Modern Wisdom - How UFC Star Ben Askren Cheated Death - #1116

Episode Date: June 27, 2026

Ben Askren is a former Olympic wrestler and former MMA champion. What is it like to come face-to-face with death and make it back? Ben went from being on top of the world to needing a double lung transplant just to survive. What actually happened to him, what did he endure during his recovery, and how did the experience reshape his perspective on life? Expect to learn what actually happened to Ben these past 18 months, how low his health went, the biggest lessons Ben has held onto over the last year, what Ben thought about when he was that close to death, how surviving and recovering changed his thoughts on faith and fatherhood, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠⁠ Timestamps: (0:00) The Crazy Story Behind Ben’s Double Lung Transplant (5:01) What Happened After Ben Blacked Out? (8:27) How Do You Breathe Without Lungs? (10:38) The Hidden Danger of Necrotising Pneumonia (12:27) The Long Road Back to Health (17:30) Waking Up to a Second Chance at Life (21:35) How to Stay Strong Through Illness (26:40) How Near-Death Changed Ben’s Priorities (33:29) Has Ben’s Definition of Success Changed? (37:26) Why Wrestlers Are Mentally Different (41:44) Talent vs Hard Work: What Brings You Success? (48:24) How to Stop the Pressure Getting to You (57:38) Choose Your Own Legacy (01:04:01) Where to Find Ben Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to life, dude. Well, I've been living again for quite a while now. June 28th was actually the day I got to transplant last year, so coming up on a year for that. I believe I woke up on July 2nd or somewhere around there, or, you know, like came to in my own mind. So yeah, it's their process, but I'm here, I'm getting better and life's pretty good. So one year ago from now, you were really in the shit. Well, I just made a post yesterday because on June 6, which was two days ago, Saturday, I got inducted to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

I went home or went back to hotel with my wife. I said, did I get airlifted June 6th last year? So last year on June 6th, I was in Vegas, and I went at first hospital, the first hospital, and then we had some friends that came out that were, one was the doctor and one was the nurse, and I said, he's not going to make it at this hospital. we need to get them back to Milwaukee because they have a good, it's called CVI to you, Cardadascular intensive care unit, and they got me a flight, they put me on a plane,

took my way back, and I said to my wife, well, why was that such a bad day? Because I don't remember I was sleeping. And she said, the transport of me, they had to fully paralyze my body. And then when I got back to Milwaukee, they put me on ECMO. And with ECMO, I think there's only like a 40% chance you come off ECMO. Why people would go on it don't come off it. So they were hoping I wouldn't have to do that. I did have to do that.

So June 6th last year, although I don't remember any, it was quite eventful. And then this year you got to celebrate. So it's, you know, it's full circle. For the people who don't know what we're talking about, could you explain what's happened over the last 12 months? Yeah. Well, May 28th last year, 2025. I went to the hospital.

I actually went down to the day before also, May 27th, my back was hurting. just a back pain. I thought it was a back spasm. That was it, you know? And on May 27th, I tested everything was normal, did all the vitals. And I told my wife, see, I told you, I was just a back spasm. And the doctor gave me medicine for a back spasmusasm. And I went back to the hotel. We were at the Bitcoin conference. And it got worse. And the medicine did not work at all, which that's never happened. I had a handful of the back specimens in life. And the medicine's really good. They just got worse and worse and worse. And then, you know, I was up most of the night trying to make it feel better.

And when I woke up in the morning, so sometime in the middle of the night, I'd finally fall in the sleep. When I woke up in the morning, it was a little bit later, and she had been videotaping me sleeping. And she'd sent it to a few of her doctor friends, and they said,

you need to get him to the hospital as soon as you can. So when I woke up. What was happening while you were sleeping? I was like super, like super fast and hard breathing. Right. And so when I woke up, my mom was like, hey, we're going to the hospital.

And I said, dude, you made me go to the hospital. I'll say, I'll not go back to the hospital, damn it. You know, I got stuff I want to do today. I don't want to go to the hospital. And she's like, no, you got to go to the hospital. So eventually they convinced me you go to the hospital. And it was the same place of the day before. We went there.

And I remember walking in the waiting room. And then that's it. I don't remember anything. I woke up in July 2nd. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know why I was there. I don't remember anything. I was in sleep for, I want to say it was 37 days, I believe.

do you transported from kind of being a bit irritated that you were back at the same hospital for what you thought might be a back spasm for the second time and your wife being a little bit overbearing yes to now it's july and what the fuck am i oh and i'm in a totally different i'm in a totally different hospital now well i woke up and it was uh you know i say wake up i was awake sometimes but i to my recollection i don't recall any any of it nothing and so that when i when i like wake up the first time or when I come to some type of cognitive understanding of what's going on. It was the middle of the night. It was dark. I obviously quickly realized I was in a hospital. And I started thinking like, how did I end up here? Why am I here? I didn't remember going in Vegas. It was how am I here and why am I here? And then I couldn't speak at all. And so I don't even recall how it happened. But for some way I, you know, signal to the nurse like, why am I here? What am I doing? And they told me I had a double one. transplant and you know again I couldn't talk and it was like okay why do I have a double long transplant I have I don't know I have no idea what how that would happen I'm totally

healthy I've never smoked I've never done anything um and then eventually my wife came in the morning whatever that you know the next morning or whatever and she had documented everything so it was like a day-by-day journal of you know June 2nd this happened June 4th this happened I had to read through it and I was like oh my god what like how did this ever happen um and yes that was kind of my recollection of waking up and kind of figuring out what was going on so retrospectively i know that you weren't awake to be able to work out this from a first person view yeah you go into the waiting room and then what happens from there um well so i had a stab infection on my elbow I don't know if you've ever got one or not, but sometimes, like, all my life, I've only had to get on an antibiotic for a singular time.

You know, you get a cut, you get a little infected. You put some antivacterial on there. You wash, you shower, you clean it up, and it goes away. And that was what happened to me. I had a little infection on my elbow. I washed a shower. I soaked it. I had a bacterial.

And within a couple days, it was gone. And I didn't think much of it, you know. And then I made no connection, but about four days later, my back. was started hurting and I thought okay this is the back spasm and everyone always said you would do it differently and I said no I wouldn't however could guess oh yeah my back hurts because my body's eating my lungs from the inside like no one's ever heard of that that's totally ridiculous so the staff got into my blood and it turned into a necrotic called necrotiving pneumonia in which uh my body was essentially eating my lungs from the inside out that was what the back pain was so I

dealt with that for about, I think five days before I ended up in the hospital. And then when I was in the hospital, it was like a really bad, like, sepsis and necrotizing pneumonia. And, yeah, so they tried doing all they could to kind of like stay my lungs and keep me alive. And at some point, it became the only way I was going to stay alive was to have a lung transplant, which, you know, again, I wasn't awake for any of this. And so I believe I was in the Milwaukee hospital for about three weeks.

before that happened. And then I got the lungs transplant and I think I was still kind of unconscious for about six more days after that. And then I woke up and there I was. Fuck me. Where do you get lungs from? That's what I said.

I don't know. I actually wrote the donor family. The donor family has not responded. Is it two from the same person? Yeah, yeah. But you can't mix and match too long. Oh, I actually think you can. No, I know you can because I talk to a guy in the hospital about it. You know, and that's one that's where you think about life and you think about gratitude and you never want to take anything to her granted.

And I always think about the people I meet in the hospital now. This is a while I was going on, probably four months ago, but I was in for one of my kind of routine checkups and this guy comes up to me. And, you know, I'm waiting to go inside the, you know, to meet the doctors. And so a lot of the same, similar type people in a similar area. So he had a lung transplant. And, you know, I think, okay, I was, I was unconscious for 36 days. I was in the hospital for, I think it was 73 total or something, which is quite a long time. And it wasn't fun.

But then this guy was in the hospital for nine months. And he was sick and he got a double lung transplant. And then almost immediately one of the two lungs rejected. I don't know why or how, I'm not a medical doctor. I can see what happened. And he got a different lung from a different person. And he is now living with two new lungs. from two different people.

So I always, I would try to reflect on, yes, my situation was tough, but it could always be tougher. And at the end of the day, I could always not be here. So I'm quite grateful for what happened. Where do they, how do the lungs come out? It cuts you right on if you guys can see this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They split you right in half.

Yeah. So they're not taking it from like under, they're not reaching under the rib cage and pulling it down. Are they cracking the rib cage open? You know, you know what, Chris, I've never had the ball. to go look exactly how they do it. No way. No, I don't want to do it.

I don't, it's called the, well, I mean, you can go look it up. If you want it called the clam shell incision is what it's called. I could see exactly where I've been cut. I know what it feels like. But no, I've never heard the balls to go look up and see exactly how they open you up. I guess I feel like that will gross me out all too much. Yeah, maybe, maybe I suppose. I guess what's crazy is like they're going to have, they have to reattacks.

It's like basically plumbing. It's human plumbing. You're like reattaching or human AC ducting maybe more accurately. It's like, oh, there's a pipe that comes down. We've got to get rid of this pipe. That pipe needs to be reconnected. I mean, I don't know how, again, if you haven't done your research, you haven't done your research.

I want to know how when you're removing somebody's lungs. I need to know how they keep you breathing because you need oxygen. Keep you fucking going. But there has to be a moment when there's no lungs. Or there's a moment. There does. There's a moment when there's four lungs. There's one of two choices.

They either attach both at the same time and switch one out. Yeah. You know what? I don't know the answer to this. I should know the answer. I do know, I'll tell you, this is gross. They said, the doctor did say it was the worst lung transplant she's ever seen. Because so many of my tissue died, it had like, essentially should, like, stick, like, glue to the walls of my ribs and stuff like that.

So they had to, like, really scrape all the old lungs up. the inside of my chest cavity. Because they were kind of decomposing inside of you. That's what she said. So she said it was one of the worst that they'd ever seen. I don't remember what the time was now because I was half unconscious for a lot of the first time I was awake. But she said it took them quite a while to actually clear it out and then, you know,

get the new ones in. So you know what? I don't know how I was reading at that point in time. Do people have any idea where this comes from? Is it randomly onset? Is it a virus? Do you get it by being on mats or what? Well, I think I got the original staff infection,

but to the point I made earlier, like it cleared up and it was no big deal. And it wasn't like I had the flu or I was sick or I was coughing or none of these things whatsoever. And, you know, the Kyle Bush thing that happened, that was a couple weeks back. It was weird. It was almost to the day of when mine happened the year prior.

sounded very, very similar to what I went through. And, you know, I have not grilled the doctor really, really hard on why exactly did this happen, how did this happen, or that kind of stuff. I guess I woke up and I said, well, this is my new reality. How do I get better? So I grill him a lot on how do I get better, but I haven't grilled him on how did it happen. That's really interesting mindset. Yeah.

I guess it's really only important for you to understand how, happened insofar as it informs what you can do now to improve. Yeah. And, you know, what happened was I think probably something that's extremely rare. You know, I guess I could go back and ask them. And honestly, part of me thinks, and this is just me judging from my wife's sake, because my wife was obviously awake and talking to them all and she did a great job of trying to connect everyone that could possibly help me. But it was one of those things where they were having a hard time figuring out how I got that sick. You know, she brought up the cut of my elbows.

She knew about that. But then they were asking all kinds of different questions on, well, was he doing this or was you doing that? Like, I think they thought, hey, this doesn't make sense either, you know, or also. Okay. So you wake up, you come around. What next? Man, so the first, you know, it's really funny.

You think you're, like, fully conscious, if you will, once I woke up. And, you know, now I look back on the first, I don't know, we'll say, we'll say 10 days to two weeks. And I was like, holy shit, I was out of my mind. I mean, now I get like there's this one two or three day period where I very vividly remember. I do remember some things that for sure happened because I went back and I crossed the with people that were there and I said, hey, did this actually happen? But then, like, I thought I got transported to this hospital that was on the lake, like half a mouth in my house. and there's no hospital there.

That didn't exist. That was only in my mind for multiple days. And I know I kept threatening, I kept threatening the nurses that I was going to walk home because I was just on the road to my house. I couldn't even walk. I couldn't walk. It's like the thought of the loss of home.

It's a lie from every different direction. Yeah. So, you know, the first couple weeks like, you know, I think I was on so many drugs. I did get out pain meds relatively quick, but it's been the rest of stuff I was on. And then they call it like delirium because you don't sleep enough in the hospital. Yeah, I had so many wild thoughts.

You know, positive thing, I had a lot of friends visiting me. So that's like I know some of those things that I thought happened did happen because I said, hey, were you there when X, Y, or Z happened? And they said, yeah. So I had a lot of friends visiting me. My wife visited me almost every day. My mom visited a lot, my dad. So, yeah, just kind of like waking up and figuring out how I do everything again because I couldn't walk.

I couldn't feed myself. The long list of things you, I mean, I pretty much couldn't do anything by myself. What was the lowest point that your health got to when you woke up? Was it immediate? And was it relatively uphill from there? Yeah. Yeah, I didn't really have anything hugely negative. I guess right before I woke up, so right after that, a day or two, right?

So not right before, like minute-wise. I guess I spiked really bad fever and they didn't know why and that was scary to everyone, including my wife. But as I woke up, yeah, everything was like, I guess it moved in a positive direction, probably not nearly as fast as I thought. You know, a lot of lung transplant patients, they're on the list for a long time, and their condition is not necessarily like immediately like to grow. Like eventually it would kill them, but it might take many years. So they're actually in kind of like a lot better shape than I was where I was like near, very near depth. I lost like 60 pounds, for example, of muscle while I was, yeah, muscle, body weight,

but mostly muscle while I was in the hospital. So when I woke up, it did mostly get better. There was a lot of things like, I don't know if you know what chest tubes are, but it took me forever to get my chest tubes out. I was the first lung transplant patient that they sent home with a chest tube in. I was like, you got to let me go. You got to let me go. Wow.

And then, yeah, unfortunately got infected. I ended up back in the hospital for two weeks. I don't think of any fault of my own. I think it just happened and, you know, then I got stuck there again for a while. But, yeah, it was a process. It took a long time. I didn't start walking on my own for,

I think it was roughly two months. You know, and then even at that point, like, you know, walking on my own, it, like, I go four steps and I'm holding on to a counter and then I go, you know, three more steps. You know, it's like, it's not really, I'm not like getting around. Yeah, and there was just a process. And it was like, once I became,

game while we're capable, like, okay, hey, today I want to try to walk for eight minutes. Walking for eight minutes is my goal. And then once I got to hang it out, then it's 10 minutes. There's 12 minutes. And then I, you know, kind of just keep building up. And then it's okay, now I'm going to try to do some squats, which was, you know, in the beginning, I couldn't get myself off the toilet. I had to have literally have someone help me get up.

Yeah, so that was the process. And it's still a process where I'm actually getting better. I feel like still quite a rapid rate. And I'm 11, over 11 months out. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance, which is why for the last five years I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't.

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Right now, you can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase where I go into the link in the description below. Or heading to drinklmn.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnmnt.com slash modern wisdom. What was your main emotion when you came back around once you were a little bit less delirious? Yeah, probably flabergia. I mean, I still think about sometimes still I wake up and think about like, how did that happen? Like I have a lung transplant.

Like I never smoked anything in my life. Like, how does someone like me end up with a lung transplant? So I think like that would probably be the main emotion of like, how did this happen? This is nuts. And then probably the second one after the. that would be like, okay, what have I got to do? Because again, this is my new reality. I can't change it.

So I might as well make the best of it. So what is it that I need to do? And I've probably spent, you know, I can't tell you how many hours since I spent 11 months researching. What do I do about this problem? What do I do about that problem? And just kind of like- Heavy, heavy chat GPT user.

For real. Chat-GPT, if you can ask my question, you get a lot of information. And then I usually use the information. I bounce off my doctor and I say, hey, here's what I'm gathering. what do you think about this? Then jet seat, GPT is right?

I don't know, we'll probably say 70, 80% of time. Like, it's pretty good. You know, there's a few things where it kind of really gets it wrong. So I always, obviously, cross-reference first. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, you know, the flabbergasted thing is so funny.

I've got this, I've always had this thought in my mind. Like, I've come off a moped in Bali. I've been in a couple of, like, pretty big car accidents. Like, a few things as sort of shock, kinetic, incident or whatever. And you're right. One of the main emotions is surprise. This can't be happening.

And I was thinking to myself, I wonder how many people have died, you know, from something horrendous or accidental. Someone got shot. You know, crossfire. Somebody got shot. And they just feel the thing go through them. And they look down and are like, have I been? Surely I haven't been.

And that's it. And your last thought isn't, you know, the movie lying on the ground, looking up, telling your last rights, explaining your insights from, it's just, did I get fucking shot?

Holy shit. And then it's done. And it's the same with you. The main insight, the main amount, was it, come back around and were you fearing for your, do you see the beauty of existence?

I was largely, uh, fucking surprised, dude. That was my main. Yeah, I would say that, you know, how, like, why am I here? How did this happen? And surprising it. And that was kind of like me piecing it together for the first, you know, a handful of days. And then the other one was what happened while I was asleep? Right.

Like, I've been asleep for 37 days. What's the Bitcoin price that, please? What's the Bitcoin? It was good at that point in time. Actually, that's a whole bunch of really, really important wrestling events. late May and early June, you know, so they were, you know, catching up on all that because I was not awake for a single day of June. And then, you know, going through the kind of order of events of what happened to me. And there was a bunch of really amazing things like, there's so many people supported either through prayer or helping my family in some ways you have performed or meals.

Because, you know, my wife is then, obviously, there's not a father in the household because I'm in the hospital. my wife is spending a large portion of her time at the hospital with me. So, you know, my kids are all on summer break. It's not even like they go to school. So, you know, who's going to take care of them? Who's going to help out with them? So usually my wife and my mom and my dad would kind of like alternate who's at the hospital. But then we had a whole bunch of friends and family helping out with our kids and stuff.

And we tried to keep it as normal as possible than them. You know, you don't want them at home thing every day. Hey, my dad, I die. Like you don't want that. So we, you know, we tried to tell them, hey, well, not. I didn't do shit. My wife tried to tell him, hey, he's sick and he's at the hospital and, you know, kind of leave it a little bit vague and open edit like that. So I guess, you know, you look across at somebody that's had a career as an athlete that's overcome lots of challenges and difficulty in training sessions from being a kid to being a teenager to a young athlete to a veteran athlete in all these different sports at wrestling and MMA and boxing.

how much of that were you able to draw on when it came to recovery and resilience? All of it. 100%. I mean, you know, because the main thing is, I mean, I said it's been 11 months. I probably felt really good for a handful of those days, you know. Like, you know, even today, I'll just say today, I'm 11 months out, I'm having a pretty good day. But, you know, for a while before the show, actually, you know, it was like, you know, Like my breathing just wasn't as good.

Sometimes I don't know if it's the allergies or I don't know what the issue. It just feels weird sometimes, you know? And then obviously earlier on, it was a lot more things than that. It wasn't only that. So the amount of days I've felt really good since then has been very limited. And so it's, you know, even on the days where you don't feel good, are you going to get up and do something? Because you just sit on the couch, you're not going to get better.

And so even on the days you don't feel good, maybe you're not going to do as much. as you had planned, but you still do something. And that's kind of, you know, where I was at for a long time. And, you know, now it's like, I feel mostly pretty good. You know, that would be something here and there pretty much every single day. But it's like, okay, well, if I don't feel good at 10 a.m., I'm going to go get my workout at 2 p.m. You know, like, I'm going to, but I am going to work out.

I am going to train and I'm going to do my breathing exercises. And I'm going to, you know, this handful of all the medical things that I do. I'm going to do them every day. I'm not going to miss it. So I've been very disciplined and regimented in that And obviously that came from my life as an athlete Being very disciplined and a regiment in that It just crossed over kind of exactly

What did your weight get down to? What was the smallest, the lowest weight? The lowest was 138. So it's like skin and bones. And what did you fight at? I thought it was 70, but I got out, I got out of the TRT So I got a little bit bigger. My normal walking weight was probably, you know,

when I was fighting 185-ish plus or minus a few pounds. And then as I retired, I was probably 195-ish somewhere in there. So that's part of 50%. Best part of 50%. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, quite the drawdown in weight. And it was just like I said, I mean, I don't think my wife has pictures.

Skin and bones really is kind of what I was. Is that because you're not moving and not consuming any calories other than what they need to keep you alive? Is that why? I think they're not move. You know, I never looked all the way to this. I got some good guesses.

Number one, you're not moving. I mean, I told you like they literally paralyzed me, but there was other times when I would wake up and I would just like, I don't recall this, but I would not be happy about that. I'd stuff all of my arms,

you know, I try to like move and then that would spike my heart rate. And then that would cause my breathing capacity in another, what is it called oxygenation or whatever? That's a drop, right? And that was really problematic. So I guess for a while they haven't been to me strapped down so I couldn't really move at all.

Yeah, so that was kind of the deal with that. And then I do believe prednisone, which I'm still on until I don't feel for the rest of my life, probably unfortunately. I believe that has some capacity of where it eats your muscles a little bit. What's that too? Prednis zone? Yeah. I don't know exactly which part of the immunospression it is,

it's an immunosuppressant. So with a transplant patient, your body will see the transplanted organ as a foreign body and it will attack it. So they need to essentially tamp down your immune system kind of permanently. Which is why flight for you and being in different places is more dangerous because you don't have an immune. If you had an immune system that could protect you from getting sick, it would also be the same immune system that would attack your new lungs. Yep, 100%.

So I try to stay out of areas where there's a lot of people where I don't like have control of the area of what my surroundings are. Unfortunately, I wear a mask a lot, which is, you know, that's kind of COVID again, baby. I make fun of the mask people for sure. And I'm a mask. I'm a mass person. Yeah. That's no good. Yeah.

Yeah. But it is getting better. I'm coming down like the levels of immunosuppression you're on. As you get further out and you get healthier, they do come down quite a bit. you kind of hit a bounce back. So I've gotten, you know, for example, in the last couple of weeks, I've gotten lower on my,

you guys have a posoconazole and acrylamis. I mean, that's fun talking about medicine, but I come down on those a little bit. So that means, you know, my energy and my indistression go up. And I think, you know, my year anniversary is coming up in about three weeks and I'll hopefully get good out

even a little more potentially. Unreal. Okay, what, I'm interested in what matters to you, more or less now than it did before? Yeah. You know what? I said this, you know, if I would have died when I went to the hospital, I noticed, I'd walk in the hospital and I don't remember anything.

If I would have died there, which I came pretty close to. I had a great life. Like, I really got to do what I love for a living and coaching wrestling. We're in the wrestling academy is. I think it's a very meaningful work and that you're helping the next generation of young person not only get better at rest, but get better at life. I love my wife. I have a great family. So I was really lucky in that I was, it didn't take me to die to figure out that whole, I have a bunch of misguided priorities. Like, I think my priorities were pretty good. I was pretty, you know,

reflectively, as I can reflect on, hey, if I would have died, what do I think about what I had done to that point? So I felt really good about that. I do think I've become. I do think I've became maybe more patient, have more gratitude for sure. And that's, you know, I don't think I was a category. Maybe I was lacking in prior, but I think maybe more guilt even more strongly. I became a Christian, which I would say prior, I was kind of Christian adjacent. Like I went to church for 16 years or so, but, you know, it didn't kind of click all the way. So that would be, you know, probably a big change, I would say.

So kind of those things, but I was proud of the life I was living prior to this. And I think all the positive things have just been kind of ramped up. And I think, I guess I think one other one that I would mention there is, you know, I invested in some businesses. And I like all the people who were running them. But if it took my time, even if it was just, hey, I meet, I meet with the founder once a month or whatever. If it took my time and I wasn't much passionate about it, I asked a few different people, like, hey, can I get out?

I'll make a deal whatever you know whatever you feel is fair give me what's fair and I just I just want to take a few more things off of my plate and I kind of feel strongly about that

and you know I get some offers and do things now and I'm just like is this what I really really really 100% while I do with my life is this worth the time away from my kids and my family and if the answer is no

then I generally choose not to do it have you seen Piki Blinders this series? No I haven't but I know Bunch of my wrestlers are really big fans So I've heard references, but I've never watched it.

Really cool BBC series. And in it, the main guy and his brother, they nearly die at the Battle of the Somme in World War I. And I think they're called Clay Kickers. So they dig tunnels to try and get into the enemy trench from underneath, as opposed to going over the top. And sometimes the two tunnels cross over each other and then they have fights inside of the fucking tunnels. It's crazy. And it's crazy. he, him and his brother basically nearly died at the Battle of the Somme.

And they've got this line where they sort of turn to each other and say, everything after that was extra. Everything after that was extra. And it kind of sounds like that's how you see this period now that I was, I was happy. I mean, I didn't want to die. It would have been optimal for me to have not died, and I'm glad that I didn't. But had I have done, I'd lived a pretty good life up until then.

But even though I'd lived a pretty good life, there's still some adjustments that I want to make in order to learn the lessons about prioritizing my time and what I was going to miss most now that I've got, now that this is extra. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's a three actor with how I feel and how I view it and I want to make the most of the extra. And, you know, the statistics on lung transplants. Now, I don't necessarily know that they apply to me for a variety of reasons, which we can go through if you'd like too, it's kind of boring. But the median life expectancy is only six and a half years, which isn't long. I don't think that's going to apply to me fully because a lot of them are

older, unhealthy people. I mean, an ex-professional athlete who didn't get it because he was smoking and was like in the midst of some of the best fucking health of his life. Yes. Yeah. So you see, you get it. So actually the longest living person at post double lung transplant is 38 years. So that's kind of my goal. It's 39. At least 39. But yeah, everything now is extra and it's kind of reformatted me. So the number one thing I love to do is my brother and I have wrestling academies. We have nine of them now in the city of Wisconsin. But the very favorite part of that is actually coaching the athletes.

And so, you know, that's the thing I want to spend the most time on from a work perspective. And then obviously, you know, with my family and doing that type of thing. And it's one of those that was weird because. I never really thought twice about, but part of the wrestling academy thing is, you travel on a lot of weekends sometimes to go coach kids. And I honestly, it's just weird thing because I love it and I miss it a lot. But then it's like, well, I realized how much I was kind of missing at home or when my wife had to be, you know, essentially a single mother if I go to a big tournament.

Now, it's not saying I'm never going to do that again. I am going to do it. I'll probably just do it a little bit less than I had previously. so to make sure I'm around for more of my kids stuff. And then obviously now my daughter's 13 and she really likes wrestling. So there's going to be a probably a good opportunity for me to spend a much time with her too bad. But yeah, so definitely not going to waste my time on things that I don't love and that I'm not really passionate about.

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I heading to jim.sh slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom 10 at checkout. That's jim.sh slash modern wisdom 10 at checkout. Has your definition of success changed since that? Um, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot. actually, because I don't know if you saw or heard, but I'm wrestling next month. And the reason I was wrestling was they told me, so I actually worked for RAF, and it's going to tremendously well. And one of my life's gold, and this is something where it's like, I'm not going to work for

RIF forever, because it's not the one thing I want to do. But one of my life gold was the start of legitimate professional wrestling organization in America that could run on its own and give athletes the opportunity to compete at professionals. R.F is doing freaking amazing job. I mean, they're doing better.

I should say, we are doing better than I ever could imagine this quickly. It's fascinating. But when they told me they're coming to my hometown on my birthday,

something. I'm right. It's like, okay, I got to get out there and I got to make it happen. And so that's kind of been a really big driver for me.

And a big part of it is me helping other people. And I listen, I get messages, pretty much every single day on Instagram at this point of, hey, your journey has inspired me. And I think I was giving, sorry,

I'm giving a very long-winded answer, but I think that's okay on this podcast. So your journey inspired me. I've been saying the same things for 15 years, but I think, you know, when I'm on top, right,

so I'm winning MMA titles and we got the best wrestling academy in America, I think people, it resonates to do it one way. And then they see you dying and on your, deathbed and trying to climb out of this hole and you're saying the exact same things, I think it resonates and motivates in a different type of way. This guy doesn't just talk about it.

This guy is about it, right? He understands what adversity is. He understands what hardship is. When he had met adversity and hardship, he reacted the exact same way that he said he would. So I'm not just talking about it. I am about it. So me being able to climb my way out of this hole and live a, I will say, relatively normal life, It's never going to be all the way back from normal,

but as close to normal as possible. I think that's very inspiring for people. And so my thought on that was, I don't know how you feel about this guy. He's very controversial, but RFK, if he comes up or thumbs down for him. I've been to dinner with him.

He was a nice guy. He's got some wacky beliefs, but he's also managed to get the food pyramid to be the right way around for the first time. There we go. That's right. You know, it's the same as everybody. So I would think, well, one of the things I think about him is, this guy has an immense amount of courage and fearlessness.

And I say this to people, I say, think about if you grew up and you watched your father be murdered and you watched your uncle be murdered. And you still have the courage to put yourself in the light of fire, right? Because there's a lot of people who don't like him right now. And you watch that happen to your father and your uncle, and you still are willing to have the courage to do that. That's amazing. I don't care what you think about the rest of what he says. That is, that's very powerful.

And he always references the Cisippus, right, where the guy rolls a bullet up, he'll only for it to roll down every single day. And then he starts over. And then, you know, the kind of message of it to me is that there's something very powerful and just showing up and having a great attitude

and working hard every single day, even if you're maybe not going to get the fruits of your labors at the end of it. Because every day that the bull to roll back down. And he shows up. and he works again every single day. And for most people, they're not going to end up without any fruits of their labor.

So, you know, they roll the boulder up the hill. It's generally going to go somewhere. And they may not get every single thing they want in life, but they're going to, if you do that, you wake up with a great attitude and you work pretty hard every day,

you're going to end up with a pretty good life that you're pretty proud of. So I think about that a lot. Why do you think wrestling produces such mentally tough people compared to a lot of other sports? I think it's the best. I think it's,

I speak on this topic a lot, and maybe biased because I run wrestling academies, but I think there is no greater impact on a child's life than wrestling. I think wrestling is a microcosm of life. I think there are two qualities that maybe you don't get from wrestling, but most of them you do. And that is you are going to have hardship, you are going to have sacrifice.

If you're going to lead any type of meaningful life, it's not going to be sunshine and rainbows. the entire of the time. And so, you know, going to wrestling, it's a level of humility because you're never going to be the best one in the room. And if you're the best one in that room, you're going to go find another room that you're not the best in. And it's not like, hey, you're not the best. Go sit on the bench. You can go watch everyone else. It's like, no, you're not the best. Now you're going to get your face rubbed in the mat by someone who's better than you and they're going to force you to be humble. So I think, you know, hard work,

discipline, perseverance, because you're inevitably going to get knocked down at times of hardship and adversity. Self-reliance is a big one. It's only you out there. There's no one else to save you. There's no team. There's no nothing else.

Humility. I think all these qualities can make a really, really well-rounded human beings. Yeah, I mean, I look at a lot of other combat sports, a lot of other sports in general, and everybody learns something, especially the consistency, the routine, but maybe it's a selection effect. Maybe it's just the sorts of parents that put their kids in or the sorts of young guys and girls that decide that they're going to go into wrestling.

They just, whatever it is about making that decision select for a particular cohort of people that are kind of stubborn and routineized and insane. But I don't know. Look at even the UFC, which is, you know, I can speak to that for sure. I'll tell you, now for sure, because I'm saying trained at a mixed martial at a gym for a long time. And we run wrestling academy.

The expectation of the parent coming into those two different places is totally different. Right. So the expectation of a pair coming into asking wrestling academy is, hey, I want my kid to learn how to wrestle. I want them to learn some discipline and some hard work and people will tougher. And you know what? If they do really well,

maybe they'll win a state title or get a college scholarship or something to that effect. and in MMA gym so many times oh my kid he's really tough and scrappy he's going to be the next star

on TV and make a whole bunch of money and so right the expectation of the two different parents doing the two different things is immense

and I think that's probably a big part of this what I would guess what would be your advice to a parent hoping to make their child's

fame and fortune by getting them to do MMA that is about the worst job because I mean, I tell everyone that, MMA is an awful job. You do it, you do it.

This is my estimation. I did it because I wanted to fight people because I like fighting people, because I love the combat. That's why I did it. But if I wanted to have a real profession and real job, I for sure would have been something else. I always walked through someone, if you say Chris came to me and said,

Hey, Ben, I want to be an MMA fighter. What do you think about that? I say, number one, it's dumb. Here's why. Chris, you're going to start training. You're probably not going to take a fight for a year. Okay, good. Then you take an amateur fight.

Your amateur fight says it's going to take you five two years to get through. Okay, once you become a pro, now you're going to have, say, two to three years of low-level professional fight. Okay, if that six years goes perfect, now you're going to sign the UFC. And in your first year in the UFC, if you win all your fights, so this is seven years of perfection. Nothing went wrong in seven years. You're going to make like $80,000. Okay, but other $8,000, you've got to pay your gym. you've got to pay your manager,

you've got to pay taxes. So you're walking home with, I don't know, $35,000, $40,000 at that point. And if you don't live in California, you're walking in up like $27,000. That's not a good job. So, you know, I've only ever recommended two people

and it's what relatively well for them because I saw they had a small migdala and they were just a little different and they wanted to fight people. How much of your success do you think came from talent? Zero. I don't believe it exists. You don't believe that talent exists.

I do not. And this is, you know what? This is hilarious. I'm thankful my wife. My wife is off. You know, we're in Kansas City. We came after I got inducted with All Fame in Oklahoma in Kansas City. My wife is a 104-year-old grandfather, so we're visiting him. So they're actually playing bingo with him right now. My wife and my kids. Fantastic. I know. Great, right?

Yeah, so my main argument with my wife is the talent one. I do not think it exists. I think obviously human bodies have predispositions to certain things. And there are certain sports which are very predisposed. But when I think about talent, I think of the ability to do a complex task really, really well. I don't think you can do a complex task really, really well without a high level of training. And one of the things before we argue this, I don't know if you're arguing me or not. But one of the things I always argue prior is if we were to test talent,

we would need to test talent out of the womb. When they pop out of their mom, we need to test it. Because I always say, hey, if I give you two kids coming to asking wrestling academy. One kid has been sitting on a couch playing video games and parents feeding him snacks all day, never teaching him discipline, he's a roly polly. Listen, he needs some wrestling. We're going to take care of him. We're going to give him what he needs.

But he's starting way over there. If you have another seven-year-old who has never wrestled, both of them, but he's got older brothers. They tried to eat him up. His parents live a very active lifestyle. They're outside. They're hiking. He's climbing trees.

He's fighting games with his brother. He's not sitting inside. They have healthy nutrition with food. These are two seven-year-olds. Neither have ever wrestled. But they are worlds apart right now. From jump. You know, so that's kind of how I'd like to think about it.

So we can debate if you'd like to. No, look, I think that, especially in the sport of wrestling, perhaps something that you begin with so early on in life. I mean, look, some people are literally built differently to others. Some people will respond to training in different sorts of ways. When you really start to ask what is involved in talent, and if you were to think about something like desire to train as a kind of talent, some people just really like wrestling. They enjoy the idea of that.

Other people might enjoy something really short. They might enjoy something that's less aggressive, right? they might be a world champion classical musicianist, right? Classical pianist or violinist or something like that. I don't think that if you just give those two people, even with their desire to work hard and their stubbornness and all the rest of this, if you don't have the desire. So it's an interesting question.

Is desire to train part of talent, right? People have a disposition to that. I would say yes. I say yes. That argument's been proven by the sled dogs. Do you know this one? No. the Iditarod sled dogs, right?

They run that big race across Alaska. So they breed obviously breed the dogs and the dogs that they can have a baby like every year or something. So they don't breed the fastest ones and they don't breathe the strongest one. They breed the ones with the most desire to keep running. And so to your point, there's. So what I would say, what I would say to that is, and so again, like 100 meter dash or something that's a really, really simple skill. Like that is not a very complex task, but a complex path, there's likely a multitude of things that it's going to take to be world class at that. So you're going to have to have, you know, work ethic, perseverance, the desire to work to your point.

By some level of intellect helps, some level of hand-eye coordination helps. Like, you know, there's just going to be this really large basket of, hey, you need X amount of this skill set, but which ones do you need? Like, in wrestling, for example, I was incredibly slow twitch. muscle fiber. My fastest ever four-year gas was like a five-eight. Like I am incredibly slow. But I found a way to make it work. There's also wrestlers who are

incredibly explosive and fast to find a way to make that work. So, you know, like of this basket of things that you can have, you may need, I will say, 20 of 25, but you don't need every one, and you can kind of pick and choose from them.

So yeah, I think it's an interesting topic. So obviously I would I would say people obviously predisposed to being born differently, but I also think the early period in life is often neglected. There's another one. You guys, you know about the Polgar sisters? No. Oh, man.

So the Polgar, I'm lucky. Let me make sure. I'm pretty sure I'm hard for the rent this. Let me make sure. So this guy, yep, I'm correct. Okay. So this guy, he said, I don't think talent exists, and I'm going to prove it. Do you know how he's going to prove it?

He puts an ad out and he says, I need a wife who wants to help me make babies. to be chess champions. And he finds one, right? So he finds the wife to agree to these terms that, okay, we're going to appropriate. And then my kids are going to be chess champions. So he calls his shot. He says it before he even has kids.

He says, and his three girls, I want to say we're the three of the five highest rated players of all times. Wow. So he called him before he appropriate. Jesus Christ. Okay. Well, yeah, if you can pick the pocket before you, you part the eight. That's

fair play. Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem? I don't consider a lot, Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of athletic brinko last night. But they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem? Sorry, man. I just kept chugging away

for the regret to creep in. Never happen. See, most people, like Jared, don't want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete right. off. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They make the best any brews on the planet. You can find Athletic Brewing Co's best selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you or best option. Get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped direct to your door.

Right now, get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com slash modern wisdom using the code, modern wisdom, a checkout. That's athleticbrewing.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout. Neerbeeer terms and conditions apply athletic brewing company fit for all times. Bottoms up. So I'm interested, like looking back at your career, you went undefeated for 87 matches in a row. This was my last two years in college, yes. Yeah.

What goes through your mind when you're on a streak like that? Do you get increasingly more scared of losing it, a pressure sort of over the top of things like that? Don't think about it. If you did, if you did, you go ahead. You did, you're going to lose it. You know, so I actually, I've written two books now with assistance, of course, because I am not a great writer.

One about my life, one is about my sports psychology ideas. But my junior senior year, I actually tried writing another book, which is about, so it was about my first book, right? Never published things I did think it turned out good enough. I worked with this sports psychology PhD, and one of the things we did, we sent a questionnaire to every division on an NCAA champion. in the past 50 years. So at that point, it was

1956 to 06, with a 50-year window. Because I said, you know, I know what I think, but I want more good opinions. So we sent that this questionnaire, I think it was like 12 questions.

And one of the questions, which was, this was really enlightening to me, because at that point, I already had one NCAA title was going on my second. And one of the questions was, when did you go from good to great?

And we were looking for some form of my training change. I got a new coach. I had a new mindset. Just something. Like what made this happen? And, you know, when did it happen for you specifically? And it was really funny because the question was simple. The question was, we want this.

And we got something totally different. And it was the most, it was a question that was answered the most similarly of any questions. Right. So if we got a hard questionnaire, 120 questionnaires back, you know, they're all open into questions. So you're going to get things that are, you know, across the gamut of what's going on. So many of them said, your question assumes I was great. I never reached greatness, but, right? So they're all these people who were, and if you want to look at wrestling, a division one state champion is like in the 99.99.99th percentile. You know, we're talking like

one of a hundred thousand. There's roughly a million people wrestling in America today. There's 10 NCAA champions, one in 100,000 approximately or something. So if you're going to label greatness, they're clearly in it. And they're, they all were saying, not at all, a very large percentage of saying some form of, I'm not great, I was never great. And so as we read through those answers, it struck me, okay, well, I wouldn't stay tight. So by my own definition, I would be great. I've never even thought about it. I never thought. I never considered it. All I was thinking about was, how do I get better? How do I beat this next person as badly as possible? And so it's one of the things where I realized

that power was in not thinking about it. Like, to just be focused. on the task ahead of you as opposed to, and you know, like one of the things that I get annoyed about is, um, is if people say, what is your legacy? My legacy is not determined by me. My legacy will determine by what all the other people think about me. I'm going to focus on every single day what I think I need to do to get better and what I need to do is for what's best in my life and whatever they want to think of me, they think of me. So that's kind of how all these people are thinking is like, I've just focused on getting better

and I'm not worried about being great as you would call it. And I think that's like really, really powerful. Yeah, that's fascinating. I guess the obsession to just be ridden by always wanting to improve is exactly why those people are separated out from the pack. You could probably ask, you know, it would be interesting. Would be to ask people who didn't become NCAA champions, but were maybe in the top 2%, and ask them when they think they became great. and they might be more likely to answer,

oh, I became great at this point. Perhaps the lack of thinking that you're great is what actually induces greatness. I'm sure you've heard the phrase. Oh, man, rest in peace. My old coach Duke group is to say this. If you're green, you're growing. Oh, what was this phrase?

It was essentially if you're green, you're growing. So if you have a white belt mentality, dang, I can't believe I just forgot what he said all the time. Oh, my goodness. Essentially, if you're green, you're growing, Like if you believe you're white belt and you're open to knowledge and learning people, you're going to continue to get better. But when you think you know it all or you're good enough, then you're going to start declining. And so, you know, with our wrestling academy now, we've been open for 15 years.

And especially in the early days before we were as influential. Because now a lot of times we have kids from the time they're real little, five, six, seven years old. But previously we saw certain kids say, oh, I won a sectional title. I don't even listen to you. I'm really good. I want a special title or I want to stay title. I'm really, really good. But we talk about state title and state champion.

These are, they're not even in the same ballpark. So yeah, I would 100% agree with. Once people think they made it or they think they know everything or know enough or they can't be helped, then generally there's some type of be either plateauing feature or decline that happens in their skillability. People, I think even have a sense of this when they look at the trajectory of any person that's on a pursuit's life, the difference between being someone who has fallen off and someone that never made it is kind of fascinating to me.

There's obviously the person who fell off by virtue of having fallen, it means that at some point they were up pretty high. There is a kind of additional disparagement of, oh, you had it and you lost it. as opposed to you never even got it, even though, like, objectively, you did better, but we're so seduced and we were so enamored and enthralled by the prospect of momentum and potential that if the direction of travel is declining, if it's going from you were great to now you're less great than you were, as opposed to you were average and then you became better than average and then you kind of stopped.

Yeah. In some ways, yeah, the person who never made it but didn't get chance to fall off is in a preferable position sometimes. Man, that's one where I would just say you'd ignore everyone else. Because I agree, you know, so many times people you'd have to start washed up to your point, that means at some point they had to be significantly better than they currently are. But time's undefeated.

No one's been great forever. And so, you know, I did retire. I retired for the first time in 2017. I never got to fight the better guys. So I said, if I ever do, I'll come back out of retirement. I'm retired 2018. Then I've hit this year, so I retired relatively quickly again after that. But I always, you know, if someone wants to continue to fighting, which, listen, I'm not,

fighting in a very tough sport. So let's go to football. If Aaron Rogers or Tom Brady, if they want to continue to compete, like, what's wrong with them continue to try to, yeah, they're not going to be as good at 40. is they were at 28 or 32 or something, obviously. But who cares? Like, they're still, they're still elite enough to be in one of the top 32 positions in the NFB, right?

You've got to be top 32 quarterbacks to play on the field, if you're not, you're not going to be on the field. So that's something that's like, well, that's an opinion of other people. And if you want to keep playing football or whatever sport it is, where you're doing, then by all means, like Kavanaugh. Yeah. Well, kind of on that, I suppose you were nearly, you were undefeated for almost a decade, right? Pretty much, almost a decade. But many casual fans remember you for one five-second knockout.

What's that taught you about reputation? I ignored it in the workplace and I could see you ignore it. Yeah, I just never thought too much about it. I mean, for me, I love to compete and I wanted to prove I was the best. And that's why I, you know, I retired. And I said, the only I'm coming back out is, but I get to fight someone rank higher than me. So, you know, when I was fighting through the Bellasquare and won championship days, I fought a fair amount of highly ranked guy. Jay Haran was fairly highly ranked, but I fought him, Douglas Lima. There was kind of a handful, but I never got to fight anyone who was in the top five. And so I was like, I think I got stuck at six. So when I came out, you know, I'd retire, I said, well, I don't want to fight so I'm better than me.

I don't want to fight anyone towards me because I want to try to prove up number one. And so right away, it was Robbie Haller, who was, I don't know if he's number two or number three in the world at that point in time. But yeah, and that was one where I think a lot of people, and some people did advise me, well, don't do this if you lose. People will think differently about you. And I said, I don't give a damn what people think about me. I never started MMA to care about what people thought about me. I started MMA to see if I could be the best in the world at it. And that's what I want to do.

And that's what I'm going to do. And I wasn't, I didn't get there. I got pretty freaking close. But no, I'm not ashamed about that at all. I kind of been, as I was thinking, watching your journey, seeing that first video you posted, which was like inspiring and harrowing in equal parts, you have this opportunity for your life to be defined by a variety of different situations. You had the opportunity for your career to be defined by being a NCAA champion and 87

undefeated fights in a row. You had the opportunity to be defined by being only the, the six best in the world in one championship and not pivoting onto something else. You had the opportunity to be defined by the fastest knockout, the opportunity to be defined by boxing Jake Paul, the opportunity now to be defined by being the guy that overcame death and got two new lungs

and then went back and wrestled within the space of owning a year. Each of these junctures, the world is sort of offering you this opportunity to make your life about a thing. And it seems to me like you're content. continuing to like stick your middle finger up at the handshake. Yeah, that's how life is about. Legacy is defined by other people if they want to.

And if they don't want to think about me, I don't really care. I hope they have a great life. And I'm going to continue to live life the way I want to and as full as I can. And, you know, I don't know if people consciously think this about me, but I think there are a lot of people who, I don't want to say, inspired might be the right word. I, how not basketball I am towards death. Like, I'm going to take a chance.

If you offer me a chance, I'm going to take a chance all every time. And I'm going to tell you, I don't need anything to give it to me in life. All I need is an opportunity. I'm going to take it. And am I going to win every time? No, I'm not. Or any of us going to win every time? No, we're not.

And, you know, there's actually this really good book. Have you ever, I don't know how you feel about this guy. I like him. And I got to meet him, and he's very cool. with his name Josh Matt Caffey wrote. Chopwood Carrey Water, really good, really good book. But then it was funny because he's written a handful of books,

most notable one with Chopwood Carrey Water, but then he wrote a book called Finish Empty. And it was Life from a Deathbed's Perspective, and it came out right around the time I was died. And so I got to read it with literally a deathbed perspective. Because I woke up, I want to say it was made, I don't know the exact date it came out. I got it maybe a month and a half to two months after everything went down, you know?

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The point of life is not to arrive safely at death. stop worrying about things and get to action. Yeah, and there's another really good one there. There's another really good one there. Worrying is like a rocking chair. You can move all day, but you ain't going anywhere. Right? So stop worried about things.

Go make it happen. And that's kind of how I lived my life prior to this. And now it's even like, dude, I'm going to, yeah, that's how I'm going to do it. And, you know, I take my medicine every day. I wear my mask when I have to. I'm trying to be reckless with my livelihood. that my plan is to be the longest living double lung transplant person ever. That is my goal.

Do you know what the record is? 38 years. I'm going 39, baby. Wow. And how old would you, how old would you be? I'd be 80. So, you know, yeah, that would be a good, good life. And, you know, I honestly, I figured if I make it like 15, 20 more years, there's going to be some new technology.

They're already starting to build organs with your own stem cell. I believe is what they're doing. And so that would also get me off the immunosuppressants because those pills over a very long. So you're suggesting that you would get another lung transplant. Yeah. You'd be down for that. You'd go through it again.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, because the immunosuppressants are, they're a decent portion of the reason why life expectancy is not that high because when you kill your immune system, you cause a whole bunch of other problems, right? And so I don't know that, you know, They are literally building organs with stem cells and your own DNA. They're probably not very good at it, yes.

I get the sense. If there's a list of people that they want to test this on as a good case study, I reckon an ex-professional athlete is probably pretty high up. And I don't know how many ex-professional athletes at your level have had. No one's going to be, I'll volunteer. I'll volunteer to have the lung transplant from my real ones to my fake real ones. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, he told my doctor, I said, hey, man, one of my doctors is pretty young and he's, I don't know, say, progressive, like, you could tell he wants to make it happen and he wants to make, you know, life better for all the lung transplant patients. And I said, hey, man, you got any ideas that you think are going to work, run by me, because you're not going to find anyone more disciplined, and I'm down for it. If you think it's going to help me live longer, I will run that protocol, so you just let me know. Fuck, yeah. Dude, you're an inspiration, man.

always were, but this is, it's another level. So I'm really, really happy that you're still here. I'm really happy that you're doing this. Good luck with the fight. I'm going to be watching. I'm going to be watching and enjoying. Thank you. What else do you got going on?

Where should people go to keep up to date with all of the things? Oh, man. I don't post on social media that much anymore. It's Instagram and Twitter and just my real name. It's not Twitter anymore. It's called X. Sorry. But I actually, I have a movie coming up this fall also about this.

This can be exciting. I don't know exactly when it's coming out yet. So my wife's, one of their family friends in high school, was a movie producer, and he was watching my stuff last summer, and he said, that looks amazing. Would you guys be open to it? My wife had filmed so much stuff while I was in the hospital, and he shopped it around, and the Henry's, I don't know if you know them, at Novo Studios picked it up, and so we've done a whole bunch of filming on it, and I think it's to be great,

and I hope it's really inspiring to for people to lead a life where just like I said, they're fearless, they live the life that they want to live, not the one that they're afraid what other people are going to think of them so they don't do things, they don't take chances, and to live their life as fully as possible.

So that's kind of what I'm hoping to inspire people with. Unreal, man. Unreal, dude, let's keep in touch. I'm excited to see what you do next. And let's talk when the documentary comes out. Awesome. I love it. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate you, dude.

you later on. If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom Reading List. It is 100 books that you should read before you die, the most interesting, life-changing, and impactful books I've ever read with descriptions about why I liked them and links to go and buy them. And you can get it right now for free by going to chriswillex.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books.