Joe Rogan Experience #1247 - Andy Stumpf

Joe Rogan 0:04 Four, three, two ... Hello, Andy.

Andy Stumpf 0:11 (laughs) What's up, Joe?

Joe Rogan 0:11 What's going on, buddy?

Andy Stumpf 0:12 (laughs) Not much, man.

Joe Rogan 0:12 We're here drinking CBD water. I've never had CBD water. GT's Kombucha sent us some CBD water.

Andy Stumpf 0:19 My first sip was a few seconds ago and, uh, I didn't read that it said cucumber basil, so I was shocked by the taste, but I like it.

Joe Rogan 0:26 Yeah, that's a weird combo, right?

Andy Stumpf 0:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:27 Cucumber ... And it- it's called Dream Catcher, which makes me think of, like, (clicks tongue) white trash lady living in a trailer park with one of them things hanging over her bed. Right?

Andy Stumpf 0:36 Pa- partially broken on the inside.

Joe Rogan 0:38 Mullet.

Andy Stumpf 0:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:39 Weird cats. (laughs) If you have a dream catcher, most likely you have cats, right?

Andy Stumpf 0:45 I think you have to have one.

Joe Rogan 0:46 It's part of the program. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 0:47 It's a package deal.

Joe Rogan 0:49 It's like, you know what I saw, um, yesterday that, that is really rare? I saw a dude who was dressed up like a Native American who was not in fact a Native American. That's a risky move in this day and age.

Andy Stumpf 1:00 (clicks tongue) Yeah, I'm not gonna go there. Uh, I wouldn't-

Joe Rogan 1:03 When we were kids-

Andy Stumpf 1:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05 ... you could be an Indian, like if you could play cowboys and Indians, you could be an Indian and they'd be like, "Oh, okay."

Andy Stumpf 1:11 "Yeah, no problem."

Joe Rogan 1:12 "He's, he's, he's the Indian, this guy's the cowboy."

Andy Stumpf 1:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14 Normal shit. Today they will fucking come for you.

Andy Stumpf 1:18 That day is gone.

Joe Rogan 1:19 It's d- day's over.

Andy Stumpf 1:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:20 What happened?

Andy Stumpf 1:22 I'm not smart enough to answer that question, but-

Joe Rogan 1:24 But you are.

Andy Stumpf 1:24 ... a significant margin. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:26 But some things have taken place. I mean, d- and dur- during the time that you were serving-

Andy Stumpf 1:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:31 ... from 2001 to 2019, where we're at today, I mean there has been a significant change in outrage culture in this country-

Andy Stumpf 1:39 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:40 ... in, in entitlement, like, with- with things that people think that they can get offended by and not offended by, things that are important and not important. It's a w- we're in the strangest time.

Andy Stumpf 1:51 (clicks tongue) The beauty of that is most of the time I was serving, so I paid zero attention to any of it.

Joe Rogan 1:56 Right.

Andy Stumpf 1:56 The disaster part of that is when you come off the off-ramp, you know, out of service-

Joe Rogan 2:01 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 2:01 ... and you go, "W- what happened?"

Joe Rogan 2:04 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 2:04 "What happened to the environment that I left?" But, uh, I mean, I went from Santa Cruz, California where I grew up, where it could well be the origin of outrage culture and social justice warriors, to the military, to back out of the military. So I had very, uh, very different, uh, optics when it comes to perspective, where I started and then what I was seeing when I came out.

Joe Rogan 2:26 Well, that's the, that's the take that I always see from people that are in the military or have been in the military, is their understanding of what's important and not important is so much different, because it's truly life and death.

Andy Stumpf 2:39 Not all the time, but I think if you are exposed to that environment enough, it'll recalibrate, uh, your perspective of what's important and what's not.

Joe Rogan 2:48 Yeah. Di- did you ever, um, read any Sebastian Junger?

Andy Stumpf 2:51 I did.

Joe Rogan 2:51 Did you read Tribe?

Andy Stumpf 2:52 Tribe is a great book. Yes.

Joe Rogan 2:53 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 2:53 Uh, read- read that off your recommendation, actually.

Joe Rogan 2:55 Did it speak to you, like in terms of like your own personal experience?

Andy Stumpf 2:58 It made complete, uh, sense. I probably would've used different terms in different places throughout, but the concept that he was talking about absolutely made sense. I mean this, so the SEAL Team's one of the, whether or not people live up to this, uh, an argument could be made, but one of the key tenets is, you know, the brotherhood, which is, uh, just another way of talking about a tribe.

Joe Rogan 3:15 Yeah. Yeah, um, I, I just felt like it was really interesting to me, like that book, that one of th- uh, th- the most moving part of it was how connected these people are when they're together and when they're at war and what that brotherhood, that camar- camaraderie means to them, and how they feel disconnected when they're back, eh, in, in regular civilization and they get depressed. It's like their life had been led at such a, such a, uh, uh, high vibration, intensity, so much, so much on the line. It's, it means so much. Everything means so much. There's so much dedication, so much commitment. And then to go back to their regular life is very, very difficult for a lot of people.

Andy Stumpf 3:57 (clicks tongue) Yeah. I, I don't think it would be unfair to say that some of the people that I served with, I probably have closer relationships than I do with my biological family, even probably ... I've shared (clears throat) , I don't know nec- not, th- it's not that the things that we shared were important, but the value in our connection was so tight, that it, honestly, tighter than my definitely biological family and potentially even my wife as well too and my own kids. And that's-

Joe Rogan 4:23 Don't tell her that out loud.

Andy Stumpf 4:25 I think she understands it.

Joe Rogan 4:26 You're gonna get in trouble.

Andy Stumpf 4:26 She gets it.

Joe Rogan 4:26 You're gonna get in trouble. You're gonna get in trouble, bro.

Andy Stumpf 4:28 Uh, that's, well, I, I only get in trouble from my wife on days that end in Y, so nothing's gonna be new (laughs) about that. But, uh, but I think she also understands that because sh- I, I certainly have struggled. I struggled quite a bit ver- about the first 18 months I got out of the military. And I look back on it now and I think, uh, two pieces of it. One, I went from seeing those people that I shared those experiences with on a daily basis, so there's that everything you have in common. We talk about stuff the same w- I mean, I just know the ins and outs of those people, and then I became detached from them. And then I had, I used to have what I thought was a job that had, uh, uh, an immense amount of purpose and then that was gone too. So I lost a little bit of my identity and a little bit of the purpose. And at that same time, like I said, I come off that off-ramp of being in the military and I'm looking at the world, it doesn't make any sense to me at all. People are arguing about things and, uh, talking about how they're oppressed while they're standing in a Starbucks line paying for a coffee that costs more per ounce than a gallon of gasoline. You know? (laughs) Stuff that probably couldn't be, uh, you know, you could couch it in terms other than oppression and none of it made sense and you just, it's, it's rough when you get detached from that environment.

Joe Rogan 5:35 Well, especially in your situation, you were wounded and you, you know, although you wanted to continue serving, you physically weren't able to anymore.

Andy Stumpf 5:43 I was for a while. So I got hurt in February of 2005. The 14-year, 15-year ... no, 14-year anniversary was earlier this month. And it took me about-... two years to work my way back to where I would become operational again. And I did one more deployment after I got hurt, and then at the tail end of that deployment, that was just the end of it. My body wouldn't tolerate it anymore.

Joe Rogan 6:05 And this is because of the metal fragments, or, like, what did, what is it totally you, was it nerve damage?

Andy Stumpf 6:10 It was, uh, the ... So, I got medically retired, which is not based off of any one incident, hopefully. I mean, people who have, they get a- an IED strike and they'll become a quad amputee or a triple amputee. That's one incident that they're gonna get, uh, retired for. For me, it was more the culmination of a lot of things. So the gunshot wound obviously didn't help. Um, and then the operational history of exposure to explosive blasts, the concussive forces, all of those things just kinda added up. I went through a 30-day protocol where they baselined me and took a bunch of tests and basically came to the, you know, they write out a h- massive document of all the things that they were able to at least document. Like, for me, I can't get an MRI because I still have metal in my body from ferrous metal from the round that clipped a piece of rebar on its way to me.

Joe Rogan 7:02 Oh, wow.

Andy Stumpf 7:03 And it clipped my sciatic nerve on the way in and they're concerned that if they image me, or what I've been told by the doctors, if they image me, it might react again with my sciatic nerve. Just pull a piece of metal by it and I'll be right back where I was. I'll have, I had drop foot for about six months. Could-

Joe Rogan 7:16 And drop foot is when your, your foot just stops working?

Andy Stumpf 7:19 Totally hangs. I could always push down, but I couldn't lift it up.

Joe Rogan 7:22 That's a thing that's happening now in MMA quite a bit. It's happened several times where guys get low calf kicked and there's something about c- chopping at the, the nerves behind the leg that, uh, guys' legs are just, their foot's going limp. It happened to Michael Chandler. Uh, it happened to Henry Cejudo.

Andy Stumpf 7:38 Are they recovering from it?

Joe Rogan 7:39 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's in the middle of the fight.

Andy Stumpf 7:41 Oh, so it's just a momentary.

Joe Rogan 7:43 So they, they get kicked and then the, the leg just stops working and they, and, and they can't stand on it. Their foot just, that's literally doesn't-

Andy Stumpf 7:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:48 ... doesn't react anymore.

Andy Stumpf 7:50 So frustrating. So for me, I got, uh, I got shot in the hip, high up on my left hand side, but by the time I had made it to the hospital, my single complaint was my ankle. I was telling them that, like, I, I didn't remember falling on my ankle. I didn't remember hitting my ankle, but it felt like somebody had taken a sledgehammer and just beat it into powder. And so they were very careful and then, you know, they cut my shoes off of me. They cut my pants off me and they ... The first thing they did was take an X-ray of my ankle and they're like, "Dude, you're totally fine." But it felt like it was destroyed because it was the nerve that got interacted with high up, it short-circuited-

Joe Rogan 8:23 Mm.

Andy Stumpf 8:23 ... all the way down to the terminal point of the nerve. And for me, it never came back. I'm hoping that, obviously for the fighters, it eventually comes back, because I had drop foot for six months to a year. I eventually was able to start, uh, dorsiflexing my foot again. But I still can't feel my left leg from the kneecap down on the sciatic side. The far left hand side and as it wraps over the top, my foot is completely numb.

Joe Rogan 8:47 And is this because of, um, the actual damage to the nerve or s- something touching the nerve?

Andy Stumpf 8:51 They don't know. That was an interesting part of being hurt as well, is talking to people who have decades of medical experience and having them look at you and go, "I don't know."

Joe Rogan 9:02 Fuck.

Andy Stumpf 9:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:02 Especially without an MRI, right? 'Cause they can't-

Andy Stumpf 9:04 They can't. And they, 'cause they're worried about it being pulled out. Same thing why the concussion history that I have, it's an estimate based off of operational history because they can't throw me in that same machine and image my brain.

Joe Rogan 9:16 Oh, whoa.

Andy Stumpf 9:17 'Cause it's spinning magnets and they're-

Joe Rogan 9:19 Right.

Andy Stumpf 9:19 And it, and then there's metal all over, uh, the left hand side of my pelvis and I don't know how much you would have to move, but if it just clipped that nerve again, it, I mean, it was probably one of the more difficult times in my life. My leg felt like it was on fire 24 hours a day-

Joe Rogan 9:34 Oh.

Andy Stumpf 9:35 ... which I could ignore during the daytime, but where it got me was at nighttime. I would lay down in bed and it just felt like I had dipped my leg in gas and just, and put a lighter onto it. So I was on high dosages of, like, gabapentin and Neurontin, which are central nervous system suppressors, so I started feeling the cognitive effect of that, so I backed myself off of that. Wasn't in a great phase of, of my life, so I was, of course, washing those down with massive amounts of alcohol. Taking three to four Ambien, staying awake, because my tolerance to all that stuff was so high. And the last thing I ever wanna do is go through that again, so I'm gonna stay away from the spinning magnets. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:13 (sighs) Jesus.

Andy Stumpf 10:13 Just ... (laughs) 'Cause I mean, it, it might be a quarter of an inch and I'd be-

Joe Rogan 10:15 Right.

Andy Stumpf 10:15 ... exactly right back where I was before.

Joe Rogan 10:17 And there's no way they can go in and pull those fragments out?

Andy Stumpf 10:20 (laughs) So I'm, I'm laying in the hospital in, uh, Baghdad. In the night that I got hurt, uh, many other people got hurt. Eight people got hurt on that particular target. I was one of the least injured. There were people who immediately flown into surgery. A guy almost lost his arm, um, a guy took a, he was right next to an explosive blast that literally peeled back the layers of his ballistic helmet. He was conscious but blind. He had taken such a shot to his head, he got ejected out the back side of a building. There were some other gunshot wounds. So I'm laying in a hospital bed. I hadn't taken any morphine because I had watched too many movies and I thought if I had, I had auto-injector syrettes on me at all times, but I thought if I had jabbed myself, I was gonna start drooling. No experience with whatsoever. And the doctors finally start working on me and he says, "All right, you know, I'm, we're gonna take a look at this. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna basically stick my finger in the hole." And I was like, "S- s- well, let's take a pause here, sir. Can I have some pain medication?" So he comes out and just juices me with morphine, first time I've ever had it. Was, I wish I would've taken it in the field. It did almost nothing. And they played around a little bit with the holes and then slipped me into an X-ray machine and said, "Do you want us to try to take this out?" And I said, "Well, what is that gonna entail?" And he said, "Well, because we can tell that there's ferrous metal in here, what we would do is we would knock you out, put a tube down your throat, lay you on your stomach and hold up a two-dimensional X-ray and basically just start slicing and pulling apart, slicing and pulling apart, looking and searching for these metal pieces and pulling them out of your body one at a time." And I said-... is there another option? He's like, "Oh, yeah, totally. The body will encapsulate it in calcium and as long as it's not touching a bone, you're probably gonna be fine." What the fuck, man? (laughs) Why didn't you lead with that option?

Joe Rogan 12:08 Right. Well, d- did they think they were gonna be able to get them all out though if they did go in there and start slicing away?

Andy Stumpf 12:13 I don't know. And I don't know what benefit it would've had. I suspect it would've caused more damage-

Joe Rogan 12:18 Mm.

Andy Stumpf 12:19 ... uh, than the actual injury itself. My hip is fine. Um, I still have never had a surgery. I've still never broken a bone. The only thing they ever did was put a gauze pad on my leg, and when the scab fell off I could start taking a bath again if I wanted to.

Joe Rogan 12:32 Wow.

Andy Stumpf 12:33 Yup. They just left everything in there.

Joe Rogan 12:35 Jesus. That's crazy. And it's all covered-

Andy Stumpf 12:38 It was bizarre.

Joe Rogan 12:39 Wow.

Andy Stumpf 12:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:40 So, if you do have an injury now, the, it's, is it a lot of guesswork? Like, if something's wrong with your leg, do they have to, like, go in there with a scope? Like-

Andy Stumpf 12:48 Uh, it depends-

Joe Rogan 12:48 ... since you can't get an MRI, like, what if you blew your knee out?

Andy Stumpf 12:51 (sighs) They would have to rely on imagery technology that doesn't revolve around magnets.

Joe Rogan 12:56 Wow.

Andy Stumpf 12:57 So pr- most likely ... I'm not too ... I think they gave me a CAT scan in the hospital, so that I don't think is magnet-based, and then two-dimensional X-ray.

Joe Rogan 13:06 Well, it's interesting too because s- some of the therapies they're using on people for TBI is-

Andy Stumpf 13:11 Magnets.

Joe Rogan 13:11 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 13:12 But I don't think they're as powerful as an MRI. I mean, you can't even wear earrings in those rooms.

Joe Rogan 13:17 Well, yeah, with an MRI.

Andy Stumpf 13:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:18 I heard about some kid who accidentally died because he had an oxygen tank in the room and they turned the machine on and then the tanks slammed into him and crushed him.

Andy Stumpf 13:25 Yeah. I've heard about the TBI, uh, magnets. That, I think I would be fine with because I don't think it has the power that the, uh, that the huge machines do.

Joe Rogan 13:34 Right. Right. It's, yeah, it's like a low frequency magnetic-

Andy Stumpf 13:37 Yep.

Joe Rogan 13:37 ... pulse that's like ... Kat Zingano, who was a UFC fighter, she e- essentially was, she was, she had been hurt and really bad in a fight with Amanda Nunes, and she got hypothyroid, uh, condition from that fight. Her thyroid wasn't functioning correctly, she was gaining weight like crazy, she was, her motor skills were all fucked up, and they fixed her with that.

Andy Stumpf 13:58 And that was from the brain injury?

Joe Rogan 13:59 Mm-hmm. Yeah. For a fight she won, which is crazy. I mean, she was hurt really bad in the first round, stopped her in the third round. She won the fight, she beat Amanda Nunes and, you know, really suffered some significant brain trauma from that fight.

Andy Stumpf 14:14 There is a ... I don't want to say there's a rash of, um, suicides in the SEAL teams specifically. Obviously the number 22 is thrown out a lot when it comes to veteran suicides, but that's, that's-

Joe Rogan 14:27 What is it, 22%?

Andy Stumpf 14:28 22, uh, veterans a day commit suicide.

Joe Rogan 14:30 A day.

Andy Stumpf 14:31 It's, it's the number that is often touted. I- ... (sighs) I'm hesitant to say that number is accurate because if you look at how it was derived, it wasn't ... they could have done a better job of getting that number. And I, and I don't want to say inside of the SEAL teams that there's a suicide issue ill- even though I do know a few people that have committed suicide and they were the ones that I would least expect it from, but they were also the ones who had, uh, quite a bit of, uh, high operational tempo. And the one thing that I don't think, especially in the military medicine world, they understand well is traumatic brain injury and the impact it has long-term.

Joe Rogan 15:07 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 15:07 And how easy it can be. 'Cause you know this f- uh, I've heard you talk about it before, you don't have to get knocked out to get a brain injury.

Joe Rogan 15:13 Right.

Andy Stumpf 15:13 And I know I've (sighs) c- uh, countless times where I either did something dumb or was just standing in the wrong place or had a hard parachute opening and I cracked my head against the metal risers, and your head hurts for the rest of the day.

Joe Rogan 15:25 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 15:26 And it's ... I've seen the change in behavior in some people, and I, I know the stuff that's tied to it as well, the low hormones, all of that stuff. There, that is happening, I think, at the highest levels in the military. Probably military-wide, but specifically those people who are kind of more on the front-leading edge of combat operations. And I think as a country we're in a, we're in a total unknown area because we're in w- a sustained period of war longer than we've ever been as a nation, and nobody knows the outcome of that. And people who I would've never guessed would make the decision to take their own life, I'll get a text in, "Hey, you know, so-and-so just went out into the woods." And i- uh, no other external injury, no other marker than obviously something happened in the geometry between their ears that caused them to make that decision. And I suspect it's from the repeated exposure to the brain injury.

Joe Rogan 16:22 Yeah. It's something that people are just starting to understand over the last couple of decades. I mean, obviously, uh, there was a focus with that Concussion movie, and, you know, I don't know if you saw that Bob Costas was actually pulled from football, uh, and they, they had told him that he'd crossed the line because-

Andy Stumpf 16:38 The announcer?

Joe Rogan 16:39 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 16:39 Bob Costas?

Joe Rogan 16:39 They pulled him. They pulled him from doing, uh ... what, what event was it? Was it from the Super Bowl?

Jamie Vernon 16:44 I think so, yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:46 Because, uh, he was talking about traumatic brain injury and the, the realities of it. And they said, "You crossed a line." He's like, "I crossed a line by talking about reality?" Like ...

Andy Stumpf 16:54 In an honest and open pers-

Joe Rogan 16:55 Yeah. Well-

Andy Stumpf 16:55 Yeah, that's not cool.

Joe Rogan 16:56 I mean, that's what he does. I mean, that is Bob Costas' entire hook. But, I mean, he's, he's a brilliant guy. But this, uh, this problem was so poorly understood just two decades ago. So everyone's just sort of coming to this realization that ... I mean, according to Dr. Mark Gordon who have, I've had on, who works with the Warrior Angel Foundation Andrew Marr's, uh, s- um, set up-

Andy Stumpf 17:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 17:19 ... where they're helping all these veterans that have traumatic brain injuries, and I've, I've had m- Mr. Gordon on several times. He, he says that you can get traumatic brain injuries from things that don't even remotely knock you out.

Andy Stumpf 17:31 Yep.

Joe Rogan 17:31 He's like, "People get them from doing moguls when they ski. They get them from-"

Andy Stumpf 17:35 (laughs) From your brain just rattling.

Joe Rogan 17:36 Yeah. They get them from jet skis, bouncing around on jet skis. I mean, you can get it from a, a minor car accident, you can have a traumatic brain injury. And for guys like me that got hit in the head for years, who knows what the fuck is going on in there. You know? And for professional fighters, it's w- you know, it's almost inevitable. For football players, it's even worse. You know, for football players, they did some crazy study and I, I know we quoted it, and I don't remember what the numbers was, but it's some insane number, like in the high 80% of people from high school on through college and into the professionals, um, have TBI.... or CTE, or the some signs of, uh, traumatic brain injury.

Andy Stumpf 18:15 I'd be surprised if they didn't, given their-

Joe Rogan 18:17 That's fucking crazy.

Andy Stumpf 18:18 It gets ... It is interesting to ... Like I was saying, so when I got medically retired, they sent me to a medical facility called NICoE, which is attached to Walter Reed, and it's the best care that I ever received because it's a civilian facility.

Joe Rogan 18:31 Mm.

Andy Stumpf 18:32 It's called the National Intrepid Center of Excellence.

Joe Rogan 18:34 We did a lot of work with them back in the day for the UFC. The UFC raised a bunch of money for that.

Andy Stumpf 18:39 Really?

Joe Rogan 18:40 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 18:40 The ... Well, the money was well spent because I went there and I probably would not have been medically retired had I not, because I left with literally 150-page dossier. And but, it's interesting tying it back to TBI because I spent a lot of time as a requirement talking to psychologists and psychiatrists. And it ... The TBI PTS in the military gets interesting because it seems like they're treated as different issues. And I'm probably misquoting the number a little bit. I think there's 13 recognized symptoms of both, but there's an overlay of like 11. So, uh, I can't remember any of the symptoms off the top of my head but you could describe one and it could apply both to TBI and to posttraumatic stress. So, it gets even more muddled on how ... Are you treating somebody for a brain injury? Are you treating somebody for a posttraumatic stress? Are you lumping everybody together? It just ... 'Cause I see a lot of people, and specifically a lot of veterans getting stuck in that world where they've ... it's a lot of focus on PTS, but the reality is, it could just be from the trauma received-

Joe Rogan 19:44 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 19:44 ... over a career or, you know, nearly two decades for most people to make it to retirement. It's really hard to tell.

Joe Rogan 19:50 Well, apparently blasts are a big one, right? Like blowing down doors and things like that.

Andy Stumpf 19:54 Yeah, it hurts.

Joe Rogan 19:54 Even, even if you just step away and you brace yourself, the impact of just the air, the concussive force of it-

Andy Stumpf 20:02 Yep.

Joe Rogan 20:02 ... is just devastating for your brain. Your, y- the human brain apparently is just so much more delicate and sensitive than anyone could have ever guessed.

Andy Stumpf 20:09 Well, and concussive blasts are a tough one 'cause they travel.

Joe Rogan 20:11 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 20:11 So if you're internally in a building and you find a door that's at the end of a hallway, even if you go all the way down to the end of the hallway and around the corner, the blast can still get you. 'Cause it will come down off the door, reflect off of the hallway, and still rock you.

Joe Rogan 20:25 Jesus.

Andy Stumpf 20:26 Yeah. And this ... It's s- it's (laughs) ... I, I thought I had a good hiding spot more than once-

Joe Rogan 20:32 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 20:32 ... and did not have a good hiding ... You sit there and just like, "Beem." You're like, "Oh, that hurt."

Joe Rogan 20:37 Oh.

Andy Stumpf 20:37 More than one occasion. Or, you're working with a bunch of assholes who take all the good hiding spots. You're like, "Goddammit."

Joe Rogan 20:43 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 20:43 And you just turn around and just ball up. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:45 And there's not really much you can do about that, right? I mean, if you have to blow down that door, someone has to be there to detonate-

Andy Stumpf 20:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 20:52 ... and you have to be close enough for it to activate, right?

Andy Stumpf 20:56 Uh-

Joe Rogan 20:56 How are they doing it? Wirelessly?

Andy Stumpf 20:58 They might be doing it wirelessly now. When I was in, uh, it was called a NONEL, um, and it basically it's a f- or a shock tube. So, you put a charge f- wherever, a do- uh, a gate, a door, a wall, and you basically have to attach an initiator to it, 'cause the charge isn't gonna go off by itself. So you need a highly reactive charge to set off an explosive that is less reactive. You keep them separate, obviously, for safety, except for the main breacher. He probably has at least one hooked up so he can be really fast. But then you just extend that flash tube and it's ... They come in long reels, I mean, that you can get 30, 40, 50 feet, and each charge mathematically, we do math on it to determine the minimum safe distance, e- of every charge and it's written on the charge so you know how far you can get away. But sometimes you're in a situation where, like I said, you think you got an awesome hiding spot and the guy lays out the flash tube and he's getting ready to fire it off and you realize that you're staring directly at the charge and you have nowhere to hide.

Joe Rogan 21:57 Oh, Jesus.

Andy Stumpf 21:57 And they're not gonna wait on you. So it's turn around, cover up into a ball, and eat it.

Joe Rogan 22:03 Oh. Is there a best way to eat it?

Andy Stumpf 22:06 Uh, open your mouth and cover your ears. I mean-

Joe Rogan 22:08 Really?

Andy Stumpf 22:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:09 Open your mouth?

Andy Stumpf 22:10 Yeah, it allow ... In- since instead of overloading, uh, like your sinus cavities and your, uh, your, your ear canal, so you can cover your ears and open your mouth. It helps.

Joe Rogan 22:17 Whoa.

Andy Stumpf 22:17 If something's gonna go off really close to you.

Joe Rogan 22:20 Open your mouth and cover your ears?

Andy Stumpf 22:22 Yep.

Joe Rogan 22:22 What- what- what's the difference between opening and closing the mouth?

Andy Stumpf 22:25 Uh, the effect of the wave, in my understanding, the contained pressure inside of your body, as opposed to giving it-

Joe Rogan 22:31 Fuck.

Andy Stumpf 22:31 ... a, an avenue to escape.

Joe Rogan 22:33 Jesus Christ. One of the things they're realizing apparently about concussions is that even just getting hit in the chest can give you concussion.

Andy Stumpf 22:41 From the-

Joe Rogan 22:41 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 22:41 ... rip of the head?

Joe Rogan 22:42 Because you're, you know, you get hit in the, in the chest and you're like, "I didn't even get hit in the head."

Andy Stumpf 22:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:46 But just getting hit in the chest makes your head snap and it makes your brain swoosh around inside your head, and tha- that's what gives you an injury.

Andy Stumpf 22:53 I just remember earlier on, I mean like in the mid-2000s, it wasn't ... The only question was, does your head hurt? Like-

Joe Rogan 23:00 Right.

Andy Stumpf 23:00 ... that was the beginning of whether or not you might have sustained a concussion, and then obviously learning much more now and where we're at, it's like, yeah, you may not have even had any sensation in your head, but you know.

Joe Rogan 23:11 It's kinda crazy when you think about how long people have been studying the human body and that this is just something they've really got a, a real understanding of in the last couple of decades.

Andy Stumpf 23:19 I don't even know if I would characterize it as a real understanding. I think they're farther along than they were two, two decades ago, but I think the amount we know versus the amount that we don't know is much more weighted on the amount we don't know.

Joe Rogan 23:32 Yeah. I went to a high school football game recently, uh, 'cause, uh, my daughter was doing this cheerleading thing and I watched these kids collide with each other, and I'm like, "Ugh."

Andy Stumpf 23:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:41 Me, a fucking fight commentator, you know.

Andy Stumpf 23:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:44 And I'm watching this, I'm like, "Get out of there. Stop doing it."

Andy Stumpf 23:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:47 It's just, to me, it's ... I don't know. It's ... I guess people ... I, I get that people enjoy the game. I understand it. I mean, I, I think there's a lot of things in life, I mean, I'm talking to you, the world record squirrel suit flying jump man.

Andy Stumpf 24:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:01 Ta- when I talk about risk and reward, maybe you got the wrong person to discuss this with, but ... You know.

Andy Stumpf 24:07 I think my risk versus reward structure is-

Joe Rogan 24:09 Well, it's worked out-

Andy Stumpf 24:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:10 ... for you. So far.

Andy Stumpf 24:11 You're here.

Joe Rogan 24:11 Today.

Andy Stumpf 24:12 Yeah, I mean, you're jumping off mountains with a flying squirrel suit. If you're here, you, it's, you've obviously got it nailed.... I'm on pause for the BASE jumping for the time being.

Joe Rogan 24:21 Did, uh, Mrs. Stump step in and-

Andy Stumpf 24:23 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:23 ... put the kibosh on it?

Andy Stumpf 24:25 For the first time, she asked me to stop in-

Joe Rogan 24:27 Whoa.

Andy Stumpf 24:28 ... uh, June of last year. But, of course, it was tied to a very close friend who, uh, did a jump, didn't go the way he wanted it to go, or anybody would. She happened to know him and it really was the, it was the first time that I seriously considered giving it up. I haven't touched a wingsuit since, uh, my buddy Alex died. And he was my main BASE jumping partner overseas on most of the trips that I'd done. And I- I'm not gonna say I shepherded him into the sport, but I was there with him on his first jump off of a cliff in Italy, the first time he put a wingsuit on. And it's, uh, that one stung a bit. So it's on pause, potentially forever as far as BASE jumping goes. I'll still skydive, but it's a, it's a question mark on the BASE jumping side of the house.

Joe Rogan 25:16 That's so fu- Y- you do such risky shit in the sky. The guy's like, "Yeah, skydiving, that's no big deal. I'll skydive. I'll jump out of a fucking plane."

Andy Stumpf 25:22 That I would do with my eyes closed every day. That's the... And my risk ratio on that one is we're, we're all set.

Joe Rogan 25:28 What is the risk ratio on skydiving? Like what percentage of those things go wrong?

Andy Stumpf 25:32 Incredibly low. Um, so they... You have a main parachute and a reserve parachute. I don't think there has been a true double failure, meaning your main parachute malfunctions, you cut it away properly and deploy your reserve parachute and have that also fail, in 20 some years. People die skydiving all the time. Well, not all the time, 'cause I guess it, you know, the population of people that do it is not huge. Uh, but I would say the vast majority of people who die skydiving, they, they kill themselves. They make a poor decision. Um, and most people who die skydiving die under perfectly functioning equipment.

Joe Rogan 26:10 Really?

Andy Stumpf 26:11 So the, the canopy size, the main canopy that you're flying, the wing over your head, the smaller it is, the faster it goes, the faster it descends. But also, quite frankly, the more fun it is. But with fun, there's consequence. So there are canopies that you can initiate a turn, and if you initiate the turn too low, you cannot pull the canopy out of the turn. You will impact the ground at a high rate of speed regardless of what you do. And if you get under that canopy with not enough experience, obviously your odds of making a bad decision are gonna go through the roof. So most injuries and fatalities, at least from the stuff I have seen, is from people making, uh, poor decisions under good equipment or choosing to execute an emergency procedure, which would be cutting away your main parachute and deploying your reserve, either out of sequence or doing it too low where the reserve parachute doesn't have time to open.

Joe Rogan 27:00 Ugh.

Andy Stumpf 27:00 To me, that's not a failure of the parachute system, that's the failure of the individual who is driving that parachute system.

Joe Rogan 27:06 So if you have a main parachute and you jump out and you hit the main parachute and there's a malfunction, how do you cut it off to put, to get the other one?

Andy Stumpf 27:13 So there's two pillows, one on each side.

Joe Rogan 27:15 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 27:15 The right-hand side, you literally (laughs) need to do this in the correct order, even though people have killed themself by going backwards. So you pull to full arm extension. You l- it's literally just a pillow with Velcro that has two cables, and the cables are what's actually holding the parachute on your shoulders. If you pull that out, the three-ring release system, which is basically just a load reduction system, unwinds itself, and your parachute's gone and you're going back into free fall. And you just pull the other pillow.

Joe Rogan 27:42 Whoosh.

Andy Stumpf 27:43 It sounds worse than it is. And before I had my first cutaway, it was terrifying. And then after you have four or five, you're like, "Okay, I got this."

Joe Rogan 27:49 You had four or five r- r- main parachutes fail?

Andy Stumpf 27:52 I think I'm at about seven right now.

Joe Rogan 27:54 Jesus Christ, Andy Stump.

Andy Stumpf 27:56 (laughs) Well, I've been jumping for 20 years.

Joe Rogan 27:59 Ah!

Andy Stumpf 27:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:59 I don't wanna hear that, man.

Andy Stumpf 28:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:01 God.

Andy Stumpf 28:02 I started jumping in '99.

Joe Rogan 28:04 Ah!

Andy Stumpf 28:04 Statistically, I'm actually, I think, under. Uh, I think it's like one in every 888 jumps you'll have a malfunction or a gear failure. It's honestly, like it's, your first one is an emotional experience.

Joe Rogan 28:16 I would imagine.

Andy Stumpf 28:17 You're se-

Joe Rogan 28:17 What, what was the first one?

Andy Stumpf 28:19 Uh, deploying a parachute and just sitting there looking at it as it's... 'Cause they wanna open and you can, I can tell now a- within an instant of trying to deploy my parachute whether or not it's gonna open or not, just by looking at the shape, by sometimes listening to it and just seeing how it opens. Sometimes, I mean, so packing a parachute people think is really difficult. If you can fold a T-shirt, you can pack a parachute. Sometimes though, you, you know, you just get off with a jump and you only have 10 minutes to make the next jump. So you skip a few steps or you rush through a few steps.

Joe Rogan 28:51 Is that what happened with you?

Andy Stumpf 28:53 Potentially. I may have skipped all of the nonessential steps and a few of the essential steps to get the parachute. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:59 Really?

Andy Stumpf 29:00 Yeah. (laughs) I was just rushing, and I didn't have a lot of experience, so I was stuffing the thing in there.

Joe Rogan 29:04 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 29:04 And when I tried to deploy the parachute, it just, it was asymmetrical, so-

Joe Rogan 29:08 Oh.

Andy Stumpf 29:09 ... sometimes it'll s- it'll open and it'll start spinning, and then you're flying with your back to the... It's 'cause... That would be considered an exciting moment, I would say.

Joe Rogan 29:16 So what happened with you? What exactly went wrong?

Andy Stumpf 29:18 It just came out asymmetrically. The parachute wasn't opening.

Joe Rogan 29:21 Were you spinning?

Andy Stumpf 29:22 No, I wasn't. I actually was able to recognize just by... It should come out, it looks like a rectangle more than anything.

Joe Rogan 29:28 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 29:28 But if you look like a rectangle that's twisted, there's no way to fix that.

Joe Rogan 29:31 No way.

Andy Stumpf 29:32 So just get rid of it, and that's what I did.

Joe Rogan 29:33 Oh.

Andy Stumpf 29:34 I, I looked up and I said, "Okay, that's not gonna work." Reach, pull, reach, pull. And your reserve opens so fast, like by the time...

Joe Rogan 29:42 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 29:42 I felt like by the time I had pulled the reserve handle, 'cause I had a handle at that point, but the time I had moved my arm to three-quarters of extension, it had fired off.

Joe Rogan 29:50 Wow.

Andy Stumpf 29:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:52 Dude.

Andy Stumpf 29:53 But the difference, and you were asking about the difference, like why is risk of skydiving lower, it's because you have time, thousands of feet. Whereas BASE jumping you might have hundreds. Or if you're really pushing the envelope, you might have sub 10 feet-

Joe Rogan 30:08 D-

Andy Stumpf 30:08 ... 'cause you're flying close to the ground as fast as you can go.

Joe Rogan 30:10 Did your friend Alex who died, did he die BASE jumping or-

Andy Stumpf 30:13 He died wingsuit BASE jumping, something that I was... I mean, he was my main BASE jumping partner.

Joe Rogan 30:19 What is the difference between wingsuit BASE jumping and regular BASE jumping? BASE, regular BASE jumping, you just have a quick deploy parachute, right?

Andy Stumpf 30:25 So you have one parachute system-

Joe Rogan 30:27 Right.

Andy Stumpf 30:27 ... when you BASE jump instead of two, because there is not time for a reserve to open. So that is just taken out of the system.

Joe Rogan 30:32 Right.

Andy Stumpf 30:33 So you pack your...... primary or only parachute, very similar to a reserve. It's designed to open rapidly, it's designed to take a lot of load. Uh, but, so base jumping is just jumping off of a static object. Uh, base stands for building, antenna, span, or earth. So four types-

Joe Rogan 30:50 Oh, okay.

Andy Stumpf 30:50 ... of object. The addition of the wingsuit is really the only difference, which allows you to, like for myself personally, I'm not a huge fan of jumping off buildings and cliffs without a wingsuit because I don't like being from me to that flag when the parachute opens. 'Cause if it doesn't open exactly in the direction you want it to, you better be Johnny on the spot or you're gonna have a fucking problem. So it's, to me, if you have enough altitude, you put a wingsuit on, in two or three seconds, the suit is mocking forward. So then you're hundreds, if not thousands, of feet away from the object. Then your parachute can open up however you want it to.

Joe Rogan 31:26 Have they made any improvements in the technology of this stuff since you first started jumping?

Andy Stumpf 31:30 Huge improvements. I mean, the first wingsuits were literally just fabric that had, like, the little thumb loops you'll find on, like, cold weather long-sleeve shirts sometimes.

Joe Rogan 31:38 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 31:39 Seriously. Like Patrick Day-

Joe Rogan 31:40 That's how you kept it on?

Andy Stumpf 31:42 That's how they kept it on.

Joe Rogan 31:43 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 31:43 I didn't jump any of those goddamn things. But I mean, I think Patrick Desjardins is how you say his name, he was one of the first, and they would just sit there and just, they would just jam their appendages and lock them out and use their entire musculature to sail this fabric as far out as they could get.

Joe Rogan 32:00 Fuck.

Andy Stumpf 32:01 And then, the suits now are unbelievable. So each wing, like the wing between your legs and the wing between each of your arms, so there's three of them, they're totally independent. They have a ram-air opening, so the air rushes into that and makes the wing semi-rigid, so it reduces the stress on your body, and they, the flight characteristics are insane. You can go, you can get the suit flying faster, you can fly it flatter, you can float. It- everything about it is improved, except for the decision-making process of the monkey who's actually jumping it.

Joe Rogan 32:33 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 32:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:35 Dude, that's the original one, Jamie?

Andy Stumpf 32:36 Oh, that guy's dead, for sure.

Jamie Vernon 32:39 He's technically the first one.

Joe Rogan 32:40 Oh. (laughs)

Jamie Vernon 32:40 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 32:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:42 It says, uh, Manus, m- uh, Mickey Morgan wearing a, uh-

Andy Stumpf 32:46 He's 100% dead.

Joe Rogan 32:47 ... batwing suit. Is that ridiculous? Well, who was the first fucking psycho that thought that this was something that they should try?

Andy Stumpf 32:54 It could potentially have been them.

Joe Rogan 32:54 Look at this asshole.

Jamie Vernon 32:56 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 32:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:56 Oh my God. This guy's like, he looks like he's living in the 1800s. When did they invent these fucking things?

Andy Stumpf 33:01 I don't know. I know one of these guys died going off the Eiffel Tower in an exhibition. Uh-

Joe Rogan 33:05 This is 1900 right here.

Andy Stumpf 33:06 Yep.

Joe Rogan 33:06 1900? What in the fuck? Look at that guy.

Andy Stumpf 33:11 Strong.

Joe Rogan 33:12 You know what, man? If you were living in 1900, you'd probably be like, "Listen, I, let's just get this over with."

Andy Stumpf 33:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:17 "Fuck living in 1900. Everyone has syphilis."

Andy Stumpf 33:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:20 "Fucking whiskey's illegal. I'm just jumping off."

Andy Stumpf 33:23 Look at that.

Joe Rogan 33:25 That is crazy.

Andy Stumpf 33:26 So to see that-

Joe Rogan 33:26 When you see that-

Andy Stumpf 33:27 Yeah. I mean, that's-

Joe Rogan 33:28 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 33:28 ... I, I mean, honestly, I'm not gonna lie, I would probably jump that out of an airplane.

Joe Rogan 33:30 1895.

Andy Stumpf 33:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:32 Oh, he's the inventor, Earle Stine.

Jamie Vernon 33:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:34 He died in the first attempt.

Jamie Vernon 33:37 Oof.

Joe Rogan 33:37 Oh, Jesus Christ. He died in the first attempt. Honor to a modern hero. All right, settle down.

Andy Stumpf 33:44 But here's the thing, Joe.

Joe Rogan 33:45 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 33:45 There's like 60-some people who are associated with, uh, the modern-day wingsuit and testing and evaluating to get it to this point.

Joe Rogan 33:51 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 33:52 They're all dead.

Joe Rogan 33:53 All of them are dead?

Andy Stumpf 33:54 Every one of them.

Joe Rogan 33:55 Geez.

Andy Stumpf 33:57 But that suit, like, I mean, that suit and the difference between that and where we are now, like it's, it's night and day.

Joe Rogan 34:03 But everyone involved in the creation of these wingsuits died in a wingsuit.

Andy Stumpf 34:08 Yep.

Joe Rogan 34:09 Fuck, man.

Andy Stumpf 34:10 Yep.

Joe Rogan 34:11 That is not good. Like, there wouldn't be a whole lot of black belts in jujitsu-

Jamie Vernon 34:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:15 ... if everyone who got to a certain point died. You know what I'm saying?

Andy Stumpf 34:19 It's hard to justify or rationalize the behavior for sure. I'll be the first person to admit that.

Joe Rogan 34:25 Yeah. What is it? Like what, what is it about-

Andy Stumpf 34:27 So that's Dean Potter.

Joe Rogan 34:27 Oh, this guy jumping his dog.

Andy Stumpf 34:29 That's Dean Potter jumping with his dog.

Joe Rogan 34:30 Oh, the poor dog.

Andy Stumpf 34:32 So the dog-

Joe Rogan 34:32 It's not the dog's fault.

Andy Stumpf 34:34 The dog, I believe, is, that looks like Switzerland.

Joe Rogan 34:36 Some crazy asshole fucking owner. (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 34:38 So Dean was in- insane, right? He was a world-class, uh, rock climber. He's also dead from jumping a wingsuit.

Joe Rogan 34:44 Oh, Jesus.

Andy Stumpf 34:44 He died in Yosemite. Um, i- it's, like I said, the technology advances. Uh, I am not, I was not there the day that Dean died. I've talked to people who have looked at it, uh, as to the conditions that led up to it, and, uh, one thing people generally don't want to do is place the responsibility on the individual making the choice, but what, from everything that I have seen, he made a choice to jump at a time when he should not have been jumping due to visual conditions.

Joe Rogan 35:12 (sighs)

Andy Stumpf 35:12 So even though the suits are amazing, really the only thing that doesn't seem to be evolving is the person that's, that's jumping it. Most of the time, just like skydiving, it's just a human being making a very poor choice, to include Alex.

Joe Rogan 35:24 What is it about people, and I mean particularly people like yourself, that love these thrills? Like, what are you getting out of that?

Jamie Vernon 35:32 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 35:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:32 What are you getting out of that other than this mad adrenaline rush? I mean, what is it? Like, what motivates you to keep doing that?

Andy Stumpf 35:41 Uh, (sighs) so I look back at it objectively. Yeah, I think wh- when I initially started pushing hard down that path, I was trying to replicate a head space or a feeling or a sensation that I had in my old job.

Joe Rogan 35:57 Oh.

Andy Stumpf 35:57 So if you wanna talk about clarity of thought, and I think you and I, we might have talked about this the very first time that we sat down, stripping away all ancillary bullshit that has absolutely no meaning, but sp- for me at least spends, I spend 99% of my time worrying about things that have no impact whatsoever.

Joe Rogan 36:14 Right.

Andy Stumpf 36:15 So you're sitting on a helicopter, pick the battle space that you're in, and you, you get a five-minute warning. And you really stop worrying about whether or not you have enough money in your checking account to cover your mortgage. And then you get a three-minute warning. And then you kinda stop worrying about whether or not you just had an argument with your wife, or you just sent off some snarky email. Then you get a one-minute warning, then a 30-second warning, and the closer and closer and closer you get-... everything is gone. And it is still to this day the, the sensation and state that I have been in that is by far ... I had no question about, uh, my purpose, and I had the utmost clarity that I've ever experienced in my life. And you get, you get used to operating in that headspace of just being in the moment, the first one to three seconds in front of you, nothing else matters. I'm gonna solve this problem and move on to the next one. This problem and move on to the next one. Well, then I lost that ability to do that, and it sucked because I liked operating in that headspace because it, it helped me deal with all the other bullshit in my life 'cause it reset for me my what matters and what doesn't matter ratio. I was able to get rid of like a ... I would describe it as just the white noise in my head.

Joe Rogan 37:24 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 37:24 Or another way I'll describe it is, like Jamie's got a bunch of levers that he can push up. I think in this, I'm included in this, I think most people are pegged out at a 10 almost all the time. They're fucking white-knuckling through life. But if you can get into that state where you have that clarity of purpose, clarity of focus, I felt like it pulled everything back to a three. And so that state helped me in things that had nothing to do with that activity, and it lasted for a long time. So when you're BASE jumping and you're standing on a cliff, and you're scared outta your mind, and you can't talk as your mouth is so dry, and you have a pee ring on your suit, which is why you always get dark suits, so people can't see your pee ring. And y- every alarm bell in your body is telling you, "Don't jump." And y- uh, I had the same experience. I wasn't worried about the checking account. I wasn't worried about what was going on in life. I was just living in that moment, and it helped me be a better dad. It helped me be a better husband. It helped me be better at any business decision that I need to make 'cause it allowed me to pull all of those stereo levers back down. So it's less for me, and I can only speak for me, it's less about, uh, thrill seeking 'cause I get that all the time. Like, "You're an adrenaline junkie." I'm like, "Ah," I enjoy, I'm an adrenaline enthusiast. I certainly enjoy that, but I actually like what I get from the activity more than the activity itself.

Joe Rogan 38:45 What do you think is going on where people are pegged at 10 all the time with nonsense, and that's something that's life-threatening can bring it back to a three and offer clarity? I mean, there has to be something that you've discussed or thought about in depth.

Andy Stumpf 38:59 I just think it helps you control, alt, delete your hard drive a little bit. It helps by not having... Like, when I'm standing on a cliff, right before I get ready to jump, there is absolutely nothing that I am thinking about other than where I want to be in the next three seconds. And by being able to focus on something so singular, and maybe I don't, I don't meditate, but I've heard people talking about by being able to clear your mind, it helps them deal with everything else. I think there might be some connection there. Um, but I just, I just think that the removal of the noise that bombards everybody all day long, even for a little bit, helps you. It's, uh, you know, you, you have iPo- or not iPod, iPhone and heads- headphones f- for sure, right?

Joe Rogan 39:50 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 39:51 Have you ever noticed, like, when you're listening to it, you listen at the same volume level, but then it do- doesn't seem to be as loud? So what do you do? You click it up a notch, right? And then you get used to that volume level, and then you click it up a notch, and then you get used to that volume level. And y- there's a receptor downgrade phenomenon. Your body gets used to it, so it adapts to it. But if you pull that stimulus out and leave it at that high volume but listen to it, like, two weeks later, it's gonna blow your ears out.

Joe Rogan 40:13 Mm.

Andy Stumpf 40:14 It, it'll seem louder. It's not gonna blow your ears out, but it's gonna-

Joe Rogan 40:16 Right.

Andy Stumpf 40:16 ... seem much louder than it would if you slowly just incrementally started adding that volume. So if it's, there's something in there that is allowing me, and I'm not recommending that anybody pursue therapy via the directions that I do, but there's something in there that's allowing me to, instead of add and add and add and add, that activity allows me to detach. And then when I come back to it, I realize, you know, it just, it just feels different for me.

Joe Rogan 40:43 Mm.

Andy Stumpf 40:43 That's, and I don't know if that's a good description of the mechanism, but that's the best that I can probably describe it.

Joe Rogan 40:49 Well, I know, uh, a lot of veterans come back and really get involved in martial arts. Martial arts apparently is, is good for along, uh, the same lines, the same sort of, uh, noise reduction.

Andy Stumpf 41:02 Yup.

Joe Rogan 41:02 Uh, especially jujitsu when someone's trying to strangle you and you're fighting for your life, and they're mounting you and trying to lapel choke you.

Andy Stumpf 41:07 I'm familiar with this now.

Joe Rogan 41:09 (laughs) Yes, he's doing it now.

Andy Stumpf 41:09 I'm six months in.

Joe Rogan 41:10 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 41:11 I don't know what you're talking about, being strangled or choked or having a huge person lay on your chest and just trying to breathe.

Joe Rogan 41:17 Like Dudley?

Andy Stumpf 41:17 Oh my God. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:19 (laughs) He's lying about being 220.

Andy Stumpf 41:21 He coulda said 219. I'm not even sure.

Joe Rogan 41:23 He's lying.

Andy Stumpf 41:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:25 There's no, I'm 200 pounds. He's fucking 18 feet taller than me. There's no way.

Andy Stumpf 41:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:29 It j- uh, it doesn't even make sense.

Andy Stumpf 41:31 Well, I, I don't have enough experience with jujitsu to, to truly speak about, uh, the long-term benefit. But what I can say is this. If I stop BASE jumping, what I will replace that ab- activity with is more jujitsu because what you just described. When somebody is literally, when you're simulating murder-

Joe Rogan 41:50 Yes.

Andy Stumpf 41:51 ... right, in your pajamas, and somebody is trying to choke you to death-

Joe Rogan 41:54 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 41:54 ... you are not thinking about anything else.

Joe Rogan 41:57 About anything else. You know, one thing that I do do that's weird is that I, I have songs playing in my head. And-

Andy Stumpf 42:02 Well, you also probably have a few more reps than most people, so you can have that capacity for songs in your head.

Joe Rogan 42:08 But they're weird songs like Christina Aguilera, I Am Beautiful. Like, sometimes that'll be playing if I'm rolling. (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 42:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:15 But the song, uh, it's like, it's almost like, uh, it sounds strange, and I never talked about this before, but it's almost like a, like a mantra. Like, uh, I'll, I'll play certain parts of the song over and over again in my head so that I can think about that instead of the b- the actual, the actual training and the actual strangling.

Andy Stumpf 42:35 But you also have, I don't wanna use the term mastered 'cause I don't know if you can master it, but where you are, you are at a m- like when you roll with somebody, I was talking to somebody about this not too long ago.When I roll with a black belt, the outcome is preordained, right? Unless they bought their black belt at Macy's and they're pretending, in which case, I don't know. I still don't know enough if it might be preordained. But the difference in what I'm thinking about versus what would happen if you and I rolled, and what you are thinking about are- is gonna be massive. So, I don't have the hard drive space to sing Christina Aguilera. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:11 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 43:11 And you probably don't even remember half of the things that you do when you roll, or how you think about it, because you have experienced it so many times.

Joe Rogan 43:20 The weirdest thing about jujitsu and training, and, you know, you could say this about striking as well, is sometimes things happen and you didn't even think about doing them, you just did it. Those are the weirdest moments. Like, there's some times where you'll- you'll kick somebody. Like, someone'll move and you'll- you'll move and then before you know it, you're like, "Wow, I didn't even think about throwing that," and it lands. It's like your- your- your brain recognizes, "Oh, I know what happens here." You know, you step to the left and throw that left kick and it just lands. You just know where to go. And then the- the same thing happens with jujitsu. Like, sometimes there's a scramble, and in the scramble, all of a sudden you're choking somebody. It's like this- this movement happens and your body just falls into place.

Andy Stumpf 44:01 (laughs) I'll let you know if I ever experience that, particularly. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:04 Well, it doesn't happen all the time. It's just- it's- it just- there's moments where you're- like, particularly if you do a lot of drilling, which I don't know how much drilling you're doing, but that's one of the things that I- it made me way better. When I first started training with Eddie Bravo, one of the things that we did a lot from white belt to blue belt time was a lot of drills.

Andy Stumpf 44:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:22 A lot of drills. Just constant drilling. And drilling is overlooked and underappreciated because sparring is so fun. So like, if you and Jamie were both learning together, you would do a few drills. "Okay, here's how you do the arm bar. You're gonna secure the arm, you're gonna swivel the hips, throw the-"

Andy Stumpf 44:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:39 "... leg over, and tap. Good. Okay, now your turn." And you do it over and over again. That's fun, that's fun. "Okay, now spar." You're like, "All right."

Andy Stumpf 44:44 But take it easy, guys. Work on the technique. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:46 Yeah, exactly. Take it easy, guys. Work on the technique. But, um, if you can spend more time drilling and less time rolling, you'll be way better at rolling.

Andy Stumpf 44:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:56 The whole idea is just carve these paths in your mind, you know? And then you- when you see someone who, like, hits a perfect Imanari roll, like that is not the first time they've done that, you know? There's, um, uh, there's- there's so many, like, super, super high level guys now that you could watch on YouTube, and you can watch them execute these techniques.

Andy Stumpf 45:18 Yep.

Joe Rogan 45:18 And the thing that you're seeing more than anything is, like how fluid everything is, and how easily everything flows 'cause there's so much efficiency in their movement because they've done it over and over-

Andy Stumpf 45:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:28 ... and over. But drilling is everything, and it's the thing that people do the least of.

Andy Stumpf 45:33 So I go- when I'm home, I go five days a week, and I, uh, I go to the... So you met Travis today.

Joe Rogan 45:39 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 45:39 Awesome. He's the owner of, uh, or the owner of SBG Kalispell, which is where I train. I c- I mean, I couldn't have planned it better. It's like four miles from my house. It-

Joe Rogan 45:48 That's amazing.

Andy Stumpf 45:48 ... in the middle of Mont- well, not the middle, the northwest corner of Montana. To have that there is unbelievable.

Joe Rogan 45:53 How far are you from Bozeman?

Andy Stumpf 45:55 Uh, as the crow flies, maybe 200 and some miles, but the drive there is like an L, it's not straight. It takes about six hours.

Joe Rogan 46:02 You gotta go through the mountains-

Andy Stumpf 46:03 You gotta-

Joe Rogan 46:03 ... dodge the grizzly bears.

Andy Stumpf 46:04 Yeah. Swerve past some-

Joe Rogan 46:05 Have you seen any grizzlies since you've been moved there?

Andy Stumpf 46:07 No.

Joe Rogan 46:07 No?

Andy Stumpf 46:08 No.

Joe Rogan 46:08 They're fucking everywhere. They're waiting for you around corners and shit.

Andy Stumpf 46:10 I don't leave my house. I just- I don't like to-

Joe Rogan 46:12 Really?

Andy Stumpf 46:12 You know, I just hang out with myself.

Joe Rogan 46:14 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 46:14 Have conversations and go to jujitsu. But I'll do- I do an hour, and a lot of it is just drill base for that hour, and there's an open mat afterwards.

Joe Rogan 46:22 Oh, okay.

Andy Stumpf 46:23 So I'm getting- I- I mean, I feel like I'm getting a good- a mix of both. And for me, I'm at the phase where like, I'm such in the alphabet phase, so I'm like, "A, ah, B, bah." Like, we'll put-

Joe Rogan 46:31 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 46:31 ... letters together into words later.

Joe Rogan 46:33 Right.

Andy Stumpf 46:33 And when I roll, I just tell myself, you know, "Maybe just focus on the fundamentals. You don't need to create new techniques."

Joe Rogan 46:39 Right.

Andy Stumpf 46:39 "... in the middle of a roll."

Joe Rogan 46:40 That's true.

Andy Stumpf 46:40 And I try to relax and use zero strength.

Joe Rogan 46:43 Mm.

Andy Stumpf 46:43 'Cause I am bigger than most people that are there-

Joe Rogan 46:46 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 46:46 ... and I don't- I've heard enough times that if you rely on your attributes early on, what's gonna end up happening is you'll have success early and then you're gonna nose-dive, because-

Joe Rogan 46:54 Yes.

Andy Stumpf 46:55 And so I'm just trying to go the other route. Just be as calm as possible, use as little of strength as possible, and just tap early and tap off. It's my favorite move.

Joe Rogan 47:03 Yeah. Another good thing to do is work off your back, 'cause you're a big guy.

Andy Stumpf 47:06 That's where I started.

Joe Rogan 47:07 Yeah, good.

Andy Stumpf 47:07 I actually asked- I said, "Can you just teach me the worst position ever? And I'll try to build up from there. And I don't care-"

Joe Rogan 47:13 Mm.

Andy Stumpf 47:13 "... about offense. I'd rather learn defense."

Joe Rogan 47:15 That's- that's very intelligent of you. That's something a lot of people don't do, and I certainly didn't do. I was just trying to choke people quick. Like, what could I- what could I do, you know?

Andy Stumpf 47:23 Whew. I don't have much success choking people. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:26 (laughs) But if you can get really comfortable with your defense, it's the most important thing. Like, Rickson Gracie's always said that, he's like, uh, "The most important thing is to be safe." He's like, "I'm always safe." He goes, "No matter where I am." He would have- Rickson would have real, like, high level black belts start on his back with a fully locked in rear naked choke.

Andy Stumpf 47:47 Really?

Joe Rogan 47:48 And then he would defend, and then he would always tap them. (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 47:52 Uh, uh, I mean, honestly, to me, that's like holding a 45-pound plate out, letting go and it just hovers. I mean, I just-

Joe Rogan 47:58 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 47:58 It's beyond my understanding how they're able to do that.

Joe Rogan 48:00 Well, there's levels. You know, there's levels to everything. I mean-

Andy Stumpf 48:03 It was eye-opening when I started. I'm like, "Oh yeah. Dude, this is gonna be... I got this."

Joe Rogan 48:07 I know, right? (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 48:08 I'm like, "This is obviously a simple recipe."

Joe Rogan 48:10 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 48:10 "Go to gym. Tap people out. There's nothing in between. I got this." And then after like my first 20 minutes, I'm like, "Oh shit."

Joe Rogan 48:17 It's humbling, man.

Andy Stumpf 48:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:19 It's so humbling.

Andy Stumpf 48:19 But I actually think that's one of the best parts about it. Like, I love-

Joe Rogan 48:22 Yes.

Andy Stumpf 48:22 So my body tells me...Like, I know who I'm gonna have a really, really tough roll with, and they're probably going to beat me, and I can feel it bouncing against my ego. But I go, "If I just go roll with that guy over there, I bet you'll be successful." And I feel that inherently-

Joe Rogan 48:34 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 48:35 ... and I'll just go roll with the person I know who's probably going to beat me. Because that- I love that choice, want something that protects your ego and something that keeps it in check.

Joe Rogan 48:42 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 48:43 'Cause it is, it is humbling. And I've been a dumbass. I should have tapped earlier before, and I'm sitting there. They completely have me locked in-

Joe Rogan 48:50 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 48:50 ... but I'm gonna try to muscle my way out of this, and then my arm's sore for three weeks.

Joe Rogan 48:53 Well, it's actually important to do both, believe it or not. It's important to be humbled, for sure. It's important to have a, a realistic perspective of your abilities. But it's also important to tap people. And so, uh, you know, I always te- tell people that, like, one of the best ways to get really good is to strangle blue belts.

Andy Stumpf 49:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:11 Get people that have, like, a little bit, a little bit of technique and they-

Andy Stumpf 49:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:15 ... they have a little bit of understanding of what's going on, and just put the choke to them. And, but also drilling. But then, you know, you have to roll with people that are r- legitimately far better than you just to, for a perspective enhancer, to understand how quickly someone can close the distance-

Andy Stumpf 49:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:30 ... how quickly someone can take advantage of an opportunity. And, and then also, the, the feeling of being set up two, three steps in a row. Like, one of the things, like, when I roll with, uh, Jean Jacques Machado, um, is, uh, you know, he's multiple time world champion. And you'll see, like, especially over time, the many, many, many times of training with him, you'll see he's setting you up f- several steps ahead. If he's sweeping you to the, to the left, right, he's sweeping you this way, he's expecting you to base.

Andy Stumpf 50:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:01 And when you base, he's gonna adjust. And when you adjust to him adjusting, he's gonna grab your leg-

Andy Stumpf 50:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:08 ... and then boom, you're on your back. You're like, "Fuck!"

Andy Stumpf 50:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:11 It's like he already saw the path, and you're just, all you're thinking of is, "Oh, don't let him sweep me."

Andy Stumpf 50:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:17 But he's sorta trying to sweep you. I mean, if you just give in like a bitch, he'll sweep you-

Andy Stumpf 50:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:21 ... but he's really wanting you to base.

Andy Stumpf 50:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:23 And then when you go to defend the base, then he's gonna trap you. And then when you go to try to adjust for the trap-

Andy Stumpf 50:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:28 ... whoops, he's got your leg and you're on your back. And then his knee's on your belly and you're like, "Motherfucker."

Andy Stumpf 50:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:33 And he saw the whole thing so many steps ahead. I mean, it's, it's a beautiful art form. It really is. Because, you know, I always say, like, about, uh, the guys that I know that are l- like some of the best guys in the world, they're so different than what you'd expect. They're really like nerd assassins.

Andy Stumpf 50:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:47 Because they're really smart. Because you're thinking almost like a ch- it's, it's like kinetic chess. You're thinking about all these moves. It's just that you can get your chess pieces to move better than other people's chess pieces can. It's like chess, but you can make your chess... If you do a lot of box jumps and plyos, and you know, you, you do heavy-duty strength and conditioning routines, you can get your chess pieces to move better. You can get everything to... You can k- give your chest pieces more endurance. You can, you know-

Andy Stumpf 51:16 Yep.

Joe Rogan 51:16 ... you can prolong your, your a- ability-

Andy Stumpf 51:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:20 ... to train and roll.

Andy Stumpf 51:22 It's been great. And like I said, it, you know, in those moments where you're getting choked or I can't breathe, like, I... It's the same type of focus. It is the singular-

Joe Rogan 51:33 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 51:33 ... goal in your life to not get murdered.

Joe Rogan 51:35 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 51:36 And I feel, it, it, for me, it's been crazy healthy. I can't speak to the larger veteran community, but I can absolutely say, for me, it's beneficial.

Joe Rogan 51:43 I think it's ben- beneficial for a lot of veterans. I, I, I talk to a lot of them that train and they, they've said that, you know, and a lot of them get super addicted.

Andy Stumpf 51:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:51 Uh, you know, they're, they're there five, six days a week and, you know, wrapping up their elbows and their wrists and taping up their fingers, and they don't give a fuck. They just wanna keep going.

Andy Stumpf 51:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:59 They'll literally roll like this with one arm 'cause their shoulder's blown out.

Andy Stumpf 52:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:02 I'm like, "You're not gonna take time off?" "Oh, I'm just gonna work around it." Work around it? Which is not always good 'cause eventually-

Andy Stumpf 52:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:09 ... you, there... I know a lot of guys who've reached the point where they're, maybe could have rehabbed something and now they have to have surgery 'cause they've kind of blown it out to the point where it's fucking dangling.

Andy Stumpf 52:18 How much do you still roll?

Joe Rogan 52:19 Very little.

Andy Stumpf 52:20 Really?

Joe Rogan 52:20 Yeah. I want to get back into it.

Andy Stumpf 52:21 Is it by choice?

Joe Rogan 52:22 Yeah. I've, I've had some significant injuries. Um, I really backed off a couple years ago because I had, um, some bulging discs that were impacting my nerves, and they were making my hands hurt-

Andy Stumpf 52:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:34 ... and my elbows hurt, and it was, uh, my, my neck had, uh, some bulging discs that were pressing against my nerves. And, uh, I got Regenakene on that and I did some spinal decompression and I relieved all that. Then I tore some meniscus and I had some shoulder injuries. The shoulder injuries-

Andy Stumpf 52:52 Jesus, man.

Joe Rogan 52:52 Yeah, the shoulder injuries were, were really bothersome because it was also fucking with archery, and I was really worried about not being able to, uh-

Andy Stumpf 52:59 Don't fuck with archery.

Joe Rogan 53:00 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 53:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:01 I love it too much. And so I rehabbed those a- almost 100%. My left one's still a little wonky, but I'm ready to roll. I'm gonna te- I'm gonna train with Jean Jacques, uh, either this week or next week and we're gonna do a podcast. So-

Andy Stumpf 53:12 How-

Joe Rogan 53:13 ... I'll get back into it once, once that happens.

Andy Stumpf 53:15 So with... You, when did you start jujitsu?

Joe Rogan 53:17 '96.

Andy Stumpf 53:18 Okay, so substantial period of time. With that amount of time off that you essentially had to take, what impact would that have for you?

Joe Rogan 53:25 It'll have a little bit of impact on my timing, but luckily, during this entire time, I've worked out very hard.

Andy Stumpf 53:32 Okay.

Joe Rogan 53:32 So my, my body's physically in very good shape. Like today, um, I ran the mountains for the first time in like six weeks since my meniscus injury, and it seems to be 100%. I mean, maybe not 100%, but no pain at all. Um, and I ran a good, steep course where it's, you know, like heavy-duty running in the, in the hills. And I was getting cysts, like recurring cysts, because the, where the meniscus tear was, there was some, you know, it was loose, and so like as I'm pounding, the blood would pool up and then it would, you know, swell up, and I had to get it drained and they'd stick this fucking fat needle in there and suck all this pus out. It was nasty. So I got exosomes and platelet-rich plasma six weeks ago. So from then, um, I waited, uh, the six weeks, but during that time period, I mostly did that Echo Bike-

Andy Stumpf 54:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:23 ... that Rogue Echo Bike because it's not impactful, so it doesn't put the pounding on the knee that, that was causing the cyst.

Andy Stumpf 54:30 Yes.

Joe Rogan 54:30 But fuck, man, does that thing build your cardio up.

Andy Stumpf 54:32 Oh, it's designed by Satan.

Joe Rogan 54:33 It's amazing.

Andy Stumpf 54:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:34 Tabatas, 20-20 sprint.

Andy Stumpf 54:37 20-10? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:37 Yeah, 20-second sprint, 10-second rest. Fuck, those are incredible.

Andy Stumpf 54:41 That bike will give you everything that you are willing to take.

Joe Rogan 54:44 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Stumpf 54:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:45 It really will. So I'm really pleased with myself that I didn't allow myself to get out of shape, because when I ran today, I was like, "Fuck, it's been six weeks. This is gonna be brutal." It wasn't brutal. It was normal-

Andy Stumpf 54:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:55 ... because I've been doing the Echo Bike. So it's maintained my cardiovascular level, which, uh, was always my, my weakest point, but-

Andy Stumpf 55:02 And so your knowledge and experience base in jujitsu ... And, and I ask because, like I said, I've been at this for six months. I'll take a week off for travel and I'll go back to a class, and I feel like I have a massive disconnect between knowledge and getting my body to work, 'cause I-

Joe Rogan 55:15 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 55:16 And I suspect it's because I'm thinking too much.

Joe Rogan 55:18 Right.

Andy Stumpf 55:18 Whereas, like I was saying, you, you have the ability to listen to Miley Cyrus in your head, or whatever her name, Christina Aguilera.

Joe Rogan 55:24 I like Miley Cyrus too.

Andy Stumpf 55:25 Awesome. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:27 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 55:28 People are into weird shit, I'm not gonna put a value judgment on that. Whereas I don't, so-

Joe Rogan 55:32 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 55:32 ... for me, if I take time off, it's ... I, I really, really struggle with it because I f- I can't connect the dots.

Joe Rogan 55:38 Yeah. Well, it's definitely, there's a difference though. The, the pathways get sharper when I train more. Like, uh, the last time I was doing, like, serious training was over a year ago. And when I was doing it, like, uh, after a few sessions, the pathways sharpen. And like, you know, you clinch up, there's less hesitation, there's more of an understanding of what's gotta take place, there's more of, like, a familiarity with training.

Andy Stumpf 56:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:01 But, you know, as you get older, you know, I'm 51 now, the thing that happens is y- your fucking joints and your, your body does not want to hold up to this continued stress. So you have to really be careful about when to train and how hard you train. Like, um, my friend, Eddie Bravo's going through that right now. He has, uh, a fake disc now in his lower back. He had to have his, uh, disc replaced with a, a titanium articulating disc. He had knee surgery, he had shoulder surgery, and he now needs wrist surgery. And now this is all within, like, you know, a couple years. And he's a couple years younger than me, so his body is hitting that, that point where this-

Andy Stumpf 56:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:41 ... years and years and years of strain and pull and choke and resist and base and r- and push, and your body just doesn't want to do that all the time. So you have to be s- You have to be smart in terms of how much stress and how much recovery you put on. I think you also have to be really smart about working on your flexibility and working on your recovery, whether it's through cryotherapy or sauna use or massage, but rest too. You can't train like a fucking wild demon six days a week-

Andy Stumpf 57:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:11 ... when you're 50. You just can't. You might get a couple of days in hard-

Andy Stumpf 57:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:15 ... but you also have to understand, like, flow rolls.

Andy Stumpf 57:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:18 Flow rolls are giant. It's the same thing with flow sparring. Like, I remember some of the best gains that I made as a kickboxer with training with guys who I knew I could trust to not f- fucking brain me. Like that we would tap each other. And so then you, you're carving pathways, but you're not taking the kind of abuse that you take if you're just going into ... Because sometimes sparring is not really sparring. You're fighting. You're fighting people in the gym. You just get together and you, you're lacing up your gloves, you're tapping gloves. They say go, the bell goes off, and you're fucking full blasting each other. And it's, that's more common than not, especially in the early days.

Andy Stumpf 57:55 I kind of find that to be the case with two white belts squaring off-

Joe Rogan 57:58 Oh, yeah.

Andy Stumpf 57:59 ... saying ... 'Cause you got to do the blood circle to make sure-

Joe Rogan 58:01 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 58:01 ... nobody's gonna get hurt by the fricking momentum-

Joe Rogan 58:03 Yes. (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 58:03 ... bouncing around the gym. It's like, "Hey, buddy, you want to just work on that technique?" And they look-

Joe Rogan 58:07 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 58:07 ... at you and go, "Uh-huh." And like, "Oh, fuck."

Joe Rogan 58:09 Yeah. They're just trying to kill.

Andy Stumpf 58:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:11 Yeah, they're trying to kill you.

Andy Stumpf 58:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:13 Yeah, there's a lot of that. It's, uh, it's really uncomfortable when someone does that to you too. You're like, "Goddammit. Do I have to do this with you?" You know, like, sometimes you could choke them quick and they'll calm down-

Andy Stumpf 58:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:24 ... and sometimes it just makes them more amped up, you know, depending on the human.

Andy Stumpf 58:28 I feel like I need to focus on my chokes now. It's not my strength.

Joe Rogan 58:31 Now, are you, uh, mostly going gi or are you going n- no gi as well?

Andy Stumpf 58:35 I do more gi than no gi only because it happens to work with my schedule, so Mondays-

Joe Rogan 58:40 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 58:40 ... and Friday. I love doing, uh, or I have loved doing the no gi stuff that I have 'cause it's so quick.

Joe Rogan 58:46 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 58:46 And I find that I rotate through a lot of the different positions. And I find myself working out of other problems more than I would in, like, a normal five-minute, uh, just open roll.

Joe Rogan 58:55 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 58:56 Um, and I realize how limited my offense is because I like holding onto the pajamas and-

Joe Rogan 59:01 Right.

Andy Stumpf 59:02 ... you know, door ... Basically, I hold onto a fricking doorknob on somebody's collar.

Joe Rogan 59:05 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 59:05 It makes sense to me now when I've heard you talking before, like, "Yeah, go ahead and wear that sweatshirt." Now I'm like, "Ooh, I don't, I don't really wanna wear a sweatshirt." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:11 Well, when someone wearing a tie-

Andy Stumpf 59:13 Oh, God. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:13 Someone wearing a tie, I'm like, "I'll kill you with that tie. I get ahold of that tie, you're a dead man."

Andy Stumpf 59:18 Even like-

Joe Rogan 59:18 You got a noose around your neck.

Andy Stumpf 59:19 ... a zip-up hoodie?

Joe Rogan 59:20 Oh, yeah.

Andy Stumpf 59:20 I'm like, "Oh, man." First, obviously I'd rub that zipper across your neck, but then you're getting choked with it. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:25 Well, how about a leather jacket if you're fucking with someone in es- in the street and that someone's a judo player?

Andy Stumpf 59:31 Someone who knows judo and you've got, like, a thick ass winter coat and they can grab-

Joe Rogan 59:35 Yeah, you're done.

Andy Stumpf 59:35 ... that shit and brain you with the world.

Joe Rogan 59:37 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 59:37 They'll just drive your fucking head into the concrete. It's been cool, man. I wish, uh, I wish I had found it earlier, and I wish I hadn't been so hesitant to try it earlier. And the reason I was, 100% reason I was, is because of my own ego.

Joe Rogan 59:50 Yeah, but the thing is, it doesn't matter, like, when ... "I wish I had done it earlier." Fuck all that, you're doing it now. Like, that's what's important. Like, it doesn't matter when you start. The, the thing about jujitsu is once you're on a path, just enjoy the path. Don't think, "God, I should have started when I was eight." Well, you can't unless you have a fucking time machine-

Andy Stumpf 1:00:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:09 ... and if you did, goddammit, I would not want to go back and be eight years old and know everything I know now, and like, it'd be like watching a movie for the 100th time.

Andy Stumpf 1:00:17 You'd be bored out of your mind.

Joe Rogan 1:00:18 Well, I'd be ... I'd, I'd fr- fuck it up. I'd probably wind up homeless.

Andy Stumpf 1:00:21 Just know your stock portfolio would be amazing because of all the knowledge-

Joe Rogan 1:00:24 Maybe, right?

Andy Stumpf 1:00:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:25 Be like, "Apple."

Andy Stumpf 1:00:26 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 "These sh- these fuckers are gonna figure it out."

Andy Stumpf 1:00:28 "Buy Apple at three."

Joe Rogan 1:00:29 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:00:29 "Let's get some Amazon stock going." Like, you'd kill it on that.

Joe Rogan 1:00:32 I know, people would be like, "What?"

Andy Stumpf 1:00:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:33 "A book thing? An online book thing? Trust me."

Andy Stumpf 1:00:35 "Don't worry about it. Put it all in there."

Joe Rogan 1:00:36 "Put all your money on Facebook."

Andy Stumpf 1:00:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:39 "What's Facebook?"Fuck are you talking-

Andy Stumpf 1:00:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 You know, David Choe, uh, he painted Facebook. He did, like, murals for Facebook in their studio, and they paid him in stock-

Andy Stumpf 1:00:48 Oh, wow.

Joe Rogan 1:00:49 ... and he got fucking hundreds, hundreds of millions from that. And he's just balling all over the world on his Facebook stock. (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 1:00:57 They don't seem to be doing too well these days, though.

Joe Rogan 1:01:00 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 1:01:00 Seeing the-

Joe Rogan 1:01:00 Facebook stock?

Andy Stumpf 1:01:00 Yeah, no, not the stock necessarily, the company. I keep seeing them in the news for the wrong reasons.

Joe Rogan 1:01:05 Yes, that's a really interesting point, right? You know, I've been focusing a lot on w- like, the, what these people are doing in terms of social media and in terms of, uh, w- you know, what impact this has on our elections, on our culture, how they're being influenced. There's a woman, we, we, uh-

Andy Stumpf 1:01:26 Talk about privacy.

Joe Rogan 1:01:27 Yeah, we booked that woman, right? Renee, w- what is her last name again? She's, she's got a phenomenal podcast with Sam Harris called The War of Information and, um, it's either The Information War or The War of Information. D'Oreste. D'Oreste, Renee D'Oreste. And she studied this, um, she studied these, these Russian troll farms and the impact they have and these fake accounts online. And what they'll do is like, so like for instance, they set up two rallies across the street from each other. One was a Texas pride rally and one was a Muslim rally.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:05 It's a classic pairing.

Joe Rogan 1:02:06 And they do it across the street from each other on purpose so that they'll interact with each other.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:10 Oh, of course.

Joe Rogan 1:02:10 So the people get there, there's no one organizing it 'cause no one, there's no real person on the ground because they're doing everything from Russia. And this is just one example. They do a lot of things with, um, with, uh, Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter. They, they were having a lot of these-

Andy Stumpf 1:02:25 Interesting.

Joe Rogan 1:02:25 They were, they were pairing them against each other. They were also, um, they had, uh, black pages that were supporting anyone but Hillary. This was their message, anyone but Hillary. Hillary Clinton does not support the Black community. We should vote for Bernie Sanders. We should vote for Jill Stein. We should vote for anybody but Hillary. And what they were basically trying to do was weaken the support that the Democrats traditionally have from the Black community.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:50 Hm.

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 And they were, they were doing this through these pages, and there was not that many pages. When you find out there's like 80 pages or 100 pages they were running, but then you find out the amount of interactions that they had with it, and there's millions and millions and millions of interactions. So comments, likes-

Andy Stumpf 1:03:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:05 ... shares, and then people are, this message that they think is coming from people from their community is actually coming from Russia, and it's actually a calculated attempt to sow dissent and to sow th- th- this conflict in America. And the idea is, and it sounded so crazy to me that like, uh, 'cause I wasn't really paying attention to it that much, but the idea is that they're trying to make us fight against each other about everything so that it fucks up democracy. So the idea is to undermine it.

Andy Stumpf 1:03:35 I would say that I think they've achieved that goal.

Joe Rogan 1:03:36 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:03:36 Whether or not they're responsible for it or not, but it certainly sends, seems like we're trending in that direction.

Joe Rogan 1:03:40 It does. I, I can't remember a time where there's more conflict and more outrage and more people willing to, like, jump into the fray regardless of whether or not they're informed.

Andy Stumpf 1:03:52 What do you think about the people who keep calling for violence?

Joe Rogan 1:03:55 It drives me crazy 'cause it's people who don't understand violence.

Andy Stumpf 1:03:58 I was gonna say the same thing. I see the people most often doing it are the ones that are the least experienced or familiar with what violence actually looks like.

Joe Rogan 1:04:05 Well, there was a lot of that from Russia as well. There's a lot of fake Antifa pages. There was a lot of that. There was a lot of that where they were telling people that the only way to get people to understand is through violence and that you must be willing to do whatever you can by any means necessary. And violence is good if it achieves the desired result of peace and prosperity and making sure that progressive ideas get pushed forth. It's fucking crazy because people who don't know what violence is, it's like here's one thing people say. They'll say to a martial arts person, like, they'll see someone like a Jon Jones. "Like, if I was Jon Jones, I'd just fucking kick everybody's ass." Like, no, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't, okay?

Andy Stumpf 1:04:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:42 You know, and all the problems that Jon Jones has been in, one thing you should notice is never been in a fight. There's no street fights out there with Jon Jones, you know? I mean-

Andy Stumpf 1:04:50 I would bet he is least, the least likely person to engage in that activity.

Joe Rogan 1:04:54 I bet you're right. Yeah, exactly.

Andy Stumpf 1:04:55 'Cause he doesn't want to do it 'cause he knows exactly the consequences, let alone the legal consequences of doing it outside of a cage.

Joe Rogan 1:05:00 Exactly. But when you look at it from someone who has zero understanding, they're like, "Oh, if I was that guy, I'd be kicking everybody's ass." But no, you wouldn't because, like, violence, people don't just accept violence. You don't just hit someone to get away with it. They think about that shit forever and they try to get you back.

Andy Stumpf 1:05:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:16 And either they hire someone to get you back or they get you back on their own or they wait for you to not remember it, and then they, they come around the corner and fucking brain you with a baseball bat. This is what people do. People don't like getting fucked up. If you kick someone's ass, they're gonna remember it. They're gonna... And this idea that you're gonna be able to suppress people by, by attacking them and hitting them with bike locks and, you know, and not letting them speak at universities that, you know, you're, you're, you're protesting at, it's, it's madness. And it's, it's, it's so confusing because it's not indicative of what I always thought of when I thought about left-wing people. I thought they were peace-loving people-

Andy Stumpf 1:05:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:52 ... or well-educated. And instead, you're getting these people that are from their fucking computer, they're calling for violence. Like, you don't know what violence is.

Andy Stumpf 1:06:01 Well, the thing is too, from what I've seen, it didn't start with the bike locks, right? It started with, you know, shout this person down.

Joe Rogan 1:06:06 Yes.

Andy Stumpf 1:06:07 And then it's like fistfights, and then they're throwing rocks, and then it's bike locks. And now I hear people, you know, "Get your guns." And, and it starts to rise to that level, I'm like, "Okay."

Joe Rogan 1:06:16 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:06:18 You people need to calm down because the theory of, uh, we need a revolution in this country. Like, let- let's pump the brakes, homeboy, right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:26 Yeah. Well, first of all, here's what we need. We need camaraderie. We need to be nice.

Andy Stumpf 1:06:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:32 This is more important than anything. We need to be calm with each other. You know, this, this idea that yelling people down stops anything, you're just gonna make people yell louder on the other side. That d- that shit does not work. That's not how human beings operate. When-

Andy Stumpf 1:06:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:45 If you want human beings to appreciate your perspective, I...... find the things that you agree on and, and work towards, like, a, a better humanity. Work towards a, a better, more loving way of interacting with each other. This is possible while disagreeing. And this is one of the most important things, I think, that we could ever e- express, in terms of how to communicate with each other. You don't have to shout people down. Like, the, the best way to do it is, is t- to try to figure out the points that you can agree on, find out what you disagree on and find out why you disagree on it. And you're always gonna get bad actors, right? You're always gonna get people that are in there, that they don't care, they're not reasonable, they just wanna win. And, but th- there's a giant problem with that kind of communicating, because it's so absolute. It's my way or the highway. Like, that's, that's where violence comes from. That's where-

Andy Stumpf 1:07:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:36 ... that's where real, it, that's where real, physical conflicts, that's where they come from. When there's no way to negotiate and there's no way to communicate outside of that.

Andy Stumpf 1:07:42 I just think it's... I don't know. Bizarre is not the right word. I think it's sad that the vast majority, from again, my opinion, what I see is, people who are identifying with shit you can see on a street sign.

Joe Rogan 1:07:54 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:07:54 Like left or right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:55 Right.

Andy Stumpf 1:07:55 Like, you're telling me that as a species, that's as nuanced as we can get? You wanna completely define yourself and your ideology and your beliefs by something literally you can see just driving your car?

Joe Rogan 1:08:05 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:05 Turn left, turn right. It's just... I don't understand it. I don't, um... It's the exact opposite world, y- to go back to, you know, getting out of the military and, and just kind of entering into the world. I'm like, "What's going on?"

Joe Rogan 1:08:17 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:17 It makes no sense to me. It makes me extremely uncomfortable. I hate hearing people calling for violence. Um...

Joe Rogan 1:08:25 I know. And especially calling for violence when it's not necessary-

Andy Stumpf 1:08:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:28 ... against the Americans. When you, what you had to deal with in the military has to be the most intense form of, of conflict that's available on Planet Earth. The most intense form of conflict is war. That's the real conflict. That's real consequences. You've suffered them physically. You've seen countless friends suffer them physically. That's the real shit. So when you're seeing people from universities, from these coddled environments and these, these r- these, uh, people with a, really, an completely ignorant perspective as to, as to what the actual consequences of violence are, calling for it, it's just bananas.

Andy Stumpf 1:09:06 On one hand, I'm glad that they haven't experienced it, because I can tell that they haven't, just by the way that they're acting.