The Sevan Podcast - #280 - Taylor Self

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

The origin story of CrossFit athlete Taylor Self. Last season he was on the edge of making it to the CrossFit Games. He is a coach at CrossFit Charlotte in Charlotte, NC so that he can pay the bills while dedicating himself to training. The conversation explores his journey through drug and alcohol addiction, the death of his father, the death of one of his childhood friends, rejected from the military, and more.  Follow Taylor - https://www.instagram.com/taylormidself/ Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Watch this episode https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC59b5GwfJN9HY7uhhCW-ACw/videos?view=2&live_view=503 Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Yeah, I hear you great. I'm tight. What's up, dude? How's Tahoe? I'm sitting here in the dark. I kind of like this. I'm sitting by these windows and the sun's just starting to come up. So like as we go through the podcast, my lighting will change. Nice. I'll become either uglier or more beautiful but i will live the same i live in third world north carolina so my lighting is i got this shitty room lamp

plugged in behind me why are you saying that because you don't want anyone moving there you know it's the greatest place in the united states right now and you don't want anyone moving there? It's pretty good. Dude, I'm in... Go ahead, hate me, people. I don't care. I mean, I don't want you to hate me, but here we go anyway. I'm in Lake Tahoe. It's got to be one of the most beautiful places

on planet Earth. It is absolutely nuts. And there's so much forest. There's so much lake.'s it's just i think it might be the deepest and largest freshwater lake in the united states anyway if you dump it out it covers california with like 12 inches of water or something there was some stat i heard as a little boy that i really liked and uh you go into it you did it you go into a Safeway here and you're with 600 people who have their faces covered with masks on. I'm like, dude, we're in the mountains.

Chill. Everyone chill. And we all got it already. Everyone I know got it. Dude, yeah. All 10,000 people I know got the Omnicon. It's chill. If we all have it, we can all take off our masks.

So weird. That's funny i actually went to lake tahoe when i was a really really young kid yeah i just don't see a north carolina boy like you um showing what were you doing here we were skiing oh yeah i have a little trouble breathing here believe it or not the elevator i think we're at 6 000 feet and i feel it i didn't remember that as a kid i just remember being like forced into ski school did you ever did you ski growing up i did a lot did your parents ever put you in ski school no just i have like my parents are like armenian immigrants you know what i mean here's your skis here's your ski pass go they can't even believe they're probably so proud that they were able to they were raised in homes that didn't have indoor bathrooms and now they're taking their kids

skiing you know what i mean they're like yeah that's funny i i fucking hated ski school you really dude it was the worst well i just wanted to go with my parents i wanted to ski with my parents and they would stick me in the ski school and you're stuck with all the little fucking kids and you can't, they don't let you do shit other than go on the bunny slope. I don't know a lot about skiing, but I used to ski a lot. And skiing's a trip as a kid because a seven-year-old, you can take him skiing for me and my family.

And I wasn't athletic at all. You could take me skiing within two ski trips. I could ski every Black Diamond Slope at Squaw Valley. I mean, not not good but like i was fearless like all right let's do it yeah that's just just snow plow off a cliff just like that you don't give a shit that's exactly what happened to me i would they would stick me in ski school and i would freak out like i was i was i lashed out so much as a little kid i was such a little you know screaming talking what i wanted and so my dad was like fuck it then you're just

gonna come ski with me and so he would take me to the black diamond and i would sit in between my skis and ride down the black diamond on my ass with my skis on like either side but do you think it's okay to prejudice i said something about a child the other day um who had red hair i was talking about him not saying nice things and And someone goes, Hey, dude, that's the way all redheads are. And it was another redhead. I'm like, what are you talking about? He said, redheaded kids are just gnarly. I don't know. That's, that's, I mean, that's pretty racist. But I was okay with it. I mean, I wasn't judging the person. I was like, all right, let me hear. Let me hear your thoughts. I don't know. I mean, I was, I was gnarly. So, but my sister wasn't,

so I don't know. My sister's a redhead too. She wasn't really gnarly at all. Yeah. Maybe I had a girlfriend in, um, in high school who had red hair and she was like the nicest person I know. And now my wife has red hair and she's taken that mantle is the nicest person I

know. My girlfriend has red hair. But you're also pretty nice and you have red hair, but you, but you come from a, uh – you were a thorny branch. Exactly. Thorny branch would probably be a little bit of an understatement. This has nothing to do with the interview.

A bunch of people this morning sent me an article that was in the morning chalk up about Noble and about the athletes not making money off the shirts. in the morning chalk up about noble and about the athletes not making money off the shirts and it's this kind of stuff that really needs contextualizing it's really an unfair article it's it's really horrible i want to say this with all sincerity to all the athletes and everyone in the ecosystem do not try to get other people's shit. If you. And contextualize everything. This is not a career. Not for a single one of you. This is an opportunity.

Colton Mertens. The opportunity is to build the Colton Mertens brand. And to maybe change some other people's lives. There was the Rob Orlando before him. There was the Dan Bailey's. These are people who never won the games. This is Josh Bridges. This is, um, you know, Katie Henninger did win the games that Miranda Alcarez did not win the games. I don't even know if she ever made it as an

individual. This is an opportunity. The guy who invented the RX bar, this is not a career. If you just to put one thing in context, really quick, a couple of things. If I told you there's a million people in jail in the United States, you have to immediately go, okay, there's 300 million people who live here. So that means one in every 300 people is in jail. And then you have to go outside and you have to be like, okay, my freshman class, when you go to high school, that day is 300 people. One of us is going to jail. If you do not think like that, you have no fucking clue what's going on. So to mention that the athletes should be getting money from Noble for shirts to be sold is fucking nuts without contextualizing it. So let me give you an example.

If they make $10 profit off of every shirt and they spent $5 million to get into the space, insurance for their employees, money they have to pay for CrossFit to be the official fucking clothing line, all that. That means they have to sell 500,000 shirts just to break even. That's 50 shirts per affiliate. Only 30,000 people at most show up to the games. And now you as an athlete or anyone, instead of befriending these people and working synergistically with them, you are participating in complaining that they're not giving you money by another parasitic organization. Do you know why the Morning Chalk Up doesn't give people money for their videos when they interview people like Taylor Self? Because – and I hate to say this – because those fucking guys over there are working their ass off and not making shit.

You know what Justin LaFranco's exit plan is already with Morning Chalk Up. That thing's never going to make a dime. He just wants to sell it and move on to the next thing. I'm not going to share a fucking dime with Taylor from the $100 I make from this podcast. Because I'm going to use that to spend on my kids. But nothing is more valuable to me than the one hour or two hours I'm going to spend with Taylor now that I would rather be spending with my kids. I'm contextualizing it for you guys. Stop complaining.

Do zero complaining in regards to like getting a piece of the pie. Do you. Do you. Make yourself like you don't have to win the games to add crazy value to this ecosystem and be someone special in it. And sure as hell don't be trying to peel money off of noble those guys are taking an enormous fucking risk by getting in this space everyone is what do you think about monster sponsoring those guys i'm stoked yeah that's awesome fucking get your money yeah a ton of don't let them tell you don't let them tell you

here's the thing i just me personally the reason why I'm the happiest man that anyone's ever met is because no one, I can say whatever I want. There's a freedom there that's like, and I get it. Other people, like so many other people can't, they don't even realize they can't. And maybe if Monster sponsored me, I would start to feel the pressure too. But just, it's like when they sponsor, and that's another reason what's a huge mistake getting rid of Dave. Dave's the only person at HQ who could have massaged that. So it was okay. And he posted it on his Instagram. He said, um, uh, Hey, we're not doing the, um, the sugar drinks and monsters moving to just non-sugar drinks.

And although I don't buy that shit, I appreciate it. The Dave faced it head on. And if these, if these athletes are still allowed to say, hey, I don't drink Monster, but I really appreciate their sponsorship, then I'm all for it. Fucking let Marlboro sponsor you as long as they're not going to censor your mouth. And that's the problem. Ninety-nine percent of the people in the space are bots. From Morning Chalk up to Craig Ritchie to some people who are like my close friends, they're peddling you shit and they can't tell you the truth of how they feel. I get it.

They're looking for that balance, right? I mean, you know what? Who was that soccer player who took the Coke down and said agua? Was that Cristiano Ronaldo? Yeah. That's how rich he is. Yeah. But if you did that, you're toast.

Man, is it naive to hope or to want or even think to believe that it would be possible to make some sort of amount of money in a space without being pressured or forced into just following the narrative that everyone else follows? Dude, look at Danielle Brandon. Yeah.

Danielle, don't hate, don't hate me for this at all. She all she fucking comes on my podcast says she don't trust anyone she talks about how she's not taking the fucking vaccine bam right on her fucking instagram she's fucking she gets on the she gets in the fuck and and dude we are not created equal i'm not saying this is everyone can do this yeah this fucking chick is is has their own being don't try to follow her shit she gets in the fucking stadium at madison at this wholesome crossfit event and fucking double birds these motherfuckers all staying for no reason wholesome this fucking chick competes with the fucking covid yeah that's

funny and you know what and everyone wants from fucking the grandmas to the fucking little boys everyone just wants to cuddle with her. Yeah. And she's – I mean she's everything. She's a fucking thunder – hot thunder thighs, fucking pole vaulting, fucking just badass. And so, yeah, I think you can do it. I think that that's actually where the most success is, to not be like – Authenticity. Hello, here's my – I mean it's where the most success is to not be like, hello, here's my here's my pro. I mean, it's where the happiness is. Here's my protein powder. I'm a good dude here. Let me sign your kids back. I just if that's who you are, like that's more.

I do believe that like that's no Olson. I believe no Olson is a fucking amazing. I believe he's living his authentic self. Yeah um but if that's not like that's not me and so like but that's who people want that's how you know everyone wants um someone with clean feet i don't have clean feet i walk around barefoot i don't mind crumbs in the bed do you ever have sand or crumbs in your bed? Dude, I fucking hate that. If that happens to my bed, I have to take the covers off and wipe it off, dude. No way. Where were you born, Taylor? I was born in Fairfax, Virginia.

So it's right outside of D.C. It's northern Virginia. Pretty super. Super what? Wealthy. It's a very wealthy area. It is? Oh, yeah.

Is that where all the politicians go there? Is that where they live since D.C. is a shithole? Yeah, I think a lot of politicians live there. It's also like a lot of like a lot of like elites are there. Like probably like 10, like a 10 minute walk from the house i grew up in this saudi arabia just no yeah saudi arabia just built this consulate like right down the street it's fucking insane it's huge and is that like acres it's like acres and it's in an area where like there shouldn't be acres available to like you know what i mean yes so you're in like the shopping

center and it's all it's like middle eastern oil money, these crazy fucking cars. And it wasn't like that when I was really young, but it's like that now. My parents moved there from the middle of nowhere, South Carolina. That's where they were born from. I apologize for DC being all a shithole, but you don't need to tell me to look at it. I'm looking out the window at Lake Tahoe. I'm in California, most beautiful place in the world. California is a shithole. Man, it's been ruined. Were you born with money? My parents are pretty middle class.

They weren't born with money. They were both super poor growing up um both of them got scholarships to schools in virginia and that's kind of what precipitated the move there and and why i grew up there um are they athletes your parents my dad played football in college my mom did not she got an academic scholarship to uva are they are they still married my dad died when i was younger so no shit yeah yeah oh my god i'm so sorry i wish i wouldn't ask that oh my god hey uh that's funny thank you thank One of my best performance, one of my most sincere moments. So your parent, so your mom raised you.

No, they, so they both, my dad was like an alcoholic. So I grew up, he died when I was 16. So I was. Oh shit. That's not, you're, that's not young. Well, when I was younger, I think is the word I said specifically. Okay. Well then that joke really wasn't funny. I was picturing like my wife's dad died when she was younger I think is the word I said specifically um okay well then that joke really wasn't funny I was picturing like my wife's dad died when she was one so you can make all sorts

of jokes because they don't hit a nerve you can make as many dead dad jokes as you want I'm thick-skinned in that but yeah so I got I was raised by both of them um but probably being you know growing up that alcoholic family probably shaped a lot of the way I grew up, a lot of the character defects I grew up with, I would say. Do you think your dad knew he was an alcoholic? Oh, for sure. Well, he got sober three years before he died. Oh, shit.

And then, you know, I come from a long line of that. My great-grandfather actually went out. I actually just learned this maybe a few years ago. But I knew he died in the hospital, my great-grandfather. But they put him in a sanitarium to detox off alcohol back before they knew what delirium tremens and shit did to you. And so you put him in a straight jacket. That was a common practice. And he fucking died from delirium tremens and shit did to you and so they put him you put him in a straight jacket or they would that was a common practice and he fucking died from delirium tremens serious yeah isn't that crazy

i always thought that that was bullshit he died from alcohol withdrawals oh yeah he fucking for sure died that's you can only die from detoxing from two things alcohol and benzo benzodiazepines what What's benzo? Like Xanax. Oh. Or Klonopin, Ativan, shit like that. Like you can't, you're not going to die from withdrawing from heroin or any opiate or crack. Did you ever do nicotine?

Yes. What kind of nicotine did you do? Did you do a chew or smoke or? Both. I smoked. I started smoking in elementary school. So I smoked. Yeah. I was like a sixth grader.

So I would steal it from my dad. He would, he would buy like fucking three cartons and stick it in his computer desk. And it was just. And you would tax it a pack. You would tax him a pack. Yeah, dude.

Exactly. Tax him a pack. These fucking Marlboro lights. I would smoke in my attic. So those, and then, and then I switched to dip at some point and did that through a lot of my sobriety before I started CrossFit

I want to come back to dip some things don't matter relative people don't be confused like if you're seven feet tall and you have a seven inch penis or you're four foot five and you have a seven inch penis it's still just a great seven inch penis. That that's not where relativity matters. Do you understand? Like you have to think for yourself, like relativity. It does matter. If you open a box in downtown Manhattan, you fucking complainers who rip on affiliates, who charge $200 a month. You don't even think for a second that the rent there is $25,000 a month, $50,000 a month, and that your box owner can't even fucking make $100,000 a year where the poverty line in Manhattan is $200,000 or less. And you're complaining.

I want to put you in a rocket ship and just send you to Pluto. You're the misery of this planet. And just leave other people alone. Get yours. Be a good person. Okay. Nicotine is a… It's the hardest thing. Be a good person. Okay. Nicotine is a – It's the hardest thing to quit, I think.

Yeah. I chewed for six months, and quitting was a trip. I got crazy tremors. Really? Like I was shaking and twitching, and I was a mess. My vision was all blurry. And I smoked cigarettes for a long time. I didn't – yeah, smoking.

Well, I didn't actually quit. Well, I switched to dip. So I didn't like quit nicotine when I quit smoking. But when I quit dip, I quit cold turkey two times. Neither time did I experience like that initial withdrawal. And I dipped a lot. Really? You didn't get like blurry vision and like twitching in bed at night and fucking crazy dreams?

No, I experienced a lot of like agitation though. Like I was just extremely fucking on edge. Yeah, because it's a coping mechanism, right? You always put a chew in. Like you're like someone cut you off, put a chew in. Oh, you're waiting somewhere, put a chew in. I mean it's just like it just becomes a coping mechanism for everything. Yeah, and then really I feel like the hardest part is down the road like six months a year two years later you just get like this random craving initially i was like man i was so in it

i was like i don't i'm not gonna do it i don't i can't dip and then six months later like damn it would feel really good that's the only thing i still have like a strong desire to do every now and then is dip. Um, I, nicotine is one of the greatest drugs on the planet and I really love it. And, but I would, I, the thing you need to know anyone who hasn't done it, you have to know this, that you're, maybe this is what people mean by selling your soul, but once you do nicotine, you'll end up in Taylor just described it perfectly. You, the most valuable thing you have is your headspace thoughts. And so once you do nicotine, then it can get caught in there for a long time. And for the next five years, once a week, you'll think about it. And it's like, no one tells you that, that like, they're like, it's bad for you. It's this, it's that. But the truth is, is that it gets stuck in your head. Yeah. It's kind of like when you go through puberty and girls get stuck in your head, it's like you need it.

You don't want to ever give up real estate in your head. So that's why you shouldn't ever do nicotine, but man, it's awesome. Right. That's a good way of putting it, but it's also, it will fucking kill you. Yeah. Yeah. Cancer. I forgot about that.

I forgot about that. I forgot about that. But the headspace thing, that's an interesting take I've never thought of. But yeah, I'll be in the car and I'll just be like, damn, it would be really nice to have a dip in. Like I'm on a road trip or something. So you're born in Fairfax and do you have siblings? Yeah, I have an older sister. So I grew up kind of through this lens, at least the way I viewed it as a kid was

like, I felt like I never got the love and affection from my dad that I wanted. I think probably in part because he was an alcoholic, mainly in part because he was an alcoholic. Um, and I had this warped perception that he had given it all to my sister. My sister got all the attention or, you know, all the love. And I didn't getped perception that he had given it all to my sister. My sister got all the attention or all the love, and I didn't get any of that, which in reality is probably just not true. But she's a very high-achieving person. It was easy to kind of create this story and narrative jealousy towards her. How much older is she?

Six years older. Five years older. Oh, so she's significantly older like you didn't play with her no she beat the shit out of me i would fucking annoy her yeah i would fucking crush her i one time she was like playing this recorder this is a good story in our living room you know that shitty like elementary school instrument yes yes yes i bought those for my kids and they end up being weapons yeah so yeah i was in my sister she's in the living i bought those for my kids and they end up being weapons yeah so yeah i was in my sister she was in the living room like just blowing on that thing like one stupid note not even playing it just being fucking annoying so i ran there and

i kicked like i high kicked it and it chipped her tooth and she's like crying and freaking out and she's probably like 11 and i'm like five. And you lost your virginity via recorder. No, well, I mean, she didn't use a recorder, but she ran in the, I was like in the kitchen hiding. She ran in there and just hit me one time and knocked me out. Wow. Yeah. Knocked me the fuck out.

Is that the first time you were ever knocked out? Yeah. And, and I haven't been knocked out a lot lot of times but a few times that was the first time for sure i got i got jumped in high school me too um and and got knocked out i think that i want to say the dude it was a gang of dudes but i'm pretty sure i mean it was a gang of dudes but i'm pretty sure it was just one giant dude and he just punched me in the face i thought there were dudes fighting me i was walking down a sidewalk and it was late at night and i just you want to fight a motherfucker and i'm like oh shit i'm gonna get to watch a fight and i turn around and some dude just punched me in the face

i woke up in the bushes spitting out teeth that's fucked up i was never i've never been knocked out from a punch other than that time but i've been like choked out like playing around with friends um yeah but also like not playing around just got choked out really yeah we i had a brutal locker room when i grew in high school for what uh what sport baseball believe it or not i wrestled too and i never got choked out wrestling or in a wrestling locker room but in the baseball locker room there's just one dude who was a fucking savage bully just choked me out one time why did you do sports did your dad encourage that yeah it felt like mandatory especially baseball so i started baseball when i was like four um

and then i wanted i played football a couple years i wrestled played basketball but baseball was the one i played my whole life so like your parents like put you in the in the station wagon at four years old drove you to t-ball your dad sits out there he's drinking in like a paper cup watching you play deer park water bottle yeah i actually was i was walking to the dugout one time and this other coach is like sitting on like the tailgate of his truck like putting his like cleats on he's like my dad's middle name was middleton's they called him mid and so he was like what's it we got in the bottle mid vodka and i was like i was like 10 so i had no idea what that was but i remember that vividly wow yeah so this other guy just making a joke at him that's kind of how bad

of an alcoholic he was just everyone knew and what was his day job he worked as he ran the night vision lab at fort belvoir army base um night vision lab meaning like binoculars and shit they could see bad guys in the dark yeah where they develop like weapon systems and all that shit so he was extremely smart probably one of the smartest people i've ever been around was he nice to you yeah i mean yeah he was i mean they were about did he whoop you yeah oh yeah yeah they were i mean it was probably not that you know unique of a situation he was a normal, I would say dad in terms of, you know, your punishments, your treatment, just kind of with the added alcoholism and stuff.

Um, did your parents get divorced before he passed away? No, they got separated though. Um, I think I was like, I was probably 13. And I remember my mom saying like have like sitting us down and having like a talk with us that like if you and your sister yeah that if dad came home drunk again that she was gonna kick him out and she just couldn't do it anymore he comes home fucking hammered one night and like i remember this clearly because my mom was crying and my dad was like fucked up laying on the couch crying because he knew that like damn like i'm getting kicked out now and uh and i hated my mom

for it because at that age like at the younger age i was i was you know i loved my dad all i wanted was his attention and his like approval and all that so i remember i fucking hated my mom so much for kicking him out and i i remember going with him to help him move in what a trip right what a fucking trip oh yeah i hated her guts like like more than anything in the world i remember going with him with my best friend at the time caleb um to move him into this like basement that he had found on craigslist dude it was it was such a shithole it was was in Prince William County. Disgusting.

In the parking lot. I remember carrying this dresser with my buddy Caleb into this basement and walking through the parking lot of this apartment complex or this townhouse complex of this basement he's moving into. And there's this fucking used condom in the parking space. And we're like 13-year-old boys. The first time I'd ever seen something like that. It was just disgusting. Every time I see a seen something like that, it was just disgusting. Every time I see a condom, I spin a narrative around it. Ah, I wonder how that got there.

And then I look, is it loaded? Is it empty? Is it empty? Were these kids playing with making water balloons or is this a real one? Look, someone gave me $10 because you're a good dude. Wad Zombie. He sent me some stickers. He's the man. Look at this dude, Eric Weiss sent me $10 because you're a good dude. Man, I love hanging out with good

dudes. You're making it rain money in my head. Did you ever say sorry to your mom for that? Are you like, holy shit, thank you for kicking the fucking drunk out, and I had it all ass backwards. I was 13.

Yeah, for sure. I've said that exactly to her. We have an amazing relationship today, but it was not that way for the longest time. I mean, we had the worst. I hated her so much. For that? For that, and then just for being the voice of reason i never wanted to hear or like

the person trying to discipline me you know after my dad died it was fucking her i mean god could you imagine that having a fucking did you blame her for that no i blamed myself a lot for that i mean i yeah i blame myself a lot for that it's crazy how did he pass he died of cancer cancer alcoholism kind of what what kind of cancer lung cancer he had lung cancer and then it it moved to his liver noted he was a smoker and a drinker so but he had quit but he had quit drinking for three years he had quit drinking for three years but when you drink fucking probably a half gallon of vodka a day it doesn't really you're 40 40 or 50 you're 45 or 50 you're fucking done and then did he did he and he smoked the whole time like from when you were a little kid to when he died he smoked the whole time yeah yeah he died with a cigarette no shit and how old

was he this was 2011 he was born 50 on the dot oh god that's next year for me you don't smoke though you're good man no you do crossfit yeah i drink a shitload of coffee though hey um how long was he dying for uh man it wasn't it was maybe two years he had been diagnosed so but and that was kind of like also in the heart of when i was getting fucked up a lot like i had you know i had found some drugs and alcohol and i was just so i was pretty oblivious to like kind of the change or the, you know, the events leading up to it. But it was, it did feel like it was pretty sudden. I remember actually that morning I was, I woke up, my mom was out of town and I was

like, I was 16. I was like, yeah, I'm not, not feeling school today. So I go downstairs. I'm like, Hey dad, I'm feeling sick. So I'm just going to stay home. And he's like, all right. Oh, he had moved back into the house. Yeah, this was – so my mom kicked him out.

Then he got sober. And then they moved back in. And their relationship got markedly better. What a raw fucking deal. He quits fucking drinking, but he still gets sick. Yeah. Okay. I mean, he made the most of his last three years, I think.

So you go downstairs. Your mom's gone. you tell your dad you're not feeling school yeah i was like yeah i'm not going to school he's like all right so i go back upstairs i get some weed i wake and bake get high with um a bong or a pipe or papers a gatorade bottle oh wow so you breathe in some plastic too good Good on you. For sure. The BPA. Yeah. It gets you higher. Melting plastic. Do you ever – this is my only regret in life is probably smoking. And the reason why is I wonder how much fucking gnarlier I'd be if my lungs had no damage.

Really? What do you mean gnarlier? Gnarlier I'd be if my lungs had no damage. Really? What do you mean gnarlier? I mean, do you remember just sitting around with friends and being like, okay, I'm going to pack a gram. Let's see if I can take the whole thing down in one bong rip. And then you don't.

So then it's the other guy's turn. So then you get another turn. And it's like that for 365 days a year for five years. And then you look back in hindsight and you're like, holy shit, I only breathed smoke for five years and then you look back in hindsight you're like holy shit i only breathe smoke for five years of my life through gatorade bottles melting and fucking apples and and do you ever wonder like holy shit what damage did i do to that fucking those lungs i don't actually i've never actually had that okay don't let that get in your head then never mind i have a great engine i just i just support people in cardio so i'm not worried about that uh you do how about that win at wadapalooza was that dope yeah that felt i mean it felt good it felt good but it would it feels better to like do well in events that you work really hard on

would you would you trade that for five minutes of love from your dad seven unacceptable no that's a good question Would you trade that for five minutes of love from your dad? Sevan, unacceptable. No, that's a good question. That's a great question. That's a fucking asshole question. Holy shit. I don't know. I would have to do some thinking on that.

Six minutes. Five minutes? That's not a lot of time. Oh. Did you like cold hands? Did you like when you were a kid if your mom put cold hands on you? Did I like that? Yeah. No. No. My mom would put cold hands on you were a kid, if your mom put cold hands on you? Did I like that? Yeah. No.

No. My mom would put cold hands on me as a kid. Like if her hands were cold, she'd put it up my shirt or on my forehead. And I fucking loved it. And I have three boys and one of my kids loves it and the other two don't. So I gravitate to the one that likes it. Because I just loved that feeling. My mom putting a cold hand on me.

It just made me feel so alive okay um uh so so you so you're 16 your mom's out of town and you go to and you and you so you wake and bake and now your dad like and was your dad sick at that like really sick like did he have like a shit in his nose no no no he never did he never did any of that he lost so much weight which i didn't i didn't realize until after the fact like you look at pictures now and it's fucking crazy crazy how much weight he lost but i didn't notice any of that so i wake him big 10 minutes later he comes back up he's like hey dude you should probably go to school today and typically i would be like

fuck that and there'd be this huge argument i'd fucking just walk out go to my friend's house whatever but for whatever reason i was like all right so i like your dress um the bus hadn't come yet so i get on the bus go to school and i remember i'm sitting in class the math class um with the same teacher i had like two years ago for a different math i was a junior and i was in algebra one part one which just meant you were fucking retarded basically like you you had algebra one in one period and then algebra one part one in another period so they were like were there like freshmen in your like eighth graders from the junior high and in your class would you take in that shit no no there was just a bunch of other stupid kids um i wasn't stupid i just hated school i didn't i didn't put any effort into it but anyway so i'm sitting in this class and uh this administrator it's like it's like third period maybe so it's like 11 in the morning and this administrator

comes in he's like hey taylor i need you to come with me to the office so i'm thinking fuck i think i actually like fucking slammed my agenda closed i'm like fuck like they found a bottle in your locker or something yeah yeah like i'm in trouble i did something i called somebody something fucked up and they told me told on me or whatever um so i remember walking down the hallway i remember this so vividly this administrator's name dan Ebelings, walking in front of me. He's like, it was such a weird walk because he's like 10 feet ahead of me. He won't look back. And I keep asking, the entire walk down the hallway, can you just tell me what I did?

I'm trying to like craft this, you know, excuse story or the lie that I need to tell to like get out of trouble. Hey, you know that dude doesn't forget this day either. There's no way. Yeah. He remembers this day either there's no way yeah he he remembers this day the rest of his life too for sure i would imagine i mean it's probably not very common you have to do that in his job anyway so i'm walking behind him like you just tell me what i did um and i must have asked him that like 10 times on this walk to the principal's office and it's fucked up he opens the fucking door to the main office and my grandmother who was in town with my dad my dad's mom

is just standing there crying saying he's gone and i just fucking lose it um and i remember hugging her and crying my eyes out and you know as I'm like really starting beginning to cry really really hard like fucked up crying the bell rings and like class lets out and all these kids are walking by and the door still opens the main office and everyone I feel like everyone's staring at me crying my eyes out and I'm like man I just I can't even articulate like what's going through my head. Part of it's like I can't believe this is happening right now. Part of it's like fear of what everyone's going to think walking past me, seeing this kid crying his eyes out in the office.

So we go home and like when I get home, my dad's still fucking dead body on the side side porch of our house and the ambulance is like come like taking him away and you saw him you saw him yeah on the stretcher covered um and then on the side porch there's like this huge fucking pile of green mucus i guess from his lungs or whatever i don't know um and like cleaning that up just, Oh yeah, it was fucked up. And I just, from then on, like that, that gave me like a great excuse to, you know, just become as much of a fuck up as I wanted to. You know what I mean? I dropped it. I, I like didn't go back to school for a couple of. I tried to go back one day, and I went back so fucked up. I was drunk.

Like drunk? Oh, yeah. Drunk, high. I bumped into this kid in the hallway. I definitely probably called him some fucking slur or whatever. He just beats the shit out of me. Beats fucking shit out of me and you don't even care i mean i like tried to fight back but dude my face looked like hamburger meat like he fucked me up um and so after that happened i was like there's no way i'm going back to school

to face anybody who you know witnessed that so i fully drop out and then boom just did you have friends did you have a crew by the way that um i don't feel uh uncomfortable very often um like really never that story with your dad's gnarly it's gnarly that you saw him in the morning yeah like did you have any inkling that like he was gonna pass away that day no he fucking normal, at least normal in the way I had thought he was normal. Yeah, the way you tell the story is I picture him, he had to walk up a flight of stairs. Like my feeling is like the day you die,

you can't walk up a flight of stairs. No, he seemed completely normal to me. Any chance he may have killed himself? Well, I've never thought of that. I don't see how, you know know i don't see how i would have you know i don't think he wasn't i don't think after this podcast you can you can just you can just hey mom what's up i just did podcast and this asshole asked me if dad killed himself i just gotta check that off the list no i don't think he did he wasn't on any medication where

i think he like probably could have i mean i I don't know. I highly doubt it. They said it was like a heart failure or whatever, liver failure, just fucking cancer or whatever. Hey, dude, someday you're going to have kids, and you're going to trip. Oh, I can't even say it. You're going to fucking trip that your dad had to leave you. You're going to feel so bad for him. That's the worst, the thought of had to leave you. You're going to feel so bad for him. That's the worst.

The thought of having to leave your kids. Yeah. I can't imagine what he would nuts. He was such a different dude too. When he got sober, like he would, you know, we just had more like,

like one time I remember me and my mom getting this huge argument and him just like, you know, I never saw this. The only time I ever saw him cry. And he like, just walks up to me, he starts crying. He's like's like hey dude we gotta be a family i was like damn all right and then like a couple hours later i'm like stealing money to go get fucked up

oh god how old are you right now? No. 26. Yeah. And you have a girlfriend. She's great. I say so much fucked up shit on the show. I don't even know what these people are talking about. Jeez, Sevan. What the fuck, Sevan?

I'm not even sure exactly which asshole comment they're talking about. I've heard. I've heard. I don't even know what, which one. I make my own dead dad jokes and shit like that. So I mean, it's, you know, you go through something hard in life and it just, it's easier to live with if you can find a little humor in it and not take it so seriously. I was a nanny for two boys.

I was a nanny when I was 18 years old. By the way, no one, I was a fucking great nanny, but no one should ever let their dudes watch. You should never, if you have kids, don't leave your kids alone with dudes yeah i'm sexist as fuck don't leave you dudes are but i was a great nanny and i was a nanny for these two boys and their parents were uh they were in the clothing business and they were they're really wealthy and and they were uh like hong kong nationals they're born in hong kong they were chinese and super traditional chinese family my sister got me the gig she knew the family through a daycare she worked out and like every day i would get out of city college and i'd go pick these kids up from school and i'd take them home and i'd rage with them right and i just like

i wonder what they think of me now but we partied hard like they were this super strict traditional chinese family but i would do great like go in their backyard and throw rocks as hard as we could play super loud music in my car. I rage at them. I always play these games with them where I beat them with pillows. They let, until they started crying, they love that shit.

They would always ask for more. And, um, one day the lady comes home and she tells me she has breast cancer. And I was 18 and I just had a fucking million fucking questions. I think that's the day I was born as an interviewer. That's the day I was. And I remember being like, what's that?

And like, do you die from it? And I started asking her all these questions. And she really appreciated it. And I remember being like. And I remember all the questions being uncomfortable. But I couldn't stop them from coming out. I mean, I could have, I just didn't like, it just seemed like I should ask not, and you know, not like the, everyone else I knew the traditional route was just to be like, Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Yeah. I don't think I'm doing that. I'm going that way.

And, uh, and I remember telling my mom that, and my mom giving me an attaboy. And I stayed there for two hours talking to her about what breast cancer is and how she was going to address it and how she was going to try to fix it. She ended up having a – what's it called when you have your breast removed? Is that a vasectomy? I don't remember what it is. Do you know what it's called? No, vasectomy is when they cut the tube, bro. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Your dick. Yeah, someone – right, right, right. Thank you. What's it called? vasectomy is when they cut the tube bro oh yeah yeah yeah yeah your dick yeah someone's something right right right thank you what's it called someone will tell me in the uh no but anyway that sucked i felt so bad for her but she but she was but but yeah um oh guys yeah on a good note there's like 80 000 trucks um traveling to yeah that's awesome i'm gonna have um cedric lapointe on on friday what is that what do you what do you mean 80 000 trucks heading to ottawa to end the mandate so they got this fucking this fucking guy this leader of canada's completely lost his mind this guy trudeau i mean completely it's almost time for another government to intervene and go get him i mean he's completely fucking lost his mind what he's doing to the Canadian people, and the truckers in Canada have had it.

So they're just – trucks are just pouring into Ottawa. I think they're basically just going to shut the city down. They're going to circle the city with semis and shut it down. And this guy who owns a CrossFit gym, either there or en route to there, his has been closed you know basically for fucking two years i'm gonna have him on the podcast do you know him he's a regional athlete yeah i've heard of cedric yeah yeah i think he was in the i think i've had him on the show before and i think he was in the last chance qualifier he wasn't the last chance he heard his back right okay and so i just reached out to him the other day and i said hey how's your training going or something and he's like

hey i'm let i'm they're gonna take me to jail because i'm keeping my gym open i'm like what and he's like yeah and i'm letting the truckers on their way to ottawa spend the night in my gym and like take showers i'm like dude you got to come on the podcast he said i'm game dude wow that they're they're they're they're leaders yes good for them that's fucking serious shit and they're that guy trudeau yeah he's a dude they're they're making they're making propaganda that's telling kids basically that anyone and they're getting kids to repeat it that anyone who doesn't take the vaccine should go to jail so like like they're basically you should never talk to anyone's kids just so you know if you talk to my kids and i didn't like i didn't accept it like

you said something to them that i didn't like i would beat you with a bat like i don't care like if you're fucking francis ninganu you're toast do not fucking talk to my fucking kids about dumb shit try to fucking indoctrinate my fucking kids i don't fucking indoctrinate my kids do they go to public school your kids no fuck no really i'm so scared about that like what i'm gonna i went you'll never let your kids go to school by the time you have kids you'll never let your kids school public school is the best thing that ever happened to me but i just feel me too i know but seriously but i'm that way like i was able to experience such a huge broad spectrum of like where people come from i mean i grew up in one of the most diverse areas in the country but listen i thought i grew up in one of the most

diverse places on the planet too berkeley california it ends up that it's not it's actually the least diverse because everyone there thinks the same they're all fucking tools they're all indoctrinated tools now i'd rather live somewhere with all fucking black people or all fucking white people or all fucking asian people where at least you can think differently that i mean it's it's crazy if you're a black dude at berkeley and you're conservative you're fucked but that's the thing dude berkeley i feel like parts of california are so politicized where i grew up like there was nothing political about my childhood until i'm turning like until really obama and by that point in time i'm probably 16 i mean when did obama get elected oh eight so maybe a little younger i don't remember but i grew up in that like everything was politics

nothing was politics for i grew up i wasn't raised with like hey these these are this is what's going on there's something called abortion and people get pregnant. And then some people don't want the child and here's ways of mitigating that. Or is it killing the baby? I wasn't taught how to thought. It was just like pro-choice. How dare you do this to women? And if you even like – you weren't even allowed to think for like, well, is the baby okay?

Get the fuck out of here. You know what I mean? It's bad in California. My parents wouldn't even discuss who they're voting for with each other like my dad was a firm believer and like you're that you're you're right your vote no one else's business very i come from a very like you know i would say probably libertarian mindset at least for my dad and my dad's side of the family, just minimal government and your choice, stuff like that. The thing is, is it, and go, it's even that article that I was talking

about in the morning chalk up the, they, that article is written to present to you how to think it's not a good way to raise your kids. It's like, Hey, um, do you want a black shirt or a white shirt? And then refuse to let anyone else talk about yellow shirts, red shirts, or blue shirts. It's not fucking cool. Yeah. We're not even taught that in school. They say the word critical thinking all throughout school, but no one – I mean as a kid, you're like, what the fuck is critical thinking? Yeah.

They're just teaching it as this subject that they should assume you would know what it is, and it's obviously to question what you're hearing, to question authority, stuff like that. You know, they don't teach you that. They're like critical thinking. But listen to everything I say. It's true. Hey, even words like focus. I remember being in my 20s, 23, 24, and it was the first time I had ever done,

or maybe like the third time I'd ever done MDMA. And I realized what focus is. I was watching a seagull for like an hour fly around. And I was like, holy shit. For 23 years, I've heard people say, just focus, just focus. I'm like, I never even knew what the fuck that word meant. Yeah. Isn't it's crazy. Homeschool is illegal in Brazil. Wow. I don't know if that's true. I bet you most kids don't even go to school in Brazil. Yeah. I don't know if that's true. Is that true? I bet you most kids don't even go to school in Brazil. Yeah, no shit. My picture of Brazil is they just, you're born, they give you a soccer

ball and then you play in the favela. The favela, yeah. The favela. Racist. So going back, so you're in Fairfax and is your mom working full-time too? Yeah. So double income. Life's good. Yeah. Christmas tree, presents under it. Yeah, I didn't want for anything really growing up. I feel like my story is one of self-inflicted hardship and adversity, as a drug addict typically is. And is the first drug you do – you in you said you would take packs from cigarettes from your dad how old were you did you say 13 sixth grade so 11 11 okay and had you started drinking

yet that was i had already drank one time before that and i had started smoking weed at like 11 wow how do you get weed at 11 dude my best friend's brother was a drug dealer. We would go into his basement and he would have those fucking hefty black trash bags full of weed. I can't even express to you how cool that was. Yeah, no, I know. As an 11-year-old? Yes, yes. Dude, I'm like looking at my friend Caleb. I'm like, let's just fucking take a handful. He's like, no, we can't do that. He weighs it. And I was like, how's he going to fucking notice that?

It's huge, dude. There was this nug one time was like this fucking long in the shape of a dick. It literally looked like a pine cone. We're just like taking pictures of it. Like we're giving it. It's just, yeah.

He was, that's pretty cool. And when the first time you smoked weed, do you even get high as a kid? I pretended to be high because my friend was, or at least he said he was. He rolled the shittiest loose blunt ever. It was like falling apart as we're smoking it. Yeah, that's how you got to learn somewhere.

And he was only 11 too? He was 12 a year older than me. Wow. Yeah, he lived with me for a while actually. I think when we were like 14 to 15 maybe him and his mom live with me and in our family how did that happen she like lost her job or something and his parents were divorced um so like they moved in with us for like a year how was that was that cool or shitty yeah he was my best friend i mean the shittiest part about it was

like he was a drug addict just like me and he would just steal my weed like i would steal money from my parents and i'm like this is my fucking weed i stole this fucking money and then i would like come home from school because he went to an alternative school at that time already and like all my shit would be gone i'm like dude what the fuck hey i that it was like that for me in college too i live with just so many fucking drug addicts. Literally, I would come home and there would be dudes in my room smoking my shit or doing my shit. And no one even cared. It would just be like, oh, sorry. I'm just like, what?

18 days in a row? Sorry? Oh, sorry. You know I come home at 2. Get the fuck out of my room. At least try to hide that shit. Yeah, he wouldn't even say sorry. He would just lie.

He'd be like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about. I swear I didn't do it. Like we both smoked it last night. I was like, no way. I'm a drug addict. I knew exactly how much I had, bro. Yeah. You're saving that little corner of the bag, right? Cause you know, you're going to need it when you come home from wherever. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So when you start smoking at 11, do you basically smoke?

How many years do you smoke straight for? I like took a, there was a one point where like I got into this DWI accident with my dad and I was like, I can never end up like this. We were on my street or I remember cause it was after football practice. We go to this, a sports bar that he always goes to, to pick up food. Um, and he was just like feeding me quarters to play that like deer hunter dude your dad would take you to a bar after practice sports bar yeah it's called neighbor's

bar and grill and what would he order like chicken wings to bring home for the family no the shittiest cheeseburgers ever and they would have like these fucking two like pickle slices that would drench the fries and the fries would just taste like pickles so anyways he's getting food and we're there for like fucking two hours and he's just feeding me quarters because he's drinking yeah i didn't yeah i was playing that like deer hunter that arcade deer hunter game like two hours i had no idea why i like i still was young enough to not understand like we're there for two hours because he's getting fucked up not so that he can let me play deer hunter arcade i thought that's what we were there is this pre-cell phone

i think i had like an lg chocolate like one of those little fucking slide flip phones so he was like we're there for a while and we're leaving and i'm walking straight to the truck and he's going that way i'm like hey dad the truck's And he's going that way. I'm like, hey, dad, the truck's over there. And he's like, oh, all right. So he's in the truck. We pull out of the shopping center. And we're going down this two-lane road. And there's a red light.

And there's like 20 cars backed up to the red light. And he's going like 40. And I'm like, dad, it's a red light. And he swerves into the other lane and stops beside people. And luckily, there's no one else coming the other direction and we're just sitting there the light turns green he gets back into our lane we take the right how old are you well are you tripping yeah i'm fucking freaking out i'm like he must be drunk i'm like this must be what it is like for him to be drunk and i'm like holy fuck what's what's going on but we're

like literally less than a mile from my house i'm like we you know we can do it we can get home so we can do it he's already missed the first spot where you can turn in our neighborhood so he goes down takes a right at the light a hundred yards down there's another entrance to the neighborhood he takes that right i'm like all right we're fucking good to go it's like a 400 maybe 800 meter drive back to the house and we're going around this turn like up into our neighborhood and he just goes straight and fucking runs right into this tree and runs the car into the ditch this truck into the ditch my fucking food goes everywhere on the floor bro i'm like god damn it oh that's what you're worried about dude my cheeseburgers everywhere i'm like fuck me so he backs out and just backs out and just and my these other kids that lived like down the street from us were behind us in their car and i i know this later because their parents

like asked me about it like hey are you guys okay so we drive back home are you able to drive oh so you are able to drive away he drove away yeah oh yeah he backed out he backed out does he say anything does he say hey are you okay taylor he's like you're all right and he's like i picked that stuff up and so i'm like picking cheeseburger putting it back in the fucking styrofoam container we pull it to the driveway he gets out of truck immediately falls down so i'm like helping him carry him into the house helping him walk into the house oh your mom probably wanted to fucking kill him i would she wasn't my wife would fucking kill me if i drove drunk with the kids i'd be dead dude dude she wasn't home so he i like help him walk into

the basement like lay him down on the couch and he lays this he like he can only get onto the couch he's a big dude so i could like you know i'm not fucking carrying him as a 12 year old i'm just like propping him up he like lays down on the couch where like his feet are half off and his whole like upper body's on the end table just fucking crazy so like that happens i'm like dude i could never end up like this i'll never drunk drive i'll never get fucked up drinking and i'm not smoking anymore and i remember this one time i had my friends over and they're like hey you want, you want to go smoke? My friend Caleb, who had lived with me for that period of time,

I'm like, no, dude, I just seen one of those commercials, like the Above the Influence commercials. I was like, how else are you going to imagine this 12-year-old kid saying this? I was like, no, dude, I'm above the influence. Hey, is any party you just want to start ball – like, if I'm – like, yesterday I was in the garage. I'm riding my kid's one wheel. Do you know what that is? Yeah.

Yeah. And I start to get a little squirrely. I'm going two miles an hour. Like, I can barely – when I say I'm riding it, I suck. Yeah. I'm, like, just balancing on it. And my seven-year-old's, like, starting to cry because he thinks I'm going to crash. Do you know what I mean? He's not – he not he's worried about like his dad getting hurt are you like

are you are you like just holding back tears the whole time and just pushing that shit down like how are you processing that i remember when my dad broke his leg when i was a kid he didn't even know how he broke it he came home from work he's like my legs hurting me and then he ended up having a broken leg and and he went to the doctor and came back and he had cast on his leg. And I just remember I was fucking bawling. No, I never, I was so oblivious, dude. I was already wrapped up in this lens of life where like, it was all about me and what I didn't have. Cause I feel like I'm growing up through this. and what I didn't have.

Because I feel like I'm growing up through this. I mean, a lot of it is that he was a shitty dad. He just did not give me attention. He would never say, hey, I love you, or you're doing good enough. It was always, what can you do better? What are you doing wrong? So I have this drug addict perspective of like, I'm not good enough. Fear of what people think of me, fear of inadequacy, fear of never having enough, fear of, you know, no one loving me.

Definitely not loving myself. And so I'm probably not wasting two moments of my fucking existence concerned about what somebody else is feeling or what they're going to go through. It's just complete self-preservation mindset as a drug addict. Um, as you're older now, do you, um, do you leverage that pathology? Are you trying to get rid of it or do you leverage it? Are you like, Oh, show these motherfuckers now. Like I told my wife the other day, I want this podcast to fucking just take over the world to prove this, the world that I'm the greatest. And she, and I'm like, she's, it starts laughing. I'm like, but I don't even know who I'm not even like mad at anyone. I laughing. I'm like, but I don't even know who, I'm not even like mad at anyone. I need someone to be mad at. I don't even know who I'm trying

to, my parents already love me too much. I don't have enough proof to know, buddy. I mean, there's a, I'm sure they're trying to spin this narrative. Fuck you all. I grew up in a hood. I'll tell all you motherfuckers. Nope. I don't got none of that. I think there's some degree of like, I want to be extremely successful and i will be but i want that to show like you can go through what i've gone through and yeah and still be extremely successful but i know you as like somebody who's trying to not ever do drugs again you typically don't want to have that mindset it is fucking poisonous to live a life of resentment. And like, like you said about the nicotine thing, that's allowing someone else to occupy space in your mind. I don't want, and I, and I did that for a long time, even sober. Like I was chasing things

and like having goals, you know, subconsciously at the time that I was not self-aware of, but like all centered around like proving my dad wrong or proving that I'm good enough or, you know, yeah. Yeah. Like leverage that. Like,

yeah. I bet you wish you would have loved me now. Motherfucker. Exactly. Exactly. And that can be a powerful motivator, but yeah. The shitty part is,

is that, um, like, and you know, I guess I, maybe I should, we should ask more games athletes but i can't remember which football player it was but he had won like his second super bowl and he was being interviewed on 60 minutes and they said is that the greatest moment of your life and he

gives it i would trade a super bowl victory to go fishing with my dad and life really is like that every time like you succeed something like you let's say you get your black belt and like you're excited for like five minutes and then you go home and it's like nothing beats if you there's times that i thought that getting something was going to fill this void and then it was hollow and it's actually really bad yeah i remember the first film festival i won and i thought i was going to be like yeah and instead i went back to my hotel room and cried i'm like that was stupid that was stupid yeah relate with that. I relate with that for sure. I mean, they're like, dude, I hated myself for so long. I mean, I still, fuck, you know, the last three years of my dad's life when he's sober and a totally different person and like receptive to like

being a father and spending time with me, I'm the exact opposite at that point. So I felt like when he died, I was like, damn, I squandered every fucking opportunity that I had to like have a relationship with him. So I for sure relate with that. I mean,

they're dude, I would, I mean, things happen the way they happen, but yeah, there's two, 10 minutes with him just to where I am now would, would be,

I mean, it would, it's, it's a pipe dream that would obviously would never happen but and i don't know that i would give a lot for that because the life i have today is pretty amazing because of the events that happened but yeah for the longest time i just wished that i hadn't been the piece of shit that i was uh and your mom's still alive oh yeah so you can just overcompensate with her dude we have yeah you know what i mean me and her like anytime you want some time with your dad just go fucking spend it on your mom dude yeah for sure and me and her are so close i like i love the fact that me and my mom are best friends and i have like the same i can i just tell her

everything you know i i have the same i'm my same self pretty much with everyone. But especially with her. She's awesome. And where's your last name from? I don't know. Maybe I think it, I think it's Western European. My parents, my great, sorry. Someone on my mom's side of the family, like her great, great, great grandfather or something immigrated from Ireland into South Carolina.

And no idea about my dad's family. They're just fucking, you know. Hey, hey, can someone get the dog? He has to take a deuce and he's barking by the door. Yeah, as long as you're dressed because we can kind of see you back there or i guess not just be kind of weird maybe that would make this the highest rated show listen to this i was in this fucking aa meeting is there nudity in this story no no yes oh awesome we need more nudity on this show covid zoom aa meeting holy fuck this is one of the

funniest things i've ever seen this was like it was like two years ago and this old fucking dude is sitting in his living room and his fucking lazy boy and his huge wife just walks behind the couch piss out shirt off just walks by the camera and everyone and you can see everyone's face go and he has no idea oh my god nobody said anything but dude that was just a trip it was not it wasn't like cool nudity it was like that's gross oh i don't know there's no gross it was gross dude i love nudity i i accept all nudity of all time the only the only part of me i don't i don't like the the only part that's sad is like um occasionally you'll see bodies stacked like cords of wood and they're all naked like in some fucking holocaust or genocide or family other than that they really

enjoy nudity dead bodies are fucked up that's not the only my dad wasn't the only one i saw too i was sober and my my cousin's grandfather had passed away. That's your life. You know what I mean? By the way, how you started that story. These are stories that come from my sober library. And these are stories over here that come from my fucked up library. For sure.

Down aisle six is the drunk stories and down aisle five is the sober stories. The contrast is insane. I mean, it's true. It's so fucking true. It's so good. I love it. I'm glad you're on the other side. Okay, so from the sober vault, share with us the dead body.

Yeah, my cousin's grandfather passed away and she called me crying. I was in South Carolina that her pop was dead and we – and we fuck dude i like drive to the horse pasture where he was at he was just fucking who is the chick she was related to you my cousin yeah okay and and it was her grandfather and he had um passed away earlier that morning i think the horse like threw him off the horse oh shit july it was july, and it was like 4 p.m. It was a grotesque scene for sure. Hey, was his body all mangled? Like his head spun around backwards or some shit? No, no.

Not in that regard, but just like eight hours and 105-degree heat outside. It just doesn't – yeah, it was gross. I've seen a bunch of dead bodies. This one particular incident, saw uh a car hit drive through a crowd oh wow and it was fucking nuts and and and i went over to all the bodies that were dead and they were all you're dressed right taylor going on the next podcast saying he saw stevan's wife naked and he's very he's very judgmental on body so

he might like you because you have red hair though his chick got red hair too and the bodies were mangled and that and that part really fucked me up like it would be like a face is caved in torso spun around like you know what i mean like the feet pointed this way and the torso this way it was and and i'm trying to like console the like anything like if they're like twitching and shit i'm like trying oh it was so fucked up and i'm trying like to stay super present because immediately i go into this mode like where was it uh in isla vista in santa barbara in the college town and what fucking happened this guy just fucking this guy fucking hit these people and then jumped out of the car

and goes i'm the angel of death no way are you kidding me was he was he on drugs um i think a combination probably was a student he was a student there yeah wow came from a rich hollywood family super famous dad um yeah it was nuts it was nuts but but when you see a body not doing the shit it's supposed to be doing like you um that's when you realize i mean that's why probably going to war so fucking hard you don't realize how much you have this well it's kind of it's kind of like this when um uh there was this there's this super duper handsome guy who has no arms and no legs named kyle maynard he's in the he's in the affiliate community he's in he's famous outside the affiliate community too and i was i was so and he's very

handsome but he just has no arms and no legs right right? And I think he's born like that. And he showed up at a party I was at one time, and a little kid opened the door while he was there. And the kid was like three. And this kid screamed like fucking bloody murder. Like the kid – because the kid's brain couldn't process how could there be a fucking human being with no arms and no legs. And it's like that, you know, like from seeing a dead body, it's like that as an adult, when you see someone who's dead,

you don't even realize your brain. It's like almost like you just immediately have an out of body experience. You start to disassociate with it. I learned that word from, uh, one of my guests, Kayla Harrison. She was molested from when she was eight to when she was 16.

And she said she would disassociate from her body. I'm like, okay, what the fuck does that mean? Anyway, another story. And dude, well, anyway, have you heard that podcast? I've heard a part of it, but I want to go watch it because I heard that one clip and it was gold. Yeah, you would appreciate her. It would make your bullshit seem like nothing. No, a lot of people. No, you're right her. It would make your bullshit seem like nothing. No, a lot of people – that's the thing.

You're right. It's all – right? So relative. I mean when you're the person experiencing it, like it's the worst thing in the world because it's happening to you. But people go through some fucked up shit. Hey, and you know what else is crazy? I think about too. Like even as I contextualize all that,'m like okay like how and i asked her

this how much worse would it have been if you would have been molested of someone of the same sex like like there's levels to this shit what if it would have been your dad versus this what if it would have like there's levels to how fucked up shit can get right yeah like i mean shit you're alive and like you're strong and beautiful and handsome and you got a chick and you're sober and it's like, holy. And you're on the seven on podcast. Like your life's like just reaching this pinnacle. I mean, you say that as a joke, but no, I'm kind of, but also like, I know, I know you're being deceived, but it's, but it's true. I mean, the opportunity that I have is, is unbelievable, dude. The kid that lived

with me for that year, my best friend growing up, he fucking died. He overdosed a year ago, last summer. Yeah. Fentanyl. Fuck. Yeah, dude. How fucking cliche? Are you fucking kidding me? No, we were the same person. And I go to this funeral. I hadn't talked to him in years. I'd built this huge fucking resentment against him because I was like three years sober at one point. And he spread this lie to everyone that I had relapsed at this concert. I was smoking a black and mild, you fuck. And he told everybody that I was smoking a blunt. What's the black and mild?

Just like a cigarette? It's like one of those long fucking cigarettes with the wood tip that they come flavored. Oh, yeah, yeah. Who else made those? I used to like those too two and they come in the cardboard box yeah they got the colored ones too those were dope dude so yeah so i i i had not talked to him for as long as time he would hit me up and i would just be like i just would fucking ignore him and we were literally best friends like we got into we got into a car accident right before i got sober together i was driving this car 100 miles an hour flipped it six times i buckled up because of him wait wait wait wait start that story again sorry i looked at one of the comments about dead bodies

what say that start that go back 30 i was just i was just putting into context like our relationship and we were spent every moment of our lives together for several years. We had gotten into, we were both getting fucked up in my room one night and I was dating this girl and she texted me. She's like, hey, I need a ride home from this party. I'm you're fucked up already. And I was like, where do you want to do this? And he's like, yeah, we got it. So I'm on the sleep. We go take the car keys.

I had just gotten my fucking, you know, probationary license where you can't drive at night. So you're 15. So you're 15. Yeah. Yeah. So we pick her up, take her back to her apartment he waits in the car i go into her room we get more fucked up do whatever have sex and uh how old were you when you lost your virginity uh 15 it was with this girl so was she cool yeah she was she was cool um i'm getting she alive is she

alive is she alive yeah she has a husband and kids oh awesome that makes me happy okay yeah for sure okay so and seems like she's having an awesome life for sure and uh so i like go go back down to the parking lot get in the car I'm more fucked up at this point we're on our way home he's like I get in the car he's like hey dude you should buckle up so I buckle up we're on our way home and like we get this grand idea to see how fast this Ford Fusion will go and so I'm going 100 miles an hour in this Ford Fusion like over 100 um down this hill and I'm hitting the bottom of this hill I'm coming up the hill and probably a quarter of a mile on my right is a turn to get on this road, that same two-lane road that my dad pulled up in that red light at. And I see it out of my peripheral vision, the turn, and I just fucking crank the wheel.

And obviously I don't make the turn. I go straight into the woods, right into this huge transformer box that like powers a bunch of lights and shit. And this is your mom's fucking car. You stole my dad's car that he had. So I was 16 at the time, not 15. He had, he had died like two months earlier. He died in September and this was in January. So three, three or four months. And, uh, is this the car he got after he crashed the truck yes he had a dodge dakota and this was his ford fusion and um he actually he didn't total the truck when he crashed at that time he sold it um he didn't have his license either he had like

fucking 20 duis so he's like why do you have a car, dude? And so I hit this transformer box and I don't remember anything. I just remember the airbags hitting and then me and him both gaining consciousness in this car. But we gained consciousness and the car's on its side

and there's smoke everywhere. So I think the car's on fire. It's just the airbag dust. Come to find out later. But there's smoke everywhere. So I'm thinking the's on fire. It's just the airbag dust. Come to find out later. But there's smoke everywhere. So I'm thinking the car's on fire. I'm like, dude, dude, we got to get out of here. So we both crawl out.

It's on the side this way, driver's side up. So we crawl out of my window. And we're standing there. I'm so fucked up. The high beams are on. The music is all the way up. And I'm trying to turn everything off. Because I'm like, fuck, we're in the middle of the woods. It's dark.'s 1 a.m if i can just turn the car off like maybe nobody will find it is what's going through my head and then you go home and

deal with it in the morning yeah and so i turn i'm trying to turn the lights and the music off nothing will turn off it's like all right fuck it let's go home it's like a mile walk back to my house so where you get like 200 yards down the road i'm like fuck my wallet i gotta get my wallet dude this is like a movie yeah dude i'm like dude i gotta get my wallet because if they find my wallet they're gonna know whose car it is that's how fucked up i am fuck the license plate in the bin anyway so i'm walking back it's It's fucking January. I'm in this fucking cut-sleeve shirt. At Air Miles, we help you collect more moments. So instead of scrolling through photos of friends on social media,

you can spend more time dinnering with them. How's that spicy enchilada? Very flavorful. Yodeling with them. Ew. Ooh, must be mating season. And hiking with them. Eee-oo-ee-oo-ee-oo-oo. Ooh, must be mating season. And hiking with them.

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grocery items. Simply add products to your shopping list in the app, and it'll show you similar items at a lower cost. Add coffee to your list, then swap it for one that's cheaper. Craving chips? The app will suggest some on sale. To get started, just open the app. It's as easy as that. See the PC Optimum app for details. Shorts. I was wearing sandals. My sandals are in the car.

Or, yeah, something like that. And so I'm walking back to the car. There's already, like, six people standing, like, looking, like, kind of outside. And I walk up in between. I'm like, is everybody okay? Have you guys seen anyone? And I'm like, I run back to the car, pretending to search for people or see if I can help anyone. I'm crawling through the car, really just looking for my wallet. Can't find my wallet. So I'm like, all right, fuck it. Gave up. So I get out of the car. I'm walking back. There's

the same people are there. I'm like, can't find anybody. I just walk right past them. Me and Caleb, my friend, walk home. When I get to the back door, the cops are pulling into the driveway. Oh, at your house. Yeah. What happens? My mom's like, dude, you got to go put some mouthwash in. I go put mouthwash in and the cops start questioning me.

I just fucking break out in tears and spill the fucking beans, dude. I'm like 16. Did you get a DUI? Shitless. Yeah, I got a baby Dewey, a reckless driver, corruption of a minor because I was with another minor who was fucked up, driving past curfew. I got all these fucking charges. minor who was fucked up driving past curfew i got all these fucking charges uh so remember how your friend said that you were you were you hated your friend because he said that um you were you were relapsed i hate this dude because he said why is your wife wearing a mask my you know what's crazy my wife is very very docile so fucking chill but she would shoot she will not wear a mask she'll go straight in a whole

food she's like what are you doing i'm waiting outside she's like why i'm like i don't want to fucking get in a fight with anyone she's like fuck that she goes in there 300 400 people in whole foods goes to the checker to check out she's the only one with no mask she goes in there they're like yes man we can't help you so she just goes to the next checker until she finds one that helps so matt i like you might, you'd never see my wife wearing a mask, buddy. You never seen it.

You don't even know what the fuck. Don't talk about my wife. Poor man's clothes. I used to smoke clothes like a maniac. I love to clove chain, smoke those fuckers. We're Craig White still smokes weed. LOL.

I love that shit. My wifey and I eat or smoke every night and I, my sleeps recovery is amazing. Yeah, I think we can see that you still smoke weed by your fucking – His picture, his little avatar. Just the way he fucking speaks too. His vernacular. So you – at a young age, you're – oh, so I want to talk about your friend who died. So this is the – so this is – man, this is some white trash shit.

So this is a kid whose older brother was a drug dealer. Yeah, so he had the bag of weed. Then eventually his mom lost his job, so they lived with you for a year, which is already kind of weird, but it kind of speaks volumes of how cool your parents are. weird but but it kind of speaks volumes of how cool your parents are and then you and then and then did you know that he was doing fentanyl and had you already found crossfit at that point yeah i found crossfit this was this was so he died last summer not sorry not last summer not last chance qualifier summer the summer prior to that and and have you seen his mom since he died i saw her at the funeral i was gonna do the funeral story is is crazy i'm ready all right are you sure dude yeah yeah yeah hey i have to go pee this sucks you know what i was thinking me too you do okay you know what i was thinking this is weird because i was thinking these

fucking assholes but i can't really say that because they're such good dudes. But Matt Souza, Will Brandstetter, and Caleb Beaver. Yeah. His name's Caleb Beaver, but he goes by C. Beaver. What a great name. These guys, they must not think you're – usually there's a guy in the background I can see. So when you would have said North Carolina, they bring up a map of North Carolina. I'm not worth that, dude.

Or when you say giant bud, the size of a penis, they'd bring up a penis. These guys aren't here today because you're not big time enough. If this was fucking Jason Hopper I was interviewing, they'd be fucking here in a second. Oh, dude, for sure. But it's Taylor's self. Okay. You have 30 seconds. You have 30 seconds.

P-break, everyone. P-break. on people. Thank you. you beat me that's why you're a games athlete i'm just a regular human being uh there was in 2008 when i was taking a piss i hold was holding my dick in my hand. I go, I wonder if Joe Rogan ever took a piss break and just abandoned his podcast for 20 seconds or 30 seconds. And then I was thinking about what, um, someone asked Dave one time at the 2008 games. Someone's like, what if someone gets injured? And someone goes, well, what do they do at the Olympics? And Dave goes, fuck the Olympics. that someone goes well what do they do with the olympics and dave goes fuck the olympics as i'm holding my dick in my i was like having a conversation with myself what would joe rogan do if he had to take a piss and i was like fuck joe rogan he's a good dude i don't mean that dude he's the messiah of american freedom right now oh my god i'm i'm him and a russell brand i'm so glad they fucking flipped the script those were the fucking most they they remind me of myself they're just liberal fucking retards and they just fucking woke up especially leso brand i

oh rogan endorsed bernie sanders it's fucking complete insanity yeah it's fucking i believe it yeah it's it's um it's woman hating human hating black man-hating, black man-hating. I mean all that shit is just putting your foot on some people's neck and stopping them from persevering. It's the same thing that that Morning Chalkup article is doing by attacking Noble for not sharing the money on the shirts. Shut the fuck up and go get yours, bitch. Hey, Rogue, go to Rogue then. I know athletes who got fucking made tons of money through rogue go to fucking bill henniger and katie henniger do what fucking rich is doing that motherfucker people

will fucking drive a hundred miles out of the way with five thousand dollars cash from their friends and buy as many fucking mayhem shirts as they can and bring them back to their friends yeah like no one gave that shit to rich we didn't give him a anyway dude i have a t-shirt logo now it's pretty crazy let's see can i see it yeah my friends people at my gym made it uh i'll pull it up on my phone i love the best guys like i i would i would fucking sell a piece of my soul to get to you on the show but i fucking oh yeah yeah i saw that that is good who made that uh we my so my friend boomer he actually has uh three emmys he's a producer he produced a couple 30 for 30s he goes for a gym but uh he submitted it on yeah the dude's a fucking i mean he's just a he's a high achiever he's a he's a

he's a good dude but and i'm sure you paid him thousands of dollars and promised him royalties from all your shirts and blah, blah, blah, blah. I didn't pay him shit. They did. I know. He did. I know. I know.

He did out of the goodness of his heart. He just had a, they submit, he took a headshot of me and they put it on this website where like artists can compete to come up with a rendering and you pay for like a package of however many interactions you get to adjust the final product or whatever. And yeah, that's like a uh i went to my the real is a legend okay will who's boomer oh your buddy oh yeah hey so that's the guy that kid right there will brandstetter yeah last night i'm laying in bed and i fucking pull up the uh my kids are i'm waiting for my kids to fall asleep and i pull up this my the real seven on podcast instagram account it has like fucking over 4 000 followers and it's fucking the nicest Instagram account I've ever seen. That dude fucking does it.

Dude, he – And I don't pay him shit. I think I've given him $100. I've met him in person. He lives in Charlotte. Will? Yeah. Wow.

He competed at my competition that I ran. The same dude? Will, you competed? Will Branson. Yeah, he did the the intermediate r is basically rx division had an rx in an advanced dude kind of looks like a young version of me with a little jufro like he kind of looks like you know he reminds me of he reminds me of the fucking the goat man from narnia i forget what that's called you know what i'm talking about have you ever seen pan isn't that is it kind of is's a pan. Isn't that – it's a pan.

Kind of. Is it a pan? I don't know. But let me pull this picture up because this is me, and I'm making fun of you, Will, but you're a good dude, so you can take it. Oh, he's such a good dude. Narnia Goatman. This is what I'm going to Google. He says competing might be a stretch of words. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Will's the straight version of that guy. All right. That guy definitely goes both ways. That guy you showed the picture of. So we were talking about a gnarly funeral. Yes. Yeah. I mean, because basically she's kind of like a relative of yours at this point, right?

It's your best friend's mom and she lived with you. At that point, there's some familial shit going on there. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we were extremely close. Me and Caleb were. And I want to preface, obviously, like I'm just sharing this story through my lens. And there's obviously a lot of, you you know there's a lot of other perceptions and probably of the events that that happened and a lot of good reasons that things happened the way they happened um but essentially we had this funeral at this at this baseball football park

called waters field where we're me and we're you know he just played vienna youth baseball and football his whole life and it was a huge part of that community me as well so we had the funeral outside there because of covid um and we're at this funeral basically at that point only a handful of people knew how he had died and his his other family, who he was extremely close with, probably closer with, they knew. And I kept asking one of the boys who was my age, like, hey, how did he die? And he's like, it's not for me to say. And I was just getting so fucking upset about it. Like, I was getting so fucking angry that he wouldn't tell me.

But it wasn't his place to. You know what I mean? So I have this fucking – at the time I had this fucking bit of resentment because I didn't know how he died. In my heart I knew how he fucking died. He was just like me. And this I know for a fucking fact is I knew him and what made him tick as well as anyone, as well as he himself fucking knew it. Because I'm sober at this point we were the exact same person doing the exact same things for the exact same reasons um even if he himself wasn't aware of it because he wasn't he wasn't sober and didn't have

that lens to view it through but so anyways we're at this funeral and I'm sitting in this fucking fold-out lawn chair, whatever. People are getting up to speak about it. That's some North Carolina shit, a lawn chair at a funeral. I like it. Dude. 12,000 lawn chairs, take one. It was like a fucking few hundred people there. It was a huge funeral. People are getting up to speak for him and i remember seeing you know his his older stepbrother not his actual brother who was this drug dealer and just the resentment

fucking building like fuck this guy standing up there like like you think like that guy sold in the fentanyl maybe even probably not but fuck you become what you're raised around right and and anyway so i'm i'm just sitting there like seething and this baseball coach of ours um um named doc havens he's a doctor an actual doctor uh gets up to speak and uh he's the one who signed his death certificate and no one during this entire time there's got to be like fucking maybe 10 people who know how he died. The one family who he was also extremely close with and spent a lot of time with, his dad, stepmom, stepbrother, and then his mom and brother and real sister, I'm sure, knew. And so this Doc Havens gets up to speak and he's like you

know says a few things about caleb and he's like and a lot of people ask me not to say anything about this but i can't go on keeping this secret and it's not good for the community it's not good to pretend like these things don't happen and he basically just fucking spits the truth on him overdosing on fentanyl and how it's a fucking, it's the real pandemic and it's fucking killing our youth. It's killing our fucking families and just wreaking havoc. The opioid epidemic. And he shares his own story about coming from middle of nowhere, West Virginia,

where that was like, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner fentanyl. Yeah, literally. And, uh,

it was just crazy. So I'm like sitting there fucking crying my eyes out as this is happening i'm like fuck dude like maybe if i would have fucking talked to him just you know there's always those what ifs of course but man if you know you don't get sober unless you want to get sober that's hey leading cause of death for i think dudes like your age and younger in the united states right now overdosing yeah overdosing on drugs yeah fentanyl specifically i think but it's okay put your mask on yeah hey dude i would i would let every just so you know i would let every fucking person over 70 who died of fucking covid die and give them a standing ovation to save your friend me personally like if i was god

yeah dude i i would i would spend back time and i would have never had a lockdown and i would have never done anything and i would have let just to save one fucking dude in his youth the amount of potential that kid had to the most athletic person i've ever met unbelievable i i like the shit he would do one time we were playing baseball. We were on Doc Haven's team. We're playing baseball. We're going out to take the infield. I'm at second base. I play second base. He plays shortstop and he's jogging past me. This was probably the most embarrassing thing. One of the most embarrassing things to ever actually happen to me, but one of the most athletic things I've ever seen with his baseball glove. He does a cartwheel six inches from my face and farts as his ass.

Everyone's freaking out. And I'm like, God damn, dude, this kid just cartwheel farted in my eyes. It was, but he was just, and he gave you a lifetime memory, dude. That's a good dude. The memories that me and him have, but that was to go back to the opportunity like even just being on this show and fucking making no money barely being able to pay rent but dude i get to wake up and do i love her day and i have the opportunity to fucking live my life and not be fucking dead and overdosed that's crazy yeah it just sucks that young people like

there's so many. Don't get me wrong. I don't want anyone to get it twisted. I don't I don't want anyone to fucking have an untimely death. But if you're 70 or 80, you've had plenty of time to fucking get your shit in order. And the youth of this country and the youth of the world should not be paying the price for you. I would never do that to my fucking kids. I would never do that to my fucking kids i would never do that to a fucking child i would never want the world to do anything for me to compensate for 30 years of fucking chugging coke could you imagine like what it's like yeah no i i mean i'm with you i just

can't imagine what it would be like as a parent for your kid to die dude holy shit and and and i would resent every single fucking person who participated in the in the pandemic narrative i would give them a piece of the blame for my child even if it wasn't healthy and like i know it wouldn't be healthy but i would still do it i would go there yeah i i like how can you go through something like that in a healthy way i mean it's what what does that even mean you know what i mean like what is the fucking healthy way to grieve a fucking child's death or a father's death or you know how how is there one healthy way i feel like the healthy way is the way that gives you the best perspective maybe 10 years down the road but i mean fuck when you're yeah you're right it's like

it's like what's the best way to get punched in the face by someone as hard as you can it's like to heal to grow from it 10 years later you're right jiggy josh dude if if if that was on video just the way it happened i can't begin to describe like have you ever have you ever heard of something like that? It was unreal. Who thinks? He knows. Josh knows it was athletic. Who thinks to fart at the top of a cartwheel in someone else's

face? Oh my God. Hey, you told a story about when you got sober. Was it after seeing your dad? Is that when you got sober? what's oh it was after seeing your dad was it after seeing your dad is that when you got sober no i like i have so after my dad died i didn't get sober i like dropped out of school i got into the most miserable point of my life for like i'm waking up every single day like fuck i can't do this anymore i hate myself i'm not going anywhere i'm a piece

of shit my dad are you is god in your life now yeah it was god in your life then no okay not that i felt but but maybe not that you felt but did you ever pray were you ever like what the fuck god why are you doing this to me did you oh yeah yeah for sure for sure okay okay like why me like why the why all all that um okay so i'm like in this point where i'm getting fucked up every single day i'm waking up in the morning i'm like in this point where i'm getting fucked up every single day i'm waking up in the morning i'm like i'm making this commitment every single morning i'm like i'm never doing any of this again i'll throw my fucking weed out the window two hours later i'm like crawling out on my roof in the gutter trying to find it yeah i can't fucking in there because

i can't because i can't exist without it and then was i a fucking idiot why did i throw that out yeah and uh so then like i i wrecked my car total my car with my friend i remember waking up in the hospital after the wait wait wait this is different how many this is different than the same same accident they took us to the hospital both me and him we walked all the way home and they were like adamant that we were going to get into the ambulance and go to the hospital okay um so i remember waking up like later that morning in the hospital my mom's next to me crying i'm thinking to myself holy shit my dad just died i almost just fucking died what would i what would that have done to my mom like i can never do this again that's a healthy thought by the way yeah so i'm like i make, this, the strongest commitment I could ever make.

I'm like, I'm never doing any of this again. I promise mom, I'm never going to drink again. I'm never going to smoke again. Do you put something on the line when you do that? What do you mean? Like your character? Yeah. Well, I mean.

Nah, like I would do these things. Like I'll give you a cheesy example. I would do these things. Like if I'm, uh, I'm doing a hundred burpees for time and I'm at 80 and I want to quit and I say, hey, if I do these next 20 in a row as fast as I can, I'll be rich when I'm older. You know what I mean? I'll make a promise to myself that I can't even keep, but I'll throw something carrot at the end. Are you like, hey, I'm going to stay sober no matter what. And if I don't like. No, I don't know. I'm just making this commitment and meeting it with every ounce of my being. OK.

And then the next day I can't follow through. I'm getting fucked up again. I'm trying to get fucked up. I just can't. I can't. I fucking cannot stop. And finally, I just get this fucking. Actually, my.

So my grandfather had died when i was 14 and he had kind of filled the role of my dad that's different we'll just we'll just slide past that so that was my dad's dad and then my dad's mom was still alive at the time and i remember so your your grandpa died when you're 14 your dad died when you were 16 this accident we're talking about happened like when you were 16 also same year yeah 16 and a half and was your grandpa an alcoholic yes but he was sober for a long time and so he kind of felt a lot of i spent summers there growing up in south carolina with him and he filled a lot of that kind of void that my dad left um was he affectionate physically yeah my grandfather was fucking incredible, dude.

Okay. Such an incredible guy. Hey, we've talked about this too in Kayla Harrison's life. She had really cool affectionate grandparents too. Yeah. And I just want to encourage people like, man, I know you already raised your fucking kids, but if you're a grandparent, man, step up. Yeah. Man, grandkids need you. Okay.

For sure. parent man step up man grandkids need you okay for sure and uh so like i remember my mom's out of town one time her sister is staying with me to watch me and she i skipped school again this morning and she's freaking out at me like we get into this fucking huge argument and i just can't stop thinking myself like i barely know this fucking lady you know she's an aunt that i'm not close with at all and i just feel fucking sick to my stomach that she's in my house telling me what to do and fuck her and blah, blah, blah. So I call my grandmother, like the only one I feel like I can talk to. And I remember I'm on the phone with her and she's like, you know, telling me that she believes in me and she has faith in me and that I'm going to, you know, and she knows everything that's going on at this point. And, uh, and then like fucking month later, she fucking dies.

And I just have this fucking gift of desperation i'm just like fuck i don't know what to do anymore i remember asking my mom for help and i went she put me in rehab with my dad's life insurance no shit yeah wait so tell me that you're 16 at the time yeah um tell me that conversation in a little more detail with my mom yeah i just i walked into her home office and i was like i don't know what to do like i'm i just said i think i said verbatim i was like mom i need help i was like and i don't know what compelled me to do that other than just fucking what aa calls the gift of desperation like shit is so bad for so long so fucking

unbearable that you're like fuck i'm willing to do anything different i don't fucking care i just don't want to feel this way do you still have the same girlfriend at that point i was i was off and on with her yeah um what was any part of you like oh fuck i can't get sober i'll lose all my friends not like that they won't like you but like that's what you do together no that didn't like that didn't even occur in my fucking mind i was just i was so fucking miserable dude i was fucking peeing in gatorade bottles in my room so i would not have to leave my room wow like have you seen the aviator with leonardo dicaprio a long time ago at the end of the movie when he's like the future and he's like in his

fucking room naked peeing in those glass milk bottles dude yeah i just didn't i didn't want to like like if there were people over at my house like my mom had people over my sister was home like i was i couldn't i couldn't leave my room i didn't want to fucking face anybody it was crazy what what drugs were you doing at that time you were you were drinking we drinking every single day weed some opiates like like what like like oxycontin hydrocoating also before my grandfather from the point like a year before my grandfather died it's like it to a little while after um when he still had a lot of it was his cough syrup for it because he had lung cancer as well so he had this fucking opiate cough syrup was that fun i never did cough syrup uh it was i dipped i dipped

a lot of i smoked weed with it a lot and i twisted things up a little bit i liked um i liked and i still like it i mean i can't remember the last time i've done it's probably been years but i but i would do it um uh i like taking like uh like vicodin like two vicodin and a beer sitting on a couch anytime you mix substances it's a recipe for some interesting oh man i used anytime i would hurt my back tape pop a couple vikid in and uh and fucking crack a bottle of wine yeah it would be fucking um uh thank you um tom you're a good dude tom was uh we're 40 bucks deep we got to get to 100 before i get out of here so we can fulfill my prophecy. I don't think I've mentioned the sponsor in fucking 10 shows.

I wonder if they hate me. Barbell Jobs? Yeah. They're such good dudes. Maybe they'll just be like, no, Sevan, you've been doing a great job. Don't worry about us. We're just giving you money because we love you. Yes.

Like Sizzurp, the Tony Tone, tone but not like we didn't put fucking jolly ranchers and and diet fanta and then pour a bunch of codeine in it we just we just would soak blunt wraps in it and let them dry and then wrap the weed and smoke oh wow you'd be patient enough to let them dry you'd think in advance wow um So, but you were an opportunistic, your real drugs were alcohol and weed. I would do anything that I could get my hands on for sure. I think the key thing here is I'm 16 when I got sober. So I wasn't exposed to a lot of opportunities to get my hands on some fucked up hard shit. Right.

If I had waited till I was 18 or 20. You might have gotten a mess i'd be fucking dead yeah and and and can you give me like a little more on that so you walk in and is your mom start crying or tell you to shut up or hey just go outside and play or is she like immediately sensitive to it yeah she had tried to get me into rehab like a couple other times and like it would come the morning for me to go and i'm like i'm not fucking going you're gonna have to call the cops and force me to go so what are you gonna wow you're gonna take me to fucking rehab did your sister ever intervene she's five years older and

been like dude what are you doing motherfucker no we i don't even remember a single conversation we had in that period of time um she probably fucking hated me uh but she didn't live at home either so we were just never around one another uh hated you because of just the stress you're putting your mom through oh yeah dude yeah yeah um siblings are a trip ma'am siblings are a trip there's some there's some there's some hardcore shit that can happen in life you can be a really good kid or two or three really good kids and kids and you can have one bad sibling and it fuck everything up. And I know some people are going to be really offended by this. And normally I would say, go fuck yourself. I don't care, but I apologize.

But this is the truth. It's the same with having disabled people in your house. You could have fucking three kids and your parents have another kid and they have a kid with Down syndrome and everyone's fucking life changes. And there's the dynamic of living with people is fucking huge, man. That's why we're all role models. We all have a responsibility to each other. I got to answer this guy's question. Is the rehab that expensive in the USA, dude?

Yeah, yeah. It's fucked up. That whole business, dude, it's like big pharma. They will fucking rape your insurance companies. If you don't have insurance, they'll fucking rape you for every fucking cent that you have to go to a place like that. It's crazy. I think that's why AA is such a powerful existence. If you have the gift of desperation or are willing to try anything.

So how long were you in rehab? What's it like? Are you with kids? Are you with adults? Do you have to go cold turkey? Yeah, we were in this young adult men's ward. There was actually two parts to this rehab. There's a 28 day program. And then at the end of the 28 day program, the counselor either like says, Oh, you're good to go. Or they recommend you for extended care, which is, I was, I was girl crazy at 16. Were you girl crazy? Dude. Yeah. I'm in fucking rehab, like jerking off every day. And like, aren't you just like, you're here to be sober,

but you're just looking for a girlfriend. Yeah. You're, could you imagine for four months being in a, in a fucking program with by 20 other dudes? No. All you guys talk about is having sex with girls, dude.

Uh, it was, it was funny. It it was i was pre-internet too like we were pretty naive bunch like like a like like the jc penning's catalog would come to your house and like on the cover would be women in their bras and like that that was like stimulating like as a kid i don't mean like in a perverse way you wouldn't jerk oh i didn't jerk off to him but like it's not like today. But I was like girl crazy. Like the only reason why I went to school in high school is to see girls.

Yeah. Or write them a note. Say hi to them. You know what I mean? It's just like that's all I want to do. Or have one say hi to me. All right. Like I'll make it till tomorrow.

So yeah, rehab was girl crazy for sure. More than anything, it was like it gave me the opportunity to be separated from the ability to get high or drunk, which was exactly what I needed. I don't think I would have been able to stay or to get sober just by going to AA. I'd gone to a couple meetings before that. Fucked up. My mom was like, you need to go to a meeting. And I would get as high as I possibly could and then go there and sit. Did you ever think about running away to get high?

Like five days in fuck this. I'm out. dude, dude, I, I fucking visualized it every single fucking day. I did not have the balls. You're in the,

I was in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. It's called Werner's still Pennsylvania. Like you run away. It's probably 10 miles to the closest gas station. How the fuck I'm 16. I'm a fat drug addict. How am I getting 10 miles to a gas station

and then you were fat you were oh dude yeah i was fat at the time for sure and when i say fat i can't see you as fat when i i say fat i'm 16 and i'm like five nine and like 200 pounds okay yeah yeah um but you're also athletic you have you're you're capable because you've been playing sports your whole life yeah but and you have you're intimate with your body and how it moves and shit like that but what does that mean in terms of surviving a 10 mile fucking trek by yourself as a 16 year old i don't know where the closest gas station is you know i mean so but i did picture running away every single day um and I didn't change any of my behaviors. I was sober of body but not really of mind, and I was just a shithead.

Hey, someone said my wife – someone's saying my girlfriend works in opiate rehab, and the company that owns it does not care about the patients one bit. Yeah, they don't. There's a struggle between counselors. Well, I just want to say my wife works at a rehab too, they fucking care some like i know and i know the owner and you know what i don't know if this is true but i'm going to say it anyway i think it used i think they're all scientologists who run the place and really yeah and i think it used to be like a scientology rehab like you go there like it was funded by scientologists and um and you know all the negative shit like stereotypes like they're the target of fucking like they're just a thousand south park episodes

probably but um but i don't think it is that anymore but it's run by scientologists and those motherfuckers care dude so that they care so much i worked at a rehab that was very home and i know the owner and she's like everyone i think my wife might be the only person there who's who's not like a customer of the place of that place like i think they only hire from within a crossfit take note of that that's a lot of that's how you get that a lot of treatment places are like that um but don't be like crossfit inc and hire your fucking marketing director from ways ways so i worked i worked at an outpatient place and it was like this one guy had started this guy named brooke and it was everybody cared there and then eventually i worked there for like two years and it had been in business for like nine years yeah and then boom

corporate rehab buys them out and they don't give a fuck anymore hey wasn't fentanyl developed to get people off of heroin probably how retarded is that what the fuck oh my goodness are you kidding me goodness i i can think of some really really gross metaphors i won't say just because i'm trying to clean the show up just like tiny bit but man it that is sloppy so yeah i'm in rehab ivan vasquez sugar-free monster money bring it someone asked me the other day would you take monster money i said one million one million dollars bring it hell yeah bring me the money i take fucking a thousand a month for monster dude dear monster energy drink please sponsor taylor self one thousand dollars anyway so yeah please you looked so good at wadapalooza dude i was you look so good yeah you look like a big strong man you look fast when you ran across

the finish line and you're running through all the assault bikes you look like a beast your hair your head your ears yeah you were dope and i and you were wearing those black shorts you were dope thanks man um yeah but yeah i was in rehab four months but really the biggest thing it did for me was get me away from the ability to get fucked up and then do you have any friends from there still like dudes who were in there with you i i am like facebook friends with a couple but but not in contact with a lot of actually i think all the ones on facebook friends where i probably aren't even sober anymore yeah they'll relapse oh yeah they have a 92 percent relapse rate legit i i mean fucking everything does a a i went to a when i got back and i met my best friend in the world he was

with at water palooza with me he came with he stayed with me for quarterfinals and the last chance that's such an amazing dude but wait go back to that say that again you got out of rehab and you met your best friend in aa i went to aa so i was in fairfax yeah i started going to meetings like every single day young people's um a meetings which saved my fucking life way more than probably rehab did but rehab are you are you really just going there to meet girls too like that's where my brain would be at 16 i'm going there because the counselor from the rehab made it part of my aftercare program where if i didn't go to these meetings every single day i'm like they're sending me back to some fucking shithole okay so i'm going to these meetings every day i get a sponsor i start doing the whole a program one more thing to put this in perspective

people this is 10 years ago so taylor's 26 now so this is 10 years ago. We're talking. Okay. I'll be, I'll be 10 years sober in April. Um, which is crazy. But anyway, so yeah, I meet my best friend. I'm, I'm going to meetings every day. I'm like having the most fun I've ever had. Cause there are people that like are happy. And I mean, dude, if you can imagine recovering drug addicts, they're the funniest fucking people on earth. So this is so funny. Um, so I just, they have to be right it's like this dude i had on the podcast the other day he said at some point in your i'm paraphrasing at some point in life you have to take all the fucked up shit that happens to you and use that as fertile ground for material for kind of your stand-up routine and that's what i've been doing like my

shit in the van story it's horrible at the time but fuck it makes it's 50 000 views on my youtube station you know what i mean i have some friends with the most fucked up stories that are just hilarious and they can make fun of themselves about it um yeah this one friend who sucked a guy's dick for fucking drugs it was and he tells the story yeah dude that's a good dude he's a fucking great dude um i have friends who did that god you will do some fucked up shit. But they kind of aren't human by the time they get to that point. Was it meth? Yeah.

No, for him it was not meth. Wow. Wow. I'm not telling this. It's his story to tell. Just tell me what drug it was that's worth putting a dick in your mouth. Heroin. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got it. Heroin and meth are worth putting a dick in your mouth. For sure. For sure. To them at that point in time for sure but anyways can i before we go to this back to your aa meetings there's this hierarchy of shit that like you if you have to run your life by you have to it's it's like one of the only rules and it has to be like breathe and then eat, and then you can interchange fuck and shelter. I need those four in that order. I have to wake up, and I have to be breathing. I need food.

And then I could be homeless as long as I'm getting some pussy or some dick, but some shelter is nice too, and those two can vacillate back and forth depending on where you are in your life. If anything gets in that hierarchy you're fucked you are no longer a normal human being your operating system is completely corrupt meaning if if like heroin is more important to you than fucking or eating or shelter then you're fucked your whole fucking system is out of fucking whack or do you know what i mean by that like if yeah and that's what's crazy about being an alcohol – a kid who's a drug addict because those – that hierarchy is not even really formed yet. You need that thing to really solidify so that you can then take those basic – anyway, that's just one of my philosophies. Like you really just need to keep that in order.

Don't let anything get in that mix. And then someone's going to say God first. Okay, I don't care. Throw God in there somewhere. God's not going to steer you to doing heroin or sucking dicks. Yeah, but you put drugs in there, it fucks everything up. Yeah, you can't put anything in there. But you put everything under it, dude.

You put everything. Yes, put everything under it, and eventually you'll get back on track. But if it gets in there, you're a mess. Yeah, well gets it doesn't even get in there it becomes there that's it there's nothing right you don't give a fuck about anything but okay sorry so so you go so you go to aa because your counselor tells you you have to go to yeah and a is if for people who don't know anything about AA, one, obviously I cannot be, I'm not a representation of what AA does because if somebody views me as what AA can do for them, I'm a fuck up and I'm going to piss somebody off.

So just don't even, you know, take me as a, as a, as a example of what it can do. But really it's just, it's an organization run by members who their only vested interest is them staying sober and helping other people stay sober. The only reason, not the only reason, but the predominant motivator for helping other people stay sober is that it helps you stay sober.

Giving it away helps you keep it for yourself. That's kind of the premise. So there's no money. It's all basically recovering drug addicts, just helping other recovering drug addicts or alcoholics. And when you say there's no money, that means what he's saying, let me translate that for you,

it's not corrupt. There's no, yeah, there's no, they don't take any sponsorships. It's the only organization I've ever been a part of where there is no outside influence because it's against one of the written traditions that the organizational structure is founded upon to where they don't take any outside money or sponsorship or donations. They don't side or affiliate with any ideologies or philosophies or political anything.

Can white people go? Yeah, dude. Can black people go? Yeah, dude. Can black people go? Dude, everyone can go. Oh, okay. Then here comes the tough one. Do you have to be vaccinated to attend a meeting? So there, yeah. So that's kind of the crazy part about this whole COVID structure. There are a lot, I started a meeting in my house here, um, where I was having guys over, um, a men's meeting. There are a lot of meetings that you can go to. They don't ask for a vaccination's meeting there are a lot of meetings that you can go they don't ask for a vaccination card there are a couple meetings where like within the church that you're at a meeting the church requires a mask and so you would have to wear a mask and i didn't go to those meetings but then they have zoom meetings and etc etc and i'm and i'm all for

i have no issue if someone wants to start a meeting and they're like, hey, everyone here has to stand on one leg. Everyone here has to wear – I don't know. Never mind. Let's not go down that alley. Well, it's not their choice. I just hate segregating people. Yeah. Well, I mean to an extent it's the church's prerogative to say if you want to have a meeting here, you have to wear a mask.

Because of our facility. It's our house yeah okay but a lot of people were doing meetings outside of this guy said i'd suck a dick for in a lego barbell in place hey that's commitment that's commitment um so hey what he did what he doesn't tell you is that he he already has yeah yeah yeah or just that that's his preference hey it's it's not a big deal if you suck a dick for lego bars if like you like sucking dick already like yeah so i don't want to say anything bad about sucking dick and be accused of being um um be speaking derogatory of the penis having a penis in your mouth is probably just a wonderful thing i i peace and love for sure anyways so yeah you're right you're right i don't want to disparage it okay go on okay so so the whole covid mess has muddied what it means to be politically affiliated

with anything because there's this guise of oh it's science it's blah blah blah it's it's authority it's the government we have to all that so prior to this to my knowledge before covid and the vaccines there was never anything politically that interfered with the way any sort of meeting was run until now and that's kind of why this is a scary unprecedented time but um it's great there's just there's this program called vipassana it's a pro it's a it's a it's a non-denominational meditation retreat it's 10 days you go there it's no eye contact with anyone and no talking they don't accept any money from outside sources they are like they are the they're the only thing i've heard

of on the planet they're the fitness they are the crossfit of finding god they are they are the CrossFit of finding God. They are the crash course in spirituality in a way that I've never heard presented to mankind, and they're requiring vaccinations now to go. Fuck. Oh, AA doesn't. I have friends who are like hardcore. Well, here's the thing. AA is not – No white mind who's looking inside themselves would force anyone to wear a mask. Yeah, that's crazy.

But I wonder how often that leadership is interchanged or if it's just a constant state of one particular set of leadership there. I don't know. What's happening is that there's this cosmic brain or something. I don't know how to explain it, that we all share, some cosmic consciousness or thought, and somehow some polluted shit has gotten in there, and it's running rampant. I guess you could say that about a lot of things. Yeah, and I'm sure there's a lot of that in AA, but the thing about AA is that there's no hierarchy in terms of who's say matters more than anyone else's.

I'm sure there is a bias at particular meetings to listen to the person with the most recovery time or the most, you know, in-depth knowledge of the big book or the traditions. But every month leadership turns over the meeting votes on new people, new service positions. And they don't even call you, they're not a leadership roles. They're called service positions because you're being of service to the meeting. So there's –

You know some crazy shit's happened though, right? Like this guy has been your sponsor for five years. You love him to death, and now he won't talk to you until you're quadruple vaxxed. Yeah. You know that shit's going down. I'll guarantee. And it's like holy shit. And that's why – but here's the thing, that shit's going down and it's like, holy shit. And that's why,

but here's the thing. And that's why, but, but AA to me is like the CrossFit of sobriety. Yeah. Um, cause dude, it works so fucking well.

Cause why do you say that? Cause of community, regularity, commitment, peer pressure, all that shit, all of that. And it's,

and, and people, it's, it's this cult-like persona in the recovery community you know there's these other things like oh go hike the at to get sober and all these other fucking you know but aa is there's no it's it's it's not based upon any any one person it's a spiritual program designed to give you a spiritual experience with a higher power and i've never heard anyone say anything bad about AA. You can't say that about a lot of

shit. It's fucking incredible, dude. I mean, it saved my life and it really started my journey towards, I mean, definitely in self-examination and, and being aware of yourself and your natural tendencies and your defects and all that shit. And that's, to me, one of the most powerful characteristics you can have is someone who's self-aware, like truly. And I don't know if it's even fucking possible to be 100% self-aware, but to be on the journey of that. And it's a spiritual program. Can you give me an example of self-aware?

Like I'm in the car and I'm fucking driving down the road and some fucking bitch cuts me off and I start freaking out and I'm like, stop, dude. What are you doing? Why are you freaking out right now? You're basically – you're poisoning yourself hoping that it hurts somebody else by getting a resentment at somebody you don't even know in the car. Yeah, or a more profound experience would be like me going with a sponsor that I had around like five years sober, a guy who like fucking changed my life, going over these, the trauma of growing up with my dad and then his death and then how my existence became to like prove that I was worthy of him by, you know, doing all these things I thought that he would approve of, um, and kind of stripping that away and, and trying to choose for myself who I want to be. Um, which is, you know, noticing that I gravitate towards, towards older men in a mentorship role because I lacked that as a child. Um, lots of things. I, I, um, I gravitated towards, towards older men too.

I really liked having a mentor. Yeah. I just like being like, you know, 16 years old and no, and no, and at least like some 40 year old dudes. And even through college, when I was at UC Santa Barbara, like I just like having access to like 50 or 60 or even older dudes, like to talk to, to hang with, to drink coffee with. I loved older dudes. It's to to hang with to drink coffee with i

loved older dudes it's a huge part of my life today i mean i've had so many mentors in aa and out of over the past 10 years that have fucking changed my life and given me new perspectives and have taught me amazing shit but i but i i know a part of the reason why i seek that out is because i lack that kind of father figure growing up. Yeah. I wonder if that's why I did. I mean, I saw my dad a lot. My dad was a workaholic.

My dad is a workaholic. He's still a workaholic at 80. Yeah. Like I kind of like it. Yeah. But, but I only, my parents were divorced.

I just saw him on the, I mean, some like on the weekends. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean maybe. I wonder. So then you – so you go to AA. So you're 16, and you've been in AA for 10 years. And when does the God – do you go to church every Sunday? No. No. And when does the God component come in? That's part of the AA thing.

Yeah, but they they're very, very articulate and adamant that it's a God of your understanding. You know, and here's the other thing. It was written in the fucking 1930s. So there's a lot of there's a lot of fucking young, woke kids and they're trying to change a lot of the verbiage and the vernacular as you use the fucking word in the big book but to put it this day there are you're saying there are oh yeah like in now not to this day but like recently people are starting to but you have to put it in a context these guys wrote the most revolutionary fucking thing on the planet in 1930s of increased liberty and progression right chill the fuck out you know it uses the word man in some places and it uses the word god in other places and just relax and understand that they mean humans and a power greater than yourself and they say that many times so the whole the whole program is is based upon

you having that relationship of dependence and surrender to a higher power. So I would say I do. I probably gravitate more towards the acceptance that I don't know what's out there, but I believe that there's something greater. And I think that it's not about knowing what is out there more than it is about seeking what is out there. And being on the path of kind of that is what, is what kind of brings some of that change and profound realizations and peace and serenity is just seeking God rather than knowing and finding God.

You can't find God. Maybe you can, maybe someone will do it in my lifetime. You know, people use this word, believe a lot. And I always say, I don't believe in God. Why would I believe in God? Because I believe, believe is something that exists in your head. And why would you trap God in your head? I don't know. I think, I think, I think there's a knowing of God or of becoming one with God or you have an experience with God. No, I experience it the whole.

But to believe is the last thing I want to do, because I believe I believe I believe that believing is what separates us from God. So that's what I know exactly what you mean by that kind of saying to believe in God is to have this for an example, the Christian ideal of what God looks like. And I just have no fucking idea what God looks like, what his name is, what he does. Is it a he, a she, a it? But you've experienced something, an unknown power that is something that – you've experienced something unknown. Yeah, for sure.

And you're aware of something that you cannot label. Yeah. And you're aware of something that you cannot label. Yeah. When I first got into rehab, I think my first God experience, it was the first night. I was crying my fucking eyes out. Where is this? Is this at rehab?

In rehab. The first night I was there. Because it was the first night I was sober, actually, for a period of time for three years. And so I'm fucking freaking out. What did I just put my mom through? Worse than that? I fucking just lost all this time with my dad that I could have had and he's fucking dead and I'll never get that back. And I am a piece of shit.

And I remember feeling that night that I would never get fucked up again. I would never use drugs or alcohol. And it was a different feeling than the commitment I had made to myself thousands of times. It was, it was just like, I know, I just knew,

I just knew I would never do it again no matter what and i would fucking die before i did um whether that's stupid or not i don't know but i but i believe that and then another time i felt it was i had been trying to get into the navy and i had done everything i could and I had worked harder for anything that I worked in my entire life. And I had this period, this like this instance of like pure acceptance where like whatever was meant to happen would happen. And if I didn't get in,

I'd be okay with it because I just did everything I fucking could. And I experienced this contentment that I had never felt before in my life. That was another experience. Yeah. And did you make it to the Navy? No, they told me. and i was okay with it i was okay with it oh it's so crazy to look at what a fucking savage you are now and to think that you couldn't make it to the navy it makes you wonder about the hiring process over there it wasn't because of my physical capability i destroyed everyone in the i was

trying to get a seal contract as a civilian and i took the pst for the first time with all of the other candidates who had been taking it for months and i fucking clapped them all like i destroyed them in the run killed them in the swim the only things i didn't beat everyone in were the push-ups pull-ups and sit-ups but it didn't they don't give a fuck about that i was like middle of the pack and that stuff if you beat everyone in the swim in the run both which i did dude they'll fucking suck your dick they that's all they care and and the rest of the shit you can do like yeah i was middle of the pack but when anyone can develop some pull-ups i think i think swimming and running are much harder developed than they're harder to develop but what they see in that is like if you're willing to

black out like i wasn't the fittest guy there but i was willing to fucking black out on the run to not let one of those fuckers pass me um like they were on my ass and i was like fuck that i'm black and you're not passing me so anyways i did that the so mentor is like yeah we'll give you you automatically qualified for your seal contract you come in take the c-sort which is like the special operations uh the comprehensive special operations resiliency test is what it stands for. And so I'm like in the recruiting office a week later after my PST taking the test, I take the test. He's like, all right,

I'm getting on the phone with the commander of our region for special warfare recruiting. And it was a guy who my family friend had actually put me in contact with earlier that summer. And I talked to him on the phone. And he told me at that point in time, he's like, with your drug history, dude, there's no way we'll take you. What do you mean? I didn't, I, what do you mean? I quit when I was 16. I didn't get into the crazy shit. My recruiter told me to lie about everything. Yeah. My recruiter told me to lie about everything. And I was honest. I was so stupid. No, you, that would have been stupid to lie. Yeah, for sure.

But he, he told me to do it. I don't, I'm not joking about that. He was at him. He's like, don't fucking say that. I'm like, like dude they'll dishonorably discharge me anyways and you don't want to carry the weight once again listen people i'm gonna tell you this secret of life too there's nothing wrong with stealing there's nothing wrong with lying except you have to then carry it around with you the rest of your life, and that is the worst thing. Fuck all the other immoral shit. First of all, there's no such thing as stealing. Stealing is based on the false premise…

Uh-oh. You froze. …of ownership. There's not even ownership. I like that my house is my house. I like this game we're playing. I like pretending like money has value. But don't delude yourself into thinking it's real.

You're paused or frozen. Ownership isn't real. Just like red doesn't mean stop. Isn't real. It's just something to be on. You don't want to have to carry the burden is my point. Damn. So,

so you're, you're going to become a seal and, um, and, and, and, and you don't, and you accept it.

Hey, are you smoking at that time when you're 16 and you're in rehab? No, they didn't allow you to have nicotine in rehab if you weren't 18. Um, unless your parents, did you start smoking again when you got out? Yeah. When I got out, I started dipping again, but not smoking, not smoking. I was dipping. Yeah. I was dipping and I dipped all the way through me trying to get into the Navy, which started when I was like 17 and ended when i was like 21 it was

like a four-year process of getting all of the medical waivers approved um so i like i spent a lot of time as like every single day obsessing about that and you're reading every fucking book written by every single navy seal that's ever fucking lived um which is a whole other thing of how i think developed a lot of the character that I have today. Hey dude, if you would have made it into the Navy and became a SEAL and went overseas and killed a bunch of people, imagine how fucked up you'd be. You'd have this fucked up past the drug addict and this twisted relationship with your dad. Then you'd have fucking this more PST and baggage of like bodies blowing up. You'd be just a fucking like, you'd need

six lifetimes to unpack that shit dude i know i i probably wouldn't be sober right yeah holy shit man um but yeah so that i didn't make it but i was dipping through that entire period i found crossfit was still dipping then i decided i was gonna like be competitive and i quit dip for like two years how did you find crossfit my sister introduced it to me and then i and then i did a class with her didn't go back and then when i was trying to get into the navy i was like wait a second wait go back second sorry sorry i got some questions so you you get out of rehab and you're living with your mom yeah and and you're going to aa and do you go back to high school at that point?

Yeah, I went to a new high school. Okay. And then do you have a job too? Like do you work at like 7-Eleven or some shit? I got a job at this fucking tree farm. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that's cool.

That's really cool. Like basically where they raise trees and then sell them to nurseries? Christmas trees and shit. And then also they sold like mulch and fucking like in bulk. Like you would come there to get a yard of mulch from a huge front end loader but not and they sold mulch bags too but mostly the bulk shit okay yeah so so you kind of get you have your life together you're living back at home you're working and you're going to new high school my life wasn't together but i was i was off you know definitely in way better shape than I had been before I went to rehab.

But I was a fucking actual high school boy at that time. And you were at least faking it until you make it. You were on the right path. Yeah. I was still skipping class a lot. I was still getting into a lot of fights and lashing out. I was still fucking doing shit that got me in trouble in school. I mooned this fucking teacher one time.

Mooned? Yeah, mooned him in high school that's like i was 18 dude they could have given me some fucking serious charges they didn't luckily um dude if you show your asshole on school grounds that's uh yeah they can fuck you up for that um i was always impressed when people mooned other people because like i never had the confidence to moon anyone i didn't want anyone to see my butt dude it's not like you're flashing your dick dude you don't have to have confidence to show them i just i just am just twisted i was like you know like i just don't like they're gonna laugh at me they're gonna be

like you're showing us that oh this guy asked me the mission the men and me yes i've read that book great book dude you can't you can't name a navy seal book bruce that i haven't read for sure unless it's been written in the past three years okay about it so um is your sister living at home at the time she introduced you to crossfit no she was home visiting went to this crossfit gym was like hey you should come with me i went with her and why did you go with her why didn't you say no fuck you i'm staying home i don't know i was on this path of like open-mindedness and enlightenment and i was like yeah i'm kind of interested intrigued and we went to jeff tincture's gym oh wow yeah it's right next to

my house so we go there. I do this workout. It's like rope climbs and deadlifts or some shit. And I like fucking sold my soul to RX it. I'd never climbed a rope before. And I'd like did this rope climb workout, fucked up my shoes, tore up my fucking legs. I was like, fuck this. I'm never doing this again. Um, and then like a year later, trying to get into the Navy, I was like, I passed this Instagram ad of this other gym.

And I was like, I should try this. This will help me. And it did. And then you've been in ever since. Yeah. And drank the Kool-Aid, brother. I started. And then when did you say, when and why did you say oh maybe

i'll um i won't just use this for fit i'm assuming you went there for fitness yeah and then some and then somehow you came across oh i could compete well the navy had just told me no i was fucking obsessed with crossfit by that time i just find something I like and I obsess over it so hard. Um, and so I kind of just got good at it and I was like, fuck it. I'll just, I love working out all the time. So I'll just be more serious about it. Um, and that kind of enter my journey of discipline and actually taking it seriously and trying to become a professional and treating myself as a professional. Um, but that kind of, there was kind of a, there was a brief period of lapse in judgment where I actually taking it seriously and trying to become a professional and treating myself as a professional. But that kind of, there was kind of a, there was a brief period of lapse in judgment where I was,

it was 2019. And this was when I was, you know, doing qualifiers and stuff. And they had just done the sanctional model where like, if you want a sanctional, you get a ticket to the games. And so I qualified online for the Mac. It was a sanctional that year. I was like sixth in the qualifier. I thought I was fucking savage. I was like right next to Jacob Heppner in the qualifier and Sam Quant and all those guys. And three days before the actual competition, I was riding a skateboard just trying to get my mind off things and fucking blew my knee out and then had surgery what year was that 2019 oh fuck have you ridden a skateboard since then yeah you do you still ride you still fuck around uh no not frequently but i've been on a skateboard for

sure a few times but how do you blow your knee out on a skateboard i was bombing this hill on a on just a regular deck and i had never been down it before this kid also was like dude don't do that it's sketchy and he kind of yelled it from behind me i was like fuck that like i'm good i'm good at skateboard i grew up skateboarding and i fucking get halfway down this hill i'm like 30 no helmet i get the speed wobbles i'm like fuck so i ditched the board and just fucking. And somehow your knee didn't, didn't like it. Yeah.

Somehow. Oh God, dude. And were you just fucking devastated? Did you start drinking again? I was on the ground. Listen to this. I was on the, for some reason I go through shit like that and it just, it has the opposite effect. It makes me more of a stubborn piece of shit.

So I was on the ground face down thinking. Right when it happened, right when I got the speed bubbles, I knew I wasn't going to compete that weekend. I knew I had just fucked myself. So I was laying on the ground face down, head in my arms. I'm like, you stupid piece of shit. You just worked so hard for this opportunity, squandered it. I fucking get up. I'm walking back home.

Yes, walking. Shit was fucked up. Get in the car, call my mom. I'm crying. Drive to the hospital. My mom and my best friend Jake meet me there. And the doctor who's on call in the ER is like, don't take my word for it, but I really don't think anything's torn. I'm thinking to myself, bitch, are you fucking high?

What I felt, dude, it's all torn. And it was. It was all fucked up. But I guess because of the swelling and me walking home on it, it stiffened up to where it felt like the ligaments were there or whatever. And so I was just fucking in that. I had read like David Goggins book like a few months prior and it was just like the perfect opportunity to practice kind of the shit that he talks about in his book.

So I went through knee surgery with no painkillers, really stupid idea. Um, but that's the kind of, you know, my sister's like 20 years sober, maybe more now. That's the kind of crazy shit she would's like 20 years sober maybe more now that's the kind of crazy shit she would do but i didn't do it because i was sober is the funny thing

i did it because in his book he talks about like experiencing pain and like how you experience something extremely hard and you put it in your cookie jar if i can do that i can do this and so i was like fuck it i don't need that shit. It was so miserable. First night I'm out of the hospital. I'm like on the couch in my mom's house. I had moved out, but I was back home because I had surgery. I'm crying my eyes out. She's like, what? What? I'm like, it hurts. I had, I had this friend and him and his wife were going to the dentist and I can't remember what procedure they were going to have, but they were both going to have it. It was like having a tooth removed or a root

canal, something fucked up, right? And they both decide that they're going to do it without any pain medication and he gets in there and he's like in there for like five minutes. He's like, fuck that. Give me the pain medication. And he gets out and his wife goes, oh my God, that was the worst thing in my life. How did you do it? And he goes, I didn't. I took the

pain medication. She's like, you fucking asshole. I bet she did medication. She's like, you fucking asshole. She did it. Can you imagine having, giving birth? No, nope. Can't imagine it.

Hey, if I knew, if I knew, I don't even know how women, I really don't know how women let dudes get them pregnant, knowing that they have to have a baby. Yeah. It's crazy.

That's how much they like dick. That's how crazy girls are about dick. No, it's not. Telling you. It's all backwards. They always blame that shit on dudes. Girls are just fucking – I mean there's nothing. There's nothing.

There's nothing I would do. I've read Fearless too, Adam Brown's book. That's what made me think I could get into the Navy as a recovering drug addict was that specific book. And I called his – maybe I didn't call, but I found the email for his wife somehow, an email there. I was like, can you please fucking help me? I'm just like this guy. Never responded. I'm not fucking like that guy.

He probably gets a billion emails a day. yes i read that book too how did that guy and you think he lied about it was some guy who got into the who became a seal who's a former drug addict no i don't think he lied at all it was just a different time when i was trying to get in cbs had came out with this article about like 10 seals getting kicked out of the east coast teams for doing drugs and shit and they were on this they're like not gonna fuck with anybody you get a thousand kids a day that want to join your fucking unit or the teams why would you why would you take a risk on one kid you can teach any kid physical fitness but fuck i have a record of you know a horrible fucking track record why would they risk it over 999 other kids that have a clean record i have this friend

who's a cop and he's a former um uh heroin addict and he's like the best cop you could ever imagine he's like the nicest most fair generous patient fittest yeah i mean it's fucking crazy yeah um i wonder who this is wait wait hold on, hold on. Let's answer. Oh, darn it. Bruce Wayne, Tom Shea's book, Unbreakable. And you spell Tom, T-H-O-M-S-H-E-A, Tom Shea. I spoke to him on the phone after I read his book. He's a really good guy.

But that's a really, really good book. You spoke to the author? Yeah, I called all those authors of SEALs when I was trying to get in. I would find their number. I'd be like, dude, any advice like can you help me uh i talked to a lot of i wrote this one guy i talked did you ever call tdc the day cash and i didn't even know who he was back then i talked to uh paul tharp who was the commander of buds at the time like a triathlete iron man wow wow i talked to this guy forget his name, but he wrote this book. It's like How to Not Get Fucked Over by a Recruiter is the name of the book. And he runs this locksmithing business in Oklahoma, and that's how I found his phone number.

I looked up his locksmithing business and called him. How to Not Get Fucked Over by a Recruiter. Yeah, because recruiters don't give a fuck about you. So now what's the plan? What's the plan moving? So you're still paying it forward. You have AA meetings at your house. You seem like you're further away from relapsing than ever.

I haven't had a meeting here in a while. It's been a while. Okay. So you're not paying it forward. You're a douche, selfish douche again. How often are you going to meetings now? Not as often as I should be and not as often as I used to. I think a lot of it –

You seem great. If you're doing good, why do you need to do it? That's kind of the conundrum is a lot of people will start doing really really well and forget how bad it was and then boom they're fucking done um i still talked my circle of of people that i spend the most time with and speak the most to are all in recovery and so i depend a lot on them it's just hard to fucking i could zoom but it's man i don't have the time to go to in-person a meetings i fucking coach three classes a night to pay rent and i train all day there's no there's literally i don't have two hours of

my day to cut out to go to drive there drive home spend an hour there there's this um uh you know conventional wisdom uh if you don't practice stillness meditation which which means to not react to to be the observer um when times are good you won't have that tool when times are bad meaning like don't wait till you fucking like yeah you can't wait till someone cuts you off or your boyfriend breaks up with you to meditate you got to meditate when it's every day perfect yeah like when you get in in uh when things are great you you have to cultivate stillness and non-reaction. I do pray and meditate every day, which I think is,

I practice, I mean, there are the 12 steps today and I do practice, the 12th step is practicing the principles in all your affairs. And the 10th step is taking personal inventory every day and when you're wrong, promptly admit it.

So there's a lot of shit that I still practice a lot of and it's just a season of life i think where i don't have a ton of time to dedicate to a meeting specifically um that doesn't mean i don't call my best friend who's sober and tell him how much of a dumb fuck i am when i when i need help hey did you do that thing where you like you go back in your life and like you say sorry to people yeah oh my god dude well i tried to do it like two times and got fucking scared and just like quit halfway through um what step is that the eighth the ninth step eighth step

is making the list of persons you would harm become willing to make amends to them all and ninth step is made amends to such people wherever possible except like you would go back to that teacher and apologize for mooning them yeah ah that's actually funny because i never fucking made amends to that guy i couldn't find him you know i can't remember his name it's crazy he was he was not even yeah but anyways and once again i i i i shared this with you the guy who got moon will never forget that day you gave him something as a gift it wasn't a gift it is a gift it is a gift my asshole and probably yes yes yes yes you gave him a gift i use this i use this story over and over and over but i was in a taxi cab it was four in the morning i was headed to

the airport it was in kansas city i just i was um, had been in a film festival and it was storming lightning, thunder, rain. It was fucking nuts. And I had to get in this taxi cab from my hotel to go to the airport, to fly back to California. And the taxi pulls up and it's a fucking minivan and it's, it's a yellow minivan. And this, it, I don't know if you guys have seen it. Now it's pretty common sight. These people are so obese that they have to have this. Not only do they have the seat scooted all the way back, but they have the seat all the way reclined and yet they're still sitting upright you know it's like a 500 pound guy and we're driving to the airport and it's fucking you can't even it's raining so hard you can't even see out the windows i mean it's pouring and

we're on the freeway and lightning lightning and thunder and all that shit and he go and i'm in there with my uh with the the producer of the movie and we're driving and he goes hey i'm gonna i have to go to the bathroom i have to pull over and go to the bathroom yeah pull over go to the bathroom like this kind of weird and he pulls over and i and we're on the side of the freeway it's fucking scary as hell it's not a safe place to pull over and the dude uh i think he's going to get out of the car and pee and then i realized this fucking dude can't get out of the car like that's a one that's like a max effort deadlift every day back squat mile sprint for him to get in and out of the car yeah he fucking goes ma'am you may want to turn your head and he reaches

over and gets a fucking gatorade bottle or coke bottle from the side of him. And he pees in the car with us sitting behind him. That's how we hit that. And at the time, I'm like, at the time, I'm like, I'm like this fucking piece of shit. But now in hindsight, I'm like, wow, that I owe that guy. Thank you. Because I'll never forget that taxi ride. Wow. Yeah, that's disgusting.

I wouldn't forget that. Yeah. So that's what i'm saying like you showed that guy his asshole and he's like he's got a story in the bank just now i probably made five dollars it made made this podcast a couple minutes longer made five bucks off of it when total views are um you know calculated and like i owe that guy i should give that i should find that guy and give that guy three percent of five bucks yeah see how the world works it's a good place it is a good place um do you do you think

you eventually make it to the crossfit games yeah i feel like i know i am yeah yeah this year do you have to just tell yourself that um like is that like oh believe it until i get there or is it like you really like something? I really feel something. But going back to that, do you think that's a silly philosophical take on life? I mean, do you not believe in the law that what you think and what you believe in or what you focus daily on comes to pass?

No, I believe it. But I get what you're saying. I mean, it's easy to just, because it's not as simple as that. You have to take action. But that's the thing. I take a lot of action. Yes, yes.

You have to take action. And there's... And I know I'm, one, I know I'm fucking, I know I'm more than good enough. And I haven't yet put together a complete performance. And I feel like when I do, it'll be something really special. So I know that. how did you meet how did you meet jason we we're we did a competition together and he beat me and that's how you guys met yeah we started training together at that at my buddy's gym crash fitness in spartanburg which is like kind of between both of us is there any party that's like

um uh you got mad on your side and i just fucking whooped your ass at wadapalooza fuck you no no i i i'm taking a different approach a more mature one i think it's part of me growing up towards working out with jason and we're going to be doing a lot more of it because i think that we have a unique opportunity to help each other he's bad at the things i'm really good at and I'm good at the things he's, you know, vice versa. So we just have a really cool opportunity to be professionals. Is any part of you like, um, I know,

I know Colton Merton's a seven's favorite and I beat him. Fuck those two. No, I actually talked to do it. I can't fucking get Colton to say more than two words this time at Water Polo. I didn't actually try to talk to him ever before, but we talked a bit. He's a good guy. I like him a lot. He's wonderful. Yeah, he's a cool dude.

Fucking wonderful. It's to not to – this is going to be a horrible metaphor, but, but to, to not, if you see a guy who's going to take a Volkswagen bug and put it on the steep, it put a Ferrari engine in it and put it on the steepest hill in the world and then throw a brick on the gas pedal to not take a fucking moment out of your life and watch that you're fucking missing out. And I feel like that's what Colton Mertens is. Not that he's a Volkswagen with a Ferrari engine. I just mean,

it's, it's that, it's that, it's that peculiar, this combination of, of fucking traits that we're looking at. volkswagen with the ferrari engine i just mean it's it's that it's that it's that peculiar this combination of of fucking traits that we're looking at his physical stature his day job his upbringing his fucking hyper intelligence i mean it's this um there's a there's a lot of depth to i'm sure a lot of these athletes that nobody really gets to see that you uncover which

i think is a really cool part of what you do. And you say that you do that. And that's the opportunity of just being honest. And it's the thing that like Morning Chalk Up and other places, I mean, they're great. They're great at what they do, but nobody really gets to tell our stories, which is what fucking, you know, you think, I guess that's what sponsors are attracted to you by or by how many fucking followers you have on Instagram. I know it's a, it's a weird, um, it's a weird thing.

I think about it more and more the juxtaposition. Like someone said to me, they go, yeah, what I'm doing is really weird. And what the athletes are giving me the um ability to do is really fucking weird in this environment i i don't mean to just suck my own dick but i can't help it um it's so unique to this sport it's such a i'm so fucking weird and i allow the athletes to be so fucking weird and come free yeah and uh and i just love people so much but yet i'm just i'm do you remember that cartoon character tasmanian devil yeah yeah like i feel like that

yeah you're all over the place sometimes it boy but but i like it like you know what i mean i'm thriving like they're like what the fuck he's got add and i'm like no motherfucker i'm a tornado yeah you always bring it back around in some way to relate to what we're discussing it's I mean it's it's cool it's natural um this guy Bruce I'm definitely rooting for Taylor to beat Hopper I beat him uh um just kidding Bruce about the middle finger not about beating him so i i had this friend i had this friend in college and um he was going he was getting ready to go his um he's getting ready to go to germany and um there was this girl he really liked and he was gonna and he was an

exchange student he lived in germany and he'd been been at college with me for you know a couple years and then he was moving back and he only had two weeks left. And there's this girl he really, really fucking liked. And he said, uh, I'm like, Hey dude, why aren't you going to her house every night? Like, what are you doing? Like get with her. And he's like, dude, like, I don't want to like fucking fall in love with her and then fucking leave and be hurt. I'm like, dude, what if we all die tomorrow? Fuck that. Go get hurt. Yeah. Go fucking break some fucking hearts. Get your heart broken. Just throw your heart in front of a train. Quit being a bitch. Yeah, live life.

And there's a part of that about being what you're doing. There's a huge part. Like you're really, yeah, you're setting yourself up for failure. I mean, like everyone is who tries to become a professional athlete. I mean, it's really a. The risk that each athlete takes on themselves is fucking immense. And anyone who's actually nuts, anyone who's actually pursuing it to a large degree, which I believe all, you know, a lot of the guys on the bubble and the people at the games are just in their breakthrough year for sure. You're taking no one else has really taken a lot of risk in you.

None. I mean, 99 percent of you are going to have your heart broken you're all chasing the same fucking girl more than that so fucking loyal she won't even look at you guys more than more than 99 with one and then there's some asshole like matt frazier who will take her five years in a row to the prom not let any motherfuckers talk to yeah yeah Yeah, yeah. You're right. But there's this other thing in this kind of universal law of abundance where if you choose to view the world as scarce and having only scarce resources, then your reality becomes one of scarcity. But if you choose to view the world as abundant, then abundance becomes your reality. And so that's kind of the other approach I feel like I want to i'm really doing my best to take with jason is that there's enough for both of us and

we can help each other have that i mean he's already made it it really is true that rising tides float all ships the other people in the media space in crossfit's for example they don't fucking get it they they don't they don't fight but you're so right yeah he will only get better if you get better there's nothing to um and and it's okay to fuck with them like when you hear like when you hear like matt and i'm justin madaris's relationship it's okay to like if they can't play the game and fuck with you and fuck with you back then then whatever. That's on them. Yeah, well, me and Jason are really close. We're closer probably than we let on, so we can take it from each other.

Yeah, he's a good dude. He's a good friend. The heartbreaking piece is most of the people will never get to dance with the girl, and then when they do finally, if they did win the games and they did dance with the girl, it's not going to be as good as you ever imagined. And so you're pursuing kind of a ghost. And yet you have to do it. There's no point to life if you don't do it. You have to do it. You're right. But I think at the other time is if you're pursuing it with the idea in mind that once you get there, you will have made it and And that that's the pinnacle. Then yeah, you're going to set yourself up for failure.

But if you just understand and accept the fact that in pursuing that as kind of what your life is, is about the journey, not the destination as cliche as that is, but that's the truth. Yeah, it really is. Um,

what, what this is, this is just rude. Taylor looks like Ed Sheeran's daddy. Who? You or me? Who's Ed Sheeran? The blonde dude?

The fucking ginger pop singer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, I thought that guy was just a total dork. And then I watched some video of him and he has his shirt off and he's boxing. I'm like, whoa, he's a stud. Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to have to look that up.

Brandon Von Drack. Are these people's real names that's david craig i don't know i feel like i feel like you can just make your fucking youtube handle whatever you want so colton is a savage he won the water palooza 10 event and then i saw him right after and just put his headphones and walked off silently by himself into the night no entourage no distraction stone-faced okay i have to i have to poop now i had to pee once and now i have a double that morning shit hitting you hey um do you know um why i scheduled you this week. Why? Because I told Matt Sousa, the producer, I was like, dude, can you please give me just fucking easy people this week? I'm going to be in Tahoe.

I want people like, because usually I freak out a couple hours before I go to bed the night before a podcast. And I like it. I like freaking out, but I wanted to try to spend more time with my kids. But can you give me someone who's just fucking easy, who I like,

who I can just fucking talk with and not trip? Because I'm to like spend more time with my kids. But can you give me someone who's just fucking easy, who I like, who I can just fucking talk with and not trip? Because I'm always like, there's this element of having to keep it going, right? Yeah, yeah. And then he put you on there. I was like, oh, thank you. That dude's so cool. We'll have an easy time. Appreciate that, man.

Yeah. Susan knew. All right. Well, so what's next um semi-finals and then uh so now you're just it's all training just now now it's just the road to the games yes sir open um quarterfinals okay games let's do them i do this thing with like after i do like these kind of a deep extensive podcast with people like with fighters or athletes i want to start like i'm then going back and just doing like shorter half hour shows so like as you do the open every time after you do a workout maybe

just do like a 20 minute show me like how is that workout yeah just to watch you um how many times you think about nicotine like um do you have sex on the days you do the open just like you know what i mean just a 20 minute and then just move on just have you on for revisits hey listen to me stop reading listen no i i because i already am i'm already on board with the idea i'll for sure come on for shorter shows look my best friend goes tell savannah about how you went bald at 16 that's the jake i was talking about my best friend that fucking asshole keep it dude he's the reason i'm not insecure about it to be honest because he just fucking rails me you're fat shut up hey how could anyone hey and well and i want to say

something to you about you fat people who make fun of other people because fat kids used to make fun of me for my nose being big i used to think but i was fat too and um but um i would be like you're making i can't do anything about nose, but you could do something about being fat. Yeah, I can't do shit about being bald. But I never did anything about being fat either. But why is being bald, I have to go to the bathroom so bad, but let's touch on this real quick. Why is being bald such an insecurity? It's so, like my best friend, Jeff Holman from the second or third grade is bald.

And like, he's so handsome. My friend Tyson Oldroyd I used to work with, he bald and like he's so handsome um my friend tyson oldrode i used to work with he's bald he's so handsome why would anyone i don't get what the um i don't think like bald dudes get like less jobs less pussy i don't think they sleep worse at night like the only thing i could think about but being bald it's bad is um this if you live if you got to wear a hat to protect yourself from the sun. I wear a hat all the time, but it's not that bad. I just think people, it's another reason to be self-obsessed about why you're not good

enough. It's just another reason to be insecure about something. I don't know. Yeah. It's a really weird one. Cause it's, um, I mean your head, you have a very nice head. I got this like dorsal fin. That's why I swim fast.

See that? Yeah. It's a very nice head. Yeah. I wonder if i have that thing no man you're not oh and this is another reason why i wouldn't want to be bald you do have to um it doesn't look good like with like little patches growing out of it oh it looks fucking terrible or the guys who try to hold on to it on the side just fucking dude and so that seems like a lot of work yeah shaving it just get no no i

mean not really i mean girls shave their fucking legs pretty frequently yeah fuck that that's a lot of work too do you use an electric shaver for your dome or uh free blade oh yeah that's a lot of work no it's good when he jumps in the pool head first, there is a zero. Jake is the funniest person I've ever met. I keep telling him to start like a comedy podcast. He's the funniest person in existence. Oh, anyone can be funny.

Being funny on demand is hard. Take the challenge, Jake. Probably. This is where the whole reason I have a podcast so I can pretend to be funny. Okay. Talk to you soon. Thank you,

brother. See ya.