Transcript of #2470 - Pierre Poilievre New

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

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How are you, sir? Pleasure to meet you.

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Great to be back in Texas.

I'm glad we finally did this.

Yes, me too.

I wanted to do it the first go around.

Yeah, I know. Well, when I got the invitation, we were in the middle of the election. And we just don't leave the country during election campaigns.

I get it.

And the problem we've had is we can't get you to come to Canada. And so we've actually hatched a full strategy to get you into Canada. Ah. Because we think it's gonna do big things for our tourism numbers. So do you mind if I present you with something right out of the gate?

Sure.

All right, this is from a gunsmith and machinist in Calgary, Alberta. His name is Jay, and he's designed Look at this kettlebell. Guess what the weight is.

70 pounds.

70 pounds. That's the weight you have. And it says on the front here, Jamie, it says here on the front, Jamie, pull it up.

So you've got that.

We've got, you see here, some other stuff for a stand.

Oh, wow. That's really cool.

Look at this stand here. So we've got seeing is believing, which I think was the slogan of the first UFC that you were the commentator for. I think it was number 13?

12.

Number 12, right. And then we've got here your favorite quote from— what's his name? The Japanese martial artist.

Miyamoto Musashi.

Yes. And it says, "If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything." Yeah. So that's here. And then Morse code, there's a thank you letter for you. You've got your flying saucer.

Oh, wow.

And we've got your logo here too. So, but most important of all, we've got a subliminal message, which is the Canadian maple leaf.

Oh, cool.

Every time you do a kettlebell swing, You do a snatch, you do a clean, you're going to be seeing that maple leaf and you're going to be reminding yourself that you need to come back to Canada. All right. All right.

All right.

Present that to you there.

Thank you very much.

Very cool.

Is that in the way, Jamie?

I can take it off. We'll take it off.

Put it down here.

So I saw your— I saw your interview with Pavel. And I'm a big kettlebell freak.

Are you really?

Yeah, absolutely. And I started researching him after you had him on. And I was trying to, I love history, so I was thinking, why did the Russians come up with this? And it turns out they used it as a counterweight at the farmer markets. So they would say, you know, you come in, you have to say this is how much potatoes you're buying. But instead of trying to do it by eyeball, they would put what is now kettlebell on one side of the scale and then the produce on the other. And then at the farmers' expeditions, you had these big Russian farmers who wanted to show how strong they were, so they would pick them up and do all kinds of displays with them. And then the Russian army took it on, the Soviet army took it on, and then that's where Pavel picked it up and then brought it over the Atlantic and introduced it to America.

Wow, that's crazy. So it was just accidental that they made this very functional tool for fitness?

Yeah, it was just, you'd go to a farmer's market, you want to buy some barley or some potatoes, but you don't know if you're actually getting the real weight. So they'd have a scale, a balancing scale, and they'd put the kettlebell on one side and the produce on the other, and then you knew you got the right amount. And then of course they have these big farmers farm fairs and they're showing off their horses and their cattle and stuff, and they'd want to do strength displays. So these farmers are throwing these things around and the Russian military picked it up And then the Soviets, of course, took over and they took it on. And then Pavel, I think he was a Belarusian though, if I'm not mistaken, Pavel Tsatsouline. I love Tsatsouline. And he brought it over to North America. But the ancient Chinese did it as well. You got—

Really?

Yeah, the ancient Chinese, the Shaolin monks have used them, but they didn't do it with cast iron. They had, theirs were sort of a concrete, a concrete block. And they did it for strength training as well.

Oh wow, a little history.

Yeah, so I'm a big kettlebell freak. I love it. And I really— I started to study what Pavel's teaching. I wanted— I think he has an accreditation or something. If I ever get time, I might take it.

Yeah, Strong First. Yeah, that's his organization.

And you're doing— you have a whole program. I think you, you do clean to press and then—

yeah, I do a bunch of different things.

Squats with overhead squat and all that.

It's a great functional tool just for your whole body.

Right.

You know, it's really one of the best pieces of exercise equipment I think I've ever found.

Yeah, I think he calls it a cannonball on a handle. And the thing I like about it is the— it's like a catapult. Like, all of the lift is in that, that instant where it flips over your hand. And so there you go.

Original ones. Wow, that's crazy. That's so interesting. So the handle was just to pick it up and carry it around.

Yeah. Wow, that had a real functional use.

Well, it's just amazing how good it is for a piece of exercise equipment that was accidentally designed that way.

Absolutely. And I think it's far superior to, to a dumbbell exercise because there's no— a dumbbell, you get a consistent lift, but that's not real life. If you're in a fight or you have to pick something up heavy, it doesn't lift consistently. It's explosive in that small range. And And when you're doing a snatch, by the time you get up to your shoulder, the thing's weightless because the catapult effect has taken over and now it's actually negative weight. It's lifting your hand up in the air if you're doing it right. But like if you're in a fight or if you're in a wrestling match or you're trying to push really hard against a heavy object, it's all about explosive power. And that's what kettlebells give rather than just this sort of freeze and contract thing that you do with, with dumbbells.

Have you always been a workout guy?

Yeah, look, I was big into sports until my mid-teens. I was on the wrestling team. I wasn't great. I was good, but I wasn't great. Then I got a wicked tendinitis in my shoulder, and it ended my athleticism for like 4 years. And that's how I got into politics. I was so bored. I got to get home from school, I had nothing to do, so I took my— told my mother—

tendinitis got you into politics?

Yeah, that's what it was. I just couldn't get rid of it. Like, every time I thought I had it beat, I'd go in and and I'd train and it would be full of inflammation. No one could do anything about it. And so I was like bored out of my mind and I said to my mom, like, you know, you go to these local meetings with the Conservative Association, like take me to that 'cause I'm going crazy.

That's nuts. Yeah. So what were you interested in when you first went there? Like, we just didn't like the way things were running? Like, what was it about it that got you so curious?

Well, I grew up in a suburban neighborhood in south end of Calgary. You know, my folks were teachers. I was adopted. My mom was a 16-year-old. She was obviously a single mom. She put me up for adoption to two schoolteachers. There was electricians and oil workers and police officers lived on our street. Normal, hardworking, good folks. And I always grew up with the impression they were getting screwed over. And that the government didn't listen to people like them, didn't listen to people who grew up on streets like ours. And living in Western Canada, there was a greater sense of that. We called it Western alienation at the time. And there was this guy, kind of a quirky guy, but a really brilliant guy named Preston Manning. And I saw this billboard of him and he had his fist up and it said, "Enough." And I said, "Yeah, I like that guy." So I got involved in politics and I started reading about different things. I started, I read, biography on Fidel Castro, and then I read some more.

Justin's dad.

No, no, not Justin's dad. Right? No, no, no.

No?

No, his dad was Pierre. His dad was Pierre. His dad was Pierre. I had issues with Pierre Trudeau too because—

It is a great conspiracy theory though.

Well, it is a hell of a, I don't think it's a true one though. His dad is Pierre.

Unfortunately.

His dad was very controversial while I grew up 'cause he did a lot of damage to the oil sector, and we're from oil country. And so that was one of the things that I felt kind of resentful about, the national government. And one of the reasons I got involved is because the West deserved a fairer deal. But I read a lot of books like Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, and I came to develop a philosophy based on just maximizing personal, financial, religious freedom. Let people make their own decisions. And that animated me to get involved in politics and fight for that, and I've been doing been doing it ever since.

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That's a fascinating transition from wrestling and tendinitis to being deeply involved in politics.

Yeah, I mean, like, you know, you're a sports guy. If you had suffered an injury that took you out of taekwondo when you were young and you simply couldn't compete at anything, you'd probably be looking for some other adventure.

Yeah, well, we're lucky that stem cells weren't around back then or you never would have gotten into politics.

That's right. I would have been a wrestler. I don't know if I would have won any awards, But yeah, that was how I got started, and I got very active very quickly. I got my first internship making $600 a month when I was 16 or 17 years old, and I would take 2 trains and a bus, and an hour and 45 minutes each way, but I was so thrilled. My dad bought me a used suit and a used pair of shoes, and I thought, this is so incredible. I'm an important guy. I wear dress shoes. I wear a tie. Didn't matter that the tie was bought from some dead guy family had sold it to a used store, but that was my start and I loved it.

Well, I'm really excited to have you in here because I've seen you speak multiple times and you're a very reasonable, intelligent person that makes a lot of sense. And that is, that is a rare thing in politics. And I love Canada. Like I should just say, I don't go up there anymore, but it's because I think the government went horribly wrong over the last, you know, X amount of years, but the people are amazing. It's like, I was always— I have always said that Canada has like, it's like America with like 20% less assholes. Like, every time I would go up there, like, people are so nice. They're the nicest people. Yeah, I think that's part of what went wrong for Canada, is that people are rule followers and they're trusting and kind people. And this wolf in sheep's clothing snuck in and was pretending he was a sweet guy and passing all these crazy laws. And just when we saw what happened with COVID with just what happened with the truckers and people's accounts getting shut down for donating to the truckers, the whole thing was so concerning because It's our— Canada was like a part of America almost.

I mean, you're a different country, but it's like you used to be able to go over there with just a driver's license. You know, it was like— it was such a cool place. I started going to the Montreal Comedy Festival in like 1993. I loved it up there. It's like one of my favorite places to be.

Is it Just for Laughs? Juste pour rire?

Yeah.

Good. How's your French?

Not good.

Okay, we'll work on that. We'll get you some French lessons.

It's terrible. I don't know any— French words. My wife is learning French though, it's interesting. She's got this app that she's learning French. But it's just an amazing place. It's a great country. And to see it go the way it's been going and sliding the way it's been happening over the last, you know, X amount of years, there's just so many things that concern me. You know, one of the things that really concerns me is this assisted suicide thing. That 1 in 20 deaths in Canada is now assisted suicide? That's insane.

Well, listen, my view is that people should have the choice, but the concern we have is the suggestion that it would be offered to kids or offered to people whose only condition is mental illness.

Right.

I don't agree with that.

My concern as well. I mean, if someone's got a terminal— like, a good friend of mine went to Oregon to end his life because he had ALS.

Okay.

But I mean, he was gone. I mean, he could barely talk at the end of his life. His name is Michael Lair. He was a regular guest on Kill Tony. Great guy, right? And it was horrible. I mean, watching him fade away, and he wanted to go out on his own terms, right? Went to Oregon for assisted suicide. There's a place for it. Yeah, but I mean, there was a kid recently in Canada, and he did it for seasonal depression. I'm sure you're aware of that case. I am. Like, who allowed that to happen? Who didn't counsel this young guy? Who didn't give him a hug? Who didn't tell him about diet and exercise and changing your surroundings, your lifestyle, and just do something to give you some hope and happiness? Like, seasonal depression? Really? You're going to end your life, this beautiful life on this planet, for seasonal depression? That's crazy.

And that's why we have to do more to give people hope when they're suffering with mental illness. Yes. You know, give people the sense that they can take back control of their lives. I think we do have to promote fitness more because it gives people, it turns them into a subject that controls their surroundings rather than an object being controlled. It teaches people that hardship is temporary and that the aftermath is positive. And we have to give people, reinstill people with a sense of meaning when they're going through hardship rather than to say that it's all over. I think we have to, our system needs to be geared towards giving people all the best options to live on, rather than just suggesting MAID as the easy, as the automatic path for the system to impose on people. So one of the things our party is pushing for is to make clear that public servants who are getting phone calls from people who are in need of help for something, they shouldn't be offering that. They should be offering MAID. People can seek it out if they want, but when you're calling up saying, I'm poor, or I'm struggling, or I'm having a mental illness, or I've got an injury, we shouldn't have a government worker saying, well, consider MAID.

Well, the unfortunate thing is that any organization that gets formed wants to grow, and you get financial incentives. And then you hire more people and then it gets bigger. And then what do you have to do? Well, you have to keep doing what you're doing. Exactly. What are you doing? You're killing people. So you're going to kill more people because you're actually financially incentivized to put more people through this program and end their lives. That's— it's very sad.

I think we have to get to a point where people have the freedom to make their own decisions, but they also have hope that there is an option for them.

Yeah, give them a pathway, you know, and like the exercise thing, it's not just give them, you know, control of their life. It makes them happier. It's— it shows— there's been studies that show it's much more effective than antidepressants.

Absolutely. Well, it's the— first of all, there's the physiological side which affects the brain, but it's also the sensation of discomfort that you push through knowing that you have to focus on the thing you have to do. And that, I think, it helps us in anything we're encountering, whether you're going through a divorce or a bankruptcy or an injury or an illness, if you know that pushing through to the other side because you've got a meaning there, that can give people hope for a better life. You know, my favorite psychologist is Viktor Frankl, Viktor Frankl, and he developed this Lagos treatment, which was basically giving people a sense of meaning. He survived the Holocaust in the concentration camp because he had a sense of meaning. That he wanted to— his book was stolen from him in the concentration camp about this theory, and he wanted to live on so he could survive and write that book. And then he found in his teaching that it wasn't so much people's circumstances that determined their happiness, it was whether they had a meaning in life. And he tells this incredible story of a group therapy session where he had this very rich woman who was married to a very rich man And he had next to him another lady who was living in terrible poverty.

She'd lost a son and had a second severely disabled son. And he said to both of them, what will your life look like when you're 80 years old and you're on your deathbed? And the wealthier lady said, well, I will look back and think that I had some fun and enjoyed the simple, the luxuries of being very wealthy and having an easy life, that there wasn't a lot of meaning to it. And whereas the mother who was struggling with a disabled child and had lost another one said, "Well, I gave my first child a great life, a short one, but a great one. I struggled to give my disabled child a good dignified existence. And I leave this world satisfied and happy that my life had purpose and meaning." And the lesson I take from that is that it is not about whether you have a gazillion dollars or whether your life is easy, it's whether you have some meaning to invest your life into. And I think we have to infuse people's lives with meaning so that they can live a good life.

Well, that's a great message. And I think it's one of the most important parts of being a leader is having a great message and having a great philosophy and having a great perspective. And I mean, that's what disturbed me the most about when Trudeau was running the country, that I didn't feel like— I felt like he was manipulating people with woke politics and ideology. And that it was just this weird slippery slope that people were falling down where they're losing rights and you're losing your ability to express yourself. And it just really disturbed me because I always felt that Canada was like one of the freest places and one of the most open-minded places. And it just, I didn't understand how it could fall so quickly. This episode is brought to you by Visible. Folks, there's one thing nobody wants this season and that's getting catfished. And it's not just dating profiles that are putting you at risk. It's also big wireless carriers. You know the type, looks great at first, promises a low price, but once you're locked in, surprise fees and an expensive bill that isn't what you were expecting. Your knight in shining armor, Visible Wireless.

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We still, you know, we are a free country and we are a democracy. We have preserved that. I had this funny moment when Joe Biden came to Parliament Hill and I said, "Mr. President, I'm Pierre Poilievre. I'm the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition." And he said, "Loyal opposition? How can you be loyal and opposition at the same time?" It's like, "What the hell are you talking about?" And because you guys have a system based on a republic, whereas ours is the British system, and in our system, that the opposition is an act of loyalty. That's what our system— it means that if you are opposing the government, you're doing it out of loyalty to the good of the people. In our House of Commons, you have a half circle in your Congress, we have two sides in our Parliament. It's two and a half sword lengths apart because they used to literally kill each other in the old English days. But the idea is the opposition is to prosecute the hell out of the government, make the mighty low. The most powerful people in the country are supposed to tremble every time they walk in that place because now every mistake they made, every abuse of power, every corruption they might have done can be exposed and in front of all eyes.

So our system is really designed to constrain the power of government through what we call Parliament. Like, I don't work for government. I work for Parliament, and Parliament works for the people. We call it the House of Commons because it's the house of the common people. It's green in there because they used to meet in the fields of England. And so I really view the role of our parliament to limit the power of government, to maximize the power of the people, make people bigger, stronger, and more fulfilled by having the government narrowly focus on the things it's supposed to do—roads, military, basic social safety net, borders, police, et cetera—but then leave people alone to live their lives. If I were to start a political party from scratch, it would be the Mind Your Own Damn Business Party. You know, just get the government to do its job well, do 4 or 5 things really well, and then let people live their lives.

Well, that sounds very reasonable. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, anybody that doesn't go along with that, anybody that's opposed to that, that doesn't even make sense.

No, look, like I said, the way I grew up and everything I've seen ever since, when I talk to farmers or factory workers, electricians, I find they know just as much or more than the so-called experts I encounter on Parliament Hill. Like back during COVID when all these governments were printing money and all the politicians and bankers said, oh, this is great. Well, look at all this money we get to spend. I'd walk around communities and I'd have like mechanics say, you know, we're gonna have inflation. And I would say, yeah, it makes sense to me. And I'd go back to Parliament Hill and the experts would all say, no, no, there's not gonna be any inflation. And sure enough, all that money filtered into the economy, bid up all the goods we buy, and everybody got smoked with higher prices. But the point is that it was the common people who don't study this stuff for a living, who don't read endless reports and studies, who could just figure out that if there's money pouring into the economy that's not matched by goods and services, it's gonna bid up the cost of everything. So that's my experience and my ideology is the common guy knows how to make his own decisions.

We need to empower him to do that.

Yeah, just stay out of people's lives. Exactly. So there's a narrative in America, and the narrative is that you were about to win and your party was about to win, but then Trump came along and said he was going to turn Canada into the 51st state and everybody went crazy.

Is that accurate? I wouldn't say they went crazy. I mean, it was like, well, it was a very upset. They should be upset though. I mean, what's a crazy thing to say? It is a crazy thing to say. Canada is not for sale. We're never going to be the 51st state. We love Americans as neighbors and friends, but we want to be uniquely and we want to be sovereign as Canadians. It's our country. It's where we grow up. You're a patriot as an American. I'm a patriot as a Canadian. It's where my grandfather arrived. It's where our collective ancestors put on military uniforms and sailed to fight wars. It's where our grandkids are going to live. We're very proudly Canadian. So we're never going to be the 51st state. And I just wish he'd knock that shit off so that we can get back to talking about the things that we can do as two separate, but two separate countries that are actually friends.

Did that really have that much of an effect up there? Like, did people take him seriously?

I think at first everyone thought it was a joke. Because we've always had these jokes like, you know, one day we're gonna take over Vermont, and Detroit should be part of Canada, and all that stuff. But then he kept saying it and saying it, and it became— a lot of people got upset about it, and I think understandably so.

Understandably, yeah. I mean, it's a crazy thing to say.

It is a crazy thing to say. I talked to him on the phone about it.

It was so funny. He's like, "At first I was joking, but then people were like, 'It's a good idea.'" That's not a good idea.

Nobody's saying that. I can assure him of that. But, and the tariffs aren't a good idea either. We should get the tariffs out, 'cause there's so much that we could be doing together as neighbors and partners if we got rid of those tariffs. I think, what are the biggest problems in America today? Affordability, security, and we can help with both if we knock the tariffs down. Let's look at affordability. We got the fourth biggest supply of oil anywhere on Earth. You guys pay a huge price discount for our oil because we're effectively All our infrastructure to ship it is north-south, and it's a very unique heavy oil. So we accept, unfortunately and for now, a price discount on the oil we send you, which can translate into more jobs and paychecks, but also lower energy prices. You've got $5 a gallon right now in lots of places in America. You're buying— I want to produce more so we can sell 2 million more barrels of Canadian oil into the U.S. market. And then there's housing. You've got huge housing pressures on young people. They can't afford a place to live. We're the biggest supplier of lumber for home building of any country that imports to the United States, exports to the United States.

We've got very low cost, but high quality softwood lumber we could be shipping. Or the best truck, the best-selling truck in America for 45 years now is the Ford Series. It's aluminum. It's a military-grade aluminum body. You guys can't make enough aluminum here. You don't have enough bauxite or electricity to convert it into alumina and aluminum. You get your aluminum from us. A tariff does not bring the production to America. It raises the price of the aluminum and therefore the F-Series truck. Get rid of that tariff. You lower taxes. You lower the cost of an F-Series truck for the miner in Appalachia or the electrician in Ohio, and that's just on the affordability side. There's a lot we can do with our minerals to make the continent a hell of a lot safer as well. So I think it's in America's interest to come towards a tariff-free deal and trade freely as friends, and that will be good for both of us.

Have you had conversations with Trump about this?

No, I believe in the rule of one prime minister at a time. So I fought like hell to win. I didn't win. We came very close. So I've said, listen, I'll leave it to the prime minister to do the negotiating. And I've said I'll support him any way I can. Even in my visit down here, I'm sending him text messages to tell him what's going on, to try and support his work. Because what we want, we both want what's best for Canada.

Where are your elections now? When do you have the next elections?

That's, this is a, A strangely hard question to answer because— I know, you have a weird system.

Weird in comparison to ours, rather.

Yours are fixed, as you know. Ours, we have technically fixed election dates, but the government can fall at any time. It's very simple. A rule is that if the opposition parties bind up and they can vote down the government, that is to say the majority of MPs in the House say, "We've lost confidence in the government," the election is now. Or if the Prime Minister decides he wants an election, he can call it and the election is now. But it has to be sometime in the next roughly 3 years.

Oh, so you have a deadline where this has to take place? Yeah, that's right. But it could happen tomorrow?

It wouldn't necessarily be tomorrow, but like in the next few weeks if there were a non-confidence vote and the government lost it, then they go to an election. So it's kind of like the British system. Interesting. Yeah. Well, it is the British system really. We adopted the British system almost identically.

So when you're campaigning, you're essentially— this is like a long game. Yeah. You're just laying out your strategy, laying out what you would do to make Canada a better place. Yeah.

Well, we have two roles. So I said I'm the leader of the opposition, but I'm also prime minister in waiting. So the notion is that the Canadian people should not only have a government, but they should have an alternative. And that alternative has two functions: official opposition, It's actually called that. I think it's a proper noun, a capital O official, capital O opposition, and also government in waiting. So you have to be prosecuting the government, but you have to present yourself to people in a way where they say, yeah, that guy or that team could actually be the government. Those are the dual roles that I have to carry out. Interesting.

And how long have you been attempting to become prime minister for?

How long has this been going on for? Almost exactly 4 years because I launched my campaign in February of 2022. Was this something that you had always had in the back of your mind, or— I'd say in the back of my mind, but it wasn't something I was set on. Like, I thought maybe, you know, when I'm in my 50s or 60s, I would try it, but I was in no rush to do that.

How old are you now? I'm now 46. And so what motivated you to do it?

Well, you know, after COVID, as COVID was unfolding, it wasn't just the COVID policies themselves, it was the economic policies. 'Cause I've been very focused on economics in my parliamentary career, and I was seeing the size and cost of government, not just in Canada, but all around the world growing so much, and that inflation was just destroying the working class people and that it was gonna get a lot worse. And so I ran on the platform of making Canada the freest country on earth, that we had a tradition of freedom in Canada. One of our earliest prime ministers, Wilfrid Laurier, was asked, "What's Canada's nationality?" And he couldn't actually list an ethnicity or a religion because we were already mixed up even 100 years ago. We had Scots and Irish and First Peoples. So he said, "Look." Yeah, French, most of all French and English. And First Nations. So he said, "Canada is free and freedom is its nationality." And I wanted to reinstate that idea. I wanted it to be the freest country anywhere on earth. And so I ran on that platform and won the leadership and then ran in the last election and stayed on after that election.

So that's kind of the last 4 years of my journey.

00:31:46

And so the way your elections work now, so you're essentially just stating your case and going around and talking about what policies you would implement and how you would do things differently and just waiting to see how it all plays out?

See, our prime minister is different than the president. He's actually part of the legislative branch, so he comes into the House of Commons and we debate multiple times a week, he and I. So it's not just— in your system, the Republican and Democrat hold 4 debates right before the election. In our system, we're always debating. So he comes in, he's on one side. I come in, I'm on the other side. And I ask him like 6 consecutive questions and then he answers. And we go back and forth. And that's called question period. Then we have these committees where we prosecute and propose on finance, natural resources, healthcare, you name it. So we're constantly prosecuting the government, also proposing better ideas at the same time. Like the other day, I proposed to bring back the Auto Pact between Canada and the US to have tariff-free trade going both ways across the border. So that's an example of how I'm in a position to actually offer solutions even though I'm not in the government, and then hopefully government actually steals my ideas, and I've been encouraging them to steal my ideas. Is this coffee, by the way?

I need some caffeine. Yeah, some caffeine there. I'm a terrible caffeine addict.

Cheers. Cheers. Oh, and shout out to George St-Pierre for hooking this up.

Yes, George is a good man. He's the best. Great guy. He, he said he's gonna have me do some pad work with him at some point. Oh really? That's pretty dangerous.

That's awesome. He's here all the time.

He's a fantastic guy. He's the best.

He's one of the best representatives of martial arts you could ever hope to meet. He's got humility.

I remember he came to Parliament Hill years ago and I thought, geez, he's gonna be 'Cause I thought he'd be cocky and swagger, but he was so down to earth. So much humility.

For what he's accomplished in MMA, I've introduced him to people and they have no idea who he is. And then I go, "That is one of the greatest fighters that ever walked the face of the earth." Absolutely.

They're like, "No way!" He's so nice. That's the Canadian way, though. Like, it's soft-spoken and gentle and kind, but— But don't piss us off. Yeah, but tough.

Yeah, that's where Trump fucked up. I wonder what would have happened if he didn't go along with that 51st state nonsense. You know, I mean, that, that is the narrative in this country. Like I said, that if he didn't do that, that you would have won.

Well, you never know. But I try not to cry over spilled milk. I focus on what I have to do and live in the present. But, but this new guy, Malott, have you followed him? Mike Malott? Oh sure, I know Mike. Yeah, he's gonna be fighting in Winnipeg. I think he's the next GSP. He's very good. You like him?

Yeah, he's excellent.

Yeah, he did a great job in Montreal. Mm-hmm. If you saw him there, but—

Oh yeah, I've been to many of his— called a bunch of his fights. Is that right? Yeah, he's excellent.

Yeah, he's— my buddy is his trainer, Crew Allen, Hamalgan, in Hamilton. He's a Hamilton steel— steel town guy, and Anyway, we're hoping that he has a big win in Winnipeg.

So, well, you guys have one of the best gyms in the world, TriStar in Montreal.

Is that right? Foras Ahabi.

Okay. The— if there's like maybe a handful of great masterminds in MMA as far as coaches, right? Foras is at the top of the list.

Is that right? And what's his discipline?

He trained GSP.

Is his discipline karate or kickboxing, Muay Thai?

I mean, he's a true mixed martial artist, black belt in jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, every— I mean, he can do everything, and he has an Tristar is a place where a lot of people from America go up there for their camps.

Interesting. Yeah, I have to drop in and see those guys.

Oh, it's phenomenal. I mean, like I said, GSP trained up there. A lot, a lot of fighters trained up there. And he also had a great working relationship with a lot of people in America, so he would come down and, you know, they would exchange fighters back and forth and train with each other.

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Ja, well, we have a great martial arts tradition in Canada. I don't know if you know Mike Miles. He brought Muay Thai from Thailand to Calgary like back in the '70s or '80s, and he's still got a great gym there.

Do you know who Jean-Yves Therrien is?

Yes, he's a buddy of mine. Oh, really? From Ottawa, yeah.

Oh, no kidding. Yeah, he— He was a hero of mine when I was a kid.

Yeah, he's incredible.

When I was kickboxing, he was like my idol. Really? Yeah. Does he know that? I never talked to him.

Well, he's gonna see this. I bought his book. Yeah?

I bought his book. I started running stairs because of his book. Right. 'Cause he was talking about how it increased his leg muscles and his kicking power.

I remember that. It was in one of his documentaries or something. He said his kicks weren't strong enough, so he would do stairs. But I went and trained at his dojo a few times.

It's in South Ottawa. He was incredible. He was one of the truly elite kickboxers of his time.

He was a great boxer too. I know he never competed as a boxer, but his hands were fantastic.

Well, that's really what separated him from a lot of other people, was like his accuracy and his technique was pristine.

He told me that he would spend hours studying the distances that your limbs would have to travel depending on how you moved. He was kind of like a scientist in the way he learned and studied. And he was all about simplicity and removing anything unnecessary. I think Bruce Lee said that. He said, "Simplicity. Hack away at the unnecessary." And, you know, what's the shortest distance to hit the strike? And he's got a great— he's a really good heart too. You know, he had a jiu-jitsu club as well. And when I went in there, there was a blind fellow who was into jiu-jitsu, which you can do as a blind person because it's so much about feel. But with COVID he couldn't do jiu-jitsu anymore because they disallowed that kind of up-close contact. So he actually found a way to train this guy with focus mitts, even though he was blind. It was really incredible. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was just— but it was incredible amount of patience he had invested in making sure this young man could keep doing his physical activity throughout COVID.

Wait a minute, so they allowed pad work but they didn't allow jiu-jitsu?

I don't know if it was a government policy or if it was just a— it was a policy at the gym because, you know, you're just so wrapped up and sweating and all that jazz.

The gyms in America, everybody just— just kept going. Kept going. They hid. They would like put foil over the windows and like hide or come in through the back door. A lot of the gyms in LA, that's what they did. They just plowed ahead. They just figured out a way to not get in trouble. And some people did get caught and get in trouble, and nothing ever came of it because it's pretty unconstitutional to tell people that they can't work out together. Like, the government really didn't have the right to tell people that they couldn't do what they wanted to do that was a legal thing that you can do. Like, all of a sudden there's this mandate, there's this law or rule being passed down, or at least it's being promoted, that you're not allowed to go to a gym and work out with other people. But those are the healthiest people. Those are the people that are least likely to get sick. This is crazy to say. And you know if you're sick, and if you just have a good gym with good people, say, "Hey, don't show up if you're sick," everybody should be okay.

These are the people you should worry about the least.

We need to have common sense again, and too many governments in the Western world have gone way too bossy. They're just looking for every excuse to boss people around. And that's what we have to push back again. And it's EV mandates or excessive control of the internet or the massive increase in the cost of government, which is really like appropriating the private voluntary economy into the coercive government economy. That's what we're seeing across Europe, in the UK, parts of the United States as well as back home. So we need to reverse that trend and get people back in charge of their lives.

Well, the narrative has always been that rights lost are never regained or are very, very difficult to regain them. So how could you reverse that?

Well, you have to keep fighting. I mean, we did regain our rights after COVID and the people have to look at the history of it.

Which rights did you regain?

Well, all the mandates are gone now.

Of course, but those were ridiculous anyway. Yeah, they were ridiculous, but they also impeded business. They ruined people's lives, social lives.

But freedom has always had to be taken. Like, you go— our tradition goes back to 1215 with the Magna Carta, the Great Charter, and most of the freedoms we have today were in that original document. Right to a jury trial, No arrest without charge, no confiscation without compensation, no taxation without representation. All comes from that one document, the Magna Carta. And it was because King John was taken aside by the barons and they said, listen, pal, this is the choice: either you sign this and follow it, or we overthrow you. And as a result, we got the Magna Carta. And all— when you guys had your Boston Tea Party and said you can't tax our tea, 'cause we don't elect you. That was an appeal as English— you were Englishmen saying, "We're Englishmen. We have the right not to be taxed unless we vote for it, and we're gonna throw you out otherwise." But that came out of the fields of Runnymede in England in 1215. So it's a long march towards freedom, and it's never actually done. There's no permanent victories or defeats. You just have to keep going forward.

00:41:48

So if you were elected, let's say you get in right now, What's one of the first things you would do?

I would unblock our resources. So we have the most resources of any country in the world per capita, bar none. We need to have, to make it happen though, we need to have the fastest permits anywhere in the world and the lowest taxes on producing those resources. We're the fourth in oil, the number one in uranium, number one in potash for fertilizer. We are the fifth biggest supplier of natural gas. We have the longest oceanic coastline. Like, we have 12 of NATO's— sorry, we have 10 of 12 of NATO's defined defense minerals. So, you know, you had that guy Palmer Luckey on. I don't think he can make his stuff without Canadian minerals. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe he'll correct me, but like night vision technology, you need to have germanium for that. You need to have gallium to make semiconductors and radar. You need to have aluminum for armored vehicles and airplanes. You need cobalt for heat-resistant alloys in fighter jets. You need tungsten for body— sorry, armor-piercing ammunition. We have it all. And what I wanna do is unblock those resources, produce them in abundance for ourselves and our allies, make $200,000 paychecks for our tradesworkers, build up an enormous strategic stockpile of it so that we have tons of leverage in international relations.

And if, God forbid, there is ever a global conflict, we would have all the resources necessary to win it. So, but we need to, we need to pass, we need to get rid of a lot of laws that are blocking and replace them with laws that have fast permitting so that we can produce this stuff on scale very quickly.

So is the concern the environmental impact of extracting these things? Is that what's holding it up?

That is the— that's the ostensible reason, but I just think across Western— the Western world, like Europe, UK, parts of the US and Canada, there's a problem with bureaucracy just growing way too damn big. Like, you know, the First Nations in our country are incredibly forward-looking. The Squamish built 6,000 units of housing on 10 acres of land. You can believe it. In a town, in a city of Vancouver where it's very hard to get a permit to do anything because it was their land, so they did it. They're trying to build, they're building now an LNG liquefaction plant where they replaced an old dirty mill. They cleaned it up and put an LNG plant there, but the federal government took a lot of time, 14 years to give them a permit. So we need to think like they're thinking, which is entrepreneurial, speed of business, get it done quickly. That's how you develop. Like, we have this community in my district, it's called Hardesty, 600 people. They manage $100 billion of oil in a town of 600 people. Why is it there? Because their municipality offers a permit in one week with one page. And I wanted to tell this story, so I called them and I said, can I have someone come and do a video with me?

And they said, we don't have anyone here. We don't have like bureaucrats that can help you. They're all out on their farms right now. They come in, they stamp the permit, and they go back to their farm. Well, that's why we have $100 billion of energy moving through the area, which is bigger than the GDP of many countries, because they have fast permits. And that's what we need in Canada. We need to be the fastest place to get things done.

But don't you think you need some safeguards to protect the environment? And how do you balance that out?

Protect it quickly. We can figure out what— whether a project is damaging to the environment in weeks and months rather than decades. Like, there's nothing you're gonna learn in year 14 of the review that you couldn't have learned in month 14. So there's ways to protect the environment. When the Germans, so when the Germans had to break their dependence on Russia after it invaded Ukraine, they approved an LNG import terminal in 60 days. They completed the whole damn thing in less than 200 days. And guess what? No environmental problems. They got their engineers to sit down and figure out how to do it quickly. And that's the mentality that we need to get in Canada.

So what would you be able to do to bypass all this bureaucracy? How could that be done legally?

Well, you slim it down to one project, one environmental review instead of 20 or 30. You have a fixed timeline that the bureaucrats have to give an answer of 6 months rather than just as long as they want to drag it on for. The other thing I would do is study areas where they're perfectly situated to have a project like a pipeline or a mine or an LNG export terminal or a port expansion and I would pre-permit it. I would say to our officials, "Go in and study. Make sure that the environmental aspects are all in good order. I will issue a pre-permit and then anybody who comes along and wants to build it, as long as they follow the terms and act responsibly, has a guaranteed permit before they even apply for it." I think we would have a roaring economy if we did that. That sounds awesome.

But the great fear is that if you do have an impact on the environment, that impact is often permanent and that it's devastating. And I've seen some of the oil extraction that they've done up in Alberta, where you look at the area, it looks like scorched earth.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's the most responsible oil extraction in the world.

But when you see these. What is that one area that often gets criticized? Fort Mac.

Is that what it is? Yeah, they're open pit mines. You open up a mine, you take out the bitumen, you separate the sand from the oil, you make it less viscous by putting diluent in it, and you ship it off. And then after the oil is— after the mining is done, they resurface it, and you wouldn't even know there was a mine there.

And there's no impact to groundwater, no impact to the environment?

I mean, there's an impact no matter what you do, but at the end of the day, the people who live there are very healthy and very happy, and they're the strongest supporters of the expansion of the oil sands. It's an incredible— Because economically it's much better. Oh, it's incredible. It's the best resource in the world. It's like, there's no decline rate. You guys have shale here, but as the years go by, you get less and less out of a shale reservoir. We have very little decline. We can keep producing and producing. We have what's called in situ, where there's an entire oil sands operation under your feet. You could be out in a forest hunting and you wouldn't even know that under your feet they're extracting it. Through a whole system of pipes where they inject just steam, steam vapor that loosens up the oil. It sinks down and goes into another pipe, comes up to the top, and you can have beautiful pristine nature. The bears, the deer, the birds, they don't even know that there's extraction happening under their feet. We have the best industry, the most responsible industry anywhere in the world.

It's been a really disgusting PR campaign by extremist environmentalists and frankly some of our competitors to try and make our industry look bad, but it's the best industry in the world. Yeah, they got me.

I saw some videos on it and I was like, oh my God, what are they doing to the ground? What are they doing to the earth? It looks horrible.

It's all bullshit. It looks horrible. Yeah, but I mean, that's just a superficial look at it. I'll take you for a tour in the oil sands. You'll be amazed. We have the best engineers in the world. And by the way, the First Nations people absolutely love it because it's lifting their people out of poverty. They're getting enormous job opportunities out of it. One of our MPs is a former chief where they took 18% unemployment, brought it down to 3%, balanced their budget. Another one of my members of parliament in Northern British Columbia negotiated a $40 billion LNG plant on the Haisla territory. It's completely eliminating poverty for the First Nations there. And by exporting clean Canadian natural gas, which we can liquefy 25% cheaper 'cause it's cold as hell in Canada, They actually displace dirty coal overseas. So instead of Asia burning coal, they're burning clean Canadian gas that's delivered by First Nations partnership. So this is the best way to do it. Makes everybody richer and makes our entire continent better off.

Well, it seems so simple the way you're laying it out. I don't understand why this hasn't been implemented.

Yeah, this is the story of my life.

It's frustrating. Is it that simple? Is it really that this is what's holding everything up, the bureaucracy and the time it takes for permits and—

Yeah, like a lot of things. Regulations. We have the same thing in housing and so do you. Like if you look at— California's terrible. California's terrible. Like why is there such a housing shortage in California? It's because it takes forever to get a permit and there's always bureaucracy standing in the way and it totally screws over the working class youth who can't find a place to live because they're not being built. And we have that challenge in Canada as well. So that's why I proposed ideas to cut the bureaucracy and the taxes so that we can build affordable homes for our youth. Because right now we have a whole generation that can't afford homes. And that was one of the biggest issues I ran on. Homeownership is necessary for family formation, for civil peace in society where, you know, everybody feels like they have a piece of the pie. We need to expand homeownership. But to do that, you've got to get the government gatekeepers out of the way, speed up the permits, free up the land, cut the development taxes.

So let's assume that you got in office. How much time would it take to start implementing these things, and how quickly would that impact be felt by the Canadian people?

Look, I think a lot of them could move very quickly. There are a lot of projects that are— that investors are sitting on, but they don't have certainty in permits. So I would unblock that. And I think in the first year you would start to see immediate benefits for the working people who'd be getting these jobs. Some of it would take more and more like a medium term. Like the second thing I would go after is just the inflationary spending, which is a big problem all over the Western world. Like people just can't afford to live. I don't know if you, you do, you encounter that around here?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, inflation's crazy. And it's, I mean, the national debt in America just went up to $39 trillion.

Right, which is bigger than your GDP. It's a lot of money. So explain this to me. 50 years ago, a barber and a waitress could buy a house with a big yard for a dog and raise 4 kids, meat and potatoes on the dinner table every night. And now an accountant and a lawyer can't do that. Why is that?

Well, there's a lot of spending and a lot of making money. A lot of just turning, you know, just making dollar bills with nothing behind it, nothing to back it.

This is the biggest fraud perpetrated on the working class people in the last 100 years.

Printing money is just insane. The idea you just print more money, it's like, and people go, oh, okay.

Well, it looks painless at first, but if you have an economy with 10 apples and $10, It's a buck an apple. You double the number of dollars to $20, but you still only have 10 apples. Well, all of a sudden it's $2 an apple. It's not that the cost of apples has gone up. It still costs the same resources to grow and pick the apples. It's that the price has gone up because the value of the money has gone down. So in America, over the last 55 years, you've doubled the number of homes in America from about 70 million to 150 million. You know how much the money supply has grown? 30 times. So you have twice the homes, but 30 times the cash. So what's happened? Housing costs have gone up 15-fold in 55 years. And now an entire generation of kids can't afford homes. We have exactly the same problem in Canada. This is the biggest wealth transfer from the working class to the elites, from, I say, the have-nots to the have-yachts. And Washington and Wall Street love it, by the way, 'cause it inflates the stock market, inflates the bureaucracy, politicians get to spend, CEOs get their stocks inflated, but it destroys the working people and we need to get back to hard money.

Everything should be getting cheaper, by the way. You know it takes 60 to 80% less resources to grow food. We grow 4 times the food on the same acre, get 4 times as much milk from the same cow. We use 80% less water and fertilizer. So why isn't it that food is not less expensive? It's because all of those gains are being erased by monetary inflation. So it's not that food is more costly, it's that the value, the money we use to buy it has less purchasing power. And we need to do what the Swiss do, which is they don't print money. They have balanced budgets, they have almost no deficit, and they have almost zero inflation in Switzerland. They have the strongest money in the world, the Swiss franc, and we would all be better if we operated like the Swiss when it comes to our money.

So in a real-world scenario, it's like you take over Canada, how would you go about implementing this?

You got to cut bureaucracy, consultants, which consume, by the way, $26 billion of spending. How big is your debt in Canada? $1.3-ish trillion. Oh, that's baby debt. It's compared to you. You guys are— We're ridiculous. Wild. But you've gotten away with it because the dollar, the American dollar is the reserve currency. So all these countries prop up the value of the US dollar by keeping it on reserve. Better hope that doesn't change. Yeah, better hope. We don't have that luxury. And so, but we do have a lot of debt and we have a lot. We have provinces too. They're quite indebted. But I would cut the bureaucracy. I would cut consultants. Foreign aid, I'd cut way back on foreign aid. We give corporate welfare, these checks to corporations. I believe business should make money rather than take money. So I would get rid of that. We're giving a lot of money to fake refugees, people who come in and don't actually, they're not actually fleeing danger. Like I love real refugees. My wife was a refugee. I have no time for people who are pretending, but they're not really.

And what do you mean by pretending to be a refugee? How are they doing this?

They're not actually endangered in their home country, so they've come to be declared themselves as students and then wanting to stay, declaring refugee status.

Oh, and this is common? Yeah, it happens.

It happens, and they just want to have a better life, so I don't begrudge them as people, but we can't spend money on social service, enhance social services, advance programs that we as Canadians don't get for people who are not paying into—

So you're not opposed to them being there, you're opposed to them getting Canadian welfare?

Well, I'm opposed to them— if they're not real refugees, they shouldn't be brought in as refugees. I think we have to distinguish between those people who are actually in danger in their home country, which is the definition of a refugee, and someone who just wants to come in excess of their proper immigration stream.

That common that it's actually affecting your economy?

Right now it's a challenge because we had a big number of international students and temporary foreign workers that came in in very large numbers in like 2 or 3 years. We were bringing in about 1 million people a year, which in America's terms would be 10 million, like just if you're doing per capita. And it really caused a housing shortage, like some places where you have 26 of these students living in one basement. So we're trying to unwind that now.

And how do you do that?

Well, when their work permit and their visitor visa runs out, then we have to encourage them to head back lawfully.

Right, but you don't want to do it ICE style.

No, no, I don't think we need to do that. I think we have to be orderly and lawful about it.

And is that supported by the Canadian people?

Yes, because we're a very welcoming country. We're a nation of immigrants, but we're also a nation of laws. And there's a general consensus like across the spectrum in Canada that the population growth was too fast for like 4 or 5 years. And so we're trying to unwind that now.

What are the other things that you would have to do to drop your debt and sort of balance your budget? Begin to turn things around?

Well, in addition— so I like this idea that actually, believe it or not, that Bill Clinton and the Republicans did in the '90s in the US. It was called the pay-go law. It was a very simple principle. Every time the administration wanted to bring in a new dollar of spending, they had to match it with a dollar of savings. So there was no extra net spending for like 8 years. And that's when your government balanced its budget and paid off $400 billion of debt. That law lapsed in 2002, and immediately after that, America went back into deficits, and you haven't emerged. You've been in deficit now for 25 years. This is about internalizing scarcity. Every creature in the universe, every bird in the trees, every fish in the seas has to live with scarcity, maximizing use of scarce resources. The only creature who doesn't do that is the politician, because he's always using someone else's money. It's like, oh, I'll just print it or borrow it or tax it. It's not my money. And so they routinely show up to their cabinet meetings and say, well, I've got a new idea. It's $100 million. Where are you going to get it?

I don't know. We'll print it. We'll borrow it. We'll tax it. Not my money. But if you had a law saying you can't actually bring a proposal to cabinet unless you have matching savings to pay for it, well, then you'd have these politicians walking up and down the hallways in their departments looking for waste. and like rooting it out. So instead of making the single mom, the senior, or the small business owner live with scarcity, I want the politicians and bureaucrats to live with scarcity. And that's what I would impose by law on my government.

Well, it's just a rational way to deal with the problem. Like, don't spend money unless you could save money. Exactly. That's how you balance things out. I mean, Clinton did balance the budget. He did. During his time, and people forget that, because we have always assumed that there's always been this extraordinary debt, but that's not the case. Through the 1990s. I mean, he did a fantastic job at that.

Yeah, I mean, it was that Congress was very disciplined as well, and the American people just got fed up and said, "We're not tolerating these deficits anymore," and they imposed scarcity from the center. And by the way, the economy boomed because the government was restrained, and the free market economy could just roar. And that's another part of the equation, by the way, is unlock the power of free enterprise. Like this is the 250th anniversary, not just of the Declaration of Independence, but also of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations where he basically for the first time in human history described the free market system. And that was starting to flourish in the States and in parts of Europe. And that system basically started to come into place after the late 1770s. The growth since the free market system has come into place in the world has been 200 times faster than it was before, because there is the most powerful system for generating material benefit for the people, and that's what we need to restore in Canada. I want to make it the freest economy in the world.

Well, that all sounds amazing. How the hell did you lose? How can a rational person not vote for that? I mean, you're not saying anything that's restrictive. You're not saying anything that is in any way infringing on people's rights or liberties, or it just sounds like it's all just 100% positive for Canada.

That's what I think. That's my mission, and I think it will be positive. I will get there, you know. Canadians do things through evolution, not revolution. So I'm just gonna keep pushing my ideas, and I think that, I think overwhelmingly we'll win the next election.

Well, it sounds like I just can't see how someone would listen to what you're saying and say, "I find fault in this." Other than like the potential environmental impact of extracting resources, I could see how a lot of the greenies would get like really upset and get their panties in a bunch about that and be very incredulous to the idea that you're going to protect the environment while you're extracting all these resources. But if you could lay it all out and also lay out this enormous economic impact and how it would uplift impoverished communities, how it would completely change the economic landscape of the country. It just only makes sense. That's why I'm baffled.

Well, listen, the people render their judgment, but it means I have to do a better job of proselytizing. What were the criticisms of you?

Like, what did your opponent say that, like, people— that resonated with people? What were they trying to say?

It was funny because they all disagreed with my ideas and they said these are all very scary ideas. Scary? And then they said— First of all, they said that I had no policies, then they said they're scary policies, and then they stole my policies right before the election. So, but hey, listen, if the government that's in power now steals all my ideas and does the things I want to do, then I've won. That's why I came here. I didn't just do it so that I could have the my name on the door. So I keep saying to the Prime Minister, steal my ideas, right?

But he doesn't want to. Well, he—

I won't criticize him on foreign soil, but we'll— but good for you. Yeah, I mean, we have a mutual respect.

That's such a Canadian thing to do.

That is a very Canadian thing to do.

So polite. You know, that's what I've said about Canadians, they're so polite.

It's funny, your security guy was talking about the Canadian standoff of, you know, when you get to a door, you go first, no, you go first, you go first. You could stay there all day. I actually looked this up the other day. Ontario actually has an Apology Act. It's a law that defines the apology because we always say sorry in Canada. So they wanted to clarify that sorry is not a legal admission of guilt. So like if we get into a car accident, I say, "Oh, sorry, man. It was terrible, your bumper." It doesn't mean that I'm guilty. It says actually in law— Oh, that's funny because it's so polite.

Even if somebody else screwed up, you say sorry. That's funny. That's so Canadian. Canadian.

But you know, the great thing about Canada is we've always sorted our shit out peacefully. Like the Protestants and Catholics tore each other's eyeballs out in Europe for like hundreds of years. And then we came to Canada and just got along. And that's the great thing about Canada is like you can come, Muslims and Jews, Christians and, sorry, Protestants and Catholics, Hindus and Sikhs, they come to Canada and they just get along. They live on the same streets. Eventually we all start intermarrying and, It's a great thing about Canada.

Well, it really is a great melting pot, you know.

Yeah, and like folks get to keep their cultures like at the same time as blending into the Canadian identity. Like my wife's from Venezuela, and so like, you know, oftentimes I'm in the house and there's like 16 Latinos and they're all speaking Spanish. I have no idea what the hell's going on. And they have this food, it's called a jackass. And I said, when they start cooking this stuff, I said to my wife, did your mom just call me a jackass? 'Cause that's what it sounded like. I don't speak any Spanish, but— You should probably learn. I should now.

They're yapping in your house. You should know what they're planning.

It's a great, my kids are starting to learn Spanish, so I'm gonna be outnumbered. Yeah, you better learn it.

Yeah. Yeah. So what else is an issue in Canada that you would like to fix? Um, we have to—

we got an allergy I'm dealing with. We got to toughen up our justice system. It got way too soft.

And what's wrong with your justice system?

Basically bail. I mean, we all believe in the basic principle that you're innocent till proven guilty, but if someone's convicted, has like 150 prior convictions, and they're newly arrested on their latest crime, yeah, I don't think we should be releasing them onto the streets. And so we got to lax on bail. So there's now a consensus in Canada that you should have severe restrictions on repeat offenders. Like in Vancouver, they had to arrest the same 40 guys 6,000 times in one year. 40 guys, 6,000 arrests. So they're basically being released within hours of their latest arrest. So we now built a bipartisan, a multi-partisan consensus to fix that. And we're pushing to toughen the bail system and ensure that— it's the repeat offenders, a tiny group. We don't have a lot of criminals in Canada, but they do a tremendous amount of crime. So if you take them off the street, you put them in prison, you can basically reduce the crime rate dramatically.

Well, we probably have more crime percentage-wise in America, but it's still a small percentage of the population that commits the crime. Yeah. But it's the same issue. Like in New York City, It's extraordinary, the amount of people that are repeat offenders. And they just let them go. In California, no cash bail, let them go. It's like, it is bananas and it doesn't make any sense and it doesn't make anybody help. I understand you want to be empathetic and I understand these narratives that the prison system is racist and the justice system is racist and these people never been given a great shake in life. Well, if you want to fix that, start in these impoverished neighborhoods, establish community centers, establish better education, fund that, but don't let hardened criminals back on the street when they— they're habitual. If you've been arrested 40, 50 times, it doesn't seem like you're getting any better, so whatever rehabilitation process they have going on there, that's not working. So keep doing the same thing over and over again, unless you like crime, I don't understand why you would do that.

This has been You know, it's imposed by these so-called experts. They tell, oh, we've done all these studies that show that these soft on crime policies work. But everywhere it's been tried, it's been an absolute disaster. Anywhere in the Western world. We have a town called Penticton. There's one guy who the police can tell by looking at the crime rate whether he's been in jail or not. When he comes out of jail, the crime rate for the entire town of Penticton actually goes up.

That's so crazy.

Just keep them in prison.

That seems so simple to solve. It's like there's so many of these problems with government that it's just like rational thinking is— Exactly. One of the great interviews that I loved about you, you were eating an apple and you were talking to this guy who was being completely ridiculous. You were asking him to define the issues that he had. And it was so funny. It was like, this is what happens when a rational person meets a person with empty narratives.

It was such a weird moment because—

You just kept eating that apple.

It was such a good apple. It was so good. That's the thing. And the thing is, I didn't even realize I was being taped. I thought it was a print interview. Oh, that's hilarious. That's why I think I was so relaxed. So I'm in the most beautiful place in the world. If you haven't been to the Okanagan, it's unbelievable. It's lakes, it's mountains, it's nice dry weather, and there's orchards and vineyards there. You'd love it. And so I'm in an apple orchard, and I'm walking around just talking with people, and my staff says, "This reporter wants to do an interview," and I'm enjoying the apple. He comes up and starts asking questions. Nobody who was there thought this was a moment. Like, we thought nothing of it. We dumped the whole thing. My staff, unbeknownst to me, was recording my whole walk. We dumped this 15-minute video on the internet. No one noticed it. And like 3 weeks later, my phone blows up and people say, "Hey, how about that apple?" I'm like, "What are they talking about? This apple thing?" And then within 3 days, everybody's talking to me about this damn apple that I had almost forgotten about eating.

So it was one of those weird things.

Well, that conversation sort of embodied this issue. It really did, because you have rational thinking and empty narratives colliding, right, while you're eating an apple. Like, you're so casual about it, you're actually eating an apple, which was so perfect. I mean, you couldn't— if you planned on, like, if you had a PR team, I think you should be eating an apple. They'd be like, ooh, I like it. So he's casual, he's eating fruit, it's healthy.

It was totally coincidence, like out of nowhere, not planned, and not even noticed. Like I said, no one there thought this was going to be a moment. We just like totally forgot about it. Well, it made it in America.

It was viral in America, and we were like, how come that guy's not the prime minister? What the hell's going on?

Well, in the meantime, you can buy Ambrosio apples from the South Okanagan. I'm really plugging a lot of sales for the Canadian economy today.

You know what I found out about Canadian maple syrup. What's that? It is actually a superfood, and it is actually better for you than honey. Is that right? Yeah, it contains a bunch of polyphenols and a bunch of like healthy nutrients. I always thought maple syrup was just a guilty pleasure you poured on pancakes.

No, it's a totally Canadian thing. Really good for you.

So you take it before your workout? No, no, I just watched an Instagram video yesterday. Somebody said it to me, and I was like, what is this?

We'll have to send you a bunch of maple syrup from Canada. Oh, I've got a bunch. I've had a bunch of Canadian maple syrup. We actually have a maple syrup reserve in Canada, like a reserve of excess stockpiles. Like an oil reserve? Well, we don't have an oil reserve. This is something I want to change. I want to have an oil reserve, but I also want to keep the maple syrup reserve because we're Canadians after all. There's nothing more Canadian than that. Well, it's so delicious.

I can't believe it's good for you. Make sure that's true.

Yeah, I mean, in what way?

Is it true? Are there nutrients? Let's put it into Perplexity, our sponsor.

I compared it versus honey. I'll give you what it showed.

Was it saying it's better? Maple syrup and honey are both sugary, but maple syrup is slightly lower in calories, glycemic index, has more minerals like magnes— mag— manganese and calcium, while honey is a bit higher in calories, has a slightly stronger impact on blood sugar. Well, this guy on Instagram was very convincing. I wish I saved it.

I think it's convincing.

I think you should go with it. I'm in it. Yeah, I'm done. Stick with it. Tastes better too.

Yeah, it's the best. Yeah, fantastic. Put that with a little bit of Greek yogurt, you eat your protein. Yeah, that's what I do. Greek yogurt and maple syrup.

Maybe start a trend because everybody uses honey on their yogurt.

No, maple syrup from Canada. It's not from Canada. It's not the real deal.

There's a lot of fake syrup, right?

There's a lot of junk out there. Yeah, when you go to a pancake house and they have that stuff in the little plastic cups, that's garbage crap.

Yeah, you don't want to have that.

It's manufactured crap.

Well, that's the case with honey as well. I had a woman in here once that was a beekeeper, and she was explaining to us that a lot of honey is not actually honey. They water it down with corn syrup.

There's so much shit in our food these days. Yes, I believe in eating clean 100%.

Well, I mean, that was one of the primary factors for me supporting this administration was RFK Jr. in this Make America Healthy Again initiative. 'Cause I think, you know, I had my friend Brigham Buhler yesterday from Ways to Well On, and, you know, we've hammered this many times over and over again, but people need to hear it. We spend more money on healthcare and we're sicker than we've ever been before. And we have more chronic illness and we have more money. None of it makes any sense. It's completely ridiculous. And it's obvious that people are eating the wrong things. And there was so much outrage of him implementing all these healthy choices and trying to get rid of dyes that are illegal in Canada. Like the same cereals that the same factory sells in Canada, they sell with natural dyes, and in America we demand them to be more colorful, so we put poison in them. Really? Yeah.

Is that— no, what are the— what do you think are the dietary habits that are making people in the Western world sick right now? Like, is it the dyes? Is it the sugars? Is it the carbs?

There's a lot of things.

Like, what's getting people?

There's a lot of things. First of all, it's processed foods. Processed foods is an enormous percentage of a lot of Americans' diets. Things with massive amounts of preservatives in them. And that's— that's like, if you want like a general guideline, eat real food. Eat real eggs, real vegetables, real meat, real fish. You'll be healthier. Yeah. As soon as you start having things that can sit on a shelf forever, except things like rice rice and normal beans, things that are dried, that makes sense, they could sit there. But if something can just sit on a shelf for a long period of time and you consume it, how is it just not rotting? Exactly. I'm sure you've seen where they've taken a McDonald's Big Mac and they've just let it sit, taken a cheeseburger in a box and the guy pulls it out like 10 years later, it looks exactly the same. That's not food.

The bacteria didn't want to eat it. They looked at it and they were like, I'm not eating that.

If bacteria doesn't eat it, mold doesn't eat it, that's crazy. Why are you eating it? Like, there's something in it preventing the mold from growing. What is that? Well, that stuff fucks with your gut bacteria. It's terrible for your body and empty calories. And we, we consume an enormous amount of processed food in this country. And if you want to be a healthier person, eat real fruit, eat real food, eat real vegetables, eat real meat. Is that simple? Just that, that would fix 90% of our problems when it comes to people's diets.

And we— when my, my wife once looked at some of the baby formula we had and she said— she looked on it, she said there's no expiry date on this. This never goes bad. That's crazy. That can't be—

that can't be a good thing, right? Meanwhile, breast milk you have to freeze, right? Exactly.

Yeah. So, and then what about on the, like, the fitness side? What do you think we can do I mean, beyond— you've done a lot just talking about it with the size of your audience. You've probably got a lot of people off the couch. But what policies do you think we could push that would get people physically active, working out, moving again? Well, the real important thing is community.

The easiest way to get fit is to get around a bunch of other people that are also involved in the same endeavor. Right? If you have a bunch of friends that are unhappy with the way their life is, like just go walk together. Say, hey guys, let's all go for a walk after dinner together. Let's all decide, like, as a neighborhood to go walk. Just walk for half an hour after your meals. It'll lower your glycemic index. It'll change your body. It'll make you healthier. You'll feel better. It just does so much for you, just movement and activity. And if you're involved with a group of people that are also inclined in the same direction, they're also trying to get better, trying to get fit, then you kind of, you know, you feed off of your atmosphere. People imitate the people that are around them, and you get support from the people that are around them. You know, make it a little healthy competition. You know, who can, you know, do the most exercise, and who can do the most, you know, whatever it is. Like, whether it's a sport, or whether it's a game, or whether it's just something that you enjoy doing that's physically physically taxing slightly.

It doesn't have to be a crazy kettlebell workout or a jiu-jitsu class. Just take a, just take a walk. Just, just, if the world, if the United States or Canada or anybody that's got problems with their health just decided to start walking every day for 20 minutes, it'll change your life. And then add things to it. Add some bodyweight squats, add some push-ups, skip a little rope. Do something. Take a yoga class. It'll change your life. Right. Absolutely. You need activity. The human body has needs. And when it doesn't— those needs are not met and you don't— your biological requirements aren't met, you develop anxiety, you get overweight, your muscles atrophy, your bone density decreases. You can't open up a jar anymore. There's all these problems that can be solved with just simple movement and activity. You don't have to become a fitness nut. You don't have to become a gym rat. You just do something, and that alone. And then change what you eat. Drink more water. Stop drinking soda. Stop drinking so much alcohol. You know, stop eating processed food. If we just slowly but surely get this in people's heads— for the longest time, people didn't think there was anything wrong with eating processed food.

They didn't think there was anything wrong They thought sugar just gave you extra calories, that's it. They didn't realize the catastrophic health consequences of consuming all this sugar, the increase in type 2 diabetes, all these problems that people are having, that people are having because of poor diet.

So what's your theory though on how that, why did that happen? Why did, what caused millions of people to shift their diets away from good, wholesome, real food towards the processed garbage? Well, first of all, marketing, right?

And availability, right? The, the, this— they always say the center of the grocery store is what you should avoid, because the center is all the stuff that doesn't need to be refrigerated, right? Everything on the outskirts, all the vegetables and the fruit, the meats, the milk, that's all the stuff that's healthy because it has to be refrigerated, because if it's not, it goes bad. Things that can just sit on a shelf, but things that sit on a shelf forever, those are the things that are the easiest to profit from because you don't have to worry about storage, you have to worry about refrigeration when you're processing or when you're moving them and transporting them. You know, just education is the most important thing because there's a lot of people that don't know how much their diet impacts them. And then there's also the problems that happen in this country where the sugar industry literally bribed scientists to pass the blame on saturated fat. And pretend that this was the cause of all these heart issues that people were having and all the obesity, that it was just fat. So then people started eating all these seed oil-rich foods like mayonnaise— or excuse me, like margarine and, you know, and corn oil and canola oil.

All this when it's better just to have tallow or butter.

Yes, it's like natural food. Your body knows what to do with it.

And beef is like a superfood. A nice fatty piece of beef, best thing you can eat. It's so good for you. You got iron, you've got fat, you've got protein and creatine. It's all packed in that one superfood. It is.

And people— there's a lot of people that live very healthily off a carnivore diet, and that astounds people. They don't understand it because they've been pushed into this idea. Well, one of the things they did in America that's great is they reversed the food pyramid. Our food pyramid was all grains at the bottom, was all wheat and grains, which is Like, there's nothing wrong with eating that as long as you're being smart about it. You don't eat too much of it. But if that's your primary diet, like, guess what? Your insulin's gonna spike. You're gonna be hungry all the time. You're gonna get fat. It's just not good. Yeah, good to eat.

When I cut the carbs out and I went basically into ketosis, I felt great because instead of having all the ups and downs when my blood sugar was down, when you're in ketosis, you You basically live off your fat stores. Yes, you have like a consistent flow of energy whenever you need it because I've obviously— I've got some here. And, and so I feel lighter. I have to sleep less now. I don't have to sleep as much because I don't— I don't eat the big heavy carbs. I cheat once in a while, but, but the big heavy carbs that your body breaks down, you got to, you got to sleep more to work through all those heavy carbs. So you feel it when you eat them.

I love carbs. I love Italian subs, don't get me wrong. I'm Italian, I love spaghetti, I love pizza, I love Italian subs, I love them, but I eat them sparingly. And when I eat them, I feel it. I feel it, like it's amazing while you're eating it, and then you're like, oh, I got hit with a tranquilizer dart. It's just not good. It's not good for you. If I eat a steak, I feel great. If I eat a steak, I don't feel in any way tired after I'm done. I don't feel exhausted. Like completely full. Also, they have a high satiety rate. Like, if you eat just steak, you're only gonna eat what you need. Like, this— your body knows when to stop. But if there's mashed potatoes next to the steak and spaghetti next to the steak and bread and all these other things, you're just gonna keep eating. Exactly. Cake and butter and ice— not butter, but like cake and ice cream and all this other stuff, you're gonna keep eating and you're gonna consume excess calories. But beef is really expensive now.

Like, it's really hard to put a steak on your plate. These, for the average guy, it's insane. It's twice as expensive as pork in Canada right now.

Well, there's also this dumb narrative that cows are responsible for climate change, which is just absolutely insane. And whoever started promoting that needs to go to jail because it's— you've done a terrible disservice to people, especially regenerative farming that's, you know, actually sequesters carbon.

Absolutely. And it's healthy for you. The farming— the ranchers in my area are fantastic. They produce an incredible product. We've got this— North America has the smallest cattle herd since 1951 this year. That's not very small herd, and that's why it's so hard to get beef. Why is that? I think, I think there's been a demand spike in the last couple of years. Beef prices were low for long, so a lot of ranchers got out of it. I just said, we can't— I can't stay in this this business losing money every year. And then all of a sudden prices started to go up and moods have changed a lot on beef even in the last 3, 4 years. So now they're trying to keep up with the demand. But I'm happy to see the ranchers doing well, but I'd sure like to see middle-class families to be able to afford to have beef again. But my theory on one of the reasons why the marketing has shifted towards all this processed crap, and this goes back to my obsession, which is inflation, because instead of just raising the prices, they downgrade the quality of the food.

They strip out the nutrients and they inject garbage into our food, the companies do, that is ultimately less nutritious, but the price tag doesn't necessarily look like it's changing. So it's one of the more insidious ways that the system is able to charge you to pass inflationary costs on without you seeing it in that, the price tag that's underneath the product.

They also engineer food to be compulsive. Like you're more compulsively going to overeat. Is that right? Yeah, sure. Especially like chips and stuff like that in America.

What country do you think does nutrition the best around the world?

Well, that's a good question. Well, Japan has one of the lowest obesity rates, right? And when you look at, Japanese food, like, what is it? It's like fish and rice and vegetables, and it's— it's— they don't use glyphosate, I don't think. I think— I think the way they process their wheat is very different than ours. You know, we have higher glycemic— we have higher gluten in our wheat because, oh, like, we have more complex glutens in our wheat, so we have higher yield. And then on top of that, they dry all the wheat out with glyphosate at the end, which is fucking terrible for you. And they were trying to ban that in America, but then Trump passed an executive order stopping it. So this is one of the things that Kennedy kind of ran on, is that he wanted to stop the ubiquitous use of glyphosate. Okay. And especially glyphosate, you know, used with wheat to dry it out. So it's not used as an herbicide, it's used to dry out the wheat. At the end so that it doesn't get moldy, which is crazy. You're spraying poison on wheat, and most Americans, if you test them, have glyphosate in their blood, you know.

And the apologists will say, oh, but it's at safe levels. Well, we don't even really know what that means. You were talking about decades and decades of consuming this stuff. That can't be good. I mean, it literally kills plants. It destroys gut bacteria. It can't be good. It would be better when you eat overseas. Like, if I eat pasta or bread in Italy, you feel better. It doesn't kill you like it does in America. It doesn't— like, oh, you don't get that same feeling.

Interesting. I didn't know. I don't know anything about glyphosate, but one of the things I—

Do you guys use glyphosate in Canada? I don't know anything about it.

I feel bad saying that, but I should do my homework on that one.

Well, we have corn that's engineered to survive glyphosate. We have Roundup Ready corn. So that you could spray glyphosate on the corn that kills all the other things that you don't want growing. Okay. But how is that— how can that be good? Like, most Ameri— like, they did a test of California wines, and what was the number? It was like some preposterous number of California wines tested positive for glyphosate. Is that right? In the high 90s, I think. Okay. Which is just nuts.

Yeah, I don't know anything about glyphosate, I have to admit. Well, you've piqued my curiosity.

The problem is, in America, our food system is entirely dependent on it at this point. You know, they want to change it, and so there's a lot of strategies. One of them is they have these machines that use lasers, and these lasers go over a field that actually target the weeds. So instead of spraying poison on them, they just zap these weeds and they can identify the difference between the weed and the crop. Really?

Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah.

The wine was 10 out of 10 tested, but this is good. 10 out of 10. I was looking at the Japanese obesity thing. They have an interesting law that they put in place in 2008 where I believe it says workplaces have to measure people's waists of adults over 40 to find out if they're potentially overweight. Wow, those people don't get fined, the companies get fined. So they have to then provide them counseling, diet advice, exercise guidance. Wow. And they also use a lower BMI than we do. There's— it starts at 25.

It says it's because they have a higher risk in Asian populations for obesity.

Interesting. I wonder why that is. I wonder if that's because a lot of rice consumption. Way lower, 4%. 4 to 6% compared to 42%. Wow, that's crazy. Their obesity rates are 4 to 6%, and we're 42. 42 is nuts. 42 is so crazy.

I gotta find out what the Japanese are doing. My next stop has got to be Tokyo.

Yeah, well, they eat healthy food, you know, and that— but that does make sense. I mean, implementing something like that, it sounds very restrictive, you know. I mean, I don't want to tell a guy he can't have a gut. Like, I have a lot of friends that are fat and I love them to death. I'd like them to be healthy, but I wouldn't, you know, I don't believe you should have that kind of control over people. No, I think you should encourage healthy behavior. I don't think you should mandate it.

Yeah, we need, we need carrots, not sticks. Yeah, carrots, literally, literally. But the system is like, you know, I think the opioid thing, that's an incredible story, really.

That's a horrible story. That's a horrible story. And, you know, the fact that no one's going to to jail for that is infuriating. They should. What they did and what the deception that they used to pretend that that stuff is not addictive, that it's not the same as heroin, is just absolutely atrocious. And the fact that they got away with it and that the Sackler family, just that one family— I don't know if you've ever seen the Netflix docudrama series. Yeah. Painkiller, or was it called Painkiller?

They're the guys from Purdue, right? Purdue Pharma. I think they were Purdue Pharma, if I'm not mistaken.

I mean, how many lives were destroyed by that?

Well, half a million ended in the US. Yeah, at least. And 50,000 in Canada. We lost more people in the last 10 years to opioid overdoses than we lost fighting in the Second World War.

True. Oh my God, that's so crazy.

And we, you know, These companies, I mean, it started in the States with Purdue and a number of others where they basically started lying to the system and paying, they actually paid bonuses to distributors for every overdose they caused. They actually tracked the overdoses and then paid bonuses to distributors because that was an indicator of how successfully they were pushing the drugs onto doctors and pharmacists and the system. It all came out in the court because there was a huge lawsuit and the companies had to pay $50 billion because of an American government lawsuit against them. But they actually paid bonuses for overdose rates. That's insane. It's wild. And they basically, they were very, very strategic. They said, we're going to go to working class neighborhoods where there's huge unemployment. So you know, in the Rust Belt of America where people were out of work and they obviously had some minor industrial injuries and said, you know, this will solve every ache and pain, take OxyContin. And it felt great when they first started taking it. And then it spread into Canada as well. And then it mutated in from OxyContin into fentanyl, which is 100 times more powerful than heroin.

It can stop your lungs in 15 seconds. Absolutely deadly. And we, you know, these companies, these dirtbag companies, should be paying hundreds of billions of dollars to cover the treatment and recovery of the people whose lives have been ruined by this.

Well, it's just insane that they only had to pay a percentage of the amount of money that they profited.

It is insane. They should have gone to jail.

They should have had to pay. First of all, give all the money back. Yeah. I mean, what you did was unbelievably evil. Absolutely. And you were allowed to profit from it, which is crazy. For years. Even the Sackler family, the amount that they got fined was a small percentage of what they actually made.

I don't know how people live with themselves when they do that.

They're sociopaths.

They have to be. They basically got into the entire system, the healthcare system, the medical community, and they pushed these overprescriptions. And then they got this crazy idea that they pushed in places like Portland and Seattle and San Francisco, that the government should start giving out opioids that are safer than the ones that are on the street as an alternative to keep people from having contaminated drugs, which made the problem even worse because the addicts would sell those to kids so that they could buy the harder stuff off the street, and it expanded it even more. So one of the things we're focused on in my plan is massive treatment and recovery programs to get people off drugs. Abstinence-based treatment is incredible. Like, it's very successful, and we're saving lives now in Canada. You get them in, you get them counseling, group therapy treatment, sweat lodges for First Nations peoples. Physical exercise is a big part of it. I went to one treatment center in Saskatchewan, and they actually bought these rusted-out weights weights, and they had the guys like lifting weights, and the bureaucrats are saying, well, why are you spending money on weights?

What does that have to do with it? He says, well, it's been the best thing we had. These guys started to see their biceps grow, and they're like, I want to look like this, and if I take drugs, I'm not going to look like this. So it was one of the best things they did. Then you get them into jobs and treatment, and there's one guy that I met in BC. He was going to kill himself. He drove his car into a brick wall because he was so ruined by his addiction, but he didn't die. He couldn't, he didn't pull it off. So he actually went into treatment, turned his life around, started a business. He's got 6 employees. And now he's going out on the street and like helping, you know, pulling guys off the street and bringing them in and saving their lives. So it's actually a really hopeful ending to the story if we can get to shift all our resources over to treatment and recovery services, which is one of my big objectives.

Are you aware of Ibogaine? No. So former Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is involved in this ibogaine initiative here in Texas. One of the things that they found, he works very closely with veterans and obviously a lot of these guys, they come back from the war, they have PTSD, they have a lot of pain, they get addicted to pills, and then they have an incredibly difficult time getting off of it. There's a treatment called ibogaine, and ibogaine comes from the aboga tree. It's like a natural psychedelic that has no recreational use whatsoever. It's not fun. And it's apparently a brutal 24-hour experience, but it rewires the brain. It stops the pathways of addiction. And just one ibogaine treatment, one session, the amount of people that never go back to using those drugs is in the 80%. Really? When they do two sessions, It's in the '90s. Wow. It's incredible. So they're implementing it here. And Rick Perry, who was like a staunch anti-drug, hardline Republican guy, great guy, but realized from talking to these veterans, maybe you have to have an open mind and look at this. We have this blanket term that we use for drugs and we say, oh, ibogaine's a drug.

You don't want to take drugs. But this psychedelic, this ibogaine, Apparently it, it's like a 24-hour review of your life that in some way, some chemical way, rewires your system and stops the pathways of addiction.

It's like a factory reset.

Yes. Wow. Yes, that's crazy. And so they're starting to implement it here in Texas, and they're gonna use it. So have they studied this?

Have they done— and they've done— is it approved like as a treatment or what?

Well, it's being approved here in Texas. And they're trying to do it in other places. And I know a friend of mine, my friend Ed Clay, he started a center down in Mexico. And the reason why he did it was 'cause he got hooked on pills. He hurt his back, he got hooked on pills, he had to figure out how to get off of it, and he did one ibogaine session, got clean. Really? And was like, I need to educate people and help people with this. This is wild. And we start this system. And, you know, and it's very successful. I know multiple people that have done it. And especially veterans that have done it and had profound changes in their life because of it. That's amazing. Yeah. And again, there's no recreational use for this. There's no chance of abusing it. Okay. It's not fun. Like, to get people to do it twice is very hard. Okay. But even doing it once— but if you do it, it's incredibly effective, much more effective than any other form of therapy. Really?

Yes. Okay. Well, I'll have to look out for that one because we need it. We still have a challenge up in Canada.

I can connect you with Rick Perry. Okay. And he's— him and Brian Hubbard are incredible with their advocacy and the promotion of this. What they've done is really amazing.

Yeah, we gotta get people off these drugs. And, you know, we're doing— we're making some good progress in Canada. Our biggest challenges are just the long-term aftermath of the opioid problem, like you have had down here. But, like, I think we can overcome it. And we have to try some new things in order to get people off these things because they're— because it's— when you're doing fentanyl, it's Russian roulette. It could be— you might not have more than a day to live if you're still taking that stuff. So it's so dangerous.

And it's in everything. It's in so many different street versions of pills that people think are safe, right? Like Xanax. There's like illegal Xanax, like street Xanax, and there's fentanyl in them. People take it and they die, right? Absolutely.

I've met so many mothers, they just come up to me at my rallies and things and they tell me the story and they show me a picture and you say, man, it's a beautiful child, that child looks healthy and smart, and she went to a party and they were handing the shit out.

And there's a high school kid here in town that took a street Adderall and had fentanyl in it and he died. Is that right? Yeah, somebody sold him what he thought was Adderall. Look, that's what killed Prince. That's what killed Tom Petty. Adderall? No, no, fentanyl. They got street drugs from someone, like they're both in pain and they become addicted to the pills, and then they got like a pill from a roadie.

I didn't know that.

And took it and died. I didn't know that.

Petty, did he sing Last Dance?

Last Chance for Mary Jane, yeah. Right, that's really sad. Oh, he sung a bunch of amazing songs. American Girl, I mean, Tom Petty was a legend. And died because of fentanyl. Prince, one of the great musical genius of human history.

And fentanyl got him too. Died from fentanyl.

Unbelievable. He had hip pain. He needed a hip replacement. His hip was blown out and he was in agony all the time. So he started taking pills and then next thing you know, you're hooked. I mean, I've had family members that got hooked on it.

Is that right? Yeah. Did they get through it?

One of them didn't. Yeah, I mean, he hurt his back doing construction started taking pills and now he's a waste.

That's the sad thing. That's the sad thing is it's— they're good people and they're not law-breaking people. They're often— it's folks who work in physically demanding jobs, they get an injury. Exactly. And it's easy to judge, but when you're in excruciating pain and you find something that makes it go away, it's understandable.

Also, if you're not educated in these subjects and you just trust the doctor You go to a doctor and the doctor says you need pain medication, and then all of a sudden you're on it.

It's easy to see how people get locked into that and then they can't break loose.

Well, the pathway to physical addiction is so well known and studied. It's very, very addictive, which is why it's so horrific that they actually promoted the fact that these things are not addictive when they were promoting them.

They knew exactly what they were doing. They were absolute crooks. I'm hoping we get big settlements out of them the way you did down here, and I want to put all that money into treatment and recovery, get people off these drugs and rescue them. I think we can save these lives. The treatment, it works. It's tough. Like, the people who go through it, they say it's— it was the worst experience of my life to go through that withdrawal. But it can be done and you come out stronger on the other side.

It can be done. And I think the most important thing is prevention and education. And letting kids know, like, hey, this is not what you want to get involved with. You want to have a happy, successful life. This is going to stop that. This is going to keep you from having it. This might kill you, and it's definitely going to ruin you.

Yeah, but you're right about fitness though, because when I was young, I, I hung around with a lot of people who got into a lot of trouble, and I could have ended up there. The reason I didn't, frankly, is sports. So I had something else to drive me. So it's one of the reasons why we need to get our young people active in sporting activities when they're in that age group, because if you're not giving them an outlet, then they'll end up down that scary path. Oh, 100%.

And also you realize that if you want to be effective in sports, like, you can't party. Exactly. It's like it'll rob you of your vitality.

Exactly. Of your performance. No, I— when I played hockey and I showed up a few times hungover and I was just shit, like, it was terrible. But, uh, you learn pretty quick that you got to be on your game. So we've got to promote more of the fitness at the, at the, at the youth level as well. And, um, and is that happening here? It's funny, I remember when I came down here as a 16-year-old. I haven't been here in 30 years. We got into town and the people who were hosting us were driving us to their home and we saw the stadium. There's like 20,000 people and it was in Houston. I said, "Is that the Cowboys playing?" And they said, "No, no, that's a high school league." It's like, "Okay." In Canada, we don't have high school leagues with 20,000 people coming out. But, but the sports are so massive here.

Football is gigantic here. It's a religion. Yeah, it's incredible. Crazy. And who do you cheer for, by the way? In Texas? Yeah, for you, you personally. Well, I've got into UT football. Okay. I really love going to the UT games. It's, it's so fun, and it's so— they're so enthusiastic, and they just love it. It's like when you're a part of it, when the touchdowns get scored and everybody's cheering, it's like, it's, it's so contagious, right? It's really amazing. And it's just like the enthusiasm they have for it. It's like, you're like, wow, like, this is a great— these people love this here. Yeah. But I've been to high school football games and it's the same thing, like packed stadiums for high school football games. And you're like, this is nuts, man. These people love their sports.

We're like that for hockey in Canada. Oh yeah. Serious, serious. Like parents are very fixated. And I think, I think it's actually a good thing. Some people say, oh, it's terrible. I think it's great to have parents that are competitive because they're pushing their kids to be better and more excellent. And even if they don't end up as NHL hockey players, it gives them that competitive edge. And I want us to be a more competitive society.

Well, when I was a kid, I worked at the Boston Athletic Club, and one of the people that I— I was a fitness instructor when I was 19. And one of the people that I worked with was Bobby Orr. Oh, really? Yeah, Bobby Orr used to come there and train, and we used to have to help him get on the VersaClimber machine because his body was so wrecked. Really? He had so many surgeries. His knees were so destroyed. He had scars all up and down his knee because he, he had knee surgery back when they were just experimenting, you know. They didn't really know how to fix knees. They just cut you open, screwed things back together again, and then it would blow apart again. And then you'd wind up having another surgery. So he had many, many knee surgeries and he could barely walk.

But he was still doing some kind of physical activity. Oh, yeah.

He was playing racquetball. He was—

How old was he at the time?

This was 1986. So, I mean— Geez, that's like, what, 40 years ago? Uh-huh. Yeah. So he was, you know, he was probably in his 50s, 40s or 50s. He was— but he's— he could barely walk. I mean, his knees didn't straighten out. Really? They were always like slightly bent, and they only bent that much. His range of motion was very small, so you had to help him get on machines. But the nicest guy, right? A legend. Like, you couldn't believe he was really there. Like, right? He would walk into the gym and you're like, oh my god, really? Yeah, I was 19. I never met a famous person, and I was like, that's Bobby Orr? Absolutely. This is nuts. But it also made me realize, like, boy, knee surgery is no joke. Like, this guy was like an incredible athlete, and now he can't even straighten his leg out.

Yeah, it's all temporary. You got to take care of yourself. Yes. Do you, do you have like residual injuries from fighting back in the day?

Yeah, yeah, I've had 3 knee surgeries, 2 reconstructions.

Was that from taekwondo? Yeah, and jiu-jitsu.

One of them, one of my ACL injuries injuries from jiu-jitsu. And what, like, what injuries are the most common in jiu-jitsu? Knees, backs, necks, shoulders. Those are the big ones. Elbows.

Is that because of the arm bars and all that stuff?

Yeah. Not tapping. That's a big one. A lot of guys get hurt just because their ego, because they don't want to tap.

And you don't— you don't strike me as the type of guy who taps very quickly.

Well, when I was younger, I was really stupid and I wasn't into tapping, right? But as I got older, I got a lot smart. Fortunately, I got a lot better, so I wasn't like in a situation where I had to tap a lot, right? If I did, I did. I just tapped. And that's the smart thing to do. And I would tell people, treat it like you're playing basketball. Don't treat it like it's your life or death. The game is life or death. The game is if a guy gets you in an armbar, he's essentially breaking your arm. He breaks your arm, he can kill you, right? That's the game. But don't treat it like that. Treat it like you can tap and keep going. Or you cannot tap and your arm's gonna be destroyed maybe for the rest of your life, right? And I've seen that happen with people where their forearm snaps and they have to have plates in it, and then it's a chronic injury for the rest of their life, right?

Yeah, no, I can imagine that. And what about in taekwondo? Like, you told the story once about how you really clocked a guy. I think it was a wheel kick. Yeah, and that like freaked you out.

That changed my whole outlook on fighting because I realized that could happen to me. And I had knocked people out before, but I'd never knocked anybody out where they didn't get up. Like, usually they get up and they're wobbly, and, you know, they get sat down and the medics take care of them, and, you know, after a while they're walking around. And this guy never got up. And I never really got over that. I never had the same lust for hurting people because it was just— I was young, you know, I was 19. And when you're 19, you think you're invincible, or you don't think about the consequences. I knew I could get hurt. I've been hurt before. I've been kicked really hard and punched really hard before. I knew I was vulnerable, but I didn't think there was going to be anything permanent.

Did the guy ever get out of the hospital? I don't know.

Really? I don't know what happened to him. Well, maybe—

I don't know what happened to him. Maybe he'll hear this show and give you a call and say that he's all right. Oh, no, no.

He probably don't want to talk to me.

Well, your spinning back kick is incredible. I saw you in GSP doing that video where you were showing him how to do the back kick. Yeah. Did he ever use that in a fight? Yeah, he did.

Yeah, he did. He landed it. Yeah, he used it a lot. It's a thing that, like, it— you have to almost grow up doing it, right? You know, unless you're dealing— Jon Jones developed it later in his career.

I saw that. He's a wizard, but he kind of, like, started implementing it, like, sort of 2/3 through his career. Did you teach him how to do that?

No, no, I did not. He worked with a Thai with no coaching. In Albuquerque. Okay. And he just really worked on that one technique specifically when he went up to heavyweight, because the guys would be, first of all, less agile and mobile. And also it was the kind of technique where you could stop a guy with one shot, right? And when your guy's smaller than most heavyweights, which John is, because he was a light heavyweight, so he's fighting at 205 most of his career, and just as a challenge decided to go up to heavyweight. But he's so intelligent, he realized like, I need a one-shot that I could put people away. So he spent hours and hours every week just going over the spinning back kick.

Really? To the body or the head?

Yeah, the body. The body. Yeah. It's like getting hit by a car. Right. So much power in that. Like, a wheel kick to the head is really difficult to develop. That's— it's like a fast-twitch thing that— it's almost like your body has to evolve and grow doing that. To really develop the kind of speed that you could pull it off on a skilled opponent.

And the accuracy, like, to try and time that all, that must be incredible.

I mean, there's freak athletes that could pick it up later in life. There's some people that are just really good at everything. They just have amazing dexterity and coordination. But for most people, you— like, I learned it when I was a kid, so, like, my body matured doing those things. My body matured kicking. And it became a part of, like, just my average, like, normal movement of life.

Right. That's amazing. And the spinning back kick, though, is it typically a body kick? Yes. You throw with that?

Well, you throw— I've thrown it to the face, too, especially a jump spinning back kick to the face. Wow. But the—

Taekwondo, wasn't it really the Koreans that developed so they could actually kick a man off a horse in war? Is that why the kicks are so high?

I don't think so. I think it was just because they were— they're smaller in stature, and they realized that you had to have more powerful kicks. Okay. You know, like, because your legs are always carrying your body around, there's a lot more mass to your muscles in your legs, and there's a lot more force you can generate with your kicks.

Did you ever see the fight between Rick Rufus and that Muay Thai guy?

Oh yeah. Wasn't that incredible? Yeah, that changed kickboxing. We've, we've showed that fight 100 times on this podcast.

It was amazing because it was like Americans versus Thai and—

Well, we didn't really understand leg kicks. Right. Because PKA karate, and I found this out later because of Benny Urquidez, who came on the podcast, he told me that the reason why they didn't allow leg kicks in PKA karate was 'cause of Bill Wallace. So, Bill "Superfoot" Wallace famously had one leg that he kicked with. It was 'cause his other leg, he had a bad knee. Right. And he didn't want anybody kicking his leg. Interesting. So he promoted this idea that only have above-the-waist kicks. Right. And that's what we had in America. Like, that's what Jean-Yves Thériault fought most of his career.

That's right, he did. He fought Rufus himself, actually. Yes. Yeah, yeah, no, that, that, that was incredible because if you looked at the, the art form, Rufus was so much more beautiful to watch than the Thai guy. He came in, he broke the guy's jaw in the first round, I think. He knocked him down a few times. Was it once? Twice.

He knocked him down a couple times, I believe, but it was—

the guy just kept chopping his leg, and then I think he went out in a stretcher because his leg was busted in like 9 places. He didn't know what to do.

He didn't understand it. What was really interesting is his brother Duke became a Muay Thai world champion after that fight.

Was that the— was that the guy who was at the fight commenting after the fight?

Yes, yes, I remember. He was saying it doesn't take—

there's no skill. Yes, I remember that.

He was embarrassed by that later in his life because he became one of the top MMA trainers. Really? Yeah.

And he took on Muay Thai? Yes.

Well, he became a Muay Thai world champion and he developed Rufusport, which is a great gym in Milwaukee, a top gym, developed world champions like Anthony Pettis. So he was, you know, he was a pioneer. It was one of the guys that had to figure it out. And, you know, he spent time in Thailand. They all, they all learned it.

They had to learn because it was the best place in Thailand to go. Is it Phuket? Is it Bangkok?

Like, where are you going? So many good places. Thailand's the real motherland of Muay Thai, obviously. And it's like, you know, Phuket's amazing, Bangkok's amazing. I mean, there's so many amazing gyms that are in Thailand. They're tough.

There's whole strips in Phuket. My wife and I were there on vacation once, and we just stumbled on this whole street. And you could do— there was sort of American-style boxing, there was a CrossFit type thing. Then there was that Tiger Muay Thai and a bunch of other Muay Thai facilities. And then there's like street vendors that were cooking meals specifically for people who are there training. Like you could buy beautiful hard-boiled eggs and avocado and chicken strips. And this is like high protein, just catered to the people who come from around the world to train for like 5, 6 weeks in a clinic.

And there's people that do it just recreationally. My friend Mark, he's a— He's a businessman. He's in his 60s, and he did it. He went over to Thailand. Did he survive? Yeah, he trained. He spars all the time. I saw him the other day, he had a black eye. He's in his 60s. I'm like, what are you doing, man?

So if you were starting from scratch, you wanted to be an MMA— would you do like, you go to Thailand and do like 2 months there and then go to Dagestan to learn how to wrestle? Is that—

that'd be the best combo if you were starting out? If you're a kid, I would say wrestling. Wrestling is number one. Yeah, that's the most important thing to learn, because if a guy can take you down, he could do whatever he wants to. If he could hold you down and beat you up— if you don't know how to wrestle, you can't fight, right? You need at least to learn wrestling, just to understand wrestling takedown defense.

But you did jiu-jitsu later in life, didn't you? Yes, right.

I didn't start jiu-jitsu till I was 29, I think.

Yeah. And who do you like right now? Who do you think is the most interesting fighter to watch these days? Oh, there's so many.

It's impossible to say the most interesting. There's a guy from Spain, Ilia Topuria. Yeah, yeah, I really like Topuria. He's what David Goggins calls uncommon amongst uncommon men. Want some more coffee? No, thank you. I'm good. Thank you. He's a freak. I mean, he's just incredibly talented. Like, weirdly talented. Like, his last 3 fights, he knocked out 3 all-time greats. Holloway. Yeah, Holloway, Alexander, and Charles Oliveira. So that's crazy. Volkanovski, who's like one of the greatest featherweights of all time, knocked him out. Knocked out Max Holloway, another one of the greatest featherweights of all time, right? And then Charles Oliveira, one of the greatest lightweights of all time. He knocks out 3 guys in 3 fights, and there's no one has a resume.

And he's not like— as I understand, he was a Greco-Roman guy for Right. And he became a boxer later on. He's just— How do you describe— How do you describe— Like, so I'm not knowledgeable in this area, but the way he almost looks like he has a Philly shell. Mm-hmm. Is that a Philly shell, what he does with the arm?

It's a little bit of that. Well, he has amazing defense. It's just amazing awareness, and he— pattern recognition, technique. It's— He's like— He's a combination of all things, right? Incredible confidence, incredible intelligence, insane discipline, work ethic, but just great training methods. Like, he does everything right. And then insane confidence. Like, his confidence is insane. He— when he fought Charles Oliveira for the lightweight title, he celebrated his victory the night before. He had a party to celebrate the night before the fight and then went out and knocked knocked Charles out in the first round and said he was going to knock Charles out in the first round.

That's incredible.

One punch, boom.

But you know what impresses me most about him is how he got up after that kick to the head he took.

I know, that was incredible.

Yeah. And you know who else did that was GSP. Remember when GSP took that head kick and he went down but he recovered quickly? And yeah, he was talking to me about how— because I said to him, like in politics, you get hit, you get hit, right? And not, not physically if you're lucky, But you have to be able to get up quickly and react to it. And I asked him, how did you do it? How did you— like, how does your brain go from taking that kind of hit to getting back in the fight and turning it around? And he said he, like, gets two very deep breaths through the nose and then out through the mouth and get some oxygen back into your system and focus your mind. I thought that was an incredible lesson.

Well, I mean, it's all in how you get kicked, because you could just get knocked out.

And then it's over.

There's nothing you could do. If you get shut off, you get shut off. Certain people get shut off. It just— you just get kicked. You get kicked and it kind of glances off of you, or you can get kicked and it just slams right in the side of your neck and the lights go dark.

Right. But if you're— if you're still able to recover and think quickly, it's incredible to have that kind of pre-programming to ready you for a moment like that.

Well, I mean, that's a big part of it. It's what I was talking about, the, the camp that he comes from. I mean, Farasaabi is like one of the most intelligent and one of the most brilliant trainers in the sport. Who's this? Farasaabi. He's the guy from Montreal. Oh, that's TriStar. So he's the guy who trains—

just trains GSP. Oh, GSP. Okay.

Yes. Okay. And I mean, I think that is— that's a big part of why GSP was able to recover. Like, they prepare for everything, right? You know, it's like there's nothing left to chance. Like, he hires people to try to knock George out in training. That was one of the things he did. He would give them more money if they could knock him out. So they would just— so he would be like fully prepared, right, when he was fighting. Like, they leave no stone uncovered.

Don't you have to like budget though, the number of headshots?

Yeah, 100%. But he was pretty confident that George— I mean, it wasn't like he was doing this with a beginner, right? He was doing this with a world champion, one of the greatest of all time. Okay, he, you know, he wanted George to be in danger, you know, so George had to fight like he was gonna fight inside the octagon, right, in danger.

Because Jon Jones said somewhere that he had, like, every time he gets hit hard in, in camp, he said, like, I just— that, that's part of my brain budget that's taken away.

Well, that's why Jon's so smart. He recognized that there's a lot of people that don't think that way. Jon also famously won't take a fight on short notice. Is that right? He wants to be fully prepared for a fighter. Even a guy like when he fought Chael Sonnen, they offered him a Chael Sonnen fight on short notice and he said no. Like, there is not a time— no disrespect to Chael, he's a great fighter— no, there's not a time in this life, in this earth, where Chael Sonnen is gonna beat Jon Jones. It's just not gonna happen. He could have taken that fight on one day's notice and still beat Chael Sonnen. He's that much better than him, but he still wouldn't take it. He's like, no, I want to be fully 100% prepared. That's smart though. Yeah. Also, he hated Chael. And so he wanted to make sure that there was not a chance that Chael could do anything to him that he wouldn't have been able to do if he was trained.

Do these guys hate each other? Sometimes. Is it— but most of them, do they respect or is it depends on the fight?

It really depends. Like when Ilia Topuria fought Charles Oliveira, he actually apologized to him before the fight. Said, I'm sorry it has to be you. I really like you. Kind of crazy. He's got to be careful.

But he hated the people too.

He's hated people he fought too. I mean, there's some people that just rub you the wrong way. There's some people, their strategy is to get inside your head and fuck with you and for you to fight with emotion. Well, he had been with Conor McGregor.

McGregor, he really hated McGregor. He wasn't gonna— almost didn't let go when the tap happened. Oh yeah, yeah. That was something else. Is Conor ever gonna come back, do you think?

Only Conor knows. I mean, if he's going to, he has to do it soon. I mean, I think he's 30— how old is he now? 37?

He's jacked now, eh? Yeah, well, not anymore.

Oh, he came back down? He was on the Mexican supplements for a while. Okay. Because he was trying to recover from his leg break. Right. When he fought Dustin Poirier.

I remember that.

He got on some stuff to try to recover for that. I don't know what he got on, but clearly it helped. He got huge. He got super jacked. The problem with getting super jacked like that is then you get addicted to what got you super jacked, because if you're on steroids, you feel like Superman, you know, you feel like you could just run through walls, right? And you get off of it, and now your endocrine system has to kind of catch up to the fact that you've been giving it exogenous testosterone for all these months and so that takes a long time for you to get back to a normal healthy level. So you feel like shit. It's hard for these guys to get off of steroids, right?

I can imagine you get addicted to being— that's why I've never done it. I don't plan on it.

How old is he? 37, almost 38.

That's getting up there. Yeah. Who's the oldest fighter that's ever been in the Octagon? Like, who's a serious competitor? Probably Randy Couture.

I think Randy won the world title at the World Heavyweight title in his 40s. Wow. Yeah. But Randy didn't even start his mixed martial arts career— I think I was there at his first fight in 1997, and I think he was 34 or 35 before he ever had an MMA fight. He was just an elite wrestler who, you know, made his way into MMA because You know, there's no real professional outlet for actual amateur wrestling.

Did you ever interact with the Gracies? 'Cause I remember way back in, like, I remember MMA, or UFC 2. It was the second one. That was when it really kicked off. 'Cause the first one was a little bit strange. It was that big fat guy whose tooth went flying out. Remember that? But number 2 was the one with Shamrock and Gracie and Dan Severn. Was he in number 2? Dan Severn, the wrestler?

I think he was later.

It might have been 3 or 4. Yeah, but that was kind of the first generation, uh-huh, of big names. Oh, Royce Gracie changed the world. Yeah, with his— he was a slow style though, man. Like, you had to have patience to watch him because he'd sit, he'd just lie on his back and wait, wait, wait.

And then with Dan Severn, he did, because he had to catch him in a triangle, right? He eventually tapped him, and no one even understand what was going on. Like, why does he— he's got his legs wrapped around him. What the hell is going on? And then all of a sudden Dan Severn's tapping out. You're like, I was like, this is crazy. So a man who weighed literally 100 pounds more than him, or close to it, on top of him, and Royce beat him.

Well, Dan Severn didn't appear to have any finishing moves. Like, he was thinking, I got you on your back, I've pinned you, I've won the wrestling match.

He would kind of give you little noogies, knuckle sandwiches.

But then, of course, eventually that anaconda comes in and either chokes you out or takes your arm.

Well, no one understood jiu-jitsu until Royce came around.

And he was his dad, wasn't it? His dad that introduced it to the family? His dad and his uncle.

So it was Carlos Gracie and Helio Gracie who are the real founders of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and then Carlson Gracie. Okay. And those guys were the pioneers, and they were having no-rules fights in the 1930s and '40s.

Wow. Yeah. And did they bring it over from Japan?

Maeda brought it over from Japan, and they taught the Gracies. And then, you know, Helio Gracie famously had a match with Kimura, who was a Japanese judoka who broke Helio's arm with a kimura. And that's how that technique— that's why it's called a kimura. Really? Yeah. In catch wrestling, they call it a double wrist lock. Okay. But we call it a kimura because kimura broke Helio Gracie's arm with this. Helio just refused to tap, and it's like, "Aah!" And eventually it snapped his arm. Wow. That's incredible. They're having these long no-rules fights in Brazil long before— anybody had any idea what MMA was in America. And then Royce's brother, Hickson, who was the best out of all of them, Hickson was fighting people when he was 18 in, like, these big arenas.

Really?

In Brazil, yeah. Unbelievable. And then they—

then I guess Dana White brought it in with UFC and then—

No, it wasn't Dana. It was, uh, there was another organization before Zuffa owned the UFC. And this other organization, they started it with Rorion Gracie. So Rorion Gracie was the guy who founded the UFC. Okay. And originally they were talking about putting like a moat around the cage and having crocodiles in it and shit. They wanted it to be like completely insane because what it was for Rorion— Rorion's a brilliant man. And what for him, what he wanted was to promote jiu-jitsu. And he's like, this is gonna be the best way to open up schools all over the country. And to show this art that my father had created. Right. So they had really taken some of the ground techniques of judo and really refined them to a razor-sharp edge. And also, one of the things that helped a lot was that Ilio was a small man. He was only like 145 pounds. And so he had to use only technique and leverage. He couldn't rely on brute strength. And so it was one of the best— sort of advertisements is to have Royce, who was also fairly small, he's only 175 pounds, beat all these big giant muscle-bound guys with pure technique because they didn't understand what he was doing.

And he was like, this is gonna be brilliant, this is gonna— and it worked. I mean, the, the name Gracie and jiu-jitsu, it's everywhere now.

Like, we even have them in Canada where these, these schools will have the Gracie name, and obviously they have no attachment to Gracie's, you're the Brazilian Gracies, but everybody wants to learn the Gracie style.

They probably do have a, like, Gracie Baja, which is a huge affiliate of gyms. They're all over the country. Okay, they're everywhere.

Are they good?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, there's like— it's very difficult to have a bad jiu-jitsu gym today. Why is that?

Because they're so competitive?

It's too competitive. Okay, there's too many good people. There's too many good gyms. Like, in Austin alone, Austin alone has like 10 amazing jiu-jitsu schools. Is that right? Oh yeah.

Do you go— do you go and roll quite often?

There's a place right up the street, 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu, which is the school that I started with. Okay. In California. Well, I started with the Machado— well, I actually started with Hicks and Gracie. I started— I started with Hicks and Gracie, and then I went to Carlson Gracie, and then I— and that was just because I didn't know there was any difference in the Gracies. And then Carlson Gracie was closer to my house. I'm like, oh, go to this Gracie place, it's closer. This one— I was a white belt, I didn't know anything. And then when they closed, when that gym closed, then I went to Jean-Jacques Machado's. And so I started training there in 1998, and that was, that was in the Valley in California. But then one of Jean-Jacques' black belts, my best friend Eddie Bravo, he started 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu, and then I trained there as well.

Okay. And in Canada, what we see a lot of places where they do Muay Thai and jiu-jitsu, so you get your striking and your grappling all in one Planet here has a Muay Thai program. Oh, is that right? So that's a lot of those—

now a lot of those gyms have that.

You went to your first as a commentator, you did it like for free, didn't you?

No, no, I, I got paid in the early days in the '90s, in 1997, but it wasn't much. I was losing money. But when the UFC was purchased by Zuffa in 2001, that was when I was on Fear Factor, and I met Dana White and I became friends with him. And he asked me as a favor to do commentary on this one show that they had, UFC 37.5. It was on Fox Sports, whatever it was. There was a cable channel. So it was best damn sports show, period, had this UFC show. And he said, would you do me a favor and just do commentary on this one event? Right. And I said, okay, I'll do it for this one. Then he's like, I want you to do it again. And then I was like, okay. I was like, I just wanted to do it for fun. Like, for me, it's like, I like going going to the fights, and I like going with my friends and having a good time. And I did like the first 15 of them for free. I just— they— I knew they were hemorrhaging money, and I didn't need any money.

But you loved it. You loved being there. It was like a kid in a candy store.

Well, also, I was very happy to try to promote this thing because for me it was the ultimate expression of martial arts. Like, we need to find out what's the best style, right? And I had kind of— I had been so engrossed in that world in Japan with Pride and all these other organizations that they had over there.

It's like, what happens if an alligator fights with a tiger? What happens if a lion fights with a bear? We gotta match them up and find out.

Well, it's humans versus humans, so it's just style. Muay Thai versus karate. You don't wanna waste your time doing something that didn't work. And there was a lot of people that wasted their time doing stuff that didn't work. And we didn't really know what that was until the UFC came along. And then we're like, oh. and now the evolution of martial arts from 1993 when the UFC started to 2026. In those years, martial arts have evolved more than they have in the last 30,000 years.

Right. Well, it's like the gap between theory and practice. Yes. And like Bruce Lee, when he— he started with Wing Chun, but he said that a lot of it was just ornamental, and he called it dry land swimming. It's like, you know, you wouldn't actually do that in a fight. And then he got into a lot of contention with the scholars of the art form. It's a very beautiful art form, Wing Chun, but I don't know if it— I can't imagine it works that well.

Well, it is— Wing Chun is effective. There's a lot of techniques.

If you got into a fistfight between like a Muay Thai guy and a Wing Chun guy, who would come out on top?

The Muay Thai guy. Yeah. But it doesn't mean that Wing Chun's not effective, and you could use Wing Chun in Muay Thai, okay, or in an MMA fight. But you have to know everything, right? That's the reality of it. It's like Taekwondo. Like, Taekwondo is not effective by itself in an MMA fight, but if you know MMA and you know Taekwondo, then you could do like what Edson Barboza did to Terry Etim and knock him out with a wheel kick in spectacular fashion.

Like, right, but he's like a big blend, right? Like, yes, some Muay Thai, some karate, some— yes.

That's what MMA is, mixed martial arts. I mean, it's like you take all— and that's Bruce Lee's philosophy, absorb what's useful, right? He was the real first mixed martial artist, and when it was very dangerous to do that, right? Because people hated him. I mean, they would attack him. He would have— he would have to have fights with people because they thought that he was disrespecting their art, right? You know, and he combined Western boxing and wrestling. He learned judo from Gene LeBell. He learned things from everybody. He learned karate, savate. He learned all these different martial arts and was absorbing what's useful and putting his own. So Jeet Kune Do, his style, was really the first mixed martial arts style.

Is that right? Yeah. Do people use it anymore?

Well, yeah, there's Jeet Kune Do schools, sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of what Krav Maga is, the Israeli martial art, is like kind of a combination of things along the way. Same lines of the way Bruce Lee did it.

Is it— is Krav Maga a good, effective martial arts system?

Every martial arts system is effective if you have a great instructor. Okay, right. But on their own, like, the best styles are the really strong styles like jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, wrestling. Those are the best. Western boxing. Those are the best styles on their own.

Okay.

But what Krav Maga is, is a combination of all those styles. And so if you have a great instructor in Krav Maga, yeah, you'll learn great Muay Thai, you'll learn great jiu-jitsu. It's essentially mixed martial arts but with a lot of emphasis on real-world application— street fights, you know, dirty stuff like eye gouging, you know, poking people in the eye, kicking them in the nuts.

Yikes.

Stuff that works. But that's what you like. Well, if you're seeing it in an MMA fight all the time, a guy gets poked in the eyes, like, hey, hang on, and he has to stop. Isn't that against the rules? Punched, and it's against the rules. So this guy's getting punched and kicked. And look, Tom Aspinall, he was in the heavyweight title fight and he got eye poked in the first round. He's had to have 2 surgeries since then on his eyes, and he hasn't been able to fight. They had to stop the fight in the first round from an eye poke. My God, it's very effective. But in Krav Maga, they're like, go for the eyes, bang.

Because in a real-world fight-for-your-life scenario, if you're in a war, I mean, It's for the Israeli military, I think. Exactly. So they have to prepare for unusual situations where you're trying to survive in a situation where your arm has been— your weapon has been removed and you're just trying to fight for your life.

Exactly. Well, just in a situation with hand-to-hand combat, you need to learn how— you need to know every— if a guy takes you down, you can't be lost. Oh, we have to get back up so I can fight. No, you have to be able to fight on the ground. And that's the idea of it. Incorporate jiu-jitsu, incorporate leg kicks, Muay Thai, Western boxing, even Jeet Kune Do techniques, even Wing Chun techniques. Really? There's a lot of hand trapping and things in Wing Chun that can be very effective.

It looks really cool what they do with that wooden dummy. Uh-huh. Yeah, it looks—

exactly. I've never really got into that, but if you do get into that, you'll learn blocking techniques and you'll—

that actually work. Yeah.

Sure, okay, but you— they'll work if you know the other stuff. They won't work if a guy just shoots a double on you and takes you down and starts pounding you. You don't know what to do when you're on the bottom, right? You have to know how to— then this is what really MMA has taught the world. It's like you have to be able to defend yourself everywhere, standing up, on the ground. You have to be effective in all the realms, right? But still, we have a lot of people that are pure specialists that do really well in mixed martial arts. Because they're so good in one area. Like Alex Pereira, who is the middleweight champion, light heavyweight champion, and now he's going up to heavyweight. He's gonna be fighting at the White House card. Alex Pereira is one of the greatest kickboxers of all time, right? He's a two-division world champion and kickboxer, but his style is all kickboxing, but he just developed takedown defense. He can do it all. You can do it all, but he doesn't submit anybody. If you're fighting him, you're gonna get You're gonna get— it's gonna be a stand-up fight unless you could take him down.

He's not gonna try to take you down. He's gonna try to fuck you up. He's gonna try to knock you into another dimension. Thanks for the warning.

I'll try to avoid the guy if I see him on the street.

Yeah, he's terrifying.

Funniest thing I ever saw was there's this video of Jon Jones on the street somewhere, and he bumped into— he was talking and he leaned on some guy's motorcycle. I think he might have been in Asia or something. The guy had no idea who he was. And he started screaming at him. And Jon said, "I'm very, very sorry," and he turned around, he ran away like he was terrified. And it was obviously he wasn't in any danger, but it was so hilarious that this guy had no idea who he was picking a fight with. That's hilarious.

The guy has no idea. His life flashed before his eyes.

But he took it well because he was like, "You know, I don't have anything to prove." Yeah, Jon's not the type of guy that would do anything to—

I mean, also, what a lawsuit.

You know, oh yeah, your hands are weapons.

I mean, his whole body's a weapon. Yeah, but most of those guys are really nice guys in real life. Is that right? Yeah, because they get all their aggression out. They don't have anything to prove. They're not the type of person— they know what they can do. They don't have to prove it to anybody. Well, you should come to Winnipeg.

They have a fight coming up. I think it's in— I think it's in April. It's in April.

UFC? Yeah, yeah. I've avoided UFCs in Canada. Well, come on up. I've avoided it just because of the government, just what was going on as a protest. I was like, this is so Well, we'll come back up and— well, if you win, I'll go up there.

Well, we should get you up before—

you become Prime Minister, I promise I'll do all the UFC events that they have in Canada.

We need you up in Canada to come, come do one of your comedy shows, and it would be great for Canadian tourists.

I used to love going up there. I used to love going to Massey Hall. Yeah, I used to.

Toronto?

Yeah, I love performing there.

I did— you used to do Montreal, and how old were you when you were in Montreal?

Oh, I started, I think the first time I was up there, I was like 25. Such a beautiful city. Yeah. It's gorgeous there. Oh, I love that.

Quebec is lovely.

It's amazing. Beautiful province. Amazing food. Shout out to Joe Beef, one of my favorite restaurants in the world. That's in Montreal.

Yeah. They're, Montreal is a great place and you should come out to the prairies too. Go to the Calgary Stampede. I've heard that's awesome. Oh, it's amazing.

I've been to Edmonton. I've been to Alberta.

Yeah.

Yeah. I performed in Edmonton a few times. And I've hunted in Alberta. Where? Well, my friends John and Jen Rivett, they have a— they have a guide. I mean, they guide people up in northern Alberta. It's all like, you know, black bear hunting. Yeah, so it's like there's a lot of great hunting.

I don't hunt myself, but there's a ton of great hunting and a lot of hunters in Alberta. Oh yeah, well, there's talk about Alberta separating. That won't happen. What was that about? It won't happen. Some people are frustrated, but they, you know, there's some legitimate frustrations, but at the end of the day, Canada's gonna be united, and Albertans, I'm born and raised Alberta, and Albertans are seriously patriotic Canadians. Very patriotic. Yeah, they're great people, hardworking. Some of the nicest people you ever run across. They are great people in Alberta. Hardy. They are hardy people.

It's cold up there. It is cold. You know how to survive.

Exactly, you gotta be tough to survive the cold in Canada, carve a country like we have, you have out of that cold weather on that big open land. But people just keep on going, and Alberta's got a real kind of rugged individualism. Yes. And people love their agriculture. There's great ranches in Alberta, beautiful grasslands in Saskatchewan.

Doesn't Brock Lesnar have a place up there?

I didn't know that. I think Brock Lesnar—

Really? Bought land in Alberta. Really? I think he owns a ranch up there.

Actually, I had heard that from somebody. Yeah. I've never seen it. He fell in love with it.

Well, he's a big hunter as well. Right. He fell in love with it up there because it's just— it's so magnificent, so gorgeous. It's a great country, and the woods are so dense and beautiful, and you got wolves and bears and moose and everything up there. It's amazing country.

The Canadian Rockies are spectacular as well. They're, you know, a worldwide attraction. You know, you go to Lake Louise, it looks like a tropical lake because it's all this runoff from the mountain melt, and you'd think you were in the tropics because It's this turquoise green. That's where I grew up. I love Calgary, I love southern Alberta. That's really my home. And so you gotta come to the Stampede. Greatest outdoor show on earth. A lot of Texans go up for the Stampede. 'Cause it's a rodeo. It's a huge rodeo.

Yeah, people don't think cowboy Canada.

They don't think of that, but yeah. Calgary, they've got some serious cowboys there. No, they really do.

Yeah, look, I love Canada.

I just— If you did your comedy show in Calgary, you'd get a massive turnout. It would be great. Think it over.

I was supposed to be up there before COVID I was supposed to do a show up there for 4/20, for April 20th. I was gonna do it in Vancouver. That's another great city. Every year I would do these 4/20 shows, like these— you know, 4/20 is the marijuana number. And Canada, now you guys have legal marijuana, too. Been legal for 10 years. Which they should have in America. It's so ridiculous. They just recently decided to make it Schedule III. Is it state by state? Yes. Okay. It's legal in a lot of states, but it's still not legal federally. It's goofy. If alcohol is legal, marijuana is far safer. It should be legal. It's ridiculous. It's also a personal freedom thing. Leave people alone. It's like, no one's robbing banks, smoking weed, fucking killing their neighbors. It's crazy. It's like— That's a personal choice thing. It's not heroin. It's not opiates. It's not like— Maybe you shouldn't do it if you have mental health problems, right? But there's a lot of people that just like take a pot gummy and go to bed, and it makes them sleep better. Like, leave them alone. Like, leave people alone.

Let people have a glass of whiskey. Let people have a glass of wine with dinner. Leave them alone. Like, stop coming up with laws where you can impose your values and your morals and your judgments on other people. Let them have— make their own personal— look, if you want to eat a fucking cheeseburger, eat a cheeseburger. You know, if you want to go and have 5 Big Macs, you should be able to. I don't think you should do it, but I don't think there should be a law stopping you. And I think that should apply to a lot of things in life and we'd be a lot better off.

Well, the bottom line is if you cannot trust a man to govern himself, how can you trust him to govern for others? Like if you think that human nature is so flawed that people cannot make decisions for themselves then how could you possibly trust human nature to make decisions for other people, to impose decisions on their lives? And who watches the watchmen? We're constantly told we need to be kind of guided by these people from ivory towers, but who are these angels anyway? They're just human beings like everyone else. So when you give them more power and more— you give them the power to impose their will on people, then that ultimately gets abused. So even— you're right, even when somebody is doing something that I don't agree with, and I would think I think it would be better for all of us if they didn't do it. The mal that is done by giving me the power to impose my decision-making on them is worse than the benefit of trying to direct them towards a better decision. Well said. That's my philosophy.

That's why I like you. Well, that's where I come from. You make a lot of sense.

It's pretty simple. I think all the best things in life are simple. We overcomplicate things. Government is way too complicated. I think we need to get back to the simplicity. The greatest speech in the English language was Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, 271 words. Einstein compressed mass and energy into a 5-character equation. Bruce Lee was an advocate of simplicity. Like simplicity is a virtue and I think we have to get back to simplicity especially in government. It. Simpler, clearer, easier to manage. That's the kind of the philosophical take I pursue.

Well, I appreciate that. I think like that philosophy and that perspective from a leader is what we need in this world, you know.

And well, I think leaders have to have humility because the problem is that if you are an egomaniac and you're in power anywhere in the world, then you're going to want to just continually impose new rules and laws to make yourself bigger. Whereas if you believe in freedom, then you have to be able to say to yourself, "I don't know better for this other person. He knows better what's for him." And it's hard, but politicians have to think that they have to trust the people. But nobody wants to have, "He left people alone," on their gravestone. They want to think, "Oh, he built this." He imposed that. He made this grand initiative that he imposed on the people in order to have a legacy. But my legacy is just to let other people build their legacies in their own lives.

I think the idea of forging a legacy based on controlling people and imposing your will is ludicrous.

Exactly. Yeah. And so—

But the problem is history is littered with people like that.

Absolutely.

Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan. There's so many people that— imposed their will and left a legacy, but is that good?

I don't think it is.

It's also, they're dead. They are, exactly.

It doesn't matter. Nobody walked by one of those magnificent tombs in Petra and said, "Boy, I'd really like to be inside there." Exactly.

What is happening while you're alive is what's really significant and the most impactful thing. Do well. Do good for the people. And I think your message resonates with me. Thank you. If I was a Canadian, I would vote for you 100%.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Well, it's, it's, you know, it's a privilege to do this work and I consider it very humbling and I'm very proud to be Canadian and to take the message of Canada here to our American friends. Well, I'm glad you're here doing that.

And I think this is going to have a big impact. I really hope it moves the needle up in Canada.

Absolutely. And down here, we got to get these tariffs gone. Yeah, get the tariffs gone.

Well, let's work it out, right? Work it out. And if you win, I'm coming up there, I promise.

Well, we're gonna try to get you up there earlier. I'm gonna keep working on you. Okay. And you look at that maple leaf on your new kettlebell every day. Eventually we're gonna work subliminally into your subconscious and get you—

look, like I said, you don't have to sell me on Canada. I love Canada, and I love that gift. So thank you so much. I really appreciate Appreciate it. Thank you for being here. It was awesome. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, buddy.