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Mark Wulfe:
From The Aasgaard Company studios in beautiful Wichita Falls, Texas... Frim the finest mind in the modern fitness industry... The one true voice in the strength and conditioning profession... The most important podcast on the internet... Ladies and gentlemen! Starting Strength Radio.

Mark Rippetoe:
Welcome back to Starting Strength Radio. It's Friday, which means that it's not Monday and it's not Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday either. It is Friday. And Starting Strength Radio is a Friday feature regular part of your week. And we're happy that you're here.

Mark Rippetoe:
We're here this week with our friend Hari Fafutis. He is from Guadalajara in Mexico. And the reason Hari is here is he's just recently completed the Spanish translation, the Spanish language translation of the Blue Book, Starting Strength Basic Barbell Training.

Mark Rippetoe:
Hari, thanks for being with us today.

Hari Fafutis:
Thanks for having me.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now we've got translations of lots of the books in other languages. I think Korean, German, Chinese, Chinese - the two types of written Chinese - Korean, did I already say Korean Korean, Chinese, Chinese, German, Polish.

Mark Rippetoe:
Is that all? That's plenty. No, we've got Japanese. You can't leave them out, they'll be pissed. We leave out the Japanese,they'll cut you open. Oh shit, vicious people, but honorable people, but vicious. Honorable yet vicious. Sometime the two go hand-in-hand.

Mark Rippetoe:
We use a little more of that in the United States these days, don't you think?

Mark Rippetoe:
So we're adding to our collection of translations by adding the Spanish translation.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, the Spanish translation is going to be a little different. We are going to publish the Spanish translation ourselves. Now, in the case of all of the other translations, we have licensed the material to the publishing company in the respective country in which it was going to be published, but we hadn't had any offers from any Spanish publishing houses. And so we thought we'd handle it a little bit different way.

Mark Rippetoe:
We're going to be laying out and pasting up the book and publishing it ourselves here under The Aasgaard Company. And this will represent a departure from all of the rest of the translations that we've done. And we thought we'd have Hari in today to talk a little bit about some of these topics. And maybe we can learn a couple of things.

Mark Rippetoe:
Hari, let me ask you a question. This is kind of something that we've noticed over the years. We have not ever experienced a high sales volume of the English translation into Spanish speaking markets, and this is... I mean, the book's been in print for 15 years and we just don't sell a lot of books into South America, Central America, Spain. Where else is Spanish spoken? Spanish still used in the Philippines? I don't think so.

Hari Fafutis:
I don't know.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't know if it is or not, but those are the primary primary Spanish speaking markets are Central and South America and Spain. And we just haven't sold a bunch of books into that into that into that market.

Mark Rippetoe:
And Bre, was the last time you shipped the book to an address in a Spanish speaking country? Ccan't remember having done it. OK, well, why do you think that is?

Hari Fafutis:
I think there's two factors here. The first one is probably a logistical factor. The United States is probably the the main country that it's already used to ordering stuff online. Right.And you have this whole infrastructure that facilitates this.

Hari Fafutis:
In South America, there's many countries that do have online services. But I feel like the people don't trust the shipping processes as well as you guys do. So that's one thing. You don't have a local a local company that delivers that stuff or like stores, physical stores where people can buy your books. Right. So I think that's one part of it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, that may very well be a major factor if you and we don't sell the book in bookstores. We've never sold a single copy of Starting Strength out of a retail bookstore. The only time that might accidentally have happened is us having sent books to a college bookstore and not all of them got bought by the instructor's class that ordered the book. And they may put those back on on the shelves in the bookstore and tried to sell them like that.

Mark Rippetoe:
But I assure you that that hasn't happened very often because typically what those guys want to do is if the bookstore places in order for 30 books, the instructor having said there's going to be 30 people in the class and the book is required for the class and 20 people come in and buy the book, they will actually want us to take back the extra 10 copies.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I mean, there have been several times we've had to say, hey, why don't you sell them? After all, you are a bookstore. It's kind of frustrating, but that's that's what's happened in the past. And as a result, we have always sold pretty much everything online, we've sold in excess of three quarters of a million copies of all of our titles.

Mark Rippetoe:
And all of them have been shipped. All of them have been sold online. And as you pointed out, if we do that, we're trusting the local postal delivery system to get things to the intended buyer. And there are some countries in which that's a more reliable process than others.

Hari Fafutis:
Right. So there is this cultural trend in the U.S. or probably also the European countries where people are starting to buy more and more online. And I feel like when you guys started selling your books online, you caught that trend like at the right time.

Hari Fafutis:
And you have to know that in South America, there's this trend is delayed. People are starting to buy more and more online, but it's still not as big a consumption as in the U.S.

Mark Rippetoe:
How how far behind us is South America, would you say, 15, 20 years in terms of online commerce?

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah, it's probably five, 15 years. Like Amazon is expanding, like in Mexico and it's already Amazon, U.S. and probably South America, too. So I feel like it's just a cultural trend will eventually catch up. And that's one of the factors.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, if if you can be assured that when you spend 30 dollars on a book that the book will actually be delivered to you within a couple of weeks instead of stolen in the process, then you're more likely to purchase a book like that and could be a cultural thing. And perhaps they will get that system cleaned up down there and we will have a new market opened up.

Hari Fafutis:
But so, yeah, that was the the one factor I was thinking.

Hari Fafutis:
But then there's the the other side of the coin is that I think that many people don't speak English as well who speak Spanish as a first language. And they also prefer, if they do speak English, they prefer to read the English books in the vernacular. So that's what we're missing out. That's what we're missing out. And well well, Spanish is I think it's the second most spoken language in the world as a first language.

Mark Rippetoe:
I would have to say that Chinese is probably the first the number one spoken language in the world as a first language. So after Chinese, I think that probably either English or Spanish would be the second most widely spoken language. India has several different languages. So and that's precisely why India uses English as an official language so that everybody else can talk to each other.

Mark Rippetoe:
English and Spanish are... What where those numbers? The native speakers.

[off-camera]:
Native speakers, it's Spanish 400 sixty million, English three hundred and seventy nine.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, Spanish is there for a very, very, very large market and if. If we're making a giant mistake. Here, spending money on this translation, I think it's a reasonable gamble, don't you? I think it's certainly worth a shot and that the book is selling very well in Chinese. I mean, as far as we know, you know, it's selling pretty well. They pay us a fairly big royalty on the Chinese sales.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the the reasoning there was I mean, how many? Yes. You know, damn near a billion people speak Mandarin Chinese and the traditional Chinese spoken and written in Taiwan, they approached us for the book and it's selling well there too.

Mark Rippetoe:
I would say that Spanish should work, but I wonder and I've always wondered if there's not some other factor here involved in this, if there's some cultural thing that we're not understanding about strength training that may not appeal to people in Central and South America. That's a good question. I think.

Hari Fafutis:
I would say no, because you have also a big cultural trend of exercise in South America, in Spain, in Mexico, all these places, you can look it up in the internet and they do have lots of training facilities, lots of gyms, lots of stores of supplements and these sort of fitness stuff. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
I think they're trying to participate in that in that worldwide trend.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes, it's a big cultural trend and people like to stay in shape, you know. So I think, like, that's how I started with you, you know, I was going to the gym and there were many other coaches. We just don't know what we're doing. And we slowly started lifting weights, using the correct movements, the barbell exercises, and you slowly come to conclusions that the barbell exercises are the main ones that give you the biggest return on your time.

Mark Rippetoe:
So why do you think we have not had an offer from a major Spanish language publisher? Because this is the process that has happened every time we've done a translation. We get an e-mail interested in whether the translation rights are available. And in general we take these offers and... We had an inquiry about Italian a while back, I wasn't satisfied with the way the thing was presented to me, so we haven't acted on that, but we we get offers all the time.

Mark Rippetoe:
Why would no Spanish language publisher be interested heretofore in this in this book? Why are we having to do this ourselves? It just makes me wonder if someone else's see what I mean, maybe something else is going on that we haven't adequately thought about. But I mean, this is a...

Hari Fafutis:
Do the publishers that approach you in the other countries...like what sort of books do they publish?

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, the that the Chinese company, for example, is a science and technology publishing company. And... Which is not what you would expect to get an offer from from China, but I think in that particular case, these people looked at the book and viewed it as a textbook, a science based textbook and not as you know the same kind of thing you see in the exercise titles in the United States with the guy with no hair, with his arms crossed in a tank top on the front of the book, you know, talking about prisons or some shit, you know.

Mark Rippetoe:
I you know, it's a I think they viewed it as a fundamentally different product, and that's why the science and technology publishing company ended up with that book in China.

Mark Rippetoe:
So the the the idea that maybe there is another cultural factor in operation here just sticks in my mind, but...

Hari Fafutis:
May as well be.

Mark Rippetoe:
But might as well try. Yes. I mean, I don't understand. I mean, there are more native Spanish speakers than English speakers, which really is surprising, if you'll think about it. That kind of is surprising.

Mark Rippetoe:
Speakers of Spanish are how many people in Spain? 60 million people in Spain? Central America, South America, but you have...

[off-camera]:
50 million in Spain.

Mark Rippetoe:
50 million in Spain. You have to remove and you have to remove Brazil from South America. You know, that's a great big piece of the land. I know it's not all completely populated, but that's the majority of the landmass of South America. The rest of it speaks Spanish.

[off-camera]:
Argentina has 50 million

Mark Rippetoe:
Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile.

[off-camera]:
What's another big population?

Hari Fafutis:
Argentina, Chile, Peru...

Mark Rippetoe:
Colombia.

Hari Fafutis:
Colombia, Paraguay, Mexico. It's a lot of people.

Mark Rippetoe:
It is a hell of a bunch of people. It really is. Outside of Central and South America you have Spain and that's about it.

Hari Fafutis:
That's about it.

Mark Rippetoe:
I think. Yeah, that's about it, I believe.

Mark Rippetoe:
But four hundred seventy five million people is a hell of a big potential market for a book. And we'll just have to see what happens if we we published a book in Spanish and it starts to form a significant sales volume. Then we've invested in the translation we've invested in in the print run, the inventory space and let's just see what happens. You know, I'm looking forward to the the thing performing well.

Mark Rippetoe:
So Hari, when you translated the book, how many times had you read it in in English before you attempted to start this?

Hari Fafutis:
That's a great question. I think we could start with how the idea of the translation started. So I think I came to you back in twenty sixteen, I guess, and I was I wasn't as strong as I am. I'm not saying that I'm the strongest, but I was weighing 155 so you probably don't remember this.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, I remember that. It's something I try to forget, but I do remember you weighing 155.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah. So so I came in and I think I wrote you an e-mail before that and I was writing you that I was interested in what you're doing, that I like to expand your system to the Spanish speakers. And then you said, well, come in and and let's talk. Right.

Hari Fafutis:
So I came in, we talked in and I told you I wanted to open up a gym and maybe try to work it out the the whole coaching and Starting Strength in Mexico first. And then you were like, well, you have to train. I mean, you're you're very skinny.

Mark Rippetoe:
And that's every word. That's true.

Hari Fafutis:
It is. Yeah. But then back then I didn't know too much about all this world of training and I had like a supposedly a back injury and I went to like four different doctors, had like two hernias at the lumbar and scoliosis. And I don't know a couple other scientific fancy names.

Mark Rippetoe:
All kind of shit was wrong.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah. Yeah. And right. And you were like, well, have you have you seen the cases in my forum? And I was like, no, I haven't seen a thing. So well, you were like, OK, you have to see that so that you get convinced that you can do these exercises and there won't be a problem with it.

Hari Fafutis:
And then you asked me whether I have some shorts or something to do the lifts. And I was like, yeah, I have some a pair of shorts in my car. And I came in, I got dressed up and you taught me how to deadlift. That was the first day. And I think I loaded like one thirty five on the bar who had no problems with my back.

Hari Fafutis:
And then you told me, would you rather have a weak, weakend... What's what's.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well I probably said would you like to have your back hurting weak or your back hurting strong.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes.

Mark Rippetoe:
You got to back pain. Yeah. Who doesn't have back pain? Would you like for your back to be weak or strong while you have your back pain? And that's a decision that most people refuse to make because they don't understand that the act of getting the back strong may and usually does alleviate most, if not all of the back pain.

Mark Rippetoe:
But even if it doesn't, deadlifts and squats do not hurt your back.

Hari Fafutis:
Exactly.

Mark Rippetoe:
And people... That just doesn't compute to the vast majority of people. So it's to Hari's credit that he actually pulled the bar off the ground and demonstrated to himself that, in fact, this this works.

Hari Fafutis:
Exactly. And that was my main motivation. I wanted to get rid of my back pain. I wanted to be strong. And I was just a little scared whether I could do the main lifts or not. And that was my the first time we met. I remember...

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, and that's a rational thing to be afraid of, you know? I mean, I'm going to use my back to lift something heavy, but my back hurts. Will I not injure my back? And I tell you, no, you will not injure your back. And you have to believe me. And, you know, some apprehension is necessary, but I mean, we've done this before, you trusted me and you demonstrated to yourself that, in fact, it doesn't hurt you to deadlift.

Mark Rippetoe:
And how many people since that period of time have you taught the same thing?

Hari Fafutis:
A lot. A lot.

Hari Fafutis:
So that's where it all started. You told me to train and get stronger. And I was like, well, he's most likely right. I will I will try this at my place and I'm going to get strong and I'm going to train people to get ready and get the the coaching certification. So that's what happened.

Hari Fafutis:
I went back home, I started training myself. And I think year and a half later, I came to the seminar and passed the platform, passed the exams. And I think it was that seminar... I don't know if you came up with the idea or I came with the idea of having the book translated into Spanish.

Mark Rippetoe:
I think you did. And I think it would have been you because of our previous discussion. We've had very little in the way of acceptance from the Spanish language community about about this material. We typically what we do is we can tell the strength of a market by how many copies of the books are ordered by private individuals within that market.

Mark Rippetoe:
Like we ship to Germany on a regular basis. People from Germany ordered the book. Chinese people were ordering a book, and we as reconfirmed, we just don't get any orders from the Spanish language countries. And so it was probably you that brought that up, not me. I would I would bet.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I probably told you this very thing and you said, well, but I'd like to try it anyway. And I said, well, knock yourself out.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah, but you told me, I remember now... you told me get the coaching certification first and then we'll see.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. And the reason I told you that is because if we are going to be responsible for the translation, if we're not just licensing the product to another another company with a professional translator, I wanted to make sure that you understood the material well enough to be able to produce an accurate translation.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the only way we could be sure of that is for you to understand the material well enough to demonstrate that by passing the examination. And and I think probably as a result of us having done that, I think this is probably going to be the most accurate and faithful translation of all of the of all of the all of the ones in print right now. I think because because of the depth of understanding of the translator.

Mark Rippetoe:
And yeah...

Hari Fafutis:
Like going back your question, how many people did I train before even starting to translate the book? And how many times I read the book before I even started translating it. I can tell you it was probably like eight times reading the book and coached more than a hundred people.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. And developed an understanding of the book by applying the things that are in the book to a whole bunch of people. Coaching.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, in the process of.... So here's a I think this is probably a really, really good question. And I'm actually kind of proud that I thought that I could come up with the question of this quality. All right...

Mark Rippetoe:
And the question is: how did you learn through your experience with reading the book, coaching the people and applying the methods and what did you do with that level of understanding in terms of making the translation? Do you... I think it's probably inevitable that you added some quality to the translation that wasn't actually there in the first in the in the English version of it. I think that could be very likely the case.

Hari Fafutis:
Absolutely. There is... even though English and Spanish are quite similar in many aspects, there are other aspects that they're not similar. So I think your language is richer in words. Like you can use lots of same word... I'm sorry, you can use lots of different words with the same meaning.

Mark Rippetoe:
Your language is based on Latin and and my language is based on Anglo Saxon, German, and Latin. And English has got a much larger vocabulary than Spanish does.

Hari Fafutis:
That's right.

Mark Rippetoe:
And which gives me a lot of a lot of additional options when I'm trying to to to communicate in terms of inflection and synonyms. And just the color of the idea that I'm trying to try to convey and Spanish is a much more straightforward. This is the way you say this.

Hari Fafutis:
Exactly.

Mark Rippetoe:
And in English, I've got 19 ways to say the same thing.

Hari Fafutis:
So you have a more friendlier language in English in which to communicate your ideas. But then in Spanish, I had to find my way around many passages to communicate what you were trying to say.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right.

Hari Fafutis:
So that process of me having coached, having read the book lots of times and then trying to put it into Spanish words, that's what forced me to find different ways to put it in in a friendly way so the reader can understand it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. And I think that that will certainly show up as being the product of your experience with having coached the movement.

Mark Rippetoe:
So when the German guys translated the book, they heard their their their house translator just translate this English into German without a filter. You had a filter.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I think that we'll see that this is a very, very high quality translation.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes. So there's basically two ways to make a translation. You hire a professional translator, and if the text is too technical, that translator will probably have to come to an expert so that he explains whatever it is that the translator did understand. So that's option A.

Hari Fafutis:
Option B is to go directly to the expert who speaks the language in which you're trying to do the translation and have him do it, but at the same time, have him hire another translator so that he covers those those holes that the that the expert in the subject can't cover. The technical aspects of the process. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
So in other words, you hire either a professional in the language or a professional in the subject matter.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes, that's right.

Mark Rippetoe:
And fill in the holes from either side.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes. Right. So we did we did that second option. And I think it worked perfectly well. Like, we didn't we didn't left anything loose.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. No, I think this is going to be a real good exposure for a lot of people to do the material that previously didn't have access to it.

Hari Fafutis:
And I wonder that if someone that is trying to learn Spanish could not benefit from buying a copy of this thing and using it as a Spanish language textbook, my and the other the English translation down beside of it and go in sentence by sentence and see how written Spanish works. That might be a real good little side project for somebody.

Mark Rippetoe:
Maybe for your kid [points off camera]. You teaching him Spanish?

[off-camera]:
Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
Good, good. I'm proud of you. You should be teaching him Spanish.

[off-camera]:
Thanks, Rip. I'm proud that you're proud.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, I'm proud that you're proud that I'm proud and it's it. But what about what about Stella? The girl? You're probably not doing with her.

[off-camera]:
No, we got to keep her down.

Mark Rippetoe:
She has no reason to. She has no reason to do anything. Have you bought her shoes yet?

[off-camera]:
She buys her own.

Mark Rippetoe:
She buys her own shoes.

[off-camera]:
She sells cookies, and then goes and buys them.

Mark Rippetoe:
She sells cookies and then sneaks around and buy shoes. And you don't know. We play like you don't know. Well, an interesting cultural deal.

[off-camera]:
Yeah, an interesting thing. I don't know if you dealt with this at all or what your thoughts on this, but I tried a long time ago. I started a long time ago to start translating some articles. And, you know, if I didn't know anything about Starting Strength or the way Rip writes and you just or the way he speaks, you know, the way the material is presented and you just have a text and then translation, that's almost easier than knowing the tone in the background and the way that the information is presented, because you have to make to your point that you have so many more options with English in terms of getting an idea across right?

[off-camera]:
Now you have to decide what the right option is that you want to get across in that moment and what and how to say it in Spanish, you know, so I would read a sentence and I could just you could just translate the sentence. Right. And it would be accurate, but it wouldn't be... It wouldn't get the point across.

[off-camera]:
Did you did you find any of that?

Hari Fafutis:
Absolutely. I guess what you're trying to say is if you go like sentence by sentence and then you look at it as a whole, it ends up being too mechanical and sometimes you lose the main idea. So a good translation, a good translator needs to read the text first, understand the ideas, and then find his own way to communicate it in the language that he's trying to do.

[off-camera]:
It's not even just the idea, it's the the flow and the ease. Because Starting Strength is - and I bring this point up in the seminar all the time and to the coaches that we are developing - Starting Strength is extremely easy to read. So easy to read that when you're learning to become a coach or you're learning the material, you'll read it and think you understand it, but you really don't because it's so dense and it is so well presented.

Hari Fafutis:
It is dense. And then even if you do understand it, then you have task number two - now communicate it to someone else. You know, and we always talk about a good coach is not only someone who knows the model, but also communicates it precisely and briefly. So that was a big part of the of the task.

Mark Rippetoe:
And one of the things that I learned a long time ago back in high school, having two years German and a year of German in college, is that Google Translate is not a translation. Word to word equivalency is not a translation. That's not the same thing as a translation. Those of you that have never studied foreign language don't really have a handle on that. But the way you say things in English and the way you say things in German are very much a function of the culture in which the language developed.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, this is you know, this is a linguistics - philology used to be the name for the study of this of this of this topic - linguistics touches on it. But just a simple word to word translation is not is not a translation. If Hari was to just make the word barbell into the Spanish word for barbell nd then training into the Spanish word for training, that's that's not a translation.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it's it's it's difficult to to explain that to people who've never looked at a foreign language. And I think that the one of the problems, as you pointed out earlier, with selling into the Spanish language market, is most people don't learn anything but Spanish in the Spanish language countries. Most people in in North America have had a, if anything, just a cursory exposure to foreign languages in school.

Mark Rippetoe:
But in Europe, for example, it's different. You've got all these different, completely different languages in close proximity to each other in the everybody over there grows up understanding the difference between speaking to me in German, speaking to me in Swiss, German, speaking to me in in Dutch, which is low German, basically, and speaking to me in Hungarian, which is a completely different language. And ideas are expressed differently across the several different cultures that generated those languages, and people with no exposure to that don't really understand the subtleties of of language.

Mark Rippetoe:
So I'm I'm glad that we ended up with a translation from somebody that's intimately familiar with with the with the material. I don't know how faithful the Chinese translation is. I don't know. I have no way of knowing.

Hari Fafutis:
And that's the challenge of a great book, like if you if you think about great books, what they have in common? Number one, they're telling the truth. And number two, the book is intelligible. People can read it and actually understand it.

Hari Fafutis:
So there's two tests to a good book. I think what you wrote is absolutely true if you apply the concepts correctly and then now you have to just communicate correctly. And and that was that was my challenge. But I do think and I am confident that all my experience prior to the translation is what really gives it that. That correct.

Mark Rippetoe:
I agree. I think it's that it's the icing on the cake in terms of the quality of the quality of the translation. So there's there's an idiom right there, icing on the cake. How does that translate into Spanish?

Hari Fafutis:
[Translates to Spanish]

Mark Rippetoe:
Which may mean something completely different. It may actually mean something different. Yes, I'm quite sure it does.

Mark Rippetoe:
So, Hari, you're actually not Mexican, are you? Let's spill the beans here.

Hari Fafutis:
OK. Sure. Well, so on the family from from my dad, they were all born in Mexico, but they're all Greek in blood.

Mark Rippetoe:
So they're first generation Mexicans from Greece, right?

Hari Fafutis:
Yes, second generation, actually. But the thing is, before, like my grandparents, my great grandparents, they were both born in Mexico, but there was this cultural thing that Greeks only marry Greeks.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. Lots of cultures are like that.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah, yeah, my my my dad broke that that habit so to say.

Mark Rippetoe:
He's a brave man wasn't he? He's a brave man. He might as well have married a Turk.

Hari Fafutis:
Could have, but there was no Turks in Mexico.

Mark Rippetoe:
That would have been the end of the world, wouldn't it? Yeah, because. Because only Americans are racist, you see.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes, so that was the the cultural thing then, but I mean, my dad's 100 percent Greek. His blood. And then my mom is it's Mexican, but she's not fully Mexican in blood either. Like you, you met her. She's blonde. She doesn't look Mexican. So there's I think that's part of like French French part of her. And I don't know what what the hell else.

Mark Rippetoe:
Who knows.

Hari Fafutis:
Who knows.

Mark Rippetoe:
But nobody in your family looks like what the Mexican people here in North Texas look like.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah, that's true.

Mark Rippetoe:
Just for those of you from different parts of the world, the Mexican people in in this area are are probably really Indians.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes, that's true.

Mark Rippetoe:
They're actually American Indians. They're Native Americans. And, you know, the the Spanish people interacted with them over the past four or five hundred years. And soo you've got a whole bunch of people in at least the southern United States and probably northern Mexico that all, you know, appear to be the same bunch people.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, you've got - in our little second home that we've that we have up in Colorado - that part of the country is populated with Spanish speaking people who look like you. They're not dark complected. And those people are descendants of Spanish immigrants from 400 years ago. And they sound different than the Mexican populations around here. And they've got a different cuisine. The whole it's it's it's fascinating how wide spread Spanish is a language and culture has been over the past probably 600 years.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes.

Mark Rippetoe:
In fact, I think you'll find that probably the United States has one of the larger Spanish speaking populations in the world. How many how many do we have?

[off-camera]:
Uh, actually, hold on, total number of Spanish speakers in Mexico is one hundred and twenty six million. Uh, United States. Fifty six million. And then Colombia and Spain are at about forty nine and forty six.

Mark Rippetoe:
So we're number two.

[off-camera]:
Number two.

Mark Rippetoe:
The second largest concentration of Spanish speaking people in the unite in the world is in the United States. So this wasn't a stupid idea after all. You know, I think a lot of people are interested, even if they've read the book in English, would be interested in reading the Spanish translation of this thing just for the ease of maybe a little bit deeper understanding of the material.

[off-camera]:
Even if you count, because that number, the number two number includes limited competence speaker so and I don't know how they could possibly know this, but yeah, even if you include the not the only native speakers and proficient speakers of second languages, the United States is still top four in the world.

Hari Fafutis:
Still big number.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, it's a big number of people and it's growing all the time. It's growing all the time. If you go to South San Antonio, there's not a lot of English spoken in the southern half of that city. They have. For a long time had a bilingual requirement for all their police force because of the large number of Spanish speakers, people who don't speak anything but Spanish. And in South Texas, that there's a lot of people in that boat, that same boat.

Mark Rippetoe:
So we'll just see what happens with this, but I'm I'm optimistic that we're going to have a bunch of books flying out the door. Are you ready, Bre? She's always ready.

Hari Fafutis:
Put her to work.

Mark Rippetoe:
Shipping and receiving is always on the money here at the The Aasgaard Company.

[off-camera]:
24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Mark Rippetoe:
24/7, 365 we're working for you here at The Aasgaard Company.

Mark Rippetoe:
How is your gym?

Hari Fafutis:
Gym is slow right now. Obviously.

Mark Rippetoe:
I think everybody's gym is slow. How is - just as an interesting aside here - what do you... I mean, everybody in the United States knows that the the Mexican government is kind of a fucking mess. All right. Everybody knows that the Mexican government is basically nonexistent over half of the country.

Mark Rippetoe:
They will kill him. If the cartels don't kill him, the government will. You better cover your ass here on this, Hari. Who do you like best, the cartels or the government?

Hari Fafutis:
Oh, that's a really tough question.

Mark Rippetoe:
You shouldn't answer that question.

Hari Fafutis:
No.

Mark Rippetoe:
Don't answer that question, because it's a dangerous thing to talk about. It's amazing to me that Mexico functions it it really is. I think it's a testament to just the basic decency of the fucking people that they have put up with this administrative chaos down there for as long as they have. I think this must be a really good bunch of people to put up with that bad bunch of people on the other side of the street.

Hari Fafutis:
This is a very interesting topic because we're basically neighbors. We have the almost the same geographical conditions, you know, and what explains why the US is so much more developed compared to Mexico?

Mark Rippetoe:
Because you guys had a head start on us of about three hundred years.

Hari Fafutis:
Well, I think it's many things. But I one of the things, for example, you guys got conquered by the by the English people. We got conquered by the Spaniards and Spaniards back then and probably still then, right now, they're on the under the Catholic regimen. And you guys are all Protestants. So that got you guy to a

Mark Rippetoe:
That's an interesting observation. I never thought about it like that before.

Hari Fafutis:
Well, you know, the Protestants who came here to the US were basically fleeing from from England and they were looking for better opportunities. They were hard workers.

Mark Rippetoe:
In fact - my the original Rippetoe ancestor was a Huguenot as they called them back then. He was Protestant fleeing from Catholic France. And he came over in the 1690s and all of the Rippetoes in the United States are traceable back to that one guy.

Hari Fafutis:
Wow.

[off-camera]:
Every... All the Rippetoes?

Mark Rippetoe:
All of us. Now they some of us spell our name differently than others. But the best I can tell, last time I looked seriously at the genealogy, that there was one original ancestor that came into Virginia back in about 1695. And the specific reason was to get away from these lunatic Catholics.

[off-camera]:
Yeah, and the Spaniards that came were the hardcore zealots.

Hari Fafutis:
The Spaniards were just looking for gold and just stealing everything from the Mexican Indians and chose to go back to Spain. And then there's another interesting difference. The they English immigrants or European immigrants who came to the U.S., they basically got rid of the Indians slowly, you know, taking them to the to the west.

Mark Rippetoe:
Just moving them out of the way.

Hari Fafutis:
To the reservations. What did what happened in Mexico? They all started having... Yes. so...

Mark Rippetoe:
They assimulated instead of moved them right.

Hari Fafutis:
The way they left only...

Mark Rippetoe:
I think they were probably more of them in Mexico, were probably more native occupiers of the land. And if you cannot beat them because of their greater numbers, you have to figure out a way to get along. And that's why...

[off-camera]:
The denser population too, right? In Central and South America, certainly the concentration was higher. So, yes. What are you going to do? You're not you know, we're in the guys that landed in America where - I imagine, you know - just because of the landmass is much more dispersed.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yes, it was more dispersed. And the climate in Mexico made it a lot easier to feed yourself. More things grow in Mexico than grow on the southern plains in the United States.

Mark Rippetoe:
And, you know, we had a very interesting book come out a few years ago called Empire of the Summer Moon that investigated the actual facts of the death of the Comanche tribes activities in the central southern Plains and one of the one of the most interesting things that I took away from that that book was the fact that you had two different approaches to human life. And the approach of the Comanches to human life was not compatible with ours and we had to do something about it and it was not optional. We had to do something about it. And because you can't coexist in a situation like that. So we won. They lost. And I'm real sorry, but that's just why we're all here right now.

Hari Fafutis:
It's the same with all the Indians in the US. There is also the book, The Killing of Crazy Horse about the Siouxs. And it's the same, right. You know, they've got rid of them or they just put them in a reservation camp. But that didn't happen in Mexico.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, you guys just kind of all became one amorphous bunch of people.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah, mixed race. And there's also the fact that, again, the the Catholic Church took over Mexico and South America. And even to this day, like, there's a lot of of power, like you just see the architecture or the infrastructure of the cities. And there's this huge Catholic church...

Mark Rippetoe:
A huge Catholic cathedral.

Hari Fafutis:
It's a lot of money in there and power and corruption and...

Mark Rippetoe:
And where is the pope from? I think it's...

Hari Fafutis:
Argentina.

Mark Rippetoe:
Argentinan. Yes, it's a it's you know, the whole thing is the Catholic and the Catholics never established a hold like that in the United States. And all these factors contribute to the cultural differences between Mexico and the United States.

Hari Fafutis:
Which brings us to the point why there's like we have lots of corruption and and and narcos.

Mark Rippetoe:
All right. We have a lot of corruption here. But I think our corruption has done a lot better job of disguising itself than yours has. Our corruption.

[off-camera]:
Ours is not overt.

Mark Rippetoe:
Ours is not over.

[off-camera]:
To the average citizen.

Mark Rippetoe:
To the average citizen, average citizen can completely ignore it and be perfectly happy because our news media is absolutely complicit in in that effort and... And instead of letting this get too far off into Alex Jones territory, we we have a... I guess our our culture started off as a more peaceful bunch of people then the Mexican culture.

Mark Rippetoe:
The native Mexicans... I mean, the Aztecs were famously.

Hari Fafutis:
You have the Aztecs and the Mayans.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the Mayans and the Olmecs. They were they had a very highly developed thirst for human blood.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah, that's true.

Mark Rippetoe:
That we here in the United States, we quelled that, we quelled that. And the dominant culture that came over here and moved that out of the way predominated and in Mexico, you guys asimulated with them and didn't really wipe that out like like we did.

[off-camera]:
The idea that it's a product of the different versions of Christianity is really interesting. I think it has a lot to do with it. Protestant Christianity coming to the United States and converting Indians and moving the ones that wouldn't convert or killing the ones that wouldn't convert. And in Mexico you've got the Catholic version of Christianity.

Hari Fafutis:
Who are scared of the church.

[off-camera]:
Exactly.

Hari Fafutis:
And you grow right... You grow like trying to be dependent on that.

[off-camera]:
Exactly. You know, authoritarianism of the Catholic Church.

Mark Rippetoe:
It was it was a quasi governmental organization. Oh, it always has been.

[off-camera]:
Less than I quasi, it was. The power.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. It was the it was... For many for many hundreds of years in human history, the Catholic Church has been the government in lots and lots of places in Europe and South America. And the Protestant church has never really functioned that efficiently in that way in England. Church of England, for a little while, the Church of England kind of tried. And yeah, they were the Anglican Church. The Church of England.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah, well, it's that a mindset, you know, through the Protestant mindset of work hard and then the Catholic mindset of if I do this and this...

Mark Rippetoe:
Obey the pope.

Hari Fafutis:
Right. So that's I think that's one of the main factors.

Mark Rippetoe:
It could very well be. I hadn't thought about that before. But that's that is an interesting take on the situation.

Mark Rippetoe:
What do you think about the way your government has handled the current crisis? I really hate to use that term because it's not a crisis.

Hari Fafutis:
No, it's not.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's a it is a it's a crisis in the way it's been handled. But the the covid-19 situation is is not a public health crisis. It's a government crisis. And every government in the world has happily jumped on this opportunity to increase their power and authority. And what is going on down there?

[off-camera]:
Yeah, with what's it like?

Mark Rippetoe:
What's it like down there right now with respect to this?

Hari Fafutis:
Well, we had to shut down most of the businesses, the "nonessentials."

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, yeah. That that sounds familiar.

[off-camera]:
It's almost like they're all using the same playbook.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's almost like they were all on the same phone call, right.

[off-camera]:
They all opened the same binder.

Mark Rippetoe:
The same binder and looked at the same instructions after they received the same phone call that day back in February. "Hey, this is how we're going to handle this, guys. All right. No, no, listen, it'll work. Just trust me. It'll work. You'll like it here in another couple of months. You'll see that I was right, but this is the way we're going to handle it."

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah, it was very similar to to what happened here. Only two exceptions. It was more exaggerated. The new regulations, you know, wearing the mask and not going out...

Mark Rippetoe:
Which would be commensurate with our previous discussion about the Mexican culture.

Hari Fafutis:
Yes. And then the other aspect is, at least most of the US citizens got some sort of incentive, right? Some sort of payment from the government. But most of us, we didn't get that. Like my small business, my gym, it was like very hard and bureaucratic to get some sort of funding from them. So I just had to find my way through that.

Mark Rippetoe:
And, yeah, I didn't do that myself.

Hari Fafutis:
No, I didn't do it either.

Mark Rippetoe:
I didn't even attempt to do it. Actually, we thought about it early on, but, you know, and later turned out we were right to not do it. Anytime the government gives you something, there is a string attached to that thing.

Hari Fafutis:
I agree. I'd rather not ask.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't want to be on the list. No, I don't want to be on the list.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah. So what I do know is I just lent out equipment to my clients and they kept on paying the the monthly fees, but we did some sort of online coaching for them. And then we were able to keep most of them.

Mark Rippetoe:
A lot of our gyms did that here.

Hari Fafutis:
So I mean, we survived, you know, but it's not like we're doing great.

Mark Rippetoe:
Nobody's doing great. We were doing great. I don't know about you guys, but up to about the first February, we were in the hottest economic expansion and probably history, the United States, things were going beautifully. And of course, we can't have that because we got to get rid of this man in November.

Mark Rippetoe:
So we had to fuck everything up. We just had to there's no way, no other option. Things are going too well. So we had to fuck them up. And this this covid-19 thing was a wonderful excuse. If you can make people afraid to get sick, then you can tell them to do things and they'll listen to you and they'll obey you if they're afraid.

Mark Rippetoe:
People accept tyranny when they perceive that the tyranny is going to protect them from something. And in this case, this thing turned out to be perhaps a slightly more severe version of the flu than previous versions of the flu. But that's all it was.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I hear you people out there right now. I can hear you screaming. What you're screaming about is the fact that I'm willing to say that and you're a bunch of fucking pussies. Because really, you know, it's true. You can't believe what these people tell you about this.

Mark Rippetoe:
The data's there. You have access to the data. We published it on our thread about this on the board every single day. The whole thing is over with. The thing was over with at the end of June and you're still wearing a mask. And your mask is a symbol of your willingness to comply. And that's all it is. It's a symbol of your willingness to comply.

Mark Rippetoe:
And And from that standpoint, this thing's worked beautifully. I would imagine it's worked out well in Mexico, too, hasn't it?

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah, there's elections coming up next year and all the politicians are using their political agenda to work it out.

Mark Rippetoe:
We've got to keep them scared or they're not going to keep us in office. So they're lying to you about who's got it and who has it risk and how many people it's killed. And all of this other shit.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't know about in Mexico, but there was there was a poll taken a couple of weeks ago about how many people the average American thinks have died from covid-19. And the poll results indicated that the average person thinks that three, nothat 30 million people have died from covid-19 in the United States. 10 percent of the population, they think has died of covid-19.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the actual number is a tiny, tiny fraction of that, to the extent that I don't know anyone who knows anyone, who knows anyone who has died from covid-19 and neither do you. And it's a it's just an interesting, interesting thing to watch unfold, to watch people not just in the United States but everywhere, but roll over on their back, you know, in in a display of willingness to do what they're told to be protected.

Mark Rippetoe:
What's happened to us? Could this bunch of people have won World War Two? You know...

Hari Fafutis:
And it's interesting that most of the countries are doing the same thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
They're all doing it, Hari. It's amazing to me. We were talking about this that a couple of days ago. It's you know, we understand the need. To do something about Donald Trump, we got to get rid of Donald Trump, that's just. And we're willing to do anything to get rid of Donald Trump, but what explains the UK? What explains Mexico, what explains South Africa? What explains the willingness of all of these countries to participate in this hoax?

Mark Rippetoe:
And I don't I don't understand it. I really don't understand it, except that the people that run things now - we're Alex Jones here again - but I just I don't know. One other explanation for this to people that run things everywhere are all in the same club.

Hari Fafutis:
Yeah. They're probably getting a lot of benefits.

Mark Rippetoe:
They're all in the same club. How would you like to be a mask manufacturer?

Hari Fafutis:
How would you like to be squatting with a mask?

Mark Rippetoe:
I'm not going to do it.

Hari Fafutis:
No.

Mark Rippetoe:
So doing sets of five. Three sets of five across and having to do that fifth rep.

[off-camera]:
You take a big breath and it goes...whooosph!

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, it sucks right down, up into your nose and shit. You know, and it's already wet since you've been spitting all over the damn thing, your whole workout, and now you you're suffocating.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, good. Suffocate, it's good for you, at least you didn't die of covid-19, right?

Mark Rippetoe:
Anyway Hari, I appreciate you being here. This is this is a departure for for us taking on a translation project like this ourselves. And we just happily licensed it out to other publishing companies before. So we're going to be in the process of learning a whole bunch of things ourselves about this thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
And those of you who are interested in the Spanish language translation, it's going to be several months before it's before it's available. We've got a giant amount of work to do on the layout and paste up and the print run and all these things that are involved in getting a book on your table, but we're on it.

Hari Fafutis:
In the meantime, anyone who's interested in, like, have questions in Spanish or something, they can look me up. In Guadalajara in Mexico and just let me know.

Mark Rippetoe:
What's your email address?

Hari Fafutis:
It is harifafutis at gmail dot com.

Mark Rippetoe:
H-A-R-I-F-A-F-U-T-I-S at Gmail dot com. Now, you're going to get offers of marriage. OK, we're going to get offers of marriage. Just ignore those. Just delete those. There'll be guys ask you about that too, because you know you know how the internet is.

Mark Rippetoe:
But those of you that are interested in communicating with Hari about this, please get on on email with him and he'll he'll write you right back unless you're asking him to do inappropriate things with you.

Mark Rippetoe:
OK. And Hari, thanks so much, man. Appreciate your work on this project and appreciate you coming up to sit with us today on Starting Strength Radio.

Mark Rippetoe:
And we will see you next week.

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