Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
ryan hall one of the most insightful
minds and systems thinkers in the
martial arts world
he's a black belt in jiu jitsu
accomplished competitor
an mma fighter undefeated in the ufc
and truly a philosopher who seeks to
understand the underlying principles
of the martial arts jiu jitsu is such an
important part of who i am
and i was hoping to share that with
folks who might know me only as a
researcher
i think there's no better person to do
that with than ryan who somehow
remarkably i can say is a friend and
also
a modern day warrior philosopher of the
miyamoto masashi line
of especially dangerous and brilliant
humans
also his amazing wife jen hall
was there as well so if you hear a kind
of voice of wisdom coming from above
you know who it is quick summary of the
sponsors power dot
babel and cash app please check out the
sponsors in the description to get a
discount
and to support this podcast as a side
note let me say that
renaming this podcast to just my name
gave me intellectual freedom that i
really didn't anticipate was so
empowering
especially for someone who's trying to
find their voice
i hope you'll allow me the chance to
really try and do that to step outside
of ai
and even science engineering history and
so on
and on occasion talk to athletes
musicians
writers and maybe even comedians
who inspire me especially up and coming
comedians and musicians like eric
weinstein
who yes we'll do a third conversation
with soon
i think if i allow myself to expand the
range of these conversations on occasion
when i do return to science and
engineering i'll bring a new perspective
and also a little bit more fun and
a few extra listeners that may not
otherwise
realize how fascinating artificial
intelligence robotics mathematics and
engineering truly is all that said
please skip the episodes that don't
interest you you don't have to listen to
all of them
trust me as someone who is a bit or a
lot ocd
that idea is quite unpleasant but life
friends is full of unpleasant things
but as hunters thompson suggested and i
suggest as well
you should still buy the ticket and take
the ride
if you enjoy this thing subscribe on
youtube review it with 5 stars not a
podcast
follow on spotify support on patreon or
connect with me on twitter
and lex friedman as usual i'll do a few
minutes of ads now
and no ads in the middle i try to make
these interesting
but i give you the time stamp so please
skip if you don't want to listen to the
ads
but it does mean a lot to me when you do
and still please do check out the
sponsors by clicking the links in the
description
it really is the best way to support
this podcast
this show is sponsored by powerdot get
it at powerdot.com
lex and use collects at checkout to get
off i use it for muscle recovery for
legs and shoulders
but you can also use it to build muscle
endurance
or even just warm up in fact i first
heard about this kind of
electrical muscle stimulation device in
reading that bruce lee used it
he was an inspiration to me as someone
who
practices first principles thinking
especially in a discipline where
conventional thinking is everywhere
he created a martial art called jeet
kune do that is in many ways
at least philosophically in his hybrid
approach a precursor
to modern day mixed martial arts there's
a special kind of deep philosophical
thinking that
combat athletes or jiu jitsu
practitioners do that
is unlike any other i think it's
grounded in the
humbling process of getting your ass
kicked a lot
that removes any illusion of
intellectual superiority
i think the journey towards wisdom
starts when you humbly admit to yourself
that you know very little or almost
nothing
anyway go to powerdot.com lex and use
codelex at checkout to get 20
off on top of the 30-day free trial
this show is also sponsored by babel an
app
and website that gets you speaking in a
new language within weeks go to
babble.com and use code lex to get three
months free
they offer 14 languages including
spanish french
italian german and yes russian
let me read a few lines from a russian
song by vladimir vasotsky
called anabolaf parisia that you'll
start to understand if you sign up to
babel
annabella
this song always made me smile because
it resonates with my own life
it translates loosely to she's been to
paris
paris for russian i suppose symbolizing
a fancy life
and that the guy could never quite fit
into that kind of life
expensive things nice restaurants cars
all that
i was thinking about what song's
equivalent in english maybe
uptown girl by billy joe is similar in
spirit
but very different in style i just
watched the video on youtube
for uptown girl and it's basically billy
joel
dressed up as a mechanic but dancing in
a way that i'm pretty sure no mechanic
has ever danced
turning the old cringe factor up to 11.
anyway i always felt like i didn't
really fit in
with the fancy people and that's what
this song represents
but back to uh babel get started by
visitingbabel.com
and use codelex to get three months free
this show is presented by the great the
powerful the og sponsor
named unofficially after one of my
favorite musicians the man in black
johnny cash that's cash app the number
one finance app in the app store
when you get it use code lex podcast the
cash app folks are
truly amazing people and are teaming
with ideas for cool contests giveaways
and all that kind of stuff i've been
thinking of doing some kind of little
contests and giving away
42 bucks to a bunch of people who win
it's not so much about the money but the
glory
and the delicious taste of victory if
you have ideas for
contests let me know i was thinking of
something like asking people to submit
funny inspiring photos or videos or
audio of using cash app
or any of the sponsors of this podcast
really
or maybe even just funny things related
to the podcast
like different weird places you might be
watching or listening
to me right now i'm pretty sure there's
somebody out there right now
sitting in a hot tub with some wine
watching me say this
i salute you sir or madam i may be
opening up some floodgates
i deeply regret later so please make
sure you're wearing clothes and whatever
you sent me
there will be no naked people in the hot
tub as part of this podcast
i have integrity and standards
let me know in the comments what ideas
for contests you might have again if you
get cash out from the app store google
play
and use the code lex podcast you get ten
dollars
and cash app will also donate ten
dollars to first an organization that is
helping to advance
robotics and stem education for young
people around the world
and now here's my conversation with ryan
hall who in your view is the greatest
warrior in history
ancient or modern that's a tough
question and
again i'm no historian by any measure so
i'll probably do the worst
like what are your best bands ever i'm
like metallica and you know so i'll pick
the
material could just come out with a new
album by the way entire
orchestra that's that's kind of cool
yeah them metallica will
will always be one of the greatest yeah
i agree with that example
if they were a well-known yet awesome
band let me say it's like a nickelback
or something like that
but i feel that feels cheap because
everyone makes fun of nickelback yeah i
don't know i guess
it depends on how you want to define
warrior something to think about
when it comes to trying to evaluate
various
people or situations or things that i've
read about or heard about are
with the circumstances that they were
involved in because i think a lot of
times it's easy to look at the outcomes
and obviously outcome we live in an
outcome-driven world and you know
outcomes do matter but at the same time
like uh
you know you look at let's say what
cuba's been able to pull off
you know from a combat sports
perspective it's it's staggering you
know like the amount of
successful olympic level competitors
they have in wrestling boxing judo
um i mean they're a tiny little island
with no money and no people it's
that's shocking you know when you come
you think about the olympics in the
united states doing well of course we
should do well i mean
russia should do well china should do
well india should do
better than they do honestly obviously
it means like they're not into it as
much or at least certain sports
because they have the resources
people-wise um so talent's not going to
be an issue
so there's something to like where the
starting point is like that's the
argument with like uh
what people say maradona i don't know if
you're into it oh yeah big soccer okay
they say mardon is better than messi
because
he basically carried the team and and
won the world cup with the team that
wouldn't otherwise win the world cup
and then messi was only successful in
barcelona because uh
he has like superstars he's playing with
other superstars
right yeah that's fair to say i mean
like like united there's a lot of
factors that go into let's say winning a
winning a soccer game and you know
obviously barcelona you know
particularly for various points in time
had a
ridiculous all-star squad of world-class
players but
um and i you know let's say for instance
maybe they didn't have the creative
players in argentina they needed to get
the ball up to messi
you know they didn't have like the nes
the and you know the
you know the again the backing there in
the midfield but um
because obviously argentina's always had
ridiculous attacking players like even
alongside messi but they're like the
three killers up front and then
a little less behind so it's interesting
you say
that it depends how you define warrior
because you can probably take like
some of the civil rights leaders you can
go into that direction like leaders in
general
but if we just look at like the greatest
martial artist in history in
that direction do you have somebody in
mind i would say at least three
three that pop into my head and um would
be
uh hannibal um alexander the great and
then
maybe miyamoto musashi um you know the
two commanders and then one
you know guy but uh so it's it's
interesting and then
again you mentioned warriors being able
to make a lot out of a little
uh you know musashi's famous for winning
duels you know that were
oftentimes one there were one-on-one you
know the alexander
and hannibal were you know military
commanders and one of them faced rome
and that was an interesting thing
oftentimes you know coming up with novel
tactics
different strategies sometimes under
resourced
doing having to do novel and crazy
things there's skin in the game
that's an interesting thing too i think
a lot of times you know it's uh
if you're playing a video game i don't
think you can be a warrior because
there's
there's no skin in the game you get hurt
you lose and it's a bummer it stings a
little bit maybe it makes you feel
slightly disappointed but uh
you know musashi loses he loses um
hannibal loses he loses alexander loses
he loses and they
lose i guess the people around them lose
so that's almost like uh
you could use even from a combat sports
perspective a muhammad ali i mean you
consider
also their quality of opposition musashi
was fighting high quality opposition
obviously hannibal and al alexander
particularly hannibal were fighting
unbelievable opposition
muhammad ali fought phenomenal
opposition but he had skin in the game
both in the ring and out
and that actually meshes with as you
mentioned like a civil rights you know
type of situation where
you are under resourced you're pushing
the stone uphill
and that was a neat thing i think about
muhammad ali was
how much you know personal conviction
the man had to have in order to pull off
what he was able to pull off both in
in and outside of the ring and that
reminds me of
of again some of the other great leaders
or great fighters throughout history so
what do you make of
the kind of very difficult idea that
some of these conquerors like alexander
the great
and somebody that uh if you listen to
hardcore history
oh dan carlin uh who apparently elon
musk is also a big
fan of is the genghis khan episode
you know a large
percent of the world is uh
is uh we can call genghis khan an
ancestor
so the difficult truth is about some of
these conquerors is that there's a lot
of murder
and rape and pillage and stealing of
resources and all that kind of stuff
and yet they're often remembered as
quite honorable i mean in the case of
genghis khan there's a lot of people who
argue if you look at the
historically the way it's described in
full context
is he was ultimately like a
given the time he was a liberator he was
uh
he was a progressive i should say uh you
know like in terms of
the the violence and the atrocities he
committed
he at least in the stories has always
provided the option
of not to do that it's only if you
resist do
you basically have the option do you
want to join us or do you want to die
and die horribly and so
that's the progressive sort of uh that's
the bernie sanders of the era
nice so uh what do you make of that that
there's just so much
of these great conquerors there's so
much
murder that to us now would just seem
insane
it's funny you mentioned it i think that
maybe it's a human
nature thing that we want to uh or you
know maybe or
maybe a misunderstanding thing that we
want to cast all of our characters
and ourselves maybe as entirely good or
as entirely negative
when you know i guess i was the phrase
or the saying you know one man's freedom
fighter is another person's terrorist
um is accurate and a lot of times i
think
you can understand as long as you're
able to look from various people's
perspective like if you look at
the tv show the wire um which was
obviously you know widely everybody
loves the wire
um i thought that they were everyone i
mean i'm not saying anything that's
that's not been said before compelling
characters from all
angles whether you like the character
dislike the character you were able to
understand the motivations of people
doing various things even if they did
wrongly they did rightly
you know we want to cast all of the the
demons throughout history as as
completely inhuman when i think that
makes it difficult for us to understand
them and we want to look
back at at the people that we think of
as great um
and entirely great and i think that
we're you know we're experiencing
the problems with this you know even
right now socially and politically as
we're trying to look back and decide the
people we thought were good or not good
or people we thought were bad and now
good
rather than going hey there's there's
good and bad to all things and there are
as you mentioned the genghis khan thing
you don't have to fight back
you do i respect you for it but then
we're gonna have a conflict and then
we'll see what happens and if you lose
you're going to be sorry that you did
because i have to make it that way if i
want to continue utilizing this this
kind of mo
because i need to discourage the next
guy from doing what you're doing right
now
and ultimately though i guess that's an
interesting thing imagine you put every
single person on planet earth in a cage
crime drops you know uh all sorts there
are certain positives to that
and i it's just things are as they are
it's difficult but that is ultimately
more the law of the jungle and i think
that we're able to supersede some of
that
now in modern times and i think we're
fortunate
but as you mentioned we look back and
say oh this is horrible
say no that that just is what it is
that's how life
is at a base level and you know again if
you're a lion and i'm a gazelle i don't
i don't really like it very much but we
don't call the lion the bad guy
we don't sanctify the gazelle or the
other way around so it's just it's
interesting when you pull back some of
the controls that we put on
our behavior and you know in modern life
which i think are generally speaking
positive
you know we get down to how things often
are and
at the same time we could modern life
was built by people like genghis khan
so then you get down to the ends just to
find the means it's a tough question
these aren't things with easy answers at
least if they are i certainly don't have
the
the smarts to figure out the answers to
them but uh
it's it's difficult i would just say
people in the world are complicated and
layered and depending upon which side of
the line you're standing on at various
times
you know um you may like or dislike
someone but i can't remember uh
it's i can't remember who's whose idea
was this is killing me but it's the veil
of ignorance i guess
um the philosophical you know um you
know idea of the veil of ignorance where
i go is
is sticking everyone in the cage the
right thing to do when i say or everyone
but me and i say well
no why well it would make my life easier
if i just went over and took all of your
stuff as long as you couldn't stop me
i mean of course that's a great idea
that's what everyone does in every video
game but uh in skyrim you steal stuff
when people aren't around
but um ultimately you go well this isn't
the right thing to do because if i were
on the other side of it
i would i would not appreciate it it's
it's inherently not a good thing to do
i'm only doing it because i think i'm
going to win and that's a fine way to be
but you don't have the white hat on i
guess i would say so
i think without those philosophical
underpinnings to reign us in
you know i guess morally speaking it's
very difficult to say what's right or
wrong and
you'd say certain actions have a
reaction almost like a physics sense
if you kill everyone in your way for as
long as you're able to
your life will be easier i mean you're
setting the table for someone doing the
same to you when you're no longer the
tough guy but
it is what it is yeah if you look at
like the instagram channel
nature's metal it hurts my heart to
watch
to remind me a comfortable descendant of
ape how vicious nature is
just unapologetically
uh just i mean there's a there's a
process to it
where the bad guy always wins
the the violence
is the solution to most problems or
the flip side of that running away from
violence is the solution depending on
your skill set
and it's funny to think of us humans
with our extra little
piece of brain that we're somehow trying
to figure out
like you said in the philosophical way
how to supersede that how to like move
past the viciousness the cruelty
the just the cold
exchange of nature but perhaps it's not
so
maybe that is nature maybe that's the
way of life maybe we're trying too hard
to uh we're being too
egotistical and thinking we're somehow
separate from nature we're somehow
distant from that very thing
i couldn't agree with him more in fact i
think actually orson scott card you know
who's the writer of a great book called
anders game
um was this was a statement that the
main character
you know ender uh made in the book his
brother was
brilliant um his brother was like kind
of sociopathic brilliant kid
that was ended up kicked out of the
school that they were all into for
battle commander
dealing with his brother taught him that
ultimately strength courage
the ability to do violence for all the
good and the bad of that is
one of the fundamental most important
things to be able to do in life because
if you can't cause destruction if you
can't cause pain
you will be forever subject to those who
can and i think that you mentioned
egotism i think that that's a disease
that could
obviously strike any of us but it's
something that we're looking at now
we're
you know i think we should be
unbelievably thankful as people that
live
in the world that we do um that we can
walk down the street
without having to worry that i'm like
well don't worry that that six foot six
270 pound person over there
is just gonna leave me alone and i have
a rolex on but whatever
i'll be fine because that person's
deciding to leave me alone because we've
all agreed to live in this relatively
you know sane and or you know
constrained society because it benefits
all of us and we're doing it because of
a philosophical underpinning
not because nature dictates it be that
way because nature dictates it go in a
very very different direction and the
only person the only thing stopping that
person from doing something to me
is either me that person or someone else
that will stand in between us
and if i can't do it and there's no one
there to stand in between us
then the only thing stopping that person
is that person and i have to hope that
they're
either disinterested or disinclined to
do that sort of thing and i think that
uh
you know it's keeping in mind that that
that is the fundamental
nature of the world whether we like it
or not um
is important and i think the the quest
to
fundamentally alter human nature is
going to be ultimately fruitless and
then also it's
it is a little bit egotistical the lion
does what a lion does
you know we we can try to box it in and
we can try to you know
guide this direction that direction but
you know
nature is as it is and as it always will
be unless we want to start to
constrain it significantly but now i'm
starting to get into individual rights
who put me in charge who says that i
should be the one to make the choice is
constraining because many of the most
awful things that have happened
throughout history one group or one
person has decided to constrain others
and we don't like genghis khan doing
that well i'll do that on a little level
are there going to be beneficial
benefits and beneficiaries absolutely
but
there'll be losers in that too so i
guess it's a it's a dangerous game it's
almost like putting on the one ring you
know we remember when frodo offered the
one ring to gandalf
and gandalf said no no i would take it
away i would put it on
i would use it out of the desire to do
good but through me it would wheel the
power so terrible you can't imagine
i think that's that's the big question
for anyone that decides
that's able to have reach and able to
have power
i mean obviously i can't speak to that
but imagine you did have
national level global level power how
would you use it
would you try to change the world would
you be glad that you did down the line
i don't know yeah there's uh i mean
that's the thing we're struggling now as
a society maybe it'd be nice to get your
quick comment on that which is um the
people who have traditionally been
powerless
are now you know seeking a fairer
society a more
equal society and
in in attaining more power
justly there's also
a realization at least from my
perspective that
power corrupts everyone even if you're
even if the flag you wave is that
of of justice right
and so you know not to overuse the term
but it'd be nice
if you have thoughts about the whole
idea of cancer culture and
the internet and and twitter and so on
where there's
on nuance difficult discussions of uh
of race of gender of
fairness equality justice all these
kinds of things
there's a shouting down oftentimes of
nuanced discussion
of kind of trying to
reason through these very difficult
issues through our history through what
our future looks like
do you have thoughts about the internet
discourse that's going on now
is there something positive yeah i mean
we can pull out of this
it's an interesting thing to see i guess
as you mentioned
anytime you're wielding power whomever
you are
doing so carefully is is important and
it's very very easy to look at the
people that have power
and that are using it poorly or have
used it poorly and go hey you're the bad
guy
and then go well of course if i had
power i'll use it properly and i may
intend to use it properly and maybe i
will
but at the same time we see
a lot of times people are people are
people i think that
a lot of the i think if you if you
believe that that
human beings are all one which i do you
know no matter whether you're here
you're there you're you're
you got two arms two legs a heart a
brain if we all live a similar
experience
you know and obviously with variations
on a theme but uh
you know you're no less a human being if
you're a person i've never met from
china than than
some person in virginia it's we're all
we're all people and i guess
ultimately if i believe that human
beings are corruptable and that power
corrupts and that we're all fallible and
we say
and do things that either intentionally
or unintentionally
um that we wish we'd not um
i think that i have to allow for a
space i guess with the word it's almost
a religious term but i guess i would
just say grace
and that's something that i see
disappearing from discourse in the
public or maybe it wasn't there i'm not
sure but it's interesting you know
watching this occur
on the internet because also now no
longer are you and i just having a talk
sitting on a
on a bus stop it's now in writing
everything's in writing the old the old
saying like don't put that in writing
you're like don't put anything in
writing that's how you get in trouble
and basically uh you know with with the
degree to which everything is recorded
but recorded in tiny little bytes it's
very very easy for me to wave
every less little foolish ignorant
incorrect or correct thing
that someone has ever said or done in
their face to support whatever
argument that i'm trying to make about
them or a situation
and i think that you mentioned cancel
culture or
you know as it seems to exist obviously
this is poisonous on its face this is
poisonous
um it's it's the sort of thing that
doesn't incentivize
proper behavior i mean you look at let's
say one of the great monsters
of history adolf hitler obviously who's
done
awful awful things but also for anyone
that's even a minor student of history
did some positive things as well
we don't have to i don't have to
embroider this person's crimes i don't
have to
act as if there was nothing good a
monster has ever done and
nothing bad that that a great person
throughout history has ever done
but imagine the ghost of adolf hitler
were to pop up and go
oh my gosh guys i'm so sorry i i know
what i've done
but i'd like to apologize and start to
make it right well i mean you'd hope
that you
you know if he popped up over here you
go well i don't really like what you've
done
and i don't like you but at the same
time i'm glad to hear that you're
attempting to
make this right and push in a positive
direction even if you can't make it
right because otherwise
what am i doing i'm disincentivizing
change for the better
i'm i'm looking to wield whatever power
i have in a punitive fashion
um which does not encourage people to do
anything other than double down
on on the wrongs that they've made
knowing that at least they're going to
have some
support from the people that support
that and i guess i want to
you you hopefully look at the use of the
internet as a tool that can
educate and i guess i don't like the
word empower but empower people to do
various things extend their reach
but uh but educate and learn rather than
to further solidify
little tribal things that exist which i
think everyone in humanity and
human history is is vulnerable to me
look at the course of human history it's
deeply tribal
and the tribes or the groups that have
been on top at various points in time
have done
a lot of times bad things to the ones
that have not and
you'd hope that we could learn lessons
from the past and rather than
you know committing the crimes that were
you know that were committed
against us recommitting them when we
slide into the top position
um say you know i could do this now but
i'll not you know i understand the urge
to
to seek vengeance is strong of anyone
that says differently i don't i wouldn't
trust
you know but at the same time we go i've
we we have enough experience in history
enough experience in life enough
hopefully wisdom you know time in to go
this isn't the right answer
this is only going to replay the things
the the worst parts of our history not
the best
and i want to encourage positive
behavior and if i just
again further lash out at people
although understandably
done done understandably i'm simply just
going to just perpetuate the cycle
that's gone on to this point
so you hope that even though we're
seeing a lot of a lot of turmoil
societally at the moment and globally at
the moment that uh
i guess our better angels can prevail at
a certain point but it's going to take a
great deal of leadership and i think
that we're
we're sorely missing like a martin
luther king style character at the
moment or a great leader
and i just i'm hoping that one will show
up
for sure and by the way a word i don't
hear often and i think it's a beautiful
one which is grace
that's a really interesting word i'm
gonna have to think about that it is
there is a religious component to it but
it's exactly right
it um you have to somehow walk the line
between you know you mentioned hitler
i've been reading uh the rise and fall
of the third reich
i'm really thinking about the 1930s
and what it's like to have economic
my concern is the economic pain that
people are feeling now
quietly is really a suffering
that's not being heard and there's
echoes of that
in the in the 20s and the 30s with the
great depression
and there's a hunger for a charismatic
leader like you said there's a leader
that
could walk with grace could inspire
could uh
could bring people together with uh with
sort of uh
dreams of a better future that's
positive
but hitler did exactly everything that i
just said except for the word positive
which is he did give a dream to the
german people who were
great people who are great people of um
of a better future it's just that
a certain point that quickly turned into
the better future requires
literally expansion of more land
it started with well if we want to build
a great germany
we need a little bit more land and so we
need to kind of
get austria then we need to kind of get
france mostly because france doesn't
understand that more land is really
useful so we need to get rid of them and
look what they did to us in versailles
anyway
but so the jew the jewish uh
the holocaust is a separate
thing i don't know well i don't know i
don't know what to think about
because uh so me being jewish and having
a lot of
the echoes of the suffering is in my
family
or the people that are lost i don't know
because hitler wrote all about it in
mineconf so i don't know
if the evil he committed was there all
along
i mean and that that's where the
question of forgiveness
i mean hitler's such a difficult person
to talk about but it's the question of
on cancer culture
who is deserving of forgiveness and
who's not
like the holocaust survivors that i've
read about that i've heard the
interviews with
they've often spoken about the fact that
the way for them to let go to overcome
the atrocities that they've experienced
is to forgive like forgiveness
is the way out for them it's interesting
to think about i don't know i don't know
if
i don't know if we're even a society
ready to even contemplate
an idea of forgiveness for hitler it's
it's an interesting idea though
it was it's a good thought exercise at
the very least
to think about like all these people
that are being canceled
for doing bad things of different
degrees
think of like louis ck or somebody like
that for being
not a good person but like what is the
path for forgiveness
so what's a good person what is the good
part if that's a sliding scale
that we could all find ourselves looking
at the
uncomfortable end of a gun on you know
particularly down the line i mean you
hope for the best but
these definitions i guess like you said
are important and who's doing the
canceling who's being canceled i'm not
necessarily as you said
saying that that's entirely unjustified
or certainly not
it's certainly understandable and
particularly you mentioned like a
monster like an adolf hitler but it's
also interesting i couldn't help but
notice like
you mentioned as a society us being able
to apply forgiveness to someone who's
done so much horror
but people who are personal i'm of
course many so many people in person
affected but directly personally
affected someone a survivor of the
holocaust
being able to let go on that i'm nowhere
near big enough a person for that sort
of thing
but i guess that's that's an interesting
thing
you know being the person who was
physically there
potentially able to able to let go
i don't know that's that's unbelievably
powerful it's interesting i guess you
have to wonder sometimes
and this isn't obviously in regards to
that to the holocaust but
why why i'm holding on to various things
am i
what is it doing for me and what is it
doing to me is it facilitative is it not
and i guess that's something else that i
i really enjoy when i was on ultimate
fighter
they uh they don't let you have any
music or any books other than religious
text so i brought a bible and i brought
a quran and i started to read them
side by side and it was it was really
interesting reading the bible's a little
drier
quran's the crown is more interesting at
least written but um
i i think something that that was
consistently brought up uh
was the way the
most merciful people want i don't think
any of us want justice
we think we want justice but i don't
think we want justice justice is a
dangerous dangerous dangerous game
because maybe this person's wronged me
deeply and i i want justice i want to
balance it out because what is justice
is not a balancing of the scales
and sometimes you can understand it on a
societal level i think it's fine i mean
there's
crime and punishment we can go for the
benefits and the drawbacks of that but
i think what any of us want is mercy
within reason
you know grace as you mentioned because
justice is a very very very dangerous
thing
and it's a valuable and important thing
but who gets to decide what's just
what justice is actually meted out maybe
i get to meet out justice but it's not
i don't get my comeuppance well that
sounds great but what happens when it's
pointed back at me
and uh i guess that comes back to the
veil of ignorance
you know the idea that that one day i
will have to live in the world in which
i've envisioned
the world in which i've created i i
think that a lot of times people love
the idea of uh
they're a judge for your crimes and a
lawyer for theirs and
i heard that the other day i thought it
was great and uh i think that's it
that's a
dangerous thing and hopefully it gives
us all pause before rightly or wrongly
but always understandably you know
wielding wielding
serious power yeah justice is a kind of
drug so if you look at history
also been reading a lot about stalin i
mean all those
folks really i don't know i don't know
what was inside hitler's head actually
that he's a tricky one
because i think he was legitimately
insane stalin was not
and stalin was like he literally thought
he's doing a good
thing he literally thought for the
entirety of the time
that communism is going to bring like
that's the utopia
and he's going to create a happy world
and in his in his mind were ideas of
justice of fairness of happiness of of
uh
yeah human flourishing and that's that's
a drug
and it somehow sadly pollutes the mind
when you start thinking like that what's
good for society
and believing that you have a good sense
of what's good for society
that's intoxicating especially when
others around you are feeling the same
way
and then you start like building up this
movement and you forget
that you are just like a you're you're
like
barely recently evolved from an ape like
you don't know what the hell you're
doing
and then you start like killing witches
or whatever like you start
you start doing they did math let's be
honest though i mean sometimes you got a
witch has to go
yeah we can all agree there which which
has to go if
if it floats or sinks which one i forget
which which
whichever one we need at the time
honestly it's floating it should have
sunk
uh yeah but yeah we can definitely agree
that we just have to go
because you brought it up i uh tweeted
recently but
also just i'm one of the things i'm
really ashamed of in my life is
i haven't really read almost any of the
sci-fi classics
really yeah so like i my whole journey
through reading was through
like the
literary philosophers that would say
like camus jesse dostoevsky
kafka like that place like that's a kind
of sci-fi world
in itself but it's it just
it creates a world in which the
the deepest questions about human nature
can be explored
i didn't realize this but the sci-fi
world is the same it just puts it in a
it like
removes it from any kind of historical
context where you can explore those same
ideas
in like space somewhere elsewhere in a
different time a different place
it allows you almost like more freedom
to like construct these
artificial things where you can just do
crazy
uh crazy kind of human experiments so
i'm now
working through it uh the books on my
list
are the foundation series by isaac
asimov
dune snow crash
by neil stephenson and ender's game like
you mentioned
that's just kind of and then so i posted
that and then of course like
elon musk john uh carmack i don't know
if you know him creator of doom and
quake
oh cool so see they all pitched in these
nerds
these ultra nerds just started like
going like did these
uh do you need to read this that and and
the other so
i've like started working out okay but
it seems like the list i've mentioned
holds up somewhat is there a book is
there
sci-fi books or series or
authors that that you find
are just amazing maybe another way to
ask that is like
what's the greatest sci-fi book of all
time well i'd like to start by
sharing something that i i'm embarrassed
about is that i haven't read anything
other than uh you know orson scott card
j.r tolkien uh frank herbert tolkien
yeah dude
yep yeah yeah i'm aware through
wikipedia
and uh through through surface reading
of things that like a book called the
republic was written once
um yeah there were some other
motherboards
you're uh a prolific reader of wikipedia
articles well
or occasionally
uh whatever else it is that i waste my
time on but but yeah so
i also i should say i posted on reddit
questions
for uh ryan hall and there's like a
million questions
but like uh half of them have to do with
dune no not really but like
people bring up doom i don't understand
why i did you mentioned doom before
well i actually actually have a showy
roll actually made us a ghee a dune
themed ghee one time which i thought was
kind of cool i'll send you i'll give you
one we got extras
but uh actually to your to your point
actually this is a orson scott card
quote actually the writer of bender's
game um fiction because it's not about
somebody who actually lived in the real
world
always has the possibility of being
about oneself
and i think that's a neat thing because
i i have heard you know
other very people whom i respect and
very sharp people
actually every now and then dig their
heels and go i don't like fiction i only
like non-fiction it's more it's more
instructive and i would go
i completely disagree with that i think
we have a hard enough time figuring out
what happened at 7 11
three hours ago that let me tell you
what happened 600
years bc i'm like hey i'm interested but
don't tell me this isn't a story too
yeah there's a there's there's actu
there's factual components i have no
doubt
but we struggle sometimes to like i
guess what i like about
fiction is that you can tell me a story
it's all about people
i mean every night there's more and less
believable things um and i think dune
would be an unbelievably well written
in my opinion for to run you know what
do i know but i really like doing i'll
say that
uh well-written example of you know
human beings interacting with one
another the
political component to that the
emotional the intellectual
the relationship components all of that
and uh i i think that dune is neat
because it's a sci-fi novel but only in
the
only in the loosest sense it's it's
really a story about
religion about group dynamics about
human potential
about um belief learning
politics governance ecology
it's uh the best stories remind me
of history the same way history
hopefully is not just a a list of facts
that i try to be able to recall
or factoids that i try to recall but a
story
that i can understand and and see how
how the threads of
time kind of came together and created
certain things and a lot of times like
we say i'm like uh how the heck is
what's going on right now or a hundred
years from now or a hundred years in the
past happened
and you can look back far enough if we
had accurate knowledge
if we had that like that hypothetical
perfect pool shot you know
at the beginning of time we would see an
unbroken chain of events that led us to
where we are
and and where we are will potentially
lead us to where we're going which is
again why hindsight's helpful but i
think it's neat like
i guess i really enjoy for instance a
book like dune and they're actually
making a movie out of it which i'm
i'm skeptical of to be honest because
it's it's going to be difficult to bring
that to the screen for a variety of
reasons but
there's at least 100 questions ask ryan
what do you think's about the new dune
movie i am not enough of an authority to
have any sort of decent opinion but i
guess what i would say is so much of it
goes on in the character's mind like how
much of any of our
day is any lived experience as it were
is internal
the majority how many times are people
walking around and you know they can you
could
like hey what do you see right now i'm
like oh well i see this picture i see a
wall hey there's lex
but really what what i was paying
attention to was what was going on
inside of my head for a moment and
almost the rest of the world
tuned out and kind of dimmed and uh
yeah i guess um that i think that's
going to be a struggle to
to any time you want to bring that type
of a written story to
to a visual medium i think it's going to
be more difficult but
it'll it'll be interesting it's
definitely my one of my favorite stories
and it's been
it's honestly helped me become better at
life in my opinion better the martial
arts
and i think the the writer i think frank
herbert was absolutely brilliant whether
those were all his ideas which in
reality none of us or all of our good
ideas aren't ours we're a combination
maybe came up with something you're a
curator of other good ideas and
some things you borrowed from somewhere
without even realizing it but uh
i think the the way the messages and the
themes and the ideas that were conveyed
particularly in the original novel or
just
absolutely brilliant is that the is that
to you
one of the greats and and the flip side
of that like or
another way to ask that is like if
somebody's new to sci-fi is that
something you would recommend
that that is an entry point i'm not well
read enough in this sci-fi world i
haven't written a lot of like isaac
asimov or anything like that but
i just i'll recommend dune i'll be an
obnoxious like evangelist for dune to
anyone who'll listen
okay so i yeah i would strongly
recommend it so the other thing you
mentioned
now i should probably be talking to you
about much more important things but
the other thing you mentioned is skyrim
uh do you play video games what's your
favorite game what's
what would you say is the greatest video
game of all time because i'm a huge fan
of elder scrolls oh
yeah i mean i play a little bit um at
this point
you know a little little less uh finally
moved into a new house so
you're like an adult no no no no i'm
like a better funded 12 year old
yeah that's yeah that's entirely that's
entirely accurate better funded 12 year
old
but um somewhat better funded
12-year-old not as well-funded as i wish
but historically did you play video
games oh yeah i played as a kid i was
you know again i've always liked playing
sports and and liked reading
and i always enjoy video games but my
favorite video game i think i've ever
played was uh
nicely the old republic um it was a star
wars game a huge star wars fan until
it became less so so recently disney
um you don't like the i haven't watched
it yet oh my
my delorean oh dog oh i actually like
mandalorian that was that was actually
pretty good yeah
waving this off yeah yeah i will if i
could cancel
one thing i would cancel disney store
i'm gonna edit that part out okay let's
go to the next
but uh this is where if people are
wondering if you're watching this on
youtube
and like the dislike amount is like 80
percent it's because of that comment so
good job good job for making the
internet hey nothing now what about
uh baby yoda yeah i guess
like he's little he's got ears and he
uses the force sometimes and he passes
out again
no qualms with baby yoda yeah you don't
have a heart okay
i the let's go to jiu jitsu if it's okay
uh so the audience of this podcast may
not
know much about jiu jitsu or they do
because it's really part of the culture
now but they don't
really know much they see that so many
people have fallen in love with it have
been transformed through it but they
don't know much about like
what is this thing is there a way you
could sort of
try to explain the what is jiu jitsu
what is the essence of this martial art
that's
captured the minds and hearts of so many
people in the world
i think that jiu jitsu is is a
philosophy
that's expressed physically and that
it's
the kind of development of the in mental
capacity and physical capacity working
in
unison to uh
move efficiently and
almost flowingly unresistantly um
with with a given situation with a with
or physically resisting opponent
um learning how to generate force on
your own and how to steal force from the
floor how to steal force from the other
person and move in concert with it as
opposed to clash against which if you
watch
two untrained people fight it's almost
entirely a clash it's a runaway and
clash or run away and clash
um if you watch jiu jitsu done well
it's it looks like water moving around a
solid structure
and and i think that that is expressed
physically and i think that all of the
things
that anyone have really been able to do
very very well in jiu jitsu end up
kind of exemplifying that but i think
that's true of martial arts in general
i think that a lot of times like the
clashing that we see going on
um and working well is just the fact
that you know you get
very very physically powerful people
every now and then they're able to get
away with this but i don't think that
that's and that's that's fantastic
because ultimately it's a results-driven
thing but
i think that the essence of the martial
arts is learning how to make more out of
less and how to move with
and be yielding almost like real life
aikido
and uh so you think of martial arts uh
jiu jitsu
as uh like water
or flowing so aikido so moving around
the the force as opposed to
sort of maybe the wrestling mindset is
finding a leverage where you can apply
an exceptional amount of force
so like it's like maximizing the
application of force i guess maybe
that's a better way to i'd like to marry
the two ideas you know because i think
you flow until the point at which
you are the greater force at which point
in time you can apply
but uh if you look at the best wrestlers
and when i say best i don't necessarily
mean most successful although of course
most successful are always very very
good
um throughout the course of history in
boxing in
wrestling in judo they're magical
they they disappear and reappear it's
like fighting a ghost that that
is like incorporeal when you want to
find it but then when you don't want to
find it
when you don't want to find it it finds
you and i i think that we see that
in the like the bouvie source citatives
of wrestling
um and you know i guess you could look
at uh floyd mayweather or willie pep
or you know pernell whitaker in boxing
um as brilliant examples of
disappearing and reappearing and when
you're strong it's almost like gorilla
warfare
when you're strong i'm nowhere to be
found when you're weak you can't get rid
of me
and i think that's what we're looking
for yeah the tear brothers are
incredible at that they just they
they look like uh skinny starbucks
baristas
and uh they just manhandle
everybody like effort effortlessly they
look like they just kind of woke up
rolled out of bed go fighting for like
the
the gold medal at the olympics and just
effortlessly throw
uh like there's a match against you i
guess yo romero
yeah so like you you know if you look at
like who is the guy
who's like intimidating in this case uh
and the terrifying looking
it's uh it's joe romero just like
a physical specimen and obviously like a
super accomplished wrestler
i think this is for the gold medal yeah
in 2008
2000 yeah sydney and then there this is
the year you all took silver
and what you like just to just show you
like there's a
inside trip effortless gucci and
he does it again
you know it's a really creative kind of
wrestling where
it's organic yeah you're throwing all
these kinds of things this is a mix of
judo a mix of
like weird kind of moves it's not like
as funky as uh ben askren it's
it's just like legitimate basic
well it's not funky for funky's sake and
i'm not poking right then asking
to imply that that's what he's doing but
it's like it's it's funny it's like a
lot of times it's almost like a musashi
talked a lot about that you know that
the only goal of combat is
to win is the the outcome is it's
outcome driven versus like flourishing
you know cool looking movements it's
like unless that had a utilitarian
purpose like what are you wasting your
time with that
both in the fight and also you know in
practice
but but as you mentioned it's almost
like it looks like judo it looks like
wrestling it looks like jiu jitsu it's
almost like i guess
reminds me all of the martial arts is
again deeply tribal as well i
i want to learn lex friedman martial
arts and then i want to learn
another you know i guess transcendent
person's martial arts and it just
happened to be the set of movements that
you tended to do most of the time
thanks to your body type and your
opposition and whatnot but then i try to
codify
that and force those to work as opposed
to going i want to understand
how the body works in concert and in in
congress with something else and other
forces
and move appropriately and that's why
it's like it always struck me that the
psyche brothers are great examples of
just moving like water but they to use
bruce lee which is a little trite but
again it's brilliant it's like
water can flow or what it can crash and
they would crash when they needed to
crash and they would flow when they
needed to flow but they would flow for
the purpose of dissipating and then
crash when they would win
and at the right moment then go back to
flowing the second that the other person
found them and it's just it's
beautiful to watch it's artistic and i
think that great expression of anything
physical is ultimately studied as a
science but expressed as an art and i
think that that's something that gets
lost in jiu jitsu a lot of times when it
gets
a little bit a little nerdy like do this
hand to your hand here like it's like
the more details i have the better
when in reality that's just not not in
my experience how it's done
might be a fun exercise of saying like
what are the main positions
and submissions in the art of jiu jitsu
you don't have to be complete that's a
ridiculously i apologize for putting you
on the spot like this but
it might be a nice exercise to think
through it sure i mean i would just say
that they're
they're you have your arms bend in
various ways you have
key lock americana straight arm locks
kimura omoplata omoplata is a
chemorecognizable plot that's just
executed emissions
like submissions breaking off your arm
in all kinds of ways but ultimately
the question is let's say you were a
terminator like a robot that i which of
course you are
going on it's like all right so we're
being completely literal
but uh and i and i couldn't harm you
with any of these things would i still
use these positions the answer is yes
they they create leverage they create
control they create
shapes that i can affect and that can
affect me and they can be affected
through other forces
and other objects or structures like the
ground or the wall i really enjoy mixed
martial arts because
there's another component rather than
just me and you and the floor there's me
you the floor and the wall and it's
another player in the game that doesn't
exist
uh in a grappling context with an uh in
a non-enclosed
you know i guess area of combat but um
you can strangle me or choke me um what
do you call it
uh without my arms being involved or you
can use one of my shoulders
to pin one side of my one carotid artery
off and you can enclose the other
you can turn my knee in the exact same
ways that you can turn my arm
straight this way and that way you can
add a rotation to that or it can be
directly linear against the joint
so i guess what i would say is the more
that i've been able to understand
jiu jitsu the more that i've been it's
given me a look into how we
learn language where rather than
learning five bazillion adjectives i go
i understand what an adjective is and of
course we are all read into
some degree of vocabulary i understand
what an adverb does
and i understand what an adverb is i
know what a noun is i know what the
component parts of a sentence
are i know what you know i guess a
clause a contraction any of these things
and it allows you to be um interesting
and artistic
with your language to the extent that
you can but i can't like i can speak a
degree of spanish but i'm not even
slightly artistic in spanish i would be
something i speak like like a child with
a head injury
and anyway um your basic understanding
of
the english language allows you to then
be a student of spanish
100 but i'm limited by my experience i'm
limited by my
understanding of techniques and i'm
limited unders by my understanding
almost like let's say techniques are
like these are like vocabulary
um so even if i kind of sort of grasp
the sentence structure
and the thought process and the thought
patterns of of spanish which it's
interesting because just even though
the orientation and the organization of
a language and i've thought about this a
great deal
um you know the way that i perceive the
world is affected deeply by the language
that i learned
you know the again if i learned i have
no idea the chinese language structures
but i can only imagine that it would be
that it would affect it's like a
different lens we're looking at the same
thing but i have i have a different set
of sunglasses on than you do
um and uh that's that's very very
interesting i'll use the quran as an
example
you know apparently it's unbelievably
poetic in in arabic
still neat and was interesting reading
in english but
i'm told by people that i trust that it
just one doesn't bear resemblance to the
other and i think that's a very
interesting thing that you may be able
to say the same thing but in in a more
in i guess in a different way in a more
artistic way that that
may not translate on a one-for-one kind
of fidelity but um
the more that we're able to understand
about how the body works the more
examples of the body working this way
the body working that way the body
working that way
the more that i'm able to eventually
become an artist but it has to be
studied as a science first and it does
start with technique collection
vocabulary collection the same way we
learn
in school you remember how to say
quickly
17 different ways and let's say i speak
spanish
i'm only i only know three so you might
use
quickly you might use an adjective like
quickly in spanish but use one of the
many many options to describe that that
i don't understand now i sit there and
go like
wait what i can't be artistic i can't be
as organic with the language as i'd like
so i believe that jiu jitsu a lot of
times starts with
the acquisition of a lot of hey do this
this this drill this technique here's an
american americana to an arm lock arm
locked to a triangle
um but the problem with that is
oftentimes we get stuck in that phase
and i people eventually become move
collectors or sequence collectors and i
notice this when i'm trying to do
dvds or i guess like an instructional
series now or even teaching in class
i don't believe in that form of learning
anymore um not that it's not valuable
but i don't believe
i don't understand jujitsu on that level
anymore so what i'm trying to do is get
across the basic ideas to people and say
hey
you need to fill in the gaps with going
to class all the time you need to go hey
learn this move learn that technique
learn that technique because otherwise
i'm basically just throwing at you
like 75 different words that you could
use but that hasn't really taught you
how to how to
speak a language whereas if you give me
the language structure
you can fill in these pieces on your own
and then eventually speak organically
in lex form which will be ultimately
unique to you because otherwise you just
end up being
a weird facsimile of whatever it is that
i'm doing
for mostly the worst i'd say but uh yeah
that's what people i mean people comment
like is this especially people haven't
listened to me before
uh is this guy drunk or high does he
does mit really allow slow people to uh
to be like
like what's what's wrong with him is he
getting sleep are you okay
and does he need help so that that's
similar with my jiu jitsu it's like this
is this guy is this guy
really whatever rank i was throughout
i remember just like is this guy really
this rank
i just have a very kind of certain way
of sitting and being slow and
lazy looking that that was ultimately
the language that i had to discover and
it was uh it was yeah it was a very
liberating
moment i think of
probably a few years of getting my ass
kicked
especially with open guard and butterfly
to where you really allow yourself to
take in the entirety of the language and
realize that um
that i'm not i'm different i'm a unique
i'm i'm unique and like i have a very uh
i have a language i have a set of
techniques a way i
move my body that needs that i'm the one
to discover
like it's you can only you can learn
specific techniques and so on but you
really have to
understand your own body that's the
beautiful thing about jiu jitsu like you
said
is like the the connection about your
philosophy your view of the world
with the physical and like connecting
those two things
how you perceive the world how you
interpret
ideas of the world about exhaustion
about force
about effortlessness like what it really
means to relax
all these kinds of loose concepts and
then actually
teach your body to like do those things
and like you know and be able to apply
force and spurts to be able to relax in
sports and like figure all that stuff
out
for my for your my individual body but
it's
as you mentioned that's i couldn't agree
with you more it's a discovery process
and no one can cheat that process
which is at the same time it's almost
like imagine i want to start writing
books in second grade unless
maybe i'm like staggeringly brilliant i
wish i could only conceptualize someone
being able to do that but
maybe a mozart of the english language
where you're out there doing it
but for most of us we don't have enough
knowledge enough information enough
experience to be able to
be to express ourselves so we have to
basically
input repeat um which is important but
it's the process as you say of going
through that of getting your ass kicked
just like well that didn't work well
that didn't work that felt right but i
don't know nobody else does that i guess
i don't believe in that
versus eventually going i don't know
i'll just try going my own way and see
what happens and now i'll get yelled at
and people won't like me and if it works
they'll say i got lucky and if it
doesn't work they'll say i was dumb
but uh which maybe all is right but
basically uh
you know going through that iterative
process that allows you to eventually
find your self-expression and find your
voice so that you
you fight the same way that you speak
the same way that you write the same way
that you think in a way that
that is uniquely you that will also
ultimately allow you
to understand other people being
uniquely them because even if you can
only conceptualize and i think about
this a lot for
society stuff where i go well this is
how i feel about this but
am i objectively right maybe about a
couple things but that's a small box
that i have to be very very careful
about what i think is objective
and versus what's not and i have to be
open to the possibility that all the
things that i think are
objectively correct may or may not be
and that should allow me to have some
degree of compassion or consideration
for other people both in their martial
arts journey and in their
in their journey you know as people as
human beings because i understand
that they're on a it's a we're all on a
path right it's all a
again an iterative process of eventual
self-expression but i think that's one
of the things that we
see having trouble when we see tribalism
which i mean
raises an expression of that political
affiliation expression of that
all of these things that can go in
really uncomfortable directions people
are looking for
hey where do i plant my feet over here
where's where's the thing that i know is
right and that we can all agree on the
following
and i think that we see that in martial
arts we're like oh i do this style why
do that style i do that stuff which is
like hey man we're all
just pushing forward in a certain
direction you're trying to do our best
and i understand why you feel the way
you do i may have felt like that at one
point too
but uh you know what i'm just trying to
learn and understand
versus i've already acquired enough
knowledge let me cross my arms and start
to to look who's fucking up around here
yeah and and i think that uh
that that's an it's an interesting trap
that i think is very human trapped to
fall into but it definitely happens
early on it's something it's a joke in
the jiu jitsu world right like how the
blue belt that knows everything well
initially it's like what i know nothing
and i
at least think i know nothing then i'd
learn a little bit and i think it's a
lot bit
and then you know the more you learn the
more you go like i don't even know what
i'm doing
yeah that's exactly right we kind of
talked about it a little bit
but uh once again a lot of people that
listen to this
have never been on the mat have never
tried jiu jitsu but are really curious
about it
everybody at all positions like i think
elon musk's kids are not doing jiu jitsu
andrew yang is like they're all you know
the world is curious
it's a it's a nice it seems to be
a nice methodology by which to humble
your ego which to grow intellectually
and physically so
people are curious about it so the
natural question is if they're curious
about it
how would you recommend they get started
maybe like
what do you recommend the first day week
month
year first couple years look like like
how do you ease into it
and make sure that it's a positive
experience and
you progress in the most optimal and
positive way
the first thing you can do is simply ask
yourself why
why you want to be involved you know i
remember the first day that i walked
into ronan athletics in
new york city to train under um
godfather my son now christian montes
and i didn't know what i was getting
myself into i
played baseball through high school and
i wanted i was at manhattan college
in the bronx and i wanted to go and
learn martial arts because
it was always something that was
interesting to me but it was never
something that that was
i that i knew was accessible and it
definitely wasn't really around in
northern virginia where i grew up
whereas then you stick yourself in in
manhattan and there's stuff everywhere
so anyway i guess i didn't know what to
expect um i didn't know
if i was going to get beat up if people
were going to be nice if people were not
going to be nice um
but what i began with was i think
expectation management
and i think that that's something that
uh i would
that'll be the first thing that i would
start is almost imagining what is it
that i'm getting myself into
because i love the martial arts with
with the martial arts has given me
everything in life and i'm so
thankful i wouldn't be sitting here um
without
without that that experience that
journey of the people that i've met the
place that i got
i could never ever have ever imagined um
and i'm just unbelievably thankful for
that but i think that the
thing that um that helped me
most of all was starting with you know
my mom said something to me one time and
she said you know there's
two types of people in various
situations there's why and there's why
not
and you know it's understandable to have
questions concerns things like that
um but maybe sometimes a little bit
easier when you're when you're younger
to just trust people or just say oh well
you know um
but uh we go hey you want to climb that
rock i'm like yeah why not let's go
hey you want to jump in that river yeah
why not sure versus if i have to
reason my way into everything i have to
be talked into everything
a lot of times i'll talk myself out of
it and i think that a lot of times this
is the thinker's disease
you want to figure out what's going to
happen and what you should expect to
have happen
before you get involved versus going
using the old bruce lee saying again
it's like no amount of thinking or
training on the on the side of the river
will teach you how to swim
you have to jump in and there are risks
associated with that
and so uh i guess uh psychological
are usually the biggest ones that's the
biggest hurdle and physical
but the biggest thing that i guess i
would suggest to anyone to say why do
you want to do this you're like well i
want to challenge myself i want to learn
i would like to learn to fight i wanted
to learn to fight so that i could
protect myself and if and if anything
else other people if only within arms
reach
um i perceived that if i had some small
degree of power
um i generally wouldn't use it which is
why i was like i'll give it a try i'll
try to be reasonable and hopefully if i
make a mistake i'll apologize to people
but basically uh
i said yeah i'd like to have that and
i wanna i know this is gonna be
challenging and we'll see what happens
and that means that getting beat up and
i didn't get like hurt but getting
roughed up and getting my arm
bent this way or that way getting choked
i was like well this is all supposed to
happen that's no big deal
it would be like going and joining the
army during peace time
and then going oh i'm just doing this
for a college education you're like okay
that's cool man
and then all of a sudden war breaks out
and they want to send me somewhere and
i'm like whoa whoa whoa whoa i didn't
sign up for that gig
actu actually you did whether you
realized it or not you may not have
thought that you did
but you did so getting your mind right
and
and just going what are my expectations
this activity what is it that i'm
looking to do and of course
you know you're you're going into a gym
you're going into a place that you don't
know people you probably don't know
people and you don't know the coach and
even if you do want to hey how you doing
shake your hand type of level
you know 95 percent of my students don't
know me not really you know i'll try to
be polite and not annoy them too much
but they don't know me and i don't know
them
um i understand if they don't trust me i
wouldn't
trust trust me either if i were them but
at the same time
someone has to take that leap and one of
the things that i've noticed um as a
martial arts instructor that's the
biggest struggle
uh with dealing with adults which is why
a lot of people like to teach kids is
because kids don't ask
don't argue now that also means there's
there's all sorts of pitfalls with that
sort of thing and that can be an issue
but you know i guess a lot of times
people get to a point in their life you
know in their
20s early 30s where now i'm i'm a
manager now i know what i'm doing
no one talks to me like that yeah versus
like hey man you go join boot camp i
don't care if you are elon musk they're
gonna tell you to shut up and do
push-ups yeah and that's
what's great about it yeah um so you are
taking a leap of faith
into a world that you're gonna be a tiny
fish and you gotta hope that the people
um who are who are guiding you in that
in that journey are gonna have
i can't say even say your best interests
at heart because they don't even know
you but they'll they'll try to do no
harm and they'll try to help you in the
way that they would understand
and i guess that's for instance that's
what i would try to do with anyone
that that comes into my gym i would try
to help them in the way that i
understand
they need as best i can in as safe and
reasonable a way as possible
but sometimes in a way that's going to
make them uncomfortable particularly if
physical combat
and and it's not something they've done
before if
a lot of people go in without even
having played you know contact sports
and so that can be a big jump and you
have to understand if if that's
where you're starting from no worries
but you're going to have to kind of work
your way to it and it's going to be
uncomfortable and
and that's okay it's part of the process
and you're gonna have some bumps and
bruises
and you're not gonna want to roll with
that guy in the corner because that that
person's rough and they beat you up and
they're like okay but
is this a big hurt or is it a little
hurt if it's a big hurt
okay if it's a little hurt you need to
use you just
drop a little bit yeah it's such an
interesting balance because
to find i think one of the most
important things
as in anything i think in life is the
selection of the people or that you put
around you
i mean that's true with the like getting
married that's true with
uh like if you go to if people ask me
like graduate students
like your phd advisor can
um can be the difference it's everything
it's like you spend five years with
somebody they're going to basically
define
the more impact on you than anybody you
marry anybody you hang out with it's a
huge impact and the same with the
the coach selection which is
like the school selection is it's going
to be really important about
in terms of like who you select will uh
define how happy like the trajectory of
your growth and how happy you are with
the entirety of the experience and yet
like the the flip side of that is
especially if you have an ego especially
if you are the manager then you need to
let go of some stuff
you're gonna feel like shit with the
good with the best kind of coach
that's that's what you need right but
there's a nice there's a weird balance
there to find
like i i mean like and everybody needs a
different thing like i'm much more
uh i enjoy being sort of like
it sounds weird but like i am you know
from the wrestling background
i enjoy feeling like crap in the sense
like the coach
like getting beat up i don't actually
enjoy it
it's not like some masochistic thing or
whatever
it's the growth like i like the anxiety
i like uh
feeling uh like like shit when i go home
like
emotionally physically it's
like it's growth it's a sign of growth
right like if you're not having to feel
those things
you're probably in your comfort zone
which is fine but that's not your growth
zone
right and everybody has a different
threshold
for that and you i mean the the
beautiful thing about jiu jitsu is like
it's also has like a yoga feel to it
like you're learning about your body
so depending on the gym and depending on
in fact
the coaches the people around you within
the gym you can select little groups too
kind of like the people with who you
roll like if you're a smaller person
it doesn't mean you have to go against
big people you can go against the people
who like
smoke a lot of weed and they're chill or
you can go against like that crazy
ripped blue belt competitor who's like
out to destroy everybody
and depending on like what your mindset
is you can kind of select that
it's just such a fascinating journey uh
of like basically self-discovery i
couldn't agree with you more it's i mean
what you need
may change over time right maybe what
you needed what you need today could
change six months from now or a year
from now and that's something that i
experience i'll use my uh first coach
christian again as a great example of
someone who i really
look up to and respect and someone who
helped me a lot like at a time when i
really needed some guidance and i needed
to learn
martial arts but get into i the hens of
gracie's gym was right down the street
from where christian was teaching
and christian was a blue belt at the
time it was uh he was teaching at a
place called fight house which was this
awesome
like you know like 90s early 2000s
you know warehouse area uh down on
fashion avenue in uh
in manhattan off of like between seventh
and eighth and uh it was like
like two basketball courts wide but like
there was the sambo guys over here there
was the kali guys over there there was a
wing chun over there with jits in the
corner
and hens was one of the most famous
academies in the world at that time
still is
and i just didn't know what enzo gracie
was and i mean
it's a great gym and it's a fantastic
place for people to train but i think
what was right for me at the time
was to i stumbled into a you know like a
two-person elevator
up and found a place where six people
trained at that time
and i had someone that that i could that
could give me some
like in addition to martial arts advice
like personal guidance
and that made it that made a big
difference and then one initially we
would have like competitions or like
intra
intra you know gym competitions with the
sambo guys we would comp
we would roll with them and like again
it was great because they were just a
bunch of like like russian dudes from
like brighton beach and they would come
down
and then we would all fight and then
everyone would train and we'd all drink
tea and then go home
and uh anyway uh what was uh
it was super super tough and they were
like again just a tough group of people
it was great
and then i remember when i decided after
like four or five months i'm like man i
really want to try to take this
seriously and i told christian about
that and he's like well hey i think you
need to do the following and it was
you know like hey here's there was a guy
named jeff ruth who was uh
about at the time which was a much
bigger deal than it is now but it was
10-0 as an mma fighter a lot of amateur
body spirits super tough dude
and jeff was was the best person at that
time that i'd ever trained with and i
just got squashed christians beat me up
too but like
jeff would just absolutely kick the crap
out of me and i was like this is
awesome and this was back when i was at
home i went home for the summer for that
and chris is like hey i think you should
stay
because i told him that's what i was
thinking and this was a coach that
you know when it's like when initially
was exactly what i needed and then he's
like well hey that's not what i'm doing
here maybe
they're going to be able to help you on
to a path that's that's kind of
commensurate with what your goals are at
the moment
and then you know that was a niche that
was an interesting thing and i really
got i feel that i was fortunate to start
um at a place where my coach was able to
transition roles
and and and do so comfortably and i
think that that also was probably a
factor of the fact that
you know where he'd done some of his
training prior like there have been
issues
with with the coach there we're like not
supporting not having the support
you know feeling like hey like i'm gonna
hold on to my students i'm gonna hold on
to my best guy or my best girl even if i
can't
take them where they need to go um so
that was an interesting thing and just
recognizing also though that
the people like the same way you're an
individual going into a gym and you
don't know what you're getting into
your coach is a person too and he or she
you know they may have been doing this
activity longer than you but they're not
they're not some weird little you know
all-knowing god they don't know anything
but they're gonna
they may say something that pisses you
off they may they may yell at you they
may help you they may
inadvertently cause you some sort of you
know some sort of issue
and just being able to recognize that
even though i say this to people and
i've said this to people in my gym i'm
like
you know we're in the service industry
man but i'm not at your service like
don't get it twisted like i will
absolutely do my best to help people
i'm there to do my best as a martial
arts
coach but i'm here to do my best as a
martial arts coach and i'll do my best
and
periodically i make mistakes and i own
an apology or two and i'll try to give
them out when i can
but uh we're not mcdonald's it's not oh
you gave me 100 bucks so you do whatever
you want in here this is my house this
is my gym this is my dojo this is this
is the martial arts this is not a
basketball team yeah there's something
beautiful about
martial arts like exactly as you said as
the coach
like in wrestling and at least
collegiate like high level wrestling
it's like there's a dictatorship aspect
to a coach that is very important to
have
like this this ridiculous sometimes
nature of like master and so on
and bowing all these traditions there's
something it seems ridiculous from the
outside perhaps but there's something
really powerful to that
because that process of you said why not
of letting go of the leap of faith
requires you to believe that the coach
has your best
interest in mind and just give yourself
over to
their ideas of how
how you should grow and that's an
interesting thing i mean i've never been
able to
really see coaches i've had as
human they're always you always it's
like a father figure or
like this you always put them in this
position of power and i think that's
i think at least for me it's been a very
it's been a very useful way to see the
coach because it allows you to not
think and let go and really allow
yourself to grow
and emotionally deal with all the
beatings they'll push you where
past oftentimes where you would have
stopped yourself right which is great
and hopefully they know
they if they're paying attention and
they're they're still a person they can
make mistakes but they'll push you
further than you would have gone
but not so far that it's not
facilitative right right that's
something that i can
say like ferraza hobby um the head coach
at tristar my head coach for mma kenny
florian one of the head coaches for mma
have both been phenomenal influences
paul schreiner who's the uh
one of the assistants at marcelo
garcia's academy um coached me in jiu
jitsu for a long time brilliant
instructor
they've all been able to do that and i
think what's interesting about all of
those guys they're very sharp but they
they're very intuitive as well and i
think that for us actually
uh you know told me about something that
john wooden said john wooden the
legendary ucla basketball coach just a
simple philosophical idea
just he said some people's life is a
bowl of shit
it needs some whipped cream in it some
people's life is a bowl of whipped cream
needs a little bit of shit in it just to
balance it out and it's an interesting
thing coaching everyone the same way
doesn't work you know that's i think the
difference between a coach and an
instructor and a lot of times people
think they want to coach but they really
want an instructor i'm like hey lex tell
me what to do not how to do
it and then other times people think
they want you know an instructor and
they really want to coach
i'm like man this guy's just giving me
information a coach is so much more than
an instructor and that's a huge leap
and that's something that i think that
people need to understand when they're
going into martial arts and i understand
i can totally grasp why they don't
because how how would they know but uh
i think about this a lot like me giving
you 150 dollars for a month which is not
nothing that's for sure
that does not that pays for instructor
really coach is a relationship that gets
developed because can you imagine like
just the amount of
emotional investment and and time
thinking away from from like oh alex
isn't here anymore what can i do to help
him what does he need
like that's that's serious and that's
the difference between that's
that's oftentimes the difference that at
getting getting over the hump in various
situations
so it's a it's an interesting you know
bargain that's being made like
commitment by the
by the instructor who becomes a coach
commitment by the student
you know like there's a financial
transaction there's a lot of things
going on there but i feel very fortunate
to have had
not just instructors in my time but
coaches and that means sometimes we
butted heads
and sometimes i look back and i think i
was right and other times looked back on
my own no they were definitely right
but there was always the trust um with
the exception of one time that
i feel that trust was greatly betrayed
um that
rightly or wrongly whether mistakes
mistakes will be made but
everyone is attempting to do do the
right thing under no circumstances would
i intentionally
do anything malicious you know versus
hey i might have done i'm going to burn
your house down but you can be darn sure
it wasn't on purpose
and i think that as long as there's that
mutual understanding and mutual belief
of goodwill
which again doesn't just magic up out of
nowhere i understand
i think that that's when then great
things can happen and i look at all the
athletes that i know
you know the guys and girls that i've
watched become fantastic in various
places
almost invariably it never happened
alone yeah yeah
i'm really torn about that like um maybe
you can help
have you seen the movie whiplash so it's
uh
i would say from an outsider's
perspective people should watch it's a
i guess jazz band it's a movie about a
drummer and
the instructor and he it's a basically
i would say from the outsider's
perspective it's a toxic relationship
but he's really the coach whatever we
call him
pushes the the musician the drama
to his limits like to where
he just feels like shit um emotionally
it's a it looks like a toxic
relationship but it's one that
ultimately is very
productive for the improvement of the
musician
i have the same like in my own
experience i had um
i got a chance to train a couple places
regularly and so one of my coaches
uh who is a great human being a lot of
people love him
but when i was a blue belt he was
pushing me a lot for competition
and every time i stepped on the mat i
was uh
anxious and almost afraid of training
because of like the places i'm gonna
have to go
and then the i can't
i don't know what's good or bad because
i think
i've become a better person because of
that experience like i needed that
and on the flip side like the place i
got my
black belt from balance studios is i
remember also
blue belt uh the coach sitting down
and i was going to competition and he
saw something in me
where he said um you know
like good luck but win or lose
we always love you like i i
re i remember that because i really
needed that at that time like i was
putting so much pressure on myself
like i'm not an actual professional
competitor
you know i just competed like i'm a pg
student like
but like it was clearly having a
psychological effect on me
and that's what a great coach does it's
like
you know it's like life is more
important than jiu-jitsu
sense that's right it's bigger so they
find
you use jiu-jitsu when you need it to
grow as a person
and when it overwhelms you you
you have to pull that person out like
look at the bigger picture always look
at the bigger picture
it's fascinating and i don't know what
to make of it i don't think i would have
it any other way is
both the anxiety and the and the love
yeah i think that i couldn't that's a
really interesting thing that you're
describing that
i i guess it kind of brings me back to a
lot of the other things we've been
discussing is
just almost like the the reciprocal
nature of everything where
no pressure that's great everyone's
happy all the time it's either i mean
let's uh use an example of sci-fi movies
let's say the matrix which of course
the first one was amazing and then each
subsequent movie made the series worse
but um but basically i'm working on a
new one by the way yeah i've heard
we'll see i was hoping for the best but
um but basically uh you know it's like
hey we started
our first initial world agent smith says
to neo he's like our first world
was a utopia where everyone was happy
and nothing ever went wrong it's like
your primitive
cerebrum rejected it and i think that
there's
obviously i mean what do i think but i
guess well i'm here so i might as well
say what i think
um i guess uh you know
great things are fantastic a kind
gentle place is fantastic and this is
again why i love dune because i think
doon does such a great job of expressing
frank herbert does such a great job of
expressing again the reciprocal nature
of these ideas
you know look at uh look at sparta for
instance or at least what i understand
sparta from the reading and also
watching 300. um
you know and reading wikipedia and
reading the wikipedia article about the
movie
not the place um but uh it's um
that's a hard brutal place and
that was their benefit to that like
absolutely was there drawback to that
absolutely is it sustainable i should i
would think probably not
um i mean granted it hasn't sustained
but i mean that type of a
of a thing it burns too hot almost and
it uh
it destroys the host at a certain point
and you know i guess that that type of
unforgiving nature
but entirely entirely permissive has its
own
issues and i guess coming back to your
what your description of like describing
a toxic relationship is a very
dangerous and tricky thing because it's
almost like uh it's like bird's-eye view
me
it's what you know you see let's say a
husband and a wife arguing and you're
like all right well
sort of somebody hitting somebody i need
to keep myself out of this because i
have no idea
what i'm seeing something but i don't
know what's going on or why specifically
and again short of it going to a place
that's that just out out of bounds
i don't know who's right here i don't
know who's wrong and i don't know what
phase of this things they're in so i
guess
long term what's good for yeah both
people
right it's dangerous for so if i want to
put my finger on the scale i can
understand the desire to do i'm like hey
guys let's break it up
yeah but and that may be the right thing
at the time but at the same time i'm not
sure so i think back to all of the times
that
you know that like you mentioned your
coach pushing you when
very very hard and then other times
going like hey let's put in perspective
here
i think that's an interesting thing for
high performance and i think that we're
seeing that
again societally you know now or at
least maybe that's it just pops up on my
internet feed periodically
um but coaches shouldn't be allowed to
do this or yell at this person to yell
at that person like well
have you ever been go to a boxing gym
it's not a commercial entity not really
a real boxing not la boxing not a ufc
gym
like a real place you're going to see
what things are like when it's entirely
performance-based go to wrestling room
at a high level
you know again there's there's left and
right limits and there are such things
obviously as abuse of course but and
that should never be tolerated
um but it's not a commercial entity
i don't need to be sweet to you if
you're if you're screwing up if you're
dropping the ball and in fact
recognizing that i'm not
doing you a favor or the team a favor by
by
being permissive of that type of
behavior i think is important everything
in its context and at its time
is important and i guess i can think
again at the times that i've been put
put or had put on me like a great deal
of pressure
to do x y as a year to succeed um or to
push for success and
i can't look back fondly enough on those
times
they were tough at the time but without
that i'm not sitting here without that
i don't go from growing up in a very
nice family in the suburbs to fighting
at the highest level in jiu jitsu
nogi and now in mixed martial arts
starting a career at age 27.
you know i don't it just doesn't happen
because people generally speaking from
that
background don't get pushed hard enough
physically to be able to make that
transition
and that has benefits and it has
drawbacks you know when you stare into
the abyss it stares back and i think
that that's an important thing to
understand
you know you stare long enough you you
can become something that you don't
that you would be sorry that you did you
don't look enough and you don't have
perspective either
you know and i i think that that's an
interesting thing i can speak to someone
who's relative to being someone who's
relatively articulate and reasonably i
try to be reasonable
but you know i'll say inspiring if
people get crazy with me they get a
warning
and then i'm gonna crack them and what
did they expect oh they hear
the guy on an interview but who did they
think they were meeting because there's
also the guy in the ring
and there's layers there too i remember
training with you
it's kind of funny there's like there's
well you didn't know who i was i mean
you still like
i have a really good strength a lot by
the way that
so i don't remember what rank i was but
it might have been purple or something
like that and i did
some like i you had this look on your
face which i've often seen
in black belts it's like here he goes
again
like here here's him trying this thing
and then when i kind of annoyed you a
little bit with it
now i get that it was a good like i you
know i did something somewhat effective
like some
like maybe a little bit off balance yeah
there's
i just peeled off a little layer of ryan
hall to where i was like okay let me
let me like there there's like layers
underneath the
covers are like somewhere in there like
so it was like okay
this like new guy rolls in here he
thinks he can
do this stupid thing and then and then
you start to beat the hell out of me
but the the point is there's layers here
from the guy who
was being interviewed now to like
genghis khan
but it's but it's all in the same body
right but it's like all of us are like
that right in various different
directions and recognizing that's okay
it's just there are consequences to all
every choice that we make as a
consequence sometimes
there's like objectively wrong or
objectively right but at least in my
mind that's a pretty small box
everything else is just there's a
consequence of that do you like that
consequence do you not
and who do i want to become what do i
want to try to
hone myself or anyone else into and also
like
but this is something i've screwed up as
a coach plenty of times you know like if
someone says
if you're if like i come to like lex i
really really want to take
you know research very seriously like
okay i believe you now
i haven't shown you that but i believe
you're like okay and now
me not showing up to research or to
study or not being up until three in the
morning thinking about this is no longer
acceptable
there was a time like five seconds
before me making that statement that if
i went to bed without reading the book
that i needed to read
no worries but the second that i made
that statement your
your expectations for me change and
maybe it's something that's something
that i've screwed up a whole bunch of
times in my
um as a teacher because it's an
interesting thing obviously you know
being a like running a martial arts
school
as you're principally an athlete um is
sometimes i don't pay enough attention
to what people are doing i just go oh
okay you say xyz i'm like roger that i
believe you're cool
i will now put you in category x and
whether rightly or wrongly like maybe
this person didn't understand what they
were asking for or i didn't express this
or the other and it just
it caused cross wires and then most
times you hash it out you have a
discussion you figure out get to the
bottom of what people are trying to do
or what they want
but uh if i was paying more attention i
think i could have been a lot more
effective or if i had more experience
and sometimes maybe i'm not sharp enough
or i don't person i'm not perceptive
enough to be able to
to see what's going on and maybe with
years more down the line i'll be able to
have a sharper perception but uh i think
that's another one of those interesting
things that
some that sometimes i would caution or
not caution but just to inform a
prospective martial arts student
depending upon where you're going um you
know this you
both you and also your coach or other
people in the room they wear many hats
and sometimes there's a i had the wrong
hat on you were talking to me
as lex the guy i didn't realize you were
talking to me i thought she would tell
me his elects the guy i didn't realize
she talked me as lex the martial artist
i'm like oh crap
i was talking to the wrong person so
it's almost like if you had a like i run
my gym with
my wife she's a black belt so she's my
wife
she's my peers as a martial artist uh
on in jiu jitsu he's here by the way in
judging so exactly
all right well all right so but a fellow
black belt and i guess like another he
doesn't have a microphone so you can't
hear all the trash he's talking exactly
but it can be tough and that's something
we've had to work through a lot and it's
like looking back and it's like now
being where i'm at now and it's easy me
to say that because she's in the room
and
i don't want to stab me just continue to
slowly poison me over time
yeah um which frankly i understand um
you know it's it's the sort of thing
that
is now way more effective than anything
else i could really
reasonably expect to have um but there
were times when when both of us
you know were justifiably annoyed at the
other because
of crossed wires and sometimes you know
you just have to scream in anywhere mr
standing anyway but
again like i've i coached some of my
friends i've coached i've coached
my friend who i've known since i was
four years old you know sometimes i
don't go hey buddy how you doing
someone's like
what the fuck are you doing put your
hand over there how many times we talked
about this and then you walk away
and you can see him look at you crooked
and you're like oh crap oh yeah he
thought i was talking to his friend
yeah well all right we need to talk this
one out hashing out and not
he's wrong how could he possibly think
that way like oh no i totally understand
that but if i was 22
like doesn't he know i'm a purple belt
some nonsense like that and it's and it
doesn't come from a bad
place but it's just i guess that comes
back to society to anything people only
have the perspective that they have and
the awareness that we have
and so again going back and going hey
guys grace like i don't expect it's not
fair for me to go i for
ufc why doesn't this guy who came in as
an attorney understand how hardcore this
needs to be and like how could he
yeah and at the same time though if if
i'm using the language of
someone that is interested in at least
performance from a martial arts
perspective
i understand how that could be
off-putting let's say for instance
someone that's
comple like all of that would be out of
bounds in their normal workplace but if
they think of the gym as my office
then whether they agree or disagree with
what's going on they go okay i hear why
i see why that might have happened
let's talk about this and we can again
all push forward in a positive direction
that benefits i guess everyone's journey
throughout the activity and now
on top of all that there's moods okay
i mean especially lately uh i think two
days ago
maybe yesterday no two days ago
i've never been that cranky
in my life i think i i don't know what
it was
but i wanted to tell everybody how much
they annoyed me
it was like i i was just very conscious
of this feeling
of like why why is this happening right
now
so i consciously decided as i usually do
in those cases to not say anything to
anybody
how do you do that uh
well i you know it's uh it's
yeah meditating because it's not i i
tend to
i tend to then visualize what's gonna
happen in the next like how is this
gonna make my life better
like if i say something
that mean to somebody else
i have uh just started a conflict
that will just escalate will continue
will add more conflict to my life
it will make things i just don't like
the feeling you will create and so you
live a lot enough life to know that like
uh
it's just like with like street fighting
you know i i i would get into a lot of
fights when i was younger just
on the street but then you realize like
it's not
like a jiu jitsu match or something like
that it's not it'll escalate
it'll it'll might come back at you
it'll like that person might find you
again but more importantly
the anxiety of it of
having created little enemies in this
world
distorts the way you see the world so
i've noticed that like
if i'm shitty to people on the internet
which i haven't been i think in a long
time
is like it it somehow brings the
shittiness to you more and more it
escalates like the more love you put out
there
the more like the people who put love
out
like surround you well you mentioned
forgiveness as well like you said
like i guess back to the original you
know the holocaust survivor scenario
we're like oh my god like you think of
the ultimate
in in like i've never experienced one
one billionth of that level of
of pain and horror and it's like and i
can't let this little thing go
you know i guess that's an interesting
thing i think you're just making the
point in your personal life
i guess the same way right yeah there
yeah and
on the internet it's hard i've somehow
gotten i mean you've
you've had a level of celebrity for a
while
i've recently gotten some level of like
celebrity
and like these people who are just
shitty for no reason
come out from all from all places like
calling me a fraud or
anything else i'm using a jain silent
bob strike back they find out a movie's
gonna be made about them and people are
talking shit on the internet and they're
like what's the internet
and then someone shows them and they're
like what and they go to a message board
and they go to hollywood to try to stop
it from being made and they eventually
get money for their likeness and they
use the money to buy plane tickets and
fly around and beat the shit out of all
the people that talk bad about them
yeah it's tough i mean it's uh i'm i'm
having trouble with it because there's
people like
yeah there's you know there's posts and
forums and like heated discussions about
is lex vaping a fraud i don't know what
has he really done and there's like
and then there's people like well i
think he's an alright guy but i'm not
sure
like like there's like literal
discussions and i'm like
like nobody like if you increase the
level of celebrity
there's going to be like one of the
things that hurts my heart a little bit
is like
some level of toxicity around joe rogan
for example
there's like communities of people that
now
like talk about him selling out for
example all that kind of stuff
and i don't you know and joe
i've talked to him about it is amazing
that he uh
he says don't read the comments he
legitimately doesn't read the comments
his heart and his soul doesn't give a
damn about the comments
all he gives a damn about is his friends
like one of the things that's really
inspiring to me and that's i've had a
conversation with them offline about
spotify
and uh the removed episodes people are
curious
um it's uh it's a thing on the internet
where uh i think you can play taylor
swift's songs on
i'll write that down but you can also
now play joe rogan podcast oh cool
and they gave him 100 million dollars so
that that's uh
you know that's awesome it's yeah uh
but the thing i've had a discussion with
him and i made a video about it that i
took down because the toxicity
is like it's hard to put into words but
he will give away the 100 million in a
second
if he ever has to compromise who he is
like he doesn't i mean he already said
as he talked about he's
made quote unquote fuck you money a long
time ago
he doesn't need any more money he
doesn't care
it's nice to have money whatever but
like he'll give it away so
the it's nice to see when
people like him at a level of celebrity
level success and financial success
don't change at all they're just the
same thing that makes you happy is
talking in his case talking shit with
his friends
in case of most of us really just just
hanging out with friends
doing the things you love in his case
doing the things he loves without any
like you know the texas way the uh
freedom
like without any corporate bureaucracy
bullshit that rolls in and says
well maybe you shouldn't say fuck you
know like more than 20 times a podcast
or something like that like those kinds
like rules like
people like he says in a suit and tie
they show up and say
stuff um oddly enough people that could
never to have done
what he does yeah exactly and it's kind
of inspiring to see
that and i i hope people i hope people
realize how special
of a human he is he's inspired
uh like people like me like i'm just i'm
a scientist right so
he inspired somebody like me from a very
different walk of life
to be like kind to others to be
open-minded i don't know that uh
it's a special dude so like people need
to support that and treasure that as
opposed to uh
as opposed to be toxic about it if i
mean what uh
i just people really
for a long time have told me that it
would be awesome if ryan hall's on
goes on joe rogan i definitely think
that'll be an awesome thing
have you listened to joe has he been
a part of your life in some kind of way
um you know well joe's always
i've i remember watching joe on fear
factor when i was a little kid which is
cool so i've actually gotten a like from
a from a
bird's eye view watch you know his his
kind of just path through life yeah but
one of the things that that i always
appreciate and again i barely know joe
are then to shake his hand he
interviewed me after the uh
briefing in the ring after the bj penn
fight but um
one of the things that i've always
admired about joe is that i think he had
fucking money from the start
i think that zero dollars is fuck you
money for joe i think
and that's something i respect about him
a great deal um
because as you say it's interesting to
watch it's like you you hope
that uh george saint pierre is like this
it's really neat now i'm not super close
to george but we're teammates at tristar
and he's never been anything but a
gentleman is one of those people that
if you didn't know george was famous
when you walked in the gym you'd have no
idea
he's not holding court not doing it he's
just you know training and he'll help
out an amateur doing this if you have a
question for him he'll help me like i'm
nobody man he
he would give me advice and train me it
was super cool and he didn't kill me
which i really appreciated he's a
gentleman
but uh you know it's like you you meet
someone and you go man i'm so
it's so cool that this is the guy who's
the best that this is the guy who
who's been successful and then you go
why are they successful like i said true
to what they're doing they haven't
changed they're the same as they've been
and i remember i got to try start in
2012 and george was already
already george st pierre but i remember
watching and talking to people and
they're like oh man george is the same
as he's always been in this neat i see
him in the gym training now
and again giving advice now and it seems
like joe has always been consistent
and it's neat to watch someone not
compromise on their values and not
change who they are and not you know
periodically like you know again we all
make mistakes like you have a bad day or
this or that an apology needs to be
issued or even
my bad or this or that and you're like
yeah they just move on they're not
afraid
to be themselves and they're not afraid
to be wrong they're not afraid to make a
mistake as you as you mentioned
open-minded and so i'm like so what are
the correct beliefs to have about this
that i know going in everyone's going to
be okay with what i'm saying
which is usually the beginning of a
conversation that's going to go nowhere
right
and uh it's it's neat to see um
the things i guess that he's created on
his own as a result
of the authenticity that's there and it
reminds me of like dave chappelle and
again i don't know i've never met dave
but it's neat to see someone that's
clearly again authentic in their own way
doing their own thing and they're
because of that they're above the
corporate nonsense but what's funny i
think the message behind all of it is
hey guys we all are i can't promise you
that i'm gonna have
money joe couldn't promise you that he's
gonna have money now it ended up working
out
but he was above that nonsense from the
jump
and he just continued to be above it by
never giving it any mind and just going
like yeah i'm gonna be a reasonable
person i'm gonna try to learn i'm gonna
try to grow
and uh if i say something annoying you
can come and talk to me about it we get
to the bottom of it and i'm like if i
need to say my bed thanks appreciate it
you know i will and if i don't need to
i'm like hey i still appreciate the talk
thanks man i'll
shake your hand and we carry on and we
go our separate ways and hopefully i'll
treat you respect you treats me with
respect
and and that's about it and i guess i
think it's a lesson that it can work out
no matter what you don't have to kowtow
to like these weird powers that be
and whether you're at this level or at
this level but
you can live your life the way that you
want and as you mentioned talk shit with
your friends hang out be happy and it
just so happens that that
resonates with people it actually
reminds me of like speaking to mit
and being in boston is like good will
hunting you know like again that's
what he really want to do he could have
gone this way could have gone that way
and it was an interesting story but it's
like
this person wants to hang out with his
buddies and wants to do other things and
again happens to be brilliant and
happens to be able to do all these other
things
but there was it i guess it's like at
least in my mind a story of authenticity
as well
and it was both the same thing in the
robin williams character and i i just
think that that's a message because
watch
watching things occur on the internet as
they do now things so many things
playing out in the public eye
i feel like so many private or otherwise
formerly private discussions and
disputes and and
you know interactions now become they
all have a a well what is this going to
say when it goes public
so how can i couch what i'm saying or
how can i word this in a way that's
going to get people on my side to use
the right buzzwords and not use the
wrong buzzwords
and it's just neat to see people you
know in their own way flip the bird to
that
because i just think that that's that's
just not how a human being is meant to
think or interact
i'm curious what you think about the
thing that recently has you know me
like hosting this podcast i sometimes
think about like
who should i talk to and not
in terms of like it's the the old hitler
question
now hitler i would definitely talk to
because post world war
ii because everyone knows he's evil the
question whether you talk to hitler
in 1937 like when
people who are really students of what's
going on understand that this is a very
dangerous human being but
a large number of part of the world
they're like
well he's a leader who cares for germany
so
the question i have it's interesting to
me it involves a particular person
named who also lives in austin texas
named alex jones
i don't know if you're familiar with the
guy i am familiar with mr jones
uh i've actually recently just listened
to infowars
like one episode of his uh show i guess
that he does every day
and it kind of reminds me of a time in
college when i drank too much
tequila there's no turning back
like no it's like like the the mistakes
you make that like
it it it's i mean you don't know where
you're gonna wake up
you don't know who you're gonna kill or
not kill or steal or rob
it it's it's unclear so that that it
felt like
i was getting pulled into a dark place
where
pretty much everybody is a pedophile
that's trying to control the world
so bill gates definitely is a pedophile
everybody in power anybody in power
there's a kind of a deep skepticism
about power and a conspiratorial way to
see the world where
everything is like dark forces in all
corners
it's like the way you feel when you're a
kid that there's a monster hiding in the
closet
which is also why you leap over the bed
from like four feet away
there's a strategy yes so but he says
that you're just being weak you need to
look under the bed
under the bed there's monsters and we
need to be aware of them because they're
growing
they're multiplying you should be and
they're touching children
they're touching children exactly so it
all connects
but the the i when i listened to him
and i thought about like do i want to
talk to him on this podcast for example
when i listened to his conversation with
joe
rogan the two times he talked on there
to me it was
somehow entertaining like it was fun to
listen to it's fun to listen to a madman
go on for four hours because
it's almost like theater um like this is
what i talked to joe about
when people try to censor alex jones joe
says
that the people who try to censor him
don't give enough credit to the
intelligence of human beings to like
understand like that like what a person
says on a large platform does not
necessarily
is not the truth you can be a madman and
say crazy things
and people are intelligent enough to
hear
uh certain things be when they're said
like
the earth is flat they can they can be
intelligent enough not to
all of a sudden start believing that the
earth is flat
like they they're intelligent enough to
sort of select
different ideas and be able to enjoy the
theater of a particular ridiculous
over-the-top conversation without
being sort of influenced where they
start believing
like toxic set of beliefs now
there's a lot of sort of
other kinds of people especially now
with cancer culture that say well you
don't want to give platform to
crazy people that that ultimately whose
beliefs might lead to
dangerous consequences like and i see it
very often now with
conspiracy theories that go that go like
way too far like for example
would i i'm not i haven't looked into it
so i'm sorry i will look into it
but uh it hurts my heart to see
that on bill gates
in my opinion the person who has saved
and improved more lives than probably
any human in history
literally because of the money he's
invested in helping
like just just the work he's done on
like malaria in africa
the number of people he's helped is huge
and yet
every interview anything you see now on
bill gates
everyone is calling him i believe
haven't looked into it
but i believe everyone's calling him a
pedophile i don't know the full
structure of it
but it's it's just a very it feels like
an
army of like it feels like it's hundreds
of thousands of people that's what it
feels like
it might be a much smaller percentage
but it feels like a huge number of
people are calling them a pedophile so
that's the
that's the flip side if you allow if you
give platform to conspiracy theories
like that
then you start to have bigger and bigger
percent of the population believe in
these crazy things
i just i wanted to put it out there
because i don't know what to
think of that if you put yourself in joe
rogan's shoes
if you put yourself in my shoes if you
put yourself just in your own shoes
i'm in my shoes right now great if
you're staying your shoes just stay in
your shoes can i have your work
would you talk would you give platform
to people like alex jones
would would you talk to somebody like
alex jones
or or not uh i
yes i would and i feel very strongly
about this honestly um
well i think that it's it's an
interesting thing and i
i would just say a lot of times i can
understand
you know very very clearly why people
would take issue with the idea of i
guess what they perceive to be
amplifying this man's voice
this man's reach um you know as as a
demonstrable negative but i think um
you know when you take a step back
further uh
the the cure is more damaging than the
disease and significantly so
um i guess i think that
i'm very very wary of i think being
where you mentioned
alex jones being wary of power and
people with it that's
a lot of times there's a lot of truth
and
validity to crazy things that people say
it's the conspiracy theories that stick
are the ones that sound credible at
least quasi-credible in some
aspect and it's almost like it seems to
me like an anchor in people's mind
and it is also funny to me obviously the
the bill gates
it's so funny to tar people with things
like pedophile racist
rapist like these are things that we're
basically trying to pick words that no
one can ever support someone who does
these things
yeah and that's you know and that
changes year by year
currently pedophile is totally in as a
thing to call somebody
just just as a it used to be communist
or marxist
cleveland browns fan you know like come
on you know who
actually nobody likes the bronze so yeah
i'll agree i felt that that was that's
why i picked one that's the trick
is you find a group of people that
nobody likes we're good here
all right that's the move but uh yeah
that's a creepy thing though because
that is that is the creepy thing it's
like people are always looking for
groups of people are always looking for
and i find this really deeply disturbing
um like hey so who's the guy that we can
all get away with
you know just treating like dirt who's
the guy that i can be a dick to
i can just walk up and punch in the face
and no one's gonna say anything yeah and
it's
even if i you know people do that with
whether it's literal nazis or someone
that i called nazi
you know i guess what's the bigger issue
this person's ridiculous beliefs or what
i'm doing
and you mentioned hitler before and
obviously mein kampf being a you know
like the outline for some of the things
he did later and when the evil was it
always there
did it did it take root later on or to
flourish later on
but was was adolf hitler a problem
because he had crazy ideas or because he
did
things i think it's because it's not i
think i know it's because he did things
now if i'm going to start punishing
thought crime
i i'm going to have to start punishing
thought crime and that's a terrifying
concept
even if i'm right about the certain
about the objectively correct about the
things that i decide to call out of
bounds
who put me in charge and made me arbiter
of good taste and how long until i
decide that something
else is is out of bounds it's always a
sliding scale or it's always just a
sliding standard
and i i find that that you know to be
more of a concern than people doing
crazy things because i guess if you
mention alex jones you know putting out
ridiculous ridiculous ideas ridiculous
theories i think that most people don't
look at alex jones as a credible person
no i'm not going to pretend to be deeply
read into all of his beliefs or the
things that he's trying to peddle
um but there's plenty of things that are
quasi mainstream
that i think on with this side or that
side that maybe not comparably
ridiculous but
are yeah you know particularly in
hindsight or you know are
we're not or silly and i guess uh
the idea of of getting a group of people
together to decide what we're not going
to tolerate
is a very very tricky thing and i think
that you know
it reminds me of law or
you know even you know religion when it
gets to like what are the things that we
don't like how do we feel about
rape it's like no under no circumstances
is that an acceptable behavior
murder no that's not acceptable behavior
killing
i don't know kind of depends on the
situation are you at war were you
justified were you acting in
self-defense
okay so it's not now murder is a
specific type of killing
the same way you know other things
should be a specific type of something
else but i guess we we draw a line of
murder we say if you want to
exist in our society you can't do this
this cannot be done
and then we go theft if someone said hey
i murdered that guy can you understand
where i'm coming from i might say yeah
i'll hear you out doesn't mean that i
think you're right
but i'm like have you ever been wronged
so deeply that you could imagine
that you could kill someone i'm like no
i haven't but i could conceptualize
someone doing that and i'm like
yeah okay and you still need to go you
still need to face you know criminal
justice as we have it in our system
at least that's how we've decided yeah
there's it's interesting you have to be
able to like there's
if you look at the history of discourse
in this country
i think it's still true but i'm not sure
it's changed since 9 11.
is uh it used to be impossible to
criticize
um a soldier it was easier to criticize
war it was harder to criticize soldiers
for allowing themselves to be the tools
of war
i tend to be maybe it's the russian
upbringing it's the
it's the combat thing i tend to
romanticize
war and soldiers i see soldiers as
heroes
but i've also heard people that not only
say that
soldiers are the war is bad they say
soldiers are bad what's their argument
it's it's the kind of a libertarian view
that
they're basically slaves to evil
right war is evil and they're they're
giving they
are suspending their moral and
ethical like as like duties as a human
being
to become the tools of evil that's sort
of the argument if you see war as evil
i mean i think it's useful to hear that
but there for a long part in history
that was completely unacceptable
same with abortion if you see abortion
as
murder i mean if i classify it in that
if i put it in that in that basket
it starts we're living in the midst
of like a genocide
from that perspective could you feel how
people could be deeply upset by abortion
you know of course
looked at from a different perspective
you say i don't believe it to be murder
that's not how i see it
then you go oh well if that's the
genesis of your your thought process
then you're like yeah okay now i see how
we can
come to a different thing but i guess we
go well abortion is murder period
therefore if you support it you support
murder
that's a convenient way for me to tar
you right but i guess
that's kind of coming back to the alec
jones i'm i'm this
nuance it's uh you have to have the
nuance in these kinds of conversations
and i have to be willing to have the
conversation and i have to be willing to
sit down if i can't sit down across from
like the most
violently racist angry hypothetical
internet
you know conceived person that none of
us have ever actually met in real life
but or hopefully not um you know and go
like well
of course i believe that this person's
wrong but allow me to change do my best
i'll hear him out and i'll go no i can
go point by point and explain why this
guy or this girl is wrong
and hopefully bring them over to a more
reasonable position where they will have
better beliefs
and they will like objectively better
beliefs and beliefs that will
will and they'll treat other people
better why would i want to marginalize
this person now i might not want to talk
i might want to invite them to my
barbecue if they're acting like a jerk
all the time
but how could i would it not make the
world a better place if i'd hear them
out and they go look if you're going to
sit down and talk with me
we're going to have to have a discussion
i'll hear what you have to say and if i
can't
if i can explain to someone why their
ridiculous belief is wrong
then i might i must not be so confident
in my position and i guess that's where
i come back to the alex jones thing as
you mentioned you know with uh
with bill gates and and you're much more
familiar with with the specifics of all
the good that he's done but you know
again he's been an unbelievable force
for good you know in this world
you can list a b c d things that the man
has has done that his foundation has
done and
you know positive things and then the
other people could speculate about
ridiculous crazy levels of of evil but
you can't produce any evidence for that
sort of thing
because if you could the man would find
himself in trouble you know and anyway i
guess what i would would say
is that why you can't force me to accept
the truth the same way you could write
down two plus two equals four on a piece
of paper
and show me how it works and i could say
nah but that doesn't make it not true
and you've still given yourself an
opportunity to present your case you've
presented it to me
and you've also for anyone listening and
watching you know you've been able to
critically
assess what's gone on you know or
critically address back and forth you
know kind of the the discourse
and i think that you almost you're
making your case for the public so i
guess like
you know when it comes to just never not
engaging with these people that seems to
me to be cowardly and i think that
that's a
something that we're seeing in society
right now i think i think we're seeing a
crisis of courage
in society all over the place and i
think that's where we're seeing poor
leadership i think we're seeing
understandable things happening
everywhere but we need stronger voices
and stronger
stronger beliefs that have a conviction
and are willing to engage with others
not just turning into a shouting contest
and not i didn't win because there's
more of me oh i voted i outvoted you
that's nice too but that's a stand-in
for bullets that's saying i won because
there's more of me that doesn't mean
that i'm right
because plenty of horrible and unpopular
now things have been very very deeply
popular in the past and would have won a
popular vote does that make them right
i'd said clearly not so i guess uh you'd
hope that we engage with these people
and that you can do your best to bring
them over to a more reasonable position
if you believe that you have one
and if you can't well at least you made
the effort and i think that that's
something where martial arts shows
the value it's like or do you know if
you're going to go win your next fight
i'm like i have no idea
i will proceed forward with with full
effort and and
you know i will fight with dignity i'll
fight with honor and i'll fight with
courage
and i i'll use everything that i have
and i will play within the bounds of the
game and that's that
and the result will be what it'll be but
i'll walk into and out of that ring with
my head held high because i will know
that i did my part i did my job
the outcome the specific outcome is not
in my control it's just strongly in my
influence
and and i think that that's something
that helped me that martial arts has
taught me because
other times even when i was successful
or unsuccessful i would focus on
if i won i'm i won therefore i'm good i
lost therefore i'm bad this other guy
won or lost therefore
as opposed to evaluating their method
and i think it's so easy when we're
taking a bird's-eye view of things to
not evaluate
how someone's doing things you're not
evaluating my process you're simply
evaluating my outcome and i could have
stumbled into something very very good
or very very bad
and we can look back and i think that's
the value of history i mean i don't mean
to get on my dang high horse but it's
like that's the value of history we can
see the unbroken chain or
the chain of events that led us
somewhere and then only with only with
the eyes of history can we truly
evaluate things unless we're in the room
watching it happen
and i guess that's again where we start
to go
most of the big bad scary things that
have happened in history that are done
particularly on an industrial scale
which implies governmental power and
things like that or these the equivalent
involve groups of people getting
together and going hey we're not going
to deal with that guy
giant groups of people so maybe we're
right this time
but maybe we're wrong next time and i
guess i would be back to the gandalf
putting on the one ring i would be very
very hesitant even if we thought we were
in the right
to simply try to try to marginalize just
on general principle even people like
alex jones whom
on their face are pretty ridiculous like
you said you should sit down with adolf
hitler and talk to the man
i agree with you to play a little
devil's advocate
is alex jones might be a bad example but
if we look at
because he has a face he is a human he's
a real person
there's also trolls on the internet
4chan the worry i have with
those folks is that and there might be
parallels to martial arts is they
practice guerrilla warfare
meaning they don't necessarily want to
arrive at the truth
they just always want to cut at the
ankles
of the powerful like they want to always
break down
the powerful and even if they
i mean it's they turn everything into a
game so they
let's see if we can make the world let's
see if we can make a trend that bill
gates is a pedophile
right they make it into a game they get
excited about this game
they see the powerful let's see if we
can convince that like who is the most
positive person we can think of
let's see if we can turn them into evil
and they've tried that with like
with like everybody and some and it
seems to stick and they're good at it
assam would argue whatever you think
about our current president
that he has some elements of that which
is
he's figured out whatever this music of
social
discourse that's going on he's figured
out how to always
troll the mainstream
like flow of consciousness that's the
the media
he always kind of says stuff that annoys
a very large number of people
and he enjoys that because it's like
taking the powerful taking the way
things were before
and he like shakes it up by saying the
most inappropriate thing almost on
purpose or instinctually and so on
the problem i have with that is that
doesn't
the powerful thing there is it uh
brings the power the those in power down
a notch that's a great thing
the negative thing is it doesn't push us
closer to a nuanced
careful rigorous discourse towards
truth it's like showing up to a party
and just like
starting to yell it doesn't create a
good conversation
it just makes everything into a game
where truth doesn't
even seem like a thing we can even hope
to achieve
like that makes sense and i guess as you
mentioned it'll come back to another
movie because i don't do books and do
movies some people just want to watch
the world burn right
and i guess there's that's a creepy
creepy you know kind of urge that some
people have and it also is
some people you're like hey would you
like to throw a brick through that glass
window and you're like
yeah sure like no i'm not going to do
that because i think about
what's going to what's going to what's
going to occur like something's going to
be hurt someone's property not going to
do it versus
hey you want to see what'll happen like
yeah sure you know kids are always like
i have my son he just
grabbed spider-man and dropped small
table spider-man fell my spider-man
didn't fall shawn like he
dropped him you knocked him off the
table and he'll grin
and basically uh you know it's it's an
interesting
thing like you said like playing that p
these people are appealing to
and you know and also almost like the
little dog
factor of like i people do want to watch
the powerful get taken down a notch for
all the good and the not
good of that because plenty of people it
seems to me that have found their way to
incredibly high positions some some have
just found themselves there and many
many many many many people
you know men and women of of all
backgrounds are brilliant and have
worked hard and yeah of course there's
luck and there's
there's luck into everything there you
know lebron james in spite of being the
best basketball player on god's green
earth is
fortunate that he didn't get hit by a
car you know it's fortunate they didn't
tear his knee
you know but thankfully we get to see
all these things you know but um
i i guess uh it's
if people don't have any skin in the
game you never know what they're gonna
do and i think that's the problem with
the internet
you know that people get to be nameless
be faceless that's why
guerrilla fighters are outside of the
bounds of war like you don't have a
uniform on
you're like i don't know who you're from
you don't get the same treatment that a
soldier gets
um for and people well that's crazy
actually there's reasons for this
because otherwise people are able to
assail things and
there's no there's no one responsible
there's no way to go and say hey where's
where did this come from what's the root
of this what how can i address this
and i think that's the problem of the
internet's problem on twitter's problem
places like 4chan i wouldn't
mind seeing that type of stuff go away
if i'm frank but that's not the same
thing as
people with a face people with people
who are willing to stand there
and say hi my name is so and so even if
i have ridiculous beliefs hopefully you
know people will hear me out and then
if i'm wrong educate me but i i guess
you hope that the real
i guess in my mind antidote to all of
this silliness
is education and and i think that that's
something that we're
you know critical thinking is is not
necessarily i went to school in america
and
you know i feel very fortunate but
critical thinking is not something
that's
that's focused on i mean and it's it's
tough it's almost like talking about
jiu-jitsu it's tough to teach critical
thinking when i don't know any words you
have to teach me techniques you can't
teach me to be an artist
but recognize that the techniques are
the beginning not the end
ultimately it's the artistry that we're
searching for not just the
not just the science or the or the by
rote memorization and i guess
you know you'd hope that people's
ability to think critically and
recognize that majority rule or
whoever's loudest does not mean that
they're right by any stretch of the
imagination and we don't appeal to that
and we don't bow to that
will help them to help inoculate them
against the ridiculous things that come
out of these places these dark places
that
that are objectively not great but the i
guess
all circling back if even if we swatted
these you know these
bad things out of existence right now
we've got to be very very careful doing
that because it's who's doing the
swatting
this political group that's in power
right now the people that support our
current president would maybe feel a
certain way the people that support
another option would feel differently as
to
what exactly defines toxic and i you
know i guess that
that's what gives me pause yeah and but
also the grace thing
i tend to believe that the the
technology you said education but the
the platforms we use like twitter and
the
reddit and all these platforms have a
role to play to teach us
grace meaning they ins they should
help us incentivize
the kind of behavior that is
incentivized in real life
like being a dick in real life is not
incentivized
like one-on-one interaction like there's
cases where it is but usually being kind
to each other
is incentivized on the internet it's not
like you get likes for being
for mocking people in a funny in a
humorous way and it can be dark
kind of mocking depending on the
community you can go you can go to the
appearance
if somebody's a little fat or a little
too skinny
you can comment on their appearance the
hair
the way their hair looks like the
appearance stuff it could be
on the people comment all the time
on the uh level of eloquence of my
speech
go fuck yourself i like it it's creepy
though watching
watching previously like this used to be
lowbrow though like people doing this
type of stuff it's creepy watching like
our political figures get
into this type of game yes but again
it's a little bit refreshing right it's
a the
my hope with donald trump was
is that he would shake up the the people
who wear suits usually
the like if you're from dc i remember
like showing up
i actually didn't wear what i usually
wear in dc because i was like
everybody's wearing a suit and tie when
i was like giving talks and stuff except
for mudge
who wears jeans and a t-shirt doesn't
give a damn
mudge is uh a forever renegade uh
but i don't even remember what uh oh
yeah so
my hope with trump was that huge shake
up that system just say like
like uh to inject new ideas to inject
new energy
of course the way it turned out is
different but like there's uh
it turns out that you might want to have
somebody who's like like an andrew yang
type character
who is full of ideas that are very
different
and inject the energy new energy into
the system
through youthful new ideas versus
through the troll that like that's
very good at sort of mocking and like
playing outside the the rules of the
game
but trump did reveal powerfully i don't
know what to think of it
that um it's just a game and you don't
have to play by the rules
that's both inspiring and dark deeply
depressing right
yeah and i don't know what to do with it
i don't i mean the same
i'm not drawing parallels not drawing
parallels between our president
and adolf hitler but it certainly and
there's a lot of
in history a lot of positive and a lot
of negative things happen
when charismatic leaders realize they
don't have to play by the rules
you can just flip the table it's the
that uh
uh kevin spacey show no house cards
house of cards where you just flip the
table or whatever you don't have to play
by the rules of the chess game you can
flip the table one wonders if that's
always been done in private
you know i guess because that's i mean
even look obviously the united states is
a as a republic but
we had we had bush then we had clinton
and we had more bush than we had
president obama then we were about to
have another clinton that's
fairly creepy yeah even on its own but
now we added another i mean i'm sure
we'll have a generation of trumps
no gee we uh you know i'm russian so
i think we humans like kings still
and queens there's something
we're attracted to the the thing we
talked about coaches
there's something in us that longs
towards that authoritarian
control one of the beautiful things
about america
the second amendment uh is uh we also
like
individual freedom that's one of the one
of the unique aspects
at the founding of this country and
still and
for me is the beacon of hope that uh
somehow there's the fire freedom burns
in there like that texas feel that i
that gives me hope the fu energy
that revolts against the power which as
we discussed power corrupts and
ultimately leads to sort of
uh degradation of the whoever's
ruling is the people it's interesting
though like it seems to me maybe i'm
just i don't know if i'm reading this
properly when i when i see it but it's
it seems to me that
that like you said that that you know
flip the bird i'm gonna do me
within reason like as long as i'm not
hurting you uh
is idea that that very much at least in
my mind defines the american ideal or at
least part of the consciousness of the
united states
is is under attack to a certain extent
you know um in
if only like i can think to like you
know maybe a generation
behind us um it's it's becoming
more collectivist yeah you know for all
the good and also the not
good of that and it's uh you know not in
not in terms
not in terms of policy at this point but
just in terms of like uh
the consciousness and i wonder if that's
a an internet thing you know people are
more in touch with one another than
they've
as far as i can tell they've ever been
at least more than in my lifetime
and uh you know the rest of the world
seems much closer than it did you know
living in virginia
california seems very far away being on
the internet it's just right there i can
hear about it i can see it
i can i can interact with people from
there you know i remember uh
you know being in tennessee at uh you
know one time and then
and reading about you know events taking
place in you know the middle east
and it just seemed like a mile away it
seemed like a
unbelievably far distance and then
another time when you're in dc you just
feel like oh you read about something
happening in paris and it just feels
like it's just right around the corner
because dc is a seat of a seat of power
where things are just occurring all the
time and
uh you know i guess you you wonder about
that's where i come back to the group
decisions to
not listen to this person or to cancel
this or to you know we all
the moral majority shall do the
following as opposed to as long as
you're not hurting me
and long as you're not hurting anyone
else i have to let you do i have to let
you be on general principle even if i
don't like you i'm very free to not like
you i'm free to speak out against you
but i'm not
it is not within my right or and not
with it and it's not i
i would not be right to attempt to
attack you
and that is an interesting thing though
when we see words being redefined or
words being defined whether it's
toxicity whether it's violence
if i think that what you're saying is is
your speech is by itself
you know a violence or a precursor to
violence i'm justified in doing all
sorts of things
you know and and that creeps me out
significantly because again even if it
ends up being pointed in a good
direction initially
it's only a matter of time and actually
that brings me to uh
another dune oh yeah i got all day
um how much are they paying you but wait
about say the uh the frank herbert
estate not enough frankly
oh let's see and how many books are
there in dune
that's a gen question you're also a fan
of
i read the whole series but
not a couple of the i read all the
prequels as well it was the exception of
a couple
is there a book one for dune dune it
would be book one
and even the prequels it's still all
better if you start
like i read dune and then read the
original what is it six
and then i went back and started to read
something like just like watching star
wars
you want to start at episode four or
whatever yeah
i think so that's the way that's the
move and then stop at six
call it a day watch the mandalorian and
but well i thought you're not walking
back here
no i like the mandalorian yeah that is
what i said
yeah i was told that i was heartless for
not liking baby yoda boy
we don't talk about a couple of the
movies
not including the middle or in the
middle and it's fine it's the
more recent movies that we don't like to
talk about yeah oh the
what's his name the the goofy guy uh
ryan
no no no the creature the goofy creature
with the jar jar
yeah jar jar do you ever see the the the
jar jar binks is actually
like the dark lord of the sith theory
that fixed the whole initial trilogy
we're like he's
he's like goofing around and like making
it all the way through battles and when
you're like wait a minute he oops his
way he
walks over to a pool does a triple
backflip falls in you're like
it's just bizarre this is the this is
the alex jones
theory of of star wars he's actually
running
one that actually was like hey we should
vote in chancellor chancellor palpatine
or senator palpatine like right before
they put jar jar in charge first off
what did they think was gonna happen
and second off that was i just think
that'd be great like oops oh man i guess
he's the emperor now
that would have been great but actually
to the to the cancel and all the other
stuff again
it's just you'd hope that it gives pause
and i think about this for fighting
because a lot of times
i'll use this example people and people
like fight fans and you know like
ufc they love people that run out and
try to murder each other and it's
entertaining
and it's super entertaining but you know
floyd mayweather doesn't resonate with
people as much it's like people
start i remember the time when floyd was
not as popular now people think people
love floyd because
he's 50-0 floyd and oh man and finally
he had so much success that we all can't
help but recognize the man's
genius and greatness but prior to that
oh he's boring he's this he's that
he fights you know with he's circumspect
he's cautious he's he's pressing
he's intelligent deeply intelligent and
uh when you watch people go out and try
to murder each other you can flip a coin
100 times and
you know you can get you could be lucky
enough to get 100 heads but it's still a
coin flip
and i think that that's what's going on
all the time is
you know people are getting an outcome
that they want but it wasn't a well
thought out situation and that's why
you'll win
by five in a row by knockout and then
lose three in a row and then people will
go well what happened to that guy he
used to be so great
no he's doing what he's always been
doing it's just it was getting great
outcomes on a coin flip prior
and it's getting negative outcomes on a
coin flip now but uh
i guess what i would say is it watches
it's interesting watching
you know i guess societal beliefs become
such a a thing that we're almost
adopting on a religious level if we're
not careful
and if if when i say religious level i
mean like like pan life
like this is guiding all of my choices
for all the good and the bad of that and
this is the dune quote is when religion
and politics travel on the same card the
writers believe that nothing can stand
in their way
their movements become headlong faster
and faster and faster
they put aside all thoughts of obstacles
and forget that the precipice does not
show itself to the man in the blind rush
until it's too late
and i think that that's again the the
pause we go oh man thank goodness we
have this guy that wants to rebuild
germany he'll put us back where we need
to be
and you stop questioning any your own
judgment your own
just you start you stop thinking
essentially right i'm not allowed to
question this oh
of course this is correct of course this
girl of course i'm right i intended to
do right so of course my actions are
correct i mean how many times have any
of us intend to do something helpful and
ended up doing something less and you
know plenty of people who intend to do
harm could by accident
do something decent and i guess it's
like you know i'm not saying anything
you know terribly terribly you know
insightful but it's just one of those
where
it's hard it's hard to say in the moment
and that's where
you hopefully caution you would counsel
some degree of caution
and uh that that's what worries me with
with people deciding that we're all so
right about this or we're also right
about that and
attempting to rather than win the
argument
silence the counter-argument no matter
how crazy it may seem
because i just think that that idea even
when it's pointed in a good direction
initially it's only a matter of time
you're amongst many things
a jujitsu black belt one of the things
that people are really curious about
white belts and blue belts and jiu jitsu
but also people haven't tried the art
is what does it take to be a jiu jitsu
black belt
i think that you know everyone's journey
is a little bit different but the one
thing
that the it was a calvin coolidge
quote you know determination persistence
is the only thing
that that will win in the end it will
always win in the end
not brilliance not toughness not
education
it's it's persistence and i think that
having the belief that
no matter what happens to me i will
proceed forward and i will i will figure
out how to make this happen hell or high
water
i think is the one thing that ties
together all of the people that i've
ever met
that made it through whatever it was
that they were going through
because you know sometimes you can get
lucky and you can have an easy time or
and that luck could be you had a good
situation it could be
i mean like in the obvious sense of like
where you're living where you're
training what's going on you had a good
situation you're
un unbelievably athletic oh you're
you're going to be an astronaut you're
brilliant and
an olympic athlete you know like well
that's a fantastic situation
you know you won the genetic lottery and
i've worked hard as well but you also
won the genetic lottery
it's a determination is the one thing
though because
that person could have a very easy go of
it initially and then tear their knee
and then they're no longer the the
superhuman physical specimen that they
were the only thing that will keep them
going
is persistence and i think that that um
i would just say that persistence to say
i'll just put one foot in front of the
other and sometimes i can see the path
ahead
and sometimes it's beyond my vision but
i will not stop
i may even slow down but i won't stop
and that's the only thing that i can say
that i've seen tie everyone together
because there's so many ways to the top
of any mountain and there's so many
different personalities and skills and
backgrounds involved
but everyone everyone carries on
so at the core the foundational advice
is just don't quit
just keep going that's the lesson of
martial arts i think you know we think
it's like how to be
strong or how to be how to win but in
reality it's like how to persist how to
endure because it's
all of us have been beaten so many times
and gotten beaten up so many times and
thought about quitting have i ever
thought about quitting absolutely have i
ever quit
never i will never ever quit ever i can
say you might not be out i will be
damned if i quit what's the darkest
moment is it injury related like is that
is it uh so like to me like two
possibilities
i've fortunately never been seriously
injured but i think
that's a dark place to be like having to
be out for many months
uh for um as jen was saying like with a
head injury especially
like the uncertainty that's one
and then the other side is if you have
big ambitions as a competitor realizing
that
you're not as good like those
those doubts were like i kind of suck
how am i supposed to be a world the
greatest fighter of all time
if i if if like several people in the
gym are kicking my ass
those are the two things that paralyzing
i think
that everyone's darkest moment is maybe
different
looking from the outside for ryan i
wouldn't say that he's had injuries
and he said bad ones i wouldn't say that
was his darkest moment
i think for me i would say some my head
injury was my darkest moment
absolutely and i have torn my acl twice
i've torn my shoulders four times i've
had lots of surgeries
for me the orthopedic injuries were not
the most
difficult it was the brain injury for
others that might be the case for them
maybe they've never
experienced an injury and maybe for them
that's their darkest moment
from the outside obviously orion can
speak to this more but for ryan i think
it was the
um inability to to perform at certain
points to the upper
the missing of opportunities that for
him from my perspective watching him
go through and having seen various
points of his growth from
from early purple bought on i think the
hardest time for him looking in
obviously was when he would hit moments
where he wasn't able to perform
for various reasons he couldn't get
fights he was having difficulties there
i think that
that was the hardest point for him did
you did you think like with the head
injury that you might
not never be able to do jiu jitsu again
yeah i mean i
i mine was very um was really bad and it
was just
the one hit but i had a looping memories
for seven months didn't know it because
when your brain's messed up you're not
even aware that you're looping
and so i saw two different neurologists
i find like it took a very long time
um i didn't know if i was going to be
able to have like linear thoughts or
read a book i didn't know at certain
points if i could listen to music again
you know without it making my head hurt
um and so
uh it was almost two years before i woke
up in the morning without a headache
um just waking up before i even start my
day
and so that so that's even bigger than
jujitsu that's just life
that's just that's just hard and i think
that
you can experience so many things i've
had all these injuries
we lost the baby when i was 15 15 weeks
and we've had all these experiences and
what the hardest point for me
not saying all those things weren't hard
but it's kind of like
as you go through these you just realize
like life goes on and you have to keep
working at it and you have to keep going
and
you asked me earlier offline did i feel
depressed and
not from my head injury i don't think
that at least in the moment i had a
any recognition of that it's kind of
like but i think different people's
personalities i have kind of the like
buckle down and just keep going and
sometimes it's not until
lots of time later that you realize wow
that was really hard
because you're just struggling to live
and and function and do the things that
you need to do alone do you mind
jumping on just like this part of the
conversation just for a few minutes it's
over do you mind you know just sitting
together oh no no
just for a little bit sorry be cool be
cool so we put a face to it you know
uh is it okay with you yeah it's fine
with me if it's fine
by the way what was the head injury if
you don't mind sharing
someone hit their head dropped their
knee on the back of my head during
training who's a lot bigger than me
so one strike to the back of the head is
too much for someone there's a reason
that's outlawed in mma right someone
50 pounds everything you drop their
running on the back your head once and
it's
that's the funny thing about getting hit
right you never can really be sure
what's going to happen
i think that's actually one of the
magical parts about jiu jitsu where like
if you choke me
if you we know what's going to occur
you hit someone they might be completely
unharmed like you might be punching tony
ferguson in the face and like he you
need to hit him with a sledgehammer to
affect this man
and then other people they could get
really badly hurt which i guess
it's back to your point about you know
street fighting and things like that and
the
serious serious potential you know
second third order consequences of any
action that we take
but yeah that's a that's a tricky thing
about getting hit how does it make you
feel that
like the the really shitty thing about
injuries to me
was that like you start thinking like
well if i did this one little thing
different
like this wouldn't have happened today
like one
one moment changes your entire life is
that
do you uh do you think that where is
that totally counterproductive um
you can't help but think that way when
you've had the amount of injuries i've
had now because i've had
more than most people's fair share um
as my orthopedic says you don't want to
win that you don't want to with the
contest of who's had the most
but since you haven't actually built me
a pool yeah um
but i think you can't help but think
that way sometimes but i definitely
don't think it's
i think it can be facilitated if you
don't beat yourself up too much
um because thinking about
why have i been subject to so many
injuries and
and a lot of it comes to just um
almost all of mine in particular are
people a lot heavier than me so we're
talk
but if i've been training martial arts
15 years i'm obviously on the much
smaller side i'm a woman
i've done thousands and thousands of
rounds
with people 50 pounds plus heavier than
me i mean years
not training with anyone less than 50
which is 50 pounds is almost half my
body weight
and when you also add testosterone the
natural
physiological advantages of men not just
are they heavier with more mass they're
faster they're more explosive they're
stronger
if they're the same size and so i think
that the willingness to be in that
environment
over and over and over again creates a
lot of strength resiliency willingness
to continue
but it also like in order to do that you
almost have to
uh for me the way i was approaching was
like pretend like i
wasn't more vulnerable um and just be
willing to step in and step in and stuff
take it until you make it kind of
until you make it kind of yeah like i'll
just one day i'll be strong enough
and you avoided injury for most for most
of those rounds i would injure the
problem as ryan points out is that like
you could do thousands of rounds but if
one person that size that strength that
however reacts
in a way that you don't expect it
doesn't it's not like an oops it's like
always major
do you regret any of it like i think
that most no one i know has experienced
the degree of injuries that i've
experienced and i started juice at a
time when
in 2005 is very different than now where
you have the coaches have more control
over what you're doing they're more
aware
in general about a lot of the injuries
there's a lot
more people who are uh
hobbyists than when i started um they
were hobbyists but it was different kind
of hobbyist you know than now
now our girls can train with other girls
they don't have to do thousands of
rounds with somebody
significantly more powerful than them
and
for the drawbacks and the benefits of
that you know as with anything
um so i think
i think that i don't think i would go
back and change it there were times
after one of my injuries where i said to
ryan i said i quit i'm done
i'm not doing this anymore i probably
said it more than once but there was one
time i was really serious in 2012.
um i was really serious i tore my
shoulder i had
i was looking at missing a big
competition again the world's for
my second or third year in a row after
injuries and i said i'd quit my job two
years before and i'm like
i'm done and run before that had always
been
you know keep me focused and then he
kind of said okay if you want to be done
be done
just just have a good time no i'm really
done i don't even want to train anymore
okay okay and then you know i think
he helped facilitate a moment for me to
go um
visit a friend some friends some girls
that were doing a girls camp
who are close to my size or some friends
of mine to go train and i was like oh
wait
i do love this thing it's harder for me
on a daily basis but that doesn't mean i
don't love this thing
and it really helped change my mind i
started to connect with other people
travel more
myself because previously he had done
that but
i hadn't really done that i think there
was a point where
um when i started youtube it was just
for fun i just wanted to sport after
college i played sports as a kid i want
to i just want to exercise i wasn't into
the martial arts
he usually gave me a hard time about it
because he was always very how can you
not care about martial
i don't know i just want to play sports
um
and ryan was really big into kind of the
philosophy side of the martial arts
aspect
um he used to give me a hard time and i
think after that moment this moment
where i looked at myself and i said do i
want to keep doing this
is when i started to appreciate
jiu-jitsu take it took off some of the
pressure i'd been feeling i think
as ryan's girlfriend but i had a
full-time job a long time
it was never my goal to be a jiu jitsu
world champion
and i think after that moment where i
like you know i really do like this i
really do want to just i had this moment
like any time where you're like i'm
doing this for me i'm not doing this for
him and i think that that's
um i think that was really lucky for me
because how often in our lives do we
have a kind of a challenge
where we have to stop and we have to say
is this really what i want
how often in a relationship do you do
that how often in any type of
lifestyle or job do you stop and you
really ask yourself is something really
difficult happen that you look and you
go am i just doing this because it's
convenient and easy
or is this what i really want to do yeah
i've had those moments like this
this podcast is one of those things it's
like
you you stop and think like
i actually love this and it's uh i had
that with jiu-jitsu too
i don't think i had set until like brown
belt did i
stop i mean yeah it's when you first
face real challenges
you think like why am i doing this it's
i think most of my progression was
why not i think that's the right the
leap of faith and then a certain point
you think like
what why am i doing this and if you can
answer
honestly that because i love it it's
kind of a liberating feeling
it's a it's a yeah it's so it's so
powerful
thankful for the opportunity to be there
right because you love it and yeah man
great gratitude it's yeah so that's it's
ultimately gratitude yeah
let me ask you this so ryan said like
what what did i took over your
thing yeah this is no nobody cares about
ryan i wouldn't
i'll photoshop him out or whatever
however you edit that'd be great
put sean connery's head uh just like a
dune
ad exactly uh connor
is that the sexiest man in sean connery
in the dune universe that's my
understanding
okay i think in any universe yeah well
mind gossiping given we actually named
our son after sean connery
oh yeah that's right yes
he was in the rock those i love all
those great lame
nicholas cage oh yeah conairs face off
greatest movie of all time
dude his accent and conair was so
awesome i don't know where it's from
alabama i guess or something
well they got like steve buscemi in
there like we need steve buscemi in this
thing and we got him
dave chappelle yeah that's right yeah
he's a prisoner
eight ball yep greatest movie of all
time
should have won and dave chappelle also
in blue streak with martin lawrence
and then uh what do you call it uh robin
who men and sites oh robin
was one of my favorites as a kid half
baked but rob yeah
well that that's a good uh
wow we just listed off some really bad
90s movies but
you take that back we're telling our age
yeah
so what um like in your view i don't
mean to
from like a smaller person i guess
that's an interesting thing while jiu
jitsu is like
that uh small i don't
hopefully that's not a bad thing um
yeah like with all these like uh bigger
people you can still enjoy the art like
what does it take to get a black belt
to excel to quote unquote master the art
gosh everyone has such a different path
ryan's promoted
six seven people something like that and
i think about
half of them have had um
have kids have families have other
careers um
at the time some of them competed a lot
some of them have never
competed or rarely competed some have
been commuted a long time
some had started different places
everyone's had different journeys
even in our own little group of seven
i think only maybe only two or three
were
high level competitors of that group at
the
higher belts very like brown black maybe
um and so it's just different for every
person and that's something that that
you know we try to tell her since we
have 400 students
and um do we have us we don't really
have anyone who's
you know a stated other other than like
the coaches like adam but
we don't have anyone that's like a
stated high-level competitor as a
student at the moment we
people look at our gym like oh it's lots
of competitors there's not lots of
competitors it's never been
lots of competitors and we've had ones
and twos here and there
um but really everybody's in it for the
long term if they're in it
sometimes the the high level competitors
are the ones that are more likely to
drop off because they
have a bit of success particularly at
blue or purple and then they realize how
hard it is at brown and black and then
they they have a hard time continuing
on that's that path and then they can't
look at themselves as a non-competitive
hard time continuing with jiu jitsu i
think
whereas sometimes it's the guy who comes
in as the white belt and he trains
you know twice a week every week and the
next thing you know he's been there for
two or three years like oh he's a blue
bell he's a purple
he's a brown bell and and he's just
consistent um over
over a long period of time and willing
to take the path
and no two people's path is exactly the
same no two people's lives are exactly
the same
you have um we have students who started
as a white belt as
you know a young adult with no you know
no responsibilities and they train all
the time and then they
have a job you know then they graduate
college and they have a job then they
have married then they have kids then
they have different points in their
careers and at different points in your
life
jiu jitsu will be there you know for
whatever way that you're willing to
accept it
it's place i think well that's actually
kind of what back to the initial
question we discussed about
you know what makes a warrior you know
and and also like what makes something
or someone
you know particularly impressive in my
mind is like uh
what they make out of what they have um
you know one of my favorite movies ever
as far as gump
and it's obviously it's it's just if you
can't uh because i've heard people like
force gum sucks i'm like i don't like
you as a person and uh
like you have no heart at all but
basically uh
it's the story of someone that tries
hard and it's like yeah but it's it's
funny movie but it's like um you know i
guess
you meet each person where they are you
know and
obviously you want everyone needs to be
pushed we all need to be pushed we need
friends and people around us that push
us to be better versions of ourselves
all the time and as you mentioned the
people you spend all of your time around
deeply impact you um and we have to be
willing to be pushed it takes a leap of
faith for me to trust
for me to put some of my self in
my my you know i guess my ability my
control my personal agency as it were in
the hands of someone else
that i that i trust and and that i
respect but
if if i can do that well again maybe i
never become
you know high level black belt
competitor but you know i had four of
the things i was doing my life i also
have a family i have this i have that
you know what that person was able to
accomplish in the martial arts relative
to what they were able to put in this
phenomenal
you know other times someone could be a
very successful black belt and it might
might be a bum
because they could have been a lot more
and you know they could have done more
they could have focused more
and and there's no shame in deciding
that you don't want to do that but
whatever it is that you're
you're invested in i remember the uh
take it uneasy podcast
and that i loved because you know i'll
just chill out
like resting it's like vacation oh who
wants to go on vacation yeah go on
vacation for a day or two you want to
spend three weeks on vacation like i
kill myself like get me out of here like
this is horrible
this is i'm a waste of life i'm not
doing anything useful right now
technically
right now right well this is fun though
it's like a one-day vacation yeah
exactly but if you notice if you had
i'm sure you're thinking about jumping
off of the building right now but if you
had to if you had to talk to me for
you know like uh three days i'm sure
you'd probably shove me off the building
i don't blame you i would be dead
but yeah five hours in but yeah but you
know it is it's like you want to be
pushing towards something um because
otherwise what's the purpose of being
here
you know it's not just a college it's
doing something useful
building growing as a person helping
others do the same if that's within your
power
at any given time but i think that's
kind of the neat thing about martial
arts is it can be many many different
things to many different people
you know i finally for instance i was
able to get a college degree let this
this year
that which i mean it's not a big deal
for most people but for me it was a big
deal because i was going back and finish
yeah and i never envisioned ever going
back and
that's a hard step to to go back and
finish that's uh
it just weighs heavy on you if you don't
it's interesting yeah i was just
i was more proud of that than most
things i've ever done if i'm honest you
know and it was neat and i really
enjoyed it and it was the process of
doing it but
you know are my academic credentials
impressive like not in the least
but for me it's like it was a big deal
for me personally to take that step
and to to go back and do that and i was
i was proud of the
the direction and because it would have
been easy like do i need to do it like
no i'm you know i'm business i'll do
okay i'll try
i'll keep fighting but i i was happy to
take the time in between fights when i
was
when i was unbooked for an opponent to
do something productive rather than just
i'll just hang
out you know like i can still train
every single day but i can also train
and go to school people go to the
olympics while going to school
i can i can do martial arts and go to
school
one thing i gotta ask is uh you know
a bunch of women listen to this podcast
if they haven't done jiu jitsu i think
it'd be kind of intimidating
to uh stop on the mat with a bunch of
bros
uh that like enjoy somehow killing each
other
like how do you succeed in that
environment to where you can
learn this art learn how to beat all
those people up
um oh gosh is there any advice
i mean another way to ask that is like
if if uh
any women listening to this are
interested in starting jiu-jitsu like is
there advice for that journey
honestly i think it's just walking in
the door and starting
sometimes i don't know how to respond to
that because i'm not i don't
view myself as typically anxious
particularly
in interactions with other people or new
people
shy is not a word that has been used for
me
but if you ask my family and um they
joke because our son talks a lot he's
advanced verbally and they're always
like oh well let's
we know where he gets that from like
because he just doesn't stop talking he
narrates everything he does um and so
they always tease because that's like
i'm known for
for kind of talking a lot um but so i
haven't been typically
i'm not i don't consider myself a shy
person so for me going into
um a new room a new group of people is
you know there's there's always that you
don't really know who they are how
they're going to treat you but i typical
but i i don't have a lot of anxiety with
that so i don't if that's something
that's going to
put something up i don't really know how
to to address that particular feeling
um but in terms of all of the rooms i've
been in i have
popped in the jutsu jams before i knew
ryan
in florida like i traveled for my jobs
in germany and florida and
in california in places where where i
don't know anyone they don't know me
and i have never once had anyone
be anything other than than kind and
solicitous
and helpful and long before when i was a
white belt and a blue belt and didn't
know anything and
didn't know anyone and i just
think that it's a community of people
that it's so cool that no matter where
you go in the world
um i i walked into a gym in prague one
time where only two people spoke english
and and it was just yeah it's weird
you know it's weird like part of a group
and they're like oh let me tell you what
it is being part of a cult right
yeah yeah but it's like a positive cult
like it for sure
that's what we would say yeah that's
true
yeah that's true i mean we do need to
murder every week of practice aikido
i mean yeah that's this cult uh true
deeply believes it no but there is a
like if you look at different kinds of
games like chess and so on like
there's a skepticism i mean there's not
a
brotherhood sisterhood feeling with jiu
jitsu it's like you can roll into most
places
even like with judo like i can see the
contrast like because i've trained in
judo
places it uh
it's more like tribal like you walk in
and like who is this like there's that
kind of feeling with jiu jitsu there's
uh
less so there is a little bit with like
the competitors there's always like
the competitors feeling each other out
usually like the blue belts uh
but like outside of that in terms of if
you don't get the
if you if you walk in with the vibes of
just
loving the art and just wanting to have
a good time
you're like welcome it's really cool
it's really
fascinating it's a really great um thing
i think and as a woman i think you
you think you're walking into these
rooms of these you know
big strong tough guys and um if anything
i would i would say that they're almost
like
much more solicitous when a woman comes
in there and
not like they're just like hitting on
you all the time you know it's just that
you walk in and everyone is like oh cool
you want to do this thing that i love
let me make sure you have a good
experience and take care of you
and i think that's that's an experience
that that i hope people have when they
come into our gym and
and i've i've always felt when i walked
into other gyms and so you know we try
our best to
to make that comfortable and and it can
be a little uncomfortable because there
are
when you walk into a male-dominated
environment there's
conversations and topics there's a
different style of camaraderie and
joking that a lot of men will do that
um maybe some women are more
uncomfortable with i grew up with four
brothers so i kind of
maybe was a little more desensitized to
that
um and i worked for the department of
defense for for a while too so
before i i i'd say you're with the
government yeah
so so i did that i'm already skeptical
yeah
i'm not going to ask you about ufos then
because you're not going to tell me the
truth
[Laughter]
uh yeah now you just freaked out a lot
of people okay
uh but yeah by the way where's where's
your school because people always ask
like where
uh uh well we're outside of washington
dc and northern virginia and falls
church
you always want to pick like what's the
best school if i travel to this place or
if i lo
if i want to move to this place so
that's well i mean obviously we're
biased but yeah
we're in the washington dc area the best
okay we just took a little break
now we're back let me ask you uh one
thing that a bunch of people are curious
about
you're one of the innovators first of
all you're one of the
great innovators and philosophers and
thinkers in jiu jitsu right
but you're also one of the innovators in
terms of leg locks
and and the 50 50 position and just like
the fact that legs have something to do
in jiu jitsu uh
the the under the other
popularizer innovator in the space is
john donahue
and his whole group of guys do you have
um thoughts about
their whole system of leg locks and
their
ideas about jiu-jitsu and so on sure i i
guess uh
you know obviously you know john and and
the students at henzo have been able to
do fantastic things competitively in the
past number of years and you know um
you mentioned innovators in the in that
kind of you know
section of jiu jitsu i would be uh i'd
love to bring up some
guys like dean lister um of course uh
mazukaze minari in fact a lot of what
was going on
in like 90s japan like combat submission
wrestling there was some crazy gnarly
stuff that
it's just it's on grainy vhs tape but
like stuff that if people were doing now
they go oh my god that's brand new
like there's um it's it's been i think
these are things that have been around
for a while
um in various places i first learned the
50 50 position just like the leg
entanglement of it
from brandon vera actually at a seminar
at lord urban's martial arts i think in
2005.
he learned it from dean lister who used
it to submit
alexandria cocareco a really really
tough nogi guy at adcc
on the in the run that uh dean made to
the to the gold medal in the absolute
division which was a great performance
at the time first american to do that
um and uh you know and i actually saw a
video i mean first of boss rutin
actually broke i think guy mesger's
foot with a 50 50 heel hook did he
actually grabbed his heel
and his and his toes and like and in
pancreas it's back when they had like
the man panties and the high uh
yeah and uh dude that was gnarly boss
rooting is underappreciated as like
as like he double oh grab like oh yeah
like you know his leverage is leveraged
it's that's like a toehold that's
you know that goes the other way and
it's like it either doesn't work or
breaks in half and uh
well he's uh people don't often think of
boss rooting as an
innovator but he is in a way like
he uh you know talk about like elon musk
and first principles thinking in terms
of physics
he like just feels like he just gets the
job he figures out like the simplest way
to get the job done of breaking things
and establishing control and hurting
people
remember that was back in the day if you
listen to boss root and do any like
commentary for any of the uh the big mma
shows or any mma show way back when any
time guys were clinching like the gosh
role for an ebar he was saying that way
back when and now people are doing it
all the time with varying degrees of
success it's it's funny it's like it's
also tough to be
uh i think like a breakaway thinker i
mean you know groupthink is a real thing
in group inertia
and it's it's neat to see um you know
particularly
at a time when maybe that type of stuff
was less accepted
um you know someone going hey i'm gonna
i'm gonna run off in this other
direction i think you know whoever
you know the inventor of electricity in
my mind is a lot more impressive than
whomever not to say that the person down
the line isn't impressive that comes up
with an interesting way to use it
um both are cool but when you think
about
just can you imagine we're sitting here
like yeah people i'm going to build an
airplane you're like what are you
talking about it's crazy people don't
fly i'm like no i'm going to do it and
of course it's not going to be as good
as the airplane down the line the
iterative things that happen later on
but um just being able to go to dream
something into existence that you
haven't seen before and then
make it happen like takes an
unbelievable like strength of character
almost like a force of will
because you have you're you're blazing a
trail that hasn't been
walked before that's the bj pen factor
in you know
winning the jiu jitsu world championship
first non-brazilian to do that was back
in 2001
and then raphael lovato later on it's
like he's you know both of those guys
are so unbelievably impressive in my
mind for the same reason you know
because they were
out there winning at a time when that
wasn't a common thing not that it's easy
to win now it's just
there's not a psychological hurdle that
needs to be left i remember you know
when i was early in jiu jitsu like
americans weren't winning the world
championships at any belt i mean
bj we all knew bj penn because bj penned
it but it was
really really uncommon now it happens
you know on a semi-regular basis of
course the brazilians are so strong
europeans are still strong
but uh and australians are coming on as
well but uh
it's it's definitely kind of an
interesting thing so to come back to
you know john danaher and the uh hensar
team obviously they're doing
fantastic things john's had some really
really great innovation there
and the the the systematization and the
methodology
that they're using is uh is great and
it's neat to see that it's getting out
there
um i would just also what i would
encourage people to
make sure that they're you know catching
up on their history because obviously
you know john's a brilliant instructor
and
has done things you know for the sport
that um that are fantastic that haven't
been done before but you know none of us
exist in a vacuum and i've learned
things from everywhere else so you know
john would say the same i'm sure
and uh you know dean lister would say
the same and it's just neat when you can
kind of trace the history of all of this
happening because we've had
humanity's had two arms and two legs for
some time at least as long as i've been
alive but you mentioned like
airplanes do you think there's something
totally new to be invented in jiu jitsu
still not totally new but like the
you know flying isn't new right uh but
airplanes nevertheless made that much
more efficient is there like new ideas
to be discovered in digital still i'd
say the reason i'd say yes is the same
reason i would say i believe in alchemy
even though i don't i'm serious like
i've got some backing for this okay
um you know i guess i talk about this
with a buddy of mine a lot like uh
and facilitative versus not facilitated
beliefs
and if i don't believe something is
possible and i do no investigation
towards it
i'll never find something even if it's
there it's almost like it's no different
than me walking up on a group of people
and going like oh man look at these
jerks this is going to suck
versus me going i wonder what these guys
are up to i'm about to have two very
different conversations even though the
players in the game are no different my
internal constitution has changed
because
of of how i've decided to approach the
situation so although i wouldn't
personally want to spend all my time
trying to turn lead into gold because i
don't believe that it's likely to work
only a person who's willing to spend his
or her life in that pursuit will
actually get to the bottom of that and
also in the
in the pursuit of that they're likely to
find other things so i think a lot of
times the idea is that humanity is
pushed forward by
you know again it's another orson scott
carbon it's like you know human beings
are in this slog it's
paraphrasing just in this slog over time
and then periodically
the humanity gives birth to genius like
someone that invents the wheel invents
electricity pushes us forward
you know comes up with with the idea of
governance that doesn't you know just
start and end with the point of a sword
you know and uh you know these aren't
common things these are unbelievable
advancements that you know that just me
sitting here i didn't come up with them
but i just get the benefit of it
so i guess what i would say is a lot of
times these ideas are called crazy
you know like as we discussed on kind of
offline it's like you know einstein
was brilliant in his 20s and it was
brilliant before that i would suspect
but basically uh you know gets
recognized later on in life and
of course we all thought those were
great ideas the man was probably roundly
mocked for
giant chunks of his life and i i guess
so it's neat
i would say there's definitely in my
mind things that even if it's just
combinations and new to me
new ways to see things new ways to
understand different depth of
understanding possibly new things new
positions new ideas
because even if that's not true
the process of of going through and
acting as if it is and believing like
that and focusing and
trying to investigate will make any of
us will push us all forward
we're sitting there you know obsessing
over the cult of our current knowledge
i think is the biggest the biggest
danger um
and the biggest cause of stagnation that
exists anywhere
yeah and it starts with believing the
the impossible which is kind of
interesting
one of the things that's really
inspiring to me is to see people out
there which
which sadly are rare who kind of have
uh a combination of two things one
is they have a world view that involves
that includes a lot of ideas that are
crazy and
the second part is they're exceptionally
focused and competent in bringing that
whatever the ideas in that world view to
reality so
there's certainly a lot of people with
crazy ideas you know there's a lot of
conspiracy theorists they have
way out their beliefs about things but
they're not
doing much to like make the like build
stuff
grounded and like they're not engineers
or whatever they're just like espousing
different crazy ideas but
that's why you get like the elon musk
type characters and the reason i bring
him up a lot
is because like there's not many others
to bring up it's like
there's not many examples of it through
history the people
i mean the guy's convinced that we're
going to colonize mars
and basically
everybody on earth thinks that's insane
everyone accept the guy that's going to
do it right except that's going to do it
and like
you can imagine like a couple hundred
years from now
people will i mean
first of all they won't certainly won't
remember the haters
they won't remember all the people if if
they do remember them
they'll remember them in a sense like
people were silly to think that this
isn't the obvious
path forward like from a perspective
that's what that's what
elon talks about like it's obvious that
we're going to expand throughout the
universe
like so from his perspective from his
perspective like
but to me it is also obvious because
like either we destroy ourselves
or will expand beyond earth like
uh like there's not many you know we
well it's not maybe it's not completely
obvious i'm i guess i share that world
view
there's the other possibility that we
humans find a sort of
an inner peace where the forces of
capitalism will calm down
and we'll all just meditate and do yoga
and jiu jitsu and like relax with this
whole tech thing
where we keep building new technologies
but it's cool to have those kinds of
people
that just believe the big ambitious
crazy dreams
because that's where it starts if you
want to build something special you have
to first believe
that when you also have to believe
strongly enough that you're not
vulnerable and i'm speculating but it's
like i can only imagine how many people
have told
elon that what he's doing is crazy so
not only did he dream it up he dreamed
it up
went with it and also went with it in
the face of being
told that it's not going to work and
then time and then also
stepped away from the bitterness because
he's done a series of really crazy
impressive things
uh and that's only those little things
i'm aware of but and also staying away
from the bitterness of every single time
you did something good initially i
all i do is talk down about you and then
eventually i act as
of course of course i never apologize
and yet you don't let that dampen
your spirits for the next innovation
which is pretty incredible to me to
watch
yeah it's kind of cool i mean uh it's
contagious to spend time
with the guy because he's not it's rogan
has the same look to him which is
interesting about these people
is uh like
there there's like a hater shield
that he's like he doesn't even like
sense them it feels like
like it doesn't he does he thinks to uh
to elon it's like it's obvious
i mean he keeps calling it like first
principles thinking
like physics says it's true therefore
it's true like he's convinced himself
that like
his beliefs are grounded in the
fundamental fabric of the way the
universe works
therefore the haters don't matter right
and i mean that's kind of like a system
of thought he developed himself
through all the difficulty through all
the doubt he's able to take huge risks
with
basically putting everything he owes on
the line multiple times throughout his
life
amidst all the drama amidst all the
doubts amidst all like the
he's still able to make just clear
clear-headed decisions
it's i don't know what to make of it but
it's inspiring as hell well
it's i think it's something that's funny
i think like i can only imagine that
you know history will look back on him
as a brilliant person but that's not the
only there's
there's a lot of maybe not not
statistically speaking but a lot
numerically on a giant planet of you
know billions people
a lot of brilliant people well um you
know time place luck
fortune all that other stuff but at the
same time that clearly isn't the only
determining thing in making elon musk
musk and obviously i don't know the guy
from adam and
but it's an interesting thing that it's
not just his intellect his belief system
his structure
how he's viewing the world like that's
did he
reason his way to that did he not what
other factors came in i'm really curious
about that because i guess coming it's
again i feel really strongly about
people's belief structure and and this
the how they view the world
being more important than the engine
behind it
you know it makes someone resilient or
not it makes someone
positive or not because you could have
ten thousand i think about this for
competitive stuff
you could have ten thousand things going
properly and one thing going improperly
if you focus on the improper you'll
probably fix it at a certain point which
is good
facilitated for development in the long
term but if you had to go and try to
perform a task in the next five minutes
and you're focusing on the negative your
confidence and your your your belief in
in the positive outcome of the future is
likely to be damaged
whereas you could have 25 things going
wrong but you go man i sure am happy to
be alive how fortunate i am this is
great i can't this is i have problems to
solve this is awesome
versus i list the problems and i start
bitching about them both of them are
technically accurate
but it's i guess different lenses and i
think that's a really neat thing to see
you know someone you know exemplifying
that for us
so maybe to look at the the fighting
world
there's a million questions i can ask
here like one you mentioned bj penn
you uh first of all you are undefeated
in the ufc and
one of the fights you've had is against
bj penn which is a
kind of an incredible fight you you won
performance of the night
what did it feel like to uh
to face pj pen and to beat him
definitively as he did
like what's that whole experience like
i'll be honest i didn't know
if i was going to ever be able to fight
again after beating gray maynard in 2016
um and i've had a couple of periods of
those i i was about to join the army
actually in uh
when i was 30 before the uh for the ufc
for
jen sent me over to ultimate fighter i
didn't want to go because i was like one
they're never going to pick me too i'd
be terrible for tv
three i'll probably say something i'm
gonna get you know burned to death in
the streets
you know i'm like this isn't a great
idea and then uh she said well go out
there see what happens do it anyway
you'll be
you'll regret it if you didn't and then
i ended up doing ultimate fighter and
then
so i fought three times on the show and
then i fought um
for the for the finale so those four
times in like
five or six months which was great and
then it took me a year to get another
opponent
um and that was gray maynard and then
gray was obviously a very tough guy
managed to get a good outcome there then
it took two years to fight b.j penn and
that was
you know obviously i'm training all the
time every single day and that never
stops but that was i'll be honest like
pretty deeply frustrating because you
know as
a human being as an athlete you know i
think as an athlete you die twice like
you have an athletic
peak or area and then then you go on
with the rest of your life
but it is a microcosm for the rest of
your life it's like you're seeing this
the sand tick away in the hourglass or
drop away and you're going man this is
these are years between 31 32 33 like
i'll
be at my best at this time my absolute
best physically now not technically i'm
a lot better
now than i was before and i planned but
at a certain point you will
unless you're bernard hopkins you will
reach diminishing returns and
i guess that's the long the long wait
you can feel the clock
ticking is this frustrating so why why
did it take two years for bj
i uh i i that's the question people ask
a lot like
why does nobody want to fight right now
i don't know i probably they probably
think they'll get infected by whatever
this is but uh i don't
i don't blame them but uh i mean you're
a really tough opponent is the bottom
line
i'll say that i'm different maybe they
perceive that the uh the the
threat is greater than the reward i'm
hoping that now that we're ranked number
you know in the ufc rankings that uh
that that will change and i know that if
we're
one more win and then we're in the top
10 that you know now
now you're there but uh what i've
consistently found is that like randoms
want to fight and i'm like go away
you know i didn't come here for you you
know because if i wanted to just fight
anybody i could go down to a waffle
house and yell until like dmx shows up
and we can we can fight because he'll be
at the waffle house too who am i kidding
i really want to hang out with the mx
but uh you know it's like you want to
when i had the opportunity
dmx oh my god that was i would
never flick shows i would never fight
dmx we'd be on the same team no
but uh anyway um it's i i guess um
i i accepted fights against uh i asked
the guy to ask about llamas i said yes i
got asked about dennis bermudez i said
yes um
you know like long periods of time and
they at that time you know in between
and 2018 um i was struggling to have
have opponents who would sign up and uh
us i haven't turned down fights i just
said hey
you know keep the i don't care about
fighting the randoms and
it's you have a successful school you're
like
you're running you're a martial artist
broadly speaking so
it doesn't make sense to to take fights
that aren't like
right that fit a certain kind of
trajectory for your career and that's
when when bj penn they said well bj's
looking for an opponent i was like
i'm your guy and uh and i think that you
know bj accepted that fight because um
another jiu-jitsu guy i don't think
he perceived that i was much of a threat
on the feet
um and uh you know i was able to
it was neat to get it to compete against
someone
uh you know who's one of my heroes one
of the people i looked up to in mma for
the longest time and you intimidated by
that
no no i love competing i i don't really
get nervous or scared before fights i'm
not afraid to get hurt and not afraid to
win i'm not afraid to lose it's
i i'm just excited for the i feel
thankful for the opportunity to compete
and the opportunity to
to play when it matters you know i i
just but that's the only time i'm
interested in playing anymore is when it
when it matters when the opposition
is i know that you know it's funny
because people pick on on
a lot of some opponents particularly
after after the fact like if you if you
get a good outcome well then uh of
course lex beat that guy that guy wasn't
that good i'm like well i was
that's after the fact i get to say that
and also as the person in the ring you
know bj penn
has hurt a lot of people in in in mixed
martial arts cage
and i could actually absolutely have
been on that list
um so it was neat to get to compete
against someone that i really respect
someone that i looked up to for a long
time
someone who has a great skill set and
also i went up and wait to fight him at
his weight class he didn't have to come
down to mine which is where he'd take
lightly it was lightweight yeah um i
generally have featherweight i walk
around like 158 pounds so
um what's the lightweight and
featherweight uh lightweight is 155.
with a day before weigh-in and
featherweight is 145 with the day before
weigh-in so i'm a little bit more
properly sized for featherweight but um
anyway uh
you know i so i didn't feel like
obviously he was giving up
a couple years of age but i was giving
up size and all this other stuff
and it was you know i was just excited
to have the opportunity to step in
against someone like bj
and uh you know we managed to to get out
of there with a with a good outcome
without getting too banged up
but uh just it was cool because we tied
up on the fence and just even uh
the second you know is when you're
rolling with somebody and you touch and
you can feel what they're doing you go
oh man this guy's really good um you can
feel the calm you can feel the small
minor adjustments that they're making
the subtle things that they're doing
and that was one of those things that
was really neat and gratifying because
you know you never know sometimes people
that you've heard of are a little bit
less technically proficient than you
thought and other times you'll meet some
guys
training like who the hell is this guy
how have i not heard of this person
and uh bj was exactly as a jitsu guy
what i would have thought
and uh another thing that's another
thing that bugged me about how people
reacted after the fight
is uh you know basically going oh bj
screwed up this screwed up that i'm like
all right yeah it's so interesting
that's sad
that was you know one of the uh to me
i mean as a fan of both that was a
beautiful moment as uh
as a as a kind of passing of a torch in
a sense
of exceptional performance like another
one that
stands out to me maybe you can comment
is
i don't understand well maybe i do why
conor mcgregor gets as much hate as he
does
uh he probably revels in it but
i think he doesn't get enough credit
for uh jose aldo
for the for like for base
you know knocking him out in the the in
the in the first few
uh seconds of uh of a fight
i mean uh jose is like one of the
greatest fighters ever
that's true uh maybe some people could
be even put in the top ten
no question and the like i don't
understand
why it's doesn't get as much
like conor mcgregor doesn't get as much
credit uh as i think he deserves
for that and for eddie alvarez and all
the fights
for some reason whenever uh conor
mcgregor beat somebody
well that they they were not that good
then
like it means like they were they were
there something was off right
that's convenient isn't it yeah it's
it's it's quite strange to me
but i mean what are your thoughts on the
um on conor mcgregor maybe one way to
ask that i'm russian some obviously also
khabib fan
but i'm also a conor fan it seems like
there's not many of us who are like fans
of both right
um what are your thoughts
the two of us which also is a good play
uh
uh stop dude yeah really really tough
dude
just like five line which is really
interesting also the oh wow i didn't
know that side of it
there's a brain there well on the khabib
versus conor what do you make of their
first fight
what do you do you agree with me that uh
they should fight again
because i think it would be awesome if
they fought again in
moscow and uh do you agree with me i'm
just gonna put
say things that piss people off but i
believe is that conor actually has a
chance to beat khabib one the conor
absolutely has a chance to be
conor has a chance to beat anyone that
he steps into that ring with and not
just like a mathematical chance you were
like oh one of the billion but like you
know
like he absolutely it's funny because i
i won't pretend to know conor really
well but i first met conor in 2010 when
i was teaching a seminar
in uh at straight blast jim ireland in
dublin um
and that's actually where i first met
all of the coaches that ended up being
on
conor's team um you know john kavanagh
owen roddy uh gunnar nelson you know so
for i actually
i enjoyed being on ultimate fighter and
being on a uriah favors team and getting
to train with all the guys there but at
the same time that the people that i was
actually
i knew better were actually the european
side all the connors coaches
um and uh that was a neat thing because
i got to
i met connor i didn't know who connor
like connor wasn't conor at that point
yeah that was before
his ufc oh yeah well well before yeah i
think i think he got in like 2014 maybe
something like that
yeah and uh anyway but he was doing well
in cage warriors winning the titles
there i think prior to that
you know i remember going seeing him on
the show and uh
also then getting to see him train
because i competed uh
i was initially slated to fight david
tamer for the ultimate fighter finale
for getting put into fight artem
for the title for the show so i went
over to ireland to train for a couple
days
and basically it was neat to watch him
watch him work i mean
man is focused and trains a lot it's
very very smart
and very very hard working and i think a
lot of times people get stuck in the uh
in this um you know and they
almost want to believe that this was
lucky or this this person
you know they're not working that hard
they're just out there they got there
with their mouth
and that's that's just not the case and
um you know i don't know what it's like
you know obviously connor's very well
off right now and i don't know how hard
how serious he's training what he's
doing i can't speak to any of that
but uh there's no question that that he
has skills to be dangerous and one of
the funny things obviously the khabib
fight one could be his weight could he
was a great fighter and
also has the chance to beat anyone in
that ring at any given time
but uh there's there wasn't conor you
know
it's uh one that he can
he can put anybody away and as you
mentioned i think that he doesn't get
the credit for the eddie alvarez fight
he doesn't get the credit for the jose
aldo fight because it was almost so much
of a letdown i remember that happened
the same weekend that i did the ultimate
fighter finale
and you're like all right wait what
yeah it almost doesn't feel like a fight
happened but we mentioned miyamoto
musashi i mean musashi was famous for
the way he poked and prodded at people
with what he was doing whether overtly
or not it's like oh
we're supposed to fight to the death and
uh you know at 3 p.m tomorrow great
4pm rolls around i'm just not there five
i mean you remember all the all the
antics and nonsense that conor was
pulling prior to that like
speaking personally that's not it's not
something i would feel comfortable doing
but it's like everyone's different
and the effect that it had on on jose
was i mean beyond evidence when was the
last time jose
started the start of the fight with
leaping left hand leaping right-hander
like
wait what and then he was obviously you
know
living rent-free in jose's head at that
point and
that was a combination of psychological
you know ability and and
and wherewithal and then physical and
remind me of the way muhammad ali would
would bother people and whatnot and
the fact that he's a polarizing figure
um i i think makes some people
not give him his due and then at the
same time sometimes certain fans may be
go overboard but uh they remember the
knee that
ben asker and got knocked out with by
mazdal i mean that was an amazing
unbelievable thing but three inches to
the right three inches to the left i
guess whichever side his head
wasn't could have been square but uh
and that fight starts with ben askren on
top of you in the first five seconds
well connor ran and threw a knee just
like that at khabib and could be
got right around it that could have
easily gone the other way can you
imagine what would have happened if
after the after coming back from boxing
after coming back from from the
mayweather fight connor connor
in the first ten seconds it's over and
you're like he would
yeah it would have been intolerable but
basically
yeah like you know but see here's the
thing let me actually push back slightly
uh
i mean to the fans correct me if i'm
wrong
but conor seems to because i've competed
a lot and
like there's a tension there's a
negativity sometimes depending on the
opponent
and there's a respect afterwards that
happens like when you understand
that there's a deep like respect and
almost like love for each other
like i always seen that in conor like
all the trash talk
afterwards yes there's a it's it's a
subtle thing
you can't always see it but there's a
respect like i agree
and the like that i almost on the khabib
side
i almost feel like khabib really took it
personally he did he didn't he lost the
respect for connor
i thought the whole time conor had the
respect so i what i wanted to say is
like
if connor won that fight like rock
khabib i could see like
i wouldn't see trash talking i could see
like trash i can stop
right there i think so too but at the
same time i'm sure you recall like
connor come across in some pretty
personal territory
you know both religiously and also
familiar with uh with khabib and it's
you know i mean i think it's the sort of
thing that i don't know
it's an interesting that's one of those
sentences like you have to know the
difference so
obviously i know the the the kibbe
the dagestani people they don't play
around like that they don't play wrong
like that you know
you know i mean they take offense to
basically i mean you you don't do that
so uh so like connor didn't
maybe he did on purpose or maybe he
wasn't even just aware of
of uh it was cultural differences about
the box he opened
like you can talk to him if floyd
mayweather
you can you can go anywhere with him you
can you could say the most defensive
things but
with uh yeah that could be hardline
yeah hard lines but you uh i mean a lot
of people ask i know you're a
featherweight but if you were to
uh face it feels like khabib is one of
the hardest puzzles to solve
in in all of mixed martial arts if you
were to face khabib
do you think how would you go about
solving that puzzle
like almost the question is almost from
a jiu jitsu perspective too
what do you do with a guy that's
exceptionally good at controlling
position
especially on top very good at wrestling
and taking down and controlling position
like let's say so forget maybe
striking on the ground how do you solve
that guy like what do you do with your
guard if you get taken down or do you
create an entire system of not getting
taken down or escaping it's like what
what ideas do you have for that well i
guess i would say in my mind fighting is
a game of trading energy
um kind of uh you know there's two
there's two things there's damage and
there's energy
so like when i say energy and being like
uh tired not tired how much how much gas
you've got
um and then damage counts obviously as
well um you could be feeling
i could be feeling great and then you
get to keep me in the head hard really
hard three times it doesn't matter that
i could get up and run a mile i can't
get up
so anyway um you know i think what
khabib does is
so well is he makes the fight look like
it could be the mega man fight
um he does a great job of avoiding
damage on the feet for the most part
and really sucking the life out of
people with how
suffocating and oppressive is his
control is his chain wrestling is as
good as anyone we've ever seen in the
ufc it's fantastic
but that poses a really serious threat
for people that need to maintain a
certain amount of space
and try to hurt them on the feed because
unless they're able to inflict an
adequate amount of damage
they're gonna each time let's say for
instance let's say him taking them down
as a foregone conclusion at some point
um if every single time khabib takes you
down you get right back up it's not that
big a deal
um because it's actually more we've all
experienced this let's say you and i are
rolling he tapped me 15 times in one
round who's more tired
probably you are yeah you what my ass so
badly that it's like you're the only one
working
but um so if you're comfortable with the
up and down of it like being taken down
if you're if you don't if you don't get
hurt badly or tired on the bottom
you have a chance but that doesn't
involve just cracking him on the feet
before he gets a hold of you
that's a lot that's a lot to ask that's
a lot to ask that's difficult to do it
seemed actually like
conor it seemed like it when he was
being kind of taken down or the
the takedown attempts against khabib he
seemed to be
somewhat relaxed the whole thing i
thought he was doing well actually i
think that particularly for the first
round i thought he did a
very good job it's just one of those
things that i think like uh
could be being the fights taking place
in khabib's world
in large part and i mean set aside that
one giant uh what is it right hand that
that
khabib hit khanna with it by the way
conor reacted like an absolute champion
he got
crushed by that overhand and then
dropped and his eyes went right back on
khabib it was immediate
great response so even though that was i
think that was a bit of a surprising
thing conor reacted really really well
but if you're going to be on bottom
with khabib for four rounds that's going
to be tough and also conor's a way
better grappler than people like to give
him credit for
but he's not the type of grappler that
can do that can that can
that's too tall of an order but there
are grapplers that could do that or at
least would have a much much better shot
at uh
being able to weather that type of a
storm do you see yourself being able to
be relaxed through that kind of storm
yes well i guess
remember being being being savagely
beaten is very relevant
the time the timing of that answer was
like okay
that's a dumb question no that's
ultimately the goal of jiu jitsu is to
um
be relaxed to the fire for sure and
remember like every ufc fighter i win
all hypothetical match
ups yeah
[Laughter]
that's true since uh
i'm one to ask ridiculous questions and
we've been
talking about sci-fi and all that kind
of stuff let me ask the kind of big
question that everybody disagrees about
certainly with me is uh who are the top
five greatest mma fighters of all time
oh man and um
why is fedor number one okay well first
off fedor is number one
oh really i agree right there with you
really oh yeah
talk about people that just get
completely underappreciated even though
he's never been
like he's never succeeded in the ufc
it's not his fault it came along after
him
at the time that at the time that fedor
was at his height the ufc was
not where it was at for heavyweight
fighting i mean not that there weren't
good heavyweights there but fedor
fedor was unbelievable you know i mean
you remember i mean
minotauro nogueira i was a massive fan
of him i still remember watching uh
what is it pride 2004 when when noguera
fought crow cop and got
blasted with that left kick and dropped
with like seconds left in the first
round pride was great because at a
10-minute first round in that
five-minute second
which again materially also alters the
fight big time and you know just the
texture of the fight because it's
totally it's borderline a different
sport
you know than than getting a five a
pause and a five
but anyway uh similar sports like one of
those swimming things where they have
nine gold medals for different types of
swimming right
but still swimming but anyway uh um
well yeah that they would disagree yeah
i don't know
but it's so it's totally true ten ten
minutes is different than five i'm sorry
i think
don't don't don't drown me swimmers i
don't swim very well it's easy easy
to downplay it but anyway um uh
yeah and then no better than uh jon
jones like the modern era
well i mean i guess it's tough to
compete to compare across eras
it would be like going and saying like
oh man how how would such and such great
grappler from today
fare against someone from 1995 i'm like
well
probably pretty well for them depending
upon
who they are what's going on you know
there's some people that would their
skill sets might transition across eras
but a lot of times not but that's not
fair we get
they'll be like comparing spartans to
modern day
you know like army guys they're like
well who's gonna win i'm like well did
modern day army guys get modern day
weapons well yeah
but who's the toughest ruggedest group
of people at the very least
so i guess it's tough to say but at
least in my mind the people that i think
about for great fighters their
their quality of opposition um their
level of like lasting like success the
level lasting innovation like the
courage that they have to demonstrate
because again it's like being a big fish
in a small pond takes no courage doesn't
mean that there's nothing there
but it just requires something a little
bit different so kazushi sakaraba is one
of my guys too
uh bj penn also i mean bj penn fought
leota machida
yeah that's insane you know it's there
was a time it was a different sport it
was a different time in the sport where
you know they were some guys were
bouncing around doing different things
but let's
so i guess the gracie family it's i mean
they never had an
in like obviously hoist was there um but
they never
and that was a definitely a different
sport weight classes being open things
like that but you have to say the hoist
is up there oh no question one of the
greatest ever
i think so too and again i wouldn't be
sitting here talking to you
um if it weren't for him so the gracie
family as a whole but i mean who's the
better i mean i think the hoist would
tell you himself probably that hixon
would have handled business back then
but they didn't put him in so again he's
the greatest fighter the greatest
fighter the greatest fighter that we saw
do his business so hoist up there for
sure
what about so this is like nobody seems
to agree with me on this but like this
connects to soccer again and messi
it seems that people value like
how long you've been a champion how many
like defenses of the championship that
you've
had successfully to me i highly value
singular moments of genius so like
like i i don't like if you look at conor
mcgregor he hasn't
i guess held i've been a champion very
long very much
he didn't defend either title right he
didn't defend any other
either of the titles but like if you try
and same with messi if you look at uh
leonel messi
there's just moments of brilliance
unlike any other in history
for both conor and messi and people
don't seem to give credit it's like well
how many world cups have you won
but to me like why is it about this
arbitrary world
cup thing or championship thing i think
it's easier for people to wrap their
head around right it's like the nfl
combine
when was i mean yeah numbers it's
something well again if i go and if i
pick tom brady in the first round
you know and it works out they call me a
genius if i
pick tom brady in the first round after
his combine and it doesn't work out i
get fired and i'm never hired again i
have to work
work somewhere else but it's like i'm
insulating myself from
criticism i think almost if i go by the
numbers well he had more bench presses
it's like how
how many times have the guys that are
like the super studs in the uh
in the nfl combine ever been on the
greatest players in the nfl history in
nfl history like
zero or close to zero and even if even
if there's some it's certainly not a one
to one
so it's so funny though i think it's
just like how many how long how many
days did he hold the title oh your title
reign was x times longer
that means nothing so if we wanted to
find greatest fighter ever like you said
i think individual moments of like
you're like that was transcended that
was different
that was something else because people
can win or lose for any number of
different reasons and that
that's an interesting thing again i
don't blame argentina not winning the
world cup on messi
you know that's not fair you know how
many times has
you know i mean aggies the i remember
when uh trent ilford was the quarterback
for the uh
the baltimore ravens and they had such a
strong defense i'm not trying to pick on
trent tilford but it's like
they had such a strong defense that that
they were like that was the ray lewis
you know
chris mcallister era you know and they
they won they won the super bowl
i don't think anyone is going to say
that
you know trent dilfer is a better
quarterback than you know or put him in
the same category as dan marino
but he got the w he's got the he's got
the super ring how many times uh let's
use march madness
or super bowl i love it like that that
guy always makes the finals but he just
never gets it done
yeah so let me get this straight get
into the finals nine times doesn't count
because you didn't win
the end game i'm not saying it wouldn't
be better but that guy won the game once
he got over the hump well how many other
times was in the finals
zero you're like all right yeah it's
interesting well we
yeah that we were obsessed with these
numbers like um
because we can't assess their method
right well i think most of the time most
of us can't assess the method of
anything and it's like oh look at that
guy do
x y swimming i'm like how do i know
michael phelps is great i don't know
who's faster
i can't look at his technique and say
anything other than well that's way
better than anything i know how to do
but i can't say
the difference between him and the next
guy so i guess that's
i wonder if it's like i need a concrete
identifier and a lot of times people
don't like saying i don't know
and most people won't put like a ronda
rousey in the top even
20 or 50 of but like she changed
more than more than almost anybody else
she changed
the martial arts history
i i don't know if that even i i don't
think i'm over exaggerating that she
she made it okay for
women to be fighters yeah and that
and like change the way we see like
she's one of the great feminists of our
time
[Music]
in her own way yeah in in a weird kind
of way that like i don't know
uh maybe i'm just a ronda rousey fan but
the
yeah but she's not in the conversation
because then you start converting into
numbers well how many did well
was she is she among the greatest
fighters or did she do the greatest
things you know i mean i don't
i think it's something i mean obviously
ronda is a great judoka who was
competing in mma at a time when a lot of
the girls like
where did you get your skills in the
olympics where'd you get yours high
school you're like yeah you're gonna
olympic girl is gonna beat you up but uh
i i guess that
that doesn't diminish it just that
accomplishment is what it is i don't
have to
i don't fedor is not diminished by the
fact that
he would like if he were to fight
stephen milochus right now probably
wouldn't go great
or that jon jones exists i don't now
have to like knock fedor's
accomplishments down
or say oh because bj penn or someone so
let's say he
has a mixed record at this point that
somehow invalidates the things that
they've done before
yeah i guess it kind of brings us back
to a lot of the other people we've
talked about the fact that the
the brilliant people throughout history
that we love are some of the monsters
throughout history that we
rightly reviled in a lot of cases we're
complicated people and their legacy is
more than just one thing and someone
doing something amazing doesn't involve
doesn't mean they didn't do anything bad
and someone doing terrible things
doesn't doesn't mean that it doesn't
invalidate the the positives that they
did but i guess we
fighting the urge to put people in one
category
and same with ourselves i think that's
why people get depressed oh i'm good
right now oh i'm bad right now versus
hey we're all at work in progress and
we're trying to do x number of things
and
legacy is a tough thing to figure out
anyway and it's all speculative
last time or no on reddit you said that
last time too
that you don't experience much fear uh
before
fights i'd like to ask you a couple mike
tyson things if it's okay it's just
interesting to me
i'm just weird so there's a i don't know
if you've seen this clip
of tyson talking about how he feels
leading up to a fight that uh he's kind
of
overtaken with fear as he gets closer
and closer and closer to the ring
his uh confidence grows um
have you seen the clip i'm aware of it
okay we've seen in a while here let me
play it for you i think george st peter
said something similar to me one time
while i'm in the dressing room five
minutes before i come out
my gloves are laced up i'm breaking my
gloves down
i'm pushing the lever at the back of my
break in the middle of the blood so my
knuckle
appears to the left feel my knuckle
piercing against the tight leather
gloves on that
and the last box angle and i come out i
have supreme confidence but i'm scared
to death
i'm totally afraid i'm afraid of
everything i'm afraid of
i'm afraid of being humiliated but i'm
totally confident closer i get to the
ring the more confidence i get
the closer more confidence i get the
closer more confidence i get
all during my training i've been afraid
of this man i thought this man might be
capable of beating me
i've dreamed of him beating me but i
always stayed afraid of him but it was
closer i get to remain more confident
once i'm
in the ring i'm a god no one could beat
me i'm a god
i mean first of all he's cognizant
of both his demons and whatever the hell
ideas he has about violence is so
interesting
is there something about the
uh the tension that he's describing
about being confident and scared that
resonates with you
or you're or do you hold to this idea
that you've kind of
spoken about before that you're really
not afraid no i
i can i can appreciate what he's saying
you know i think that
um you know i can speak to feeling like
concerned about let's say for instance
if
you feel a certain way i think people
are a lot more like computers than we
than we like to admit and just because a
lot of times i can't parse
what's going on and why it doesn't mean
that it's not
it doesn't make sense and and i think
that at least in the times of like if
i'm concerned about a situation or about
a person
or about something happening prior to
the fight or i'm like there's a reason
there was a reason i don't have to push
that down and bury it there's a reason
like why what have i not thought about
what have i not done
what am i missing why am i feeling this
way as you mentioned
you know for yourself prior like you'd
be like why am i feeling like this i
don't do this very well in certain
aspects of my life
now that i mentioned it or not i think
about it but when it comes to
competing i think i do an all right job
and i'm trying to learn to be better and
it's uh
and going like well why do i if i feel
this way there's a reason
okay am i thinking about this the wrong
way have i not adequately prepared for
something i have to i
have to address it and then maybe i'll
be up for four hours that night you know
like extra hours thinking what if i not
address watching sparring watching this
watching that
and then that when i when i
am thinking about things more more
accurately or when i've addressed what
that concern was
i feel any of that concern kind of
dissipate and
i guess if i honestly thought that
you know i guess when it comes to i know
i'm gonna die at a certain point
obviously i'm gonna get hurt
i mean you know pain happens but the
pain of
loss would be nothing compared to the or
the pain of injury nothing compared to
the pain
of running away you know and yeah and
so i guess if i think about where's my
value what it's like
i feel like i'm a winner every single
time i step into that ring and fight
with everything that i have i can't
promise that i'll win
my next fight i know that i have the
skills and the tools to beat anyone
in grappling or wearing mixed martial
arts at this point it's just
i i know that for certain i've trained
enough people i compete with enough
people i know
i know where i stand but i also know
that i'm not perfect and also the
the better fighter even if i perceive
that i was that thing
um doesn't win on the night the the man
who fights better
wins on the night and if i give credence
in my mind to
only the person that's that's one has
value versus going what's your process
what's your path through this how are
you going about this how are you
thinking about this how are you behaving
then if if i can focus on the process
then then i
will respect my opponent i will respect
myself and i'll respect anyone
that behaves with with a certain level
of of consistency to that
and they could win there's plenty of
winners in history that that are
shit bags and there's plenty of losers
that are not but
winning doesn't make you a bad or good
person and losing doesn't make you good
by default either
or bad by default so and i think that
that can be the truth socially that can
be the truth you know athletically and
you know academically so i guess is
there a primal fear though like a primal
fear of getting hurt the
running away and not facing
the the threat long term is the bigger
pain
than any pain you can experience in the
fight
that's pretty powerful but what about
the violence of i mean you don't have
that on your face but like
the i don't know if you've also seen
tyson talk about he was on rogan
recently he was talking about
was trying to psychoanalyze himself
about
why he enjoys violence
so much i mean he called it orgasmic
i don't know have you seen that clip i
haven't okay we're playing
we're playing it because i can i need to
because trump also retweeted it which is
hilarious i don't know how to
contextualize yeah that's something that
our president
retweeted the clip of uh
of tyson saying that's just maybe he's
just doing like they're not
it's like i'm gonna throw him a
curveball no one's gonna have any idea
what that is but yeah he did no
explanation just here you go there you
go
well i think that's kind of like what
you're describing it's like if i give
you an answer it has to be a good one
better to just let your imagination run
exactly
yeah he's yeah he's like the kubrick of
our time
you know what's really interesting that
sometimes um
period it's not real but sometimes i
struggle with the fact of why it's a
possibility i can really hurt somebody
like you don't want to hurt them
what do you mean when you struggle
struggle with the possibility that you
could hurt them
that is sometimes it's orgasmic
sometimes
yeah like some fights like particularly
like
tyro biggs or someone that you had
problems with
someone that you joe's not getting you
had animosity towards
so when you finally get your hands on
them hey um
what does it mean um when fighting gets
gets you erect what does that mean it's
a good question
means you're getting excited yeah so
that that's going through your mind
right now well that's how i get when i
was a kid and i you know sometimes
i get to twinkle the twinkle yeah well
that's what i'm saying is like you
reached a state as a human being as a
champion as a ferocious fighter
you reached a state of of ability
and of accomplishment that very few
humans will ever ever
touch and feel that's why i'm asking you
when you're running
when you're hitting the bag when that
heart's beating again and that you know
who you are
you're mike motherfucking tyson so when
you're doing all this shit again you're
still mike tyson
those thoughts have got to be burning
inside you again
it's got to be pretty wild i don't know
it's um it's wild but um
i believe it's um it's rightfully so to
be that way and i just know how to
um i don't but think i i'm how to deal
with it
i don't let it overwhelm me i mean he
goes on to try to
they don't ever like joe doesn't
bite well the interesting thing about
that
conversation is mike was trying to
figure himself out
yeah like he's trying on the spot like
why do i feel this way uh
to me it was like to me it's so real
and honest to uh to feel
like pleasure from hurting somebody
like that you rarely hear that
in this society it's like you rarely
like talk about like you feel pleasure
from winning
you feel pleasure from like the relief
of overcoming like all the stress you
have to go through
pleasure from just like the
the specifics of the fight the
techniques you use the
maybe overcoming being down a couple
rounds but like how often do you hear
somebody say
i just enjoyed he's not even saying
because i hate the opponent he's saying
like
i enjoyed purely the violence of it
that's crazy i mean i don't know it's
honest
it made me ask like i wonder how many of
us are cognizant of that
let's say mike is uncommonly
seemingly uh honest i think athletes
make a full-time job out of lying
you know i think people make a full
themselves perhaps too that's fair
i mean in some you tell yourself or you
tell others what you feel you need to or
maybe whether you
would even know what you feel you need
to but why should he not
i mean again did he did he run up and
just hit somebody that's
didn't sign up for this no they sign it
to be there
well that's the interesting thing about
dyson is there's that weird uh
like non-standard behavior i mean
like your fighting style is not standard
he's non-standard to another degree
of like uh who else has that in jiu
jitsu uh
uh polaris uh uh has this kind of
weirdness like what's what's in there
like there's a fear that i think uh
most opponents would have because it's
like it's no longer about
like it takes you out of the realm of
its game
it takes us back to the thing we're
talking about like before is
it strips away that like several layers
of
ryan hall the the podcast uh guest
ryan hall the jiu jitsu instructor ryan
hall just a competitor
it keeps going down to a point where
like ryan hall the murderer of all
things that get in his way
that lies underneath all of it seemingly
like if we're
like in this society we put all that
aside but it makes you wonder
like now society's being tested in many
ways it makes you wonder like
what's underneath there well do we want
do we want the answer to that because i
guess it's what is it uh
you've seen paul fiction you know the
best character in the movie and in the
best scene in the movies i give my
questions here if you're what he called
him my answers scare you she's asking
scary questions
you know and i guess uh you wonder i
mean all of us that's something that i
think it's funny
oh that's not okay i mean versus maybe
not appropriate
for situation x y or z but uh
what should make any of us think i mean
humanity is a different place now and i
mean i'm not saying anything
crazy out there but it came in a
different place now than we were 5 000
years ago
where all of us are descended from
people who have killed things with their
teeth and fingernails in order to be
where we are
and whether it was in whether it was an
animal or it was in conflict with
another person
i mean think about that the chances of
dying by violence now are so
so slim at least in in most countries in
most places like shockingly small
thankfully but there was a period of
time like the most
period of time where dying by violence
was mostly how it went down
and i guess what would be facilitative
what would allow you to win
back to ender's game you know what
allows you
if you can't do that you are all you are
forever subject to people who can
and that's that's a real thing and
you know we're fortunate to find
ourselves in a situation where we don't
where other things matter but that is a
funny thing periodically where people
you'll see people
like kind of drawing at each other like
in videos or out in the world
that clearly neither of them expect this
to get serious like i'm just going to
yell at you you're going to yell at me
and it's like this weird larping thing
we're both going to go on our own
separate way
all it takes is one person to be like
well i wasn't kidding yeah and it's like
oh you'll go to jail like oh
i know you're gonna go to the morgue and
it's
that's but that can happen like that
like society i mean obviously anyway you
could jump across the table and stab me
in the eye
i mean i appreciate hope if you don't
and there will be consequences if you do
but not from not from me
from from the rest of society will
potentially get you at a certain point
but you can decide to not play by the
rules anytime you want
it's fascinating that yeah that's we've
created rules
based on which we all behave but
underneath there
you know there there's things that
doesn't the there's motivations and
forces that don't play by the rules
they're still there nature's metal is
under the surface
seriously and again i pull out my phone
and i'm basically saying like hey
i'm gonna you're gonna get caught yeah
but really i'm further antagonizing you
yeah
rightly wrongly you know what i mean
like and that that's an interesting
thing and i feel like just people need
to remember any of us need to remember
just for any reason just
that's that's one step away at all at
all times you ever i've had people say
to me before like oh i don't feel safe
i'm like you're not safe
i'll kill you before you get out of this
room nothing you do stop that nothing
i mean but don't worry you could do the
same to me which means i'm like oh thank
goodness can you imagine like how many
guns are there are in this country
like i mean everywhere i mean seriously
everywhere but that's a heartening
thought not the other way because people
usually freak out and go oh my god gun
violence gun violence says gun violence
is
like really not a serious issue in the
united states compared to what it could
be
because it means that i mean with the
amount of guns and the amount of
bullets that are out there that are in
circulation can you imagine if like
one in every thousand was used in anger
each day i mean
this would be a terrifying place to live
you couldn't go anywhere so i mean
although you could say hey this is more
than we'd like or xyz
it actually means that people are much
more reasonable insane than we're saying
than or then i then sometimes i might
and i might argue so i guess what i mean
is like oh man i walked to 7-11
and i didn't get stabbed i'm like oh
well that's good because not because i
protected myself with my karate
it's basically no one decided to run
over and stab me because i wasn't
protecting myself it's
i they they stopped so i guess we're all
fortunate to live in a society that
like you said nature being metal doesn't
become that big of an issue all the time
but it is funny when you get people in
the ring and you go hey let's peel back
from mr tyson many layers of that
and say hey now it's okay and it's cool
that i mean that's what society's doing
so i've
i lived in harvard square for a while
and we
add extra layers of what safe means like
now there's a dis discourse about safe
spaces about like
ideas being violence or or like uh
you know yeah but ideas or
minor slights against your personality
being violence
but that's all like extra layers around
the nature is metal thing
that uh it's cool that's that's what
progress is but we can't forget that
like underneath it it's still
it's still the the thing that will
murder at the at the drop of uh
in any at any moment if uh if aroused
one thing that i find funny though or
ironic maybe about the uh
the you know words of violence you know
offense is violence thing is that of
course
that if that the belief in that then
justifies
my violence like my and whether maybe
maybe not physical violence but my
response to my my aggressive response to
things
and i guess like which again regrets
begets a further aggressive response and
like a you know kind of a
tit-for-tat sort of situation or or it
goes to like well there's 10 of me and
there's one of you so we'll get you and
you can't do anything about it
but that's not morality that's that's
just saying that's might makes right
so i guess again you can understand why
people do it and there are certain there
is a progress aspect to it but again i
guess without proper examination i'm
effectively
with my 10 friends you know and and the
force of the law mike tysoning people
but not admitting to myself what i'm
doing and at least mike tyson again is
honest
are you uh afraid of death
i mean it's easy for me to say no as i
sit here probably not about to die but
is this like the ufc question can you
defeat any opponent exactly
yes the answer is of course yes and uh i
don't have they're not around they're
not here are they
yeah exactly but i mean you uh do you
ponder your own mortality
maybe another context to that is you
mentioned two deaths
for martial artists i think that's
actually why
honestly even though at a relatively
young age i think mortality is something
that i'm aware of
more maybe more than the average person
i think probably most athletes can speak
to this and
anyone that's had trouble i've managed
to to slide out of a couple
near-death experiences personally you
know mostly river related
um because i'm an idiot but um i regret
nothing but uh yeah
yeah but uh thank god we're here but um
yeah it is in our seeing
seeing the end and seeing going
well what's going to happen i guess i
think
it comes back to kind of what we're
discussing about belief structure and
belief system
i think a lot of times if i recognize
that no matter what i do
it's all going to end one day and then
you go well why were we here what would
i do
am i going to make it to 40. i have no
idea i'd like to hope so
that i had no idea that i was going to
make it to to the age that i am now
um am i going to make it to 80. how much
of that is in my control
much of it is not i mean it's so funny
it's an interesting like back to the
belief structure again like locus of
internal and external locus of control
you know what's facilitative versus
what's true
and you know i think accepting personal
responsibility for more than is on my
control
is is probably a positive but at the
same time recognizing
that much of much is not in my control i
was fortunate enough to be
born in the united states fortunate
enough to you know to not
knock on wood have a serious disease
that i'm not aware of right now
um i didn't do any of that i just showed
up
that was really fortunate and i i guess
that doesn't diminish
the fact that i try to make decent
choices
but it works in concert with it and i i
guess um
when i when you go is death what i want
right now no no i should think not and
again it's easy for me to be relatively
calm about as i'm not staring it in the
face
but what i would care a lot more about
is
is how you live that's what's in my
control and i can't control if as i walk
out of this building a helicopter falls
on me
worrying about that i can't control
maybe i maybe i have cancer now and i
don't know it
i really hope not but um there's
something about meditating on the fact
that
it could end today outside your control
that can uh clarify your thinking about
yeah the the fact that life is amazing
like just kind of
somebody yeah helping you enjoy this
moment even if life was horrible
let's say for instance it was it was you
live at one of those times or places and
this place
still exists in this world today that
life is brutal
and metal and whatever all and short and
painful
would you still want it and again as i'm
sitting here not
not on fire physically it's easy to say
yes but i would i'm confident i still
i'll plant my feet and say yes any of
life any life is amazing and beautiful
and
a gift an unbelievable gift that none of
us have earned
for the record i hate the word earned a
lot of times earn yeah you earn but it's
like
there's a lot a lot of good fortune in
earning and that's back to do i want
justice or do i want
grace and i guess we're all fortunate to
be where we are no matter where we are
and hopefully it should give us
some sense of perspective some sense of
compassion for other people but also
like like you said a sense of peace if
it all ended right now would i
be happy with what i with a life to this
point of course
would you like to live a little longer
yeah i would try to do more
and try to live rightly to the best that
i know how which over time will
hopefully continue to evolve in a
positive direction
but if the answer to that is no i
i guess uh that's that's always
that's a sign that that what i'm doing
is not what i'm meant to be doing and i
mean you're familiar with the tecumseh
before so there's a i've got one
actually if you could give me 10 seconds
i'll i'll read this one out this is
a personal favorite basically and i
think it sums up i mean again like it's
one of those quotes on the internet like
when abraham lincoln said don't believe
everything you read online
um but uh this is you know i it's
again uh attributed but it's like so
live your life that the fear of death
can never enter your
heart trouble knowing about their
religion respect others in their view
and demand that they respect yours
love your life perfect your life
beautify all things in your life
seek to make your life long and its
purpose in the service of your people
prepare a noble death song for the day
when you go over the great divide
always give a word or sign a salute when
meeting or passing a friend even a
stranger when when in a lonely place
show respect to all people and grovel to
none
when you arise in the morning give
thanks for the food and for the joy of
living
if you see no reason for giving thanks
the fault lies only in yourself
abuse no one and no thing for abuse
turns the wise ones to fools and robs
the spirit of its vision
when it comes your time to die be not
like those whose hearts are filled with
the fear of death
so that when their time comes they weep
and pray for a little more time to live
their lives over again in a different
way
sing your death song and die like a hero
going home
powerful words i don't think there's a
better way to end it let me just say
uh we've spoke maybe five six years ago
i don't even remember when but i'm not
exaggerating
saying like you had a huge impact on my
life because of the podcast
you're the reason i was doing the
podcast
as long as i have you're the reason i'm
doing this podcast
and it's a little it's a stupid little
meeting that you probably didn't know
who i was
i didn't really know who you are it was
just like a magical moment it's a flap
of a butterfly wing kind of situation
and uh yeah i'm forever grateful you're
one of the
most inspiring people in my life so ryan
it's a huge honor that you would
come here uh jen and talk with me and
waste
all this time i really appreciate it was
amazing thank you so much alex it's just
been a pleasure i really appreciate you
having us on thank you
thanks brother thanks for listening to
this conversation with ryan hall
and thank you to our sponsors power dot
babble and cash app
please check out these sponsors in the
description to get a discount and
to support this podcast if you enjoy
this thing
subscribe on youtube review it with five
stars on apple podcast
follow on spotify support on patreon or
connect with me on twitter at lex
friedman
and now let me leave you with some words
from frank herbert in dune
deep in the human unconscious is a
pervasive need for a logical universe
that makes sense
but the real universe is always one step
beyond logic
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time