Chris Cornell was one of the most successful musicians of all time. He was a rock god. And yet, he took his own life at the age of 52, leaving behind a devastated family and friends. This week, we discuss what we can learn from his tragic passing, and what we should do when we find ourselves in a similar situation. We also discuss how to deal with the loss of a loved one, and how important it is to keep going no matter what you're going through. J.J. is a comedian, podcaster, writer, and podcaster. He also happens to be an Ironman triathlete, and is a long time friend of mine. I know he's going through a rough patch right now, and I know I'm not the only one who can relate to his struggles, but it's hard to understand why someone would kill themselves at such a young age. I can't even begin to comprehend how someone who was at the top of their game could do such a thing. I don't even know what to say, but I can tell you that it's going to greatly affect us all, and it's a wake-up call that we all need to wake up and realize that we're all going through something that we need to do something about it. It's not going to get any easier than that. I know that we'll all of us have to go through something like this in some sort of way, so we can get through it, and come out the other side of our lives better than we go through it. I hope that we can all come out on the other end of this better than the other, and we can come out of it feeling like we've been through it and we're not alone. . Thank you for listening to this episode of What's Happening, baby! -Jocko xoxo - Jocko - The Jockos Podcast Music: "What's HAPPENING" - "Goodbye Baby" - - "Ladies and Gents" - by Fucking Greatness - "Outtro: "Fucking Good Morning" by Jeffree Star - "Solo" by Fergie - "Feat. by Ian D'angelo (feat. John Doe and "I'm Too Effing Goodness" by Pizzi - "Dancing in the Sky" by Squeals - "Crispy Girl"
00:00:46.000To me it just really kind of Reveals the complexities of human life.
00:00:51.000Yeah exactly what you're saying to have a guy that is at the pinnacle of his skill the pinnacle of fame the pinnacle of money And and for him to say you know what not gonna do it anymore Yeah, I don't know what was going on in his head,
00:01:23.000Well, that's one of the really hard things when you start talking about suicide for people that, for someone like me, and I haven't had suicidal thoughts, right?
00:01:34.000So when you go from that to somebody that not only has the thoughts, but then goes ahead and executes it, it's very hard to comprehend.
00:01:41.000Yeah, I've met people that have done it before.
00:01:44.000I've had a few friends that have done it.
00:01:50.000Everybody's got their own Unique mindset and it's just you you know, what's really crazy man is I've read the statistic the other day about suicide That people in poor neighborhoods are far less likely to kill themselves people that are in the struggle Yeah,
00:02:06.000well, I actually believe that because they're fighting for something.
00:02:09.000Yeah And someone that's already got everything and then they're then end up with no drive with no goal And nothing left to achieve and so then all of a sudden they're just staring at the mirror without anywhere else to go You know, I'm not talking about Chris Cornell in particular,
00:02:26.000but for some people I know one of the things that happens is that when they become very successful and they're still not happy Then they get hopeless.
00:02:35.000They just feel like well, I have everything and yet I'm fucking miserable You know, I have a nice big house.
00:02:41.000I drive this fancy car and I still am miserable like there's no hope like this life is meaningless and I don't even know what to say to that.
00:03:00.000Yeah, no, there's no doubt about that.
00:03:02.000There's no doubt about having something that you're striving for, some goal.
00:03:05.000And like you just said, when all those goals have been achieved, and now you're sitting there at the top of the mountain, and now you don't feel happy, what do you do?
00:04:27.000Yeah, and I actually, early on, I had someone, you know, say something along the lines of on social media, on Instagram or on Twitter, you know, oh, you're just going to post another picture you're watching.
00:05:06.000There's like a single mom somewhere in the valley here that's working three jobs that's getting up at 3.30 in the morning so she can go work as a waitress somewhere before she's got her other day job that she's got to go through so she can feed her kids.
00:05:20.000I get up almost as a luxury at this point.
00:05:23.000I mean, I'm a retired guy from the military, so I can kind of get up whenever I want.
00:05:30.000Sort of but you also get up because that's who you are Yeah, and I get up because it is it is a way to maintain discipline in life for sure to get that stone out and sharpen that blade every morning It's the grind that sharpens the axe,
00:05:53.000But I mean, for some people out there that aren't feeling good, man, if you just fucking struggled more, you get over that struggle, you feel better.
00:06:00.000It sounds so simplistic, but I swear by it.
00:06:03.000I felt shitty myself and then forced myself to work out.
00:06:07.000And after I get out of there, I'm like, what?
00:06:11.000Actually, I had Tim Ferriss come on my podcast, and when he came on, he was like, hey, I don't know if I'm the right kind of guest for your podcast, because my podcast is about war and death and killing and all that stuff, and so Tim's are about being better and stuff like that,
00:06:31.000Tim's podcast is about improving yourself, and mine is about war and genocide and horrible things.
00:06:36.000And he said to me, you know, hey, I don't know if I'd come on the podcast, but, you know, maybe I'm not the right type of guest or whatever.
00:06:41.000And I wrote back to him, and I said, hey, man, you know, you've been through some dark stuff in your life because he wrote a blog post years ago about him being suicidal and him contemplating and planning to commit suicide.
00:06:59.000He went to the library and got out a bunch of books on killing yourself and then did the research on how he was going to do it and planned it all.
00:07:12.000So maybe it's 26. 15 years ago, and he was under all this pressure.
00:07:17.000You know, he was an Ivy League guy, and he was trying to finish school, but then it wasn't working out, and it was just problematic, and so he started saying to himself, okay, well, how am I getting out of this?
00:07:25.000Well, there's one way to get out of it, and luckily, he didn't do it, but when he came on, you know, that's what we talked about, and what he said, you know, as he was making recommendations from, again, from a guy who's been there, Was like, hey, if you're trapped in your mind and you're starting to feel that way,
00:08:06.000Gymnastics with my daughter and we were talking about kids killing themselves where she used to live She used to live in one of the really wealthy tech areas outside of San Francisco and a bunch of kids that went to school with her daughter that were like 15 16 were jumping off bridges and shit like it was a Like an epidemic and they were trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and they're literally calling it affluenza That these affluent kids and their families are literally worth a billion dollars.
00:08:34.000I mean, everybody's super rich, and they're having this insane pressure before high school and in high school to be in Ivy League schools and to get 4.0s, and they're not having any fun, and they're not experiencing life, and they don't have any hope,
00:08:50.000and their parents are all on fucking pills, and they're just killing themselves.
00:08:53.000Yeah, and as you said, it really is a piece of perspective because if you think about when you watch one of your buddies go down the downward spiral, maybe it's not to suicide, but whether it's drug addiction, a lot of times some female, the girlfriend, the ex-wife will just take them on the downward spiral and they can't get out of it.
00:09:11.000And if they were to step back, if it was you and your buddy watching one of your other friends go down the spiral, they'd go, oh my God.
00:09:17.000That's crazy But when you're in that spiral people get caught in that and they can't they can't get the perspective of what it looks like from the outside Yeah, it's hard for people to break momentum to momentum That's good momentum or meant to momentum this bad momentum when I get a like when I get on a good groove or working out all the time I feel it like after I'm done working out.
00:09:36.000I'm like, yeah I can't wait to get in there again.
00:09:40.000But then there's that bad momentum like you get injured or something like that and you can't do anything for a couple weeks and then to try to get that kickstart that motor up again, it's hard to get momentum.
00:09:51.000I've caught some some flack for saying there was these big science experiments or something and they said that willpower Dissipates throughout the day and the more decisions you have to make the weaker you get throughout the day and I think that's BS I agree with what you're saying which is We're good to go.
00:10:30.000Fats are starting to look pretty good, and then the next thing you know, it's pizza, and then when you get home at night, you're just watching TV, and that can continue on for days, and then days turn into weeks, and then the next thing you know, you're fat and out of shape.
00:10:41.000Yeah, and then on top of that, if they did do that study, like, really, I want to know what those people were eating, because that's a big factor, too, because there's a lot of people that are eating shit food, and then by the end of the day, your body's in a crisis.
00:10:52.000Your body's just processing all this bullshit.
00:11:23.000And if you're eating a big, like, bullshit lunch filled with nonsense, like, your body's got to process all that stuff.
00:11:30.000And so at the end of the day, yeah, you're going to lose your willpower.
00:11:32.000So, like, when five o'clock, six o'clock rolls around, you're going to be tired.
00:11:35.000But if you have a healthy lunch, and, you know, you're properly fueled, and then you also have positive people in your life, everyone's motivated, by the end of the day, you're going to feel good.
00:11:46.000Like, say if you're doing jujitsu with a bunch of other people that are doing jujitsu, Everybody's enjoying it.
00:11:50.000You're looking forward to that 6.30 class.
00:11:55.000When you get out of work, you're fueling up with water.
00:11:58.000You're trying to get some electrolytes in you because you know you're going to get out there on the mats and you're going to sweat it out.
00:12:02.000Yeah, and the thing you got to do, too, is...
00:12:04.000When you get done with work and it was a grind and you ate crappy food and whatever happened happened and you got yelled at by your boss or whatever, and the real easy decision is to be like, I'm not going to go train tonight.
00:12:15.000Those are the nights you've got to train because that is going to kick you back onto track real quick.
00:12:18.000When you get in there and you see your boys and they're getting ready to tear you up on the mats, and that's going to get you on track as opposed to going home and watching TV, which isn't going to do anything for you.
00:12:27.000Yeah, and if jiu-jitsu's not your thing, whatever the fuck your thing is, just go and do it.
00:12:32.000And if you feel like shit because you ate lunch, then your lunch was, you know, filled with bullshit, well then, hey dummy, don't eat shitty lunch tomorrow.
00:12:48.000Yeah, now your decision-making will be better.
00:12:50.000Like, people don't understand how significant it is.
00:12:53.000Like, all these little decisions, those are like, that's the path for the rest And if you decide to go to fucking Cheetos chocolate chip cookie route, you're just making a shit path.
00:13:05.000You're carving your fucking path through broken rocks and glass and it's not the way to go.
00:13:09.000Yeah, there's no doubt that the life change decision isn't one big decision that you make.
00:14:01.000And if you've ever been truly thirsty before, like in the desert where you haven't had water or you didn't bring enough water and you're really thirsty, Coke isn't even appealing at that point.
00:14:13.000You get in that mode where you've been truly thirsty, which I've been before.
00:14:16.000Not like I was going to die, but I've been close to getting some sort of a heat stroke scenario happening and then got to a stream, pumped the water, drank the water, and that's the most beautiful thing in the world when you don't have water and you get it.
00:14:30.000Yeah, I bet more so, even if you're getting it from a stream and then pumping it through a filter and you're just getting it right out of the earth.
00:14:36.000It's what you're supposed to have, folks.
00:14:38.000I think people are supposed to struggle.
00:14:40.000I think there's a part of us that longs for the old times when we were just some sort of primitive monkey people running away from animals.
00:14:48.000That's still in our DNA. There's no doubt that you have an instinct.
00:14:51.000I mean, that's why we play sports, right?
00:14:53.000You play sports because you want to compete with people and look at the rise of UFC. Why is that?
00:14:58.000Because that's the most primal sport you can possibly come up with, is I'm going to fight you.
00:15:01.000That's what we're going to do in a cage.
00:15:44.000You might not understand the ground that much when submissions, but when you see a guy turning red, because the other guy's behind him, choking the fucking life out of him, you get it.
00:16:36.000Like, even if you're not hurting him, I mean, it just feels good.
00:16:39.000It feels like you're supposed to do it.
00:16:42.000I mean, maybe it's just you and I. You know, I think anybody I think anybody that that tries it and gets that that's why that's why jujitsu is getting so popular Because you take a random person on the street male female 10 years old 20 years old 40 years old You put them and you say okay when you get them this other person in this position right here And you get their arm around you get your arm around their neck You can kill them or you can accept you can accept their tap and you can have mercy on them That's
00:17:15.000You know, another thing that's powerful about it is that two guys can be friends and practice killing each other and not even hurt each other.
00:17:21.000Like, I'm sure you've recognized that, like, I feel better working out with black belts.
00:17:27.000I feel safer training with guys that are, like, super high level than I do with even guys that are, like, an athletic white belt that might spaz out and accidentally headbutt me.
00:17:36.000Yeah, and I mean I get asked that question all the time too is people say hey am I too old to start jiu-jitsu?
00:17:40.000I'm 52 years old I'm 49 years old and what I tell them is you're not too old You're definitely not too old but you need to be smart and one of the smartest decisions you need to make is choosing your training partners and And you don't want to train if you're a 52-year-old guy that's never trained before, and you're a white belt,
00:17:57.000The person you don't want to train with is the other white belt that's 22 years old, that's on steroids, that's going to go psycho, and he just doesn't know how to control his body.
00:18:08.000Whereas the black belt, the percentage chance of you being hurt by a black belt, if you're a white belt that's just...
00:18:21.000My kid takes a mixed martial arts class, and the instructor asked me to come in and demonstrate one particular type of move the other day.
00:18:29.000And so I demonstrated it, and we were talking about some different positions that are important for kids to recognize, like how to make sure you don't get...
00:18:37.000Kids were giving up their back when they were trying to pass guard.
00:18:39.000They were trying to pass guard and they were pushing down.
00:18:42.000And I'm like, you never want to turn your shoulder like that because I had explained to them the arm drag.
00:18:45.000So I'm explaining to these kids the arm drag.
00:18:47.000And you see their little brain spinning, man.
00:18:49.000And you see them practicing on each other.
00:19:12.000Let's get all that shit out of there, and then you can be civil.
00:19:15.000Yeah, well, even if there's no jujitsu instruction involved and there's no mats around and you take two kids and you put them in the yard, eventually they're gonna start wrestling with each other.
00:19:29.000I was at a party once with my kids and these two boys started going at it and neither one of them had any training, you could tell, but it's just natural.
00:19:36.000They're getting their hips low, and they're trying to push each other, and they're trying to figure it out, and neither one of them knew what to do.
00:19:42.000And I kind of wanted to go up and start coaching them, but they're just playing in the grass.
00:19:47.000It's fascinating to see just natural human instincts.
00:19:51.000Yeah, and that's the other thing I've noticed in teaching kids jiu-jitsu is...
00:19:56.000The kids that are a little bit more cerebral, you know, the parents will think, well, you know, my son, he's kind of a nerd, he's kind of a smart kid, I don't know if he's going to like this, but the opposite is actually true very often, where the kid that's cerebral, he'll recognize, as soon as you show him three things,
00:20:12.000like you said, his wheels are turning, he's going, wait a second, this is a skill I can learn, and if I know this, and the other guy doesn't know this, I'll be able to beat him.
00:20:32.000They're assassin nerds It's really kind of interesting it is and and you're you're you're not being facetious when you use the word assassin nerds because you know this is you know if you go back before you knew Jiu Jitsu before I knew Jiu Jitsu before I knew Jiu Jitsu and you know I was a big Navy SEAL 200 pounds and One of those kids that's 145 pounds would absolutely have destroyed me if we got into a fight.
00:21:10.000I mean, it's a complex game of kinetic chess.
00:21:13.000I mean, it's more complex than chess because, you know, in chess you've got these different pieces and they're restricted in their movements.
00:21:20.000Jiu Jitsu is not restricted in its movement and every transition has so many different possibilities and so many different setups.
00:21:27.000There's so many different times you get led one way and then just to get you to defend so that they can establish a second position and they get you to defend that so they can establish a third position.
00:21:37.000Yeah, and that part of it is is what I think really for me transferred from jiu-jitsu to not only to the battlefield but to life as well because The big thing in jiu-jitsu from my perspective is that you don't go Strength against strength right if I'm I don't if I'm trying to choke you I don't try and choke you overtly I don't just grab your neck no I work on your arm and I put pressure over here and I pass your guard and then I Eventually while you're thinking about something else boom.
00:22:04.000That's when I grab your neck or that's when I grab your arm and And that's what I think on the battlefield You know you can't you just don't attack hardened positions of the enemy and in life You know if you're trying to be a leader you're trying to step up and lead somebody you don't just come down and bark orders at people because that's not as effective as Maneuvering and adjusting your position and getting in a better position and then getting that person to give you what you want instead of trying to take it from them Yeah,
00:22:30.000that's a really important lesson for parenthood.
00:22:33.000Like, you can't just tell kids what to do.
00:22:35.000You know, like, just do it because I told you to do it.
00:22:37.000They're like, fuck you, I'm going to be a hooker.
00:22:41.000Yeah, and that applies not only to kids.
00:22:44.000You're 100% it applies to kids, but it applies to adults as well.
00:22:47.000And that is people need to understand why they're doing what they're doing.
00:22:49.000And, you know, if I want you to go take down some building and capture some bad guy, I don't go, hey, hey, Joe.
00:22:55.000I want you to go take down this building.
00:23:08.000So you might have thought there was a better way to do it, or you might have had a different idea of how to get it done.
00:23:12.000And now when you go out there and you meet some kind of resistance, whether it's an obstacle you didn't expect, or whether it's some scenario that you didn't foresee...
00:23:19.000Instead of you trying to overcome it, you just blame me.
00:23:21.000You just look, Jocko came up with this stupid plan, and here we are.
00:23:48.000And that's another piece of leadership, and it's the exact same thing with kids.
00:23:51.000If you tell your kid, you know, you will get good grades in school, That means nothing to them, but if you explain to them hey I would love for you to get good grades and here's why it's gonna open opportunities for you in the future It's gonna allow you to be able to outsmart people because you have more knowledge than them and then you're gonna be able to end up making more money Which is actually give you more freedom in the long run instead of doing a job that you don't want to do If you explain all those things to a kid,
00:24:15.000it's going to be a lot more successful than just, do what I told you, get good grades because I said so.
00:24:19.000Now, when you do these conferences where you speak at businesses and they bring you in to have these leadership meetings, what would you call them?
00:24:38.000Because that's another big piece of this is that all these ideas about interacting with human beings, they just don't change.
00:24:45.000Like, there's little variance, but whether you're dealing with kids or whether you're dealing with adults and whether you're dealing with business people, whether you're dealing with soldiers on the battlefield...
00:24:53.000The leadership principles, they don't change.
00:24:56.000And therefore, you can, whether you're trying to get people to go out and capture and kill a bad guy, or whether you're trying to get them to build some product and sell it, the principles of leadership don't change.
00:25:07.000You're still trying to get a bunch of totally independent people, right?
00:25:11.000And that's one of the myths we have to overcome a lot, because everyone thinks, oh, and the military is just like a robot, and that's just not true.
00:25:20.000They're free thinking people and they're gonna come up with their own ideas They're gonna have with their own agendas and they're gonna think of ways to do things that they think are better than yours So you can have all these independent free thinkers and you got to get them on board with the same plan to you To go out and execute and so it doesn't matter if you're on the battlefield or in business That's what that's what you're trying to get done and the leadership principles don't change To me,
00:25:40.000as a person who's never been in the military, that's one of the fascinating aspects of how it works, is how do you get all these different people to follow through on a plan, and who are the leaders, and why do the leaders have the right ideas, and who educates them to having the right ideas?
00:25:57.000I know that a lot of people are excited about where the military is right now, like Tim Kennedy re-enlisted.
00:26:04.000Yeah, he re-enlisted because he believes that the military has support now and look, Tim Kennedy believes he was put on this earth to kill bad guys and that's what he wants to do.
00:26:35.000And then other people believe that there should be much more civilian oversight, and there should be much more checks and balances before things get done.
00:26:43.000This is a big debate that's going on today.
00:26:46.000Well, I think there's two different things that you just talked about.
00:26:48.000That is what the military gets told to do and how they do it.
00:27:02.000The civilians are under control, or the military's under control of civilians.
00:27:05.000And yet, once you say, okay, this is what we want to have happen, you need to let the military professionals figure out how they're going to go and make it happen.
00:27:14.000Yeah, that's that's where it gets tricky, right?
00:27:16.000Because if you're in that like one of the things that was explained to me by a friend who's a Navy SEAL He was saying that when something needs to get done and you have all these people that are telling you how you can do it how you can't do it like in people that are not in Experiencing combat and don't understand what what could or could not go sideways Like to put more problems in place or to put more checks and balances in place You're actually gonna put these people in more danger that that is true
00:27:46.000Yeah, you should like I said if you let the civilians decide what it is that needs to be accomplished and then the military leaders decide How they're gonna go ahead and make that that happen and I mean it goes back to it goes back to Vietnam You know there was too much civilian oversight of what was happening in Vietnam and the military leaders were They didn't really have the wherewithal,
00:28:10.000not even the wherewithal, they didn't have the free reign to go out and try and make things happen the way they wanted to, and it ended up in a big quagmire.
00:28:16.000Well, Vietnam seems like, to me, from an outsider, to be one of the most fucked up wars ever.
00:28:22.000Because it didn't totally make sense that it was happening, and then now we know that the Gulf of Tonkin was very likely a false flag, and that there was some sort of motivation to get there in the first place.
00:28:32.000And then you're dealing with guerrilla warfare for the first time ever in U.S. history.
00:28:36.000Like, they didn't exactly know how to handle this.
00:28:40.000And we didn't adapt very well to what was happening on the ground, which is always going to be problematic if you have close-minded people in the military.
00:28:48.000If people are close-minded, you're not going to be able to move forward when the battlefield changes.
00:28:53.000And the battlefield changes all the time.
00:28:56.000Iraq, the battlefield changed drastically from this big conventional force that we went up there to fight against Saddam's big army.
00:29:02.000Well, once that fell apart, then what happened?
00:29:04.000Now all of a sudden we were facing guerrillas again and an insurgency and it took us several years to change our strategy from We didn't even know what to do.
00:29:14.000There's all these people running around What do we do with these all these people running around and how do we get these people under control and and the civilians want us here?
00:29:20.000And and yet if we don't do the right thing now the civilians don't want us here What do we need to do?
00:29:25.000So it took us some time to adjust our strategy in Iraq and Luckily, we had some good leaders that that went ahead and made those changes Isn't it also that when when you're in war and though the strategy and not the strategy But the motivation is very clear like if you fight against Hitler's army in World War two Yeah,
00:29:41.000this is very clear that you're dealing with an evil force Whereas in Vietnam.
00:29:46.000Why are we here like what's going on the communism what's happening?
00:29:50.000extremely extremely challenging no doubt and that That is why and you know, I've talked about this before if if America Any nation is gonna go to war you have to decide that this is the most important thing in the world You have to and the wills that I talked about that you have to have to execute this war you got to have you got to have the will to kill people in any Again,
00:30:43.000You're gonna get hit, you're gonna get bruised up, you're gonna get dinged, and it's the same thing in war.
00:30:47.000So you have to have the will to kill people.
00:30:50.000Of course, it's easy to have the will to kill the bad guys, but then you have to accept the fact that some innocent people are going to die, and that is gonna be awful.
00:30:57.000And then on the other side of the coin is, of course, if you're gonna send people to war, people, Americans, are gonna die.
00:31:04.000And there's nothing you can do about it.
00:31:08.000And, you know, that's why Vietnam was just the ultimate tragedy in many respects, because we were killing a lot of civilians, we were losing a lot of Americans, but we weren't progressing the way we needed to.
00:31:24.000Like when the Bush administration wouldn't let them take photographs of coffins and send them home, like a lot of people are really upset because there's a lot of people that felt like, look, Americans should know that there's a cost to this and they should know that there's consequences to these actions.
00:31:40.000And they were saying that these consequences and knowing about these consequences could Lesson morale, could lessen support back at home when they really need it?
00:31:48.000And the people didn't really need to know this.
00:31:49.000What they need to know is we're on the right track and we're doing well.
00:31:54.000And whether it's the right decision to keep the Americans in their beautiful bubble that they live in and let them know that this war is happening, but you don't have to see The the brave Americans coming home that have sacrificed their lives and interestingly if you remember I think it was Tarawa the Battle of Tarawa in World War two and For the first time so we were we needed money to run World War two a lot of money war bonds and all that and we were kind of falling behind and we needed some money and one of the first times that they released a
00:32:24.000lot of pictures of American dead Americans was I think it was the Battle of Tarawa and There was all these Americans washing up on the beach.
00:32:33.000I mean Marines that had drowned and got shot and it was awful But they did it for a reason they did it to show like hey, this is real.
00:32:40.000This is happening We need to put pitch in we need money.
00:32:49.000We all need to get in for the big win, right?
00:32:52.000And that's the opposite of what we're talking about when they're saying, hey, you're not allowed to take pictures of dead Americans that are being killed.
00:32:59.000And, you know, I think there should be some level of transparency there when...
00:33:04.000America should see what is happening, what is the cost, because it's real easy for Americans to sit there and allow these young kids to go overseas and fight and die, or be wounded, gravely wounded, and just to shut those, you know, just ignore them, because I don't care because I'm over here in the mall.
00:33:19.000No, maybe we should not only, you know, Maybe we should not only show pictures of the coffins that are coming back, but maybe we should explore and show the lives that those men sacrificed and who they were and what they did and what their families were like and their wife and kids and mom and dad that they left behind that they gave up.
00:33:39.000And so now we're just going to say, oh, that's not happening.
00:33:41.000No, it's happening and you need to know it.
00:33:44.000It is kind of strange, right, when you think about how little access to information people really had back in World War II. They were counting on the news, they were counting on newspapers, and now today we have massive, massive access to information instantaneously, but yet you get less of it when it comes to that.
00:33:59.000Yeah, and in some ways you get more of it.
00:34:01.000I mean, obviously, when there's an incident that happens overseas, you can find out about it on Twitter as fast as you can find out about it through, you know, waiting for a real news source to come up with it.
00:34:10.000But you don't get anything that's specifically distributed by the U.S. government to let you know the consequences of a war.
00:34:18.000And say, hey folks, we need your support.
00:34:33.000Do we brush that under the rug and we just show the Americans getting killed or do you universally show what's happening?
00:34:38.000What war is man war is jacked up I'm here to tell you war is not glorious.
00:34:44.000It is not fun and it is it is a horrible horrible event and So yeah, I think you should expose it and I think you should expose it at a high level so that people understand what we're getting into and and as horrible as war is There's many times throughout history where war is the absolute in my mind in my opinion the right thing to do and we don't have a choice and and we need to do something when when horrible things are happening and And you know I think that's you know on my podcast I talk about like
00:35:14.000the like I said I talk about war and death and horrible genocide and and that's one of the reasons why I think it's it's gotten a lot of traction is because I'm talking about things that are otherwise being ignored and I think people do want to know I think people do want to understand war to deeper level so that way when they hear a Politician up there saying hey we should go to war they can at least say to themselves I know what I know what he's talking about and And he's not just talking about,
00:35:39.000hey, we're going to wave the flag and we're going to send some soldiers over there.
00:36:05.000But we better weigh our minds heavily before we make that decision to go and execute.
00:36:11.000Now, when you think about the evolution of human beings, you think about how much safer it is today versus how it was thousands of years ago, do you ever foresee a time where war won't exist?
00:36:24.000You know, people joke with me a lot about the robot wars and robots being able to accomplish wars.
00:36:30.000I actually believe that thing will come.
00:36:32.000I mean, we've got drones right now that are very capable.
00:36:36.000Pretty soon we'll have land warfare robots that will be able to go in and clear buildings and make things happen.
00:36:42.000And then will the enemy then have robots that will fight our robots at some point?
00:36:48.000Yeah, and then at some point will that elevate to a point where we're not dealing with physical robots anymore But just the software behind the robots and now it's just a big sort of cyber warfare that that is that seems conceivable to me now Joe Don't mistake me for some kind of like a Sam Harris intellectual over here or that I'm gonna sit here and explain to you what the future of you know warfare from a technical perspective but from my from my Rudimentary thought process could it not elevate to a point
00:37:20.000And then that eventually escalates to a point where it's some kind of cyber warfare whether it's not physical But it's just information based that does make sense to me that that could happen.
00:37:28.000I Yeah, it makes sense to me too, especially when you see those Boston Dynamic robots.
00:37:54.000Will those robots fight people for a while?
00:37:56.000Probably people that don't know any people that don't people don't have good robots yet.
00:38:00.000Yeah, and that's not gonna be fun for the people without robots right and We'll see where it goes from there.
00:38:06.000I mean, I think that's just a surrender scenario, right if you've got a If let's say America has these robots that can just come in with ruthless Precision and take out bad guys and you know, you're gonna be at their mercy There's a fucking science fiction movie,
00:39:49.000Again, it's obviously not the best galloping.
00:39:52.000It's not the best structure because you have to make this thing up and run, whereas with wheels on it or treads or something, like a tank, a mini tank.
00:41:16.000Watch what this fucking thing can do, man.
00:41:18.000After it does this, it goes down these stairs, and then it gets to, I mean, it gets to this wall, like a hurdle, and it fucking bounces over this hurdle like it's nothing.
00:41:55.000They would just hunt you down and kill you.
00:41:57.000I mean, just think about that technology and then add that Tesla technology for self-driving cars and knows where all the cars are and everything.
00:42:05.000We're just a few years away from something very, very bizarre.
00:42:09.000Yeah, again, I kind of look forward to it.
00:44:21.000It's like a little Siri assistant thing, but it hasn't been advertised, and it doesn't work for every person's name.
00:44:27.000It might not work for Jocko, but it will work for Joe Rogan, and it might in the future if they update it, or I don't know who needs to update it.
00:44:36.000This is an updated version of that, I believe.
00:44:40.000And just to bring this conversation back to where we were the further we go in this direction of Technology being in every part of our lives the further away we get from having to struggle with things and the bigger Hole there's gonna be in the hole that you sense and I sense which is if you're not struggling if you're not working if you're not fighting for something That's just gonna go further and further into the past and further and further down and people can have that hole to fill up somehow and Yeah,
00:45:10.000the physical body needs, it has requirements.
00:45:32.000But if you just keep pumping out energy, you keep doing something, it maintains some sort of homeostasis.
00:45:39.000It maintains some sort of a balance point.
00:45:41.000It maintains some sort of operational happiness, like where the body's not fighting against itself.
00:45:48.000Because I think that a lot of people's bodies are just fighting against them.
00:45:51.000And a lot of, like, the way the decisions they're making, a big part of it is they're just not taking care of their meat vehicle.
00:45:58.000So they're getting all these confusing messages from the flesh.
00:46:02.000Yeah, I mean we see that every day when you walk around America and you see people that are just you wonder how much longer they're gonna be able to survive and What happens if they if there's a fire and they have to run?
00:46:15.000They're not gonna make it around the corner to go to Disneyland Everybody's on a scooter.
00:46:23.000And I have a friend who works at Disneyland, and he was telling me, like, he started working there 10 years ago, it was rare to see someone on a scooter.
00:46:35.000They're on scooters because they've eaten themselves into this unmanageable shape.
00:46:39.000Well, again, even five years ago, if you wanted to eat yourself in a miserable shape, you had to walk to the grocery store to do that, which was at least some form of movement.
00:46:48.000And now you just one-click on Amazon and you got the Cheetos in ultra-large size showing up at your front door in two hours.
00:46:57.000And they're going to come in a drone soon.
00:46:58.000Yeah, and by the way, it'll be like Cheetos, and then it'll put you up the other things that you will probably want, too.
00:47:05.000If you want Cheetos, you probably want two liters of Coke, and you probably want some marshmallows to go with that, and there you go.
00:47:09.000Two hours, it's there, and you're just killing yourself.
00:47:15.000I wonder when they're going to be able to figure out a way to compensate for all the shit, just some sort of a pill that figures out, or even CRISPR. I was listening to this Radiolab podcast where they're updating CRISPR. Do you know what CRISPR is?
00:47:36.000And they've only figured it out over the last few years, and apparently they've already started doing work on non-viable fetuses in China with this.
00:48:01.000Well, there's China, and there's definitely some things going on in China.
00:48:04.000For sure, they're doing some dark shit with people and this goddamn technology.
00:48:08.000But they think that they're not only going to be able to use this gene editing tool, but they're going to be able to implant this gene editing tool into our genetics so that your own genes start doing the work of CRISPR for you.
00:48:23.000So things like, they think it's going to take the place of antibiotics.
00:48:27.000They think it's going to be able to edit out things like Alzheimer's, like whatever the gene is for Alzheimer's.
00:48:32.000They'll be able to edit that out so Alzheimer's will no longer exist.
00:48:35.000It's going to be really, really strange because people are going to have to make decisions.
00:48:40.000Yeah, and I think this stuff is going to come quickly once we turn the corner.
00:48:44.000It seems like it's going to come fast.
00:49:20.000And I always thought if you could just clone your body and then you let your body grow to be 20 years old, then you just take your brain out, put it inside that new body, then you're good to go.
00:49:31.000I think it's going to be even creepier than that.
00:49:33.000I think they're going to be able to turn back the clock.
00:49:35.000Because I think that when you think about cellular aging, like, well, what is it?
00:50:17.000Next year I'm going to be 11. If it goes backwards in that direction, if they can literally halt it, if they can take you and then, say if you're a 40-year-old woman, and they put you on a 20-year program, and they're like, well, in 20 years, instead of being 60,
00:50:32.000you're going to be 20. And this is how it's going to work.
00:50:34.000Next year you're going to be 39. That's totally conceivable.
00:50:55.000Because now you're thinking, hey, I don't want to go skydiving because I could actually live for thousands of years if I don't screw this up.
00:51:02.000I think more likely you're gonna see a lot more parkour and those assholes that are doing backflips off the Grand Canyon, like that kind of shit.
00:51:09.000You're gonna see more people that are like wanting to feel alive by taking crazy risks.
00:51:30.000Yeah, you posted one of those the other day, and you said something like, you know, I don't know how you wrote it, but you said something like, and I watched it, and I was like, my sentiments exactly.
00:52:53.000But what do you do when you're, whatever, 23 years old?
00:52:57.000There's something that, like, particularly in the human brain, there's something that resonates about hanging from something by your hands.
00:53:05.000Like, that's one of the scariest ones.
00:53:07.000Like, Kingston is on this gigantic crane, and he's hanging onto the crane with his hands, and then he does it with one hand.
00:53:13.000He's hanging there, and he's fucking hundreds of feet up, and if he falls, he's just splatter.
00:55:17.000Yeah, I mean, Alex, you had Alex Arnold on him, and, you know, we, my family, we go up to Yosemite and stuff, so we are familiar, but you can see how he kind of edged into it, right?
00:55:26.000And you start climbing, and you got ropes, and then you get really good at it, and then you're like, you know what, I can probably make it to there without a rope, and then next thing you know, you'll probably make it there, too, and then the next thing you know, you're climbing, you know, El Capitan with no rope, or Naftone with no rope, which is completely, you've been to Yosemite?
00:56:27.000It's like, you know, someone walking on a balance beam that does it all the time, they're gonna be comfortable with it, and he's climbing stuff all the time, so he's more comfortable.
00:56:33.000It's still hard to get a grip on, though.
00:56:36.000You know, when I was hosting Fear Factor, we had this one thing that we did where we had people hang from a pole that was suspended over this water.
00:56:45.000And it was shocking how the little amount of time, the small amount of time that men, in particular, could hang from a pole.
00:56:56.000Like, they were like a minute in, these guys were dropping into the water.
00:57:26.000There's too much mass behind you that you're asking small limbs or small digits to control.
00:57:32.000And then also, your heart has got to pump too much blood through that tissue.
00:57:38.000There's like a point of diminishing returns when it comes to size.
00:57:42.000That's one of the things you saw when you'd see Cain Velasquez fight guys.
00:57:46.000Cain Velasquez has always been in that sweet spot of about 240. 240 to me is about as big as you want to get.
00:57:52.000Because the guys over 240, man, they might fuck you up in the first few minutes, but you take them into that fourth and fifth minute of the first round, and then they're huffing and puffing, and then in the second round, they're getting their asses kicked.
00:58:03.000And the Cain Velasquez storm was one of the more fascinating things to watch in all my years of the UFC, because he was a heavyweight that had the cardio of a lightweight.
00:58:13.000But he was, again, 240. 240 pounds, not too big.
00:58:35.000Having that kind of sustained energy is a talent, just like some guys are super flexible, and some guys are super strong and explosive, and some guys just have that range.
00:59:05.000And that's what a guy like Cain is, because Cain, like you said, I mean, for him to be able to get in there and go five rounds pushing around another guy that weighs 260 pounds, that's beast mode right there.
01:01:04.000They'd post those videos though of him training in Russia, running with his buddies and swinging kettlebells, and he'd be like, yeah, this guy works hard.
01:01:33.000Like, He got smaller as his career went on because he stopped doing strength and conditioning as his body got older and focused more on skill work.
01:01:42.000But there's this ancient picture, not ancient, but there's a picture of him standing there shirtless around a bunch of kettlebells.
01:01:49.000A bunch of old kettlebells, yeah, yeah.
01:01:55.000And the thing that I think that he really had was he had a good...
01:01:58.000His skill in my mind was that he was really good grapplers a really good striker, but he the way he mixed them together Yeah, you would see him just like hit somebody in the face and then judo throw them and then arm lock them or choke them It was all just so smooth I don't think anyone knew what to defend because if they defended one thing they were get if they defended it a Grappling move they were getting punched in the face if they defended a punt they were getting taken down and Yeah,
01:02:48.000Was his attitude when he would just come in there with no emotions, just raise his hand, dead face.
01:02:53.000You know, they'd introduce him, he'd just raise his hand, he'd destroy someone, and he would have the same expression on his face like before he fought.
01:02:59.000He just had total absence of emotion that was, to me, that's what I always thought, yes.
01:04:01.000And the other guy that comes to mind when we're thinking about old school fighters, that really, it wasn't just his skill set, which was unbelievable, but Sakuraba.
01:04:10.000Because the way Sakuraba, his craziness.
01:04:31.000But that attitude of not giving a fuck is like that's what worked so well for him inside the inside the ring Yeah, well, I know we see this all the time with fighters We see with anybody that is gonna live out on the fringe like that.
01:04:42.000They're gonna have some sort of offset There's there's another there's for every action.
01:04:46.000There's an equal and opposite reaction, right?
01:04:48.000So you get a guy that's living that far on the edge like like Sakuraba was That edge just doesn't stop when he gets out of the cage, right?
01:04:54.000He's going and gonna get after it more He had some horrible losses, though.
01:05:01.000He got used and exploited worse than anyone else, right?
01:06:20.000In the training vids of Gary, he's just like he's just trained all he does he's completely obsessed with jiu-jitsu.
01:06:26.000I love it Yeah, and he's doing rope climbs and he's just that's all he does He's also being coached by John Donaher and he's a part of that Henzo Gracie crew in New York City and that Donaher death squad man you want to talk about a real like wizard of jiu-jitsu Donaher understand his Instagram posts are some of the very best Instagram posts on the internet and I got to follow him then.
01:06:50.000His breakdowns of certain techniques and matches and what went well and what went wrong and what's required of athletes and how to excel and the difference between an athlete in competition versus a difference in training.
01:07:01.000That's one of his most recent things about putting yourself in bad positions and working on your weaknesses as opposed to just continuing to push your strengths.
01:07:10.000The fighters that are good in training, but they're not good in their cage, and there's other fighters that kind of get beat up in training, but then when they get in the cage, they rise to the occasion.
01:07:20.000I got to see that a bunch with a bunch of different fighters over the years that I trained with, and you'd say, ah, this guy's going to do okay, but then they'd get in the cage, and boom, they would just turn it on.
01:07:29.000And then some guys that are crushing everyone during training, they'd get in the cage, you know, UFC fight night or whatever, and they just can't They can't get it done that night, even though they're crushing people in the training.
01:07:55.000And then for some reason, you know, once they faced other people that also have physical advantages but were tougher, they would just go, they'd just fall apart.
01:08:05.000Yeah, you got to get that in and we got some guys at the jacket this guy at the gym right now who's just He's just a he's a mutant.
01:08:14.000He's a mutant like he's so strong He I was it he shot on me the other day I sprawled on him and so he's on all fours and And he fights at 185. I'm on all fours and he picks me up with one hand,
01:08:29.000picks me up and slams me and gets across side.
01:08:32.000And I said, bro, did you just like shot put me right there?
01:08:37.000And he's 185. Once he walked around that.
01:08:39.000He walks around at 200, 205. You know, typical fight.
01:10:15.000Think you can think you can I think you think you can you inoculate yourself to the stress It's just the mind so like you like the idea that these pitfalls in the mind are insurmountable I think that's ridiculous that seems to be more surmountable or more more More passable than physical problems because like physical problems like if you're 140 pounds and a guy's 240 pounds You're both equally talented and both equally driven boy.
01:10:42.000You're kind of fucked Yeah, well that being said it is similar to what we talked about earlier Which is when you have somebody that's caught in their own mind They can't get the perspective to step out and be like, dude, just calm down.
01:11:13.000And if you really can think about it that way, every time, you know, I remember pretty much every time I've ever been humiliated on the mat.
01:11:21.000Every time I've ever been like really manhandled and tapped, I remember them very well.
01:11:25.000And I also remember like every time I rolled with like a real high-level black belt and got my ass handed to me, my training jumped up a notch.
01:11:35.000You train with someone who's way better, and you realize, whatever I thought was a high frequency, there's people that are operating several hundred RPMs faster than that, and I just hadn't encountered them.
01:11:48.000I think that to be around that is so important.
01:11:51.000If you ever train with a guy that trains in a small town, And all the people in the town is maybe like Purple Belt and coaches.
01:11:59.000There's a certain RPM that they all operate in.
01:12:02.000And if you come in and you're used to that fucking San Diego assassin RPM and they're like, what the fuck is this guy doing?
01:12:12.000But if you come from a place like that and you try to train at Henzo's or something like that, you're jumping into a fucking pit of killers.
01:12:27.000The better people you train with, the better you're gonna get.
01:12:29.000And you gotta seek those people out, you know.
01:12:31.000You gotta not mind, hey, that guy Taylor that I'm talking about, do I like getting my ass kicked by a guy that's been training for six months?
01:13:15.000Like, when your body is used to, from the time you're an early kid, throwing bodies around, like, your tendon strength and your ability to manipulate bodies is a very different kind of strength.
01:13:26.000I mean, it might not translate to a 40-yard dash or...
01:13:29.000Or sprints or, you know, lifting weights, but there's the physical ability to move bodies is very unusual.
01:13:36.000Yeah, and you always have to be careful, too, because there's been plenty of wrestlers along the way that don't do well in MMA. Oh, They just they're great.
01:13:47.000They're strong, but I think that's a mental thing I think they have like some limited factor in their brain where they go they just can't quite open their mind to jiu-jitsu They can't quite open their mind to striking they can't get out of that wrestler mentality of You know this I have to go as hard as I can right now because in MMA you can't go as hard as you can right now for the whole time you will run out of gas Especially with striking,
01:14:09.000if you're boxing and sparring with people and you think you're just going to go in and do that, you're going to run into somebody who actually knows how to box and you're going to come home with headaches every night and you're going to get very discouraged.
01:14:18.000It's a matter of who you're training with, too, as far as your trainers.
01:14:22.000Who's coaching you and what methodology are they using and what mindset are they trying to impart on you as far as skill development?
01:14:29.000Because there's so many people out there that just don't have a real clear philosophy.
01:14:38.000I want to work on footwork and avoiding certain shots and being able to move in better You know instead they're just trying to win every round or they're trying to you know push hard and then do you not get to the next level?
01:14:52.000Which in my mind when we get past the athleticism we get past the mental overcoming of challenges and then in my opinion you get to the next level which is Creativity yeah, and that's when you get to McGregor right Johnny Bones Jones they're doing things that they're kind of making up yeah,
01:15:11.000and they're making up live as they go and I think that to me is is You know we kind of I think we saw with BJ Penn back in the day.
01:15:18.000He was creative I think Fedor did it where he was he was doing creative things But I think to me that's that's where you go that one level higher is when you add the creative element to a guy that can take a and B and make F out of those things somehow and Yeah,
01:15:34.000and when you watch those guys, there's something about watching a Jon Jones or a Fedor or a Primetime BJ Penn.
01:18:22.000You know, a lot of people don't know that he had a pretty bad staph infection just a few weeks before the first fight, and he was on some serious antibiotics, and that's one of the reasons why he was so drained.
01:18:32.000Like, people are like, oh, he gassed out.
01:18:33.000Like, if you've never taken antibiotics before, you don't know how fucking horrible it is on your gas tank.
01:19:17.000Look, I mean, maybe he's gonna go full Bernard Hopkins, just fucking clinch and hit him in the clinch and tie him up and rough him up, and maybe that's the plan.
01:19:26.000Lean on his neck, you know, just fight dirty.
01:20:10.000I mean, you go back to Willy Papp and a lot of the guys from the old days and for sure Lomachenko today, but in terms of like overall performance against elite fighters over the course of his career, the guy's only been tagged hard like five or six times ever.
01:20:29.000I mean, you look at him, he's throwing money around, driving Bentleys, but that fucking guy will get on the strip and he'll be running miles at 3 o'clock in the morning.
01:20:38.000He opens up his gym at 3 o'clock in the morning and just does 15 rounds in the back.
01:23:26.000Andy Foster's the guy who runs the California State Athletic Commission, and he is such a fucking animal.
01:23:32.000Andy Foster's one of the most important guys in terms of, like, commission, the guys who run commissions in MMA. He's, like, one of the most proactive, one of the most knowledgeable, and one of the very best.
01:25:59.000I'm just going to sit back and take a little break.
01:26:01.000So there's a funny meme of Michael Bisping in the hospital bed that says Bisping be like, I'll just sit here and wait for GSP. Oh, that's harsh, man.
01:27:56.000I think fighting, if you could kick somebody in the shin to the face, like you can shin somebody in the face but you can't knuckle them in the face.
01:28:02.000Yeah, I think it would be so helpful for all the head trauma that's happening if they took off the gloves and you had to either strike with an open palm or you had to pay the price because I might hit you twice before I broke my hand and now I'm going to be grappling with you and trying to take you down.
01:28:15.000I don't think people understand that, that if someone just ducks their head down and you hit them with a straight punch to the forehead, you are very likely to break your hand.
01:28:23.000I don't think you should be able to wrap your hands either.
01:29:05.000Until you wrap it up, then you make it like a cast.
01:29:08.000You wrap it up and you get a nice, stiff wrist wrap where your wrist isn't going anywhere enough to wear buckling and flexing when you punch someone.
01:29:16.000It's hardcore when they wrap up those hands, boy, like even like holding pads for guys when we're backstage getting ready, they just turn it up.
01:30:31.000Damn man, Vitor, in the early days, I was there, his first fight in 1997, the first time at UFC 12. Nobody had seen anything like that.
01:30:40.000This guy comes in with his blazing hand speed, built like a fucking Greek god, and everybody's like, oh Jesus, what do you do with this fucking kid?
01:30:48.000That was interesting, and of course, we all heard, because I was a jiu-jitsu guy at that time, we were like, oh, he's only a purple belt, is what we were hearing, and they gave him his black belt just because he's doing this fight and blah, blah, blah, he's only a purple belt, and he comes out with just, what is it, 13 punches to the face,
01:31:04.000bop, bop, bop, and then he did the same thing to Vandalay, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, straight punches down the pipe.
01:31:10.000Yeah, when he fought Vanderlei, he was wearing shoes.
01:31:14.000There was all these wacky rules back then.
01:31:17.000It's really interesting to see like from 1993 to 2017 how far fighting has changed and how much we know about it now.
01:31:25.000Yeah, I always say that fighting in 1992 was theoretical.
01:31:32.000And we you know some somebody will say something to me on the internet like hey, you know What about this martial art or whatever and I'm like what you what do you think of this?
01:31:40.000I'm like you just no reason to theorize Not only do we know from the UFC we also have been and now a country at war for whatever 15 years So all of our guys been going overseas and doing the same stuff in combat so we know what works There's no there's no big question anymore,
01:32:43.000This Chinese MMA fighter has had to go into hiding because people are offended that he battered this Tai Chi master and made their country look bad.
01:33:23.000I had one of my buddies, a black belt guy named Jeff Higgs, old school jiu-jitsu guy, and he got told by a Tai Chi guy, you know, you can't take me down.
01:33:34.000God and my buddy see that yeah, I mean that guy just got obliterated Yeah, and the only way you can ever actually know what would happen if someone punches you in the face is to train that way If you just have these ideas in your head that you're gonna stand in front of them This guy just oozing blood all over the place and he's getting up he's battered his nose is shattered wobbly and It's probably the first time he's ever been punched.
01:33:57.000Maybe the MMA guy should have, if he had a little bit more foresight on what was going to happen, he should have come out and really done the whole respect and then the bow and then all this stuff.
01:34:09.000And then after he defeated him, he should have helped him.
01:34:11.000Maybe that would have helped him from a political standpoint.
01:36:11.000Like, and that, you know, the idea that you could just center yourself and a college wrestler can't take you down.
01:36:16.000Yeah, that's one of my new things that I tell people with jiu-jitsu because I used to say like jiu-jitsu is magic because it kind of is you know when you know jiu-jitsu You can do things that are almost magic, right?
01:36:26.000But then when you're teaching somebody for the first time almost like look it's not magic It's you know I was showing somebody the other day of you know elbow escape or something from the mount and the guy's like you know he's he's it's really hard to do because he keeps pulling my arm away and You know?
01:36:40.000And I was like, yeah, it's a fight you're in.
01:38:01.000The knowledge will flow through you, but you have to believe.
01:38:04.000Yeah, well, down in San Diego, I don't know what it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago, they had that Heaven's Gate thing where all these people put on those purple shoes.
01:38:11.000They put on the purple Nikes and they killed themselves when the comet was flying by.
01:38:15.000And it shows you again, you know, now we're, you know, you're talking about the human mind is just so complicated and complex that it's grasping for something to believe in and some people aren't going to believe in anything.
01:40:48.000And they get into this thing, and they get into this thing because they don't want to ever stop and pause and look at the way they're thinking versus the way other people are thinking and go, okay, did I get myself in a fucking trap here?
01:41:00.000Did I get myself into an intellectual trap where I'm supporting an idea that's not true, and now I'm reinforcing that in my head, and I'm tightening up all my borders and trying to figure out a way to not let new ideas in and to reinforce my old ideas?
01:41:15.000You know, your podcast with Jordan Peterson the other day, he kind of brought that up, which I think, by the way, if anyone hasn't listened to that podcast, that's got to be one of the best podcasts that I've ever heard.
01:41:25.000And he's talking about the fact that sometimes people, if they accept those new ideas, all of a sudden what they've done with their life for the past 20 years gets thrown out the window.
01:41:35.000Yeah, and that's got to be really hard and immediately when I was listening to that I was thinking to myself Yeah, that's that's what happened in the 90s when somebody that had been studying some traditional martial art god bless them They were doing the best they could but when all of a sudden some blue belt in jiu-jitsu could come in there and roll them up and choke them out and there was nothing they could do about it and they either had to do one of two things say Okay,
01:41:57.000I'm gonna start training this other new thing that I don't understand or block it out, which was very hard to do with Jiu Jitsu I mean that's the good thing about MMA and about UFC is it was like You can deny it all you want, but you have to face this guy on the mat That's the only way you can and when you do that you're gonna lose whereas with all these kind of intellectual arguments A lot of times,
01:42:19.000And if you tell me, you know, if I'm telling you that every picture of the earth is, whatever, CGI, and that's what I'm going to hold, and I'm not going to let it go, and how are you going to prove to me otherwise?
01:42:28.000And every single picture you show me, I say, no, that's CGI. And you show me another picture, and I say, no, that's CGI. We're never going to get anywhere.
01:43:54.000You can't even start like a white, but someone that's never trained Jiu Jitsu before has a 0% chance of beating a A guy that's a black belt.
01:44:34.000Yeah, and there's certain positions, like if you get your back taken or something like that, where you're almost 100% dead.
01:44:40.000Yeah, but I think that there's parallels to that in life, because if you look at life and you look at the way you're behaving and the way you're thinking and the way you choose to accept ideas and the way that you choose to view the world, if you're so rigid in your ideology that you're unwilling to accept Any sort of new information and new data or any sort of contrary data or information,
01:45:03.000like someone who's telling you something that you don't agree with, but you're going, okay, well, all right, well, what's your perspective?
01:45:09.000Instead of just agreeing or disagreeing with them and arguing and going to war with them, try to take it in.
01:45:15.000Try to go, okay, well, what is this guy saying that has merit?
01:45:30.000That everyone who's ever been successful somehow or another got it through stealing, and then what we need to do is take all the money in the country and redistribute all this wealth so everybody gets $50,000.
01:45:45.000I might argue with it, or I might see your point, or I might think that if you did do this, but you still...
01:45:51.000If you did this right now, this is what I think, if you did this right now, if you took all the money from all the billionaires and all these fucking rich tycoons, all of them, and took all their money and distributed it equally amongst everybody in the country, How long would it take if you just allowed normal capitalism to flourish after that?
01:46:08.000How long would it take before the levels went right back to where they are?
01:46:39.000Okay, Billy's getting a whatever, a 30. So what we're gonna do is you're gonna take the test, and then we're gonna take whatever points from you and give them to Billy, so that you both get a D. And that's what we're gonna do.
01:47:42.000Part of being driven is you've got to have something to show for it.
01:47:45.000So we gotta be really careful that the amount of, you know, wealth that you spread around, if you spread it all around, you're gonna end up with no one wanting to achieve anything.
01:47:54.000Yeah, like I hear Bernie Sanders talk and he seems like a really nice guy.
01:47:58.000And he seems like he really has his mind in the right place and his heart in the right place.
01:48:06.000I'm like, well, that's definitely better than being greedy.
01:48:08.000It's definitely better than being corrupted by the banks.
01:48:11.000It's definitely better than being corrupted by Wall Street and giving these bullshit, phony speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars and fucking over people for profit.
01:49:06.000Well the concept of income inequality is always strange because it's like well Okay, but you should you make the same amount of money for a job that doesn't have the same amount of importance and significant?
01:49:17.000I'll just go ahead and straight-up answer for you.
01:49:19.000No, you shouldn't if if you got paid after 10 years of medical school the same that you got paid to drive a bus After you busted your ass and worked hard and had to study and do all this stuff to go to medical school and by the way You built up a bunch of debt trying to go to school.
01:49:35.000Hey, why wouldn't you just become a bus driver?
01:49:37.000Motivation shouldn't be financial your motivation should be helping people You gotta be we we have to be careful that and and of course I There are people that legitimately need help in the world.
01:49:55.000And we've got to be compassionate and take care of those people to the best of our ability.
01:49:59.000But we definitely need to watch out for, hey, let's steal everything from the people that worked hard and give it to the people that didn't.
01:50:06.000Yeah, it just doesn't seem like a good idea.
01:50:09.000It seems contrary to what we know about human motivation, basic human instincts.
01:50:18.000Because we could distribute all the money and wealth that we've built in America and distribute it over the whole world.
01:50:23.000Well, I think a better concept is figuring out why there are pockets of extreme poverty and how to mitigate those pockets of poverty that have just...
01:50:31.000I mean, generation after generation, certain neighborhoods have just been extreme poverty.
01:50:36.000And these people that grow up there, that's what they know.
01:50:38.000They're sort of almost programmed into it because they're seeing it around them.
01:50:42.000That is the paradigm that they accept.
01:50:45.000And it's very self-limiting in a lot of ways.
01:50:48.000We don't see anybody escape or you see very few people escape.
01:50:56.000I wish I knew all the details of this, but there was a Native American tribe, and somebody I'm sure will tell me what it is, but there was a Native American tribe in Northern California that when all the Native American tribes got designated Native American tribes and they got you know Here's what you're gonna get and this is your tribe and this is these guys for whatever reason they didn't get it They didn't get designated as a Native American tribe.
01:51:21.000They just got they got passed over no one noticed them and Now all the members that tribe like completely dominate they run everything financially they own everything up there They kind of kicked ass right And it's because they had to and I think a lot of times when when people just get given stuff It becomes very very difficult for them to say you know what I'm gonna go out and work hard You know am I gonna bust it's a classic example of hey am I gonna bust my ass at McDonald's for eight bucks an hour 40 hours
01:51:51.000a week or whatever 30 hours a week for nine bucks an hour I'm gonna work that hard doing that or am I just gonna take my welfare check which is equal to or almost equal to for sitting around doing nothing Yeah, that's not a hard question to answer for many many people.
01:52:04.000Yeah, I'm gonna sit around and do nothing So we had to be careful about it's hard.
01:52:09.000Yeah, it is hard It's it is a natural inclination that people have to do the least amount to just be as comfortable as possible or as lazy as possible You know, I think your your statement that you always say discipline equals freedom is People should have that shit tattooed on their thigh.
01:52:25.000You should look at that when you get up in the morning and put your underwear on.
01:52:29.000That shit is so important because if you do have discipline and if you do go out there and get the things done that you need to get done, you have freedom and you feel better and you feel relaxed because you don't have that balloon hovering over you.
01:52:45.000That balloon of, you know, just knowing that you're not doing your best, knowing that you're not out there hustling.
01:52:52.000And if you just get a free check every month, and you don't really have to go out there and kick ass, you can kind of get by.
01:53:10.000I'm not some big guy that understands the mechanisms of the welfare state and all that.
01:53:16.000I'm just going off of what I think, which is similar to what you're saying.
01:53:20.000If I was just getting a check for not doing anything, I wouldn't feel good about it.
01:53:23.000You know, I wouldn't feel good about it.
01:53:25.000And so, I think that there are people that go, hey, if I can get free money, I'm going to take the free money.
01:53:32.000You know, there is a concept of universal basic income that's kind of interesting, though.
01:53:36.000Because this idea is that once we get automation and once we get artificial intelligence, there's going to be...
01:53:43.000So many jobs that don't exist anymore that we got to figure out what to do with all these people.
01:53:48.000And the idea is if you just have your basic needs taken care of, like not enough so that you could actually thrive, but just where you have food and shelter.
01:53:58.000How many people would then pursue their actual love and what they're actually passionate about?
01:54:04.000There's tests they're doing on it now.
01:54:07.000They're trying to find out, would the same amount of people be successful?
01:54:10.000Would more be successful or would less?
01:54:12.000Like, how many people would pursue their dream if they knew they didn't have to worry about starving to death?
01:54:17.000If they just got money every month, they knew where they were going to sleep and eat, and then they could just go and do whatever the fuck they wanted to do?
01:54:57.000Because that's a thing that I also explain to my kids, is that every time the government gives a dollar to somebody...
01:55:05.000They took that dollar from somebody else.
01:55:06.000Yeah, so and it's you know, it's that's the reality of it.
01:55:10.000Yeah Then the question is like where like when a guy like Bernie Madoff or some crazy Wall Street character When they just move some money around and make money like okay, how much you getting out of that?
01:56:32.000Between that and genetic engineering and all these different things that we've been talking about, it's gonna get really weird.
01:56:37.000And I think, again, going back to the original conversation we started off with today, I think the weirder it gets and the further we get away from primal sort of existence of hunting down food and fighting against other tribes, I think the further we get away from that, the more we're gonna have to reach back to it and ground ourselves to it.
01:56:54.000Well, at the very least, the more you're going to have to deal with whatever requirements your body and your mind have for difficulty.
01:57:00.000I think we have requirements for struggle and difficulty because I think your body is set up to...
01:57:06.000I think biologically we have certain expectations for difficulty.
01:57:11.000And when you don't uncover those or encounter those expectations, I think people find a real lack of meaning in this lack of stress and this peace.
01:57:21.000And that's why we're gonna have to reach back to this physicality at some point.
01:57:33.000If I'm just sitting there and I don't have a job anymore and I just get, you know, $12,000 a month and that's enough for me to pay my food and pay my rent, I'm just gonna sit there and play video games.
01:57:43.000I don't think that's the kind of existence I would want to live.
01:57:46.000It might not even just be physical, too.
01:57:48.000I think it's just in overcoming and enduring and figuring things out, like even writing a book.
01:57:52.000I'm sure you're feeling like you have a new book out, The Way of the Warrior Kid, and I'm sure the feeling that you get when you write a book and complete it is, I fucking did it.
01:58:31.000It's a kid's book, Way of the Warrior Kid.
01:58:34.000And the reason I wrote it is because, first of all, all the things that we're talking about right now, They're happening even more to kids.
01:58:43.000iPads, iPhones, they're sucked into technology, and there's nothing completely wrong with that, but if they get sucked into technology and they don't ever come out of it, you've got issues.
01:59:13.000So in gym class, when they're doing pull-ups, he's getting made fun of.
01:59:17.000He's doesn't know his times tables which you should absolutely know in fifth grade, but he doesn't know him So he's thinks he's stupid now.
01:59:24.000He doesn't know how to swim because he never learned and He's when they go on the field trip to the to the lake.
01:59:30.000He doesn't know how to swim So everyone's having a good time and he can't and eventually they call him out on it And finally he's getting picked on by the big bully Kenny Williamson.
01:59:42.000So, the book starts off last day of school.
01:59:46.000Basically, all these problems come to a head.
01:59:48.000He's all bummed out, crying behind the library.
01:59:51.000Goes home, and when he gets home, his mom reminds him that his uncle, Uncle Jake, is coming to stay with him for the summer.
01:59:58.000Uncle Jake is a guy that was a SEAL in the SEAL teams and he's just got out of the SEAL teams and he's gonna go to college in the fall But he's gonna spend the summer with his sister and with his nephew Mark and so you know that the Navy SEAL shows up Uncle Jake shows up and he sees his little nephew and he says hey,
02:00:18.000you know They're actually staying in the same room and he says hey, you know what are you gonna do tomorrow?
02:00:22.000You know you wanna go play some ball you want to go for a swim and the kid says you know like I I don't want to play ball.
02:00:28.000It's not fun and and I don't know how to swim and I don't know these breaks down, you know getting picked on the whole nine yards and his uncle says Okay, so you can't swim you don't know your times tables You can't do any pull-ups and you're getting picked on we can change all those things We just have to get a plan put it together and make it happen So puts him on the workout program teaches him how to study teaches him how to swim teaches him jiu-jitsu If it was only that easy Yeah,
02:00:55.000and what's what's good is It's not as hard as people think and I think that's why the books getting a strong reaction because there's actually pragmatic methods in there on For instance, I went through all this stuff not knowing not knowing times tables I went through that with my daughter my oldest daughter didn't know her times tables and what she thought was She's stupid.
02:01:16.000I don't know my times tables other kids know them I don't know them and I said to her, you know, she's crying and You know, she's in whatever third or fourth grade crying.
02:01:37.000It's that and so I actually go through that method in the book How do you learn how to fight you're getting picked on how do you learn how to fight?
02:01:44.000You go down to your jujitsu school, and you start learning jujitsu.
02:01:48.000And you and I both know, if you know jujitsu in a grade school fight in sixth grade, you're going to win 100% of the time, right?
02:02:04.000You've got to inoculate yourself to it.
02:02:06.000You start off wading in the water, then you dunk your head, then you lay down and you feel the water all over your body, and then eventually you step in, and then eventually you start to dog paddle, and then eventually you start to swim, and then eventually you jump off the bridge.
02:02:21.000And that one I got from my middle daughter, who wanted to be in the school play, But she got stage fright and so she would freak out every time she would have to go in front of a crowd So I said okay, we're gonna inoculate you to being in front of people first You're gonna sing in front of me You know and then you're gonna sing in front of me and mom and then you're gonna sing in front of me and mom and your brothers and sisters and then you're gonna sing in front of you know our friends that are gonna come over there's gonna be ten of them and then you're gonna sing in front of you know all of the people that we know
02:02:51.000at a block party and then you're gonna get out and you're gonna do your rehearsal and she did it and she got inoculated and I'll tell you right now she's not afraid of anything that girl and so that's the same thing that that he goes through in the book overcoming his fear of water and He inoculates to it, gets used to it, and then finally the final step is you have to go,
02:03:22.000And I wrote it so that kids can apply these things that I learned, both in the SEAL teams and in raising my own kids, they can apply them to their life.
02:03:30.000It's been great to see all these kids reading it and all the great feedback of kids doing push-ups and pull-ups and training and going down and starting jujitsu and making flashcards.
02:03:40.000And one of the cool things about being a kid is, well, it's a struggle in that you haven't really achieved any success yet in anything, but what you don't realize is that you've got all these possibilities to get good at stuff.
02:03:53.000Once you become really good at something, one of the real problems is people don't like to get out of their comfort zone and become a beginner again.
02:04:00.000And it's one of the beautiful things about life is humbling yourself with something new.
02:04:07.000And kids, they don't have that lesson yet, so everything is terrifying.
02:04:11.000But once they do learn it, if you could teach a kid how to get good at one thing.
02:04:16.000Like one of the things that led me to get good at stand-up comedy and all the other things that I did is that I got really good at martial arts young.
02:04:23.000So I knew, okay, I sucked when I first started.
02:04:25.000I remember sucking, but I remember I kept working and I get good at it because I focused and I put the time in.
02:04:31.000Well, if I just do that without anything else, I mean, you've learned that you can make a path.
02:05:30.000You know it's going to take hard work.
02:05:31.000And the other thing that I did in this book, which is...
02:05:34.000I played around with the idea but his dad the kid's dad is not really present and and the reason I did that is because a lot of kids these days don't have a dad around and he the only thing he says about his dad I put one line in there about his dad Which was,
02:05:52.000you know, he says, my dad's gone a lot for his job and stuff.
02:06:13.000You know, if you wouldn't have done martial arts, who would have told you that, hey, if you work hard and you train, you're going to get good at this.
02:06:19.000If you wouldn't have done that with martial arts, you wouldn't have done it with stand-up comedy, you wouldn't have done it with the rest of your career.
02:06:23.000You would have said, you know, you would have gotten on the stage the first time for stand-up comedy.
02:07:42.000If I don't do anything new for a long time, I feel stagnant.
02:07:46.000But when I start doing something new, especially something that I'm not good at, so I start thinking about it a lot, I start obsessing about it a lot, I get invigorated.
02:08:09.000It's a new thought I haven't seen before.
02:08:11.000And we have these, you know, we have these things that we do where we just bring people in.
02:08:15.000Like, usually we go out and work with a company.
02:08:17.000We go out with one company and we go out and we work with a company.
02:08:20.000But we found that there was some smaller companies or people that couldn't afford to bring us in so we said okay What are we gonna do about that?
02:08:26.000So we made this thing up called the muster where we open it up to the public to come and you know Come and spend two days going through all these principles and it's the same thing that you're talking about They say it's a challenge.
02:08:40.000It's new thought It's thinking about something from a different light people that have been in leadership positions for five years ten years fifteen years and they go oh Oh, okay, I can apply this new methodology that I haven't seen, hadn't thought about before.
02:08:52.000So to continue to grow and learn is just so important across the board.
02:08:56.000Yeah, stepping outside your comfort zone is just one of the most important things for a human being, for whatever reason.
02:09:02.000I mean, I don't know what it is, but I know what works.
02:09:22.000You're getting a lot better a lot quicker though.
02:09:24.000Oh man like your endurance jumps up quick like within a few weeks I was able to like way past areas like I've got this this trail that's about 2.7 miles through the hills like real steep hills and There are some spots where I was just fucking dying and now I can get through them I can get through them and get to the top and I'm still dying but I'm dying less and Are you timing yourself,
02:10:37.000Like, maybe I'll be doing pull-ups, heavy pull-ups for a while.
02:10:40.000I'll be doing pull-ups, pull-ups, pull-ups, trying to get up my max pull-ups.
02:10:43.000And then I get to a point where, okay, now I'm not going to, it's going to take every bit of focus in my life to get from 58 pull-ups to 62. I don't want to do that.
02:10:56.000So, I'm cool with 52, and now I'm going to start working on my deadlift, or I'm going to start training jiu-jitsu more, and I'm just constantly...
02:11:33.000I hate to say it because not everyone can make that happen.
02:11:36.000People live in cramped quarters, but man, if you can even just get a pull-up bar and maybe a set of rings, you can do so much and then you grab yourself one kettlebell.
02:11:45.000If you have a yard and you have a kettlebell, you could do a lot.
02:12:04.000But if you have a pull-up bar in your house, you can do pull-ups, you can do push-ups, you can do squats, you can do all kinds of burpees and everything else, sit-ups and gut work, and you can pretty much get your whole body in really good shape with that one piece of equipment.
02:12:21.000Yeah, so when you set out your workouts, do you write them down on paper?
02:12:26.000Do you just have an idea what you want to do?
02:12:27.000I do write them down because I kind of log what I'm doing, but I'll put down, you know, whatever exercise I'm going to do or whatever bunch of exercises I'm going to do, and I'm logging down what I'm, you know, what my times are if I'm going for time or what the weights are if I'm going for weight.
02:12:41.000I'm pretty I heard this the other day, so I'm gonna say it They said Arnold was an instinctual trainer, so I I do that somewhat You know I'm not like looking at a book and I don't plan out for three weeks or a month in advance of exactly what I'm gonna do that day because that day I might go damn I you know I'm not feeling that Type of workout and I'm I need to not do it.
02:13:02.000I'm gonna do something else So I use my what my body's telling me somewhat That's not to say that I go hey, I don't feel like doing anything to do today So I'm not gonna do it because that's actually a rule that I have if I don't feel like doing something today I feel like I need a rest I'll do something that day and put the rest off till the next day make yourself do it today and And then if you still need it tomorrow,
02:13:55.000I have a little tweak on my knee right now, so I can't sprint like I normally would, but otherwise I'd be doing some sprints in there, too.
02:14:10.000But if you think about how much time you spend on the mat, if I would have been playing basketball or playing soccer, I'd still get the same.
02:14:20.000And this is not a bad tweak, it's just like, oh yeah, a little tweak.
02:14:24.000Well, that's one thing that I try to impart on people, too, that strength and conditioning training, particularly strength training, it protects the joints.
02:14:41.000I work out all the time and I never take any significant amount of time off.
02:14:45.000I never say I'm not gonna work out or I never just fall into a hey I went two months or even two weeks or even five days For me to for me to not work out for five days.
02:14:55.000There was some kind of like something happened I was like majorly sick or I was even if I'm traveling I'll still get it done But I think that that consistency your body just is used to it and you don't you don't Get hurt as often and you're like a hardcore metal guy, right?
02:15:56.000He's a black belt in jiu-jitsu, but he's had a completely insane life as well.
02:16:00.000His name is Harley Flanagan, and his life's been completely Insane isn't it doesn't even really doesn't there's hardly I actually it was interesting because I just had him on on my podcast and It's it was a different it was a different you know guest for me a different genre and People you know first of all the guy you know people that listen my podcast They
02:16:31.000expect a certain type of podcast, right?
02:16:33.000I'm gonna talk about leadership I'm gonna talk about the military and all of a sudden I bring in this guy who's been a complete maniac and I mean he's done, you know, he was Drugs, you know drug sex rock and roll.
02:16:44.000It's basically been his whole life and since he was like 10 years old He was playing in a punk rock band in New York City.
02:18:01.000But it was interesting, because I had him on the podcast, and it was interesting to have people that listen to it, that listen to my podcast, which is very different.
02:18:11.000You know, you bring in basically all kinds, you get all kinds of, such a completely wide variety of people in here.
02:18:18.000My guests have been basically War guys, right?
02:18:23.000Brian Stan, Tim Kennedy, Jody Mittick, who's a Canadian sniper, wounded real bad in Afghanistan.
02:18:30.000I had a guy named Colonel William Reeder on there, who was a pilot in Vietnam, got shot down, and got shot down twice actually, captured in Vietnam, was in captivity for a year, and he's talking about He's in a bamboo cage with his legs shackled and he wakes up in the middle of the night because the rats are eating his wounds.
02:18:52.000I mean, I'm bringing on guys that are just talking about, not only talking about heavy subjects, but they're also talking about it from, you know, a very...
02:19:05.000I mean, is there anyone more positive than than Brian Stan?
02:19:08.000That guy's just like a like a just an American hero, right?
02:19:12.000And so then I all of a sudden out of left field I bring on Harley Flanagan and he tells his story was really interesting to me to have people's reactions and There was a couple people that were like, oh, you know This was a real letdown for you to bring them on but if you hear his story you listen to the whole podcast I mean here's a guy who Who you can hear it in his voice like his his heart is broken over some of the things that he's been through his life losing his father his father was a was a heroin addict and in his father Died
02:19:42.000burned alive in a dumpster as he lit a fire to try and keep himself warm.
02:19:47.000That's how his dad died Buried his mom.
02:19:51.000I mean it's just it's just a tragic story, but My point is that the even though I had a very few people that were like all that was you know You shouldn't have he swore literally.
02:20:00.000Hey, he swore a bunch on the podcast That's inappropriate or whatever and then I what was really that that was kind of well That's that's kind of too bad to hear hear someone say that that they would have that viewpoint But what was really cool was all these other people that are very straight laced kind of Kind of middle road American people that that listen to podcasts were like dude Thanks for having that guy on what a heart what a guy and it's good for me to know about that stuff and It's good for to hear someone that's been through the depths
02:20:30.000of drug addiction and hell Come back out of it and do all right and and again from my perspective I think that my Interaction with those kind of people when I was growing up which I certainly had you know I was a young kid going to New York and Boston going to hardcore shows and all that It'll let me see part of the world that most people don't really see and so when I got in the military I got I was kind of used to dealing with people that people aren't used to dealing with and I think it helped me out a lot so Is it a hard
02:21:00.000managing expectations once you don't mean how many what do you do you have like 75 episodes up already?
02:21:05.000Yeah, yeah, that's crazy Yeah, last time you here you had zero zero I love it though.
02:21:12.000And it's a lot, you know, my podcast is a lot different than yours because I'm going deep on some subject that I'm actually going to like, I have to study and prepare for.
02:21:20.000And it's not interacting with another person most of the time.
02:21:23.000Most of the time I'm interacting with history.
02:21:44.000But is it hard to manage expectations, which is what I was getting after?
02:21:48.000Because once you establish, like, a fan base...
02:21:52.000Sometimes they have this idea in their head of what the podcast should be to them like what they want out of it And then they they can express that they don't like where you're going like I don't like that you brought this Harley guy on this guy's not what I like I like straight laced military guys who don't swear this guy's a fucking nutty dude jumps around on stage and the my answer to that is No,
02:22:16.000and I'll tell you why From the beginning of, you know, when you said, it was you and Tim Ferriss, you know, both you guys said you should do a podcast, and I said, okay, cool.
02:22:26.000Well, to this day, your podcast with Tim Ferriss is one of my all-time favorite podcasts.
02:22:29.000I listened to it in my, I was cooking, I was listening to my kitchen, I was like, Jesus fucking Christ, this is a good podcast.
02:24:10.000It's awful Probably the hardest podcast that I've done because I'm a patriotic guy and here I am talking about You know American soldiers doing heinous acts to innocent people and and so and I've done that I did I did a podcast about the genocide in Rwanda which was if you don't know anything about that two tribes and It's very hard for Americans to understand this the difference between these two tribes is nothing It's just two tribes.
02:24:41.000They have the same they look the same They have the same religion which by the way the religion was Catholicism because they'd been like converted to Catholicism Well, they went on a rampage and the Hutus which was one tribe murdered 800,000 Tutsis in a hundred days with machetes with machetes So I've covered these dark and horrible things on my podcast and I and I don't even Know really
02:25:12.000a hundred percent why other than this thought in the back of my mind That I've always had which is that you have to kind of understand the darkness of the world in order to appreciate The good in the world and that's why it was really interesting to hear you talking to Jordan Peterson Because he covered that part,
02:25:33.000you know, he was saying look man is Got a dark side and you won't become a good person unless you understand your dark side and and it's interesting for me because Jordan Peterson is clearly a Highly intellectual and academic guy and I'm not right.
02:25:47.000I'm I'm a nug right I joined the military after high school and and yet all so many of the things he says when he says them I say oh, yeah Well, that's the same thing I stumbled upon he came across that reading the the French philosopher or whatever that's where he comes I came across it in life and So it's very interesting to me when I hear him say look there's darkness in the world and there's evil in the world and We have to face that and and as soon as I heard him saying that on the podcast I'm like well That's that's what I think and I can't give you the philosophical basis
02:26:18.000for it like he can but I can tell you what I've lived through and I can tell you that if you don't understand the fact that there's darkness in the world and that people human beings are capable of evil things and If you don't understand that you're not gonna understand the the first of all you're not gonna understand what you need to look out for in the world and what we need to be aware of as a society and As a as a race of humans,
02:26:41.000but also you're not gonna appreciate things in the world that are Beautiful and good and positive.
02:26:48.000So with the podcast, I'm not doing it to make people happy.
02:26:55.000I'm not doing it to make people listen.
02:26:58.000I'm not even doing it to make people listen.
02:27:00.000I'm doing it because it's things that I've lived through.
02:27:04.000It's things that I want to understand better and I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing and if people like it, then that's awesome and if people don't want to listen to it, that's cool too.
02:27:15.000Well, at least from my personal experience, listening to guys like Jordan Peterson or listening to yourself or listening to anybody talk about really deep, important subjects, even if you know what they're saying to be true, it reinforces it in your own mind and maybe even opens up new doors of comprehension.
02:27:43.000He was hitting some notes about human psychology and the reason why we behave in certain ways and the pitfalls of these certain types of behavior that I absolutely knew he was right.
02:27:55.000And maybe I'd even thought about them before, but seeing them reinforced so eloquently and seeing it expressed so articulately, it really sparked life in my mind.
02:28:07.000Yeah, and even, you know, he was talking about being a warrior, right?
02:28:12.000And how these guys in modern times, we don't spend time being a warrior.
02:28:17.000If you and I were living 500 years ago, you and I would both be battle-scarred and...
02:28:23.000We would be used to that lifestyle people aren't used to that lifestyle now They've kind of forgotten what that feels like and so I'm that was my life I mean that was my life was to prepare for war and go fight war that was my whole life and so for me to look back on it now and hear Jordan Peterson to say like That's normal.
02:28:44.000And it makes me say, okay, I understand now where, you know, kind of part of, I understand myself better when I hear him say, oh yeah, this is normal for guys to go out and fight wars.
02:29:17.000That's why people are listening to what you're saying.
02:29:20.000Because you have that warrior mentality in your life.
02:29:26.000Well, I think that guys like Jordan Peterson, I think that anybody that can tap into those truths that we know, you know, I just don't think we hear them enough.
02:29:36.000I think we're inundated with so much stupid shit every day.
02:29:38.000It's so hard to get to any like real substantial truths that will positively affect both your outcome and your outlook on life.
02:29:50.000And I think guys like you guys like Tim Ferriss is putting on all these amazing podcasts Jordan Peterson all these people that can express things to someone like This podcast literally has changed my life.
02:30:02.000I mean it's changed my thinking It's I'm a totally different person than I was when I first started this podcast because talking to all these interesting and fascinating people And wise people.
02:30:13.000It's been like having some crazy crash course in a million different disciplines and a bunch of different conversations.
02:30:23.000And seeing the pitfalls of some people's thinking and being around people where you see the holes in their minds.
02:30:31.000The way they express themselves or the way they process information made me recognize the holes in my own processing and the way I used to communicate with people.
02:31:05.000If I listen to music, it's my music that I get off of iTunes, or it's something that someone, like a new band, that someone tells me or turns me on to, but I don't listen to anybody I don't listen to satellite radio.
02:31:41.000Kind of know them too like they have these shared experiences with me and I talked about this on that on that podcast about Rwanda They talk about the fact that the first thing they do in a revolution In a coup is they want to take control of the radio and there's this great piece in there where he says they're talking about the fact that with with TV and You have to take what the image on the screen in your mind your eyes process it and then it goes into your brain With reading you take those
02:32:11.000words and they go in through your eyes and it processes them and it goes into your brain, but with audio There's no filter the words are going directly into your brain.
02:32:22.000They're unfiltered And so that's why I think this podcast audio format is so powerful because the people that are listening to this right now, they're sitting in the room with us.
02:32:35.000And when I'm recording my podcast, I'm actually talking to them and they're there.
02:32:41.000And when I go out and I meet people...
02:32:43.000You can absolutely feel like, hey, and the little inside jokes, because even though I'm talking about how dark and evil my podcast is, but we have a good time, too, and we have episodes that are funny, and we talk about regulars.
02:32:55.000We talk about jiu-jitsu and food and everything else working out, and we have fun, too.
02:33:07.000And so it's it's a very very powerful medium that I think got skipped over and You know we went from radio just completely absorbed into TV and then absorbed into the internet and now all of a sudden we got to this other side where we're back to this thing that there's some reason why people used to sit around that radio and Listen to those radio shows back in the day even I did you know when I was a kid for whatever reason I I liked radio shows.
02:33:36.000I would sit there and listen to Dr. Demento, and they'd have those little radio shows and those skits, and that was a powerful medium, and I knew it back then.
02:33:44.000And so for me, like you, as soon as you and Tim were saying, you should do your own podcast, I was like, absolutely, I'm going to do this.
02:33:57.000I want them to, like, be putting their headphones on and, like, stretching their neck a little bit, pressing play, and then just going, okay, this is...
02:34:16.000So it's you and him and that's it like there's there's not like a whole team if you had a the the audience that you have I know that you guys are shit ton of downloads now So the that kind of audience if you were on a radio show you'd have a successful radio show So you'd be in a studio somewhere.
02:34:32.000You'd have to have production meetings You'd have to have a bunch of people that would tell you what the I was gonna say I'd have people telling me What I could and couldn't say.
02:34:47.000And that's the beautiful thing about it.
02:34:48.000And, you know, I know we're leaving money on the table, because right now, all these advertisers that come to us, and they say, hey, can you talk about this?
02:35:38.000You're talking and they're thinking how you're thinking.
02:35:42.000They're like allowing themselves to be taken on this journey, whether they're in their car, whether they're at the gym, they're absorbed in your thoughts in a very unique way.
02:35:49.000And because of the fact there's not a whole lot of other people contributing and entering into the picture, you know, like producers and network executives and advertising agencies, and look, we've looked at the stats, and Jocko, you've got to talk more about this, and You know what I mean?
02:36:02.000You could get lost in analytics and never find your true voice.
02:36:05.000But podcasts, it's almost entirely your true voice.
02:36:16.000You know, in terms of like each individual podcast, it's just your voice and it may be like mine, it's mine and the guest and whoever else comes in.
02:36:27.000And that's where you, I mean, Singular Visions is what makes some, it's like, there's a reason why Netflix does so well and the reason why a lot of these HBO shows do so well is because they leave those fucking people alone.
02:36:40.000They just go, make us Game of Thrones.
02:37:04.000Actually told that to my publisher about you know my publisher I was like you know what the best thing about my podcast is is that no I can do whatever I want to do I can do whatever I want to do and that's what makes it it's a it's very very liberating there's no I mean you write a book and You know they're someone's gonna edit that thing and they're gonna change this and they're gonna adjust that they want the cover to look like this the podcast is It is just you and you know Even the first my first podcast came out and you
02:37:34.000know my wife lifts it listen to it and she was all stoked Because when was the last time that you sat down and talk just talk to your wife for two and a half hours, right?
02:37:44.000Yeah, it doesn't happen And my wife was like, hey, it was awesome.
02:38:17.000Honestly, when do you ever get a chance to sit like this across from someone and talk to them for three hours without checking your phone, without anybody coming into the room, without anybody interrupting you with something you have to do or someplace you have to be?
02:38:31.000That's one of the reasons why I say that it changed my life, is because it educated me on other people's thought processes in a way that you don't get one-on-one dialogue with people in the real world.
02:38:42.000And if you think about it, you know, as we talk about going back to these primal things, there's a primal thing about having human conversation.
02:38:48.000And if you think about where technology is going, we don't have much human conversation.
02:38:56.000Not only am I not having two and a half hour conversations with my wife, I'm not having two and a half hour conversations with anybody.
02:39:01.000Until I come up here and sit down with you or until I go into my podcast studio and I sit down and I have a two and a half hour conversation with you know a million people that are gonna sit there and listen and they're gonna give me feedback on Twitter and they're gonna tell me this and they're gonna tell me their story and it's it's very it's a we're filling a hole I think it's a hole in communication right now because you know we text each other you know you and me text each other yeah I text I text echo I text everybody text my wife I don't think you and I have ever had a conversation on the phone no I No.
02:39:51.000Like that's the next thing is you train together, but there's...
02:39:54.000There's a gap in human contact right now, in having conversations.
02:39:58.000And I'm just thinking this right now, that the whole nature of podcasting fills that hole.
02:40:04.000And if you look at the podcasts that do well, it's podcasts that are...
02:40:11.000Conversationalist unless you go with the podcast that's highly produced and they got they you know cuz like Radiolab yeah all those ones that are highly produced and even the ones that are produced by you know NPR so they have real money behind them and they're they're a different thing But for normal dudes that are just sitting around and talking those are popular podcasts That's why Tim Sam Harris those guys are sitting around and talking and explaining stuff because that doesn't exist anymore in the in the day-to-day life for a lot of people You know what else doesn't exist in a day-to-day life?
02:40:48.000Everybody is so toned down and neutered.
02:40:52.000It's like human resources and corporate life has watered down people's natural behavior to the point where people are just dying on the inside, sitting in these fucking cubicles, rotting.
02:41:03.000Just freaking the fuck out, having all these thoughts they can't entertain, having to pretend to be someone they're not all day long, putting on this bullshit way of talking, this fake way of thinking.
02:41:14.000Everybody's got to subscribe to whatever fucking ridiculous policies their company wants to enforce, and you're just a robot, and you get out of there and you just want to scream.
02:41:23.000Yeah, or you want to listen to some guys talk about some real shit.
02:41:31.000Yeah, that's another reason why I wrote the kids book, because the kids book, instead of, you know, it being about, hey, if someone's picking on you, go and tell the teacher.
02:41:40.000It's like no actually if somebody's picking on you learn to defend yourself and kick their ass if needed that's That that hasn't been said that's another reason I wrote the book I I went I've told this story before but I went and got some book for my kid when he was little my my one son and three daughters I went and got a book from his it was like a pirate book,
02:41:57.000And I'm thinking cool pirates are gonna burn stuff take over villages Steal things this will be awesome, and I read the book, and it's just complete These guys are complete You know, pathetic.
02:42:46.000Doesn't exist you can't learn your times tables guess what you need to work and study you don't get put into a special class and get a tutor and maybe you get aid you know you got some Special help to get no you need to work and make that happen.
02:42:57.000You don't know don't don't know how to swim guess what that doesn't mean you stay away from the water No, you learn how to swim you step up you man up.
02:43:05.000That's what you do So that's another reason why I wrote the book so that people can actually kids can learn that Life is hard, and in order to deal with life, you gotta be hard.
02:43:16.000Yeah, and just this idea that life is hard, something you're supposed to shield from them, it's so silly.
02:43:22.000And, you know, I've had this conversation with my friends because everybody that I know that's interesting had a fucked up life.
02:43:28.000But now we have kids, and the last thing we want is our kids to have a fucked up life.
02:43:32.000So we put our kids in these good schools, we live in these nice neighborhoods, everybody eats healthy, and there's no fucking domestic violence, and everybody seems, it's so different than all of our lives.
02:43:59.000What I've chosen to do is get my kids involved in martial arts, Give them the opportunity to pursue difficult things and understanding that through pursuing these difficult things like in accomplishing stuff Like you you learn something about yourself.
02:44:12.000You learn that you have this ability inside of you to overcome.
02:44:15.000I've got this Statement that I made on my podcast about kids and I said if you're helping your kids you're hurting them And if you think about it, right, and the example I gave is like tying your kid's shoe.
02:44:28.000If you tie your kid's shoe, you're actually taking away the opportunity in their life to develop their fine motor skills of tying a shoe.
02:44:38.000We're actually taking that away from them.
02:44:41.000Make your own sandwich, make your own bed, clean your own room.
02:44:44.000You need to do this stuff for yourself and when I'm helping you, I'm hurting you.
02:44:47.000So I think we can protect them without just completely coddling them and making sure that every issue that ever could present itself to them has been eliminated.
02:44:58.000Because you're going to end up with some weak kids.
02:45:00.000Yeah, and if those kids have to compete with some kid who's had to take care of himself their whole life, that kid's going to be ferocious.
02:45:06.000Yeah, you're going to have a feral kid competing against your little soft, fleece-lined kid.
02:45:12.000Yeah, that's why some of those competitive sports are so important.
02:45:16.000And martial arts are great, wrestling's great, jiu-jitsu, but football, basketball, anything that puts you in those challenging positions where you're going to have to step up, you're going to get ground out.
02:45:46.000Some of the hardest times that she's been put through is on the wrestling mat and having to step up Against some girl that like the exact girl you're talking about some girl from the barrio in San Diego That's a tough ass girl that's been through the ringer and has domestic violence going on in her house And her one escape from all that is to come out and wrestle against some other girl and beat her down So,
02:46:08.000my daughter has to step up and do that, and it's an incredible thing.
02:46:12.000It's incredibly powerful and empowering.
02:46:15.000Even I watched her change, you know, when she would be intimidated in those situations, to where now she's like, bring it.
02:46:46.000That's a great podcast to listen to, and there's so many points that he covers in there that are...
02:46:51.000Really profound and I think important today.
02:46:54.000Well, he's dealing with a very unusual situation where those coddled, soft kids are now in universities and they're trying to run the show with these ridiculous programs of inclusion and diversity and, you know, forcing their mindset down everybody else's throat.
02:47:10.000Yeah, it's fascinating and disturbing to see that happening and it's really yes, it's actually disturbing to see that happening and see Kids could be focused on such important things in the world and they end up focusing on something that is borderline In many cases borderline,
02:47:29.000you know meaningless, you know launch let's let's move towards a real goal There's diseases to cure and you know yeah good things to do in the world Well, you know, I think everybody agrees that racism is bad and homophobia is bad, but that's not exactly what you're dealing with here.
02:47:46.000What you're dealing with is people trying to control the way other people behave and talk and think, and it might not even be in response to any actual Real like Negative things that have happened.
02:47:59.000It's like they're trying they're trying to create negative things to battle that might not even be there There's just a lot of weirdness today in this world and I think that to bring it back full circle a lot of this weirdness comes from a lack of true struggle like do you think that these kids that are growing up in Russia that are doing backflips off of the top of buildings are Are they dealing with the same diversity lectures and classes that they have to handle?
02:48:24.000And I think there's an intrinsic part of human beings that wants to be part of a tribe of some kind and wants to defend their tribe.
02:48:31.000And when you grow up in a place where there's no real tribe, then you look for one to latch onto.
02:48:36.000And these people over They have a cause and they've got a tribe and you can be part of that tribe and you can be and you then you can lash out at the bad guys and I think that happens a lot and I think it's it's unfortunately unfortunate because it really Crushes, you know individuality which is what I you know That's my kind of my premier base,
02:48:54.000you know thoughts are around individual freedom.
02:48:57.000Yeah be an individual think for yourself free your mind Yeah, there's a lot of comfort in those groups that these people belong to, whether it's any kind of group, whether it's a hardcore right-wing group or a hardcore left-wing group.
02:49:10.000You kind of know what the rules are, and you play by those rules, and then you surround yourself with a bunch of like-minded people in an echo chamber who also support the fact that these rules are the rules, and we have to get these out there, and like...
02:49:23.000I think we just need to establish there's a bunch of shit you shouldn't do.
02:49:55.000It's hard for insecure people to allow that to happen because insecure people, when they see individual freedom that's contrary to what their own personal behavior is like, They have to question themselves and challenge themselves.
02:50:08.000They decide that that person's wrong, and these people are wrong, and I'm right, and this needs to be established, and we need to fight, and we need to go out and punch Nazis, or whatever the fuck they think they're supposed to be doing.
02:50:21.000Yeah, it's weird than when that becomes your whole life.
02:50:24.000Yeah, and I'm sure you get this I get it a lot which is people on social media that want me to weigh in on this thing or they want me to weigh in on this side or they're attacking me because of this or attacking me because of that Not so much attacking but people want me to weigh in on things all the time and it's things that I just say man This isn't affecting me.
02:50:45.000And not only that, my comments aren't gonna move this forward.
02:50:50.000And finally, I don't care about that thing.
02:50:53.000I understand that you're obsessed with it, but I'm not.
02:50:57.000I'm not obsessed with this thing that you're obsessed with.
02:51:01.000So I don't even care that you're obsessed with it.