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Sept. 20, 2020 - Lex Fridman Podcast

03:48:00

Ryan Hall: Martial Arts and the Philosophy of Violence, Power, and Grace | Lex Fridman Podcast #125

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	The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall, one of the most insightful minds and systems thinkers in the martial arts world.
	He's a black belt in jiu-jitsu, accomplished competitor, an MMA fighter undefeated in the UFC, and truly a philosopher who seeks to understand the underlying principles of the martial arts.
	Jiu-Jitsu is such an important part of who I am, and I was hoping to share that with folks who might know me only as a researcher.
	I think there's no better person to do that with than Ryan, who somehow, remarkably, I can say is a friend, and also a modern-day warrior philosopher of the Miyamoto-Masashi line of especially dangerous and brilliant humans.
	Also, his amazing wife, Jen Hall, was there as well, so if you hear a kind of voice of wisdom coming from above, you know who it is.
	Quick summary of the sponsors.
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	As a side note, let me say that renaming this podcast to just my name gave me intellectual freedom that I really didn't anticipate was so empowering, especially for someone who's trying to find their voice.
	I hope you'll allow me the chance to really try and do that, to step outside of AI and even science, engineering, history, and so on, and on occasion, talk to athletes, musicians, writers, and maybe even comedians who inspire me.
	Especially up-and-coming comedians and musicians like Eric Weinstein, who, yes, we'll do a third conversation with soon.
	I think if I allow myself to expand the range of these conversations on occasion, when I do return to science and engineering, I'll bring a new perspective and also a little bit more fun and a few extra listeners that may not otherwise realize how fascinating artificial intelligence, robotics, mathematics, and engineering truly is.
	All that said, please skip the episodes that don't interest you.
	You don't have to listen to all of them.
	Trust me, as someone who is a bit or a lot OCD, that idea is quite unpleasant.
	But life, friends, is full of unpleasant things.
	But as Hunter S. Thompson suggested, and I suggest as well, you should still buy the ticket and take the ride.
	If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 stars and up a podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
	As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle.
	I try to make these interesting, but I give you the timestamp, so please skip if you don't want to listen to the ads, but it does mean a lot to me when you do.
	And still, please do check out the sponsors by clicking on the links in the description.
	It really is the best way to support this podcast.
	This show is sponsored by PowerDot.
	Get it at PowerDot.com slash Lex and use code Lex at checkout to get 20% off.
	I use it for muscle recovery for legs and shoulders, but you can also use it to build muscle, endurance, or even just warm up.
	In fact, I first heard about this kind of electrical muscle stimulation device in reading that Bruce Lee used it.
	He was an inspiration to me as someone who practices first principles thinking, especially in a discipline where conventional thinking is everywhere.
	He created a martial art called Jeet Kune Do that is in many ways, at least philosophically in his hybrid approach, a precursor to modern day mixed martial arts.
	There's a special kind of deep philosophical thinking that combat athletes or jiu-jitsu practitioners do that is unlike any other.
	I think it's grounded in the humbling process of getting your ass kicked a lot that removes any illusion of intellectual superiority.
	I think the journey towards wisdom starts when you humbly admit to yourself that you know very little or almost nothing.
	Anyway, go to PowerDot.com and use code LEX at checkout to get 20% off on top of the 30-day free trial.
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	Let me read a few lines from a Russian song by Vladimir Vysotsky called Она была в
	Париже.
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	Наверное я погиб, глаза закрой и вижу.
	Наверное я погиб, оробею, а потом.
	Куда мне до нее, она была в Париже.
	И я вчера узнал, не только в нем одном.
	This song always made me smile, because it resonates with my own life.
	It translates loosely to she's been to Paris.
	Paris for Russian, I suppose, symbolizing a fancy life.
	And that the guy can never quite fit into that kind of life.
	Expensive things, nice restaurants, cars, all of that.
	I was thinking about what song is equivalent in English.
	Maybe Uptown Girl by Billy Joel is similar in spirit, but very different in style.
	I just watched a video on YouTube for Uptown Girl, and it's basically Billy Joel dressed up as a mechanic, but dancing in a way that I'm pretty sure no mechanic has ever danced, turning the old cringe factor up to 11.
	Anyway, I always felt like I didn't really fit in with the fancy people, and that's what this song represents.
	But back to Babbel.
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	I've been thinking of doing some kind of little contest and giving away $42 to a bunch of people who win.
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	And now, here's my conversation with Ryan Hall.
	Who, in your view, is the greatest warrior in history, ancient or modern?
	That's a tough question.
	And again, I'm no historian by any measure, so I'll probably do the worst.
	Like, what are your best bands ever?
	I'm like, Metallica?
	Metallica just came out with a new album, by the way, with an entire orchestra.
	That's kind of cool. Yeah.
	Metallica will always be one of the greatest.
	So I agree with you. They were a bad example.
	They were a well-known yet awesome band.
	Let me say it's like Nickelback or something like that.
	But I feel that feels cheap because everyone makes fun of Nickelback.
	Yeah. I don't know. I guess it depends on how you want to define Warrior.
	Something that I think about when it comes to trying to evaluate various people or situations or things that I've read about or heard about are...
	The circumstances that they were involved in, because I think a lot of times it's easy to look at the outcomes.
	And obviously, we live in an outcome-driven world, and outcomes do matter.
	But at the same time, you look at, let's say, what Cuba has been able to pull off from a combat sports perspective.
	It's staggering. The amount of successful Olympic-level competitors they have in wrestling, boxing, judo.
	I mean, they're a tiny little island with no money and no people.
	That's shocking. You know, when you think about the Olympics in the United States doing well, of course we should do well.
	I mean, Russia should do well.
	China should do well. India should do better than they do, honestly.
	Obviously it means like they're not into it as much or at least certain sports because they have the resources people-wise.
	So talent's not going to be an issue.
	So there's something to where the starting point is.
	That's the argument with why people say Maradona...
	I don't know if you're into soccer.
	They say Maradona is better than Messi because he basically carried the team and won the World Cup with a team that wouldn't otherwise win the World Cup.
	And then Messi was only successful in Barcelona because he has superstars.
	He's playing with other superstars.
	Right. Yeah, that's fair to say.
	I mean, like United, there's a lot of factors that go into, let's say, winning a soccer game.
	And, you know, obviously Barcelona, you know, particularly for various points in time, had a ridiculous all-star squad of world-class players.
	But, you know, let's say, for instance, maybe they didn't have the creative players in Argentina.
	They needed to get the ball up to Messi, you know?
	They didn't have, like, the Iniesta and, you know, again, the backing there in the midfield.
	But... Because obviously Argentina's always had ridiculous attacking players, like even alongside Messi, but they're like the three killers up front and then a little less behind.
	So it's interesting you say that, depends how you define warrior, because you could probably take like some of the civil rights leaders, you can go into that direction, like leaders in general.
	But if we just look at like the greatest martial artist in history in that direction, do you have somebody in mind?
	I would say at least three that pop into my head would be Hannibal.
	Alexander the Great and then maybe Miyamoto Musashi, you know, the two commanders and then one, you know, guy.
	But so it's interesting.
	And then, again, you mentioned warriors being able to make a lot out of a little.
	Musashi's famous for winning duels, you know, that were oftentimes one-on-one.
	You know, Alexander and Hannibal were, you know, military commanders, and one of them faced Rome, and that was an interesting thing.
	Oftentimes, you know, coming up with novel tactics, different strategies, sometimes under-resourced, having to do novel and crazy things.
	There's skin in the game. That's an interesting thing, too.
	I think a lot of times, you know, if you're playing a video game, I don't think you can be a warrior, because there's no skin in the game.
	You get hurt, you lose.
	That's a bummer. It stings a little bit.
	Maybe it makes you feel slightly disappointed, but...
	You know, Musashi loses, he loses.
	Hannibal loses, he loses.
	Alexander loses, he loses.
	And they lose. I guess the people around them lose.
	So that's almost like you could use, even from a combat sports perspective, Muhammad Ali.
	I mean, you consider also their quality of opposition.
	Musashi was fighting high-quality opposition.
	Obviously Hannibal and Alexander, particularly Hannibal, were fighting unbelievable opposition.
	Muhammad Ali fought phenomenal opposition, but he had skin in the game both in the ring and out.
	And that actually meshes with, as you mentioned, like a civil rights type of situation where you are under-resourced, you're pushing the stone uphill.
	And that was a neat thing, I think, about Muhammad Ali was how much personal conviction the man had to have in order to pull off what he was able to pull off both in and outside of the ring.
	And that reminds me of, again, some of the other great leaders or great fighters throughout history.
	So what do you make of the kind of very difficult idea that some of these conquerors like Alexander the Great and somebody that, if you listen to Hardcore History, Oden Karlin, who apparently Elon Musk is also a big fan of, is the Genghis Khan episode.
	You know, a large...
	A percent of the world can call Genghis Khan an ancestor.
	So the difficult truth is about some of these conquerors is that there's a lot of murder and rape and pillage and stealing of resources and all that kind of stuff.
	And yet, they're often remembered as quite honorable.
	I mean, in the case of Genghis Khan, there's a lot of people who argue, if you look at historically the way it's described in full context, is he was ultimately...
	Given the time he was a liberator, he was a progressive, I should say.
	In terms of the violence and the atrocities he committed, He, at least in the stories, has always provided the option of not to do that.
	It's only if you resist.
	So you basically have the option, do you want to join us or do you want to die and die horribly?
	That's the progressive sort of, that's the Bernie Sanders of the era.
	Nice. So what do you make of that?
	That there's so much...
	Of these great conquerors, there's so much murder that to us now would just seem insane.
	It's funny you mention it.
	I think that maybe it's a human nature thing that we want to, or maybe a misunderstanding thing, that we want to cast all of our characters and ourselves maybe as entirely good or as entirely negative when, I guess, the phrase or the saying, one man's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist.
	Is accurate. And a lot of times I think you can understand as long as you're able to look from various people's perspective.
	Like if you look at the TV show The Wire, which was obviously widely, everybody loves The Wire.
	I thought that there were everyone, I'm not saying anything that's not been said before, compelling characters from all angles.
	Whether you like the character, dislike the character, you were able to understand the motivations of people doing various things.
	Even if they did wrongly, they did rightly.
	We want to cast all of the demons throughout history as completely inhuman when I think that makes it difficult for us to understand them.
	And we want to look back at the people that we think of as great and entirely great.
	And I think that we're experiencing the problems with this even right now socially and politically as we're trying to look back and decide the people we thought were good or not good or people we thought were bad are now good rather than going, hey, there's good and bad to all things.
	And there are, as you mentioned, the Genghis Khan thing.
	fight back. You do, I respect you for it, but then we're going to have a conflict and
	then we'll see what happens. And if you lose, you're going to be sorry that you did, because
	I have to make it that way if I want to continue utilizing this kind of MO, because I need
	to discourage the next guy from doing what you're doing right now. And ultimately, though,
	I guess that's an interesting thing. Imagine you put every single person on planet Earth
	in a cage. Crime drops, you know.
	Also, there are certain positives to that.
	And it's just things are as they are.
	It's difficult. But that is ultimately more the law of the jungle.
	And I think that we're able to supersede some of that now in modern times.
	And I think we're fortunate. But as you mentioned, we look back and say, oh, this is horrible.
	Say, no, that just is what it is.
	That's how life is at a base level.
	And, you know, again, if you're a lion and I'm a gazelle, I don't really like it very much, but we don't call the lion the bad guy.
	We don't sanctify the gazelle or the other way around.
	So it's interesting when you pull back some of the controls that we put on our behavior and, you know, in modern life, which I think are generally speaking positive, you know, we get down to how things often are.
	And at the same time, we could – modern life was built by people like Genghis Khan.
	So, then you get down to the ends justifying the means.
	It's a tough question. These aren't things with easy answers, or at least if they are, I certainly don't have the smarts to figure out the answers to them.
	But it's difficult.
	I would just say people in the world are complicated and layered, and depending upon which side of the line you're standing on at various times, you know, you may like or dislike someone, but I can't remember whose idea it was.
	This is killing me, but it's the veil of ignorance, I guess, the philosophical idea.
	You know, idea of the veil of ignorance where I go, is sticking everyone in the cage the right thing to do?
	Or everyone but me? And I say, well, no.
	Why? Well, it would make my life easier if I just went over and took all of your stuff as long as you couldn't stop me.
	I mean, of course, that's a great idea.
	That's what everyone does in every video game.
	But in Skyrim, you steal stuff when people aren't around.
	But... Ultimately, you go, well, this isn't the right thing to do because if I were on the other side of it, I would not appreciate it.
	It's inherently not a good thing to do.
	I'm only doing it because I think I'm going to win.
	And that's a fine way to be, but you don't have the white hat on, I guess I would say.
	So... I think without those philosophical underpinnings to rein us in, you know, I guess morally speaking, it's very difficult to say what's right or wrong.
	You'd say certain actions have a reaction, almost like a physics sense.
	If you kill everyone in your way for as long as you're able to, your life will be easier.
	I mean, you're sitting at the table for someone doing the same to you when you're no longer the tough guy, but it is what it is.
	Yeah, if you look at the Instagram channel, Nature is Metal, it hurts my heart to watch, to remind me, a comfortable descendant of ape, how vicious nature is.
	Just unapologetically...
	I mean, there's a process to it where the bad guy always wins.
	The violence is the solution to most problems, or the flip side of that, running away from violence is the solution depending on your skill set.
	And it's funny to think of us humans with our extra little piece of brain that we're somehow trying to figure out, like you said, in a philosophical way, how to supersede that, how to move past the viciousness, the cruelty, just the cold Exchange of nature.
	But perhaps it's not so.
	Maybe that is nature.
	Maybe that's the way of life.
	Maybe we're trying too hard to, we're being too egotistical and thinking we're somehow separate from nature.
	We're somehow distant from that very thing.
	I couldn't agree with him more.
	In fact, I think actually Orson Scott Card was the writer of a great book called Ender's Game.
	This was a statement that the main character, Ender, made in the book.
	His brother was brilliant.
	His brother was...
	Like, kind of sociopathic, brilliant kid that was ended up kicked out of the school that they were all into for Battle Commander.
	Dealing with his brother taught him that ultimately strength, courage, the ability to do violence for all the good and the bad of that is one of the fundamental, most important things to be able to do in life because if you can't cause destruction, if you can't cause pain...
	You will be forever subject to those who can.
	And I think that you mentioned egotism.
	I think that that's a disease that could obviously strike any of us, but it's something that we're looking at now.
	I think we should be unbelievably thankful as people that live in the world that we do that we can walk down the street without having to worry that I'm like, well, don't worry, that 6'6", 270-pound person over there is just going to leave me alone.
	I have a Rolex on, but whatever.
	I'll be fine because that person is deciding to leave me alone because we've all agreed to live in this relatively, you know, sane and or, you know, constrained society because it benefits all of us.
	And we're doing it because of a philosophical underpinning, not because nature dictates it be that way, because nature dictates it going a very, very different direction.
	And the only person, the only thing stopping that person from doing something to me is either me or I think?
	You know, it's keeping in mind that that is the fundamental nature of the world, whether we like it or not, is important.
	And I think the quest to fundamentally alter human nature is going to be ultimately fruitless.
	And then also it's a little bit egotistical.
	A lion does what a lion does.
	You know, we can try to box it in and we can try to, you know, guide this direction, that direction.
	But, you know... Nature is as it is and as it always will be unless we want to start to constrain it significantly.
	But now I'm starting to get into individual rights.
	Who put me in charge?
	who says that I should be the one to make the choice is constraining because many of the most
	awful things that have happened throughout history, one group or one person has decided
	to constrain others. And we don't like Genghis Khan doing that. Well, I'll do that on a little
	level. Are there going to be benefits and beneficiaries?
	Absolutely. But there'll be losers in that too. So I guess it's a dangerous game. It's
	almost like putting on the one ring.
	We remember when Frodo offered the one ring to Gandalf and Gandalf said, no, no, I would take
	I would put it on. I would use it out of the desire to do good.
	But through me, it would wield a power so terrible you can't imagine.
	I think that's the big question for anyone that decides that's able to have reach and able to have power.
	I mean, obviously, I can't speak to that.
	But imagine you did have national level, global level power.
	How would you use it? Would you try to change the world?
	Would you be glad that you did down the line?
	I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing we're struggling now as a society.
	Maybe it'd be nice to get your quick comment on that, which is the people who have traditionally been powerless are now seeking a fairer society, a more equal society.
	And in attaining more power justly, there's also a realization, at least from my perspective, that power corrupts everyone.
	Even if the flag you wave is that of justice, right?
	And so, you know, not to overuse the term, but it'd be nice if you have thoughts about the whole idea of cancel culture and the internet and Twitter and so on, where there's On nuanced, difficult discussions of race, of gender, of fairness, equality, justice, all of these kinds of things, there's a shouting down, oftentimes, of nuanced discussion, of kind of Trying to reason through these very difficult issues through our history,
	through what our future looks like.
	Do you have thoughts about the internet discourse that's going on now?
	Is there something positive that we can pull out of this?
	It's an interesting thing to see, I guess, as you mentioned.
	Anytime you're wielding power, whomever you are, doing so carefully is important.
	And it's very, very easy to look at the people that have power and that are using it poorly or have used it poorly and go, hey, you're the bad guy.
	And then go, well, of course, if I had power, I'll use it properly.
	And I may intend to use it properly, and maybe I will.
	But at the same time, we see a lot of times people are people are people.
	I think that I think if you believe that human beings are all one, which I do, you know, no matter whether you're here, you're there, you got two arms, two legs, a heart, a brain, we all live a similar experience, you know, and obviously with variations on a theme, but...
	You're no less a human being, if you're a person I've never met from China, than some person in Virginia.
	We're all people.
	And I guess, ultimately, if I believe that human beings are corruptible and that power corrupts and that we're all fallible and we say and do things that either intentionally or unintentionally that we wish we'd not...
	I think that I have to allow for a space, I guess the word, it's almost a religious term, but I guess I would just say grace.
	And that's something that I see disappearing from discourse in the public, or maybe it wasn't there, I'm not sure.
	But it's interesting, you know, watching this occur on the internet, because also now no longer are you and I just having a talk sitting on a bus stop.
	It's now in writing. Everything's in writing.
	The old saying, like, don't put that in writing.
	You're like, don't put anything in writing.
	That's how you get in trouble. Yeah. And basically, you know, with the degree to which everything is recorded, but recorded in tiny little bites, it's very, very easy for me to waive every less little foolish, ignorant, incorrect, or correct thing that someone has ever said or done in their face to support whatever argument that I'm trying to make about them or a situation.
	And I think that you mentioned cancel culture, as it seems to exist.
	Obviously, this is poisonous. On its face, this is poisonous.
	It's the sort of thing that doesn't incentivize proper behavior.
	I mean, you look at, let's say, one of the great monsters of history, Adolf Hitler, obviously, who's done awful, awful things, but also for anyone that's even a minor student of history, did some positive things as well.
	I don't have to embroider this person's crimes.
	I don't have to act as if there was nothing good a monster has ever done and nothing bad that a great person throughout history has ever done.
	But imagine the ghost of Adolf Hitler were to pop up and go, oh my gosh, guys, I'm so sorry.
	I know what I've done, but I'd like to apologize and start to make it right.
	Well, I mean, you'd hope that you, you know, if he popped up over here, you go, well, I don't really like what you've done.
	And I don't like you.
	But at the same time, I'm glad to hear that you're attempting to make this right and push in a positive direction, even if you can't make it right.
	Because otherwise, what am I doing?
	I'm disincentivizing change for the better.
	I'm looking to wield whatever power I have in a punitive fashion, which does not encourage people to do anything other than double down on the wrongs that they've made, knowing that at least they're going to have some support from the people that support that.
	And I guess I want to, you would hopefully look at the use of the internet as a tool that can educate, and I guess I don't like the word empower, but empower people to do various things, extend their reach, but educate and learn rather than to further solidify little tribal things that exist, which I think everyone in humanity and human history is vulnerable to.
	I mean, look at the course of human history.
	It's deeply tribal. And the tribes or the groups that have been on top at various points in time have done a lot of times bad things to the ones that have not.
	And you'd hope that we could learn lessons from the past.
	And rather than committing the crimes that were committed against us, recommitting them when we slide into the top position, say, you know, I could do this now, but I'll not.
	You know, I understand the urge to seek vengeance is strong.
	Anyone that says differently, I wouldn't trust it.
	But at the same time, we have enough experience in history, enough experience in life, enough hopefully wisdom, time in to go, this isn't the right answer.
	This is only going to replay the things, the worst parts of our history, not the best.
	And I want to encourage positive behavior.
	And if I just, again, further lash out at people, although understandably, done understandably, I'm simply just going to just perpetuate the cycle that's gone on to this point.
	So you hope that even though we're seeing a lot of turmoil societally at the moment and globally at the moment, that I guess our better angels can prevail at a certain point.
	But it's going to take a great deal of leadership.
	And I think that we're sorely missing like a Martin Luther King-style character at the moment or a great leader.
	And I'm hoping that one will show up.
	For sure. And by the way, a word I don't hear often, and I think it's a beautiful one, which is grace.
	That's a really interesting word.
	I'm going to have to think about that.
	There is a religious component to it, but it's exactly right.
	You have to somehow walk the line between...
	You mentioned Hitler.
	I've been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
	I'm really thinking about the 1930s.
	And what it's like to have economic...
	My concern is the economic pain that people are feeling now quietly is really a suffering that's not being heard.
	And there's echoes of that in the 20s and the 30s with the Great Depression.
	And there's a hunger for a charismatic leader.
	Like you said, there's a leader that Could walk with grace, could inspire, could bring people together with sort of dreams of a better future that's positive.
	But Hitler did exactly everything that I just said except for the word positive.
	Which is, he did give a dream to the German people, who were great people, who are great people, of a better future.
	It's just that a certain point that quickly turned into the better future requires literally Expansion of more land.
	It started with, well, if we want to build a great Germany, we need a little bit more land.
	And so we need to kind of get Austria, then we need to kind of get France, mostly because France doesn't understand that more land is really useful, so we need to get rid of them.
	And look what they did to us in Versailles anyway.
	But so the Jewish...
	The Holocaust is a separate thing.
	I don't know. Well, I don't know.
	I don't know what to think of it because so me being Jewish and having a lot of The echoes of the suffering is in my family, of the people that are lost.
	I don't know, because Hitler wrote all about it in Mein Kampf, so I don't know if the evil he committed was there all along.
	And that's where the question of forgiveness I mean, Hitler is such a difficult person to talk about, but it's the question of, on cancel culture, who is deserving of forgiveness and who is not?
	Like the Holocaust survivors that I've read about, that I've heard the interviews with, they've often spoken about the fact that the way for them to let go, to overcome the atrocities that they've experienced is to forgive.
	Forgiveness is the way out for them.
	It's interesting to think about.
	I don't know if we're even a society ready to even contemplate an idea of forgiveness for Hitler.
	It's an interesting idea though.
	It's a good thought exercise at the very least.
	To think about, like, all these people that are being canceled for doing bad things of different degrees.
	Think of, like, Louis C.K. or somebody like that for being not a good person.
	But, like, what is the path for forgiveness?
	And also, what's a good person?
	What is a good person?
	If that's a sliding scale that we could all find ourselves looking at the uncomfortable end of a gun on, you know, particularly down the line.
	I mean, you hope for the best, but...
	These definitions, I guess, like you said, are important.
	And who's doing the canceling?
	Who's being canceled? I'm not necessarily, as you said, saying that that's entirely unjustified or certainly not.
	It's certainly understandable.
	And particularly, you mentioned like a monster like an Adolf Hitler.
	But it's also interesting, I couldn't help but notice, like you mentioned, as a society, us being able to apply forgiveness to someone who's done so much horror.
	But people who are personal, I mean, of course, many, so many people have been personally affected, but directly personally affected.
	Someone, a survivor of the Holocaust.
	I'm nowhere near big enough person for that sort of thing.
	But I guess that's an interesting thing.
	You know, being the person who was physically there, potentially able to let go.
	I don't know. That's unbelievably powerful.
	It's interesting. I guess you have to wonder sometimes, and this isn't obviously in regards to the Holocaust, but why I'm holding on to various things.
	What is it doing for me and what is it doing to me?
	Is it facilitative?
	Is it not? And I guess that's something else that I really enjoy.
	When I was on Ultimate Fighter, they don't let you have any music or any books other than religious texts.
	So I brought a Bible and I brought a Koran and I started to read them side by side.
	And it was really interesting reading.
	The Bible's a little drier. Koran's more interesting, at least written.
	But I think something that was consistently brought up was...
	I don't think any of us want justice.
	We think we want justice, but I don't think we want justice.
	Justice is a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous game, because maybe this person's wronged me deeply, and I want justice.
	I want to balance it out, because what is justice if not a balancing of the scales?
	And sometimes you can understand it, and on a societal level, I think it's fine.
	I mean, there's crime and punishment, and we can go for the benefits and the drawbacks of that, but...
	Well, I think what any of us want is mercy within reason.
	You know, grace, as you mentioned, because justice is a very, very, very dangerous thing.
	And it's a valuable and important thing.
	But who gets to decide what's just, what justice is actually meted out?
	Maybe I get to mete out justice, but it's not, I don't get my comeuppance.
	Well, that sounds great. But what happens when it's pointed back at me?
	And I guess that comes back to the veil of ignorance.
	You know, the idea that one day I will have to live in the world in which I've envisioned, the world in which I've created.
	I think that a lot of times people love the idea of they're a judge for your crimes and a lawyer for theirs.
	And I heard that the other day.
	I thought that was great. And I think that's a dangerous thing.
	And hopefully it gives us all pause before rightly or wrongly, but always understandably, you know, wielding serious power.
	Yeah, justice is a kind of drug.
	So if you look at history, also been reading a lot about Stalin.
	I mean, all those folks really, I don't know what was inside Hitler's head actually.
	He's a tricky one, because I think he was legitimately insane.
	Stalin was not.
	And Stalin was like, he literally thought he's doing a good thing.
	He literally thought for the entirety of the time that communism is going to bring, like that's the utopia, and is going to create a happy world.
	And in his mind were ideas of justice, of fairness, of happiness, of, yeah, human flourishing.
	And that's a drug, and it's somehow, sadly, Pollutes the mind.
	When you start thinking like that, what's good for society, and believing that you have a good sense of what's good for society, that's intoxicating, especially when others around you are feeling the same way.
	And then you start building up this movement, and you forget that you are just like a...
	It's barely recently evolved from an ape.
	You don't know what the hell you're doing.
	And then you start killing witches or whatever.
	They did math.
	Let's be honest, though. I mean, sometimes a witch has to go.
	Yeah, we can all agree that a witch has to go.
	If it floats or sinks, which one?
	I forget which one it is. Whichever one we need at the time, honestly.
	Is it floating? It should have sunk. Yeah, but yeah, we can definitely agree that witches have to go.
	Because you brought it up, I tweeted recently, but also just...
	One of the things I'm really ashamed of in my life is I haven't really read almost any of the sci-fi classics.
	Really? Yeah. So my whole journey through reading was through...
	The literary philosophers, I would say, like, Camus, Hesse, Dostoevsky, Kafka, like, that place.
	Like, that's a kind of sci-fi world in itself, but it just creates a world in which the deepest questions about human nature can be explored.
	I didn't realize this, but the sci-fi world is the same.
	It just puts it in a, it like removes it from any kind of historical context where you can explore those same ideas in like space somewhere elsewhere in a different time, a different place.
	It allows you almost like more freedom to like construct these artificial things where you can just do crazy things.
	Crazy kind of human experiment.
	So I'm now working through it.
	The books on my list are the Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov, Dune, Snow Crash by Neil Stevenson, and Ender's Game, like you mentioned.
	That's just kind of...
	So I posted that, and then, of course, Elon Musk, John Carmack, I don't know if you know him, creator of Doom and Quake.
	Oh, cool. See, they all pitched in.
	These nerds, these ultra nerds just started going like, you need to read this, that, and the other.
	So I've started working out okay.
	But it seems like the list I've mentioned holds up somewhat.
	Is there a book, is there sci-fi books or series or authors that...
	That you find are just amazing.
	Maybe another way to ask that is like, what's the greatest sci-fi book of all time?
	Well, I'd like to start by sharing something that I'm embarrassed about.
	Is that I haven't read anything other than, Orson Scott Card, J.R.R. Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Tolkien.
	Yeah, I'm aware through Wikipedia and through surface reading of things
	that like a book called The Republic was written once.
	There were some other good ones.
	You're a prolific reader of Wikipedia articles.
	Or occasional. Occasional, yeah, exactly.
	In between whatever else it is that I waste my time on.
	But yeah, so I also, I should say, I posted on Reddit questions for Ryan Hall, and there's like a million questions, but like half of them have to do with Dune.
	No, not really. But like people bring up Dune.
	I don't understand why.
	Did you mention Dune before?
	No. Well, actually, we actually have a show role actually made us a gi, a Dune-themed gi one time, which I thought was kind of cool.
	I'll send you one. I'll give you one. We got extras.
	It's awesome. But actually, to your point, actually, this is an Orson Scott card quote, actually, the writer of Ender's Game.
	Fiction, because it's not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.
	And I think that's a neat thing because I have heard, you know, other people whom I respect and very sharp people actually every now and then dig their heels and going, I don't like fiction.
	I only like nonfiction. It's more instructive.
	And I would go, I completely disagree with that.
	I think we have a hard enough time figuring out what happened at 7-Eleven three hours ago that let me tell you what happened 600 years BC. I'm like, hey, I'm interested, but don't tell me this isn't a story too.
	Yeah. There's factual components, I have no doubt, but we struggle sometimes to, like, I guess what I like about fiction is that you can tell me a story, it's all about people.
	I mean, every now and then there's more and less believable things, and I think Dune would be an unbelievably well-written, in my opinion, for it to run.
	What do I know? But I really like Dune.
	I'll say that. A well-written example of human beings interacting with one another, the political component to that, the emotional, the intellectual, the relationship components to all of that.
	And I think that Dune is neat because it's a sci-fi novel, but only in the loosest sense.
	It's really a story about religion, about group dynamics, about human potential, about belief, learning, politics, and Governance, ecology.
	The best stories remind me of history.
	The same way history, hopefully, is not just a list of facts that I try to be able to recall or factoids that I try to recall, but a story that I can understand and see how the threads of time kind of came together and created certain things.
	And a lot of times, like we say, I'm like, oh, how the heck is...
	What's going on right now or 100 years from now or 100 years in the past happened?
	And you can look back far enough.
	If we had accurate knowledge, if we had that hypothetical perfect pool shot, at the beginning of time, we would see an unbroken chain of events that led us to where we are.
	And where we are will potentially lead us to where we're going, which is, again, why hindsight's helpful.
	But I think it's neat. I guess I really enjoy, for instance, a book like Dune.
	And they're actually making a movie out of it, which I'm...
	I'm skeptical of, to be honest, because it's going to be difficult to bring that to the screen for a variety of reasons.
	Yeah, there's at least 100 questions.
	Ask Ryan what he thinks about the new Dune movie.
	I am not enough of an authority to have any sort of decent opinion, but I guess what I would say is so much of it goes on in the character's mind.
	Like, how much of any of our days, any lived experience, as it were, is internal?
	The majority, how many times are people walking around and you know, they can be like, hey,
	what do you see right now?
	I'm like, oh, well, I see this picture.
	I see a wall.
	Hey, there's Lex.
	But really what I was paying attention to was what was going on inside of my head for
	a moment and almost the rest of the world tuned out and kind of dimmed.
	And I guess that I think that's going to be a struggle too.
	Anytime you want to bring that type of written story to a visual medium, I think it's going to be more difficult.
	But it'll be interesting.
	It's definitely one of my favorite stories, and it's honestly helped me become better at life, in my opinion, better at martial arts.
	And I think the writer, I think Frank Herbert was absolutely brilliant, whether those were all his ideas, which in reality, none of us are, all of our good ideas aren't ours.
	We're a combination. Maybe you came up with something, you're a curator of other good ideas, and Some things you borrowed from somewhere without even realizing it.
	But I think the way the messages and the themes and the ideas that were conveyed, particularly in the original novel, are just absolutely brilliant.
	Is that to you one of the greats?
	And the flip side of that, or another way to ask that is if somebody's new to sci-fi, is that something you would recommend?
	That is an entry point.
	I'm not well-read enough in the sci-fi world.
	I haven't read a lot of Isaac Asimov or anything like that, but I'll recommend Dune.
	I'll be an obnoxious evangelist for Dune to anyone who will listen.
	So yeah, I would strongly recommend it.
	So the other thing you mentioned, now I should probably be talking to you about much more important things, but the other thing you mentioned is Skyrim.
	Do you play video games?
	What's your favorite game?
	What would you say is the greatest video game of all time?
	Because I'm a huge fan of Elder Scrolls.
	Oh, cool. Yeah, I mean, I play a little bit at this point, you know, a little less.
	Finally moved into a new house.
	So you're like an adult? No, no, no.
	I'm like a better funded 12 year old.
	Yeah, that's entirely accurate.
	Better funded 12 year old. But somewhat better-funded 12-year-old.
	Not as well-funded as I wish. Historically, did you play video games?
	Oh, yeah. I played as a kid. Again, I've always liked playing sports and liked reading, and I always enjoy video games.
	But my favorite video game I think I've ever played was Knights of the Old Republic.
	It was a Star Wars game.
	I'm a huge Star Wars fan until it had become less so recently.
	Disney. You don't like the...
	I haven't watched it yet. Mandalorian.
	Oh, actually, I like Mandalorian.
	That was actually pretty cool. Waving this off.
	Canceled. Yeah, if I could cancel one thing, I would cancel Disney Star Wars.
	I'm going to edit that part out.
	Okay, let's go to the next.
	This is where, if people are wondering, if you're watching this on YouTube, and the dislike amount is like 80%, it's because of that comment.
	So, good job.
	Good job for making the internet hate you.
	I regret nothing. What about Baby Yoda?
	Yeah, I guess. He's little, he's got ears, and he uses the force sometimes, and he passes out.
	No qualms with Baby Yoda.
	Yeah. You don't have a heart.
	Okay. Let's go to jiu-jitsu, if it's okay.
	So the audience of this podcast may not know much about jiu-jitsu.
	Or they do, because it's really part of the culture now, but they don't really know much...
	They see that so many people have fallen in love with it, have been transformed through it, but they don't know much about, like, what is this thing?
	Is there a way you could sort of try to explain what is jiu-jitsu, what is the essence of this martial art that's captured the minds and hearts of so many people in the world?
	I think that jiu-jitsu is a philosophy that's expressed physically and that it's the kind of development of the mental capacity and physical capacity working in unison to move efficiently and almost flowingly, unresistingly with a given situation, with a physically resisting opponent.
	generate force on your own and how to steal force from the floor how to steal force from the other person and
	Move in concert with it as opposed to clash against which if you watch two untrained people fight, it's almost
	entirely a clash It's a runaway in clash a runaway in clash if you watch
	Jiu-jitsu done. Well, it's it it looks like water moving around a solid structure
	And and I think that that is expressed physically and I think that all of the things that anyone has
	Really been able to do very very well in jiu-jitsu end up kind of exemplifying that
	But I think that's true of martial arts in general.
	I think that a lot of times, like, the clashing that we see going on and working well is just the fact that, you know, you get very, very physically powerful people every now and then.
	They're able to get away with this, but I don't think that that's...
	And that's fantastic, because ultimately it's a results-driven thing, but...
	I think that the essence of the martial arts is learning how to make more out of less and how to move with and be yielding, almost like real life Aikido.
	So you think of martial arts, Jiu Jitsu, as like water or flowing, so Aikido, so moving around.
	The force as opposed to sort of maybe the wrestling mindset is finding a leverage where you can apply an exceptional amount of force.
	So like maximizing the application of force.
	I guess maybe that's a better way to, I'd like to marry the two ideas, you know, because I think you flow until the point at which you are the greater force at which point in time you can apply.
	But if we look at the best And when I say best, I don't necessarily mean most successful, although of course most successful are always very, very good.
	Throughout the course of history in boxing, in wrestling, in judo, they're magical.
	They disappear and reappear.
	It's like fighting a ghost that is like incorporeal when you want to find it, but then when you don't want to find it, it finds you.
	And, uh, I, I think that we see that in the, like, the Bovice societies of wrestling.
	Um, and, you know, I guess you could, you could look at, uh, Floyd Mayweather or Willie Pep or, uh, you know, Pernell Whitaker in boxing, um, as, as brilliant examples of disappearing and reappearing.
	And when you're strong, it's almost like guerrilla warfare.
	When you're strong, I'm nowhere to be found.
	When you're weak, you can't get rid of me.
	And I think that's what we're looking for.
	Yeah, the Setia brothers are incredible at that.
	They look like skinny Starbucks baristas, and they just manhandle Everybody effortlessly.
	They look like they just kind of woke up, rolled out of bed, fighting for the gold medal at the Olympics and just effortlessly throw.
	There's a match against, I guess, Yo Romero.
	Yeah, so if you look at who is the guy who's intimidating in this case and terrifying looking, it's Yo Romero, just like a physical specimen and obviously a super accomplished wrestler.
	I think this is for the gold medal, yeah, in 2000.
	2000? Yeah, Sydney.
	And then there... This is the year you all took silver.
	Just to show you there's an inside trip, effortless.
	He does it again.
	It's a really creative kind of wrestling where...
	It's organic. Yeah, you throw in all these kinds of...
	There's a mix of judo, a mix of weird kind of moves.
	It's not as funky as Ben Askren.
	It's just legitimate...
	Well, it's not funky for funky's sake.
	And I'm not poking at Ben Askren to imply that that's what he's doing.
	But it's funny.
	It's like a lot of times it's almost like Musashi talked a lot about that, that the only goal of combat is to win.
	It's outcome-driven versus flourishing, cool-looking movements.
	It's like, unless that had a utilitarian purpose, like what are you wasting your time with that?
	Both in the fight and also, you know, in practice.
	But as you mentioned, it's almost like it looks like judo.
	It looks like wrestling.
	It looks like jujitsu.
	It's almost like, I guess, that reminds me all of the martial arts
	is again, deeply tribal as well.
	I wanna learn Lex Fridman martial arts.
	And then I wanna learn another, you know, I guess transcendent persons martial arts.
	And it just happened to be the set of movements that you tended to do most of the time,
	thanks to your body type and your opposition and whatnot.
	But then I try to codify that and force those to work as opposed to going,
	I wanna understand how the body works in concert and in Congress with something else and other forces
	and move appropriately.
	And that's why it's like it always struck me that the Scythe brothers are great examples of just moving like water.
	But to use Bruce Lee, which is a little trite, but again, he's brilliant.
	It's like water can flow or water can crash.
	And they would crash when they needed to crash and they would flow when they needed to flow.
	But they would flow for the purpose of dissipating and then crash when they would win.
	And at the right moment, then go back to flowing the second that the other person found them.
	And it's just, it's beautiful to watch.
	It's artistic. And I think that that great expression of anything physical is ultimately studied as a science but expressed as an art.
	And I think that that's something that gets lost in jujitsu a lot of times when it gets a little bit, a little nerdy, like do this hand here, hand here.
	Like the more details I have, the better.
	When in reality, that's just not in my experience how it's done.
	It might be a fun exercise of saying like, what are the main positions and submissions in the art of Jiu Jitsu?
	You don't have to be complete.
	That's a ridiculously, I apologize for putting you on the spot like this, but it might be a nice exercise to think through it.
	Sure. I mean, I would just say that you have your arms bend in various ways.
	You have key lock, Americana, straight arm locks, Kimura, omoplata.
	Omoplata is a Kimura, Kimura is an omoplata.
	It's just executed. Submission. So like breaking off your arm in all kinds of ways.
	But ultimately, the question is, let's say you were a Terminator, like a robot, which of course you are.
	Go on. Go on. It's like, it's a word being completely literal.
	And I couldn't harm you with any of these things.
	Would I still use these positions?
	The answer is yes. They create leverage.
	They create control. They create shapes that I can affect and that can affect me.
	And they can be affected through other forces and other objects or structures like the ground or the wall.
	I really enjoy mixed martial arts because...
	There's another component.
	Rather than just me and you and the floor, there's me, you, the floor, and the wall.
	And it's another player in the game that doesn't exist in a grappling context with a non-enclosed area of combat.
	But you can strangle me or choke me, what do you call it, without my arms being involved?
	Or you can use one of my shoulders.
	To pin one side of my, one carotid artery off and you can enclose the other.
	You can turn my knee in the exact same ways that you can turn my arm, straight this way and that way.
	You can add a rotation to that or it can be directly linear against the joint.
	So I guess what I would say is the more that I've been able to understand jiu-jitsu, the more that I've been, it's given me a look into how we learn language where rather than learning five bazillion adjectives, I go, I understand what an adjective is.
	And of Of course, we are all read into some degree of vocabulary.
	I understand what an adverb does.
	And I understand what an adverb is.
	I know what a noun is. I know what the component parts of a sentence are.
	I know what, you know, I guess a clause, a contraction, any of these things.
	And it allows you to be interesting and artistic with your language to the extent that you can.
	But I can't, like, I can speak a degree of Spanish, but I'm not even slightly artistic in Spanish.
	I would be something, I speak like a child with a head injury.
	And anyway, But your basic understanding of the English language allows you to then be a student of Spanish.
	100%. But I'm limited by my experience.
	I'm limited by my understanding of techniques.
	I'm limited by my understanding almost like, let's say, techniques are like vocabulary.
	So even if I kind of sort of grasp the sentence structure and the thought process and the thought patterns of Spanish, which it's interesting because just even the orientation and the organization of a language, and I've thought about this a great deal, You know, the way that I perceive the world is affected deeply by the language that I learned.
	You know, again, if I learned, I have no idea how the Chinese language structures, but I can only imagine that it would affect, it's like a different lens.
	We're looking at the same thing, but I have a different set of sunglasses on than you do.
	And that's very, very interesting.
	I'll use the Quran as an example.
	You know, apparently it's unbelievably poetic in Arabic.
	Still neat and was interesting reading in English, but I'm told by people that I trust that it just one doesn't bear resemblance to the other.
	And I think that's a very interesting thing that you may be able to say the same thing, but in a more...
	I guess in a different way, in a more artistic way that may not translate on a one-for-one kind of fidelity.
	But the more that we're able to understand about how the body works, the more examples
	of the body working this way, the body working that way, the body working that way, the more
	that I'm able to eventually become an artist.
	But it has to be studied as a science first and it does start with technique collection,
	vocabulary collection, the same way we learn in school.
	You remember how to say quickly 17 different ways.
	And let's say I speak Spanish, I only know three.
	So you might use quickly, you might use an adjective like quickly in Spanish, but use one of the many, many options to describe that that I don't understand.
	And now I sit there and go like, wait, what?
	I can't be artistic.
	I can't be as organic with the language as I'd like.
	So I believe that jiu-jitsu a lot of times starts with the acquisition of a lot of, hey, do this, this drill, this technique.
	Here's an Americana, Americana to an arm lock, arm lock to a triangle.
	But The problem with that is oftentimes we get stuck in that phase.
	And people eventually become move collectors or sequence collectors.
	And I noticed this when I'm trying to do DVDs or I guess like an instructional series now or even teaching in class.
	I don't believe in that form of learning anymore.
	Not that it's not valuable, but I don't believe – I don't understand jujitsu on that level anymore.
	So what I'm trying to do is get across the basic ideas to people and say, hey – We're good to go.
	For mostly the worst, I'd say.
	Yeah, that's what people comment, especially people who haven't listened to me before.
	Is this guy drunk or high?
	Does MIT really allow slow people to be like, what's wrong with him?
	Is he getting sleep? Are you okay?
	Does he need help? So that's similar with my jiu-jitsu.
	It's like, is this guy really?
	Whatever rank I was throughout, I remember just like, is this guy really this rank?
	I just have a very kind of certain way of sitting and being slow and lazy looking.
	That was ultimately the language that I had to discover.
	It was a very liberating moment, I think.
	Probably a few years of getting my ass kicked, especially with Open Guard and Butterfly, to where you really allow yourself to take in the entirety of the language and realize that...
	That I'm unique.
	I have a language, I have a set of techniques, a way I move my body that I'm the one to discover.
	You can learn specific techniques and so on, but you really have to understand your own body.
	And that's the beautiful thing about Jiu Jitsu, like you said, is the connection about Your philosophy, your view of the world with the physical and connecting those two things.
	How you perceive the world, how you interpret ideas of the world about exhaustion, about force, about effortlessness, like what it really means to relax, all these kinds of loose concepts and then actually teach your body to do those things.
	And be able to apply force in spurts, be able to relax in spurts, and figure all that stuff out for my individual body.
	But as you mentioned, I couldn't agree with you more.
	It's a discovery process, and no one can cheat that process, which is, at the same time, it's almost like imagine I want to start writing books in second grade, unless maybe I'm staggeringly brilliant, which I can only conceptualize, so I'm being able to do that, but maybe a Mozart of the English language where you're out there doing it.
	But for most of us, we don't have enough knowledge, enough information, enough experience to be able to express ourselves.
	So we have to basically input, repeat, which is important.
	But it's the process, as you say, of going through that, of getting your ass kicked, of just like, well, that didn't work.
	Well, that didn't work. That felt right.
	But I don't know. Nobody else does that.
	I guess I don't believe in that. Versus eventually going, I don't know, I'll just try going my own way and see what happens.
	And now I'll get yelled at and people won't like me.
	And if it works, they'll say I got lucky.
	And if it doesn't work, they'll say I was dumb.
	Which maybe all is right.
	But basically, going through that iterative process that allows you to eventually find your self-expression and find your voice so that you fight the same way that you speak, the same way that you write, the same way that you think in a way that is uniquely you, that will also ultimately allow you...
	To understand other people being uniquely them, because even if you can only conceptualize, and I think about this a lot for society stuff, where I go, well, this is how I feel about this, but am I objectively right?
	Maybe about a couple things, but that's a small box that I have to be very, very careful about what I think is objective versus what's not, and I have to be open to the possibility that all the things that I think are objectively correct may or may not be.
	And that should allow me to have some degree of compassion or consideration for other people, both in their martial arts journey and in their journey as people, as human beings, because I understand that we're all on a path.
	It's all, again, an iterative process of eventual self-expression, but I think that's one of the things that we see having trouble when we see tribalism, which, I mean...
	Racism expression of that. Political affiliation expression of that.
	All of these things that can go in really uncomfortable directions.
	People are looking for, hey, where do I plant my feet over here?
	Where's the thing that I know is right?
	And we can all agree on the following.
	And I think that we see that in martial arts.
	We're like, oh, I do this style.
	I do that style. I do that style.
	It's like, hey, man, we're all just pushing forward in a certain direction here trying to do our best.
	And I understand why you feel the way you do.
	I may have felt like that at one point, too.
	But, you know, I'm just trying to learn and understand versus...
	I've already acquired enough knowledge.
	Let me cross my arms and start to look who's fucking up around here.
	And I think that it's an interesting trap that I think is a very human trap to fall into, but it definitely happens early on.
	I mean, it's a joke in the jiu-jitsu world, right?
	Like, oh, the blue belt that knows everything.
	Well, initially, it's like, what? I know nothing, and I at least think I know nothing.
	Then I'd learn a little bit, and I think it's a lot bit.
	And then, you know, the more you learn, the more you go like, I don't even know what I'm doing.
	Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right.
	We kind of talked about it a little bit, but once again, a lot of people that listen to this have never been on the mat, have never tried Jiu Jitsu, but are really curious about it.
	Everybody at all positions, like I think Elon Musk's kids are now doing Jiu Jitsu, Andrew Yang is, like they're all, you know, the world is curious.
	It's a nice, it seems to be a nice methodology by which to humble your ego, which to grow intellectually and physically.
	People are curious about it.
	So the natural question is, if they're curious about it, how would you recommend they get started?
	Maybe like, what do you recommend the first day, week, month, year, first couple of years look like?
	Like, how do you ease into it and make sure that it's a positive experience and you progress in the most optimal and positive way?
	The first thing you can do is simply ask yourself why.
	Why you want to be involved.
	You know, I remember the first day that I walked into Ronan Athletics in New York City to train under my godfather, my son now, Christian Montez.
	And I didn't know what I was getting myself into.
	I played baseball through high school and I was at Manhattan College in the Bronx.
	And I wanted to go and learn martial arts because it was always something that was interesting to me, but it was never something that I knew was accessible.
	And it definitely wasn't really around in Northern Virginia where I grew up, whereas then you stick yourself in Manhattan and there's stuff everywhere.
	So anyway, I guess I didn't know what to expect.
	I didn't know if I was going to get beat up, if people were going to be nice, if people were not going to be nice.
	But what I began with was, I think, expectation management.
	And I think that that's something that I would...
	That would be the first thing that I would start, is almost imagining, what is it that I'm getting myself into?
	Because I love the martial arts.
	The martial arts has given me everything in life, and I'm so thankful I wouldn't be sitting here without that experience, that journey.
	The people that I've met, the places that I've gone, I could never, ever have ever imagined.
	And I'm just unbelievably thankful for that.
	But I think that the thing that...
	That helped me most of all was starting with, you know, my mom said something to me one time and she said, you know, there's two types of people in various situations.
	There's why and there's why not.
	And, you know, it's understandable to have questions, concerns, things like that.
	But maybe sometimes it's a little bit easier when you're younger to just trust people or just say, I don't know, you know.
	But we go, hey, you want to climb that rock?
	Yeah, why not? Let's go. Hey, you want to jump in that river?
	Yeah, why not? Sure.
	Versus if I have to reason my way into everything, if I have to be talked into everything, a lot of times I'll talk myself out of it.
	And I think that a lot of times this is the thinker's disease.
	You want to figure out what's going to happen and what you should expect to have happen
	before you get involved versus going using the old Bruce Lee saying again it's like no amount of
	thinking or training on the on the side of the river will teach you how to swim. You have to
	jump in and there are risks associated with that and so I guess psychological are usually the
	biggest ones that's the biggest hurdle and physical but the biggest thing that I guess I
	would suggest anyone to say why do you want to do this?
	You're like, well, I want to challenge myself.
	I want to learn. I would like to learn to fight.
	I wanted to learn to fight so that I could protect myself and if anything else, other people, if only within arm's reach.
	I perceived that if I had some small degree of power, I generally wouldn't use it, which is why I was like, yeah, I'll give it a try.
	I'll try to be reasonable and hopefully if I make a mistake, I'll apologize to people.
	But basically, I said, yeah, I'd like to have that.
	And I know this is going to be challenging, and we'll see what happens.
	And that means that getting beat up, and I didn't get hurt, but getting roughed up, getting my arm bent this way or that way, getting choked, I was like, well, this is all supposed to happen.
	That's no big deal. It would be like going and joining the Army during peacetime.
	And then going, oh, I'm just doing this for a college education.
	You're like, okay, that's cool, man. And then all of a sudden, war breaks out and they want to send me somewhere.
	And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't sign up for that gig.
	Actually, you did. Whether you realize it or not.
	You may not have thought that you did, but you did.
	So getting your mind right and just going, what are my expectations for this activity?
	What is it that I'm looking to do?
	And of course... You know, you're going into a gym.
	You're going into a place that you don't know people or you probably don't know people and you don't know the coach.
	And even if you do want to, hey, how you doing, shake your hand type of level, you know, 95% of my students don't know me.
	Not really. You know, I try to be polite and not annoy them too much, but they don't know me and I don't know them.
	I understand if they don't trust me.
	I wouldn't trust, trust me either if I were them.
	But at the same time, someone has to take that leap.
	And one of the things that I've noticed as a martial arts instructor, that's the biggest struggle
	With dealing with adults, which is why a lot of people like to teach kids because kids don't ask don't argue
	Now that also means there's there's all sorts of pitfalls with that sort of thing and that can be an issue
	But you know, I guess a lot of times people get to a point in their life, you know
	And they're 20s early 30s where now I I'm a I'm a manager now
	I know what I'm doing. No one talks to me like that. Yeah versus like a man you go join boot camp
	I don't care if you are Elon Musk They're gonna tell you to shut up and do push-ups. Yeah,
	and that's what's great about it. Yeah, so You are taking a leap of faith into a world that you're
	gonna be a tiny fish and you got to hope that the people Who are who are guiding you in that in that journey are
	gonna have I?
	Can't say even say your best interest at heart because they don't even know you but they'll try to do no harm
	They'll try to help you in the way that they would understand and I guess that's for instance
	That's what I would try to do with anyone That comes into my gym.
	I would try to help them in the way that I understand they need as best I can and as safe and reasonable a way as possible, but sometimes in a way that's going to make them uncomfortable, particularly if physical combat is not something they've done before.
	A lot of people go in without even having played contact sports.
	And so that can be a big jump.
	And you have to understand if that's where you're starting from.
	No worries. But you're going to have to kind of work your way to it.
	And it's going to be uncomfortable.
	And that's okay.
	It's part of the process. And you're going to have some bumps and bruises.
	And you're not going to want to roll with that guy in the corner because that person's rough and they beat you up.
	And they're like, okay, but is this a big hurt or is it a little hurt?
	If it's a big hurt, okay.
	If it's a little hurt, It needs you to soldier up a little bit.
	It's such an interesting balance because to find, I think one of the most important things as in anything I think in life is the selection of the people that you put around you.
	I mean that's true with like getting married, that's true with like if you go to, if people ask me like graduate students, like your PhD advisor, Can be the difference, it's everything.
	It's like you spend five years with somebody, they're going to basically define more impact on you than anybody you marry, anybody you hang out with, it's a huge impact.
	And the same with the coach selection, which is like the school selection, it's going to be really important in terms of who you select will define how happy, The trajectory of your growth and how happy you are with the entirety of the experience and yet The flip side of that is, especially if you have an ego, especially if you are the manager that needs to let go of some stuff, you're going to feel like shit with the best kind of coach.
	That's what you need.
	But there's a weird balance there to find.
	And everybody needs a different thing.
	I enjoy being sort of like, it sounds weird, but like, From the wrestling background, I enjoy feeling like crap.
	In the sense like the coach, getting beat up.
	I don't actually enjoy it.
	It's not like some masochistic thing or whatever.
	It's the growth.
	I like the anxiety.
	I like feeling like shit when I go home.
	Emotionally, physically, it's growth.
	It's a sign of growth, right? Like if you're not having to feel those things, you're probably in your comfort zone, which is fine, but that's not your growth zone, right?
	And everybody has a different threshold for that.
	I mean, the beautiful thing about jiu-jitsu is like, it also has like a yoga feel to it.
	Like you're learning about your body.
	So depending on the gym and depending on, in fact, The coaches, the people around you, within the gym, you can select little groups too, kind of like the people with who you roll.
	If you're a smaller person, it doesn't mean you have to go against big people.
	You can go against the people who smoke a lot of weed and they're chill, or you can go against that crazy ripped blue belt competitor who's out to destroy everybody.
	And depending on what your mindset is, you can kind of select that.
	It's such a fascinating journey of basically self-discovery.
	I couldn't agree with you more.
	What you need may change over time, right?
	Maybe what you need today could change six months from now or a year from now.
	And that's something that I experienced.
	I'll use my first coach, Christian, again, as a great example of someone who I really look up to and respect and someone who helped me a lot.
	Like at a time when I really needed some guidance and I needed to learn martial arts, but get into – Henzo Gracie's gym was right down the street from where Christian was teaching.
	And Christian was a blue belt at the time.
	He was teaching at a place called Fight House, which is this awesome, like, you know, like, 90s, early 2000s, you know, warehouse area down on Fashion Avenue in Manhattan, off of, like, between 7th and 8th.
	And it was, like, two basketball courts wide, but, like, there was the Sambo guys over here.
	There was the Kali guys over there.
	There was Wing Chun over there. There was Jiu-Jitsu in the corner.
	And Hensel's was one of the most famous academies in the world at that time.
	Still is. And I just didn't know what a Henzo Gracie was.
	And I mean, it's a great gym and it's a fantastic place for people to train.
	But I think what was right for me at the time was I stumbled into a two-person elevator and found a place where six people trained at that time.
	And I had someone that could give me some, in addition to martial arts advice, personal guidance.
	And that made a big difference.
	And then initially we would have competitions or intra-gym competitions with the Sambo guys.
	We would roll with them.
	And again, it was great because they were just a bunch of Russian dudes from Brighton Beach.
	And they would come down and then we would all fight and then everyone would train and we'd all drink tea and then go home.
	And anyway...
	I love Russians. It was super tough, and they were like, again, just a tough group of people.
	It was great. And then I remember when I decided after like four or five months, I'm like, man, I really want to try to take this seriously.
	And I told Christian about that, and he's like, well, hey, I think you need to do the following.
	And it was like, hey, there was a guy named Jeff Ruth who was a purple belt at the time, which was a much bigger deal than it is now, but it was 10-0, it was an MMA fighter, a lot of amateur body experience, super tough dude.
	And Jeff was the best person at that time that I'd ever trained with.
	I just got squashed. Christian used to beat me up too.
	But like, Jeff would just absolutely kick the crap out of me.
	And I was like, this is awesome.
	And this was back when I was at home.
	I went home for the summer for that.
	And Chris was like, hey, I think you should stay.
	Because I told him that's what I was thinking.
	And this was a coach that...
	You know, when it's like, when initially was exactly what I needed.
	And then he's like, well, hey, that's not what I'm doing here.
	Maybe they're going to be able to help you onto a path that's kind of commensurate with what your goals are at the moment.
	And then, you know, that was an interesting thing.
	And I really got, I feel that I was fortunate to start At a place where my coach was able to transition roles and do so comfortably.
	And I think that that also was probably a factor of the fact that, you know, where he'd done some of his training prior, like, there have been issues with the coach there.
	We're, like, not supporting, not having the support, you know, feeling like, hey, like, I'm going to hold on to my students.
	I'm going to hold on to my best guy or my best girl, even if I can't.
	Take them where they need to go.
	So that was an interesting thing.
	And just recognizing also, though, that the people, like the same way you're an individual going into a gym and you don't know what you're getting into, your coach is a person too.
	And he or she, you know, they may have been doing this activity longer than you, but they're not.
	They're not. Some weird little all-knowing God.
	They don't know anything. They may say something that pisses you off.
	They may yell at you.
	They may help you. They may inadvertently cause you some sort of issue.
	And just being able to recognize that even though...
	I say this to people, and I've said this to people in my gym.
	I'm like, we're in the service industry, man, but I'm not at your service.
	Don't get it twisted. I will absolutely do my best to help people.
	I'm there to... Do my best as a martial arts coach, but I'm here to do my best as a martial arts coach.
	And I'll do my best, and periodically I make mistakes, and I owe an apology or two, and I'll try to give them out when I can.
	But we're not McDonald's.
	It's not, oh, you gave me 100 bucks, so you do whatever you want in here.
	This is my house. This is my gym.
	This is my dojo. This is a martial arts.
	This is not a basketball team.
	Yeah, there's something beautiful about martial arts, like exactly as you said, is the coach, like in wrestling, at least collegiate, like high-level wrestling, is like...
	There's a dictatorship aspect to a coach that is very important to have.
	Like, this ridiculous, sometimes, nature of, like, master and so on, and bowing, all these traditions.
	There's something, it seems ridiculous from the outside, perhaps, but there's something really powerful to that.
	Because that process of, you said, why not, of letting go of the leap of faith Requires you to believe that the coach has your best interest in mind and just give yourself over to their ideas of how you should grow.
	And that's an interesting thing.
	I mean, I've never been able to really see coaches I've had as human.
	They're always, you always, it's like a father figure or like this, you always put them in this position of power and I think that's, I think, at least for me, it's been a very useful way to see the coach because it allows you to not think and let go and really allow yourself to grow and emotionally deal with all the beatings.
	Well, they'll push you where past oftentimes where you would have stopped yourself, right?
	Which is great. And hopefully they know if they're paying attention and they're still a person, they can make mistakes.
	They'll push you further than you would have gone, but not so far that it's not facilitative, right?
	Right. That's something that I can say, like Faraz Zahabi, the head coach at TriStar, my head coach for MMA, Kenny Florin, one of my other head coaches for MMA, have both been phenomenal influences.
	Paul Schreiner, who's one of the assistants at Marcelo Garcia's Academy, coached me in jiu-jitsu for a long time, brilliant instructor.
	They've all been able to do that.
	And I think what's interesting about all of those guys, they're very sharp, but they're very intuitive as well.
	And I think that Faraz actually told me about something that John Wooden said, John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach.
	Just a simple philosophical idea.
	He said, some people's life is a bowl of shit.
	It needs some whipped cream in it.
	Some people's life is a bowl of whipped cream.
	It needs a little bit of shit in it just to balance it out.
	And it's an interesting thing. Coaching everyone the same way doesn't work.
	That's, I think, the difference between a coach and an instructor.
	And a lot of times people think they want to coach, but they really want an instructor.
	I'm like, hey, Lex, tell me what to do, not how to do it.
	Yeah. And then other times people think they want, you know, an instructor and they really want a coach.
	And I'm like, man, this guy's just giving me information.
	A coach is so much more than an instructor.
	And that's a huge leap. And that's something that I think that people need to understand when they're going into martial arts.
	And I can totally grasp why they don't because how would they know?
	But I think about this a lot.
	Like me giving you $150 for a month, which is not nothing, that's for sure.
	That does not – that pays for instructor, really.
	Coach is a relationship that gets developed.
	Because can you imagine, like, just the amount of emotional investment and time thinking away from, like, oh, Alex isn't here anymore, but what can I do to help him?
	What does he need? Like, that's serious.
	And that's the difference between – that's oftentimes the difference that getting over the hump in various situations.
	So it's an interesting – You know, bargain that's being made, like commitment by the instructor who becomes a coach, commitment by the student.
	You know, like there's a financial transaction.
	There's a lot of things going on there.
	But I feel very fortunate to have had not just instructors in my time, but coaches.
	And that means sometimes we butted heads.
	And sometimes I look back and I think I was right.
	And other times I look back and I don't know they were definitely right.
	But there was always the trust, with the exception of one time that I feel that trust was greatly betrayed, that...
	Rightly or wrongly, whether mistakes will be made, but everyone is attempting to do the right thing.
	Under no circumstances would I intentionally do anything malicious, you know, versus, hey, I might have burnt your house down, but you can be darn sure it wasn't on purpose.
	And I think that as long as there's that mutual understanding and mutual belief of goodwill, which, again, doesn't just magic up out of nowhere, I understand, I think that that's when then great things can happen.
	And I look at all the athletes that I know, you know, the guys and girls that I've watched become fantastic in various places.
	Almost invariably, it never happened alone.
	Yeah, I'm really torn about that.
	Maybe you can help. Have you seen the movie Whiplash?
	Mm-mm. So it's, I would say, from an outsider's perspective, people should watch it.
	It's a, I guess, jazz band.
	It's a movie about a drummer and the instructor, and he, it's basically, I would say, from the outsider's perspective, it's a toxic relationship, but he's really the coach, whatever we call him, pushes the musician, the drummer, to his limits, like to where He just feels like shit emotionally.
	It looks like a toxic relationship, but it's one that ultimately is very productive for the improvement of the musician.
	I had the same, like in my own experience, I got a chance to train at a couple places regularly, and so one of my coaches Who is a great human being.
	A lot of people love him. But when I was a blue belt, he was pushing me a lot for competition.
	And every time I step on the mat, I was anxious and almost afraid of training because of like the places I'm gonna have to go.
	And then the, I can't, I don't know what's good or bad because I think I've become a better person because of that experience.
	Like I needed that.
	And on the flip side, like the place I got my black belt from, Balance Studios, I remember also Blue Belt, the coach sitting down and I was going to competition and he saw something in me where he said, you know, like, good luck, but win or lose, we always love you.
	I remember that because I really needed that at that time.
	I was putting so much pressure on myself.
	I'm not an actual professional competitor.
	I just competed.
	I'm a PhD student, but it was clearly having a psychological effect on me.
	And that's what a great coach does.
	Life is more important than Jiu Jitsu since it's bigger.
	So they find You use jiu-jitsu when you need it to grow as a person, and when it overwhelms you, you have to pull that person out, like look at the bigger picture, always look at the bigger picture.
	It's fascinating, and I don't know what to make of it.
	I don't think I would have it any other way, is both the anxiety and the love.
	Yeah. I think that's a really interesting thing that you're describing that I guess it kind of brings me back to a lot of the other things we've been discussing is just almost like the reciprocal nature of everything where no pressure, that's great.
	Everyone's happy all the time.
	I mean, let's use an example of sci-fi movies, let's say The Matrix, which, of course, the first one was amazing, and then each subsequent movie made the series worse.
	But basically...
	They're working on a new one, by the way.
	Yeah, I've heard. We'll see. I was hoping for the best.
	But basically, let's say, hey, we started...
	Our first initial world, Agent Smith says to Neo, is like our first world was a utopia where everyone was happy and nothing ever went wrong.
	It's like your primitive cerebrum rejected it.
	And I think that there's obviously – I mean, what do I think?
	But I guess, well, I'm here, so I might as well say what I think.
	I guess, you know, great things are fantastic.
	A kind, gentle place is fantastic.
	And this is, again, why I love Dune, because I think Dune does such a great job of expressing – Frank Herbert does such a great job of expressing, again, the reciprocal nature of these ideas.
	You know, look at Sparta, for instance, or at least what I understand of Sparta from the reading and also watching 300 – And reading the Wikipedia article.
	And reading the Wikipedia article about the movie, not the place.
	But that's a hard, brutal place.
	And was there benefit to that?
	Like, absolutely. Was there drawback to that?
	Absolutely. Is it sustainable?
	I would think probably not.
	I mean, granted, it hasn't sustained, but I mean, that type of a thing, it burns too hot almost, and it destroys the host at a certain point.
	And I guess that type of unforgiving nature, but entirely permissive has its own issues.
	And I guess coming back to your description of describing a toxic relationship is a very dangerous and tricky thing, because it's almost like a bird's eye view.
	You see, let's say, a husband and a wife arguing.
	And you're like, all right, well, sort of somebody hitting somebody.
	I need to keep myself out of this because I have no idea what – I'm seeing something, but I don't know what's going on or why specifically.
	And again, short of it going to a place that's just out of bounds – I don't know who's right here.
	I don't know who's wrong. And I don't know what phase of this things are in.
	So I guess- And long term was good for- Yeah.
	Both people. Right.
	It's dangerous for- So if I want to put my finger on the scale, I can understand the desire to do that.
	I'm like, hey guys, let's break it up. Yeah.
	But, and that may be the right thing at the time, but at the same time, I'm not sure.
	So I think back to all of the times that, you know, that like you mentioned, your coach pushing you when very, very hard.
	And then other times going like, hey, let's put it in perspective here.
	I think that's an interesting thing for high performance.
	And I think that we're seeing that, again, societally, you know, now, or at least maybe that just pops up on my internet feed periodically.
	But coaches shouldn't be allowed to do this or yell at this person to yell at that person.
	Like, well, have you ever been...
	Go to a boxing gym. It's not a commercial entity.
	Not really. A real boxing, not LA boxing, not a UFC gym.
	Like a real place. You're going to see what things are like when it's entirely performance-based.
	Go to a wrestling room at a high level.
	Again, there's left and right limits and there are such things, obviously, as abuse, of course, and that should never be tolerated.
	But... It's not a commercial entity.
	I don't need to be sweet to you if you're screwing up, if you're dropping the ball.
	And in fact, recognizing that I'm not doing you a favor or the team a favor by being permissive of that type of behavior, I think is important.
	Everything in its context and at its time is important.
	And I guess I can think again of the times that I've been put or had put on me like a great deal of pressure to do X, Y, or Z or to succeed or to push for success.
	And I can't...
	I look back fondly enough on those times.
	They were tough at the time.
	But without that, I'm not sitting here.
	Without that, I don't go from growing up in a very nice family in the suburbs to fighting at the highest level in jiu-jitsu, gi, no-gi, and now in mixed martial arts, starting a career at age 27.
	You know, I don't, it just doesn't happen because people, generally speaking, from that background don't get pushed
	hard enough physically to be able to make that transition.
	And that has benefits and it has drawbacks. You know, when you stare into the abyss, it stares back.
	And I think that that's an important thing to understand.
	You know, you stare long enough, you can become something that you don't, that you would be sorry that you did.
	You don't look enough and you don't have perspective either.
	You know, and I think that that's an interesting thing.
	I can speak to someone who's relatively articulate and reasonable.
	I try to be reasonable. But I'll say in sparring, if people get crazy with me, they get a warning, and then I'm going to crack them.
	And what do they expect?
	Oh, they hear the guy on an interview saying, But who did they think they were meeting?
	Because there's also the guy in the ring.
	And there's layers there, too.
	I remember training with you.
	It was kind of funny.
	There's, like...
	Well, you didn't know who I was.
	I mean, you still, like...
	You have a really good straight ankle up, by the way.
	Yeah. That...
	I don't remember what rank I was, but it might have been purple or something like that.
	You had this look on your face, which I've often seen in black belts.
	It's like, here he goes again.
	Here's him trying this thing.
	And then when I kind of annoyed you a little bit with it, now I get that.
	I did something somewhat effective, maybe a little bit off balance.
	I just peeled off a little layer of Ryan Hall to where I was like, okay, let me like, there's like layers underneath.
	Ogres are like onions.
	There's Mike Tyson somewhere in there.
	So it was like, okay, this new guy rolls in here.
	He thinks he can do this stupid thing.
	And then you started to beat the hell out of me.
	But the point is there's layers here from the guy who is being interviewed now to like Genghis Khan.
	Yeah. But it's funny.
	It's all in the same body. Right, but it's like all of us are like that, right?
	In various different directions and recognizing that's okay.
	It's just there are consequences to all, every choice that we make has a consequence.
	Sometimes there's like objectively wrong or objectively right, but at least in my mind, that's a pretty small box.
	Everything else is just, there's a consequence to that.
	Do you like that consequence?
	Do you not? And who do I want to become?
	What do I want to try to hone myself or anyone else into?
	And also like, but this is something I've screwed up as a coach plenty of times.
	You know, like, if someone says, if, like, I come to them like, Lex, I really, really want to take, you know, research very seriously.
	Like, okay, I believe you.
	Now, I haven't shown you that, but I believe you.
	Like, okay. And now, me not showing up to research or to study or not being up until three in the morning thinking about this is no longer acceptable.
	There was a time, like, five seconds before me making that statement that if I went to bed without reading the book that I needed to read...
	No worries. But the second that I made that statement, your expectations for me changed.
	And maybe that's something that I've screwed up a whole bunch of times as a teacher.
	Because it's an interesting thing, obviously, running a martial arts school as you're principally an athlete is...
	pay enough attention to what people are doing.
	I just go, oh, okay.
	You say X, Y, Z.
	I'm like, roger that, I believe you, cool.
	I will now put you in category X.
	And whether rightly or wrongly, like maybe this person didn't understand
	what they were asking for, or I didn't express this or the other,
	and it just, it caused cross wires.
	And then most times you just, you hash it out, you have a discussion, you figure out,
	you get to the bottom of what people are trying to do or what they want.
	But if I was paying more attention, I think I could have been a lot more effective,
	or if I had more experience.
	And sometimes maybe I'm not sharp enough, or I don't, I'm not perceptive enough
	to be able to see what's going on.
	And maybe with years more down the line, I'll be able to have a sharper perception.
	But I think that's another one of those interesting things that sometimes I would caution, or not caution,
	but just inform a prospective martial arts student, depending upon where you're going.
	You know, you.
	Both you and also your coach or other people in the room, they wear many hats.
	And sometimes I had the wrong hat on.
	You were talking to me as Lex the guy.
	I didn't realize you were talking to me.
	I thought you were talking to me as Lex the guy.
	I didn't realize you were talking to me as Lex the martial artist.
	I'm like, oh, crap. I was talking to the wrong person.
	So it's almost like if you had a...
	I run my gym with my wife.
	She's a black belt. So she's my wife.
	My peers as a martial artist in jiu-jitsu.
	She's here, by the way, in judging, so...
	Exactly. All right.
	Well, all right. But I'll fill a black belt.
	And I guess like another thing- She doesn't have a microphone, so you can't hear all the trash she's talking.
	Exactly. But it can be tough.
	And that's something we've had to work through a lot.
	And it's like looking back, it's like now being where I'm at now.
	And it's easy for me to say that because she's in the room and I don't want her to stab me.
	Just continue to slowly poison me over time.
	Yeah. Which, frankly, I understand.
	You know, it's the sort of thing that is now way more effective than anything else I could really reasonably expect to have.
	But there were times when both of us, you know, were justifiably annoyed at the other because of crossed wires.
	And sometimes, you know, you just have disagreement anyway or misunderstanding anyway.
	But again, like, I coach some of my friends.
	I coach my friend who I've known since I was four years old.
	You know, sometimes I don't go, hey buddy, how you doing?
	Sometimes I'm like, what the fuck are you doing?
	Put your hand over there. How many times have we talked about this?
	And then you walk away and you can see him look at you crooked.
	And you're like, oh crap. Oh yeah, he thought I was talking to him as his friend.
	Yeah, well, all right, we need to talk this one out, hash it out.
	And not, he's wrong.
	How could he possibly think that way?
	I'm like, oh no, I totally understand that.
	But if I was 22, doesn't he know I'm a purple belt?
	Some nonsense like that. And it doesn't come from a bad place, but it's just, I guess, that comes back to society, to anything.
	People only have the perspective that they have and the awareness that we have.
	And so again, going back and going, hey guys, Grace, I don't expect, it's not fair for me to go, I fight UFC. Why doesn't this guy who came in as an attorney understand how hardcore this needs to be?
	Like how could he and at the same time though if I'm using the language of?
	Someone that is interested in at least performance from a martial arts perspective
	I understand how that could be off-putting let's say for instance someone that's
	Like all of that would be out of bounds in their normal workplace
	But if they think of the gym as my office then whether they agree or disagree of what's going on
	I go, okay. I hear why I see why that might happen Let's talk about this and we can again all push forward in
	a positive direction That benefits I guess everyone's journey throughout the
	activity and now on top of all that there's moods I mean, especially lately.
	I think two days ago, maybe yesterday?
	No, two days ago.
	I've never been that cranky in my life.
	I don't know what it was, but I wanted to tell everybody how much they annoyed me.
	It was like, I was just very conscious of this feeling of like, why is this happening right now?
	So I consciously decided, as I usually do in those cases, to not say anything to anybody.
	How do you do that? Well, you know, it's, yeah, meditate.
	Because it's not, I tend to then visualize what's going to happen in the next, like, how is this going to make my life better?
	Like, If I say something that means to somebody else, I have just started a conflict that will just escalate, will continue, will add more conflict to my life.
	I just don't like the feeling it will create.
	And so you live enough life to know that it's just like with street fighting.
	I would get into a lot of fights when I was younger, just on the street.
	But then you realize it's not like a jiu-jitsu match or something like that.
	It'll escalate.
	It might come back at you.
	That person might find you again.
	But more importantly, the anxiety of it, of having created little enemies in this world, distorts the way you see the world.
	So I've noticed that...
	If I am shitty to people on the internet, which I haven't been, I think, in a long time, it somehow brings the shittiness to you more and more.
	It escalates. The more love you put out there, the more the people who put love out...
	Like, surround you. Well, you mentioned forgiveness as well.
	Yeah, forgiveness. Like, I guess back to the original, you know, the Holocaust survivor scenario, where you're like, oh my god, like, you think of the ultimate in, like, I've never experienced one billionth of that level of pain and horror, and it's like, and I can't let this little thing go?
	You know, I guess that's an interesting thing.
	I think you're just making the point in your personal life, I guess, the same way, right?
	Yeah, and on the internet, it's hard.
	I've somehow gotten, I mean, you've had a level of celebrity for a while.
	I've recently gotten some level of, like, celebrity.
	And, like, these people who are just shitty for no reason come out from all places, like, calling me a fraud or anything else.
	I mean, it's a J and Silent Bob strike back.
	They find out a movie is gonna be made about them and people are talking shit on the internet
	and they're like, what's the internet?
	And then someone shows them and they're like, what?
	And they go to a message board and they go to Hollywood to try to stop it from being made.
	And they eventually get money for their likeness and they use the money to buy plane tickets
	and fly around and beat the shit out of all the people that talk bad about them.
	Yeah, it's tough.
	I mean, it's, I'm having trouble with it cause there's people like, yeah, there's, you know,
	there's posts and forums and like heated discussions about is Lex Fiebing a fraud?
	I don't know. What has he really done?
	And then there's people like, well, I think he's an alright guy, but I'm not sure.
	Yeah. Like, there's, like, literal discussions, and I'm like, if you increase the level of celebrity, there's going to be, like, one of the things that hurts my heart a little bit is, like, some level of toxicity around Joe Rogan, for example. There's, like, communities of people that now, like, talk about him selling out, for example, all that kind of stuff.
	And I don't, you know, and Joe...
	I've talked to him about it.
	It's amazing that he says don't read the comments.
	He legitimately doesn't read the comments.
	His heart and his soul doesn't give a damn about the comments.
	All he gives a damn about is his friends.
	One of the things that's really inspiring to me, and I've had a conversation with him offline about Spotify and...
	The removed episodes, people were curious for me.
	What's Spotify? It's a thing on the internet where I think you can play Taylor Swift songs on.
	I'll write that down. But you can also now play Joe Rogan podcast.
	Oh, cool. And they gave him $100 million.
	So that's, you know, that's...
	That's awesome. Good for Joe. It's, yeah.
	But the thing I've had a discussion with him, and I made a video about it that I took down because of the toxicity, is like, it's hard to put into words, but he will give away the 100 million in a second if he ever has to compromise who he is.
	Like, he doesn't, I mean, he already said, as he talked about, he's made, quote unquote, fuck you money a long time ago.
	He doesn't need any more money.
	He doesn't care. It's nice to have money, whatever, but he'll give it away.
	It's nice to see when people like him, at a level of celebrity, level of success and financial success, Don't change at all.
	They're just the same thing that makes you happy is talking, in his case, talking shit with his friends, in the case of most of us really, just hanging out with friends, doing the things you love.
	In his case, doing the things he loves without any, like, you know, the Texas way, the freedom, like, without any corporate bureaucracy bullshit that rolls in and says, Well, maybe you shouldn't say fuck more than 20 times a podcast or something like that.
	Those kinds of rules.
	People, like he says in a suit and tie, they show up and say stuff.
	Oddly enough, people that could never have done what he's done.
	Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of inspiring to see that, and I hope people realize how special of a human he is.
	He's inspired people like me.
	I'm a scientist, right?
	So he inspired somebody like me from a very different walk of life to be kind to others, to be open-minded, I don't know.
	It's a special dude, so people need to support that and treasure that as opposed to be toxic about it.
	People really, for a long time, have told me that it would be awesome if Ryan Hall goes on Joe Rogan.
	I definitely think that would be an awesome thing.
	Have you listened to Joe?
	Has he been a part of your life in some kind of way?
	You know, well, Joe's always, I remember watching Joe on Fear Factor when I was a little kid, which is cool.
	So I've actually gotten to like, from a bird's eye view, watch, you know, his kind of just path through life.
	But one of the things that I always appreciate, and again, I barely know Joe other than to shake his hand.
	He interviewed me briefly in the ring after the BJ Penn fight.
	But one of the things that I've always admired about Joe is that I think he had fucking money from the start.
	I think that zero dollars is fuck you money for Joe.
	And that's something I respect about him a great deal.
	Because, as you say, it's interesting to watch.
	It's like you hope that George St.
	Pierre is like this. It's really neat.
	I'm not super close to George, but we're teammates at TriStar, and he's never been anything but a gentleman.
	He's one of those people that, if you didn't know George was famous, When you walk in the gym, you'd have no idea.
	He's not holding court, not doing it.
	He's just training, and he'll help out an amateur doing this.
	If you have a question for him, he'll help me.
	Like, I'm nobody, man. He would give me advice and train me.
	It was super cool.
	And he didn't kill me, which I really appreciated.
	He's a gentleman. But it's like you meet someone, and you go, man, it's so cool that this is the guy who's the best, that this is the guy who's been successful.
	And then you go... Why are they successful?
	Like I said, true to what they're doing.
	They haven't changed. They're the same as they've been.
	And I remember I got to TriStar in 2012 and George was already George St.
	Pierre. But I remember watching and talking to people and they're like, oh man, George is the same as he's always been.
	And it's neat. I see him in the gym training now and again, giving advice now.
	And it seems like Joe has always been consistent.
	And it's neat to watch someone not compromise on their values and not change who they are.
	And not, you know, periodically, like, you know, again, we all make mistakes.
	Like you have a bad day or this or that and an apology needs to be issued or even my bad or this or that.
	And you're like, yeah, and they just move on.
	They're not afraid to be themselves, and they're not afraid to be wrong.
	They're not afraid to make a mistake.
	As you mentioned, open-minded.
	So I'm like, so what are the correct beliefs to have about this that I know going in everyone's going to be okay with what I'm saying?
	Which is usually the beginning of a conversation that's going to go nowhere, right?
	And it's neat to see the things, I guess, that he's created on his own as a result of the authenticity that's there.
	And it reminds me of like Dave Chappelle.
	And again, I don't know.
	I've never met Dave. But it's neat to see someone that's clearly, again, authentic in their own way doing their own thing.
	And because of that, they're above the corporate nonsense.
	But what's funny, I think the message behind all of it is, hey guys, we all are.
	I can't promise you that I'm going to have money.
	Joe couldn't promise you that he's going to have money.
	Now it ended up working out, but he was above that nonsense from the jump.
	And he just continued to be above it by never giving it any mind and just going like, yeah,
	I'm going to be a reasonable person.
	I'm going to try to learn.
	I'm going to try to grow.
	And if I say something annoying, you can come and talk to me about it.
	We can get to the bottom of it.
	And I'm like, if I need to say my bad, thanks, appreciate it.
	You know, I will.
	And if I don't need to, I'm like, hey, I still appreciate the talk.
	Thanks, man.
	I'll shake your hand and we carry on and we go our separate ways and hopefully I'll treat
	you with respect.
	You treat me with respect.
	And I guess I think it's a lesson that it can work out no matter what.
	You don't have to kowtow to like these weird powers that be.
	And whether you're at this level or at this level, but you can live your life the way that you want.
	And as you mentioned, talk shit with your friends, hang out, be happy.
	And it just so happens that that resonates with people.
	It actually reminds me of like speaking at MIT and being in Boston is like a goodwill hunting.
	Again, what did he really want to do?
	He could have gone this way, he could have gone that way, and it was an interesting story, but it's like, this person wants to hang out with his buddies and wants to do other things, and again, happens to be brilliant and happens to be able to do all these other things, but there was, I guess it's like, at least in my mind, a story of authenticity as well, and it was both the same thing in the Robin Williams character.
	I just think that that's a message because watching things occur on the internet as they do now, so many things playing out in the public eye, I feel like so many private or otherwise formerly private discussions and disputes and interactions now become – they all have a, well, what is this going to say when it goes public?
	So how can I couch what I'm saying or how can I word this in a way that's going to get people on my side or use the right buzzwords and not use the wrong buzzwords?
	And it's just neat to see people – You know, in their own way, flip the bird to the head because I just think that that's just not how a human being is meant to think or interact.
	I'm curious what you think about the thing that recently has, you know, me like hosting this podcast, I sometimes think about like, who should I talk to and not?
	In terms of like, it's the old Hitler question.
	Now Hitler I would definitely talk to because, post-World War II, because everyone knows he's evil.
	The question whether you talk to Hitler in 1937, like when people who are really students of what's going on understand that this is a very dangerous human being.
	But a large number of parts of the world are like, well, he's a leader who cares for Germany.
	So the question I have, it's interesting to me, it involves a particular person named, who also lives in Austin, Texas, named Alex Jones.
	I don't know if you're familiar with the guy.
	I am familiar with Mr.
	Jones. I've actually recently just listened to InfraWars, like one episode of his show, I guess, that he does every day.
	And it kind of reminded me of a time in college when I drank too much tequila.
	What happened? There's no turning back.
	No. It's like, the mistakes you make that, it's...
	You don't know where you're going to wake up.
	You don't know who you're going to kill or not kill or steal or rob.
	It's unclear.
	It felt like I was getting pulled into a dark place where pretty much everybody is a pedophile that's trying to control the world.
	So Bill Gates definitely is a pedophile.
	Anybody in power, there's a kind of deep skepticism about power and a conspiratorial way to see the world where everything is like dark forces in all corners.
	It's like the way you feel when you're a kid that there's a monster hiding in the closet.
	Which is also why you leap over.
	Over the bed from like four feet away.
	There's a strategy. Yes.
	So, but he says that you're just being weak.
	You need to look under the bed.
	Under the bed, there's monsters and we need to be aware of them because they're growing, they're multiplying.
	You should be- And they're touching children.
	They're touching children, exactly.
	So it all connects.
	But when I listened to him and I thought about like, do I want to talk to him on this podcast, for example?
	When I listened to his conversation with Joe Rogan, the two times he talked on there, to me it was somehow entertaining.
	It was fun to listen to.
	It's fun to listen to a madman go on for four hours because it's almost like theater.
	This is what I talked to Joe about.
	When people try to censor Alex Jones, Joe says that the people who try to censor him don't give enough credit to the intelligence of human beings to understand that what a person says on a large platform is not necessarily the truth.
	You can be a madman and say crazy things, and people are intelligent enough to hear certain things When they're said, like, the Earth is flat, they can be intelligent enough not to all of a sudden start believing that the Earth is flat.
	Like, they're intelligent enough to sort of select different ideas and be able to enjoy the theater of a particular ridiculous over-the-top conversation without being sort of influenced the way they start believing, like, toxic set of beliefs.
	Now, there's a lot of sort of...
	Other kinds of people, especially now with cancer culture, that say, well, you don't want to give platform to crazy people that ultimately whose beliefs might lead to dangerous consequences.
	And I see it very often now with conspiracy theories that go way too far.
	For example, I haven't looked into it, so I'm sorry.
	I will look into it. But...
	It hurts my heart to see that on Bill Gates, in my opinion, the person who has saved and improved more lives than probably any human in history, literally, because of the money he's invested in helping, just the work he's done on malaria in Africa, the number of people he's helped is huge.
	And yet, every interview, anything you see now on Bill Gates, everyone is calling him, I believe, haven't looked into it, but I believe everyone's calling him a pedophile.
	I don't know the full structure of it, but it's just a very, it feels like an army of like, it feels like it's hundreds of thousands of people.
	That's what it feels like. It might be a much smaller percentage, But it feels like a huge number of people are calling him a pedophile.
	So that's the flip side.
	If you give platform to conspiracy theories like that, then you start to have bigger and bigger percent of the population believe in these crazy things.
	I just... I wanted to put it out there because I don't know what to think of that.
	If you put yourself in Joe Rogan's shoes, if you put yourself in my shoes, if you put yourself just in your own shoes.
	I'm in my shoes right now.
	Great. If you stay in your shoes, just stay in your shoes.
	Can I have yours? Would you talk, would you give platform to people like Alex Jones?
	Would you talk to somebody like Alex Jones or not?
	Yes, I would, and I feel very strongly about this, honestly.
	Well, I think that it's an interesting thing, and I would just say a lot of times I can understand very, very clearly why people would take issue with the idea of, I guess, what they perceive to be amplifying, this man's voice, this man's reach, as a demonstrable negative.
	But I think when you take a step back further...
	The cure is more damaging than the disease, and significantly so.
	I think that...
	I'm very, very wary of, I think being where you mentioned Alex Jones being wary of power and people with it.
	That's a lot of times there's a lot of truth and validity to crazy things that people say.
	It's the conspiracy theories that stick are the ones that sound credible, at least quasi credible in some aspect.
	And it's almost like it seems to me like an anchor in people's mind.
	And it is also funny to me, obviously, that Bill Gates, it's funny to tar people with things like pedophile, racist, rapist.
	Like, these are things that we're basically trying to pick words that no one can ever support someone who does these things.
	And that's...
	And that changes year by year.
	Currently, pedophile is totally in as a thing to call somebody just as it used to be communist or Marxist.
	Cleveland Browns fan.
	You know, like, come on. Actually, nobody likes the Browns.
	So I'll agree with you. That's why I picked on them.
	That's the trick is you find a group of people that nobody likes. We're good here. All right, that's the move
	But yeah, that's a creepy thing though because that is that is the creepy thing is
	It's like people are always looking for, groups of people are always looking for, and I find this really deeply disturbing, like, hey, so who's the guy that we can all get away with just treating like dirt?
	Who's the guy that I can be a dick to?
	I can just walk up and punch in the face and no one's going to say anything.
	And it's – even if – you know, people do that with – whether it's literal Nazis or someone that I called a Nazi, you know, I guess what's the bigger issue?
	This person's ridiculous beliefs or what I'm doing?
	And you mentioned Hitler before and obviously Mein Kampf being, you know, like the outline for some of the things he did later and when the evil – was it always there?
	Did it take root later on or flourish later on?
	But was – Was Adolf Hitler a problem because he had crazy ideas or because he did things?
	I think it's because it's not.
	I think. I know it's because he did things.
	Now, if I'm gonna start punishing thought crime I'm going to have to start punishing thought crime, and that's a terrifying concept.
	Even if I'm right about the certain – about the objectively correct, about the things that I decide to call out of bounds, who put me in charge and made me arbiter of good taste, and how long until I decide that something else is out of bounds?
	It's always a sliding scale, or it's always a sliding standard, and I find that – To be more of a concern than people doing crazy things, because I guess if you mention Alex Jones putting out ridiculous ideas, ridiculous theories, I think that most people don't look at Alex Jones as a credible person.
	Now, I'm not going to pretend to be deeply read into all of his beliefs or the things that he's trying to peddle, but there's plenty of things that are quasi-mainstream that I think on this side or that side, that maybe not comparably ridiculous, but are You know, particularly in hindsight or, you know, are silly.
	And I guess...
	The idea of getting a group of people together to decide what we're not going to tolerate is a very, very tricky thing.
	And I think that, you know, it reminds me of law or, you know, even, you know, religion when it gets to, like, what are the things that we don't like?
	How do we feel about rape?
	It's like, no, under no circumstances is that an acceptable behavior.
	Murder? No, that's not acceptable behavior.
	Killing? I don't know.
	It kind of depends on the situation.
	Are you at war? Were you justified?
	Were you acting in self-defense?
	Okay, so it's not—now, murder is a specific type of killing.
	The same way, you know, other things should be a specific type of something else, but I guess we draw the line of murder.
	We say, if you want to exist in our society, you can't do this.
	This cannot be done. And then we go, theft.
	If someone said, hey, I murdered that guy, can you understand where I'm coming from?
	I might say, yeah, I'll hear you out.
	Doesn't mean that I think you're right.
	But I'm like, have you ever been wronged so deeply that you could imagine that you could kill someone?
	I'm like, no, I haven't. But I could conceptualize someone doing that.
	And I'm like, yeah, okay.
	And you still need to go – you still need to face criminal justice as we have it in our system.
	At least that's how we've decided.
	Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.
	You have to be able to, if you look at the history of discourse in this country, I think it's still true, but I'm not sure it's changed since 9-11, is it used to be impossible to criticize A soldier.
	It was easier to criticize war.
	It was harder to criticize soldiers for allowing themselves to be the tools of war.
	I tend to be, maybe it's the Russian upbringing, it's the combat thing.
	I tend to romanticize war and soldiers.
	I see soldiers as heroes.
	But I've also heard people that not only say that war is bad, they say soldiers are bad.
	What's their argument?
	It's the kind of a libertarian view that they're basically slaves to evil, right?
	War is evil. And they are suspending their moral and ethical duties as a human being to become the tools of evil.
	That's sort of the argument if you see war as evil.
	I mean, I think it's useful to hear that, but for a long part in history, that was completely unacceptable.
	Same with abortion.
	If you see abortion as murder, I mean...
	If I classify it in that, if I put it in that basket...
	It starts, we're living in the midst of like a genocide...
	Looked at from that perspective, could you feel how people could be deeply upset by abortion?
	You go, of course. Looked at from a different perspective, you say, I don't believe it to be murder.
	That's not how I see it.
	Then you go, oh, well, if that's the genesis of your thought process, then you're like, yeah, okay, now I see how we can come to a different thing.
	But I guess we go, well, abortion is murder, period.
	Therefore, if you support it, you support murder.
	That's a convenient way for me to tar you, right?
	But I guess that's kind of coming back to the Alec Jones.
	I'm- It's the nuance.
	You have to have the nuance in these kinds of conversations.
	And I have to be willing to have the conversation, and I have to be willing to sit down.
	If I can't sit down across from the most violently racist, angry, hypothetical, internet-conceived person that none of us have ever actually met in real life, or hopefully not, and go like, well, of course I believe that this person's wrong.
	But allow me to change, do my best, I'll hear them out and I'll go, no, I can go point by point and explain why this guy or this girl is wrong and hopefully bring them over to a more reasonable position where they will have better beliefs and they will, like, objectively better beliefs and beliefs that will, and they'll treat other people better.
	Why would I want to marginalize this person?
	Now, I might not want to talk, I might not want to invite them to my barbecue if they're acting like a jerk all the time, but how could I, would it not make the world a better place if I'd hear them out and they go, look, if you're gonna sit down and talk with me, we're gonna have to have a discussion.
	I'll hear what you have to say. And if I can't explain to someone why their ridiculous belief is wrong, then I must not be so confident in my position.
	And I guess that's where I come back to the Alex Jones thing.
	As you mentioned with Bill Gates, and you're much more familiar with the specifics of all the good that he's done.
	But again, he's been an unbelievable force for good in this world.
	You can list A, B, C, D, things that the man has done, that his foundation has done, and positive things.
	And then the other people could speculate about ridiculous, crazy levels of evil, but you can't produce any evidence for that sort of thing.
	Because if you could, the man would find himself in trouble.
	And anyway, I guess what I would say is that Why?
	You can't force me to accept the truth the same way you could write down two plus two equals four on a piece of paper and show me how it works and I could say, nah, uh-uh.
	But that doesn't make it not true.
	And you've still given yourself an opportunity to present your case.
	You've presented it to me.
	And you've also, for anyone listening and watching, you know, you've been able to critically assess what's gone on, you know, or critically address back and forth, you know, kind of the discourse.
	And I think that you almost, you're making your case for the public.
	So I guess like, you know, When it comes to just not engaging with these people, that seems to me to be cowardly.
	And I think that that's something that we're seeing in society right now.
	I think we're seeing a crisis of courage in society all over the place.
	And I think that's where we're seeing poor leadership.
	I think we're seeing understandable things happening everywhere.
	But we need stronger voices and stronger beliefs that have a conviction and are willing to engage with others.
	Not just turning into a shouting contest and not, I didn't win because there's more of me.
	Oh, I outvoted you.
	That's nice too. But that's a stand-in for bullets.
	That's saying I won because there's more of me.
	That doesn't mean that I'm right.
	Because plenty of horrible and unpopular now things have been very, very deeply popular in the past and would have won a popular vote.
	Does that make them right? Yeah.
	I'd say clearly not. So I guess you'd hope that we engage with these people and that you can do your best to bring them over to a more reasonable position if you believe that you have one.
	And if you can't, well at least you made the effort.
	And I think that that's something where martial arts shows the value.
	It's like, do you know if you're going to go win your next fight?
	I'm like, I have no idea. I will proceed forward with full effort, and I will fight with dignity, I'll fight with honor, and I'll fight with courage.
	And I'll use everything that I have, and I will play within the bounds of the game, and that's that.
	And the result will be what it'll be, but I will walk into and out of that ring with my head held high, because I will know that I did my part, I did my job.
	The outcome, the specific outcome is not in my control, it's just strongly in my influence.
	And I think that that's something that helped me, that martial arts has taught me because other times, even when I was successful or unsuccessful, I would focus on, if I won, I won, therefore I'm good.
	I lost, therefore I'm bad.
	This other guy won or lost, therefore, as opposed to evaluating their method.
	And I think it's so easy when we're taking a bird's eye view of things to not evaluate how someone's doing things.
	You're not evaluating my process.
	You're simply evaluating my outcome.
	And I could have stumbled into something very, very good or very, very bad.
	And we can look back and I think that's the value of history.
	I mean, I don't mean to get on my dang high horse, but it's like this value of history is we can see the unbroken chain or the chain of events that led us somewhere.
	And then only with the eyes of history can we truly evaluate things unless we're in the room watching it happen.
	And I guess that's again where we start to go most of the big, bad, scary things that have happened in history that are done particularly on an industrial scale.
	Which implies governmental power and things like that, or the equivalent, involve groups of people getting together and going, hey, we're not going to deal with that guy.
	Giant groups of people. So maybe we're right this time, but maybe we're wrong next time.
	And I guess I would be back to the Gandalf putting on the one ring.
	I would be very, very hesitant, even if we thought we were in the right, to simply try to marginalize just on general principle, even people like Alex Jones, who on their face are pretty ridiculous.
	Like you said, you should sit down with Adolf Hitler and talk to the men.
	I agree with you to play a little devil's advocate.
	Please. Is, Alex Jones might be a bad example, but if we look at, because he has a face, he is a human.
	He's a real person. There's also trolls on the internet, 4chan.
	The worry I have with those folks is that, and there might be parallels to martial arts, is they practice guerilla warfare.
	Meaning, they don't necessarily want to arrive at the truth.
	They just always want to cut at the ankles of the powerful.
	They want to always break down the powerful.
	Even if they, I mean, they turn everything into a game.
	So they, let's see if we can make the world, let's see if we can make a trend that Bill Gates is a pedophile, right?
	They make it into a game.
	They get excited about this game.
	They see the powerful.
	Let's see if we can convince that, like who is the most positive person we can think of?
	Let's see if we can turn them into evil.
	And they've tried that with like, Like everybody.
	And it seems to stick, and they're good at it.
	Some would argue, whatever you think about our current president, that he has some elements of that, which is he's figured out whatever this music of social discourse that's going on, he's figured out how to always troll the mainstream flow of consciousness, that's the media.
	He always kind of says stuff that annoys a very large number of people and he enjoys that because it's like taking the powerful, taking the way things were before and he like shakes it up by saying the most inappropriate thing, almost on purpose or instinctually and so on.
	The problem I have with that is that doesn't The powerful thing there is it brings those in power down a notch.
	That's a great thing. The negative thing is it doesn't push us closer to a nuanced, careful, rigorous discourse towards truth.
	It's like showing up to a party and just like starting to yell.
	It doesn't create a good conversation.
	It just makes everything into a game where truth doesn't even seem like a thing we can even hope to achieve.
	That makes sense. And I guess, as you mentioned, we'll come back to another movie because I don't do books and do movies.
	Some people just want to watch the world burn, right?
	And I guess that's a creepy, creepy kind of urge that some people have.
	And it also is some people you're like, hey, would you like to throw a brick through that glass window?
	You're like, yeah, sure. Yeah.
	Like, no, I'm not going to do that because I think about what's going to occur.
	Like, something's going to be hurt, someone's property, not going to do it versus, hey, you want to see what will happen?
	Like, yeah, sure. You know, kids are always like, I have my son, he just grabs Spider-Man and drops him off the table.
	Spider-Man fell. Like, Spider-Man didn't fall, Sean.
	Like, you dropped him.
	You knocked him off the table. And he'll grin.
	And basically, it's an interesting thing, like you said, that these people are appealing to.
	And also, almost like the little dog factor of people do want to watch the powerful get taken down a notch for all the good and the not good of that.
	Just plenty of people, it seems to me, that have found their way to incredibly high positions.
	Some have just found themselves there.
	And many, many, many, many people, men and women of all backgrounds, are brilliant and have worked hard.
	And yeah, of course there's luck. And there's luck into everything.
	LeBron James, in spite of being the best basketball player on God's green earth, is fortunate that he didn't get hit by a car.
	It's fortunate that he didn't tear his knee.
	But thankfully, we get to see all these things.
	But I guess it's...
	If people don't have any skin in the game, you never know what they're going to do.
	And I think that's the problem with the internet, you know, that people get to be nameless, be faceless.
	That's why guerrilla fighters are outside of the bounds of war.
	Like, you don't have a uniform on. Like, I don't know who you're from.
	You don't get the same treatment that a soldier gets.
	For, and people go, well, that's crazy.
	Actually, there's reasons for this.
	Because otherwise people are able to assail things and there's no one responsible.
	There's no way to go and say, hey, where did this come from?
	What's the root of this?
	How can I address this?
	And I think that's the problem of the internet, the problem of Twitter,
	this problem of places like 4chan.
	I wouldn't mind seeing that type of stuff go away, if I'm frank.
	But that's not the same thing as people with a face, people with...
	People who are willing to stand there and say, hi, my name is so-and-so.
	Even if I have ridiculous beliefs, hopefully, you know, people will hear me out and then if I'm wrong, educate me.
	But I guess you hope that the real, I guess, in my mind, antidote to all of this silliness is education.
	And I think that that's something that we're, you know, critical thinking is not necessarily, I went to school in America and, you know, I feel very fortunate, but Critical thinking is not something that's focused on.
	I mean, it's tough. It's almost like talking about jiu-jitsu.
	It's tough to teach critical thinking when I don't know any words.
	You have to teach me techniques. You can't teach me to be an artist.
	But recognize that the techniques are the beginning, not the end.
	Ultimately, it's the artistry that we are searching for, not just the science or the bi-rote memorization.
	And I guess... You'd hope that people's ability to think critically and recognize that majority rule or whoever's loudest does not mean that they're right by any stretch of the imagination.
	And we don't appeal to that and we don't bow to that.
	We'll help them to help inoculate them against the ridiculous things that come out of these places, these dark places that are objectively not great.
	But I guess all circling back, even if we swatted these bad things out of existence right now, We've got to be very, very careful doing that because it's who's doing the swatting.
	This political group that's in power right now, the people that support a current president would maybe feel a certain way.
	The people that support another option would feel differently as to what exactly defines toxic.
	And, you know, I guess that that's what gives me pause.
	Yeah. And but also the grace thing.
	I tend to believe that The technology, you said education, but the platforms we use like Twitter and Reddit and all these platforms have a role to play to teach us grace, meaning they should help us Incentivize the kind of behavior that is incentivized in real life.
	Like being a dick in real life is not incentivized.
	Like one-on-one interaction.
	There's cases where it is, but usually being kind to each other is incentivized.
	On the internet, it's not.
	You get likes for mocking people in a funny, in a humorous way.
	And it can be dark kind of mocking, depending on the community.
	You can go to the appearance.
	If somebody's a little fat or a little too skinny, you can comment on their appearance, the hair, the way their hair looks, the appearance stuff.
	It could be on the people comment all the time on the level of eloquence of my speech.
	Go fuck yourself.
	I like it. It's creepy, though, watching previously.
	This used to be lowbrow, though, people doing this type of stuff.
	It's creepy watching our political figures get into this type of game.
	Yes. But again, it's a little bit refreshing, right?
	My hope with Donald Trump was...
	Is that he would shake up the people who wear suits usually.
	If you're from D.C., I remember showing up.
	I actually didn't wear what I usually wear in D.C. because I was like, everybody's wearing a suit and tie.
	When I was giving talks and stuff.
	Except for Mudge, who wears jeans and a t-shirt.
	Mudge doesn't give a damn. Mudge is a forever renegade.
	But... I don't even remember what, oh yeah, so my hope with Trump was that he would shake up that system to say like, to inject new ideas, to inject new energy.
	Of course, the way it turned out is different, but it turns out that you might want to have somebody who's like an Andrew Yang type character who is full of ideas that are very different and inject the energy, new energy into the system Through youthful new ideas versus through the troll that's very good at sort of mocking and playing outside the rules of the game.
	But Trump did reveal powerfully, I don't know what to think of it, that it's just a game and you don't have to play by the rules.
	That's both inspiring and dark.
	Deeply depressing, right?
	Yeah, and I don't know what to do with it.
	I don't, I mean the same, I'm not drawing parallels, not drawing parallels between our president and Adolf Hitler, but it's certainly, and there's a lot of, in history, a lot of positive and a lot of negative things happen when charismatic leaders realize they don't have to play by the rules.
	You can just flip the table.
	It's that Kevin Spacey show.
	Oh, House of Cards. House of Cards, where you just flip the table or whatever.
	You don't have to play by the rules of the chess game.
	You can flip the table.
	One wonders if that's always been done in private, you know?
	I guess, because that's...
	I mean, even look, obviously, the United States is a republic, but we had Bush, then we had Clinton, then we had more Bush, then we had President Obama, then we were about to have another Clinton.
	That's fairly creepy.
	Yeah. Even on its own.
	But now we added another...
	I mean, I'm sure we'll have a generation of Trumps.
	No. Gee. We...
	You know, I'm Russian, so I think we humans like kings still and queens.
	There's something...
	We're attracted to the thing we talked about, coaches.
	There's something in us that longs towards that authoritarian control.
	One of the beautiful things about America The Second Amendment is we also like individual freedom.
	That's one of the unique aspects at the founding of this country and still, and for me, is the beacon of hope that somehow there's the fire of freedom burns in that Texas feel.
	That gives me hope.
	The FU energy that revolts against the power, which as we discussed, power corrupts and ultimately leads to sort of degradation of whoever's ruling the people.
	It's interesting, though. It seems to me, maybe I'm just, I don't know if I'm reading this properly when I see it, but it seems to me that, like you said, that, you know, flip the bird, I'm going to do me within reason, like as long as I'm not hurting you, is idea that very much, at least in my mind, defines the American ideal, or at least part of the consciousness of the United States, is under attack to a certain extent.
	You know, if only, like, I can think to, like, you know, maybe a generation behind us.
	It's becoming more collectivist, you know, for all the good and also the not good of that.
	And it's, you know, not in terms of policy at this point, but just in terms of, like, consciousness.
	And I wonder if that's an internet thing.
	You know, people are more in touch with one another than they've, as far as I can tell, they've ever been, or at least more than in my lifetime.
	time. And, you know, the rest of the world seems much closer than it did, you know, living
	in Virginia, California seems very far away. Being on the internet, it's just right there.
	I can hear about it. I can see it. I can interact with people from there. You know, I remember,
	you know, being in Tennessee at, you know, one time and then reading about, you know,
	events taking place in, you know, the Middle East. And that just seemed like a mile away.
	It seemed like an unbelievably far distance. And then another time when you're in DC, you
	just feel like, oh, you read about something happening in Paris. And it just feels like
	it's just right around the corner because DC is a seat of power where things are just
	occurring all the time. And, you know, I guess you wonder about that's where I come back
	to the group decisions to not listen to this person or to cancel this or to, you know,
	we all, the moral majority shall do the following as opposed to as long as you're not hurting
	me and as long as you're not hurting anyone else, I have to let you do, I have to let
	you be on general principle. Even if I don't like you, I'm very free to not like you. I'm
	free to speak out against you, but I'm not, it is not within my right or, and not with
	it. And it's not, I would not be right to attempt to attack you. And that is an interesting
	thing though, when we see words being redefined or words being defined, whether it's toxicity,
	whether it's violence. If I think that what you're saying is, is your speech is by itself,
	you know, a violence or a precursor to violence, I'm justified in doing all sorts of things,
	You know, and, and.
	And that creeps me out significantly because, again, even if it ends up being pointed in a good direction initially, it's only a matter of time.
	And actually, that brings me to another- Dune quote?
	Yeah, I got all day.
	How much are they paying you?
	Well, yeah, about say the Frank Herbert estate.
	Not enough, frankly. Let's see.
	And how many books are there in Dune?
	That's a Jen question.
	You're also a fan of Dune?
	I read the whole series, but not a couple of the...
	I read all the prequels as well, with the exception of a couple.
	Is there a book one for Dune?
	Dune. It would be book one, and even the prequels, it's still all better if you start...
	Like, I read Dune and then read the original...
	What is it? Six? And then I went back and started to read some of the...
	It's just like watching Star Wars.
	You want to start at episode four or whatever.
	Yeah, I think so.
	That's the move.
	And then stop at 6, call it a day, watch The Mandalorian.
	Well, I thought you're not walking back here.
	No, I like The Mandalorian. No, it's not The Mandalorian.
	That is what I said. I was told that I was heartless for not liking Baby Yoda.
	We don't talk about...
	A couple of the movies, not including the Mandalorian.
	The Mandalorian's fine. It's the more recent movies that we don't like to talk about.
	Oh, the...
	What's his name?
	The goofy guy. Ryan...
	No, no. No, the creature.
	The goofy creature with the...
	Jar Jar? Yeah, Jar Jar.
	Do you ever see the Jar Jar Binks is actually like the Dark Lord of the Sith theory?
	That fixed the whole initial trilogy where he's...
	Because he's goofing around and making it all the way through battles.
	And when you're like, wait a minute, he oops his way.
	He walks over to a pool, does a triple backflip, falls in.
	You're like, it's just bizarre.
	This is the Alex Jones theory of Star Wars.
	He's actually running everything.
	He was the one that actually was like, hey, we should vote in Chancellor Palpatine or Senator Palpatine.
	Like right before, they put Jar Jar in charge.
	First off, what did they think was going to happen?
	And second off, I just think that'd be great.
	You're like, oops, oh man, I guess he's the Emperor now.
	That would have been great. But actually, to the cancel and all the other stuff, again, you'd hope that it gives pause.
	And I think about this for fighting, because a lot of times, I'll use this as an example.
	People fight fans and UFC, they love people that run out and try to murder each other.
	And it's entertaining. And it's super entertaining.
	But... Floyd Mayweather doesn't resonate with people as much.
	I remember the time when Floyd was not as popular.
	Now people think people love Floyd because he's 50-0 Floyd.
	And oh man, finally he had so much success that we all can't help but recognize the man's genius and greatness.
	But prior to that, oh, he's boring, he's this, he's that.
	He fights with his circumspect, he's cautious, he's pressing, he's intelligent, deeply intelligent.
	And when you watch people go out and try to murder each other, you can flip a coin a hundred times and You know, you can get, you could be lucky enough to get a hundred heads, but it's still a coin flip.
	And I think that that's what's going on all the time is, you know, people are getting an outcome that they want, but it wasn't a well thought out situation.
	And that's why you'll win by five in a row by knockout and then lose three in a row.
	And then people will go, well, what happened to that guy?
	He used to be so great. And you're like, no, he's doing what he's always been doing.
	It's just, it was getting great outcomes on a coin flip prior and it's getting negative outcomes on a coin flip now.
	But I guess what I would say is it watches it's interesting watching, you know, I guess
	societal beliefs become such a Thing that we're almost adopting on a religious level if we're
	not careful if when I say religious level I mean like like pan life like this is guiding all of my
	choices For all the good and bad of that and this is the dune quote
	is when religion and politics Travel in the same car the writers believe that nothing can
	stand in their way Their movements become headlong faster and faster and
	faster they put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that the precipice does not show
	Itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late. And I think that that's again the the pause we
	We go, oh man, thank goodness. We have this guy that wants to rebuild Germany.
	He'll put us back where we need to be.
	And you stop questioning your own judgment, your own...
	Right. You stop thinking, essentially.
	Right. I'm not allowed to question this.
	Of course this is correct.
	Of course I'm right.
	I intended to do right, so of course my actions are correct.
	I mean, how many times have any of us intended to do something helpful and ended up doing something less?
	And, you know, plenty of people who intend to do harm could by accident do something decent.
	And I guess it's...
	You know, I'm not saying anything, you know, terribly, terribly, you know, insightful, but it's just one of those where it's hard to say in the moment.
	And that's where you hopefully caution, you would counsel some degree of caution.
	And that's what worries me with people deciding that we're also right about this or we're also right about that and attempting to, rather than win the argument, silence the counter argument, no matter how crazy it may seem.
	Because I just think that that idea, even when it's pointed in a good direction initially, it's only a matter of time.
	You're, amongst many things, a jiu-jitsu black belt.
	One of the things that people are really curious about, white belts and blue belts in jiu-jitsu, but also people haven't tried the art, is what does it take to be a jiu-jitsu black belt?
	I think that, you know, everyone's journey is a little bit different, but the one thing that the, what is it, Calvin Coolidge quote?
	You know, determination, persistence is the only thing that will win in the end.
	It will always win in the end.
	Not brilliance, not toughness, not education, it's persistence.
	And I think that having the belief that no matter what happens to me, I will proceed forward and I will figure out how to make this happen, hell or high water, I think is the one thing that ties together all of the people that I've ever met that made it through whatever it was that they were going through.
	Because... You know, sometimes you can get lucky and you can have an easy time and that luck could be you had a good situation.
	It could be, I mean, like in the obvious sense of like where you're living, where you're training, what's going on.
	You had a good situation. You're unbelievably athletic.
	Oh, you're going to be an astronaut.
	You're brilliant and an Olympic athlete.
	You know, like, well, that's a fantastic situation.
	You know, you won the genetic lottery and I'm sure you've worked hard as well, but you also won the genetic lottery.
	Determination is the one thing, though, because that person could have a very easy go of it initially and then tear their knee.
	And then they're no longer the superhuman physical specimen that they were.
	The only thing that will keep them going is persistence.
	And I think that that... I would just say that persistence.
	I'll just put one foot in front of the other, and sometimes I can see the path ahead, and sometimes it's beyond my vision, but I will not stop.
	I may even slow down, but I won't stop.
	And that's the only thing that I can say that I've seen tie everyone together, because there's so many ways to the top of any mountain, and there's so many different personalities and skills and backgrounds involved, but everyone carries on.
	So at the core, the foundational advice is just don't quit.
	Just keep going. That's the lesson of martial arts, I think.
	We think it's like how to be strong or how to win, but in reality, it's like how to persist, how to endure, because all of us have been beaten so many times and gotten beaten up so many times and thought about quitting.
	Have I ever thought about quitting? Absolutely.
	Have I ever quit? Never.
	I will never, ever quit.
	Ever. I can say that. You might knock me out.
	I won't be damned if I quit.
	What's the darkest moment?
	Is it injury-related? To me, two possibilities.
	I've fortunately never been seriously injured, but I think that's a dark place to be, having to be out for many months for, as Jen was saying, with a head injury especially.
	The uncertainty, that's one.
	And then the other side is If you have big ambitions as a competitor, realizing that you're not as good.
	Those doubts were like, I kinda suck.
	How am I supposed to be a world, the greatest fighter of all time, if several people in the gym are kicking my ass?
	Those are the two things that paralyze you.
	I think that everyone's darkest moment is maybe different.
	Looking from the outside for Ryan, I wouldn't say that he's had injuries and he's had bad ones.
	I wouldn't say that was his darkest moment.
	I think for me, I would say my head injury was my darkest moment.
	Absolutely. And I've torn my ACL twice.
	I've torn my shoulders four times.
	I've had lots of surgeries.
	For me, the orthopedic injuries were not the most significant.
	It was the brain injury.
	For others, that might be the case for them.
	Maybe they've never experienced an injury, and maybe for them that's their darkest moment.
	From the outside, obviously, Orion can speak to this more, but for Orion, I think it was the inability to perform at certain points, the missing of opportunities that for him, from my perspective, watching him go through and having seen various points of his growth from early Purple Belt on, I think the hardest time for him looking in, obviously, was when he would hit moments where he wasn't able to perform for various reasons.
	He couldn't get fights. He was having difficulties there.
	I think that was the hardest point for him.
	Did you think with a head injury that you might never be able to do jiu-jitsu again?
	Yeah, I mean, mine was really bad and it was just the one hit, but I had a looping memories for seven months.
	Didn't know it because when your brain's messed up, you're not even aware that you're looping.
	And so I saw two different neurologists.
	It took a very long time.
	I didn't know if I was going to be able to have linear thoughts or read a book.
	I didn't know at certain points if I could listen to music again without making my head hurt.
	It was almost two years before I woke up in the morning without a headache.
	Just waking up before I even start my day.
	So that's even bigger than Jiu Jitsu.
	That's just life. That's just hard.
	And I think that you can experience so many things.
	I've had all these injuries.
	We lost a baby when I was 15 weeks.
	We've had all these experiences.
	And what the hardest point for me, not saying all those things weren't hard, but it's kind of like, as you go through these, you just realize life goes on and you have to keep working at it and you have to keep going.
	And you asked me earlier offline, did I feel depressed?
	And Not for my head injury.
	I don't think that, at least in the moment, I had any recognition of that.
	It's kind of like... But I think different people's personalities, I have kind of to buckle down and just keep going.
	And sometimes it's not until lots of time later that you realize, wow, that was really hard.
	Because you're just struggling to live and function and do the things that you need to do along the way.
	Do you mind jumping on just this part of the conversation just for a few minutes?
	I'm sorry, I'm going to need to over... Do you mind just sitting together?
	Oh, not at all. Just for a little bit.
	Sorry about that. I didn't mean to jump in here.
	It'd be cool if we put a face to it.
	Is it okay with you?
	Yeah, it's fine with me. It's fine with you.
	By the way, what was the head injury, if you don't mind sharing?
	Someone had dropped their knee on the back of my head during training.
	It was a lot bigger than me.
	So one strike to the back of the head is...
	There's a reason that's outlawed in MMA, right?
	Someone 50 pounds everything and drops their knee on the back of your head once and it's That's the funny thing about getting hit, right?
	You never can really be sure what's going to happen.
	I think that's actually one of the magical parts about jiu-jitsu, where if you choke me, we know what's going to occur.
	You hit someone, they might be completely unharmed.
	You might be punching Tony Ferguson in the face, and you need to hit him with a sledgehammer to affect this man.
	And then other people, they could get really badly hurt, which I guess, back to your point about street fighting and things like that, and the serious, serious potential, second, third order consequences of any action that we take.
	But yeah, that's a tricky thing about getting hit.
	How does it make you feel that the really shitty thing about injuries to me was that you start thinking, well, if I did this one little thing different, this wouldn't have happened today.
	One moment changes your entire life.
	Do you think that way or is that totally counterproductive?
	You can't help but think that way when you've had the amount of injuries I've had.
	I've had more than most people's fair share.
	As my orthopedic says, you don't want to win that.
	You don't want to win the contest of who's had the most injuries.
	But since you have, thanks for building me a pool.
	Yeah. But I think you can't help but think that way sometimes, but I definitely don't think it's...
	I think it can be facilitated if you don't beat yourself up too much.
	Because thinking about why have I been subject to so many injuries and a lot of it comes to just almost all of mine in particular are people a lot heavier than me.
	But if I've been training martial arts 15 years, I'm obviously on the much smaller side.
	I'm a woman. I've done thousands and thousands of rounds with people 50 pounds plus heavier than me.
	I've been years not training with anyone less than 50 pounds, which is 50 pounds is almost half my body weight.
	And when you also add testosterone, the natural physiological advantages of men, not just are they heavier with more mass, they're faster and more explosive, they're stronger if they're the same size.
	And so I think...
	That the willingness to be in that environment over and over and over again creates a lot of strength, resiliency, willingness to continue.
	But it also, like, in order to do that, you almost have to, for me, the way I was approaching it was, like, pretend like I wasn't more vulnerable.
	And just be willing to step in and step in and step in and step in and step in.
	Fake it until you make it kind of thing?
	Fake it until you make it, kind of, yeah.
	Like, I'll just one day, I'll be strong enough.
	And you avoided injury for most of it.
	For most of those rounds I avoid injury.
	The problem, as Ryan points out, is that you could do thousands of rounds, but if one person that size, that strength, that hover reacts in a way that you don't expect, it's not like an oops, it's always major.
	Do you regret any of it?
	I think that no one I know has experienced the degree of injuries that I've experienced.
	And I started it at a time when, in 2005, it was very different than now, where the coaches have more control over what you're doing.
	They're more aware, in general, about a lot of the injuries.
	There's a lot more people who are hobbyists than when I started.
	They were hobbyists, but it was different kind of hobbyist than now.
	Now our girls can train with other girls.
	They don't have to do thousands of rounds with somebody significantly more powerful than them.
	And for the drawbacks and the benefits of that, as with anything.
	So I think that I don't think I would go back and change it.
	There were times after one of my injuries where I said to Ryan, I said, I quit.
	I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore.
	I probably said it more than once. But there was one time I was really serious in 2012.
	I was really serious.
	I had torn my shoulder. I was looking at missing a big competition again in the world for my second or third year in a row after injuries.
	And I said, I'd quit my job two years before.
	And I'm like... I'm done.
	And Ryan, before that had always been, you know, keep me focused.
	And then he kind of said, okay, if you want to be done, be done.
	Just have a good time.
	No, I'm really done.
	I don't even want to train anymore. Okay, okay.
	And then, you know, I think he helped facilitate a moment for me to go visit a friend, some friends, some girls that were doing a girls camp who were close to my size or some friends of mine to go train.
	And I was like, oh, wait. I do love this thing.
	It's just harder for me on a daily basis, but that doesn't mean I don't love this thing.
	And it really helped change my mind.
	I started to connect with other people, travel more, myself, because previously he had done that, but I hadn't really done that.
	I think there was a point where when I started Jiu-Jitsu, it was just for fun.
	I just wanted to sport after college.
	I played sports as a kid. I just wanted to exercise.
	I wasn't into the martial arts. He used to give me a hard time about it because he was always very, how can you not care about martial arts?
	I don't know. I just want to play sports.
	And Ryan was really big into kind of the philosophy side of the martial arts aspect.
	He used to give me a hard time.
	And I think after that moment, this moment where I looked at myself and I said, do I want to keep doing this, is when I started to appreciate jujitsu.
	It took off some of the pressure I'd been feeling, I think, as Ryan's girlfriend.
	But I had a full-time job a long time.
	It was never my goal to be a jujitsu world champion.
	And I think after that moment where I was like, you know, I really do like this.
	I really do want to keep this. I had this moment, like any time where you're like, I'm doing this for me, I'm not doing this for him.
	And I think that that was really lucky for me because...
	where we have to stop and we have to say, is this really what I want?
	How often in a relationship do you do that?
	How often in any type of lifestyle or job do you stop and do you really ask yourself?
	Does something really difficult happen that you look and you go,
	am I just doing this because it's convenient and easy?
	Or is this what I really want to do?
	Yeah. I've had those moments.
	Like, this podcast is one of those things.
	It's like, you stop and think like, I actually love this.
	And I had that with jiu-jitsu too.
	I don't think I sat until like brown belt that I stopped.
	I mean, yeah, it's when you first face real challenges.
	You think like, why am I doing this?
	I think most of my progression was why not?
	I think that's the right, the leap of faith.
	And then at a certain point you think like, Why am I doing this?
	And if you can answer honestly that because I love it, it's kind of a liberating feeling.
	Yeah, it's so powerful.
	It's an acceptance. You feel thankful for the opportunity to be there, right?
	Because you love it. Yeah, it's great.
	Gratitude. It's ultimately gratitude.
	Let me ask you this.
	Ryan said, what is it?
	I took over your thing. Nobody cares about Ryan.
	I wouldn't. I'll Photoshop him out or whatever.
	However you edit. If you do that, that'd be great.
	Put Sean Connery's head.
	Just like a Dune ad.
	Exactly. Sean Connery, I could get down on that.
	Is that the sexiest man in Sean Connery?
	In the Dune universe? That's my understanding.
	I think in any universe.
	We actually named our son after Sean Connery.
	He was in The Rock. I love all those lame Nicolas Cage movies.
	Con Air is probably the greatest movie of all time.
	Dude, his accent in Con Air was so awesome.
	I don't know where it's from. Alabama, I guess, or something.
	I love that they got Steve Buscemi in there.
	They're like, we need Steve Buscemi in this thing.
	We got him. Dave Chappelle?
	Yeah, that's right. He's a prisoner in that.
	Eight ball. Yep.
	Greatest movie of all time.
	Should have won an Oscar. Dave Chappelle also in Blue Streak with Martin Lawrence.
	And then, what do you call it?
	Robin Hood Men in Tights? Oh, Robin Hood Men in Tights was one of my favorites as a kid.
	Half-baked, but yeah, that's a good...
	Wow, we just listed off some really bad 90s movies, but...
	You take that back.
	For telling our age. Speak for yourself.
	So what, like, in your view, I don't mean to, from like a smaller person, I guess, that's an interesting thing about jiu-jitsu is like that small...
	I don't... Hopefully that's not a bad thing.
	Elves are taller.
	With all these bigger people, you can still enjoy the art.
	What does it take to get a black belt to excel, to quote-unquote master the art?
	Gosh, everyone has such a different path.
	Ryan's promoted six, seven people.
	Something like that. And I think about half of them have had...
	Have kids, have families, have other careers.
	At the time, some of them competed a lot.
	Some of them have never competed or rarely competed.
	Some haven't competed in a long time.
	Some had started different places.
	Everyone's had different journeys, even in our own little group of seven.
	I think only, maybe only two or three were high-level competitors of that group at the higher belts, right?
	Like brown, black, maybe.
	It's just different for every person.
	And that's something that we try to tell.
	Since we have 400 students, we don't really have anyone who's a stated, other than the coaches like Adam, but we don't have anyone who's a stated high-level competitor as a student at the moment.
	People look at our gym like, oh, it's lots of competitors.
	It's not lots of competitors. It's never been lots of competitors.
	We've had ones and twos here and there.
	But really, everybody's Sometimes the high-level competitors are the ones that are more likely to drop off because they have a bit of success, particularly at blue or purple, and then they realize how hard it is at brown and black, and then they have a hard time continuing on that path, and then they can't look at themselves as a non-competitor.
	They have a hard time continuing with jiu-jitsu, I think.
	Whereas sometimes it's the guy who comes in as the white belt and he trains You know, twice a week, every week, and the next thing you know, he's been there for two or three years, like, oh, he's a blue belt, he's a purple belt, he's a brown belt, and he's just consistent over a long period of time and willing to take the path.
	And no two people's path is exactly the same.
	No two people's lives are exactly the same.
	We have students who started as a white belt as a young adult with no responsibilities, and they train all the time, and then they Well, that's actually kind of what, back to the initial question we discussed about, you know, what makes a warrior.
	You know, and also, like, what makes something or someone, you know, particularly impressive in my mind is, like, what they make out of what they have.
	You know, one of my favorite movies ever is Forrest Gump, and it's obviously...
	It's just... If you can't...
	Because I've heard people, like, oh, Forrest Gump sucks.
	I'm like, I don't like you as a person.
	And, like, you have no heart at all.
	But basically, it's the story of someone that tries hard.
	And it's like, yeah, but it's a funny movie.
	But it's like... I guess you meet each person where they are.
	And obviously, everyone needs to be pushed.
	We all need to be pushed. We need friends and people around us that push us to be better versions of ourselves all the time.
	And as you mentioned, the people you spend all of your time around deeply impact you.
	and we have to be willing to be pushed.
	It takes a leap of faith for me to trust, for me to put some of myself in my,
	you know, I guess my ability and my control, my personal agency, as it were,
	in the hands of someone else that I trust and that I respect.
	But if I can do that, again, maybe I never become, you know, a high-level black belt competitor,
	but, you know, I had four of the things I was doing I also have a family. I have this, I have that.
	What that person was able to accomplish in the martial arts relative to what they were able to put in this phenomenal.
	Other times, someone could be a very successful black belt and in my mind be a bum.
	Because they could have been a lot more.
	And they could have done more.
	They could have focused more.
	And there's no shame in deciding that you don't want to do that.
	But whatever it is that you're invested in, I remember the Take It Uneasy podcast.
	And that I loved because...
	You know, I'll just chill out.
	I like resting. It's like vacation.
	Oh, who wants to go on vacation? Yeah, I'll go on vacation for a day or two.
	You want to spend three weeks on vacation?
	Like, I kill myself. Like, get me out of here.
	Like, this is horrible. I'm a waste of life.
	I'm not doing anything useful.
	You're technically on vacation right now.
	Right. Well, this is fun, though.
	This is like a one-day vacation.
	Exactly. But, you know, I'm sure you're thinking about jumping off of the building right now.
	But if you had to talk to me for, you know, like three days, I'm sure you'd probably shove me off the building.
	I don't blame you. I'll be dead.
	Five hours in.
	But yeah, but you know, it's like you want to be pushing towards something.
	Because otherwise, what's the purpose of being here?
	You know, it's not just a college.
	It's doing something useful, building, growing as a person, helping others do the same if that's within your power at any given time.
	But I think that's kind of the neat thing about martial arts is it can be many, many different things to many different people.
	You know, I finally, for instance, was able to get a college degree this year.
	That which, I mean, it's not a big deal for most people.
	But for me, it was a big deal because I was...
	You went back and finished. Yeah, and I never envisioned ever going back.
	That's a hard step to go back and finish.
	It weighs heavy on you if you don't.
	It's interesting. I was more proud of that than most things I've ever done, if I'm honest.
	And it was neat, and I really enjoyed it, and it was the process of doing it.
	You know, are my academic credentials impressive?
	Like, not in the least.
	But for me, it's like it was a big deal for me personally to take that step and to go back and do that.
	And I was proud of the direction.
	And because it would have been easy.
	Like, do I need to do it? Like, no.
	You know, I have business. I'll do okay.
	I'll try. I'll keep fighting. But I was happy to take the time in between fights when I was unbooked for an opponent to do something productive rather than just hang out.
	You know, like I can still train every single day.
	But I can also train and go to school.
	People go to the Olympics while going to school.
	I can do martial arts and go to school.
	One thing I gotta ask is, you know, a bunch of women listening to this podcast, if they haven't done jujitsu, I think it'd be kind of intimidating to step on the mat with a bunch of bros that like enjoy somehow killing each other.
	Like, how do you succeed in that environment to where you can learn this art, learn how to beat all those people up?
	Um, oh gosh.
	Is there any advice? I mean, another way to ask that is if any women listening to this are interested in starting jiu-jitsu, is there advice for that journey?
	Honestly, I think it's just walking in the door and starting.
	Sometimes I don't know how to respond to that because I don't view myself as typically anxious, particularly in interactions with other people or new people.
	Shy is not a word that has been used for me by, if you ask my family, and they joke because our son talks a lot.
	He's advanced verbally, and they're always like, oh, well, we know where he gets that from, because he just doesn't stop talking.
	He narrates everything he does.
	And so they always tease because that's...
	I'm known for talking a lot.
	I don't consider myself a shy person.
	For me, going into a new room, a new group of people, there's always that you don't really know who they are, how they're going to treat you, but I don't have a lot of anxiety with that.
	If that's something that's going to put something off, I don't really know how to To address that particular feeling.
	But in terms of all of the rooms I've been in, I have popped into Jiu-Jitsu gyms before I knew Ryan in Florida.
	I traveled for my job in Germany and Florida and California and places where I don't know anyone, they don't know me.
	And I have never once had anyone be anything other than kind and solicitous and helpful.
	And long before when I was a white belt and a blue belt and didn't know anything and didn't know anyone.
	And I just think that it's a community of people that it's so cool that no matter where you go in the world...
	I walked into a gym in Prague one time where only two people spoke English.
	And it was just...
	Yeah, it's weird. You know, instantly you're like part of a group and they're like, oh, let me tell you what a place to go eat.
	It's like being part of a cult, right? Yeah. But it's like a positive cult.
	That's what we would say as cultists.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's true. I mean, we do need to murder everybody who practice Aikido.
	I mean, yeah.
	This cult deeply believes that...
	No, but there is a...
	Like, if you look at different kinds of games, like chess and so on, like...
	There's a skepticism.
	I mean, there's not a brotherhood, sisterhood feeling.
	With jiu-jitsu, it's like you can roll into most places.
	Even with judo, I can see the contrast.
	Because I've trained in judo places, it's more like tribal.
	You walk in, And who is this?
	There's that kind of feeling.
	With Jiu Jitsu, there's less so.
	There is a little bit with the competitors.
	There's always the competitors feeling each other out, usually the blue belts.
	But outside of that, if you walk in with the vibes of just loving the art and just wanting to have a good time, you're welcome.
	It's really cool. It's really fascinating.
	It's a really great thing, I think.
	And as a woman, I think you're walking into these rooms of these big, strong, tough guys.
	And if anything, I would say that they're almost much more solicitous when a woman comes in.
	And not like they're just hitting on you all the time.
	It's just that... You walk in and everyone is like, oh, cool.
	You want to do this thing that I love.
	Let me make sure you have a good experience and take care of you.
	And I think that's an experience that I hope people have when they come into our gym.
	And I've always felt when I walked into other gyms.
	And so we try our best to make that comfortable.
	And it can be a little uncomfortable because there are When you walk into a male-dominated environment, there's conversations and topics.
	There's a different style of camaraderie and joking that a lot of men will do that maybe some women are more uncomfortable with.
	I grew up with four brothers, so I kind of maybe was a little more desensitized to that.
	And I worked for the Department of Defense for a while, too.
	So before I... So you're with the government.
	Yeah, so I did that for a while after college.
	I'm already skeptical. I left.
	I left. Oh, you left. I'm not gonna ask you about UFOs then because you're not gonna tell me the truth.
	No. They exist.
	Yeah, no, you just freaked out a lot of people.
	Okay. Sorry. But yeah, by the way, where's your school?
	Because people always ask, like, where...
	Well, we're outside of Washington, D.C. in Northern Virginia in Falls Church.
	You always want to pick, like, what's the best school if I travel to this place or if I want to move to this place.
	Well, I mean, obviously we're biased, but yeah, we're in the Washington, D.C. area.
	The best. Okay, we just took a little break.
	Now we're back. Let me ask you one thing that a bunch of people are curious about.
	You're one of the innovators.
	First of all, you're one of the great innovators and philosophers and thinkers in jiu-jitsu, right?
	Yeah. But you're also one of the innovators in terms of leg locks and the 50-50 position and just like the fact that legs have something to do in jiu-jitsu.
	The other popularizer, innovator in the space is John Donaher and his whole group of guys.
	Do you have thoughts about their whole system of leg locks and their ideas about jiu-jitsu and so on?
	Sure. I guess, you know, obviously, you know, John and the students at Henzo have been able to do fantastic things competitively in the past number of years.
	And, you know, you mentioned innovators in that kind of, you know, section of jiu-jitsu.
	I'd love to bring up some guys like Dean Lister, of course.
	Masakazu Imanari. In fact, a lot of what was going on in like 90s Japan, like combat submission wrestling,
	there was some crazy gnarly stuff that it's just it's on grainy VHS tape. But like stuff that if
	people were doing now, they go, Oh my God, that's brand new.
	Like there's, it's, it's been, I think these are things that have been around for a while in
	various places. I first learned the 50-50 position, just like the leg entanglement of it from Brandon
	Vera, actually at a seminar at Lord Urban's martial arts thing in 2005.
	He learned it from Dean Lister, who used it to submit Alexandre Kakareko, a really, really tough Nogi guy at ADCC in the run that Dean made to the gold medal in the Absolute Division, which was a great performance at the time, first American to do that.
	And, you know, and I actually saw a video.
	I mean, first, Abbas Rutten actually broke, I think, Guy Mezger's foot with a 50-50 heel hook.
	He actually grabbed his heel and his toes and went, and in Pancrace, it's back when they had, like, the man panties and the high boots on.
	And dude, that was gnarly.
	Boss Rootin is underappreciated.
	Like he double grabbed?
	Oh yeah, his leverage is leverage.
	That's like a toehold that goes the other way and it's like it either doesn't work or breaks in half.
	People don't often think of Boss Rootin as an innovator, but he is in a way.
	Like he, you know, talked about like Elon Musk and first principles thinking in terms of physics.
	He like just feels like he just gets the job.
	He figures out like the simplest way to get the job done of breaking things and establishing control and hurting people.
	Remember that was back in the day, if you listen to Boss Root and do any commentary for any of the big MMA shows or any MMA show way back when, any time guys were clinched, he was like, the guy should roll for a knee bar.
	He was saying that way back when, and now people are doing it all the time with varying degrees of success.
	It's funny. It's also tough to be, I think, like a breakaway thinker.
	I mean, groupthink is a real thing and group inertia, and it's neat to see, particularly at a time when maybe that type of stuff was less accepted.
	Someone going, hey, I'm going to run off in this other direction.
	I think whoever – the inventor of electricity in my mind is a lot more impressive than whomever – not to say that the person down the line isn't impressive – that comes up with an interesting way to use it.
	Both are cool, but when you think about – Can you imagine we're sitting here and we're like, yeah, people, I'm going to build an airplane.
	You're like, what are you talking about?
	It's crazy. People don't fly.
	I'm like, no, I'm going to do it. And of course, it's not going to be as good as the airplane down the line, the iterative things that happen later on.
	But just being able to go to dream something into existence that you haven't seen before and then make it happen takes an unbelievable strength of character, almost like a force of will.
	Because you're blazing a trail that hasn't been walked before.
	That's the BJ Penn factor in winning the Jiu-Jitsu World Championship, first non-Brazilian to do that.
	That was back in 2001.
	And then Rafael Lovato later on, both of those guys are so unbelievably impressive in my mind for the same reason, because they were...
	I think we're good to go.
	And Australians are coming on as well.
	But it's definitely kind of an interesting thing.
	So to come back to John Danaher and the Henzo team, obviously they're doing fantastic things.
	John's had some really, really great innovation there.
	And the systematization and the methodology that they're using is great.
	And it's neat to see that it's getting out there.
	I would just also, I would encourage people to make sure that they're, you know, catching
	up on their history.
	Because obviously, you know, John's a brilliant instructor and has done things, you know,
	for the sport that are fantastic that haven't been done before.
	But you know, none of us exist in a vacuum and I've learned things from everywhere else.
	So, you know, John would say the same, I'm sure.
	And you know, Dean Lister would say the same.
	And it's just neat when you can kind of trace the history of all of this happening because
	we've had, humanity's had two arms and two legs for some time, at least as long as I've
	been alive.
	like airplanes, do you think there's something totally new to be invented in jiu-jitsu still?
	Not totally new, but flying isn't new, but airplanes nevertheless made that much more efficient.
	Is there new ideas to be discovered in Jiu Jitsu still?
	I'd say, the reason I'd say yes is the same reason I would say I believe in alchemy, even though I don't.
	No, I'm serious. I've got some backing for this.
	Okay. You know, I guess I talk about this with a buddy of mine a lot, like, and facilitative versus not facilitative beliefs.
	believe something is possible and I do no investigation towards it.
	I'll never find something even if it's there.
	It's almost like it's no different than me walking up on a group of people and going
	like, oh man, look at these jerks, this is going to suck versus me going, oh, I wonder
	what these guys are up to.
	I'm about to have two very different conversations even though the players in the game are no
	different.
	My internal constitution has changed because of how I've decided to approach the situation.
	So although I wouldn't personally want to spend all my time trying to turn lead into
	gold because I don't believe that it's likely to work, only a person who's willing to spend
	his or her life in that pursuit will actually get to the bottom of that.
	And also in the pursuit of that, they're likely to find other things.
	So I think a lot of times the idea is that humanity is pushed forward by, again, it's
	another Orson Scott Carbwin.
	It's like human beings are in this slog.
	It's paraphrasing just in this slog over time.
	And then periodically, humanity gives birth to genius, like someone that invents the wheel,
	invents electricity, pushes us forward, comes up with the idea of governance that doesn't just
	start and end with the point of a sword. And these aren't common things. These are
	unbelievable advancements that, not just me sitting here, I didn't come up with them,
	but I just get the benefit of it. So I guess what I would say is a lot of times these ideas
	are called crazy, like as we discussed offline, it's like Einstein was brilliant in his 20s,
	and he was brilliant before that, I would suspect, but basically gets recognized later on in life.
	And of course, we all thought those were great ideas. The man was probably roundly
	mocked for giant chunks of his life. And I guess so it's neat to, I would say there's
	definitely in my mind things that, even if it's just combinations and new to me,
	new ways to see things, new ways to understand, different depth of understanding, possibly new
	things, new positions, new ideas, because even if that's not true.
	The process of going through and acting as if it is and believing like that and focusing and trying to investigate will make any of us, will push us all forward.
	Whereas sitting there, you know, obsessing over the cult of our current knowledge, I think is the biggest danger and the biggest cause of stagnation that exists anywhere.
	Yeah. And it starts with believing the impossible, which is kind of interesting.
	One of the things that's really inspiring to me is to see people out there, which sadly are rare, who kind of have A combination of two things.
	One is they have a worldview that involves, that includes a lot of ideas that are crazy.
	And the second part is they're exceptionally focused and competent in bringing that, whatever the ideas in that worldview to reality.
	So there's certainly a lot of people with crazy ideas.
	You know, there's a lot of conspiracy theorists.
	They have way out their beliefs about things, but they're not.
	Doing much to build stuff grounded.
	They're not engineers or whatever.
	They're just espousing different crazy ideas.
	But that's why you get the Elon Musk type characters.
	And the reason I bring him up a lot is because there's not many others to bring up.
	There's not many examples of it through history.
	The people, I mean, the guy's convinced that we're going to colonize Mars.
	And basically, Everybody on earth thinks that's insane.
	Everyone except the guy that's gonna do it, right?
	Except that's gonna do it.
	And you can imagine a couple hundred years from now, people will...
	I mean, first of all, they certainly won't remember the haters.
	They won't remember all the people.
	If they do remember them, they'll remember them in a sense like people are silly to think that this isn't the obvious...
	From a perspective, that's what Elon talks about.
	It's obvious that we're going to expand throughout the universe.
	From his perspective.
	From his perspective. But to me, it is also obvious because either we destroy ourselves or we'll expand beyond Earth.
	Maybe it's not completely obvious.
	I guess I share that worldview.
	There's the other possibility that we humans find an inner peace where the forces of capitalism will calm down and we'll all just meditate and do yoga and jiu-jitsu and relax with this whole tech thing where we keep building new technologies.
	It's cool to have those kinds of people that just believe the big, ambitious, crazy dreams.
	Because that's where it starts.
	If you want to build something special, you have to first believe.
	You also have to believe strongly enough that you're not vulnerable, and I'm speculating, but I can only imagine how many people have told Elon that what he's doing is crazy.
	So not only did he dream it up, he dreamed it up, went with it, and also went with it in the face of being...
	I'm told that it's not going to work.
	And then also stepped away from the bitterness because he's done a series of really crazy, impressive things.
	And that's only those little things that I'm aware of.
	And also staying away from the bitterness of every single time you did something good, initially all I do is talk down about you.
	And then eventually I act as, of course, of course.
	And then I never apologize. And yet you don't let that dampen your spirits for the next innovation, which is pretty incredible to me to watch.
	Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of cool.
	I mean, it's contagious to spend time with the guy because he's not...
	Rogan has the same look to him, which is interesting about these people.
	There's like a hater shield.
	He doesn't even sense them, it feels like.
	He thinks to Elon, it's obvious.
	I mean, he keeps calling it first principles thinking.
	Physics says it's true, therefore it's true.
	He's convinced himself that his beliefs are grounded in the fundamental fabric of the way the universe works, therefore the haters don't matter.
	Right. And I mean, that's kind of like a system of thought.
	He developed himself through all the difficulty, through all the doubt.
	He's able to take huge risks with basically putting everything he owes on the line multiple times throughout his life.
	Amidst all the drama, amidst all the doubts, amidst all like the...
	He's still able to make just clear, clear-headed decisions.
	I don't know what to make of it, but it's inspiring as hell.
	Well, I think it's something that's funny.
	I think, like, I can only imagine, you know, history will look back on him as a brilliant person, but that's not the only thing.
	There's a lot of, maybe not statistically speaking, but a lot numerically on a giant planet of, you know, billions of people.
	A lot of brilliant people. Well, you know, time, place, luck, fortune, all that other stuff.
	But at the same time, that clearly isn't the only determining thing in making Elon Musk, Elon Musk.
	And obviously, I don't know the guy from Adam, but it's an interesting thing that it's not just his intellect, his belief system, his structure, how he's viewing the world.
	Like, that's... Did he reason his way to that?
	Did he not? What other factors came in?
	I'm really curious about that because I guess coming, it's, again, I feel really strongly about people's belief structure and how they view the world being more important than the engine behind it.
	You know, it makes someone resilient or not.
	It makes someone positive or not because you could have 10,000.
	I think about this for competitive stuff.
	You could have 10,000 things going properly and one thing going improperly.
	If you focus on the improper, you'll probably fix it at a certain point, which is good, facilitated for development in the long term.
	But if you had to go and try to perform a task in the next five minutes...
	And you're focusing on the negative.
	Your confidence and your belief in the positive outcome of the future is likely to be damaged.
	Whereas you could have 25 things going wrong, but you go, man, I sure am happy to be alive.
	How fortunate I am. This is great.
	I have problems to solve.
	This is awesome. Versus I list the problems and I start bitching about them.
	Both of them are technically accurate, but it's, I guess, different lenses.
	And I think that's a really neat thing to see, you know, someone, you know, exemplifying that for us.
	So maybe to look at the fighting world, there's a million questions I can ask here.
	One, you mentioned BJ Penn.
	First of all, you're undefeated in the UFC, and one of the fights you've had is against BJ Penn, which is kind of an incredible fight.
	You won performance of the night.
	What did it feel like to...
	To face BJ Penn and to beat him definitively as he did.
	What's that whole experience like?
	I'll be honest, I didn't know if I was going to ever be able to fight again after beating Gray Maynard in 2016.
	I've had a couple periods of those.
	I was about to join the army, actually, when I was 30 before the UFC, before Jen sent me over to Ultimate Fighter.
	I didn't want to go because I was like, one, they're never going to pick me.
	Two, I'd be terrible for TV. Three, I'll probably say something.
	I'm going to get burned to death in the streets.
	I'm like, this isn't a great idea.
	And then she said, well, go out there, see what happens.
	Do it anyway. You'll regret it if you didn't.
	And then I ended up doing Ultimate Fighter.
	So I fought three times on the show.
	And then I fought for the finale.
	So that's four times in five or six months, which was great.
	And then it took me a year to get another opponent.
	And that was Gray Maynard.
	And then Gray was obviously a very tough guy.
	Managed to get a good outcome there.
	there, then it took two years to fight BJ Penn.
	And that was, you know, obviously I'm training all the time every single day and that never stops.
	But that was, I'll be honest, like pretty deeply frustrating
	because, you know, as a human being, as an athlete, you know, I think as an athlete, you die twice.
	Like you have an athletic peak or area, and then you go on with the rest of your life.
	But it is a microcosm for the rest of your life.
	It's like you're seeing the sand tick away in the hourglass or drop away.
	And you're going, man, these are the years between 31, 32, 33.
	I'll be at my best at this time, my absolute best physically.
	Now, not technically. I'm a lot better now than I was before on our planet.
	But at a certain point, unless you're Bernard Hopkins, you will reach diminishing returns.
	The long wait, you can feel the clock ticking.
	Is this frustrating? Why did it take two years for B.J.? That's the question people ask a lot.
	It's like, why does nobody want to fight, Ryan?
	I don't know. They probably think they'll get infected by whatever this is.
	But I don't blame them.
	I mean, you're a really tough opponent, is the bottom line.
	I'll say that I'm different. Maybe they perceive that the threat is greater than the reward.
	I'm hoping that now that we're ranked number 12 in the UFC rankings, that...
	That that will change, and I know that if we're one more win, and then we're in the top 10, that, you know, now you're there.
	But what I've consistently found is that, like, randoms want to fight, and I'm like, go away.
	I didn't come here for you, you know, because if I wanted to just fight anybody, I could go down to a Waffle House and yell until, like, DMX shows up, and we can fight, because he'll be at the Waffle House, too.
	Who am I kidding? I really want to hang out with DMX. But, you know, it's like, you want to, when I had the opportunity...
	Fine Hall and DMX at Waffle House. Oh, my God, that was so cool.
	Sounds like a Netflix show or something.
	I would never fight DMX. We'd be on the same team.
	No. But anyway, I guess I accepted fights against – I got asked about Lamas.
	I said yes. I got asked about Dennis Bermudez.
	I said yes. You know, like long periods of time at that time, you know, in between 2016 and 2018.
	I was struggling to have opponents who would sign up.
	And I haven't turned down fights.
	I've just said, hey, I don't care about fighting the randoms.
	And you have a successful school.
	You're a martial artist, broadly speaking.
	So it doesn't make sense to take fights that fit a certain kind of trajectory for your career.
	And that's when BJ Penn, they said, well, BJ's looking for an opponent.
	I was like, I'm your guy.
	And I think that BJ accepted that fight because another jiu-jitsu guy, I don't think he perceived that I was much of a threat on the feet.
	And I was able to, it was neat to get it to compete against someone who's one of my heroes, one of the people I looked up to in MMA for the longest time.
	Were you intimidated by that?
	No. No, I love competing.
	I don't really get nervous or scared before fights.
	I'm not afraid to get hurt. I'm not afraid to win.
	I'm not afraid to lose.
	I'm just excited for the...
	I feel thankful for the opportunity to compete and the opportunity to play when it matters.
	You know, I... I just, that's the only time I'm interested in playing anymore is when it, when it matters, when the opposition is, I know that, you know, it's funny because people pick on, on a lot of some opponents, particularly after, after the fact, like if you, if you get a good outcome, well then, of course, let's beat that guy.
	That guy wasn't that good. I'm like, well, I wasn't, that's after the fact, I get to say that.
	And also as the person in the ring, you know, BJ Penn has hurt a lot of people in mixed martial arts cage.
	And I could actually absolutely have been on that list.
	So it was neat to get to compete against someone that I really respect, someone that I looked out to for a long time, someone who has a great skill set.
	And also I went up in weight to fight him at his weight class.
	He didn't have to come down to mine, which is where he'd take- Which was lightweight?
	It was lightweight, yeah. I'm generally a featherweight.
	I walk around at like 158 pounds.
	So- What's lightweight and featherweight?
	Lightweight is 155 with the day before weighing and featherweight is 145 with the day before weighing.
	So I'm a little bit more properly sized for featherweight.
	But anyway, you know, so I didn't feel like, obviously he was giving up a couple years of age, but I was giving up size and all this other stuff.
	And it was, you know, I was just excited to have the opportunity to step in against someone like BJ. And, you know, we managed to get out of there with a good outcome without getting too banged up.
	But just, it was cool because we tied up on the fence and just even the second, you know, is when you're rolling with somebody and you touch and you can feel what they're doing, you go, oh man, this guy's really good.
	You can feel the calm, you can feel the small minor adjustments that they're making, the subtle things that they're doing.
	And that was one of those things that was really neat and gratifying because, you know, you never know.
	Sometimes people that you've heard of are a little bit less technically proficient than you thought.
	And other times you'll meet some guy that you train, you're like, who the hell is this guy?
	How have I not heard of this person?
	And BJ was exactly, as a jiu-jitsu guy, what I would have thought.
	And another thing, that's another thing that bugged me about how people reacted after the fight is, you know, basically going, oh, BJ screwed up this, screwed up that.
	And I'm like... That's so interesting.
	That's sad. To me, as a fan of both, that was a beautiful moment.
	It's a kind of passing of a torch, in a sense, of an exceptional performance.
	Another one that stands out to me, maybe you can comment, is...
	I don't understand, well maybe I do, why Conor McGregor gets as much hate as he does.
	He probably revels in it.
	But I think he doesn't get enough credit for Jose Aldo.
	For the, for like, for basically, you know, knocking him out in the first few seconds of a fight.
	I mean, Jose is like one of the greatest fighters ever.
	That's true. Maybe some people could be able to put him in the top ten.
	No question. And I don't understand why Conor McGregor doesn't get as much credit as I think he deserves for that and for Eddie Alvarez and all the fights.
	For some reason, whenever Conor McGregor beats somebody, well, they were not that good then.
	It means something was off.
	Right. That's convenient, isn't it?
	Yeah. It's quite strange to me.
	But, I mean, what are your thoughts on Conor McGregor?
	Maybe one way to ask that.
	I'm a Russian, so I'm obviously also a Khabib fan.
	But I'm also a Conor fan.
	It seems like there's not many of us who are fans of both.
	Right. What are your thoughts?
	You and Artem Lobov. Yeah, right?
	Exactly. The two of us, which also is a good thing.
	Tough dude. Yeah, really, really tough dude.
	Especially like five languages. Really interesting, Kat.
	Oh, wow.
	I didn't know that side of it. There's a brain there.
	Well, on the Khabib versus Conor, what do you make of their first fight?
	Do you agree with me that they should fight again?
	Because I think it would be awesome if they fought again in Moscow.
	And do you agree with me?
	I'm just going to say things that piss people off, but I believe is that Conor actually has a chance to beat Khabib.
	One, that Conor absolutely has a chance to beat.
	Conor has a chance to beat anyone that he steps into that ring with, and not just like a mathematical chance.
	You're like, oh, one of the billion, but like, you know, like he absolutely, it's funny because I won't pretend to know Conor really well, but I first met Conor in 2010 when I was teaching a seminar at Straight Bless Gym Ireland in Dublin.
	that ended up being on Conor's team.
	John Kavanaugh, Owen Roddy, Gunnar Nilsson.
	So for, I actually, I enjoyed being on Ultimate Fighter and being on Uriah Faber's team
	and getting to train with all the guys there.
	But at the same time, the people that I was actually, I knew better were actually the European side,
	all of Conor's coaches.
	And that was a neat thing because I got to.
	I met Conor. I didn't know who Conor...
	Conor wasn't Conor at that point.
	Yeah, that was before his UFC division.
	Oh, yeah. Well before, yeah.
	I think he got in like 2014, maybe, something like that.
	Yeah. And anyway, but he was doing well in Cage Warriors, winning the titles there, I think, prior to that.
	You know, I remember seeing him on the show and also then getting to see him train because I competed.
	I was initially slated to fight David Tamer for the Ultimate Fighter finale before getting put in to fight Artem for the title for the show.
	So I went over to Ireland to train for a couple days.
	And basically, it was neat to watch him work.
	I mean, man is focused and trains a lot and very, very smart and very, very hardworking.
	And I think a lot of times people get stuck in this, you know, and they almost want to believe that this was lucky or this person, you know, they're not working that hard.
	They're just out there. They got there with their mouth.
	And that's just not the case.
	And I don't know what it's like.
	Obviously, Conor's very well off right now, and I don't know how seriously he's training, what he's doing.
	I can't speak to any of that. But there's no question that he has skills to be dangerous.
	And one of the funny things, obviously, the Khabib fight went Khabib's way.
	Khabib was a great fighter and also has the chance to beat anyone in that ring at any given time.
	But there was an...
	Connor, you know, it's one that he can put anybody away.
	And as you mentioned, I think that he doesn't get the credit for the Eddie Alvarez fight.
	He doesn't get the credit for the Jose Aldo fight because it was almost so much of a letdown.
	I remember that happened the same weekend that I did the Ultimate Fighter finale.
	And you're like, wait, what?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	It almost doesn't feel like a fight happened.
	But we mentioned Miyamoto Musashi.
	I mean, Musashi was famous for the way he poked and prodded at people with what he was doing, whether overtly or not.
	It's like, oh, we're supposed to fight to the death at 3 p.m.
	tomorrow. Great. 4 p.m.
	rolls around. I'm just not there. 5.
	I mean, you remember all the antics and nonsense that Conor was pulling prior to that.
	Like, speaking personally, that's not something I would feel comfortable doing, but it's like everyone's different.
	And the effect that it had on Jose was, I mean, beyond evident.
	When was the last time Jose started the fight with leaping left hand, leaping right hand?
	You're like, wait, what? Yeah.
	And then he was obviously living rent-free in Jose's head at that point.
	And that was a combination of psychological ability and wherewithal and then physical.
	And it reminded me of the way Muhammad Ali would bother people and whatnot and...
	The fact that he's a polarizing figure, I think, makes some people not give him his due.
	And then at the same time, sometimes certain fans maybe go overboard.
	But remember the knee that Ben Askren got knocked out with by Masvidal?
	I mean, that was an amazing, unbelievable thing.
	But three inches to the right, three inches to the left, I guess whichever side his head wasn't.
	It could have been squarer.
	And that fight starts with Ben Askren on top of you in the first five seconds.
	Well, Conor ran and threw a knee just like that at Khabib, and Khabib got right around it.
	That could have easily gone the other way.
	Can you imagine what would have happened after coming back from boxing, after coming back from the Mayweather fight?
	Conor rocks Khabib.
	Conor, in the first 10 seconds, it's over.
	And you're like, he would...
	It would have been intolerable.
	But basically...
	But see, here's the thing.
	Let me actually push back slightly.
	To the fans, correct me if I'm wrong, but Conor seems to...
	Because I've competed a lot.
	There's a tension, there's a negativity sometimes, depending on the opponent.
	And... There's a respect afterwards that happens.
	When you understand that there's a deep respect and almost love for each other.
	I've always seen that in Connor.
	All the trash talk afterwards, it's a subtle thing.
	You can't always see it, but there's a respect.
	I agree. Almost on the Khabib side, I almost feel like Khabib really took it personally.
	He lost the respect for Conor.
	I thought the whole time Conor had the respect.
	So what I wanted to say is if Conor won that fight, like rocked Khabib, I could see...
	I wouldn't see trash talking.
	I could see trash talking stop right there.
	I think so, too. But at the same time, I'm sure you recall, Connor crossed in some pretty personal territory, both religiously and also familiarly with Khabib.
	I think it's the sort of thing that...
	I don't know. It's interesting.
	That's one of the reasons. It depends. You have to know the difference.
	Obviously, I know the Khabib, the Dagestani people, they don't...
	Play around like that. They don't play around like that.
	I mean, they take offense to basically...
	I mean, you don't do that.
	So, like, Conor didn't...
	Maybe he did it on purpose, or maybe he wasn't even just aware of...
	Totally fair. It was cultural differences.
	Out of the box he opened. You can talk to Floyd Mayweather.
	You can go anywhere with him.
	You can say the most offensive things, but with Khabib...
	There's hard lines. Yeah, hard lines.
	But you... I mean, a lot of people ask.
	I know you're a featherweight, but if you were to...
	It feels like Khabib was one of the hardest puzzles to solve in all of mixed martial arts.
	If you were to face Khabib, How would you go about solving that puzzle?
	The question is almost from a jiu-jitsu perspective, too.
	What do you do with a guy that's exceptionally good at controlling position, especially on top, very good at wrestling and taking down and controlling position?
	Let's say, so forget maybe striking.
	On the ground, how do you solve that guy?
	What do you do with your guard?
	If you get taken down, or do you create an entire system of not getting taken down or escaping?
	What ideas do you have for that?
	Well, I guess I would say, in my mind, fighting is a game of trading energy.
	There's two things.
	There's damage and there's energy. When I say energy, I mean tired, not tired, how much gas you've got.
	And then damage counts, obviously, as well.
	I could be feeling great, and then you get to kick me in the head really hard three times.
	It doesn't matter that I could get up and run a mile.
	I can't get up. So anyway, I think what Khabib does so well is he makes the fight look like a Khabib Nurmagomedov fight.
	He does a great job of avoiding damage on the feet for the most part and really sucking the life out of people with how suffocating and oppressive his control is.
	His chain wrestling is as good as anyone we've ever seen in the UFC. It's fantastic.
	But that poses a really serious threat for people that need to maintain a certain amount of space and try to hurt them on the feet because unless they're able to inflict an adequate amount of damage, they're going to each time, let's say for instance, let's say him taking them down as a foregone conclusion at some point.
	Um, if every single time Khabib takes you down, you get right back up.
	It's not that big a deal. Um, because it's actually more, we've all experienced this.
	Let's say you and I are rolling.
	You tap me 15 times in one round.
	Who's more tired? Probably you are.
	My ass so badly that it's like you're the only one working.
	So if you're comfortable with the up and down of it, like being taken down...
	If you don't get hurt badly or tired on the bottom, you have a chance.
	But that doesn't involve just cracking him on the feet before he gets a hold of you.
	That's a lot to ask.
	That's a lot to ask. That's difficult to do.
	It seemed actually like Connor...
	It seemed like it when he was being kind of taken down or the takedown attempts against Khabib.
	He seemed to be somewhat relaxed through the whole thing.
	I thought he was doing well, actually.
	I think that particularly for the first round, I thought he did a very good job.
	It's just one of those things that I think like...
	Khabib being... The fight's taking place in Khabib's world in large part.
	And I mean, set aside that one giant...
	What is it? Right hand that Khabib hit Conor with.
	By the way, Conor reacted like an absolute champion.
	He got crushed by that overhand.
	And then drop...
	And his eyes went right back on Khabib.
	It was immediate, positive, great response.
	So even though that was... I think that was a bit of a surprising thing.
	Conor reacted really, really well.
	But if you're going to be on bottom...
	With Khabib for four rounds, that's going to be tough.
	And also, Conor's a way better grappler than people like to give him credit for, but he's not the type of grappler that's too tall of an order.
	But there are grapplers that could do that, or at least would have a much, much better shot at being able to weather that type of a storm.
	Do you see yourself being able to be relaxed through that kind of storm?
	Yes. Well, I guess...
	Remember, being savagely beaten is very relaxing.
	The timing of that answer was like, okay, that's a dumb question.
	That's ultimately...
	The goal of jiu-jitsu is to be relaxed through the fire.
	For sure. And remember, like every UFC fighter, I win all hypothetical matchups.
	Yeah. That's true.
	Since I'm one to ask ridiculous questions, and we've been talking about sci-fi and all that kind of stuff, let me ask the kind of big question that everybody disagrees about, certainly with me, is who are the top five greatest MMA fighters of all time?
	Oh, man. And why is Fedor number one?
	Okay, well, first off, Fedor is number one.
	Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Right there with you.
	Really? Oh, yeah. Talk about people that just get completely underappreciated.
	Even though he's never succeeded in the UFC? It's not his fault it came along after him.
	At the time that Fedor was at his height, the UFC was not where it was at for heavyweight fighting.
	I mean, not that there weren't good heavyweights there, but Fedor was unbelievable.
	I mean, you remember...
	I was a massive fan of him.
	I still remember watching Pride 2004 when Noguera fought Cro Cop and got blasted with that left kick and dropped with seconds left in the first round.
	Pride was great because he had a 10-minute first round and that 5-minute second, which again materially alters the fight big time and the texture of the fight.
	It's borderline a different sport.
	You know, then getting a five, a pause and a five.
	But anyway, similar sports, like one of those swimming things where they have nine gold medals for different types of swimming, right?
	But still swimming. But anyway...
	Well, yeah, they would disagree.
	Yeah, and I don't mean... They specialize in that.
	But it's totally true.
	Ten minutes is different than five minutes.
	I'm sorry. I think...
	Don't drown me, swimmers.
	I don't swim very well. It's easy for me to downplay it.
	But anyway... Yeah, and then- So better than John Jones, like the modern era.
	Well, I mean, I guess it's tough to compare across eras.
	It would be like going and saying like, oh man, how would such and such great grappler from today fare against someone from 1995?
	I'm like, well, probably pretty well for them, depending upon who they are, what's going
	on.
	You know, there's some people that would, their skill sets might transition across eras,
	but a lot of times not, but that's not fair.
	We get the, they'll be like comparing Spartans to modern day, you know, like army guys.
	You're like, well, who's going to win?
	I'm like, well, did modern day army guys get modern day weapons?
	Well, yeah.
	But who's the toughest, ruggedest group of people at the very least?
	So I guess it's tough to say, but at least in my mind, the people that I think about for great fighters, their quality of opposition, their level of, like, lasting, like, success, their level of lasting innovation, like, the courage that they have to demonstrate.
	Because, again, it's like being a big fish in a small pond takes no courage.
	It doesn't mean that there's nothing there, but it just requires something a little bit different.
	So Kazushi Sakuraba is one of my guys, too.
	BJ Penn also.
	I mean, BJ Penn fought Lyoto Machida.
	That's insane. You know, that was a time, it was a different sport.
	It was a different time in the sport where, you know, some guys were bouncing around doing different things.
	So I guess the Gracie family, I mean, they never had an, like obviously Hoist was there, but they never, and that was definitely a different sport.
	Weight classes being open, things like that.
	Yeah, but you have to say that Hoist is up there.
	Oh, no question. One of the greatest ever.
	I think so too. And again, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you if it weren't for him.
	So the Gracie family as a whole, but I mean, who's the better?
	I mean, I think Hoist would tell you himself probably that Hickson would have handled business back then, but they didn't put him in.
	So again, he's the greatest fighter, the greatest fighter, the greatest fighter that we saw do his business.
	So Hoist up there for sure.
	What about... Nobody seems to agree with me on this, but this connects to soccer again and Messi.
	It seems that people value how long you've been a champion, how many defenses of the championship that you've had successfully.
	To me, I highly value singular moments of genius.
	If you look at Conor McGregor, he hasn't, I guess, been a champion very long, very much.
	Well, he didn't defend either title, right?
	He didn't defend either of the titles.
	And the same with Messi.
	If you look at Lionel Messi, there's just moments of brilliance, unlike any other in history for both Conor and Messi.
	And people don't seem to give credit.
	It's like, well, how many World Cups have you won?
	But to me, why is it about this arbitrary World Cup thing or championship thing?
	I think it's easier for people to wrap their head around, right?
	It's like the NFL combine. Numbers.
	Yeah, numbers. Well, again, if I go and if I pick Tom Brady in the first round and it works out, they call me a genius.
	If I pick Tom Brady in the first round after his combine and it doesn't work out, I get fired and I'm never hired again, I have to work.
	I work somewhere else. But it's like, I'm insulating myself from criticism, I think, almost, if I go by the numbers.
	Well, he had more bench presses.
	It's like, how many times have the guys that are like the super studs in the NFL combine ever been on the greatest players in the NFL history?
	In NFL history, like zero or close to zero?
	And even if there's some, it's certainly not a one-to-one correlation.
	So it's so funny, though.
	I think it's just like, how many days did he hold the title?
	Ah, your title reign was X times longer.
	That means nothing. So if we wanted to find greatest fighter ever, like you said, I think individual moments of like, that was transcended.
	That was different. That was something else.
	Because people can win or lose for any number of different reasons.
	And that's an interesting thing.
	Again, I don't blame Argentina not winning the World Cup on Messi.
	You know, that's not fair.
	You know, how many times has, you know, I mean, I remember when Trent Dilfer was the quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, and they had such a strong defense.
	I'm not trying to pick on Trent Dilfer, but it's like they had such a strong defense that they were to make it.
	That was the Ray Lewis, you know, Chris McAllister era, you know, and they won the Super Bowl.
	I don't think anyone is going to say that, you know, Trent Dilfer is a better quarterback than...
	Or put him in the same category as Dan Marino.
	But he got the W. He's got the Super Bowl ring.
	How many times? Let's use March Madness.
	Or Super Bowl. I love it. That guy always makes the finals, but he just never gets it done.
	So let me get this straight. Getting to the finals nine times doesn't count because you didn't win the end game.
	I'm not saying it wouldn't be better, but that guy won the game once.
	He got over the hump. Well, how many other times was he in the finals?
	Zero? You're like... All right.
	It's interesting what we, yeah, that we were obsessed with these numbers.
	Well, because we can't assess their method, right?
	Well, I think most of the time, most of us can't assess the method of anything.
	It's like, oh, look at that guy do XY swimming.
	I'm like, how do I know Michael Phelps is great?
	I don't know, he was faster? I can't look at his technique and say anything other than, well, that's way better than anything I know how to do, but I can't say the difference between him and the next guy.
	So I guess that's, I wonder if it's like, I need a concrete identifier.
	And a lot of times people don't like saying, I don't know.
	And most people won't put like a Ronda Rousey in the top even 20 or 50 of...
	But like she changed more than almost anybody else.
	She changed the martial arts history.
	I don't know if that even...
	I don't think I'm exaggerating that.
	She made it okay for...
	Women to be fighters.
	Yeah. And change the way we see...
	She's one of the great feminists of our time.
	In her own way, yeah.
	In a weird kind of way that...
	I don't know. Maybe I'm just a Ronda Rousey fan, but...
	Yeah. But she's not in the conversation because then you start converting into numbers.
	Well, how many did she actually win?
	Is she among the greatest fighters or did she do the greatest things?
	You know what I mean? I don't... It's hard.
	It's something not... I mean, obviously, Ronda is a great judoka who was competing in MMA at a time when a lot of the girls...
	Like, where did you get your skills?
	In the Olympics. Where did you get yours?
	High school. You're like, yeah, you're going to...
	Olympic girls are going to beat you up.
	But I guess that that doesn't diminish her.
	Just that accomplishment is what it is.
	I don't have to... I don't...
	Fedor is not diminished by the fact that...
	Like, if he were to fight Stephen Miocis right now, it probably wouldn't go great.
	Or that Jon Jones exists.
	I don't now have to, like, knock Fedor's accomplishments down.
	Or say, oh, because BJ Penn or so-and-so, let's say, has a mixed record at this point that somehow invalidates the things that they've done before.
	I guess it kind of brings us back to a lot of the other people we've talked about.
	The fact that the brilliant people throughout history that we love or some of the monsters throughout history that we...
	Rightly revile in a lot of cases.
	We're complicated people and their legacy is more than just one thing.
	And someone doing something amazing doesn't mean they didn't do anything bad.
	And someone doing terrible things doesn't invalidate the positives that they did.
	But I guess... Fighting the urge to put people in one category.
	And same with ourselves. I think that's why people get depressed.
	Oh, I'm good right now.
	Oh, I'm bad right now.
	Versus, hey, we're all a work in progress and we're trying to do X number of things and legacy is a tough thing to figure out anyway and it's all speculative.
	Last time, or no, on Reddit, you said that, last time too, that you don't experience much fear before fights.
	I'd like to ask you a couple of Mike Tyson things, if it's okay.
	It's just interesting to me, maybe I'm just weird.
	So there's a, I don't know if you've seen this clip of Tyson talking about how he feels leading up to a fight.
	That he's kind of overtaken with fear.
	As he gets closer and closer and closer to the ring, his confidence grows.
	Have you seen the clip? I'm aware of it, but I haven't seen it in a while.
	Here, let me play it for you.
	George St. Pierre said something similar to me one time.
	While I'm in the dressing room, five minutes before I come out, my gloves are laced up.
	I'm breaking my gloves down.
	I'm pushing the lever of the back of my leg.
	I'm breaking the middle of the gloves for my neck.
	Pierce The closer I get to the ring, the more confidence I get.
	The closer I get, the closer I get.
	All during my training, I've been afraid of this man.
	I thought this man might be capable of beating me.
	But I always stayed afraid of him.
	But the closer I get to the ring, I'm more confident.
	Once I'm in the ring, I'm I'm a god.
	I mean, first of all, he's cognizant of both his demons and whatever the hell ideas he has about violence.
	It's so interesting. Is there something about the tension that he's describing about being confident and scared that resonates with you?
	Or do you hold to this idea that you've kind of spoken about before that you're really not afraid?
	No, I can appreciate what he's saying.
	You know, I think that, you know, I can speak to feeling, like, concerned about, let's say, for instance, if you feel a certain way, I think people are a lot more like computers than we like to admit.
	And just because a lot of times I can't parse what's going on and why doesn't mean that it's not, it doesn't make sense.
	I see. And I think that, at least in the times of, like, if I'm concerned about a situation or about a person, Or about something happening prior to the fight, or I'm like, there's a reason.
	There is a reason. I don't have to push that down and bury it.
	There's a reason. I'm like, why?
	What have I not thought about? What have I not done?
	What am I missing? Why am I feeling this way?
	As you mentioned, you know, for yourself prior, like, you'd be like, why am I feeling like this?
	I don't do this very well in certain aspects of my life, now that I mention it or now that I think about it.
	But when it comes to competing, I think I do an alright job and I'm trying to learn to be better and it's going like, well, why do I, if I feel this way, there's a reason.
	Okay, am I thinking about this the wrong way?
	Have I not adequately prepared for something?
	I have to address it and then maybe I'll be up for four hours that night, you know, like extra hours thinking, what have I not addressed?
	Watching sparring, watching this, watching that.
	And then that when I am thinking about things more accurately or when I've addressed what that concern was, I feel any of that concern kind of dissipate.
	And I guess if I honestly thought that, you know, I guess when it comes to, I know I'm going to die at a certain point, obviously.
	I'm going to get hurt. I'm going to, you know, pain happens.
	But the pain of loss would be nothing compared to the or the pain of injury be nothing compared to the pain of
	running away You know and yeah, and so I guess if I think about
	Where's my value?
	What it's like I feel like I'm a winner Every single time I step into that ring and fight with
	everything that I have I can't promise that I'll win.
	I know that I have the skills and the tools to beat anyone in grappling or in mixed martial arts at this point.
	I know that for certain.
	I've trained with enough people.
	I've competed with enough people. I know where I stand.
	But I also know that I'm not perfect and also the better fighter, even if I perceive that I was that thing.
	Doesn't win on the night.
	The man who fights better wins on the night.
	And if I give credence in my mind to only the person that's won has value versus going, what's your process?
	What's your path through this?
	How are you going about this? How are you thinking about this?
	How are you behaving? Then if I can focus on the process, then I will respect my opponent and I will respect myself and I'll respect anyone that behaves with a certain level of consistency to that.
	And they could win. There's plenty of winners in history that are shitbags.
	And there's plenty of losers that are not.
	Yeah.
	and losing doesn't make you good by default either, or bad by default.
	So, and I think that that can be the truth socially, that can be the truth athletically, academically.
	So I guess- Is there a primal fear though,
	like a primal fear of getting hurt?
	The running away and not facing the threat long-term is the bigger pain
	than any pain you can experience in the fight.
	Bye.
	That's pretty powerful.
	But what about the violence of...
	I mean, you don't have that on your face, but like...
	I don't know if you've also seen Tyson talk about...
	He was on Rogan recently and he was talking about...
	He was trying to psychoanalyze himself about why he enjoys...
	I mean, he called it orgasmic.
	Have you seen that clip?
	I haven't. Okay.
	We're playing it.
	Because Trump also retweeted it, which is hilarious.
	I don't know how to contextualize that our president retweeted the clip of...
	Yeah, but let's say...
	Of Tyson saying...
	That's just... Maybe he's just doing anything like...
	They're not gonna... It's like, I'm gonna throw him a curveball.
	No one's gonna have any idea what that is.
	But yeah, he did no explanation, just here you go.
	There you go. Well, I think that's kind of like what you were describing.
	It's like, if I give you an answer, it has to be a good one.
	Better to just let your imagination run.
	Exactly. Yeah, he's...
	Yeah, he's like the Kubrick of our time.
	You know what's really interesting?
	That sometimes...
	Period. It's not real, but sometimes I struggle with the fact of, wow, the possibility I can really hurt somebody.
	Like you don't want to hurt them?
	What do you mean when you struggle with the possibility that you could hurt them?
	That is sometimes...
	It's orgasmic sometimes.
	Like some fights, particularly like Tyrell Biggs or someone that you had problems with, someone that you had animosity towards, so when you finally get your hands on them.
	Hey, what does it mean when fighting gets you erect?
	What does that mean? It's a good question.
	It means you're getting excited.
	Yeah. So that's going through your mind right now?
	Well, that's how I get when I was a kid.
	Sometimes I get the twinkle.
	The twinkle? Yeah.
	Well, that's what I'm saying. It's like you reached a state as a human being, as a champion, as a ferocious fighter.
	You reached a state of ability and of accomplishment that very few humans will ever touch and feel.
	That's why I'm asking you, when you're running, when you're hitting the bag, when that heart's beating again, and you know who you are, you're Mike motherfucking Tyson.
	So when you're doing all this shit again, you're still Mike Tyson.
	Those thoughts have got to be burning inside you again.
	It's got to be pretty wild.
	I don't know. It's wild, but I believe it's rightfully so to be that way.
	And I just know how to... I don't think I'm massive, but I just know how to deal with it.
	I don't let it overwhelm me.
	I mean, he goes on to try to...
	They don't ever... Like, Joe doesn't...
	The interesting thing about that conversation is Mike was trying to figure himself out.
	Yeah. On the spot.
	On the spot. Like, why do I feel this way?
	To me, it's so real and honest to feel pleasure from hurting somebody.
	You rarely hear that.
	In this society, it's like you rarely like talk about like you feel pleasure from winning.
	You feel pleasure from the relief of overcoming all the stress you had to go through.
	Pleasure from just the specifics of the fight, the techniques you used, maybe overcoming being down a couple of rounds.
	How often do you hear somebody say, I just enjoyed...
	He's not even saying because I hate the opponent.
	He's saying, I enjoyed purely the violence of it.
	That's crazy. I mean, I don't know.
	It's honest. It made me ask, like, I wonder how many of us are cognizant of that.
	I'd say Mike is uncommonly, seemingly honest.
	I think athletes make a full-time job out of lying.
	You know, I think people make a full-time job on the line.
	To themselves, perhaps, too. That's fair. I mean, you tell yourself or you tell others what you feel you need to, or maybe whether you even know what you feel you need to, but why should he not?
	I mean, again, did he run up and just hit somebody that didn't sign up for this?
	No, they signed it to be there.
	Well, that's the interesting thing about Dyson is there's that weird, non-standard behavior.
	I mean, your fighting style is non-standard.
	He's non-standard to another degree.
	Who else has that?
	In Jiu-Jitsu, Polaris has this kind of weirdness.
	What's in there?
	Like, there's a fear that I think most opponents would have.
	Because it's like, it's no longer about like, it takes you out of the realm of its game.
	It takes us back to the thing we were talking about before.
	It strips away that several layers of Ryan Hall, the podcast guest, Ryan Hall, the jiu-jitsu instructor, Ryan Hall, the jiu-jitsu competitor.
	It keeps going down to a point where Ryan Hall, the murderer of all things that get in his way, that lies underneath All of it, seemingly.
	Like, if we're... Like, in this society, we put all that aside, but it makes you wonder.
	Like, now, society's being tested in many ways.
	It makes you wonder, like, what's underneath there?
	Well, do we want the answer to that?
	Because I guess it's... What is it? You've seen Pulp Fiction, you know, the best character in the movie and in the best scene in the movie.
	He's like, if my questions...
	If you're... What do you call it? If my answer's scary, you should cease asking scary questions.
	You know? And I guess...
	I mean, all of us, that's something that I think it's funny.
	We go, oh, that's not okay. I mean, versus maybe not appropriate for situation X, Y, or Z. But what should make any of us think?
	I mean, humanity is a different place now.
	And I'm not saying anything crazy out there, but humanity is a different place now than we were 5,000 years ago, where all of us are descended from people who have killed things with their teeth and fingernails.
	In order to be where we are.
	And whether it was an animal or it was in conflict with another person, I mean, think about the chances of dying by violence now are so slim, at least in most countries and most places.
	Like, shockingly small, thankfully.
	But there was a period of time, like, the most period of time where dying by violence was mostly how it went down.
	And I guess what would be facilitative, what would allow you to win, back to Ender's Game, You know, what allows you – if you can't do that, you are forever subject to people who can.
	And that's a real thing.
	And, you know, we're fortunate to find ourselves in a situation where we don't – where other things matter.
	But that is a funny thing periodically where people – you'll see people like kind of jawing at each other like in videos or out in the world that clearly neither of them expect this to get serious.
	Like I'm just going to yell at you. You're going to yell at me.
	And it's like this weird LARPing thing.
	We're both going to go on our own separate way.
	Yeah. All it takes is one person to be like, well, I wasn't kidding.
	And it's like, oh, you'll go to jail.
	I'm like, oh, I know. You're going to go to the morgue.
	But that can happen like that.
	Like society, I mean, obviously, anyway, you could jump across the table and stab me in the eye.
	I mean, I appreciate it. I'd hope if you don't, and there will be consequences if you do, but not from me.
	From the rest of society will potentially get you at a certain point.
	But you can decide to not play by the rules any time you want.
	It's fascinating that, yeah, that's, we've created rules based on which we all behave, but underneath there, you know, there's things that doesn't, there's motivations and forces that don't play by the rules.
	It's still there. Nature is metal is under the surface.
	Seriously. And again, I pull out my phone and I'm basically saying like, hey, you're going to get caught.
	But really, I'm further antagonizing you.
	Rightly or wrongly. You know what I mean?
	And that's an interesting thing.
	And I feel like just people need to remember, any of us need to remember, just for any reason, just that's one step away at all times.
	I've had people say to me before, like, oh, I don't feel safe.
	I'm like, you're not safe. I'll kill you before you get out of this room.
	Nothing can do to stop that. Nothing.
	I mean, but don't worry, you can do the same to me.
	Which means I'm like, oh, thank goodness.
	Can you imagine, like, how many guns there are in this country?
	Like, I mean, everywhere.
	I mean, seriously, everywhere.
	But that's a heartening thought, not the other way, because people usually freak out and go, oh my god, gun violence, gun violence.
	Gun violence is, like, really not a serious issue in the United States, compared to what it could be.
	because it means that, I mean, with the amount of guns and the amount of bullets that are
	out there that are in circulation, can you imagine if like one in every thousand was
	used in anger each day?
	I mean, this would be a terrifying place to live.
	You couldn't go anywhere.
	So, I mean, although you could say, hey, this is more than we'd like or X, Y, Z, it actually
	means that people are much more reasonable and sane than we're saying.
	Or then sometimes I might argue.
	So I guess what I mean is like, oh man, I walked to 7-Eleven and I didn't get stabbed.
	I'm like, oh, well, that's good. Not because I protected myself with my karate.
	It's basically no one decided to run over and stab me because I wasn't protecting myself.
	They stopped. So I guess we're all fortunate to live in a society that, like you said, nature being metal doesn't become that big of an issue all the time.
	But it is funny when you get people in the ring and you go, hey, let's peel back from Mr.
	Tyson's Many layers of that and say, hey, now it's okay.
	And it's cool that, I mean, that's what society's doing.
	So I've lived in Harvard Square for a while, and we add extra layers of what safe means.
	Like, now there's a discourse about safe spaces, about, like, ideas being violence.
	Or, like, you know, like...
	Ideas or minor slights against your personality being violence.
	But that's all extra layers around the nature is metal thing.
	It's cool. That's what progress is, but we can't forget that underneath it, it's still the thing that will murder at any moment if aroused.
	One thing that I find funny, though, or ironic, maybe, about the words of violence, offenses, violence thing, is that, of course, the belief in that then justifies my violence.
	And whether maybe not physical violence, but my aggressive response to things.
	And I guess, which, again, begets a further aggressive response and kind of a...
	A tit-for-tat sort of situation.
	Or it goes to like, well, there's 10 of me and there's one of you, so we'll get you and you can't do anything about it.
	But that's not morality.
	That's just saying that's might makes right.
	So I guess, again, you can understand why people do it and there are certain, there is a progress aspect to it.
	But again, I guess without proper examination, I'm effectively with my 10 friends, you know, and the force of the law, Mike Tyson-ing people, but not admitting to myself what I'm doing.
	And at least Mike Tyson, again, is honest.
	Are you afraid of death?
	I mean, it's easy for me to say no as I sit here, probably not about to die, but...
	Is this the UFC question?
	Can you defeat any opponent?
	Exactly. The answer is yes. The answer is, of course, yes.
	And I don't have... They're not around.
	They're not here, are they? Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, do you ponder your own mortality?
	Maybe another context to that is you mentioned two deaths for martial artists.
	I think that's actually why, honestly, even though at a relatively young age, I think mortality is something that I'm aware of, maybe more than the average person.
	I think probably most athletes can speak to this, and anyone that's had trouble.
	I've managed to slide out of a couple near-death experiences personally, mostly river-related, because I'm an idiot.
	I regret nothing.
	Yeah. Yeah, but thank God we're here.
	But yeah, it is an interesting seeing the end and seeing going, well, what's going to happen?
	I guess I think it comes back to kind of what we're discussing about belief structure and belief system.
	I think a lot of times if I recognize that no matter what I do, it's all going to end one day.
	Then you go, well, why were we here?
	What would I do? Am I going to make it to 40?
	I have no idea. I'd like to hope so.
	I had no idea that I was going to make it to the age that I am now.
	Am I going to make it to 80?
	How much of that is in my control?
	Much of it is not.
	I mean, it's so funny.
	It's an interesting, like back to the belief structure, again, like locus of internal and external locus of control, you know, what's facilitative versus what's true.
	And, you know, I think accepting personal responsibility for more than is on my control is probably a positive.
	But at the same time, recognizing that much is not in my control.
	I was fortunate enough to be born in the United States, fortunate enough to, you know, to not knock on wood, have a serious disease that I'm not aware of right now.
	I didn't do any of that.
	I just showed up.
	That was really fortunate.
	And I guess that doesn't diminish the fact that I've tried to make decent choices, but it works in concert with it.
	And I guess when you go, is death what I want right now?
	No. No, I should think not.
	And again, it's easier for me to be relatively calm about it as I'm not staring it in the face.
	But What I would care a lot more about is how you live.
	That's what's in my control.
	And I can't control if as I walk out of this building a helicopter falls on me.
	Worrying about that. I can't control.
	Maybe I have cancer now and I don't know it.
	I really hope not. There's something about meditating on the fact that it could end today, outside of your control, that can clarify your thinking about the fact that life is amazing, like just kind of helping you enjoy this moment.
	Even if life was horrible, let's say, for instance, you live in one of those times or places, and this place still exists in this world today, that life is brutal and metal and whatever all, and short and painful.
	Would you still want it?
	And again, as I'm sitting here not on fire physically, it's easy to say yes, but I'm confident I still plant my feet and say yes.
	Any life is amazing and beautiful and a gift, an unbelievable gift that none of us have earned, for the record.
	I hate the word earned.
	A lot of times, earned, yeah, you earn, but it's like...
	There's a lot of good fortune in earning.
	And that's back to, do I want justice or do I want grace?
	And I guess we're all fortunate to be where we are no matter where we are.
	And hopefully it should give us some sense of perspective, some sense of compassion for other people.
	But also, like you said, a sense of peace.
	If it all ended right now, would I be happy with life to this point?
	I'm like, of course. Would you like to live a little longer?
	Yeah, I would try to do more and try to live rightly to the best that I know how, which over time will hopefully continue to evolve in a positive direction.
	But if the answer to that is no, I guess that's always...
	That's a sign that what I'm doing is not what I'm meant to be doing.
	And I mean, you're familiar with Tecumseh?
	I've got one, actually.
	If you could give me 10 seconds, I'll read this one out.
	This is a personal favorite, basically.
	And I think it sums up, I mean, again, it's one of those quotes on the internet, like when Abraham Lincoln said, don't believe everything you read online.
	But this is, you know, it's, again, attributed, but it's like, so live your life that the fear of
	death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion, respect others in their view
	and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in
	your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
	Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
	Always give a word or sign a salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger,
	when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
	When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
	If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
	Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
	When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
	Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
	Powerful words. I don't think there's a better way to end it.
	Let me just say, we've spoke maybe five, six years ago.
	I don't even remember when, but I'm not exaggerating saying you had a huge impact on my life because of the podcast.
	You're the reason I was doing the podcast as long as I have.
	You're the reason I'm doing this podcast.
	It's a little, it's a stupid little meeting that you probably didn't know who I was.
	I didn't really know who you are.
	It was just like a magical moment.
	It's a flap of a butterfly wing kind of situation.
	And yeah, I'm forever grateful.
	You're one of the most inspiring people in my life.
	So Ryan, it's a huge honor that you would come here, Jen, and talk with me and waste all this time.
	I really appreciate it. It was amazing.
	Thank you so much, Alex. It's just been a pleasure.
	I really appreciate you having us on.
	Thank you. Thanks, brother. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ryan Hall, and thank you to our sponsors, PowerDot, Babbel, and Cash App.
	Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast.
	If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 Stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
	And now, let me leave you with some words from Frank Herbert in Dune.
	Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense.
	But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

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