Raw Truths From The Brink Of Death - Ben Askren - #1116

Welcome back to life, dude. Well, I've been living again for quite a while now. June 28th was actually the day I got to transplant last year. So coming up on a year for that, I believe I woke up on July 2nd or somewhere around there, or, you know, like came to in my own mind. So yeah, it's their process, but I'm here, I'm getting better. And life's pretty good. So one year ago from now, you were really in the shit. Well, I just made a post yesterday because on June 6th, which was two days ago, Saturday, I got inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. And when I went home or moved back to the hotel with my wife, I said, did I get airlifted June 6th last year? So last year on June 6th, I was in Vegas and I went to the first hospital, second hospital, and then we had some friends that came out that were one was a doctor and one was a nurse. And I said, he's not going to make it to this hospital. We need to get him back to Milwaukee. Cause they have a good, uh, it's called CVICU, uh, cardiovascular intensive care unit. And they, they got me a flight. They put me on a plane, uh, took me all the way back. And I said to my wife, well, why was that such a bad day? Cause I don't remember. I was sleeping. And she said, the transport me, they had to fully paralyze my body. Um, and then when I got back to Milwaukee, they put me on ECMO. And with ECMO, there's, I think there's only like a 40% chance you come off ECMO. A lot of people go on it, don't come off it. So, uh, they were hoping I wouldn't have to do that. I did. I couldn't. So June 6th, last year, although I don't remember it, it was quite eventful. And then this year you got to celebrate. So it's, you know, it's full circle for the people who don't know what we're talking about. Could you, could you explain what's happened over the last 12 months? Yeah. Um, well, May, May 28th, last year, uh, 2025, um, I went to the hospital. I actually went down on the day before also May 27th. My back was hurting. Just a bad back pain. I thought it was a back spasm. That was it. You know? And on May 27th, I tested, everything was normal. I did all the vitals. And, and I told my wife, see, I told you I was just a back spasm. And the doctor gave me medicine for a back spasm. And I went back to the hotel. We were at the Bitcoin conference and it got worse. And the medicine did not work at all, which that's never happened. I've had, you know, a handful of other back spasms in my life. And the medicine is really good. They just got worse and worse and worse. And then, you know, I was up most of the night trying to make it feel better. And when I woke up in the morning, I was like, I'm going to die. So sometime in the middle of the night, I'd finally fallen asleep. When I woke up in the morning, it was a little bit later. And she had been videotaping me sleeping. And she had sent it to a few of her doctor friends. And they said, you need to get him to the hospital as soon as you can. So when I woke up. What was, what was happening while you were sleeping? I was like super, like super fast and hard breathing. Right. Um, and so when I woke up, my mom was like, Hey, we're, we're going to the hospital. And I said, dude, you made me go to, you made me go to the hospital. I said, I'll not go back to the hospital. Damn it. Um, you know, I got stuff I want to do today. I don't want to go to the hospital. And she's like, no, you gotta go to the hospital. So eventually they convinced me to go to the hospital. And it was the same place as the day before we went there. And I remember walking in, in the waiting room and then that's it. I don't remember anything. I woke up in July 2nd. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know why I was there. I was asleep for, I want to say it's 30, I think it was 37 days, I believe. So you, you transported from kind of being a bit irritated. That you were back at the same hospital for what you thought might be a back spasm for the second time and your wife being a little bit overbearing. Yes. So now it's July and what the fuck am I? Oh, and I'm in a totally different, I'm in a totally different hospital now. Well, I woke up and it was, uh, you know, I say wake up. I was awake sometimes, but I, uh, to my recollection, I don't, I don't recall any, any of it, nothing. And so when I, when I like wake up the first time, or when I come to some type of cognitive understanding of what's going on. And, um, it was, it was the middle of the night. It was dark. I obviously quickly realized I was in a hospital and I started thinking like, how did I end up here? Why am I here? I didn't remember going in Vegas. It was, how am I here and why am I here? And then I couldn't speak at all. And so I, I don't even recall how it happened, but for some way I, you know, signal to the nurse, like, why am I here, what am I doing? And they told me I had a double lung transplant. And, you know, again, I couldn't talk and it was like, okay, why do I have a double lung transplant? I have, I don't know. I have no idea what, how that would happen. I'm totally healthy. I've never smoked. I've never done anything. Um, and then eventually my wife came in the morning, whatever that, you know, the next morning or whatever, and she had documented everything. So it was like a day by day journal of, you know, June 2nd, this happened, June 4th, this happened and I had to read through it and I was like, oh my God, what, like, how did this ever happen? Um, and yeah, so that was kind of my. Recollection of waking up and kind of figuring out what was going on. So retrospectively, I know that you weren't awake to be able to work out this from a first person view, you go into the waiting room and then what happens from there? Um, well, so I had a staph infection on my elbow. Um, I don't know if you've ever got one or not, but you know, sometimes like I, I, all my life, I've only had to get on an, uh, antibiotic a singular time. Um, you know, you get a cut, you get a little infected, you put some antibacterial on there, you wash, you shower, you clean it up and it goes away. And that was what happened to me. I had a little infection on my elbow. I washed, I showered, I soaked it. I had a bacterial and within a couple of days it was gone. And I didn't think much of it, you know? And then I made no connection, but about four days later, my, my back was started hurting and I thought, okay, this is the back spasm and everyone always said, you would do it differently. And I said, no, I wouldn't. Whoever could guess, oh yeah, my back hurts because my body's eating my lungs from the inside. I was like, no one's ever heard of that. That's totally ridiculous. So the staff got into my blood and it turned into a network called necrotizing pneumonia in which, uh, my body was essentially eating my lungs from the inside out, that was what the back pain was. So I dealt with that for about, uh, I think five days before I ended up in the hospital and then she went, well, it's in the hospital, it was like a really bad, like sepsis and necrotizing pneumonia, um, and yeah, so they, they tried doing all they could to kind of like save my lungs and, and keep me alive. And at some point it became the only way I was going to stay alive was to have a, uh, lung transplant, which, you know, again, I wasn't awake for any of this. Um, and so I believe I was in the Milwaukee hospital for about three weeks before that happened. And then I got the lung transplant and, uh, I think I was still kind of like unconscious for about six more days after that. And then I woke up and there I was. me where do you get lungs that's what i said um i'd like i don't know i actually wrote the donor family the donor family has not responded obviously is it two from the same person yeah yeah but you can't you can't mix and match two lungs oh i actually think you can't no i know you can because i talked to a guy in the hospital about it you know and that's where that's where um you think about life and you think about gratitude and you never want to take anything for granted and i always think about the people i meet in the hospital now uh this is a while ago probably four months ago but i was in for one of my kind of routine checkups and this this guy comes up to me and you know i'm waiting to go inside the you know to meet the doctors and so a lot of the same similar type people in a similar area so he had a lung transplant and you know i think okay i was i was unconscious for 36 days i was in the hospital for i think it was 73 total or something which is quite a long time and it wasn't fun but then this guy was in the hospital for nine months and he was sick and he got a double lung transplant and then almost immediately one of the two lungs rejected i don't know why or how i'm not a medical doctor i can't see what happened and he got a different lung from a different person and he is now living with two new lungs from two different people so i always i would try to reflect on yes my situation was tough but it could always be tougher and at the end of the day i could always not be here so i'm quite grateful for what happened where do they how do the lungs come out it cuts you right i don't know if you guys can see this but right there yeah yeah yeah they split you right in half yeah so they're not taking it from like under they're not reaching under the rib cage and pulling it down are they cracking the rib cage open you know you know what chris i've never had the balls to go look exactly how they do it no way no i don't want to know i don't it's called the well i mean you can go look it up if you want it's called the clam selling clam shell incision is what it's called um i could see exactly where i've been cut i know what it feels like um but no i've never had the balls to uh go look up and see exactly how they open you up i guess i feel like that'll gross me out a little too much yeah maybe maybe i suppose so i guess what's crazy is like they're gonna have they have to reattach it's like it's like basically plumbing it's human plumbing you're like reattaching or human ac ac ducting maybe more accurately it's like oh there's a pipe that comes out of it and it's like oh there's a pipe that comes out of it and it's like oh there's a comes down we got to get rid of this pipe that pipe needs to be reconnected yeah i mean i don't know how again if you haven't done your research you haven't done your research i want to know how when you're removing somebody's lungs i need to know how they keep you breathing because you need keep you fucking going but there's there has to be a moment when there's no lungs or there's a moment there does there's a moment when there's four lungs there's one of two choices they either attach both at the same time and switch one out yeah you know what i don't know the answer to this i should know the answer i do know i'll tell you this is gross they said the doctor did it was the worst lung transplant she's ever seen because so many of my tissue died it had like uh essentially she did like stick like glue to the walls of my ribs and stuff like that but they had to like really scrape all the old lungs off the inside of my chest cavity because they would kind of decomposing inside of you that's that's what she said so she said it was uh it was one of the worst that they'd ever seen uh i don't remember what the time was now because i was half unconscious for a lot of the first time i was awake but she said it took them quite a while to actually clear it out and then you know get the new ones in so you know what i don't know how i was breathing at that point in time do people have any idea where this comes from is it just randomly onsets is it a virus do you get it by yeah being on mats or what well i think i got the original original staph infection but to the point i made earlier like it cleared up and it was no big deal and it wasn't like i had the flu or i was sick or i was coughing or none of these things whatsoever um and you know the kyle bush thing that happened that was a couple weeks back it was weird it was almost to the day of when mine happened the year prior um sounded very very similar to what i what i went through and uh you know i have not grilled the doctor really really hard on why why exactly did this happen how did this happen or or that kind of stuff i guess i woke up and i said well this is my new reality how do i how do i get better so i grilled him a lot on how how do i get better but i haven't grilled him on how did it happen that's really interesting mindset i yeah i guess it's it's really only important for you to understand what happened insofar as it informs what you can do now to improve yeah and uh you know what happened was i think probably something that's extreme extremely rare um you know i guess i could go back and ask him and honestly part of me thinks and and this is just me judging from what my wife said because my wife was obviously awake and talking to them all and she did a great job of kind of trying to connect everyone that could possibly help me um but it was one of those things where they were having a hard time figuring out how i got that sick you know she brought up the cut of my elbow she knew about that but then they were asking all kinds of different questions on well was he doing this or was he doing that like they i think they thought hey this doesn't make sense either you know or also okay so you wake up you come around what next man so the first uh you know what's really funny you think you're you're like fully conscious if you will once i woke up and you know now i look back on the first i don't know we'll say we'll say 10 days to two weeks and i was like holy shit i was out of my mind i mean now i get like there's this one two or three day period where i very vividly remember i do remember some things that for sure happened because i went back and i crossed with people that were there and i said hey did this actually happen but then um like i thought i got transported to this hospital that was on the lake like half a mile from my house and there's no hospital there that didn't exist that was only in my mind for multiple days uh and i know i kept threatening i kept threatening the nurses that i was going to walk home because i was just on the road right i couldn't even walk i couldn't walk you know it's like the thought it's a lie it's a lie from every different direction yeah so you know that the first couple weeks like um you know i think i was on so many drugs i did get off pain meds relatively quick but um it's been the rest of the stuff i was on and then they call it like delirium because you don't sleep enough in the hot you know in the hospital um yeah i had so many wild thoughts um you know positive thing had a lot of friends visiting me so that's like i know some of the things that i thought happened did happen because i said hey were you there when x y or z happened and they said yeah so i had a lot of friends visiting me my wife visited me almost every day my mom visited a lot my dad um yeah just kind of like waking up and figuring out how to do everything again because i couldn't walk i couldn't feed myself you know it's the long list of things you i mean i pretty much couldn't do anything by myself what was the lowest point that your health got to when you woke up was it immediate and was it relatively uphill from there yeah um yeah i didn't really have anything hugely negative i guess right before i woke up so right after a day or two right um so not right before like minute wise um i guess i spiked really bad fever and they didn't know why and that was scary to everyone including my wife uh but what as i woke up um yeah everything was like i guess it moved in a positive direction probably not nearly as fast as i thought um you know a lot of lung transplant patients they're on the list for a long time and their condition is not necessarily like immediately like like eventually it would kill them but it might take many years so they're actually in kind of like a lot better shape than i was where i was like near very near depth i lost like 60 pounds for example of you know muscle while i was yeah muscle uh body weight but mostly muscle uh while i was in the hospital um so when i woke up it did mostly get better there was a lot of things like i don't know if you know what chest tubes are but it took me forever to get my chest tubes out i was the first lung transplant patient you gotta let me go you gotta let me go and then yeah unfortunately i got infected i ended up back in the hospital for two weeks um i don't think of any fault of my own i think it just happened and you know then i got stuck there again for a while but uh yeah it was a process it's been a long time um i didn't start walking on my own for i think it was roughly two months um you know and then even at that point like you know walking on my own meant like i go four steps and i'm holding on to a counter and then i go you know three more steps you know it's like i just don't know how to do it you know three more steps you know it's like i just don't know how to do it you know it's like i just don't know how to do it you know it's like i just don't know how to do it go you know three more steps you know it's like it's not really i'm not like getting around um yeah and there was just a process and it was like once i became more capable it's like okay hey today i want to try to walk for eight minutes walking for eight minutes is my goal and then once i got the hang of that then it's 10 minutes there's 12 minutes and then i you know kind of keep building up and then it's okay now i'm going to try to do some squats which was you know in the beginning i couldn't get myself off the toilet i had to have literally have someone help me get up um yeah so that was the process and uh it's still a process and i'm still trying to get myself off the toilet and i'm still trying to get myself off the toilet and i'm still trying to get myself off the toilet process where i'm i'm actually getting better i feel like still quite a rapid rate and i'm 11 over 11 months out yeah most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance which is why for the last five years i've started pretty much every morning with element element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't this orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet salty orangey nectar and i really tell the difference when i take it versus when i don't it plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue helps to optimize brain health and regulate your appetite while also curbing cravings best of all there are no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration so you can buy it and try it for as long as you want and if you don't like it for any reason i'll just give you your money back plus they offer free shipping in the u.s right now you can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink lmnt.com slash modern wisdom the that's drink lmnt.com slash modern wisdom what was your main emotion when you came back around once you were a little bit less delirious yeah probably flabbergast and i still think about sometimes still i wake up and think about like how did that happen like i have a lung transplant like i never smoked anything in my life like how does someone like me end up with a lung transplant so i think like uh that would probably be the main emotion of like how did this happen this is nuts um and then probably the second one after that would be like okay what have i got to do because again this is my new reality i can't change it so i might as well make the best of it so what is it that i need to do and i've probably spent you know i can't tell you how many hours since i spent 11 months researching what do i do about this problem what do i do about that problem and just kind of like heavy heavy chat gpt user for real chat gpt if you ask my question uh you get a lot of information and then i usually use the information i get a lot of information and i bounce off my doctor and i say hey here's what i'm gathering what do you think about this then jet seat gpt is right i don't know probably say 70 80 percent of time like it's pretty good you know there's a few things where it kind of really gets it wrong um so i always obviously cross cross-reference first okay so i you know the flabbergasted thing's so funny i've got this i've always had this thought in my mind like i've come off a moped in bali i've been in a sort of shock kinetic incident or whatever and you're right one of the main emotions is surprise like this isn't this can't be this can't be happening and i was thinking to myself i wonder how many people have died you know from from something horrendous or accidental someone got shot you know crossfire somebody got shot yeah and they just feel the thing go through them and they look down and they're like have i been oh surely i haven't been and that's it and your last thought isn't yeah you know the the movie lying on the ground looking up telling your last rights explaining your insights from like it's just did i get fucking shot holy shit and then it's done and it's the same with you the the main insight the main amount was it you come back around and were you fearing for your do you see the the beauty of existence it's i i was largely uh fucking surprised That was my main sensation. - I would say that, you know how like why am i here how did this happen and surprising it and uh that was kind of like me piecing it together for the first you know handful of days and then the other one was what happened while i was asleep right like i've been asleep for 37 days what's the bitcoin price that please what's the bitcoin it was it was good at that point in time i actually missed a whole bunch of really really important wrestling events in uh late may and early june uh you know so they were you know catching up on all that because i was not awake for a single day of june um and then you know going through the kind of order of events of what happened to me and and you know there was a bunch of really amazing things like um there's so many people supported um either through prayer or helping my family in some ways you perform or meals because you know my wife is then obviously there's not a father in the household because i'm in the hospital uh my wife is spending a large portion of her time at the hospital with me um so you know my kids are all on summer break it's not even like they go to school so you know who's going to take care of them who can help out with them so usually my wife my mom my dad would kind of like uh alternate who's at the hospital but then we had a whole bunch of friends and family helping out with our kids and stuff and uh we tried to keep it as normal as possible for them you know you don't want them at home thinking every day hey my dad i die like you don't want that so we you know we tried to tell him hey well not i didn't do shit um my wife i tell him hey he's sick and he's at the hospital and you know kind of leave it a little bit vague and open-ended like that so i guess you know you look across at somebody that's had a career as an athlete that's over overcome lots of challenges and difficulty in training sessions from being a kid to being a teenager to a young athlete to a veteran athlete in all these different sports and wrestling and mma and boxing how much of that were you able to draw on when it came to recovery and resilience all of it 100 i mean um you know because the main thing is i mean it's been i said it's been 11 months i probably felt really good for for a handful of those days you know like you know even today uh i'll just say today i'm 11 months out i'm having a pretty good day but you know for a while before the show actually um you know it was like i was like my breathing just wasn't as good sometimes i don't know if it's the allergies or i don't know what the issue it just feels weird sometimes you know um and then obviously earlier on it was it was a lot more things than that it wasn't wasn't only that so the amount of days i've felt really good since then has been very limited and so it's you know even on the days where you don't feel good are you going to get up and do something because you just sit on the couch you're you're not going to get better and so even on the days you don't feel good maybe you're not going to do as much as you had planned but you're still going to do something and that's kind of you know where where i was at for a long time and you know now it's like i feel mostly pretty good there's you know that'll be a little something here and there pretty much every single day but it's like okay well if i don't feel good at 10 a.m i'm gonna go get my workout at 2 p.m or you know like i'm gonna but i am gonna work out i'm gonna train and i'm gonna do my breathing exercises and i'm gonna you know this handful of other medical things that i do i'm gonna do them every day i'm not gonna miss it um so i've been very disciplined and regimented in that and obviously that came from my life as an athlete uh being very disciplined very regimented in that uh it just crossed over kind of exactly what did your weight get down to what was the smallest the lowest weight the lowest was 138 so it's like skin and bones and what did you fight at i fought at 170 but i was uh i got i'll be i got the trt so i got a little bit bigger my normal walking weight was probably uh you know when when i was fighting 185 ish plus or minus a few pounds and then as i retired i was probably 195 ish somewhere somewhere in there so that's part of 50 best part of 50 yeah yeah so uh yeah quite quite quite the drawdown to weight um and it was just like i said i mean i don't i don't think my wife has pictures skin skin and bones really is kind of what i was is that because you're not moving and not consuming any calories other than what they need to keep you alive is that why um i i think they're not moving well i you know i've never looked all the way to this i got some good guesses number one you're not moving i mean i told you like they literally paralyzed me but there was other times when um i would wake up and i would just like i don't recall this but i would not be happy about that if i um stuff all of my arms you know i try to like move and then that would uh spike my heart rate and then that would cause my breathing capacity and i remember my uh what is it called oxygenation or whatever that's a drop right and that was really problematic so i guess for a while they even have me strapped down so i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm so i couldn't really move at all um yeah so that was kind of the that was kind of the deal with that so uh and then i do believe prednisone which i'm still on and so i don't feel for the rest of my life probably unfortunately um i believe that has some uh some capacity of where it eats your muscles a little bit what's that do that's a prednisone yeah it's something i don't know exactly which part of the immunosuppression it is but it's an immunosuppressant so with the with a transplant patient um your body will see the uh transplanted organ as a foreign body and it will attack it so they need to essentially tamp down your immune system kind of permanently which is why flight for you and being in different places is more dangerous because you don't have an immune so if you had an immune system that could protect you from getting sick it would also be the same immune system that would attack your new lungs yep 100 so i you know i try to stay out of areas where there's a lot of people where i don't like have control of the area or what my surroundings are unfortunately i wear a mask a lot which is you know that's kind of covid again baby i make fun of the mask people for sure and i'm a mask person yes that's that's no good um yeah yeah but it is getting better i'm i'm coming down like uh the levels of immunosuppression you're on as you get further out and you get healthier they do come down quite a bit so you you kind of hit a bounce back so i've gotten the you know for example last year on my you guys have posaconazole and tacrolimus i mean that's fun talking about medicine but i come down on those a little bit so uh that means you know my energy and my indiscretion go up and i think uh you know but my year anniversary is coming up in about three weeks and i'll probably i'll hopefully get put out even a little more potentially unreal okay what um i'm interested in what matters to you more or less now than it did before yeah um you know what i i i said this uh you know if i would have died uh when i went to the hospital nurse i walked in hospital i don't remember anything if i would have died there which i came pretty close to um i had a great life like i really got to do what i love for uh for a living and coaching wrestling around the wrestling academies i think it's very meaningful work and that you're helping the next generation of young person not only get better wrestling but get better at life um i love my wife i have a great family so i was really lucky in that i was it didn't take me to die to figure out that whole i have a bunch of misguided priorities like i think my priorities were were pretty good i was pretty you know reflectively because i can reflect on hey if i would have died what do i think about what i had done to that point um so i felt really good about that i do think i became maybe um more patient um have more gratitude for sure and that's the i don't think i was a category maybe i was lacking in prior but i think maybe more i feel even more strongly um i became a christian which uh i would say prior i was kind of christian adjacent like i went to church for 16 years or so but just you know it didn't kind of click all the way um so that would be you know a probably a big change i would say so kind of those things but i was i was proud of the life i was living prior to this and i think all the positive things that just been kind of uh ramped up and i think i guess i think one other one that i would mention there is you know i invested in some businesses um and i like all the people who are running them but it if it took my time even if it was just hey i meet i meet with the founder once a month or whatever if it took my time and i wasn't like passionate about it i said i asked a few different people like hey can i get out like i'll make a deal whatever you know whatever you feel is fair give me what's fair and i just i just want to take a few more things and i'm like okay i'm going to off of my plate um and i i kind of feel strongly about that you know i get some offers to do things now and i'm just like is this what i really really really 100% want to do with my life is this worth the time with my kids and my family and if the answer is no then i generally choose not to do it have you seen peaky blinders the series no i haven't but i know bunch of my wrestlers are really big fans of it so i've heard references but i've never watched it really cool bbc series and uh in it the main guy and his brother they nearly die at the battle of the psalm in world war one and the i think they're called clay kickers so they dig tunnels to try and get into the enemy uh trench from underneath as opposed to going over the top and sometimes they the two tunnels cross over each other and then they have fights inside of the fucking tunnels it's crazy and um that's crazy he uh him and his brother basically nearly died at the battle of the psalm and they've got this line where they they sort of turn to each other and say everything after that was extra everything after that was extra and it kind of sounds like that's how you see this period now that i was i was happy i mean i didn't want to die it would have been optimal for me to have not died and i'm glad that i didn't but had i have done i'd lived a pretty good life up until then but even though i'd lived a pretty good life there's still some adjustments that i want to make in order to learn the lessons about prioritizing my time and what i was going to miss most now that i've got now that this is extra yeah no uh yeah that's true that's pretty accurate with uh with how i feel and how i view it and i want to make the most of the extra and you know what the statistics on lung transplants now i don't necessarily know that they apply to me for a variety of reasons which we can go go through if you'd like to it's kind of boring but uh the median life expectancy is only six and a half years uh which isn't long um i don't think that's going to apply to me fully because a lot of them are older unhealthy people an ex-professional athlete who didn't get it because he was smoking and was like in the midst of some of the best fucking health of his life yes yeah so you see you get it so uh they actually the longest living person at post double lung transplant is 38 years so that's kind of my goal uh it's 39 at least 39 um but yeah everything now is extra and it's kind of reformatted me so the number one thing i i love to do is my brother and i have wrestling academies um we have nine of them now in the city of wisconsin but the very favorite part of that is actually coaching the athletes um and so you know that's the thing i want to spend the most time on uh from a work perspective um and then obviously you know with my my family and doing that type of thing and it's one of those that was weird because i never really thought twice about but you know part of the wrestling academy thing is you travel on a lot of weekends sometimes to go coach kids and i i honestly it's this weird thing because i love it and i miss it a lot and um but then it's like well i realized how much i was kind of missing at home or when my wife had to be a you know essentially a single mother if i go to a big tournament now it's not saying i'm never going to do that again i am going to do it i'll probably just do it a little bit less than i had previously um so to make sure i'm around for more my kids stuff and then obviously now my daughter's 13 and she really likes wrestling so there's gonna be a probably a good opportunity for me to spend a bunch of time with her too bad um but yeah so definitely not going to waste my time on things that that i don't love and that i'm not really passionate about um and that's kind of probably the biggest thing this episode is brought to you by gym shock if you're going to spend an hour in the gym you might as well look hot and feel comfortable while you're doing it gym shock makes the best men's and women's training gear on the planet and here is something i realized a few years into training when you actually like what you're wearing in the gym you show up differently you train harder you stay longer you get way more high fives their hybrid shorts are unreal they're the perfect length they're sleeveless t-shirts are basically what i've trained in every day for a year now they're the ideal fit they're breathable and they hold their shape perfectly so no more looking like adam sandler's your stylist basically everything they sell is unbelievable well designed high quality and you get 30 day free returns globally with global shipping plus a 10 discount site wide right now you can get 10 off everything by going to the link in the description below heading to gym.sh modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom 10 at checkout that's gym.sh modern wisdom 10 is your definition of success changed since that um you know i would think about this a lot actually because i don't know if you saw or heard but i'm i'm wrestling next month um and the reason i was wrestling was they told me so i actually worked for raf and it's going tremendously well and one of my life goals and this is something where it's like i'm not going to work for raf forever um because it's not the one thing i want to do but one of my life goals was to start a legitimate professional wrestling organization in america that could run on its own and give athletes the opportunity to compete as professionals raf is doing freaking amazing job i mean they're they're doing better i should say we are doing better than i ever could imagine this quickly it's fascinating um but when they told me they're coming to my hometown on my birthday something i'm right it's like okay i gotta get out there and i gotta i gotta make it happen um and so that's kind of been a really big driver for me and a big part of it is me helping other people and i listen i get messages pretty much every single day on instagram at this point of hey your journey has inspired me um and i think i was giving sorry i'm giving a very long-winded answer but i think that's okay on this podcast so your journey inspired me i've been saying the same things for 15 years but i think you know when i'm on tops right so i'm winning mma titles and um we got the best wrestling academy in america i think people it resonates with people one way and then they see you dying and on your deathbed and trying to climb out of this hole and you're saying the exact same things i think it resonates and motivates in a different type of way not this guy doesn't just talk about this guy is about it right he he understands what is what adversity is he understands what hardship is that when he had met adversity and hardship he reacted the exact same way that he said he would so i'm not just talking about it i am about it um so me being able to climb my way out of this hole and live a i will say relatively normal life you know it's never gonna be all the way back to normal but as close to normal as possible um i think that's very inspiring for people and uh the so then my thought on that was uh i don't know how you feel about this guy he's very controversial but rfk um if he comes up or comes down to him um i've been to dinner with him he was a nice guy like he's got some he's got some wacky beliefs but he's also managed to get the food pyramid to be the right way around for the first time in history you know it's it's the same as everybody so i would think well one of the things i think about him is this guy has an immense amount of courage and fearlessness and i say this to people i say think about if you grew up and you watched your father be murdered and you watched your uncle be murdered and you still had the courage to put yourself in the light of fire right because there's a lot of people who don't like him right now and you watch that happen your your uncle and you're still willing to have the courage to do that that that's amazing i don't i don't care what you think about the rest of what he says that is that's very powerful and he always references uh sisyphus right where the guy rolls the bullet he'll only for it to roll down every single day and then he starts over and then you know the kind of message of it to me is that there's something very powerful and just showing up and having a great attitude and working hard every single day even if you're maybe not going to get the fruits of your labor at the end of it right because every day the boulder rolls back down and he shows up and he works again every single day and for most people um they're not going to end up without any fruits of their labor right uh so you know they roll the boulder up the hill it's generally going to go somewhere and they may not get every single thing they want in life but they're gonna if you do that you wake up with a great attitude you work pretty hard every day you're gonna end up with a pretty good life that you're pretty proud of um so i think about that a lot why do you think wrestling produces such mentally tough people compared to a lot of other sports uh i think it's the best uh i think it's uh i speak on this topic a lot and i may be biased because i run wrestling academies but i think there is no greater impact on a child's life uh than wrestling i think it wrestling is a microcosm of life um i think there's a few qualities that maybe you don't get from wrestling but most of them you do um and that is you are going to have hardship you are going to have sacrifice if you're going to lead any type of meaningful life it's not going to be sunshine and rainbows the entire time and so um you know going to wrestling it's a level of humility uh because you're never gonna be the best one in the room and and if you're the best one in that room you're gonna go find another room that you're not the best in and it's not like hey you're not the best go sit on the bench and go watch everyone else it's like no you're not the best now you're gonna get your face rubbed in the mouth by someone who's better than you and they're gonna force you to be humble um so i think you know uh hard work discipline perseverance because you're inevitably going to get knocked down at times of hardship and adversity um uh self-reliance is a big one it's it's only you out there there's no one else to save you there's no team there's no nothing else humility uh i did i think all these qualities uh can make a really really well-rounded human being yeah i i mean i look at a lot of other combat sports a lot of other sports in general and everybody learns something especially the consistency the routine but maybe it's a selection effect maybe it's just that the sorts of parents that put their kids in or the sorts of young guys and girls that decide that they're going to go into wrestling they just whatever it is about making that decision select for a particular cohort of people that are kind of stubborn and routinized and insane but i don't know there's a look at look even the ufc which is uh you know i can speak to that for sure i'll tell i'll tell you on that one for sure because i obviously trained at a mixed martial arts gym for a long time uh and we run wrestling academy the expectation of the parent coming into those two different places is totally different right so the expectation of a parent coming into asking wrestling academy is hey i want my kid to learn how to wrestle i want them to learn some discipline and some hard work and get a little tougher and you know what if they do really well maybe they'll win a state title or get a college scholarship or something to that effect and in an mma gym So many times I thought, oh, my kid, he's really tough and scrappy. He's going to be the next star player. on TV and make a whole bunch of money. Um, and so right to the expectation of the two different parents doing the two different things is, is immense. Um, and I, I think that's probably, uh, a big part of this, what I would guess. What would be your advice to a parent hoping to make their child's fame and fortune by getting them to do MMA? That is about the worst job you get. I mean, I tell, I tell everyone that MMA is, is an awful job. Um, you do it, you do it in my, this is my estimation. I did it because I wanted to fight people because I like fighting people because I love the combat. That's why I did it. But if I wanted to have a real profession and real job, I for sure would have done something else. Um, I always walk through someone. If you say, Chris came to me and said, Hey Ben, I want to be an MMA fighter. What do you think about that? I say, number one, dumb. Here's why Chris, you're going to start training. You're probably not gonna take a fight for a year. Okay, good. Then you take an amateur fight. Your amateur fight says it's going to take you probably two years to get through. Okay. Once you become a pro, now you're going to have to say two to three years of low level, uh, professional fight. Okay. That's six years goes perfect. Now you're going to sign to USC and your first year in the UFC. If you win all your fights, this is, this is seven years of perfection. Nothing went wrong in seven years. You're going to make like $80,000. Okay. But of the $8,000, you got to pay your gym. You got to pay your manager. You got to pay taxes. So you're, you're walking home with, I don't know, 35, $40,000 at that point. Well, if you don't live in California, you're in California. I'm like $27,000. That's not a good job. Um, so, you know, I've, I've only ever recommended two people and it's relatively well for them because I saw they had a small amygdala and it was a little different. They wanted to fight people. How, how much of your success do you think came from talent? Zero. I don't believe it exists. You don't believe that talent exists. I do not. And this is, you know what? This is hilarious. I'm thankful. My wife, my wife is off. You know, we're doing, we're in Kansas city. We came here after I got inducted all fame in Oklahoma and Kansas city. My wife is a hundred and four year old grandfather. So we're visiting him. Uh, so they're actually playing bingo with him right now. My wife, my kids. Fantastic. I know. Great. Right. Um, yeah. So I, my main argument in my life is, is the talent one. I don't, I do not think it exists. I think obviously human bodies have predispositions to certain things and there are certain sports which are very, very predisposed. But, uh, when I think about talent, I think of the ability to do a complex task really, really well. I don't think you could do a complex task really, really well without a high level of training. Um, and one of the things before we argue this, I don't know if you're arguing or not, but one of the things I always argue prior is if we were to test talent, we would need to test talent out of the womb. When they pop out of their mom, we need to test it because I always say, Hey, if I give you two kids coming to ask, the rest of the Academy, one kid has been sitting on a couch playing video games. His parents feeding him snacks all day, never teaching him discipline. He's a roly poly. Listen, he needs some wrestling. We're going to take care of him. We're going to give him what he needs, but he's starting way over there. If you have another seven year old who's never wrestled, they both, both of their records, but he's got older brothers. They try to beat him up. He, his parents live a very active lifestyle. They're outside, they're hiking, they climb in trees. He's biking. He's playing games with his brother. He's not sitting inside. They have healthy nutritious food. These are two seven year olds. Neither of them ever wrestled, but they are worlds apart right now from, from jump, you know? So that's kind of how I like to think about it. So we can debate if you'd like to. No, I look, I, I think that especially in the sport of wrestling, perhaps something that you begin with so early on in life, I mean, look, some people are literally built differently to others. Some people will respond to training in different sorts of ways. When you really start to, ask what is involved in talent. And if you were to think about something like desire to train as a kind of talent, some people just really like wrestling. They enjoy the idea of that. Other people might enjoy something really short. They might enjoy something that's less aggressive, right? They might be a world champion, a classical musicianist, right? Classical pianist or violinist or something like that. Uh, I don't think that if you just give those two people, even with their desire to work hard and their stubbornness and all the rest of this, if you don't have the desire, so it's an interesting question is desire to train part of talent, right? So people have a disposition. I would say, I would say yes, I say yes. That's been that, that, that argument's been proven by, uh, the sled dogs. Do you know this one? No, the, the Iditarod sled dogs, uh, right. That they run that big race route across Alaska. Um, so they, they breed, obviously breed the dogs and the dogs that they can have a baby like every year or something. So they don't breed the fastest ones and they don't breed the strongest one. They breed the ones with the most desire to keep running. And so to your point, there's, but so, and so what I would say, what I would say to that is it ends again, like a hundred meter dash or something that's a really, really simple skill. Like that is not a very complex path, but a complex path, there's likely a multitude of things that it's going to take to be world-class at that. So you're going to have to have, you know, work ethic, perseverance, the desire to work to your point, um, by some level of intellect helps some level of hand-eye coordination helps. Like the, you know, there's just going to be this really large basket of, Hey, you need a X amount of this skill set, but which ones do you need? Like in wrestling, for example, um, I was incredibly slow twitch muscle fiber. My, my fastest ever four year dash was like a five eight. Like I am, I am incredibly slow, but I found a way to make it work. There's also wrestlers who are incredibly explosive and fast to find a way to make that work. Um, so, you know, like of this basket of things that you can have, you may need, I don't, we'll say 20 of 25, but you don't need every one and you can kind of pick and choose from them. Um, so yeah, I, I, I think it's interesting topic. So obviously I would actually, I would say people obviously predisposed to being born differently, but I also think the early period in life is often neglected. There's another one. You guys, you know about the pole guard sisters. Nope. Y'all man, we are. So the pole guard, I've been, let me make sure I'm getting, I'm pretty sure I'm a hundred percent right on this. Uh, let me make sure. So this guy, uh, yep, I'm correct. Okay. So this guy, he said, I don't think talent exists and I'm going to prove it. You know how he's going to prove it. He puts an ad out and he says, I need a wife who wants to help me make babies to be chess champion. And he finds, and he finds the one, right? So he finds the wife to agree to these terms that, okay, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to procreate and then my kids are going to be chess champions. So he see, he, he called his shot. He says it, but before he even has kids, he says, and his, his three girls, I want to say we're the three of the five highest rated players of all time. Wow. So he called him before he appropriated. Jesus Christ. Okay. Well, yeah, if you, if you can pick the pocket before you pop the eight, uh, that's fair play. Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem? I don't consider all that Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of athletic brinco last night. But they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem. Sorry, man. I, I just kept chugging away for the regret to creep in. Never happened. See, most people like Jared don't want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of athletic brinco. They make the best NA brews on the planet. You can find athletic brinco's best-selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you, or, best option, get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped direct to your door right now. Get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom at modernwisdom at checkout near beer terms and conditions apply. Athletic brewing company fit for all times bottoms up. So I'm interested in like looking back at your, um, at your career, you went undefeated for 87 matches in a row. That's my last two years of college. Yes. Yeah. What, what goes through your mind when you're on a streak like that? Like, do you get increasingly more scared of losing it? A pressure sort of over the top of, of things like that. Don't think about it. If you did, if you did, you did, you're going to lose it. Um, you know, so I actually, I wrote two, I've written two books now, uh, with assistance of course, because I am not a great writer. Uh, one about my life, one is about my sports psychology ideas, but my junior senior year, I actually tried writing, um, another book, uh, which is about, so I, so it was about, it was about my first book, right? Never published because I didn't think it turned out good enough. Well, I worked with this sports psychology PhD and one of the things we did, we sent a questionnaire to every division one NCAA champion in the past 50 years. So at that point it was 1956 to oh six was a 50 year window. Um, because I said, you know, I know what I think, but I want more good opinions. So we sent them this, this questionnaire. I think it was like 12 questions. Um, and one of the questions, which was, this was really enlightening to me because at that point I already had one NCAA title. I was going on my second. And one of the questions was, when did you go from good to great? And we were looking for some form of my chaining, short chain training change. I got a new coach. I had a new mindset, just something, something like what made this happen. And you know, when did it happen for you specifically? And it was, really funny because that the question was simple question was we want this and we got something totally different and it was the most it was a question that was answered the most similarly of any questions right so if we got a hard questionnaire 120 questionnaires back you know it's they're all open-ended questions so you're going to get things that are you know across the gamut of what's going on so many of them said your question assumes i was great i never reached greatness but right so they they were all these people who were and if you want to look at wrestling a division one state champion is like in the 99.999th percentile like you know we're talking like one of a hundred thousand there's there's roughly a million people wrestling in america today there's 10 ncaa champions one in a hundred thousand approximately or something so if you're going to label greatness they're clearly in it and they all were saying not at all okay not all a very large percentage saying some form of i'm not great i was never great and so as we read through those answers it it struck me okay well i wouldn't say it's high also by my own definition i would be great i've never even thought about it i never thought i never considered it all i was thinking about was how do i get better how do i beat this next person as badly as possible and so it's one of the things where the i realized the power was in not thinking about it like to just be focused on the task ahead of you as opposed to and you know like one of the things that i i get annoyed about um is if people say what is your legacy that my legacy is not determined by me my my legacy will be determined by what all the other people think about me i'm going to focus on every single day what i think i need to do to get better and what i need to do is for what's best in my life and whatever they want to think of me they think of me so that's kind of how all these people are thinking it's like i've just focused on getting better and i'm not worried about being great as you would call it um and i think that's like really really powerful yeah that's fascinating i i guess the obsession to just be riven by always wanting to improve is exactly why those people are separated out from the pack you could probably ask you know it would be interesting would be to ask people who didn't become uh ncaa champions but were maybe in the top two percent and ask them when they think they became great and they might be more likely to answer oh i became great at this point perhaps the lack of thinking that you're great is what actually induces greatness i mean that's all you i'm sure you've heard the phrase oh man rest in peace my old coach duke group who should say this um if you're if you're green you're growing oh what was this phrase it was essentially if you're green you're growing so if you have a white belt mentality dang i can't believe i just forgot what he said all the time oh my goodness essentially if you're you're green you're growing like if you if you believe you're white belt and you're open to knowledge and learning people you're going to continue to get better but when when you think uh you know it all or you're good enough then you're going to start declining and so you know with our wrestling academy now we've been open for 15 years and especially the early days before we were as influential because now a lot of times we have kids from the time they're real little five six seven years old um but previously we saw certain kids say oh i want a sectional title i'm i don't need to listen to you i'm really good i want a sectional title or i want a state title i'm really really good when you know we're talking about state title then state champion these are these are they're these are the things that we agree with once people think they made it or they think they know everything or know enough or they can't be helped uh then generally there's uh some type of either plateauing feature or decline that happens uh in their skill ability people i think even have a sense of this when they look at the trajectory of a any any person that's on a pursuit's life the difference between being someone who has fallen off and someone that never made it is kind of fascinating to me there's a obviously the person who fell off by virtue of having fallen it means that at some point they were up pretty high yeah there is a kind of additional disparagement of oh you had it and you lost it as opposed to you never even got it even though like objectively you did better but we're so seduced and we are we're so enamored and enthralled by the prospect of momentum and and potential that if the direction of travel is declining it's going from you were great to now you're less great than you were as opposed to you were average and then you became better than average and then you kind of stopped like yeah in some ways yeah the the person who never made it but didn't get chance to fall off is in a preferable position sometimes man that that's one where i would just say you i'd ignore everyone else um because i agree you know so many times people you've sort of washed up to your point that means at some point they had to be significantly better than they currently are but times undefeated no one's been great forever and so uh you know i i did retire i retired for the first time in 2017 i never got to fight the better guys so i said if i ever do i'll come back out of retirement i unretired 2018 then i've hit issues so i retired relatively quickly again after that um but i always you know you know if someone wants to continue fighting which uh listen i'm not fighting in a very tough sport so let's go to football if a aaron rogers or tom brady if they want to continue to compete like what's wrong with them continue to try to yeah they're not going to be as good at 43 as they were at 28 or 32 or something obviously but who cares like they're still they're still elite enough to be in one of the top 32 positions in the nfb right that you got to be top 32 quarterbacks to play on the field although if you're not you're not going to be on the field um so i that's something that's like well that's an opinion of other people and if you want to keep playing football or whatever sport it is where you're doing then by all means like that matter yeah well i kind of on that i suppose you wouldn't nearly and you you were undefeated for almost a decade right pretty much almost a decade but many casual fans remember you for one five second knockout yeah what's that taught you about reputation i ignored it in the first place then i could see you ignore it so um yeah i just never i never thought too much about it i mean for me i love to compete and i wanted to prove i was the best and that's why i you know i retired and i said the only one coming back out is i get to fight someone ranked higher than me so um you know i when i was fighting through the bellator and one championship days um i fought a fair amount of highly ranked guy jay haran was fairly highly ranked i fought him that was lima um there was kind of a handful but i never got to fight anyone who was in the top five and so i was like i think i got stuck at six so when i came out you know i retired i said well i don't want to fight someone better than me i don't want to fight anyone that's worse than me because i want to try to prove i'm number one and so you know right away it was robbie waller who was i don't know if he's number two or number three in the world at that point in time but yeah and that was one where i think a lot of people and some people did advise me well don't do this if you lose people will think differently about you and i said i don't give a damn what people think about me i never started mma to care about what people thought about me i started mma to see if i could be the best in the world at it and that's what i that's what i want to do and that's what i'm going to do and i wasn't i didn't get there i got pretty freaking close um but no i'm not ashamed about that at all i kind of been as i was thinking watching your journey seeing that first video you posted which was like inspiring and harrowing in equal parts you have this opportunity for your life to be defined by a variety of different situations you had the opportunity for your career to be defined by being a ncaa champion in 87 undefeated fights in a row you had the opportunity to be defined by being only the sixth best in the world in one championship and not pivoting onto something else you had the opportunity to be defined by the fastest knockout the opportunity to be defined by boxing jake paul the opportunity now to be defined by being the guy that overcame death and got two new lungs and then went back and wrestled within the space of only a year each of these junctures you the world is sort of offering you this opportunity to make your life about a thing and i it seems to me like you're continuing to like stick your middle finger up at the handshake yeah that's that's that's how life is about like legacy is defined by other people if they want to and if they don't want to think about me i don't i don't really care i hope they have a great life and i'm gonna continue to live life the way i want to and as full as i can and um you know i i i don't know if people consciously think this about me but i think there are a lot of people who i don't want to say inspired might be the right word by how not bashful i am towards that like i'm gonna take a chance if you offer me a chance i'm gonna take a chance all every time and i'm gonna tell you i don't need anything give it to me in life all i need is an opportunity give me an opportunity i'm gonna take it and am i gonna win every time no i'm not are any of us gonna win every time no we're not and you know there's uh there's actually this really good book have you ever have you read i don't know if you uh how you feel about this guy but i like him and i got to meet him and he's very cool his name is josh mccaffey wrote chop wood carry water um really good really good book um and then but then it was funny because he's written a handful of books most notable one with chop wood carry water but then he wrote a book called finish empty life from a deathbed's perspective and it came out right around the time i was died and so uh I got to read it with literally a deathbed perspective because I woke up, I want to say it was me. You know, I don't know. I don't know the exact date it came out. I got it maybe a month and a half to two months after everything went down, you know? And one of the, one of the really amazing quotes that it just sticks in my head. So I better get it right is the point of life is not to arrive safely at death. I think 95% of people don't get enough fiber, which is why Momentous built Fiber Plus because hitting your daily fiber target through food alone is actually kind of hard, even harder than your last toilet trip. Fiber isn't just a digestion thing. It's the foundation of your gut health, which drives how well you absorb nutrients, how stable your energy is and how quickly you recover. If your gut isn't dialed, everything else you're doing is working at a fraction of its potential. Fiber Plus is a three-in-one formula built to address digestion, gut barrier strength and blood sugar stability all at once. That's why I plan to make my next big dump Momentous. Best of all, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. So you can buy it and try it for 29 days. And if you don't love it, they'll give you your money back. Plus they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com slash modernwisdom. And modernwisdom at checkout. You've got this line, the point of life is not to arrive safely at death. Stop worrying about things and get to action. Yeah, and there's another really good one in there. Worrying is like a rocking chair. You can move all day, but you ain't going anywhere. So stop worrying about things. Go make it happen. And that's kind of how I lived my life prior to this. And now it's even like, dude, I'm gonna, yeah, that's how I'm gonna do it. You know, like I said, I take my medicine every day. I wear my mask when I have to. I'm gonna try not to be reckless with my livelihood. My plan is to be the longest living double lung transplant person ever. That is my goal. Do you know what the record is? 38 years. I'm going 39, baby. Wow. And how old would you be? I'd be 80. So, you know, yeah, that would be a good life. And, you know, honestly, I figure if I make it like 15, 20 more years, I'm gonna be like, there's gonna be some new technology. They're already starting to build organs with your own stem cells, I believe is what they're doing. And so that would also get me off the immunosuppressants because those pills over a very long time. So you're suggesting that you would get another lung transplant? Yeah. You'd be down for that? You'd go through it again? Oh, absolutely. I mean, because the immunosuppressants, they're a decent portion of the reason why life expectancy is not that high because when you kill your immune system, you can cause a whole bunch of other problems, right? And so I don't know that, you know, they are literally building organs with stem cells and your own DNA. They're probably not very good at it, yes. Dude, I get the sense. If there's a list of people that they want to test this on as a good case study, I reckon an ex-professional athlete is probably pretty high up. And I don't know how many ex-professional athletes at your level have had, like how many, no one's gonna be, I'll volunteer, I'll volunteer to have the lung transplant from my real ones to my fake real ones. Fake real ones. Yeah, exactly. Well, I told my doctor, I told my doctor, I said, hey man, one of my doctors is pretty young and he's, I don't know, progressive. Like you could tell he wants to make it happen and he wants to make, you know, life better for all the lung transplant patients. And I said, hey man, you got any ideas that you think are gonna work? Run them by me because you're not gonna find anyone more disciplined and I'm down for it. If you think it's gonna help me live longer, I will, I will run that protocol. So you just let me know. Fuck yeah. Dude, you're an inspiration, man. You always were, but this is, it's another level. So I'm really, really happy that you're still here. I'm really happy that you're doing this. Good luck with the fight. I'm gonna be watching. I'm gonna be watching and enjoying. Thank you. What else have you got going on? Where should people go to keep up to date with all of the things? Oh man. I don't post on social media that much anymore. Once Instagram and Twitter, and this is my real name, it's not Twitter anymore. It's called X, sorry. But I, actually I have a movie coming out this fall also about this. This is gonna be exciting. I don't know exactly when it's coming out yet. So my wife's, one of their family friends in high school was a movie producer and he was watching my stuff last summer and he said, that looks amazing. Would you guys be open to it? My wife had filmed so much stuff while I was in the hospital and he shopped it around and the Henry's, I don't know if you know them, I don't know if you guys know them, but they're in the hospital and he was in the hospital and he was in the hospital and he was in the hospital and I think it's gonna be great and I hope it's really inspiring for people to lead a life where just, like I said, they're fearless, they live the life that they want to live, not the one that they're afraid what other people are gonna think of them so they don't do things, they don't take chances and to live their life as fully as possible. So that's kind of what I'm hoping to inspire people with. Unreal, man. Unreal. Dude, let's keep in touch. I'm excited to see what you do next and let's talk when the documentary comes out. Awesome, I love it. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate you, dude. Catch you later on. Finding a doctor is hard enough. Finding the right doctor, even harder. Someone who takes your insurance, has an available appointment when you need one and feels like someone you can actually open up to. That's where ZocDoc comes in. Download the ZocDoc app to search and compare doctors by specialty, insurance and availability. Read real patient reviews, find the right fit for you and book now. Book instantly because getting seen by the right doctor matters. ZocDoc. Ready to be seen? Download the ZocDoc app today.