Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 418 Live - Psychedelics with Matt Vincent & Bonnie Schroeder
Episode Date: August 11, 2020Matt Vincent is a former high school and college thrower turned two-time Highland Games World Champion and the CEO/founder of HVIII Brand Goods. He is also formerly known by the People’s Coach as th...e “Fat Owl”. Bonnie Schroeder is a competitive powerlifter and powerlifting coach who helps women across the world learn how to develop physical and personal strength, confidence, and a greater sense of well being through strength training. Follow Matt on IG:https://www.instagram.com/ihviiimattvincent Follow Bonnie on IG: https://www.instagram.com/bonschro Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell
Transcript
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project podcast hosted by Mark Bell,
co-hosted by Nsema Eang and myself, Andrew Zaragoza. This episode is recorded on August
8th and is with our friends Matt Vincent and Bonnie Schroeder. Matt Vincent's been on the
podcast several times and he's one of the longest tenured guests that we've had. I think he's been
on the podcast in every iteration of it and that includes the locations as well. But Matt, of
course, is the owner of Hate Brand Goods.
They make the amazing fanny pack that I wear every single day.
Bonnie is a power lifter and fitness coach.
Together, they've been traveling the entire country, having a lot of fun.
You guys need to follow them on Instagram.
All links will be down in the descriptions below.
But what's really interesting about it is that we get an awesome perspective from their point of view
in regards to what's going on with the country right now, whether it be protests in regards to
police brutality and even coronavirus. They get to see different parts of the country and
they tell us that in certain parts that nobody wears masks, yet when they show up here in
California, it's kind of mandatory.
The super interesting topic that we covered today
was their psychedelic experiences.
Both did an ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica
and just some really amazing things happened to them.
A lot of stuff that they've been, you know,
carrying with them for so long
kind of got worked out during this psychedelic experience.
But we had a lot of fun with this one,
so we hope you guys do as well.
If you do, please reach out to us.
All social media links will be down in the description below.
So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen,
please enjoy this episode with Matt Vincent and Bonnie Schroeder.
So average is 13.
We looked it up.
Because she's like, I'm not.
I don't fart more than most people.
It's just because of the food I eat now.
Right.
But when I don't eat that food.
She eats good.
So I'd say.
So imagine if we put her on what our diets used to be.
Yeah, but she eats vegetables, though.
No.
Vegetables make you farty.
She doesn't eat them.
Oh.
Does everything make you farty?
I guess.
Except like every one of her farts is like.
I just don't think I can hold a lot of air back there.
So it's like pop.
There's no room. Yeah. All of her farts sound like. I just don't think I can hold a lot of air back there, so it's like pop. There's no room.
Yeah, all of her farts sound like bubble wrap.
It's like bap.
Bap.
Yeah.
But she probably has 60 of those a day.
Jesus Christ.
One of the best descriptions that Mark ever said was like, it sounds like someone's ripping
carpet.
Oh, no.
Especially when you're squatting.
Oh, man.
The last time we were here.
Last time I was here, I farted while I was squat here, you had such a good fart while you were squatting.
Like laughing on the way out.
Oh yeah, like hip position and just your...
And I'm like...
Yeah, yeah.
I just can't stop laughing.
You guys are beyond the farting in front of each other stage.
You know what an exhausting thing that would be to pretend that we don't fart or poop?
You would be very bloaty.
You know how difficult that would be for me?
I'd be so uncomfortable and so much pain.
I think it was probably the first weekend that we actually hung out.
I was like, this is...
We'll go ahead and get this out of the way.
Yeah, I gotta release this because I'm gonna die.
We're both adults here.
Yeah.
I feel like you're gonna double over in pain holding those hands.
Oh, it's terrible.
Dude, that's the worst.
When you first start going out with someone and like stay at their house the first night
and so like you don't get your morning poop.
You're just like, I'm going to head home.
We both need some time, I'm sure.
Everything is uncomfortable here.
Yeah.
Can we just skip this stage and start farting in front of each other?
Right.
Be humans.
You guys have been traveling around a bunch, huh?
Yeah, yeah.
We're five weeks in, man.
What's the goal?
What is the goal?
The goal is to get the fuck out of St. Louis.
Not that we dislike St. Louis.
No, it was just, man, we just miss travel.
That's a big one for me.
Have you slid down the arch yet?
Once.
Climbed right up to the top.
Got there.
Slid right down.
I did it on my feet, though.
Oh, that's good.
Am I missing the reference?
Just the St. Louis arch. Oh, okay. There's an arch there, yeah. Oh, that's good. The whole way. Am I missing the reference? I feel like you're just a St. Louis arch.
Oh, big stainless steel thing.
There's an arch there.
Yeah, that's it.
It just sounded so weird.
I didn't post about it.
What is it, like 200 feet high?
No, it's like 1,000 feet tall.
Yeah, yeah.
1,000 feet tall.
It's a gateway arch.
It's gateway to the Americas.
How tall is it really, do you know?
I don't know how tall it is.
Gateway to the West.
We could look that up.
200 feet.
We should probably look it up right now.
No, maybe more? I bet more than that. 500? I'd say, I'm going is. Gateway to the West. We could look that up. 200 feet. We should probably look it up right now. No, maybe more?
I bet more than that.
500?
I'd say, I'm going to give it...
500 sounds reasonable.
$1, Bob.
$466.
That's my guess.
Wow.
Are we Googling this?
I would assume.
630 feet.
Oh, there we go.
All right.
Okay.
He slid down that.
That's the whole plan.
Quite an epic slide down.
We'll show the video later.
Yeah, I greased my feet and went down.
Coconut oil.
A lot of balance.
MCT.
MCT.
Tell us your MCT oil, coconut oil, butter story.
This is your fault.
You did this.
Of like 2015 or 2016?
Also, the first time hearing this from you was the other day.
Yeah.
I've shit a lot in my life hey we're proud this
is why you're on the show i know it proud of you yeah so when i was really working on becoming less
gross and uh getting less fat and talking to you a bunch about keto ideas and things like that and
you're like man before bed sweet tooth keto cocoa and i'm like okay sick and you're like unsweetened cocoa
powder uh mct oil coconut oil heavy whipping cream i'm like perfect i can do that add a little
cinnamon let's fancy that what i didn't miss or what i didn't get correct was the idea that it's coconut oil or MCT oil.
So I went with both.
I also added butter.
Oh, my gosh. Because I don't know.
It doesn't make it taste more delicious.
Everything needs butter, right?
Yeah.
And about 30 minutes later,
I got some of the worst hot snakes I've ever had in my life.
So bad, man.
Just lava and magma ever had in my life. So bad, man.
Just lava and magma flying out of my backside.
That's a rough feeling when your stomach feels hot like that.
Oh, it's not good.
You know, in the words of Burdick, the concern is when they're cold.
No, that's true. Yeah, cold poop.
Then you've got things to worry about.
Yeah, I texted Burdick one day and said, oh, man, my farts are really hot today.
This is disgusting.
And he writes back. He's like like only contact me if they're cold because that would be a problem yes i spent most of that night
like in my in my bathroom i had one of those uh you know the private like toilet closet
that we now have in life uh i just ended up like i couldn't leave because of the rate that i kept
shitting so i just like leaned against the wall and had fallen asleep essentially just like we're
just whatever needs to get out of here let's keep flowing out just keep we get we're in the right
place for it either that or lay in the tub i don't know the answer oh wow so you're getting
out of st louis and uh what else are you doing
yeah so we've we hit the road and we're just kind of doing a summer road trip we did one last year
uh a month for a month it was just a month this year we blocked off eight weeks so had so much
fun i decided to double it so much fun it just especially now because like we're five weeks in
and it feels really sustainable because we know how to find camp.
We can grab an Airbnb if we need one every once in a while
for quality Wi-Fi, place to wash clothes, meal prep a little bit,
and just kind of re-sort out.
So that's been good.
Or if we book an Airbnb, I've got a place that I can have my meal prep company,
Eat Right Foods or Stay Classy Meats can send stuff to us there and we can restock.
And so, I mean, dinner most nights has been rice and meat that we get from those places.
And on the road, we stop at gas stations and heat that up in bowls and steal their condiments.
And so it's been awesome.
And, you know, being on there, we wanted to go see friends and we wanted to get out because travel's been cut so much this year that that's a big part of what I love to do.
And we both enjoy doing it and the camping and, you know, stealing some time in nature.
Plus, the weather's great in the Pacific Northwest with summer in St. Louis.
It's a hot butthole.
So it seems like you've you've loved it.
You love travel since i've known you pretty
much and then how about for yourself absolutely same thing same thing like all my family vacations
growing up were to lakes and camping or staying in cabins canoeing fishing all that so i totally
grew up that way you guys uh fight argue on the road much or you know things uh because you i
don't know just like uh you're
together those quarters for a long time together together yeah uh i mean we're used to living and
working together anyway like we both work from home you know so i think we're very aware of the
space and time that the other one needs i need a little bit more quiet time than he does um but no
there hasn't been really any issues at all and if something's
bothering one of us like neither of us have a problem speaking up and yeah you say it then and
let the communication be there that way you you talk about it like two adults instead of
hold something in until shit or or do it like i do and we talk to each other with levels of sarcasm
to eliminate the problems like being hey you know like uh you're gonna put feet
on the dash let's clean the windshield every once in a while you know something like that right
sometimes it turns into something they'll do yeah yeah yeah every once in a while right but i thought
hey at least you got it out right and i mean look neither of us have so much ego that we can't say
oh sorry i'll try to i'll try to fix it. Right.
And then have a conversation and then also respect the fact that you need time alone.
And whether that's we're at an Airbnb and we need to be in separate rooms for a little bit to either just chill and have some private space, you know, three people in a truck's
crowded because we've got our media guy, Brant, with us, too.
And so, you know, everyone needs that time.
And so, like, when we get an Airbnb, you know, I try to make sure we've got – that he's got his own room too because he needs that.
And he's an animal.
What else have you guys been doing?
It seems like you guys have some uh unconventional ways of uh working
on yourselves individually so let's uh dive into some of that what's you've uh drug talk yeah yeah
you've been messing around with some uh psychedelics and such and like a lot of people don't know about
that world yeah uh i started dabbling in it i guess um 2016 or uh pretty much after my knee
went to shit and was at that point was just dealing with
chronic pain and was looking for anything that could be an avenue of some light out of where i
was and um so started dabbling a bit way more with uh cannabis and then you know edibles and
edibles have a little bit more of a psychoactive feeling than smoking does just because your liver processes it.
And so you get a different chemical reaction.
I don't know the science behind it because I'm not terribly smart, but I'm not going to pretend to use those big words.
And then as that's moved on, it's been a little bit of psilocybin with mushrooms and some other stuff.
And it's I found all of it has been wildly beneficial for me. It's, it's changed a lot of my perspective.
I think it's reframed a lot of things as far as gratitude and empathy and
checking my ego out of most equations to where, you know, that little thing of someone does a slight to you and
yet it's easy to take it as a personal thing instead of just maybe they didn't realize
what they were doing.
But give that benefit of the doubt.
There's multiple reasons, right?
They could have maybe not realized what they were doing.
Maybe they had a rough day.
Of course, there's a lot of different reasons on why you never know.
Someone might lash out or say something and they just have no clue that it even bothered you at all
yeah it's one of the things i've picked up during this and that's been really powerful for me to
handle those type of situations is i don't equate uh malintent to something i can answer with
stupidity or someone's tired or they're busy.
So I always equate those things as first.
So if someone says something and you take it a bit offensive, maybe just think they
don't know enough.
That's the definition of a good explanation.
So if someone is to say, I think keto diets are dumb, like that's not and you need to
explain why, like what are you talking about?
If you can then wrap it around and say, well, because I'm more of a believer that it comes down to calories.
And when you're doing a keto diet, you're probably cutting out some calories.
Then you're like, ah, okay, now we're having a conversation.
Right.
Yeah.
All diets work.
Right.
It's a matter of how long are you willing to live in a caloric deficit.
That's how this operates, or surplus.
How long are you willing to live in a caloric deficit?
That's how this operates or surplus.
But, you know, so some bit of mushrooms and then some dabbled a little bit of LSD.
And then we both went for New Year's this year to kick off 2020.
We went to Costa Rica and did four days of ayahuasca at a facility called Rhythmia.
And it was an experience.
It was an interesting week.
Is that the second time you did ayahuasca? No, this would be my first run at ayahuasca.
Both of our first times.
Yeah, both of us.
Yeah, same place.
Yeah, you're there for a week, and we had four ceremonies in a row.
So it was pretty intense.
Why do you guys think that this kind of stuff is considered to be so – it seems like it's – I don't think that it's strange.
I don't care.
I think it's great.
Like, whatever way people can find – whatever the hell it is, we're all looking for something, right?
So, whatever way people can find that, as long as it doesn't hurt me, then I'm pretty much cool with it.
But what do you guys think?
Like, why is there such a stigma?
Is it the unknown?
I mean, people are doing drugs all day.
We got caffeine. We have alcohol. Right. Is it the unknown? I mean, people are doing drugs all day. We got caffeine,
we have alcohol. Those are the acceptable ones. I mean, look at how cool cigarettes were, you know,
20, 30 years ago. Yeah, right. There is no good or bad drug. It's just chemicals, right? And it's
just how it's used. And I think, like you said, a lot of people are afraid of the unknown, you know,
and ayahuasca is a big, big unknown and people only know what they've
heard and some of those stories can be a little scary a little intense so people are automatically
turned off and said no no no i could never i could never do that and a lot of these things you know
you are faced with your anxieties facing your fears and things like that and that's just
uncomfortable for people yeah i think it's too much of a look in the mirror for a lot of people. And especially something like that where this is work.
Like, this is medicine.
And I think people think it's too much of a look in the mirror.
When the reality of it is, and one of the decisions that helped me go through it was the more that I started familiarizing myself with it and being around people that could, could guide a little bit through this
arena, you know, um, with Kyle Kingsbury or Aubrey Marcus or any of these other people
I've been fortunate enough to, you know, call close friends, um, listening to them and these
big, big concepts that I kept getting from them.
And there's a lot of stuff there that I don't need.
Like, um, I like what they do with open relationships, but it's not working for me.
I know that.
And that's fine.
But it seems to be great for them.
And best of luck to you.
They're not bitter.
And they're not negative people.
And they all are in loving relationships with their friends and the people they hold close.
They believe in this tribe.
They probably some of the happiest people seem to be the happiest people I'm around and support each other fully like this.
Couldn't want anything more than success for you.
And why wouldn't you feel that way?
Right.
I think a lot of people operate out of scarcity that that there's only so much success we all have to share.
And it's not fucking true.
It gets all out there.
Same with happiness.
Same with love.
And leaning into that instead of fear is really what I picked up from them.
And so I'm like, man, there's something here I'd like to know myself and then I can make a
decision. And so I towed the water a little bit with different things, you know, microdosing or
moving into mushrooms with some different stuff. And, uh, it's been good. Also,
I wasn't insecure going in, you know, I wasn't battling an addiction going in. I wasn't insecure going in you know i wasn't battling an addiction going in i wasn't battling
i don't have a bunch of crazy childhood trauma things have been pretty fucking sweet for me
you know um yeah i think that's important to know i think that's an important note you know because
i think that some people think it might rescue them and it's like well i you know i don't know
but you're just sharing the way that it went for you. Right, right.
That's all I have.
I don't think it's for everyone, but this is my experience, and that's all I can speak on.
I think the people, because we were at Rhythmia with a group of 100 people during the ceremonies,
and I think we were some of the people that had.
Is everybody naked, by the way?
No.
I'm picturing.
Nope.
I must be thinking of something different.
More cult dressed.
Like everyone there is dressed in kind of like flowy white stuff when we go to a ceremony.
I didn't get that memo, so I'm in all black.
We didn't get that memo.
Yeah, because I'm a disgusting human being.
I can't wear white all day.
Like what distance could I wear a white suit and not get something on it?
It's not a possibility.
But I think out of everyone there there we were two people that had like
the least amount of trauma that we were going to fix and a lot of the things that i thought would
come up for me in your journeys like it didn't actually so the medicine gives you what you need
not necessarily what you want yeah yeah i really hope that i'd get this you know connection and
conversation with my father who's passed.
I was really kind of, you know, there's, oh, man, what's going to come up?
And so you do have anxiety about it, like, fuck, am I going to have to deal with this thing that I've kind of shuttled away somewhere?
Or, you know, what's going to come up in it?
The biggest thing with that is being able to submit and being able to, I call it, hand the keys over.
This ride's going to go wherever it's going to go,
and you don't get to be in control anymore.
And that's okay.
You're not in danger.
Like, you're not in real fucking danger.
It's things you need to sort out.
And the other thing they talk about when uncomfortable situations
and uncomfortable feelings do come up, whatever's coming is going.
So let it come.
That was a really, really helpful one for me because the first part of my really intense night was very, very scary.
But you're not so out of control that you can't tell yourself that, oh, this is the drug.
Yeah.
I took medicine.
This is what I'm feeling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I took medicine.
This is the effect.
And.
What's coming is going.
But you probably could get into a pretty bad spiral of panic, right?
You can. You can. and um but you probably could get into a pretty bad spiral of panic right you can you can but
the shaman and other people there are so good at what they do that you do feel this
light this uh i mean for for me one of the really interesting things that had happened um
at at the place there's these two dogs uh galaxy and uh akila and uh they they refer to the dogs
as shaman and so like while we're in ceremony they're free to come in the building and wander
around and do all this and so like two of the nights we were there while i was pretty deep into
it um i felt like i was laying there and somebody had sat with me and both the dogs had come and got on my mattress with me and kind of spooned in.
And one of the conversations I had with them.
The dogs.
The dogs.
So I visualized both of them as dogs that I have with my ex-wife.
This Mutt, Ziggy, and this other dachshund Willie.
And it was this conversation I had with them.
And like, man, having pets that you've had for a long time and then moving away, it's fucking tough.
These are kids.
And had this conversation with them of like, miss you.
And I'm sorry that i left you know and uh hearing back
from from the dog or ziggy you know was like yeah but you you know she you know that she needed us
right and and yeah i do and this was the right thing and so that was a cool release and moment to have.
Yeah, it's a powerful thing.
And I mean, the other thing for me out of this group of a hundred dogs, by the way, are actually a lot more common than people think.
I've seen the show Family Guy more than once.
These were some pretty amazing dogs.
Anytime you think that you'd actually like your dogs to talk to you, think about if you had a friend that occasionally just chases
his ass around in a circle.
You don't want any information from that dude.
You only feed it once or twice a day.
It's so mad at you.
What are we having? Are we having brown pebbles?
These will be awesome.
How come you get to eat all day, you fat fuck?
I'm going to go lay down.
Thank God. Thanks, man.
I got up. I woke you up at six. I'm going to go take a. Thank God. Thanks, man. I got up.
I woke you up at six.
I'm going to go take a nap for the next three hours.
I'm real curious about this real quick, though, because I mean, you guys said there's hundreds of people at this ceremony.
I think 110.
110.
Is everyone on at the same time?
Oh, yeah.
Is this something that like you get up while you're on and you'll wander around?
Yeah, absolutely.
So imagine it like it's a nice resort, but it almost feels more like a rehab center.
Totally.
So in the center of everything, there's the temple, which is just this big building.
And for ceremonies, everyone has their own mattress, a pillow, a blanket and a bucket.
Because most people will purge.
Wow.
At least one of the nights.
But you're in there with a hundred people uh ceremony begins at like 6 p.m and everyone goes up and gets their cup
and then you go back to your bed and you lay down and you wait and so everyone's experiencing it
together but i wasn't stressed out about the number of people there like that never really
seemed like an issue because your world kind of gets real small yeah your mattress
ends up being the only thing going on okay yeah yeah but in the beginning it's probably helpful
before you start the ceremony probably to have that energy of like-minded people around maybe
in a place that we went to like rhythmia one of the things they do really well are these integration
classes and so like we would have ceremony in the evening but we had classes to kind of attend throughout the day where people
talked about their experience and then the shaman would be in there to help not necessarily
interpret but if things you could see when people were like this is what i had going on and it felt
really sketchy because people had crazy experiences.
Mine were very mild comparison to a lot of the folks in the room.
And yeah, having having those classes of integration of how to deal with it and how to continue
to work with the medicine after you've left were really, really valuable.
So I think something like that verse shooting from don't know, shooting from the hip.
I mean, you could fucking order the products online.
I think that's a terrible idea.
Uh, yeah, I would recommend doing it with, with people that know their shit and, you
know, quality shaman and do your research and make sure that this is, I'm sure there's
something to, uh, doing it out in nature, you know?
And I mean, you do it in a, a uh in a building and you're on the
20th floor and you freak out about something maybe not great maybe not a great idea right
yes well set and setting i think are very very important for psychedelics as much as anything um
oh yeah that night was like seeing the stars for the first time yeah i'm sure there's some
psychedelics that probably fit into this category but but for the most part, it's not really like a party thing, right?
No.
No.
I think maybe that's a misunderstanding that people have.
I think that would be a terrible idea.
Oh, you're just taking drugs to have a blast.
No, with that said, yes, I also enjoy drugs.
I mean, I like taking, if we're going to be camping somewhere and we know that we're going to be
relatively secluded,
I like taking mushrooms.
It is fun,
but again,
it's set and setting.
Am I in a place that this is going to enhance the feeling I have of being in
this location?
And,
you know,
just,
it can be fucking fun.
There's nothing wrong with having fun,
enjoying food with the rest of your family.
Right.
Instead of being on some weird diet.
Yeah.
I think it's kind of similar in some way.
Yeah.
I want to experience the same thing everybody else experiences.
Look, it's not good or bad, right?
Like, it doesn't have feelings.
It's a thing.
You know, no different than food is.
Like, there's not good and bad food.
It's a choice.
You know, it's how it reacts to you.
And, you know, and the situation you give it
and and so like yeah i think there's different times like i know that if i want to get some
shit sorted it's a different set and setting than if i want to be in the woods and give it
more to interact with i guess would be the way um What are some differences if there are differences between you just kind of thinking about stuff versus utilizing these psychedelics to think about stuff?
You get better at accessing.
For me, I get better at accessing those.
I don't know.
Let's call it um thought processes you know different problem solving
methods different creative concepts different able to connect a to c in a different way than
i can without but the more that i've kind of tapped into it especially with you know something
as simple as microdosing or anything else, I can get there easier without it.
So I like that.
I understand.
Yeah, with psychedelics for me, it seems to be like with mushrooms,
you get to bring back the information.
You got shown a path.
Yeah.
And now whether you choose to.
I can try to go back that way.
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's important that you get to i can try to go back that way yeah yeah and um yeah i
think i think that's important that you get to bring that information back with you it's not
like getting fucking blackout drunk and then you wake up in this haze and don't know what happened
kind of correct me if i'm wrong here since i don't know much much about it uh would it be
maybe the equivalent of um because like no matter what no matter what you do or what you take, you're going to wake up tomorrow as Matt.
Yeah.
For the most part.
I mean, it's not a certainty, but for the most part, right?
You can't really jump into somebody else's soul.
No.
But for a moment, do you think while you're on these drugs that perhaps you're detached from everything you kind of ever thought, everything you've ever believed.
And it's you're in kind of almost like a different universe, maybe watching yourself from like a drone, a drone, drone footage or something.
Sure.
You're able to, like, see yourself do stuff.
And you're like, why do I do that all the time?
Or what?
You know, why do I talk that way to people?
What's, you know, that kind of thing.
to people what's you know that kind of thing yeah i do think that it works very much as a as a as a big mirror to to look at yourself and decide like why why do i handle things this way why is um
so one of the one of the things i know like that i i learned growing up was uh the way my dad
handled stuff and the way dad handled stuff was if a new thing was presented, you know, like, hey, can we go to blah, blah, blah?
The answer is no, because that's easiest.
And then it's usually no frustration, you know, especially if we got in trouble or something stupid or flat tire on my truck and I needed help.
Right. Like kid shit.
Then it's frustration, anger.
He can calm down, process it, and then we'll be cool.
But you've wasted a half hour.
Right.
And so I remember calling him in college, and there was something that I needed.
And I called him, and I was like, hey, man, Dad, I need help with this thing.
And I need to skip the 45 minutes of you being pissy about it so that we can get to a solution.
And he,
and we hang up and then he calls me back and he's like,
I just realized what you said.
I'm like,
yeah,
so can we,
can we get on with this?
And for me,
like that's ingrained.
Like I,
I've been that guy.
I know that that's my response pretty naturally for a long time that I really took pride in being an asshole.
I took pride in a lot of those things that that's gone, man.
Like I can be I can be hard headed.
I can suck it up.
I can work hard type of thing.
Yeah.
You know, and I mean, you can also do all those things without having to be an asshole.
You know, you don't have to be a martyr for the hard work you do or
the life or any of this like do it do it for you because at the end of the day that's the only
person it's going to really matter to and everyone's busy and you get you get more empathy from it and
the empathy is a big one and then for me gratitude is just through the roof like i feel like i used to really
be someone that took a lot for granted and that has changed maybe like more appreciation rather
than like expectations type thing tons and it's it's it's appreciation for me of the people around
me the set and setting it's just grown so so much you guys ever meet somebody like's like, you know, they're just they're just that way all the time.
And it's like a little like when we're when you're young and you know somebody that's like that and they're always super smiley and you're just like, man, I don't know what to do.
Like you like the person, but you're like, I need to get the fuck away.
You're too positive.
Yeah, they have it going on kind of all the time.
But what an amazing place to have yourself be in.
I honestly thought for a long time that the people I'd met who were that positive were full of shit.
I'm like, man, is it exhausting putting on this fucking smile all goddamn day?
It would be.
I'm too cynical for this shit.
And I'm glad that that's left.
Like, whatever bit that is.
And it's, don't get me wrong, I'm still cynical and shitty about a lot of stuff, but but not not people as much.
Back to one of the things you'd asked before about, you know, for why why do people fall into this fear of it?
Well, I think a lot of it is just what we've been taught in propaganda.
And we've not been given a chance to educate our system on
what these drugs could do because they're not terribly profitable they're not used in a clinical
setting and so we treat them as say no to drugs this is this is the answer we've been taught
forever yet some drugs completely cool really dangerous drugs well though well the doctor said
these are great and and the more that we've got to know
especially us in this space right like how fucking little does your general practitioner know
outside of the scope of shit that he's been given like your doctor is not a nutritionist
fucking in any way shape or form they are educated on this is the thing. This is what fixes it. They don't know
holistic approaches. They don't know these other things. They're not educated on all that.
They can be, but they don't have to be. It's not part of the education.
And so I think I think we need more avenues and more paths. And for me,
it was, you know, trying to get out of pain and i one of the things i think psychedelic did was
allow me to frame reframe pain differently i guess would be a way to say it like i'm never
operating it like a zero on the pain scale like i'm stiff today i was stiff yesterday but now i
describe it like i feel stiff or sore or any of those things i I'm not in debilitating pain.
There's a big fucking difference between the way things
were and
how they are now. And I think people
that operate at a two on the pain scale
all the time, they need an option that isn't
an opiate.
And if it is kratom, if it is a plant
based thing, if it could be a dietary change
with them. I almost forgot.
We gotta take a shot.
We've got to take a shot.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, we've got potions.
I mean, pass them around.
Have you thought about making these taste slightly better?
Gracias.
No.
Better.
No, they taste better.
No, I love that they taste gross.
I took one earlier.
Oh, they're so bad.
Oh, of course.
I took four earlier.
It's not a big deal.
Now.
Bottoms up.
I mean, I'm not fully endorsing it, but Mind Bullet plus a microdose of psilocybin, rocket fuel.
Damn.
Do you feel in some way that some of the psychedelics are almost like a steroid for your brain in some way?
They allow some interpersonal growth.
I mean, I've always kind of said, when I was young and just didn't drink at all, your brain in some way they allow um some like interpersonal growth um i mean it's a good way
i've always kind of said like when i was young and just didn't drink at all i i would say you
know i just don't understand why wouldn't people do something more useful with their drugs you know
like alcohol just gets you like just gets you silly just gets you drunk which can feel good
yeah i'm not gonna argue that doesn't feel good it feels great um but there's a lot of there's so many so many side effects to it obviously there's side effects to steroids as well but
if you want to have a better body or you want to be a little bit bigger then you you know you just
feel like you want to take something that boosts you in that direction i think maybe there's some
similarities between that and what you guys are talking about right i mean i think as much as the
market of nootropics has come on board that we are trying to fix cognitive capacity.
And look, we're in a really fortunate spot, right?
Like we are talking about people who any level of need in my life has been fulfilled.
I have love from friends and family.
I have shelter.
I know where meals are coming from.
I'm not concerned about money.
I'm not rich, but I don't live in a crazy fucking way. And so I don't have to sweat my bills.
And because I don't have these other stressors, I can think more existential stuff. I can think
more. Well, how do I, how do I improve the way I deal with problems? How do I get more efficient
at that? And so you start looking
into nootropics. You know, I think it's a really tough sell for someone who's like, must be nice.
I've got two jobs and I've got two kids at home. I sleep four hours a night and I'm essentially
drowning every day. You know, that's a tough situation. I don't have a lot of answers for that.
tough situation i don't have a lot of answers for that um i've never been in that situation i've never had to pull myself up by my bootstraps i mean i i was a broke 20 year old like people are
when they get out of college i was broke when i first got married and you know we slowly climbed
up through work and making some money and doing this and improving the lifestyle we had. I would challenge that you're not rich because of what you listed previously on all the different
things that you have.
So I think that sometimes we have a tendency to say stuff like that, but it's like it's
in comparison to, you know what I mean?
So I think, and then plus, you know, you're modest, so of course you're going to kind
of downplay it a little bit.
But I think anybody that feels like they have things fulfilled and feel good and they're happy
and i know it's like uh you know maybe like a might be considered like a loser mentality or
you might be trying to uh you know say you're something that you're not but i do think that
that is you may not be wealthy with you know a crazy amount of money to where you just don't care about what you spend.
Like, I don't care if the flight's 7,000 bucks.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, I'm going to do it anyway.
But I think that we are very, very, many, many people are very rich and they don't even recognize it.
And under those circumstances, especially if I'm going to compare to globally, I'm astronomically.
Right.
Right.
Like to have all those hierarchy of needs met to be on to the next level.
Yeah.
Okay.
I have expensive hobbies.
Yeah.
And it would be detailed in like what where your focus is each day.
Right.
Your focus is in lifting.
Your focus the other day was dropping your new apparel line.
each day right your focus is in lifting your focus the other day was dropping your new apparel line you know it's like these are all like these are all fucking awesome things that we get to do
we have a great opportunity to do rather than man i gotta fucking figure out where i'm gonna get food
but that's a big one right like that's a big one for people is realizing a lot of things that you
get to do and you don't have to do it. And I think a lot of people are stuck in constantly just doing things they have to do.
Getting out of that's tricky.
But I think a lot of that just becomes a mindset of like, man, I get to do this.
And I think people operate again a lot out of fear and this risk of like, well, I don't
know what's going to happen. And I have these responsibilities and things like that. And fortunate enough for me at 37 with no kids, I can kind of lean into a bunch of different things. I want to try. I'm not terribly responsible to any other people on earth.
And I look at it really honestly, like I'm very, very aware and conscious of my mortality.
I am going to die.
That is coming.
No, no.
Come on, man.
It's coming.
Right.
And I'm 37 years old.
Did you talk to dogs?
I don't think you're going anywhere.
More days I can spend doing that in my life.
The better.
Right.
You know, at 37, I mean, realistically, you know, I've said this a lot, but let's say I'm halfway, right? I mean, 74 years old, I would have outlived most of the other men in previous generations of my family.
And there isn't a guarantee.
I'm aware of that, too.
Like, I don't know what the tiny percent chance is that I die in a terrible car crash on the way to my hotel tonight,
but it's not 100% safe.
I'm getting in a car.
There's a risk, and I'm aware of it.
And so with that awareness, I want to make the most out of the days I've got left, man.
I want to be on board.
I want to be at the wheel. I want to be conscious and out of the days I've got left, man. I want to be on board. I want to be at the wheel.
I want to be conscious and making decisions and not just surviving.
And I think a lot of people just survive it.
If you were to think about it, like you guys do these trips, let's say you do them once a year.
You got 40 more trips.
Right.
You know, or 50 more, like whatever the number would be, right?
I mean, not to be like morbid, but I think you should be a little realistic, right?
I describe it and I've used it in talks to this idea of marbles.
And it's this concept that it's really what I guess my midlife crisis or whatever you want to call it started at at 31 when my dad had passed away the day before my birthday.
And he was 62 when he died.
And I just remember this like just like fuck are you halfway and at that point like i had not started hate brand i had not done a lot of things but i had
done some you know um and so you know kept competing and at that point was like man if
you're halfway and you got 31 years left that that translates out to something like 1650 weeks.
And if every Monday morning you have a big jar on your desk full of marbles
with 1650 marbles in it,
and you pluck one out and analyze it and decide,
was the previous week of my life spent getting better,
challenging myself,
being around people I love doing things that make me happy, getting better, enjoying progress, learning?
Or was it spent doing a bunch of shit out of obligation, waiting for this time of, well, once this happens, we're going to be there and there equals happy because it's
such a fucking lie, man.
There's no there.
It doesn't exist.
And so if I look at both these roads and these are my opportunities of life, both of them
still converge at some point with me in the ground.
So there's no risk.
Yeah.
Like, for example, I have no idea what your answer to this question would be, but are you any happier than you were let's say like in college oh yeah a much but it's been a
lot it's been work of course you've had to like almost like earn it i guess you'd say right yeah
fuck failed a shitload i mean since college i have i mean it's funny how you want to list things
right it's easy to be like oh my accomplishments were x y and z but if we want to list things, right? It's easy to be like, oh, my accomplishments were X, Y, and Z. But if we want to list it like, well, since college, I failed at owning a bike shop.
I got out of that with $50,000 worth of debt.
I got a job, paid that off.
I almost declared bankruptcy.
I sold a house for $10,000 less than I paid for it after living in it for 10 years, which isn't
great investment.
I got a divorce.
I've lost my sport, had nine knee surgeries, got a fake knee.
I got fired from a job that was paying almost 200 grand a year.
But now you get to travel everywhere.
It must be nice.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Easy for you to say you're rich.
Exactly right.
Must be nice.
And so, yeah, I mean,
I can look at that road
or I can look at what the gifts have been.
You know, that I do get to have this apparel thing
and I do get to share my message with a lot of people and I get to teach people and I get to battle some of the fuckery that's out there, man.
And this just this over sensationalized bullshit when it does fall more in the middle.
But we love as a country and as a people, we want things so black and white and so politicized, it's fucking bonkers.
Like, why should you know my stance on abortion based on if I want to wear a mask on my face?
And that's how it seems to add up in this country.
It's like, well, if you're a not mask wearer, that means you're probably anti-vax.
You're going to be, you know, all these other things.
I'm like, no, man.
They just put you in a box
or right yep you're that right there and that's what people want right you know instead of there
being this actual logical you know concern maybe on each point and think about it and how does it
concern you and how does it concern everyone else you know i think a lot of that is really just
reframing and that's one of the things psychedelics has done very, very well.
I think if anyone is interested in something that kind of gives some insight to psychedelics, that's a bit wild.
Midnight Gospel on Netflix.
You've seen it?
He's got a lot going on and it's it's pretty strong.
It's a powerful show
what's something that really would uh throw either one of you like real sideways so you'd be real
irritable about it that uh maybe that just doesn't happen anymore like what's is there kind of a
couple things that maybe stand out where you were just i mean i think both of you are fairly calm
people and and you seem now seem you seem fairly fairly rational but i mean
over the years i i know that i think you're a little bit like myself where the outward demeanor
is pretty calm but inside you know there's some weird shit going on here and there uh has there
been anything that uh that kind of stands out that just it just doesn't frustrate you at all
and when it comes your way you're like yeah fuck that oh yeah i think i'm more aware of when the problem is me instead of putting the blame on other people
which is every single time that's such a big one i'm so much more insightful and i can actually
take a step back not be so quick to frustration or anger and be like okay is the problem actually within is this just my perception of what's happening around and usually that's the answer isn't that
yeah and you got to ask other people around you like am i crazy but like this happened and
they're like no you're crazy yeah it's your fault the things that still will
reach me to a level of breaking are, I fucking hate my time being wasted.
And that goes back to how I feel about the days and hours I've got left.
You don't get to buy those from me.
They're not just taken.
That's why, like, at this point in my life, like the idea of having to go do something
at the DMV, I'd rather be set on fire, possibly rather be set on fire because it's a waste of
my fucking day for a thing that i don't need that the information i have still works nothing changed
um so inconvenience and well i think that's another thing like that hierarchy that we're
talking about like everything is good everything's covered yeah so now your priorities change and
time is one of those things that you can't get back you can't buy more of it so you're going
to value that a lot more yeah and i think i think being once you start can take responsibility for
your day and a lot of stuff i think a lot of the frustration leaves because then i don't put the
blame on someone else you know even if it's something with Brandt or something with Bonnie and I like my expectations
didn't get met on something, whether whether that was something stupid, like she went to
the store and didn't pick up X, Y and Z or not enough of it or just, you know, whatever
an example would be instead of me being frustrated and like, fuck, why didn't she buy that?
And then, like, give her shit about it.
I should have expressed better that this was important.
One of the examples I use for that is like, if I let you borrow my truck today and you were to get in a wreck, right?
I feel responsible for that, even though I wasn't in the truck because i handed the keys
over you didn't fucking take it without asking i said here you go man so i've taken responsibility
that mark is going to drive my truck today and so if he wrecks it i'm responsible yeah and you
didn't tell me that the left wheel was a little weird you guys ran over something or even or even
nothing right like shit happens you bumped into a fucking thing because you don't know the size of the truck it's not your vehicle um and if
i borrowed your car and i was to hit something i would take care of it because i was responsible
for taking the keys so this puts everything in my wheelhouse and i'll deal with it that way i can't
be let down or frustrated by someone else's actions. I'll be responsible.
I'll take care of it. And that, that saved me a ton of headache. Uh, so that, that's been a good
one, but yes, frustration, it's still there. I'm better at getting out of it and quicker. You know,
I can usually take a minute and be like, fuck, why did I? You're very good at recognizing it.
And now it's a thing that we'll actually talk through.
Yep.
Yeah.
You can say, I'm frustrated.
I don't want to be.
Yep.
Let's figure this out.
Exactly.
Get out of it.
Yeah.
Sometimes.
And sometimes it's as simple as just being able to verbalize it and work through it with
your partner.
It's like, hey, I'm frustrated.
I need to work through this.
This isn't an attack.
This is something I don't want to feel.
Yeah.
Let's figure out what the root is.
Right.
So important.
Yeah.
And again, it's not I'm not bummed out that it's very rarely like, am I mad that this
small thing happened?
It's always the slide of a bigger thing and that's what happens in
a lot of relationships right like these little bitty things just add up and that's the straw
that brought the camels back instead of why don't we address each one of these straws even if it's
a sentence or two and you can't expect people to know how you feel about a thing if you've never
said it and then you just freak out one day.
Like it's a terrible way to communicate.
So let me ask you this real quick.
Um, that idea of ownership from both of you guys, like you just take responsibility or
you just try to look at for everything, blaming, yeah, not blaming the other individual.
Was this, um, different pre ayahuasca or is this something you guys have just been working
on or you discovered better through ayahuasca? I't say ayahuasca but psychedelics psychedelics okay
yeah gotcha gotcha yeah i would i would say for sure that's something that i've been able to
access a lot better that it seems more like my natural path now instead of something i would
have to really fight to get to.
And, yeah, that kind of changed in just the way my brain operates.
And, yeah, man, I'm like you, and she can fucking attest for it, that I'm a fucking maniac.
Like, I am an absolute crazy person.
Laser light show.
Yeah, inside my head.
He's got two speeds.
Bonkers.
Yeah.
And so it's either that or I'm asleep.
Or really stoned staring at a TV.
Yes, that's what I was thinking of.
I need that occasionally, too.
Matt, can you explain the conversation you had with your knee?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because that was really interesting.
So one of the things that happened during my ayahuasca trip, as I said, I really expected a lot of visual stuff, which has been kind of how mushrooms or anything else have felt.
And I really didn't get any, which I find interesting because the drug gives you what you need, not what you want.
And you wanted the visuals.
Oh, yeah.
I wanted a party.
And it didn't fucking – it did not provide.
It provided two nights of really big frustration and then finally some kind of emotional things that I sorted through and release.
And one of those was this conversation with my knee and hip.
For those who don't know, from 2016 till January of 2018 or February of 2018, I think.
No, I had knee surgery in Aprilil april of 2018 2019 was your last
one was it last year yeah a year and a half yeah that seems right um how day it is anymore um
a lot of knee issues yeah so i had nine knee surgeries and i mean essentially i went from
competing and the last time i competed in 2016, like I took second in the world.
And then five months later, I couldn't walk up and down stairs due to complications from surgeries.
And you're trying to do the best you can.
I mean, look, the hindsight of it is I wish I wouldn't have ever had the first knee surgery in that run of it.
I wish I would have retired at the end of 2016, lost weight, and then just been on this path without fucking my knee up.
But I also wouldn't have retired.
I needed a thing to make that hard line decision for me and then accept it.
That like instead of being bitter and bummed about I don't get to compete at this thing that I was fucking great at.
I found my thing, man.
I found this thing that I got to be best in the fucking world at,
and it's gone.
I can't even dabble in it.
I can't kind of go throw.
I can't do any of it.
I can try to explain it to people,
but even then I can't show you.
And so it's a really frustrating thing.
But instead of that feeling now,
it's,
it's really transferred into how fortunate I am. I
got to travel around the world for fucking 10 years with my best friends and my brother
and compete in a sport I loved that has given me an opportunity and a platform to do the rest of
what I've done with my life. So the conversation again. Yeah. And so back to my knee being shitty,
the conversation I ended up having with it was it kind of uh it addressed me my knee and
hip did in a voice in my head and it says you know like hey man we should talk i'm like all right
what's what's going on and they're like so everything that's going good in your life
right now is like it's work we did that we were a part of that team you know we we won world
championships we did all the training. We lifted that weight.
We moved around.
And we failed.
We have died on our shield for this cause.
What else is it you'd like us to do?
Because we're done and we're broken.
Is there any way that since you're not competing now, maybe treat us with some respect for what we've done.
And be nice to us.
You're a smart guy who has so many amazing people at my disposal for rehab and feeling better and medicine and diet and all these type of things.
And yet you keep walking over there and grabbing the fucking hammer out of the toolbox.
You got other tools.
Let's use those.
and hammer out of the toolbox you got other tools let's use those and from that moment it was very much this cognitive thing of like i'm gonna be nice to my body for a while and see how it responds
in the middle of that did you have any like rebuttals no nothing you just took it all in
it was right yeah no you mean you know what i mean like they're they're right and and at that
point like man i've been so desperate to get out of pain that i don't care
what the answer is let's get there yeah and then now moving forward like did you just carry that
over or did something else happen because i know like uh chris bell was talking about like his
ibogaine experience he felt like it was like brushing the uh like not the pain away but the
nerve receptors or whatever it was was it anything
like that or like as far as like a longevity of that experience or has it just been hey this is
the way motherfucker like follow this it was it was just more this feeling of emotionally like
instead of the way that i have approached rehab through everything has been the same way i
approached training for my sport like man if it's just the work that needs to get put in, I'm happy to do that.
I can I can fucking outwork and I can out suffer.
But that's not what it needed.
What it needed was to fucking chill and it needed time to relax.
It needed time to do other things like maybe we'll put more of the focus on walking for a while.
Why don't we wait till we can do that out of pain before we start trying to squat heavy
again?
Right.
You know, and even like, well, we'll Hatfield squat to a box, but like it's too much right
now.
It's an interesting thing because when I think about your scenario, I think about all the
things you were asking for, you know, when you would have conversation with somebody else, it was never,
hey, you know, I think, you know, I think I should go like one of two ways.
It was always, how do I get better so I can get back in the game?
Right.
And so you have great people at your disposal, but maybe at the moment you were asking the
wrong questions.
I think that's very, very realistic.
You know, I think, I think that's very true.
And because everybody wants to help everybody's well-meaning.
It's like, all right, here's what you got to do.
You got to stretch this way.
You have to do A, B and C.
And you're like, oh, I could do that.
Right.
Right.
And rather than like figuring out just other ways to honor your body.
Right.
And now with that said, I still have the choice to say, fuck you.
That we're doing this my way.
But 505 squat for a double yesterday.
Yeah, it was fun.
It feels the way it's supposed to.
Briefs just held you together.
That's all it was.
Get a full scuba suit soon enough.
That's amazing that you manage that, though.
Like with everything you told me, your hip, your knee.
Well, 505.
There isn't anywhere on earth that it would be a legal squat.
Still, I'm super stoked on it.
Right.
But like we are talking about, it is two inches high to a box in briefs.
And I'm on gear.
This doesn't work anywhere.
It was neat to see you do it because your body is still very functional.
You're still very strong.
So it's just a matter of doing it.
Yeah.
Of just going through with it.
Yeah.
Now, I think if I was training heavy like that to see how heavy I could get my squat again, I'm going to run into trouble.
But every once in a while, I can sneak one under the radar before the body realizes we're possibly doing something stupid.
Yeah.
It's like a surprise attack of like, oh, we're just going to jump in for a max lift.
And it's like, wait, wait, what?
Yeah, exactly what we did in Iceland.
Yeah, like if I had to actually jump in.
Exactly, like showing up in Iceland and competing on no notice.
We're like, oh, shit, we'll do a max deadlift and a max log.
I've never done a log before.
Okay.
One of those games.
So we went to Iceland.
Last November.
Yeah, last year for three weeks.
And when we landed, we're going to stay with a buddy of mine, Hasey.
And he's like, Heffi's having an event at his gym.
It's Max Log, Max Deadlift.
We signed you guys up.
I'm like, okay.
All right.
Guess I'm learning log.
Yeah.
So this, I mean, this is October or November.
And I mean, I had total knee replacement in April.
And so I'm like, huh, fuck it.
I mean, but that's part of the thing with, you know, my lifestyle or brand, too, is it's the always party side of it.
Am I going to skip out on the life experience of getting to share a platform in Iceland with my fucking favorite people in a country that I love?
Fuck no.
Let's let her rip and
at least i've got enough experience to know when things feel the right bad and the bad like bad bad
like you know the difference on list when you're like this isn't a good idea today right and then
there's days where it's like this is doesn't feel great but it feels the way it's supposed to feel bad um so i mean i
ended up pulling 550 and then did a 300 pound log and it was fucking fun man awesome wow i still love
competing but it's it's for me right and i want to do a ton of stuff like i want i'm interested in
i had signed up to do a ruck event that I would have been doing next week in San Francisco.
But with kind of everything going on, didn't seem right.
And then also you like you've always kicked out like you've always worked really hard.
Have you noticed that maybe like even your work capacity has gone up because you're just in an overall better mood all the time and you're in better shape?
Just stoked to get shit done yeah also with
i mean also the way that i've designed my life with with work and what i outsource and how i
manage things i have time to pursue those things right and pursue them as though that's what i
want to do today if i want to take a five-hour bike ride i could probably go fit it in and
it's amazing what kind of making a switch
to more endurance style training has been because I needed something. I need a carrot to chase,
uh, training for the sake of training. I can't fucking do it. I don't care about it. I don't
give a shit. Uh, she loves it. And for me, I just, I just don't get it. I need something that I'm giving a shit about.
And so,
uh,
the cycling thing has been great.
Luckily for me,
I've always liked bikes.
And so kind of leaning into this and it doesn't hurt my leg.
It doesn't hurt the hip.
It's a thing that I get to do.
It's also a thing I'm really fucking bad at compared to cyclist.
And I'm comparing that to the last thing i gave a real big shit about i
was the best in the world at this isn't gonna happen at cycling no i don't have the skeleton
you know not to mention broken in 37 so it's still fun making progress at it and getting better
like fucking being able to go for a little bit of a run. I mean, we've talked about that.
These were things that, I mean,
if you asked either of us
10 years ago, like,
what do you think about going for a jog? I'd be like,
what are you even talking about?
Why would anyone do that? Why would you say
that? And there's a couple of things
that we're going to try to do more of. Like when we get
back to St. Louis, we're both like looking into
trail running because my background is running.
So doing trail running together would be really cool.
It would be fun.
And also looking at getting a bag and doing boxing like we talked about.
Finding a coach in St. Louis, yeah.
Yeah, I think those things would be fun.
I think when it comes to some of these new things, I think the most important thing is just to do it.
Just to give it a go.
But it doesn't have to be that you run five miles.
You can be like, all right, well, this is my first go of it.
I'm going to run some hills until I feel tired.
And if I need to stop and drink some water and reboot and maybe try a couple more on the way out, and that's it well and it's exciting to have a new thing that we can do together yeah do it together would be
really fun and not only that like us trail running a little bit together gives us more opportunity
that like oh shit we're going to be in this place and there is a 20 mile trail we'd like to do well
that's now not a four day thing we could do it in two you know two 10 mile days no big deal we pack a pretty minimal
amount of gear and move um so you steal time because we can move faster back to that uh
yeah man it's all of that's just been such a benefit of being able to get
still get better at things that's That's the pursuit is progress. And continuing to learn and continuing to just hold yourself to that standard of we want to get better.
We want to be happier.
This is the direction things are going.
But that's what so many people struggle with.
They're stuck on that idea of a there when that's just not the right mindset.
There is no there.
What do you say there?
What do you mean?
Because like, I'll be happy once I get there, like to a certain point.
Yeah.
Oh, if I can just get that raise.
Yeah.
If I can.
If I can just get that four or five bench.
Right.
Like, then what?
Your life isn't going to change.
No, nothing.
I mean, you know, we've talked about it.
Was any of the success that you've had with your business or anything, was there ever
a moment where you're like that was
the day it changed no not really no it's just it's this long and it's not even
this it's you know it's not linear progression and neither is healing from
injuries neither are relationships neither are fucking anything everything
has this cyclical kind of turn to it
and if you just give things that room to breathe i would say the day that did change everything
forever was just starting that's it right are you good at celebrating i don't really care
see that's that's a weird one too that i'm trying to get better at i don't i don't well i just i
don't look at the numbers i don't you know i don't do any of that so but you did at one point no not really never no i i'm made aware of them sometimes but
i mean we'll we'll celebrate a little bit here and there you know i don't know you get a new
trademark or patent or um have some decent sales or whatever but uh yeah it's really not
it's not a it's not a big deal, you know.
I'm the same boat.
Yeah.
Like, I mean, we've put a ton of work into the drop that went yesterday.
And, but I got another one coming in three weeks.
Yeah, I just always looked at, like, celebrating.
It just doesn't do anything to change the news. And it doesn't really do anything.
I don't like a lot of ups and downs.
Right.
You know, and sometimes that might make some of my relationships weird because when it's
someone's birthday,
I just don't care.
Sure.
I just,
the thing I don't give a shit.
You know what I mean?
Like,
because I know for me that I don't care about my own birthday,
but it's like to somebody else,
it might matter,
you know,
more or whatever,
but I'm not real,
you know,
there's nothing I hate more than someone like find out my birthday's in April
and be like,
I'm born in April. I'm like, one in
twelve chance. It's fucking
not rare. You only
had eleven other options, man.
Also, yeah.
Astrology.
I can get kooky, but astrology
is its own fucking thing to me that is
such a level of narcissism.
Don't bring that up to charity.
She's a sweet girl. She's a sweet witch. such a level of narcissism. Don't bring that up to charity. Oh, I know. Her and I were talking about it the other day.
She's a sweet girl.
She's a sweet witch.
Yeah.
But yeah, like astrology, like constellations and all that stuff, all those things only
line up in space looking from our planet.
Right.
So, like, you go anywhere else, these things don't fucking operate that way.
Right.
Like, narcissistic dick, you think these stars are there for you?
You know, this is totally from left field.
But there's this Netflix show called, like, Indian Marriages.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
And I was surprised to learn that, like, okay, when these people are, when they're doing these arranged marriages, astrology is a big deal.
When they're trying to match people.
Like, there's height, there's caste, there's your income, there's all this.
And then what's your sign?
And will that sign match with this sign?
And if they don't, what's the best way that we can maybe have the wedding?
Like what month can we have the wedding where we can get that integrated to?
The right lunar cycle.
I didn't know how ingrained in that culture it is.
But it's dope.
Look, I like space.
I just don't think it gives a shit about us.
Yeah, I would probably agree with that.
That's where I fall on a lot of stuff, right?
That I appreciate the indifference the universe has to my success or failure.
I like that because then it puts responsibility back on me.
I'm at the wheel.
Pass or fail, these are my fucking decisions.
I accept the failures, too.
And I'm not failure adverse.
I don't mind failing.
Like, that's how you learn.
That's how you get better at things.
Success is a terrible teacher.
I mean, I always look at it like coming up with bicycling and being around BMX guys for a long time and the really talented professional BMX riders, what they're fucking really good at is falling.
Right.
They can fall without getting hurt, which allows them to try again.
They also have fallen enough that they can recognize things going bad earlier and pull out and be able to ditch the bike or make another run or make a small adjustment or change things up so you can try again.
What they don't do is commit and ride the handlebars into the fucking ground and go to the hospital.
You're able to get good at failing to where you can recognize it earlier and fail small instead of all the chips on the table black.
There's a time and place for that.
But you got to know the cards feel pretty stacked
in the direction of rolling that risk, right?
So, man, being scared of failure
also just doesn't make sense to me.
Like, fucking fail, man. It's okay.
You know, what's it been like?
And I don't know if, Bonnie, you too, if you've started something new.
But you said you've, I don't know if you've had much of a big background with bicycling.
But it seems like it's been pretty new for you, right?
So I owned a bicycle shop out of college.
I rode quite a bit then.
I liked bikes and building bikes and that mechanical side of it probably as much as riding for a long time
and now i've really enjoyed riding because i'm better at it because i'm not 280 pounds and
you know out of shape so what's it been like doing something like i guess really focusing
on something kind of new now at this point because it's kind of rare that people start a new type of
sport seriously
later in age they're usually like you know sticking with the same thing that has to do with
lifting or strength but this is kind of on the other side of it it's it's kind of the same way
that uh i realize what i like is hiking and essentially bikes give me a faster version of hiking.
So same thing with why my truck looks the way it does.
It's hiking.
I can drive forest roads and do all these other things to get to cool places.
But with the bike, like, I'm not an endurance athlete.
Like, never in my career, like, my sports have always been, what, two seconds at best? Like, as much as you can go full gas pedal two seconds then you're done so doing something for five hours is such a different thing
and it's such a different mental strategy for me uh that it's it's been fun to try to tap into it
and get better at it to realize where i'm weak or or when I realized like you don't want to get off the bike because you're
tired or sore,
you're bored.
So figure out how to fix that and figure out how to stay,
uh,
stay in it and stay present with the bike,
you know,
work on breast stuff and then find little PRS to hit.
Like even,
even with running,
um, I mean, first thing I, first thing I did was I walked a whole mile. I did it in 17 minutes,
you know, and then eventually I walked a 5k. And so now I've got a 5k time. That's an hour and
seven minutes. Okay. So next time, could I do it an hour and six?
Could I walk a little faster?
And then eventually it's like, well, maybe if I run 50 yards a few times during the thing, the time gets better.
And it gets fun when it gets to a point of like, all right, to beat last time, I really have to give it some shit.
Like, I have to fucking try.
And so, like, man, it's fun watching this just little steps of progression.
But I think so many people just expect to be good at a thing.
First and foremost, man, there's a there's a YouTube channel I showed to Brandt last night.
I kind of spaced on and it's a brilliant concept.
This guy, Mike Boyd, and he learns to do things.
And so like his channel is like,
you've seen guys take a cup and stack dice.
Familiar with that, right?
And so his thing was, he's like,
so I watched a guy do this thing where he takes five dice
and gets them in a cup and stacks them,
takes five more dice and stacks them on top of the other tower,
out of the bottom of the cup.
And he's like, I'm going to see how long it takes for me to be able to do this.
That's the whole channel.
The whole channel is learning new things.
And so you get to watch this full process where he's trying to figure it out
and frustrated and frustrated and frustrated.
And then, you know, you see the next day he's like, so I found out.
Yeah, yeah.
So he's like, I found out that there's a certain type of dice that work better with cups.
So then he orders the dice.
And so you really get to watch this.
Got some fast hands.
Yeah.
And so you see him put headphones on.
He's like, I had to put headphones on because I can't handle the noise anymore of the dice.
Day three.
Day three.
And so like he's an hour and 35 minutes in.
But how many days does he spend on a thing?
Just until he gets it yeah okay and so he tries for a couple hours every day yeah until he gets it and so it's like it took him six hours to
learn how to do this yeah and like there's another one where he breaks a wine glass singing singing
yeah just making whatever noise you can vibration.
Yeah.
And it depends.
You have to have crystal.
There's,
there's,
there's trickery to it.
Okay.
It's science.
And so it's a brilliant channel.
That's yeah.
Learn how to throw cards,
learn how to do these simple things.
Has he had anything he hasn't been able to do yet?
Do you know?
I want to say that there was one I ran into and i can't remember what it was but i
mean one of it's even silly shit like can i do that thing where you pull a tablecloth off yeah
but you get to watch someone sometimes it's a skill set that just from a physical standpoint
might be out of your right like if you and i decided today we're going to learn how to dunk
a basketball like it ain't fucking happening right yeah muscle ups there you go do a backflip i mean well it's a really good uh it's a really good lesson in that
um for the most part our brains and our minds are all very similar you could just you can learn
just about anything um the only thing that would be different is just like how long it would take
you sure well you know no matter what it is? Like anything you want to be good at takes repetition.
And that's probably the biggest carryover
that what I love about strength.
Nice.
That's sick.
Doing those muscle ups.
Yeah.
And what I love is that he has the number of days at the bottom.
Yeah.
Day 93.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's great.
Yeah.
Damn.
Thanks for the recommendation.
It's a great channel.
What's his name again? Mike Boyd. Mike Boyd. great. Yeah. Damn, thanks for the recommendation. It's a great channel. What's his name again?
Mike Boyd.
Mike Boyd.
Okay.
Yeah, I think.
Also.
I don't watch a lot of lifting.
It's such a great capacity.
You know, we have such an awesome capacity.
I think we all sell ourselves short.
You know, I've said it many times that I've never met somebody that can't get stronger.
Right.
You know, I've never met someone that can't learn.
I never met somebody that, you know that can't learn a new skill.
The way you do it might suck, and it might not look the way that someone else has done it because maybe they're graceful and they've been doing it for a long time.
But you can get better.
Yeah, there's no limit to it.
Right.
And that's with strength. And even with strength, like at this point, I'm aware that the chances are me getting the strongest I'll ever be are done.
And this machine has compromised.
I found that threshold in my life of how strong this was going to get before failure.
And it gave up.
I was asking it to do a lot of things.
But I can still make progress. If I just look at getting better than yesterday, that's that's really digestible.
Still interested.
Yeah.
Still into it.
Well, not only that, like being stronger has provided me more options the same way.
Like, that's really how I look at money is money is a tool the same way.
It's not good or bad the same way i feel about my telephone
or social media none of these things are good or bad they're they're essentially fire right
and so either i can use that fire to warm my house cook meals forge tools and make my life better
or i can let it burn my fucking house down the fire doesn't care it's how you operate it you know and that's same way i think
about anxiety is it's how you want to use it because i don't think there's a ton of difference
in anxiety of the panic of the unknown or that feeling you get getting ready to go compete
like that's fire like how do you do you use that as the extra push to get that lift or get that moment or make that move?
Or do you do you get crushed by it and cower and run?
And it's a skill like anything else that if you want to get good at that, you need to get used to being uncomfortable and being have to perform when it fucking counts.
when it fucking counts and man there's progress is is the biggest one that you know people are just wanted immediately and and everything takes reps everything does relationships take reps
being a decent person to your friends takes reps work is is only that. And no matter what it is, you're going to be better in 10 years at this than you are today.
And you're going to be somewhere in 10 years.
So why not be fucking good at this thing?
Have you dealt with a lot of anxiety?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I deal with it in different ways.
Mine always would manifest into frustration and then kind of just wanting to shut down and just be left alone and get kind of just fuck this.
And then time time would, quote unquote, sort it out.
But maybe not really, because maybe you didn't really even investigate where the beginning frustration was coming from.
Yeah. Or you can't find it. Right.
And I think a lot of that comes with age you know a little bit that we talked about
think about how interesting that is right like that's uh very irrational right like you feel
this way at this moment but eight minutes from now you can feel completely different
it's like how the fuck did that happen right like it if we're just trying to be like honest about it
and and logical about it it doesn't sound logical,
but it does make sense that we have certain beliefs, we have certain things that we're
kind of expecting to happen, and when those things don't happen, we get frustrated.
It kind of happens in an instant, and you may not even recognize.
And you're like, I need some time to myself.
But that's okay, too.
And a few minutes later, you're fine.
At least it's okay to recognize that you need some time to yourself instead of letting this thing fester and drag out.
We talked about it, right?
Like, I think perspective and experience changes a lot.
Luckily, I've dealt with a lot of anxiety, whether that's competition anxiety or anything else.
And one of the tools I used to deal with those with those types of things is I use them like a zoom out method.
And so whatever this tiny fucking,
whatever it is,
that's stressing me out or bugging me or whatever.
If I zoom out and look at earth,
this doesn't matter.
And it's sure as shit,
not going to matter in five years.
So let's figure out just how to get through it.
Yeah, it's a level of self-awareness.
Yeah, yeah.
And when it came to competition, it was this zoom out to the point of like, look how far I throw a rock today is not going to make the fucking overall list of human history.
So you're doing a thing you love.
You're doing a thing you prepared for.
Now do your fucking job. That's it. Just do the thing you're doing a thing you love. You're doing a thing you prepared for. Now do your fucking job.
That's it.
Just do the thing you're best at.
You know, do the thing you trained for.
Do the thing that you've practiced and ready to go.
Now's the fucking time.
And you get that little boost that you don't get in training from it being a competition that matters.
And you're prepared and you've rested.
And so, like, give it a chance to run.
that matters and you're prepared and you've rested and so like give it a chance to run and we talked about a lot of stuff and it is experience and it's a lot of perspective
one being like i mean why kids cry when you spill milk and it's because this is literally
the worst thing that's ever happened to this one year old i thought it was because they're
assholes that too this is why I don't have one of these.
Every time I just see kids,
I'm like, why would anyone do this? Seems awful.
It's tough. They're very loud and super inconvenient. Back to things
that stress me out, so I know that
this won't be ideal for me.
And teach their own.
I know plenty of people who love
their kids and seem to have a great time. I think they're
lying to me.
Yeah. You know, I know plenty of people who love their kids and seem to have a great time. I think they're lying to me.
You know, it it's because it's the worst thing that's ever happened to them.
But as you grow, you realize how much the volume gets turned down on that little thing.
I mean, man, how blessed you are that the worst thing that's happened to you is that your glass of milk spilled.
You know how how how lucky you are that these are the problems you have.
I think this is where I might get into trouble with social media, because the worst thing that happens to somebody might be somebody else ripping them apart on social media. As a young kid, you know, think about just think about just the things we deal with in a given day as adults.
Somebody being rude or somebody, even just how social media is interpreted by adults, period, right?
Oh, yeah.
And so could you imagine, you know, the weight that it's having on?
There's a lot of kids with, you know, smartphones, a lot of kids on social media.
So I feel super fortunate.
It would be very strange growing up with it. Yeah, I feel super fortunate that I didn't have any of that until I was in my mid-20s.
Having that in high school would have been fucking brutal, man.
High school's crazy to begin with because, I mean, think about even just stupid shit in high school.
Like, a two-week relationship in high school?
Like, we dated.
Like, if I had a two-week relationship with someone right now, I wouldn't even tell most people.
It'd be like, we hung out.
I think I know her last name.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, it just would be such a blip on the radar that it wouldn't register.
But, like, dating in high school for two weeks is such this weird just microcosm of space in your life that is very strange.
And time passes weird.
change and time passes weird and so yeah yeah it's it's just perspective on it that you start getting more reps under your belt with life experience and and and goods and bads and you
you're able to frame things differently but if you avoid bad and you avoid failure and you lower the bar on progress and good.
And then fuck man.
One of the ones that bugs us the most is this idea that this idea of self
love that's been pushed a lot through social media,
whether that's the way you look,
the way you feel your,
your differences,
this big push for self love,
which we fully agree on
but people look at stuff like the idea that you want to make progress as being a negative to that
like you can be what do you say i you know uh self-love does not mean complacency right
like you can you can still love where you're at and everything you've got going on
and still want more
I'm not chasing more because I'm
unhappy I also would say that
I think it's okay to hate where you're at
what if you were born
into just a crap home where you get
abused all the time because I
fucking hate this but I'm going to figure out
on a more positive side
I'm going to figure out a way out of this
I got to get out, you know, on a more positive side, I'm going to figure out a way out of this. I got to get out.
Right.
And man, I have such feeling because I don't have any of those experience and I don't have any of those answers.
And man, the idea that someone's stuck is fucking rough to me that you don't have options.
And there are really people that are in that situation.
I mean, yeah, those those those situations actually exist.
But then a lot of times it's just you.
That's like I wasn't yourself.
Stay stuck.
I wasn't born and fucking.
I mean, I've overcome a few things in my life, but I didn't realize it, too, that I live in sub-Saharan africa you know and like the opportunity for improvement
there in your life is very very different than the opportunity here i was watching a platoon
last night okay with my family mellow mellow yeah my son's in like some of the older movies and
stuff right but uh charlie sheen is in the movie and he's like looks like a kid child and uh they're doing all
this like grunt work they're like you know uh removing you know poop from the uh outhouses
and like all this crazy stuff and and they're you know they're in the woods and it's raining
they're getting bit by mosquitoes there's people shooting at them like this is a horrible, horrible existence. And they ask Charlie Sheen, they're like, what did you used to do?
And he explains.
And somebody else is like, oh, yeah, you know, it's just sucked.
You know, out of nowhere I got drafted, you know.
And the other guy's like, yeah, me too.
And Charlie Sheen's like, he's like, well, I chose to be here.
And then he says, like, I wanted to fight, you know, I wanted to fight for our country.
I wanted to be somebody.
I wanted to do something.
And the other guy in the movie says, he goes, that's some rich people shit.
He's like, you got to be rich to even think that way.
Yeah.
And I just thought that is amazing.
Like, it was a funny scene in the movie.
It was kind of silly.
But, you know, there's a lot of people that like like
a minimalist right someone who's like i you know i need to clear everything out like the only person
that would ever think that way is someone that's already experienced some sort of you know wealth
too much yeah too much now you got to kind of clear everything out so i i do agree a hundred
percent that you know where we start off in life is sometimes just grazed over.
And I agree with you 100% that it does all fall on us.
We have choices.
We have a choice.
Everyone has a choice.
The unfortunate part is that a lot of people, even though they have choices, they just have
to make a lot more of the correct choices just to get midway.
To start it. Yeah, just to get midway. To start it.
Yeah, just to get started.
That starting line analogy.
Yeah, explain that.
I don't remember all of it.
Okay, so.
If you're lined up, if you're starting like a race and everyone's on the same line, okay,
now take a step back if your parents have been divorced.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Take a step back if your parents.
Your parents were poor.
And it doesn't mean you're not on the same track. Nope means you're back a little bit right but yeah pretending that we're
all the same for everyone yeah pretending that everyone in our country or everyone alive
was given the same tools and same opportunity it's fucking crazy yeah it's an absolute fallacy
that we've been taught and take a step back if you're female or black or whatever.
Yeah.
I mean, and other sides of that, too, are.
Or you fart a lot.
Or you fart a ton.
Is that what the bathroom trip was?
Oh, yeah.
She just left them 30 to go.
There was definitely just as soon as she got out of the door, every step was a little.
I've actually been good this whole time, so you're all welcome.
Oh, we'd know today.
You would. They're not doing great. All right, guys. They've been good this whole time, so you're all welcome. Well, we'd know today.
You would.
They're not doing great.
All right, guys.
They've been rough.
Would you guys have, we'll start with you, Bonnie. Do you think you could have landed on similar ideas and similar beliefs that you have now?
now, just through either some sort of therapy, some sort of consulting, reading a book, experiencing it on your own in some way without psychedelics?
And if not, what do you think the difference is?
I think so, maybe.
I think a lot of it is having a partner that's also open to those same ideas and same experiences
and willing to learn and grow with you.
I think that's really huge, having a partner that has that same kind of mindset and same path that they want to take.
I know, like, since I hit 30, I've grown so, so, so much just as a better human coach, athlete, partner, friend, just everything. My life has
changed so much. But yeah, I think it really does matter having a partner that wants the same things
and is also willing to help you grow and give you the support that you need. So that's been huge
for me. Same question. I think that everything I got from psychedelics are a direction I wanted to go already. I think it poured gas on the fire and eliminated a lot of the clutter in my head or roadblocks that I had constructed between me and getting there.
roadblocks that I had constructed between me and getting there.
And so I think it exponentially increased the ability to get to that level of self-awareness,
maybe would be the right term. And I think you can get there through other avenues, like reading and things like that,
of course.
But I think it just pours
jet fuel on that process yeah i would say that i've seen you already doing all those things
right you already are reading you already are communicating with a lot of people i mean so
you're already doing those things and yeah this is uh just the willingness and openness to learn
and surround yourself with other people that have those experiences and want the same things and
like the like the austin crew
like those people are priceless you know their experiences and things that they've given you
as far as support yeah yeah i think i think there's a couple things and like you know even
talking with with uh with brandt you know being brandt's 24 like what a different 24 that is than
than me like he doesn't know what a dial-up internet sounds like.
He's never had to watch porn slowly load on the screen.
And if you're disappointed, you chose the wrong thumbnail.
I remember that.
Right.
And so, you know, we're talking about stuff.
And, you know, just talking about people you're around and friends. And I remember this turning point for me of like right around 30 that like,
man,
my friends were still going to the same bar and talking about the same shit
and talking about what they wanted to do one day.
And then I had to get away because that's not the path I wanted to be on.
I wanted to do other things and,
and,
and make that progress.
Right.
And so now seven years
into that, I don't have friends that don't have their shit together. I don't have friends that
are negative. You know, I, I've got people that, and don't get me wrong, my friends have bad
moments and call and need help or need, need something to discuss or check in on each other.
and need help or need something to discuss or check in on each other.
But, man, I don't have people around me that do that.
They aren't stuck talking about their biggest success in high school.
Right.
Or that the world's out to get them.
Sure.
And having those people around, it's changed me a ton.
I think that back to something like with my dad or mom or any of this, right?
Like born in Sulphur, Louisiana, a town of 25,000 in southwest Louisiana.
All my dad's friends are from there.
He grew up there, got a job there, worked there, traveled some, but anyone he's going to call for advice on a thing, have the same life experience he had relatively.
Right.
He doesn't have a fucking you.
He doesn't have a Mark Bell to call to.
Hey, man, how do you think about this?
Or Kelly Starrett or Aubrey Marcus or any of these other, you know, Kyle Kingsbury, these people that have
been through some shit and have thought about stuff and have a different perspective on
it than I do.
And maybe I want your perspective, which is different than Aubrey's or Kelly's or my mom,
but I want to know all of them.
And then I can kind of sort through it instead of he didn't.
My dad doesn't have those people to call.
So, of course, my life gets to be different and my perspective gets to be different.
I have such a different avenue of information.
Plus, what's out there now with the Internet?
Just what an amazing tool that we get.
We have a device in our pocket that has all the information of forever.
Like it's a choice to use it or be be paralyzed by it and yeah i just having those
people around man like you you have to eliminate those time wasters and that inconvenience of
fuck man if if you're the if you're at the top level of your group of friends
there's a bigger chance that they're going to bring you down to meet them then you're the if you're at the top level of your group of friends there's a bigger chance that
they're going to bring you down to meet them then you're going to drag all them up so i mean
surround yourself with other people that are going the same path that you want to go that are
doing things in life that motivate you that inspire you and keep keep keeping them around man now i think you gotta you gotta chase that
or i mean look if you're super fucking stoked going to a nine to five job and getting your
two days off a week and two weeks right on and and i'm not i'm not look if someone's fat
and happy,
I don't give a shit.
I don't care.
Right on.
Do what you want to do with your time.
But if you're unhappy,
you don't get to just complain about it.
There's moves to make.
And if you're not willing to help you,
you can't expect me to want to help you more than you do.
You can't expect me to give a shit about your success more than you do. I can't want you to get stronger more than you do you can't expect me to give a shit about your success more than you do i can't want you to get stronger more than you do and like why wouldn't you be your biggest fan
like why wouldn't you want to make this the best the best chance um which more weird psychedelic
thought but idea of multiple timelines and this type of idea of the multiverse.
If that's something that's real, and I don't have any fucking idea, it's a concept.
If that exists, that means there is a version of me that exists that is broke, homeless,
drug addict, the worst possible scenario of me ever.
And then there's another one that's the best.
And if both of these exist, I'm just going to try to be that guy because it's out there.
So why wouldn't this just get to be that story?
Who the fuck wants to be the version of them in the infinite timelines that nine to five
job?
Sure thing.
We did that.
And after 35 years, they gave me a watch fucking replaced tomorrow.
That's what you traded your fucking life and your time for fuck it's gone you don't get to make a second run at it it's over you blew it
every time something like this comes up um you know it's usually about like super training and
surrounding yourself with like stronger people and, you know, whatever.
And so this is the same thing, but with more successful people.
Or smarter people.
Yeah, whatever it may be.
We always get the person that will say, yeah, but there's nobody like nobody around me that's like that.
Fucking leave.
It's the same way I feel like if I go to Saskatoon, Canada in winter and it's negative 30 degrees.
My question is like there's roads that leave here and go south, guys.
You could fucking not live like that.
We have this new thing called the Internet and social media.
Right.
And I mean, that's what we joke about all the time.
Like all of our friends are spread out across the country and we get to take trips like this and reconnect and see them again.
And I mean, that's what it's there for.
You can absolutely find these people and reach out and make those connections. I think New Mexico
might be one of the poorest. There's a bunch
of spots in the United States. Well, they went through that big blue meth thing.
Anyway, there's some really horrible spots of like
New Mexico, right? But even in New Mexico, there's great people. And it doesn't
have to be someone that's rich. It doesn't have to be somebody that has a social media following.
It could be your pastor. It could be your dad. It could be your uncle. I mean, you could
still surround yourself. You can just recognize like, wow, he's a fireman. That guy's got
his shit together. He's got two kids. I could imagine that for myself one day. But how do
I go from here to there? Well, maybe i should fucking ask him right right or even i should see what
it's about you know put yourself out there make yourself vulnerable and available well even even
man talk to bart and geo one of my favorite things that i talked to them on the podcast about was
when they when they started barbara brigade right they've already got their own thing going with
youtube and they're killing it.
And then it was like, well, I want to work out more was Bart's kind of thing.
And so he's talking to his partner, Joe, and Joe wants to work out.
And they're like, fuck me, let's get it.
Let's get a shipping container, put a gym in it.
And then we have a private place to train.
This would be fucking great.
Well, then everyone on their J.K.
News team was also interested in a place to work out.
And so now you've got 15 people.
And they're like, well, shit, let's open a gym.
And so it was first going to be a private gym.
And so Bart's like, we don't know how to do any of this.
Everything we do is online.
So he and Gio bought How to Open a Brick and Mortar Business for Dummies book and read it.
And they said, look, I don't know how to do this, but let's just figure out what the next step is and attack that.
And then figure out when we run into a roadblock that's impassable and decide, is it worth still doing?
Just do the next step.
Didn't they really buy a book?
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, yeah.
I actually read that book.
I love them. And he's like, we just never ran into a thing that we weren't able to figure out, like whether that was, okay, so we need to file an LLC.
How do you do that?
Well, there's plenty of information to do each step, but I think you can get overwhelmed looking at 200 steps that need to get done to get to the goal.
Instead, just make the goal, let's do the next one.
Just let's take that next step to whatever that is.
And then kind of once you figure out that everything has a recipe similar to that,
it makes a lot of stuff easier to attack.
So, I mean, man, just keep doing the reps.
Gotcha.
You know, I want to go back to when you said that you know
all the people around you were pretty much doing the same thing when you realized that did you just
slowly filter yourself out of that or did you like was it a well it was a it was that would have been
bike shop failing i think i'm knocking down a sweet 425 a month from the bike shop failing. I think I'm knocking down a sweet $425 a month
from the bike shop I own.
I have started bouncing again
at the strip club at night
and DJing
because it paid me enough
to pay the bike shop's rent
and pay an employee
for me to keep the bike shop opening.
Good business model.
If at any point you pick up a second job
to keep your first job, it's a fucking bad idea cut cut on that one don't keep lying to yourself that
it's gonna turn around it's coming uh it wasn't and so yeah like you just kind of have to
you gotta just be smart with it too. I moved when I felt that way.
Right.
So I'm from Iowa originally, and I was in that exact spot, like, feeling very, very stuck.
I had left my 9 to 5 and was coaching full time, but still just felt stuck, like, around the same people that are doing the same things.
And, like, it was getting so bad to where it was actually giving me, like, almost panic attacks and anxiety around it i'm like i just don't know what to do and so basically overnight um i had a
friend in st louis and i just said fuck it i'm moving like something needs to change and nothing
is going to change unless i do so let me take that first step and just go and we'll figure it out
i mean what's worst thing that happens? You move back. Exactly. Fucking deal. Exactly.
It's not a big deal.
Well, and I think everyone worries about having all the pieces in place and every step. And I didn't.
And it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Yeah.
It's welcoming to get to know other people that are successful and realize how little they feel like they have a grasp on how the whole thing works and that they're constantly still learning.
And figuring it out.
We're just trying to figure it out as we go, man.
Like every day.
You know, you feel like you get a grasp on some certain sides of it and then something else pops up of like, well i don't know how that works and and you move on i mean i'm sure you've run into i mean when you started slingshot and you guys are doing it out of the garage and it's you and andy and i mean at that point
like if if someone walked in and like man you know man, you know, it's you're going to have X number of employees that you've had to fire.
You're like, we don't have any fucking employees.
Why would I have had this many people I need to let go?
Like that's a negative, but it's a thing that comes with it.
That's learning how to do that, too, because that's a tricky thing to have to be that level of responsible because you're responsible to the whole boat.
I remember doing some stuff with Reebok.
One of the people I was dealing with in collaborating with Jesse Burdick and making a shoe, they asked me at a dinner.
They're like, oh, how's that the slingshot business going i
was just like it's not little right you know and he was like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm like
i said really it's just for me like i just said that for me to just so i don't think of it that
way sure i'm not trying to knock down what you say i know what you mean yeah you kind of forgot
the name i i get it it's no big deal you know what you mean you actually gave him the idea that context of what he had to say was more
important than the words right we've lost that a bit too as a society right and so i you know i've
always just thought it would i don't know i just always felt like it would it would it would work
out it would work well like you know just uh maybe like with your bike shop maybe you just felt that
way like hey this is gonna work yeah and it just didn't like so your bike shop maybe you just felt that way like hey this is
gonna work yeah and it just didn't like so my thing could have done this gone the same way i
just felt like it was gonna work but it ended up uh doing okay but i'm also aware that having 22
year old me was a big part of the problem of a bike shop of the bike shop at that time um
but i mean yeah i mean you went into it not knowing that this is the direction
it was going, but you figure it out or, or get around people that can answer questions.
You know, you've got people you lean on.
I mean, you've got mentors and, and, and people you trust and that's important.
I think the mentor role really gets lost for a lot of people.
And, uh, I, I've been again, very fortunate there to have, to for a lot of people and uh i've been again very fortunate there to
have to have a lot of people that i really love and value their opinion that that have been really
helpful to me that i don't ever have to question whether or not their opinion has anything to it
other than they want to see me happy and successful. What's the roles you guys have for hate brand?
She's a sponsored athlete.
Although people think I do more.
I get customer service questions.
I don't know why.
Don't do that.
It's terrible.
Do you do other work or no?
For hate, no.
Sponsored athlete.
Photoshoots.
I mean, yes.
And obviously you guys are talking about it.
Of course.
Right.
Like, so we're bouncing ideas and things like that off of each other.
And, you know, sometimes I need to work through a concept.
And that's a great sounding board since we're on the same page about a lot of things.
And maybe somehow she's figured out how to word it better than I was.
Yeah.
I mean, we'll look at designs and colors and do a lot of that together.
But that together. Uh,
but that's,
does,
uh,
the word hate ever seem weird to you and the experiences that you had with,
uh,
psychedelics?
Like,
are you sometimes like,
I'm sure you're probably,
probably comes and goes,
but like,
do you sometimes almost think like,
I just don't feel the same way about that word anymore.
I realized the brand is kind of a different thing.
Sure.
The original place that it came from.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, I but but that's still there, right?
Like the original idea of it was this, you know, self-motivation through some healthy amount of self-loathing that hold yourself accountable because no one else is going to like if this isn't important to you, why would it be to anyone else?
And so be willing to do the work
be willing to do all these things be be stern enough and hate yourself enough to fucking do it
but what about your knee bro i told you it wasn't a good idea well we need to change directions
you know but that's that's not avoiding it's not back to that it's not complacency you know i also
didn't win a world championship and then say, we made it and then put my fucking
feet up and wait for everything to come to me.
Goals have just changed.
Right.
Like most people who follow my brain now don't ever know that I did that.
I'm okay with that.
But chapter is done.
It's a cool thing I did.
And it's not going to make it to my shirt.
Two time world champ.
Two time world champ.
Perfect.
With my face on it.
Or a belt.
Now we're talking.
Championship.
I don't want the championship belt.
Why haven't we used more of those for powerlifting?
They should be used in everyday life, period.
All trophies in general should be wrestling belts.
Oh, man.
Get the strap.
Yeah, it has changed.
It's altered. But the base meaning of just
holding myself accountable to progress is still there. And it's, you know, over time,
it's been able to boil it down to a bit more concentrate, right, of what it really stands for
to me. And I still feel really powerful with that. And I feel very, very
fortunate that my audience has allowed me to make the change to go from being the Highland
Games guy and, you know, posting strength videos and stuff like that to fucking hiking
and swimming in lakes and talking about drugs and getting weird. But, you know, I mean,
stuff we're still releasing was a line we did before. That
was this, you know, be harder to kill. I mean, I think, I think that's important. Be more fucking
resilient, like take stress, you know, challenge yourself. And that way, that way, you know, man,
I think people are so fucking fragile, whether it's emotionally or even physically at this point that I mean,
our country was built by tough sons of bitches,
you know,
whether that was westward expansion.
I mean,
look at something like Lewis and Clark,
like we're going to head west.
What's that way?
I don't know.
These are tough fucking people.
And be a little bit more like that.
Like, what is it?
Be an American, not an Americant.
Yeah.
Big shirt.
Just people like being victims.
And I just don't have a place for that.
Do you think people need to go through, like, hard times in order to have the perspective that you have?
Hmm.
I think there needs to be some struggle.
I think there needs to be resistance to your life to,
to get,
to get the good,
to,
to,
to challenge yourself.
And the resistance doesn't have to necessarily be bad.
It doesn't have to be bad.
It just be resistance.
Yeah.
I don't think it needs to be a certain It could just be resistance. It could just be shit in your way. Yeah. It's just resistance.
I don't think it needs to be a certain level of trauma.
Right.
Because like we talked about, like neither of us have really had, I mean, outside of your surgery.
Right.
I mean.
Highly traumatic.
But like I said, that feeling of being stuck and making moves to get myself out of that situation.
Like it doesn't need to be a certain level of negative.
It just needs to be enough to get you thinking just a little bit more.
Sometimes people hear that, you know, someone's parent passed away when they were eight or something.
And I think sometimes there's a misinterpretation of that.
Like you have to go through dark, you know, really tough, brutal times in order to be, you know, molded into this diamond later on in life.
And I don't think that's necessarily true, although it is the case sometimes with some
people.
Yeah, of course it can be.
I think whatever it needs to be, it needs to be just enough to flip that switch.
And I think there's a lot of people who can get caught in a loop of thinking, holding
on to this trauma or pain is what's giving them that edge.
And that's a really weird crutch to have.
Whether that's creative types who think, man, getting fucked up every night and drinking is what kind of gets me to this place.
Or I write better when I'm drunk.
Or like the comics who struggle with depression and anxiety.
They're like, well, if I take medicine or get healthy, maybe I'm not funny anymore.
I think Michael Jordan was that way a little bit.
Oh, yeah.
I think he had disordered thinking.
For sure.
I mean, it worked.
Yeah.
That's right.
But he was just able to handle it.
Most people after a while are like, oh, man.
Right.
And he's his own special level of crazy person.
Right.
I mean, there's a reason we know his name and not, you know, other people's there's he's a stud and man, crazy people are exciting. I never wanted to just fit into the middle. Weirdos are great. Michael Jordan's a weirdo.
This is some guy who was starting to bet on things because he liked competition, and that's really what gambling is.
But there's a reward that's fun.
But he would bet on stuff like whose bag would come out of the baggage claim first.
Right?
I love it.
You know, simple shit like that. And then I also love that he would try to get in touch with baggage claim people to get his bag put on the bag first.
You know?
Stack the cards, man.
You know?
Give it hell. Uh,
I don't think it's necessary to have trauma. Yeah. I think a lot of people hold that too. And
you know, through, through the knee stuff, I get a lot of messages about surgery and people
are going to have this going on. And one of the things i always get from people is this my knee's a little jacked up i've had some surgeries it's not as bad
as yours was and i always respond with like but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like your pain
is yours and it doesn't have shit to do with mine because my leg hurt more than yours does
doesn't mean you're not unhappy and nor does that
give me some you shouldn't hold that as like well he dealt with more i'll i should be fine with this
that's not how it works you're dealing with the most that you can deal with at that time and most
people are dealing with the most they can deal with at that time all the time and so like pain and trauma aren't a competition.
And I think we can stop looking at things that way.
And I think I do think as a culture, that's one of those things that we do.
And we put up people on pedestals that have overcome more or done these other things.
And it's really easy to say, you know, looking at Donald Trump and say like, well, sure, but he started all this off of this loan he got from his dad must, must be nice. You know what I mean? Like quit fucking comparing,
dude. That was, he didn't choose his parents. That was a resource he had that was there.
And he fucked man. If, if my dad would have offered me a million dollars to start a business,
I'm fairly certain at that point, I could have turned that into 700 grand really quickly.
You know, I mean, but even even turn a million into a billion.
Get out of here.
You know, there's there's work involved there, too.
And he's failed a ton.
And I mean, I'm far from a fan, but right on.
He's done some stuff.
I can see value there.
Yeah.
Yeah. I,
yeah.
The pain and pain and trauma are not a competition and everyone's got their own shit and everyone's shit's valid.
Now I struggle when people take on other people's pain and trauma and, and feel it's theirs.
That's a tough one. You know know um like what do you mean so the social justice warriors okay right or the the karens uh well okay you know this this idea
that like holy shit i have been validated i have a thing that I can yell at fucking people about.
And I'm on the top virtuous side of this.
You know that finally, finally, I am in the right and I know it.
Like why?
That's a weird competition, too, of who's more virtuous.
It's the same thing of why back in the day people were like, you know, with racist issues of like, well, my black friends.
Come on, man.
Like, that was the thing.
Everyone mentions like, well, I know a black guy.
Like, that doesn't make you not a racist, you know, but nor does not having black friends make you a racist.
Neither of these things have one to do with the other.
But, you know, just accepting someone else's trauma is really weird.
And I think we're in a weird spot, too. Guy, Brett Weinstein was on Rogan and he was a professor at Evergreen College in Oregon and really started seeing kind of the first bits of this.
And one of my concerns with not Black Lives Matter or not any of the stuff going on, my concern is forced compliance.
whether that's you know that like well if you feel this way at all like like you need to say black lives matter and this was a weird bit on instagram right for
for all of us who operate in some bit of an influencer space for fucking disgusting word
um but it is what it is that there was part of it that there was an obligation to make a post that you felt that
i need to say something on this even though i threw rocks in a field and make fucking t-shirts
this isn't someone whose opinion you should value in this arena i don't fucking know what i'm
talking about i know that i don't dislike people because of the color of their skin.
And I mean, I got messages about like, what are you planning to do to add more people of color to the roster of hate athletes or people you're going to hire?
I'm like, I've had trans athletes.
I sponsor for Asian people.
My my media guy is is is half black, half white. Like, the fuck are you talking about? I got four Asian people. My media guy is half
black, half white. Like, the fuck are you talking
about? I don't hire anyone.
Oh, shit. Yeah, Brant. That changes
everything. I knew it. I had no idea.
What the hell? That was also
You didn't see it coming.
That was also the weekend we went
hiking. So we were off the grid for like
two days and then came back to this
disaster on instagram
and my dms are full of why aren't you saying anything i'm like whoa whoa what what yeah i
have a bunch of friends that got the same shit and it's just like yeah people if they don't see
what did i miss yeah they don't see you post something then they think you're automatically
on the other side you you have to say something it makes absolutely no sense it's
not no it's not at all it couldn't be any more of a curated view and even someone who has done
vlog work of his life for a really long time you're getting a very edited 10 fucking minutes
of my day of course it's the best highlight reel that i can possibly put together highlight
funny that i've chose to share.
Right.
Like, it's not fucking real, man.
Like, you don't want to see me sit at my desk and figure out a thing for three hours, you know, or realize that you've done something and forgot to hit record.
Sick.
I could do that again.
I was hoping to rerun that intro.
again i was hoping to rerun that intro uh but and the forced compliance of stuff that our countries and that i think that goes back to just that really really weird
politicizing everything that everything's black or white and then i learning more i guess about
like what safe space and all that as an older guy who wasn't on a
college campus i'm not fucking familiar with any of this and what i thought it was was physically
like a safe space that were but what it became is that like they were uninviting guest speakers
that didn't have the same very very left is where typically this was happening.
Same ideologies the kids had.
And they felt because, well, suicide and anxiety is up for kids in that age range that you
challenging my ideas put me in a compromised space and make me not feel unsafe in my own
head with my thoughts.
This is a terrible fucking plan to avoid.
And colleges were supposed to be a place of higher education where you meet people that aren't like you and you discuss different topics intelligently.
It's supposed to be that salon of thinkers that we had back back when when people were still concerned about education.
And avoiding that to stack the cards to where everything follows a similar message,
and if it doesn't follow a message, we'll fucking fire you.
That's a bad idea, man.
That's a really, really shit idea.
Is this still a thing that is currently happening?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, it's just as i mean
just being out of college because they so for a decade plus i don't they would do stuff on
colleges right so if they had a speaker and comedians have talked about it a lot like they
don't tour campuses anymore because fuck this and it was like you you would show up as a speaker
and either they'd make a big enough ruckus about you coming that the campus would uninvite you,
or they'll show up at your speech and make enough noise and disrupt enough that you can't give your speech.
And so.
I saw that happen a lot with some of Jordan Peterson's content.
Ben Shapiro, too.
Yeah.
They have like hecklers and, you you know all kinds of different things and then but what's cool about um i haven't seen ben shapiro do it but maybe he
has but i've seen jordan peterson actually get in conversation with people and talk to people
like outside of and these people are like they're pretty charged up so i'm like fuck man that's
good on him because these people are like they're ain't they're very angry and you're like holy shit but he he still shares his belief and he's like no here's why i think this
here's why i think that and at least they both at least a person walks away with i got to you know
share my information rather than just uh you know not allowing that person to come to your
campus at all i mean how are we going to gain any knowledge if people aren't questioning it like that's the only place that knowledge comes from in the first place so
how are we going to get to anything new if we just all have the same ideas and concepts i mean it's
it's the same idea right that someone watches a youtube video you make that's free and then tells
you they don't like it or that you should talk about this.
Like, where the fuck are you entitled to shape the content I make?
It's free.
I'm going to make whatever the fuck I want.
If you don't like it, there's an infinite number of channels for you to watch.
I just I can't even imagine having any more in my head of this guy needs to know i don't like this
i'm gonna write a letter oh man that's where they just changed the fucking channel that's where the
race to zero followers came from is that just like i'm doing my own fucking thing man and and we we
talked about that too like sometimes you got to get rid of the old followers you know followers to
to find people that are into the thing you're doing now.
Got rid of all those prudes the other day.
Right.
Apparently they don't like naked butt pics.
My most liked photo I've ever fucking posted to the two of us in this little pond we'd found.
Yeah, I think I lost 300 fucking followers for it.
Like, man, happy to show you the door.
You're not enjoying yourself like that's fine. you offended by a butt cool man and also if you're offended by a butt
life's going great for you that's just a fact meanwhile it's super training gym yeah
we're on the tv yeah i probably lost almost a000 people told me they were disappointed in me. Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Disappointed in her.
Yeah.
Meanwhile, I'm like, we look great.
Like, look at us.
We're killing it.
Look how much fun we're having.
Yeah.
Yep.
You know what I mean?
Started the morning skinny dipping.
Yeah, it was a great day.
Social media is a weird thing.
I mean, people are sharing, you know, just about everything.
So, you know.
There's everything.
Yeah, right. Right. you know just about everything so you know there's everything yeah right what's right well
i just we don't wonder what the real difference is on i don't know man i guess people have an
expectation of what they think matt vincent is they have an expectation of what they think you
are and well i disappointed that expect didn't meet that expectation yeah and you can't do that
on every post anyway i think people there's also don't confuse the fact that you have followers with the idea that you have a valid opinion on everything or an important one. It's OK to say you don't fucking know. Be like, I don't know. I shouldn't speak on that. Or it's not a thing I concern myself with. I don't know what you're talking about. And that's not a thing I concern myself with. I don't fucking know what you're talking about. And that that's okay.
You know,
there's like,
I don't like the stay in your lane idea because I want people to be free to
think and talk about whatever they want to.
But again,
it comes back to that forced compliance,
right?
Of this idea of like,
you curse too much.
Okay.
You mean I make noises with my mouth.
You don't like like for fuck's sake
like just slow it down do you know what i mean like or change the channel so many other people
you can follow or maybe voice your opinion in a different way and explain why you don't like the
cussing right say hey i watch all your videos i'm a huge fan but i actually think that you uh
curse a little too much i'd love to see you know and here's and here's why like just give me some
sort of reason right then maybe you look at it and you're like ah i i kind of do i think i do
and you might ask her you say hey do i curse too much you might be like yeah a little bit
like oh rather than a short little blanket statement, there's no follow up. Why do you have such foul language?
Right.
Immediately, if if the response to me is because you felt attacked.
Right.
When I don't know your name.
Yeah.
I didn't attack you.
You know that if you have that level of vanity or narcissism to think that this was directed directly at me, you probably have some things you should sort out.
Instead of the things that I watch that aren't in my wheelhouse,
and whether that's, let's just say religion thing is an easy thing I can take a hard stance on
that I don't agree with most of it.
But I don't have a problem that other people do.
You're not going to go on Joel Olsteen's YouTube and dislike it and make a comment.
Why would I fucking bother?
I can watch this other guy learn stuff.
There's an awesome channel that I can watch that makes me feel good.
But I think people like fucking feeling shitty.
I think we're addicted to that, too, that we're addicted to being offended.
Well, people like conflict.
And if it's via keyboard, then there's no consequences.
Yeah, sure.
But we've also given and I think we're wired to it.
Frustration is addicting.
For sure.
And we give more attention to negative comments than we do positive ones.
So years.
It's been a long time. But negative comments. we do positive ones so years it's been a long time but
negative comments i don't mind criticism criticism and critique are very very welcome
but just like i mean if i posted something like her and i with this shot of her ass
like there's going to be some fucking idiot who who comments and says something like
what are both these dudes doing you know know, because she's a muscular female, God forbid.
I don't think it's because of that.
I think because they see the giant penis that's hanging down between the legs.
I think that's what I noticed.
She does have a giant penis if she had one.
Robbing.
It's that big dick energy.
I don't know what I'd do with it, but it'd be fun.
It was hanging down in the water.
I mean, that might be part of the of the reason i have to lay on my stomach
but there's always those people right ridiculous comments so like man i will comment back to
everyone who has anything to say unless it's shitty for the sake of being shitty and i'll
just delete and block you i don't care hit the bricks you know why why tolerate it i think uh that frustration is a
sensation in our bodies that's similar to a challenge you know and so we we uh we get a
response from that in our body and it's addicting we had uh andrew huberman on the podcast he was
on joe rogan's podcast as well a neurosist, and he was explaining a lot of this. But this is a great explanation into why, you know, just the old adage of putting one
foot in front of the other makes so much sense.
There's a little resistance to it.
You may not really want to do that.
But when you go through something or challenge yourself in whatever new way it is that you're
challenging yourself, you get a lot of great feedback from it.
But sometimes, you know, we have things like frustration.
I've mentioned to these guys many times.
There's an old study where they put people in a dark room by themselves and the people
just kept hitting this button over and over again to electrocute themselves.
And they told them before they went into the room, they said, hey, there's going to be
a button on the table.
It's going to electrocute you, you know.
And, you know, they would hit it, you know, and then they would ask them, oh, would you pay money to not get electrocuted by this button?
You know, like if I was forcing your hand on it, they're like, hell yeah, of course I would.
I don't want to get electrocuted.
But when they put them in this room and had them in isolation for 15 minutes they were
pushing the button very very frequently it's just because uh i think we'd rather be like annoyed or
we'd rather have something going on rather than be lost in our own thoughts it's fascinating yeah
yeah it's pretty cool yeah it's man there's there's weird stuff i mean whether that's
like other studies like the uh the one with the uh inmates and and prisoner or prison guards in
the stanford study what they did and that like if you give people power they fucking abuse it
yeah all right that's a fact and you know not only that like you know these people didn't have
any real power and they still turned um now i know there's other stuff that shows maybe this test was
fucky but either way i mean that or there was another
study that was essentially like doctors in a room with you and there's a control panel with buttons
one through ten and you can hear someone that's being tested on the other side of a wall but you
can't see them and it was the doctor asked a question the person that answers it and based
on what the doctor felt the answer was,
you hit a button. And that button
gave a small shock. And as
it worked up the ladder, it was bigger shocks.
And the
test was to see how compliant
to
authority that this person
would be. And at some point, the person on the other
side of this wall is screaming for help and asking
you, please don't hit the fucking button and the doctor just says press the button again
press the button and so many just would until the person quit screaming right you know and it's all
an act right right right right but i mean it's it's easy to look at that and then extrapolate
like why people fall in line with things that because they told us to
we're supposed to authority and man i like that the younger generation is more willing to challenge
authority than say my parents generation was oh yeah and man i grew up for sure
authority older people in authority was correct.
That wasn't up for debate that like,
if I was to argue with a teacher,
that was my ass in trouble when I got home,
because I shouldn't have argued with an adult who was the authority figure,
right or wrong.
My parents would have never gone to school and be like,
but he had a good point.
No,
it was time to be quiet and stop.
You know, and so I think I think that bit of figuring out appropriate authority is something that's got to be done to, you know, in appropriate compliance, I guess.
That part is really difficult because. But it's a moving target.
You know, how many, I don't know if your surgeon was bad that did your first knee surgery.
Sure.
So he did all nine.
Oh, he did all of them.
Yeah.
So, you know, I mean, it's hard to know, like, you know, who is the authority?
Who is a good doctor and which doctor finished at the complete bottom of his class?
Who made all C's.
And doesn't care to, maybe just doesn't care to advance their knowledge and maybe they're just not
into it so it's just a job for them right which that wouldn't be great to have someone care for
you that they you know it's just passionate about yeah they're not excited about it every day they're
not interested in it like you watch a surgery video and you realize these guys are far more carpenters than they are
finesse right you know i mean they're mechanics and they're fixing parts and they look at it as
tools and this needs to be replaced and i mean that's the last answer the guy gave me before my
knee replacement was he you know i was like you know what do you have to kind of help me feel
that this is going to be the response he's like well everything that's causing you pain we're taking out
i'm like oh well that fucking works that answers that immediately for me he's like we're not
continuing to just remove parts to try to patch a problem we're just going to replace them with
brand new stuff yeah and that works for me with vehicles and how they work so why wouldn't this
make more sense? Right.
How has how has like the coronavirus?
Has that played into anything with your travel?
Because it's like a little bit more complicated.
Travel is a little different.
Have you guys gotten any heat for any of that kind of stuff or has it been pretty, pretty good?
No, we haven't gotten any heat on it at all.
It's been very interesting to see how different parts of the country handle it.
No one in Montana has really heard of masks.
So it's interesting to see the variants everywhere that we go.
And we're both very comfortable with being compliant, you know,
where masks are required.
I think a private business is allowed to ask you to do whatever they'd want yeah no shirt no shoes no services
same thing right i can wear a mask it's not the biggest uh thing i've had to overcome in my life
yeah uh i mean you're eating outside more often which is fine whatever um and then gas station
bathrooms have been a little weird yeah a lot more lot more porta potties. Yeah. Stuff is closed.
I mean, yeah.
And how is that helpful?
Right.
Oh, man.
Right.
I don't think.
Because, you know, those aren't getting cleaned.
Well, I think a lot of it with the virus is, and people in general, I think a lot of it's
posturing.
And it's this idea that we're doing a helpful thing instead of are we analyzing?
Is it really helpful?
Well, that's like the stuff. Virtue are we analyzing is it really helpful well that's
like signaling yep yeah well that's like the stuff with people with like restricted hours
yeah it's like oh so you're gonna shorten the hours so more people are crammed into a short
amount of time it's a fucking terrible this is helping like yeah it's it's interesting and and
even i mean luckily for us we're set up to camp. So we're not going into cities.
Yeah, we've avoided.
I mean, and even that, like where we were outside of Portland, like we drove through Portland.
And as far as the media is concerned, this place is burning to the ground.
I don't see any of that shit.
It looked like the same Portland that I've ever been to in the last five years. All the problems are, you know, or where we're protesting, where this what the area that they've claimed for themselves.
Chaz.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That type of stuff are such small, compact areas.
Just a couple blocks.
That it's it's not the whole city's an issue, right?
Like in the same way, the rest of the world thinks all of americans are fat yet there's
not a single one in this room anymore anymore as we're talking to me we're talking about us
it's just and the media and information that is shared through the old method is rough it's a really rough biased trying to make money man and they're
they're providing us with what what we ask for because we keep watching the same reason the
kardashians are on tv all we gotta do is stop watching that shit now quit putting them on the
air yeah that's how tv works but we don't and so we keep watching fox news because people want to be mad you know right
back to that whole frustration being addicting that'd actually be interesting how many people
from a different party are watching the opposite right watching the opposing news there's probably
a lot i would say not as many that just want to hear yeah echo chamber of what they want to hear
i know but it'd be interesting to kind of know the stats on that yeah but are you right yeah i mean but watching fox news or watching
cnn or or what have you it's like watching polar opposites say the exact same story it's
fucking crazy but in a way that feeds their point of view i think a big problem with it is just the
fact that we have this 24-hour news thing now and we can really
blame all of this on espn's pti this is when i started so so familiar with the show pardon the
interruption i'm not so no okay so pardon the interruption was a show i think it may still i
don't know if it's still on there okay the were these two guys, and they were the first channel that they had a list of topics on the left side of the screen.
There's something running across the bottom giving stats and shit from ballgames.
And these guys get two minutes to essentially yell about a subject at each other.
And then a buzzer hits, and they move on to the next one.
And this is how every single news channel has become yeah they've they have adopted pti
and it looks like that a little bit like a countdown show as well yeah they just did it
first yeah and it has changed tv on every aspect and so if you have news that's got to get filled
and topics they got to get filled they're not looking for resolution or answers they're just looking to yell at each other for three minutes yeah instead of
long firm discussion like this you know which i do think we should get more of like why the
fuck aren't our presidential candidates doing this you could it's free right you could put
100 of the speeches and as much as you want to explain and share your platform and why it's there with the world, start a YouTube channel.
It's hard to learn anything real about presidents.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
tweet and we know a couple things but everything has to be political from their person you know i mean i guess it doesn't have to be but um it's important that they say things you know in a
certain manner you know to because it has to kind of fit their agenda and fit their beliefs
um so yeah it is it's uh it's just an it's an interesting thing that we can't, we don't have access to like hearing someone talk more and talk on their feet.
So it would be amazing if you could hear, you know, if you could hear Joe Biden in several different interviews on podcasts, but he's really, he's not really on them.
Trump's not really on them.
I mean, we've heard him recently.
Joe Rogan did one with Bernie Sanders.
Yeah.
That was a really good, interesting listen because it actually gives them a chance to talk.
There's been some stuff like that.
I'm just saying it's very scary.
Yeah.
But I think I also think that they won't do it because of the climate that we've created.
That you're not allowed to say the wrong word or make a misstep.
And everything's allowed to be taken out of context that like,
you may have explained something for 15 minutes,
but if one of the sentences you used sounds fucky,
they're going to take that and chop it up.
And this is all you talked about.
And that's what Rogan said about after having Bernie on.
He's like,
I'll never do it again.
I'll never have another presidential because I immediately got shifted that I
was a complete left Bernie Sanders supporter instead of I just wanted to give the guy a platform to share his thoughts on.
Right.
And how weird is that?
How weird is that, too?
Because Joe Rogan has been somebody that we have always looked to to share the truth with us.
Now he can't.
Right.
Yeah.
You guys, you have decided I'm not allowed to do it.
Great work. He kind of can, but he kind of can't.
He does, he needs to be careful of
his words because
people can misunderstand him. And it's not
because he'll get canceled or anything necessarily.
Which is beautiful because he can't.
Right. That would pretty much,
yeah. I mean, I guess he could.
By who? CrossFit got canceled, you know.
No one owns Joe Rogan. Do you know what I mean? Like, he's not depending who? CrossFit got canceled, you know? No one owns Joe Rogan.
No, I...
Do you know what I mean?
Like, he's not depending on...
No, he could fuck himself over.
Yes, he'd have to lose his fucking mind and say something completely.
Yeah, he could fuck himself over.
Bonkers.
Yeah.
I mean, look at Matt Lauer.
Yeah, or something weird.
Yeah, but Matt Lauer works for a company that's owned by a conglomerate that someone gets a vote.
Right.
Joe's show isn't.
Right.
Right.
Right.
And that's a that's a very unique thing that we don't have a lot of that.
There isn't a right or left big support that pays for Joe's show.
Right.
And I think that's what makes that platform really unique that we don't have a lot of those areas anymore that that somebody doesn't have a
vote based on money to what you get to talk about and i think it's important that we have
those type of things but we also have to as a society be able to allow people to be people
and people to make mistakes and people to change and people to be able to say i'm sorry i didn't
know enough i fucked that up but i'm trying to get better and learn like we
can't like even even with the black lives matter stuff man like people that were like well i didn't
see you talking about any of this six months ago i was fucking wrong i didn't know enough
now i'm educated on it and i'd like to share what i've learned you're allowed to grow and
change and we hold people accountable to this level of scrutiny that we don't hold ourselves to because because they're known or have a platform
or any of these other things there's still people that are trying to get better and educate
themselves like give give some fucking slack and some room for breathing yeah not a lot of people
are good at admitting that they were wrong well i think because a lot of that's the repercussions
for admitting you were wrong,
that people were like,
finally,
we now have proof that he doesn't know shit.
Oh yeah.
You know,
or because you said one thing wrong.
Now we have to throw away all the other good ideas that you had.
Canceled.
Yeah.
Like,
no,
got to go.
Unacceptable.
So after being in all the different areas and you said there's a lot of
different, uh, there's a lot of different uh
there's a lot of different practices right um california has been the most complicated okay
yeah yeah because the wear a mask save a life yeah hey right on our uh our uh seminar that we
had this weekend canceled is it uh because with uh stan yeah i think someone called it in and you know
you see something say something that's california for you oh okay that must be fucking rats like
just happened yeah yeah just okay yeah culture of rats is this what we're gonna fucking do
yeah it just it just happened but i guess um
okay so if things are like quote unquote normal in montana and uh as far as i know we don't have
any uh you know uh we don't have any state borders that are being blocked off so people
can't go anywhere um does it even make sense to do like what we're doing have half the like
you have the economy shut down and i i personally, and again, I'll speak from my experience of travel and what little bit I've learned and how I feel about it.
Now, again, I know people think I'm a doctor, but in fact, I threw rocks in a field that people agreed to measure.
So less than a doctor.
Right now, my concern is that small businesses get to operate and people who have poured
their life into a thing aren't fucking cheated out of that success by something that's taken
out of their hands.
And if that means I need to wear a mask to give those people support, I'm on board.
I'll do it.
That's fine.
This isn't the biggest goddamn thing.
A struggle.
I can put a thing on my face.
It's not a problem.
Do I personally think it is really helpful?
No, I don't.
I think that is about the lowest hanging fruit that we can pretend helps as much as anything.
I think more being outside with vitamin D, as we've seen and been and shown that that makes a big difference.
And that logically makes different, you know, makes sense to me for who's higher risk for infection.
sense to me for who's a higher risk for infection. We have learned that it doesn't spread through surfaces. We also have to admit that we were lied to. Now, whether the intentions of that lie
are noble or not are irrelevant, but we've been lied to. We were told that masks were not important from jump by Fauci. And then later he said, we said that because we knew there'd be a shortage and we needed them for the hospitals. And if all that is 100% true, and as I'm not a doctor, I'll take his word. But now I'm aware that you've lied to me.
But now I'm aware that you've lied to me.
And that becomes tricky, man.
Instead, be honest.
And it's okay that if they would have just said, we don't know exactly what we're dealing with.
We think this is going to be the best response.
We have to try.
We can see what other places have done and try to mimic that. But the problem with that becomes how much real information are you actually getting from places?
Because all of that's so propagandized, too.
And so right or left that.
How the fuck is this a political virus?
How is this political?
Shouldn't we all at least be on the same page about this is bad?
Let's fix it.
Nope.
We can't even do that weird weird times man
i think it's like anything else like this is bad but how bad you know that that comes into
question uh you know in every aspect of american culture you know uh you ran a stop sign not a big
deal you ran a stop sign killed somebody ran a stop sign killed Not a big deal. You ran a stop sign, killed somebody.
Ran a stop sign, killed someone, and you were drunk.
Right.
You know what I mean?
It's like there's severity to it.
And to me, the severity of this virus just is not great enough to have all the bells and whistles and all the different things that are going along with it.
That's just been my own personal thoughts on it.
along with it that's just been my uh own personal thoughts on it and and uh just the idea that our governor shares the idea of wear a mask save you know save lives i just i don't know why he would
make that stance i don't know why unless he believes that 51 in your state believe that
right right yeah i know it's not leadership right it's placating right and that's what we've got Yeah, I know. to help the country in situations like this. And if, and why would you take a reality show host advice on a medical thing instead
of this fucking doctor that we've hired?
I think that's weird.
I also like,
I mean,
that's the same way I feel about fucking the vaccination stuff.
Like,
like,
man,
do we want such an information bias so bad that you think jenny mccarthy figured this out
she's a fucking playmate who ran singled out this is not one of our best thinkers
what did she do i'm she was big anti-vax she was one of the heads of kind of that movement
and like yeah fuck right fuck people pick let's let's pick representatives that are smarter than
us not just because they're celebrities.
Celebrities.
Just because you're like, just because you're a good actor doesn't mean you have a smart
opinion.
You read words off a sheet of paper.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing that we have so much information at our fingertips?
Overall, I think it's a good thing, but I think we need to get better at developing
the filter for deciding bullshit
and that only comes with reading more information you know also there's a lot of logic that i think
you can just look at stuff of like i mean even when protests started happening in la
world health organization made, made a statement that,
uh,
you know,
regarding mask.
And it was,
it was like,
look,
we,
we think everyone should stay inside and no one should be outside.
If you're protesting due to,
uh,
black lives matter and George Floyd,
it was somehow.
Okay.
I mean,
they made a post that like,
yeah,
we still think you should be inside, but also this is fine.
Like, what the fuck is that work?
They're magically protected because they're arguing for the right thing.
And getting more information like that, there's got to be some logic to you that like bullshit's afoot.
And.
Boy, they just knew they couldn't stop it, to be honest.
Like.
Sure. Well, also, they are aware that there's associated with calling it negative in any way can you also imagine as an organization
right now saying don't protest these things right you're fucking you're done yeah right
you can't do that and so that's the forced compliance now i think they actually would though
if the virus was stronger of course if it was if
people were really you know dying in in large numbers which i know that there's there's fuckery
there yeah right yep um and even with the numbers that are reported they're still fairly low um i
just think that like if again i think if people were really uh if this thing was insanely
um deadly uh you guys wouldn't be traveling you know we wouldn't have to have coercion by the
government or the state to say hey you know you're not allowed to do this but you're allowed to do
this you're not allowed to do that but you're allowed to you know we wouldn't really need that
because i would call you up and be like matt Matt, you still coming? You'd be like, fuck, no, dude.
I'm doing shit.
Yeah, I'm not doing nothing.
I'm going to another country away from people.
Yeah.
And yeah, it's on this road trip.
One of the things that's become very, very clear is I really do love America.
Our country is incredible.
Hit the music.
I love the landscape we have. I love the diversity.
I love that
how different getting
to see the southwest of our country is compared
to the Pacific Northwest and get to see
mountains and get to see all this great,
amazing stuff or Montana or Glacier National Park or any of these incredible things.
I don't know how much I like Americans.
I don't like entitlement.
I don't like this feeling that this lie that we keep telling ourselves that we're the fucking
best when there's no proof of that.
We're still just people.
fucking best when there's no proof of that we're still just people and if we can allow ourselves to be wrong and say we fuck that up as a group we can make change but instead digging our feet
in and refusing to change because we are fucking right and we're america
that's a fucking tired story man and it isn't serving anyone well you know pretending that
you know having a tendency to point our fingers at the rest of the world uh
with what they're doing wrong when i mean why why did we spend i mean there was a period of
time that we we dumped 80 billion billion to rebuild part of Afghanistan.
And meanwhile, Flint, Michigan doesn't have fucking drinking water.
Let's weed our own garden.
Let's sort this shit out first before we start trying to figure out how to fix the rest of the planet.
And I'm very, I don't know, I'm a bit of a globalist.
I do think we're a global community, especially now with the way businesses reach immediately.
And you got to be willing to say you were wrong to make progress.
And that's not something we're very good at as a society.
And I think that's a thing that could change that would allow a lot more growth than the fear response to admitting you were wrong.
Where are you guys off to next?
So we're going to head from here to Santa Cruz, hang out with Brooke Ince for a few days.
I'm going to go tour Specialized Bicycles Headquarters. I'm excited about that. And try not to buy a few days. I'm going to go tour specialized bicycles headquarters.
I'm excited about that.
And try not to buy a new bike.
Will be the goal.
Have an extra spot on the bike rack. So it was thought about before.
I got some.
I didn't even think about that.
Electric bikes over there.
They do.
Yeah.
Specialized make some rad ones.
And man, that's one of those things that like when that popped up, I was like, what the
fuck are we doing?
But now, as I've ridden one, they're really, really rad.
And, man, I think it would be cool that, like, if you're coming up on bikes and you're wanting to learn to ride more and do all this, and you have a group of friends that have been, this can give you the ability from jump to be like, oh, man, I want to go do this 50-mile ride with my buddies, but I physically can't.
I need help.
That bike gives help.
And that allows you to get the life experience.
And maybe it gets to the point that you're healthy enough one day to switch, you know, get on a real, you know, get on a not electric bike or not assisted bike.
And I mean, man, some of the like I would have loved one.
I did a ride up in Portland with some guys that all ride.
And I got fucking slaughtered.
They set out to do 52 miles and 7,000 feet of climbing.
Buddy Dustin Klein, who's got a YouTube channel I follow and interesting guy artist.
So I met up with them and we camped and we went for a ride and uh like i took a separate
route that they had set that was 30 miles and only like 4 500 feet of climbing and so like we
split off at a point i'm like i can't do that but if i'd had some assistance on on hill climbing
from the electric bike i could have got the experience of spending all day with those dudes in the saddle.
You know,
this is not man.
The same way I feel about lifting at this point. Like you got a barbell in your hands.
I'm in,
I don't give a shit about the details of it.
I don't care if you want to bodybuild or CrossFit or,
or fucking do Zumba.
I don't care.
You want to do something?
I'm on your squad.
You know, that's, that's on your squad. You know, that's
what I want. And so, yeah,
see Specialized. We'll probably come back up this way,
see Kelly Starrett, hang out with them for
a few days, and then I think
Mammoth Lakes.
Go visit a buddy of mine,
Derek Woodsky, and his girlfriend.
Do some hiking, some camping.
And then make our way to
FitCon over in Salt Lake
City, which should be fun.
We'll see you all, right?
Yeah.
Weird outdoor trade show, and it will be interesting.
That's the rock thing?
Or is that?
No.
No, the rock is in Atlanta.
Oh, it's in Atlanta.
But I don't know.
I think the first year of it, I think, got postponed, I think.
It makes sense.
Okay.
Was this year supposed to be the first year?
Yeah.
I think, yeah.
I think, well, I think 2019 might have been, it might have came and went already.
Not sure.
What do you, I mean, what do you think big changes that are going to come from this that
hold?
I mean, do you think we're going to, social distancing will continue for a long time?
Do you think masks will continue for a long time?
I think we've seen masks for a while.
Yeah, I think social distancing will definitely, well, it'll be around.
I guess it might subside if, you know, some of the baseball parks and football stadiums and things like that start to open up.
up, I would imagine that it's hard to say because I see so many people being irrational and not admitting that they're not doing a very good job of social distancing.
You know, I've said before that I think on a scale of one to ten, I'm doing like a three
or four.
Yeah, I'd say mine's probably about the same.
But anything less than a ten, you know, would be ineffective, right?
Because you got possible transmission would be ineffective right because you're you got possible you got possible
transmission going on right so um i think it's going to go on for a while you know i think maybe
the information is going to start to come out on what is really happening but i still think it will
take a long time so my concern is that information even getting
out to to the mass right getting getting out to people that get it or people that are searching
out that information is one thing but getting out getting out to the masses is another and that's
one of those things that concern me about the way this goes, man. And I mean, even watching idiocracy, right?
Like, like something like that, that keeps coming more and more true.
I, uh, I, I, I don't think it would end in a, like a battle or a war or something like
that, because I think that, um, people being told to sit on their ass, I don't think is
that problematic.
No, we're pretty good at it. Yeah.'s very like very good at it but at some point
uh money that has been built by previous generations is going to run out you know the
money that you're getting from the government at the moment the unemployment the money that maybe
your parents had or your grandparents had or someone has because i don't know anybody
who's really like up against i don't know anybody who's really like up against, I don't know anybody who's really struggling, but that
doesn't mean that there's not people out there.
But even in the face of COVID-19 and with everything going on, I know that they say
there's going to be economic destruction, but I just don't think we've even seen what
that side will look like.
So people can sit on their ass all they want but until their money is taken
away that's when we might start to see the frustration happen but that might
take a couple years now another thing we've talked about with as many people
that now have transitioned to work at home do you think that's a big move that
we see in the corporate space on a lot of things that,
A, I mean, why do we have this giant
fucking building that we're filling with people if they
can do their job remotely? Right. And I mean,
one of those questions I've asked people that I know
that have those type of jobs is like,
how much less salary would you take if you didn't have
to go to the office?
And then think about what that saves a company.
If you're talking about 10% of a salary and then you don't
need 15 janitors and only the essential people that need to come to an office, because that does exist, have them there.
And so, like, now are we going to start seeing all these big, stupid fucking buildings and cities become vacant?
And then that's a big shift we've got to make.
I think it just shows us a different way.
And that's what I've felt about Donald Trump from the beginning,
is that for better or for worse, he showed us a different way to be president.
You know, the tweets and the stuff he shares on social media.
Maybe the next president will do that, but maybe they'll navigate those waters better.
Maybe they'll be more selective on what they say or whatever.
But I think in the end, much like a lot of the stuff that's going on i
think it will lead to better things i think if there's any saving grace of covet 19 is that the
whole world went through it so like rather than just seeing like rather than just saying like oh
you know how's what's the impact on the united States or what's the impact on my city, which is important.
We do want to know, like, how's the rest of the world handling this?
How are other people doing it?
That feeling of a global community, I think, is really important.
Yeah.
And for me, what I've been kind of questioning the whole time is, like, well, hey, how come some of these other countries have, they have, how do they have a different idea on this?
As you were saying, like, it's a virus. Like, like it should be similar you know we we know how viruses act um and and so
on and so just in in seeing that and seeing like okay sweden and belarus and some of these other
places it's like wow they have like exact opposite thought process than us how is that possible do
the people of sweden want to see all their people die?
Do they want to see their country wiped out?
I'm like, I don't really think they probably do.
So how did they come to that conclusion?
What are they doing?
You know, those kinds of things.
You know, as a logical side, I think it's a very, very strange thing that we've, you know, I like the survival
of the fittest. I like evolution based on these traits, which we've gotten away from for a long
time. And I mean, even if I look at like our medical community, right? Like if our doctors
are our best and brightest, they're spending their entire life taking care of the dying,
you know, so the weakest are getting
the most attention to be kept alive um and with the virus or anything like that like i think we're
placating to such this small percentage that we're not looking at the overall and i mean people die every year viruses happening flu happens i mean
and these deaths from this i mean if the numbers are accurate and we'll say if that right like
to even just look at it at that surface without the other debate um these are extra people dead
on top of the other things those other things are still happening. This needs to be addressed.
But we've got to find actual useful things.
And we can't look at other stuff that we know is the case, right?
That like hospitals were getting a bump in money from insurance companies or the government if they used ventilators.
And we've also seen 80% of people put on ventilators fucking die but that's where the cash came so of course they follow it as that's a system that you've put in
place and that we're going to have to follow it's not i don't blame the hospital and doctors for
that that they're a business do if a family's crying they're saying he needs a ventilator
because that's what they saw on the news right and then you're like well fuck like they you know i know it's uh easier said than done you know for
the medical professionals say hey they don't need that you know right they're gonna be okay the guy
dies anyway right and it's like what the fuck do we do now yeah and then it becomes that you know
that like well well covet did it right like maybe there's some underlying issues that this just uncovered,
you know, in the same way that like, I don't know,
a really weird analogy would be, I mean, if I got,
if three of us needed to run away from a bear and I got eaten,
it'd be like blaming the bear instead of maybe this was an underlying issue
because I can't run good because I have a shitty knee.
Right.
I mean,
part of that's my fault.
And I think this was an opportunity as a country.
We could have taken a bigger account of our own health concerns and what can
we,
can we be tired of being the fat fucking country on earth is is that okay can we
can we move past like being the fat lazy fucks that are ignorant and stupid and racist can we
do better than that as a group maybe that's maybe that's a thing that a hundred percent
of americans could agree on is everyone okay if we try to be better than the fattest, laziest, least traveled, less educated country on earth?
If we could all possibly agree that that's not ideal.
You'd think.
That's a nice step forward.
But there'll be people that fucking argue it.
You know, and that's, I think a lot falls back to leadership.
Right.
And again, you know, I like that Donald Trump was trying to mix things up.
I like that we got out of the old fucking guard.
But I don't like that we have a leader who can't say I'm sorry or that I didn't know or I was wrong.
And that translates down to the rest of the people that follow him.
It's like, well, if he's not going to do it, that's how I'm fucking doing it.
And now you have a bunch of fucking dummies who think they're right.
Because, look, I think we, if you look at,
do you agree that, you know, the middle average American is uninformed,
not healthy, doesn't know nutrition is also not searching out anything
other than information bias for what they currently already think and and you know if if we agree that
the average american falls into that category then we also have to agree that 150 million people in
our country are dumber than that and that's a fucking problem that's a lot
of people and you you can't fight stupid that way like i don't especially if they're not willing to
say they're incorrect or want to learn more or that this is the way because
man that's that's a real tough one to not be able to admit you're wrong.
It's weird because the country, I'm sure, like, has kind of always needed a leader, but we haven't, like, quote unquote, really needed one that often.
No.
You know what I mean?
Like, obviously, the president of the United States is a very fucking important position, but it's not until somebody crashes planes
into a building or until there's a big virus floating around that we really like, hey,
we need, you know, we need someone to come through with a plan and to make a definitive
statement about what it is we're actually going to do.
And in this case, I don't know what he's empowered to do or not do, but didn't seem
like there was enough direction from the beginning.
And there was and even now it's like it kind of is getting talked about even less.
They just keep kind of talking about the same things.
They're talking about masks and they're not really they're still not really taught.
I guess they're the new focus is the vaccines.
Well, they're still talking about the things that your average dummy is yelling about.
Right. Because that's the people watching the news things that your average dummy is yelling about. Right.
Because that's the people watching the news channel.
That's the people watching these press conferences.
They're not talking to us who are willing to look at other forms of education. Right.
Like, I remember there was some class I had taken in college and we were discussing racism.
And I remember what the class was.
But at some point kind of had this feeling of like everyone in the room gets it we're all in a college class
taking a women and gender studies class like everyone in here gets it so we're just an echo
chamber we're not the it's the people out there that need this discussion. Let's pack up and go to Arkansas. We'll fix it there. As someone who's lived close to Arkansas,
I don't recommend it. You see that video
of the guy who's like, I think he had a Black Lives Matter poster. He's that clip.
He's being just screamed at by people, you know. But it was kind of
neat the way that it ended. Somebody actually gave him a handwritten
note and said i love
what you're doing or something like that keep doing you know it's a worthy cause yeah something
like that and it you know sucks that the guy that even said that you know had those thoughts
couldn't even voice he couldn't even say it it was a white guy holding that poster by the way
right right a bunch of people were like white lives matter too or uh you're white why are you
saying that?
Some people would just yell in real.
I don't understand how this is a thing.
People have missed the fucking point on this bitch.
Like, like, like, if all lives matter, black lives matter.
And also, no one else is being attacked by the police department in places like this is in the more that I've talked to people, black friends and stuff like that. Like these are very different experiences growing up
with police officers than I have. And even that, like myself, I'm not comfortable if I've been
pulled over, I'm still nervous. And a little simple thought like is, you know, with police
cars looking the way they do in this kind
of militant militarization of police forces i mean what's the difference in how we feel about
police force if they all drove bright pink cars you know that fucking played the ice cream song
whenever there was an emergency uh you know instead of you know the black car with black wheels and
made to be intimidating yeah this meant to be intimidating vehicle
you know especially now why is black intimidating matt
it's the absence of color no black is all color good way to think on your feet. Black's all color.
White's the absence of color.
There you go.
That's right.
That helps.
That's a good answer.
You guys are awesome.
I'm glad you guys had the time to be on the show, and I think we've been chatting away
for a while.
Two hours, 45 minutes.
Woo-hoo.
Yeah.
Killing it.
Wow.
I've been known to be able to talk.
We always go a little while.
How did you guys meet?
We met at the Arnold.
Yeah, the Arnold a handful of years ago.
2017, I think.
She was there working with Donuts and Deadlifts
booth that had gone to Hangout.
I think it was not Working With, but Hangout.
After your bodybuilding career?
Yes, significantly.
How long did you bodybuild for?
About five years.
Five years, and I did CrossFit for for a year and then got into powerlifting yeah i never competed in bodybuilding or anything
but you did a figure show didn't you something bikini or no i thought you did a show really
well shit now you gotta do a show whoops no yeah no yeah i don't think so. But yeah, that would have been like right after I switched to powerlifting.
Yeah.
From that point, we knew of each other.
And then we'd started working together a little bit with hate.
And then the more and more that we had hung out at different things, and it seemed the kind of universe kept putting us in situations together. We enjoyed each other's company.
And we wanted to spend more time with it.
So, I mean, I think that's really all we're trying to do, right?
Find people you like to spend time with and spend more time with them.
And looking at it that way, I mean, this is someone that makes me happy.
I want to be around, has similar ideas, has similar time constraints to their life, has the freedoms I have.
Fuck, let's give it a go.
She benches 225?
Right.
Is that what it was?
220.
She currently outpools me.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
That's fucking awesome.
All right, where can people find you, Bonnie?
At Bon Schro on Instagram.
If you want to see naked butt pics, that's where you go.
That's the spot. There's one there. How about for you, Bonnie. At Bonshro on Instagram. If you want to see naked butt pics, that's where you go. That's the spot.
There's one there.
How about for you, Mr. Matt?
I hate Matt Vincent on Instagram.
Hate Brain Goods is the brand.
I have a podcast called Um So.
And there's butt pics on your Instagram, too.
That's true.
It's a win-win.
Just making OnlyFans.
Yikes.
Next move.
It's the next move.
Oh, yikes.
Take us on out of here, Mr. Andrew.
Will do.
Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode.
If you had as much fun as we did, please make sure you share this with a friend.
Also, please make sure you're following the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram,
at MBPowerProject on Twitter.
And these two beautiful people's Instagrams will be down in the YouTube and Facebook description,
as well as the podcast show notes.
My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ.
And Seema, where are you at?
I'm at Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube.
And Seema Inyang on Twitter.
Mark?
At Mark Smelly Bell.
Strength is never weakness.
Weakness is never strength.
Catch you all later.