Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with John Clark.
00:00:02 He’s a friend, a Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt,
00:00:05 former MMA fighter, and at least in my opinion,
00:00:08 one of the great UFC corner man coaches to listen to.
00:00:12 And also, he’s my current jiu jitsu coach
00:00:15 at Broadway Jiu Jitsu in South Boston.
00:00:17 He was once, for a time, a philosophy major in college,
00:00:22 and is now, I would say, a kind of practicing philosopher,
00:00:26 opinionated, brilliant,
00:00:28 and someone I always enjoy talking to even when,
00:00:31 especially when, we disagree, which we do often.
00:00:36 He’s definitely someone I can see talking to
00:00:38 many times on this podcast.
00:00:39 In fact, he hosts a new podcast of his own
00:00:43 called Please Allow Me.
00:00:46 Quick mention of each sponsor,
00:00:48 followed by some thoughts related to the episode.
00:00:50 Thank you to Theragun,
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00:01:15 As a side note, let me say that martial arts,
00:01:18 especially jiu jitsu and judo,
00:01:20 have been a big part of my growth as a human being.
00:01:22 So I think I will talk to a few martial artists
00:01:25 on occasion on this podcast.
00:01:27 I hope that is of interest to you.
00:01:29 I won’t talk to people who are simply great fighters
00:01:31 or great athletes, but people who have a philosophy
00:01:35 that I find to be interesting and worth exploring,
00:01:37 even if I disagree with parts or most of it.
00:01:41 I like alternating between historians
00:01:43 and computer scientists, fighters and biologists,
00:01:46 and between totally different worldviews and personalities,
00:01:50 like Elon Musk and Michael Malice.
00:01:53 This world, to me, is fascinating
00:01:56 because of the diversity of weirdness
00:01:58 that is human civilization.
00:02:00 I love the weird and the brilliant,
00:02:03 and hope you join me on the journey of exploring both.
00:02:06 If you don’t like an episode, skip it.
00:02:09 For an OCD person like myself,
00:02:11 sometimes not listening to a podcast episode
00:02:14 is an act of courage.
00:02:16 It’s like not finishing a book even though you’re 80% done.
00:02:19 Try it sometimes.
00:02:21 Listen to ones you like, and don’t listen
00:02:23 to the ones you don’t like.
00:02:25 I know, it’s profound advice.
00:02:27 If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
00:02:30 review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
00:02:32 follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,
00:02:35 or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
00:02:38 And now, here’s my conversation with John Clark.
00:02:43 You ready for this?
00:02:45 I’ve been ready for this my whole life.
00:02:46 All right, I was thinking of doing a Kerouac style road trip
00:02:50 across the United States,
00:02:52 after this whole COVID thing lifts.
00:02:54 You ever take a trip like that?
00:02:56 I’ve done a handful of long distance driving trips
00:03:01 up and down the East Coast, but also from the West Coast
00:03:04 back to the East Coast, and then returning to California.
00:03:08 So I’ve definitely done my fair share
00:03:10 of driving in this country.
00:03:12 Do you have the longing for the great American road trip?
00:03:16 I think there are so many things
00:03:18 that I’ve been lucky enough to see in the world
00:03:20 that I now, at this point in my life, realize
00:03:22 there are tons of things that I need to see here
00:03:25 in this country, and a road trip could potentially
00:03:27 be the best way to see them.
00:03:30 I think to do it effectively, you need an amount of time
00:03:34 where you can be as leisurely as possible.
00:03:36 There’s no deadline, and there’s no,
00:03:38 I’ve gotta make it from Chicago to St. Louis by sundown
00:03:41 to get to this place at this time.
00:03:43 I think you really need to be able to take your time
00:03:45 and kind of let the road take you where you need to go.
00:03:51 It feels like you need a mission though, ultimately.
00:03:54 There’s a reason you need to be in San Francisco.
00:03:56 That’s like the Kerouac thing.
00:03:57 You have to meet somebody somewhere kind of loosely
00:04:00 in a few weeks, and then it’s the,
00:04:03 as you struggle on towards that mission,
00:04:06 you meet weird characters that get in your way,
00:04:08 but ultimately sort of create an experience.
00:04:11 I think having a loose deadline is good,
00:04:13 but that’s a beginning and an end point,
00:04:16 and what I mean is I don’t wanna have to be,
00:04:18 all right, we’re leaving, say, Boston on Sunday night.
00:04:22 Let’s get to New York by Monday morning,
00:04:25 and then from New York, we’re gonna go to Philly,
00:04:27 and we’ve gotta be in Philly at four.
00:04:30 A vague beginning and end is fine,
00:04:32 but I think having very strict guidelines in between
00:04:36 will rob you of certain experiences along the way.
00:04:39 If you have a timeframe to get from Philly to Indianapolis
00:04:43 and some awesome shit starts to happen in Philly,
00:04:46 do you really wanna have to cut it short
00:04:47 because you gotta be in Indianapolis by sunup?
00:04:50 Why do you have to be anywhere by any time
00:04:52 for any reason, really?
00:04:54 Plans change.
00:04:55 Plans change all the time, exactly,
00:04:56 but if we’re talking about having a mission
00:05:00 or the type of road trip,
00:05:01 I just think it would be best to have it
00:05:04 as loose and flexible as possible.
00:05:07 I don’t know.
00:05:08 You gotta make hard deadlines and then break them.
00:05:12 Totally change the plans.
00:05:13 Disappoint people, break promises.
00:05:15 That’s the way of life.
00:05:17 Somebody’s waiting for you in St. Louis,
00:05:19 and all of a sudden, you fell in love
00:05:21 with a biker in New York.
00:05:23 I don’t know.
00:05:24 I don’t know what you’re up to.
00:05:25 I can appreciate that, but on a trip like that,
00:05:29 I feel like a trip with deadlines
00:05:33 is for a different point in your life,
00:05:34 and at this point in my life,
00:05:35 I don’t want any of the deadlines
00:05:37 because it’s not about meeting someone
00:05:39 and disappointing them in St. Louis.
00:05:41 It’s about me not disappointing myself.
00:05:45 You wanna have enough time in what you’re doing
00:05:48 to make sure that you get the full breadth
00:05:50 of every experience that you encounter.
00:05:52 How would you fully experience a place?
00:05:55 How would you?
00:05:56 I don’t think I’ve actually fully experienced Boston.
00:05:59 If you were showing up to a city for a week
00:06:02 on this road trip, what would you do?
00:06:04 So I’m gonna answer that in two parts.
00:06:06 A few years ago, I had an opportunity to move out of Boston,
00:06:09 and the thing that kept me here, no question about it,
00:06:12 was the fact that I felt like I had a contract
00:06:16 with my students, and I did not.
00:06:18 I felt like a great many of them took a leap of faith
00:06:22 by joining my gym and asking me to teach them what I know,
00:06:26 and when I had an opportunity to leave Boston,
00:06:29 I thought of those people,
00:06:30 and I thought, I wanna fulfill my obligation to them.
00:06:33 So because I made a decision to stay here,
00:06:35 I then that summer made a decision
00:06:37 to endear myself to the city of Boston,
00:06:39 and I tried to find lots and lots
00:06:40 of different things to do.
00:06:42 I can tell you that the coolest thing
00:06:43 that I found to do in this city is the MFA,
00:06:48 where they have on Friday nights,
00:06:50 they’ll have different exhibits and stuff,
00:06:52 and they’ll have little beer carts and food tents,
00:06:55 and you can go do a painting class off on the side.
00:06:59 Very cool night of things to do.
00:07:01 But in general, whenever I’m in a new city,
00:07:04 I try not to pay attention to Google,
00:07:06 and I try not to do anything that I find on a travel site.
00:07:10 The best thing to do is to walk out of your hotel
00:07:13 or wherever it is you’re staying
00:07:14 and find the most normal looking bar,
00:07:17 have a drink, and talk to a bartender.
00:07:19 So the people, the people.
00:07:21 The people, and then you can experience that town
00:07:23 the way that they experience it.
00:07:25 Even in a city where there are tons of tourist attractions,
00:07:28 locals probably visit the same tourist attractions
00:07:32 when they have visitors come from out of town,
00:07:34 you wanna see how they view those places
00:07:36 and how they visit them.
00:07:38 And you wanna go to eat where they’re going to eat.
00:07:40 Like, you’re gonna, for the most part,
00:07:44 the North End is not a place where I would take someone
00:07:47 and say, hey, this is Boston’s,
00:07:49 the pinnacle of Boston dining,
00:07:51 because it’s very touristy.
00:07:52 There are a handful of really good restaurants there,
00:07:54 but I wanna know where the,
00:07:56 I wanna go to Bogie’s Place.
00:07:57 I wanna know the down low spots where.
00:08:00 The hell’s Bogie’s Place?
00:08:01 It’s like a little steakhouse in the back of J.M. Curly’s.
00:08:04 Exactly.
00:08:04 It’s like a shitty bar?
00:08:06 J.M. Curly’s?
00:08:06 No, it’s just a bar with like bar food.
00:08:09 But I think that like.
00:08:11 In South Boston?
00:08:12 It is in Boston, yeah.
00:08:13 It’s not South Boston?
00:08:14 No, it’s in, it’s in the downtown area.
00:08:18 Like, I don’t know what the neighborhoods
00:08:21 are called here, honestly,
00:08:22 because they have an area called Downtown Boston,
00:08:25 and I don’t even know what the hell that means.
00:08:27 And they used to have the Financial District.
00:08:28 Where’s Southie?
00:08:29 Cause I’ve heard about the Southie.
00:08:31 Southie is South Boston.
00:08:33 But is there a difference between South Boston and Southie?
00:08:36 No, it’s the same thing.
00:08:37 No, but like, you know, the mythical Southie.
00:08:39 I think the mythical Southie
00:08:41 is something that’s long gone now.
00:08:44 And the term now actually is Sobo.
00:08:48 Oh no.
00:08:49 Yeah, it’s.
00:08:50 It’s changed, what, who took over what?
00:08:52 What’s the, you know, the good will hunting personality.
00:08:55 That’s Southie, isn’t it?
00:08:56 Strong accent, those bad ass dudes.
00:08:58 I came here right at the end of like,
00:09:00 what was South Boston.
00:09:02 So when I got, and my gym is in South Boston,
00:09:05 the neighborhood was just starting to change.
00:09:07 So I think,
00:09:12 as gentrification happened
00:09:14 and they started building more luxury condominiums,
00:09:16 they were buying all these old businesses out,
00:09:18 all the mom and pop businesses.
00:09:19 And I think that kind of changed
00:09:23 the makeup of the community.
00:09:25 And it wasn’t only because there was an influx
00:09:27 of new young people with disposable income,
00:09:31 it’s because there’s an exodus of the older people
00:09:34 who kind of grew up and raised their families there
00:09:35 because they were being offered
00:09:37 humongous sums of money for their homes
00:09:39 that they had bought like in the late 70s and early 80s
00:09:41 so that they could develop those areas.
00:09:43 So you have a combination of the influx of new people
00:09:46 and the exodus of the old,
00:09:47 and now you just got this totally new neighborhood
00:09:49 in its place.
00:09:52 What do you love about Boston?
00:09:53 Is there a love still for Boston?
00:09:58 You certainly have the love of the thing
00:10:00 that’s gone as well.
00:10:01 Yeah, I think, I don’t wanna pinpoint pin this on Boston
00:10:05 because it’s happening in all great cities.
00:10:08 As these areas become gentrified,
00:10:10 what’s happening is the personality
00:10:11 and the character of the neighborhood
00:10:12 is just being run out.
00:10:14 And I have nothing against people coming in
00:10:16 and making money and things like that.
00:10:18 But when you do it at the expense of the culture,
00:10:21 the character and the personality of the neighborhood,
00:10:24 I mean, you’re kind of standing on the shoulders of giants.
00:10:27 These are the people that came here
00:10:28 and built these areas up.
00:10:30 It happens here in Boston,
00:10:31 it happens in all over New York,
00:10:34 happens on the West Coast.
00:10:36 So what I love about Boston is not nearly as romantic
00:10:41 as what it might’ve been 15 years ago
00:10:42 and what I used to love about New York.
00:10:45 What I love about Boston is that it’s walkable.
00:10:51 The food scene is on the rise here.
00:10:55 But I think you’re hard pressed to find the charm
00:10:59 that people think of when they think of old Boston
00:11:03 and old New England city.
00:11:04 So yeah, I see it differently.
00:11:05 People sometimes criticize like MIT
00:11:08 like for the thing that it is now.
00:11:11 But I think it is always like that.
00:11:13 I tend to prefer to carry the flame of the greatness,
00:11:20 the greatest moments of its history
00:11:22 and like sort of enjoy the echoes of that
00:11:26 in the halls of MIT.
00:11:27 In the same way in Boston, you think about the history
00:11:29 and that history lives on in the few individuals.
00:11:33 Like you can’t just look around what Boston is now
00:11:36 and be like, what has Boston become?
00:11:38 I think it was always carried by a minority of individuals.
00:11:43 I think we kind of look back in history
00:11:46 and think like times were greater
00:11:48 in a certain kind of dimension back then.
00:11:50 But that’s because we remember,
00:11:53 this is a ridiculous non data driven assertion of mine,
00:11:57 is to remember just the brightest stars of that history.
00:12:02 And so we romanticize it.
00:12:04 But I think if you look around now,
00:12:05 those special people are still living in Boston
00:12:07 for which Boston will be remembered as a great city
00:12:10 in like 50 years.
00:12:11 I think you’re probably right, but isn’t there some sort
00:12:14 of theory about the point that there’s like a certain age
00:12:20 in your life where things resonate differently to you?
00:12:22 Like, I think they’ve done studies
00:12:23 where most people stop searching for new music
00:12:26 after age 19.
00:12:28 Most dads you see like wearing super old clothes,
00:12:30 like that’s the style of the time period
00:12:33 of the last great part of their life.
00:12:35 So like there’s an evolution in people
00:12:38 and it could also be the memories of where they live.
00:12:41 And when I was 17, of course my neighborhood
00:12:44 was the best then because I was having the most fun.
00:12:46 And we always kind of look at things through that tint,
00:12:49 I think, and you’re right.
00:12:51 And I don’t think there’s anything wrong
00:12:53 with the way cities are evolving now.
00:12:55 It’s just not, I prefer the time of like a mom and pop store,
00:13:01 not a fabricated like gastropub that could just be like
00:13:06 on a four lane super highway
00:13:08 on your way out of Epcot Center.
00:13:10 And it’s actually owned by like some conglomerate.
00:13:13 But there’s still the special places.
00:13:15 Like I, this takes us back to the road trip
00:13:17 is maybe I tend to romanticize the experiences
00:13:22 of like the diners in the middle of nowhere.
00:13:25 What would you say makes for like,
00:13:29 it feels like life is made up of these experiences
00:13:33 that maybe on paper seem mundane,
00:13:36 but are actually somehow give you a chance
00:13:39 to pause and reflect on life
00:13:42 with like a certain kind of people,
00:13:45 whether like really close friends or complete strangers,
00:13:47 maybe alcohol is involved in the middle of nowhere.
00:13:50 It seems like a road trip facilitates that
00:13:52 if you allow it to.
00:13:54 Like what do you think makes for those kinds of experience?
00:13:56 Have you had any?
00:13:57 I think in the context of a road trip,
00:14:00 I think it’s like hyper localization.
00:14:02 And I think it is those experiences along the way
00:14:10 with people and the people that you’re with
00:14:14 will color the experiences differently
00:14:15 depending on the person.
00:14:17 The road trip you took was with somebody else or alone?
00:14:20 So I’ve driven up and down the East Coast several times.
00:14:23 When I drove from LA to New York,
00:14:26 my friend was on the run from the cops.
00:14:29 Yeah.
00:14:30 So we were trying to get out of.
00:14:32 Traffic tickets?
00:14:33 Yeah, traffic tickets.
00:14:34 Yeah, allegedly.
00:14:35 We were trying to get out of LA
00:14:36 because he was going to have to go away for a little while.
00:14:40 So we drove from LA and we just,
00:14:43 we were young kids, we had no idea what we were doing,
00:14:45 and we drove East.
00:14:46 And then we had an unbelievable trip,
00:14:49 mostly because we didn’t really have a destination,
00:14:52 we didn’t really have a timeframe, thank goodness,
00:14:54 because he got arrested again in Pennsylvania.
00:14:57 So we got kind of stuck there.
00:14:59 And then we drove back to LA
00:15:02 when he got out in Pennsylvania.
00:15:05 But all the stops along the way
00:15:08 were kind of like weird things,
00:15:10 like you have no money, right?
00:15:11 So you’re finding that like a little diamond
00:15:14 in the rough place to eat,
00:15:15 the diner you talk about, like that place.
00:15:18 I once was in, where was I?
00:15:20 I think I was in Buenos Aires.
00:15:22 And the guy that I was with, he said,
00:15:23 I know this quaint little spot around the corner.
00:15:26 And I was young, I was like 25.
00:15:28 And I thought the coolest thing in the world would be
00:15:32 to be such a citizen of the world
00:15:33 that you know these quaint little spots around the corner
00:15:36 in like all these great cities.
00:15:38 Like I know where to get this great chicken sandwich
00:15:40 in Argentina.
00:15:41 I know where to get this great meal in Costa Rica.
00:15:44 I know where to get this super local egg in another country.
00:15:48 And I just thought that that was really cool,
00:15:50 the ability to do that anywhere in the world.
00:15:52 Did you get closer with that guy through the trip?
00:15:55 I found that like, so I took a trip across the United States
00:15:58 with a guy friend of mine.
00:16:01 We had different goals.
00:16:02 I was searching for meaning in life
00:16:04 and he was searching for,
00:16:06 what’s the politically correct way of phrasing it,
00:16:09 but just basically trying to sleep
00:16:12 with every kind of woman that this world has to offer.
00:16:15 What’s the difference between those two things?
00:16:17 Well, I guess he was searching
00:16:18 for the different kinds of meanings.
00:16:20 Yeah, I mean, I still think that you can’t find meaning
00:16:26 between a woman’s legs, I suppose.
00:16:28 Have you tried all of them?
00:16:31 But there was a tension there.
00:16:34 We grew closer with those experiences,
00:16:36 but we’ve gotten in fights.
00:16:39 There was a lot of like literal almost fights
00:16:42 and then we were close and there was like silences,
00:16:44 but then we were like brothers
00:16:46 and this whole weird journey of friendship that we went on.
00:16:49 I think anytime you spend that much time
00:16:52 in like a small space with another person,
00:16:55 you’re gonna have the different parts
00:16:57 of the relationship will manifest themselves.
00:16:59 You’ll have the periods of closeness.
00:17:00 You’ll have the periods of vulnerability
00:17:02 where it’s like maybe you’re driving through Denver
00:17:04 and it’s three in the morning
00:17:05 and you talk about something
00:17:06 you might not have otherwise talked about.
00:17:08 You’ll have the periods
00:17:09 where you don’t wanna see that motherfucker ever again.
00:17:12 He didn’t, and depending could be because of anything.
00:17:16 But the guy that I drove twice with,
00:17:19 we’re still in contact, we’re still buddies.
00:17:24 We have very different goals also,
00:17:27 but at that point in our lives,
00:17:28 we never even contemplated the meaning of life.
00:17:31 We were about probably more to the point
00:17:34 of the friend that you drove with.
00:17:35 We were more about racking up experiences,
00:17:38 whatever they were.
00:17:40 I wanna be able to retell this.
00:17:42 Stories.
00:17:43 Yeah, I wanna be able to retell this
00:17:45 and it’s gotta sound cool.
00:17:47 Like I don’t wanna retell a story about,
00:17:49 yeah and then we drove through Alabama
00:17:50 and they’ve got a lovely library
00:17:51 and I checked out this book
00:17:52 and I’m not interested in retelling that.
00:17:54 Do you remember any, this is a kid’s show,
00:17:58 do you remember any stories that the kids would enjoy
00:18:01 from those times that were profound in some kind of way?
00:18:05 There were some impactful moments
00:18:08 on the beginning of our road trip where we had no money
00:18:11 and as a couple of kids who knew nothing,
00:18:13 we literally had to, we stopped in Vegas
00:18:15 and we went to Circus Circus.
00:18:17 At the time they had $3 blackjack
00:18:19 and we had like 12 bucks
00:18:20 and my buddy was a kind of a degenerate gambler
00:18:22 so he knew what was up.
00:18:23 I was just like kind of stuffing chips in my pockets,
00:18:25 making sure we could pay for the gas.
00:18:28 And just being at a point which is like a starting line
00:18:31 and like we drove from LA to Vegas,
00:18:34 which is only about four hours
00:18:36 and being at the starting line and realizing like,
00:18:38 we may not even like get off the starting line here.
00:18:41 And if we don’t, what are we doing?
00:18:42 We’re gonna be two guys stuck in Vegas.
00:18:44 We have no money.
00:18:45 We can’t go West because you’re gonna get pinched.
00:18:47 We have no money to go East.
00:18:48 What the hell are we gonna do?
00:18:49 Are we gonna wind up in Vegas?
00:18:51 So, you know, that was kind of a profound thing
00:18:53 where you just, it’s a turning,
00:18:56 it potentially could have been a turning point in our lives
00:18:59 had we not made enough money to continue going East.
00:19:03 That’s the beautiful thing about road trips
00:19:05 when you’re broke is like,
00:19:08 in retrospect, everything turned out fine,
00:19:10 but you’re facing the complete darkness,
00:19:13 the uncertainty of the possibilities laid before you.
00:19:16 And like, I don’t know if you were confident at that time,
00:19:20 but like, I was really full of self doubt.
00:19:23 Like just, all I could see is all the trajectories
00:19:27 where you just screw up your life.
00:19:28 Like, what am I doing with my life?
00:19:29 I’m a failure, like all these dreams I’ve had,
00:19:32 I’ve never realized I’m a complete piece of shit.
00:19:34 All those kinds of things.
00:19:35 I had no concept of consequence.
00:19:38 I probably had toxoplasmosis.
00:19:42 I had literally no concept of consequence.
00:19:45 Immediate gratification was all I cared about.
00:19:47 Oh, so existentialist.
00:19:48 Yeah, it did not even enter my mind in my like early 20s
00:19:55 that anything that I was doing at that point
00:19:57 could reverberate for the rest of my life.
00:19:59 I think part of me didn’t even think I’d make it this far.
00:20:02 And so I was not interested in like the long play.
00:20:05 I remember thinking like,
00:20:06 why should I be acting now in a way
00:20:08 that might impact a point in my life I never reach?
00:20:12 And yet now you are a man who searches for meaning in life,
00:20:17 at least I would say to put another way,
00:20:20 you think deeply about this world
00:20:25 and in a philosophical context
00:20:27 while also appreciating the violence
00:20:30 of hurting other friends of yours, right?
00:20:35 On a regular basis.
00:20:36 So why do you think, I mean,
00:20:38 maybe there’s a broader question there,
00:20:40 but it calls a personal question.
00:20:42 It seems that people who fight for prolonged periods of time,
00:20:49 like Jiu Jitsu people and mixed martial arts people,
00:20:52 even military folks become over time philosophers.
00:20:57 What is that?
00:20:58 Is that, is there a parallel between fighting and violence
00:21:02 and the philosophical depth with which you now have arrived
00:21:05 from the starting point of being the full existentialist
00:21:07 of like just living in the moment
00:21:09 to like being introspective human now?
00:21:14 I would say to that being a soldier
00:21:18 or a warrior hundreds of years ago
00:21:22 is probably what started the marriage
00:21:24 between martial arts and philosophy.
00:21:28 If you’re constantly under someone else’s charge
00:21:31 and you’re told to go out and walk in a line
00:21:33 and overtake some Germanic tribe somewhere
00:21:36 and that happens all the time, your job is being a soldier.
00:21:43 On any given day, you might not come home.
00:21:46 So I think that you have to start your day
00:21:48 by thinking deeply about how you’ve lived to that point
00:21:52 and the people that are living in and around you
00:21:54 and how you’ve treated them.
00:21:55 And I think that probably is what started the marriage
00:21:58 of being kind of like a philosophical martial artist.
00:22:02 You’ve got to really like on a daily basis,
00:22:06 take stock of what’s going on around you and inside you
00:22:09 because we all suffer with this kind of idea.
00:22:13 If today’s my last day, did I do it right?
00:22:16 And we don’t really do it so much nowadays
00:22:18 because we’re so comfortable,
00:22:19 but if we were being marched out to war every day,
00:22:22 I think you’d see people live a little bit differently.
00:22:26 And you treat the people around you
00:22:28 a little bit differently.
00:22:29 Do you think there’s echoes of that
00:22:30 in just even the sport of like grappling and Jiu Jitsu
00:22:35 where you’re facing your own mortality?
00:22:37 We don’t really think of it that way, but.
00:22:39 To be honest, I think that a lot of people
00:22:41 that train in a martial art in contemporary society,
00:22:45 I don’t consider them all martial artists.
00:22:48 I think just because you train in martial art
00:22:50 does not mean you’re a martial artist.
00:22:51 There are so many people that use martial arts
00:22:53 as a form of exercise and like this little piece
00:22:57 of self concept.
00:23:00 They use martial arts as a tagline in their Instagram bio.
00:23:04 And it’s really a form of exercise.
00:23:06 It’s something they do, it’s not something they are.
00:23:09 And I think there’s a big difference there.
00:23:11 There’s a bunch of stuff mixed up in there
00:23:13 because the Instagram thing is something you do for,
00:23:17 it’s also, it could be something you are for display
00:23:20 versus who you are in the private moments
00:23:24 of searching and thinking and struggling
00:23:26 and all that kind of stuff.
00:23:27 Instagram is a surface layer
00:23:29 that much of modern society operates in,
00:23:34 which is really problematic because there’s that gap
00:23:37 between the person you show to the world
00:23:40 and the person you are in private life.
00:23:42 And if you make majority of your project
00:23:45 of the human project of your sort of few years
00:23:48 on this earth, the optimization
00:23:50 of the public Instagram profile,
00:23:53 then you never develop this private person.
00:23:56 But it does seem that if you do jiu jitsu long enough,
00:23:58 it’s very difficult not to fall into like,
00:24:00 this has become a personal journey,
00:24:04 an intellectual journey.
00:24:06 Because like, if you get your ass kicked thousands of times,
00:24:09 there’s a certain point to where that,
00:24:12 maybe it’s like a defense mechanism,
00:24:14 but that turns into some kind
00:24:15 of deeply profound introspective experience
00:24:18 versus like exercise.
00:24:20 It’s not yoga.
00:24:21 Yeah, so let me go back first
00:24:24 and address the Instagram point,
00:24:26 which I think there’s a difference
00:24:28 between people whose Instagram is intrinsically tied
00:24:32 to their profession and they have
00:24:34 to put a specific profile out there.
00:24:35 And I think in general,
00:24:38 people who truthfully their business is tied
00:24:42 to their Instagram profile, I wanna exclude them.
00:24:45 I think that most people,
00:24:47 Instagram is how they want to be seen.
00:24:50 And that’s not always congruent with who you are,
00:24:53 but I think there is a level of dishonesty there.
00:24:58 Like this is how I want people to see me.
00:25:00 I’m gonna put all this stuff in my Instagram bio,
00:25:02 but that’s really not me.
00:25:05 And when you do that,
00:25:08 I think it’s a little disingenuous and you’re right.
00:25:11 There’s not, you’re never really gonna marry
00:25:13 those two things together and it gets tough.
00:25:15 Let me, sorry to interrupt,
00:25:17 let me push back on something.
00:25:18 This is a good time to address the many flaws
00:25:23 of the great and powerful John Clark.
00:25:25 Okay, let’s go there.
00:25:29 Cause it’s interesting.
00:25:31 You strive so hard for excellence in your life
00:25:35 and for extreme competence that you are visibly
00:25:40 and physically off put by people
00:25:43 who have not achieved competence.
00:25:46 Do you think we should be nicer to the people who are,
00:25:51 like you mentioned, a person who first picks up an art,
00:25:56 picks up, becomes vegan, starts doing CrossFit,
00:26:00 start doing Jiu Jitsu for the first time
00:26:02 and create that as their,
00:26:04 they’re struggling through this like, who am I?
00:26:07 And they’re really overly proud and it’s kind of ridiculous.
00:26:11 And you and your wise chair have seen many battles.
00:26:15 Yeah, that you see the ridiculousness of that.
00:26:19 I tend to, I’m learning to give those folks,
00:26:25 not to mock them and to sort of give them a chance
00:26:28 to do their ridiculousness because I think I was that too.
00:26:32 Let me first clarify.
00:26:34 I wanna be clear about what you mean
00:26:36 when you say a level of competence.
00:26:38 Now I’ve never won a world championship.
00:26:41 I’ve never, you know, there are plenty of things in my life
00:26:45 where I’ve not achieved what most people would consider
00:26:50 to be the penultimate level of success.
00:26:54 Now.
00:26:54 That’s accomplishments.
00:26:56 It’s accomplishments, it’s ribbons, it’s things like that.
00:26:58 And it’s not that those things don’t mean anything to me.
00:27:00 And the fact that I haven’t in some arenas
00:27:03 is something that I wanna change,
00:27:06 which is, we can talk about that in a second.
00:27:09 But I think that there’s a difference
00:27:11 between the very eager noob of whatever it is they’re doing
00:27:17 who does the thing so that they can signal
00:27:22 they do the thing.
00:27:24 That’s a person I have less respect for.
00:27:26 So we know each other primarily through jujitsu.
00:27:29 Look at a jujitsu tournament.
00:27:32 There’s this idea that people espouse online.
00:27:37 I respect anyone with the guts to get on the mat
00:27:40 and put it on the line and sign up for a tournament.
00:27:43 That is the biggest load of shit I have ever heard.
00:27:47 This is great.
00:27:48 Do you know how easy it is for you
00:27:50 to put your name on something
00:27:52 and pay the registration fee and walk in there?
00:27:54 That’s not the hard part.
00:27:55 That’s the easiest part.
00:27:57 I don’t care if you lose your first match,
00:27:58 but I respect the person who signs up for the tournament,
00:28:02 registers for the tournament, goes on a diet,
00:28:05 loses weight the right way, trains their ass off,
00:28:07 and does the things properly and then goes on the mat.
00:28:10 The person who simply signs their name
00:28:12 on the registration form and jumps on the mat,
00:28:16 if they haven’t done these other things,
00:28:17 they actually have nothing to lose.
00:28:19 Because what they’ve done is they’ve stepped onto the mat,
00:28:21 in the ring, in the cage with a bucket full of excuses.
00:28:25 Sure you signed up, but you’re not really vulnerable
00:28:29 because you didn’t run, you didn’t do this,
00:28:31 you didn’t do all the things you’re supposed to do.
00:28:33 The person who eliminates every possible excuse
00:28:38 and then steps on the mat
00:28:40 and gets their ass kicked in the first round,
00:28:42 I have so much more respect for that person
00:28:44 than the person who does nothing
00:28:46 and maybe on natural ability wins a couple of matches
00:28:48 and then writes on Facebook
00:28:50 on how I lost to the eventual champion.
00:28:54 That’s worth zero, that’s worth zero.
00:28:56 And in that process, what did you learn about yourself?
00:28:58 You learned about yourself
00:29:00 that you’ve got a natural level of aptitude
00:29:02 for whatever this activity is that you’re doing,
00:29:05 but you didn’t actually learn how to maximize it
00:29:07 through training and through dedication
00:29:10 and through all these other things.
00:29:12 I’m an incredibly interested, novice musician.
00:29:17 I like to play bass, but I don’t put that on anything.
00:29:20 And I stink at it.
00:29:22 I would really love to be sick at it.
00:29:24 I’m currently not, but I’m not running around,
00:29:28 talking about entering, any of those other things.
00:29:31 I do it, it’s for myself
00:29:33 and I wanna reach a level of competence in that.
00:29:37 So the person that you have respect for
00:29:40 is a person who takes it fully seriously,
00:29:44 takes the effort fully seriously.
00:29:47 So for bass, that would be that you agree with yourself
00:29:50 that you’re going to perform live
00:29:51 and just in your own private moments, your private thoughts,
00:29:55 you’re not going to give yourself an excuse out,
00:29:57 like, I’m just gonna have fun.
00:29:59 This is a nice experience.
00:30:00 You’re going to think I’m going to try
00:30:02 to be the best possible bass player
00:30:05 given everything that’s going on in my life,
00:30:07 but I’m going to do my, like actually,
00:30:10 and put it all on the line.
00:30:11 And if I fail, that’s not because I didn’t try,
00:30:16 it’s because I’m a failure.
00:30:18 Exactly.
00:30:19 And then sit in that sick feeling of like, I’m a failure.
00:30:24 But isn’t that an important thing to know?
00:30:26 Absolutely.
00:30:27 But there’s a, that’s like the best thing it could be,
00:30:34 but sometimes it’s fun to lose yourself
00:30:36 in the bragging, in the lesser ways of life.
00:30:42 And I think I’m careful not to,
00:30:46 because too many people in my life,
00:30:49 when I brought them with like a little candle
00:30:51 of a fire of a dream, they would just go like,
00:30:56 they would just blow that fire out,
00:30:58 that they would dismiss me.
00:31:00 Cause they see like, I would say,
00:31:03 I’ve said a lot of ridiculous stuff,
00:31:05 but I’ve always dreamed about like putting,
00:31:10 I always dreamed of having this world full of robots.
00:31:15 And every time I would bring these ideas up,
00:31:20 they’ll be shut down by the different people,
00:31:21 by my parents, by, then you need to first get an education.
00:31:28 You need to succeed in these dimensions.
00:31:30 In order to do all these things,
00:31:32 you have to get good grades.
00:31:33 You have to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:31:34 Like there’s all this stuff that it’s indirect
00:31:38 or direct ways of blowing out that little ridiculous dream
00:31:41 that you present.
00:31:43 And it’s like, I remember sort of bringing up,
00:31:46 I don’t know, things like becoming a state champion
00:31:53 in wrestling, right?
00:31:56 It’s a weird dance because of course the coaches will tell,
00:32:00 they’ll kind of dismiss that.
00:32:02 It’s like, okay, okay.
00:32:04 But at the same time, it feels like in those early days,
00:32:07 you have to preserve that little fire.
00:32:10 Johnny Ive, I don’t know if you know who that is,
00:32:12 is a designer at Apple.
00:32:13 He was a chief designer.
00:32:14 He’s behind most of the iPhone, all that stuff.
00:32:17 And he always talked about that he wouldn’t bring his ideas
00:32:21 to Steve Jobs until they were matured
00:32:23 because he would always shit on them.
00:32:25 He wanted them to as little babies live for a little bit
00:32:30 before they get completely shut down.
00:32:31 And I always think about that when I see a beginner
00:32:33 sort of bragging on Instagram, you have to be careful.
00:32:37 Let them play with that little dream.
00:32:40 Are you playing with a little dream that you’re nurturing
00:32:43 and you’re trying to take that little flame
00:32:44 and you’re trying to create a roaring blaze with it?
00:32:48 Or are you playing with the idea of it
00:32:50 and behind that there’s no substance?
00:32:54 It’s hard to know the difference.
00:32:55 That’s what I struggle with.
00:32:56 I don’t think it necessarily is.
00:32:58 Certainly you’re wrong.
00:32:59 And when I say Instagram,
00:33:01 I don’t wanna impugn a bunch of strangers,
00:33:03 but I have a gym with a lot of members.
00:33:05 And I can tell you that the number of years
00:33:07 I’ve been in the gym,
00:33:08 when someone comes to me and says, this is my goal,
00:33:11 I don’t tell them yes or no in general, but I know.
00:33:15 I can tell by the way they say it to me,
00:33:17 I can thin slice it.
00:33:18 I’ve seen the look on people’s faces.
00:33:20 And when people start to say they wanna do X, Y, and Z,
00:33:24 I know right off the bat,
00:33:26 this person’s either gonna put an effort in
00:33:27 or they’re not going to put an effort in.
00:33:29 So to me, it’s about the effort behind that.
00:33:33 If you’re busting your ass and you’re a new at something
00:33:36 and you’re brand new, but you’re working really hard
00:33:38 and you have a series of like moderate successes in that,
00:33:42 like that’s the guy I wanna champion
00:33:44 because that persistence and that grit over time,
00:33:47 those successes will no longer be moderate.
00:33:49 They’ll be huge.
00:33:51 But the person who’s having moderate success
00:33:52 by doing nothing, chances are they’ll never learn
00:33:55 to put that work in and the successes will never grow.
00:33:58 You have an admiration for Mike Tyson.
00:34:01 I love him.
00:34:03 I’m just gonna let that sit for a brief moment.
00:34:06 So why?
00:34:09 I think there’s a combination of factors.
00:34:10 One is like the timeliness of his career
00:34:13 and like the age I was when he like came to prominence,
00:34:18 the raw, brutal violence
00:34:23 and the raw, brutal honesty when he speaks.
00:34:26 I think it’s easy for people to hear him or see his life
00:34:29 and cast him aside as some simianesque,
00:34:33 like just cretin scourge on society.
00:34:36 But when you hear him speak,
00:34:37 like this is not a guy who’s unintelligent.
00:34:40 This is a guy who knows himself better
00:34:42 than probably most of us know ourselves.
00:34:44 It’s disarming and that’s a humongous part
00:34:48 of my admiration for him.
00:34:52 Who is Mike Tyson?
00:34:54 Because it feels like there’s similarities
00:34:56 between him and you.
00:34:59 It feels like there’s a violent person in there,
00:35:02 but also a really kind person.
00:35:04 And they’re all like living together in a little house.
00:35:07 And you’re the same.
00:35:08 There’s a thoughtful person,
00:35:10 but there’s also a scary, violent person.
00:35:12 And they’re like having a picnic.
00:35:14 They’re having a picnic.
00:35:16 I think there are dialectical tensions in everyone,
00:35:18 these like opposing forces
00:35:21 that are constantly pulling at you
00:35:22 and at different points in your life,
00:35:24 like it’s sliding scale.
00:35:26 And I think that certainly when I was a younger person,
00:35:31 that there was a lot more manifestation of the violence
00:35:35 and a lot less of the kindness.
00:35:38 People who were not as close to me
00:35:40 probably saw more of the violent side
00:35:42 and only the very close people to me saw like
00:35:44 what would pass for the kind side.
00:35:46 And now that’s sliding in the other direction.
00:35:49 And I worry actually sometimes that
00:35:53 there could be a situation where I need
00:35:55 that old version of me
00:35:57 and he’s getting further and further away
00:35:59 and I can’t call him up if I need him.
00:36:01 And that concerns me to a certain degree.
00:36:07 The sad aging warrior seeing his greater self fade away.
00:36:12 But you still compete.
00:36:13 Does that person return?
00:36:15 It seems like for Mike Tyson,
00:36:16 that person returned at the prospect of competition.
00:36:20 It returns, but I’ve learned better
00:36:23 how to manifest it in competition
00:36:26 in terms of like the effects
00:36:27 that that type of emotion has on you physically
00:36:29 in the middle of a competition.
00:36:31 So I’ve better learned how to utilize that energy.
00:36:34 But I think another side effect of this
00:36:36 is like having a gym where you’re a bigger guy
00:36:39 and you’re the head instructor,
00:36:40 you can’t be as mean and violent as you once were
00:36:43 because you’re also not trying to run a business.
00:36:46 And you spend so many years trying not to be mean
00:36:51 and to soften your technique a little bit
00:36:54 that that all of a sudden just becomes who you are.
00:36:56 And I don’t necessarily like that.
00:36:58 So I’ve been trying to reclaim that a little bit
00:37:00 on the mat, but I think in competition,
00:37:08 there has to be an athlete really wants to score the points.
00:37:15 A fighter really wants to incapacitate you
00:37:18 and put you in a position where they can
00:37:20 do their own bidding.
00:37:21 And the result in a jujitsu match
00:37:23 might just still be two points,
00:37:25 but the motivations are very, very different.
00:37:28 What do you make of Tyson on Joe Rogan
00:37:30 saying that he was aroused by violence?
00:37:32 Do you think that’s insane?
00:37:34 Do you think that’s deeply honest for him?
00:37:36 And do you think that rings true for many of us,
00:37:40 others who practices in different degrees?
00:37:43 I can’t speak for a lot of people.
00:37:45 And I think that it was a brutally honest statement by him.
00:37:48 And I think it’s something that even if a lot of people
00:37:51 feel it, they’re not that comfortable
00:37:53 admitting it or saying it.
00:37:55 But I think there’s great joy
00:38:01 in landing a flush right hand on someone’s jaw
00:38:05 and then watching them crumble.
00:38:07 You don’t even feel it.
00:38:08 You ever played baseball as a kid?
00:38:10 You can hit a base hit off the end of the bat
00:38:11 and it will sting your hands
00:38:13 because of the way that you hit it.
00:38:15 You can hit a home run and you won’t feel anything.
00:38:18 It just feels so good in your hands.
00:38:19 And that’s, I think, one of the joys of physical contact.
00:38:25 When you do it the right way,
00:38:27 and that goes for all physical contact.
00:38:29 When you do it the right way,
00:38:30 the physical pleasure you can derive from it
00:38:33 and the mental pleasure, it’s unparalleled.
00:38:38 See, but that’s different.
00:38:39 Let me draw a distinction.
00:38:40 I’m not,
00:38:44 I’ve had the fortune of being a wrestler.
00:38:47 And I would draw a distinction
00:38:50 between a very well executed in competition,
00:38:54 double leg, single leg take down or a pin.
00:38:57 There’s some, as an OCD person,
00:38:59 there’s something so comforting
00:39:01 about a well executed pin
00:39:03 because it’s like two seconds
00:39:05 and it’s just like everything is flush and nice.
00:39:07 And like, it’s all clean.
00:39:09 I mean, okay, this OCD person who likes to align show,
00:39:13 it’s just beautiful.
00:39:14 Okay, that’s good technique.
00:39:16 And wrestling also provides you,
00:39:20 maybe more than other sports,
00:39:22 the feeling of dominating another human.
00:39:25 Yes.
00:39:26 Of breaking, no, not just of them being very cocky
00:39:30 and very powerful,
00:39:32 you feel this power of another human being
00:39:34 and then you breaking them.
00:39:37 And like, I’m not as honest as Mike Tyson.
00:39:42 But that, I don’t think I’ve ever sort of looked in the mirror
00:39:48 and said like, that that was, I enjoyed that aspect of it.
00:39:53 But it certainly seems like you chase that.
00:39:56 So when I was a wrestler in high school,
00:40:00 I lost so many matches because of over aggressiveness.
00:40:05 Like, I would pick the top position and let you stand
00:40:08 just so that I could do a mat return.
00:40:10 And I wasn’t trying to return you to the mat.
00:40:12 I was actually trying to like drive you through the mat
00:40:15 and through the ground.
00:40:16 Like I took, like, it gave me joy to do that.
00:40:20 Like, it wasn’t like I was trying to, you know,
00:40:23 just return you to the mat so that I could pin you.
00:40:25 That what you just talked about,
00:40:26 like the dominating another person,
00:40:28 I used to look at that as you’ve got someone
00:40:30 who in theory is equally trained
00:40:32 and equally skilled as you are.
00:40:34 And you’re absolutely out there totally dominating them.
00:40:38 There’s joy in that.
00:40:39 You could get in an MMA fight
00:40:41 and you could take someone down and you could mount them.
00:40:44 And all that feels great.
00:40:47 But when you start raining down the punches
00:40:49 on their face from mount and like dropping elbows and stuff,
00:40:52 like there’s another level of satisfaction there.
00:40:55 And it’s tough to describe.
00:40:57 And I don’t think that everyone is made for it.
00:41:01 When I was, I think when I was a senior in high school,
00:41:03 my wrestling coach said, look,
00:41:05 you’ve got to stop with all this crazy aggressive wrestling.
00:41:09 Like they tried to turn me into a technician
00:41:12 and it did work to a degree.
00:41:15 And it was a humongous shift for me in terms of success,
00:41:18 but it wasn’t the same level of enjoyment out of it.
00:41:23 Like, I mean, I got disqualified from New England
00:41:25 because my coach said cross face and I cross face
00:41:28 and he said harder.
00:41:29 And I basically wound up and blasted a kid in the face
00:41:31 and his nose got busted everywhere.
00:41:33 But I didn’t think not to do it because that felt good.
00:41:37 It felt good to cross face him like that.
00:41:39 I was a lot of like.
00:41:42 That’s a weird American warrior ethos that I’ve picked up,
00:41:46 but I also have in me the Russian, the Setyaev brothers
00:41:49 that don’t see it, don’t see it as that.
00:41:53 They don’t get draw,
00:41:56 they think that there is a tension between the art
00:42:00 of the martial art and the violence of the martial art.
00:42:04 I agree with that.
00:42:05 It’s a poetic way I could put it,
00:42:06 but they’re not so fascinated with this Dan Gable
00:42:10 dominating another human.
00:42:12 They think of the effortlessness of the technique
00:42:18 and your mastery of the art is exhibited
00:42:20 in its effortlessness,
00:42:22 how much you lose yourself in the moment and the timing,
00:42:25 that just the beauty of a timing.
00:42:27 Like there’s much more, like one example in judo,
00:42:30 but also in wrestling, you can look at the foot sweep.
00:42:33 Wrestlers in America and even judo players in America
00:42:38 and much of the world don’t admire the beauty
00:42:40 of the foot sweep, but a well timed foot sweep,
00:42:43 which is a way to sort of off balance
00:42:45 to find the right timing to just effortlessly
00:42:50 change the table, turn the tables of,
00:42:53 I mean, dominate your opponent is seen as the highest form
00:42:58 of mastery in Russian wrestling.
00:43:00 In the case of judo, it’s in Japanese judo.
00:43:04 It’s interesting.
00:43:05 I’m not sure.
00:43:06 I’m not sure what that tension is about.
00:43:08 I think it actually takes me back to,
00:43:11 I don’t know if you listened to Dan Carlin,
00:43:13 Hardcore History and Genghis Khan, if you’ve ever.
00:43:17 I’ve read a great, great book.
00:43:19 On Genghis Khan?
00:43:20 Yeah.
00:43:21 I’m still trying to adjust.
00:43:23 Most of my life said Genghis Khan,
00:43:25 but the right pronunciation is actually Genghis Khan.
00:43:31 There’s a tension there.
00:43:32 We kind of think, I don’t know we,
00:43:35 I kind of thought as Genghis Khan is a ultra violent,
00:43:41 a leader of ultra violent men, but another view,
00:43:45 another way to see them is the people who warriors
00:43:50 that valued extreme competence and mastery of the art
00:43:58 of fighting with weapons, with bows,
00:44:00 with the horse riding, all that kind of stuff.
00:44:03 And I’m not sure exactly where to place them
00:44:07 on my sort of thinking about violence in our human history.
00:44:12 I think in the context of like combat sports,
00:44:16 I think there’s a difference between an athlete
00:44:19 winning a contest under a certain set of rules
00:44:22 and a fighter winning a fight under those exact same rules.
00:44:26 There’s a different approach to it.
00:44:28 And I don’t think one is any better than the other.
00:44:32 Like in MMA, I think a great example would be
00:44:35 George St. Pierre.
00:44:37 George St. Pierre is a tremendous athlete
00:44:40 and he considers himself to be a martial artist first.
00:44:43 He’s trying to win an athletic competition.
00:44:45 Like Nick Diaz is trying to bust your ass, right?
00:44:49 There’s a different approach to it.
00:44:51 And yes, they’ve had different results
00:44:53 at the highest level of competition,
00:44:55 but it’s difficult to attribute the difference in results
00:44:59 just to their approach to the sport
00:45:00 because they’re different human beings
00:45:01 with different abilities and different physical attributes.
00:45:06 The PsyTF brothers have that luxury of being able
00:45:09 to talk about the beauty of a perfectly timed slide by.
00:45:14 There are other wrestlers that will never be able
00:45:16 to pull that off and therefore they have to pursue
00:45:18 other ways to defeat someone.
00:45:20 And maybe it is the Dan Gable breaking a man’s spirit
00:45:24 by outworking him type thing,
00:45:25 which is beautiful in its own way.
00:45:28 But we tend to self select the ways in which
00:45:33 we’re able to be successful
00:45:35 and then kind of take a deep dive into that.
00:45:37 What do you think is more beautiful?
00:45:39 Brute force or effortless execution
00:45:46 of a technique that dominates another human?
00:45:49 I think it’s a subjective thing
00:45:52 based on what skills you perceive yourself to have.
00:45:55 I’m never, I’ve never been a slick, super athletic,
00:45:59 dexterous competitor in anything.
00:46:02 And I’ve always been more of an,
00:46:04 I’ve gotta outwork you, I’ve gotta out grind you,
00:46:06 I gotta out mean you.
00:46:07 And so because I’ve lived that,
00:46:09 I tend to see the beauty in that more
00:46:11 because I have a perceptual awareness
00:46:13 that I don’t have for the people who have the luxury
00:46:16 of being very slick and athletic
00:46:18 and using beautiful technique.
00:46:20 Now that said, there’s a phenomenal little video
00:46:23 the other day I sent to a friend of a compilation
00:46:29 of foot sweeps by Leota Machida in MMA.
00:46:32 And they’re so beautiful and they’re so awesome.
00:46:34 And it’s not that I don’t have an appreciation for those,
00:46:38 but I can’t emulate those because I lack
00:46:39 the physical ability to do that.
00:46:42 Whereas I at least have a chance to emulate
00:46:46 some of the people who do it through grit
00:46:48 and through outworking people.
00:46:51 But I would love to return to Genghis Khan
00:46:54 and get your thoughts about,
00:46:56 like I have so many mixed feelings
00:46:59 about whether he is evil or not,
00:47:04 whether the violence that he brought to the world
00:47:09 had ultimately, the fact that it had maybe
00:47:14 kind of like Dan Carlin describes,
00:47:16 cleanse the landscape.
00:47:19 It’s like a reset for the world through violence
00:47:22 had ultimately a progressive effect on human civilization,
00:47:29 even though in the short term it led to massive,
00:47:33 you could say suffering.
00:47:36 I don’t know what to make of that, man.
00:47:38 What are your thoughts on Genghis Khan?
00:47:40 I think it’s always difficult to look at a historical figure
00:47:44 and their actions of their time through a modern day lens
00:47:48 because it’s easy for us to kind of impugn
00:47:54 their achievements and the things that they did
00:47:56 and say, oh, well, what he did was wrong.
00:48:00 Well, of course that can be true,
00:48:02 but a lot of times we don’t actually have
00:48:04 any real good context or concept
00:48:06 of the times they were living in
00:48:09 and what really was deemed wrong and what really wasn’t.
00:48:11 We’re looking at it through a very cushy modern lens.
00:48:14 That being said, from what I’ve read about Genghis Khan,
00:48:18 yeah, he was a violent dude,
00:48:19 but also he gave you an option.
00:48:22 When he got to a village, he said,
00:48:24 look, you have a choice,
00:48:29 you can come with us or you can run.
00:48:31 And he gave them an option to join his legion of fighters
00:48:36 who he took very good care of.
00:48:38 He was the first military leader
00:48:41 to pay his soldiers families when they died.
00:48:45 And he did that based on the booty that they got
00:48:48 when they raided a village.
00:48:50 He took that money, he took his share
00:48:52 and they divided that up amongst the soldiers
00:48:54 and then the soldiers families.
00:48:55 I think he also is credited with first horseback mail routes
00:49:02 or something like that, right?
00:49:03 Isn’t he the godfather of the modern postal system?
00:49:06 There’s something like that.
00:49:08 Yeah, he’s the Bernie Sanders of the Mongol Empire.
00:49:14 I do think the offering of surrender is an interesting one
00:49:18 because it’s interesting as a thought experiment,
00:49:23 whether you would sacrifice your way of,
00:49:26 like the pride of nations or the nationalism,
00:49:28 pride of your country,
00:49:30 whether you’re willing to give that up to survive.
00:49:38 It depends on who depends on you.
00:49:40 If you have a family and young kids and stuff like that,
00:49:44 I think your obligation is primarily to them
00:49:47 and therefore surrender has to be something
00:49:49 that you consider in that moment in time
00:49:52 so that you can take care of those people.
00:49:55 If you’re a man alone and you’ve got all these principles
00:49:57 and all this other stuff and you’re not down
00:50:00 with what Genghis Khan is doing and what he’s selling,
00:50:02 yeah, try and escape, do your thing
00:50:04 and just know what waits on the other side of that
00:50:06 for you potentially.
00:50:08 But I think if there’s someone else out there
00:50:09 that depends on you, your obligation should be to them.
00:50:13 It feels like historically people valued principles
00:50:17 more than life in this weight of like,
00:50:22 what do I value more?
00:50:23 The principles I hold versus survival.
00:50:26 It seems that now we don’t value principles as much.
00:50:30 Principles could be also religion,
00:50:31 it could be your values, whatever.
00:50:33 We’re okay sort of sacrificing those
00:50:36 for to preserve our survival.
00:50:38 And that applies in all forms like actual survival
00:50:42 or like on social media, like preserving your reputation,
00:50:46 all those kinds of things.
00:50:48 It seems like we, especially in America,
00:50:52 value individual life,
00:50:57 that death is somehow a really bad thing.
00:51:00 As opposed to saying sacrificing your principles
00:51:04 is a very bad thing and everybody dies
00:51:06 and it’s okay to die.
00:51:08 What’s horrible is to sacrifice your principles
00:51:12 of who you are just to live another day.
00:51:15 I think a big problem is people don’t really even know
00:51:17 what their principles are anymore.
00:51:19 People, social media and just the way that we live nowadays
00:51:26 where we’re separated from the human contact like this,
00:51:29 like you’re not contacting people in a community anymore.
00:51:33 You’re not, whether you’re religious or not,
00:51:35 like you’re not congregating at a church,
00:51:37 you’re not part of a parish
00:51:39 like you would be like in down South,
00:51:41 you’re not part of that community anymore.
00:51:44 And so it’s difficult to figure out
00:51:48 what your principles and values are
00:51:50 because you’re constantly jumping from one bucket
00:51:52 to the next online.
00:51:55 And you don’t get a lot of like direct,
00:51:58 like reasonable feedback from people.
00:52:01 You just get dipshit feedback.
00:52:02 Like, oh, you don’t believe this?
00:52:03 Well, you’re a jerk.
00:52:04 I think the hard thing currently
00:52:07 is having the integrity and character
00:52:09 to stick by principles one under.
00:52:11 I don’t want to equate murder in the Genghis Khan times
00:52:15 to social media cancel culture,
00:52:19 but it certainly doesn’t feel good
00:52:20 when people are attacking on social media.
00:52:22 And it does take a lot of integrity to,
00:52:26 without anger, without emotion,
00:52:28 without mocking others or attacking others unfairly,
00:52:34 standing by the ideas you hold,
00:52:38 or in another way, standing by your friends,
00:52:45 standing by this little group,
00:52:47 like loyalty of the people that you know are good people.
00:52:51 I find that in cancel culture,
00:52:54 one of the sad things is whenever somebody gets
00:52:57 quote unquote canceled,
00:52:59 everybody just gets all their friends become really quiet
00:53:02 and don’t defend them or worse.
00:53:06 I mean, quiet is at least understandable.
00:53:08 They kind of signal that they throw them out of the bus,
00:53:12 I guess is one way to put it.
00:53:14 And that’s something I think about a lot
00:53:18 because from coming from me, it’s like,
00:53:22 I hold an ethic.
00:53:23 I don’t know if others hold this ethic.
00:53:25 Maybe it’s this like Russian mobster ethic of like,
00:53:30 you should help your friends bury the body.
00:53:34 You shouldn’t criticize your friends for committing
00:53:36 the murder.
00:53:37 Like there are certain levels of like,
00:53:40 yeah, you have that discussion after you buried the body
00:53:43 that like maybe you shouldn’t have done that murder thing.
00:53:47 I don’t know, I understand that that’s a problematic,
00:53:51 what’s the terminology?
00:53:54 That’s a problematic ethical framework
00:53:57 within which to operate.
00:53:58 But at the same time, it feels like what else do we have
00:54:00 in this world except the brotherhood, the sisterhood,
00:54:04 the love we have for a very small community.
00:54:06 But perhaps that’s the wrong way of thinking.
00:54:08 Perhaps the 21st century would be defined
00:54:11 by the dissipation of this community,
00:54:13 of this loyalty concept.
00:54:14 No, we’re all just individuals.
00:54:16 I think you’re right.
00:54:17 And I think you have to have some sort of core framework
00:54:20 of principles and beliefs that you operate on.
00:54:22 And I think what I was referencing is a little bit different.
00:54:26 But to speak to your point,
00:54:28 you need a framework of core principles
00:54:34 on which you can then base a lot of your other decisions.
00:54:38 Like I believe these three things to be true,
00:54:40 whatever they are,
00:54:41 and that will help inform other decisions
00:54:43 you make in your life.
00:54:45 As far as how you treat your friends,
00:54:48 I’ve got probably three friends that,
00:54:52 if they called me right now and said,
00:54:53 let’s bury the body, sorry, Lex, I gotta go.
00:54:56 There are other people in my life that if they said,
00:55:00 hey, we’ve got to go bury the body,
00:55:02 I would say, who is this?
00:55:06 So I think it depends on the relationship.
00:55:09 I wonder if that’s a good, that’s a really good measure.
00:55:12 I would love to have,
00:55:14 I would love that to be in your profile.
00:55:15 People put like pronouns.
00:55:17 I would love to put like, honestly, like objectively,
00:55:22 not self report, but objective,
00:55:24 how many people in your life, if they committed murder,
00:55:28 you would not ask any questions
00:55:29 and you would help them hide the body.
00:55:31 Like, I would love to know that number for people.
00:55:33 Yeah, and I think it’s a weird thing too,
00:55:35 because you think right away, like, okay,
00:55:37 it must be the group of people that are the closest to you.
00:55:39 That’s who you’re first thinking of, right?
00:55:41 But obviously for like my best friend,
00:55:44 I would do it, no question about it.
00:55:45 But I’ve got other people that are close to me
00:55:47 that are close to me in other ways.
00:55:50 And I probably wouldn’t do that only
00:55:52 because I don’t think they’d do it for me.
00:55:54 Yeah.
00:55:55 And that is a consideration.
00:55:57 So I guess, is the principle there
00:55:59 then that you do for your friends
00:56:02 what you think they would do for you?
00:56:03 Is that the underlying principle?
00:56:05 Or do you just have a blind loyalty
00:56:06 to people in your life for different reasons?
00:56:10 I got people that are not on my inner circle
00:56:12 that I probably wouldn’t help change a tire
00:56:15 at two in the morning if they’re on the highway.
00:56:17 But if they called me and said,
00:56:18 hey, we gotta bury the body, I might show up for that.
00:56:20 It’s just these weird different connections you have.
00:56:22 Yeah, it’s fascinating.
00:56:23 Yeah, I have close friends that like,
00:56:25 I’d probably be, exactly, the tire is a good example.
00:56:28 I’d be like, can’t you find somebody else to do this?
00:56:31 I think part of that is just this leap of faith
00:56:35 into like giving yourself to the other person
00:56:39 that creates a deep connection
00:56:43 that makes life fulfilling, like meaningful
00:56:49 that doesn’t exist if you don’t take that leap.
00:56:51 I mean, it’s not about the murder.
00:56:52 We’re sort of focusing.
00:56:53 I think that’s a, I think you have to,
00:56:57 what is it, cross that bridge when you get there.
00:56:59 I’m not exactly sure.
00:57:00 This is just a thought experiment.
00:57:01 But it’s, I think about that a lot,
00:57:05 especially these COVID times.
00:57:06 And as like people become more and more isolated
00:57:09 and separated from each other,
00:57:11 like how important is it to have those deep connections
00:57:14 to other humans?
00:57:16 I think especially like what you’re talking about there.
00:57:18 Have you ever seen the movie, The Town?
00:57:20 There’s a great line in the movie
00:57:21 where one of the main characters
00:57:23 walks into his friend’s house and he says,
00:57:26 I need your help.
00:57:28 We’re gonna go hurt some people
00:57:29 and you can never ask me about it again.
00:57:31 And the friend looks up and he says,
00:57:33 whose car are we taking?
00:57:35 Like that is the type of person you need in your life.
00:57:38 And the people, like there are people
00:57:40 that will walk through that door and say that to you
00:57:41 and you drop everything you’re doing.
00:57:43 And then there’s the people that walk through your door
00:57:44 and you’re like, you know what?
00:57:45 I got a hot pocket in the microwave.
00:57:49 I’m a little bit tied up right now,
00:57:50 but I’d love to help you out.
00:57:52 But you know, I don’t wanna do that.
00:57:54 And you don’t have that deep connection with those people.
00:57:57 You mentioned some principles
00:57:58 that you’ve changed your mind on.
00:58:02 Is there, do you wanna go there?
00:58:04 Is there some interesting principles
00:58:07 and the process of changing that is useful to talk about?
00:58:11 I can’t really cite a specific thing,
00:58:14 except that understanding that the principles
00:58:18 that you have at different points in your life
00:58:20 can change and it’s okay to change them
00:58:22 without being a total pussy
00:58:23 and being bullied by other people
00:58:25 into thinking what you thought was wrong.
00:58:27 If you come to these conclusions of your own volition
00:58:30 and you decide to change them, that’s great.
00:58:32 And it can be really, it can be really liberating.
00:58:36 It’s really liberating to have an idea
00:58:38 that you hold so true to your core belief system
00:58:45 and then to actually have someone change your mind for you
00:58:47 and be okay with it, as opposed to being like, no,
00:58:50 I gotta die with this.
00:58:52 I gotta die with this.
00:58:53 It’s really liberating.
00:58:54 There are definitely are ideas you wanna die on that hill
00:58:56 and no one’s ever gonna change your mind.
00:58:58 But it’s really liberating to be confident enough
00:59:02 to say, change my mind.
00:59:03 I’m lucky enough to have some smart motherfuckers around me
00:59:06 who can tell me, listen, you’re being a total dipshit.
00:59:10 Like let’s rethink this.
00:59:12 Or like I have one friend who does the five whys all the time
00:59:15 and he loves backing me into a corner.
00:59:17 And.
00:59:18 What’s the five whys?
00:59:19 You just, like when someone makes a statement
00:59:20 about something, to really get to the core issue,
00:59:24 they say, if you ask why five times, make a statement,
00:59:27 well, why is that?
00:59:29 And you answer that, well, why?
00:59:30 And you phrase the whys differently, obviously,
00:59:32 but then you get to the core.
00:59:33 They say five times, you can get to the core of the issue.
00:59:36 And that’s a challenging thing.
00:59:38 But I find later in life, it’s so liberating for me
00:59:41 to be confident enough to be like,
00:59:43 man, was I fucking way off the mark on this
00:59:46 and have my mind changed.
00:59:48 And be able to say that to others that I was wrong.
00:59:50 Totally.
00:59:51 That ability, and I never used to have that.
00:59:54 And it feels real good.
00:59:58 And there’s a hunger for that too.
01:00:00 Yeah, you’re so right, actually, on a personal level,
01:00:03 it feels very good.
01:00:05 Exactly as you said, it’s liberating
01:00:07 because you’re free to then think as opposed to.
01:00:10 Defend.
01:00:11 Yeah, without thinking.
01:00:14 Yeah, you get so sick of defending the same thing
01:00:16 over and over and over.
01:00:18 And you start to think about it and it’s like,
01:00:20 well, I would really like to evolve my thought process here.
01:00:25 And when you’re constantly defending one point,
01:00:29 it’s difficult to let other ideas in.
01:00:31 You discount the possibility
01:00:34 that you can have your mind changed
01:00:35 when you’re constantly on the defense.
01:00:37 You have to have a crack in the front line
01:00:39 in order to let a new idea come in and possibly flourish.
01:00:43 And maybe the new idea doesn’t even prove your current
01:00:46 belief system to be wrong,
01:00:48 but maybe it’s like the water to a seed and it grows
01:00:51 and now it’s something even bigger and better.
01:00:54 And you can start to work with that instead.
01:00:57 And it’s a tough thing because I’m a stubborn fuck
01:00:59 and it’s very difficult for me, it was historically,
01:01:03 to say I was wrong about this one,
01:01:05 or I messed this one up,
01:01:06 or I wish I could have that one back.
01:01:09 There’s a public figure for me thing too,
01:01:11 which there’s a difference between changing your mind
01:01:16 with a small circle of friends
01:01:17 and changing your mind publicly about something,
01:01:20 but it has equal, one echoes the other.
01:01:23 It is equally liberating,
01:01:25 but people will not make that change easy,
01:01:31 but it doesn’t matter.
01:01:32 That’s the point.
01:01:35 I think it’s ultimately liberating as a human being,
01:01:38 public figure or not to just think deeply about this world
01:01:43 and to keep changing, which is like,
01:01:47 I think there’s a deep hunger for that
01:01:49 in like political discourse,
01:01:51 that people are so tribal currently about politics
01:01:55 that they want to see somebody who says,
01:01:58 you know what, I changed my mind on this.
01:02:00 And then keep changing their mind and keep asking questions,
01:02:03 keep showing that they’re open minded,
01:02:05 all that kind of stuff.
01:02:06 But when you want someone in a position of political power
01:02:10 to change their mind because they realize
01:02:12 that there might be a better way,
01:02:13 not because they realize that by changing their mind,
01:02:15 they’re gonna get a new demographic to vote for them.
01:02:18 Like that’s transparent as shit.
01:02:19 Nobody wants to see that.
01:02:21 Like that’s a person who can’t separate their position
01:02:26 from their people they’re supposed to be helping.
01:02:27 Yeah, and you can usually smell that.
01:02:29 That’s, we’re just talking offline about,
01:02:34 there’s something about Hillary Clinton
01:02:36 where she talked about changing her mind on gay marriage
01:02:40 that it felt like this is a political calculation
01:02:44 versus like really deeply thinking about like,
01:02:47 what things do we do in this world
01:02:53 that violate basic human rights?
01:02:55 Like really thinking about deeply.
01:02:56 And of course politicians are calculating this,
01:03:00 but you can see it.
01:03:01 This is the thing.
01:03:02 That’s why I like on the human level,
01:03:06 there’s like political policies, but there’s also humans.
01:03:08 And I’ve always liked Bernie Sanders, for example.
01:03:11 I don’t know, not the later perhaps Bernie Sanders,
01:03:13 but I used to listen to him back in the day.
01:03:15 And it felt that people might disagree with me,
01:03:18 but it felt like there was a real human struggling
01:03:22 with ideas, whatever, agree with him or not,
01:03:25 it felt like he wasn’t doing political calculation.
01:03:27 He was just a human.
01:03:28 He couldn’t be further away from my political ideals,
01:03:32 but also like, there’s an obvious authenticity
01:03:36 to his passion for what he’s saying
01:03:38 that is not present in other candidates.
01:03:40 And you could see it,
01:03:42 all these people that have been in politics forever,
01:03:44 like from all the way back
01:03:45 when Hillary was a lawyer in the 70s.
01:03:47 There’s a couple of shots of her in a courtroom
01:03:49 in the 70s though, she’s looking all right.
01:03:52 She’s got those big glasses on.
01:03:53 She’s kind of a little bit of a nerdy babe back in the day.
01:03:57 Oh, you mean like.
01:03:58 Yeah.
01:03:59 Well, John Clark says Hillary Clinton was a babe
01:04:03 back in the day.
01:04:04 73 Clinton, yeah.
01:04:05 That’s an interesting question
01:04:10 about authenticity in politicians.
01:04:12 Do you think like Hillary Clinton,
01:04:15 just the Clintons in general are a good example
01:04:17 that why do you think they become over time so inauthentic?
01:04:21 Is it the system that changes them?
01:04:23 Is it their own hunger for power?
01:04:25 Is it, what is it, or are they always inauthentic?
01:04:29 Well, first I’d like to say that,
01:04:31 I don’t know if you know this,
01:04:32 but I come from a bit of a political dynasty myself.
01:04:36 I was on the student government several times
01:04:38 in high school and my dad won the runoff
01:04:42 in a special election in Bradenton Beach, Florida.
01:04:45 I think there’s like 700 people there.
01:04:47 So.
01:04:48 So your dad got you the job?
01:04:49 Yeah, we’re basically,
01:04:51 a lot of people compare us to the Kennedys.
01:04:54 My guess with the politicians is that,
01:04:56 and you can see it now as we’re becoming more cognizant
01:04:59 as people to the political process,
01:05:02 I think the process corrupts people.
01:05:04 And I think that, I don’t know the ins and outs of it.
01:05:06 I’ve listened to people who are far more educated
01:05:09 on it than me and I’m unprepared to cite
01:05:11 any of their points.
01:05:14 I think you can see it a little bit in Dan Crenshaw.
01:05:16 Can I say this?
01:05:17 Yeah, I like him.
01:05:19 I really liked Dan,
01:05:21 especially like a year, year and a half ago.
01:05:23 He seemed very level headed.
01:05:25 It’s clear to me now that as he panders
01:05:28 more and more to the right,
01:05:30 it’s because he’s setting himself for a presidential run.
01:05:33 It’s clear that that’s happening.
01:05:35 And he just doesn’t seem like the same authentic
01:05:38 ideals oriented guy that he did a year and a half ago.
01:05:42 Now I could be wrong on that.
01:05:43 It could be way off.
01:05:44 But I think that you can take someone
01:05:46 as honest as you want to.
01:05:49 When you start them on that path to the presidency,
01:05:52 you become so unbelievably beholden
01:05:56 to so many people and entities along the way
01:05:59 that by the time you get to the final destination,
01:06:02 the Oval Office, all you’re doing is paying back
01:06:05 the favors that got you there.
01:06:06 And you never get to serve the people
01:06:08 you’re supposed to serve.
01:06:09 Your primary focus is on your office
01:06:12 and not on the people that you’re supposed to be helping.
01:06:15 And I think that that’s a humongous problem.
01:06:17 And like we could talk all about campaign finance reform
01:06:19 and the two party system.
01:06:20 But at the end of the day,
01:06:22 the people who are running for political posts,
01:06:27 they’re working to keep a job.
01:06:29 They’re not working to improve the lives
01:06:30 of the constituents, which is different.
01:06:33 A long, long time ago, like a lot of politicians,
01:06:36 those were like part time jobs.
01:06:38 And they held other posts out West.
01:06:40 They were ranchers by day and sheriff by night,
01:06:43 whatever the case might be.
01:06:44 But now, such a cushy path for the rest of your life
01:06:48 that the goal is to just be a politician,
01:06:51 not do the things that you think a politician
01:06:53 is supposed to do.
01:06:54 And that’s a problem.
01:06:55 By the way, I’ll talk to Dan on this.
01:06:58 It’s funny, I like the version of him from a year ago
01:07:02 and I haven’t been really paying attention.
01:07:03 So I’ll be, I’ll actually pay more attention now
01:07:07 and ask him that exact question.
01:07:08 Like, how do you prevent yourself from changing,
01:07:11 becoming what the Clintons became?
01:07:14 I tend to believe like there’s conspiratorial stuff
01:07:16 about Clintons and all these politicians.
01:07:17 I tend to believe that they were actually
01:07:19 good, thoughtful people back in the day.
01:07:21 And the system changes them.
01:07:25 It’s not even the system.
01:07:27 There’s something about just the process of campaigning.
01:07:30 I just think it wears you down to where
01:07:33 if you look at the percentage of time you spend
01:07:35 on the kinds of conversations you have,
01:07:38 it’s like one, you do these speeches,
01:07:41 which you repeat the same thing over and over and over.
01:07:43 It beats the process of thinking.
01:07:47 You just exhaust your brain to where
01:07:49 you’re not thinking anymore, you’re just repeating.
01:07:51 It’s very, it’s exceptionally difficult
01:07:54 to keep making speech after speech after speech,
01:07:57 saying the same thing over and over and over again,
01:07:59 and at the same time thinking deeply
01:08:01 and changing your mind and learning.
01:08:04 And then also the pandering to financial,
01:08:07 like having phone calls, like fundraising,
01:08:10 all those kinds of things.
01:08:11 That’s what they do now.
01:08:12 They spend most of their time fundraising.
01:08:13 They’re not worried about anything.
01:08:15 Sorry to interrupt you, but I was gonna say
01:08:16 that you can see there’s a fuel.
01:08:19 Like the more attention and the higher regard
01:08:24 you’re held in in your community,
01:08:26 and the more sycophants like continue
01:08:28 to blow smoke up your ass,
01:08:30 the more it changes the way you present yourself.
01:08:32 And you can see it in every walk of life.
01:08:35 I mean, jiu jitsu is a tiny, tiny little section
01:08:37 of the world, but you see it in the jiu jitsu community.
01:08:40 When someone all of a sudden starts a social media page
01:08:42 or whatever, and they get a bunch of people,
01:08:44 like basically like cyber fellating them
01:08:48 on their Instagram page, they change.
01:08:51 Fellating, is that a word?
01:08:52 I think so.
01:08:53 So giving fellatio?
01:08:54 Yeah.
01:08:55 So fellating.
01:08:56 Yeah.
01:08:57 Jamie, look it up.
01:08:59 I think, but in those people, it changes their character.
01:09:03 Yeah.
01:09:04 It changes who they are because they become emboldened
01:09:06 and now they’ve got this like mythical cyber mob
01:09:09 behind them.
01:09:11 There’s a sign at the entrance to your gym
01:09:13 that reads, for every moment of triumph,
01:09:16 it’s a quote by Hunter S. Thompson.
01:09:19 It reads, for every moment of triumph,
01:09:21 for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.
01:09:27 What does this quote mean to you?
01:09:29 That quote to me is about, mostly about sacrifice.
01:09:34 And it’s about to achieve anything great
01:09:38 or anything beautiful or to triumph,
01:09:41 you have to have sacrificed so many things to get there,
01:09:44 unless you’re the most unbelievably genetically gifted person
01:09:48 in the world and greatness is just, you know,
01:09:51 falls upon you, it’s just raining from the sky.
01:09:53 I think on your path to greatness,
01:09:58 on your path to success and triumph,
01:10:00 you leave a lot of carnage in your wake,
01:10:02 personal relationships, other goals,
01:10:04 things that you didn’t pursue, you know,
01:10:08 other unfulfilled dreams.
01:10:10 And you kind of have to sell a lot of that out
01:10:12 in order to be really at the peak of your field
01:10:18 or what you want to be.
01:10:22 I know that that’s happened in my life.
01:10:23 I mean, there’s tons and tons of relationships
01:10:26 that, you know, couldn’t survive the way
01:10:31 that I was living my life,
01:10:31 because when I was trying to be a big time fighter
01:10:34 or like when I was just training all the time,
01:10:36 tons of relationships dissolve themselves naturally,
01:10:41 some not so naturally.
01:10:43 Some people get it, some people don’t get it,
01:10:44 some people hate you, you miss tons of other opportunities.
01:10:49 And I think that’s kind of what that quote means to me.
01:10:51 It’s about sacrifice.
01:10:52 It’s about you’re giving up what you want now
01:10:57 for what you want more.
01:11:01 And it’s the trampling of souls, it’s messy too,
01:11:05 because it’s not clear what the right path is.
01:11:10 Like that sacrifice is not obvious
01:11:13 that those are the right sacrifices to make.
01:11:16 You might be ruining your own life,
01:11:19 but the fact that you’re willing to take that risk
01:11:22 and sort of go all in on whether it’s stupid or not,
01:11:29 go all in on something,
01:11:32 that the possibility of creating something beautiful
01:11:35 is there.
01:11:36 Who says it’s stupid?
01:11:37 If you’re going all in on it, you don’t think it’s stupid.
01:11:40 Someone else might think it’s stupid,
01:11:41 but I mean, who really cares?
01:11:44 Well, I’m of many minds on many things,
01:11:46 so I feel like there’s certain minds,
01:11:49 certain moves of the day where you think it’s stupid.
01:11:52 Like relationships is a beautiful one,
01:11:54 which is, you’ve seen the movie Whiplash, by any chance?
01:11:56 Yes.
01:11:59 It seems like in a man’s life,
01:12:02 or it could be a woman’s, but I don’t identify as a woman,
01:12:06 so I know the man, the lived experience.
01:12:08 It’s 2020, bro.
01:12:10 But my lived experience for now is that of a man.
01:12:13 We’ll see about tomorrow.
01:12:15 And there is, in the pursuit of excellence,
01:12:19 there’s often a choice of,
01:12:24 some of the souls that must be trampled
01:12:26 are personal relationships with humans in your life
01:12:29 that you might deeply care about.
01:12:30 It could be family, it could be friends,
01:12:33 it could be loved ones of all different forms.
01:12:36 It could be the people that, your colleagues
01:12:40 that are dependent on you, people who will lose jobs
01:12:42 because of the decisions you make, all this kind of stuff.
01:12:45 It seems that that moment happens,
01:12:48 and I’m not sure that sacrifice is always the correct one.
01:12:52 Like, to me, the movie Whiplash,
01:12:53 for people who haven’t seen, spoiler alert, maybe?
01:12:56 I don’t even know if that movie has any spoilers,
01:13:00 but there is a relationship with a female.
01:13:02 There’s a student, there’s a drummer
01:13:04 that’s pursuing excellence
01:13:06 of this particular art form of drumming,
01:13:09 and he has a brief, fleeting relationship with a female,
01:13:14 and he also has an instructor
01:13:16 that’s pushing him to his limits
01:13:18 in what appears to be awfully a lot
01:13:20 like a toxic relationship.
01:13:22 And he chooses, not chooses,
01:13:26 he naturally makes the decision
01:13:31 to sacrifice the romantic relationship with the woman
01:13:34 in further pursuit of this chaos of,
01:13:39 this chaotic pursuit of excellence.
01:13:41 And that doesn’t feel like a deliberate decision.
01:13:45 It feels like a giant mess of like an emotional mess
01:13:49 where you’re just like,
01:13:51 kind of like a fish swimming against stream,
01:13:55 just like, fuck it.
01:13:57 You let go of all the things that convention says
01:14:00 you should appreciate.
01:14:02 You throw away the possibility of a stable life,
01:14:04 of a comfortable life,
01:14:05 of what society says is a meaningful life,
01:14:10 and just pursue this crazy thing
01:14:12 full of seeming toxicity
01:14:14 with crazy people surrounding you.
01:14:16 I don’t know.
01:14:17 So I don’t know what the right decision is.
01:14:19 Part of my brain says, you should stay with the girl.
01:14:22 Fuck that instructor that’s making you,
01:14:26 that’s pushing you to places where it’s like,
01:14:29 that are destructive, potentially destructive,
01:14:31 like could lead to suicide,
01:14:32 could lead you to completely
01:14:39 fail or fail on your pursuit of excellence
01:14:43 or destroy the dream,
01:14:47 the passionate pursuit of the thing
01:14:48 that you’ve always dreamed for,
01:14:50 in that case is drumming.
01:14:51 I don’t know.
01:14:52 There’s so many minds there.
01:14:53 Like what is the right thing to do?
01:14:54 So my first two thoughts are,
01:14:55 number one, fuck convention.
01:14:58 What is convention?
01:14:59 It’s like some laid out path,
01:15:01 some linear progression of the way your life
01:15:03 is supposed to go,
01:15:04 like that someone can draw a picture of at the end.
01:15:07 That shit’s, first of all, it’s just boring and whatever.
01:15:11 And it’s, I don’t wanna say that it’s cowardly
01:15:14 because it isn’t cowardly,
01:15:16 but for someone who’s not conventional
01:15:18 to not be nonconventional is cowardly,
01:15:21 to get sucked into the convention.
01:15:22 That’s first.
01:15:23 Second of all,
01:15:24 I believe that scene in the diner in that movie
01:15:28 where he tells her you’re in my way
01:15:30 because I’m gonna want to be with you,
01:15:33 or you’re going to want me to be going out to dinner
01:15:35 with you and I know I should be practicing,
01:15:37 or I know I should be training.
01:15:39 And ultimately I’m gonna make,
01:15:40 I’m either gonna feel bad about not being with you
01:15:43 by training,
01:15:44 or I’m gonna skip the training to be with you
01:15:46 and neither one is right.
01:15:47 The whole thing that they don’t mention in that
01:15:49 is that that’s the wrong girl.
01:15:51 That’s the wrong girl.
01:15:53 The right girl is a gangster.
01:15:55 The right girl says, oh, you’ve practiced tonight?
01:15:59 I’ll leave you a sandwich and some milk
01:16:01 so that you can, outside the door,
01:16:04 let me know when you’re done,
01:16:05 or you have some free time.
01:16:07 The right girl compliments that.
01:16:09 She’s not an impediment in any way.
01:16:11 Even if what you wanna do is be with her so much
01:16:16 that you’re putting the drums down,
01:16:17 or you’re putting the bass down,
01:16:18 or you’re picking up the pizza,
01:16:19 or you’re not going to training,
01:16:22 that girl, without even telling you
01:16:24 why she’s making decisions,
01:16:26 is making decisions to help you achieve your goal.
01:16:29 Now that might sound like some sort of chauvinistic
01:16:32 king of the castle type shit
01:16:34 where everyone should cater to you,
01:16:36 but the fact of the matter is
01:16:40 that person is a compliment to your life
01:16:42 in helping you do your thing,
01:16:44 and in your own way you’re helping them
01:16:46 to achieve whatever their goals are also.
01:16:48 It’s uncommon that you have two people under the same roof
01:16:51 striving to be unbelievably excellent in one small area.
01:16:56 It’s not impossible, but it’s uncommon.
01:16:59 Relationships have to be like binary systems,
01:17:01 like two stars.
01:17:03 The gravitational pull is what keeps you together
01:17:05 and circling around one another, right?
01:17:08 And one is bigger than the other,
01:17:11 and they’ll fluctuate,
01:17:12 and the stars will get bigger,
01:17:14 and they’ll get smaller,
01:17:15 and they’ll contract based on positioning and composition.
01:17:19 That’s the way a relationship should be,
01:17:21 not an asteroid coming in to disrupt
01:17:25 the surface of your planet.
01:17:27 It’s a binary system, it’s a compliment.
01:17:28 That girl was the wrong girl for him.
01:17:30 So you shouldn’t,
01:17:32 like the big unconventional dreams
01:17:36 should not be adjusted to fit into this world.
01:17:41 Because I mean, there is a part of me
01:17:42 that’s like full of self thought,
01:17:43 well, maybe you’re just a dick.
01:17:45 Maybe.
01:17:46 Yeah, who cares?
01:17:48 Lex, so first of all,
01:17:51 who cares?
01:17:52 This is, by the way, somebody who’s,
01:17:56 you have recently gotten,
01:17:58 well, in the span of the history of the universe
01:18:01 is recently you’ve gotten to a relationship,
01:18:03 but you haven’t always,
01:18:04 you have not felt the need to be in the relationship
01:18:08 just because you’re supposed to
01:18:10 by society’s kind of momentum.
01:18:13 If you, I think that if you really want anything,
01:18:16 you’ve got to be prepared fully to be the exact opposite.
01:18:20 If you’re a person who’s looking for a relationship,
01:18:22 the only way you’re going to get in an awesome relationship
01:18:24 is by being comfortable being alone,
01:18:26 because that’s the risk.
01:18:27 If you’re a person who’s driven by money,
01:18:29 you’ve got to be comfortable being totally poor
01:18:31 because that’s the risk, right?
01:18:33 And when you’re constantly hedging your bets,
01:18:37 you’re never all in.
01:18:38 You’re never all in on the thing you’re trying to do.
01:18:41 So a relationship has to compliment your life.
01:18:45 You can’t say, it’s okay to want to be in a relationship,
01:18:50 but you can’t want to be in a relationship so bad
01:18:53 that you take someone in who fits the suit.
01:18:56 And it’s like, oh, our schedules kind of work out.
01:18:58 You live near me and this and that and the other thing,
01:19:00 because the logistics of a relationship
01:19:02 are not always perfect.
01:19:04 It’s what matters is when the two people are together.
01:19:07 That’s the perfect part of it.
01:19:08 And it’s great to want to meet people and say,
01:19:14 if we meet and some sort of a relationship develops,
01:19:18 I’m willing to run with it,
01:19:20 but I’m not meeting you hoping a relationship develops.
01:19:23 I think you kind of put the cart before the horse
01:19:25 in a lot of those situations.
01:19:27 It’s like when guys meet.
01:19:28 No guy goes out and is like, I’m looking for a bro, right?
01:19:32 Nobody does that.
01:19:33 You go to the gym and you run into a bunch of dudes
01:19:35 and the next thing you know, someone’s cool
01:19:36 and they want to talk about fighting
01:19:37 and you’re fucking shotgun and beers.
01:19:39 And all of a sudden you got a bro and that’s how it works.
01:19:41 It works the same way with women.
01:19:43 What’s a shotgun and beers?
01:19:45 I’ll show you after this.
01:19:45 You poke a hole in the bottom and you open the top.
01:19:49 Yeah, this is the problem with America.
01:19:52 Drink vodka like a man.
01:19:54 Okay, now don’t poke holes in beers.
01:19:57 This is the problem with the frat culture.
01:19:59 They don’t really know how to drink.
01:20:00 They think they know how to drink.
01:20:01 They don’t know how to drink.
01:20:02 What do you think makes a successful relationship
01:20:07 if we can linger on that a little longer?
01:20:09 Like, let me ask John Clark about love.
01:20:17 I didn’t ask a question, but let me just say love.
01:20:22 About love.
01:20:26 Are you one of those people who never says I love you?
01:20:31 No, no, I’m an extreme person.
01:20:34 And like my emotions are also extreme.
01:20:37 And one of the things I concern myself with,
01:20:43 maybe this is philosophical and martial arts warrior
01:20:45 soldier type related stuff is like, I don’t want anyone.
01:20:50 If I die tonight on the drive home,
01:20:52 hopefully that doesn’t happen.
01:20:54 I hope that no one is left questioning
01:20:56 how I felt about them.
01:20:57 And people I don’t like probably are not questioning that.
01:21:02 And so the thing that I’ve had to learn
01:21:04 how to do later in life is to tell the people
01:21:06 that you care about, that you care about them.
01:21:10 And each thing can be equally off putting
01:21:14 to the receiver of the message.
01:21:18 Each thing can be equally off putting
01:21:20 to the receiver of the message.
01:21:20 When you’re letting someone know how much you dislike them,
01:21:22 that can be off putting to the person
01:21:24 receiving that message.
01:21:25 And when you tell someone how much you care about them,
01:21:27 it can also be off putting to the person,
01:21:29 depending on how they view their relationship with you.
01:21:32 But it’s still important to get it out there.
01:21:34 Like you shouldn’t hold those things in
01:21:37 because you’re worried about how they’ll be received
01:21:39 or if they’ll come back at you.
01:21:41 So you’re okay going all in on these?
01:21:45 Yeah.
01:21:46 Not afraid of commitment?
01:21:47 No, I’m not afraid of commitment.
01:21:48 Anyone who says they’re afraid of commitment
01:21:50 is full of shit.
01:21:50 You know what they’re afraid of?
01:21:51 They’re afraid of commitment with that person.
01:21:54 That’s what they’re afraid of.
01:21:56 Like when someone knocks you on your ass
01:22:00 and they come into your life
01:22:01 and you’re flush with all these emotions,
01:22:04 you’re not worried about,
01:22:05 oh, I don’t really like commitment.
01:22:07 No, because they’ve knocked you on your ass.
01:22:08 You want to be with them.
01:22:10 You want those things.
01:22:11 The two most alive points in your life,
01:22:13 I think people feel is the euphoria of a new relationship
01:22:16 and then the loss when that love is gone.
01:22:21 You’ll never feel more, I don’t think,
01:22:23 than in those moments in your life.
01:22:26 See, the nice thing about the loss is it lasts longer.
01:22:31 Yeah.
01:22:33 That’s a Louis C.K. point that he makes,
01:22:36 which is like that,
01:22:39 like in his show, I think,
01:22:41 is a conversation with an older gentleman
01:22:44 that says like that’s his favorite part
01:22:45 of the relationship is that period
01:22:48 between the loss of the relationship
01:22:51 and the real death, which is forgetting the person.
01:22:56 But that period lasts the longest
01:22:58 and that’s like the most fulfilling,
01:22:59 like missing the other person
01:23:02 is as fulfilling as the actual love,
01:23:07 the early infatuation, which is interesting.
01:23:09 I also think of the Bukowski.
01:23:11 I return to that.
01:23:13 There’s a little clip of him in an interview
01:23:16 saying that love is a fog
01:23:21 that dissipates with the first light of reality
01:23:25 or something like that.
01:23:26 So basically emphasizing
01:23:28 that it’s this very, very, very fleeting thing,
01:23:31 that it’s a moments thing and then it just fades
01:23:36 and everything else is something else.
01:23:38 So love is only a temporary thing, which is interesting.
01:23:41 I think some people say that’s cynical.
01:23:44 I don’t know.
01:23:45 I don’t know what to think of it.
01:23:46 I think it’s important to understand
01:23:49 that everything is fleeting
01:23:51 when you don’t put effort into it.
01:23:54 Almost everything will be fleeting.
01:23:55 If you don’t put effort into it,
01:23:56 most people will get fat and lazy.
01:23:58 If you don’t put effort into something,
01:23:59 you’re gonna not be good at playing guitar or playing bass.
01:24:03 You’ve got to put effort into it.
01:24:04 The same thing goes for a relationship.
01:24:07 That the awesome part of it, that like love part,
01:24:12 that dies soon and early on in a relationship
01:24:15 because it’s so good
01:24:17 that we think we don’t have to work at it, but you do.
01:24:20 You have to keep doing the things
01:24:21 and you gotta keep things new and crisp and fresh.
01:24:24 And different people probably feel differently about this,
01:24:30 but I don’t know, you walk around your girl
01:24:33 and you start like farting and stuff,
01:24:35 like that’s when it all dies.
01:24:37 That’s when it dies.
01:24:39 We’re all human beings.
01:24:40 We’re all here and our bodies work in the same way,
01:24:44 but you start to chip away at this beautiful thing
01:24:48 when you buck conventional courtesy and things like that.
01:24:56 Well, take it for granted, basically.
01:24:58 You take it for granted, yeah.
01:24:59 I mean, that’s the same thing with life.
01:25:03 I’m a big fan of meditating on death
01:25:06 that you could die today.
01:25:08 In the same way you should meditate
01:25:09 on this relationship could end today,
01:25:11 this connection with another human could be.
01:25:13 This is the last time you could be interacting.
01:25:17 And your chances of that increase
01:25:19 when you take it for granted and you shit on people.
01:25:21 But when you work at it, the chances of that decrease.
01:25:24 It’s never gonna be zero, but it decreases.
01:25:27 And when you do that, when you’re the person
01:25:30 and you’re trying to maintain
01:25:32 and you’re trying to work at the relationship,
01:25:35 you gotta make sure that both people are working at it.
01:25:37 Otherwise, you’re just a fucking chump.
01:25:39 Okay, let’s return back to mixed martial arts.
01:25:43 Let me ask the ridiculous question
01:25:44 of who do you think are the top three,
01:25:47 maybe top five greatest fighters of all time?
01:25:51 It’s so hard to compare fighters across generations.
01:25:57 And maybe one way to say it is which metrics
01:26:00 would you put on the table
01:26:01 as to measure what a great fighter is?
01:26:05 There was a guy named Dioxapus.
01:26:08 And in the fourth century, and he was such a badass
01:26:16 that in the Olympics in 336 BC,
01:26:18 no one even showed up to fight him in the Pancration event.
01:26:22 Nobody even showed up because he was fucking everybody up.
01:26:24 Years later, he was retired.
01:26:26 And this crazy Macedonian dude came there
01:26:29 at some dinner for Alexander the Great,
01:26:32 everyone’s chilling, drinking,
01:26:33 whatever they were drinking out of their chalices.
01:26:36 And this Macedonian dude threatened him and challenged him.
01:26:40 So Dioxapus said, yeah, man, we’ll throw down.
01:26:43 And they set the time and the place.
01:26:45 Macedonian dude comes out like body armor,
01:26:49 spear, shield, all this other shit.
01:26:52 Dioxapus came out absolutely naked with a wooden club
01:26:56 and took on this much younger guy,
01:26:58 beat the living crap out of him
01:26:59 and then put his foot on his throat
01:27:01 and then didn’t even kill him in the show of ultimate power
01:27:07 for the time.
01:27:08 So I think.
01:27:09 There’s something about the guy being naked too
01:27:11 is just extra demeaning.
01:27:13 Extra demeaning, yeah.
01:27:14 Okay, can we rephrase the question then?
01:27:18 Because those are clearly going to be
01:27:21 some probably forgotten warriors in history.
01:27:23 Well, let’s take it to like modern day mixed martial arts
01:27:26 in the UFC, perhaps.
01:27:27 Well, just mixed martial arts there.
01:27:30 Who do you think are the top fighters of all time?
01:27:32 What metrics would you consider
01:27:34 in trying to answer this perhaps unanswerable question?
01:27:38 I think one of the things you want to think about
01:27:40 is strength of opponent at the time you fought them.
01:27:44 So for example, fighting BJ Penn in his prime
01:27:48 and beating him is far different
01:27:50 than beating BJ Penn last year, right?
01:27:52 So to say you have a victory over BJ Penn
01:27:54 is not the same given the timeframe of when it happened.
01:27:59 Not to take anything away from anyone who’s beaten BJ Penn.
01:28:02 Just use that as an example of someone whose career
01:28:05 went into a different direction.
01:28:07 I would say the guy who I think is probably the best
01:28:14 that people are the least familiar with
01:28:17 would be Marillo Bustamante.
01:28:19 And I think he was a guy who was one of the guys
01:28:23 with the first really good physical build for MMA,
01:28:26 which I think is narrow from the chest to the back
01:28:29 and long shoulder to shoulder
01:28:32 and kind of sinewy made out of steel cable.
01:28:34 That was a guy who could box,
01:28:36 that was a guy who could wrestle,
01:28:37 and that was a guy who had great jujitsu.
01:28:39 He wasn’t a great kickboxer,
01:28:41 but at the time he didn’t need it.
01:28:43 Fought everybody and gave everybody a run.
01:28:46 I think he’s probably one of those guys
01:28:50 who’s gotta be considered.
01:28:52 Yeah, there’s a few killers that never,
01:28:55 because why is he not in the discussion?
01:28:57 Because I think greatness requires both the skill
01:29:03 and the opportunity to meet each other.
01:29:06 And when you talk about a fighter,
01:29:08 the other thing that really a good fighter needs
01:29:10 to become great is a foil.
01:29:12 And so many fighters don’t have a foil.
01:29:15 That’s one of the biggest detractions, I think,
01:29:17 of early Mike Tyson’s career.
01:29:19 He didn’t have a foil.
01:29:20 He had no one driving him.
01:29:22 And by the time he did,
01:29:23 by the time he had a foil in Holyfield,
01:29:25 his career was in a different place.
01:29:26 But he’s one of the greats of all time,
01:29:28 and he never really had a foil,
01:29:30 so his greatness was in unparalleled destruction
01:29:35 of like nobody as well, of lesser opponents.
01:29:42 Right, and so when people debate
01:29:46 the level of greatness of Mike Tyson,
01:29:48 that’s one of the things they say,
01:29:49 like he didn’t fight a lot of killers in their prime.
01:29:51 I think you’ve obviously got to say in that conversation,
01:29:55 I have a really difficult time
01:29:58 keeping George St. Pierre out of the conversation,
01:30:02 only because he was able to beat you with anything.
01:30:06 He could out jab you, he could out wrestle you,
01:30:09 and he could submit you.
01:30:11 The problem I have with Fedor
01:30:13 is his career also took a drastic turn towards the end.
01:30:18 And when he was fighting in Pride,
01:30:21 he was doing a lot more grappling,
01:30:22 and then he just started casting
01:30:24 that overhand right at people.
01:30:26 And his game kind of changed at that point.
01:30:29 You can’t take anything away from his greatness,
01:30:31 but at that time, the great heavyweights
01:30:34 were not really fighting in Pride,
01:30:37 and they didn’t really exist yet.
01:30:38 And by the time he fought a really good one,
01:30:40 Fabricio Verdun, he did get submitted there.
01:30:42 Does his later performance color your and our perception
01:30:47 of his greatness in general about fighters?
01:30:51 Not mine, but I’m someone who’s intimately involved
01:30:55 in the sport, but it colors everyone else’s.
01:30:57 Same with Anderson Silva.
01:30:58 I don’t think Anderson Silva doesn’t want to fight
01:31:00 in like seven years or something, or he’s like one.
01:31:03 That’s a guy who in his prime was one of the best fighters.
01:31:06 Is he in the top five for you?
01:31:08 I think he’s probably in the top five, yeah.
01:31:10 Greater striker of all time or no?
01:31:11 In MMA?
01:31:12 In mixed martial arts.
01:31:13 In mixed martial arts?
01:31:15 In mixed martial arts, that’s a tough question.
01:31:19 The greatest MMA striker of all time.
01:31:22 Because like the timing,
01:31:25 we’re talking about foot sweeps, right?
01:31:27 Who makes it look easier than Anderson Silva?
01:31:31 I think in an incredibly short sample of his prime,
01:31:36 it’s gotta be Anderson Silva,
01:31:37 and I think you have to consider discussing Leota Machida
01:31:41 for his unbelievable manipulation of distance,
01:31:45 which is something that people don’t really talk too much
01:31:47 about in terms of fighting,
01:31:48 unless you’re someone in the sport.
01:31:50 That his use of distance and the ability to like,
01:31:54 what we call pop out, like make you miss by one inch
01:31:57 so that he could follow your fist back in
01:31:59 as you retract it and it hit you over the top,
01:32:02 that that’s a thing of beauty.
01:32:06 Anderson Silva, when he became a counter striker,
01:32:08 when he got to his prime in the UFC,
01:32:10 that was a thing of beauty.
01:32:11 That was a thing of beauty.
01:32:13 So I think definitely those two guys
01:32:15 and Murilo Bustamante’s gotta be the third guy.
01:32:18 There’s just so many good guys now.
01:32:20 It’s just.
01:32:20 So where do you put, in terms of metrics,
01:32:23 you mentioned GSP and Anderson Silva,
01:32:24 I think they have a large number of defenses of a title.
01:32:28 Is that important to you?
01:32:30 Like this kind of consistent domination?
01:32:32 No, because it’s easily manipulated
01:32:36 by the people making money off the fights.
01:32:38 So there was a great quote one time
01:32:40 when the UFC was coming to prominence
01:32:42 and Vince McMahon from the WWE, he said,
01:32:46 you know, the difference between what we do
01:32:48 and what UFC does is that when we have a superstar,
01:32:53 I can make sure he stays on top
01:32:55 until he’s no longer a superstar
01:32:56 because we have predetermined results.
01:32:58 UFC can’t do that because they’re actually having fights.
01:33:01 Well, it’s true and false.
01:33:02 You can’t do that,
01:33:03 but you can give your superstars the most favorable matchups
01:33:07 to keep them on top for the longest.
01:33:09 So people always talk about title defenses
01:33:11 as if the guy they’re fighting, the challenger,
01:33:13 is always the person most deserving of the shot.
01:33:16 And it’s just not true.
01:33:17 So I don’t put that much stock in it.
01:33:19 Is it possible to put a guy in consideration
01:33:23 as one of the greats
01:33:25 if all they had is one or two amazing fights?
01:33:30 I’ll tell you, like an amazing
01:33:33 could be a lot of different definitions.
01:33:35 It could be just the war.
01:33:37 Like they never really reached
01:33:39 the highest of excellences of domination,
01:33:41 but they’ve, like this,
01:33:44 we had this discussion about Kyle Bokniak, right?
01:33:47 Yep.
01:33:49 To me, that’s a perfect example.
01:33:50 He had this famous fight against Zabit Magomed Sharapov,
01:33:59 where on one side you have an Anderson Silva type of fighter
01:34:03 and Zabit, like just a very good striker.
01:34:07 Like, and then there’s like the warrior on the Kyle side.
01:34:13 And just the fight,
01:34:14 they created something special together.
01:34:16 It was fight at night, whatever.
01:34:17 But the, you know, that fight was special on that night
01:34:23 because the two dance partners.
01:34:25 You can have a great performance
01:34:27 without being a great fighter.
01:34:28 Not saying neither of those guys is a great fighter,
01:34:30 but to answer your first question,
01:34:32 I think that having one or two great performances
01:34:36 does not necessarily mean that you are great.
01:34:38 I need a larger sample size.
01:34:39 I have no idea what that is.
01:34:41 I don’t have any idea what that is.
01:34:42 And also,
01:34:48 where, how much weight does toughness have
01:34:52 when you’re thinking about the criteria
01:34:53 when you define a great fighter?
01:34:56 That’s a good question.
01:34:58 And I don’t have the answer to it.
01:35:00 I admire the underdog that rises to the occasion
01:35:03 through brute force.
01:35:04 They didn’t have,
01:35:05 they didn’t bring the skillset to the table
01:35:07 that perhaps some of the greats have,
01:35:09 but they rose to the occasion.
01:35:12 I mean, there’s something about that.
01:35:13 There’s something about that.
01:35:14 And so now we’re more talking about like
01:35:17 the internal attributes
01:35:18 as opposed to the external physical attributes.
01:35:21 And those are the things I think that you cannot teach.
01:35:25 Those things, you come in the door
01:35:27 and you either have that or you don’t.
01:35:28 I think, and we talk about this all the time,
01:35:30 and this is one of the things
01:35:31 where my mind changes regularly.
01:35:34 Like on what makes a fighter,
01:35:35 is it born or is it bred?
01:35:37 And this week I’m of the opinion that it’s in you.
01:35:42 And maybe it’s in you and you suppress it
01:35:44 and people can tease it out of you,
01:35:46 but I don’t think you can make someone
01:35:48 who doesn’t have that seed in there.
01:35:49 I don’t think you can turn them into that great warrior
01:35:53 with that level of grit and mental toughness.
01:35:56 Now, when that fight, when Kyle fights Zabit,
01:36:00 it’s a unique situation for both guys.
01:36:02 It was kind of a later replacement fight for Kyle.
01:36:06 Zabit’s star was on the rise.
01:36:08 And Kyle put the blueprint out there on how to beat Zabit.
01:36:12 Which is?
01:36:13 Which is pressure him
01:36:14 and try and drag him into the late rounds.
01:36:16 You notice that later on when Calvin Kader fought him,
01:36:19 they wouldn’t give him five rounds.
01:36:21 They wanted five rounds.
01:36:22 And Zabit’s camp, from what I understand,
01:36:24 would not agree to the five round fight.
01:36:26 Well, he didn’t look.
01:36:28 Right, so with Kyle, it was a three round fight.
01:36:30 Three round fight.
01:36:31 And did it went to decision?
01:36:33 It went to decision.
01:36:34 Well, Zabit won the decision, clearly.
01:36:36 Did Kyle have a shot at winning the third round?
01:36:39 I don’t remember the exact score,
01:36:40 but Kyle could have won the third round
01:36:43 had he done a couple things differently.
01:36:46 But I do believe in the fourth round,
01:36:48 I think Kyle wouldn’t have won a fourth round.
01:36:50 And I think maybe even won the fight
01:36:52 if there would have been a fifth round.
01:36:53 And he was pressing forward,
01:36:56 perhaps in a funny way that you could tell me I’m wrong,
01:37:00 but it felt like he wasn’t emphasizing head movement
01:37:04 at that point.
01:37:04 He went full Mike Tyson.
01:37:05 There was a point at which,
01:37:07 so it’s funny that you say that.
01:37:09 Which is a contradiction, actually, because.
01:37:11 Mike Tyson had great head movement.
01:37:12 I actually don’t know exactly what I mean
01:37:16 because he was in the pocket.
01:37:17 I think he was trying to do the movement.
01:37:19 He was just in the pocket and pressing forward.
01:37:21 And the fuck you attitude of just not pressing down.
01:37:23 That was a little bit later
01:37:24 when Zabit’s back was towards the cage.
01:37:26 Towards the end of the round.
01:37:28 We get that fight.
01:37:30 And I said to Kyle, I was like,
01:37:32 look, this kid has been training martial arts
01:37:34 since he was three years old.
01:37:36 There’s not an area where you’re gonna out technique him.
01:37:39 And so we’ve gotta now channel some of that grit
01:37:41 that we know you have.
01:37:42 This is an opportunity to showcase it.
01:37:44 And I don’t know how long I did it for,
01:37:47 because Kyle’s much shorter than Zabit.
01:37:49 So for a good long while,
01:37:50 while we were training for Zabit,
01:37:51 I didn’t even say anything.
01:37:53 And I just had clips of Mike Tyson training
01:37:55 on the TV in the gym and the head movement.
01:37:58 And I didn’t even mention it.
01:37:59 And then we started to like get into it
01:38:01 and talk about getting inside the length
01:38:03 of the longer fighter and things like that.
01:38:06 And we kind of, which when some people train MMA,
01:38:09 they say, okay, this guy’s a really good wrestler.
01:38:12 Let’s think about avoiding the wrestling
01:38:15 or being a better wrestler.
01:38:16 And I think that when the difference in skill is so great,
01:38:21 those are both the wrong answer.
01:38:24 If a guy who’s a really good wrestler wants to take you down
01:38:26 and you don’t have a lot of wrestling experience,
01:38:27 he’s probably gonna get you down
01:38:28 if he’s got a good coach, right?
01:38:30 So you have to deal with that.
01:38:32 To then say, I’m gonna then learn in eight weeks
01:38:35 how to wrestle better than a guy who’s been wrestling
01:38:37 since he was eight years old is also a bad idea.
01:38:39 So what we concentrated on for that camp
01:38:41 and it worked beautifully was
01:38:43 not getting caught in chain wrestling.
01:38:45 These are the takedowns you’re gonna get caught with.
01:38:48 This is how to not get caught with the next step
01:38:50 while you’re defending takedown one.
01:38:52 Cause it’s the chain of techniques
01:38:54 that are gonna get fucked, right?
01:38:56 So we talked, we did a ton of work on get ups
01:38:58 and breaking the hands from the various takedowns.
01:39:01 Like it was a while ago now.
01:39:02 So I don’t remember exactly the techniques we worked on,
01:39:05 but we concentrated on defend the first takedown
01:39:08 and stay out of the chain.
01:39:10 Don’t get chained into a bunch of wrestling techniques
01:39:12 cause you will be out wrestled.
01:39:14 And that was really successful.
01:39:16 And then in the third round, Zabit was tired.
01:39:18 And…
01:39:19 He was tired.
01:39:20 He’s Zabit got tired.
01:39:21 He cuts a tremendous amount of weight.
01:39:23 Like I can’t see him staying at 145 forever
01:39:26 when they start giving him five round fights.
01:39:28 I don’t even know if he’s had a five round fight
01:39:29 and he may have, but I can’t see him staying down there.
01:39:32 He’s, the guy’s like six one.
01:39:35 Guys, he’s a giant of a guy.
01:39:36 So Kyle pressed forward there and he said,
01:39:40 he felt that there was no power left in Zabit’s hands.
01:39:43 And so he felt fine.
01:39:44 And I think part of it was he fed off the crowd
01:39:47 as he moved forward and, you know,
01:39:50 saw that he wasn’t taking a lot of damage.
01:39:54 Like the punches weren’t staying him.
01:39:56 He started walking right through him.
01:39:58 It goes to your question of what makes a fighter.
01:40:01 Was the, him walking forward like that,
01:40:06 something that you’re born with
01:40:07 or is that something you were training?
01:40:09 Is that the Mike Tyson on TV?
01:40:11 He’s born with that.
01:40:12 Kyle is born with that.
01:40:14 And the crowd, I’ve been in a lot.
01:40:16 Was he in Boston?
01:40:17 No, he was in New York.
01:40:18 He was in Brooklyn.
01:40:19 I’ve been in a lot of arenas
01:40:20 for a lot of different sporting events.
01:40:21 That’s one of the loudest things I’ve ever heard
01:40:23 when he did that.
01:40:24 I was going crazy.
01:40:26 And you ask about that being like taught or not.
01:40:29 Kyle is so much like that,
01:40:31 that I have to try and tease some of that out of him,
01:40:33 pull it back.
01:40:34 Because he’s also so very technical when he wants to be
01:40:39 that the emotion and the fun of it
01:40:42 gets in the way of his technique.
01:40:43 And probably has cost him a couple of wins.
01:40:47 And so that’s one of the things
01:40:48 we work on with him right now.
01:40:49 It’s like staying within yourself, being a professional,
01:40:52 taking your time to download the information in round one
01:40:54 and then starting your fight in round two.
01:40:56 But the tension between those two things,
01:40:58 what makes, what on that day created one of the,
01:41:02 in my opinion, one of the greatest fights I’ve ever seen.
01:41:06 Joe Rogan agrees.
01:41:07 Yeah, it’s one of the greatest fights
01:41:09 I’ve certainly ever seen.
01:41:10 So like, it’s funny that you as a coach,
01:41:13 I can see the frustration of like,
01:41:16 like throwing away some of the strategy kind of thing.
01:41:20 Like you seeing like being not happy
01:41:23 that there could be things
01:41:24 that he could have done to win the fight.
01:41:26 It’s in retrospect.
01:41:26 I think that at that time,
01:41:28 we were playing with incredible house money.
01:41:30 Like Kyle was a gigantic underdog in that fight.
01:41:33 Zabit was unstoppable.
01:41:34 I think people were probably picking him
01:41:35 to finish the fight in round one.
01:41:37 I think at that point,
01:41:38 no one had ever gone the distance with Zabit.
01:41:40 And no one certainly had, you know,
01:41:42 put that kind of performance together.
01:41:43 And I think Kyle put the blueprint out there.
01:41:47 And in retrospect, when I look at the last round,
01:41:51 yeah, there were things that could have been done differently,
01:41:53 but we’re playing with house money at that point.
01:41:55 Like, I mean, let it fly.
01:41:57 You get to a point where you’ve got it,
01:41:59 you’re down three rounds and there’s 20 seconds left.
01:42:01 You got to move all your chips to the center of the table
01:42:03 and, you know, see what happens.
01:42:05 Do you remember what Joe Rogan said about it?
01:42:07 I remember like he got won over.
01:42:09 I think I have trouble remembering
01:42:11 because offline we talked about that fight
01:42:13 and he’s exceptionally impressed by,
01:42:15 I mean, Joe’s from Boston, so it’s like,
01:42:18 I mean, there’s a story there.
01:42:20 Okay, it sucks not,
01:42:23 you naturally want to romanticize,
01:42:25 like there’s a Rocky versus like,
01:42:28 there’s a Rocky IV, a Draga.
01:42:30 I mean, similar, I suppose, kind of chemistry.
01:42:35 Kyle’s style represents the American.
01:42:39 Ideal, right?
01:42:40 The spirit.
01:42:41 Yeah, I mean, he’s from Gloucester.
01:42:42 It’s like, you could have dragged him off the docks
01:42:45 three hours before the fight and said,
01:42:47 hey, you want to go fight?
01:42:48 And he would have said yes.
01:42:50 Oh man, that was a special fight.
01:42:51 But that’s, as per a discussion
01:42:53 of like greatest fighters of all time,
01:42:55 I tend to believe that that fight is more special
01:42:59 than the championship belt defenses by George St. Pierre.
01:43:04 Like, you know, there’s something to that.
01:43:06 It’s like Rocky, Rocky I is more special
01:43:12 than like Rocky III, right?
01:43:15 So like, it’s the underdog or it’s whatever,
01:43:19 like the dance partner is like going to war
01:43:21 and like that moment, I mean, it’s bigger.
01:43:24 It’s bigger than any individual fighter.
01:43:26 They create that and that,
01:43:29 I know it’s not perhaps good for a career.
01:43:32 It’s not good for like in terms of money,
01:43:34 in terms of longevity,
01:43:35 in terms of all those kinds of things,
01:43:36 but that’s a special moment in the history of fighting
01:43:39 that you both created.
01:43:40 I can remember like right after,
01:43:42 like there was so much excitement in the air
01:43:45 during the third round.
01:43:46 And I remember being in the corner
01:43:47 and like, I was so excited at the end of it
01:43:50 that I had forgotten what happened in the other two rounds.
01:43:53 I didn’t even know.
01:43:53 And I looked to Sean, one of the other corner men,
01:43:56 and I think I said to him, did we win?
01:43:58 When you rewatch the fight,
01:44:00 clearly we didn’t win the fight.
01:44:01 I mean, we lost the other rounds,
01:44:02 but I got so caught up in that moment
01:44:05 and I just remember like,
01:44:07 I was so in awe of his performance
01:44:10 that like I forgot what was going on.
01:44:12 And it’s so hard to not be a fan at that moment
01:44:16 and to stay within yourself and try and like coach,
01:44:18 but then what the fuck you even coaching at that point?
01:44:20 It’s like, we’re rumbling.
01:44:21 We got 30 seconds.
01:44:22 We’re trying to win here.
01:44:23 And I remember like the performance itself,
01:44:26 I’m not a fan of moral victories,
01:44:28 but if ever there was gonna be one, that was one.
01:44:30 And when the fight was over and I grabbed Kyle,
01:44:32 like they hadn’t even been to the center of the cage yet.
01:44:35 And I just hugged him and I said, you’re my fucking hero.
01:44:38 And I remember being very emotional about that,
01:44:41 that I was able to be a part of that.
01:44:43 It feels wrong to say, but I was,
01:44:45 I kind of avoided saying it,
01:44:46 but I think if I’m being honest with my feelings,
01:44:49 this is a safe space for feelings.
01:44:52 Is I think it was the greatest mixed martial arts fight
01:44:57 I’ve ever seen.
01:44:59 And I don’t think I’m being biased.
01:45:00 I was honestly thinking like, am I being biased?
01:45:02 I honestly don’t think so.
01:45:05 I think that was the greatest fight.
01:45:06 Like if you wanna rank fights I’ve ever seen,
01:45:08 I think to me that was the greatest fight I’ve ever seen.
01:45:10 It certainly was one of the greatest displays
01:45:13 of like just dogged effort from an underdog
01:45:17 who was out experienced and probably outsized.
01:45:22 But I mean, like you just,
01:45:25 Kyle’s one of those kids,
01:45:26 you’re never gonna tell him he’s out of a fight.
01:45:27 He has something you can’t teach.
01:45:29 And I’ve seen tons of people with more physical attributes
01:45:35 and they’re just mental midgets
01:45:36 and they got a million dollar body and a 50 cent heart.
01:45:39 And Kyle is not that.
01:45:42 And you can’t teach it no matter what you do.
01:45:44 But that was, I would say like my career in combat sports,
01:45:49 which spans, if you wanna go all the way back
01:45:51 to like wrestling, like that was one of probably
01:45:53 the greatest experiences I’ve been a part of.
01:45:57 It’s a bittersweet sport.
01:45:58 She’s a fickle mistress.
01:46:01 Yeah, I mean, the tragic aspect of that is
01:46:08 like, I guess Kyle lost, right?
01:46:10 So like if you look at the record
01:46:12 and all the kind of things,
01:46:14 perhaps like you look at the career,
01:46:17 maybe like as a financial,
01:46:21 from a financial perspective that perhaps is not
01:46:25 the greatest thing for Kyle’s career
01:46:28 or that or in the history of the UFC,
01:46:32 perhaps it’s not like maybe many people
01:46:36 didn’t even watch that fight,
01:46:38 but it was a special moment that stands in the history.
01:46:40 There’s not many of these in the history of fighting.
01:46:44 But at the end of the day,
01:46:45 when you look at someone’s career in the UFC,
01:46:47 like financially, there’s a handful of people
01:46:53 that make real money.
01:46:54 Everybody else makes nothing.
01:46:56 There’s a handful of people that make real money.
01:46:58 So did that loss cost him in the near term?
01:47:02 Sure, but when you look back on your life,
01:47:04 you’re not gonna look back on that loss
01:47:05 as something that derailed my life financially
01:47:07 and I never recovered from it.
01:47:08 That’s not gonna happen.
01:47:10 Like the sad thing is, is unless you were a champion
01:47:13 and most people are gonna be forgotten
01:47:15 right after they’re gone.
01:47:16 Most people will be forgotten.
01:47:18 And if you’re not forgotten,
01:47:19 certainly your accolades are gonna be misrepresented.
01:47:22 Either they’re gonna be inflated or diminished
01:47:24 one way or the other.
01:47:25 So looking back on it, it’s just so hard to quantify that.
01:47:31 But it’s an experience.
01:47:32 And when you’re in that moment
01:47:34 and you’re one of the people intimately involved in it,
01:47:38 the value of that experience supersedes any financial gain.
01:47:44 Where would you put Khabib
01:47:46 in the discussion of the greatest of all time?
01:47:48 So you recently, we worked together,
01:47:50 we watched the fight of him and Justin Gaethje
01:47:56 and Khabib retired.
01:47:58 Would you put him up there as one of the greatest
01:48:02 or did he never truly find his foil,
01:48:05 like the great warrior that challenged him?
01:48:08 And maybe do you think he’s fully retired now?
01:48:13 To answer the question about being fully retired,
01:48:15 I don’t have any idea.
01:48:16 I can’t for a second pretend to think that I understand
01:48:22 the way that people from that part of the world
01:48:24 think and respect their family and things like that.
01:48:26 To an American who says,
01:48:27 oh, I promised my mom I wouldn’t do it.
01:48:29 I mean, I promised my mom I wouldn’t do a lot of things.
01:48:31 I went right out the fucking back door and did them.
01:48:33 But I think that that means something different
01:48:36 to people in different parts of the world.
01:48:37 So I have no idea what kind of weight that carries.
01:48:41 So I can’t answer that.
01:48:42 I can say a lot of times when people think
01:48:45 about great fighters,
01:48:47 they think about the aspects that make up MMA.
01:48:50 Like they think of MMA as a pie
01:48:52 and they’re all these different pieces that make up the pie.
01:48:56 And how good is this piece?
01:48:57 And how good is this piece?
01:48:58 And how good is this piece?
01:48:59 When the fact of the matter is
01:49:00 is you only need one really, really, really good piece.
01:49:05 And the other pieces are complimentary pieces
01:49:07 to get you to where you’re the strongest.
01:49:10 And if you want to tell me
01:49:12 that Khabib’s not the greatest MMA fighter
01:49:14 because he doesn’t have really slick striking,
01:49:17 you can make that argument.
01:49:19 But what I can tell you is Khabib has good enough striking
01:49:22 to get him to his grappling
01:49:23 where he is clearly the best guy at 155 they’ve ever seen.
01:49:27 So does that make him the greatest fighter
01:49:29 in that division or not?
01:49:31 To your point about the foil,
01:49:33 they wanted Connor to be his foil
01:49:35 and he just manhandled them.
01:49:37 I mean, they wanted that to happen.
01:49:39 Did not happen.
01:49:40 Well, there’s a kind of argument to be made which we kind of,
01:49:45 now you get haters in this argument
01:49:47 and you’re going to be one of the haters
01:49:50 because I know your, how should I put it?
01:49:53 Lack of admiration for Connor McGregor.
01:49:59 But, what is it?
01:50:01 Football is a game of inches?
01:50:03 Yeah.
01:50:03 There’s a sense where that Connor,
01:50:08 there’s an argument to be made
01:50:10 that Connor wasn’t exactly dominated,
01:50:13 that he ended up being dominant,
01:50:14 meaning, let me phrase it differently,
01:50:16 is there’s a lot of points in the fight
01:50:20 that a different trajectory could have happened.
01:50:24 So he wasn’t so far from having a chance
01:50:27 at winning that fight.
01:50:28 It’s just the end.
01:50:30 You can focus.
01:50:31 Those are the most important moments at the end.
01:50:34 You’ve lost the most important moments.
01:50:35 Right, but the road less taken.
01:50:37 It could have been,
01:50:39 if he didn’t lose those very important moments,
01:50:42 he had a chance.
01:50:43 I’m saying out of all the people that Khabib fought,
01:50:46 it’s arguable that Connor was up there
01:50:49 of the people that had a chance.
01:50:51 Let me say this first.
01:50:54 I love.
01:50:55 I’m going to get so much heat for this.
01:50:56 I do love Khabib.
01:50:57 I’m a huge Khabib fan
01:50:59 because I’m a grappler first and foremost.
01:51:01 Me too, because I’m also Russian.
01:51:03 I love Khabib, calm down.
01:51:05 Okay.
01:51:06 When Connor came on the scene,
01:51:08 I loved Connor because I’m an Irish American
01:51:10 and I want to support him and things like that.
01:51:12 And he was good fun.
01:51:14 He got to be, for my personal taste,
01:51:17 he got to be too much.
01:51:20 Of all the people Khabib has fought,
01:51:22 I would never fight Connor again if I were him.
01:51:25 And here’s why.
01:51:26 And I said this about the Diaz fight.
01:51:29 Nate Diaz, who was one of my favorite fighters,
01:51:32 has fought the exact same fight for 12 years.
01:51:34 Connor will switch something up to give himself an edge.
01:51:38 And I believe that Connor would figure something out
01:51:41 in fight number two, I think,
01:51:43 but I also thought that Gagey would give Khabib problems
01:51:46 where it wouldn’t be a matter of
01:51:48 I’m going to out wrestle Khabib
01:51:49 or become better at defending his wrestling takedowns.
01:51:54 Connor would have figured out a way to not get wrestled.
01:51:56 I feel like he’s constantly changing.
01:51:58 He’s constantly evolving.
01:52:00 And whether or not people realize it or not,
01:52:02 I think Connor’s one of the better overall athletes in MMA
01:52:05 just from looking at his body and his movement
01:52:07 and the way he’s shaped.
01:52:08 He’s got a very tiny waist.
01:52:10 He’s got really pronounced glutes and shoulders.
01:52:13 And I think he’s a for real athlete.
01:52:15 Whereas a lot of guys in MMA are not for real athletes.
01:52:17 They’re just good at one of the things that makes up MMA.
01:52:21 I understand what you’re saying about
01:52:23 if this happened, if that happened,
01:52:25 but I mean, you could say that
01:52:26 about every single combat sports event ever.
01:52:29 If Spinks’s hook landed on Tyson,
01:52:32 maybe that fight didn’t end the way that it did,
01:52:34 but you know what?
01:52:35 It didn’t.
01:52:36 You’re absolutely right.
01:52:37 But if we could talk about just Connor McGregor
01:52:40 for a second,
01:52:43 I can’t wait to get your fan mail or hate mail.
01:52:47 Speak to the innovation of Connor.
01:52:50 I don’t hear very many people making this argument,
01:52:54 but is it possible to make an argument
01:52:56 that Connor McGregor is one of the greatest fighters
01:52:58 of all time?
01:53:00 It’s an interesting argument.
01:53:01 And the problem, the only problem with the argument
01:53:03 is there’s so much emotion on either side.
01:53:06 Yeah, I had a conversation, sorry to interrupt,
01:53:08 with Yaron Brook, who is a philosopher,
01:53:13 objectivist, which is the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
01:53:18 And the amount of emotion around that particular human
01:53:22 is fascinating to me.
01:53:23 It’s similar to the amount of emotion around Donald Trump.
01:53:27 You can think of different personalities, maybe Elon Musk.
01:53:30 Those are the people that aren’t willing
01:53:31 to have their mind changed.
01:53:32 They’re too emotionally attached to the argument.
01:53:34 Yeah, but it’s weird that why do we,
01:53:37 why some people inspire so much emotion and others don’t?
01:53:42 But Connor McGregor, I feel like nobody’s able
01:53:46 to have a calm fight analysis of the guy.
01:53:52 Look, to me, as just a fan of martial arts,
01:53:57 like I studied judo, I love watching just hours
01:54:00 of Olympic judo and appreciating the art form.
01:54:04 Like I forget the humans involved.
01:54:06 Teddy Renner, who’s a heavyweight,
01:54:09 the most probably the most dominant heavyweight
01:54:11 in the history of judo, just studying his gripping,
01:54:14 just the art of it.
01:54:16 And who cares if there’s shit talking?
01:54:18 Like to me, I put all of that aside
01:54:21 and just look at the art.
01:54:23 And like what I really appreciate about Connor McGregor
01:54:27 is his innovation, like of movement,
01:54:33 of maybe it’s romanticized, maybe you can correct me.
01:54:36 I’m just a Cheeto eating fan of mixed martial arts,
01:54:41 but like I seem to detect more innovation
01:54:45 than almost any other fighter
01:54:47 that I’ve paid attention to in Connor McGregor.
01:54:51 I think first, I’ll answer in two parts.
01:54:54 I think, well, I’m not gonna answer the first part.
01:54:56 It’s just a comment, because you didn’t ask the question.
01:54:58 What was the question?
01:54:59 I don’t even remember.
01:55:00 It’s about how Connor McGregor fans are very emotional
01:55:04 and Connor McGregor detractors are very emotional.
01:55:07 I think fans become very emotional.
01:55:09 They become cheerleaders of someone like Connor McGregor
01:55:11 or Donald Trump, because they see that person
01:55:13 exhibiting the qualities that they themselves lack.
01:55:16 And so they become cheerleaders for that, right?
01:55:18 And I think that for the most part,
01:55:20 people who are detractors of Connor McGregors,
01:55:23 they’re not really Connor McGregor detractors.
01:55:25 They’re detractors of Connor supporters.
01:55:28 There’s a beef that they have
01:55:29 with the people in that bucket, right?
01:55:31 Like, it’s not really a problem.
01:55:33 And that applies probably in our current political climate,
01:55:37 Donald Trump with the left and the right.
01:55:39 It’s more about like, they actually don’t like
01:55:44 on the other, the caricature, the most extreme versions
01:55:47 of what they see in the supporters of the other side.
01:55:50 Yeah, that’s a good point.
01:55:51 But I think the more interesting thing
01:55:52 is the fighter himself.
01:55:53 So let’s put the supporters aside.
01:55:55 I would say that, you know, what some people know
01:55:59 and some people don’t know is that Connor’s base
01:56:01 is in karate and the karate style of Connor McGregor,
01:56:06 Steven Thompson, of Lyoto Machida,
01:56:10 that type of distance management,
01:56:12 a lot of times we think as martial artists,
01:56:14 we think that the sport version of the art
01:56:17 we’ve chosen to pursue somehow taints the authenticity
01:56:21 and the effectiveness of it.
01:56:24 But point karate is what led to that
01:56:26 in and out distance management style of Connor,
01:56:28 of Lyoto and of Steven Thompson.
01:56:31 They all kind of use it a little bit differently,
01:56:33 but they use it very effectively, all three of them.
01:56:36 And that comes from a world of trying to kind of like
01:56:41 step in, land contact on you from my point
01:56:43 and then get back out before you can counterstrike me, right?
01:56:47 And that’s where that comes from.
01:56:49 Connor is blessed to have a longer arms
01:56:52 than someone his height probably normally has.
01:56:54 And his movement is just so fluid.
01:56:57 He’s so athletic with the hinges of his body,
01:57:01 the knees and the hips and the swivel of his body,
01:57:04 which is also the hips and the shoulders.
01:57:07 His movement, his distance,
01:57:09 and the way he sets people up for the straight left hand
01:57:12 while you’re circling away from it
01:57:14 and he can still land it,
01:57:15 which is what he did to Chad Mendes.
01:57:17 Hit him with a straight left
01:57:17 while he was circling away from it.
01:57:20 That is something that is very beautiful to watch.
01:57:24 And sometimes people see the kicks
01:57:27 and they see all the flashy snap kicks and the sidekicks.
01:57:30 All that stuff is doing is setting people up
01:57:32 for the left hand.
01:57:34 It’s all it’s doing.
01:57:34 It’s you’re corralling people, you’re funneling people,
01:57:37 or you’re leading the dance and you’re bringing them
01:57:39 to a spot where you know you can land that left hand.
01:57:41 And his ability to do that is masterful.
01:57:45 People constantly shit on his ability to grapple
01:57:48 because a couple of his losses
01:57:50 have been to jujitsu guys or grapplers,
01:57:52 but they’ve been to really good guys.
01:57:55 Anyone who’s gonna sit here and tell me
01:57:56 Conor McGregor’s not a good grappler, go grapple him.
01:58:00 Let me see you grapple him.
01:58:02 To that point, I’ll also say a lot of people
01:58:05 will use Conor McGregor’s X guard sweep on Nate Diaz
01:58:08 as evidence to his high level grappling in that fight,
01:58:11 to which I would also counter,
01:58:13 Nate Diaz didn’t fight that off
01:58:14 because he knew he was so much better at jujitsu
01:58:16 off the bottom that he didn’t even care if he got swept.
01:58:19 So is Conor McGregor innovative?
01:58:21 Absolutely.
01:58:23 Is he one of the best fighters ever?
01:58:25 It’s tough to say because he’s such a cash cow
01:58:27 that he was fed people.
01:58:28 I firmly believe no one who put
01:58:32 that Conor McGregor Khabib fight together
01:58:34 thought Khabib would win.
01:58:36 Wow.
01:58:38 I remember, so at that time it was not completely clear.
01:58:42 There was a myth of the great Khabib.
01:58:45 It wasn’t completely clear how good is he really.
01:58:48 So that’s interesting.
01:58:49 And it was unclear how good is Conor also.
01:58:55 Because I think to me,
01:58:57 maybe part of my admiration of Conor McGregor
01:59:00 is rooted in the fact that I thought
01:59:02 there was no way he beats Jose Aldo
01:59:05 and I thought there’s definitely no way
01:59:07 he beats Eddie Alvarez.
01:59:09 And so like when he did,
01:59:10 I was like, my brain was like,
01:59:17 there’s something broken.
01:59:18 It was like shut down, like on windows, like froze.
01:59:20 We have to rethink this.
01:59:21 Like this is a special human.
01:59:23 Now people who argue he’s not even in the running
01:59:25 of like top 20 is,
01:59:28 if you look at the number of defenses, for example,
01:59:30 of his belt that he had very, very little.
01:59:32 But like to me, I’m one of those people
01:59:34 is back to our discussion of like,
01:59:36 do moments make great fighters?
01:59:38 That I think just being able to beat Jose Aldo
01:59:41 and I would argue in his prime,
01:59:43 some people might disagree in this,
01:59:49 in a way where he like figures out the puzzle,
01:59:51 gets in his head the entirety of the picture.
01:59:53 And then to be, I mean, Eddie Alvarez,
01:59:57 would he be considered a really strong wrestler?
02:00:00 Like, or not strong wrestler,
02:00:04 strong striker and wrestler,
02:00:05 the whole combination of it.
02:00:06 And also what’s the other wrestler he fought?
02:00:09 Chad Mendes. Chad Mendes.
02:00:10 So let me comment on all those if I may.
02:00:13 So I was at the Chad Mendes fight live.
02:00:15 And there was a jujitsu tournament, we’re out in Vegas.
02:00:18 And so me and my best friend came out
02:00:20 and we got some tickets.
02:00:21 That night was supposed to be the first Aldo fight.
02:00:24 Aldo got hurt, like right after I bought the tickets.
02:00:27 They pulled Chad Mendes in.
02:00:28 He was a little bit out of shape, whatever.
02:00:30 You still got to fight the fight.
02:00:32 But I don’t want to use that fight as evidence
02:00:36 to Conor’s greatness because they pulled Chad Mendes in.
02:00:39 He was like hunting and drinking beers in the woods
02:00:41 and was a little out of shape.
02:00:43 But if you want to talk about greatness,
02:00:45 like that surpasses your in ring accomplishments.
02:00:50 I was in the stands that night
02:00:52 and the people that came from Ireland
02:00:56 to see Conor fight that night,
02:00:58 single handedly set the market
02:01:00 for hotel room prices and airline tickets to Vegas
02:01:03 that weekend.
02:01:05 These motherfuckers were all dressed like Conor
02:01:07 in the stands.
02:01:09 They had wool suits on and big beards
02:01:11 and the whole thing.
02:01:12 I mean, they probably weren’t pocket watches.
02:01:14 I never saw more people trying to be someone else.
02:01:19 Never saw more people try to be someone else.
02:01:21 I mean, there’s a level of,
02:01:23 is there a level of greatness in that?
02:01:24 I mean, I don’t know how to parse all that out.
02:01:26 You’re somebody who doesn’t admire that.
02:01:28 I love that in the sense, the following sense, I think.
02:01:31 And people don’t seem to hold this belief at all,
02:01:34 but to me, fighting is not just,
02:01:37 this isn’t like a quiet street fight that nobody watches.
02:01:42 This is also a spectacle.
02:01:43 This is also a story.
02:01:45 There’s like, there’s a professional wrestling element
02:01:48 to this.
02:01:49 This is not, like you think it’s just about fighting.
02:01:51 If it was just about fighting, you wouldn’t,
02:01:54 I mean, there’s a story to it, I guess,
02:01:56 is what I’m trying to get to.
02:01:58 And greatness has to incorporate that.
02:02:01 People that criticize, again, I might be wrong on this,
02:02:04 but I honestly think that Conor McGregor,
02:02:07 not nearly as much as Khabib,
02:02:10 but he’s a true martial artist.
02:02:13 I think he respects his opponents despite the talk.
02:02:17 Maybe I’m misreading it,
02:02:19 but it feels like he is a storyteller,
02:02:22 like Chael Sonnen type of like, he’s constructed this image
02:02:27 to play the story, like just the way he acts
02:02:30 after the fight, the honor he shows to his opponents.
02:02:33 There’s a real martial artist in there,
02:02:35 and to dismiss the fact that the story of the fight
02:02:41 is part of it, because he doesn’t just shit talk.
02:02:44 This is what people don’t seem to understand.
02:02:46 He’s good at shit talking.
02:02:48 Very good, and I’m with you on basically everything you said.
02:02:53 I think that there’s greatness to that,
02:02:55 and I think that he understands how to sell a fight,
02:02:57 and I think what he did to Jose Aldo by getting in his head
02:03:05 helped him win that fight.
02:03:08 He insulted Jose Aldo and his country so much
02:03:12 that he knew Aldo was gonna come forward
02:03:14 right into that left hook.
02:03:15 Was that fight in Brazil, by the way?
02:03:17 Do you remember?
02:03:18 I don’t recall.
02:03:19 Because I know he insulted all of Brazil,
02:03:20 but I’m not sure if it was in Brazil.
02:03:22 But when he tried to do that to Khabib,
02:03:23 you could tell that he just was not gonna get
02:03:25 in Khabib’s head.
02:03:26 Khabib was unflappable.
02:03:27 But there is definitely something great
02:03:30 about how he moves people.
02:03:33 The Irish are like, I mean, Conor’s walkout music,
02:03:37 for people from Ireland of Irish descent,
02:03:41 that shit is like very deep.
02:03:43 You know, it’s a very emotional song.
02:03:47 I was, to be honest, a little bit upset with Khabib,
02:03:51 that he didn’t rise.
02:03:54 I admire that entire culture.
02:03:56 But there’s an aspect to where he could have risen
02:03:59 to the occasion of there’s the same kind of depth
02:04:03 of love of country that Russia has.
02:04:10 Is there in Dagestan?
02:04:11 Dagestan is a little weird in terms of like,
02:04:15 but he could have, especially with Putin’s support,
02:04:18 wear for a bit the full Russian hat
02:04:22 of like this is the great nation.
02:04:23 Like rise above the culture of Dagestan,
02:04:28 which is a small town boy with the small town values
02:04:31 of family and all those kinds of things.
02:04:33 There’s a moment where you inspire entire nations.
02:04:36 Like the step up and be the foil
02:04:40 to the great Conor McGregor where also Khabib
02:04:45 becomes the foil to, like both of them
02:04:48 are the foil to each other and become like,
02:04:51 that fight was already a great fight, right?
02:04:54 But it could have been something historic.
02:04:57 Ali versus Fred, I mean, it could have been really historic.
02:05:00 And I would argue, I guess the biggest disappointment I have,
02:05:05 and I understand it and I also honor it as a martial artist,
02:05:08 but to, I’m disappointed that Khabib doesn’t seem
02:05:13 to even consider the possibility of doing in Moscow
02:05:18 fight number two, and because that could be narrative wise
02:05:23 if they do it right, that’s one of the,
02:05:26 could be one of the greatest fights in history.
02:05:29 Yeah, I think in terms of Khabib and inspiring a country,
02:05:34 is it possible that by staying true to the values
02:05:39 that he had his entire career and getting to the zenith
02:05:44 of his art form and still doing it in that humble way,
02:05:49 isn’t it possible that that inspires?
02:05:50 Yeah, 100%, so I should clarify that I think
02:05:55 they’re just hearing from people,
02:05:56 from my fellow comrades, no, is they love that.
02:06:01 They love that, but they.
02:06:06 There’s also a brash, beer chugging, shit talking thing
02:06:09 that people really like about Connor, and I do love that.
02:06:12 But the beautiful narrative would have been the clash,
02:06:15 the real clash of those cultures.
02:06:17 So Khabib chooses to live the culture by walking away.
02:06:23 There’s also like a clash of them sort of walking,
02:06:27 not walking away from the fire, but walking into the fire
02:06:31 of this brashness.
02:06:33 It’s the sort of the cool collected calmness
02:06:40 of the Dagestan people.
02:06:41 It’s like you were talking about the Saitya brothers.
02:06:43 So they just view it totally differently.
02:06:46 And there are stereotypes about the Irish
02:06:50 where they’re maybe potentially a louder,
02:06:52 more boisterous culture.
02:06:55 Haven’t heard of that, yeah.
02:06:57 And I mean, I thought they each played their part perfectly.
02:07:01 And all those things that you’re describing
02:07:04 could have happened.
02:07:05 Maybe Khabib steps up and he carries the proverbial flag,
02:07:08 so to speak, for a nation of people and they go to battle.
02:07:10 But the fight, if it plays out the same way,
02:07:12 is still the fight.
02:07:13 And it was an okay fight.
02:07:16 It wasn’t a great fight.
02:07:17 It was, you know, the fight was okay.
02:07:21 And I think that, again, I don’t have any idea
02:07:26 what Khabib’s obligations to his family are.
02:07:28 I don’t think either of those guys want for more money.
02:07:34 To do another fight is just a legacy thing.
02:07:38 It’s just about fulfilling some part of a legacy.
02:07:44 And I just, I admire the possibility of a great legacy
02:07:49 that is bigger than either of the fighters.
02:07:51 I think with Khabib, he kind of, he’s not as concerned
02:07:56 about legacy, I think.
02:07:57 Right.
02:07:58 There’s a…
02:07:59 Your promoter’s dream, because you want the rematch,
02:08:01 and the only thing that makes more money
02:08:03 than the rematch is the trilogy.
02:08:05 You gotta split the rematch, you hope Conor wins,
02:08:09 and then you have the trilogy fight.
02:08:10 And now you’re all in.
02:08:11 Yeah.
02:08:13 Yeah, I can’t get into Khabib’s head,
02:08:15 but I know Putin, just the game, the entirety of it,
02:08:19 especially at the time,
02:08:20 especially if it was Trump as president,
02:08:24 if he was as president at the time,
02:08:26 and Putin, and in Russia,
02:08:30 and just knowing how masterful Conor is at,
02:08:35 because Conor would be a different Conor.
02:08:37 I think he would be a calmer Conor.
02:08:39 There would be a different,
02:08:42 because you don’t wanna be over the top Conor
02:08:43 with the Russian people.
02:08:44 Right, no, that’s…
02:08:46 It’s like, ah, this is dangerous ground.
02:08:48 See, that was the episode in the hotel in Brooklyn
02:08:53 when some of the Russian guys confronted Artem,
02:08:58 and then Conor came over.
02:09:00 It’s not, but the danger of that.
02:09:02 I mean, there is the element of just like real danger,
02:09:05 and the real, it was almost of war.
02:09:08 It’s, I don’t know, it’s…
02:09:11 It was like when Chael Sonnen was talking so much smack,
02:09:14 maybe it was against Vanderlei Silva.
02:09:17 I don’t know, and it was one of those fights
02:09:18 where they just didn’t think he was gonna make it
02:09:20 out of Brazil.
02:09:21 Yeah.
02:09:21 Yeah.
02:09:22 Americans don’t get it.
02:09:24 Yeah.
02:09:25 People take some of that shit in different parts
02:09:26 of the world very, very seriously.
02:09:28 Yeah, but that’s what makes it beautiful.
02:09:30 That’s what makes a great story,
02:09:32 and I think fighting is very much about the stories,
02:09:35 not just about the particular outcomes of a fight,
02:09:39 or the skillset matching, or the chess of the fight.
02:09:43 It’s also about the story of the greater,
02:09:47 like context of societies, of warring.
02:09:51 We’re like warring cultures, but we’re still,
02:09:54 we’re still good, we’re no longer can have great,
02:09:58 big, hot wars between nations because of nuclear weapons.
02:10:03 This is our wars that we can have,
02:10:05 and in some sense, I feel robbed of the great war
02:10:09 that could have happened.
02:10:11 It doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of wars going on,
02:10:13 but yeah, the big one is not gonna happen.
02:10:16 There’s too much of a balance of power
02:10:17 with nuclear weapons and technology and stuff,
02:10:20 but it’s not the end of war.
02:10:23 No.
02:10:24 Do you think there’s always gonna be war?
02:10:27 I think there’ll always be war,
02:10:28 especially in underdeveloped parts of the world.
02:10:31 Isn’t there always underdeveloped,
02:10:33 relatively, parts of the world?
02:10:35 Yeah, I mean, at some point, though, you’d think,
02:10:37 I mean, the way that technology’s expanding
02:10:40 and we’re bringing technology to weird parts of the world
02:10:43 that you wouldn’t think of as technologically advanced,
02:10:47 the way that the Chinese are inhabiting certain areas
02:10:51 for mining purposes and things like that,
02:10:54 I think underdeveloped parts of the world
02:10:57 will get developed quickly.
02:10:59 I just wonder what the nature of that war might be.
02:11:02 It could be cyber, it could be all those kinds of things.
02:11:04 I think in developed nations, it’s gonna be cyber.
02:11:06 I think that’s probably the next phase of war,
02:11:08 but I mean, I think you talk about parts of the world
02:11:10 like the Middle East,
02:11:10 and it’s just still gonna be warring tribal factions.
02:11:13 We can’t even begin to understand
02:11:15 what those people are fighting about over there.
02:11:17 Yet, everyone sitting in America on their couch
02:11:20 has an opinion.
02:11:22 You can’t even begin to understand it.
02:11:24 I sure can’t.
02:11:25 Yeah, it’s back to the principle discussion,
02:11:29 when what’s violated is much deeper
02:11:31 than just kind of anything we can even,
02:11:35 in a middle class existence, can even comprehend.
02:11:38 A lot of times, American soldiers will go to war
02:11:40 because that’s what they’re told to do,
02:11:41 and maybe they disagree with the orders,
02:11:43 and maybe they agree with the orders,
02:11:44 but I get a sense that people in the Middle East fighting
02:11:48 all believe in what they’re fighting for.
02:11:49 It’s not a thing where they’re told to go do it.
02:11:53 I believe they really believe
02:11:56 that what they’re doing is the right thing,
02:11:57 and they’re defending some sort of principle.
02:11:59 Are you generally optimistic about the future,
02:12:03 speaking of war, of human civilization?
02:12:05 Do you think we’ll, people talk about the Fermi Paradox
02:12:13 and asking why haven’t aliens visited us,
02:12:17 if you believe they haven’t visited us.
02:12:21 One of the thoughts is that there’s kind of a great filter
02:12:25 that intelligent civilization reach a point
02:12:29 where it destroys itself naturally,
02:12:31 so that’s why we haven’t seen them.
02:12:32 They don’t last very long.
02:12:34 There does seem to be a kind of,
02:12:37 we seem to be advancing faster and faster and faster.
02:12:39 We keep developing more and more powerful ways
02:12:41 of destroying ourselves in all kinds of ways,
02:12:44 not even, just even to say nuclear weapons alone,
02:12:48 but there’s all kinds of new ways,
02:12:50 engineer pandemics, nanotechnology, AGI,
02:12:57 all those kinds of things.
02:12:58 It seems to be that the argument that we are going
02:13:06 to destroy ourselves in some kind of creative way
02:13:09 very shortly is not too crazy of an argument to make.
02:13:13 Are you more optimistic or pessimistic
02:13:16 about the prospects of human civilization
02:13:18 in maybe the 22nd century?
02:13:21 Like, is it possible that your generation
02:13:23 is the last generation to be alive on Earth?
02:13:26 No, but I wouldn’t say that five generations
02:13:28 from now that could be true.
02:13:32 I guess I think of it really selfishly.
02:13:34 I’m a big believer that when your time here on Earth is over,
02:13:39 the overwhelmingly vast majority of people
02:13:42 will be forgotten within 12 calendar months.
02:13:44 People with no family will be forgotten sooner,
02:13:47 and so I don’t give a lot of thought
02:13:49 to what will happen to Earth or mankind when I’m gone.
02:13:52 I give more thought to maximizing my time here now,
02:13:55 and I wanna do it in a way where I don’t,
02:14:01 I’m not overtly hindering the future of civilization
02:14:04 or humankind, but I’m definitely taking a me first approach
02:14:09 to how I live on Earth.
02:14:10 Do you have a philosophy behind why you have
02:14:13 or don’t have kids on this topic?
02:14:16 Because for many people, when they have kids,
02:14:20 there’s a sense, it’s almost like a genetic sense
02:14:23 or something like that, where all of a sudden,
02:14:26 you do start caring about what happens
02:14:28 five generations from now.
02:14:30 I mean, I think I’m just too selfish.
02:14:34 I mean, I think that’s the easy answer.
02:14:37 Like, I know that your whole life has to change.
02:14:40 You know, your focus, everything shifts,
02:14:43 and just don’t wanna do that.
02:14:45 And also, I think that there’s a level of,
02:14:48 I guess if I have to really unpack it,
02:14:51 there’s probably a level of lack of hope in the future.
02:14:56 Like, I don’t think it’s, I don’t think the world
02:14:59 and humanity is going in the right direction.
02:15:02 What does the right direction look like?
02:15:04 I think the right direction looks like people
02:15:08 coming back together in a more impactful human way,
02:15:15 in person, touching, feeling, talking face to face.
02:15:20 So all the things you’re describing is what we had,
02:15:23 as you mentioned before, when you were like a teenager.
02:15:25 So the state of the world.
02:15:27 But that’s because your mind was formed then.
02:15:29 It very well could be.
02:15:31 It very well could be.
02:15:32 It’s very possible that the virtual reality worlds
02:15:34 that we’ll create will be actually
02:15:35 a much higher level of existence.
02:15:37 In fact, like now we’re getting,
02:15:39 we’re moving slowly away from tribalism,
02:15:43 perhaps you could argue the ideas of nations,
02:15:46 and we’re going, we’re moving into the realm of ideas
02:15:49 and it could be a higher form of existence
02:15:51 where we’re sort of moving past the constraints
02:15:56 of our meat vehicles into the space of our minds.
02:15:59 It depends what you value.
02:16:00 Cause when you sit here and you talk about it,
02:16:02 and you’re talking about these things
02:16:04 in these humongous levels, on these macro levels.
02:16:07 And I don’t think a lot of people view it that way.
02:16:09 I think a lot of people view it as like,
02:16:10 what kind of pizza am I getting tonight?
02:16:12 Like it’s a much different outlook.
02:16:14 And sure, the virtual world that’s on the horizon,
02:16:19 I’m sure it’s got benefits and will help people,
02:16:22 but is it gonna help the things that you find valuable?
02:16:25 Like, was it gonna help commerce?
02:16:26 Okay, sure.
02:16:27 Is that the thing you find the most valuable?
02:16:29 Is it gonna help communication?
02:16:31 Well, it’ll help disseminating information.
02:16:33 Is it gonna help explain the information
02:16:35 you’re disseminating?
02:16:36 Probably not.
02:16:37 Is it gonna hinder interpersonal communication?
02:16:39 Absolutely.
02:16:40 And those are things I find valuable.
02:16:42 Interpersonal communication, talking to people.
02:16:44 Like it saddens me when I go into a restaurant
02:16:49 and there’s five year old kids who like,
02:16:50 slamming away on an iPad and can’t make eye contact
02:16:53 with anybody or teenagers who don’t say please and thank you
02:16:56 when they order from the waitress.
02:16:57 Like that to me is wrong.
02:16:59 That shit’s wrong.
02:17:00 And I don’t know this for a fact,
02:17:02 but I do attribute that to using technology as a crutch
02:17:06 when we’re raising raising kids.
02:17:08 So, you know, I think those are things that I find valuable.
02:17:13 I tried to empathize.
02:17:14 I mean, I agree with you as a person who grew up
02:17:16 in a certain age, but like prior to the internet, I suppose.
02:17:21 But, or at least solidified the early philosophies
02:17:25 of the way I see the world prior to the internet.
02:17:29 During the time of AOL, let’s put it this way.
02:17:31 Mm hmm.
02:17:32 Uh.
02:17:33 Brr.
02:17:33 Uh, what was your AIMS screen name?
02:17:36 I never had one.
02:17:37 Okay.
02:17:38 I was the last person I knew to get a cell phone.
02:17:40 I was so anti all that stuff because I just felt like
02:17:45 I didn’t want to be a part of it.
02:17:46 I did not want to be a part of it.
02:17:47 I joined the underground forum about MMA in 2000 or 2001
02:17:52 when I first started training.
02:17:54 I think right at the tail end, I got a MySpace,
02:17:57 but I didn’t have any of that stuff
02:17:58 and I didn’t want any of it.
02:17:59 I don’t know why.
02:18:00 It just was, I was not into it.
02:18:03 I felt like, like what are the good things
02:18:06 that are going to come out of it?
02:18:07 Oh, I’m going to get my package in two days
02:18:09 instead of four days?
02:18:11 Does that make my life better?
02:18:12 I try to, I try to deeply empathize
02:18:15 with a lot of experiences of other people.
02:18:17 And like one of the things I love,
02:18:18 like the smell of paper books and books in general.
02:18:22 And early on, this is like five years ago,
02:18:24 I just gave away all my books.
02:18:27 And I said, you know, I’m really going to try to
02:18:30 fall in love with the books in the same way I did before,
02:18:33 but now with a Kindle or not a Kindle,
02:18:36 like paper, white, whatever, the ebook reader.
02:18:40 And I’m still not there,
02:18:42 but I’ve been kind of trying to fall in love
02:18:45 with that experience.
02:18:46 And the same way I try to think like,
02:18:48 teenagers are really into TikTok now,
02:18:50 like making these short videos.
02:18:53 I try to consider the possibility that their existence
02:18:56 will be a much happier one than I’ve had
02:18:58 because of this kind of interaction.
02:19:01 From my sort of skeptical perspective,
02:19:02 it’s like the attention span is so short,
02:19:05 they don’t really deeply think or deeply experience things.
02:19:08 They construct a social layer that they present to the world
02:19:13 and they work on creating this social layer,
02:19:15 like the presentation to the world much more
02:19:18 than really sitting alone with their thoughts
02:19:20 and the sadnesses and their hopes and dreams and fears.
02:19:23 And like working on the project that is their own,
02:19:28 like actual person that exists in this physical world,
02:19:31 as opposed to working on the project
02:19:32 of a particular social platform that they show.
02:19:35 But like, perhaps that project,
02:19:39 like who cares who you are in the physical space?
02:19:42 Maybe what you are is what your Instagram shows.
02:19:46 That’s the more important project to work on.
02:19:48 Well, what’s reality?
02:19:49 Yeah, what’s reality?
02:19:50 Perception is reality, right?
02:19:51 So how other people perceive this constructed thing,
02:19:54 that’s their reality of you.
02:19:56 But is it your reality?
02:19:57 Like that, I mean, like we said earlier,
02:19:59 it’s how you want people to see you
02:20:03 is very rarely in line with how you really are
02:20:06 or how you see yourself.
02:20:08 And I mean, I can remember being like a 13 year old kid
02:20:11 and like when you go through a bunch of weird
02:20:13 13 year old kid shit, like sitting in my room,
02:20:16 like turning a red light on
02:20:18 and listening to like a sad record
02:20:20 and like trying to figure out what’s going on inside.
02:20:23 Sometimes you like it, sometimes you don’t like it.
02:20:25 But I feel like those experiences are lost
02:20:28 on kids constantly connected to a phone.
02:20:29 And like, you know, I don’t know what the remedy
02:20:32 for those situations is nowadays.
02:20:33 Like, I don’t know, do they make a TikTok video?
02:20:35 Do they blog about it?
02:20:37 Do they, you know, make a video or a…
02:20:39 Nobody blogs anymore, bro.
02:20:40 Whatever, man.
02:20:41 Or a video, a story about,
02:20:46 oh, this is what happened to me
02:20:47 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
02:20:48 Does that actually help them work it out?
02:20:50 Or does it just create more noise and more static
02:20:52 on how to get to the root of the problem
02:20:54 and learn about themselves?
02:20:55 I don’t know what future social networks are exactly.
02:20:58 I do know on a shallow level,
02:21:00 it does feel good when somebody clicks like on something.
02:21:03 I think that is more of a drug
02:21:05 than an actual deep long lasting fulfilling happiness.
02:21:09 But perhaps there’s a way to make a social network
02:21:11 that does lead to long lasting happiness
02:21:14 that’s somehow detached from the physical meat space.
02:21:18 I don’t know, but it feels like
02:21:19 you want to give that a chance.
02:21:21 Do you think when people are liking things on social media,
02:21:25 do you think there’s just a group of people,
02:21:27 an overwhelming majority of people
02:21:29 that are gonna like whatever you put out there,
02:21:30 they’re clicking like,
02:21:32 and then there’s another section of people
02:21:33 that just constantly scroll and like,
02:21:35 scroll and like, and scroll and like.
02:21:37 Like, do you think when you get a like
02:21:41 on content you put out,
02:21:42 that that like perhaps came from someone
02:21:45 who normally doesn’t like your content,
02:21:47 but like you’ve just changed their mind on something,
02:21:50 you’ve turned them around on it.
02:21:52 I tend to think that when I get likes on social media,
02:21:55 those are just the people that like all my shit
02:21:56 no matter what I say.
02:21:57 Like they probably don’t even read it.
02:21:59 Like I could put the most preposterous thing up there
02:22:02 and you’re still gonna get a handful
02:22:03 of the same exact likes.
02:22:04 That’s interesting.
02:22:05 But I tend to, the way I see likes,
02:22:07 you’re kind of, you said multiple things.
02:22:10 I think in one sense you see social media
02:22:13 as like a battleground of ideas
02:22:15 and like is a kind of indicated,
02:22:17 like the best possible like is an indicator
02:22:19 of like, of you winning over somebody on an idea
02:22:25 and they really appreciate that idea.
02:22:26 That’s the best possible like.
02:22:27 To me, a like is just two strangers smiling at each other.
02:22:31 Like a moment of like, like.
02:22:35 I got you, bro.
02:22:36 Yeah, I got you, bro.
02:22:37 Yeah.
02:22:38 Yeah, like fist bump.
02:22:39 Like, yeah, we’re in this fucking thing together.
02:22:42 This whole thing doesn’t make any sense,
02:22:43 but we’re in this together.
02:22:44 And yeah, it’s possible for likes to be that.
02:22:48 I don’t think the actual clicking of a like,
02:22:51 I think social media at its best might be that
02:22:54 where it’s like, I got you, bro.
02:22:56 And it’s a large scale as opposed to kind of
02:23:02 this weird, like crazy pool of dopamine
02:23:06 where everyone’s just obsessed with this likes and likes
02:23:08 and then the division drives like more
02:23:12 of this like weird, anxious engagement.
02:23:16 I think that’s just the dark version of it
02:23:18 in the early days of social media.
02:23:19 I think you called it a battleground of ideas,
02:23:22 but I think social media is nothing but a battleground
02:23:24 of fragile egos.
02:23:27 Well, but humans are fragile egos.
02:23:29 I mean, maybe, but I think the people,
02:23:33 I think particularly on social media,
02:23:35 they’re the most fragile.
02:23:37 Like, would you be doing all the things you’re doing?
02:23:41 What would you be doing if you weren’t,
02:23:43 if you weren’t podcasting and posting the things you do
02:23:50 on social media, what would you be doing?
02:23:52 You’d probably be much the same guy, right?
02:23:55 But I think that on social media,
02:23:57 the fragile ego people, what you see on social media
02:24:01 is not what they’d be doing without social media.
02:24:03 Does that make any sense?
02:24:04 Like you’re probably,
02:24:06 your mission is probably somewhat congruent, your path.
02:24:09 You’re just utilizing social media.
02:24:10 But I think a lot of people,
02:24:12 social media has changed their path
02:24:14 and now they’re doing something totally foreign to them.
02:24:20 And they’re only able to do it maybe
02:24:22 because of social media.
02:24:23 I think you’re focusing on a particular moment in time
02:24:27 of people in their less great moments,
02:24:31 like in their less great version of themselves.
02:24:34 I think you’re just focusing on the masses struggling
02:24:37 to become the best version of themselves.
02:24:39 And then you, yeah, sure.
02:24:41 For stretches of time, whether it’s days, weeks, and months,
02:24:45 you could be a shady person on the internet.
02:24:47 I think you’re focusing on that.
02:24:51 And unfortunately, social media platforms emphasize
02:24:56 they love it when you’re like that,
02:24:58 when you’re not doing great in your own life
02:25:01 because it increases anxiety, increases engagement,
02:25:04 makes you more susceptible to an argument,
02:25:07 and then really get pulled into like conspiracy theories,
02:25:09 all that kind of stuff.
02:25:11 But the other side works too.
02:25:12 I think there’s also the people who are on social media
02:25:15 fronting like they’re these positive figures
02:25:17 and going to the gym, whatever it is,
02:25:21 the positivity that they spew out.
02:25:23 But in real life, they’re the most negative fucks
02:25:24 you’ve ever met in your life.
02:25:26 And they’re just so full of crap.
02:25:27 And it’s just people playing to an audience.
02:25:30 It’s like you said, it’s like a politician sometimes.
02:25:34 A politician wakes up one day and they decide,
02:25:35 who’s the group I can pander to the best
02:25:38 to get the most likes equals votes?
02:25:40 And it’s the same thing on social media.
02:25:42 People wake up and whether it’s conscious or not,
02:25:45 what’s the group I can pander to the best
02:25:47 to get the most likes?
02:25:48 Is it the positivity motivated crowd?
02:25:50 Is it the woe is me crowd?
02:25:52 Like what is it?
02:25:53 Who’s gonna give me the most likes?
02:25:54 That’s what I’ll do.
02:25:57 I don’t know how to argue against that.
02:25:58 I guess it rings true what you’re saying,
02:26:03 but I just kind of refuse to believe it.
02:26:05 I guess I’m pandering to the optimistic crowd.
02:26:08 Like I met with my marketing team
02:26:10 and I just feel that love has the best,
02:26:16 what do you call it?
02:26:17 No, I don’t know.
02:26:18 There’s a lot of people that accuse me
02:26:19 of being like exactly that,
02:26:21 which is like, why are you always being positive?
02:26:22 It’s like, well, cause I’d like to be that.
02:26:26 Yeah, but I wouldn’t consider you someone who panders.
02:26:30 No, but I guess what I’m saying is like,
02:26:33 it’s easy to say that everyone is pandering,
02:26:39 but like maybe they’re just trying.
02:26:42 I do believe that social media platforms
02:26:44 could encourage people when they’re trying
02:26:46 to be the best version of themselves, whatever that is.
02:26:48 It could be like Conor McGregor talking shit.
02:26:50 It could be just being positive.
02:26:52 It could be actually creating cool things in this world,
02:26:55 putting out instructional videos for Jiu Jitsu
02:26:57 or like inspiring students to competition.
02:26:59 I don’t know.
02:27:00 All those kinds of things, educational content.
02:27:03 I think that people are trying.
02:27:05 Like I tend to believe that people want to be good.
02:27:09 Like they want to be successful
02:27:12 in whatever that definition of success is.
02:27:14 And they’re kind of struggling to do that.
02:27:15 And they’re just awkward at it at first.
02:27:18 And like, it’s easy to focus on the awkwardness
02:27:21 and the stumbling around as people have that.
02:27:24 And they start shitting on each other.
02:27:25 It’s easy to kind of focus in on that.
02:27:27 But I think that’s just like people, you know, white belts.
02:27:30 There’s more white belts in the world
02:27:32 than there are black belts.
02:27:32 But you gotta give them a chance to kind of grow.
02:27:34 I think on social media, if you put your stuff out there,
02:27:37 whatever your stuff is, your content, your views
02:27:39 or whatever, you let the chips fall where they may.
02:27:41 Like that’s a different thing than being like,
02:27:43 I’m gonna tweak what I normally might say
02:27:46 and put it up this way
02:27:47 because I want these people to like it.
02:27:50 And in terms, I also think I have a different viewpoint
02:27:54 than you do on people wanting to be successful.
02:27:56 I actually don’t think that many people
02:27:58 want to be successful.
02:27:59 I think people want to have the appearance
02:28:02 of wanting to be successful.
02:28:04 But to be successful takes a shitload of work.
02:28:06 And most people don’t want to put that work in.
02:28:08 So they craft this persona of a person
02:28:11 who’s trying really hard, but just can’t catch the break
02:28:13 or, you know, these motherfuckers
02:28:15 with getting back on my grind.
02:28:18 You’ve never been on a grind.
02:28:19 You’ve been on the couch.
02:28:20 I so disagree with you.
02:28:22 I get it.
02:28:23 I get it.
02:28:24 That’s your foil.
02:28:25 You enjoyed that guy on the couch with the cheetah.
02:28:27 That’s your motivation.
02:28:29 But just own it.
02:28:30 Don’t be like back on the ground, back on the couch.
02:28:33 Yeah.
02:28:34 Well, you’re like David Goggins,
02:28:36 who was like talking shit to the one guy
02:28:38 with the eating Cheetos.
02:28:39 And so doing inspires millions
02:28:42 to actually pursue their success.
02:28:44 I get it.
02:28:45 But I just think that most people
02:28:46 really do want to be successful
02:28:48 and are trying to work hard and they keep failing.
02:28:53 So, I mean.
02:28:54 But why is it continue?
02:28:55 I’m sorry to interrupt you.
02:28:57 But like, let’s take a person who’s overweight.
02:28:59 Do you not think that person wants to be skinny?
02:29:01 Of course they want to be skinny.
02:29:02 They just don’t want it enough
02:29:04 to put the pizza or the pie down and go to the gym.
02:29:07 They want it, but they want it to be easy.
02:29:10 Of course they want to be skinny.
02:29:11 Well, everyone wants it to be easy.
02:29:13 Right.
02:29:13 And of course people want to be successful,
02:29:16 but do they want it enough to do the work?
02:29:18 I don’t think they do.
02:29:19 I think the easy thing to do is to create
02:29:24 an outward facing persona of the person who really wants it.
02:29:28 And you get the same reward from a lot of people
02:29:32 as the person who actually is successful.
02:29:35 Very few people differentiate
02:29:36 from the person who’s found success
02:29:38 and the person who’s showing you
02:29:40 how they’re trying to get success on social media.
02:29:43 People see that as the same.
02:29:44 I see you’re going after the marketing dollar
02:29:47 that represents the people that want to work hard.
02:29:50 Yeah.
02:29:51 I like it.
02:29:54 You started a podcast recently.
02:29:57 Hell yeah.
02:29:58 It’s called, which people probably from this conversation
02:30:02 can, I guess we didn’t really talk about politics much
02:30:05 or the fact that you’re a business owner
02:30:06 or the fact that you’re a red blooded American
02:30:08 and love this country, America.
02:30:12 We didn’t really talk about that,
02:30:14 but from the name of the podcast,
02:30:15 they can probably infer it.
02:30:16 And the name is Please Allow Me.
02:30:20 Good name.
02:30:24 What have you learned from doing this podcast?
02:30:27 What’s your hope of doing this podcast?
02:30:30 People should definitely listen to it.
02:30:31 You have a few episodes out.
02:30:32 You’re damn good at it, which is very interesting.
02:30:36 I’m sure you’ll evolve and change.
02:30:38 So this is like the early days.
02:30:40 I’m curious to see where it goes,
02:30:41 but what’s your thinking around it
02:30:44 as an intellectual putting your thoughts out into the world?
02:30:48 I think that one of the things that COVID did
02:30:52 when we’re all kind of in lockdown was as a business owner,
02:30:56 made me take stock of what’s the future
02:30:57 of brick and mortar businesses.
02:30:59 And I’ve always been reluctant
02:31:01 to be an online presence in any way,
02:31:04 just because it’s not my thing,
02:31:05 because I believe that I’m a force of nature
02:31:07 and people need to experience me, right?
02:31:10 And the few characters that Twitter has are phasing.
02:31:13 It’s not enough to experience.
02:31:14 It’s not enough.
02:31:15 The force of nature, there’s John Clark.
02:31:17 I want you to feel physically uncomfortable around me.
02:31:19 This has been three hours
02:31:21 of me being physically uncomfortable.
02:31:23 I’m scared for my life.
02:31:25 And so I thought that that would be one of the ways
02:31:27 in which I could increase.
02:31:29 I came to the conclusion that with the lockdown
02:31:33 and potential future lockdowns,
02:31:36 in order to pay my mortgage and my bar tab
02:31:39 and my Grubhub’s out of control,
02:31:42 that I would need to find ancillary ways to…
02:31:45 Door dash slash Lex.
02:31:47 You don’t want to use Grubhub, Grubhub sucks.
02:31:49 Door dash.
02:31:50 They actually do.
02:31:51 Door dash.
02:31:52 No, I’m just kidding.
02:31:53 You can go back to your local fooder.
02:31:55 711.
02:31:56 Yeah, and get the food.
02:31:57 You can order 711 from Door Dash.
02:31:59 Or from Postmates.
02:32:00 Code Lex.
02:32:02 Okay, I’m sorry, go.
02:32:04 But anyway, I thought it was like,
02:32:05 oh, I should probably increase a little bit
02:32:07 my online presence and what would be a way to do that
02:32:12 that would be fun for me and entertaining.
02:32:14 And I thought, well, a lot of people, yourself included,
02:32:18 that I know have done some podcasts
02:32:20 and I find that inspiring and I’m fortunate enough
02:32:24 to know a bunch of cool motherfuckers
02:32:25 that I can talk to about a wide range of topics.
02:32:31 Then they’re starting to drop in.
02:32:32 There’s an aspect to which podcasting
02:32:34 does capture the force of nature better.
02:32:36 In the digital form, podcasting captures
02:32:39 the force of nature of a human being
02:32:40 better than other mediums, perhaps.
02:32:42 Yeah, definitely, there’s that.
02:32:43 I just felt like, you know when it’s midnight
02:32:48 and you’re in the bar and you get the sense
02:32:51 that the bar’s gonna close in 90 minutes
02:32:53 and you think, you know, not enough people have seen me yet
02:32:57 and maybe we should go to another bar
02:32:58 so more people can see me.
02:33:00 I feel like podcasting is like that for me.
02:33:03 Not enough people have heard my thoughts
02:33:05 and I feel like, my mom raised me to be a giver.
02:33:08 She didn’t want me to be selfish.
02:33:10 And I have these thoughts that I think.
02:33:15 It’d be a waste if you didn’t give it to the world.
02:33:17 People seem to really enjoy them.
02:33:18 Yeah, no, I enjoy them.
02:33:20 While I’ve probably been on my best behavior today
02:33:23 on this episode of the podcast.
02:33:25 So if you want the uncensored, unfiltered,
02:33:29 the full spectrum of the force of nature,
02:33:31 there’s John Clark, you go to the podcast.
02:33:35 Funny enough, I think you’re drinking
02:33:37 throughout most of the podcast.
02:33:39 Yeah, yeah.
02:33:40 Tequila, so they only last like an hour
02:33:42 because you seem to like, I’m guessing
02:33:45 that you just lose it one hour.
02:33:47 Like it’s like Cinderella turns into a frog or whatever.
02:33:50 One of the things I’m learning is
02:33:54 sometimes you have great conversations when you’re drunk
02:33:57 and sometimes you don’t.
02:33:58 Like I went into it with the write drunk,
02:34:01 edit sober mentality.
02:34:03 Yes, Hemingway.
02:34:05 Hemingway, yes.
02:34:06 But turns out that sometimes you don’t have that much
02:34:10 to edit when you’re super shit faced.
02:34:13 And so I’ve been scaling that back a little bit.
02:34:17 What do you mean exactly by that?
02:34:18 Like, where does it go wrong when you’re drunk?
02:34:20 I’m curious about that, because.
02:34:22 It gets, especially when you have a personal relationship
02:34:26 with the person that you’re talking to,
02:34:27 rather than trying to put some ideas on display
02:34:29 for other people to hear and maybe talk about,
02:34:32 you wind up just having like a conversation
02:34:33 with your bro about inside jokes and things like that.
02:34:36 And it’s like, it’s not that interesting.
02:34:37 No one wants to like watch, you know,
02:34:40 go to a bar and watch two people at the,
02:34:42 sitting there getting drunk and talking to each other
02:34:44 is different than listening to like strong discourse.
02:34:48 Yes.
02:34:49 One interesting thing as a fan of Joe Rogan,
02:34:51 I’m a fan, I’ve been a fan of Joe Rogan for a long time
02:34:53 and he has his friends over a lot, right?
02:34:56 And there’s a aspect to those three, four,
02:34:59 five hour conversations that I really enjoy.
02:35:00 There’s a magic to those.
02:35:02 I think he taught the world that those kinds
02:35:03 of long form conversations can work.
02:35:06 The, what you forget is Joe Rogan is a comedian.
02:35:10 His friends are also celebrities.
02:35:12 Like they know what it’s like to be on the mic.
02:35:14 They know there is a challenge
02:35:17 to actually having your friends on a microphone.
02:35:20 Totally.
02:35:21 Like they’ve never,
02:35:22 this is the first time they’ve been on a microphone.
02:35:24 And that’s actually what you’ve been doing,
02:35:25 which is a very interesting experiment.
02:35:28 And you find that some are more awkward than others.
02:35:31 Like they’re trying to find like,
02:35:33 what do I do with this kind of thing?
02:35:35 Why do you not talk to strangers?
02:35:37 Why did you go with people that you’re actually know?
02:35:41 So the simple answer is the people
02:35:43 that I selected are both interesting
02:35:44 and I thought would be good at talking.
02:35:46 But then I noticed the thing you just mentioned.
02:35:48 My buddy Paul did the first one and Paul’s a wild man.
02:35:51 And if you went out with Paul,
02:35:52 he can talk about a bazillion topics
02:35:56 to a certain, to a significant level of depth, right?
02:36:00 And he’s got a good understanding
02:36:01 and he’s got a unique perspective on a lot of things.
02:36:03 And I think he was the first guy invited on my podcast
02:36:10 and it was almost like he was on a little bit
02:36:15 less than natural about it.
02:36:16 And then by the time he loosened up with some drinks,
02:36:19 he was, it just, we were all shitfaced.
02:36:22 There’s a face shift though.
02:36:24 Totally, totally.
02:36:25 And so he’s gonna come back on
02:36:27 and he’ll be more comfortable with it.
02:36:29 And it’ll probably be awesome
02:36:31 because he’s a great person to talk to.
02:36:33 I had my friend Dave on who’s a restaurateur
02:36:35 and a musician, that one will be released pretty soon.
02:36:39 But yesterday I had a guy on
02:36:40 who you might really enjoy listening to
02:36:42 who’s a friend of mine, his name’s Mark Clem.
02:36:44 He’s an endurance athlete and he’s been compared,
02:36:48 he’s been called the white Dave Goggins.
02:36:51 And he talks about like those comparisons
02:36:53 and what he hates about it and the various events and stuff.
02:36:56 And he’s just a guy who’s just always kind of like natural
02:36:59 and like, I knew he’d be great to get on the podcast.
02:37:01 And so I started with friends who I thought could handle it
02:37:07 and who also are just really interesting people.
02:37:10 And I did it so that I could also establish
02:37:13 a level of comfort because it was a new thing for me.
02:37:16 And I knew that they wouldn’t really give a shit
02:37:18 what I was doing and be like, hey, this is cool.
02:37:20 I’m going over to JC’s house.
02:37:21 We’re gonna drink some tequila and talk shit.
02:37:22 There’s just gonna be a microphone there this time.
02:37:24 I mean, it’s amazing what you’re doing, the freedom of it.
02:37:26 I mean, you’re not currently doing any advertisements
02:37:28 or any of that kind of stuff.
02:37:29 You’re just exploring your voice.
02:37:30 This is one of the mediums that you’re just trying it out.
02:37:32 My 11 subscribers know what I’m about.
02:37:34 Your 11 subscribers, it’s in the double digits.
02:37:40 For both you and I, do you have advice for me
02:37:43 as a podcaster and for yourself as a podcast?
02:37:46 Like if you were to think like you’re gonna do say,
02:37:49 I mean, who knows, but say you do a thousand more episodes.
02:37:53 Like imagine a world where your life continues
02:37:58 in that direction, that this is like a little parallel.
02:38:01 Like for me, this thing is like a little side hobby,
02:38:03 but it’s also one that’s deeply fulfilling.
02:38:07 So not just from a business perspective,
02:38:09 which is not the way I think about it.
02:38:10 I just think from a life human perspective,
02:38:13 it’s I probably wouldn’t have this kind of conversation
02:38:16 with you off mic, like this long, this deep, this attentive.
02:38:20 There’s something really fulfilling
02:38:22 about these conversations.
02:38:23 So what advice would you have for me?
02:38:26 What advice do you have for yourself?
02:38:28 Oh, have you not introspected this that deeply?
02:38:31 Oh, I have advice.
02:38:32 I think the first advice I would give to you
02:38:34 is I think you should have me on more often.
02:38:37 Yeah.
02:38:38 Yeah.
02:38:39 That’s first and foremost.
02:38:41 And second is go on your podcast and have a conversation.
02:38:43 Well, I would say you come on my podcast when you’re ready.
02:38:49 Yeah.
02:38:49 When you feel like the product that I’m putting out
02:38:54 would benefit from your presence and vice versa,
02:38:57 not as a favor to a bro, but at the right time.
02:39:01 I do sense, actually, it’s an interesting,
02:39:04 there’s a dance to it, which is like Joe Rogan,
02:39:07 I recently did, like Joe Rogan had a conversation with me
02:39:12 on this podcast.
02:39:13 There’s a very specific kind of thing
02:39:16 where you’re helping each other out.
02:39:19 Yeah.
02:39:20 But the timing on that has to be right.
02:39:22 Right.
02:39:23 You know, like if that makes any sense,
02:39:24 you’re like supporting each other.
02:39:26 It doesn’t make sense.
02:39:27 It doesn’t make a difference, you would think.
02:39:30 Right.
02:39:31 Because it’s just people talking,
02:39:32 it doesn’t matter what microphones,
02:39:34 but it changes things.
02:39:35 It does, and there’s an order to the guests
02:39:36 that I’ve had on.
02:39:38 And the next guest that I’ll have on
02:39:39 will be a friend we have in common,
02:39:42 and we’ll be talking about teaching
02:39:44 and how to teach different styles of teaching
02:39:45 and what you’re teaching and all these other things.
02:39:47 Your mind’s saying who?
02:39:48 Oh, Sean Fisher.
02:39:49 And I think there’s an order to,
02:39:53 it’s not scientific, but it’s based on my gut.
02:39:56 Is it astrologically based?
02:40:00 What do you mean it’s not scientific?
02:40:02 Your gut, so you have a sense,
02:40:05 like Joe Rogan, for example, tries to do left, right.
02:40:09 He tries to alternate like this gut feeling
02:40:12 of like these bins of people,
02:40:14 and he tries to alternate worldviews.
02:40:17 That’s interesting.
02:40:18 Like he kind of, so that he doesn’t feel like it,
02:40:21 like it constantly shakes him.
02:40:25 It’s more about him,
02:40:26 like constantly pulls him in multiple directions
02:40:28 about like how he sees the world,
02:40:31 and that keeps him balanced.
02:40:32 That keeps the conversation kind of exciting.
02:40:34 That’s interesting.
02:40:35 I did it in a way where I knew Paul was gonna be wild
02:40:39 and we might get a little out of control
02:40:40 and like have some technical hiccups along the way.
02:40:43 And then my friend Jake,
02:40:44 who’s a CEO of a pharmaceutical company,
02:40:47 that was very timely because he was able
02:40:49 to speak to vaccines.
02:40:50 And that was kind of scientific flavored.
02:40:52 Yeah.
02:40:53 And what I learned listening back on that
02:40:55 is like I learned for myself about,
02:40:58 I wasn’t asking the next level questions
02:41:02 to really draw out great answers.
02:41:04 And part of it is you’re simultaneously hanging out
02:41:09 with a bro, but also I was trying to learn something
02:41:11 and I didn’t learn what I wanted to learn.
02:41:12 And that’s my fault because I didn’t ask the questions.
02:41:15 He’s an expert in that field.
02:41:17 He doesn’t know that I’m an absolute dipshit
02:41:19 when it comes to that stuff.
02:41:20 And so I didn’t do a good job.
02:41:22 And if I don’t know it,
02:41:22 that means the thing I was trying to tease out of him,
02:41:25 no one who was gonna listen is gonna learn that either.
02:41:27 So I learned that.
02:41:30 Then I had the one with soap on,
02:41:31 which I thought was pretty good.
02:41:34 He’s a wrestler, he’s also a farmer.
02:41:36 Right, and a social worker.
02:41:38 And kind of humble and thoughtful.
02:41:40 Yeah, thoughtful.
02:41:41 Thoughtful guy.
02:41:42 Like slower, he’s not a wild man, that kind of thing.
02:41:45 Not a wild man in the sense that I’m wild,
02:41:46 but he does preach this philosophy of being more wild.
02:41:51 Like being in touch with nature.
02:41:52 Nature, that kind of wild.
02:41:54 Right, right, right.
02:41:55 And then my buddy Dave, he came on because I love music.
02:42:01 And I wanted to talk a lot about music.
02:42:03 And he’s one of the most knowledgeable people
02:42:05 about music that I know.
02:42:06 And he’s got a restaurant coming up.
02:42:07 And I thought my buddy Mark Clem,
02:42:11 being an endurance athlete,
02:42:12 like when you hear some of the things,
02:42:13 I didn’t even know these things existed
02:42:14 that this fucking kid did.
02:42:16 He’s out of his mind.
02:42:17 And I think Sean and I will have
02:42:19 probably the most intellectual conversation
02:42:21 that I’ll have had on my podcast to date.
02:42:24 And so there’s a little bit of alternating there,
02:42:26 but I did it that way so that.
02:42:32 There’s a gut feeling behind, oh, so that what?
02:42:34 Is there, where are you going?
02:42:36 Do you know where you’re going?
02:42:39 I don’t have a destination, but I want to,
02:42:42 I want to see it to its end, whether that’s,
02:42:48 it gets somewhere of its own volition
02:42:51 or it takes on a new life at some point.
02:42:53 And then I know how to drive it where it needs to go.
02:42:57 I think the advice I have for both of us is,
02:43:04 I think I need to, no, I don’t think so.
02:43:09 I think for you, I see an inner turmoil.
02:43:12 I see a storm that bruising you
02:43:14 because I feel like there’s a concern
02:43:17 for what you’re saying.
02:43:18 And is it gonna lead to negative feelings towards you
02:43:27 or the thing that you’re doing?
02:43:29 And I feel like we’re different people
02:43:33 and I have such an easier time saying fuck off to everybody.
02:43:37 And that’s a liberating thing,
02:43:40 but it also can keep me from achieving the thing
02:43:43 that I want to achieve,
02:43:44 because I’m so flippant with opinions
02:43:48 that I don’t listen to them
02:43:49 and let them direct me when they should.
02:43:51 There’s a balance.
02:43:53 Let me push back on that.
02:43:54 Please do.
02:43:55 I think you believe that about yourself
02:43:57 and nevertheless, your social media presence
02:43:59 indicates otherwise.
02:44:01 If I were to be very harsh,
02:44:02 you’re like one of the mentally strongest
02:44:05 character wise people I know.
02:44:07 And yet on social media,
02:44:09 you don’t put your face to the world.
02:44:11 So one of the reasons you sense the fear in me,
02:44:15 which exists, I of course want to let go of it,
02:44:18 is because I put my face and my name on things.
02:44:23 And so when I say something stupid,
02:44:26 it hurts when people say like,
02:44:29 look, that guy said something stupid.
02:44:32 And so there’s a fear of saying something stupid
02:44:34 in all of his different forms,
02:44:36 like of being my lesser self.
02:44:38 It’s the same feeling I have in competition
02:44:40 of losing, not just losing.
02:44:42 Losing doesn’t matter.
02:44:43 It’s embarrassing myself.
02:44:45 I like losing, being the lesser version of myself.
02:44:48 And when you put yourself out there in a full way,
02:44:50 I think you,
02:44:52 I would venture to say you’re also,
02:44:54 because you said you wouldn’t give yourself that advice.
02:44:58 I feel like you’re also afraid
02:44:59 of standing behind some of the ideas,
02:45:01 because right now you’re doing guerrilla warfare.
02:45:03 You’re free to be,
02:45:07 to say things, to speak your mind from the sidelines.
02:45:11 But the moment you’re standing,
02:45:13 and when people can throw shit at you,
02:45:16 I feel like you haven’t faced that fire yet.
02:45:19 You’ve been avoiding that fire.
02:45:20 I’m not sure, maybe I’m projecting.
02:45:22 No, to a degree you’re right.
02:45:24 I think a big thing for me was putting ads on
02:45:27 for our Jiu Jitsu online curriculum.
02:45:32 That was a big thing for me,
02:45:34 because for several reasons,
02:45:36 like in the climate of everyone under the sun
02:45:39 having a Jiu Jitsu tutorial online and social media,
02:45:44 not social media necessarily,
02:45:45 but forums specifically that critique and shit the bed.
02:45:49 One thing I have not done that I’ve thought about doing,
02:45:51 and probably you’re right in your analysis of it,
02:45:54 is I’ve not gone the way that I do see you
02:45:56 on things like Reddit and say,
02:45:58 hey, Reddit, I’m doing this.
02:46:00 Like I could easily go to Reddit and say,
02:46:01 hey, Reddit, I got this website up.
02:46:04 Here’s a sample video,
02:46:05 whatever the fuck people do on there.
02:46:07 But yeah, you’re right, I haven’t done that.
02:46:08 And part of it might be because I know also,
02:46:15 if I get suckered in for one second into the negativity,
02:46:18 I’m gonna become an online warrior,
02:46:20 and I don’t wanna be that person.
02:46:22 So yeah, you’re probably right.
02:46:23 So you’re self aware about that.
02:46:25 I mean, one of the things I’ve early on decided
02:46:27 is like, I’m just gonna be,
02:46:30 I’ve always really enjoyed being positive.
02:46:32 So I’m going to make sure I stay that way.
02:46:35 And when there’s negativity, it’s like,
02:46:38 I’m not just ignoring it.
02:46:40 I’m literally just returning it with positivity.
02:46:43 I probably am the same way as you,
02:46:45 most people are with egos.
02:46:49 You wanna become the warrior against the negativity.
02:46:51 And like many wars, there’s no winning.
02:46:56 There’s no winning that war.
02:46:57 Especially online.
02:46:58 Especially on the internet.
02:46:59 And so in that sense, that’s been a journey
02:47:02 to try to face the fire of the negativity.
02:47:07 And it’s not actually that bad.
02:47:08 It sounds like very dramatic.
02:47:09 There’s not many people that are negative,
02:47:11 but it’s like when you put advertisements,
02:47:14 so you put your face on an instructional
02:47:15 or something like that.
02:47:17 It just, there’s an aspect to it
02:47:19 which you’re being a salesman,
02:47:20 you’re being a gimmicky thing.
02:47:23 It just feels wrong.
02:47:24 And people will point out, look,
02:47:26 that guy is a fraud, like it’s fake.
02:47:28 Look, he’s trying,
02:47:29 but those people are going to be out there.
02:47:31 And if you’re like trying to do your best,
02:47:33 trying to be authentic and not trying to like
02:47:36 be a snake oil salesman
02:47:40 and being like the shady kind of salesman,
02:47:44 I think they keep you honest.
02:47:46 They keep you honestly being the most authentic self.
02:47:49 And podcasting is like the best medium
02:47:52 because you’re being real.
02:47:53 Those one hour plus that you put out there,
02:47:56 that’s like real John.
02:47:58 That’s not a,
02:48:01 like people fall in love with that.
02:48:04 And that’s the beautiful aspect of podcasting
02:48:06 is there’s no,
02:48:09 long form doesn’t give any possibility
02:48:12 for you not to be authentic.
02:48:14 And that’s why it’s a magical medium.
02:48:17 The tough thing is you’re not,
02:48:21 popularity takes time, not popularity.
02:48:25 And so like you shouldn’t be doing it for that reason.
02:48:27 And I don’t,
02:48:29 it’s not the thing that really drives me.
02:48:33 Yeah.
02:48:34 Is there three books,
02:48:35 technical fiction philosophical that had an impact on you?
02:48:38 Like, is there books that you kind of return to
02:48:40 that you enjoy and that you find profound in some way?
02:48:44 I would say like probably the thing I read
02:48:46 is in one of Emerson’s essays that I read
02:48:49 at a point in my life where I needed that type of thing.
02:48:52 And I read self reliance and,
02:48:55 he’s got a ton of good essays,
02:48:56 but I thought self reliance was probably
02:48:58 the most impactful to me.
02:49:01 I’ve read later in life,
02:49:03 like a handful of existential authors
02:49:07 and they’re all great,
02:49:09 but at the time a lot of it has to do with timing.
02:49:12 And when I read self reliance
02:49:14 and it was about the individual that was really good
02:49:17 and made it was impactful.
02:49:19 There’s also a book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull
02:49:22 by Richard Bach, I think.
02:49:25 And it’s kind of along the same lines.
02:49:27 It’s about this seagull who wants to break conformity
02:49:30 and learn to fly and do all these other great things.
02:49:33 And so it’s a very short read.
02:49:35 So if people are interested in that, that’s good.
02:49:39 The book, which I was lucky enough to read
02:49:42 before the movie ever even came out,
02:49:44 which is just a pleasure of mine was American Psycho.
02:49:47 Just from a writing standpoint,
02:49:49 I found that the writing was awesome.
02:49:52 Brett Easton Ellis is the author of that
02:49:54 and several other books
02:49:55 who have like intertwining characters.
02:49:57 He’s a New England prep school guy.
02:49:59 And so a lot of like the stories
02:50:00 and a lot of the visuals rang true for me
02:50:05 and anyone who can write four pages of prose
02:50:07 on like a Huey Lewis album, I mean, kudos to you.
02:50:11 And I also would say no one will do this,
02:50:14 but I would at some point read as much
02:50:19 of one of the big three religious texts as possible.
02:50:24 It really gives you perspective.
02:50:25 There are so many overlapping stories of religious texts.
02:50:30 And then the way that they’re written
02:50:31 gives you a unique perspective
02:50:33 on different people throughout the world.
02:50:37 And if you’re a Roman Catholic,
02:50:41 maybe don’t read the Bible, read one of the other texts.
02:50:43 And that would be an interesting take, but.
02:50:45 I’m embarrassed to say that, first of all,
02:50:47 I’ve never read the Bible, which is embarrassing to say.
02:50:50 It’s like I read a bunch of stuff about the Bible
02:50:52 and not the Bible itself.
02:50:53 And the same, not equating them,
02:50:55 but I haven’t read Marx directly.
02:50:58 I haven’t read Mein Kampf by Hitler directly.
02:51:01 And it feels like sometimes,
02:51:02 cause you think like it’s better to read stuff
02:51:05 about the books, but ultimately you want,
02:51:08 because like the analysis will be better
02:51:10 in texts that followed it,
02:51:13 but there’s value to actually reading like the actual words.
02:51:20 Yeah, there’s this power in the words
02:51:22 that there’s a reason why like the Bible
02:51:25 is one of the most impactful books ever.
02:51:29 You know, it’s in those words
02:51:32 and it’s a value to return to those words.
02:51:34 The communist manifesto is truly frightening
02:51:36 if you read it in like modern context.
02:51:41 It’s worth reading.
02:51:42 Yeah.
02:51:43 It’s worth reading.
02:51:44 And so is Mein Kampf, not obviously,
02:51:46 well, it’s not obvious, but it is not very well written,
02:51:50 but all the ideas that led to the evil that is Hitler
02:51:53 are all in there, which is fascinating to think about
02:51:57 because probably some of the world leaders at the time
02:51:59 should have probably read the books.
02:52:01 He outlined everything he’s gonna do.
02:52:02 Offline, you mentioned an Emerson quote that I really like.
02:52:08 So let’s try to end on this powerful quote.
02:52:12 It’s easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion.
02:52:15 It’s easy in solitude to live after your own.
02:52:17 The great man is who in the midst of the world
02:52:19 keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
02:52:24 What does this quote mean to you?
02:52:26 It kind of reinforces the idea
02:52:29 that you’re here to live your life
02:52:33 and that even when people are trying to
02:52:39 influence you or comment on the decisions
02:52:43 that you make for your life,
02:52:44 you should have the strength to stick by living your life
02:52:48 the way you want to live it,
02:52:50 that there’s one immutable truth for you
02:52:53 and it doesn’t apply to everyone.
02:52:55 And so people who frown upon
02:53:03 or judge the way that you live
02:53:06 because it’s not, air quotes, conventional,
02:53:10 their opinion should not be something
02:53:13 that impacts the choices that you make.
02:53:17 You’re in a relationship now.
02:53:18 Yes. Is that deeply meaningful?
02:53:20 Or are you ultimately still alone?
02:53:23 Are you still just a man in the cold
02:53:24 of the life that is suffering?
02:53:27 No, I’m a man who’s warm, nestled in a bosom.
02:53:31 I don’t think there’s a better way to end, John.
02:53:37 You’re a friend, you’re my coach.
02:53:39 I’m sure we’ll talk many more times in the future.
02:53:41 Thanks for wasting all your time with me today.
02:53:44 Thanks brother.
02:53:45 Thanks Lex, I had an awesome time.
02:53:46 Hope to be back soon.
02:54:16 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.