Daniele Bolelli - The Drunken Taoist

Full transcript: Daniele Bolelli on London Real

0:00 What’s up? It’s Brian Rose from London Real. I’m here in Spitalfields Market, which is another one of Jack the Ripper’s haunting grounds back in the day. We’ve had a crazy week at London Real, never a dull moment. I’m going to discuss the entire Joey Diaz situation.

0:18 But before that, I want to talk about our guest this week. His name is Mr. Daniele Bolelli and he is a martial artist, a philosopher. He wrote his first book, I think, at 22 years of age in Italy. It’s now been translated into English and Russian.

0:34 He’s got a new book out that is kind of like Making Your Own Religion. He calls it like the MMA of religion. Take a little bit from here and take a little bit from there. And Daniele sat down with me when I was out in LA in his backyard. I’m loving these outdoor podcasts.

0:51 And he was very honest about some things that have gone on in his life. Most notably his wife died two years ago and left a very young daughter that he had to pretty much deal with when he was dealing with all sorts of other stuff as far as I think he was trying to finish a book and trying to teach a university and so the man’s been through some adversity like that and he’s a legit martial artist as well. He gave me a DVD on leg locks and you know he’s know who’s the more palajares but he can definitely probably hang close to him so it was cool to get his impression and his thoughts about philosophy and I think I talk more about some of my own philosophies, more so than any other London Real show.

1:31 You know, when you have a trial log, I end up trying to just shut up sometimes and when you’re just one-on-one with people, I talk a bit more and it was nice just to talk to Daniele about him. So I think you’re really going to enjoy this hour and a half with him. He also is the creator of the Drunken Taoist podcast which I really enjoy listening to. It’s one of the top ones on on philosophy and I think you’re gonna enjoy that as well so please subscribe to him there and he interviews lots of different people. I think Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee’s daughter, was one of the best ones that I liked. He was also in the movie I think the Bruce Lee story as well and he had some commentary.

2:12 One of his favorite things is he sticks the middle finger up at God I and to certain things that he can’t control in life so he talks about that on the show so I hope you enjoy it. We’ve had a bit of drama this week with Mr. Joey Coco Diaz an actor and comedian in Los Angeles just to give you the full backstory I wrote Joey an email I think a year ago and when he was on Beauty and the Beast with Felicia Michaels and I asked him if we could interview him you know he said he couldn’t come to London cuz he He doesn’t have a passport, he’s not allowed to travel because of his background or his time he spent in prison, I think.

2:52 And so we were always in touch and when we went out to the Rogan show in October of last year, I tried to hook up Joey, but he was on the road. And so when I went out to L.A. last week, I found out like Sunday night or Monday that he was game. And to be honest, it made my week. I was like, wow, I can’t wait to sit down with Joey and talk to him and he had me meet him at this coffee shop way up in like Burbank or something. So I drove, it was like a five-hour round trip, I drove up to see him and I set up in like this outdoor coffee shop with like a dirty power strip and Lee Siaat rolled up and I was like hey Lee and so I hung out with Lee for a while and then Joey and I sat down for two hours and got a great interview with Joey. I mean the people that got a chance to watch it, some say it’s one of the best ever and I have to agree it was just nice to get a one-on-one with Joey.

3:42 Know just to get really inside his head as opposed to you know three or four people talking at the same time it was good just to hear what was going on so that was all well and good I got back to the UK I published the show on Tuesday everyone was loving it retweeting it Joey was the desk squad guys and we’re all retweeting it and the positive comments on YouTube it was like 98% positive and so I was really pleased with the show and that was Tuesday and then Wednesday came along and as you know we have a group of interns here at London Real and I don’t know all of them even specifically by name I’ve got a guy who does PR coordination for me for free no nobody gets paid to do anything around here because there quite honestly is no money really in podcasting I think unless you you ramp it up so so they loved the show so much and they’re Joey Diaz fans that like eight or nine of them started going ape shit on on Twitter, and they were tweeting this and tweeting that and asking people for retweets.

4:42 And then when people retweeted, they were saying, hey, you should come on the show. And they don’t have authorization to invite people on London Real. That’s my decision. But when you get people to volunteer for you, you want to let them go a little crazy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t monitor what they were doing on Twitter.

5:00 Because if you don’t put the at London Real TV handle on there, then I can’t see what you’re doing. So any motherfucker can tweet anybody about anything. I can tweet Jay-Z, and you can tweet President Obama, and so they were all going crazy. So Joey tweeted me, I think, Wednesday morning. It was like, you guys are tweeting too much, and I think I tweeted back as a joke.

5:21 I was like, ah, Joey, your tweets are gold. Because I thought he was talking about my tweets, and all I was tweeting was quotes he did from the show, and like I normally do. You can see them, I didn’t delete any tweets. They’re all still up there. But by 5 p.m. London time, Joey had gone absolutely apeshit and he was pissed off and he didn’t like all the tweets and the fact that we were begging people for retweets or maybe even pimping people for the show, and I get it.

5:46 I get it. Fair enough. And so I called all the interns and called everyone and said, just stop. And I sent out a message apologizing to Joey and said it would stop, and it did stop as far as I know. I mean, hell, unless there’s some troll out there pretending to be some kid.

6:00 I mean, everyone was tweeting from their own personal Twitter account, so, you know, it could have been anybody, you know? And like I said, I know some of these guys’ names, but I don’t know everyone. So that happened, but by then Joey was just gone, man. He was pissed off, and he’s just started going mad on Twitter. And I understand that he was angry, you know, we did apologize and stopped all the tweets, but at that point he was just going crazy.

6:24 And you know, I don’t think Twitter wars are a very intelligent way of expressing yourself. I stopped doing Twitter Wars when I turned age 7. So quite honestly, I logged off. And I was just like, you know what, if all this bile is going to be directed out there at interns or at people or at London Real, and if the Desquod crew who were retweeting the show and who liked the show, I think, want to come after us, and I mean like Jesus, what am I going to do?

6:50 Respond to each one and start calling people cocksuckers? No, I’m not going to do that. So it all went a bit crazy. Joey sent me a message finally on Facebook. He hadn’t contacted me directly before, even though he had my email.

7:03 And he said, take the show down. I asked him to reconsider because it’s such a great show, but he was pretty adamant. Lawsuits being threatened and things like that, and he could take the video down himself, which I don’t know if he could. And quite honestly, I have attorneys too. But it was about midnight in London, and I was sitting at home, and I thought, you know, if you don’t want to be part of London Real, then why the hell would I put your video up with us?

7:33 We’re not TMZ. We don’t force people. People love to be on our show, and they love to be promoted by us. So ultimately, I took the video down and sent peace to you, Joey, and complied with what he wanted to do. And that was it.

7:47 I think there was some more residual hate and people being pissed off and all this stuff. But you know, that’s pretty much what happened. And at the end of the day, if we lose fans, DS fans, or desk squad fans, or whatever, that’s OK. I mean, it’s really simple what we do here. It’s London Real.

8:04 We sit down with people and talk to them. That’s our product. And if you enjoy that, then watch. And if you don’t, then don’t. It’s really simple.

8:14 So I don’t take any of this stuff personally. I’ve been seeing a lot of shit in my life. And at 42, I can’t say that this does really bothered me very much. It’s all pretty funny now that it all seems to be a tempest in a teacup at the end of the day because like today I don’t think anyone knows. I think Joey’s deleted all his tweets so it’s like it never happened and if you were on Twitter then you would have never known it happened. So that’s it. You know I kind of feel bad it happened. You know I really genuinely liked Joey and went out of my way and was so proud of the work we did and so when he starts accusing me of doing things in a bad way or trying to do this, all I’m trying to do is show the world who you are and it turns out the world is not going to get to know you from London Real and you know what, we’re going to get over it. It was 3,000 views on YouTube out of just under a million and it’s one guest out of a hundred. So again, I don’t have any anger. I think a lot of people are surprised by that. But I can only keep saying peace to you Joey. I wish you the best in your career. I hope I didn’t give you a heart attack with all that stuff from the tweets. And you know we did apologize and oh yeah I’ll go. And so there I you know in my opinion we apologize pulled the video. There’s not much more I can say. You know how we feel. I said I sent peace to you and I really enjoyed Lee and meeting him. So there you go. That was the situation. Don’t want to talk about

9:48 It much more. Congratulations to the people that did see the video and listened to the audio. Like I said, I think it’s a great interview. Maybe somebody downloaded and there’s some copy out in the cyberspace, but I’m done with the situation. It’s too bad. I’m going to miss listening to the church, but it’s going to be hard to listen to it anymore. But like Like I said, I send peace to all people and again, the apologies have been made and in my opinion the reparations were done.

10:14 So not much more to say on this, sorry if you had to be a part of all that nastiness. Some people feed off to a reward, some people love that shit and I just, I don’t like those people and I don’t like to engage in that kind of thing. If I wanted shop journalism, I could have done that with many of my guests and got these hot clips on YouTube that will hit a million views because I asked some guy this you know we don’t do that so I’m not about to start now so there you go anyways I apologize to mr. Bolelli that that this part has to be on your pre-roll but I’m so glad I sat down with you and now I give you martial artist and philosopher mr. Daniele Bolelli up-and-coming podcast this is London Real on location here in Los Angeles this is apparently a co-broadcast potentially with the drunken Daoist I am here with mr. Daniele Boley as I said when I came in Bonjourno Daniele is a Italian writer martial artist and university professor and And you’ve been described as half stand-up comedian and half zen master.

11:38 I like that. I don’t remember why I paid to write that, but that’s nice. It’s very good. I like that. Some of your books, your first book I think was on the warrior’s path, which is philosophy, fighting and martial arts mythology, which I think you penned originally in Italian at 22.

11:55 Yeah, I wrote it in Italian and it was kind of a much shorter version. It was like eight chapters. then my English sucks so bad that I couldn’t really translate it into English for a long time. Eventually, maybe seven years later, I got it done in the U.S. with three extra chapters, and then they asked me a super-sized version later on yet with two more chapters.

12:16 So this is a book that started out thin and Italian and started growing and growing into these bigger English versions. And yeah, that was my first thing. It’s kind of a trip to look at it now but it’s now it’s in Russian and yeah I think I’m out in Russia yeah that’s it’s actually coming back out in Italy now in the newer thicker version is gonna be out in May so yeah that’s been my very first thing that’s cool I want to ask you later how do you write a book at 22 years well I didn’t have a girlfriend in this extra time and in order to spare and I got something cool about you being 22, and most 22-year-olds wouldn’t think that they could write a book or have an opinion people would want to read, so that’s a good story.

13:04 You’ve got some other books I just want to touch on briefly. I’m only going to cover three in this intro, but one which came out, I think, a couple years ago, which is 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know Religion, which I think is some surprising, shocking, and little-known facts about the big three religions. There’s probably more on top of that. And your latest book, which is coming out this week, it’s called Create Your Own Religion, a how-to book without instructions, love that title, which I think is an open invitation to question all the values and beliefs and worldviews that humanity has held so far.

13:41 Is that a reasonable summary of it? Yeah, totally. It’s basically the MMA approach to religion. It’s the same way as in martial arts, mixed martial arts started by taking the best of a bunch of different system tests what works and what doesn’t to create your own thing very Bruce Lee of the approach to MMA. My approach is I do the exact same thing with religions is I look in addressing all the big key philosophical questions that anybody have to figure out for their own lives. I look at what answers are already out there.

14:14 I take a look at where those answers have led in some cases I recoil in horror going heal. That didn’t seem like a good experiment. Let’s leave that. In other cases, I’m like, that’s actually a great idea. I’ll borrow it, mix it, create my own thing.

14:29 Okay. Do you limit yourself to the big three religions? No, that’s too limiting. I’m not particular. I mean, you can find stuff that’s okay in the monotheistic religions, but those are the things that I really like the least. So I’m more in sync with some Taoist thinking, Buddhist thinking, I mean, I take whatever I can use, you know what I mean, I don’t care where it comes from as long as it’s good and I like it and it helps my life, that’s the only thing that matters. But generally speaking, I tend to find more in religions that are not faith-based. Faith-based religions tend to scare me and freak me out in more ways than one.

15:06 Okay, can you quickly define the difference between a faith-based religion or an example of an Fate-based religions, religions that are based on the idea that this one God revealed the truth to human beings saying this is what you need to do and because there is no evidence for it you go on fate whether that’s you should follow it or not. The religions that are not faith-based usually don’t make a claim that this is the truth because some God told you so. They make a claim about this is the truth, test it out for yourself.

15:39 Is Buddhism one of those? Yeah, it’s kind of like Buddhism as like Buddha is parable of the raft that I thought was awesome. He said, you know, compare these teachings to a raft. He said, it’s really only to take you from point A to point B. If you find another way to get to point B, good for you.

15:55 Good for you you know if you once you get to point B kind of useless to drag the raft on your back for your entire life and worship it that’s not the point the point is it’s a mean to an end end of story okay which is very open-minded yeah dig it you know is like it’s just trying to help you solve the problem and if you can find other ways to do so by all means and there’s no guilt feedback loop on those no exactly no you have to do it this way okay so in that sense is less Yes, that’s why I don’t consider it fate-based, because it’s something you can test out for yourself. You can test out those ideas, not because Buddha said so, it’s, are they good ideas or not? Do they work for you or not?

16:37 Maybe some of them do, some of them don’t. It’s totally fine to do so, and monotheistic religions, there’s no, at least officially it’s not a do-it-yourself thing. You can test it for yourself, you either believe it from A to Z, or you are committing some kind of sin. my way or the highway. So your books always have all have really cheeky titles and I love that about it. So you’re serious this is kind of a how-to how-to book to create on religion it’s not it’s not a way of investigating religions it’s actually is kind of it’s both I mean it’s investigating for the point of creating so it’s and by creating I don’t mean tomorrow you start the Church of Brian or something is not is it creating a way of life some Some people may not like the word religion, scratch it off, put philosophy.

17:24 Same thing. It’s how to live in this world. That’s what it’s about. Okay. Great.

17:31 I can’t wait to see that. And that’s out. What on Amazon right now? Bookstores? Yep.

17:36 Just came out. Amazon bookstores are by now quickly disappearing, but whatever bookstores are left, yes. I’ll be there. I just want to round out a little bit more about you. You’re originally from Milan, but you moved over here after high school, right?

17:48 Yep. You graduated from UCLA, and you’re also a graduate from Cardiff in Wales. I’m actually still, it’s a complicated story, but basically, because I started teaching right after getting my first master degree. Okay. From here.

18:04 From here. Okay. And teaching with a master is a complicated proposition because, you know, the kind of jobs you have available are more limited. Okay. As opposed to with a PhD.

18:13 Yeah. Okay. I did a second master’s. do a PhD because that would require an investment of time and energy that I just didn’t have because I had to put the time and energy into making money, supporting my wife at the time, doing all this other stuff. So I was like, fuck, what do I do? You know, I need to, it would help me to have a PhD, but I really can’t because now I have all these classes lined up to teach and it’s part-time, but it’s better than nothing. And then eventually I started hooking up with Cardiff University to do a PhD where I would go there for a while, But then a lot of it would also be done through as a research thing so I can do from here Okay, I’m stealing the process. Okay, so that’s close to home Yeah, I mean for people that don’t know Wales is right next to England and it’s a shame I’ve never been to Wales and I’ve lived in England for 11 years If you throw a stone far enough you can reach it from London I can drive there in three hours and we just had a Welshman on the show, which is Howard Marks You know in infamous international cannabis mugler, so I hope you won’t be upset with me But um, it’s uh, that’s a crazy coincidence. Yeah I like it. I went there a few times. It was fun Yeah, I like it. Most people have a good rap, you know, they seem to be pretty cool down-to-earth people that kind of thing so um, so uh and uh Sorry, I was just saying you moved here to la um and now you teach

19:34 In a lot of different departments. Um from what I understand you teach everything from history to social sciences To american indian studies to asian american studies world arts cultures in different places all over Southern California. Yeah, it’s kind of funny, like sometimes when people ask me, so what kind of class do you have coming up now? I’m like, it’s all the same. Because I mean, to me, it’s like the specifics are different, right?

19:59 Obviously, if you’re talking about American Indian history, it’s different than if you’re talking about martial arts in movies, right? But that’s only the starting point. At the end, I end up talking about the same things. Okay, which is philosophy? Yeah, it’s life, right?

20:13 The big things of life that makes life fun and interesting. At the end of the day, they are always the same. It’s sex and a relationship with death and all these gender roles or attitudes about nature. These are the topics that to me are key in any endeavor. And so the classes I teach, really they are excuses to get to the fun with the big topics.

20:40 So the examples are different. the specific expert knowledge is different, but overarching themes don’t really change. Okay, it’s interesting because I was driving over here and I was like, Jesus, you know, Daniele has like all this schooling and philosophy and it’s something I never took much of. And then I was also thinking, okay, but you know, I’ve been through a lot of things in my life and a lot of successes and failures and you know, relationships and heartbreaks and like all that stuff.

21:06 So I guess by definition, am I a philosopher? And you must hang out with a ton of academics that are philosophy, you know. I hate that. I was gonna say, you just answered my question. I mean, do you think sometimes that having a philosophical structure in place that you would get from a PhD can actually confine the way people look at their life?

21:26 I think mess you up. I think graduate school is, for the most, I’m sure there are exceptions. You know, I don’t wanna generalize, but for the most part, you will fuck up your brain in several ways, and you will spend years trying to unlearn some of the stuff that’s been put in your head. Because the reality of the game is that a lot of graduate school is become super specialized where you have to know one thing. You don’t know about history in the great scheme of things or the lessons from it.

21:54 You know what happened in that one street corner in 1615 between 6 PM and 6 30. And that’s what your PhD is about kind of thing. So a lot of it to me is the exact opposite the attitude I have about knowledge. My attitude is all knowledge serve life is about making life more fun, more enjoyable. Their approach is stripping life from knowledge and focusing on knowledge for knowledge sake, on little tiny specks of knowledge that are isolated from everything else. Okay, nuances that make this philosopher different than this.

22:29 What the hell is the point? Okay. That to me doesn’t speak to me. Is it the difference between say physics and engineering. You know one is very practical and analytic and one is used in life or used in the field. There’s certainly an element of that and that some of it I think is just the people getting into these fields is some people have a driving passion for life in all of its forms and some people don’t and for whatever reason they like to play weird nerdy games and that’s what they’re into and that’s it and totally over my head I don’t get that stuff and to me is a crime to turn what couldn’t should be an awesome experience such as going to college which really is about it’s more than knowledge to me is about a place where you find yourself where you’re tackling wisdom where you’re grappling with wisdom on a daily basis and instead that’s because wisdom is a subjective concept that doesn’t enter the picture it’s all about being objective which means just giving you little peels of knowledge data that can’t be argued about that those are just facts. Unfortunately that stuff is dumb memorization you know it’s not about turning it into anything that helps elevate the quality of anybody’s life. Okay so to me that’s I mean it’s better than ignorance you know I’m not arguing no ignorance is greater sense and clearly in that sense going to college and being educated is better than nothing but that’s not much better okay is that’s not the point of the whole

24:03 Thing okay but you’re still trying to get your PhD yeah but again it’s a mean to an end okay you know if somebody tomorrow give me a piece of paper with a PhD on I’m totally happy with it because it’s not that I think that the process of getting a PhD is gonna make me smarter or wiser okay it’s just I need a stupid piece of paper to teach more classes so I can do the stuff I want to do. Okay. It’s about it. Do you encourage your students to like go out there and do crazy things and take risks and do things that aren’t part of the normal well curriculum I guess you can’t tell them to you know to live their life differently but is that is that I’ve never seen one of your lectures but I’m wondering if that’s a theme you know throughout some of the things that you teach about I know you’ve been said you’ve been told I’ve seen you quoted as being saying that you need to be involved in lots of different things in life in order to taste to taste it correctly. Yeah, because I mean to me is I don’t necessarily encourage people to do jack because it’s their life and they know what it is that they need but if they come to me with an idea or I’ll gladly play along and I mean the thing with me is that a lot of the conversations I have with students the stuff that I’m teaching is really an excuse for them to tell me about their life and where they are going with it and where maybe that one idea that I brought up how it applies to very real concrete things in their day-to-day life

25:22 And that’s where we jump in. But I don’t necessarily have a preconceived plan of like everybody should try these things or do this stuff because people are different right and so I’ll just kind of roll with whatever they feed me. Okay you know I was watching some of your leg locks on YouTube so people don’t know you know Daniele is quite an accomplished martial artist I could I’m actually gonna write read through your a bit of some of your styles here but it says you trained in several several styles of martial arts including Kung Fu, Senso, I don’t know some of these names, Bagua Zhang, okay these are we are the Chinese martial arts, fun, and including which is going to give you street cred with the MMA fans, submission wrestling, Brazilian jiu jitsu, boxing judo, 4-3 black belt in the kung fu is just the sense so you know that makes you a unique philosophy instructor. I was just wondering if you could tell me about a bit about your martial arts history and then I got a question for you about Matt Hughes but that’s that’s a different story but um yeah was that something important to you as a kid growing up I mean is Milan or the martial arts big in Milan? Yeah it is big. I think there was always this sensitive more. If you go by yin and yang I had much more of a yin personality, very sensitive, sweet, I avoided conflict, I nerdy, all of that kind of stuff. I craved and needed the other side, you know, I needed to balance me out something that

26:56 Made me a little more pragmatic, a little more assertive, a little more all those qualities that I hadn’t developed that much and so to me martial arts was really attractive in that sense of something to balance out my personality and I started out with a very romanticized notion of martial art you know I wanted master Yoda telling me teaching me the way of the force basically and then I realized that not quite the way it works so I started out with a lot of Chinese martial arts so because in my mind you know in popular imagination that’s what martial arts are about right? Asian and mysterious and all that and eventually I started drifting more towards self-defense based martial arts and eventually even that started bugging me because I felt that there was no reality check you know because is a lot of self-defense training is cooperative training right okay you never know what it means to deal with somebody with the adrenaline with the pressure with somebody who’s really trying to take your head off and all of that so then I started switching to our combat sports because clearly I mean combat sports are also simulation because all the techniques that you would actually really use in a fight you can’t use for safety reasons right but at the same time you do get to try timing power adrenaline all those things do come into place and the other guy will spend the last several years to become more effective at taking your head off is

28:22 Right there coming your way so it forces you to deal with fear so I love combat sports. This is sports like boxing, wrestling, MMA, jujitsu, the whole game. Okay. All of them to me are brilliant, you know, there’s something very real about it, very raw, primal and because you test yourself you find the less people who have this, I mean a lot of traditional martial artists have this very deep attitude of just being all full of themselves and full of ego. A lot of it is a product of their training, is because you build yourself up as this deadly machine but you never really try it, you have this vested interest in keeping this sense that you’re really so deadly. If you go out and compete on a regular basis you get a sense of how good you are, you get a sense that there are a lot of people you can beat, there are you get a sense there are a lot of people who can beat you, it keeps things in perspective, you know your ego can only grow so big because you have to bring it to the mat every time you train And if you get your ass kicked all your claims of being big and deadly turn out to be ridiculous So you need to you know keep it real in that sense And yeah my most people who have never been around a mixed martial artist think that you’re a bunch of you know goons Or the problem is they see the they see the boxing analogy which is the trash talking and stuff which Unfortunately has kind of precipitated in boxing, but as soon as you cross over into an MMA

29:47 I would argue wrestling or jujitsu area where you’re being humbled on a regular basis. You will meet the nicest people Yeah, I mean One of the guys I trained with I trained with who’s a co-host sometimes on London Real He’s a Thai boxer K1 fighter and he has the gentlest handshake, right? and I always I think there’s a correlation or an inverted correlation between the handshake power and Skills because anybody trying to crank on your hand, right? There’s some insecurity there I mean I think you’re totally right when you test it and you do get humbled by reality by the fact that as good as you are there’s always something better than you. It’s always someone to humble you. Of course so it keeps things light it keeps things in perspective and I like it so I really dig I mean I don’t get me wrong there are a lot of traditional martial art that I still like I value the training there are some awesome people training that would not become these ego-driven assholes. But for my personality, for what I need, I need the combat sports element more. If somebody was already like this tough guy by nature where they maybe they do need to go do Tai Chi all day, you know, because he mellows them out, they need it to round up their personality. Doing my personalities, I need the combat sports aspect. Okay. And you trained them, did you fight MMA? Yeah, I did a couple of fights.

31:09 I mean, that was already a few years ago in Italy and, you know, even now, Italy is sort of in the backwaters of MMA back then, even more so. So it was, you know, like calling it professional events is a big, uh, being very optimistic, but I mean, yeah, it’s fun. It was pro rules and everything. I mean, you’re in a cage or a ring and someone can take your head off. And those are the rules, right?

31:33 So yeah, that’s serious. Yeah, I mean, I trained a long time. I got a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but I never fought MMA. it was always in the back of my mind something I respected heavily and thought about doing but I never did it fucking scary yeah yeah especially I’m an extra wimp you know I start from a place where I don’t just I’m really behind the curve here in terms of fearlessness and even before I did a pro fight when I did the smokers even with the headgear so you’re not really gonna get hurt that bad you’re still scary part of it is you’re not really scared of getting hurt. I mean, that’s part of it. But part of it is getting scared of being honoring in front of a bunch of people and get physically dominated by another man who’s going to sit on you and pound your, that’s, it’s an ego thing. It’s an ego thing. Yeah. Okay. And did you find yourself intentionally going to where the fear is? Yeah. And is that, is that a credit to part of your philosophy background? Because a lot of people just would not, would not recognize is that they’re staying away from the fear.

32:37 I mean, most people I see, and it frustrates the hell out of me, stay away from fear most of their lives and never recognize what they’re doing by staying away from it. It’s controlling you. It’s limiting you. It’s ultimately making you less of the person that you can be in every aspect of your life, being a nicer parent, relating to friends, relationships. Look at relationships.

33:03 So many people are scared of their feelings are scared of getting hurt and so they put up this guard that ultimately may prevent you from getting hurt but also prevent you from enjoying the relationships to the fullest and I mean I understand it but to me it’s a child reaction you know it’s like come on are you really that afraid to be hurt the fuck you’re gonna hurt anyway you know life is gonna hurt you no matter what embrace it and at that point you can actually get all the good stuff out of it, you know, because I mean nobody likes getting hurt, you know, it sucks, I get it, I understand it, like the martial arts thing, every time I’ve done an MMA thing, I would swear to myself that it would be the last time ever because it was so scary, you know, before when I’m there, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this, this sucks so bad, you know, you quickly find out that the expression, scare the shit out of you is not just metaphorical, because you spend the morning on the toilet, you’re Panicking, you’re sweaty, you can’t breathe, all of that.

34:04 So it’s like, who wants to feel that way? But then when you get through it, oh my God, it feels so good. Yeah, the dwarf in Russia is just big. Yeah, and you, despite feeling pure sheer terror, you stepped up anyway. And regardless of outcome, because you can’t control outcome, right?

34:21 You know, you can only control it in some degree. Regardless of outcome, you went through something that scared the hell out of you. That’s big. You know then when other fears show up in your life The muscle has been trained of dealing with fear Yeah, and they’re usually probably less significant than the big one. Yeah, and you know, you’ve done it before Yeah, I always do that whenever I have a fear I always go back to the things that I’ve dealt with in the past and I thought okay Wait a second. I’ve done this before I’ve done this before I’ve done this before even Joey Diaz has said that when he goes into an audition and always looking like I was no addition And he’s like, wait a second, I used to go after the headliner on a Tuesday night at this crappy comedy club over and over again and just sucked.

35:04 And he’s like, none of these people have gone through that kind of humiliation and pain. I can deal with this. Exactly. So do you still do that today? Do you still try to go to where the fear is in your own life?

35:17 Yeah, I mean, I think life in that sense, I’m really glad I did what I did martial martial art wise because it prepared me for, because I mean my life I didn’t really that been that bad you know for the most part I was extra sensitive as a person so I would feel things a lot but objectively speaking my life hadn’t been that bad. By the time my life did get that bad I’m really glad that I had that preparation through martial arts of dealing with fear, dealing with this lack of control, dealing with getting your ass kicked and yet you know when in martial arts when you got your ass kicked you either decide to check out and never show up again. She’s very tempting. Totally or if you keep coming that say something about you because you know staying in a place where you have no hope of winning and staying it anyway that to me translates to life more than any perfect arm bar or left hook you know it’s like those are techniques that’s nice but that kind of stuff will happen in life when the shit hits the fans things got really bad and how do you deal with it at that moment when you have really no hope of a good outcome you know it’s easy for us to get pumped up and have all this positive thinking stuff about you know the out I’m not gonna believe all this negative news I’m gonna find a way to triumph in the end well what when you can’t well when reality really kicks you in the balls and there’s nothing you can do to quote-unquote win.

36:45 Then what? That ability to be able to stay in it even when things are extremely rough and to find little chance of enjoyment in the middle of the war situations. Something powerful about that. And so the last maybe three years of my life I am training and stuff but because so much has happened I haven’t had a chance to really train as much as I used to or as much as I would like to. A lot of the fear-based stuff has been more life-throwing it my way and not necessarily searching it.

37:21 Right. Do you think after going into the cage and doing those things as younger men that you get to where you are now, do you think there’s a limited number of things that you can go out and do when you’re a father, you’re a teacher, to really confront your fears? You can’t go into the Congo, you know, or you think there was always some place where you can confront your fear. I think there are so many fears out there that unless you are really amazing because you have conquered your fear across the board, and even if you do conquer them in one particular time, it’s like sweeping the floor, just because you have done it once doesn’t mean it doesn’t get dirty again.

37:58 So the fear element is gonna creep up again, no matter how well you handled it before. Yeah. Once you have handled it already, because it’s easier to do it again, but it’s by no means a guarantee. Right, I like that analogy, sweeping the floor. So even if you go back and do something you’ve done before that’s scary, it can still be scary.

38:19 It can be elements of that. Probably less, because you have that experience, as you were saying, you go back in your mind, you have done it already, you rush towards it a little bit, but still, it doesn’t mean that it’s not scary at all. Right, right. And some of the things you dealt with the last couple of years, your wife died, you were working on a position you were trying to get at a university that kind of fell through, and everything kind of came crashing down on you.

38:43 Yeah, I lost my house. My daughter was 19 months old when my wife died, so dealing with a baby that now is completely and totally dependent on you 24-7, that’s intense. That’s intense. In some ways it helped me a lot because then you don’t have time to whine and be all commiserating yourself of how hard things are because you have a damn baby that needs your love and attention and everything else you can’t be poor me. There’s no time and energy for that so in that sense it actually helped me a lot but on a practical level it’s hard right because it’s constant energy going out in another direction. So yeah it has been intense. Did you find yourself like thinking back to your martial arts training or was it not that was it not that specific? Do you think it was just more of a feeling that you’ve been through some difficult things before or were you ever? I mean I did mentally the connection realizing that feeling of like, because honestly it surprised me that I handled things better than I expected to and I think a lot of it But when I tried to figure out why, because I’ve never been that much of a fearless person, I figured out a lot of it was probably the experience of testing myself through martial arts, but really was about dealing with fear and doing that over and over again and realize over and over again that I don’t really control much, and help you relax a little bit.

40:14 Yeah, I guess that whole knowledge that you can’t control things and dealing with that lack of control. It’s probably a good analogy for life which you can’t control. I said this to my my nine-year-old stepdaughter. She always wants to know like where we’re gonna go and then how we’re gonna get there and all this stuff and like we were coming in from the airport yesterday and I pulled her aside and I was like just see here’s an analogy in life. I was like you know you might think you’re in control but you’re actually never in control of anything and her mother was laughing because I was getting all philosophical on her I was like so there’s no point in you stressing about like how we’re gonna get from the airport to the thing because you’re just you only have an illusion that you’re in control but I don’t think she took it on board I mean but ultimately it is what it is right enjoy the ride while you can because you have no idea about I mean ultimately when we talk about fear one of the biggest one is the fear of dying yeah because you know we got all pissed off about minor stuff and here you’re talking about all of eternity and you have no idea what the hell happens or if anything happens or everything that makes you you just disappears like that’s talk about a scary thought yeah yeah and when you in a sense you accept that as well when you’re like fuck there’s nothing i can do to avoid it and it’s real and so in that sense you know when they tell you

41:33 There is no monster hidden under your bed it’s okay yeah the fact is there is the monster hidden under your bed and shit he’s gonna get ugly at some point one way or another i’ve heard you say So explain what you mean by that. A lot of people have this, a lot of people I like who are trying to empower other human beings, they do so by painting reality in rosy terms, like things are not as bad as you make them be, you’re psyching yourself out, it’s gonna be okay, if you follow these you’re gonna try off and so on. My experience is nothing bad, you know, it’s like the exact opposite, it’s like no bad and shit happens, you have no control, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

42:17 Welcome to the world, have fun there, you know, as I… And that’s real, but at the same time, just because all this ugliness does exist and will hurt you at some point or another, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the ride at the same time. You know, people don’t wanna go to that place because then it depressed the hell out of them. Yeah, yeah. And it crashes them, so they have to be like, it’s all for the best, there’s meaning in everything, things are gonna work out if one door closes another one opens you know all this type of stuff it’s a good way of thinking but to me to me personally feels like lying to oneself to psych yourself up and it doesn’t work for me so i need to look at it in the lowest ugliest terms accept that that’s how it is and then i can move beyond that and i feel that once i accept it then i can Enjoy the little moments which ultimately is all you have right is this moment right here right now It’s all that exists and hey, but in the wine let’s party. You know, let’s have a good time Do you find if you have like a bad experience that you just try to?

43:27 Be with the pain or be with the grief and just know that you probably need to go through that and that you know It’s it’s just part of of living as opposed to try to escape it. A lot of people will grab a drink or we’ll go play a video game or try to transfer that out but do you think you really ultimately have to deal with that pain sooner or later and so you deal with it now some people got addicted to dealing with it and they enjoy getting into the grief not enjoy literally but you know they become so comfortable with it that it becomes the whipping yourself on a daily basis Martin Luther reference right and it’s that’s not healthy either right that’s It’s their past time is being the victim, being the drama person. So yeah, I mean, I had, it was weird because I had no time and energy when all the bad stuff happened is, I would, you know, play with my daughter all day, feed her, take care of her, change her diapers, do this stuff.

44:20 At the same time, I had this deadline for a book I had to turn in two months later. So I would literally write it as I’m giving her a meal, I would be thinking about the next sentence and the second I would put her to bed, start cranking down and writing and I would be, you know, funny and light-hearted in the book when my life was anything but. And so then I would give myself like 10 minutes a day where I would crack, you know, I would start crying, it would hit me hard, I would hurt all of that and a few minutes it’s like, okay, now there’s shit to take care of, you’re done, you know, you went there, good for you, now move on.

44:57 That’s quite a schedule to keep up. I mean, I didn’t literally do it like, okay, it’s 9 p.m. It’s my time But you know the reality of the intensity of everything that was going on meant that I would probably allow myself Small doses of it. Okay, and I don’t know if that’s healthy or not, but it’s kind of what I had to do So you work for the timing? Yeah, I just keep thinking if I had like a major tragedy if I could keep going on with you know, London Real But I mean that would probably the one thing that would save me having that regular thing I mean having those positive influences, you know, and just to deal with something like that But um my old martial arts instructor used to say you learn a lot about yourself when you get into a fight Mm-hmm, and I guess you probably learned a lot about yourself with that tragedy with your wife because you really you probably found this strength You didn’t know when I certainly was there. Yeah, and I I hesitate to pat myself on the back too much because again just because I was able to do that in some particular set of circumstances I don’t really have an illusion that it’s automatically I could do the same thing in another set of circumstances. So and again this is where the whole positive thinking people get a little too infatuated with their success stories and they’re like this work I learned the secrets of life now follow my ten steps and you can do the same and it’s like maybe, maybe, you know, it’s a good idea, it’s good

46:23 To throw it out there, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. Plus your own mindset changes and can become more fragile over time, so yeah, maybe the 45-year-old, you know, Daniele might deal very differently than the 42-year-old, depending on the circumstances at the time, you know. Completely. moments where we are literally standing on an edge and one little push one way or another can change dramatically or we are going to react. Yeah, I felt like that sometimes.

46:51 Even walking around sometimes, I felt like I’m just on the edge. I just hope nobody does something to push me and I can get home and turn the lights out. Right. So, you know, I was going to ask you, I think it was UFC 158, St. Pierre Diaz, they had an interview with Matt Hughes, who’s retired now and I think he’s like, he seemed like the ambassador or something for the UFC yeah I don’t know he’s like kind of a middleman guy but oh my I’m gonna be seeing bad things now so okay well anyways will you feel free but um they asking him they were interviewing him about things and they asked him about you know he’s now retired and if his fighting style changed over the years and if he changed and he said you know he he picked up became very very religious five or six years ago we saw that on the ultimate fighter he was giving out bottles to people and then he He said, I watched my wife give birth to two different children and I gained religion and he said, I found that I was less inclined to go across the cage and rip my opponent’s arm off and beat him with it.

47:49 And he said, as each one of these moments happened, I just felt that innate aggression was not there anymore. Now, he loved the competition and he loved to win, but that kind of innate aggression, said he quite honestly was honest about the fact that it had waned over the years and I was just curious if you have ever found that you know getting older becoming a father if you’ve felt maybe even your interest in UFC or your interest in some of these blood sports or even your own fighting has changed. You know I never read that by the way is the first ever Matthew’s quote that I like. Okay. You don’t like Matt? No. Okay. Why don’t you like him? I mean, I don’t know him personally, so who the hell knows, but you know, it’s like from as much as you can tell from TV, his attitude, his book, I read his book, you know, I remember I read Tito or Tit’s book and Tito, you know, was one of this guy who carried himself or like this badass at this really bad attitude. When you read him, you really got an appreciation for him, right? Because his whole life story is so much more complex than the imagery presents, that you actually like the guy.

48:55 Yeah, when he was on Rogan I really liked him because I didn’t realize he was on crystal meth before he started and I didn’t realize the heart because you get used to the Tito who speaks in the third person. Exactly. And then you realize that the guy actually has a lot of heart and there’s a lot of sensitivity there and there’s, you know, it becomes sympathetic. Yooks could be the same thing, you know, that he has this attitude but then behind And after I read his book, I was like, Jesus, he’s worse than his attitude.

49:22 His attitude came across 10 times more of this big bully who just drives some crashing people and is basically just a flat-out dick. And I’m sure, well, no, actually, I’m not sure. Maybe I hope he’s a nicer person than the book making him seem to be, or that he maybe doesn’t come across on TV so well, because again, I never met the guy, so I don’t really know. Or maybe he wrote that book. Right.

49:46 When you write your book at the end of the career, maybe you write it as a projection of who you want to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s scary. If that’s who you want to be, that’s not saying good things about you. But you know, it’s like, again, people you see through a book or through TV, how much do you really know?

50:02 You know, so I leave open the possibility that maybe I would meet the guy and not only change my mind, because otherwise it beats me on the head, but also change my mind because maybe he’s a much nicer person than seems to. Yeah, based on the public persona, I’m not a fan to say the least. I like, you know, he’s a tough guy. I mean, he’s matched with like friend trig when he got kicked in the balls and he managed to turn it around. That was one of the heroic moments that I’m, you know, you watch that and you’re like, that man is made of iron, you know, as hard as willpower.

50:35 So I respect that about it. He said that was one of his favorite fights. Yeah. And I mean, because he yeah, he saw adversity. I mean, and he said that was the favorite fights that he likes to watch.

50:44 Right. And it’s the same with me. They’re like Shakespearean dramas playing out where you see a fighter tested Ronda Rousey, you know, she was really tested on that fight So now that’s where and in fact for me. I do not like Matthews I have mad respect watching that fight so that say something, you know, it’s easy when you like somebody you want to see them In a good light when I saw that despite not particularly like him I was like all the respect to the guy cuz that’s amazing what he did in there So okay, and what about you with as you’ve got an older, you know procreation that kind of thing Did that change the way you look to martial arts or not? I never had that aggression to begin with okay Okay, I came from such a different place. Okay, but even the way I fight

51:28 I’m always looking for submissions because I honestly don’t really like hurting people Okay, so I think some of these guys got off your own family and somebody else that’s I mean all Matthew style was just get on top and they’ll boy him to open him up and you know it’s a very again he’s a fight so it is what it is right you know you’re not supposed to be nice within a fight yes but it takes a certain personality to be better I teach than somebody else and to care less in that sense I think Crow cop said in a pride fight when he lost by on bar to no Guerra he was getting a lot of on no Guerra was getting a lot of bad That thing said to him about the Croatian television and Crocop stepped up and he said he could have broke my arm and he didn’t and he said he put it on just enough and so yeah you do see those fighters.

52:19 And my attitude because maybe I’m not comfortable with that kind of aggression and violence to begin with, I always look for, I like MMA because of the potential for things to to get ugly, but I always for myself try to look for a way to win submissions usually. Just get to a place where then we can shake hands, we all go home happy and life is done. So in that sense, not a lot has changed, because my attitude was never one that was that intense about being aggressive and wanting to go for blood kind of thing.

52:58 Okay, so your podcast is called The Drunken Taoist and your fighting style has been called The Drunken Taoist. Right, right. I was wondering if you could explain that fighting style or maybe you just did a little bit. Yeah, because I guess I am more, it’s the same thing to apply to schooling, whether I apply to martial arts, whether I apply to anything, I’m not very good at staying, I’ve been a good student to go through the motion and learn how you’re supposed to learn.

53:23 Okay. I keep thinking in other ways and so as much as it’s important to have a grounding in what it is that you want to learn I always want to experiment in ways that may not be So a lot of my game is an Orthodox. It’s very weird in everything I do is very Mine in both the good and bad ways, right? I’m lacking certain things that somebody should have by going through the basics and everything and I have other things that other people do not because they are weird and orthodox and they have never been taught to do that and so it it’s not part of the way they have been molded okay so my way the drunken Taoist thing is somebody would say now in Kung Fu movies sometimes you see this figure of the old drunken guy who looks like crap who looks like what I was gonna do and show up and there’s the tough muscle or challenger who gets drop and nobody knows what happened and it’s like how could this guy beat this one you know that doesn’t make sense and a lot of my game is more strategy based so when most of the time when I fought people they look way worse than they do when they fought somebody else and it doesn’t look like I’m doing much but it’s because my game is all about taking them away from where they are strong and bringing them to a place where they are not so strong okay so it’s really more strategy based than anything you know I’m not the strongest guy in the world I’m not the fastest guy in the world I’m not you

54:50 There are a lot of things that I badly lack and because of that, like I remember one time I was, we did a pretty hard sparring session with this guy in boxing. Boxing is not my main thing, right? This guy is 6 inches taller than me, 25, 30 pounds heavier at least, he’s a better boxer, he’s faster, he’s younger and he doesn’t like me. That’s tough, that’s a long afternoon. so I’m screwed, right? Yeah, I’ve been there. And what I was thinking was I’m not gonna beat him in a clean boxing match, I’m not gonna beat him in a lot of ways, so what can I do?

55:28 You know, because the guy was already so much taller than me, I started crouching even more, so he would have to punch at this really awkward angle going way downward more than he was used to. I would throw this, I’m not gonna throw this nice jab because he has seen a million jabs thrown by people who are faster and better than me, I’m gonna throw this, you know, I’m gonna almost shoot in on the guy like I’m wrestling and come with these weird looping punches coming at straight angles so the guy doesn’t know what the hell is going on, you know, you are too low, you are coming in these weird ways, I end up wrestling him essentially, I end up like in his face, pinning his gloves, hitting him with the other hand, arm dragging him, stepping on his feet, doing the stuff that’s all either borderline legal and illegal, like exactly, it’s like nobody’s got a coolie on it unless you’re doing something horrendously bad but it’s clearly at the edge and I basically wrestle him more than I thought him and he would find him, he doesn’t know what the f**k happened, right? I mean if we fight five more times he would beat me every time because he figures it out and he switches out the strategy but for that one time that was That was the only thing I could do.

56:33 If I played normal boxing, I get killed because the guy’s better than me, has more experience and is faster and stronger. So there’s no incentive for me to play normal, right? Okay. And is that why leg locks go into your shoes? Yeah, totally.

56:47 For people that don’t have a jiu-jitsu background, leg locks are these, it’s not something that was traditionally taught by a lot of the Gracie clans, but they’re basically a way of attacking people’s knees, ankles, and feet. And it’s not, a lot of the classic training, just ignore the feet. And so, but if you’re good at it, then you can be really dangerous because most people don’t train in this area when it comes to defense. And it’s such a sensitive area. I mean, geez, your knee can be popped quickly.

57:16 Very much. I mean, the thing is, I’m never gonna beat a guy who’s better than me with a choke or with an arm bar or something, right? Because how many times they have been chocked They know how to defend it. If they are better than you, they’re not gonna get them, you know. The only way that I’ll ever beat somebody who’s better than me is by doing stuff that they are not used to doing and so in the grappling game something like leg locks, so many few people train them, few people spend enough time with leg locks, so it’s one of those big holes that is very easy to become better than everybody else at leg locks because so few people train in it.

57:55 Yeah, and so I feel that becomes my equalizer, right? There are plenty of guys that are that the same or better than me and the only way I can change the game A little so I don’t get totally slow third is by going for leg locks Constantly. Yeah, you’re pretty fluid with those things Yeah So Daniele, I just gave me a DVD with us and I was watching your YouTube stuff and I was actually in Rio de Janeiro in 2005 training the Brazilian top team and a guy who no one had heard of named Husamar Pajares was in the corner and I had never seen this guy before and he must have slapped on, I kid you not, like 40 leg locks in a row on his sparring partner and it was just like one every 15 seconds, 10 seconds. I’d never seen some of them and he was laughing the whole time while he was doing it and I was just like my god and it was amazing.

58:42 It changes how people think too because I was rolling with a guy maybe six months ago and you know when you don’t know somebody and you start rolling and you feel their energy the first few minutes and I realized he’s a rough customer he’s either bet is either the same level or better than I am I’m definitely try passing his guard he was really good at keeping guard I was like okay plan B so the second he opened his guard I fell into a lag lock tapped him out I mean later I did the same thing I mean later I did the same thing I mean later I did the same thing four lag locks in a row the guy’s entire jutsu game had gone out the window all he could think about was his feet the rest of game has suddenly declined in skill dramatically and then I could pass his guard. I would have never been able to before. So it’s like throwing these little curves that make people throw them off their strength. I like it.

59:36 Do you use that in other aspects of your life? Yeah I guess it’s unlike martial arts you know in other aspects of my life ideally I try to be in a place where they walk away happy and I walk away happy. So the way to do that is I need to figure out their motivations, where they are coming from, what they need. And so in some cases I do, I saw earlier you had the Robert Green book and I do kind of like the Robert Green game with different motivations, you know, I’m totally for manipulating reality, which includes, you know, manipulating sound like a bad word, but manipulating the situation. Except that when I manipulate the situation, I tend to do it in a way that I want the other person to walk away happy to. Because otherwise, I don’t know, creates bad vibes, it gets back to you, you get an old psych. So I like the rubber grid, you know, use them all and get what you want and screw whatever they think. I don’t know, either I have a softy or I have a wimp or something, but I have this more, I do want to to play a little bit in a way, because I mean, sometime somebody may be very, in a conversation, somebody may have certain areas that if you touch them, you’re gonna get in a fight.

1:00:57 No matter how right you are, or maybe they should be thinking about that thing that they are doing, if you handle it in a certain way, bad results will come. You may have said the right stuff, they are not ready for it. So my game becomes, okay, how do I get around it? How do I find a way to lower their defenses, not to screw them over, but to lower their defenses so that we can both have a good day? Right, okay.

1:01:23 And so yeah, that kind of game to me applies to interpersonal relationships even more. Yeah, because I think Nelson Mandela once said, you can defeat your enemy without dishonoring him. And I always felt that way with martial arts, like you can beat the guy and then, you know, walk out with arm and arm, you know, and just, you know, and I agree, you can win an argument and not humiliate someone. You know, you can, yeah, so there is a way to do it. Like to me, the best is when you win the argument and the other person doesn’t even feel that you want the argument.

1:01:58 You know, it’s like, they just suddenly feel happy and everything worked out. It’s like, perfect. Yeah, that’s good. Everybody got what they want. Doesn’t always work, but it’s a good goal.

1:02:08 It’s a good goal. So you just cranked out two books pretty fast. What motivates you to write a book? And yeah. So I’m a masochist bastard.

1:02:19 I don’t know, I mean, not that fast because you don’t really do not be working on for a really long time, taking notes for a long time. Then I wrote it over a couple of years. I add it more or less already. When I pitched it, they were like, You pitched it to the publisher that published your last book. You can’t have a relationship with them.

1:02:39 No, that’s the thing. I pitched it to this information and I hadn’t published anything with them and they were like a little scared by what you’re saying, you know, we like your writing, we like your book, we like your first book and everything on the warrior’s path, but it’s a thick book about religions where we’re not, maybe it sells, maybe it doesn’t, we’re not so sure. Why don’t you, we have this series called Fifty Things You’re Not Supposed to Know about we want to do one on religion why don’t you do one of those that we feel safer about at least breaking even with something like that okay if that goes okay then we do the other one okay so the 50 things was not a book that I was planning to write okay was something that I was told you know you want it or not and you know initially I was like screw you know I’m giving you my heart and soul of everything I wanted to put in about religions in this book and they’re asking, screw that, but then of course they mentioned the magic word advance as in advance check, I was like, I’d be delighted to write your book, please when do I start? Those don’t get passed out a lot do they? Yeah and you know it wasn’t a lot but it was still more than I had. So you did 50 ways first, 50 things first. Yeah so I did that one, I mean I’d already written Create Your religion for the most part, but I did The Fifty Things that was published faster and I was actually happy to write. It was fun to do it, it was a fun project. Everyone says good things about that book

1:04:09 Because they can grab it and kind of get a quick little anecdote or kind of a story that sticks in their mind. That’s what it is, you know, it’s a fun book in the sense that is funny, light-hearted, teach you something about the history of religions but in a fun way but it’s not you know in a sense as much as I like it is not my heart is not like my heart is spilled on the page you know what I mean I’m of the school of thought for writing that I love there’s this Nietzsche quote that Nietzsche wrote of everything that’s written I only love what a man has written with his blood and I dig it because it’s like I want I don’t want to be fucking entertained I want passion I want intensity, I want your heart and soul on the page, otherwise you’re wasting my time.

1:04:55 Isn’t that what Hemingway did as well? He always wanted like real, I wanted, you know. Yeah, it gets me in the guts, right? And so Fifty Things clearly wasn’t that, you know. It was something that was for fun, I think. I mean, when I read it, I’m like, oh fuck, I had a really good time writing this, this was a good, you know, so I’m happy with it, it’s not something I’m unhappy with, but it’s different from the book that you are dying to write. It’s a different feel to it. And Create Your Own Religion for me was sort of the sum of everything that I thought philosophically about life in a way, you know, put it in a package. So I was more invested in it. What’s a win for you for like this this latest book, like what for you is like a metric of success? It doesn’t have to be even a quantifiable metric.

1:05:45 Right yeah that’s a hard one that’s a hard one to figure out because it’s um on one end everybody want the big numbers you know you want to see so a ton of people have sold not only for the money but also because it means that a lot of people eat that heat and resonated with a lot of people yeah at the same time um how much is enough you know how many people do you need to reach before you can pat yourself on the back and say that was a success you know if you reach a small number but they go nuts and it changes their life in a good way you know they really go nuts for it they love it that’s something is that success or not you know it’s like so that’s a tricky one i struggle with that a lot because you know i get a lot of messages on a regular basis and i try to always reply to my messages i don’t know if i’ll always be able to but i hear you say that on the podcast and I’m like I know how hard that is to do sometimes. I’m big on it because people take time to write you. I feel if it’s all possible to write back I should because it’s a big thing to do not to. So I take that and I take those messages seriously and when you get all the good feedback from somebody in the weirdest corner of the world who tells you their life story, tells you what something you wrote, hit them and help them, it’s humbling really. It makes you feel like wow really the tightrope help you in that insanely bad situation, that really makes you feel good.

1:07:12 So clearly success in that sense. And on the other level you are this ego thing of like I want more, I want more, I need to hit a bigger audience. And even if you hit that, probably that you’re like no, bigger, you want more. It’ll be great for a day and you wait for the next day. How come it’s not more? Exactly. It’s like money, right? It’s like how Not much is enough, the numbers can keep going up.

1:07:34 And the marginal gain of elation, it’s much less, I think, going up than going down. I don’t know, it’s just like, yeah, how much more? Does it really make you that much happier? For sure. On that note, a message to your listener, since you guys are figuring out that my fragile ego needs boosting, please download my podcast.

1:07:55 I will look at the numbers, pat myself on the back and sleep better at night. Well, definitely check out the Drunken Taoist on iTunes, Taoist with a T. I want to ask you about that because your podcast debuted very high on the philosophy and religion section of iTunes, number one. For a while. For a while.

1:08:17 And London Real is something I track a lot of the times and after we were on Rogan six months ago, our audio downloads just went through the ceiling and it’s something I watched for a while, and of course, you know, my, you know, look, you know, where are our views, and okay, and then my ego would be based on the views, and then at one point, I had to stop looking, because it’s, at one point, it got to a point like, why are you doing this? I’ve done the same thing, I would check it every single day and I realize I’m a fucking addict, stop now, you’re just being stupid, so for the last two months, I haven’t even taken out a look at my views. Say it’s 50,000 or 70,000 people listen to your podcast, do you know those 20,000 people? Do they exist? Did it even happen?

1:09:00 It’s this number that, you know, iTunes will never even tell you who these people are, you’ll just see it by the number of pings on your server, and then it’s like, it gets to be really weird. It sort of gets to a point where I find and cut it. You see, we are in the same room. But sometimes people think I’m skyping all the time because of the split screen. But yeah, that’s what I wanted to know if you just stop looking. I just need, actually, that you bring it up because I was very addicted to that.

1:09:28 Yeah, and then you’ll start questioning why you’re doing the podcast. Because if you’re ultimately doing it for fan numbers, then you’re ultimately not doing it for the right reason, I think. And in that sense, exactly, because inevitably, especially at the beginning, you know, my numbers kind of, you immediately went to the top of iTunes, new and noteworthy, all of that kind of stuff. So you got a bunch of people also who were just checking it out, right? Why not stick around?

1:09:54 So when inevitably you have the dump afterwards where the numbers start going down a little bit, you get all bummed out. But at the same time, I’m getting all these messages and like 99% of messages are all super positive. And so you really start thinking, am I that much of an ego-driven freak that I need the number to feel good about myself? Or is the fact that some people are getting something out of it, isn’t that the whole point? That you’re having fun doing it and that some, And in that sense, some people, that’s why, you know, you talk to people who have their own little podcast that hundreds of their friends listen to.

1:10:31 Is that a success? I mean, hell, if a hundred of their friends get something good out of it, hell, if 10 of their friends get something good out of it and the other 90 listen for fun, is that a bad thing? I mean, obviously it’s not a commercial success. But hey, all the power to you, you know? Yeah, it puts everything in perspective because it’s like, well, what realistically is this podcast going to do?

1:10:51 Gonna do I mean do you want to reach those certain people in a big way I mean because you know you’re not gonna be Jay Leno so I like to become king of Hawaii that would be my podcast lead to the fact that the population of Hawaii say please come rule over us I would be very pleased with that important thing about goals you have something quantifiable yeah that’s good you should have a date on that as well just to make it a Tim Ferriss goal okay maybe by 2015. Now maybe 2013, maybe 2030. I mean the King of Hawaii. It hasn’t been a king there for a hundred years. I know. Malaho, Malayha or something. I would think that Trump. Okay. Some of the business cards you can make. King of Hawaii. How cool is that?

1:11:34 So I mean tell me about the podcast. Your 13th episode, I think. I was listening to the author you just had on recently. It’s really good. I really like your episodes, you know, some great talks with Duncan on there and some, I don’t know, really deep stuff. How are you finding the podcast? Did you have to have your arm twisted to do it? Is it, uh, you ever think about packing it in?

1:11:54 Um, I mean, yeah, initially because I’m not, I didn’t know all the technology surrounding part. Hell, I mean, to be honest, when I first went, my very first podcast I’ve ever done as a guest was Rogan’s. Right, okay. And so I find myself in like, one of the biggest podcast in the world, knowing jack-shit about the whole world where it’s like oh yeah podcast you know I kind of heard about it it’s like sad really and then after being on and off as a guest and getting the feedback hey start your own start your own start your own I wanted to I just didn’t have the physical time to invest into learning everything that goes into the technological part of it you know or recording editing putting iTunes, do the whole… So I asked on Facebook, Twitter, you know, anybody, thank you guys for telling me this but anybody want to help with it because I can’t do it, you know, if it’s about me starting from scratch, do everything on my own, I can’t. Right. Now that I don’t want to, I don’t have the time and energy and so when I add support and Rich and Devin stepping up and helping me with some of these things and a few other people help with some aspects of it, that made real, you know, that made it, okay, I can show up, worry about content, worry about guests and stuff I want to talk about and worry about the content of it and not having to worry about the technical component and at those conditions I could do it, you know, and so I enjoy that a lot, you know,

1:13:20 It’s sometimes challenging when you have the regular deadline and you know, suddenly life happens and you have a million other things to do but you know, you make the commitment, you should stick to the deadline you know in my case is not even as hard as what you have because I only do two episodes a month right one with a guest and one without just where we go on random runs okay so it’s not even that bad and still sometime you’re like oh damn we need to it’s coming up we need to get down and record and but no it’s fun I like it a lot and really the listeners feedback is the main thing okay the when you I mean I’m having fun recording them and all but when you get the feedback and people telling you what the way in which it’s helping you then it gives you motivation. When you feel like oh I do this, I’m tired, I have to do that podcast again you know but you think about how it’s affecting people then like stop whining just get on with it and do what you need to do because there are other people who you know it sounds too much to say depend on you maybe that’s too much clearly but at the same time you know there are people who if nothing else for entertainment are counting on it and they would be happy if you do it so get off your ass and do it. Right and that’s different feedback than you get from your books? Similar just more. There’s a lot more messages even though when you look at the numbers is not really you know books

1:14:43 You know my first book has sold pretty well but I think because maybe the people who listen to podcasts are more technologically driven anyway so they more willing to just shoot your message in a heartbeat. People would read even though I did put my email in there and stuff you get less messages from that. Yeah plus with your podcast you’re in their head every every two weeks and you know exactly just to get reminded and they’re usually online that kind of thing. One of my favorite episodes was was with Sharon Lee.

1:15:11 Oh yeah, it’s awesome. And yeah it was really good and I liked her honesty because growing up with Sharon Lee it is probably no cakewalk you know and she talked a little about that you know, during the show, but you were involved in the movie I Am Bruce Lee, which she produced and she was in as well? Yeah, she was produced and she was in it. How did you get involved in that project? I’ll make the story quick, it’s fun.

1:15:33 Who did you have to pay or kill to get involved? That’s actually close, I was in Wales.

1:15:42 How could the story start? I know. And while I was there, I found out, they told me, oh, there’s this guy you should work with for your PhD, he writes about media and martial arts, this Paul Bowman, check him out, and I’m like, okay, so I looked him up in my hotel room before going back to the university the next day. Not only do I find out that he wrote about martial arts and about Bruce Lee, but I find excerpts of his book and a couple of chapters of his book is just trashing stuff that I written. And I’m like, oh, I didn’t know that. That’s interesting stuff that you had done. In On the Warrior’s Path. I mentioned you by name. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1:16:17 Two chapters of his book, or maybe one I can remember, but they’re basically about my stuff. like whoa okay that’s weird and oh and he’s really getting into it here some things are really pissing him off hmm so the next day but you know he seemed like I see his pig I see some of the stuff he seemed like a nice guy I’m like okay I won’t take it personal so I see that he has his office hours the next day so I’ll show up to his office hours and he’s like look at me kind of like what the hell are you because you know I’m not one of his students and I’m like hello Daniele Bolelli and I see again this is my version of the story probably completely different on the other end but in my mafia imagination I’m picturing Gil star sweating bullets and thinking like oh shit what the hell is it doing in Wales this guy just came to kill me because I you know. Did you wear a suit for him?

1:17:07 So that was very polite you know he’s like okay by imagination I’m running the conversation from the godfather to when the guy’s coming in to tell the Nero about no that old lady that I kicked out from the house I’m sorry I really I’ll bring the I’ll bring the rent less probably not at all what happened but the gay book heiress is by budget a shot so in any case bottom line we chat a little eat it off he was a really nice guy and because he had written a monograph about Bruce Lee when they were doing I am Bruce Lee they wanted somebody who had a little more of a philosophical take on it. So they asked Paul. When they asked him, they said, is there anybody else?

1:17:48 Because we were nowhere heavy on the MMA section, on the personalities. We want somebody else with a philosophical take on it. Anybody you can think of. Paul probably, because they didn’t want me to come back and make him an offer he couldn’t refuse, decided he recommended me. And so I got this call saying, tomorrow morning, can you record in a lane, place I’m like it happens to work so sure so I showed up and that’s what happened and it was fun you know I had a good time the director of I am Bruce Lee Pete McCormick he’s a guy that we really hit it off right away really aren’t really smart nice human being and then we started cooperating on a project and right now as we speak in fact I have every other finger cross cuz where there’s a project we’re working on for a TV series that’s been pitched as we speak So I’m on edge but the whole thing was awesome, you know, I got to meet Shannon through the documentary I got to meet with McCormick. I got Adam Skorgi was one of my guests on the podcast Adam He was produced this is a documentary called the Union. It’s about marijuana industry in Canada Yeah, he was on I am Bruce Lee. So I got to meet him in that way. So it was a great experience it was a lot of fun and And then I felt that going to them because they released it in theaters before they put it on DVD So going to the theater and see myself pop up on the screen I felt it was the first step to becoming king of Hawaii looking a boy. Look out Hawaiian. Yeah, exactly

1:19:18 George Clooney’s with that And how much time were you on screen for? Like not that much is like I think I said beforehand is like any second over 30 seconds that I mean there I’ll take a shot or something and I would have died probably had I done it because he was like 52 seconds or something So 22 shots in a row would have killed me But you know, it’s another thing is funny, you know, they interview you for two hours and then you get a tiny bit on screen That’s the way business is done. Right? Yeah, and sometimes you don’t get any yeah But it was funny too because I remember we talk and talk and talk and I remember at one point say now I come purposely to a middle finger race to our authority And I saw the light in Peter McCormick’s side going off for like say that one light again You know he really wanted to use it stuff like okay I know where we’re going with it and that’s what he is Which which once makes me ask you about your picture that’s on your website It’s a standard picture of you and if you haven’t seen this well go to Daniele belele calm You can check it out, but it’s you in an Oxford shirt with a tie with a black eye holding some books which are probably philosophy related, and you’ve got a UFC glove on, and you’ve got the middle finger up.

1:20:28 And I’ve seen you with other middle fingers holding your daughter with the middle finger up. What’s the middle finger all about? Middle finger is, especially the one with my daughter, that was when everything was going to crap. It was like maybe two months after my wife had died. And so somebody was taking a pic of me, and I realized, you know, I’m standing there in this leather jacket holding my baby in a sweet way with one arm tiny baby cuddled up against me and on the other hand I’m like I have this middle finger to the universe because ultimately that’s how I felt right I felt like the universe is trying to crush me and every fucking thing that could go wrong is going wrong so there was a side of me that was the sort of sweet sensitive take care of my little daughter and the other side I was like you know what fuck you all I’m gonna have a good time until I drop dead no matter what you throw my way and so the middle finger part was I think I actually wrote it as a tweet once and this started becoming one of the things that I use all over there’s this one line that I wrote that was answering hopelessness with a defiant smile and raised middle finger and that’s exactly what that was about is like horrendous things happen I’m gonna find a way to have fun anyway motherfucker and so that’s where the middle finger with the smile comes in you know it’s not an angry middle finger it’s just like I don’t care yeah you know

1:22:01 I don’t care what you throw my way I’m gonna find one way because otherwise you shoot yourself which I understand you know if it gets to be too much and you get crushed I understand people who say I can’t wait I get it you know I’m not saying, but as long as I can, that’s where the middle figure and the smile come in. I think it’s so poignant that it goes to hopelessness because it’s not even directed at anyone in particular. No, it’s not personal. It’s not even directed at someone who’s fucked with you.

1:22:30 It’s like it’s just the concept of hopelessness that you are rejecting. Uh-huh. Like, I’m not going to be a victim. Right. Have you ever suffered from like a bit of nihilism?

1:22:44 I mean, you do get, there are a lot of times in life when you feel that there’s no meaning in anything. You know, all this shit, there’s no point, there’s no logic, there certainly is no morality that rewarding good people, punishing the bad, there’s none of that shit. And when you had a bunch of tragedies back to back to back, it’s… You look at it, they’re like, what’s the justice? You know, there is no justice, and that I accept.

1:23:07 But beside there is no justice, it’s what’s the point, is there any meaning? And in that sense, obviously I don’t know the answer and nobody else does either. But it’s like, well, there may not be meaning. I’m still alive here and now diapers need to be changed. My daughters need to smile.

1:23:25 So there’s meaning right now, you know, that’s where meaning is. Is there any deeper meaning? I don’t know. And ultimately I don’t care because it’s nothing I can control anyway. The only thing I care about is the cycle.

1:23:39 Right. You think without your daughter, that would be tough to do sometimes? I’m sure. I’m sure it would be harder. I don’t think it would be possible, but definitely it would be harder.

1:23:49 I had some bouts of nihilism before I started London Real and I’d left finance in London and I was just like not working, not knowing what to do and I really got to this nihilistic like what is the point in any of this? And I forget how far down I was in that track. I wasn’t suicidal or anything, but I was really to this really bleak point of what are we doing this for but it’s funny now when I’m meeting like really cool people every week and having these cool conversations and I’ll be honest it’s a human connection that I get to have with these people and it’s all kind of gone away you know and that and dealing with some young people I’ve got like a nine-year-old step-totter and just like they show you to just you know shut up about your nihilism because like yeah this is important this is more important than you this is immediate and the next generation and I don’t know For some reason it seems to wash all of that out for me big time I think is one of the few things that can defeat those feelings and even fear going back to the fear element You know, I mean we hear that topic of like love being the only thing that’s stronger and in some way as a rhetorical as that May sound is actually true because there are times where you can do things for somebody else that you never find a strength to do for yourself, right and And that was actually my first MMA match, that’s exactly what happened when I was going through my whole fear, panic, terror that before fight.

1:25:16 I was talking with my wife, she was in the US, I was in Italy, and we were on the phone and she knew where I was mentally. And one thing that she said was like, when you go for the fight, imagine that that guy is trying to hurt me. And it was weird, like in one second your whole mindset switch. You’re there like fuck I don’t wanna fight this guy’s got a pam on your and all of a sudden You’re like I can’t wait to get in the cage with you motherfucker. I’m going to kill you And he’s like not literally, you know, you keep perspective and you’re like he’s still a probably good guy You don’t really but the mentality switches and he’s like it’s not that I didn’t want to be strong for myself But I couldn’t find a way. Okay for somebody else else in one second, it switches a lot.

1:26:03 Strange how that works. Weird, really weird. It is weird. It’s funny, yeah, actually Ronda Rousey says that about her sister, she’s really close with her younger sister and that’s how, what she projects, this person’s trying to hurt my younger sister and then she just flips. Yep, big time.

1:26:18 It’s a nice way of compartmentalizing it too, really. Because you can kind of turn it off after, maybe. And even then, you know, it didn’t get to make me crazy. Like I remember doing the first fight, The guy was pretty good striker and decent jujitsu but had no wrestling so the second he threw the first kick I took him down and then the rest of the match was kind of a boring grinding match. I took top mount and because he was defending submissions well I went to ground and pound which I never really do.

1:26:46 Even when I watch the tape I’m just like oh my god that’s like the saddest attempt I ground because I clearly don’t want to hurt a dude so I’m hitting him enough to give the ref an idea this guy is not defending himself but I’m clearly not trying to take his head off and so it’s kind of funny because even so I was in this mindset of like fuck I’m determined he still didn’t get to a point where I’m really believe it and I’m bloodthirsty you’re still like man I’m glad the ref stopped it cuz you know I wrapped the guy’s arm around this neck so you’re really is not going anywhere it’s pretty clear but the intent to pummel it the way you should have if you’re a pro MMA guy wasn’t there. I guess that’s your personality yeah. Do you still roll on a regular basis? You know the last two or three years have been challenging you know I roll but regular is a big word because you know I do for a while and then something happen and my daughter is on sick I have to be on for two weeks and I can’t really take any other time anymore you know all this so the last two to three I’m wishing to get to a back at what place in my life where things are stable enough that I can do that on a more regular basis I’m still doing it but nowhere near the way you know the way I trained from the time I was maybe 20 to 35 I was a monk right I I always put in my time.

1:28:12 The last few years, yeah, two to three, I would say, it’s sketching, trying to, working on it. I mean, I just moved into, I finally now have a house, everything is stable and stuff. So that should help, that should be a first step. Do you think part of it’s an age and maturity thing, that it might not be what it used to be so important for you to get that training in every week? I don’t know, because when I do go, I remember when I’ve gone maybe like a month ago after I hadn’t trained for like two or three months I went to eat halfway through a bit. I could feel I had this smile going from what year to when I was just like I forgot how good this feels Yeah, that’s fun. Having a good role with with the right crowd is yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty good Yeah, that’s why I see Elio Gracie doing in the 80s. I’m like, I want to be that guy But I know things get in the way sometimes Big time.

1:29:05 Unfortunately. I was wondering if you could tell me about your thoughts on Bruce Lee. I mean, it’s like, you look at him and he’s been built up so much to kind of this mythical figure that can probably never do no wrong, a superman, a wise man about everything, the original of MMA, and do you think that’s overdone sometimes? I mean, anybody, right? Everybody’s human and nobody is that 24-7.

1:29:28 I think the guy was brilliant. I think he was philosophically brilliant, definitely ahead of his time, martial art wise. Pushing himself in many ways at the time. At the same time, pushing himself clearly too much, because clearly he’s burning the candle from too many hands and something got to give at some point. So there’s something about his willpower and determination that may be more than it’s healthy for a person to have.

1:29:53 But at the same time, that’s what made him Bruce Lee. I love the guy. I think he’s absolutely brilliant. I wouldn’t go, you know, all the people who start turning it into this meat of like, he would beat anybody in the world. He’s like, oh, the fuck do you know? You know, probably not. You know, I’m sure he was good. And I’m sure there were people who would have beaten him then and could definitely beat him now.

1:30:15 So, you know, I think it, but that doesn’t matter to me. Yeah, I think that isn’t very, it’s not really relevant, is it? No. Whether you know, Henderson could beat him now or who cares I just love how little things like him pushing himself he closed a bunch of his martial arts schools down didn’t he because he thought they weren’t relevant anymore right I mean and also I mean he was doing other stuff so you really didn’t have the time and energy to spend in there and so what’s the point of keeping it open if you’re not there physically okay and you know he was into movies and doing all the other stuff But no, I like Bruce Lee because if again you can get something of film and you really can get a sense of a person through film, which we left open earlier with the Matthew Oakes question, if you can, then whatever I get from Bruce Lee on the screen, there’s something that I dig a lot.

1:31:08 Yeah, there’s something like when you watch Enter the Dragon, there’s just something about him that comes through that I don’t think you can fake. And yeah, it’s something, yeah, something pure. No, definitely. It seems like a weird question. That’s something I brought up with Shannon during our conversation.

1:31:26 It’s like, how is it that some people seem to be more real than others? What does that even mean, you know? And yet, you feel it, you know? So there is some culture. Yeah, I mean, pass written, felt it in Holland and this person felt it here and you know.

1:31:40 And some people feel like there’s something there you’re in their presence that hit something in people. I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, Bruce Lee had it. Yeah, and probably Diane Young didn’t hurt that because we got that snapshot of that. Absolutely. At your best, without the inevitable ups and downs that people have in life with the contradictions and all of that. Yeah, that’s true. What’s next for you in the the next five and ten years I mean what’s it’s it’s interesting because you’re a philosopher right so like what’s success for you in ten years might be a different king of Hawaii yeah that’s why I think yeah I’m worried about like king of Nebraska doesn’t have that ring you know beside by royal aspirations I would I’m trying to, I wanna write, there’s several books I have in mind. I literally have, because I’m a social part, I have maybe 50 pages worth of notes of 10 different books, I kid you not. So there’s a ton of stuff that I badly wanna write. A lot of it is fiction. I’ve done non-fiction so far but a lot of the stuff I want to do is mainly historical fiction, I would have a blast doing that.

1:33:09 I love historical fiction. I’ve read a couple great ones. Some people don’t respect historical fiction though, right? There’s a great one on Hannibal, where it’s like in first person as he goes through the Alps. I want to read that, that sounds awesome already. It’s great to read it, but some people are like, that’s not history, that’s not fiction. History is a joke anyway, because nobody really knows what the fuck happened. There’s this trend among historians of being purely objective and the reality is that if you are really want to be purely objective we don’t know anything about 99% of human history you know so it’s like shut the fuck up already or lighten up a little yes you want to be scientifically based but also history is an art to some degree because you are filling in the blanks in ways that you don’t know yeah I can’t stand the history channel when they bring out an expert it’s usually a professor no offense and they’re telling you what happened there in like and Hannibal. So then Hannibal was really frustrated with the mountains and the Alps. I was like, really? Do you know that? He kills me. And I’m fine with it if it’s a knowledge. It’s like, you acknowledge the fact that there’s an element of art involved because you weren’t there, you don’t know. And in that sense, then if it’s part art, then historical fiction is fun.

1:34:19 If it’s well done, it’s awesome. What’s wrong with that? I think you can really bring home someone. That’s right. People love historical fiction, love historical fiction movies, hate history courses with a passion because it’s so damn dry and boring and who wants doesn’t really matter you know yeah you’re accurate clap clap clap good job but doesn’t relate to life so what I guess unless you can get the students to get in the head of your exactly protagonist or something and then they can be like oh yeah okay now I get it I guess that’s why movies are successful absolutely absolutely personalize that so so you got some fiction coming yeah just as an author it’s tough to do to cross over and even that yeah i mean it’s tough it is tough and even that i think i have something before that in mind because there’s one thing that i actually started writing last summer i stopped after that because i had other things going on but there’s something more personal which i wouldn’t call it autobiography because it clearly isn’t but it is about the stuff we’re talking dealing with grief loss the mess of it all and because people seem to, you know, when I’m talking more philosophy, people dig it with a point.

1:35:26 When I’m talking on a personal level, people seem to respond a lot more. Okay. Something like a resound with, if it can help somebody else, good. So I’m thinking more of doing something along those lines and then going into fiction territory. Well, that makes sense. I mean, that’s success. I think that’s why your podcast has been a success because you do bring a personal element to it.

1:35:46 That’s right. Otherwise, what’s the point? Yeah. And since you have kind of a diverse background, I think people want to hear it right from you. So but yeah, so there’s a lot I want to write I’m thinking like this thing with Pete McCormick going the TV route Okay, look at you. You’re in LA and you’re gonna have a TV series potentially that would be fun Okay, and really because also that would bring audience to the things I’m already doing that I can only reach so many With something like TV to reach a lot more it’s bigger. Fun. Which moves me to my next couple questions and then we’ll be finished. LA. I’m actually from Southern California. I live in London. You grew up in Milan. Now you live in LA. What do you love about LA and what, if anything, do you hate about LA? When I first moved to LA, my romantic fantasies quickly disappeared and I started hating it really fast. Okay. And for the first two years I had a really hard time because Italy for me wasn’t friendly enough, there wasn’t enough community, and here there’s like one tenth of what you have in Italy so it’s like yeah good job Daniele you move to the right place for if that’s what you’re craving right? Okay. So I crave like almost a tribal structure right? I crave that and you know LA is anything but you know it’s very isolated because of the geographic nature of business culture you know people in U.S. are used to picking up and yeah absolutely so I had a hard time with that and eventually

1:37:22 I gave up on this notion of you know you got to choose you know not every place will have everything so LA is great to get stuff done beside the awesome weather you get to it’s so much easier to get stuff done not only for practical purposes but also for the culture encourages innovation much more so. Another thing I hate about Europe is that not to generalize, but definitely about Italy, I can speak for that, is a dead culture. Everything is about the past. Any new idea, immediately you got people going, oh, I don’t know about that, you know, all the reasons why it can’t work. The US, there’s a tendency to say yes to things, even to things you shouldn’t say yes to, but that’s exciting because there’s more willingness to experiment. So that’s what I like about it. That is very real. I’ve been to Italy and I’ve been to Europe and I love going to Italy but you know you always get the same meal and you always you know the island of Capri will always be the island of Capri and there won’t be any changes.

1:38:25 That’s the way it feels. I mean I’m sure things are changing. It’s like being in a museum or something. It’s just it’s fun if you retire there. It’s fun if you don’t have to work.

1:38:34 It’s funny, exactly, you want to drink wine and chat with your friends by the bar, you know, that’s all good but for getting stuff done, not so much. So I like that about Alay, there’s more of a feeling of things happening and ultimately I think right about when I was at the edge of the site, maybe I need to go back to Italy but then even that didn’t look that appealing because the reasons why I left, you are still there. I ran into this woman, started a relationship, fell in love with her and you know, the reason why we do six, right? So I was like, LA is just great, I think I’m gonna live in LA, you know. Even then when the relationship ended, I was like, by then I got used to living in LA, I started appreciating the good sides of it and made my peace with the bad sides of it.

1:39:26 And so after that, I was cool with living here. Do you still crave that community and have you found it anywhere? I mean I like it a lot is what I think in an ideal world it should be. Very hard to find. We had a guest on our show called Charles Eisenstein and I don’t know if you’re familiar with him but he he had the same thing he went to some city it was Chicago and he’s like I’m gonna form a community I’m gonna have some barbecues I’m gonna get these people over and he ultimately concluded that there is no community unless you you need each other and unless you are right you have to rely on each other for something like you know I don’t know whether it’s you make the wine and I make the cheese or you have to look after my child and I have to they said without a real need and dependence there never will be a community which sucks in some ways I mean I agree with you but it’s awful because it’s like how about being a community because you’re a cool human being regardless of what you do or if we have something in common there it just I enjoy your company how about that you know why is that such a strange conversation? I don’t know maybe we’re finding that you know via podcast somehow or maybe you’re finding this through through people that you have on the show you know I think maybe I am finding this you know through certain guests I meet I find that they kind of become part of my community that’s a real community absolutely because that’s based

1:40:40 On trust on yeah pushing each other maybe you maybe that is a community because you need them Yeah but it’s almost weird, it’s like you need an excuse to be a community, we have a common interest than we are a community, not because you know we, I mean there are a lot of people that I can think of that I really get along with them great, we don’t have a lot in common about what we do right or the specific things we like but it’s like but I don’t know there’s uh it’s weird, I spend lots of time on some American Indian reservations where there’s clearly all the negative statistic, the poverty, the alcoholism, all the nasty scrap on the planet yeah and And at the same time, there was a very beautiful sense of community in the middle of all the nastiness, which doesn’t outdo that, doesn’t negate all the nastiness.

1:41:28 But there was something pretty cool about it. So I was thinking, man, having sort of a tribal structure before being colonized and all the nasty shit came with it must have been a really powerful experience. Yeah, super powerful. Well, maybe you should write a book about this in the future, because it’s great to have that idea community and I love a community but it’s find it you find that that I find that you can have a bunch of people over for a barbecue but then you lose touch with them because you don’t really need them to do something and you like them I had a great time talking with you but then you don’t talk to them for another year right so and I think we really create it you know that’s why it would be fun to have like places even in a city where you live close right if there was a way to make it happen where sort of like-minded people that you you live in the same neighborhood so it becomes so this little you know you have your private space so it’s not like you have that if you want to mind your business you lock the door and mind your business but you have that option of just stepping outside and you run into your friends and it’s very easy you know it’s like when I do something five minutes from now you know already or then in LA is like sure let me drive for an hour and a half across it’s like yeah yeah nothing’s gonna happen. I think we’re all chill and trying to get back to that community somehow you know and I don’t know if we’re gonna find it maybe that’s

1:42:44 What we’re trying to do with these podcasts I don’t even know internet definitely helps bridge distances that way is people are always bitching about Facebook and Twitter is not the same as face-to-face of course it’s not the same as face-to-face but face-to-face is not happening anyway in a lot of ways yeah so at least is better than that and podcasts more so because just having your voice and hearing a conversation or seeing a conversation that’s super powerful right so that helps a lot. Last question I wanted to ask you about California and how you feel about I just wonder how you feel about marijuana and psychedelics I never ever got your opinion and we talk about it sometimes on a show we’ve talked about Alaska in the past and I just wondered if if yeah if they help you with your thinking or if you found that they don’t. First time my smoke weed, I was 11 and I had a joint with my mom so that was fun, never weed itself never done much to me, you know I see some people who smoke and they really trip out of their minds and I’m like really it’s the same thing I’m smoking because it’s not really doing much to me I mean it relaxes me, it’s pleasant but nothing dramatic so and yeah it’s weird how it the same thing affects people so differently. I see people really trip big or some weed. If I take deep breaths it’s the same thing you know it really did not hit me that hard and I have thought it hit hard enough

1:44:16 Like I remember once I made when I was a teenager I made this tea with ashish and I completely fucked up the dosage so I took like five times the recommended amount and I don’t do well with terrible so this was another thing that nothing happens for two hours and you’re like oh what a waste and suddenly you are in a whole other universe where it takes you 20 minutes to go 10 feet yeah I don’t like that at all okay I was like this sucks it lasted for eight hours I kept going like waking up being like where am I who am I oh it’s me in this place lights out who am I where am I for like four hours on end I was like yeah this sucks I don’t think I’m made for serious psychedelics cuz I would Because it comes very psychoactive when you eat it. I’m told yeah, I haven’t done it. I hate edibles I really okay, and you own it for so long, right? Yeah, and so that kind of scared me off because I was very into Psychedelic culture from an intellectual standpoint. I read all of Timothée Leary One of my first jobs was to translate Terrence McKenna’s book into Italian. Wow, that’s kind of fun So I dug it I got a lot out of it I was a little freaked out for a while at the time when I had the impulse to experiment with psychedelics more So my experiences have all been like very mellow and my like one time somebody American Indian ceremony somebody had made tea with peyote, okay Super mild, you know, it wasn’t enough of it to really hit you

1:45:46 So it was again a pleasant sensation was like shaking hand with the plant, but it wasn’t really a full-on thing. Okay, I you know, couple of things but nothing dramatic and I’ve always had the sense, like now I’m curious, you know, it’d be fun to try some stuff but I didn’t have that same sense of need that I had when I was younger, when I really badly wanted to. So weed, totally fine but again to me is next to I think. Stronger stuff, you know, it also depends on what you can get reliably. Like for example, I met Albert Ofman, the creator of LSD a couple of times and one thing he said is that 90 plus percent of a ghost by LSD is not LSD. And it’s because he said that, again, according to him, who knows, but he said that his stuff is safe. He wouldn’t mess you up. But there are some of the chemicals are so rare that you wouldn’t support mass production the way it is. Okay. So you say a lot of the street stuff is sketchy because you don’t know what you’re getting. Okay. Mushrooms and things you know you really need to know somebody to make sure you’re getting something good. So I’m not opposed to it.

1:47:00 Okay. You know. But it’s not a part of your existence consciousness work. I I think my mind is so damn weird to start with, that I think it doesn’t need too much encouragement to go in very strange places. Just so everyone knows your partner was here earlier that produces your podcast, and he was comparing you to Walter White from Breaking Bad.

1:47:22 Right, yeah. Yeah, I heard that a lot actually. I heard a bunch of people tell me, so Breaking Bad is just like your life. I’m like, what the fuck? Really?

1:47:31 It could be a compliment. At least you’re not boring. boring yeah yeah yeah I take that but I would rather not be dying and dealing math maybe but thanks so much for your time today yeah I was I’m so glad thank you so much it was really surreal that we were straight emails from London and now I’m here at your house so thanks to the hospitality I appreciate it if people want to get pre-order your book or order your book on Amazon or what’s the best way to do that your website Twitter yeah my website is daniellebollalee.com I don’t know if you guys put a piece of notes up or something.

1:48:03 Yeah, I’ll put that on the YouTube and on the notes. My Twitter is just at my first initial D and then my last name, Bola Elibio, L-E-L-L-I. Okay, the two L’s are second. Yeah. Okay.

1:48:16 One L first, two L second. Okay. And then the… Yeah, if you guys want to check out Drunken Time’s podcast, you can go on iTunes. If you go even on my website, then yourbola.com, there’s a link to the podcast websites with all the archives and everything and and yes you know books are on all three the ones I published there on Amazon okay you got them on Amazon UK too they are kind of all over so yeah excellent good feel better about myself yeah a little ego boost never hurt anyone as long as you know that’s what it is it’s okay I really like your podcast I’ve got maybe like eight or ten that I have on my phone but yours is one it’s like you and Trussell and Rogan and Diaz are the guys that kind of my go-to so it’s nice yeah so so that’s it if if you’re listening to us whether you’re listening to us on either episode please subscribe to us on iTunes this video of this episode will be up on the London Real YouTube channel which is London Real TV and that’s it thanks so much and awesome appreciate it man thank you so much okay cool until then it’s about the journey as we say All right, take care.