Lex Fridman Podcast - #125 – Ryan Hall: Martial Arts and the Philosophy of Violence, Power, and Grace

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

Ryan Hall is a jiu jitsu black belt, UFC fighter, and a philosopher of the martial arts. Please check out our sponsors to get a discount and to support this podcast: - PowerDot, use code LEX: https://powerdot.com/lex - Babbel: https://babbel.com and use code LEX - Cash App: download app & use code "LexPodcast" If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/podcast or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 7:22 - Greatest warrior in history 11:48 - Genghis Khan 17:32 - Nature is metal 21:49 - Cancel culture 36:11 - Sci-fi books and movies 44:50 - Essence of jiu jitsu 51:17 - Jiu jitsu is a language 1:01:12 - How to get started in jiu jitsu 1:14:01 - The value of a good coach 1:25:42 - Lex training with Ryan 1:31:06 - Toxicity on the internet 1:34:41 - Joe Rogan 1:42:25 - Alex Jones 2:07:02 - Donald Trump 2:09:45 - The American ideal 2:17:33 - What does it take to be a jiu jitsu black belt 2:49:06 - Elon Musk 2:57:39 - Fighting BJ Penn 3:04:13 - Conor McGregor 3:12:08 - How to beat Khabib Nurmagomedov 3:16:00 - Top MMA fighters of all time 3:24:41 - Mike Tyson 3:41:13 - Fear of death

The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall, one of the most insightful minds and systems thinkers in the martial arts world. He's a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, a accomplished competitor, an MMA fighter undefeated in the UFC, and truly a philosopher who seeks to understand the underlying principles of the martial arts. Jiu-Jitsu is such an important part of who I am, and I was hoping to share that with folks who might know me only as a researcher. I think there's no better person to do that with than Ryan, who somehow remarkably, I can say, is a friend, and also a modern day warrior philosopher of the Miyamoto Masashi line of especially dangerous and brilliant humans. Also his amazing wife, Jen Hall was there as well, so if you hear a kind of voice of wisdom

coming from above, you know who it is. Quick summary of the sponsors, PowerDot, Babble, and CashApp. Please check out the sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that renaming this podcast to just my name gave me intellectual freedom that I really didn't anticipate was so empowering, especially for someone who's trying to find their voice. I hope you'll allow me the chance to really try and do that to step outside of AI and even science, engineering, history, and so on. And on occasion, talk to athletes, musicians, writers,

and maybe even comedians who inspire me, especially up in common comedians and musicians like Eric Weinstein, who yes, will do a third conversation with soon. I think if I allow myself to expand the range of these conversations on occasion, when I do return to science and engineering, I'll bring a new perspective and also a little bit more fun. And a few extra listeners that may not otherwise realize how fascinating artificial intelligence,

robotics, mathematics, and engineering truly is. All that said, please skip the episodes that don't interest you. You don't have to listen to all of them. Trust me, as someone who is a bit or a lot OCD, that idea is quite unpleasant. But life, friends, is full of unpleasant things. But as Hunter Assamson suggested, and I suggest as well, you should still buy the ticket and take the ride. If you enjoyed this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 stars and not a podcast,

follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter and Lex Friedman. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but I give you the time stamp, so please skip if you don't want to listen to the ads, but it does mean a lot to me when you do and still please do check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. This show is sponsored by Power Dot. Get it at power dot com slash Lex and use code Lex at checkout to get 20% off.

I use it for muscle recovery for legs and shoulders but you can can also use it to build muscle, endurance, or even just warm up. In fact, I first heard about this kind of electrical muscle stimulation device and reading that Bruce Lee used it. He was an inspiration to me as someone who practices first principles thinking, especially in a discipline where conventional thinking is everywhere. He created a martial art called Jit Kundo that is in many ways at least philosophically in his hybrid approach, a precursor to modern-day mixed martial arts. There's a special kind of deep philosophical thinking that combat athletes or jiu-jitsu practitioners do that is unlike any other. I think it's grounded in the humbling process of getting your ass kicked a lot that removes any illusion of intellectual superiority. I think that journey towards wisdom starts when you humbly admit to yourself that you know very little or almost nothing.

Anyway, go to power.com slash Lex and use code Lexet checkout to get 20% off on top of the 30 day free This show is also sponsored by Babel, an app and website that gets you speaking in a new language within weeks. Go to Babel.com and use code Lex to get 3 months free. They offer 14 languages including Spanish, French, Italian, German, and yes, Russian. Let me read a few lines from a Russian song by Vladimir Vosotsky called Anabela of Paris. You'll start to understand if you sign up to Babel. I probably died when I was in the blood of the king. I probably died when I was in the army.

Where did I go? Anabela of Paris. I was in the army yesterday, not only in the same room. This song always made me smile because it resonated in my own life. a navel af barizhe. Yaf Chirales' naun, ni tokov niomad nom. The song always made me smile, because it resonates with my own life. It translates loosely to, she's been the Paris. Paris for a Russian, I suppose, symbolizing a fancy life, and that the guy can never quite fit into that kind of life. Expensive things, nice restaurants, cars, all that.

I was thinking about what songs equivalent in English, maybe Opton Girl by Billie Joe is similar in spirit, but very different in style. I just watched the video on YouTube for Opton Girl and it's basically Billie Joe dressed up as a mechanic, but dancing in a way that I'm pretty sure no mechanic has ever danced. Turning the old cringe factor up to 11. Anyway, I always felt like I didn't really fit in with the fancy people, and that's what this song represents. But back to Babel, get started by visiting babel.com and use call Lex to get 3 months free.

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I've been thinking of doing some kind of little contest and given away 42 bucks to a bunch of people who win It's not so much about the money, but the glory and the delicious taste of victory If you have ideas for a contest, let me know. I was thinking of something like asking people to submit funny inspiring photos or videos or audio of using cash app or any of the sponsors of this podcast really or maybe even just funny things related to the podcast like different weird places you might be watching and listening to me right now. I'm pretty sure there's somebody out there right now sitting in a hot tub with some wine watching me say this. I salute you sir or madam. I may be opening up some floodgates I deeply regret later. So please make sure you're wearing clothes and whatever you sent me. There will

be no naked people in the hot tub as part of this podcast. I have integrity and standards. Let me know in the comments what ideas for context you might have. Again, if you get cash app from the App Store Google Play and use the code Lex Podcast, you get $10 and cash-app will also donate $10 to first, an organization that is helping to advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world. And now, here's my conversation with Ryan Hall. Who in your view is the greatest warrior in history? Ancient or modern? That's a tough question, and again, I'm no historian by any measure, so I'll probably do the

worst. What are your best bands ever? I'm like Metallica. And in a cell, I'll pick the Metallica just came out with a new album by the way, in Thai orchestra. That's kind of cool. Yeah. That's important.

Metallica will always be one of the greatest. Yeah, that's absolutely great. So I agree with that example. If they were a well-known yet awesome band, let me say it's like a nickelback or something like that. But I feel that feels cheap because everyone makes fun of nickelback. Yeah. I don't like, I guess it depends on how you wanted

to find warrior, something that I think about when it comes to trying to evaluate various people or situations or things that I've read about or heard about are the circumstances that they were involved in because I think a lot of times it's easy to look at the outcomes and obviously outcome we live in an outcome driven world and you know outcomes do matter but at the same time like you know you look at let's say what Cuba has been able to pull off you know from a combat

sports perspective it's staggering you know like the amount of successful Olympic level competitors they have in wrestling boxing boxing, judo. I mean, they're tiny little island with no money and no people. It's shocking, you know, when you can you think about the Olympics and the United States doing well, of course, we should do well. I mean, Russia should do well, China should do well. India should do better than they do. Honestly, like obviously it means like they're not into it as much or at least certain sports because they have the resources people wise So talent's not going to be an issue So there's something to like where The starting point is like that's the argument with like what people say Mara Dona. I don't know if you're into oh Yeah, big talk

They say Mara Dona is as better than messy because he basically carried the team and won the World Cup with the team that wouldn't otherwise win the World Cup. And then Messi was only successful in Barcelona because he has superstars. He's playing with other superstars, right? Yeah, it's fair to say. I mean, like, you know, there's a lot of factors that go into, let's say, winning a soccer game or, you know, obviously, Barcelona, you know, particularly for various points in time at a ridiculous all-star squad of world-class players. And let's say, Frances, maybe they didn't have the creative players in

Argentina. They needed to get the ball up to Messi. They didn't have the NES, and the backing there in the midfield. But obviously, Argentina's always had ridiculous attacking players, even alongside Messi, but they're like the three killers up front and then a little less bot behind. So it's interesting you say that it depends how you define warrior because you can probably take like some of the civil rights leaders, you can go into that direction like leaders in general. But if we just look at like the greatest martial artist in history in that direction, do you have somebody in my I would say at least three three that pop into my head and would be Hannibal

Alexander the great and then maybe me a mode of Musashi You know the two commanders and then one you know guy, but So it's it's interesting and then again you mentioned warrior's being able to make a lot out of a little Musashi's famous for winning duels, you know, that were oftentimes one other one-on-one, you know, the Alexander and Hannibal were, you know, military commanders and one of them faced Rome. And that was an interesting thing, oftentimes, you know, coming up with novel tactics, different strategies, sometimes under-resourced, doing having to do novel and crazy things. There's skin in the game.

That's an interesting thing too. I think a lot of times, you know, it's if you're playing a video game, I don't think you can be a warrior because there's no skin in the game. You get hurt, you lose, and that's a bummer. It stings a little bit. Maybe it makes you feel slightly disappointed,

but you know, Musashi loses, he loses. Hannibal loses, he loses. Alexander loses, he loses, and they lose, I guess the people around them lose So that's almost like you could use even from a combat sports perspective. I'm a hominalee I mean you consider also their quality of opposition Massashi was fighting high quality opposition obviously Hannibal and Alexander particularly Hannibal were fighting unbelievable opposition Muhammad Ali fought phenomenal opposition

But he had skin in the game both in the ring and out, and that actually meshes with, as you mentioned, like a civil rights type of situation where you are under resourced, you're pushing the stone uphill. And that was the neat thing I think about Muhammad Ali was how much personal conviction the man had to have in order to pull off what he was able to pull off both in and outside of the ring.

And that reminds me of again, some of the other great leaders and great of the ring. And that reminds me of again, some of the other great leaders are great fighters throughout history. So what do you make of the kind of very difficult idea that some of these conquerors like Alexander the Great and somebody that if you listen to hardcore history, Odin Carlin, who apparently Elon Musk is also a big fan of as the Genghis Khan episode. You know, a large percent of the world is a, is a, can call Genghis Khan an ancestor. So the difficult truth is about some of these conquerors is that there's a lot of murder and rape and pillage and stealing of resources and all that kind of stuff. And yet, they're often remembered as quite honorable.

I mean, in the case of Genghis Khan, there's a lot of people who argue if you look at the historically the ways described in full context, is he was ultimately like a lip given the time he was a liberator. He was a progressive I should say. You know, like in terms of the the violence and atrocities he committed, he at least in the stories has always provided the option of not to do that. It's only if you resist to, so you basically have the option, do you want to join us or do you want to die and die horribly? And so that's the progressive sort of, that's the Bernie Sanders of the era.

Nice. So what do you make of that? That there's so much of these great conquerors? There's so much murder that to us now would just seem insane. It's funny. You mentioned it. I think that maybe it's a human nature thing that we want to, or maybe, or maybe a misunderstanding thing that we want to cast all of our characters and ourselves.

Maybe it's entirely good or is entirely negative when, you know, I guess the phrase or the saying, you know, one man's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist is accurate. And a lot of times I think you can understand as long as you're able to look from various people's perspective, like if you look at the TV show The Wire, which was obviously, you know, widely, everybody loves The Wire, I thought that there were everyone, I'm not saying anything I thought that there were everyone, I'm not saying anything that's not been said before, compelling characters from all angles,

whether you like the character, dislike the character, you were able to understand the motivations of people doing various things, even if they did wrongly, they did rightly. You know, we wanna cast all of the demons throughout history as completely inhuman when I think that makes it difficult for us to understand them. And we want to look back at the people that we think of as great and entirely great.

And I think that we're experiencing the problems with this, even right now, socially and politically, as we're trying to look back and decide the people we thought were good or not good or people we thought were bad or not good, rather than going, hey, there's good and bad to all things. And there are, as you mentioned, the gang is con thing. You don't have to fight back. You do. I respect you for it, but then we're going to have a conflict.

And then we'll see what happens. And if you lose, you're going to be sorry that you did, because I have to make it that way if I want to continue utilizing this, this kind of MO, because I need to discourage the next guy from doing what you're doing right now. And ultimately though, I guess that's an interesting thing. Imagine you put every single person on planet earth in a cage, crime drops, you know. Also, there are certain positives to that. And it's just things are as they are.

It's difficult, but that is ultimately more the law of the jungle. And I think that we're able to supersede some of that now in modern times. And I think we're fortunate. But as you mentioned, we look back and say, oh, this is horrible. Say, no, that, that just is what it is. That's how life is at a base level. And, you know, again, if you're a lion and I'm a gazelle, I don't, I don't really like it very much, but we don't call the lion the bad guy.

We don't sanctify the gazelle or the other way around. So it's just it's interesting when you pull back some of the controls that we put on our behavior and you know in modern life, which I think are generally speaking positive, you know, we get down to how things often are and at the same time we could modern life was built by people like gang is con. So then you get down to the ends just to find the means it's a tough question these aren't things with these answers Or least if they are I certainly don't have the the smarts to figure out the answers to them, but It's difficult. I would just say people in the world are complicated and layered and depending upon which side of the line you're standing on at various times You know, you may like or dislike some of it, but I can't remember. I can't

remember whose idea it was. It's the veil of ignorance, I guess. The philosophical idea of the veil of ignorance where I go is sticking everyone in the cage, the right thing to do. I say, or everyone, me and I say, well, no, why? Well, it would make my life easier if I just went over and took all of your stuff as long as you couldn't stop me I mean of course, that's a great idea That's what everyone does in every video game, but in Skyrim you steal stuff when people aren't around, but Ultimately you go well, this isn't the right thing to do because if I were on the other side of it I would I would not appreciate it. It's it's inherently not a good thing to do I'm only doing it because I think I'm gonna win and that's a fine way to be but you don't have the white hat on I guess I would say so

I think without those philosophical underpinnings to rain us in you know, I guess morally speaking It's very difficult to say what's right or wrong and you just say certain actions have a reaction almost like a physics sense If you kill everyone in your way for as long as you're able to your life will be easier I mean you're sitting in the table for someone doing the same to you as you're able to. Your life will be easier. I mean, you're sitting in the table for someone doing the same to you when you're no longer the tough guy, but it is what it is. Yeah, if you look at like the Instagram channel Nature's Metal, it hurts my heart to watch, to remind me a comfortable descendant of ape, how vicious nature is, just unapologetically.

I mean, there's a process to it where the bad guy always wins. The violence is the solution to most problems or the flip side of that running away from violence is the solution depending on your skill set and It's funny to think of us humans with our extra little piece of brain that we're somehow trying to figure out Like you said in the philosophical way how does supersede that how to like move past the viciousness the cruelty the just the cold Exchange of nature. But perhaps it's not so. Maybe that is nature. Maybe that's the way of life. Maybe we're trying too hard to

we're being too ego-tistical and thinking we're somehow separate from nature. We're somehow distant from that very thing. I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I think actually, Orson Scott Card, you know, was the writer of a great book called Ender's Game, was this was a statement that the main character, you know, Ender made in the book. His brother was brilliant. His brother was like kind of sociopathic brilliant kid

that was ended up kicked out of the school that they were all into for Battle Commander. commander dealing with his brother taught him that ultimately strength courage, the ability to do violence for all the good and the bad of that is one of the fundamental most important things to be able to do in life because if you can't cause destruction, if you can't cause pain, you will be forever subject to those who can. And I think that you mentioned egotism. I think that that's a disease that could obviously strike any of us, but it's something that we're looking at now. We're, you know, I think we should be unbelievably thankful as people that live in the world that we do.

That we can walk down the street without having to worry that I'm like, well, don't worry that that six foot six 270 pound person over there is just going to leave me alone. And I have a Rolex on, but whatever, I'll be fine because that person is deciding to leave me alone because we've all agreed to live in this relatively, you know, sane and or, you know, constrained society because it benefits all of us. And we're doing it because of a philosophical underpinning, not because nature dictates it be that way because nature dictates it going a very, very different direction. And the only person, the only thing stopping that person from doing something to me is either me, that person or someone else that will stand in between direction. And the only person, the only thing stopping that person from doing something to me is either me, that person, or someone else that will stand in between us. And if I can't do it, and there's no one that will stand in between us, then

the only thing stopping that person is that person. And I have to hope that they're either disinterested or disinclined to do that sort of thing. And I think that, you know, it's keeping in mind that that is the fundamental nature of the world, whether we like it a lot, is important. And I think the quest to fundamentally alter human nature is going to be ultimately fruitless. And then also it's just a little bit of egotistical. A lion does what a lion does. We can try to box it in and we can try to guide this direction, that direction, but nature is as it is and as it always will be unless we want to start to constrain it significantly.

But now I'm starting to get into individual rights who put me in charge, who says that I should be the one to make the choice is constraining because many of the most awful things that have happened throughout history, one group or one person has decided to constrain others. And we don't like ganganges Condo in that. Well, I'll do that on a little level. Are there going to be benefits and benefits? And beneficiaries, absolutely.

But there'll be losers in that too. So I guess it's a dangerous game. It's almost like putting on the one ring. You know, we remember when Frodo offered the one ring to Gandalf. And Gandalf said, no, no, I would take it away. I would put it on. I would use it out of the desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power. So terrible. You can't imagine. I

think that's the big question for anyone that decides that's able to have reach and able to have power. I mean, I mean, obviously, I can't speak to that, but imagine you did have national level, global level power. How would you use it? Would you try to change the world? Would you be glad that you did done a line? I don't know. Yeah, there's a, I mean, that's the thing we're struggling now as a society. Maybe it'd be nice to get your quick comment on that, which is the people who have traditionally been powerless are now, you know, seeking a fairer society, a more equal society, and in maintaining more power justly, there is also a realization, at least, from my perspective, that power corrupts everyone, even if the flag you waive is that of justice, right? And so, you know, not to overuse a term,

but it'd be nice if you have thoughts about the whole idea of cancel culture and the internet and Twitter and so on, where there's new ones, difficult discussions of race, of gender, of fairness, equality, justice, all of these kinds of things. There's a shouting down oftentimes of nuanced discussion, of trying to reason through these very difficult issues,

through our history, through what our future looks like. Do you have thoughts about the internet discourse that's going on now? reason through these very difficult issues, through our history, through what our future looks like. Do you have thoughts about the internet discourse that's going on now? Is there something positive? Yeah. I mean, we can pull out of this. It's an interesting thing to see. I guess, as you mentioned, anytime you're wielding power, whomever you are doing so carefully

is important. And it's very, very easy to look at the people that have power and that are using it poorly or have used it poorly and go, hey, you're the bad guy. And then go, well, of course, if I had power, I'll use it properly. And I may intend to use it properly, and maybe I will. But at the same time, we see a lot of times people are people are people. I think that a lot of times people are people are people. I think that a lot of the, I think if you, if you believe that human beings are all one, which I do, you know, no matter whether you're here or there, you're, you got two arms, two legs, a heart of brain. We all live a similar experience, you know, and obviously it's variations on a theme, but, you know,

you're no less a human being. If I, If you're a person I've never met from China than some person in Virginia. It's we're all people. And I guess ultimately, if I believe that human beings are corruptible and that power corrupts and that we're all fallible and we say and do things that either intentionally or unintentionally that we wish we'd not, I think that I have to allow for a space, I guess,

it's almost a religious term, but I guess I would just say grace. And that's something that I see disappearing from discourse in the public or maybe it wasn't there, I'm not sure, but it's interesting, you know, watching this occur on the internet, because also now no longer are you and I just having a talk sitting on a bus stop? It's now in writing, everything's in writing. They're old saying, don't put that in writing.

Don't put anything in writing, that's like in trouble. And basically, with the degree to which everything is recorded, but recorded in tiny little bites, it's very, very easy for me to wave every less, a foolish, ignorant, incorrect, or correct thing that someone has ever said or done in their face to support whatever argument that I'm trying to make about them or a situation. And I think that you mentioned

cancel culture, you know, as it seems to exist. Obviously, this is poisonous, on its face, this is poisonous. It's it's the sort of thing that doesn't incentivize proper behavior. I mean, you look at let's say one of the great monsters of history, Adolf Hitler, obviously, who's done awful, awful things, but also for anyone that's even a minor student of history, did some positive things as well. We don't have to, I don't have to embroider this person's crimes. I don't have to act as if there was nothing good a monster has ever done and nothing bad that a great person throughout history is ever done. But imagine the ghost of Adolf Hitler were to pop up and go,

oh my gosh, guys, I'm so sorry. I know what I've done, but I'd like to apologize and start to make it right. Well, I mean, you'd hope that if he popped up over here, you'd go, well, I don't really like what you've done. And I don't like you, but at the same time, I'm glad to hear that you're attempting to make this right and push in a positive direction even if you can't make it right. Because otherwise, what am I doing? I'm disincentivizing change for the better.

I'm looking to wield whatever power I have in a punitive fashion, which does not encourage people to do anything other than double down on the wrongs that they've made, knowing that at least they're going to have some support from the people that support that. And I guess I want to, you would hopefully look at the use of the internet as a tool that can educate, and I guess that, I don't like the word, power, but empower people to do various things, extend their reach, but educate and learn rather than to further solidify little tribal things that it exists, which I think everyone in humanity and human history is vulnerable to. I mean, look at the course of human history. It's deeply tribal.

And the tribes are the groups that have been on top at various points in time have done a lot of times bad things to the ones that have not. And you'd hope that we could learn lessons from the past and rather than committing the crimes that were, you know, that were committed against us, recommitting them when we slide into the top position, say, I could do this now, but I'll not. I understand the urge to to seek vengeance is strong of anyone that says differently. I wouldn't trust. But at the same time, we have enough experience in history, enough experience in life, enough, hopefully wisdom, time in to go, this isn't the right answer, this is only going to replay the things, the worst parts of our history, not the best.

And I want to encourage positive behavior. And if I just again, for the lash out at people, although understandably, done, done understandably, I'm simply just going to just perpetuate the cycle that's gone onto this point. So you hope that even though we're seeing a lot of turmoil, societally at the moment and globally at the moment, that I guess our better angels can prevail at a certain point, but it's going to take a great deal of leadership. And I think that we're sorely missing like a Martin Luther King style character at the moment or a great leader. And I just, I'm hoping that one will show up for sure. And by the way,

a word I don't hear often, and I think it's a beautiful one, which is grace. That's a really interesting word. I'm going to have to think about that. There is a religious component to it, but it's exactly right. You have to somehow walk the line between, you know, you mentioned Hitler. I've been reading the rise and fall of the Third Reich. I'm really thinking about the 1930s. And what it's like to have economic... My concern is the economic pain that people are feeling now quietly is really a suffering that's not being heard. And there's echoes of that in the 20s and the 30s with a great depression. And there's a hunger for a charismatic leader. Like you said, there's a leader that could walk with grace,

could inspire, could bring people together with sort of dreams of a better future. That's positive, but Hitler did exactly everything that I just said except for the word positive, which is he did give a dream to the German people, who were a great people, who are great people, of a better future. It's just that a certain point that quickly turned into the better future requires literally expansion of more land. It started with, well, if we want to build a great Germany, we need a little bit more land. And so we need to kind of get Austria, then we need to kind of get France mostly because France doesn't understand that more land is really useful, so we need to get rid of them.

And look what they did to us in Versailles anyway. But so the Jewish, the Holocaust is a separate thing. I don't know why I don't know, I don't know what to think of it because for me being Jewish and having a lot of the echoes of the suffering is in my family or the people that are lost. I don't know because Hitler wrote all about it in Mein Kampf. So I don't know if the evil he committed was there all along. I mean, and that that's where the question of forgiveness. I mean Hitler is such

a difficult person to talk about, but it's the question of on cancel culture who is deserving of forgiveness and who is not like the Holocaust survivors that I've read about that I've heard the interviews with they've often spoken about the fact that The way for them to let go to overcome the atrocities that they've experienced is to forgive that they've experienced is to forgive. Like forgiveness is the way out for them. It's interesting to think about. I don't know. I don't know if we're even a society ready to even contemplate an idea of forgiveness for Hitler. It's an interesting idea though. It's a good thought exercise at the very least To think about like all these people that are being canceled for doing Bad things of different degrees think of like Louis CK or somebody like that for being not a good person

But like what is the path for forgiveness? It's also what's a good person? What is the good person if that's a sliding scale that we could all find ourselves looking at the uncomfortable end of a gun on, you know, particularly down the line. I mean, you hope for the best, but these definitions, I guess, like you said, are important and who's doing the canceling, who's being canceled. I'm not necessarily, as you said, saying that that's entirely unjustified or certainly not, it's certainly understandable. And particularly, you mentioned like a monster like an adult Hitler, but it's also interesting. I couldn't help but notice like you mentioned

as a society us being able to apply forgiveness to someone who's done so much horror. But people who are personal, I'm of course many that so many people in person affected, but directly personally affected someone, a survivor of the Holocaust, being able to let go on that. I'm nowhere near big enough a person for that sort of thing. But I guess that's an interesting thing.

You know, being the person who was physically there, potentially able to let go. I don't know, that's unbelievably powerful. It's interesting. I guess you have to wonder sometimes, and this is obviously in regards to that, to the Holocaust, but why I'm holding on to various things, so by what is it doing for me and what is it doing to me?

Is it facilitative? Is it not? And I guess that's something else that I really enjoy when I was on Ultimate Fighter. They don't let you have any music or any books, I didn't really just text, so I've got a Bible and I've got a Quran, and I started to read them side by side. And it was really interesting reading. The Bible was a little drier, Quran's more interesting, it leaves written.

But I think something that was consistently brought up was the way, most merciful. People want, I don't think any of us want justice. We think we want justice, but I don't think we want justice. Justice is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous game, because maybe this person is wrong. Me deeply, and I want justice. I want to balance it out because what is justice?

It's not a balancing of the scales. And sometimes you can understand it. On a societal level, I think it's fine. I mean, there's crime and punishment. And we can go for the benefits and the drawbacks of that. But I think what any of us want is mercy within reason. You know, grace, as you mentioned, because justice is a very, very, very dangerous thing. And it's a valuable and important thing, but who gets to decide what's just, what justice

is actually meet it out? Maybe I get to meet out justice, but it's not, I don't get my come up and so that sounds great. But what happens when it's pointed back at me. And I guess that comes back to the veil of ignorance. You know, the idea that one day I will have to live in the world in which I've envisioned and the world in which I've created. I think that a lot of times people love the idea of they're a judge for your crimes and a lawyer for theirs.

And I heard that the other day, I thought it was great. And I think that's a dangerous thing. And hopefully it gives us all pause before, rightly or wrongly, but always understandably you know wielding wielding Serious power. Yeah, justice is a kind of drug. So if you look at history It's also been reading a lot about Stalin. I mean all those folks Really, I don't know. I don't know what was inside Hitler's head actually that he's a tricky one because I think he was legitimately insane Hitler said actually that he's a tricky one because I think he was legitimately insane. Stalin was not and Stalin was like he literally thought he's doing a good thing.

He literally thought for the entirety of the time that communism is going to bring like that's the utopia and he's going to create a happy world. And in his mind, were ideas of justice, of fairness, of happiness, of, of, yeah, human flourishing. And that's a drug. And it's somehow sadly pollutes the mind. When you start thinking like that,

what's good for society, and believing that you have a good that, what's good for society? And believing that you have a good sense of what's good for society, that's intoxicating, especially when others are wrong, you're feeling the same way. And then you start building up this movement and you forget that you were just like a, you're barely recently evolved from an ape.

You don't know what the hell you're doing. And then you start killing witches or whatever. Like you start doing it. They did math. Let's be honest though. I mean, sometimes you get a witch has to go. I wish. Yeah, we can all agree there.

Which has to go. If it floats or sinks, which one I forget which one I did. Which one, whichever one we need at the time, I wish. It's a floating it should have sunk. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, we can definitely agree that we just have to go. Because you brought it up, I tweeted recently,

but also just, I'm one of the things I'm really ashamed of in my life is I haven't really read almost any of the sci-fi classics. Really? Yeah, so like my whole journey through reading was through like the literary philosophers, I would say like Kamu has say, Dostoevsky, Kafka, like that place. Like that's a kind of sci-fi world in itself, but it's, it just, itself, but it's it just it creates a world in which the the deepest questions about human nature can be explored. I didn't realize this, but the

sci-fi world is the same. It just puts it in a it like removes it from any kind of historical context, the way you can explore those same ideas in like space, somewhere else, where in a different time, in different place, it allows you almost like more freedom to like construct these artificial things where you can just do crazy, crazy kind of human experiment. So I'm now working through it. The books on my list are the foundation series

by Isaac Asimov, Dune, Snowcrash, Buying You, Stevenson, and Endersgame, like you mentioned. That's just kind of... And then, so I posted that, and then of course, like Elon Musk, John Carmack, I don't know if you know him, creator of Doom, and quite... Oh, cool. So, they all pitched in. These nerds, these alternate nerds just started

like going like these, you need to read this, that, and the other. So I've like started working out. OK. But it seems like the list I've mentioned holds up somewhat. Is there a book? Is there sci-fi books or a series or authors

that you find are just amazing. Maybe another way to ask that is like, what's the greatest sci-fi book of all time? Well, I'd like to start by sharing something that I'm embarrassed about, is that I haven't read anything other than, you know, Orson Scott Card, JR Tolkien, Frank Herbert Tolkien. Yeah, yeah, I'm aware through Wikipedia and through the surface reading of things that like a book called The Republic was written once. There was some other mother. You're a prolific reader of Wikipedia articles. Wow. For a case. For a case. For a case, for a case, for a case. For a case, for a case, for a case. For a case, for a case.

For a case, for a case. For a case, for a case. For a case, for a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case.

For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case.

For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. For a case. people bring up do I don't understand why I did you mention doon before home well actually we actually have a show you all actually made a sick a key a dune themed key one time which I thought was kind of cool I'll send you on give you one we got extra but actually to your to your point actually this is a horse and Scott card quote actually the writer of and his game fiction because it's not about somebody who

actually lived in the real world always has the possibility about of being about oneself and I think that's a neat thing because I have heard, you know, other people who my respect and the very short people, actually, every now and then, dig their heels and go, I don't like fiction, I don't like nonfiction. It's more instructive and I would go, I'd completely disagree with that. I think we have a hard enough time figuring out what happened at 7, 11, three hours ago that let me tell you what happened 600 years BC. I'm like, hey, I'm interested, that let me tell you what happened 600 years BC.

I'm like, hey, I'm interested, but don't tell me this isn't a story, too. There's actual components, I have no doubt, but we struggle sometimes to, like I guess what I like about fiction is that you can tell me a story, it's all about people. I mean, there's more and less believable things, and I think Dune would be an unbelievably well-written,

in my opinion, for what do I know? But I really like Dune. I'll say that. Well-written example of human beings interacting with one another, the political component to that, the emotional, the intellectual, the relationship components to all of that. And I think that Dune is neat because it's a sci-fi novel,

but only in the looseest sense. It's really a story about religion, about group dynamics, about human potential, about belief, learning, politics, governance, ecology. It's the best stories remind me of history. The same way history, hopefully, is not just a list of facts that I try to be able to recall or factoids that I try to recall,

but a story that I can understand and see how the threads of time kind of came together and created certain things. And a lot of times, like we say, I'm like, oh, how the heck is what's going on right now? Or 100 years from now, or 100 years in the past happened? And you can look back far enough if we had accurate knowledge. If we had that hypothetical, perfect, pool shot, you know,

at the beginning of time, we would see an unbroken chain of events that led us to where we are and where we are will potentially lead us to where we're going, which is again, why hindsight self-help. But I think it's neat. Like, I guess I really enjoy, for instance, a book like Dune, and they're actually making a movie out of it, which I'm skeptical of, to be honest, because it's going to be difficult to bring that to the screen for a variety of reasons. But one of those at least a hundred questions asked, Ryan, what do you think is about the new Dune movie? I am not enough of an authority to have any sort of decent opinion, but I guess what I would

say is so much of it goes on in the character's mind, like how much of any of our day is any lived experience as it were is internal. The majority, how many times are people walking around? And you know, they can, you can, like, hey, what do you see right now? I'm like, oh, well, I see this picture, I see a wall. Hey, there's Lex. But really, what I was paying attention to

was what was going on inside of my head for a moment. And almost the rest of the world tuned out and kind of dimmed. And I guess that, I think that's going to be a struggle to to any time you want to bring that type of a written story to to a visual medium. I think it's going to be more difficult, but it'll be interesting. It's definitely my one of my favorite stories and it's been it's honestly helped me become better at life in my opinion, better than martial arts. And I think the the writer, I think Frank Herbert was absolutely brilliant, whether those were all his ideas, which in reality none of us are all of our good ideas,

aren't ours or a combination, maybe came up with something you're a curator of other good ideas and something you borrowed from somewhere without even realizing it. But I think the way the messages and the themes and the ideas that were conveyed particularly in the original novel or just absolutely brilliant. Is that to you one of the greats and the flip side of that, or another way to ask that is if somebody's new to sci-fi, is that something you would recommend, that is an entry point? I'm not well read enough in the sci-fi world. I've ever read a lot of Isaac Asimov or anything like that, but I just, I'll recommend

Dune, I'll be an obnoxious like evangelist for Dune to anyone who will listen. Great. So yeah, I would strongly recommend it. So the other thing you mentioned, now I should probably be talking to you about much more important things, but the other thing you mentioned is Skyrim. Do you play video games? What's your favorite game? What's, what would you say is the greatest video game of all time?

Because I'm a huge fan of other scrolls. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge fan of other schools. Oh, yeah I mean I play a little bit at this point, you know a little less Finally moves into a new house. So you're like an adult. No. Oh, no. No. I'm like a better-funded 12-year-old Yeah, that's yeah, that's entirely that's entirely accurate better funded 12-year-old, but somewhat better funded 12-year-, not as well fun as I wish, but I always do play video games. Oh, yeah, I played as a kid. I was, you know, again, I've always liked playing sports and and like reading and I was enjoying video games, but my favorite video game I think I've ever played was

nicely the over public. It was a Star Wars game. A huge Star Wars fan until it'd become less so so recently Disney. You don't like the I haven't watched it yet. Oh, Mandalorian. Oh, don't go actually like Mandalorian. That was actually pretty cool. Yeah, waving this off. Yeah, no, yeah, I would if I could cancel one thing I would cancel Disney. So I'm gonna exit that part out. Okay, let's go to the next. But this is where if people are one if you're

watching this on YouTube and like the dislike amount is like 80% That's because of that comment. So good job. Good job for making the internet hate you. I would about Baby Yoda. Yeah, I guess There's like this little one's got ears and he uses the force sometimes and he passes out again. No qualms with baby Yoda Yeah, you don't have a heart. Okay. Let's go to Jiu-Jitsu. So the audience of this podcast may not know much about Jiu-Jitsu, or they do because it's really part of the culture now, but they don't really know much. They see that so many people have fallen in low with it, have been transformed through it,

but they don't know much about like, what is this thing? Is there a way you could sort of try to explain the, what is Jiu Jitsu, what is the essence of this martial art that's captured the minds and hearts of so many people in the world? I think that Jiuujitsu is a philosophy that's expressed physically and that it's the kind of development of the mental capacity and physical capacity working in Unison to move efficiently and almost flowingly, unresistently, with a given situation, with a physically resisting opponent. Learning how to generate force on your own and how to steal force from the floor, how to steal force from the other person,

and moving concert with it as opposed to clash against, which if you watch two untrained people fight, it's almost entirely a clash. It's a runaway in clash, a runaway in clash. If you watch Jiu-Jitsu done well, it looks like water moving around a solid structure. And I think that that is expressed physically and I think that all of the things that anyone have really been able to do very, very well in Jiu-Jitsu end up kind of exemplifying that. But I think that that's true of martial arts in general.

I think that a lot of times like the clashing that we see going on and working well is just the fact that you get very, very physically powerful people every now and then they're able to get away with this. But I don't think that that's fantastic because ultimately it's a results driven thing. But I think that the essence of the martial arts is learning how to make more and less and how to move with and be yielding in almost like real life I keto. And so you think of martial arts, jujitsu, as like water or flowing, so I keto, so moving around the force as opposed to sort of maybe the wrestling mindset is finding a leverage where

you can apply an exceptional amount of force. So like, so like maximizing the application of force. I guess maybe that's a better way to, I'd like to marry the two ideas, you know, because I think you flow until the point at which you are the greater force at which point in time you can apply. But if you look at the best wrestlers and and when I say best, I don't necessarily mean most successful, although of course most successful are always very, very good. Throughout the course of history in boxing, in wrestling, in judo, they're magical. They disappear and reappear. It's like fighting a ghost that is like in corp real when you want to find it,

but then when you don't want it to find it, when you don't want to find it, it finds you. And I think that we see that in the like the buvice or sightsees of wrestling. And you know, I guess you could look at a Floyd Mayweather or Willie Pepp or you know, a pernell Whitaker in boxing as brilliant examples of disappearing and reappearing and when you're strong, it's almost like a real warfare. When you're strong, I'm nowhere

to be found. When you're weak, you can't get rid of me. And I think that's what we're looking for. Yeah, the T.O. brothers are incredible at that. They just, they look like skinny Starbucks baristas and they just manhandle everybody like effort effortlessly. They look like they just kind of woke up, rolled out of bed, fighting for like the the gold metal of the Olympics and just effortlessly throw. Like there's a match against you. I guess you'll remember. Yes, like you, you know, if you look at like who is the guy who's like intimidating in this case And the terrifying looking it's it's the overmarrow just like a

Physical specimen obviously like a super accomplished wrestler. I think this is for the gold medal Yeah, and 2000 2000. Yes, and then there is your old silver and Yes, and then there is the ear you all took silver and What you just like just to show you like there's a inside trip effortless Uchi he does it again, you know You know, it's a really creative kind of wrestling where Organic yeah, you're throwing all these kinds of things. There's a mix of judo, a mix of like weird kind of moves. It's not like as funky as Ben Askerin, it's just like legitimate, basic. Oh, it's not

funky for funky sake. No, I'm not poking Ben Askerin to imply that that's what he's doing, but it's like, it's funny. It's like a lot of times, it's almost like a Musashi talked a lot about that, you know, the only goal of combat is to win, the outcome is out come driven versus like flourishing, you know, cool looking movements, it's like unless that had a utilitarian purpose, like what are you wasting your time with that, both in the fight and also in practice, but as you mentioned, it's almost like it looks like judo, it looks like wrestling, it looks like jiu-jitsu, it's almost like, I guess, it reminds me all of martial arts is, again, deeply tribal as well. I want to learn Lex Friedman martial arts, and then I want to learn another, you know, I guess, transcendent person's martial arts, and it just happened to be the set of

movements that you tended to do most of the time thanks to your body type and your opposition and whatnot. But then I try to codify that and force those to work. As opposed to going, I want to understand how the body works in concert and in Congress with something else and other forces and move appropriately. And that's why it's like, it always struck me that the sites, your brothers are great examples of just moving like water.

But they used Bruce Lee, which is a little tripe, but again, he's brilliant. It's like water can flow or water can crash. And they would crash when they needed to crash. And they would flow when they needed to flow, but they would flow for the purpose of dissipating and then crash when they would win. And at the right moment, then go back to flowing

the second that the other person found them. And it's just beautiful to watch. It's artistic. And I think that that great expression of anything physical is ultimately studied as a science, but expressed as an art. And I think that that's something that gets lost in jiu-jitsu a lot of times when it gets a little bit

little nerdy, like do this hand here, hand here, like stick to more details I have, the better. One in reality, that's just not in my experience, how it's done. Might be a fun exercise of saying like, what are the main positions and submissions in the art of Gigietsu. You don't have to be complete.

That's over ridiculously, I apologize for putting on this part like this, but it might be nice to exercise to think through it. Sure. I would just say that you have your arms bend in various ways. You have key lock Americana, straight arm locks, Kimor, I'm a plotter. I'm a plotter as a Kimor, Kimor is an awful lot.

It's just execute it. Executed. It's like submission just breaking off your arm in all kinds of ways. But ultimately, the question is, let's say you were a terminator, like a robot that I which of course you are. Go on. Go on. It's like, it's a word being completely literal.

But and I couldn't harm you with any of these things. What I still use these positions, the answer is yes, they create leverage, they create control, they create shapes that I can affect and that can affect me and they can be affected through other forces than other objects or structures like the ground or the wall. I really enjoy mixed martial arts because there's another component rather than just me and you and the floor. There's me, you, the floor and the wall. And it's another player in the game that doesn't exist in a grappling context with an non-inclosed, I guess, area of combat. But you can strangle me or choke me.

What do you call it without my arms being involved or you can use one of my shoulders to pin one side of my, one carotid artery off and you can close the other. You can turn my knee in the exact same ways that you can turn my arm straight this way and that way. You can add a rotation to that or it can be directly linear against the joint. So I guess what I would say is the more that

I've been able to understand the more that I've been it's given me a look into how we learn language where rather than learning five bazillion adjectives I go I understand what an adjective is and of course we are all read into some degree of vocabulary. I understand what an adverb go, I understand what an adjective is. And of course, we are all read into some degree of vocabulary. I understand what an adverb does. And I understand what an adverb is. I know what it now is. I know what the component parts of a sentence are. I know what, you know, I guess a clause or contraction, any of these things. And it allows you to be interesting and artistic with your language to the extent that you can. But I can't, like, I can speak a degree of Spanish, but I'm not even slightly artistic in Spanish. I would be something,

I speak like a, like a child with a head injury. And anyway, the basic understanding of the English language allows you to then be a student of Spanish. 100%. But I'm limited by my experience. I'm limited by my understanding of techniques. I'm limited by my understanding almost like like let's say techniques are like these are like vocabulary. So even if I kind of sort of grasp the sentence structure and the thought process and the thought patterns of Spanish, which it's interesting because just even the orientation and the organization of a language and thought about this a great deal, you know, the way that I perceive the world is affected deeply by the language that I learned. You know, the way that I perceive the world is affected deeply by the language that I learned.

You know, the, again, if I learned, I have no idea how the Chinese language structures, but I can only imagine that it would be, that it would affect, it's like a different lens. We're looking at the same thing, but I have a different set of sunglasses on than you do. And that's very, very interesting. I'll use the Quran as an example. You know, apparently it's unbelievably poetic and in Arabic. Still neat and was interesting reading in English, but I'm told by people that I trust that it just one doesn't bear resemblance to the other, and I think that it's a very interesting thing that you may be able to say the same thing, but in a more, I guess in a different way, in a more artistic way that

may not translate on a one-for-one kind of fidelity. But the more that we're able to understand about how the body works, the more examples of the body working this way, the body working that way, the body working that way, the more that I'm able to eventually become an artist, but it has to be studied as a science first, and it does start with technique collection, vocabulary collection, the same way we learn in school, you remember how to say quickly 17 different ways. And let's say I speak Spanish, I'm only, I only know three. So you might use quickly, you might use an adjective like quickly in Spanish, but use one of the many, many options to describe that that I don't understand.

And now I sit there and go like, wait, what? I can't be artistic. I can't be as organic with the language as I'd like. So I believe that Jiu-Jitsu a lot of time starts with the acquisition of a lot of, hey, do this, this drill, this technique, here's an Americana, Americana to an arm lock, arm lock to a triangle. But the problem with that is oftentimes we get stuck in that phase. And I, people eventually become move collectors or sequence collectors. And I notice this when I'm trying to do DVD or I guess like an instructional series now, or even T-Shine

class, I don't believe in that form of learning anymore. Not that it's not valuable, but I don't believe, I don't understand you should still on that level anymore. So what I'm trying to do is get across the basic ideas to people and say, hey, you need to fill in the gaps with going to class all the time. You need to go, hey, learn this move,

learn that technique, learn that technique, because otherwise I'm basically just throwing at you like 75 different words that you could use, but that hasn't really taught you how to speak a language. Whereas if you give me a language structure, you can fill in these pieces on your own and then eventually speak organically in Lexform, which will be ultimately unique to you, because otherwise you just end up being a weird facsimile of whatever it is that I'm doing for mostly the worst, I'd say. But yeah, that's what people, I mean, people comment,

like, is this, especially people who haven't listened to me before, is this guy drunk or high? Does MIT really allow slow people to be, what's wrong with him? Is he getting sleep, are you okay? And does he need help? So that's similar with him? Is he getting sleep? Are you okay? Does he need help?

So that's similar with my Jiu Jitsu. It's like, is this guy really whatever rank I was throughout? I remember just like, is this guy really this rank? I just have a very kind of certain way of sitting and being slow and lazy looking that there was ultimately the language that I had to discover. It was, yeah, it was a very liberating moment, I think, of probably a few years of getting my ass kicked, especially with open guard and butterfly to where you really allow yourself to

take in the entirety of the language and realize that I'm not, I'm unique. I'm unique. And like I have a very, I have a language, I have a set of techniques, a way I move my body that needs that I'm the one to discover. Like it's, you can only, you can learn specific techniques and so on, but you really have to understand your own body. And that's the beautiful thing. only you can learn specific techniques and so on, but you really have to understand your own body. That's the beautiful thing about Jiu-Jitsu, like you said, is the connection about your philosophy,

your view of the world with the physical and connecting those two things, how you perceive the world, how you interpret ideas of the world about exhaustion, about force, about effortlessness, like what it really means to relax, all these kinds of loose concepts, and then actually teach your body to like do those things. And like, you know, and be able to apply force and spurts, to be able to relax and spurts, and like figure all that stuff out for my, for my individual body. But it's as you mentioned, that's a couldn't agree with you more. It's a discovery process, and no one can cheat that process, which is at the same time, it's almost

to imagine I want to start writing books in second grade, unless maybe I'm like staggeringly brilliant, which I can only conceptualize someone being able to do that, but maybe a Mozart of the English language where you're out there doing it. But for most of us, we don't have enough knowledge, enough information, enough experience to be able to be, to express ourselves. So we have to basically input repeat, which is important. But it's the process, as you say, of going through that, of getting your

ass kicked, or just like, well, that didn't work. Well, that didn't work. That felt right. But I don't know. Nobody else does that. I guess I don't believe in that. Versus eventually going, I don't know. I'll just try going my own way and see what happens. And now I'll get yelled at and people won't like me. And if it works, they'll say, I got lucky. And if it doesn't work, they'll say I was dumb. But, which one, maybe all is right. But basically, going through that iterative process

that allows you to eventually find yourself expression and find your voice so that you fight the same way that you speak, the same way that you write, the same way that you think in same way that you write the same way that you think in a way that that is uniquely you that will also ultimately allow you To understand other people being uniquely them because even if you can only conceptualize and I think about this a lot for Society stuff where I go. Well, this is how I feel about this But on my objectively right maybe about a couple things

But that's a small box that I have to be very very careful about what I think is objective versus what's not And I have to be open to the possibility that all the things that I think are objectively correct may or may not be and That should allow me to have some degree of compassion or consideration for other people both in their martial arts journey And in their in their journey, you know as people the human beings because I understand that they're on a It's a we're all on a path where it it's all a, and again, an iterative process of eventual self-expression, but I think that's one of the things that we see, having trouble when we see tribalism,

which I mean, racism, expression of that, political affiliation, p-expression of that, all of these things that can go in really uncomfortable directions. People are looking for, hey, where do I plant my feet over here? Where's the thing that I know is right? And we can all agree on the following. And I think that we see that in martial arts, we're like, oh, I do this style. I do that style. I do that style. It was like, hey, man, we're

all just pushing forward in a certain direction here trying to do our best. And I understand why you feel the way you do. I may have felt like that at one point too. But, you know, I'm just trying to learn and understand versus, I've already acquired enough knowledge. Let me cross my arms and start to look who's fucking up around here. And I think that that's an interesting trap that I think is very human trap to fall into, but it definitely happens early on. It's something that's a joke in the Jitsu world, right? Like how the blue belt that knows everything, well initially it's like, what, I know nothing

and I at least think I know nothing. Then I learn a little bit and I think it's a lot bit. And then the more you learn, the more you go, I don't even know what I'm doing. Yeah, that's exactly right. We kind of talked about it a little bit, but once again, a lot of people that listen to this have never been on the mat, have never tried Jitsu, but are really curious about it.

Everybody at all positions, I think Elon Musk's kids are not doing Jitsu. Anditsu and your Yang is like they're all you know the world is curious it's a it's a nice it seems to be a nice methodology by which to humble your ego which to grow intellectually and physically so people are curious about it so the natural question is if they're curious about it, how would you recommend they get started? Maybe like, what do you recommend the first day, week, month, year, first couple of years look like? Like how do you ease into it and make sure that it's a positive experience and you progress in the most optimal and positive way? The first thing you can do is simply ask yourself why, why you want to be involved.

You know, I remember the first day that I walked into Ronan athletics in New York City to train under Godfather of my son now, Christian Montses. And I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I played baseball through high school and I wanted, I was at Manhattan College in the Bronx and I wanted to go and learn martial arts because it was always something that was interesting to me, but it was never something that I knew was accessible and it definitely wasn't really around in North of Virginia where I grew up, whereas then you stick yourself in Manhattan and there's stuff everywhere. So anyway, I guess I didn't know what to expect.

I didn't know if I was going to get beat up, if people were going to be nice, if people were not going to be nice. But what I began with was, I think, expectation management. And I think that that's something that I would, that would be the first thing that I would start, is almost imagining, what is it that I'm getting myself into? Because I love the martial arts, with, with, the martial arts has given me everything in life. And I'm so thankful I wouldn't be sitting here without, without that, that experience out of the journey of the people that I've met, the places that I've gone I could never,

ever, ever, ever imagine. And I'm just unbelievably thankful for that. But I think that the thing that, that helped me most of all was starting with going, you know, my mom said something to me one time and she said, you know, there's two types of people in various situations, there's why and there's why not. And, you know, it's understandable to have questions, concerns, things like that.

But, and maybe sometimes it's a little bit easier when you're younger to just trust people or just say, oh, you know, but we go, hey, you wanna climb that rock? I'm like, yeah, why not? Let's go. Hey, you wanna jump in that rock? I'm like, yeah, why not? Let's go. Hey, you want to jump in that river?

Yeah, why not? Sure. Versus, if I have to reason my way into everything, I have to be talked into everything. A lot of times, I'll talk myself out of it. And I think that a lot of times, this is the thinker's disease. You want to figure out what's going to happen

and what you should expect to have happen before you get involved. Versus going using the old Bruce Lee saying saying again, it's like no amount of thinking or training on the on the side of the river will teach you how to swim. You have to jump in. And there are risks associated with that. And so I guess a psychological are usually the biggest ones. That's the biggest hurdle and physical. But the biggest thing that I guess I would suggest

anyone to say, well, why do you want to do this? You're like, well, I want to challenge myself. I want to learn to I would like to learn to fight I want to learn to fight so that I could protect myself and if and if anything else other people if only within arms reach I've perceived that if I had some small degree of power I generally wouldn't use it which is why I was like, yeah, I'll give it a trial try to be reasonable and hopefully if I make a mistake I'll apologize to people but basically I said but basically, I'd like to have that. And I want to, I know this is going to be challenging, and we'll see what happens. And that means that getting beat up, and I didn't get hurt, but getting roughed up,

getting my arm bent this way or that way, getting choked, I was like, well, this is all supposed to happen. That's no big deal. It would be like going and joining the army during peacetime, and then going, oh, I'm just doing this for college education You're like, okay, this cool man, and then all of a sudden war breaks out and they want to send me somewhere And I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't sign up for that get actually you did whether you realize it or not You made out a thought that you did but you did so getting your mind right and and just going what are my expectations?

This activity what is it that I'm looking to do and of course, you know You're you're going into a gym. You're going into a place that you don't know people, you probably don't know people, and you don't know the coach, and even if you do want to, hey, how you do in shake your hand, type of level, 95% of my students don't know me, not really, and I'll try to be polite and not to annoy them too much, but they don't know me, and I don't know them. I understand if they don't trust me, I wouldn't trust trust me either if I were them, but at the same time someone has to take that leap. And one of the things that I've noticed as a martial arts instructor that's the biggest struggle with dealing with adults, which is why a lot of people like to teach kids is because kids don't ask, don't argue.

Now that also means there's there's all sorts of pitfalls with that sort of thing and that can be an issue. But you know, I guess a lot of times people get to a point in their life in their 20s, early 30s where now I'm a manager now. I know what I'm doing. No one talks to me like that. First, it's like, hey, man, you go join boot camp. I don't care if you are Elon Musk. They're going to take a shut up and do push ups.

And that's what's great about it. So you are taking a leap of faith into a world that you're going to be a tiny fish. And you got to hope that the people who are guiding you in that journey are gonna have, I can't say even say your best interest at heart because they don't even know you, but they'll try to do no harm. They'll try to help you in the way that they would understand.

And I guess that's, for instance, that's what I would try to do with anyone that comes into my gym. I would try to help them in the way that I understand they need as best I can and as safe and reasonable a way as possible, but sometimes in a way that's going to make them uncomfortable, particularly if physical combat and it's not something they've done before. If they've a lot of people go in without even having played, you know, contact sports, and so that can be a big jump and you have to understand if that's where you're

starting from, no worries, but you're going to have to kind of work your way to it and it's going to be uncomfortable and that's okay. It's part of the process and you're going to have some bumps and bruises and you're not going to want to roll with that kind of corner because that person's rough and they beat you up and they're like, okay, but is this a big hurt or is it a little hurt? If it's a big hurt, okay, if it's a little hurt, you need to beat you this. That's a little bit. Yeah. It's such an interesting balance because to find, I think one of the most important things as an anything

I think in life is the selection of the people that you put around you. I mean, that's true with like getting married. That's true with like if you go to, if people ask me like, graduate students, like your PhD advisor can be the difference. It's everything. It's like you spend five years with somebody, they're going to basically define the more impact on you than anybody you marry and you're hanging out with, it's a huge impact.

And the same with the coach selection, which is like the school selection is, it's going to be really important about in terms of like who you select will define how happy, like, the trajectory of your growth and how happy you are with the entirety of the experience. And yet, like the flip side of that is, especially if you have an ego, especially if you are the manager, then you still let go of some stuff, you're going to feel like shit with the good, with the best kind of coach, that's what you need. But there's a night, there's a weird balance there to find.

Like, I mean, like, and everybody needs a different thing. Like I'm much more, I enjoy being sort of like, sounds weird, but like, I'm, you know, from the wrestling background, I enjoy feeling like crap in the sense, like the coach, like getting beat up. I don't actually enjoy it. It's not like some masochistic thing or whatever. It's the growth. Like, I like like the anxiety I like feeling like shit when I go home, like emotionally, physically, it's growth. It's a sign of growth, right? Like if you're not having to feel those things, you're probably in your comfort zone,

which is fine, but that's not your growth zone, right? And everybody has a different threshold for that. I mean, the beautiful thing about Jiu-Jitsu is like, it's also has like a yoga feel to it. Like you're learning about your body. So depending on the gym and depending on, in fact, the coaches, the people around you, within the gym, you can select little groups too,

kind of like the people with who you're all, like if you're a smaller person, it doesn't mean you have to go against big people. You can go against the people who like smoke a lot of weed in their chill, or you can go against like that crazy, rip blue belt competitor who's like out to destroy everybody. And depending on like what your mindset is, you can kind of select that. And it's such a fascinating journey of like basically self discovery. I couldn't agree with you more. It's been what you need,

it may change over time, right? You maybe what you needed, what you need today could change six months for an hour a year for now. And that's something that I experienced. I'll use my first coach, Christian, again, as a great example of someone who I really look up to and respect and someone who helped me a lot.

Like at a time when I really needed some guidance and I needed to learn martial arts, but get into, Hensel Grace, his gym was right down the street from where Christian was teaching. And Christian was a blue belt at the time. He was teaching at a place called Fighthouse, which was this awesome,

like 90s, early 2000s, warehouse area down on Fashion Avenue and Manhattan, off of like between seventh and eighth. And it was like a like two basketball courts wide, but like there's the Samba guys over here. There was the Colley guys over there. There was a Wing Chun over there.

There was Jits in the corner. And Hensers was one of the most famous academies in the world at that time. Still is. And I just didn't know what Hensers Grace he was. And I mean, it's a great gym and it's a fantastic place for people to train. But I think what was right for me at the time was to, I stumbled into, you know, like a two-person elevator up and found a place where six people trained at that time. And I had someone that I could give me some, like in addition to martial arts advice,

like personal guidance. And that made a big difference. And then when initially we would have like competitions or like intra, you know, gym competitions with the Sambo guys. We would roll with them. And like, again, it was great. They were just a bunch of like Russian dudes from like Brighton Beach and they would come down

and then we would all fight and then everyone would train and then we'd all drink tea and then go home. And anyway, what was, it was super tough and they were like, again, just a tough group of people. It was great. And then I remember when I decided after like four or five months, my men I really want to try to take this seriously and I told Christian about that. And he's like, hey, I think you need to do the following.

And it was, you know, like, hey, here's there was a guy named Jeff Ruth who was part of the time, which was a much bigger deal than it is now, but it was 10 and always an MMA fighter, a lot of amateur body spirit, super tough dude. And Jeff was the best person at that time that I'd ever trained with. I just got squash christines beat me up too, but like Jeff would just absolutely kick the crap out of me. And I was like, this is awesome.

And this was back when I was at home. I went home for the summer for that and Chris was like, hey, I think you should stay. Because I told him that's what I was thinking. And this was a coach that, you know, when it's like, when initially was exactly what I needed. And then he's like, well, hey, that's not what I'm doing here. Maybe they're going to be able to help you onto a path that's kind of commensurate with what your goals are at the moment. And then, you know, that was an interesting thing. And I really got, I feel that I was fortunate to start

at a place where my coach was able to transition roles and do so comfortably. And I think that that also was probably a factor of the fact that where he'd done some of his training prior, like there have been issues with the coach there. We're not supporting, not having the support, feeling like, hey, I'm gonna hold onto my students. I'm gonna hold onto my best guy, I'm a best girl. Even if I can't take them where they need to go.

So that was an interesting thing, and just recognizing also though, that the people, like the same way you're an individual, going into a gym and you don't know what you're getting into your coach is a person too and he or she, you know, they may have been doing this activity longer than you but they're not they're not some weird little you know all knowing God they don't know anything they're going to say something that pisses you off they may bump they may you, they may help you, they may inadvertently cause you some sort of issue and just being able to recognize that even though I say this to people, and I've said this to people in my gym, I'm like, you know, we're in the service industry, man, but I'm not at your service. Like don't get it twisted. Like I will absolutely do my best to help people. I'm there to do my best as a martial arts coach, but I'm here to do my best as a martial arts coach. but I'm here to do my best as a martial arts coach.

And I'll do my best in a periodic, I make mistakes in my own apology or two, and I'll try to give them out when I can. But we're not McDonald's. It's not, oh, you gave me a hundred bucks, so you do whatever you want in here. This is my house, this is my gym, this is my dojo, this is a martial arts, this is not a basketball team.

Yeah, there's something beautiful about martial arts, like exactly as you said, is the coach, like in wrestling and at least collegial, like high level wrestling, is like, there's a dictatorship aspect to a coach that is very important to have, like this, this ridiculous sometimes nature of like master and so on and bowing all these traditions. There's something, it seems ridiculous from the outside perhaps, but there's something really powerful to that. Because that process of you said, why not, of letting go of the leap of faith requires you to believe that the coach has your best interest in mind and just give yourself over

to their ideas of how you should grow. That's an interesting thing. I mean, I've never been able to really see coaches I've had as human. They're always, they're like a father figure or like this, you always put them in this position of power. And I think that's, I think at least for me it's been a very useful way to see the coach

because it allows you to not think and let go and really allow yourself to grow and emotionally deal with all the beatings. They'll push you, we're passed oftentimes where you would have stopped yourself, right? Which is great and then hopefully they know they, if they're paying attention and they're still a person, they can make mistakes.

But they'll push you further than you would have gone but not so far that it's not facilitative, right? That's something that I can say, like Faraz Ahabi, the head coach at TriStar, my head coach at MMA, Kenny Foreign, one of the head coaches at MMA, it both been phenomenal influences, Paul Schreiner, who's the,

one of the assistants at martial arts, he is a academy, coach me in Getsu for a long time, brilliant instructor, that they've all been able to do that. And I think what's interesting about all of those guys, they're very short, but they're very intuitive as well. And I think that for us actually, you know, told me about some, the John Wooden set,

John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach. Just a simple philosophical idea. Just, some people's life is a bowl of shit. They need some whipped cream in it. Some people's life is a bowl of whipped cream. He needs a little bit of shit in it, just to balance it out. And it's an interesting thing. Coaching everyone the same way doesn't work. You know, that's, I think, the difference between a coach and an instructor. And a lot of times people think they want a coach,

but they really want an instructor. I'm like, hey, like, tell me what to do, not how to do it. And then other times people think they want, you know, an instructor and they really want a coach. And I'm like, man, this guy's just giving me information. A coach is so much more than an instructor. And that's a huge leap. And that's something that I think that people need to understand when they're going into martial arts. And I can totally grasp why they don't, because how would they know?

But I think about this a lot. Like me giving you $150 for a month, which is not nothing. That's for sure. That does not, that pays for instructor really. Coach's relationship that gets developed, because it can imagine imagine like just the amount of emotional investment and time thinking away

from like, oh, Alexis is in here anymore, what can I do to help and what does he need? Like that's serious and that's the difference between, that's often times the difference that getting over the hump in various situations. So it's an interesting bargain that's being made like commitment by the instructor who becomes a coach, commitment by the student. There's a financial transactions, a lot of

things going on there, but I feel very fortunate to have had not just instructors in my time, but coaches, and that means sometimes we butted heads, and sometimes I look back and I think I was right. And other times I look back on my own, they were definitely right. But there was always the trust with the exception of one time that I feel that trust was greatly betrayed, that rightly or wrongly, whether mistakes, mistakes will be made, but everyone is attempting to do the right thing under no circumstances, what I intentionally do anything malicious,

versus, hey, I might have done, I might have burnt your house down, but you can be darn sure it wasn't on purpose. And I think that as long as there's that mutual understanding and mutual belief of good will, which again, doesn't just magic up out of nowhere. I understand. I think that that's when then great things can happen. And I look at all the athletes that I know, you know, the guys and girls that I've watched

become fantastic in various places, almost invariably. It never happened alone. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really torn about that. Like, maybe you can help. Have you seen the movie Wip Lash? So it's, I would say from an outsider's perspective, people should watch it. It's a, I guess, jazz band of, it's a movie about a drummer and the instructor. And he, it's a basically it, I would say, from the outsider's perspective, it's a basically I would say from the outsider's perspective

It's a toxic relationship, but he's really the coach Whatever we call him pushes the the musician the drummer to his limits like to where He just feels like shit emotionally. It's it it looks like a toxic relationship But it's one that ultimately is very productive for the improvement of the musician. I have the same, like in my own experience, I had a chance to train in a couple of places regularly. And so one of my coaches, who is a great human being, a lot of people love him, but when I was a blue belt, he was pushing me a lot for competition.

And every time I step on the mat, I was anxious and almost afraid of training because of like the places I'm gonna have to go. And then the, I can't, I don't know what's good or bad because I think I've become a better person because of that experience. Like I needed that. And on the flip side, like the place I got my black belt from, balance studios is, I remember also Blue Belt, the coach sitting down and I was going to competition and he saw something in me where

he said, you know, like good luck, but when or lose, we always love you. Like I remember that because I really needed that at that time. Like I was putting so much pressure on myself. I'm not an actual professional competitor. I just competed. I'm a PhD student, but it was clearly having a psychological effect on me. That's what a great coach does. Life is more important than jujitsu. It's bigger. They So they find you use digits when you need it to grow as a person and when it overwhelms you, you have to pull that person out, like look at the bigger picture,

always look at the bigger picture. It's fascinating and I don't know what to make of it. I don't think I would have it any other way, is both the anxiety and the love. Yeah. I think that's a really interesting thing that you're describing that I guess it kind of brings me back to a lot of the other things I've been discussing

is just almost like the reciprocal nature of everything where no pressure, that's great. Everyone's happy all the time. I mean, let's use the example of sci-fi movies to see the Matrix, which of course, the first one was amazing. And then each subsequent movie made the series worse. But basically, I work on a new one, by the way. Yeah, I've heard, we'll see, I was hoping for the best.

But basically, you know, let's say, hey, we started our first initial world agent, Smith, as to Neo, he's like, our first world was a utopia where everyone was happy and nothing ever went wrong. He's like, your primitive cerebrum rejected it. And I think that there's obviously, I mean, what i guess well i'm here so i might as well say what i think um i guess uh you know great things are fantastic a kind gentle place is fantastic and this is again why i love dune is i think dune does such a great job of expressing, Frank Herbert does such a great job of expressing, again, the reciprocal nature of these ideas.

You know, look at a, look at Sparta, for instance, or at least what I understand Sparta from the reading and also watching 300. You know, it's a little bit... And reading the Wikipedia article about the movie, not the other place. But it's a hard brutal place. And there was their benefit to that,

like absolutely, was their drawback to that? Absolutely, is it sustainable? I should probably think probably not. I mean, granted it hasn't sustained, but I mean, that type of a thing, it burns too hot almost, and it destroys the host at a certain point. And I guess that that type of

unforgiving nature but entirely entirely permissive has its own issues and I guess coming back to your your description of like describing a toxic relationship is a very dangerous and tricky thing because it's almost like it's like birds eye view me it's like you know you see let's say a husband and a wife arguing and you're like all right right, well, sort of somebody hitting somebody. I need to keep myself out of this because I have no idea what I'm seeing something, but I don't know what's going on or why specifically. And again, short of it going to a place that's just out of bounds, I don't know who's right here.

I don't know who's wrong. And I don't know what phase of this things are in. So I guess, and a long term was good for both people. Right, it's dangerous for, so if I wanna put my finger on the scale, I can understand the desire to do them. I can't just break it up. But, and that may be the right thing at the time,

but at the same time, I'm not sure. So I think back to all of the times that, you know, that like you mentioned, your coach's pushing you when it's very, very hard. And then other times going like, hey, let's put in perspective here. I think that's an interesting thing for high performance. And I think that we're seeing that again,

societally, you know, now, or at least maybe that's just pops up on my internet feed periodically. But coaches shouldn't be allowed to do this or yell at this person, yell at that person, like, well, have you ever been Google boxing gym? It's not a commercial entity, not really. I have a real boxing, not LA boxing, not a USC gym, like a real place. You're going to see what things are like when it's entirely performance-based, go to wrestling

room at a high level. You know, again, there's left and right limits and there are such things, obviously, as abuse, of course, and that should never be tolerated. But it's not a commercial entity. I don't need to be sweet to you if you're screwing up, if you drop in the ball and in fact recognizing that I'm not doing you a favor or the team a favor by being permissive of that type of behavior, I think is important. Everything in its context and at its time is important.

I guess I can think again of the times that I've been put where had put on me like a great deal of pressure to do X, Y, Z, or to succeed or to push for success. And I can't look back fondly enough on those times. They were tough at the time, but without that, I'm not sitting here, without that. I don't go from growing up in a very nice family in the suburbs to fighting at the highest level in

Jujitsu, Gino Gino and now in Mix martial arts starting a career at age 27. I don't, it just doesn't happen because people generally speaking from that background don't get pushed hard enough physically to be able to make that transition. That has benefits and it has drawbacks. When you stare into the opposite, it stares back and I think that that's an important thing to understand, you stare long enough, you can become something that you would be sorry

that you did, you don't look enough and you don't have perspective either. And I think that that's an interesting thing. I can speak to someone who's relatively articulate and reasonably, I try to be reasonable, but you know, I'll say in sparring if people get crazy with me, they get a warning and then I'm a crack them. And what do they expect? Oh, they hear the guy on an interview, but who do they think they were meeting? Because there's also the guy in the ring. And there's layers there too. I remember training with you is kind of funny. There's like there's

What you didn't know who I was. I mean you still like I have really a trinical out by the way that So I I don't remember what rank I was but it might have been purple or something like that and I Did some like I you had this look on your face, which I've often seen in black belts. It's like, here he goes again. Like, here's him trying this thing. And then when I kind of annoyed you a little bit with it, now I get that, it was a good,

like, I, you know, I did something somewhat effective, like some, like, maybe a little bit off balance. Yeah. There's, I just peeled off a little layer of Ryan Hall to where I was something somewhat effective, like some, like, maybe a little bit off balance. Yeah. There's, I just peeled off a little layer of Ryan Hall to where I was like, okay, let me, let me like, there's like layers underneath the downers of my tires and somewhere in there. Like so I was like, okay, this like new guy rolls in here. He thinks he can do this stupid thing. And then you started to beat the hot.

But the, the, the point is there's layers here from the guy who was being interviewed now to like Genghis Khan. But it's fallen the same body. Right, but it's like all of us are like that, right? In various different directions and recognizing that's okay. There are consequences to all every choice that we make as a consequence. Sometimes there's like objectively wrong or objectively right,

but at least in my mind, that's a pretty small box. Everything else is just, there's a consequence of that. Do you like that consequence? Do you not? And who do I want to become? What do I want to try to hone myself or anyone else into? And also like, this is something I screwed up as a coach plenty of times. You know, like if someone says, if you're, if like, I come to my legs, I really, really want to take, you know, research very seriously like, okay, I believe you. Now, I haven't shown you that, but I believe you, like, okay, and now me not showing up to research or to study or not being up until three in the morning thinking about this is no longer acceptable. There was a time, like five seconds before me

making that statement that if I went to bed without reading the book that I needed to read, no worries. But the second that I made that statement, your I went to bed without reading the book that I needed to read, no worries. But the second that I made that statement, your expectations for me change and maybe it's something that I've screwed up a whole bunch of times in my as a teacher because it's an interesting thing obviously, you know, being like running a martial arts school as your principally an athlete is sometimes I don't pay enough attention to what people are doing. I just go, okay, you say X, Y, Z, I'm like, Roger that, I believe you're cool.

I will now put you in category X. And whether rightly or wrongly, like maybe this person didn't understand what they were asking for, or I didn't express this or the other end, it just, it caused cross wires. And then most of the times you just, you hash it out, you have a discussion,

you figure out, get to the bottom of what people are trying to do or what they want. But if I was paying more attention, I think I could have been a lot more effective, or if I had more experience, and sometimes maybe I maybe not sharp enough, or I'm not perceptive enough to be able to see what's going on. And maybe with years more down the line, I'll be able to have a sharper perception. But I think that's another one of those interesting things that sometimes I would caution or not caution, but just inform a prospective martial arts student

depending upon where you're going. You know, both you and also your coach or other people, they were many hats. And sometimes I had the wrong hat on. You were talking to me as Lex the guy. I didn't realize you were talking to me. I thought you were talking to me as Lex the guy. I didn't realize you're talking to me as Lex the martial artist. I'm like, oh crap, I was talking to the wrong person.

So it's almost like if you had, like I run my gym with my wife. She's a black belt. So she's my wife. She's my peers as a martial artist in Jiu-Jitsu. He's here by the way, in judging. Exactly. All right.

All right. So I'll fill a black belt. And I guess like another thing. He doesn't have a microphone so you can't hear all the trash. He's talking. Exactly. But it can be tough. And that's something we've had to work through a lot.

And it's like looking back, and it's like now being where I'm at now, and it's easy for me to say that I'm in the room and I don't want to disturb me. Just continue to slowly poison me over time, which frankly I understand. You know, it's the sort of thing that is now way more effective than anything else I could really reasonably expect to have. But there were times when both of us were justifiably annoyed at the other because of cross wires. And sometimes you just have to scream in anywhere and misrestaining anyway, but again,

I coach some of my friends. I've coached my friend who I've known since I was four years old. Sometimes I don't go, hey buddy, how you doing? Sometimes I was like, what the fuck are you doing? Put your hand over there. How many times have we talked about this? And then you walk away and you can see him look at your crooked and you're like, oh crap,

oh yeah, he thought I was talking to his friend. Yeah, well, all right, we need to talk this one out, hash it out and not he's wrong. How could he possibly think that way? Like, oh, no, I totally understand that. But if I was 22, it doesn't need no, I'm a purple belt, some nonsense like that. And it doesn't come from a bad place. But it's just, I guess, that comes back to society to anything. People only have the perspective that they have and the awareness that we have.

And so again, going back and going, hey guys, grace, like I don't expect, it's not fair for me to go out for UFC. Why doesn't this guy who came in as an attorney understand how hard core this needs to be and like how could he? And at the same time though, if I'm using the language of someone that is interested in at least performance

from a martial arts perspective, I understand how that could be off-putting, let's say, for instance, someone that's completely like all of that would be out of bounds in their normal workplace. But if they think of the gym as my office, then whether they agree or disagree with what's going on, they go, okay, I see why that might happen. Let's talk about this. And we can, again, all push forward in a positive direction that benefits, I guess, everyone's journey throughout the activity.

And on top of all that, there's moods, okay? I mean, especially lately, I think two days ago, maybe yesterday? No, two days ago, I've never been that cranky in my life. I think I don't know what it was, but I wanted to tell everybody how much they annoyed me. And it was like, I was just very conscious of this feeling of like, why is this happening right now? So I consciously decided, as I usually do in those cases, to not say anything to anybody, how do you do that?

Well, I, you know, it's, yeah, meditate because it's not, I tend to then visualize what's going to happen in the next, like, how is this going to make my life better? Like, if I say something that mean to somebody else, I have just started a conflict that will just escalate, will continue, will add more conflict to my life. It will make things, I just don't like the feeling you will create. And so you live enough life to know that like, it's just like with like street fighting. I would get into a lot of fights when I was younger, just on the street.

But then you realize it's not a digit to match or something like that. It's not ill-escalate. It might come back at you. That person might find you again, but more importantly, the anxiety of it of having created little enemies in this world, distorts the way you see the world. So I've noticed that like, if I am shitty to people on the internet, which

I haven't been I think in a long time, is like, it, it somehow brings the shittiness to you more and more at escalates. Like the more love you put out there, the more like the people who put love out, like surround you. Well, you mentioned forgiveness as well. Like saving you. Like I guess back to the original, you know, the Holocaust survivor scenario, we're like, oh my god,

if you think of the ultimate, then like I've never experienced one, one billionth of that level of pain and horror and it's like, and I can't let this little thing go. You know, I guess that's an interesting thing. I think you're just making the point in your personal life. I guess the same way, right? Yeah, they're, yeah.

And on the internet it's hard. I've somehow gotten, I mean, you've, you've had a level of celebrity for a while. I've recently gotten some level of like celebrity. And like these people who are just shitty for no reason come out from all From all places like calling me a fraud or Anything else I'm using a giant silent Bob strike back They find out a movie is gonna be made about them and people talking shit on the internet

And they're like what's the internet and then someone shows them and they're like what then they go to a message board And they go to Hollywood to try to stop it from being made and they eventually get money for their likeness and they use the money to buy plain tickets and fly around and beat the shit out of all the people that talk bad about them. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I'm having trouble with it

because there's people like, yeah, there's, you know, there's posts and forms and like heated discussions about Islam, so you've been a fraud. I don't know, but has he really done? And there's like, and then there's people like, well, I think he's an all right guy, but I'm not sure. Like, like, there's like, literal discussions. And I'm like, like, no, but like,

if you increase the level of celebrity, there's going to be like, one of the things that hurts my heart a little bit is like, some level of toxicity around Joe Rogan, for example. There's like one of the things that hurts my heart a little bit is like some level of toxicity around Joe Rogan, for example. There's like communities of people that now like talk about him selling out, for example, all that kind of stuff. And I don't, you know, and Joe, I've talked to him about it is amazing that he, he says don't read the comments. He legitimately doesn't read the comments. His heart and his soul doesn't give a damn about the comments. All he gives a damn

about is his friends. Like one of the things that's really inspiring to me and that's I've had a conversation with them offline about Spotify and they're removed episodes, people are curious. It's a thing on the internet where I think you can play Taylor Swift songs on. But you can also now play Joe Rogan podcast. Oh, cool. And they gave him $100 million. So that's, you know, that's awesome. It's awesome.

It's, yeah. But the thing I've had a discussion with him, and I made a video about it that I took down because the toxicity is like, it's hard to put into words, but he will give away the 100 million in a second if he ever has to compromise who he is. Like he doesn't, I mean, he already said, as he talked about, he's

made quote unquote, fuck you money a long time ago. He doesn't need any more money. He doesn't care. It's nice to have money, whatever, but he'll give it away. So the, it's nice to see when people like him at a level of celebrity, level of success and financial success, don't change at all. They're just the same thing that makes you happy is talking in his case, talking shit with his friends, in the case of most of us really, just hanging out with friends, doing the things you love.

In his case, doing the things he loves without any, like, you know, the Texas way, the freedom, like without any corporate bureaucracy bullshit that rolls in and says, well, maybe you shouldn't say fuck, you know, like more than 20 times a podcast or something like that, like those kinds of like rules, like people, like he says in a suit and tie, they show up and say stuff. Oddly enough, people that could never have done what he does. Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of inspiring to see that. And I hope people, I hope people realize how special of a human he is. He's inspired, like people like me, like I'm a scientist, right?

So he inspired somebody like me from a very different walk of life to be like kind to others to be open-minded. I don't know. That is a special dude. So like people need to support that and treasure that as opposed to as opposed to be toxic about it. I mean what I just people really for a long time have told me that it would be awesome. The fine halls on Goza and Joe Rogan, I definitely think that would be an awesome thing. Have you listened to Joe? Has he been a part of your life in some kind of way? Um, you know, well Joe's always, I'm watching Joe on Fear Factor when I was a little kid, which is

cool. So I've actually gotten a like from a bird's eye view watch, you know, his kind of just path through life. But one of the things that I always appreciate, and again, I barely know Joe more than to shake his hand and interview me after the, briefly in the ring after the BJ pen fight. But one of the things that I've always admired about Joe is that I think he had fucking money from the start. I think that zero dollars is fucking money for Joe.

I think, and that's something I respect about him a great deal. Because as you say, it's interesting to watch. It's like you hope that George St. Pierce like this. It's really neat. I'm not super close to George, but we're teammates at TriStar, and he's never been anything but a gentleman. And he's one of those people that,

if you didn't know, George was famous when you walked in the gym, you'd never know idea. He's not holding court, not doing it. He's just, you know, training and a hell of hell about an amateur doing this. If you have a question for him, he'll help me. Like, I'm nobody. He would give me advice and training. It was super cool. And he didn't kill me, which I really appreciated. He's a gentleman. But, you know, it's like, you meet someone and you go, man, I'm so, it's so cool that this is the guy who's the best, that this is the guy who's been successful. And then you go, why are they successful?

Like, it's true to what they're doing. They haven't changed, they're the same as they've been. And I remember I got to try start on 2012 and George was already, already, George St. Pierre. But I remember watching and talking to people and they're like, oh man, George is the same as he's always been in this. I see him in the gym training now and again, giving advice now. And it seems like Joe has always been consistent and it's neat to watch someone not compromise

on their values and not change who they are. And not periodically like, you know, again, we all make mistakes. Like you have a bad day or this or that and an apology needs to be issued or even my bad or this or that. And you're like, yeah, and they just move on. They're not afraid to be themselves and they're not afraid to be issued, or even in my bed, or this or that, and you're like, yeah, and they just move on. They're not afraid to be themselves, and they're not afraid to be wrong. They're not afraid to make a mistake,

as you mentioned, open mind, and some like, so what are the correct beliefs to have about this that I know going in? Everyone's gonna be okay with what I'm saying, which is usually the beginning of a conversation that's gonna go nowhere, right? And it's neat to see the things, I guess, that he's created on his own as a result of the authenticity that's there.

And it reminds me of Dave Chappelle. And again, I don't know, I've never met Dave, but it's neat to see someone that's clearly, again, authentic in their own way, doing their own thing. And because of that, they're above the corporate nonsense. But what's funny, I think the message behind all of it is, hey guys, we all are. I can't promise you that I'm gonna have money. Joe couldn't promise you that he's gonna have money. Now it ended up working out, but he was above that nonsense from the jump.

And he just continued to be above it by never giving it any mind. And he's going like, yeah, I'm a be a reasonable person. I'm gonna try to learn. I'm gonna try to grow. And if I say something annoying, you can come and talk to me about it. We can get to the bottom of it. And I'm like, if I need to say my bad, thanks, appreciate it.

You know, I will. And if I don't need to, I'm like, hey, I still appreciate the talk. Thanks, man. Shake your hand. We carry on and we go our separate ways. And hopefully, I'll treat you to respect. You treat me with respect. And that's about it.

And I guess I think it's a lesson that it can work out no matter what. You don't have to cow-tow to like these weird powers that be. And whether you're at this level or at this level, but you can live your life the way that you want. And as you mentioned, talk to your friends, hang out, be happy. And it just so happens that that resonates with people.

It actually reminds me of like speaking to MIT and being in Boston is like a Google hunting. Like again, what do they really want to do? He could have gone this way, he could have gone that way. And it was an interesting story, but it's like this person wants to hang out with his buddies and wants to do other things. And again, happens to be brilliant and happens to be able to do all these other things, but there was, I guess it's like a million of my mind, a story of authenticity as well, and it was both the same thing in the Robin Williams character. And I just think that that's a message because watching things occur on the internet

as they do now think, somebody thinks playing out in the public eye, I feel like somebody private or otherwise formerly private discussions and disputes and interactions, now become, they all have a, well, what is this gonna say when it goes public? So how can I couch what I'm saying

or how can I word this in a way that's gonna get people on my side to use the right buzzwords or not use the wrong buzzwords and it's just need to see people You know in their own way flip the bird to that because I think that that's that's just not how a human being is meant to think or interact I'm curious what you think about the thing that recently has you know me hosting this podcast, I sometimes think about like, who should I talk to and not? In terms of like, it's the old Hitler question.

Now Hitler, I would definitely talk to because post World War II, because everyone knows he's evil. The question whether you talk to Hitler in 1937, like when people who are really students, so what's going on, understand that this is a very dangerous human being. But large number of the part of the world are like, well, he's a leader who cares for Germany. So the question I have, it's interesting to me. It involves a particular person named who also lives in Austin, Texas named Alex Jones. I don't know if you're familiar with the guy. I am from there with Mr. Jones. I've actually recently just listened to Infer Wars, like one episode of his show, I guess he does every day. And it kind of reminds me of a time in college

when I drank too much tequila. There's no turning back. Like, it's like the mistakes you make that, like it's, I mean, you don't know where you're gonna wake up. You don't know who you're gonna kill or not kill or steal or rob. It's unclear. So that it felt like I was getting pulled into a dark place

where pretty much everybody is a pedophile that's trying to control the world. So Bill Gates definitely is a pedophile. Everybody in power, anybody in power, there's a kind of a deep skepticism about power and a conspiratorial way to see the world where everything is like dark forces in all corners. It's like the way you feel when you're a kid that there's a monster hiding in the closet which is also why you leap over the bed from like four feet away.

There's a strategy. Yes. So, but he says that you're just being weak. You need to look under the bed. Under the bed, there's monsters, and we need to be aware of them because they're growing, they're multiplying. You should be.

And they're touching children. They're touching children, exactly. So it all connects. But the, I, when I listened to him, and I thought about like, do I wanna talk to him on this podcast, for example, when I listened to his conversation with Joe

Rogan the two times he talked on that, to me it was somehow entertaining, like it was fun to listen to. It's fun to listen to a madman go on for four hours because it's almost like theater. Like this is what I talked to Joe about when people try to censor Alex Jones. Joe says that the people who try to censor him don't give enough credit to the intelligence of human beings to like understand. of human beings to understand that what a person says on a large platform does not necessarily is not the truth. You can be a madman and say crazy things. People are intelligent enough to hear certain things when they're said, like the earth is flat, they can be intelligent enough not to all of a sudden start believing that

the Earth is flat. Like, they're intelligent enough to sort of select different ideas and be able to enjoy the theater of a particular ridiculous over the top conversation without being sort of influenced the way they start believing, like toxic set of beliefs. Now there's a lot of sort of other kinds of people, especially now with cancer culture that say, well, you don't want to give platform to crazy people that ultimately whose beliefs might lead to dangerous consequences. And I see it very often now with conspiracy theories that go that go like way too far. Like for example, I'm not, I haven't looked into it. So I'm sorry, I will look into it. But it

hurts my heart to see that when Bill Gates, in my opinion, the person who has saved and improved more lives than probably any human in history, literally, because of the money he's invested in helping, like just the work he's done on La Cmalaria in Africa. The number of people he's helped is huge. And yet, every interview, anything you see now on Bill Gates, everyone is calling him, I believe, haven't looked into it, but I believe everyone's calling him a pedophile. I don't know the full structure of it, but it's just a very, it feels like an army of like, it feels like it's hundreds

of thousands of people. That's what it feels like. It might be a much smaller percentage, but it feels like a huge number of people are calling him a pedophile. So that's the flip side. If you allow, if you give platform to conspiracy theories like that, then you start to have bigger and bigger percent of the population believe in these crazy things. I just, I wanted to put it out there because I don't know what to think of that. If you put yourself in Joe Rogan's shoes,

if you put yourself in my shoes, if you put yourself just in your own shoes, I mean, I'm in my shoes right now. Great. If you put yourself in my shoes, if you put yourself just in your own shoes, I mean, I'm in my shoes right now. Great. If you're staying in your shoes, just staying in your shoes. Can I have your words? Would you talk, would you give platform to people like Alex Jones? Would you talk to somebody like Alex Jones or or not? Yes, I would and I feel very strongly about this honestly. Well, I think that it's an interesting thing and I would just say a lot of times I can understand

very, very clearly why people would take issue with the idea of I guess what they proceed to be amplifying this man's voice, this man's reach, you know, as a demonstrable negative. But I think, you know, when you take a step back further, the cure is more damaging than the disease and significantly so. I guess I think that I'm very, very wary of, I think being where you mentioned Alex Jones being wary of power and people with it. That's a lot of times there's a lot of truth and validity to crazy things that people say.

It's the conspiracy theories that stick are the ones that sound credible, at least quasi-credible in some aspect. And it seems to me like an anchor in people's mind. And it is also funny to me, obviously, the Bill Gates, it's funny to tar people with things like pedophile, racist, rapist. Like these are things that we're basically trying to pick words that no one can ever support someone who does these things.

And that changes here by year. Like currently pedophile is totally in as a thing to call somebody just as a, it used to be communist or Marxist. Yeah. Leave them browns fan, you know, like, come on. You know, who? Actually nobody likes the browns. So I'll agree with you.

I felt like that was that's why I picked on that's the trick is you find a pit group of people that nobody likes. We're good here. All right. That's the move. But yeah, that's a creepy thing though, because that is the creepy thing. It's like, people are always looking for groups of people

or always looking for them to find this really deeply disturbing. Like, hey, so who's the guy that we can all get away with, you know, just treating like dirt? Who's the guy that I can be a dick to? I can just walk up and punch in the face and no one's going to say anything. And it's even if people do that with, whether it's literal Nazis or someone that I called Nazi, I guess what's the bigger issue?

This person's ridiculous beliefs or what I'm doing. And you mentioned Hitler before, and obviously, Mein Kampf being like the outline for some of the things he did later and when the evil was it always there, did it take root later on or flourish later on, but was Adolf Hitler a problem because he had crazy ideas or because he did things? I think it's because it's not, I think, I know it's because he did things. Now, if I'm going to start punishing thought crime, I'm going to have to start punishing thought crime, and that going to have to start punishing thought crime.

And that's a terrifying concept. Even if I'm right about the certain, about the objectively correct about the things that I decide to call out of bounds, who put me in charge and made me arbiter of good taste, and how long until I decide that something else is out of bounds. It's always a sliding scale or it's always a sliding standard. And I find that, you know, to be more of a concern than people doing crazy things, because I guess if you mention Alex Jones,

putting out ridiculous ideas, ridiculous theories, I think that most people don't look at Alex Jones as a credible person. Now, I'm not gonna pretend to be deeply right into all of his beliefs or the things that he's trying to pedal. But there's plenty of things that are quasi mainstream that I think on would decide with that side that maybe not comfortably ridiculous, but are, you know,

particularly in hindsight or, you know, are, we're not, or silly. And I guess the idea of getting a group of people together to decide what we're not going to tolerate is a very, very tricky thing. And I think that, you know, it reminds me of law or, you know, even, you know, religion when it gets to, like, what are the things that we don't like? How do we feel about rape? It's like, no, on to no circumstances is that an acceptable behavior.

Murder. No, that's not acceptable behavior. Killing. No, no, kind of depends on the situation. Are you a war? Were you justified? Were you acting in self-defense? Okay, so it's not, now murder is a specific type of killing. The same way, you know, other things should be a specific type of something else, but I guess we draw the line of murder. We say, if you want

to exist in our society, you can't do this. This cannot be done. And then we go theft. If someone said, hey, I murdered that guy, can you understand where I'm coming from? I might say, yeah, I'll hear you out. Doesn't mean that I think you're right. But I'm like, have you ever been wrong so deeply that you could imagine that you could kill someone? I'm like, no, I haven't. But I could conceptualize someone doing that. And I'm like, yeah, okay.

And you still need to go, you still need to face, you know, criminal justice as we have it in our system. Or at least that's how we've decided. Yeah, that's interesting. You have to be able to, like, there's, if you look at the history of discourse in this country, I think it's still true, but I'm not sure it's changed since 9-11, is it used to be impossible to criticize a soldier.

It was easier to criticize war. It was harder to criticize soldiers for allowing themselves to be the tools of war. I tend to be maybe it's the Russian upbringing. It's the combat thing. I tend to romanticize war and soldiers. I see soldiers as heroes, but I've also heard people that not only say that soldiers are the war is bad, they say soldiers are bad. What's their argument? It's the kind of a libertarian view that they're basically slaves to evil, right? War is evil.

And they're giving, they are suspending their moral and ethical duties as a human being to become the tools of evil. That's the argument, if you see war as evil. I think it's useful to hear that, but there's for a long part in history that was completely unacceptable. Same with abortion. You see abortion as murder. I mean, if I classified it in that,

if I put it in that basket, it starts where living in the midst of like a genocide. Looked at from that perspective, could you feel how people could be deeply upset by abortion? You go, of course. Looked at from that perspective, could you feel how people could be deeply upset by abortion? You go, of course, looked at from a different perspective, you say, I don't believe it to be murder.

That's not how I see it. Then you go, well, if that's the genesis of your thought process, then you're like, okay, now I see how we can come to a different thing, but I guess we go, well, abortion is murder period. Therefore, if you support it, you support murder. That's a convenient

way for me to tar you, right? But I guess that's kind of coming back to the Alex Jones. I'm this nuance. It's you have to have the nuance and these kinds of conversations. And I have to be willing to have the conversation. And I have to be willing to sit down. If I can't sit down across from like the most violently racist, angry, hypothetical internet, conceived person that none of us have ever actually met in real life, but are hopefully not. And go like, well, of course I believe that this person's wrong, but allow me to change, do my best, I'll hear them out, and I'll go,

no, I can go point by point and explain why this guy or this girl is wrong, and hopefully bring them over to a more reasonable position where they will have better beliefs, and they will objectively better beliefs, and beliefs that will treat other people better. Why would I want to marginalize this person? I might not want to talk. I might not want to invite them to my barbecue if they're acting like a jerk all the time, but how could I would

not make the world a better place if I'd hear them out and they go, look, if you're going to sit down and talk with me, we're going to have to have a discussion. I'll hear what you have to say. And if I can't, to someone why their ridiculous belief is wrong, then I must not be so confident in my position. And I guess that's where I come back to the Alex Jones thing. As you mentioned, you know, with Bill Gates, and you're much more familiar with the specifics of all the good that he's done. But, you know, again, he's been an unbelievable force for good, you know, in this world.

You can list A, B, C, D, things that the man has done to this foundation has done, and, you know, positive things. And then the other people could speculate about ridiculous, crazy levels of evil, but you can't produce any evidence for that sort of thing. Because if you could, the man will find himself in trouble, you know. And anyway, I guess what I would say is that why you can't force me to accept the truth, the same way you could write down two plus two equals four on a piece of paper and show me how it works and I could say, nah, but that doesn't make it not true. And you've still given yourself an opportunity to present your case, you've presented it to me, and you've also for anyone

listening and watching, you know, you've been able to critically assess what's gone on, you know, or critically address back and forth, you know, kind of the discourse. And I think that you almost, you're making your case for the public. So I guess like, you know, when it comes to just never not engaging with these people, that seems to me to be cowardly. And I think that that's a something that we're seeing in society right now. I think we're seeing a crisis of courage in society all over the place. And I think that's where we're seeing poor leadership.

I think we're seeing understandable things happening everywhere, but we need stronger voices and stronger beliefs that have a conviction and are willing to engage with others. Not just turning them to a shouting contest, and I didn't win because there's more of me. Oh, I voted. I voted you. That's nice too. But that's a stand in for bullets. That's saying I won because there's more of me. That doesn't mean that I voted you. That's nice too, but that's a stand-in for bullets. That's saying, I won because there's more of me.

That doesn't mean that I'm right. Because plenty of horrible and unpopular now things have been very very deeply popular in the past and would have won a popular vote. Does that make them right? Glad to say clearly not. So I guess you'd hope that we engage with these people and that you can do your best to bring them over to a more reasonable position if you believe that you have one. And if you can't, well, at least you made the effort. And I think that that's something where martial arts shows the value. It's like, are you know if you're gonna go when you're next fight, I'm like, I have no idea.

I will proceed forward with full effort and I will fight with dignity, I'll fight with honor and I'll fight with courage. And I'll use everything that I have and I will play within the bounds of the game and that's that. And the result will be what it'll be but I will walk into and out of that ring with my

head held high because I will know that I did my part. I did my job. The outcome, the specific outcome is not in my control. It's just strongly in my influence. And I think that that's something that helped me that martial arts has taught me because other times, even when I was successful or unsuccessful, I would focus on if I won, I won therefore I'm good. I lost therefore I'm bad. I lost, therefore I'm bad.

This other guy won or lost, therefore, as opposed to evaluating their method, and I think it's so easy when we're taking a bird's eye view of things to not evaluate how someone's doing things. You're not evaluating my process. You simply evaluate my outcome, and I could have stumbled into something very, very good or very, very bad. And we can look back, and I think that's the value of history. I mean, I don't mean to get on my dang high horse, but it's like this, the value of history

is we can see the unbroken chain or the chain of events that led us somewhere. And then only with the eyes of history, can we truly evaluate things unless we're in the room watching it happen. And I guess that's again, where we start to go most of the big, bad, scary things that have happened in history

that are done particularly on an industrial scale, which implies governmental power and things like that, or the equivalent, involve groups of people getting together and going, hey, we're not going to deal with that guy, giant groups of people. So, maybe we're right this time, but maybe we're wrong next time. And I guess I would be back to the Gandalf putting on the one ring. I would be very, very hesitant, even if we thought we were in the right to simply try to marginalize just ungeneral principle, even people like Alex Jones,

whom on their face are pretty ridiculous. Like you said, you should sit down with it. I'll get there and talk to the man. I agree with you to play a little devil's advocate is Alex Jones might be a bad example, but if we look at because he has a face, he is a human. He's a real person. There is also trolls on the internet 4chan The worry I have with those folks is

That and there might be parallels to martial arts is they practice guerrilla warfare meaning They don't necessarily want to arrive at the truth. They just always want to cut at the ankles of the powerful. Like, they want to always break down the powerful. And even if they, I mean, they turn everything into a game. So they, let's see if we can make the world, let's see if we can make a trend that Bill Gates is a pedophile. Right, they make it into a game, they get excited about this game, they see the powerful, let's see if we can convince that like who is the most positive person we can think of.

Let's see if we can turn that into evil. And they've tried that with like, with like everybody. And it seems to stick and they're good at it. Sam would argue, whatever you think about our current president, that he has some elements of that, which is he's figured out whatever this music of social discourse that's going on, he's figured out how to always troll the mainstream, like, flow of consciousness. That's the media. He always kind of says stuff that annoys a very large number of people. And he enjoys that. Because it's like taking the powerful, taking the way things were before. And he like shakes it up by saying the most inappropriate thing,

almost unpurpose or instinctually and so on. The problem I have with that is that doesn't... the powerful thing there is it brings the power... those in power down a notch. That's a great thing. The negative thing is it doesn't push us closer to a nuanced careful rigorous discourse towards truth. It's like showing up to a party and just like starting to yell. It doesn't create a good conversation. It just makes everything into a game or truth doesn't even seem like a thing we can even hope to achieve. That makes sense. As you mentioned, we'll come back to another movie because I don't do books and do movies. Some people just want to watch the world burn, right? And I guess there's that's a creepy, creepy, you know, kind of urge that some people have. And then also is some people you're like, Hey, would you like to throw a brick through that glass window? You're like, yeah, sure. Like, no, I'm not going to do that because I think about what's going to,

what's going to what's going to occur? Like something's going to be hurt. Someone's property. Not going to do it versus, hey, you want to see what'll happen? Like, yeah, sure. Kids, I always like, I have my son. He just grabbed Spider-Man and dropped his mom on the table. Spider-Man fell. My Spider-Man didn't fall, Sean. Like, he dropped them.

You knocked him off the table and he'll grin. And basically, it's an interesting thing. Like you said, playing these people are appealing to. And also almost like the little dog factor of like, people do want to watch the powerful get taken down a notch for all the good and the not good of that. Just plenty of people, it seems to me that have found their way to incredibly high positions.

Some have just found themselves there and many, many, many, many people, you know, men and women of all backgrounds are brilliant and it worked hard. And yeah, of course, there's luck and there's, there's luck into everything. They're, you know, LeBron James, in spite of being the best basketball player on God's Green Earth is fortunate that he didn't get hit by a car. You know, it's fortunate that it didn't tear his knee, you know, but thankfully, we get to see all these things, you know, but, um, I, I guess, uh, it if people don't have any skin in the game,

you never know what they're gonna do. And I think that's the problem with the internet, that people get to be nameless, be face. That's why guerrilla fighters are outside of the bounds of war, like you don't have a uniform on. Like I don't know who you're from. You don't get the same treatment that a soldier gets for M people. Well, that's crazy.

And actually, there's reasons for this. Because otherwise, people are able to sail things. And there's no, there's no one responsible. There's no way to go and say, Hey, where's the, where did this come from? What's the root of this? What, how can I address this? And I think that's the problem of the internet's problem. Twitter, this problem, places like 4chan, I wouldn't mind seeing that type of stuff go away,

if in Frank, but that's not the same thing as people with a face, this problem in places like 4chan, I wouldn't mind seeing that type of stuff go away, if I'm frank, but that's not the same thing as people with a face, people with, people who are willing to stand there and say hi, my name is so-and-so. Even if I have ridiculous beliefs, hopefully, people will hear me out and then if I'm wrong, educate me, but I guess you hope that the real, I guess in my mind, antidote to all of this silliness

is education and I think that that's something that you know, critical thinking is not necessarily I went to school in America, you know, I feel very fortunate, but critical thinking is not something that's focused on. I mean, and it's tough. It's almost like talking about jujitsu. It's tough to teach critical thinking when I don't know any words. You have to teach me techniques. You can't teach me to be an artist, but recognize that the techniques are the beginning, not the end. Ultimately, it's the artistry that we are searching for, not just the science or the early by-road memorization.

And I guess, you'd hope that people's ability to think critically and recognize that majority rule or whoever's loudest does not mean that they're right by any stretch of the imagination. And we don't appeal to that and we don't bow to that. We'll help them to help inoculate them against the ridiculous things that come out of these places these dark places that That are objectively not great, but the I guess all circling back if even if we swatted these you know these bad things out of existence right now We've got to be very very careful doing that because it's who's doing the swatting this political group That's in power right now the people that support a current president

would maybe feel a certain way. The people that support another option would feel differently as to what exactly defines toxic. And I guess that's what gives me pause. Yeah. But also the grace thing. I tend to believe that the technology, you said education, but the platforms we use like Twitter and the Reddit and all these platforms have a role to play the teachers grace, meaning

they should help us incentivize the kind of behavior that is incentivized in real life. Like being a dick in real life is not incentivized. Like one on one interaction. Like there's cases where it is, but usually being kind to each other is incentivized. On the internet, it's not like you get likes for being for mocking people in a funny, in a humorous way. And it can be dark kind of mocking, depending on the community. You can go, you can go to the appearance. If somebody's a little fat or a little too way and it can be dark kind of mocking, depending on the community. You can go, you can go to the appearance, if somebody's a little fat or a little too skinny, you can comment on their appearance, the hair,

the way the hair looks, like the appearance stuff, it could be on the people comment all the time on the level of eloquence of my speech. Go fuck yourself. I like it. It's creepy though watching previously, like this used to be low brow though, like people doing this type of stuff.

It's creepy watching like our political figures get into this type of game. Yes, but again, it's a little bit refreshing, right? It's like the, my hope with Donald Trump was, is that he would shake up the people who wear suits usually. Like if you're from DC, I remember like showing up. I actually didn't wear what I usually wear in DC because I was like, everybody is wearing

a suit and tie when I was giving talks and talks. Except for much, who wears jeans and a T-shirt. Right. talks and stocks. Except for much who wears jeans and a T-shirt. It doesn't give a damn. Mudge is a forever renegade. But I don't remember what I, oh, yeah. So my hope with Trump was the huge shake up that system to say like, like, to inject new ideas to inject new energy. Of course, the way it turned out is different. But like there's, it turns out that you might want to have

somebody who's like an Andrew Yang type character who is full of ideas that are very different and inject the energy, new energy into the system through youthful new ideas versus through the troll that's very good at sort of mocking and like playing outside the rules of the game. But Trump did reveal powerfully, I don't know what to think of it, that it's just a game. And you don't have to play by the rules. That's both inspiring and dark. Deeply depressing, right?

Yeah, and I don't know what to do with it. I don't, I mean, the same. I'm not drawing parallels, not drawing parallels between our president and Adolf Hitler, but it's certainly, and there's a lot of, in history, a lot of positive and a lot of negative things happen when charismatic leaders realize they don't have to play by the rules.

You can just flip the table. It's that Kevin Spacey show. No house cards. House of cards where you just flip the table or whatever. You don't have to play by the rules of the chess game. You can flip the table. One wonder is if that's always been done in private. You know, I guess because that that's, I mean, even look, obviously, the United States is a republic, but we had, we had Bush, then we had Clinton, then we had more Bush, then we had President Obama, then we were about to have another Clinton. That's fairly creepy. Yeah.

Even on its own. But now we added another, I mean, I'm sure we'll have a generation of Trump's. No. Gee. I mean, I'm sure we'll have a generation of Trump's. No, gee. We, you know, I'm Russian, so I think we humans like kings still and queens. There's something we're attracted to, the thing we talked about, coaches. There's something in us that longs towards that authoritarian control. One of the beautiful things about America, the Second Amendment is we also like individual freedom. That's one of the unique aspects of the founding of this country and still. And for me, it's the beacon of hope that somehow there's the fire of freedom burns in there like that Texas feel that I that gives me hope the F.U

energy That revolts against the power which as we discuss power corrupts and ultimately leads to sort of degradation of the whoever's in ruling is the people it's interesting though, it seems to me, maybe I don't know if I'm reading this properly when I see it, but it seems to me that, that like you said, that flip the bird, I'm gonna do me within reason,

like as long as I'm not hurting you, is idea that very much at least in my mind defines the American ideal, or at least part of the consciousness of the United States is under attack to a certain extent. You know, and if only like I can think to, like maybe generation behind us, it's becoming more collectivist.

Yeah, you know, for all the good and also the not good of that. And it's, you know, not in terms of policy at this point, but just in terms of like consciousness. And I wonder if that's an internet thing. You know, people are more in touch with one another than they've, as far as I'm controlled, have ever been, or at least more than in my lifetime.

And, you know, the rest of the world seems much closer than it did, you know, living in Virginia, California, seems very far away, being on the internet. It's just right there. I can hear about it, I can see it. I can interact with people from there. I remember being in Tennessee at one time and then reading about events taking place in the Middle East.

And that just seemed like a mile away. It seemed like a unbelievably far distance. And then another time when you're in DC, you just feel like, oh, you read about something happening in Paris. And it just feels like it's just right around the corner because DC is a seat of a seat of power where things are just occurring all the time. And, you know, I guess you wonder about that's where I come back to the group

decisions to not listen to this person or to cancel this or to, you know, we all, the moral majority, she'll do the following as opposed to as long as you're not hurting me and long as you're not hurting anyone else, I have to let you do, I have to let you be on general principle, even if I don't like you, I'm very free to not like you, I'm free to speak out against you, but I'm not, it is not within my right or and not with it. And it's not, I would not be right to attempt to attack you. And that is an interesting thing though. And we see words being redefined or words being defined, whether it's toxicity, whether it's violence. If I think that what you're saying is your speech is by itself, you know, a violence or a precursor to violence, I'm justified in doing all sorts of things, you know, and that creeps me out

significantly, because again, even if it ends up being pointed in a good direction initially It's only a matter of time and actually that brings me to Another doing yeah, I got all day I'm gonna show they pay you but we about say the the Frank Herbert estate not enough Let's see and how many books are there in dude. That's a gen question You're also a fan of Dune. I read the whole series, but not a couple of the... I read all the prequels as well with the exception of a couple.

Is there a book one for Dune? Dune. It would be book one, and even the prequels, it's still all better if you start. Like I read Dune and then read the original. What is it? Sixth and then I went back and started to read some of the books. I think just like watching Star Wars, you want to start at episode four, whatever. Yeah, I think so. That's the way that's to move and then stop at six, call it a day, watch the man, Allorian. But well, I thought you're not walking back here. No, I liked the man, Allorian. Yeah, that is what I said. I was told that I was harmless for not like a baby Yoda boy.

We don't talk about a couple of the movies, not including the Mandalorian. The Mandalorian is fine. It's the more recent movies that we don't like to talk about. Oh, the, what's his name? The goofy guy. Ryan. No, no, no. No, the creature, the goofy creature with the...

Jar Jar? Yeah, Jar Jar. Do you ever see the Jar Jar banks is creature, the goofy creature with the Georgia. Yeah, Georgia. Yeah, do you ever see the the the the the Georgia banks is actually like the dark lord of the Sith theory that fixed the whole initial trilogy where like he's like goofing around and like making it all the way through battles and winning or like wait a minute he oops his way he walks over to a pool does a triple backflip falls in you like. It's just bizarre that he's the this is the

Alex Jones theory of of Star Wars. He's actually running everything. He was the Alex Jones theory of star work. He's actually running everything. He was the one that actually was like, hey, we should vote in chancellor, chancellor Palpatine, or Senator Palpatine, like right before they put George R. and Charles. First off, what did they think was going to happen? And second off, I would think that would be great.

Like, oops, oh man, I guess he's the emperor now. That would have been great. But actually, to the cancel and all the other stuff again It's just I you'd hope that it gives pause and I think about this for fighting because a lot of times I used to see example people and people like fight fans and you know Like you have see they love people that run out and try to murder each other and it's entertaining and it's super entertaining but You know fluid may whether it doesn't resonate with people as much

It's like people start I remember the time in Floyd was not as popular. Now people think people love Floyd because he's 50 and oh Floyd and oh man, he finally had so much success that we all can't help but recognize the man's genius and greatness. But prior to that, oh, he's boring, he's this, he's that, he fights, you know, with, he's circumspect, he's cautious, he's, he's pressing, he's intelligent, deeply intelligent. And when you watch people go out and try to murder each other, you can flip a coin a hundred times and you can get, you could be lucky enough to get a hundred heads, but it's still a coin flip.

And I think that that's what's going on all the time is people are getting an outcome that they want, but it wasn't a well thought out situation. That's why you'll win by five in a row by knockout. And then lose three in a row and then people will go, well, what happened to that guy? He used to be so great and you're like, no, he's doing what he's always been doing.

It's just, it was getting great outcomes on a coin flip prior and it's getting negative outcomes on a coin flip now. But I guess what I would say is it watches, it's interesting watching, you know, I guess societal beliefs become such a thing that we're almost adopting on a religious level if we're not careful. And if when I say religious level, I mean like, like, pan life, like this is guiding all of my choices for all the good and the bad of that. And this is a doon quote is when religion and politics travel in the same car, the writers believe that nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become

headlong, faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late. And I think that that's, again, the pause. We go, oh, man, thank goodness. We have this guy that wants to rebuild Germany. He'll put us back or we need to be. And he stopped questioning your own judgment, your own. Just you start, you stop thinking essentially. Right. I'm not allowed to question this. So of course this is correct. Of course this is correct. Oh, of course I'm right.

I intended to do right. So of course my actions are correct. I mean, how many times of any of us intend to do something helpful and end up doing something less. And you know, plenty of people who intend to do harm could by accident do something decent. And I guess it's like, you know, I'm not saying anything, you know, terribly, you know, insightful, but it's just one of those where it's hard to, it's hard to say in the moment. And that's where you, you hopefully caution, you would counsel some degree of caution.

And that, that's what worries me with, with people deciding that we're also right about this or we're also right about that and attempting to rather than win the argument, silence the counter argument, no matter how crazy it may seem. Because I just think that that idea, even when it's pointed in a good direction initially, it's only a matter of time. You're amongst many things a jiu-jitsu black belt. One of the things that people are really curious about, white belts and blue belts in jiu-jitsu, but also people haven't tried the art, is what does it take to be a Jiu-Jitsu black belt?

I think that, you know, everyone's journey is a little bit different, but the one thing that the, it was a Calvin Coolidge quote, you know, determination, persistence is the only thing that, that will win in the end. It will always win in the end. Not brilliance, not toughness, not education, it's persistence. And I think that having the belief that no matter what happens to me, I will proceed forward and I will figure out how to make this happen, hell or high water. I think it's the one thing that ties together all of the people that

I've ever met that made it through whatever it was that they were going through. Because you know, sometimes you can get lucky and you can have an easy time or that luck could be, you had a good situation. It could be, I mean, like in the obvious sense of like where you're living, where you're training, what's going on, you had a good situation, you're unbelievably athletic.

Oh, you're gonna be a national. You're brilliant and an Olympic athlete, like, well, that's a fantastic situation. You won the genetic lottery and I'm sure you've worked hard as well, but you also won the genetic lottery. It's a determination is the one thing though, because that person could have a very easy go of it initially and then tear their knee. And then they're no longer the superhuman physical specimen that they were.

The only thing that will keep them going is persistence. And I think that that, I would just say that persistence, I say, I'll just put one foot in front of the other and sometimes I can see the path ahead. And sometimes it's beyond my vision, but I will not stop. I may even slow down, but I won't stop. And that's the only thing that I can say that I've seen tie everyone together because there's so many ways to the top of any mountain and there's so many different personalities and skills and backgrounds involved but everyone, everyone carries on. So at the core, the foundational advice is just don't quit. Just keep going. That's the lesson to martial arts, I think. You know, we think it's like how to be strong or how to be, how to win, but in reality, it's like how to

persist, how to endure, because it's's all of us have been beaten so many times and gotten beaten up so many times and thought about quitting. Have I ever thought about quitting? Absolutely. Have I ever quit? Never. I will never, ever quit, ever.

I can say, you might not be out. I will be damned if I quit. What's the darkest moment? Is it injury related? Like, is it, is it, so to me like two possibilities, I've fortunately never been seriously injured, but I think that's a dark like to me, like two possibilities, I've fortunately never been seriously injured, but I think that's a dark place to be, like having to be out for many months for, as General's saying, like with the head injury, especially like the uncertainty, that's one.

And then the other side is if you have big ambitions as a competitor, realizing that you're not as good, like those, those doubts were like, I kind of suck. How am I supposed to be a world, the greatest fighter of all time? If I, if, if like, several people in the gym are kicking my ass, those are the two things that paralyze you. I think that everyone's darkest moment is maybe different. Looking from the outside for Ryan, I wouldn't say that he's had injuries.

And he said, bad ones, I wouldn't say that was his darkest moment. I think for me, I would say, my head injury was my darkest moment. Absolutely, and I've torn my ACL twice. I've torn my shoulders four times. I've had lots of surgeries. For me, the orthopedic injuries

were not the most difficult. It was the brain injury. For others, that might be the case for them. Maybe they've never experienced an injury. And maybe for them, that's their darkest moment from the autonomously Orion. Can speak to this to this more but for Ryan I think it was the inability to perform at certain points to the the missing of opportunities that for him from my perspective watching him go through and having seen various points of his

growth from from early purple thought on I think the hardest time for him looking in, obviously, was when he would hit moments where he wasn't able to perform for various reasons. He couldn't get fights. He was having difficulties there. I think that was the hardest point for him. Did you think, like, with the head injury that you might not never be able to do Jiu-Jitsu again?

Yeah, I mean, mine was very, was really bad and it was just the one hit but I had a looping memories for seven months. Didn't know it because when your brain's messed up you're not even aware that you're a looping. And so I saw two different neurologists. I finally, like, it took a very long time. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to have like

linear thoughts or read a book. I didn't know at certain was going to be able to have like linear thoughts or read a book. I didn't know certain points if I could listen to music again, you know, without making my head hurt. And so it was almost two years before I woke up in the morning without a headache. Just waking up before I even start my day. And so that's even bigger than you do. So that's just life. That's just that's just hard. And I think that you can experience so many things. I've had all these injuries. We lost the baby when I was 15, 15 weeks. We've had all these experiences. And what the hardest point for me, not saying all of those things weren't hard, but it's kind of like, did you go through these? You just realize that life goes on and you have to keep working at it and you have to keep going and you asked me earlier offline, did I feel depressed?

And not for my head injury, I don't think that at least in the moment I had any recognition of that, it's kind of like, but I think different people's personalities, I have kind of the like, buckle down and just keep going and sometimes it's not until lots of time later that you realize, wow, that was really hard. Because you're just struggling to live and function and do the things that you need to do along that. You mind jumping on just like this part

of the conversation just for a few minutes? I'm sorry. Do you mind just sitting together? Oh, no, just for a little bit. Sorry, I'm not gonna let me tell you something. It'd be cool if we put a face to it, you know. Is it okay with you? Yeah, it's fine with me. It's fine with you. By the way, what was the head injury, if you don't mind sharing? Someone had dropped their knee on the back of my head during training, who's a lot bigger than me.

So one strike to the back of the head is too much for someone. There's a reason that's outlawed in MMA, right? Someone 50 pounds, everything, it drops around the back of your head once and it's... It's the funny thing about getting hit, right? You never can really be sure what's gonna happen. I think that's actually one of the magical parts about you to hit, or like if you choke me,

if you, we know what's gonna occur. You hit someone, they might be completely unharmed. Like, you might be punching Tony Ferguson in the face and like, you need to hit him with a sled chamber to affect this man. And then other people, they could get really badly hurt, which I guess it's packed to your point about, you know, street fighting and things like that. And a serious, serious potential, you know, second-third-order consequences of any action that we take. But yeah, that's a, that's a tricky thing about getting hit. How does it make you feel that the really shitty thing

about injuries to me was that like, you start thinking like, well, if I did this one little thing different, like this wouldn't have happened today. Like one moment changes your entire life. Is that, do you think that way? Is that totally counterproductive? You can't help but think that way.

When you've had them, I'm in Jersey. I've had more than most people's first year. As my orthopedic says, you don't want to win that. You don't want to win the contest of who's had the most. But since you had, it's built me a pool. Yeah. But I think you can't help but think that way sometimes, but I definitely don't think it's, I think it can be facilitative if you don't beat yourself up too much.

Because thinking about why have I been subject to so many injuries and a lot of it comes to just almost all of mine in particular, people a lot heavier than me. So we're to, but if I've been training martial arts 15 years, I'm obviously on the much smaller side, I'm a woman, I've done thousands and thousands of rounds with people 50 pounds plus heavier than me. I mean, I'm in years not training with anyone less than 50 pounds, which is 50 pounds is almost half my body weight.

And when you also add testosterone, the natural physiological advantages of men, not just are they heavier with more mass, they're faster and more explosive, they're stronger, if they're the same size. And so I think that the willingness to be in that environment over and over and over again creates a lot of strength, resiliency,

willingness to continue, but it also, like in order to do that, you almost have to, for me, the way I was approaching, it was like, pretend like I wasn't more vulnerable. And just be willing to step in and step in and step in and step in and step in and step in. Take it until you make it kind of thing. Until you make it kind of, yeah, like, I'll just one day, I'll be strong enough. And you avoided injury for most, for most. For most of those rounds, I would injury strong enough. And you avoided injury for most?

For most of those rounds, I would injury the problem is Ryan points out is that like you could do thousands of rounds but if one person that size, that strength, that hover reacts in a way that you don't expect, it's not like an oops, it's like always major. Do you regret any of it? I think that most, no one I know has experienced

the degree of injuries that I've experienced. And I started it at a time when, in 2005, it's very different than now, where you have, the coaches have more control over what you're doing. They're more aware in general about a lot of the injuries. There's a lot more people who are hobbyists than when I started. They were hobbyists, but it was different kind of hobbyist, you know, then now, now our girls can train with other girls. They don't have to do thousands of rounds with somebody significantly more powerful than them. And for the drawbacks and the benefits of that, you know, is with anything. So I think that I don't think I would go back and change it.

There were times after one of my injuries where I said to Ryan, I said I quit, I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. I probably said it more than once, but there was one time I was really serious in 2012. I was really serious. I had torn my shoulder. I was looking at missing a big competition again in the world for my second or third year in a row after injuries. And I said, I'd quit my job two years before.

And I'm like, I'm done. And Ryan, before that, it always been, you know, he could be focused and then he kind of said, okay, if you want to be done, be done. Just have a good time. No, I'm really done. I don't even want to try anymore. Okay, okay. And then, you know, I'm really done. I don't want to train anymore. Okay, okay.

And then, you know, I think he helped facilitate a moment for me to go visit a friend, some friends, some girls that were doing a girls camp who were close to my size, or some friends of mine to go train. And I was like, oh wait, I do love this thing. It's harder for me on a daily basis, but that doesn't mean I don't love this thing.

And it really helped change my mind. I started to connect with other people, travel more myself, because previously he had done that, but I hadn't really done that. I think there was a point where, when I started to do, it was just for fun. I just wanted to sport after college. I played sports as a kid. I just wanted to exercise. I wasn't into the martial arts.

He's been giving me hard time at it because he was always very, how can you not care about martial arts? I don't know. I just want to play sports. And Ryan was really big into kind of the philosophy side of the martial arts aspect. He used to give me hard time. And I think after that moment, this moment where I looked at myself and I said, don't want to keep doing this, is when I started to appreciate Gidget Zoo. It took off some of the pressure. I'd been feeling, I think, as Ryan's girlfriend, but I had a full-time job a long time. It was never my goal to be a Giu-Jitsu World Champion. And I think after that moment where I was like,

you know, I really do like this. I really do want to keep you just, I had this moment like any time where you're like, I'm doing this for me, I'm not doing this for him. And I think that that's, I think that that was really lucky for me because how often in our lives do we have a kind of a challenge where we have to stop

and we have to say is this really what I want? How often in a relationship do you do that? How often in any type of lifestyle or job do you stop and do you really ask yourself is something really difficult happen that you look and you go, am I just doing this because it's convenient and easy or is this what I really want to do? Yeah, I've had those moments, this podcast is one of those things, is like you stop and

think like, I actually love this. And it's, I had that with you just a two. I don't think I had said until like brown belt that I stop. I mean yeah it's when you first face real challenges. You think like why am I doing this? I think most of my progression was why not? I think that's the right, the leap of faith. And then at a certain point you think like what why am I doing this? And if you can answer honestly that because I love it, it's kind of a liberating feeling. It's a, yeah, it's so, it's so powerful. It's successful.

I'm thankful for the opportunity to be there, right? Because you love it. Yeah, man, I, if you guys were to say gratitude, it's, yeah, it's, it's ultimately gratitude. Yeah. Let me ask you this. So Ryan said like, what, what is it? I said go over your thing. Yeah, and nobody ask you this. So Ryan said like what what is it? I took over your thing. Yeah, nobody cares about Ryan.

I would yeah, I'll photoshop him out or whatever. How are you going to do that? Be great. Put Sean Connery's head. Yeah, just like a dune ad. Obviously. Sean Connery, I can get down that. Is that the sexiest man in Sean Connery? In the dune universe? That's my understanding. I think in any

universe. Yeah. Well, mine gothling given. We actually named our son after Sean Connery. Oh, yeah. We did. We did. We did. We did. We did. He was in the rock. That was, I love all those awesome, lame, Nicholas Cage. Oh, yeah. Conair. Face off. This movie of all time. This accent and Conair was so awesome. I don't know where it's from. Grace, Louis Vuitton. Do you have accent in Connor was so awesome. I don't know where it's from. Alabama, I guess, or something. I love that they got like Steve Buscemi in there. Like we need Steve Buscemi in this thing.

We got a Dave Ship Bell. Yeah, that's right. He's a prisoner in there. Eight ball. That's right. Yep, greatest movie of all time. Shoot of on an awesome show. Dale also went blue streak with Martin Lorz.

And then what do you call it? Rahman Hemen and Sites? Oh, Rahman Hemen and Sites are on the favorites as a kid. I've baked. But yeah, that's a good, wow. We just listed off some really bad 90s movies, but you take that back. We're telling our age. Yeah, they're so broad.

Let's speak to yourself. So what, like in your view, I don't mean to, from like a smaller person, I guess, that's an interesting thing while Jiu-Jitsu is like that small, I don't mean, I hope it's not a bad thing. Elf. Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf,

Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf these like bigger people, you could still enjoy the art. Like what does it take to get a black belt to excel to quote unquote master the art? Gosh, everyone has such a different path. Ryan's promoted six, seven people. Something like that. And I think about half of them have had kids,

have families, have other careers. At the time, some of them competed a lot. Some of them have never competed or rarely competed. Some haven't been in a long time. Some had started different places. Everyone's had different journeys, even in our own little group of seven. I think only, maybe only two or three

were high level competitors of that group at the higher belts, very like brown, black maybe. And so it's just different for every person. And that's something that we try to tell our students, we have 400 students. And do we have a, we don't really have anyone who's, you know, a stated other than like other coaches like Adam, but we don't have anyone that's like a know, a stated other than like other coaches like Adam, but we don't have anyone that's like a stated high-level competitors as a student at the moment.

People look at our gym and go, oh, it's lots of competitors, it's not lots of competitors, it's never been lots of competitors. And we've had ones and twos here and there, but really everybody's in it for the long term, if they're in it. Sometimes the high-level competitors,

the ones that are more likely to drop off because they have a bit of success particularly at blue or purple and then they realize how hard it is at brown and black and then they have a hard time continuing on that path and then they can't look at themselves as a non-competitive, hard time continuing with Jiu-Jitsu I think. Whereas sometimes it's the guy who comes in as the white belt and he trains you know twice a week every week and the next thing you know, he's been there for two or three years, like, oh, he's a blue belt, he's a purple belt, he's a brown belt, and he's just consistent over a long period of time and willing to take the path. And no two people's path is exactly the same.

No two people's lives are exactly the same. We have students who started as a white belt as a young adult with no responsibilities, and they train all the time, and then they have a job, and they graduate college, and they have a job, and they have married, and they have kids, and they have different points in their careers, and at different points in your life, digits will be there for whatever way that you're willing to accept it. It's place, I think. Well, that's actually kind of what back to the initial question

we discussed about, you know, what makes a warrior, you know, and also like what makes something or someone, you know, particularly impressive in my mind, is like what they make out of what they have. You know, one of my favorite movies ever is Faris Gump, and it's obviously, it's just, if you can't, because I've heard people like, you're doing Foris scum sucks, I'm like,

I don't like you as a person. And, like, you have no heart at all. But basically, it's the story of someone that tries hard. And it's like, yeah, but it's funny, but it's like, you know, I guess you meet each person where they are, you know? And obviously, you want everyone needs to be pushed, we all need to be pushed.

We need friends and people around us that push us to be better versions of ourselves All the time and as you mentioned the people you spend all of your time around deeply impact you And we have to be willing to be pushed it takes a leap of faith for me to trust me to put some of my Self in my my you know, I guess my ability in my control my personal agency as it were in the hands of someone else that I that I trust and that I respect. But if I can do that, well again, maybe I never become you know high level black belt competitor, but you know, I had four of the things I was doing in my life. I also have a family I have this I've that you know what that person was able to accomplish in the martial arts relative to what they were able to put in this phenomenal, you know, other times someone could be a very successful black belt. And it might might be a bum because they could have been a lot more.

And, you know, they could have done more, they could have focused more. And there's no shame in deciding that you don't want to do that. But whatever it is that you're invested in, I remember the take it uneasy podcast. And that I love because, you know, I'll just chill out. Like resting, it's like vacation. Oh, who wants to go on vacation? Yeah, I'll go on vacation for day or two. You want to spend three weeks on vacation?

Like, I kill myself, like get me out of here. Like this is fun. This is, I'm a waste of life. I'm not doing anything useful. I'm taking out vacation. I'm taking out vacation right now. Right. Well, this is fun though. But it's like a one day vacation.

Oh, yeah, exactly. But you know, I would, I'm sure you're thinking about jumping off of the building right now. But if you had to, if you had to vacation. Exactly. But you know, I was, I'm sure you're thinking about jumping off of the building right now. But if you had to talk to me for, you know, like three days, I'm sure you'd either, you probably shut me off the building. I don't blame you. I'll be dead. People.

But yeah. But you know, it is, it's like you want to be pushing towards something. Because otherwise, what's the purpose of being here? You know, it's not just a college, it's doing something useful, building, growing as a person, helping others do the same if that's within your power at any given time. But I think that's kind of the neat thing about martial arts is it can be many, many different things to many different people. You know, I finally, for instance, I was able to get a college degree this year, that which, I mean, it's not a big deal for most people, but for me, it was a big deal because I

was going back and finished. Yeah. And I never envisioned ever going back. And that's a hard step to go back and finish. That's a it was heavy on you if you don't. It's interesting. Yeah, I was just I was more proud of that than most things have ever done if I'm honest, you know, and it was neat and I really enjoyed it. And it was the process of doing it. But you know, or my academic credentials impressive, like not in the least. But for me, it's like it was a big deal for me personally

to take that step and to go back and do that. And I was proud of the direction. And because it would've been easy, like, do I need to do it? No, I'm business, I'll do okay. I'll try, I'll keep fighting. But I was happy to take the time in between fights when I was, I was unbooked for an opponent

to do something productive rather than just I'll just hang out, you know, like I can still train every single day, but I can also train and go to school. People go to the Olympics while going to school. I can, I can do martial arts and go to school. One thing I got to ask is, you know, a bunch of women listen to this podcast. If they haven't done a jitsu, I think it'd be kind of intimidating to stop on the mat with a bunch of bros that enjoy somehow killing each other. How do you succeed in that environment to where you can learn this art, learn how to beat all those people up? Gosh.

Another way to ask that is if, if, if, uh, and you women listening to this are interested in starting digits, are like, is there advice for that journey? Honestly, I think it's just walking in the door and starting. Sometimes I don't know how to respond to that because I'm not at, I don't view myself as typically anxious, particularly, um, uh, and interactions with other people or new people. It's just leaving. particularly in interactions with other people or new people.

Shai is not a word that has been used for me, but if you ask my family and they joke because our son talks a lot. He's advanced firmly and they're always like, oh, well, we know where he gets that from. Like, his he just doesn't stop talking. He narrates everything he does. And so they always tease because that's like, I'm known for kind of talking a lot.

But so I haven't been typically, I'm not, I don't consider myself a shy person. So for me going into a new room, a new group of people is, you know, there's always that you don't really know who they are, how they're going to treat you, but I tip it, but I, I don't have a lot of anxiety with that. So I don't, if that's something that's going to put some of you up, I don't really know who they are, how they're going to treat you, but I don't have a lot of anxiety with that. So if that's something that's going to put something up, I don't really know how to address that particular feeling. But in terms of all of the rooms I've been in, I have popped into the GTSU-GEMs before I knew Ryan in Florida. Like I traveled for my job as a Germany in Florida Florida and California in places where I don't know anyone, they don't know me,

and I have never once had anyone be anything other than kind and solicitous and helpful, and long before when I was a white bell in a blue bell and didn't know anything and didn't know anyone. And I just think that it's a community of people that it's so cool that no matter where you go in the world, I walked into a gym in Prague one time, we're only two people in Spokane English

and it was just... Yes, weird. It's weird that you're like part of a group and they're like, oh, let me tell you what it's like to go to a cult, right? Yeah. But it's like a positive cult. And for sure, that's what we would say a positive cult. Like it for sure.

That's what we would say as cultists. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. That's true. I mean, we do need to murder everybody who practice like Edo. I mean, yeah, that's this cult deeply believes it. No, but there is a, like if you look at different kinds of games like chess and so on, like there's a skepticism.

I mean, there's not a brotherhood, sisterhood feeling, which is it so it's like you can roll into most places, even like with judo. Like I can see the contrast, like because I've trained a judo places, it's more like tribal, like you walk in and like who is this? Like there's that kind of feeling,

which it gets through there's less so. There is a little bit with like the competitors, there's always like the competitors feeling each other that I'll usually like the blue belts. But like outside of that in terms of if you don't get the, if you walk in with the vibes of just loving the art and just wanting to have a good time. You're like, welcome.

It's really cool. It's really fascinating. It's a really great thing, I think. And as a woman, I think you think you're walking into these rooms of these big, strong, tough guys. And if anything, I would say that they're almost like much more solicitous when a woman comes in there. And not like they're just like hitting me all the time

You know, it's just that you walk in and everyone is like oh cool You want to do this thing that I love let me make sure you have a good experience and take care of you And I think that's that's an experience that that I hope people have when they come into our gym and and I've always felt when I walked into Other gyms and and so you know we try our best to make that comfortable. And it can be a little uncomfortable, because when you walk into a male-dominated environment, there's conversations and topics. There's a different style of camaraderie and joking

that a lot of men will do that. Maybe some women are more uncomfortable with. I grew up with four brothers, so I kind of maybe was a little more desensitized to that. And I worked for the department of fence for a while too. So before I'd do the government. Yeah, so I did that for a lot of your calls. Yeah. I'm not going to ask you about your falls then because you're not going to tell me the truth. No. Thanks, I'm just kidding. Oh, yeah.

No, you just freaked out with a lot of people. Sorry. But yeah, by the way, where's your school? Because people always ask like where... Well, we're outside of Washington DC and Northern Virginia and Falls Church. You always want to pick like, what's the best school if I try out a list place or if I want to move to this place? Well, I mean, obviously we're biased, but yeah, we're in the Washington DC area.

The best. Okay, we just took a little break. Now we're back. Let me ask you one thing that a bunch of people are curious about. You're one of the innovators. First of all, you're one of the great innovators and philosophers and thinkers in Giu-Jitsu, right? But we are also one of the innovators in terms of leg locks and the 50-50 position and just like the fact that legs have something to do

in Jiu-Jitsu, the other popularizer innovator in the space is John Dynahar and his whole group of guys. Do you have thoughts about their whole system of leg locks and their ideas about Jiu-Jitsu and so on? Sure. I guess, obviously, John and the students at Hanzo have been able to do fantastic things competitively in the past number of years. You mentioned innovators in that kind of section of Jiu-Jitsu. I would love to bring up some guys like Dean Lister, of course, Mazikaze, Imanari. In fact, a lot of what was going on in like 90s Japan, like Combat Submission Wrestling, there was some crazy gnarly stuff that it's just,

it's on grainy VHS tape. But like stuff that people were doing now, they go, oh my god, that's brand new. Like there's, it's been, I think these are things that have been around for a while in various places I first learned the 50 50 position just like the leg entanglement of it from Brandon Vera Actually at a seminar at Lodervin's martial arts thing in 2005 He learned it from Dean Lister who used it to submit Alexandra Kakareko really really tough nogi guy at ADCC on at ADCC, on the run that Dean made to the gold medal

in the Absolute Division, which was a great performance at the time, first American to do that. And I actually saw a video, I mean, first of boss Routin actually broke, I think Guy Mezger's foot with a 50-50 heel hook, to be actually grabbed his heel and his toes, and like, and in pancreas

it's back when they had like the man panties and the high boots on. Yeah. And, uh, too, that was gnarly boss root and his underappreciated is like, as like, he double, oh, yeah, like, and, oh, yeah, like, you know, his leverage is leverage. It's, that's like a toll hold that, you know, that goes the other way. And it's like it either doesn't work or breaks in half. And, uh, well, he's, uh, he's, the people people don't often think of Boss Routin as an innovator, but he is, in a way, he talked about Elon Musk and first principles thinking in terms of physics. He just feels like he just gets the job. He figures out the simplest way to get the job done of breaking things and establishing

control and hurting people. Remember that was back in the day, if you listen to Bosphorus and do any commentary for any of the big MMA shows or any MMA show way back when anytime guys were clenches, like the guys who roll for a knee bar, he was saying that way back when and now people are doing it all the time with varying degrees of success, it's funny, it's also tough to be,

I think like a breakaway thinker. I mean, group think is a real thing in group inertia. And it's neat to see, you know, particularly at a time when maybe that type of stuff was less accepted, you know, someone going, hey, I'm going to run off in this other direction. I think, you know, whoever, you know, the inventor of electricity in my mind is a lot more impressive than whomever, not to say that the person down the line isn't impressive, that comes up with an interesting way to use it Both are cool, but when you think about just then can you imagine we're sitting here like yeah people I'm gonna build an airplane. You're like what are you talking about?

It's crazy people don't fly like no, I'm gonna do it and of course That's not gonna be as good as the airplane down the line the iterative things that happen later on but Just being able to go to dream something into existence that you haven't seen before and then make it happen, like takes an unbelievable strength of character almost like a force of will, because you're blazing a trail that hasn't been walked before. That's the BJ Penn factor in winning the Jiu-Jitsu World Championship.

First non-Berslian to do that. It was back in 2001. And then Rafael Lovato later on, it's like, both of those guys are so unbelievably impressive in my mind for the same reason, you know, because they were out there winning at a time when that wasn't a common thing. Not that it's easy to win now. It's just, there's not a psychological hurdle that needs to be left.

I remember, you know, when I was early in Jiu-Jitsu, like Americans weren't winning the world championships at any belt. I mean, BJ, we all knew BJ Penn because BJ Penn did it, but it was really, really uncommon. Now it happens, you know, on a semi-regular basis. Of course, the Brazilian is just so strong, European is just so strong, but in Australians are coming on as well. But it's definitely kind of an interesting thing. So to come back to, you know, John Danahar and the Hensel team, obviously they're doing fantastic things. John's has some really, really great innovation there. And the systematization and the methodology that they're using is great.

And it's neat to see that it's getting out there. I would just also want, I would encourage people to make sure that they're catching up on their history because obviously, you know, John's brilliant instructor has done things, you know, for the sport that are fantastic. They haven't been done before, but, you know, none of us exist in a vacuum and I've learned things from everywhere else. So, you know, John would say the same, I'm sure. And, uh, you know, Dean Lister would say the same.

And it's just neat when you can kind of trace the history of all of this happening because we've had, he man, he's had two arms and two legs for some time, at least as long as I've been alive. But you mentioned like airplanes. And you think there's something totally new to be invented in jiu jitsu still not totally new but Like the you know flying isn't new But airplanes nevertheless made that much more efficient. Is there like new ideas? To be discovered in jitsu still I'd say the reason I'd say yes is the same reason I would say I believe in alchemy even though I

Don't I'm serious. I like I've got yes is the same reason I would say I believe in alchemy, even though I don't, not I'm serious. I've got some backing for this. Okay. You know, I guess I talk about this with a buddy of mine a lot, like, and the facilitative versus not facilitated beliefs. And if I don't believe something is possible and I do no investigation towards it, I'll never find something even if it's there. It's almost like, it's no different than me walking up on a group of people and going like,

Oh man, look at these jerks. This is going to suck versus me going, oh, I wonder what these guys are up to. I'm about to have two very different conversations, even though the players in the game are no different, my internal constitution has changed because of how I've decided to approach the situation. So although I wouldn't personally want to spend on my time trying to turn lead into gold because I don't believe that it's likely to work Only a person who's willing to spend his or her life in that pursuit will actually get to the bottom of that and also in the in the pursuit of that They're likely to find other things So I think a lot of times the idea is that humanity is pushed forward by you know again It's another or since got carbon. It's like you know human beings are in this slog It's a paraphrasing just in this slog over time.

And then periodically, humanity gives birth to genius, like someone that invents the wheel, invents electricity, pushes us forward, comes up with the idea of governance that doesn't just start and end with the point of a sword. And these aren't common things. These are unbelievable advancements that I'm not just me sitting here,

I didn't come up with them, but I just get the benefit of it. So I guess what I would say is a lot of times these ideas are called crazy, you know, like as we discussed on kind of offline. It's like, you know, Einstein was brilliant in his 20s. And it was brilliant. Before that, I would suspect, but basically, you know, gets recognized later on in life. And of course, we all thought those are great ideas. The man was probably around the mod for giant chunks of his life. And I guess so it's neat to I would say there's definitely in my mind things that even if it's just combinations and new to me, new ways to see things, new ways to understand different depth of understanding, possibly new things, new positions, new ideas, because even if that's not true, the process of going through

and acting as if it is and believing like that and focusing and trying to investigate will make any of us will push us all forward. We're sitting there, you know, obsessing over the cult of our current knowledge, I think is the biggest, the biggest danger and the biggest cause of stagnation that exists anywhere. Yeah, and it starts with believing the impossible, which is kind of interesting. One of the things that's really inspiring to me is to see people out there, which sadly are rare, who kind of have a combination of two things.

One is they have a world view that involves, that includes a lot of ideas that are crazy. And the second part is they're exceptionally focused and competent in bringing that whatever the ideas in that world view to reality. So there's certainly a lot of people with crazy ideas, you know, there's a lot of conspiracy theorists, they have way out their beliefs about things, but they're not doing much to like make the like build stuff ground in like they're not engineers or whatever There's just like spousing different crazy ideas But that's why you get like the Elon Musk type characters and the reason I bring him up a lot is because like there's not many others to bring up It's like there's not many examples of it through history the people mean, the guys convinced that we're going to

conize Mars. And basically, everybody on Earth thinks that's insane. Everyone except the guy that's going to do it, right? Except that's going to do it. And like, you can imagine, like a couple hundred years from now, people will, I mean, first of all, they won't, certainly won't remember the haters. They won't remember all the people. If they do remember them, they'll remember them in a sense, like people were silly to think

that this isn't the obvious path forward. Like from a perspective, that's what Elon talks about. Like it's obvious they were going to expand throughout the universe. From his perspective. But to me, it is also obvious because either we destroy ourselves or we'll expand beyond Earth.

There's not many, well, maybe it's not completely obvious. I guess I share that worldview. There's the other possibility that we humans find a sort of an inner piece where the forces of capitalism will calm down and we'll all just meditate and do yoga and jiu-jitsu and like relax with this whole tech thing where we keep building new technologies. But it's cool to have those kinds of people that just believe the big, ambitious, crazy dreams, because that's where it starts. If you wanna build something special,

you have to first believe that. When you also have to believe strongly enough that you're not vulnerable, and I'm speculating, but it's like, I can only imagine how many people have told Elon that what he's doing is crazy. So not only did he dream it up, he dreamed it up, went with it, and also went with it in the face of being told

that it's not gonna work. And then also stepped away from the bitterness because he's done a series of really crazy, impressive things. And that's only the little things that I'm aware of. But, and also staying away from the bitterness of every single time you did something good. Initially, all I do is talk down about you. And then eventually I act as, of course, of course,

I never apologize. And yet, you don't let that dampen your spirits for the next innovation, which is pretty incredible to me to watch. Yeah, it's kind of cool. I mean, it's contagious to spend time with the guy because he's not, it's, Rogan has the same look to him,

which is interesting about these people, is like, there's like a hater shield. He's like, he doesn't even like sense them. It feels like, like, it doesn't, he thinks to, to Elon, it's obvious. I mean, he keeps calling it like first principles thinking. Like, physics says this through, therefore, it's true. Like, he has convinced himself that like his beliefs are grounded in the fundamental fabric of the way the universe works. Therefore the haters don't matter. And I mean, that's kind of like a system of thought he developed himself through all the

difficulty, through all the doubt, he's able to take huge risks with basically putting everything he owes on the line multiple times throughout his life. I mean, it's all the drama. It's all the doubts. I mean, it's all like the, he's still able to make just clear, clear headed decisions. It's, I don't know what to make of it, but it's inspiring as hell. Well, it's, I think it's something that's funny. I think like, I can only imagine the, you know, the history will look back on him as a brilliant

person, but that's not the only thing. There's, history will look back on him as a brilliant person, but that's not the only there's there's a lot of maybe not numerically speaking, but a lot numerically on a giant planet of you know billions of people a lot of brilliant people. Well, you know, time, place, luck, fortune, all that other stuff, but at the same time, that clearly isn't the only determining thing in making Elon Musk Elon Musk. And obviously, I don't know the guy from Adam, but it's an interesting thing that it's not just his intellect, his belief system, his structure, how he's viewing the world.

Like that's, did he reason his way to that? Did he not? What other factors came in? I'm really curious about that because I guess coming, it's, again, I feel really strongly about people's belief structure and this, how they view the world being more important than the engine behind it. It makes someone resilient or not.

It makes someone positive or not because you get up 10,000, I think about this for competitive stuff. You get up 10,000 things going properly and one thing going improperly. If you focus on the improper, you'll probably fix it at a certain point, which is good, facilitated for development in the long term, but if you had to go and try to perform a task in the next five minutes, and you're focusing on the negative, your confidence, and your belief in the positive outcome of the future is likely to be damaged, whereas you could have 25 things going wrong, but you go, man, I'm sure I'm happy to be alive,

how fortunate I am. This is great. I have problems to solve. This is awesome. Versus, I list the problems and I start bitching about them. Both of them are technically accurate, but it's, I guess, different lenses. And I think that's a really neat thing to see, you know, someone, you know, exemplifying that for us. So maybe to look at the, the fighting world, there's a million questions I can ask here. Like one, you mentioned BJ Penn.

You, first of all, you're undefeated in the UFC and one of the fights you've had is against BJ Penn, which is kind of an incredible fight. You want performance at the night. What did it feel like to face BJ Penn and to beat him definitively as you did? And what's that whole experience like? I'll be honest, I didn't know if I was going to ever be able to fight again after beating

Grand Manor in 2016. I've had a couple of periods of those. I was about to join the army actually. And when I was 30 before the UFC 4 Gen sent me over to an ultimate fighter, I didn't want to go. Because I was like, one, they're never going to pick me to. I'd be terrible for TV. Three, I'll probably say something.

I'm going to get, you know, burned death in the streets. You know, like this is a great idea. And then she said, we'll go out there, see what happens, do it anyway. You'll regret it if you didn't. And then I ended up doing ultimate fighter. And then so I fought three times on the show. And then I fought for the finale. So there's four times in like five or six months,

which was great. And then it took me a year to get another opponent. And that was great, Maynard. And then Gray was obviously a very tough guy. Managed to get a good outcome there. Then it took two years to fight BJ Penn. And that was obviously I'm training all the time every single day, and that never stops.

But that was, I'll be honest, like frustrating because you know as a human being is an athlete You know, I think as an athlete you die twice like you have an athletic peak or area and then then you go on with the rest of your life You but it is a microcosm for the rest of your life It's like you're you're seeing this the sand tick away in the hourglass would drop away and you're going man This is these are the years between 31 32 32, 33, I'll be at my best at this time, my absolute best physically. Now, not technically, I'm a lot better now than I was before in a plan. But at a certain point, you will, unless you're Bernhard Hopkins, you will reach diminishing returns. And I guess the long, the long way you can feel the clock

taking is this frustrating. So why did it take two years for BJ? That's the question people ask a lot. It's like, why does nobody want to fight? I don't know. I probably think they'll get infected by whatever this is. But I don't blame them. But I mean, you're really tough upon it. It's a different line. I'll say that I'm different.

Maybe they perceive that the threat is greater than the reward. I'm hoping that now that we're ranked number 12, in the UFC rankings, that that will change. And I know that if we're one more win and then we're in the top 10, that now you're there. But what I've consistently found is that randoms wanna fight. And I'm like, go away, I didn't come here for you.

Cause if I wanted to just fight anybody, I could go down to a waffle house and yell until DMXX shows up and we can we can fight because it'll be at the waffle house to whom I can. I really want to hang out with DMX. But, you know, it's like you want to when I had the opportunity, I'm holding DMX. Oh my god. That was so cool. I would never. I would never fight DMX would be on the same team. No, but anyway, it's I guess I accepted fights against. I got asked about Lama's, I said yes, I got asked about Dennis from Mutas, I said yes, you know, like long periods of time and they at that time, you know, in between 2016 and 2018, I was struggling to have opponents who would

sign up and us, I haven't turned down fights, I've just said, hey, you know, keep the, I don't care about fighting the randoms. And it's just, if you have a successful school, you're like, you're running your martial artists, broadly speaking, so it doesn't make sense to take fights that aren't like, that fit a certain kind of trajectory for your career.

And that's when when BJ Penn, they said, well, BJ's looking for an opponent. I was like, I'm your guy. And I think that, you know, BJ accepted that fight because I'm a, no, the Jiu-Jitsu guy. I don't think he, he perceived that I was much of a threat on the feet. And, you know, I was able to, it was neat to get it to compete against someone, you know, who's one of my heroes. One of the people I looked up to in MMA for the longest time. And you intimidated by that? No, no, I love competing. I don't really get nervous or scared before fights.

I'm not afraid to get hurt and not afraid to win. I'm not afraid to lose. I'm just excited for the, I feel thankful for the opportunity to compete and the opportunity to play when it matters. You know, I just, but that's the only time I'm interested in playing anymore is when it matters. When the opposition is, I know that, you you know it's funny because people pick on a lot of some opponents particularly after after the fact like if you if you get a good outcome well then of course let's beat that guy that guy wasn't that good I was that's after the fact I get to say that and also as the person in the ring you know BJ pen has hurt a lot of people in in mixed arts cage. And I could actually absolutely have been on that list. So it was neat to get to compete against someone that I really respect.

Someone that I looked up to for a long time, someone who has a great skill set. And also I went up and wait to fight him in his way class. He didn't have to come down to mine, which is where he takes lightly. It was lightweight. Yeah. I'm generally a featherweight. I walk around it like 158 pounds. So what's the lightweight? Lightweight is 155, with a day before weigh and a featherweight is 145 with a day before weigh.

And so I'm a little bit more properly sized for featherweight. But anyway, you know, so I didn't feel like, obviously he was giving up a couple of years of age, but I was giving up size and all this other stuff. And it was, you know, I was just excited to have the opportunity to step in against someone like BJ. And we managed to get out of there with a good outcome without getting too banged up. But it was cool because we tied up on the fence. And just even the second, you know, is when you're rolling with somebody and you touch

and you can feel what they're doing, you go, oh man, this guy's really good. You can feel the calm, you can feel the small minor adjustments that they're making, the subtle things that they're doing. And that was one of those things that was really neat and gratifying because, you know, you never know, sometimes people that you've heard of are a little bit less technically proficient than you thought.

And other times you meet some guy, you're training like, who the hell is this guy? How have I not heard of this person? And BJ was exactly as a jitsy guy what I would have thought. And another thing that's another thing to bug me about how people reacted after the fight is basically going, oh, BJ screwed up this, screwed up that. And I'm like, all right. Yeah, it's all interesting. As sad, that was, you know, one of the, to me, I mean, as a fan of both, that was a beautiful moment is a kind of passing of a torch in a sense of Exceptional performance. I can another one that

Stands out to me. Maybe you can comment as I Don't understand. Well, maybe I do why Conor McGregor gets as much hate as he does We probably revels in it, but I think he doesn't get enough credit for Jose Aldo, for the, for like, for basically, you know, knocking him out in the first few seconds of a fight. I mean, Jose is like one of the greatest fighters ever. Maybe some people can be put in the top 10. No question. And the like I don't understand why it doesn't get as much like a conno-mograga doesn't get as much credit as I think he deserves for that

and for Eddie Alvarez and all the fights for some reason whenever Khan Magraga beats somebody Well, they they were not that good then like it means like they were they were there something was off Right. That's convenient. Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's quite strange to me, but I mean what are your thoughts on strange to me, but I mean, what are your thoughts on, on Conor McGregor? Maybe you want it way to ask that. I'm Russian, some obviously also could be fan, but I'm also Conor fan. It seems like there's not many of us who are like fans of both. What are your thoughts? You and Ardom Lobov. Yeah, right. The two of us, which also is a good thing. Tough dude. Yeah, tough, really, really tough, dude.

It's actually like five languages, really interesting, Kat. Oh, so the, oh, wow, I didn't know that side of it. There's a brain there. Well, on the Kabea versus Connor, what do you make of their first fight? What do you, do you agree with me that they should fight again? Because I think it would be awesome if they fought again in Moscow. And do you agree with me? I'm just going to put say things

that piss people off, but I believe is that Connor actually has a chance to beat Gabym. One, the Connor absolutely has a chance to beat Gabym. Connor has a chance to beat anyone that he steps into that ring with and not just like a mathematical chance. You're like, oh, one of the billion, but like, you know, like he absolutely, it's funny because I won't pretend to know Connor really well, but I first met Connor in 2010 when I was teaching a seminar in at Strait Blest, Jim Ireland in Dublin And that's actually where I first met all of the coaches that ended up being on Connor's team You know John Kavanaugh, Owen Roddy, Gunner Nelson, you know, so for I actually I enjoyed being on Ultimate Fighter and being on

Your iFavor's team and getting a train with all the guys there But at the same time that the people that I was actually, I knew better were actually the European side, all the Connors coaches. And that was a neat thing because I got to, Met Conner, I didn't know Conner wasn't Conner at that point. Yeah, that was before his UFC defeat. Oh yeah, well, well before. Yeah, I think he got in like 2014, maybe something like that. Yeah, and anyway, but he was doing well in cage warriors winning the titles there. I think I think he got in like 2014, maybe something like that. Yeah. And anyway, but he was doing well in cage warriors winning the titles there. I think prior to that, you know, I remember going seeing him on the show and also then getting to see him train because I competed.

It was initially slated to fight David Tamer for the ultimate fighter finale before getting put into fight. For the title for the show. So I went over to Ireland to train for a couple days. And basically it was neat to watch him watch him work. I mean, man, he's focused and trains a lot and it's very, very smart and very, very hard working and I think a lot of times people get stuck in this. And they almost want to believe that this was lucky or that this person, they're not working that hard.

They're just out there, They got there with their mouth. And that's just not the case. And I don't know what it's like. Obviously, Connors are well off right now and I don't know how serious he's training, what he's doing. I can't speak to any of that. But there's no question that he has skills to be dangerous.

And one of the funny things obviously that could be fight, when it could be his way, it could be was a great fighter and also has the chance to beat anyone in that ring at any given time. But there is, there was a Connor, you know, it's one that he can put anybody away. And as you mentioned, I think that he doesn't get the credit for the Eddie Alvers fight, he doesn't get the credit for the Josie out of fight because it was almost so much of a

letdown. I remember that happened the same weekend that the ultimate fighter finale. And you're like, oh, wait, what? Yeah, it almost doesn't feel like a fight happened, but we mentioned me a modem of mousashi. I mean, mousashi was famous for the way he poked and prided at people with what he was doing, whether overtly or not. It's like, oh, we're supposed to fight to the death in a 3 p.m. tomorrow. Great. 4 p.m. rolls around. I'm just not there. Five. I mean, you remember all the antics and nonsense that Connor was pulling prior to that,

like it's speaking person, that's not something I would feel comfortable doing, but it's like everyone's different. And the effect that it had on Jose was, I mean, beyond evident. When was the last time Jose started the fight with leaping left hand, leaping right hand, you're like, wait, what?

And then he was obviously, you know, living rent free in Jose's head at that point. And that was a combination of psychological, you know, ability and, and, and wherewithal and then physical. And it reminds me of the way Muhammad Ali would, would bother people and whatnot. And the fact that he's a polarizing figure, I think makes some people not give him his due. And then, at the same time, sometimes certain fans may be go overboard. But they remember the knee that Ben Askerin got knocked out with by Mazardal.

I mean, that was an amazing, unbelievable thing. But three inches to the right, three inches to the left, I guess whichever side his head wasn't. Now you could have been square or. But and that fight starts with Ben Askerin on top of you in the first five seconds. Well, Connor ran in through a knee just like that. It could be even, it could be, got right around it.

That could have easily gone the other way. Can you imagine what would have happened if after coming back from boxing, after coming back from the Mayweather fight? Connor Roberts could be in the first 10 seconds, it's over. And you're like, he would, it would have been intolerable. But basically, like, you know, but see here's the thing. Let me actually push back slightly.

Uh, I mean, to the fans, correct me from wrong, but Connor seems to, because I've competed a lot. Like there's attention. There's a negativity sometimes, depending on the opponent. And there's a respect afterwards that happens. Like when you understand that there's a deep like respect and almost like love for each other. Like I always seen that in Connor.

Like all the trash talk afterwards, there's a it's a subtle thing. You can't always see it, but there's a respect like. I agree. And like that I almost on the kebab side, I almost feel like kebab really took it personally. He didn't, he lost the respect for Connor. I thought the whole time Connor had the respect.

So what I wanted to say is like, if Connor won that fight, like rock kebab, I could see like, I wouldn't see trash talking. I could see like trash talking stop right there. I think so too, but at the same time, I'm sure we call it like Connor Crossen some pretty personal territory, both religiously and also familiar with Keebeb.

And it's, I mean, I think it's the sort of thing that, I don't know, it's an interesting, that's one of the reasons. It depends. Like you have to know the difference. So obviously I know the Keebeb, the Dagestiny people, they don't play around like that. They don't play around like that. You know, I mean, they take offense to basically, I mean, you don't do that.

So, so like, Connor didn't, maybe he did on purpose, or maybe he wasn't even just aware of of, of, of, of, of the box. He opened. and just the wear of the box. You know, like you can talk to him, if Floyd made whether you can go anywhere with him, you can say the most offensive things, but with, it's hard lines. But you, I mean, a lot of people ask, I know you're a featherweight,

but if you were to face, it feels like Kabebe was one of the hardest puzzles to solve in all mixed martial arts. If you were to face Kabebe, do you think how would you go about solving that puzzle? Almost, the question is almost from a Gisou perspective too. What do you do with a guy that's exceptionally good at controlling position, especially on top, very good at wrestling and taking down and controlling position? Like, let's say, so forget maybe striking on the ground, how do you solve that guy? Like, what do you do with your guard if you get taken down or do you create an entire system

of not getting taken down or escaping? What ideas do you have for that? Well, I guess I would say in my mind fighting is a game of trading energy. There's two things. There's damage in those energy. So when I say energy, I mean, tired, not tired, how much gas you've got. And then damage counts, obviously, as well. You could be feeling great, and then you get to kick me in the head, hard as well. You could be feeling, I could be feeling

great. And then you get to kick me in the head hard, really hard three times. It doesn't matter that I could get up and run a mile. I can't get up. So anyway, you know, I think what Kabeab does is so well is he makes the fight look like it could be in a magamata fight. He does a great job of avoiding damage on the feet for the most part and really sucking a life out of people with how suffocating and oppressive his control is. His chain wrestling is as good as anyone we've ever seen in the UFC. It's fantastic.

But that poses a really serious threat for people that need to maintain a certain amount of space and try to hurt them on the feet because unless they're able to inflict an adequate amount of damage, they're going, each time, let's say, for instance, let's say him taking them down as a foregone conclusion at some point. If every single time Kabib takes you down, you get right back up. It's not the big deal because it's actually more,

we've all experienced this. Let's say you and I are rolling, you tapped me 15 times in one round. Who's more tired? Probably you are. Yeah. My ass so badly that it's like, you're the only one working.

But, so if you're comfortable with the is so badly that it's like you're the only one working. But if you're comfortable with the up and down of it, like being taken down, if you don't get hurt badly or tired on the bottom, you have a chance, but that doesn't involve just cracking him on the feet before he gets a hold of you. That's a lot to ask. That's a lot to ask. That's difficult to do. It seemed to actually like Connor, it seemed like it when he was being kind of taken down

or the take down attempts against Kabebe. He seemed to be somewhat relaxed the whole thing. I thought he was doing well actually. I think that particularly for the first round, I thought he did a very good job. It's just one of those things that I think like Kabebe, the fights taking place in Kabebe's world in large part. And I mean, set aside that one giant, uh, was it right hand that

that Kabebe hit Connor with it. By the way, Connor reacted like an absolute champion. He got crushed by that overhand and then drop in his eyes went right back on Kabebe. It was immediate positive, great response. So even though that was, I think that was a bit of a surprising thing. Connor reacted really, really well. But if you're going to be on bottom with, could be for four rounds, that's going to be tough. And also, Connor's a way better grappler than people like to give him credit for. But he's not the type of grappler that can do that can, that can, that's too tall of an order. But there are grapplers that could do that, or at least would have a much, much better shot at being able to weather that type of a storm. GCSL being able to be relaxed through that kind of storm.

Yes. Oh, I guess. Being being being savagely beaten is very realistic. The time, the timing of that answer was like, okay, that's a dumb question. That's ultimately the goal of Jiu-Jitsu is to be relaxed to the fire, right? For sure. And remember, like every UFC fighter, I win all hypothetical match-ups.

Yeah. Sure. That's true. Since I'm wanting to ask ridiculous questions, and we've been talking about sci-fi and all that kind of stuff, Let me ask the kind of big question that everybody disagrees about certainly with me is who are the top five greatest MMA fighters of all time. And why is Fader a number one? Okay, well first off, Fader is number one. Oh really? Oh yeah. Right there with you. Really? Oh yeah. Talk about people that just get

completely underappreciated. Even though he's never been like, he's never succeed in the UFC. So I just followed it, came along after him. At the time that, at the time that Fedor was at his height, the UFC was not where it was at for heavyweight fighting. I mean, not that there weren't good heavyweights there, but Fedor, Fedor was unbelievable. You know, I mean, you remember, I mean, and Minotaur and Ogaro, I was a massive fan of him. I still remember watching, what is it, Pride 2004 when Ogaro fought Crocup and got blasted with that left kick and dropped with like seconds left in the first round.

Pride was great because that was a 10 minute first round and that five minute second, which again, materially, also is the fight big time. And you know, just the texture of the fight, because it's totally, it's borderline to different sport. You know, then getting a five, a pause and a five. But anyway, similar sports, like one of those swimming things,

where they have nine gold medals for different types of swimming, right? But still swimming, but anyway, well, they would disagree, but I'm not sure. They specialize in the sport. But it's totally true, 10 minutes is different than five minutes. Sorry, I think, I think,

don't drown me, swimmer, so I don't swim very well. It's easy for me to easily get to downplay it. But anyway, yeah, and then no, it's better than John Jones, like the modern era. Well, I mean, I guess it's tough to compare it to compare across errors. It would be like going and saying like,

oh man, how would such and such great grappler from today fare against someone from 1995? I'm like, well, probably pretty well for them, depending upon who they are, what's going on. You know, there's some people that would their skill sets my transition across eras, but a lot of times not, but that's not fair. We get to be like comparing Spartans to modern day, you know, like army guys. They're like, well, who's going to win? I'm like, well, do modern day army guys get modern day weapons? Well, yeah. But who's the toughest ruggedest group of people at the very least?

And so I guess it's tough to say, but at least in my mind, the people that I think about for great fighters, they're quality of opposition, they're level of like lasting and like success, they're level of lasting innovation, like the courage that they have to demonstrate, because again, it's like being a big fish in a small pond takes no courage. Doesn't mean that there's nothing there, but it just requires something a little bit different so because usually soccer robbers one of my guys to

BJ pen also, I mean BJ pen fought Leo to Machita. That's insane. You know, it's that was a time it was a different sport. It was a different time in the sport where you know, some guys were bouncing around doing different things, but let's It was a different time in the sport where you know, they were some guys were bouncing around doing different things But let's so I guess the Gracie family It's I mean they never had an in like obviously hoist was there But they never and that was definitely a different sport weight classes being open things like that But you have to say that hoist is up there. Oh no question one of the greatest ever I think so too and again I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you if it weren't for him So the Gracie family as a whole,

but I mean, who's the better, I mean, I think the hoist would tell you himself, probably that Hickson would handle business back then, but they didn't put him in. So again, it's the greatest fighter, the greatest fighter, the greatest fighter that we saw do his business. So hoist up there for sure.

What about, so this is like nobody seems to agree with me on this, but like this connects the soccer again and messy it seems that people value like How long you've been a champion? How many Like defenses of the championship that you've had successfully to me. I highly value singular moments of genius so like like I don't, if you look at Conor McGregor, he hasn't,

I guess, held, been a champion very long, very much. Well, he wouldn't defend either title, right? He didn't defend any other, either the titles. But like, if you, and same with messy, if you look at, uh, the only thing I'll messy, there's just moments of brilliance on like any other in history for both Conor and and Messi and people don't seem to give credit. It's like, well, how many world cups have you on? But to me, like, why is it about this arbitrary world cup thing or championship thing? I think it's easier for people to wrap their head around right? It's like the NFL combine. Well, I mean, Tom's, yeah, numbers. It's something,

well, again, if I go and if I pick Tom Brady in the first round, you know, and it works out, they call me a genius. If I pick Tom Brady in the first round, you know, and it works out, they call me a genius. If I pick Tom Brady in the first round after his combine and it doesn't work out, I get fired and I'm never hired again, I have to work somewhere else. But it's like, I'm insulating myself from criticism, I think, almost if I go by the numbers. Well, he had more bench presses. It's like, how many times have the guys that are like the super studs in the NFL combine ever been on the greatest players

in the NFL history in NFL history. Like zero or close to zero. And even if there's some, it's certainly not a one to one correlation. So it's so funny though, I think it's just like how long, how many days do you hold the title? Your title reign was X times longer. That means nothing. So if we wanted to find greatest fighter ever, like you said, I think individual moments

of like, you're like, that was transcendent. That was different. That was something else. Because people can win or lose for any number of different reasons. And that it's an interesting thing. Again, I don't blame Argentina and not winning the World Cup on Messi.

You know, that's not fair. You know, how many times is, you know, I mean, I use the, I remember when Trent Dillford was the quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens. And they had such a strong defense. I'm not trying to pick when Trent Dillford was the quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens. And they had such a strong defense. I'm not trying to pick on Trent Dillford, but it's like, they had such a strong defense that they were to make it. That was the Ray Lewis, you know, it Christmas callister, era, you know, and they won the

Super Bowl. I don't think anyone is going to say that, you know, Trent Dillford is a better quarterback than, you know, or put him in the same category as Damirino. But he got the W, he's got the super ring. How many times do I let's use March Manus? Or Super-O, I love it. That guy always makes the finals, but he just never gets it done.

So let me give this straight. Get into the finals nine times doesn't count because you didn't win the end game. I'm not saying it wouldn't be better, but that guy won the game once. He got over the hump. Well, how many other times do you win the finals? Zero, you're like, all right.

It's interesting where we, yeah, that we were obsessed with these numbers. Like, what cause we can't assess their method, right? Well, I think most of us can't assess the method of anything. I was like, oh, look at that guy do X-Wine swimming. I'm like, how do I know Michael Phelps is great? I don't know, he was faster.

I can't look at his technique and say anything. Other than, well, that's way better than anything. I know how to do, but I can't say the difference between him and the next guy. So I guess that's, I wonder if it's like, I need a concrete identifier and a lot of times people don't like saying, I don't know. And most people won't put like a Ronda Rousey

in the top even 20 or 50 of, but like, she changed more than, more than almost anybody else, she changed the martial arts history. I don't know if that even, I don't think I'm exaggerating that. She made it okay for women to be fighters. And like changed the way we see, like she's one of the great feminists of our time.

I don't know. In her own way, yeah. In a weird kind of way that like, I don't know. Maybe I'm just a Ron Nerozzie fan, but yeah. But she's not in the conversation because then you start converting into numbers. Well, how many do you see? Well, is she among the greatest fighters?

Or did she do the greatest things? You know what I mean? I don't think so. It's something I mean, obviously, Ronda is a great chudoka who was competing in MMA at a time when a lot of the girls, like where did you get your skills? Neil Olympics, how would you get your highest goal? You're like, yeah, you're gonna,

Olympic girls gonna beat you up. But I guess that doesn't diminish her. Just that accomplishment is what it is. I don't have to, I don't, Fador is not diminished by the fact that he would, like, if he were to fight steep in meotus right now, it probably wouldn't go great. Or that John Jones exists. I don't now have to like knock Fedor's accomplishments down or say, oh, because BJ Penn or someone, so let's say, has a mixed record at this point

that somehow invalidates the things that they've done before. I get, it kind of brings us back to a lot of the other people we've talked about. The fact that the, the brilliant people throughout history that we love or some of the monsters throughout history that we rightly revile in a lot of cases were complicated people in their legacy is more than just one thing and someone doing something amazing doesn't and without doesn't mean they didn't do anything bad and someone doing terrible things doesn't doesn't mean that doesn't validate the positives that they did but I guess we fighting the urge to put people in one category and same with ourselves I think that's why people get depressed. Oh, I'm good right now. Oh, I'm bad right now versus hey, we're all of work in progress and we're trying to do X number of things and legacy is a tough thing to figure out anyway. And it's all speculative.

The last time or no, I read it, you said that last time too, that you don't experience much fear before fights. I'd like to ask you a couple of Mike Tyson things if it's okay. It's just interesting to me and maybe I'm just weird. So, there's, I don't know if you've seen this clip of Tyson talking about how he feels leading up to a fight that he's kind of overtaken with fear, but as it gets closer and closer and closer to the ring, his confidence grows. Have you seen the clip? I'm aware of it. OK.

It's in the wall here. Let me play it for you. George St. Pierce had something similar to me one time. While I'm in the dressing room, five minutes before I come out, my gloves are least up. I'm breaking my gloves down. I'm pushing the dressing room, five minutes before I come out, my gloves are least up. I'm breaking my gloves down. I'm pushing the lever to back my lower, I can't even middle the gloves for my knuckle. Peers do the lever, feel my knuckle piercing against the tight leather gloves.

I'm at the last box angle, and I come out, I have supreme confidence. I'm scared to death. I'm totally afraid. I'm afraid that I have to name my freedom. I'm afraid of being humiliated, but I'm totally confident. Close'm afraid of having made my friends afraid of me and I'm really eating. But I'm totally confident. Close I get to a ring more confident. I get closer and more confident. I get to close to a more confident. I get to do my training. I'm afraid of this man. I thought this man might be capable to be in me. I've dreamed of him being me. That will be. I always stayed afraid of him. But it was close I get to a ring

more confident. Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god. No one could beat me. I'm a god. I mean, first of all, he's cognizant of both his demons and whatever the hell idea he has about violence is so interesting. Is there something about the tension that he's describing about being confident and scared that resonates with you? Or do you hold to this idea that you've kind of spoken about before that you're really not afraid? No, I can appreciate what he's saying. I think that I can speak to feeling concerned about, let's say, for instance, if you feel a certain way, I think people are a lot more like computers than we would and we like to admit. And just because a lot of times I can't parse

what's going on. And why doesn't mean that it's not, it doesn't make sense. And I think that at least in the times of like if I'm concerned about a situation or about a person or about something happening prior to the fight, or I'm like, there's a reason that there was a reason I don't have to push that down and bury it. It's there's a reason like why? What have I not thought about? What have I not done? What am I missing? Why or I'm like, there's a reason. There was a reason. I don't have to push that down and bury it. It's a reason. Like, why? What have I not thought about?

What have I not done? What am I missing? Why am I feeling this way? As you mentioned, you know, for yourself prior, like, you'd be like, why am I feeling like this? I don't do this very well. And certain aspects of my life, I'm not that I mentioned it or not, I think about it. But when it comes to competing, I think I do an alright job and I'm trying to learn

to be better and it's a, I'm going like, well, why do I, if I feel this way, there's a reason. Okay, am I thinking about this the wrong way? Have I not adequately prepared for something? I have to address it and then maybe I'll be up for four hours that night, you know, like extra hours thinking that one of my not addressed watching, sparring, watching this, watching that. And then when I'm thinking about things more accurately, or when I've addressed what that concern was,

I feel any of that concern kind of dissipate. And I guess if I honestly thought that, you know, I guess when it comes to, I know I'm gonna die at a certain point. Obviously I'm gonna get hurt. I mean, you know, pain happens, but the pain of loss would be nothing compared to the, or the pain of injury would be nothing compared to the or the pain of injury,

be nothing compared to the pain of running away. And so I guess if I think about, it wears my value, it's like, I feel like I'm a winner every single time I step into that ring and fight with everything that I have. I can't promise that I'll win my next fight. I know that I have the skills and the tools to be at anyone in grappling or in mixed martial arts at this point. It's just I know that for certain, I've trained enough people, I compete enough people, I know where I stand, but I also know that I'm not perfect and also the better fighter, even if I perceived that I was that thing, doesn't win on the night. The man who fights better wins on the night. And if I give credence in my mind to only the person that's that's one has value versus going, what's your process?

What's your path through this? How are you going about this? How are you thinking about this? How are you behaving? Then if I can focus on the process, then I will respect my opponent, now I respect myself and I respect anyone that behaves with a certain level of consistency to that. And there's plenty of winners in history that are shit bags. And there's plenty of losers that are not. But winning doesn't make you a bad or good person, and losing doesn't make you good by the fault either, or bad by the fault.

So, and I think that that can be the truth socially, that can be the truth athletically, academically. So, and I think that that can be the truth socially, that can be the truth, you know, athletically, you know, academically. So, I guess- Is there a primal fear though, like a primal fear of getting hurt? The running away and not facing the the threat long term is the bigger pain than any pain you can experience in the fight. That's pretty powerful. But what about the violence of, I mean, you don't have that on your face, but like, I don't know if you've also seen Tyson talk about, he was on Rogan recently and he was talking about, he was trying to psychoanalyze himself about why he enjoys violence so much. I mean, he called it

orgasmic. I don't know, have you seen that clip? I haven't. Okay. We're playing it because I can, I need to, because Trump also retweeted it, which is hilarious. I don't know how to contextualize the, that our president retweeted the clip of, of, say, off Tyson saying, that's just, maybe he's just doing the, like, they're not, it's like, I'm gonna throw him a curable. No, he's gonna have any idea what that is. But yeah, he did no explanation. Just, here you go.

There you go. Well, I think that's kind of like what you're describing. It's like, if I give you an answer, it has to be a good one, better to just let your imagination run. Exactly. Yeah, he's, yeah, he's like the Kubrick of our time No, it's really interesting that sometimes

Period, but sometimes that struggle with the fact of why the possibly actually really hurt somebody like you don't want to hurt them What do you mean we struggle struggle with the possibility that you could hurt them? That is sometimes, it's all got to make them times. Yeah. Like some fights, like particularly like Tyrell Biggs or someone that you had problems with, someone that you, Joe's not getting you had animosity towards, so you could finally get your hands on them. Hey, what does it mean when fighting gets you wrecked? What does that mean? It's a good question. Means you're getting excited.

Yeah. So that's going through your mind right now. Well, that's how I get one, I was a kid. And I, you know, sometimes I get when I was a kid and I you know Sometimes I get the twinkle the twinkle. Yeah Well, that's what I'm saying is like you reached a state as a human being as a champion as a ferocious fighter You reach a state of of a ability and of accomplishment the very few humans will ever ever touch and feel That's why I'm asking you, when you're running,

when you're hitting the bag, when that heart's beating again, and you know who you are, you're Mike, mother fucking Tyson. So when you're doing all this shit again, you're still Mike Tyson. Those thoughts I've gotta be burning inside of you again. It's gotta be pretty wild.

I don't know, it's wild, but I believe it's rightfully so to be that way. And I just know how to, I don't think I'm mastered, but I just know how to deal with it. I don't let it overwhelm me. I mean, he goes on to try to, they don't ever, like Joe doesn't bite. Well, the interesting thing about that conversation is Mike was trying to figure himself out. Like he's trying on the spot. Like, why do I feel this way? To me, it was like, to me, it's so real and honest to feel like pleasure from hurting somebody.

Like, that you rarely hear that. In this society, it's like you rarely talk about you feel pleasure from winning. You feel pleasure from the relief of overcoming like all the stress you have to go through, pleasure from just like the specifics of the fight, the techniques you use, the maybe overcoming being down a couple of rounds. But like how often do you hear some of these say, I just enjoyed, He's not even saying because I hate the opponent. He's saying like I enjoyed purely the violence of it. That's crazy. I mean, I don't know. It's honest. It made me ask like, I wonder how many of us are cognizant of that. But St. Mike is uncommonly seemingly honest.

I think athletes make a full-time job out of lying. You know, I think people make a full-time job out of lying. You know, people make a full-time job. To themselves too. That's fair. I mean, you tell yourself, or you tell others what you feel you need to, or maybe whether you know what you feel you need to, but why should you not, I mean, again, did he run up and just hit somebody that didn't sign up for this? No, they sign up to be there. Well, that's the interesting thing about Dyson is there's a weird, like, non-standard behavior.

I mean, like, you're fighting styles non-standard. He's non-standard to another degree of like, who else has that? In Jiu-Jitsu, Polaris has this kind of weirdness, like, what's in there? Like, there's a fear that, I think, most opponents would have, because it's like, it's no longer about, like, it takes you out of the realm of its game.

It takes us back to the thing we were talking about before, is it strips away that several layers of Ryan Hall, the podcast, guest, Ryan Hall, the Jiu-Jitsu instructor, Ryan Hall, the Jiu-Jitsu competitor. It keeps going down to a point where Ryan Hall the murderer of all things that get in his way, that lies underneath all of it seemingly. Like if we're like in this society, we put all that aside, but it makes you wonder,

like now's society's being tested in many ways. It makes you wonder like, what's underneath there? Well, do we want to do we want the answer to that? Because I guess it's what is it a you see in Paul fiction, you know, the best character in the movie and in the best scene in the movie is like if my questions, here if you're what he called my answer is scary, you know, the best character in the movie and in the best scene in the movies, I give my questions. Here, if you're what do you call it, my answer is scary. You should see us asking scary questions, you know, and I guess you wonder, I mean, all of us, that's something that I think it's funny. We call that's not okay.

I mean, versus maybe not appropriate for situation X, Y or Z, but what should make any of us think? I mean, humanity is a different place now. And I'm not saying anything crazy out there, but it came into a different place now than we were 5,000 years ago, where all of us are descended from people who have killed things with their teeth and fingernails in order to be where we are. And whether it was in, whether it was an anvil,

or it was in conflict with another person, I mean, think about the chances of dying by violence now are so slim, at least in most countries and most places, like shockingly small, thankfully. But there was a period of time, like the most period of time were dying by violence is mostly how it went down. And I guess what would be facilitative,

what would allow you to win back to Ender's game, you know, what allows you, if you can't do that, you are forever subject to people who can. And that's a real thing. And you know, we're fortunate to find ourselves in a situation where we don't, where other things matter. But that is a funny thing periodically where people, you'll see people, like kind of jaw on each other, like in videos or out in the world that clearly neither of them expect

this to get serious. Like, I'm just gonna yell at you, you're gonna yell at me, and it's like this weird, larping thing, where we're both gonna go on and on separate ways. All it takes is one person to be like, well, I wasn't kidding. And it's like, oh, you'll go to jail, I'm like, oh, I know. You're gonna go to the morgue. And that can happen like that, like society.

I mean, obviously, anyway, you could jump across the table, stab me in the eye. I mean, I appreciate it. I hope if you don't, and there will be consequences if you do, but mean, obviously, anyway, you could jump across table, stab me in the eye. I mean, I appreciate, I hope if you don't, and there will be consequences if you do, but not from me, from the rest of society will potentially get you at a certain point. But you can decide to not play by the rules

any time you want. And it's fascinating that, yeah, that's, we've created rules based on which we all behave, but underneath there, there's things that doesn't, there's motivations and forces that don't play by the rules. And still there.

Nature's metal is under the surface. Seriously, and again, I pull out my phone and I'm basically saying like, hey, I'm gonna, you're gonna get caught. But really, I'm further antagonizing you. Really wrongly, you know what I mean? And that's an interesting thing. And I feel like just people need to remember any of us.

You'd remember just for any reason. That's one step away at all at all times. You ever, I've had people say to me before, like, oh, I don't feel safe. I'm like, you're not safe. Like, kill you before you get out of this room. Nothing you do stop that. Nothing.

I mean, but don't worry. You can do the same to me, which means I'm like, oh, I'll thank goodness. Can you imagine like how many guns are there are in this country? Like they're I mean everywhere. I mean seriously everywhere, but that's a heartening thought not the other way because people usually freak out and go My god gun violence gun violence is gun violence is like really not a serious issue in the United States Compared to what it could be because it means that I mean with the amount of guns and the amount of Thambulettes that are out there that are in circulation

Can you imagine if like one in every thousand was used in anger each day? I mean, this would be a terrifying place to live. You couldn't go anywhere. So, I mean, although you could say, hey, this is more than we'd like or X, Y, Z, it actually means that people are much more reasonable and sane than we're saying.

Then, or then, sometimes I might argue. So, I guess what I mean is like, oh, man, I walked to 7-11 and I didn't get stabbed. I'm like, oh, well that's good, because not because I protected myself with my karate, it's basically no one decided to run over and stab me because I wasn't protecting myself. They stopped.

So I guess we're all fortunate to live in a society that like you said, nature being metal doesn't become that big of an issue all the time, but it is funny when you get people in the ring and you go, hey, let's peel back from Mr. Tyson, many layers of that and say, hey, now it's okay. And it's cool that, I mean, that's what society's doing. So I've lived in Harvard Square for a while.

And we add extra layers of what safe means. Like, now there's a discourse about safe spaces, about ideas being violence, or ideas or minor slights against your personality being violence. But that's all like extra layers around the nature as metal thing. That it's cool, that's what progress is, but we can't forget that

like underneath it is still the thing that will murder at the drop of any moment if aroused. One thing that I find funny though, ironic maybe about the words of violence, offense is violence thing, is that of course, the belief in that then justifies my violence. Like, whether maybe I'm not physical violence, but my response to my aggressive response to things. And I guess like, which again,

big threats, bigots of further aggressive response and like a tit for tat sort of situation or it goes to like, well, there's 10 of me and there's one of you, so we'll get you and you can't do anything about it. But that's not morality. That's just saying that's might makes right. So I guess, again, you can understand why people do it

and there are certain derives of progress aspect to it. But again, I guess without proper examination, I'm effectively with my 10 friends, and the force of the law, Mike Tyson, and people, but not admitting to myself what I'm effectively with my 10 friends, you know, and and the force of the law Mike Tyson in people But not admitting to myself what I'm doing and at least my Tyson again is honest Are you a afraid of death? I mean, it's easier for me to say no as I sit here probably not about to die, but is this the UFC question? Can you defeat any opponent?

The answer is of course yes, and I don't have to, they're not here, are they? Yeah, exactly. But I mean, do you ponder your own mortality? Maybe another context today is you mentioned two deaths for martial artists. I think that's actually why, honestly, even though it at a relatively young age, I think mortality is something that I'm aware of,

maybe more than the average person. I think probably most athletes can speak to this and anyone that's had a lot of managed to slide out of a couple of near death experiences personally, mostly river related because I'm an idiot, but I regret nothing. Yeah, but thank you. But yeah, it is an interesting seeing the end and seeing going well What's gonna happen? I guess I think it comes back to kind of what we're discussing about belief structure and belief system I think a lot of times if I recognize that no matter what I do

It's all gonna end one day and then you go well why were we here? What would I do? Is am I gonna make it to 40? I have no idea. I'd like to hope so. I had no idea that I was going to make it to the age that I am now. Am I going to make it to 80? How much of that is in my control? Much of it is not. I mean, it's so funny.

It's an interesting, like back to the belief structure, again, like internal and external, locus of control. You know, what's facilitative versus what's true? And, you know, I think accepting personal responsibility for more than is on my control the locus of control, what's facilitative versus what's true. I think accepting personal responsibility for more than a sum of my control is probably a positive, but at the same time, recognizing that much is not in my control. I was fortunate enough to be born in the United States, fortunate enough to knock on wood

have a serious disease that I'm not aware of right now. I didn't do any of that. I just showed up. That was really fortunate. And I guess that doesn't diminish the fact that I've tried to make decent choices, but it works in concert with it. And I guess when you go, is death what I want right now? No, no, I should think not. And again, it's easier for me to be relatively calm about as I'm not staring at the face. But what I would care a lot more about is how you live.

That's what's in my control. And I can't control as I walk out of this building, a helicopter falls on me. You're worrying about that. I can't control, maybe I have cancer now and I don't know it. I really hope not. But there's something about meditating on the fact

that it could end today. Outside of your control, they can clarify your thinking about the fact that life is amazing. Like just kind of helping you enjoy this moment. Even if life was horrible, let's say, Francis, it was, you live at one of those times or places and those places still exist in this world today, that life is brutal and metal and whatever all and short and painful, would you still want it?

And again, as I'm sitting here not on fire physically, it's easy to say yes, but I'm confident I still, I'll plant my feet and say yes. Any of life is amazing and beautiful and a gift, an unbelievable gift. None of us have earned for the record. I hate the word earned. A lot of times earned, yeah, you earn, but it's like, there's a lot of good fortune and earning. And that's back to, do I want justice?

Or do I want grace? And I guess we're all fortunate to be where we are and no matter where we are. And hopefully it should give us some sense of perspective, some sense of compassion for other people, but also like, like you said, a sense of peace where if it all ended right now, would I be happy with what a life to this point of course,

would you like to live a little longer? Yeah, I would try to do more and try to live rightly to the best that I know how which over time will hopefully continue to evolve in a positive direction. But if the answer to that is no, I know how, which over time will hopefully continue to evolve in a positive direction. But if the answer to that is no, I guess that's always, that's a sign that what I'm doing is not what I'm meant to be doing.

And I'm year familiar with Tacumso. Before I, I've got one actually. If you could give me 10 seconds, I'll read this one out. This is a personal favorite. Basically, and I think it sums up, I mean, again, it's one of those quotes on the internet, like when Abraham Lincoln said, don't believe everything you read online. But this is, you know, it's again, attributed, but it's like, so live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion,

respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Se yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life, seek to make your life long and it's purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or sign a salute

when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and gravel to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing

for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death so that when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and dialogue a hero going home.

Powerful words. I don't think there's a better way to end it. Let me just say, we've spoke maybe five, six years ago. I don't even remember when, but I'm not exaggerating saying like you had a huge impact on my life because of the podcast. You're the reason I was doing the podcast as long as I have. You're the reason I'm doing this podcast. It's a stupid little meeting that you probably didn't know who I was. I didn't really know who you are.

It was just like a magical moment. It's a bit flap of a butterfly wing kind of situation. I'm forever grateful. you're one of the most inspiring people in my life. So right, it's a huge honor that you would come here. Jen didn't talk with me and waste all this time. I really appreciate it. It was amazing. Thank you so much, Alexis. It's been a pleasure. I really appreciate you having a song. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ryan Hall and thank you to our sponsors Power.babel and cash app.

Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 stars and not a podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman. And now let me leave you some words from Frank Herbert in Dune. Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. you