#1833 - Tim Kennedy

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] Your stand -up was the first time, the first one I've been to in probably 10 years.

[4] Oh, with the Vulcan?

[5] Yeah.

[6] Yeah, that's a great place.

[7] There's rad.

[8] Yeah, it's a fun little spot.

[9] Everybody was cool.

[10] It's weird that it's on 6th Street, but.

[11] Yeah.

[12] Yeah, my place is too.

[13] We up?

[14] Yeah, it's 6th Street is a, unique spot.

[15] It's, they're doing some stuff to try to, you know, clean it up a little bit and they got rid of that homeless situation.

[16] There was like a crazy homeless encampment that was really close to that.

[17] They got rid of that.

[18] So, Austin's a unique place.

[19] There's a lot of wild shit in this town.

[20] Yeah.

[21] Amazing stuff and really weird stuff.

[22] Yeah.

[23] Yeah.

[24] It's a great combination, though, and it's a great size.

[25] You know, you were one of the people that early on got me thinking about Austin because you were always ranting about it.

[26] I'm not how great it is.

[27] I should have kept my mouth closed.

[28] Should have kept your mouth shut.

[29] Because then when you came here, everybody, I just, they're like, where's Joe had?

[30] Oh, just moved to Austin.

[31] I was like, you shut your mouth.

[32] We're on a flight last night coming back, and the Southwest person who obviously lives in Austin, they stopped in Austin, then flew to San Diego.

[33] And he's like, and everybody that is going home to visit in San Diego, please stay.

[34] Like he said that over the intercom on a Southwest flight.

[35] And I was like, I like this guy.

[36] Well, it's a, it's like, it's a, it's.

[37] It's like the secret's out, but the barrier to entry is high.

[38] It's hard to move to a new city.

[39] Yeah.

[40] It's a lot.

[41] And then on top of that, it's hard to find a fucking house here.

[42] Everybody I know that finds a house here, they get out bid.

[43] Like, you got to bid more than the house costs.

[44] It's like they're making this little sneaky move where like save the house.

[45] If it's listed for 500 grand, you got to offer six.

[46] Yeah.

[47] Because if you don't, someone is going to do that and then you're not going to make it.

[48] I've been trying to buy land and I keep, I mean, and I'm coming in high well over.

[49] And then, you know, still losing out.

[50] The realtors, like, yeah, somebody from California just paid cash and came 30 % over.

[51] Fuckers.

[52] Yeah.

[53] It's wild out here.

[54] And they're building out here like crazy, too.

[55] Like, when you get out towards, like, Round Rock and, you know, out in that area, there's just constant construction.

[56] I'm in Cedar Park.

[57] That's where our headquarters is.

[58] And that used to, if you're in Austin, Cedar Park was, like, the absolute hillbill north.

[59] And now it's just North Austin.

[60] Yeah.

[61] Just everything is just slow.

[62] Still so small.

[63] Yeah.

[64] In comparison to L .A. Every time I go back to L .A. I'm like, fuck this.

[65] How did I live here?

[66] I'm so much more relaxed here.

[67] Unfortunately, we're talking about it again.

[68] We're fucking it up.

[69] Dang it.

[70] You look good.

[71] Thank you.

[72] Thank you.

[73] Healthy?

[74] Working out?

[75] Training?

[76] Yeah, a lot.

[77] Grapling?

[78] No, I'm trying to heal a knee.

[79] I have a knee issue right now that's, I was working out and doing some moitai.

[80] And I just, even though it hurts, I still kick with it.

[81] And then it was starting to swell.

[82] And so now I've been going to Brigham at Ways to Well and getting it shot up.

[83] Dude, he's great.

[84] He's great.

[85] Ways to Well is awesome.

[86] Right now it's good.

[87] Doesn't hurt at all.

[88] So I'm going to give it a couple of months and really do all the knees over toes stuff and try to rehabilitate it without getting an MRI because I don't want to know what's going on in there.

[89] I just did six months of that program.

[90] Yeah?

[91] Yeah.

[92] And it makes a big difference.

[93] Oh my God.

[94] It's not fun though.

[95] What part's not fun?

[96] It's not fun.

[97] It's obviously mobility.

[98] you're focusing on circulation into the knee so it's not good for the ego it's not fun for the ego because the weight that you're doing for the squats in that style of squatting to have your knees over your toes is way less than if I was going to be a meathead and go and squat you know doing the lunges it's trying to get that deep deep forward lunge to get the knee all the way of the toe and then all the sled pulls and all slid pushes and it's just like golly can I just do some athlete things you know I know I know it's healing, so I'm not going to be a better athlete, but it's still not fun.

[99] It does change.

[100] It remaps your knee.

[101] It really does.

[102] It changes the structure.

[103] Like, it doesn't feel as loose anymore.

[104] Everything feels like more rigid and strong and secure.

[105] I just, I'm avoiding, I have a, I've had meniscus taken out of this knee, and I'm, I'm worried about, you know, cartilage damage.

[106] And that's what I'm worried that this, this injury is, because it's just, it's strangely, like, sharp.

[107] Yeah.

[108] And not getting better.

[109] And so.

[110] I'm hoping that stem cells and peptides and...

[111] That's the combo.

[112] Well, what I'm really...

[113] Yeah, I'm hoping that it'll do it.

[114] But I just have to not be a meathead.

[115] This is what I do.

[116] I get the stem cells.

[117] I feel pretty good after four weeks.

[118] Start crushing the bag again.

[119] And then, you know, I kind of aggravated one more time.

[120] Yep.

[121] I have the mats that I'm on right now, a level of killer that I've never imagined existing in names that I didn't even know.

[122] Oh, the Donna Heard Death Squad?

[123] Oh, yeah.

[124] Everybody that came here.

[125] And everybody's training at Roka right now.

[126] That's right.

[127] That's cool.

[128] Shout out to Roka.

[129] Yeah.

[130] Rob's been really rad.

[131] Three workouts a day on those mats.

[132] That's amazing.

[133] So cool.

[134] Yes.

[135] You know, you have, oh, this guy's a two -time Olympic gold medalist.

[136] What's up?

[137] You know, hey, Satoshi.

[138] And as he mauls me, like we're in the cage right here on it.

[139] And Satoshi was just beating me up.

[140] And then Roy McDonald getting ready to this fight, beat me up.

[141] You know, GSP's traveling in.

[142] And then obviously, he's, like Gordon and the Sean Javier Ribeiro team at Six Blades, not but three miles away.

[143] You have the B team with Craig Jones.

[144] So like one through 20, the best grapplers in the planet are in Austin.

[145] And the check mat guys are here.

[146] Oh, yeah.

[147] Gray Brazilian Five Factory.

[148] It's fucking crazy.

[149] Tacket kids.

[150] It's amazing how many good grapplers are here in this town.

[151] All of them.

[152] Amazing.

[153] A lot of them.

[154] Yeah.

[155] Yeah, it's amazing.

[156] Eddie Bravo's thinking about coming here, too.

[157] He just doesn't want to like overcrow it because there's already a 10th planet right here.

[158] Yeah.

[159] But every time he comes, he's like, fuck, I want to come here.

[160] Yeah.

[161] There's room.

[162] I think so, too.

[163] There's fucking two million people.

[164] That's plenty of room.

[165] Yeah.

[166] I mean, give or take 10 miles, you can open a new gym.

[167] Yeah.

[168] Yeah, I think so too.

[169] And there's a lot of spots, you know, especially if you want to head towards dripping and, you know, that area.

[170] Yeah, dripping's open.

[171] I just opened my gym in Cedar Park.

[172] So, you know, there was 10 miles.

[173] Sanjay Ribeiro is the closest kind of big gym and Six Blades and that was on 183 so he was you know it's a 20 minute 15 minute drive to him Nobody's gonna Right Somebody over there is gonna pick that gym Somebody over here is gonna pick this gym There's enough for everybody out there There's enough for everybody Tell me what you're doing with sheep dog Like what is your sheep dog response courses What are those?

[174] The In light of everything that's been happening I mean I've been screaming From every building I can get on that You know we need to prepare America for what is happening now.

[175] And so sheepdog response, like the company mission statement is to train and equip people to preserve and protect human life.

[176] With that in mind, we do everything from fighting, shooting, and medical to try and make sure everybody that comes to those courses, teachers, law enforcement, all of them get the basic fundamentals of really the things about saving life.

[177] And we have been, I mean, sheepdog response, we have, I think, a hundred 180 or 210 courses this year and if you go to the website right now it's like sold out sold out so like i can't i'm not going to lower the quality of training because everybody needs to know the right things as we look at uvalde and the lack of training and uh the response and the broken systems and all the things that went wrong in there uh you know i'm like god why you know like i literally teach every single day what the answer is to all of this and you know you can only train so many people in a year.

[178] I think it's it's you definitely can only train so many people in a year and it's also taking a long time for people to come to grips with the only solution is like you have to be able to protect yourself.

[179] Yeah.

[180] Well I mean there's that's the responsive reactive side of it and which is really important.

[181] You know we have to make our schools hard targets.

[182] We have to get individual individuals to be responsible and be able to protect themselves like our basic entry course for teachers and for everyone is called protector it's protector one course and we shoot we fight how to keep blood in the body you know turnicates packing wounds and then the biggest part of situational awareness and that's all preventative actions where I see something that could be going wrong but I'd prefer to go upstream to the root cause of what is causing some of this violence You know, mental health and these broken young men and try to fix the individual.

[183] So we don't, we have to do all these things with our schools.

[184] You know, I have been writing nonstop since these last shootings have been happening, you know, and like the four Ds about how to make a school a hard target.

[185] What are the four Ds?

[186] You have detection, denial entry.

[187] You have deterrence and then you actually have defend.

[188] So of those things, identifying what a problem is.

[189] and trying to deter from the outside limited entry, you know, how our headquarters are set up.

[190] It's difficult to get in here.

[191] It doesn't look like a place I want to try and get in.

[192] The bushes are the landscaping's in a way where I'm not going to have access to the windows.

[193] You know, like there's in my building, when you come to the front door and you get let in, you're in a killbox.

[194] You know, you get led into a lobby.

[195] And in that lobby, you can't get past the lobby.

[196] And in the lobby, there is somebody that will let you into the next room.

[197] and uh you're stuck there and unless somebody lets you in you know the defend is obviously uh the last course of action where teachers or law enforcement um are going to be protecting their kids there's lots of different solutions to that they have cameras that can have pepper balls in them um you know lasers that can blind people but ultimately it's the individual that has to be trained to be able to protect those children and in that like preventative model of going upstream to fix the problem we could concurrently we can do two things at once right like we can make our school harder targets and we can train teachers and we can get law enforcement to respond correctly while we start talking really about what is causing these young men to be broken so what do you think we can do about that because that without that you know people think guns are the problem and this is the narrative that we keep here and we need gun control but that there's more guns and they're people.

[198] So it's not necessarily a gun problem because the vast majority of people, the vast, vast, vast majority would never fucking do anything like this.

[199] It's a very, very, very, very small amount of people that are deranged and broken and would do something like this.

[200] So how do we address that?

[201] That is the issue.

[202] It's a mental health issue.

[203] Yeah, but it's a bunch of things that we'd, that nobody wants to talk about.

[204] You know, we're going to be throwing throwing stones Hollywood, video games, social media, you know, it's more divisive than ever on social media you know you get in this echo chamber with your own ideas and those echo chambers and they're crazy ideas sometimes when you are able to curate and editorialize the feed that you get back so they're only people like if i'm following if i if i'm struggling and i'm just following um angry hate rhetoric and that is just building and so my thoughts are then magnified and compounded by other people reaffirming my own belief system and in that in the algorithms then they put in something that then enrages me. So it's like bias confirmation, bias confirmation, bias confirmation.

[205] Oh, and then here's something for me to interact with because they want us to interact.

[206] So, you know, the more emotionally driven we are in social media, the more we participate in it and the longer that we're on it.

[207] So those algorithms are really just dangerous.

[208] That's one.

[209] Hollywood, where, you know, I love Matthew McConae and I love his position and I love him as an actor and I love what he had to say and I love that he wants to protect schools and children you know, but like, how many movies has he been in where he had people on their knees and he executed him in the face?

[210] You know, you can't be on this moral high ground and then be a hypocrite.

[211] So if Hollywood is perpetuating, you know, I've never let my children practice putting somebody on their knees and shooting him or watching a move.

[212] Has he really done that in a movie?

[213] Yeah.

[214] What movie has he done that?

[215] It was that Guy Ritchie movie.

[216] Oh, yeah.

[217] Yeah, the drug dealer movie.

[218] Yeah, one of many examples.

[219] Yeah.

[220] You know, he's, he's an action star, and he's a great actor, and not, and I really love what he had to say and how we all do have to come together and find solutions, you know, but if, like, Liam Neeson is out there being, you know, hey, we should get rid of guns, but I'm going to take the next $10 million contract for Netflix to be in the next action film, and my kill count's going to be 1 .10.

[221] Oh, man, I don't, I don't know if you can be in that position of moral authority to talk to me about what you should be doing with firearms.

[222] Yeah, you don't hear.

[223] Keanu Reeves talking about what we should do about fire rights.

[224] No, he's a great example of somebody that, you know, morally and ethically really walks the line of truth and integrity.

[225] And he's John Wick.

[226] Yeah.

[227] I mean, you'd have to shut the fuck up.

[228] He killed so many people.

[229] You're with a pencil.

[230] He's like, you're like, hey, bah!

[231] That was amazing.

[232] I mean, he's killed people with everything in those movies.

[233] You know, music, video games, all of those things.

[234] But the video games one is an interesting one because there's arguments that video games actually, squash the feelings that people have of violence because they allow people to have like a cathartic release through doing these things and then there's arguments that they desensitize people and I don't know which ones are correct I mean I used to play video games a lot when I was fighting you know it is as you know I'm not somebody that cannot do things so I'm not good at just sitting still yeah sitting still so recovery for me in between workouts you know Greg Jackson would lock me out of a gym Like, you know, you can't train five times today, Tim, like, get out.

[235] So I would have to do something, and, you know, he'd be like, no, don't walk the Sandia Mountains.

[236] You know, like, don't go up the trail.

[237] Can you just do something?

[238] So he was trying to just get you to recover from the training routine.

[239] Yeah.

[240] So, like, video games was a way that I could just sit there, throw on, you know, the pressure cuffs on my legs or ice something while I would sit there and relax.

[241] And what kind of games would you play?

[242] I loved first -person shooters, you know, the call of duties.

[243] And, but being a shooter and having, you know, obviously been in combat a bunch of times, it was artificial.

[244] It didn't, I still wanted to go out and shoot, you know, shooting definitely and training and dry firing and practicing is that cathartic process, like really scratches that itch of wanting to drill and train.

[245] What I experienced was afterwards, I actually had more like pent up energy, you know, because I'm doing like these, all these.

[246] intense things, but it's this artificial experience that, I mean, like, jerking off compared to going with your partner and having an amazing, intimate experience.

[247] Two totally different things.

[248] I hate the term partner.

[249] Thank you.

[250] We've talked about this.

[251] Yeah, it's not a partner.

[252] I was done.

[253] Tell the story.

[254] Oh, man. So I'm in New York last week on the book tour.

[255] I walk into a coffee shop and we're like right off Times Square.

[256] And I walk in.

[257] and I asked the barista for an oatmeal cappuccino, which is my favorite beverage.

[258] And my wife, I ask if she can have a cafeolet with oat milk.

[259] And the barista, and I say it just like that.

[260] I'll have an oatmeal cappuccino, please, and my wife would like a cafeole.

[261] And my wife is really shy and doesn't even like to talk to people she doesn't know to include people at a restaurant.

[262] So she oftentimes, like, can you order for me?

[263] So I wasn't man answering for her as a feminist.

[264] She requests it.

[265] Yeah, she did.

[266] And the lady corrected me calling her my wife and said, you mean partner?

[267] No, no, this is my wife.

[268] This is my wife.

[269] And she would like a cafeole, please.

[270] Just bonkers.

[271] Imagine how crazy you have to be to talk to a grown man and tell him to not call your wife your wife.

[272] That there is a correct way to announce her.

[273] I didn't know what to do.

[274] I think it's partner.

[275] So you should do that too, Tim.

[276] I know.

[277] That's so, that's young people today.

[278] They're out of their fucking mind.

[279] That's what I'm worried about.

[280] These poor fucks that are stuck in the fog of woke that are just trapped in these universities and then they get out and they exist in these weird bubbles like L .A. or New York in particular.

[281] They're dangerous.

[282] Well, they're just nuts.

[283] They think that that's how you're supposed to be.

[284] I mean, imagine correcting someone if they said my partner.

[285] Like imagine if you say, I'll have a cappuccino and my partner would like a tall black coffee.

[286] Oh, you mean your wife.

[287] Yeah.

[288] Now the, that's my fucking, I said partner.

[289] That's the word I like.

[290] I like partner.

[291] I'm going to use that one.

[292] Imagine correcting someone there.

[293] You'd be just as gross.

[294] I couldn't imagine.

[295] It's just so dumb.

[296] Like, what do you give a fuck what he's calling?

[297] You know what it is?

[298] It says, he's married to that lady.

[299] He said, wife.

[300] That's how you say it.

[301] She's the boss.

[302] So I'll literally do whatever she wants, and that's how she'd like to be referred, so.

[303] Jesus, Christ, people are nuts.

[304] But it's the idea that somehow or another, it's better to say partner than wife?

[305] Why would it be better?

[306] Gender neutral.

[307] What the fuck?

[308] It's a woman.

[309] Yeah.

[310] You're married to a woman.

[311] Women are still okay.

[312] It's still okay to be a woman.

[313] Especially this one.

[314] She, her, still all right.

[315] You can still have that in your pronouns and your Twitter bio.

[316] Fucking A man. I'm learning how all of it works still.

[317] I don't get it.

[318] I don't think anybody knows.

[319] And it'll change.

[320] It'll change with the tide.

[321] It'll turn and it'll go down a new road soon and, you know, we're all going to be identified as animals.

[322] We're all going to be foxkin.

[323] I'm not ready for it.

[324] I'm not ready for any of this.

[325] I don't understand why anybody.

[326] would think that it's okay to correct you that doesn't make any sense i i completely understand i don't like it when men say this is my partner i mean like it's your fucking wife man it's okay to be be married it's okay to say wife it has been a non -stop attack on you know the vernacular verbiage that we use yeah you know and it's in in every forum in every in every opportunity you like in twitter like on instagram it's it's telling you it'll like populate sometimes ask you like would you like to add your pronoun or, um, it's like, I don't care.

[327] Sure.

[328] You know, I don't, whatever.

[329] You just have to tell me how it works.

[330] I just don't know why it's so important all of a sudden.

[331] I think it's because - I get transgender representation.

[332] I get that.

[333] And I, you know, it's a very small percentage of the people and those people deserve love and respect.

[334] For sure.

[335] And I'll fight for them everywhere I can.

[336] I get all that.

[337] But don't put that on me. I don't, I've never needed to say my fucking pronouns.

[338] Look at my beard.

[339] I'm a man. Let's move on.

[340] Look at this.

[341] I'm a 220 -pound ape.

[342] There's no question when I am.

[343] Let's move on.

[344] Let's move on.

[345] You could be whatever you want, but leave me the fuck alone.

[346] Yeah.

[347] And I've spent most of my adult life kind of protecting groups of people that can't protect themselves.

[348] So I totally sympathize and empathetic to trying to protect everybody and their beliefs.

[349] Yes.

[350] You know, but it also stops where you are.

[351] Like, you don't get to project that belief onto my beliefs because I have my own beliefs.

[352] You don't need to protect my beliefs.

[353] I can protect my own beliefs.

[354] But, um, you know, let's just stay over here.

[355] I think it's a small amount of people that are doing it.

[356] But the problem is it's like, it undermines the all the goodwill that people have towards, like, these group of progressive minded folks.

[357] It's the small amount of people that want to come, force compliance.

[358] They want to force people to behave and think a very certain way.

[359] Yeah, I mean, back to mental health, I think with shooters, you see a reoccurring theme.

[360] You know, you see broken nuclear families.

[361] These young broken men are missing serious, masculine elements of who they are.

[362] When you look at them, and I'm profiling, I am generalizing here, you see a very similar young man every single time.

[363] He's weak, he's frail, and he's broken.

[364] And there's nothing more dangerous than a broken, not healthy, masculine figure.

[365] You know, testosterone's a beautiful thing.

[366] And one of the great things about the military is they enhance and they build all of this kind of ability to do very efficient violence.

[367] You know, but they also show you how to control it and how to management and the vertical of the chain of command and when is it appropriate.

[368] You know, here's your rules of engagement.

[369] So it's very controlled and by the, by this process, this arduous refiners fire of shaping a human into a weapon that you have a healthier thing.

[370] You have this healthy, beautiful, masculine thing that is very, very different.

[371] If you look at me and all of, you know, my friends in the special operations community, like, these are healthy, great men that love their wives and they love their children and they love America.

[372] and they and like the warrior society and the warrior culture um is like this nice balance of their their fit they they get great night's sleep they are very good at violence i mean jordan peterson you know himself said the uh like a good man isn't a useless man a good man is one that is capable and strong and powerful but knows how to control it yeah and i couldn't agree more and when you look at these these young broken men you see see the same trend over and over again.

[373] And they are missing these important moments that shape them as men.

[374] And then they have testosterone, and they have strength, and they have violence, and they've never known how to channel it.

[375] You had martial arts, I had martial arts, I had the military, we had really healthy ways to burn that kind of growth and learn, you know, getting our asses beat on the mats.

[376] And learn discipline.

[377] Yeah.

[378] Yeah.

[379] Yeah, it's the in -cell of the world.

[380] And the people...

[381] Is that just black coffee?

[382] Oh, yeah.

[383] The in cells and the people that, you know, just never have these experiences where they learn how to channel their aggression and learn how to harness their discipline and learn how to be a fucking man. It's an issue.

[384] It's a real issue.

[385] And this whole, I think, you know, there's like, it's become a disparaged term, like, to be a man. Yeah.

[386] But that's a really important thing to learn how to be, like, when you see.

[387] someone who holds their shit together and stays calm under pressure and you're like wow you you admire that person that that's to be admired yeah it is a thing it's an important thing it's just we are so god damn comfortable in this country and we're so accustomed to it and it's been accentuated by the comfort that people experience from being able to talk shit on social media so it's very distorted perception of what's acceptable in terms of how to communicate with other humans it's weird I was in Ukraine a week ago and And the men there have been hammered for resistance.

[388] You know, being on the border of Russia, obviously.

[389] They've known what was coming for a generation.

[390] And they have been training relentlessly for the past 20 years.

[391] And the young men that you could walk down the streets of Kiev and Maripool, Nipro, and there is not a fat human in sight.

[392] You know, there is not a, just a complacent human anywhere to be seen.

[393] Every single person there has been hardened, not just in body, but also in mind.

[394] And then, you know, I flew from there to Amsterdam, Amsterdam direct back to L .A., or back to Austin, which is cool that we have a direct to Amsterdam now.

[395] And the moment the plane lands, I get off, I take five steps out of the gate.

[396] And I'm like, ah, I'm back in America.

[397] There's just, like, weak, soft people everywhere.

[398] God, there's so many, so many sloppy people here.

[399] And if you bring that up, you're fat shaming.

[400] I don't get that either.

[401] Listen, there's things that you have no control over, like, literally no control over.

[402] Like, to shame someone for a disability is a horrendous act.

[403] It's a horrendous thing to do.

[404] But to shame someone for slovenly behavior.

[405] For things that they have a choice about it.

[406] That's actually probably good for them.

[407] Especially when they're a bad feeling.

[408] that will negatively affect us.

[409] Like my insurance rates are very, very high because my insurance has to pay for a lot of unhealthy people.

[410] You know, obviously COVID just like went ramp it through the community of unhealthy people.

[411] You know, like I changed nothing about my life.

[412] I still worked out every single day.

[413] I still went to the gym every single day.

[414] I still flew in the helicopters.

[415] I remember you text to me when you got it.

[416] You're like, I finally got it.

[417] It was like almost two years in.

[418] And it took, I'm not going to tell you how I got it, but it was really hard for me to get it.

[419] And I was, when I finally, I was, I was really excited.

[420] You're not going to tell me how you got it?

[421] No, because I'll get somebody in trouble.

[422] But it was, by the time you got it, though, it was already Omicron.

[423] Yeah.

[424] Which I got.

[425] And I literally had for one day.

[426] I was positive for a day.

[427] I mean, I'd had the real one, the Delta.

[428] Yeah.

[429] And, you know, that was only three days.

[430] I was positive for five days.

[431] I felt sick for like four hours.

[432] I hadn't slept in two days.

[433] I was working on the border.

[434] That's how it always is, right?

[435] Yeah.

[436] And I was working.

[437] And then I came back and I was like, is this, is it, because the border has like this moon dust all along the, the Del Rio River.

[438] And so I was like, is this just because I was outside, you know, running and chasing people.

[439] So I'm like, is this just moon dust in my sinuses or do I feel like crap?

[440] And I kind of had like a headache.

[441] And I never lost my taste to smell or smell.

[442] And I was like, I'm going to take a test.

[443] And I got a positive.

[444] It's like, oh, my God.

[445] I got it.

[446] And then I put on a sweatsuit.

[447] And I got my assault bike.

[448] and I burnt a thousand calories in an hour which was pretty rat and then I came in and the worst part of the whole experience was like I went to my wife and was like well I don't have to go to work for a couple of days what are you doing?

[449] And she's like you are you insane?

[450] You literally have COVID.

[451] Yeah you literally have COVID I was like but anyways then I turned and then she got mad at me well that's how it goes didn't work out so since we've talked last on the podcast you have been well let's go all the way back to Afghanistan.

[452] Because you were there.

[453] Oh, God, indeed.

[454] You were there during the worst of it when the pullout was happening.

[455] Yeah.

[456] So, yeah, with 20 -something deployments overseas, I've never seen anything like Afghanistan during the fall of Afghanistan.

[457] I don't know who was at a strategic level not anticipating that the Taliban, every time.

[458] that we moved an inch on the ground that the Taliban would not move an inch on the ground.

[459] So, myself and all of my peers, all my colleagues, fully forecasted what was going to happen.

[460] So as soon as we started collapsing that ground, there was no doubt in any of our minds that every inch of ground that we gave up was ground that the Taliban was going to take.

[461] So when we gave up, you know, Kandahar and Bogram, the two strategic military bases, that means that we just gave up the rest of the country.

[462] And we, having been at war there for 20 years and, you know, multiple trips over there, we have lots of friends that deployed with us there, you know, Afghans, the Afghans have a special operations unit called the commandos.

[463] We worked alongside them.

[464] Our interpreters are obviously from Afghanistan.

[465] So they live in Afghanistan, but they work for us.

[466] These people have security clearances.

[467] They love the idea of democracy and freedom.

[468] They love the idea of a free independent uh afghanistan they want their daughters to be educated and those ideals that philosophy does not align with the taliban so as taliban start taking over afghanistan our phone just starts exploding from all of my friends and asking me to go contracting companies saying hey i'll pay you 10 grand a day to go grab this guy um but none of it was altruistic you know Like, none of it was the right call to action.

[469] It was lots of people, yes, it was going to go and save life, but it was for money.

[470] And I was just waiting for, I don't know what I was waiting for.

[471] I wasted two days trying to figure out what is the right thing to do here.

[472] Until my phone rang, I was in the middle of writing that book.

[473] And I was with Nick Palmishano, who's my co -author on this book.

[474] He's sitting next to me. We're working.

[475] My phone rings, Chad Robes Show, calls me. and he was a marine special operations guy that had multiple deployants there and he had a translator named Aziz and Aziz worked specific specific to special missions units like the tip of the spear type units and Aziz had already been told that they're coming to find him and Aziz was on the run with his family and they were very very explicit about what they're going to do to his wife and his children in front of him before they kill him.

[476] him.

[477] And then like Aziz's friends start being murdered.

[478] And so Chad calls me and says, hey man, I'm going to go get Aziz.

[479] Can you help me?

[480] And I said, yes.

[481] I'm on my way.

[482] At the same moment next to me, Nick is talking to a young woman named Sarah Verardo.

[483] Sarah is this like powerhouse.

[484] She runs the independence fund, which is a vet a military veteran nonprofit that takes care of severely wounded veterans and give them chairs like.

[485] track automatic track chairs her husband is one of the worst this is a weird title to hold but he is one of the worst wounded veterans veterans from the afghan war that's her husband and she's the the provider and care and sole care provider i don't know what the right word is she takes care of him and uh he was wounded in afghanistan so her heart is like just but she has lots of friends in the government so in this moment we have the right kind of two people i have a good mission i i i know what I'm going to do.

[486] It's morally right.

[487] And somebody has to do it or Aziz and my friend's friend is going to be murdered.

[488] And I have a method.

[489] Sarah can get us routes and approval from the government.

[490] So the four of us started this NGO called Save Our Allies.

[491] And that literally that phone call was the beginning of what is now, you know, what was the most successful NGO movement?

[492] What's an NGO?

[493] A non -government organization, a nonprofit.

[494] So Save Our Allies, like that call initiated it.

[495] Nick and I were on a plane into the Middle East the next day.

[496] We flew into the UAE, the Crown Prince, was like the most generous host that you could imagine.

[497] One of our friends used to ride motorcycles with the Crown Prince, and he said, I will give you a C -17 plane.

[498] If you can land it, fill it up with a perfect manifest of people.

[499] and get it out I'll give you another plane and that was the that was the initial promise and 10 days later we moved 12 ,000 people out of Afghanistan 11 % of everybody that left the country during the evacuation me and three of my friends on the ground and 12 of us total in the Middle East moved everybody remembers you know people hanging onto the landing gear of aircraft and falling to their death Like that that was peak Afghanistan withdrawal and that is that is when we got there.

[500] So when you say that it was like nothing you had seen in 20 years of being deployed.

[501] Yeah.

[502] In what in what way?

[503] I mean, Taliban's going to Taliban so they are definitely doing their thing.

[504] But it was it was the the desperation of the people trying to find a way to live.

[505] So at each of these gates, a Neo operation, it's a non -combatant evacuation operation.

[506] It's a military operation if a Neo takes place.

[507] They keep calling it a Neo, but that's if the military ran it.

[508] And if the military ran it, you would see a special forces unit with a big, like the Ranger Regiment or 82nd Airborne that come in, that build this huge exterior perimeter, that control the ground strategically, then it would be like the clockwork of a military operation as planes are coming in and planes are coming out and we're building manifest we're confirming that everybody that goes on the plane are the right people this was not a neo this was run by the state department so instead of that think a big strategic military operation instead of think the airport became an embassy and like in the movies you're running the embassy and if you get in you know like you're safe and then they'll get you out that's how they started treating h kaya the um the airport in cabul as an embassy.

[509] So the military just secured the perimeter of the embassy, the airport, and anybody that got on, the airport was able to get out.

[510] Except the military wasn't allowed to go outside of the airport.

[511] So all the people in the city of Kabul were stuck.

[512] That's where we had to come in.

[513] So we had to go out into Kabul and grab the people and then smuggle them past the Taliban to get them onto planes.

[514] And to answer your question, question the that perimeter of the base where the gates there's tens of thousands of people that were lining up here and they maybe walked a few days so by the time they get there they're dehydrated they have nothing there there's no food there's no water the Taliban if there's too many people they'll just take a magazine and just dump it into the crowd to move them back or to like crowd control them they'll just dump a magazine into a crowd of people the women they would they would float babies like you're at a baseball game with a beach ball they would float the baby baby towards the gate and then hope in the hopes that a marina or a soldier would reach down and grab the baby and bring it into safety and when that didn't work the moms would take the babies and they'd try to throw them over the walls well guess what's on either side of the wall constantina wire there's fucking constantina wire on both sides of this wall so these babies would land in the wire and we're in the middle of moving you know hundreds of people at a time like smuggling them past the Taliban and I'm stepping over a baby in water or there's like a small body that's on fire that was burnt alive by the Taliban you know one of the teams as they're they went out in a Kabul and they they they just missed it by seconds they're going to go pick up this woman that was a journalist for that the Afghan uh one of the Afghan uh one of the Afghan news organizations but the Taliban got to her first they pull up the Taliban see these guys in the car they drop her on their hood of the car and they execute her on the car as they just look at the dudes in the car there's nothing that they can do just execute her this was every day so when I said a level of desperation I've never seen before this is I mean this is like no American no no American can imagine that type of desperation and that was everywhere you looked and how long were we there for while this was happening the our ground team there's myself and three other um like personnel recovery experts uh we're there total for 10 days and did it dissipate somewhat did the no no no just got more desperate so everybody that was watching on television they saw curated controlled um information um information information, you know, is way worse on the ground.

[515] So what looked like this assemblance of an assembly line of planes taking off and planes coming in, um, well, that is inside a controlled environment, you know, that was in on the base outside.

[516] If you, if you, if you, if you, if you go a thousand meters outside of the wire, it is just chaos, anarchy, apocalyptic level madness.

[517] You know, like really really really total towel ban uh experience out there and so when you're leaving 10 days later what what are you how are you feeling what one of our one of the guys with us is code named sea spray he didn't eat in those 10 days he lost 20 something pounds in in the 10 days that he was there and um you know he could like nibble on a cracker and drink water just because he didn't have any enzymes left in his stomach to break anything down, you know, when you're running out the wire to grab a family and come back in, you don't really have time to think about what you're stepping over, but you still see it.

[518] And that's the thing that tortures my mind is I still saw it all, but I didn't have the time to address it emotionally, think about this dead body I'm stepping over, because I'm really busy trying to get to this family.

[519] Then I went to this family and I confirm we had to be really judicious in how we confirmed who the people were.

[520] You know, if I bring, if I brought back one person that wasn't the right person to bring back, I would consider myself a failure in the whole entire mission.

[521] If I bring back one radical terrorist that's not escaping but trying to get to the United States and everything would be for not.

[522] So we had a really deliberate Department of State, Department of Defense approved manifest that would go officially through the government.

[523] They would submit all of their paperwork.

[524] They would have, you know, digital versions of it.

[525] So I would then give them a location on the ground where they would have to meet me. And then once I met up with them, they would have a far recognition signal.

[526] That would be not to like give up the tradecraft, but they'd have a way to let me know that that is the right person.

[527] And that then would come face to face.

[528] And then they'd have another thing, like a secret word that they had to sneak into a sentence.

[529] and that's a near recognition signal and then they have to give me their documents and the documents have to be real and it has to be the right person and the same ones that were submitted so cool I got the right person so come on I got your family why are these other 40 people with you they're like oh it's it's like it's my cousin and you know and her family and it's um you know my brother and his family and it's like they got to stay like you're coming with me and they're staying sorry you can get in the car you can't you have five seconds then by that time usually the Taliban have spotted us and it's a foot race to make it back into the wire before they catch us and what happens to the people that get left behind they're murdered or used you know there's pilots and their doctors and they're engineers and they run the sewage system they run the electrical plant so they're trying to get out but the Taliban want them to stay because all the infrastructure that's built there are operated by people that were friendly to the Americans.

[530] So they want like if they want their power plant to work they have to have all the engineers that ran it so they don't want them to leave.

[531] They don't want the pilots to leave because their airport won't work.

[532] They don't have anybody to run their air traffic control.

[533] They don't have anybody to, you know, make sure the water purification system works properly.

[534] So they're trying to keep all those people there.

[535] But all those people know that they'll then be slaves to the Taliban.

[536] So they're trying to get out.

[537] and that's that's the that's the tough catch -22 position that we're in I could only imagine the frustration that so many people like yourself who've been over there must have to how this was all handled that this should have been they should have known what was going to happen if you just decided to pull out the way they did but yes I mean the level of frustration I've never seen anything like it in my lifetime in the military where there was that many many men and women from the military so active and unified and we have to do something.

[538] You know, the, I'm never going to forget my countryman's response to Afghanistan and Ukraine, the generosity of just America.

[539] You know, it's a different thing from being, you know, that nationalist compared to being a person.

[540] Patriot.

[541] You know, these Patriots were throwing money to pay for gas on planes.

[542] They were, you know, helping us buy buses to position out in Kabul.

[543] Like we literally bought buses that we put in intersections to have people meet there and they would bring that bus on to the air on to the air base.

[544] And none of this would have been possible, you know, without the UAE and the Crown Prince and the Sheik, without their generosity and then without the American people just stepping up and veterans especially they just um i just never seen it so as angry as i am as to the way that we strategically did that withdrawal i have never been more proud of the american people it was it was amazing it's great that you could have that perspective while also encountering such a horrific scene because i got i got to imagine that that that the horrific aspects of it would be overwhelming for most people yeah you kind of focus at the work i love mr rogers i do he said this thing uh people parents were asking what what do we do in light of like all these terrible things that are happening and he says look to the helpers you will always see people doing good work and helping and uh and i really take this i don't know if I don't know how that works really in the brain, but I didn't focus on, I saw all the soldiers from the 82nd being so brave and I saw all the Marines on the walls, you know, protecting all of these people trying to come in and trying to find the right people.

[545] I mean, they're children, you know, they're 18, 19, 20 year old young men and women that volunteered to serve.

[546] and then here they are thrust into this apocalypse -like scenario.

[547] And they're just, they're so, so incredible.

[548] I look at them, you know, I look at the, I look at my team.

[549] Sean G was our ground force commander, C -spray and Dave.

[550] You know, I look at them.

[551] I see their eyes just sunken in from not sleeping for six, seven days in a row.

[552] And, but they're still going.

[553] Like, I look at that, you know, I look at that 80 -second.

[554] guy, as I'm like, man, can you pick up this Constantina wire so I can slip, slip underneath here with this little kid?

[555] He's like, yeah, bro, picks up like, that's rad.

[556] But when the bomb goes off at the end of August, that was what we knew going to be the end of us being able to be effective in going outside the wire and grab people and bring them back in.

[557] The base just, was going to get locked down and that's that that that was starting to hurt that's when I realized so our list kept growing right I said we moved 12 ,000 people in 10 days like think think about 12 ,000 you've you've been to arenas with 12 ,000 people in 10 days we put them we confirmed who they were which is a miracle in itself thank you Sarah Varado so saver allies found these people confirmed who they were got them approved from the government and then put them on a plane and flew them out in 10 days but after the bomb happens and we are limited in our ability to be effective and this list is growing and growing and growing this that is when like my soul just starts dropping out the bottom because the list grows and my and we're not bringing anybody else in so Sean G our ground force commander you know listening to him tell Sarah she's like well what's the point of us still being making this list six so we know who we left behind and uh and i was just like this is dumb like this is this is this is really bad how many people got left behind 40 000 on our list i think do we have any idea what happened to them um we left back americans like they they are in the control of the taliban if they're alive So we're still actively working like we we have been so we have now moved 17 ,000 people total out of Afghanistan.

[558] So we've moved another 5 ,000 people since Afghanistan became fully under control the Taliban.

[559] And we how do you get them out while it's in control the Taliban?

[560] We're very sneaky.

[561] So it's 5 ,000 people covertly.

[562] Yeah.

[563] And we have.

[564] So we like lily pad.

[565] We once you get them out, you take them.

[566] to a place, you know, Qatar, UAE, Pakistan.

[567] And you stage them there as you work through the Department of State immigration process.

[568] And immigration right now is a pretty tough thing to work through.

[569] You, Gordon Ryan, you know, is a great example, his amazing, wonderful wife.

[570] You know, he's trying to get her processed through legally.

[571] My best friend, Nick Palmishano, who wrote that book with me, his wife, it took her two and a half years, and she did everything perfect, two and a half years with a green card to become an American citizen.

[572] You know, so we have 5 ,000 people that are stuck in this process.

[573] A little shout out to some of the senators that are pushing to extend the SIV application.

[574] So that's the special immigration visa.

[575] It's a special V visa wouldn't wouldn't be applicable and some you know Mike Waltz and Senator Tillis and the guys like that are stepping up being like no no no like we have a bunch of allies still that are stuck let's let's figure out how to do with them first how was that not taken into consideration before we pulled out I just don't understand how anyone in good conscience could have handled it the way they did and why did they handle it the way they did was there a reason um there was a there was a date that was set on the campaign trail that we would be pulling out after 20 years and uh so on you know september 11th 20 21 we when i say we America said that we were going to be leaving afghanistan and uh to stay true to those campaign promises and um You know, we're, and I'm not like against leaving Afghanistan.

[576] You know, I didn't want to fight in Afghanistan anymore.

[577] I don't think anybody else did.

[578] And the, having been there for 20 years, like, whether it was a good war, a feudal war, that's for strategic level people to argue about.

[579] But the way that we left, that, that was really problematic, obviously.

[580] I don't know.

[581] Have we ever done anything like this before?

[582] Yeah.

[583] I mean, it happened in Saigon.

[584] At the end of the Vietnam War You know, we have I mean, you go all the back to Sun Tzu He tells you how to retreat You know, if You can see other instances where we did it poorly Like Dunkirk Like had the The Englishmen not stood up And hopped on private -owned boats And cross the channel You know, there's a good chance that All of Great Britain would have fallen to the Nazis you know that that was a bad plan um so yeah it's happened multiple times but uh i don't know why we just don't seem to learn from history and uh then we just bury history intentionally bonkers yeah it is bonkers it's got to be a strange feeling to be you to have experienced so many of the things you've experienced and then to come back here and see all these people that are just blissfully ignorant of what's going on in the world while there's stuff in their face with crispy cream donuts.

[585] Yeah, it's kind of insulting a little bit.

[586] You know, Memorial Day just happened.

[587] And, uh, and I think about all of, all of the amazing men and women that have fought so bravely for this country.

[588] And I'm like, ah, so what are we doing to make sure their sacrifice was worth it, right?

[589] Are we really, moving forward the ideals that it is to be an American.

[590] And I think being an American is a beautiful thing.

[591] And the ideals that this country were founded on are beautiful, powerful things.

[592] And, uh, but then it, uh, it's not appreciated and totally taken for, taken for granted.

[593] Yeah, completely.

[594] And I don't think there's any way to really educate people on what's happening.

[595] Unless you physically expose them to it or, unless, unless they make a concerted effort to educate themselves.

[596] I don't, so many people just, they don't know.

[597] Like, we pulled out of Afghanistan.

[598] There was some noise in the media for like a few weeks.

[599] It was like 45 days.

[600] Yeah, and then gone.

[601] And then it drifted off.

[602] And I was well aware that there are still people left behind there.

[603] And I'm like, well, what happens to those people?

[604] And it's just the discussion just ended.

[605] And then, you know, they're mad at somebody for doing something on TV or somebody did something here.

[606] Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are getting a divorce.

[607] There's something.

[608] There's always some distraction.

[609] Will Smith's flaps Chris Rock.

[610] And that's it.

[611] We stopped talking about it.

[612] And meanwhile, it's one of the biggest cluster fucks in the history of this country.

[613] In terms of...

[614] That was the largest evacuation in American history.

[615] Like, ever.

[616] And it was, there's no, there's no way...

[617] I would love to, like, be able to put numbers, but there's no way for us to assume or guess the type of...

[618] of atrocities and the number of of them that happened outside.

[619] You know, the ones I saw firsthand, you like, would take pages of this notebook.

[620] And, you know, there's thousands of soldiers that saw that every single moment.

[621] And that was just within eyes distance.

[622] You know, who knew what happened three blocks in where the actual Taliban checkpoints were?

[623] So every route into the base was controlled by the Taliban.

[624] And every military expert on the planet, you know, whoever, whoever controls the outside perimeter actually controls that ground.

[625] So the Taliban controlled the outside perimeter.

[626] So they controlled the airport.

[627] Everybody that got into that base was either able to circumvent, like get past one of the Taliban checkpoints or had to go through it.

[628] You know, it's like, oh, thank you for this passport.

[629] What is your job?

[630] Your occupation is you are a plumber.

[631] You can't leave.

[632] You know, oh, you worked for the Americans.

[633] I have you on this list.

[634] You cannot leave.

[635] And, and then you're just with a And if I'm not hearing it from you, I'm not hearing it.

[636] This is the problem.

[637] It's like this is a, it's a crazy scenario and it's not being discussed publicly.

[638] No, because it's, um, it's not comfortable to talk about like mental health.

[639] It seems like all these things that we should be talking about.

[640] We don't want to talk about because they're like kind of bummer topics, but they have to be.

[641] You know, we, we, we have people left in Afghanistan and we have some of the people that we got out of Afghanistan.

[642] that are trapped in these lily pad countries that can't make it back.

[643] I'm not even saying they have to come to the United States, but we have to do something with them, right?

[644] Like I personally escorted a couple hundred into Albania.

[645] Amazing.

[646] George Soros's son, I got to meet him, and he paid.

[647] These were all, I think they're really employees or they're on an internship program in Afghanistan, but a lot of them were Afghan -albanian dual citizens.

[648] And he, he, George Soros Jr. paid for these guys to be brought back to Albania.

[649] So, like, I took a plane full of a couple hundred people and flew them into Albania.

[650] And this is one of the wildest things.

[651] I get on a, get on a C -17.

[652] Bomb has gone off, you know, like 13 Americans die.

[653] The base is shut down.

[654] I mean, it is like, it is a fortress.

[655] now nobody's coming on nobody's going off the plumbing is going out there's no more clear clean water they're taking tractors and driving overnight vision and rifles so we don't leave them behind I'm watching like a boot marine take a pickaxe and go into a helicopter and just start destroying the helicopter and uh yeah like a black hawk or a little bird and as like a an an aspiring helicopter pilots that would love to buy a helicopter.

[656] I'm like watching them destroy Sikorski.

[657] I'm like, you know, like, destroy me. And like, this has happened all around us as, you know, bombs going off and, you know, you hear gunfire and things are burning.

[658] We're starting to destroy all of our sensitive documents and we're just collapsing down this base.

[659] I get on the, we pack a C -17 full of people, C -17 wrapped closes.

[660] I have to get on a military C -17 because my, plane out, which was a private jet that we had set up as our emergency evacuation, it crash lands in Pakistan as it's flying into Afghanistan.

[661] It has an engine go out so it has to do an emergency crash landing into Pakistan.

[662] And now I'm sitting here in Afghanistan like do -to -do.

[663] I don't know how I'm getting out.

[664] Oh, God.

[665] I have no idea.

[666] And so fortunately the military's amazing, you know, and they took care of us.

[667] And so they flew the four of us volunteers where I'm not there in any military capacity I'm fully there as a civilian working for an NGO an approved government an approved government nonprofit so with authorities all the way up and down and I get on this military C -17 and the ramp closes and as that like last little bit of Afghanistan light finally leaves my vision I turn around and I see these four 400 people sitting on the floor of a C -17 they've never been an aircraft before they've never left Afghanistan before that vast majority of them and you know I'm thinking about all the people that we left it behind and the way that you leave a combat zone is way different than the way that we take off from like an airport like this nice gradual slope the way military planes take off or land it is like full power straight up and they start doing like these maneuvers to make sure that they don't get shot out of the sky.

[668] So all of these people on this plane are freaking out.

[669] And the old women who are exhausted and dehydrated, they start passing out.

[670] And just so people get to understand who these people are that we're bringing out, I'm like, hey, I need a doctor.

[671] Is there a doctor in here?

[672] Like 17 people stand up.

[673] You know, all, all, some Americans, some Afghan doctors, there was like an orthopedic surgeon.

[674] There's a vascular surgeon.

[675] And so like they all just come in and that's who's on these planes.

[676] These aren't just, I know it's really easy to like, oh, they're these brown people from the Middle East.

[677] That is so racist and wrong.

[678] Like these are amazing humans that are educated and they speak English.

[679] They just happen to be trapped in Afghanistan.

[680] They just have to be born and then trapped in Afghanistan.

[681] And then the plane lands and we're figuring out what to do with all these people and like, hey, we already have a place to move this next group.

[682] so I got a couple hours of sleep I got a little bite of food and then I hopped on another plane to bring these these people into Albania and I take them to Albania and there's this beautiful resort on the water that that Mr. Soros Jr. had financed and when I get there these kids are out in the grass and they're playing and they're drawing and they're giggling and they're laughing and it was just my brain couldn't compute like that.

[683] These people were just, I just brought these people out of Afghanistan.

[684] It was just really, really cool, the resilience, like how beautiful of a species we are.

[685] They had mental health teachers there that were already, like, present for these children to start working through this experience they just had.

[686] Pretty rad.

[687] Fuck.

[688] Heavy.

[689] What was the, when, when they decided to pull out, what was the strategy?

[690] in terms of like getting people out.

[691] Did they have any?

[692] No. So it was just like figure it out on your own, we're gonna leave.

[693] And all the people that worked as translators, all the people that worked as our allies, they just left them.

[694] Yeah, but wanna swear they, good luck.

[695] Now, how would they ever expect anyone to cooperate with us ever again?

[696] Yeah.

[697] I don't know.

[698] Or what kind of message that sends our current allies?

[699] Yeah.

[700] You know, if you're...

[701] And just to the rest of the world.

[702] Yeah.

[703] Like, what are we?

[704] I think Afghanistan was a contributor to Putin's enthusiasm to go into Ukraine.

[705] He's like, what are they going to do?

[706] They're not going to do anything.

[707] In one of the military bases, the two kind of big ones were Kandahar and Bogram.

[708] I think it was Bogram.

[709] The general, the Afghan general that ran Bogram base, American forces in the dead of night loaded all of their people and the stuff that they could carry into the planes that they had left the base he woke up to an empty base with Taliban just driving onto the most strategic piece of land in the whole entire country and the Taliban just like walk into the arms room open the door and start grabbing ARs off the racks that the military just left there night vision PVS 31's you know Taliban Man, it's like, whew.

[710] Jesus Christ.

[711] Yeah.

[712] Inferiting.

[713] Yeah, like, what was the price tag on the amount of stuff that was left behind?

[714] It's some preposterous number.

[715] It's like 40, 70 billion?

[716] I don't know.

[717] That is a really Googlable number.

[718] Is that a verb now?

[719] Googlable?

[720] Yeah, Googleable?

[721] Should be.

[722] Like it is.

[723] Yeah.

[724] If you Google, that's a verb, right?

[725] Yeah.

[726] I Googled it.

[727] I Googled it.

[728] Yeah.

[729] Tens of billions of dollars.

[730] I don't remember the exact number, but it's wild.

[731] And is anyone accountable for this?

[732] Does anybody apologize?

[733] Like, how does this work?

[734] Does anybody say we fucked up?

[735] We could have done this better?

[736] I mean, that's all on the public relations department of the government to do.

[737] On the voter side, like the only way that you affect change is by voting.

[738] So the consequence to bad policy.

[739] is the people choosing people that enact different policies.

[740] The problem is we're so tribalized.

[741] We're so polarized in this country that there's people that will vote Democrat no matter what.

[742] That's wild to me. So I am a radical centrist.

[743] You know, like I look at these two fringe sides and I like, bro, you're crazy on the far right, right?

[744] They're like look on the far left.

[745] I'm like, ooh, bro, you're crazy.

[746] And I'm just like in the middle being like, oh, who here thinks that Afghanistan down as a wreck.

[747] A bunch of people raise their hands.

[748] Okay, cool.

[749] Who thinks that we should enact legislation to protect schools and spend money to be able to harden our schools and address mental health?

[750] And like, everybody raises our hand.

[751] Not a single hand to stay down, right?

[752] And then you're like, who thinks that it's a great plan for Russia to be able to take a land that leads up to NATO countries?

[753] You know, loving NATO or like Ukraine, don't like Ukraine think they're corrupt, any of it.

[754] Like everybody has to be like, yeah, I don't want communism at my door.

[755] And then you go, well, who thinks there's a problem with immigration right now?

[756] And, uh, I mean, obviously in Texas, every Texan is going to be like, bro, there's a crazy problem.

[757] Like everybody generally is like, yeah, I think the immigration system's broken.

[758] Let's figure out how to fix it.

[759] Even if you're like, no, build the wall or no, let them all in, everybody still agrees that there's a problem with immigration.

[760] We have to fix it.

[761] So in the middle here are just a bunch of people with a lot of, issues that we all agree need to be fixed, and then I guess we can't have a conversation because we are so divided about what the best solution is.

[762] I think there's a giant percentage of us that are in the middle, but there's enough people that are so crazy on either side that you choose to say that crazy, I just can't tolerate, so I'm going to join in with this crazy.

[763] You know, like I'm going to, I'm going to side with Antifa because I think the proud boys are gross.

[764] You know, it's like, that kind of a thing.

[765] That's what people tend to do.

[766] They just, they tend to decide to side with one of the tribes, even though they probably have a conglomerate or conglomeration of ideas that they've adopted from sort of both.

[767] Maybe economically they're more conservative, but socially they're more liberal.

[768] It's like most people are kind of in the middle.

[769] And this is, I think one of the things that happened during COVID is that people are sort of alarmed by the way some of the governments handled things, particularly the way Canada handled things, the way some of the states handled things.

[770] And it made people lean towards whatever side was going to impose less restrictions on them and respect freedom more.

[771] Florida grew.

[772] Florida, Texas grew.

[773] Yeah, Arizona grew.

[774] Places, Nevada grew.

[775] People got the fuck out of California because they're like, I don't like where this is going.

[776] Yeah.

[777] And I need to be someplace where I feel like I'm not going to be restricted in my actions by a government that really doesn't have a good idea on how to protect me anyway.

[778] And they want to infantilize me in some sort of a way.

[779] Yeah.

[780] I just released this documentary called No Help Us Coming.

[781] And it addresses that specifically.

[782] You know, they're like, it's all up to you.

[783] You know, as Trudeau and Gavin Newsom just landed in California and had a thing last week.

[784] And there's like pictures of them together and you're looking at like the Dercro.

[785] level legislation that is happening in Canada and California similarly and then the number of people that are just running for their lives.

[786] Yeah.

[787] To get away from those types.

[788] And you look at Australia and you're like, that is Australia?

[789] They had concentration camps in Australia.

[790] You know, like, is this real?

[791] Is this 2022?

[792] I guess it is.

[793] Well, they were quarantine camps.

[794] Quarantine camps.

[795] And they concentrated people there.

[796] Yeah.

[797] But they weren't concentrated.

[798] camps.

[799] But they're just quarantine camps.

[800] And even if you've had COVID and gotten over it, and even if you don't have it mildly, you have to be in a camp.

[801] Even though it's a respiratory disease and there's no history ever of being able to control a respiratory disease, anything that spreads the way COVID spread, particularly that one, which is one of the most contagious diseases we've ever experienced.

[802] Especially Omicron, so fucking contagious.

[803] Like, good, you're not containing that.

[804] No. I just really like freedom.

[805] I think it's super important, and I've always thought it was important, but I realize how important it is once I've moved to Texas, because it's not just that Texas gave you more freedom.

[806] It changed the way people behaved during the pandemic, as opposed to California where people are still afraid.

[807] They're still terrified.

[808] They're traumatized.

[809] They're not healthy.

[810] No. There was a level of anxiety that existed already there.

[811] I mean, there's so many people in California that are on anti -duty.

[812] depressants and anti -anxiety medication and they're freaking out already and they're not doing jack shit with their body there's sedentary lifestyle and they're seeking to mitigate some of the problems that come with that with pharmaceutical drugs and then a pandemic hits so they've got psychological issues they've got cultural issues they've got an issue with the way they view government and the way they view the government particularly in california that they almost want them to take care of everything they want them to hold their hand and then you come here and There's none of that.

[813] No. And that's what I loved.

[814] I'm like, we're in.

[815] Yeah.

[816] Fuck it.

[817] I mean, dude, I came out here two fucking years ago now.

[818] It's been two years.

[819] You came to the right moment, man. I did.

[820] You dodged a bullet.

[821] Well, I saw it coming, man. I'm one of those, I smell smoke.

[822] Let's get the fuck out of here.

[823] I'm that guy.

[824] Because I have a lot of faith in some people.

[825] You know, I have almost no faith in most people.

[826] And I saw it was falling apart there.

[827] And I saw the paranoia and the anxiety was ramping up.

[828] and I had known so many people that had already had COVID by that point and gotten over it and I resented this idea that I'm supposed to think about it the same way that someone who's 90 and obese is supposed to think about it.

[829] Like it's a death sentence.

[830] I'm like, I'm not thinking about it that way.

[831] I'm thinking about it's I don't want to get it but this is not going to kill me like I'm 99 % sure I could fucking skate through this in a healthy way if I, you know, use the right medication and take care of myself and Why am I being locked out of the restaurants?

[832] Why can't...

[833] Why am I being locked out of the gym?

[834] Can't go to the gym.

[835] Yeah, you can't...

[836] I mean...

[837] The one thing that will save your life.

[838] Even gyms outside, you were supposed to wear a mask.

[839] Like, where...

[840] You...

[841] I need to see some fucking mask data.

[842] Because these guys have bandanas on.

[843] I mean, I just...

[844] I smell farts.

[845] I don't think this is working.

[846] Yeah.

[847] Data is a weird...

[848] Especially around mental health right now.

[849] Yeah.

[850] Trying to learn about, um, suicide and depression and anxiety and the type of prescriptions that are being prescribed post and during COVID, the things that I'm seeing in the world right now are very, very scary because people are not, both physically and emotionally healthy.

[851] Like, we're in a really dangerous moment where we either turn a corner and start making good decisions about being individually responsible about our health and mental and physical health, or I think we're going to have some really serious repercussions You know, we're seeing it already, like the insane rise of suicide and substance abuse.

[852] And it's frightening.

[853] I mean, the veteran community right now, they're not even reporting the data of veteran suicides and active duty suicides because they are so high and they don't want people to know about them.

[854] You know about this?

[855] How high is it?

[856] So 18 to 35 -year -olds are the most vulnerable population that are just coming back from a deployment for suicide.

[857] And they have seen an 80 % increase, 80, I think it was like 86 % increase in suicides in that group of people coming back from combat.

[858] And what do they attribute that to?

[859] Every coping mechanism that should exist for a healthy human, right?

[860] Like, I get good sleep.

[861] I exercise.

[862] I don't drink.

[863] I don't do drugs.

[864] I have sex with my wife.

[865] You know, I have great friends.

[866] I have an amazing family.

[867] These are all healthy coping mechanisms that are in place for like a healthy, well -adjusted person.

[868] They're coming back.

[869] You know, they haven't seen their wife.

[870] They've seen a whole bunch of stuff.

[871] They can't go outside an exercise, you know, two years of containment where gyms are closed.

[872] You know, they can't even go on the gym on base for like the past year and a half.

[873] Crazy.

[874] Crazy.

[875] Well, I mean, not only is it crazy, but then you're breeding crazy by creating an environment that breeds crazy.

[876] Yeah.

[877] And then we know what the byproduct is.

[878] Like this is unprecedented mental health problems within the veteran community.

[879] So, you know, if on on Instagram, like, I'm posting all, hey, here's the suicide hotline number.

[880] You know, like here are ways to seek help.

[881] You know, find a friend.

[882] I just two days ago in Washington, D .C., we did a ruck around the mall in Washington, D .C. I did a post.

[883] I said, hey, come out for mental health.

[884] We need a hundred people just show up to go for a walk with, you know, 40 pounds on their backs.

[885] And I'm not trying to kill them all in a good healthy way.

[886] So they couldn't kill themselves, you know.

[887] And all of those things like community and sweat and friendship and laughing, like those are all really great things for humans to experience.

[888] And none of that has happened for the past couple of years.

[889] Yeah.

[890] And heaven forbid we talk about it.

[891] Yeah.

[892] It's the unthought of consequences.

[893] of the way they enacted measures to supposedly protect us.

[894] And that thing that you just said that's very important is the amount of overdose deaths and the amount of suicides, how much it ramped up.

[895] And in many places, per age group, it far surpassed the people that were dying from COVID.

[896] Yeah.

[897] Especially with young people that aren't as susceptible to COVID but were just as susceptible to suicide.

[898] More susceptible than young people.

[899] Yeah.

[900] You know, the...

[901] Startling statistics.

[902] By 2030, 23 times more people will die of veterans and soldiers will die of suicide than died in the whole entire combat time of the past 20 years.

[903] Oh, my God.

[904] 23.

[905] Oh, my God.

[906] Oh, my God.

[907] Jesus Christ, that's so crazy.

[908] So we, I'm just preaching the gospel, go outside an exercise, go find a friend, you know.

[909] Yeah.

[910] There's nothing wrong with calling.

[911] And then we then I mean then the legislation people like oh well maybe we enact some red flag gun laws to protect these people like no no what you're going to do is not you're going to prevent them from going and seeking help because they're going to be scared that you there's no there's not going to be any due process to get them off this list once you get them on this list.

[912] Right.

[913] And then you'll take their stuff.

[914] They'll never never get it back now they're not going to do it.

[915] So whatever thought they might have had about going to getting some help now they're not going to do it.

[916] Now they're not going to do it.

[917] it.

[918] So great.

[919] Like, you just made the problem worse.

[920] Well, there's also the real issue, the very real issue, that someone could turn you in when it's not justified.

[921] Well, I got a bunch of haters.

[922] Yeah, I'm sure.

[923] You know, I think I'm a pretty healthy person, but there's no doubt that they'd be like, just, just to piss him off, like, 1 -800 be a snitch.

[924] I've looked into your Instagram comments before.

[925] Oh, they're wild.

[926] Why would you do that?

[927] I don't read my own, but I'll occasionally read my friends and if it's you I mean like if you post something controversial I'm like let's do with the craziest I'll oh Jesus right I'll read into I'm like what the fuck man and I'll click on the links and a lot of times it's not even a real person it's like no posts blocked account you you know you can't you can't look at their photos there's probably no photos yeah a bunch of our so Matt best Evan Hafer Jared Taylor Mike Glover calling on like all of those guys if you click on some of the people that are and there's about five or six hundred of these pages and there's somebody that has built this big huge infrastructure to target us and they are troll comments there's somebody writing in perfect English whether that's a Russian bot a China bot or an actual just crazy troll and they have they you know they have dedicated meme pages and you know saying outlandish wild things you know like yeah that Matt best is anti -2a or that you know Tim Kennedy hates freedom yeah they were saying that Evan was anti too I had to have him in here I was like oh like he's like what do I do about this I'm like please come on yeah let's talk about this this is so fucking insane your company's called black rifle coffee and they're trying to say your anti second amendment like what the fuck is going on in in that confirmation bias where you have this this kind of preconceived notion and then you go out and look for any anything that supports your wild ideas, you know, if I think the number 17 is my magical number, I can go out and I can find the number 17 on a freeway sign.

[928] Man, I knew it.

[929] You know, I knew that's my magic number, right?

[930] And then I'm driving down the road.

[931] I turn left into a residential area and I look down at my speedometer.

[932] Oh, I'm at 17.

[933] And so, like, you start getting this belief.

[934] And it is the most dangerous thing in confirmation bias, especially when it has crazy ideas, like anti -freedom ideas or like hating a specific person and you're looking for reasons not to like them it is dangerous for investigators on the law enforcement side like they we have specific measures for detectives to prevent them from using confirmation bias you know where I think I think you're guilty so I'm going to start looking for evidence that supports my belief that you are guilty Did you ever see the Amanda Knox trial on Netflix?

[935] No. There's a documentary on Amanda Knox and what happened to her in Italy.

[936] It's exactly that.

[937] Yeah.

[938] I had her on the podcast.

[939] She's an amazing person.

[940] She's so articulate and so smart and so resilient.

[941] And what's fascinating is one of the subjects we got into was I said, do you think you would, I would never wish this on anyone because it happened to her when she was 20 years old.

[942] She was falsely accused of murder.

[943] There's plenty of evidence that there was this guy from Africa.

[944] They know who he has.

[945] his DNAs all over the house, his blood's in the house.

[946] Like, he came into the house and he said he was in the house and said he got there when the guy was killing her and he ran away.

[947] Like the fucking story is so bad.

[948] It's so bad.

[949] And they still tried to pin it on her because that's who they initially supposed was doing it.

[950] There's zero evidence.

[951] Yeah.

[952] But they tried her twice, twice for this.

[953] But it's that kind of shitty detective work.

[954] that you're talking about avoiding because people are human and humans have egos and egos lead you to make decisions that aren't rational or justifiable but they support your initial assertion which if you say it turns out I was wrong now a sudden people go well you don't know what the fuck you're doing and nobody wants to do that yeah have to break somebody have enough inner development or interpersonal skills to acknowledge that they're wrong right like that doesn't happen anymore.

[955] Well, it's like the checks and balances just weren't in place for him to accuse her in the first place.

[956] The prosecutor that accused her in the first place, he was well off, he was all wrong, but this is what we're talking about that try to avoid.

[957] I love throwing darts at social media in that same confirmation vein.

[958] You know, when you curate your own feed and you're following a bunch of pages that it reaffirms those beliefs, and that's dangerous, where you're not getting any outs you know i follow people that i like way disagree with um so i can hear their ideas yeah so that make sure that my ideas like man that's a great point that she just made maybe i want to look into this and uh and then i take a little peek or i could be a psychopath and i could you know block all of those people that disagree with me and then only follow all the people that that agree with me and you know i'm getting weird articles but i'm like oh but that's an article that supports my what this crazy idea that i have yeah and uh that's not healthy yeah and and most people aren't very good at managing that stuff.

[959] They only just subscribe to or click on links that they're interested in, like that support their initial assertions.

[960] Yeah.

[961] That support their confirmation bias.

[962] And that's a giant problem with people because they don't get taught that.

[963] They don't get taught.

[964] They also, people think of ideas as if it's a part of them.

[965] And when you have an idea about something, you want that idea to be confirmed.

[966] You want that idea to turn out to be true.

[967] So you're like, ha ha, I won.

[968] I'm correct.

[969] But you can't attach yourself to ideas.

[970] You can't.

[971] And you've got to be willing to abandon them.

[972] You have to be.

[973] That inquisitive mind, you know, where I want, I'm going to always assume that I don't understand this thing and I want to know more about it regardless.

[974] We use jiu -jitsu.

[975] Like, I've been doing Jiu -Jitsu for forever.

[976] And, uh, and I feel right now like I'm re -learning all of Jiu -Jitsu because Jiu -Jitsu has evolved so fast in the past few years.

[977] And, you know, I'm going up to, like, uh, the Jean -Carlos and the Gordon Ryans and, and, you know, what is this thing that you just did?

[978] Like, uh, so I've been doing Jiu -Git -T for, you know, 30 years.

[979] What is this?

[980] This is neat.

[981] And that wild.

[982] It's so cool.

[983] And there's so many variables.

[984] Or, I, I, could go back to my own gym and, you know, be in the big fish in my super tiny little pond and, uh, never adapt or never grow or never learn anything new.

[985] And when you do that intellectually, where this is what I think and this is what I know, but I'm never going to subject myself to anything different.

[986] Like, how dangerous is that?

[987] It is very dangerous.

[988] But it's more common than not.

[989] It's more common for people to do that than it is for people to seek out new ways to learn and humble themselves with new information.

[990] And Jiu -Jitsu, it forces you to do that.

[991] You know, if you, well, I mean, it is really, really fascinating what the changes that have taken place in Jiu -Jitsu.

[992] Essentially, I mean, Jiu -Jitsu is always evolved, right?

[993] There's like the Tenth Planet system that used flexibility and the closed guard and rubber guard and it's really weird and interesting way.

[994] And then there's a lot of people that did that and they would try these moves out on people and they would have no idea what the fuck they're doing and they'd be tapping before they knew it was too late yeah they didn't understand and then the leg lock system came into place and when the leg lock system came into place like oh my god like i stopped training really hard somewhere around the time that the leg lock systems got put into place so i'm a baby when it comes to that in my i might be a black belt and jiu jutsu but like when i train with Gabe Tuttle and he explains to me that all the Ashi Garami positions and all the different ways to counter him.

[995] I'm like, holy shit.

[996] This is like starting from scratch almost.

[997] It's like, I understand how to do a heel hook.

[998] I get it.

[999] But just the subtle variations on how to defend and when you're safe and when you're not safe and how to set up two, three moves in advance because you're knowing that this person is going to try to get out of it by going this way.

[1000] So you're stopping this and then you're implementing that.

[1001] It's like, there's so much to learn.

[1002] And then John, Dan O 'Hur, he's sitting there, and he's like the wildest on this spectrum, brilliant nerd.

[1003] And he's like going through these steps.

[1004] And I'm on the mat, and I know I'm about to drill it.

[1005] But I want to run off the mat and go grab a video camera and record it so that I can, and then write it down so I'd have any chance of remembering all of the details that he put into it.

[1006] Right.

[1007] You know, and then I, Powell Brandau, who is, like, I'm a hoila Gracie Blackbelt.

[1008] And he's like, the Gracie Humida is here.

[1009] I have Gracia Midas Seed Park.

[1010] He owns Gracia Amida South.

[1011] And, like, I'll go back to him and, like, we'll be trying to drill these things together.

[1012] I'm actually useless, man. I don't even remember how to do this.

[1013] Why don't you get, like, a little tripod and put your iPhone on it and just, like, film...

[1014] I don't know, it's weird.

[1015] It's not a bad idea.

[1016] It's not.

[1017] I think one, my knee hills up, that's my move.

[1018] I think I need to, because, like, all the stuff that I worked with Gabe, I'm like, God, damn it.

[1019] I don't know if I could demonstrate half of it.

[1020] Yeah, Gordon and...

[1021] John both have like online tutorials that are really amazing.

[1022] Yeah, BJJ fanatics.

[1023] There's hundreds of hours of stuff.

[1024] Yeah.

[1025] And they're like so easily, easy to consume.

[1026] It's formatted well.

[1027] It's filmed well.

[1028] The audio's good.

[1029] Yeah.

[1030] It's very clear too.

[1031] They're very clear in the steps, the steps of progression.

[1032] And, you know, what the reasons for doing each individual step are.

[1033] Yeah.

[1034] They're great instructors.

[1035] Well, John is a cheat code, as Gordon Ryan puts it.

[1036] He's a, like, where do you find?

[1037] find one of those?

[1038] Where do you find a guy who is a professor of philosophy at Columbia University, a legit super genius who then falls in love with jujitsu to the point where he's sleeping on the maths and teaching classes all day long?

[1039] And coincidentally, he's injured.

[1040] So because he's injured, he can't compete himself.

[1041] So he pours all of his brilliance into other people because he's got an artificial hip and he needs an artificial knee and he's really fucked for playing rugby when he was younger.

[1042] Yeah, it's, um, he and I are going to be cornering Rory McDonald and, uh, in, the PFL.

[1043] Yep, on the PFL.

[1044] Where's that?

[1045] It's in Atlanta on July 1st.

[1046] And so getting Rory ready for this fight.

[1047] First of all, that guy's a monster.

[1048] Roy is awesome.

[1049] Rory is not just a great human.

[1050] I love him to death and his wife is beautiful and such a great woman.

[1051] Uh, but he, he has evolved as an, I've never, I mean, he's always, you remember the Robbie Lawler?

[1052] Mm -hmm.

[1053] Roy McDonald, one of the best fights.

[1054] How do you forget that fight?

[1055] Anybody who's never seen it, go and watch it.

[1056] Jesus Christ, that was a crazy fight.

[1057] The Glover fight that just happened.

[1058] Incredible.

[1059] Those two fights for me are like number one and number one.

[1060] Yeah, they're right there.

[1061] But Roy right now physically is a freak.

[1062] So I have to, I'll go in right here and get beat up by him at the 10th Planet Gym.

[1063] And then I'll step out and somebody else will go in with him.

[1064] And then John and I will be coaching him.

[1065] and getting the opportunity to coach a fighter with John also gives me a new layer kind of peeling back the way that his mind works and he is he is truly brilliant you know he's he's a great human he's a great coach in jiu jitsu but he's also a great fighter like he understands how all of it works and putting it together uh best spoke for a single person is is pretty neat Yeah, he knows, he also coaches people in striking, which is wild.

[1066] Like Gary Tonin, I was like, well, who's Gary's striking coach?

[1067] Like John's Gary's striking coach, too.

[1068] I'm like, what?

[1069] He, what?

[1070] But if anybody else, if you told me anybody else was doing it, I'm like, my God, man, go to a real striking coach.

[1071] But with Don Herr, I'm like, okay, all right, I bet he can do it.

[1072] Yeah.

[1073] I bet he, the fucking guy has no life outside of the gym.

[1074] This is what's crazy.

[1075] He'll teach all day long, and then he doesn't have a girlfriend.

[1076] friend.

[1077] He goes and watch fucking wrestling videos.

[1078] He's watching guys from Bulgaria wrestle.

[1079] He's watching you know people from Japan do Kyokishin.

[1080] He's just like constantly absorbing technique.

[1081] It's really wild.

[1082] My least favorite thing to hear from him is when I'm training with a person and that person that I'm training with does a great thing.

[1083] Um, John is like, hey, great job Gordon.

[1084] You know, like, Gordon Ryan, great sweep.

[1085] I'm like, I just got, I'm about to get smashed.

[1086] You know, I hate hearing it on the side of this voice.

[1087] He hated his voice.

[1088] Gordon Ryan put pressure on the left shoulder.

[1089] Yep.

[1090] And very rarely does he go, great, great job, Tim Kennedy.

[1091] Right.

[1092] That doesn't come out very often.

[1093] He just laughs at me. You have to earn that, I guess.

[1094] Yeah, I've heard he's got a lot of really interesting killers that people haven't seen yet.

[1095] I've invited you a couple of times just to sit there.

[1096] I can't.

[1097] I'll want to train.

[1098] As soon as this knee has gotten to the point where I'm comfortable that I can push it, I'm going to get back on the mask.

[1099] I do my conditioning in their morning class time, and we set up, like, our bikes and our rowers and our skiers so we can just by osmosis, watch technique as they're doing it.

[1100] So I'm, like, on the skier, just like this creep, just staring right at it.

[1101] I'm just like, I'm staring into your eyes as I'm just going.

[1102] My heart rates up in the yellow, you know, and they just laugh, you know.

[1103] It's like me and Shane and Sean Apperson.

[1104] I'm that old school approach where I do my boxing separate I do my Muay Thai separate I do my wrestling separate and I do my Jiu -Jitsu separate and then I do MMA where I try to put them all together but I try to develop each of those pieces as like a kind of a traditionalist Have you tried it other ways?

[1105] Yeah but you like this way you like to really concentrate Well because I really love I love like the sweet science of boxing and you know the footwork is different than when I do Muay Thai you know and there's there's part But then I get to go and paint my MMA pitcher and put it all together in my style.

[1106] But the, like, if I'm, for me getting better in Jiu -Jitsu, if I just did MMA, and I'm not, you know, no -gee and ghee slightly different techniques, the way I'm going to position my hip furor is going to be different.

[1107] I don't have the friction, you know, I don't have a belt to grab to prevent them from rolling forward.

[1108] Like, these are just slightly variations, different variations.

[1109] I like doing it really specific to each.

[1110] of the respective arts.

[1111] The only thing that I would think would be difficult to transition back and forth between the two would be moitai and boxing.

[1112] The moitai boxing thing, I think, would be difficult because the stances are different and the fear of leg kicks.

[1113] Like, you can't put, you can't go heavy on that front leg and move in when a guy could just sidestep and chop your calf.

[1114] Yeah.

[1115] If I want Lama Shako footwork and I'm only doing Muay Thai, but But that footwork is really, really useful in MMA, but I'm just doing MMA and Muay.

[1116] Like, I'm never going to get the good footwork that I need to be a good boxer.

[1117] Right.

[1118] And I'm not going to get the good head movement because the head movement in Muay Thai is way different than that in boxing, you know.

[1119] And I'm not going to learn how to put my shoulder in the right position to protect my chin where I can keep my lead hand low unless I do just boxing.

[1120] So if I want to take those very unique elements of boxing and then integrate it into my striking style, I do have to train that thing individually and then implement it into my style.

[1121] Yeah.

[1122] Well, it makes sense.

[1123] I mean, there's certainly subtleties to each individual thing that you can't learn if you incorporate everything together.

[1124] And you learn that when you see just combat jiu -jitsu.

[1125] Combat jiu -jitsu, which is a really interesting concept.

[1126] I mean, at the beginning, I was like, this sounds silly.

[1127] You're going to smack each other, but now I'm like, this is fucking great.

[1128] This is awesome.

[1129] It makes jiu -jitsu.

[1130] Well, first of all, there's a lot of things like when guys are in the 50 -50 or when they're diving on heel hooks and their face is right there and someone just smashed and guys are getting T -K -Oed.

[1131] You know, I watch quite a few T -KOs with just palm strikes to the face you're getting smashed from the top and you realize like, hey, you can't just grab legs.

[1132] You can't just grab legs when this guy has full use of his hands and he's standing over you.

[1133] You're realizing like what things are actually practical.

[1134] I mean, you and I are both old enough to remember the Pankrae's days.

[1135] Oh, yeah.

[1136] I had 30 fights.

[1137] in pancreas, half of which were knockouts.

[1138] Wow.

[1139] You know, like, I put people to sleep.

[1140] With palm strikes.

[1141] With palm strikes.

[1142] Yeah.

[1143] You know, the All Army Combatives Tournament, which is like this arduous hell of a tournament.

[1144] Three days, first days, grappling, second day is pancreas.

[1145] Third day is MMA.

[1146] And violent, violent pancreas fights with high -level fighters.

[1147] And guys can hit hard.

[1148] I just go back to Boss Routin.

[1149] Boss Routin was the best at it.

[1150] Because he had the most flexible wrists and he would pull his hand way back his jab would hurt oh my god his hook would smash guys like this like he was throwing punches like here's there's quite a few I mean look at this that's beautiful these are just slaps but this this shows you and by the way that's not even the most realistic use of that position the most realistic use of that position I go back to henzo Gracie when henzhou gracey fought there was a judo guy in one of those early like world Combat League, one of those early tournaments.

[1151] With this fucking guy, it might have been extreme fighting.

[1152] This guy apparently was fucking with Henzo and calling him up in the middle of the night and calling his hotel room.

[1153] So when Henzo got behind him, he took his back, he just elbowed the base of his brain.

[1154] That'll do it.

[1155] Boom!

[1156] Boom!

[1157] And that's the most effective use of the back mount.

[1158] But because it's illegal to hit someone in the back of the head, we don't see that.

[1159] I'm not sure why it's ill. legal to hit someone in the back of the head.

[1160] Because you get hit in the back of the head all the time.

[1161] Like if you get hit with a roundhouse kick, there's a high likelihood you're getting hit in the back of the head.

[1162] Because if you're standing sideways and you get neck kicked, guess where that fucking foot is landing?

[1163] It's the back of your goddamn head.

[1164] You get hit with a heel hood.

[1165] Here's Henzo.

[1166] So Henzo gets us to do it back.

[1167] And look at it.

[1168] Boom, boom, boom.

[1169] I mean, come the fuck on.

[1170] Yeah.

[1171] I mean, that is the most effective use of the backmount because he's using full...

[1172] Obviously he has a fantastic back mount too and he's using...

[1173] And the guy's tapping.

[1174] He's using...

[1175] And watch how he steps on him.

[1176] Watch how he steps on him when he gets off him.

[1177] Watch this.

[1178] Because the guy was a dick.

[1179] Get out of here.

[1180] He stepped on his neck.

[1181] And the referee's like, hey, you can't do that.

[1182] He's like, yeah, but I just did.

[1183] I teach...

[1184] I call it making soup where you take the back and in...

[1185] It's nice when we're in my gym.

[1186] You know, I have a judo subfloor, Fuji mats, I think there's 16 springs underneath every one of our floors.

[1187] Oh, that's great.

[1188] Yeah, like you're on an Olympic judo floor.

[1189] And, you know, padded walls, air conditioning, we got fans.

[1190] It's just the most conducive environment for it to be nice, safe training.

[1191] You and I step out into that parking lot, the whole world changes about what jujitsu should look like.

[1192] Right.

[1193] So making soup is when I take that back mount, you know, I just take their face and I push it into the ground.

[1194] You know, like I only need an inch for me to break his orbital socket in his nose on the concrete.

[1195] You know, and then, like, once those teeth and a little bit of, you know, the cerebral spinal fluid drips out of the nose, you know, and a little bit of the blood and gum and saliva, like, that all gets mixed in front of this guy's face before the darkness slowly closes in.

[1196] Like, that's the end of the fight.

[1197] Yeah, and concrete and with a back mount, it's, well, just fighting a judo guy.

[1198] Yeah.

[1199] Imagine that.

[1200] Wearing a winter coat, fighting a judo guy in the street.

[1201] Satoshi threw me, you know, Olympic gold medalist.

[1202] just threw me to the ground over and over and over again.

[1203] Dan O 'Hur, he's like, how beautiful, and I, because I was on the receiving end of it, he said, how beautiful is it for how affected it is that he can just take somebody and put them on the ground?

[1204] And I was like, yeah, it's really beautiful.

[1205] How are his submissions?

[1206] Not, definitely not his, I don't think he ever attacked one time.

[1207] Really, just control mostly?

[1208] Yeah, yeah.

[1209] And he had great control.

[1210] He was really hard to get out from under.

[1211] He's really strong.

[1212] He's this gigantic head.

[1213] Yeah, he's huge.

[1214] You know, and his hands are, you know, his grips are wild.

[1215] He's like 510, 260, right?

[1216] Yeah.

[1217] Yeah, he was hard.

[1218] Very Mark Hunt -esque.

[1219] Yep.

[1220] But it's so, such a sweet heart to train with.

[1221] He was great.

[1222] But being able to, you know, I can knock you out with my fist or my elbow or my shin or my knee.

[1223] But he takes the earth.

[1224] And he hits you with the earth.

[1225] Yeah.

[1226] Yeah, the Earth is big.

[1227] The Earth doesn't move when you hit it.

[1228] It's not like a heavy bag.

[1229] You're taking a stubborn, dumb object, me, and then you're taking a moving object like the Earth and, like, no thing to.

[1230] I've seen so many horrific street fights on Instagram and YouTube where a guy picks a guy up and slams him on the ground.

[1231] It's the worst.

[1232] It's the scariest thing, man, because you land head first on the ground like that.

[1233] When somebody hoist you up in the air, bam!

[1234] I mean, fuck.

[1235] It's...

[1236] We, back to leg locks in the ground, I was teaching a course in New York, a sheepdog response course.

[1237] And there was a couple black belts that were in the course.

[1238] And we're fighting for guns and knives, the rubber guns and knives.

[1239] And I'm in half guard, and I take, you know, he had the weapon, the gun in his arm, in his waistband.

[1240] And I kind of, he was covering it with his arm and I pulled it out in the back.

[1241] So I now have his gun.

[1242] And he like dives, he like dives underneath like he's going to go for a leg lock.

[1243] and why you have the gun oh i have the gun and i'm standing over him and i'm just like so i tap him as he's you know like i i'm good at leg locks and i'm just like moving my feet so he's not getting a finish but i'm like tapping his forehead with the gun and uh he still hadn't processed like as he's like having this piece of plastic kind of in the face and he like finally opens his eyes and the realization that i'm tapping him in the face with the gun that as he's diving for a leg lock, you know, how dangerous, you know, sports jiu -jitsu is to combat jiu -s.

[1244] That's why I love that combat jiu -sitsu.

[1245] It's adding a degree of realness.

[1246] Well, it's definitely opening up people's eyes that were just straight -up jiu -jitsu players that took a chance and didn't want to do MMA, but said, let me see what happens when you add slaps.

[1247] Yeah.

[1248] You know, but you see guys who excel at that, like guys like Wagner Rocha, who's, you know, a jiu -jitsu blackbell, but also an M .M .A. fighter.

[1249] And so he gets on top of guys.

[1250] and smashes them, just smashes them.

[1251] It's good.

[1252] Yeah, it's just like you, there's a lot of positions that aren't really effective unless you make this agreement where you're not gonna slap or strike.

[1253] It's the same thing with boxing, like people always say like boxing is a very effective martial art. Sure, if we make an agreement that I'm not going to pick you up and throw you on the ground, or if you make an agreement, I'm not going to kick your legs out from under you.

[1254] Yeah.

[1255] Yeah, it's like, as soon as you make an agreement with that, like, that's a, there's a great video on Glory Kickboxing's Instagram page of this dude, I forget his name, this Russian guy, like a real high -level guy who fought Badrari, fought a lot of guys, but he's fighting this boxer.

[1256] And it's a boxing versus Muay fight.

[1257] And it's hilarious to watch, because this is it.

[1258] Yeah, it's comical.

[1259] What is his name?

[1260] Does it say his name?

[1261] This dude, I've seen this guy fight multiple times.

[1262] four of those kicks, we're done.

[1263] I mean, it's, it's crazy.

[1264] Because the guy comes in trying to box, and he's just getting his legs destroyed.

[1265] He never gets a chance to set his feet.

[1266] And then he gets head kicked and then chopped out, and then this is the end of it.

[1267] He's like, eventually like, what the fuck, man?

[1268] And that guy's not walking for days, by the way.

[1269] Alexei Ignathev.

[1270] That's it, right.

[1271] Yeah, that's the dude.

[1272] And he's a fucking super technical guy who was, I think he actually has one decision win over Botter.

[1273] Harry, like back in the day.

[1274] But like super, super high level.

[1275] He kicks beautifully.

[1276] Oh, my God.

[1277] He's, he's excellent.

[1278] His downfall was the hooch.

[1279] I like to drink a little bit too much, partied.

[1280] Haley O 'Gracy, Hoyler told me as we're talking about jiu -jitsu evolving.

[1281] He said, my dad would say that if somebody can touch your face while you're doing jiu -jitsu, that you're doing Jiu -Jitsu wrong.

[1282] I'm like, dude.

[1283] That's brilliant.

[1284] Well, you've seen the Kevin Holland Jacques -A -Rae fight?

[1285] Yeah.

[1286] He knocks Jacari out from his back.

[1287] Yep.

[1288] He's on his back.

[1289] He punches him in the face and staggers him and then finishes him off.

[1290] Like, it's just like, yeah, guys can do that, man. You can't let a guy punch you in the face.

[1291] I think it was Eve Edwards told me that Dwayne Ludwig broke his eye socket from the guard.

[1292] Like, he's in Dwayne's guard and Dwayne broke his eye socket with a punch.

[1293] It's like, what the fuck, man?

[1294] Well, Dwayne, it hits hard from everywhere.

[1295] Yeah.

[1296] It was a perfect technique, you know.

[1297] It's like, but it's, there's, there's reality to MMA that you need to know if you're a jujitsu guy, because you have this distorted idea of what you can and can't do.

[1298] That's, I love having the, our jiu jihitsu gym, Gracie Humida, Cedar Park is in our sheepdog response building in Cedar Park.

[1299] So there, you're always reminded as like the, the, the special forces guy.

[1300] walking by you know is this like marine recon guys walking by is this Navy SEAL is walking by like they're all good level fighters MMA they also do jujitsu so when you're out there like you know Jean Collar Bedoni's and is teaching the evening class super talented black belt they're still like I'm walking by you know like 220 pound hairy handed dude with like chunked up hands and scar tissue around his eyes like don't don't forget where we are and what this is like this is this is real jiu jiu yeah you're learning a single aspect of fighting and that aspect doesn't work if you have a lot of other stuff in an important one yes I love you should yeah it was probably the most important I mean if you mean we look one of the things we learned from the early days of the UFC was in with all things considered if you only know one sport if you only know one art jujitsu is pretty fucking effect that it wasn't until everybody else learned jujitsu that jiu jitsu became a very important aspect of it, but not the primary aspect.

[1301] Remember the early days of the UFC?

[1302] All we thought about was Jiu -Jitsu.

[1303] Everybody was just scrambling to Jiu -Schools.

[1304] Law enforcement, if you're in law enforcement and you don't train Jiu -Jitsu, shame on you.

[1305] Like, period.

[1306] You have to go and learn it because it is a superpower.

[1307] And this is why I tell them, like, a trained person touching an untrained person, that untrained person has no choice over what I want to do with their body.

[1308] I can do anything I want to it.

[1309] You know, I can effortlessly put their hands behind their back and put them in cuffs.

[1310] You know, I can move them cautiously and graciously and kindly to the car as a trained person.

[1311] It is so powerful to have that control over somebody else that they're, and if you're in that protect and serve mode, it is your obligation.

[1312] It's your duty to know it.

[1313] Yeah, it's like having no gun.

[1314] It's almost like that.

[1315] It's almost like you're really helpless.

[1316] And I didn't, you know, when I first started doing jiu -jitsu, I had a very distorted idea of what my abilities would be.

[1317] And I think that that's a lot of people.

[1318] I think a lot of people like, oh, I'm a good athlete, I'm strong, I'll be fine.

[1319] And then you find someone who's your size who just fucking throws you around like a ragdoll and strangles you at will.

[1320] And you're like, oh, oh, shit.

[1321] Like, this is fucking different, you know.

[1322] But then there's also, like, the other thing, like I had a friend of mine who was a jujitsu blackbell who took an MMA fight.

[1323] and I knew he did he did no striking he was not a striker at all and I go hey man I go do you know the guy you're fighting and they're like no I don't know the guy I'm fighting I'm like what you can do to people with jiuitsu some people can do you striking like you're fucked like you're standing with that guy he's just gonna like Anderson silver or something like if you don't know there's there's people that you don't know they they might have only had one fight but they're fucking nasty They're really good.

[1324] They're just trained really hard and happened to have never competed or only competed a couple of times.

[1325] And you could run into that guy in a fight, and that's a terrible place to be, to be butt scooting towards some guy who's trying to literally separate the muscle from the fucking shin, you know, or separate your thigh meat with his shins.

[1326] Like, this is terrifying.

[1327] It's awesome.

[1328] You opened all of that with a guy that trains really hard.

[1329] That's the thing.

[1330] You train really hard Whatever it is your modality is If you don't do that thing hard You don't train that thing hard against a fully resistant opponent Then you're not going to be good But if you do Man, you're a force Yeah, you're a force And it's a beautiful thing to have Just that ability And it's a beautiful thing to practice just for fun Like you could practice archery And never want to shoot an animal Not only want to shoot a target You can practice jujitsu And never want to get into a fight but the beautiful thing is you have this talent now you have this ability even if you never use it if all you do is train that's fine but if the shit goes down your body knows what to do it's like instinctively if you lock up with someone you're going to look for an inside trip you're going to know what to do when you get to a side control position and you see there's an opportunity to mount them if they turn over you're going to take their back if their neck is there you're going to take the choke it's just going to be there you've done it so many times instead of having to think through things like I saw the UFC I'll do this like no no no no you're not going to be able to do that you have to train it but if you do train it you don't have to use it but if you need to use it it's fucking there that applies with all training you know whatever theater that we're traveling to Ukraine Afghanistan the military and special operations you know they train that skill set the basic fundamentals so much that you can take these guys and put them anywhere and they perform at such a high level it's because of the training you know it's because it is so rigorous it's so arduous you know it doesn't matter where they go they're still able to do whatever the mission is that's the argument that's like missing about the police is that the police don't train the way special operations trained but yet they're involved in combat scenarios on a regular basis yeah so what we're experiencing right now is a byproduct of what society is forced police to become.

[1331] You know, they're demonizing military training for law enforcement.

[1332] And then obviously we just experienced defund the police.

[1333] And, you know, nearly every large city has seen a crazy rise in crime.

[1334] And the ones that these large cities that defunded their police, to include Austin, you know, we've never seen homicides like this.

[1335] You know, get in the Chicago's and the Boston, you're just like, golly, this is so scary.

[1336] and how does it make any sense that I'm going to provide this group that I want to protect us with less training and less funding but then still want them to be a better product to be able to protect us and then the people that they're protecting I'm going to disarm so the people coming to save them are untrained and unprepared is it's creating this disastrous situation you know it's not like I I want to prevent rapes from happening, so me as a good person, I'm going to, like, chop my penis off.

[1337] Like, that's the dumbest argument you could ever make.

[1338] Like, that's not going to prevent rapes.

[1339] It is going to empowering people or preventing consequences for a rapist to try and rape somebody.

[1340] You know, it's not cutting the genitals off of every man. Right.

[1341] That's crazy.

[1342] So what do you think is the roadblock for, I mean, obviously what you're saying in terms of with law enforcement is it's common sense.

[1343] so why is it so hard to get something implemented like a rigorous training course i think it's ignorance i think the first thing is society culture right now we have been uh we've been emasculating the military the law enforcement for a while you know we want a kinder softer gentler you know and I get they're dealing with mental health and we can have specialists that can come in and deal with somebody having a mental health crisis but we still need men and women that will run towards the sound of gunfire and know what to do yeah and we don't right now we have we have been weakening them and we have been making them ill -equipped to respond to that And then I think Yuvalde is a great example of not properly trained with broken systems that are not ready to do the right thing.

[1344] And we will have more of that unless we get them the right training and we get our schools to become hard targets.

[1345] And then we go upstream to the origin, the genesis of these problems, which is mental health with the individual.

[1346] If we don't do those things, then it's never going to be fixed.

[1347] I think everybody agrees that the problem is a mental health problem ultimately because there's only one way you could ever do something like that.

[1348] You have to be mentally ill. So how does someone solve the mental health aspect of it?

[1349] I mean, what can be done?

[1350] I believe it is this, it is a large cultural shift.

[1351] You know, the nuclear family where, you know, mother and father are loving their child and trying to make that person be a healthy, adjusted human.

[1352] That has been demonized.

[1353] so with a broken family comes often a broken person um masculinity it's been attacked nonstop and you know we've we've demonized any any kind of of masculine attributes you know let's no it's let's in every way try to feminize men and that a feminine man is a is a dangerous thing um when it comes to violence yeah now on the spectrum of being a man. We have very feminine men and I love them and they're fine and I'll take care of them and that there's nothing wrong with that.

[1354] But a broken one is a dangerous thing.

[1355] Any broken thing, especially one that's capable of violence.

[1356] One that's capable of violence who feels like the world has abandoned them and they want to leave a mark.

[1357] Bowling, cyberbullying, social media, video games, movies, all of, when I say to a cultural shift, it has to be.

[1358] this large effort of all of us being like, okay, these are not things that are, they're healthy for us to have a healthy society.

[1359] But most people who play violent video games would never be violent.

[1360] For sure.

[1361] They're just kids who enjoy it or adults who enjoy it because they think it's fun.

[1362] Yeah.

[1363] And I want them to be able to still do that.

[1364] Yeah.

[1365] Me too.

[1366] I mean, I think of it the same way I think about gun control.

[1367] Like the vast majority of people would never use a gun in a mass shooting.

[1368] I don't think the solution is to punish everyone by eliminating the right and taking away your constitutional right.

[1369] I don't think that's the solution.

[1370] I think the solution is you have to figure out a way to prevent it from happening in these vulnerable places.

[1371] And did you hear it was a fucking shooting again yesterday?

[1372] They're at a kid's camp in Dallas and they killed the guy immediately.

[1373] Oh, I did.

[1374] Yeah.

[1375] Showed up at a fucking kids camp with 250 people and opened fire.

[1376] and the cops got to them quick.

[1377] Shoot out with the cops.

[1378] The cops killed them.

[1379] I mean, but you're not hearing about it because guns were used to prevent another mass shooting.

[1380] That's another very difficult group of data to find is the number of shootings that were prevented by somebody with a gun.

[1381] Yeah.

[1382] It's really, I mean, as somebody that runs a training company, I'm always looking for not just an anecdotal examples, but data for me to be like, okay, what was a good thing that happened?

[1383] what was a dangerous thing that happened in the AAR of I want to AAR every shooting like an after action review I want to look at the things that did right and the things that they did wrong I want to sustain the things that they did right and then I want to make sure that we address the things that did wrong so we in training have a better system and I and we're trying to do that with shootings and it pops up for a second like there was you know a shooting at this mall in San Antonio and somebody in the parking lot it was a the guy gets out of the car He's walking towards the mall and somebody spots him and ends up confronting him and was concealed carrying and stop this guy from doing this active shooter.

[1384] It was impossible to find any of the information about what happened.

[1385] And that's very commonplace about how difficult it is to find that type of data.

[1386] Well, Colleon was on the podcast a couple days ago.

[1387] I love that guy too.

[1388] And we broke down the numbers.

[1389] And when they talk about gun violence, it's staggering the amount of gun violence.

[1390] It's actually suicide.

[1391] He said it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 65%.

[1392] And then, you know, there's cops killing bad guys.

[1393] That's a certain percentage of it.

[1394] And then a giant chunk is gang violence.

[1395] Yeah.

[1396] And so when you get down to like what is actually happening with guns, like there's a lot of socioeconomic problems that are contributing to this.

[1397] There's a lot of cultural problems that contribute to it because you have these communities that have never been fixed.

[1398] They have the same issues that they've had for decades upon decades because they've been ignored.

[1399] And why we'll spend billions of dollars to help foreign countries, we don't spend a fucking nickel to try to fix all these really damaged and fucked up inner cities where people are growing up with this heightened sense of despair.

[1400] It never gets any better.

[1401] Everyone around you is either involved in crime or affected by crime.

[1402] There's drug dealing and violence and gang violence.

[1403] And this is your reality.

[1404] and the only way to get social cred is to become a shooter, to become somebody who's capable of doing the horrific things that you're seeing all around you.

[1405] And then if I'm looking for an argument for me to say how dangerous firearms are, I just automatically grab gun violence in its entirety and don't understand or break down.

[1406] I don't take that one extra minute to go a layer deep to understand what the real numbers look like.

[1407] But I'll just take those mass aggregates and be like, oh yeah look look at all this like no man like 65 % of that's suicide and a lot of this is gang violence a whole bunch of it is long for you like yeah it's lame it's a lame blanket yeah it's a lame blanket to throw over gun violence you know mass shootings are fucking horrific but you know what what's also considered mass shootings when they talk about the amount of mass shootings is when gangs get together and shoot at each other that's a mass shooting because there's more than one people shot and it's more you know it's just but the bottom line about all of it is we keep looking at one aspect of the problem, which is the amount of guns.

[1408] We're not looking at the mental health aspect of it.

[1409] You hear no legislation or no programs that are being implemented and put into place to try to reach out to people and help people that have been bullied, that are despair, that are filled with despair, and they don't have an out.

[1410] They feel like their life is over before it's even begun.

[1411] Yeah.

[1412] First, if you're out there, I love you.

[1413] Um, if you've been bullied, I'm sorry, but, uh, find, find one of us, because we'll, like, we'll talk to you.

[1414] Yeah.

[1415] Um, there's hope tomorrow's going to be better, but, uh, it's hard to believe that while it's happening to when you feel like your, your world is over.

[1416] I, I, like, personally experienced that, you know, like, I've had, um, I was in Marl Bay, California, took all my clothes off, um, and swam due west into the, into the ocean.

[1417] You know, I had a couple of women pregnant.

[1418] I thought I might have HIV.

[1419] um you know i lost like my pro fight um you know dark dark moment and swam mile two miles out into the fog and Jesus Christ yeah um tread in water in in this cold water and I'm in the fog now like I couldn't see the rock anymore I couldn't hear the waves anymore I have no idea which way the the coast is and I just had to sit there and tread water it was one of the scariest moments of my life and the coldness man I wanted to live so bad I never I wasn't thinking about killing myself you know like I just was so I just needed a moment you know I needed a baptism I need to be like like a phoenix rising from the ashes you swim a mile out at least yeah I mean I'm a good swimmer my dad was an Olympic level swimmer we grew up swimming at a yeah but ocean swimming's a motherfucker yeah especially in morrow bay if you know if you're south if you're on the north side of that rock the current from the south side of the rock through the breakers I mean it's some powerful current and um You know, I swam for about 45 minutes, so that, I mean, that's a mile and a half at least.

[1420] And so I'm in just treading water in the fog, butt -ass naked, and thank God, somebody saw me walk into the water.

[1421] And Moro Bay is like a retirement city.

[1422] And so I'm assuming, I'm just imagining, I never knew, I never knew who it was.

[1423] This old woman went and called the Coast Guard.

[1424] And the Coast Guard boat, this is one of the earliest chapters in my book is describing, like, this is kind of, not.

[1425] 9 -11 happened very shortly after that and woke me up as to I need to do something.

[1426] And this Coast Guard boat comes up and this captain has his like legs dangling off the side of the boat.

[1427] He's like, hey, what are you doing down there?

[1428] And like my arrogance as a young man, you're like our frontal lobe, not developed clearly at this moment.

[1429] I'm like, I'm swimming.

[1430] He's like, no shit.

[1431] Like even in that moment, I'm a sarcastic little prick.

[1432] And he's like, so what's going on?

[1433] So I give him like a summary A little executive summary of my life right now He's still in the water I'm still in the water He's just talking to me As I'm treading water And I give him the update And he's like man I was gonna offer You to get out of the drink But quite frankly I'd just stay down there I'm like oh my god What a dick right And it's like yeah But it's real cold And he like leans over And he's like I see that Like you are This is like just these mental punches Of me treading water I've been out here for 45 minutes, 53 degree water, in the fog.

[1434] You know, thank God he didn't run over me. And he's like, I'm going to only off for one time if you want to get out of that water.

[1435] I was like, I want to get out of the water.

[1436] So he throws down one of those cargo nets off the side of the boat.

[1437] My hands could barely work.

[1438] You know, like I clamber up the side of the boat with like little claw hands.

[1439] And he put one of those navy wool blankets.

[1440] They're green and it's just like pure wool.

[1441] And it felt like millions of little needles stabbing me in my back.

[1442] And it was like the most wonderful feeling, you know, so I sympathized that feeling of darkness, but I also have seen the other side of it.

[1443] And I, like, I wanted to live so bad and feeling all that pain all over my back.

[1444] Like, it was the most wonderful feeling to know I'm alive.

[1445] You know, I never.

[1446] And so I get what that darkness feels like, but I also know how beautiful life is after that.

[1447] Like, you could have died out there.

[1448] For sure.

[1449] Very easily.

[1450] Yeah.

[1451] Very easily.

[1452] Yeah.

[1453] And, and, And if you didn't get rescued by the Coast Guard and the fog didn't lift?

[1454] Yeah, I don't believe in God or whatever I do, but I know there's no way to describe why I'm not dead.

[1455] When you go through my life and you read moments like this, you're just like, this, this is not possible, you know, from Afghanistan, you know, just this last August to Ukraine, to combat tours, you know, getting blown up in Afghanistan and, you know, multi -dead.

[1456] day gunfights periods of time where I'm like crawling on the ground trying to find a magazine that has bullets in it because I've run out of bullets.

[1457] When you start going through this you're just like this is but moments moments like that you know God's pretty ride thanks man do you do you think you're fortunate or do you think that there's really like a plan out there for you?

[1458] Do you think that you are doing enough good work that somehow or another this is either predestined or you're just making the best out of it as it goes along and you decide that it's predestined like yeah I mean back to confirmation bias right like I can have my beliefs and I'm looking for examples that support that construct but I think objectively if you take a step back and you look into every religion you know and if we're looking at karma people that do good and you see good that comes back to them however that happens I now I believe that I know what I'm supposed to be doing here you know I'm supposed to be equipping and training people to be able to preserve and protect human life like I know that you're not just doing that you're also making people better humans and that I think is as much of a part of it as anything is that in doing that in training and equipping people to take care of themselves and to protect life and training people in martial arts you're making better humans.

[1459] They become better human.

[1460] Yeah.

[1461] Some people don't want to hear that because they don't want to do the work.

[1462] So they don't want to hear that that makes you a better human.

[1463] But guess what it does?

[1464] It does.

[1465] It does.

[1466] We're both examples of it.

[1467] We both have.

[1468] You're a really bad, horrible person for a while, you know?

[1469] You've talked about it many times.

[1470] And anybody that knows me, like, I carry a ton of shame and humiliation over periods of my life.

[1471] And when I talk to somebody that knew me back then, I'm like, oh, man. So, Every young man is just filled with ego and anger and, you know, you could go and take that anger and channel it in the worst ways possible and ruin a bunch of people's lives or you can find martial arts and become an inspiration and help a lot of people and become a better human being.

[1472] And that's what's happened to both of us.

[1473] And it's happened to countless people that we know.

[1474] Every fucking manly man that I know has had anger issues.

[1475] and has had ego issues and has all these things that we call toxic masculinity, all these things that befall so many men because there's a long history of men fighting in wars, protecting families, hunting and gathering and needing to have this ability to perform violence and this ability to be aggressive.

[1476] And with no channel of that, you can get off the fucking rails pretty easy.

[1477] Yeah, really easily.

[1478] Really?

[1479] But then you look at these, you know, these giant, you know, the Jocco Willinks, you know, and the Glover Texheras, there's not a nicer human than Glover.

[1480] Right.

[1481] You know, like the kindest sweet.

[1482] He and I trained together when he was a purple belt.

[1483] When he first came to the United States, first time that he had, you know, his crappy little visa and walked into the pit and was at slow kickboxing, just mopping the mats with all of us.

[1484] You know, I was at the time, we would have to drive from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara.

[1485] to train with the closest purple belt.

[1486] Wow.

[1487] You know, like...

[1488] So this has got to be like early 90s then, right?

[1489] Yep, mid -90s.

[1490] Glover was the boogeyman for like six years because he couldn't get into the United States.

[1491] For six years, he was the scariest guy in the 25 -pound division that wasn't in the UFC.

[1492] And I was always keeping an eye on him.

[1493] I was always like, when are we going to get Glover into the UFC?

[1494] And then he got into the UFC, and I don't know if Kyle Kingsbury was his first fight, but it was one of his first fights.

[1495] I was there for that.

[1496] And I watched him mall, Kyle.

[1497] Like, holy fuck, is this guy good?

[1498] Which goes to show you how goddamn good John Jones is.

[1499] Because John Jones was the first guy to shut him down inside the octagon.

[1500] I mean, John's the best to ever do it.

[1501] He's one of them.

[1502] You know, I mean, my goat list is pretty long because I don't think you could say there's one guy that's the best.

[1503] Because, like, Khabib never even got challenged.

[1504] I mean, it's hard to not.

[1505] I mean, Khabib didn't fight as many people as John.

[1506] did.

[1507] He didn't defend his title as many as John did.

[1508] But Khabib Michael Johnson was the only one to even crack him.

[1509] Michael Johnson tagged him one time and he beat the fuck out of Michael Johnson in that fight.

[1510] You remember when he's on top of him?

[1511] He's like telling him?

[1512] Yeah, you know I'm supposed to fight for a title.

[1513] You know I'm supposed to give up now.

[1514] I think he was talking.

[1515] Yeah.

[1516] It's like I'm going to hurt you.

[1517] Just stop.

[1518] And he's saying give up now.

[1519] And he got him into Camorra and I'm like, Jesus Christ, you fucking tap because it got so far back.

[1520] I'm waiting for that snap that we've all seen.

[1521] many times like the frank mirror no garrif oh oh the jacqueray one never arm never comes back that upper arm snap is fucking horrific man there's something about that one when they get the camora oh we uh i did it standing in combat to a guy that tried to grab some stuff off my kit and the camora is like the best technique to defend if somebody's trying to take stuff off of you like law enforcement it's one of the first techniques that they should learn about how to keep their weapon on them, right?

[1522] Lock the wrist, reach over, grab their own wrist, bring their wrist back behind their head.

[1523] And in like a snap, I break literally every bone in his whole entire arm and dislocate his shoulder and his collarbone snaps as his face hits the wall and it breaks all the bones in his face.

[1524] You know, and, you know, I have grenades and flashbangs and knives and a gun all on my body armor.

[1525] So you can't take that stuff.

[1526] But like it was that fast.

[1527] His whole arm he'll never use again.

[1528] It's wild.

[1529] Yeah, it's such an effective.

[1530] Yeah, it's horrific.

[1531] When Frank Meir did it to Nogera, I'll never forget that.

[1532] When you know it and it goes over, just, and he just like, Nogarra's, like, laying there, like, looking at his arm and.

[1533] Heartbreaking.

[1534] Yeah.

[1535] I don't want to.

[1536] I'm never going to experience that.

[1537] I'm going to tap way early.

[1538] Yeah.

[1539] Oh, don't.

[1540] There is.

[1541] What are you doing to us?

[1542] Jamie.

[1543] Oh, man. That's not even the worst one.

[1544] Frank Mears broken a few arms The worst one, in my opinion, was the Tim Sylvia one when he snapped his forearm Because he bends his forearm backwards Here it is.

[1545] He was kind of on the Frank Yeah So Frank gets on top And when Frank gets on top This is the arm Is that right arm Yeah, get ready He had great Like submission power You know you have There it is.

[1546] He's got it.

[1547] So Nogera, in trying to advance position, he left that arm out there.

[1548] Here comes.

[1549] No. Here comes.

[1550] And as he rolls them over twice.

[1551] That's right.

[1552] It's right here.

[1553] I'm like flexing my whole body.

[1554] Snap!

[1555] I can't breathe.

[1556] That's not comfortable.

[1557] That's horrific.

[1558] That made my palm sweat.

[1559] Yeah, that arm's never the same again.

[1560] It's never going to be the same again.

[1561] And Nogera is so nice.

[1562] Yeah.

[1563] He's such a gem.

[1564] He's such a gem.

[1565] But that arm has a giant scar.

[1566] Forever.

[1567] Like a fish getting gutted.

[1568] You have never broken a bone.

[1569] Really?

[1570] No. Not even a hand?

[1571] Nope.

[1572] Wow.

[1573] That's crazy.

[1574] How's that possible?

[1575] I don't know if it's like John Hackleman, old school.

[1576] You know, we'd hit boards sometimes.

[1577] You know, we'd hit bags without gloves sometimes.

[1578] I know boxing coaches right now like, don't listen to Tim.

[1579] You know, keep your gloves and wraps on.

[1580] But like...

[1581] There's something to that.

[1582] There is something to that.

[1583] I've never broken my hand in any way.

[1584] That's crazy.

[1585] Do you ever use makiwara?

[1586] Yeah.

[1587] That, I mean, there's something real about that for sure.

[1588] I mean, you see the giant caluses that people build up on their knuckles.

[1589] I mean, that's got up.

[1590] And the early martial arts, you know, I had Chodokon Karate in there.

[1591] I had, you know, Japanese jiu -jitsu, I had taekwondo.

[1592] So there was like lots of form, strikes, boards, and all those things just developed.

[1593] We're amazing that you've never broken any.

[1594] My early fights, I wouldn't wrap.

[1595] Really?

[1596] Yeah.

[1597] Just put the gloves over?

[1598] I just put the gloves on.

[1599] And, you know, I probably had 20 or 30 fights, you know, on Indian reservations, kind of pre -real sanctioning.

[1600] Yeah.

[1601] Before states were allowing MMA.

[1602] What was the logic that there's less padding?

[1603] No, I like to feel and grip and grab.

[1604] You know, I didn't have like the Winkle Johns and the Gibsons to wrap my hands perfect like they do now.

[1605] You know, like early fighting.

[1606] We would literally use like.

[1607] boxing wraps and then tape our hands.

[1608] I didn't know, we didn't know any better.

[1609] So I would just be like, I don't, I can't grab like this, you know, and I definitely can't punch like this, so I'd rather wear, you know, have big hands, I'd rather wear like a medium -sized glove that I just have to force my hand in.

[1610] I'm wearing a smaller glove, so my hand can get into different angles, and I definitely can grab a lot easier.

[1611] Yeah.

[1612] It's like I just liked it.

[1613] Have you ever thought of the argument that we should have no gloves?

[1614] Yeah.

[1615] Because I kind of, I'm with that.

[1616] up until I saw the bare knuckle boxing and people's faces get destroyed.

[1617] I'm like, God damn.

[1618] Like, when you see Chris Lieben?

[1619] Do you see Chris Lieben's face after one of his fights?

[1620] It looks like you got an attack with a hatchet.

[1621] Even like Chad Mendez, you know, his, he dominated that whole entire fight.

[1622] You know, he comes out, he had a couple of cuts, you know, and he's swollen up.

[1623] But I love it.

[1624] And I love...

[1625] It's just weird that you can kick someone in the face with your shins.

[1626] You can elbow someone in the face with your elbows.

[1627] no covering or protection at all.

[1628] Those things are both much harder than your hands.

[1629] You could kick things pretty fucking hard with your shin or you could never hit them like that.

[1630] Like just think of like shin on shin contact when people crack shins together.

[1631] It's horrible.

[1632] But if you hit your hand on a shin like that, it's probably going to break.

[1633] Yeah.

[1634] So why is it that you can protect your hands with a wrap and it's like it gives you an unrealistic expectation of what the hands are capable of doing?

[1635] Yeah.

[1636] I think it because it prolongs action.

[1637] I guess You get more violence You get more punchy punchy I guess It's just like there's some things That are unrealistic Yeah Like I do One thing I do like And it's very controversial But I like one FC's policy Of strikes on the ground You can need a head on the ground I love it my favorite My favorite Jason Mayhem Miller We had two fights against each other The first one We were allowed to Like pride rules You know soccer kicks Knees to the head Where was that in?

[1638] What organization?

[1639] It was ECC Elite Cage Fighting Championship, wild eight -man tournament.

[1640] We had Dennis Kang, Jason Maham Miller, Ryan...

[1641] Dennis Kang was a bad motherfucker.

[1642] He was a bad.

[1643] People forgot about him.

[1644] Oh, I did not.

[1645] For a long time, he was a bad motherfucker.

[1646] He was so good.

[1647] He was never quite made it to that championship level, but there were some years where Dennis Kang was a fucking straight -up killer.

[1648] Yes, he was.

[1649] And in that eight -man tournament, he's a killer.

[1650] that fight mop the mat with Jason Mayhem Miller I just crushed him on the ground knees to the head soccer kicks to the head he's trying to fight off his back and I'm just like eating his legs up he shoots a crappy shot you know a little snap down I'm a north south as he's belly down just dropping knees to the sides of it top of his head one fight you know then fast forward two years I think we're the same person slightly different rule set and it's it's proper MMA and you know I lose a split decision but you see us in almost the exact same positions with the same but I just wasn't allowed to do damage in half the positions is we it's it's weird to like what's like what you're talking about with the the combatives training that like like if I can tap you in the head with a gun that's not good right and if you're in a position where I could knee you in the head I feel like that should be implemented I feel like this we're getting an unrealistic idea of what's possible in these positions I got to put a my hand on the ground.

[1651] Oh, you can't touch me. Did you see Mighty Mouse's fight where he got caoed with the knee to the ground in one FC?

[1652] I think one FC has a better rule set in that regard.

[1653] I do too.

[1654] But I also don't like cages.

[1655] I think they should fight in a large open area because there's a thing about a cage that allows you to get back up to your feet.

[1656] It also allows you to take guys down.

[1657] I think much more realistic is like if you can have a basketball game and you can have it on this big ass fucking basketball court, why can't you have two guys stand in the middle of that big ass basketball court, mat that fucker up, everybody gets a clear view.

[1658] Yeah, as a...

[1659] I was undefeated in the smaller cage.

[1660] So anytime I...

[1661] We can't get away.

[1662] I know.

[1663] You know, like, I would chase, you know, like Luke Rockhold.

[1664] You watch that fight, we're on the big cage, and I'm chasing him around the whole entire fight, and he's just like peppering me with good footwork and outside strikes, you know, and then we get to the little cage with Melvin Menhoff and Robbie Lawler.

[1665] Both of those fights were in little cages, and you watch how that fight went down.

[1666] You know, like I just, like a pit bull on top of them.

[1667] And I just mold them.

[1668] And totally different.

[1669] Like, you give Robbie an extra five feet of circumference.

[1670] Like, that dude's going to be blasting me from the outside in that Southpaw with that nasty cross the whole entire.

[1671] No, thank you.

[1672] Yeah.

[1673] Yeah.

[1674] It's crazy.

[1675] Like, people forget that you had this long career in, like, so many.

[1676] You fought in so many organizations before you got to the UFC.

[1677] Well, I was running from the UFC.

[1678] You're running from.

[1679] them?

[1680] Yeah.

[1681] In what way?

[1682] I was making so much more money.

[1683] Oh.

[1684] Not fighting for, my first fight in the UFC, I made half the money that I made in my fight, uh, the one fight before that.

[1685] Really?

[1686] Yeah.

[1687] Half.

[1688] Wow.

[1689] Yeah.

[1690] And zero sponsor money.

[1691] And, you know, like peak, by the time, you came in, was, was Reebok already in place?

[1692] Were the no sponsor money?

[1693] No sponsor money.

[1694] That, that thing.

[1695] Yeah.

[1696] Hodger Gracie was.

[1697] my first fight in the UFC.

[1698] I had one fight.

[1699] Was Hodger in the UFC or was that in Strike Force?

[1700] No, Hodger was my first fight in the UFC.

[1701] I forgot Hodger fought in the UFC.

[1702] Wow.

[1703] Super scary moment when I shot a crappy single leg and he took my back.

[1704] I had Hodger Gracie on my back.

[1705] This is not according to plan.

[1706] Like Greg Jackson's like, you're dumb, Tim.

[1707] You're so dumb.

[1708] Why did you do that?

[1709] You were not supposed to do this.

[1710] How did you wind up with Jackson's?

[1711] It's like what led you to be over there?

[1712] I mean, I was really torn between going with Bob Cook and AKA or going to Jackson.

[1713] It was, you know, I think it was when I lost to Jacare.

[1714] It was a really close fight.

[1715] I really thought I won.

[1716] I won on every measurable matrix, but I had big swan closed eye.

[1717] And Greg was there.

[1718] And Greg was like, you know, you really missed real key moments in preparation and kind of how you executed your game plan.

[1719] And I was like, yeah, you're not wrong.

[1720] You know, he's like, you need to be in a real fight camp.

[1721] You know, like I can help introductions.

[1722] You know, I can literally connect you with American Top Team.

[1723] I was friends with Bob Cook.

[1724] And I thought about going to California.

[1725] But I had so much baggage and bad decisions from when I lived in California that I thought it would be a bad idea for me to go back there.

[1726] So I was looking for the real professional big fight camp.

[1727] And Jackson and I have just really.

[1728] Similar to Dan O 'Hournell, like, I just really appreciate that intellectual approach to martial arts.

[1729] And, you know, it wasn't just fighting.

[1730] It wasn't, you know, sweat and staff on the mat.

[1731] It was like, hey, let's take a moment and think about what we're doing here as a martial artist.

[1732] So that just really jived with me. Thank God for those camps.

[1733] You know, thank God for people like Dan Lambert, dump a ton of money into a place like American top team.

[1734] I think it's like, where would the sport be if it wasn't for those outliers?

[1735] Those people who decide, I mean, I don't know what kind of fucking headaches are involved in running something like Jackson Winklejohn, but it must be nuts.

[1736] It must be nuts.

[1737] You're dealing with a hundred savages.

[1738] You got Russians coming in here and, you know, guys coming in that are kickboxers and guys coming in that are wrestlers and everyone's beating a shit out of each other.

[1739] And you're trying to see what cream is going to rise to the top.

[1740] I don't want to do it.

[1741] Fuck that.

[1742] No, my jiu -jitsu gym is, like, proper, traditional.

[1743] like everybody wears white geese except you got one day where you get to wear your competition blue if you want but it's all it's a white ghee gym you know like we're bowing old school bowing at the beginning of class bowing at the end of class and um you know everybody's like checking fingernails everybody got deodorant you know it is like a really nice clean checking fingernails is good yeah bj pen bj pen's got some talents he's running for governor yes you might win man they love him Hawaii loves BJ Penn. So I listened to a couple of interviews of them recently and you know he's my era of MMA and some of my peers from that era have struggled with TBI and CTE and you know you hear it and how they talk and they struggled being entrepreneurs second life after fighting right you know Miller great example of how traumatic and dangerous with substance abuse and violence and, you know, BJ sounds great.

[1744] Yeah.

[1745] And he was articulate.

[1746] He had, and on, back to issues, he was, like, talking specifically about issues.

[1747] I know the Hawaii party system's weird because you kind of just have to be, like, only one party's going to be voted.

[1748] So you have degrees of one party.

[1749] And, you know, he had just talking about issues.

[1750] I was like, all right, BJ?

[1751] Yeah, he's got, he's got a very good grasp on the problems in Hawaii.

[1752] He thought about it for a long time before he ran.

[1753] And when he was on the podcast, he was talking very, very good.

[1754] specifically about problems that they face and why those problems exist and what he thinks he could do about it yeah one of a I a guy at my that works with me at sheep up response his name's Yako great black belt net like super talented very Yaku Kalili and he has a large Hawaiian family you know and some of his kids he's adopted and just how poor some areas of Hawaii are and how little resources they have for, you know, substance abuse and, like, he's just a great human and, you know, he's a real martial artist and he just did the right thing and taking care of.

[1755] He just has a beautiful family, but he's a great example of all of the things that are broken about Hawaii.

[1756] I was with Tulsi in New York last week.

[1757] You know, we're talking, you know, she loves politics and she's pretty passionate about all of them.

[1758] But listening to her talk about broken Hawaii, man, it's just like, it's tough.

[1759] It's tough.

[1760] It's tough.

[1761] It's tough.

[1762] There's a lot of poverty and a lot of drugs and a lot of crime.

[1763] And what is she going to do now?

[1764] I asked her that.

[1765] And she's keeping her cards tight to her vest.

[1766] She is.

[1767] She is.

[1768] Yeah.

[1769] And, you know, she's like, right now I'm just kind of doing this.

[1770] She was doing like the media tour.

[1771] So she, I think she did like 10 TV shows last week, got to go to dinner with her.

[1772] And it was, it was fun because we talked, we went to this Indian restaurant in New York.

[1773] I did a signing at the Barnes & Noble, and we come across the street and have dinner with her in this Indian restaurant.

[1774] It took us four and a half hours to get our food.

[1775] And normally I would, yeah, normally I would have been outraged.

[1776] But instead, I got to spend four and a half hours with Tulsi and just talk.

[1777] You know, we talked to go to the store and buy the ingredients?

[1778] They had to have.

[1779] What the fuck, man. Yeah.

[1780] We talked to human traffic, counter human trafficking.

[1781] We talked, you know, school shootings.

[1782] We talked, you know, her career.

[1783] And it was just fun to, um, she and I. do not agree on a lot of, you know, a lot of things.

[1784] And it's, it's fun to be with somebody that you don't agree with.

[1785] And, you know, the cream rises at the top.

[1786] And the better ideas as we kind of flush these out.

[1787] And it was cool because we were both doing a lot of media.

[1788] You know, I think the next morning I was on Fox and Friends.

[1789] And you're, you never know what people are going to ask you, you know, like whatever hot button topic they're looking for a sound bite.

[1790] So, you know, the night before, her and I are just kind of running through all of these ideas and these problems.

[1791] and it's something that I wish all Americans did more frequently.

[1792] You know, oh, you disagree with me?

[1793] Right.

[1794] I don't hate you.

[1795] But I want to talk to you.

[1796] What do you guys disagree about?

[1797] Foreign policy.

[1798] She's a non -interventionalist foreign policy.

[1799] Yep.

[1800] Yeah, and I'm definitely like an American first, strong foreign presence, you know.

[1801] You know, we pulled out of Ukraine, the military.

[1802] The special forces goes all over the world and trains militaries.

[1803] And it not just better equips and better trains that military, but it also creates opportunities for, you know, we have connections.

[1804] You know, like the Czech Republic.

[1805] I deployed with the Czech Republic with their special forces and horrible gunfights, wild, wild rides.

[1806] And those are friends that until we die, I will love those guys for forever.

[1807] Then I go back to the Czech Republic.

[1808] I go to their special forces base and, you know, teach.

[1809] some human intelligence courses and do like this exchange of information they eastern europe they had some different tactics than we used so like this cool cross -pollination of ideas and tactics and tradecraft and then i come back and i bring those back to my unit and some of those stay and um but those relationships are built you know when we left ukraine they that training those relationships and those contacts don't exist so you know us us coming in now trying to figure out, okay, how are we going to help you guys?

[1810] We're like starting cold.

[1811] You know, it's like a cold call to do a sale.

[1812] How difficult is that to then go to somebody that you're at the gym with all the time and you talk to?

[1813] And you're like, dude, I just got this new thing.

[1814] It's an awesome, you know, pre -workout.

[1815] Two totally different experiences and success.

[1816] When were we in Ukraine?

[1817] We were there.

[1818] I mean, we were, I think we were all the way up to 2016.

[1819] So the agreements that the U .S. government has with those countries, there's lots of different levels of them, what kind of participation and collaboration we're going to have.

[1820] And sometimes some special operations can even come to the United States and go to our special forces.

[1821] Like they can go through our training.

[1822] And like they can, as if they're earning a green bray, go through every single phase and learn how we plan.

[1823] and how our tactics are.

[1824] Like, these are really good allies that we're going to be aligned with forever, you know, British, Australian, you know, at Ranger School, you'll see German infantry officers and you'll see Australian SAS guys.

[1825] It's rad.

[1826] And then they bring that back to their respective countries.

[1827] And all, you know, with rising tides, all ships will be raised, that kind of approach to.

[1828] So Tolstney, I don't agree on where, you know, we should, be that's cool we got to talk through a little bit of it at least it's a discussion yeah what's fascinating with me about her is how the left is completely ignoring her although she was a democratic congresswoman yeah for eight years but the right has her on everything with full total respect knowing she's a democrat it's so interesting yeah like one of the things that's been very strange about this whole polarization between the two -party system in america is how the right will allow people to come on that they disagree with and talk to, and they'll talk to them respectfully, and they don't attack them.

[1829] Whereas if I watch a person who's a right -wing person who gets on CNN or MSNBC, they're getting attacked.

[1830] Non -stop.

[1831] That's the only way.

[1832] There's never a civil discussion where you're allowed to agree to disagree or have a discussion about why you disagree.

[1833] I think it has a lot to do with the reason that you end up being, you know, my beliefs and my idea.

[1834] is I'm always looking for an opposing or a conflicting idea which will either make my my beliefs more sound or I'll have to take a second look at them because there's something wrong with it and somebody like that is is naturally going to be subscribing to you know made more conservative ideals than over here where like this is my belief system and I don't as an isolationist like I don't with my ideas.

[1835] I don't want anybody to disagree with me. And, like, but I also, with Tulsi and Bill Maher's, Bill Maher, Mar. Mar. Yeah.

[1836] They're Democrats.

[1837] Yeah.

[1838] And now I think a lot of Democrats are looking at them, like, are you guys Republicans?

[1839] Yeah, exactly.

[1840] No, you're not.

[1841] You're still Democrats, but the, the outlier fringe of that party has left them.

[1842] Like the whole, the line of rational just moved so much further away and where like a Bill Maher and Tulsi Gabbard are now like centrist.

[1843] Well, they're considered centrist, but some people say they're far right.

[1844] That's crazy.

[1845] It's nuts.

[1846] I've heard people say like Bill, Bill Maher has adopted a far right ideology.

[1847] Like, what?

[1848] I've seen it.

[1849] There's, but that's just Twitter.

[1850] Twitter is a goddamn mental health.

[1851] You want mental health problems.

[1852] That's the center of mental health problems in this country.

[1853] But what's unique to me is that there's a, I think probably what happened was the response from Donald Trump.

[1854] The response to Donald Trump being president, he was so polarizing and he attacked people in a way that was so non -presidential and the way he would behave was so non -presidential that that's just his thing.

[1855] When someone comes after him, he comes back at them even harder.

[1856] But when you're the president and you do that, it's.

[1857] just gets everybody's panties in a wad.

[1858] And he's just fucking taking gallons of gasoline and chucking it on the fire.

[1859] And so when they got rid of him and they got him out of the air, they're like, we got to make sure this never happens again.

[1860] Meanwhile, it's going to happen again.

[1861] It's going to happen again.

[1862] He's coming back.

[1863] He might even win.

[1864] But this polarization has like hardened them.

[1865] The thing with Trump, because of Trump's behavior, the way he communicates, which I just think is a terrible way to communicate as a president.

[1866] but if you're his supporter you love it you're like yeah stick it to him finally someone sticks up for us and so it's like yeah i get your feelings i understand why you would love that and i understand that he's right about many things there's a crazy video that's out there that shows all the things that donald trump predicted if joe biden gets in office and how all of them have taken place have you seen that video no i'm gonna send it to jamming because it's so wild it's so wild you watch it play out and you're like holy shit yeah Because it's, it's so crazy that it's that blatant.

[1867] Like, you would think, like, wait a minute, is this, is this theatrical?

[1868] I mean, this is crazy.

[1869] But at a point, you were a two -party system with, you know, nearly 50 -50 split down the middle.

[1870] At no point would I, in that presidential position, like, your job is to try to bring as many people from each respective side.

[1871] together.

[1872] Yeah, bring everybody together.

[1873] That's not his approach?

[1874] No, he's, that's why it's so not, it's not how a leader behaves.

[1875] Like, he was very, he's got a huge ego, and that's what's led him to this amazing amount of success that he's had.

[1876] But that huge ego, once he gets into a position about here, pray this from the beginning and give me some volume.

[1877] Before I took office, there's a lot of folks out there, there were not folks out there making some pretty broad predictions about how things that turn out.

[1878] This video, hold on, stop for a second.

[1879] This video does not sound like that.

[1880] It sounds fine.

[1881] What's coming through the computer?

[1882] Why is that happening?

[1883] Because I played it today on my phone.

[1884] It sounded perfect.

[1885] They're coming for your guns.

[1886] They're coming for your jobs.

[1887] And they're coming for your freedom.

[1888] They hate American energy and Joe Biden will.

[1889] Shut it all down.

[1890] He's going to.

[1891] If I became president.

[1892] Biden's elected.

[1893] He will wipe out your energy industry.

[1894] prediction that is my favorite one i must have is that if i got elected gas prices going five six seven dollars for a gallon you flood your communities with criminal aliens drugs and crime while they live behind beautiful gated compounds they try to take away your guns second amendment they want to take it away while they enjoy private security that's fully armed i never understood that He spent trillions of dollars rebuilding foreign nations, fighting foreign wars, and defending foreign borders.

[1895] If all those predictions of doom and gloom six months in, here's where we stand.

[1896] You want to use the word recession or depression?

[1897] Think of a single mile.

[1898] You know, it's sad.

[1899] So if you're primary concern right now is inflation.

[1900] We could stop it in 30 minutes.

[1901] Well, I took office.

[1902] He finally went outside.

[1903] He went to get an ice cream I say you're not doing a very good job This is campaigning pre -election Yeah Wow There was him campaigning pre -election And what has actually taken place I mean it's just Uncomfortable It's wild and what's interesting is Even CNN is starting to push back against it Like Don Lemon was interviewing the woman Who is the new press secretary for the White House Yeah And he was asking, is Joe Biden going to be fit for 2024?

[1904] And she's like, he's fine.

[1905] He's great.

[1906] Like, what are you talking about?

[1907] And you're watching, and you're going, what the fuck are you talking about?

[1908] He's definitely not.

[1909] That's not true.

[1910] Like, you know that's not true.

[1911] Like, you're gaslighting us.

[1912] And I saw Ocasio Cortez asked if she would support the president in a 2024 run.

[1913] And she's like, ha, you know, let's talk about the issues that we're trying to fix right now.

[1914] And they're like, so would you support the president?

[1915] president you didn't answer me that's what the journalist asked her and she's like um you know we have issues right now that we need to address first and and then she let her off you know but yeah yeah crazy it's going to be it's going to be wild well it's it's 2020 or we've got midterms right now yeah i don't know i wonder what's going to happen but it's like there's no there's no no clear shining example of what we we really need no you know you know I mean, unity would be nice.

[1916] You know, I'd rather, I wish it was so much more about the issue than the individual where we could talk about all of the issues and find the candidate that has the best solution for those interviews.

[1917] That's just crazy talk.

[1918] Who the fuck are you?

[1919] Yeah, it would be nice.

[1920] But, you know, I think there's also the giant problem of money in politics.

[1921] It's just unless you remove that, unless it really is for the people, then you've got a bunch of people that are getting people to do, things once they get into office it's going to benefit their bottom line and that's what we have here we have a corrupt system we we've agreed that it's okay if it's corrupt as long as we you know write it down yeah as long as we know that it's legal corruption the um that ukraine bill you know 40 billion dollars like up everybody's like oh you know the corruption over there and i was like i mean i'm like we can't throw stones right from where we are in our glass house of corruption, where you have a senator that makes, you know, whatever, $200 ,000 and is worth $40 million.

[1922] Yeah, no, she's worth a lot more than that.

[1923] I wasn't saying to any individual.

[1924] Nancy Pelosi?

[1925] No, I wasn't.

[1926] I mean, that's another great example.

[1927] She's worth hundreds of millions.

[1928] And she's never done anything besides public service.

[1929] Do you know that she's better at stock trading than Warren Buffett or George Soros?

[1930] Like, she's got a better record than any of those guys.

[1931] Those guys are professionals.

[1932] All they have done has been rich and make themselves richer.

[1933] And she's better at it.

[1934] By a good margin.

[1935] By a good margin.

[1936] That's not good.

[1937] And it's weird.

[1938] Is it weird?

[1939] Because like she knows about things before they happen.

[1940] It's almost like it's insider trading, Tim Kennedy.

[1941] Almost.

[1942] I would never ever make that accusation, though.

[1943] It's a hilarious.

[1944] I'm sure you've seen the interview where they asked her, what do you think about stopping Congress from, people, members of Congress from trading stocks.

[1945] Like, oh, they think that's an idea.

[1946] Can we just do term limits and not let them get rich while in office from how they vote?

[1947] There should be some things, some measures that are put into place.

[1948] But the problem is then we'd get even less qualified people that want to be president and less qualified people that want to be congressmen.

[1949] If they didn't think that there was some sort of financial incentive, there's zero financial incentive, all you're doing is being a civil servant.

[1950] Boy.

[1951] I like that, though.

[1952] I like it too, but I just think, but they're also going to crawl up your ass with a microscope and find out who you fuck when you're in high school.

[1953] Like, it's just...

[1954] Politics are out for me. Oh, my God.

[1955] It's the amount of chaos that's involved and there's, you know, there's nothing that seems to be like a clear solution to fix any of that.

[1956] It just seems to be like we're just going to complain about it and it's going to be chaotic until the Chinese take over.

[1957] Don't say that.

[1958] Why would you say that, Joe?

[1959] Take that back.

[1960] take that back well they already got john sina once they got john sina we're already the same group that obviously was in afghanistan uh save our allies did you read about ben jill no so he was a journalist with fox news that got blown up in ukraine and a couple of journalists that were with him died and he was horrifically injured um our organization save our allies was the group that went in and found him rescued him saved his life and then got him out of Ukraine and into American level medical care.

[1961] And then all the way, he's currently in Bamsie, like right here in San Antonio.

[1962] And first, it's so cool that journalists are brave like that to go and to go, you know, to go into Kabul, to go into Ukraine, to go into down to the border and to see what is really happening down there.

[1963] It's like a little nod to them and, but that guy, no painkiller after he is is very, very seriously injured.

[1964] His family haven't seen the wounds.

[1965] So, like, I'm not going to explain them.

[1966] But, you know, tourniquette's on for hours.

[1967] And he has to make it through all these checkpoints.

[1968] And this is, like, peak invasion.

[1969] And they're able to get him out of Ukraine and save his life.

[1970] And, like, that ground team from Save Our Allies that was so creative and how, I mean, they literally went into the front lines, grabbed this journalist.

[1971] You know, dead bodies around him, got him medical care, and then got him out of the country before he died.

[1972] And that, Benji Hall, you're a badass.

[1973] Wow.

[1974] Yeah, pretty rad.

[1975] There's a lot of badasses out there.

[1976] As much as we want to talk about people that are fat and lazy and soft in this country, there is a large number of fucking incredible human beings that are here.

[1977] I'm surrounded by him.

[1978] You know, I talk about wanting America to be more healthy.

[1979] and fitter and stronger and individually responsible and able to secure a school, you know, be able to protect your kids.

[1980] I fully believe that, that we need to be better and we're the weakest that we've ever been.

[1981] But I'm, like, surrounded by, in the military, in my position there, I'm just surrounded by the best and most brilliant men that ever existed.

[1982] Like, these guys are so incredible.

[1983] And then the guys that I work with at Cheapdard Response, their heart as servants, you know, teaching teachers, teaching law enforcement, you know, teaching civilians that just want to be better mothers and fathers to be able to protect themselves and their families.

[1984] Like, how rad is it that they've dedicated their whole entire lives to this idea?

[1985] Like, they'll teach 14 -hour days.

[1986] They'll come back into the office, start cleaning all the weapons, start cleaning the mats, mopping, sanitizing, you know, to do it all again the next day.

[1987] It's so humbling to see how many great humans that are out there.

[1988] And we so often just, like, focus at the bad.

[1989] at the expense of the good never being recognized.

[1990] Well, I think for a lot of people, they're just surrounded by the bad, and that's what they look to as a benchmark, unfortunately.

[1991] They don't have access to the type of people that you're around.

[1992] And if they did, they would judge themselves in comparison.

[1993] It's just a thing that people do automatically.

[1994] You imitate your atmosphere, and if your atmosphere is filled with beasts, and these guys are just putting in the work every day, and if you want the kind of respect that they get from you, you got to put in that kind of work, too, and rising tide lifts all boats.

[1995] And everybody gets in it together.

[1996] And you come out of the other end, you're better because of that because, you know, iron sharpens iron.

[1997] And that's just how it goes.

[1998] So important.

[1999] So important.

[2000] Just go and do it.

[2001] The, um, the scars and stripe this book, the whole reason, like we dropped it right now is in this editorialized, curated existence where you know Instagram I'm using a filter to make myself look good um that whole book is about failure and struggle and every single one of the mistakes that I ever made you know it is it's not this self -execulating memoir of like why I'm this amazing person it is all the reasons that I'm not you know it's all of the reasons why um it is normal for us to struggle it is normal for you to not be able to deadlift that 500 pounds unless you have conditioned yourself and failed and pushed yourself so your body in adaptation adaptation is able to do it and in we we think exclusively physically when we talk about adaptation but like your soul and your brain and the total human condition is all part of it yeah and you have to struggle you know you you have to see failure you know failed at business now i've great businesses you know failed at relationships and the pain of the of that failure like hurt being a 10 year old in wrestling for the first time and getting pinned in my first match and having to stand up in that gymnasium, that big huge Atascarro gymnasium.

[2002] And my dad is sitting right, I could still see him right here on the side of the mat, you know, and that my head hung in shame as the other guy gets his hand lifted.

[2003] You know, in wrestling, it's just so fast.

[2004] The hand goes up, but the echoes of that failure just sort of resounding in my head as I have to walk single elimination, my tournament's over.

[2005] Yeah.

[2006] You know, and if I had not experienced that failure, there's no way you'd see me fight for world titles.

[2007] There's no way I'd become a black belt.

[2008] You know, that moment away from me and I got a participation trophy and we both got our hands raised, that moment's gone.

[2009] Right.

[2010] And it is so important.

[2011] And you apply that with everything.

[2012] I stick my hand on a stove.

[2013] I burn my hand.

[2014] I learned not to put my hand on the stove.

[2015] And that's that pain and that's that process of failure that we are taking that away from this generation.

[2016] Yeah.

[2017] It needs to be ingrained.

[2018] They need to understand that it's a benefit.

[2019] You have to look at those failures to go, you have fuel now.

[2020] You have fuel.

[2021] And you can decide to ignore it and you can decide to wall.

[2022] in the shame of loss or you can be far better because of this because there's nothing that motivates you like humiliation no no we if you're out of shape i'm never going to make fun of some a fat person walking to the gym so proud that you're there right but i will look at you walking into a crispy cream and making it yeah another conscious decision about what your lifestyle looks like where i'm going to have to pay for your health care in a few years you know like those are two very different things.

[2023] I'll embrace you.

[2024] I'll help you program.

[2025] I will help you diet.

[2026] You know, people walking into through my doors, some of them have never held a firearm in their life.

[2027] You know, they don't know the first thing about situational awareness.

[2028] They don't know where to park.

[2029] They don't understand that they should park towards the front of the parking lot underneath the light and that they see somebody with their window down, the engine off and they're sitting smoking a cigarette with the backed in and they're looking at everybody walking through the parking lot.

[2030] Maybe that person might try to mug you as you get out of your car.

[2031] Maybe, you know.

[2032] And it is these these complete new ideas to them and watching their brains start firing seeing these things for the first time explaining why profiling and generalizing when it comes to protecting your own life is useful and how the sixth sense is a real thing you know like that feeling where did that guy look at me weird in society we're like okay no no i'm i'm not going to look at that guy and make any assumptions about him because it's it's culturally rude or inappropriate and I'm going to talk myself out of this and then that guy assaults me you know like now now this poor woman's been raped because she talked herself out of it you know and we can train and we can sharpen we condition and it is the most beautiful and magical thing to watch these people teachers right now just flooding clamoring to us and I cannot run enough courses and you can see them starving like they want to protect their students so bad it's such a beautiful thing I own a private school.

[2033] You know, I, I launched Apogee Strong and Apogee our school to address what's happening in schools and what's happening with our young men and women.

[2034] And seeing parents walk in and being like, wait, I get to be involved in what happens with my own child's education.

[2035] Yes, you do.

[2036] Wait, I get to, my son has to exercise and keep a journal as to what he's in what books he's reading, you know, and like, what?

[2037] This is rad.

[2038] And it is just the last.

[2039] And it is just the Life.

[2040] It is provided a second wind.

[2041] I'm going to do this till the day I die.

[2042] And I love seeing this realization that people can take control of their own destinies, especially around safety.

[2043] Well said.

[2044] I'm glad you're out there, Tim Kennedy.

[2045] Love you, man. You too?

[2046] Can you keep doing this?

[2047] I think I'm going to.

[2048] You're going to?

[2049] Please.

[2050] I think I'm going to keep doing it.

[2051] Yeah.

[2052] Scars and stripes.

[2053] It's available right now.

[2054] It's everywhere.

[2055] Audio book.

[2056] Did you read the audiobook?

[2057] I did.

[2058] Fuck yeah.

[2059] No, it was hard.

[2060] I bet.

[2061] But you have to.

[2062] I cry.

[2063] It took me a day to get through three paragraphs.

[2064] Yeah.

[2065] Audio books, man. That's why I'm never going to get in that stupid chamber you have in the back.

[2066] Never going to do it.

[2067] I just experienced a version of it.

[2068] Hard pass, man. It's even different in that one.

[2069] Thank you.

[2070] All right.

[2071] Well, thank you, brother.

[2072] Appreciate you very much.

[2073] Bye, everybody.