#125 – Ryan Hall: Martial Arts and the Philosophy of Violence, Power, and Grace

Ryan Hall is a jiu jitsu black belt, UFC fighter, and a philosopher of the martial arts. Please check out our sponsors to get a discount and to support this podcast: – PowerDot, use code LEX: https://powerdot.com/lex – Babbel: https://babbel.com and use code LEX – Cash App: download app & use code “LexPodcast” If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/podcast or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter https://twitter.com/lexfridman, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman/, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman, Medium https://medium.com/@lexfridman, or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/lexfridman where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1434243584, follow on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc6GTFvKFPXnkCL, or support it on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman. Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 0:00 – Introduction 7:22 – Greatest warrior in history 11:48 – Genghis Khan 17:32 – Nature is metal 21:49 – Cancel culture 36:11 – Sci-fi books and movies 44:50 – Essence of jiu jitsu 51:17 – Jiu jitsu is a language 1:01:12 – How to get started in jiu jitsu 1:14:01 – The value of a good coach 1:25:42 – Lex training with Ryan 1:31:06 – Toxicity on the internet 1:34:41 – Joe Rogan 1:42:25 – Alex Jones 2:07:02 – Donald Trump 2:09:45 – The American ideal 2:17:33 – What does it take to be a jiu jitsu black belt 2:49:06 – Elon Musk 2:57:39 – Fighting BJ Penn 3:04:13 – Conor McGregor 3:12:08 – How to beat Khabib Nurmagomedov 3:16:00 – Top MMA fighters of all time 3:24:41 – Mike Tyson 3:41:13 – Fear of death

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall, one of the most insightful minds and systems thinkers in the martial arts world. He's a black belt in jiu-jitsu, accomplished competitor, an MMA fighter undefeated in the UFC, and truly a philosopher who seeks to understand the underlying principles of the martial arts. Jiu-jitsu is such an important part of who I am, and I was hoping to share that with folks who might know me only as a researcher. I think there is no better person to do that with than Ryan, who somehow remarkably, I can say, is a friend and also a modern day warrior philosopher of the Miyamoto Masashi line of especially dangerous and brilliant humans.

• 0:42Lex Fridman?

  Also, his amazing wife, Jen Hall, was there as well. So if you hear a kind of voice of wisdom coming from above, you know who it is. Quick summary of the sponsors: Power Dot, Babbo, and Cash App. Please check out the sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that renaming this podcast to just my name gave me intellectual freedom that I really didn't anticipate was so empowering, especially for someone who's trying to find their voice. I hope you'll allow me the chance to really try and do that, to step outside of AI and even science, engineering, history, and so on.

• 1:23Lex Fridman?

  And on occasion, talk to athletes, musicians, writers, and maybe even comedians who inspire me, especially up and coming comedians and musicians like Eric Weinstein, who, yes, we'll do a third conversation with soon. I think if I allow myself to expand the range of these conversations on occasion, when I do return to science and engineering, I'll bring a new perspective and also a little bit more fun and a few extra listeners that may not otherwise realize how fascinating artificial intelligence, robotics, mathematics, and engineering truly is. All that said, please skip the episodes that don't interest you. You don't have to listen to all of them.

• 2:06Lex Fridman?

  Trust me, as someone who is a bit or a lot OCD, that idea is quite unpleasant. But life, friends, is full of unpleasant things. But as Hunter S. Thompson suggested, and I suggest as well, you should still buy the ticket and take the ride. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Fridman. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but I give you the timestamp, so please skip if you don't want to listen to the ads, but it does mean a lot to me when you do. And still, please do check out the sponsors by clicking on the links in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast.

• 2:52Lex Fridman?

  This show is sponsored by Power Dot. Get it at powerdot.com/lex and use code Lex at checkout to get 20% off. I use it for muscle recovery for legs and shoulders, but you can also use it to build muscle, endurance, or even just warm up. In fact, I first heard about this kind of electrical muscle stimulation device in reading that Bruce Lee used it. He was an inspiration to me as someone who practices first principles thinking, especially in a discipline where conventional thinking is everywhere. He created a martial art called Jeet Kune Do that is in many ways, at least philosophically in his hybrid approach, a precursor to modern day mixed martial arts. It's a special kind of deep philosophical thinking

• 3:36Lex Fridman?

  that combat athletes or jiu-jitsu practitioners do that is unlike any other. I think it's grounded in the humbling process of getting your ass kicked a lot that removes any illusion of intellectual superiority. I think the journey towards wisdom starts when you humbly admit to yourself that you know very little or almost nothing. Anyway, go to powerdot.com/lex and use code Lex at checkout to get 20% off on top of the 30 day free trial. This show is also sponsored by Babbel, an app and website that gets you speaking in a new language within weeks. Go to babbel.com and use code Lex to get three months free. They offer 14 languages,

• 4:19Lex Fridman?

  including Spanish, French, Italian, German, and yes, Russian. Let me read a few lines from a Russian song by Vladimir Vassotsky called "Ona byla v Pariži" that you'll start to understand if you sign up to Babbel. Наверное, я погиб. Глаза закрою, вижу. Наверное, я погиб. Арабею, а потом. Куда мне до нее? Она была в Париже. И я вчера узнал не только в нем одном. This song always made me smile because it resonates with my own life. It translates loosely to, she's been to Paris. Paris for a Russian, I suppose, symbolizing a fancy life. And that the guy can never quite fit into that kind of life. Expensive things, nice restaurants, cars, all of that. I was thinking about what song is equivalent in English.

• 5:04Lex Fridman?

  Maybe Uptown Girl by Billy Joel is similar in spirit, but very different in style. I just watched the video on YouTube for Uptown Girl. And it's basically Billy Joel dressed up as a mechanic, but dancing in a way that I'm pretty sure no mechanic has ever danced. Turning the old cringe factor up to 11. Anyway, I always felt like I didn't really fit in with the fancy people. And that's what this song represents. But back to Babbel. Get started by visiting babbel.com and use code Lex to get three months free. This show is presented by the great, the powerful, the OG sponsor, named unofficially after one of my favorite musicians, the man in black, Johnny Cash. That's Cash App, the number one finance app in the App Store.

• 5:49Lex Fridman?

  When you get it, use code Lex Podcast. The Cash App folks are truly amazing people and are teaming with ideas for cool contests, giveaways, and all that kind of stuff. I've been thinking of doing some kind of little contest and giving away 42 bucks to a bunch of people who win. It's not so much about the money, but the glory and the delicious taste of victory. If you have ideas for contests, let me know. I was thinking of something like asking people to submit funny, inspiring photos or videos or audio of using Cash App or any of the sponsors of this podcast, really. Or maybe even just funny things related to the podcast, like different weird places you might be watching or listening to me right now.

• 6:34Lex Fridman?

  I'm pretty sure there's somebody out there right now, sitting in a hot tub with some wine, watching me say this. I salute you, sir or madam. I may be opening up some floodgates I deeply regret later. So please make sure you're wearing clothes and whatever you sent me. There will be no naked people in the hot tub as part of this podcast. I have integrity and standards. Let me know in the comments what ideas for contests you might have. Again, if you get Cash App from the App Store or Google Play and use the code LexPodcast, you get $10 and Cash App will also donate $10 to FIRST, an organization that is helping to advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world.

• 7:17Lex Fridman?

  And now here's my conversation with Ryan Hall.

• 7:39Lex Fridman?

  Who in your view is the greatest warrior in history, ancient or modern?

• 7:44Speaker 01

  That's a tough question. And again, I'm no historian by any measure. So I'll probably do the worst. It's like, what are your best bands ever? I'm like Metallica and you know, so I'll pick the-

• 7:55Lex Fridman?

  Metallica just came out with a new album, by the way, with the entire orchestra.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  That's kind of cool.

• 7:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  That's important.

• 8:00Lex Fridman?

  Metallica will always be one of the greatest.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were a bad example. They were a well-known, yet awesome band. Let me say it's like Nickelback or something like that. But I feel that feels cheap because everyone makes fun of Nickelback.

• 8:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  I don't know. I guess it depends on how you want to define warrior. Something that I think about when it comes to trying to evaluate various people or situations or things that I've read about or heard about are the circumstances that they were involved in. Because I think a lot of times it's easy to look at the outcomes. And obviously outcome, we live in an outcome-driven world and you know, outcomes do matter. But at the same time, like, you know, you look at, let's say what Cuba's been able to pull off, you know, from a combat sports perspective. It's staggering, you know, like the amount of successful Olympic-level competitors they have in wrestling, boxing, judo. I mean, they're a tiny little island with no money and no people. It's shocking, you know, when you can, you think about the Olympics and the United States doing well. Of course, we should do well.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  I mean, Russia should do well, China should do well. India should do better than they do, honestly. Obviously, it means like they're not into it as much, or at least certain sports, because they have the resources people-wise. So talent's not going to be an issue.

• 9:07Lex Fridman?

  So there's something to like where- The starting point is like that's the argument with like why people say Maradona. I don't know if you're into.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:16Lex Fridman?

  Big soccer.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:18Lex Fridman?

  They say Maradona is is better than Messi because he basically carried the team and and won the World Cup with the team that wouldn't otherwise win the World Cup. And then Messi was only successful in Barcelona because he has like superstars. He's playing with other superstars.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, that's fair to say. I mean, like, like, you know, there's there's a lot of factors that go into, let's say, winning a winning a soccer game and, you know, obviously Barcelona, you know, particularly for various points in time at a ridiculous all star squad of world class players. But um, and I, you know, let's say, for instance, maybe they didn't have the creative players in in Argentina, they needed to get the ball up to Messi, you know, they didn't have like the N E S, the and, you know, the, you know, the, again, the backing there in the midfield. But um, because obviously Argentina's always had ridiculous attacking players, like even alongside Messi, but they're like the three killers up front and then little less behind.

• 10:08Lex Fridman?

  So it's interesting. You say that depends how you define warrior, because you can probably take like some of the civil rights leaders. You you can go into that direction, like leaders in general. But if we just look at like the greatest martial artists in history in that direction, do you have somebody in mind?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  I I would say at least three, three that pop into my head and would be Hannibal, Alexander the Great, and then maybe Miyamoto Musashi. You know, the two commanders and then one, you know, guy, but uh, so it's it's it's interesting. And then again, you mentioned warriors being able to make a lot out of a little. You know, Musashi is famous for winning duels, you know, that were oftentimes one other were one on one. You know, the Alexander and Hannibal were, you know, military commanders and one of them faced Rome. And that was an interesting thing. Oftentimes, you know, coming up with novel tactics, different strategies, sometimes under resourced, doing having to do novel and crazy things.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  There's skin in the game. That's an interesting thing, too. I think a lot of times, you know, it's a if you're playing a video game, I don't think you can be a warrior because there's there's no skin in the game. You get hurt, you lose, and it's a bummer. It stings a little bit, maybe it makes you feel slightly disappointed, but uh. You know, Musashi loses, he loses. Hannibal loses, he loses. Alexander loses, he loses. And they lose. I guess the people around them lose. So that's almost like you could use, even from a combat sports perspective, Muhammad Ali. I mean, you consider also their quality of opposition. Musashi was fighting high-quality opposition. Obviously Hannibal and Alexander, particularly Hannibal, were fighting unbelievable opposition. Muhammad Ali fought phenomenal opposition, but he had skin in the game, both in the ring and out. And that actually meshes

• 11:45Speaker 01

  with, as you mentioned, like a civil rights, you know, type of situation where you are under-resourced, you're pushing the stone uphill. And that was a neat thing, I think, about Muhammad Ali was how much, you know, personal conviction the man had to have in order to pull off what he was able to pull off, both in and outside of the ring. And that reminds me of, again, some of the other great leaders and great fighters throughout history.

• 12:06Lex Fridman?

  So what do you make of the kind of very difficult idea that some of these conquerors, like Alexander the Great, and somebody that, if you listen to Hardcore History, oh, Dan Carlin, who apparently Elon Musk is also a big fan of, is the Genghis Khan episode?

• 12:26Lex Fridman?

  You know, a large percent of the world is, can call Genghis Khan an ancestor. So the difficult truth is about some of these conquerors is that there's a lot of murder and rape and pillage and stealing of resources and all that kind of stuff. And yet, they're often remembered as quite honorable. I mean, in the case of Genghis Khan, there's a lot of people who argue, if you look at the, historically, the way it's described, in full context, is he was ultimately, like, given the time, he was a liberator. He was

• 13:11Lex Fridman?

  a progressive, I should say. You know, like, in terms of the violence and atrocities he committed, he, at least in the stories, has always provided the option of not to do that. It's only if you resist do, you basically have the option. Do you want to join us? Or do you want to die? And die horribly? And so that's the progressive sort of, that's the Bernie Sanders of the era.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 13:39Lex Fridman?

  So what do you make of that? That there's so much... Of these great conquerors, there's so much murder that to us now would just seem insane.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  It's funny you mention it. I think that maybe it's a human nature thing that we want to, or you know, maybe, or maybe a misunderstanding thing that we want to cast all of our characters and ourselves, maybe as entirely good or as entirely negative when, you know, I guess the phrase or the saying, you know, one man's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist is accurate. And a lot of times I think you can understand as long as you're able to look from various people's perspective. Like if you look at the TV show The Wire, which was obviously, you know, widely, everybody loves The Wire. I thought that there were, everyone, I'm not saying anything that's, that's not been said before, compelling characters from all angles, whether you like the character, dislike the character,

• 14:31Speaker 01

  you were able to understand the motivations of people doing various things, even if they did wrongly, they did rightly. You know, we want to cast all of the demons throughout history as completely inhuman when I think that makes it difficult for us to understand them. And we want to look back at, at the people that we think of as great and entirely great. And I think that we're, you know, we're experiencing the problems with this, you know, even right now socially and politically, as we're trying to look back and decide the people we thought were good are not good, or people we thought were bad are now good, rather than going, hey, there's, there's good and bad to all things. And there are, as you mentioned, the Genghis Khan thing, you don't have to fight back. You do, I respect you for it, but then we're gonna have a conflict and then we'll see what happens.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  And if you lose, you're gonna be sorry that you did because I have to make it that way if I want to continue utilizing this, this kind of MO, because I need to discourage the next guy from doing what you're doing right now. And ultimately though, I guess that's an interesting thing. Imagine you put every single person on planet Earth in a cage. Crime drops, you know, all sorts, there are certain positives to that. And I, it's just. Things are as they are. It's difficult, but that is ultimately more the law of the jungle. And I think that we're able to supersede some of that now in modern times. And I think we're fortunate, but as you mentioned, we look back and say, oh, this is horrible. Say, no, that that just is what it is. That's how life is at a base level.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  And, you know, again, if you're a lion and I'm a gazelle, I don't, I don't really like it very much. But we don't call the lion the bad guy. We don't sanctify the gazelle or the other way around. So it's just, it's interesting when you pull back some of the controls that we put on our behavior. And, you know, in modern life, which I think are generally speaking positive, you know, we get down to how things often are. And at the same time, we could, modern life was built by people like Genghis Khan. So then you get down to the ends justifying the means. It's a tough question. These aren't things with easy answers, or at least if they are, I certainly don't have the, the smarts to figure out the answers to them. But, uh, it's, it's difficult. I would just say people in the world are, are complicated and layered.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  And depending upon which side of the line you're standing on at various times, you know, um, you may like or dislike someone. But I can't remember, uh, it's, I can't remember whose, whose idea it was. This is killing me. But it's the veil of ignorance, I guess, um, the philosophical, you know, um, you know, idea of the veil of ignorance where I go is, is sticking everyone in the cage, the right thing to do, and I say, or everyone but me. And I say, well, no, why? Well, it would make my life easier if I just went over and took all of your stuff as long as you couldn't stop me. I mean, of course, that's a great idea. That's what everyone does in every video game. But, uh, in Skyrim, you steal stuff when people aren't around. But, um, ultimately you go, well, this isn't the right thing to do because if I were on the other side of it, I would, I would not appreciate it. It's, it's inherently not a good thing to do. I'm only doing it because I think I'm going to win.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And that's a fine way to be, but you don't have the white hat on, I guess I would say. So I, I think without those philosophical underpinnings to rein us in, you know, I guess morally speaking, it's, it's very difficult to say what's right or wrong. And you'd say certain actions have a reaction, almost like a physics sense. If you kill everyone in your way for as long as you're able to, your life will be easier. I mean, you're setting the table for someone doing the same to you when you're no longer the tough guy, but it is what it is.

• 17:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. If you look at like the Instagram channel, nature is metal. It hurts my heart to watch, to remind me, a comfortable descendant of ape, how vicious nature is, just unapologetically.

• 18:09Lex Fridman?

  Just, I mean, there's a, there's a process to it where the bad guy always wins. The, the violence is the solution to most problems. Or the flip side of that, running away from violence is the solution, depending on your skillset. And it's funny to think of us humans with our extra little piece of brain that we're somehow trying to figure out, like you said, in a philosophical way, how to supersede that, how to like move past the viciousness, the cruelty, the, just the cold exchange of nature. But perhaps it's not so, maybe that is nature, maybe that's the way of life, maybe we're

• 18:52Lex Fridman?

  trying too hard to, uh, we're, we're being too egotistical and thinking we're somehow separate from nature, we're somehow distant from that very thing.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I think actually Orson Scott Card, you know, was the writer of a great book called Ender's Game, um, was, this was a, a statement that, that the main character, you know, Ender, uh, made in the book. His brother was brilliant, um, his brother was like, kind of sociopathic, brilliant kid that was, ended up kicked out of the school that they were all into for Battle Commander. Dealing with his brother taught him that ultimately strength, courage, the ability to do violence, for all the good and the bad of that, is one of the fundamental, most important things to be able to do in life, because if you can't cause destruction, if you can't cause pain, you will be forever subject to those who can. And I think that you mentioned egotism, I think that that, that's a disease that could obviously strike any of us, but it's something that we're looking at now, we're, you know,

• 19:48Speaker 01

  I think we should be unbelievably thankful as people that live in the world that, that we do, um, that we can walk down the street without having to worry that, I'm like, well, don't worry, that, that six foot six, 270 pound person over there is just gonna leave me alone. And I have a Rolex on, but whatever, I'll be fine, because that person's deciding to leave me alone, because we've all agreed to live in this relatively, you know, sane and or, you know, constrained society, because it benefits all of us, and we're doing it because of a philosophical underpinning, not because nature dictates it be that way, because nature dictates it go in a very, very different direction. And the only person, the only thing stopping that person from doing something to me is either me, that person, or someone else that will stand in between us. And if I can't do it, and there's no one there to stand in between us, then...

• 20:33Speaker 01

  The only thing stopping that person is that person and I have to hope that they're either disinterested or disinclined to do that sort of thing. And I think that, you know, it's keeping in mind that that is the fundamental nature of the world, whether we like it or not, is important. And I think the the quest to fundamentally alter human nature is going to be ultimately fruitless. And then also, it's it is a little bit egotistical. A lion does what a lion does, you know, we we can try to box it in and we can try to, you know, guide this direction, that direction. But, you know, that nature is as it is and as it always will be unless we want to start to constrain it significantly. But now I'm starting to get into individual rights. Who put me in charge? Who says that I should be the one to make the choices constraining? Because many of the most awful

• 21:18Speaker 01

  things that have happened throughout history, one group or one person has decided to constrain others. And we don't like Genghis Khan doing that. Well, I'll do that on a little level. Are there going to be benefits and beneficiaries? Absolutely. But there'll be losers in that too. So I guess it's a it's a dangerous game. It's almost like putting on the one ring. Remember when Frodo offered the one ring to Gandalf? And Gandalf said, No, no, I would take it away. I would put it on. I would use it out of the desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power so terrible, you can't imagine. I think that's that's the big question for anyone that decides that's able to have reach and able to have power. I mean, obviously, I can't speak to that. But imagine you did have national

• 21:58Speaker 01

  level, global level power. How would you use it? Would you try to change the world? Would you be glad that you did on a lion? I don't know.

• 22:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's a I mean, that's the thing we're struggling now as a society. Maybe it'd be nice to get your quick comment on that, which is the people who have traditionally been powerless are now, you know, seeking a fair society, a more equal society. And

• 22:25Lex Fridman?

  In in attaining more power justly, there's also a realization, at least from my perspective, that power corrupts everyone, even if you're even if the flag you wave is that of of justice. Right. And so, you know, not to overuse the term, but it'd be nice if you have thoughts about the whole idea of cancel culture and the internet and Twitter and so on, where there's nuanced, difficult discussions of of race, of gender, of fairness, equality,

• 23:08Lex Fridman?

  justice, all of these kinds of things. There's a shouting down oftentimes of nuanced discussion of kind of trying to reason through these very difficult issues through our history, through what our future looks like. Do you have thoughts about the internet discourse that's going on now? Is there something positive?

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:31Lex Fridman?

  That we can pull out of this?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  It's an interesting thing to see. I guess, as you mentioned, anytime you're wielding power, whomever you are, doing so carefully is important. And it's very, very easy to look at the people that have power and that are using it poorly, or have used it poorly and go, hey, you're the bad guy. And then go, well, of course, if I had power, I'll use it properly. And I may intend to use it properly, and maybe I will. But at the same time, we see a lot of times, people are people are people. I think that a lot of the I think if you if you believe that that human beings are all one, which I do, you know, no matter whether you're here, you're there, you're you're you got two arms, two legs, a heart, a brain, we all live a similar experience, you know, and obviously

• 24:18Speaker 01

  with variations on a theme. But, you know, you're no less a human being if you're a person I've never met from China than than some person in Virginia. It's we're all we're all people. And I guess ultimately, if I believe that human beings are corruptible, and that power corrupts, and that we're all fallible, and we say and do things that either intentionally or unintentionally, that we wish we'd not.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  I think that I have to allow for a space, I guess, with the word, it's almost a religious term, but I guess I would just say grace. And that's something that I see disappearing from discourse in the public, or maybe it wasn't there, I'm not sure, but it's interesting, you know, watching this occur on the internet, because also now, no longer are you and I just having a talk, sitting on a, on a bus stop. It's now in writing, everything's in writing. The old, the old saying, like, don't put that in writing. You're like, don't put anything in writing. That's how you get in trouble. And basically, uh, you know, with, with the degree to which everything is recorded, but recorded in tiny little bites, it's very, very easy for me to wave every last little foolish, ignorant, incorrect, or correct thing that someone has ever said or done in their face to support whatever argument that I'm

• 25:26Speaker 01

  trying to make about them or a, or a situation. And I, I think that you mentioned cancel culture, or, you know, as it seems to exist. Obviously, this is poisonous. On its face, this is poisonous. Um, it's, it's the sort of thing that doesn't incentivize proper behavior. I mean, you look at, let's say, one of the great monsters of history, Adolf Hitler, obviously, who's done awful, awful things, but also, for anyone that's a, even a minor student of history, did some positive things as well. We don't have to, I don't have to embroider this person's crimes. I don't have to act as if there was nothing good a monster has ever done, and nothing bad that, that a great person throughout history has ever done. But imagine the ghost of Adolf Hitler were to pop up and go, oh

• 26:08Speaker 01

  my gosh, guys, I'm so sorry. I, I know what I've done, but I'd like to apologize and start to make it right. Well, I mean, you'd hope that, you know, if he popped up over here, you go, well, I don't really like what you've done. And I don't like you, but at the same time, I'm glad to hear that you're attempting to make this right and push in a positive direction, even if you can't make it right. Because otherwise, what am I doing? I'm disincentivizing change for the better. I'm, I'm looking to wield whatever power I have in a punitive fashion, um, which does not encourage people to do anything other than double down on, on the wrongs that they've made, knowing that at least they're going to have some support from the people that support that. And I, I guess I want to, you, you would hopefully look at the use of the internet as a, as a tool that can educate, and I guess that, I don't like the word empower, but empower people.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  To do various things, extend their reach, but uh but educate and learn rather than to further solidify little tribal things that it exists, which I think everyone in humanity and human history is is vulnerable to. I mean, look at the course of human history. It's deeply tribal. And the tribes or the groups that have been on top at various points in time have done a lot of times bad things to the ones that have not. And you'd hope that we can learn lessons from the past and rather than, you know, committing the crimes that were, you know, that were committed against us, recommitting them when we slide into the top position, um say, you know, I could do this now, but I'll not, you know, I understand the urge to to seek vengeance is strong of anyone that says differently. I don't I wouldn't trust, you know, but at the same time, we go I've

• 27:37Speaker 01

  we we have enough experience in history, enough experience in life, enough, hopefully wisdom, you know, time in to go, this isn't the right answer. This is only going to replay the things, the the worst parts of our history, not the best. And I want to encourage positive behavior. And if I just, again, further lash out at people, although understandably, uh done done understandably, I'm I'm simply just going to just perpetuate the cycle that's gone on to this point. So you hope that even though we're seeing a lot of a lot of turmoil societally at the moment and globally at the moment, that uh, I guess our better angels can prevail at a certain point, but it's going to take a great deal of leadership. And I think that we're, we're sorely missing like a Martin Luther King style character at the moment, or a great leader. And I just, I'm hoping that one will show up.

• 28:22Lex Fridman?

  For sure. And by the way, a word I don't hear often, and I think it's a beautiful one, which is grace. That's a really interesting word. I'm gonna have to think about that. It is, it, there is a religious component to it, but it's exactly right. It um, you have to somehow walk the line between, you know, you mentioned Hitler. I've been reading uh, the rise and fall of the Third Reich. I'm really thinking about the 1930s.

• 28:50Lex Fridman?

  And what it's like to have economic, my concern is the economic pain that people are feeling now quietly is really a suffering that's not being heard. And there's echoes of that in the twenties and the thirties with the Great Depression. And there's a hunger for a charismatic leader. Like you said, there's a leader that could walk with grace, could inspire, could bring people together with sort of dreams of a better future. That's positive. But Hitler did exactly everything that I just said, except

• 29:31Lex Fridman?

  for the word positive, which is he did give a dream to the German people who were a great people, who are great people of a better future. It's just that a certain point that quickly turned into the better future requires literally expansion of more land. It started with, well, if we want to build a great Germany, we need a little bit more land. And so we need to kind of get Austria, then we need to kind of get France, mostly because France doesn't understand that more land is really useful. So we need to get rid of them. And look what they did to us in Versailles, anyway.

• 30:16Lex Fridman?

  But so the Jewish, the Holocaust is a separate thing. I don't know. Well, I don't know. I don't know what to think of it. Because so me being Jewish and having a lot of the echoes of the suffering is in my family, of the people that are lost. I don't know, because Hitler wrote all about it in Mein Kampf. So I don't know if the evil he committed was there all along. I mean, and that, that's where the question of forgiveness. I mean, Hitler is such a difficult person to talk about, but it's the question of, on cancel culture,

• 31:01Lex Fridman?

  who is deserving of forgiveness and who is not? Like, the Holocaust survivors that I've read about, that I've heard the interviews with, they've often spoken about the fact that the way for them to let go, to overcome the atrocities that they've experienced, is to forgive. Like, forgiveness is the way out for them. It's interesting to think about. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if we're even a society ready to even contemplate an idea of forgiveness for Hitler. It's, it's an interesting idea, though. It was, it's a good thought exercise, at the very least,

• 31:44Lex Fridman?

  to think about, like, all these people that are being canceled for doing bad things of different degrees. Think of, like, Louis CK or somebody like that for being not a good person. But like, what is the path for forgiveness?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  And also, what's a good person?

• 32:01Lex Fridman?

  What is a good person?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  If that's a sliding scale, that we could all find ourselves looking at the uncomfortable end of a gun on, you know, particularly down the line. I mean, you hope for the best, but these definitions, I guess, like you said, are important. And who's doing the canceling? Who's being canceled? I'm not necessarily, as you said, saying that that's entirely unjustified, or certainly not, it's certainly understandable. And particularly, you mentioned, like, a monster like an Adolf Hitler. But it's also interesting, I couldn't help but notice, like, you mentioned, as a society, us being able to apply forgiveness to someone who's done so much harm. But people who are personal, I mean, of course, mentioning that so many people are personally affected, but directly personally affected, someone, a survivor of the Holocaust, being able to let go on that. I'm nowhere near a big enough person for that sort of thing.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  But I guess that's, that's an interesting thing. You know, being the person who was physically there, potentially able to, able to let go.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  I don't know, that's unbelievably powerful. It's interesting. I guess you have to wonder sometimes, and this is obviously in regards to that, to the Holocaust, but why, why I'm holding on to various things? Have I, what is it doing for me and what is it doing to me? Is it facilitative, is it not? And I guess that's something else that I really enjoy. When I was on Ultimate Fighter, they, they don't let you have any music or any books, other than religious texts. So I brought a Bible and I brought a Quran and I started to read them side by side. And it was, it was really interesting reading. Bible was a little drier, Quran's, Quran's more interesting, it's rewritten. But I, I think something that, that was consistently brought up was the way most merciful. People want, I don't think any of us want justice.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  We think we want justice, but I don't think we want justice. Justice is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous game. Because maybe this person's wronged me deeply and I, I want justice. I want to balance it out because what is justice if not a balancing of the scales? And sometimes you can understand it and on a societal level, I think it's fine. I mean, there's crime and punishment and we can go for the benefits and the drawbacks of that. But I think what any of us want is mercy within reason. You know, grace, as you mentioned, because justice is a very, very, very dangerous thing. And it's a valuable and important thing, but who gets to decide what's just? What justice is actually meted out? Maybe I get to mete out justice, but it's not, I don't get my comeuppance. Well, that sounds great, but what happens when it's pointed back at me? And I, I guess that comes back to the veil of ignorance.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  You know, the idea that, that one day I will have to live in the world in which I've envisioned and the world in which I've created. I, I think that a lot of times people love the idea of they're a judge for your crimes and a lawyer for theirs. And I heard that the other day. I thought that was great. And I, I think that's a, that's a dangerous thing. And hopefully it gives us all pause before rightly or wrongly, but always understandably, you know, wielding, wielding serious power.

• 34:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, justice is a kind of drug. So if you look at history, also been reading a lot about Stalin. I mean, all those folks really, I don't know, I don't know what was inside Hitler's head, actually. That he's a tricky one because I think he was legitimately insane. Stalin was not. And Stalin was like, he literally thought he's doing a good thing.

• 35:12Lex Fridman?

  He literally thought for the entirety of the time that communism is going to bring, like that's the utopia and is going to create a happy world. And in his, in his mind were ideas of justice, of fairness, of happiness, of, of, yeah, human flourishing. And that's, that's a drug and it's somehow sadly pollutes the mind. When you start thinking like that, what's good for society? And believing that you have a good sense of what's good for society, that's intoxicating, especially when others around you are feeling the same way.

• 35:54Lex Fridman?

  And then you start like building up this movement and you forget that you are just like, you're, you're like barely recently evolved from an ape. Like you don't know what the hell you're doing. And then you start like killing witches or whatever, like you start, you start doing- They did math. Let's be honest though. I mean, sometimes you got a witch has to go. Yeah, we can all agree that a witch, a witch has to go. If, if it floats or sinks, which one, I forget which one- Which, whichever one we needed at the time, honestly. If it's floating, it should have sunk. Uh, yeah, but yeah, we can definitely agree that witches have to go. Because you brought it up, I tweeted recently, but also just, I'm, one of the things I'm really ashamed of in my life is

• 36:38Lex Fridman?

  I haven't really read almost any of the sci-fi classics, really. Yeah, so like I, my whole journey through reading was through like the literary philosophers, I would say, like Camus, Hesse, Dostoevsky, Kafka, like that place. Like that's a kind of sci-fi world in itself, but it's, it just-

• 37:04Lex Fridman?

  It creates a world in which the the deepest questions about human nature can be explored.

• 37:13Lex Fridman?

  I didn't realize this, but the sci fi world is the same. It just puts it in a, it like removes it from any kind of historical context to where you can explore those same ideas in like space somewhere elsewhere in a different time, a different place. It allows you almost like more freedom to like construct these artificial things where you can just do crazy, uh, crazy kind of human experiments. So I'm now working through it. The books on my list are the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, Dune,

• 37:47Lex Fridman?

  Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson and Ender's Game, like you mentioned. That's just kinda, and then, so I posted that and then of course, like Elon Musk, John Carmack, I don't know if you know him, creator of Doom and Quake.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 38:02Lex Fridman?

  See, they all pitched in, these nerds, these ultra nerds just started like going like these, uh, you need to read this, that and the other. So I've like started working out, okay. But it seems like the list I've mentioned holds up somewhat. Is there a book, is there sci fi books or series or authors that, that you find are just amazing? Maybe another way to ask that is like, what's the greatest sci fi book of all time?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Well, I'd like to start by, uh, sharing something that I, I'm embarrassed about. Is that I haven't read anything other than, uh, you know, Orson Scott Card, J R Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Tolkien.

• 38:45Lex Fridman?

  Dune.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, I'm, I'm aware through Wikipedia and through, through surface reading of things that like a book called The Republic was written once. Um, there were some other, a mother.

• 38:57Lex Fridman?

  Do you read Wikipedia? You're a prolific reader of Wikipedia articles.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Well.

• 39:01Lex Fridman?

  Or occasional.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. In between, uh, whatever else it is that I waste my time on, but.

• 39:08Lex Fridman?

  But yeah, so I also, I should say, I posted on Reddit, questions for, uh, Ryan Hall, and there's like a million questions. But like, uh, half of them have to do with Dune. No, not really, but like, people bring up Dune. I don't understand why I, did you mention Dune before?

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Well, I actually, we actually have a show you roll actually made us a gee, a Dune themed gee one time, which I thought was kind of cool. I'll send you, I'll give you one. We got extras.

• 39:31Lex Fridman?

  Awesome.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  But, uh, actually to your, to your point, actually, uh, this is a Orson Scott card quote, actually the writer of Enders Game. Um, fiction, because it's not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility about, of being about oneself. And I, I think that's a neat thing because I, I have heard, you know, other, other people whom I respect and are very sharp people. Actually, every now and then dig their heels and go in, I don't like fiction. I only like nonfiction. It's more, it's more instructive and I would go, I completely disagree with that. I think we have a hard enough time figuring out what happened at seven 11, three hours ago, that, let me tell you what happened 600 years B.C. I'm like, hey, I'm interested, but don't tell me this isn't a story too.

• 40:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  There's, there's, there's actual, there's factual components, I have no doubt, but we struggle sometimes to, like, I guess what I like about fiction is that you can tell me a story. It's all about people. I mean, every now, there's more and less believable things. Um, and I think Dune would be an unbelievably well-written, in my opinion, for order, you know, what do I know? But I really like Dune, I'll say that. Uh, well-written example of, you know, human beings interacting with one another, the political component to that, the emotional, the intellectual, um, the relationship components, all of that. And, uh, I, I think that Dune is neat because it's a sci-fi novel, but only in the, only in the loosest sense.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  It's, it's really a story about religion, about group dynamics, about human potential, about, um, belief, learning, politics, governance, ecology. It's, uh, the, the best stories remind me of history, the same way history hopefully is not just a, a list of. That I try to be able to recall or factoids that I try to recall, but a story that I can understand and see how how the threads of time kind of came together and created certain things. And a lot of times, like we say, I'm like, ah, how the heck is what's going on right now? Or 100 years from now, or 100 years in the past happened? And you can look back far enough, if we had accurate knowledge, if we had that like that hypothetical, perfect pool shot, you

• 41:28Speaker 01

  know, at the beginning of time, we would see an unbroken chain of events that led us to where we are and and where we are will potentially lead us to where we're going, which is again, why hindsight's helpful. But I think it's neat. Like, I guess I really enjoy, for instance, a book like Dune, and they're actually making a movie out of it, which I'm skeptical of, to be honest, because it's it's going to be difficult to to bring that to the screen for a variety of reasons. But one of those

• 41:49Lex Fridman?

  There's at least 100 questions. Ask Ryan what he thinks about the new Dune movie.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  I am not enough of an authority to have any sort of decent opinion. But I guess what I would say is so much of it goes on in the character's mind. Like, how much of any of our days is any lived experience, as it were, is internal? The majority? How many times are people walking around? And, you know, they can you could like, hey, what do you see right now? I'm like, oh, well, I see this picture. I see a wall. Hey, there's Lex. But really, what was what I was paying attention to was what was going on inside of my head for a moment, and almost the rest of the world tuned out and kind of dimmed. And I guess that I think that's going to be a struggle to anytime you want to bring that type of a written story to to a visual medium. I think it's going to be more difficult. But it'll be interesting. It's definitely my one of my favorite

• 42:36Speaker 01

  stories. And it's been it's honestly helped me become better at life, in my opinion, better at martial arts. And I think the writer, I think Frank Herbert was absolutely brilliant, whether those were all his ideas, which in reality, none of us or all of our good ideas aren't ours, were a combination. Maybe came up something you're a curator of other good ideas and some things you borrowed from somewhere without even realizing it. But I think the way the messages and the themes and the ideas that were conveyed, particularly in the original novel, are just absolutely brilliant.

• 43:04Lex Fridman?

  Is that to you one of the greats? And and the flip side of that like, or another way to ask that is like, if somebody is new to sci fi, is that something you would recommend? That that is an entry point?

• 43:16Speaker 01

  I'm not well read enough in the sci fi world. I haven't written a lot of like Isaac Asimov or anything like that, but I just, I'll recommend Dune. I'll be an obnoxious like evangelist for Dune to anyone who will listen. So I, yeah, I would strongly recommend it.

• 43:27Lex Fridman?

  So the other thing you mentioned, now I should probably be talking to you about much more important things. But the other thing you mentioned is Skyrim. Do you play video games? What's your favorite game? What's, what would you say is the greatest video game of all time? Cause I'm a huge fan of Elder Scrolls.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. Yeah, I, I mean, I play a little bit at this point, you know, a little, little less. Finally moved into a new house, so.

• 43:51Lex Fridman?

  So you're like an adult?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  No, oh, no, no, I'm like a better funded 12 year old. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's entirely, that's entirely accurate, better funded 12 year old. But somewhat better funded 12 year old, not as well funded as I wish.

• 44:06Lex Fridman?

  But historically, did you play video games?

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I played as a kid and I was, you know, again, I've always liked playing sports and liked reading and I always enjoyed video games. But my favorite video game I think I've ever played was Knights of the Old Republic. It was a Star Wars game, a huge Star Wars fan until it become less so, so recently, Disney.

• 44:25Lex Fridman?

  You don't like the, I haven't watched it yet. Oh, Mandalorian?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, actually, I like Mandalorian. That was, that was actually pretty cool, yeah.

• 44:31Lex Fridman?

  Waving this off.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:33Lex Fridman?

  Canceled.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I will, if I could cancel one thing, I would cancel Disney Star Wars.

• 44:37Lex Fridman?

  I'm gonna edit that part out. Okay, let's go to the next. But this is where if people are wondering, if you're watching this on YouTube and like the dislike amount is like 80% is because of that comment. So good job, good job for making the internet hate you.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  I regret nothing.

• 44:53Lex Fridman?

  Now, what about Baby Yoda?

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess he's like, he's little, he's got ears and he uses the force sometimes and he passes out. I get no, no qualms with Baby Yoda, yeah.

• 45:03Lex Fridman?

  You don't have a heart, okay.

• 45:08Lex Fridman?

  Let's go to Jiu Jitsu, if it's okay.

• 45:12Lex Fridman?

  So the audience of this podcast may not know much about Jiu Jitsu. Or they do, because it's really part of the culture now, but they don't really know much. They see that so many people have fallen in love with it, have been transformed through it, but they don't know much about like, what is this thing? Is there a way you could sort of try to explain the, what is jiu-jitsu? What is the essence of this martial art that's captured the minds and hearts of so many people in the world?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  I think that jiu-jitsu is, is a philosophy that's expressed physically and that it's the kind of development of the mental capacity and physical capacity working in, in unison to move efficiently and almost flowingly, unresistingly with, with a given situation, with a, with a physically resisting opponent. Learning how to generate force on your own and how to steal force from the floor, how to steal force from the other person and move in concert with it as opposed to clash against, which if you watch two untrained people fight, it's almost entirely a clash.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  It's a runaway in clash, a runaway in clash. If you watch jiu-jitsu done well, it's, it, it looks like water moving around a solid structure. And, and I think that that is expressed physically and I think that all of the things that anyone has really been able to do very, very well in, in jiu-jitsu end up kind of exemplifying that, but I think that that's true of martial arts in general. I think that a lot of times like the clashing that we see going on and working well is just the fact that, you know, you get very, very physically powerful people every now and then they're able to get away with this, but I don't think that that's, and that's, that's fantastic because ultimately it's a results driven thing, but I think that the essence of the martial arts is learning how to make more out of less and how to move

• 47:06Speaker 01

  with and be yielding, almost like real life aikido. And.

• 47:11Lex Fridman?

  So you think of martial arts, jiu-jitsu as a.

• 47:16Lex Fridman?

  Like water or flowing, so Aikido, so moving around the the force as opposed to sort of maybe the wrestling mindset is finding a leverage where you can apply an exceptional amount of force. So like, it's like maximizing the application of force.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  I guess maybe that's a better way to, I'd like to marry the two ideas, you know, because I think you flow until the point at which you are the greater force, at which point in time you can apply. But if you look at the best wrestlers, and then when I say best, I don't necessarily mean most successful, although of course, most successful are always very, very good. Throughout the course of history, in boxing, in wrestling, in judo, they're magical. They disappear and reappear. It's like fighting a ghost that that is like incorporeal when you want to find it, but then when you don't want it to find it, when you don't want to find it, it finds you. And I think that we see that in the like the buvise or sites of wrestling. And, you know, I guess you could look at Floyd Mayweather

• 48:18Speaker 01

  or Willie Pep, or, you know, Purnell Whitaker in boxing, as brilliant examples of disappearing and reappearing. And when you're strong, it's almost like guerrilla warfare. When you're strong, I'm nowhere to be found. When you're weak, you can't get rid of me. And I think that's what we're looking for.

• 48:34Lex Fridman?

  Yes, the two brothers are incredible at that. They just, they look like skinny Starbucks baristas, and they just manhandle everybody like effortlessly. They look like they just kind of woke up, rolled out of bed, fighting for like the gold medal at the Olympics, and just effortlessly throw, like, there's a match against, I guess, Yo Romero? Yeah, so like, you know, if you look at like, who is the guy who's intimidating in this case, and terrifying looking, it's Yo Romero, just like a physical specimen, and obviously like a super accomplished wrestler. I think this is for the gold medal, yeah. And 2000?

• 49:19Speaker 01

  2000?

• 49:20Lex Fridman?

  Yes. And then there-

• 49:22Speaker 01

  This is the year you all took silver.

• 49:25Lex Fridman?

  And what you, like, just to show you, like, there's a inside trip effortless. Uchi, he does it again.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:37Lex Fridman?

  You know, it's a really creative kind of wrestling where.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  It's organic.

• 49:41Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, you throw in all these kinds of, this is a mix of judo, a mix of like weird kind of moves. It's not like as funky as Ben Askren. It's, it's just like legitimate, basic.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Well, it's not funky for funky's sake, and I'm not poking Ben Askren to imply that that's what he's doing. But it's like, it's funny. It's like a lot of times, it's almost like Musashi talked a lot about that. You know, that the only goal of combat is to win, is the, the outcome is, it's outcome driven. Versus like flourishing, you know, cool looking movements. It's like unless that had a utilitarian purpose, like what are you, what are you wasting your time with that? Both in the fight and also, you know, in, in practice. But, but as you mentioned, it's almost like it looks like judo, it looks like wrestling, it looks like jiu jitsu. It's almost like, I guess, that reminds me, all of martial arts is again deeply tribal as well. I, I want to learn Lex Fridman martial arts and then I want to learn another, you know, I guess transcendent person's martial arts.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  And it just happened to be the set of movements that you tended to do most of the time, thanks to your body type and your opposition and whatnot. But then I try to codify that and force those to work as opposed to going, I want to understand how the body works in concert and in, in congress with something else and other forces and move appropriately. And that's why it's like, it always struck me that the Saito brothers are great examples of just moving like water. But they, to use Bruce Lee, which is a little trite, but again, he's brilliant. It's like water can flow or water can crash and they would crash when they needed to crash and they would flow when they needed to flow. But they would flow for the purpose of dissipating and then crash when they would win. And at the right moment, then go back to flowing the second that the other person found them. And it's just, it's beautiful to watch. It's artistic.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  And I think that that great expression of anything physical is ultimately studied as a science, but expressed as an art. And I think that that's something that gets lost in jiu jitsu a lot of times when it gets a little bit, little nerdy, like do this, hand here, hand here. Like it's like the more details I have, the better. When in reality, that's just not, not in my experience how it's done.

• 51:35Lex Fridman?

  Might be fun exercise of saying like, what are the main positions and submissions in the art of jiu jitsu? You don't have to be complete. That's a ridiculously, I apologize for putting you on a spot like this, but it might be a nice exercise to think through it.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, I would just say that there, there, you have your arms bend in various ways. You have key lock Americana, straight arm locks, kimura, omoplatte. Omoplatte is a kimura, kimura is an omoplatte. It's just executed.

• 52:02Lex Fridman?

  Submissions, so like.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Submissions.

• 52:04Lex Fridman?

  Breaking off your arm in all kinds of ways.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  But ultimately, the question is, let's say you were a Terminator, like a robot that I, which of course you are.

• 52:12Lex Fridman?

  Go on.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  That go on. It's like, all right, we're being completely literal. But, uh, and I, and I couldn't harm you with any of these things. Would I still use these positions? The answer is yes. They, they create leverage. They create control. They create shapes that I can affect and that can affect me. And they can be affected through other forces, then other objects or structures like the ground or the wall. I really enjoy mixed martial arts because there's another component, rather than just me and you and the floor, there's me, you, the floor and the wall. And it's another player in the game that doesn't exist in a grappling context with an, uh, in a non-enclosed, you know, I guess, area of combat. But, um, you can strangle me or choke me, um, what do you call it? Uh, without my arms being involved.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Or you can use one of my shoulders to pin one side of my, one carotid artery off and you can enclose the other. You can turn my knee in the exact same ways that you can turn my arm, straight this way and that way. You can add a rotation to that, or it can be directly linear against the joint. So I guess what I would say is the more that I've been able to understand jiu jitsu, the more that I've been, it's, it's given me a, a look into how we learn language where rather than learning five bazillion adjectives, I go, I understand what an adjective is. And of course we are all read into some degree of vocabulary. I understand what an adverb does. And I understand what an adverb is. I know what a noun is. I know what the component parts of a sentence are. I know what, you know, I guess a clause, a contraction, any of these things.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  And it allows you to be, um, interesting and artistic with your language to the extent that you can. But I can't, like, I can speak a degree of Spanish, but I'm not even slightly artistic in Spanish. I would be something, I speak like a, like a child with a head injury. And anyway, um, But your basic understanding of the English language allows you to then be a student of Spanish. One hundred percent, but I'm limited by my experience. I'm limited by my understanding of techniques. I'm limited by my understanding, almost like, let's say, techniques are like these, are like vocabulary. So even if I kind of sort of grasp the sentence structure and the thought process and the thought patterns of Spanish, which it's interesting because just even the orientation and the organization of a language, and I've thought about this a great deal.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  You know, the way that I perceive the world is affected deeply by the language that I learned. You know, the, again, if I learn, I have no idea how the Chinese language structures, but I can only imagine that it would be, that it would affect, it's like a different lens. We're all looking at the same thing, but I have, I have a different set of sunglasses on than you do. And that's, that's very, very interesting. I'll use the Quran as an example. You know, apparently it's unbelievably poetic and in Arabic. Still neat and was interesting reading in English, but I'm told by people that I trust that it just one doesn't bear a resemblance to the other, and I think that's a very interesting thing, that you may be able to say the same thing, but in a more, I guess in a different way, in a more artistic way, that, that may not translate on a one for one kind of fidelity.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  But the more that we're able to understand about how the body works, the more examples of the body working this way, the body working that way, the body working that way, the more that I'm able to eventually become an artist, but it has to be studied as a science first. And it does start with technique collection, vocabulary collection, the same way we learn in school. You remember how to say quickly seventeen different ways. And let's say I speak Spanish, I'm only, I only know three. So you might use quickly, you might use an adjective like quickly in Spanish, but use one of the many, many options to describe that, that I don't understand. And now I sit there and go like, wait, what? I can't be artistic. I can't be as organic with the language as I'd like. So I believe that jiu-jitsu a lot of times starts with the acquisition of a lot of, hey, do this, this, this drill, this technique.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Here's an Americana, Americana to an arm lock, arm lock to a triangle. But the problem with that is oftentimes we get stuck in that phase. And I, people eventually become move collectors or sequence collectors. And I noticed this when I'm trying to do DBDs or I guess like an instructional series now, or even teaching in class. I don't believe in that form of learning anymore. Not that it's not valuable, but I don't believe, I don't understand jiu-jitsu on that level anymore. So what I'm trying to do is get across the basic ideas to people and say, hey, You need to fill in the gaps with going to class all the time. You need to go, hey, learn this move, learn that technique, learn that technique, because otherwise I'm basically just throwing at you like 75 different words that you could use, but that hasn't really taught you how to, how to speak a language. Whereas if you give me the language structure,

• 56:31Speaker 01

  you can fill in these pieces on your own and then eventually speak organically in lex form, which will be ultimately unique to you, because otherwise you just end up being like a weird facsimile of whatever it is that I'm doing for mostly the worst, I'd say, but uh.

• 56:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's what people, I mean, people comment like, is this, especially people who haven't listened to me before, uh, is this guy drunk or high? Does he, does MIT really allow slow people to, uh, to be like, what's, like, what's, what's wrong with him? Is he getting sleep? Are you okay? And does he need help? So that, that's similar with my jiu jitsu is like, is this guy, is this guy really, whatever rank I was throughout, I, I remember just like, is this guy really this rank? I just have a very kind of certain way of sitting and being slow and lazy looking that there was ultimately the language that

• 57:25Lex Fridman?

  I had to discover. And it was, uh, it was, yeah, it was a very liberating moment, I think, of probably a few years of getting my ass kicked, especially with open guard and butterfly to where you really allow yourself to take in the entirety of the language and realize that, um, that I'm not, I'm diff, I'm a unique, I'm, I'm, I'm unique. And like, I have a very, um, I have a language, I have a set of techniques, a way I move my body that needs, that I'm the one to discover. Like it's, you can only, you can learn specific techniques and so on, but you really have to understand your own body. And that's the beautiful thing about jiu jitsu, like you said, is like the, the connection about.

• 58:10Lex Fridman?

  Your philosophy, your view of the world with the physical and like connecting those two things, how you perceive the world, how you interpret ideas of the world about exhaustion, about force, about effortlessness, like what it really means to relax, all these kinds of loose concepts, and then actually teach your body to like do those things. And like, you know, and be able to apply force in spurts, be able to relax in spurts and like figure all that stuff out for my, for my individual body.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  But it's, as you mentioned, that's, I couldn't agree with you more, it's a discovery process and no one can cheat that process, which is at the same time, it's almost like imagine I want to start writing books in second grade unless maybe I'm like staggeringly brilliant, like which I can only conceptualize someone being able to do that, but maybe a Mozart of the English language where you're out there doing it. But for most of us, we don't have enough knowledge, enough information, enough experience to be able to be, to express ourselves. So we have to basically input, repeat, um, which is important, but it's the process, as you say, of going through that of getting your ass kicked, they're just like, well, that didn't work, well, that didn't work, that felt right, but I don't know, nobody else does that, I guess I don't believe in that. Versus eventually going, I don't know, I'll just try going my own way and see what happens. And now I'll get yelled at and people won't like me and if it works, they'll say I got

• 59:28Speaker 01

  lucky and if it doesn't work, they'll say I was dumb, but uh, which maybe all is right. But basically, uh, you know, going through that iterative process that, that allows you to eventually find your self-expression and find your voice so that you, you fight the same way that you speak, the same way that you write, the same way that you think in a way that, that is uniquely you, that will also ultimately allow you to understand other people being uniquely them, because even if you can only conceptualize, and I think about this a lot for society stuff, where I go, well, this is how I feel about this, but am I objectively right, maybe about a couple of things, but that's a small box that I have to be very, very careful about what I think is objective versus what's not. And I have to be open to the possibility that all the things that I think are objectively correct may or may not be.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  And that should allow me to have some degree of compassion or consideration for other people, both in their martial arts journey and in their, in their journey, you know, as people, as human beings, because I understand that they're on a, it's a, we're all on a path where it's all, and again, an iterative process of eventual self-expression, but I think that's one of the things that we. See having trouble when we see tribalism, which I mean racism expression of that, political affiliation, expression of that, all of these things that can go in really uncomfortable directions. People are looking for, hey, where do I plant my feet over here? Where's, where's the thing that I know is right? And we can all agree on the following. And I, I think that we see that in martial arts. We're like, oh, I do this style. Well, I do that style. I do that style. It's like, hey, man, we're all just pushing forward in a

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  certain direction here, trying to do our best. And I understand why you feel the way you do. I may have felt like that at one point, too. But, uh, you know, we're, I'm just trying to learn and understand versus I've already acquired enough knowledge. Let me cross my arms and start to, to look who's fucking up around here.

• 1:01:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  And, and I think that, uh, that's an, it's an interesting trap that I think is very human trap to fall into, but it definitely happens early on. It's, I mean, it's a joke in the jujitsu world, right? Like, oh, the blue belt that, that knows everything. Well, initially, it's like, what? I know nothing. And I at least think I know nothing. Then I learn a little bit, and I think it's a lot bit. And then, you know, the more you learn, the more you go like, I don't even know what I'm doing.

• 1:01:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's exactly right. We kind of talked about it a little bit. But, uh, once again, a lot of people that listen to this have never been on the mat, have never tried jujitsu, but are really curious about it. Everybody at all positions, like, uh, I think Elon Musk's kids are now doing jujitsu. Andrew Yang is, like, they're all, you know, the, the world is curious.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:01:49Lex Fridman?

  It's a, it's a nice, it seems to be a nice methodology by which to humble your ego, which to grow intellectually and physically. So people are curious about it. So the natural question is, if they're curious about it, how would you recommend they get started? Maybe like, what do you recommend the first day, week, month, year, first couple of years look like? Like, how do you ease into it and make sure that it's a positive experience? And you progress in the most optimal and positive way?

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  The first thing you can do is is simply ask yourself why, why you want to be involved. And you know, I remember the first day that I walked into Ronan Athletics in in New York City to train under my godfather, my son now, Christian Montes. Um, and I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I I played baseball through high school and I wanted, I was at Manhattan College um in the Bronx. And I wanted to go and learn martial arts because it was always something that was interesting to me, but it was never something that that was I that I knew was accessible. And it definitely wasn't really around in in Northern Virginia where I grew up. Whereas then you stick yourself in in Manhattan and there's stuff everywhere. So anyway, I guess I didn't know what to expect. Um, I didn't know if I was gonna get beat up, if people were gonna be nice, if people were not gonna be nice.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Um, but what I began with was, I think, expectation management. And I think that that's something that uh I would, that'd be the first thing that I would start is almost imagining, what is it that I'm getting myself into? Because I love the martial arts with with martial arts has given me everything in life. And I'm so thankful I wouldn't be sitting here um with without without that that experience, that journey. The people that I've met, the places that I've gone, I could never ever have ever imagined. Um, and I'm just unbelievably thankful for that. But I think that the thing that um that helped me most of all was starting with going, you know, my my mom said something to me one time and she said, uh, you know, there's two types of people in various situations. There's why and there's why not.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  And you know, it's it's understandable to have questions, concerns, things like that. Um, but and maybe sometimes it's a little bit easier when you're when you're younger to just trust people or just say, I don't know, uh, you know, um, but uh, we go, hey, you want to climb that rock? I'm like, yeah, why not? Let's go. Hey, you want to jump in that river? Yeah, why not? Sure. Versus if I have to reason my way into everything, if I have to be talked into everything, a lot of times I'll talk myself out of it. And I think that a lot of times this is the thinker's disease. Um, you want to figure out what's gonna happen and what you should expect to have happen before you get involved versus going using the old Bruce Lee saying, again, it's like no amount of thinking or training on the on the side of the river will teach you how to swim. You have to jump in. And there are risks associated with that.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  And so, uh, I guess, uh, psychological are usually the biggest ones. That's the biggest hurdle and physical. Um, but the biggest thing that I guess I would suggest to anyone to say, why do you want to do this? You're like, well, I want to challenge myself. I want to learn. I would like to learn to fight. I want to learn to fight so that I could protect myself. And if, and if anything else, other people, if only within arm's reach. Um, I perceive that if I had some small degree of power, um, I generally wouldn't use it, which is why I was like, yeah, I'll give it a try. I'll try to be reasonable and, and hopefully if I make a mistake, I'll apologize to people. But basically, uh, said, yeah, I'd like to have that. And I want to, I know this is going to be challenging and we'll see what happens. And that means that getting beat up, and I didn't get like hurt, but getting roughed up, getting my arm bent this

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  way or that way, getting choked. I was like, well, this is all supposed to happen. That's no big deal. It would be like going and joining the army during peacetime and then going, oh, I'm just doing this for a college education. You go like, okay, that's cool, man. And then all of a sudden war breaks out and they want to send me somewhere. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't sign up for that. Actually, you did. Whether you realize it or not, you may not have thought that you did, but you did. So getting your mind right and, and just going, what are my expectations of this activity? What is it that I'm looking to do? And of course, you know, you're, you're going into a gym, you're going into a place that you don't know people, or you probably don't know people, and you don't know the coach. And even if you do want to, hey, how you doing? Shake your hand type of level, you know, 95% of my students don't know me. Not really. You know, I'll try to be polite and not annoy them too much, but they don't know me and I don't know them. Um, I understand

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  if they don't trust me. I wouldn't trust, trust me either if I were them. But at the same time, someone has to take that leap. And one of the things that I've noticed, um, as a martial arts instructor, that's the biggest struggle, uh, with dealing with adults, which is why a lot of people like to teach kids is because kids don't ask, don't argue. Mm hmm. Now, that also means there's, there's all sorts of pitfalls of that sort of thing, and that can be an issue. But, you know, I guess a lot of times people get to a point in their life, you know, in their twenties, early thirties where now I, I'm a, I'm a manager now. I know what I'm doing. No one talks to me like that. Yeah. Versus like, hey, man, you go join bootcamp. I don't care if you are Elon Musk. They're gonna tell you to shut up and do pushups. Yeah. And that's what's great about it. Yeah. Um, so you, you are taking a leap of faith into a world that you're going to be a tiny

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  fish. And you got to hope that the people, um, who are, who are guiding you in that, in that journey are going to have. I can't even say your best interest at heart because they don't even know you. But they'll try to do no harm and they'll try to help you in the way that they would understand. And I guess that's, for instance, that's what I would try to do with anyone that comes into my gym. I would try to help them in the way that I understand they need as best I can. And as safe and reasonable a way as possible. But sometimes in a way that's going to make them uncomfortable, particularly if physical combat and it's not something they've done before. If they've, a lot of people go in without even having played, you know, contact sports. And so that can be a big jump and you have to understand if that's where you're starting from.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  No worries, but you're going to have to kind of work your way to it and it's going to be uncomfortable and that's okay. It's part of the process and you're going to have some bumps and bruises. And you're not going to want to roll with that guy in the corner because that person's rough and they beat you up and they're like, okay, but is this a big hurt or is it a little hurt? If it's a big hurt, okay. If it's a little hurt, need you to settle up a little bit.

• 1:07:44Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's such an interesting balance because to find, I think one of the most important things as in anything, I think in life is the selection of the people that you put around you. I mean, that's true with like getting married, that's true with like if you go to, if people ask me like graduate students, like your PhD advisor can be the difference. It's everything. It's like you spend five years with somebody, they're going to basically define the more impact on you than anybody you marry, anybody you hang out with is a huge impact. And the same with the coach selection, which is like the school selection

• 1:08:26Lex Fridman?

  is, it's going to be really important about in terms of like who you select will define how happy, like the trajectory of your growth and how happy you are with the entirety of the experience and yet. Like the, the, the flip side of that is especially if you have an ego, especially if you are the manager, then you still let go of some stuff, you're gonna feel like shit with the good, with the best kind of coach. That's, that's what you need.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:54Lex Fridman?

  But there's a night, there's a weird balance there to find, like, I mean, like, and everybody needs a different thing. Like, I'm much more, um, I enjoy being sort of like, it sounds weird, but like, I'm, you know, from the wrestling background, I enjoy feeling like crap in the sense like the coach, like getting beat up. I don't actually enjoy it. It's not like some masochistic thing or whatever.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  I know what you mean, yeah.

• 1:09:22Lex Fridman?

  It's the growth. Like, I like the anxiety. I like, uh, feeling, uh, like, like shit when I go home, like emotionally, physically, it's a, it's like, it's growth.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  It's a sign of growth, right? Like, if you're not having to feel those things, you're probably in your comfort zone, which is fine, but that's not your growth zone, right?

• 1:09:42Lex Fridman?

  And everybody has a different threshold for that. And I mean, the, the beautiful thing about jiu jitsu is like, it's also has like a yoga feel to it. Like, you're learning about your body. So depending on the gym and depending on, and in fact, the coaches, the people around you, within the gym, you can select little groups too, kind of like, the people with who you roll, like, if you're a smaller person, it doesn't mean you have to go against big people. You can go against the people who like, smoke a lot of weed and they're chill, or you can go against like that crazy rip, blue belt competitor who's like out to destroy everybody. And depending on like, what your mindset is, you can kind of select that. It's such a fascinating journey of like basically self-discovery.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  I couldn't agree with you more. It's, I mean, what you need may change over time, right? And maybe what you needed, what you need today could change six months from now or a year from now. And that's something that I experienced. I'll, I'll use my, my first coach, Christian, again, is a great example of someone who I really look up to and respect, and someone who, who helped me a lot. Like, at a time when I really needed some guidance and I needed to learn martial arts, but get into, I, the Henzo Gracie's gym was right down the street from where. Christian was teaching and Christian was a blue belt at the time. It was uh he was teaching at a place called Fight House, which was this awesome like, you know, like nineties, early two thousands, you know, warehouse area uh down on Fashion Avenue in uh in Manhattan off of like between seventh and eighth and uh it was like a like two basketball courts wide, but like there's the Sambo guys over here. There was the Kali guys over there. There was a Wing Chun over there. There was Jiu Jitsu in the corner.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  And Henze's was one of the most famous academies in the world at that time, still is. And I just didn't know what Henzo Gracie was. And I've I mean, it's a great gym and it's a fantastic place for people to train. But I think what was right for me at the time was to I stumbled into uh you know, like a two person elevator up and found a place where six people trained at that time. And I had someone that that I could that could give me some like in addition to martial arts advice, like personal guidance. And that made it that made a big difference. And then when initially we would have like competitions or like intra intra, you know, gym competitions with the Sambo guys, we would we would roll with them. And like again, it was great because they were just a bunch of like like Russian dudes from like Brighton Beach and they would come down and then we would all fight and then everyone would train and we'd all drink tea and then go home.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  And uh anyway, uh what was uh Russians. It was super uh super tough and they were like, again, just a tough group of people. It was great. And then I remember when I I decided after like four or five months, I'm like, man, I really want to try to take this seriously. And I told Christian about that and he's like, well, hey, I think you need to do the following. And it was, you know, like, hey, here's there was a guy named Jeff Ruth, who was a purple belt at the time, which was a much bigger deal than it is now, but it was ten and O was an MMA fighter, a lot of amateur box spirit, super tough dude. And Jeff was was the best person at that time that I'd ever trained with. I just got squashed. Christian used to beat me up too, but like Jeff would just absolutely kick the crap out of me. And I was like, this is awesome. And this was back when I was at home. I went home for the summer for that and Chris was like, hey, I think you should stay.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Because I told him that's what I was thinking. And this was a coach that, you know, when it's like when initially was exactly what I needed. And then he's like, well, hey, that's not what I'm doing here. Maybe they're going to be able to help you onto a path. That's that's kind of commensurate with what your goals are at the moment. And then, you know, that was an that was an interesting thing. And I really got I feel that I was fortunate to start um at a place where my coach was able to. Transition roles and and and do so comfortably. And I think that that also was probably a factor of the fact that, you know, where he'd done some of his training prior, like there'd been issues with with the coach there. We're like not supporting, not having the support, you know, feeling like, hey, like, I'm gonna hold on to my students. I'm gonna hold on to my best guy or my best girl, even if I can't take them where they need to go.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Um, so that was an interesting thing. And just recognizing also, though, that the people, like the same way you're an individual going into a gym and you don't know what you're getting into. Your coach is a person too, and and he or she, you know, they may have been doing this activity longer than you, but they're not, they're not some weird little, you know, all-knowing God. They don't know anything. They may, they may say something that pisses you off. They may bum, they may yell at you. They may help you. They may inadvertently cause you some sort of, you know, some sort of issue. And just being able to recognize that even though I I say this to people and I've said this to people in my gym, I'm like, you know, we're in the service industry, man, but I'm not at your service. Like, don't get it twisted. Like, I will absolutely do my best to help people. I'm there to

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  do my best as a martial arts coach, but I'm here to do my best as a martial arts coach. And I'll do my best and periodically I make mistakes and I owe an apology or two and I'll try to give them out when I can. But, uh, we're not McDonald's. It's not, oh, you gave me a hundred bucks, so you do whatever you want in here. This is my house. This is my gym. This is my dojo. This is, this is the martial arts. This is not a basketball team.

• 1:14:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's something beautiful about martial arts, like exactly as you said, is the coach, like in wrestling and at least collegiate, like high level wrestling, is like, there's a dictatorship aspect to a coach that is very important to have, like this this ridiculous, sometimes nature of like master and so on and bowing all these traditions. There's something, it seems ridiculous from the outside perhaps, but there's something really powerful to that. Because that process of, you said, why not, of letting go of the leap of faith, requires you to believe that the coach has your best interest in mind and just give yourself over to their

• 1:14:59Lex Fridman?

  ideas of how how you should grow. And that's an interesting thing. I mean, I've never been able to really see coaches I've had as human. They're always, you always, it's like a father figure or like this, you always put them in this position of power. And I think that's I think, at least for me, it's been a very, it's been a very useful way to see the coach, because it allows you to not think and let go and really allow yourself to grow and emotionally deal with all the beatings.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  They'll push you where past often times where you would have stopped yourself, right? Which is great and hopefully they know, if they're paying attention and they're still a person, they can make mistakes. They'll push you further than you would have gone, but not so far that it's not facilitative, right?

• 1:15:45Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  That's something that I can say, like Farazah Habbi, the head coach at TriStar, my head coach for MMA, Kenny Florian, one of my other head coaches for MMA, have both been phenomenal influences. Paul Schreiner, who's the, one of the assistants at Marcela Garcia's academy, coached me in Jiu-Jitsu for a long time, brilliant instructor. They've all been able to do that. And I think what's interesting about all of those guys, they're very sharp, but they're very intuitive as well. And I think that Faraz actually, you know, told me about something that John Wooden said. John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach. Just a simple philosophical idea, just, he said, "Some people's life is a bowl of shit. It needs some whipped cream in it. Some people's life is a bowl of whipped cream. Needs a little bit of shit in it, just to balance it out." And it's an interesting thing. Coaching everyone the same way doesn't work. You know, that's, I think, the difference

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  between a coach and an instructor. And a lot of times, people think they want to coach, but they really want an instructor. I'm like, "Alex, tell me what to do, not how to do it." And then other times, people think they want, you know, an instructor and they really want a coach. And I'm like, "Man, this guy's just giving me information." A coach is so much more than an instructor. And that's a huge leap. And that's something that I think that people need to understand when they're going into martial arts. And I understand, and I can totally grasp why they don't, because how would they know? But I think about this a lot. Like, me giving you $150 for a month, which is not nothing, that's for sure, that does not, that pays for instructor, really. Coach is a relationship that gets developed. Because can you imagine, like, just the amount of emotional investment and time thinking away from, from like, "Oh, Alex isn't here anymore. What can I do to help him? What does he need?" Like, that's, that's serious. And that's the difference between, that's, that's

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  oftentimes the difference that, that getting, getting over the hump in various situations. So it's, it's an interesting... You know, bargain that's being made like commitment by the by the instructor who becomes a coach, commitment by the student, you know, like there's a financial transaction. There's a lot of things going on there, but I feel very fortunate to have had not just instructors in my time, but coaches, and that means sometimes we've butted heads and sometimes I look back and I think I was right and other times I look back on my own, no, they were definitely right, but there was always the trust with the exception of one time that I feel that trust was greatly betrayed that rightly or wrongly, whether mistakes, mistakes will be made, but everyone is attempting to do, do the right thing. Under no circumstances would I intentionally do anything malicious, you know, versus, hey, I might have done, I might

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  have burnt your house down, but you can be darn sure it wasn't on purpose. And I think that as long as there's that mutual understanding and mutual belief of goodwill, which again doesn't just magic up out of nowhere, I understand, I think that that's when then great things can happen. And I look at all the athletes that I know, you know, the guys and girls that I've watched become fantastic in various places, almost invariably, it never happened alone.

• 1:18:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm really torn about that. Like, maybe you can help. Have you seen the movie Whiplash? So it's a, I would say from an outsider's perspective, people should watch it's a, I guess jazz band, it's a movie about a drummer and the instructor and he, it's basically, I would say from the outsider's perspective, it's a toxic relationship, but he's really the coach, whatever we call him, pushes the musician, the drummer to his limits, like to where he just feels like shit emotionally. It's a, it looks like a toxic relationship,

• 1:19:03Lex Fridman?

  but it's one that ultimately is very productive for the improvement of the musician. I have the same, like in my own experience, I had, I got a chance to train at a couple of places regularly. And so one of my coaches, who is a great human being, a lot of people love him, but when I was a blue belt, he was pushing me a lot for competition. And every time I step on the mat, I was

• 1:19:33Lex Fridman?

  anxious and almost afraid of training because of like the places I'm gonna have to go. And then the I can't I don't know what's good or bad because I think I've become a better person because of that experience like I needed that and on the flip side like the place I got my black belt from balanced studios is I remember also a blue belt the coach sitting down and I was going to competition and he saw something in me where he said um you know like good luck but win or lose we always love you like I I really I remember

• 1:20:18Lex Fridman?

  that because I really needed that at that time like I was putting so much pressure on myself like I'm not an actual professional competitor you know I just competed like I'm a PhD student like but like it was clearly having a psychological effect on me and that's what a great coach does is like you know it's like life is more important than jujitsu it's bigger so they find you use jujitsu when you need it to grow as a person and when it overwhelms you you you have to pull that person out like look at the bigger picture always look at the bigger picture it's fascinating and I don't know what to make of it I don't think I would have it any other way is both the anxiety and the and the love yeah

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  I think that I couldn't that's a really interesting thing that you're describing that I I guess it kind of brings me back to a lot of the other things we've been discussing is just almost like the the reciprocal nature of everything where no pressure that's great everyone's happy all the time it's either I mean let's uh use the example of sci fi movies to say the matrix which of course the first one was amazing and then each subsequent movie made the series worse but um but basically

• 1:21:28Lex Fridman?

  they're working on a new one by the way

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  yeah I've heard we'll see I was hoping for the best but um but basically uh you know let's say hey we we started our first initial world agent smith says to neo is like our first world was a utopia where everyone was happy and nothing ever went wrong it's like your primitive cerebrum rejected it and I think that there's obviously I mean what do I think but I guess well I'm here so I might as well say what I think um I guess uh you know

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Great things are fantastic. A kind, gentle place is fantastic. And this is again, why I love Dune, because I think Dune does such a great job of expressing, Frank Herbert does such a great job of expressing, again, the reciprocal nature of these ideas. You know, look at, uh, look at Sparta, for instance, or at least what I understand of Sparta from the reading and also watching 300.

• 1:22:15Lex Fridman?

  And reading the Wikipedia.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  And reading the Wikipedia article about the movie, not the place. Um, but, uh, it's, um, that's a hard, brutal place. And was there benefit to that? Like, absolutely. Was there drawback to that? Absolutely. Is it sustainable? I should, I would think probably not. Um, I mean, granted, it hasn't sustained, but I mean, that type of, uh, of a thing, it burns too hot almost and it, uh, it, it destroys the host at a certain point. And, you know, I guess that, that type of unforgiving nature, but entirely, entirely permissive has its own issues. And I guess coming back to your, what your description of like describing a toxic relationship is a very dangerous and tricky thing because it's almost like, uh, it's like bird's eye view, me, you know, you see, let's say a

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  husband and a wife arguing. You're like, all right, well, sort of somebody hitting somebody. I need to keep myself out of this because I have no idea what, I'm seeing something, but I don't know what's going on or why specifically. And again, short of it going to a place that, that just out of bounds, I don't know who's right here. I don't know who's wrong and I don't know what phase of this things are in. So I guess.

• 1:23:25Lex Fridman?

  And long-term was good for.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:29Lex Fridman?

  Both people.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Right. It's, it's dangerous for, so if I want to put my finger on the scale, I can understand the desire to do that. I'm like, hey, guys, let's break it up.

• 1:23:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  But, and that may be the right thing at the time, but at the same time, I'm not sure. So I think back to all of the times that, you know, that like you mentioned, your coach pushing you when it's very, very hard. And then other times going like, hey, let's put it in perspective here. I think that's an interesting thing for high performance. And I think that we're seeing that against societally, you know, now, or at least maybe that's just pops up on my internet feed periodically. Um, but coaches shouldn't be allowed to do this or yell at this person, yell at that person. Like, well, have you ever been, go to a boxing gym. It's not a commercial entity, not really. A real boxing, not LA boxing, not a UFC gym, like a real place.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  You're gonna see what things are like when it's entirely performance based. Go to wrestling room at a high level. You know, again, there's, there's left and right limits and there are such things, obviously, as abuse, of course, but, and that should never be tolerated. But it's not a commercial entity. I don't need to be sweet to you if you're, if you're screwing up, if you're dropping the ball. And in fact, recognizing that I'm not doing you a favor, or the team a favor by, by being permissive of that type of behavior, I think is important. Everything in its context and at its time is important. And I guess I can think again of the times that have been put, put or had put on me like a great deal of pressure to do XYZ or to succeed, or to push for success. And I can't look back fondly enough on those times.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  They were tough at the time. But without that, I'm not sitting here. Without that, I don't go from growing up in a, in a very nice family in the suburbs to fighting at the highest level in Jiu-Jitsu, Gi, Nogi, and now in mixed martial arts, starting a career at age 27. You know, I don't, it just doesn't happen because people, generally speaking, from that background, don't get pushed hard enough physically to be able to make that transition. And that has benefits and it has drawbacks. You know, when you stare into the abyss, it stares back. And I think that that's an important thing to understand. You know, you stare long enough, you, you can become something that you don't, that you would be sorry that you did. You don't look enough and you don't have perspective either. You know, and I, I think that that's

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  an interesting thing. I can speak to someone who's relative to being someone who's relatively articulate and reasonable. I try to be reasonable. But, you know, I'll say in sparring, if people get crazy with me, they get a warning and then I'm gonna crack them. And what did they expect? Oh, they hear the guy on a, on an interview. But who did they think they were meeting? Because there's also the guy in the ring.

• 1:25:59Lex Fridman?

  And there's layers there, too. I remember training with you. It's, it's kind of funny. There's like, there's, well, you didn't know who I was. I mean, you still like,

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  I have a really good straight ankle up, by the way.

• 1:26:13Lex Fridman?

  That. So I I don't remember what rank I was, but it might have been purple or something like that. And I did some like I you had this look on your face, which I've often seen in black belts. It's like, here he goes again, like here here's him trying this thing. And then when I kind of annoyed you a little bit with it, now I get that it was a good like I, you know, I did something somewhat effective, like some like maybe a little bit off balance.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:44Lex Fridman?

  There's I just peeled off a little layer of Ryan Hall to where I was like, OK, let me, let me like there there's like layers underneath.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  Ogres are like onions.

• 1:26:54Lex Fridman?

  Somewhere in there like so it was like, OK, this like new guy rolls in here. He thinks he can do this stupid thing and then and then you started to beat the hell out of me. But the the point is there's layers here from the guy who was being interviewed now to like Genghis Khan.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  But it's but it's.

• 1:27:12Lex Fridman?

  It's all in the same body.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Right, but it's like all of us are like that, right? In various different directions and recognizing that's OK. It's just there are consequences to all every choice that we make has a consequence. Sometimes there's like objectively wrong or objectively right, but at least in my mind, that's a pretty small box. Everything else is just there's a consequence to that. Do you like that consequence? Do you not? And who do I want to become? What do I want to try to hone myself or anyone else into? And also, like, but this is something I've screwed up as a coach plenty of times. You know, like if someone says, if you're if like I come to like Lex, I really, really want to take, you know, research very seriously, like, OK, I believe you now. I haven't shown you that, but I believe you like, OK. And now me not showing up to research or to study or not being up until three in the morning, thinking about this is no longer acceptable.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  There was a time like five seconds before me making that statement that if I went to bed without reading the book that I needed to read, no worries. But the second that I made that statement, your your expectations for me changed. And maybe it's something that's something that I've screwed up a whole bunch of times in my, um, as a teacher, because it's an interesting thing. Obviously, you know, being a like running a martial arts school is as you're principally an athlete, um, is. Sometimes I don't pay enough attention to what people are doing. I just go, oh, okay. You say X, Y, Z. I'm like, Roger that. I believe you. Cool. I will now put you in category X. And whether rightly or wrongly, like, maybe this person didn't understand what they were asking for, or I didn't express this or the other, and it just, it caused cross wires. And then, most times, you hash it out, you have a discussion, you figure out, get to the bottom of what people are trying to do, or what they want.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  But if I was paying more attention, I think I could have been a lot more effective. Or if I had more experience, and sometimes maybe I'm not sharp enough, or I don't, I'm not perceptive enough to be able to see what's going on, and maybe with years more down the line, I'll be able to have a sharper perception. But I think that's another one of those interesting things that some, that sometimes I would caution, or not caution, but just inform a prospective martial arts student, depending upon where you're going. You know, this, you, both you and also your coach or other people in the room, they wear many hats. And sometimes there's a, I had the wrong hat on, you were talking to me as Lex the guy. I didn't realize you were talking to me, I thought you were talking to me as Lex the guy. I didn't realize you were talking to me as Lex the martial artist. I'm like, oh, crap. I was talking to the wrong person. So it's almost like if you had a, like, I run my gym with my wife.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  She's a black belt. So she's my wife, she's, my peers as a martial artist in jiu-jitsu.

• 1:29:28Lex Fridman?

  He's here, by the way, in judging, so.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. All right, well, all right. So, but, but a fellow black belt, and I guess like another.

• 1:29:35Lex Fridman?

  She doesn't have a microphone, so you can't hear all the trash she's talking.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. But it can be tough, and that's something we've had to work through a lot. And it's like, looking back, and it's like now being where I'm at now, and it's easy for me to say that because she's in the room, and I don't want her to stab me, just continue to slowly poison me over time.

• 1:29:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Which frankly, I understand. You know, it's, it's the sort of thing that, that is now way more effective than anything else I could really reasonably expect to have. But there were times when, when both of us, you know, were justifiably annoyed at the other because of crossed wires. And sometimes, you know, you just have disagreement anywhere, misunderstanding anyway. But again, like, I've, I coached some of my friends. I've coached, I've coached my friend who I've known since I was four years old. You know, sometimes I don't go, hey buddy, how you doing? Sometimes like, what the fuck are you doing? Put your hand over there. How many times we talked about this? And then you walk away and you can see him look at you crooked and you're like, oh crap. Oh yeah, he thought I was talking to him as his friend. Yeah, well, all right, we need to talk this one out, hash it out and not, he's wrong. How could he possibly think that way? Like, oh no, I totally understand that. But if I was 22, like, doesn't he know I'm a purple belt?

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Some nonsense like that and it's, and it doesn't come from a bad place. But it's just, I guess that comes back to society, to anything. People only have the perspective that they have and the awareness that we have. And so again, going back and going, hey guys, grace, like, I don't expect, it's not fair for me to go, I fight UFC. Why doesn't this guy who came in as an attorney understand how hardcore this needs to be? I'm like, how could he? And at the same time though, if, if I'm using the language of someone that is interested in at least performance from a martial arts perspective, I understand how that could be off putting. Let's say for instance, someone that's like, all of that would be out of bounds in their normal workplace. But if they think of the gym as my office, then whether they agree or disagree with what's going on, they go, okay, I hear why. I see why that might have happened. Let's talk about this.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  And we can, again, all push forward in a positive direction that benefits, I guess, everyone's journey throughout the activity.

• 1:31:23Lex Fridman?

  And on, on top of all that, there's moods. Like I, I mean, especially lately, uh, I think two days ago, maybe yesterday, no, two days ago. I've never been that cranky in my life. I think I, I don't know what it was, but I wanted to tell everybody how much they annoyed me. It was like, I, I was just very conscious of this feeling of like, why, why is this happening right now? So I consciously decided, as I usually do in those cases, to not say anything to anybody.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  How do you do that?

• 1:31:59Lex Fridman?

  Uh, well, I, you know, it's, uh, it's, yeah, meditate because it's not, I, I tend to, I tend to then visualize what's gonna happen in the next, like, how is this gonna make my life better?

• 1:32:14Lex Fridman?

  If I say something that mean to somebody else, I have just started a conflict that will just escalate, will continue, will add more conflict to my life. It'll make things, I just don't like the feeling it will create. And so you live enough life to know that like, it's just like with like, street fighting. I would get into a lot of fights when I was younger, just on the street. But then you realize like, it's not like a jujitsu match or something like that. It's not, it'll escalate. It'll, it might come back at you. It'll like, that person might find you again.

• 1:32:59Lex Fridman?

  But more importantly, the anxiety of it, of having created little enemies in this world, distorts the way you see the world. So I've noticed that like, if I am shitty to people on the internet, which I haven't been, I think, in a long time, is like, it somehow brings the shittiness to you more and more. It escalates. Like, the more love you put out there, the more like, the people who put love out, like surround you.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  Well, you mentioned forgiveness as well. Like you said, like, I guess back to the original, you know, the Holocaust survivor scenario, where you're like, oh my God, like you think of the ultimate thing in like, I've never experienced one, one billionth of that level of, of pain and horror. And it's like, and I can't let this little thing go? You know, I guess that's an interesting thing. I think you're just making the point in your personal life, I guess, the same way, right?

• 1:33:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there, yeah. And on the internet, it's hard. I've somehow gotten, I mean, you've, you've had a level of celebrity for a while. I've recently gotten some level of like celebrity. And like, these people who are just shitty for no reason come out from all, from all places, like calling me a fraud or...

• 1:34:14Lex Fridman?

  Anything else?

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  You ever see Jay and Silent Bob, Strike Back? They find out a movie is gonna be made about them and people are talking shit on the internet and they're like, what's the internet? And then someone shows them and they're like, what? And they go to a message board and they go to Hollywood to try to stop it from being made and they eventually get money for their likeness and they use the money to buy plane tickets and fly around and beat the shit out of all the people that talk bad about him.

• 1:34:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's tough. I mean, it's, uh, I'm, I'm having trouble with it because there's people like, yeah, there's, you know, there's posts and forums and like heated discussions about his likes for even a fraud. I don't know. What has he really done? And there's like, and then there's people like, well, I think he's an all right guy, but I'm not sure. Like, like, there's like literal discussions and I'm like, uh, like, uh, no, nobody, like, i- if you increase the level of celebrity, there's going to be like, one of the things that hurts my heart a little bit is like, some level of toxicity around Joe Rogan, for example. There's like communities of people that now, like, talk about him selling out, for example, all that kind of stuff. And I don't, you know, and Joe,

• 1:35:18Lex Fridman?

  I've talked to him about it, is amazing that he, uh, he says, don't read the comments. He legitimately doesn't read the comments. His heart and his soul doesn't give a damn about the comments. All he gives a damn about is his friends. Like, one of the things that's really inspiring to me, and that's, I've had a conversation with him offline about Spotify and, um, the removed episodes, people are curious.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  What's Spotify?

• 1:35:44Lex Fridman?

  It's, uh, it's a thing on the internet where, uh, I think you can play Taylor Swift songs on, um,

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  I'll write that down.

• 1:35:53Lex Fridman?

  But you can also now play Joe Rogan podcast.

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 1:35:57Lex Fridman?

  And they gave him a hundred million dollars, so that, that's, um, you know, that's,

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  That's awesome, good for Joe.

• 1:36:03Lex Fridman?

  It's, yeah. Uh, but the thing I've had a discussion with him and I made a video about it that I took down because of the toxicity, is like, it's hard to put into words, but he will give away the hundred million in a second if he ever has to compromise who he is. Like, he doesn't, I mean, he already said, as he talked about, he's made, quote unquote, fuck you money a long time ago. He doesn't need any more money. He doesn't care. It's, it's nice to have money, whatever, but he'll give it away, so the,

• 1:36:39Lex Fridman?

  It's nice to see when people like him at a level of celebrity, level of success and financial success, don't change at all. They're just the same thing that makes you happy is talking, in his case, talking shit with his friends. In the case of most of us, really, just hanging out with friends, doing the things you love. In his case, doing the things he loves without any, like, you know, the Texas way, the freedom, like, without any corporate bureaucracy bullshit that rolls in and says, "Well, maybe you shouldn't say fuck," you know, like, more than 20 times a podcast or something like that. Like, those kinds of, like, rules, like, people, like he

• 1:37:22Lex Fridman?

  says, in a suit and tie, they show up and say stuff.

• 1:37:26Speaker 01

  Oddly enough, people that could never have done what he's done.

• 1:37:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of inspiring to see that, and I hope people, I hope people realize how special of a human he is. He's inspired, like, people like me, like, I'm just, I'm a scientist, right? So he inspired somebody like me from a very different walk of life to be, like, kind to others, to be open-minded. I don't know, that is a special dude. So, like, people need to support that and treasure that as opposed to, as opposed to be toxic about it. If, I mean, what, people really, for a long time, have told me that it would

• 1:38:12Lex Fridman?

  be awesome if Ryan Hall goes on Joe Rogan. I definitely think that would be an awesome thing. Have you listened to Joe? Has he been a part of your life in some kind of way?

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  Um, you know, well, Joe's always, I remember watching Joe on Fear Factor when I was a little kid, which is cool. So I've actually gotten a, like, from a, from a bird's eye view, watch, you know, his, his kind of just path through life.

• 1:38:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  But one of the things that, that I always appreciate, and again, I barely know Joe other than to shake his hand. He interviewed me after the, uh, briefing in the ring after the BJ Penn fight. But, um, one of the things that I've always admired about Joe is that I think he had fucking money from the start. I think that zero dollars is fuck you money for Joe. I think, and that's something I respect about him a great deal. Um, because as you say, it's interesting to watch. It's like you, you hope that, uh, George St. Pierre is like this. It's really neat. I'm not super close to George, but we're teammates at TriStar and he's never been anything but a gentleman. He's one of those people that if you didn't know George was famous, when you walk in the gym, you'd have no idea. He's not holding court, not doing it. He's just, you know, training and he'll help out an amateur doing this. If you have a question for him, he'll

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  help me. Like I'm nobody, man. He would give me advice and train. It was super cool and he didn't kill me, which I really appreciated. He's a gentleman. But, uh, you know, it's like you, you meet someone and you go, man, I'm so, it's so cool that this is the guy who's the best, that this is the guy who, who's been successful. And then you go, why are they successful? Like I said, true to what they're doing. They haven't changed. They're the same as they've been. And I remember I got to TriStar in 2012 and George was already, already George St. Pierre. But I remember watching and talking to people and they're like, oh man, George is the same as he's always been. And it's neat. I see him in the gym training now and again, giving advice now. And it seems like Joe has always been consistent and it's neat to watch someone not compromising their values and not change who they are and not, you know, periodically like, you know, again, we all make mistakes.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Like you have a bad day or this or that and an apology needs to be issued or even my bad or this or that. And you're like, yeah, they just move on. They're not afraid to be themselves and they're not afraid to be wrong. They're not afraid to make a mistake. As you, as you mentioned, open minded. So what are the correct beliefs to have about this that I know going in, everyone's going to be okay with what I'm saying, which is usually the beginning of a conversation that's going to go nowhere, right? And, uh, it's, it's neat to see, um, the things I guess that he's created on his own as a result of the authenticity that's there. And it reminds me of like Dave Chappelle and, and again, I don't know, I've never met Dave, but it's neat to see someone that's clearly, again, authentic in their own way, doing their own thing. And they're, because of that, they're above the corporate nonsense. But what's funny, I think the message behind

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  all of it is, hey guys, we all are. I can't promise you that I'm going to have money. Joe couldn't promise you that he's going to have money. Now it ended up working out, but. He was above that nonsense from the jump. And he just continued to be above it by never giving it any mind and just going like, yeah, I'm gonna be a reasonable person. I'm gonna try to learn, I'm gonna try to grow. And if I say something annoying, you can come and talk to me about it when we get to the bottom of it. And I'm like, if I need to say my bad, thanks, appreciate it. You know, I will. And if I don't need to, I'm like, hey, I still appreciate the talk. Thanks, man. Shake your hand and we carry on and we go our separate ways and hopefully I'll treat you with respect, you treat me with respect. And, and that's about it. And I guess, I think it's a lesson that it can work out no matter what. You don't have to kowtow to like these weird powers that be.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  And whether you're at this level or at this level, but you can live your life the way that you want. And as you mentioned, talk shit with your friends, hang out, be happy. And it just so happens that that resonates with people. It actually reminds me of like, uh, speaking at MIT and being in Boston is like a goodwill hunting. You know, like, again, that's, what did he really want to do? He could have gone this way, he could have gone that way. And it was an interesting story, but it's like, this person wants to hang out with his buddies and wants to do other things. And again, happens to be brilliant and happens to be able to do all these other things. But there was, it, it, I guess it's like, at least in my mind, a story of authenticity as well. And it was both the same thing in the Robin Williams character. And I, I just think that that's a message, cause watch, watching things occur on the internet as they do now. Things, so many things playing out in the public eye.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  I feel like so many private or otherwise formerly private discussions and disputes and, and, you know, interactions now become, they all have a, a, well, what is this gonna say when it goes public? So how can I couch what I'm saying or how can I word this in a way that's gonna get people on my side to use the right buzzwords and not use the wrong buzzwords? And it, it's just neat to see people, you know, in their own way, flip the bird to the hat. Because I just think that that's, that's just not how a human being is meant to think or interact.

• 1:42:38Lex Fridman?

  I'm curious what you think about the thing that recently has, you know, me like hosting this podcast, I sometimes think about like, who should I talk to and not? In terms of like, it's the, the old Hitler question. Now Hitler, I would definitely talk to because, oh, post-World War II, because everyone knows he's evil. The question whether you talk to Hitler in 1937, like when?

• 1:43:07Lex Fridman?

  People who are really students of what's going on, understand that this is a very dangerous human being. But a large number of part of the world are like, well, he's a leader who cares for Germany. So the question I have, it's interesting to me, it involves a particular person named, who also lives in Austin, Texas, named Alex Jones. I don't know if you're familiar with the guy. I am familiar with Mr. Jones. I've actually recently just listened to Infowars, like one episode of his show, I guess, that he does every day. And it kind of remind me of a time in college when I drank too much tequila. What happened? There's no turning back. No.

• 1:43:52Lex Fridman?

  It's like, like the mistakes you make that like it, it's, I mean, you don't know where you're gonna wake up, you don't know who you're gonna kill or not kill or steal or rob. It's unclear. So that, that it felt like I was getting pulled into a dark place where pretty much everybody is a pedophile that's trying to control the world. So Bill Gates definitely is a pedophile. Everybody in power, anybody in power, there's a kind of a deep skepticism about power and a conspiratorial way to see the world where everything is like dark forces in all corners.

• 1:44:35Lex Fridman?

  It's like the way you feel when you're a kid, that there's a monster hiding in the closet. Which is also why you leap over the bed from like four feet away. There's a strategy. Yes. So, but he says that you're just being weak, you need to look under the bed. Under the bed, there's monsters and we need to be aware of them because they're growing, they're multiplying, you should be. And they're touching children. They're touching children, exactly. So it all connects. But the, the, I, when I listened to him, and I thought about like, do I want to talk to him on this podcast, for example?

• 1:45:08Lex Fridman?

  When I listened to his conversation with Joe Rogan, the two times he talked on there, to me, it was somehow entertaining. Like, it was fun to listen to. It's fun to listen to a madman go on for four hours, because it's almost like theater. Like, this is what I talked to Joe about. When people try to censor Alex Jones, Joe says that the people who try to censor him don't give enough credit to the intelligence of human beings to like, understand, like, that, like, what a person says on a large platform does not necessarily, is not the truth. You can be a madman and say crazy things, and people

• 1:45:53Lex Fridman?

  are intelligent enough to hear, uh, certain things, be, when they're said, like, the earth is flat, they can, they can be intelligent enough not to, all of a sudden, start believing that the earth is flat. Like, they, they're intelligent enough to sort of, select different ideas and be able to enjoy the theater of a particular ridiculous, over-the-top conversation without being sort of influenced the way they start believing, uh, like, toxic set of beliefs. Now, there's a lot of, sort of, um, other kinds of people, especially now with cancel culture, that say, well, you don't want to give platform to crazy people,

• 1:46:33Lex Fridman?

  like, that ultimately, whose beliefs might lead to dangerous consequences, like, and I see it very often now with conspiracy theories that go, that go, like, way too far. Like, for example, would, I, I'm not, I haven't looked into it, so I'm sorry, I will look into it, but, uh, it hurts my heart to see that when Bill Gates...

• 1:47:01Lex Fridman?

  In my opinion, the person who has saved and improved more lives than probably any human in history, literally, because of the money he's invested in helping, like just, just the work he's done on like malaria in Africa, the number of people he's helped is huge. And yet, every interview, anything you see now on Bill Gates, everyone is calling him, I believe, haven't looked into it, but I believe everyone's calling him a pedophile. I don't know the full structure of it, but it's, it's just a very, it feels like an army of like, it feels like it's hundreds of thousands of people. That's what it feels like. It might be a much smaller percentage, but it feels like a huge number of people are calling him a pedophile. So that's the, that's the flip side. If you allow, if you

• 1:47:46Lex Fridman?

  give platform to conspiracy theories like that, then you start to have bigger and bigger percent of the population believing these crazy things. I just, I wanted to put it out there because I don't know what to think of that. If you put yourself in Joe Rogan's shoes, if you put yourself in my shoes, if you put yourself just in your own shoes.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  I'm even, I'm in my shoes right now.

• 1:48:08Lex Fridman?

  Great. If you're staying in your shoes, just stay in your shoes.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  Can I have yours?

• 1:48:11Lex Fridman?

  Would you talk, would you give platform to people like Alex Jones? Would, would you talk to somebody like Alex Jones? Or, or not?

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  Uh, I, yes, I would. And I feel very strongly about this, honestly. Um, well, I think that it's, it's an interesting thing. And I, I would just say a lot of times, um, I can understand, you know, very, very clearly why people would take issue with the idea of, I guess what they perceive to be amplifying this man's voice, this man's reach, um, you know, as, as a demonstrable negative. But I think, um, you know, when you take a step back further, uh, the, the cure is more damaging than the disease and significantly so. Um, I guess, I, I think that. I'm very, very wary of, I think being where you mentioned Alex Jones being wary of

• 1:49:08Speaker 01

  power and people with it. That's, a lot of times, there's a lot of truth and validity to crazy things that people say. It's the conspiracy theories that stick are the ones that sound credible, at least quasi credible in some aspect. And it's almost like, it seems to me like an anchor in people's mind. And it is also funny to me, obviously, the, Bill Gates, it's funny to tar people with things like pedophile, racist, rapist. Like, these are things that we're basically trying to pick words that no one can ever support someone who does these things. And that's, you know,

• 1:49:42Lex Fridman?

  And that changes year by year. Currently, pedophile is totally in as a thing to call somebody, just, just as a, it used to be communist or Marxist.

• 1:49:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, Cleveland Browns fan, you know, like, come on, you know,

• 1:49:57Lex Fridman?

  Actually, nobody likes the Browns, so I'll agree with you.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  That was, that's why I picked them. That's the trick, is you find a group of people that nobody likes. We're good here? All right, that's the move. But, uh, yeah, that's a creepy thing, though, because that is, that is the creepy thing. It's like, people are always looking for, groups of people are always looking for, and I find this really deeply disturbing, um, like, hey, so who's the guy that we can all get away with, you know, just treating like dirt? Who's the guy that I can be a dick to? I can just walk up and punch in the face and no one's gonna say anything. And it's, even if, you know, people do that with, whether it's literal Nazis or someone that I called Nazi, you know, I guess what's the bigger issue? This person's ridiculous beliefs or what I'm doing? And you mentioned Hitler before, and obviously Mein Kampf being,

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  you know, like, the outline for some of the things he did later, and when the evil, was it always there? Did it, did it take root later on or flourish later on? But was, was Adolf Hitler a problem because he had crazy ideas or because he did things? I think it's because, it's not, I think, I know it's because he did things. Now, if I'm gonna start punishing thought crime, I I'm gonna have to start punishing thought crime and that's a terrifying concept. Even if I'm right about the certain about the objectively correct about the things that I decide to call out of bounds. Who put me in charge and made me arbiter of good taste? And how long until I decide that something else is is out of bounds? It's it's always a sliding scale or it's always just a sliding standard.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  And I I find that that, you know, to be more of a concern than people doing crazy things. Because I guess if you mention Alex Jones, you know, putting out ridiculous ridiculous ideas, ridiculous theories, I think that most people don't look at Alex Jones as a credible person. Now, I'm not gonna pretend to be deeply read into all of his beliefs or the things that he's trying to peddle. Um, but there's plenty of things that are quasi mainstream that I think on would this side or that side that maybe not comparably ridiculous, but are,

• 1:51:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  you know, particularly in hindsight, or, you know, are we're not are are silly. And I guess, uh, the idea of of getting a group of people together to decide what we're not going to tolerate is a very, very tricky thing. And and I think that, you know, it reminds me of law or, you know, even, you know, religion when it gets to like, what are the things that we don't like? How do we feel about rape? It's like, no, under no circumstances is that an acceptable behavior. Murder? No, that's not acceptable behavior. Killing? I don't know. Kind of depends on the situation. Are you at war? Were you justified? Were you acting in self-defense? Okay, so it's not now murder is a specific type of killing. The same way, you know, other things should be a specific type of something else. But I guess we we draw the line on murder.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  We say if you want to exist in our society, you can't do this. This cannot be done. And then we go theft. If someone said, hey, I murdered that guy. Can you understand where I'm coming from? I might say, yeah, I'll hear you out. Doesn't mean that I think you're right. But I'm like, have you ever been wronged so deeply that you could imagine that you could kill someone? I'm like, no, I haven't. But I could conceptualize someone doing that. And I'm like, yeah, okay. And you still need to go, you still need to face, you know, criminal justice as we have it in our system. At least that's how we've decided.

• 1:53:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's it's interesting. You have to be able to like, there's, if you look at the history of discourse in this country, I think it's still true, but I'm not sure it's changed since nine 11 is, uh, it used to be impossible to criticize.

• 1:53:18Lex Fridman?

  A soldier. It was easier to criticize war. It was harder to criticize soldiers for allowing themselves to be the tools of war. I tend to be, maybe it's the Russian upbringing, it's the combat thing. I tend to romanticize war and soldiers. I see soldiers as heroes. But I've also heard people that not only say that soldiers are, that war is bad. They say soldiers are bad.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  What's their argument?

• 1:53:51Lex Fridman?

  It's the kind of libertarian view that they're basically slaves to evil. Right? War is evil. And they're given, they are suspending their moral and ethical, like duties as a human being to become the tools of evil. That's the sort of the argument if you see war as evil. I mean, I think it's useful to hear that, but there's for a long part in history that was completely unacceptable. Same with abortion. You see abortion as murder. I mean.

• 1:54:32Speaker 01

  If I classify it in that, if I put it in that, in that basket.

• 1:54:36Lex Fridman?

  It starts, we're living in the midst of like a genocide.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  Looked at from that perspective, could you feel how people could be deeply upset by abortion? You go, of course. Looked at from a different perspective, you say, I don't believe it to be murder. That's not how I see it. Then you go, oh, well, if that's the genesis of your, your thought process, then you're like, yeah, okay. Now, now I see how we can come to a different thing. But I guess we go, well, abortion is murder, period. Therefore, if you support it, you support murder. That's a convenient way for me to tar you, right? But I guess that's kind of coming back to the Alec Jones.

• 1:55:09Lex Fridman?

  I'm, I'm. It's the nuance. It's, you have to have the nuance in these kinds of conversations.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  And I have to be willing to have the conversation and I have to be willing to sit down. If I can't sit down across from like the most violently racist, angry, hypothetical internet, you know, conceived person that none of us have ever actually met in real life, but are hopefully. Not um, you know, and go like, well, of course I believe that this person's wrong. But allow me to change, do my best. I'll hear him out and I'll go, no, I can go point by point and explain why this guy or this girl is wrong. And hopefully bring them over to a more reasonable position where they will have better beliefs. And they will like objectively better beliefs and beliefs that will will and they'll treat other people better. Why would I want to marginalize this person? Now, I might not want to talk. I might not want to invite them to my barbecue if they're acting like a jerk all the time.

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  But how could I, would it not make the world a better place if I'd hear them out and they go, look, if you're going to sit down and talk with me, we're going to have to have a discussion. I'll hear what you have to say. And if I can't, if I can't explain to someone. Why their ridiculous belief is wrong, then I might, I must not be so confident in my position. And I guess that's where I come back to the Alex Jones thing, as you mentioned, you know, with uh. With Bill Gates and and you're much more familiar with with the specifics of all the good that he's done. But, you know, again, he's been an unbelievable force for good. You know, in this world, you can list A, B, C, D, things that the man has has done, that its foundation has done. And, you know, positive things. And then the other people could speculate about ridiculous, crazy levels of of evil.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  But you can't produce any evidence for that sort of thing. Because if you could, the man would find himself in some trouble. You know, and anyway, I guess what I would would say is that. Why, you can't force me to accept the truth, the same way you could write down two plus two equals four on a piece of paper. And show me how it works and I could say, nah, uh, but that doesn't make it not true. And you've still given yourself an opportunity to present your case. You've presented it to me. And you've also, for anyone listening and watching, you know, you've been able to critically assess what's gone on, you know, or critically address back and forth, you know, kind of the the discourse. And and I think that you almost, you're making your case for the public. So I guess like, you know, when it comes to just. Never not engaging with these people, that seems to me to be cowardly. And I think that that's a.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Something that we're seeing in society right now. I think we're seeing a crisis of courage in society all all over the place. And I think that's where we're seeing poor leadership. I think we're seeing understandable things happening everywhere. But we need stronger voices and stronger, stronger beliefs that have a conviction and are willing to engage with others, not just turning into a shouting. Contest and not, I didn't win because there's more of me. Oh, I voted, I outvoted you. That's nice too. But that's a stand in for bullets. That's saying I won because there's more of me. That doesn't mean that I'm right. Because plenty of horrible and unpopular now things have been very, very deeply popular in the past and would have won a popular vote. Does that make them right? I'd say clearly not. So I guess uh. You'd hope that we engage with these people and that you can do your best to bring them over to a more reasonable position if you believe that you have one.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  And if you can't, well, at least you made the effort. And I think that that's something where martial arts shows the value. It's like, are, do you know if you're gonna go win your next fight? I'm like, I have no idea. I will proceed forward with, with full effort and, and you know, I will fight with dignity. I'll fight with honor and I'll fight with courage. And I'll use everything I have and I will play within the bounds of the game and that's that. And the result will be what it'll be, but I'll walk into and out of that ring with my head held high because I will know that I did my part. I did my job. The outcome, the specific outcome is not in my control. It's just strongly in my influence. And, and I think that that's something that helped me, that martial arts has taught me because other times, even when I was successful or unsuccessful, I would focus on. If I won, I'm, I won, therefore I'm good. I lost, therefore I'm bad. This other guy won or lost, therefore.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  As opposed to evaluating their method. And I think it's so easy when we're taking a bird's eye view of things to not evaluate. How someone's doing things. You're not evaluating my process. You're simply evaluating my outcome and I could have stumbled into something very, very good or very, very bad. And we can look back and I think that's the value of history. I mean, I don't mean to get on my dang high horse, but it's like this value histories. We can see the unbroken chain or. The chain of events that led us somewhere. And then only with, only with the eyes of history can we truly evaluate things unless we're in the room watching it happen. And I, I guess that's again where we start to go. Most of the big, bad, scary things that have happened. In history that are done particularly on an industrial scale, which implies governmental power and things like that, or these, the equivalent.

• 1:59:28Speaker 01

  Involve groups of people getting together and going, hey, we're not gonna deal with that guy, giant groups of people. So. Maybe we're right this time, but maybe we're wrong next time. And I guess I would be back to the Gandalf putting on the one ring. I would be very, very hesitant, even if we thought we were in the right. To simply try to, try to marginalize just on general principle, even people like Alex Jones who. On their face are pretty ridiculous. Like you said, you should sit down with Adolf Hitler and talk to the man.

• 1:59:54Lex Fridman?

  I agree with you to play a little devil's advocate.

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:59:58Lex Fridman?

  Is Alex Jones might be a bad example, but if we look at, because he has a face, he is a human, he's a real person. There is also trolls on the internet, 4chan. The worry I have with those folks is that, and there might be parallels to martial arts, is they practice guerrilla warfare, meaning they don't necessarily want to arrive at the truth. They just always want to cut at the ankles of the powerful. Like, they want to always break down the powerful. And even if they, I mean, it's, they turn everything

• 2:00:39Lex Fridman?

  into a game. So they, let's see if we can make the world, let's see if we can make a trend that Bill Gates is a pedophile, right? They make it into a game. They get excited about this game. They see the powerful. Let's see if we can convince that, like, who is the most positive person we can think of? Let's see if we can turn them into evil. And they've tried that with like, with like, everybody. And it seems to stick, and they're good at it. And some would argue, or whatever you think about our current president, that he has some elements of that, which is, he's figured out, whatever this music of social discourse that's going on, he's figured out how to always troll the mainstream, like,

• 2:01:24Lex Fridman?

  flow of consciousness, that's the media. He always kind of says stuff that annoys a very large number of people, and he enjoys that. Because it's like, taking the powerful, taking the way things were before, and he like shakes it up by saying the most inappropriate thing, almost on purpose or instinctually and so on. The problem I have with that is that doesn't, the powerful thing there is it brings the power, the, those in power down a notch. That's a great thing. The negative thing is it doesn't. Push us closer to a nuanced, careful, rigorous discourse towards truth. It's like showing up to a party and just like starting to yell.

• 2:02:09Lex Fridman?

  It doesn't create a good conversation. It just makes everything into a game where truth doesn't even seem like a thing we can even hope to achieve.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  That makes sense, and I guess as you mentioned, it'll come back to another movie because I don't do books and do movies. Some people just want to watch the world burn, right? And I guess there's, that's a creepy, creepy, you know, kind of urge that some people have. And also is some people, you're like, hey, would you like to throw a brick through that glass window? You're like, yeah, sure. Like, no, I'm not going to do that because I think about what's going to, what's going to, what's going to occur, like something's going to be hurt, someone's property, not going to do it versus, hey, you want to see what'll happen? Like, yeah, sure. You know, kids are always like, I have my son, he just grabs Spider-Man and drops him off the table. Spider-Man fell. Like Spider-Man didn't fall, Sean. Like you dropped him, you knocked him off the table. And he'll grin. And basically, you know, it's, it's an interesting thing, like you said, like playing that these

• 2:03:04Speaker 01

  people are appealing to and, you know, and also almost like the little dog factor of like, people do want to watch the powerful get taken down a notch for all the good and the not good of that. Just plenty of people, it seems to me, that have found their way to incredibly high positions. Some, some have just found themselves there and many, many, many, many, many people, you know, men and women of, of all backgrounds are brilliant and have worked hard. And yeah, of course there's luck and there's, there's luck into everything. They're, you know, LeBron James, in spite of being the best basketball player on God's green earth, is fortunate that he didn't get hit by a car. You know, it's fortunate that he didn't tear his knee, you know, but thankfully we get to see all these things, you know, but um, I, I guess, uh, it's, if people don't have any skin in the game, you never know what they're going to do.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  And I think that's the problem with the internet, you know, that people get to be nameless, be faceless. That's why guerrilla fighters are outside of the bounds of war. Like you don't have a uniform on. Like, I don't know who you're from. You don't get the same treatment that a soldier gets. Um, for, and people go, well, that's crazy. Actually, there's reasons for this. Because otherwise, people are able to assail things. And there's no, there's no one responsible. There's no way to go and say, hey, where's, where did this come from? What's the root of this? What, how can I address this? And I think that's the problem of the internet's problem with Twitter, this problem in places like 4chan. I wouldn't mind seeing that type of stuff go away, if I'm frank. But that's not the same thing as people with a face, people with, people who are willing to stand there and say, hi, my name is so and so.

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  Even if I have ridiculous beliefs, hopefully, you know, people will hear me out and then if I'm wrong, educate me. But I, I guess you, you hope that the real, I guess, in my mind, antidote to all of this silliness is education. And, and I think that that's something that we're, you know, critical thinking is, is not necessarily, I went to school in America and I'll, you know, I feel very fortunate. But critical thinking is not something that's, that's focused on. I mean, and it's, it's tough. It's almost like talking about jujitsu. It's tough to teach critical thinking when I don't know any words. You have to teach me techniques. You can't teach me to be an artist. But recognize that the techniques are the beginning, not the end. Ultimately, it's the artistry that we are searching for, not just the, not just the science or the, or the bi-rote memorization.

• 2:05:11Speaker 01

  And I guess, you know, you'd hope that people's ability to think critically and recognize that majority rule or whoever's loudest does not mean that they're right by any stretch of the imagination. And we don't appeal to that and we don't bow to that. Um, will help them to, help inoculate them against the ridiculous things that come out of these places, these dark places that, that are objectively not great. But the, I guess, all circling back, if, even if we swatted these, you know, these bad things out of existence right now. We've got to be very, very careful doing that because it's who's doing the swatting. This political group that's in power right now, the people that support our current president would maybe feel a certain way. The people that support another option would feel differently as to what exactly defines toxic.

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  And I, you know, I guess that, that's what, what gives me pause.

• 2:05:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And, but also the grace thing, I tend to believe that. The technology, you said education, but the platforms we use like Twitter and the Reddit and all these platforms have a role to play to teach us grace, meaning they should help us incentivize the kind of behavior that is incentivized in real life. Like being a dick in real life is not incentivized, like one-on-one interaction. There's cases where it is, but usually being kind to each other is incentivized. On the internet, it's not. Like you get likes for mocking people in a funny, in a humorous way.

• 2:06:40Lex Fridman?

  And it could be dark kind of mocking, depending on the community. You can go, you can go to the appearance. If somebody's a little fat or a little too skinny, you can comment on their appearance, the hair, the way their hair looks, like the appearance stuff. It could be on, the people comment all the time on the level of eloquence of my speech. Go fuck yourself.

• 2:07:03Speaker 01

  I like it. It's creepy though, watching, watching previously, like this used to be lowbrow though, like people doing this type of stuff. It's creepy watching like our political figures get into this type of game.

• 2:07:14Lex Fridman?

  Yes, but again, it's a little bit refreshing, right? It's the, my hope with Donald Trump was, is that he would shake up the, the people who wear suits usually, the, like if you're from DC, I remember like showing up, I actually didn't wear what I usually wear in DC because I was like, everybody's wearing a suit and tie when I was like giving talks and stuff.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Except for Mudge, who wears jeans and a t-shirt.

• 2:07:42Lex Fridman?

  Mudge doesn't give a damn. Mudge is a forever renegade. But I don't even remember what, oh yeah, so my hope with Trump was to huge shake up that system to say like, like to inject new ideas, to inject new energy. Of course, the way it turned out is different, but like there's, it turns out that you might want to have somebody who's like, like an Andrew Yang type character, who is full of ideas that are very different and inject the energy, new energy into the system through youthful, new ideas versus through the troll that like, that's very good at sort of mocking

• 2:08:26Lex Fridman?

  and like playing outside the rules of the game.

• 2:08:31Lex Fridman?

  But Trump did reveal powerfully, I don't know what to think of it, that it's just a game. And you don't have to play by the rules. That's both inspiring and dark.

• 2:08:43Speaker 01

  Deeply depressing, right?

• 2:08:44Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and I don't know what to do with it. I don't, I mean, the same, I'm not drawing parallels, not drawing parallels between our president and Adolf Hitler. But it's certainly, and there's a lot of, in history, a lot of positive and a lot of negative things happen when charismatic leaders realize they don't have to play by the rules. You can just flip the table. It's that Kevin Spacey show.

• 2:09:12Speaker 01

  House of Cards.

• 2:09:13Lex Fridman?

  House of Cards, where you just flip the table or whatever. You don't have to play by the rules of the chess game. You can flip the table.

• 2:09:19Speaker 01

  One wonders if that's always been done in private, you know, I guess, because that's, I mean, even look, obviously, the United States is a, is a republic, but we had, we had Bush, then we had Clinton, then we had more Bush, then we had President Obama, then we were about to have another Clinton. That's fairly creepy.

• 2:09:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:36Speaker 01

  Even on its own.

• 2:09:37Lex Fridman?

  But now we added another, I mean, I'm sure we'll have a generation of Trumps. No.

• 2:09:44Speaker 01

  Gee.

• 2:09:45Lex Fridman?

  We, you know, I'm Russian, so I think we humans like kings still and queens. There's something, we're attracted to the, the thing we talked about, coaches. There's something in us that longs to, towards that authoritarian control. One of the beautiful things about America, the second amendment, is we also like individual freedom. That's one of the, one of the unique aspects at the founding of this country and still, and for me is the beacon of hope, that somehow there's the fire of freedom burns in like that Texas feel that I, that gives me hope.

• 2:10:28Lex Fridman?

  The F U energy that revolts against the power, which as we discussed, power corrupts and ultimately leads to sort of. Degradation of the whoever's ruling the people.

• 2:10:43Speaker 01

  It's interesting, though. Like, it seems to me, maybe I'm just, I don't know if I'm reading this properly when I, when I see it. But it's, it seems to me that, that, like you said, that, that, you know, flip the bird, I'm gonna do me within reason. Like, as long as I'm not hurting you, uh, is idea that, that very much, at least in my mind, defines the American ideal, or at least part of the consciousness of the United States, is, is under attack to a certain extent, you know? Um, and if only, like, I can think to, like, you know, maybe a generation behind us. Um, it's, it's becoming more collectivist, you know, for all the good and also the not good of that. And it's, uh, you know, not in, not in terms, not in terms of policy at this point, but just in terms of, like, uh, consciousness.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  And I wonder if that's a, an internet thing, you know, people are more in touch with one another than they've, as far as I'm concerned, who've ever been, or at least more than in my lifetime. And, uh, you know, the rest of the world seems much closer than it did, you know, living in Virginia. California seems very far away. Being on the internet, it's just right there. I can hear about it. I can see it. I can, I can interact with people from there. You know, I remember, uh, you know, being in Tennessee at, uh, you know, one time and then re, and reading about, you know, events taking place in, you know, the Middle East. And that just seemed like a mile away. It seemed like a, a unbelievably far distance. And then another time, when you're in DC, you just feel like, oh, you read about something happening in Paris, and it just feels like it's just right around the corner. Because DC is a seat of, uh, a seat of power where things are just occurring all the time.

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, I guess you, you wonder about, that's where I come back to the group decisions to not listen to this person or to cancel this or to, you know, we all, the moral majority shall do the following as opposed to, as long as you're not hurting me and long as you're not hurting anyone else, I have to let you do, I have to let you be on general principle. Even if I don't like you, I'm very free to not like you. I'm free to speak out against you, but I'm not, it is not within my right. Or, and not with it, and it's not, I, I would not be right to attempt to attack you. And that is an interesting thing, though, when we see words being redefined or words being defined. Whether it's toxicity, whether it's violence, if I think that what you're saying is is your speech is by itself,

• 2:12:53Speaker 01

  you know, a violence or a precursor to violence, I'm justified in doing all sorts of things. You know, and and that creeps me out significantly because again, even if it ends up being pointed in a good direction initially, it's only a matter of time. And actually, that brings me to another.

• 2:13:10Lex Fridman?

  Dune quote?

• 2:13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got all day.

• 2:13:12Lex Fridman?

  Um, how much are they paying you?

• 2:13:14Speaker 01

  But we about say the the Frank Herbert estate and not enough, frankly. Uh, let's see.

• 2:13:20Lex Fridman?

  And how many books are there in Dune?

• 2:13:22Speaker 01

  Uh, that's a Jen question.

• 2:13:24Lex Fridman?

  You're also a fan of Dune?

• 2:13:26Speaker 02

  I read the whole series, but not a couple of the, I read all the prequels as well, with the exception of a couple.

• 2:13:34Lex Fridman?

  Is there a book one for Dune?

• 2:13:36Speaker 02

  Dune would be book one and even the prequels, it's still all better if you start. Like I read Dune and then read the original, what is it, six? And then I went back and started to read some of the.

• 2:13:46Lex Fridman?

  Just like watching Star Wars, you you want to start at episode four or whatever?

• 2:13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  That's the way that's the move and then stop at six, call it a day, watch the Mandalorian, but.

• 2:13:58Lex Fridman?

  Well, I thought you're not walking back here.

• 2:14:00Speaker 01

  No, I liked the Mandalorian. Yeah, that is what I said. I I was told that I was heartless for not liking Baby Yoda, who I.

• 2:14:07Speaker 02

  We don't talk about a couple of the movies, not including the Mandalorian. The Mandalorian is fine. It's the more recent movies that we don't like to talk about.

• 2:14:15Lex Fridman?

  Oh, the, what's his name? The goofy guy?

• 2:14:19Speaker 01

  Ryan.

• 2:14:20Lex Fridman?

  No, no, no, the creature, the goofy creature with the.

• 2:14:23Speaker 01

  Jar Jar?

• 2:14:24Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, Jar Jar.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  Do you ever see the the the Jar Jar Binks is actually like the Dark Lord of the Sith theory that fixed the whole initial trilogy? We're like, he's he's like goofing around and like making it all the way through battles and winning. You're like, wait a minute, he oops his way. He walks over to a pool, does a triple backflip, falls in, you're like. It's bizarre that you-

• 2:14:41Lex Fridman?

  This is the Alex Jones theory of Star Wars. He's actually running everything.

• 2:14:47Speaker 01

  He was the one that actually was like, hey, we should vote in Chancellor Palpatine, or Senator Palpatine, like right before they put Jar Jar in charge. First off, what did they think was gonna happen? And second off, that was, I would just think that'd be great, like, oops, oh man, I guess he's the emperor now. That would have been great, but actually to the cancel and all the other stuff, again, it's just, you'd hope that it gives pause, and I think about this for fighting, because a lot of times, I'll use this example, people like fight fans and, you know, like UFC, they love people that run out and try to murder each other. And it's entertaining, and it's super entertaining, but, you know, Floyd Mayweather doesn't resonate with people as much. It's like people started, I remember the time when Floyd was not as popular. Now people think, people love Floyd because he's 50 and 0 Floyd, and oh man, and finally he had so much success

• 2:15:30Speaker 01

  that we all can't help but recognize the man's genius and greatness. But prior to that, oh, he's boring, he's this, he's that, he fights, you know, with, he's circumspect, he's cautious, he's pressing, he's intelligent, deeply intelligent. And when you watch people go out and try to murder each other, you can flip a coin 100 times and, you know, you can get, you could be lucky enough to get 100 heads, but it's still a coin flip. And I think that that's what's going on all the time is, you know, people are getting an outcome that they want, but it wasn't a well-thought-out situation, and that's why you'll win by five in a row by knockout, and then lose three in a row, and then people will go, well, what happened to that guy? He used to be so great, and you're like, no, he's doing what he's always been doing. It's just, it was getting great outcomes on a coin flip prior, and it's getting negative outcomes on a coin flip now.

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  But I guess what I would say is, it watches, it's interesting watching, you know, I guess, societal beliefs become such a thing that we're almost adopting on a religious level if we're not careful. If, when I say religious level, I mean like pan life, like this is guiding all of my choices, for all the good and the bad of that, and this is a Dune quote, is when religion and politics travel in the same car, the riders believe that nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong, faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that the precipice does not show itself to the man in the blind rush until it's too late. And I think that that's, again, the pause, we go, oh man, thank goodness, we have this guy that wants to rebuild Germany, he'll put us back where we need to be.

• 2:16:56Lex Fridman?

  And you stop questioning any your own judgment, your own just you start you stop thinking essentially.

• 2:17:02Speaker 01

  Right, I'm not allowed to question this. Oh, well, of course, this is correct. Of course, this is correct. Of course, I'm right. I intended to do right. So of course, my actions are correct. I mean, how many times have any of us intended to do something helpful and ended up doing something less? And, you know, plenty of people who intend to do harm could by accident do something decent. And I guess it's like, you know, I'm not saying anything, you know, terribly terribly, you know, insightful, but it's just one of those where it's hard to it's hard to say in the moment. And that's where you hopefully caution, you would counsel some degree of caution. And that that's what worries me with with people deciding that we're all so right about this, or we're all so right about that and attempting to rather than win the argument, silence the counter argument, no matter how crazy it may seem.

• 2:17:46Speaker 01

  Because I just think that that idea, even when it's pointed in a good direction initially, it's only a matter of time.

• 2:17:51Lex Fridman?

  You're amongst many things, a jujitsu black belt. One of the things that people are really curious about. White belts and blue belts in jujitsu, but also people haven't tried the art is what does it take to be a jujitsu black belt?

• 2:18:08Speaker 01

  I think that, you know, everyone's journey is a little bit different, but the one thing that the what's the Calvin Coolidge quote, you know, determination, persistence is the only thing that that will win in the end. It will always win in the end. Not brilliance, not toughness, not education, it's persistence. And I think that having the belief that no matter what happens to me, I will proceed forward and I will I will figure out how to make this happen, hell or high water. I think is the one thing that ties together all of the people that I've ever met that made it through whatever it was that they were going through.

• 2:18:43Speaker 01

  Because, you know, sometimes you can get lucky and you can have an easy time or and that luck could be you had a good situation. It could be, I mean, like in the obvious sense of like where you're living, where you're training, what's going on, you had a good situation, you're unbelievably athletic. Oh, you're you're going to be an astronaut. You're brilliant and an Olympic athlete, you know, like, well, that's a fantastic situation, you know, you won the genetic lottery and I'm sure you've worked hard as well, but you also won the genetic lottery. It's a determination is the one thing, though, because that person could have a very easy go of it initially and then tear their knee. And then they're no longer the the superhuman physical specimen that they were. The only thing that will keep them going is persistence. And I think that that. Um, I would just say that persistence, I say, I'll just put one foot in front of the

• 2:19:27Speaker 01

  other and sometimes I can see the path ahead and sometimes it's beyond my vision, but I will not stop. I may even slow down, but I won't stop. And that's the only thing that I can say that I've seen tie everyone together because there's so many ways to the top of any mountain and there's so many different personalities and skills and backgrounds involved, but everyone, everyone carries on.

• 2:19:49Lex Fridman?

  So at the core, the foundational advice is just don't quit, just keep going.

• 2:19:53Speaker 01

  That's the lesson of martial arts, I think. You know, we think it's like how to be strong or how to be, how to win, but in reality, it's like how to persist, how to endure because it's, all of us have been beaten so many times and gotten beaten up so many times and thought about quitting. Have I ever thought about quitting? Absolutely. Have I ever quit? Never. I will never, ever quit, ever. I can say, you might knock me out, I will be damned if I quit.

• 2:20:15Lex Fridman?

  What's the darkest moment? Is it injury related? Like is the, is it, uh, so like to me, like two possibilities. I've fortunately never been seriously injured, but I think that's a dark place to be, like having to be out for many months, uh, for, um, as Jen was saying, like with a head injury especially, like the uncertainty, that's one. And then the other side is if you have big ambitions as a competitor, realizing that you're not as good, like tho- those, those doubts where like, I kinda suck. How am I supposed to be

• 2:20:55Lex Fridman?

  a world, the greatest fighter of all time if I, if, if like several people in the gym are kicking my ass? Those are the two things that paralyze you.

• 2:21:05Speaker 02

  I think that everyone's darkest moment is maybe different. Looking from the outside for Ryan, I wouldn't say that he's had injuries and he's had bad ones. I wouldn't say that was his darkest moment. I think for me, I would say some of, my head injury was my darkest moment. Um, absolutely. And I've torn my ACL twice. I've torn my shoulders four times. I've had lots of surgeries. Um, for me, the orthopedic injuries were not the most.

• 2:21:34Speaker 02

  Difficult, it was the brain injury. For others, that might be the case for them. Maybe they've never experienced an injury. And maybe for them, that's their darkest moment. From the outside, obviously, Orion can speak to this more. But for Orion, I think it was the inability to perform at certain points. The missing of opportunities that for him, from my perspective, watching him go through and having seen various points of his growth from early Purple Blood on. I think the hardest time for him looking in, obviously, was when he would hit moments where he wasn't able to perform. For various reasons, he couldn't get fights. He was having difficulties there. I think that that was the hardest points for him.

• 2:22:17Lex Fridman?

  Did you think with the head injury that you might never be able to jiu-jitsu again?

• 2:22:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, mine was very, was really bad. And it was just the one hit. But I had a looping memories for seven months. Didn't know it because when your brain's messed up, you're not even aware that you're looping. And so I saw two different neurologists. I find, like, it took a very long time. I didn't know if I was going to be able to have like linear thoughts or read a book. I didn't know at certain points if I could listen to music again, you know, without making my head hurt. And so it was almost two years before I woke up in the morning without a headache. Just waking up before I even start my day. And so that-

• 2:23:01Lex Fridman?

  So that's even bigger than jiu-jitsu. That's just life.

• 2:23:03Speaker 02

  That's just, that's just hard. And I think that you can experience so many things. I've had all these injuries. We lost a baby when I was 15, 15 weeks. And we've had all these experiences. And what the hardest point for me, not saying all of those things weren't hard, but it's kind of like, as you go through these, you just realize like, life goes on and you have to keep working at it and you have to keep going. And you asked me earlier offline, did I feel depressed? And- Not from my head injury. I don't think that, at least in the moment, I had a, any recognition of that. It's kind of like, but I think different people's personalities, I have kind of the like buckle down and just keep going.

• 2:23:45Speaker 02

  And then sometimes it's not until lots of time later that you realize, wow, that was really hard. Cause you're just struggling to live and, and function and, and do the things that you need to do along the path.

• 2:23:55Lex Fridman?

  Do you mind jumping on just like this part of the conversation just for a few minutes?

• 2:24:00Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I didn't mean to over.

• 2:24:00Lex Fridman?

  Do you, do you mind, you know, just sitting together? Oh, no, no. Just for a little bit?

• 2:24:05Speaker 02

  Sorry about that. I didn't mean to jump in here.

• 2:24:07Lex Fridman?

  It'd be cool if we put a face to it, you know? Is, is it okay with you?

• 2:24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fine with me. It's fine with you.

• 2:24:13Lex Fridman?

  By the way, what was the head injury, if you don't mind sharing?

• 2:24:16Speaker 02

  Someone hit their head, dropped their knee on the back of my head during training, who's a lot bigger than me. So one strike to the back of the head is too much for someone. There's a reason that's outlawed in MMA, right? Someone 50 pounds, everything, drops their knee on the back of your head once and it's...

• 2:24:32Speaker 01

  It's the funny thing about getting hit, right? You never can really be sure what's gonna happen. I think that's actually one of the magical parts about jiu-jitsu where like if you choke me, if you, we know what's gonna occur. You hit someone, they might be completely unharmed. Like you might be punching Tony Ferguson in the face and like you, you need to hit him with a sledgehammer to affect this man? And then other people, they could get really badly hurt, which I guess it's back to your point about, you know, street fighting and things like that. And the serious, serious potential, you know, second, third order consequences of any action that we take. But yeah, that's a, that's a tricky thing about getting hit.

• 2:25:05Lex Fridman?

  How's it make you feel that, like the, the really shitty thing about injuries to me was that like, you start thinking like, well, if I did this one little thing different, like this wouldn't have happened today. Like one, one moment changes your entire life. Is that, do you, uh, do you think that way or is that totally counterproductive?

• 2:25:27Speaker 02

  Um, you can't help but think that way when you've had them, my injuries I've had, uh, because I've had more than most people's fair share. Um, as my orthopedic says, you don't wanna win that, you don't wanna win the contest of who's had the most.

• 2:25:40Lex Fridman?

  But since you have, that's what's building me a pool.

• 2:25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, but I think you can't help but think that way sometimes, but I definitely don't think it's... I think it can be facilitated if you don't beat yourself up too much. Because thinking about, why have I been subject to so many injuries? And a lot of it comes to just, almost all of mine in particular, people a lot heavier than me. So we're talking, but if I've been training martial arts 15 years, I'm obviously on the much smaller side. I'm a woman. I've done thousands and thousands of rounds with people 50 pounds plus heavier than me. I mean, years not training with anyone less than 50 pounds, which is 50 pounds is almost half my body weight. And when you also add testosterone, the natural physiological advantages of men,

• 2:26:26Speaker 02

  not just are they heavier with more mass, they're faster, they're more explosive, they're stronger. If they're the same size. And so I think that the willingness to be in that environment over and over and over again creates a lot of strength, resiliency, willingness to continue. But it also, like, in order to do that, you almost have to, for me, the way I was approaching it was like, pretend like I wasn't more vulnerable. And just be willing to step in and step in and step in.

• 2:26:56Lex Fridman?

  Fake it until you make it, kind of thing?

• 2:26:58Speaker 02

  Fake it until you make it, kind of, yeah, like, I'll just, one day, I'll be strong enough.

• 2:27:02Lex Fridman?

  And you avoided injury for most, for most of it?

• 2:27:05Speaker 02

  For most of those rounds, I avoided injury. The problem, as Ryan points out, is that, like, you could do thousands of rounds, but if one person that size, that strength, that hover reacts in a way that you don't expect, it doesn't, it's not like an oops, it's like always major.

• 2:27:18Lex Fridman?

  Do you regret any of it, like?

• 2:27:20Speaker 02

  I think that most, no one I know has experienced the degree of injuries that I've experienced. And I started at a time when, in 2005, it was very different than now. Where you have, the coaches have more control over what you're doing. They're more aware, in general, about a lot of the injuries. There's a lot more people who are hobbyists than when I started. They were hobbyists, but it was a different kind of hobbyist, you know, than now.

• 2:27:48Speaker 02

  Now, our girls can train with other girls. They don't have to do thousands of rounds with somebody significantly more powerful than them. And for the drawbacks and the benefits of that, you know, as with anything. So I think...

• 2:28:06Speaker 02

  I think that, I don't think I would go back and change it. There were times after one of my injuries where I said to Ryan, I said, "I quit, I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore." I probably said it more than once, but there was one time I was really serious in 2012. I was really serious. I had torn my shoulder. I had, I was looking at missing a big competition again in the world for my second or third year in a row after injuries. And I said, I'd quit my job two years before and I'm like, "I'm done." And Ryan, before that had always been, you know, keep me focused. And then he kind of said, "Okay, if you want to be done, be done. Just, just have a good time." "No, I'm really done. I don't even want to train anymore." "Okay, okay."

• 2:28:45Speaker 02

  And then, you know, I think he helped facilitate a moment for me to go, um, visit a friend, some friends, some girls that were doing a girls camp who are close to my size, some friends of mine to go train. And I was like, "Oh, wait, I do love this thing." It's just harder for me on a daily basis, but that doesn't mean I don't love this thing. And it really helped change my mind. I started to connect with other people, travel more, myself. Um, because previously he had done that, but I hadn't really done that. I think there was a point where, um, when I started Jiu-Jitsu, it was just for fun. I just wanted a sport after college. I played sports as a kid. I want to, I just want to exercise. I wasn't into the martial arts. He used to give me a hard time about it because he was always very, "How can you not care about martial arts?" "I don't know. I just want to play sports."

• 2:29:27Speaker 02

  Um, and Ryan was really big into kind of the philosophy side of the martial arts aspect. Um, he used to give me a hard time. And I think after that moment, this moment where I looked at myself and I said, "Do I want to keep doing this?" Is when I started to appreciate Jiu-Jitsu. Take, it took off some of the pressure I'd been feeling, I think, as Ryan's girlfriend, but I had a full-time job a long time. It was never my goal to be a Jiu-Jitsu world champion. And I think after that moment where I looked, you know, "I really do like this. I really do want to keep this." I had this moment, like anytime where you're like, "I'm doing this for me. I'm not doing this for him." And I think that that's, um, I think that that was really lucky for me because how often in our lives do we have a kind of a challenge where we have to stop? And we have to say, "Is this really what I want?"

• 2:30:13Speaker 02

  How often in a relationship do you do that? How often in any type of lifestyle or job do you stop? And do you really ask yourself, "Has something really difficult happened that you look and you go, 'Am I just doing this because it's convenient and easy? Or is this what I really want to do?"

• 2:30:27Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I've had those moments. Like this, this podcast is one of those things. It's like you, you stop. And think like, I actually love this.

• 2:30:39Lex Fridman?

  And it's, I had that with Jiu Jitsu too. I don't think I had sat until like brown belt that I stopped. I mean, yeah, it's when you first face real challenges, you think like, why am I doing this? It's, I think most of my progression was, why not? I think that's the right, the leap of faith. And then at a certain point, you think like, what, why am I doing this? And if you can answer honestly that because I love it, it's kind of a liberating feeling. It's a, it's a, yeah, it's so, it's so powerful.

• 2:31:12Speaker 01

  Then you feel thankful for the opportunity to be there, right? Because you love it and you go, man, I.

• 2:31:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's great gratitude. It's, yeah, it's ultimately gratitude. Yeah. Let me ask you this. So Ryan said like, what, what is it?

• 2:31:24Speaker 02

  I took over your thing.

• 2:31:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, nobody cares about Ryan.

• 2:31:28Speaker 01

  I wouldn't.

• 2:31:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I'll Photoshop him out or whatever, however you had it.

• 2:31:31Speaker 01

  If you do that, it'd be great. Put Sean Connery's head.

• 2:31:34Lex Fridman?

  Uh, just like a Dune ad.

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:31:38Speaker 02

  Sean Connery, I could get down that.

• 2:31:41Lex Fridman?

  Is that the sexiest man in Sean Connery?

• 2:31:43Speaker 01

  In the Dune universe? That's my understanding.

• 2:31:46Speaker 02

  I think in any universe.

• 2:31:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, well, Ryan Gosling.

• 2:31:49Speaker 02

  We actually named our son after Sean Connery.

• 2:31:52Lex Fridman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:31:53Speaker 02

  We did.

• 2:31:53Speaker 01

  No, you know, yes.

• 2:31:56Lex Fridman?

  He was in The Rock. Those, I love all those lame.

• 2:32:00Speaker 01

  Nicolas Cage. Oh, yeah.

• 2:32:01Lex Fridman?

  Con Air is probably the greatest movie of all time.

• 2:32:04Speaker 01

  Dude's accent in Con Air was so awesome.

• 2:32:06Lex Fridman?

  I don't know where it's from. Alabama, I guess, or something.

• 2:32:09Speaker 01

  I love that they got like Steve Buscemi in there. They're like, we need Steve Buscemi in this thing. We got him.

• 2:32:12Lex Fridman?

  Dave Chappelle?

• 2:32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

• 2:32:15Lex Fridman?

  He's a prisoner.

• 2:32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, eight ball.

• 2:32:18Lex Fridman?

  Yep. Greatest movie of all time. Should have won an Oscar.

• 2:32:20Speaker 01

  Dave Chappelle also in Blue Street with Martin Lawrence.

• 2:32:24Speaker 01

  And in, what do you call it? Roman Hymen and Tights?

• 2:32:26Speaker 02

  Oh, Roman Hymen and Tights was one of my favorites as a kid.

• 2:32:28Lex Fridman?

  I've baked, but Rob, yeah, well, that's a good.

• 2:32:33Lex Fridman?

  Wow, we just listed off some really bad 90s movies, but. You take that back.

• 2:32:38Speaker 02

  For telling our age.

• 2:32:39Lex Fridman?

  Speak yourself. So what, like, in your view, I don't mean to, from like a smaller person, I guess, that's an interesting thing. While jiu jitsu is like, that, uh, small, I don't, I, I hope, hopefully it's not a bad thing. Elf. Elves are taller. Like with all these, like, uh, bigger people, you could still enjoy the art. Like, what does it take to get a black belt to excel, to quote unquote, master the art?

• 2:33:11Speaker 02

  Gosh, everyone has such a different path. Ryan's promoted, uh, six, seven people.

• 2:33:16Lex Fridman?

  Something like that.

• 2:33:17Speaker 02

  And I think about half of them have had, um, have kids, have families, have other careers. Um, at the time, some of them competed a lot. Some of them have never competed or rarely competed. Some have been competing a long time. Um, some had started different places. They, everyone's had different journeys. Uh, even in our own little group of seven, um, I think only, maybe only two or three were, were high level competitors of that group, um, at the higher belts, very like brown, black, maybe. Um, and so it's just different for every person. And that's something that, that, you know, we try to tell our, since we have 400 students.

• 2:33:57Speaker 02

  And, um, do we have a, we don't really have anyone who's, you know, a stated, other, other than like other coaches like Adam. But we don't have anyone that's like a stated high level competitor as a student at the moment. We, people look at our gym and go, oh, it's lots of competitors. It's not lots of competitors. It's never been lots of competitors. And we've had ones and twos here and there. Um, but really everybody's in it for the long term, if they're in it. Sometimes the, the high level competitors are the ones that are more likely to drop off because they have a bit of success, particularly at, at blue or purple. And then they realize how hard it is at brown and black. And then they, they have a hard time continuing on that, that path. And then they can't look at themselves as a non-competitive and have a hard time continuing with jiu jitsu, I think.

• 2:34:39Speaker 02

  Whereas sometimes it's the guy who comes in as a white belt and he trains, you know, twice a week, every week, and the next thing you know, he's been there for two or three years. Like, oh, he's a blue belt, he's a purple belt, he's a brown belt. And, and he's just consistent, um, over, over a long period of time and willing to, to take the path. And no two people's path is exactly the same, no two people's lives are exactly the same. You have, um, we have students who started as a white belt as a, you know, a young adult with no, you know, no responsibilities and they train all the time and then they have a job, you know, then they graduate college, then they have a job, then they have married, then they have kids, then they have different points in their careers and at different points in your life, jujitsu will be there, you know, for whatever way that you're willing to accept it. It's place, I think.

• 2:35:24Speaker 01

  Well, that's actually kind of what, back to the initial question we discussed about, you know, what makes a warrior, you know, and, and also like what makes something or someone, you know, particularly impressive in my mind is like, uh, what they make out of what they have. Um, you know, one of my favorite movies ever is Forrest Gump and it's obviously, it's, it's just, if you can't, uh, uh, cause I've heard people like, oh, Forrest Gump sucks. I'm like, I don't like you as a person. And, uh, like you have no heart at all, but basically, uh, it, it's the story of someone that tries hard. And it's like, yeah, but it's, it's a funny movie, but it's like, um, you know, I guess, you, you meet each person where they are, you know, and obviously you want, everyone needs to be pushed. We all need to be pushed. We need friends and people around us that push us to be better versions of ourselves

• 2:36:08Speaker 01

  all the time. And, and as you mentioned, the people you spend all of your time around deeply impact you. Um, and we have to be willing to be pushed. It takes a leap of faith for me to trust, for me to put some of my self in my, my, you know, I guess my ability, my control, my personal agency, as it were, in the hands of someone else that I, that I trust and, and that I respect. But if, if I can do that, well, again, maybe I never become, you know, high level black belt competitor. But, you know, I had four of the things I was doing in my life. I also have a family. I have this, I have that. You know, what that person was able to accomplish in the martial arts relative to what they were able to put in is phenomenal. You know, other times someone could be a very successful black belt and in my mind be a bum.

• 2:36:49Speaker 01

  Because they could have been a lot more and you know, they could have done more, they could have focused more. And there's no shame in deciding that you don't want to do that, but whatever it is that you're invested in. I remember the Take It Uneasy podcast and that I loved because. You know, I'll just chill out. I like resting. It's like vacation. Oh, who wants to go on vacation? Yeah, I'll go on vacation for a day or two. You want to spend three weeks on vacation? Like, I'd kill myself. Like, get me out of here. Like, this is horrible. This is, I'm a waste of life. I'm not doing anything useful.

• 2:37:17Lex Fridman?

  I technically have vacation right now.

• 2:37:18Speaker 01

  Right. Well, this is fun though.

• 2:37:20Lex Fridman?

  This is like a one day vacation.

• 2:37:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. But you know, if you had, I'm sure you're thinking about jumping off of the building right now. But if you had to, if you had to talk to me for, you know, like three days, I'm sure you'd probably shove me off the building. I don't blame you.

• 2:37:31Lex Fridman?

  I'll be dead.

• 2:37:32Speaker 01

  But, yeah.

• 2:37:33Lex Fridman?

  Five hours in.

• 2:37:34Speaker 01

  But, yeah, but you know, it's like you want to be pushing towards something. Um, because otherwise, what's the purpose of being here? You know, it's not just a college. It's doing something useful, building, growing as a person, helping others do the same if that's within your power at any given time. But I think that's kind of the neat thing about martial arts is it can be many, many different things to many different people. You know, I finally, for instance, was able to get a college degree this, this year. That which, I mean, it's not a big deal for most people, but for me, it was a big deal because I was.

• 2:38:01Lex Fridman?

  Going back and finish.

• 2:38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I never envisioned ever going back and.

• 2:38:05Lex Fridman?

  That's a hard step to go back and finish. That's a.

• 2:38:08Speaker 01

  It, it.

• 2:38:09Lex Fridman?

  It weighs heavy on you if you don't. It's interesting.

• 2:38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just, I was more proud of that than most things I've ever done, if I'm honest, you know, and it was neat and I really enjoyed it. And it was the process of doing it, but you know, are my academic credentials impressive? Like, not in the least. But for me, it's like, it was a big deal for me personally to take that step and to go back and do that. And I was, I was proud of the, the direction. And because it would have been easy, like, do I need to do it? Like, no, you know, I have business. I'll do okay. I'll try. I'll keep fighting. But I was, I was happy to take the time in between fights when I was, when I was unbooked for an opponent. To do something productive rather than just, I'll just hang out, you know, like I can still train every single day, but I can also train and go to school. People go to the Olympics while going to school. I can, I can do martial arts and go to school.

• 2:38:54Lex Fridman?

  One thing I gotta ask is, you know, a bunch of women listen to this podcast, if they haven't done jujitsu, think it'd be kind of intimidating to step on the mat with a bunch of bros that like enjoy somehow killing each other. Like, how do you succeed in that environment to where you can learn this art, learn how to beat all those people up?

• 2:39:20Speaker 02

  Um, oh, gosh.

• 2:39:22Lex Fridman?

  Is there any advi- I mean, another way to ask that is like, if, if any women listening to this are interested in starting jujitsu, like, is there advice for that journey?

• 2:39:32Speaker 02

  Honestly, I think it's just walking in the door and starting. Sometimes I don't know how to respond to that because I'm not, I don't view myself as typically anxious, particularly in interactions with other people or new people.

• 2:39:45Lex Fridman?

  You're just leaping?

• 2:39:46Speaker 02

  Shy is not a word that has been used for me by, if you ask my family, and they joke because our son talks a lot, he's advanced verbally, and they're always like, oh, well, let's, we know where he gets that from, like, because he just doesn't stop talking. He narrates everything he does. And so they always tease because that's like, I'm known for, for kind of talking a lot. But, so I haven't been typically, I'm not, I don't consider myself a shy person. So for me going into a new room, a new group of people is, you know, there's, there's always that you don't really know who they are, how they're gonna treat you, but I, but I, I don't have a lot of anxiety with that.

• 2:40:25Speaker 02

  So I don't, if that's something that's gonna put somebody off, I don't really know how to, to address that particular feeling. But in terms of all of the rooms I've been in, I have popped into jujitsu gyms before I knew Ryan in Flor-, like, I traveled from my job, so in Germany and Florida and, and California and places where, where I don't know anyone, they don't know me. And I have never once had anyone be anything other than, than kind and solicitous and helpful. And long before, when I was a white belt and a blue belt and didn't know anything and, and didn't know anyone. And I just think that it's a community of people that it's so cool that no matter where you go in the world.

• 2:41:09Speaker 02

  I walked into a gym in Prague one time where only two people spoke English. And, and it was just-

• 2:41:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's weird.

• 2:41:17Speaker 02

  You know, instantly you're like part of a group and they're like, oh, let me tell you about a place to go eat.

• 2:41:21Lex Fridman?

  Part of a cult, right? Yeah, but it's like a positive cult, like it for sure. That's what we would say as cultists. Yeah, that's true.

• 2:41:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:30Lex Fridman?

  That's true. I mean, we do need to murder everybody who practice Aikido. I mean, yeah. That's this cult deeply believes in. No, but there is a, like, if you look at different kinds of games like chess and so on, like, there's a skepticism. I mean, there's not a brotherhood, sisterhood feeling. With Jiu-Jitsu, it's like you can roll into most places. Even like with Judo, like I can see the contrast, like, cause I've trained in Judo places. It, uh, it's more like tribal, like you walk in and like, who is this? Like, there's that kind of feeling. With Jiu-Jitsu, there's less so. There is a little bit with like the competitors. There's always like, the competitors feeling each other's out, usually like the blue belts.

• 2:42:15Lex Fridman?

  Uh, but like outside of that, in terms of if you don't get the, if you walk in with the vibes of just loving the art and just wanting to have a good time, you're like, welcome. It's really cool. It's really fascinating.

• 2:42:29Speaker 02

  It's a really great thing, I think. And as a woman, I think you, you think you're walking into these rooms of these, you know, big, strong, tough guys. And if anything, I would, I would say that they're almost like much more solicitous when a woman comes in there and not like they're just like hitting you all the time, you know? It's just that you walk in and everyone is like, oh, cool. You wanna do this thing that I love. Let me make sure you have a good experience and take care of you. And I think that's, that's an experience that, that I hope people have when they come into our gym. And I've, I've always felt when I walked into other gyms and so, you know, we try our best to, to, to make that comfortable. And, and it can be a little uncomfortable because there are, when you walk into a male-dominated environment,

• 2:43:12Speaker 02

  there's conversations and topics. There's a different style of camaraderie and joking that a lot of men will do that. Um, maybe some women are more uncomfortable with. I grew up with four brothers, so I kind of maybe was a little more desensitized to that. Um, and I worked for the Department of Defense for, for a while too. So before I, I, I.

• 2:43:31Lex Fridman?

  So you're with the government?

• 2:43:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, so I did that for a while after college, yeah. I left, I left.

• 2:43:39Lex Fridman?

  Oh, you left. I'm not gonna ask you about UFOs then, because you're not gonna tell me the truth.

• 2:43:42Speaker 02

  No. They exist.

• 2:43:46Lex Fridman?

  Uh, yeah, no, you just freaked out a lot of people. Okay.

• 2:43:51Lex Fridman?

  But yeah, by the way, where's, where's your school? Cause people always ask like where?

• 2:43:55Speaker 02

  Uh, well, we're outside of Washington DC in Northern Virginia in Falls Church.

• 2:43:59Lex Fridman?

  You always wanna pick like, what's the best school if I travel to this place? Or if I, if I wanna move to this place. So that's.

• 2:44:05Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, obviously we're biased, but yeah, we're, we're in the Washington DC area.

• 2:44:09Lex Fridman?

  The best. Okay. We just took a little break. Now we're back. Let me ask you one thing that a bunch of people are curious about. You're one of the innovators. First of all, you're one of the great innovators and philosophers and thinkers in jiu jitsu, right? But you're also one of the innovators in terms of leg locks and, and the 50 50 position. And just like the fact that legs have something to do in jiu jitsu. The, the under, the other popularizer innovator in the space is John Donahue and his whole group of guys. Do you have thoughts about their whole system of leg locks and their ideas about jiu jitsu and so on?

• 2:44:51Speaker 01

  Sure. I, I guess, uh, you know, obviously, you know, John and, and the students at Henzo have been able to do fantastic things competitively in the past number of years. And you know, um, you, you mentioned innovators in the, in that kind of, you know, section of jiu jitsu, I would be, I'd love to bring up some guys like Dean Lister, um, of course, uh, Masakazi Minari. In fact, a lot of what was going on in like nineties Japan, like combat submission wrestling, there was some crazy gnarly stuff that it's just, it's on grainy VHS tape. But like stuff that if people were doing now, they go, oh my God, that's brand new. Like there's, um, it's, it's been, I think these are things that have been around for a while, um, in various places.

• 2:45:29Speaker 01

  I first learned the 50 50 position, just like the leg entanglement of it from Brandon Vera, actually at a seminar at Lord Urban's Martial Arts, I think in 2005. He learned it from Dean Lister, uh, who used it to submit Alexandra Cockareco, really, really tough nogi guy at ADCC on the, in the run that Dean made to the, to the gold medal in the absolute division, which was a great performance at the time, first American to do that. And, uh, you know, and I actually saw a video, I mean, first a boss rootin' actually broke, I think Guy Mezger's foot with a 50 50 heel hook. He actually grabbed his heel and his, and his toes and went. And in pankraces back when they had like the man panties and the high boots on.

• 2:46:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  And dude, that was gnarly. Boss Rutten is underappreciated as like as a.

• 2:46:11Lex Fridman?

  Like he double grab like.

• 2:46:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You know, his leverage is leverage. That's like a toehold that, you know, that goes the other way. And it's like, it either doesn't work or breaks in half. And.

• 2:46:22Lex Fridman?

  Well, he's, people don't often think of Boss Rutten as an innovator, but he is in a way. Like he, you know, talk about like Elon Musk and first principles thinking in terms of physics. He like just feels like he just gets the job. He figures out like the simplest way to get the job done of breaking things and establishing control and hurting people.

• 2:46:43Speaker 01

  Remember that was back in the day, if you listen to Boss Rutten do any like commentary for any of the, the big MMA shows or any MMA show way back when. Anytime guys were clinched, he's like, the guy should roll for a knee bar. He was saying that way back when. And now people are doing it all the time with varying degrees of success. It's, it's funny. It's like, it's also tough to be, I think like a breakaway thinker. I mean, you know, group think is a real thing and group inertia. And it's neat to see, you know, particularly at a time when maybe that type of stuff was less accepted. You know, someone going, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run off in this other direction. I think, you know, whoever, you know, the inventor of electricity in my mind is a lot more impressive than whomever, not to say that the person down the line isn't impressive, that comes up with an interesting way to use it.

• 2:47:25Speaker 01

  Both are cool, but when you think about, just can you imagine we're sitting here like, yeah, people, I'm gonna build an airplane. You're like, what are you talking about?

• 2:47:32Lex Fridman?

  It's crazy.

• 2:47:33Speaker 01

  People don't fly. I'm like, no, I'm gonna do it. And of course, it's not gonna be as good as the airplane down the line, the iterative things that happen later on. But just being able to go to dream something into existence that you haven't seen before and then make it happen, like takes an unbelievable like strength of character, almost like a force of will, because you have, you're blazing a trail that hasn't been walked before. That's the BJ Penn factor in, you know, winning the Jiu Jitsu World Championship, first non-Brazilian to do that. That was back in 2001. And then Rafael Lovato later on, it's like, he's, you know, both of those guys are so unbelievably impressive in my mind for the same reason, you know, because they were out there winning at a time when that wasn't a common thing. Not that it's easy to win now, it's just there's not a psychological hurdle that needs to be left.

• 2:48:18Speaker 01

  I remember, you know, when I was early in jiu jitsu, like Americans weren't winning the world championships at any belt. I mean BJ, we all knew BJ Penn because BJ Penn did it, but it was really, really uncommon. Now it happens, you know, on a semi-regular basis. Of course, the British are still strong, Europeans are still strong. But, uh, and Australians are coming on as well. But, uh, it's, it's definitely kind of an interesting thing. So to come back to, you know, John Danaher and the, uh, Henzer team. Obviously they're doing fantastic things. John's had some really, really great innovation there. And the, the, the systematization and the methodology that they're using is, uh, is great. And it's neat to see that it's getting out there. Um, I would just also want, I would encourage people to make sure that they're, you know, catching up on their history because obviously, you know, John's a brilliant instructor and has, has done things, you know, for the sport that,

• 2:49:03Speaker 01

  um, that are fantastic that haven't been done before, but you know, none of us exist in a vacuum and I've learned things from everywhere else. So, you know, John would say the same, I'm sure. And, uh, you know, Dean Lister would say the same. And it, it's just neat when you can kind of trace the history of all of this happening because we've had, humanity's had two arms and two legs for some time, at least as long as I've been alive.

• 2:49:21Lex Fridman?

  But you mentioned like airplanes. Do you think there's something totally new to be invented in jiu jitsu still? Not totally new, but like the, you know, flying isn't new, uh, but airplanes nevertheless made that much more efficient. Is there like new ideas to be discovered in jiu jitsu still?

• 2:49:39Speaker 01

  I'd say, the reason I'd say yes is the same reason I would say I believe in alchemy, even though I don't. No, I'm serious. I've, I've got some, some backing for this.

• 2:49:47Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 2:49:47Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I, I guess I, I talk about this with a buddy of mine a lot, like, uh, and facilitative versus not facilitative beliefs. And if I don't believe something is possible and I do no investigation towards it, I'll never find something, even if it's there. It's almost like, it's no different than me walking up on a group of people and going like, oh man, look at these jerks. This is gonna suck versus me going, oh, I wonder what these guys are up to. I'm about to have two very different conversations, even though the players in the game are no different. My internal constitution has changed because of, of how I've decided to approach the situation. So although I wouldn't personally want to spend all my time trying to turn lead into Gold because I don't believe that it's likely to work. Only a person who's willing to spend his or her life in that pursuit will actually get to the bottom of that.

• 2:50:31Speaker 01

  And also in the in the pursuit of that, they're likely to find other things. So I think a lot of times the idea is that humanity is pushed forward by, you know, again, it's another Orson Scott Carr one. It's like, you know, human beings are in this slog, it's paraphrasing, just in this slog over time. And then periodically humanity gives birth to genius, like someone that invents the wheel, invents electricity, pushes us forward. You know, comes up with with the idea of governance that doesn't, you know, just start and end with the point of a sword. You know, and, uh, you know, these aren't common things. These are unbelievable advancements that, you know, that me sitting here, I didn't come up with them, but I just get the benefit of it. So I guess what I would say is a lot of times these ideas are called crazy, you know, like as we discussed on kind of offline. It's like, you know, Einstein was brilliant in his twenties and it was brilliant before that, I would suspect.

• 2:51:17Speaker 01

  But basically, uh, you know, gets recognized later on in life and of course we all thought those were great ideas. The man was probably roundly mott for giant chunks of his life. And I guess so it's neat to, I would say there's definitely in my mind, things that even if it's just combinations and new to me. New ways to see things, new ways to understand, different depth of understanding, possibly new things, new positions, new ideas. Because even if that's not true, the process of of going through and acting as if it is and believing like that and focusing and and trying to investigate will make any of us will push us all forward. Whereas sitting there, you know, obsessing over the cult of our current knowledge, I think is the biggest, the biggest danger. Um, and the biggest cause of stagnation that exists anywhere.

• 2:52:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And it starts with believing the the impossible, which is kind of interesting. One of the things that's really inspiring to me is to see people out there, which which sadly are rare, who kind of have.

• 2:52:15Lex Fridman?

  A combination of two things. One is they have a worldview that involves, that includes a lot of ideas that are crazy. And the second part is they're exceptionally focused and competent in bringing that, whatever the ideas in that worldview to reality. So there's certainly a lot of people with crazy ideas. You know, there's a lot of conspiracy theorists. They have way out there beliefs about things, but they're not doing much to like make the, like build stuff grounded. Like they're not engineers or whatever. They're just like espousing different crazy ideas. But that's why you get like the Elon Musk type characters. And the reason I bring him up a lot is because like, there's not many others to bring up. It's like, there's

• 2:52:59Lex Fridman?

  not many examples of it through history. The people, I mean, the guy's convinced that we're going to colonize Mars. And basically, everybody on Earth thinks that's insane.

• 2:53:14Speaker 01

  Everyone except the guy that's gonna do it, right?

• 2:53:15Lex Fridman?

  Except that's gonna do it. And like, you can imagine, like, a couple hundred years from now, people will, I mean, first of all, they won't, certainly won't remember the haters. They won't remember all the people. If, if they do remember them, they'll remember them in a sense like people are silly to think that this isn't the obvious path forward. Like, from a perspective, that's what, that's what Elon talks about. Like, it's obvious they were going to expand throughout the universe. Like, so-

• 2:53:47Speaker 01

  From his perspective.

• 2:53:48Lex Fridman?

  From his perspective. Like, but to me, it is also obvious, because like, either we destroy ourselves, or, or we'll expand beyond Earth. Like, uh, like, there's not many, you know, we, well, it's not, maybe it's not completely obvious. I guess I share that worldview. There's the other possibility that we humans find a sort of, of an inner peace, where the forces of capitalism will calm down, and we'll all just meditate and do yoga and jiu-jitsu and like relax with this whole tech thing, where we keep building new technologies. But it's cool to have those kinds of people that just believe the big, ambitious, crazy dreams. Because that's where it starts. If you want to build something special, you have to first believe.

• 2:54:32Speaker 01

  When you also have to believe strongly enough that you're not vulnerable and I'm speculating, but it's like, I can only imagine how many people have told Elon that what he's doing is crazy. So not only did he dream it up, he dreamed it up, went with it and also went with it in the face of being told that it's not going to work. And then any time, and then also stepped away from the bitterness because he's done a series of really crazy, impressive things. And that's only those little things that I'm aware of, but, and also staying away from the bitterness of every single time you did something good initially, I, all I do is talk down about you and then eventually I act as of course, of course, I never apologize.

• 2:55:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:08Speaker 01

  And yet you don't let that dampen your spirits for the next innovation, which is pretty incredible to me to watch.

• 2:55:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's kind of cool. I mean, it's contagious to spend time with the guy because he's not, Rogan has the same look to him, which is interesting about these people is like, there, there's like a hater shield. But he's like, he doesn't even like sense them. It feels like, like it doesn't, he does, he thinks to, to Elon, it's like, it's obvious. I mean, he keeps calling it like first principles thinking, like physics says it's true, therefore it's true. Like he's convinced himself that like his beliefs are grounded in the fundamental fabric of the way the universe works. Therefore the haters don't matter.

• 2:55:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:55:55Lex Fridman?

  And I mean, that's kind of like a system of thought. He developed himself through all the difficulty, through all the doubt, he's able to take huge risks with basically putting everything he owes on the line multiple times throughout his life amidst all the drama, amidst all the doubts, amidst all like the, he's still able to make just clear, clear headed decisions. It's, I don't know what to make of it, but it's inspiring as hell.

• 2:56:18Speaker 01

  Well, it's, I think it's something's funny. I think like, I can only imagine that, you know, history will look back on him as a brilliant person, but that's not the only, there's, there's a lot of, maybe not numer, not statistically speaking, but a lot numerically on a giant planet of, you know, billions of people, a lot of brilliant people. Well, you know, time, place, luck, fortune, all that other stuff, but at the same time, that clearly isn't the only determining thing in making Elon Musk, Elon Musk. And obviously I don't know the guy from Adam and, but it's an interesting thing that it's not just his intellect, his belief system, his structure, how he's viewing the world, like that's. Did he reason his way to that? Did he not? What other factors came in? I'm really curious about that because I guess coming, it's again, I feel really strongly about

• 2:57:02Speaker 01

  people's belief structure and this, the how they view the world being more important than the engine behind it, you know, it makes someone resilient or not, it makes someone positive or not, because you could have 10,000, I think about this for competitive stuff, you could have 10,000 things going properly and one thing going improperly. If you focus on the improper, you'll probably fix it at a certain point, which is good, facilitated for development in the long term. But if you had to go and try to perform a task in the next five minutes, and you're focusing on the negative, your confidence and your your belief in the positive outcome of the future is likely to be damaged. Whereas you could have 25 things going wrong, but you go, man, I sure am happy to be alive. How fortunate I am. This is great. I can't, this is, I have problems to solve. This is awesome.

• 2:57:44Speaker 01

  Versus I list the problems and I start bitching about them. Both of them are technically accurate, but it's, I guess, different lenses. And I think that's a really neat thing to see, you know, someone, you know, exemplifying that for us.

• 2:57:57Lex Fridman?

  So maybe to look at the fighting world,

• 2:58:01Lex Fridman?

  there's a million questions I can ask here. Like one, you mentioned BJ Penn. You, first of all, you're undefeated in the UFC and one of the fights you've had is against BJ Penn, which is a kind of an incredible fight. You won performance of the night. What did it feel like to, to face BJ Penn and to beat him definitively as he did? Like, what's that whole experience like?

• 2:58:26Speaker 01

  I'll be honest, I didn't know if I was going to ever be able to fight again after beating Gray Maynard in 2016. And I've had a couple of periods of those. I was about to join the army, actually, in, when I was 30, before the, for the UFC, before Jen sent me over to Ultimate Fighter. I didn't want to go because I was like, one, they're never going to pick me. Two, I'd be terrible for TV. Three, I'll probably say something, I'm going to get, you know, burned to death in the streets. You know, I'm like, this isn't a great idea. And then she said, well, go out there, see what happens, do it anyway. You'll be, you'll regret it if you didn't. And then I ended up doing Ultimate Fighter. And then, so I fought three times on the show and then I fought for the, for the finale. So there's four times in like five or six months, which was great. And then it took

• 2:59:09Speaker 01

  me a year to get another opponent. And that was Gray Maynard. And then Gray was obviously a very tough guy, managed to get a good outcome there. Then it took Two years to to fight BJ Penn and that was, you know, obviously I'm training all the time every single day and that that never stops, but that was, I'll be honest, like pretty deeply frustrating because you know, as a as a human being, as an athlete, you know, I think as an athlete, you die twice, like you have an athletic peak or area and then then you go on with the rest of your life, but it is a microcosm for the rest of your life. It's like you're you're seeing this the sand tick away in the hourglass or drop away and you're going, man, this is, these are the years between 31, 32, 33, like I'll be at my best at this time, my absolute best physically. Now, not technically, I'm a lot better now than I was before in a plan, but at a certain point, you will,

• 2:59:53Speaker 01

  unless you're Bernard Hopkins, you will reach diminishing returns. And I guess

• 2:59:56Lex Fridman?

  The long, the long wait, you can feel the clock ticking. Is this frustrating? Why? Why did it take two years for BJ?

• 3:00:04Speaker 01

  I, I,

• 3:00:05Lex Fridman?

  That's the question people ask a lot. It's like, why does nobody want to fight Ryan?

• 3:00:09Speaker 01

  I don't know. I probably, they probably think they'll get infected by whatever this is, but I don't, I don't blame them, but I wouldn't.

• 3:00:15Lex Fridman?

  I mean, you're a really tough opponent is the bottom line.

• 3:00:18Speaker 01

  I'll say that I'm different. Maybe they perceive that the the the threat is greater than the reward. I'm hoping that now that we're ranked number 12, you know, in the UFC rankings that that that will change. And I know that if we're one more win and then we're in the top 10, that, you know, now, now you're there. But what I've consistently found is that like randoms want to fight and I'm like, go away. I didn't come here for you, you know, because if I wanted to just fight anybody, I could go down to a Waffle House and yell until like DMX shows up and we can, we can fight because he'll be at the Waffle House too. I'm like kidding, I really want to hang out with DMX. But, you know, it's like you want to, when I had the opportunity.

• 3:00:51Lex Fridman?

  Ryan Hall and DMX.

• 3:00:52Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, that was so cool. I would, I would never, I would never fight DMX. We'd be on the same team. But anyway, it's, I guess, I accepted fights against, I asked, they got asked about Lamas. I said, yes. I got asked about Dennis Vermees. I said, yes. You know, like long periods of time and they, at that time, you know, in between 2016 and 2018, I was struggling to have have opponents who would sign up and I haven't turned down fights. I've just said, hey, you know, keep the, I don't care about fighting the randoms and it's just.

• 3:01:26Lex Fridman?

  You have a successful school. You're like. You're running, you're martial artists broadly speaking, so it doesn't make sense to, to take fights that aren't like

• 3:01:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:01:37Lex Fridman?

  That fit a certain kind of trajectory for your career.

• 3:01:40Speaker 01

  And that's when, when BJ Penn, they said, well, BJ is looking for an opponent. I was like, I'm, I'm your guy. And, uh, and I think that, you know, BJ accepted that fight because I'm another jujitsu guy. I don't think he, he perceived that I was much of a threat on the feet. Um, and, uh, you know, I was able to, it was neat to get it to compete against someone, uh, you know, who's one of my heroes, one of the people I looked up to in MMA for the longest time.

• 3:02:03Lex Fridman?

  Were you intimidated by that?

• 3:02:04Speaker 01

  No, no, I, I love competing. I, I don't really get nervous or scared before fights. I'm not afraid to get hurt and not afraid to win. I'm not afraid to lose. It's, I, I'm just excited for the, I feel thankful for the opportunity to compete and the opportunity to, to play when it matters. You know, I, I just, but that's the only time I'm interested in playing anymore is when it, when it matters, when the opposition is, I know that, you know, it's funny because people pick on, on a lot of, some opponents, particularly after, after the fact. Like if you, if you get a good outcome, well then, of course, let's beat that guy. That guy wasn't that good. I'm like, well, I was, that's after the fact. I get to say that. And also as the person in the ring, you know, BJ Penn has hurt a lot of people in, in, in mixed martial arts cage. And I could actually absolutely have

• 3:02:46Speaker 01

  been on that list. Um, so it was neat to get to compete against someone that I really respect, someone that I looked up to for a long time, someone who has a great skill set. And also I went up in weight to fight him at his weight class. He didn't have to come down to mine, which is where he'd take.

• 3:02:59Lex Fridman?

  It was lightweight?

• 3:02:59Speaker 01

  It was lightweight. Yeah. Um, I'm generally a featherweight. I walk around at like 158 pounds. So, um,

• 3:03:05Lex Fridman?

  What's lightweight and featherweight?

• 3:03:06Speaker 01

  Uh, lightweight is 155 with a day before weigh-in and featherweight is 145 with the day before weigh-in. So I'm a little bit more properly sized for featherweight. But, um, anyway, uh, you know, I, so I didn't feel like, obviously he was giving up a couple of years of age, but I was giving up size and all this other stuff. And it was, you know, I was just excited to have the opportunity to step in against someone like BJ. And, uh, you know, we managed to, to get out of there with a, with a good outcome without getting too banged up. But, uh, just, it was cool because we tied up on the fence and just even, uh, the second, you know, is when you're Roll with somebody and you touch and you can feel what they're doing. You go, oh man, this guy's really good. Um, you can feel the calm. You can feel the small minor adjustments that they're making, the subtle things that they're doing. And, uh, that was one of those things that was really neat and gratifying because,

• 3:03:51Speaker 01

  you know, you, you never know. Sometimes people that you've heard of are a little bit less technically proficient than you thought. And other times you'll meet some guys you're training, like who the hell is this guy? How have I not heard of this person? And, uh, BJ was exactly as a jujitsu guy, what I would have thought. And, uh, another thing, that's another thing that bugged me about how people reacted after the fight is, uh, you know, basically going, oh, BJ screwed up this, screwed up that. I'm like, all right, yeah.

• 3:04:14Lex Fridman?

  That's so interesting. That's sad. I, that was, you know, one of the, and to me, I mean, as a fan of both, that was a beautiful moment is, uh, as a, as a kind of passing of a torch in a sense of exceptional performance. Like another one that stands out to me, maybe you can comment is, I don't understand, well, maybe I do, why Conor McGregor gets as much hate as he does. Uh, he probably revels in it, but I think he doesn't get enough credit for, uh, Jose Aldo, for the, for like, for basically, you know, knocking him out and, and the,

• 3:04:57Lex Fridman?

  in the, in the first few, uh, seconds of, uh, of a fight. I mean, uh, Jose is like one of the greatest fighters ever.

• 3:05:05Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 3:05:06Lex Fridman?

  Uh, maybe some people can even put him in the top 10.

• 3:05:09Speaker 01

  No question.

• 3:05:10Lex Fridman?

  And the, like, I don't understand why it's, doesn't get as much, like Conor McGregor doesn't get as much credit, uh, as I think he deserves for that. And for Eddie Alvarez and all the fights, for some reason, whenever, uh, Conor McGregor beats somebody, well, that, they, they were not that good then. Like, it means like they were, they were, there's something was off.

• 3:05:36Speaker 01

  Right. That's convenient, isn't it?

• 3:05:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's quite strange to me, but I mean, what are your thoughts on the?

• 3:05:45Lex Fridman?

  On Conor McGregor, maybe one way to ask that, I'm Russian, so I'm obviously also a Khabib fan. But I'm also a Conor fan. It seems like there's not many of us who are like fans of both.

• 3:05:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:05:55Lex Fridman?

  What are your thoughts?

• 3:05:56Speaker 01

  You and Artem Lobov.

• 3:05:59Lex Fridman?

  The two of us, which also is a good fight.

• 3:06:02Speaker 01

  Tough dude.

• 3:06:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, really, really tough dude.

• 3:06:05Speaker 01

  Speaks like five languages, really interesting cat.

• 3:06:07Lex Fridman?

  Oh, so, oh, wow, I didn't know that side of it. So there's a brain there. Well, on the Khabib versus Conor, what do you make of their first fight? What do you, do you agree with me that they should fight again? Because I think it'd be awesome if they fought again in Moscow. And do you agree with me, I'm just gonna put, say, things that piss people off, but I believe, is that Conor actually has a chance to beat Khabib?

• 3:06:31Speaker 01

  One, Conor absolutely has a chance to beat Khabib. Conor has a chance to beat anyone that he steps into that ring with, and not just like a mathematical chance. You're like, oh, one of the billion, but like, you know, like, he absolutely, it's funny, because I won't pretend to know Conor really well, but I first met Conor in 2010, when I was teaching a seminar in, at Straight Bless Gym Ireland in Dublin. And that's actually where I first met all of the coaches that ended up being on Conor's team. You know, John Kavna, Owen Roddy, Gunnar Nelson, you know, so for, I actually, I enjoyed being on Ultimate Fighter and being on Uriah Faber's team and getting to train with all the guys there. But at the same time, the people that I was actually, I knew better were actually the European side, all of Conor's coaches.

• 3:07:10Speaker 01

  And that was a neat thing, because I got to, I met Conor, I didn't know who Conor, Conor wasn't Conor at that point.

• 3:07:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that was before his UFC did.

• 3:07:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, well, well before, yeah. I think, I think he got in like 2014, maybe something like that. Yeah, and anyway, but he was doing well in Cage Warriors, winning the titles there, I think, prior to that. You know, I remember going, seeing him on the show, and also then getting to see him train, because I competed, I was initially slated to fight David Tamer for the Ultimate Fighter finale, before getting put in to fight Artem for the title for the show. So I went over to Ireland to train for a couple of days. And basically, it was neat to watch him, watch him work. I mean, man is focused and trains a lot, and is very, very smart, and very, very hardworking, and I think a lot of times, people get. Stuck in the uh in this um you know and they almost want to believe that this was lucky or this this person you know like they're not working that hard they're just out there they

• 3:08:04Speaker 01

  got there with their mouth and that's that's just not the case and um you know I don't know what it's like you know obviously Connor's very well off right now and I don't know how hard how seriously he's training what he's doing I can't speak to any of that but uh there's no question that that he has skills to be dangerous and one of the funny things obviously that Khabib fight when Khabib's way Khabib was a great fighter and and also has the chance to beat anyone in that ring at any given time but uh there's there was a Connor you know it's uh one that he can he can put anybody away and as you mentioned I think that he doesn't get the credit for the Eddie Alvarez fight doesn't get the credit for the Jose Aldo fight because it was almost so much of a letdown I remember that happened the same weekend that the Ultimate Fighter finale and you're like all right wait what yeah it almost doesn't feel

• 3:08:47Speaker 01

  like a fight happened but we mentioned Miyamoto Musashi I mean Musashi was famous for the way he poked and prodded at people with what he was doing whether overtly or not it's like oh we're supposed to fight to the death and uh you know at 3pm tomorrow great 4pm rolls around I'm just not there 5 I mean you remember all the all the antics and nonsense that Connor was pulling prior to that like speaking personally that's not I would it's not something I would feel comfortable doing but it's like everyone's different and the effect that it had on on Jose was I mean beyond evident when was the last time Jose started the started the fight with leaping left hand leaping right hand you're like wait what and then he was obviously you know living rent free in in Jose's head at that point and that was a combination of psychological you know ability

• 3:09:29Speaker 01

  and and and wherewithal and then physical and it reminded me of the way Muhammad Ali would would bother people and whatnot and uh the fact that he's a polarizing figure um I I think makes some people not give him his due and then at the same time sometimes certain fans maybe go overboard but uh they remember the knee that Ben Askren got knocked out with by Masidal I mean that was an amazing unbelievable thing but three inches to the right or three inches to the left I guess whichever side his head wasn't no you could have been square but uh and that fight starts with Ben Askren on top of you in the first five seconds well Connor ran and threw a knee just like that at Khabib and Khabib got right around it that could have easily gone the other way can you imagine what would have happened if after the after coming back from boxing um after coming

• 3:10:14Speaker 01

  back from from the Mayweather fight Connor rocks Khabib in the first 10 seconds it's over and you're like he would It would have been intolerable, but basically, like, you know.

• 3:10:25Lex Fridman?

  But see, here's the thing. Let me actually push back slightly. I mean, to the fans. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Connor seems to, because I've competed a lot. And like, there's the tension, there's the negativity sometimes, depending on the opponent. And there's a respect afterwards that happens, like, when you understand that there's a deep, like, respect and almost like a love for each other. Like, I always seen that in Connor, like, all the trash talk afterwards.

• 3:10:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:10:55Lex Fridman?

  There's a, it's a subtle thing. You can't always see it, but there's a respect, like.

• 3:10:59Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 3:11:00Lex Fridman?

  And like, I almost, on the Khabib side, I almost feel like Khabib really took it personally. He didn't, he lost the respect for Connor. I thought, I thought the whole time Connor had the respect. So I, what I wanted to say is like, if Connor won that fight, like, Rock Khabib, I could see like, I wouldn't see trash talking. I could see like trash talking stop right there.

• 3:11:24Speaker 01

  I, I think so too, but at the same time, I'm sure you recall, like, Connor, Connor crossing some pretty personal territory. You know, both religiously and also familiarly with, with Khabib. And it's, you know, I mean, I think it's the sort of thing that, I don't know, it's, it's an interesting, that's one of the reasons.

• 3:11:39Lex Fridman?

  Like, you have to know the difference. So, so obviously, I know the, the Khabib, the Dagestani people, they don't.

• 3:11:46Speaker 01

  Play around like that.

• 3:11:47Lex Fridman?

  They don't play around like that. You know, I mean, they take offense to basically, I mean, you, you don't do that. So, uh, so like Connor didn't, maybe he did on purpose, or maybe he wasn't even just aware of, of, uh.

• 3:12:02Speaker 01

  It was cultural differences, you know.

• 3:12:04Lex Fridman?

  The box he opened. Like, you, you can talk to Floyd Mayweather, you can, you can go anywhere with him. You can, you can say the most offensive things, but with, uh, Khabib.

• 3:12:15Speaker 01

  It's hard line.

• 3:12:15Lex Fridman?

  It's, yeah, hard lines. But you, uh, I mean, a lot of people ask, I know you're featherweight, but if you were to.

• 3:12:25Lex Fridman?

  Face, it feels like Khabib was one of the hardest puzzles to solve in all of mixed martial arts. If you were to face Khabib,

• 3:12:34Lex Fridman?

  do you think, how would you go about solving that puzzle? Like, almost, the question is almost from a jiu-jitsu perspective, too. What do you do with a guy that's exceptionally good at controlling position? Especially on top, very good at wrestling and taking down and controlling position. Like, let's say, so forget maybe striking, on the ground, how do you solve that guy? Like, what do you do with your guard? If you get taken down, or do you create an entire system of not getting taken down or escaping? Like, what, what ideas do you have for that?

• 3:13:06Speaker 01

  Well, I guess I would say, in my mind, fighting is a game of trading energy. Kind of, uh, there's two, there's two things, there's damage and there's energy. So, like, when I say energy, I mean, like, tired, not tired, how much, how much gas you've got. And then, damage counts, obviously, as well. You could be feeling, I could be feeling great, and then you get to kick me in the head hard, really hard, three times. It doesn't matter that I could get up and run a mile, I can't get up. So, anyway, um, you know, I, I think what Khabib does is so well, is he makes the fight look like a Khabib Nurmagomedov fight. He does a great job of avoiding damage on the feet, for the most part, and really sucking the life out of people with how suffocating and oppressive his control is.

• 3:13:48Speaker 01

  His chain wrestling is as good as anyone we've ever seen in the UFC, it's fantastic. But, uh, that poses a really serious threat for people that need to maintain a certain amount of space, and try to hurt him on the feet, because unless they're able to inflict an adequate amount of damage, they're gonna, each time, let's say, for instance, let's say him taking them down as a foregone conclusion at some point. If every single time Khabib takes you down, you get right back up, it's not that big a deal. Because it's actually more, we've all experienced this, let's say, you and I are rolling, you tap me 15 times in one round, who's more tired? Probably you are.

• 3:14:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:21Speaker 01

  You whooped my ass so badly that it's like you're the only one working. But um.

• 3:14:26Lex Fridman?

  So if you're comfortable with the up and down of it, like being taken down.

• 3:14:30Speaker 01

  If you're, if you don't, if you don't get hurt badly or tired on the bottom, you have a chance, but that doesn't involve just cracking him on the feet before he gets a hold of you.

• 3:14:41Lex Fridman?

  That's a lot.

• 3:14:42Speaker 01

  That's a lot to ask. That's a lot to ask.

• 3:14:43Lex Fridman?

  That's difficult to do. It seemed actually like Connor, it seemed like it when he was being kind of taken down or the takedown attempts against Khabib. He seemed to be somewhat relaxed the whole thing.

• 3:14:55Speaker 01

  I thought he was doing well, actually. I think that particularly for the first round, I thought he did a very good job. It's just one of those things that I think like uh, Khabib being, the fights taking place in Khabib's world in large part. And I mean, set aside that one giant, uh, what is it, right hand that, that Khabib hit Connor with. By the way, Connor reacted like an absolute champion. He got crushed by that overhand. And then drop and his eyes went right back on Khabib. It was immediate pros, a great response. So even though that was, I think that was a bit of a surprising thing. Connor reacted really, really well. But if you're going to be on bottom with Khabib for four rounds, that's going to be tough. And also Connor's a way better grappler than people like to give him credit for. But he's not the type of grappler that can do, that can, that can, that's too tall of an order.

• 3:15:37Speaker 01

  But there are grapplers that could do that, or at least would have a much, much better shot at uh, being able to weather that type of a storm.

• 3:15:44Lex Fridman?

  Do you see yourself being able to be relaxed through that kind of storm?

• 3:15:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:15:49Lex Fridman?

  Well, I guess.

• 3:15:53Speaker 01

  Remember, being, being, being savagely beaten is very relaxing.

• 3:15:56Lex Fridman?

  The time, the, the timing of that answer was like, okay.

• 3:16:01Lex Fridman?

  That's a dumb question.

• 3:16:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:16:03Lex Fridman?

  That's ultimately, the goal of jiu jitsu is to um, be relaxed through the fire.

• 3:16:09Speaker 01

  For sure. And remember, like every USC fighter, I win all hypothetical matchups.

• 3:16:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:15Lex Fridman?

  That's true. Since I'm one to ask ridiculous questions and we've been talking about sci fi and all that kind of stuff, let me ask the kind of big question that everybody disagrees about, certainly with me, is who are the top five greatest MMA fighters of all time?

• 3:16:33Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 3:16:33Lex Fridman?

  And why is Fedor number one?

• 3:16:36Speaker 01

  Okay, well, first off, Fedor is number one.

• 3:16:38Lex Fridman?

  Oh, really?

• 3:16:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Right there with you.

• 3:16:40Lex Fridman?

  Really?

• 3:16:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Talk about people that just get completely underappreciated.

• 3:16:44Lex Fridman?

  Even though he's never been like, he's never succeeded in the UFC?

• 3:16:48Speaker 01

  It's not his fault it came along after him. At the time that, at the time that Fedor was at his height, the UFC was not where it was at for heavyweight fighting. I mean, not that there weren't good heavyweights there, but Fedor, Fedor was unbelievable. You know, I mean, you remember, I mean, Minotaro Noguera, I was a massive fan of him. I still remember watching, what is it, Pride 2004, when, when Noguera fought Cro Cop and got blasted with that left kick and dropped with like, seconds left in the first round. Pride was great because it had a 10 minute first round and that five minute second, which again materially alters, alters the fight, big time. And you know, just the texture of the fight is just totally, it's borderline a different sport, you know, than, than getting a five, a pause and a five. But anyway, similar sports, like one of those swimming things where they have nine gold medals for different types of swimming, right? But still swimming, but anyway.

• 3:17:34Lex Fridman?

  Well, yeah, they would disagree.

• 3:17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:17:37Lex Fridman?

  They specialize in that. But it's so, it's totally true. 10, 10 minutes is different than five minutes.

• 3:17:41Speaker 01

  Sorry. Don't, don't drown me swimmers. I don't swim very well. It's easy for me, it's easy for me to downplay it. But anyway, yeah, and then.

• 3:17:50Lex Fridman?

  So better than John Jones, like the modern era?

• 3:17:53Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I guess it's, it's tough to compare, to compare across eras. It, it would be like going and saying like, oh, man, how, how would such and such great grappler from today fare against someone from 1995? I'm like, well, probably pretty well for the, depending upon. Who they are, what's going on, you know, there's some people that would, their skillsets might transition across eras, but a lot of times not, but that's not fair. We get, they'll be like comparing Spartans to modern day, you know, like army guys. Like, well, who's gonna win? I'm like, well, do modern day army guys get modern day weapons? Well, yeah, but who's the toughest, ruggedest group of people at the very least? So I guess it's tough to say, but at least in my mind, the people that I think about for great fighters, their, their quality of opposition, um, their

• 3:18:37Speaker 01

  level of like lasting, like success, their level of lasting innovation, like the courage that they have to demonstrate. Because again, it's like being a big fish in a small pond takes no courage. Doesn't mean that there's nothing there, but it, it just requires something a little bit different. So Kazushi Sakuraba is one of my guys too. Um, BJ Penn also, I mean, BJ Penn fought Leota Machida. That's insane. You know, it's, that was a time, it was a different sport. It was a different time in the sport where, you know, they, some guys were bouncing around doing different things, but let's, so I, I guess the Gracie family, it's, I mean, they never had an, in, like, obviously Hoist was there, um, but they never, and that was definitely a different sport, weight classes being open, things like that.

• 3:19:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but you have to say that Hoist is up there.

• 3:19:17Speaker 01

  Oh, no question.

• 3:19:17Lex Fridman?

  One of the greatest ever.

• 3:19:18Speaker 01

  I, I think so too. And, and again, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you, um, if it weren't for him. So the Gracie family as a whole, but I mean, who's the better, I mean, I think Hoist would tell you himself probably that, that Hickson would have handled business back then, but they didn't put him in. So again, he's the greatest fighter, the greatest fighter, the greatest fighter that we saw do his business. So Hoist up there for sure.

• 3:19:38Lex Fridman?

  What about, so this is like, nobody seems to agree with me on this, but like this connects to soccer again and Messi. It seems that people value, like, how long you've been a champion, how many, like, defenses of the championship that you've had successfully. To me, I highly value singular moments of genius. So like,

• 3:20:02Lex Fridman?

  Like, I, I don't, like, if you look at Conor McGregor, he hasn't, I guess, held, been a champion very long, very much.

• 3:20:09Speaker 01

  Well, he didn't defend either title, right?

• 3:20:10Lex Fridman?

  He didn't defend any other, either of the titles. But like, if you, and same with Messi, if you look at Lionel Messi, there's just moments of brilliance, unlike any other in history, for both Conor and Messi. And people don't seem to give credit, it's like, well, how many World Cups have you won? But to me, like, why is it about this arbitrary World Cup thing or championship thing?

• 3:20:33Speaker 01

  I think it's easier for people to wrap their head around, right? It's like the NFL Combine. When was, I mean, Tom's, yeah, numbers, it's something, well, again, if I go and I, if I pick Tom Brady in the first round, you know, and it works out, they call me a genius. If I had to pick Tom Brady in the first round after his Combine, and it doesn't work out, I get fired and I'm never hired again, I have to work, work somewhere else. But it's like, I'm insulating myself from criticism, I think, almost, if I go by the numbers. Well, he had more bench presses, it's like, how, how many times have the guys that are like the super studs in the, in the NFL Combine, ever been on the greatest players in the NFL history, in NFL history? Like, zero or close to zero? And even if, even if there's some, it's certainly not a one-to-one correlation. So, it's so funny, though, I think it's just like, how many, how long, how many days did he hold the title?

• 3:21:17Speaker 01

  Oh, your title reign was X times longer. That means nothing. So if we wanted to find greatest fighter ever, like you said, I think individual moments of like, you're like, that was transcendent, that was different, that was something else. Because people can win or lose for any number of different reasons, and that, it's an interesting thing. Again, I don't blame Argentina not winning the World Cup on Messi. You know, that's not fair. You know, how many times has, you know, I mean, I'll use the, I remember when Trent Dilfer was the quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, and they had such a strong defense, I'm not trying to pick on Trent Dilfer, but it's like, they, they had such a strong defense that, that they were to make, that was the Ray Lewis, you know, Chris McAllister era, you know, and they, they won, they won the Super Bowl. I don't think anyone is going to say that, you know, Trent Dilfer's a better quarterback

• 3:22:02Speaker 01

  than, you know, or put him in the same category as Dan Marino. But, he got the W, he's got the, he's got the Super Ring. How many times, let's use March Madness, or Super Bowl, I love it, like, that, that guy always makes the finals, but he just never gets it done.

• 3:22:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:22:15Speaker 01

  So let me get this straight, getting to the finals nine times doesn't count, because you didn't win the end game. I'm not saying it wouldn't be better, but that guy won the game once, he got over the hump. Well, how many other times was he in the finals? Zero, you're like... All right.

• 3:22:27Lex Fridman?

  It's interesting what we, yeah, that we were obsessed with these numbers like, um.

• 3:22:32Speaker 01

  Well, because we can't assess their method, right? Well, I think most of the time, most of us can't assess the method of anything. It's like, oh, look at that guy do X, Y, swimming. I'm like, how do I know Michael Phelps is great? I don't know, he was faster. I can't look at his technique and say anything other than, well, that's way better than anything. I know how to do, but I can't say the difference between him and the next guy. So I guess that's, I wonder if it's like, I need a concrete identifier. And a lot of times people don't like saying, I don't know.

• 3:22:55Lex Fridman?

  And most people won't put like a Rhonda Rousey in the top even 20 or 50 of, but like she changed more than, more than almost anybody else. She changed the martial arts history. I don't know if that even, I don't think I'm exaggerating that. She, she made it okay for women to be fighters.

• 3:23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23:19Lex Fridman?

  And that, and like changed the way we see, like she's one of the great feminists of our time.

• 3:23:26Speaker 01

  In her own way, yeah.

• 3:23:27Lex Fridman?

  In, in a weird kind of way that like, I don't know. Uh, maybe I'm just a Rhonda Rousey fan, but the, yeah, but she's not in the conversation because then you start converting into numbers. Well, how many did she actually win?

• 3:23:39Speaker 01

  Is she among the greatest fighters or did she do the greatest things? You know, I mean, I don't, I think it's something, I mean, obviously Rhonda is a great judoka who was competing in MMA at a time when a lot of the girls like, where did you get your skills? In the Olympics? Oh, where'd you get yours? High school? You're like, yeah, you're gonna, Olympic girl's gonna beat you up. But, uh, I, I guess that that doesn't diminish her, just that accomplishment is what it is. I don't have to, I don't, Fedor is not diminished by the fact that he would, like if he were to fight Steve Imiotis right now, it probably wouldn't go great. Or that John Jones exists. I don't now have to like knock Fedor's accomplishments down or say, oh, because BJ Penn or so and so, let's say has a mixed record at this point that somehow invalidates the things that they've done before. I guess it kind of brings us back to a lot of the other people we've talked about.

• 3:24:23Speaker 01

  The fact that the, the brilliant people throughout history that we love or some of the monsters throughout history that we. rightly revile in a lot of cases, we're complicated people and their legacy is more than just one thing and someone doing something amazing doesn't invalid, doesn't mean they didn't do anything bad and someone doing terrible things doesn't, doesn't mean that, doesn't invalidate the, the positives that they did, but I guess we're fighting the urge to put people in one category and same with ourselves, I think that's why people get depressed. Oh, I'm good right now. Oh, I'm bad right now versus hey, we're all a work in progress and we're trying to do X number of things and legacy is a tough thing to figure out anyway and it's all speculative.

• 3:24:59Lex Fridman?

  Last time, or no, on Reddit, you said that, last time too, that you don't experience much fear before fights. I'd like to ask you a couple of Mike Tyson things if it's okay. It's just interesting to me, maybe I'm just weird. So there's a, I don't know if you've seen this clip of Tyson talking about how he feels leading up to a fight, that he's kind of overtaken with fear, as he gets closer and closer and closer to the ring, his confidence grows. Have you seen the clip?

• 3:25:32Speaker 01

  I'm aware of it, but I haven't seen it in a while.

• 3:25:34Lex Fridman?

  Here, let me play it for you.

• 3:25:36Speaker 01

  George St. Pierre said something similar to me one time.

• 3:25:40Speaker 03

  While I'm in the dressing room, five minutes before I come out, my gloves are laced up. I'm breaking my gloves down, I'm pushing the lever at the back of my leg, I'm breaking the middle of the gloves and my knuckle pierced through the lever, I feel my knuckle piercing against the tight leather gloves on the ever last box. When I come out, I have supreme confidence, but I'm scared to death. I'm totally afraid. I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of losing, I'm afraid of being humiliated, but I'm totally confident. The closer I get to the ring, the more confidence I get. The closer, the more confidence I get. The closer, the more confidence I get. All during my training, I've been afraid of this man. I thought this man might be capable of beating me. I've dreamed of him beating me. I always stayed afraid of him. But the closer I get to the ring, I'm more confident.

• 3:26:23Speaker 03

  Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god. No one could beat me.

• 3:26:26Lex Fridman?

  I'm a god. I mean, first of all, he's cognizant of both his demons and whatever the hell ideas he has about violence. It's so interesting. Is there something about the, uh, the tension that he's describing about being confident and scared that resonates with you? Or you're, or do you hold to this idea that you've kind of spoken about before that you're really not afraid?

• 3:26:50Speaker 01

  No, I, I can, I can appreciate what he's saying. You know, I think that, um, you know, I can speak to feeling like concerned about, let's say, for instance, if you feel a certain way. I think people are a lot more like computers than we, than we like to admit. And just because a lot of times I can't parse what's going on and why, it doesn't mean that it's not, it doesn't make sense.

• 3:27:12Lex Fridman?

  I see.

• 3:27:12Speaker 01

  And, and I think that at least in the times of like, if I'm concerned about a situation or about a person or about something happening prior to the fight, or I'm like, there's a reason, there is a reason. I don't have to push that down and bury it. If there's a reason like, why, what have I not thought about? What have I not done? What am I missing? Why am I feeling this way? As you mentioned, you know, for, for yourself prior, like you'd be like, why am I feeling like this? I don't do this very well in certain aspects of my life. Now that I mentioned it or now that I think about it. But when it comes to competing, I think I do an all right job and I'm trying to learn to be better. And it's a, I'm going like, well, why do I, if I feel this way, there's a reason. Okay. Am I thinking about this the wrong way? Have I not adequately prepared for something I have to, I have to address it? And then maybe I'll be up for four hours that night, you know, like extra hours thinking, what have I not addressed?

• 3:27:57Speaker 01

  Watching sparring, watching this, watching that. And then the, when I, when I am thinking about things more, more accurately, or when I've addressed what that concern was, I feel any of that concern kind of dissipate. And I guess, uh, if I honestly thought that, you know, I guess when it comes to, I know I'm going to die at a certain point, obviously. I'm going to get hurt. I'm going to, you know, pain happens, but the pain of loss would be nothing compared to the, or the pain of injury would be nothing compared to the pain of, of running away. You know, and, and so I guess if I think about where's my value, what it's like, I'm, I feel like I'm a winner. And every single time I step into that ring and fight with everything that I have, I can't promise that I'll win my next fight.

• 3:28:41Speaker 01

  I know that I have the skills and the tools to beat anyone in grappling or in, or in mixed martial arts at this point. It's just. I I know that for certain, I know I've trained with enough people, I competed with enough people, I know, I know where I stand. But I also know that I'm not perfect and also the the better fighter, even if I perceived that I was that thing, doesn't win on the night. The the man who fights better wins on the night. And if I give credence in my mind to only the person that's that's one has value versus going, what's your process? What's your path through this? How are you going about this? How are you thinking about this? How are you behaving? Then if if I can focus on the process, then then I will respect my opponent and I will respect myself and I'll respect anyone

• 3:29:24Speaker 01

  that behaves with with a certain level of of consistency to that. And they could win. There's plenty of winners in history that that are shitbags and there's plenty of losers that are not. But winning doesn't make you a bad or good person and losing doesn't make you good by default either or bad by default. So and I think that that can be the truth socially, that can be the truth, you know, athletically and, you know, academically. So I guess.

• 3:29:48Lex Fridman?

  But is there a primal fear, though, like a primal fear of getting hurt? The running away and not facing the the threat long term is the bigger pain than any pain you can experience in a fight?

• 3:30:07Lex Fridman?

  That's pretty powerful. But what about the violence of, I mean, you don't have that on your face, but like I don't know if you've also seen Tyson talk about, he was on Rogan recently, he was talking about

• 3:30:19Lex Fridman?

  he was trying to psychoanalyze himself about why he enjoys violence so much. I mean, he called it orgasmic. I don't know. Have you seen that clip?

• 3:30:31Speaker 01

  I haven't.

• 3:30:32Lex Fridman?

  Okay, we're playing, we're playing it because I can, I need to, because Trump also retweeted it, which is hilarious. I don't know how to contextualize that our president retweeted the clip of

• 3:30:45Lex Fridman?

  of Tyson saying.

• 3:30:46Speaker 01

  That's just, maybe he's just doing it like, they're not, it's like, I'm gonna throw him a curveball. No one's gonna have any idea what that.

• 3:30:51Lex Fridman?

  But yeah, he did no explanation, just here you go.

• 3:30:53Speaker 01

  There you go. Well, I think that's kind of like what you were describing. It's like, if I give you an answer, it has to be a good one. Better to just let your imagination run.

• 3:31:00Lex Fridman?

  Exactly. Yeah, he's, yeah, he's like the Kubrick of our time.

• 3:31:06Speaker 04

  You know what's really interesting? That sometimes, um.

• 3:31:13Speaker 04

  Period. It's not real, but sometimes I struggle with the fact of, wow, is there a possibility I can really hurt somebody?

• 3:31:19Joe Rogan?

  Like, you don't want to hurt them?

• 3:31:23Joe Rogan?

  What do you mean, where you struggle with the possibility that you could hurt them?

• 3:31:28Speaker 04

  That is sometimes... It's orgasmic sometimes. Yeah.

• 3:31:34Joe Rogan?

  Like, some fights, like particularly like Tyrell Biggs, or someone that you had problems with, someone that you...

• 3:31:41Lex Fridman?

  Joe's not getting it.

• 3:31:42Joe Rogan?

  You had animosity towards, so when you finally get your hands on them.

• 3:31:46Speaker 04

  Hey, um...

• 3:31:49Speaker 04

  What does it mean, um... When fighting gets you erect? What does that mean?

• 3:31:55Joe Rogan?

  It's a good question.

• 3:31:57Joe Rogan?

  Means you're getting excited.

• 3:31:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:32:00Joe Rogan?

  So, that's going through your mind right now?

• 3:32:02Speaker 04

  Well, that's how I get when I was a kid, and I, you know, sometimes I get the twinkle.

• 3:32:07Joe Rogan?

  The twinkle?

• 3:32:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:32:09Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's what I'm saying. It's like, you reached a state, as a human being, as a champion, as a ferocious fighter, you reached a state of ability and of accomplishment that very few humans will ever, ever touch and feel. That's why I'm asking you, when you're running, when you're hitting the bag, when that heart's beating again, and that you know who you are, you're Mike motherfucking Tyson. So, when you're doing all this shit again, you're still Mike Tyson. Those thoughts have gotta be burning inside you again. It's gotta be pretty wild.

• 3:32:40Speaker 04

  I don't know. It's, um... It's wild, but I believe it's rightfully so, to be that way, and I just know how to, um, I don't think I mastered, but I just know how to deal with it. I don't let it overwhelm me.

• 3:32:55Lex Fridman?

  I mean, he goes on to try to, they don't ever, like, Joe doesn't bite. Well, the interesting thing about that conversation is Mike was trying to figure himself out.

• 3:33:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:33:09Lex Fridman?

  Like, he's trying, on the spot, like, "Why do I feel this way?"

• 3:33:17Lex Fridman?

  To me, it was like, to me, it's so real and honest to, uh, to feel like pleasure from hurting somebody. Like that, you rarely hear that. In this society, it's like, you rarely like, talk about like, you feel pleasure from winning. You feel pleasure from like, the relief of overcoming, like, all the stress you had to go through. Pleasure from just like, the specifics of the fight, the techniques he used, the maybe overcoming, being down a couple of rounds. But like, how often

• 3:33:58Lex Fridman?

  do you hear somebody say, "I just enjoyed..." He's not even saying, "Because I hate the opponent." He's saying like, "I enjoyed purely the violence of it." That's crazy. I mean, I don't know, it's honest. It, it, it made me ask, like, I wonder how many of us are cognizant of that?

• 3:34:17Speaker 01

  I'd say Mike is uncommonly seemingly honest. I think athletes make a full-time job out of lying. You know, I think people make a full-time job out of lying.

• 3:34:28Lex Fridman?

  To themselves, perhaps, too.

• 3:34:28Speaker 01

  That's fair. I mean, in some, you tell yourself, or you tell others what you feel you need to, or maybe whether you've, whether you even know what you feel you need to, but why should he not? I mean, again, did he, did he run up and just hit somebody that's, didn't sign up for this? No, they, they signed up to be there.

• 3:34:47Lex Fridman?

  Well, that's the interesting thing about Dyson is there's that weird, uh, like, non-standard behavior. I mean, like, your fighting style is non-standard. He's non-standard to another degree of like, uh, who else has that? In Jiu-Jitsu, uh, Polaris, uh, has this kind of weirdness, like, what's, what's in there? Like, there's a fear that I think, uh, most opponents would have, because it's like, it's no longer about, like, it takes you out of the realm of it's a game. It takes us back to the thing we're talking about like before is it strips away that like

• 3:35:29Lex Fridman?

  several layers of Ryan Hall, the podcast guest, Ryan Hall, the jujitsu instructor, Ryan Hall, just a competitor. It keeps going down to a point where like Ryan Hall, the murderer of all things that get in his way, that lies underneath all of it seemingly like if we're like in this society, we put all that aside, but it makes you wonder like now as society is being tested in many ways. It makes you wonder like what's underneath there.

• 3:35:57Speaker 01

  Well, do we want, do we want the answer to that? Cause I guess it's what is it? Uh, you've seen Paul Fiction, you know, the best character in the movie and in the best scene in the movie. It's like if my questions here, if you're, what do you call it? If my answers scare you, you should cease asking scary questions, you know, and I guess, uh, you wonder, I mean, all of us, that's something that I think it's funny. We go, that's not okay. I mean, versus maybe not appropriate for situation X, Y, or Z, but, uh, what should make any of us think? I mean, humanity is a different place now. And I mean, I'm not saying anything crazy out there, but humanity is a different place now than we were 5,000 years ago, where all of us are descended from people who have killed things with their teeth and fingernails in order to be where we are. And whether it was in, whether it was an animal or it was in conflict with another person. I mean, think about that,

• 3:36:42Speaker 01

  the chances of dying by violence now are so, so slim, at least in, in most countries and most places, like shockingly small, thankfully. But there was a period of time, like the most period of time where dying by violence is mostly how it went down. And I guess what would be facilitative? What would allow you to win back to Ender's Game? You know, what allows you, if you can't do that, you are all, you are forever subject to people who can. And that's, that's a real thing. And you know, we're fortunate to find ourselves in a situation where we don't, where other things matter. But that is a funny thing periodically where people, you'll see people like kind of jawing at each other, like in videos or out in the world, that clearly neither of them expect this to get serious. Like I'm just going to yell at you, you're going to yell at me. And it's like

• 3:37:26Speaker 01

  this weird LARPing thing where we're both going to go on our own separate way. All it takes is one person be like, well, I wasn't kidding. And it's like, oh, you'll go to jail. I'm like, oh, I know. You're gonna go to the morgue and it's that's but that can happen like that like society. I mean, obviously, anyway, you could jump across the table, stab me in the eye. I mean, I appreciate, I'd hope if you don't, and there will be consequences if you do, but not from not from me. From from the rest of society will potentially get you at a certain point. But you can decide to not play by the rules anytime you want.

• 3:37:56Lex Fridman?

  Fascinating that, yeah, that's we've created rules based on which we all behave. But underneath there, you know, there there's things that doesn't. There's motivations and forces that don't play by the rules. It's still there. Nature is metal is under the surface.

• 3:38:12Speaker 01

  Seriously, and again, I pull out my phone and I'm basically saying like, hey, I'm gonna you're gonna get caught.

• 3:38:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:38:17Speaker 01

  But really, I'm further antagonizing you, rightly or wrongly, you know what I mean? Like, and that that's an interesting thing, and I feel like just people need to remember, any of us need to remember. Just for any reason, just that's that's one step away at all at all times. You ever I've had people say to me before, like, oh, I don't feel safe. I'm like, you're not safe. I'd kill you before you get out of this room. Nothing you can do to stop that, nothing. I mean, but don't worry, you could do the same to me, which means I'm like, oh, oh, thank goodness. Can you imagine like how many guns are there are in this country? Like, I mean, everywhere, I mean, seriously, everywhere. But that's a heartening thought, not the other way, because people usually freak out and go, oh, my God, gun violence, gun violence. Gun violence is like really not a serious issue in the United States compared to what it could be.

• 3:38:59Speaker 01

  Because it means that, I mean, with the amount of guns and the amount of bullets that are out there that are in circulation. Can you imagine if like one in every thousand was used in anger each day? I mean, this would be a terrifying place to live. You couldn't go anywhere. So I mean, although you could say, hey, this is more than we'd like or X, Y, Z. It actually means that people are much more reasonable and sane than than we're saying. Then or then I then sometimes I might I might argue. So I guess what I mean is like, oh, man, I walked to 7-Eleven and I didn't get stabbed. I'm like, oh, well, that's good because not because I protected myself with my karate. It's basically no one decided to run over and stab me because I wasn't protecting myself. It's they they stopped. So I guess we're all fortunate to live in a society that that, like you said, nature being metal doesn't become that big of an issue all the time.

• 3:39:43Speaker 01

  But it is funny when you get people in the ring and you go, hey, let's peel back from Mr. Tyson. Many layers of that and say, hey, now it's okay.

• 3:39:51Lex Fridman?

  And it's cool that, I mean, that's what society is doing. So I've, I lived in Harvard Square for a while and we add extra layers of what safe means. Like now there's a discourse about safe spaces, about like ideas being violence or, or like, uh, you know, like, yeah, but ideas or minor slights against your personality being violence. But that's all like extra layers around the nature is metal thing that, uh, it's cool. That's, that's what progress is, but we can't forget that, like underneath it is still, it's still the, the thing that will murder at the, at the drop of a, in any, at any moment, if, uh, if aroused.

• 3:40:36Speaker 01

  One, one thing that I find funny though, or ironic maybe about the, uh, the, you know, words of violence, you know, offenses, violence thing is that of course that if that the belief in that then justifies my violence, like my, and whether maybe my, maybe not physical violence, but my response to my, my aggressive response to things. And I guess like, which again begets, begets a further aggressive response and like a, you know, kind of a tit for tat sort of situation, or, or it goes to like, well, there's 10 of me and there's one of you. So we'll get you and you can't do anything about it. But that's not morality. That's, that's just saying that's might makes right. So I guess again, you can understand why people do it. And there are certain, there is a progress aspect to it. But again,

• 3:41:18Speaker 01

  I guess without proper examination, I'm effectively with my 10 friends, you know, and, and the force of the law, Mike Tyson-ing people, but not admitting to myself what I'm doing. And at least Mike Tyson, again, is honest.

• 3:41:31Lex Fridman?

  Are you, uh, afraid of death?

• 3:41:34Speaker 01

  I mean, it's easy for me to say no, as I sit here, probably not about to die, but.

• 3:41:38Lex Fridman?

  Is this like the UFC question? Can you defeat any opponent?

• 3:41:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. The answer is of course yes. And, uh, I don't have, they're not around, they're not here, are they? Yeah, exactly.

• 3:41:47Lex Fridman?

  But I mean, you, uh, do you ponder your own mortality? Maybe another context to that is you mentioned two deaths for martial artists.

• 3:41:56Speaker 01

  I think that's actually why, honestly, even though at a relatively young age, I think mortality is something that I'm aware of. More, maybe more than the average person. I think probably most athletes can speak to this and anyone that's had. I've managed to slide out of a couple of near death experiences personally, you know, mostly river related. Um, because I'm an idiot, but, um, I regret nothing, but, uh, yeah, but, uh, thank God we're here. But, um, yeah, it is an interesting, seeing, seeing the end and seeing going, well, what's gonna happen? I guess, I, I think it comes back to kind of what we're discussing about belief structure and belief system. I think a lot of times if I recognize that no matter what I do, it's all gonna end one day.

• 3:42:39Speaker 01

  And then you go, well, why were we here? What would I do? Am I gonna make it to 40? I have no idea. I'd like to hope so. I had no idea that I was gonna make it to, to the age that I am now. Um, am I gonna make it to 80? How much of that is in my control? Much of it is not. I mean, we, it's so funny. It's an interesting, like, back to the belief structure, again, like locus of internal and external locus of control. You know, what's facilitative versus what's true? And, you know, I think accepting personal responsibility for more than is on my control is, is probably a positive. But at the same time, recognizing that much of, much is not in my control. I was fortunate enough to be born in the United States, fortunate enough to, you know, to not, to knock on wood, have, have a serious disease that I'm not aware of right now.

• 3:43:24Speaker 01

  Um, I didn't do any of that. I just showed up. That was really fortunate and I, I guess that doesn't diminish the fact that I've tried to make decent choices. But it works in concert with it and I, I guess, um, when I, when you go, is death what I want right now? No, no, I should think not. And again, it's easy for me to be relatively calm about it as I'm not staring it in the face, but. What I would care a lot more about is is how you live. That's what's in my control and I can't control if as I walk out of this building, a helicopter falls on me. Worrying about that, I can't control, maybe I, maybe I have cancer now and I don't know it and I really hope not. But um.

• 3:44:04Lex Fridman?

  There's something about meditating on the fact that it could end today outside of your control. They can clarify your thinking about.

• 3:44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:44:13Lex Fridman?

  The, the fact that life is amazing, like just kind of.

• 3:44:16Speaker 01

  Something.

• 3:44:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, helping you enjoy this moment.

• 3:44:18Speaker 01

  Even if life was horrible, let's say, for instance, it was, it was, you live at one of those times or places and this place is still exists in this world today. That life is brutal and metal and whatever all and short and painful. Would you still want it? And again, as I'm sitting here, not, not on fire physically, it's easy to say yes, but I would, I'm confident, I still, I'll plant my feet and say yes. Any of life, any life is amazing and beautiful and, and a gift, an unbelievable gift. Uh, that none of us have earned for the record, I hate the word earned, a lot of times earned, yeah, you earn, but it's like. There's a lot of, a lot of good fortune and earning and that's back to, do I want justice or do I want grace?

• 3:44:58Speaker 01

  And I guess we're all fortunate to be where we are, no matter where we are, and hopefully it should give us some sense of perspective, some sense of compassion for other people, but also. Like, like you said, a sense of peace where if it all ended right now, would I be happy with what I, with life to this point, like, of course. Would you like to live a little longer? Yeah, I would try to do more and try to live rightly to the best that I know how, which over time will hopefully continue to evolve in a, in a positive direction. But if the answer to that is no, I, I guess, uh, that's, that's always. That's a sign that, that what I'm doing is not what I'm meant to be doing and I mean, you're familiar with the Tecumseh? Before, there's a, I've got one, actually, if you could give me 10 seconds, I'll, I'll read this one out, this is a personal favorite.

• 3:45:43Speaker 01

  Basically, and I think it sums up, I mean, again, I could, one of those quotes on the internet, like when Abraham Lincoln said, don't believe everything you read online. Uh, but, uh, this is, you know, I, it's again, uh, attributed, but it's like, so live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion, respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or sign a salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.

• 3:46:27Speaker 01

  If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

• 3:46:49Lex Fridman?

  Powerful words. I don't think there's a better way to end it. Let me just say, we've spoke maybe five, six years ago. I don't even remember when, but I'm not exaggerating in saying like you had a huge impact on my life because of the podcast. You're the reason I was doing the podcast as long as I have. You're the reason I'm doing this podcast. It's a little, it's a stupid little meeting that you probably didn't know who I was. I didn't really know who you are. It was just like a magical moment. It's a flap of a butterfly wing kind of situation. And yeah, I'm forever grateful. You're one of the most inspiring people in my life.

• 3:47:28Lex Fridman?

  So Ryan, it's a huge honor that you would come here, Jen, and talk with me and waste all this time. I really appreciate it. It was amazing.

• 3:47:37Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Lex. It's just been a pleasure. I really appreciate you having us on. Thank you.

• 3:47:41Lex Fridman?

  Thanks, brother. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ryan Hall. And thank you to our sponsors, Power Dot, Babbo and Cash App. Please check out the sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Fridman. And now let me leave you with some words from Frank Herbert in Dune. "Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense, but the real universe is always one step beyond logic." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.