The Sevan Podcast - Ben Bergeron & Will Reusch #944

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

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you're gonna love the story behind it even better bam we're live i my birthday happened and my wife walked in during the middle of the show and handed this to me and goes the people watching your show bought this for you whoa cool and i went like a little baby, Ben. I went like a little baby. How does the – like it's multicolored lights. Yeah, so basically it's a steel sign. It's like a piece of steel that I'm assuming with a laser was cut. And then behind it, there's LED lights that are stuck. Yep. It even came with a remote where you can change the color and have it do all this fancy shit, but I just leave it there on all the time.

I love it. I'm getting, yes. Hey, dude, seriously, it felt, Ben, it felt like I haven't earned a lot of things in my life. By that, I mean like I earned paychecks, but like my kid earned a gray belt. Instructor walked up to. Yeah. Where's, where's gray live in the life cycle? Right after white.

Yeah. Like, just like, so, so he, he went to jujitsu for a year and they gave him a gray belt. And then after, and I was like, afterwards, the instructor walked up to him and goes, no one can ever take that from you. You'll have that your whole life. And that hit me like a fucking ton of bricks. I was like, oh, shit. Because we live in this world where everyone's like thinking they can choose their identity or they talk to kids about identity or what do you want to be or that. My kid didn't have to do any of that.

He earned something at six years old himself. No one can ever take from him. You get to keep that your whole life not the belt per se the physical belt but the it's crazy and so i felt like in my life when the viewers bought that for me and organized that through with my wife i felt like i earned it amazing you know what i mean from my peers and shit it was it was i don't know how like how do they even like go about doing that? That's really cool.

Social media, Ben. We're all one big family. How do they do that without you knowing about it? Oh, manipulate my wife. Get my wife. You know what else? They bought me an 80-pound dumbbell and that. That's really cool.

Yeah. Yeah, it was dope. How often do you use the 80 pound dumbbell? Uh, more often than I should. I want to work. I'm trying to work out more often than I should. More often than I should. I want to, um, uh, I want to do a, uh, a workout where I, it was strictly for ego reasons like to show off for my Instagram.

I want to do a strict muscle up 100 pound dumbbell workout 100 pound dumbbell snatch workout with strict muscle ups legit because people just think I'm just like this fucking midget old man who like Amanda Amanda with strict and 100 pound dumbbell yeah way simple reps though I'm thinking

like two strict muscle ups you know dumbbell snatch in each hand 10 rounds but just kind of like a fuck you look at me look what i can do but i got hurt using the 70 pound dumbbell that's very crossfit so if you get hurt with a 70 skip to 80 because it's not it's the it's the curse of the the certain weights that don't work that is crazy you see like athletes do that at competitions uh-huh they miss like uh uh you know they're progressing up in snatches they go they go 250 they miss 260 so they go straight to 270 and hit

it yeah it's like what i was i was lowering a 70 with my left hand uh slow on purpose to just to get, I don't know, more pump or more stimulus. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. And something hurt right there. So my right arm has progressed to the 80, but my left arm is now back down to the 20. But anyway, I'm committed. It's totally doable. Good to have you. Thanks, buddy.

Where are you sitting? I'm sitting in my office. The gym is right there, Natick, Massachusetts. Yeah, nice. Yeah. Do you have a workout that's kind of like your go-to workout that you're not proud of but like in a pinch like it's 11 o'clock at night and you haven't done anything yet so you do it like for

me it's um i'll do like uh 10 10 minutes on the assault bike minimum 100 calories and then like uh 12 leg lifts on the minute for 10 minutes you know what i mean where i just lay on my back and hold a d-ball behind my head and lift my legs up like just really up and down so and i'm like all right and i'm sweaty and i'm like, okay, go to bed. Yeah. There's nothing I do at 11 o'clock. So no. All right. You do have anything you do that's just like, just. I have like, so if I'm like traveling,

if I'm traveling and I'm in a hotel gym, what I do is I just, I, I run the dumbbell rack with different movements. So it's cause you don't need any warm-up it's you use so like you start i literally start with i just did this last week when i was traveling i started the five pound dumbbells and i'll do um like five pound uh double dumbbell front squats okay yeah i'll do five of those and i'll go to the 10 pound 15 20 i'll work my way all the way up to the 50s and when i get to the 50s or if they're 70s wherever there is then i'll do five of those and then I'll go to the 10 pound, 15, 20. I'll work my way all the way up to the fifties. And when I get to the fifties or if they're seventies,

whatever there is, they'll do the same thing. But next it's with a one arm presses, 10, 15, 20. So that's, but my favorite kind of go to, if I'm just like to jump in and do a workout is, um, three rounds of Cindy, uh, and a 400 meter run. And move through that as many times you want okay i feel like it gets everything there's again you don't need it i like the idea of like what you're doing with the self like things you can jump into that you don't need a warm-up right

like and you can kind of do basically brain dead and not hurt and not hurt yourself yeah basically i'm at 51 i'm just trying not to hurt myself. 51, Savant? I did not know. Yeah, crazy, right? Whoa. Looking good, man. I shaved a little bit or else I'd have looked 75. This comes in gray. As you can see on the sides, too, it's like I'm like a reverse skunk.

Ben, this is the third time I think you've been on the show? Sounds right. On this particular show. And great podcast for those of you who didn't listen to them. Some of the more – some of the things that I like Ben for, superficial as they may be. Author of the book Chasing Excellence. First coach in the CrossFit space. He wasn't the first coach.

Shut the fuck up. He's close enough if he was or if he wasn't the first coach shut the fuck up he's close enough if he was or if he wasn't he's one of the first coaches we'll get into that in a second uh coach of the um uh the only coach in the history of crossfit space to have two champions uh in one year uh two crazy dominant skillful uh uh athletes uh matt fraser and kat Katrin David's daughter. And when I was in the back, him and Matt O'Keefe, when I would film the behind the scenes every year at the games, we formed what I would think was a unique and pleasant and kind of charming, simple relationship. I would see them. It was always nice.

We would kind of, I would congregate with them. I would kind of, that's where I would take my breaks we would eat these i would pass these out yep i remember that's amazing except they were the green ones then yes the green ones i don't have the green ones here i apologize um and and and then and then you went on and i knew your wife actually before you because i went to uh i'm i, uh, through the same thing. She was a top 10, uh, CrossFit games athlete. Um, I went to the IMG Academy with her, uh, early on with a handful of other athletes. And I, I bonded with her there, a great lady, um, Heather. And then I also actually ironically, or not ironically, but interestingly enough, I had the chance to work with one of your daughters every year um who just you know every once in a while you meet a cool kid

not a lot of them uh and she was cool as shit so i would get up at five in the morning meet at the hotel and me and her and nicole christiansen would jump in dave's car and spend the next 15 hours together. We did that. It's crazy. She was so cool. It's Maya and she's 23. 23! She's been to 12 straight CrossFit

games at age 23 and worked for HQ for all of those. What does she do now that Dave's not should say for not she did not work for hq she worked for hq or for us in comp train what is she doing she worked for us now so she does all logistics for the athletes like uh rental cars flights hotel setting up body work um getting meals all that stuff oh i'm so sorry maya maya i i hear you we were at the top and now we're fucking we were at the top maya uh you know hanging with tdc So I've had a lot of nostalgia over the last couple little bit. And you started off with that behind the scenes, literally the Savant behind the scenes of those years of like 2012 to 2016-ish.

Those are pretty cool years, Savan. I felt like I was really a part of something really special that was growing, I wouldn't say exponentially, but certainly linearly every single year. And looking back on it, it was, it was true. Like those were really amazing years. And, you know, I, I, I've tried to piece together why they felt so special and not to, you know, make, give you any more accolades than you need. But a big part of that was what you were doing with that behind the scenes. You think about what all the sports are doing now.

I say all the sports, but golf with full swing, F1 with drive to survive, tennis with point break. They're giving all of the viewers access behind the scenes to insight into what happens in these athletes lives in normal every day leading up to and at and during the biggest competitions and you and hq were doing that 10 years ago they're all just starting to do it now we were 10 years ago. They're all just starting to do it now. We were 10 years ahead of the curve. And that's a real, I think that's why it was so easy to feel like you were a part of something,

even if you were kind of like tangentially a part of this thing. You're just like getting into it as a fan because you got access to these athletes like you would never get in other sports. And for what it's worth it that doesn't exist anymore we you know but then we had fittest film road to the games and savans behind the scenes and that that kind of like trifecta you got you got engrossed into this because you got to meet the personality tour ben i don't remember that i'm sorry the road to the games was insane that was heber marzen and mariah the fittest

films what was that you know like uh um world's fittest the oh okay so they would do those documentaries the documentary like dubai and okay okay yeah okay yeah you know um and it was really that was an amazing amazing time and it was because of the meat you know it was because of a lot of things but the media was i think at the forefront of it sorry i know what you're talking about we would do the yearly documentaries correct okay and then we had road to the games correct and then we had the behind the scenes. That access to the athletes in our sport, it was unprecedented then. I mean the best – the closest I can think that came up to it was like the ultimate fighter for UFC. But that was only one show, and we were putting out three.

That's pretty cool. and we were putting out three. That's pretty cool. And I don't mean to dog on the UFC, but the road to the games was a thousand times better than UFC's Embedded. Now, I know they do Embedded 12 times a year, but Kieber and Mars, before every pay-per-view event,

they have like a pay-per-view event every month. And then the week prior to the pay-per-view event, you you get to there's a 10-minute video that comes out every day oh got it where you're like back there with them while they're trying to lose weight or facetiming with their kids shit like that hey um during during that time um there were athletes who gave me um uh and coaches that gave me more access than others i i nothing for uh nefarious reasons i think it was strictly i don't know what the reason why is actually but there were people like josh bridges rich froning um katrin david's daughter annie thor's daughter um there were just athletes uh benny gerard uh travis mayor um um usually men it was a it was rare that the women

would would be as open as the men not that they were closed off but they were uh they were wound a little bit tighter the women would you say that's true the women were wound a little bit tighter at the event generally speaking i would say generally speaking yes but there were people like catrin and annie who were not wound so they they were more like kind of dudes they could shoot the shit crack jokes um yeah i mean competition's hard and because competition's hard it it tugs on emotions and i think that females in okay, blast me if you want to, but I think they're more emotional than most of the guys are. And the guys probably deal with stress a little bit differently than women do. And that's probably why they get a little more closed off.

And that's probably why they get a little more closed off. But there's a reason that I enjoyed coaching Katja as much as I did because she wasn't that type of athlete as well. I had never thought of this, but I've seen a lot of men start doing the weird yawning shit or like Matt go over to the bushes and start gagging. I never actually saw any women do that. They just go way in. They seem like they would go way inside, whereas the men would sort of express it more like, I mean, Josh would just start talking crazy shit.

Josh was entertaining. Yeah, Rich would talk some crazy shit. Matt Fraser would start, you know, like feel like he's going to throw up. So yeah, maybe women internalize it and then it comes out. But did you ever see any women going over to the bushes and gagging or having any kind of those outward manifestations? Maybe Sam Briggs talked – she got a little talkative, Chatty Cathy. Yeah.

It's funny that when the guys feel stressed, they get chatty. Cause you know, I think that I'm the opposite of that. Um, and the women, I think it just, they manifest the emotions more.

Like, I don't think you see as many guys crying between events and that's not a rare thing for the female side at all. So I think it's just the way it it comes about you know someone in the comments wrote um uh ben bergeron's doing a um media tour i do i do it does seem like he's been on a lot of shows ben did not contact me by the way i reached out to ben and suza reached out to ben and asked him to um come the show. So he, it's not like he's, I don't know.

It doesn't matter whether he is or isn't, but I just wanted to be clear. A wad zombie, a zero access to athletes. Now, unless you run them down on the way to the athlete area, Ben, this was not how the show was supposed to start.

You said in your interview with talking elite fitness that you think crossfit i want to use your exact words because maybe we're on the same page but i think we're not on the same page you think it's the most stable it's it's ever been um and i think it's the least stable it's ever been yeah it's it's and so i was like wow this that's a cool um i'm i'm open i'm open to it being the most stable okay and i'm open to having a proximity bias to things that would make me think that it's the least stable but but i'm so curious what how and why we see it so differently or what you use as a as a marker for thinking it's the most stable i could be mischaracterizing what you're saying i'm not quoting you maybe you didn't use the word stable um if i use the word stable that was probably that was probably misspoken okay because i don't believe it's most stable i believe that

they have as good of a foundation for the competitive season as they've ever had okay okay and you know what you did say it has the best foundation it's had, and then you didn't say for the competitive season, but all the examples you gave were in regards to the competitive season. I want to say something to scratch your back here, and you said something so fascinating there that I'd never fucking heard before. When this year and last year, I don't know if it's the year before,

but 10% of all the best open athletes individual go on to the quarter finals. Yep. And you say something in that interview, I think it's with Tommy or you say with Patrick Cummings that maybe it is Patrick Cummings. You say, how fantastic is that because now we have 10 of the people now these are my words i'm twisting your words a little bit who think they're competitive no that's my words oh okay i thought you said who are competitive i'm i threw and think they're competitive but um that's fucking great and you're like who wouldn't want that i'm like yeah that is

great yeah so i actually think it's great. So it's what they've done is they've exactly that. So this is why I think the foundation, so let's, I'm, I'm happy to sit on this one for a little bit. I think that the competitive season is established. I don't think that they, everyone's talking about like,

they need to have the tour. Like it's bringing Dubai and what a Palooza, which one is all this. We have the, the, the funnel. to have the tour like they should bring in dubai and water palooza we should go on this all this we have the the the funnel you have the open literally the biggest as far as i know biggest participatory events in the world then that goes boils down to a quarters semis and games four stages like i don't think we need a whole lot more than that. We could talk about it. But what they've done a phenomenal job of is prior to this, there was only the people that were trying to get to semifinals that were, quote, competitive athletes. Which is, I mean, you could throw all those people into my gym. Like it's a tiny number. And what they've done with the quarterfinals

is said top 10%. So everyone's striving for that. And if you make that, you're a competitive athlete. Like that's, and that's a cool thing to be all identify as, but it's not only, here's what, it's not only the 10%, because if you finished and they've done this percent, you get a percentile ranking. Now you're in the 19th percentile. Those people are not going, Oh, I'm not competitive. They're going, Oh, next year I'm on 19th percentile. I didn't realize I was even that close next year. I can make it to quarterfinals. And what they've done is they've given them a carrot.

We don't want someone to chase. It's like, we all want it's a dopamine it's the it's the goal it's the we want that accolade we want that um that achievement and we want to be able to to take the next step up the competitive ladder so what they've done for all these people is we've gone from a few hundred athletes to, if there's literally from a few hundred athletes that make the semifinals to not just 10% of 400,000, but 20% of 400,000, they went from a few hundred athletes to 80,000 athletes that identify as competitive. Meaning all the ones who made it inside the fence and then the ones who are clinging to the fence. Exactly right. Okay.

That's a big thing. Now, that's what I mean in terms of the foundation has probably never been as solid in terms of a season. In terms of the actual games. The business is unraveling, I think. They're in trouble. unraveling. I think like, like, like, like they got, they're in trouble.

I believe, I think, I believe. All right. So here's, we just talked about this from the first few years of the games were neat, interesting, fun,

right? So, you know, we can kind of call that like CrossFit Games 1.0. And I would say- It was a crazy party. It was meeting people that you saw their scores in the blog. And I would say that that would even carry through to the first year at the StubHub Center. Sure, fair. You know, so 2010, you know, when Reebok came in, we'll call it 11, 12, 13.

Like that's a big step up instead of the winner getting, you know, a $500 gift card to Rogue. You know, it's like this is something that these guys can live off of for a year. And I would call that 2.0. And 2.0 was dope to be a part of because it was you doing the media stuff every year the the soccer stadium is getting fuller the tennis stadium is full and it was still gritty it was still like some fuck you foot thrown around yeah because it was still like it was still like you think you're the best come and prove it here you know yeah yeah so that was a really – and I would say that was like 2012 to 2016-ish. That was – again, I really believe a lot of that had to do with the media that was surrounding this thing and interest.

So I would call that CrossFit Games 2.0. I would say CrossFit Games 3.0 is Madison. I would say CrossFit Games 3.0 is Madison. And I would say that if we're in 3.5 or 4 right now, I don't know. I haven't seen much growth. I really haven't. I mean, from 2017 to today. And yeah, there's an asterisk in there with COVID because COVID messed things up. But we're past that now.

I think it's been flatline at best and probably down. And, you know, there's a chance there might be half as many affiliates now, Ben, as there were in 2018. Well, let's just stay on the game thing. I forget about the affiliates, but but just on the game side of things. Well, don't you think that's the fuel for it? No, I don't.

Okay. I don't. I think that this is a sport. So I don't think the NFL relies on Pop Warner. I just don't. I don't think the NFL relies on high school football. The NFL is the NFL, and they're going to get the freaks and the monsters, and as long as they're putting on a great broadcast,

the big overweight dad sipping the, you know, not sipping chugging the bud lights in the parking lot and going in and losing their minds. And that's going to be there. And I feel like it's the same thing with if, if CrossFit's relying on the affiliate model to support the games, I think that's totally misguided.

Now I think that they need to rely on the affiliate model to support CrossFit. That's like the business model is get people to get affiliated and take certifications. It used to be a three-headed, this is my take from the outside, the revenue streams were three legs of the stool. The affiliates paying their yearly affiliate licensing fee, getting people to take the seminars from level one to level four and all the SME specialty certs.

And back then it was signing up for the CrossFit Journal. The games was revenue. It just wasn't profit. You could throw the games in there too. It generated a shitload of revenue, but just no profit. It was a wash, right? Bring in $30 million and throw out $30 million.

We disagree wholeheartedly on there. I don't think the NFL does exist without Pop Horner, but I don't want to turn this whole show into that. Why? No, let's tell me about that um i i i think if you just if you made football so that um uh it's it's the funnel it's the funnel it's a it's a it's a it's a i don't want to say it's an organic funnel but but it's an organic funnel the the pop Warner, the high school football, the college football, all of that is the same as our L1 training affiliates wanting to work out. The soccer mom is going to the gym.

I think it's all – that's what it is. And that's why I think events do so – events that miss that piece do so poorly. So I think that's why regionals did so well because they really attracted the funnel. No, I think regionals did so well because they were regionals. Right, right. And that's one of the pieces that attracted them to the funnel, that they were regional. Right, so meaning – So that all of the addictives could come.

I could drive to that thing so yeah we're in massachusetts regionals was in albany new york a two-hour drive people could day trip it or overnight it now our athletes go to orlando nope like we had four people from our gym go down to Orlando, whereas before we had 4D. And so I think everywhere in the United States, everywhere, there's a huge Pop Warner program, there's a huge high school program, there's a huge college program, and that those people are interested in professional football because of that. Yeah, I don't know. I think that –

You think that people go there – don't get me wrong. I don't want to poo-poo on the athleticism and the quarterbacks and all that. I think that – You think that people go there – Don't get me wrong. I don't want to poo-poo on the athleticism and the quarterbacks and all that. I love that. The sport needs the sport. Of course, we need a funnel for athletes. But we don't need the sport for fans. Like how many football fans played high school in football? My wife, Heather, loves to watch.

We don't miss a Patriots game. We watch every single minute of every single game. She's never put on pads before. So she's a fan even though she didn't play it. And that's why the NFL has done such a great job is they're not just looking for people that play the sport. We're never going to get there that way. If the goal is 100 million people – UFC.

I don't agree with you there, by the way. I don't think how we look – I don't agree with you there about maybe we never get there, by the way. No, we can get there. We're not going to get there if we're relying on the people that are going to be our fans need to be doing this thing. we're relying on the people that are going to be our fans need to be doing this thing. We need to get the people outside of our sport. Like golf is doing like formula one, formula one exists,

right? Formula one, no one's doing formula one, right? Right. Exactly. Right. But everyone does drive a car.

Fine. Everybody, everyone squats, everyone presses things above their head. Right. Right, right. So I wish I could offer you one. I wish I could offer you one.

Can you smell my breath through this? Is that no, I never offered it to you because I could smell your breath too. You guys were too tall. I never smell your breath. Hey, um, I,

I, the, the, the three of the most sports that I thought were the most boring sports in the history of the world with golf, baseball, and tennis. And my kids play tennis, and I'm fascinated by tennis now.

Tennis is a cool game. Yeah, I'll stop if I like it. But tennis is doing the thing, right? They have point break. They're getting you behind the scenes. They're telling the story of the athletes. They're pumping media into this thing. So here's like that – back to that full circle.

pumping media into this thing. So here's like that back to that full circle. I think it's time for, because we've been flatlined for seven years and probably track churning down. I feel like CrossFit HQ has had the shot to do this thing. It's not happening. I think that they should spin this thing off, license it out to a, a media company like IMG

or like what, you know, when Dana White came in, he eventually turned the UFC into a media company. They could just bring me back. Ben, they could bring me back and I could change it in three years. No, you're not enough. You're help, but you're not enough. I could do it in three years.

I could run the media department for three years and the whole thing would be fucking – Or like what F1 has done. F1 sold to a media company and they create this drive to survive. I'm disgusted that you don't think I'm enough. Live Golf just bought the PGA. Or you sell this one of these massive sports funds that are pumping money into the growth of these sports that understand also we might need just like golf did not a wholesale

revamp but we need to get some new ideas into how this thing is broadcast broadcasts because watching regionals watching a lot of the events is not um it's not exciting unless you know what they're actually doing because you do this thing do you know who's in charge of media at crossfit hq do you know them do you know who Yeah. I don't know. It is – I say this with zero respect, but all sincerity. It is the dumbest, most unqualified, incapable, worst visionary, angry, egomaniac simpletons I've ever known in my life. It is so – and I – it's beyond bad. I don't even know – I feel sorry for Don because I like Don. Yeah. It's like – it's bad.

It's like seeing someone wetting their pants up on stage and they don't know it. Extra sloppy. Congrats and good luck, Ben. Hey, but either way, the discussion that we're having needs to happen. I don't. And the cool thing is that both of those – whatever the root is, both what you and I are suggesting could be done at the same time with no ill effects. The community can be supported internally more, and that could be presented to the outside world better simultaneously. I'm not saying – yeah, we need to support the affiliates as well.

That needs to happen in a big, big way. I've yet to see it. I think that overseas they are getting a little more support. I talked to affiliate owners over there and like the, the model is set up a little bit better over there, I believe, but you know, I would love to see,

I think that's what HQ should be, should be in place for is to support the affiliates. That's what the model seems to be. Yeah. CompTrain. Tell me what CompTrain is, please. Yeah. CompTrain is a training platform for people that believe training hard is a necessary ingredient to be the best

versions of themselves when i uh yesterday i listened to uh three podcasts you were on and or three interviews you did in the last like doing research in the last week and this is what i my one of my takeaways you are at first my takeaway is oh he's he he's gonna he wants to build comp train into uh crossfit 2.0 uh community affiliates programming but the but i never saw i never saw where the competition was and then that then i as i started know, walking around my house last night, I'm like, Oh, that's why you're so excited about this 10% because Comtrain isn't about starting CrossFit 2.0 necessarily. Although it will be positioned to do that poised to do that. If something were to happen to CrossFit, what you're interested in doing is catering to – the reason why you're putting Cole in charge of these few is because you want to pull out a bigger net and cater to these 20%, to these 80,000 people.

And I think if I heard you right, it's not the people who do CrossFit three days a week, and it's not the elite CrossFitters. It's that swath in between. That's exactly right. Okay. Minus the, um, the CrossFit 2.0. I love CrossFit. I hope CrossFit thrive. I'm a CrossFit affiliate. I've been a disciple and supporter. You know, this from like from day one, it's been a long, long time. And the reason I want to speak critically about it is because I want to see the improvements. I want it to thrive. I want this thing to be something that I'm so proud to be a part of. And CompTrain can coexist with them for sure. It's the bigger pie, not who's getting what slice. But you're also correct in I want to create a platform that

has the ability to speak to people in that, yes, we still want to help people get to and hopefully win the CrossFit Games. That doesn't go away. But we want to use this platform to help people, regardless of what your goals are, if it's to summit a 4,000 peak, if it's to do BJJ, if it's to be a better soccer dad, if it's to push off to crepitude and disease, if it's to have a six pack, if it's to run a sub eight minute mile, whatever, it's a platform that you can use to become the best physical version of yourself. And here's one of the ways we're doing that. That's a little bit unique that has not been done yet is I'm a big believer that when people do things together, they go farther, they go faster. It's a reason that, you know, armies march together in unison. They found that when, I mean, what a bad model, right?

Like you're just a sitting duck. You're like in formation, like just drop one, you know, RPG. And the whole thing goes, why would you ever do that? Why would you not scatter? And everyone get there together because they found that when they go together, they go farther and faster. If we train together, we will get results better. Siobhan, if me and you are doing, and CrossFit figured this out on day one, but if we do the same workout of the day,

that level of, call it what you want, camaraderie or competition will make us go just a little bit harder, will give us a little bit more accountability, will give us a little bit harder will give us a little bit more accountability will give us a little bit more incentive to show up tomorrow i was working out yesterday in the garage and in the middle of the workout i had something i needed to write down for this podcast i was going to do with you and if there was someone in the room i would have never done that exactly since no one was watching i stopped my workout so here's what and wrote it down so we now we have this two-fold approach so it's that's the first one that We need to start with that principle. If you go farther together, farther, faster.

Okay, from there – With the presupposition that that's better, which I'm okay with. Okay, from there, we have to have this understanding that people train in different environments. Some people are training in the garage like you are. Some people are training in an affiliate like I am. Sixty percent of our users train in their garage. So – Oh, training in affiliate like i am 60 of our users train in their garage so oh we use comp train users comp train yep okay so how do we get them to train together well you have to create a platform and the the way to do that is if we get

them in real life awesome we'll get there in a second but we got to create a platform that they're doing the same workouts together cool so we've we've done that. So every day, this is not revolutionary at all, but everyone's doing the same thing. But you might have, you know, like you said, 30 minutes at 11 o'clock before you go to bed, I might have two hours that I've carved out in the morning. How do we get to do the same thing? Well, what we've done is instead of of because you're doing Brazilian jujitsu and I'm trying to train to fight off disease and be a great soccer dad, not that you're not doing that as well. We can do the same thing because when you come into the platform, it asks you how much time do you have to train today? And it's going to give you the most impactful training session that you

have for the time that you have. And we're going to give you the most impactful training session that you have for the time that you have. And we're going to overlap that as much as possible, starting with the most impactful thing. And then from there, you go out towards the accessory work and the other tangential things that we can kind of like build into this thing. So now we have people training in different spots, doing the same thing based off of how much time they have available. And you could do 30 minutes today and two hours tomorrow and the train is not going to bump and run into each other. Now what you have is people potentially doing this in their garages, but we have hundreds and hundreds of CompTrain affiliates, like CompTrain CrossFit gyms, Comptrain affiliates, like Comptrain CrossFit gyms,

Comptrain gyms that follow our programming. So you can find these gyms. It's really cool. You can find these gyms on our app. And now this person that's been doing this in their garage can go, oh my God, I didn't realize there was a Comptrain gym nine miles from me. And vice versa, you have somebody in the affiliate following this that now has access to so much more of a platform than they would get just in their app. So we have a,

in the app, you have a worldwide platform and a gym platform that you can toggle between the two. And. Oh, you got it. And in this, so you can be like, Hey, I'm just going to message board inside my affiliate.

I'm going to check out the leaderboard inside my affiliate. But I also want to jump out and see how I rank in the worldwide leaderboard. I want to jump out and see Ben's mindset minute that he like every single day posts. I want to jump out and check out the university and learn more things that, you know, what might help me make me a better athlete, a better person. So now you're part of something bigger than just the affiliate as well. So it's kind of this layered approach of it starts with, we got to do these things together, but understanding people are doing this in different environments and giving the people this opportunity to overlap into a bigger community that speaks the same truths.

And we don't say the same truths as everybody, but we do believe certain things. And if you believe those things, this is a place for you. And the reason why you are shifting positions is to dedicate more time to this vision as opposed to being just locked in on a handful of athletes. Yeah, I've spent the last 15 years in a full-time job working with four to six athletes at a time. And on one end, you got Chris Spieler, Becca Voigt. I think Becca was maybe the first 10-time athlete. Michelle LaTondra. And then in more modern times, you had Fraser, Katrin, Brooke Wells, Cole Sager.

Yep. In in your interview with Patrick Cummings, Patrick Cummings says something to you like Comtrain has been through a lot of changes in the last 15 years and you stop him. And I think you switched to the word, not changes. Uh, it's an evolution. And there, it, you, as you, you had a shitload of high profile athletes in the last, I don't know. Well, I guess since the beginning, there wasn't anyone more high profile than in the last I don't know I guess since the beginning there wasn't anyone more high profile than

Spieler right as that camp got really big and then it seemed and this is just from the outside that there was a bit of an exodus that it was Chandler Miss Katrin

Amanda even the head coach Pally pally pally harry yep harry um uh i don't know if i said chandler smith man of honor there seemed uh sam quant there seemed like that there was a brookwell's there like that there was just a lot of athletes who left was is that hard well a couple questions did something happen there did you guys change your vision was there a fight why do athletes shift was it not is it being mischaracterized to say that it was all of a sudden um and is that hard for you like because once you get to the top there's no i mean there's nowhere to go but down after you have Katrin and Fraser, if your metric is champions. Mm-hmm.

Right? Yep. Yeah, so I would say that, you know, okay, was it all of a sudden? No. Chris Spieler left. Chris Spieler retired. Becca left. Becca continued to compete. Chris Spiller retired.

Becca left. Becca continued to compete. So it wasn't that this all of a sudden thing. I think it's the nature of – I mean the guys towards the end. I mean like Daquant, Katrin, Chandler. There's this narrative that, oh shit, something went wrong over there. Yeah. We did shift gears.

The company did. The company did. Okay. Yep. So it was mutual. There was less of a place for them. There was less of a place for them maybe. Or it wasn't as elite athlete centric uh no it was still

elite athlete centric and i think that we you know we did a pretty darn good job even like and you did i don't mean to poo-poo it yeah no no uh but like um you know uh two games ago we had two silver place finishes. And who were those? Katrin and, um, Sam. Right. You know, so, um, so we, but, but, but I don't want to beat around the bush. So here's, let's, let's talk like, um, we had a really nice trajectory, a really nice run where we were lead dog and we were in what I would call a blue ocean. Meaning we could kind of like play around and do what we wanted to do.

And there wasn't a lot of competition. That's the nature of the reality of the situation. competition. They're just, that's, that's the nature of the reality of the situation. You know, I say that there wasn't a lot, but there was, and people just don't remember this. Even when we, you know, I'm, I'm getting a lot of credit for starting the first camps. I don't think that's, I was, I was one of the first, but back in the day it was Comp Train, OPEX, and Rudy's thing. What was his? Outlaw. Outlaw.

Right. So those were the original ones. Comp Train just happened to outlast those guys in this space a little bit. But then it became Comp Train, Invictus, and NorCal. And those were like the things. And then NorCal and I don't want to say Invictus didn't, but Invictus put more effort into team stuff. I would, I'll just say that, but CJ is still doing a great job. NorCal went into the affiliate side of things. And then it became

more comp, then, you know, they kind of went away and it became more like comp train, brute, and probably, and Mayhem was always there i was gonna say mayhem mayhem kind of mayhem this was when mayhem started to come about was when um you know rich was kind of like towards the end of his individual career and starting the team thing mayhem started to pop up then it became um mayhem stuck Brute is still in the game. But the bigger ones became HWPO, Proven, those type of things. And those two are so new that we don't even know if they're going to be flashing the pan. So we just don't know.

So I'm not saying that they will be. I think Matt's putting a lot of energy and effort into this. I think that he's doing a phenomenal job. Shane is a great games coach. I don't think Tia would be where she is today without Shane. So I think that they – I don't think that they'll be flashes in the pan. What I want to – what we try to do was – One bad tweet, Ben, and they're gone.

One bad tweet. What my vision was because I saw where the sport was going, and this is 2019-ish, just before we had two Silver Place finishes, was let's go really deep into these individual athletes. Let's really do this thing. So instead of doing this with just Katrin here, we invited these athletes to move here. To help support the athletes through the move, we tried to help them. We gave them monthly stipends to help with pay. And to do that, we took on some money and we went and we hired a CEO to help try to create an academy. And we really tried to make this thing really, really professional.

When we did that, we lost our way a little bit. We lost the ethos of what we had been from day one. And we became a little bit corporate and we became a little bit bottom line centric. When you're in the midst of it, you don't see it in real time. It takes some hindsight and perspective to realize where you are and what you're in the midst of it, you don't see it in real time. It takes some hindsight and perspective to realize where you are and what you're doing. And the sport also didn't grow, um, in line with the vision and the plan that we had. So had, you know,

I thought I right before COVID, I was like, this thing's going, like we were on this upward trajectory. Bigger brands were coming to the space, Monster and all this other stuff. And we were just early and the sport flatlined. And we couldn't get the, as we were spinning to more like this growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. as we were spinning to more like this growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, it, it, it wasn't us and we couldn't support the athletes the way that we wanted to. So there's a misalignment of expectations and reality, and that's never a positive thing and athletes left because it wasn't this academy thing that we were hoping to build. And I was getting torn between being a full-time coach and trying to get the business to be where the business needs to be to support an academy type situation

and this is why i've spun back into what is the best way we can do to move this thing forward the right way and to find a blue ocean which um i think that we are doing a really good job in putting the right people in the right spots and it's cole taking over elite coaching and it's me going back to um turning the comp train business into what i believe it can and should be um thank you for sharing all that would you even use the word there was a a cultural change during that hiccup? 100%. Did this process wound you? Yeah. Yeah, it wounded you.

Yeah. The way you described it sounded like it wounded you. Yeah. I want to be… Like you got hurt. I want to build something awesome. Yeah i i want to build something awesome yeah that's i i want to build something amazing that's my like dream that's my litmus test like am i proud of this thing um and when we went into growth mode which was intentional it was a conscious decision

it was like i had the conversation with har conscious decision. It was like, I had the conversation with Harry, the business partner. It was like, hey, do we want to keep this thing, this lifestyle business, which is awesome and amazing. And we both knew it at the time. And we could, hey, we sat down. I can remember the lunch that we had. We had this amazing- Harry's the coach, right? Okay. And he's the guy that helped me build this thing. And we had this conversation of, do we want to continue to do this as a lifestyle thing? Or do we want to moonshot this and go? And we were like, let's, let's, I was like, we, and we both decided we've, we've built

an amazing lifestyle business. Let's see if we can do this thing. because it's a challenge and we love challenges. So we went for it and we hired a CEO, a CMO, a CFO, a head of business development. We hired the entire C-suite. We went from six employees to 19. Wow. Wow. In six months.

And that's when things shifted. And today we're back to six employees. We have contractors. Wow, that must be a crazy. We're back to six. Are you ever going to tell that whole story in detail? I feel like I'm doing it now, but like, I guess there's a lot of stuff between the lines you are doing it you are doing it um uh was it hard wrestling it back did you say wrestling it wrestling yeah i've always wanted to say it like that like right instead of wrestling wrestling yeah it's super hard yeah yeah it's crazy like um you the hardest but you did get it back did you almost lose comp train yep probably yep fuck dude are you out are you out the other side uh i don't think if you're if you're running a business the right way i don't think you should ever feel like you're out the other side it's kind of like it's's like in 2017 was CrossFit out the other side.

I think everyone would have gone, yup. Like, yup. Right, right, right. You know, like Noble. Is Noble out the other side? Everyone would go, yup. Just laid off 30%, right? Yeah.

Like, I don't think, and it's the same thing if you're an athlete. Should you ever go like, okay, we're there. We made it. Like, Matt does that for one year and he's not the champion, you know, a gazillion years in a row. So, are we out the other side? No. I'm going to say no, and I hope that I never say yes. Okay.

Fair enough. Wow. That's a fucking journey. You've had – hey, that sounds like you had a really stressful two years. Yeah, and that's the difference between, to me, that's one of the big differences between lifestyle and growth. And I'm a guy that wants to be, you know, my highest measure of success is on my deathbed looking back going,

did I do everything the right way, put my efforts and energy into the right things? And in order to do that, you have to live a life in line with your values and principles. And my values and principles is build awesome teams, build awesome individuals, build an awesome community. And during that time, I think we moved away from that a little bit. So that was stressful.

Yeah. Your story stressed me out. I'm not going to lie to you. Your story fucking stressed me out. But I'm so like, yeah. There's this saying once in your life. But I'm so like, yeah, how excited am I for this next evolution, this next thing? Because I couldn't believe, I couldn't imagine a more aligned brand, product, and community for what we're driving and striving to create right now. For what we're driving and striving to create right now, I don't know how else I can envision creating something that's exactly what I want to create.

Is part of it going back to your – well, you're not going back to your roots. Are you going back to roots? Yes, it's going back to roots. It is going back to roots. Yeah. I mean we went from six people to 19, and we're back to your roots are you going yes it's going back it is it is going back to roots yeah i mean we went from six people to 19 and we're back to six yeah you know we went from like let's build an awesome team let's build an awesome community let's uh make people feel incredibly valued and special when they come into this this little tribe this little network um that's 100 what we're trying to do again. This is going back a little bit.

Anthony TPA, has any athlete competed at the CrossFit Games that didn't start at an affiliate? You have to play ball at a small age to become elite in the pros. Matt Fraser. He didn't start at an affiliate? He trained in the back room of an affiliate. Jason Watkins, I disagree with Ben about a lot. He's hitting some cold hard facts today. Oh, that's so sweet.

That's so sweet. So sweet. Ben is still full of himself. I love it. I've sensed none of him being full of himself. What are you doing? What are you doing? Don't do that.

David Reed, Sevan is like your bitter ex-girlfriend. I want to validate i want to say that there's some there but i'm not i um i i don't i don't see it i fell so far behind in the comments because i like to put the people who pay i like to pull up their shit so now i'm like uh scrolling down okay here we go eaton beaver seven on any crossfit coach knows how you train based off how fast you feel fall apart in burpees with him seven oh okay this guy's saying seven on any crossfit coach knows how you train based how fast you fell apart in the burpees with hillary listen asshole i was fucking i'd been drinking all day make myself vulnerable and you tell me i have a

fucking world-class burpees 50 and two minutes last year on and go check my instagram ding dong that's the only thing i'm good at that's like telling me i'm fucking ugly when the only thing i have is my looks okay here we go let's like guys someone quit looking at comments and get back to the interview that this is the interview this is this is like the fun part everyone just gets to take a deep breath i scheduled another guest for three minutes i haven't fucking heard from him um ben you're excited you're invigorated i'm excited invigorated um why um why and you went public with this with the uh cole sager uh announcement as um uh head of training uh the elite athletes um was any party like hey let's just do it quietly let's

not announce it yeah yeah there's there's always that i uh that idea um but i i think it's always nice to align expectations. So I think it'd be strange if all of a sudden Ben wasn't showing up to events with his competitive athletes. That would seem weird. So why not just let everyone know? Then Ding Dongs on YouTube will start speculating. They'll start saying you have AIDS or something. Oh my God. Jesus. Then Ding Dongs on YouTube will start speculating. They'll start saying you have AIDS or something. I'm excited for you. I've always appreciated your transparency.

I think – I've always thought your heart was in the right place. Yeah, I'm stoked for you. You said something in one of the interviews, I think it was with Talking Elite Fitness or Patrick, where you said relationships are really important to you. And that's cool. I think that that's a good moral compass to keep people, as long as you can maintain your integrity. By no means am I saying

that you ever didn't do that, but your buddy Matt O'Keefe's good at that too. I've rubbed up against him in the wrong way a few times, and I could tell he values relationships. He's not willing to just burn relationships because someone, you know, accidentally peed on his campfire uh so anyway thanks for being you and uh i i hope to have you on again i'm excited for you and let me know if there's anything i can do for you you're killing it yeah you're a staple in the community and uh anyone who doesn't see that the the importance of having oak trees like you just continuing to just fucking dig roots in deeper is missing your value. You're vital.

It's a bunch of oak trees like that that's kind of keeping the hill from sliding into the ocean. Beautiful analogy. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, brother. Please say hi to your wife. Say hi to your daughter. And I'll talk to you soon.

Cool. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. Okay, bye. I could have had him on for two more hours. I mean, I don't know if he would have stayed. I'd have loved to have had him on for two more hours. Ben Bergeron. Wow.

I fucking love him. I like him. Oh, look. Holy shit. There he is. How are you? Will. Yeah. What's up, buddy?

Good to see you. Good. I was preparing for a no show has nothing to do it has nothing to do with who you are okay it's just in my own head my own uh short man insecurities my own insecurities no i was trying to get my um my better camera working but it's not so the mas bueno camera yeah yeah so but the the one on my computer seems pretty good ladies and gentlemen i'd like to introduce you to william ruch ruch thank you but look we're already uh simpatico we're already working together will ruch has some serious uh issues like myself um he wants to be open and yet uh he keeps uh he's he's just

tripping balls on what the democrats are doing he wants to be open he wants to be so fucking bad he wants to be uh his interviews are like all the people that i dream to interview um uh an affinity for black women tons of black women guests that's true fucking a i mean uh really for some reason for some reason i don't know why some of the most powerful creatures on the planet happen to be women vaginas with melanated skin like this lady what was this lady oh megan mcglover yeah what a beast powerhouse uh uh lesbian woman uh accused of being a homophobe uh where does she show up on mr williams uh podcast um uh hot wife you got a hot like like porter wigan wife it's filipino yeah and you're kind of a dorky white dude so like you check that

box he got this cool lady coolest shit uh talking to her about what it's like being a uh a melanated vagina that's conservative brit caldwell yeah britney caldwell yeah she's a fellow teacher yeah oh she is at a public school yes public school in atlanta but she left last year yeah she was of course she did a three-year national average for public school teachers what a shame yeah okay so here you had someone on here you had someone on we'll dig into this lady this was uh i had problems with her bronteonte Rebzik. Oh, my God. How did you get her – there comes a point where I like you, and it starts swerving over into jealousy. Like, William.

Oh, Africa? Africa Brooke? How are you getting these people on your show? And the list goes on and on. He got a picture in here with Jordan Peterson just swinging just swinging his dick around um yeah you you you are absolutely killing it okay now that we've established that let's go back a little bit okay um where were you born bethlehem pennsylvania like eastern pennsylvania okay yeah and uh and and you have kids i I do. I have three sons. No shit.

Me too. Yeah? We really are alike. Oh, shit. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away?

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Let us help you plan every detail with professionalism and compassion. We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at DignityMemorial.ca. Wow. Two six-year-olds and an eight-year-old. Oh, my gosh. I have an eight and a six and then a one. Holy cow.

Yeah, I just didn't have the twins. But, yeah, I have an eight and a six, too. Oh, Holy cow. Yeah. You see, I just didn't have the twins, but yeah, I have an eight and a six too. Oh my goodness. I had no idea. What a shitty researcher. And, um,

and, and were you married, but did you, are they all with the same girl? Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations. Very traditional.

And were you married before you had kids? Uh, we were, yeah. Wow. I didn't do that. I, I got a pregnant, i got it pregnant first

and i'm glad i'm married are you glad you're married absolutely yeah yeah we got a good thing going so far yeah i'm crazy glad i'm married i didn't think i would um i didn't think i would enjoy it and And your parents, are your parents first generation? Are your parents immigrants? No, no. We're like way, way, way, way back. Like pre-revolution. Like super American.

Yeah. Are they still together? Yeah, they're still together. They broke up for a couple years because they're crazy, but then they got back together, yeah. Oh, congratulations. And do you have siblings? I do. I have one older sister. She's two years older than me lives in me too me too really me too older sister two years

older i'm 51 how old are you 40 40 oh so you had kids kind of young yeah either that or i had them old and i'm not willing to say that so you you're gonna have to you're gonna have to take that one is it how old's your wife uh my wife is i'm 51 and she's three years younger than me okay three years that's not too bad makes her four yeah 48 or 49 oh okay yeah she um i had my first kid when I was 43, and she was 39. Yeah. Yeah. But we CrossFit.

Like, we can make kids to wear 70. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's kind of been a little bit debunked, like the idea of, like, 40, you need to stop. I don't think that's true. I don't know if that was ever really a thing, but. Some people just shouldn't have kids, by the way. If you're not sure, me a picture of uh you and

your wife uh working out together and i'll tell you if you should have kids let's keep that keep those genes going uh and uh quiet david i'm i'm glad i'm glad i'm not married shut up shut just shut just quiet no one asked you um you had them old seve stop i did not and um and you were raised a democrat your teacher i'm gonna guess your parents were teachers no my parents weren't teachers but they were democrats um yeah i was raised democrat i mean when you're young i think especially i teach politics i think it's just like well i want to be a good person and the good people are the ones on the left so i'll lean there i think that's that's what i was taught too the message yeah and what did your parents do what were their vocations um my mom was a social worker so she

worked like foster care like helping them get homes and then my dad was like a like a human resources guy for a big uh big hospital company and um and you knew from a young age you were democrat like when they would do like the mock elections at school and they would be like do you are you voting for yeah i don't think i i honestly i don't think i thought about it much i think i was just like i i didn't give politics a second thought i had no interest in it when i was like like 16 17 like i don't give a shit who's running for president i was worried about like getting a pimple or like getting a cute girl to look at me right me too god yeah exactly like yeah did i have a full tank of gas and what's this pimple doing yeah like politics is not really i didn't see it relating to my life in any way like if this guy

got in the presidency is my life going to get better or worse like i didn't see it relating to my life in any way. Like if this guy got into presidency, is my life going to get better or worse? Like I didn't connect any of those dots. Are you still, are you still a school teacher? Yeah. And, and so you're able to have that Instagram account and be, are you at a school teacher?

You're a private school. I'm at a private school now. That's, that's the trick. Not just that I'm at a religious private school. That is really open they already have an ideology so when i push back on especially like woke stuff yeah letters come out to the school they find out where i where i teach and they send letters or emails or whatever

and then my school just like crumbles them up and throws them away i'm very very lucky that's part of why i'm doing i'm doing is because i I have a big network of teachers that can't speak out about the craziness. So, like, I do it because I can. Because I don't know. There's not many teaching positions that can do what I do and talk about the things that I talk about. Trans issues and stuff like that. Like, asking questions about the trans issues. Like, you're not allowed to do that at most schools.

Even private schools. Especially, like, the elite. I'm in L.A. in la so like the elite west side like private schools no way you get fired dude you're in the fucking hive la is the hive 100 of of woke and insanity yeah wow that's that's that's amazing and it's are you jewish no. No. But you teach at a Jew school? I teach at a modern Orthodox Jewish school, yeah. My three boys are Jewish. Okay. So I teach three Jews, but they're homeschooled.

So I guess I'm a teacher like you, too. I teach Jews. You teach Jews. Yeah. Are there any non-Jews who go there? Nope. Not allowed. No, they're not allowed?

No, it's pretty strict. Racist. That sucks. there nope not allowed no they're not allowed no it's pretty it's pretty racist that sucks so you're telling me if i'm a fucking armenian but i don't want my kids going to the woke fucking uh public school i can't send them to the jew academy jewish if they you know either if their mom's jewish you know how it works like their mom or they uh or they whatever it is converted but that seems like a huge pain in the butt to convert so yeah no i mean it's part of it is so they're trying to keep it you know yeah they're trying to keep it within the tribe so you know they don't want their kid bringing home a maria or christopher you know what i mean like you want yeah bring home a Maya. Kudos to that school, man.

We need – and kudos to you for – keep going. This is a little personal. Are you independently wealthy? No, but my wife is like an entrepreneur. She makes the bulk of like our household income. Okay. entrepreneur she makes the bulk of of like our household income because okay because um but by no means am i um bill gates but if i didn't have the resources i have i couldn't sit on this little ledge yeah and throw rocks at the idiots i feel like because i have kids i feel like i have some

sort of obligation with the resources i have to stand on this ledge with a bow and arrow and fucking shoot down the bad shit. And if I didn't like, I, even though it seems inconsequential, I just fucking have to do it. Someone has to do it. And that's what I'm hearing what you do. You, for some reason have a big enough set of balls which maybe just means a little cushion of money which is your wife being an entrepreneur that you and you have three kids does that resonate with you that you kind of have a moral obligation to like okay is it okay you have to ask the tough questions yeah is it okay to generally mutilate a 12 year old boy when when i'd say it's those two things the fact that i'm at a a modern orthodox jewish school that is all about just like questions and education uh and they already

have an ideology and then um and then the fact that my wife you know makes a good living she's a hustler she's like you know a shark business woman in the beauty industry so those two things absolutely if it wasn't in that situation yeah I couldn't take the risk that I do. 100%. I'm always confused about the Jews because the Jews I was raised with, they're all fucking like psychologists. They're crazy woke. They're crazy woke. And, and I'm in, I'm in California also. And yet as I study more and more about Jewish culture, like recently I just learned that FDR, the great Democrat president who put – built internment camps and fucking circled up all the Japanese and took all their shit.

jews uh at ellis island who are fleeing fucking uh um germany in world war ii that he wouldn't fucking open up and it's like dude are you out of your fucking mind yeah they like turned away boats boats like came into florida and they were just like no head back head back what um so i'm confused do you have any idea why are so many jews democrats what where did they lose their way my whole one side of my whole family is jew democrats um yeah i mean i looked this up a while ago i forget exactly what it is um probably something along the lines of like a like a like a progressive kind of thing for when there was hardcore anti-semitism and like you're not allowed to come to these uh you know country clubs or you know we're not allowed to buy a house in these these communities and stuff like that that they aligned a lot with the civil rights movement like if you look at like martin luther king when he was marching in washington and stuff there are a lot of like

rabbis with him and stuff like that so i think that the jewish population uh aligned themselves with the civil rights movement and then when the civil civil rights acts were passed in like 64 by Johnson, it was that there was that classic quote of like, I'll have these guys voting Democrat for the next 200 years or whatever. Johnson said. So I think that there's an alignment with this is, I think it's in the black community too. It's like,

well, this is the party that gave us our civil rights. So we're going to stay loyal to them. Wow. Even though it wasn't. Yeah. Well, Johnson did it. I mean, but his reasons.

But the Democrats voted, more Democrats voted against it than Republicans voted against it. The Civil Rights Act? Yeah. Including Al Gore's dad voted against it his civil rights act yeah including al gore's dad voted against it yeah it's like still like the good old boy democrats hey if you had if you um so was there a time when you kind of woke up when you is there is there a moment where you were like uh-oh i'm not thinking clearly on this 100 yeah it was. It was when I married, it wasn't, I married my, uh, my wife. So she's from, you know, the Philippines, born in the Philippines, came here and it's a family of entrepreneurs.

Like they live 10 people in a one bedroom apartment, like that kind of story, you know, just like hustled, hustled, hustled. And they were conservative politically because of that, but they were also super generous. So they like open their house up to anyone who was like trying to get by and all that kind of stuff and it kind of threw a wrench into my whole idea about what you know oh i thought conservatives were like the greedy ones i thought they were the ones who did and then i looked at like my more liberal friends and i was like wow they don't really contribute much at all to like homeless people or they don't open their house at all to immigrants so i was like oh maybe it's not what i thought it was and that was the start that was the start yeah and then um it was right around the same time that i started listening to like the joe rogan podcast because i had a long commute

and he brought on all these like the intellectual dark web people like eric weinstein and uh jordan peterson and people like that that were kind of questioning you know the way that this woke ideology and the way that that things were kind of set up and i way that this woke ideology and the way that that things were kind of set up and i was like oh okay yeah i'm i'm a little off on this what year was that 2015 something like that i got married in 2012 but no no but the joe rogan stuff because when i when i would listen to joe he was woke as shit. And then all of a sudden – I didn't listen to him a lot. Let me recharacterize that. When I would see clips of his or when I would read headlines like he supported Bernie Sanders and things like that and the guests he would have on or in the beginning of the so-called pandemic, he just seemed woke to me like, this guy's not gonna this guy's not gonna um

go out on a limb and then all of a sudden as him bill maher and uh what's the guy's name who who um hey ruben uh ruben's i didn't see ruben make the the switch um the the comedian from the uk he's huge on instagram um brand oh russell brand i saw those three guys flip this flip the script and i was like holy shit rogan brand and bill mauer like waking up yeah yeah i don't know if it's like waking up to like oh the republicans are the right way but i think waking up to like the way that the whole system of like elitists and corporate greed and influencing governments of how that all works you know that the wef stuff um you you you talk about not wanting to be in an echo chamber and it's funny because my listeners and i are all kind of in an echo chamber because we we can tell

because we're all in the same algorithm right uh um instagram's got us all fucking pegged and and we're all kind of swimming together and and that does concern me but for me it's like starting to ask what the definitions what the definition of words meant and i learned that from greg glassman 15 years ago the founder of crossfit he defined people still today will do crossfit forever and not realize the what greg really did is he just defined fitness he gave it a scientific definition and it exploded from there. And people can't even fathom that. And so for me, it was I started – so I was homeless for five years.

And when people talk about the homeless crisis in the United States, it's not a homeless crisis. Homeless has the insinuation that those people chose that. homeless crisis. Homeless has the insinuation that those people chose that. And in the five years that I was homeless, it was only me and one other guy of the thousands of homeless people I met that weren't drug addicts. That basically it's a mischaracter. They're all drug addicts. And I, and some of them can say, no, they're not. Well, the vast majority, 99% are drug addicts and they've chosen the hierarchy of drugs over shelter the same way i mean you know what i mean they've and so if to build them shelter would be a huge disaster would exacerbate

the problem that is not the that is not they don't need to go indoors they need to recalibrate their um hierarchy they've even put drugs before food right 100 yeah and so that's how i kind of woke up and that's how i feel that i just started looking into not accepting um you know like the newest thing will is they're saying that there's 600 laws passed in the last two years that are anti-trans and if you look at any of the anytime i turn on cnn that's what i'm saying but anytime i look at the laws the laws are like um uh against allowing 12 year olds to chop their penises off and i'm like how how is that being thrown like i haven't i actually haven't seen one that's anti-trans they're more they're almost all child protection yeah it's just how you spin words it's all it's this the whole thing's become a word game yeah and like the perspective that you have you know going into that um yeah i mean homelessness it's one of those

things where like yeah it's it's i agree with you that's a choice but it's also like these people are sick and if you're a drug addict the correlation between um there's a great book uh chasing the scream yohan hari book i've read it but like um chasing the scream chasing the scream just about like the drug the war on drugs and stuff about like the drug, the war on drugs. And so I'm very much against the war on drugs personally. I don't think it's good. But, you know, a lot of these people, they have like extreme childhood trauma and they've never processed it for whatever reason. They never had therapy.

They never had whatever it is. So, like, I think if you look at these addicts on the street, they're sick. Then they need some sort of support to get to get them off i don't know if they can just like make that decision i think that they're they're broken in a lot of ways yeah that book yeah it's really good and tell me uh the first and last days of the war on drugs um uh i i was thinking this will the other day that if i was a i don't know, I don't know if you've ever been addicted to anything, but I was addicted to nicotine, right? And I'll always crave nicotine.

But if I was addicted to heroin, I would not want a clean needle exchange program. I would want to be arrested. Because I would want to be thrown into jail for like a week or a holding cell for two weeks to try to give me – because to smoking you got to try like a hundred times yeah like i never hear anyone who's like i quit and i'm done yeah you got so you kind of need a reprieve right like you need like to quit smoking you need to cough up blood one time or like to quit heroin you kind of need to and it just seems like the entire machine is you think if they just legalized all drugs, the problem would get better? I mean they legalized pot and marijuana in California, and the shit got worse. Yeah, I think that it would get better for some things, like as far as like fentanyl overdoses and stuff.

I think that would improve because of that. Yeah, that would be great. So if you know that the drugs at least you're getting, you can dose it out properly. I think it has to be that. And then the money that we're flooding into, you know, uh, you know, supporting these, these anti-drug or these, these drug laws and stuff like that, and going out and enforcing it, I think that could go towards better treatment, treatment centers for people who are sick. Um, but I'm worried about getting drugs that aren't what you think they are. And that's how the overdose rates are so high. 70,000 or whatever is 80,000 people.

Because, you know, essentially if you're drinking a beer and sometimes it's 3.5% and then sometimes it's the same percent as vodka, you know, then you're screwed. Because you're like, ah, I have three beers. I know what I feel like on three beers. But then you have three beers and one of those beers is vodka and you can't taste the difference, then you're dead. And that's what's happening with a lot. three beers and one of those beers is vodka and you can't taste the difference then you're dead and that's that's what's happening with a lot like kids like teenagers are getting like street xanax and stuff and then dying from fentanyl and i think that kind of stuff is uh is a big that's a big concern for me um five people that are one degree of separation from

me have all died from fentanyl overdose and none of them were doing fentanyl yeah there you go so like why is that way i explained to my class is like if you're gonna have a like a couple of friends over to drink in your bedroom and you gotta walk through the living room where your parents are you're not gonna bring a case of beer clanging around you're gonna bring one bottle of vodka and smuggle it well that's what fentanyl is it's like so potent so you can just send an envelope from china and have an envelope and then you can cut it in with all the heroin and stuff like that as opposed to shipping a big crate of heroin. It's just it's a lot more potent.

And that's what that's what happened during like prohibition, too, is they started making moonshine, which was really potent instead of beer was that was like the popular thing before that. So it's just like, all right, it's going to be illegal. We got to do it on the down low. We got to make it really, really compact and therefore up the potency. And that's that's a concern with how many people are accidentally dying that's that's terrible oh it's terrible um i had a guy on who made a documentary about it i'll send it to you it's it's it's beaut it's beautifully done unfortunately i cried for 50 minutes but um but as a parent i think you'll you'll really appreciate it it's told from the perspective

of parents who lost their kids uh jay hardell jail and being away from his kids got my brother to clean up from heroin yeah um rock bottom right you're in jail that's as bad as rock bottom as you can get have you ever hit rock bottom um yeah uh medically i was really, really sick in my early 20s. So that would say something called intracranial hypertension. It's really rare. Basically, my brain makes too much spinal fluid. So I was getting really strong headaches and backaches for like two years. They didn't know what it was.

I had a bunch of surgeries. And I had to spend just like weeks on end in the hospital as they were cutting me open and figuring out what was wrong and stuff like that. So for me, that was. But that was the catalyst for a lot of positive changes. So it's kind of the way it works. And it was so bad that basically you wanted to die. That's, that was rock bottom. You're like, I'm tapping, I'm done. I can't take this anymore. Yeah. It was, it was really, really dark. Yeah. Did you, had you met your wife at that point? Nope. No, I was, I just moved out to California. I was like 24 years old. So I was a young, young guy. Um, and so I didn't have as much like now it's different in 2018. I actually also had a stroke in 2018 from like excessive dehydration, they think.

But, um, but that was different. Cause at that point I had two kids and a wife and I was like, I can't die. I got important shit. That's like around people counting on me it was it was i had no it like no desire as much as pain as i was in as hard as it was being in the hospital i was like i was like i gotta get out of here because i have stuff that's really important to do where when i was in my early 20s it was it was just like easier somewhat to give up and i didn't but yeah i definitely that was i'd say, my rock bottom. Tell me about your stroke. Where were you? What happened? It was weird. It's venous sinus thrombosis.

So basically, I was working out a lot. I do jujitsu and stuff. Where do you do jujitsu? John Jack Machado. He's like an old Mr. Miyagi type who's super good. In LA. In LA, in LA and Woodland Hills. Yeah. Um, I was doing jiu jitsu at a different gym at that point, but like, and I was working out and everything like that. And I wasn't drinking water. Uh, and I, then I went on this

like carnivore diet. Like I was on a ketogenic diet and a carnivore diet. So I got rid of a lot of the vegetables, which are filled with water. And in the morning, my pee would be like really dark. And I was like, eh, what's the the worst i could have i was drinking a lot of coffee just you know it was it wasn't very smart lots of coffee not a lot of water excessive working out they think that my blood just got really like thick like coagulated and then i got a clot in one of the drainage like the way that your your blood kind of works is just like, like, it's like, like piping, like plumbing. And, uh, and one of those, the, the drainage from my brain clogged. So it kind of had a backup, like you get a clog in your sink backup. And then all the blood vessels in my brain started to pop. And I started, and I was getting like a really bad headache.

It was over the course of like two days, got a really bad headache. And I started hallucinating. And my wife was like, you got to go to the hospital. I was like, nah, I'm fine. Let me just take some NyQuil and sleep it off. And that's like why you live longer when you have a wife. She's like, no, you got to get in the car. She like dragged me to the hospital. They took a scan. They said I had a stroke.

They rushed me to the ICU, gave me a bunch of like blood thinners. And then it kind of broke up to some degree. And then the blood just like started rerouting in my brain. It was gnarly but did a piece of your brain die no i was i've been i was really really lucky man um you know i just it was just a wake-up call to to pay attention to the the small stuff like i was like looking at like micronutrients and like i was looking at like my supplements and stuff like that and not drinking water so now I drink a ton of water.

Doctors think that I have like just an excess of like water need. Like I have to drink at least a gallon a day. I'm just like – Are you still carnivore? No. No. I'm low carb. But like no, I'm not – I can't do that again unless I drink a lot of water and can't drink any coffee.

Then maybe I could do it. Crazy. drink any coffee and then maybe i could do it crazy and and um in that how did they how did they make it so your body produces less um uh the the intracranial hypertension that was caused by the the cranial fluid how did they make your body produce less of that yeah they put a shunt in so i have like a pipe like a little tube from my spinal column like my spinal like cord whatever the cerebral spinal sac and then it just dumps off into like my spinal like cord whatever the cerebral spinal sack and then it just dumps off into like my perennial cavity like inside my body and then i just i pee extra but yeah they put a little valve in there what's hardware yeah so just kind of like

draining into your bladder yeah had they has that had they ever done that before yeah yeah yeah i think it's like it's doesn't didn't seem that uncommon just to have like a – just a shunt, like a release valve. It just pours into my body cavity, and then my body absorbs it. Hey, is it literally like this? Like you have like a cup of like cranial fluid, and then up here there's a pipe, and if it goes up too high, it hits that pipe, and then just drips off down into your bladder? I think it's like a pressure valve. So they put into my spine and then like as the the pressure gets big because that's what was happening is i

was getting like really bad headaches and yeah as the pressure gets big it opens up the little release and then it just pours out fuck dude that's fucking amazing yeah and it works no more headaches no more it was bad too i mean it was a couple years of like my early 20s so it was bad so no thank god i'm good now uh jean uh is joe rogan's instructor your instructor is joe rogan's instructor yeah yeah i've never seen joe rogan there but yeah wow small world he moved right he moved to texas texas yeah um will why um uh first of all how do you get all your guests um ask them on on um instagram usually i think it helps if i say like i'm a school teacher um that's you know like like like essentially i align with like there's a problems in education i'm trying to bring it and

not many classroom teachers are talking about the things i'm doing i mean it's very very few for a bunch of reasons i think a lot of them align with me but they're they're scared for legitimate reasons to speak out so um that's that's probably the biggest thing is like i'm a i'm a school teacher i'm not just some random white guy i'm like i'm i'm in the classroom trying to bring about critical thinking and stuff like that. So I think that's why, but I reach out to him just on Instagram. Or if I find someone interesting from another podcast or on TV or something like that, I do a little research and I try to find them like on Google.

Like there was a teacher here in Glendale. It's like a gay guy, like teacher of the year, two-time teacher of the year who was fired for basically saying that like, you know, we shouldn't push a trans agenda on kids so i'm trying to find him like i reached out to his lawyer try to look him up on social media like i do that like that person's interesting i reach out to him and you're doing and how frequently is your podcast uh say once a week and and you do you do video also it's video and audio yeah yeah i did one yesterday with chris beck it was like the navy seal like 13 deployments seven combat deployments navy seal and then became trans in 2013 i've been trying to get him on for fucking five months how the

fuck did you do that detransition in 2022 um he's wild man he's talking about thermodynamics and like like all this crazy stuff worked for the pentagon so they're like he's like deep into the whole uh you know like deep state stuff and and you went to and you got him through instagram yeah i was i was persistent um but yeah he has that automatic reply i remember yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So, um, I connected, I think it was a school teacher thing. Cause then when, when we talked, um, he was saying like, you know, thanks for what you're doing. Cause they homeschool their kids and they're like really against the school system. I think that's what it is. I think that people are looking, the people are concerned about the school system and then they're seeing me who's like

speaking out against it. Um, and I think, that's what, what aligns with people. I hear that 87% of the teachers in the, in the, in the United States who teach our 49 million kids are in the public school system. 87% are liberal. Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, at least. Yeah, I would say so. I think there's probably some like older guys that are vets or you know in the science department or something like that that aren't but yeah what's also all the unions the unions are directly connected to the democratic party so you're

paying union dues like they're that's if you look up the nea that's the biggest um teachers union you can look that up and look at where their donations went it's it's 90 go to democrats so the the nea i think is a good kind of example of the way that this is is is funneling directly with uh the democratic party you say there are very few teachers like you i'm gonna guess there's i haven't seen one have you seen one like on social media yeah just anywhere just a teacher who's openly like hey i don't think that there should be boys in the girls bathroom yeah on uh on twitter um not even that you're saying that uh can we have a teacher won't even say can we have a discussion yeah that's about boys conservative teachers um uh daniel buck is one he's on uh twitter uh he's like a conservative so he's he's open i'm not actually that's the thing it's like i'm just asking questions i'm not like

you know let's go republicans i'm just like wait hold on they're both really messed up let's have some conversations about this and that's i don't know too many others that are doing that as openly as me. You not only had – what was his name? Beck on, but you had Chloe on. Chloe Cole, yeah. Look at this. This is like – this should be – she should be like everywhere. This should be like America's most popular guest.

She should be on fucking every show. Like why the fuck – Jimmy Kimmel should have her on. Well on well stills a wrench into a lot of the ideas right i mean that was that was like one of my favorite part i was like emotional during like she's she's still a kid she's the age i teach you know she's maybe 18 or 19 now but she's a kid which is 18 19 is still a kid and um and she was just she was just duped by this whole thing. And her parents were. I mean, it was a really. I feel for this girl. But she's strong.

And she's got a lot of support now. A lot of people like you are like, all right, Bowie, you're awesome. We got you. And so there's a lot of support that she has. And I hope that that helps. Because I don't know how she doesn't fall into a dark place place knowing all the stuff that happened to her and she's cool i just hope she doesn't get greta thunberg thundered thunberg you know what that i said that in the podcast are you talking about like being like by being like manipulated by people who are who have their own agenda yeah

like like like poor greta when you see her you're like fuck what did what happened to you i said that to her because um i don't know how your feelings are on Matt Walsh. I'm not a big fan of a lot of things that he does. Even though I understand why he's doing it, I do. You mean just because he's angry, his vibe? You don't like his vibe? Yeah. I know that's a little vague.

I'm a Christian, man. I don't know. I think that he broadcasts that he's a Christian all the time. And then he goes after and makes fun of people the most harsh way that he can. And I think that there's if you're going to broadcast that you're a Christian, he says it a lot more than I do. And if you're going to broadcast that and then try and take cheap shots at people, I think that's a real problem for what I think is important, which is like, you know, trying to get people to, to see the benefits of a Christian life. But like, uh, that's a big, that's a big issue for me is like calling out the ugliness within those people. But yeah, I think she could be used as like a, as like a cudgel, like a, like a political tool. And I said that to her, I was like, just be careful that people aren't using you, you know, for, for their own kind of personal political gain, some sort of anti-gay agenda, which could happen, whatever it is.

There's a line that we have to draw to be clear on what it is. Kudgel, C-U-D-G-E-L, a short and thick stick used as a weapon. Did I not say it? I meant like a... No, you used it perfectly. Did I? Yeah, well, you used it perfectly too as a weapon. Did I not say that? I meant like a... No, you used it perfectly. Did I?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you used it perfectly too as a cudgel. She could be used as a weapon to like, yeah. Greta Thunberg's been weaponized. I think that's totally fair. Yeah. I think it's just... Basically, you're not allowed to talk about climate change

or else they've lumped it in with flat earther and yet there's absolutely zero predictive value in the models that they've put forward i mean it's fucking nuts it's nuts yeah you can't just taking these i mean chloe is too like you're taking these autistic kids and you're putting them on this massive like platform and just having them a little asperger's in her she had a little autism chloe yeah yeah she said that she was she was like late late diagnosed but she said she was diagnosed with having, um, sorry, sorry. Go on. Okay. You take these, these, uh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, these kids, like I've taught kids with, with like Greta Thunberg or whoever I've taught

kids like that. Like they're so easily kind of like, you know, shifted cause they, they, their mind works differently. Like you can kind of drive them in a certain direction. And then she's getting praise for really not saying anything. She't say anything you know i i i've been trying to i don't think i'm gonna get him but like i tried to get boyan slot you know about that guy that kid no but i'm sure he's awesome you're fucking oh he's awesome so he's 16 years old he went snorkeling as a european kid like a like scandinavian kid but but boy on slot. He, uh, he was swimming like, like, uh, like, um, snorkeling the ocean, saw more plastic than fish. And he's like,

you know, he's 16 years old. He's like, I'm going to clean up the oceans. And he did, he's doing the biggest ocean cleanup. He's pulls out thousands and thousands of pounds of like, of plastic from the oceans every single day and then melts them down and makes cool sunglasses. Like he's, he's amazing. And he's actually cleaning up the environment, but no one knows who boy on slot is. Everyone knows who Greta Thunberg is. Like he's just out there doing the work. You know,

it's like that thing where like someone's standing there with a sign that says don't litter and they're, they're knee deep in litter. And then someone else is out there with one of those spikes cleaning up the litter. Yeah. And they're getting critiqued. It was like, where's your sign? Where's your sign? litter and then someone else is out there with one of those spikes cleaning up the litter yeah and they're getting critiqued it's like where's your sign where's your sign how come you're not talking about don't litter it's like no i'm too busy cleaning it up

you know and i think that that's that's that's a big problem what's going on here yeah this dude's cool yeah yeah he's cool but i bet you he's woke as fuck sorry i just had to throw that i bet he might be yeah yeah he might be but he's still he's cool. I bet you he's woke as fuck. Sorry. I just had to throw that. I bet. He might be. Yeah. Yeah, he might be, but he's still, he's doing work. Yeah, good, good. Okay. Yeah, shit. Founder and CEO.

Yeah, good, good, good one. Yeah, he's cool. After you have him on, I'm going to start bugging him. Let's try. Let's follow. Yeah. At least he's not wearing a mask in his um hey give me something that the republicans are sorry to put you on the spot not sorry i give me something that the republicans are doing

that's uh that's that's that's batshit crazy like i can give you 10 things i think that the democrats are doing that are batshit crazy can you give me something that like that they're doing that's just like what the fuck um yeah i think that there's there's blindness in general to to like the the the moves that they're doing that are very similar to the moves that like it's just the general hypocrisy but like within my my world of education just to get more specific would be um in florida when they're when they're part of what the law was to ban the ban critical race theory and i've spoken on a critical race theory i was on you know like whatever glenn beck and black news tonight talking about critical race

theory um part of what they're doing is there was language in the policy that if a child is offended by what was being why by what's being taught, that it needs to go up for review. And that's like snowflake stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's woke shit. That's woke shit. That word, yeah, you're right. Okay. So that's one where I'm just like, no, you can't do that

because there's going to be little, you know, Brad or whatever, little white kid who's going to be like, well, they said that white people did bad stuff or whatever it is it's like well yeah kids are going to be overly sensitive and they're going to try and weaponize that so that's one that i would say i'm not not a fan of so to to sort of take the um it's basically what um what you started we talked about early in the show. Some people are offended by what you do, and then their kids don't even go to your school. They don't know you, but then they send a letter to your fucking school to try to get you fired. It's like the worst – it's fucking disgusting.

It's like the – and that's basically what that's doing in that law. Instead of – they're basically allowing people to say it's enough to be offended in order to raise your hand and put it and make every stop the bus and we have to be like okay i'm offended yeah like what i would advocate for more is like a conversation like if you want to bring in ibram x kendi into you know professional development all right well then also bring in james lind bring in, you know, John McWhorter. Like, let's have this out. Let's have an out of these ideas and let's figure this out. That's what I'm always advocating for is not like the, I'm not cancel culture,

but let's be more, let's bring in more and let's bring more perspectives in and let's get really to it. Because I think the best ideas will survive. But we're not having this free exchange of back and forth and like a you know like a gladiator arena of ideas we're not that's why i'm anti echo chamber is i think that what we're what we're gonna get to is just our own set of news and information and facts and everything like that as opposed to like what's actually going on so i i like i like just bringing it all in and let's let's see what happens but you can't like so during um the summer of 2020 whatever you want to call that the george floyd summer

the the uh a bunch of teachers were all over the internet saying elevate black voices and you know project black voices and stuff and they were all like hardcore left black voices and i would and i asked several of them like why are you not mentioning any conservative black voices and one zero zero zero yeah a very prominent teacher who like on like social media who has a big like the biggest teacher podcast and stuff was like well are they saying anything different i was like john mccorder said the answer is worse than racism yeah not only is that different it's the anti-racism is just word fuckery yeah it's like daryl davis is an anti-racist you know that guy if i see him i is that is he the harvard guy with the dreadlocks no no daryl davis is the

the musician who befriended people in the kkk and got him to give up their robes oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah like that's an anti-racist like he actually stops racists from existing because he befriends them even max kenny doesn't stop racism drives it underground he just he just turns it around and makes it okay to be racist against these people instead of those people that's the way i see it i think it's like neo-racism but it's not it math it's not the way you see it it's the it's the way it is another example would be we were i used to be for affirmative action right i was in college and i would get and i would protest the the there was a black guy uh who was um uh on the sat on the uc regions for university of california and

he was against affirmative action and he was a black guy right and he would come to our school and fucking everyone protest against him all the fucking white kids right not get curious right yeah and now i have to look at what does affirmative action mean affirmative action means that there's 10 spots to get into college and instead of giving them to the 10 people based on this criteria of passing these tests, we're going to give them based on skin color. And so that means that affirmative action means less white kids and less Asian kids are going to get in so that we can help out more people who do better at living at the equator, melanated skin. And it's like they never tell you that part. It just it's just it's a and that's why they use the word affirmative action it's really racism to fight racism yeah it's like it's a sloppy it's it's not my opinion yeah i don't think of any my opinion is that you're having a good hair day

right but the facts are that will has hair right i mean it's like for now it's your dad bald yeah i'm doing okay though yeah you look good it doesn't it's not getting crazy yet thanks man um and so that that's the part i'm struggling with on how you are staying i i think like i have seth gruber on do you know who that is i'm fucking Armenian. Sorry, I'm shifting gears. You have Peter Boghossian on? I've contacted him 20 times, and he keeps saying not yet.

I'm fucking Armenian. And you went on Will Roosh's podcast? You dickhead. I love you, Peter. I'm Turkish. No, I'm not. But you know your history. Yeah.

No, Boghossian's great's great again i think that was because i was school teacher speaking out and i was like very i love the the hoax papers i taught i teach them in my class i teach about the bogosian hoax papers so that's probably why but yeah no i'm with you for an affirmative action i see it ibram x candy actually tweeted something about this where he's like kids are pretending to be black in order to get into college like bubble and then he quickly do that i would totally do that yeah well my students do not they don't pretend but like if they're mixed race they're gonna say that they're one thing over the other because it's actually out like what the the average sat scores are for like a white kid getting into harvard uh Hispanic kid, a black kid, an Asian kid.

It's like, you know, it's like, it's very clear. And then they did that whole thing. There was that lawsuit against Asian kids at Harvard because they were penalized. Like they weren't getting in, even though they were clearly had the best grades and stuff like that, because they said if we just took it based on merit,

then the school would be almost all Asian. And I guess that's a problem so hey um uh asians make basically twice as much on average than white people yeah and it also comes down like dear black people please attack the asians and leave us alone thank you the uh it comes down like what kind of asian too like that's the thing is like i'm married a filipino the filipinos are not the same as the koreans and like japanese chinese there's like a culture of education it's actually very similar like the jewish culture that i teach in but then if you look at like like lao shen pinos are lower on the totem pole oh yeah yeah

sorry honey yeah i i figured and who's kicking that it's like, I guess it's the same with black-skinned people, too. Like, fuck, Nigerians are murdering. Nigerians, exactly. They're fucking destroying it here, yeah. They're outperforming their white counterparts. So that's why these categories, there is, like, obviously a cultural difference. Thomas Sowell. Like, there's obviously a huge cultural difference that you just can't bring up.

And I just want to bring it up. So I'm going to be like, isn't this a problem? Like, this is all. bring up. And I just want to bring it up. So I'd be like, isn't this a problem? Like this is all you mean skin color doesn't really matter. And it's all cultural. It's a hole in it. I mean, it's there's I think there probably is. I enroll in my podcast. It's like he's like, you know, he was denied speaking.

He went to Harvard Business School and he was denied a speaking gig for Nicole Hannah Jones. And they said, well, yeah, you're black, but you're west indian like his parents are jamaican and that's not the same and he's like look if you're saying that i'm being just that black people being discriminated against by cops and stuff like you think a cop's gonna look at me start harassing me and go wait a second your parents are from jamaica right oh okay never mind like you're it's all good like which one is it it's a very disjointed ideology look at like i know you're a school teacher don't make fun of me don't judge me for this you ready look at i looked up ian rome look at look at my spelling is just horrible look at me r-o-w-e i've stopped r-o-w-e

i don't actually i don't think he has an instagram oh well here now he does it's this white guy uh he's a traffic electrician auxiliary auxiliary police officer, Canadian music advocate. Canadian music advocate. I just want to know what your pronouns are. What are his pronouns? He didn't put them. Dude, listen, you don't have an RV in your fucking pro, in one of your pics and your pronouns.

So I have this guy on uh will who uh uh seth gruber and he's made it his his dedication in life to uh uh stop kids from being murdered in the womb and i'm pro-choice okay and he's pro-life yeah but part of me every time like part of me thinks i'm just lying because I'm just so part of me thinks I really am pro-life and I and I might actually be a Republican. And when I see the shit you're doing, I'm like, oh, maybe Will's maybe Will and I like we're kind of. We're we're. We're stuck. We want to be open. I can't tell maybe if it's just like you know i'm just dedicated to the 49ers and no matter what i can't ever be a raider fan well do you know what i'm saying like i have them on and i'm telling them i'm pro-choice and

this guy's made his life-saving babies and i'm like fuck what a stud i just love him yeah um and like i don't see i don't want to take away women's rights over their bodies because of the precedent it sets but like dude like i know it's killing babies i know it is yeah i'm so i'm fucked up i'm all i'm all i'm all see look at look at see here's heidi there here comes the peanut gallery i knew that you get can't you guys just let will and i have a moment? Go get a glass of water or something? Savon, you're not pro-choice. That's a tough one.

Savon, just admit to yourself we will accept you with open arms. I am fine. Would you still consider yourself a Democrat? No. No. And the reason why is because I think that at its core, my understanding now of the ideology and the way it works is that they are profoundly hateful and racist and that there's a eugenics component in its history. And this one's really hard for me to say. I think that there's a pedophilia maybe component. Not maybe. hard for me to say i think that there's a pedophilia maybe component not maybe something's

uh even though i look even though i'm sort of dogmatic in my spirituality while i play this game on planet earth i want to protect children at all costs yeah do you know what i mean like i do so so i'm just and i wouldn't give a fuck if i didn't have kids tell you the truth will i probably wouldn't give a fuck i'd be like bring the armageddon on you know what i mean yeah but like i want my boys to have like cool girlfriends and like like chicks that want to raise their kids and like yeah and believe in that like like like a dude with a strong chick is dope you could fucking take on the world yeah the chick got your back yeah 100 and i don't want a chick who's like who's like trying to feminize my boy like here's another thing too like because

across it like every human being should know what it's like to walk out onto a track and run as hard as they can for 400 meters it's fucking crazy and yet there's there's for some reason that's being poo-pooed like everyone should know at one point what it's like to wrestle right physical fitness is like look down upon something like right wing there's there's always like crazies um so do you think that you're are you going through any of that like me i mean i don, I don't lose sleep over it, but I don't want to be a fraud either. I don't want to be insincere. Like, why can't I just say, why can't I just say I'm pro-life, but I can't, I just can't. Um, I don't know. I mean, I, I, I am. What are you? Are you pro- what are you are you pro-choice are you pro-life um i'm i'm mixed on it as well here's here's the reason oh yes well it's tricky it's paying

liberty against life and i've had four podcasts on it it's i the problem it's pain what it's pain liberty against life so it's the woman's liberty against the baby's life. And what happens is the pro-choice people are all focused on the liberty, and the pro-life people are all focused on the life. But America is life and liberty. Why don't they just admit that it's killing a baby though? That's the part. At least I can admit that. I can be like, hey, it's killing a baby, but I also want the liberty for women. But they're calling it like – Clump of cells.

want the liberty for women but they're like calling it like clump of cells yeah or they're saying like really it's just but i want to be a lawyer well then you're okay with child sacrifice just admit it you're okay with killing the baby in your womb so that you could go to law school i've had two um like abortion one of the bronte rems who showed and then i also had abortion doctor on like it's like one of my early podcasts and um both of them kind of got to the point where they admit that it's at least not ideal like like they like they they admit that there it is terminating a pregnancy it's terminating a life like you really break it down they will but it's just the liberty of the woman supersedes that because of you know they're autonomous they're conscious the baby's not you know things like that i my biggest concern about um banning abortion is the same concern i have with prohibition

of anything is it won't stop it and that's that's my big like i like free will i like helping like as a school teacher like i don't want to force you to not cheat so it's not like put up these barricades and blind your eyes so you don't look your neighbor's don't want to force you to not cheat. So it's not like put up these barricades and blind your eyes. So you don't look your neighbor's paper. I want you to want to not cheat, which is harder. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The goal. That's how I feel about steroids. I don't want you to have to lie. Yeah. I hate the fact that we, we exalt athletes and then punish them for using steroids. Like,

I don't know what the answer is, but I, I'm, I feel bad for them that they have to lie. Same thing with the abortion. They never talk about the, the damp women who have abort feel bad for them that they have to lie. Same thing with the abortion. They never talk about the women who have abortions are damaged for the rest of their lives, I think. Some of them are.

I don't know the stats. In my mind that there's two kinds. There's ones who know that they're damaged and there's ones that are in denial and they're also damaged. I don't think you have an abortion. And then by that, I mean, it stays with you your whole life. It's a thought you pick when you kill a baby you pick something up yeah that you can never put down like nicotine that's why nicotine is horrible you pick it up and you'll never put it down yeah you kill a baby now you got something go to bed at night you're like oh yeah you can ignore it yeah shut it down or repress it but

yeah it's there somewhere i think so yeah uh but the my i what i would ideal i think would be you have the option to do tremendous harm and evil in the world and you choose not to and that's so that's one of the reasons and you know maybe that's that's you know ignorant but like that's that's i think one of the bigger reasons why i would lean towards keeping it up to the states to decide if a certain state wants to have abortion. I don't think it's good, but I think that that's probably aligned with the Constitution more so. I don't know. And then let people make that call. But also we need to support young moms and stuff like that, people who feel lost.

They have no one to help them raise this kid. We also have to do that. And that's an issue that I think the political right needs to get better at, is real support for these pregnant girls who feel like they have nowhere to go. There are organizations, 100%, but those organizations are not in the neighborhoods where a lot of these pregnancies are happening. I got taught in those neighborhoods and the kids were really, these 15 year old girls get pregnant and they're lost.

They don't know what to do. You know, it's like, you got to be there for them to walk them through it. And as a friend, you say like, you have, you're pregnant. We're going to raise this kid together. I got you. You're not on your own because they're so scared that they feel ill-equipped to raise this thing. So they have an abortion.

So you can't just ban it. If you're going to ban it, you got to give support to fill it in. It's like banning drugs. If you're going to legalize drugs, then you got to support people. If you're going to ban drugs, you got to support people through their addiction. And I think that it's just like a hard line of just, of just making abortions illegal. I don't know if that's going to solve the root problem. And what, and what is the root problem?

solve the root problem and what in what is the root problem i think a big one is the normalcy of casual sex and this makes me seem like a real old like fart like a conservative i guess but like i don't know i didn't wait till marriage to have sex and i did but i didn't think about it i was just like as soon as i can have sex i'm gonna have sex why would I not a girl's willing to hook up with me of course I'm gonna do it and not thinking about the the real repercussions of that I mean you have kids you have sons right I mean do you yeah do you want them to just go out and just hook up with random girls like wouldn't it be better it'd be better to have them meet someone that they love whether or not they get married like someone that they love and they're like hey if we would have a baby in this like all right it's made through love and i'm gonna do the right thing like that's

the ideal and i like aiming for the ideal and i think that the fact that kids are watching friends still high school kids watch like friends from the 90s but joey goes on a date and hooks up with someone then you know monica has two dates and it's time to have sex. They just, it's this thing of just like, it's fine to have sex with anybody. Don't worry about it. I don't think that that's the way that we're built. We're built to have sex for continuing on your genes and your, you know, that whole thing. So I think that there's, there's the cultural element of of like you should maybe have sex with people

that you love that you feel a deep connection with and not just the i think it's the casual hookup culture is a big problem with it but that's that makes you sound really old um i i going back to the boy thing i just i think boys need to be kept busy yeah like very like very very busy i think if you see groups of boys not doing anything, that's the downfall of civilization. You do not. The last thing I want to see is a group of 18 year old boys standing on a street corner in your,

in your city. If they can be the nicest boys in the world, you never want to see that. Yeah, no, 100%. I would always, when I was teaching public school,

like I taught in a really bad area of East LA and I would get there two hours early and then get there two hours late. I would take them to the gym. I'd lift with them, do guy stuff. I'd teach them how to box and stuff like that just because they wanted something. They didn't want to be on the streets, really. These were gangster kids, but they were just like, we have nowhere to go. So I was like, all right, well, I'll give you somewhere to go. And then they were at the gym instead of on the streets.

It was really good. There just wasn't enough. There weren't enough boys and girls clubs and stuff like that in those, in those areas that the kids were able to go to. Mason Mitchell. I think he's being sarcastic or facetious. I want the poor uneducated 16 year old girl to have three kids with no support,

anything but abortion. See, I, I can't even handle the wording of that though. Mason. I had a 17 year old student at that school. And he said like 17 year old student, she was pregnant with her third kid.

Wow. And I, and I, she was like, I had the bathroom pass to like go to the bathroom. Hey, you know, she had the bathroom pass.

Hey, Mr. Can you sign my bathroom pass? And I was like, Oh, you got to write the time on there. Hey, you know, she had the bathroom pass. Hey mister, can you sign my bathroom pass? And I was like, Oh, you got to write the time on there. And she's like, what time is it?

And I pointed to the clock. It was like an analog clock. And she goes, I can't read that shit. Oh, like what? I thought of the Chris rock joke. It's like,

like get out of here before your kid robs me in 15 years. Like, like that's, Hey, do you know if it was three separate dads? I think it was actually the same dad. Oh, that's cool. He was in 11th grade. Oh, shit.

Oh, no. Yeah, he was a senior. She was 11th grade or something like that. He was at the school, too. Yeah. I don't know who was watching the kids. I had the same girlfriend. I think that one was the same dad but i had the same girlfriend one of the same dad i had the same girlfriend sophomore junior senior year and within a year she said i could have sex with her but i still waited another two years why i was like just i

was just happy like touching her tits and rubbing on her and shit why did you wait no no reason just like i just thought it was too much work like what like like if like i was cool with you know just a handy or dry humping or just whatever like it was yeah and then but but but it's three years and i loved her to death she was great and you want to know the only reason why i ended up having sex be completely honest no one's listening again let me see the numbers yep everyone is on a bathroom break um i thought i was going to graduate from high school a virgin and i was like you know what i should do this. Not that I had any peer pressure.

I didn't care if some kid said it. I was like, I better do this. And then once I had sex once, Will, it was like a fucking downpour. Yeah. Like 10 years of pussy just fell on me. Like someone opened a gate and it just like. They could smell it on your hangover. Will, I need you for more time uh but we've run out of

time what is the end for two things or did you have fun yeah yeah i didn't know i was stepping into man yeah you're this is very different than it than a lot i go on a lot of podcasts that are super dry so no this was great thank you this wasn't boring at all okay good and um what is what how much longer are you going to do your podcast is there a goal like what is there a goal do you um i'm guessing you kind of need to keep teaching um just for the street cred and for the stories and the information but that you also probably want to step away so you can take more full-time care of your kids and do more media. Yeah. I love it. I really do. Like you mean just the balance of your life. You're loving your life.

I love my life. Yeah. I've been very, very blessed, but like I love being in the classroom. Like I just, my seniors just graduated and it's like at the end of the year, like I bring my wife to like this, like senior celebration night and like bring my wife just cause she's kind of like more on the side of like, you know, you should have a bigger impact, you know, scale what you're doing, whatever it is, which I hear. And I, and I, and I appreciate that.

And I'm doing it. But like when a kid who you've had like a relationship with, like, like, you know, them, you've known them since 10th grade, you know, you know, their ups and downs, their parents are going through a divorce and they were crying. You, you know, talk to them. You've known them since 10th grade. You know their ups and downs. Their parents are going through a divorce and they were crying. You talk to them. I'm really close with my students. I have a lunch with a different student every day. I get to know these kids and I

really connect with them. I can't do that on the same level through my social media and podcasting and stuff. There is an element of yeah, I still have the street cred of being a classroom teacher, but I really really enjoy it. I'm going to keep doing the podcast and stuff so it's not there is an element of like yeah then i i still like this the street credit being a classroom teacher but i really really enjoy it um i'm gonna keep doing the podcast you're a relationship person you like human relationships yeah cool yeah like an enneagram for that enneagram test um but uh yeah so i'm gonna keep doing the podcast and stuff because

the hope that i'm working on right now what I'm doing is trying to make homeschool curriculum. That's along the lines of like the stuff that I do in the classroom and trying to scale it and open it up. So I have like group meetings with like kids from across the country. That's what I'm trying to do. And I'll use my podcast and stuff to still bring bring more attention to what I'm trying to do in education. I'm trying to fix the education system because it's just broken on all levels. So yeah, I think that's, that's a way it's like, keep myself no. So I show up on people like you on your radar and then you can bring me in and talk about stuff. Like, I think that there's a real power in having a social media presence. Now, if someone screws me

over, if I take my car in to go get oil at this Jiffy lube on this corner of the street and they screw me over, then I can be like, don't go to the Jiffy lube on this corner of the street and they screw me over then i can be like don't go to the jiffy lube and like there's some power in that there's some power in that and then if there's something crazy that goes on with my school and they they change their mind they get rid of me for a really bad reason or someone um does something really terrible i can bring them i can bring them on my podcast you know there's so many people that are doing amazing things and i'm like more people need to know about what you're doing. I'll contribute in the little way that I can. So I think that there's I think that there's real value in building that that presence on on these social media channels.

Well, Alyssa, what's the name of his podcast? There's no reason to know the name of Will Roosh's Cylinder Radio. All your time should be here at the Sevan podcast. Do not go to Cylinder Radio. Put your head back, cylinder radio put your head back will put your head back oh well a final question this one's the the biggest putting on spot um you didn't share your phone number with me you're very guarded now that you've been on the show are you going to share your phone number with me in the email i had said you could text me

oh i didn't see it oh yeah man i'll give you my phone number i don't share it right here right now but i'll email you right now. Of course, man. You the band, dude. Thank you. I know our paths are going to cross again. I loved having you on. You're a great dude.

What a great resource. I'm glad to have met you. Thank you very much, man. No, it was great to meet you, too. Yeah, we'll do this again. This was fun. All right, brother. Ciao.

Take care. Will Roosh, Ben Bergeron. God, I love thison God I love this show I love this show I love love love this show I have to go I'm going Dear Semon

This is God Your podcast is dope I love you Buh-bye