Tony Hawk: Harnessing Passion, Drive & Persistence for Lifelong Success

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.880 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.080 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.040 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.900 | Today, my guest is Tony Hawk.

00:00:17.320 | Tony Hawk is one of the most celebrated

00:00:19.000 | and accomplished professional skateboarders of all time.

00:00:21.840 | For more than 40 years,

00:00:23.240 | he has been at the forefront of the sport.

00:00:25.240 | And I don't mean just doing a sport for more than 40 years.

00:00:28.320 | I truly mean he has been at the forefront of skateboarding,

00:00:31.360 | developing new maneuvers, aka tricks,

00:00:33.820 | that include incredible feats,

00:00:35.180 | like the 900 and 900 degree spin in the air,

00:00:38.640 | as well as numerous other maneuvers

00:00:40.980 | that have really pushed the entire sport forward.

00:00:44.000 | He's also completely popularized the sport

00:00:46.880 | through his video game

00:00:48.240 | and through his ambassadorship for skateboarding.

00:00:50.680 | In fact, few, if any, names are synonymous with skateboarding

00:00:54.060 | in the general public as Tony Hawk.

00:00:56.160 | And he is oh so deserved of that title,

00:00:59.360 | because for more than 40 years,

00:01:01.200 | he has shown up as the consummate professional.

00:01:03.760 | He is kind, he is respectful,

00:01:05.940 | and he is completely committed to his craft.

00:01:08.600 | And that shows up in every aspect of his life.

00:01:11.200 | He still, to this day, skateboards daily.

00:01:13.380 | And as you'll soon learn,

00:01:14.760 | he recently suffered a major injury,

00:01:17.160 | a complete break of his femur,

00:01:19.880 | that is the bone in his upper leg.

00:01:22.100 | And this is what many people would consider

00:01:24.100 | a career ending injury.

00:01:26.000 | Not only did Tony come back from that injury,

00:01:28.520 | but he went back to the very trick

00:01:30.880 | on which he broke his femur

00:01:32.480 | and recently completed that trick.

00:01:33.840 | That is a 540 or so-called McTwist.

00:01:36.200 | I mention this because at every level of his life,

00:01:38.840 | Tony has demonstrated himself to be somebody

00:01:40.980 | with incredible drive, incredible vision,

00:01:43.760 | and incredible persistence.

00:01:45.680 | And today we talk about that drive, vision, and persistence,

00:01:49.000 | and we talk about what it takes to set a goal

00:01:52.420 | and to continually evolve one's goal

00:01:54.720 | and to continually progress as a basically young preteen,

00:01:59.720 | as a teenager, as a young adult, as an adult,

00:02:03.240 | and well, let's face it, as a 55-year-old man,

00:02:05.600 | he is now heading a little bit past middle age,

00:02:08.440 | although we do hope that he lives forever.

00:02:11.280 | Tony Hawk, AKA the Birdman,

00:02:13.320 | really does seem to be superhuman.

00:02:15.780 | But as you'll learn today, he is oh so human

00:02:18.600 | in the way that he shares his own experience

00:02:20.520 | and shares with you the ways in which we can each and all

00:02:23.680 | look at what we do and think about what we want to achieve

00:02:27.420 | and put our minds and our bodies to those goals

00:02:30.240 | and achieve them.

00:02:31.440 | I confess that today's discussion with Tony Hawk

00:02:33.580 | was a particularly thrilling one for me to have.

00:02:36.400 | I grew up in the sport of skateboarding.

00:02:38.560 | So I had met Tony previously,

00:02:40.460 | although he doesn't remember it, that was many years ago.

00:02:42.920 | In fact, I met his parents.

00:02:44.280 | You'll learn more about that story during today's episode.

00:02:47.420 | But I was aware, of course, of Tony's accomplishments.

00:02:50.620 | I was also aware of his philanthropy.

00:02:53.080 | So he has a skate park foundation.

00:02:54.960 | I also listened to his podcast

00:02:56.720 | with another professional skateboarder, Jason Ellis,

00:02:59.140 | called Hawk versus Wolf.

00:03:00.480 | We provided a link to that podcast

00:03:02.000 | in the show note captions as well.

00:03:03.680 | But never before have I had the opportunity to sit down

00:03:06.400 | and talk to the Tony Hawk and learn from him.

00:03:09.020 | So I was absolutely delighted to have this conversation

00:03:11.840 | and it far exceeded my already lofty expectations.

00:03:16.100 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:03:18.680 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:03:21.240 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:03:23.140 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:03:25.040 | about science and science-related tools

00:03:27.000 | to the general public.

00:03:28.460 | In keeping with that theme,

00:03:29.560 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:03:32.440 | Our first sponsor is Element.

00:03:34.180 | Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need

00:03:36.640 | and nothing you don't.

00:03:37.940 | That means plenty of electrolytes, sodium, magnesium,

00:03:40.440 | and potassium, but no sugar.

00:03:42.640 | The electrolytes and hydration are absolutely key

00:03:45.480 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:03:48.100 | Even a slight degree of dehydration

00:03:49.820 | can impair our ability to think, our energy levels,

00:03:52.640 | and our physical performance.

00:03:54.260 | Element makes it very easy to achieve proper hydration,

00:03:57.280 | and it does so by including the three electrolytes

00:03:59.680 | in the exact ratios they need to be present.

00:04:02.380 | I drink Element first thing in the morning when I wake up.

00:04:04.540 | I usually mix it with about 16 to 32 ounces of water.

00:04:07.720 | If I'm exercising, I'll drink one while I'm exercising,

00:04:10.920 | and I tend to drink one after exercising as well.

00:04:13.880 | Many people are scared off by the idea of ingesting sodium

00:04:17.880 | because obviously we don't want to consume sodium in excess.

00:04:20.740 | However, for people that have normal blood pressure,

00:04:22.920 | and especially for people

00:04:24.040 | that are consuming very clean diets,

00:04:25.800 | that is consuming not so many processed foods

00:04:29.120 | or highly processed foods,

00:04:30.780 | oftentimes we are not getting enough sodium, magnesium,

00:04:33.640 | and potassium, and we can suffer as a consequence.

00:04:36.080 | And with Element, simply by mixing in water,

00:04:38.060 | it tastes delicious.

00:04:38.900 | It's very easy to get that proper hydration.

00:04:41.000 | If you'd like to try Element, you can go to Drink Element.

00:04:43.920 | That's lmnt.com/huberman

00:04:46.360 | to claim a free Element sample pack with your purchase.

00:04:48.680 | Again, that's drinkelementlmnt.com/huberman.

00:04:52.560 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Roca.

00:04:55.240 | Roca makes eyeglasses and sunglasses

00:04:57.360 | that are the absolute highest quality.

00:04:59.720 | I've spent a lifetime working on the biology

00:05:01.480 | of the visual system, and I can tell you

00:05:02.760 | that your visual system has to contend

00:05:04.520 | with an enormous number of challenges

00:05:06.280 | in order for you to be able to see clearly.

00:05:08.480 | Roca understands this

00:05:09.600 | and has developed their eyeglasses and sunglasses

00:05:12.020 | so that you always see with perfect clarity.

00:05:14.680 | In addition, they are extremely lightweight,

00:05:16.980 | and they won't slip off your face if you get sweaty.

00:05:19.640 | Indeed, Roca eyeglasses and sunglasses

00:05:21.540 | were initially designed for performance in sports,

00:05:24.360 | but now they include aesthetics and styles

00:05:26.700 | that are really designed to be worn anytime.

00:05:28.520 | I, for instance, wear readers at night.

00:05:30.080 | I'll sometimes wear sunglasses during the day when I drive,

00:05:32.200 | and of course, I do not wear sunglasses

00:05:33.960 | when I do my morning sunlight viewing,

00:05:35.780 | which I highly recommend everyone

00:05:37.660 | do their morning sunlight viewing.

00:05:39.460 | If you'd like to try Roca eyeglasses or sunglasses,

00:05:41.820 | you can go to Roca, that's R-O-K-A.com,

00:05:44.540 | and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order.

00:05:48.060 | Again, that's Roca, R-O-K-A.com,

00:05:50.240 | and enter the code Huberman at checkout.

00:05:52.720 | And now for my discussion with Tony Hawk.

00:05:55.520 | Tony Hawk, welcome.

00:05:56.880 | - Thanks.

00:05:58.040 | - I'm particularly thrilled to have this conversation

00:06:00.720 | because I've tracked your career for a very long time.

00:06:05.620 | Grew up in the skateboard thing.

00:06:06.920 | - I know. [laughs]

00:06:08.400 | - Had your poster on my wall.

00:06:09.800 | - Oh, thank you.

00:06:10.780 | - Your name is synonymous with skateboarding, as you know.

00:06:13.920 | I think a question that probably get asked

00:06:16.080 | from time to time,

00:06:16.960 | but let's just clarify the data from the outset.

00:06:20.520 | Tony Hawk is your real name, right?

00:06:22.560 | - Yes, Anthony Frank Hawk, but I never went by Anthony.

00:06:26.140 | I mean, my parents call me Tony since I could remember, so.

00:06:29.620 | - It's a fitting name given the sport and what you do.

00:06:33.080 | And we will get into this a little bit later

00:06:34.800 | when we talk about family and parenting and parents,

00:06:38.100 | but I'll allude to the story now

00:06:40.400 | that when I was 14 years old,

00:06:43.560 | your parents took me in.

00:06:45.200 | I slept in your bed in your home, not with you in it,

00:06:49.840 | but surrounded by your, a near infinite number of trophies.

00:06:53.520 | And I, and I, and-

00:06:55.360 | - It must've been right after I moved out.

00:06:58.000 | - So this would be, I was 14 years old.

00:07:00.160 | Maybe I'll just tell the story now very briefly.

00:07:01.780 | I was 14 years old.

00:07:02.720 | I was at a contest at Linda Vista Boys Club.

00:07:06.160 | Everyone left, me and another kid named Billy Waldman.

00:07:09.440 | We're still there.

00:07:11.600 | Your dad said, "Where are you going?"

00:07:15.300 | It was clear that I didn't know where I was going.

00:07:18.460 | My life was, I was a wayward youth at that time.

00:07:20.880 | And so they took me in for a night, maybe even two nights.

00:07:24.480 | Your mom, Nancy, and your dad, Frank, were so gracious,

00:07:27.900 | brought me in, into your home, took me to dinner.

00:07:30.980 | I don't recall.

00:07:33.080 | - I mean, that tracks, that's what my dad

00:07:35.400 | and my mom together would be doing that, yes.

00:07:37.560 | - Incredible people.

00:07:38.800 | And we'll get back to that story later

00:07:40.320 | 'cause you and I actually met the next day

00:07:42.880 | in Fallbrook at your ramp.

00:07:44.400 | - Oh, Fallbrook, so it had to have been '88, '89.

00:07:47.080 | - That's right.

00:07:47.920 | I'm gonna say '89.

00:07:49.800 | And it must've been one of the either NSA or CASL contests

00:07:54.440 | that your dad was very active in.

00:07:57.480 | But we'll get back to that.

00:07:58.560 | But I have so many questions that relate

00:08:01.100 | to skateboarding to you and really, as a neuroscientist,

00:08:05.400 | to the whole concept of a life of continual progression.

00:08:09.160 | Because whether or not people listening to this

00:08:12.180 | and watching this are skateboarders or not,

00:08:14.360 | and I imagine that most of them are not,

00:08:16.880 | it's absolutely clear that you've been in this game

00:08:19.960 | a very long time and that you've somehow managed

00:08:23.680 | to continue to progress over and over

00:08:26.760 | to come back from very severe injuries

00:08:30.000 | and somehow keep getting better and better.

00:08:32.260 | So the first question I have

00:08:34.020 | is about the younger version of you.

00:08:38.480 | Did you have any sort of self-concept?

00:08:41.960 | Like, I want to be a pro athlete

00:08:45.160 | or I want to be a skateboarder

00:08:46.640 | or I want to have a video game named after me, right?

00:08:50.320 | Right, exactly.

00:08:51.160 | But if you can think back to maybe even pre-skateboarding,

00:08:55.560 | do you remember what your self-concept was?

00:08:58.680 | This notion of like I have a self

00:09:01.560 | and I'm either similar or different

00:09:03.720 | to other kids in some way?

00:09:05.360 | When I was young, I was put in a lot of advanced classes

00:09:09.920 | and not that that felt like a badge of honor.

00:09:12.200 | It felt more like I was just classified as a nerd.

00:09:15.440 | But then I thought, okay, well, that's my strength.

00:09:17.720 | So I'll lean into that.

00:09:18.820 | And I thought that maybe I would be a teacher.

00:09:21.900 | 'Cause I thought, well, I get all these concepts

00:09:24.140 | and I think I could relate them to kids or to my peers.

00:09:29.140 | 'Cause I helped a lot of my classmates

00:09:31.960 | through some classes.

00:09:33.960 | So that's all I really had.

00:09:36.360 | I didn't know.

00:09:37.200 | And then when I would play sports, I would be okay.

00:09:40.360 | I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't the VIP or the MVP.

00:09:45.240 | And so I was just kind of playing basketball,

00:09:48.240 | playing baseball.

00:09:50.340 | And then when I found skateboarding,

00:09:54.760 | I mean, it was pretty obvious

00:09:57.560 | that that was what I wanted to do.

00:09:59.440 | It was once I got on a skateboard

00:10:02.660 | and realized that I could maneuver it

00:10:04.300 | and do things that were unique.

00:10:06.700 | And now they're moving the needle or anyone cared,

00:10:10.000 | but they were unique in the sense of like,

00:10:11.980 | I've never seen one do this and this feels awesome.

00:10:15.100 | And so I just want to do this.

00:10:17.340 | And so I didn't think that this is my career.

00:10:20.260 | I was 10.

00:10:21.340 | So I just thought, this is my, this is my hobby.

00:10:25.200 | This is my thing.

00:10:26.920 | And I don't want to play these other sports anymore.

00:10:29.520 | - Did you stop playing all the other sports?

00:10:31.560 | - Yes, I quit little league in the middle of the season

00:10:36.200 | when my dad had been appointed president

00:10:38.740 | of that chapter of little league.

00:10:40.880 | Because he was the coach.

00:10:43.440 | He was always very involved in all of his kids.

00:10:45.440 | I have three siblings.

00:10:46.440 | So he was always very supportive,

00:10:48.160 | whatever they were doing.

00:10:49.520 | And then when I was playing baseball,

00:10:51.420 | he became a coach because he had time and he was doing that.

00:10:54.200 | He was almost retired.

00:10:55.820 | And then he was such a prominent figure in the little league.

00:11:01.020 | They said, oh, you're president now.

00:11:02.780 | And so then someone else was coach.

00:11:04.440 | And then I was skating and I was over it.

00:11:08.380 | - Did you immediately start skateboarding in the parks

00:11:11.360 | on transition as we say,

00:11:13.420 | or were you pushing around in the driveway like most kids?

00:11:16.200 | - I was transportation and skating was kind of a fad.

00:11:20.720 | So I started in 78, roughly, maybe 77 even.

00:11:24.540 | And it was kind of a fad.

00:11:26.760 | So kids just had skateboards and they would,

00:11:29.640 | they would all cruise around, you know, like it was the 70s.

00:11:31.940 | So everyone had a bike, right?

00:11:33.720 | And you knew wherever all the kids were

00:11:35.140 | 'cause the bikes were in the front lawn.

00:11:36.920 | And then at some point that kind of turned into skating.

00:11:40.380 | So everyone had skateboard.

00:11:41.800 | They're all like shitty, you know,

00:11:45.500 | JC Penny or big box store skateboards.

00:11:51.160 | No one had really good one, not in my area.

00:11:53.320 | But then at some point,

00:11:56.680 | we were just looking at these magazines of people skating

00:11:59.500 | and everyone's skating in pools.

00:12:00.920 | 'Cause that was the dog town and Z boys there.

00:12:02.460 | And it was like, these guys are flying.

00:12:04.300 | I want to like, where do we do that?

00:12:05.920 | And then the skate park opened up in San Diego.

00:12:09.040 | - That was Del Mar Skate Park?

00:12:10.480 | - Escape Oasis.

00:12:11.320 | - Okay, Oasis.

00:12:12.280 | - Oasis Skate Park was the first one in our area.

00:12:15.420 | Actually, I take that back.

00:12:16.480 | Spring Valley was the first skate park.

00:12:18.280 | I tried to go there and I was nine and you had to be 10.

00:12:22.000 | And I remember like sitting in the parking lot,

00:12:26.040 | looking over the fence and my dad didn't realize

00:12:29.160 | what they ate.

00:12:30.000 | 'Cause my dad would have easily lied for me,

00:12:31.900 | but he didn't realize there was an age limit.

00:12:33.480 | And he's, how old is he?

00:12:34.320 | Nine, oh, sorry, he can't come.

00:12:36.220 | And then they closed, not long after.

00:12:38.780 | So when I never got to Spring Valley.

00:12:41.600 | - 'Cause I think of you as synonymous

00:12:43.840 | with Del Mar Skate Ranch.

00:12:45.160 | - Sure, well, that was, that came later

00:12:46.880 | because Oasis Skate Park was opened up.

00:12:50.020 | So this was when I first, when I was like 78,

00:12:52.660 | a friend of mine was going,

00:12:55.640 | he said, I'm going to go to the skate park.

00:12:57.180 | So I had to go get, you know, it's such a hassle.

00:13:01.000 | Like I had to go get the authorization form.

00:13:03.240 | I had to get it notarized by the bank, by my parents,

00:13:06.320 | like to go there.

00:13:08.040 | And then I went and it was, that was my epiphany.

00:13:10.760 | When I first saw people flying around in person,

00:13:14.200 | I was like, this is what I'm doing

00:13:16.240 | for as long as I could possibly do it.

00:13:17.940 | 'Cause it looked like magic.

00:13:21.120 | It really did.

00:13:21.960 | It looked like they were flying on magic carpets.

00:13:24.280 | And it spoke to me in the sense of being a daredevil,

00:13:27.500 | but also doing it individually, not relying on my team,

00:13:32.100 | not getting, getting hassled by a coach.

00:13:37.100 | It was just like, oh, I can be part of the scene,

00:13:39.240 | but do it my own way.

00:13:40.820 | And then I skated Oasis as much as I could,

00:13:44.860 | as whenever I get your rides there.

00:13:47.660 | And then my parents moved to North County, San Diego,

00:13:51.840 | when I was in high school.

00:13:54.060 | Mostly because they were just chasing

00:13:56.780 | kind of real estate deals.

00:13:58.300 | And so I got lucky that Del Mar Skate Ranch was right there.

00:14:04.460 | Every other park closed.

00:14:06.260 | The Del Mar Skate Ranch remained open.

00:14:07.620 | So I mean, there was a bit of luck to all that.

00:14:09.500 | And it was based on geography.

00:14:11.240 | - Your dad's involvement is interesting

00:14:15.800 | because I got into skateboarding because, you know,

00:14:19.780 | my dad wasn't around that much at that time.

00:14:22.620 | A lot of kids get into skateboarding

00:14:23.680 | because it doesn't require parent involvement.

00:14:26.620 | Was it unusual to have parental involvement at that stage?

00:14:30.100 | I mean, I remember Frank.

00:14:31.180 | And by the way, I remember Frank and Nancy,

00:14:32.880 | your parents with such fondness,

00:14:34.980 | not just because they took me in,

00:14:36.060 | but I remember thinking like they were at times

00:14:38.880 | the only point of stability in a landscape of like 200

00:14:42.560 | people where, as you know,

00:14:43.740 | there could be like potential chaos of any kind.

00:14:46.220 | And your dad had this way of moving about,

00:14:48.200 | like he wasn't afraid.

00:14:49.420 | I recall that he wasn't afraid to say what he thought,

00:14:51.700 | like, hey, don't do that.

00:14:52.700 | Like impose some regulation at these contests.

00:14:55.380 | And at the same time, it seemed to me also understood

00:14:58.200 | that this was a sport unlike other sports.

00:15:00.040 | Like you're not going to regulate kids like me at the time,

00:15:04.060 | or you're not going to try and control people.

00:15:06.780 | So what was it like to have your dad involved?

00:15:09.160 | And the reason I ask is that you're a parent,

00:15:11.440 | we'll talk more about parenting,

00:15:12.940 | but also it seems that he went from saying, okay,

00:15:15.920 | you know, little league, other sports,

00:15:18.500 | which is more typical to, okay,

00:15:20.300 | this kind of unusual sport, skateboarding,

00:15:23.180 | but your mere interest in it was enough to get him excited

00:15:27.140 | or motivated enough to take you around to these places.

00:15:30.100 | That's pretty special.

00:15:31.160 | I mean, that's pretty unique.

00:15:32.000 | - It was, I mean, and in that respect,

00:15:33.820 | it was great to have his support and to rely on him for that.

00:15:38.140 | The fact that he was always around and that he was in charge

00:15:40.660 | of a lot of the events, that sucked

00:15:43.020 | because it just marked me

00:15:47.020 | as one being favorited

00:15:50.780 | and spoiled.

00:15:54.060 | And most of my friends,

00:15:55.700 | their parents didn't want them skating.

00:15:57.420 | So even though they were stoked that my dad

00:16:00.700 | was doing this kind of thing

00:16:02.100 | and giving that kind of support,

00:16:03.180 | they still were like, your dad's here.

00:16:06.260 | Like, this is our thing.

00:16:07.420 | This is our scene.

00:16:08.320 | This is our getaway from our parents.

00:16:10.440 | I didn't really have a choice in the matter.

00:16:13.320 | I did at some point tell him my concerns

00:16:18.320 | and my frustrations with it,

00:16:21.240 | but he didn't really want to hear it.

00:16:23.080 | He was very much steadfast.

00:16:26.160 | Like, well, I've been coming this far.

00:16:28.640 | Like, we can keep our distance at these events,

00:16:32.320 | but people are relying on me to organize them.

00:16:34.800 | And so I just had to suck it up for a while.

00:16:38.080 | - Did it push you harder?

00:16:39.500 | Like, if you could prove yourself with a skateboard

00:16:41.160 | and then you didn't have to worry about

00:16:42.520 | any claims of favoritism,

00:16:43.600 | 'cause ultimately you can't fake skateboarding, right?

00:16:48.240 | I mean, there's no deep fake version of skateboarding.

00:16:51.560 | You either can do it or you can't do it.

00:16:53.680 | And it's shown in real time.

00:16:56.080 | So, and I suppose back then I recall

00:17:00.420 | you were quite a bit skinny or skinnier.

00:17:03.920 | - Oh yeah.

00:17:04.760 | I had all kinds of things going against me at the time.

00:17:08.600 | - Yeah, I mean, I don't think people will realize this

00:17:10.240 | unless they've met you in person,

00:17:11.580 | but nowadays there are a few taller skateboarders out there

00:17:14.220 | 'cause the sport's grown so much,

00:17:16.460 | but you're pretty tall.

00:17:17.620 | You're like six.

00:17:18.660 | - Six, three, but I was not when I was growing.

00:17:21.020 | When I was that age, I was very small

00:17:23.160 | and kind of concerningly small

00:17:28.880 | because by the time I got to be 16,

00:17:31.860 | I was still, I looked like I was 13.

00:17:36.400 | I used to get pulled over.

00:17:38.500 | I literally, like I had a car that I bought with my earnings.

00:17:42.160 | I had a Honda Civic, 1977, CBCC,

00:17:45.480 | and I would get pulled over.

00:17:47.340 | And then the cops would be like, "How old are you?"

00:17:49.260 | I'd go, "16."

00:17:50.420 | Like, "Well, you looked like you were 13 back there."

00:17:52.840 | And then I shot up around age 17.

00:17:57.040 | - Okay, so that's interesting.

00:17:58.760 | And we can get back to this when we talk about

00:18:00.680 | your almost remarkable levels of ability

00:18:04.620 | to recover from physical injuries,

00:18:06.080 | because, well, I'll just share a little bit

00:18:08.520 | of a biological theory here,

00:18:10.980 | which is that there are a lot of people

00:18:11.820 | that study longevity and perhaps the fastest rate of aging

00:18:16.620 | that we ever undergo is puberty, right?

00:18:18.800 | If you think about a kid before puberty,

00:18:20.240 | kid after puberty, it's like different human being,

00:18:22.040 | psychologically, often physically as well.

00:18:24.280 | Some people have a longer arc of puberty than others,

00:18:27.000 | and that does seem to correlate with a longer life.

00:18:29.920 | And so it's kind of interesting.

00:18:31.760 | Some kids hit puberty and they go through

00:18:33.040 | all the markers of puberty in like one summer.

00:18:35.440 | Other kids, it's very, very long.

00:18:37.280 | And it sounds like, we don't have to talk about

00:18:39.440 | when you hit puberty and the other markers,

00:18:41.120 | but it sounds like your growth spurt occurred late.

00:18:44.840 | That's a terrific marker of a long life, by the way,

00:18:48.320 | because what it reflects is the onset

00:18:49.920 | of a big burst of growth hormone

00:18:51.700 | out of the pituitary and the brain.

00:18:54.360 | And if you continue to grow for a long period of time,

00:18:57.720 | that indicates, it gives you a little bit

00:18:59.580 | of the slope of the line.

00:19:01.040 | Does that make sense?

00:19:01.880 | - Oh yeah, for sure.

00:19:03.080 | This may have important and fortunate consequences.

00:19:06.520 | So at 17, you shot up, am I correct in remembering,

00:19:10.560 | maybe you said it, maybe somebody else did,

00:19:12.080 | that you were, forgive me, but so skinny when you were a kid

00:19:15.720 | that you actually wore elbow pads as kneepads.

00:19:18.080 | Yeah, that's a true story.

00:19:19.520 | - For sure.

00:19:20.360 | And I took inspiration from others that I identified with,

00:19:25.360 | namely Steve Cavallaro, because he was already

00:19:28.600 | an established pro when I started to come up in the ranks

00:19:32.160 | or even get noticed at all.

00:19:33.400 | And he was wearing elbow pads on his knees

00:19:36.400 | in this full page picture of him in Winchester

00:19:38.360 | doing a back sit there.

00:19:39.200 | And I was like, that, I want to do that.

00:19:42.160 | And he's small.

00:19:44.000 | And I feel like that's my goal.

00:19:46.560 | And what I didn't say, like, if he can do that, I can do it.

00:19:48.680 | It was just more like, oh, this, I identify with that.

00:19:51.860 | And that gives me hope.

00:19:54.440 | - And as I recall, Stevie also has

00:19:55.880 | a pretty severe scoliosis, right?

00:19:58.000 | Like at one point, at one point he was turned pretty,

00:20:01.960 | pretty tight to the right or left, I don't recall,

00:20:04.260 | which I mean, still incredible skateboarder, love Stevie.

00:20:06.560 | He's a NorCal guy.

00:20:07.400 | So I grew up around him.

00:20:08.240 | - Yeah, I know whatever he had is from birth,

00:20:10.040 | but it was more that his size.

00:20:14.000 | And I didn't even know he was many, not many,

00:20:17.180 | but no, he's like four years older than me.

00:20:19.700 | So I just was like, oh, there's small guys doing that.

00:20:22.960 | I can do it maybe.

00:20:24.520 | But when I got tall, when I went through puberty,

00:20:28.320 | suddenly I had all these tricks.

00:20:31.440 | And then suddenly I had the strength and the height

00:20:35.440 | that gave me confidence.

00:20:37.440 | And so all of a sudden it was like,

00:20:38.560 | oh, I can go way higher now.

00:20:41.520 | And I'm comfortable with these tricks,

00:20:43.500 | these intricate board maneuvers and stuff.

00:20:45.880 | So that was a huge advantage to me.

00:20:48.320 | The smaller stuff felt different after that,

00:20:53.520 | which was harder, but being able to blast eight feet

00:20:57.760 | in the air as opposed to four feet in the air

00:20:59.880 | was a huge advantage.

00:21:01.180 | - Yeah, isn't that wild when the nervous system

00:21:03.580 | knows how to do something and then your body changes

00:21:06.140 | and you can do the same thing,

00:21:07.580 | but with so much more force.

00:21:09.200 | - Even the bowls look smaller.

00:21:11.640 | When I would stand on top of it, I was like, wait,

00:21:13.020 | this isn't that big?

00:21:14.860 | - It's wild.

00:21:17.120 | Well, the reason I ask about this,

00:21:18.200 | I think people listening generally seem to assume that

00:21:23.060 | if you become a Stanford professor

00:21:24.560 | or you become a professional skateboarder

00:21:26.000 | or you become a professional soccer player,

00:21:28.200 | that you were just fated to become that, right?

00:21:30.680 | And it's clear that it's the confluence

00:21:32.200 | of so many different factors,

00:21:33.820 | but one of the consistent factors for sure

00:21:37.920 | is a sense that you just really love doing it, right?

00:21:40.360 | I mean, I can't imagine getting proficient

00:21:44.560 | or excellent at anything without loving doing it, right?

00:21:47.800 | And so still at this time when you were, let's say 14, 15,

00:21:52.140 | did you have any concept of, I'm gonna have a pro model,

00:21:56.580 | I'm gonna, none of that.

00:21:57.840 | - Well, there was none of that to be had.

00:22:01.160 | So we didn't have these great aspirations

00:22:03.560 | because no one had really done that before.

00:22:06.680 | There were, you could have some success.

00:22:08.920 | Yes, you could have maybe a signature model,

00:22:11.000 | but even the top sales of skateboarding then

00:22:14.320 | wasn't a career.

00:22:15.480 | The prize money was $150 for first place,

00:22:19.640 | 100 for second, 50 for third.

00:22:21.880 | - Couple tanks of gas, some food.

00:22:25.480 | - Yeah, so let's put it this way.

00:22:28.240 | I turned pro when I was 14.

00:22:30.400 | By the time I was 15 and a half

00:22:34.240 | and I had a learner's permit and I could drive a scooter,

00:22:38.520 | you know, I had $600 in my bank account

00:22:41.680 | and I used that to buy a Honda Express Moped.

00:22:44.960 | For a year and a half, that was my earnings, was $600.

00:22:49.200 | - So clearly money wasn't the dopamine hit.

00:22:51.960 | It was the actual skateboarder.

00:22:54.400 | - Sure, and that's what I mean though.

00:22:55.760 | There was no goal of that because it just didn't exist.

00:22:59.240 | So I didn't care.

00:23:00.360 | Like, are you kidding me?

00:23:01.440 | I have my own vehicle at age 15.

00:23:04.000 | Like I was living large.

00:23:05.340 | I can get to the skate park on my own.

00:23:07.840 | That was amazing.

00:23:09.660 | - To be 14 and be a professional at anything

00:23:13.680 | must be a trip, so to speak.

00:23:17.760 | But what I'm wondering about,

00:23:18.920 | because I came up when your early cohort with Palo Peralta,

00:23:23.840 | so for those that don't know, so-called Bones Brigade, right?

00:23:27.480 | I guess it was what, total what, like six, seven guys?

00:23:29.240 | There were some that were a little more peripheral

00:23:30.560 | than others.

00:23:32.120 | There were about six, seven core guys in the various videos.

00:23:36.240 | I mean, you guys were famous, right?

00:23:37.720 | You had posters on kids' walls who skateboarded.

00:23:42.000 | There was a second or maybe it was a third surge

00:23:44.780 | of popularity in skateboarding

00:23:46.240 | because it would sort of surge in general popularity

00:23:50.280 | then disappear and come back as it has over decades.

00:23:52.960 | It keeps coming and going to some extent.

00:23:56.080 | Did you have a conscious awareness of just how,

00:23:59.400 | how much attention was being placed on photos of you,

00:24:02.640 | videos of you?

00:24:03.480 | And I'm just wondering about the younger version of you,

00:24:05.200 | whether or not you realize what was happening.

00:24:08.880 | And the reason I ask is because you've always seemed to me

00:24:11.800 | somebody who, through interviews, through videos,

00:24:14.320 | through our interactions,

00:24:15.840 | and for those that have known you much longer than I have,

00:24:19.560 | just very grounded, like not caught up in it.

00:24:23.500 | We've never seen headlines about you kind of just

00:24:27.000 | blowing all your money or wrecking cars

00:24:29.720 | and destroying your life.

00:24:31.240 | I mean, I'm sure you've made mistakes like any of us,

00:24:33.240 | but you seem to have avoided a lot of the pitfalls

00:24:36.440 | of quote-unquote famous people and celebrities.

00:24:38.880 | And yet you were a famous person from a very young age.

00:24:42.160 | - Yeah, well, I think it was that I didn't never,

00:24:49.000 | that was never a goal.

00:24:50.480 | And then when I had a sense of it, I was very uncomfortable.

00:24:54.360 | I mean, I was happy.

00:24:55.300 | I was happy to be successful.

00:24:56.640 | I was happy that people recognized me.

00:24:58.640 | That was amazing just because I was good at skateboarding.

00:25:02.480 | I never imagined something like that.

00:25:04.820 | And, but I was always very,

00:25:06.520 | I mean, some people thought that I was sort of

00:25:10.240 | almost like pompous or arrogant because I wasn't interacting

00:25:13.200 | because I was just, I was walled off.

00:25:14.660 | I was like, I don't know what to do.

00:25:16.040 | - Gosh, this is the last words I would ever use

00:25:18.880 | to describe you.

00:25:19.920 | - I think it was just more that people would see me,

00:25:22.200 | like I'd go to a ramp.

00:25:23.040 | I didn't know anybody and I would just start skating

00:25:24.840 | and I'd do all my stuff and they were like,

00:25:26.760 | oh, he doesn't even talk to anyone.

00:25:28.960 | And I was like, I don't know what to do.

00:25:31.460 | I don't know how to act.

00:25:32.300 | - Also you were 14 years old.

00:25:33.600 | - Right, so Stacey broke me out of that.

00:25:35.920 | 'Cause I remember one time there was a kid

00:25:37.320 | that was just staring at me, like holding my skateboard.

00:25:39.600 | He had my signature model and he said,

00:25:41.440 | go say hi to that guy.

00:25:43.080 | What, are you sure?

00:25:44.360 | Like he wants to interact with you, you know,

00:25:47.960 | just go high five him or anything.

00:25:49.360 | And I learned to sort of break out of my comfort zone

00:25:53.260 | by doing that enough.

00:25:55.800 | But my first go around, I mean,

00:25:57.400 | that was sort of my first wave of fame, I'd say,

00:26:01.840 | the Bones Brigade years.

00:26:03.840 | And we were so young that we thought this is forever.

00:26:07.880 | And so we were definitely careless with our money,

00:26:11.440 | with our actions.

00:26:12.760 | And at some point my dad saw that he didn't think

00:26:17.880 | it was gonna be long-term.

00:26:20.120 | 'Cause no one had had a long-term career, right?

00:26:22.440 | So he encouraged me to invest, to get property,

00:26:27.440 | like to buy a house.

00:26:31.120 | That was my saving grace.

00:26:33.040 | 'Cause I definitely was spending.

00:26:35.520 | - On cars and things like that.

00:26:38.160 | - Yeah, car, like kind of a little bit beyond my means.

00:26:41.080 | I wasn't really considering, all my money was 1099 income.

00:26:45.120 | So it wasn't, we weren't paying taxes on anything.

00:26:47.280 | And at the end of the year, it'd be like,

00:26:48.440 | oh, you owe this much.

00:26:49.280 | Like, wait, what are you talking about?

00:26:51.280 | So for instance, hey, do you wanna go to Hawaii?

00:26:56.240 | Yeah, okay, invite everyone.

00:26:58.720 | We're all going to Hawaii.

00:27:00.340 | I got, well, let's rent a place.

00:27:01.720 | Okay, and it was on me 'cause I had the means.

00:27:06.080 | - You mentioned Stacy.

00:27:06.960 | We should probably clarify for people.

00:27:09.480 | Tony's referring to the great Stacy Peralta.

00:27:12.440 | - Yeah, he was the one who put me on the Bones Brigade.

00:27:15.720 | When I was still considered sort of a circus act,

00:27:20.520 | like a, my skating was not really established.

00:27:24.600 | The stuff that I was doing was largely made fun of

00:27:27.380 | because people thought that what I was doing

00:27:29.800 | was just more like a free show.

00:27:31.420 | - Can you explain more?

00:27:33.320 | So my, and let me just tell you that my recollection,

00:27:35.920 | first recollection of you,

00:27:37.880 | that I still have that image in my mind would,

00:27:40.480 | is the finger flip air, right?

00:27:42.680 | So for folks that aren't familiar with skateboarding,

00:27:44.880 | people ride around on transition or in the street,

00:27:47.240 | handrails, stairs, you know,

00:27:48.200 | people are probably familiar with all those things,

00:27:50.080 | but skateboards will ride up toward the top of the pool

00:27:52.920 | or the ramp, and they'll do something on the so-called lip

00:27:54.700 | or the coping, that's to ride at the edge of it,

00:27:57.060 | or they'll go above it, like in the air.

00:27:59.020 | But I recall seeing you do the finger flip air.

00:28:01.280 | I'd never seen anyone flip a board in the air.

00:28:03.880 | I'd seen people do varial, so move it.

00:28:06.680 | This is going to be complicated for people just listening,

00:28:08.240 | but just flip it upside down

00:28:10.280 | and then catch it in and finger flip air.

00:28:12.760 | That was, I remember that was jaw drop, right?

00:28:15.500 | It was like, so if that was considered circus era

00:28:19.280 | or circus like, then I don't know,

00:28:21.640 | I don't know what it was being compared to,

00:28:23.520 | because at the time we probably watched that,

00:28:27.560 | it was in slow motion, as I recall,

00:28:29.040 | and we probably watched it 3000 times, you know, that summer.

00:28:33.920 | There was a big group of us

00:28:34.760 | that all started skateboarding that summer.

00:28:36.960 | - I would say kind of just before that in that window

00:28:39.800 | is when people were more giving me flack

00:28:44.800 | for what I was doing,

00:28:47.400 | because I was mostly doing board variation stuff,

00:28:50.140 | but I still didn't have the height.

00:28:52.280 | - The height in terms of the height.

00:28:53.100 | - The height in terms of getting in the air.

00:28:55.760 | So I was doing all this stuff kind of right at coping level.

00:28:58.860 | And so people weren't taking it into consideration

00:29:01.520 | or giving it much merit because it was just like,

00:29:04.200 | oh, he's doing a little board twist or a board turn.

00:29:06.280 | And then when I started to get some height

00:29:08.840 | around the time you saw and started doing those tricks,

00:29:11.960 | like visibly way up high,

00:29:14.560 | that's when the shift happened in terms of more acceptance.

00:29:19.560 | But I was still labeled as like a trick skater, robot skater.

00:29:24.680 | And then you had Christian Osoy, who was all style.

00:29:29.560 | Air is higher than anyone.

00:29:31.260 | Anytime he did a trick,

00:29:32.360 | it was gonna be so flashy and so amazing.

00:29:36.000 | - And rockstar personality.

00:29:37.200 | - And rockstar personality.

00:29:38.380 | And so in that era, I mean, it was very divided.

00:29:43.360 | It was like, no one liked us both, you know what I mean?

00:29:47.800 | It was just so strange to be of that age

00:29:50.460 | and of doing something

00:29:53.060 | that had never really been established.

00:29:57.200 | And then suddenly I'm pitted against another skater

00:30:00.040 | and we're just trying to make our way

00:30:01.440 | through teen years and skateboarding.

00:30:05.400 | And it was hard.

00:30:08.080 | I mean, it was like, I got bullied.

00:30:11.040 | You know, yes, I was successful.

00:30:13.460 | Yes, I was doing, but I would get thrasher magazine

00:30:18.460 | would talk shit about my performance when I would win.

00:30:21.600 | - Yeah, I remember that

00:30:22.440 | because I was from Northern California

00:30:23.720 | and thrasher magazine was skateboard magazine

00:30:25.260 | from Northern California.

00:30:26.380 | I actually wrote for them for a while

00:30:27.640 | when I was a postdoc to make some extra money

00:30:30.360 | under a different name folks,

00:30:31.540 | but you can try and find those articles they're out there.

00:30:35.000 | And then in Southern California,

00:30:36.280 | it was skateboarder mag, trans world,

00:30:38.280 | mostly trans world skateboarding.

00:30:39.760 | - Yeah, it was a trans world skateboarding

00:30:42.080 | and thrasher magazine were the two.

00:30:44.080 | - The rivals.

00:30:44.920 | - Right.

00:30:46.280 | - So yeah, I recall some of those things that were said.

00:30:49.240 | It just is amazing to me,

00:30:51.980 | but it brings about a really important lesson,

00:30:54.020 | which is, you know, that kid that gets made fun of,

00:30:57.600 | if they're determined and they love what they're doing,

00:30:59.860 | that's going to be the kid that blows everyone away later.

00:31:02.000 | And I know this for sure, because I'll never forget there.

00:31:05.280 | Do you remember the back to the city contests

00:31:06.920 | that were called in San Francisco?

00:31:08.280 | So I went to those, they were in the drain fountains

00:31:09.940 | in front of city hall.

00:31:11.480 | I remember getting there one day

00:31:12.460 | and there was this guy with kind of like Afro-like hair

00:31:15.200 | pushing around and he was doing what are called daffies.

00:31:16.920 | He had two skateboards.

00:31:17.760 | He was kind of like weaving around.

00:31:18.920 | And I remember thinking, you know,

00:31:20.440 | San Francisco's got its issues now,

00:31:22.600 | but back then it was rough also for different reasons.

00:31:25.380 | I remember thinking like, this guy is going to get beat up.

00:31:27.920 | I hung out with the Embarcadero crew.

00:31:29.560 | I was like, this guy's going to get beat down.

00:31:31.780 | That guy was Mark Gonzalez.

00:31:33.440 | So one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest

00:31:36.240 | street skateboarder, if you can't really define

00:31:38.560 | these things greatest and whatnot in skateboarding.

00:31:40.960 | But you know, I remember thinking, this guy's just,

00:31:44.840 | he's a kook.

00:31:45.680 | And then I realized who it was.

00:31:47.360 | And then I realized he was just like any other kid there

00:31:50.120 | at some level.

00:31:50.960 | And then a lot of the kids that got teased early on,

00:31:53.480 | they stuck with it.

00:31:54.320 | Five years later, I'm seeing them in the magazines.

00:31:56.320 | And I think about this with podcasting too.

00:31:58.560 | There've been some podcasters that have reached out early on

00:32:00.720 | and had questions and I look at their stuff.

00:32:02.400 | And you know, one's initial impression can be like,

00:32:05.140 | what are they doing here?

00:32:06.520 | And then you just see them two years later,

00:32:08.080 | three years later, and they're doing amazingly well.

00:32:10.260 | And you're like, this guy or gal is here for good.

00:32:13.340 | They're probably gonna be top of the game in a few years.

00:32:15.480 | So you never count anybody out.

00:32:17.360 | When you would go to sleep at night in that era,

00:32:19.800 | were you like laying on the pillow going like,

00:32:21.200 | oh my God, people hate me.

00:32:22.520 | There's stuff in the magazines.

00:32:24.120 | I got to push harder.

00:32:25.380 | This is hard.

00:32:26.400 | Did you talk to your dad about it?

00:32:27.720 | I mean, again, it's a lot to bear even as an adult.

00:32:31.240 | I can only imagine what it's like to bear

00:32:32.880 | as a 15 year old kid.

00:32:35.120 | - I didn't really have a support group, you know,

00:32:37.980 | or any resource to voice those concerns.

00:32:42.920 | I just knew I wanted to keep getting better.

00:32:46.080 | That was it.

00:32:46.900 | And so if anything, if I was worried about those voices,

00:32:50.480 | if I was worried about the whatever take people had on me,

00:32:55.480 | I knew I was just gonna go back to the skate park

00:32:57.920 | and learn more tricks.

00:33:00.760 | And at some point I had so much of that as a foundation

00:33:05.760 | that it was sort of undeniable that like,

00:33:08.900 | well, he can do all this stuff.

00:33:10.940 | And he doesn't just do it at his home park.

00:33:13.840 | And I think that's probably when the tide turned for me

00:33:18.440 | is when I started to do well at other events,

00:33:22.620 | namely Upland Pipeline, which was for the most part,

00:33:26.660 | the most frightening pool that we could ride.

00:33:29.480 | The thing was big, but I also recall like the hips

00:33:32.360 | as they're called, like the transitions,

00:33:33.640 | the way they match up were super tight.

00:33:36.320 | - Lot of her giant coping, super rough.

00:33:39.340 | Like if you fell in Upland, you're getting chewed up.

00:33:42.060 | It's pulling your knee pads down.

00:33:43.480 | - I didn't know that.

00:33:44.320 | 'Cause from the photos, I wouldn't know that.

00:33:45.820 | - Oh, it was treacherous.

00:33:46.980 | It really was like, it was.

00:33:48.240 | And I wanted to do well at the event

00:33:53.160 | and I would drive up there every weekend.

00:33:54.880 | Like my friend, Greg Smith was a freestyler,

00:33:58.080 | but he lived near Upland.

00:33:59.520 | And so I would go Friday after school,

00:34:02.360 | straight to Upland, skate at night,

00:34:04.080 | skate Saturday all day, skate Sunday early,

00:34:07.440 | and then drive home 'cause I live in San Diego.

00:34:11.180 | And I just made it my mission to figure that thing out

00:34:14.560 | because that was the proving ground for me.

00:34:18.040 | And so if I could skate that, I could go skating.

00:34:22.640 | - As many of you know,

00:34:23.540 | I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012.

00:34:26.220 | So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.

00:34:28.680 | AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink

00:34:30.980 | that's designed to meet

00:34:31.820 | all of your foundational nutrition needs.

00:34:34.040 | Now, of course, I try to get enough servings

00:34:35.680 | of vitamins and minerals through whole food sources

00:34:37.960 | that include vegetables and fruits every day.

00:34:40.220 | But oftentimes I simply can't get enough servings.

00:34:42.880 | But with AG1, I'm sure to get enough vitamins and minerals

00:34:45.880 | and the probiotics that I need.

00:34:47.620 | And it also contains adaptogens to help buffer stress.

00:34:50.800 | Simply put, I always feel better when I take AG1.

00:34:53.600 | I have more focus and energy and I sleep better

00:34:56.120 | and it also happens to taste great.

00:34:58.360 | For all these reasons, whenever I'm asked,

00:35:00.220 | if you could take just one supplement, what would it be?

00:35:02.920 | I answer AG1.

00:35:04.500 | If you'd like to try AG1, go to drinkag1.com/huberman

00:35:08.660 | to claim a special offer.

00:35:10.140 | From now until August 12th, 2023,

00:35:12.680 | AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs

00:35:15.040 | plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.

00:35:17.760 | Again, if you go to drinkag1.com/huberman,

00:35:21.180 | you can claim the special offer of 10 free travel packs

00:35:24.200 | plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.

00:35:27.020 | - So it's clear you had enormous drive.

00:35:29.480 | Let's talk a little bit about the process of trying tricks,

00:35:33.800 | the anxiety associated with it.

00:35:35.320 | Did you and do you have a sort of systematic process?

00:35:39.120 | Was it, you know, I'm gonna learn the basics first.

00:35:42.000 | Like, did you say that?

00:35:43.040 | Did you say, okay, I'm gonna learn how to do stuff,

00:35:44.760 | you know, at coping level.

00:35:46.280 | Then I'm gonna do a little layer, then I'm gonna go bigger.

00:35:48.400 | I'm gonna do this.

00:35:49.240 | Or did you just sort of try what you wanted to try?

00:35:54.240 | And obviously you weren't haphazard about it.

00:35:56.760 | Like, it seems you were pretty systematic

00:35:59.040 | about exploring what's possible

00:36:01.700 | and then pushing forward little by little.

00:36:03.880 | But yeah, maybe you could talk a little bit

00:36:05.840 | about how you have conceptualized,

00:36:08.080 | okay, tomorrow I wanna try this.

00:36:09.720 | - It comes in different forms, but for the most part,

00:36:15.960 | I think about how I could combine existing tricks

00:36:19.600 | and would this trick work going into this trick

00:36:23.100 | and could your body position shift

00:36:25.280 | or would it all work in unison?

00:36:28.200 | And when I approach a new trick,

00:36:30.760 | I'm saying more in the last 20 years,

00:36:34.920 | my thought process is I have all the pieces to this.

00:36:38.420 | I've done every bit of it.

00:36:40.520 | I've done the first part of the trick in another form.

00:36:44.660 | I've done the second part or the grinding of it or whatever,

00:36:49.400 | usually in some other basic way.

00:36:51.780 | And then the landing is,

00:36:53.600 | well, the landing is from whatever that is.

00:36:56.060 | And if you can throw all those things together

00:36:59.320 | and make the timing work, it's gonna work.

00:37:01.780 | And I never went at something with some haphazard approach

00:37:06.780 | or throwing caution to the wind, like hope this,

00:37:10.180 | see what happens.

00:37:11.240 | It's always very much like, I know I have all these things.

00:37:14.080 | And so I just have to put them together.

00:37:16.820 | And I mean, now things are so technical

00:37:20.940 | that my same approach that I'm doing hundreds of times,

00:37:23.940 | one of them just works.

00:37:24.940 | And it's not because I didn't,

00:37:26.980 | it's not because I committed to that one.

00:37:28.580 | It's because of some tiny fractional adjustment

00:37:32.300 | that happened that I didn't even know happened

00:37:34.800 | and it just worked.

00:37:36.320 | And I mean, that kind of is the curse of what tricks are now

00:37:39.880 | 'cause there are plenty of moves that I've done

00:37:42.560 | over the last 10 years even that I only did once

00:37:45.460 | 'cause it was too fucking hard to get to.

00:37:47.880 | And I didn't learn from that one make.

00:37:51.320 | And that's hard to accept.

00:37:55.240 | 'Cause in the past, I was learning tricks

00:37:57.080 | to have them in my arsenal that I could just throw them down

00:37:59.540 | at a competition or a demo.

00:38:01.420 | I've got that in my pocket.

00:38:03.500 | These days, like that trick, for instance,

00:38:06.700 | I did a 360 shove it, five out of fakie.

00:38:10.020 | - All right, let's break that down for real.

00:38:11.460 | - 360 shove it, so who's gonna take this on?

00:38:13.740 | I'll let you take this on.

00:38:14.860 | I can try it from my knowledge and perspective,

00:38:17.360 | but we'll-

00:38:18.200 | - 360 shove it is pushing the board with your feet

00:38:22.220 | and letting it spin a full 360 rotation under your feet

00:38:26.340 | and then landing back on it.

00:38:28.060 | It's a trick that people do on, usually on flat ground.

00:38:31.980 | I've learned to do it up on the vert walls.

00:38:35.060 | Like I can do 360 shove it's kind of in the air.

00:38:37.740 | But I'm doing that.

00:38:40.300 | I'm doing a 360 shove it and then I'm landing on my truck.

00:38:44.580 | Right?

00:38:45.420 | - Like the axle between the wheels.

00:38:46.700 | - One axle in a, what we call a 5-0 position,

00:38:49.720 | which is basically a wheelie on the truck.

00:38:51.220 | So everything is so precise.

00:38:53.100 | I got to do 360 shove it at exactly

00:38:54.700 | a certain spot on the wall.

00:38:56.120 | I've got to catch it so that my truck lands

00:38:58.480 | when my foot hits it.

00:39:00.060 | I can't push it into the truck

00:39:01.420 | 'cause that screws up my balance.

00:39:03.740 | So it has to land on the truck.

00:39:05.620 | I have to land with my weight perfectly set back

00:39:10.260 | enough that I can come in backwards

00:39:12.860 | because I'm doing this trick

00:39:14.900 | and I'm gonna come in fakie.

00:39:18.940 | Right?

00:39:19.780 | 360 shove 5-0 to coming in forward

00:39:21.740 | is a whole different beast.

00:39:23.940 | I could probably do that just in a few tries.

00:39:26.620 | But the idea that I have to land on this thing,

00:39:28.700 | balance on it like a teeter totter

00:39:31.080 | and then reverse my energy and come in fakie.

00:39:35.780 | - Backward.

00:39:36.620 | - It's so hard.

00:39:38.180 | It's so hard to get into the right position.

00:39:40.780 | So anytime I try it, there's like a one in 10 chance

00:39:45.020 | I'm even gonna get into the position I need.

00:39:47.860 | And that's the one I have to commit to.

00:39:49.640 | So every time I do it, it's so intense

00:39:51.980 | and it takes so much commitment and so much mind.

00:39:56.980 | I don't even know how to explain it.

00:40:01.900 | That you have shut everything else out

00:40:05.820 | except this one moment and this one fractional piece

00:40:09.980 | that you have to make work.

00:40:13.640 | And I've done it once.

00:40:16.700 | And I would love to do it again,

00:40:19.200 | but I know it's gonna take the same amount of effort.

00:40:21.660 | I didn't learn from that one that I made

00:40:24.100 | some trick that makes it happen every time.

00:40:26.220 | It's all so technical

00:40:27.420 | and there's so many things that can go wrong

00:40:29.380 | that I'll always accept that, okay, I did it once.

00:40:33.180 | - In thinking about the 360 show at Five Oh Fakie,

00:40:35.860 | was that something that you thought of the night before?

00:40:39.980 | You decide that day, do you ever use visualization?

00:40:43.040 | Have you ever had learning come to you in a dream

00:40:45.720 | or find that you tried, tried, tried something,

00:40:47.260 | went to sleep that night, next day, made it,

00:40:49.620 | anything like that?

00:40:50.540 | - Yes, sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night

00:40:52.720 | and I'll write down something.

00:40:54.740 | 'Cause it was like, oh, there's this trick.

00:40:56.180 | Oh, I think I could do that.

00:40:57.260 | Yeah, okay, I'm gonna write it down.

00:40:58.280 | - So you dream about skateboarding from time to time.

00:41:00.420 | - Yeah, well, yeah, that has shifted a bit after I got hurt.

00:41:03.980 | But yeah, I used to dream that I can't skate.

00:41:07.540 | Like I'm trying and it feels like the ramps made a carpet.

00:41:11.160 | I can't get the speed, I can't get the timing.

00:41:13.580 | And then as I went through this traumatic injury,

00:41:15.820 | my dreams shifted to, wow, I can skate.

00:41:18.100 | I can do all my tricks again.

00:41:19.220 | - Oh, interesting. - Yeah.

00:41:20.380 | - A little piece of science around the can't skate piece

00:41:24.960 | or when people feel like they're bolted down in a dream

00:41:27.260 | or they can't run away.

00:41:28.580 | There's this one phase of sleep called rapid.

00:41:30.300 | I movement sleep where the brain is very active.

00:41:33.420 | The dreams associated with it tend to be very vivid.

00:41:36.440 | And at the same time, we are completely paralyzed.

00:41:39.620 | And the idea is that no one really knows why,

00:41:42.180 | but that it's the case that we're paralyzed

00:41:44.460 | to prevent us from acting out our dreams.

00:41:46.620 | It's also an interesting neurochemical phenomenon

00:41:50.060 | 'cause during these rapid eye movement dreams,

00:41:51.860 | they tend to be very intense,

00:41:53.420 | but the body can't release adrenaline.

00:41:55.460 | So it's almost like its own form of trauma therapy.

00:41:57.300 | It's like you're experiencing this intense thing

00:41:58.680 | in your mind, but your body can't react.

00:42:00.860 | And so oftentimes people have argued

00:42:03.740 | that that's why you feel like you want to move

00:42:06.280 | and you can't because you actually can't.

00:42:08.180 | Some people have woken up while still a bit paralyzed in REM.

00:42:11.220 | Have you ever had that happen?

00:42:12.060 | Where you wake up and- - No, but actually

00:42:14.380 | a couple of my kids have struggled

00:42:16.340 | with that a couple of times.

00:42:17.660 | - Yeah, REM interference it's called.

00:42:19.140 | It's not dangerous and usually people can jolt themselves

00:42:21.280 | out, but it's kind of terrifying.

00:42:22.720 | So that's interesting.

00:42:23.560 | So we'll get to a discussion about the recent injury

00:42:26.300 | and thankfully recovery from the injury.

00:42:29.220 | Not miraculous because that makes it seem

00:42:31.000 | as if it's surprising.

00:42:31.900 | Frankly, I'm not surprised that you've recovered,

00:42:33.920 | but it is spectacular the way you have.

00:42:37.380 | But you're saying that in your dreams before the injury,

00:42:42.100 | you would think about skateboarding,

00:42:43.780 | but you felt like there was a kind of can't do it.

00:42:46.000 | - When I was doing it in my dream,

00:42:48.040 | there was always some roadblock that I just could like,

00:42:51.840 | why can't I get any speed?

00:42:53.320 | Why can't I snap or do this trick?

00:42:56.660 | It's more in the moments where it's Twilight moments

00:42:59.400 | where I'm kind of awake and I'm thinking about tricks

00:43:01.780 | that everything else falls away and I can actually focus

00:43:04.880 | on what kind of new moves to come up with.

00:43:08.180 | An example of that was recently I went to the X Games

00:43:15.620 | in Japan a few weeks ago and I was thinking

00:43:21.580 | I was gonna go more to show my support

00:43:25.400 | 'cause they had a vert event.

00:43:26.260 | There's not a lot of vert events anymore.

00:43:28.140 | So if there's a vert event,

00:43:30.260 | it's kind of like if you build it, I will come

00:43:32.140 | 'cause I want to show my support.

00:43:34.300 | That's kind of where my heart is.

00:43:36.140 | And they had a best trick event and I thought,

00:43:38.740 | man, maybe I could get in the best trick.

00:43:40.140 | Is there anything new though?

00:43:41.700 | And I'm still recovering from my leg.

00:43:43.740 | And then at some point I was falling asleep and I thought,

00:43:47.180 | oh, I could do that trick and come in 180.

00:43:50.300 | I know I could do that with my current state

00:43:53.180 | and not getting that much speed.

00:43:54.940 | So to explain what I was doing is a half cab,

00:43:59.940 | body varial to backside blunt.

00:44:01.800 | - Okay, we can walk through this.

00:44:03.340 | Half cab has come up backwards, go 360.

00:44:06.780 | So half of that would go 180.

00:44:08.100 | - As I approached the top of the ramp, body varial.

00:44:11.740 | That means I jump around and then I jump around on my board

00:44:15.100 | and then I make sure that it lands with my two trucks out

00:44:18.860 | and my tail on the coping, which is very precarious.

00:44:22.460 | And I've done that and come and fakie these.

00:44:24.740 | - That's the blunt piece.

00:44:25.580 | - That's the blunt.

00:44:26.420 | So I've done that and then you have to use your feet

00:44:29.380 | to lift up the board, come and fakie.

00:44:31.940 | I've done that twice.

00:44:34.160 | And I thought, well, I wonder if there's something

00:44:36.660 | I could do like that.

00:44:38.140 | And then I realized that if I just keep coming around

00:44:40.760 | and I come in backside direction,

00:44:44.420 | that keeps my body spinning

00:44:46.380 | and that might actually be easier.

00:44:48.940 | It wasn't, but I figured it out.

00:44:51.380 | - I think I saw a clip of this on Instagram.

00:44:52.680 | - I did it, yeah.

00:44:53.740 | I did it X Games and that was like, it was my last run.

00:44:56.520 | It was, I mean, it didn't move the needle.

00:44:58.980 | I got seven place, but for me, it was a huge moment.

00:45:02.700 | - It felt amazing, I bet.

00:45:04.780 | - Oh yeah, for sure.

00:45:06.220 | I mean, it was like weeks of preparation

00:45:10.100 | and trying to figure this thing out.

00:45:11.380 | I made it twice before the event on my own alone on my ramp,

00:45:17.680 | but that's just an example of,

00:45:21.160 | I was literally falling asleep

00:45:22.600 | and then all of a sudden it was like,

00:45:24.780 | half cup body roll, backside blunt.

00:45:26.840 | - I love it.

00:45:27.680 | That liminal state between wakefulness and sleep

00:45:30.260 | is such a beautiful state that if one is open to ideas

00:45:34.040 | showing up there, they almost always do.

00:45:36.780 | - I started trying it the next morning.

00:45:39.340 | - Do you ever find that when you're taking walks

00:45:41.860 | or in the shower or not thinking about skateboarding?

00:45:45.660 | - Yeah, it's usually in the sort of mundane moments

00:45:49.140 | that I get inspiration, yeah.

00:45:51.440 | - Do you have practices for pure relaxation

00:45:54.840 | aside from socialization?

00:45:56.020 | - I know, I was never,

00:45:57.500 | I think that's something I've been lacking.

00:46:00.120 | I never was good at warming up, stretching, post-warm up

00:46:05.120 | or relaxing, meditation, nothing.

00:46:13.020 | I just, I go skate and it's on.

00:46:15.780 | And as I've gotten older,

00:46:19.420 | I realized that's not the best technique,

00:46:22.200 | but it's worked so far.

00:46:24.260 | - It has worked.

00:46:25.860 | So for you, it's go,

00:46:27.140 | hopefully a little bit of warm up if you.

00:46:28.700 | - I have more of a sort of OCD warm up run

00:46:33.260 | that I use to gauge how I'm feeling,

00:46:35.960 | but I kind of have to get through that.

00:46:38.060 | - Like a surgeon, when a surgeon's about to do a surgery,

00:46:41.700 | they don't warm up, they just check off the various boxes

00:46:44.300 | of this is here, that's there.

00:46:46.300 | Make sure that they're comfortable in their environment

00:46:48.500 | and then they do the life-saving work, yeah.

00:46:52.020 | - Yeah, I'd say my warm up run is kind of basic tricks,

00:46:56.100 | but they give me a sense of how stiff

00:46:59.020 | or what I need to adjust for for the rest of the day.

00:47:03.060 | So I guess it's not so OCD,

00:47:04.700 | but I definitely feel like I got to go through that routine.

00:47:07.700 | - What feels the best?

00:47:10.940 | Like, I know that making a new trick feels incredible,

00:47:14.820 | especially if you've been at it a long time,

00:47:16.780 | dialing it in so that you can do it again and again,

00:47:19.140 | it's its own form of reward.

00:47:22.060 | But what is the maybe list of two or three things

00:47:25.400 | that just feels so good?

00:47:27.740 | - Well, that for sure, learning new tricks,

00:47:30.540 | not even that it's something that I created,

00:47:32.820 | but just doing something that I've never done before.

00:47:35.940 | When I first learned varials, backside varials,

00:47:40.300 | no one had done backside varials before,

00:47:42.020 | they'd only done the front side.

00:47:44.340 | And a varial is where you reach down, grab your board,

00:47:47.220 | jump in the air and then turn it 180 under your feet.

00:47:49.900 | It's like a shove it, but you're guiding with your hand.

00:47:53.060 | I learned that halfway up the pool,

00:47:56.220 | the main pool at Oasis with no one around.

00:48:00.480 | And the feeling I got when I rode away

00:48:02.860 | was something that I had never experienced

00:48:04.780 | and it is literally the buzz

00:48:06.980 | that I've been chasing ever since,

00:48:08.780 | because it was like I created something.

00:48:10.780 | - Varials below coping was the button.

00:48:13.060 | - That was it, it really was.

00:48:14.260 | And if you saw a video of it, you'd be like that thing?

00:48:17.020 | You're like, what can I say?

00:48:18.500 | It was the first time that I thought of it.

00:48:22.060 | I went through all the motions of it.

00:48:26.920 | I did the work and I figured it out and no one cared,

00:48:30.820 | but at some point I was able to do it six feet in the air

00:48:35.020 | and do a full 360 varial.

00:48:37.780 | And so that was the building block,

00:48:40.460 | but that feeling was like no other.

00:48:44.340 | I'd say that, and then just even to strip

00:48:48.300 | everything else away, like the most basic tricks,

00:48:51.560 | like a backside ollie is a no-handed aerial.

00:48:55.140 | That used to be what it was called,

00:48:56.540 | backside no-handed aerial.

00:48:58.640 | It feels so good because even to this day,

00:49:02.880 | people say, how does the board stay on your feet?

00:49:05.740 | And I can't even tell you how the board stays on my feet.

00:49:08.540 | I just know, I know how to maneuver it.

00:49:11.760 | And I know how to keep the pressure on it

00:49:13.220 | and the friction going.

00:49:14.620 | And backside ollies is like,

00:49:16.400 | I think it's like a marvel of physics

00:49:19.460 | and a clean backside ollie to me feels good as anything.

00:49:23.980 | - Yeah, it's a beautiful thing to behold.

00:49:25.380 | I confess I've never done a legitimate backside ollie

00:49:27.580 | on vert, on a mini ramp, sure, but not on vert.

00:49:30.100 | So I can't relate to the feeling,

00:49:31.500 | but I love, love, love the fact

00:49:34.820 | that you brought us back to that early

00:49:39.060 | variable low coping feeling and that,

00:49:41.580 | that marks the essence of what feels so good

00:49:46.000 | when you do something else, right?

00:49:47.500 | It's sort of like a, it's a,

00:49:49.100 | as a neuroscientist I see it as a chemical stamp.

00:49:51.380 | It's like a chemical fingerprint of progress, right?

00:49:54.740 | And I'm also delighted to hear

00:49:57.820 | that it still feels that good to do these things.

00:50:00.080 | 'Cause I don't think anyone can have

00:50:01.580 | the kind of lifelong progression that you've had.

00:50:04.520 | And it's still going without a,

00:50:07.900 | not just love of the thing,

00:50:09.860 | but love of the feeling that it brings

00:50:12.340 | when no one's around.

00:50:13.420 | 'Cause you said skating your ramp by yourself.

00:50:14.920 | So how often are you on your ramp with,

00:50:16.900 | you know, no one's filming for Instagram,

00:50:18.620 | nothing for a video, nothing for a video game, none of that.

00:50:21.580 | Maybe there's, you know, maybe other guys are around,

00:50:24.540 | gals around, we'll talk about gals too.

00:50:26.080 | 'Cause one of the big shifts in skateboarding

00:50:27.620 | since I started is that there's some amazing

00:50:30.720 | female skateboarders now.

00:50:32.760 | There's a young lady in fact,

00:50:34.340 | that's been skateboarding at your ramp.

00:50:35.820 | Forgive me, I can't remember her name.

00:50:37.060 | Is it? - Reese.

00:50:37.900 | - Reese. - Reese Nelson.

00:50:39.300 | - Goodness. - She's a fuser.

00:50:40.460 | - Goodness gracious. - I know.

00:50:42.660 | - She is so good. - Yeah, so good.

00:50:45.660 | - So good.

00:50:46.780 | So we'll get back to that.

00:50:47.700 | But I think that, you know,

00:50:49.100 | people starting any kind of sport or academic career

00:50:53.820 | or business or anything,

00:50:54.700 | I think people assume that you go from zero to 100 somehow.

00:50:59.220 | And that there are these people that are just selected

00:51:01.940 | by genetics or by luck or by some combination of things

00:51:05.160 | to just like get it and be better than everybody else.

00:51:07.560 | But it's clear that you've spent a lot of time alone

00:51:10.380 | driving someplace to skate the next day

00:51:12.220 | or alone at the ramp.

00:51:13.980 | So do you ever reflect on that kind of drive

00:51:18.960 | and you know, what that's all about?

00:51:22.140 | Or is it just so intrinsic to who you are?

00:51:24.340 | - It's serenade, I don't think about it.

00:51:26.580 | I just know I have to do it.

00:51:27.860 | It's like, I mean, we can get into it with my injury,

00:51:31.540 | but to go back to what you're saying,

00:51:36.540 | is you're saying that people think that,

00:51:39.280 | oh, you were chosen for this or genetics or whatever.

00:51:41.160 | Have you saw me skate? - Your last name's Hawk

00:51:42.500 | after all. - Like if you saw me skate,

00:51:44.640 | when I first started skating,

00:51:45.760 | there was no way you'd think that I was a natural

00:51:47.840 | or that I had any future in it.

00:51:50.220 | I was all gangly, I was all over the place,

00:51:52.120 | I was eating shit left and right.

00:51:53.580 | Like it just, I wasn't good, I wasn't.

00:51:57.420 | I wasn't a natural.

00:51:59.240 | I've seen people that are naturals.

00:52:01.460 | And I've seen that how they don't have that drive.

00:52:06.020 | They don't have the discipline and it's not wasted,

00:52:10.320 | but they don't take advantage of what they have naturally.

00:52:15.320 | And for whatever reason, I don't fault anyone for it,

00:52:20.420 | but I've seen both sides of it.

00:52:21.540 | And I've also seen other skaters who are just driven

00:52:24.720 | and who are not really good, kind of sloppy

00:52:27.760 | and become the best, Andrew Reynolds.

00:52:31.020 | When we put him on our team, he was just like me,

00:52:35.180 | super gangly, his boards bouncing around,

00:52:37.380 | but he's trying every single trick.

00:52:39.660 | And every time he sent me a video,

00:52:41.500 | it's some new technique that he's figured out.

00:52:44.260 | And he didn't really, by the untrained eye,

00:52:49.140 | he didn't have the skill set for.

00:52:51.420 | And then he became the boss, you know what I mean?

00:52:54.460 | So I think it's just, you have to give that as much weight

00:52:59.620 | as natural to me, if not more, I'd say more.

00:53:03.900 | - Yeah, I would certainly say more for science.

00:53:06.700 | And you know, the people who are in the lab

00:53:08.740 | late at night and early in the morning and drilling away,

00:53:10.660 | not always the smartest, certainly not the dumbest,

00:53:15.660 | but smart enough to show up when other people are leaving

00:53:19.060 | and continue.

00:53:19.940 | And I think there has to be a little bit

00:53:21.700 | of friction internally and maybe externally also,

00:53:26.140 | but just some friction, some I'm gonna show you.

00:53:29.660 | - Yes, okay, my best example of that,

00:53:32.980 | and I haven't talked about this yet,

00:53:35.780 | 'cause I did it privately,

00:53:37.900 | but I broke my leg doing a McTwist,

00:53:41.540 | something that I've done thousands of times.

00:53:44.220 | - 540.

00:53:45.140 | - 540, yeah, so it's a one and a half spin

00:53:47.780 | in the backside direction.

00:53:49.020 | But that particular grab that you do makes it a McTwist

00:53:52.100 | because it makes you kind of flip upside down.

00:53:54.540 | So it's kind of a one and a half somersault.

00:53:56.740 | It's not my trick, it's Mike McGill's trick.

00:53:59.500 | I learned it not long after he created it in 1984.

00:54:03.100 | Been doing it ever since.

00:54:04.700 | I mean, I'm talking about 40 years McTwist, right?

00:54:07.980 | I've gotten hurt once or twice, but not bad.

00:54:11.200 | Anyway, I fucked around and found out,

00:54:14.560 | did one with no speed last year,

00:54:18.420 | thinking I could do it like I was still 20

00:54:20.580 | and got tangled up and broke my femur.

00:54:24.200 | I had a super long recovery, I had a false start,

00:54:27.160 | I had a non-union fracture,

00:54:29.040 | which means my bone never connected back to itself

00:54:31.280 | and it kept pushing itself further away.

00:54:33.400 | And that's all.

00:54:36.200 | In the past, I got a second surgery in November.

00:54:40.700 | And all along in the back of my head is,

00:54:43.540 | I gotta get back to 540s, I have to.

00:54:45.480 | And I can't explain why I have to.

00:54:49.880 | I hate that it means that much to me.

00:54:53.340 | But it's in here.

00:54:56.340 | You know what I mean?

00:54:57.180 | It's not a sense of pride.

00:54:58.900 | It's not like, I have to prove this to anyone.

00:55:02.080 | I just have to do it.

00:55:03.580 | And last week I did it.

00:55:06.480 | It was so scary.

00:55:08.960 | And I prepped for it.

00:55:11.660 | I mean, even down to like my diet

00:55:14.740 | and I stopped drinking altogether.

00:55:17.260 | And I was like, every time I go to the ramp,

00:55:19.340 | I'm just trying 540s like to get the spin,

00:55:21.480 | to get the landing zone with no intention of making it,

00:55:25.100 | just that I had to get there.

00:55:26.300 | And then I had to have this heart to heart with my wife

00:55:28.440 | that she doesn't want to see me get hurt.

00:55:31.260 | She doesn't want to see me

00:55:32.100 | risking myself at this age anymore.

00:55:34.240 | She doesn't want to live

00:55:35.080 | through another traumatic injury with me.

00:55:37.620 | And I had to tell her, I have to do this.

00:55:41.940 | She was gracious and accepting

00:55:44.500 | and that's all I could ask for.

00:55:47.820 | It wasn't like she was like, yeah, you gotta go do it.

00:55:49.860 | It was like, okay, that's who you are.

00:55:53.500 | And so she was there.

00:55:56.700 | She was my only spectator.

00:55:58.300 | - So good.

00:56:00.400 | I confess I've seen a video of this

00:56:02.780 | and my first response was, F yes.

00:56:07.780 | And my second response was, that was really high.

00:56:11.260 | Like this is no, you know, just above coping 540.

00:56:14.340 | This isn't even, you know, this is a head high 540.

00:56:17.140 | - I'm not going to make the same mistake I did last time

00:56:18.980 | where I tried it low thinking

00:56:20.300 | I just get away with it anymore.

00:56:21.580 | So the going high was more of a safety measure,

00:56:26.340 | which is ironic.

00:56:27.980 | The bigger the ramps for me, the safer it is

00:56:31.780 | because I have a better landing zone.

00:56:33.420 | I have more time in the air to adjust.

00:56:35.940 | And even though it looks spectacular

00:56:37.300 | and you're six feet in the air,

00:56:38.140 | it's just like, no, I need that.

00:56:40.420 | I can't skate some eight foot pool.

00:56:42.660 | I have no landing zone.

00:56:44.260 | I'm too tall.

00:56:45.100 | I've moved too slowly now to do that kind of stuff.

00:56:49.380 | So that's why you don't see me like in the park events

00:56:51.540 | and stuff like that.

00:56:52.620 | You know, you're going to see me on this 14 foot vert ramp

00:56:54.940 | because that's my happy place and that's where I'm safe.

00:56:57.740 | But also having my wife there,

00:57:00.980 | I just knew I wasn't gonna get hurt in front of her

00:57:03.940 | 'cause I would have been in such trouble.

00:57:05.860 | - The emotional support and pressure is a real thing.

00:57:11.940 | And in the best ways, not to focus on the bad aspects

00:57:16.760 | of the injury because-

00:57:18.560 | - There are plenty.

00:57:19.460 | - Yeah, that I recall you and I communicated

00:57:22.180 | not long after the, let's say,

00:57:24.700 | let's call it what it was, the first break.

00:57:26.740 | And I remember you said to me over text,

00:57:28.740 | you said how long before I'm skateboarding again?

00:57:30.980 | And I said, skateboarding as in pushing

00:57:33.760 | or skateboarding as in what you do on vert, you know?

00:57:37.820 | And you said, what I do on vert.

00:57:40.200 | And I said, well, it seems you are doing a lot of things.

00:57:43.360 | You were doing deliberate cold, deliberate heat, pressure.

00:57:45.940 | You do a number of things.

00:57:46.920 | I mean, you're not haphazard about your career

00:57:49.620 | and your body and your health.

00:57:50.720 | And we'll get into that a little bit later.

00:57:52.480 | Some of the things that you've enjoyed

00:57:54.240 | as beneficial for you.

00:57:55.260 | But you said, I'm calling it at two months.

00:57:59.560 | And I said, okay, I believe it.

00:58:02.320 | And then I recall that you, was it the Oscars

00:58:05.080 | or some other award event where you came out

00:58:06.960 | about a week later, you came out there,

00:58:09.540 | you walked out, just broken femur,

00:58:12.360 | and you weren't using any support to walk out.

00:58:14.740 | So you clearly ditched whatever support

00:58:16.620 | you might've been using,

00:58:17.980 | which I think is awesome by the way.

00:58:19.860 | And then pretty soon I was seeing videos of you dropping in.

00:58:23.920 | I'm seeing videos of you doing kick turns below coping.

00:58:26.760 | I'm seeing videos of you at coping.

00:58:29.560 | And you know, we have a friend in common,

00:58:32.120 | the skateboard and generally photographer, Mike Blaback.

00:58:35.220 | And I remember texting Mike, I was like,

00:58:37.400 | Tony's back already.

00:58:38.600 | This is superhuman rates of healing.

00:58:41.880 | And I think it is superhuman rates of healing.

00:58:45.360 | Then you mentioned that you damaged,

00:58:48.160 | broke the femur again.

00:58:49.560 | So did you allow more rest the second time?

00:58:51.560 | What was driving you to get back in it so quickly?

00:58:54.160 | - The first go round,

00:58:55.640 | I just didn't listen to any of the professional advice

00:59:00.320 | because I thought, well, I've done, I've come this far

00:59:02.340 | and I've always been able to push through broken pelvis,

00:59:06.200 | broken elbow, knee surgeries.

00:59:08.800 | And I've always been,

00:59:09.640 | the timeline is always very shortened for me

00:59:11.320 | because I just get back out there

00:59:12.420 | and I get the healing started,

00:59:14.060 | but I also am comfortable with what people think

00:59:17.080 | is extremely risky.

00:59:18.740 | But in this instance,

00:59:21.560 | I wanted to get back out there right away.

00:59:24.120 | And not long after the Academy Awards,

00:59:26.840 | I was actually walking with a cane at that time

00:59:30.160 | and I ditched the cane just to walk out on stage

00:59:31.960 | to present the award.

00:59:32.800 | So that was my big coming out moment,

00:59:35.720 | but it was kind of forced.

00:59:37.200 | And as soon as I walked out the stage, I grabbed my cane

00:59:38.960 | and I was hobbling in the backstage.

00:59:40.800 | But I was skating kind of a mini ramp

00:59:46.440 | and I was already struggling

00:59:50.480 | because I couldn't put my weight on my front foot

00:59:53.420 | because my bone still had not connected to itself.

00:59:56.080 | So there's a gap in the bone,

00:59:57.720 | but there's a nail, what they call a nail

00:59:59.940 | or a big piece of metal that's holding them in place.

01:00:03.420 | But I didn't realize how careful I needed to be

01:00:05.680 | with that because it was so precarious.

01:00:08.260 | And I decided I'm gonna drop in on the mini ramp.

01:00:11.380 | Like I think I'm ready.

01:00:12.320 | And it wasn't the drop in on the mini ramp.

01:00:14.640 | It was me getting to the top of the mini ramp

01:00:16.880 | and stepping off my board.

01:00:18.160 | - It's always that kind of stuff.

01:00:20.160 | - But I just stepped off my board

01:00:21.640 | like I would do any other day,

01:00:23.080 | but I didn't think I led with my front foot

01:00:25.760 | and I felt the bone move in that moment.

01:00:28.040 | I felt it either twist or get out of place

01:00:35.520 | and I was in total denial for months

01:00:39.560 | 'cause I just said, "Oh, it just hurts now."

01:00:41.520 | Like I got a minor setback.

01:00:45.040 | And then I finally, eight months into my recovery,

01:00:49.440 | seven months into my recovery, I was always in pain.

01:00:52.840 | My skating wasn't progressing.

01:00:54.200 | I couldn't get speed.

01:00:56.080 | And by all measures, I should be back.

01:00:59.480 | At least I'd be back to a level that I feel good about.

01:01:04.200 | And I went and got x-rays

01:01:06.080 | and they said, "Your bone never connected.

01:01:08.720 | You have a non-union fracture."

01:01:10.060 | And every time I skated, so my bone's like this,

01:01:13.400 | every time I skated, I was pushing it further away.

01:01:16.500 | And so my bone was like this on the last x-ray

01:01:20.160 | and that was the hard truth.

01:01:22.160 | - So for those listening, just laterally displaced,

01:01:24.520 | think about a pipe that's broken in the middle

01:01:26.560 | and just one's offset to the other.

01:01:28.800 | - And as I keep skating and I could force my skate,

01:01:32.460 | like I kind of learned this hack where I can put 75%

01:01:35.840 | of my weight on my back foot and 25% of my front foot

01:01:38.180 | and do what I wanted to do,

01:01:39.660 | but it wasn't where I thought I'd be.

01:01:42.480 | And it just hurt all the time.

01:01:44.780 | I mean, it really was like, that was my trigger

01:01:47.320 | 'cause I have a pretty high tolerance to pain

01:01:51.740 | and it was always hurt.

01:01:54.140 | Like I would dread going to the airport

01:01:56.520 | knowing I had to walk to a gate.

01:01:58.120 | So I knew something was wrong there.

01:02:01.240 | I went to a specialist that deals in non-union fractures

01:02:05.540 | and he had a very pragmatic factual approach.

01:02:09.720 | And it was like, oh, I would do this.

01:02:10.700 | I'm taking that nail out.

01:02:11.540 | I'm taking the other hardware out and put it together.

01:02:13.240 | And you cannot move for two months.

01:02:15.640 | - Did you obey that order?

01:02:17.900 | - I did.

01:02:18.860 | - Really?

01:02:19.700 | - Yeah.

01:02:20.520 | - So what is-

01:02:21.360 | - I was chilling.

01:02:22.520 | I was not gonna risk that again.

01:02:24.200 | - Did you, and do you prioritize things like sleep,

01:02:28.780 | nutrition, just generally?

01:02:32.460 | And did you emphasize those things

01:02:35.140 | while you were recovering from the injury?

01:02:37.120 | - Yeah, I was very disciplined in my diet,

01:02:40.340 | in my schedule, in my sleep.

01:02:42.220 | Surprisingly, I was very busy

01:02:46.760 | because I do speaking engagements

01:02:49.960 | and suddenly my speaking engagements

01:02:52.400 | were getting booked left and right.

01:02:55.680 | I mean, to the point where I did a tour

01:02:57.420 | through Europe last summer of speaking engagements.

01:03:00.240 | So that was a silver lining, I guess, to my idol time.

01:03:04.500 | And I leaned into it.

01:03:08.000 | I made myself available and it's good money

01:03:12.800 | and it's fun to interact.

01:03:15.560 | But all through that, of course,

01:03:19.560 | in the back of my head, I was like,

01:03:20.400 | "When, when can I skate, when can I skate?"

01:03:22.960 | And then when I finally started skating,

01:03:25.120 | it was night and day with my leg.

01:03:27.780 | I felt like I could lean forward.

01:03:29.680 | Suddenly I was learning tricks every session,

01:03:33.560 | relearning tricks.

01:03:34.740 | So I just, I'm just lucky that I got to live

01:03:39.340 | in this time of modern medicine.

01:03:41.680 | - Was that two months the longest you've ever gone

01:03:43.500 | without skateboarding vert?

01:03:44.720 | - Yeah, yeah, without skating at all.

01:03:48.400 | - Not even just pushing around?

01:03:49.560 | - No.

01:03:50.520 | - Yeah, good for you for obeying doctor's orders.

01:03:52.720 | And also good for you for deciding that your rate

01:03:57.720 | of recovery is going to be whatever it is for you.

01:04:00.020 | Because I feel like I'm hearing both things.

01:04:02.040 | On the one hand, you listen to the medical professionals.

01:04:04.000 | On the other hand, I'm not hearing,

01:04:06.000 | "Oh, you know, I looked at the average rate of recovery

01:04:07.920 | from this kind of fracture, this and that."

01:04:10.120 | It's like, it's as if you decided two things at once,

01:04:14.560 | that there are experts who have something

01:04:16.440 | to offer me here, I'll follow their advice.

01:04:18.560 | And yet I'm the expert at myself.

01:04:21.720 | Here, I'm putting myself in your first person.

01:04:23.720 | Tony is the expert in Tony.

01:04:25.040 | And I'm going to make sure that I come back 100% or better.

01:04:30.040 | - Yeah, not better, and I have come to terms with that.

01:04:34.340 | Because I know that I'm not going to be pushing myself

01:04:37.840 | the way that I did before I got hurt anymore.

01:04:40.880 | There are some tricks now that are way more difficult

01:04:44.600 | just because whatever, something changed in my body.

01:04:47.640 | And for instance, I can't grab slob, like I can't do it

01:04:52.240 | consistently, that used to be my go-to grab.

01:04:54.760 | Could do that anytime, over 60 foot gaps, whatever.

01:04:57.600 | Like I could just grab, I knew where my board was.

01:05:00.220 | I knew that was going to hold onto my feet.

01:05:02.120 | And half the time I try to grab that way,

01:05:04.440 | now I don't reach it, or I grab my foot instead.

01:05:07.360 | And I don't know, I can't make the adjustment to fix it.

01:05:12.360 | And so I've just sort of come to terms with,

01:05:14.520 | well, that's not the go-to grab anymore.

01:05:17.540 | And that's okay, I had a good run.

01:05:20.600 | - Yeah, your kit's pretty, pretty vast.

01:05:23.740 | So there's a lot of other things to reach too.

01:05:26.060 | Aside from the 540, which by the way, congratulations.

01:05:28.860 | Not only is it a 540, but done at least head high,

01:05:32.780 | I've seen it with my own eyes.

01:05:34.320 | And under really great circumstances, your wife there,

01:05:38.000 | just the two of you, and after,

01:05:40.220 | and the trick that broke the femur in the first place.

01:05:43.520 | So congratulations on that.

01:05:46.520 | I'd like to take a quick break

01:05:47.640 | and acknowledge our sponsor InsideTracker.

01:05:50.320 | InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform

01:05:52.680 | that analyzes data from your blood and DNA

01:05:55.180 | to help you better understand your body

01:05:56.720 | and help you meet your health goals.

01:05:58.620 | I'm a big believer in getting regular blood work done

01:06:00.940 | for the simple reason that many of the factors

01:06:03.260 | that impact your immediate and long-term health

01:06:05.480 | can only be analyzed from a quality blood test.

01:06:08.080 | However, with a lot of blood tests out there,

01:06:10.100 | you get information back about blood lipids,

01:06:11.980 | about hormones and so on,

01:06:13.120 | but you don't know what to do with that information.

01:06:15.140 | With InsideTracker, they have a personalized platform

01:06:17.440 | that makes it very easy to understand your data,

01:06:20.200 | that is to understand what those lipids,

01:06:22.120 | what those hormone levels, et cetera, mean,

01:06:24.100 | and behavioral supplement nutrition and other protocols

01:06:27.280 | to adjust those numbers to bring them into the ranges

01:06:30.080 | that are ideal for your immediate and long-term health.

01:06:32.360 | InsideTracker's ultimate plan now includes measures

01:06:34.640 | of both ApoB and of insulin,

01:06:36.860 | which are key indicators of cardiovascular health

01:06:39.500 | and energy regulation.

01:06:41.080 | If you'd like to try InsideTracker,

01:06:42.520 | you can visit insidetracker.com/huberman

01:06:45.320 | to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans.

01:06:48.100 | Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off.

01:06:52.600 | - Are there other things that you're thinking,

01:06:55.460 | can't wait to get back to that?

01:06:57.200 | Let's set aside slaw bearers for now.

01:06:59.980 | - Yeah.

01:07:00.820 | - Yeah, I want to get my hand plants back

01:07:05.540 | the way I used to do them.

01:07:06.620 | I have yet, yeah, it's so invert,

01:07:08.700 | like it's one-handed, handstand.

01:07:10.980 | I can do them now, but I've-

01:07:12.580 | - I've seen you do them recently.

01:07:13.740 | - Yeah, but they used to be my signature

01:07:16.100 | was a tuck knee ember and flopped all the way back,

01:07:18.840 | and I can't get ahold of my board

01:07:21.820 | to pull it all the way back like I used to.

01:07:23.920 | If I can get that, I'll feel like that's it.

01:07:28.160 | That was the last milestone.

01:07:31.540 | - I'm not here to diagnose

01:07:33.360 | and treat these specific skateboard trickisms,

01:07:36.740 | but between what you said about the slaw bearer

01:07:39.320 | and what you're saying about this itself,

01:07:40.560 | it seems like there's something

01:07:41.960 | about getting your front hand around

01:07:45.460 | and just kind of pulling it back in behind you.

01:07:49.060 | So maybe this is like the way that the femur's lining up

01:07:51.360 | with your pelvis and maybe some off-ramp,

01:07:53.840 | something or other, physical therapy could do it.

01:07:56.100 | - I am actually working with, at Beschor,

01:07:59.040 | he is the doctor of physical therapy,

01:08:02.220 | and he has helped me immensely through my recovery.

01:08:06.060 | And when I'm frustrated with this motion,

01:08:09.660 | or that's the same grab, actually, as in the twist,

01:08:12.680 | he worked on me before it and was just contorting my body

01:08:17.140 | and my leg into these positions

01:08:18.940 | that I don't really even get to when I'm skating

01:08:22.600 | just to prepare me for that.

01:08:24.540 | And he did, but that's what it took.

01:08:26.620 | - It's interesting that we're talking about skateboarding

01:08:31.100 | and we're also talking about physical therapists,

01:08:33.720 | we're talking about nutrition, we're talking about sleep.

01:08:35.300 | So growing up in- - You can't be like,

01:08:36.880 | none of that, none of that.

01:08:37.980 | - Never imagined any of this. - Never, never.

01:08:39.620 | - And I'm chuckling because growing up in skateboarding

01:08:42.560 | early on, for me, not quite as early as you,

01:08:46.700 | but pretty early, 12, and got out of it and back,

01:08:50.740 | and yes, I can still do a thing or two here and there,

01:08:53.900 | but that's not the point.

01:08:54.820 | The point is that the nutrition consisted largely

01:08:59.180 | of fast food or whatever was around,

01:09:02.400 | cigarettes and beer were sort of the energy drinks

01:09:05.020 | and supplements of the times.

01:09:08.500 | This has fortunately changed,

01:09:09.980 | but there was essentially no health promoting tools

01:09:14.980 | or aspects to it at all, but that was back then.

01:09:17.920 | But then over time, it seems it's evolved.

01:09:19.620 | Now I see, I saw a couple of posts from Stevie Williams,

01:09:23.140 | like he's in the gym.

01:09:24.860 | I think I saw Danny Way early on working with Paul Check

01:09:28.680 | and doing some balance work, neck work,

01:09:31.360 | 'cause he had broken his neck surfing

01:09:32.780 | and things of that sort.

01:09:33.740 | So there seems to have been a big shift

01:09:35.560 | over the last 15, 20 years where skateboarders

01:09:38.960 | are taking good care of their bodies like other athletes,

01:09:41.480 | thinking about the resilience of their bodies,

01:09:44.020 | and also generally taking better care.

01:09:46.080 | Like a lot of them opt not to drink and do drugs

01:09:48.680 | and all those sorts of things.

01:09:50.460 | So, I mean, how does it strike you to see the way

01:09:53.580 | that skateboarding has evolved towards the option

01:09:55.980 | to be much healthier and treat it like a serious sport

01:09:59.040 | where you're a serious athlete?

01:10:00.200 | A word that even 15 years ago, 20 years ago,

01:10:02.700 | if you called a skateboarder an athlete,

01:10:04.520 | some people might even be offended by that.

01:10:06.380 | People in skateboarding, right?

01:10:07.980 | - Absolutely, yeah.

01:10:09.200 | Well, to answer your question, in the early days,

01:10:13.720 | that was part of the scene and the culture

01:10:16.220 | just 'cause it was the antithesis to organize team sports

01:10:21.220 | and mainstream culture.

01:10:23.360 | And so it was just like, yeah, this is what we do.

01:10:24.980 | Fuck it, who cares?

01:10:25.820 | Like we drink and we skate and everyone,

01:10:28.080 | it was wild west, right?

01:10:31.340 | But as I never fell into that deeply

01:10:35.520 | because I saw how it affected people's performances

01:10:38.880 | and the skating itself was paramount to me.

01:10:42.420 | That is what I wanted to focus on.

01:10:43.680 | That's what I wanted to be good at.

01:10:45.000 | And I saw people partying and partying their skills away.

01:10:48.440 | So I had at least that forethought.

01:10:51.200 | And then as skating got more established, popular,

01:10:57.300 | more of a career option, then people started

01:11:01.520 | taking it more seriously, especially competitors.

01:11:04.520 | But there's such a wide swath of what skateboarding is

01:11:08.520 | and it's a big tent.

01:11:09.640 | So to say that it's more organized,

01:11:12.680 | yes, it's more organized over here.

01:11:14.080 | There's still all these skaters over here partying,

01:11:17.200 | hopping fences, don't care about contests,

01:11:20.360 | don't want sponsors.

01:11:21.380 | - Oh, well like GX 1000, like those kids

01:11:23.360 | that bomb hills in San Francisco.

01:11:24.940 | - But that's what I love about it is the diversity of it all.

01:11:29.240 | And that's, we're all part of this scene.

01:11:32.240 | So I was a competitor, that was my path to success.

01:11:37.240 | And so I appreciate that people take it more seriously now

01:11:40.720 | and that they do have trainers, they have resources.

01:11:43.520 | I mean, they have sponsors that will pay

01:11:45.120 | for this kind of stuff.

01:11:46.240 | There was no such thing.

01:11:48.700 | I mean, like at our biggest skate contest,

01:11:51.520 | we were all staying at Stacey Peralta's parents' house

01:11:55.040 | the night before and he would take us out to get spaghetti

01:11:58.860 | because he thought carbohydrates

01:12:00.260 | was going to give us energy the next day.

01:12:02.260 | That was the extent of training in 1983, right?

01:12:07.260 | But nowadays we're treated like high elite athletes

01:12:12.540 | because they are like, if you really look at people

01:12:17.260 | that are at the top of their field, people like Naija Houston

01:12:20.860 | you know what I mean?

01:12:21.700 | Like the dude is a machine.

01:12:22.820 | He is one of the most precise skaters

01:12:26.340 | that we've ever seen or precise athletes.

01:12:29.340 | The side of Naija Comaneche, yes, I'm aging myself.

01:12:34.340 | But what I'm saying is like, this takes hardcore dedication,

01:12:41.100 | precision, athleticism, and devotion.

01:12:47.660 | And so now they have the resources to back that up

01:12:50.220 | and to keep it going longer.

01:12:52.220 | I mean, yeah, would I be able to do this now,

01:12:55.140 | especially after getting hurt without the help

01:12:57.660 | of a doctor of physical training?

01:13:01.220 | Probably not.

01:13:02.700 | I do it on some level, but I wouldn't get to where I am now.

01:13:05.700 | And so, hey, I think it's awesome.

01:13:09.140 | I never wanted to covet skateboarding as this thing

01:13:14.060 | that no one else, like a gatekeeper to it.

01:13:15.980 | No one else can touch it.

01:13:17.300 | I always thought there was something in skateboarding

01:13:19.100 | that was magical and that was good for mental health

01:13:23.740 | and that was required such passion.

01:13:28.740 | And I never understood why I didn't get bigger

01:13:35.440 | through those lean years.

01:13:38.020 | It was always like, this speaks to kids.

01:13:40.020 | Like it's daredevil and it's active and it's exciting

01:13:44.080 | and you can do it as a group, but you can do it your own way

01:13:46.620 | and I don't know, all those things,

01:13:48.320 | it took a long time for everyone else to figure it out.

01:13:51.360 | They definitely figured it out.

01:13:52.280 | I mean, nowadays, skaters are the cool kids in school.

01:13:55.200 | - Yeah, it's in the Olympics.

01:13:56.940 | There was always discussion, would it be,

01:13:58.180 | it was an exhibition sport in the Olympics at one point.

01:14:00.180 | - No. - No?

01:14:01.320 | - No. - Oh, I thought it was.

01:14:02.900 | Maybe it had a run at potentially being an exhibition sport.

01:14:05.820 | - There was talk of that. - Got it, got it.

01:14:08.760 | - But it never did and not that, I mean, at some point,

01:14:13.760 | especially in the late '90s, early 2000s,

01:14:18.040 | skating was getting appreciated

01:14:21.140 | and kind of reached that threshold of, is it mainstream?

01:14:25.800 | Well, it's on McDonald's commercials,

01:14:28.100 | so I guess that's pretty mainstream

01:14:29.780 | and so we already had come of age

01:14:31.540 | and it was like, we don't need the Olympics.

01:14:33.860 | We're already more popular

01:14:35.420 | than a lot of Olympic sports, right?

01:14:39.180 | So why do we need their validation?

01:14:40.940 | And then at some point it became

01:14:42.020 | like the power dynamic shifted and it was like,

01:14:45.260 | oh, they need our cool factor.

01:14:47.760 | We don't need their validation.

01:14:49.580 | And it was like, yeah, okay, you guys want it?

01:14:52.020 | Sure, go ahead, hold the events, hold the qualifiers.

01:14:56.500 | We'll participate, but we don't need this.

01:15:01.200 | - Well, you've been an amazing ambassador for the sport

01:15:05.840 | that's driven so much of that wider acceptance

01:15:09.320 | and progression and invitation into different domains.

01:15:12.580 | One of the things that I definitely want to talk about

01:15:15.380 | is the video game, right?

01:15:17.220 | Because I think that the video game changed a lot of things

01:15:21.440 | for the general public

01:15:23.000 | in terms of their perception of skateboarding.

01:15:25.700 | I mean, what it allowed of course is, this is obvious,

01:15:29.000 | but it allowed kids that weren't going to, you know,

01:15:32.220 | bang up their shins or walk in with a broken wrist

01:15:35.760 | or, you know, all skinned up to do incredible tricks,

01:15:38.680 | but in silico on a screen, right?

01:15:41.320 | And to pretend that they are the pro skateboarder.

01:15:44.720 | This is actually what video games are about.

01:15:47.340 | And yet when you can see something,

01:15:49.940 | just like you can imagine it in a dream

01:15:52.460 | or while you're falling asleep,

01:15:53.900 | and you can see something and hear an air quotes,

01:15:56.340 | do something in a video game,

01:15:57.900 | it also is going to inspire a number of kids to go outside

01:16:00.520 | and grab a real skateboard and try that

01:16:03.180 | or try something like that.

01:16:04.740 | So clearly the video game was a catalyst

01:16:06.660 | for what I consider now the wide acceptance of skateboarding

01:16:10.260 | as a sport in all its various forms.

01:16:12.980 | - Could you just talk for a little bit about the genesis

01:16:15.760 | of the video game?

01:16:16.600 | Were you into video games prior to the video game?

01:16:19.240 | Were you into technology generally?

01:16:22.440 | And what sort of motivated the interest in the video game?

01:16:25.360 | Because it certainly has changed the face

01:16:28.240 | of actual skateboarding

01:16:29.400 | and the perception of skateboarding.

01:16:31.160 | - Well, I've been into video games since the get-go.

01:16:34.720 | I mean, I was a kid, you know, playing Pong, Pac-Man,

01:16:37.560 | Missile Command, Q*bert, you name it.

01:16:40.120 | And then getting the home systems in television,

01:16:43.300 | Super NES, Commodore 64.

01:16:47.340 | - Sega.

01:16:48.400 | - Sega, yeah.

01:16:49.240 | But I, and I always loved technology.

01:16:52.620 | So when I finally started making money in the '80s,

01:16:57.620 | my first kind of big purchase in terms of that,

01:17:01.560 | in terms of electronics was a Commodore Amiga,

01:17:07.380 | which was considered one of the highest end home computers,

01:17:12.000 | you know, alongside Mac, but more graphic oriented

01:17:15.060 | and more game oriented.

01:17:16.520 | And so I was always into that idea

01:17:19.720 | that you could do this kind of stuff at home,

01:17:21.460 | not just in arcades.

01:17:22.620 | And then I got a call from a PC programmer

01:17:28.520 | that wanted to pitch a skate game

01:17:31.280 | and had a crude engine of a skater

01:17:34.880 | that would cruise around, go in bowls and stuff like that.

01:17:37.900 | And it was all keyboard controlled, it was clunky,

01:17:40.280 | but it was something.

01:17:41.700 | And the last thing that we had as skating

01:17:44.580 | was 720 in the arcade or Skate or Die

01:17:49.580 | for home systems for Commodore 64.

01:17:51.740 | That was like the last thing that had happened

01:17:53.580 | for skateboarding in video games.

01:17:55.860 | And so I went with him, I was excited to get,

01:17:58.820 | like I got to, we got to go to Nintendo and pitch it.

01:18:02.880 | We went to Midway, you know,

01:18:04.860 | we went to all these different console

01:18:07.440 | and software manufacturers and we're just told

01:18:11.520 | that this is a bad idea.

01:18:13.320 | Skateboarding is not popular.

01:18:15.240 | Home video games are barely a thing.

01:18:17.480 | Why would anyone want to buy a video game

01:18:20.160 | about skateboarding?

01:18:21.600 | Someone said those exact words to me at Midway.

01:18:25.580 | And so he got frustrated and he needed to find a job

01:18:30.280 | and I was just kind of free floating.

01:18:32.640 | So I said, okay, he goes, well, I'm not gonna do this,

01:18:35.560 | but I feel like you've established yourself,

01:18:38.280 | at least in the video game world,

01:18:40.920 | industry that you're interested in doing something.

01:18:42.860 | So maybe if someone does something, they'll call you.

01:18:44.360 | And I was like, yeah, right, sure.

01:18:46.720 | Sure enough, like a year later, Activision called me

01:18:49.640 | and they said, hey, we heard you want to do a video game.

01:18:52.020 | I said, well, yes, I would love to work on a video game.

01:18:55.680 | I'm not a programmer or anything.

01:18:57.640 | So we have something we're working on

01:18:59.060 | I would like to show it to you.

01:19:00.660 | And so I went up to Activision.

01:19:02.840 | They were working on a skate game,

01:19:06.120 | but it was based on an engine of a game

01:19:08.040 | that was already released called Apocalypse

01:19:09.800 | starring Bruce Willis.

01:19:11.120 | So the first version of my game was Bruce Willis

01:19:14.480 | on a skateboard with a gun strapped to his back

01:19:18.020 | in a desert wasteland doing kick flips.

01:19:21.520 | And it was awesome.

01:19:23.720 | It was truly like I picked it up and I got past that visual

01:19:27.880 | and then I started playing it and it was intuitive.

01:19:31.480 | The motion felt right, the engine was right.

01:19:34.300 | And I was like, this is the baseline of something special.

01:19:39.300 | I didn't think it was gonna be some big hit.

01:19:41.700 | I just thought, this is gonna be appreciated

01:19:44.620 | by skateboarders.

01:19:46.000 | And that was my goal the entire development process,

01:19:50.840 | which was about a year and a half after I signed on.

01:19:53.820 | Through that year and a half, we were going back and forth

01:19:56.460 | with, they would FedEx me builds on CDs.

01:19:59.360 | I had a modified PlayStation and I would play it,

01:20:01.920 | make notes and I thought, man, skater's gonna dig this.

01:20:04.840 | And that was it.

01:20:05.680 | And skating wasn't even that popular.

01:20:07.580 | It was coming to, it was starting to get some traction.

01:20:11.720 | - What year was this again?

01:20:12.820 | - Like '98.

01:20:14.180 | So it was like X Games were starting to come into the fold.

01:20:17.400 | People were taking note of what skateboarding had become

01:20:19.740 | at that point.

01:20:21.040 | And then I thought, this is gonna be cool.

01:20:23.980 | Skater's gonna like it.

01:20:25.120 | And then not long before the release,

01:20:29.800 | they called me and they said,

01:20:30.920 | "Hey, we wanna offer you a buyout of future royalties

01:20:34.720 | for this game.

01:20:35.680 | 'Cause I think people are gonna like it."

01:20:39.120 | And I was like, what does that mean?

01:20:40.840 | They go, "We'll give you a half a million dollars

01:20:42.800 | and then you don't get royalties going forward,

01:20:46.080 | but you get that money upfront."

01:20:48.280 | And at that time in my life,

01:20:51.600 | to hear someone say half a million dollars

01:20:53.000 | seriously sounded like a half a billion dollars.

01:20:56.200 | Like no one had ever talked about numbers that big to me.

01:21:00.600 | - Well, also '98 was a little bit of a quiet time

01:21:03.960 | for vert skateboarding too, right?

01:21:05.360 | - Sure, yeah.

01:21:06.200 | Skateboarding in general, but yeah.

01:21:07.760 | Luckily vert skating still was a thing

01:21:13.660 | because of inline skating.

01:21:15.380 | Because inline skating was huge, right?

01:21:18.120 | Late '90s.

01:21:19.360 | And they were all vert.

01:21:20.960 | And so we as skaters got to sort of ride those coattails

01:21:25.120 | 'cause it was like, "Hey, there are vert ramps

01:21:26.440 | 'cause everyone's rollerblading."

01:21:28.760 | - I forgot about that.

01:21:30.040 | - That did.

01:21:30.880 | And I have, honestly, I was the special guest

01:21:33.000 | at a couple of inline rollerblade shows

01:21:36.680 | where it was like, "This is Team Rollerblade Live

01:21:38.600 | and special guest, Tony Hawk, the skateboarder."

01:21:40.480 | And I was like, "Hey, hi, all right, dropping in."

01:21:43.440 | But it paid the bills.

01:21:44.480 | - Yeah.

01:21:45.840 | - So to answer from what you're saying,

01:21:51.200 | vert skating was a thing at least established

01:21:54.700 | in the ex-skaters, which was something

01:21:57.320 | and enough for us to make a living.

01:21:59.160 | So when they offered me this money,

01:22:02.600 | I actually was in a pretty good place

01:22:06.020 | in terms of my, I don't know, my options,

01:22:10.040 | my trajectory and I felt like,

01:22:13.520 | and I had just bought a new home and I thought,

01:22:17.000 | "I'm gonna take a chance and just see what happens."

01:22:20.160 | And that was the best financial decision I ever made.

01:22:24.000 | - Took the equity.

01:22:24.920 | - Yeah, I just let it ride.

01:22:27.840 | I was like, "No, I wanna see what happens with this."

01:22:29.660 | And as soon as the game was released,

01:22:32.560 | it was getting stellar reviews.

01:22:35.240 | And then I remember like the very next week

01:22:38.640 | after it was released, never stopped saying,

01:22:41.320 | "Okay, we're working on number two.

01:22:42.400 | What do you wanna do?"

01:22:44.000 | Like, "What do you mean?"

01:22:45.340 | "Well, yeah, we're doing a sequel."

01:22:46.780 | "Wait, what?

01:22:47.620 | Awesome."

01:22:49.880 | And then we ended up doing like 10.

01:22:52.360 | - Amazing. - Crazy.

01:22:53.720 | - Amazing.

01:22:54.560 | I'm thinking about your decision to not take the cash

01:22:59.160 | and to see how it would go.

01:23:00.840 | I'm thinking about your decision to buy a car at 16

01:23:04.940 | and as a consequence get pulled over

01:23:07.160 | 'cause you looked younger.

01:23:08.600 | I'm thinking about the time when

01:23:11.360 | through the graciousness of your parents who took me in

01:23:13.840 | 'cause I had no money to get back up to Northern California

01:23:16.400 | and they couldn't get ahold of my mom.

01:23:18.920 | They took me to your home,

01:23:19.840 | but then they took me to where you were living the next day,

01:23:23.020 | which was in Fallbrook.

01:23:24.380 | You don't remember this, but I do.

01:23:26.280 | And I know you've heard this story before.

01:23:27.840 | So forgive me because most people listening haven't.

01:23:29.820 | But I remember getting driven up to Fallbrook.

01:23:32.120 | You had the ramps in your backyard.

01:23:34.080 | I walked in, got introduced to you.

01:23:36.780 | You were very gracious, said, "Hello, what's up?"

01:23:38.840 | Said, "Feel free to push around on the ramps outside."

01:23:40.740 | It was the mini, it was a spine ramp.

01:23:42.080 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:23:43.640 | Two ramps back to back folks, spine.

01:23:45.760 | Sorry, nomenclature.

01:23:47.760 | I think Ray Underhill was there.

01:23:50.200 | - Yeah, he lived there for a while.

01:23:51.320 | - Yeah, and as I recall,

01:23:52.360 | you had pretty vast music collection

01:23:55.080 | and we'll talk about music.

01:23:56.480 | But it also seemed that there was a couple of cars

01:24:00.760 | in the driveway and whatnot,

01:24:02.040 | but it's clear to me based on a number of things

01:24:05.240 | and that interaction and what I observed there

01:24:07.560 | that either you had someone in your ear,

01:24:10.440 | either your dad or your mom or both,

01:24:12.560 | or maybe it had been Stacy,

01:24:13.920 | or maybe it was somebody else who was advising you

01:24:17.160 | to make very good financial decisions,

01:24:19.440 | like not spend all your money

01:24:21.380 | or continue to spend all your money to invest in things,

01:24:26.060 | or maybe it was just instilled in you at a young age.

01:24:29.240 | Who knows?

01:24:30.660 | I'm asking because I think so many people

01:24:33.820 | burn their early success,

01:24:36.140 | what represents a lot of wealth for them early on,

01:24:38.680 | they burn that where they start making just bad decisions.

01:24:41.280 | You explained before why you tended

01:24:43.200 | to avoid drugs and alcohol,

01:24:45.200 | and certainly any severe relationship to drugs or alcohol

01:24:48.160 | that would keep you from progressing and skateboarding.

01:24:50.480 | But the ability to make really good decisions

01:24:54.240 | as a young, famous athlete is more rare than it is common,

01:24:59.240 | even when people have coaches.

01:25:03.120 | So I'm curious, where did that shrewdness

01:25:06.280 | and that prudence come from?

01:25:07.860 | And was Frank, your dad,

01:25:09.160 | and maybe Nancy also advising you all along,

01:25:11.520 | like, hey, think smart, be smart,

01:25:14.800 | because clearly you've made some very smart decisions.

01:25:18.220 | - He was definitely a guide in it.

01:25:22.840 | He was the first one who said,

01:25:24.640 | you should probably buy real estate.

01:25:27.380 | I was 17, so I didn't even know that was possible,

01:25:29.840 | but he co-signed and made it possible.

01:25:31.940 | But then after that,

01:25:34.320 | I ended up buying that home that you went to,

01:25:37.880 | and it was four acre property,

01:25:39.720 | and we built these ramps on it.

01:25:41.280 | And that was amazing and definitely helped propel my skating

01:25:46.280 | to a different level than I ever imagined.

01:25:49.200 | But at some point that was just a drain,

01:25:53.320 | and it was a drain financially,

01:25:55.360 | and I was living beyond my means,

01:25:57.000 | and my income kept dropping,

01:25:58.440 | 'cause we're talking about not long after that was '91, '92,

01:26:01.800 | the slowest days of skating.

01:26:04.380 | And I've got this giant mortgage,

01:26:06.840 | and I've got this property and these ramps

01:26:08.440 | that I can't afford to upkeep.

01:26:10.720 | I can barely afford my water bill at one point.

01:26:13.920 | You know, and so what you saw might've seemed stable,

01:26:18.240 | but behind the scenes, it was starting to unravel.

01:26:21.320 | - Birdhouse hadn't been started.

01:26:22.600 | - Birdhouse was started in '92,

01:26:24.440 | and when I started Birdhouse,

01:26:26.520 | I took the equity from that house to start it,

01:26:30.020 | 'cause I burned through my savings

01:26:32.400 | from trying to keep this place going.

01:26:35.160 | So I took a second mortgage out on that house,

01:26:37.480 | or I took my equity out, started Birdhouse,

01:26:40.520 | sold the house for what I had taken out,

01:26:43.840 | and then moved to my original place

01:26:46.560 | that I had when I was in high school,

01:26:48.720 | and just pulled back on expenses.

01:26:53.160 | I think that was when I really became shrewd,

01:26:56.220 | because I had to.

01:26:58.040 | I had a first child.

01:27:00.680 | I had an income that was very uncertain, very fluctuating,

01:27:05.680 | and I was just eating Taco Bell and Top Ramen

01:27:09.880 | and peanut bread and jelly sandwiches,

01:27:11.840 | and not spending anything, and taking every job,

01:27:16.840 | like the most random demo requests,

01:27:19.920 | or we want you to be a consultant on this commercial,

01:27:23.240 | because I'm 24.

01:27:25.000 | I'm too old to be the guy skating,

01:27:27.960 | 'cause it has to be youth, right?

01:27:29.600 | But they're like, well, we wanna see what's possible,

01:27:31.160 | so can you come up the day before and show us the ropes?

01:27:33.600 | And so I would be the stunt skater that's filling in

01:27:37.960 | to show them the angles and stuff,

01:27:39.440 | and then they would go hire Chet Thomas as the young kid,

01:27:43.760 | and then I would stand around.

01:27:44.700 | I was getting paid.

01:27:45.540 | I didn't care.

01:27:46.360 | - I think I remember those commercials.

01:27:47.540 | Is it a cereal commercial or something like that?

01:27:50.480 | - The cereal commercial was Chris Miller, Frosted Flakes,

01:27:55.000 | and I was Tony the Tiger.

01:27:56.360 | So I was wearing a skin tight suit.

01:27:59.700 | - It's all the blonde SoCal guys, you, Chet, Chris.

01:28:02.260 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:28:04.040 | - Throughout the birdhouse, which is your company,

01:28:07.240 | but without telling people what is it, Skateboard Company.

01:28:09.600 | I remember Willie Santos was early on.

01:28:12.440 | I remember, he's a super nice kid.

01:28:14.260 | Used to see him at the contest.

01:28:15.280 | I remember thinking, whoa, Tony Hawk has his own company

01:28:18.200 | for skateboarders.

01:28:19.040 | That was revolutionary.

01:28:19.880 | - We had a team, you know, like Willie was a maestro.

01:28:22.920 | Jeremy Klein, legendary street pioneer.

01:28:28.240 | Steve Barra, who's kind of a, we called it ATV,

01:28:30.760 | but street anvert.

01:28:33.600 | We had Ocean Howell, who was like our number one amateur.

01:28:37.740 | We had Andrew Reynolds, Matt Beach.

01:28:40.860 | We had a team, it was full on.

01:28:43.960 | - Was it fun to move from rider to also rider,

01:28:48.320 | but team manager, owner?

01:28:50.400 | - Was it fun?

01:28:51.600 | It was just necessary.

01:28:54.200 | I can't say it was fun.

01:28:55.160 | I mean, yeah, it was fun,

01:28:56.440 | 'cause we were still just kind of reckless

01:28:59.840 | and driving, you know, six of us in a van,

01:29:03.480 | driving to skate shops across the country

01:29:05.480 | and begging them for 300 bucks

01:29:08.640 | so that we could get gas and food and a hotel room

01:29:10.920 | and get on our way.

01:29:12.980 | I don't know.

01:29:16.320 | But for me, it just felt like a necessity to,

01:29:19.920 | that was what I had to do to make a brand happen.

01:29:23.160 | And so I was willing to do it.

01:29:24.720 | But it was exhausting.

01:29:29.200 | Yeah, 'cause I had to be the coach

01:29:34.200 | and the tour manager and the skater.

01:29:38.180 | I was putting myself out there on the worst conditions

01:29:43.360 | and just rolling my ankle left and right.

01:29:46.480 | And it was all street and it just wasn't my thing.

01:29:49.440 | It was hard, but I loved it, it made it happen.

01:29:53.420 | - In my mind, I'm thinking you had to be

01:29:55.540 | Tony Hawk, the skateboarder, Frank Hawk, the organizer,

01:29:59.740 | and Stacy Peralta, 'cause Stacy had been a pro skateboarder.

01:30:04.060 | I still think of him as a skateboarder,

01:30:05.500 | even though he's a filmmaker, right, skateboarder.

01:30:07.060 | Just like I still think of Spike Jones as a skateboarder,

01:30:09.260 | BMXer, filmmaker.

01:30:12.100 | It seems like you had to integrate all of those.

01:30:14.720 | And I mentioned that because I am curious.

01:30:17.700 | I think a lot of people are probably curious.

01:30:20.180 | Are you the type of person like sit back in a chair at night

01:30:22.420 | and think like, okay, like, how I'm gonna do this?

01:30:24.320 | I mean, are you contemplative

01:30:26.020 | or is it really you just identify what needs to be done

01:30:29.240 | this year and over the next three years

01:30:30.920 | and set your milestones kind of short in.

01:30:33.380 | - I guess now or back then. - Back then.

01:30:35.920 | - Oh no, everything was just in the moment.

01:30:38.640 | We gotta get here.

01:30:40.160 | We gotta get to Dallas by tomorrow.

01:30:42.620 | Like as soon as this demo's over,

01:30:43.980 | get in the van, we're going.

01:30:45.380 | We gotta get a hotel room.

01:30:48.380 | It was just stuff like that, it was very much.

01:30:51.960 | But I think I learned to respect punctuality

01:30:56.960 | because I travel with plenty of skaters that were not

01:31:04.620 | and didn't care and show up late and was like,

01:31:06.940 | dude, and like, I don't know these guys.

01:31:08.780 | And then when I was in charge, it was like,

01:31:10.500 | we're gonna be on time

01:31:11.780 | 'cause we have to respect other people's time.

01:31:14.340 | And we said, we're gonna be here at three o'clock,

01:31:15.760 | we're gonna be here at three o'clock.

01:31:18.060 | And that's not easy with a skate crew.

01:31:22.240 | No, Mike Blaback, who as you know,

01:31:23.640 | is integral to the "Humor in Love" podcast.

01:31:25.680 | I talk about that.

01:31:26.520 | We've got some other guys that came over from DC

01:31:30.760 | to as filmmakers and editors for us.

01:31:32.740 | And they're so punctual and they're so on it.

01:31:36.080 | And I noticed you showed up early today, right?

01:31:38.500 | Right on time or early, early by five minutes.

01:31:42.640 | And that is a distinguishing factor, I think,

01:31:45.440 | in any occupation, but especially in skateboarding

01:31:48.400 | where there's this kind of looseness.

01:31:50.040 | - Sure.

01:31:50.880 | - So if you do show up on time, it really means a lot.

01:31:54.380 | The professionalism that was instilled in you,

01:31:57.480 | it's clear that different places where that's showing up,

01:32:00.420 | mentioned the shrewdness about the business decisions.

01:32:02.820 | I'm curious about another aspect of that,

01:32:04.680 | which is maybe a little more cryptic,

01:32:06.060 | which is whether or not it was the CD collection that I saw

01:32:09.780 | or your mention of the car, your interest in video games.

01:32:14.100 | It seems that one thing that you've done

01:32:16.300 | that a lot of guys that I knew,

01:32:18.100 | 'cause back then, by the way, it was mostly guys now,

01:32:20.000 | so we said there were women doing it too, women and girls.

01:32:24.200 | It seems like you have a lot of other hobbies and interests,

01:32:28.580 | music and et cetera, but that we never heard about you

01:32:32.180 | getting distracted or pulled down those lines.

01:32:34.620 | We didn't hear about you going and surfing

01:32:36.300 | and getting hurt surfing so that you couldn't skate.

01:32:39.380 | We're getting really into motorcycles or racing cars, right?

01:32:43.220 | Some people went hard left out of skateboarding into that,

01:32:46.980 | like Ken Block, the late, great Ken Block,

01:32:49.700 | but that became his main thing.

01:32:51.120 | Seems like you knew that skateboarding was the main frame

01:32:54.840 | and stayed with that.

01:32:56.000 | And yet you have a lot of other interests.

01:32:58.860 | - Yeah, I think I, well, with other sports,

01:33:02.700 | especially like motocross,

01:33:05.660 | I have this huge respect for motocross.

01:33:08.420 | I think it's super exciting.

01:33:09.580 | I would love to do it.

01:33:10.680 | And I know that I would not escape unscathed.

01:33:14.340 | I would definitely want to learn the tricks,

01:33:16.580 | do whips and flips and whatever,

01:33:19.040 | and I'm going to get hurt.

01:33:20.500 | And I don't want to risk my skate career for that.

01:33:24.400 | So I purposely pulled away from that type of thing.

01:33:29.400 | The last knee surgery I had is because I overshot a jump

01:33:33.300 | in Mammoth on my snowboard.

01:33:35.340 | So that was the lesson.

01:33:37.400 | I was like, don't, what are you doing?

01:33:39.300 | - Just cruise.

01:33:40.340 | - Yeah, stay on the ground, hit the powder.

01:33:42.860 | Free ride with your bros because I learned my lesson.

01:33:47.260 | So yeah, you're right, but at the same time,

01:33:50.000 | like I still love going surfing and snowboarding.

01:33:53.020 | I don't do them as much, obviously,

01:33:55.600 | but those are part of what I did all growing up.

01:34:00.600 | And they're important to me.

01:34:02.200 | I did do a couple of celebrity car races,

01:34:06.080 | like a NASCAR race.

01:34:07.100 | And I totaled a car in the Long Beach Grand Prix

01:34:11.500 | 'cause this dude ran me into the wall and it was like,

01:34:13.940 | well, that was fun, but I'm not,

01:34:16.340 | I don't have the bandwidth to get that serious about it.

01:34:21.340 | - And now you have a family, of course, too.

01:34:23.180 | - Of course, yeah, I mean, and those things,

01:34:25.740 | as fun as they are and as, I don't know,

01:34:29.860 | as sort of auxiliary as they are,

01:34:34.740 | they require a lot of time.

01:34:36.440 | I mean, just for instance, that Long Beach Grand Prix,

01:34:39.260 | they want you to go stay in Palmdale

01:34:41.460 | for like a week and a half and train

01:34:44.060 | and figure out how to truly know how to drive and be safe.

01:34:46.900 | And it's like, I don't, I ain't got time for that.

01:34:49.300 | - Yeah, that's time you're not skateboarding.

01:34:51.340 | - Or with your family.

01:34:52.260 | - Right.

01:34:53.100 | - Yeah.

01:34:53.920 | - Right, now I feel the same way.

01:34:55.100 | If I get pulled away from reading papers

01:34:57.740 | and prepping podcasts and reading the latest research

01:35:01.140 | and thinking about experiments we could do,

01:35:02.500 | then I, for more than a couple of days,

01:35:04.180 | I start feeling the itch.

01:35:05.900 | I have a feeling this stuff is programmed

01:35:07.300 | into one's nervous system after a while.

01:35:08.700 | Like you've been skateboarding for so long

01:35:10.140 | that if you go a few days,

01:35:11.980 | it probably just, your system is-

01:35:13.920 | - Oh, I get edgy.

01:35:14.760 | - It's like depriving you of water or something.

01:35:16.180 | - Oh yeah, for sure.

01:35:17.020 | I mean, well, just for instance,

01:35:19.960 | our ramp is being torn down on Sunday.

01:35:25.000 | Today is Friday.

01:35:26.460 | Our ramp is being torn down on Sunday at 10 a.m.

01:35:28.660 | to be moved to Salt Lake City for our big vert event.

01:35:32.060 | I'm going there at 8.30

01:35:33.900 | so I can get a session before it gets torn down.

01:35:35.940 | - I love it.

01:35:36.780 | - On Father's Day.

01:35:37.780 | That's my Father's Day.

01:35:39.160 | I'm going to work at 8.30 a.m. on Sunday.

01:35:41.300 | - I love it.

01:35:43.240 | - Speaking of family and lineage,

01:35:45.580 | tell us about your kids.

01:35:48.380 | You've got some talented skateboarders in your family

01:35:50.540 | besides yourself.

01:35:51.980 | - I do.

01:35:52.900 | Well, I have four of my own and I have two stepkids

01:35:55.740 | and they all skate.

01:35:57.540 | My daughter, not so much anymore,

01:36:00.080 | but all the boys, five boys, are all really into it.

01:36:04.460 | My oldest son is the most,

01:36:06.760 | he's the most prominent because he turned pro

01:36:11.960 | and has his own following,

01:36:15.820 | has a name for himself, Riley, and he's 30.

01:36:18.620 | - Yeah, he kills it on street.

01:36:21.300 | He's a big street skateboarder.

01:36:22.220 | - He does, yeah.

01:36:23.640 | But they're all good.

01:36:26.980 | They're all good skaters in their own ways.

01:36:29.960 | And it's so fun.

01:36:32.340 | I mean, I didn't,

01:36:35.060 | of course they're surrounded by it their whole life,

01:36:37.400 | especially Riley 'cause when he was young,

01:36:39.420 | I didn't really have the means to have childcare

01:36:41.580 | or whatever.

01:36:42.420 | So I just had to take him with me on tours and whatnot.

01:36:44.480 | So he was always around it.

01:36:45.960 | So he got good at it by default,

01:36:48.080 | but at some point started to shy away from it

01:36:50.120 | because he felt the pressure in my shadow.

01:36:54.580 | And it was like, I don't, this isn't fun.

01:36:56.340 | I don't, people expect me to be super good

01:36:58.440 | or I have to do this stuff.

01:36:59.480 | And so he went, shied away from it,

01:37:01.480 | but then found a bunch of his friends in high school

01:37:04.600 | and they love skating.

01:37:05.680 | He's still good at it.

01:37:06.580 | So he found his crew and they've all found their crews.

01:37:10.780 | Completely independent of me.

01:37:13.740 | And so when we go on vacation, for instance,

01:37:17.340 | we were, last year we were in, or two years ago,

01:37:20.820 | we were on the big island in Hawaii.

01:37:22.300 | They want to go to the skate parks.

01:37:24.260 | I don't want to go to the skate parks, I'm on vacation.

01:37:27.380 | - It's also a little harsh stuff.

01:37:28.680 | It's a great way to get hurt, right?

01:37:30.060 | - What's that?

01:37:30.900 | - Over in Hawaii. - Of course, yeah.

01:37:31.720 | - It's all weather worn.

01:37:32.740 | - Oh yeah, and it's not even my scene,

01:37:34.100 | but then so I go, I'm, so I'm their chauffeur

01:37:37.340 | and I'm their filmer.

01:37:38.940 | - I love it.

01:37:39.780 | - That's my vacation.

01:37:40.880 | But because they all love it so much, you know what I mean?

01:37:43.280 | And it just, it's so cool.

01:37:44.900 | Like, I mean, how could I ever ask for more?

01:37:47.400 | It's amazing.

01:37:48.240 | - Let's talk about Frank and Nancy a little bit,

01:37:51.120 | just 'cause I have this kind of odd connection

01:37:53.760 | to your family through those,

01:37:55.760 | this really two or three day interaction,

01:37:57.260 | changed my life forever.

01:37:58.680 | Meeting you was spectacular as a young skateboarding kid,

01:38:02.460 | but also just the idea that someone would literally

01:38:04.660 | take me into their home.

01:38:06.280 | I mean, they had every reason to not trust me.

01:38:08.180 | First of all, I was hanging out with Billy Waldman,

01:38:10.280 | no explanation needed, the people who knew Billy.

01:38:12.640 | I hope he's doing well.

01:38:13.480 | I haven't heard anything about him,

01:38:14.300 | but I hope he's doing well.

01:38:15.940 | But we were wild, but he basically took me into your home.

01:38:19.560 | He and Nancy took me in, you know, fed us or fed me.

01:38:24.560 | I had another friend with me and, you know,

01:38:28.440 | I just have to say, as you're describing your family,

01:38:32.240 | I can only imagine what it must've been like

01:38:33.920 | for Frank and Nancy to see you have your kids.

01:38:36.240 | Did they get to live long enough to see that Riley

01:38:41.240 | and your other kids were skateboarders?

01:38:42.860 | - My dad met Riley,

01:38:45.280 | but my dad passed away when Riley was two.

01:38:48.000 | So he's the only, one of my kids that he met.

01:38:52.100 | My older sibling had kids,

01:38:56.580 | so he met two of his other grandkids besides Riley.

01:39:03.180 | My mom got to see some of Riley's success,

01:39:06.860 | but she suffered from Alzheimer's dementia

01:39:09.860 | and so things slipped away.

01:39:12.020 | But I think that my dad would not believe

01:39:17.020 | that skateboarding is in the Olympics.

01:39:23.020 | To him, that is the top of the mountain

01:39:26.940 | because he was really into other sports.

01:39:28.480 | He loves sports.

01:39:29.320 | He loved the Olympics.

01:39:30.160 | He loved watching football.

01:39:32.140 | He loved watching baseball.

01:39:33.780 | He loved when the Olympics were on.

01:39:36.060 | He just, he loved the competition element

01:39:38.020 | and the hype of it.

01:39:39.620 | And I think there was part of him that felt like,

01:39:41.620 | why isn't skateboarding in this?

01:39:43.420 | You know, but he knew that there were so many hurdles

01:39:46.100 | to get through and so much more acceptance

01:39:48.580 | that needed to happen.

01:39:49.980 | And I don't think he imagined it would ever happen.

01:39:53.300 | - He was a special guy.

01:39:56.500 | I can still hear his voice.

01:39:58.340 | He was a very large guy too.

01:39:59.700 | I don't know if you, I was just smaller then.

01:40:01.380 | I definitely was smaller then.

01:40:03.120 | He had like a big presence.

01:40:05.620 | And I know I've told you this many times before.

01:40:08.500 | This is actually how we got reconnected.

01:40:09.780 | I sent you a direct message and said,

01:40:10.900 | "Hey, I met your parents.

01:40:12.280 | "In fact, they took me into your home

01:40:13.780 | "and I'm telling the truth

01:40:15.020 | "and you'll know I'm telling the truth

01:40:16.200 | "because they took me to dinner

01:40:17.620 | "and they ordered black coffee after dinner."

01:40:20.660 | And you know, for years,

01:40:21.820 | I would order black coffee after dinner.

01:40:23.540 | You know, as a kid, you're just so impressionable.

01:40:25.180 | These really nice people took me in.

01:40:27.040 | I was like, wow, this is what a really healthy family

01:40:28.860 | looks like.

01:40:29.860 | I'm grateful to have loving parents, always did,

01:40:32.820 | but I didn't have the healthy family structure.

01:40:34.900 | So for me, it was like,

01:40:35.740 | oh my goodness, these people drink black coffee after dinner.

01:40:38.020 | This must be what healthy families do.

01:40:39.820 | So by the way, folks, don't drink caffeine

01:40:41.780 | within eight hours of going to sleep.

01:40:42.960 | But-

01:40:43.800 | - Wait, I still do that.

01:40:46.340 | - But well, it doesn't seem to be holding you back.

01:40:49.120 | Individualized, but yeah,

01:40:52.900 | it's spectacular that this lineage of, you know,

01:40:56.180 | Frank to you, and I mentioned, and Nancy,

01:40:58.760 | because it seems like while she might not have been

01:41:00.600 | at the contest and running around setting up tables

01:41:02.500 | and doing all of it, like she clearly was supportive as well.

01:41:05.120 | - Oh, she was at a lot of the events too.

01:41:07.420 | I mean, they needed all hands on deck

01:41:09.080 | when it started getting big and no one was taking salaries.

01:41:11.900 | You know, that was the thing is that people thought like,

01:41:13.460 | oh, your dad's like cashing on,

01:41:15.440 | he never took up money for any of that.

01:41:18.500 | And he took so much shit.

01:41:20.720 | You know what I mean?

01:41:21.560 | He just, he just loved it.

01:41:22.460 | - It was for you.

01:41:23.740 | - Well, and-

01:41:24.580 | - I have to imagine he wouldn't have been there.

01:41:25.420 | - It was for me and it was also for the misfits

01:41:27.900 | that I surrounded myself with.

01:41:29.500 | And even though he was brash and he was like, you know,

01:41:34.500 | he was, I don't know, what's the word?

01:41:37.880 | He was foreboding and intimidating or whatever else.

01:41:42.940 | He did it for all those kids that were kind of lost.

01:41:46.360 | Like you, I mean, really like he loved

01:41:48.920 | that it brought them together,

01:41:50.100 | that it gave them a sense of self,

01:41:51.740 | it gave them a sense of purpose.

01:41:53.140 | He saw that because he was that.

01:41:55.940 | He really had a rough childhood.

01:41:58.620 | And he did everything he could through his adult life

01:42:01.540 | to make up for it with his own kids

01:42:03.620 | and with the kids that they surround themselves with.

01:42:06.420 | So that's what he loved about it.

01:42:08.460 | Of course he loved seeing me thrive too,

01:42:10.800 | but he loved that he created the safe space

01:42:13.360 | and this sense of community.

01:42:16.220 | And so my mom, my mom was, that was her thing,

01:42:18.500 | was getting people together, gatherings.

01:42:22.380 | You know, oh, we should all get together.

01:42:24.700 | And like, even my siblings and I,

01:42:27.820 | as much as we want to emulate our parents,

01:42:31.020 | we don't do it as much as they did.

01:42:33.060 | And we regret that.

01:42:34.020 | - Well, there's still time.

01:42:36.160 | - No, I mean, we do, but it's tricky.

01:42:38.820 | We're all in different areas.

01:42:39.980 | - Sure.

01:42:40.900 | Yeah, the person that comes to mind

01:42:42.420 | when I think about your dad,

01:42:43.780 | now I'm forgetting the movie,

01:42:44.840 | but there's this one Clint Eastwood movie

01:42:46.540 | where he lives in a neighborhood

01:42:49.220 | where I think it's a bunch of young Hmong gangsters.

01:42:53.020 | - El Camino.

01:42:53.860 | - El Camino.

01:42:54.700 | - Yeah.

01:42:55.520 | - And I just remember there's that scene

01:42:56.900 | of Clint coming out on his porch

01:42:58.660 | and just standing really upright,

01:43:00.680 | everything in his front lawn, everything super manicured

01:43:04.700 | and just standing there like this immense presence.

01:43:06.740 | And that's how I remember Frank Hawk.

01:43:08.620 | - Yeah, but he was a total softie.

01:43:10.740 | That's the thing.

01:43:12.600 | That's the, you know, there was a, it was all a front.

01:43:16.440 | - Well, he was certainly very gracious.

01:43:20.100 | - Like, you know, you got to see that side of him

01:43:23.220 | where it's just like, oh yeah, come on, we'll take you out.

01:43:26.420 | You want to go see Tony's place, let's go.

01:43:28.260 | Like, that's not some hard ass.

01:43:30.580 | - Well, there's a tail end to the story too,

01:43:33.500 | where he actually called my mom.

01:43:36.100 | And I think there may have been a statement or two about,

01:43:38.420 | hey, this kid's 14.

01:43:39.540 | Like he can't be in Linda Vista Boys Club

01:43:41.180 | taking the bus back to Lancaster, et cetera, et cetera.

01:43:43.780 | May have been some discussion like that,

01:43:45.820 | but then they also paid for me to go home.

01:43:48.500 | - Oh yeah.

01:43:49.320 | - They flew me home.

01:43:50.420 | - Yeah.

01:43:51.260 | - So I think I owe you a couple of hundred bucks

01:43:52.540 | for a Southwest flight or whatever airline it was.

01:43:55.120 | Well, it's fun.

01:43:56.860 | And I think important to reminisce about these people

01:43:59.060 | because they aren't just your parents,

01:44:01.620 | but they've done so much.

01:44:03.100 | And through you, you know, I really think that emotions

01:44:06.960 | and stories are really like the equivalent

01:44:09.460 | of energy in humans.

01:44:10.900 | You know, when people talk about energy,

01:44:11.880 | because that gets carried forward.

01:44:13.580 | Speaking of which, we share a common love

01:44:17.780 | of some particular music.

01:44:19.420 | Are you somebody who listens to music

01:44:21.180 | to sort of to inspire you to get amped up to go skateboard?

01:44:25.600 | Is music an important part of your life?

01:44:27.860 | - Yeah, let's put it this way.

01:44:29.140 | I had a playlist for my 540 the other day.

01:44:33.720 | - Okay.

01:44:34.820 | - Fine tune to that trick

01:44:36.620 | and what would get me motivated and hyped to do it.

01:44:41.380 | - You don't have to share with us what's on the playlist

01:44:43.280 | unless you choose to.

01:44:44.980 | - Oh man.

01:44:45.820 | - But was it high energy, low energy?

01:44:47.060 | - High energy, well, and some meaningful songs

01:44:50.180 | like New Order Ceremony and let's see,

01:44:54.980 | Nine Inch Nails getting smaller

01:44:56.740 | because that was a song we used

01:44:58.720 | in one of our big skate tours

01:45:00.300 | and it was one of the most high energy sections of the show.

01:45:03.500 | Gosh, there were so, I can't go through all of them,

01:45:09.340 | I forget.

01:45:10.180 | Gang of Four, wait, Gang of Four is,

01:45:19.420 | shit, I forgot, what is it?

01:45:21.260 | Oh, I Find That Essence Rare, fires up.

01:45:26.980 | So I had like 10 that were just gonna,

01:45:29.780 | if any of those played, I'm gonna make it

01:45:32.180 | and I knew that it was about an hour and a half

01:45:35.740 | and that's as long as I'm gonna try it

01:45:38.020 | before I'm too tired.

01:45:39.620 | - So you're listening in the warehouse

01:45:41.040 | or you're listening in the warehouse?

01:45:41.880 | - In the warehouse, on random.

01:45:43.960 | And then the song that I made it to

01:45:46.460 | was off of that Prodigy album, Fat of the Lamb

01:45:50.780 | and it's called Climatize, it's an instrumental.

01:45:53.180 | I used it for a birdhouse edit when 411 was the thing.

01:45:56.720 | - 411 were these little like video newsletter type things.

01:46:01.420 | - Yeah. - Anyway.

01:46:02.340 | - So when that song came on, I was feeling it, I made it.

01:46:07.080 | - Fantastic, I love this because the neuroscientist in me

01:46:11.460 | is immediately gonna say, we have this brain

01:46:14.140 | that loves to take in information and discard

01:46:16.700 | other information, but paired association is so strong.

01:46:20.740 | - Yeah. - And when you couple that

01:46:22.100 | with some sense of reward, like the making of the varial

01:46:25.220 | below coping as early in life or making the 540s

01:46:30.220 | as a comeback to the injury, after the injury.

01:46:34.620 | - I mean, it was almost like I loved all that music,

01:46:37.060 | but I was indoctrinated by it through the skate parks

01:46:40.380 | because that was the soundtrack, it was punk music.

01:46:44.160 | It was Sex Pistols and 999 and Black Flag and Devo

01:46:48.960 | and X and Buzzcocks and that's what I kept hearing

01:46:53.960 | and that's what I associate with my best of times.

01:46:57.800 | - Yeah, it's in your nervous system.

01:46:59.160 | - Yeah. - Yeah, there's a few voices,

01:47:02.520 | Rancid and Tim Armstrong and the other guys.

01:47:05.600 | - Operation Ivy. - Operation Ivy.

01:47:07.440 | - Yeah, Sound System, Sound System was on that playlist,

01:47:10.120 | was on the 540 playlist.

01:47:11.240 | - All right, Tim will be so happy to hear that

01:47:13.700 | and Matt Freeman, the bass player and Jesse Michaels

01:47:16.240 | is now playing again with Tim.

01:47:17.560 | - Right. - The lead singer

01:47:18.400 | of Operation Ivy. - Yeah, with their new gig.

01:47:21.200 | What's it called?

01:47:22.100 | - They had a name and then they changed it.

01:47:25.640 | - Oh, okay. - Initially it was,

01:47:28.480 | well, I don't want to say 'cause they changed it

01:47:29.920 | for a reason. - That's all right.

01:47:31.360 | I know they're making new music.

01:47:32.540 | - Yeah, which is amazing, Operation Ivy is incredible.

01:47:34.880 | My yearbook photo for I think two years running

01:47:37.480 | was the cover of Operation Ivy

01:47:38.840 | 'cause I didn't show up for the yearbook photo.

01:47:40.320 | Speaking of which, did you show up for yearbook photos

01:47:42.580 | or did you graduate high school?

01:47:44.600 | - I graduated high school

01:47:45.840 | but I didn't go to any of the events,

01:47:47.800 | prom or any of the auxiliary.

01:47:52.400 | I didn't know, I mean, I was an outcast.

01:47:54.600 | I was not, even though I had success in skating,

01:47:58.320 | skating wasn't cool and I was not homies

01:48:01.500 | with anyone at school except for two other skaters

01:48:05.160 | and we felt very ostracized, so nah.

01:48:10.000 | Yeah, I did show up for the graduation 'cause my mom

01:48:12.700 | and dad wanted to see it.

01:48:14.140 | - Yeah, likewise, I graduated but I could tell you more

01:48:16.020 | about the curbs in the parking lot of my high school

01:48:17.860 | than I could about anything that happened in the classroom.

01:48:19.220 | - Oh man, I broke so many sprinkler heads

01:48:21.740 | because the sprinkler heads were right next to the curb

01:48:23.940 | and there was a double-sided curb

01:48:25.680 | and so you board slide 'cause I'd go there early

01:48:27.500 | and board slide and then I'd just lean too far in

01:48:29.620 | and break the sprinkler head and never got caught.

01:48:31.660 | - What high school?

01:48:33.220 | - Well, I went to a couple.

01:48:34.220 | I went to Sarah High School originally,

01:48:38.300 | then I went to San Diguito High School,

01:48:41.180 | which is in North County and then I ended up at Torrey Pines.

01:48:43.640 | I got so bullied at San Diguito

01:48:45.200 | that I requested to be transferred

01:48:47.240 | because I couldn't survive there as a skater.

01:48:52.000 | I would have to hide my skateboard in the bushes

01:48:54.740 | before class and then go find it after school

01:48:57.200 | so that people wouldn't target me.

01:48:58.900 | - The '80s were rough, it was like a John Hughes film.

01:49:03.920 | - Well, for sure, it was jocks versus nerds

01:49:07.440 | and then skaters were like not even considered in that realm

01:49:11.380 | because they're just going to get hammered

01:49:14.440 | 'cause there were so few of us.

01:49:15.940 | - Well, things have changed

01:49:17.760 | and not only have things have changed

01:49:19.380 | such that skateboarding is far more popular and respected

01:49:22.020 | and at least one mark of that is in the Olympics,

01:49:25.080 | although there are other marks of respect, certainly,

01:49:28.140 | but a huge evolution that I've observed

01:49:30.520 | is when I was skateboarding as a 14-year-old

01:49:34.940 | and close to my 20s and then took some time off for sure,

01:49:39.940 | hardly any girls, hardly any women,

01:49:43.840 | there were a few like Cara Beth Burnside,

01:49:46.420 | they got teased, ridiculed, it was hard on them.

01:49:50.240 | - Super hard, yeah. - Super hard.

01:49:51.420 | Now, largely through Instagram,

01:49:55.100 | but some other channels as well,

01:49:57.400 | you can see this young girl, Reese,

01:49:59.440 | on vert, skateboarding better than a lot of grown men

01:50:03.780 | who have been skateboarding for decades.

01:50:06.260 | And then there are a number of other ones

01:50:07.740 | in street skateboarding and also taking really hard slams.

01:50:12.740 | So this is a complete revision

01:50:17.700 | of the recent history of skateboarding.

01:50:20.100 | So thoughts on that and on Reese and there are a few others.

01:50:23.620 | Is it Lizzie who took a really bad fall that was filmed?

01:50:28.620 | - Broke the neck off her femur, yeah.

01:50:32.980 | - Yeah, these are tough ladies.

01:50:35.180 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:50:36.020 | - For doing it and for coming back.

01:50:37.540 | - Lizzie did the loop.

01:50:38.700 | She did the full 360 loop, first woman to ever do it.

01:50:42.520 | - So what do you think changed, like that paved the way?

01:50:45.980 | Is it just a critical mass of females doing it?

01:50:50.980 | Is it that Sky Brown?

01:50:54.620 | - For sure, there were the pioneers,

01:50:56.880 | people like Cara Beth Burnside and there's so many others.

01:51:02.680 | Patty Hoffman was one of the first vert skaters too,

01:51:07.680 | who they planted the seed and then there were other women

01:51:12.240 | that took inspiration like, oh, girls can do this.

01:51:15.640 | Even though they're largely outnumbered

01:51:18.240 | and they get hassled for sure.

01:51:20.760 | And then through the street era,

01:51:22.940 | people like Alyssa Steemer who paved the way

01:51:25.820 | for legit street skating.

01:51:29.280 | But then through the years,

01:51:32.560 | it started to become more common, more accepted,

01:51:37.520 | which is dumb to say

01:51:38.680 | 'cause it should have always been accepted.

01:51:41.500 | But the thing that really tipped the scale

01:51:44.400 | was when everything was leading up to the Olympics,

01:51:47.700 | there had to be equal divisions in equal disciplines

01:51:51.080 | for men and women.

01:51:52.880 | And suddenly there was no question

01:51:54.160 | of should we have a women's event?

01:51:56.200 | Like, no, we have to have a women's event

01:51:58.200 | because that's the road to qualifying

01:52:01.320 | for the Olympic stage.

01:52:04.220 | And Vance Park series to their credit,

01:52:07.400 | they were holding events simultaneously,

01:52:10.120 | not that we're Olympic qualifiers, but just their own.

01:52:12.380 | And they said, these events are equal across the board,

01:52:15.960 | equal prize money, equal attention.

01:52:18.240 | I mean, it was just like, that was just matter of fact.

01:52:20.960 | And that shifted a lot.

01:52:23.740 | It really did.

01:52:24.800 | Now if you go to a skate park,

01:52:27.160 | and you see plenty of women there.

01:52:28.920 | - Yeah, it's awesome.

01:52:29.920 | - Like literal women, like moms, you know?

01:52:32.400 | There are older women that are learning how to skate.

01:52:37.280 | It's awesome.

01:52:38.840 | - Not that it matters so much,

01:52:40.720 | but does anyone claim to be the first female

01:52:44.200 | to do 540 on vert?

01:52:45.520 | Is that sort of a known thing?

01:52:46.360 | - That would be Lindsay Adams.

01:52:47.800 | - Fantastic.

01:52:50.760 | - And she did that.

01:52:51.680 | I'll tell you how she did that.

01:52:53.680 | She was trying it.

01:52:56.040 | So she's trying to do McTwist.

01:52:58.560 | She's married to Travis Pastrana.

01:53:00.380 | It's like the, you know?

01:53:02.120 | It's like the elite action sports couple.

01:53:06.840 | And she was trying them.

01:53:09.480 | She was getting pretty close.

01:53:11.680 | And then we did a big exhibition in Paris

01:53:15.840 | at the Grand Palais on behalf of Quicksilver.

01:53:19.080 | It was a huge event.

01:53:21.520 | They put a half pipe up and we did this giant show.

01:53:25.840 | There were thousands of people there.

01:53:27.760 | And it was very much unspoken but expected

01:53:32.520 | that I was gonna do a 900 at this event.

01:53:36.520 | I think it was, I wanna say it was 2010 maybe.

01:53:39.600 | And, or no, like 2009.

01:53:44.280 | And the organizers were kind of like,

01:53:47.640 | "Okay, so we're gonna do this.

01:53:48.480 | "And then, you know, at some point you do a 900."

01:53:52.080 | And I was like, "I can't guarantee that ever."

01:53:55.160 | Like every time I've ever made it,

01:53:56.520 | it's been pretty spontaneous.

01:53:57.840 | I, you know, I've set out to do it and not,

01:53:59.840 | I've come up short.

01:54:01.000 | I can't guarantee it.

01:54:01.840 | I'll try, I'll try.

01:54:03.420 | And they were like, "Yeah, yeah, okay."

01:54:06.240 | And so I knew the whole time that we're skating,

01:54:08.540 | I was like, "Okay, everyone's expecting this."

01:54:09.920 | So I kind of went through the motions

01:54:12.040 | of doing my exhibition tricks, you know, playing the hits

01:54:17.040 | and then started trying 900s.

01:54:19.840 | And at the same time, Lindsay started trying 540s

01:54:23.160 | 'cause she was feeling that energy.

01:54:25.320 | And so it was this sort of, not battle,

01:54:28.880 | but definitely we were trading hits.

01:54:31.360 | It was like, "All right, here goes Johnny, it's a nine,

01:54:33.080 | "oh, you missed it.

01:54:33.920 | "And here goes Lindsay, oh, she missed it."

01:54:36.740 | And then I, she almost made one, like was riding down,

01:54:41.740 | you know, and then fell at the flat bottom.

01:54:48.680 | It was like, "Oh, and then I made 900."

01:54:51.920 | And that was kind of the showstopper.

01:54:54.760 | 'Cause like that's what they expected

01:54:55.960 | and everyone's going crazy and whatever.

01:54:58.280 | People are coming down off the ramp, knees sliding down

01:55:00.620 | and we're saying goodbye to the crowd.

01:55:03.040 | And I look up and Lindsay puts her tail out.

01:55:06.000 | There's still people standing on the ramp

01:55:08.480 | and she puts her tail out.

01:55:09.320 | And I was like, "I think Lindsay wants to try it again.

01:55:11.580 | "Here we go, I'm on the mic now."

01:55:13.600 | She made it, love it.

01:55:15.580 | She stole the show.

01:55:18.160 | Like without question, it was huge.

01:55:21.360 | You can look it up on YouTube, like it's there.

01:55:24.440 | Lindsay Adams, first 540.

01:55:27.240 | It was awesome.

01:55:28.280 | And then she made it and we all grabbed her

01:55:30.760 | and put her on her shoulders.

01:55:32.740 | - That is awesome.

01:55:33.580 | - It was really cool.

01:55:34.560 | - That is awesome.

01:55:35.400 | 'Cause these things are like the four minute mile

01:55:38.060 | as a barrier, then people break that barrier

01:55:39.960 | and then other people break that barrier.

01:55:41.480 | It's, I mean, I've watched enough of skateboarding

01:55:44.480 | in recent years.

01:55:45.320 | You know, like the Sky Brown thing, she's phenomenal.

01:55:48.100 | And I actually saw her family out to dinner here

01:55:51.180 | in Los Angeles and with her brother

01:55:53.860 | and her folks are really gracious, really nice.

01:55:56.200 | And there again, you know, parents going to the skate park.

01:55:59.260 | After all, she's couldn't drive herself.

01:56:01.000 | I think she's at that time she was probably like nine.

01:56:03.100 | - That's probably one of the biggest shifts too,

01:56:05.640 | is that parents encourage their kids to skate now.

01:56:09.580 | Could you imagine that when we were young?

01:56:12.540 | Never.

01:56:13.360 | - No, there were so many factors telling us not to,

01:56:14.940 | which just made us want to do it more.

01:56:16.860 | - Sure, yeah, now kids are like,

01:56:19.140 | parents are pushing them into it.

01:56:21.260 | Get out there, learn tricks.

01:56:23.300 | It's like, wait, that's not what we're supposed to be doing.

01:56:25.340 | But it's cool that, I think with the really cool factor

01:56:30.020 | of all that is there are definitely people our age,

01:56:33.800 | I'm grouping you into my age category.

01:56:37.420 | - I'm 47.

01:56:38.260 | - All right, close enough.

01:56:40.140 | But that have kids and skateboarding

01:56:42.860 | was such a special time in our life.

01:56:44.880 | And then they're rediscovering it through their kids

01:56:46.920 | and they're skating together.

01:56:48.420 | And I think that's just so amazing

01:56:51.840 | that someone of our age would be like,

01:56:56.220 | you know what, I used to do that.

01:56:57.680 | You're into that, like, let's go.

01:56:59.840 | And then you could show your kid how to do a sweeper.

01:57:02.480 | - I can probably do that.

01:57:04.600 | I don't have kids yet, but when I do,

01:57:06.220 | I intend on being healthy enough to do a sweeper.

01:57:09.520 | People can look up sweeper.

01:57:10.580 | We don't have to explain it for them,

01:57:11.760 | but a little layback grind or a sweeper.

01:57:13.960 | - Yep, oh yeah, because they wouldn't think to do it.

01:57:16.640 | - No, and they are doing all these difficult flip tricks

01:57:19.180 | and that's not my scene.

01:57:21.100 | - Yeah, what's your go-to on a game of skate

01:57:22.800 | if you're going to really take out the younger generation?

01:57:25.700 | - I can do impossibles pretty regularly.

01:57:28.700 | - On transition.

01:57:32.240 | - Consistently, I can do them on flat.

01:57:33.840 | - So this is where basically you scrape the back of the,

01:57:36.200 | it's an ollie really, but it wraps around the back foot.

01:57:38.760 | - The whole board wraps over your foot.

01:57:41.100 | That's kind of my sneak attack on games of skate.

01:57:44.380 | - Does Rodney Mullen get credit for that trick still?

01:57:46.580 | - Oh yes.

01:57:47.420 | - That's a Rodney.

01:57:48.420 | Are you still in touch with Rodney?

01:57:50.380 | - Absolutely, yeah.

01:57:51.400 | - Yeah, he's somebody that certainly deserves mention

01:57:54.740 | in the pioneering of tricks, I think of-

01:57:56.700 | - He's the godfather of modern skateboarding.

01:57:58.620 | - I think of Rodney, you, and Mark Gonzalez Gons

01:58:03.180 | as like the guys that-

01:58:05.380 | - I'm honored.

01:58:06.220 | - Drove the progression in different,

01:58:10.160 | partially overlapping directions that set the template

01:58:13.340 | for essentially-

01:58:14.180 | - I learned fingertips because of Rodney.

01:58:15.780 | Like the first trick you saw me do,

01:58:17.300 | I learned that because I saw Rodney do it on the ground

01:58:19.580 | and I thought, well, I can't do it on the ground,

01:58:21.980 | but I have plenty of time in the air to do it.

01:58:24.720 | - It's awesome.

01:58:25.560 | It's awesome that Stacey put you guys together.

01:58:27.460 | We mentioned Bones Brigade,

01:58:28.820 | but we didn't really talk about the architecture of it

01:58:32.060 | from the perspective of skateboard progression,

01:58:33.900 | but it was kind of like any good band.

01:58:37.100 | It seemed like there was really good chemistry

01:58:39.780 | interpersonally, but also that there was,

01:58:43.060 | each person had something unique.

01:58:44.320 | You skated the way you did, Mike skated the way he did,

01:58:46.560 | Stevie the way he did, and Rodney and-

01:58:50.120 | - We respected each other, but we also fed off each other.

01:58:53.180 | - Tommy Guerrero, right?

01:58:55.120 | 'Cause growing up in the Bay Area.

01:58:56.960 | In fact, Tommy's skating the hills of San Francisco

01:59:00.200 | in those videos, makes it look easy,

01:59:02.320 | but those hills are rough, they're dangerous,

01:59:05.280 | and they have real life obstacles like moving buses.

01:59:07.980 | You'll notice he wasn't stopping his top signs,

01:59:10.220 | so that's fantastic.

01:59:12.040 | We could reminisce about all these angles,

01:59:13.920 | but the point being that spending time with people

01:59:17.980 | who do similar things or the same thing,

01:59:20.020 | but do it differently is one of the best ways to progress.

01:59:23.240 | This is why I routinely fly to Texas

01:59:25.540 | and hang out with Peter Attia, another podcaster,

01:59:27.500 | Lex Friedman, just 'cause they do things

01:59:29.060 | differently than I do.

01:59:30.880 | Where do you draw sort of peripheral inspiration from now?

01:59:35.620 | I know you see Jimmy Wilkins at your ramp quite a lot,

01:59:38.640 | the phenom, Jimmy Wilkins.

01:59:40.720 | It's kind of eerie how good that kid is.

01:59:42.760 | Who else are you spending time with besides Reece?

01:59:46.280 | And one of the reasons I asked this is that skateboarding

01:59:48.160 | is unique among many sports in that a given session,

01:59:52.000 | a gathering to skateboard will include an enormous range.

01:59:56.120 | - 55-year-old men and 10-year-old girls.

01:59:57.880 | - Exactly, which is incredible.

02:00:00.440 | You don't think about soccer, a serious game of soccer

02:00:03.260 | between professional soccer players.

02:00:04.820 | - But also, it's not even that we're skating together,

02:00:07.180 | it's that we are communicating and influencing each other.

02:00:12.100 | I mean, that is like the last conversation I had with Reece

02:00:16.920 | was she's talking about like,

02:00:18.280 | "Are you gonna try to do 540 again?"

02:00:19.740 | I go, "Yeah, I'm kind of working on it."

02:00:21.420 | She goes, "Well, I think," 'cause she saw me try one.

02:00:23.240 | She goes, "I think you need to pull out a little more."

02:00:25.040 | And she was right.

02:00:26.540 | - And she's how old again?

02:00:27.460 | - She's 10.

02:00:28.300 | And I didn't even consider that

02:00:30.820 | because I'm just back in my mode

02:00:32.820 | and I'm not taking into consideration

02:00:34.800 | that I don't have the snap that I had before I got hurt.

02:00:37.820 | And she was, I mean, that was one key to me making it.

02:00:40.520 | And, you know, but to me,

02:00:44.200 | that's just, that's representative of skateboarding

02:00:47.800 | and the inclusivity of it and the diversity of it,

02:00:50.480 | where it's me, I'm 55, there's 30-year-old pros

02:00:54.480 | that are at the top of the game.

02:00:58.540 | There are 17-year-old up-and-comers, men, women,

02:01:04.540 | 10-year-old girl that is doing tricks

02:01:06.920 | that we've never even thought of or want to do.

02:01:10.880 | And it's all part of the whole mix.

02:01:15.880 | - That's really beautiful.

02:01:17.920 | I want to ask you about memorabilia.

02:01:21.980 | Not a topic that I think about much,

02:01:25.180 | but I think in a prior conversation of ours,

02:01:27.040 | you mentioned something about this.

02:01:28.720 | So, you know, there are skateboard collectors.

02:01:32.080 | There are people that collect stickers, skateboards.

02:01:34.640 | There's a whole market and world for this.

02:01:37.660 | And in addition to people wanting selfies with you

02:01:41.120 | when they see you, I imagine there's a long history

02:01:44.040 | and continued tradition of people taking a pen,

02:01:46.280 | putting your hand and saying, can you sign this, right?

02:01:49.520 | Because you are in this very small,

02:01:53.240 | but very clearly esteemed group of people

02:01:56.540 | where your signature increases the value of things.

02:01:59.760 | So how does that work and how does that feel?

02:02:03.560 | Like if a skateboarder who, you know,

02:02:06.580 | there are the telltale signs of who is and who isn't, right?

02:02:09.520 | If they walk up to you and they're like,

02:02:12.200 | hey, will you sign this?

02:02:13.860 | Do you feel good about signing it

02:02:15.000 | or is that something that you refrain from?

02:02:16.720 | And if somebody is just merely a collector, a trader,

02:02:19.520 | and they're trying to build their portfolio, so to speak,

02:02:23.500 | you can probably also sense that.

02:02:24.960 | So I'm not trying to put you in the hot seat here.

02:02:28.080 | - Well, to answer your question, through the years,

02:02:30.680 | I was always open to that and I'm happy to,

02:02:35.120 | especially when people are skaters or skate fans

02:02:38.800 | and whatnot.

02:02:39.820 | In the last three years, there has been this new element

02:02:44.820 | of resellers, of people that just go buy signature stuff.

02:02:50.420 | They have nothing to do with skating.

02:02:51.960 | They don't care about skateboarding at all.

02:02:53.760 | They just want to get my signature on an item and sell it.

02:02:58.640 | And they usually do it on eBay or through their own channels.

02:03:01.640 | That's fine at some point.

02:03:04.260 | Like a few years ago, I respected the hustle.

02:03:06.360 | These guys, they knew that I was gonna be at this event.

02:03:08.480 | Okay, they're outside waiting.

02:03:09.580 | They've been waiting for hours.

02:03:10.700 | I'll sign a couple of things.

02:03:12.380 | But in recent months even,

02:03:15.320 | they have figured out how to get my flight info.

02:03:19.240 | Like some hacked into my actual airline accounts.

02:03:23.000 | Some have sources at certain airports that get the manifest

02:03:27.160 | and they sell the information.

02:03:28.580 | I found all this out

02:03:29.420 | because I've actually held a couple of them accountable

02:03:32.680 | because I said, look, I'm not gonna sign this

02:03:34.200 | until you tell me how you knew I was gonna be here.

02:03:36.120 | I have no business here.

02:03:37.840 | I'm here to visit family.

02:03:39.040 | No one knows I'm coming here.

02:03:40.680 | Oh, well, a friend said they saw you at the Detroit airport.

02:03:44.440 | Like, no, they didn't.

02:03:45.560 | They wouldn't know where I'm going to anyway.

02:03:48.640 | Like, oh, I saw it on Twitter.

02:03:49.640 | You didn't see it on Twitter.

02:03:50.920 | I'm on Twitter.

02:03:52.600 | Tell me the truth.

02:03:54.480 | There was a guy from TMZ that gets flight info

02:03:56.480 | and he sells it to us.

02:03:57.600 | Okay, thank you.

02:04:00.080 | But that has increased to a point

02:04:02.320 | where it's not sustainable.

02:04:04.040 | I can't please everyone.

02:04:06.360 | The last time I flew out of Chicago,

02:04:08.560 | there were about 15 people.

02:04:11.480 | One guy had a shopping cart full of skateboards

02:04:15.480 | and they all bum-rushed me at security

02:04:19.020 | before I went through security

02:04:20.480 | thinking that I'm gonna sign stuff.

02:04:21.760 | I'm like, you guys, I can't do that.

02:04:24.320 | I'm gonna miss my flight and I can't delineate.

02:04:28.040 | Like, I'm sorry.

02:04:29.800 | You guys have like sabotaged yourselves.

02:04:31.580 | I don't know what to say.

02:04:32.960 | And then I went through security

02:04:35.000 | and there were four dudes waiting at the gate.

02:04:37.040 | They had bought tickets, airline tickets,

02:04:39.520 | so that it could be past security.

02:04:41.400 | Airline tickets they're not gonna use to chase this.

02:04:46.580 | - Wow.

02:04:47.420 | - So, I mean, wham, people want my autograph,

02:04:50.560 | but it's weird and it's intrusive and it's kind of creepy.

02:04:54.200 | - Yeah, just tell them that a neuroscientist told you

02:04:56.760 | that you gotta get that slobber right.

02:04:59.320 | And if you sign too many autographs,

02:05:01.880 | that you're never gonna get that.

02:05:02.720 | - You're gonna regret all my chances of getting it back.

02:05:04.160 | - You're not gonna get the tuck knee.

02:05:05.640 | You're not just not gonna be do the flap knee invert.

02:05:08.080 | You're just not gonna get it.

02:05:08.920 | - Anyway, it's just a really weird thing that has popped up.

02:05:13.920 | And other than that,

02:05:15.620 | and so the tricky part is when there is a public thing

02:05:18.980 | or a public exhibition or whatever,

02:05:20.660 | to try to figure out who is the true skate fans

02:05:24.260 | and who aren't.

02:05:25.100 | Usually they're pretty identifiable,

02:05:27.700 | but it just, it has ruined the experience

02:05:31.220 | for people who truly are, that grew up skating.

02:05:33.620 | - Well, thanks for sharing that.

02:05:36.360 | And we won't tell everyone what the telltale signs are

02:05:40.040 | so that these people don't exploit them.

02:05:41.620 | The skateboarders, the real fans will know.

02:05:44.460 | They won't even have to worry about

02:05:46.580 | whether or not they represent accurately

02:05:48.260 | 'cause you just will.

02:05:49.420 | On the positive side,

02:05:51.820 | something I've been wanting to learn more about from you

02:05:54.800 | is your philanthropic efforts.

02:05:58.600 | I think Kevin Rose, who's in the tech sector,

02:06:03.480 | was the first to mention to me that you have,

02:06:07.000 | you guys have done some philanthropy together

02:06:09.800 | and maybe you've done some with Jim Thiebaud as well,

02:06:11.840 | the great Jim Thiebaud.

02:06:13.080 | - Yeah, well, both Jim and Kevin were board members.

02:06:17.760 | Jim is the current board member of the Skatepark Project.

02:06:20.720 | - Well, tell us about the Skatepark Project.

02:06:22.480 | - It's my nonprofit and we try to develop

02:06:27.100 | public skate parks in underserved areas,

02:06:29.580 | but more so by supporting the community

02:06:32.620 | and giving them the resources to do so.

02:06:34.340 | So groups that are trying to get skate parks in the area,

02:06:36.620 | we are the resource center for them.

02:06:39.660 | We'll give them advice, we'll give them funding,

02:06:41.940 | we'll give them our stamp of approval

02:06:44.880 | and that can go a long way.

02:06:46.360 | And to date, we've helped to fund over

02:06:50.280 | almost a thousand skate parks now

02:06:51.900 | and seven or 800 of which are open.

02:06:54.900 | I mean, it's my proudest work for sure

02:06:57.520 | and it's because I never took for granted

02:07:02.520 | the fact that I grew up near a skate park

02:07:05.660 | and that was my home away from home.

02:07:07.040 | That was where I found my sense of community,

02:07:08.800 | my sense of identity, my crew.

02:07:12.920 | And so many kids choose to skateboard

02:07:15.760 | but have no support in doing so.

02:07:18.120 | And so those skate parks are a lifeline.

02:07:20.520 | - Yeah, I can attest, they absolutely save lives.

02:07:23.720 | There's no question.

02:07:25.200 | Where can people find out more about your foundation?

02:07:28.240 | We can provide a link, but I guess-

02:07:29.440 | - Skatepark.org.

02:07:30.760 | - So where does the funding for these parks

02:07:32.520 | actually come from?

02:07:33.960 | - It comes from donations from supporters,

02:07:36.380 | it comes from fundraisers, some corporate.

02:07:39.840 | Sometimes funding is funneled through us

02:07:43.200 | for specific regions like we have a built to play project

02:07:48.200 | that's in Michigan and New York

02:07:50.480 | and that's funded by the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation.

02:07:54.180 | So they give us the funding

02:07:56.340 | and then we have to give it to that area.

02:07:59.320 | But it's easy because there's plenty of projects

02:08:02.220 | and now there's an abundance of skate parks in those areas.

02:08:05.520 | - I love it.

02:08:06.440 | Thank you for doing that, for organizing around that.

02:08:09.440 | - And I get to get more places to skate.

02:08:11.920 | [laughing]

02:08:14.080 | - I'm curious what's in the immediate horizon, right?

02:08:18.000 | These days you probably have the option

02:08:20.000 | to say yes to things and no to things.

02:08:22.880 | You have a family, you have your skateboard career.

02:08:26.840 | Where do you place your priorities

02:08:30.500 | in terms of how to carve up your day or your week?

02:08:32.500 | I mean, what would you like to make sure that you do

02:08:35.920 | for as much of the hours of your waking day for the next,

02:08:39.600 | let's just say five years 'cause if you want to extend

02:08:42.480 | that out, you can, but.

02:08:44.400 | - Well, I want to be available to my kids first and foremost

02:08:48.520 | and we still have one at home for the next four years.

02:08:52.200 | So I will make sure that I'm available to her.

02:08:56.840 | And in terms of career, I never had great aspirations.

02:09:01.840 | Like I never thought, okay,

02:09:04.480 | this is what I want to accomplish.

02:09:05.680 | It was always just very more trick specific oriented.

02:09:10.600 | So it was always like, I want to try this and this and this.

02:09:12.680 | I would like to continue skating.

02:09:14.240 | I don't know if I'll be able to skate

02:09:15.760 | at the level I'm skating right now in five years,

02:09:18.420 | but I know that I'll still be on the ramp.

02:09:20.760 | I may not be doing it in public.

02:09:22.360 | Trying to advocate for public skate parks,

02:09:26.780 | doing more with the foundation.

02:09:28.600 | And whatever, I think the way I prioritize my time

02:09:32.960 | is what will resonate the furthest and have the best impact

02:09:37.000 | on skateboarding in general.

02:09:38.280 | I do feel that I've come to a point where yes,

02:09:41.960 | I'm some unofficial ambassador to skateboarding

02:09:46.440 | and I want to represent it well.

02:09:48.400 | I want to be fair in that skateboarding

02:09:53.160 | is all kinds of different things.

02:09:54.840 | It's not just X Games or Olympics or whatnot.

02:09:58.320 | It represents a true culture.

02:10:03.160 | And I want to project that as much as I can

02:10:07.800 | and make sure that people understand

02:10:09.520 | that that's also positive.

02:10:10.860 | And I mean, really everything that I'm doing now

02:10:17.040 | is just kind of fun.

02:10:18.640 | I would say in the last five to 10 years

02:10:23.800 | is the first time I've truly enjoyed

02:10:26.480 | what skateboarding has provided me in terms of opportunity

02:10:30.040 | and what it brings to me and what it means to my family.

02:10:34.720 | Like I have a much better appreciation

02:10:37.160 | and understanding for it.

02:10:38.520 | And these days, it's just like,

02:10:40.640 | everything's kind of just gravy.

02:10:41.860 | It's just so fun.

02:10:43.180 | I can't believe I can still do it for a living.

02:10:44.720 | It's crazy.

02:10:45.560 | I'm 55 years old and I truly ride my skateboard as a career.

02:10:50.560 | Like that's nuts.

02:10:52.280 | And I wouldn't have it any other way.

02:10:55.120 | Well, it certainly is earned.

02:10:57.000 | And I just want to say thank you for a number of things.

02:11:00.560 | First of all, thank you for going to the skate park.

02:11:05.600 | Thank you for picking this trajectory.

02:11:08.420 | Thank you for inspiring me and so many other young people

02:11:12.000 | and old people, older people over so many decades now,

02:11:16.020 | both with what you did on a skateboard

02:11:18.300 | and off the skateboard and including your resilience

02:11:21.580 | and determination to push and continue to progress

02:11:25.260 | to the point where you were badly injured.

02:11:27.560 | And then to push through that, come back,

02:11:29.980 | at least match what you did previously.

02:11:31.660 | And I would wager that you will exceed

02:11:34.420 | your prior skill level going forward.

02:11:37.340 | So I want to thank you for your resilience.

02:11:39.340 | I know it comes from an intrinsic drive.

02:11:41.420 | Your love of skateboarding, it just absolutely comes through.

02:11:45.060 | I share in some of that, of course, having grown up in it,

02:11:48.980 | but not nearly as much as you,

02:11:50.540 | but also just your willingness to stretch out

02:11:52.280 | into these different areas, like the video game thing,

02:11:54.820 | or talk about X Games, the Olympics,

02:11:59.020 | because that did allow for a lot of growth

02:12:01.500 | and lateral movement of skateboarding.

02:12:04.260 | And at the same time, just as you said,

02:12:06.260 | to bring it right back to the fact

02:12:07.380 | that skateboarding isn't one thing,

02:12:08.620 | it is not like other sports.

02:12:10.520 | It's its own sport and it's its own lifestyle.

02:12:13.460 | It's its own thing.

02:12:14.620 | And we do consider you the ambassador for skateboarding.

02:12:19.120 | And I speak for many people when I say

02:12:21.600 | that we're very grateful that you are,

02:12:23.540 | because you bring that shrewdness and that prudence to it,

02:12:26.620 | but also that get after it punk rock spirit

02:12:30.000 | and the goodness that your parents instilled in you

02:12:33.180 | clearly comes through everything

02:12:34.380 | from the philanthropy and onward.

02:12:35.800 | So I can't say enough positive things

02:12:38.200 | or express enough gratitude for what you've done

02:12:40.400 | and for your time here, your legacy in skateboarding,

02:12:43.100 | but also just in the game of life is clearly cemented.

02:12:46.460 | So thank you.

02:12:47.300 | - Oh, thank you.

02:12:48.140 | And I appreciate that the ethos of skateboarding

02:12:52.080 | shines through on your show and just your crew here.

02:12:55.240 | It's clearly a lot of them come from the skateboard world.

02:12:59.180 | So you're still supporting it, whether you know it or not.

02:13:02.620 | - Thanks so much.

02:13:03.460 | And hopefully you'll come back and we'll do it again.

02:13:06.080 | - All right, sounds good.

02:13:08.900 | - Thank you for joining me

02:13:09.740 | for today's discussion with Tony Hawk.

02:13:11.820 | If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

02:13:14.320 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

02:13:16.080 | That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

02:13:18.660 | In addition, please subscribe to the podcast

02:13:20.900 | on Spotify and Apple.

02:13:22.540 | And on both Spotify and Apple,

02:13:23.920 | you can leave us up to a five star review.

02:13:26.240 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast

02:13:28.560 | or guests that you'd like me to consider hosting

02:13:30.620 | on the Huberman Lab podcast,

02:13:32.180 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

02:13:34.400 | I do read all the comments.

02:13:36.380 | Please also check out the sponsors mentioned

02:13:38.100 | at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

02:13:40.220 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

02:13:42.940 | Not on today's podcast, but on many previous episodes

02:13:45.640 | of the Huberman Lab podcast, we discuss supplements.

02:13:48.180 | While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,

02:13:50.320 | many people derive tremendous benefit from them

02:13:52.460 | for things like improving sleep, hormone support, and focus.

02:13:55.900 | The Huberman Lab podcast has partnered

02:13:57.700 | with Momentous Supplements.

02:13:58.840 | If you'd like to access the supplements discussed

02:14:00.580 | on the Huberman Lab podcast,

02:14:02.180 | you can go to Live Momentous, spelled O-U-S.

02:14:04.700 | So it's livemomentous.com/huberman.

02:14:07.700 | And you can also receive 20% off.

02:14:09.860 | Again, that's Live Momentous, spelled O-U-S.com/huberman.

02:14:14.060 | If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network

02:14:16.120 | newsletter, our neural network newsletter

02:14:18.400 | is a completely zero cost monthly newsletter

02:14:20.780 | that includes summaries of podcast episodes,

02:14:23.360 | as well as protocols.

02:14:25.120 | That is short PDFs describing, for instance,

02:14:27.700 | tools to improve sleep, tools to improve neuroplasticity.

02:14:31.220 | We talk about deliberate cold exposure, fitness,

02:14:34.040 | various aspects of mental health.

02:14:35.300 | Again, all completely zero cost.

02:14:36.980 | And to sign up, you simply go to HubermanLab.com,

02:14:39.740 | go over to the menu in the corner,

02:14:41.500 | scroll down to newsletter and provide your email.

02:14:43.680 | We do not share your email with anybody.

02:14:46.060 | If you're not already following me on social media,

02:14:47.980 | I am Huberman Lab on all platforms.

02:14:50.400 | So that's Instagram, Twitter, Threads, LinkedIn,

02:14:53.380 | and Facebook, and at all of those places,

02:14:55.980 | I talk about science and science related tools,

02:14:57.980 | some of which overlaps with the content

02:14:59.520 | of the Huberman Lab podcast,

02:15:00.620 | but much of which is distinct from the content

02:15:02.860 | of the Huberman Lab podcast.

02:15:04.060 | Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

02:15:07.200 | Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

02:15:08.960 | with Tony Hawk.

02:15:10.000 | And last, but certainly not least,

02:15:12.020 | thank you for your interest in science.

02:15:13.980 | (upbeat music)

02:15:16.560 | (upbeat music)

Tony Hawk: Harnessing Passion, Drive & Persistence for Lifelong Success | Huberman Lab Podcast

Chapters