444 - Stoicism and BJJ, with Adisa Banjoko

Speaker 1: Hey there, I'm Stephan Kesting and this is the Strenuous Life podcast. Speaker 2: Deca, how the hell's it going? Speaker 1: Oh, you know, my health is better. Your boy fell out last week. I had something crazy. Listen, if y'all do jiu-jitsu or not, something crazy is going around all over the Bay. I know it's out where you are and I even got friends in the UK that got it. One seems like a flu. It was an unnamed virus. That's all they said. Unnamed virus with bronchitis. Speaker 2: The the trick is it seems to act like it's going away and then you get some type of flare up. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: Um and so like every week or so, I'm going on week four, like midweek, it'll it'll creep up. It might be almost a fever, the head starts banging again, you might feel it, but it's just less than the last time. So guys, if if you're feeling stuff like that, don't come into class. Like seriously, like don't stay out cuz you know, we don't know who's living with old people, who's living with, you know, other people that are immuno compromised, but outside of that, I'm great. Speaker 1: Well, I'm on this side of the uh the dirt nap. That's all that's all a good thing. Speaker 2: Yes, agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Speaker 1: Yeah, I I thought you were a very obvious choice to talk about something that's interested me for a while, but I haven't really dove into too deeply. I've kind of been involved in the periphery of it. And that's the idea of stoicism and in particular, how stoicism intersects with martial arts. So, can you can we start with the martial art end of it first? Just give us a quick rundown of your your background in hugging men and punching them in the head. Speaker 2: Okay, cool. So, my the cliff notes of my jiu-jitsu story are this. I was doing Eskrima Serrada, um in like 1990, 1989, and I was horrible at it. Absolute horrible at it. But I was like, I'm resolved to learning something. I just wanted to learn any martial art. And, you know, uh Eskrima Serrada was pretty dope. So, I was into it. It's a Filipino stick fighting art. Speaker 1: How would you characterize it? Speaker 2: I mean, basically, if you saw Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon when he had that one stick and he started wrecking people, that's that kind of stuff. It's basically a two a two two stick or a two blade fighting style that mixes um really smooth parries and counterattacks. Really smooth stuff. And um I really liked it, but I just was not good at it. So, one day my friend Jamie Lepeña was at his house and he said, hey man, I saw this thing. These guys from Brazil are doing all this stuff. And they showed it he showed it to me and I was like, no way, dude, you just get on top of somebody like your old brother and sister family fight thing and that's the end of the fight. I was like, there's no way that could work. And he was like, well, do you think I could take you down if I got there? Do you think you could get out? I was like, absolutely. So, of course, it doesn't work. And um he was like, well, I bought some instructionals. So, I was doing instructionals pre-UFC. And I was able to have really good success with it wrestling randos who, you know what I mean, thought they were cool. Speaker 1: Who was the first instructional by? Speaker 2: Horion. Horion. The early Horion. Speaker 1: Oh, so those were like the uh the the super polite ones, but also incredibly expensive for the time. Speaker 2: Incredibly expensive, super polite, but my boy also got had Gracie in Action 1 and Gracie in Action 2. So, that's where you could see the actual fights, right? Whether it was at the beach or on some crazy uh indoor place that didn't have mats and people were getting slammed. It was wild. And so, I always kind of understood jiu-jitsu to be something for something that's real, you know, if you're if you're in a real situation. So, I believed in it. And I was so small. I have to say I was I was 160, 165 pounds tops at that time. Fast forward, when Hoist Gracie triangle chokes Dan Severn in UFC 4, I always believed in him. I always knew he was going to win. I wasn't worried about it at all. But to see the triangle choke in real time at that point in martial arts was crazy. And I was like, I have to learn this for real. Like, you know, the tapes were were were not nearly enough. And so, not long after that, Jamie called me. He goes, hey man, there's a guy named Half Gracie. He's in Mountain View. At the time I lived in San Jose, where I live now. And uh he said, um so, apparently he's got a school in Mountain View. You should go check it out. And I was like, I'm going to go join. And he was like, but one thing though. And I was like, what is it? He was like, he's really rough. He's not like Hoist. Like Hoist is supposed to be very nice and he's like, it's supposed to be a rough school. I was like, whatever. I went and it was a horrifilly rough school. I I was not fit enough for what happened. And I was so sore that first day. Speaker 1: What what do you mean by rough? Speaker 2: First of all, the warm-ups, like, you know, people have seen the the Kurt Osiander, I think it was the thing that he did with um who's the guy, the food guy? Why am I blanking on his name right now? Bourdain, Anthony Bourdain. Right? So, I'll start from there. So, here we go. You know, there's this clip of Anthony Bourdain when when when he's with Kurt Osiander and he's talking about the Half Gracie warm-ups. Man, those warm-ups will break your soul. They weren't it's not like legendary just cuz, bro, those warm-ups were crazy. And no matter how fit you thought you were, you lifted weights, you didn't lift weights, you jogged a little, you did push-ups, you could bench a lot. Those warm-ups were soul cracking. And I wasn't a fit person. You know what I mean? That that's really it. Like I had a real slim baseline for fitness, let alone strength. I was known to be weak. Anybody who knew me growing up, like, he's the weak guy. Yeah. So, I remember that first night. I was so sore. Just from the training. Like they didn't really do me wrong. They didn't beat me up. I don't have one of those kind of stories. But from not using my whole body for real, for real, the way they did, I was sore. I was waking up as I moved in sleep. And I remember looking up at the ceiling and being like, bro, this is painful. I was like, maybe this ain't built for you. And then I said, you know what? Go back one more time. And if it feels this bad, you can quit. But if it doesn't feel this bad, you're going to stay. And it didn't feel as bad. I stayed. I was at the I was the worst one in the room every day. Like I'm not even going to try and pretend. Like I remember seeing BJ Penn first day he came into the academy, seeing him roll with uh Dave Camarillo. You know, he was with Tom Callos. But I didn't know who Tom was at the time and I didn't realize that, you know what I mean? I thought he was just BJ's dad. And um, you know, so Dave Camarillo, Cameron Earl, BJ Penn, JD Penn. JD Penn was a storm on his own, right? Reagan Penn, like, I was getting murdered, bro. But like I didn't care. My whole thing was, allow yourself to get murdered so you can learn. Right? And because I was a journalist, I got to start I started writing about it. So, I wrote one of I wrote what I believe is the first jiu-jitsu profile on a Gracie in Maxim Magazine. Applegate, Christina Applegate was on the cover. Christina Applegate was on the cover. I did a thing for Half there. Then I got to interview Helio for Rap Pages Magazine. I interviewed Helio, Horion, and Hoist. And uh Hiron was a green belt at that time and he was my main translator for me and Helio. And, you know, I got, you know, Helio showed me some moves. And uh I was already training at Half's at that time, but, you know, that was crazy. Speaker 1: Do you remember what he showed you? Speaker 2: Yeah, he showed me wrist grab escapes from standing and just like, you know, standard wrist grab escapes to, you know, when you squat down, put the person on the floor, whatever. I just taught that last week, you know what I mean? Like literally last week. And, you know, he was 86, but he was very skilled. Like if he wanted to cross choke you, you know, he he could cross choke you, you know what I'm saying? Like, was he straight fighting and hitting double legs? No, he was 86. But like, he could absolutely teach jiu-jitsu not only coherently, but with very deliberate detail. And so, I got lucky, you know what I mean? Around 2001, I left and I started training under Charles Gracie, who had his first academy in Daly City. Daly City was not as intense as Half's. Like and Charles didn't mean it to be. Like he he was definitely his own teacher. He taught different. And Half and he was good. So, you know, it was cool. He gave me my blue belt. I got my blue belt from Charles. And um, it was it was still a rough time though, you know what I mean? Like there was a light dojo storm once that I that I participated in defending. This guy came in from Nova União. And it was just on, bro. It was the weirdest thing. I came up the stairs. The original Charles Gracie is across the street and up the street from where it is now. And you would go up a flight of stairs and the mats were immediately to your left when you turned. And I see this guy on top of a dude who he he was smaller than the guy he was fighting. The Charles guy was a lot bigger. But he was finishing the guy. He got up and I could see there was some back and forth and I knew it was an unfriendly scenario. They were like, Deca, you got to you got to squab with this dude, bro. He's, you know, it's on, you know. And um it wasn't punching. It was pure jiu-jitsu. The thing is, I was at a supreme psychological disadvantage cuz I had just been going through all of Mark Lehman's tape, which were all Nova União guys. And there was this one particular guy whose name I forget and he was one of the most beautiful and poetic purple belts I've ever seen. Remember when everybody had the leopard style dyed hair? Speaker 1: Mhm. Speaker 2: Um this guy had that and he was incredible, but he died in a car accident around the time like everything got hyped for him. He died in a car accident. I'm blanking on his name right now. He was incredible. Speaker 1: I remember the hair. I don't remember the name. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a purple belt. He used to be in all those Mark Lehman tapes, bro. And he was incredible. So, because I had been studying that guy, I'm actually deeply in fear of Nova União psychologically right now cuz I'm just watching highlight reels of stuff. So, I'm not fully present. I go after the guy. I'm not going to lie. He didn't do anything special, but I wasn't fully present and he caught me. And while I'm fighting the guy, the dude who he had previously beat is on the phone with Charles and then he called one more dude who was a purple belt, Sanzio, who was who was Brazilian. So, I'm going and I I'll I'll never forget this, bro. I'm getting arm barred. He's he's got the mount and I'm trying to defend and and he lays back and he takes my arm and as I look to my left, I see Sanzio standing at the far side of the mat holding a crumpled up gi and a purple belt. And so, I tap and I sit up and I am pissed. I am disappointed in myself. I feel like I I betrayed what I said I was trying to learn. I was really upset. I wasn't crying or nothing, but I was disappointed in myself. And Sanzio said something to him in Portuguese. He said something back. I looked at that dude and in my brain I was like, you're absolutely about to get fucked up. Like, you're fucked up. Sanzio came out with that shit on and he he obliterated that man. Like repeatedly, like repeatedly. And so, like I learned a lot in that moment about like what it means when you fight not believing in yourself. Uh even though I've done it tons of times after, but I learned that day. Like cuz it what it's okay to get tapped out by anybody ultimately, but it always feels worse when you get submitted by someone you know you're better than, but, you know what I mean, you make that mistake, you allow that space, you whatever. And so, you know, it was still a rough time for jiu-jitsu, you know what I mean? Like there were a lot there was a lot of you know, clicks and, you know what I mean, whatever. And then not long after getting my my blue belt, I competed a little bit. I did fine. One of my clips was on uh 101 Submissions Volume 2. Uh yeah, in the in the gi. Ezekiel choke. Um and um, you know, I was enjoying myself, but then, you know, family and kids made me have to kind of stall stuff out for a while. And then um I was writing for On the Mat at the time. I was always writing about jiu-jitsu. Um and I was always training, just kind of floating around, but not really consistent in any way cuz I was just trying to be a family man and everything. And then, you know, I kept writing, did a lot of writing for On the Mat. Eddie Goldman back in the day. Shout out Eddie Goldman, NHB News. I wrote for NHB News. I wrote for Valley Tudo News. I did a lot of different stuff like that. Um it didn't pay, but I didn't care. And then um after a very long like on and off kind of hiatus, Gumby from Half Gracie, who uh is is, you know, a very decorated and respected OG from the Mountain View days, you know, he started before me, but around the same time. He he he said, hey, you know, I'm getting ready to start my own school. What's your goals in jiu-jitsu? And I was like, man, I just want to be a legit purple. If I could just be a legit purple, I would be happy. Like I don't even care about black, but can I just level up a little bit more? And I got my purple, brown, and black from Gumby. Over time. It was not overnight. I I I did jiu-jitsu half my life. I started when I was 27. Right? I'm 56 and I've been a I've been a black belt for like four years. I think it'll be year four. I think it'll be year four. Like so, I was always train stop, train stop, train stop. And so, you know, if you're some Speaker 1: A lot of people are in that boat. A lot of people are in that boat and it's okay. I mean, if you keep on it's always there for you when you want to come back. Speaker 2: Man, it is, you know. And so, my advice to middle-aged dads doing jiu-jitsu is like always just keep one pinky toe on the mat. That's how I did it. So, you know, I did a lot of solo drills at home that I made up on my own cuz I would say, Gumby, how can I get better at jiu-jitsu when I'm not here? And he was like, I don't know. I always have people. You know, he was like, I don't know. So, I started making up solo drills. I started making up, you know. And I would kind of run myself through certain things. Like I could barely train from purple from blue into purple. My training was very rare and I used solo drills to get my timing and my structure in order. So, guys, don't give up. Just give your allow yourself to keep one pinky toe on the mat. Watch videos, read books. I think reading books is a lost art in jiu-jitsu. Everybody's just trying to look for the viral clip. You know, you got to read books, man. Speaker 1: It's interesting with the solo drills. I I do think that there's some advantage if you're uncoordinated in a specific movement to getting that movement wrapped. But I think the bigger advantage is that while you're doing this movement, you're thinking about jiu-jitsu. You're you're keeping that pinky toe in the water. Speaker 2: 100% man. Speaker 1: And you're not and I I think the marginal gains after say blue belt of doing solo drills is pretty low for most people with the exception of some very specialized moves. I mean, I I was trying to work on a shotgun sweep from De La Hiva. And that's kind of a tricky, weird, bridging, twisting, spiraling motion. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: And I didn't understand the motion until I figured out how to do it as a solo drill. But then I didn't need to rep it a million more times. I was like, oh, now I get it. You know, it it provided that isolation lab where I could just without having to worry about another body, Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: work on that bridging up on one leg off of a raised object while twisting the other way and shooting the other leg straight. And it it it I don't think there was any value in the reps, but there was value in figuring out the drill to get that first couple of reps in. Speaker 2: Now, see, I have a very probably highly biased perspective of of solo drilling because I had to. There was, you know what I mean? Like I was, you know, juggling kids, two, sometimes three jobs. I I had to do solo drills, yeah. So, my belief, and I know like there's a lot of really decorated people who are way better than me, like including yourself, that that, you know, have medium to like, you know, like Roger Gracie's like drills, why bother? And um, you know, there's books on solo drilling and and so, Speaker 1: And the reason Speaker 2: I have produced a DVD back in the day on Speaker 1: Did you did you have a solo drill one? Okay. Speaker 2: I had a solo drill one. Yeah. So, that's yeah. You know, I believe in solo drills for this reason. I believe at any belt level, but specifically white, you know so little, you need to do solo drills to get the fundamental movement and structure down, right? I believe that solo drills build presence in the actual roll. If you can get to a point where you have presence in the actual roll, because I know one of Roger's main points, which is accurate, is that, yeah, but nobody like if you're doing an arm bar from the closed guard drill, right? Yeah, but that person's not defending, right? They're not trying to stop you from doing it. My counter to that is, yes, however, presence from doing the solo drills gives you real-time ability to innovate nuances as they appear. If you're asking yourself, am I doing this arm bar right? One, you're probably not. And two, that person's about to break jailbreak and Godzilla up out of there. But if you've been pivoting, pulling the arm, right? You know what I mean? Getting your shoulder blades off the mat, making sure you have the accurate grip, then your chances of being able to innovate in that real-time moment are more important than anything else. Speaker 1: I mean, by the time you start talking world champions, people in the running for world champions, it's not a random selection of jiu-jitsu people. Say what you want. Like the story is always, I was so weak and I was so small and I was so uncoordinated and then I went off and in the Shaolin Temple, excuse me, in the jiu-jitsu dojo, I I this boy became a man. Yeah, I mean, there's footage of BJ Penn sitting there at at mat side scratching his own ear with his big toe. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: That is athletic like I don't want to write off the work that these guys have put in, but they are all starting at a much higher than average athletic potential and probably at a much higher than average ability to learn things quickly potential. Speaker 2: Let me tell you, BJ Penn probably had and still has the highest jiu-jitsu IQ of another human being I've ever seen. I mean, ever. I've seen a lot of great people and I will never frown on any of them. But I observed BJ Penn at white belt all the way through. Uh he was always on another level. But what he also had is he was the rare mix of raw skills, which there are few of in jiu-jitsu, IQ and support. Bro, I didn't know what his parents did back then, you know, his parents were really rich. I didn't know that. But like, what I did know is that like, where you had the the Half Gracie gym on El Camino, when they originally came out, there was like a Holiday Inn on that same side of the street about five lights up, maybe four lights up. They were in that thing. I remember coming into the Holiday Inn and there was like a a desk, you know, a dresser. The dresser was covered in medals, gold medals. Already. And I remember looking at all those medals and being like, I have never seen this many gold medals by anybody in jiu-jitsu in my life. Now, granted, all of them had, you know, this was all of their. Speaker 1: But you couldn't see the wood. Speaker 2: And it's cuz their work ethic was crazy. Their pops was funneling was was funding their ability to train twice a day, which at that point, 19, you know, 1999, 2000, nobody trained two days a week, two two times a week a day. And so, when you look at his trajectory to black, it is very easy to miss that his dad had the money, was willing to support, and that his son had the skill and the drive. That's rare. Something's usually missing and that's what makes the person not become great. He had all the above, plus his supportive family. Bro, he was destined for all of it. Speaker 1: So, how do we cuz I mean, you're kind of known for for talking a lot about stoicism. Maybe take people through what you define as stoicism. And then how it applies to training, in particular jiu-jitsu, but in general martial arts. Speaker 2: So, stoicism is a Greek philosophy that comes out of like uh Greece and Rome. It was really kind of popularized by a guy named Zeno, who he basically sold cloth for his dad, a very specific kind of cloth that was purple. And uh it was royal. Like, you know, you see the royal purple. That's that's what they sold. So, he has a ship with his guys. He's getting ready to take it in. A big storm hits. He gets shipwrecked and he's stuck on an island for a while. Eventually, he gets back and he's like, yo, what happened to my life? He's trying to make sense of it. Uh he ends up going into a library, reading something he liked. And he started trying to figure out how he thought. So, he went I think he went to a couple different schools. Then he started like kind of looking at his own ideas. And basically, stoicism is a philosophy that uses different emotional and mental exercises to get you to de-escalate your emotions, not suppress them, de-escalate them, and then choose to make the the best decision after you've, you know, kind of gone through the who, what, where, when, why, wise. Right? So, there's there's there's four basic um virtues to stoic philosophy, which is wisdom, right? The pursuit of knowledge, right? Courage, right? Um temperance, right? Meaning that you're a balanced person with discipline. A lot of people don't use that word. They'll just say discipline, right? And and then justice, right? Being a just person, right? So, you have different practices to kind of build in these four lanes. And then you also have, you know, different essays and tools to work on anger, right? So, it's not that you don't I think the biggest mistake that people have when they think of stoic is they think this person doesn't feel. They think this person doesn't want to feel and that this person is trying to transcend feeling so they can kind of come up with this ones and zeros binary equation into whatever their decision is. That's not really it. In fact, that's not stoicism for sure. What stoicism asks you to do is allow yourself to feel everything, all of the pain, all of the fear, all of the sadness, right? All of the joy, but then put it through these filters of wisdom, courage, discipline, and justice and then take the most wise, courageous, right? Balanced and and um just decision irrespective of how you feel. So, you might be like, I'm hella angry. However, I'm not going to, right? I'm going to respond like this. And so, that's really what the essence of being a stoic is, but it's hard work. It's hard to do. But it's easy in that I think with a lot of philosophy and a lot of like um a lot of people are rightly on a self-help journey or, you know, in a lot of pain, whatever. You know, you can get lost in the quotes and in the big quoting, the Marcus Aurelius said. Seneca tells us. The great Epictetus once wrote. Right? But what happens is a lot of those people don't share the practices of those who wrote this way that we're all in awe of. So, it's like, you know, there's things like voluntary hardship, which is you volunteer to deal with less so that you can have a higher respect for things and have more gratitude in your life. So, Speaker 1: So, what does that look like in in practice? Speaker 2: Yeah, so in uh uh voluntary hardship looks like, I'm going to sleep on the floor next to my bed. I'm not going to sleep in the bed. I'm going to sleep on the floor. Now, I might have like a blanket, but I won't have my electric blankie. I won't, you know what I mean? I'm going to sleep on the floor. I might not even use a pillow, right? And so, I'll do that and, you know, among other things, it it makes you just kind of gracious one that you have a bed, but when you see a homeless person, you know, before you might have been like, look at this guy. Now you're like, damn, that shit hella hurts the hip. Let me give this guy a sandwich or whatever, right? Like you you have a little bit more empathy. It looks like eating a salad and putting nothing on it. Just like eating the lettuce, tomatoes, the eating it as it is, right? Now, you may be like, man, I'm used to putting a whole bunch of ranch or Italian or whatever. But this is allowing you to live a simple life. Stoics led very simple like non-complicated lives. So, even if they ate something heavy like a steak or whatever, you know, it would just be simply grilled, cut, you know what I mean? Like they're not they're not going to put Speaker 1: That's a big statement when one of the most famous and most quoted stoics is Marcus Aurelius, who was a Roman emperor. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was a Roman emperor, but the thing about Marcus Aurelius is that, you know, he was in a high pursuit of knowledge and apparently had a very high adaptation uh for philosophy at a very young age, but he pursued it, right? He pursued it. And so, he was also very sick most of his life. Um but he also fought on the battlefield. But he wasn't known to be a warrior. So, he had to really train himself. He had to be disciplined. So, you know, a lot of the things that he had or that we know him for, he was not born with, but he had to cultivate despite having this great opportunity to be an emperor. And so, for him, you know, you know, like he had a he had a brother who was the exact opposite. Because he knew he was close to the emperor, he would, you know, drink as much as he wanted, run around, be in the bars, acting crazy, you know, not disciplined on the battlefield. And um these were the kinds of things and the people that he was around. And his book, Meditations, was never really meant to be out. It was a diary that people found and preserved, you know what I mean? And it's it's it's really good. So, I mean, you know, learning stoic practices though is just as important as learning the quotes. And so, there are a lot of different books and authors that I suggest so you get the practice part and not just get the I'm hyped up and let me go take an ice bath while I listen to, you know, some Marcus Aurelius quotes. Right? Like uh Donald Robertson has a book called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. Beautiful book. Almost anything by Ryan Holiday. He's actually written a book for every virtue, right? So, there's the right thing right now, which I think is about justice. Uh Discipline is Destiny, which obviously is about like temperance, it's having balance. There is uh Courage is Calling. Um and so, you know, for everyone, right? There's there's a there's there's a thing you can cultivate. What I was Speaker 1: I've read the right do the right thing right now. I haven't read the others yet. Speaker 2: I have that one, but I haven't read it, but I've read most of the others. So, Speaker 1: You complete me. Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, my buddy. Right? So, it's like we, meaning like anyone listening, right? Like we already know probably what's kind of wrong. Maybe you're hung up by anxiety. Uh maybe you're quick to anger. You have anger issues. Maybe you are too fearful, right? Uh maybe maybe you are a person who has a lot of things in your life, but you lean into extremes, extreme drinking, extreme smoking, extreme emotions, extreme like sexual gratification, you know what I'm saying? And so, what stoicism is going to help you do or that what what it can be used as a tool is to turn that down, find your real self and find a middle path, right? That allows you to thrive wherever you are, like in your in your in your interpersonal relationships, in your your romantic space, in business, right? And so, yeah, there's a lot of really interesting practices that you can do from where you are. So, don't think you have to listen to a Deca, go read all this Greek stuff and whatever. You could just go on YouTube or even into a thing like Chat GPT or Claude.ai and say, you know, I suffer from extremely low self-esteem. What stoic practices could I start doing now to build my self-esteem that are easy, right? And it'll start telling you, you know, not just quotes, but practices. That's what I I, you know, think people should look into. Cuz I'm a lover of stoicism, but I'm not translating nothing in Latin for nobody. Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned this idea of voluntary discomfort or voluntary hardship. And that is a practice. And, you know, you in I suppose you going and getting the shit beat out of your body at Half Gracie was an example of voluntary hardship because you went back. The first time might have been a mistake. The second time, Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, but I went back because I believed it was authentically valuable. I was like, look at these smaller dudes really being able to win over bigger dudes. And you, meaning me, are supremely small, supremely weak, not, you know what I mean? Like, I was physically fast in terms of running and I had a little bit of hand-eye coordination, but I was not a dynamic basketball player or, you know, fill in the blank of whatever. The only thing I was pretty decent at was soccer. But I hadn't done soccer in years and I was an adult now with kids. So, you know, what better thing to do than just try to figure out how to defend yourself so at least you don't just get the crap beat out of you in front of your uh significant other. That'd be great. But as I came into jiu-jitsu, I realized being, you know, from my era, I'm again, I'm 56. So, I'm a guy who grew up on Karate Kid. I'm a guy who grew up on the Kung Fu TV show. I grew up, you know, with the VHS era watching Bruce Lee. I used to go to martial arts like weapon stores as a kid, taking my, you know, bike route money so I could get a uh a throwing star, which they were selling to kids at that time, right? Or, you know, try to get some thing you could stab people with and they would give it to me. Speaker 1: That's my story exactly, except throwing stars weren't legal in Canada, so I had to make my own using tin snips. Speaker 2: Dude, I had throwing stars. And it was the one, you know the one that had the the thing you could put it on a belt buckle. They used to have these stars you could put on a belt buckle. It was one of those and they worked. I was I was throwing them at this wood wall behind my house. So, it was crazy. But so, coming from that, I believed that whoever taught you how to fight would also teach you philosophy. Speaker 1: Ah. Speaker 2: Right? Right? I come from this thing. And you know, look, bro, I mean, it's not news. Half Gracie was not teaching philosophy in Mountain View. He was teaching fighting. And if you got a good idea from doing that practice, then that was good for you. But he was just trying to make killers, bro. You know what I mean? And so, I really realized quickly that a lot of other people there weren't thinking like me, right? Um and I don't mean that as any kind of disrespect. They were there to fight and learn how to fight and they were getting what they came for. I, however, was getting most of what I came for. I I I needed more. Now, I was already a practicing Muslim. I converted to Islam in 1990. And so, you know, I knew that the Prophet Muhammad was a wrestler. I knew he had won in wrestling. I knew that they had this thing called Futuwa in Islam, which are the prophetic sports, right? These are sports that Muslim children are encouraged to do. And they are wrestling/grappling/jiu-jitsu, okay? Uh swimming, horseback riding, and archery. Those four things are what Futuwa are are are are made of, okay? And so, that's why whether you go to Afghanistan or you go to Dagestan or Kyrgyzstan, any of the Stans, there's always some kind of wrestling there, right? And so, it's it's a it's a big part of Islamic culture. So, in my faith, Speaker 1: And they were parts of Persian culture before there was an Islam. Speaker 2: Yeah, Persian culture. Exactly. I just did a podcast with a guy who knows a lot of that Persian wrestling stuff. They they had these thing called the Zurkhaneh, which were uh what they called houses of wisdom. This you see those big bats that they those big wooden bats for strength training. They had this shield thing. They do all these different push-ups and feats of strength. And in the Zurkhaneh, they also did poetry, which is crazy. Like, but there was a lot of poetry also done in between sets and things like that. So, I knew that that was a part of it. And so, what I didn't realize was that when I met Helio, I already loved jiu-jitsu and I planned to do it for sure, for sure. But when I met Helio Gracie, I decided I was doing jiu-jitsu forever. Forever. I was like, until they put me back in the earth, I'm doing this. And so, at the same time, because I grew up with so much low self-esteem, I never thought I was going to be a black belt. Legit. In my life, having a black belt was never in the cards for me in my heart. I just kept going back because it was something that I loved. And what I didn't realize was that going back would get me the black belt in time. I didn't realize that. I was just like, I'll never be good enough forever. That's fine. Speaker 1: It's almost like you were focusing on the process and not the end destination. Speaker 2: Absolutely. In fact, one of my friends, one of my childhood friends said, you know what's weird? I was like, what? He said, never in my life do I remember you saying that you wanted a black belt. I never remember you saying it. Ever. He goes, I would just wouldn't not see you for years, but you were still practicing. I wouldn't see you for more years, you were still practicing. He goes, I knew you loved it, but I never heard you say you wanted it. I said, that's because I was so convinced I would never get it that I just never bothered to say it. It was it was it was too far, you know. But I used my time on the mat at Half's to start reading the Book of Five Rings. Now I'm reading the Art of Peace by O Sensei, the guy that, right? Cuz I'm thinking, well, maybe I can pull in Aikido philosophy, right? Maybe Aikido philosophy can work for jiu-jitsu. I'm reading works and quotes by Jigoro Kano. I'm thinking, well, maybe we could still use the the the judo philosophy, bring it in. But quite honestly, as a practitioner of jiu-jitsu, as much of so much of it did apply, I felt like a lot maybe didn't. Um maybe because of the intensity. I was speaking with a friend once and he said, have you ever noticed that the traditional martial arts that tend not to work are the ones with big philosophies. And the ones that really do work tend not to. He said like, look at Thai fighting. What's the philosophy of Thai fighting? I don't know. But if they start kicking you in that knee, you're going to know what time it is and those elbows start spinning, right? He's like, look at American wrestling. Right? Speaker 1: Work harder. Speaker 2: Yeah, American wrestling doesn't have a philosophy, right? Except keep going, right? And so, he goes, then you got jiu-jitsu. And he said, and he said, maybe uh Kyokushin karate, right? Or Enshin, those like really hard like we're actually, you know, flying knees and all that are in the game. He's like, and boxing, right? American boxing. He's like, those things don't have a philosophy per se. But but but you look at things that do have more of a philosophy and those guys tend to get beat up and choked out. So, he was like, I think that's weird. Speaker 1: So, here we are talking about the junction of philosophy and a martial art that we'd like to believe works. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: What does that mean about us and what does that mean about our martial art? Speaker 2: I mean, I think that the the the problem with, you know, and my argument back in the day, one of the first articles I wrote for Valley Tudo News was this thing saying like, look, if Brazilian jiu-jitsu works quick, like remember in those days they were like, in six months, it's your equivalent to a black belt in any other martial art. And if I'm honest, six months after being at Half's, I ended up going to a judo school and I did tap one of the instructors like more than once as a white belt at Half Gracie's at the bottom of the barrel in Mountain View. And I and I tapped an instructor like legit several times. I was blown away that that was that that that was the case. But here's the point. It's not about me. And I mean this. You know, you look at guys like Jordan Peterson, right? And they'll be like, you want to be a monster and and then, you know, you want to control it. Go be an absolute monster. And you're like, okay. Now, here jiu-jitsu can make you a monster in six months. If we're if we're being honest, in six months, two days a week, you'll be better than most of the men you know in your life. Period. If you go three times a week or you decide to be even casually competitive, like, you're the most dangerous man in the room in a lot of circles. It doesn't mean you're invincible, but Brazilian jiu-jitsu absolutely works. Here's my point. If I can make you a monster in six months, but I can't give you empathy, but I can't make you care about wisdom, if I can't make you care about justice, if I can't show you the importance of having balance in your life, it's dangerous that I teach you this art. Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. It's like letting a little kid run around with a shotgun. Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. And at that point, I was a white belt. So, who shut up, white belt. Nobody cares about your fake ass Black Miyagi, dog. Get out of here, right? But I always knew it was a problem. And then when you look now, okay? Let's run down the list of of the scandals we're roughly aware of right now. Uh Atos, for shame. We don't even need to have that whole conversation, but we should. Okay? That's crazy. That guy Isaac who comes out of Kingsway, running with uh Gordon Ryan, okay? Crazy. His lady's on the run. Isn't she gone? What's her name? Speaker 1: Uh Natalie Santoro. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, on the run, right? Crazy. How many people, I'm not even going to name any of them because I don't I don't want to demean them. How many people have we had as champions in Brazilian jiu-jitsu who turn out to be complete loons, who need to be institutionalized or be on some kind of medicine? Oh, and then whatever's going on with the Checkmat scandal, right? There's a whole Checkmat scandal. Right? So, this is me not trying to know what the scandals are. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: And then every time I still say, let's have a conversation about philosophy in the space of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I get still get all the pushback, right? But like, can we still afford to act like some of these schools aren't low-grade cults? Can we can we acknowledge that? Can we acknowledge that some of these cult of personality people have been financially abusive, sexually abusive, uh physically abusive to a lot of their own students and stuff like that? Like, we have to acknowledge Speaker 1: Financially abusive? Speaker 2: Dude, stuff's upside down, bro. It's it's horrifying. And I'm not saying be a stoic and pretend to be Mr. Miyagi. I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm saying I am a deeply, viciously flawed human, but I'm just trying to be cool, show some people jiu-jitsu before I get back in the dirt and enjoy the journey, right? And use it for good while I got it. Right? And meanwhile, a lot of schools and a lot of individuals are out of balance, at peace with being out of balance, and nobody even wants to talk about that this lack of character in Brazilian jiu-jitsu isn't the cancer of the sport. I never thought a lack of character would be the cancer of the sport. But that's that's where we're at right now. Speaker 1: I do think that jiu-jitsu is having a little bit of a me too moment right now. Like it it we went from me too 10 years ago, basically peaking with, well, Harvey Weinstein. Speaker 2: Right, right. Speaker 1: And then kind of a a wild swing the other way. Speaker 2: Right, right, right. Oh, no, absolutely. Speaker 1: Grab them by the pussy. We'll elect uh adjudicated rapist who has very, very credible, many, multiple rape allegations. That's kind of the the counter swing to me too. And now I think it's swinging back a little bit. I mean, we have to acknowledge that a one sexual assault allegation could be fake. These things do happen. I think they happen a lot less often than people would like like it to be to be able to write it off. But by the time you're at multiple allegations or as happened in Atos, every single woman leaves or Speaker 2: Is bouncing and being like, I'm no longer no longer and you just watch everything roll out. It's frightening, man. Speaker 1: So, I, you know, yes, there hasn't been a hasn't been adjudicated in a court of law. But when a lot of people that I know are like, I am so hard out. Speaker 2: Yeah. All the way. Yeah. Speaker 1: You know, and and so the thing is is that, you know, again though, if I speak about philosophy, uh if I speak about Islam, if I speak about Daoism, you know, which I, you know, a lot of times so I got a podcast on Substack called Bishop Chronicles. I bring a lot of people to talk about stoic philosophy and jiu-jitsu and or just one of the other. And so, you know, I'm having a good time on there. I'm enjoying the conversations and sharing just the fundamentals. Again, I am not a classically trained anything. The only thing I've been classically trained in is jiu-jitsu. I have a GED, right? Now, uh I've lectured at Lehigh University on Islam. I've lectured at Harvard on Islam. I've lectured I just put up a Harvard lecture on chess and hip-hop uh behind the paywall that I did at Harvard. I totally forgot about it like, you know, 2016. But like, you know, the idea is that I don't care why you got into jiu-jitsu. As long as it's for positive reasons, it's cool. But here's the deal. There's never been a more important time for you to get into stoic philosophy than right now. Right now. Are you looking at what's happening in the world? Are you looking at what's happening to our democracy? Are you looking at what's happening, the tension in the streets? Like and it's not about like, worst case scenario, I got to fight to the death. You may have to. It's unlikely. You may have to. It's unlikely. But the other idea is, you should want to be a capable adult in this time and be able to help yourself and others. I'm not doing jiu-jitsu just for me. I've told people before, a lot of times jiu-jitsu starts with you and if you stay on the path, it ends with other people. Jiu-jitsu ain't about me at 56 anymore. These old ass knees, this back is just itching to get thrown out. My back is like, do do jiu-jitsu again and see if I allow your ass to walk tomorrow. It's always threatening me. Knees are always threatening me. Lungs and heart always threatening me. But I keep going back. I'm not going back for me. I'm going back for the person who can't fight for themselves. I'm going back for the old person who can't run with everybody in that moment and maybe maybe I can pick them up. Right? But like, we have to understand that it's not enough to do jiu-jitsu. We have to think about how are we using jiu-jitsu to help make us a better person? How are we using jiu-jitsu to help us be contributing to our local community? Don't think about changing the world. How are you using jiu-jitsu in your local community? Speaker 1: I I was talking about this with uh an endurance athlete who had done a bunch of triathlon, had done a bunch of paddling, had done a bunch of cycling. So, he may was making the argument that cycling is one of the most selfish sports out there because there's so much money in it. Right? Like if you if you want to get sponsored and lead a sponsored life as a as a professional marathon canoeist, good luck. Speaker 2: Right, right. Speaker 1: That's not going to happen. Speaker 2: Right, right. Speaker 1: You'd be lucky to eat one package of ramen a day and hitchhike across the across the country. But if you're a professional cyclist, you can make some decent money. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And essentially all of cycling, especially once you start talking about the pack dynamics, is not how do you lift other people up? It's how do you take advantage of other people? This this is his argument. And it it it tracks somewhat with the high-level cyclists that I know. So, I I'm I'm biased there and there goes my entire audience of of pro cyclists and want to be pro cyclists. But it's not the first group of people I've alienated. Uh So, ultimately, jiu-jitsu, obviously, if I'm got a small group of training partners and I make them better, I become better. But at the same time, it's also a selfish thing because the the uh the short-term benefit of me showing you exactly what I'm doing to set up my super special knee bar attack is that my super special knee bar attack stops working in the short term. So, there's a short-term disincentive. Speaker 2: No, you'll get your knee bar. Yeah, yeah, it it it's it's crazy. Like you'll get like I still remember when I taught somebody the Darce super early and then they Darced me. Like I was like, I shouldn't have. Right? And so, like that's always a part of the journey. What I think is the weird thing about jiu-jitsu is that so many people come into it from a place of humility, of fear, having been bullied, whatever. And one of the saddest things ever, it happens in every gym where someone who comes in not knowing anything, becomes good. And it's only at the point where you see they have acquired some skill that you realize that they too are a bully. They treat people rude. They, right? And you're like, oh my God, bro. Like you, right? And so, that's part of why I think philosophy Speaker 1: But so much of that is from the top down. Like there are people Speaker 2: No, I Speaker 1: Go ahead, make your case. Speaker 2: I think it's the way people come in. You tell me. I think when people are unclear on their why or they lie to themselves about why they came into the gym, it directly impacts the way they roll and the way they carry themselves in the gym. But if a person is like, I actually I'm telling people like I want to get fit, but the truth is my dad, my dad used to kick the shit out of me. So, when I'm rolling, that person we call a spaz, that's PTSD. He's not a spaz. He's fighting his dad. He's not even rolling with you, bro. He's fighting his dad, right? The person who got knocked out in front of their girlfriend, the reason they don't have any control is cuz they're not trying to go out like that again. And so, they're really choppy and that's why you got to like calm them down. But you tell me what you think. Speaker 1: Well, I don't disagree that there are people fighting with demons instead of training with training partners. That that exists for sure. And and that's a separate thing and that's that's also a top-down thing. Because if you if you're an instructor and you just want the toughest bunch of sons of bitches in your training room, you might let that spazzy guy who's fighting for his absolute life for every drill, go unchecked because it's it's going to create a tougher bunch of guys. But if you're the instructor and you're like, hang on, this isn't right. You might take the guy aside and try and, you know, dude, go to therapy. Dude, you can't go that hard. Dude, if you keep on going that hard, I'm going to kick you out for the safety of my students. And your own safety, by the way. And then if on the other hand, you have an instructor who will absolutely needs to be top alpha dog and will do whatever he needs to do to punish people who even getting close to him, then people internalize that and that's the right way to be. So, my theory of top-down doesn't account for the guy coming in with severe trauma and severe psychological issues. For sure. Speaker 2: Yeah. But we but we can't know that. And a lot of times I'm not even sure that the new customer knows it yet, right? Because because they're just trying to cure whatever, you know, their their their initial their initial thing is. And so, I was telling one of my friends back in the UK, uh in Leeds, this guy who who he's a boxing instructor at Castleford Boxing, uh and Pontefract and uh outside of Leeds. And we were talking about this like how people tend to not know their why. And I said, you know, you need to give people 45 to 60 days to observe them and try to get a sense of their why. Cuz everybody's going to come in saying, I just want to be fit. I saw this in UFC. I listen to Joe Rogan, right? Those are all but under that answer, there's always a second answer. And so, you need time to observe them and then circle back and they'll be like, actually, um I was jumped and I didn't know what to do. Actually, right? And then and then it's cool. The the the actual why is I was explaining to Tony, his name is Tony. Tony Leo. I said, the why doesn't matter because your answer is going to be, I'm going to help you and we're going to grow together through it. That's always the answer, you know what I mean? But but I I think top-down makes sense, but the problem is back to philosophy, stoic philosophy, there's a thing called the dichotomy of control, right? Like you can only control so much. So, I, right? At Half Gracie, coming from the old days when Half Gracie was just a death cauldron on the mats and if you made it, you made it. If you didn't, you didn't. Now I'm telling people to be like, whatever. I'm not really in control if they can grasp it. I'm not really in control if they take this sentiment like sincerely, you know, I I coach the kids class and sometimes the kids can be extra rough, especially when they run out of techniques. Like they're like, well, I don't know what I'm doing. Here goes the elbow on the neck. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just going to give you the old school strangle cuz I can't make the choke hold work. I've been telling them, listen, think about how you want people to feel when class is done. Do you want your training partners to feel like they're weak? You want trade part your training partners to feel like you don't care if you lean on their on their neck with your elbow just so you can say you won the won the match. You know, like do you want them to feel like they're not good enough? There's a way to still give your all and maintain respect and things like that. And, you know, I I tell the kids, you know, think about, are you becoming more wise in jiu-jitsu? Are you able to take anything from this class and use it in the classroom, use it at home with your with your siblings, use it when you're frustrated with your parent? Like I want you to think about how jiu-jitsu can help you be better because I said, honestly, like being good at jiu-jitsu doesn't matter if you're not actually a good person. Speaker 1: Amen. Speaker 2: You know, I I really believe that. Speaker 1: So, you mentioned your why, but I'm fairly sure that your why has changed over time, right? Over the 27 years that you've been training, it's probably mutated a few times and evolved into something new, hasn't it? Speaker 2: Yeah, in the beginning, it was just hardcore uh self-preservation, feeling like I wasn't good enough and I need, you know, again, at the time, I was like, I didn't have a gun. My my now ex-wife didn't want a gun in the house. I really didn't want one either. So, I was like, I'll be I'll be the gun, right? So, then I started going to jiu-jitsu. When you start, you know, it's scary. You're just getting your ass kicked regularly. And then even, you know, I think the biggest lie that we tell people, especially in the beginning, is that it gets easier. It never it never actually gets easier. Um it's kind of like lifting weights, right? If I give you a little bit more than you can push, like you'll you might power through it and you and you'll get through it. But through that consistency, you'll actually get stronger. The weight doesn't get easier to pick up. You get stronger. It's the same thing in jiu-jitsu. People think like, why are all these people leave at blue? Bro, cuz they think once they get that blue belt on, all right, now I can start kicking people's asses and letting them know what time it is. And then it's like, nah, homie, you just got jumped into the gang. Now it's really on. And you learn this whole world that you never knew existed and then they quit. You know, and then they quit. So, I think that um letting people know it's always hard and that you weren't good at it. Like every time I teach a move, I say, I wasn't good at this and there was a time when I didn't know it. So, I don't want you to think because you see me doing it hella clean right now that I was always this way. And don't hold yourself to this standard. I want you to try to learn the move. Just try and learn the move. And be okay with with not only not getting it right tonight, but trying it and rolling and letting and then people get passed and whatever. You've got to be okay with that. Because if you don't try the move, we'll never know what you're capable of. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: You know, um I have found stoicism to help me a lot in my ability to grieve more rationally and not see death as a punishment, but just as a natural process, you know, in in in the journey. So, you know, Marcus Aurelius wrote something along the lines of, look, after a certain point, either your brain starts to fade, but your body's cool, or vice versa, right? Something goes first. Speaker 1: My mother died from ALS. So, her body died around her brain and her brain was still functioning. And in the end, she chose to it was before Canada had the medical assistance in dying act made. Right. But basically, the hospital allowed us to take her home with a whole bunch of drugs to keep her comfortable. Right. And just knowing knowing that she would die. And she knew that she would die and it was a it was a decision. So, her brain was surrounded by a dying body. My father who just passed, died of Alzheimer's. So, his body hung on for years, but his brain, he was no like he was a a shadow of a shadow of his former self. So, then his body died around his brain. So, that's so interesting that Marcus Aurelius writes about these two possibilities. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? And that's why again, that's why I really, you know, I like stoicism because it's easy and it doesn't have a lot of dogma. I, you know, I've told people before, you know, I am Muslim, but I am not some kind of Islamic scholar type historian dude. I have lectured at Harvard on Islamic history. I've lectured at Brown. I've guest lectured at a lot of different places, Lehigh, whatever. Right? But I'm not like uh I'm not like an Islamic scholar. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like, you know, in terms of the different, you know, Speaker 1: You haven't come out of a madrasa. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like I don't have it like that. My Arabic is not lit, whatever, you know what I'm saying? I I believe that um a lot of what you get out of the stoics can be taken and used easily. And that's what I liked jiu-jitsu. Like, you know, I learned really quickly training at Half's like, if he showed me this move today and I really focused on it, if I went outside and something popped off, I could probably pull it off. Like after, you know, after about training for like six months, right? Where you kind of get used to how you absorb moves and things like that. Stoicism has a lot of practices that are simple to understand and you can just deploy it in your own life and give it a couple weeks, you know. Um the first one that I used, the first practice I used was called the the view from above. And it's about learning how to depersonalize anything that you experience, lots of pain, lots of sadness, lots of joy, whatever. And this is a a meditation that I'll often do with people where I'll say, okay, wherever you are right now, just like close your eyes, look around the room, visualize where you are and who and what's around you and then close your eyes. Right? And then so, we'll wait a couple minutes and I'll say, now, take a view 10 feet up and look down on the room, see yourself in your clothes sitting there, right? See where your chair is, see the people to the left and right of you, see where I'm standing, right? Okay, cool. Now, go up above the building and now you can see cars going by, you can see the street vendors, you can see people going in and out of restaurants and bars and, you know, you can see a hearse and you can see an ambulance and you can see a car full of kids getting ready to go to school, right? And then you can go up and you can see the whole region you're in, right? And observe that. Okay? And now you're seeing airplanes and you're seeing uh uh boats, right? That are going across cargo boats and this and that, right? Then you can see graduations and people are leaving uh graduations, other people are leaving a funeral home. Some people are pulling up to the hospital, other people are getting out. And you go all the way out and you can see the earth moving on its axis, right? In slow motion, right? And you can see the clouds and you can see all of the life and the little pockets of darkness, right? And then you slowly talk yourself back into your body, right? And that's how you depersonalize what happens. We always say, you know, oh man, this happened to me. Right? Oh man, you know, it happens. It's part of the life experience that we all are guaranteed to feel, right? On the day you graduated from college, somebody failed out and was told they weren't good enough to be in the program. And, you know what I mean? On the day you were born, somebody else died. On the day you died, somebody will be born. Right? And so, when you get that dream job, somebody else got fired, right? And so, you have to understand that it's not that things are happening to you. They are happening. You will get through them. You will navigate into a new place. And sometimes if these things don't happen, you won't find your trajectory. Sometimes the worst things that come to you are the things that actually set you on the journey to being your best, highest, and happiest and most peaceful self, but it comes through the pain. Speaker 1: I I think that's fair. And that's uh an incredibly useful lens to to look at this through. I think you addressed most of the things that I wanted to talk about. Is there anything else that you'd like to leave people with? Speaker 2: You know what? I just like to leave people with this, man. Um please take yourself in these times seriously because they're not a joke. And if anything that's not right with the ship we're on is to be arrided, it will take action from those who are wise, who are courageous, who are disciplined, right? Who seek justice and who in the course of seeking justice, uh do not become the demons they're trying to remove. This is crucial. Right? Um America has been worse than this. But there's no reason for us to believe that it can't get worse than this if we don't take ourselves seriously. You know, I am born here in San Francisco. I grew up incredibly uh multicultural experience that was often racist, was often this, was often a lot of things. But, you know, I got along despite it. And I know that had I been born anywhere else in the world, this amazing life that I've lived, it just wouldn't have been lived. Right? This couldn't happen anywhere else. Right? And it's because of that that I love the country. It's because of that that I want the best for this country in this time. And um it's going to take more than empty slogans from any party. It's going to take more than a few philosophy quotes, some quotes from the Bible, Quran, Torah, whatever, to write the ship. But like, it can be arrided and you can have a hand in it. We can have a hand in it. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be vengeful, but it has to happen because um, you know, jiu-jitsu, if it doesn't teach you anything, it should teach you to speak the truth as you see it and and try to have a good contribution to the people around you. That's all I'm trying to do. To whatever degree I fail at it, I apologize in advance, but that's that's my goal as flawed as I am. Speaker 1: All right. How do people uh get more of your thoughts and your uh connect with you? Speaker 2: Oh, cool. Yeah, thank you, thank you. So, I uh Deca Banjoko, you can check me out on Substack at the Bishop Chronicles Podcast. It is a podcast that covers stoicism and martial arts for the most. I put some other different stuff behind the paywall cuz I used to be like a hip-hop journalist. So, sometimes I'm writing about Tupac or uh Rizza. Those are going to do be two new pieces I'm dropping with my friendship with them and, you know, things that I experienced over there. But go to the Substack on Instagram. I'm @BishopChronicles with an S on the end, @BishopChronicles. And I have a small uh company that I run called 64 Blocks where we teach meditation, chess, and jiu-jitsu to people of all ages, but it's really kind of directed at the youth. And um that's @RealTheNumber64 and Blocks on it. Thanks for having me on, man. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Take care. Speaker 2: All right, one love.