The Central Conversation
Continuing Education Through Conversation.
Hosted by Alan Baker, The Capable Academy Podcast explores practical lessons, lived experience, and useful frameworks that help people think clearly, train intelligently, lead themselves well, and continue becoming more capable.
Why This Podcast Exists
Continuing Education Through Conversation.
Capability can be developed through formal lessons, direct training, written study, and lived experience. It can also be developed through thoughtful conversation.
The Capable Academy Podcast is the conversational learning environment of the Academy. Each episode explores ideas that help listeners think more clearly, make better decisions, lead themselves more effectively, and apply practical lessons in everyday life.
This is not entertainment for its own sake. It is continuing education through conversation.
One Mission. Many Environments.
Where Conversations Explore Capability.
The podcast is not built around random topics. Each conversation explores capability through environments where people must think, decide, train, lead, adapt, and serve.
Combat Environment
Martial arts, conflict, discipline, pressure, timing, and skill development.
Protection Environment
Awareness, responsibility, deescalation, service, and decisions under pressure.
Physical Capability
Health, movement, durability, strength, recovery, and lasting performance.
Leadership Environment
Standards, communication, responsibility, influence, and leading by example.
Scholar Environment
Study, reflection, learning models, history, philosophy, and self education.
Outdoor Capability
Navigation, preparation, risk, self reliance, and lessons beyond controlled spaces.
Explore The Conversation Library
Continue Exploring The Academy.
Begin with an established conversation. Each episode can become a pathway into related articles, questions for reflection, and future Academy Studies.
The Secrets And Benefits Of Kung Fu Training
A conversation on structure, sensitivity, body mechanics, discipline, and long term skill development.
A Good Man Is A Violent Man But With Self Mastery
A conversation on strength, restraint, discipline, responsibility, and the standards that guide capable people.
Warrior’s Path | Sifu Alan Baker | Episode 26
A conversation on mindset, personal development, training, and the principles that guide continued growth.
Unlocking Joint Health With Indian Clubs And Filipino Martial Arts
A practical conversation on movement quality, joint health, training durability, and lasting physical capability.
The Art Of Self Leadership
An episode on leading yourself first, building standards, staying disciplined, and using martial arts as a life framework.
What Are You Missing In Your Martial Arts Training?
A conversation on identifying gaps in training and building a more complete path of development.
Meet Your Hosts
Two Voices. One Continuing Conversation.
Each conversation is guided by two people with different strengths and one shared mission: helping listeners become more capable human beings.
Host 01
Founder And Host
Alan Baker
Alan Baker is the Founder of The Capable Academy and the primary host of The Capable Academy Podcast. For nearly five decades he has studied martial arts, leadership, executive protection, firearms, coaching, outdoor education, business, and human performance.
Drawing from a lifetime of teaching and continual study, Alan uses each conversation to help listeners think more clearly, make better decisions, and build meaningful capability that extends far beyond any single discipline.
His role is not simply to share information. His mission is to help people develop stronger perspective, practical wisdom, disciplined thinking, and the ability to meet life with greater capability.
Host 02
Cohost And Technical Director
Bob Burgee
Bob Burgee has spent more than three decades helping instructors build educational systems, produce instructional media, and preserve martial arts knowledge for future generations.
A longtime martial artist and instructor under both Dan Inosanto and Erik Paulson, Bob has manufactured more than 30,000 training blades through Edges2 and serves as Technical Director for the Combat Submission Wrestling Association, the C Tac Association, the Alan Baker educational platforms, and The Capable Academy.
On the podcast, Bob represents the listener. He asks the questions many people are thinking, helping conversations unfold naturally and making complex ideas practical and approachable.
Together, Alan and Bob create conversations designed to help listeners think differently, learn continuously, and become more capable.
The Conversational Classroom
The Podcast Is One Classroom Inside The Academy.
The podcast is where ideas are explored in motion. Articles develop public written work related to those conversations. Academy Studies turn selected ideas into structured Academy original education.
Conversation creates an opening. Reflection develops understanding. Structured study builds capability.