Julie Kedzie, a former MMA fighter with nine years in the cage—including battles through multiple broken noses and shoulder surgery—shifts from combat to storytelling, earning a master’s in non-fiction writing while critiquing the sport’s commercialization, steroid testing loopholes (like TUEs for spironolactone), and toxic branding. Her fight against depression post-retirement, linked to hormonal birth control crashes and Adderall use, mirrors broader struggles of athletes transitioning from extreme physical discipline to new passions. Rogan and Kedzie argue that MMA’s raw honesty and failure-driven growth contrast with society’s avoidance of truth, making fighters uniquely resilient yet vulnerable to systemic pressures. [Automatically generated summary]
I think that, I think there's something with MMA and creativity.
And I think whereas, because the opportunities maybe haven't been out there for women as much, when it comes to like, I guess, finding an avenue for that creativity, they're, you know, they go into other things like academics and arts, and then they find MMA, and then they try to do both.
And I think that those of us who started back then, of course I'm not knocking the people who are doing it now because they're tremendous athletes and the women going into it now, but the environment was such that you had to be really obsessive.
And I'm sure that many other female athletes at this time Have that kind of obsessive streak.
But I think at that time, because we, I mean, you would scour the internet, like the MMA Underground, that was, I was always looking for fights.
I was always trying to find somebody to find me or the Sure Dog forums, all that stuff before it got kind of trolly.
And they videotaped me and they said, what do you want to do with this?
And I was like, oh, I'm going to be in the UFC. And that was 2004. And, you know, everybody laughed at me and was like, no, I'm going to be in the UFC. Just watch me.
I actually can't believe I did.
But, I mean, I can believe.
That was my goal.
That's what, you know, I didn't do well in the UFC, but I got there.
That's a crazy feeling to try to explain to someone that has never done anything remotely as dangerous as competing in MMA. Try to explain that to someone.
If you were talking to some Woman who's a doctor or a professor or a just normal job, you know?
Those aren't the most normal jobs, but you know what I'm telling you.
I'm just saying, if you were trying to explain to someone what you want to fight, like you're looking forward to something that's going to make you terribly nervous, you're probably going to want to throw up right before you go out there, you're going to be freaking out, and then finally you're going to be in there doing it.
Everybody has that in them to a certain extent where they just have to push themselves in some direction.
Although, you know, when it comes to those long hikes, I've also heard from people who have failed at the Appalachian Trail, you know, after a certain point, you're just putting one foot in front of the other.
So I think that there's also that sense of burnout.
But those people with that drive to do something, well, passion, I think, is the perfect word for it, that just want to push beyond what they know into a different sphere.
The problem is it does become addictive and your body or your mind can't always keep up with it.
I mean, that's how we settle the new world, right?
That's how mountains are...
Our climb, our summited, that's how we get to space.
It's because there's something in human nature that's so precious that you just have to keep pushing.
It's a collective feeling, but then there's some individuals out there who just stand a little bit apart or just in maybe a different playground, and they just want to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and they want to be the ones, and that's It's how we achieve.
The thing about MMA, though, it's like you have to, I guess, balance that pushing with preserving your physical health, especially someone as smart as you.
It's got to be an interesting sort of an act, a balancing act, because Yeah.
I retired kind of young, I guess, but I understood that it was the time I needed to because things were not going to function in my body on the level that they needed to.
And my mind wasn't in a place where it would push beyond that.
I feel like I did a lot of great stuff in my life.
I'm proud of the things I've done, but I think that I was also surrounded by people who really guided me well, who really like going back to school and stuff like that after my career.
This is the influences of people who were just like they care about the people on their team.
They care about who they surround themselves with.
But I didn't know any of that.
I just kind of showed up.
And first, you know, I drive to the gym and Greg says, oh, follow me back to my place.
And immediately I back into the dumpster at the gym.
I'm a total klutz.
But no, he came out to Russia with me for that fight.
And I wanted to impress him because I didn't realize till he was in that gym.
I was just like, oh, this is going to be like my sensei.
Like this is the this is like I feel like a samurai.
And this is like the person I want to.
I forgot what that relationship is called.
This is the person I really want to lead me and guide me.
He's my leader.
And I wanted to impress him so badly.
That fight, first thing she does right away was against Yulia Berzakovich.
First thing she does, punch me in the nose, just shatters my nose.
Blood everywhere.
I was like, great, this is again.
And it was right after the Carano fight, so I was like, I was used to losing, and you never want to get in that space of being used to losing.
But somehow I clicked, and, you know, I did pretty well in the fight, and I ended up getting a mounted triangle on her and finishing with strikes.
In between rounds, another corner man put cold water on the back of my neck, and I thought that I just farted.
I thought it was a fart.
Turns out, and this poor girl, mounted triangle, no less.
And they just put us on a bus, separate me and Amanda Buckner from our corner men and everything.
Because we'd won our fights.
And they take us to this palace.
And I cannot remember whose palace.
Alexander or something like that.
It was in St. Petersburg.
And it was beautiful.
Gold, damask, and silk.
And just...
I'm in fight clothes, and I'm like, what is that smell?
And I was like, I'd seen a guy puking backstage because of a headshot, and I was like, I must have rolled in it or stepped in it.
I smell so bad.
And Jean-Claude Van Damme randomly walks up to us.
I mean, it was just like, you know, Fedor's here, Jean-Claude Van Damme, this and that, like just weird and surreal, already head trauma going on with me, like not really in my right mind.
But that's usually, I stumble into things without knowing, which is probably best, because I'm a very nervous person, like, I'm a very intense person.
And so being there and just having had the fight, I don't know, like, when I think about it, I'm just like, I'm sorry, Donald Trump, but your hooker's pissing on you thing, I beat you.
I mean, it's a good, the Tap Out story is like a good cautionary tale for, like, beating a brand into the ground to the point where you gotta, like, go up to some people and go, hey, man, you can't wear our shit.
It's so weird to, yeah, it's so weird to think, like, branding and all of that.
That's a huge, like, now I'm becoming so aware of it because I know other writers, that's a really big avenue because if you think about Donald Trump, I mean, he's become president because of his brand, right?
He's the best example, I think, of a guy who really isn't beholden to any special interest groups.
But I think what he offered and what Trump...
Offers as well is that they're outside of the system in some way Trump appears to be like way more inside the system than he was giving on to be but At least it shakes up this ridiculous They have this like really cryptic sort of way of doing business and bizarre way of intermingling money and influence and politics and putting it all together and It's just something has got to come along to let people know, like, hey, this system sucks.
It doesn't represent us.
It's foolish.
It's ancient.
It was made up back when people used to write with feathers.
And, you know, like this entire election, everything about it has pushed me into being like, no, man, I'm a straight up socialist.
And I used to resist that title.
I used to say, no, I'm I'm a liberal and I'm this.
No, I'm a socialist.
I don't actually even think that I agree with some of the liberal things that have been espoused during all this.
I think that we are at a point, an evolved people, You know, in such a respect that we have to take care of each other and it has to be mandated from a bigger power because we don't take care of each other otherwise.
Well, there's another discussion totally, but I think student loans are disgusting.
I think what they're doing by subsidizing education and making people pay these ridiculous rates, not only that, if you go bankrupt, it doesn't matter.
You still have to pay your student loans.
You can never get away from that.
No, you It's not a single other business venture that you get into, and you would consider investing in your education and possibly your future as some sort of a business venture, business slash educational venture.
I'm not a fan of this really regimented, go through four years of high school, go through four years of college, then you do this, then you get a job.
You're 30, you should have a child.
Now you have a child.
I just don't buy any of it.
There's so many different people out there with so many different dreams and aspirations and interests.
It's so rigid.
And when kids see this rigid path in front of them, first of all, it gives them anxiety.
That's what it used to give me.
I used to see people that were going to college and getting degrees and getting jobs.
I'd get anxious because I'm not like them.
I feel like a loser.
I feel like an outcast.
And I think that If we made education free and made it more available to people, I just don't think, I think that if we could spend the amount of money that we spend on the military, not that we should cut back the amount of money, but there's got to be that same amount of money or in the neighborhood of that same amount of money that could go towards infrastructure, that could go towards education, that could go towards impoverished communities.
There's like zero effort made to build this country back up.
Well, I would say, yeah, and looking at the proposals on deck right now, the little that's being used for it, like the NEA and stuff like that, that's being taken off now.
The what?
The National Endowment for the Arts, stuff like that, that gives actual people and artists who maybe don't fit the mold but actually have a venture going for them that they could be successful with if they got some sort of funding or support.
I actually love modern art if I know what's going on, but if I don't, then I feel like I'm just not getting it, and I don't understand what's happening.
I do think that I think not pushing art on people.
I shouldn't say pushing art, but I guess providing opportunities for art for people.
Not just art as in painting or sculpture, but I mean like writing and then literature.
And it's the ways...
I do think that the rigid educational system where you're just like, you do this, you do this, you do this.
Some people's brains just aren't wired that way.
But there are other avenues for them to be creative and to find themselves.
And like I found with MMA. I mean, I was pre-law.
And then my last semester of college, I was like, I don't want to go to law school.
I had to get mine scraped out, and they cut out, I think they're called the turbinates, these big lumps in there, and they kind of cut them down to open up the path.
I think it was tearing before that fight because I always had a lot of shoulder pain.
But I've had shoulder pain on both sides a lot.
But during the Tate fight, I remember throwing a left hook or something.
Just, whoa, what the hell happened?
My labrum was torn all the way through.
But I had this weird genetic thing called a Buford complex, which, that's a hilarious name for something, but it's like a thickened tendon, so it was holding my arm up.
So I didn't know that it was actually torn all the way through.
It wasn't, like, limp.
But I do remember, like, not, all of a sudden, not being able to base on my left side and being like, whoa, what's going on here?
Yeah, that's what the surgery was for, but it was a really intense surgery.
I didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal because I hear about people going to get their knees scoped and stuff like that, but I couldn't get out of bed for a week.
My mother had to come take care of me, and I was 32 years old.
I was like, this is embarrassing, but I couldn't actually get out of bed and move, and I ended up having a bad reaction to the medication, and yeah, it was...
You know, and I was also the matchmaker, so I was actually...
I stepped down from that when I went back to school, so I'm no longer the Invicta matchmaker.
But part of my job was I had this really regimented checking the girl's weight twice a day.
I should say the fighter's weight, but I'm a girl, too, so I can say girl.
But, you know, I would check their weight twice a day and I had them text me their weight and I'd be like, okay, I need you to send me a picture of what you're weighing on your scale right now and compare it to this.
Like, I was kind of a bitch, but I didn't want fighters missing weight on my watch.
The problem was they were still going to miss weight anyway.
There's something archaic about it.
It's not...
It needs to change.
I think more weight classes, you've said that before, I think more weight classes is a really good idea.
I think for women, more importantly, because when you're talking about six pounds, you're talking about a greater percentage of body weight for a lighter person.
You know, when you're talking about 10 pounds for a heavyweight, it's like they take a shit it's 10 pounds.
You know, there's giant people like Francis Ngannou.
That guy could probably lose 10 pounds in three minutes if he wanted to.
That entertainment side of it was never something I captured myself.
I didn't have that little niche, sort of.
But when I see fighters do that, like her who can be the full package, who can destroy an opponent and make the fans look forward to just watching her walk onto a stage, I love that.
And when we talk about branding and stuff like that, you kind of wonder who falls into the category of staying who they are as a brand, as a fighter, or who creates something for themselves and how much of that is actually authentic or how much they try to pretend.
Well, you're putting them under this massive microscope.
When you see two fighters go to war, you're seeing their souls bared out.
You see so much in what they're capable of, like how they're capable of focusing, pushing themselves.
What they've done to discipline themselves to get ready physically.
I mean you can see that.
You see them express themselves with their endurance.
Like talking about Mighty Mouse again.
Like you see what amount of work that guy has put in in the gym when you see him in the fifth round moving a thousand miles an hour and not even breathing heavy.
It's like there's expression in that.
Like you're seeing something that this guy is like showing you everything he's got.
Yeah, and he's showing, there's that click that happens with some fighters where they're getting beaten down and all of a sudden they turn it around.
Misha Tate's a great example of that.
Like, you know, in her fight with Holly, she kicked my ass too with the armbar.
You know, she turns it around.
Something happens in there.
And you can see that that's the warrior thing that has won actual wars in people, where they've, you know, like...
I don't know, it makes me think of Henry V a little bit, you know, like, you know, just those moments where we are outnumbered, this is gonna suck, I'm losing, everything's going against me.
Alright, here I go.
I'm still gonna keep pushing.
And it's like, you know, it's like moments like that.
If you can look at fighting from, I guess you don't take fighting personally.
Maybe, I don't know how to explain it by taking it personally, but if you can invest yourself in those moments of glory, Is that easier for you to do now that you've retired than it was to do while you're competing?
Although it was Myspace then, which is embarrassing to say.
And then it's funny because I had this tension with her because I was like, I don't want to market myself in that direction.
It's not...
Who I am exactly when it comes to MMA. And then, of course, Greg sent that there was an uncomfortableness between us, and he took us up to the top of a mountain and made us run sprints until we were crying and holding onto each other and became sisters.
He was just like, all that's bullshit.
You are sisters, you're training partners, you're here for each other.
And it was amazing.
Something clicked in my mind where I was just like, oh yeah, she can promote herself however the fuck she wants to.
So it made a lot more sense to me when I could step back out of what the boxes that I had placed myself under, or the containers, not necessarily boxes because I didn't feel closed in, but the containers that I was comfortable working within for myself aren't the same for the person next to me.
Well, I think there's a natural inclination to try to shoot down potential rivals or potential, you know, like you're looking at people and you're trying to pick apart what they do.
I mean, in a lot of ways, when you're a fighter, you have predatory instincts.
I mean, you must.
When you're sizing up a future opponent, there's no way you're not looking at things they do wrong or things that you think you can exploit or maybe, you know, maybe she doesn't work hard enough or maybe she misses weight because her discipline's off and you start looking for holes in their game.
Of course.
And you're going to do that with a rival in the gym as well.
And, you know, I wouldn't even go so far to say we were rivals, as I was 30 pounds heavier than her, so I was just a bully.
But, you know, the truth of the matter is, also, because, especially the early terrain of women in the sport, when there was another woman who came into the gym, this could either be your best training partner ever, or it could be somebody coming in here, you know, to pick up.
You don't know.
And I think men look at the gym that way, too.
I think they size each other up in the gym with a new partner coming in and stuff like that.
Sure.
And it's interesting because it sounds so sexist when I say it, but it's also, I don't want to lie, sit here and lie to you and say, think that, you know, like I, when other women would come into the gym, I would be like, yay!
You know, that evolved over time.
And especially because the atmosphere that Greg created there was incredible.
Like, I was the first MMA girl really in that gym.
And then, you know, and then Michelle was there and then other people.
And now it's like there's a huge women's team over there.
Especially, you know, when, because there was quite a few female boxers in that gym, and I thought it would be an interesting thing to do, but I just never took that path.
I was a pretty decent boxing sparring partner.
Like, I learned how to imitate, you know, their opponents and stuff.
But yeah, I think I was always better in the gym than I actually was in competition.
Yeah, and me just thinking, okay, this is what fixes me getting dropped or whatever.
But I did think towards the end, if I got dropped three times in sparring before the fight with Cohea, and that was in one day, and I was like, okay, Three times in one day?
You know, I mean, and he's been stopped and he's lost, but...
It's just the ferocity in which he approaches fighting.
It's heart and will and just determination.
It's all together in this indomitable spirit package.
Diego might not be a world champion.
He might not ever win a world title.
The amount of fans of that guy has won.
Because when he's so entertaining, what you're trying to see when you're watching two people fight is one person try to figure out a way to triumph over the obstacle in front of them that is the person, over the body that wants to stop, over the lungs that are burning, over the legs that are giving out.
We're kind of being nice about it, but it is kind of at the brink of death.
I mean, Robbie Lawler, Rory McDonald, that was, to me, the brink of death.
I mean, you're getting really close.
Those guys were fucking going to war.
And when Rory's nose caved in and blood's pouring out of his face, and he just collapses and he couldn't take it anymore, I mean, how far away from death is that?
It's so much, I guess I'm working on so many writing projects right now and so many things that I'm trying to analyze MMA from such a different perspective now, but if you think about it, what they've sacrificed to that canvas, like what they've given, like all of these fighters, all of these greats and all these not greats who've still given that part of themselves to that canvas and you wonder, what's the payback exactly?
It's kind of a utopia, but it's a controlled utopia.
It's a heterotopia.
It kind of molds those two ideas.
I was going to ask you about podcasting, because you kind of create one.
When your voice goes out over the air, and when you're doing these things, you're...
Entering into people's heads, you yourself in a way, or your voices, and it's creating this space that's other, where they're connected with you, right?
And it's just an other space.
And I think that fighting and I think the cage is that as well.
I think it's this new avenue.
It's this new area.
And that's where I feel so troubled when it comes to the commercialization of it all.
Because I wonder, people are still fighting for glory and stuff.
She got used to a very specific thing happening when she fought.
It was her dominating.
And when that didn't happen, in that one fight, look, she tried her best against Holly, but Holly fought the perfect fight and Ronda fought the wrong fight.
She gets devastated and chalks it off to lack of training, chalks it off to distractions.
So this time she's going to do no media.
She's going to do no interviews, no nothing.
Just go in there and just be bulldog about it.
But when you see the discussions about this fight and you see people that were behind the scenes, they were all convinced that she was going to steamroll Amanda Nunes.
There were so many people back there.
I was like, you guys are out of your fucking mind.
I was saying before the Holly fight that Amanda was probably the most dangerous fight for her.
Because Amanda's really fucking good on the ground.
No, and, you know, Amanda's got actually a very good clinch and a very good awareness of where her body goes.
And her center of gravity seems to be, you're right, she's so long, it seems to be a little bit lower than, you know, I think it would be very hard to launch her on her head.
I didn't know who she was, and we weren't going to talk.
And then I just got to absolutely adore her.
But, you know, back to Rhonda and all of that, I feel like...
It's interesting, the Diego Sanchez, kind of the mentality, the bite down in the third round, I think you have something there where you push when it's against you.
And I wonder that something, that knockout interrupted her, or when Holly got her and interrupted her forward progression, and then going back, pulling back away from the media and stuff, I almost wonder if that in itself was...
Kind of a denial of that interruption and maybe trying to create a space for herself.
I don't know.
I'm so obsessed with this idea of creating our own spaces and what we're doing in our own lives because everybody's so different.
It's very important.
Yeah, and she was trying to, I guess, plot out the way to this fight and to wait at this victory against Amanda Nunes and not being distracted and not doing press and stuff like that.
And I almost think if she had done the press, And this is just a theory.
I don't know her that well.
I think she's a lovely person.
But if she had done the press, if she had exposed herself to all of that again, if she would have had more of a triumphant attitude, because she would have known, when you know what it's like to lose, And you know that you can still get up the next day and be okay?
And face the people who you said a million things to, a million confident things to, and you're wrong?
Or you were wrong for a night?
And understand that you can actually still get them to see your side?
You know, I think there's a bunch of problems technically with how she's preparing.
You know, I think her work with Edmund made her look really good on the Mets.
But there's a big difference between looking good on the Mets and having a bunch of different options tactically.
When you're in a fight.
And I think a lot of that comes with just long, long sessions in the gym, a lot of experience, and years and years of sparring and fighting.
But she was just, go forward, go forward, attack, go forward, attack.
And when she started getting hit, she didn't have any answers.
She was like throwing up this sort of push-away front kick and moving away against Amanda, and she was kind of done from like the first couple of punches landing.
And I think that if you look at real seasoned strikers, you know, like a good example would be, boy, there's a lot of good examples, but Ioana Jacek in her last fight against Karolina Kivalkovic.
Okay, that is two very seasoned strikers.
There was a lot of feints.
There was a lot of different angles.
There was a lot of different approaches.
It was try one way.
That doesn't work.
Let's go over here.
That doesn't work.
Let's go over here.
Now I got something.
Let's try that again.
Went to the well too many times.
Try back to this again.
It was a communication.
There was a conversation going on.
What you're seeing a lot of fighters is they're shouting out one or two words, but they're not articulate.
Meaning their approach is very, if you see someone and they just keep going to the big right hand over the top, big right hand over the top, it's like you're just banking on this one thing and someone is going to be able to figure out that approach.
And it might not be the person that's right in front of you, but someone who's really good is going to find their way through that and they're going to be able to talk circles around you.
I talk all the time about When I watch fighting, I try to break it down objectively.
I'm saying, what it mirrors in a lot of ways is communication.
And that really, truly articulate people that have a long history of using a deep vocabulary are way better off with a nuanced conversation than someone who is just...
They might be able to say, get off my lawn!
You know, they might be able to...
Yell out one phrase, but how can they adapt to someone who's passive?
How can they adapt to someone who tricks them?
How can they adapt to someone who paints them into a corner?
Can you figure your way out of a trap?
Do you understand a trap?
And when you see it in fighting, you see people getting set up and you see things happening.
Like Anderson.
Like Anderson Silva was a master at setting people up and a master of that Like, figuring out the language of what you do.
What do you do?
Like, what's your thing?
Like, you could see him when he was moving with guys.
He would stand southpaw, he would switch up, he'd move around, he would give you a little of this, and he'd just try to...
And then eventually, he'd figure out your rhythm and then start dropping shit on you.
And when he did, it was masterful to watch, because here's a guy that had figured out whatever rhythm you're on.
And I think that describing that as a conversation with another person, it's perfect.
It is a dialogue between two people.
It's a dialogue of physicality and strength and stuff like that.
But there's a conversation happening there in the cage.
And I think...
When we go back to maybe the aspects of...
I actually think that Ronda Rousey's training might have been a little bit too boxing oriented.
Not that she didn't throw kicks.
Not that she didn't use her judo.
But she didn't prepare for chaos.
And I don't know that boxers always prepare for chaos.
Because it's such a...
A layered, this step, you move your foot this way, you move your foot this way, you move your head this way, you respond this way.
You know, it's so beautiful, but when you see boxers like Tyson, who could throw that double right, you know, the hook to the body and then the uppercut and stuff like that, he could prepare for the chaos because he could bring chaos.
And I think that in her early fights, there was chaos there because she wasn't as sure of herself.
It was, ah, I gotta get what I need to get.
And that unsettled fighters.
But then when she got more comfortable with hitting the mitts, when she got more comfortable with them moving forward and having everything laid out for her perfectly, you're going to do this, you're going to spar this person, this is going to happen.
Now, I'm making a lot of assumptions here.
I never trained with her.
I never sparred with her.
I see what I've been presented by UFC media and commercials and stuff like that.
And I do as well as people that I know that trained with her that didn't like the environment and thought that it was just a little bit too unrealistic.
And that's, I think, what maybe the conversation between old school MMA and what's going on in MMA right now with commercialization, and it's worldwide.
And I, on one hand, I'm so happy for the fighters that they're getting paid more, that, that the opportunities are there, that, you know, they don't have to worry about crappy sponsors, although I'm not a huge Reebok fan, but whatever, it's not my business.
Like, but the, they don't prepare for chaos anymore as much.
And chaos was what we thrived on back in the day, right?
We didn't know who we were going to fight.
I fought three people, one, three people one night, one time.
I lost a fight.
And then the next day I took a kickboxing fight because I was so mad I lost an MMA fight.
Like, there was no regulation and I could have gotten seriously, like, injured, right?
But at the same time, it was that chaos that was so beautiful, like finding where you are in the chaos and, and finding your own patterns in that and, and preparing for it.
And that's, I don't know, that's the old school MMA that I miss a little bit.
Well, there's definitely something interesting and fascinating about that chaos.
But there's also, when you're talking about a professional and when you're talking about someone who's a world champion in particular, there's real value in preparation for an individual opponent.
And when you switch up an opponent last minute or something happens, like when Conor McGregor last minute wasn't facing Rafael Dos Anjos, all of a sudden he was facing Nate Diaz on 11 days notice.
I mean, that kind of chaos is a completely different animal.
I totally agree with you, and I might be contradicting myself here, but I don't care.
Because also, when Jon Jones rejected the fight, the initial, like when Chael was supposed to step in for him, and he said, no, that's not what my team wants.
And he got so much shit for that, and the whole event got canceled, but at the same time, it's just like, that's a pretty smart professional move to make.
Although it was a move that affected a lot of people negatively who were supposed to be on that card and it affected the company negatively, it was a very big power move.
And it was also a move towards saying, hey, I'm more professional than this.
Well, and there's also wild motherfuckers do wild motherfucker shit.
Like you want some dude who opens up a shogun with a flying knee when he's 22 years old and catches shogun on the chin.
That's Jon Jones.
That whole wild man thing is the reason why he's so goddamn good in the first place.
Because he has amazing confidence.
What makes Jon special is like the Gustafson fight.
A fight that he admittedly was in shitty shape for.
Really wasn't training, was partying way too much, wasn't really paying attention, didn't think Gustafson could beat him, and got dragged deep into the fifth round.
Still wound up winning.
He didn't fold up.
He fought.
I mean, he wound up winning the fifth round.
He wound up taking it to him.
He pulled that fight out.
And he made it...
I mean, look, Gustafson's a bad motherfucker.
It's not like Gustafson was a pushover.
But Jon Jones made that fight way harder than it was by not being in condition, not being in shape, and still gutted it out and won.
Yeah, he had that, I think, that part of him that I hope he returns to that is all about that, I don't know, those Diego Sanchez moments, like when you just, it becomes your spirit that's fighting there, not just your body that's fighting, but something else has to take over and take the reins.
You know, and then he's coming back in July, and he'll most likely be fighting the winner of Daniel Cormier Rumble Johnson, which is in a couple of months.
If they could do that in time, because you've got to go May, June, July, maybe.
I mean, it really depends on how this fight goes.
But he still has a chance to pull it off and still has a chance to be the greatest of all time.
But he's fucked up pretty hard.
I like John, though.
I just think John's around the wrong fucking people.
I think that we all wake up at some point, and I just think his wake-up hasn't happened yet.
Like, even with maybe with the suspensions and the stuff that he's saying.
But I think that he also tried very hard to brand himself a certain way that, again, authenticity, inauthenticity.
You know, like, I think that I'm sure that I'm not a religious person, so I don't really know how to say if somebody is being super Christian or not being super Christian or being whatever that they identify with.
Like, it's not my...
That's not my knowledge sphere.
But I will say that it didn't seem, the things that he was saying didn't jive with how he was and it came out and people hated him for it.
I had to take a few acting classes when I got a development deal, but it was because I already had a television show.
And so they said, hey, you should...
Learn how to act it was really that it wasn't that it was something that I trained for no I am I was doing stand-up and I got a development deal to do a sitcom and so then all of a sudden I found myself out here and You know I was like When I moved out here I was like Five, six, something like that.
And I was just trying to figure out what I'm doing.
Like, why am I acting?
Like, this whole thing is weird.
You know, and then a couple years later, I guess I was 97, I was training at Carlson Gracie's place, and Vitor was 19. And he had just beaten John Hess over in Hawaii.
I was a white belt over there, and Mario Sperry trained there, and Carlos Pageto, and Marillo Bustamante used to watch those guys train.
I mean, I try to do my best every time I do it, but honestly, what my contribution is is so...
I don't want to say it's insignificant, but it's not very important, because what it is is just me trying to do the best I can to describe what I see in front of me, to make it as entertaining as I can, but also honor what's happening.
You're where the flow of information has to come through for the average viewer.
No, I really admire that about you.
I'm not trying to suck up, but your enthusiasm is something I really tried to model myself after.
I think that I'm nowhere near the level of commentator that you are, but when I hear you get excited about stuff, I'm really happy to hear that because it makes me think, okay, as somebody who's communicating what's happening in this sphere that...
So many people know about but so many people don't really understand like what's going on if somebody's clenched up or they're grabbing a bicep here and why that's important.
Why the way this fighter is shifting their hips is so important.
You know and it's cool to see that kind of enthusiasm so that I guess other people can get excited about something without even knowing they're getting excited.
Like their blood pressure comes up a little bit when they're watching and that's neat.
Like, when the whistle blows, like, what happened?
I don't know what happened.
And, you know, people make fun of me all the time for that, but it's not interesting to me.
Kickboxing, boxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, and MMA, watching all that takes up plenty of time.
I don't have time for anything else.
I just don't and the consequences just aren't the same I mean when when I watch a kickboxing match or I watch an MMA fight the consequences are so extreme that I'm engaged I'm captivated and with MMA You know, when I'm watching it, and I'm there live, and I'm cage-side, and I'm watching all this stuff go down, and I'm not just watching, but I'm also analyzing it.
So I'm trying to decipher patterns, and I'm data chunking, and trying to figure out what could possibly happen.
What am I seeing?
Am I projecting this, or am I actually seeing this?
And just trying to be as empty about it as I can, but also be so enthusiastic about it.
And then there's moments like when Darren Elkins beat Mursad Bektik.
It's just so hard for me not to cry inside the octagon.
It's amazing to, I guess, to see your passion for that and to see you are able to witness that and you're still able to translate that kind of passion to people.
No, and also you're going to wear yourself down to a certain point where it's just like you're going to be too sick to actually be able to experience what you need to experience for the viewer.
Did you have that kind of passionate connection with comedy?
Like when you're doing stand-up and when you're in that kind of engagement, do you feel that flow where you're just almost to the point of emotion and you want to cry?
It's important in that I know that people come out to see me and they pay money and I want to do my best.
It's important that I'm trying to constantly improve.
What I do is I dump all my material out every two years.
So I write a special.
I perform it, I get it tight, and then I record it, I put it on whatever, on Netflix or whatever, and then I'm done.
And then I have to write a whole new one.
And that process is a long and painful process.
Like, I did my Netflix special in November.
It came out in November, so it's been December, January, February, March.
We're four months in now, so it's like on, like, Fawn legs.
It's like it's just sort of like trotting along now.
It's not really like a cult.
You know, it's not really like fully formed yet, but it'll get fully formed and then once it gets hardened and once I know that it's ready to rock like I could smash for an hour, then I chuck it out.
And so there's a lot of intensity in that regard, but it's a different kind of intensity.
I think they kind of it's a fun intensity.
There's emotions like There's, you know, jokes that don't go well, and it's painful, and I don't enjoy that, but I also know that that's where the growth comes from.
Like, those shitty sets or what, like, some of my biggest leaps have come from post-sets where it wasn't good, and then I sort of re-engaged and reconnected and got more fired up.
And as soon as that stops being important to me, I'll stop doing that, too.
But...
It doesn't have the same feeling that fighting has.
Fighting has this unique moment, this unique thing to it, like that Darren Elkins fight, where it's like, man, there's not a whole lot of things like that in the world that you can witness, where they're that fucking intense, and that I have the honor to try to do service to, to try to I would say fighting is one of the few arts or sports or however you want to phrase it, experiences in the world where the stakes are immediately high.
I think that's, I was kind of a lousy matchmaker in that sense that I cared about the girls too much.
I really did.
And I was just like, I didn't want anybody to lose ever.
Somebody has to lose.
I was terrible with the math.
I'm very hyperactive.
When I'm in the zone, I can pay attention really well, but when I'm not, my mind is everywhere and I can't really focus.
I wasn't great in that respect.
But, man, when you see something come together, though, when you see the fight actually happen, And it does matter who wins or who loses, but it also doesn't.
What matters is just watching that physical engagement and these people perform.
And they're not performing, but they are performing.
Like, Well, when you see a fight like Misha Tate versus Holly Holm, when Misha Tate takes Holly Holm down in the fifth round, locks that choke in, and Holly doesn't even tap, she's throwing punches in the air as she goes unconscious.
And, you know, there's people on the outside that would look at that and go, oh, that's just barbaric and it's just violent.
But you see Misha Tate getting that belt strapped around her waist and her reaction...
Because, yeah, Counter-Strikers, they have their own, I guess, their own methodology with being able to read what's happening.
And if somebody doesn't initiate, there's a lot of waiting.
Yeah.
And waiting is, you know, it makes the fans hate you and it makes you hate yourself because you get more frustrated and your emotions get more intense, right?
Yeah, especially when you get to a fight like Wonderboy Thompson versus Tyron Woodley, where you see this waiting thing and it's just going on and on and on, you know, five rounds, and you're like, get to the fucking fight!
The whole reason I went back to school is I was reading some of those long-form essays the MMA writers were doing.
And I was like, you know, and I was doing the matchmaking.
I was doing okay at it.
I was doing the commentary, but I was like, I'm just not reaching that thing that I was reaching when I was fighting.
Something about me is not being expressed.
So I took a class, a writing class, wrote an essay, and it got me into school.
And I was like, I mean, Iowa, I mean, it's like one of the best schools for writing.
Iowa does two things well, wrestling and writing.
And to get in there, yeah, I was just so...
And I feel alive now.
I feel like I'm back to being the Julie I need to be.
Where I'm hungry for something again.
And it's words and stories.
And I think that MMA is the perfect, I don't know, avenue for all of these stories.
Because, you know, everybody...
At first, in old interviews, people would just say whatever the fuck they wanted to say, and they'd do whatever the fuck they wanted to do.
And then everybody got savvy to the media, right?
And they're just like, I'm only going to reveal this.
I'm only going to reveal this.
And other people played on that, and they're like, I'm going to give more information.
I'm going to give sound bites.
And so I think that when it comes to communication and words in MMA and what fighters are giving, there's a lot about what's not being said.
That can really be explored, and I'd really like to know what that is.
I want to know what makes a fighter, not what makes a fighter decide to fight, but what makes a fighter decide to wake up the next day after a fight.
You know?
Yeah, I mean it's so emotional, it's so crazy, and fighters are such insane people that after a loss, I'm surprised actually there aren't more suicides and stuff like that in the sport, and I don't mean to get super serious, but people take it to such a high level.
And with the amount of pain that they invest in themselves and the amount of emotion towards it, when fighters decide, I lost this fight and I lost this fight, but I'm going to get back in, I'm going to do it again.
Like, if they decide, they make the conscious choice to stay, not necessarily, I don't know if it's living in the sense of biologically living or just living in that space still of wanting to be a fighter, of wanting to do that.
You know, I was just talking to Uriah Faber about that, but I think that he's a real good role model to young fighters because he's as enthusiastic about his post-fight career.
You know, he's like, hey, this is a new chapter in my life and I'm excited.
I'm excited to do different things now.
I went out with a win.
And I love the fact that he did that.
He fought in Sacramento, in his hometown, against a tough guy in Brad Pickett.
Beats Brad, and he's like, I'm gonna go out with a win, and I'm on to the next chapter.
Thank you all so much.
And he gets this giant round of applause, and good for him.
Yeah, he came from a place of, I guess, of Oh, I think privilege is the wrong word because he built what he built.
So it's not privilege, but maybe he came from a place of being able to see a bigger picture.
But then you think about maybe the Joe Fraziers of the sport, people like that, when they stopped fighting, what, you know, he built a gym, he did this, he did that.
But like, what...
I don't know.
Fighter stories to me are incredible.
The reasons that people fight and the reasons that commentators commentate.
The reasons that people are still so emotionally invested in this sport and what those stories are and what keeps people going.
I love that.
I think that there's something to the creation we have built.
I mean, the Fertittas and Dana built like the UFC. But I mean, we as fighters, as a fighter community, as an MMA community have built something incredible.
And I am interested in why we still want to occupy this space or what makes people want to leave it but then come back.
And maybe that's just my own personal journey because I can't get out of it.
And I'm finding in words and in communication, I'm finding something there.
I'm finding that I can access this again.
It's harder for me because I have to use my brain more.
But I can't just go in there kicking and punching.
I have to sit and think about things.
I have to formulate these questions for life that I've never even thought about.
But you've got to love the questions, like Real Kay said.
The questions are what's important, not even the answers.
It's just finding the right questions to ask and going through that.
And I've really rediscovered a love for this sport by stepping away from it Every commentary job that I do now, every time I'm in there for Invicta, I'm just, this is amazing.
And finding that enthusiasm again is great.
I didn't have that towards the end of my fight career.
I mean, if we think about seeing that for the first time, if you visually picture that right now, because we're not used to it, yeah, it would be weird.
But I mean, if it was the norm, then I don't think it would be that weird.
Women fighting was also in my mind connected to a certain sense of frustration for the athletes that they had like Lucia Riker could never get Christy Martin a fighter.
You know there was always that thing like I had always known Lucia Riker was like the best women boxer and everybody kind of knew but she couldn't get that fight like where everybody would know how good she was and then everybody's like oh Christy Martin's the best female boxer like god damn it no she's not like you gotta she's gotta fight this woman from Holland You know, and then it sort of never happened.
And then, you know, there was Mia St. John, who was more like a girl's, a good boxer, and she was cute, and she was really working that angle.
And then there's Layla Ali, of course, who was Muhammad Ali's daughter.
But there was no one who caught fire.
There was no one, there was no like, oh my god, this girl's gonna fight this fight, this is gonna make, like what we have now.
Like, what we have now in MMA is incredibly unique.
You know, like, Valentina Shevchenko and Amanda Nunes.
That is just two super high-level MMA fighters who happen to be women, who have worked their way up the ladder.
Amanda Nunes is obviously the champion.
Valentina, though, is just knocking on that fucking door.
And that is an exciting, dynamic match-up for the women's bantamweight title.
That didn't exist in boxing.
There was never that sort of match-up, build-up thing in...
By the way, there's other people waiting past Valentina.
There's contenders.
It's real.
And there's contenders at strawweight as well.
It's real.
And so I think that...
There was always this sort of thing that was connected with women fighting that it wasn't legit, that it was kind of like the WNBA. As good as an athlete, as some of those players are, no one gives a fuck in this country.
It just doesn't catch on.
I'm sure they give a fuck and they're probably mad that I'm saying that, but you know what I'm saying.
Marketing-wise, for whatever reason, it's not seen as an equal sphere to the NBA. Right.
And what's been unique about female fighters in MMA is that because they can share the same octagon on the same night, because they're in the same playing field, then there's a chance to see more of an equal setting.
I mean, when you have someone like Ronda Rousey who's headlining a massive card and the pay-per-view sells 1.5 million buys, that is gigantic for women's combat sport, for combat sports in general.
And it's unprecedented.
Anybody who says it's not is crazy.
Before Ronda Rousey came along, there had never been an athlete like that, that had been dominating in a combat sport and on a worldwide scale where everybody knew who she was.
With what she presented, well, she's an incredible person, but with what she presented, she had the package that transcended, oh, this is a female fighter.
It was Ronda Rousey is a fighter.
And of course, they focused on her femininity.
They focused on her being a female.
But at the same time, I mean, she was doing way better than the men when it came to universal appeal and stuff like that.
I understand that and I think that there's something to that.
It's unfortunate because I know Chris Cyborg.
I was the matchmaker with Invicta when she was fighting for us and I was there for her weight cuts and I saw some of her struggles and what a kind, kind person she is.
Just a genuinely kind person.
But then there's this persona of toughness and her saying this kind of thing to Rhonda or she's saying this to Gina and then they're saying it back and it's this, that, you know, and it's just like for some reason, I never thought she got the respect that was due.
But at the same time, then she did fail a drug test.
So it was like, like, unfortunately, you carry the burden of having your entire legacy be questioned when you mess up like that.
You know what a female body looks like and you know what someone looks like when they most likely have been introducing male hormones into a female body.
And that he has natural testosterone and that you can accentuate natural testosterone pretty significantly, especially if you're someone like a Kevin Randleman or, you know, like a Marvin Eastman who just has this extreme mesomorphic build.
There's a lot of people that are built that way that don't do anything illegal.
Right, but if you do wish for the best for women, wouldn't you definitely want to take a hard stance against someone who's introducing male hormones into a female body?
And also the problem with that is a lot of the effects are permanent.
I think a lot of the effects of a woman altering her physiology with male hormones, there's a certain amount of those effects.
And this is also argued against men taking steroids.
There's a certain amount, and there's been tests about this, this isn't just speculation, that certain amount of physiological changes are permanent when you take steroids.
Because you're introducing these hyper-human levels of testosterone to a male system.
See, that comes back, like the testicular atrophy.
It's really the shutdown of the endocrine system, but that comes back, and when it comes back, there's a certain amount of the improvements that you've received because of those steroids that you will keep forever.
Yes, which is one of the things that infuriates people that have been clean their whole life, is that someone can test positive, and then they continue on their career, even if they are not taking steroids now, they have a benefit.
They have a permanent benefit of taking those illegal drugs.
I mean, there's nothing I can say that would champion that being a good thing.
It's not a good thing.
But I will say that she did not test positive since 2011. And so if there was that advantage in something like that, we saw somebody like Urena Baer in kickboxing still work against that and still find victory.
First of all, the Jorena Barge fight was a testament to Cyborg's courage and fighting spirit that she took that fight because nobody wanted to fight Jorena for a long time.
And if you don't know who Jorena Barge is, if you watch her Muay Thai fight, she's some ungodly number of fights she's had.
She's a multiple time world champion and she's just so stunningly technical as a fighter.
But, you know, you look at them physically, they looked very, very different.
You know, Cyborg's just this attacker, berserker style, and fought a very good fight.
I'm a fan, and I tweeted this many times along, that the UFC needs to make a 145-pound women's division, but...
There's also some realities that you have to address and those realities have to be addressed for the other women that haven't done anything as well just to look up for them.
And it's hell on your body to be a female athlete.
In many ways, it's wonderful and encouraging.
But you're right.
And again, I don't have an answer for that.
I don't think there's a clean slate.
I do think that Chris Cyborg is in the position right now with her career.
And with the things that have been questioned about her, the things that have been done, she has actually the opportunity now to really spearhead making it all clean.
And coming forward with whatever happened in the past with this spironolactone.
They believe they're doing that or in the process of trying to do that.
Maybe it has been cleared.
But what that means is, look, it's not hurting anybody she competes against.
It's not that.
It's just they don't like people taking it because it can mask some of the effects of androgens in the female body.
And it also, as a diuretic, diuretics are illegal because diuretics also can mask some of the potential properties of testosterone or hormones or That's why they did away with all the IV rehydration.
Well, I know girls that just compete in jujitsu tournaments that do testosterone.
I mean, they just want to be stronger and better, and there's no money in it.
They're just trying to get an edge.
And it's kind of weird.
You know, it's weird.
It's, you know, it's amateur, and no one's testing, and they say everyone's doing it, so they're doing it.
So you go, okay, like, I got no position on this.
I mean, I don't know what to say.
But when it comes to MMA and when it comes to professional sports, and back then, if it was the Wild West, I'm sure a lot of people were doing it, you know?
But Chris Heiborg became sort of the poster girl when she looked the part and then tested positive.
Yeah, the real problem though with what's going on today is they're offering these massively steep Steep sentences for people and suspensions for people so like first if you get caught I think the first suspension is like two years and then if you get caught again it's even deeper and then three years it's three times if you get caught a third time it's like life you're done yeah like Vanderlei Silva one is the most disturbing one to me because he ran away from a test and they banned him for life like that is fucking that's abusive yeah you gotta wonder how many other fighters have run away from it but
Well, not only that, but when you talk to Chael Sonnen about how sketchy the USADA people were when they came to him, like they made him do it in a broom closet and give boys like this.
Is this sterile?
Like, who are you?
Do you have an ID? Like, they don't want to give you ID. They just want to test right away and you just have to listen to them.
So can you imagine being on that level where you feel like your body is in a certain, it can perform a certain way and then have that taken away from you?
Well, there's the thing is that with youth is, you know, you have all this athletic ability, you have all this strength and speed, but you don't have any experience and wisdom.
And then as you gain experience and wisdom, father time slowly takes away your physical gifts to the point where you're trying to, like Bernard Hopkins when he fought Joe Smith.
There was that weird moment where you realize like, oh, we've passed the point.
Here, where your knowledge and your hard work and discipline makes up for the fact that your body's deteriorating.
Then you're fighting this young bulldog who's just an animal.
Yeah, well, then you look at this, and you're like, you didn't have to recognize it for a couple years.
They turned back the time.
I mean, you went from Vitor Belfort, who fought Rich Franklin, Vitor Belfort, who fought Sexyama, and, you know, you look good, but then, when he got on the testosterone, it's like, all of a sudden, you have the phenom, this demon.
I know some people who use some shady ass doctors and what the doctor would literally tell them is you take testosterone for a short amount of time, take a lot of it, get your system hooked on it, then get off of it and then get tested.
So then they would go, well, it's got low testosterone.
Because your body, you jolted it down with like 10 weeks of high-level tests, and then you say, oh, I'm feeling a little run down, and maybe I have something wrong with me.
I have a medical condition.
It's like a lot of it was just guys who take steroids, and their body had stopped producing it naturally, and then they got a therapeutic use exemption, and they were shooting it up all the time, and then they were going in there, and they were 27 years old.
Well, the benefits, if their endocrine system caught up, say if they did a certain amount of cycles and they gained a certain amount of strength, they would keep some of that benefit permanently.
But when their endocrine system crashed because they had taken all the steroids and then they got off of it, that's when they can test.
Probably, but while they're at a low testosterone, they're going to experience very significant decreases in endurance and stamina and your intensity.
All that's going to be down.
Your body's like...
Really depressed.
Like that's one of the things that happens to men when they get head injuries, is that head injuries and traumatic brain injuries cause a disruption in the pituitary gland, which causes your body to produce less testosterone, which oftentimes leads to soldiers, football players, fighters becoming severely depressed.
And oftentimes they lean towards alcoholism and drug addiction.
And a lot of that is trying to combat that depression.
I don't know if it caused depression, but I would say that the changing chemicals in my body post-fight.
So you can't just say it's like this one thing, but I would say a heightened estrogen probably...
I was all of a sudden eating carbs again for the first time.
You know what I mean?
A lot of things were different.
I wasn't exercising however many hours a day.
Everything in my life was different.
But I will say, you know, I put on 30 pounds within...
Six months of retiring.
Wow.
Yeah, it was insane.
I mean, I have breasts now, which is a great thing, but it wasn't something I was used to for a decade.
And, you know, it's so funny about how when your reproductive chemicals or when all that gets messed up, how that actually messes with your brain as well.
Because I can understand these men coming off of head injuries if they're having a decreased chemical, like testosterone or whatever it is, I can understand that actual...
Weirdness, like taking part, and that affecting their brains severely.
Yeah, there's a big history of depression in my family.
I went through a really rough time.
And then, remarkably, I discovered writing, and that was great, and that's led me on a completely different path.
But yeah, post-fighting, there's something about that.
It's not even...
I mean, I think the chemicals are a great...
I'm not a doctor and I'm not a scientist.
That's my family.
They're all scientists and shit.
I don't know any of it.
I don't know the science behind it exactly.
But I will say that I don't know that it's necessarily always chemical.
I think that there's a big part of it.
It's also purposeful.
I think when you don't have a purpose, when you don't have a goal and something to strive for, then your body reacts to that as well and your brain reacts to that as well.
You can run three miles a day, but it's not the same as sparring every other day or whatever you're doing or doing jujitsu twice a day or whatever it is.
I mean, again, I'm not, I have a great therapist, but I'm not, you know, I can't tell you what that is.
But I can say that there is something to having all of that in balance, having, being chemically, I guess, physiologically in balance with the way your body's supposed to be.
And then have your exercise the way it's supposed to be, and then have your purpose the way it's supposed to be.
And it's such a weird balance as human beings that when any of those things get thrown out of whack, you're headed for trouble.
And the way he looked at it was like that people are really concentrating constantly about what they eat, but they're not concentrating constantly about what they take in their mind.
And that you should really be aware of your mental diet, too.
You know, that if you snack on too much junk food mentally, it'll weaken your mind, you know?
Yeah, I think that we don't push ourselves mentally a lot.
And when it comes to that, I think Honestly, it's just coming down to, I mean, it's not a cure-all, but reading.
If you just read, if you just sit and force yourself to read and you actually engage with a text, all of a sudden you realize something is happening in your brain.
You're creating space for more thought in your brain.
But also, you can't be exposed to too much bullshit.
And who knows what's bullshit and what's not bullshit.
I mean, there has to be a discernment somewhere along the line.
Some sort of, like, I guess...
I don't know, literary consciousness or something like that, where you know that...
I mean, I'm addicted to Twitter.
Are you?
Oh, I love Twitter.
I love it.
And I know that I'm a giant bitch on there, and I don't care.
And I, you know, the part of me is like, I hate that part of myself, but I also really like it because I think I'm becoming, it's, to me, it's not, I'm not a brand.
There's no Julie Kedzie fighter who has to impress anybody anymore.
Granted, I represent Invicta to a certain extent, but I fully understand that Shannon could fire me if I say something just outrageous and horrible.
She wouldn't.
She's a wonderful person.
And I'm no longer behind the scenes there.
I'm a commentator.
I'm not somebody making any decisions with the company.
I think people are a bunch of different things depending on who they are at what time of the day.
I think it'd be nice if the whole world was egalitarian and if we all looked at people as just treating them Who they are based on their character and their personality and not categorizing them so specifically like, oh, you are a woman, so you are less or you are a man and you are more or vice versa.
No, I mean, the problem is there's a lot of people that virtue signal and a lot of people that are posturing and a lot of people that are putting a label on themselves to try to make themselves seem like they're in a higher moral high ground than the rest of the folks around them and that's the motivation for doing it.
That becomes transparent and people get angry at that.
They recognize what it is.
So when someone like Jamie Kilstein slips up after all these years of virtue signaling, they're like, ah, I knew it, you fuck!
Those people, if there's a person out there that doesn't think that a woman's a person, fucking Jamie Kilstein is not going to change their opinion.
He's just going to broadcast it and let everybody know that's how he thinks.
And he's going to get all this love and people are going to send him all these likes and they're going to give him thumbs up and say nice things to him on Twitter.
And that may or may not be a good thing.
It's more a good thing than a bad thing.
It's not a bad thing.
But you're not going to change some asshole's opinion by saying something like that.
I think people's opinions change if they value what you're saying, if they believe that you're being truthful, and if what you're saying is compelling enough for them to reconsider the way they look at things.
But it's not 100%, and it's not the motivation behind doing things in the first place.
I don't ever try to change people's opinions, but I do try to express myself as cleanly and as accurately and as honestly as I can.
And I think that, in my opinion, in my experience, when I've heard people like you talking about your life, like you just talking about your life in this podcast, I take that in, and I know it's pure, and it'll make me consider every little...
Everything that a person says, every sentence, every conversation that you have with someone where they're being real with you, it adds more knowledge to your database of human interaction and the way people behave and think.
And I think in that way, it does slowly make you consider more things about people and that adds to the overall surface area of knowledge that you have about people in general.
I definitely feel a responsibility in not manipulating them.
I definitely feel a responsibility in not taking advantage of that, not starting a cult or something like that.
Yeah, I mean...
But the good part about it is if you don't need anything from anybody, like you're not trying to get people to send you $50 a month for the fucking, you know, platinum plan where you get access to secret messages from L. Ron Hubbard or whatever.
But you know what I mean?
It's like you can take advantage of people in certain ways.
And I think that's a real issue with any sort of hive mind thinking, right?
Yes, but when Alex Jones was on here, I think people got to understand Alex Jones way more after me getting him drunk and stoned and having him talk about interdimensional child molesters.
You get to see a channel like, oh, this is kind of like a half-wacky show where he's also commenting on the craziness of the world, but you got to see who he really is.
The guy that I've known for almost 20 years.
That's what I wanted to do by having him on.
People are like, why are you friends with that guy?
I'm like...
Watch.
Watch what happens.
We'll get him fucked up.
We're gonna have some fun.
And you realize like, oh, this guy's like, he's kind of wacky.
Like half of what he's doing is almost like a show.
Like agent provocateurs, like when they have peaceful protests, they'll send in people to smash windows and they're wearing government-issue boots and they get rounded up and they don't wind up being prosecuted because they were literally brought in by the police to turn a peaceful protest into a violent protest.
The people that took over Occupy Wall Street and undercover cops that were doing all this fucking crazy, chaotic, violent shit to get people to move in and break up these camps and break up these protests when they were all legal.
And I'm so bad because when I follow my train of thought, then I can never have citations and it drives me bananas because I don't want to present information as speculation.
But is a person's right to drive a car down a street more important than a person's right to express themselves by saying, I don't want this to happen.
I am willfully challenging the law right here in a peaceful way.
But it's not peaceful if your grandpa is dying and you need to get to the hospital and some asshole wants to stand in front of him with a macrame hat on with a, you know, I'm a male feminist sign.
I mean, I've been arrested for political protests before, and I was very aware I was crossing a line onto here.
I was doing something.
I was going to be arrested for it, but it was the voices behind me and the collective voices together that were doing something not...
Knowing that they were going to be arrested, knowing that the part about going to jail and being able to write about or being able to understand that you were taking a stance on something, you're just trying to bring attention to something that you think is wrong.
Oh, it was many years ago, and all the military guys already hate me, but it was the School of the Americas.
I was 18. I think I got arrested twice, 18 or 19. It was the School of the Americas when they were teaching the counterinsurgency techniques down in Fort Benning, Georgia.
I'm banned for life there.
But I was very religious then.
I was very into social justice.
I wanted to be a nun, and I wanted to change the world, and I wanted people to not kill each other anymore.
And I wanted us not to fund military groups in South America who were slaughtering people.
At the same time, it was protesting.
I was stepping deliberately onto a military base and saying, no, I don't want this to happen anymore.
Okay, well let's unpack that because what you did there was you made a, there's a political protest, you went to the scene of where you think these terrible things are taking place and you took a stand knowing you were going to get arrested and that it was going to bring media attention to this.
There's a big difference between that and you deciding, we're gonna block the 101 because Black Lives Matter.
You know, that doesn't have anything to do with all those people that are driving to work.
You're violating their rights to pass.
You're violating their space.
You're stopping them from being able to move freely.
You're doing it in a way that inconveniences and puts people in danger, and it's not necessary.
You could do it in a public space.
You could do it in places where you're allowed to protest.
You could do it, and you could still get your voice out and still get your message out and not block traffic on the highway.
The blocking traffic on the highway is attention whoring.
And it's attention whoring in a very dangerous way.
Because you are stopping people from getting to medication.
You're stopping people from getting medical treatment.
People can be in the middle of giving birth.
There's a lot of shit that happens where you fuck with people's ability to travel and move around.
We rely on that.
It's extremely significant.
So when you just decide that, you know, you, whatever, I want transgender rights for the bathroom.
Let's block this fucking highway.
Just because you think you can get attention doing something like that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
There are ways to get attention doing things that are lawful, and there's ways that are noble, and then there's blocking the fucking highway like a baby.
Well, it is a good example because it was peaceful protesting and it did get a lot of attention, including me and a lot of other people who tweeted about it and put up links about it and let people know about it and talked about it on the podcast.
I'm not disregarding what you're saying about the highways and stuff like that, because that wouldn't be the kind of protest that I would want to be a part of.
That's not the kind of thing I would want to enact.
Now, do I believe in the Black Lives Matter movement?
Yes, to a certain extent.
I also believe...
In police officer training and better training for police officers in situations of high stress.
I think that there's so much nuance to what's going on there and there's so much carried on.
And the highway blocking and the stuff like that, you're giving very, very good counter arguments to this.
But I will say that there's also something in effect when you can make the loudest noise.
And you know something is wrong.
Isn't it your responsibility to try and fix things?
I cannot disagree with you to a certain extent where it is a very inconvenient thing and it can be a dangerous thing, and I don't think any protesting should endanger people's lives at all.
No, but that's not necessarily what the law is saying.
The law is saying that you exonerate someone's responsibility if someone jumps in front of your car and tries to stop you.
We've seen people assault people, smash their car windows because they're trying to get through some sort of a protest line and they don't have anything to do with what the protest is.
They just want to get out of there.
They're in their car and they're stuck and maybe they have their kid with them and the kid's crying and freaking out and they hit the gas.
My friend was at one of these things where he was trying to get his car through and they were all blocked and stopped and people had crossed hands, locked hands and blocked the highway.
And some guy came up to his window and is screaming, black lives matter, black lives matter, screaming at his window.
He's like this white guy yelling at him, another white guy, and he's screaming Black Lives Matter at him.
He's like, okay, this is so misdirected.
My friend is a Democrat.
He votes liberal.
He's so liberal, like down the board with pretty much everything.
And someone's screaming at him.
He's screaming at him like he has done something wrong because this person is misguided and misdirected rage.
And they're a part of this whole mob mentality.
Everyone's together.
They're all chanting and yelling, and everyone's getting excited.
And they think that they're doing the right thing.
It's today.
A lot of them that are involved in these protests, they're so enamored by this idea that they're doing the right thing and they're enacting change, they don't realize that they're also polarizing the opposition.
And this is one of the reasons why Donald Trump was elected in the first place.
Because so many people are so tired of people shoving in their face their righteous indignation, shoving in their face this locking hands and blocking the highway, and you have to listen to us.
That is energy.
And it goes like this, and then when it goes like that, people go like that.
And can you understand where the rage is built up of people felt like they've been ignored and they've been pushed back so hard that they actually start exploding like that and they get into these hives because they have no other group to belong to?
To continue to write, to continue to talk, to continue to express yourself in a way that's going to make other people consider what you're saying, and maybe change people's minds and thoughts.
Right, but I think that's part of the rage of people screaming, is they want it to change now.
And by going up to my friend's window and yelling, Black Lives Matter, this fuckhead thinks he's going to change.
But he doesn't even really think that.
He thinks he's got the right to do it.
You've got to fucking listen to me, man.
There's this thing going on where people get these mob mindsets, where they think they're allowed to hit a girl because she's got a red hat on that says, Make Bitcoin Great Again.
You know, but it's also, we have learned, it's so hard to just generalize and say everything is because of this and everything is because of that, isn't it?
And then I think that the sins that happen along the way, the missteps that happen along the way, we tend to forgive them instead of pointing out, no, you shouldn't do this.
You shouldn't affect somebody who's driving their child to work or something like that.
That's not what should happen.
But we do tend to forgive the people who are in the same team as us, don't we?
What's good about it is you get worked out and people get worked up, rather, and they start talking about it and they also realize that, hey man, it really does matter if you vote.
It really does matter if you're politically active.
Right.
It really does matter if you talk about these things and you care.
But the team mentality that we have, the us versus them, it just gets so weird.
It gets so fucking crazy.
People get so out of control with it.
And like you said, the Make America Great Again people, they don't want to hear shit about the left.
They don't want to hear shit about Bernie.
They want to say Barack Obama's a Muslim from fucking Kenya.
I think it gives people, like, I think without opposition, it's very difficult to get motivated.
And I think there's a significant amount of opposition now.
And people are, I think they're organizing, people on the left are organizing in a way that they never have before.
And hopefully, hopefully, people will understand there'll be someone along the line That understands that the polarization effect that happens between choosing these hardline teams left and right and not recognizing the possibility that there's so many people in the middle that just pick a side.
They just decide to go left or decide to go right.
And yeah, Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate.
She was a terrible opposition candidate.
Hopefully next time there'll be someone that's really good and we'll understand what is the problem with having a megalomaniac who's a business vulture run the country.
I will say, in my opinion, she was more qualified.
She served as secretary of the state.
Now, I didn't like that she was a professional politician, because I think when you're a professional politician, then you're dedicated to just winning and not, you know?
But I've been not a public figure necessarily, but I've had people talk shit about me to my face, talk shit about me here and there because of my previous career.
Because in MMA, you get a certain amount of people just...
Telling you how terrible you are.
But to a certain extent, you don't also...
You want to be desensitized to somebody threatening to rape you?
Yeah, I... You know, with that, actually, Iowa has a really good Brazilian jiu-jitsu club, and I went there once, and I had a great time rolling, and then I just...
I don't know what it is about the way my mentality works, but I feel like it would distract me away from my writing.
And I know it wouldn't.
I know it would probably be balancing me more, but I get so intense about the things that I'm doing.
Like, I had a list of questions for you today just because I wanted to find out what you think about certain things.
Narrow-minded maybe is a thing for it, but I just get so obsessed about Getting answers to certain things or asking questions about things.
And I'm afraid I'd do that with grappling and jiu-jitsu and I would get too far into that.
I have a history of eating disorders and doing things, and I could see myself slipping into that path again.
And so it was like leaving fighting and then discovering That I actually really want to explore this new area of fighting that is writing or this new area of creativity that is writing that you can bring fighting into.
And I needed all of these kind of things to be laid out.
And I thought I probably would have interrupted myself if I hadn't gone on antidepressants.
And I hadn't kind of pulled back a little bit from feeling everything so intensely.
They put me on it, but they said, we have to go through all this testing for it.
So I'm still being tested for if I have attention, deficit disorder, or whatever it is that makes me think in a peculiar way or not be able to get tasks finished.
And so, you know, I'm still being tested for it.
But, you know, taking it now, I am able to calm down.
So if, say, I wake up in my room and I look and it's messy in my room, what What I tend to do, or my tendency to do, especially post-fighting, whenever I enter this weird mind space, is panic about, this is messy here, this being messy here means I won't be able to complete this task, this will happen here, this will happen here, and then I'm never going to be able to, and then I just get paralyzed.
And I panic, and I'm fearful that I can't actually just get out of bed to put a shirt on, or to pick something up, because everything all of a sudden clouds in at once.
It would lead me to hyper-focus on really strange things.
And I think that actually helped with fighting, if that's what I have.
I'm still in the diagnosis-like process of this, but, you know, so far this is the medicine that's worked the best for me.
But when I was fighting, one thing that I did do poorly was I would go from A to C instead of go to A to B to C. I would see what would happen after I won the fight in my mind.
When I first started training camp which a lot of fighters do and I think that helps but sometimes you miss B where the actual fight happens and in my mind sometimes I would gloss over that and I would get caught up in things I would wait for this to happen and wait for that time or be paralyzed and not be able to make the next step now I feel like I am able to when I take a pill I'm able to put my feet on the ground and Out of bed, look up and say, okay, my room needs to be cleaned, but first I need to do this.
And I'm able to make, I'm able to go A to B and then do C. Instead of just jumping over and then looking at C and then thinking all the things after me just come crashing at me and I freak out.
Not finding my sunglasses because they're on the top of my head and wandering around looking for them.
And for a while there, I was really scared.
Maybe this is a post-fight brain trauma.
And the depression set in pretty hard post-fight.
So I was wondering, well, what?
And seeing doctors and stuff like that, they were like, maybe you should get an MRI. Maybe you should get your brain checked.
But let's also address the depression right now.
And once the depression was addressed, and I was able to see that there's something else going on here that may not be due to getting hit in the head.
It may actually be due to me having a chemical thing that makes me just all over the place.
Because I'm in the best school in the world for writing right now.
I didn't get in there, like, without...
How do I explain it?
The focus is different.
I think I just needed to channel it.
And I think that I got very scared that I had brain damage, that I was going to never be able to do anything, that I wasn't going to be able to...
And the truth was, I think that my body chemistry had changed somewhat.
And my learning disassociation, my learning, whatever it is that made me good at fighting...
I had to translate into a different world.
And so I had to kind of take steps to do that and get into some pretty intense therapy and do things like that in order to understand that, no, my brain is just wired differently.
So I don't know if it's the creative brain or the obsessive brain or whatever.
Yeah, you can answer a whole bunch of questions that they give you, but you can also lie if you know what they're looking for, which is what I did in many depression tests.
I would just lie because I didn't want people to think I had depression.
And it was just like, okay, but I am actually feeling this on this survey.
I should answer this correctly.
And I will say that something that I did, you know, when I look back at my lifetime of choices and the things that I did, I self-medicated with experiences.
Like, trying to have this experience, this experience, this thing.
Have all this, all this, do this, do this, you know, all this.
And I self-medicated.
I had very severe bulimia.
And that would calm me down.
It would calm me down.
While you were fighting?
No, early days of fighting.
It's actually one of the things I really...
And I don't talk about it, but I really credit Greg Jackson for this and putting me on a path.
Because I confess to him, okay, this is a problem that I have when I first seen it.
This is something that I've dealt with a little bit with some treatments.
But, you know, I puke my food up.
And he...
He didn't let me anymore.
I don't know how to explain he didn't let me anymore, but he put a lot of care and pressure on me to be a more mentally healthy person by directing that energy, that panicked energy, when I would get all worked up and just have to go puke because I didn't know what else to do with myself.
And he helped me direct that energy into the sport.
And he gave me tasks to do, and I ended up working for him.
But it was just like, I mean, he's a really fucking good dude.
Like, really good dude.
Yeah, he's a very good guy.
Yeah, and just, you know, I honestly credit him for, I think he saved my life to a certain extent, because I got pretty bad there for a while.
And when I moved to Jackson's, it was like, sort of that understanding that I'm stepping into a new realm where I am a professional athlete now.
I have to conduct myself a certain way.
I have to eat food a certain way.
I have to address my body a certain way.
I have to...
You know, it took a burden off of me that made me panic.
And I don't know how to explain that, but it gave me purpose, maybe?
To be...
Somebody that somebody else is invested in to understand.
He's like, you know, you're my first female MMA fighter that I really want to put work into.
So don't get fucking pregnant.
Don't do this.
Don't puke anymore.
Don't do, you know, he's just, he put some rules in place for me when I came there.
Cause he said he wasn't really on board with him.
Oh, I shouldn't say that.
Cause it'll get him a lot of shit.
He wasn't on board with female MMA. And then, you know, he saw my Corona fight.
He liked it.
He liked me.
And he was just like, okay, I'll give this a shot.
And for me, it saved my life because I don't know where I would be without MMA. And when it comes to, I guess, the bulimia and the self-sabotage that I was doing to myself, competing in the sport and finding purpose was really important.
And just the talks I would have with him about like, you know, philosophy and this kind of thing, because it's hard to find people to talk about some intellectual subjects with sometimes in that sport or in a gym.
And so to be able to sit down and break things down and think, OK, I can use my brain this way.
This is great.
And then when I quit fighting and I moved to Kansas, I didn't have that bubble anymore.
I didn't have that that home or that feeling, you know, and so it was just like I just slid right backwards and I was gaining all this weight.
And I was, you know, I just became eating poorly.
Oh, yeah, of course.
Yeah.
I mean, sugar is so addictive when you actually get to eat it again.
I mean, coming from a point of view of someone like you, so smart and articulate, I would imagine that your memoirs or what you would be able to describe about your days competing would be really fascinating and compelling.
I mean, she came back from a deficit in that fight, landed that question mark kick over the shoulder and clanged her.
That was beautiful.
That was one of the best question mark kicks I've ever seen landed inside the octagon against a really tricky Muay Thai opponent who was getting the better of her early on.
Isn't that kind of what we're talking about with the Vitor thing, though?
It's almost like your experience and your ability and your knowledge gets overwhelmed by father time.
It's like father time and there's a cross in the road and you have to figure out how much experience do you have, how much knowledge, and whether or not your body can actually act on those things anymore.
I'd say that's pretty early to say about her in her MMA career, but she has had all that boxing and kickboxing experience before this, so maybe, you know...
I had to be her sparring partner after that fight if that tells you how much brain damage I might have now.
But her mentality after that, she refused to interact with people or have people corner her that would doubt that she could win that fight in the future.
Refused.
She is such a champion mind that, no, if people thought she would take corrections, she would take, you know, I've got to switch this up, I've got to do this differently, but if you believe that she shouldn't have the rematch, she wouldn't work with you.
You know, I think when we went back to the, and these are, you know, it's a shorthand, but it was, you know, the who were you when you started and who are you now?
And I guess what goes with that, and I ask these questions because I've been asking them of a lot of people in this sport or in this industry or people who are high level in what they're doing today.
What would you have left behind?
What do you regret?
What would you have left behind in becoming who you are now?
What could you have changed?
And it's a hard question to ask because nobody wants to look back and, oh, I regret this.
Because we learn from our regrets, right?
But if there's something you could have changed, you could have done differently, would you have?
You make mistakes with people you're involved with romantically.
You make mistakes career-wise.
You make mistakes with comedy and art.
You're constantly...
I mean, it's a constant process of mistakes.
You know, especially when you're writing new stuff.
With jiu-jitsu, there's constant mistakes.
You know what I mean?
I think...
Testing yourself and constantly seeking improvement and constantly trying to expand upon your creative work and expand upon what you're doing as a martial artist or what you're doing as an athlete or improving upon your conditioning drills and trying to advance in yoga, get better at that.
I'm always doing something that I'm failing in.
I think that's a big I like doing new things and sucking at them.
But if there was anything, it would be genuine curiosity.
I'm genuinely curious about things.
And I'm trying to make this as entertaining as possible.
So I do my best to try to...
Make the conversation flow.
And I don't always succeed.
I fail all the time.
And that failure makes me try better.
I definitely think I'm better at podcasting now than I was six months ago, and better six months ago than I was a year ago, and then I hope I'll be better a year from now than I am today.
But there's also, this isn't, in a weird way, it's an audio art form.
And it doesn't seem like it is, but the art of conversation is, there's an interaction to it, and you're very good at it, which is one of the reasons why you apologize when you accidentally talk over each other.
But that's a part of human interaction.
We talk over each other.
We accidentally do, or sometimes you have a point that you feel like you have to get in now or forget it.
I mean, and it's a matter of how to do it the right way.
And one of the things that I've found from doing podcasts is how bad people are at that.
It's really frustrating to talk to really self-centered people that just talk over everyone and don't listen to what anybody has to say and aren't genuinely listening.
They're just waiting for their chain to talk.
I mean, that is really frustrating.
And it's...
You realize the art of conversation is something that's cultivated.
I mean, there's many things in my life that if they were presented in front of me right now learning that I've done them in the past and fucked up, I would do it differently.
But that's part of being who you are today.
I think people that word regret is a very dangerous word because people far too often define themselves by their past failures instead of saying that's not you like you're not that person you're you right now and that's what I really truly believe I believe that you Are all of your experiences in life and all the data that you've acquired and all the revelations and understandings that you've gathered up because of those positive and negative experiences and that creates who you are at this moment and the
most interesting people to me are the people that have been tested that have gone through trials and tribulations and it's one of the reasons why fighters are so interesting because the emotional rollercoaster of a fight camp and then fighting and competing and Not just MMA, but people that do jujitsu and boxers and just people that have done something that's very difficult to do.
You've tested yourself in a way that very few people have.
And so you understand yourself in a much deeper way.
You understand where that breaking point is.
You understand what happens when you break.
You understand who the demons are in your mind that tell you to break.
You know, and some people never meet those demons and they're there.
They're waiting.
They're waiting for the call.
They're waiting for that fucking button to be pushed so they can pop up into your brain and wreck havoc.
And, you know, sometimes they invoke those demons.
They ask those demons to come in and distract them from all the real issues that they have in their life and all the things that they actually do need to deal with, all the real work that the pain of the mundane, the pain of the boring discipline work is sometimes so great that people, I mean, that's why some people Fighters wind up fucking off and getting drunk and never coming to work out and wind up being in poor shape when the fight comes off.
It's not because they didn't know the fight was coming.
It's not because they're a coward.
It's because they're letting their demons trip them up.
Yeah, I think when we lament the loss of somebody's potential, it's not always because they were doing the wrong things or they lost the wrong fight, but it's because they never recognized where they can move on from there.
And exploring your personal sovereignty, exploring your ability to truly manage all these very difficult scenarios that present themselves in life is one of the most interesting and fascinating things about studying human beings.
And to me, it's like the exact opposite of the mob mentality.
When you're swept away in this groupthink, and you're really not responsible for yourself, and you're thinking in this very almost selfish way of giving into this thing.
It's too easy.
It's too easy.
There's so many people around.
I just go crazy.
It's like the opposite of like the lone...
One of the reasons why I never really was into team sports.
I was like, I understand that it's a challenge.
I understand that it's difficult.
There's an intensity of the one-on-one competition that cannot be matched in any other forum.
Even if it's one-on-one playing tennis, it's so much more intense than a group game of volleyball or basketball or whatever.
But I do allow people to think for me in a certain way.
Like when I listen to someone, like if I listen to a book on tape or I listen to a lecture, what I'm listening to is I'm allowing this person to direct my thoughts with their words.
They're painting pictures.
They're explaining facts.
They're going over their own personal experiences.
And you are, in many ways, allowing that person to think for you.
But then when that's over, you think for yourself, and you take into account what that person has said, and it can enhance your perceptions.
Because if someone's being honest with you, which I think is one of the most important parts of expressing yourself, I would like to know what your real motivations are.
I want to know what your real thoughts are.
I don't want you to pretend.
I don't want you to be a politician.
I don't want you to just give me some bullshit version of who you are because you think I'm going to like you more from that.
And I think people can tell when someone's doing that.
Right.
And I think when someone's not doing that, when someone's being genuine, people cling to it and they go, look, maybe he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, but maybe he's being honest about it and I'll find out together.
We'll figure it out together because at least this dude's telling me the truth or she's telling me the truth or this group is an honest group.
That's what I think we belong for in this life because this life is so filled with dramatic interpretations of reality.
I think there's a lot of people that seek truth in watching MMA. Like, when we're talking about that Darren Elkins fight, there's no truer moment in the world.
And this guy digging deep.
I mean, it's as raw as it gets.
His face is covered in blood.
He can't even fucking see.
There's a truth in that that's inescapable.
You can't dance your way out of it.
You can't bullshit your way out of it.
Spotlights and glitter and fucking hype music.
There's none of that.
It's down to this inescapable reality.
And I think when people are confronted with all the trials and tribulations of life, and there's so much confusion, and we seek inspiration in so many different avenues, and we seek leadership, and we seek mentorship, and we seek hopefully this light out there that guides us in some sort of a way.
And one of the only ways that we can really truly trust that light is if we know it's coming from a person that is committed to the path of honesty.
Manipulation is so easy to fall into, but it's also so easy to just resent everybody about them, too.
I teach rhetoric, so we consider a text and we're just like, okay, who's the speaker?
What is the text?
What is the message in the text?
What are they trying to say?
And then what is this huge mythos surrounding all of this?
What are they trying to do here?
And it's so interesting to see kids' minds change about like, oh, I don't actually have to believe this because I've been assigned.
Or I do have to think a certain way or I have to consider the source.
It's kind of a rabbit hole sometimes.
That's where, in my mind, the truest religion to me, or whatever you want to call it religion, is science.
I just think science is The scientific method is based on so much philosophy, so much, and it's trying to fail all the time.
Repeatable results, if you can't get repeatable results, like blind results on something, then that's what you're always trying to do, and you're always failing.
I come from a family of scientists, so of course, for me, it's what I love more than anything, is to hear them talk about how to find truth.
And then truth is also different from fact.
And so when you go down, okay, is it truth or is it fact, or is it opinion?
What's going on here?
It gets really, um, finding tools for discernment, that's really, that becomes really tricky.
And I think that's where a hive mind comes from, right?
You know, like people not trying to grab those tools, not trying to assess their own motivations for latching on to thinking that this is right.
And it's, again, I do believe what you said about individualism and doing your own thing and striking, you know, forging your own path and stuff like that.
But our inability somehow to commit ourselves to learning.
If you look overall, if you looked at the pie chart of soft people, like, oh, fuck, look how soft we are.
If you look at the pie chart of ignorant people, look how ignorant we are.
But in that pie chart, in defining people, in that sort of broad generalization process, You lose the beauty of individuality.
And that's one of the things that's unique about us is that we have the ability in this country to seek out all sorts of different paths, to be who you would choose to be, to follow whatever occupation or whatever path of interest that you choose to follow.
The best thing I've ever discovered is my mute button.
Not even blocking people, but just muting people.
Actually, the best thing I've discovered is that I have to take my phone and physically put it away from me, and then I can write, and I get into that zone, and it feels wonderful.
Well, one of the beautiful things about doing podcasts, one of the things that's taught me is that I don't ever have three-hour conversations with people outside of podcasting.
Like, you and I got deeper and got to know each other better in this conversation than we would if we knew each other, passing each other at the UFC for a decade.
But we, whenever in life, do you get to sit across from someone, just stare them in the eyes, across the table, like you and I have done, for three hours, and just go deep?
It's like I was reading all this cult and this heterotopia stuff, and I'm just like, this is Really cool because I see this when we read and I see this, I listen to so many audiobooks and so many podcasts and I'm just like, I'm finding weird spaces in my brain to be connected to people who don't even know who the fuck I am.
You could be nice and you can actually, you can connect to people and like, if it is like the Appalachian Trail and we're just putting one foot in front of the other, at least it's I don't think the people that finish that trail think that.