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

The following is a conversation with Ryan hall, one of the most insightful minds and systems thinkers in the martial arts world. He's a black belt in Jiu jitsu, accomplished competitor, an MMA fighter, undefeated in the ufc, and truly a philosopher who seeks to understand the underlying principles of the martial arts. Jiu Jitsu is such an important part of who I am and I was hoping to share that with folks who might know me only as a researcher, I think there's no better person to do that with than Ryan, who somehow, remarkably, I can say is a friend and also a modern day warrior philosopher of the Miyamoto Musashi line of especially dangerous and brilliant humans. Also, his amazing wife Jen hall was there as well. So if you hear a kind of voice of wisdom coming from above, you know who it is. Quick summary of the sponsors PowerDot, Babbel 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. 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. 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I use it for muscle recovery for legs and shoulders, but you can also use it to build muscle endurance or even just warm up. In fact, I first heard about this kind of electrical muscle stimulation device in Reading that Bruce Lee used it. He was an inspiration to me as someone who practices first principles thinking, especially in a discipline where conventional thinking is everywhere. He created a martial art called Jeet Kune do that is, in many ways, at least philosophically, in his hybrid approach, a precursor to modern day mixed martial arts. There's a special kind of deep philosophical thinking that combat athletes or Jiu jitsu practitioners do that is unlike any other. I think it's grounded in the humbling process of getting your ass kicked a lot that removes any illusion of intellectual superiority. I think the journey towards wisdom starts when you humbly admit to yourself that you know very little or almost nothing. 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I just watched a video on YouTube for Uptown Girl and it's basically Billy Joel dressed up as a mechanic but dancing in a way that I'm pretty sure no mechanic has ever danced, turning the old cringe factor up to 11. Anyway, I always felt like I didn't really fit in with the fancy people, and that's what this song represents. But back to Babbel. 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. When you get it, use code LEXPodcast. The Cash app folks are truly amazing people and are teeming 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. 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Again, if you get Cash App from the App Store, 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. And now here's my conversation with Ryan hall. Who in your view is the greatest warrior in history? Ancient or modern?

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

Just come out with a new album by the way, or the entire orchestra.

That's kind of cool. Yeah, that's important.

Metallica will. Will always be one of the greatest.

Yeah. So I agree with bad example. They were a well known yet awesome band. Let me say it's like Nickelback or something like that. But I feel that feels cheap because everyone makes fun of Nickelback. Yeah, I don't like. 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 has 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. That's, that's shocking. You know, when you come, you think about the Olympics in the United States doing well, of course we should do well. I mean Russia should do well, China should do well. India should do better than they do, honestly. Obviously it means like they're not into it as much or at least certain sports because they have the resources, people wise. So talent's not going to be an issue.

So there's something to 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.

Oh yeah, big soccer.

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

Yeah, that's fair to say. I mean like, like United is, 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, had a ridiculous all star squad of world class players. But, and you know, let's say for instance, maybe they didn't have the creative players in Argentina they needed to get the ball up to Messi. You know, they didn't have like the nest and you know, the, you know, the, again the backing there in the midfield. But because obviously Argentina's always had ridiculous attacking players like even alongside Messi, but they're like the three killers up front and then a little less behind.

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

I would say at least three. Three that pop into my head and would. Hannibal, Alexander the Great and then maybe Miyamoto Musashi, you know, the two commanders and then one, you know, guy. But so it's interesting. And then again you mentioned warriors being able to make a lot out of a little. Musashi's famous for winning duels, you know, that were oftentimes one. They 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. There's skin in the game. That's an interesting thing too. I think a lot of times, you know, it's. 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. It's a bummer. It stings a little bit, maybe makes you feel slightly disappointed. But you know, Musashi loses, he loses, Hannibal loses, he loses, Alexander loses, he loses and they lose. I guess the people around them lose. So that's almost like you could use even from a combat sports perspective, Muhammad Ali, I mean you consider also their quality of opposition. Musashi was fighting high quality opposition. Obviously Hannibal and Alexander, particularly Hannibal were fighting unbelievable opposition. Muhammad Ali fought phenomenal opposition. But he had skin in the game both in the ring and out. And that actually meshes with, as you mentioned, like a civil rights, 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 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 of great fighters throughout history.

So what do you make of the kind of very difficult idea that some of these conquerors like Alexander the Great and somebody that if you listen to hardcore history, Odan Karlin, who apparently Elon Musk is also a big fan of is the Genghis Khan episode. 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, 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 given the time. He was a liberator. He was a progressive, I should say, in terms of the violence and the atrocities he committed. He, at least in the stories, has always provided the option of not to do that. It's only if you resist. So you basically have the option, do you want to join us or do you want to die and die horribly? So that's the progressive, sort of. That's the Bernie Sanders of the era.

Nice.

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

It's funny you mention it. I think that maybe it's a human nature thing that we want to. Or, you know, maybe. Or maybe a misunderstanding thing, that we want to cast all of our characters and ourselves maybe as entirely good or is 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. You were able to understand the motivations of people doing various things. Even if they did wrongly, they did rightly. We want to cast all of the demons throughout history as completely inhuman when I think that makes it difficult for us to understand them. And we want to look back at the people that we think of as great and entirely great. And I think that we're experiencing the problems with this even right now, socially and politically, as we're trying to look back and decide the people we thought were good or not good or people we thought were bad are now good rather than going, hey, there's good and bad to all things. And there are, as you mentioned, the Genghis Khan thing. 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. 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. 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 it's difficult. I would just say people in the world are complicated and layered and depending upon which side of the line you're standing on at various times, you know, you may like or dislike someone, but I can't remember. It's. I can't remember who's. Whose idea it was. This is killing me. But it's the veil of ignorance. I guess the philosophical idea of the veil of ignorance, where I go is sticking everyone in the cage the right thing to do, or everyone but me. And I say, well, no. Why? Well, it would make my life easier if I just went over and took all of your stuff as long as you couldn't stop me. I mean, of course that's a great idea. That's what everyone does in every video game. But in Skyrim, you steal stuff when people aren't around. But ultimately you go, well, this isn't the right thing to do because if I were on the other side of it, I would. 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. And that's a fine way to be, but you don't have the white hat on, I guess I would say so. I think without those philosophical underpinnings to rein us in, you know, I guess morally speaking, it's very difficult to say what's right or wrong. And you 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.

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 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 skill set. And it's funny to think of us humans with our extra little piece of brain that we're somehow trying to figure out, like you said, in a philosophical way, how to supersede that, how to, like, move past the viciousness, the cruelty, just the cold exchange of nature. But perhaps it's not so. Maybe that is nature. Maybe that's the way of life. Maybe we're trying too hard to. We're being too egotistical and thinking were somehow separate from nature. We're somehow distant from that very thing.

I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I think actually Orson Scott Card, who's the writer of a great book called Ender's Game, this was a statement that the main character, Ender, made in the book. His brother was brilliant. His brother was kind of sociopathic, brilliant kid that 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. Is one of the fundamental, most important things to be able to do in life. Because if you can't cause destruction, if you can't cause pain, you will be forever subject to those who can. And I think that you mentioned egotism. I think that that's a disease that could obviously strike any of us, but it's something that we're looking at now. We're, you know, I think we should be unbelievably thankful as people that live in the world that we do, that we can walk down the street without having to worry that I'm like, well don't worry that 6 foot 6, 270 pound person over there is just going to 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 sane and or constrained society because it benefits all of us and we're doing it because of a philosophical underpinning, not because nature dictates it be that way, because nature dictates it going a very, very different direction. And the only 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 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 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, nature is as it is and as it always will be unless we want to start to constrain it significantly. But now I'm starting to get into individual rights. Who put me in charge? Who says that I should be the one to make the choice is constraining because many of the most awful things that have happened throughout history, one group or one person has decided to constrain others. And we don't like Genghis Khan doing that. Well, I'll do that on a little level. Are there going to be benefits and beneficiaries? Absolutely, but there'll be losers in that too. So I guess it's a dangerous game. It's almost like putting on the One Ring. You 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 the big question for anyone that decides that's able to have reach and able to have power. I mean, obviously I can't speak to that, but imagine you did have national level, global level power. How would you use it? Would you try to change the world? Would you be glad that you did down the line? I don't know.

Yeah, there's, 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 fairer society, a more equal society. And in attaining more power justly, there's also a realization, at least from my perspective, that power corrupts everyone. Even if you're, even if the flag you wave is that of justice. Right. And so, you know, not to overuse the term, but it'd be nice if you have thoughts about the whole idea of cancel culture and the Internet and Twitter and so on, where there's nuanced, difficult discussions of race, of gender, of fairness, equality, justice, all of these kinds of things. There's a shouting down oftentimes of nuanced discussion of kind of trying to reason through these very difficult issues, through our history, through what our future looks like. Do you have thoughts about the Internet discourse that's going on now? Is there something positive, yeah, we can pull out of this?

It's an interesting thing to see. I guess, as you mentioned, anytime you're wielding power, whomever you are doing so carefully is important. And it's very, very easy to look at the people that have power and that are using it poorly or have used it poorly and go, hey, you're the bad guy. And then go, well, of course, if I had power, I'll use it properly, and I may intend to use it properly, and maybe I will. But at the same time, we see a lot of times people are people are people. I think that 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 we had 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 people. And I guess ultimately if I believe that human beings are corruptible and that power corrupts and that we're all fallible, and we say and do things that either intentionally or unintentionally, that we wish we'd not. I think that I have to allow for a space. I guess the word. It's almost a religious term, but I guess I would just say grace. And that's something that I see disappearing from discourse in the public, or maybe it wasn't there, I'm not sure. But it's interesting, you know, watching this occur on the Internet, because also now, no longer are you and I just having a talk, sitting on a bus stop. It's now in writing. Everything's in writing. The old saying, like, don't put that in writing. Don't put anything in writing. That's how you get in trouble. And basically, 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 trying to make about them or a situation. And I think that you mentioned cancel culture as it seems to exist. Obviously, this is poisonous on its face. This is poisonous. It's the sort of thing that doesn't incentivize proper behavior. I mean, you look at, let's say, one of the great monsters of history, Adolf Hitler, obviously, who's done awful, awful things. But also for anyone that's even a minor student of history, did some positive things as well. I don't have to embroider this person's crimes. I don't have to act as if there was nothing good a monster has ever done and nothing bad that a great person throughout history has ever done. But imagine the ghost of Adolf Hitler were to pop up and go, oh, my gosh, guys, I'm so sorry. I know what I've done, but I'd like to apologize and start to make it right. Well, I mean, you'd hope that if he popped up over here, you go, well, I don't really like what you've done, and I don't like you, but at the same time, I'm glad to hear that you're attempting to make this right and push in a positive direction, even if you can't make it right, because otherwise, what am I doing? I'm disincentivizing change for the better. I'm looking to wield whatever power I have in a punitive fashion, which does not encourage people to do anything other than double down on the wrongs that they've made, knowing that at least they're going to have some support from the people that support that. And I guess I want to, you hopefully look at the use of the Internet as a tool that can educate and I guess I don't like the word empower, but empower people to do various things, extend their reach, but educate and learn rather than to further solidify little tribal things that exist, which I think everyone in humanity and human history is vulnerable to. I mean, look at the course of human history. It's deeply tribal and the tribes or the groups that have been on top at various points in time have done a lot of times bad things to the ones that have not. And you'd hope that we could learn lessons from the past and rather than committing the crimes that were committed against us, recommitting them when we slide into the top position, say, you know, I could do this now, but I'll not. You know, I understand the urge to, 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. 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, I'm simply just going to just perpetuate the cycle that's gone on to this point. So you hope that even though we're seeing a lot of turmoil societally at the moment and globally at the moment, that I guess our better angels can prevail at a certain point. But it's going to take a great deal of leadership. And I think that we're sorely missing like a Martin Luther King style character at the moment or a great leader. And I just, I'm hoping that one will show up for sure.

And by the way, a word I don't hear often, and I think it's a beautiful one, which is grace. That's a really interesting word. I'm gonna have to think about that. It is. There is a religious component to it, but it's exactly right. It. You have to somehow walk the line between, you know, you mentioned Hitler. I've been reading the rise and fall of the Third Reich. I'm really thinking about the 1930s and what it's like to have economic. My concern is the economic pain that people are feeling now quietly, is really a suffering that's not being heard. And there's echoes of that in the. In the 20s and the 30s with the great Depression. And there's a hunger for a charismatic leader. Like you said, there's a leader that could walk with grace, could inspire, could. Could bring people together with. With sort of dreams of a better future that's positive. But Hitler did exactly everything that I just said, except for the word positive, which is he did give a dream to the German people who were great people, who are great people of. Of a better future. It's just that a certain point that quickly turned into the better future requires literally expansion of more land. It started with, well, if we want to build a great Germany, we need a little bit more land. And so we need to kind of get Austria, then we need to kind of get France, mostly because France doesn't understand that more land is really useful. So we need to get rid of them.

And look what they did to us in Versailles anyway.

But so the Jew, 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 for 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's where the question of forgiveness. I mean, Hitler is such a difficult person to talk about, but it's the question of cancel culture, who is deserving of forgiveness and who is not. Like the Holocaust survivors that I've read about, that I've heard the interviews with. They've often spoken about the fact that the way for them to let go, to overcome the atrocities that they've experienced is to forgive. Like, forgiveness is the way out for them. It's interesting to think about. I don't know. I don't know if. 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, 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?

And also, what's a good person?

What is a good person?

If that's a sliding scale that we could all find ourselves looking at the uncomfortable end of a gun on, you know, particularly down the line. I mean, you hope for the best, but these definitions, I guess, like you said, are important. And who's doing the canceling, who's being canceled? I'm not necessarily, as you said, saying that that's entirely unjustified or certainly not. It's certainly understandable. And particularly you mentioned, like a monster, like an Adolf Hitler. But it's also interesting, I couldn't help but notice, like you mentioned as a society, us being able to apply forgiveness to someone who's done so much horror. But people who are personal. I mean, of course, many, so many people have been personally affected, but directly personally affected. Someone, a survivor of the Holocaust, being able to let go on that. I'm nowhere near a big enough person for that sort of thing, but I guess that's an interesting thing, you know, being the person who was physically there, potentially able to let go. I don't know. That's. That's unbelievably powerful. It's. It's interesting. I guess you have to wonder sometimes, and this isn't 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 text. So I brought a Bible and I brought a Quran and I started to read them side by side. And it was really interesting reading. The Bible's a little drier. The Quran's more interesting, at least written. But I think something that was consistently brought up was the way most merciful people want. I don't think any of us want justice. 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 want justice. I want to balance it out. Because what is justice is 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 sound great, but what happens when it's pointed back at me? And I guess that comes back to the veil of ignorance. You know, the idea that one day I will have to live in the world in which I've envisioned and the world in which I've created. I think that a lot of times people love the idea of they're a judge for your crimes and a lawyer for theirs. And I heard that the other day. I thought it was great. And I think that's a dangerous thing. And hopefully it gives us all pause before, rightly or wrongly, but always understandably, wielding serious power.

Yeah, justice is a kind of drug. So if you look at history, also been reading a lot about Stalin. I mean, all those folks really. I don't know what was inside Hitler's head, actually. He's a tricky one because I think he was legitimately insane. Stalin was not. And Stalin was like, he literally thought he's doing a good thing. He literally thought for the entirety of the time that communism is going to bring, like, that's the utopia and is going to create a happy world. And in his. 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 somehow sadly pollutes the mind when you start thinking like that, what's good for society and believing that you have a good sense of what's good for society. That's intoxicating. Especially when others around you are feeling the same way. And then you start like building up this movement and you forget that you are just like a.

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. 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. Which has to go if. If it floats or sinks. Which one? I forget which one.

Whichever one we need at the time, honestly. It's floating. It should have sunk.

Yeah. But yeah, we can definitely agree that we just 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 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 Camuse, Dostoevsky, Kafka, like that place, like that's a kind of sci fi world in itself. But it's. It just. It creates a world in which the. The deepest questions about human nature can be explored. I didn't realize this, but the sci fi world is the same. It just puts it in a. It like removes it from any kind of historical context where you can explore those same ideas in like space, somewhere elsewhere, in a different time, a different place. It allows you almost like more freedom to like construct these artificial things where you can just do crazy, 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, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Ender's Game, like you mentioned. That's just kind of. 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. Oh cool. See they all pitched in these nerds. These ultra nerds just started like going like these. You need to read this, that and. 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 you find are just amazing? Maybe another way to ask that is what's the greatest sci fi book of all time?

Well, I'd like to start by sharing something that I'm embarrassed about is that I haven't read anything other than orson Scott card. J.R.R. tolkien. Frank Herbert Tolkien. Yep. Yeah. I'm aware through Wikipedia and through. Through surface reading of things that like a book called the Republic was written once. There were some other mother good ones.

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

Well, or occasionally. Exactly. In between whatever else it is that I waste my time on. But.

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

Well, I actually. We actually have a show you roll actually made us a key a Dune themed GI one time which I thought was kind of cool. I'll send you. I'll give you one. We got extra. But actually to your, to your point actually this is a Orson Scott Card quote actually the writer of vendors game 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 think that's a neat thing because I have heard other people whom I respect and very sharp people actually every now and then dig their heels and go, I don't like fiction. I only like non fiction. It's more instructive. And I would go, I completely disagree with that. I think we have a hard enough time figuring out what happened at 7:11 three hours ago that let me tell you what happened 600 years BC. I'm like, hey, I'm interested. But don't tell me this isn't a story too. 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. And I think Dune would be an unbelievably well written in my opinion, for whatever, you know, what do I know? But I really like Dune. I'll say that well written example of, you know, human beings interacting with one another. The political component to that, the emotional, the intellectual, the relationship components, all of that. And I think that Dune is neat because it's a sci fi novel, but only in the loosest sense. It's really a story about religion, about group dynamics, about human potential, about belief, learning, politics, governance, ecology. The best stories remind me of history the same way. History hopefully is not just a list of facts that I try to be able to recall, but. 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, 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 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 bring that to the screen for a variety of reasons.

But there's at least 100 questions. Ask Ryan. What do you think about the new Dune movie?

I am not enough of an authority to have any sort of decent opinion, but I guess what I would say is so much of it goes on in the character's mind. Like how much of any of our day is. Is any lived experience, as it were, is internal. The majority. How many times are people walking around and you know they can. You're 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 one of my favorite stories and it's honestly helped me become better at life, in my opinion, better at the martial arts. And I think the writer, I think Frank Herbert was absolutely brilliant. Whether those were all his ideas, which in not reality, none of us are. All of our good ideas aren't ours. We're a combination. Maybe you came up with something. You're a curator of other good ideas and some things you borrowed from somewhere without even realizing it. But I think the way the messages and the themes and the ideas that were conveyed, particularly in the original novel or just absolutely brilliant, is that.

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's new to sci fi, is that something you would recommend? That that is an entry point.

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.

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? Because I'm a huge fan of Elder Scrolls.

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

So you're like an adult?

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, but historically.

Did you play video games?

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

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

Oh, I actually like Mandalorian.

That was actually pretty cool, waving this off.

Yeah, yeah, I will. If I could cancel one thing, I would cancel Disney Star.

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, it's because of that comment. So good job.

Good job for making the Internet hate nothing.

What about Baby Yoda?

Yeah, I guess he's like, he's little, he's got ears, and he uses the Force sometimes and he passes out. No. No qualms with Baby Yoda.

Yeah, you don't have a heart. Okay, let's go to Jiu Jitsu, if it's okay. So the audience of this podcast may not know much about Jiu Jitsu, or they do because it's really part of the culture now, but they don't really know much. They see that so many people have fallen in love with it, have been transformed through it, but they don't know much about, like, what is this thing? Is there a way you could sort of try to explain 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?

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 unison to move efficiently and almost flowingly, unresistently with a given situation with their 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 It's a runaway and clash. A runaway and clash. If you watch jiu jitsu done well, it looks like water moving around a solid structure. And I think that that is expressed physically. And I think that all of the things that anyone have really been able to do very, very well 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 with and be yielding almost like real life aikido.

And so you think of martial arts, jiu jitsu as 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.

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 are the greater force, at which point in time you can apply. But if you look at the best wrestlers, and when I say best, I don't necessarily mean most successful, although of course, most successful are always very, very good. Throughout the course of history, in boxing, in wrestling, in judo, they're magical. They disappear and reappear. It's like fighting a ghost that is like incorporeal when you want to find it, but then when you don't want 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 buvice society of rat wrestling. And I guess you could look at a Floyd Mayweather or Willie Pep or Pernell 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.

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

In 2000.

Yeah. Sydney. And then there.

This is the year you all took silver.

And what you like, just to show you like there's a inside trip. Effortless. Ouchie. He does it again. Yeah. You know, it's a really creative kind of wrestling where it's organic. 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 just like legitimate, basic.

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 a moust. She talked a lot about that. The only goal of combat is to win. It's outcome driven versus flourishing. Cool looking movements. It's like unless that had a utilitarian purpose, what are you wasting your time with that both in the fight and also in practice. 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 reminds me all of the martial arts is again, deeply tribal as well. I want to learn Lex Fridman martial arts and then I want to learn another, I guess transcendent person's martial arts. And it just happened to be the set of movements that you tended to do most of the time, thanks to your body type and your opposition and whatnot. But then I try to codify that and force those to work as opposed to going. I want to understand how the body works in concert and in congress with something else and other forces and move appropriately. And that's why it always struck me that the Saiti 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 beautiful to watch. It's artistic. And I think that the 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. A 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. In my experience.

How it's done 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 spot like this, but it might be a nice exercise to think through it.

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. Kimora, Oma plata. Oma plata is a kimora. Kimora's almost submissions.

So, like submissions breaking off your arm in all kinds of ways.

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

Go on, go on.

It's like, all right, we're being completely literal. But. And I. And I couldn't harm you with any of these things, would I still use these positions? The answer is yes. They create leverage, they create control, they create shapes that I can affect and that can affect me. And they can be affected through other forces and other objects or structures like the ground or the wall. I really enjoy mixed martial arts because there's another component rather than just me and you and the floor. There's me, you, the floor and the wall. And it's another player in the game that doesn't exist in a grappling context within a non enclosed, I guess, area of combat. But you can strangle me or choke me, what do you call it, without my arms being involved. Or you can use one of my shoulders to pin one side of my one carotid artery off, and you can enclose the other. You can turn my knee in the exact same ways that you can turn my arm straight this way and that way. You can add a rotation to that, or it can be directly linear against the joint. So I guess what I would say is the more that I've been able to understand jiu jitsu, the more that I've been. It's given me a look into how we learn language where rather than learning five bazillion adjectives, I go, I understand what an adjective is. And of 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 I guess a clause, a contraction, any of these things. And it allows you to be interesting and artistic with your language to the extent that you can. But I can't. Like I can speak a degree of Spanish, but I'm not even slightly artistic in Spanish. I would be something I speak like a child with a head injury. And anyway.

But your basic understanding of the English language allows you to then be a.

Student of Spanish 100%. But I'm limited by my experience. I'm limited by my understanding of techniques and 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, the way that I perceive the world is affected deeply by the language that I learned. Again, if I learned, I have no idea how the Chinese language structures, but I can only imagine that it would affect. It's like a different lens. We're all looking at the same thing. But I have a different set of sunglasses on than you do. And that's very, very interesting. I'll use the Quran as an example. 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 may not translate on a one for one kind of fidelity. But the more that we're able to understand about how the body works, the more examples of the body working this way, the body working that way, the body working that way, the more that I'm able to eventually become an artist. But it has to be studied as a science first. And it does start with technique, collection, vocabulary, collection. The same way we learn in School where you remember how to say quickly 17 different ways. And let's say I speak Spanish. I only know three. So you might use quickly. You might use an adjective like quickly in Spanish, but use one of the four 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 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. Here's an Americana, Americana to an arm lock, armlock to a triangle. But the problem with that is oftentimes we get stuck in that phase and people eventually become move collectors or sequence collectors. And I noticed this when I'm trying to do DVDs or I guess like an instructional series now, or even te. 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 speak a language. Whereas if you give me the language structure, 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 a weird facsimile of whatever it is that I'm doing for mostly the worst, I'd say.

But, yeah, that's what people. I mean, people comment like, is this especially. People haven't listened to me before. Is this guy drunk or high? Does he. Does MIT really allow slow people to be like, what's quote? Is it like, What's. What's wrong with him? Is he getting sleep? Are you okay? Does he need help? So that. That's similar with my Jiu Jitsu is like, this. 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 was ultimately the language that I had to discover. And it was.

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, that I'm not, I'm diff. I'm a unique, I'm unique. And like I have a very, 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 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 your, my individual body.

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. I wish 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, which is important. But it's the process, as you say, of going through that, of getting your ass kicked or just like, well, that didn't work. Well, that didn't work. That felt right, but I don't know, nobody else does that. I guess I don't believe in that. Versus eventually going, I don't know, I'll just try going my own way and see what happens. And now I'll get yelled at and people won't like me. And if it works, they'll say I got lucky. And if it doesn't work, they'll say I was dumb. But which maybe all is right, but basically, you know, going through that iterative process 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, to understand other people being uniquely them. Because even if you can only conceptualize, and I think about this a lot for society stuff where I go, well, this is how I feel about this, but am I objectively right? Maybe about a couple things, but that's a small box that I have to be very, very careful about what I think is objective versus what's not. And I have to be open to the possibility that all the things that I think are objectively correct, may or may not be. And that should allow me to have some degree of compassion or consideration for other people, both in their martial arts journey and in their, in their journey as people, as human beings. Because I understand that we're all on a path, it's all again, an iterative process of eventual self expression. But I think that's one of the things that we see having trouble when we see tribalism, which I mean racism, expression of that, political affiliation, expression of that. All of these things that can go in really uncomfortable directions. People are looking for, hey, where do I plant my feet over here? Where's the thing that I know is right? And we can all agree on the following. And I think that we see that in martial arts, we're like, oh, I do this style well, I do that style, I do that style. We're just like, hey man, we're all just pushing forward in a certain direction here, trying to do our best. And I understand why you feel the way you do. I may have felt like that at one point too. But you know, I'm just trying to learn and understand versus I've already acquired enough knowledge. Let me cross my arms and start to look who's fucking up around here. And I think that it's an interesting trap that I think is very human trap to fall into. But it definitely happens early on. It's, I mean, it's a joke in the jiu jitsu world, right? Like, oh, the blue belt that knows everything. Well, initially it's like, what? I know nothing. And I at least think I know nothing. Then I learn a little bit and I think it's a lot bit. And then, you know, the more you learn, the more you go like, I don't even know what I'm doing.

Yeah, that's exactly right. We kind of talked about it a little bit. But once again, a lot of people that listen to this have never been on the mat, have never tried jiu jitsu, but are really curious about it. Everybody at all positions, like, I think Elon Musk's kids are not doing jiu jitsu. Andrew Yang is like, they're all, you know, the world is curious. 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 years look like? How do you ease into it and make sure that it's a positive experience and you progress in the most optimal and positive way?

The first thing you can do is simply ask yourself why. Why you want to be involved. I remember the first day that I walked into Ronin Athletics in New York City to train under my godfather, my son, now Christian Montas. And I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I played baseball through high school, and I was at Manhattan College in the Bronx. And I wanted to go and learn martial arts because it was always something that was interesting to me, but it was never something that I knew was accessible. And it definitely wasn't really around in Northern Virginia, where I grew up. Whereas then you stick yourself in Manhattan and there's stuff everywhere. So anyway, I guess I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know if I was going to get beat up, if people were going to be nice, if people were not going to be nice. But what I began with was, I think, expectation management. And I think that that's something that I would. That'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 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. And I'm just unbelievably thankful for that. But I think that the thing that. That helped me most of all was starting with, you know, my mom said something to me one time, and she said, you know, there's two types of people in various situations. There's why and there's why not. And, you know, it's understandable to have questions, concerns, things like that. But maybe sometimes it's a little bit easier when you're. When you're younger to just trust people or just say, I don't know, you know, but we go, hey, you want to climb that rock? 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. You want to figure out what's going to happen and what you should expect to have happen before you get involved versus going. Using the old Bruce Lee saying again, it's like, no amount of thinking or training on the. On the side of the river will teach you how to swim. You have to jump in. And there are risks associated with that. And so I guess psychological are usually the biggest ones. That's the biggest hurdle and physical. But the biggest thing that I guess I would suggest 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 wanted to learn to fight so that I could protect myself. And if. And if anything else, other people, if only within arm's reach, I perceived that if I had some small degree of power, I generally wouldn't use it, which is why I was like, yeah, I'll give it a try. I'll try to be reasonable, and hopefully if I make a mistake, I'll apologize to people. But basically said, yeah, I'd like to have that. And I want to. I know this is gonna 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 way or that way, getting choked. I was like, well, this is all supposed to happen. That's no big deal. It would be like going and joining the army during peacetime and then going, oh, I'm just doing this for a college education. You're like, okay, that's cool, man. And then all of a sudden, war breaks out, and they want to send me somewhere, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't sign up for that gig. Actually, you did. Whether you realize it or not, you may not have thought that you did, but you did. So getting your mind right and just going, what are my expectations for this activity? What is it that I'm looking to do? And of course, you know, you're. You're going into a gym, you're going into a place that you don't know people. 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. I understand if they don't trust me. I wouldn't trust, trust me either if I were them. But at the same time, someone has to take that leap. And one of the things that I've noticed as a martial arts instructor, that's the biggest struggle with dealing with adults, which is why a lot of people like to teach kids, because kids don't ask, don't argue. Now that also means there's, there's all sorts of pitfalls with that sort of thing. And that can be an issue. But, you know, I guess a lot of times people get to a point in their life, you know, in their 20s, early 30s, where now I, I'm, 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 boot camp, I don't care if you are Elon Musk, they're gonna tell you to shut up and do push ups.

Yeah.

And that's what's great about it. Yeah. So you, you are taking a leap of faith into a world that you're going to be a tiny fish. And you got to hope that the people who are guiding you in that journey are going to have, I can't say, even say, your best interest at heart, because they don't even know you. But they'll try to do no harm 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 contact sports. And so that can be a big jump. And you have to understand, if that's where you're starting from, no worries. But you're going to have to kind of work your way to it and it's going to be uncomfortable, and that's okay. It's part of the process and you're going to have some bumps and bruises and you're not going to want to roll with that guy in the corner because that person's rough and they beat you up and they're like, okay, but is this a big hurt or is it a little hurt? If it's a big hurt, okay, if it's a little hurt, A little bit, 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, 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, the coach selection, which is like the school selection 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 flip side of that is if, especially if you have an ego, especially if you are the manager that needs to let go of some stuff, you're gonna feel like with the good, with the best kind of coach, that's the. That's what you need, right? 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. I enjoy being sort of like. Sounds weird, but, like, I am, 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. It's the growth. Like, I like the anxiety. I like feeling like, like shit when I go home. Like, emotionally, physically, it's a. It's like, it's growth.

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

And everybody has a different threshold for that. I mean, the, 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, 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 ripped blue belt competitor who's like out to destroy everybody. And depending on like what your mindset is, you can kind of select that, that it's such a fascinating journey of basically self discovery.

I couldn't agree with you more. What you need may change over time, right? Maybe what you need today could change six months from now or a year from now. And that's something that I experienced. I'll use my first coach, Christian again, as a great example of someone who I really look up to and respect and someone who helped me a lot at a time when I really needed some guidance and I needed to learn martial arts. But get into I, I, the Henzel Gracie's gym was right down the street from where Christian was teaching. And Christian was a blue belt at the time. It was, he was teaching at a place called Fight House, which is this awesome, like you know, like 90s, early 2000s, you know, warehouse area down on Fashion Avenue in Manhattan off of like between 7th and 8th. And it was like 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 was jiu jitsu in the corner. And hence 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, 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 comp, 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. And anyway, what was, it was super, super tough and they were like, again, just a tough group of people. It was great. And then I remember when I decided after like four or five months, I'm like, man, I really want to try to take this seriously. And I told Christian about that and he's like, well, hey, I think you need to do the following. And it was, you know, like, hey, here's. There was a guy named Jeff Ruth who was purple belt at the time, which was a much bigger deal than it is now, but it was 10 and 0 as an MMA fighter. A lot of amateur box experience, super tough dude. And Jeff was the best person at that time that I'd ever trained with. I just got squashed. Christian used to beat me up too, but like, Jeff would just absolutely kicked the crap out of me. And I was like, this is awesome. And this was back when I was at home. I went home for the summer for that. And Chris was like, hey, I think you should stay. Because I told him that's what I was thinking. And this was a coach that, you know, when it's like when initially was exactly what I needed. And then he's like, well, hey, that's not what I'm doing here. Maybe they're going to be able to help you onto a path that's, 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 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 have been issues with, with the coach there. We're like, not supporting, not having the support, you know, feeling like, hey, like, I'm going to hold on to my students, I'm gonna hold on to my best guy or my best girl, even if I can't take them where they need to go. So that was an interesting thing. And just recognizing also though, that the people like the same way you're an individual going into a gym and you don't know what you're getting into. Your coach is a person too. And he or she, you know, they may have been doing this activity longer than you, but they're not, they're not some weird little, you know, all knowing God. They don't know anything. They're going to. 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 say this to people and I've said this to people in my gym, I'm like, 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 do my best as a martial arts coach, but I'm here to do my best as a martial arts coach, and I'll do my best. And periodically I make mistakes and I owe an apology or two, and I'll try to give them out when I can. But we're not McDonald's. It's not, oh, you gave me 100 bucks. So you do whatever you want in here. This is my house, this is my gym, this is my dojo. This is the martial arts. This is not a basketball team.

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

They'll push you where past, oftentimes where you would have stopped yourself, which is great. And hopefully they know if they're paying attention and they're still a person, they can make mistakes, but they'll push you further than you would have gone, but not so far that it's not facilitative. Right. That's something that I can say. Like, Faraz Zahabi, the head coach at Tristar, my head coach for mma, Kenny Florian, one of the head coaches for mma, have both been phenomenal Influences. Paul Schreiner, who's one of the assistants at Marcelo Garcia's academy, coached me in jiu jitsu for a long time. Brilliant instructor. They've all been able to do that. And I think what's interesting about all of those guys, they're very sharp, but they're very intuitive as well. And I think that Faras actually told me about something that John Wooden set. That John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach. Just a simple philosophical idea. Just. He said, some people's life is a bowl of it, needs some whipped cream in it. Some people's life is a bowl of whipped cream, needs a little bit of 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 between a coach and an instructor. And a lot of times people think they want a coach, but they really want an instructor. I'm like, hey, Lex, 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 coaches 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, but 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 oftentimes the difference that Getting. Getting over the hump in various situations. So it's a. 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 will be made, but everyone is attempting to do the right thing. Under no circumstances would I intentionally do anything malicious versus hey, I might have burnt your house down, but you can be darn sure it wasn't on purpose. And I think that as long as there's that mutual understanding and mutual belief of goodwill, which, again, doesn't just magic up out of nowhere, I understand. I think that that's when then great things can happen. And I look at all the athletes that I know, the guys and girls that I've watched become fantastic in various places, almost invariably it never happened alone.

Yeah, I'm really torn about that. Maybe you can help. Have you seen the movie Whiplash? So it's. I would say, from an outsider's perspective, people should watch it. It's a. I guess, jazz band for. 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, to where he just feels like shit. Emotionally. It looks like a toxic relationship, but it's one that ultimately is very productive for the improvement of the musician. I have the same. Like, in my own experience, I had. I got a chance to train in a couple places regularly. And so one of my coaches, who is a great human being, a lot of people love him, but when I was a blue belt, he was pushing me a lot for competition. And every time I step on the mat, I was anxious and almost afraid of training because of, like, the places I'm gonna have to go and then the. I can't. I don't know what's good or bad because I think I've become a better person because of that experience. Like, I needed that. And on the flip side, like, the place I got my black belt from Balance Studios, I remember also blue belt, the coach sitting down and I was going to competition, and he saw something in me where he said, you know, like, good luck, but win or lose, we always love you. Like, I. I really. I remember 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. Like life is more important than Jiu jitsu, since it's bigger. So they find you use jiu jitsu when you need it to grow as a person and when it overwhelms you, you have to pull that person out. Like, look at the bigger picture. Always look at the bigger picture. It's fascinating. And I don't know what to make of it. I don't think I would have it any other way. Is both the anxiety and the. And the love.

Yeah, I think that I couldn't. That's a really interesting thing that you're describing that. But 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 use an example of sci fi movies, let's say the Matrix, which of course, the first one was amazing and then each subsequent movie made the series worse. But.

But basically they're working on a new one, by the way.

Yeah, I've heard. We'll see. I was hoping for the best, but. But basically, you know, I'd say, hey, we started our first initial world. Agent Smith says to Neo, he's like, our first world was a utopia where everyone was happy and nothing ever went wrong. It's like your primitive cerebrum rejected it. And I think that there's obviously, I mean, what do I think? But I guess, well, I'm here, so I might as well say what I think. I guess, you know, great things are fantastic. A kind, gentle place is fantastic. And this is again why I love Dune, because I think Dune does such a great job of expressing. Frank Herbert does such a great job of expressing again, the reciprocal nature of these ideas. Look at Sparta, for instance, or at least what I understand of Sparta from the reading and also watching 300.

And reading the Wikipedia article and reading the.

Wikipedia article about the movie, not the place, but that's a hard, brutal place. And was there benefit to that? Absolutely. Was there a drawback to that? Absolutely. Is it sustainable? I should say, I would think probably not. I mean, granted, it hasn't sustained, but I mean, that type of a thing, it burns too hot almost and it destroys the host at a certain point. And I guess that type of unforgiving nature, but entirely permissive, has its own issues. And I guess coming back to what your description of describing a toxic relationship is a very dangerous and tricky thing because it's almost like it's like bird's eye view me, you know, you see, let's say a husband and a wife arguing and you're like, all right, well, short of somebody hitting somebody, I need to keep myself out of this because I have no idea what I'm seeing something, but I don't know what's going on or why specifically. And again, short of it going to a place that's 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.

And long term, what's good for. Yeah, both people.

Right. It's dangerous for so. So if I want to put my finger on the scale, I can understand the desire to do. I'm like, hey guys, let's break it up. 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 is pushing you when very, very hard, and then other times going like, hey, let's put it in perspective here. I think that's an interesting thing for high performance. And I think that we're seeing that again societally, you know, now, or at least maybe that's just pops up on my Internet feed periodically. But coaches shouldn't be allowed to do this or yell at this person, to yell at that person. Like, well, have you ever been go to a boxing gym? It's not a commercial entity, not really a real box, not LA boxing, not a UFC gym, like a real place. You're going to see what things are like when it's entirely performance based. Go to 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 screwing up, if you're dropping the ball. And in fact recognizing that I'm not doing you a favor or the team a favor by being permissive of that type of behavior, I think is important. Everything in its context and at its time is important. And I guess I can think again of the times that I've been put or had put on me like a great deal of pressure to do X, Y or Z or to succeed or to push for success. And I can't look back fondly enough on those times. They were tough at the time, but without that, I'm not sitting here. Without that, I don't go from growing up in a very nice family in the suburbs to fighting at the highest level in jiu jitsu, gi, no Gi, and now in mixed martial arts, starting a career at age 27. 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 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 a crack em. 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 and there's layers there too. I remember training with you. It's kind of funny. There's like, there's. Well, you didn't know who I was. I mean, you still, like, I have.

A really good straight ankle out, by the way.

Yeah, that's so. 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, I, you know, I did something somewhat effective, like some, like, maybe a little bit off balance.

Yeah, there's.

I just peeled off a little layer of Ryan hall to where I was like, okay, let me, let me. Like there, there's like layers underneath Tyson somewhere in there. Like, so it was like, okay, 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. But it's, but it's all in the same body Right.

But it's like all of us are like that, right? In various different directions. And recognizing that's okay. It's just there are consequences to all. Every choice that we make has a consequence. Sometimes there's like, objectively wrong or objectively right, but at least in my mind, that's a pretty small box. Everything else is just. There's a consequence to that. Do you like that consequence? Do you not? And who do I want to become? What do I want to try to hone myself or anyone else into? And also, like, but this is something I've screwed up as a coach plenty of times. You know, like, if someone says, if you're. If like, I come down like, Lex, I really, really want to take, you know, research very seriously. Like, okay, I believe you now. I haven't shown you that, but I believe you're like, okay, and now me not showing up to research or to study or not being up until three in the morning thinking about this is no longer acceptable. There was a time like five seconds before me making that statement that if I went to bed without reading the book that I needed to read, no worries. But the second that I made that statement, your expectations for me changed. And maybe it's something. That's something that I've screwed up a whole bunch of times in my. 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 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. 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'm not perceptive enough to be able to see what's going on. And maybe with years more down the line, I'll be able to have a sharper perception. But I think that's another one of those interesting things that sometimes I would caution or not caution, but just inform a prospective martial arts student, depending upon where you're going, you know 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 talked 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. She's a black belt. So she's my wife. She's my peers as a martial artist in jiu jitsu.

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

Exactly. All right, well, all right, so. But. But a fellow black belt. And guess like another.

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

Exactly. But it can be tough. And that's something we've had to work through a lot. And it's like looking back and it's like now being where I'm at now. And it's easy me to say that because she's in the room and I don't want her to stab me. Just continue to slowly poison me over time. Yeah. Which frankly, I understand. You know, it's. 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, we're justifiably annoyed at the other because of crossed wires. And sometimes, you know, you just have discreet anywhere or misunderstanding. Anyway. But again, like, I've. I coach some of my friends. I've coached. I've coached my friend who I've known since I was 4 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 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, doesn't he know I'm a purple belt? 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 you? 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. And we can again, all push forward in a positive direction that benefits, I guess, everyone's journey throughout the activity.

And now on top of all that, there's moods. Okay. I mean, especially lately. I think two days ago, maybe yesterday. No, two days ago. I've never been that cranky in my life. I 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.

How do you do that?

Well, I, you know, it's. It's. Yeah, meditate. Because it's not. I, I tend to. I tend to then visualize what's going to happen in the next. Like, how is this going to make my life better? Like, if I say something that 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 in enough life to know that, like, it's just like with, like street fighting, you know, 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 jiu jitsu match or something like that. It's not. It'll escalate. It'll. It might come back at you. Like, that person might find you again. But more importantly, the anxiety of it, of having created little enemies in this world, distorts the way you see the world. So I've noticed that, like, if I am shitty to people on the Internet, which I haven't been, I think, in A long time is like, it. 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.

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 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?

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 anything else.

On the Bob Strike Back. They find out a movie is going to be made about them, and people are talking on the Internet and they're like, what's the Internet? And then someone shows them and they're like, 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. Out of all the people that talk bad about them.

Yeah, it's tough. I mean, it's. 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, is Lex Free been 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, like nobody. Like, if you increase the level of celebrity, there's going to be like, one of the things that hurts my heart a little bit is, like, some level of toxicity around Joe Rogan, for example. There's, like, communities of people that now, like, talk about him selling out, for example, all that kind of stuff. And I don't, you know, and Joe, I've talked to him about. It is amazing that he. 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 the removed episodes. People are curious. Spotify, why It's. It's a thing on the Internet where I think you can play Taylor Swift songs on.

I'll write that down.

But you can also now play Joe Rogan podcast.

Oh, cool.

And they gave him a hundred million dollars. So that, that's, you know, that's.

It's awesome. Good for Joe.

It's. Yeah. But the thing, I've had a discussion with him and I made a video about it that I took down because of the toxicity is like, it's hard to put into words, but he will give away the 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, you money a long time ago. He doesn't need any more money. He doesn't care. It's nice to have money, whatever, but he'll give it away. So the. 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, 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 that rolls in and says, well, maybe you shouldn't say, you know, like more than 20 times a podcast or something like that. Like, those kinds of, like, rules, like people like he says in a suit and tie that show up and say.

Stuff, oddly enough, people that could never have done what he does.

Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of inspiring to see that. And I hope people realize how special of a human he is. He's inspired, 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. I mean, what I. People really for a long time have told me that it would be awesome if Ryan Halls on goes on Joe Rogan I definitely think that would be an awesome thing. Have you listened to Joe? Has he been a part of your life in some kind of way?

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

Yeah.

But one of the things that, that I always appreciate, and again, I barely know Joe or than to shake his hand. He interviewed me after the briefing, in the ring, after the B.J. penn fight. But one of the things that I've always admired about Joe is that I think he had fuck you money from the start. I think that $0 is money for Joe, I think. And that's something I respect about him a great deal because as you say, it's interesting to watch. It's like you. You hope. Hope that George St. Pierre is like this. It's really neat. I'm not super close to George, but we're teammates at tristar and he's never been anything but a gentleman. Is one of those people that if you didn't know George was famous, when you walk into 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 help me like I'm nobody, man. He would give me advice and train me. It was super cool. And he didn't kill me, which I really appreciated. He's a gentleman. But, 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 has 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 compromise on their values and not change who they are and not, you know, periodically, like, you know, again, we all make mistakes. Like you have a bad day or this or that and an apology needs to be issued or even my bad or this or that. And you're like, yeah. And they just move on. They're not afraid to be themselves and they're not afraid to be wrong. They're not afraid to make a mistake. As you, as you mentioned, open minded. So I'm like, so what are the correct beliefs to have about this that I know going in? Everyone's going to be okay with what I'm saying, which is usually the beginning of a conversation that's going to go nowhere. Right, right. And it's neat to see the things, I guess, that he's created on his own as a result of the authenticity that's there. And it reminds me of like Dave Chappelle. And again, I don't know, I've never met Dave, but it's neat to see someone that's clearly, again, authentic in their own way, doing their own thing. And because of that, they're above the corporate nonsense. But what's funny, I think the message behind all of it is, hey, guys, we all are. I can't, I can't promise you that I'm going to have money. Joe couldn't promise you that he's going to have money. Now, it ended up working out, but he was above that nonsense from the jump and he just continued to be above it by never giving it any mind and just going like, yeah, I'm going to be a reasonable person, I'm going to try to learn, I'm going to try to grow. And if I say something annoying, you can come and talk to me about it, we can get to the bottom of it. And I'm like, if I need to say my bad, thanks, appreciate it, 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 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 these weird powers that be. And whether you're at this level or at this level, but you can live your life the way that you want. 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 speaking at MIT and being in Boston is like Google hunting 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, 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 just think that that's a message because watching things occur on the Internet as they do now, so many things playing out in the public eye, I feel like so many private or otherwise formally private discussions and disputes and interactions now become. They all have a, well, what is this going to say when it goes public? So how can I couch what I'm saying or how can I word this in a way that's going to get people on my side or use the right buzzwords or not use the wrong buzzwords? And it's just neat to see people, in their own way, flip the bird to that, because I just think that that's just not how a human being is meant to think or interact.

I'm curious what you think about the thing that recently has, you know, me, like, hosting this podcast. I sometimes think about, like, who should I talk to? And not in terms of, like, it's the. The old Hitler question. Now, Hitler I would definitely talk to because post World War II, because everyone knows he's evil. The question whether you talk to Hitler in 1937, like, when people who are really students of what's going on understand that this is a very dangerous human being, but a large number of part of the world, they're 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. There's no turning back. Like, no, it's like, like the. The mistakes you make that, like, it, it's. I mean, you don't know where you're going to wake up. You don't know who you're going to kill or not kill or steal or rob. It's unclear. So 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, about power and a conspiratorial way to see the world where everything is like dark forces in all corners. It's like the way you feel when you're a kid that there's a monster hiding in the closet, which is also.

Why you leap over 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, saying, 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, 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 are intelligent enough to hear certain things when they're said. Like, the earth is flat. They can, there 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 to where they start believing like toxic set of beliefs. Now there's a lot of sort of other kinds of people, especially now with cancer culture, that say, well, you don't want to give platform to crazy people that, 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'm not, I haven't looked into it. So I'm sorry, I will look into it. But it hurts my heart to see that on Bill Gates. In my opinion, the person who has saved and improved more lives than probably any human in history, literally because of the money he's invested in helping, 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, 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 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.

I'm in my shoes right now.

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

Can I have yours?

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

I, I, Yes, I would. And I feel very strongly about this, honestly. Well, I think that it's an interesting thing. And I would just say a lot of times I can understand very, very clearly why people would take issue with the idea of, I guess, what they perceive to be amplifying this man's voice, this man's reach as a demonstrable negative. But I think when you take a step back further, the cure is more damaging than the disease and significantly So I guess I think that I'm very, very wary of, I think being where you mentioned Alex Jones, being wary of power and people with it. That's a lot of times there's a lot of truth and validity to crazy things that people say. It's the conspiracy theories that stick are the ones that sound credible, at least quasi credible in some aspect. And it's almost like it seems to me like an anchor in people's minds. And it is also funny to me, obviously, the, 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.

Yeah.

And that's you know, 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.

A Cleveland Browns fan, you know, like, come on, you know who.

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

I felt that that was. That's why I picked on. That's the trick is you find a group of people that nobody likes. We're good here. All right. That's the move. But yeah, that's a creepy thing, though, because that is. That is the creepy thing. It's like people are always looking for. Groups of people are always looking for. And I find this really deeply disturbing. Like, hey, so who's the guy that we can all get away with, 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 going to say anything.

Yeah.

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, 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 going to start punishing thought crime, I'm going to have to start punishing thought crime. And that's a terrifying concept. Even if I'm right about the certain, about the objectively correct, about the things that I decide to call out of bounds, who put me in charge and made me arbiter of good taste. And how long until I decide that something else is out of bounds? It's always a sliding scale or it's always a sliding standard. And I find that to be more of a concern than people doing crazy things. Because I guess if you mention Alex Jones putting out ridiculous ideas, ridiculous theories, I think that most people don't look at Alex Jones as a credible person. Now, I'm not going to pretend to be deeply read into all of his beliefs or the things that he's trying to peddle, but there's plenty of things that are quasi mainstream that I think on with this side or that side that Maybe not comparably ridiculous, but are particularly in hindsight or are silly. And I guess the idea of getting a group of people together to decide what we're not going to tolerate is a very, very tricky thing. And I think that 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 an 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. 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. Or at least that's how we've decided.

Yeah, 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 9, 11 is. It used to be impossible to criticize a soldier. It was easier to criticize war. It was harder to criticize soldiers for allowing themselves to be the tools of war. I tend to be. Maybe it's the Russian upbringing, it's the.