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[Assistant] Your size, these things could really shape your opportunity. But people now come to Thailand and they aim to fight multiple times. I can feel the change since when we moved here.


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[Assistant] Right? Is there anything you want to say about that change? I think that's kind of cool that higher number fighting


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[Assistant] That's very far. I mastered that one roller coaster. I don't know. Uhm, so for everyone else, you know our secret, our magic phrase is Tyson and the Catskills. It's what returns us to our like core principle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every, oh, we should do one. Next time we'll do, uh, the weather. The mountain makes its own weather. That's another one for us. But, uhm.


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[Assistant] It's something that refreshes us knowing what we're doing and it gets connected to Sylvie's like huge fight numbers and also her, uhm,


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[Assistant] Feeling of being like an ultra runner or something, but it's not like race winning.


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[Assistant] Because the purity of the fucking thing is just the process. Like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I dunno, we were talking about this the other day, about how like in Thailand, when Thai fighters now become names, they actually end up retiring in a weird way. They either move to Thai or Thai fight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We go to TIE fight to fight silly fights or...


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[Assistant] They go into an international sss... They don't really have a career arc anymore. And it's kind of sad because right when these fighters are starting to peak...


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[Assistant] In the golden age, they'd have like five other fighters they have to face. But now there's no other to face.


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[Assistant] We try to include a technical aspect of


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[Assistant] Your training or Muay Thai in every Muay Thai Bones podcast because


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[Assistant] This one's connected up a little bit earlier to something we were talking about when we were talking about Car Hot.


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[Assistant] Preferred style, but I feel like there's like a, when you face a flaw, like you think you have a flaw in your, in your technique or in your fighting style, you have two options. One is you work hard to like kill it. Like you cut it. Like you, you're like, no more of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or, you take that tendency and you find a way to emphasize it and mold it into a strength. So, you, sometimes that has to do with emphasizing it. Am I going straight there?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or step back. And I think it's, many people have this instinct. It's a self preservation instinct. Is that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's already half of something Carhartt does.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was like- Well we should say you've struggled a long time with this. So it'll be just kick and you just don't like kicking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is a crazy thing. Stepping back is supposedly a flaw.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kicking, not kicking is supposedly a flaw. You combine them together and it produces this thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This instinct really. Yeaah. This is what I find interesting about your step back where you're like, uh, whether it's good or bad, it's very quick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is, step back, spring forward. And this is the beautiful thing about it.


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[Assistant] In Karhat's style, when you watch it, it's this really cool, syntactical moment in how elastic he is. It's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or cocking the gun. Yeah, pulling the hammer back. It is like exhilarating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, but the step back in the hands of most fighters are diffusing of the energy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? Like, I'm moving out of range. And he's like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you love Car Hot Style partly because of this. Yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, I don't know, what do you feel about like, how people can incorporate this, or how you want to work on it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you could take advantage of the flinch. If you flinch down, that's part of a slip.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have the instinct, yeaah. You flinch down and then you rotate the counter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, well, well, tell me, I haven't been around, so. What were we doing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you should be able to do it anytime you step back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's all like, step back, step back, step back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's why I'm saying in training maybe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even if you don't throw, even if you don't throw the kick, it's that back leg flex where you feel like you're loading energy to be released.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's step back. Something's coming back at you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then a lot of times in Car Hot Style, you get this like beautiful, he won't even throw the kick, but he's like, you feel the hammer cock.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, those small movements affect scoring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fighter, uh, um, referees can see it. Is that an interesting component of that? You got that. Uhm, so, that was our last segment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anything else that you've been thinking about this week? We've had some really interesting conversations. Uhm, you're working through the fear book, which you're basically having a long running argument with the author.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, we're not gonna get right into it, but just to let people know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a very interesting book on fear that we'll link maybe in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she has a very interesting thesis that I'm very partial to about letting your, uhm, letting fear into your life, into your head and not repressing it and kind of making friends with fear so that it becomes an advantage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, a lot of people's poor relationships with fear come from the fact that we repress it and try to beat it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is very, that's very true. I never made that connection between Fiyah and Rahu. You already have this strategy on like almost a spiritual level. It'd be interesting to see that unfold at the level of a fighter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who allow fear to be present. So that's one thing we've been kind of thinking about we might talk about in the future. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, there's so many interesting little things that went on that we can't really get into.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a huge fight planned. A lion fight. Uh, Amy Pirney was to fight Lomonee who was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Depending on whether she's training or not, could be considered the best female TIE fighter in the world, but she really doesn't fight much anymore. Uhm, lack of opponents, uhm, who knows why she doesn't really, could be, but she could not make the visa.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a shame. Very shame. It's terrible. She could not get a visa to fight. Amy and her teammate Sandra, uhm, Avik from Samtai filled in and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Received a, uh, series of body shots early in the fight by Amy Kearney.


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[Assistant] Uh, for those who don't know Amy Pirney, she is a body shot monster.


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[Assistant] And we were thinking, when we were thinking about the Lomonee matchup, we were like, Thai girls don't really face a lot of body shots. I'm really wondering if body shots are going to be a problem for Lomonee. Because Lomonee is very good at managing space.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm like, the thing about body shots is once they get your liver swelling,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, it's okay, but you don't have to, if you don't have a strong, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Anisamexon held off, uh, people had different feelings about the fight. You found it to be not very entertaining.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are probably going to talk about this in the future. You'll find many.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, and with Glory, it's even a bigger problem because even people who know...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What happened with that decision? Uhm, I personally thought Mixon did a beautiful job of managing the space, uhm, and nullifying Tiffany Manso's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, Tiffany has a kind of like patterned attack and really does really well under certain spatial relations and, uh, Anisamexon controlled the space in a way that prevented Tiffany from being able to show what she can do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, that was a big name fight. Again, the top female fighters in the world, Muay Thai fighters really don't even get to fight in Muay Thai.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In that case, you had those two wonderful fighters. You have Lomany not even really having anyone to face or fight and have her visor not work out. Like, uhm, Kaylyn Young went to Australia and fought a fight there's no video for that I know of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A fight that I haven't seen video of. Kaitlyn's one of the better female Muay Thai fighters in the world. I think I ranked her in the top 10, pound for pound. She suffered a really serious or potentially very serious orbital fracture. Uhm, but man, that's a fight I wanna see.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, maybe I can, but the mechanisms of communication are so clouded that you can't, uh, find it. But, how can the sport grow


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you can't see the sport, like it's, it would be like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] American football, not televised, not on the radio, like you cannot see this, you can just hear about it through the grapevine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I don't know. It kind of drives me crazy.


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[Assistant] But, you know, some of the things we've talked about among ourselves, anything else as we're signing off maybe? Anything else interesting we've been thinking about?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's Muay Thai Bones. If you like what we're doing, and you want to support it, you can become a patron, link in the description. You're not only helping Sylvie as a fighter, basically,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Set a world record one day of the most professional fights ever.


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[Assistant] Oh, just to let you guys know, we changed our voice to British and it's changed everything because she's positive, right, upbeat, and sounds very precise.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We believe her when she gives us a direction and not only shouldn't we turn left, but when we turn left, things are going to be like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This week's episode is brought to you by Harry's. So New Year's has come and gone. Have you followed through on your resolution to stop overpaying for a great shave?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've been using Harry's for as long as I've been endorsing them, and I can tell you that I've never once missed waiting around for the kid with the keys to come unlock the case, nor have I ever once missed being like, ah, why do these cost so much?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Focused on providing a great shaving experience for a fraction of the price of the competition, Harry's offers high quality blades engineered in their very own German factory and shipped directly to your home.


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[Assistant] Why pay $32 for an 8 pack of blades when you can get them shipped for half the price at Harrys.com? The Harrys Starter Set is an amazing deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For just $15 you get a razor, moisturizing shave cream, and three blades. Harry doesn't like to discount because their prices are already very low, but we do have a special offer for you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His influence did not extend into territory held by his ally, André Rigo, nor to territory held by his enemy, the British. And then even in the North Province, where Toussaint did wield enormous influence, there was still a check to his total authority in the form of Sontenacs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Toussaint did have the most troops. He controlled all the best property, both the rich northern plains and the slowly rebuilding city of Le Cap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So in a complicated game of politics played out from the fields of Saint-Domingue to the halls of the Directory in Paris, Toussaint grabbed opportunities when they arose to make himself not just the most powerful man, but the only powerful man in Saint-Domingue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now there is no doubt that for the moment, Commissioner Sontenacs was the biggest obstacle now standing in front of Tucson.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tucson had successfully engineered the commissioner's election to the Council of 500, but when Santanax said, no, I'm going to stay and maybe I'll go home in the spring, Tucson must have been annoyed, but he could not press the issue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sontenax was a living symbol of black liberation and that had to be tread lightly around.


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[Assistant] Not all blacks were excited to be returning to the plantations under all these labor codes. And all through 1796, armed revolts had popped up from time to time, and Tucson had to rush in to stop them from spreading.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he did not miss that some of these insurgents chanted Long Live Sontenacs as they took up arms. So for Tucson, getting rid of the Emancipator was going to be a tricky business. Misplay it, and the blacks might rise up against him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Though Santanax remained, he was the only French emissary Toussaint had to worry about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Laveau had gone back to France to take up his seat in the Council of 500. Uh, Third Commissioner Philippe Romme remained in Santo Domingo overseeing the transfer of Spanish authority, though just so you know, the Spanish are really dragging their feet about this and the French don't really have the forces to compel them to do anything for the moment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other two commissioners who never did anything went home without having ever done anything. So of the five members of the third commission, only Julian Raymond and Sontenacs remained, and Raymond had decided firmly that Tucson was the future of Saint-Domingue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whatever sympathy he may have had for Andre Rigo never had much of a chance to express itself. Raymond was in the north under Tucson's military auspices and he was currently taking advantage along with Tucson's officers of all these land auctions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Raymond was not a threat to Toussaint's authority, and was in fact now a staunch ally.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, the rapid-fire spins of the French Revolution presented Toussaint with both a mortal threat to all that he was trying to accomplish and a golden opportunity to get rid of Saint-Annex and see the project through to completion.


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[Assistant] We are now at episode 3.46 of the French Revolution. The first round of elections for the open seats in the legislative councils of the Directory are about to unfold in March and April 1797.


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[Assistant] And as you may recall, this election turned out to be a crushing defeat for the old Termidorians, and a great victory for a new breed of conservative reactionary.


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[Assistant] Coming into the Council of 500 amidst this conservative sweep were a number of prominent colonial landowners, the old big whites who were absolutely set on reversing the course of liberty and equality in San Domingue and restoring the rightful order of things, white supremacy and slavery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After taking up their seats in the Council of 500, these guys wasted little time, and in May and June 1797, a succession of colonial planters rose to denounce the state of San Domingue, putting the blame for everything on first racial equality, and then slave emancipation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These men painted a vivid portrait of a once lucrative colony in ruin.


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[Assistant] Where once thriving industrialized plantations had pumped out the sugar and coffee that made the whole world go round, there now stood burnt out plantations overgrown with weeds tended by indolent blacks who just lay around. Fields were being planted with rudimentary tools and then ill-tended thereafter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The colony would never be what it was and what France needed it to be until the crimes of equality and emancipation were avenged.


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[Assistant] These planters called for a military force to go back to San Domingue and put things back the way they should be. And they even got so far ahead of themselves that they demanded the Republic cover the planters costs as they rebuilt their slave plantations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These planter delegates also took steps to ensure that there was no voice in the Council of 500 to oppose their picture of Saint-Domingue.


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[Assistant] As the legislative councils of the directory convened, the planter interests challenged the credentials of the representatives from the colony, preventing Dufay and Belly and Laveau from taking up their seats. So there was no one directly connected to the colony who could stand up and defend everything that had happened since emancipation.


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[Assistant] Now the directory was not 100% moved by these speeches, but they were not deaf to them either.


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[Assistant] Because where we are at in the Revolutionary Wars is that General Bonaparte has just beaten the Austrians and imposed the Leoben preliminaries.


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[Assistant] If this last foreign enemy was really removed, sending an army to San Domingue to reassert the old colonial order was not totally out of the question. Nor, given the state of the directories finances, was the prospect of a productive San Domingue pumping out sugar and coffee again odious to the directors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The reactionary planters managed to score one early victory when they pinned everything on Sontenacs and his radical ilk. And in June, they induced the Council of 500 to recall the Third Commission. With a new political climate in Paris, Sontenacs was going to have to come home and defend himself all over again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the reactionary planters in the Council of 500 weren't totally right in the picture that they painted of San Domingue in the spring of 1797, but they weren't totally wrong either.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is no doubt that the cash crop export economy of Sandalmang had fallen off a cliff after 1791 when everything had been consumed by fire and civil war. It was also becoming clear that the plantations that were restarting were never going to be as productive as they had once been.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The men like Toussaint and Saint-Anne-Aix and the now departed Laveau believe that they could bring the plantations back to life by creating a system of shared prosperity. And Toussaint in particular urged returning white and colored plantation owners that fostering the love of the cultivators would be more productive than the fear that they had fostered in their old slaves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at the moment, Sando Mang was in a vicious economic cycle that prevented this dream from becoming reality.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The colony had always been so focused on sugar, coffee, and indigo that Sandalmang had never been self-sufficient. It relied on imported foods and supplies to live, imports paid for with the profits of the exports. But with exports nowhere to be found, the imports dried up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other problem is that as much as Tucson encouraged the rebuilding of destroyed plantations, there was only so much that could be done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All the heavy machinery and special equipment to produce all the really good refined sugar could not just be built from scratch. It had to be crafted and forged and a lot of it had been built back in France. Who was going to pay for all that or wait for it to show up?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Focused on the immediate needs of self-sufficiency, these communities cleared parts of the forest to build homes and plant crops, beginning a process of total deforestation, which modern Haiti still reels from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And with corporal punishment now banned, the once omnipresent whip set aside, it was harder to get men and women to perform work they really didn't want to perform, especially when they were hungry and just wanted to eat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also standing in the way of a reborn economy was something we talked about last week, that the life of a cultivator led nowhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, the life of a soldier had the possibility of advancement.


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[Assistant] So young men of prime working age wasted no time picking life in the army over life in the fields.


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[Assistant] Adding up everyone together from across the colony, that is those serving under Tucson and Rigo and the British, something like 25% of the black men in the colony were under arms, as much as 15% of the total population.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And as these soldiers continued their lives under arms, they developed the soldier's habit of taking what they could not make.


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[Assistant] Cultivators, both on plantations and then free blacks living on their own, both faced constant harassment and expropriation from the soldiers. And the divide between the military and civilian wings of Haitian cultural life began to grow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Asantinax tried to alleviate some of these structural problems and he made efforts to erect a civil infrastructure to help bring up the next generation of free citizens into a world where they would not be subject to the whims of the wealthy and powerful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And one subtle new rule forbade the use of the word freedman to describe an ex-slave. Santanax hoped to permanently erase any stigma that came with slavery, even an acknowledgement that it had once been overcome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then Santanax and Raymond got started on a program of education reform. Though reform isn't actually a very good word for it, more like education conjured from the ether.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The colonial administrators, from the very beginning, had viewed schools in the colony to be purely seditious institutions. And this is part of the reason why all those prominent colored families had sent their kids back to France for schooling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Men like Raymond and Rigaud. There were literally no primary or secondary schools in the colony, and that's exactly how the Metropole wanted it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Sontenac established the first school in Le Cap to serve as a model for what he hoped would be a network of schools that would provide an education for the population. He also wrote back to France begging for teachers and textbooks and resources.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But unfortunately, Santanax was never able to follow through on the project, and schools quickly lost out to the army when it came time to disperse state funds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The commissioners also worked to set up legal courts in as many towns and municipalities as they could to try to introduce the rule of law into a colony that had long been governed by little more than brute force.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the cultivators were going to have rights they needed to have a judicial system they could count on to address their grievances and rectify them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But here the broader problem of an uneducated population rose its head as Sontenac struggled to find men who were educated enough to staff these courts. Especially because those who did have an education were drawn from the wealthy planter class, so they could never be trusted to just follow the law where it led them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tucson and Santanax worked in harmony with each other publicly, and even privately seemed to get along okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Though, Sontanax did keep requesting that Toussaint demobilize some of his soldiers to get those young men back to work, and Toussaint kept dragging his feet because yeaah, that's not gonna happen. It was clear to everyone that military might was still the key to power in Saint-Domingue, and Toussaint was not just going to disband the centre column of his own support.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Santanax was also persistently angry about the generous welcome Toussaint kept giving to returning white planters. Many of those guys had fled the colony specifically because they were mortal enemies of the Second Commission. So, Santanax was not at all pleased when Toussaint welcomed these guys back, as if nothing had ever happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Tucson and Santonex did share some broad principles, and really, neither could afford to alienate the other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then, in midsummer 1797, the text of one of the speeches made by the reactionary planters in the Council of 500 made its way back to Saint-Domingue, and Toussaint started formulating a plan to both hold off reactionary attempts to undo all that he was working for,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And solidify his position as the sole leader of San Domingue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tucson issued a point by point rebuttal of the planter arguments. Aside from the obvious point that the free blacks are now the republic's military force in the colony, so you want to be very careful about who you try to put back in chains, Tucson also pointed out that the white property owners were finding life in the colony productive and beneficial.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said that if the white planters really wanted to make money again, they should embrace their free labor force, not continue to alienate them with threats of reimposed slavery. And, you know, God help you if you ever try to act on any of those threats.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The planters in Paris had also made the claim, though, that the blacks were too stupid and vicious to be trusted as free citizens, to which Toussaint said, hey, we might be uneducated, but we're not stupid, so educate us, and we'll be as upright a population of citizens as you've ever seen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As to the vicious part, Toussaint took a pretty delicious swipe at the French. He said if the crimes committed by the inhabitants of Saint-Domingue precluded their right to be free citizens, then my god, what about you lot back in Paris? Toussaint was well briefed on the course of the terror.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the existence of bloody crime stains us, then it must really super stain you. So what right do any of you have to be free citizens?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if any group was open to the argument that the crimes committed in the heat of revolt and revolution ought not stain the leaders of the present, it was the men who ran the directory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After dispatching this letter, Toussaint also prepared to make a peace offering to the conservatives that would solve a number of problems in one fell swoop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because there was no one the planters hated more than Santanax. And Tucson could see that as long as Santanax represented the new order in San Domingue, the hatred of Santanax would transfer to hatred of the new order.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Emancipation and Sontanax were just too closely tied.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But if Sontenac could be cut out, Tucson might be able to make an independent case for following through with liberty and equality.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the amazing thing here is just how prescient Toussaint is in immediately grasping the political situation back in Paris and then using it to his advantage. Because unbeknownst to everyone in Saint-Domingue in mid-summer 1797, the Council of 500 had just voted to recall Saint-Annex. Justice Toussaint was getting ready to expel the commissioner from the colony.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the details of the expulsion of Sontanax are obscure. And unfortunately the best picture we have of what happened came from Toussaint's later official version, so you can kinda take it all with a grain of salt. But here's what we do now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In mid-August, Toussaint and a few of his principal generals got together and decided that the time had come to force Sontenacs to take up his position in the Council of 500.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tucson also enlisted the aid of Julien Raymond, who agreed to try to convince Santanax to leave.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To justify the expulsion, Toussaint revealed that Sontenacs had approached him on numerous occasions with a plan to raise the blacks in a new uprising, whose principal objective would be to murder all the whites and then declare independence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, it's pretty likely that this is a wild pack of lies concocted by Toussaint, but it did line up with the prejudice against Sontenacs that was growing in the Council of 500, and that was really the only thing that mattered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Toussaint and his generals presented a letter to Saint-Annex on August the 17th, 1797, demanding the commissioner vacate the island.


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[Assistant] Santanax stalled for three days, but on August the 20th, Toussaint grew impatient and apparently fired off some of the heavy guns in Le Cap to jolt Santanax to action.


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[Assistant] There is also a report in here of a closed-door meeting between Tucson and Sontanax, from which Sontanax emerged ready to depart the island. The threats made must have been dire and immediate.


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[Assistant] Now one of the reasons Sontenac stalled though, is that he wanted Toussaint to write a letter of support for Sontenacs that he could take with him back to the Council of 500. A request Toussaint refused, and not only did he refuse the request, he did the exact opposite.


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[Assistant] He wrote another long letter to the directory denouncing Sontanax detailing Sontanax's plans to massacre the whites and declare independence and he said, for these heinous crimes that I have uncovered and as a defender of the French constitution, I have now expelled him from the island.


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[Assistant] So, Toussaint has now positioned himself as the ally of the white planter interests in the colony, and then given the reactionary conservatives back in the Council of 500, their most hated enemy on a silver platter.


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[Assistant] And he reinforced the image of Toussaint Louverture as the Republic's point man in Saint-Domingue.


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[Assistant] There is a genuinely impressive cunning to how Toussaint operated. I mean, here in this instance, he has not just eliminated a rival, he has simultaneously co-opted his enemy's position and enhanced his own position with one deft maneuver.


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[Assistant] So Sontenac got on board a ship in August 1797 and sailed away from Saint-Domingue. And this time, he would never return.


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[Assistant] Fructidor was the coup that saw the Directory abandon democratic pretensions and re-forge itself as the so-called Second Directory, run by the triumvirate of Barah, Rebell, and La Reveilleur.


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[Assistant] But the more immediate upshot of the coup of Fructidor was that among the deputies expelled from the Council of 500 were nearly all the white planters who had just spent the summer railing against liberty and equality.


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[Assistant] With them out of the picture, the threat of a white conservative attempt to re-seize Sandalmang was temporarily put to bed.


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[Assistant] And just as they were getting kicked out, the delegates from San Domingue had their credentials approved. So now, for example, the men most committed to colonial matters were men like Laveau, Dufay, and Belly, who were never going to argue for anything less than the continuation of liberty and equality.


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[Assistant] So like, for example, when Laveau took up his seat, he defended Toussaint to the hilt. He said Toussaint is the only reason the colony is still French, and I understand that better than all of you because I was actually the principal military officer in the colony, and I'm telling you, Toussaint is not the enemy of the Republic. He also said that Toussaint's tri-color vision for Saint-Domingue was awesome.


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[Assistant] And given the circumstances, an amazingly good deal for white planters specifically, and then France generally.


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[Assistant] I mean all that's happened is that these men have lost the right to call black men property. The rest of their property has not been seized. It's being handed back to anyone who wants to come claim it. If we all get together and embrace this move away from punishment and exploitation and hate,


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[Assistant] Towards a future built on reward and shared prosperity and mutual affection, everything is going to be great.


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[Assistant] With the political situation back in France once again altered, that meant that whatever firestorm Santanax believed he was about to walk into was already extinguished by the time he got off the boat in October.


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[Assistant] Sontenax did defend himself by saying that Toussaint was a tyrant in the making and you can't trust what he's telling you, which isn't totally inaccurate. The charges that Sontenax was conspiring to kill the whites and make himself governor general of an independent Saint-Domingue was almost certainly lies.


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[Assistant] But the directory had no personal beef with Santanax, or the job he had done, and they declined to pursue any punitive measures against him.


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[Assistant] But this does mark the end for Sontanax in our story. And he gets the rare peaceful ending to a revolutionary career.


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[Assistant] Outside the very small world of people interested in the Haitian Revolution, which I've now roped all of you into, by the way, no one knows who Santanax is, nor what he did.


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[Assistant] Even in Haiti, the natural course of patriotic history emphasizes the role played by the blacks and colored leaders in emancipation while downplaying the role of some random white French guy.


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[Assistant] Which is totally understandable, but Sontanax does deserve his place in world history, and hopefully I've done my little part here to make sure that he gets the recognition that he deserves.


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[Assistant] But back in San Domingue, Toussaint himself was ignorant of the coup of Fructador.


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[Assistant] And so in November 1797, he drafted another long letter that laid out both the promise of a free and equal San Domingue and issuing some none too subtle warnings about the dangers of trying to undo it.


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[Assistant] Since it's arguably Toussaint's most famous declaration of principles, I'm going to quote it in full a bit here. But before I do, I want to clarify that when I say that Toussaint is drafting these letters, what he's actually doing is dictating his thoughts in Creole and then having secretaries translate it into formal French.


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[Assistant] Now this could be a very time-consuming process that required a lot of dialogue between Toussaint and his secretaries to make sure it said what Toussaint wanted it to say. But he understood just how important it was to convey his ideas and plans and demands in clear, educated French.


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[Assistant] And all of his correspondence from the very earliest stages of the slave revolt show the meticulous care he gave to presenting himself in educated language.


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[Assistant] Toussaint began his November 5th letter with a denunciation of the white planters as the true enemies of the republic who are now covering themselves in false patriotism.


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[Assistant] We know that they seek to impose some of them on you by illusory or specious promises in order to see renewed in this colony its former scenes of horror.


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[Assistant] He then pivoted quickly to claiming to be the truest defender of the Republic himself and made his first hint that anyone back in France contemplating re-enslavement was going to find this a very difficult proposition.


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[Assistant] Bury ourselves under the ruins of a country revived by liberty rather than suffer the return of slavery.


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[Assistant] But then Tucson deftly turned to a little ass-kissing of the directory to make sure they knew that he trusted their wisdom and judgement entirely.


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[Assistant] He said it is for you, citizen directors, to turn from over our heads the storm which the eternal enemies of our liberty are preparing in the shades of silence.


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[Assistant] It is for you to enlighten the legislature. It is for you to prevent the enemies of the present system from spreading themselves on our unfortunate shores to sully it with new crimes. Your wisdom, which will enable you to avoid the dangerous snares, which are common enemies hold out for you.


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[Assistant] Toussaint stabbed at the white planters where they were most obviously vulnerable to attack. That from the beginning they had conspired with the enemies of France. That by 1793 they were openly in league with the enemies of the new republic.


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[Assistant] He said, I send you with this letter a declaration which will acquaint you with the unity that exists between the proprietors of Saint-Domingue who are in France, those in the United States, and those who serve under the English banner. And you will see there a resolution unequivocal and carefully constructed the restoration of slavery.


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[Assistant] Basically, you cannot take their claims of patriotism and love of liberty seriously. They are liars and traitors who are trying to use the English to reimpose slavery.


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[Assistant] Toussaint then moved on to a neoclassical allusion to the supreme fidelity of a man to his country even over that of his own children. And I don't know how much of this is just Toussaint saying things, or if he really knew, for example, what a hit Jacques-Louis David's painting of Brutus, waiting for his dead sons, had been in France.


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[Assistant] But whether this was on purpose or accident, he hit the perfect note. And he is referring here now to the fact that his two sons have gone back to be educated in France and are now virtual hostages of the French.


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[Assistant] It is not astonishing that these men who sacrifice their country to their interests are unable to conceive how many sacrifices a true love of country can support in a better father than they, since I unhesitatingly base the happiness of my children on that of my country, which they and they alone wish to destroy.


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[Assistant] But even as he was directing all this vitriol at the planters, he's also subtly warning the directory, don't you go thinking you can use my kids against me because it's not going to work.


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[Assistant] And then with all that said, he started rolling downhill towards his powerful conclusion.


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[Assistant] Do the colonists think that men who have been able to enjoy the blessings of liberty will calmly see it snatched away?


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[Assistant] They supported their chains only so long as they did not know any condition of life more happy than that of slavery. But today, when they have left it, if they had a thousand lives, they would sacrifice them all rather than be forced back into slavery again.


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[Assistant] Now this is just kind of a general statement aimed at everyone, and reiterating his earlier hint that re-enslavement would be a violent and futile exercise.


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[Assistant] But then he did move quickly onto some more ass kissing by rhetorically agreeing that France would never do anything that horrendous.


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[Assistant] Those principles which do her most honor to be destroyed, her most beautiful achievement to be degraded, and by her decree of 16 pluvios, which so honors the humanity of the world.


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[Assistant] And then Tucson concluded with the final famous kicker.


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[Assistant] But if to reestablish slavery in San Domingue this was done, then I declare to you it would be to attempt the impossible. We have known how to face dangers to obtain our liberty. We shall know how to brave death to maintain it.


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[Assistant] So what Tucson has done here is first remind everybody that reactionary big whites have been traitors to the republic and have been traitors for quite some time, so don't believe their lies.


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[Assistant] Third, anyone who tries to reimpose slavery is going to face an army of free blacks who will fight to the last man to stop it from happening, and you are just not going to win that fight.


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[Assistant] The ironic thing about this carefully crafted letter is that the battle had already been won before Tucson even drafted it.


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[Assistant] The coup of Fructador had tossed out the reactionary planters and let in Tucson's allies, and I doubt very highly that the directory to whom the letter was addressed even read it before now Delegate Laveau induced the Council of 500 to reaffirm liberty and equality in the colonies.


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[Assistant] On January the first 1798, they voted that French law would be implemented uniformly throughout the empire, and that all blacks and coloreds would enjoy the same rights as if they had been born in France.


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[Assistant] Though, there was one small stipulation. That to enjoy these rights, you had to be serving as a cultivator, or a soldier, or a tradesman. I mean, basically employed in some officially recognized productive activity.


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[Assistant] So, though the directories version of freedom wasn't quite as sweeping as the national conventions had been, it did line up perfectly with Tucson's vision for San Domingue.


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[Assistant] And he was no doubt very pleased to discover that everything he had wanted to come to pass from all the letters he had written over the course of 1797 had now come to pass. Sontanax was gone, the reactionary whites have been smacked down, and Tucson has the full support of the directory.


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[Assistant] But though Toussaint has positioned himself as the directories man in Saint-Domingue, the future of the colony was still in doubt, and now lay in a contest between the three principal forces left in the colony. Toussaint Louverture in the north, André Rico in the south, and then the British, still occupying an archipelago of ports in between, but not for much longer.


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[Assistant] Next week, when they leave, the stage will be set for a final showdown between Andre Rigaud and Toussaint Louverture for control of Saint-Domingue.


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[Assistant] Before we go though, I'll mention that I just got to help the History of Byzantium podcast celebrate its 100th episode with an interview. And I'm assuming you're all listening to the History of Byzantium already.


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[Assistant] We talked about some behind the scenes on history podcasting, the difference between dealing with ancient and modern history, and then of course what my favorite scene from Red Dwarf is.


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[Assistant] For those that are joining us for the first time, Muay Thai Bones is a podcast we record, uh, when we're traveling across Thailand, we spend a lot of time on the road. Sylvie's fighting all over the country. We spend 10 hours in the car, we have great conversations, and uhm,


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[Assistant] We're driving back from Chiang Mai now back to Patia and we share these conversations on our podcast trying to


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[Assistant] Illustrate that Muay Thai touches all kinds of, uhm,


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[Assistant] Facets of life, and so we try to hit across the spectrum in each of our episodes. Uhm, so what we're talking about isn't something that interests you, just jump 20 minutes and it'll be something totally different. Uhm, so, our first topic is a, like, big, wide topic. Uhm,


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[Assistant] And then we re-shared it and there was some interesting conversation in the comments.


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[Assistant] And it's about how Muay Thai in Thailand necessarily expresses Buddhist principles and values and that a lot of


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[Assistant] The corollary to this is that a lot of the times when westerners come to Thailand's Muay Thai, there are fundamental


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[Assistant] Miscommunications involved because...


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[Assistant] You have to understand buddhistic principles and therefore thai culture, which is buddhistic, in order to, and values, to really understand how Muay Thai is done in Thailand.


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[Assistant] I've seen that conversation and also there's an old but interesting conversation where Damien Traynor, I believe it was Damien Traynor, in a blog post argued that Muay Thai is not buddhistic because uhm, uh,


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[Assistant] The traditions that surround like the Ramoy or whatever have kind of like an animistic root.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and I think that this argument that Muay Thai is not buddistic is more about inclusivity, like if you're not a Buddhist,


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[Assistant] Do you want me to go in that, uh, more largely?


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[Assistant] Is there, you have the Buddhist religion and which also might be called a philosophy to some people and it promotes certain values, right? So there's the Buddhist practice and beliefs in that practice which involve rights.


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[Assistant] Uh, the organization of Buddhist practice, and then if it's something that's Buddhist, it means...


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[Assistant] Well, I can kind of agree with or, uhm,


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[Assistant] Go along with the values being expressed by that practice without being a practitioner. So you could come to Thailand and fight Muay Thai in the Thai style. And in that performance, in your fights, be expressing buddhist values.


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[Assistant] Without yourself having to practice as a Buddhist. Uhm, and so, this goes into a different direction though.


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[Assistant] In terms of that Damien Treanor article, which was more like, uhm, these practices do not violate your, uh, religious beliefs from the West. Like, a Muslim can do it, a Christian can do it, like, I think there was a sense like, uhm,


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[Assistant] Muay Thai somehow might be considered exclusionary if it was defined as Buddhist.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so we're talking about the Buddhistic qualities of Muay Thai, uh, these values that are expressed in the culture that, uhm, if you don't embrace it, you're kind of missing a really important component of what makes Muay Thai different than many other fighting arts and sports.


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[Assistant] Yes, and let me jump right in on this core.


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[Assistant] Interesting things, like yes, things like, let's just say Tai Chi, uhm, or elements of Kung Fu, Karate, martial arts.


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[Assistant] Do embody calm mind, because they also come out of, uh, buddhistic traditions.


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[Assistant] But what really is interesting about Muay Thai is Muay Thai comes out of a living fighting sport.


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[Assistant] Reality. Like it's one thing to do Tai Chi.


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[Assistant] In your living room, which is certainly worthy, but to attain that calm mind when someone's trying to kick the shit out of you?


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[Assistant] Is a different thing. They're both worthy. But what's interesting about Muay Thai is that it takes the, uhm, principles that you might find in more traditional martial arts that are further from fighting practice


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[Assistant] And it puts them under duress, like serious duress. There's some aspects of Muay Thai that are very brutal.


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[Assistant] Well, this will actually go into our next topic, which isn't happening now, which is the purpose of sparring as emotional development. So, you can skip ahead if you're interested in that. But, this idea that, this is very interesting that


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[Assistant] Westerners, when they, very broadly speaking, think about fighting, they think of their own state of mind as imposing violence on someone else as the like, focus.


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[Assistant] Which, right? It's like I'm trying to hurt somebody. That's my main point. Whereas in Thai, we can argue that in Thai, the Thai version of this, uhm,


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[Assistant] It's what you're saying. It's like, what does one do when your will is imposed? Now in the larger sense, when you're going about in the world and things happen to you, like you receive pain in the world, your will is being opposed. Like, I just wanted to have a nice day, go get a cup of coffee, and three people cut in line.


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[Assistant] Buddhism is about the equanimity that you experience when opposed. And you could argue that the practice of Muay Thai in the Thai sense is all about doing that under the most adverse circumstances. When your opposition


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[Assistant] The opposition you're facing is doing everything it can to counter you.


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[Assistant] Oh, they got their ass kicked so bad. Well, this is something that's kind of, uhm, just to create a little side note.


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[Assistant] In, uh, IFMA scoring, amateur scoring, uh, the West has become more and more attuned to like phrases like breaking posture.


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[Assistant] Like, uhm, it scores well in traditional Muay Thai if you break your opponent's posture. The reason for this is Buddhist.


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[Assistant] Because the body is the symbol of the spirit.


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[Assistant] Right? And the way that you, uh, what you're doing when you're performing in a Muay Thai fight is you're performing the wholeness of your spirit through your posture.


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[Assistant] Totally. Like being off balance on a strike means you're off balance within yourself.


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[Assistant] So a lot of what Muay Thai, what you're doing in Muay Thai technique and why


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[Assistant] It's hard for westerners to sometimes read the scoring.


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[Assistant] The body is the symbol of the state of the spirit. When you break your opponents posture


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[Assistant] If you break it regularly enough, you will eventually actually break their spirit, which is where you have spirit defeat.


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[Assistant] Where do I start? First of all, what is the role of the face in a fight? Like, and then, and maybe then explain, or do you want to explain Ning first? What is Ning? Because we've done some stuff on Ning.


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[Assistant] So if you said of a fighter, he is Ning, that's a pretty nice compliment.


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[Assistant] Well that's, this is a super interesting thing because what I always draw attention to is


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[Assistant] How what you do in the ring is something you've done in the training ring a hundred times.


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[Assistant] What fighting does is it puts duress on you, and then when you have duress on you, all the things you intend to be and do, consciously, go away, and you settle down into things you've done repeatedly. So it's really dangerous, and this is one of the beautiful things about Thailand, but it's really dangerous


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[Assistant] In the practice ring or on the pads or on the bag or whatever you're doing to


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[Assistant] Practice even facial expressions of frustration.


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[Assistant] Or anything, but anything that's not Ning.


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[Assistant] You want to be expressing this equanimity in the practice moments. There's no off time in practice. So that when you get really stressed in a fight,


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[Assistant] You, you settle down into the habit of Ning.


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[Assistant] Where can we go from that? From Ning. Help me, baby.


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[Assistant] There's a bifurcation, there's a natural bifurcation in Muay Thai, which is Muay Thumur.


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[Assistant] No, but I'm saying there's, there's two versions of Ning that it seems like there are. There's the Muay Fumar fighter like who's the ultimate Ning fighter is, uh, Samart.


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[Assistant] Whose basic nigneness is like a shoulder shrug of everything. Like almost too bored to be in the ring, and then knock you out.


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[Assistant] And so he raises Ning to this incredible level of almost like, the board, don't make me use my weapons even.


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[Assistant] Beautiful. Yeaah, totally. The Lord Hot Chicks of Muay Thai. And then you have the like, uhm, marching Muay Kow unstoppable powerhouses like Long Sawan or, uh, Yod Wichua was that as a stadium fighter. And they have to embody Ning in a different way.


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[Assistant] They can't look bored because that's not the style.


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[Assistant] So they have to come forward, but there is a nignness about it that is like a... It's like hard and softening. Uh, well, that was a weird pun, but...


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[Assistant] Yin and Yang. There's two versions of Ning. The Muay Khao fighter is a Yang fighter who also is Ning. Like, you just hit me three times, I really don't, didn't feel that in any way.


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[Assistant] And part of your journey as a Muay Thai fighter in your style is to identify what kind of Ning you want to express.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and you're just coming upon this now. You don't even know, right? You're starting to explore it, right?


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[Assistant] Like you made a, you've been vlogging your mental training lately and you've talked about, and you can see those on YouTube, they're free. Uhm, there's 10 of them up already, and one of them at least was about like,


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[Assistant] I'm just gonna control my face when we do this one.


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[Assistant] Kick burn that I fucking hate and I've developed this habit of complaining about it and my, my crew.


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[Assistant] Crew new joking about it, like the fact you don't like it and you're like, I'm going to cut all that out because it's not taking me where I want to go.


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[Assistant] Yes, now there's two, there's a layer here, which is...


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[Assistant] You don't like doing it, you don't show your coach. Because you don't want to show the judge.


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[Assistant] In round four. Right. Like you learn that no matter how you feel, that's just how you're feeling.


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[Assistant] Your expression, the symbol, the symbolism of your state, you are in control of that.


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[Assistant] Well that, that's the, that's the interesting thing is that this control that you have to do, if repeated becomes a practice.


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[Assistant] Eventually, you become Ning even about


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[Assistant] So eventually when you tell the story three years from now and you're like talking about these burn kicks, I fucking hate them is not something that even comes to your mind.


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[Assistant] I don't know, they just happened. There's another, uh, so, I don't know, I find this really interesting because in the...


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[Assistant] You're like, you don't have to be a Buddhist to do any of these things, but if you don't follow


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[Assistant] The values being expressed, you're falling outside the aesthetic and the aim of Muay Thai in Thailand.


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[Assistant] What's kinda cool about it is that if you went to a Thai gym and you caught on to this


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[Assistant] If you caught on to this practice, which is your, uhm,


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[Assistant] The crew does not reward you when you put your hands on your hips and march around how tired you are. Like in the West, we like to show how tired we are as a symbol of our commitment. How hard we're working. Yeah, like, so we're really committed to this.


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[Assistant] It's a very interesting, uh, thing that phenomenon has happened to make a little detour in your gym. There's a lot of Italians, uh, that go to, uh, Petra Rung Gym and in Italian culture, as you can see in the marvelous soccer styles of Italian, great Italian teams to portray the pain as this


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[Assistant] It's a great immense moment of, it's a dramatize it almost, right? It's a cultural dimension, and so there, in the fabric of Petra Nouronjim, there is this thing where Italians show how absolutely exhausted they are after a, uhm, padwork burn. Like, a peanut will kill you.


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[Assistant] Head on over to the ropes and just demonstrate how fatigued you are. This is so not Thai.


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[Assistant] This is very like, maybe a western European kind of thing, but it's like, you're not practicing really what Muay Thai is. The buddhist values. Maybe these are kind of catholic values, where you dramatize the passion of the


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[Assistant] Well, that's kind of, you know what I'm saying? Like uhm, I remember, there were some...


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[Assistant] Quotation. Oh, it was a movie. It was really good. I think Jack Lemmon played a priest. I'm not sure I might be mixed on this thing. And it's like, uhm...


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[Assistant] He was talking about the role of the priest and how the priest, uhm,


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[Assistant] Okay, continuing on from where we were just leading off, this is really interesting. The Catholic priest in the movie was saying that the role of the priest is to take someone's everyday tragedy or sadness, like their problem,


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[Assistant] And to elevate it almost operatically to the level of tragedy, like, in order to produce a transformation. So to take your everyday, uhm,


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[Assistant] Issues and to create almost a cosmological expression that then gets transformed through being a good Christian or Catholic.


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[Assistant] This is the opposite of Buddhism in a lot of ways. One could argue that everything is about flattening things out, not elevating them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so this is what's compelling to me, is that if you come to Thailand and you enter the gym and you pursue this kind of like, um, Ning quality in your training, you are practicing Buddhism without even realizing it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That uhm, the culture, the fabric of Muay Thai is about this particular kind of masculinity. There is a masculinity involved. It's Buddhist, but also in Thai culture, it's also


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then Ngoc Leng becomes kind of a hitman kind of assassin, and there's a really good article, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Written by Peter Vail on Academic, uhm, we'll link that in the reading notes, which is about how the, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The hypermasculinity of the Tainock Muay Thai fighter falls between the characteristics of the Thai Monk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fits in with this larger concept that when you come to Thailand, the Muay Thai of Thailand is not only expressing Buddhistic values, but also the unique cultural expression of those values in gender.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're learning basically Thai masculinity, a version of masculinity, and what's kind of interesting is that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As westerners, when we come to Thailand, we come to an exotic culture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The exotic nature of it, the fact that it's not something you were raised in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Can be a potent transformative quality because you're not trying to live up to ideals that you were being pressured with when you were 4 years old, 7 years old, 12 years old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The fact that it's another culture means that you can kind of like, inhabit this other skin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you've used this analogy before, that when you learn a language that's not your mother tongue, you notice the structures of it and the rules of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That if you were just raised in language, you have no idea what a fucking participle is or a gerund or... When you learn something from the outside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The elements that make it what it is, you become sensitive to them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're like, how do I learn this? One thing that we kind of came across, that's kind of, uhm, that's a thought, thought chain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which was talking about your face. And the training of your face. I don't know what we were watching on television, but there was a thing about the dancer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Someone was training in dance, some dance performance or something, probably was a reality show.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the expert who was doing the teaching was like, you have to control your face. It's like, everybody thinks about, uhm, the qualities of a beautiful dancer as being all about their limbs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and so you concentrate on all of this, and a lot of times, I assume in dancing, you concentrate, and so your face expresses concentration. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This person was like, no, it's really, the most important part is the face, because when somebody's watching a dancer, they're feeling what they're expressing, but they're looking at the face. And after this observation, I, when watching dancers in performances on television and what not, I look,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To the face of them. And I'm like, wow. The ones that are really affecting me are ones that got their face together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really necessary performance that you don't even think of as important to dancing. And you have this same element in Muay Thai. He's like, yeah, you want the like perfect kick and beyond balance and tempo and all this stuff. But if your face is not expressing the freedom you're trying to show in your technique, you have a limit, a ceiling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know. So ultimately, circling back to the Muay Thai itself is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you understand that in a fight, you're trying to express Ning, and your opponent is trying to express Ning, and all the points you're scoring and everything you're doing is trying to break that equanimity that your opponent is showing, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It gives a deeper sense of what your goal is in an actual fight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We think, in the West, all about damage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How much damage do you give? Damage points.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's like, in Thailand, if you're marching on somebody, and you don't look like you're affecting them in any way, they're Ning, and you're not, you're losing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're actually, it's better to not even march.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you can't win that Ning battle. And that's why the advancing fighter in Thailand will often lose. And they think they're just, in the West, we think, well you're just racking up the aggression points. And it's like, no, how you advance is really important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's why also with big strikes like a knee to the gut or anything that breaks posture, you want that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The effect of your strike to have this additional spiritual effect, which is, I'm, you're, I'm breaking your name.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's say you're not Buddhist, right? And you even religiously identify as some other religion. What do you think?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The benefit is or the access point is for you, if you come to Thailand and you want to fight in the Thai style, like, what do you think you should consider?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe like, well outside of your religious beliefs, these- this philosophy about life might be beneficial? Or appealing? Like what do you say about that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're on a mission. They're on a very important mission. It costs money to come here and stay here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They put themselves in the ring and they, like, very sincere efforts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Four decades or more in the West were very drawn to traditional martial arts. Was the idea that there is a self-control being expressed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In kung fu or whatever it is, that there is a dou, a dao kind of thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That you're self-cultivating in a certain way. What's so interesting about Muay Thai is it has, when you really dig into it, is it has this cult, self-cultivation


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mahou just agrees about Kung Fu being spiritual.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well these things, these things are taught, this is, we're largely talking about things that are taught outside their culture. Like, you're learning karate, but you're not in Okinawa. So, these things have to be expressed in a formal way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's so interesting is that the same things are happening in Thailand, in Muay Thai, but it's in the culture. It's in the fabric.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you're pursuing self-cultivation in general, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can find that in Muay Thai, but you have to look for it. Because it's not going to be bullet pointed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Subject, which is, uh, the purpose of Smart. Okay, let's stop this and start it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, this is continuing on from the last topic, a strongly related one, which is about the purposes of sparring as you've experienced them in Thailand, mostly through Petrin Rung and the way Krunu regulates and directs sparring within your gym.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The foundation of the conversation maybe is, we'll put it in the reading notes, uhm, a post you wrote on the Muay Thai Roundtable Forum, which is a forum we've started, uhm, with great discussions of these kinds of topics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll link that post you wrote on the forum, which describes these things, but it'd be good, I thought it'd be good to have a conversation about it and it fits right in with this Muay Thai in Thailand is Buddhistic, uhm, theme, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What, I guess what we boil it down to, to the nub of it, is sparring is emotional development.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when there's a stereo, there's a stereo type out there on the internet, which is Ty's only spar technical lights. And then the story that gets kind of like memed out is the reason why they're so light and technical is because they fight so much and they don't want to hurt each other. Like this is the kind of thing that's developed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It usually comes from a playful, sparring, uhm, video that goes out and gets memed about and then a myth about Thailand kinda develops, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's starting to sound like you just advocate for hard sparring and that's not what you're talking about either.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From the ties. From the ties perspective. Yeah, they're looking at you and they're like, why are you acting like a seven year old?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you have to keep in mind, they literally mean a seven year old because this is when they're developing a fighter, this is how a seven year old expresses themselves. They're like looking at the behaviors of a child.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, we're tolling agreement on the most, that line, which is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Westerners think of sparring as technical development. And some of this might come from the Dutch kickboxing style, which is you learn combinations,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the pads or in shadow and then you learn them in drills with your opponent and then you like try to gradually bring those technical things into more and more pressure situations. So what you're really doing is you're training a technique under greater and greater adversity and your progress comes from


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being able to do that technique. This is 100% opposite of the Thai style, or the Thai ambition, which is, this is so interesting, because they're raising kid fighters since they're kids, their development as a fighter,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're eight years old. You don't have emotional control if you remember when you were eight. When you're learning to spar, the sparring of what you're learning


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is an emotional development. It's not a technical one. They're not correcting these kids. Learn your...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your hook low kick. Do the hook low kick over and over again and increasing. It's not technically oriented. It's about how... Ning can you be?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I, I would say that uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably the biggest differential is that Dutch style or


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Western Muay Thai is taught to adults. So the idea that you actually have to develop emotionally doesn't naturally come to you. You already assume that you're developed emotionally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As you, unless you're somebody who's like grown up in very rough neighborhoods, you probably do not have the emotional capacity to level yourself under physical attack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you might be developed like you know how to deal, to emotionally function in a workplace, but you don't understand duress.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You've watched, the cool thing about Petron Rung, even though westerners have been coming there since the late 80s, it is still a real Thai gym in that it raises Thai boys to be stadium fighters and champions. Yep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The core of the gym is a living kai moi.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And for some, for that reason, it's not a gym for many people. Because when you come to Thailand, you want to feel like the priority. You can be given priority.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you learn this thing and then you take it back with you, bring it to your gym. That's why we call it the slow cook method. But maybe you've been able to watch, you've been there five years now, right? You've been able to watch this sparring development


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To dem, to develop emotional competence in the gym.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like we're like, sparring is about emotional development. Well, what is the way that that shows itself? Like you were saying, little kids can cry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To condition fighters emotionally. Yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think, for instance, he kind of enjoys or has figured out a way to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Use the like, out of control westerner who's got 10, 15 pounds on somebody as a way to like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Deal with this. To the other, to the tie, let's say. Or a westerner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where he's like, I'm gonna put you under something that's not fair.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That somebody is going to be imposing themselves on you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Deal with it. And then he feels it. He's got his eyes everywhere. And he's like, oh, that's not, that's not good for you. Too much is too, too much of that's not good for you. Now I'm gonna put you somewhere else where you have the advantage a little bit. And he's always moving these temperatures.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trying to develop the motion of each fighter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] War that you just toughen yourself to. It's about learning your place of equilibrium in the pack and go a little bit into this track basis.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I wanted to talk about the pack, but maybe we take a break right now and uh, turn that. Kill the camera baby.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is a thing we were just finishing up on on that topic, which is a really, uhm, something we took from Caesar Milan and his dog training, uh, how he would kind of, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When there were trouble dogs, like dogs that have behavioral problems, one of the methods he used to kind of like, uhm, even out a dog with issues, is that he would just like, he had a huge pack of dogs, and he would clip the dog with the pack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he would basically use the pack, the social pressures of the pack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in the pack, all the other dogs have kind of like, settled their relationships.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's more than the shuffling because Carabao...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not only learning his equilibrium by having the right partner in a mix, but he's also looking at and judging appropriate behavior on people further along in the, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he's looking to how bank, who's older and has gone through the process, is handling himself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not only gives you lots of options on who to be mixed with, but also presents examples of ideal behavior to model yourself after.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Models of behavior, like this is how we conduct ourselves, and that's why particular gyms are really important, because every gym has a different culture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a really interesting example, I'm not going to name the gym.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was a mix of westerners and Thais, and we visited the gym. And there was a young kid in there, Thai kid, who fucking gets put with westerners all the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he developed this kind of, to me, nasty unchecked quality about himself when he would spar with anybody. And the gym culture-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm saying, obviously, I'm saying...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The culture of the gym at the time and culture changes all the time was not one where he was learning to correct himself. Like his behavior with people he could dominate


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An oversight, a kind of moral oversight that you get with like, Kru Nu or Arjan Surat, who just would not, in Bangkok, who would not tolerate certain kinds of like, manifestations, certain attitudes, and so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you need a pack, but a pack doesn't automatically produce healthy situations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's contagious. Yeah, but literally what is it expressing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe we'll be there for another six months. It's a component. Like everybody in the pack is contributing to the culture of the gym.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and I think that's actually a criticism of the gym. It shouldn't be tolerated. But unfortunately, you know, PNU is actually a lot about let things play out. I'm not going to master control everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pull everything back to center eventually. But a single gym in Thailand is constantly changing. There's different fighters involved. Long term Westerners.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You really have to trust that the crews that are running it have in mind an aesthetic about Muay Thai that is healthy, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Process in Thailand is an item I don't know that you can really duplicate this in the West.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have largely have adults, you're not training them since kids, so that your development in...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Technique and inspiring is not mirroring your development as a person from like 8 to 13 to 18, right? That this sparring process in the pack in Thailand occurs


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, national stadium, just being Ning. Alex came to the gym when he was 12 or 13 and underwent a lot of beatdowns.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And develop this quality that when Thais see it in an international stadium, they're like, wow, what the hell is that? That is not a Westerner type behavior.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was never like, oh you have to be this way, you should manifest these qualities. It was just a matter of him going through a lot of very hard times. And it wasn't necessarily people beating on him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It would be like, you're gonna get locked in the clinch and you're not gonna be able to get out for 20 minutes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're doing an analogy here. Speaking of Tai in his performance of Muay Thai. Maybe we can link a fight of his in the reading notes. I don't know if we have video of something where you can see what we're talking about. This Ning, this last fight, if we have a video of it, is a really good example of like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Identifying this quality that is much valued in Thai culture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ultimately it's a buddistic value, uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, but he's soaked in, he's been at the gym for five years, six years now. Uhm, he's soaked in the culture at every level. I mean, he's not just in the gym, he has made friendships with Thai boys and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's been raised as a Thai boy, basically, but between you. And so, it's so interesting to me this quality. Like, he's a very interesting version. There's not that many of, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Westerners that have been raised as a tie and you see the transformation and you, we've been lucky because you've been there almost the entire time. We came a little bit after him and you've seen him, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Start out as a basically a western kid and just go through this entire process. It takes years. You can't teach this in an afternoon or six months.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so let's move on to the next topic. Maybe stop the camera for me so we can check it out. See what would be good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, changing things up, we have a chance to actually continue on with this theme of bodistic values. We'll probably pick that up in the next segment or the one after that. We're going to switch gears in case, just for the virtue of variety.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everything we do is supported through Patreon. So these are people that believe in Sylvia as a fighter and journalist, and we use, uhm, the support by patrons, uh, including sponsors, to not only do stuff that only patrons get to see, like the Muay Thai library, but also to do stuff that everybody can see, like this podcast. Uhm, so we're constantly working on


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These projects that aim to hope, they aim to change the fabric of Muay Thai a little bit, like for instance this


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Talking about Muay Thai in a kind of expansive way like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's see how many aspects of life that Muay Thai can touch. That's what these podcasts are about, because that's how we think. One of the things that we recently did was we, I guess started, but we restarted a form that you had on 8limbs us website and that, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a very cool forum for a while, but we ran into a problem where we really needed to invest some money and, uhm, create the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Apply new software that makes it much more functional because it was running into bugs and things. And so we reinvested in the form


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Making it much more easy to comment on and interact with. But that, I guess what we're really, what I'm really talking about here is the ambition about the form is to create a different kind of digital space.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A different kind of Muay Thai conversation space.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It feels like to me that a lot of what


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The conversation space on Muay Thai is surrounding breakdown, video breakdowns of technique or highlights of knockouts, spectacular things shared on social media, Facebook or on YouTube.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that much of the conversation is either said by uhm, an authority in the video or people making comments


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the comments section, either that something is badass or sucks or whatever, that's the kind of conversations being had about Muay Thai.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, are either instructional or cheering in some way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's more, it's not like that's not good. That all serves it. That's how it is. That's the landscape of conversation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It could all be good, yeaah. So what we're trying to create, we're thinking to ourselves, we're trying to create a different


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kind of conversation that's also possible, which involves more thought out, more culturally nuanced conversations about the nature of Muay Thai and how it touches life and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Part of what that requires is to create a different digital space that much of the conversation that's being had already is governed by the digital space of Facebook or the digital space of the comments section on YouTube. There's only certain things that you can say


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And get, and have them be nurtured by this space. So we're trying to create in this form.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We know in an internet forum is the old...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Way the internet used to function. So we know that this is not something that everybody's gonna gravitate to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, we're like, it's that old build it and they will come kind of idea. If we create a digital space that could foster more reflective, longer form conversations,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those conversations will be grown and it might not be used by everybody, but we're like, let's just create this space and see what it becomes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You not only have the long form thing, but then somebody else can add a long form thought beneath it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then two weeks later, another one beneath it, and you have a chain of thought that isn't just a blog post authoritatively saying this is the way things are. It's like here's a, here's a developed thought.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now look, there's another developed thought that spun off of this. Like there's this really cool thing that this one guy did where he's like, it was about your hand in the box post about putting, that fighting is about keeping your hand in the box like in the movie Dune.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, it was my thing. No, no, it was my thing. But he, where he's like, uhm, now I'm all confused.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And on the pads. And about how you, how he, it wasn't willpower that got him through, uhm, a very difficult session. That he had somehow tapped into.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have to create a different kind of space in order to create a different kind of conversation. And the thing about the form, and it's not going to appeal to everyone, but it's like you expand the literal space, like literally the margins that you can write in, and suddenly


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then maybe somebody will write, maybe you guys are watching and you can go hop, we'll put it in the notes and you can give your own expression. There is such a beautiful...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Non-argumentative, like we're trying to create a non-argumentative space, a lot of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We all, it's well known now that internet is just a place to fucking like, argue with people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Resonant. For long periods of time, part of the problem with Facebook is, even if you have a great Facebook post and some really great comments, it's gone. Like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two months from now, try to find it. Like it's gone. But on a form it's not gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's very, I don't know, I'm a little bit more old school digital communication wise and so I'm very excited by the like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Breath and continuity of threads on a topic because then they become archived and accessible


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 15 years from now or something. There's a fucking beautiful, sorry to go on about this, if you're not excited by the topic, jump ahead 10 minutes, but there's a beautiful thing about Pat, I forgot his last name.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he's getting in touch with this legendary ancestor, his great uncle, and rebuilding the memory of his


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] career and, uh, posting, um, uh, newspaper clippings, uh, photos of his, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fighting days, uhm, Magga's old Thai magazine covers that he was on. He was one of the great fighters of Thailand in the, in the era.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now he's like posting all these things and then his most recent post was that he got in touch with relatives in Chonburi. He's not in Thailand. And they have like a bunch of stuff still. Including possibly his fighting robe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You didn't see that post? He's like, is they're gonna send it to me? He goes, I'm not sure if his belt is in there, but if it is, I'm assuming it's a Lampini belt, uh, I'm gonna frame it. And it's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where on the internet would this story


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This record, this discovery, he's like actively discovering and posting. Ever be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in some weird way, and he's like, he's so very cool to just eat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have created even the possibility of this kind of record. Because at the most, what would happen is, he would have posted on his Facebook page a few photos, people that know him would be like, way to go dude, this is so interesting, and it would just not be anywhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And instead, by being able to create this space.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now that thing is like sitting there, and it's a whole history of photos, and I'm like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know, to me the whole, the, the form, if that's the only thing that the form produced, I'm like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was worth it. It is worth it. But this is the kind of thing, like, if you're watching this and you're, if you're watching Muay Thai Bones, you're like into long conversations about Muay Thai, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For people who want little bite size, this is not bite size. If you're watching this, you would probably enjoy many of the posts in the forum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm kind of excited by, oh, one of the side things I'm thinking of doing, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know, I don't know if this is possible, but this is one of the hardest things to do, is to get real time or accurate placement of people in gyms. In some regard, almost every gym is right for somebody.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For whatever, whatever your ambitions are, you, you gotta at least get close to the target. And so we're thinking about maybe using the form to do something like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Infinite possibility is what's, what's capable. For me, mostly the form is about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wow, can we change the way that Muay Thai is talked about? It can still be talked about with breakdowns and badass comments and all kinds of enthusiasm like online community on Facebook or YouTube is a real and a wonderful thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The one thing that I'm thinking of is, James Boyd, I pointed most of the meme about spinning techniques and about whether you should do them and uh, kind of like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, should you master basics or should you like, are you rushing into spinning techniques? And it is a funny meme, right? As it should be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it actually led to a really substantive discussion about people advocating for spinning techniques or enjoying them or coaches being like, oh, this is my nightmare. I don't want to be trying to teach advanced things to people who need the basics. But as an example that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A meme, if that was on Facebook, there'd just be like, ha ha ha, couple of comments, whatever. But there would be no expansion of conversation.