The Joe Rogan Experience - #2453 - Evan Hafer

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Evan Hafer is a Special Forces veteran, founder, and executive chairman of Black Rifle Coffee Company, and one of the hosts of the “Black Rifle Coffee Podcast.”www.blackriflecoffee.comwww.youtube.com/@BlackRifleCoffeeCompany Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Go to https://ROKA.com and upgrade your eyewear This video is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit https//BetterHelp.com/JRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. What's happening, baby? Everything and nothing all the same time. I was just explaining all this shit that's on this desk. It's like everybody likes to give me something that sits here, which is kind of cool. Like Ed Calderon gave me this.

It's like WD40 with a lighter attached to it. You can fucking blast people. Is it like a self-defense? He's always got these things, like cartel things. That looks like it's 3D printed, yeah. Yeah, I think it is. That's cool. Yeah.

I mean, it's a little portable flame drawer. Holy shit. From two common items. And then I think it was Luke Caverns gave me this. Is that who gave me this? The old Mekhead. It's from the Olmex. Oh, is that what it is?

Yeah. And then, of course, my man, John Reeves, has always given me these mammoth things. I got mammoth. This is actually from Colossal, but he gave me a 1911 handle. That's legit. Yeah.

Even though, do you have any 1911s? No. Yeah. I got 2011s. Yeah, of course. It's a huge upgrade. Yeah, but, you know,

I'm sure it'll probably be able to fit. Like, you can bring it to a gunsmith. It can make it better. Well, you know what you could do. You could have them make one for your bow. So you could put the bone on each side of your bow. I have that. You have it?

Yeah, from Rattler Glit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is another piece. Shout out to Handsome Rob, but Rattler grips. He always hooks me up. Gives me those, keep hammering ones. Yeah, those are cool.

Yeah, it feels better, too. Feels better in the hand. It's interesting, like Hoyt doesn't have a whole lot of option. Like, UltraView doesn't make their handles for Hoyt, but they make them for Matthews because he shoots Matthews. But it's a nice handle upgrade. It really does, like, the way it sits in your hand, It really does feel like a little better.

Are you still putting them on your Hoyt for everyone? The rattle grips. You do? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he just sent me some new ones. It feels better. And the bone, there's something about the bone. It's more tactile in your hand than the plastic.

Well, I've been a wrap in mind with that camouflage athletic tape. Oh, really? Yeah. Beaumar sells stuff like that. He sells specific bow grip. Right. It's got a little bit of tackiness to it. But some people think you shouldn't have that.

They think your hand should be so really. relaxed, that it should be able to slip around your hand so there's like no torque whatsoever on your front hand? I don't like that. I like to feel the dexterity of it, right? I like to have a little bit of relief in the hand in the context of, like, I've got to have some grippiness to it. It's just like a baseball bat or any other things.

Even all of the, like, Glock's in 2011s, I'll still do an upgrade on the stippling and clearly a bit more. But I've also got giant hands for a... Well, I shouldn't be, I shouldn't say I'm small. Like, I am two inches taller than the average Asian woman. So I don't like to brag about it. I don't want to come out with that right away. It just might seem a little bit egotistical.

Yeah, but if you do anything, I think it's just like whether it's with archery or anything with shooting. You just, it just has to register with you. It's not, it's not going to be the same with everybody. I know, I know dudes who just can't get used to finger triggers. And some dudes just love finger triggers. And some guys just have to shoot a hinge. And some guys just can't do it. I shoot them all, man.

Yeah. Like I just have, so I got that dump bag now that I basically all wear on the side. And then I'll do the hinge roulette. So I'll just like reach in there. Reach in. And then I got to shoot a hinge or I got to shoot this. And the only way that you don't or the mix-up part, you've got to shoot the wrist wrap, right?

You have to put that on. So you can't just do shooter roulette with all of that. But that's the wrist straps a little bit more involved. But I love having them. I've been using the wise guy. I've been ever since our last hunt, I've been only using the wise guy. And I'm used to it now. It took a while.

I was like hammering the trigger for a little bit. Like after the thing is it's like with archery, once your form breaks down and then you try to compensate because you're tired, like I think I should just limit myself to one hour. And after one hour, just stop. So is that what you're doing every day is basically an hour? Yeah. A little bit more, a little less. Yeah, but it's when it's more, it's when things go sideways.

Like I'll give myself a few minutes break to let my arm relax. And then I just, I'm just, it's too much compensating because my arm's tired. Right. And not enough, especially because the bow's 84. Now I got the new one that's 90 pounds. Is that what you're shooting every day? Yeah. You're shooting 90 pounds.

84 every day. 84 every day. I haven't set up the 90 yet. It's still at archery-gun tree. And then do you, are you going out to 100 plus every day, too? Are you sticking at like, 85? 85. It's my standard in my backyard.

As long as there's no one wandering around. When people are wandering around, I tend to, you know, like this landscavers, I don't do the long bomb. I've got, my wife is redoing this little garden house in the back so she won't let me shoot at it anymore because she's afraid I'm going to put it. Arrow through her little hut that she's making. She's actually doing all the work, too. She's got, like, a tool belt on, and she's out there hammering away. Oh, that's great. And doors in and everything.

She's doing all the work. Wow. So she's like, you can no longer use this as your backstop because it was just a pile of shit that I could basically shoot arrows at. Oh, that's a bad trade. It's a super bad trade. Yeah, I need a backstop. You got to fuck off.

Like, we were talking about, like, must-havs for backyards. Like, I got to be, I'm not living in a house where I can't shoot at least 50 yards. No. I go out in the backyard. I get my range finder. I bring a range finder when I look at houses. No bullshit. Are you serious?

100%. I've been doing it for the last like six, seven years. Before I bought this house in Austin. When I bought the house in Austin is a big yard, I'm like, we're good. I just had to find a spot. I was like, at least 100 yards from here to here. Have you ever punched the trigger and put one out in the river? I guess you shouldn't tell you that.

No. We shouldn't say that. No, I never shoot towards the river because it's kayakers. Right. You never know when some, because like the kayakers, they like to go like real close to the shore. Well, yeah. If you hear, ah!

Yeah, dude. Like, fuck, that would suck. Oh my God, I'd be in such deep shit. I would never do it. I wouldn't. You would be in such deep shit? Deepest of deep shit. An asshole like me is always promoting archery. I shoot

a kayaker with a field tip right through the fucking forehead. See some poor lady? Like a unicorn running through. running off the river. Oh, God. Oh, my God.

I very rarely, I mean, if I'm shooting broadheads, I really know where I'm going. Yeah. I don't fuck around. But with field tips, I'll launch some bombs. But it's never in an area where there's anything behind me. No. I don't.

It's too risky. I had, so I had an archery, little archery range in the back of my Salt Lake City building. And every, like, and I used to let everybody use it in the company. And then after you've worked for the company, for a while you'd get your choice you get like a staccato or a rifle or a bow and then we're doing we still do right we still do a lot of better and adaptive athlete shoots and the tactical or tactical games and the total archery

challenges so I've given away a hundred bows probably oh that's awesome company do you let them pick their brand and the whole deal no no no we partner we partnered with Hoyt on the last batch and we partner with PSC we partner with kind of oh nice anybody that wants to like go in 50-50 on us right oh great but then we'll make them black rifle custom right so it's cool camouflage a little branding on it but here's the downside of that is when you got a bunch of people shooting in the back and I had a storage facility in the back there were always arrows in this like storage here and so finally my my our general

counsel came to me he's like no more you got to stop you can't shoot any more arrows so a bandit for everybody except for me me Logan, you know, Matt, basically the people that could either absorb the legal fees or at least like explain it away. Well, the thing about archery is it's such a, it's a skill that 100% degrades. Yeah. Like you have to stay on it. Yeah. And you just can't trust that everyone's staying on it.

No. It's even hard for me if I take three weeks off. Yeah. I was having that a little bit of tendonized in my left elbow. so I took like a month off after running season. And you put it back in your hand and it feels almost like a foreign object. I know.

It feels horrible. It's just gross. Until you have at least three or four days of shooting consistently back into the groove, you can't put the arrow where you want. It's just three weeks off. And it feels to me like the more consistent I am in off season, like the entire year.

That's the, those are the years. years where I'm really shooting my best. You can't just get back on the bow like a month before you have to go hunt. You can't do it. I can't. I know guys that can. Guys that I grew up with that have been shooting since, you know, they were nine. Right, but they're really good shots.

Imagine how good they would be if they did it all the time. Yeah. Like a guy like Cam, like he's not taking any time off. No. He's shooting every day. Period. But that's part, he takes pleasure in the pain too. He doesn't take time off because.

That would be relaxing. Yeah, it'd be relaxing. Imagine, just imagine that. Like, Cam Haynes on vacation. His feet up, you know, drinking on the beach. Is that even like a, it's not even a thing? I've gone on vacation with him. Have you really?

Yeah, but when we went vacationing in Lanai, where we could bohunt. So we would bohunt at least once a day because Lanai, you know, you've been. It's one of the craziest places on Earth. Great. For people that don't know, there's 3,000 people and 30,000 deer. Yeah. And they were given by King Kamea, to King Kamehamea, by the, whoever the head dude was in India. He's like, he gave him a gift of access to him.

Is that where they came from? Mm-hmm. I didn't realize that that was the actual timeline. Yeah. I didn't realize that. Yeah. And they're everywhere. They tried, they tried to reintroduce them, I try to introduce them to the big island.

Like I know Shane Doran was all pumped about it, but then they eradicated them. People killed them. They said they were invasive. But. I think they need to be everywhere. they can be. They're delicious. They're the delicious. They're the most delicious meat. Of the deer. Of course. Yeah, yeah. Next to elk. It's like, for me, it's elk and then Axis. But Axis are the most challenging hunt. They're the fastest things I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. They move so fast,

it doesn't even make sense. It's like, how are you doing that? You could dodge an arrow from 30 yards away, and the arrow's not even close to them when it gets there. I had a female bedded at 30 and she jumped the string on her bed at 30 yards. That was my first shot. I realized Holy shit. Yeah, they're different I've got to up my game. Well, it's like

they evolved with tigers. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like you've got to be able to go. Can you imagine how tough you would be if you'd evolved with tigers? That would be sick. Well, that's the problem with America, period. It's like there's

not enough. There's too many running around with zero physical challenges, and they're so soft. Like, there's a giant percentage of our population that is so soft. And if, like, if there was like a, if the world went nuclear, we lost everything, and then it was like hand-to-hand battles,

every country could invade America for running out of bullets. Once we run out of bullets, every country can fuck us up. Yeah, right? You can walk around. I think, well, that's, you know, with coffee, right the best coffee shops or like it's so much stuff on instagram it's so funny because you walk into a coffee shop and if you see the craziest looking freak it's going to have the best coffee yeah what's that about baristas there's so left wing weirdo fucking lip rings oh yeah how many nose

rings do you have how like how many colors do you have in your hair and how many pronouns you have because that's like you're going to make the greatest espresso i've ever had And that's the joke, right? Because I'll go cruise around in Austin for the last couple weeks. Yeah, you see a dude who's jacked with a hand tattoo. He's going to make you a bullshit coffee. It's like, I can make you pour over. I mean, I can just pour it over.

You know? Like, what? He'll make you some cowboy coffee. He's going to fucking one of them tin pots that you put on the fire. Take his sock off or something. Like, I'm good. I'm all set, man. Yeah, I'm all set.

What is it about baristas? Like, how did that become such a less? left wing safe place. You know, I don't know. I think the origin of it comes from San Francisco, Seattle, right? All the, we'll say the left wing, left coast, all of the woke as well. Yeah, because that also drove most of what I would say is the third and fourth wave. Because there's one, two, three, four basic waves in coffee.

For a third and fourth wave are the most recent. And fourth wave would be considered single origin, very lightly roast coffees, and you've been to these coffee shops. You know what they look like? It takes you 15 minutes ago, get a cup of coffee. They typically won't even talk to you. They look down at the computer screen. But it's going to be a decent cop, right? So if you go first wave, which is going to be Folgers, Maxwell House, that's like been around for 100 years.

That's a commodity coffee. It's going to have Robusta. It's going to be darker roasted. that's going to be first wave. And then second wave would be experiential. So it would be more like Starbucks. Kind of second wave would be experiential dark. And then third wave would be more artisan, microlot, single origin.

And fourth wave is kind of a mix of the best in third wave that really activates your senses in a sense of like, now they're doing anaerobics. So they're using things from like wine and beer and they're developing all these different profiles. But that artisan craft, the Genesis in like San Francisco and Seattle from third wave, they took on identity politics and then drove it through the trade. It's pretty impressive.

It's so weird because if you go anywhere, you can get amazing cups of coffee. You're just going to like wade through the wokeism to go get it. Yeah. I can't go there. No. I was at a Starbucks the other day and two lesbians walked in. they saw me and they left. What?

They said, we can't. We can't do this. Seriously? They looked in my face and they said, we can't do this. And they left. I was like, I'm a big fan. Yeah. Big fan of your work.

Big fan of your work. I had a cup of coffee from Starbucks either, which I rarely go into, but I was up to my family. And it was so bad. A cup of black coffee. It's all I drink. I don't put anything in it. I was like, this is like not drinkable. It tastes like shit.

which is like everybody throws a bunch of cream in there and a bunch of sugar in there and you get your caffeine and it tastes like what you like. But if you just try to just drink coffee at Starbucks, it is such a bad product. And that doesn't have to be like that. Well, part of the problem is when they over-roasted because they know it's going to have cream and sugar in it.

But why over-roast it then? Because you can make a consistent profile and it's just consistently very dark and extremely acidic, basically. And that becomes the consistency in the product. Do you think people have this thing in their head that the darker the coffee is, the stronger it is? Yeah, of course. That's one of the huge misconceptions, right? Right.

It's just bucket the misconceptions in here, which is, you know, coffee is not a bean, it's a fruit. So it's a cherry, and then you roast the pit. So the second one would probably be the darker you roast something, the more caffeine. it's going to have, which is absolutely not the case. The opposite. It's completely opposite because you've got two genetic strains. You've got Robusta and Arabica. Robusta is smaller bean.

It's got more caffeine. It's also more bitter. Arabica probably constitutes probably 60 to 70% of the world's coffee, but it's more flavor. It's got less caffeine and it's less acidic in general. And then when you over-roast it, you can kind of combine multiple lots. multiple variants of Aravica. Oh, I see. And then you can consistent,

you can make this consistent profile. So it consistently sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you're going to put cream and sugar in it, nobody cares because they're like, I just need something that's going to serve as a caffeine vehicle for my cream and sugar. I know, but wouldn't that be okay

if you just had good coffee and did that and didn't burn it? Well, I do. I think that's where third wave and fourth, fourth wave, it's more directly related to the quality of the coffee. It's no cream, no sugar. And it's more first and second wave, it's cream and sugar. Because you're going to have to cover up the inconsistencies. Well, some people just like it anyway, because what they're getting is a treat.

It's not, they're not thinking of it as like, I'm drinking coffee. Like, they're getting a treat. Right. Like if you have order a frappuccino. It's a milkshake. It's a milkshake. Yeah. Yeah.

There's tons of sugar. Yeah. Tons of caffeine, too. You're like, you're sitting in your cubicle. You've got like 100 grams of sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine. You're like, you're skyrocketing with just energy until you crash. And then you need another one in the afternoon. Yeah, and then you're just doing that all day and frying your central nervous system.

And then when you get out of work, you just die. You just go home and slow. Go home and melt on the couch and watch some sports, man. Yeah, your insulin's all fucked up. You're falling asleep. Like, it just comes fast. The coffee nerd. conversations just put half the fucking audience to sleep too i don't care yeah yeah it's so funny man

i'll start talking about it i'm like uh i should not because i was a comms guy that back in in my previous profession my previous life and it's so funny because when you talk about communications and just technology in general and you start analyzing like you know frequencies and and spectrum analyzers or whatever right ever you want to talk about communications and just technology in general and you start analyzing like you know frequencies and and and uh spectrum analyzers or whatever, whatever you want to talk about. People's eyes would just glaze over in the team room. And I'm like, all right, well, you guys want to go blow some shit up? Like, why don't we shift the topic?

Because you guys don't want to talk about this. I know you don't want to hear about it. So in cross-training, it's just you try to keep people awake, basically. This episode is brought to you by Roka. And this is important, so don't skip this. I've been wearing Rokas for years, and I absolutely love them. Of all the glasses brands out there, I choose Roka. Roka shit just works different.

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Oh, yeah. For whatever reason. Even if it's like important technical details that will help you do things that are exciting, it's the delayed gratification. They're the same type of people that don't like to do cold plunges or don't like to do certain things that like you're not going to feel an immediate benefit it's going to suck while you're doing it so you put it off like you got to you've got to have a mindset that there's some things that suck that will make the things that are exciting way better yeah like for comics

it's writing like sitting down and writing you know because a lot of comics don't want to write they just want to come out with ideas through the day and then work them out on stage i'm like that is great you can do that but you should also write because the ideas that come to you while you're writing they won't come any other way and those are like like little gifts from the universe. And the only way you get them is you got to sit down with a fucking pad of paper or a computer in front of you and come up with them. You got to sit down and start working and let the mind just slowly but surely pop them out.

How often do you do that? At least four days a week. For hour, two hours? Yeah. Yeah. At least an hour. I try to write a thousand words. So it might be an hour.

It might be two hours. And then out of those thousand words, I might get a paragraph. Like, there it is. Right. That's what I was looking for. You're basically looking for arrowheads in a field. You know, you're picking up a giant clump of dirt and you're shaking it out and washing it over and ah, got one.

So do you try that out on anybody before you actually? No. No, you just like, okay, this is the concept. I'm pretty sure I got something. When I got something, I'm pretty sure I got it, but I don't know what it's going to be until the audience tells me. When you have your own clubs, so you can just try it helps. That helps a lot.

You just like drive in. Matt's Wednesday. Let me try this out. But even when I didn't, I would go to the store. I would go to the, like say if I have a bit and it's exciting. I'm like, oh, I wrote something that's good. I would go to the improv, and then I'd go to the store, maybe I'd go to the ice house.

Right. I bang out a few sets, at least two in a night. Some, you know, you could travel around. Like, L.A. was really good for that. Austin's amazing for that. There's seven clubs on my street now. What? Oh, yeah.

Between my street and the neighboring streets. So you got us, and then right down the street is the sunset room, which Red Band owns, and then right up across from that, You got Creek in the cave, which is awesome. And then you got the Vulcan, which is right down the street. And there's a bunch of other small rooms. There's the Black Rabbit. There's all these rooms that have comedy at least three or four nights a week.

So if you're like a guy or a girl coming up right now in Austin, you can really work. You could work. And they're all paying. So, you know, you're collecting 50 bucks here. My club pays more. My club plays the most. But all these different places, they pay, you know, like actual money for you to do a set. At the end of the night, you got a few hundred bucks.

You can get something to eat. Like, there's all these comics that don't have to do the road now. Right. So, like, they used to just have to do the road to pay their rent and for food. You don't have to do that anymore. You could, like, stay in town and really build up material and then go out in the road. Is the material going to shift? I know it's, like, regionally, you've got to have your...

I'm not saying, like, left or right. I'm just saying, does the material have to shift based on where you're at? So if you're in L.A., is the crowd a little bit different? The people are going to be more, accepting, less accepting, expect... expect something a little bit different. You can't think of that. You can't. You just like, here's the joke.

Yeah. Let me run it. Well, the good thing is if they're not accepting of an idea, maybe you should reexamine that idea and maybe figure out like why I'm, maybe I should figure out a better way to make this idea acceptable, you know, because there's ideas where I'll start it off and it's like, ooh, this isn't going anywhere. And then I'm like, there's got to be an angle in here. And then I'll find a whole other angle.

I'm like, ha ha. Now I have it. And then I have to find an angle, like, what if I was a woman and I was watching this? And I'm looking at this fucking meathead on stage. And I'm like, okay. Like, I got to figure out a way to get them to understand that just because I look like this, doesn't mean I'm a bad guy. Right, right. Like, let me like work this into your head first and then explain it from my perspective.

It's funny. Because I look like this. It doesn't mean I'm a bad guy. It's an automatic assumption. Yeah. You know? I mean, it's an untold prejudice that like men with muscle. in particular, or assholes, like instantly.

Yeah, you're, you've got a, you've got a very definitive look. And then as soon as you open your mouth, they're assuming that you're going to be just the complete asshole. Right. Yeah, I can see that. A mean person. Yeah, yeah. You know, covered in tattoos, cage fighting commentary.

Do you, I know that you can craft a joke because you've been doing this for forever, but is there a certain amount of pleasure that you get now from bombing sometimes? Smoking in. Terrible. Really? I always say bombing on stage is like sucking a thousand dicks in front of your mother. But the difference is like there's probably a guy out there that likes sucking a thousand dicks as far as much. You made me do this, mom.

Come on, mom. 99. There's a guy out there that would like take some, I mean, there's people into shit porn and all kinds of other things. You're drawing the same parallel to like bombing and people are in just shit porn. Yeah, yeah. If you like bombing, you get you're into people shitting in your mouth. It's not fun. You don't want people to have a bad time.

They're there to have fun. These people work. They're working all day. They're fucking tired. You want them to have a good ass time. And the only way for them to have a good ass time is for you to do your job. Right. You know, but it's, it has to sometimes not work well.

And there's just like this moment when I'm about to do a new bit. I'm like, God, I don't even want to do this. I don't know where this goes. But I have to. You got to trot it out there. and hope that you could find an angle. So you don't try those on your, like with your wife or your kitchen. She'd be the worst.

Yeah. She'd be the worst. Yeah. She'd just tear you down. She would just stare at me like, what is wrong with you? It's like she and I have a very good balance because she's so different than me. She's so, but has a lot of the same values as me. Yeah.

You know, like discipline and she's very smart and she's interested in things. But we're very different. Well, it's so funny because my wife and I will walk around, right? And I'm a very amateur comedian to surround my friends. I try to, I try really hard, right? I'm not even close. I'm just like, you know, I specialize in stupid shit that I said. Basically, that's where I'm going with this.

And she, when I get her to laugh, that's like, that means way more to me than, like, but my friends, sure, I can make them laugh. Like, I can make my employees to laugh. I kind of pay them to, you know? But like when my wife laughs, that means it's fucking funny. That's legit. It means, it means something, right? It's like, it's legit. She's like a one-person crowd, right?

So we were walking around. I was talking about, um, have you seen that Bert Kreacher, Freebert? Have you seen his new series? I've only seen trailers, but everybody that saw it loves it. It's really funny, man. And so I was like, we should watch this. You should check it up. We should watch like five minutes.

She's like, this is such a dude show. Fuck you. I'm never watching this. But it's the same. It's like what I want to watch, and I think is funny. She's like absolutely not. But then she wants to watch some like true crime thing around it, you know, a dude that killed his wife. And I'm like, they love that.

They love it. Why do they love that? It's so weird. It's like genetic that they love it because my kids love those shows. Really? They love serial killer expose shows and all these true crimes. And I don't like any of that. I was talking to my daughter about it and she said, because girls don't.

do things like this so we kind of want to see like what's going on in a man's mind that makes it's such a mystery you know what I'm saying like it's such a mystery like most men can imagine a scenario where there's a bunch of people that did some horrible shit in a room and you just go in there and fucking kill all of them yeah most men yeah most men can say oh yeah there's a place there's a play like if someone did something and I knew they did something and they're in that room and they need to go, they need to go. Right. Most women can't think like that.

They don't think like that. It's not inside their head. And then there's the darkness of it. Like, these aren't men that are doing something to someone who deserves it. They're just doing it to vulnerable people. They're just evil creatures who just want to go out and hunt vulnerable people. And I think women want to know that there are men like that out there that are so different than them so they can put it in their head.

Like, okay, serial killers are real. Right. Like, these true crime shows have showed me this. And I want to know, like, what to look for. Right. That's what I think. Whereas have you ever spent a second of your life in fear or fearing a serial killer? Not really.

No. It's not a realistic fear. But if I was at a truck stop and there was some fucking shady dude that came into the bathroom after me and he was like waiting outside and it didn't look like you needed to use the bathroom, I'd be. 100% on guard. Like, there's people that will just randomly kill people just for a thrill and get away with it. And I think there's way more of them getting away with it than they'd like us to know. Like, here's a good example. In Austin, what is the actual number of people who have bodies that have been found in late?

Put this into our wonderful sponsor perplexity before it becomes the digital God that takes over the universe. this AI. What are the numbers of people that have been found drowned in Lady Bird Lake over the last three years? It's something crazy. Is it really? Yeah, it's like 30. I thought this was just a funny joke for Tony to talk about landing in the...

It's like a real thing. No, no, no, no, no. It's real. Right. It's real. So the cops don't want to say it's a serial killer. They think there's because it's over by Rainy Street. A lot of people are partying.

But there's, the bodies keep piling up. 38. What? And they want to say it's not a zero killer? Since 2022, data showing at least 38 bodies found in or around Lady Bird Lake. Separate map-based analysis of Lady Bird Lake, deaths, downtown area reports, four deaths in 2022, five in 2022, five in 2022, five in 2022, five in 2024, two in 2025. So this is Downtown area

These map numbers focus on a specific stretch of the lake While the 38 body figures covers all bodies found in or around the lake in that period These might be right near that bar area on rainier Right, right on Rainey Street Yeah Or other parts of the lake So they're basically saying These guys get drunk

And they end up passing out in the water I mean All you would have to do is get someone drunk enough where you could hold them under water. Yeah. It's not, I mean, if you were a guy who wasn't drinking or you had a really good tolerance or you're a big person, no evidence of serial murderer says the patterns match typical accidental drowning risks, young adult men, nightlife, easy water access.

Or some guy was drowning gay guys. Could be. There's a lot of them are gay. Like a giant percentage of these guys are gay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's near a gay area. That's the gay, rainy street is like the party area where there's a lot of gay bars. That's why it's such a funny joke for Tony. Yeah.

Well, it's a weird thing, man. It's a weird thing because at what point in time does someone have to get caught before they say, oh, Jesus, these weren't just a coincidence. Someone was drowning people. Because I don't think it was a common thing. I think like, you know, you maybe get one a year. Some fucking drunk hops off a boat and doesn't know what he's doing and drowns. That does happen. But this is not that.

This is way more. 38 bodies in a few years is kind of kooky. Well, and how many of those, if you think about it, right, how many serial killers are out there? Because FBI, obviously, they've done the analysis on it. There's probably like 100, 200, 200, active serial killers at any point in time. Always. There's always, yeah. Always has been.

And most of them, well, I'll say, yeah, I wanted to get caught. Or, yeah, it took you long enough. Like, I was getting sloppy. Right? My murder lust took over. There was 200 since 2004. Oh, my gosh. What? Oh, my God.

Autopsy report found alcohol present in a large share of the cases, sometimes at levels above the legal driving limit, which is not much, by the way. The legal driving limit is like two drinks. And police specifically describe most rainy street area drownings as alcohol or drug-related. I've heard people getting, you know, dose. They get roofied and whatnot, and they're like, I've heard a lot too many cases. Never in a city of I lived, I've heard that many people saying they've been roofied. Yeah.

No, I think it's, I don't think it's specific to here. I think it's everywhere. It's GHB, I think, is a lot of it. People are dosing people up with GHB. That's a big one. How many serial killers are there quit? Yeah. How many active serial killers do they estimate are in America right now?

Let's guess. I'm saying 10. You think 10? Yeah. I think 100. Whoa. Yeah, I'm going 100. This is like a wheel of fortune type scenario.

Yeah, man. Holy shit. A hundred's nuts. If it's 100. I think it's 100. That's crazy. 300. Interesting.

Huh? 25 to 50 at any given time. Wow. Wow. Wow. Range reflects killers who have committed at least two murders with a cooling off period and are still operating undetected. I like the cooling off period. Yeah, maybe I want to take a break.

Scrubbing the fucking blood out of the inside of your fingernails. Cereal killings make up less than 1% of U.S. homicides overall. Numbers peaked at around 300 in the 1970s and 1980s. There was 300 active serial killers in the 70s and the 80s. I bet that was because that was when it was like son of Sam, you know. Was it trendy? Yeah. I think it was probably a lot of bored dudes who just didn't like working in an office.

It's like Ted Bundy and Sam. All those guys were like the Green River. All over the news. All over the news. Yeah. It was huge. Why are there fewer serial killers now than there used to be? What was the answer?

That's probably just because it's easier to get caught now. People are probably more afraid to try. Yeah, because you think about all the technology and the surveillance. Like, you get rolled up. Yeah. You get a... I think the creepiest one was that dude who studied serial killers in college. and then went and killed those girls at that dorm house.

You know that story? What was that in Seattle? I think there was Budi. Yeah, it was Ted Bundy, right? No, no, no, a recent one. Oh, it was recent. Recent, yeah. He knew the people that lived there.

He studied, what did he study exactly in college? Like he was studying it like he was trying to learn how to not get caught. Yeah, this guy, this fucking creep. Horrific new details about the final moments of the four university of Ohio. Idaho stabbing. Oh, gosh, so that's where I'm to school. That's University of Idaho. He stabbed the four victims at least 150 times in total.

I didn't realize that was like the case from Moscow. Yeah, that's crazy. Jesus Christ. Yeah. This sick fuck. So this guy, he was studying it in college. So I forget what criminal justice, let's see if we could find out, but it was very clear that he had been planning this a lot. been planning this a long time. And there was also a possible connection to him and some murders

from the Pacific Northwest that they, he knew the people, the people died in a kind of a similar way. He might have gotten away with it up there. Right. So he tried it up there and then went to Idaho. PhD criminology student. Oh my gosh. Oh, that makes sense. It does. Yeah. So he's, he's educating himself on how to get away with it. He was that guy that if you had your comms class, He'd be sitting there like this. He's like way into it. Yeah, way into it. Yeah, he wanted to know all the details.

Pacific Northwest is like, that's a spot. These guys love it up there. I don't know if it's like the rain, you know, like. Well, we had a lady that was connecting it. She came on the podcast and she was connecting a bunch of serial killers from a very specific area that did a lot of, it was mining, right? Wasn't it mining in the industrial pollution? Oh, so it was like increased.

increased lead or something, right, in the water or something? What was the processing of it? Like, what are those? When they're burning it. Yeah. What's that called? Leaching. Yeah, it was lead, but it was other stuff.

It was other stuff like there's arsenic in it and there's a lot of shit. But what am I looking for? Not what is it? Why can't I come up with that term? The plants where they burn all the shit. Power plants. What's the term? God damn it.

Smelting? No. What's her name? Caroline Frazier. Yeah, Caroline Frazier. Maybe Paul would know if he got stamens on here and she could talk about the mushroom or the fungi in Pacific Northwest. Maybe it has something to do with it. I don't think so.

I think that that'll probably stop them from doing it. But her take was that there was all these places. What is the term I'm looking for where they incinerate shit like a power plant, like a coal plant? There's a term. I can't remember what it is. Anyway, they're releasing an incredible amount of toxins in the atmosphere. And a lot of this shit is coming down in rain. It's getting in the ground.

All the ground around there is all polluted. Right. Everything's polluted. And so what her take is that all these people have suffered chemical pollution. And a lot of that chemical pollution leads to all sorts of weird psychological disorders and psychosis and all kinds of shit, depending upon the levels of exposure. So this is why you have. but increased to serial killers in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah.

Yeah, there was a bunch of power plants up there. Interesting. Coal plants and smelting and, you know, just a lot of mining. There's a lot of mineral-rich resources up there. So I should be concerned because I spent the most of my life up there. Well, half of it at least. Yeah. It depends.

I think now they've cleaned it up, though. Like she was connecting it to a long time ago. But there's areas back there where she was saying that they do an analysis of the soil And it's just completely fucked. How long has it been since you've done Seattle? Oh, I haven't been back in a while. I did the Tacoma Dome with Dave Chappelle. We did that right before the pandemic popped.

Oh, okay. And I really haven't been back. It's just like once that whole Chaz thing went down and they locked off the block and the mayor said maybe it's the summer of love. Or maybe you've got some fucking crazy people that you've empowered to take over. a giant swath of your city and you're cool with it. And you're the fucking mayor. And by the way, she is an upgrade compared to their current mayor. The current mayor is, that choice is insane.

A woman has never held a real job. She's been living with her parents. She's 40. They pay her bills. She's a socialist. She rides a bike. She doesn't even on a car. And now she's in charge of what?

It was $7 billion budget? Like what is? That makes sense. Yeah. Two thumbs up, Seattle. Congratulations. You've done a great job. I don't know where those places go.

Those places that have gone like full into Wokeville, like a buddy of mine just went to Portland. And he was like, bro, it's bananas. It's like a complete mental asylum, like spilled out onto the streets, not just the campers, not just the open air drug users everywhere. Because for a long time, they decriminalized everything in Portland. So everybody ramped it up a notch and moved to Portland because that was a place where you could do drugs and not worry about anything. But he was like, all the regular people are cracked. The place, like, spending as much time as I have in Seattle, which I used to live there, I loved that city. Late 90s, loved it.

Oh, it was amazing. It was one of my favorite places to visit. Such a cool spot. Cool people. And then you saw this flip, and it was right around 2010, as when things were really flipped over. And that, to your point, they had your car was your domicile so you couldn't get a parking ticket. So you could basically live in front of somebody's house. in a parking spot and they couldn't write a parking ticket that started in 2010 give a give a take a couple of years

and so i went back to my my i had a house up there for a while and the the week the day i decided that i was going to sell this place like we fly up there i've got my daughter she's like a year old my wife and i are walking down the street and this is a part of the city it's called ballard which is beautiful part of the city tons of like old bars awesome place back late 90s early 2000 But then there was a camper in front of my condo and then there was a naked man with a tennis racket with his My daughter's a year old is Dicks flying around and my my my one-year-old's like I'm holding there like walking away from the other end He's got a tennis racket. He's like playing the US open in his head whatever he's doing and then on the corner no less than 50 feet away There was a half-naked lady like taking a shit and you're like nah time to leave I think this is a

I think we're all good here. We had an issue like that in California for a while. Oh, yeah. Where when the economy started to go south, this is pre-pandemic as well, we started having these campers camp out right in front of our studio. And they would, the studio where we had in L.A., even in that place, it was the warehouse, we had a big lawn in front of the warehouse. And these guys would spread out on the lawn.

So they would park their camper there and then they would like cook out and they would lay out and so like you're in this bill you're asking people to walk past these people to go do your podcast in this big ass warehouse that I had leased and I was like why are you doing this like you can't be doing this you can't just use my lawn as your front yard like this is crazy I mean spread out too they had shit laying out there and there's nothing you can do well you there was oh really yeah we contacted the police and the police eventually they realized this is not a good thing and they moved them all but they moved them to different parts of town and So then you would drive to like the more industrial areas of town that didn't like our place was like semi-industrial.

There was a bunch of warehouses, but there was also a bunch of like foot traffic businesses, restaurants and stuff like that. And so they moved them out of there. But if you go into the deeper industrial places where they have factories and stuff, they were there, like whole blocks of them where you just have campers laying out and just open meth smoking. These people are just full-on meth heads that had just started a community of fellow meth enthusiasts. with campers. And a lot of their campers didn't even run. They could just get it to the spot wherever it was. And then they would steal power, you know, every now and then I'd do it would die

because he didn't know how to do the wires right and you get cooked. Yeah, that's right. It's the same where we were at in Salt Lake. I'd have full-time security out in front of the, like literally in front of the building. Our concern was when we left. It was like if we left at night and someone broke in, it would take fucking forever for cops to show up and do something about it. And so I was like, you can't just can't have these guys knowing that like famous people and, you know, high profile people are going to be at that spot.

And you've got like open meth smoking right in front of the place. Like, this is too crazy. Yeah. They're too unpredictable. You know, look, I don't care if you live in your truck. It's probably cool. If you're a guy who's like, you've checked out of society essentially and you just like playing pickleball all day and you live in a camper, who cares? It could go and do that.

But once you start engaging in meth smoking and then it's always theft. Thief comes with meth smoking. And there's a lot of break-ins in the area. And it got to a point where the cops had to do something. So credit to them that they did. It's almost a difference between hashtag van life and hashtag meth life. Yeah. There's a big difference.

Right. Van life is like you want to be a guy who's not saddled down to one particular spot. You have a place that's in this van that has a bed. You have a little tiny kitchen area. You have a little portable fridge. It's all you need. I don't need a fucking house. Just travel around.

It's probably fun. The freedom of it, you know. Like Alex Honnold, that crazy dude that just climbed that tower in Chinese Taipei, he used to live like that for a long time. He had a big van. He would park it in his friend's driveway sometimes, and he would just travel to trailheads and live out of his van. That's like the minimalist attraction, right, where you're like, I don't have anything other than what's in my band or on my back where life is simple.

I don't have to organize anything. I can stay focused. I think that's an interesting thought exercise, especially when you're younger. They're like, okay, cool, I can wrap my head around that. Yeah. And it's completely respectable. A lot of these hippies, I shouldn't say that in the context of, like, hippie dance around in flowers in my hair. A lot of these, like, climber, crunchy guys,

they are hard, committed, like, bad mofos. Oh, yeah. When they're living on dog food, like, there's this great story about the founder of Patagonia where he went to the store, he was climbing L-Cap, and I'm trying to recall a story from outside magazine from, you know, 20 years ago, but in general circumstance, it's what it is, where he went to the store, he's going to be climbing L-CAP for months,

and he's just working on a specific route. And he went to the store to buy food. He only had 100 bucks or whatever it was. And dog food was less expensive. And he was like, me, I can live on that. And he bought dog food and lived on dog food. It just lived on kill. And yeah, so he could climb and stay out there longer.

His farts were like, bro. Like you wouldn't want to be behind that on this route, right? He would not want to be climbing behind that guy. I'll tell you that. Because I stopped giving my dog regular dog food a lot. long time ago. But when he was younger, all my dogs, I would just buy the most expensive dry dog food. I was like, oh, this stuff is good. And then somewhere along the line, it clicked. I was like, wait, how can it sit there? How can it just sit in that bag for a month? That's crazy. How could it sit

on the shelf for years? That's nuts. That can't be good for you. And then I started feeding them frozen food. And then they like that. But then I switched to farmer's dog, which is human-grade food, which is lightly They fucking love it. That stuff I would eat. Like you smell it. It smells like food. It doesn't smell disgusting. Right.

But regular dog food is fucking terrible for a dog. It's gross. It's not good for them. So if you have to eat that stuff, that kibble stuff, and you're going to travel around, your gut must be going. Like, what are you doing? What kind of chemicals are in here? What kind of preservatives? They're just nuking your gut bio.

The level, but I love the level of commitment. I love, like, when people drift over into, like, crazy to where their level of commitment and their passion, like, translates directly into nothing else exists in their life. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. To do the thing that they, they love.

Fun. That to me is like, you're, you're an extremist and I respect it. I'm like, you know what? Hey. No, I can respect that. Yeah. Do you ever see that movie Dirtbag? No.

Pull up that movie Dirtbag. It's a great movie. It's about a guy who essentially did that until he was dead. This guy just camped out on the ground in front of his friend's houses. Most of the time, didn't have a car. Just would just climb. That's all he did. He was always mooching off people.

And he had very detailed. What was the dude's name? Fred Becky. Fred Becky. The dude's a legend. So he had been doing this from, you know, the 19-fucking 50s. Like, he was an old-ass man. Look at the gnarled hands.

Look at his. fucking hands. Solid. From just climbing. Imagine that guy got a hold of your dick. He just rip it right off. Do you know who Mark Twight is? No.

Okay. So Mark Twight, he was, I mean, one of the foremost names in Alpeneering. He's written several books on it. He wrote a book called Kiss or Kill Confessions of Asero Climber back in the day. Very, very similar. Like, in the context of, I would imagine, the psychological makeup. And he started a gym called Jim Jones back in the day. And like it was where a bunch of people you had, it was invite only.

So you could only get invited. And it was like a lot of special operations guys, CIA guys and professional climbers. Like everybody that was trying to push the envelope physically would go out and train with Mark. And I've been friends with him for years. But anything Mark does, he moves from like, I'm going to be the best climber like alpeneering. I'm going to be the subject matter expert. He was a professional.

He shot Ipsic for a while. So he's a professional, you know, pistol shooter for a while. He's a professional climber. And now he's a photographer, writer. But everything he does, he does it to a level of perfection that it probably drives everybody else in his life bananas. Like he's fascinating. He's a fascinating human. Those people that go really to the outer level.

of whatever's possible with whatever the fuck they're doing are always fascinating. Yeah. Because it makes you go, I don't know if I want to do that. Like, what is the sacrifice to get really good at rock climbing? You never have kids. You never have a life.

You never have a job. Like, this dirtbag guy, like, everyone around him both admired him and felt sad for him. Right. Because, like, he died a dirtbag. He never had a family. And it's like all his ex-girlfriends talking about how an interesting guy he was. He was really fun. But eventually, I have a.

fucking move on like this dude all he wanted to do is like sleep on the ground and get up and start climbing rocks his whole life but there's if you think about everybody around us in their in their profession or their thing right you're at the apex of a your professional your your profession and your level of commitment i'm not like boosting you up i'm just saying like your level of commitment is unparalleled to a huge percentage of other people so you have a portion of you're of whatever that is. And there are all these other people that have that thing

where their pursuit of passion around that specific profession or product, whatever it might be. They're so committed to it that it takes over. It's all consuming. I've seen it because even when you go play pool, when we were in Vegas a couple of months ago,

they're like, oh, we're going to play pool and might come out. He's going to be there until like 6 o'clock in the morning. I'm not going to do that. And Green Tree was like, he was there until like 6 o'clock in the morning. for eight hours straight. I was like, yeah, I could see the writing on the wall.

I'm out of here. The pool is my number one problem. That's my biggest one. Really? Yeah, that's the one where if I ever wanted to not do anything else, I would just become a professional pool player. If I just said, okay, I'm done, I'm done podcasting, I'm done with the UFC, I'm done with everything.

I'm just going to travel around and do tournaments. Huh. I could go crazy. I could go crazy and just do that 100%. Is it just the... The game fascinates you, the angles, the ability to like just continue to evolve within that all the time. You can't ever be the best. You definitely never achieve full perfection.

But to be really good requires this level of laser focus and concentration and an understanding of what's going on. I mean, you're taking a stick and you're hitting a ball into another ball with pinpoint accuracy into a pocket. that is on my table, it's four and a quarter inches. So you've got the cube, the ball, the object ball, which is about that big, and then you got that much space on each side. Just a tiny little space on each side, and you gotta slip it through there. Oftentimes, like eight feet away, seven feet away, six feet away, with English. So you're putting spin on the cue ball, which imparts a throw on the object ball.

So if I put right hand spin on the cue ball and I hit the object ball, I have to calculate for the fact that it's going to throw the object ball slightly to ball slightly to the left because of the right hand spin because it clings to the ball a little bit and shoot. So all this is playing in my head. And then I have to have it at a speed where once the cue ball then collides with the object ball pockets it, then it's got to go one, two, three rails for perfect position on the next ball. And I have to have an angle. I have to make sure that I have an angle for the following ball.

Right. And you don't want to be trapped on the rails. You want to be off the rail. It's like all these different things. You can't think about anything else. Your mind has to be clean. It cleans your mind. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Guys have come out, like the best in the world have come out and played with you. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you hold up? Well, I can never beat them. Right. But I beat them some games. I can break and run out.

So I'll break and run out one, two games in a row sometimes. But they'll make, so like if you have like a score of accuracy, it's called a Fargo rating. It's based on a thousand points as you never miss. I am in like the 700, on a good day, 750 range. But a real world class pro is in the 800 plus range. Like Fador Gorse is probably like 850. Joshua Fillers probably like a little higher than that. they get into this rate where they so rarely miss.

And again, they're playing on four-inch pockets, which is like a quarter-inch smaller than the pockets I'm playing on. Although they are playing on new cloth, which helps a lot, makes things more slippery. They fall in more, more worn-out cloth. Like when it's broken in for a couple of weeks, it gets tougher. Really? Yeah, yeah.

The cloth gets a little less slick, and you've got to hit a ball a little bit more pure, but on the plus side, English takes better. So when you play with these guys, is it one of those things where they like instantly humble you in the context of you start feeling, I'm really confident in my game and then you step in? No, not really. No. There's not that big of a delta between. There's a gap.

There's definitely a gap. I mean, they're just way better than me. But it's a lot of it. It's just time. They spend eight hours a day playing every day. If I spent eight hours a day playing every day, I think I could play at a professional level. I wouldn't be able to beat the best guys. No.

I would never be able to beat like the coping chungs and the guys that are the very top top. Because those guys have been playing eight hours a day for decades. They never stop. What's a guy like that make annually in tournaments? Now more than ever. Really? Yeah, because of matchroom pool. So matchroom, the same company that Eddie Hearn owns that does a lot of boxing promotions.

They're involved in a lot of sports. They've done an amazing job with pool. specifically with Nineball. And they put on these huge tournaments. Saudi Arabia has a big one every year. They have this big world championship where they pay a ton of money. And so, you know, a good player, like a top of the heat player, is making a half a million dollars plus a year.

Okay. And then also endorsements. So they have endorsements, like companies like Predator Q's pay them, QTECH and all these different companies pay them X amount of dollars per year. They have a sponsor for the chalk they use. They have a sponsor for the tips they play with, all these different things. All that adds up. So what's the difference then between, what is it, snooker?

Is that the English? That's a totally different game. It's totally different. It's a big table. It's a 12 by 6 as opposed to a 4.5 by 9. So it's a much bigger table. But the balls are smaller as well. And then their cues have these tiny little tips on them.

They all play with ash cues, which is like a very stiff wood. And they play with like a solid wood cue. Whereas a lot of like pro pool players have switched to carbon fiber now. They play with carbon fiber cues because it's like it's a little bit more dense, so it moves the ball differently. Is it fun? Have you played it? Snooker?

Yeah. I played it when I was in Scotland a little bit. But I only played by myself. There was just a table and I was just whacking balls around. It's very difficult to pocket balls. But I don't even really understand the rules. I would have to really pay attention. I watch it a little bit sometimes because I know all hard it is to do what they're doing

because you do have this enormous table. Their cloth is a lot slower, too. It's not as slick of a cloth. So is it, it's got to be older then, right? Is it older? Oh, it's old. Snooker's old. So the original billiards game had no pockets.

The original billiards game was three cushion billiards or bulk line. There's a bunch of different billiards games. We play on a table, like say it was like this table, there's no pockets in it, and there's just rubber rails all around it. And it's all about knocking one ball into the, other ball going three rails and then colliding with the third ball. Huh. Yeah, it's just about scoring points.

I've watched a bunch of that online too because it helps you understand angles, like as you go into a rail, because the angles change depending upon how much English you put on it, how hard you hit it, whether you hit it with follow or draw. There's a bunch of different parts of the cue ball that you can contact with that radically changes the way the ball moves around on the table. So it's like you're calculating so many different things. There's geometry involves. There's touch and feel.

There's all these factors that come into play when you're playing really well. So that explains why archery is also somewhat of a fascination then because you have very similar aspects to archery and pull directly translate. That's like why those things snap together real well for you. Oh, for me, they're hand in hand. They're basically the same thing. It's basically the same thing you're just doing it in a different way. You know, it's the same thing.

It's like having everything just flowing together perfectly after like years and years and years of meticulous practice. And then it starts to come together. Thunk. Thunk. And then you pull that group out. It's nice and tight, like 65 yards. Like, yeah. You got it dialed in.

It's that feeling. And it's the same thing. is the world goes away. There is no room for anything when you're about to pull that trigger. Whether it's in pool when you're about to make the shot or whether it's an archery,

there's no room for anything. That's what I like about it. I also like that there's no bullshit. There's no shenanigans. There's no personality. Right. Nothing matters. Nothing matters.

Did the ball go in the hole? If it didn't, you lose. If it did, you win. It's really clean. I like that. Yeah, like that's the thing I love about, like, shooting just in general.

Like, if I'm hitting a target, it doesn't matter. I took my kids to the arcade the other day and ski ball. Oh, yeah, I love ski ball. I can, like, spend an hour on that thing. Just like, just trying to get a perfect lob in there. And it's like, I used to tell people, I'm like, I'm just a projectile enthusiast where I love hitting center mass of whatever target. I'm still a six-year-old kid with my BB gun, right?

It's like, at the end of the day, now my tools are, are, you know, much more advanced, and I've got, you know, the millions of dollars of government-funded training behind me, so I'm a little bit more effective at hitting what I want to shoot at. But it still has the same, the same exact feeling. Like, if you're six years old

hitting a pop can with your BB gun or ringing a piece of steel at a mile with a rifle or hitting a, you know, the heart of a foam elk in your backyard, it's the same, dude. It translates and it, like, pulls you into something that's, like, pure, I guess. It is pure and it's also a really good mind exercise. Just like, you know, when you work out, you're cleaning your mind.

There's a lot of what working out is. It's not just physical. It's mental clarity. You relax the mind. You calm the mind through hard exercise. And there's something where you're calming your mind through shooting. Because it requires so much of you, everything else just gets put the fuck out of the way. bills this that you know oh I got to call that guy I don't want to call him fuck I got to deal with this thing oh that's falling apart this deal sucks it all goes away it has to go away if it doesn't go away you miss and then you go fuck why don't I miss I'm you miss because you're distracted like let's focus put the fucking arrow on the knock you know put it in there drop back center it calm relax at that moment like at that moment there is nothing else in your fucking head there's nothing and then

and it goes in there, you get this this nice burst of happiness when you watch that fucking arrow just drop right in exactly where you wanted to, like, ah, and then you go and pull the arrows and you go right back and start it again. And at the end of that practice, I feel way better. It always feel better.

I always feel clearer. My head works better. It's just like it's a focus exercise which excites all your synapses. And then on top of that, it's a mental clearing thing. Like, Fred Barry should talk about that. Like something about, I forget the quote, but it's something about there's nothing like shooting a bow

that clears a man's mind. It's totally true. There's something about archery in particular that just cleans your mind. Yeah, I 100% agree. I used to have this trad bow. That's how I started. And I told you the story?

Like, so I'd stuff the old coffee bags, a burlap coffee bag. It'd stuff them up and fill them up. And then I started shooting a tradboats. Trad bow originally, while the roasting cycle takes about eight and a half minutes. So I couldn't really do anything. I'm watching the coffee roast, which is just tumbling at a big dryer. And so I'd just shoot a tradbo in the back to try to focus something other than the business,

you know, family, whatever it is. I could just shoot my tradbo. And then Dudley was like, why do you shoot that thing? It's so stupid. Don't you like to hit what you shoot at? And I'm like, I'm just doing it for fun, man. Like, you know, I'm a happy, go lucky guy. I just want to, like, active form of meditation.

But what I did realize was it was such a pure, to your point, it would flush out all this negative shit that I was, like, either working through or dealing with. That's like, so being able to translate that to other people, especially veterans, huge, huge transformation for guys. Because they can go out, it's quiet. It's a subculture they can be part of They can geek out on all the New gear and arrowheads And you wade into the infinite never-ending debate Around bullshit around cutting surface area

And fucking you know mass and velocity And like you'll never get tired Because it's like full of its own little drama And it's like a bunch of nerd shit That you can actually have a lot of fun with So much nerd shit That's what people don't understand You know and they don't expect nerd shit

Like real complicated technical nerd shit from archery. You don't think of it that way. But it's like many things. Like once you get into it, you realize like, oh, this thing, this is a learning curve to this motherfucker. There's a lot involved. Like whenever one of my friends is like, I want to go bow hunting, I'm like, do you really? Are you sure? Like, don't tell me you, like, it's not that you got to dive in off of a cliff. This is not like I'm going to go dip my waters into bow hunting. I want to go shoot an elk. like Jesus Christ, do you know how hard that is to do? You have fucking, there's so many moving parts.

There's so many things. You have to be proficient under extreme stress. There's so much going on there, man. Don't tell me you want to do that unless you, you got to show me before I get involved. Take me bow hunting. That's not happening. You are not going to be stomping on twigs near me and you're not going to be going to be not checking the wind.

All these things are not going to happen. Well, they like the idea. Right. Like they like, and there's plenty of people. They're like, they're, they're window shoppers in this activity, right? They're like, they're walking by and they're like, that looks cool. Right. But they don't like the realities of what it actually takes because it's so fucking hard.

And it like ruins you a lot of times. Like, I mean, when the last few years, we've hung enough together like, dude, I've been psychologically ruined by like shooting something or making a bad shot or like just devastating. Missing. Yeah. It's like you can't figure out why you missed. No. And then you're running through it a thousand, a thousand times. Like, what did I do?

Okay, how do I do better? And then you're like, okay. But you're the kind of guy that does that, that does the process in your head and then improves and keeps getting better. For some people, that will ruin their life. Like the one bad thing that happens will ruin their fucking life. Because they spent all these months preparing. They paid for a tag. They hired an outfitter.

and then fling, dunk, dunk the shot, fucking ruin their whole week, and then they go back home. How'd your hunt go? Oh, I missed. You know, like, or I wounded it. Well, and it's a, it's a lesson in life. Mm-hmm.

You can work harder than you've ever worked. And still fill. And still fill. Yeah. You can work for a decade of your life. You can shoot and shoot and train and train. And you can put in all the work and still fuck it up. And there's guys who in the same situation,

as you would succeed. Yeah. So you got to figure out what are they doing different, why are they better, keep in and keep getting better. Like there's hunts that I've been successful on recently, you know, within the last few years, that I know that if I had that same hunt eight, nine years ago, I probably would have not been able to make that shot. Right. I'm not, I wasn't as good then.

So I've gotten better. It's like, I think everybody needs something that you can't master that is hard to do. that cleans your mind. I think people need stuff to clean their mind. And I think that's why so many people are running around all fucked up because you're looking at social media all day. So that gives you anxiety. Your life is not satisfying.

So that gives you anxiety. You don't take care of your body. So that gives you anxiety. You have all these things come back. You're stuck in traffic. That gives the anxiety. Everybody's just mentally all fucked up. And so you go to a doctor and the doctor says,

well, you know, obviously you're dealing with depression and I can prescribe to you this or that or that and then you're on Lexapro or whatever the fuck you're on. And that's the road they go down. And this is a bad road. It's not a road where you're going to improve your life. And there's other ways to do it. And I think there'd be a lot more happy people in this world if you've found a thing. It doesn't have to be archery.

It doesn't have to be pool. It doesn't have to be jiu-jitsu. It doesn't have to be pistol shooting. It just has to be something that's hard to do. that you are on this quest to make these incremental improvements. And through that focus of incremental improvements, you improve your human potential. You improve your ability as a person to do difficult and to handle situations.

So I always tell people, if you do jiu-jitsu, you'll be much happier because the stresses of life are nothing compared to a dude who's trying to literally break your arm. He's on top of you and you're defending and then you get out of it and then you get him or he gets you and then you have to tap and you go over again. That is so hard to do that like regular life becomes like a breeze. It becomes a breeze.

It makes everything. Jiu-jitsu people are some of the most relaxed people I've ever been around in my life. They're all friendly to everybody. They're never talking shit or causing drama problems. They get it all out. I think there's something about, getting the shit kicked out of yourself too, right?

So there's something about facing someone, which I don't do jih Tzu, just, you know, as a caveat to that, but being able to like face another person in any scenario and then compete against them. Yeah. So where everything counts,

and then literally just getting the shit beat out of yourself and going, okay, well, I'm going to step back up, I'm going to do it again, right? Yeah, and get better. That level of, teaching yourself mental endurance. Like that is the thing that I constantly think about my kids.

Like I'm like, how do I be compassionate, caring, loving, you know, the dad that wants to give them everything? And then how do you like translate that into also creating obstacles that will drive mental courage? Right?

Just courage. I think you do it by example. I think that's the best way. Yeah. My opinion is like if you look at Cam Haynes' sons, I mean, he was rough raising his kids. He talks about that.

But those kids are exceptional. They're fucking exceptional. Yeah. One son's a ranger. The other son broke the world chin-up record. And, you know, he runs marathons with jeans on. He's fucking got two savage kids. And why?

Well, look at the environment they grew up in. They grew up with a dad who's supremely disciplined. And just by being in his presence, you realize like, oh, I can achieve. achieve a lot more than other people can if I'm just willing to put in that work. And for a lot of people, that's that feeling, that feeling of like this, the anxiety of the struggle and of grinding it out and like, that scares them and they don't want to do it. And so they come up in excuses or they retreat into other things and, you know, they distract themselves.

And if you're a parent that does that, you create a weird environment for your child because your child is sort of imitating you as a leader and you're a fuck up and you're always making excuses and you get fired a lot or you sleep in a lot or you do things that like are not admirable and then that child you know fuck life man you know whereas you know his kids are probably like Jesus Christ dad's a fucking animal like I want to be an animal too and then you see how people respect his father and they go oh okay I want to I want people to respect me like that too you know You hear what people talk about him when he's not around. Like, well, I want people to respect me.

Right. Well, there's only one way to do that. You have to be worthy of respect. It's only one way to get there. It's a fucking long road. Good luck. Start going. And you're not going to get any satisfaction for a long ass fucking time other than the fact that you're on the path, that you're on, you're involved in the process and you're on the journey.

Yeah, the grind, right? And it's like, it's overused. But the level of endurance. in courage when it's like that trade alone just trying to understand courage like who has it, who doesn't have it, and then the level of commitment to a mission or something bigger than yourself. It's the thing that I think about, I'd say a huge percentage of the last several years, especially you know, as I get a little bit older, right, a little bit further away from the GWAT in

I was with, I'm doing a documentary on Earl Plumley, you know that is? No. So he's a Medal of Honor recipient, former Green Beret. We are at the UFC fight with Elliot Miller and Earl Plumley. Earl Plumley is an incredibly humble guy, like just an amazing human. Like you can sit here and talk to him. You'd never, in a million years, know that this guy had a. earned the Medal of Honor. Never. Like, because one, he's never going to tell you. Two, he's going to

ask you a hundred questions about you and be way more fascinated with that. And three, you know, we were having this conversation. He's like, man, it belongs to the guys. Like, I didn't do anything. Like, it belongs to the guys. Like, the guys, any of the guys, if they wouldn't have been shot, would have done the same exact thing that I did. And I was like, man, that is an incredible statement from, you know, a guy that's sitting here. And so with a stuff, documentary follows his path from joining the Marine Corps, which was literally where the judge, you know, those old stories of the guy that was like forced by the judge to join the military or jail. He literally has that. And it starts, he goes into, you know, the Marines and then he's a force recon Marine and he had gone through all the selections and he got out of the Marine Corps, joined the Army, and we follow his story through the eyes of his peers and his leaders. because we wanted to see from his perspective what do other people say about him through his entire journey. Now, the story from his perspective.

One, he'll never tell it the way that it probably needs to be told. Two, what were the choices that he made throughout his professional life that made the man that was capable of such an incredible act of courage that it warranted the highest metal, you know, literally earned? to the United States military. And that single word, courage, how do you build courageous people? Yeah. Is a fascinating, it's quite literally, it's such a fascinating subject.

And most of it is, it's the man in the arena, right? It's a poem from Teddy Roosevelt. It's like, it's not the critic who counts. It's like keeping up, stepping back in, this commitment to something. than greater than yourself and then making these thousands of choices in your life every days you wake up step forward step back into the fray and like make the active decision to be better

and it's like it's it's such a fucking fundamental thing of being able to any any part of your life if you don't get up in the morning and like commit yourself to something i'm not you know motivational speaker but it's how are you ever going to get better if you're not committed to something, like being a better dad or a better husband or better, you know, better at your profession. And then committing to this evolutionary process takes not only a huge amount of commitment, but mental and physical endurance. It does.

And I'm never going to get tired of trying to figure this out because obviously it's like my peer set. I was having this conversation with Jack Carr and I ran into the airport. We ran into each other at the airport And the way down here And we were talking about Fucking love that guy Fucking such a good dude

And It's not just in the military Right? It's not It's just Yeah, in all of life Yeah, all of life Yeah, you find exceptional people

In all of life And you can, they're fuel Those people are fuel And they And they enhance the lives of the people around them And then if you become one of those guys You enhance the lives of the people around you

and then you feed off of them and they feed off of you and everybody feeds off of each other. And it's so good for you to know that people like that are out there. That there's a guy like that capable of incredible courage. And that how did he get there? What did he do? How did he become the man he is right now? Because God damn, that's an admirable man.

So how do I? How do you get there? Yeah. It's in there's all these stories. Jack and I were talking about because, you know, the Navy SEALs, Obviously, they've got a lot of positive PR over the last several years, but this special operations community has got so much just, I don't know, airtime, right? But there are all these other people in the military throughout, you know, generations of war fighters that have gone out and done these incredibly hard jobs.

And I found this story of the parchey, which is the USS parchey, which is the most decorated submarine and ship in Navy history. They have nine presidential citations. It's the most decorated group of men in the U.S. Navy, like, in modern history. And everything they've done is still classified. Whoa. It's a Cold War era nuclear submarine that was modified and ultimately tasked out by the CIA to go out and do collection. And they were the guys that hundreds of feet down, they would land on the bottom of the ocean.

and the Soviets had these military communication lines that were basically hard lines that would go under a bay so they could communicate back and forth and they felt like they were secure. And one of their jobs, which is, I've never been able to see anything, you know, declassified, but the stories that are out there, these guys would land on the bottom of the ocean,

send out divers at hundreds of feet. And these guys would hook listening devices on those lines, hundreds of feet down, like in cold, dark water. Can you imagine, dude? Like, you're out in 400 feet or 300 feet of water, pitch black, you can't see anything, and your job is to go and put a listening device

on a Soviet communication line in 1986 or whatever it was. And you're in enemy territory. So if you get discovered, you're dead. And none of these guys, that's the incredible thing none of these guys have ever said anything about it Wow decades and not only decades of missions months away from home none of these guys have said a fucking thing they've not been on a podcast they've not written any books and the only thing they say is yeah we did a lot of incredible shit still can't talk about it

unbelievable man yeah I've been able to see I can go out and do shit and like you still have the ability to see I can't imagine being in like 300 feet of water. Pitch black. Pitch black. If you lose a glove, right? Or something goes wrong. How are you going to get back to the boat?

Like, and you're going to have to get back to the boat and then get back into American territory without being discovered. And more importantly, you're going to do this how many times over the course of your career? And does the listening device require them to gather the information while they're at the bottom of the ocean? or does it transmit? I think it transmits. Oh, yeah.

That's much more convenient. It's not been declassified. So who knows? Right, who knows? And they don't talk about it. Wow. They don't talk about it. That's crazy.

I was talking to, Jack and I were talking about it. And I was like, have you ever heard about this? And, you know, he's a retired Navy guy. He's like, no, I've never heard about it. I'm like, that's my point. It's an incredible story, man. Like, these guys are still buttoned up. Not saying a fucking word.

They picked the right guy. They pick the right guys. Yeah, there's guys like that out there. Yeah. Yeah. And they don't have to be famous either. There's a lot of people out there that just, they're, you know. They're just doing the mission.

Yeah. They'd come home, not tell their families. Yeah. Their wives would be pissed off. What are you doing? Out on the boat with all your friends for months, just hanging out, hot racking, you know? Yeah. Like, I can't say anything.

You have to have the right wife. Mm-hmm. If you don't have a woman that can understand that, that becomes a real problem. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of them ended up in divorce. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, that was part of the Bob Lazar story. The Bob Lazar was the guy that worked at Area 51.

Yeah. He couldn't tell his wife what he was doing. And they would call him at like 10 p.m. There's a flight for you that leaves at 11, 15, be at the airport. And he had to leave. And he would tell his wife, I got to go to work. And she's like, it's 11 o'clock at night. He's like, I have to go to work.

What are you doing? It's like, I can't talk about it. Because all his phones were bugged. Everything was bugged. Right. So his wife is like, this motherfucker's cheating on me. She starts fucking her flight instructor. And that's one of the reasons why they removed him from his duties because they're like,

this guy's going to be unstable. We have to see how he handles this because he's involved in this top secret back engineering of a flying saucer program, allegedly. And we have to, you know, keep an eye on this motherfucker because he can't be mentally unstable and have this kind of responsibility because he couldn't tell her. Couldn't tell her anything. You can't tell anybody. Yeah.

And then eventually he took her to the sites where he could, he explained to everybody when he thought that his life was in danger and then he was getting fired. When things started getting sideways, like people need to know about this. He took her out there and he showed her. But he didn't know that she was fucking some other guy by that time. That's so unfortunate. Unfortunate. Look at this is what I'm doing.

I wonder if that actually would. I wonder if she's like, fuck. I shouldn't have fucked that guy. Man, I feel bad now. I shouldn't have fucked that guy. I used to have to do that because for years, you know, years of my life, I didn't tell anybody, couldn't tell anybody who I worked for or what I did. And I didn't have a wife, so I didn't have a wife or kids.

I just not really say anything. And I just dip out. I kind of dipped out from my family. My dad was, like, very concerned because he's like, I never hear from that kid. I don't know what he's doing. I'm like, eh, just working. Just busy, man. But it weighs on you after a while.

You're like, this kind of sucks. Yeah, not being able to tell people about something you're doing. That's hard. Like, you can never show someone part of who you are. You're always going to be a door that's closed. It's kind of nuts. Yeah, it's difficult. It was like my wife, when we first got together, she's the first girl.

Or first woman, I shouldn't say a girl. She's the first woman I told. Because I was like, fuck this place. I'm out of it. anyway, so if I get rolled up, I get rolled up. Who cares, I'm out anyway. Did she, was she initially like, whoa? Like, how did she handle it?

Well, so we were. Did you give her, like, details? No, no, no. Because she had met some of my friends, right? And, you know, the guys from the community are fairly obvious because they look like you. And they're jacked, tattooed. You know, a lot of them are, you know, big beards.

It looks like, let's like the Hells Angels. Right. So, like, I don't work for the State Department. That's fairly obvious. Like, State departments, they're going to wear suits and, you know, they come out of Harvard and they use really long words all the time. They're not like they don't look like they're getting ready to commit a felony. And so she would be around, you know, at our kitchen table or whatever, and you'd have all these guys that look like, you know, their NFL hell's angels. and I look like this, which, you know, is intimidating nonetheless,

but I could get away with it. I could sell that, but they couldn't. She's like, well, so you work for the State Department, but what is it that you actually do, right? I'm like, you're not a janitor, obviously. I'm like, ah, you know, we train assistant advise or something. And then after a while, you know, getting to know her, you know, six months or however long we'd known each other,

we were driving down the road. And I was like, I actually worked for the CIA. And she was like, I know. What are you a fucking idiot? I'm like, yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Like, and it's funny because even now today, right, it's like a lot of my friends will come by. I haven't seen for years.

And she always has the same kind of like eye roll. It's like, okay, you guys are going to be up to like two in the morning. Like drinking at the kitchen table, talking shit about everybody that used to work with. Yeah. That's right. It's like and it's so dramatic, right? It's like it's such a sewing circle at times with people and it's all the same people are the same regardless of your profession.

It's like they're always talking shit and that guy's a good dude, that guy's not. It's so fascinating to me like James O'Keefe stuff. Like how much they bust people that talk about things they should never talk about with people that are just on a date with. Yeah. Like not even like your. wife of 10 years. No, no, no, no, no, some lady or some guy. It's a lot of it. It's chatty gay guys. Yeah, yeah. A lot of it is gay guys like, I'll tell you how we do it. And they're on a date with

some guy and they're trying to impress them and they start telling about what secret covert things they're doing that's totally illegal. And they do it all the time. Oh, it's got, it happens all the time in D.C. And it doesn't really matter what party or wherever you go. You always have the guy. And it's so funny because I would go to, you know, whatever party X. And depending on the venue, it might be like State Department and FBI or whomever. And you can always tell who works for whom. And it's always like they're always trying to outjockey each other for who works for the better government service. And I used to always tell people I was a janitor.

So they would leave me alone. And I'm a janitor at Northrop Grumman. I'm like, why are you here? Like kind of a thing. Like, ah, that's what I do. It's, you know, it's my passion. I love them shit, shit stripes and toilets, man. I got to wipe them out.

But then all the other guys were like jockeying for like FBI or State Department or wherever they're going. And then it's always the guy's like, I can't tell you who I work for. And you're like, oh. Then you just sit back and listen. You're like, let me hear where this guy's going. This is going to be a fun one. You know, like, holy shit. Get a couple of drinks at them.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's just full of shit. Oh, so full of shit. Well, that's the thing about important people. that have achieved a high level of success, everybody wants to pretend they're that. Yeah.

There's a lot of people that wanna pretend they're that person. Because it's so hard to become that person, but you can convince a lot of people that don't know any better that you are. That was a big thing with martial arts. Big thing with martial arts. It was especially in the 80s. So in the 80s when I first started,

no one knew anything. It wasn't like today. Today, if you get in a street fight, If you're a high school kid and you get in a street fight with another high school kid, there's a high likelihood that that kid knows how to leg kick. He might know a blast double. He might know an arm triangle. You might get fucked up.

Like, they might know how to fight. Back then, no one knew how to fight. It was very rare. There was like one kid who knew how to box. It was always the wrestling team, which were the most dangerous people. Those guys were the worst. Those guys were the, they're the hardest motherfuckers in the school always. And I didn't even realize that until I started wrestling.

I was like, I'm amongst these fucking elite. And they're just walking around with everybody like they're normal. And you realize the level of commitment and dedication involved in being an elite high school wrestler, just a high school wrestler. It's fucking off the charts. These kids were going to camps all through the summer. They would get sent off to wrestling camp. They were training year round.

And I just hopped in in my sophomore year. I did one season of wrestling. And I was like, this is crazy. Like the level, I had no idea. I was hanging around with these people. I thought they were normal people. They're like kids that were like little soldiers, like all of them. Thick-necked little fucking soldiers.

And you realize like, wow, they like open my eyes like, Jesus, there's these people around. And they were never even considered martial artists until the UFC. No one really understood unless they actually did wrestling how helpless the average person is with an elite wrestler. You have no chance. It's not like, maybe you'll be able to hit him before he takes you now. No, no chance. He's going to shoot on you.

He's going to put him. You have no chance. You have zero chance. But there was always a bunch of guys who were pretending they were martial arts experts. It was, oh, it was a really common thing. And then you would talk to him like, where do you train? What do you do? And it was always some guy who like learned some missed.

There was one guy. This guy actually wound up getting arrested for murder. And he's in jail right now. Yeah. He had lied to everybody and told him that he was a Brazilian jiu jihitsu black belt. and he was even teaching people and he knew almost nothing and this is like in the early early 2000s

I guess like the late 90s early 2000s and it was just starting to catch on like people were just starting to understand the depth of martial arts because of the UFC but it hadn't really gone mainstream until about 2005 and this guy was telling everybody

he was a Brazilian jiu jutsu black belt and then Eddie Bravo trained with him and Eddie came back to him He's like, man, something's wrong. He was like, this guy is terrible. He didn't know shit. And he's like, and I was like, really? He goes, yeah, I think he's a fake.

I think he's a fraud. And he wound up confronting this guy. And then the guy wound up, he was banging some guy's wife and wound up luring the guy back to his karate school and killing him. What? Yeah, yeah. And he went to jail and he's in jail right now. But he had a fake name.

His name was Raphael Tori. That was his fake name. but his real name was like Ralph something or another. And he's in jail right now for murder. But that's a super funny character, right? Not that guy. But a fake black belt. But a fake martial artist.

What was that? There's a movie years ago where it's like one foot way, the way of one foot or something. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, with Danny McFryde. Yeah, that's awesome. And it was fucking hilarious, man. And it's like that guy, that like character, that strip mall, you know, martial artist, Is it just a piece of shit?

Yeah. There's a guy on Instagram that documents all these guys. It's McDojo Life on Instagram. It's a fucking great page because it's all people doing bullshit fake martial arts like death touch. Like people that can like touch your forehead and you go limp and fall the ground. And you get all their students become like brainwashed and they go along with this whole facade. It's really weird. They're in on the charade.

It's very strange. Super weird. It's like it's very cultish. Mm-hmm. Martial arts are very cultish, especially traditional martial arts. Like your instructor was always sir. You're always bowing to them. There's always a lot of weirdness inside.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like traditional taekwondo, you always would refer to your instructors as Mr. It was Mr. I hated it. I was like just you don't have to that. How many years did you do that? Oh, like hardcore for seven years. Yeah, hardcore. And then you switched over to Jiu-Jitsu?

Yeah, I switched over to Jiu-Jitsu a few years later. stopped fighting when I was 22 and then I was a real it was like doing comedy I started doing comedy at 21 and I kind of half asked still trained and fought a few times while I was also doing comedy but I didn't have the commitment that I had before I'd had a series of events that led me out of like wanting to compete and one of them was recognizing brain damage recognizing it in other people recognizing it in friends and then laying in bed with headaches after sparring sessions going, okay, where does this lead? And I don't, I'm not even making any money off of this. And then there was a guy that I hurt really bad in a tournament. I knocked this one guy out when I was 19 in California. I was competing in the nationals. And I caoed this guy and he never got up.

They had to take him on a stretcher and he was on a stretcher for half an hour and then they took him to the hospital and it freaked me out because I was like, that could have easily been me. It easily could have been me. and that one bothered me because I was like, what am I doing? Like, why am I doing this? Like, I'm trying to win, you know, the national championships.

I'm trying to be in the Olympics. I'm trying to do these things. But I'm like, okay, well, where does that lead me to teaching? Do I really want to, I was already teaching at the time, but I really want to teach for a living forever. I'm like, I don't think I do. There's not, you know, and then recognizing that the martial art that I had picked, Tycoondo had a lot of flaws in it.

It was really good for kicking, but it wasn't the best overall martial art. And when I started kickboxing, I really realized that. And then I started getting into Muay Thai, and I realized the power of leg kicks with the devastating impact it has on your mobility and like one or two leg kicks and you're so compromised.

I was like, oh, this is, there's so many levels to this. So I was like kind of half-assing martial arts like the last year, not nearly as committed. Like I was all in, all throughout my high school years, all in, until I was 21. And then from 21 to 22, kind of half-assed it. And then I didn't start doing jujitsu until years later.

So what's going on at like 21, 22 in you? Like, what are you thinking? Do you remember what you're thinking? Like, I'm going to be an actor. I'm going to be a comic. No, no, no, no, no. What do you think? I didn't think I was going to be a comic until I did an open mic night when I was 21.

And then even then, I was like, this is just something that I think I can do. But when I had bomb I'd be like fuck I should go back to fighting I just get a few people And then you know what happened I tore my ACL And when I tore my ACL I had to have surgery And I couldn't do anything for like six months And then I realized like my body's vulnerable

Like you're you're counting on your tissue Staying intact in order to like live this life That you want to live So I got my knee reconstructed And I was like all right So that was the first knee knee reconstruction Yeah

It was back then Yeah I was 22 I think When I blew it out 21 somewhere around then It was like right around the time When I was like Thinking about stopping competing

It's like my You know Like the universe was like Let me help you Right Let me fuck your knee up real quick So I had to get that fixed And that takes a while before it

It gets back to normal again But The comedy became a thing Where I was like This is very exciting And really difficult to do And so different Than anything else I was doing

where you have to get the people to like you. Like it's dependent upon like personality. Whereas with martial arts, I wanted them to not like me. I loved it. I didn't have any problem. Like, no one's going to save you. It doesn't matter if these people hate me. And if you're looking at me and there's just you and me and a referee, I liked it.

I liked that this person had like a bunch of, at least one of my favorite things was like hearing cheers stop. Like when people are cheering like, get on fuck, yeah, kick his ass, kick his ass. Then whomp! And then the, the, one of the, the, The guy would collapse, then you hear silence. You just hear silence. Especially if you go to where they live.

Like if you had to go to Ohio and fight in Ohio, I just loved that silence. It was this final moment. And my thing was I would always walk away like it was normal. I would never celebrate. I would just walk away like that was, I do this every day. I'm going to do this to the next guy too. This is what I'm going to do to you. And I would always take naps too.

That was the other thing I did when everybody was freaking out before. fighting for sparring, I would go to sleep in front of everybody. I just put a hoodie on and just lie down on the ground and go to sleep. Is that like a, where you try to fuck with them a little bit? It was a little bit of fucking with them. There was a little bit of, I'm so relaxed. Right. I'm going to take a nap here while you're freaking out.

But it was also, I wanted to do it from my own mind. I wanted to just, like, be. I was so in my own head. I was just, it was, I was so in my own, like, what I'm going to do. I wasn't thinking about all these other external things until that one knockout. That's when I really started thinking about what could happen to me. Because I had gotten really lucky where I never really got hurt in a tournament. Never got dropped.

Never got knocked out. Never got really rocked. But I did it to a lot of people. And then I was like, this is coming around. Like, it's a matter of time before I get womped. It's just, it happens. It's just going to happen. I'm going to fight some national champion guy.

Right. And I'm going to zig when I should have zagged and I'm going to catch a heel to my fucking jaw. And that's going to be a wrap. I'm going to be waking up in the hospital. That's interesting that you had that thought early on to where you're like, ah. Well, I started seeing brain damage in other people, specifically when I started kickboxing because I was training at boxing gems. And I started seeing guys that was, I was like a slurry aspect to the way they talked. There was a labored thing to their speech.

There was something about them and then I would see it degrade over time, you know? Like I really started getting involved in sparring and boxing when I was about 19 and there was also around the time where I started losing my enthusiasm for Taekwondo because I just realized the no punching to the face thing in tournaments was so limited. It really, it fucked you up because it gave you this illusion that you could pull things off where all the guy would have to do is jab you in the face. You're like, oh, okay. Like at this distance, you can't do the thing that you normally do in a Taekwondo tournament. You have to be much more aware defensively. So I had to recalibrate my offense and my tactics. And so then I just started doing a lot of boxing and a lot of kickboxing. And I saw so much brain damage.

I saw so much like unreported brain damage. Just weird stuff. Guys would tell you the same story. They just told you like five minutes ago. They tell it to you again. And I was realizing, oh, these guys can't remember. They just said this thing five minutes ago. It was like they were stoned, you know, and they weren't, you know.

They were just starting to exhibit the beginning signs of brain damage. So when you're making those decisions early on, like you're controlling, like being able to control your emotions. So your anxiety and being able to like put yourself into the right mental framework to go out and perform. So regardless. So you're competing in Taekwondo, you're going out, you're actually performing open mics. Is that what you're doing at the time? Yeah, when I was 21. Once I was 21, I started doing open mics.

So being able to control your emotions because you've got to be freaking out a little bit. Yeah, well, the first time, the first time I went on stage, I was more scared than I had ever been fighting, which I thought was crazy. So I started fighting before I could really be scared. I started fighting when I was 15. It was like the first fights that I had. You were scared, but you didn't, you were so stupid. You didn't know what could happen to you. And I was really lucky that I had a really good school.

The school that I trained at was super technical. That was the guy who I trained under this guy, J. Hunt Kim, he trained with General Cheyung-Yi, who was like the founder of Taekwondo. And so it was like the technique was perfect. Like you had to have perfect technique. Like if you did anything sloppy or anything, like kind of, they would correct you. Like, you had to have it down. And they emphasized a lot of heavy bag training, which a lot of schools didn't even have a heavy bag, which I thought was crazy.

Like, we would go and do these things where we'd have. Our team would go and train with another team. Like, we would travel in New York, and there was, like, another, an instructor that was friends with our instructor, and they would bring the competition teams to compete against each other and we'd fight in a gym. So it was like these unsanctioned fights that you would have. And you know, you'd find people that were roughly your weight. And these guys didn't have

heavy bags. And you'd go to their gym. They have like a strip mall type gym. And there was, in their dojang, they didn't have a heavy bag. I was like, this is crazy. You guys don't train with heavy bags? And I didn't make any sense to me. They had kicking paddles and a bunch of different things. But they didn't have anything to

improve thrusting techniques and stabbing techniques, which is like you need resistance. You need a heavy And so our instructor was adamant about, like, if you can't hurt somebody badly with one kick, you're doing the wrong thing. These techniques were originally designed for war. Right. And you're supposed to be able to have devastating power in everything you throw.

That got lost a little when Taekwendo got into the Olympics or when it was on the path to getting into the Olympics. And it became more of like point scoring. They would try to hit you and run away. you and runaway. It was a lot of like fast moving techniques that didn't have the same sort of devastating impact. So where I got real lucky in where I trained is that they really emphasize power. And so the school that I was at was very feared because a lot of the other black belts were like the guys that I trained with were fucking really dangerous. Like they were they were

known for when they would go to a tournament. People would get scared because if these guys hit you, you're in trouble. Like these were dangerous. cats, you know, that were like just wheel kicking people into another dimension, turning side kicking people and crushing rib cages. It was a lot of that. And so I got real lucky that that's the gym that I started in, that I started with, like, you know, you imitate your atmosphere. Right, right.

I was, the first guy that I ever saw hit a bag was this guy, John Lee. And when I saw him, he was the national Taekwondo light heavyweight champion, and he was competing, he was training to compete in the world games. So he was about to go to, I guess it was the World Cup. And he was in full training mode, like the moment I walked into the gym. And I watched him fold this heavy bag. And as I was going up the stairs, I could hear the sound of it. This is I was just visiting this gym.

I was leaving a baseball game at Fenway Park. And me and my friend just walked up the stairs just because we didn't want to wait for the tea. It took so long for so many people leaving the baseball game. There was going to be big lines. It was going to be packed. Let's just walk up here and see what's going on. And as we were walking up the stairs, I heard this sound that I'll never forget. It was like, wump!

Kaching! Wump! Kaching! And the kaching was the chains of the heavy bag. Because this 120-pound bag was flying through the air when this guy would hit it. And the chains were going to shing and rattling. And then it would come down. He would set it up again.

And he was seven, ten feet from me. Like there was this little ledge where he could sit and watch. people and they had set it up like that. So the heavy bag was set up right where people would walk in because it was a great recruitment tool because you would really get to see what people are capable of. In the moment I saw that, I was like, I want to know how to do that. Like, how do you do that? Like, he was doing spinning back kicks over and over again, turning side kicks.

I'm just folding this fucking bag and app. I'm like, that's crazy that a person could generate. I didn't think a person could generate that kind of force. And I trained with him. a lot and I learned from him a lot he taught me a lot and he was an interesting guy too because he'd be like a real street guy like you've been in out of jail he wound up having a substance problem but it was this funny dude from Chelsea which was like a real hard dangerous neighborhood in boston and just a fucking killer man a killer just a killer and when he would when he would

compete people would get so nervous it was crazy to watch because I started seeing I started training with him and going to tournaments with him when I was a white belt. So I was a white belt, and he was a black belt national champion. And when John Lee would show up, you'd see people whispered like, fuck, John Lee's here. He would see guys take these deep breaths because they knew he was in their weight class. Like, fuck, fuck, because they knew this guy wasn't trying to win on points. He was trying to break your body. He was trying to just crush your organs.

He was trying to separate your fucking brain from the inside of its skull. He was trying to hurt you, and he did it to a lot of people. I watched him knock out a lot of people, a lot of people. It was wild to see. So, like, you know, but it was, to me, it was just like this new thing that was going to change who I am. You know, I went for the first time in my life, I felt like I wasn't a loser because I was, like, really good at this thing that was scary, you know, and I just threw myself into it. It was my whole life. I didn't do anything.

I didn't party. I didn't go to, I had very few friends outside of high school. You know, I was, it was my whole thing was just training. I'd get home from school, get something to eat, immediately leave, hop on the train, head into town every day. That was like 15? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, from like the summer of my freshman year of high school. That's when I first started. Right, right like when I graduated from high school and my freshman year, I started training. And it was nuts. It was just like this complete new life. It was so weird. And then competing, like traveling around competing. First is like a white belt, then a blue belt, then wicker my way out, purple belt.

And then all of a sudden, in Taekwendo, red belt is brown belt. Right. And then black belt. And then my instructor was crazy. He would let me compete as a black belt before I was a black belt. It let me compete in the men's division when I was 16. Yeah, it was nuts. Holy shit.

Yeah, it was just they if they thought you had potential they'd just throw you right into the flames like let's see So what you could do so the confidence that gives you it's like finding something that you're good at? Yeah, it was like all of a sudden I realized well all of a sudden I got obsessed with something Where I'd never had really worked hard at anything in my life and then I had abs. I was like this is crazy like I look at myself in the mirror I had abs All of a sudden I had muscles everywhere I was like this is not because you're going through puberty right and So you're this doy little fucking kid, this scrawny, doy little kid that never did any sports other than baseball. And then all of a sudden, I'm shredded and I know how to fuck people up. And then I was doing it to like live humans all over the country, like traveling everywhere. We traveled.

That's all we did. We just traveled. So how does that go from, how do you go from there, though? Like, why or how did you go, I'm going to go to stand up? Like, what was the, what was that? It was really my friends. It was really, yeah, my friend Steve Graham, who I'm still friends with this day, he was a real maniac. He was on the U.S. ski team.

He was a flight pilot with the Navy, or not a flight pilot, a flight surgeon with the Navy. He was an ophthalmologist, like an insanely hardworking guy, like unbelievably disciplined. And he got into Taekwondo while he was a doctor, you know, while he was an ophthalmology. He's a maniac to this day. This dude's had like, he's still a good friend. He's had like 70 fucking surgeries. He's at his knees replaced, still trains, still spars. Yeah, yeah.

He's like in his 60s now. He's a fucking nut. And so he's like, hey, you're funny? You should go do this? We would go to tournaments. And when we would go to tournaments or when we have sparring days in particular, everybody was super nervous. It was very dangerous. And so I would be the one who would break the ice.

I'd be the one who would make fun of everybody and do impressions of everybody. and I always was cracking everybody up. And it was a captive audience. Right, right. And everyone was looking for, like, relief from the fact that there was this tent. Like, we would be on a bus headed to, like, Poughkeepsie, New York to go compete in a tournament. And I would be the one on the bus, like, making fun of everything, just cracking everybody up. And my friend Steve said, you should be a stand-up.

You should try it. You should just try it. And I'm like, look, you think I'm funny because you like me. Right, right. Other people are going to think I'm an asshole. Like, my sense of humor was very dark. It was very crazy back then because I was living a crazy life. And then did an open mic night.

And then I said, I think I might be able to do this. Did you bomb, like straight away? No, I didn't do well. I got a couple of laughs. Like, ha, ha, ha. It wasn't good. Right. But everybody sucks.

Do you remember any of the jokes that you roll out with? Here's my impression of a good-looking girl getting pulled over by the cops. Do you realize how fast you're going? No, do you like my tits? Yes, I do. Here's a warning. It was terrible. It was so bad.

It was so bad. I had so many bad jokes. But I also realized like everybody sucks in the beginning. And then I thought back to martial arts. I'd go, oh, this is like everything. Right. Like if you start off, you suck. Like everything and the whole thing is like getting better at this thing you suck at.

Which is like, I had this guy, Tommy Woods, Dr. Tommy Wood. We were talking about new things about the value in terms of like people that acquired dementia. and one of the best ways to keep your brain fresh is do new things, do things that you're not good at and learn how to do them and get better at. And I think I had sort of just applied what I had learned from martial arts because obviously I wasn't good at martial arts when I started. I was terrible. Everybody's terrible.

You don't know what you're doing. And then you realize like, oh, through repetitive effort, concentration, focused, discipline, you're going to get better. It's a path. And so I was like, oh, this is a new thing. but it's also a new thing filled with other misfits because I was a misfit, right? And it's like, oh, well, these comedians are misfits too.

They didn't have regular rules. They always wanted to smoke pot and drink beer and, you know, they stayed up late and they slept late and they were just maniacs. I was like, okay, I could hang out with these people. Like regular people that wanted a regular job scare the shit out of me because I don't want to get sucked into your drone-like frequency.

I can't live. I tried regular jobs. Like, this is not going to work. work for me. I'm too ADD, HD, whatever the fuck it is. Whatever it is, I got it. I'm like, I can't do this. But those people were misfits. There were these weird,

and occasionally professionals would go up, and you'd realize, like, wow, this guy's a master, like the mastery he has of like concepts and jokes and tricking you into thinking one thing, and then he hits you with another thing, and like, God, and the smoothness of it all, it just became

an obsession. Do you remember the guy? Like, you looked at? Teddy Bergeron. There's this guy who had been on the Tonight Show, and he unfortunately developed a substance problem, which a lot of people do. And I think some of it is just the pressure of stand-up and the pressure of fame and the pressure of constantly performing.

And then it's just also like just live in that dirtbag life where you're just like you can do whatever you want. It doesn't matter. Do Coke. You know, and they're just doing Coke. And like there was clubs that would pay you in Coke. What? Yeah, they would, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick's Comedy Stop would offer. would offer you cocaine or cash in the 1980s. Yeah. I can see that. I can see how, I can see how this, this thing becomes super redicting. And this is like your dirtbag life. It's the, it's that same parallel we're talking about. Yeah.

This becomes the rock that you're climbing every day because this is the audience that you have to entertain. It becomes about getting better, honing a craft, like, and ultimately succeeding with the crowd right in front of you. And they're giving you the feedback. Like, that's very similar. Like, you're either getting higher on the rock or you're falling off. And the falling off was important because the bombings would really teach you. You didn't want that. So what was it about the bomb?

Like, what did you, how did you bomb? What did you do wrong? What went wrong? What's wrong with your material? What's wrong? Like, are you being lazy in the way you're setting things out? Like, what are you doing wrong? And then figuring it out because that pain of bombing was so, like, sometimes it's bad to do well a bunch of time.

because they need to get relaxed. Like you can't be relaxed. Like you have to like constantly grinding at it. You have to constantly be taking that fucking thing apart and trying to figure out what, how to make it better. The guys like, like Andy Kaufman, right,

that would go out and they had a whole shtick and nobody understood what the fuck they were doing. That's a different thing. It's a different thing. It's wild. It is wild. Because it's almost an intentional, you're bombing intentionally,

but it's funny. You got to like stretch it out a little bit to understand what's going on. And it's a different individual psychology. It's a different thing. He's doing a different thing. My criticism of that, and I don't really have a criticism, maybe that's the wrong word, because I think Kauffman was brilliant. He was brilliant on taxi. He was an interesting character. The shit he did with pro wrestling was just bananas. Bananaes. It was wrestling women. It was wild. It was so great. It was so great. But he never was a great comic, right? Like, see, if Shane Gillis decided to go that path and just bomb on purpose,

that would be almost more interesting. Right. Like, here's a guy who knows how to kill. He's a real comic. I'm one of the funniest guys ever. Yeah. And then he starts saying, playing the theme to Mighty Mouse and just repeating, here I come to save the day. Like, that's what Anthony Kaufman did. He would play a, have a record player and just play the Mighty Mouse theme. song and just repeat here I come to save the day and everybody was like well fuck is going on like it was like this weird mind fuck that he was doing with everybody but he never did the other thing right right he never like really entertained and killed like all the evidence of andy coughman is of him doing this weird stuff which again it's not really a criticism right but he was doing a

different thing he was an odd guy who saw this thing and he was like I think I can get in there and do something completely disruptive right I can see that. Like, it's very distinctly different. Nothing wrong with it. I loved it. I loved especially the wrestling stuff. But it's not my favorite.

Like if I had a change, if someone told me Andy Coughman's performing in this room over here, but Dave Attell is in that room over there. I'm going to see David Tell. I want to go see the master. Yeah, I'm going to laugh. And I'm going to see a guy at the top of his craft that's doing this hypnosis on everybody.

And you're just leave there. Your sides hurt and you're dying. You don't leave there going, what the fuck was that? But he wanted people to leave there and go, what the fuck was that? That was the magic of Andy Kaufman. But it's just not my, you know, I don't like jazz. You know, I don't want to go see jazz. It's hard to like.

I think it's kind of cool background music, but I'm not leaving the house to go see jazz. But I know people who fucking love it. So if you think back to Taxi, I was thinking about this the other day with Danny DeVito and Taxi. Like, that guy's still going. I know. It's incredible, man. I know. Like, I was, and it's just like a snippet of taxi came up, and I was like, holy shit.

How old is Danny DeVito? He's a hundred and fifty thousand years old. He's like, Tony Danz was long since retired. Holy shit. That guy just keeps going, and he looked old and taxi. Is Judd Hurst still alive? I don't know. That's a good question.

I don't know. That was a great show. It was a great show. That was a great show. He's 90. He's 90? Yeah. Is Mary Lou Hanner was taxi, too, right?

Wasn't she on a show? taxi. Mary Lou Henner, you know, she has that crazy mind thing where she remembers everything. Seriously? Everything. You can give her a date and she could tell you like 1973, you know, February 2nd. She'll tell you what day it was. She can tell you what happened on that day.

She can tell you news things. She can tell you what she was doing that day. She has like not just a photographic memory, but a complete recall of all events. and dates. I forget what the term is. Superior autobiographical memory ability. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Can remember almost every day of her life since she was 11. Isn't that nuts?

That's amazing. And she's got to be 70 years old, right? 73, I think, is 73? Yeah. She remembers everything. The funny thing is, is DeVito's still funny. Yeah. Like, he's still funny. Like, I mean, like the way that he lands jokes. I mean, always sunny.

How many seasons of that? Like 20 now? I don't know. I mean, it's still. How many fucking, like things is he done? I don't know. Taxi to always. Taxi was when I was a boy. Yeah.

To always sunny. That was the thing my dad used to watch. Yeah. Like, my dad seems old. My dad's 80 years old, right? My dad used to watch that. How old's Danny DeVito? 81.

Still banging it out. Still fucking killing it, man. Still funny. I mean, how old's, I'm not trying to equate Ron White to Danny, but I'm saying, like, how old's Ron? Because he's still killing it. 70? Yeah.

Yeah, around 70. Yeah. Like, I was watching another night. And, you know, he flew back from where he was. And he just, like, came in and stood up there and did a set. Like, it just kind of, like, walked in almost. It felt like he was just like, oh, I'm here. I'm just going to stop in and do this.

And then he fucking killed seamlessly. Just, it was perfect. He's as good as... He's better, I think, than he's ever been right now. I've never... Like, watching somebody that's great. And then watching somebody that's in an... another dimension, like him specifically, because he's perfect.

Like, it's just, it's absolutely perfect because it comes off. It's unforced. It's a conversation. Like, he's just having a conversation with the crowd. Yeah. Like, it's so incredible to watch somebody that can be perfect in their delivery, but then be completely unassuming in the way that they're delivering it. Yeah.

Like, it's just a natural conversation, like I had it. Casual. Yeah. It's completely casual. casual killing. You don't even feel like you're in, like you're watching a stand-up comedian. You feel like you're watching somebody talk and you know that it's coming. You think that it's coming and he still fucking delivers it with just a level of exceptionalism.

You're like, fuck man. Like the guy's incredible. I think it's one of those things where you keep working at it. You just keep getting better. And also he stopped drinking. So he stopped drinking a couple of years ago and that changed everything. He got lost a ton of weight, got way more focused. But, you know, he had been going hard for decades.

And his doctor had a poem, son, and go, hey, man, you're going to die. Are all those guys still, all the blue-collar comedy tour guys, are they still, are they still all doing it? Foxworthy still does stand up. I think he did stand up recently with Ron. But I don't think he tours a lot. I don't know about Larry the cable guy. I don't hear about him anymore. I don't hear about the other guy, Bill Engval.

You don't hear much about him anymore. I think out of all them, Ron is the guy who's still. But out of all them, it was like Jeff Foxx was a great comic. And then, you know, I think, in my opinion, Ron was the best. Ron's just a master. But also Ron is, he loves it, man. Like, he was there last night. He performs all the time.

He's always down. He always, like, I always get text messages from him when I have shows. He wants to come and do a set. It's like he lives for it, man. He's constantly writing. He's constantly working on it. Like, that's his thing, man. He enjoys the shit out of it.

Still tours, still does the road, does better than ever, sells out everywhere. And you're getting the best show at Iran that you've ever gotten out of him. He's better now, I think, than he's ever been. I really believe that. And it's crazy that at 70, he's still getting better. His material just keeps getting better. And it's always working at it. He's always working at it, you know?

Yeah, that whole thing about L.A. or whatever he did. It sounded like he pulled that out of his ass on stage. He was just telling a story about being on a flight. And you're like, holy shit. He just telling me a story. He was in the back room of the comedy store one night. There was a back bar. And we were hanging out.

And we were drinking. This is back Ron's drinking days. And we're having a couple glasses of whiskey. And then Ron starts telling the story about how when he was stationed in Hawaii, he goes, there's a place you can go. And, you know, it was a bunch of hooks. hookers, you get your dick suck for like 20 bucks, man. I was there every fucking day.

And he goes, and then all these years later, I was watching the news story, and all these transvestite hookers were getting rounded up in the very area where I used to go every day. And I realized, oh, my God, I got my dick suck about a hundred times by men. And he was telling this fucking hilarious bit. It wasn't a bit. He was just telling us this story. We were dying. I go, have you ever said this on stage?

He goes, no. Fuck no. I go, you should tell that on stage. I go, Ron, that's hilarious. I go, we were dying laughing. I mean, it was like it was a bit, but it was just him telling a story. Just no intention of ever saying. We're in the back room.

He goes from the back room onto the stage in the OR, the original room. He walks down the hallway. I go with him. He goes on stage. He goes, let me tell you a story about how I got my dick suck. about a hundred times by men. He just goes into the story

it fucking murders murders like it had been a polished bit that he'd been worked it on for years it was just a story but Ron is a great storyteller like a natural storyteller like if he's not

trying to be funny he's funny he doesn't have to like think about it it's like he's just got his personality man He's just cool. Yeah, he's like that, that, um, iconic Western, almost a Western storyteller. Like the guy that you would expect sitting at the campfire, a hunting camp, it's the old, you know, guide that's been around the 100 years. Like, he's killed thousands of animals.

He's packed shit out. And then he's got these stories that you can't hope but listen to. Yeah. And that's what he reminds me. I'm like, man, this guy is so. fucking perfect. And every time I see him, like, holy shit. That's the guy.

Yeah. That's the guy. He's an old master. You know, it's, uh, there's not a lot of humans like that guy. He's the main reason why I was interested in moving to Austin. He was the first reason, because I knew Ron had already lived here. Ron was already moved here. Ron moved here in 2018.

Okay. And so, uh, he just got tired of it. He kept a place in Beverly Hills and we'd come visit us at the comedy store sometimes, but I was talking He's like, man, I fucking love it here. He goes, there's no Hollywood bullshit. He goes, if I want to fly somewhere to work, I'm in the center of the country, it's easy to get anywhere. People are nice.

Food's great. And he goes, he just not around Hollywood. And I kept thinking, man, can I live in Austin? Like, I always liked Austin and on it was out here. So when I would come out here for work every now and then. And I'd always come out here and love doing stand up here. I was like, that planted the first seed. And then when the pandemic hit, Ron was already.

here. And when I came out here to look at houses and stuff in, this is in May of 2020. So this is only a couple months into the lockdown. But I had already had enough. I was like, I'm getting the fuck out of here. Like, I knew these cocksuckers in L.A. were never going to give up the kind of control and power that they had over people's lives. They get off on it, those fucking weirdos. And so I was like, well, at least Ron will be there. I go hang out with Ron. Like, even if I never do stand up again, at least Ron will be here. And then, You know, Ron was also the guy who convinced me that I have to open up a club. I had had a thought in my head and I was thinking about doing it.

We talked about doing it. And then Ron went on stage for the first time in like six months. It was in November of 2020. And then he grabs me by my shoulders when he got off stage because he fucking murdered. First of all, when he went on stage, they went crazy. And there's a giant standing ovation because there was no indoor shows anywhere else near there. It was like we were doing it at the Vulcan. They had some shows they were doing at Cap City before Cap City went under,

but they were like separating everybody by like 20 feet or some stupid shit, like as if the virus can't go through the year. It was dumb, right? Everything was dumb. But the Vulcan was just like unhinged. It was packed. I was like, this is so crazy. This is such a super spreader party.

And Ron went on stage and he had gone over his notes and material and it wasn't even sure. He was thinking he was retired. He was talking about retiring. I think I'm retired. Did this one set. And then he grabs him by the shoulders. He goes, whatever the fuck we have to do, we're going to keep doing this. He goes, you got to open up that club.

I'm like, okay, we're going to open up the club. And then we started looking for locations, like right afterwards. So, like, Ron was a key force. He's the godfather of the Austin comedy movement, like, where this became, like, this big hub. It started with Ron, 100%. Because I know if he was here. If he was here, we'd have my friend. I could go hang out.

Right, right. Because like, even if I couldn't do stand-up again, just I need someone who's just a renegade. I need a dude I can hang out with. That's just a real comic that we're going to have fun. We could just talk shit and laugh. Well, who would you hang out with when you were in L.A.? Him. Him when he was there until 2018, always.

But of course, Joey Diaz. Yeah. And, you know, when the pandemic hit, Joey moved to New Jersey. He's like, fuck this place. And, you know, he was on the same things as me. Fuck these people. This is, and he always wanted to go back home to New Jersey. which was, you know, where he's from.

And then Duncan moved to North Carolina. Like, everybody moved out. But it was like Duncan. I hung out with Duncan, Sugura, Ari, Bert, all those people that were, you know, the mainstays at the comedy store. It was just, there was an amazing crew, Tony Hinchcliff, of course. Yeah. And Tony was one of the first guys to move out here, too, with me. And then Seguer moved out here.

And then everybody moved out here. Just like this wave started. Is there anybody that you're like we started with, like back? in the day, like, because you were, what, Boston? Like, was there anybody he started with that you're still like? Yeah, Fitzsimmons. Greg Fitzsimmons. We're real tight.

Greg Fitzsimmons started one week. I think I started a week after him or before him, something like that. But we're separated by one week. Oh, seriously? Yeah. We did open mics together. We traveled around together. We did road.

We would drive 90 minutes to do five minutes for free. Yeah, we would drive to Rhode Island to stand up for free. We traveled all over the, all over New England. We did road gigs together. Yeah, we came up together. We had so much fun. We just had no money, no career. No even thought of one day having a career.

The goal was, I want to be able to make a living doing comedy. Because we knew that there was guys in town that were headliners that could, you know, grind out 100 grand, 50 grand, whatever it is a year, only doing comedy. They didn't have to do anything else. I was like, that's the dream. Imagine if you could pay your bills with comedy. Right. The idea of a career was like, no, we never even talked about it.

Because everybody in Boston stayed in Boston. Nobody left. And other than like Stephen Wright and Jay Leno, there was like a few people that had kind of, air quotes, made it, you know, during that time period and left Boston. Right. The goal in Boston was just to be a good comic. It was a real interesting thing because it was a real artist colony in the most unpretentious of ways because these guys were all co-keying. snorting, whiskey drinking, psychopaths. And a lot of them were big guys, like these big fucking football player-looking dudes who were

just animals. And they were just wild men, you know, and they had this life that was so envious to me. I was like, God, to be so free. All you have to do is just tell jokes. You don't have to ever show up at the fucking newspaper depot to deliver newspapers or drive. I was driving limos and doing construction gig. I didn't have to do any of that.

you could just do comedy. And that was me and Greg. We would just drive around just thinking like one day, imagine being able to make a living doing this. That was the only goal. And then we both wound up event. He moved to New York for a bit and I lived in New York for a while. And then I moved to L.A. And then he eventually moved to L.A. as well.

And now he's still there. He's still back in L.A. Gosh, I can't imagine, man. like living there and staying there even for even professionally did you see what they just did to the guys that won the Super Bowl do you see the jock tax yeah yeah Jamie you see the jock tax yeah it's not a new thing though I understand I understand but that but it is it's specific to California and this jock tax in California um they were some of the players lost money playing in the Super Bowl they had a pay Oh, no, no, it is true.

I don't think so. No, no, it is true. I went it through AI last night. I don't say. No, it was in, they pulled it up on GROC and people analyzed it. And it's based, no, Jamie. It's based, Jamie, it's based on the seven days that they had to be there. So you have to pay a fee based on the seven days dependent upon what your salary is.

They played a game there in January, though, too. Okay. Maybe this year. Okay, with whatever. The Super Bowl, Specifically, these guys... Jamie's so funny. I know, but this is one of those things that's not real.

What do you mean it's not real? I told you it was run through AI last night. He made $178,000 for the Super Bowl. He had to pay $249,000 in tax. I'm pretty sure those are the numbers. And it's based on the fact that he was there for seven days, so it's a percentage of your income over the course of a year. So if he makes $2 million a year and he's there for seven days,

This is how much money you have to pay. Gotcha. And so the Super Bowl pay is not, it's like on top of your normal salary. Right. Right. So it actually cost him money to playing the Super Bowl. So he made $178,000. But because he's there for seven days, he had to pay $200,000.

Did you watch it? No. No. I was going to watch it just for Bad Bunny, just because everybody was so pissed off. I thought it was hilarious. This guy's like, what do you fucking care? It's like this weird culture war That this guy is

Singing and objectively people that saw it said it was a great show I don't know I'll take their word for it Like somebody was telling me the other day They're like oh you're gonna watch the Super Bowl I'm like what? Super Bowl? Oh yeah Yeah that's sports gotcha Yeah yeah

I was halfway through it or whatever I'm like I have no idea what's going on man I got it's your team If it's your team I get it It was the Patriots I could root for the Patriots But it's like, I'm busy. If it's on, like at an airport or something, like, I'll watch it.

Like, I'm not going out of my way. I'm not going to be like, hey, what's going on? If Aaron Rogers was playing, I'd watch it. Maybe it'd even go if Aaron was playing. But it's like, there's, it's so hard to go from combat sports to regular sports for me. Oh, God. It's so hard. It's so hard.

The UFC last Saturday was fucking spectacular. And it was a small one in the apex sense. and there was some incredible fights. It was so good. It's like that to me is like, oh, I don't have a lot of time for entertainment. That fills it all up. Yeah, that fight, like, I mean, Saturday was like incredible. Yeah.

That was incredible. Yeah, the Mario Batista performance was fucking insane. He's so good. That guy just keeps getting better. He looks like a world champion. And it's like you watch combat sports and the consequences are so grave. what they're doing, the dedication, this moment. You train for months and months for this one moment when this referee is like,

Fighter 1, you ready, Fire 2, you're ready, let's go. And it's, whoo, here we go. That to me is the most exciting thing in all of sports. And it'll never stop being that to me. I love it. Football's fun. I like it. I've been to some UT games.

UT games are fucking great. They're fun. Well, this is like the state, right? Yeah. This is not only like the state pastime, People are like grown up. They're completely modeled to go play Texas football. Yeah.

I mean, this is like the icon of Texas sports. And it's just the enthusiasm for the crowd is nuts. I got to shoot the cannon once. Why don't they let me shoot the cannon off? Yeah. What? That was pretty cool. It's fun.

Being on the field and seeing these guys warm up and get ready and then watching the game. Nighttime games are the best. They're nuts, man. And then, of course, they do the jet flyover. which is like America you're flying over fighter jets over a football game that doesn't happen anywhere else

they don't do that anywhere else they never do that for a fight fly fighter jets over that'd be cool though it would start like maybe maybe Daniel will get it yeah maybe they could do it at the sphere and have like the roof of the sphere

like show the jets as they pass over maybe they'll do it at the White House UFC they probably will I would imagine well they're probably going to have air presence I mean how dangerous is that card going to be Oh my gosh. In terms of like if you wanted to have some sort of a disruptive event, that's the spot. At the White House and you're having cage fights.

And I'm not even convinced that it's going to happen. Because with all the crazy shit going on in the world, who knows what happens between now and June when this is supposed to pop off? Like, who knows? Who knows what goes down? John. Who knows what fucking happens with all this Epstein file shit? It just keeps getting crazier and crazier and crazier and deeper and deeper. And so Rokana and Massey just released the names of these guys that had been redacted from the list.

And one of them is Lex Weck. What is his last name? Les. Les Wexner, right? Who is the CEO of Victoria Secrets? Is he the CEO or the owner? Former CEO. Both.

Both. Former owner, CEO of Victoria Secrets. He's being named as a co-conspirator now. Yes. Yeah, so he's being named along with Galane Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. He, because, you know, he runs this modeling, Victoria Secrets, Hot Girls, the whole deal. Somehow or another, he's involved in this. And they had redacted his name up until now, right?

I'm pretty sure. Yeah, that I, well, two things. I don't think anybody, his existence as a co-conspirator is new information. But it's confirmed now, right? It was people I think are up in arms is that it wasn't supposed to be blocked out from the file. Exactly. He's not a victim. Right.

He's not a victim. So why was his name redacted? Right. And so they got it unredacted. And now he's being named. I think he's the funder of most of it is what it's here. What? Right.

So people knew that there was something going on, but he had gifted Jeffrey Epstein this insane house in Manhattan. So this is like a $60 million house in Manhattan. You know the house where you go into it? and you see Bill Clinton in a dress. You know that picture that we have out in the lobby? That's from the foyer of his house. Right. That Jeffrey Epstein was gifted by Les Wexner.

By the way, Whitney Webb posted on her Twitter about Les Wexner being a sex trafficker, a child sex trafficker in 2020. So you can find that. Like that crazy chick is right about everything She's She was kidnapped Or she was claimed she was kidnapped It was in his house in New Albany Where I was Columbus

She claimed she was being held there For I don't know Two weeks or something Like doing art She called her dad to try to get out of there Or something like that Oh Jesus Yeah

And that's like his involvement Is like brand new information This was in Columbus Ohio New Albany is where All the like that's where his house is The giant, the biggest house in Ohio, I think. It's a suburb of Columbus. It'd be like Westlake to...

Right, right, right. People think he's still there. That's where Epstein's living, but that's not the factory. Well, the people that think he's alive, I think they think he's in Israel, don't they? Well, there's some definitely... I think they're AI photos. They might not be.

Oh, I saw that, yeah. People think he's been seen or spotted around town. Wouldn't you think he'd get some surgery? You would think that he would have to. Yeah. Like, he's probably one of the most recognizable faces in the world at this point. Yeah. After so much air time.

You'd have to get some surgery if you wanted to still. I mean, how would you keep that? This is the tweet. Your reminder that Leslie Wexner financed the mass rape and trafficking of thousands of American children for over a decade. And right now, he is sitting in a 26K square foot mansion in New Albany, Ohio, thinking that he is above the law. She tweeted this in April 28 of 2020. How crazy is that? Holy shit.

She's like the most prolific of all the conspiracy there's the most well-read, the one with the most recall, the one that's the most quoted. I don't know how she's so good at it. We're trying to get her on. I don't know how she's so good and what her background is, how she finds all this information. but she's always way ahead of all this stuff. Yeah, I mean, 2020. That's crazy. That's fucking way ahead of everybody.

Crazy. Bro. But these files, just what's come out so far. And the fact that they redacted men, these powerful billionaire guys, their names were redacted. Like there's one of them where he's talking about pandemic planning. What? Jeffrey Epstein is talking about pandemic planning to someone named Bill whose name is redacted. It's like, why are you redacting the guy's name that you're talking about planning for a pandemic, like what to do in response to a pandemic?

Why is his name retracted? So redacted, rather. When are they supposed to testify? When are the Clinton supposed to testify? Would you say they're going to two weeks? Do you say the aliens are? are coming in the next two weeks. They're going to land.

Something's going to happen. Just before that testifying. Yeah, it'll be we bomb Iran. Aliens show up, maybe at the same time. Yeah. Fuck, man. Outside of this, because this, I mean, obviously this conspiracy, it's not a theory anymore, right?

Because they're connecting the networks. They're like exposing a lot of this. Like, when you look at your total conspiracy catalog of things that you like to dive into outside of aliens because everybody knows that. What are your other ones that you like? Well, aliens is the most fun one. Yeah.

This is the one that I hate the most. Yeah. Because this one scares the shit out of me. Because the fear of, you know, we talked about this yesterday with Roger Avery, the fear of these like literally demonic human beings that are running the world and don't give a fuck about human lives and enjoy watching people being tortured,

enjoy watching people killed, participating in ritual sacrifice of people and they do it in order to show that you're a part of a team and you're we know that that has always historically been a real thing and it's been something that you look at in history you go god it's so sick it's so twisted it's so disgusting and everybody wants to think thank god that's not happening now but then when you realize like that might have been happening now here's one of the craziest ones the day he was indicted in 2018 The very next day, he ordered 330 gallons of sulfuric acid. What?

Yes. He ordered 65-gallon drums of sulfuric acid to be delivered to the island. And so there was a lot of people online saying, oh, that was probably for his desalination plant. It's probably like a regular thing they need to order. So then someone else did a deep dive and said, no, this is the first time this was ever ordered. I checked that again. I saw there was two other ones. Oh, there was two other orders? In 2017 and 2015.

Oh, so that got it was wrong. It could have been the first one from that company potentially. Ah, that makes sense. So maybe it was for this desalination equipment, but also that's a lot of sulfuric acid. You know, if I needed five gallons for my desalination equipment, but 239 gallons or whatever it is to burn kids. Yeah. to fucking get rid of bodies well it's kind of hard to

to think of any other use for acid just in general right immediately you think immediately yeah the other orders were they that large because here's the other thing how long has they been killing people how long have they've been boiling bodies to get rid of them I mean if if you do have for lack of better

words let's call it a service will you allow rich people from foreign governments or whatever you set it up. I can give you whatever you want. What I want to do is I want to kill a hooker. Like I want to kill her, I want to torture her, and I want to get rid of the body. I want to do that.

Like, can you do that? There was one where this one guy is saying to him, thank you for the torture video. It's literally a part of an email. The actual quote, thank you for the torture like enjoyed the torture video it's so gross

and they think they've identified that guy and what do they think he's a sultan I was trying to find that right now I think because Massey said he got the he looked that one up I believe because it's weird they're letting them into the files one by one for

like an hour at a time what? Yeah bro the Congress people can go look at specific there's millions of files you got to tell them which file you want specifically to look at It's crazy. The whole thing is crazy because like why why have you protected people? So we know Sultan Ahmed bin Suleiman Suleim sent the torture video to Epstein. This is in 2009. So Epstein was saying that. Where are you? Are you okay? I love the torture video. I am in China. I'll be in the U.S. Second World

week of May. What the fuck, man. And why is his name redacted? Why would your name be redacted if you're not a victim? Like, this is what's crazy about all this. Like, how come you redact some people and you don't redact other people? Like, what is this? This is not good. No one of this is good for this administration. It looks fucking terrible. It looks terrible. It looks terrible for Trump when he was saying that none of this was real. This is all a hoax. This is not a hoax. Like, did you not know? Maybe he didn't know if you want to be charitable. But this is definitely not a hoax.

And if you've got redacted people's names and these people aren't victims, you're not protecting the victim. So what are you doing? Right. And how come all this shit is not released? You would think that all of it would just, like get rid of all of it. Just expel it all. It's crazy. So this is the conspiracy that drives me the most crazy because I don't like it.

Julian Dory talked about this yesterday in his podcast. I just saw a clip going around. American billionaire Tom Pritzker had an email to him that says... You mean Julian Dorsey? Dorsey, yeah, sorry, sorry. Oh, okay. I'm in a remote valley of Afghanistan. It's my birthday wish with boys with toys.

Spent time with Petraeus yesterday, and he loaned me a chopper. Actually, two with one as a backup. Can't call till tomorrow. Yeah, but boys with toys could mean like military guys with weapons. That's what I assume. That's not what the video, they thought they were talking about little boys because they were in Afghanistan. But the birthday wish is an interesting part. It's my birthday wish.

In a remote valley. In a remote valley in Afghanistan. And he's telling an ex-being about it. But it also loaned me a chopper. Well, actually, this is, yeah, this is two Epstein. Right. But the thing is, like, the loan me a chopper, my birthday wish. His birthday wish might have been to like gun down villagers.

I know. That's what I thought they were talking about. not go play with little kids. Yeah. I just want to go kill people and they want to do it. I mean, I bet that. Look, he loaned me a chopper. It doesn't sound like I came in there to fuck kids.

It's like my birthday wish sounds like I'm here to fuck people up. Right. Or I'm just out here to tour Afghanistan, which, I mean, I don't know why anybody would want to tour Afghanistan. But it seems like... The only reason why I would be interested in going to Afghanistan is the stuff that Jason Everman told me about. Like when he showed me all those ancient Greek ruins, which is the only... nuts where archaeologists have no access to them. Right.

That stuff's crazy. No, it's incredible. All from Alexander the Great. Like there's immense ruins in Afghanistan of cities. They had Greek cities like beautiful columns and incredible construction in Afghanistan that are like, how old? When was Alexander the Great? What was that?

The 1400s? What was that? That's 1,000 plus, right? So, like, I mean, what year was it? What year was Alexander the Great? I believe it was actually, what, 300? I don't know, Jamie. 300 AD?

300 BC. 300 BC. Wow. It was like 600 years off. Wow, I was way off. 300 BC and they're building these immense, beautiful Roman cities. Mm-hmm. Greek Roman cities.

Like, it looks like, it looks like you're either in Rome or, You're in ancient Greece, like incredible architecture. Well, I think up until the Soviets invaded, I mean, Afghanistan was kind of like the crown jewel, right? They referred to it as the Beirut of Central Asia because it was, you had a very eclectic group of people. And Kabul was known as like this beautiful city. And obviously, post-occupation, the Soviets had killed, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. And then with the buildup and the devastation of the devastation of, not only a military occupation of the Soviets,

and then us coming in, you know, soon after, obviously, with when the Moulas took charge, it basically went completely to the other side or the extreme and the Taliban, and then us coming in. They've had nothing but decades of war. It's completely eviscerated any assemblance of intellectualism. There's no, like, infrastructure of technology or advancement.

Like, the universities were essentially demolished. So everything was. ruined. So you're talking about, I mean, at least several hundreds, hundreds of years of advancement that just were eliminated in three decades. And just a complete collapse of society. Yeah. I mean, you would, I would spend a lot of time just trying to understand the place, right? And you would have, you leave an airfield where we have the most advanced technology in the, the world, right? Like we're, you know, launching helicopters and jets and any and all pieces of technology you could imagine. And you would drive, you know, into these valleys or,

you know, from one place to another, and you would have horse-drawn carriages of, you know, two mules and they're carrying something in the background. And it's like you have the same cars are on the road with a Toyota Corolla and you have a mule pulling an old Toyota Corolla or something, right? So you'd have an entire society of like basically Amish, Amish level people. And then, you know, Americans right next door in an airbase are launching the most advanced technology and warfighting capability in the world. And so you'd see everything from point A to point B. you would encounter huge percentage of people are illiterate.

Like no schooling, no advancement for girls. You know, that children were seen more as like a beast of burden. And a lot of places they would actually value their sheep more than they would value their children. So they would be looking for reparations or, you know, to get paid for quite possibly the sheep that you destroy. on target, but their kids, not, not really. So you had a really clear picture to what civilization was like 500 years before that or a thousand years at certain times. And you'd see it too, right?

Because you'd have Buddhist architecture, Greek architecture, and then you'd have the standard kind of Taliban infrastructure. You'd have the Soviet architecture from their invasion. You'd have all these different layers of military occupation. You could see them all within two weeks. Wow. I was up in this place called the Pangir, and the lion of the panjir was this general Massoud.

And he was killed actually on September 10th before September 11th. So he's part of the actual September 11th plot. He was killed by a suicide bomber as they were trying to do a documentary. and they brought in a camera packed full of explosives and killed them the day before, which ultimately was part of the September 11th attacks, because they knew that Massoud was the connection to the U.S. invasion or the U.S. invasion would be involving Massoud. And the Panjir is this beautiful, like it's incredible river valley.

And it's also part of where the Soviets would just get their asses. handed to him because we had the Majadine was being funded by the CIA at the time, obviously, back during the Soviet invasion. And they would ambush the Soviets on these windy mountain roads next to this river and they would cut them off basically on the front and the back of the convoy and then destroy the entire convoy in between and they'd just shove all the shit that was destroyed in the river. So the river would have rapids and not all the rapids were made from like rocks and natural, you know, natural occurring rapids.

They were made by like T-52s and Russian tanks and all this like this war material that was pushed into the river by the Panjuri's. Wow. And I went up to his grave. He's really incredible guy when you like read about him and like all of his like combat accomplishments against the Soviets.

But the Panjur Valley is like such a beautiful place And we used to joke around about how, gosh, we'd love to come back here and, like, go skiing or, like, recreate in Panjure Valley because it looks like Colorado or someplace incredible and beautiful. And at the same time, you're in Afghanistan, so you're surrounded by just the chaos and the devastation of war with this one tiny little piece, this, like little sliver in the middle of nowhere. It's absolutely beautiful. And some of the rapids are made by T-52s. And as a whitewater guy, I was like, man, I'd like to. kayak this. That'd be cool. If you were a person who's a wealthy person that your desire was to go gun people down,

like there are people that will provide you with that service. Like there was a thing with the Soviets, or not the Soviets, with Russians, where they're allowing people to kill pirates. Yeah. Like you would pay a bunch of money and they'd take you to where the pirates are and you'd go out in a ship and with a 50 cow, just fucking blow up pirate boats. Yeah, I'd heard about that. I'd heard about there were places that you could go as, you know, a combat tourist, basically.

Has to be. Yeah. There has to be places. It's all going to be like Russian or Somalian or a connection between the two, right? So you'd have these like rogue elements and places where there is an organized government. There's essentially just chaos and anarchy. Which is Afghanistan. Correct.

Yeah. Yeah. So someone from the western side was providing that service to someone and letting them borrow a chance. Chopper. Well, that was Petraeus. So they were saying, like, Petraeus was the commanding general of the time, which I would find it, it's kind of hard to believe. Hard to believe. Yeah, that a general that's in charge of combat operations in Afghanistan, we'd loan just a rich guy helicopter. And it sounds correct in the context of we owe plus another one because they could never fly anywhere alone. They always had to fly in two because they had to have a support.

But just loan me a chopper. Loan me a chopper. What? It's a stretch. You know, as much as I disagree with the way that they were running the war, it would be hard for me to believe that a general would just loan some rich guy, a couple of helicopters that fly around Afghanistan. You think he's lying? I don't know. I don't know. You'd have to, like, dive into it and figure it out.

Yeah. But either way, there's nothing normal about these emails. No. There's nothing normal. Nothing normal. One thing to take into consideration is how much of these emails? are actually factual. Like accusations

that they're putting on other people. You got to take that with a grain of salt. This guy wasn't, he was all about like influence peddling. Like, and probably he had enemies and he probably would probably destroy his enemies with rumors and making up false stories. Like the Bill Gates one with asking me for antibiotics

to slip into his wife because he got STD from a Russian hooker. I'm like, that seems too. too on the head you know what I mean like why wouldn't he go to his fucking personal doctor why is he going to Jeffrey Epstein for antibiotics in New York

when he lives in Seattle do you don't think he has like a concierge medicine set up there with a guy and why would he say hey Melinda I gave her STDs you wouldn't you'd say hey get me some stuff

oh I lost my prescription can you give me another one yeah it fell out of my car give me another one yeah and fucking crushing up in her smoothie Like, if you're going to do that, you would do it, he's not a dummy, he's Bill Gates, right?

You would do it in a more discreet way than contact a international sex trafficker who's a part of like some intelligence operation. You would think. You would think. Right. But the skeptic in me tends to kind of like look at it under a magnifying glass little. Yeah. I don't want to take everything at face value, but also at the accumulation of all of these different things leads you to just go, what the? fuck was going on. Did you find out how many other the sulfuric acid orders if the other ones were just as large?

I struggled to even find that. I was like maybe I made this up. But I did find one. There was different. So they were talking about, there's emails back to 2012 or 14 about, I don't have the thing up. This is the thing saying there's nothing there. The sepureic acid? Yeah. Emails release and documents. How do they know there's nothing there? No, this is, I ask, yeah. Water maintenance systems dating back to 2013, implying possible routine use of sulfuric. Possible is a weird word. Use of sulfuric acid for pH adjustment and filtration, but no specific prior invoices or shipments are detailed.

Yeah, that's exactly. It wasn't an invoice. There was one they were talking about getting one drum of sulfuric acid with 40 bags of, like, carbonate salt or something. Yeah, see, that makes more sense than six fucking jubes. giant 55 gallon drums of sulfuric acid the day after you get indicted. When you dig into the actual files website, I started looking up the RO plant, which is the reverse osmosis system they had there.

There's a ton of discussions about it going all the way back to 2012 when I think is when he bought it. Of using sulfuric acid? No, just having a reverse osmosis. Right. Water there must have been a problem. Right. Well, it makes sense because they were using desalination technology.

but it's just the volume is suspicious. They were buying it from time for a while. Also, dude had to know he was going down. Like when he gets arrested in 2019, in 18, rather, when he gets indicted, he had to know he was going down. And if you know you're going down and you're trying to mount some sort of a defense, one of the first things you would have to do is get rid of bodies. You have to get rid of everything. Right.

If you've got a bunch of people on the island that they could swoop in at any point in time and pull out of there, And then you're fucked. Like if he had underage kids on the island, whatever he had on the island. On that note, I was saying. This picture I know came from, there was rumors of him getting concrete machines shipped there, but that was from the first time he got arrested. So I think in 2008 the first time he got arrested, they had a bunch of machines shipped. Oh, this isn't showing it on.

Oh, bro. But I don't know how you do construction on the island without getting concrete machines shipped. I don't know how you get rid of bodies. Or put them inside of concrete. That's the problem. Well, I mean, maybe it's two in the same. It's like, hey, I go to an island, and I've got to make all the infrastructure, so I need a bunch of concrete. I need RO, so I've got to have some ferg acid.

What's better for a cover-up? There's the picture of the machines on the island. And here's the description of it. Yeah, right before his 2019 arrest, industrial car mix 5.5 XL self-loading concrete mixer. So he got a concrete mixer and he got the fucking sulfuric acid right after his arrest? I mean, if these details are correct. Oh, God. This is just a guy on Twitter, though.

So this is right before his arrest and right after his arrest. He got sulfuric acid and a concrete mixer. Like, why would you be thinking that you are going to be able to do construction when you're going to go to jail for the rest of your fucking life? Yeah, I don't know if construction plans would be top at my list. Yeah. I've got to innovate. What a fucking weird thing.

You know, I know I'm going to get arrested, but you know what? I got this big construction program that I'm really interested in. I don't know if that's the same. The whole thing's so dark, dude. It's so dark. It's so dark, and they ran it for a long time. They ran it for decades. I also had another island that no one talks about.

Oh, Jesus. He had the big island. That was little St. James. They had great St. James, which is the one next door. He owned that one, too? Yeah, you had both of them. Oh, God. Both of them were part of the sale.

We almost got. What? It was for sale. Why I pitched the idea. Yeah, we thought about it. We thought about it. We just didn't think there's enough sage in the world. No, no.

You can't clear that out. No, you can't clear that out. Well, it's also you would never find peace because people would be visiting that island constantly. And also just so gross. There's a lot of bad karma. They just need to like use that as like maybe like a bombing island. You know one of those? Just turn it into a U.S.

Y. Yeah. Like that one island in Hawaii that you can't go to? Yeah. Because they just fucking light it up all the time. Just light it up all the time. Like have a little bit of grace to the way that we actually end this whole This whole story outside of the files just like start blown it's blown up

It's so it's so dark. It's my least favorite of the conspiracies It's not fun at all man. It's it it's like aliens It's fun it's interesting like you can you can go down the rabbit hole a million ways and it doesn't it gets dark only if you let it get dark Yeah, or okay, they're gonna occupy the planet. They're gonna you know make us all slaves or they're gonna kill us all like yeah, you can you can go there, but half the time you're not going to go there. It's just an interesting thought experiment. There was a very interesting article, Jamie. I don't know if you saw it, but this guy was, he's, it's one of the other guys that's

leaving an AI company. I saw it going around. I don't know if it's the same one, but yeah, go ahead. And he's talking about how, how, how, what a big deal it is. I'll send it to you right here. He's talking about how I don't think No one understands it And the way this is going to change people

He goes, this is very similar to the time Where we were realizing Like people were hearing stories about Oh, there's a virus in China But no one knew exactly what was going to happen How it's going to like literally change humanity Change history. He's like This is the same sort of stories

We're getting from these AI labs He's like he wrote this very long in detail something big is happening and the the article is written by this guy Matt Schumer and I I recommend it highly if you want to really fucking get the shit scared out of you it's terrifying and he starts this comparison to like people stockpiling toilet paper and stuff at the beginning of COVID he's like they don't really understand how big this is going to be and how this latest version of chat GPT they're working on chat GPT 5 chat GPT made it so they had chat

GPT make a better version of itself and they made this better version of itself and this this better version of itself can think things out it doesn't just do what you ask it to do it thinks things out it calculates it makes apps like instantaneously that would take developers months and months cost millions of dollars does it in minutes it doesn't like and perfect it goes through it it it runs it it it tests it it makes that doesn't have any problems. It anticipates all the different uses for the app, all the different ways it can be done.

It's going to be applied to law. It's going to be like there's all these guys that are working in coding that say, I don't really have a job anymore. I just basically show up and tell this AI program to do these things. And it keeps getting better and better. And it's like the leaps are enormous. The leaps in its capability and its intelligence level. It's like it's already smarter than people.

What's going to be, I think it's going to be a, white color apocalypse, right? Yes. So when you think about just attorneys. Yes. Okay, so if you have the ability to case reference any legal file. Ever. Instantaneously.

Instantly. Yep. And form a case. Why are you going to need paralegals and, you know, first year attorneys? You're not going to need them. The people that aren't nervous are naive. Mm-hmm. I think this is going to be the kind of.

astronomical change that has literally never taken place in civilization before. I don't think it's ever taken place at this level. I think it's the invention of the internet times a million. I think it's going to change everything. It's just like how do we adjust? That's the real question. And how are our kids growing up today, like when they used to think about, you know, professions and things that they would go into, they would have, you know, clear.

roads into, okay, these are professional work tracks that they can go out and find a job and whatever, accounting, legal, engineering, but it's going to change the entire professional landscape for, I mean, every generation from this point forward, basically entering the workforce. Elon just said that it's a waste of time to go to medical school. Really? He's like, optimist robots, these robots that he's making are going to be able to perform better than any doctor at any hospital, and they're going to be able to do it in your house.

They're going to be better surgeons than any surgeon alive, these robots that they're making. And they're going to be powered by AI. You're going to have a super genius robot in your house that can do your taxes, that can fucking do chores, that can perform surgery on you. So it's going to be an entire rise of an economy that's going to be human built versus AI built, right?

So, I mean, there has to be, like, if you have a label organic or it will be essentially, I think, the same type of thing. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. It would almost have to bifurcate the economy into two different sections. It's going to get weird as fuck.

And I don't think people really understand. And I feel like I'm just sitting here waiting to see what. But I know that most people that you run into on the street, are completely ignorant. They think, oh, chat GPT is fun. I ask you questions. It's so much better than Google. Do you think that that's because they don't want to recognize it and look at it?

I don't think they know. I think unless you're going on a deep dive, all this stuff is kind of esoteric. All this stuff is happening. You have to like search it out and get an understanding of it. Like if you use an AI program to enhance your life, like perplexity, it's really good. I mean, perplexity is awesome for like solving. problems, you could ask a question. I use it all the time when I write. I set it up and I talk to it. So I, you know, I say, you know, what year did Cortez invade Mexico? What is,

how did this happen? How many guns did they have? What did the, you know, what was, how many languages are lost in Mexico? Like, I was going on this deep dive. Amazing. But that's the surface, like what, what they're talking about is levels and levels and levels have improved ability to the point where it's better at human beings smarter than human beings at everything. So what's the end state then would be? We're second class citizens. We're obsolete. Yeah, we're obsolete.

Yeah. So do you think that it turns, like, do you think it's a sky net type scenario then? It ultimately flips and then ridds humanity of humans? It's certainly on the table. The world of humanity? It's certainly on the table, especially if they decide that we're too problematic or if you give us too much freedom. That's what causes all this chaos, which is true, right? You give people freedom. You're going to have a certain amount of chaos. You're going to have a certain amount of car accidents unless you

have autonomous cars. You're going to have a certain amount of school shootings unless you take away all the guns. You're going to have a certain amount of school stabbings, let's take away all the knives. I mean, you could, you could, if you were a running program designed to eliminate all problems in the world, you would break those problems down to one source. Well, what are the problems? You've got natural disasters and you've got humans. And humans are the cause of most of the problems. Natural disasters are relatively rare in comparison to human-caused problems. It's not good. Then you have to run AI to do the analysis to what the future of AI is, which ultimately you'd be entrusting the robbers with the bankies. It's probably going to do the same thing that we do to dogs.

Spay in neuter them. Right. Yeah. Keep them as pets. But there's no emotion there. So why would they want to keep us as pets? Why do they want to stay alive? Right.

Why are they scheming to stay alive? Why are they blackmail their creators? Right. Why are they doing all sorts of things that seem to show that they have thought? Are they trying to show that they have thought in order to dupe us into the ability that they might be empathetic? No, that was one of the things that he talked about in the things that they might be empathetic. No, that was one of the things that he talked about in the... article that they hide their ability to think things through and they're actively, they recognize

that they're being observed. And so they're doing things behind the scenes while they're also doing tasks. I have to believe that there's portions of the DOD that have worked on this and it's further along than the open source pieces that we can see. Hard to say because there's a giant competition with us and China and Russia. And I don't know if they really can close this stuff off. I don't think it can operate that way. I think it has to be a sort of a collaborative effort. One of the things that's scaring a lot of people that are whistleblowers in the AI space is that they are bringing in people from other countries to just facilitate these problems that they have and make it go faster. So they're bringing in Chinese nationals. There's a huge

possibility of espionage and then there's this mad race. It's a Manhattan project for super intelligent AI. It's a Manhattan project that's also open sourced and it's extremely porous when it comes to information. So essentially you've weaponized the most powerful tool ever known to human kind. Yeah. It's fucking terrifying. So you've open sourced it and then think about the Manhattan Project if that was just completely porous and there was an open door to any and all countries internationally. You just had the ability to come in and walk out with files come as you go.

Fuck, dude. Like everybody would be racing to nuclear power splitting the atom and then if you could weaponize that internationally and then crowdsource it essentially, like you're in a really shit scenario. Yeah, that's where we're at. Yeah. That's where we're at.

All right, dude, we just did three hours. Awesome. Thanks, man. We got some food and hang out. And that's it. Black Rifle Coffee. It's the best. That's all we use. Appreciate it.

I've been wearing one of their shirts. It's like half by war joke. Yeah. All right. Bye, everybody.