Combat sports journalist and podcaster Luke Thomas joins us to discuss the changing landscape of masculinity and politics among young men. We dig into the appeal of the manosphere, the pull of right-wing influencers, and the role of digital life in shaping identity. Luke offers a candid look at how these forces affect young men—and what might pull them back.
Transcript:
Patrick Sullivan: Welcome to the Turn Signal podcast. This is a good day for us. We’ve got Luke Thomas. Luke Thomas is a combat sports journalist. He’s a commentator, blogger, and podcaster. He’s a former Marine, trained in martial arts in college and also in the Marines. And he was a commentator for CBS Sports. And now we host a couple of podcasts on mixed martial arts. including Morton Combat and another one called Luke Thomas Gets Political. I know Luke as the devoted dad to his daughter, who’s in my own daughter’s class at school. Luke, just so you know, Rob and I kind of met in a similar way, not through our children, but through our dogs at the dog park. Our German shepherds quickly became best friends and then we determined that our politics are very similar and it was coming up on the 24 elections. So Rob and I decided to get together and do some fundraisers for Kamala Harris and Angela Alsabrooks. And we raised a bunch of money, and it was very successful. And of course, you know, we succeeded in that Angela Ulster Brooks won her election, and we failed in that Donald Trump became president. We take it personally. And so then we decided that we wanted to keep working together. So we started this podcast. And yeah, Rob, any intro you want to add to that?
Rob Pierno: I think that’s pretty good. I’m looking forward to speaking with Luke. Luke, this is the first time I think we’ve definitely met or met each other, but quite a bio online and it’s pretty rich and interesting, very different than my bio. So I look forward to talking to you about some of the things that you know and also early diving in politics and kind of the MAGA movement. And yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
Luke Thomas: Well, I appreciate the invite. Let’s do it. And yeah, I’m happy to be here with you gentlemen.
Patrick Sullivan: Thanks, Luke. The biggest reason I was fascinated by your story and having you on our podcast is that you seem to have a direct line into the vein of young men in America. You probably have a better read on what’s going on with them. Rob and I have talked a lot about why young men are being attracted to the right, and especially, you know, some kind of virulent, you know, right-wing figures, you know, thinking about, you know, andrutate and, you know, the kind of man of spear and all that kind of thing. So why is that? Why do you think that the right’s gotten their claws so firmly into young men in America, right?
Luke Thomas: It’s a rich and complex answer. I will give the more podcast appropriate one. I want to be clear, there might be emerging research that challenges any of this. I’ve tried to do the best reading I can on this and to marry that to the best extent possible with personal anecdotal evidence. Still, I come to a lot of dead ends at times. I mean, I think the answer that the best I can surmise is that, A, it should be kind of noted that some of this phenomenon is kind of worldwide and it crosses geographic boundaries. And so some of the explanations have to account for that. But I’m just going to speak to the US phenomenon as best I understand it. That’s the one obviously closest to us. Um, there’s a, as I mentioned, there’s a few answers. I think one, I just can’t overstate to people, I want to be clear, you mentioned I had a direct pipeline to young men and on some level that is certainly true. I’m in close proximity to them in one way or the other by virtue of my work. At the same time, I was caught off guard by this too. Um, to me is much of what has been revealed about what young men prefer and what places they go and what they’re doing with their time. It was a learning curve for me as well because I didn’t understand it and why it had taken the shape that it did. It kind of changed underneath my feet. And this is the natural byproduct of getting older. But it’s not like I was right on top of it from the word go either. But in making an assessment about it, I would say, number one, I’m going to make the argument that at the risk of sounding overly like a Luddite, I think digital life has been on balance for certain people negative. I don’t think that’s true population wise generally, or that there can’t obviously be use cases where it has been a profound improvement to our lives. But I think there’s going to be a segment of people whose lives have been, their outward lives, and to an extent even their inward lives, have been replaced by digital transactionalism that is engrossing to them. I think it is radicalizing to them. And I also think it makes them deeply unhappy. And as you mentioned that our daughters go to school, and one thing I’ve been really kind of looking into about my own daughter is, The ways in which analog learning is just vastly superior to digital forms of learning just interfacing with the computer itself versus writing and turning on a page turns out to have pretty profound impact and I think when you take those effects writ large on memory cognition but also mood and They’re the only radicalizing paths of content. These are, these are malicious forces. And I think we should call them for what they are. I think on top of that, and this is a bit of a harder lesson to learn because in my 20s, you know, so that this would be the 2000s. And then the 2010s would be my 30s. We kind of came out of the 90s and into a place where our politics was slowly growing, or at least attempting to grow anyway, from the left, a bit of a more humane place. And to be, I’m sure we all remember the terms inclusiveness and whatnot, and trying to understand the perspective of these other marginalized communities rather than the ones in which we had. Come from it. I don’t really think any of I mean I don’t want to say any of that was bad But I in general I certainly support the the vast bulk of that as a way to interrogate our past and to understand our future But somewhere along the line I’m not co-signing the the truth of the claim But I am going to just articulate what I have heard over and over again, which is that from those people who have gone down a more radicalizing path or have taken a, you know, even if it’s not like fully on Andrew Tate Manus here, but something approximating that what they have told me and take it for what it is worth is that they felt like that led to a politics of their own exclusion and that they would look at the two parties, for example, in a sort of a political way, And they would say, which of these ones is speaking to my concerns? And they felt, again, I’m not cosigning the truth of it, but they certainly felt that the left wasn’t even trying to address them. Like there was nothing in their agenda that at all spoke to them. And you’ll recall, Kambala made an effort, I think, you know, obviously it was far too little, far too late of making marijuana or various versions of marijuana legalization and then, you know, amendments to like crypto legislation. as like a kind of outreach to them. And this was, I can tell you, this was far too little, far too late. There are other forces in play certainly beyond the ones that I can describe, but I just feel like these online communities that take over and replace a person’s life combined with some of the ways our politics have gone has probably created for our present situation.
Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it’s the chicken and egg question about whether the digital modes and social media kind of exacerbating an existing problem. And I think it absolutely did. It takes your, feeds you grievance as a product, right? And just gets you clicking and clicking and makes you angrier and angrier. But there’s also, you know, that wouldn’t work unless those seeds were planted in fertile ground, right? Like, if there was a reason to be angry, I mean, and I think that there are, you know, not just that the parties aren’t, you know, kind of reaching out or the Democrats aren’t directly addressing them. But I think there are valid arguments, particularly in rural America, that the Democrats completely abandon these folks. And I think about Democratic masculinity in the past. And I think about unions. I think about that being an outlet for where young men, regardless of whether they’re going to go to college or not, or if they were not going to go to college, they could have a career where they could provide for their family, where they could learn, and where they could kind of exercise a traditional kind of male role. And I think now that the Democrats did abandon unions and also with globalization and NAFTA just allowed the kind of manufacturing industry, which was an outlet for a lot of men to support their families, just kind of disappear. And I think that they should shoulder some blame for that. those underlying causes as well.
Luke Thomas: If I may, I would add a smaller third one. Again, I think relative to some of the other broader explanations, this would not be the predominant one, but I do think it’s important to note one thing that I have seen that I find really irritating, and I don’t think, again, this is the main causal driver. What I do think is that other factors can be the main causal driver, and then the one I’m about to say just simply makes it a lot smoother. which is that the left has decided that their positions are so unimpeachable that they’re unwilling to argue for them anymore. Now this is now changing a little bit more, but it became where someone would say something like insanely racist and the reaction was, you know, we have to ostracize this person and reject them and believe me, I’m not necessarily a saying that’s a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, what I am saying is what ended up happening is then this kind of like information circuit, the Manisphere circuit was a sort of great example of this, where they would begin to just float things like, you know, Hitler Apology, and you know, here’s why certain reforms of race science are great, and it went completely unchallenged for a really long time, and then look at the metastasizing effect, it had this kind of like information cognitive stew that they’re all cooking in. And if you don’t do anything to get in front of that, that can have some pretty big second order effects. My general worldview is, not everyone has to do this, but on some level, if you’re trying to make a public account of the views of the left, you should do so with great confidence. If you believe that this is something that is true, if you believe that this is something that is important and right and particularly consequential at critical junctures of elections or any other point in political social history, you need to advocate for that. And the last thing I’d say on this is, you know, for people who grew up in the 90s, we recall that the gay marriage debate, like the way that ended up going was because the people who were arguing for it, they won. Like they want a debate. I mean, I realize it had a legal path that had to take to consecrate these things. But the, you know, getting out there and making the case for it is partly what helped breed a larger atmosphere to make these things possible. And I’m sure those debates were ugly and unfair and insane to hear in retrospect, but it worked. And I feel like if you lose that reflex, problems can emerge.
Patrick Sullivan: Yeah. So you’re saying the Democrats just haven’t engaged. They’re just like these basket of deplorables. His conversation isn’t even worth having with these people. And they actually need to engage with the folks and articulate why their position is better to those people.
Luke Thomas: Again, it’s not like I want the party focused consistently and only on discussing issues of culture war or issues just around race. I mean, I think these conversations are critically important, but I’m saying like other online actors or other people in your community or the ways in which, again, I’m not expecting people to poison all of their Thanksgiving dinners, but for the folks who want to take on a role about this, this kind of reflex to be like the way to handle these insane views that people that articulate is to withdraw from it. I don’t know what the evidence would be that someone can look at that and say that that worked. I just don’t know what that is because it looks to me, we are now having to fight uphill to get back to a point where then we can begin to move downhill. Now, Trump is making it very easy because of his poor stewardship of government, but it’s taking that to even make some of this possible.
Rob Pierno: What areas, you have a magic wand, what few areas do you want to see the Democratic Party focus on to bring men back into the fold? What should we be focusing on then in order to galvanize them? You mentioned about very late Kamala Harris focused on a few things like legalizing marijuana and others, but that was too little. Are there certain few big ticket items that you think Democratic Party needs to focus on?
Luke Thomas: I mean, I think the good news for a lot of what we’re up against is that a lot of it is big picture in which, you know, it has some broad based appeal and this can have, you know, particular expressions depending on the demographic. But I, you know, as a sort of like, let me just sort of say outright. This is just my politics and I’m sure people can disagree. It’s totally okay. I just think now is a moment for, you have to articulate a vision. I’m really of positivity, but about possibility. What can we actually do? What kind of government can we have? What kind of care can we provide? What kind of assistance is available? What kind of future can really help to be shaped by any of this? And I’m thinking like Medicare for all, we’re not talking about anymore. subsidies for Obamacare, which certainly had an important role at a point in time, but this is an insufficient way of looking at it. You have to redefine the possible. You have to redefine the, you have to change the Overton window about like, what is it that we are going to do when we return to power? So this forward thinking about changing the paradigm on how we’ve done things, I think you have to completely explode that. Otherwise, there’s just no way to get a buy-in from some of these guys. I can just feel it. Unless you come to them and say, the things that you’ve been told are not politically possible, we have great news. We’re going to make them possible. This, to me, is a winning message. And I mean this around progressive ideals. I brought up Medicare for all for that reason, but there’s a series of attending reforms across different parts of the labor economy and other places that would be important. But as it relates to young men, I think one of the things that has really kind of alarmed me, and I’m sure you guys have seen some of the research on this, is the way in which they’ve kind of Just withdrawn more generally from life, and this is expressed in things like, for example, educational attainment, right? So there’s just fewer and fewer of them going to college. There’s fewer of them finishing it. There’s fewer of them making use of it. There’s more of them living at home longer. And, you know, I don’t think by itself that is necessarily a problem, but in a world where they are unable to imagine a future of home ownership. in a world where they are unable to easily connect the relationship between a college education and a brighter future with higher earnings and greater life potential generally. In a world where these online spaces of their own grievance politics can be given to life, you have to find a political path and you have to speak to these kinds of issues that hold them into society more, that pull them into social mobilization, that pull them back into the pipeline. But that is not possible unless they can really believe that this pipeline actually works. And we have hollowed that out. In my view, we have hollowed that out to an extraordinary degree. And so anybody I’m voting for, whether this is local politics, we don’t have a state in DC, but federal after that, is going to be people who are running on making college affordable, making healthcare affordable, running on anti-corruption, running on enforcing the law, running in after antitrust. We just saw yesterday, for example, the DOJ is just going to let Ticketmaster walk. This is not specific to the men that you’re talking about, but I absolutely believe a muscular view and FDR kind of politics is the very best way to convince them we mean business.
Rob Pierno: Well, and one thing FDR had was at a time, right? He had a super majority. So right now we’re looking at a very divided Congress and that obviously is very tough in the Senate to get things passed. But I understand what you’re saying about the message. So then flip side, the other side, what is it that, where do you see the MAGA movement heading right now? I mean, you hear people like, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, MAGA is dead. I don’t necessarily, I don’t believe that, but kind of what’s the path forward for 2026 and November, you think, for MAGA?
Luke Thomas: So this is a great question, and I’m gonna use the same kind of lens of young men to answer it. There’s just no doubt in my mind, MAGA as a unifying political force, and what I mean is, obviously it’s highly divisive, but unified in the sense of enough to marshal electoral forces to make substantive gains, either for federal elections or state, I think that is coming apart. I can just see so many different versions of them. You can see the collapse among certain racial demographics, like Hispanics, who are instrumental in certain races in certain states and returning Trump to office. Their support has collapsed. Young men in particular has had a huge collapse. So that kind of thing, that was those extra forces that really got Trump over the hump. And again, these are another state races too. That is coming apart. What I think is much more concerning to me is that the thing that I think is going to replace it is going to be much worse. Now the trade off to that is that I don’t know if it’s going to be as big as MAGA, but I definitely think what will be there is more poisonous. And I’m sure you guys know about him and your listeners probably do as well. But if you want to see where MAGA is headed, you should pay very close attention to what Nick Fuentes is doing. Nick Fuentes is this guy. He has a Hispanic last name, but he is essentially a white nationalist, a young guy, late in his 20s. And he articulate, he’ll be the first one to tell you, in fact. that maga is dead because in his view it failed in a number of fronts number one he thinks of the deportations that are happening are not nearly enough which i realize is insane to say but he certainly believes that he is deeply anti-israel but in a way that it’s not just critical about the actions of the government or the military but it goes much deeper into the control of you know it veers very quickly into anti-Semite. Yeah, he’s a total anti-Semite. He appears very quickly into that territory. And I have to tell you, he is going to win the intellectual battle in that party. I’m telling you, it’s going to happen. Not because he has the right ideas, certainly not, but because he is seen by young men, by a huge portion of them as authentic. And you look at these college group chats that get leaked from young Republican groups and they’re like, crazy anti-Semitic, crazy racist. This is not an accident. This is, I think, a lot of people thought that, like, oh, when Trump goes away, the racial and other forms of invective that have been raised, this will go away, or this will be less of a feature, when in fact, I think it’s actually going to make the partisanship of that even worse. The question is, Is there enough of a political force there to actually become a real threat to our national politics? And I don’t have the answer for that. But I think it’s going to metastasize, if anything.
Patrick Sullivan: Something’s got to take its place, and I think whether it’s these culture wars, they’re really a distraction. The main beneficiary of them is the Epstein class, the billionaires. So I wonder whether there’s an opportunity to refocus these kids and young men on the actual, I mean, you mentioned that digital life is poisoning them. to refocus them on. The reason why you don’t have enough is because for every dollar you’re getting, the billionaires are taking five for themselves. There’s a giant sucking sound in the economy, and what it is is the billionaires in your pocket. I think the progressive platform that could be directed to or I mean is a response to that. If that could become clear to them and kind of, I understand the anger and I actually try and kind of validate the anger. I mean, I think part of it is manufactured, part of it is just, but But there are real reasons for it in the economy. And I think if we could redirect them to that and show kind of presented the Democratic Party or progressive politics, not as the party of kind of the weak, but actually presenting liberalism as a strong alternative. No, the federal government is here to protect you from these you know these billionaires you know that um from from these you know deals consolidating media taking away your choices you know and everything raising prices at the grocery store you know um if i may jump in there one thing that i’ve really noticed too and this is this is i mean there is a little bit of good news
Luke Thomas: is that if you actually debate some of these people, and I don’t mean like in the showy kind of way, but like, you know, you actually interact with a person and you really try and make them interrogate and defend their own views. And like sort of one way I do this all the time is on immigration. I have a lot of friends who might even be like, you know, slightly only right wing, not even crazy right wing, but you know, it’s sort of a Mitt Romney type, but even they will give you kind of rhetoric around really anti-immigrant sentiment. And what I find when I actually put them up to the test is that it’s just a lot of vibes. It’s just a lot of vibes. They don’t actually have, they don’t really know what the problem is, or such that they think it is, the problem with immigration. They don’t know anything about it. They kind of repeat to you memes or talking points or data points that they hear, but then when they actually have to confront the evidence, it’s clear that A, they’ve never seen it before, and B, what was powering their worldview was this broader sentiment. that was kind of finding ways to, you know, various instantiations in parts of their life. And it might show up as anti-immigrant. It might show up as some other thing. But like, these things can be challenged if they have a reason to believe that, like, this is a country that punishes elites. Just a sort of basic premise. Like, is this a country that punishes elites? And right now, there’s just super poor evidence for that. So, like, when you add in affordability and education attainment and everything else, Yes, it bleeds into these places, but I don’t know how hard the commitment is to some of the ideas. I think the commitment is from a deep-seated feeling of we’re not part of the pipeline of the American success story anymore.
Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, right, right. So what are the fora where we could have these conversations? like your podcast, why did you split off Luke Thomas gets political from your other podcast? How did that decision make and go? And is it a different audience and how’d that work?
Luke Thomas: My hope is to make it a different audience. I don’t know if that will be successful or not, we shall see. It’s a few reasons. I think one, one thing you have to understand about fight fans is that there are some of them that like, It’s hard to explain unless you’re really in the fight world. Like there are fight fans where all they do is just watch fights and they just don’t care about any other factor related to any of this. And they’re not a harm. You know, I, to the extent that I can silo content so as not to alienate some of them. I think is important. I do do some crossover stuff on my pure MMA channel, but the basic answer is that I needed a separate place for it. I felt like I needed to lean into it and partly in YouTube if you have, I mean, you know, bigger accounts can get away with this, but like if you talk about, you know, oh, this is a YouTube channel about cars, and then all of a sudden it’s a YouTube channel about cars and photography, at times this can mess up how, yeah, it can actually undermine how YouTube shares your content. So there’s just a bit of self-preservation in that one. But the reality is honestly, the big one is I just wanted to do more of it. I felt like I needed a place to experiment. And the truth is I’m still kind of just kind of finding what I want to talk about. I never planned any of this. This was not, oh, I plan to do the MMA side of things, sure. But then, the way in which I’ve been exposed to the rot that is in our politics and our country more broadly, it just shocked my conscience to a point where I felt like I had to say something. And so it’s not, I don’t have some grand vision. You know what I mean? Like maybe I’m doing it wrong. I don’t even know. It’s just, it felt like the right place to have a separate kind of lane to fill that one up independently.
Rob Pierno: Yeah. That sounds familiar, right, Patrick? I mean, that’s why we’re talking about it too. We just, it shocked our conscious as well. You know, Patrick, it’s all right. Can we talk a little bit about MMA? Because mixed martial arts obviously is enormous in the U.S. I’ve never, I’ve never gravitated towards it as much, but I am kind of curious too, because looking a little bit about your bio, it seems like, Luke, you have a bit of a love-hate relationship with MMA, not necessarily the fighting. It sounds like the fighting side of it, and I can understand the attraction there, but the other part of it, and maybe that’s the toxic masculinity I don’t know. Maybe you could talk about that, the parts of it that maybe you’ve even gotten in a tiff, I think, with the head of, what’s his name? Daniel White, I mean, maybe called you out at one point too, but what is it that you kind of see the problems in mixed martial arts today?
Luke Thomas: Oh God, I could do a whole podcast on this. I got into it accidentally. I mean, I, you know, I eventually I came up with a plan. I got into it accidentally. This was circa 2005. I got back into it and I, I, um, I started a blog back in 2007 by 2011. I was hired by Vox media, you know, so home of Vox.com and the, the verge and a lot of other places I was there for, I’m not sure how long, quite a while. And then, um, split off eventually and went to serious XM. I did a stint in showtime and CBS sports and, you know, I’ve done it all, um, and spike TV as well. MMA was the first sport I felt like I ever really understood and knew the ins and outs of everything. And it was happening at a time where Joe Rogan actually does have an interesting quote. I realize he’s got a lot of uninteresting quotes, but he does have one that is good. And he had mentioned in a fight, this was, you know, long before MMA really blew up, but that the, and it’s hyperbole, but it’s true, which is that hand-to-hand combat has evolved more in the last 20 years than it did in the last 2000. And there’s really something to be said for that. It was this interesting laboratory experiment about all of these mythologies that we had grown up with in the 80s and the 90s about martial arts and any kind of force you could imagine that could impact a fight. And it turned out like 90% of it was just all junk. And then the 10% that was real was this incredibly engrossing thing and it was changing over time very rapidly. This was a very exciting thing. And the one thing you also have to realize too is during this time as the UFC is trying to get mainstream attention, this is during essentially the late Bush and Obama years, what was actually happening was they were making a pitch. The UFC was making a pitch to the United States and the world, namely that like whatever you thought cage fighting is, it’s not. This is a sport for young, old, rich, poor, black, white, east coast, left coast, partisan, Catholic Jew, you name it. This is for everybody. They used to sell a t-shirt that said, we are all fighters during Pride Month, and it was the colors of the Pride flag. They have since taken that out. But I’m trying to explain what the pitch was. And then Ronda Rousey comes along in 2014. I wound up seeing young girls at UFC events who were there to see Ronda Rousey, unfathomable levels of what this could mean. But that has all completely gone away. Basically, I’m not… Breaking news when I say this, but like the way to understand combat sports less so boxing with certain boxing to boxing to is they are not another part of sports. They are impolite society’s sports that we import from them. Right. I have been to a million fights at casinos. I’ve never been to a basketball game there. These are the gambling world, the device world and MMA and boxing. These are connected worlds. And that’s different from the worlds of hockey and basketball and baseball. Those are more parts of traditional mainstream society. And I think what has basically happened over the last 10 or so years, a little bit less, is that they have the UFC reached a point of critical mass of total monopolization. A Deutsche Bank report came out and said that of every dollar the total industry generates, they take 90 cents of it. A monopoly in the most aggressive of ways. It has between that and I think the owners both making a transactional political turn to right-wing politics as a way to get rewards for things that they want legislatively accomplished, as well as maybe just some inherent partisanship that was kind of already there. They have felt impunity to give up basically that old vision of inclusiveness and instead go with one that is, in almost every way, the exact opposite. They’ll tell you that’s not what they’re doing, like they’ll deny this, you know, if they ever heard me say it. But it’s very clear that’s exactly what has happened, and it has been, I will tell you the truth, Ben, that has been extremely painful for me. Extremely painful, because this was a project I really believed in. in terms of what it meant and what it could do and what it would represent it. And not only has that all been abandoned, but actually the product itself beyond that is suffering by virtue of the monopoly strangle that is happening. And so it’s this intersection between, you know, different life changes, of course, but like how the organization changed, the effects of monopoly, how our broader politics turn right wing, the transactionalism of Trump world generally, all of it kind of colliding at once. And it has not been my favorite thing to deal with. Let me assure you.
Patrick Sullivan: Are there any alternatives? Is there any? I’m sure you’re not the only one who feels this way. Maybe you’re the most public. But is there an opportunity for somebody else to start something? Or is there another version of it happening?
Luke Thomas: No, not really. Again, they have they have. It’s not just a monopoly. It’s one of the most aggressively controlling massive monopolies in any segment of our labor economy. I mean, I just cannot overstate it to you. There’s nothing that anyone else can do. There are people who are trying a little bit. They’ve all gone out of business or been bought. USC got accused in an antitrust suit of buying a rival promoter. and then not even doing due diligence over its assets about whether or not this purchase made sense just as a way to close them out of the market. You know, like deeply anti competitive behavior, right? Like totally illegal. FTC took a look at them twice during the Obama years and let them walk. I think that proved to be a catastrophic decision on their part. This is what I mean about, you know, progressive politics having a little bit more sense of Making companies answer for their anti competitive behavior and they just didn’t and the results now or I mean like this is not a joke, right? So the UFC was instrumental in helping Trump get back to office and I need folks to like wrap their head around that The one of the big mistakes that people make about the fight world is that because it is a circus that they treat it trivially huge mistake Look at all of the things inside of a fight world. I mean, there’s gonna be fights on the White House lawn. Larry Ellison and his father were seen there with Middle East financiers at events with the Speaker of House, Elon Musk all doing deals and these deals get consummated, at least, you know, and come to life and shape at fight events. Like it is super, super big mistake to not take that seriously. And when you realize who’s operating in these worlds should scare you a little bit because these are people like, you know, At one point, I’d like to make here very simply, like what are they getting out of it to have this Trump world connection? Well, boxing has regulation. Boxing has federal regulation. It’s called the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, and it was put in place in the 2000s by John McCain. It is not a perfect act, but it is the only real legislation protecting a lot of these boxers. Manager can’t be a promoter. They have to disclose to the boxer how much they’re making. They can’t control rank and title, like there’s a lot of things that are very, very critical to why the boxers make so much money and the MMA fighters don’t. The UFC is currently in their parent company, TKO. They are currently, I went to both the hearings and the educational workforce committee. They are going to Congress and they’re trying to get the law changed. that would grant them essentially an exemption to all those provisions, which would enable them to do what? Easily monopolize the industry. They’re tearing the rebar out of a building, essentially, is what they’re doing here to make way for what they want to do. And when you look at that in the broader picture of this deregulatory environment that is happening around clean water protections or environmental protections more generally, or as I mentioned, letting the DOJ just letting Ticketmaster off the hook, This is bad, like this is bad for society to let this kind of elitist impunity and workforce protections to be completely done away with. And these things are happening to an extent, I mean, obviously not the water protections, but like these kinds of things are happening within the fight world right now. It’s like none of us take Andrew Tate seriously for the ideas that he has, but you have to take him seriously for the effect that he can have, although mercifully his is now waning as well.
Patrick Sullivan: I’m hearing more and more about people as young men, instead of going to college and getting a job, they said, no, my job is I’m gambling on sports or I’m using prediction markets as my income. And look, I’m making $100,000 a year or whatever. and or crypto, you know, it’s kind of a similar thing. Like it’s like an alternative path, you know, for me, like, no, I’m going down this road. Is gambling, is it embedded into the MMA world as well? I don’t know, online gambling?
Luke Thomas: It is, except I will make a bit of a defense of it in this particular case. Now, that’s not to say that there couldn’t be more responsible legislation and there might be some coming down the road. And this is also distinct from like prediction markets, which I think are, I don’t know what the utility is of those. The one argument I will make in defense, not so much of, let me just make it specific in this particular case. When I got into the sport in the late 90s and early 2000s, I actually learned about sports betting from MMA. And it was always a big part of it. It has always been a big part of it. As I mentioned, like Casino World and boxing and MMA, these are intertwined worlds. And in fact, I found in our New York Times article from the 1920s, where they were saying, we’re going to create the New York State Athletic Commission, the thing that the government regulatory agency that actually regulates combative athletics. And it’s a state run board and doctors have to get licenses, fighters have to get licenses. And the reason why they were doing it was back in the 20s, there was too much unregulated gambling and too much unregulated fights that were taking place. But the two were connected from day one. I think to me, that’s a very separate question from this expanse of it to places where it’s a relatively new kind of phenomenon. So I want to be clear, I’m not opposed to responsible gaming
Patrick Sullivan: I’m not either. In fact, I work for a company that supplies slot machines to Las Vegas and the tribe. It’s all about responsible gaming. And I’m disturbed about the presentation of gambling as a career somehow, along with those other… Yeah.
Luke Thomas: I mean, when you just look at it mathematically, it can’t actually be… There’s gonna be a handful of guys who can do it, right, of course. But I just mean, there is something of a historical exception case in combat sports related to this one particular issue. But I think, you know, you’re speaking more broadly, as we talked about at the beginning of this conversation, we have got, there’s just this male withdrawing. And I think that is the part that’s kind of interesting. You know, I read this interesting piece from a writer named Freddie Debord. You may have come across his work at times. And he was talking about the logic of the incel. And what he was saying was, he was like, just understand for the course of like human reality, there have been you know, obviously billions and people, billions of people who’ve come before us, and this act of finding a mate suitable to your, you know, to your, uh, there’s symmetry between you and them in terms of the attraction, life status, blah, blah, blah. This is something that’s been able to happen through rich and poor, you know, early civilization, modern times. It’s a thing that’s been able to happen to people from literally all walks of life, without necessarily a great degree of difficulty. And now we are expected to believe through the self-pitying logic that these avenues are closed off in the modern world. And it’s when it sort of stated like that, you’re like, yeah, obviously the arguments that these people are using to withdraw from life and pull themselves out of romantic relationships. And frankly, just pro-social bonds generally, it’s just vibes. It’s not real. The question is how you undo that magnetic pull And I think that’s something I’m still trying to wrap my head around beyond the questions of political choices we can make.
Patrick Sullivan: Right. Scott Galloway talks about that in his Pivot podcast. And he talks about in his books, apparently, which I have not read. But he really stresses that men have to go and try. out with women, they should approach women. And then when they are rejected, they will be most of the time, and they should respectfully withdraw and try again. And that’s part of the deal. And the Intel culture doesn’t even want to do that. It’s just kind of writing them off. But I actually read an article lately that compared to the latest generation, the Lux Maxers, and they’ve almost made the incels look good in comparison, because at least the incels were like… kind of lamenting that they couldn’t be with women, whereas the new generation, they’ve almost completely written them off. But in either case, yeah, they’ve just withdrawn. They can’t face rejection. But rejection is part of success. You actually can’t succeed at anything without trying and failing and failing and failing. And so it seems that young men now are just trying to insulate themselves from failure, you know, and trying. And, you know, I think that they need to have outlets for that. Tell me about, you know, we need to wrap it up pretty soon, but I want to hear about also your experience of being a Marine, you know, because I saw, you know, it was actually somebody, a caretaker for our young daughter. here in Washington, DC, approached me and said, I’m not sure what to do. My son is thinking about joining the Marines, and I want to talk to you about it. And I knew nothing about the Marines. I knew nothing about the military, not having served myself. And I investigated. I actually talked to, I called the recruiting officer. I talked him through it. Anyway, he ended up joining. And it’s been fantastic for this kid, just fantastic. This kid who was really at risk of frankly going to jail here in DC and getting picked up by gangs at the building where he lived is now traveling the world. He’s doing great. And it’s just, I’m not saying that everybody should join the Marines. It certainly wouldn’t have worked for me as a young man, but I mean, I think I talk about how that changed your life.
Luke Thomas: Yeah. You know, it’s kind of funny. I am the first person in my family to join the military. Um, I didn’t want to become an officer even though I went to college because I knew it wasn’t going to be a career. I just kind of wanted to do it. So I had to do it in a way where I did it in the reserves, actually joined my junior year of high school. I’ve still finished high school, but the, I did that on purpose because it actually takes off some of the time on your contract on the backend. If you do, So I graduated high school on a Friday. I went to boot camp on a Monday. I did 13 weeks later, I went to college and it was this kind of crazy experience that I had. It’s so funny, you know, like the way I explain to people is I’m really glad I joined and I’m also really glad I got out when I did. So I was in from 98 to 04 and you can well imagine during that time there were some, you know, fairly tumultuous events. I was able to avoid the worst of it be just from pure dumb luck. I was in a Marine Corps Reserve artillery unit and at that time artillery in the Marine Corps was not being completely phased out, but it wasn’t a combat priority because the Army already did it and they had much more of it. And this was still kind of early into Afghanistan and Iraq where whatever needs they would have for artillery, they could get from the Army. They just didn’t need to call us yet. However, months after I got out, they converted my unit to an infantry company and they sent it to do prisoner transport in Fallujah. So, you know, my friends had lots of fun stories. I can assure you about what it was like to leave the FOB every day. But it was one of those things where it’s like, Very few things I’ve done in terms of like good decisions in my teens have still resonate with people in my 40s, you know? But like joining the Marine Corps is just one of those things that people routinely are curious about. They look on your resume and they have nice things to say about it. And it’s this kind of fraternity whenever you go and meet another person who has it. And I think for me, The Marine Corps was a lot of different things, but perhaps the most important one was help me re-understand what I did like and what I didn’t like about it. But also, the biggest one I take from it is, you know, it’s kind of funny, right? Because I graduated college with a philosophy degree and I know people are like, well, what’s the value of that? And to me, that’s actually one of the best decisions I ever made. in all of my life. It doesn’t give me access to wisdom in some kind of special way, but it did help me create a better path to find wisdom, such that I can in the world, with very lasting consequences. Whereas I double major in political science, all the things we learned in 1998 to 2002, very little of it is applicable anymore, about some of the paradigms that we were reading at the time. And these just don’t hold up, but all the other things I did hold up, I take the Marine Corps as something like that. I don’t sign off on American hegemonic wars, and I was glad I never had to participate in them. But what I got from the Marine Corps was finally someone showing me that your mind is much weaker than you realize, and you actually have to strengthen it over time in a very overt, specific, direct ways. And when you do that, the possibility of what you can achieve is so vastly beyond what you ever imagined. I was pushed in the Marine Corps in ways that I never even would have had the ability to do that to myself. And it completely caused a reawakening of what I thought was a human’s potential could even be. I know that sounds crazy to talk about the military perhaps that way, but it did that for me. And so when I think of its lasting impact, I think about that.
Patrick Sullivan: I think everybody should have an opportunity for me like that. For me, it was college that kicked my ass when I really put my mind to it and realized, oh, this takes a lot of work and up all night studying and finally, but the opportunity to actually get better at something. is huge, but also just being bound to another group of people, like I’m sure you were with your unit and your boot camp, and also being bound to your country in that way. And I hate to say it, but I think that having Having talked to several different Israelis who serve in the IDF, like they are bound to each other and they’re bound to their country through that kind of mandatory service. I’m a Quaker. I’m not, but I wonder if there is some opportunity here. I mean, there’s a lot to do. I mean, climate change is real. The planet is hurting. I think if there were an opportunity for some kind of mandatory service, and it could be, okay, you want to go to the military, you don’t, Then you can dig trails and you can work on wildfires, which is going to be a big deal now. And then just bring people together. And I mean, let people from all walks of life meet each other and from all areas of the country. I think it’s something we should seriously consider some kind of…
Luke Thomas: Yes, your thrust. I mean, college is a little more selective, right? Depending on where you go. Whereas I found in the military, you’re just kind of thrust together in quite literally in certain cases, where you’re just around people that I would never have met but for that experience, not merely in different training academies, but in my unit in particular as well. And it was a real clear look into the world that I just simply wouldn’t have had but for that experience. And I haven’t given the mandatory nature of national service a lot of thought, but I would say that I do fully agree Like commitment to ones, I mean, to how many of these guys who, you know, are especially these right wing agitators who radiate for war or agitate for some kind of policy that themselves they’ve never given to the nation. Some of them refused to even pay their taxes, much less. you know, do it in other ways. And it’s like, I feel like the way in which you understand what the country needs and your role in that can be shaped even by something like the Peace Corps or in my case, just reserve military duty. It has a profound like buy-in effect as well as kind of like a moment where you’re like, well, there’s a lot going on here that has to get right. And people kind of have to do their job to make it look right. And I just, I’m a firm believer in trying to make those things attractive as possible.
Patrick Sullivan: Yeah, yeah, and then the Peace Corps has the added benefit of making us look great, you know, around the world, too. Sure. Poor AmeriCorps. Yeah, I mean, there’s a bunch of them. Yeah, AmeriCorps, just like USAID did, and that poor was totally dismantled.
Rob Pierno: And Luke, I have a question more about current affairs right now and in your, you know, obviously experience in the military. But right now, you know, we, our president started a preemptive war 11, 12 days ago when I ran just very, very bluntly. Do you think there is a potential that this can make Americans safer, this war that was initiated, or do you think it’s the other, the otherwise?
Luke Thomas: Oh, I think this is. A profound disaster. I would not, I mean, it’s already making them unsafe. They’ve had to evacuate roughly about a million people from GCC states beyond that as well of Americans. And they obviously did a very poor job of anticipating that and helping them get out, although I’m told that that’s improved in recent days. to say nothing of the kind of effect downstream that could have from a terror campaign, to say nothing of if they do boots on the ground or any kind of other initial or I should say escalating military involvement. This is profoundly unsafe for Americans. I couldn’t oppose it more and I suspect that I would bet that morale for this one is low. I would bet that because, I mean, I lived through the Iraq war, right? I was in my hotel, sorry, but I’m a hotel. I was in my dorm room on the Tuesday of 9-11, and I watched it happen from my senior dorm room, and then everything that came after that in the Iraq war. And that was obviously nonsensical, but we all remember Colin Powell going to Congress and then trying to show the vibe. Like they made, it was a nonsense effort, but they made at least some kind of an effort. They didn’t do any of that this time. There was no pretence. There was no effort. They just kind of walked us into it. And there’s questions about whose interests were really serving their ours or some other, you know, entities, both both political, I should say, both state and corporate on top of it. And so to me, it’s like the whole the war on terror. really reshaped the American focus in all the wrong ways. I talked to Spencer Ackerman on my channel, who was a Pulitzer Prize winner for some of the Snowden revelations, and he argues that you can’t get modernized the way in which they are. the way in which they operate, you know, for example, with their sort of extra legal justifications for what they’re doing, this Alligator Alcatraz black siteization of where they’re putting their warehousing facilities. This is all a legacy of the war on terror. This is all of those same forces just unleashed on ourself. And I think independent of whether or not there’s even any coherent geopolitical aims that we have related to this, which is its own important and separate question, the way in which all of the forces that you allow these malevolent actors to have, this has a way of finding itself unleashed on Americans. And I think this particular case of vulnerable populations like immigrants, and I worry about all of that effect. All of it is destabilizing. All of it is, uh, in my judgment, unnecessary. And frankly, I gives me, I mean, the, the very thought of them using a tactical nuke, for example, and where does that leave us? Um, even boots on the ground in a place notoriously impossible for an incursion and what that might mean for American bloodshed and then our standing in the world. I have, it’s, we learned, we learned nothing to me from the war on terror. It’s kind of what I take from this.
Patrick Sullivan: Okay, thanks, Luke. Appreciate it. That was kind of a dark, but this is actually a great conversation.
Luke Thomas: And also, dogs are great and cats are cool, and I love DC.
Patrick Sullivan: DC is a great place to live. It’s beautiful right now. And, you know, we have a MMA fight coming here. So if you fight your element, no, I know, I know you’re just made about that. But okay, thank you, Luke Thomas. This was this is a great conversation. Robin, I really enjoyed it. I could I could tell. And I think I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Luke Thomas: Yeah. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.