have and then you never get to find your talent and you're just a number on a page
no one gives a fuck about you at the end of the day and maybe your parents really didn't want you
like the things that happen and the abilities you have to be able to make good informed decisions on what you're going to do when you are, say, I don't know, 25 years old coming out of an environment like that is very difficult.
And this is now the third podcast in the last five or six where this has come up.
But I think about this a lot when it comes to like criminal justice and looking at these things.
So we've talked about it.
I talked about it with Anthony D'Apolito, and then I talked about it with Miles Matthews extensively.
Probably once a year, I will go down the little internet cyberspace of going on YouTube and watching sentencings or guilty verdicts and stuff like that and a lot of the
time it will be somebody from a very poor background of all races all different all
different environments but the one thing the environments had in common is that it was
desperate right and i'll see kids 18 year olds 19 year olds who killed somebody and some judge is about to you know
right after his lunch break sentence them to life in prison and of course the victim's family i i'm
like what do you even say to them i mean they they have every right to want to see this person fry
but i think about well what got him there yep what led to that point they have to take responsibility
for the fact that they made that choice but what are all the things that fuck them i'm still gonna stick with lack of accountability let me put it
this way imagine if instead of him going to jail it's his father who left right or if it's the
person that should have played the better role right we have a response i love it i'm so glad
you brought this up i'm so glad that was wild i'm so glad you brought this up. I'm so glad you brought this up. Yo, that was wild. I'm so glad you brought this up, dude. Because, and I, again, I try to listen to both sides, but I've been listening to Candace Owens a little bit.
You know who Candace Owens is?
I do.
Okay.
So I've been listening to her a little bit.
And she, only because she talks about that, because there's a side to this stuff that I will never, I'm not a young black man.
I'm not.
I'll never be a black man.
I'll never be able to understand what it's like to live in a world as a black man.
Right?
So because of that, I tried to get some insight.
Do you feel like she writes that off, though?
What do you mean?
And I don't mean to cut you off.
I just want to ask about her specifically because she kind of pisses me off.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay.
And what I will not – I talked about this with Terrence Jones on a podcast, like one of the first ones we did.
And he had a great line, and I agree with this entirely.
I will not attack her intellect.
She's a very, very smart woman, and she's obviously made it for herself too.
So I think that's great.
I just think that while there are some things she says where it's like, yeah, even Louis Farrakhan says the same things, and they're talking about the same problems from different political angles, and it's like, okay, even Louis Farrakhan says the same things and they're talking about the same problems from different political angles.
And it's like, OK, that's right.
She also seems to really go hard the other way.
And what I mean by that is when she sees something like a George Floyd situation or something like that, she doesn't want to see that, OK, we have a problem here.
And at the same time, I watch it and it's awkward for me because a i don't ever
want to shut down opinions and b i she's also like she's also a black woman she has way more
of an understanding even if she's not a black male in that scenario she has way more of an
understanding than i do right so it's like i'm kind of stuck of like well how do i even go with that i i just feel like she goes so hard towards
the right yeah on stuff that it's like she cherry picks things and it does piss me off because then
i gotta fucking say well no i disagree with that and then i'm disagreeing with a black woman talking
about black issues and it's like fuck man look i though my solution to that just answer your
question like my solution to that is i i know a of people say this, and I get heat for this whenever I bring it up.
But I genuinely, I'm so blessed to have grown up the way I grew up, where I was in the Bronx.
I was the only white kid in the class.
To then growing up, I went to high school at Don Bosco Prep in Ramsey, New Jersey.
You went to Bosco?
Yeah, I played football for a little bit.
You played football at Bosco?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Some people, but let's stop. Some people don't know how big a deal that is. Back then, yeah, I played football for a little bit. You played football at Bosco? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people, but let's stop.
Some people don't know how big a deal that is.
That's like saying you played for fucking Alabama in the high school Alabama.
Yeah, I played my freshman year and I think I also played my junior year.
I was just a young kid that was edgy from the Bronx that was trying to like get after it. And my mom was like the best. She was just looking up high schools because I didn't want to go to public school. I was zoned for didn't have football. And they had like there was a type of school that had like, like bars on the windows and metal detectors. And yeah, I was in the Bronx. So we were like, they were looking for an opportunity to move out. And so, yeah, so they found Bosco.
It was like the best football program.
And, you know, that's what she found online.
I was like, okay, fuck it.
I'll do that.
So I went to two of their camps. And then I went and I met Coach Toll and stuff like that.
He's gone now, right?
He is gone.
I think he's back at Bergen now.
And, you know, I was playing fullback for them, I think,
for my second year that I played.
But my first year, I was linebacker.
Honestly, dude, I didn't handle the adversity well because i went from being like an all-star
like you know in my little town whatever to being nobody you know like really nobody and i and i
just was like oh well this like if i'm not starting then you know a am i even good or b
do they even think i'm you know do they see who they're you know and so
just like a lot of like just high school teen shit you know it just gets in your head and i just like
fell in and out of it but the benefit was that i really fell in love with lifting so like i'd be in
the gym from like nine or maybe eight p.m to like three in the morning every day in high school
throughout all of high school and that just you know snowballed so yeah so i did play boss i did
play football bosco for a little bit i swam for them for a year um and then throughout high school
i played equestrian polo as well so yeah yeah yeah very uncommon thing that's why i threw it in there
a bronx kid bro i know playing equestrian polo i know yeah it's i got into it because i thought
it was my shot at ivy at the time i did not have the grades. Of course you did. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, dude.
That's smart as shit.
Oh, he's a polo player.
You walk in like, hey, what the fuck is up?
Wait, like.
I had the gold chain on and everything.
Hold on.
Hold on a minute.
Wait, wait.
I think we got.
You're in the wrong place, son.
That's hilarious.
Take that hat off.
Yeah, no.
It was an interesting adjustment, we'll call it.
But, you know, again, that's why I'm blessed to have grown up the way I did,
because I got to experience what one side's talking about,
what the other side's talking about.
And you really learn.
It's like, bro, I hate to break it to you.
You're all fucking animals.
Like, we can all be pieces of shit.
We can also all be the most amazing people in the world.
And once you realize that, I swear, and I really do mean this,
you don't see color,
bro. You don't. You just don't. It's like, hey, man, what's going on? How are you? Or hey,
how can I help you with that? Oh, yeah, I'm into that too. I'm telling you, man, the more you immerse yourself into that, and the more you hold yourself accountable,
the more aware you become of like, hey, whatever he's going through that caused him to not say
hello to me today or whatever, that's not a race issue. That's not a he hates me issue. It's strictly because he's got shit
going on, just like I do, right? So going back to what you're saying about Candace Owens and stuff,
like, first of all, 100%. Yeah, I'm sorry I cut you off. We went on a tangent now. No, dude,
you're good. You're good. It's obvious for sure. I think two things. One, I think she hates the
left so much because it really is, to an extent, it is starting to, and again, this is definitely where opinions start to take place.
It's okay.
It's definitely holding back her people.
That victim mindset holds people back, period, no matter what color you are, no matter what.
And that's what she's really fighting against.
So that's number one.
Number two.
So you think the left, and I just wanted to find stuff yeah i'm not even disagreeing you think the
left is in the black community and in other communities too i don't know if you said that
i think my primary like obviously their their push is minority communities so i'm going to say
minority communities in general they push a victim victim mindset you're saying like where everybody's
oppressed there's everybody's out to get us the world's out to get us there's nothing you could do you need to ask you know
that's a victim mindset i don't disagree with that i i i think unfortunately i think that's
a very obvious point now i think that's why the left has lost me um i don't i don't think the
answer is to say fuck it everyone pull yourself up by your bootstraps
no matter who you are i'm not saying there's an excuse for the oppression if there is a depression
sure i'm not saying that excuses it i am saying that if you do see yourself as a victim completely
yeah if you see yourself as a victim then that's a victim mindset that's gonna hold you back yeah
if you see yourself completely as one and are we talked about repetition earlier yeah constantly it's repeating your face i i agree with you i think that that has like you see so many
politicians who've been there a fucking long time of course like that's another problem but let's
say some of the people have been in washington a long time who have over history pretty moderate
voting stances who now are parroting yeah crazy crazy fucking language that is in no
way moderate you know and that that's that's where i start to go you know and so candace is right
about that in my opinion it's it's emanating from that side and yeah i i would agree her frustration
comes from that and then what happens is it's like this giant It's like throwing gasoline on the fire because then everyone is pissed off at that
Yeah, they go the other way and that's do that's the thing. So I think it's twofold for her
I think number one. She genuinely is passionate about helping her community about
Just raising awareness in general
But I also think the other side of it is it is marketing dude, like think about it. She's a businesswoman
She's got to make a fucking living.
What's going to get more views?
Her bashing things on the left or her saying, oh, well, I guess they're kind of right about this.
But, like, imagine somebody saying, like, I mean, and I hope nobody ever takes that context.
But imagine Candace Owens saying George Floyd deserved to die.
Like, imagine she said that, right?
How many views is that going to get versus going along with what everybody else is saying, right?
And so it's kind of like from a marketing perspective, it's almost like, dude, I don't – it almost makes sense as to why she would start to say stuff like that.
So I completely agree with you.
I think that there are some things that she's definitely way too extreme on.
And I think unfortunately that's going to be the case with most people in those positions.
Like you can't – it goes back to what we were saying before right like you listen but you don't just absorb everything
and agree with everything they say right you start to pick certain things for me i don't i genuinely
do not know much i honestly do i don't even know much about my own fucking community let alone i
mean seriously so it's it's it's different like i because i don't know and don't understand, I am not going to pretend like I do.
And I'm going to listen.
I'm going to be open.
And so going back to what we were saying about how that 18-year-old kid who's getting incarcerated,
I mean, she says it.
I would love to fact check it.
I mean, I'm sure she fact checks it.
But one of the biggest reasons why you have crime, especially in black youth, is because
fatherless homes.
Yep.
And our society, I mean, I was born out of wedlock. So my parents weren't married when I was born.
My mom got a check because of that. If she was not married to my dad, she got a check from the
government. Once she got married to my dad, that check stopped coming in. So now we are rewarding
having children and not being married. Now imagine you're poor, right? You don't have
consistent income
a check from the government i mean fuck why wouldn't you take it why would you get married
if you're getting paid so my point is there are all these like look and i'm not a political expert
i do not at all piss myself to be like like that so i'm sure there are things i just don't
understand and maybe i'm totally off the mark i acknowledge that but from the little i do know
it does seem like we're we're blaming the wrong people we're pointing
the finger at the wrong person the person who's truly at fault for an 18 year old young man young
minority for murder although it's a very heinous crime heinous crime the real person who has a
fault is the father that left or or the the teacher that told him he sucked at school and
shouldn't and should stop trying that's the accountability i'm talking about if every single
person held themselves accountable
and pushed each other to be fucking better, that's it.
We'd all be, it'd be a different fucking world, man.
I mean, for some reason, every successful person
I listen to or I watch has some story
where a teacher told them that they couldn't do it
or somebody told them that they suck.
I mean, I've had that with my coaches and stuff,
but it's like, why?
Like, we all agree that we shouldn't talk to people that way
that we should encourage people we should encourage children we should encourage someone to do it
right so it's like so then where where are we going off the mall and the reality is it's
accountability it's it's not it's the inability to look in the mirror and so it's a and this is
i think actually a very big problem with men in general um a lot of us, I feel like, and I'm definitely victim of this as
well. I shouldn't say victim, but I do this as well sometimes, where we have our own insecurities.
We have things that we're scared of, that we feel incompetent about. So what do we do? We reflect
that on other people, right? And so we take that out. I mean, the common verbiage is we take that
out on other people, right? So if I'm upset with myself, sometimes I end up acting more mean, right? Towards people in my family. And I catch myself, I'm like, why the
fuck would I do that? Why would I say that? My mom was just asking me how my day was. And I was just
like, leave me alone. Like, don't worry about it. Why? What did you do to deserve that? That's on
me, dude. So that's me not checking myself. I feel like a lot of us do that. And it's, again,
I think that it really does come down
to accountability but that that requires a high high level of uh humility and that's something
that our i mean look at rap culture look at our music culture in general what are what are we
listening to what's my generation listening to what are what's my sister's generation who's you
know five six years you're in what are they listening to it's all rap it's all it's all
stuff that's like sex drugs violence who's the who's the baddest dog and it's been that way for a long
time yeah 100 why is the cool thing it's what you mean and that's okay but people are taking
it too literally i think it was actually eminem who had a song like that he was like we rap about
guns and violence and stuff but the kids who listen think we actually do that like that's not
that this is to push records this isn't a daily life this isn't cool this is what we want you know and so i think
there's that miscommunication so when you see instagram and you have social media and all these
rappers and kylie jenner more i mean she's more fake than real right now right i mean physically
so it's kind of like when you i mean she looks good i love you girl i do not stand i brought it
up i just want to let you know like that's it dude she's not she's not going to be on your podcast
like we cool boo we cool she looks like she's looking directly at the camera too
it's right yeah i'm i'm checking you on that one don't i will accept no smoke about kyle in here
but continue it's like i i really do feel bad bad for a lot of people who don't have the confidence to look within and to find, to see their own potential.
Like, I feel like it's so easy to look at, like, celebrities.
Even Conor McGregor.
Like, I have a, dude, I have a, it's huge.
It's got to be your height.
I mean, I'm a short dude, so I can't compare it to myself.
But it's your height.
It's wide. It's a painting of Conor McGregor. It was a print. It's 250 bucks,
right? I loved him, but he, I mean, if there's an epitome of like toxic masculinity, that's it.
I mean, this guy talks shit 24 seven aggressive dude has been in the news for a lot of bad things.
Lots of rumors about him cheating on his wife tons of shit right
and yet people idolize him right and there was a time when i did too and so it's it's like that
you know it's there's definitely a lot of pieces of that where i i feel bad because it's who do you
who do you look up to and it goes back to our point before where it's like there's a problem
but nobody's offering the real guidance i'm feeling like my wall is getting attacked here this is not
this is not two people in like the last five minutes it's suddenly it's like they're not
great so kylie apologies connor apologies i'm gonna push back on on connor a little bit
because i am a big connor mcgregor fan it sounds like at least you're still somewhat of a fan but
a couple things as far as like the girlfriend rumors go those are only like rumors i hope
to god they're not true because that's like a beautiful thing she was there i have a story for you at some point but
okay all right that's terrifying um so don't do that but uh as like him as a person first of all
some of it is definitely a marketing act like he's a great marketer but one of the things i really do
like about him because we've been talking about accountability a lot is that he is
one of the most gracious people in victory and defeat i've ever seen in my life the only person
like he and nergeman adolf i never say his name right fucking hate each other the badass russian
dude there's and he's a great fighter they fucking hate each other no doubt about that but other than
him like one of the best things i ever saw is when he lost to
diaz which he talks so much shit going into that fight again great marketer but he loses to diaz
in march 2016 and everyone's expecting after the fight like him to like make excuses like oh you
have egg on your face and he was just like he's a champion he fought a great fight i respect any
man that goes in there he beat me fair square. I will not let this defeat me.
I will not shy away.
I will come back.
I'll rise up and I'll beat him.
But he did a great job tonight.
Yada, yada, yada.
And you hear that and you hear the tone to which he says it.
He says it very soft but resolute and like, yeah, he got me.
And then you see him do that after other fights.
You see him do it like when he beat Cowboy Cerrone in like 17 seconds last year.
Immediately afterwards was like, hey, do not disrespect that guy guy's a legend he came in here with me i'll respect that forever
so i do see in him i thought he lost no no against cowboy saron that was beginning of 2020 right
before covid he beat him with the shoulder thing oh okay okay yes yes yes yeah you know where rogan
starts describing like and then he comes in with the double salt. Oh, okay, okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, where Rogan starts describing, like,
and then he comes in with a double salt shaker
and then finishes off with an Alabama cousin
and then wraps him around on the roasted pepper finish.
And, like, none of us have any idea what he's saying,
but you're just like, okay.
He could be making shit up right now, but side issue.
But anyway, yeah, so when he did that,
like, he was very gracious in it.
So I do think in
him there are some stuff to look up into and obviously like i am a biased fan with it but
your point is well taken there are not what was the exact line it was like there there's a
there's a problem and there's no good example you said so there's obviously a problem here but
nobody's offering real guidance yeah and and so whether or not you look at him or you look at kylie and you really got to look at
who you're looking at in society too and like who you're listening to and we kind of talked about
that earlier but you know a lot of people want in this social media society because that's really
what we're getting at they want to be this or that because other people will love them for it
yep you even see it on a micro scale especially on tiktok i don't think there's any better example
than that where people will try to find their one thing that's going to get them the theme so
one of the awkward things i'll go and look at is accounts that got really big when i was on tiktok with all the
fucking 12 year olds in 2019 that did one thing it was something stupid right and then they kept
they had millions of views and then they like that's their thing they got to keep doing it and
eventually people get sick of it yeah and then it stops and they fade away it's like a sad thing to
look because now they're lost right yeah they may have a million followers but they get fucking
4 000 views yeah and so i see all these kids now who recently there's been a kid who does like the
face have you seen that yeah like where he does that thing he's stuck as the face guy man yeah
he's stuck as the weekend coming on on the song dropping and him being like so call out my name
like that and then looking at the fucking camera like if he tries to do something different it's
some people pull it off but it's hard and a lot of that is like do i think he woke up one day and said i know my purpose in the world i'm gonna make a stupid fucking plastic surgery looking face and
everyone's gonna love it and that's what i'll do for the rest of my life no but now he's stuck in
it because that's what other people want from him and so when we look at people in, and I'm not ripping that kid, like good for him.
But when we look at people in the society, you know, we look at the one, two or three
things that separate them and say, that's exactly what I need to do or find my version
of it.
And then everyone else will love me.
And then you know what?
That's it.
And we don't consider, well, what's the context of them doing?
This is complicated to speak out loud.
But what's the context of them doing that thing complicated to speak out loud but what what's the context of them doing
that thing or being that way what does that mean for the example they set for their following or
followers you know what does it mean for society itself what is positive and what is negative
yeah yeah i mean i definitely agree with that i i struggle with this a lot, man. It's, I really struggle with this a lot, actually. And it wasn't
until recently that I found a, I don't want to say an answer, but certainly like at least a piece
of an answer to this problem where it's like, not only who do you look up to, but why are you
looking up to them? And then what do you do with that information, right? Some of these people are so glamorous, so big, or at least appearingly to us,
that it's almost like, oh, I could never even think about that. So even if you look up to someone,
it's like, is that going to make you more depressed and more down and out? Or is that
going to actually inspire you, right? My answer to that recently has been, how about this?
Twofold. One, take pieces of the people that I really like. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger
was a champion, became a governor, whatever. Boom. I like those pieces. I don't necessarily
like how he cheated on his wife, had a baby and didn't show up to his, yeah, a lot of stuff like
that. I'm going to leave that stuff aside. I don't want that. Good for you. Conor McGregor,
champion, grind ethic, came from welfare checks with a girlfriend, right? From Ireland. He's still
with her. I mean, the dude is undoubtedly one of the greatest athletes right we can't even
we can't even argue that no doubt so that's a piece that i'm going to take with me right his
party lifestyle how he treats competitors for the marketing stuff outside of the ring maybe that
stuff i'm going to leave aside right basically what i'm getting to is you start to pick pieces
of the people that you look up to and say and you form almost like this perfect person
and that perfect person becomes yourself it's your future self now all the decisions i make or you make are in the best interest of your
future self jordan peterson actually talks about this as well so the idea is conahay talks about
it too does he really who's your hero you know my hero you ever hear that speech i have and i i
debate every day dude when i see that i I'm like, did he script this,
or did he really come up with this on the fly?
No.
Devin, my hero.
Let's see it.
My hero is me.
Your hero.
For all, forever.
Ten years.
It's me ten years from now.
And ten years from now, my hero is going to be me ten years from now.
That's a really good impression.
But when you think about it.
He's been practicing that.
I don't think my McConaughey is that good.
Thank you, though.
But I do agree with him.
So it's interesting that you bring him up as an example because he's – I feel like that is setting it more insular.
Like, okay, instead of comparing myself to everyone else, let's compare myself to myself and where I'm at.
Absolutely.
And that's a healthy mindset to have.
I don't like the people that say like,
oh, like, look, there's a place for self-love for sure,
but you're not going to grow
if all you do is love yourself.
And part of loving yourself
is knowing when to call yourself out on your bullshit, right?
How do you do that?
You have to have something to compare it to.
That's the whole like, look in the mirror.
You're comparing yourself to yourself, right?
Can you go back to the self-love thing though?
Go for it.
So what do you mean by you can't have...
I almost like missed what you said there.
So that's my bad.
But you said something like you can't just love yourself.
Well, I think what I was saying was self-love, like you can't grow if all you do is love yourself well i think what i was saying was self-love like you can't grow if all you do
is love yourself because i think that narcissism right it's it's kind of like look if you can't
call yourself out on your shit right okay you're not going to be able to grow because you're not
going to see the opportunities to grow you're not going to see where your faults are right
but then again it does kind of come down to the question of like, what does it mean to love
yourself, right? Because to me, like if I love somebody, that doesn't mean like 110% support all
the time. Oh, you're doing meth? Great. You know, it's like, hey, hold on a second. I love you. I
care about you. Stop doing drugs. That's love, right? So if we're thinking of love in that
context, then yes, I think you can grow because you love yourself, right? But I think in the context that a lot of people are pushing it, the agenda is like self love in the
sense of so what you're unhealthy, so what you're obese, so what you're whatever. And to me, it's
like, no, not not the case at all. You know, very unhealthy way to think. And, and nobody, everybody's
afraid to offend everybody now and lose friends and shit. So nobody's gonna hold each other
accountable. Like if I said to you, I was like, look, man, you have a great podcast and
stuff. But I don't know, I kind of wish the table felt a little different, right? Like,
that's now going to incur you to say, you know, oh, you know what is the table? Should it be?
You know, that's going to force you to question it. Whereas otherwise, if you were able to do
that and reflect on yourself, now all of a sudden, you set yourself up in a better position to let's
say, improve the podcast, right? And so I think there are
things like that where I think there's room for self-love, but at the same time, it depends on
how you're defining it. By the way, I love the table. Oh, cool. Yeah. I was starting to question
the table a little bit. Let's make sure we put that out there. I do. I wipe this down every time
before a guest comes in. It's a smooth fit's a smooth oh dude i sit here like my my my
face is right down yeah sometimes you lick it just i'm literally i check it i check for the
dust and everything i want to look imperfect when you come in so anyway table aside there's a quote
i've heard a ton of times in my life that drives me fucking nuts where people say i have no regrets
because everything i did made me the person i am today
if you say it in the right context it can be an okay quote but very few people who say that quote
ever have because what it ends up being is people are already excusing ahead of time things they're
going to do wrong because it's going to make them the person they are afterwards or whatever
and they're not looking at it from the sense of like okay i don't regret anything because
it made me where i am now where i'm now self-aware right there's a huge fine line there yeah you know
and so i think when when when you're talking about like this whole concept of of people
not taking self-love too far, it's a very similar wavelength
because you take it to the point where,
like, as an example,
do I think that it was,
it goes right back to zero to 100 point, by the way,
do I think it was healthy for society
to tell all women to be fucking stick figures
and if you're not, like, oh, you don't belong here?
No, not at all.
Do I think it's healthy for society
to put very obese women
on ads though and tell them oh this is perfectly normal this is fine no i do not i think once again
the answer is probably somewhere in the middle but what we do now is we discourage anyone from like
working hard to you know look great or more importantly, feel great. Like your health drives everything you do.
I certain damn well now don't take that for, for, you know, for granted or anything. And it's like,
if you can't feel good, you can't perform. If you can't perform, you can't get results. If you can't
get results, you're not going to be happy. And if you're not going to be happy, what the fuck is
the point? It's a loop. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think for, I mean, like, I don't know too much
about the agenda itself
but from what i've heard um from what i see people talk about i think it's more so it's not so much
shaming people who put in the work and try to be healthy it's more so alleviating any shame for
people who don't put in the work right which i like that again to me still a problem i'm a little
bit more um hardcore when it comes to this stuff,
but that's just because of my natural mindset
when it comes to athletics and competing and stuff like that.
And even my business.
If you're going to do it, go all the way, man.
You have the potential to be on the fucking moon,
just like everybody does.
Everybody has the potential.
It's infinite potential.
So why not?
Why not push yourself?
But that aside, that's where I'm coming from,
so I have a bias but i genuinely think that anything that convinces you to excuse unhealthy habits uh no
not good for you whatsoever not even close like oh yeah you had a tough day you know like it's
like saying yeah you know you had a tough day go ahead and rip a pack of cigarettes like yeah you
deserve it like come on dog like who's that helping you know so it's it's one of those situations where
i think that i i understand where it's coming from and you hit it on the head where it's the
other extreme of what society has been like expecting so to speak or buying into like that
sex appeal stuff but then again look at only fans look at tinder look at all these i mean we still have it it's like we still it's like we're shaming that but at the same time we're like
yeah yeah but push it push it push it because that's what sells kylie jenner is a great example
right so yeah it's it's really it's really twisted and it's it's um who gets the likes
yeah it's on the for you page on tiktok yeah it's very true and it's very sad and that's actually
john i was talking to john the other day and he has a good friend of his ivana i think her
tiktok is ivana.get.fit she's really into what she does she's kind of like a fitching vibe
um and she talks about that too and you know and hopefully she doesn't get mad mad at me for saying
this but she she trains hard like she works hard but she says it herself she's like the stuff that gets
the views and the likes are the you know me like it's it's like that sex appeal stuff it's me
posting ass pics and stuff like that on instagram like that is the reality of it and she'll throw
in the videos and she's actually said this in one of her stories when people ask her the question
like hey so why don't you post any training videos and she's like well when i do you guys don't
engage like she said it blatantly she's 100 hundred percent correct that's true so it's like
dude you can't fucking like it goes beyond like knowing your worth and self-love it's like look
man i hate to say it but like you can't because both are right you can't say hey society should
stop sexualizing women should stop putting all that stuff out there 100 but at the same time you know if that's what we are creating and then responding to it's like dude
we're just feeding the cycle you know 100 and that's by the way that i mean who's consuming
that content mostly men right so that's on us i'll i'll call it out completely that's the content i
engage with on tiktok like if you got nice tits like your boy's stopping the
finger and you're watching that video you know what i mean so and it's yeah most guys are going
to think the same way 100 that is unfortunately what it is i i think the best symbol and there's
a lot of great symbols of it but maybe the best symbol like trend of that was the one there was
the voiceover like hey everyone you want to
see something cool and a girl would just walk up to the camera and then like walk back and like
show her tits and ass and say that's it everyone thanks for coming and that's the truth because
those videos always trended because it's funny because it's also literal like we're making fun
of ourselves but that's what it is like those are the i'm a red-blooded male like those are the
videos i i do enjoy watching that what i reallyize with, and I think it's what drives this whole
overextending of the quote unquote self-love movement is I can't imagine, I can't even imagine
being a girl or a woman in today's society. Can't imagine it. I think it's pretty hard for men,
to be honest with you, because there's still a a lot of that competition too but it's a whole different level
for women because that competitive nature when you see that all the time i can't imagine being
a girl going through my tiktok feed and seeing everything that i'm supposedly competing against
to get the attention of men and then telling myself all the reasons why i'm not that and i
i think about that all the time and i have such an empathy for it and so i think that's
again everything's it's like and i haven't said this yet today i don't know how i haven't said
this but i talk about this a lot the law of physics is that for every action there's an
equal but opposite reaction and unfortunately it ties down to everything and unfortunately
it's that eye for an eye thing and it's not good so i don't and i don't think it ties down to everything and unfortunately it's that eye for
an eye thing and it's not good so i don't and i don't think it's good to put 400 pound women on
the front of magazines and say this is what we want right well no you don't but i also don't
think it's great to that and again i'm a part of the problem because i do enjoy it but you know
i don't think it's great to reinforce the fact that if you have great tits shake them and if you have a great ass fucking twerk i think the beautiful
thing about and this is a beautiful thing about america and i speak as somebody who has uh you
know a girlfriend in physical therapy school which is pretty intense she's working non-stop
and uh and a younger sister who loves amer, loves politics, loves history, wants to study neuroscience.
She's going into college now.
You have a choice.
You get to choose.
So yes and no.
I totally understand where you're coming from with – I wonder how difficult it would be to grow up as a female.
And that's something we'll never get to understand.
What I will say though is you do get to choose
and you do also,
you don't get to choose how people perceive you.
You get to choose how you perceive you.
So if you're cool and comfortable
with perceiving yourself as somebody
who would have an OnlyFans and that's fine.
Like do your thing.
I'm not judging whatsoever.
Totally fine.
If you're comfortable with that, cool, do it.
No problem.
If you're uncomfortable with it, don't do it. Instead, go study whatever it is that you want to study. Go learn and pick
up. I mean, I think it's Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank. He specifically says his female CEOs
perform better than his male CEOs, the companies that he invests in. He says it time and time
again. And why? Because, and Jordan Peterson also touches on this, women are more agreeable.
So it makes sense.
So now, and then when we're really...
Yeah, go ahead.
I know he does say that, and that's a whole separate issue.
But what does that have to do with O'Leary having female CEOs that perform better?
Because I've heard him say that.
Well, my point I'm getting to is that your only option isn't OnlyFans, isn't sex appeal, isn't shaking your tits and your ass
is like what you said. Right. But the agreeable thing, that's where I'm a little bit... Oh,
the agreeableness I was saying was more so that just to prove that women can perform better
in business, in whatever industry that they want to do. Like the statistics are there.
Okay. So I was saying that women have, according to Kevin O'Learyary perform better in the ceo position right or running his companies right and i was saying
to support that he attributes it attributes it to agreeableness which is what jordan peterson talks
about just to follow that through so the agreeableness supplies a reason as to why women
women would perform better in like you know business settings or ceo or owner of a company
or something like that and then that in its in and of itself would support the fact that you don't
have to do you know only fans or whatever well and this ties back to what we talked about early
on in the episode where we're talking about like biological drives and and roles and what I worry about with leaning into that is that you then take away possibilities that do and should and unfortunately didn't always exist for women that exist now, right?
So, for example, it is very possible for a woman to be a little girl now and say like, you know i'm going to be the ceo of exxon
mobile or the ceo of apple or whatever yeah because guess what they can absolutely and that
wasn't the case 40 years ago so that's nice progress but again when if a woman chooses to
go do something like that you know there's also aspects of where you go quote-unquote against the
gender role right like oh the mother raising the kids and whatever.
Like, you're going to go outside that.
I don't think that exists anymore, dude.
I'm almost surprised to hear you say that.
I think it's starting to dissolve.
And what do you think of that?
Like, the fact that it's dissolving?
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.
Dude, I don't care.
I mean, dude, look, I'm going to be honest.
I hate washing the dishes.
I hate taking, but everybody's got responsibilities. I want, and I say this to my girlfriend and, you know,
if we end up together or if we don't, wherever she ends up, I want her to be strong, independent,
and feel like she can depend on herself. Right? I think the problem with that old school,
traditional mentality was like, well, women technically were dependent on the men to bring
the bread home. Right? Yep. There's a problem with that, like a big problem.
All right, now I'm going to turn this on you then.
Go for it.
I'm going to go in a different direction than we were going to go because this is more interesting.
Yeah.
Because earlier you talked about like the loss of masculinity.
Yep.
And the loss of the role for the man to be able to take.
What you're saying right, and I didn't disagree with that at all.
I think we do have some problems with that.
But a lot of times like someone like you will say something like that and get put in the box of, like, oh, this is what he must think about, quote-unquote, gender roles.
No, not at all.
And it's very clear that you're in the box that I'm in, which is, like, do whatever the fuck you want.
Do whatever the fuck.
Do what you want.
So how do we balance that?
That's my question.
Oh, absolutely.
So when I say that there are these sex differences, right, really what I'm talking about is I don't think that there should be any sort of expectation of what a male and a female should do or can do with their life.
So therefore, again, it comes down to accountability.
Who are you?
Who do you choose to be?
And how do you – what are your choices that you're going to use to benefit society, right?
Again, I'm totally, totally for women choosing whatever and in fact like i said i think that they can perform better in many aspects than men can and vice versa and i'm also totally if a guy
wants to step up and say i'm gonna fucking i'm gonna clean this house like nobody's ever fucking
clean this house cool bro like do it do it what i don't want to see is people shaming men
for being let's say the go-getters the aggressive the hustlers that like okay so what i'm not trying
to you know i'm not trying to like let me put if i have to compete against a woman for a job
great like let's let's fucking do it may the best of us take it right same thing like and and that's
yeah i i don't i don't believe really in the gender role situation whatsoever.
What I do think, though, is that historically, I think women are better at being at home,
taking care of children.
And that's just because of, again, what I believe to be true is the sex differences from innate biological stuff, right?
Whereas men are better at going to work or setting up a shop, being entrepreneurs.
And again, I do think that that
does, it's kind of like a scapegoat, so I hate to say it, but I really do think it comes down to
like the sex differences. But that's not to say that a woman isn't capable of doing what a man
does and a man isn't capable of doing what a woman does. All right. Great context. Great context.
Because now I see exactly where you are across the board and it's very – I think I'm in line with every single thing you've said on the topic.
It comes back to causing the other problem though when you do think that.
So I – how do I say this in English? This is really hard to concept and bring it out and i
don't want to explain it wrong i think that we should live in a world where every single thing
you just said should absolutely exist and people women and men should have the freedom of choice to
be who what and how they want to be completely i also think that we shouldn't shame the two genders into maybe falling back into a little bit of more traditional roles that they have.
You said it.
I'm going to stop you.
You shouldn't shame people for wanting to do the traditional.
Right.
And I think you touched on that too.
So we're 100% with you there i worry about when we take that too far and then start trying to legislate from
the other side and start shifting the roles on their heads i mean i i think about this
intersectionality curve all the time because i'm at the top of it i'm a and you are too i'm a white
male right so guess what we we got we got nothing nothing to talk about and and nothing to
be able to say like well there's somebody more powerful than us yeah but what it does is it
creates these tribal factions where you're constantly looking for the lower version and
so as an example now you see and and it comes back to it like i feel like people rag on the
trans community so much and that's bullshit.
What's not bullshit is when they say where things are like taken too far.
And we touched on earlier, like,
you know,
male to female transgenders competing in women's sports.
Like that should not be something that you can't argue against and say,
well,
hold on a fucking minute.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking like in general,
like just kind of writing it off.
The problem is you now see
it like in that context like some women come out and speak out like against wait i don't want
someone that was formerly a guy competing in my sports which not only do they have every right to
say i will fight that battle with them because i agree with them right and i think i'm backed by
science on that we are seeing some of those women quote unquote get shut down or canceled now yep
because they are higher on that intersectionality curve correct and what worries me is that we've
seen like ideologies take control of it and then define entire ideologies by it that to the point
that it's like you create people who then disagree with it and get pushed farther and farther to the
opposite end that we have now create like i see them on the internet we've now created a lot
of people who want to go back to fucking 1900 where women can't vote and this was
better when I was a man society like that's not the answer right yeah I just
worry about the ability to even get that like common ground of like hey everyone
just do what the fuck they want to do just don't like if we're gonna draw
lines draw it at
things like and not to pick on i'm just using that as the most ridiculous over the top example
draw it on the lines of not letting a former male compete in a female sport right like it's simple
shit yeah no dude i completely agree i also think that it's just i think joe rogan said this on one
of his podcasts that there was like a historian who said nearing the end of every civilized society was argumentation over gender douglas murray was that who he was yeah so and
it makes sense because it's kind of like look man that means that things i i say this take this with
a grain of salt it means that things are easy enough for us to worry about it, right? Again, sex differences. Why is it that men were the ones to go to war and women were the ones
to stay home and take care of the children or raise the children? It happened naturally. Why
was that? There are sex differences there. Why is it that in sports it is unfair for a trans woman
to compete against women who aren't trans trans because there are sex differences that as
you noted earlier as of right now we cannot manipulate and control to the extent that we
you know we would want to yep it it definitely and it's it's unfortunate because i think and i
guess the word that we're skating around here is like the privilege idea yep uh and i'll just i mean i'll just take it as far as white privilege right if if you have
it it's like i'll the best way i can do this i can do you think it exists great question um i'm
on the edge i am not of course as a as a 23 year old white male i'm gonna say no but it's easy for
me again goes back it's easy for me to say no when i am in
the epitome of what would be white privilege right yep i am i believe in opportunity i am a pure
opportunist i don't i don't believe in socialism i don't believe in communism i don't believe
in handouts none of it i really don't um i believe in give someone the
opportunity to work to to to use their talents if they choose to awesome if not that's that's not my
problem right so because of that you know i i the problem is i know too many people friends of mine
successful black men who are strong motherfuckers who who get it done day in, day out,
way better than I do it. Straight up. Ashton Ruska is one of them. He's an elite level power
off. They're probably one of the best to ever do it right now. He's about our age and it's insane.
And he's, he serves in the military on top of serving in the military. He's one of the greatest
athletes in our sport. It's insane when you look at that and you think, well, hold on a second.
Is it, is it, was he held back?
Was he, I think regardless of what the circumstances are, he saw opportunity.
And I don't want to speak for him because I don't know what his views are.
He saw opportunity regardless of circumstance, regardless of all,
he made it happen and he's doing it better than most.
So the point that I'm trying to make is I try,
I'm not saying that I want to dodge the bullet in any way, But I really don't, I don't see a lot of that. I don't really see that. I guess I could understand it in the sense of like, like a Wall Street case or any of like the old traditional power structures that we have. Sure, I could, I could see the argument. Unfortunately, in my space, I don't see it. Like, I'm struggling to get my, I can't say struggling, but it's not easy to get a business off the ground when you're starting from nothing, right?
Yep. That's what I'm doing. And you're doing the same thing. And when I think of privilege,
I think of things being handed to you because you have the privilege. I don't really feel like I'm experiencing that. And I know a lot of people who at the same token, they agree. It's really just opportunity.
And I think the problem is it gets misconstrued.
And it's funny because a lot of the people who I think push the white privilege thing are people who are very wealthy and very white.
And so it's like, how the fuck do you know?
Like, what are you talking about?
Like, to me, it just doesn't make sense.
It's like, look, at the end of the day, this is America, man.
You create opportunity.
And at the end of the day, like, I hate to break it to you, but not everybody's going to like you.
A lot of people don't like me.
And so it's your job to not give a fuck.
Like, that's the beauty of America.
You can keep going.
You can push.
You can find the people that think like you.
Find the people that you can connect to. And actually, even better than that, find the people
that disagree with you, but yet you guys find a way to keep going. Because that's what cultivates
the true change and innovation, right? You can't do that if you're constantly thinking like,
he has a one-up. He has an advantage over me. Again, it goes back to that victim mindset.
So I have to tell myself, look, if it exists, if it doesn't exist, it doesn't matter.
My job is to create opportunity, take advantage of opportunity, and help other people achieve
opportunity.
And again, I genuinely only care about the content of somebody's character.
That's how I was raised.
And again, I'm very blessed to have grown up the way I grew up.
So it's easy for me to think like that.
But yeah, but do you think white privilege is a big issue today?
Do you think that that's
something that you have that your parents have like where are you at with that see when I answer
this question I have to answer it very very carefully because everything will get taken
out of context and I'll be labeled in a box and this is something this is just a problem I run
into all the time and it's why people on the right get pissed at me and people at the left
get pissed at me but I find the gray area on stuff where it isn't black and white like we talked about earlier
where it isn't like oh you killed somebody right like wrong obviously um i believe that by the
definition of it which is what what do you see as a definite exactly my point exactly i believe
by the what should be the definition like the word
privilege and i'm not reading from the webster's miriam whatever the dictionary right now
the word privilege should mean that you have some sort of advantage that inherently is baked in that
another person doesn't yeah i think when you say the words white privilege on the surface and then add context to it and say by math what is the most
common race in america it is still white it has been going down which i think for the long term
is actually like a like a good thing that we're getting more diverse great but you know we're
still last i checked it was like 65 percent of society is white so there's you are more likely
to run into someone who looks like you and therefore
has your experience than the other people who are in the 35 sure so by that metric and then adding
to it that yes do i think there are clearly in some environments some baked in prejudices that
even people i'm not saying like people are racist but do people have some inherent things that they don't realize they have for sure absolutely so yes i think it exists the problem is i think the term has been bastardized
out of control yeah to exist to you talk about the victim mindset to exist to a level that is
beyond ridiculous that is not the truth so like i use the best example is like the whole argument socially that happened last summer in
light of george floyd and all that do i think that all cops are pigs absolutely not do i think that
all cops are great absolutely not unfortunately the two levels of society that got attention and
we're fighting are the two who feel those two ways and so you don't have any nuance
to be able to say okay well yeah you know like anything else there are some bad cops like
anything else sometimes they get covered up for but guess what there's a lot of great ones too
guess what there's a lot of guys who get into that work and don't get paid a fuck ton of money either
by the way right who technically risk their life going out there who are legitimately trying to protect society saying that opinion i just said out loud was not a popular thing to say
last summer because both sides yell at you and say fuck you yeah because you don't see it completely
their way so i feel the same way the same way when i talk about white privilege because it's used as
a weapon and it's look it's easy for two white guys like you and me to sit in here and say this and have a nice fucking critical thinking discussion.
Exactly.
Let's rip a joint and talk about it.
It's easy to do that.
So that's why I want to have that perspective.
And I've had black guys in here.
I'm going to continue to do that.
I've had Asian guys in here.
I've had people of all different races in here.
The one thing, I'm finally having another woman in here.
I was 0 for 7 there.
7 canceled on me. So it's been a fucking cock fest recently but that's starting to change so we'll get there but you know like i even feel funny talking about it just like
you and me going off about women versus men all the time i think it's great if there had been more
women on the podcast so everything is like a grain of salt and it has the context of like you have to
be self-aware of where you sit so i am self- of the fact that I am a white male and there are some baked in things that have probably helped me a little bit.
I just don't think the problem is like, yo, we're the most racist country on planet Earth.
Absolutely fucking not.
I will shut down that.
I don't give a fuck who tells me that argument, what background you come from or whatever i think that we have some racism problems in this country abso-fucking-lutely
would i like to see it all eliminated absolutely am i going to do whatever i got to do to help that
process of being eliminated abso-fucking-lutely if i can use this podcast to do that i'm going to do
it but am i going to sit here and allow people to say that when there's fucking genocide that
happens in this world based on race i'd also like to point out too that i think my biggest you brought up to
light and you gave me some ideas here that i think the bigger issue that i have with the statement
white privilege is the white part of course naturally here's the thing a lot of people have
a lot of privileges but privilege by itself fine there's a lot of things that we grow up.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
It's the white part, right?
Yeah.
I can tell you right now.
I just went to Texas, right?
We went through all of the homeless people there.
All of them that we found on the street.
Maybe this was just by chance.
We're white.
Most of them, by the way, were my age.
I promise you that when you look at the statistics, there are more impoverished white communities,
white families, white families.
It has to be because we have more white people.
And I want to be careful too because I understand what you're saying.
Of course it's going to be that way because we have statistically more.
Same way that technically, I don't remember the numbers, but there were technically like the same amount of white people killed by police as black people but but
but then then when you put it in context the ratio of a black person being killed by a cop to a white
person is actually like three to one so you see the problem and i'm not trying to at all excuse
or justify any side and i'm not at all trying to deteriorate the value of what the black and
minority communities are going through not at all i want to make that perfectly clear all i'm trying to say is that by saying white privilege
you are assuming that all white people have privilege i have a i say right now i have a
privilege now at this point in my life i unless something goes drastically wrong with my father
my dad's a surgeon so he worked his ass off to go through medical school whatever long story short
now he's a surgeon he has his practices practices. Unless something goes drastically wrong, I will not be homeless. If I fail with my business, I'm going
right back to mom and dad's house and I can at least eat, right? That's privilege. I get that,
right? My parents made choices to create that for me. My parents grew up without the privileges.
There are families, white families, who don't grow up with that privilege and who also don't have
that privilege currently i personally know these people who are actually their business means a lot
to them i know kids who didn't get to go to college because they didn't have the privilege
of going to college having somebody pay i didn't pay for college myself my parents did right i went
to manhattan college on a presidential scholarship then transferred to colgate manhattan college on
a presidential was 10 grand a year. Not horrible.
Colgate, 70. 70 fucking thousand dollars. I did not, look, I didn't pay a fucking dime. My parents paid that. Straight up. So that's a privilege. I got the privilege of going to school. I happen to
be white. There are a lot of people who aren't white, who also have privilege. By the way,
the Kardashians are one of them, I would assume. So the reality is like, you're looking at a lot of cases where we blanket statement one race, and that in and of itself
makes it a race thing. And that's where I have a problem. I am totally fine with somebody saying,
hey, Gav, you have privilege. I have a problem when they say, hey, Gav, you have privilege
because you're white. It's like, no, no, no, let's just ignore the race, ignore the color of my skin.
Let's just acknowledge the fact that my parents now have money,
therefore I have money that I can use to suffice to survive, right? Now I'm not driving fancy cars
and all that shit, but again, I'm not homeless, dude. I'm not suffering the way a lot of other
families are. Can I add to your point here too? Go for it. And this is a problem I have with that whole conversation.
When you create this language and create this barrier where it's white is all powerful,
and therefore black is only extremely oppressed,
you create the complete generalization that in this case,
with this example, all black people are poor, which is not fair.
It's not fair.
Because it's also not true.
You had a black president who was one of the most successful people to ever live.
Exactly.
They have – there are plenty of examples now in society, and you couldn't have said this 70 years ago.
But you know what?
And you know what?
I think what sucks is that it took until now for those types of people to get recognized.
What do you mean?
I'm happy that we have a lot of the movements we have now because you have things like the BET Awards, right?
And things where we have now a focus on successful people in black culture.
You're not going to get that 100 years ago, dude.
That's not going to happen.
Yeah.
Right?
So because of these movements, we have a lot of fantastic shit.
I mean, I love the Black Panther movie.
I hate to say it, but there's no way that would have gotten the press it would have gotten if we didn't have the awareness and the movements that we have now.
Right?
We're more open to it now because of everything.
So for that, I'm entirely grateful.
The only thing that I hate is when people try to divide based on race because that perpetuates the problem.
Instead of saying white privilege, because that perpetuates the problem. Instead of
saying white privilege, you just say privilege, period. And because the majority of us in the
country are white, like you said, are white, unfortunately, that means the majority who are
privileged are going to be white. And that's just a fact. We can sit there with that.
But what I want to say to the people listening to the podcast right now like and this is something that this is a heavy podcast this is yeah this is a heavy one i i genuinely believe this to my core
i don't give a fuck what color you are what what gender i don't care about anything right at the
end of the day if you see yourself as somebody who is oppressed as somebody who is a victim
i promise you that's only going to hold you back. And the reality of it is, if you allow yourself to feed into that and feed into that and give
into that, I promise you, you will have nothing but a negative mindset moving forward. I promise
you, if you pull yourself out, if you recognize the power is within, that's the beauty of this
country. That's the beauty. I'm not saying it's going to be easy. I'm not saying that it's going
to be harder for one person than it is, like 100%.
And everybody's going to have different experiences, right?
And I'm going to be straight with you.
I wish I could tell you.
I wish I could guarantee you that this color of your skin wouldn't play a factor in your success.
I wish I could, but I do not know that answer.
And I certainly can't speak on behalf of anybody that's not white, right?
Or anybody that's not a white male.
So I'm not going to pretend that it's going to be just as easy as it was for me. I'm not going to say anything. What I am going
to tell you, though, is I can guarantee you, and I know this because of Powerlifting. I know this
because of my training that I've been training for over 10 years in multiple different sports.
You will not grow if you do not suffer, if you do not endure, if you do not take advantage of
opportunity. You cannot do that if you see yourself as somebody who's not capable. If I sit
here and think, man, you know, I'm not Ashton Ruska, man. I don't have the genetics or I'm not
so-and-so. I'm just, I'm five foot four, dude. I'm five foot four. There's like, there are beasts.
I mean, Hafthor Bjornsson, the guy who's sponsored by Rain Energy Drinks, the dude's like six, seven.
I'm not that guy. Man, how could I ever accomplish what he accomplished? No way. Arnold Schwarzenegger, he's a beautiful human, man. I mean, he's got long hair. He's got
that accent. I could never do that. You think that's going to get me anywhere? No fucking way.
So I have only one option. That's to believe in myself. You can't depend on other people to do
that for you. And if you can do it, I promise you, you will see so much more success. The privileges,
the disadvantage, all of it goes out the fucking window,
because guess what?
It doesn't matter.
You're in control.
You're in control of yourself
and your decisions and your actions.
So when you take, when you hold yourself accountable,
when you take action, you can create that change,
no matter what the privileges or advantages
or disadvantages there are that exist in your life.
I think that's a really powerful thing.
I think a lot of people who grew up in our time that are our age, I think it's a really powerful thing. I think I think a lot of people who Who grew up in our time that are our age?
I think it's really difficult for people to grasp that then you are in fucking control like the whole privilege thing
Why did that stem out that stemmed out because people felt like they couldn't get to where they wanted to go because of the color
of their skin right
Even if there's truth to it at the end of the day does it change anything?
No, you still anything no you still have
to you still have to find a way and by finding a way you create a better path let me ask you a
question two things on that i'm going to give an extreme example to start and then i want to
push on that too i think creating a victim a perpetual victimhood mindset totally agree and
i think it's a problem and i it's hard to stop the slippery slope of getting to that, which is why we're there, which is like being a victim is cool.
And I don't think it should be.
But, you know, if you had something bad happen to you or something, you are a victim to something.
And there needs to be a recognition that like, oh, this happened to me.
Like, let's use an extreme example.
Girl gets raped.
She needs to recognize that.
Right.
And like she needs to understand she is a victim. And it's needs to recognize that right and and like she needs to understand
she is a victim and it's okay to say that and it's okay to to be fucking broken you know what
you don't and unfortunately something like that happens it's like whatever happens after your
mind you can get really fucked up from that and you may be fucked up for the rest of your life
and i can't fault her in
that way but unfortunately if you beat it into your head every single day that that's what i'm
this this will define me and i'm not faulting girls who do that i can't imagine having that
happen to me but like that you become that right yeah so you don't want to have to you don't want
the the rate i almost said raper that would have been bad you don't want the
rapist to win you you like that's that's how they win when when they completely take away your
entire future and it's a very tough thing to say out loud because i can't imagine right and and
i'm fuck if i'm going to tell you how i would handle that i can't i'm not a woman and like that
that's that's horrible so extreme example but you also have like looking at it from the sense of like, okay, you said something
like, I can't change this. So let me just break through it. I would say you need to be careful
with that in the sense that you don't want to just complete, like if everyone just ignored
that something was fucked up, that was hurting certain people more than it was hurting
other people or hurting certain people and not hurting other people then we would never fix
things there has to be a level to which we recognize stuff and then fix it my problem where
i agree with you is where we recognize stuff and then say we're going to fix it but all we do is
just continually recognize it and then beat it into existence forever yeah i completely agree i
mean first of all the problem is that when i say victimization victimization is not validating
trauma that's not valid validating trauma is its own separate independent oh okay yeah yeah
victimization is when you consider yourself that i mean look yes there's the the literal sense of
you were a victim of a crime of a trauma of something like rape but you said it yourself
the reality is that the rapist wins and also who gives a fuck about the rapist at the end
it's your life that matters right do you win if you let it hold you down your whole life and it's
your whole life it's extremely difficult look like you said i could never imagine never never ever
yeah i can't judge what that would be like i can't judge but the reality is it's our response by the
way it's our responsibility as men to hold other men accountable number one number two help women
who have been victims of that get through it that's where we need to be you can't do that
when you have a victim mentality thinking like and by the way that's us as men thinking like
oh well the world sucks and i guess this is just this is gonna happen to you and blah blah blah
no you gotta fucking grab that shit by the reins and say no motherfucker i'm gonna help you get out of this i'm gonna help you learn to trust men again i'm
gonna help you that's what a father by the way a good father should do a good brother should do
and this hits home for me because i you know i have a sister who i love i have a girlfriend who
i love i have a mother who i love and i don't even know how it would feel if i found out let
alone forget about being them in the situation here's the other thing though
and this is why I by the way I'm pro-gun here's my issue my my sister told me the other day now I live in Mahwah uh New Jersey which is Bergen County right not a bad area not she's walking
the dog she says there's a white van um there's somebody in the van and he's staring at her right
she's like it's obvious that he's staring at her, right? She's like, it's obvious that he's staring at her.
The dog stops, like looks.
And she starts to feel a little uncomfortable.
The guy is about to get out of the van, right?
Just staring at her, like looking at her up and down.
I wasn't there, but this is what she said.
Then she said a police car kind of pulled out
and then he quickly got back in his van
and she kept walking.
Now I'm thinking to myself like, okay.
So now my sister, by the way, for context is uh what would she be 17 17 so now i'm thinking my now i'm already getting heated right so i'm
like fuck what what would she have done god forbid anything god forbid anything what would she have
done i live in a state where if you if she even carried a gun she'd go to fucking jail if she
shot him out of self-defense you go to fucking jail but we also live in a state where they say oh but you know you you really no guns no no but you really should
make sure that you're uh that that men aren't raping women blah blah like yeah but guess what
motherfucker i know that does that guy know that and who's who's gonna protect her right so that's
my problem give women the tools give first of all give everybody give women the tools to protect themselves to empower themselves it's not enough words are not enough that's my that's my number
one concern and my number one issue with a lot of this stuff it's like look it's one thing to
validate trauma it's another thing to validate it and not help them or give them the tools
to get the out of of it, right?
Counterargument to that, and for the record, I'm pro-gun too,
and to be clear on my stance there,
I'm pro-gun strictly for the slippery slope of where it stops.
If you start with one, and I always use this example,
and some people argue with me, and that's fine,
but do I think anyone needs to fucking own an AR-15?15 no you're not fucking using that to hunt like it's stupid but i have a couple friends who do and
the way they explain it is i'd never take it out and i they've shot it at the range a couple times
to know that they know how to use it and their their explanation is they hate it but they do it
as a symbol of like
god forbid they ever came for those and then came for the next ones and the next ones
you fucking have it right and so i i get that my issue becomes like that whole super sub of
coming after and then eventually no one can have access to it and it's a problem
where i think it runs and again opposite but equal reaction same fucking story all over again here but
where like that example that you give up of your sister runs into a problem is the the the use of
of the gun because does that sound massively suspicious yeah does that guy sound like he was
up to bad shit absolutely i want to give a personal example though of a couple months ago that outside my
house where where something happened and i had wanted to be armed at the time and what it really
was and it was similar this this guy in the middle of the night at like 1 a.m was in the middle of
the court outside my house and was shining a beam into the fucking house like like a fucking fluorescent
beam and i'm staring like i see it through the other room like what the fuck and i go over there
and i'm hearing i'm even hearing like on the car like he backed up for a minute i heard the beep
beep beep and it was a big fucking tanker truck but not like not one of the long ones on the road like just a big massive
fucking shithouse of a machine and i'm like what the fuck and then i'm looking and i can see a
little figure in the in the actual truck and and it looks like he's looking like in the house and
he's shining the beam right into here and now he can see me and so then suddenly like out of nowhere
the guy whips it right whips
the truck and in the middle of a neighborhood court i mean he's being an idiot whips the truck
forward and then starts ripping it back backing it up into the driveway and now i'm like what the
fuck motherfucker so i grabbed my louisville because i always have a louisville and fun fact
you rather have the bat than not but a bat is not a gun and I don't
know what the fuck this guy has and I grabbed a fucking bat and then the moment I get out there
he's backed up into the court again so I'm like what the fuck and then suddenly now mind you I
didn't have a gun at the time and so I wasn't approaching the vehicle yet because I only have
a bat and if he has a gun guess what gun's gonna beat a bat real fast so at the time like i'm backed off and then suddenly like he rolls down the window nicest
guy in the world and goes hey i'm really sorry it doesn't say like the number of the house next to
you looks like the number of this house i got called by the whatever to be here the guy had
been called a couple days earlier because the electricity in the house had gone out.
And so Atlantic City Electric was sending him out,
which could be at middle of the night call legitimately,
to fix the power lines.
And so he was just showing up to the job
and then was like fucked up
with what house he was supposed to be at
and wasn't paying attention to the fact
that he was driving a little aggressively for a second
and was the nicest guy in the world.
And I remember when I cooled down 10 minutes later thinking about that going
if i had a gun he was getting brandished really and oh yeah oh just shot no no no no no no brandished
oh that means like i'm holding up the gun to him which once a loaded gun is hold up to someone
you don't know what's gonna happen after that because you don't know how he's gonna react
yeah like he's gonna think for his life or whatever and i'm like
he was getting a 45 held in his face no doubt about it and i'm like imagine what could have
happened yeah and i think about that and it's tough because i think about that a lot and that's
why i hate the thought of them but you know on the one hand like i don't i want people to be able to
be armed in the in the case of tyranny but it's like when you start to go the other way on it you get really aggressive with it
and then bad desperate shit can happen except except what okay but what if what if he wasn't
the nicest guy exactly there were guys that jumped out exactly because in the bronx that's what
happened right so we had we had um fuck well we had the bloods um what were they called the latin kings with the latin kings yeah so we had we had that kind we had the bloods um what were they called the
latin kings with the latin kings yeah so we had we had that kind of stuff in my neighborhood in
the bronx uh and i'm just saying man like when you got like eight break-ins on your block every
three months it's not a comfortable feeling like it's really not and when you like i'm telling you people have
to go through it to really get it when and i'm not at all saying i'm from like the hood and i'm
you know whatever but when you have a ladder and we used to keep a ladder by the windows because
we were on the second floor we used to keep a ladder by the windows in the case somebody did
break in the rule was get the fuck out of the house and run as far as you can don't stay in the house just go and my my dad's philosophy was kind of like look the kids you everybody gets
safe i'm the one staying in here and i'll take care of it that was it so we had three apartment
three three rooms in the apartment super fucking small ladders by everyone when you live like that
you don't think anything of it by the way like especially as a kid like you're growing up like
it's just normal until you start living in like an area that i live in and now it's
like very comfortable and every say we have an alarm system for the house and it's like we've
got a dog and now all of a sudden it's like it's easy i could totally see why people it heats people
up to think that we still need guns i fucking promise you yeah if you don't have them the bad
guy does like the black market there's a reason why they have agreed so when i went to texas second amendment dude when i went to texas every you don't even you wouldn't even
know it everybody's kind everybody's respectful for the most part i mean i had i met nicer people
there than i'll ever meet here everybody's packing do you remember the attack in texas a few years
ago no what was the one in the church oh i think so yeah and and somebody put him down oh yeah yeah
and he and unfortunately i think the
guy did get a couple people but there were yeah i don't want to say the number there were a lot
of people in that church and an armed motherfucker took him down yes a lot of other people could
have died if that guy wasn't armed that was a massacre yeah we don't talk about that we don't
and that's i think again it comes down to people are scared of it because they don't understand it.
I know people, and I used to think like this too, and I'm sure maybe you did at one point.
It's easy to think like, oh my God, like that cop, and I'm not protecting, you know, I'm not whatever.
I'm very impartial when it comes to this stuff.
But he rattled off like 10 shots and and hit him like 12 i promise you dude if you go to a shooting
range and you try under no pressure no threats try to aim that gun and hit every shot like
it's scary dude it's it's very hard like i think if people had a better appreciation for the weapon
and understood what it was like to handle one uh what it was like to shoot one and that's without
any pressure or anything like that we also got to train our cops a lot better oh no no no that yeah that's a whole other topic i
totally agree but in terms of like some regular civilians being armed i definitely do think like
people if people had a better appreciation for it again goes back to the beginning of the
conversation it's not the tool it's the mechanic if you recognize and you appreciate what you have
you're not going to go around shooting it's not how how this works. That's not how it works in Texas either. So, you know, the reality is if you, I strongly believe
in our constitution, and I really do believe that every person, black, white, green, purple,
man, woman, child, doesn't matter, has a right to the pursuit of happiness and has a right to
protect themselves and their family, period, period. So to me, that means guns. To me, you know, it means opportunity. It doesn't mean
handouts. It means opportunity and equal opportunity may add like that's I'm very big
push on that equal opportunity. And again, people will do that, do with that what they will, you
know, and from there, and that's why podcasts like this are beautiful, because this is where
people can come and I don't want to say learn but at least see different perspectives right
so yeah but i i'm i'm very programmed pro-gun specifically because of that especially uh during
the whole you know george after george floyd and with all the riots and the protests and stuff like
that i mean with buildings being blown up and you're like, well,
let's just say somebody did break in.
How would I protect my family?
Actually, I have a great story for you.
I shouldn't say great story,
but at Colgate, my last semester,
we were online, Zoom,
all of this stuff was happening,
the George Floyd stuff.
So obviously, I mean,
conversations were heated as it was.
I was in a criminology course,
of course, coincidental, right?
So they're talking about gun laws and the whole class is like extreme extreme liberal right which is fine i mean i don't care
like i said i really do enjoy listening to open perspectives but it was like very lopsided in the
class so i happen to be like the one strong stance i take is pro-gun specific because i've had certain
experiences where i feel like it was necessary right okay so i'm in the i'm in the class and
this comes up
and they were talking about like, oh, well, you know, you don't need a gun. You don't need a gun.
So I gave them this example because my house in the Bronx had been broken into multiple times.
So I was like, look, I'm going to be honest with you. If somebody breaks into my home,
right? And I shoot him and I kill him. And he had the intent to either rob or rape my sister
or rape my mother or do some damage. i would rather live with the consequences of killing him and putting him down than the
consequences of him having raped my my sister my mother my girlfriend burning my house down
all things that have happened in the past right okay good you want to know what the response was
well men should stop raping women that's what the response was first of all let me just point out to
the audience absolutely everyone should stop raping anyone period right but why did why does it still exist it exists
because there's evil in this world and that's what i was talking about with the soft mindset
before it's that's the problem we have this false expectation that the world is sunflowers and
rainbows it's not bro it's really fucking not And the problem that I have right now is like when you have that kind of thinking, it's so fucking dangerous.
Because if we take away, Jordan Peterson says it the best.
Ready?
He says the only thing that can beat a bad, dangerous man is a good man that's even more dangerous.
It's a good man who's a monster, man or or woman who's a monster who's dangerous but who's
good they have to be more killer instinct they have to be more dangerous that's it dude you
can't i'm telling you man when you you can't appreciate it until you go through it but
it really is something where if you live in a little fucking like bubble like this like this
glass it's very difficult to see
the perspective of things like pro gun or things like protection stuff like you don't need it you
don't need i'm telling you man you'd rather have it i promise like i really do it it's not you
don't have to use it don't ever even fucking touch it please but in the case that you do need to
you'd rather have it so i don't know i it's one of those topics, again, it's a very hot topic. I feel very strongly about it.
Also because that's also how we liberated.
That's how we're here.
That's how our freedom was attained.
Yeah.
And I agree a thousand percent with the fact that you need to have.
And by the way, if there's one good thing to come of COVID,
we're, as my friend Mike Spear says,
we're the most well-armed militia in the world you've got your gun sales you can't even get a nine
millimeter or ammo it was stunning to me i guess because in the past i've talked about how i am
pro second amendment but the number of texts i got throughout the pandemic of people like yo so
how do you uh how do i go about buying a gun i was like stunned because i'm not even a gun owner i
just strongly believe in it and i guess that's why people thought why don go about buying a gun? I was like stunned because I'm not even a gun owner. I just strongly believe in it, and I guess that's why people thought I was.
Why don't you own a gun?
I never have.
I don't own one either, by the way.
I have never had the moment where I said,
oh, I need it because of where I live right now.
I've had a couple close moments to that,
and then I deprioritized it and ended up being
okay because i'd rather not have to have one but i am recently i have thought about it a lot more
i don't have one either but it's only because i can't i can't allocate the funds for what i
what i'd want to get or like not what i want to get but to properly because to me it's not just
arming yourself it's training yourself oh yeah i don't think it's good enough to just oh go out and buy a gun like you really do need
to pay for some lessons yep handle it and that's gonna call that's gonna run you up a lot of money
so but which by the way i think it's not a fucking toy yeah if this was more affordable and accessible
to people here we are talking about equal opportunity i definitely don't think that most
areas most areas that uh are more impoverished are more low-income housing there's no fucking
way there's a gun range there.
Very rare.
I mean, A, safety reasons, but B, because it's expensive.
Like, it's genuinely expensive.
Who can afford to go, right?
I mean, let's do the math.
So I understand that.
I definitely do think it should be more accessible,
and I think it should be something that's more encouraged but in a safe way, you know?
And training, absolutely.
I mean, without a doubt.
You shouldn't be allowed to buy the gun unless you guarantee purchase 10 fucking lessons with
the gun. I 100% think that and I can't afford that, which is why I haven't bought the gun.
I also can't afford the safe that goes with it, you know, and I also would want to train
the people that are gonna be in the house around the gun. Like that's these are all the things that
come into it. So I don't own one either. But either but yeah it's um it is a slippery slope
though too because it does it definitely does trigger some people and it's for sure man i mean
i i can't help but think of certain circumstances where i'm like damn dude if that teacher was just
armed man and trained if that was just part of her training like fuck if that one girl like dude
my girlfriend can't even fucking use a taser like Like, she went to SUNY Cortland, okay?
It's in New York.
There were a lot of rape cases.
A lot of stabbings and stuff like that.
What do you mean she can't use a taser?
It's illegal.
She would go to jail.
I gave her a taser.
Yes, I gave her a taser.
I was like, Jess, at the very least, take this with you to the bar.
Now, look, I'm not some, like, crazy helicopter, you know, like, whatever.
Like, have fun.
Do whatever the fuck you want.
But as a boyfriend, I'm concerned.
Because I'm like, look, if I'm with you'm with you fuck it like and at the end of the
day like okay i get scat get stabbed you get to run away like that's fine with me but when i'm
not there i'm not gonna trust whoever you're with i don't care who it even if we're with your guy
friends i don't trust them to protect you so take this take that whatever and then i i find out she
could go to jail if she used it like if she got caught with that in her purse,
that would be a charge.
I'm thinking to myself, like, yo,
this is so fucking twisted.
Like, how, I want people to,
I want women to be able to protect themselves against men,
period, like, end of story.
Because men, sexual, like, biological sex differences,
we tend to be bigger, stronger, more aggressive.
I mean, come on, on bro this isn't a fair
game then you know what i mean so yeah and that's yeah it's very frustrating for me it's a hot topic
because it's like dude it's there's no excuse you know what i mean yeah man i mean it's it's
damned if you do damned if you don't on the training point because like you know to be trained but do other people know to do that and
then you have gun owners who then use it and have no fucking idea what they're doing and people
unnecessarily die and it's like i do i agree with you in the sense that i want to err on the side
of like people having the right and having the ability to be able to do that and protect
themselves i think that a society where bad
people are going to find a way to get their hands on weaponry means that good people need to be able
to get their hands on weaponry too. So when I see any forms of restrictions coming in on that,
that does not sit well with me. And like we just talked about a few seconds ago, but you know,
you just, you mentioned you just went down to texas yeah yeah reese i actually just
got back last all right well a week ago now had you ever been there before no that was my first
time yeah so did you talk to anyone about that when you were down there like the whole like
because it is very yeah fucking freedom yeah i would say they talk to me so like interesting
yeah yeah yeah so you know we would be in a boot shop look there's some cowboy they're
scouting you that's what they're doing do I just they're like they are as a Yankee from Rosie bro
they they see they see a clean-shaven white boy with a part in his hair and they're thinking like
literally I mean we it's funny man we were we met really good people um but yeah it's there i mean
you we were in a boot shop sky johnny he came from uh mexico and uh yeah man i mean they talk
about it all the time they're like they really do have that mindset of like come and take it
like come you want our guns come and take it you know and if you want to come and take it
it's like if you think you're going to eliminate our second man we're going to secede that's how they think like they genuinely think
that that which is is a shock you know because you're used to up here you are never even if
somebody believes it they are not speaking that shit out loud so um it just it was it was definitely
interesting and uh it's cool but also at the same time like you do get a little bit of that too far right traditional mentality, which I don't really mess with either.
You know, I like to be, I don't know, it was interesting for sure.
I think that one of the issues I have with the right wing where, you know, it's like the traditional right wing, if we're just talking about that, like kind of traditional Texas Republican republican is that there are so many freedoms on things that then there's not freedoms on stuff and you know
you see the consistent like don't they fear change and don't like things they're not used to
what happens though is that then when that's public and people see that and say well fuck that
which you know is the natural response that many of us would have to that,
we then forget that, well, there are some things they definitely have right.
And I agree with that.
Do I like the fact that everyone's fucking walking into a bar with a gun on them?
Not necessarily, but do I like the fact that everyone has the right to do that?
Yeah, I do.
Yeah, I'm going to be honest with you.
We didn't spend enough time to know if there are like precautions or rules that they take like maybe you can't like i'm pretty sure like i know
in arizona you can't just walk in like you have to leave your gun in a basket whatever all right
whatever but here's the other thing too though we stayed in austin and we visited san antonio we
visited corpus christi austin is known to be extremely democratic extremely liberal right and you could see that for sure um and especially downtown in the city but no matter where we were you could
not tell if somebody was carrying i only knew that people were caring because i went to a gym
in san antonio guy was very nice he was like listen man i'm gonna be honest with you just
because you don't think they are does not mean that they aren't i promise you they have it on them whether
you see it or not everyone now here's the thing the fact that it's concealed a little concerning
you know but at the same time it also raises a little bit of an awareness like it's it's almost
like a standard of respect it kind of it's hard to explain it was like a vibe you get this vibe of
like nobody fucks with each other in that way. Like everybody has a level of respect.
What I will say though,
that the guy from San Antonio said,
he was like,
you know,
I'll be honest.
Like if somebody's on your property
and you don't want them there,
you have every right to blow them away.
So that kind of shit does exist.
So like what you were talking about,
that situation,
that hundred percent would have played out
exactly how you thought it was going to play out
so for better or for worse yeah so you know and so but now again with that said it is the tool
you know i mean you have it's a tool and you are the mechanic you have to choose how you use it and
how you approach it again what i will say though you said like some people not being like pro
change i was in new braunfels which is like right between san antonio san antonio and austin right so austin what's it called uh new braunfels
beautiful town by the way beautiful town but it has very german roots so like super traditional
german roots uh well yes yes uh what what kind of super traditional german cowboy hat fucking buckle like boots
and everything those are not the german tradition oh no no no not that not that kind of dream okay
not the nazi shit okay yeah i don't think about cowboy hats we're still in the free country yeah
but actually i was kind of surprised to hear that they had the german but yeah so very german roots
and that's very white that's basically what i'm trying to say okay it started off very very white so they're there right and they're
talking about how much more diverse it's become because over the recent years all the influx of
people into austin and then people spread out real estate's cheap they're buying it up they're
going to resell great business stuff okay whatever so they're filling out new braunfels they're
making comments as if it's like we're open to the diversity but we're not open to
the liberal shit that's straight up what they'd say that's in New Braunfels that's a little bit
further from Austin right so there is some of that like you have people that are like not
not pro-change whatsoever not open to new idea you know and I think the thing is like
you could tell it's not a very creative
town like yeah i'm not trying to be disrespectful at all very beautiful very very very very beautiful
but you lack a lot of the art and the creativity one thing one thing about conservatives i'm going
to generalize here but fucking i'm going to generalize the lack of fucking creativity and
the lack of ability to make cool shit it is a trait yeah i wouldn't say lack of i
would definitely say lack of drawing outside the box yeah you know so so yeah so like that's and
you can totally see that but also on the same token too like when you're in downtown austin
it's really cool but at the same time like you can tell like graffiti everywhere that's where
the homeless were that's it was very cut like it was a little trashy and stuff but you could tell there's like a lot of like cool small coffee shops lots of
independently owned stuff you know definitely more of the artistic style stuff and so it's
interesting for us because we literally go from that to the bipolar opposite so it was interesting
it was definitely a cool trip i'm glad i went i went because i was thinking about moving to texas
and i kind of still am i really liked some parts
of austin like north austin was really cool round rock or georgetown uh those were really cool spots
you get a mix of both i like places that are in the middle i really do like i like places that
have a mix of i see value in both um and those places had a mix of how to mix it both so that
was cool when i moved to san antonio I really liked San Antonio. They have a fucking
sick gym there. Sick gym. But I don't know if I would move there. New Braunfels, again,
absolutely beautiful, but not a lot going on. And it's growing. It's definitely diversifying.
But again, I don't know if I'd move there. Next up is Dallas. I want to check out Dallas.
Got it. So yeah, let's actually talk about what you you're doing let's let's segue to that right now
that's a good spot to go because i are are you looking to move down there because there's like
a wider influx of people like in the power lifting community or like it's a better spot for you to be
or you're just quality of life kind of deal good question uh so there are main some main reasons
that first one is no state income tax um so that's
a big one warm weather year round for the most part that's a big one um uh cost of living so
cheaper to buy and rent you know there uh and then the other thing is i mean i again they are
pro-gun state like i can carry and stuff without having to worry about it so that's that's another
benefit and the last thing really only came up recently was
just the fact that there are so many people moving all the tech companies a lot of the big like
joe rogan's there tesla's there apple's setting up a headquarters there uh a friend of mine who
also graduated from colgate he owns and runs suniva super coffee um yeah jim desico great
fucking guy a great athlete him and his brothers run the company they just moved to austin
so it just you see the trends and you kind of want to follow it people don't know this that
was happening before covet too it got exploited with covet yes but austin was and it was kind of
quiet but if you were in the tech community you knew this a few years ago austin was creating a
lot of the secondary satellite campuses for big tech companies and now some of the main campuses are there but you know what one of my clients from my previous career had called me up
like on a whim new york guy called me up one day and said julian tell me about florida and texas
i was like what the fuck like you're fucking new york guys like yeah i'm sick of it yeah and i'm
like okay and he's big in the tech community.
So he had already been hearing whispers.
This is 2018.
And within a week after we got the information, he had flown down to Austin and signed the lease for his company.
I was like, holy shit.
And he's like, Julian, you don't understand.
If you're in this community, I came down here to confirm it, but they're here, man.
They're fucking here.
I met a guy.
His name is Jonah. another great fucking dude i met him at the gold's gym in austin just had needed a gym on
a saturday went saw him he owns a supplement company we were talking and even he was saying
he's like bro you don't get how tight the circle is like the entrepreneurship circle here is nutty
like you could sit in on a poker game and sit next to somebody who's worth 40 million and you're just
having a conversation that network you can't get that in a city or in la because it's there's a
level of access right there's like the uber wealthy and you got to get through circles and
shit and awesome because everybody's coming in it's almost like a clean slate yep right it's a
melting pot dude it's fucking perfect the only downside is that it like all cities it's going
through its transition austin from according to the people who live there this is what they told me like austin was never built to be a big city so it's struggling to adapt
to that right so it's a landlocked kind of like hilly laid back chill i've never been there but
that's that's what it is so you have downtown downtown city right everything around it is hill
country all right think of it like new york city manhattan you
ever been upstate new york a little okay upstate new york is like trees yeah fucking four okay
that it's kind of like that except flatter more hills warmer weather that's it so right now austin
i don't want to say struggling i don't really know but they're developing right so you have
this small little glass but all these people are pouring in so now it's starting to spread out spread out spread out spread out yeah and it's like they don't have the
luxury that miami does like because you've seen austin and miami have won covid like straight up
they they are the victors they are at the winning table and what suarez is doing in miami right now
is unlike anything i've ever seen in my life but with miami forget the fact you know it's
miami baby but you know besides that it's like 35 square miles of the city limits yeah so many
untapped buildings that they have any the cranes have been sitting there waiting to build something
land for days cheap land for days knows that like compared to san francisco for as an example which is like
crazy with this but like the zoning laws are easy so they have all like they were ready for this
they were born for people to be fucking coming in at a fast rate and they still can't even handle it
austin to your point and again i haven't been there you know better than me at this point but
from everything i've heard over the years is like it's not like that's not the case they and there's a lot of trees and like countryside and shit like that so they gotta
knock shit down to build stuff and it's like it's a lot to take in yeah i think it seems like they're
handling it as best they can though i mean yeah well look it's something that it's a beautiful
thing because it's like capitalism baby like it if it's gonna grow people gonna make it grow you
know like you have these tech companies coming in boom boom. Now all of a sudden you're going to get
that loan from the bank that says you want to buy that 32 unit building. Cause they know,
Oh, Apple's right next door. How many jobs are they bringing there? Where are they going to stay?
Oh, in your 32 unit building. So it all funds itself in a way. It just takes time and it's
going to have its ugly phase. I think it's in its ugly phase right now. Yeah. Now you, you strike me
as one of the more interesting people I've ever met because you have such a wide range of thoughts and you think about things extremely extremely
deeply and to use a stereotype here people don't think of that when they're thinking of like a
power lifter like oh this guy is going to give critical theory on everything from like from like
gender to racial studies like yeah like all this shit and whatever
and i love hearing it but like how did you you know you're one of the best in the world by the
way i want you to explain like what what weight class you're in and like how it works but how did
you get into that and like where do you stand right now and what are you looking to do all right
so i told this story pretty much only once and it was to one other person i actually think it would might have been john um man so first and foremost i i i mean i've been lifting i'm 23 now i've been
lifting since i was like 12. love that so i've been like my mom in our bronx apartment used to
put in the p90x tapes and just get after it and i was like well it i'm gonna get after it
too right and uh so I would do that.
And at the time I was doing it for sports,
as I'm sure you could relate.
Like you didn't train because you wanted to train.
You trained for sports, right?
That's how I went about it.
And I saw so much increase, like just everything.
Confidence, productivity, everything went up.
I fell in love with it.
Then all the people around me started to notice.
And this was when I was like fucking middle school.
Like, dude, that's crazy.
Can you train me?
Can you train me?
That's how that seed was planted. Get to high school,
fallen in and out of love with different sports and shit like that. But training always stayed consistent, right? All right. So let's fast forward all the way to college. So I transferred
to Colgate. And by this time, I mean, I've done CrossFit for a few years, right? I've done Olympic
lifting out of an academy in Westchester, New York for a few, for about a year and a half. I had done some bodybuilding stuff. So I really,
and I dove into this shit, right? So I transferred to Colgate and I had a really tough time
transitioning because I transferred mid-year. It's fucking freezing. It's like negative 15 every day
there. And it's a hard school. And I that i don't know anybody so i'm working on
the gym and it's a hard feeling for anybody who doesn't lift i don't know if they'll truly grasp
this so if you don't lift you better start fucking lifting um i get to the gym right whenever you
walk into a gym you're not used to it almost feels like uncomfortable like it's not like a home right
okay so that's how it feels so i'm leaving and i start to break down i'm like dude like because
lifting became who i was i built my confidence through that i built my friendships through that
i built everything through that and i felt like it was starting to fall apart so i'm thinking
myself like i've been training at the time it was like seven years i've been training for seven
years what do i have to show for it like my body like that's it like what what so what who cares
i look up some records because i like to compete i look up records for
the 83 kg class at and and the juniors the juniors goes from like age 19 till like the day before you
turn 24 right and 83 kgs like 185 pounds exactly 183 or 181 i know my shit yeah yeah baby so we're
there i'm sitting in my car right and i'm upset with myself because I'm like, fuck, man.
Like, I feel like I'm worth nothing, right?
I just spent all these hours in the gym every day for the last seven years for what, right?
Why do you feel like you're worth nothing?
Because you weren't competing?
I didn't have anything.
Well, no, because I didn't have any accomplishments, no medals, no titles, nothing.
Yeah, so you weren't, yeah.
I just felt like, man, like, so what?
I was lifting for three to five hours a day for
the last seven years like but is that what you felt like i'm and i'm pushing a little bit here
but is that what you felt like you needed to draw out of it it wasn't because like you and i talked
off air about this but like i'd fucking love lifting and i've been unhealthy now for a year
and it's been like six months since i had a real lift and it's fucking it's killing me inside and
we still look pretty good so i'm trying i see those biceps man well we're working every
time you grab the camera the boomstick i see that vein popping up i think you're trying to
prop me up here so thank you but it's like i i never ever competed like you do and you know where
you like to put 750 pounds on on the bar and lift it up four times
like a sociopath i like to put 255 on the hex and make that thing fly for about 60 reps over about
five minutes right so different apples and oranges if you don't lift like those are entirely different
things i always drew my drive to like how it made me feel and then back to some of the stuff we talked about
earlier like being able to know like shit hit like i'm a boxer shit hits the fan i'm gonna
knock you fucking out right like that's where i got it i never thought like i need to outlift that
guy or set this record to feel that worth i my reward is i feel good i feel like i did something
i feel disciplined i feel like a man i feel like i'm fucking strong and can defend myself so you you didn't give yourself any credit
for that because you were doing this at a young fucking age i think i think i did that for the
first five years and it feels good you and then it wasn't enough it wasn't enough because again
and i think a lot of people struggle with this what's your purpose in life man like where are
you going and then when you start to break it down, it's like, well, what do I do every day?
And this is what I asked myself.
I was like, in my perfect paradise, I had everything I ever wanted.
Money, cars, family, all that stuff.
What is it I'm still going to do when I wake up?
I have everything I want, but I'm still alive.
So what am I going to do?
First thing that popped into my mind is Lyft.
So I'm thinking, I'm like, you know what?
I must be doing something right, right?
All right.
So the reason why it wasn't enough was because i'm thinking myself like okay yeah this
is what i'm passionate about this is what i'm doing but so what like there's got to be something
more to this and i wanted to push myself to a newer standard i wanted to push myself to become
more and to do that i i figured you know what let me let me start competing in something i was going
to do olympic lifting but i couldn't because my gym didn't have the right equipment so i was like well what else is the lifting is
olympic lifting is snatch clean and jerk right wild it is pretty crazy i'm not gonna lie
um but yeah so then i think powerlifting so that now i'm in the car i'm looking up records and i'm
convincing myself like i can do this so i look up the records sky russell or he's still
very very top competitor right now um and i see his name and i can do this so i look up the records sky russell he's still very very top
competitor right now um and i see his name and i'm thinking and so basically i at the time i had a
1400 total total is your squat your best squat plus your best bench plus your best deadlift right
at the time i don't know what my exact numbers were but there was like a 315 bench maybe
i don't know a 505 squat and like a 525 deadlift in your weight class yeah yeah
whatever that was like 83 kg to win to be number one i needed like an 1800 total or 1830 totals
like 400 pounds on my total and i'm thinking to myself stupid i'm thinking i'm thinking to myself
like i can do this in two years no sure you know i really think i'm thinking like all i got to do
is just put on 200 pounds on my total in each year and i specifically remember talking to it talking about it to people at my
girlfriend's because my girlfriend's school suny courtland was a very athletic school like heavily
athletic and there were powerlifters there and i remember talking like yeah i think i'm gonna do
this blah blah and they were all like fuck you who the fuck are you bro you can't do shit you
know i mean i love how everyone tells you it's crazy right it's funny right away yeah because i don't do that and and the reason why
and i'll get to why i get to why i don't do that but so i'm i i start committing myself to it long
story short get a coach and all stuff and i go through the process and my first meet um i ended
up totaling like 1600 i placed first new jersey state champion and my second meet was nationals placed top six
in the nation in by the way now i compete 93 kg so that's around 205 pounds uh how old were you
this this for new jersey states i want to say i was 20 maybe and then for my first nationals i was
i think i was still 20 or maybe i was 21. Yeah. It gets confusing because of the COVID stuff.
We skipped a whole year of nationals and stuff,
so it's hard for me to remember.
I think it was like 20.
So, yeah.
At nationals, I total, I don't even remember, 1680 maybe,
placed sixth in the nation for my class and for juniors.
What was your squat then?
At the time, at nationalsals it was 612 squat bench was
fourth 440 maybe pull was 640 or 650 something like that i mean you hear that yeah someone's
beating you baby pussy but uh yeah and so you know fast forward my last meet i had an 1830 total um and uh i squatted six i don't know 672 i benched 463 and
then deadlifted around 700. um gotta get that bench up buddy well my bench now is 490.5 no yeah yeah
yeah my best squat to date 716.55. Best bench, 490.5.
716.
What was it like getting seven bills for the first time?
It felt pretty euphoric, but it was hard.
Were you going down to 10 inches on that?
Bro, that shit was depth.
You know why I was depth?
Because I didn't hit depth the first time I attempted it.
Yeah.
And what's the standard depth you must hit?
I forget. Your hip crease has to pass, I believe, below your knee, your knee crease.
Right.
So that can be different inches for different people.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
A hundred percent.
I think, I think the actual rule, it might be like an inch measurement thing, but I just
know from training, we look for that hip crease and the knee crease.
Your hip crease really should be below your knee crease.
That's why I never, I never checked that.
Now I know I did, but I used to set up whenever i did squats i would touch because you
can't you don't want to take the force and take the force away at the bottom and get a bounce like
you want to just barely touch right yeah so i would set it up at the 13 or 14 inch mark okay
but i know like because some guys i trained that a very similar gym to what you have up there you
train at elite yeah yeah so i trained it at
whippany and what i loved about that place is it was all boxers and power lifters and then some
guys like in the middle who like respected both or did a little bit of both and so i you know
chris lentino was there um who the fuck else was there like like some some pretty big guys like in
the space who you would know worked out there and i would always be amazed at how low they would go because like i'm going to 13 or 14 and at 6-1 that's pretty
fucking low yeah and like some of the guys would be like all right good depth then you see some
motherfucker with his ass touching the floor yeah there are times when that's not necessary but the
reality is if you know you're gonna get red lighted for depth it's it's just a shitty feeling
because it's like you fucking you squatted it dude just go deeper and usually the reason why you're not going deeper and nobody
likes to admit this but it's a confidence thing so like in competition nine times out of ten if
you did not hit depth but you hit the squat it's probably because you weren't confident i've i've
done that i've definitely up with that and i've multiple times it's a confidence thing
which means what do you mean a confidence? You have to have confidence and composure
getting under the barbell.
A lot of people don't get it.
You don't get fucking,
everybody has a different approach,
but in my experience, especially when it's a max lift,
you do not want to get all fucking crazy riled up.
I call it a controlled rage.
Your job as a power lifter, as a lifter in general,
is you inhibit the inhibitors in your body.
Your body naturally wants to protect itself.
So when it gets hyped up for a heavy lift, what you're trying to tell your body is like,
yo, motherfucker, we're going to die if we don't do this.
You better turn everything off and go for it, right?
Naturally trying to get your adrenaline up if you're a drug-free athlete like myself.
So if that's the case, you're inhibiting the inhibitors.
But here's the problem.
You get too crazy, all your technique goes out the window. Everything goes out the window. Not only do you risk injury, you're probably going the inhibitors but here's the problem you get too crazy all your technique goes out the window everything goes out the window not only do you risk injury you're probably going
to fail the lift or you're just going to make it look fucking ugly right so you need a controlled
rage it's like a focus it's like a fucking it's like think of like a sniper right you got the
power of one of the most powerful weapons in the fucking world in your hands but without control
that thing is useless right you respect that beast exactly and the beast by the way is yourself
Yeah, then that's a beautiful thing about lifting and that's why I've fallen in love with it
The bar the weight it's impartial doesn't give a fuck how much money you have what color you are where you come from if you
Had a bad day if it doesn't matter it stays the same
That means that your performance is completely predicated on yourself means you're in control
It's a different level accountability right right there's no such thing as any
given sunday there's no such thing oh well they just had better guys no it's you or you so
decide so because of that um that plays into confidence if you're not confident about your lift
you're going to cut depth right you don't think you can go as deep you're going to slow it you
see it all the time guys slow down their their descent so much it takes so much energy out of
them that they hit the hole.
They can't even come up.
That's happened to me because you don't have the confidence.
You don't think you can do it.
So you're scared.
You're scared.
You're scared.
I mean, you're basically doing a tempo squat.
So you're zapping yourself of all your energy.
And then you can't pick it up.
So yeah, it happens a lot.
Confidence is a big thing.
Sports psychology plays a big role in all that stuff so which i don't think it's enough
coverage these days well that's we could go off on that yeah for a long time but you know and and
i'm gonna have to have you back here again because we talked about like i always say i never know
where these things are going and this episode is a prime example because i figured you know i'm
gonna bring up stuff you're interested in and
that i share an interest in right so i'll find those commonalities and so i'm thinking in this
episode well we'll probably end up getting to like you know staying fit during covid and like
how some people are dealing with the mental behind that like you kind of just mentioned a little
touch of the mental stuff and then go through like how you got to where you got and what you're doing
and we're fucking at the end here and we're like getting to it now so i'm gonna have to have you here again to like go through a bunch of that
other stuff but um you know in the meantime on this like one of the things you mentioned right
there and people just think about the stereotype right away and they see if they're watching right
now i mean you can tell this guy's fucking brick shithouse um you know he walks in here like his
arms got to move out of the way the goddamn door but and like again like i've seen guys who work like you i know what goes into that so it's like
it's crazy but one of the stereotypes is you know to compete in that kind of stuff guys are you know
they're hitting the juice and whatever so how do you and like some cynics right now are gonna
listen like yeah you're not all fucking juice but you know know, you're looking at me. I believe you.
How do you find a way to compete when you know that frankly, a lot of the people you're
going up against, they do have that advantage.
It's just, it is a reality.
Two things.
One, my federation is the most prestigious and strictest federation.
What does that mean?
So we hold ourselves to it.
Federation is like, think of it like the Olympics, right?
Where my federation is the Olympics of it like the olympics right where my federation
is the olympics of powerlifting all right so it's like the most um federation is like an organization
it's like what's that called what's mine is the usapl so the difference is i'll break it down real
fast okay so we have usapl uspa right then we have like rps and then wrpf a bunch of like kind of i
don't want to say irrelevant because i'm piss some people off but some ones that not many people care about right the biggest difference is
the usapl is the only federation to use the same bar which is a stiff bar right for each lift they
drug test their athletes the top 10 of every competition um the judging wait so they don't
drug test 90 of them well yeah but it's just they're lost okay yeah pretty much all right
that's to say but yeah no no that's um and what else and they have very very strict judging like extremely it's also
one of the most expensive federations to be in um the other federations they use different bars
um there's for the most part it's all like kind of free-for-all in terms of drugs they do have
drug-tested meats but uh most of the competition is in and the money is in non-drug tested so
to answer your question first and foremost my federation is drug tested and if i want to be
a world champion i know i'm going to get tested and also i wouldn't do it anyway but um you know
i'm not going to take drugs because obviously i'd get caught can you get around it you know i don't
know i mean i i want to say yes because like why wouldn't like if you could
figure out like i'm sure like sarms i don't think is being tested for um there are people who've
gotten popped which means that there are people who probably haven't gotten popped right um
mother mother russia figured it out yes yes oh big time they do all the drugs over there yeah
but uh yeah man i mean the other thing too is i
personally don't give a fuck like i want to be the best of the best and if you're on drugs and
fuck it if i get to beat you while you're on drugs and that sucks for you you know so like
to me i i'm in it not because of i'm comparing myself to other people i'm in it for myself
like again i see myself as somebody who has the potential like we all do has the potential to set
standards that people would look at and be like holy fuck how the fuck is he gonna do that's not even possible you're crazy and
then you go and do it it's like the first person to ever run a sub four minute mile right everybody
thought it was impossible until he did it now thousands of people have done it yeah so that's
it man you know and to me it's like look man i i have nothing against drugged athletes none
whatsoever um but again to me it's like like, I want to know that everything I did
was true strength. I can't attribute it to drugs, can't attribute it to a special bar,
nothing. It's pure, raw strength. And that was the product of me and my dedication and my team
and my coach and the people that support me. So that means no drugs. It's definitely tempting
though. No, no, good for you. I sure it is because and like I think about it with
baseball a lot too because
I've heard even now
But a little to a lesser extent and I don't want to comment on that but back in the day
Yeah, like in the early 2000s you talk to anyone who was in the league
Yeah, there was a fucking Gatorade tank in the middle of every locker room.
And I think about it from the sense that they were all doing it.
They were all there.
They were all doing it.
And the guys who didn't, guess what?
They most likely didn't make it.
And with the short earning window they had, they didn't make the money.
I don't care what you say.
Anyone can judge from the outside. That is a shitty spot to be in when you know everyone is fucking doing it
and you are putting yourself at a disadvantage to do it and so in powerlifting where i know that
like it is a thing and you can get around these tests and whatever the fact that you don't i
respect the fuck out of that because it's it's very you know again like you have a window here of like a decade where you're going to be in your physical peak and you're going to have to work to keep your body in that peak because you are bending it in ways that it is not supposed to bend every most days of your life.
Yeah, you know, for sure.
Yeah.
And that just and this is a good note to end on to like there are a lot of people, a lot of elite level lifters that openly take drugs and are honest about it.
And that I'm all for it.
There's a lot, there are lifters who lie about it, you know, but that's not so much
empowering.
That's more in like the bodybuilding space, like influencers, especially all of them are
on shit and they all lie about it.
That's a problem because now they're pushing their programs, pushing their supplements.
It just gives this false idea of what's actually attainable.
Regardless, if, if i did take drugs i
would just compete in a in a non-drug tested federation you know and and just be open about
it and and that would be fine you know but think of it this way like there are guys like the strong
men like the guy again who was sponsored by rain half thor bjornson he was in game of thrones do
you really think people want to pay to see some skinny scrawny tall dude no they want to see the
beast of the fucking beasts right guess what that takes that takes drugs and so if he's his job is to do that take the drugs
man like i get it you know i'm again nothing against it whatsoever i just think we have a
responsibility to be completely transparent and open and honest with people that way we can set
the right expectation and also too like i think a lot can be accomplished like we have guys
doing things naturally that guys on drugs will never be able to do.
Where's that coming from?
I think it comes from in here.
I think it comes from you having a vision.
And you lose that when you start to give in to things like drugs.
Because it's like, you almost think, like, I'm not capable without it, right?
Yeah.
You think, oh, I need this to get the edge.
Bro, it's not that.
It's within you.
The moment you start down that path, again, it's it's that what you that secret ingredient to become a world champion
i believe is vision and having the conviction to to believe in that vision to believe in yourself
more than anybody if you're the type to think like oh well i can do it if i just take drugs
you've already eliminated that that side of it you know and the secrecy is what breeds anger
yeah you know when when people are up front about stuff even if you think it's wrong or disagree with it like you it
there's and you've got to be careful where you draw the line here with certain things like
like if you walked up to me and said i'm a racist motherfucker i can't be like you know what he's
honest he's cool right like there's a line to everything but you know it's like when people
are up front about some of the taboo things or
whatever there's a level of to which other people from the outside go okay all right well at least
he told me you know it's like they they feel like they're in on it right so there's there's less
anger with it but um one thing i i did want to make sure we we got to before you got out of here
was what the next steps are for you and what you just did recently as well. So you lifted 716, was it, on the squat?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that was down in Miami?
Yeah, that was my last squat and bench.
So you're back in competition now.
And within your weight class, where do you rank in the world?
And what are the next steps and what are the goals?
Yeah, so right now I'm about 10 weeks out from nationals.
I'm still a junior, but they canceled junior nationals because of COVID.
And they also canceled junior worlds, which sucks.
Cause this was my last year.
Junior means the age class.
So it's like 19 to the day before you turn 24.
Got it.
Yeah.
Otherwise you're competing against the open, which is all ages.
Yeah.
This was my last year to have a shot at going to junior worlds and they already canceled
junior worlds right off the bat, which kind of sucks.
But it is what it is uh so yeah so i'm 10 weeks out from nationals raw nationals which will be in daytona beach florida um of course it will be yeah right uh and uh let's see
so right now um it's it's tricky to say rankings because you had a whole year of quarantine where
some people didn't get to compete some people did i was lucky enough to compete over the summer um so i did get a
ranking but given the fact that not a lot of people have you know whatever given the current
standings in the nation i'm like top five uh overall all you know whatever uh top four top
weight classes no no 93 the 93 kg i mean for like the most of the other weight classes yes except
for maybe some of the ones that are above but but it's funny because as you go up and up and up like
the 105s which is the next waist class up they're competitive but the ones after that like there's
only like maybe two or three guys that are like big top and then the rest aren't really there you
know because they don't have they're too tall well they're just they're just not as competitive
total wise you know like the 83s and 93 kgs we're all stacked because there's so many men that weigh this you know that way what i weigh
like it's easy to weigh 205 or cut down to 205 to be like 300 or 250 plus not a lot of guys are
are you know that heavy and that's wrong anyway yeah so i'm like top top four to five or let's
say four to six in the nation and that's pretty much we destroy uh every
other country for the most part at the ipf championship so that would probably stay the
same like i'd probably still be top i want to say to be safe because i don't want to give any false
you know presumptions maybe top four to seven in the world maybe top four to eight you know at absolute absolute worst top 10 absolute worst and what is
the world record in the squat at that age 749 I think so you're 33 pounds off yeah which I I mean
I obviously I'd hope to I'm really hoping to chip something this upcoming Nationals I would
definitely like to squat 727 or more I'd like to bench 490 or more, hopefully obviously in the 500s,
and I'd like to pull somewhere around 750 plus.
I watched you do 435 with your feet in the air the other day.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Had a guy challenge me, man.
I had to step up, brother.
I used to love – I loved watching that shit at whip,
like when the guys would just do crazy shit.
I'm like, yeah, let's go.
I can't fucking do that, but yeah. yo you want me to spot no actually he should spot yeah it's like and and i see you got like you you literally have like the bravest girl in
america fucking spotting you on some of this stuff and i'm like like what what is she on yeah there
was a time over quarantine dude like my girlfriend would spot me on my squats. Wait, that's your girlfriend spotting you?
Not the one from yesterday.
That's Yvonne.
And that's the girl I was talking about last time about the influencer stuff.
But yeah, so my girlfriend would spot me during quarantine because I bought like a $200 rack
to put in my home gym because I wanted to lift and prepare.
Gyms were closed.
So you do what you got to do.
And she would spot me on like my max attempts.
And like, they weren't easy.
So like, even my coach was like they weren't easy so like even
my coach was like dude your girlfriend's got some balls to be fucking spotting you because god
forbid i was like yeah well it's a good thing we didn't fail it you know yeah that starts to get
to a territory i'm like yo bro i think yeah i think he might be i don't know like i know i could
do it but like sometimes i'm just like what if i'm the guy that drops it? Oh, fuck. No, no, no.
He's got a competition next week.
I'm not.
No, no, no.
No liability here.
Smart man.
That's the lawyer's son talking like, hey, let's limit our liability.
That's awesome, man.
It is a different breed.
I've always been very, very interested in the mentality that goes into that and the patience.
That's the number one reason why i never got to got into the
power lifting i like my mentality is i like to fucking move right so i want to be drenched in
sweat my my great leg day is timing inside of 55 minutes 20 sets of deadlifts and squats 12 to 15
pounds at mid-weight and i'm fucking like angry while i'm doing it because i'm constantly moving and so the respect level i have for the guys who have to come in there and train where
it's like yo over the next hour we're going to do six sets of four but it's it's four of like
fucking 1200 pounds you know like it's amazing and the patience it takes to do that and then to
be able to focus and not rip every fucking muscle on your body every single time you go in to do that three rep, whatever. It's definitely, it's definitely
hard. Definitely. I definitely miss bodybuilding stuff. Uh, I definitely miss sweating. I mean,
we hit accessories. We hit by, I hit more bodybuilding accessories than most lifters,
most power lifters. Uh, but I'm also kind of psychotic. Like I have a thing, I have to do
an extra set, extra rep, extra exercise, every lift rep extra exercise every lift like but um yeah so it definitely dude a hundred percent john says that too because i coached john
and uh and we're putting him through a strength phase peak phase right now he's like dude man i
just miss sweating bro i don't like i come in here spend two hours in the gym and i feel like i
didn't even do anything yeah man but it is what it is bro it's it's these small consistent
compounding wins you just come come in, day out.
Same thing with your podcast.
There's a reason why it's so good, man.
There's a reason why you're so good at what you do.
It's because you've been building this up consistently, day in, day out.
Yeah, man.
No shortcuts.
No shortcuts.
It's like every single day, you just add a little bit.
Your win is that even on the bad days, get some shit done.
Oh, yeah.
The bad days are the ones that really count.
70% of my training days suck and feel like shit and hurt.
And I don't want to go to the gym.
And if every single one of those days, you'd be surprised, man.
There's some shit that I've done lifting wise that I go into it thinking
there's just no fucking way.
There's no way I'm going to be able to do what I have to do today.
And it's a grind and it sucks.
But then I leave and I'm like, fuck man, I just did that.
That's insane.
And there's a lot of micro moments like that. And the beautiful thing about lifting is it's a grind and it sucks but then i leave and i'm like man i just did that there's that's insane and there's a lot of micro moments like that and the beautiful thing about lifting
is it's physical so you can feel it it's not like a mental thing where you're trying to like study
you can't really tell when you're pushing yourself when you're in the weight room you got no choice
so yeah yeah well gav this this was this was awesome man you i i love i love
the issues you go at and and you know, I just had a podcast a couple weeks ago.
What were they?
First, I had Grant Wiley, who's like just a beautiful storyteller.
And then we worked through – who was after that?
Mike Spears, out of his fucking mind.
He's my Alex Jones.
Oh, there we go.
And then Chaz, another great storyteller.
Dappeleder, another great storyteller. And then then miles who's very much like you just goes miles matthews just goes at
the so i've had a nice balance here of like different vibes and this vibe today was
like my head was in a twist and i i love that i don't know how it's going to sound later if i
sounded hopefully it's cool but it's cool you you were awesome and and great guests and there's a
lot we didn't get to so we're gonna have to you know to be continued no dude i just want to say hopefully it's cool man hopefully it's cool you you were awesome and and great guests and there's
a lot we didn't get to so we're gonna have to you know to be continued no dude i just want to say
man i i cannot thank you enough for the opportunity i mean this is my first podcast and i cannot thank
you enough for the i'm gonna be your last 10 but i hope not man because this was an awesome
experience and this one this experience would be tough for other people to beat that's for
fucking sure like it john was not kidding he put in a really good word and he was like dude probably
one of the best experiences i've had on podcasts and he's done
a bunch yeah and i was like man now you got me hyped up and uh this did not disappoint this
exceeded man you seriously seriously well i i appreciate that and we're building something here
and i always say we because it's a couple different things that go into it first of all the
listeners and viewers i guess because people really do view podcasts i
can't believe that but i do i by the way i do they do like i at the beginning i'm like i can't
believe i'm gonna do this no one's gonna look but they they really there's a lot of people that just
watch on youtube but the people that buy into this early because someone starts a podcast it's like
what's the dumbest thing you can do in america start a fucking podcast but you know they do and
and and they buy in and they believe in this thing and you know now it's in some other countries which is wild to me so the appreciation i have
for that is it's like bizarre like you think about like i can't believe some dude in england
is waiting for my episode to come out that's that is incredible it's a very surreal feeling yeah all
those people appreciate it but the second layer to it that's so important is the guests that have
come in here and you know guys buying into this from day one, the earliest guests, and then the guys who continue to come in, someone driving three hours today to be here and just giving a beautiful thought process on everything.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
And I like to say as this thing goes, everyone's coming with me.
That is what it is.
So we've had people of all different points of view, all different walks of life and and experiences i got a guy who's now top five in the world in powerlifting so when
we're talking fitness and things and clearly some other things too like you're gonna be a go-to i
appreciate it man dude i i can't believe you're 23 too like holy shit i wish yeah i get i'm hard
on myself i definitely do i definitely do think about that a lot. I wish I was, I wish I knew that the secret ingredient was just work.
Just execute.
Just do it.
Do the work, baby.
But yeah, man, look, a rising tide raises all ships.
So that's it.
So that's it, man.
But again, really appreciate it.
And I'm really happy and excited for the next one.
So yeah.
Thank you, man.
I really appreciate you.
Everybody else, give it a thought.
Get back to me.
Peace.