Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #67 Kurt Shrout

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

After serving as a military police officer in the United States Marine Corps, Kurt Shrout began setting up tours of UFC fighters to visit American troops stationed abroad, often teaching hand-to-hand defense tactics seminars.
 He is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and has won medals at the Pan Ams, US Nationals, and Master Worlds Championships and is currently pursuing his PhD in political science and writes for smerconish.com and mediaite.com. Kurt drops by to talk about how he got involved with Tour For The Troops, his time in the marine corps, learning how to learn, the state of politics today and chaos and order. Connect with Kurt: Twitter | https://twitter.com/kurtwshrout?lang=en Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/kurtshrout/ Show Notes https://smerconish.com/ https://www.mediaite.com/ Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/ Connect with Onnit on: Twitter | https://twitter.com/Onnit        Instagram | https://bit.ly/2NUE7DW Subscribe to Human Optimization Hour   Itunes  | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher  | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify  | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY

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taken together, there's science that shows they work wonders and they're an excellent addition to any pre-workout that we have. Make sure you check out beta-alanine at onnit.com slash podcast for another 10% off. Kurt motherfucking Shrout. Kurt Shrout. Oh, I'm sorry if the motherfucking offended anybody. I'm trying to do a better job on cursing since apparently I get a little worked up, like I'm in the locker room during some podcasts. Not all of them, and I am being more mindful of that. So I just wanted to state that. I like speaking the way I normally speak to people, but there's a time and a place for that.

So I will be trying to curtail that a little bit. Now back to Kurt Shrout. Kurt Shrout is a longtime friend. And just a fucking awesome dude. Like really awesome. He was a Marine and he got into jujitsu and all sorts of cool stuff. He had done Muay Thai growing up,

but really he's an ace in jujitsu. And even though he's 10 years older than me, and I'll joke and often say that he's 20 or 30, he's very good. He can beat me and he weighs about 30 pounds less. I mean, he's, and I'm not saying that as his qualifier. He took second. He got silver at Master Worlds and only lost on an advantage. I mean, just a highly talented dude, but we don't talk much about jujitsu.

I try to fit it in at the end. This is mostly about life. This is about a lot of cool shit. On this podcast, we talk about politics for the very first time. We talk about Jordan Peterson, who was a very polarizing character. And I try to see, as I do with everybody, if I disagree with someone, surely there's something I can agree with them on, right? So I search for those things. And if I agree with somebody and think they're great, let me find something I disagree with them because nobody should be held up to master status. Nobody is the second coming and I'm not looking for that in other people. So it helps me to see the humanness in all people if I can find that common ground.

Because we all have things we're happy about, our light, and we all have things that we're not so happy about, our shadows. But the more we expose those to ourselves and to others, the easier it is to grasp that shit. Now, I've gotten quite airy-fairy, and believe me when I tell you this, this podcast is not that. Kurt Shrout is an incredible human, and I was very happy to finally have him out here. We had him out for the Honored Invitational because he's a huge jujitsu fan, as am I, and we had a blast. It was great hanging with him, and I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I did. All right, so I'm joined by the sweater. Explain the sweater. I guess in the radio industry, like back in the day, the woman that would be in the radio studio for the morning drive time, they're referred to as the sweater.

Why does she have to be a woman, Kurt? I don't know. I don't assign these roles or come up with any of this stuff. I didn't even come up with the moniker. Okay, I love it. All right, so you're going to be the sweater today. I'm going to talk for 90% of this, and you're just going to chime in with little tag words here and there. I'm pretty sure that'll end up being how it goes. All right. So one of the things here was I'm joined by Kurt

Shrout, as you know, since you clicked on this podcast, who's been a longtime friend. We'll unpack all that. You told me before that you only wanted to come on the show as an intellectual and not as a friend of Kyle Kings. You didn't want to just come on the podcast because you're my friend. And that's the only reason you're here. So I want to be clear. The only reason you're on today's show is because you're my friend. That's it, buddy. All right. Let's get that out of the way. I'm getting hot over here. Yeah. Rip my sweater off. Kurt, you are one of the most fascinating dudes I've ever met. And I mean that with 100% sincerity, even though I'm going to bust your balls today. We met on a tour for the troops in 2010 with- Oh, is that only 2010?

Uh-huh. Wow. Chris Lieben, Ed Herman. Mike Swick. Mike Swick. Greg Thompson. That's right, Greg Thompson. Yeah, that was a good tour. That was not a good tour. That was not a good tour at all.

That was the very first tour I'd ever done. So a long time ago, I was in the Marine Corps. We'll unpack all that. Come on, I like to do this like a Tarantino movie. Okay, back and forth. Start with the end end then we go back to fill in the middle and then we actually finish with the real ending right so can we do the origin story of how we met yes on the tour for the troops all right and then we'll get to you being a well

i guess it's important that they know you're a former marine not an ex-marine a former former right yeah and then it's relevant to that's why you do the tours that's why i started setting up the tours for the troops so i became very good started setting up the tours for the troops. So I became very good friends with Nate Corey, who was on the original season of The Ultimate Fighter, along with Mike Swick. And so I found myself in a position where I could give back to the military that I had gotten so much from, especially knowing a high-level professional athlete. So I started setting up tours of UFC fighters and BJJ experts, Brazilian jiu-jitsu experts, to go and visit the troop station overseas, run seminars with them, autograph sessions with the athletes. And so the very first tour I ever did, it was Mike Swick, you, Chris Lieben, Ed Herman, Greg Thompson, and we went to Europe and the Middle East. And our Europe stay got extended because- Volcano went off.

Volcano in Iceland. Everyone was grounded. Right. And so, yeah. And so it was a nightmare. Well, we had a tour bus- We had a tour bus. That fucking everyone and their mom had been in. Right. And our tour bus driver, Mike.

Mike. Who I think is still working for the military, German guy. And the stories that he has. He had taken everyone from Toby Keith recently in that bus to the Rolling Fucking Stones. Right. Had been in that bus. Right. I mean, this was a $400,000 tour bus.

This was not like a rented school bus. It had showers. It felt like fucking rock stars. It had beds. It had couches. It had everything. A DVD room in the back. Right, right, right.

With couches that Lieben could hide beer in between the cushions with. No. Let's talk about that tour. Let's talk about what made it difficult. So what made it, it was the very first tour I'd ever done. I didn't at the time quite know I think 50% of the people on that tour were drunk for two days straight. And so that was very difficult. And I did not like that. Not one bit.

And so trying to organize everything was, you know yeah these strong personalities we went to once the volcano went off we decided like we kind of had to kill time so it's like well we'll take you guys to the u.s embassy in paris and we were gonna stop in uh the netherlands along the way and everyone's just chanting to go to that fucking city. Amsterdam. And you were like, there's no way in hell we're going to Amsterdam. And it's off route. And I'm never letting you guys out in Amsterdam.

So I was like, well, we at least got to hit a cafe. And well, I don't want to say how we got there. But an address was given to us by someone who knew what was up. And we ended up finding this cafe. And it was all cobblestone walkways. Just incredible. Beautiful place. But there's not a lot of American tourists there. Right. and we ended up finding this cafe and it was all cobblestone walkways soup just incredible beautiful place but there's not a lot of american tourists there right it's it's pretty remote and the base we were on felt like um it felt like the shining yeah it was just it was empty

empty it was completely i was half expecting kids to come through on a tricycle like it was fucking weird yeah but um we get out to the cafe and I love this story. Mike Swick had never smoked pot and I'm, and you know, he's a bit of a worry wart and a people pleaser. So he didn't want to make old uncle Dana upset. And I was telling him, everybody's like, come on, Mike, we're all going to fucking, we're going to hit the volcano. We'll go in a cafe. So we get in the cafe, and he's petrified. Somehow word's going to get back to Dana that he's smoking weed, which is like, you're in the fucking Netherlands. Who gives a shit, right?

Well, we get in there, and we were pretty recognizable because Chris Lieben has red hair and is covered in tattoos, and Ed Herman's covered in tattoos, and also he's a natural ginger. And I'm tall, and Swick's a recognizable guy. He's been on TV a lot. So the guy recognizes us from behind the weed counter. He's like, ah, UFC, UFC. And Swick freaks the fuck out. And we all have to grab him and be like, dude, it's cool. It's totally cool. So they give us all the weed we want for free. There's volcanoes at every little coffee table. We grab a seat.

They bring it out. We load it up. We start filling bags. And Swick's taking giant pulls. And he's like, I don't feel anything. I'm not getting anything. I'm not high. So I'm sure you guys were responsible and said, well, no, let it kick in.

Is that what happened? That's not exactly how it went down. Well, do it again, Mike. I finally, I was like, eh, maybe pump the brakes because I was fucking blasted. And we all go for a walk as we come out. And we're kind of wandering aimlessly through the streets. And Swick, still claiming not to be high, marches straight into a McDonald's. Probably the only McDonald's they have and orders half the fucking menu.

It's fully engulfed. And I'm like, I want to drink. I want to see the town. And we go to a bar and it's like the record stopped. I'm sure we told you about this, but the record stops. We're looking around. The only guy who looked like us

was the fucking security guard at the front door. And he was like, you guys aren't from around here, are you? And we're like, shit, no. He's like, he's like no man i was like why is everyone so young and he goes well everyone that's your age they're they've already been to the bars the legal drinking age here is that's okay you can cough it won't mess up the audio for anybody listening in the car let's edit that out no we're not going to edit that out and i'm going to make sure of it 100 unedited episode and uh he's like so they're 16 years old here that's the legal drinking age he goes i do a pretty good job of id'ing but a lot of people have fake ids or their older siblings

ids so that means there's fucking 13 and 14 year olds in this bar that we're at and by the time they're in their late teens they go to the cafes and then by the time they're in their late teens, they go to the cafes. And then by the time they're in their late twenties, thirties, they're just fucking grabbing wine and weed for the house. They're having friends over. They're not going out anymore. It was fucking awkward. It was like a twilight zone episode. And we tried dancing and then we ended up moving on. Great story. So we move on. Compelling. We get to the, to the U S embassy. And do you remember? Well, hold on. There's another part of this story. So, move on compelling. We get to the, to the U S embassy. And do you remember? Well, hold on. There's another part of this story. So, um, I didn't go out with you guys that night.

Like I was tired. I was exhausted of you guys, not of being in Europe. Cause that's awesome. That's a goal for everyone. So in about three o'clock in the morning, Swick knocks on my door back at the barracks. And he's like, hey, we lost Ed Herman. That's right, I forgot. He's somewhere in one of these three countries because it was a border country that you could have been in Germany, France, or-

Netherlands. Netherlands. And I was like, I don't care. I really don't care anymore, Mike. I don't care if we ever see Ed Herman again. And I just closed the door and went back to bed. And the look on Swig's face was like, I can't believe you're not going to help. And I was like, I'm done.

I'm done. But in all fairness, I love Ed Herman. He's phenomenal. Ed, he's a great dude. Yeah. Where were we at when we had the, uh, the grape scene with me and you, which airport was that? So that was in, uh, not Kuwait. It was in UAE. And so that was, we had finally got to the middle East and we were, it was on a dry base

where you could buy alcohol on base. You weren't supposed to take it out into town, although there were places, hotels out in town where you could get alcohol. And at the hotel that we were staying out, it's called Movin' Picks. Movin' Picks. Movin' Picks. And there ended up being a wedding reception in the ballroom there. And you and Herman got invited to it. That's right. So Herman and Kingsbury decided, hey, we're just going to stay up all night with this party and drink. And so by seven o'clock in the morning, because we had a flight and the flight we were going to was Abu Dhabi. And so we're downstairs. And so I'm a fruit person. I like fruits, veggies, protein. You can go for fruit.

I don't like bags of chips and stuff like that. And fruit in the Middle East is very expensive. And so I had a bag of grapes that I probably spent like 20 bucks on, you know, for, you know, half a pound kind of a thing. I love how you're building this. And this, by this point, we're 10 days into the tour and, uh, yeah. And so my frustration level was pretty high. You had a short fuse. Just like I had a very short fuse.

And, uh, so we're all standing out waiting for the bus to take us to the airport. And I'm standing there eating my grapes and Kingsbury walks up just drunk and stares at me. He's like, what, six, eight inches away. And I'm just eating my grapes, just ignoring him. And then his big, massive hand just comes swinging down on top of the grapes, knocks him onto the ground, and then he just stomps on him and then turns and looks at me. That was one of my favorite moments. That you don't even remember. You don't even remember.

And so I process, all right, so what are my options here? Well, all right, I could hit Kyle. It'll completely change the dynamics of the next four days of the tour. But come to find out, knowing Kyle, Kyle probably would have been like, no, I deserved it.

We're totally cool. And so I was processing what I should do here. And in that moment, Greg Thompson and Mike Swipp come running over and they both knew to quickly separate us. And Swip grabbed you, Greg grabbed me, walked me off. And the entire, Greg just goes, I know, I know, I know. Don't worry. I know. Like I didn't even have to explain. And, but, and then as soon as we got to Abu Dhabi, you had to get plugged in to get rehydrated. So you went straight to the-

I wanted the IV. Give me all the B vitamins. Yeah, because you were so dehydrated. Who would have saw that coming? I don't know. Yeah. No one could foresee. Middle East.

What was to happen. Drinking, not water. Yeah. Yeah, and I think it was probably like 120 125 degrees it was hot while we were there so so we that's that's where we meet and then you know what's great about that is sweet got me on that tour while i was on that very first tour um who was the guy who got busted for pot? He fought, he was, um, he got busted for having a grow operation. Anyways, he couldn't go on this next tour, which was with a different company with pro sports MVP.

Oh, so that opened up a slot for me. Swick was going to go, he was going to spend the night in Frankfurt, Germany, and then go right on this next tour. Oh, that's right. Cause you went back to back. Yep. And so I, I got the, you know, via email and Swaik again with the invite, I got to go on this next tour, which is through pro sports MVP, which is how I met my wife later on, not on that exact tour, but a year later,

my wife to be, I would meet on a very tour for the troops. Yeah. Cause you were on that one with Tom Lawler when you met Natasha, right? I don't know. That might have been a different tour that Tom was on. The tour that I met Tosh was just me, Tosh, Amber, Nicole Miller, and Mike Swick. Swick was on all these. He was a regular out there. Yeah, surprisingly. Swick was great.

With his cans of tuna fish. Yeah, yeah. And no garlic. No garlic. There's no garlic in this. You're going to take us the quickest route to the club, right? You're not going to drive us all around. I think this guy's fucking with us.

He's trying to make a couple extra bucks. Yeah. He wants a couple extra euros. Get out. Get out. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So let's backtrack this. Okay. What made you want to go into the military growing up? So I was an absolute buffoon in elementary school, middle school, high school. I didn't know how to be a student. I didn't know how to learn. I didn't know how to behave. I was angry.

But I also knew that college is an essential part of life. You're not—very few people out there are going to be able to make it, have a successful, a financially successful life without incorporating college. Everybody in my family went to college, you know, and so I didn't want to be left out. You're a real one percenter, Kurt. Well, so just like the Shrouts, you know, every single one of my cousins, uh, have degrees or advanced degrees. There are multiple PhDs on the child side of the family. So there's like 15 cousins, um, PhDs there's lawyer there's, I mean, they're just, they're

just an impressive group of people. And if we're all in a room together and you line us up from dumbest to smartest, the dumbest person in the room is going to be my brother. And then I'm next to him, right? And really, it depends on what we're talking about. I might be the dumbest person in the room. And so they're just great motivators of don't be complacent. This is in your genes. You can do this.

If you just work, you can accomplish your educational goals. So I knew I had to go to college, but did not have discipline. I didn't know how to behave as an adult. And I also come from a military family. My grandfather served in World War II. He was a bombardier. Flew on multiple missions. Flew on the Berlin Airlift. Shot down twice. Started off in the Army Air Corps and then the Air Force.

And so I was, you know, I need to follow in these footsteps. So I joined the Marine Corps. Picked the Marine Corps over any other service because I thought it would look better on a resume. And you would look better in a uniform. You know, come to find out, it really doesn't matter all that much. What matters is that you did it, that you're a veteran, that you served. And it's definitely a benefit. So I picked the Marine Corps because I was hoping to learn how to be an adult, you know, teach me to show up on time, you know, cause I didn't know about punctuality. Uh, and, and it worked now I was still an incredible idiot as a Marine. Uh, like if, thank God I had amazing superiors. Uh, otherwise, I mean, I got in trouble left and right, you know, even, even stuff would get you in trouble when you're in the Marines. Oh God,

this is how dumb I was when I was 19. So everybody knows about going AWOL. Well, they don't call that in the military. It's UA, unauthorized absence. And so I went missing for 36 hours. And so I was in Cincinnati, I was supposed to be back at like seven o'clock on a Sunday night. I didn't show up until 7.00 AM on a Tuesday morning because of a woman. And, you know, and so I like my life could have been destroyed because of that. Absolutely destroyed. But I had major Ridgeway who was my headquarters and headquarters squadron commander at the time. And I received what's called nonjudicial punishment. I was restricted to the barracks for 30 days.

But I still ended up, you know, a couple years later, I was promoted to NCO. I became a corporal. So it didn't completely curb my career. And I could have reenlisted. I don't know if I would have been able to stay in for a full 20 with that on my record, but I definitely would have been able to enlist four years for another four years. But I, you know, I got out because it was just, it's a, military is a hard life. And the people that do do it for 20 something years are, I'm impressed, especially, you know, in the Navy and the Marine Corps, just because of the amount of deployments that you do, you are constantly overseas.

That's their mission, is to be gone. So I did that, got my college money, got out, went to college. And you were a math major in college? I studied math. I wasn't a math major. My degree's in history. I studied the. I wasn't a math major. My degree's in history. I studied the ancient Near East.

Ancient astronaut theorists contend. No. You're not one of the ancient alien guys? No. No, no, no. Okay, I got that wrong. No, that's not me. There has to be evidence for something in order for me to look at it. But math goes into that.

Like, how could they construct the pyramids? Oh, absolutely. Right? But it doesn't, just because you can't answer that question, aliens is not the, you don't go to the God of the gaps, you know, just because you don't know the answer. Therefore, it's got to be the superpower. We can agree on that. Yeah. We'll get to some stuff we disagree on. Oh, I'm sure. So what do you learn in college that's not in your fucking school book? College, especially with history, for me, was learning how to learn,

how to do research, how to find evidence. And so it's not necessarily about being lectured to. That wasn't my experience. I'm sure that's a lot of students' experience of the teacher tells you what you're supposed to think and write. But I went to Sonoma State University. One of my professors' history was an archaeological PhD, archaeology. And so he wasn't a historian. He dug in the dirt. And if you don't find the evidence in the dirt, therefore, whatever theory is out there, or idea, not theory, whatever idea is out there, if there's not evidence, then don't bother looking at it. You know, it's a wasted point. So it was about learning how to learn and how to critical thought and not just accepting what you've been told, but to evaluate that information.

So, yeah, I loved it. Granted, a history degree is really just a degree in reading and writing. You know, you could go to the library and learn everything that I learned. For $2.75 in late fees. Right, that's right, will hunting. Yeah, you know, and so, and that's true.

But you also, there's some mentoring that takes place in college, you know, where the professor can say, well, you know, don't just, you know, look at primary sources and not just somebody's opinion of that primary source. I got a question. How many, how much of what you learned in college did you feel like after later on, like you listen to something like hardcore history or history on fire with Daniel. Like, like we were like, fuck, I was fucking lied to. I mean,

think about what I was 19 years old. Let me paint the picture. I'm 19 years old. It's Columbus day. I'm in junior college and there's a shit ton of native Americans in head dresses in our fucking, in our meeting hall. And I'm like,

Oh, this, this looks cool. Let me sit down here. And I go over there and they talk in very real terms about what Columbus was doing when he was here. But that's not your reality. So for you, you're like, well, that's, no, that's not, no, Columbus was awesome. He gave us freedom. He invented democracy, you know, this kind of stuff. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just

bananas to have that turned upside down. And I think Jukka Willink does a great job of this in his podcast, The Raping of Nanking, where he goes through that book and it's fucking gut wrenching. Right. Like it's, it's a, and he, he will preface before the episode. I encourage, we'll link to it in the show notes. He prefaces before the episode, like, this is not one you listen to with your kids. This is not one you throw on during dinner. It's some of the most horrific acts in human history. And it's very well documented and detailed.

But what he elaborates on is how culturally the Japanese were taught a very certain thing about their enemies, about the Chinese from birth on through every school, through every grade in school that they had all the way up until they got to the military. So by the time they get there, they're not looking at those other humans as humans. Not at all. They are not fucking human to them, right? So like, how can this happen? Well, this is how it can happen. Right. Right.

And culturally too, every nation does this, you know, so there are horrors that have taken place in the American past. Right. And so we all know the story of, of giving Native Americans blankets that were infected with smallpox. Right. But if you ask who is the president that was in charge of that decision? Most of us, we would have to be like, well, let me work that timeline. You don't get taught who committed the horror. You get taught that the horror happened,

but it really wasn't what we wanted. And so we don't tend to identify who our monsters are in our past or the decisions that were made. And monster might not be a fair term. Some people could hear that and think like, no, that person wasn't a monster. Just culturally at the time, people viewed Native Americans as less than human. So therefore, you can't blame them for the choices that they did. So we don't get taught that.

That's similar. Sorry to carry you out. Finish this and then I'll jump in. Okay. So every culture does this. The predominance of death camps were not in Germany. They were in Poland, right? So there's an aspect of the German culture

that if you were to talk to them about World War II and the Jews and the Holocaust, that there's this pretty big consensus. And there's a book by Ernestine Schlantz that was written, I don't know how many years ago. Can you say his name in a German accent? No, no. It's a woman.

She was married to a former Senator Bill Bradley. And she wrote about this and that, you know, the culture was we committed these, we didn't commit these atrocities. What we did wrong is we kicked the Jews out of the country. And then the Polish were the ones that really enacted this terror. But then if you confront people with, yeah, but the SS were running the camps. Well, the SS were a presence in the camp, but the camps were really controlled by the Polish. And so you have this German culture

and for the rest of the world, we all know what Germans did to the Jews during the Holocaust, but their national consensus, and it's definitely, it's not unanimous, but there's population that thinks like, no, our mistake was we kicked the Jews out and it was the Poles that did this, you know, which is for us, it's mind blowing. You would think like, no, you did this. You guys were the horrific ones. It wasn't.

That's reminding me of a couple of things. Obviously there's a huge parallel to a lot of this stuff with slavery. And, you know, that that's also, they're just like the thought of that, well, Native Americans weren't thought of as human or they were thought of less than. So that was kind of took generations to pass before we had that shift, right? And to allude to what you're talking about here, I don't know. I think it was Chelsea Handler, who I haven't watched much of, but I got her baked on one of her shows. So I watched a few episodes of her things. And I think she was touring the South and asking different people what they thought of slavery. And there was people answering on camera. Maybe this was like 2016. So only a couple of years ago.

Well, I don't think it's that bad. I think there was probably some good. I think the majority were good slave owners that were pretty nice to them and would cook food for them. And then I think there was probably a few bad apples that made the rest look bad. And it's like, damn, this is fucking 2016. But I think there might be something to that in that most people, and this is a segue to getting to Jordan Peterson, but most people, they can't look at themselves or whatever they come from with any real integrity if it's too painful or if it's too much. If it causes guilt or shame, then we don't want to look at that. We don't want to acknowledge that. And this is a concept that Aubrey's talked

about in his open relationship. If he holds himself to the standard that he holds himself at, and he's feeling jealousy, there's shame and guilt around that jealousy. So he won't even acknowledge the fact that he's actually feeling jealous. And thankfully there's tools like psychedelics and deep inner work and introspection that allow him to process and see that thing for what it is. But across the board, whether it's Germany or whether it's parts of the South, you see that, you know, and, and I'm sure there's, you know, towns near Native American lands still to this day where they're like, no, you know, we gave them this plot of land. They're doing great. They got a casino. It's their fault. They're not happy, you know,

and not realizing that they've been disenfranchised for 300, 400, 500 years. They're not encouraged to participate in democracy. All these ways that they get left out. Yeah. So there is a concept that Jordan Peterson has that, I mean, there's a couple that I agree with. And don't get me wrong. I read that article you sent me. And actually, Ryan, I'm going to have an article sent to you from Kurt. So we can link to that in the show notes for people to get

a slightly different view on Jordan Peterson. Most people that listen to the show, he was a guest on Aubrey's. We have a lot of people that listen to the show that listen to Joe Rogan. And for a while, I was drinking the Kool-Aid, but there are some things that stood out to me, particularly in his book and in listening to his lectures, where I'm like, oh, okay. And the article really rang true for me. He uses a lot of different language and tries to connect a lot of dots. And it's very clear. When people say, how could the Nazis do that? To recognize very clearly, that's you.

You could fucking do that. Every human on this planet has the exact same hardware. Not the same software, but the exact same hardware. This isn't millions of years ago. This isn't Homo erectus or some fucking descendant of Homo sapiens. This is within a hundred years. They are the exact same hardware as us. So how could they do that? No, we're all fucking capable of that horrific thing. So really to have an examination of what we're taught, is it valuable? Does it serve?

Is it for the good of all? Like to really have that introspective look at not only, you know, as Don Miguel Ruiz talks about in the four agreements, like what have we been domesticated to? What are the things we agreed to? Like we all stop on red. We all go green. We all go on green, right? Those are all agreements. But what else is packaged into that?

You know, I think that's, that's a key, a key piece here. And I agree with Jordan Peterson on that. Yeah. So for those that I've, I've been critical of some of Jordan's thoughts from time to time, not all of them. And I would never, ever say anything disparaging about him on air. Bash him. No, because I don't have the opportunity to discuss an idea with him. So if I hear him say something and I disagree with it, if we were in a room together, I could say, well, hold on. So I'm not sure how you got from A to B.

Can you walk me through this process? And then I might get a better understanding. This is where you'll like the article. So please read along if you're curious about this. Yeah. And so unfortunately, you know, so Jordan Peterson, and I know he's cause celeb for people to bash, you know, people want to get their names known by being the ones that are counter Jordan Peterson. But it's not fair to do that if you're not in a discussion with him. And he's definitely been the subject of gotcha journalism, where people try and pin him down on something that he said.

And I've read enough Jordan Peterson and watched enough that he would probably be willing to say, and I'm putting these words in his mouth, that he's not 100% correct all the time. He's said that before. Yeah. And for me, the problem, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or a Jordan Peterson fan or a Joe Rogan fan or an Aubrey fan or anything else, is that you cannot be part of a base. You cannot have zero issue with anything that someone says. There has to be things that you're like, well, I don't agree with that. I agree with this, but I don't agree with that. And the base is really the problem.

The basis will always be the problem. As an example, and I just wrote an article about this for Mediite. It's a Dan Abrams news website where discussing how much a base can screw up what we do. So there's no historian, no journalist today that would argue that what Nixon did as far as Watergate, the Saturday Night Massacre, was okay. Everybody's in contention that this was a mistake. Nixon did some incredible things as a president. He really did. He did a couple just phenomenal. Opened up trade with China, Title IX for women's sports, female sports. There's a lot of people that don't like Title IX. There's a lot of people that do, but I don't care. Like, I want women to come to the table,

you know, and Title IX attempted to accomplish that. And where it failed is, yeah, but our men's baseball team could have been so much better had we not had to subvert that $15,000 to support the women's volleyball. No, no, you'll never hear me accept that what a man didn't get is a tragedy compared to what a woman should get. So in any case, when Nixon's last year in office, his approval rating,

not his disapproval, his approval rating was in the 20%. 20% of the nation was completely okay with what Nixon had done. There is no historian that'll tell you that that's okay, what he did. And I think if we polled people today, they would be like, oh yeah, that's a problem. And so that number really should have been in the single digits, yet it wasn't. It was still in the 20%. There were people that were like, well, Nixon's my guy. So there had to have been a justification for him doing what he did, and they didn't care that it was illegal.

And we see this with every single president. People will always, when Reagan apologized for the Iran-Contra affair, In my heart, I still believe this to be true. He gives this national interview that I did not know what was happening. People accepted that. It's hard to imagine that a president did not know that that was taking place. It doesn't matter if it's Clinton, Obama, Trump, W. Bush, H.W. Bush, we make excuses for our politicians. We make excuses for our intellectual thinkers. There are people out there that have never heard anything that Peterson said, Jordan Peterson said, as being incorrect. Well, if Peterson's one of the first people to admit, I'm not right all of the time. And Peterson does do a great job encouraging people

to go out there and read and look at stuff. He's not telling you he has the secret source that you don't get exposure to like some cults. He encourages this, yet you still have a base that's like, nope, he's perfect. He's 100% correct. And I think that's, man, that's sad. Because all of us, you have intellect, you have

the ability to think, you have the ability to process. And if you're just willing to accept what somebody says without verifying or without doing your own exploration, then you're not really serving much. You're not providing a thought to the conversation. What do you think of, this will probably be the last of Jordan Peterson, but there's a concept here that trickles into other concepts. So I want to bring this up. What do you think of his main thought process that life is chaos and order? So that's a really interesting one because if you talk about chaos and order, if we look at it in terms of physics.

So if I look at the sun right now, I would say that the sun is order. It's not chaotic. You know, it's nuclear fission. It's providing this radiation, allows the earth to exist. But those are values that I have identified, right? Or I have assigned a value. Prior to the sun existing, it was forming. Why isn't that order? And so when the sun explodes, that's not chaos. That's just the next process. It's not beautiful. It's not ugly. It's not order. It's not chaos. It is entropy. It is change, but there is no order or chaos. It's just doing

what nature says to do. If a tornado hits Iowa and I don't want that to happen, and lives are lost, we have a negative assignment to it. But the earth doesn't care. That tornado has to exist because of the natural laws of earth, airflow, heat, humidity. All these things taken together create tornadoes, create hurricanes. If they're destructive, that's bad. We don't like it. But it's just a natural part of things. And so there isn't an order and a chaos. Peterson's is more about your life and not necessarily about the- The loss of the universe. Right. Yeah.

And I would agree with that. I think that that parallels, I think in his book, 12 Rules for Life, he gets a little too far into the Bible than I'm familiar with. Right. But heaven and hell, I do think of as constructs of our lives right now

and manifest. So what we go through here on earth is, our perception directly places us in one or the other. Life is good or it's bad. And for people who look through the filter of life is chaotic and life always has me down and I have bad luck and you fill in the blank, I think there is a bit of that self-fulfilling prophecy. And anyone you've met who is an Eeyore or a downer who can't seem to get their shit together, they will constantly find ways to affirm that very belief. And the same is true on the opposite end of the spectrum, right? You can have somebody who really nothing gets them down because they have a good hand on their

shoulders and they have a way of reframing and rethinking whatever the thing is, right? So with that, and then of course, even in Buddhism, like we are, we are, their teaching is about the end of suffering. Like we are born into suffering and this is the human condition. Life is suffering. And we, we have that as the human condition, but there is a way out. If you try to mitigate the suffering of others, you know, don't. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, I just don't know if, how much energy should be lost in assigning a value to that. If I need to change an aspect of my life, I don't think it benefits me to say, well, my life is chaotic right now. Yeah, the labeling of shit doesn't make a damn bit of difference. I don't think that you can have an ordered life. I think that you can be on a path to improve your life, to always try and attempt to improve your life. But it's not, there are things that you could do to make it chaotic,

whether you are living in drama, drug issues, family issues, stuff like that. Bad drug issues. Bad drug issues. family issues, stuff like that. Bad drug issues. Bad drug issues. You're right. Opioids are when you're taking them and it's not needed to. Absolutely. But for most of us who don't have destructive lives, I don't see a benefit to labeling it as that as opposed to,

I just need to improve. I need to be on a better path. And it's not about order of chaos. It's just about having a way. Very well stated, my brother. Let's drop into politics here. Never been discussed on the show before. What strikes me, and you live in Portland and there's, you know, that's kind of, we've been to Winston in Portlandia, which is a mockery. It's a hundred percent. It is awesome. It is really fucking accurate. They nailed it. They did nail it. Yeah. And, um, so, so culturally there, I can see kind of, kind of some reasons that's a very left place, right. But having a military background coming from military, um military descendants, a long line of

people that have been in there, that's typically more conservative, more right-wing. How have your politics been shaped over the course of your life? What has really brought you to where you're at today and what are those values? So I think a lot of it falls back to the history. Okay, I believe this, but why do I believe that? Let me look into it. There's been numerous times that I've written articles, whether it was politics or MMA-based, where I had this idea of the path of research that I wanted to be on, and then you're presented with evidence that's to the contrary. Oh, no. By the stats, Dominic Cruz should beat TJ Dillashaw, even though you initially, you have that gut feeling TJ should win that fight. But once you break it down, like who do you, odds are favorite, oh, it ends up being that Dominic should be the one that wins that as an example. And so with politics, I think, and we're moving into the holiday season and, you know, you always see these things on social media or news reports that, oh, it's the holiday season.

Don't talk about religion. Don't talk about politics, right? Because these are the things that disrupt families. Why? You know, it's not what you're talking about. It's how you're talking to each other. And so my path on politics has never been about, I need to tell you why you should be thinking something different. It's not that at all. It's, I try and look at research-based positions and therefore why I have this view that I do. And not dictating that you need to have the same view and want it to be a conversation. So if it's the holidays and I've got far right family members, I've got far left family members, and then trying to figure out how can we communicate about these issues where

you're feeling heard and that I'm feeling heard. So if I go into it thinking like, oh, I really need to explain to my sister why it's okay to own a gun, she might not be willing to hear that. But if I listened to why she doesn't want, and this is not, I don't believe this thought that she has, but if she thinks that we need to get rid of all guns, I need to listen to that position first before I even attempt to establish my position. Before you tell her that America is not an island

and we can't get rid of all the guns and this is not Australia. Yeah. And that's really one of the most silly arguments that people on the far left. And unfortunately, the further you are to the left, the further you are to the right, those are the smallest amount of people that for some reason have the largest voice. Well, that's what social media is. Yeah, it does. And it allows people to just put out misinformation constantly. And so for those that didn't hear that, Australia was able to ban guns after a pretty horrific massacre a couple of decades ago. But culturally, we are not Australia. I mean, look at the United States alone. The different cultures that you have that exist in the Pacific Northwest versus Louisiana, versus Connecticut, versus even New Mexico. We are a vast culture of people. And so could you

imagine, let's say the Senate is 100% Democrats, the House is 100% Democrats, every governorship, every state legislature is 100% Democrats, with the exception of Texas. Let's say Texas keeps a Republican governor, Republican legislature. Can you imagine if the United States tried to say, like, we're going to get rid of guns. Texas would say, and I think rightfully so, well, we're not going to stay in this because culturally we're not okay with that. This is part of how we identify. You're not going to take that from us, and we would rather cede from the union than be part of this. And I think that that's an appropriate response. So you can't just tell people, like, you have to do this.

And so culturally, what they did in Australia, it could never happen in the United States. It really could not happen in the United States. Certain states could certainly do that. You know, California has made it extremely difficult to buy certain types of firearms where other states don't. Like in Oregon, you's very much there's

paramilitary idea. And so AR-15s, stuff like this is a big part of the culture, which just something that happens. So with politics, it's no different. If we want to discuss Trump or Obama or anything like that, I need to make sure that I don't do, well, what about? If I point out the hypocrisy that somebody is exhibiting, that's not going to get them to hear what it is that I have to say. That's just an absolute waste. And I also think that, unfortunately, I wouldn't say a lot, but there's a good deal of amount of people that aren't as informed as they should be because they look at strictly biased information, whether it's coming from the left or from the right, they're looking for

validation. And oftentimes that validation is coming through a passionate, well-constructed argument, but not presented with evidence. You know, that it's, there's conjecture in the argument, there's possibilities that they're presenting, but they're not saying like, this has happened. They're just saying, well, what if? You know, we saw it like, you know, with the whole border wall, you know, with the migrants coming over and President Trump saying that we can consider those rocks the same as a rifle. And that just fed to the separation between two aspects of America. And although I would argue neither side really understands the ramifications of that statement, the president can establish rules of engagement.

That really doesn't come from him. It comes from commanders and it comes from a book called the San Remo Handbook on Rules of Engagement that was created by the United Nations. You can't just shoot at people because you want to. And so the left gets all up in arms. The right says, no, that should be able to happen. And it's just not necessarily the case, but it's because they don't have that access to, not that they don't have the access to information, but they don't want to look to that information to see if they should be viewing it in a different way. So what are some core things, some core beliefs that you're down with that differ, that one might be on the right, one might be on the left, that make you more centered? Because I think most intelligent

people are going to be somewhere closer to the middle than these extremes left and right. My biggest problem always is when somebody tells me that one of the biggest threat facing America is another American. I can't stomach it when a conservative tells me that America's problems are liberals. I can't stomach it when a liberal tells me America's problems are conservatives. Because it's just not true. And for the most part, a lot of us believe in this sense of tribalism, but the political tribalism that's taking place is extremely detrimental. As an example, if you tell me your position on abortion, I now know where you stand on man-made climate change. I know where you stand on Black Lives, I now know where you stand on man-made climate change. I know where you stand on Black Lives Matter. I know where you stand on a vast number of issues that are completely unrelated to each

other on the Second Amendment. None of these things have anything to do with each other. And that's really unfortunate. Everything should be able to stand alone and not have you be 100% on board because that tends to be the position of your side. Yeah, I'm red or blue, and that checks off all the fucking boxes for me out of the gate.

Oh gosh, that's detrimental. That's so detrimental. You know, there is no correlation between man-made climate change and the second amendment. There's not. You know, so you no correlation between man-made climate change and the second amendment. There's not, you know, so you should be able to look at one and have it stand alone compared to these other things. I have a great story to jump in with that. It's very quick. Donald Cerrone was in town and he was here at Onnit and, you know, we just got a nice big lifted tundra, which I'm sure he would have approved of.

But at the time I was driving my Prius, which sticks out like a sore thumb here in Texas. Right. And he sees me get into it and he just looks over and he shakes his head. He goes, what are you a fucking liberal? And I laughed so hard. And I was like, why? Because I fucking like the environment or because I want to save on gas. Right. What kind of shit is that?

You know, like it was just, it was hilarious. But like, that's the thing. Like, if you care about the environment, if you think we have a hand in this, right, then automatically you're a progressive far left piece of shit who doesn't want anyone to own their guns and fill in the blank on all that other stuff. Baby killer, you name it, right? Which is so ironic because the whole start of conservatism with Teddy Roosevelt was conserving the environment. He enacted these natural parks, wanted to protect hunting grounds and waterways so that way we could fish. We could be stewards of the land. And then it got a way of,

no, we should get oil. One of the first things that Reagan did when he came into office was took solar panels off the roof of the White House that Jimmy Carter had put up. Because wanting to establish America's righteousness with having fossil fuels, which is odd. It's very odd. And so, yeah, it's that weird, weird juxtaposition of these ideas that they just don't fit. Saudi Arabia, as an example, largest oil producers in the world are spending $200 billion on a solar farm. That's everything you need to know about the future of oil. If Saudi Arabia is willing to spend $200 billion on a solar farm, we should reevaluate. And without a doubt, the reality is in 100 years from now, hopefully less, 100% of the vehicles on the road are going to be electric powered or-

You think in 100 years? My guess would, well, it's just a completely made up number. I don't think we're running out of oil anytime soon. It's not that we're running out of oil. The powers that be number. I don't think we're running out of oil anytime soon. It's not that we're running out of oil. The powers that be. I'm not saying that we're running out of oil. Well, let's get into this too, because I'm not a, there is no doubt the climate is changing.

I think everyone will agree to that. Nope, everyone won't. Everyone won't. Everyone whose opinion I value will agree the climate is changing. We may differ on how much of a hand we have in that or how much oil has a hand in that. And I've read books like The Soil Will Save Us that talks about ways we can sequester carbon through grass-fed cattle, grazing cattle versus factory farm meat. And factory farm meat, because of the methane being a far higher contributor than fossil fuels or third world countries that burn cow patties to stay warm, right? There's an

energy crisis in India and the vast majority of people that live there need to heat their little huts, right? We saw that in Afghanistan. So is methane more than the carbon footprint that we leave? I don't fucking know, right? But are we, do we have a hand in this i would say yes um with that with you watch like the what's the documentary with leonardo dicaprio can you pull that up ryan yeah i'm talking about it's it's you know he's a hollywood guy he's pretty far left uh it it it had an air of um al gore's film inconvenient truth it had a lot of that in it. Before the flood. Before the flood. Thank you, Giles. But what it talked about was, and they show the prime minister of these tiny countries in Malaysia where their islands are being swallowed up by the water

already. And they're basically stating that if the scientists that are proposing this are correct, in an 80-year span, we'll lose all of our coastal cities. And so refugees, even within our own country and every other major country, will become a huge issue. Hong Kong is gone, Miami, Manhattan. So if those are accurate, then I could see us switching from like, all right, no more fucking oil unless it's absolutely necessary. We're going to have all electric cars, those kind of things. If the estimate is off, even by a little, I see the powers that be holding on as much as possible to fucking oil. Yeah. Well, oil not a profit-driven industry.

So people aren't making trillions of dollars. Like, I don't think that you would ever get a nation that has as many billionaires as Saudi Arabia does based off of solar energy or wind energy or nuclear energy. It's just not going to happen. And I think that as time goes by, technology will allow us to harness these energy sources a lot more efficiently, which means that you don't have to have all the effort that's involved. So when people are calling for coal to come back,

there's not a good return on the dollar in investing in coal energy. It's just not. And so companies, why would I invest a dollar on that only to make $2 when I can invest a dollar in oil and make $5, something like that. So that's why coal is going away. It just doesn't make money. Now, eventually, although I guess even though I said these clean energies are not profit-driven industries, eventually there'll be the shift to it because of the fact that there's enough damage to the earth that from possibly from oil that we need something that we can have all the energy that we want and people aren't having to waste money on it. So it wouldn't be driven from money made, but from money citizens are able to save and therefore spend on something else.

So for a capitalist market, you kind of do want people spending money on something other than heat, food, stuff like that. When I want you to buy a TV where your options are a tank of gas or a new video game, yeah, let's figure out a way to get rid of the tank of gas as an issue so that way you can buy the new video game. I think that'll eventually— Are you familiar with Milton Friedman? Oh, yeah. Yeah, fucking excellent dude. Well, I'll find a video that we can put up in the show notes. He's an old school guy.

He's a brilliant mind on what a truly free and open market looks like. And how a lot of the pitfalls of capitalism are addressed through a free and open market. And that resonates, that resonates that just, that just came up for me because I think that's a, one of the fairer arguments from conservatives who want everything to be oil driven and don't give a shit about, you know, having the biggest truck on the planet is let the open market decide. Right. Right. And so let's, let's let technology,

let's let technology be the the mover on this and really redirect and i don't think i mean you can love fast cars but the second you get in a fucking tesla you're like good god this is this is the fucking dopest futuristic car i've ever fucking been in you know and it's lightning fast you know so i think that that those are clear indicators that we are heading in that direction oh yeah yeah without a doubt so one thing we haven't discussed which is kind of going off topic compared to where we've been is jujitsu yeah and i and i definitely want to get this in towards the end here and that you're you're like 57 right now yeah i'll be 58 uh next september

no you're not. No. 47. 47. Yeah. That was good. I only give you an extra 10 years there. When did you get into jujitsu? And how's the fucking course of your career gone? Because you're dealing with injuries and shit like that.

You still train. You're inspiring me because I'm 37. And I've got a fucked up knee that happened in jujitsu. And anytime as a dad, as a father of three, and I'm a father of one who wants more kids, anytime you can't walk or you can't fucking move and play like a normal human that I am coming to a crossroads where I'm not sure if I want to press on down that road, but you're doing it right now. So let's talk about that. So there's always that idea of training smart. We all know train smart versus train hard. I've definitely noticed as I've gotten older. So for us, there's always been strength training

and conditioning training. And now I'm realizing that I have to incorporate training completely designed to prevent injury, you know, which is outside the norm of physical activity. So if you've got 45 minutes on a Monday and you're like, well, I can go hit, you know, some squats. I can blast out the legs. Great. You now have stronger legs. But at my age, it's about, well, I've got 45 minutes.

Let me make sure I'm doing the exercises that will prevent me from being injured whenever I'm doing explosive behavior. And I need that in jujitsu. I just recently had my first knee surgery about five weeks ago out of a 47-year life of physical activity. You know, I started boxing when I was a kid. I lived in Thailand and fought Muay Thai over there. And then I transitioned into jujitsu because of, like, I'm tired of being punched and kicked. Like the gentle art.

Like it, I mean, it's rough. But a bad day in jujitsu means that I get tapped. And, you know, and then you reset, you shake hands, and you start all over again. Bad day in, you know, MMA or Muay Thai, kickboxing, boxing is you're going to get punched in the face for five to 10 rounds. And so if you have a bad day where you're just timings off, you're just getting your life shortened by continuing for that hour. And your quality of life. And your quality of life. Even if you live to 100,

nobody wants to be a vegetable for the last 40 years. Right. Yeah. Don't want that at all. So I got into jujitsu when I was 30. I started training with David Terrell in Santa Rosa, California. That's a good first coach. Oh my gosh. What a monster. What an absolute, and he still is. His jujitsu career at the time, he'd never even been scored on in a competition all the way through. He did an appearance at Abu Dhabi Combat ADCC back in, I want to say 2001, somewhere right around there, where he lost in the semifinals to Salo Hibero. And I think it was by an advantage or a ref's decision. Dave will be the first to tell you that, yeah,

but prior to that, Salo did suplex him twice prior to points being able to be scored. And in fact, you can watch a highlight video of him competing at that tournament. So he was just always a monster. And that was a very Matt tough school. Like you couldn't, you, it was not the general art. It was, it was pretty rough.

You had a young Nick Diaz in the house too, right? Oh my, I can tell you like at the, at a Gracie open. So it was a local San Francisco tournament. That the very first one that I went to at one point, there was like eight matches going and everybody in the crowd got up and moved to one quarter of the gym. And so I was asking like, what's going on? And they were like, Nick Diaz is over there. He was a blue belt at the time, I think like 16 or 17 years old. And the entire place wanted to go watch him compete. And of course he dominated.

You know, the kid's a monster. I think when he was 19 is when he just started tapping like, you know, these upper black belts in competition without much problem. And these guys both came out of, Dave Terrell and Nick Gracie, Nick Diaz came out of Cesar Gracie school. Cesar is just one of the best.

One of the interesting aspects of it, I think, is your ego. With jujitsu, we always say, hey, check your ego at the door. And your ego is not your amigo and all these little silly phrases, which I kind of disagree with now that I'm a little bit older. I think that your ego is not a positive or a negative. It's definitely a yin and a yang. It's both. That you need your ego to improve.

And it doesn't matter what it is. If I want to be a better husband and a better father, that's my ego saying, hey, correct this. If I want to get better at jujitsu, that's my ego. And my idea isn't, I want to be better than other people. It's that I want to be better than I was. That is still your ego. And I can remember Dave asking me after training for like a year, he goes, don't you ever get tired of getting tapped out? And you're like, nope.

Yeah, because I was. I was getting tapped out by everybody. And I've got these long arms. And so if you're new to jujitsu, if you train for four weeks, you're going to be able to armbar me just because I'm this lumbering buffoon. And so Dave said that to me. And I was like, oh, yeah, I don't want to get tapped out anymore. And so then I was trying to work harder to have a smarter game and that's the ego. But

that ego allowed me to improve and not to be destructive towards somebody else, but to get better at the sport that I love. And yeah, so it's a good path. That resonates a lot with me because so much in the, you know, there's been not the majority of these episodes on this podcast, but there's been a few where we've dipped into the spiritual conversation through plant medicines and meditation and thoughts on God and whatever you want to call it. But there, you know, it's, and I don't mind shying, like, I'm not trying to shy away from that stuff, even though that like politics is hard for people to grasp sometimes, um, that there's no conversation that's off limits in my boat. But at the same time in that, among people in that community who are oftentimes focused, like, you know, fucking spiritual as fuck, like JP Sears says, you know, and that's, that's their, that's their thing.

There's a huge concept that I think is misaligned, and that is the dissolving of the ego. I need to get rid of this thing. Well, first of all, it's impossible in human form. Maybe where we go after this, that gets removed. But while we're here on earth, absolutely impossible to fully remove that. You can dissolve your ego in a plant medicine ceremony temporarily, which can be a huge benefit. You can drop into a super deep meditation and come to a place of stillness where you're no longer a prisoner of your thoughts. Also important, whether you ever do plant medicines or not, no matter if you're an atheist or a believer or not, doesn't matter. Those are great practices

to have. But all that to say, you're never going to fucking remove your ego and there's many things that if you have there's you know there's it's it's a scale right so just like the far left and the far right right too little ego you're probably a pushover and a little bitch that doesn't you know like doesn't have a backbone too much ego you're probably too a little bit self-centered narcissistic and you don't listen to other people or hear what other people are saying. But somewhere in that medium, somewhere in the middle, you can find common ground and balance in what you want to gain out of life. There is a spark. There is drive to be better, to do better for yourself. But there still is that ability to let go, to surrender, to listen to others, to maybe change your mind,

maybe admit that, oh, fuck, I was wrong there. Right. One of my favorite ego stories is Elliot Marshall, who's actually competing tomorrow at the On It Invitational. On It Invitational 10, baby. On It Invitational 10. Tune in. Live on Facebook. Yeah, but not live when this podcast airs. You would have to go back in time. So you guys go back in time, look it up on Facebook videos and watch it. So I moved out to Colorado, I don't know, like six years ago, maybe seven.

And we lived out there for a few years then moved back to Portland. And I started training at like in a Mall Easton school. Mall Easton was one of Henzo Gracie's first black belts. And then he moved to Boulder, opened up his jujitsu school. I think it was like a purple belt at the time. And Elliot Marshall was one of his first students and has been one of his consistent students.

And they now own multiple locations in the greater Portland area. And if you ever get a chance, Elliot's got a- Greater Portland or greater Denver? I'm sorry, greater Denver area. And if you ever get a chance, Elliot's got a- Greater Portland or greater Denver? I'm sorry, greater Denver area. And Elliot's got a podcast. I think it's called The Gospel of Fire. And if you can, check it out.

I mean, didn't he just do a book too? He's working on it. I don't think it's been published yet. Okay. And so after a training session, oftentimes Elliot will relay a story that fits into something that we're doing. And this is one of my favorite stories of his that I try and share as often as possible. And he was like, I remember the first time I really started

to smash Amal. Because Amal would just tap me left and right, catch me with anything that he wanted to. And then this one day, he was like, everything was clicking for me. You know, where I was passing them all as guard, I was doing whatever I want. I'd catch them all. And then, you know, in jujitsu, if somebody gets submitted, then you tap hands and slap hands and start all over again. And he was like, I was just dominating, dominating. And he said, about halfway through the round, I realized, oh, Amal's just practicing this new move

that he doesn't have it correct. And I'm able to do stuff because Amal is trying to improve. And it wasn't because of what Elliot was doing. It was that Amal's ego, he didn't care. He was like, I want to develop this new move. If Elliot passes my guard and then submits me because of it, doesn't matter. There's a move I want to add to my game. I need to practice it on Elliott because Elliott was one of the best at the academy. So be it. And I love that story. I love that he was more than willing to have this kid

walk off the mat thinking like, I just totally dominated this black belt. I'm so good. I'm tapping black belts. But Amal didn't care. And for most of us black belts, like we don't like being submitted, you know, our ego comes into play in a negative way of like, oh, that purple belt caught me or that brown belt. We don't typically get very upset when we get caught by other black belts. But if you get caught by a purple belt, then, you know, you're, you know, you're, you get a hang up on it for a day or two days or something like that. Amal didn't care. Amal was willing to let this 230-pound snot-nosed kid do whatever because Amal wanted to add something to his lexicon of moves. And I love that. And the fact that Elliot was able to recognize that that was taking place.

Then, of course, I've seen Elliot roll a whole bunch of times and seeing that he would allow these purple belt kids to attack in positions who put himself in dangerous positions to see what those kids can do. And so I think that's really essential in jujitsu, that you have to be willing to expose, try something new that, you know, it's kind of hard to do in other sports that. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll, I'll leave us here. We're running out of time. I'm going to leave us here with the converse, the flip side of that. This would be that extreme side of the ego. That's not beneficial. How my knee got hurt was I was rolling with a guy that was smaller than me and also not a black belt. And it's funny because from white through brown, I didn't care if I got tapped, even by a belt that was lower than me. I might think about it, like why'd that guy tap me? But

it wouldn't be, it wouldn't fuck me up. Right. But as a black belt, unless I'm rolling with Robert Drysdale or Vinny Magalash or somebody who's been a black belt much longer than I've been rolling altogether, I would be like, no, this guy ain't going to fucking tap me. Right. So the smaller guy who's not a black belt gets me in an inside heel hook, but I straightened my leg and there's no pain. So I'm like, fuck it. I'm not tapping to this. I'm going to fucking work my way out. And sure enough, no pain. I ended up tapping because I wasn't getting out, but it was a long time i was in that position i go on to roll i finished the day that night knee swells up like a puffer fish can't

walk torn meniscus and badly torn so there is at any level you have to be able to check that and it's not about dissolving it completely because that is the very thing that made me want to get on the mat in the first place. But where's the balance, right? And that's a fucking nine-month injury and count. You know, that you got to pay for it because you weren't willing to, hi, this is a bad position. I shouldn't. But had it been a Kimura, you probably would have tapped because,

you know, because that's, you know, that's going to be serious damage soon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tricky deal. It is. Where can people find you online? Twitter, Instagram, Facebook? I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. Instagram is really just pictures of my kids, pictures of tacos, stuff like that. Nothing super important. And then I never tweet. I'm never on Facebook.

That's a hole. It's a hole that people shouldn't be in. It's just, yeah. I remember when I first got off Facebook and you were so disappointed. You're like, I miss you. That's how we would talk. And then you finally came over to the Grams. So now we can still interact with one another. Well, I've noticed that, especially with something like Facebook, that even though it was designed that you could have conversations, that conversations really aren't taking place, not in ways that people can hear. It's almost become one of those evil chat rooms back in the late 90s where people are just-

Shitting on each other. Yeah, libtard, this kind of stuff, or conservative, that there is no conversation. It's just vitriol. And so, yeah, sometimes you'd see you know, you'd see something that was interesting, but I just saw way too much misinformation on there that I don't want to be in that hole. Yeah. Well, we'll get your handles and, um, what else were you going to talk about? You've, you were just on Elliot's podcast, right? No, I wasn't on Elliot's. Yeah.

Which one? Uh, Nate Corey. Nate Corey. So let's talk about that. Let's pump him up a little bit. Yeah. And then we'll link to that in the show notes as well. So Nate Corey has started a podcast called Vet Speak. And so the platform is where somebody from the military can just tell their story or explain what life was like in the military or anything like that. And I highly encourage people, especially if you don't have anyone in your family that has ever served in the military, you know, to listen to some of them. There's a couple, he only started it, I want to say a couple of weeks ago.

So I think there's maybe four or five podcasts out there. Probably like 10-ish by the time we launch. Probably. Yeah. And just, there's just great stories. And so Nate wanted a platform where people can just tell. Hey, I thought I turned my ringer off. Great.

I love that you left your ringer on. Can we edit that out? No. Fuck no. Sorry, people turned this podcast off a long time ago, Kurt. They won't catch that. So Nate started this podcast. I was on it a week ago talking about some of my experiences

and what it is that I wanted people to know about the military and the pros, the cons. We'll link to that. And we'll link to the other guy who you said was better than you. There's a lot of people better than me. No, but there was one guy specifically to tune into that you said was better than you? There's a lot of people better than me. No, but there was one guy specifically to tune into that you said was fucking amazing. There's Kirsten, Eddie, and Frank.

And listen to any one of those podcasts. And you will be- I think it was Eddie. It was Eddie. But even the Frank one is compelling. And so it was the Kirsten one. The Kirsten one will be mind-blowing. Dope.

Mind-blowing. So definitely check it out. And as we're closing out, the only thing I'd want to add in relationship to that is every year we have Memorial Day. And I believe 100% have a barbecue. Enjoy that day off in celebration of those that lost their lives while serving for the country.

But do this one thing for me. Google, research a name of somebody that died, whether Iraq War, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, World War II, and tell their story at your barbecue and toast them. And it won't be hard to find out just a brief history. The importance of it is that family members don't want anyone to be forgotten. So God forbid one of my kids grows up and dies in war, I need to know that they will live on. And so I started a couple of years ago looking up some names and then I would post about them online and I got a Facebook message from a friend that said oh my god did you know Doc Baez and Doc Baez

was somebody that had died in in the war on terrorism and I just happened to have found his name wrote up a quick blip about him you know then cheers them online. And I said, no, I didn't know him. I just came across his name with an unfortunate list of thousands of people that have died for our country. And then my friend responded like, I miss him every single day. And thank you for posting about him. And so if you barbecue on Memorial Day, look up a name, tell their story. You might feel embarrassed, but nobody at that party is going to have an issue with you doing it. And the last Memorial Day barbecue that we did, I had 10 names on a list that I read out that came from three people. So three friends knew 10 people that died

from the war on terror. And they don't want those friends forgotten. And those family members don't want their children, their brothers, their sisters, their fathers and mothers forgotten. So yeah. It's almost like the American Dia de los Muertos. Yeah, exactly. Fuck yeah. Yeah. So make sure you put this at the front of the podcast since people turned it off a long time ago. All right. Because I don't give a shit. I guess there is some editing necessary, exactly. Fuck yeah. Yeah. So make sure you put this at the front of the podcast since people turned it off a long time ago. All right. Because I don't give a shit.

I guess there is some editing necessary, guys. I love you, brother. We're going to have a fucking great weekend. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Human Optimization Hour. We had my boy Kurt Schraud on. I hope you guys dig it.

Hit us up on social media. He's kind of elderly, so he might not respond quickly. But I think he's on Instagram more than anything these days, if I recall correctly. And what else? 10% off all supplements and food products at onyx.com slash podcast.