#2292 - Josh Waitzkin

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joe Rogan Experience #2292 - Josh Waitzkin

Introduction In episode #2292 of The Joe Rogan Experience, released on March 19, 2025, host Joe Rogan engages in a deep and insightful conversation with Josh Waitzkin, a renowned chess prodigy and martial arts enthusiast. Their dialogue traverses various subjects, including the beauty of Jiu Jitsu, the philosophy of learning, overcoming personal adversities, and the profound implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on society.

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1. Early Jiu Jitsu Experiences and Influences

Key Discussions: Joe Rogan expresses his admiration for Jiu Jitsu, highlighting its aesthetic and technical beauty. He reminisces about witnessing Marcelo Garcia's exceptional skill firsthand during a 2003 fight in Abu Dhabi, emphasizing Marcelo's fluid and adaptive technique.

Notable Quotes:

• Joe Rogan [00:21]: “Youknow the beauty of Jiu Jitsu. I feel like Jiu Jitsu is beautiful for people who practice it.”
• Josh Waitzkin [02:12]: “Amazing. Dude, that's epic.”

Insights: Josh shares his early training experiences under John Machado in LA and later with Marco Santos in New York. His dedication led him to cross-train with Marcelo Garcia, ultimately resulting in the creation of a new Jiu Jitsu school in New York. This foundation underscores the profound impact mentorship and diverse training have on an athlete's development.

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2. Philosophy of Transition and Learning

Key Discussions: Josh delves into his philosophy of maximizing time spent in transitions, whether in martial arts or other disciplines. He draws parallels between dynamic movements in Jiu Jitsu and footwork in striking sports, illustrating how embracing the "in-between" moments fosters greater skill and adaptability.

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Waitzkin [10:06]: “Relate to the transitional training is through frames. It's like a process of building more frames.”
• Joe Rogan [05:36]: “The most important thing about any kind of combat sport…”

Insights: Both Josh and Joe agree on the significance of fluidity and adaptability in combat sports. Josh emphasizes that spending time in the transitional spaces allows for greater virtuosity and technique refinement, which is essential for excelling in any competitive or artistic endeavor.

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3. Overcoming Adversity: Injury and Resilience

Key Discussions: A pivotal moment in the conversation revolves around Josh's severe back injury caused by a herniated disc during Jiu Jitsu training. This incident forced him to reassess his engagement with the sport and transition to alternative pursuits like foiling.

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Waitzkin [37:33]: “I was so stupid. No, it was significant moment.”
• Joe Rogan [40:00]: “What's it like now?”

Insights: Josh recounts the harrowing experience of his injury, including the immediate physical and emotional challenges. His resilience and commitment to recovery, through methods like Total Immersion Swimming and foundational training, highlight his ability to adapt and overcome significant setbacks. This adversity catalyzed his transition to foiling, where he found a new passion that complements his martial arts background.

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4. Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Threats

Key Discussions: The dialogue shifts towards the advent of AI and its transformative potential. Josh articulates concerns about AI surpassing human capabilities, drawing parallels with the evolution of computer chess and its impact on human players. They discuss the ethical implications, societal disruptions, and the urgent need for humility and adaptability in the face of rapidly advancing technologies.

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Waitzkin [83:40]: “They can have you do anything, right?”
• Joe Rogan [87:25]: “It's going to be a God in 50 years.”

Insights: Josh emphasizes the necessity for humans to cultivate a beginner's mindset and adaptable learning strategies to coexist with superintelligent AI. He warns against the potential misuse of AI for manipulation and control, advocating for robust safety measures and ethical frameworks to guide AI development. The conversation underscores the dual-edged nature of AI advancements, presenting both unprecedented opportunities and existential risks.

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5. Coaching and Teaching: Unlocking Potential

Key Discussions: Josh shares his unique approach to coaching, which involves deep listening, understanding individual patterns, and fostering a safe environment for self-expression and growth. He contrasts this with traditional coaching methods that often impose rigid structures, thereby stifling a person's inherent potential.

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Waitzkin [127:28]: “I have a lot of humility, like I don't think that I know the way.”
• Joe Rogan [134:22]: “You have to really understand someone psychologically to be able to coach them as well.”

Insights: Josh advocates for personalized coaching that honors each individual's unique strengths and weaknesses. By recognizing and addressing the entanglement of a person's brilliance and dysfunction, he helps athletes and professionals break free from limiting patterns and unlock their true potential. This empathetic and tailored approach distinguishes his coaching methodology from more conventional, one-size-fits-all strategies.

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6. Personal Reflections and Life Lessons

Key Discussions: Towards the end of the episode, Josh reflects on his near-death experience during hypoxic breathwork training, which deepened his connection to the ocean and reinforced his commitment to living authentically and passionately. He discusses the importance of embracing challenges, maintaining humility, and continuously evolving in response to life's unpredictable changes.

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Waitzkin [150:01]: “It's like you have to skate to where the puck is going.”
• Joe Rogan [154:14]: “Thank you, Josh. It was a lot of fun.”

Insights: Josh underscores the significance of facing discomfort and adversity as integral to personal growth and mastery. His experiences highlight the transformative power of resilience, the necessity of maintaining a learner's mindset, and the enduring value of pursuing one's passions with unwavering dedication.

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Conclusion

Episode #2292 of The Joe Rogan Experience offers a profound exploration of Josh Waitzkin's journey from chess prodigy to martial arts maestro and beyond. Through their extensive dialogue, Rogan and Waitzkin illuminate the intricate interplay between discipline, adaptability, and continuous learning. They also cast a critical eye on the future of AI, urging humanity to navigate its challenges with humility and a steadfast commitment to personal and collective growth. This episode serves as both an inspirational narrative and a thought-provoking discourse on the evolving landscape of human potential and technological advancement.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Joe Rogan [00:21]: “I feel like Jiu Jitsu is beautiful for people who practice it.”
• Josh Waitzkin [02:12]: “Amazing. Dude, that's epic.”
• Josh Waitzkin [10:06]: “Relate to the transitional training is through frames.”
• Joe Rogan [05:36]: “The most important thing about any kind of combat sport…”
• Josh Waitzkin [37:33]: “I was so stupid. No, it was significant moment.”
• Joe Rogan [40:00]: “What's it like now?”
• Josh Waitzkin [83:40]: “They can have you do anything, right?”
• Joe Rogan [87:25]: “It's going to be a God in 50 years.”
• Josh Waitzkin [127:28]: “I have a lot of humility, like I don't think that I know the way.”
• Joe Rogan [134:22]: “You have to really understand someone psychologically to be able to coach them as well.”
• Josh Waitzkin [150:01]: “It's like you have to skate to where the puck is going.”
• Joe Rogan [154:14]: “Thank you, Josh. It was a lot of fun.”

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This summary encapsulates the essence of the conversation between Joe Rogan and Josh Waitzkin, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened to the episode. The structured sections offer clarity on the diverse topics discussed, while the notable quotes with timestamps highlight pivotal moments in their dialogue.

Transcript

[Joe Rogan]

Joe Rogan podcast.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience Train my Day.

[Joe Rogan]

Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day, whenever someone is like an interesting person and then I find out they do Jiu Jitsu too. Oh, I could talk to that guy for sure.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You know. You know, like, I get excited when interesting people do Jiu Jitsu because I think to the outsider, to a lot of people that are, you know, they haven't been exposed to what it's like to train and what it's like to be around high level Jiu Jitsu people, they don't, they don't know that vibe. They don't know what it's like. They don't know the, the beauty of Jiu Jitsu. I feel like Jiu Jitsu is beautiful for people who practice it. You know, like, you see, like Marcel's a great example. Your coach. You know, Marcelo is probably one of the most beautiful guys to watch because he just takes advantage of these scrambles in this like really beautiful way. Like fast and, and slippery. And when the opponents react, he reacts in the other way. It's all just technique and flow. It's like, ah, like the first time I ever saw him, I saw him live in 2003 in Abu Dhabi and is when he fought Chow Lin. That was the first time I'd ever seen him in the flesh.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I didn't even choked him out in like eight seconds.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh my God. Crazy scrambled. But no one even knew him. No one knew of him other than, you know, he was obviously. I think he was a brown belt at the time. I don't even think he was a black belt. I think Marcelo might have been a brown belt.

[Josh Waitzkin]

That's interesting.

[Joe Rogan]

I didn't in 2003 find that out. Was Marcelo a brown belt when he won Abu Dhabi in 2003? He may have. Eddie Bravo was a brown belt when he was.

[Josh Waitzkin]

He told me recently that right before that fight his like his grips had locked up. So he went into that fight. It looks incredible. Just that arm drag. Take the back. Choked him out in his seconds.

[Joe Rogan]

His hands.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, his like, grips from the fight before were like, oh, wow. Yeah. When, when Eddie beat Hoyler, he was a brown belt.

[Joe Rogan]

Yep.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. John Jock took his black belt off of his own waist and put it on Eddie.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Amazing. Amazing. Dude, that's epic. So it's funny, my background, we have a lot of overlap in our early Jiu Jitsu education because my first teacher was John Machado.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And I spent years training with John in LA long before and then I'm. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And then when did. When did you move to New York?

[Josh Waitzkin]

So I moved to New York. I think I started training with John. So I was doing Chinese martial arts for a bunch of years before that, competing everywhere. Then I started training, cross training with John And I think 2001, 2002, and then early 2005, moved back to New York, started training with Marco Santos in his school in New York. And I was training with Zhukao and Alison Britis. Zhukao is an amazing old school, Bracey Baja, like, you know, amazing fighter. And I was also cross training with Lucas Lepri at the time. And I was. I needed. I was just ready to. And then I met Marcelo and I was. And he had moved from New York to Florida, and I was traveling to Florida to train with Marcelo a bunch, and I wanted to be pushed all in. And Marcel and I gotten really close. And then I. I just said to him, hey, man, you know, you want to. You want to come back to New York and open a school together? And he really loved New York, and we gotten very close.

[Joe Rogan]

Where was he at the time?

[Josh Waitzkin]

He was in Florida. He was in New York before he. He loved New York, but then he had to move to Florida. He'd been. There was just a lot of jiu jitsu politics flowing everywhere as it does. Jiu jitsu politics the worst. And yeah, anyway, long story short, we opened a school together. And after that, and it was amazing. Then I spent so many years all in training with him. Most such a beautiful, beautiful martial artist.

[Joe Rogan]

So in 2002, he's promoted to black belt. So he was already a black belt because this is 2003.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, sounds right.

[Joe Rogan]

So he had only been a black belt for a year and won Abu Dhabi, which is pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. Just that, I mean, didn't just beat Chow Lin won the entire division and just looked like no one anybody had ever seen. Just the scrambles and his ability to arm drag and take the back, and then once he gets to your side, the ability to transition to the back is just phenomenal.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And he spends his, like his whole jiu jitsu life he spent in the scramble in transition. And that was really a philosophy of his. Have you seen that old school artisoave clip? Remember the old documentary Arte Suave from back in the day around him as a young teenager training at Fabre Gujelle's school in Sao Paulo? And it was so interesting because even then you could see him. He never held position. He always let opponents move, be fun to pull that up maybe at one point.

[Joe Rogan]

Interesting.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like a core principle of his was to allow the opponent to move and spend as much training time as possible in transition. And while most jutsu guys, as you know, is their coming through egos are controlling. They're holding guys.

[Joe Rogan]

No, this. Is this him? Yeah, he's already a black belt here.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, this is after he moved to start training with Fabio in, in Sao Paulo. And this, it's such a beautiful thing because if you watch his, his style, he's not in this moment actually.

[Joe Rogan]

Now he's fully controlling.

[Josh Waitzkin]

He's fully controlling it, but most of.

[Joe Rogan]

The time he's scrambling.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, he's scrambling.

[Joe Rogan]

Did he explain why?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Well, you're maximizing time spent in the in between. I mean, I think in the martial arts people are so focused on position when they're learning position, position, position. But the in between is where the real virtuosity happens.

[Joe Rogan]

Interesting.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And so he spent, he maximized his time in the in between.

[Joe Rogan]

So in stand up fighting, that would be like footwork and angles be similar to that. Because the most important thing about any kind of combat sport, in terms of striking sports, is to be in a better position to land a shot and be in a better position to defend. So if you're fighting southpaw to orthodox, you always want to make sure that if you're southpaw, your foot is on the outside of your opponent's leg. That way your opponent has to kind of cross over, try to hit you, but you're in a position to hit them on the blind side. And the best ever at that is Vasily Lomachenko. Because Lomachenko, when he was young, his father made him stop boxing for two years and just study Ukrainian dance.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Really?

[Joe Rogan]

So for two years he just did Ukrainian dance and his foot. Have you ever seen him box?

[Josh Waitzkin]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, my God. Pull up Lomachenko Highlight. It's all about movement and position with this guy. It's all about when you punch, he's going to make you react this way and then he's going to go that way and then he's going to spin sideways and he'll be behind you. So this Lomachenko, like, the way he moves is so different. It's almost like, it's almost like his, he's got just a, a radar for like where their, where their punches are coming from and knows exactly where to put his feet at all times. No matter what they do, he knows what they're going to do. But when you watch his, like, footwork, it's the most extraordinary thing because his ability to give you all sorts of different reads, like, incredible. I mean, you won a world title, I think it is fourth pro fight, unbelievable amateur record. But it's, it's just the movement. Like, he's never right in front of you. He's always off to the side. He's always moving around. He jumps in and out, and it's, it's with perfect precision. Like, a lot of times when guys do a lot of footwork and movement, there's points in that transition where they're off balance, where they can't really throw a punch or their footwork is out of position or they're leaning too far over on this side. He's never off balance. He's never out of position. He's always, slide aside, pop up, slide aside, pop up. And you never know where the fuck he is. He's a magician. It's fascinating to watch him fight. And very few people have tried to incorporate that. Like, you see some of his movement. It's just the way he's able to fool the best fighters in the world and just have a level of movement that they just don't really understand what to do with. They just, they get baffled by it because everything coming from different angles, it's never, I'm charging straight forward at you, trying to destroy you. Everything is angles and movement.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Virtuosity is so beautiful to watch.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's incredible. In anything. In anything. When you watch someone who's just unbelievably extraordinary and unique in their. Whatever their discipline is, it's always fascinating to watch. This episode is brought to you by Intuit TurboTax. We're all just trying to level up, right? I'm always trying to push myself. Whether it's training, learning something new, or just trying to be a better human. You put in work physically, mentally, and over time, you evolve. It's 2025. Doing your taxes has evolved too. Just like we put in the work to level up, TurboTax has put in the work to make taxes effortless. Because now taxes is getting matched up with a Turbo tax live expert who has the latest tech with that, they can cross check millions of data points to make sure that your return is 100% accurate. That means you get the best possible outcome this tax season for your unique tax situation, all while you go about your day. It's 2025. It's time to file. Like it now. This is taxes intuit TurboTax. Get an expert [e-mail] One way I.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Relate to the transitional training is through frames. It's like a process of building more frames. We have position, we position. And for some people, there'll be no space in between. But if you spend your time playing in the transitional space between, you build up frames. Like an illusionist. I know. Remember you spoke to Darren Brown back in the day.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like, you know, great illusionists, magicians, mind control guys, they have the ability to see in frames that we don't have the ability to see. And so it seems like magic, it seems like illusion.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

When martial artists are called mystical. Right. It's because people don't understand what they're doing for the most part, technically. And they have frames where others don't have frames.

[Joe Rogan]

So they have more options, more. It's like having a language and you have an access to a larger vocabulary.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, yeah, I think. I think that that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. And people. Well, it's like, if you think about. You're engaging with an illusionist who has done something, has spent hundreds of hours in a certain specific routine, and you're seeing it for the first time. They just have immense knowledge where you have none. They have more frames and they can play in frames that you don't have. And it seems like something's coming from. From the. From the sky.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's where Eddie Bravo had a pretty significant contribution to jiu jitsu because he was so creative in some of his attacks and some of the things that he developed, particularly off his back, like the rubber guard variations, they were so systematic. And so, like, if you got good at it, it was surprising to anybody. Didn't understand what you were doing because they didn't know these positions well.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So if you got, like, there's this kid named Jeremiah Vance who's one of Eddie's best guard players, and there's a highlight reel of his submissions off of his back, his rubber guard submissions. And if you don't have a person that you train with, if you train at a traditional school and you don't understand these positions, you don't know how good someone can be at it. There's times where you don't think you're vulnerable, where you're incredibly vulnerable. Like the difference between a really good guard player in MMA and, like, Paul Craig, for example, he submitted some of the best two world champions off of his back in the light heavyweight division, Jamal Hill and the current champion, Ankalaev. Ankalaev's only defeat is to Paul Craig because he's just Wicked off of his back. So everybody feels comfortable in mma. There's only a couple guys like Oliveira. You got to really watch your P's and Q's. There's a few guys that are just wicked off of their back, but no one's like Paul Craig. And so if you're just used to fighting regular guys off of their back and you get in guard and you start, you get a little cocky. You extend an arm to try to land a punch and then all of a sudden his legs are wrapped around your fucking neck and you're like, oh, Jesus, how does this happen so quick? Because he's just got that technique. It's just so tightened up. Just stop. It just locks it up so fast. It's fascinating to watch the difference between like a really good guard player and someone is just a regular MMA fighter who knows how to do a triangle, but really doesn't have like the elaborate setups.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Many ways that's in a large scale. What, what Hoist was doing back in the day, no one had, no one had any idea. Grabbing his gi. Think they had a huge advantage. Yeah, but they were entering his, his terrain. And then when, when we were training in the early days, there was so much close mindedness about leg locks. So the leg lock game was outside of the conceptual scheme to so many jiu jitsu guys.

[Joe Rogan]

It was forbidden.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It was forbidden. So they'd get caught. It's like that dogma. It's so interesting competitively finding where someone's dogma is, where their constructs are their false constructs.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, there's a good argument for it with the gi, with young guys.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Oh, for sure.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Because shredding each other's ankles all the time.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Ripping knees apart where they're not going to be able to be repaired, you know, I mean, how many people have ruined their knees forever from a heel hook? A large number, I would imagine. If there's any technique that's ever ruined an athlete's career, the heel hook would probably be number one.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Heel hook is why I started training jiu jitsu.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. Because I was doing standup stuff and I was competing everywhere. And my, I, I was doing Chinese martial arts. And my teacher's son, Max Chen, who is a, he was a sanshell fighter and on the Olympic, on the U.S. national team, really good standup fighter. And he was studying UFC before I had even looked at it. And then he was studying, I think it was Frank Shamrock's double heel hook.

[Joe Rogan]

Shit.

[Josh Waitzkin]

From way early days. And he was just like, let's let's just continue to the ground. And I had never ground fought before, and I ended up in the ground. And he just put me in heel hooks and double heel hooks. My knees were exploding. He had no idea what the fuck he was doing.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, no.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Terrible idea.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, no.

[Josh Waitzkin]

My knees were just screaming. And I would throw him on the floor and then I'd be tapped. I didn't even know what tapping out was. I had never grappled before.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, no. You didn't even know anything put you in a heel hook.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Nothing. The first submission I felt in my life was like the heel hook 20 times. Somehow my ACL didn't shred. And I was like, I have to fucking train this jiu jitsu because Max is kicking my ass. And I didn't like it. So then that's how it all began.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, Hoist was brilliant in wearing the GI because it made people grab it.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

They thought they had an advantage, that he had something to grab. And next thing you know, he's like, he clinched around you. He dragged you to the ground.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's an amazing idea. Right. Like, they had no idea that they were entering his game. They thought they were controlling him.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. And they didn't understand that all that friction from the GI was going to make it very difficult for you to get out of anything.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And he was so grabbing him. He spent his life people grabbing.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

That entered his. His room.

[Joe Rogan]

That changed the whole world, didn't it?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Oh, my God.

[Joe Rogan]

Changed the whole world.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Awesome.

[Joe Rogan]

Changed what street fights look like. Changed everything.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Those first. Those first UFCs were just wild.

[Joe Rogan]

Nuts wild.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Just the bizarre.

[Joe Rogan]

The first UFC I worked was UFC 12.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

In Dothan, Alabama. Yeah. I had to take a propeller plane. I had to fly into. I think we flew into Birmingham or somewhere, and then we had to take a propeller plane to Dothan. I was like, what am I doing? This is so ridiculous. But I wanted to just see it live because I'd only seen it on television. I'd only seen it. I'd never seen a live cage fight before. I'm like, this has got to be crazy.

[Josh Waitzkin]

So UFC 12, how long after the first was that?

[Joe Rogan]

Wells 97. So it was four years later.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Four years later.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Wow. You've been on that journey from the beginning.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Everybody was like, what are you doing? Don't be associated with this. So many people were telling me not to be associated with it. It was. It was like I was doing snuff films or something. You know, it's like, why are you doing this. You're an actor. Like, I was like, okay, I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, I like it. I want to go watch. I needed to see it.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And you were. You're training at that point?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, yeah. I'd already started doing Jiu Jitsu. I started jiu jitsu in 96.

[Josh Waitzkin]

You were training at Hickson's then, right?

[Joe Rogan]

Started at Hickson's, and then I went from Hickson's to Carlson Gracie's. I didn't know. I thought all Gracies were the same. Like this Grace. Oh, this Gracie's closer. I'll go this Gracie.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I love each other.

[Joe Rogan]

And I'd also say I didn't understand they were fight. They were all tooth and claw at each other back then. I didn't know that. I knew Carlson's from. I think the show was Extreme Fighting, the John Peretti Show. So John Peretti, who worked for the UFC then branched off and had another thing called Extreme fighting, and that's where Conan Silvera came from, and a bunch of, like, elite UFC fighters. Mario Sperry fought his first fights over there. So it was. It was like, a really good competitive organization that was, like, right up there with the UFC back in the day. And so I had Carlson Gracie's name was on that all the time. And they showed some training footage of them training. So I found out about that place, and that was right when Vitor Belfort was emerging. So Vitor was 19, so I was training at the same gym as Vitor. It was incredible just watching him train, you know, he was a freak. Like, just an athletic freak at 19. He was so fast. Just so fast and so. And with his hands. And everybody knew he was a black belt under Carlson Gracie, so everybody expected just jiu jitsu. And this guy comes out with little MMA gloves on and just starts tuning people up on the feet. You're like, whoa, a black belt who can do that? Like, where's this coming from? Like, this is a totally new thing. So that was the first fight that I attended. That was the first fight I worked, UFC 12.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

It was nuts.

[Josh Waitzkin]

This theme of transitions and developing frames where other people don't have them. Like, it's so interesting how it's manifested in every art, in everything. Like, I remember when I was playing chess, because I was a chess player from age 6 to 23. That was my first. My first art.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, you weren't just a chess player. You were a chess player. They made a movie about. Dude.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. That didn't have much to do with me, man.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, searching for Bobby Fischer is about you, bro.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, which has got to be.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Weird many moons ago. That was fucking weird.

[Joe Rogan]

Was it weird? The dramatic representation of your life versus the real life? Like, what is that juxtaposition? Like, is it bizarre watching a fake version of you on television and did or on a screen rather? And did you have like a feeling like, am I that person? I'm not that person. Like, I'm me. This is not really me, but it's about me.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

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[Josh Waitzkin]

So the book came out when I was 11 years old. My dad actually wrote the book. He was a writer and he ended up just writing about the journey from me starting to play chess to winning my first national championship. And when the book came out, it felt like I read it and it felt true. I was a little pissed off because they don't want people to know when I cried. I was an 11 year old. I didn't want to be vulnerable, right. But like, that felt like. And that was my first real thrust into the. Into like some degree of spotlight. And then. And I was the national champion at that point. And I was each year for those years. So like I was at the top of the chess world, the youth chess world. And then I had the movie come out, the book came out, and then when the movie came out, it was a shit show. I hated the movie when it first came out.

[Joe Rogan]

Why'd you hate it?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Because I thought it had nothing to do with my life. Years later I was able to see it as a work of art separate from my life and see it that way. And I was able to see how it was thematically true in many ways to theme, to like themes in my life. But like my first teacher, Bruce Pendolfini, who's still a very dear friend of mine, Ben Kingsley played him as this mean guy. And I've had terrible coaches in my life. I've had coaches who were super destructive, but Bruce wasn't. He was beautiful and loving and helped me discover my love for chess. My first coaches were the Hustlers in Washington Square park and Bruce Penalfini together. And the way that was represented, I didn't like it. They also combined a bunch of characters in Washington Square park, the Hustle, that combined them into one in a way that, you know, was thematically true but didn't feel so like when you're a kid, you're a teenager, you see all the difference. A movie comes out about your life, you see all the differences as opposed to the similarities. And it was. Yeah. And I felt really guilty about it relative to Bruce. That was a big part of it because I love Bruce.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you talk to him about.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Oh, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What did he. What was his take on it? I mean, was he named Bruce in the movie?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, he was named Bruce in the movie. And he, I mean, he honestly, he loved it. I mean, he put him in the spotlight as like the, the chess teacher in, in, you know, in the country, in the world. So he rolled with it really well. I was just sensitive to all of like all these mean spirited things that happened between us in the film that never happened in life.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And years later, like, those things did happen to me and actually during those years when it came out, they were happening to me then. It was interesting is I had some really destructive coaches During. During that time. And I didn't put that on. On Bruce. But also what happened with the movie is that I love chess so deeply. It was my first form of self expression. And up until the film came out, it was just sort of this preconscious, innocent form of. Of play, of battle, of. Like. It was. It was my. It was my jujitsu mats. It was. It was. I fucking loved it. And. And then the mo. The movie is what pulled me into self consciousness for the first time. I started thinking about. Instead of losing myself in thought, I started thinking about how I looked to groupies, to cameras, to present. So, like, I moved from self expression to self consciousness to being locked up. And then, you know, and I didn't ask for. I didn't decide I want to have a movie. This thing was done. And it was ultimately. I mean, I'm grateful for it. From my perspective now, the existential crisis that happened was awesome for me. It forced me to become more complicated as a human and integrate a sense of consciousness into my relationship to something. So my perspective on it now is that it was a beautiful journey. It made me grapple with a lot of shit. I didn't become reliant on a flower garden in order to have a deep relationship to an art. But at the time I was very conflicted about it. And then when I graduated high school, I took off and left the US for a couple years. Lived in Slovenia with my girlfriend at the time. To get away from the spotlight, to get away from the media, get away from all the shit that was connected to the movie. And that was when I started studying East Asian philosophy and meditating and started reading Jack Kerouac and existentialist literature and trying to figure myself out, figure the world out, figure out how I related to these things in some empty space.

[Joe Rogan]

What's a tremendous burden to place upon a young person to take their life, which is essentially anonymous, you know, to the general public. You know, known in the chess world, obviously, but in the general public, yeah. Anonymous. And then all of a sudden, a movie star, and not a movie star in the sense that you're on the screen, but it's about you, which is probably even weirder. So you have these false expectations or false. False narratives of how your life played out and who the people and who the piece. And so everywhere you run into people, they have a version of you that they've seen that's not real.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And they think they know you very intimately, which is weird, but they don't same. I mean, with you you're so public, right? Everyone, probably most people think they know who you are and what you.

[Joe Rogan]

But at least they know me from me talking.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, it's a really good point.

[Joe Rogan]

They don't know me. Imagine if, like, Mario Lopez played me in a movie, right? You know what I mean? There's someone. Someone less handsome than Mario Lopez, but. And then you would have this thing where, like, oh, you're the guy that that guy played in the movie. And I'd be like, yeah, but that's not really. I don't. That's not really me. I don't really. I didn't have that problem. This is not real. That's fake.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And also, when you're a teenager, you're susceptible to all of the temptations.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I mean, suddenly you've got groupies everywhere, and that's awesome, and it's a lot of fun, but it does not necessarily. It's not necessarily consistent with sitting for six hours at a time in competition playing chess.

[Joe Rogan]

No, it's probably destructive to it, Right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Quite destructive, yeah. Which is interesting. And you have to integrate all of that.

[Joe Rogan]

How old were you when the film came out?

[Josh Waitzkin]

15.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. That is a crazy time to get any kind of attention because you're. You're just getting testosterone for the first time. You're like, what is all this?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Right?

[Joe Rogan]

And your. Your body's growing.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It was going hard.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And you're becoming a man now. All sudden, girls like you. Like, what?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What is this about? This is craziness.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I already had a very strange life because. And I think, like, a foundational part of my psychology came from. So I started playing chess when I was six years old. When I was. By the time I was seven, I was the top rated player for my age in the country. My first national championship, I got my ass kicked, which was tremendous. It was great. Last round. I lost the last round of my first Nationals. I lost to the guy who later became my best friend for many, many years, David Arnett.

[Joe Rogan]

And you say tremendous because. Was that like a jumping point for improvement for you?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Because I didn't learn that I could win without getting my ass kicked first. I had to grapple with my demons. And I relate I. The year from then to winning my Nationals, my first Nationals. The next year was when I really developed a love for chess. And I had to work very hard. And I didn't associate winning the Nationals with talent or a smooth trip or all the bullshit that people can connect when they have. When they're. When they're called A prodigy from the outside. It's not a term I ever related to myself at all. But like, when they're. These labels are put on from the outside, and if you win too fast, too too young, you can just develop this relationship to. This brittle relationship to success and to work into training, into everything, right? You don't, you don't realize that getting your ass kicked is a huge part of the journey.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a problem with very talented fighters as well. A lot of very talented martial artists, they never developed the discipline to truly become great because, like, from the very beginning, they had whatever the advantage was, whether it's a speed advantage, a strength advantage. I mean, genetics play such a large part in martial arts success. You know, if you have someone who's an elite mind who is incredibly disciplined and also has great genetics, you get a Mike Tyson.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Well, that's amazing. You can have that combination.

[Joe Rogan]

That's what you're looking for. That's what you're looking for. But if you don't have that and Mike Tyson is competing in your division, you're fucked. Like, you can be really disciplined, but like, so genetics do have, they do play a factor circumstances, coaching, there's a lot of different factors. But if you're a real prodigy and there are people out there that are just extraordinary from the beginning. I find that if success comes too quickly, you don't develop the mettle to really push through boundaries and reach new levels. Because the only way you get there is through. You have to. I think oftentimes training becomes. It becomes regimented, becomes something you do. You see incremental growth and improvement. You get confidence. But then when you compete, if you get your ass kicked, then you have to kind of reassess everything. Like, okay, was I working at 10 or was I working at 8? Was I. Was I studying tape or was I fucking off and, and calling girls? You know, was I paying attention to my training routine and my recovery, or was I just training and partying? Like, what was I doing wrong? Like, what led this person to land those shots? What led this person to beat me? Yeah, and if you don't have those moments where you lose, I don't think you ever really achieve your true potential because you have to be challenged. And the best expression of challenge is total humiliating defeat.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Absolutely. And so consistently, the biggest losses, the most crushing losses are what lead to the biggest wins later. Yes, sometimes many years later, but people often. I remember I was giving a simultaneous chess exhibition for a charity when, you know, in my 20s somewhere. And this, this Guy introduced his son and he said his son hadn't lost a chess game in. In two years. And he was so proud. And it's just like, I knew it was a train wreck. I mean, the kid, like, because you're the kid, obviously, just was only choosing people to play who he could beat, wouldn't compete up in tournaments, would only play down, would. And he was just. And he was the only kid who didn't want to play against me in the simul. And so his life was protecting this perfect, perfect people who don't lose. So in my chess life, the interesting thing that happened in my psychology is that I was the top rated player for my age in the country from a young age. But I always played up. I always played against adults. Except for nationals and worlds, I played up and so. And all of my rivals were targeting me because I was the top seed in youth events. But they're coaches and were much stronger players than me. They were adults, international masters, grandmasters, and they could see all my weaknesses, psychological, technical, everything. And so if I ever made a mistake, the weakness was exploited until I took it on. And so I developed from really young age this relationship to training, which was if I didn't take on my weakness, I got my ass kicked and I felt pain. And so not taking on my weakness became outside of my conceptual scheme. So from age 8, I just. I. And it can be a blind spot, like today in life, Like, a criticism of me that certain loved ones would have is that I. I'm just. I'm always. I love training. I love pushing my limits as a way of life in whatever I'm doing. If it was chess, if it was fighting, now it's. It's foiling, surfing and then foiling in. In the biggest waves I can find. And like, just if I'm playing at my edge, I feel. It feels beautiful. It feels like where I want to be, but the comfort zone doesn't feel comfortable, beautiful. And to me, that works really well. But it's a big part of, like, my foundation in that was when being 8 years old and being targeted. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. My whole life. And I. It wasn't until recently that I realized that it was actually outside of my conceptual scheme not to take on the weakness because it was just connected to pain from such a young age as a competitor. There's no luck in chess. There's no fucking luck in chess. If you have, like, if you. If you're playing chess, if you have an opening repertoire that's massive and you go into a game and there's one little place that there's a weakness and you don't want your opponent to go. He always fucking finds it. You don't know why you can. You never, like, make a move and hope he doesn't see it. Or I'll set this trap and it's not the best move, but maybe he'll fall into it. No, that never works at a high level. So you just, you, you have to take your shit on.

[Joe Rogan]

So you associate not taking it on with pain.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, I don't anymore. I did young and now I don't associate it with anything. I just don't do it.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Unless I try.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a better way to handle it, to recognize there's a real process, there's the right way to do this, it's the only way to do this. So don't even think about the other way.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Right. But if it's kind of driving you. For me, I think it's healthier for me to recognize that pattern in myself and then roll with it as opposed to just not even see, like, that it's that it's there, that it's there.

[Joe Rogan]

Right? Yeah, well, yeah. Acknowledge. Well, you have to have acknowledgement of it because you have memories.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like, if I'm cooking a turkey, I have to cook a world class turkey. I have a friend, Jim Detmer, who says to me, josh, what you have to do is cook a terrible turkey. Just cook a. Cook an average turkey, you know, don't crush it. In other words, like, don't. It's an interesting thing when you become present to the fact that you have this, like, youthful story running through everything you do. And you can choose to live that way, but it's good for it to be a choice as opposed to just driving you.

[Joe Rogan]

It's definitely good for it to be a choice. It's always good for it to be a choice because sometimes life will. You know, there's a curve that you have to take and you have to put something aside for a bit or maybe forever. And you have to be able to transition to something else. And if you can't do that, then you'll be stuck.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And you see a lot of that with martial arts people. You know, most of us, at a certain point in time realize that injuries are not just inevitable, but at a certain point in time, you go, maybe I should stop doing this. Because training, no matter what you do, training is all about you using your body as a weapon and someone using their body as a weapon. Whether it's martial arts, like standup fighting, or whether it's jiu jitsu, it's the same thing. You're. You're trying to. You're trying to isolate joints, you're trying to cut off blood, and you're resisting all these things. And all the weak points get exposed. Shoulders, knees, ankles, back, neck, all those things get exposed. And if you're a meathead, like I have been in the past, you train through injuries and they get chronic. And then you get to a certain point where you're like, what am I doing? And if you can't transition to something else, if you can't find something else to do with your time, then you're a cripple. Then, you know, then you're getting your 10th surgery on your back and you're still trying to train. And everybody's like, look at Bob. He's crazy. He's got all his disc fused, but he's still training. Like, maybe Bob shouldn't be training. Like, maybe, maybe Bob's gonna break something else now. Like, maybe. Maybe it's time to move on to something else. And if you don't have this ability to constantly take on new projects and be excited by different things, you're gonna have a shallow life. Like, life has so many challenges and so many fascinating things to dive into. For you now, it's foiling for a while. Jiu jitsu, chess, like anything like that, you'll find something else like that. When it comes to college basketball and March mania, one thing is for sure, nothing's for sure. Upsets, buzzer beaters, Cinderella's advancing. Top seeds going home early. It's all going to happen. Bet the unexpected. Every upset, every day with DraftKings sportsbook. With live betting, exclusive content, promos and parlays, DraftKings is the ultimate college basketball destination. First time. Here's something special just for you. New DraftKings customers bet five bucks to get $200 in bonus bets instantly. Bet the unexpected with DraftKings Sportsbook. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use the Code Rogan. That's Code Rogan for new customers to get 200 in bonus bets. When you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling problem.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Call 1-800-GAMBLER in New York.

[Joe Rogan]

Call 877-8-HOPENY or text hopeny467-369 in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Please play.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Responsibly on Behalf of Boot Hill Casino and resort in Kansas, 21 and over.

[Joe Rogan]

Agent eligibility varies by jurisdiction.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Void.

[Joe Rogan]

In Ontario, new customers only. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG co Audio.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Jiu Jitsu was the art I had to. That I had to move on from. Not on my own terms because I ruptured my L4 L5 disc. There it is. Trained on it like a crazy person for a couple years. And then the doctors looked at that and they just like, if you keep on doing this, you're not gonna walk, not gonna be able to play.

[Joe Rogan]

What's it like now?

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's great now. Yeah, that's great.

[Joe Rogan]

I think it's a little foiling. Probably makes your core, like, incredibly strong.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, I mean, I. I've done a lot of stuff. I mean, I spent. I never had surgery. They all told me to, but I didn't have surgery. And I did tons of. I mean, I've been doing total immersion swimming and foundation training and everything I could do for the back. And the foiling feels. I mean, I'm training like I'm all in on this art and I'm doing it in a way that feels healthy on the back. I train Jiu Jitsu now, but light. I mean, I can't train all it all out. Like, I'd love to, love to. When I. It was hard. It was heartbreaking to give it up.

[Joe Rogan]

It was hard.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And I was so madly in love and all in with Marcelo and having that, like, I was at that part of the learning process, which is where I get good at the learning process, which is like toward the higher levels of something. That's where I'm best at learning.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you have a small injury that got worse over time, or did you have a significant moment where you realized you heard it?

[Josh Waitzkin]

I was so stupid. No, it was significant moment. I was. I was position sparring. Marcelo wasn't at our school in New York. It was a week before my. My eldest son Jack was born. So it was a bit over 13 years ago. I. We were. Marcelo was. Was gone. We. I was at the school. Paul Shriner was running class that day, I think, and there was this 240 pound blue belt visiting. This is like ripped dude. And Paul had everyone doing position sparring, half guard, position sparring. And this guy was matched up against one of our guys. I've had that hubristic, invincible feeling about me in that moment. I was just. When you're feeling at your very best in Marshall flow. And I was like. And it ended up where we were doing half guard position sparring, where I was holding half guard and he was doing this pass, twisting the spine, and it was so stupid to do it. I mean, I was just holding half guard in a. In, like, in position sparring, and I just felt it go. And then, like, you know, it was. I couldn't move. It was terrible.

[Joe Rogan]

Did it herniate?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. And all the fluid gone.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And. Yeah, it was brutal. You know, it was. And I remember.

[Joe Rogan]

So how is the disc now?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Couldn't list. I couldn't lift up my child for the first three, four months of his life. Then I had this strange period where I couldn't. I couldn't. Standing and walking was the toughest. But then I had this period, like, if I had gone to the corner store to get milk, like, three or four months later, I have to bike to the corner store and come back. And. I can't explain this, but I had a period where I couldn't walk, but I could ski because of the angle. So Marcel and I were going to the mountains out around New York, just bombing down. I was just trying to get my fix in. Just skiing without turning was my goal. He was snowboarding, I was skiing.

[Joe Rogan]

You couldn't walk, but you could ski.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, it was very strange, period. Don't fucking ski. It would have been a smart thing to tell me. Yeah, I was a dumbass for the first two years after the injury, and then I. And then I realized I had to.

[Joe Rogan]

What does the disc look like now?

[Josh Waitzkin]

I haven't looked at it in a long time.

[Joe Rogan]

It doesn't trouble you anymore?

[Josh Waitzkin]

It does trouble me. I take care of it all the time.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, they replaced them now. Eddie Bravo got a fake disc in his lower back, a titanium disc, and he's able to train again. I know quite a few guys have got them. Al. Jermaine Sterling got one in his neck and then went on to defend the UFC bantamweight championship several times.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, they replaced them all together. I didn't know that.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, they put artificial discs now. Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

You know your point about. I remember I was back in the early 2000s, studying Eddie's game, studying the Rubber Guard, studying all the Twister stuff. Just trying to wrap my head around it.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, he's got some wild stuff, and if you're not used to it, it's really interesting to watch people that just have never encountered it before. When I would go to train in other places, like, I lived in Colorado for a bit, and I Trained at a mall, Easton's. And when I'd go up there, there's so many positions that guys just didn't understand. They didn't know what was going on. They figured it out after a while, like, oh, if he goes this way, he's going to try to get me in a twister. Yeah, if he goes this way, he's going to try to set this up. But there's certain things that people do all the time. Like, especially, like, put your hands on the mat. If you put your hands, pull up. Jeremiah Vance Highlights. This is, like one of Eddie's best black belts with rubber guard. And the way he does it is phenomenal. He has incredible leg dexterity and his technique is so sharp. And he catches people and stuff and they're like, how am I even stuck here?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Do you find that?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, here it is. So watch. Watch how quick he sets things up. It's like, right away you're Foxville. Like, who does this? Who sets up a Go Go plata right off the bat and then triangles it. Look how he sets this up. I mean, this is insane. And just massive crank on your fucking neck.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And he switches it to Oma plata rerolls Alma Plata crucifix finish.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yep.

[Joe Rogan]

And everything he does involves this incredible dexterity and flexibility. There's like a whole series of highlights. That's not even some of his best stuff, but he's able to do this to people that just don't know what he's doing. Like, they don't understand some of these transitions.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And this is just like one of the best expressions of the techniques that Eddie's developed. So, like, Jeremiah's fantastic at that. Like, this. This particular technique of being able to isolate the alma plata and then secure a choke in the transition. He does this to everybody. Look at how this transition right here.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Brutal.

[Joe Rogan]

Is so nasty. Yeah, it's so nasty. And you just. You don't know what the fuck you're doing. How am I getting out of this? I mean, he just hits this over and over and over on people. And so many times when people go for noma plata, people say, okay, I. Worst case scenario, I might roll out of this and wind up on my back inside control. But not with him. But with, like, this is like, you're really close to checkmate from the moment the oma plata set up from a position where you're defending. So you're defending correctly from the oma plata and that winds up setting up this choke.

[Josh Waitzkin]

What was your. How did you feel about Ryan Hall's game in mma because he also. He's entering the MMA game.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, he's been in the MMA game for quite a while.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, I know, but I mean, when he entered the game, he came into it with a repertoire that was so unusual for him.

[Joe Rogan]

Very unusual. Well, he's really, really smart, obviously. And when you see his style. The problem with his style, in my opinion, is it's so jiu jitsu heavy that he's vulnerable when he's fighting world class strikers like Ilia Toporia smashed him.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And it was a horrible, horrible knockout. It's because Ilya's a legit Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt, but also, like way more technical on the feet. And when you're fighting a guy who's just. Any one mistake you make in striking it is a concussion. Any one mistake, boom. A big hand's coming, a knee's coming, a kick's coming. It's like something's coming. If you make mistakes, it's just like being a blue belt rolling with a high level black belt. It's the same thing. It's like you're just way too vulnerable. So his jiu jitsu is off the charts, but his standup is not at the level of his jiu jitsu. And that's just a real problem today. It's very. You can kind of be a specialist if you're a striker. A striker, like, there's a few guys that can pull it off if they're really strong and they have good takedown defense. Like Pereira is the best example. Right. Two division world champion kickboxer comes over, dominates, becomes a two division UFC champion as a striker. Because every fight starts standing up. But if you don't know how to strike, every fight starts standing up. So the beginning of the fight is always something you're not good at. And if you're getting tagged at the very beginning of the fight and now you're in desperation mode and all this person has to do, it's an enormous space. They're fighting in the octagon. And the cage of the octagon actually makes it easier to get up if someone takes you down. So there's a lot of elements that wouldn't even exist if you had a flat surface with no walls. So it's easier to defend, it's easier to move around because it's an enormous surface. So you're now chasing this person and you might have already gotten a concussion, you might have already been rocked. So you're already a little out of it. And now you're like desperado mode. It's just a bad place to be. You have to have world class striking to compete at a world class level in MMA at this point. Yeah, you have to have. You have to have something. At the very least, you have to be really good defensively. Really good. But then you're just going to get picked apart on the feet.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Your legs are going to get kicked, you're going to get brutalized. Yeah, you have to be a really good striker. And Ryan is one of those guys that's a specialist. And you know, he tapped a lot. I mean, tapped BJ Penn in like 10 seconds. He's tapped a lot of guys.

[Josh Waitzkin]

He's.

[Joe Rogan]

When he gets a hold of you, you're in this complex web of transitions and techniques that if you're just a regular MMA fighter who trains jiu jitsu three times a week, you're not going to know what he's doing.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, he's a brilliant guy. He, he trained at our school from, in New York, I think from 2010, 2012, that range. And it was so interesting watching him and Marcelo because Ryan had a huge amount of humility relative to Marcelo and he wanted to train with him. And Marcelo was so curious about Ryan's game, but Marcelo never studied anyone's game. A core principle of Marcelo is if you study my game, you enter my game, and no one will be better at my game than me. And so when he in competition, guys would be studying tape of everybody. He would never study one's tape, never study one's fights, but he'd watch them the fight before they went against him, and he'd pick up on some kind of elemental read. He has this incredible. He's what I call a low rep learner. His ability to learn from a single repetition is just unbelievable. And it was really interesting watching him and Ryan because Ryan and Ryan just came and visited me in my home a month ago and we were talking about how formative those training experiences with Marcelo were. And it was like one way that Ryan described it is that he had this, like, layers of traps, seven steps in. But Marcelo had this deep understanding upstream of that. And it was like watching Marcelo put himself like right next to the fire, like right next to Ryan's game. He wanted to learn Ryan, the edges of Ryan's game, but never enter it. And his ability to play right at the threshold of all of Ryan's traps, which he could pull almost everyone else into, in just pure grappling.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And, but not, not just his ability to learn, it was like. It felt like a cat putting its paw right up against the edge of a fire and just, like, learning about what heat was and deconstructing it, but then not ever getting into the heat, you know, And I. And you'd watch Ryan roll anyone else. He just pulled them into the fire, into the spider web.

[Joe Rogan]

That's fascinating.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. Marcelo has a really incredibly deep, almost simian physical intelligence, and his ability to learn from a single republic is unique in my observation.

[Joe Rogan]

That's amazing. Ryan has had a ton of surgeries, hasn't he?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Oh, yeah. Man, that dude has had such bad luck.

[Joe Rogan]

What is wrong with him? What's going on?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Some shit with. I mean, tons of stuff with his knee, with his hip, with. I think he's starting to come. I think his shoulder, something now. He. He's still. You know, he's had, like nine. 23. I think it was 23. I think he said 23 surgeries. Dude has got. And the bad one happened with someone just falling on him in training.

[Joe Rogan]

What was that?

[Josh Waitzkin]

I don't know. I don't. Hip.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, God.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. I don't know exactly. I haven't seen.

[Joe Rogan]

What did he get done to his hip?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Ask him. I'm not sure. Yeah, he's had a lot of surgeries. A lot of.

[Joe Rogan]

Someone just fell on him. So was he training with someone else and someone else?

[Josh Waitzkin]

No, he was. He was training with somebody and he was taking it easy on them in a transition, trying to not hurt them, and then they just collapsed on him on his hip in a certain way, as he described it. Yeah. Brutal.

[Joe Rogan]

When you were training, did you do any weightlifting just to sort of supplement it to keep your joint strong and your.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, yeah, I did a lot of. I tended to do weightlifting that was consistent with the movement patterns of the arts that I was training in. So now. So I would do a lot of biking, lower body strength, and then I would do. I wasn't. Didn't have. I think if I did it now, I would do much more weightlifting. But when I was rolling, usually twice a week, six days a week, and. And I was. I would do cardio work in addition, and then some, like, some resistance work, but I didn't. I wasn't. Like. I'm doing a lot of work with the Boston Celtics now, and I'm seeing how they're. For the last few years, and I see how they're brilliant, their sports science team and their physical trainers are. And, like, I don't think that I was. When I was Training jiu jitsu. I was at the level of, for example, the Boston Celtics in. In. In the resistance training that I was doing. It supplemented. And Marcelo didn't do weight training. That was part of it. When I was training with him, we were like. I was just.

[Joe Rogan]

He didn't weight train at all?

[Josh Waitzkin]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

How did he get those legs?

[Josh Waitzkin]

He just rolls, man. He was biking. He resigned into those bikes without. Without brakes. We were biking all over New York.

[Joe Rogan]

Bikes without breaks.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What do you mean?

[Josh Waitzkin]

What are they called? Fix these. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What is that? Fixed wheel.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, fixed wheel.

[Joe Rogan]

What does that mean? Just got no.

[Josh Waitzkin]

No brakes.

[Joe Rogan]

How do you slow down? You could. You go slow.

[Josh Waitzkin]

You got to slow. You put your hand. Your foot on the. On the edge of the wheel. What, like. Yeah, fixed wheel. Biking. I mean, he loved fixed wheel around New York, and I was biking, then I switched over.

[Joe Rogan]

Why would you ever get on a bike with no brakes?

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's a.

[Joe Rogan]

You control it. You're. You're breaking. Sure. I'll show you videos.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Show people love it. But, man, in New York, it's quite something. I mean, in New York, when you're going down a hill in New York City and in traffic, there's. There's some adventures.

[Joe Rogan]

You're going down a hill, how are you fucking slowing down?

[Josh Waitzkin]

You don't go fast. Oh, we're going fast, yo.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, that's it. You just got your. You got to see a high.

[Josh Waitzkin]

This isn't gonna be a good video.

[Joe Rogan]

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in my life. This is something only white people would figure out. Let's have a bike with no brakes.

[Josh Waitzkin]

The dumber thing was what I did after this, which is that I. When I fell in love with surfing, I was one wheeling all over New York.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, five ways to stop on a fixie. How about don't get a fixie, get brakes, you fucking idiot. This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen in my life. Why wouldn't you have brakes? Why wouldn't you have an option to control the bike better? This episode is brought to you by my friends at Black Rifle Coffee. That's all I drink, folks. If you see me drinking coffee in the studio, it's Black Rifle Coffee. Is because my friend Evan Hair, who owns a company, I love him to death. And they make the best coffee in the world. They put together the best energy drink in america. Made with 200 milligrams of naturally sourced caffeine, locale calories, and absolutely zero sugar. It's Available in four new delicious flavors. Project Mango, Ranger Berry, Freedom Punch and White Frost. Veteran founded and veteran led. Each Black Rifle Coffee purchase you make helps them give back to those who serve our nation. Shop now@black riflecoffee.com Joe Rogan with the code ROGAN for 30 off. Or visit your local grocery and convenience stores. Black Rifle Coffee. America's coffee. So I. The people that ride these, they'd argue they control it. Probably better. Yeah. Look at all the white people. All white people. Ridiculous white people that be doing backflips with skateboards. This is a big New York thing, though. I've. Of course it is. They don't. They like suffering over there. That's why they live jammed on top of each other. Find a good video. That's so stupid. There's no good videos on that. That's a stupid thing.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Movie I've seen.

[Joe Rogan]

That's why breaks. You fucking freaks.

[Josh Waitzkin]

My last two years living in New York, I had fallen so in love with surfing and I was, I knew ocean arts were my next chapter and I was so heartbroken not to be able to do it every day. So I got a one wheel. It was like the first generation. You know the one with electronic skateboards. With one.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, yeah, we have one of those.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Just came out, first generation. And I was just like thousands of miles biking one, wheeling all over New York and then. But it was at the early one, if you push past the pushback, it had this pushback thing which would slow you down, but you could push past and go faster. But if you push past the final pushback, it just bottomed out. Wham. Oh, he just went 23, 24 miles. It was a whack right over taxi cabs, under taxi cabs, through taxi cabs, everything.

[Joe Rogan]

The one wheels. Like when you're a kid or, sorry, the fixie.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's like you just skid.

[Joe Rogan]

Remember, there is a kid. Yeah, I guess that's a better way to describe it. I was thinking of it that way. Okay. So you can break. You can also reverse, which you can't do on most bikes. You can ride backwards if you needed to.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's really beautiful. I mean, I, I, I, this wasn't. This, I never did it. But it's really beautiful to watch when it's done. Well.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, that makes me feel better that you could just skid.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, you could skid, retire, but you could stop. There's lots of things that can go wrong, but yeah, seems like beautiful things. There are lots of things that go wrong. Foiling there's a lot of things that can go wrong. You're 35, 40 miles an hour on top of a guillotine. Big waves.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, dude, I learned how to foil two years ago, and it took me like three hours to get on that thing for the first time because I've never served.

[Josh Waitzkin]

You're on an E foil or.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Took me forever. Just kept falling down, getting back up, falling down. Meanwhile, my kids, my youngest at the time, she was 12, humiliated me. Yeah, she just hopped on it instantly was scooting around. And look, she know how to do it immediately, but she, she wakeboards.

[Josh Waitzkin]

She.

[Joe Rogan]

She does a lot of that shit. She's really athletic. But she was just humiliating me. And I was just like, I'm gonna figure this out. For hours I kept falling down, getting back up, falling down, and eventually I got it. And then once I got it, it was like, easy.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Once I got. I was like, oh, I see.

[Josh Waitzkin]

E foiling is the best. It's like, it's the best way to learn how to foil because you. They weigh 90 pounds. The E foils do, like a high performance, big wave, high performance foil, the whole setup will weigh four or five pounds.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. I mean, E foil, you have a battery. It's heavy, and you've got electricity to learn how to. So you learn foil dynamics. Foiling. When you're high performance foiling in. In big surf, you're. You're just on a, Like a. If you're towing in, you're on a three and a half foot board. No, no, batter is. It's not powered. It's just. You're just riding hydrodynamics.

[Joe Rogan]

Are you getting towed into these?

[Josh Waitzkin]

You can paddle in or. But if you're towing in to bigger waves, you're on a small board.

[Joe Rogan]

You'Re.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Getting towed in behind a jet ski, whipped in, and then you're just riding. It's epic. It's frictionless. So beautiful.

[Joe Rogan]

And what's the benefit of that? Above surfing is that you're above the water.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Above the water, you're not feel like the ultimate. If you think about the glassiest surf day possible, the frictionless feeling, it's more frictionless than that because you're above the water.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I get that. On the efoil, when you get cooking on the E foil, you're above the water, and it's wild. It just. I always feel like I'm gonna fall, I'm gonna fall, I'm gonna fall.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

As soon as I get above the water, like, okay, we're going Too fast, you're gonna wipe out.

[Josh Waitzkin]

The foil is interesting because it's like the ultimate receptivity, because the foil picks up on underwater wave circulation. So it's picking up on lift when you're going very fast. And also when you're in a wave, the waves have upward circulation at the face of the wave. And you get to the top of the wave, it accelerates. And so your foil is riding the underwater currents and you're receiving it so amplified. So like tiny little movements have big effects on the thing. So like the surf movement would be very big and the foil movement is very subtle of the body mechanic. And then you learn to really crank into it and it's limitless. You can do open water foiling, crossing oceans on long, high aspect wings, riding open ocean swells, and you can, you can push like high performance foiling is just like high performance surfing that the lines you can draw, the turns are epic, the GS are crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

So you're all in on this, huh?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Oh, yeah, I'm all on.

[Joe Rogan]

Is it an everyday thing for you?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yes. Every day, same as Jiu jitsu. Six days a week, twice a day, if possible.

[Joe Rogan]

Really? Wow.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow. Do you have goals?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Virtuosity? Yeah. I competed my whole life, and so now I live like I train, the way I would if I was in a world championship training camp.

[Joe Rogan]

That's hilarious. With foiling, who else is doing that?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Just a couple lunatics.

[Joe Rogan]

How many other people are foiling like they're training for a world championship activity?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, but the interesting thing is, like, I. Yeah, I love it. It's. But all these arts to me are connected. That's the strange thing about my, like, chess, Chinese martial arts, jiu jitsu, surfing, foiling. To me, the fascinating thing when you get toward the pinnacle of an art is that you start to experience, at least from my perspective, that the apexes of these arts are much closer to one another than lower down in the mountain of the same art. So people who are virtuosos in various fields are often speaking a much more similar language than people who are at lower levels of the same art than their training. And like, when I think about. About chess, I related to chess through core principles, and those principles manifest in the martial arts. I remember that I had this when I wrote my first book, the Art of. Or my second book, the Art of Learning. It was about my experience of crossing over my level from chess into the Chinese martial arts. And I had this really interesting experience where I was giving a simultaneous chess exhibition, playing 40 games at once in a charity for Duchenne. Muscular dystrophy. But I was at that point. I'd been training martial arts for two years, and I had not been. I'd kind of moved away. I was in the transition away from chess during that period. And I had this realization that I was winning these chess games, playing 40 games at once. But I was not playing chess. I was feeling flow riding space left behind. I was riding the energetic wave of the game like I would if we were flowing on the mats. But I was making chess moves. And I realized that these arts had become fundamentally connected. And then that became like an area of interest and of exploration. I started making what I was doing unconsciously more and more conscious. And now when I relate to chess, I don't move chess pieces anymore. But chess is manifest in everything that I do, as is jiu jitsu, and as is like in the ocean arts, I'm manifesting these other arts, the core principles I've experienced through them all the time. And that's one of the things that I've. I've been puzzled by for many years, is why chess is so fucking hard. Like, chess has no luck. The best chess players in the world are so brilliant at what they do. I listened to your episode with Magnus Carlsen. Enjoyed that.

[Joe Rogan]

He was great.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, it was cool. Like, someone like Magnus, he's so fucking good at what he does. Such a virtuoso. But if you look at like the top 100 or top thousand chess players, they're tremendously strong. But when they try to translate their ability to other fields, they often can't. And it's surprising. And I've tried to figure out why for a lot of years. Because you think, like, if you're able to just be so excellent at something that's super hard, you can take out something that's relatively easier and become very good at it. And I think that the reason that people often can't cross level over from one thing to the other is that they learn it in a localized language. So you can learn chess in a way which is very specific to chess, like principles that are just chess principles, or you can learn chess in a language which connects to all of life, and that won't slow down. It might accelerate your chess learning, but you can but it. But like. And if children are taught games like chess or gymnastics or music or whatever else, so they're learning about that art very deeply, they're touching quality, they're pushing their limits, they're living a life of Training, as I know you value very much. But they're doing so in a language which connects to the rest of life. Then they're studying thematic interconnectedness while they're studying chess or jiu jitsu or anything else. And then they're just learning the language of excellence.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And it's interesting because if you watch chess teachers teaching students, many of them don't do this. They teach it within the confines of the chessboard, like a prison. And if you learn chess that way, then it's like you're living on an island and the ocean around you is like prison walls. Right. But if you study chess in a way that you're learning how each chess principle connects to every other art you could ever study, then just this web of interconnectedness is forming in your mind. Then when you take on something else, you're able to cross the level over really, really naturally. And in many ways, that's my. That's a big part of my life's work, is the study of that interconnectedness.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you think that a hu. Well, it had to be a huge factor for you that you were sort of forced to reevaluate the way you interface with life when you became famous because of the film at 15. So childhood chess player become very well recognized, then all of a sudden this movie, and now you have to kind of like grapple with things. And as you said, these challenges make you more complex person. And then your ability to sort of push chess aside and try other things. Do you think that's because of that? It has to be a factor in your. This desire to explore other things because you're kind of thrust into this thing where your, your thing is now changed. Your thing is now not just flowing and learning and getting better and doing battle with chess. Now it's image and groupies and this bizarre thing that you're living up to and you don't like it and you want to escape it, and so you have to reevaluate. And so this forced reevaluation from a young age at 15 years old, this key developmental period as a young man, sort of opens you up to the possibilities of all sorts of different ways of living life and all sorts of different things to do with life.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. A language I use for this is the passage from the preconscious to the post conscious competitor or artist. And like, when I, up until 15, I would relate to myself as the preconscious competitor. I love chess. It was free flowing. I loved the battle, I loved the competition. I Love the ass kicking and the kicking ass. I just loved the fucking battle of the thing. And then. And then I had. I fell in love for the first time when I was 15. The movie came out after that and I started studying existentialist literature. I started reflecting on the absurdity of it all. I started to become present to the fact that these were just 64 squares and 32 pieces. Like I was spending my life studying this fucking box, wooden box. Like the construct. The absurdity of being stuck in that construct became clear to me. And then I was becoming more and more self conscious about how what I was doing was perceived by others. And I got lost in all of that. And in many ways, like the journey, some people don't run into that for a long time. There are some chess players that just become insanely strong without ever reflecting on the absurdity of the fact that they're just playing chess. And that's a great liberation. That the moment you become aware of the fact that you're immortal, that you can get your ass kicked, that your arm can break, that you can die, that what you're doing is absurd. You get locked up by that knowledge. And there's so many different forms that can take. Or the moment you like, for example, Boston Celtics, like they like, you're hungering to win a world championship, and then you win the NBA Finals. Suddenly everything changes. Your relationship, your motivation changes. All the reasons you're doing it are no longer valid in some ways, because now you've accomplished the thing you always dreamed of and you have to discover it's true in any form of competition or art. In my experience is that there comes a moment where someone's consciousness becomes more complicated and they can't just return to the innocence they had before. Because you can't do that. You can't put it back in the box. It's out. So then you have to work through that journey, which is a lot of what I did from like my late teenage years leaving and studying philosophy and then moving into other fields and started relating to art in a way that was integrating that self awareness, integrating that sense of mortality. It's like when I. A very powerful example of this was I die. I drowned in a pool. I guess like nine, ten years ago. I was doing hypoxic breath work. Wim Hof training in a pool.

[Joe Rogan]

Jesus Christ.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And never do Wim Hof training. Everybody please. In a pool. Because you're flushing the CO2 from your body. But CO2 is what gives you the urge to breathe. And so without carbon dioxide, you don't feel the urge to breathe. And I'd been a lifetime free diver, spearfishing from when I was five, six years old. But I was never doing hypoxic breathwork before free diving. So if you're diving 80, 90, 100ft, you're not flushing the CO2 from your body before you do so. So you still have that sense for when you need to breathe. But I was in a NYU pool. I was just swimming 50 meters back and forth underwater and then doing this hypoxic breath work in between. And then my last recollection was being stretched out in bliss. Those tingles through your body you get from. Have you done WIM HOF training? Yeah. You know, those tingles. Had those fucking tingles. And then I woke up 30 minutes later. What happened was that I blacked out. I was in the bottom of the pool for over four minutes after blacking out from shallow water. Blackout.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, my God.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Which should. It should be 45 seconds to a minute. And you should be brain dead or dead because you're post shallow water blackout. I know the time it was because there was an old man at the pool who saw me in the bottom of the pool and swam one lap. And his laps were a little bit over a minute. So I'm a second lap. After his third lap, he said, let me, I'll check on him if he's still down. He thought I was holding my breath, but I was only holding my breath while swimming. So if I was still, I was fucking out. His fourth lap. After his fourth lap, he pulled me up. I was blue. My whole body was blue. My head was red. My body saved me, my training saved me and almost. And killed me. Sent all the blood to my brain. My eyes were blown out, red, like bloodshot for three weeks that followed. And I. I remember waking up and having this. Everyone looking everyone around me and like, what the fuck is everyone? What's going on, guys? Like, what's the drama? I was the fucking drama. And I spent that night in the hospital going through old chest variations, trying to like, test my brain. Is my brain ruined? Like, do I remember things somehow? My brain, Maybe it's fucked up, but it seems like it'd be working pretty well and wow. But like, I can't. And that was also a big part of me realizing I had to spend my life in the ocean because, like, I could feel the potential for some PTSD response. Like, I could, I could actually feel the potential trauma response. Like a cloud that was washing over Me like I could see the cloud coming and I just fucking decided not to let it in. And I got back in the water the next day and I just fucking. And I think that's a big part of my relationship with the ocean, is having died in water. I need to spend my life in the water.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you have any sort of out of body experience or anything while you're gone?

[Josh Waitzkin]

What's really fucked up about it is. No, that's what's really wild. It went just black. That's what's crazy is that I went. My last memory is of just tingles and bliss and then waking up. And so if I hadn't been pulled out, there would have been no flash, no seeing my life pass before my eyes, no tunnel on the other side, nothing. You know what's really fucking wild though is that many years later I was doing this. This guy, Brandon Powell is a brilliant guy who's a top WIM HOF trainer and a trainer of trainers of his guys. And I was doing some retreats with teams of mine and we're doing some WIM HOF work. And he had this methodology of kind of accelerated hypoxic work where that he said, I'm not sure if it's true, but he said, release DMT in your body, inhibited the DMT inhibitors in your body. And I did these journeys with him twice through pure breath work, no psychedelics. And I experienced these two times months apart. I experienced. One time I experienced the center of my consciousness as the. Where I. As my busted disc. And I experienced the world through like the electrical connections emerging from my. From my L4 L5. It's very strange. And the other one was the only memory I have of that. And I'm not sure if this is accurate or some kind of illusion, but I saw the drowning experience from above, the whole thing. I watched the 20 minutes that I was on the. That I was on the bottom of the pool and then up in 25 minutes and then on the pool deck and I saw the whole thing from above. But that was like years after it happened, so I can't explain that.

[Joe Rogan]

Were all the people there the same people?

[Josh Waitzkin]

I don't know. My memory of it consciously from what actually happened is so fuzzy. Right. Because I just died and came back and then I saw it from above. I think I was mostly focused on the memory of myself. Yeah. So I relate to myself now like I've died and I'm living and I live with a sense of gratitude and commitment. That's a big Part of why we moved to the jungle with my family. It's like I emerged from that with a commitment to living life as beautifully and deeply and truly as I possibly could. And to not let anything slip. Just all in.

[Joe Rogan]

Isn't it fascinating that sometimes it takes. Again, it's the same thing as like loss propels you to a next level. Even the moment in life where you realize it all could just go away.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like that so fucking fast. No warning. Just gone.

[Joe Rogan]

No warning.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I've done so many stupid fucking things like in these extreme sports. I've done, you know, like so many times I almost died. Free diving or. But that one was different, man. Yeah, because there was like. I didn't. It was just a. The crazy thing was technical blind spot. I just didn't know this thing about carbon dioxide. I didn't know I was taking a risk in that moment. I thought I was just taking a swim.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you learn from other people who do Wim Hof breathing when they swim after? Or did you before? No, before.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Oh yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Who taught you to do this?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Nobody. I did one Wim Hof breathing on land and I was like, you know, I'll fuckin do it. Let's do it fucking on the swim right now. Sounds like a great idea.

[Joe Rogan]

I think other people have done that and died.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, they have. And most people who die from shallow water blackout are highly trained Navy SEALs because they're very good at inhibiting the urge to breathe. But you can get too good at it or you can not feel it at all.

[Joe Rogan]

The ocean is such a fascinating thing. It's so alive. Yeah, it's. It's such a strange thing when you get in the ocean. If you haven't been for a while, you climb in and you feel it moving around you and pulling and. And the water just feels different. It feels like it's a living thing. Like you're in a. You dunk your head under and you look at this world that's three quarters of the surface of the earth and it's so. It's so vibrant and you see people that are surfers that just get drawn into its spell and it just becomes a part of their life is to ride that energy and to feel it and. And the addiction that they get from it. Guys like Laird, now guys like you. I know so many people that they like Jocko. He won't leave San Diego. He doesn't even want to be in California. Yes, but San Diego is the ocean for him. He has to be by the ocean.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. Yeah. And you can't dominate the ocean. You have to receive her.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, you just.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And if you have any brittleness in your ego, she will kick your ass until you just blend.

[Joe Rogan]

I know you're a favor. You're in favor of optimizing training and finding ways to learn things quicker. Would wave surf pools, those crazy ones like Kelly Slater style wave surf pools where they have. That would give you like way more reps, right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

If you're surfing for sure. Wave pools have revolutionized surf training because for foiling you have the ocean and foiling is much more abundant. Like the surf community is quite scarce in some ways because you have to. You can only surf in specific kinds of waves. And like if you, if you're trying to make one turn, you might not see that section again for two years. You can't replicate conditions in the ocean foiling. You can, because you can pump a foil, you can drive it down, let it float back up and drive it down. So you can and you can, or you can whip yourself on behind a jet ski into a certain kind of wave. So if I want to work on like a certain turn, I can get 40, 50 reps in a given day. While surfing pre wave pool, you couldn't at all. So most great surfers I would, my are brilliant low rep learners because by necessity in the ocean you don't get tons of reps. So in my observation, the greatest competitive surfers in the world are excellent at learning from one or two reps like Marcelo Garcia is on the mats. I'm not naturally a great low rep learner, I'm a higher rep learner. Foiling is what one could say. It's more technically complex than surfing because it's everything that surfing is. But also you have a foil which has lift dynamics and a tail. And you can change the foil shape, the tail shape. If you change the angle of attack on your tail by a quarter degree, it changes the whole feel of everything. It's super technical. And so in many ways one could argue that it's harder. I wouldn't say. Not that it's hard. Any of these arts are infinitely deep because you can refine anything forever. But it's more technical shit to deal with. But it's more trainable because you can replicate conditions like you now can in wave pools. Wave pools for surfers. Now you can, you can hit the same section 30, 40 times. So I do, I do think it's an incredible, it's incredible. But the interesting thing is that most surfers of this generation aren't they don't train in the same way that chess players do or jiu jitsu fighters do because it's a low rep art that you can't replicate conditions in. So surfers aren't. Most surfers aren't constructed psychologically in a way that they will take advantage of wave pools the way a Jiu jitsu guy would.

[Joe Rogan]

That's interesting.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like drilling like you drill.

[Joe Rogan]

Psychologically, that's interesting because they're accustomed to just taking what the ocean gives you.

[Josh Waitzkin]

You can't just take a low rep learner and tell them to live like a high rep learner. It's a different fucking thing.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And, and it's very interesting to me that. So surfers crossing over to foiling is very interesting because they. A lot of surfers, some surfers do it and they just, they're all in and they want to take it on. A lot of the best surfers in the world are crossing over, but it's a different lifestyle. The ones who cross over, the ones who can embrace the high rep training.

[Joe Rogan]

Life, the one who can adapt. Yeah, yeah. That's the low rep training thing with surfing I never really considered, but that does make sense. You have to be able to optimize. You have to be able to take advantage of each one of those things and pick it up pretty quickly.

[Josh Waitzkin]

You have to, especially in the early think about like learning as a kid and then like everything you're exposed to that the ocean's always moving, always changing. But if you can like learn from one rep and burn it in, then that just. Well, in jiu jitsu, for example, you can say, I'm going to drill this armbar 40 times today. 40 times, like this afternoon, hundreds of times, thousands of times over the next two weeks. Right. So you can get as many reps as you need. It's not true in the ocean, right?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it totally makes sense. Why do you think that children learn quicker than adults?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, beautiful question. I think it's. I think a lot about unlearning. Right. So my life's work is unlearning and I think a lot about unlearning because so much of what high level learning is, is being unblocked, which is getting rid of the blocks, the egoic blocks, the false constructs we have, the bullshit we put on everything we do, trying to control the situation. We should just embrace the lack of children don't have to unlearn that. They haven't learned it in the first place. So they're unblocked. Like my little Boy, Charlie learning how to surf was so beautiful to watch. He just like, he grew up in the ocean, he grew up in the jungle and ocean and he just from a young age was swimming and tumbling and we made a game of tumbling. And then when he first got on the surfboard, it was like it wasn't, we didn't make it technical. It wasn't like he should telling him what to do. It was like he could be right foot forward or left foot forward. It wasn't, we didn't impose things on him. He just like danced on the board and would find his way and he started doing things that were very technical that he would just create. It was pure playfulness. While if you watch people come to a surf, like a surf break, who are like New Yorkers who travel down for five days and they've got all this gear, the gear is amazing. They've got like gloves and booties and knee guards and like everything is covered white face. Everything is just like not a part of their body is designed to touch the ocean. They're trying to keep the ocean away. And they're like, they want to be super controlling about everything they learn. They're like, everything is so regimented in their minds, but they're trying to control their relationship with the ocean. But the way to learn on the ocean is to not control it, to embrace it, to listen to it, to observe it, to feel it, to like let it envelop you, right? Kids will just play. They're not afraid of failing. They'll. They'll just like the moment a kid becomes afraid of looking bad. Like you see that wash over kids when they're like 9, 10, 11, 12, some different ages and they become, oh, they don't want to fall, they don't want to look bad and then that's when they get locked up. Yeah, the freedom of, I mean, to me a lot of what like the beacon is, is as adults is being the post conscious, discovering the post conscious freedom as a learner. Like how can we learn without the egoic blocks, right? Without having to look good. So if you're crossing over, like if you're a world class striker and you're getting on the jujitsu mats and getting your ass kicked, or if you're a great jujitsu fighter and you get into an MMA gym and suddenly the guys can just beat the out of you, like having or a great surfer switching over to foiling, right? Or a great chess player moving into the martial arts so you're fucking. Or if you're like training in some esoteric Chinese martial art like I was. And then you're moving to the jujitsu mats. You might have some ego, but you're just tapping out to everybody all the time. Right. And like having the freedom to learn without egoic blocks is. And I actually think that culturally this is one of the most important things that we need to cultivate because we're living in a world now where the pace of technological disruption is accelerating so fast. I know you've done a bunch of, of explorations on this with, with, with Tristan Harris and others in, in terms of what AI is bringing to society. And it's been a big focus of mine for many, many years. And it's an area where, where I'm working. I think that, that we are going to be living in a world where AI is better at everything than we are. Right. So if you think about it in the context of chess, I grew up in the world of where chess was crossing over into the computer realm. So computers are first like I began playing chess in the pre computer era, computer chess era. Then computers entered and I initially was very resistant romantic to it. And I remember at 19 I started developing Chess Master, this computer chess program. And I developed this academy of mine for the next 10 years that followed, teaching the human side of chess through computers. But when it first they first approached me, I didn't want to do it because I felt like it was going to disrupt, it was going to kill the beauty of, of human chess. The art of chess, which is so much about imperfection and then, but like chess players when I grew up, had to sit in the unknowing, in tolerance. They had to have a tolerance of cognitive dissonance. You might, and I might study a chess position and go three months without knowing what the solution is. Right. So our psychologies had to be constructed so that we could sit in cognitive and emotional dissonance for long, long periods of time. Days, weeks, months, sometimes years. Now chess players can click on a button and they've got a supercomputer right by their side will tell them the answer instantly. It's interesting to think about how different that is psychologically and the different kinds of people that that draws in. But what happened then is that you had Deep Blue entered the game like supercomputers and then you had the movement of AI entering into chess. And we had AlphaGo and then AlphaZero, which came out of DeepMind. So Demis Hassebus was the developer of DeepMind. He was a child of chess Friend of mine. So Demis and I, from age 11 on were good friends. And we had dialogue about the birth of DeepMind, which was this AI company he began. And then he developed AlphaGo and AlphaZero. And to give a feel for what AlphaZero did in chess. AlphaZero was able to without being taught anything about humans playing chess. No education of, like, the history of human chess playing within three hours of experimentation was stronger than any human or computer in history. So imagine your life's work. Like, you know, I was a pretty good chess player, right? Like someone like Magnus Carlsen is a much, much stronger chess player. He's the world champion. Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Bobby Fischer. Think about people who are world champions. AlphaZero, within three hours of experimentation without being taught anything was stronger than them, right? So we really need the strongest AI engine in the world today is rated 3700 ELO. So to give a sense for what that means, When I was nine years old, my rating was like 1900 or so, right? Magnus Carlsen. The strongest human players in the world now are rated somewhere about 2,800, 2,850 ish. Elo. The strongest AI is 3700 Elo. So just the absurdity of the fact, the gap between a strong nine year old and the human world champion is the same ELO gap as between the world champion and the strongest AI. Wow. It gets so hard for us to really wrap our heads around what that means. That means that everything like chess players had a front row seat to that happening early. When I listened to some of your dialogues with these guys, and I could feel you and them trying to grapple with how to communicate what it means to have these insanely powerful intelligences in the world. And I think if you can imagine an art like chess having millennia of development, people studying it like you train jiu jitsu, right? So imagine people training 10 hours a day for 30, 40 years being the greatest human in the world at it. And then something can come in and within three hours of experimentation, be much stronger than them. And imagine that's gonna be in fucking everything, right? So, like, we have to be like children in how we learn. We're gonna have to release the egoic relationship that we have to our level, to our knowledge, to everything. One of, you know, the great, you know, Thomas Kuhn's structure of scientific revolutions.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes, right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

So, like, you think about what happens, what the human has to do to the internal resistance we have to overcome to embrace the new paradigm so let's say you're a Newtonian physicist, right? You've been studying physics your whole life. You've got tenure, you've got 40, 50 years of knowledge built up, everyone reveres you. And now there's this new thing, quantum mechanics enters the picture, right? Like to embrace this new thing is to realize is to admit to oneself and everybody else that your life's work is kind of, you have to release it. It's wrong, it's old, right. This new paradigm is. But we resist it individually. Ego, ego. And societally, right? Because we will fight tooth and nail to maintain our conceptual schemes. That's one of our strongest drivers of all humans, right? And so I think we're moving into a world now where you're going to have 3700, 3800 ELO rated everything, kicking our ass at everything. So we have to become like children. To go back to your question, in my opinion, and how we relate to learning, right? We can't. Decision making, right? Like when, you know, we think about like social media. Imagine a 3800 Elo rated networked. Imagine a million networked 3800 Elo rated super intelligences utilizing everything that they can gather about you on social media to manipulate, to manipulate you to do whatever it wants or whoever is controlling it wants. They can have you do anything, right? But we have to, like, it's so hard for us to admit that we are the ant relative to the human, right? Like, we are the ant. We have to have that humility. And one of the things that I think that that's the most important question today that we face as a species is like, what do we do?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, we won't know until it happens. And we will become a different thing. We will have to admit that we are no longer the apex intelligence on the planet. We will have something that's akin to an artificial life form, that's far superior to us in reasoning, access to resources, logic. It'll be far more technically proficient. It'll make far better versions of itself, probably pretty quickly. They've already seen AI is duplicating itself. It's not being prompted to do this.

[Josh Waitzkin]

But when you say we don't, I mean, I would argue we should operate as if it's already happening. It's an inability.

[Joe Rogan]

It is, it is happening. But it hasn't completely transformed life yet, right? It's. It's emerging, right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's about to.

[Joe Rogan]

It's a. Yeah, it's a God. It's a God that's emerging and if it's not a God yet, it'll be a God in 50 years. It just is. It's going to be attached to quantum computing. It's going to figure out ways to implement better strategies as far as utilization of energy resources. It'll be much better at everything than we are.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And then the question is, will it be used to manipulate us? Will it be used to control populations? Will it be. Elon says, his estimation says there's an 80 to 90% chance it'll have a radically positive impact on society at large. That 90% likelihood that it'll radically improve the quality of everyone's life. But then there's 20 or 10% that it will not and that we'll be imprisoned. Like 10% possibility of the matrix, you know, 90% possibility of a technologically inspired utopia.

[Josh Waitzkin]

My feeling about it is that, I mean, there are places where it's going to be incredibly, it's going to be beautiful. Like just how computer chess raised the, the level of, of human chess game chess players, right? And now AI chess has made chess players much, much stronger. And part of it is because great chess players are partially great because they have had. They're excellent at knowing where not to look. Right? Great chess players don't actually look at more, they look at less, but they look in the most potent directions. What's fascinating is that AI entering the picture has forced really strong chess players to unlearn where they've been correct to learn not to look. So in other words, areas where they were well trained not to look because humans couldn't play those positions, AI can now play those positions. And actually those are the right positions to play. They're the objectively correct positions to play. But now humans studying with an AI can be much better at playing those positions, right? And so, like, for example, I'm working on this fascinating project called LILA Science, which is focused on combining cutting edge science, the best scientists in the world, and cutting edge AI to try to have huge breakthroughs in material science and life sciences. And now that can only be done, in my opinion, with just best, best, best in class safety practices. And in my view, that involves having a higher level AI running safety than you have running the actual science.

[Joe Rogan]

When you say safety, like what are you referring to?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Making sure that we don't, that doesn't go wild, that you don't create things that get out there that could be terribly destructive. I think that the part of the AI race that's happening is that people are driven by ego and there's a game theory of a race going on. And when you have a race, everyone's just running as fast as they can, but they're not. If they slow down to think about what's safe, they might fall behind in the race. And I believe ethically, if we're in the AI scene at all, then we must be developing safety practices that are making it responsible.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a very logical perspective. Unfortunately, we are in a race and that's where it gets weird. Right? And because we're not just in a race in America. Right, we're in a race internationally. And the consequences of losing the race are grave. It's akin to the consequences of losing the Manhattan Project, of not coming to the bomb. The first. Not being the first to implement a bomb, which is really crazy to think, but I think it's that on steroids. I think it's the Manhattan Project on steroids because I think it has the. If used in the wrong way, it has the possibility of completely imprisoning society. All you'd have to do is lock down resources, food, power, electricity, everything, and you, you put society at a complete halt. If you can figure out a way to completely disable grids. And you know, every car has a computer in it now. Most cars are connected to wi fi. It's most new ones have at least an option to connect it. There's a way that someone can connect to your car. And this is, this is crazy. In phones, everyone's reliant completely on your phone. There's AI in your phone now. Who knows what could happen if that got hijacked. There's a guy named Robert Epstein who spent a lot of time analyzing what the impact of curated searches can do to presidential elections, to public opinion on things. And that when you're getting a search where you're using Google or some of these search engines, you're getting curated search results. If you look for specific political opinions, political positions, you will get a curated result that is oftentimes skewed in whatever ideology towards whatever ideology the people that programmed it are, you know, they're aligned with. So if you Google something about Donald Trump, you will have as many negative responses they could possibly throw to the front of the line. It will take you page after page after page to find what you're looking for, but you'll be confronted immediately with negative stuff. Now, if you're a person that's in the middle and maybe a person that's undecided in an electoral process, an electoral race, you can be swayed in a Significant manner. And he estimates it's as high as 30 to 50% of the people that are on the fence, that are sort of undecided voters, can be swayed by search result engines, which is kind of crazy. And that's just an algorithm, that's just something that they've devised. This is not like a purposeful changing of narratives in order to implement whatever strategy they think would be the best for them financially, whether it's a central bank, digital currency or social credit score system or something where they could completely control behavior and have your behavior locked up to your bank account, locked up to your ability to make a living, your ability to travel. That's spooky stuff because that's all AI. And if AI can be, if someone figures out the best version of AI that can traverse these boundaries that we have with encryption and with grids and computer systems and just completely lock everything down, we're.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, that's why I don't, you know, when I, when I hear people say things like that, 80 to 90% positive, I feel like they're, they're, they're jumping to the destination without thinking about the journey to it. Because the journey to it is going to involve so much disruption, so much pain, so much chaos. And I think what you just said about grids and everything is true. I mean, you think about, about how many people had the ability to disrupt in that way 15 years ago. A handful of countries.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Right now it's going to be hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals who just have access to super coded super coders.

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Right. And so how could it be 80 to 90% positive when there is just going to be limitless humans who have the ability to disrupt, armed with 3800 Elo rated coders that can do anything you want. Hackers, it's just like insane in the.

[Joe Rogan]

Hands of broken people.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's much easier to destroy than to create. Right. You can create for thousands of years and you destroy instantly. So it only takes one terribly destructive act or a handful of them to overcome all the positive. I don't believe that that 80, 90% thing is right. I think that there are areas like science, where we could easily create materials that could have a massively positive impact on the climate. We could have life science breakthroughs that eliminate cancer, eliminate diseases, make the human lifespan hundreds of years. I think those things could happen, which is great. I also think that we could be manipulated into doing increasingly destructive things and we could have horrific things happen like the grid. You know, there's a guy There's a guy who was very brilliant in the espionage world years ago who said to me. He said to me, you know, he's someone who would know. And he said, you know, Josh, what you don't realize is a strong AI. And this was years ago, armed with the information that the social media companies have about, you could convince 99% of Americans to move to Alaska or Antarctica or anywhere within two weeks. Easily. Easily. I mean, just. Just like it's. It's so hard to have the humility that we are the ant relative to the human. Yeah, Right. If you have a 3800 ELO. I'm just using that rated intelligence, trying to manipulate you. And it's armed with everything. I mean, humans can manipulate you with what's on social media.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. With a British accent and an infomercial.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, no problem. Show some leg, you're gone.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I mean, it's just so hard to have the. So we have to have the, like, the real humility that we are manipulatable and a super intelligence which is out there, and there are humans controlling the super intelligence so far. Maybe that will end. So I personally feel. I know everyone should get the fuck off social media. I just think it's like. I think that's the most important thing because everything that we're feeding in to. I've never been on social media. I made that decision a long time ago. Really?

[Joe Rogan]

When did you make it?

[Josh Waitzkin]

I was never on it. I made it. Right. I remember when, like, MySpace came out. Like, what.

[Joe Rogan]

What did you think at the time?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Fuck that.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. I didn't. I didn't. It felt off to me. It felt like something I didn't want to be involved with. I. I didn't Not. I'm not saying that I was prescient and I saw everything that would happen, but I never. There was some people who were impersonating me on social media and. But I was never on any form of social media and. Good for you. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, I'm on everything but TikTok.

[Josh Waitzkin]

TikTok is fucked. It's hilarious. When I was flying here, I was listening to your conversation with Tristan Harris while the dude next to me was scrolling TikTok on the plane. And it was amazing listening to this dialogue here and watching him just like.

[Joe Rogan]

Watching it happen for an hour and.

[Josh Waitzkin]

A half straight, just like, it was incredible. I've never actually seen someone fucking do that. It was the most brainless thing I've ever seen in my life.

[Joe Rogan]

It's so brainless.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's brutal and so addictive and so manipulative. Like it can just guide you to anything you. But why don't we. It's one thing, I kind of disagreed with you on this talk where you were saying that you just don't think that humans are going to do anything about it until we're forced to. But I don't know, man. I think that. What if we just wake the fuck up and take ourselves off of this thing that can be used to steer us anywhere this other humans or AI wants to steer us. Why don't we just remove ourselves from it?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's a very rational perspective.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Let's just fucking do it.

[Joe Rogan]

Most people aren't rational.

[Josh Waitzkin]

But why don't we help people be rational and just change the whole way.

[Joe Rogan]

They interface with life? And that's a big ask. It's not as simple as. Logically, social media is bad for you. I'll stay off the small dopamine hit that you get from opening up reels. Just scrolling through and seeing people get knocked out and car accidents and big boobs. That is, for whatever reason, much more compelling than the idea of possessing autonomy and the idea of having the ability to completely remove yourself from the thing that everyone's addicted to, which is likes and engagement and getting an outrage. The algorithm showing you things over and over again that outrage you. It's. It's so compelling to people, we're so averse to being bored that at any time, when nothing's going on, you pick up your phone, you start scrolling at any time, you just get nonsense just fed into your head. At any time.

[Josh Waitzkin]

But think about, like, the first time that somebody experiences jiu jitsu. They get on the mats and they're. And they realize they might have some hubris. They're an athlete, maybe they've done some standup, maybe they haven't. They're a football player, whatever. And they suddenly are like a fish out of water. They're flopping on the sand, right? And their joints are being popped and they're being choked out. And the humility that they experience, right?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like, I think we need to culturally experience that humility before it's too late, because that's what. That's how manipulatable we are. Just how like a first aid grappler is on the. On the jujitsu mats against a decent fighter, a decent grappler. Like, that's how helpless we are next to a 3800 Elo, which exists. It'll be stronger than 30. I'm just saying like that, where it is now, it'll be much the fuck stronger than that tomorrow.

[Joe Rogan]

Once it's attached to quantum computing, it literally would be a God. Yeah, we're about to experience the most bizarre transition that I think any human civilization has ever experienced. You know, it's, it's electricity times a billion, it's, you know, computers times a billion. It's, it's something completely different. And we're going to adapt to it. We're going to have to, we're going to have to figure it out. It's just what will that be like? What will life be like when we adapt to it? That's what things, that's when things are going to get strange. I think the 80 to 90% improvement of life experience, I think what he's talking about, quality of life experience, I think what he's talking about is it'll make allocation of resources much more efficient. It'll be much easier to get water and health services to third world countries. It'll be much easier to keep power on in places. It'll be much easier for people to get sanitation, medicine, things along those lines. And then starving, poverty, nutrition, all those things could probably be worked out in a far more efficient and a far more effective way. Then the problem is control. That's the problem. The problem is human beings. Every single government, every single leadership position, everything involves control. The CEO controls the company, the President controls the country. There's Congress, there's senators. Control, control, control. Everything is control. And then financial benefit from that control. That's where it gets scary because whoever is actually programming this thing, as we've seen with Google's AI, disaster. When they program their AI to show you images of Nazis and it showed you multicultural, multi ethnic, you know, multiracial Nazis, like instead of actual, like what is it though? No Nazis with dueling scars on their face. Hard looking, scary German dudes. That's Nazis. These are not Nazis. This is a fever dream. This is some nuttiness that you've, you've put your DEI nonsense into an artificial version of what the past is. That's crazy. You can't do that. Because if you start doing that with everything else, then we have a distorted version of reality itself by the most potent intelligence that we currently have at our disposal. And that's nuts.

[Josh Waitzkin]

The question is, what should we do and like, as individuals societally? I mean, I know you're having dialogue with people who have a lot of ideas about the society societally. And I'm thinking about it on the individual Level as well. And it goes like your question about children and learning. Right. I. I feel that there's something about having that beginner's mind which is so liberating.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Right. And it's very difficult for adults to release their egoic addiction to what they do to their habits. Right. To what, props up their identity. But I think that what we could do is take on thinking, take on learning, take on the art of decision making, for example, with a beginner's mind for the world that's coming, like you think about skating to where the puck is going is going, not to where it was or what it used to be. Right. So what does it mean to be a human in the world that we're a year or two or three away from? Right. Where there's a superintelligence out there that can manipulate us, where so many jobs are lost?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, let me throw that at you. What do you think the world will look like?

[Josh Waitzkin]

What do I think it will look like?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I think that we're going to have thrillingly exciting discoveries being made. We're going to have problems solved that we are, as humans, unable to solve. And so there'll be, like, amazing technological innovations that are going to make things much more convenient. I think there'll be huge life science breakthroughs. I think there'll be huge material science breakthroughs. I think there will be wild competition for who controls it. And I completely agree with you about that. And I think that as that unfolds, it's going to be really messy. I think that there's going to be, like, unbelievable amounts of jobs are going to be lost, and then people are going to not have jobs. So what the fuck are they going to do? Right? So this is part of what I'm describing. People need to train at the ability to recreate themselves. Right? Like how some people can move from one art to another and others can't. I think we have to train at the art of rediscovery. Right? So I think we're going to be tested as a species in our ability to. To recreate our identities and to live in a state of dynamic flux, of embracing new paradigms. Paradigms are going to be shifting all the fucking time. The pace of change is going to be radically accelerating for the rest of our lives. The rest of our lives.

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

So if that pace of change is accelerating, then we need to have the ability to recreate ourselves as things shift. We all know that, like, you can't be solving the problem that was important, like in a fight A minute ago, Right, Right. It's a different fucking problem than we have right now, right? Or in a chess game an hour ago or ten minutes ago or one minute ago, right? As a society, we need to be solving the problems that are and that are coming, not the ones that were 10 years ago that we're emotionally addicted to. But humans don't fucking do that, right? We are. We tend to cling to our ideas, the decisions we made. Then we try to justify our ideas. We cling to identities. I mean, I think that this question of identity is a really important one, whether it relates to a belief system, a decision you've made. Like this idea of humans fighting tooth and nail to maintain our conceptual schemes is something like, you think about someone who has what one might frame as a fear of success, right? Like that's a term people use, fear of success. The way I understand fear of success is that why do people undermine themselves when they are close to something that they want, right? To a breakthrough that they yearn? I think the reason is because if their conceptual scheme, if their identity is in not being the person who wins the big game, right? Or who succeeds, it is more terrifying to succeed than it is to give up that old identity. That's a core driver of human psychology, right? In competition, that's a lot of what we do, right? We plant identities in people, tells in people, little egoic addictions in people, and then we exploit the mind being stuck there because it's not dynamic. It can't keep on moving. Right? Like Robert Persig, my favorite. The most important philosopher of my life, Robert Persig wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Have you read. Have you read that book? Yeah, I did. Awesome. He was a really important person in my life. I could tell you an interesting story about him, his idea of dynamic quality, right? I think we have to live in a state of dynamic quality, not static quality. Right. Like you think about the front of the freight train surging through space time versus sitting in the restaurant car. Like we want to be strapped to the front of the freight train as reality is unfolding and adapting to the new realities. And I think we need to build the. The way of life that allows us to do that.

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Right. And I have a lot of ideas about what that way of life looks like. I think if we don't do that, then we're gonna be dinosaurs in a fucking world with the comet coming, and it's gonna blow us the fuck up. So we need to create the ability to reinvent ourselves, to Be creative, to adapt.

[Joe Rogan]

So what do you think happens with all these people that lose their jobs? Because most people believe that some form of universal basic income. People that study this believe that some form of universal basic income is inevitable and necessary. I worry about that psychologically because I worry about people being dependent upon checks from the state and not having agency and not having a personal sense of worth. You know, I think people identify with what they do. If someone's a great mechanic and they have a great relationship with the people that bring their cars to them and they enjoy being able to fix things and help people, they identify with this. This is a part of who they are. They're a person who fixes cars and works on cars. If that's gone and now all of a sudden they just have a check, who are they?

[Josh Waitzkin]

What do dudes do when they got. When they have nothing to do?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it depends on the dude. You know, some people learn new things, some people get excited, and some people. There's going to be people that take advantage of it in a very positive way. If there's a universe, if there's a real living wage that you get from the government where you really don't have to worry about your housing anymore, you don't have to worry about your food. I think that would be. If you were an ambitious person, that would be amazing. So then you could dedicate yourself entirely to what you love, whatever that thing is, and just really dive into that and let that become your focus in life. We're accustomed to believing that survival itself is the primary driving force. Food and shelter is a primary driving force for this intelligent species of human beings. But part of me says, why? Why is that? Why does that have to be your driving force? Shouldn't. If we have unlimited resources, which assumingly will. Assumingly we will with AI, if it's implemented correctly, we have unlimited resources. In terms of your ability to never worry about being hungry, never worry about shelter. You would hope that what people would do then is pursue their dreams. But some people don't have fucking dreams. Some people, they've gone too far down this journey of life with a rigid mindset and a very limited perspective. And now they're forced to change. And many will change, but many will not. And that's where it gets weird, because then you have a whole entire class of society, an enormous swath of human beings that are addicted to TikTok that now get checks, have no hobbies or interests, live off garbage food, and they're lost.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And they're being told probably they're being manipulated, that someone's responsible for this, that these people need to be taken down and shut down. We need to return to our old way of life. You give enormous potential for unrest.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Well, I think that like in dialogue that I've had over the past 10 years or so with people who are AI optimists, there's this jump to the utopian future, right? Where where everything like land of abundance, no more resource scarcity, everything is beautiful. People have the ability to study art and poetry and opera and right. They don't need to work anymore, they don't need to be grinding anymore. They can think about philosophy, et cetera, et cetera. That's the argument. That's just like assume that that would be a positive end. I'm not so sure. I think that we have some other energies flowing through us that we might want to express. But let's just like say that that would be great. The problem is getting there, right? So in chess there's this interesting dynamic between strategy and tactics all the time, right? We need to liberate ourselves from, to be strategic and to think ahead. Like think about what would be the ideal place to go. But then we also have to get the tactics right, the math right to get there. We can't just hang our queen or hang our bishop or hang our rook on the path to our strategic dream, right? We need to integrate execution with strategic dreaming because often if we're thinking too much tactically, we can't see the long term plan we want to utilize, right? Like the end result we want to move toward. And so when I think about this path of AI, I think there's going to be so much disruption along the way to that place of resource abundance and utopia. Even if that was a positive place, I think it's going to be a really messy path to get there. But for us to navigate the path, the question to me now is what should we be doing as individuals, as a species in order to allow us to navigate that path?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, I think certain people, certainly, if universal income becomes ubiquitous, we're certainly going to need some sort of guidance. We're certainly going to need some, something that guides people towards a future feeling of relevancy, towards a feeling of purpose, like you got, you got to give people something.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Training is a beautiful thing to do.

[Joe Rogan]

Any kind of training, anything where you learning something. But again, it comes to this comfort thing. You and I have very similar paths in life and that we've sought things that are many people find uncomfortable and difficult. And I Think there's great value in uncomfortable and difficult things and in the beginner's mindset and the learner's mindset, because there's just. You learn more about everything by learning about something. And I've lived my life like that, and so have you. And there's many people out there that resonate with these ideas, and they also live their life like that, and they get excited. But there's many people that don't. And those are the people that I really worry about, the people that just want a good job, where there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with wanting a good job and being able to take care of your family and having a place where you enjoy working and being able to go there every day. And when that's taken away from people and they have to kind of restructure the entire way they interface with reality. And then there's this bizarre connection with the government now, where the government is now your provider. It's not just for the people, by the people, it's not representative of the people. It's now your provider, which is a very strange relationship to have. And, you know, we see it in welfare states and, you know, which I think social safety nets are very important. I think if we're going to be a compassionate society, we need to be able to take care of people that aren't doing well. Because a lot of life is about fortune, and sometimes people run into horribly unfortunate situations, and there's massive potential in those people, and those people can realize that potential if they're helped. And I think that's real, too. But I do think there's a certain psychological aspect to having the state take care of all your food and money and resources and housing, that all of a sudden, who are you and what. What do you do to give yourself meaning if you're not the type of person that seeks out difficult things and you're 45 or 47 years old or whatever you are, and this is happening to you, like, and you. You feel lost, like there's going to be a lot of people like that. And throughout history, times, terrible times, have been very cruel to people who weren't prepared.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And, you know, I worry about it almost like an intellectual famine, you know, like a psychological famine that people will be deprived of the thing that they have rested their hat upon, like their identity, who they are, what it means, their sense of purpose, that it will be pulled away from them. That scares the shit out of me, especially when I know how many people get addicted to drugs. And how many people get addicted to all sorts of weird lifestyle choices to provide them with some dopamine or some rush or just something that makes them feel like they're alive?

[Josh Waitzkin]

There's something so powerful about being grounded in. And, and a path to being grounded is being immersed in an art. Like, for example, like jiu jitsu or, or chess, where if you like, if you're on the jujitsu mats and, and you overextend your arm and you get armbarred like you, you're not gonna say, that's not my fault, that was his fault, or like that's. Then you just don't fucking get better and you get armbored again, right? You only get better by taking your shit on.

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Right. Or if you're a chess player and you make a mistake and you lose, the people who say that's not my fault, don't they fucking. They're irrelevant very, very quickly. They just get blazed by and they're just like everyone else's race has passed and they're not in the race anymore. And if you think about a community, for example, of fighters, let's think about jiu jitsu as like a vision. Like one of the things that separates people as they get deeper into an art is whether they want to take themselves on as a way of life, whether they're hungry to have their weaknesses revealed, right? You think about a school where like somebody like you can. I always found it interesting to watch people when they're four or five rounds into sparring. Like, do they look for the blue belt to rest with or do they look for the like, like 240 pound fucking bruiser to beat the shit out of them or the high level brown belt to exploit them or the black belt to like kick their ass, right? Who do they look for? Who does like the up and coming purple belt look for when like the young competitor, is he looking for the egoic rest or the place to be exposed? Like people who hunger for exposure to get better. Right? It's like seeking accountability as a way of life. I think there's something really powerful to do that with decision making, right? Because we're making decisions and we're making decisions in a higher and higher stakes world. And if we train at the art of decision making in something that's grounded in reality, like for example, the chess rating system is just a fucking thing. It's objective, there's no bullshit to it. But I hear people like, I know people who play chess online and then they're like, yeah, this is my rating, but I'm actually much stronger than that because of this and this. It's like, no, you're not. You just haven't taken your shit on. Right? Like you, you're not stronger than your rating. Your rating is how strong you are as a chess player.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

But there's something about, there's something so beautiful about an accurate feedback loop, right? And that can be with a coach training with. You could be on the, just getting tapped out, getting your ass kicked. Right. Getting hit, losing, whatever it is. I think that there's something so powerful about people cultivating some way of life where they're grounded in some kind of feedback loop in their training life that there's no bullshit involved, that they learn to accept accountability as a way of life. They seek feedback loops. I think that we can do this in decision making. I mean, my view is that we're going to be making decisions as a species in an increasingly complex world where there is a superintelligence. So we need to track our decisions and we need to see objectively when they are good and when they're bad. Like just how you can studying tape as a basketball team or as a jujitsu fighter, whatever. Like we need to create game tape in our decision making. Right. We have to stop deluding ourselves about the fact that we're actually better than everything shows we are.

[Joe Rogan]

Right? People love to think that way.

[Josh Waitzkin]

They fucking love it.

[Joe Rogan]

It gives them a nice little out in their accomplishments, gives them a nice little excuse for why things haven't gone their way.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like if you make a decision, write down what the decision is and write down why you made the decision and then look back on it in a week or two or three and create like a spreadsheet, a log or whatever the fuck you want to use of all of your decisions and why you made them and look back on them. And then if the reasons for making the decision no longer are valid, but you're holding to the decision, which is what everyone does, then don't do that, don't do that. Let go of it, reevaluate.

[Joe Rogan]

So when you work with people and you know, I know a big part of what you do is help organizations learn. And how do you instill these ideas in people? Do you have a structure that you follow when you go to work with people, do you try to see what they do?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, I try to see what they. So I, I. So I've been training for the last 15. Yeah, it's 15, 16 years elite mental and Physical athletes. Right. Decision makers, investors, athletes, fighters. You've worked with fighters, NBA teams. Well, in my school with Marcelo, we had a huge. Yeah. Group of fighters, jujitsu fighters. And so I've been in dialogue with people who are the pinnacles of different fields my whole life. And one thing is that I love working with people who want to take themselves on. So it begins with them being all in on the process. I'm not great at motivating people to take their shit on. I love to begin once we're taking our shit on and then it's individualized. I get to know someone's pattern. Just 99% listening, observing. A lot of what I try to do is understand the entanglement of their brilliance and their eccentricity or their genius and their dysfunction. I think so quickly people try to come in. If you come in with some kind of formula for how things will be done, you're going to be slicing away the brilliance of individuals. Right. Like all of our most brilliant creations are interwoven with the dysfunctional parts of our mind. Everyone wants to normalize people in the realm of trainers or coaches of different fields. I think it's mostly bullshit because mostly armchair professors who don't understand what it actually means to be playing on that razor's edge of peak performance where you have to make a decision which is taking a risk that's right on the edge of something catastrophic. But that's the thread, the needle solution. And so when I start working with someone, I try to get to know them very, very deeply. Their patterns, their patterns of success, their patterns of failure, their. Where their genius and their dysfunction are entangled. I often go into what I call a cave process which is trying to understand what their self expression is like. Going into the cave with them, metaphorically, try to understand what their self expression would be. Liberated from reactivity and inertia. So not reacting away from what they did before and not being subject to the inertia of what they did before, but just blue skying what the ideal solution would be, what the most pure self expression for them would be.

[Joe Rogan]

So it's completely dependent upon the individual and their approach initially.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. And not their approach. The individual and the patterns of their approach. Right. Not that we would do things the way they did before, but I have a lot of humility, like I don't think that I know the way. I don't think there is a way. I think we all have our own way. We need to discover the coaches who have been most damaging to me. For example, when I was in that same period When I was 15, 16 years old, I had a coach who was part of the Russian school of chess who essentially had me move away from my self expression, move away from my style, my style of chess play. At that point, my whole life had been creative, attacking, improvisational. I loved to create chaos and find hidden harmonies in chaos. I loved to battle. He urged me to stop playing that way, stop studying that style of play, play like these cold blooded prophylactic chess players like Petrosian or Karpov. I played much more in the style, not the strength, but the style of like Garry Kasparov or Mikhail Tall or Bobby Fischer. Like players who were, who were aggressive, right, who had a lot of like red blood flowing through their body like I was hot blooded. And he urged me to play in the opposite style from what was natural to me. Think what would Karpov do here? Not what would Josh do here?

[Joe Rogan]

Is there a benefit to that, just to expand your repertoire?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yes, there is absolutely a benefit to that. But there's also the movement of a, of a young, of like a young competitor away from their self expression, a love from their love for the game, a love from their passion. Right. I think I had this. There's this brilliant man named Yuri Rozaveyev who I was on the other pillar of the Russian school of chess who said this amazing thing to me. He said to me, josh, you can learn Karpov through Kasparov. And I didn't understand what he meant for many, many years after that. And it was a little too late in my chess life to take that in. But what he was saying is that you can learn the great defensive chess by studying the defense of the great attackers.

[Joe Rogan]

Why was it late in your career to take that in?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Well, good question. It's just when he said it to me, it was like my, my, like I was in my early twenties and my, and like my love for. I'd lost my love for chess. Like it had gotten static, stale. Like I would it, you know, good challenge. It probably wasn't late, but I wasn't, I couldn't hear it. I didn't. Like I would have had to go into the cave, go away, go through an existential crisis and come back to chess. But there were a lot of things that were moving me away from chess at that point. In addition to that, I didn't want to be trapped inside of the confines of 64 squares anymore. I felt like a lion in a cage. So it was like if I had known him when I was 14, 15, he would have been a different arc for me in the chess life. But maybe it would have been much worse for my life if I had known him in 50, I might have fucking played chess for the rest of my life. And I'm so grateful I didn't. So who knows?

[Joe Rogan]

Isn't it interesting when life takes you on these. Or you go on your own journey and you realize that decisions that you've made that have turned you in one way, those are critical decisions. If you think of the life that you're living now, is this optimal? If this is optimal, then, yes, it's good that you moved away from chess. But if you had gotten that coaching when you were younger and it reignited your love of chess, then it would be good for the life that you currently have, because you would say, well, you know, as a person who's just, like, so in love with chess, I'm so grateful that I ran into this person when I was 11 years old and they sent me in this correct path.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, I mean, I absolutely. I mean, for me, I love the life that I live that, like, I'm so grateful for the life that I've lived. And I was moved away from chess in many ways by this alienating experience of. Of that I just described. And then also the dynamics of the movie and everything. But that was many. I played just for eight years after the. After the movie, and so my results were very good, but I was moving into this internal. I was in an existential crisis.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And then. But every, like, catastrophic injury or heartbreaking loss or losing a world championship, when you're a millimeter from winning the finals, all of those losses that were so heartbreaking to me, every big loss, I'm grateful for now and led to the biggest wins and led to the biggest insights and transitions and my life today, the crises that I had in many ways have armed me to help people express themselves in their arts. And a lot of the reads that I made as a competitor, to go back to your question, like, I invert now. So, like, the things that. The way I would read chess players, find where their minds were stuck, find where their bias patterns were, like, find where their energy was stuck, find where they were, like, static now, then I would exploit them. Right. Same thing you do in the fight game. You find where someone's pattern is static and exploit it. Right. Then what I do in training people is I find those. I have a very good nose for those because I spent my life as a competitor sniffing them out, feeling my way to them. But then I work on liberating them, releasing the obstruction. So a lot of what I do today in my work with brilliant performers is work on unleashing what I used to exploit.

[Joe Rogan]

That's interesting. That's great. That must be very satisfying to teach people how to get better at things.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't use that yet. I don't teach people I don't know. It's. I'm not teaching some people something I know, but you're teaching. Well, I'm kind of discovering their path with them.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like, I don't go in thinking like, this is the way you fucking should do it. I don't believe that I know what they should do. And I believe that any coach who thinks that they know what someone else should do without listening to the self expression of that person very, very deeply is just wrong and they should not be. They could reject that coach.

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, you have to really understand someone psychologically to be able to coach them as well.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because sometimes you don't know like what the. The hitch is until you run. You're like, oh, there it is. So this is your whole problem with your whole life.

[Josh Waitzkin]

But the amazing thing is you find the hitch, but then you see, oh, that hitch is interwoven with your biggest. Like I said, I sent you that thing I wrote about Marcelo, right. And like there was this incredible moment that I had with. With Marcelo, such an emotional moment, you know, so he's in. I describe him as like this great low rep learner and he's someone who, uniquely in my life, I've never seen anyone better at learning from one experience, big or large. Right. And then there was this moment we were sitting, I guess it was six years ago. We were sitting just talking about life and our journey and everything. And he started. He started weeping. And he said to me, you know, Josh, I never forget my pain. And he said, you know, Marcelo had a real tragedy. He lost a baby. Marcelo and Tachi, his wife, they lost. They had twins and they lost their baby, Joey. Olivia and Joey were born premature and Joey. Joey died. It was a terrible tragedy. It was just devastating for. I mean, just beyond belief devastating. And like, like the loss of his son, the loss of his mother, the loss of his father. Every moment someone looked at him a certain way. Every moment somebody like raised their voice at him and it triggered him into like a fight place. Every. Every time he'd been submitted, every time he'd been swept, every time I realize is he was saying this like all of his pain is with him every moment. And as he described this to me, it was this incredibly emotional scene where he was just weeping in his exploration, in his, like, just brother to brother talking to me about like he walks around with every wound he's experienced in life present all the time. And so we think of like this brilliant low rep learner. The guy who has a superhuman ability to learn from one experience. But it's a superpower, but also it ravages him all the fucking time. And you can't just remove that. You can't be like, yeah, release your pain, be great. But then you're also releasing the genius.

[Joe Rogan]

That's the thing about people that are really amazing at something. The pain of losing is so devastating to them. When you talk about genius, people use Michael Jordan as an example. Genius basketball player, but unbelievably competitive.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, just can't help himself in everything.

[Josh Waitzkin]

In everything, on and off the court.

[Joe Rogan]

I've heard if you beat him at pool, he won't talk to you for two weeks.

[Josh Waitzkin]

You could be like, mike, just take it fucking easy on the pool table. What do you care? But you can't say that Gary Kasparov was the same way. Competitive in everything.

[Joe Rogan]

Everything.

[Josh Waitzkin]

But you can't just like remove that. You're removing the genius with it.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right. That you, you have a Ferrari engine and you're trying to like navigate 30 mile per hour traffic and you're like.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I'll never forget this, this, this chess coach Mark Davetsky, who. He said to me this unbelievably hubristic thing when I was 15, 16 years old. He said to me, if he had had Bobby Fiser as a student, as a, as a, from as a seven year old, he could have made Fiser a much, much stronger chess player without any of the craziness.

[Joe Rogan]

Without the craziness.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And I was just like, as a teenager, like my hands started like sweating when I just said that. It's just like because to me it's just not fucking true.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Like Fisher's a crazy thing to say.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. It's hubris. Right. And this is the same guy who was urging me into that direction. Like, but that's the opposite of my approach. Right. I think we need, and if we are going to try to disentangle the dysfunction from the genius, we need to understand it very deeply. We need to plant the seeds patiently for that genius to sprout somewhere else. We need to water those seeds. We need to observe them coming. We have to very like slightly sand away the dysfunctional patterning while observing if it. Like, it's a very delicate process. Right. You can't just fucking excise the tumor.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, there's also a problem in when someone becomes very good at doing something and they have a very specific way, they've become very good at doing something, they assume that this is the way and that this is the way for everyone and that they can impose their way on other people. And what led them to become great in the first place is also that hubris that makes them think they could take Bobby Fischer and make him even better.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Well, that's why great coaches, great fighters often aren't great coaches.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Because most teachers teach the way they learned, which will alienate 70 or 80% of their students by definition.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Great coaches can. Well, great coaches for a large group need to be able to teach different ways for different kinds of learners.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Different modalities of learners. Are they. Are they visual? Are they somatic? Are they. Are they auditory? Like, what makes them tick? And you have to know if you're teaching a chess class. I started teaching a group of kids chess when I was in my teens. I taught them from kindergarten through fifth grade, and we ended up winning in New York. It was a beautiful journey with kids at PS116, and we from moving the pieces to winning city, state, and national championships. And it was so interesting because I'd be, like, teaching eight, ten kids at once, and I would be teaching. It was like giving a simultaneous exhibition. Like, each one had their own language. And it was. I was, like, so involved with this theme that I would be. It was exhausting because I was teaching 10 chess lessons at the same time to 10 kids. And I remember I had this moment, this heartbreaking moment where I had this one student named Ivan who I. Who I like. Just charismatic, intense. You know, we had a very close relationship. I love the kid. And, like, I was. He was at the national championship. I was giving him this. This. This pep talk, and I was just, like, firing him up and speaking to him in the way he needed to be spoken to. And. And then he was like. He ran off, like, stoked, fired up to go kick some ass. And then this other kid who was on the team, this beautiful, sensitive boy, came over, and I looked at him with the same energy that I just been speaking to Ivan, and I brought it to him, and I was like 15 seconds into speaking to him, and I looked at his eyes and I realized, like, this is a disaster. Like, this is terrible. And then I stopped. I Like, and I, like, gave him a hug, and we, like, slowed it down, and we, you know, he needed to go in a very different way than Ivan went in.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

But, coach, think about how often you see cornermen fucking up fighters.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I mean, so as a coach, I think we have to, like, put our own egos aside, and our idea that we know how one should learn.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And that's what's very important, is finding the right coach. You have to find a coach that understands you and has a style that you can implement, because there's some coaches that just have styles that physically you're not designed for. You can't learn the way they learned. That's what's fascinating about you, is that you've gone from being this hyper competitor to teaching people or coaching people to find the very best version of themselves and how to. How to acquire that. That's very rare, that someone who gets really good at something also becomes really good at showing people how they can get better at things. Like, that's a specific focus that you've had. Like, why is that so rewarding to you?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Well, I took on this interesting challenge when I broke my back because I was already doing this, but I was training people. But when I broke my back, I remember I said, okay. During this healing process, after the year and a half to two years of denial and training through it, when I stopped, I tried to take on training people with the same passion and love that I had for training myself. I wanted to see if I could, like, love it as much. And I never got there. And then I got into the. You know, that's part of what moved me into discovering the ocean arts and being all in on training. So a big part of my relationship with training other people is training myself as a way of life. Like, I'm always, like, I'm living at my limit in my. In the arena myself. The moment I think a coach, like, leaves the arena where they're putting their own ego on the line all the time, or their life on the line or whatever the fuck they're putting on the line, then they become static and they start to think they know the answer. It's like the fat martial arts instructor who's many years past training and is smoking a cigarette on the sideline, telling people what to do and no longer is, like, actually dynamic the moment our egos get protected. Right. So my relationship to training is something that I live all the time. I think also becoming a dad was a big part of it. Like, the nurturing and A lot of what I've done is invert what I used to do to break people. Now I invert to heal them or to unleash them. Like being a father is about the most humbling thing I've ever. I thought I had ideas about education until I became a dad and then I realized I didn't know anything. I had to start over. Yeah. And also the wound pattern. Like I think understanding people's wound patterns is very important. And a lot of my wound pattern is in loving something very very deeply, being alienated from it and then finding a post conscious relationship to it and the self expression within it. And I think that helping people with that journey is. Is really important. And also I love engaging with all in. I mean I just love like whether, you know, my current projects are like cutting edge science and AI, just brilliant scientists. It's such an incredibly interesting and like deep. Being deeply involved with the Boston Celtics, like just the very top of the NBA world. And my relationship with Joe Mazzullo, the head coach and kind of coaching the coach is a modality that I've been developed playing in for a long time. Helping the leader of an organization expand, express themselves as the coach of their people is a big part of what I do. And a couple other interesting investing and tech projects and like just helping some like it allows me to play in, in fascinating realms. And then studying the interconnectedness. I mean a big part of my passion is thematic interconnectedness. Like how is what's happening with the Boston Celtics the same as what's happening in this cutting edge science program the same as what's happening in this wildly interesting tech investing program? Right. And how do those principles, those interconnecting fibers relate to culture more broadly and relate to me and what I'm doing every day on the water? Foiling.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. That's Miyamoto Musashi.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things.

[Josh Waitzkin]

So the Book of Five Rings. Right. Like to me, I feel that I cannot believe how few people have studied Musashi deeply. Right. I mean whether you're reading the novel about his life and then studying like book of five rings, I think everyone should read like 10 times, maybe a day a page, 10 times over. I. You know, one of my favorite cadences of Musashi is in so many chapters of Book of Five Rings how he comes back and says like essentially these words are empty. You have to practice it as a way of life.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Again and again. And people just skip these things, but they don't realize and everyone wants to be told what to fucking do as opposed to understanding. They have to work for the path to figure out what the fuck they should do. And you have to practice as a way of life. Right, Right. Yeah. Talk about a real motherfucker.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, just fascinating that he learned this by being a sword fighter.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What is the best way to be sword fighter? You can have no bullshit in your mind, so you must be balanced. And his approach was, you must be an artist, you must be a poet, you must be a warrior. You must be in tune with all of your feelings and all of your senses and everything about you. And to do everything correctly, do all, all things.

[Josh Waitzkin]

And he was fighting to the death.

[Joe Rogan]

To the death.

[Josh Waitzkin]

So there was no bullshit. There's no room for deceit.

[Joe Rogan]

62 men in one on one combat.

[Josh Waitzkin]

You can't say like, oh no, that wasn't my fault, that doesn't fucking work. No, you take your shit on. But there's something so beautiful about the truth telling nature of living. Like if you, you know when you're on the, when you're in a jiu jitsu team and you've got some, you watch someone who think they're competing for a while, but then suddenly they're competing next week, how the repertoire compresses, like all the fat just flies off. Right. There's something so beautiful about that process and the cadence. And if we live putting ourselves in the flame, then we're not going to be bullshitting ourselves all the time because there's this truth telling modality. So the question is, how can we, as many of us as possible, live in some form that's true to us where we are. There's this grounded truth telling, accurate feedback loop in what we're doing, what we're practicing as a way of life.

[Joe Rogan]

My fear is that there's so many of us, probably even people that are listening to this right now, that have never developed that aspect of their life. And it's very difficult to get started on that path. Once you've been on this path of complacency and comfort, it's very hard for people to sort of embrace this new way of thinking and interfacing with reality.

[Josh Waitzkin]

But when things are hard, that's beautiful. Like that's the beginning. We want to be hard. So the first thing is I think we want people to love the discomfort of being hard. It's hard. Fucking great. Everything worthwhile is hard.

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like we not what, what have you done? That's, that's been interesting. That hasn't been hard. Every time you get in an ice plunge, it's fucking hard.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Like I cold plunge every day. I think you do too, right?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah. Like it's a way of life. It's fucking hard every time.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's not easy. Hard is beautiful. Living on the other side of pain, that's where things get valuable.

[Joe Rogan]

Not doing it and knowing that you didn't do it. Yeah, that's hard. That's not good for you.

[Josh Waitzkin]

No, it's not good.

[Joe Rogan]

If you let that. That part of you, when you're 40 seconds in, you're like, let's get the fuck out. Now. If you let that part win, you feel terrible for the rest of the day. But if you just hang in there for 2 minutes and 20 seconds more. Yeah, you'll feel so good, you get out of there. Like, all right, got this one done.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's like you a foiling and you don't fall. That's a terrible day because you're not pushing your turns hard enough. You're not breaching enough. You're not ripping it around hard enough. Right? Like, everyone finds these. These. It's like one thing that happens with investors, right? They. They become successful, and then they develop a mental model to replicate the success, right? So they figure out mental become a groove that they can follow, but then the groove becomes a rut they get stuck in, and then it starts to collect water, and it's stagnant water. And then they hold to an old mental model based on a success 10 years ago or 20 years ago, and they're trapped in it for the rest of their lives. Yeah, it happens again and again in every field, Right. Some early success creates. You make a framework, you make a modality. You create a mental model. You replicate the success. It's not working, but you stick to it because your identity gets connected to that mental model, and you're not living with dynamic quality. Your qualities become static.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it's so hard for people to recognize when that's happening as well, because once people get success, then the fear of losing that success overwhelms them. And then sometimes it's easier to control a person who's been successful because they don't want to let this go. They don't want to go back. They want to move forward. They want to continue. So what do I have to do to make sure that I'm. I mean, you see this in Hollywood.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's a.

[Joe Rogan]

It's a big thing in Hollywood. People panic when they start doing well, and then they Align themselves with other people doing well and then they kind of changes the way they think and the way they, they behave because everything is dependent upon you being chosen for, for things. So your, your whole life is like wondering what your social status is and how you, how you advance that. And hey, what do I have to say? What should I tweet today to make sure everybody knows I'm on the right side?

[Josh Waitzkin]

And then you're playing not to lose, you're not playing to win. It happens all the time in sports. Like if you're a basketball team and you've been dominating the game and you're up 8 or 10 in the fourth quarter, then you start to protect the lead.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Josh Waitzkin]

No, you didn't get the lead because you're protecting the fucking lead. You were dominating with aggression. Right. The moment it's like the prevent defense, in my opinion is the worst thing ever created in sports strategy. Right. Like, you know, prevent defense, I've heard of it. But yeah, it's like if you're a football team and you're, and you're, you've, you have a 14 point lead in the fourth quarter or an 8 point lead in the fourth quarter and you stop doing the dominant things that got you the lead. But you start protecting the lead. So your defensive back sit back, you start allowing 8 or 10 or 12 yard completions, it is now you're protecting the lead versus dominating the opponent. But then you let the opponent feel their strength, feel their greatness. They're not dominated anymore. The moment a fighter stops feeling dominated and starts to tap into their greatness, then your fucking opponent's a beast again. Right, Right. We see it all the time.

[Joe Rogan]

All the time.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Right. So don't protect the fucking lead. Dominate.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, right.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I, I do.

[Joe Rogan]

What brought you to the dance?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, exactly.

[Joe Rogan]

It's just, it's in life, I think that thing that you're talking about is very critical. That fear of losing once you've won. Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

It's very interesting. In the surf world, so many people I've observed who are great surfers, they want to learn to foil because foiling opens up so much. Right. You can foil all the time in different conditions and sloppy conditions. And ocean, big, big waves, small wave, it just, it's so abundant and they can see how epic it is, but then they try once and they get their ass kicked. It doesn't matter how good a surfer. You are not talking about e foil, I'm talking about like wave foiling, not high performance gear. You're going to have two, three months of ass kicking as part of it. It doesn't matter how good you are as a surfer, but now you have to like, be. You have to look like a beginner again. You have to be go from being like the coolest guy in the lineup if you're socialized, to being the quote, unquote kook, being the guy who's just getting his ass kicked, who's falling all the time. Right. And they don't want to do that. So their ego of the excellent surfer prevents them from learning this art. They want to learn because they're unwilling to look bad for a while in front of the people who they're used to looking good with.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. They're so used to being cool.

[Josh Waitzkin]

So the foilers are people who. It's very interesting micro culture inside of surfing is that foilers have been people who learned how to. How to foil because they were willing to get their ass kicked and look bad.

[Joe Rogan]

Are there any other things that are exciting to you like that, that you think of? Like if one day you can't foil any longer, do you have like an escape strategy?

[Josh Waitzkin]

I don't have an escape strategy. I never did. I never had like, this is going to be plan B. I've never been a plan B guy. I know I could recreate myself, but I love this art profoundly. And I love being in the ocean. Like, there's something about this to me also, this is not about destroying anything. It's not about beating anybody. It's about self discovery, pushing my limits in the ocean, which is an element. And the foil taps into ocean energy so fucking potently. And the other thing is that the art is at such an early stage of technological growth, that foil gear is progressing so quickly. And the people who are actually at the bleeding edge of foil, performance wise, can ride this gear, which is increasingly difficult to ride. But the hardest gear to ride is the gear which is. Can do the most epic shit. And so the sensitivity is like. As the gear requires more and more sensitivity, the sensitivity is cultivated and fewer. Very few people in the world can do it on this gear. And it's just so sublime. So I'm so fucking in love with this art.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I do not have a plan B, but, you know, fuck, who knows what happens?

[Joe Rogan]

I love when people love things. Oh, that's one of my favorite things to watch is people that are just absolutely engrossed in what they're doing and are fascinated by it and in love with it and. And on the journey. It's very addictive. It's very inspirational. It gives you something. It's like there's, there's something out of watching people and learning from people that are really, really passionate about something that's so contagious.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I've never loved an art more. Like I've loved some arts really fucking deeply in my life. You know, foiling is number one. I've never loved an art more. Well, maybe it's because I'm, I'm, I'm at this moment of life where I'm at and I'm like integrating everything I've learned from different arts and bringing it into this one. And this one's manifesting all of it. But, but in terms of like the day to day experience of it. Oh yeah, man, I'm a lunatic.

[Joe Rogan]

I just, just love it. Yeah, yeah. So you can't, you have to live by the ocean. You're fine.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I do. That's, that's beautiful. I live right where the jungle meets the ocean.

[Joe Rogan]

You were telling me before we wrap this up, you were telling me about a crocodile encounter.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Oh yeah, that was before I started, before I started foiling. I was surfing and I, it was like 5:00am and I was, I was flying back to New York that day. So I went out for like a, just pre sunrise, right at sunrise surf. And I was on this glassy like head high wave and this gnarled log came up in front of me, this piece of fucking wood. And I saw it and I hit it and jumped off. It just emerged right in front of me. I didn't know how, I didn't see it. I thought it was a big tree. And when I hit the water, my brain was still thinking log. But it was so interesting, my skin lit up goosebumps. And I just realized red alert, prehistoric danger. And I jumped back on my board and this 10, 11 foot croc came swimming just a few feet away from me. It was so interesting. I spent my life, I spent a lot of. Since I was 6 years old, I've been free diving, spearfishing with a Hawaiian swing, Hawaiian sling. Like bow and arrow, underwater, deep, deep water diving. Like I, I spent tens of thousands of sharks. But this was so different. Like croc energy. And I haven't, I don't know crocs like I know sharks. I don't know crocs and crocs are.

[Joe Rogan]

It was trying to eat you sharks a lot. I mean there's a lot of people that believe the sharks are attacking people because the people are where the sharks are and they don't Want the people there?

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You know like when they're, they're interfering with their hunting grounds and they attack people in that regard. I've heard people say that and I'm like, that kind of resonates. That makes sense. But crocodiles are different. They're just hunting everything and if you're there, you're on the menu. They're hyper aggressive. They're very different than alligators which are also very dangerous. But crocodiles are significantly more dangerous and more aggressive.

[Josh Waitzkin]

My, it was interesting when I hit the water, my body lit up like I was in the water with a dinosaur. And then it came up and it's interesting that my body, this speaks to the nature of the intuition. Right. Cause my mind still thought it was a log. I hit the water, something energetically told me something, get the fuck out. And then it came swimming right up next to me and like the feeling of the snout, the eyes like just came and then a big, another wave was coming in and I managed to just pop up and ride the next wave to the beach. But yeah, and maybe if I knew.

[Joe Rogan]

The, that would have been the last day I foiled.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Well maybe like if I knew the language of crocs, like I know language of shark language.

[Joe Rogan]

Murder, kill, eat. That's the language.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Maybe there's an internal language.

[Joe Rogan]

I do not believe that's true. I think they are, they are the waste management of the ocean and of the ground. I mean they are there to make sure that anything that slips, anything that gets too close, anything that up it doesn't pay attention to the ripples in the water. That's a meal they, they clean up. They're the cleaning crew. They make sure that there's no weakness in the system and they devour and they live forever. That's the crazy thing is like the ones that they spotted in the early journeys when they were talking about like there's talks of 40, 40 foot plus. Crocodiles probably were real because crocodiles don't die of old age. They don't have like a 20 year lifespan. They just keep growing. And if a crocodile lived before people had guns and you know they weren't on the menu and you got to imagine they could live hundreds of years, hundreds of years eating deer and wildebeest and anything that fucked up antelopes, anything that fucked up, anything they can get ahold of and they just keep growing. I think they could be enormous, enormous, enormous super predator dinosaurs that live amongst people.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I have a friend of mine who's a professional hunter, Jim Shockey and he was flown to Africa because this particular village was being targeted by crocodiles. So they hired hunters to hunt these crocodiles. And while he was there, he said everyone you would meet had a chunk taken out of them. People were missing hands, some people were missing feet. And while he was there, one of the women in the village got taken and they would set up these posts in the water so that the crocodiles couldn't get through to this one area where they would gather water and wash clothes and do things. The crocodiles had figured this out, so they went onto the shore and then they would go into the water where the posts are and wait for them. Yeah.

[Josh Waitzkin]

So the feeling of humility and danger that you have relative to crocs. Yeah, I have about AI Relative to the ability to manipulate humans. Unless we take on our ability to be manipulated as a way of life, like, I feel it, like, that much in my skin.

[Joe Rogan]

I think you're correct. Yeah, I think you're correct. I think it's going to be an incredibly, incredibly challenging time in history, and one that I don't think the brightest amongst us can truly predict the outcome.

[Josh Waitzkin]

I want to make one other point, which is that I think that when we talk about training as decision makers, it doesn't matter how good you are at something, it matters that you're on the road, you're on the journey. So let's just say people started to play chess. It doesn't matter how strong a chess player you are or if you're good or if you suck, that doesn't matter. It's a journey. Right. If you're putting yourself in any arena that's objective and you're trying your hardest and you have a feedback loop, like the mats, like the jujitsu mats, whatever they are for you, and you look at the quality of your decisions and you jot down why and you are willing to change your mind and you take on that training as a way of life, then you're on the road to, like, being grounded in, like, in a way that we're not today. And I think that being grounded in reality, in something like feeling the earth beneath our feet, in our process, is a big part of how we're going to be able to navigate a world where everything is being deconstructed all the time by a superior intelligence. Because we're going to need to recreate ourselves. But we have to have, you know how, like, when you're deep into an art, like, think about you with your knowledge of mma, you have this intuition about where the truth is right, you have a sense for where it is right. We need to cultivate that sense in an increasingly chaotic world. And I do feel that, like, being involved in some kind of truth telling arena, whatever it is, is a hugely important practice. And then taking on the art of training as a way of life is. I feel like it's one of our. And. And like, that combined with getting the.

[Joe Rogan]

Fuck off social media, really amazing advice.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Yeah, that's my.

[Joe Rogan]

Thank you, Josh.

[Josh Waitzkin]

That's my pitch.

[Joe Rogan]

It was a lot of fun. I really appreciate it. This was great. Yeah, I was really excited to do this and really happy to beat you. So, yeah, really appreciate you.

[Josh Waitzkin]

Awesome, Jim. Thanks for reaching out.

[Joe Rogan]

My pleasure. All right, Bye, bud. Can't find him on social media. Don't look.