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Speaker 1

00:00

The following is a conversation with John Clark. He's a friend, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, former MMA fighter, and at least in my opinion, 1 of the great UFC cornerman coaches to listen to. And also, he's my current Jiu-Jitsu coach at Broadway Jiu-Jitsu in South Boston. He was once, for a time, a philosophy major in college and is now, I would say, a kind of practicing philosopher, opinionated, brilliant, and someone I always enjoy talking to even when, especially when, we disagree, which we do often.

Speaker 1

00:36

He's definitely someone I can see talking to many times on this podcast. In fact, he hosts a new podcast of his own called Please Allow me. Quick mention of each sponsor, followed by some thoughts related to the episode. Thank you to Theragun, the device I use for post-workout muscle recovery, Magic Spoon, low-carb, keto-friendly cereal that I think is delicious, 8sleep, a mattress that cools itself and gives me yet another reason to enjoy sleep, and Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends.

Speaker 1

01:09

Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that martial arts, especially jiu-jitsu and judo, have been a big part of my growth as a human being. So I think I will talk to a few martial artists on occasion on this podcast. I hope that is of interest to you.

Speaker 1

01:29

I won't talk to people who are simply great fighters or great athletes, but people who have a philosophy that I find to be interesting and worth exploring, even if I disagree with parts or most of it. I like alternating between historians and computer scientists, fighters and biologists, and between totally different world views and personalities like Elon Musk and Michael Malice. This world to me is fascinating because of the diversity of weirdness that is human civilization. I love the weird and the brilliant and hope you join me on the journey of exploring both.

Speaker 1

02:06

If you don't like an episode, skip it. For an OCD person like myself, sometimes not listening to a podcast episode is an act of courage. It's like not finishing a book even though you're 80% done. Try it sometimes.

Speaker 1

02:21

Listen to ones you like and don't listen to the ones you don't like. I know, it's profound advice. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 Stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman. And now, here's my conversation with John Clark.

Speaker 1

02:43

You ready for this?

Speaker 2

02:45

I've been ready for this my whole life.

Speaker 1

02:46

All right. I was thinking of doing a Kerouac-style road trip across the United States, you know, after this whole COVID thing lifts. You ever take a trip like that?

Speaker 1

02:56

I've done a handful of long-distance driving trips

Speaker 2

03:01

up and down the East Coast, but also from the West Coast, back to the East Coast, and then returning to California. So I've definitely done my fair share of driving in this country. Do you have the longing for the great American road trip?

Speaker 2

03:16

I think there are so many things that I've been lucky enough to see in the world That I now at this point in my life realize there are tons of things that I need to see here in this country and a Road trip could potentially be the best way to see them. I Think to do it effectively you need an amount of time where you can be as leisurely as possible. There's no deadline and there's no, I've gotta make it from Chicago to St. Louis by sundown to get to this place at this time.

Speaker 2

03:43

I think you really need to be able to take your time and kind of like let the road take you where you need to go.

Speaker 1

03:51

It feels like you need a mission though, ultimately. Like there's a reason you need to be in San Francisco. That's like the Kerouac thing.

Speaker 1

03:57

You have to meet somebody somewhere kind of loosely in a few weeks. And then it's the, as you struggle on towards that mission, you meet weird characters that get in your way, but ultimately sort of create an experience.

Speaker 2

04:11

I think having a loose deadline is good, but that's a beginning and an end point. And what I mean is I don't want to have to be, all right, we're leaving say Boston on Sunday night. Let's get to New York by Monday morning.

Speaker 2

04:25

And then from New York, we're going to go to Philly and we've got to be in Philly at 4. A vague beginning and end is fine, but I think having very strict guidelines in between will rob you of certain experiences along the way. If you have a timeframe to get from Philly to Indianapolis and some awesome shit starts to happen in Philly, do you really wanna have to cut it short because you gotta be in Indianapolis by sunup?

Speaker 1

04:50

Why do you have to be anywhere by any time for any reason really? Plans change.

Speaker 2

04:55

Plans change all the time, exactly. But if we're talking about having a mission or the type of road trip, I just think it would be best to have it as loose and flexible as possible.

Speaker 1

05:07

I don't know. You gotta make hard deadlines and then break them. Totally change the plans, disappoint people, break promises, that's the way of life.

Speaker 1

05:17

Somebody's waiting for you in St. Louis and all of a sudden you fell in love with a biker in New York. I don't know, I don't

Speaker 2

05:24

know what you're up to. I can appreciate that, but on a trip like that, I feel Like a trip with deadlines is for a different point in your life. And at this point in my life, I don't want any of the deadlines.

Speaker 2

05:37

Because it's not about meeting someone and disappointing them in St. Louis. It's about me not disappointing myself. You wanna have enough time in what you're doing to make sure that you get the full breadth of every experience that you encounter.

Speaker 1

05:52

How would you fully experience a place? How would you, you know, I don't think I've actually fully experienced Boston. Like how, if you were showing up to a city for a week on this road trip?

Speaker 1

06:03

What would you do? So I'm gonna answer that in

Speaker 2

06:05

2 parts. A few years ago, I had an opportunity to move out of Boston and the thing that kept me here, no question about it, was the fact that I felt like I had a contract with my students And I did not, I felt like a great many of them took a leap of faith by joining my gym and like, you know, asking me to teach them what I know. And when I had an opportunity to leave Boston, I thought of those people and I thought, I wanna fulfill my obligation to them.

Speaker 2

06:33

So because I made a decision to stay here, I then that summer made a decision to endear myself to the city of Boston and I tried to find lots and lots of different things to do. I can tell you that the coolest thing that I found to do in this city is, the MFA where they have like on Friday nights, they'll have like different exhibits and stuff and they'll have like little beer carts and food tents, and you can go do a painting class off in the, on the side, very cool night of things to do. But in general, whenever I'm in a new city, I try not to pay attention to Google and I try not to do anything that I find on a travel site. The best thing to do is to walk out of your hotel or wherever it is you're staying and find the most normal looking bar, have a drink and talk to a bartender.

Speaker 1

07:19

So the people, the people.

Speaker 2

07:21

The people. And then you can experience that town the way that they experience it. Even in a city where there are tons of tourist attractions, locals probably visit the same tourist attractions when they have visitors come from out of town, but you want to see how they view those places and how they visit them.

Speaker 2

07:38

And you want to go to eat where they're going to eat. Like, you know, you're going to, for the most part, the North End is not a place where I would take someone and say, hey, this is Boston's, the pinnacle of Boston dining, because it's very touristy. There are a handful of really good restaurants there, but I wanna know where the, I wanna go to Bogie's Place. I wanna know like the down low spots where-

Speaker 1

08:00

What the hell is Bogie's Place?

Speaker 2

08:01

It's like a little steakhouse in the back of Jam Curly's, exactly.

Speaker 1

08:04

It's like a shitty bar? Jam Curls?

Speaker 2

08:06

It's just a bar with like bar food, but I think they're like- It's not Boston? It is in Boston, yeah. It's like-

Speaker 1

08:13

It's not South Boston?

Speaker 2

08:14

No, it's in the downtown area. Like, I don't know what the neighborhoods are called here, honestly, because they call, they have an area called downtown Boston, and I don't even know what the hell that means. I think it's near the financial district.

Speaker 1

08:28

Where's Southie? Because I've heard about the Southie.

Speaker 2

08:31

Southie is South Boston.

Speaker 1

08:33

But is there a difference between South Boston and Southie?

Speaker 2

08:36

No, it's the same thing.

Speaker 1

08:37

No, but like, you know, the mythical Southie.

Speaker 2

08:39

I think the mythical Southie is something that's long gone now, and The term now actually is Sobo.

Speaker 1

08:49

Oh no.

Speaker 2

08:49

Yeah,

Speaker 1

08:49

it's- It's changed what, who took over what? What's the, you know, the goodwill hunting personality? That's Southie, isn't it?

Speaker 1

08:56

Strong accent, those bad-ass dudes.

Speaker 2

08:58

I came here right at the end of like, what was South Boston. So when I got in my gym is in South Boston, the neighborhood was just starting to change. So I think as gentrification happened and they started building more luxury condominiums, they were buying all these old businesses out, all the mom and pop businesses.

Speaker 2

09:19

And I think that kind of changed the makeup of the community. And it wasn't only because there was an influx of new young people with disposable income, it's because there's an exodus of the older people who kind of grew up and raised their families there because they were being offered humongous sums of money for their homes that they had bought like in the late 70s and early 80s so that they could develop those areas. So you have a combination of the influx of new people and the exodus of the old, and now you just got this totally new neighborhood in its place.

Speaker 1

09:51

What do you love about Boston? Is there a love still for Boston? You certainly have the love of the thing that's gone as well.

Speaker 2

10:01

Yeah I think I don't want to pinpoint pin this on Boston because it's happening in all great cities. As these areas become gentrified, what's happening is the personality and the character of the neighborhood is just being run out. And I have nothing against people coming in and making money and things like that.

Speaker 2

10:18

But when you do it at the expense of the culture, the character and the personality of the neighborhood, I mean, you're kind of standing on the shoulders of giants. These are the people that came here and built these areas up. And it happens here in Boston. It happens in all over New York, happened on the West coast.

Speaker 2

10:36

So. What I love about Boston is not nearly as romantic as what it might've been 15 years ago and what I used to love about New York. What I love about Boston is that it's walkable. The food scene is on the rise here, but I think you're hard pressed to find the charm that people think of when they think of old Boston and old New England city?

Speaker 1

11:04

See, I see it differently. People sometimes criticize like MIT like for the thing that it is now. But I think it is always like that.

Speaker 1

11:15

I tend to prefer to carry the flame of the greatness, the greatest moments of its history and like sort of enjoy that, the echoes of that in the halls of MIT. In the same way in Boston, you think about the history And that history lives on in the few individuals. Like you can't just look around where Boston is now and be like, what has Boston become? I think it was always carried by a minority of individuals.

Speaker 1

11:43

I think we kind of look back in history and think like times were greater in a certain kind of dimension back then, but that's because we remember, this is a ridiculous non-data driven assertion of mine, is we remember just the brightest stars of that history, And so we romanticize it. But I think if you look around now, those special people are still living in Boston, for which Boston will be remembered as a great city in like 50 years.

Speaker 2

12:11

I think you're probably right, but isn't there some sort of theory about the point that there's like a certain age in your life where things resonate differently to you. Like, I think they've done studies where most people stop searching for new music after age 19. Most dads you see like wearing super old clothes, like that's the style of the time period of the last great part of their life.

Speaker 2

12:35

So like there's an evolution in, in people and it could also be the memories of where they live. And when I was 17, of course my neighborhood was the best then because I was having the most fun. And we always kind of look at things through that tint, I think. And you're right, and I don't think there's anything wrong with the way cities are evolving now.

Speaker 2

12:55

It's just not, I prefer the time of a mom and pop store, not a fabricated like a gastro pub that could just be like on a 4 lane super highway on your on your way out of Epcot center. And it's actually owned by like some conglomerate.

Speaker 1

13:13

But there's still the special places like I this takes us back to the road trip is maybe, I tend to romanticize the experiences of like the diners in the middle of nowhere. What would you say makes for like, it feels like life is made up of these experiences that maybe on paper seem mundane, but are actually somehow give you a chance to pause and reflect on life with a certain kind of people, whether really close friends or complete strangers, maybe alcohol is involved in the middle of nowhere. It seems like a road trip facilitates that if you allow it to.

Speaker 1

13:53

Like what do you think makes for those kinds of experience? Have you had any?

Speaker 2

13:57

I think in the context of a road trip, I think it's like hyper-localization and I think it is those experiences along the way with people. And the people that you're with will call it the experiences differently depending on

Speaker 1

14:16

the person. The road trip you took was with somebody else or alone?

Speaker 2

14:20

So I've driven up and down the East Coast several times. When I drove from LA to New York, my friend was on the run from the cops. Yeah.

Speaker 2

14:30

So we were trying to get

Speaker 1

14:32

out of tickets.

Speaker 2

14:33

Yeah. Travelling tickets. Yeah. Allegedly we were trying to get out of LA because, he was going to have to go away for a little while.

Speaker 2

14:40

Yeah. So we drove from LA and we just, you know, we're young kids. We had no idea what we were doing and we drove east and then, you know, we had an unbelievable trip, mostly because we didn't really have a destination. We didn't really have a time frame, thank goodness, because he got arrested again in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2

14:57

So we got kind of stuck there and then, you know, and then we drove back to LA when he got out in Pennsylvania. But all the stops along the way were kind of like weird things. Like you have no money, right? So you're finding that like a little diamond in the rough place to eat the diner you talk about, like that place.

Speaker 2

15:18

I once was in, where was I? I think I was in Buenos Aires and the guy that I was with, he said, I know this quaint little spot around the corner. And I was young, I was like 25. And I thought the coolest thing in the world would be to be such a citizen of the world that you know these quaint little spots around the corner in like all these great cities like I know where to get this great chicken sandwich in Argentina I know where to get this great meal in Costa Rica I know where to get this super local like egg in another country I thought that that was really cool The ability to do that anywhere in the world.

Speaker 1

15:52

Did you get closer with that guy through the trip? I found that, so I took a trip across the United States with a guy friend of mine. We had different goals.

Speaker 1

16:02

I was searching for meaning in life and he was searching for, what's the politically correct way of phrasing it, but just basically trying to sleep with every kind of woman that this world has to offer.

Speaker 2

16:15

What's the difference between those 2 things?

Speaker 1

16:17

Well, I guess you're searching for the different kinds of meanings. I mean, I still think that you can't find meaning between a woman's legs, I suppose. Have

Speaker 2

16:28

you tried all of them?

Speaker 1

16:31

But there was a tension there. We grew closer with those experiences, but we've gotten in fights. There was a lot of literal almost fights, and then we were close and there was silences, but then we were like brothers.

Speaker 1

16:46

It was this whole weird journey of friendship that we went on.

Speaker 2

16:49

I think anytime you spend that much time in a small space with another person, you're gonna have the different parts of the relationship will manifest themselves. You'll have the periods of closeness, you'll have the periods of vulnerability where it's like, maybe you're driving through Denver and it's 3 in the morning and you talk about something you might not have otherwise talked about. You'll have the periods where you don't want to see that motherfucker ever again.

Speaker 2

17:11

Right. He didn't, and depending could be because of anything. But the guy that I drove twice with, we are still, we're still in contact. We're still buddies.

Speaker 2

17:24

We, we have very different goals also. But at that point in our lives, we were not, we never even contemplated the meaning of life. We were about Probably more to the point of the friend that you drove with we were more about racking up experiences, whatever they were,

Speaker 1

17:38

right? I

Speaker 2

17:40

Want to be able to retell this? Stories. Yeah, I want to be able to retell this and it's got to sound cool Like I don't want to retell a story about yeah and then we drove through Alabama and they've got a lovely library and I checked out this book and I'm not interested in retelling that.

Speaker 1

17:54

Do you remember any, oh, this is a kid's show. Do you remember any stories that the kids would enjoy from those times that were profound in some kind of way?

Speaker 2

18:05

There were some impactful moments on the beginning of our road trip where we had no money. And as a couple of kids who knew nothing, we literally had to, we stopped in Vegas and we went to Circus Circus at the time they had $3 blackjack and we had like 12 bucks and my buddy was a kind of a degenerate gambler so he knew what was up. I was just like kind of stuffing chips in my pockets making sure we could pay for the gas.

Speaker 2

18:27

And just being at the point which is like a starting line And like we drove from LA to Vegas, which is only about 4 hours. And being at the starting line and realizing like, we may not even like get off the starting line here. And if we don't, what are we doing? We're gonna be 2 guys stuck in Vegas with no money.

Speaker 2

18:44

We can't go West, cause you're gonna get pinched. We have no money to go east. What the hell are we going to do? We're going to wind up in Vegas?

Speaker 2

18:51

So, you know, that was kind of a profound thing where you just, it's a turning, it potentially could have been a turning point in our lives had we not made enough money to continue going East.

Speaker 1

19:03

That's the beautiful thing about road trips when you're broke is like, in retrospect, everything turned out fine, but you're facing the complete darkness, the uncertainty of the possibilities laid before you. And like, I don't know if you were confident at that time, but like I was really full of self-doubt. Like just, all I could see is all the trajectories where you just screw up your life.

Speaker 1

19:28

Like what am I doing with my life? I'm a failure, like all these dreams I've had, I've never realized I'm a complete piece of shit, all those kinds of things.

Speaker 2

19:35

I had no concept of consequence. I probably had toxoplasmosis. I had literally no concept of consequence.

Speaker 2

19:45

Immediate gratification was all I cared about.

Speaker 1

19:47

Oh, so existentialist.

Speaker 2

19:48

Yeah, it did not even enter my mind in my early 20s that anything that I was doing at that point could reverberate for the rest of my life. I think part of me didn't even think I'd make it this far. And so I was not interested in like the long play.

Speaker 2

20:05

I remember thinking like, why should I be acting now in a way that might impact a point in my life I never reach?

Speaker 1

20:11

And yet now you are a man who searches for meaning in life, at least. I would say, to put it another way, you think deeply about this world and in a philosophical context, while also appreciating the violence of hurting other friends of yours, right? On a regular basis.

Speaker 1

20:37

So why do you think, I mean, maybe there's a broader question there, but it's also a personal question. It seems that people who fight for prolonged periods of time, like jiu-jitsu people and mixed martial arts people, even military folks, become over time philosophers. What is that? Is there a parallel between fighting and violence and the philosophical depth with which you now have arrived, from the starting point of being the full existentialist of just living in the moment to being introspective human now.

Speaker 2

21:14

I would say to that, being a soldier or a warrior hundreds of years ago is probably what started the marriage between martial arts and philosophy. If you're constantly under someone else's charge and you're told to go out and walk in a line and, you know, overtake some Germanic tribe somewhere. And that happens all the time.

Speaker 2

21:40

Your job is being a soldier there's on any given day, you might not come home. So I think that you have to start your day by thinking deeply about how you've lived to that point and the people that are living in and around you and how you've treated them and I think that probably is what started the marriage of being kind of like a philosophical martial artist. You've got to really like, on a daily basis, take stock of what's going on around you and inside you, because we all suffer with this kind of idea. If today's my last day, did I do it right?

Speaker 2

22:16

And we don't really do it so much nowadays because we're so comfortable, but if we were being marched out to war every day, I think you'd see people live a little bit differently. You know, and you treat the people around you a little bit differently.

Speaker 1

22:29

Do you think there's echoes of that in just even the sport of grappling and jiu-jitsu where you're facing your own mortality. We don't really think of it that way, but.

Speaker 2

22:39

To be honest, I think that a lot of people that train in a martial art in contemporary society, I don't consider them all martial artists. I think just because you train a martial art does not mean you're a martial artist. There are so many people that use martial arts as a form of exercise, and this little piece of self-concept, they use martial arts as a tagline in their Instagram bio.

Speaker 2

23:04

And it's really a form of exercise. It's something they do, it's not something they are. And I think there's a big difference there.

Speaker 1

23:11

There's a bunch of stuff mixed up in there because the Instagram thing is something you do for, it's also, it could be something you are for display versus who you are in the private moments of searching and thinking and struggling and all that kind of stuff. Instagram is a surface layer that much of modern society operates in, which is really problematic, because there's that gap between the person you show to the world and the person you are in private life. And if you make majority of your project, of the human project of your sort of few years on this earth, the optimization of the public Instagram profile, then you never develop this private person.

Speaker 1

23:55

But it does seem that if you do Jiu Jitsu long enough, it's very difficult not to fall into like, this has become a personal journey, an intellectual journey. Because if you get your ass kicked thousands of times, there's a certain point to where that, maybe it's like a defense mechanism, but that turns into some kind of deeply profound introspective experience versus like exercise, not yoga.

Speaker 2

24:21

Yeah, so let me go back first and address the Instagram point, which I think there's a difference between people Whose Instagram is intrinsically tied to their profession and they have to put a specific profile out there and I think in general people who Truthfully are their businesses tied to their Instagram profile. I want to exclude them. I think that most people Instagram is how they want to be seen.

Speaker 2

24:50

And that's not always congruent with who you are, but I think there is a level of dishonesty there. Yeah. Like, this is how I want people to see me. I'm going to put all this stuff in my Instagram bio, but that's really not me.

Speaker 2

25:05

And when you do that, I think it's a little disingenuous, and you're right, you're never really gonna marry those 2 things together, and it gets tough.

Speaker 1

25:15

Let me, sorry to interrupt, let me push back on something. This is a good time to address the many flaws of the great and powerful John Clark. Okay, let's go there, because it's interesting.

Speaker 1

25:32

You strive so hard for excellence in your life and for extreme competence that you are visibly and physically off-put by people who have not achieved competence. Do you think we should be nicer to the people who are those early, like you mentioned, a person who first picks up an art, picks up, becomes vegan, starts doing CrossFit, started doing Jiu-Jitsu for the first time and create that as their, you know, they're struggling through this like, who am I? And they're really overly proud and it's kind of ridiculous. And you in your wise chair of seeing many battles.

Speaker 1

26:15

Yeah. That you see the ridiculousness of that. I tend to, I'm learning to give those folks, not to mock them, and to sort of give them a chance to do their ridiculousness, because I think I was that too.

Speaker 2

26:32

Let me first clarify. I wanna be clear about what you mean when you say a level of competence. Now, I've never won a world championship.

Speaker 2

26:41

I've never, you know, there are plenty of things in my life where I've not achieved what most people would consider to be the penultimate level of success. Now- That's accomplishments. It's accomplishments, it's ribbons, it's things like that. And it's not that those things don't mean anything to me.

Speaker 2

27:00

And the fact that I haven't in some arenas is, is something that I want to change, which is, we can talk about that in a second. But I think that there's a difference between the very eager noob of whatever it is they're doing who does the thing so that they can signal they do the thing, that's a person I have less respect for. So we know each other primarily through jujitsu. Look at a jujitsu tournament.

Speaker 2

27:33

There's this idea that people espouse online I respect anyone with the guts to get on the mat and put it on the line and sign up for a tournament that is the biggest load of shit I have ever heard

Speaker 1

27:47

this is great do you know Do

Speaker 2

27:48

you know how easy it is for you to put your name on something and pay the registration fee and walk in there? That's not the hard part. That's the easiest part.

Speaker 2

27:57

I don't care if you lose your first match, but I respect the person who signs up for the tournament, registers for the tournament, goes on a diet, loses weight the right way, trains their ass off, and does the things properly, and then goes on the mat. The person who simply signs their name on the registration form and jumps on the mat, if they haven't done these other things, they actually have nothing to lose. Because what they've done is they've stepped onto the mat, in the ring, in the cage, with a bucket full of excuses. Sure you signed up, but you're not really vulnerable because you didn't run, you didn't do this, You didn't do all the things you're supposed to do the person who Eliminates every possible excuse and then steps on the mat and gets their ass kicked in the first round I have so much more respect for that person than the person who does nothing and maybe on natural ability wins a couple of matches and then, you know, writes on Facebook on how I lost to the eventual champion.

Speaker 2

28:54

That's worth 0. That's worth 0. And in that process, what did you learn about yourself? You learned about yourself That you've got a natural level of aptitude for whatever this activity is that you're doing, but you didn't actually learn how to maximize it through training and through dedication and through all these other things.

Speaker 2

29:12

I'm, I'm an incredibly interested novice, musician. I love, I like to play bass, but I don't put that on anything. And you know, I stink at it. I would really love to be sick at it.

Speaker 2

29:24

I'm currently not, but like I'm not running around, you know, talking about entering, you know, any of those other things. Like I do it, it's for myself, and I wanna reach a level of competence in that.

Speaker 1

29:37

So the person that you have respect for is a person who takes it fully seriously, takes the effort fully seriously. So for bass, that would be that you agree with yourself that you're going to perform live, and just in your own private moments, your private thoughts, you're not going to give yourself an excuse out like, I'm just gonna have fun, this is a nice experience. You're going to think, I'm going to try to be the best possible bass player given everything that's going on in my life, but I'm going to do my, like, actually, and put it all on the line, and if I fail, that's not because I didn't try, it's because I'm a failure.

Speaker 1

30:18

Exactly. And then sit in that sick feeling of like, I'm a failure.

Speaker 2

30:24

But isn't that an important thing to know?

Speaker 1

30:26

No, absolutely. But there's a, That's like the best thing we could be. But sometimes it's fun to lose yourself in the bragging, in the lesser ways of life.

Speaker 1

30:42

And I think I'm careful not to, because too many people in my life, when I brought them with a little candle of a fire of a dream, they would just go, they would just blow that fire out. That they would dismiss me, because they see, I would say, I've said a lot of ridiculous stuff, but I've always dreamed about putting, I always dreamed of having this world full of robots. And every time I would bring these ideas up, they would be shut down by the different people, by my parents, by, you know, then you need to first get an education, you need to succeed in these dimensions. In order to do all these things, you have to get good grades, you have to blah, blah, blah, like there's all this stuff that it's indirect or direct ways of blowing out that little ridiculous dream that you present.

Speaker 1

31:43

And it's like, I remember sort of bringing up, I don't know, things like becoming a state champion in wrestling, right? It's a weird dance because of course the coaches will tell, they'll kind of dismiss that. It's like, okay, okay. But at the same time, it feels like in those early days, you have to preserve that little fire.

Speaker 1

32:10

Johnny Ive, I don't know if you know who that is, is a designer at Apple. He was the chief designer. He's behind most iPhone, all that stuff. And he always talked about that he wouldn't bring his ideas to Steve Jobs until they were matured because he would always shit on them.

Speaker 1

32:26

He wanted them to like little, as little babies, like live for a little bit before they get completely shut down. And I always think about that when I see a beginner sort of bragging on Instagram. You have to be careful. Let them play with that little dream, you know?

Speaker 2

32:40

Are you playing with a little dream that you're nurturing and you're trying to take that little flame and you're trying to create a roaring blaze with it, or are you playing with the idea of it and behind that there's no substance?

Speaker 1

32:53

It's hard to know the difference. That's why I struggle with

Speaker 2

32:56

it. I don't think it necessarily is. Certainly you're wrong. And when I say Instagram, I don't wanna impugn a bunch of strangers, but I have a gym with a lot of members and I can tell you that the number of years I've been in the gym, when someone comes to me and says, this is my goal, I don't tell them yes or no in general, but I know I Can tell by the way they say it to me I can thin slice it I've seen the look on people's faces and when people start to like say they want to do X Y & Z I know right off the bat This person's either gonna put an effort in or they're not going to put an effort in so To me it's about the effort behind that If you're busting your ass and you're a new at something and you're brand new, but you're working really hard and you have a series of like moderate successes in that, like that's the guy I wanna champion because that persistence and that grit over time, those successes will no longer be moderate.

Speaker 2

33:49

They'll be huge, but the person who's having moderate success by doing nothing, chances are they'll never learn to put that work in and the successes will never grow.

Speaker 1

33:58

You have an admiration for Mike Tyson.

Speaker 2

34:01

I love him.

Speaker 1

34:03

I was just going to let that sit for a brief moment.

Speaker 2

34:07

Why? I think there's a combination of factors. 1 is the timeliness of his career and the age I was when he came to prominence, the raw, brutal violence and the raw, brutal honesty when he speaks. I think it's easy for people to hear him or see his life and cast him aside as some simian-esque like just cretin scourge on society, but when you hear him speak like this is not a guy who's unintelligent.

Speaker 2

34:40

This is a guy who knows himself better than probably most of us know ourselves. It's disarming and that's a humongous part of my admiration for him.

Speaker 1

34:52

Who is Mike Tyson? Because there's, it feels like there's similarities between him and you. There's a, it feels like there's a violent person in there, but also really kind person.

Speaker 1

35:04

And they're all like living together in a little house. And you're the same. There's a thoughtful person, but there's also a scary, violent person. And they're like having a picnic.

Speaker 1

35:14

They're having a picnic.

Speaker 2

35:16

I think there are dialectical tensions in everyone. These like opposing forces that are constantly pulling at you and at different points in your life, like it's sliding scale. And I think that, certainly When I was a younger person, there was a lot more manifestation of the violence and a lot less of the kindness.

Speaker 2

35:38

People who were not as close to me probably saw more of the violent side and only the very close people to me saw what would pass for the kind side. And now that's sliding in the other direction. And I worry actually sometimes that there could be a situation where I need that old version of me, and he's getting further and further away, and I can't call him up if I need him. And that concerns me to a certain degree.

Speaker 1

36:07

The sad aging warrior seeing his greater self fade away. Like, but you still compete. Does that person return?

Speaker 1

36:15

It seems like for Mike Tyson, that person returned at the prospect of competition.

Speaker 2

36:19

It returns, but I've learned better how to manifest it in competition in terms of like the effects that that type of emotion has on you physically in the middle of a competition. So I've better learned how to utilize that energy. But I think another side effect of this is like having a gym where you're a bigger guy and you're the head instructor, you can't be as mean and violent as you once were because you're also now trying to run a business.

Speaker 2

36:46

And you spend so long, so many years trying not to be mean and to soften your technique a little bit, that that all of a sudden just becomes who you are. And I don't necessarily like that. So I've been trying to reclaim that a little bit on the mat. But I think in competition, there has to be… an athlete really wants to score the points.

Speaker 2

37:15

A fighter really wants to incapacitate you and put you in a position where they can do their own bidding and the result in a jujitsu match might just still be 2 points, but the motivations are very, very different.

Speaker 1

37:28

What do you make of Tyson on Joe Rogan saying that he was aroused by violence. Do you think that's insane? Do you think that's deeply honest for him?

Speaker 1

37:36

And do you think that rings true for many of us, others who practices in different degrees?

Speaker 2

37:43

I can't speak for a lot of people, and I think that it was a brutally honest statement by him. And I think it's something that even if a lot of people feel it, they're not that comfortable admitting it or saying it. But I think like, there's, there's great joy in like landing a flush right hand on someone's jaw and then watching them crumble.

Speaker 2

38:07

You don't even feel it. You ever play baseball as a kid? You can hit a base hit off the end of the bat and it will sting your hands because of the way that you hit it. You can hit a home run and you won't feel anything and it'll just feel so good in your hands.

Speaker 2

38:19

And that's, I think, 1 of the joys of physical contact. When you do it the right way, and that goes for all physical contact, when you do it the right way, the physical pleasure you can derive from it and the mental pleasure, it's unparalleled.

Speaker 1

38:38

But that's different. Let me draw a distinction. I've had the fortune of being a wrestler.