Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Why Isn't There Tickling in MMA? An Investigation About this episode Socrates called it a sensation of both pleasure and pain. But the tickle is the one legal move that the UFC won't talk about — especially after the tickle went viral. Correspondent David Fleming giggles his way from a rat-titilating neuroscientist in Germany to a cage-side gaggle at a wedding ballroom in Rochester, exploring the science of laughter, the art of war and a truly genius alternative to the purple nurple.
• Pre-order David Fleming's book, "A Big Mess in Texas: The Miraculous, Disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans and the Craziest Untold Story in NFL History" https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250374301/abigmessintexas/
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Transcript 7,870 words · 18 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 I'm Pablo Torre and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly because today we're going to find out what this sound is.
0:18 Speaker 01 Let me tell you something, if you want to tickle me while I'm punching the [BEEP] out of you in the face, go ahead and try.
0:24 Speaker 00 Right after this ad.
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2:38 Pablo Torre? So I think we gotta do a draft of these. I think we begin Dave Fleming this episode, and thank you for joining us again.
2:45 Speaker 05 Yeah.
2:46 Pablo Torre? We need to draft the official rules of MMA, which I'd never read before until you came to us with this list, per the UFC website, of things that are not allowed in MMA. So you're the guest. You may have the first pick.
3:02 Speaker 05 Oh, thank you. I know exactly where I'm going. I'm going all the way down to intentionally placing a finger into any orifice, or any cut, or laceration of an opponent.
3:14 Pablo Torre? Well, with the number two overall pick, I'm taking fish hooking, which is the act of inserting a finger or fingers, or one or both hands into the mouth or nostrils of a person, pulling away from the center line of the body.
3:25 Speaker 05 Uh, hair pulling is really next for me.
3:28 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah, fair. I cannot believe you left me groin attacks of any kind with my second pick.
3:34 Speaker 05 God, this is going just like my fantasy football draft. Okay, uh, Three Stooges eye gouging of any kind.
3:40 Pablo Torre? Hmm. Throat strikes of any kind and/or grabbing the trachea.
3:44 Speaker 05 Uh, let's see. Holding opponent's gloves or shorts. Damn it, that's like drafting a quarterback in the first round.
3:52 Pablo Torre? Ooh.
3:53 Speaker 05 I know where you're going.
3:54 Pablo Torre? Ooh.
3:55 Speaker 05 I know it. Don't do it. Don't steal it from me.
3:58 Pablo Torre? Small joint manipulation.
4:00 Speaker 05 Because there's so much, that's so open for interpretation.
4:02 Pablo Torre? The small joints, just the small joints.
4:04 Speaker 05 And what constitutes, I don't want to know, small joint?
4:07 Pablo Torre? Or manipulation.
4:09 Speaker 05 Obviously clawing, pinching, or twisting of the flesh, which I think we all know what that means.
4:14 Pablo Torre? Yeah, that is the purple nurple.
4:16 Speaker 05 Yeah.
4:17 Pablo Torre? That is, that is a steal. With the last pick, I'm going to take fingers outstretched to ward an opponent's face slash eyes.
4:25 Speaker 05 Fantastic.
4:26 Pablo Torre? Which is not allowed.
4:27 Speaker 05 I mean, they've covered a lot here, a lot of stuff I didn't even think of, and I fight dirty.
4:32 Pablo Torre? You do. You have, by the way, you are an athlete.
4:35 Speaker 05 Yes, I was a former Division One collegiate wrestler. If you can believe, I know.
4:41 Pablo Torre? I like how apologetic you are in revealing that you have a D1 athletic background. Which is why when you were assessing, when you were scouting this list of things you cannot do in mixed martial arts, a sport that I thought pretty much anything, you know, went, you noticed that there was something not there.
5:07 Speaker 05 I think it's the perfect combination for this story. I grew up with three brothers, and I was a collegiate wrestler. And then I noticed, wait a second, the one thing that's not against the rules in MMA is tickling.
5:22 Pablo Torre? The very trauma that you clearly suffered growing up.
5:27 Speaker 05 Yes, and I think you'll hear us refer to this often throughout this episode, but anybody who had a sibling, an older sibling, has been at some point held down and tickled until they've lost control of, well, their bowels, no.
5:43 Pablo Torre? Well.
5:44 Speaker 05 But you know, right, I mean.
5:45 Pablo Torre? Oh, I am both the tickly, I am the younger brother to my older sister, and the tickler, the older brother to my younger brother.
5:53 Speaker 05 You can't breathe, you can't control yourself.
5:57 Pablo Torre? I am the problem that I have raged against.
6:01 Speaker 05 But there is a sense of, okay, so as somebody who's got a wrestling background, and you're thinking about rendering your opponent sort of like paralyzed or overwhelmed.
6:09 Pablo Torre? I didn't think about this until you brought it up, and I was like, it would work on me.
6:14 Speaker 05 It's very visceral, or you remember back to your childhood of laughing so hard, and it was like, well, gosh, that seems like it would be very effective in a fight inside the cage.
6:29 Pablo Torre? We should reveal that this is a conversation that we had about a year ago.
6:34 Speaker 05 Again, that's about right for how long it takes to cook these ideas between the two of us.
6:38 Pablo Torre? Where has Dave Lehming been since he went death row and got nominated for a Peabody Award? He's been investigating, why isn't there tickling? Because it's clearly allowed in MMA.
6:54 Speaker 05 Does this mean I could, you know, start training and kind of work my way all the way to the top of MMA as a tickler?
7:02 Pablo Torre? This is a question that I just want to make very clear. We took as seriously as a show could take anything.
7:10 Speaker 05 The first step is, okay, we'll go ask the experts. We both know lots of people on a national level who cover this sport.
7:17 Pablo Torre? Yes.
7:17 Speaker 05 Respected journalists. And I have to tell you that one of the secrets of what I do is the minute I reach out to somebody like this and they get offended or they go, there's no story there. That's not even worth it. Or no, that's, you're insulting people who take this sport seriously. For me, it's like bingo.
7:38 Pablo Torre? And the key tipping point for me in terms of like, what is this episode gonna be? Why are we greenlighting this? Are we just stoned right now?
7:49 Speaker 05 You must ask yourself that a lot.
7:51 Pablo Torre? The tipping point was the fact that this happened.
7:58 Speaker 05 This is a fight happening in April of last year. It's a bantamweight fight between Tim Fargo, the guy on top, and Mason Lewis, the guy on bottom.
8:10 Pablo Torre? Yes, one guy's head is being thigh mastered by the other.
8:14 Speaker 05 Correct, it's like a reverse triangle headlock.
8:17 Pablo Torre? And whose head is between the thighs of?
8:19 Speaker 05 That is Mason Lewis, a bantamweight fighter from New York. The guy who is locking his head in a vise is Tim Fargo.
8:28 Pablo Torre? Be very clear, his groin is riding the back of his neck.
8:31 Speaker 05 Yeah.
8:32 Pablo Torre? And they're both lying horizontally.
8:34 Speaker 05 I feel like one or several elements in this, in what we're watching, should be on that list we discussed, but they're not.
8:41 Pablo Torre? And so Tim Fargo, who has trapped Mason between his thighs, Mason, Mason's up to some stuff.
8:49 Speaker 05 He's doing like the goo goo gaga tickle fingers on Tim's exposed foot. We should mention too, yes, look at how red his face is. So he's stuck here.
9:00 Pablo Torre? Oh, the blood rushing to Mason Lewis's face.
9:03 Speaker 05 Yeah. And so Mason, first he gives a thumbs up. He's like, I'm not being choked out. I'm, this is not the end of the fight.
9:09 Pablo Torre? I'm still alive. Don't call this yet.
9:10 Speaker 05 He tries to punch, which I think any MMA fighter would do. And then,
9:17 Speaker 05 and then goes back for a second one.
9:19 Pablo Torre? He's tickling the ivories.
9:21 Speaker 05 He's very intentional and purposeful about it.
9:24 Pablo Torre? But, but then.
9:25 Speaker 05 Wait, did you see that? Okay. In all this reporting, I didn't notice Tim, did you see him laugh? He starts, he's like, what the?
9:33 Pablo Torre? Where's a producer filming this? Cause I can't be more obsessed with the fact that rage in the cage 24.
9:39 Speaker 05 Yeah.
9:40 Pablo Torre? Is being settled by tickle. But the point being that Mason Lewis, the tickler, what happens at the end of this fight?
9:51 Speaker 05 He gets out of that leg vice around his head because of the tickling, gets out of it and actually wins the fight on decision.
10:17 Pablo Torre? So Tim Vargo, the tickly, upset by Mason Lewis, the tickler.
10:21 Speaker 05 Exactly.
10:21 Pablo Torre? And you, Dave Fleming, are pointing to the tickle as the reason why.
10:28 Speaker 05 And the sort of proof that this theory needs to be looked into.
10:34 Pablo Torre? So we should be clear also that like when this happened, much to the chagrin of all the MMA journalists and experts and fighters that wouldn't talk to us about this, the internet did seem to notice.
10:51 Pablo Torre? What you may have noticed is that the
10:54 Speaker 05 Oh.
10:55 Pablo Torre? That's the universal language of tickling.
10:58 Speaker 05 Exactly.
10:59 Pablo Torre? We know what's up. The world knows what's up. But for some reason, this sport doesn't want to talk about it.
11:07 Speaker 05 And so that's what I basically spent the last year of my life doing is investigating, where does the sport fall on something like this?
11:17 Pablo Torre? And how did Mason Lewis specifically, our tickler, come up with the idea in the first place to tickle?
11:24 Speaker 05 Yes, and has PTFO discovered the future of MMA?
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13:19 Speaker 02 Wouldn't it be great if life's little upgrades didn't feel like a splurge? Like getting the aisle seat with extra legroom for a one-hour flight, ordering extra guac with zero hesitation, or paying for assembly on that swing set because you'd rather spend your Saturday doing literally anything else. It's called living filthy comfortable. In whatever filthy comfortable looks like to you, Schwab can help you find it with investing, trading, education, and human help, all in one place. Learn more at schwab.com. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal.
13:55 Pablo Torre? There are all of these laws in a very lawless sport, seemingly, and those rules that we drafted, for instance, like who decides those? Who gets to make the call on this is allowed, this is not allowed in mixed martial arts?
14:09 Speaker 05 Yeah, the whole like throat grabbing and eye gouging and fish hooking, you can find those in the unified rules of MMA that were created and ratified in 2009 by something called the Association of Boxing Commissions.
14:24 Pablo Torre? Which sounds very proper and legalistic.
14:27 Speaker 05 Yes, of course, but if you really want to know the scoop on MMA rules, you gotta go talk to Big John McCarthy.
14:36 Speaker 01 My name's John McCarthy. If you're gonna go to MMA, they call me Big John McCarthy, but I'm too old for that anymore. But I started off in MMA at the very beginning at UFC One, ended up being asked to be the referee for UFC Two, and it started from there and continued on for a little over 25-year career, and it was a lot of fun.
14:59 Speaker 09 Big John McCarthy has witnessed the best that the UFC has had to offer over his years. Here we go. This could be another one of those that goes in the pile.
15:11 Pablo Torre? So so far, this Steven Seagal looking giant does feel like, yes, the appropriate judge, jury and executioner on what's legal in MMA.
15:22 Speaker 05 Perfectly fit for this role, but he is actually the the chair, the official chair of the ABC Rules and Regulations Committee, helped establish the original rules of the sport. And he retired in 2018, still helps with the rules, but has been a part of like hundreds, if not thousands of of fights.
15:42 Pablo Torre? And something that becomes very clear is that Big John, not a fighter himself, still has a highlight reel.
15:50 Speaker 10 Get yourself up and get ready to face me.
15:53 Speaker 11 Knock it off. John, that was way late. Knocked up the art to disqualify. Knock it off. But will you please go up a tickle? Oh, you bet I will. Knock it off. I don't want. You're done. That's it.
16:06 Speaker 05 So I asked this guy what he would say to someone like me who thinks tickling should be used more often as an offensive tactic.
16:16 Speaker 01 You're full of crap.
16:21 Speaker 01 It's been this whole thing for years within the sport because it's tickling allowed. You're not allowed to to pinch at or to grab the flesh in a way where you're trying to actually create a pain, twist the flesh or things like that. It was asked during when we were setting up the rules, what do you think about tickling? Who cares? Let me tell you something. If you want to tickle me while I'm punching the [BLEEP] out of you in the face, go ahead and try.
16:50 Pablo Torre? So on the big board of people I would not want to try in purple nerple. I think Big John does go number one overall, but his philosophy or his worldview on this seems to be, what, that he doesn't think it's possible for a fighter to be tickled? Or or that if you're hurt, if you're feeling pain from getting decked in the face over and over again, it doesn't matter. You can't even feel the the can't even feel that.
17:16 Speaker 05 It's all that. And it's so dismissive of the concept that he was like, we don't even need to put it in the rulebook because it would be so stupid.
17:24 Pablo Torre? But Exhibit A, Your Honor, is Mason Lewis versus Tim Fargo. And so what does Big John say to that?
17:33 Speaker 01 I know, I know the exact fight that you're talking about because I had a lot of people sit there and say, is this legal? Yeah, it's legal, absolutely legal. Is that why the person got out? No, it's not why the person got out. But is he allowed to tickle while he is either putting on a submission or being put in a submission? He can tickle.
17:54 Pablo Torre? So he thinks the tickler, Mason Lewis, was just like doing a bit, basically?
17:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, and Big John just sort of mixed this in with all the other weird hijinks he's seen over the last 25 years inside the ring.
18:06 Speaker 01 Randy Couture fought Tito Ortiz long ago, back at UFC 44. And, you know, in the very end of the fight, fifth round, you know, Tito is like working for, you know, trying to, you know, hook up a leg lock and it's not even close. And I was reffing it. And Randy's, you know, standing over him and he starts smacking him on the ass, you know, like he's spanking him. I said, Randy was being a smartass at the time and that's okay, he can do that.
18:37 Speaker 01 I'm just telling you right now, I've seen people that have done it out of trying to be funny. I've never seen tickling ever stop anything in a fight.
18:48 Pablo Torre? But this is where he's telling us to not believe our lying eyes.
18:52 Speaker 05 Right.
18:52 Pablo Torre? Like, the butt tap didn't work, the tickle seemed to.
18:57 Speaker 05 Right, we watched it on film and so it's like, we know this worked somehow.
19:02 Speaker 01 A lot of times, people will do something and the fighter who's applying the submission hold or any of those types of things will actually feel something and like, stop. Because, what, what was that? And they'll actually, they lose what is going to be the finish of a fight based upon stopping just for that one to two seconds of time that it changes the pressure. It allows the person to gain a little bit back of, you know, what they can to get them and all of a sudden they're getting out of the problem. You can call it genius, I call it ridiculous.
19:39 Speaker 05 Isn't that Big John agreeing that it worked?
19:42 Pablo Torre? And Big John, if you're listening to this episode, I am very respectful of you and your work. But you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. He's saying tickling doesn't work, except when it does work, in which case it's distraction. It's disruption. It's not tickling as tickling that has been effective, which is unsatisfying to me.
20:02 Speaker 05 Yeah, I always come back to the same thing, the big brother theory. Because I think everyone understands what it's like to be held down by your big brother or big sister and tickled to the point where it becomes torture and you lose control. I mean, what does Big John think about that?
20:17 Pablo Torre? Yes, your lived experience.
20:18 Speaker 05 Exactly.
20:19 Pablo Torre? You're saying to the world and to Big John, "These pants did not pee themselves."
20:37 Pablo Torre? There's a point in every episode we do together, Flem, where it feels like you should be charging me tuition. Because I learned things. I learned things I didn't learn in college, things I didn't know that anybody had ever learned. So where do you want to start with the history and the science of tickling?
20:57 Speaker 05 It goes all the way back and is connected to and has been referenced by people as far back as Aristotle, Socrates, even Darwin. I feel like every episode-
21:07 Pablo Torre? Aristotle had, "Duh duh duh duh." Yeah, he had some tickle takes.
21:12 Speaker 05 Well, I mean, right, he was wearing a toga and sandals, so easy access for the tickling. But Socrates, he may have summed it up better than anyone else in the history of the world. He says and wrote that "tickling was a sensation of both pain and pleasure." I mean, that's the definition of-
21:32 Pablo Torre? That honestly kind of nails it.
21:36 Pablo Torre? But the question of why then?
21:38 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
21:39 Pablo Torre? What is the evolutionary reason?
21:42 Speaker 05 There's still a ton of debate about sort of, why do humans, why do humans tickle? And why are we ticklish?
21:49 Pablo Torre? Yes.
21:49 Speaker 05 And it's sort of all over the board. It's fascinating. There are theories that it evolved as a form of social bonding, as a way of sort of socializing infants.
21:59 Pablo Torre? Like introducing infants to human touch?
22:01 Speaker 05 Yes, as sort of a bonding sort of ritual. But then there's a more widely held theory that tickling is essential for survival. This is like a fight or flight thing, representing a form of mock battles that prepare juveniles for warfare by teaching them tactics and strategies for defending their bodies in a real fight.
22:23 Pablo Torre? But the thing I've always wondered personally is why some people are ticklish and some people are not. I have friends who don't feel anything, it seems.
22:33 Speaker 05 And so, again, we had to go talk to an expert. And the guy we found, Dr. Shimpei Ishiyama, a neuroscientist at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, is one of the world's leading experts in the science and neuroscience of tickling.
22:53 Speaker 12 I've been studying ticklishness for nearly more than 10 years. And especially in terms of neurobiological underpinnings, underlying these sensations. And I've been working on this heavy tickling, also called gargalisis.
23:14 Speaker 05 So what he explains is there are actually two different scientific types of tickling. The first one is nismesis, which is like a light sort of feather touch sensation that doesn't evoke laughter, but you know, sort of like that sort of like tickly skin. And the second one is called gargalisis.
23:34 Pablo Torre? Which is a Pokémon.
23:35 Speaker 05 Yeah, or it sounds like somebody that would do battle with Godzilla. But that's what we're talking about. It's the sort of more vigorous version of tickling that usually results in laughter. And gargalisis has only been observed in humans and a few other non-human primates, like chimps and orangutans and rats.
23:59 Speaker 12 So rats do laugh when they're tickled on their trunk, but with ultrasound, so we cannot hear.
24:11 Speaker 05 So rats are... If you convert the sound to lower frequencies, you can hear rats laughing. Apparently, it sounds like birds chirping.
24:20 Pablo Torre? So you're telling me that we have this?
24:24 Speaker 05 Would this be us if I could not supply the video?
24:29 Speaker 13 So here's the sound a rat makes if you tickle its back.
24:36 Speaker 13 The sound has been converted to a lower frequency that we humans can hear, but the source frequency is mainly 50 kilohertz.
24:46 Speaker 13 Apparently, the rat likes being tickled.
24:48 Pablo Torre? The last time I saw a hand move like that, it was Mason Lewis on Tim Fargo's foot.
24:56 Speaker 05 So when a person or a rat is tickled, it activates, it fires up the neurons in the somatosensory cortex, the area of the brain that is responsible for tactile sensations, touch, temperature, pressure, and pain.
25:12 Pablo Torre? So now, we're getting somewhere.
25:15 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, like now, we've found our expert.
25:18 Pablo Torre? Because tickling, what you're talking about, is an overwhelming of the nervous system.
25:22 Speaker 05 Right, and I'm going back to the Big Brother theory. It's that that's what we want to know. What is the science behind that sensation of like, I'm short-circuiting right now?
25:32 Pablo Torre? Yes, it feels like torture. It can feel like torture.
25:35 Speaker 05 Exactly, and that's where tickle torture comes from.
25:39 Pablo Torre? Again, in my experience, if you catch me off-guard, I can feel almost paralyzed. That's how effective, or how weak, I guess, my somatosensory cortex is.
25:52 Speaker 05 Overlay that into an MMA fight. Wouldn't that be really effective? If you can render someone in that state through tickling, I mean, that's like a secret weapon.
26:03 Pablo Torre? That's more than just mere distraction.
26:06 Speaker 05 It's like a Marvel character who can render people paralyzed through tickling.
26:10 Pablo Torre? The Tickler.
26:11 Speaker 05 The Tickler.
26:13 Pablo Torre? So at this point, it sounds like it's a pretty open and shut case.
26:17 Speaker 05 Well, not really, because they're-
26:19 Pablo Torre? We just listened to the rats. You're telling me there's more? It gets more complicated?
26:23 Speaker 05 It does, of course. You know, there are still a lot of sort of unsolved mysteries around tickling. Starting with the fact that I think we all understand some people are really ticklish and some people aren't.
26:36 Pablo Torre? That is true.
26:37 Speaker 05 And scientists still don't fully know why that is.
26:40 Pablo Torre? So this raises one of the more existential questions I've ever contemplated. Is all that why we cannot tickle ourselves?
26:51 Speaker 05 Kind of. It's related to the idea that you can't tickle yourself because your brain can anticipate the sensation. It's the sort of surprise element is really important with tickling.
27:03 Pablo Torre? Right.
27:04 Speaker 05 Let me, I'll read you something from a study that was released just this past May. "Each voluntary movement we perform, our brain uses information from the motor signals to predict and suppress the self-generated sensations. Consequently, when touching or trying to tickle our own body, the brain predicts and cancels the resulting sensations, prioritizing the process of external stimulation such as those from our predators."
27:34 Pablo Torre? So in other words, nobody anywhere can tickle themselves.
27:39 Speaker 05 Well, as with all of nature, there is an exception, Pablo. And this is an extraordinary one.
27:46 Speaker 12 There are several clinical and non-clinical reports that self-tickling is possible. So one is schizophrenia or healthy people with schizotypal traits.
28:00 Speaker 05 Only people who can tickle themselves are schizophrenics and other people with dissociative disorders.
28:09 Pablo Torre? I'm now thinking about the tickling scouting combine. And how there's a, there's a trait that the scouts are all looking for. And it's schizophrenia, which I did not anticipate finding out today.
28:22 Speaker 05 I tried to warn you. This was the rabbit hole of all rabbit holes.
28:26 Speaker 12 It's very interesting indeed because in most adults, tickling is aversive. It's annoying, right? So otherwise, we would have been like a tickling each other all the time instead of shaking hands. Right. But we don't do that. And so, so we hate being tickled, right? So when we grow up especially, and that's why it can be used as weapon, right? Because it can annoy the other, the opponents.
28:57 Speaker 05 What about, okay, is it pass interference if a guy goes up to catch the ball and you tickle him? And he brings his arms down? No.
29:04 Pablo Torre? Is it illegal if in soccer, when you're making a wall and you want to like, you know, disrupt that in front of a free kick or something?
29:12 Speaker 05 Right.
29:12 Pablo Torre? You know, you know?
29:13 Speaker 05 Or somebody, somebody jumps up to hit a header. I mean, now they're fully exposed. You get a double tickle.
29:20 Pablo Torre? Right.
29:20 Speaker 05 They're immediately going to go fetal position. The ball's going to sail out of bounds.
29:24 Pablo Torre? Think about the entire underwater world of water polo.
29:27 Speaker 05 Dr. Ishiyama even brought that up. He was like, it would change the sport.
29:31 Speaker 12 I have an idea. It's a, it's a water polo. Because the water polo, you don't see, you can't see underwater, really. That's why they're really like doing aggressive fighting underwater invisibly. But you could, you could tickle the other.
29:51 Pablo Torre? Your sport of wrestling.
29:52 Speaker 05 Collegiate wrestling. I mean, my God, how many NCAA titles would I have won?
29:56 Pablo Torre? Right. A new feeling to dropping the gloves in hockey, by the way.
30:00 Speaker 05 Yeah.
30:00 Pablo Torre? Would be when you drop them to tickle.
30:02 Speaker 05 You could tickle in horse racing. You could tickle in four by 100. If you're allowed to reach over and tickle your opponent so they can't catch the baton.
30:12 Pablo Torre? I just feel like everyone else needs to catch up.
30:15 Speaker 05 Well, yeah.
30:16 Pablo Torre? To the argument that is being made on this program.
30:18 Speaker 05 Yes. I, I feel like after this airs, there will be sports before this episode comes out and sports as we know it afterwards.
30:26 Pablo Torre? To the point where the strategy, the conversation will not be around tickling as offense. But obviously, how to play defense against this?
30:33 Speaker 05 Now that we've established that it can be used, that it's effective, we even found out for the next step, how do you play defense?
30:41 Pablo Torre? Against your big brother or an opposing professional athlete in any number of venues.
30:48 Speaker 05 Right, in over a dozen different sports. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, the science behind how you defend the tickle.
30:59 Speaker 12 When I read your email about application to wrestling, I immediately thought, yeah, what if a wrestler feels ticklish? That's gonna be very disturbing, very distracting, right? And how could we prevent that? Fortunately, we have an answer to that. So if you touch yourself, the somatocensory cortex activity goes down. If somebody touches you, the somatocensory cortex activity goes up. Meaning, if you apply both, it's gonna be flat because it's canceling out each other. This is very interesting phenomenon. But if you know the mechanism, it's very simple. It's just canceling out.
31:40 Pablo Torre? Dude is saying, when you're about to get tickled, what the tickle-ee should do is start to self-tickle.
31:48 Speaker 05 Yeah, we've just changed the lives of millions of little brothers, right? Because it's like, no, no, no! Bam, I'm tickling myself! Yep, yep, it's a defense!
31:58 Pablo Torre? It's kind of perfect.
31:59 Speaker 05 It is. I think it also proves how if there's a defense, then there must be...
32:04 Pablo Torre? It's also just like the schoolyard insult school of defense. It's like, before you call me ugly, I begin to call myself hideous.
32:15 Speaker 05 Yes!
32:16 Pablo Torre? And therefore, I am rubber and you are glue.
32:19 Speaker 05 It's the self-deprecation defense.
32:22 Pablo Torre? That's right. So now, as we take this back to where we started, what about Mason Lewis and Tim Fargo? And the whole [bleep] reason that we actually gathered here today?
32:37 Speaker 05 Don't you worry, Pablo. That's where we're going next? Straight to tickle town.
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34:00 Pablo Torre? So I feel like we should start with the tickle.
34:02 Speaker 05 Yes.
34:03 Pablo Torre? Because Tim Fargo, the guy who took the L in that match, in that fight, how hard was he to find?
34:10 Speaker 05 Not hard at all, in fact. Fights out of New York, and I was definitely not the first person to contact him about this viral incident.
34:19 Speaker 14 Well, everyone, for like the last year, every week, people have sent it, like, at least two people have sent it to me. So I've seen like every version of it so far.
34:29 Pablo Torre? And Fum, if you are half the journalist that I know and have hired you to be, there was a very important opening question.
34:37 Speaker 05 Oh, Pablo, I brought the Peabody heat right away in this interview. Like, scale of 1 to 10, how ticklish are you, do you think?
34:46 Speaker 14 Uh, I don't know, probably not much, like four, maybe.
34:52 Pablo Torre? So if he's like a four on the 10-point ticklish scale, wh- what was going on in that video?
35:01 Speaker 05 So even while it was happening, I think Tim was trying to figure that out as well.
35:06 Speaker 14 Once I noticed what he was doing, I was like, I kind of like looked back like, what, what's going on here? Even if it's not like tickling you, it's still mentally, you kind of takes you out of it for a second, right? You know, like, cause you're trying to figure out, you just start thinking about it instead of what you're supposed to be.
35:25 Pablo Torre? And I think that's the point. I just feel like this is the upshot. This thing worked. That's what Tim Fargo just told you on the record, finally. The question then becomes, if that's how the tickly felt, what about the tickler?
35:41 Speaker 05 Yeah, gotta go to the source. Gotta go to Mason Lewis, right? He's the final piece of this puzzle and he was so hard. Oh, he just did not make it easy on us.
35:52 Pablo Torre? The number of texts I sent Mason Lewis after you got stonewalled by Mason Lewis.
35:58 Speaker 05 Oh, not just Mason Lewis, his management, his gym, the people who supply him with merch, uh, family members. I mean, I, this, I went all in trying to track him down.
36:09 Pablo Torre? And the thought was, the fear was that the tickler would not want to come clean about his, his most distinguishing career.
36:20 Speaker 05 Right. And you know, so we sort of bought into the whole MMA hype of this was embarrassing. This is not good for the sport. Real men don't tickle.
36:31 Pablo Torre? Right. He's also like a 23-year-old, you know, he's, he's barely a pro.
36:35 Speaker 05 No, he's still an amateur. Yeah. Still an amateur. He's only fought eight times.
36:39 Pablo Torre? Right. Six and three is his record. Also fights out in New York. And so the question was, well, we have honestly just spent a year without getting the big payoff.
36:51 Speaker 05 Can we talk to the tickling rat expert in Germany and then not track down Mason Lewis? And then we put all of our PTFO minds together and we realized Mason had a fight coming up in Rochester, New York.
37:07 Pablo Torre? Yes, we had to send you on. Maybe the most luxurious assignment to date.
37:12 Speaker 05 Yeah. I kept thinking, what could be a worse assignment than death row in Texas? Well, yeah, Rochester, New York, for eight hours of amateur MMA fighting in the ballroom of the luxurious Wyndham Hotel in downtown Rochester. Thank you, Pablo.
37:33 Pablo Torre? Where dreams are made.
37:37 Speaker 05 Not just my dreams, because they had used the ballroom the night before for somebody's wedding reception. So this is, I have been all over the world. I've been to China, I've been to Super Bowls, Olympics. Yep, and there I was in the Wyndham Ballroom, waiting for the tickler.
37:56 Pablo Torre? Yes, last night, it was love. Tonight, it's war.
38:03 Speaker 05 All right, I made it. This is 15 minutes before fight time. Welcome to the Thunder Ballroom Dome.
38:14 Pablo Torre? It is otherwise carpeted.
38:16 Speaker 05 Yes.
38:17 Pablo Torre? There are folding chairs.
38:19 Speaker 05 I'm not exaggerating, yes. Think of a wedding ballroom that has a...
38:24 Pablo Torre? Generous points program in the lobby.
38:27 Speaker 05 Fighting cage in the middle, surrounded by chairs. There's a bar and a buffet and a humongous display from the local pot dispensary out in the hallway.
38:42 Pablo Torre? Perfect.
38:43 Speaker 05 Of course, the air conditioning is not working in the hallway, so it's an 80-degree melange of BO, dirty carpet, cannabis, and...
38:53 Pablo Torre? Hope.
38:54 Speaker 05 And hope, and hope. And so, I'm really glad I wanted to go. I'd never been to an MMA fight.
39:00 Pablo Torre? I was honestly fascinated by the dispatches you were live sending me.
39:04 Speaker 05 Yes, torturing you with. And my curiosity got the better of me, and then, once I sort of got comfortable, the athletes themselves, regardless of sort of what level this is, or what's going on there, the athletes themselves, lot of respect for actually getting into a cage to face another human in a fight.
39:23 Pablo Torre? Yes, yes.
39:24 Speaker 05 And so, once I got more comfortable, I was like, I'm gonna pick out the toughest guy tonight. And I'm going to try and tickle him, or at least ask him about tickling. And so about midway through the night, Cedric, I'm not making this up. Cedric Sexual Chocolate Ortiz.
39:40 Pablo Torre? That's his, that's his government name.
39:42 Speaker 05 His ring name. He won his 185 pound fight in under a minute by basically just punching another human in the face until submission. And so of course Sexual Chocolate is the guy who I decided to try to tickle. Outside of the box, like tickling, have you ever heard of someone tickling?
40:05 Speaker 15 My boy Mace. I still remember when he fought Tim Fargo and he had him in the triangle and started tickling. Yo, I was dying when I seen that video.
40:15 Speaker 05 But like, did you like it?
40:16 Speaker 15 Oh, it's bro. It's the art of war, man. It's the art of war. Like this is, this is not just like sad, sadistic brute force, man. It's like science out there, man. It's like, uh, we're not, we're not just fighters. I consider us scientists, experimentalists. We are not regular people. We are experimentalists.
40:34 Speaker 05 Okay, but are you ticklish? Like, would it work on you?
40:37 Speaker 15 I'm not gonna lie. I don't want, I don't know and I don't want to find out. Cause if somebody escapes by submission for me getting tickled, I'm probably gonna be a little embarrassed at the same time proud, cause I know it's a genius tactic.
40:49 Speaker 05 Come on, I'm gonna try it out right now.
40:51 Speaker 15 No, I'm not that ticklish.
40:53 Speaker 05 Thank you.
40:58 Speaker 05 Dude, career highlight unlocked.
41:01 Pablo Torre? The fact that Sexual Chocolate did not just actually gouge your eye out.
41:06 Speaker 05 Oh my God, he.
41:07 Pablo Torre? It's kinda shocking.
41:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, I, he, in fact, it was the opposite. He sort of scurried away, I think, looking for human resources. To, to report me. But who knew you could go to Rochester to find, what an amazing quote.
41:21 Pablo Torre? What a philosopher.
41:22 Speaker 05 Yeah.
41:22 Pablo Torre? What a philosopher king. What, what, what, what a, what a heat check. A journalistic heat check by Dave Leving. I also like how we obviously knew who you were talking about.
41:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, so clearly they.
41:35 Pablo Torre? My, my boy Mace.
41:36 Speaker 05 Yeah, and tickling, right, exactly. And just the fighters themselves could, could not have been better to talk about.
41:43 Pablo Torre? Without being too grandiose, it's like, this is what most sports. Is actually like.
41:49 Speaker 05 Right, that's a great point. The true alphas. And I learned this lesson over and over again. The true alphas are the ones that are totally cool to talk about anything having to do with their sport. It's guys like this who the minute the final bell rings, they hug each other and they're done being combatants and they're generally great guys who are very approachable. And he, I mean, it was funny the way he said it, but they are thinkers. They're trying to figure out different angles and new ways to approach their craft.
42:19 Pablo Torre? Yeah, and much like a German lab rat. They will let you tickle them.
42:25 Speaker 05 It did sound a little bit like bird chirping. He kinda did kinda go like that. It's like so.
42:30 Pablo Torre? So where, where is Mason Lewis? In the ballroom where it happens.
42:35 Speaker 11 And his opponent. With a record of five and three, fighting out of dope, perp, and still beat me on. Representing Bruton MMA. He stands at five foot seven, official weight of 135 pounds. He is Mason Lewis.
42:57 Speaker 05 Our boy Mason, Sexual Chocolate refers to him. He was the co-main event, so I had to sit through almost 20 other fights before we got to Mason coming into the ring. And as a courtesy, I didn't want to approach him until after the fight.
43:15 Pablo Torre? Again, like it was like approaching like a snow leopard almost. Like you didn't want to scare him off. He's a rare creature to encounter just in the wild.
43:22 Speaker 05 Right, cuz and we weren't sure what his reaction was gonna be. We weren't sure if he was gonna.
43:26 Pablo Torre? No, he'd been evading both of us.
43:28 Speaker 05 Right, for a long time. And so, yeah, I gave him the courtesy of waiting until after the fight and I didn't have to wait very long.
43:41 Speaker 11 Even into round number one, live here in Nigga's Dome, and new, I'm CP, Bexham Way Champion, Mason.
43:58 Speaker 05 Mason, basically, in the first minute of his fight, wins his first amateur belt with a chokeout, referee tapout, in one minute exactly. And I think exerted more energy jumping on top of the cage than he did, uh, winning this fight.
44:16 Pablo Torre? Which means that amid the crush of post-game press, enters Dave Fleming, PTFO correspondent.
44:24 Speaker 05 And then came the moment in Rochester where I, instead of hating you, I, I understood your genius. Because getting in front of Mason Lewis, getting him to talk, he, he couldn't have been more sort of thoughtful, more sort of introspective, more, he couldn't have been more open about why he tickled, how it worked, uh, all those questions we had been searching the world for a year to answer, he was more than happy to open up.
44:52 Speaker 16 So I'm very conscious in the cage. A lot of people just disassociate and they leave almost their mind, I want to say. I do a lot of meditation. I do at least an hour of meditation a day and I do journaling. I journal my entire life, how I want to perform each day at practice, how I want to sleep, how I want to eat, how I want to feel mentally. And I do a lot of journaling and, and meditating. And I feel like that allows me to be conscious in every moment of my life.
45:18 Pablo Torre? When I was 23, I was not sounding like that.
45:20 Speaker 05 Yeah, I, that, that really caught me off guard.
45:23 Pablo Torre? Like, dear diary, today, I scandalized the world of mixed martial arts by tickling my opponent's foot and upsetting him in a viral bout.
45:37 Speaker 16 In the cage, um, last year I distinctly remember. I don't know why, but I thought that he got me in that lock, in that, uh, reverse triangle, it's called.
45:44 Speaker 05 Right.
45:45 Speaker 16 And it wasn't choking me because he was choking, he was, he had the lock on the wrong side. And I couldn't break the lock with one hand. And I knew, people are ticklish. People let go. So I figured if I tickled his foot, he might let go.
45:58 Speaker 05 And he did let go. Yes. So there's our proof.
46:01 Pablo Torre? Oh my god, it couldn't have, he couldn't have been more premeditated intentional.
46:05 Speaker 05 Right. He just absolutely thought about it, went for it, and then felt for himself because he's the one with that guy's legs wrapped around his neck. That tickling is effective.
46:18 Pablo Torre? He's like, I got a couple moves here. I'm gonna go with the tickle.
46:22 Speaker 05 Yeah, and I do kinda love the theatrics of it too. And he, he mentions this about the sort of, the showmanship. We were in a boring position, let's make it fun. Because he did do the doink, doink, doink. I mean, yeah, he was very intentional.
46:36 Pablo Torre? And so the question is, is he at all ashamed? Like, what does this mean for Mason Lewis's future?
46:47 Speaker 05 Or more importantly, would you tickle again?
46:51 Speaker 16 A hundred percent.
46:51 Speaker 05 Okay.
46:52 Speaker 16 If that's what it takes, if that's what it takes. Yeah.
46:54 Speaker 05 Uh huh.
46:55 Pablo Torre? Yep. And that, that is when my, my content cortex started feeling like Don King.
47:02 Speaker 05 Oh yeah, we, we instantly went into matchmaking mode and was like, oh, we need to make this happen. Can I confirm at some point in the future, you're down for Tickle Fight 2?
47:13 Speaker 16 I'm down for Tickle Fight 2, yes.
47:14 Speaker 05 All right.
47:15 Speaker 16 Of course. I, uh, and I just wanna put this out there that I do, I love, I love watching Tim fight. I think he's a great fighter too.
47:21 Speaker 05 And he was, oh, but there's a key difference to Tickle Fight 2. This time, right? Tim Fargo has his own secret weapon.
47:29 Pablo Torre? He is apparently willing to do whatever it takes.
47:35 Speaker 05 Would you use that if you had to?
47:38 Speaker 14 I should do that if I could get him in a situation. If I could get him in a tickling position, then I would. If I could get him locked up. I would rather tickle someone and win than lose.
47:50 Pablo Torre? But there is an issue here. And this will really affect like the betting lines for a tickle fight, too.
47:58 Speaker 05 Mason Lewis doesn't just have one big brother. He's got three older stepbrothers and two older sisters. Mason Lewis is the youngest of six. Are you ticklish? Like, where'd you get the idea from?
48:12 Speaker 16 Very ticklish. Oh, my gosh. You could tickle me to death.
48:14 Speaker 05 Okay, okay. So wait, what if someone does it to you?
48:18 Speaker 16 Then I'm screwed.
48:20 Pablo Torre? It feels preordained in retrospect that the story would always end with the tickler becoming the tickly.
48:29 Speaker 05 Oh, see, this is great. You're already working on social media lines for the fight.
48:34 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the fight poster.
48:35 Speaker 05 Which is great, Pablo, because I already measured, um, out in the conference room. We could fit a cage in there. I've already measured it. We might have to move like the coffee machine and stuff like that, but we can fit a cage in there.
48:45 Pablo Torre? We don't have an HR department, so that's totally fine also.
48:48 Speaker 05 Yeah, so TF2 is like off and running. It's gonna be amazing.
48:53 Pablo Torre? PTFO TF2. Fully legal.
48:58 Speaker 05 PTFO TF2. This one's for the little brothers.
49:06 Pablo Torre? Where the last sound that you hear is...
49:23 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.
49:29 Pablo Torre? And I'll talk to you next time.
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