Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with joe
rogan
that we recorded after my recent
appearance on his podcast
the joe rogan experience joe has been a
inspiration to me and i thank to
millions of people for
just being somebody who puts love out
there in the world
and being genuinely curious about wild
ideas
from chimps and psychedelics to quantum
mechanics and artificial intelligence
like many of you i've been a fan of this
podcast for over a decade
and now somehow miraculously
am uh humbled to be able to call him a
friend
if you enjoy this thing subscribe on
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i never ads in the middle but this time
let's go straight to the conversation
with a bit of guitar first
[Music]
do you ponder your mortality are you
afraid of death
i i do think about it sometimes i mean
it does pop into my head sometimes
just the fact that uh i mean i'm 53
so if everything goes great i have less
than 50 years left
you know if everything goes great like
no car accidents no injuries
but it could happen today this could be
your last day it could be
that's kind of a stoic thing to meditate
on death
there's a there's a bunch of
philosophers ernest becker
and uh sheldon solomon they believe that
death
is the at the core of everything wrote
this book warm at the core
so does that come into play in the way
you see the world
i think having a sense of urgency is
very beneficial
and understanding that your time is
limited can aid you greatly
i think knowing that this is a temporary
time that we
we have finite life spans i i think
there's a
there's great power in that because it
it motivates you it gets you going
i think being an immortal living forever
would be one of the most depressing
things particularly if everybody else
was dying around you
and i think one of the things that makes
life so
interesting and fascinating is that it
doesn't last
you know that you you really get a brief
amount of time here
and really by the time you're just
starting to kind of figure yourself out
who you are and
how not to screw things up so bad it's
like time's up
the ride's over what about from your
like from your daughter's perspective
do you do you uh think about the world
where and now and what kind of world
you're going to leave them
i do you worry about it i do yeah i do
i do when i see these uh protests and
riots and chaos and so much
so much uh anger in the world today and
then particularly today i think
because of the the pandemic and the fact
that
so many folks are out of work and
through no fault of their own and
can't make ends meet and just people
feel so helpless and angry
it's uh a particularly divisive time
it's a particularly turmoil filled time
and uh it just doesn't seem like the
world of a year ago even
just feels very chaotic and dangerous
and this
and it's a small thing like in terms of
the like the possibilities of things
that could happen to the world like a
pandemic
like the one we've experienced it really
just doubles the amount of deaths
on a bad flu year so it relatively
speaking
is a small thing comparison to
super volcano eruptions asteroid impact
a real horrific pandemic or one that you
know
really wipes out millions and millions
of people
it's um it's stunning how fragile
civility is it's stunning how fragile
our
our society really is that something
like this can come along some
unprecedented thing
unprecedented thing can come along and
all of a sudden everybody's out of work
for six months
and then everybody's at each other's
throats and then politically everyone's
at each other's throats and
and then with the advent of social media
and uh
the images that you can see you know
with the videos of
police abuse and just racial tensions
are an all-time high
to a point where like if you asked me
just five or six years ago
like are have racial problems in this
country largely been alleviated i'd
probably say yeah it's way better than
it's ever been before
but now you could argue that it's not
now you could argue it's no it's way
worse
in just a small amount of time it's way
worse than it's ever been during
my lifetime you cut well while i'm aware
of it you know obviously when i was a
young boy in the 60s they were still
going through the civil rights movement
but now uh it just seems
very fever-pitched and i think a lot of
that is because of the pandemic and is
because of all the
the heightened uh just tension
the one i liken it to is
um road rage because you know people
have road rage
not just because they're in the car no
one can get to them but also because
you're at a heightened state
because you're driving fast and you know
you're driving fast you know you have to
make split-second movements and so
anybody doing something
like what people go crazy because
they're they're already at an eight
because they're in the car and they're
moving very quickly
that's what it feels like with today
with the pandemic feels like everybody
is already at an eight
so anything that comes along it's like
light it all on fire
you know burn it down like that's part
of what i think
is part of the reason for a lot of the
looting and the riots and all the chaos
it's not just the people out of work but
it's also that everyone feels so
tense already and everyone feels so
helpless and it's like you know doing
something like that
makes people uh it just
it gives people a a whole new
motivation for chaos a whole new
motivation
for for doing destructive things that
i've never experienced in my life
and your better days when you see a
positive future
what do you think is the way out of this
chaos of 2020 like if you visualize at
that's a better world than today what is
that how do we get there what does that
look like
it's a good question
i do i i can honestly say i don't know
and uh i wouldn't have said i don't know
a year ago
a year ago i would have said we're going
to be okay as much people hate trump the
upon
economy is doing great i think we're
going to be fine that's not how i feel
today
today i don't think there's a a clear
solution politically
because i think if trump wins people are
going to be furious and i think if biden
wins people are going to be furious
um and particularly like if things get
more woke
you know if people uh continue to
enforce
this uh forced compliance and make
people
behave a certain way and act a certain
way which seems to be a part of what
this whole woke thing is that
is the most disturbing for me is that i
see what's going on i see there's a lot
of
losers that have hopped on this and
they they shove it in people's faces and
it doesn't have to make sense like
there was a black lives matter protest
that stopped this woman
at a restaurant they were surrounding
her outside a restaurant they were
forcing her to raise her fist
in compliance this is a woman who's
marched for black lives multiple times
black lives matter multiple times and
the people around her doing this were
all white
yeah it's all it's all weird my friend
coach t he's a wrestling coach
also uh on a podcast my friend brian
moses
his take on it is that black and he's a
black guy he says black lives matter's a
white cult
and i'm like when you see that picture
it's hard to argue that he's got a point
it's clearly not all about that but
there's a lot of people that have jumped
on board
that are very much like cult members
because the thing about black lives
matter or any movement
is you can't control who joins there's
no
entrance uh examination so you don't go
okay how do you feel about this what's
your perceptions on that like
how you like the the man who shot the
trump supporter
in portland you know that guy who
murdered the trump supporter then the
cop shot him
that guy was walking around with his
hand
on his gun looking for trump supporters
just want i mean he's a
known violent guy who was walking around
looking for trump supporters found one
and shot one
that has nothing to do with black lives
matter he's a white guy he shot another
white guy it's just
it's just madness you know and then that
kind of madness
is uh it's disturbing to see it
ramp up so quickly i mean there's been
there's been
riots in portland every night oh excuse
me demonstrations
for 101 days now 101 days in a row of
them lighting things on fire
breaking into federal buildings it's
like
whoever saw that coming nobody saw that
coming so
i don't know what the solution is and i
don't know what it looks like in five
years so 2025 to answer your question
like
it could be anything i mean we could be
looking at mad max we could be looking
at
the apocalypse we could we could also be
looking at an
invasion from another country we could
be looking at a war like a real
hot war to put a little bit of
responsibility on you
like for me i've listened to you since
the red band olive garden days
that's the very beginning and uh there
was something in the way you communicate
about the world maybe there was others
but you're the one i was aware of
is you're open-minded and uh
like loving towards the world especially
as the podcast developed like
you just demonstrated and lived this
kind of just
kindness or maybe even like lack of
jealousy in your own little profession
of comedy
it was clear that you didn't you didn't
succumb
to the weaker aspects of human nature
and thereby inspire like people like me
who i was i was naturally probably
especially in like the 20s
early 20s kind of jealous on the success
of others
and you're really the primary person
that taught me
to um truly celebrate the success of
others
and so by way of question
you kind of have a role in this of
making a better 2025 you have such a big
megaphone is there something
you think you can do on this podcast
with the words
the way you talk the the things you
discuss
that could create a better 2025 i think
if anything
i could help in leading by example
but you know that's only going to help
the people that are listening
i don't know what else i can do in terms
of like make the world a better place
other than
express my hopes and wishes for that
and just try to be as nice as i can to
people as often as i can
but i also think that i've fallen into
this weird category particularly with
the spotify deal
where um you know i'm one of them now
i'm not a regular person anymore now i'm
like some
famous rich guy so you go from being a
regular person to a famous rich guy
that's out of touch
you know and uh that that's a real
issue whenever you're talking about the
economy
about just real life problems it's it's
interesting it kind of hurts my heart to
hear people say about elon musk he's
just a billionaire yeah
it's an interesting statement but i
think if you just continue being
you and he continue being him people
people i think people are just voicing
their worry
that you become some rich guy i don't
even know if they're doing that
i think they're just finding the way he
describes it an attack vector
right yeah and i think he's right i
think they just uh they can dismiss you
by just saying oh you're you're just a
that
you know you're a you know you're easily
uh
definable right but there i mean there's
truth to that
you if you're not careful you can become
out of touch
but you that that's an interesting thing
like how
why haven't you become out of touch like
as a human
off the podcast you you don't act like
uh
like you you talk to somebody like me
you don't talk like a famous person
or you you don't you don't act rich
like you're better than others there's a
certain listen i've talked to quite a
few
you have too but i've talked to
especially kind of group of people that
like nobel prize winners let's say
they have sometimes have an error to
them
of arrogance yeah and you don't what's
that about
well you got to know what that is right
like um
that air of arrogance comes from
drinking
your own kool-aid you you start
believing that
somehow another just because you're
getting praise from all these people
that you really
are something different usually it
exemplifies
there's there's something there there's
where there's a lack of struggle
you know and i think uh struggle is
probably one of the most important
balancing tools that a person can have
and for me um i struggle
mentally and i struggle physically i
struggle mentally
in that i like we were talking about on
the podcast we did previously
you and i on my podcast said i'm not a
fan of my work
i'm not a fan of what i do i'm my
harshest critic
so anytime anybody says something bad
about me i'm like
listen i said way worse about myself i
you know i don't like anything i do i'm
ruthlessly introspective and i will
continue to be that way because that's
the only way you could be good as a
comedian there's no other way you can't
just think you're awesome and just go
out there you have to
you have to be like picking apart
everything you do but there's a balance
to that too because you have to have
enough confidence to go out there and
perform
you can't think oh my god i suck i know
what i'm doing but i know what i'm doing
because i put in all that work and one
of the reasons why i put in all that
work is i don't like
the i don't like the end result most of
the time so i need to work at it all the
time
and then there's physical struggle which
i think balances everything out
without physical struggle i i've i
always make the analogy that the body is
in a lot of ways like a battery where if
you
have extra charge it's like it leaks out
of the top and it
becomes unmanageable and messy and
that's how my psyche is
if i if i have too much energy if i'm
not
if i'm not exerting myself in a
violent way like an explosive way like
wearing myself out
i just don't like the way the world is i
don't like the way i interface with the
world i'm too
tense i'm i'm i'm i'm too quick to
be upset about things up to but when i
work out hard
and you know i put in a brutal training
session
everything's fine well the first time i
talked to you on
jerry uh you were doing up to um
so sober october and there's something
in your eyes
uh like i think you've talked about that
you you know you exercise the demons out
essentially so you
exercise to get whatever the parts of
you that you don't like out
uh there is a dark there's a darkness in
you there like the
the competitiveness and the focus of
that person
that was a scary time in a lot of ways
that sober october thing
because uh my friends were all talking
shit right because we're
competing against each other and these
fitness challenges and
you had uh one point poor
like you got a certain amount of points
for each minute that you went at 80
percent
of your max heart rate and one day i got
1100 points
so i did seven hours on an elliptical
machine
watching the bathhouse scene from john
wick where he murders all those people
i watched him probably 50 times in a row
i went crazy
i went crazy but i went crazy in a weird
way where
it brought me back to my um my fighting
days
it was like the same that person came
out again it's like well i didn't even
know he was in there
it's like they're like
like like an assassin like a killer like
i felt
i felt like i felt like a
like a different person is it echoes of
like what mike tyson talked about
essentially like
the but no orgasm in their oceans
all the crazy shit that he was is there
is there that
is there a violent person in there oh
yeah yeah there's a lot of
there's a lot of violence in me for sure
i don't know if it's genetic or learned
or
it's because during my formative years
from the time i was
15 until i was 22 all i did was fight
that was all i did that was all i did
all i did was train
and compete that's all i did that was my
whole life is it connected to uh
so you uh your mom and dad broke up
early on is it connected to
the dad at all i i'm sure it's connected
to him
also because he was violent and it made
me feel very scared to be around him
but i also think um it's connected in
who he was as a human is transferred
into my dna
you know i think there's a certain
amount of i mean
i mean to be prejudiced against myself i
look like a violent person
you know if i didn't know me i'm just
even the way i'm built and not even just
the working out bar just the size of my
hands and
like there's the width of my shoulders
like there's
most likely a lot of violence in my
history in my past and my ancestry
and i think um i think we minimized that
with people like so much of your
behavior like
when i see my daughter i have a one
daughter that's obsessive
in terms of like she wants to get really
good at things like could she and she'll
practice things all day long
and and it's 100 my personality
like she's me in a female form but
without the anger as much and without
the
um fear like she's you know loving
household and everything like that but
she has this intense obsession with
doing things and doing things really
well and getting better what's the point
we have to tell her to stop like stop
doing handsprings in the house stop
stop come on just sit down have dinner
like one more one more
like she's just like she's like she's
psycho yeah um
and i think there's a lot of
behavior and personality and
a lot of these things are passed down
through genetics we don't really know
right we don't know how much of who you
are
genetically is learned behavior
you know nature and nurture we don't
know if it's learned behavior
or whether or not it's something that's
intrinsically a part of you because of
you know who your parents were
i think there's there's certainly some
genetic violence in me
there's something you channeled it yeah
you figured out is basically your life
it's a productive exploration of how to
channel that yes
try how to figure out how to get get
that monkey to sit
down and calm down there's another
person in there like this is a
calm rational kind
friendly person who just wants to laugh
and have fun and then there's that dude
who comes out when i did sober october
that guy's scary i don't like that guy
yeah a guy just wants to get up in the
morning and go you know it's like
it's um i mean when i was competing it
was necessary
but it makes me remember i didn't really
remember what a
what i used to be like until that it's
like
when i'm working out seven hours a day
yeah and just
so obsessed and and all i was thinking
about was winning
that's all i was thinking about like if
they were if they were working out five
hours a day i wanted
i wanted them to know that i was going
to work out an extra three hours
and i was going to get up early and i
was going to text them all hey pussies
i'm up already taking pictures send
selfies you know i was like
you're going to die i kept telling them
you're all going to die and try to keep
up with me you're going to die
you weren't fully joking no i wasn't
joking at all
that's what i was fucked up about it was
the scary thing when i interacted with
goggins
and what i saw in you on during that
time
is like this guy
like like this is why i've been avoiding
dave ganga's recently
[Laughter]
is like because he wants to meet he has
to do like talk on this podcast but he
also wants to run an
ultra marathon with me and i felt like
this is a person
if i spend any time in this realm if i
spend any time with the joe rogan of
that
sober october like i might have to die
to get out
like there's this kind of uh yeah
there's a competitive aspect that's
super unhealthy
i mean you saw the video that we watched
earlier today of goggins draining his
knee
that would stop me from running ever
again because i would think in my head
okay
i'm gonna ruin my cartilage i'm gonna
need a knee replacement i would start
thinking
i would go down that line but he is
perpetually
in this push-it mindset you know what he
talk
calls the dog in him you know he's got
that dog is in him all day long and he
feeds that dog
you know and that's um that's who he is
that's one of the reasons why he's so
inspirational and he's fuel
for millions and millions of people i
mean he really is he motivates people in
a way that is
so powerful but it can be very
destructive
i just i know i know now
especially after the sober october thing
that that thing's still in me
you know i didn't know because i really
haven't done anything physically
competitive
except one time i was supposed to fight
wesley snipes it came out then too
that came out too that got creepy too
but luckily that never happened
but that was many months of training
like training twice a day every day
kickboxing in the morning
jiu jitsu at night i was just going
going and going and going
and i was just thinking just all day
long and it but it fucks with all the
other aspects of your life
fucks with your friendships fucks with
your your fuck with my comedy fucks with
everything
because that mindset is not a mindset of
an
artist it's a mindset of a conqueror the
concur
yeah destroyer that's why it's so
interesting to see mike tyson
make the switch it's clear that like
whatever that is however that fight goes
he made us
there's a switch of a dif he stepped
into a different dimension
roy jones jr is coming on my podcast
soon and uh you know roy's gonna be on
uh before the fight i'm
i'm so curious to see how it goes down
but genuinely concerned
because mike tyson is a heavyweight and
roy jones at his best was 168 pounds
and um i don't know if roy has that room
in his house
mental house of where mike tyson goes i
don't know
i don't know if he has a rope mike
doesn't have a room he's he's got an
empire in there
with the open side the door
there's a whole empire in his head and
he's he's in that
firmly you know when he got out of the
weed and and
started training again like you could
see it in him and by the way physically
in person he looks spectacular he looks
like a fucking adonis
i mean he looks ready to go yeah it's
crazy yeah i watch the videos of him
what about you uh have you ever
considered competing in jiu jitsu
no for that very reason i don't want to
get obsessed
that's my my number one concern i had to
quit video games
yeah when we were playing video games at
the studio i had to quit because i was
playing five hours a day like out of
nowhere all of a sudden i was playing
five hours a day i was coming home late
for dinner
i was ending podcasts early and jumping
on the video games and playing
i get obsessed with things and i have to
recognize
what that is and these competitive
things like competitive
especially like really exciting
competitive things like video games
they're very dangerous for me the
ultimate competitive video game is like
jiu jitsu and um if i was young i most
certainly would have done it if i didn't
have
like a very clear career path it was
something that i enjoyed
my concern would be that i would become
a professional jiu jitsu fighter
when i was young and then i would not
have the energy to do
stand up and do all the other things
that i wound up doing as a career
when i was um 21
i quit my job teaching i was teaching at
boston university
i was teaching taekwondo there and i i
knew
and i also had my own school in revere i
knew i couldn't do it
right and also be doing stand-up comedy
i knew i couldn't do both of those
things
there was no way you have to be
cognizant of uh
that obsessive force within you to make
sure uh yes i
i have to know how to manage my mental
illness right that's
that's a very particular mental illness
and i think that mental illness again
my formative years from 15 until i was
you know 21-ish 22 those
those years were spent constantly
obsessed
with martial arts that was my whole day
i mean i trained almost every day
the only time i would not train is if i
was either injured or
if i was exhausted if i needed a day off
but i was obsessed
and so that part of my personality
that i haven't nurtured is always going
to be there under the surface
and when you it gets reignited by
something it's
very weird it's a weird feeling and it
can get reignited with a video game
it can get reignited with anything that
that obsessive
that you know whatever it is that
competitive demon yeah the way you talk
about guitar
i know you would love fall in love with
playing guitar but i think you're very
wise to not touch that thing that's why
i want golf
i have friends who want to golf i'm like
fucking with that thing
so a lot of people ask me about uh like
what's
uh joe rogan's jiu jitsu game like like
like
like assuming that i i somehow spend uh
hours rolling with you before and after
we interact i mean what's a good uh you
should at some point
show a technique or something that'll be
fun sure i mean i've got what's your
game
what's your name oh there i saw i saw
you doing a i
think had an arm uh something online
yeah
i did that was i fucked my neck i'm
doing head and arm chokes i did them so
much
that i i you know because you use your
neck so much with head and arms chokes
i developed like a real kink in my neck
and uh it turned out i had a bulging
disc
and uh you know so you do it on that
just one side
well it was uh no i could do it on the
left side but i definitely am better on
the right side
the right side was my best side so if
you were to compete let's say like
what's your a game
what would you go from standing up how
would you go to submission would you
pull guard would you take down
what how would you pass guard what's i
don't have good takedowns i mean i was
not a good wrestler
so i would most likely either pull guard
or i would pull half guard do you have a
good guard yes are you comfortable being
on your
butt on your back yes i'm very i'm very
flexible so i have good
my rubber guard is pretty you go to
right yeah i have good arm bars and good
triangles off my back but
um i also have a very good half guard
but my top game is my best i have
i have a very strong top game you have a
hashtag card
you have a preference of like what kind
of guard and how to pass that guard and
uh like yeah like is there a specific
game plan like you would you double
under hooks from half guard is the game
plan
for me if i can get double underhooks
from half guard i could sweep a lot of
people
under hooks of what sorry the arms are
so half guard
lock down right half card go into lock
down
double under hooks got it clinched to
the body suck the body into the type
pressure and yeah massive pressure and
then
inch my way into a position we call the
dog fight
and inch my way to a position where i
could get the person on their back
yeah that's what because you did show me
i still disagree with you about the thai
thing
um that you can choke so wrong so wrong
uh well it's not wrong with you with you
it's wrong because
you you know i think there's a system
where i i've have this thing with donna
here we're gonna figure it out
okay but uh let's have a little velcro
in the back
let's see that's you're just not
cheating you're not you're the exact
that's cheating
uh yeah you did i did feel when you
showed me
i think you showed me the rubber guard
because it's still a god that's a little
bit foreign to me
i just felt that you can immediately
feel not with the rubber guard just but
the way you move your body is
you're um like a shanji type of guy who
knows how to control another human being
so like some people are a little bit
more
i would say agile and technic like
playful and
kind of loose loose and they work on
transition transition transition
you're a control guy like you know how
to control position in an advanced
position
donahue is the same way he's all about
control my game is smush
that's my game smush you grab a hold of
you once i have you why would i let you
go
that's my thought is like why would i
let you go i just want to incrementally
move to a better position
until i can strangle you but i'm much
more
into strangling people than anything
else yeah which is a great mma
approach for jiu jitsu well too many
people don't
tap when you get their arms you know and
i'm it's not
i'm not opposed to arm bars i love arm
bars but everybody goes to sleep
yep and and quit from pressure too i
mean yeah
quit mentally that's nothing like you
can't breathe
you know if you got a guy who's like a
really good top game guy and he mounts
you
and i'm a big fan of mounting with my
legs crossed
you know like a guard like a top guard
and so i can squeeze with both
legs smush and i'm just i'm just looking
for people to make mistakes and slowly
incrementally bettering my position
until i can get something locked up
yeah i love jiu jitsu though man i just
wish it didn't injure you
yeah you know jiu-jitsu is like if your
joints were more durable
they could figure out a way to make
joints more durable god i could do jiu
jitsu forever
yeah so much fun i actually i talked to
this uh roboticist russ tedrick he
builds
one of the world-class people that
builds humanoid robots you're interested
in boston dynamics yeah they keep people
in that kind of robotics so i asked him
the stupidest question of like
how far are we we from uh having a robot
be a ufc champion
and uh yeah it's actually a really
really tough problem it's it's it's the
same
thing that you know makes somebody like
danielle comey like on the wrestling
side
special because you have to understand
the movement of the human body
in ways that so difficult to teach it's
so it's so subtle the timing
the pressure points like the leverage
all those kinds of things that's just
for the clinch
situation and then the movement for the
striking
is very difficult as long as you're not
allowed as a robot
to like use your natural abilities of
having a lot more power right a lot more
power and
more durable right the human body like
especially meniscus
like like you see the the heel hook game
like everybody's involved in leg locks
and heel hooks like
all those guys wind up with torched
knees everyone's got torched knees
everyone's knees are torn apart
you and you don't grow new meniscus you
know that's like one of those joints
where
man when it goes this is and those guys
are 28 years old
blown out knees let me ask the
ridiculous question what do you think
we're talking about cops what do you
think uh is the best martial arts for
self-defense
for sure jiu-jitsu yeah wrestling right
i think grappling i should say
with judo as well especially in a cold
climate if you get someone who's got
like a heavy winter jacket on my god
like judo is an incredible
plus concrete that's the worst place to
be with a
heavy winter jacket with a judo
specialist and you're standing up with
them
oh my god but i think grappling because
in most self-defense situations it
usually winds up
with grappling you're definitely better
off though knowing some striking
because there's nothing more terrifying
than when you go to take someone down
they actually have takedown skills
but they can fight and so they have
takedown defense
and they know how to fight and then you
don't know how to stand up like the
worst thing in the world seeing someone
like reaching who doesn't know how to
do striking and someone cracks you what
about all that
krav maga talk which is like you know
the whole line of argument that says
that jiu jitsu and wrestling and all
these sports
they fundamentally take you away from
the nature of violence
so they're just teaching you how to play
versus the reality of of um
violence that is involved in like a
self-defense situation
that is is a totally different set of
skills would be needed in general the
people that say
that jiu-jitsu or other martial arts
don't they it's more of a sport and they
don't really understand
and they don't really understand
violence in general the people that say
that suck
yeah that's anybody who thinks like
someone's like you know hey man i'll
just bite you
i'm like are you gonna bite me okay do
you think i'm gonna bite you too what do
you think of that
what if i punch you in your fucking face
you think you're still gonna bite me
when you can't even see
yeah when you you you barely even know
you're alive and i
choke you unconscious if someone's
really good at jiu jitsu
good luck stabbing them with your keys
you know you don't have a chance you
don't have a chance if someone's much
better you and they trip you and get you
on your back
and then they fucking elbow you in your
face and get a head and arm choke on you
all that krav maga it's out the window
son you're way
better off learning what works on train
killers
like this whole idea that you're going
to poke some of the eye and then you're
going to kick him in the nuts and
like you're you're going through these
drills that yeah it's good to know
what to do if you run into someone who
doesn't know how to fight
it's way better to know what to do to
someone who knows how to fight
that's the best thing learn how to fight
against people who know how to fight
like all that practice self-defense and
they're gonna it's gonna come at you
with a knife you're gonna grab the wrist
and do that
like it's good to know self-defense
but it's much more important to
understand martial arts
comprehensively when you understand
martial arts comprehensively
like there's no crop i shouldn't say
there's no krav maga guys but it's
it would be shocking if a krav maga guy
and a mixed martial arts guy had a fight
and the mixed martial arts guy was a
trained killer all around
didn't fuck that guy up that's that's
what i would expect would happen
i would i would i would not think that
some guy who
has a little bit of this and a little
bit of that and prepares for the streets
is going to be able to handle a person
who trains with killers
on a day-to-day basis who rolls with jiu
jitsu black belts
who trains with muay thai champions like
here
it's the best martial arts of the
martial arts that work on martial
artists
not the martial arts that work on
untrained people what about
we're in texas now what about guns
that's the best martial art no but would
you
like uh in this crazy time should people
carry guns it's not a bad idea to have a
gun
because if you need a gun you have a gun
and if you don't need a gun
if you're a person with self-control
you're not going to use it you're not
going to just
randomly use it but you have something
to protect you this is the whole idea of
the second amendment
the whole idea of the second amendment
gets distorted by mass shootings or by
terrible people murder people and do
terrible things but
it's that's all those things are real
but they don't take away
from the fundamental efficacy
of having a firearm and defending your
family or defending your life
and there are real live situations where
people have had firearms and it's
protected them
or their loved ones or they've stopped
shooters there's
there's many of these stories but people
don't like those stories because then it
it tends to lead to this gun culture
argument is pro-gun culture argument
that people find very uncomfortable it's
it's human beings are messy
and we're messy in so many different
ways right we're messy
uh emotionally we're messy messy
physically but we're also messy in
what's
good or bad what's we want things to be
binary we want things to be
right or wrong you know one or zero and
they're not
but but there is crime in the world and
there is violence in the world and
you're better off knowing how to fight
and you're betting better
off knowing how to defend yourself and
you're better off having a gun
and yeah i generally think that guns i
do like
the idea that guns second amendment
helps protect the first amendment
there's a kind of
sense that makes puts me at ease knowing
that so many people in this country have
guns
that uh i mean alex jones i just
listened to one episode of infowars
for the first time boy is he he reminds
me like when i
drank some tequila i felt like i'm going
to some dark places today
that's how i feel like listening to him
but uh
he talks about like that it's he worries
about martial law
so basically government overreach by
which happened throughout
history like there's there's something
to worry about
there but it's it puts me at ease
knowing that so much of the population
has guns that people government would
think twice
before uh instituting martial law on
cities
but i actually was asking almost like on
the individual level
i maybe shouldn't say this but i don't
yet own a gun
and i felt that if i carry a gun
statistically just for me as a human
knowing my psychology i feel like i'm
more likely to die
like i feel like i would put myself in
situations
that i shouldn't like the way i i will
see the world will change
because my natural feeling is like when
somebody when i was in philly
and i knew late at night in west philly
when some guy looks at you you can
immediately calculate that this is a
dangerous human being
there it starts with a monkey look at
first like
i'm a bigger monkey than you and that's
where i found like for example i'll do
the beta thing of just looking down and
turning away
and just getting out of trouble like
very politely
and basically that kind of approach
because if you have a in terms of
getting out of serious violence
situations like serious
something where you could die versus if
i had a gun i feel like i would want to
be
that that would be that cowboy monkey
thing where i would want to put myself
in situations
where i'm a little bit of a savior even
of myself
and almost create danger which
can no longer like the escalation of
which
i can no longer control well you're
talking about taking a gun somewhere
versus having a gun in your home yes yes
i mean carry on me that's a different
situation and much harder
to get a warrant for or a license for
that
you know control concealed carry
licenses especially in massachusetts
they don't come easy a little message
yeah that's a whole nother thing
yeah you're saying gun in the home yeah
a gun in the home
having a gun having knowing how to use a
gun like i know how to use a gun i've
trained you know many hours learning how
to shoot a gun
at tactical places you know there's a
bunch of videos of me
doing it on uh instagram i i practice
and i think it's good to to understand
how to be accurate
so i've been a fan of your podcast for a
long time you don't often talk about it
because you're always kind of looking
forward but if you look at the old
studio they just left
is there some epic memories that stand
out to you
that you like you almost look back i
can't believe this happened
oh yeah almost too many of them to count
is that something that pops into mine
now all of them elon musk blowing that
flamethrower in the middle of the
hallway i got a video of that
have you seen the video of it yeah yeah
i think you posted on instagram i think
i did too
yeah he's a madman um having bernie
sanders in there
uh you know just uh all the fun fight
companions we did and all the
crazy podcasts with joey diaz and duncan
trussell and
there were so many there were so many
moments you know it's um
podcast is this is a weird art form
and it almost seems like it sounds silly
but it almost seems like something that
chose me rather than i chose it
i think of that all the time in some
strange way it's like i'm i'm showing up
as like an antenna
and i just plug in and twist twist on
and then i
i take in the thing and i put it
together and i'm
like a passenger of this weird ride yeah
you you've talked about this before i
really
like this idea of that human beings are
just carriers of these ideas
yeah ideas are the ones who are breeding
yeah in a sense like the idea found
you as a useful brain to use to spread
itself through the podcasting medium
yeah something that that's a
on uh but did because when i think about
your podcast i think about joey diaz i
think about all those comedians you've
had
i mean i think you've had joey on i mean
maybe close to
50 times some crazy number is there
i mean he's over the top offensive
just that's who he is to the core is
there
some sense where you
you wondered like whether it's right to
have
the spotify episode number one with
duncan dressler
that's why we wore nasa suits and we got
high as fuck
it's like that's the whole idea behind
it i mean can you introspect that a
little bit like can you think like what
is that because that's rare
it's such a rare thing to do because
they they're
you're not supposed to talk to duncan
trussell
with a huge platform that you have five
hours why not
because donald trump apparently watches
your podcast
so so just the idea that there's these i
mean that's what i think about
you know these ceos write to me that
they listen to the podcast that
that i do and i have somebody like a
david fravor
and i was nervous about it i was nervous
to have a conversation for me
david fravor is a duncan trestle which
is like
just because of his experiences with the
ufos
yeah just even just the way he sees the
world because he is
open i don't know if he's always like
this but he opened himself to the
possibility
of unconventional ideas most people in
the scientific community kind of
say well i don't really want to believe
anything that doesn't have a lot of hard
evidence
right and so that was to me like a step
and as the thing somehow
becomes more popular that it becomes
this fear of like
well should i talk to this person or not
and i mean you're an inspiration and
saying like do whatever the hell you
want
you have to well first of all
i have what you call fuck you money and
if you have fuck you money you don't say
fuck you what's the point of having the
fuck you money
you're wasting it like you're wasting
the position like someone
said to me like why do you why do you
like sports cars so much like how many
cars do you have a bunch of cars so
because
if i was a kid and i said hey if i was
that crazy rich famous guy
like i don't want to have a bunch of
cool fucking cars like so i
so i would do that like because that not
everybody gets to do that like if you're
the person that gets to do that
you're kind of supposed to do it like
that's if you if you want to
if that really does speak to you and you
know um
i've talked to you about this before but
muscle cars
specifically once from the 1960s and the
early 70s they speak to me in some weird
way man i could just stare at them
like i have a 65 corvette i walk around
it sometimes at night when no one's
around
what's your favorite muscle car like
what's your
most badass late 60s the
probably that car probably that 65
corvette yeah
i walk around it when no one's around i
think i've during the 69 corvette is
there a particular year
that uh just 65 is uh generation two
69 is generation three 69 is like the
it's even more curvy they're both
awesome just awesome in different ways
but i just love muscle cars for whatever
reason
but but the point is like i like what i
like and if i can do what i want to do
i should do what i want to do and it's
not hurting anybody and
the thing is like i would do the duncan
podcast if no one was listening right
right if it was if we were just starting
to do a podcast together
and uh no one cared and it got like 2
000 views which
we did for years a long time i would do
it with duncan and we would get high and
we'd talk crazy shit about aliens and
spaceships and
maybe dude maybe ideas are living life
forms and they're inside your head and
that's how things get
man yeah man i've
just kind of morphed me and him together
in that because the
life form ideal life form idea is mine
that i've i've really
really think about a lot i think about a
technical side by the way like uh
i when i heard you say that because i've
been thinking i was like
oh whoa that's interesting that it might
be they might be alive
because they i don't know what the fuck
they are but when someone has an
idea for uh you know whatever an
invention a toaster
and then they think about this all it
need is like these heating elements and
a spring
and then it pops on the stunts i have a
timer and then they build this thing now
also it's alive
it's like you manifested it in a
physical form a toaster is not the best
example but
a car a airplane you're thinking about a
thing like an idea comes into your head
and you can say oh well it's just
creativity it's a part of being a person
that's how we invented
tools and how you know we became better
hunters all those things are true
it's i'm not saying that there's some
magic to what i'm saying
but there's also a possibility that
we're
simplifying something by saying that
it's just creativity
that it's just a natural human
inclination to invent things
but why is it possible
that ideas like creativity like we are
the only animal
other than there's a few species that
create things like
bees make bee hives and but it's very
they're very uniform
you know some animals use tools you know
like you know chimps will use like
sticks to get
termites and things like that but
there's something about what we do
that's it makes you wonder because we
look at this
just look at this room that we're in
look at all these electronics
look at all this crazy shit that human
beings have
invented and then built upon others
inventions improved and innovated
these all came out of ideas like the the
idea
they it germinates in someone's head it
bounces around they write it down
they share it with others the other
people who have similar ideas or ideas
that are complementary they work
together
and they they change the world and the
new thing in that is the idea is not the
people it's like we think we found the
ideas but it's more like the ideas
the ideas found us fine you yeah they're
literally in the
in the air yeah they come to you i
always felt like that with bits
like when i come up with a bit that's
why i'm i'm always telling people about
the stephen pressfield book the war of
art because he talks about uh respecting
the muse and the idea that
your ideas come when you sit down and
you do the work or you sit down like a
professional and you
you talk to the muse like come tell me
what to do like if the muse was a real
thing as if it amuses like a
some mystical creature that comes and
delivers you ideas
even if that's not real that's how it
works yeah
it does work like that if you do treat
it like it's a muse
and you treat it with the respect and
you you treat it like a professional
the ideas do come to you i never thought
about what he's doing he's just sitting
there waiting
for the idea that's trying to breed to
find him
yeah there's that's a that's a trippy
thing if you show off trippy
if you show up and put in the time and
focus your energy
on that the the ideas they will arrive
that will arrive and that's the same
with writing comedy like there's been
many many times where i'll come home
from the comedy store
and i just sit down and start writing
and i just i've i got nothing there's
nothing there i'm just writing it's all
bullshit
nothing's good it's just like hmm and
then all of a sudden
bam there's the idea
melson i can't stop and then you know a
couple hours later and i'm like whoa
and then the next night i'm on stage and
i'm like how about that
boom it gets this big laugh i'm like
holy shit
and i know that came out of the
discipline to sit down and call the muse
i mean the cool thing is the ideas have
found you
to like oh i'm going to use this dude
like
he seems to have a podcast that's
popular yeah i'm going to breed inside
his brain
yeah and spread it to others yeah an
or an inventor you know i'm going to use
this guy who's like desperately seeking
some sort of a
a product to bring to market some guy
who wants to invent things he's thinking
about inventing things all the time
like these ideas that weasel their way
into your head and it seems to me also
that
your your the frequency that your mind
operates under has to be correct because
one of the things about creativity seems
to be if you think about yourself a lot
if you're really into yourself or your
image
or or you're selfish those ideas
are not they don't find you yes that's
funny
the creative yeah yes it stifles the
opportunity that the idea has for
defining
yes which is one of the reasons why joke
thieves people that steal jokes are
terrible writers
there's never like really good writers
who are also joke thieves it's just
joke thieves and then you know when they
have to write on their own if they get
exposed
they become terrible comedians they're
of a shadow of what they were when they
were stealing other people's ideas
because the thing that would make you
steal a person's idea
is that ego part the the like the
wanting to claim it for yourself to
wanting to be the man
i'm gonna or the woman you know you want
to be the person who gets out there that
says it and
everybody's gonna love me for it like
you can't think like that and be
creative
it requires a humility and it requires a
detachment from self in order to create
like
when i'm writing i'm blank i'm like i'm
just staring i'm like
i'm just the part of my mind that's
active is not
like me it's like this weird core
function
part where i'm not i'm not aware of
my personality i'm not aware i'm not
aware of anything
i'm just trying to put it together in a
way that i know works
and just being there being present yeah
pressfield is just i'm a big believer
just sitting there
you're not staring at a blank page
putting in the time
yeah and sometimes it's not that way
sometimes it's an inspiration like
sometimes i'll be sitting there
at dinner and i'll be like i'll be right
i got an idea and my wife is really cool
about that i'm like i have an idea and i
i have to just run out of the room real
quick and i write it down on my phone
and then i can come back
you know because those are those are
like little gifts that you get sometimes
from the universe out of nowhere
and some people rely only on those gifts
you know