Roll On: No Shortcuts To Enlightenment

Post-election thoughts. Managing stress and disagreement. Connecting to gratitude. Weekly wins. And, of course, listener questions. Welcome to another edition of Roll On. Commanding co-host duties as always is my hype man Adam Skolnick, an activist and veteran journalist perhaps best known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me co-author. Adam has written about adventure sports, environmental issues and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is the author of One Breath and is currently hard at work on a novel. Some of the many topics explored in today’s conversation include: What can be learned from the life + death of Zappos’ Tony Hsieh; The unpredictability of happiness; The antitrust campaign to break up the tech behemoths; Rob Bell lessons on writing + self-love; Our growing adoration of ‘Feels Good Man’; and Celebrating grassroots environmental activism In addition, we answer the following listener questions: Is pursuing a more authentic life path an ego trip? How can a person with low self-esteem and avoidance discomfort develop more intimacy? Does endurance racing in your 50’s pose health risks? Thank you to Joe from northern New York, Seth from Wisconsin, and Michael from Boulder, CO. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page, or better yet leave a voicemail at (424) 235-4626. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:22Rich Roll?

  All right. Adam and I are back, and once again, it's time to take roll call.

• 1:31Rich Roll?

  We're back. We took a little bit of a forced hiatus. We're going to talk about that in a second. But Adam, how you doing? Doing great, man. Feeling good. Great to be back in the, well, I don't want to step on the, it's great to be in this particular room with you right now. Yeah. Good to see you, my friend. Roll on is resuming. Not only that, we are in a brand-new studio. This marks the debut of the Rich Roll Podcast HQ. I did record a podcast the other day, but this is going to go up ahead of that. So I think officially, this will be the first podcast, well, I know it will be the first podcast that everybody gets to see the new space. So I'm very grateful and excited about it.

• 2:15Rich Roll?

  This is like, this is, it feels like home already, doesn't it? It does, yeah. What do you think? I love it, man. I mean, I remember you showed me this space a few months ago. It's happened very quickly, and maybe two months ago? Yeah, I mean, we've been working on it for a while. It was well underway when you saw it for the first time, but we did hit our stride and this final push. We got a lot done pretty quickly. So it's pretty great. We got our boy Davey over here. He's making a video that's gonna take everybody behind the scenes on the whole thing, which I'm pretty excited about. And it's amazing. Now we have our own podcast headquarters.

• 2:52Adam Skolnick?

  People don't realize, like, well, maybe some people do, but you've gone through, this is at least the fourth space that I know about that you've been functioning in five, if you count two spaces, or six, if you count three spaces.

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, originally, it just moved wherever the guest was. Like, I was sort of a traveling salesman with the thing for probably the vast majority of the history of this show. I mean, I would do them occasionally at my house, but more often than not, even when they were in Los Angeles, I would go to the person's house and set up there, which was kind of fun, because you're in their environment, so they're already gonna be more relaxed. And it's cool to like, go see how other people live, like the guests that you're gonna, you're gonna talk to.

• 3:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 3:35Rich Roll?

  You get an introduction into their space, which I think, you know, helps inform the conversation. And then when I would travel and go out of town, and I still do this, like, I have a travel case and I bring my stuff with me. But then it kind of migrated to this office. That's where we did the podcast. I had this little janky office in Westlake.

• 3:55Adam Skolnick?

  Don't call it janky.

• 3:56Rich Roll?

  It was a little janky. It was fine. It was good. Listen, I was very grateful to have a space outside of my house to work. And I would do it there. Then we moved it into an open room in our house when the boys moved out. And that's where we started shooting video. And that's what most people, you know, have seen when they've seen the YouTube video version of the show. And then when the pandemic hit, we had to, for understandable reasons, you know, not be having people come over to the house all the time. So we moved it to a temporary space, which is where we've been hosting it for the last nine months or whatever.

• 4:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, while everyone's kind of sitting at home trying to figure out what's next, we kind of went bold and locked down this 2,000 square foot warehouse and began building it out. And here we are today.

• 4:45Adam Skolnick?

  Into the, you know, Rogan, Rogan ditch town. So now you're the, you're the biggest podcaster in the West Valley.

• 4:52Rich Roll?

  Listen.

• 4:54Rich Roll?

  I think the lesson in it is I could have never envisioned or anticipated or dreamed that it would become a thing that would even be deserving of something like this. And just by showing up for it, you know, day by day and building it brick by brick, it's like the natural evolution or progression of what happens when you put in a lot of work and kind of stay out of the results. Like I've been doing it for the process, you know, the love of the process of doing it and just been on this journey. And it feels like I just woke up one day and here we are. But, you know, it's been eight years at this point. We just eclipsed the eight-year anniversary of the show.

• 5:33Adam Skolnick?

  And going hard, too.

• 5:35Rich Roll?

  Going hard.

• 5:35Adam Skolnick?

  And you know what I take from it is you could have easily said, okay, the pandemic hit. At first you were doing things virtually like everybody else on Zoom. And then you kind of figured out a way to do it safely out of the house to keep everyone at home safe. And then it came into this. So it's like you, I mean, obviously you're in a good position to be able to do it, but you were thinking, you were able to kind of flip something that could have been, kept other people cramped and their vision kind of insular and not looking to jump ahead. And you were able to kind of figure out a way to make this whole thing a move for you in a positive direction.

• 6:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a risk, but there is something cool about investing in ourselves, especially in a moment where there's a lot of uncertainty, you know. So, so it's new for me, you know, like the large S of the whole thing, like getting used to it and feeling deserving of it is

• 6:33Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you had that with your house, too, didn't you?

• 6:35Rich Roll?

  For myself.

• 6:36Adam Skolnick?

  Didn't you have that with your house?

• 6:37Rich Roll?

  I still have that with my house.

• 6:38Adam Skolnick?

  You still have that?

• 6:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, more to be revealed. Like I said, we're going to do a video and show everybody everything. We've got a cool lounge here and it's just a great place for guests to come and feel comfortable. And, and also a place where the team can come and work also. So we're not just always a distributed, you know, group of people working on the show.

• 6:57Adam Skolnick?

  Excellent, man. So it's, it's such a quicker drive for me. And it's right over the hill from my favorite dive spot.

• 7:05Rich Roll?

  You and me both. What dive spot is that?

• 7:07Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not saying.

• 7:08Rich Roll?

  Okay. You don't want to have stalkers showing up, rolling up on you?

• 7:13Adam Skolnick?

  They don't roll up on me, bro.

• 7:15Rich Roll?

  When you want to escape for a cocktail or something?

• 7:19Adam Skolnick?

  I don't do cocktails. Well, I've done cocktails right after, but yeah, it's not the typical thing. Now I have to get back and make sure our baby is taken care of.

• 7:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you do have to do that. So let's get into it. Well, the first thing I want to say is that we missed the other week because you had a scheduling thing and we had to push this. And there were a lot of people that were like, what happened to Roll On? Like, I need my Roll On fix. So that was nice. Thank you. I'm glad that, you know, people are enjoying it and feel like they missed it.

• 7:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 7:50Rich Roll?

  That must feel good for you, too.

• 7:52Adam Skolnick?

  It does feel good. It was, uh, it was, I didn't expect that, but it was just one of those things. The scheduling came up last minute. I couldn't be avoided. And, uh, and it's nice to, that people are, are needing that fix. And it's nice that we're delivering something to people that they are enjoying and that I'm a part of this great show. I'm, I feel like-

• 8:12Rich Roll?

  You're a podcaster now.

• 8:14Adam Skolnick?

  I, I am a, I am now a podcaster. I can't deny it.

• 8:20Rich Roll?

  That's true.

• 8:20Adam Skolnick?

  I like it, though. I like this form. I like new media.

• 8:23Rich Roll?

  Well, for people that are brand new, and maybe this is their first episode of Roll On, Adam Skolnick is the person you've been hearing. He's my BFF co-host on this kind of tangential edition of the show.

• 8:39Adam Skolnick?

  Journey into Rich's mind.

• 8:40Rich Roll?

  Adam is a journalist. He's an environmentalist. He's a contributor to The New York Times and Outside, perhaps best known as the co-author of David Goggins' mega-hit memoir, Can't Hurt Me. And this is the show where we talk about current events, kind of things that are top of mind. We share a few lessons. We do a little show and tell and we answer listener questions. And it's a cool opportunity, because this show is always about the guest, to share a few of my thoughts on subject matters that the audience seems to be interested in. And we're going to start today with a, with a big story, right?

• 9:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Well, before we get into that, I just wanted to let you know that you have a couple of new super fans. Speaking of the fans that like Roll On, my parents, Trudy and Richard.

• 9:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Excellent. What are their names?

• 9:35Adam Skolnick?

  Trudy and Richard.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  What's up, Trudy? What's up, Richard?

• 9:39Adam Skolnick?

  And they

• 9:40Rich Roll?

  Have them come over here and we'll give them a tour.

• 9:42Adam Skolnick?

  You know, when I started doing your show, they would, they would like, okay, well, definitely when their next time.

• 9:47Rich Roll?

  When it's safe. Yeah.

• 9:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like when, when you first had me on, they watched it on YouTube and they thought it was, it was cool. Then I kept turning up on the thing and they never really brought it up again. But somehow lately, they've been listening to not just this episode, but all these back episodes. They've been like diving into the back episodes. They are buying the products that you are selling. Or that you're advertising.

• 10:10Rich Roll?

  Is your, does your dad have a whoop and he's like drinking Athletic Greens and stuff?

• 10:14Adam Skolnick?

  No, but he's using the new roll on that you're advertising and he's using the.

• 10:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, the Native deodorant?

• 10:20Adam Skolnick?

  That's it. My, my, uh, my mom bought it for him. She's, she, she wanted it out of the Toms racket.

• 10:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:26Adam Skolnick?

  She got into the Native and the vegan energy bars, I think are on his list.

• 10:33Rich Roll?

  Cool, man.

• 10:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 10:34Rich Roll?

  That's very cool.

• 10:35Adam Skolnick?

  So yes, so there are your newest super fans. They're probably listening to a back episode right now. They're deep in the archives.

• 10:40Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, I think we'll do, maybe we'll do, this is actually gonna, we're gonna be taking a little bit of a hiatus from this show, actually. Cause I'm gonna take a break in January. Um, last year at this time, I took all of December off and I was in Australia. And it was really, um, great to just hit pause on my professional life. Um, I think we all need that at times in our life and, uh, I intend on doing that again, just in January rather than December. So I've been working my butt off the last six weeks or so, um, along with the team to get all the shows essentially produced. So there, there'll be no interruption in the podcast. The shows will go up as usual.

• 11:24Rich Roll?

  There just won't be any roll on because these are recorded contemporaneously with when we publish them.

• 11:30Adam Skolnick?

  So January, you're saying I don't have work in January. I'll see you in February.

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  Right. So, uh, so we gotta make it count.

• 11:37Adam Skolnick?

  We might sneak one more in, right?

• 11:39Rich Roll?

  Maybe. We filled the, we filled the schedule out for, for January. No room for another roll on in January.

• 11:46Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Well, I've got, I thought I had two more hours to convince you.

• 11:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 11:51Rich Roll?

  Let's get into it.

• 11:51Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it, man.

• 11:52Rich Roll?

  So the first thing that, that I wanted to talk about was a story that, um, that, that, that definitely impacted me for personal reasons and for broader reasons as well. Um, and that is the, the passing of, of Tony Shay, who was the founder of, um, Zappos, who passed away, um, on November 27th. He was 46 years old. The cause, the stated cause of his death was related to smoke inhalation from being in a fire. But there's a lot more to this story, and I think there's so many, um, interesting threads, tragic threads to pull on, to kind of understand what happened here.

• 12:32Adam Skolnick?

  No doubt. Uh, um, when I first heard of the story, and I'm not, I'm, I'm new to him. Like, I wasn't really familiar with Zappos, really. And I read the New York Times obituary, which didn't get into kind of the more, the dark side of what was happening. But it kind of, you could hint at it. You could tell that something was going on. But, um, but, you know, I was really interested in, I like a con of class who are thinking differently, who, you know, the, the wealthy guy that lives in airstream trailer that is revitalizing an entire area of Las Vegas. That's interesting to me.

• 13:08Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:08Adam Skolnick?

  Um, you know, someone who is interested in, uh, capping his salary, if not his entire compensation, um, who is interested in not having a corner office, but wants to sit in the bullpen.

• 13:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:21Adam Skolnick?

  Like, these kinds of things of how he ran his company. Interesting to me. Uh, so, you know, you forwarded this Wall Street Journal story that goes deeper into him in ways that I had not read about. And, uh, I think that's what we wanted to get into that too, right?

• 13:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. So the Wall Street Journal article is called, "The Death of Zappos: Tony Shay, A Spiral of Alcohol, Drugs, and Extreme Behavior." But before we dive into that aspect of him, you know, perhaps I can share a little bit of, of, of my personal experience. I only met him once and very briefly, so I can't say that, that I, that I knew him in any meaningful way. Um, but I will say that he was... Definitely a maverick and very beloved. When he passed away, the outpouring of love and support for this guy was unbelievable. On Twitter, it seemed like every single person that I follow had had some story about their experience spending time with him.

• 14:16Rich Roll?

  He was truly a remarkable person and obviously an extraordinary businessman who, in many ways, as an early pioneer in the e-commerce space, revolutionized that consumer experience by doubling down and really prioritizing the customer service aspect of what he was doing, which was essentially selling shoes, that's what Zappos is, by making all of their customers feel heard and respected and really, almost like they were part of a thing, like a community or like a family. He would personally respond to customer service emails himself at like 2:00 in the morning, right?

• 14:57Rich Roll?

  And by really making that the focus of how this company did business, they were able to grow it into this massive thing.

• 15:05Adam Skolnick?

  It seems like, because he had that successful first company that he sold for, what, 200 something million dollars to Microsoft. It's almost like Zappos became his Petri dish for how to run a company and how to be a business person in a new kind of way, right?

• 15:20Rich Roll?

  Right, right. And like you said, he would sit out in the bullpen with everybody else and he didn't have a corner office. He was a guy who loved people and for reasons that we're going to get into, like needed to be with people all the time.

• 15:36Adam Skolnick?

  He didn't like executive row, like they called it that? He liked monkey, what, they call it monkey row? Something like that?

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  Is that what he called it? Something like that.

• 15:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he liked that better.

• 15:45Rich Roll?

  So I first, when I met him, it was because I was invited to come to Zappos as part of a kind of curated weekend called The Downtown Project. My friend Amanda Slavin, who had a company called Catalyst Creative, would invite a group of people, like a couple of weekends a year, I don't know, maybe she did it every couple of months, to come and visit Zappos, but also get a taste of what Tony was doing in downtown Las Vegas, which was truly extraordinary. This is a guy who had his company headquartered in Henderson, which is kind of like a suburb of Las Vegas. He decided to move the company into

• 16:27Rich Roll?

  A pretty decrepit part of Las Vegas, the downtown area that's well off the Strip, which was the original kind of city of Las Vegas, that had fallen into, you know, a significant level of disrepair. And most of the buildings down there were abandoned. And he envisioned creating this campus, kind of like NYU, where Zappos would be integrated into the city amongst many buildings where people would walk, you know, or ride bikes around in between them, with an effort of really revitalizing this part of the city. And he personally put $350 million of his own money into doing that. And when I visited, which was many years ago, I'm sure it's much cooler now than it was then, it was pretty

• 17:12Rich Roll?

  amazing what he had accomplished. Like, he was taking over these, like, rundown, you know, one-story or two-story motor lodges and turning them into startup offices. He was putting seed money into all these businesses, like, everything from some new technology play to a coffee shop. And all over the place, there was this sensibility, like an energy, like, something cool is happening here. You know, it's like, it's very hipster. There's people riding fixie bikes and Like Williamsburg in Vegas. And skateboarders and things like that, and like, artists, you know, painting murals on the side of buildings. Right.

• 17:47Rich Roll?

  In addition, this thing called the Container Park, which was kind of like a little plaza built with shipping containers, where there were little businesses and restaurants and, you know, like, frozen yogurt and, like, t-shirt stores or whatever, in this kind of park Yeah. where he, with which he surrounded it by, with, like, these amazing sculptures. He had this huge praying mantis metal sculpture that I think he got from Burning Man that, like, would breathe fire at night, like, at dusk every night. Amazing. And it was, it was kind of an amazing thing. And as part of this weekend tour, which, by the way, that's where I met Robin Arzon for the first time. Like, I met some cool people. I met Kevin Pierce, who was the

• 18:33Rich Roll?

  Snowboarder who suffered a traumatic brain injury and then became the subject of this documentary called The Crash Real, which if you haven't seen it, it's amazing. He's really cool. Him and his brother were there. You know, Robin became a very good friend as a result of that experience, meeting her on this weekend. But they took us to, there's a condo building on the edge of the city there.

• 18:53Adam Skolnick?

  He was building condos too, right?

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  He was building all kinds of stuff.

• 18:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. He was building it. But there was a pre-existing condo building and on one of the floors, I can't, I think it was the top floor, he had, he had busted through the walls of like, I think almost every single apartment on that floor, maybe not all of them, but a significant portion of them, to create one massive condo that was kind of like a commune. And that's where he lived. Like he, it would, we were there, there were all kinds of people staying there. People would come and stay for a while and leave, like it was a transient kind of communitarian approach to living, including like a room where there was like flora growing on the ceiling, like, like plants were growing from the ceiling down. And he would kind of wander through and, you know, and this is, this

• 19:40Rich Roll?

  is the CEO of this massive organization. So it was kind of frat house meets hippie commune on some level.

• 19:47Adam Skolnick?

  Meets real world.

• 19:48Rich Roll?

  Um, right. And, and there's, there's like a, I think there's a certain, um, unique courage to live your life differently, especially when the stakes are high and you're like this crazy high net worth individual, to continue to kind of iterate and try things and experiment. Um, he also was one of the people that backed the Life is Beautiful event, which was kind of like this Coachella sort of weekend concert situation that also had speakers. And I spoke there and it was like, I met Bill Nye and I met Dan Price, who was that CEO that instituted the salary cap and has all his employees starting at a base salary of 70 grand. Like I've met tons of cool people as a result of Tony

• 20:32Rich Roll?

  Shay indirectly, right?

• 20:34Adam Skolnick?

  Was that also in Vegas, The Life is Beautiful?

• 20:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's in, it's in Vegas as well. I don't know if it's still going on. I think it's, I think it still is.

• 20:41Adam Skolnick?

  The, the obit I read prior to the one we, I read this morning, but the obit I read was, um, said something about how You know, for some reason, when he revitalized downtown, it was going well. But then there was the backlash, oh, you're making downtown this one place that's affordable for people to live now unaffordable. So then he created the trailer park and moved there as kind of a way to say, no, you know, there's other options. And he lived like in this airstream village.

• 21:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:10Adam Skolnick?

  And I think there was low income housing as part, you know, incorporated into that from what I remember.

• 21:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's true. I just remember thinking, if I was 23 or 24 and interested in startup culture or wanted to do something artistic and different, I would have considered moving there. Like, it was a very supportive environment for that kind of thing. The housing is super cheap and there was this community of people that were doing, you know, it's rare that, you know, when you think of trends or movements, like you think of Seattle during the grunge period or like Greenwich Village during, you know, Bob Dylan. And those don't happen that often. Like, where would you point to now where there's some kind of emergent artistic sensibility

• 21:58Rich Roll?

  percolating up out of, you know, someplace off the beaten track that then has a downstream significant impact on culture? Like, that's like lightning in a bottle. And I did have that sense that he was trying to craft that there and there was an energy that something like that was going on.

• 22:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I can't even remember what, I guess you could say Williamsburg in the 2000s in New York.

• 22:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Adam Skolnick?

  And, but you can't really point to like some big cultural event that came out of that, other than just.

• 22:27Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, I talked to, I talked to my, you know, my boys are musicians and we have this conversation a lot. I'm like, where would you go right now? Like, where is the music scene happening? And they're like, it's not really like that anymore because of the internet. Yeah, it's like, like, remember when?

• 22:43Rich Roll?

  Like when Beck was coming up and LA was having a moment.

• 22:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 22:46Rich Roll?

  At, um, what, what was that place in Silver Lake where all those bands would play?

• 22:49Adam Skolnick?

  Bright spot. No, no. Um.

• 22:51Rich Roll?

  Star, uh, starts with a N S.

• 22:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:54Rich Roll?

  I'll think of it in a second. But there was that kind of, you know, feeling then. Or when the wallflowers were playing at Cantor's, you know, like.

• 23:00Adam Skolnick?

  That was great. I love it.

• 23:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was, there, there are those moments where you're like, something is going on right now. That's even, that's more like, like you've the seeds of something cool.

• 23:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:11Rich Roll?

  Um, anyway, that's, that's the, the feeling that I got in this, you know, downtown section of Las Vegas. So, um, in any event.

• 23:19Adam Skolnick?

  But what was coming out of that was a new way of managing people, right? It wasn't so much a cultural product like music or art. But what was coming up out of that was this new way of, of running a company, right? And that he, that he was able to express in book form.

• 23:35Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:35Adam Skolnick?

  He was speaking about it quite a bit. He was demonstrating it. It was a, his life was kind of, uh, not a performance at all, but like a demonstration of, of a new way of being.

• 23:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:46Adam Skolnick?

  If you want to be a CEO, which you don't really see. Usually what you see is yachts and, you know, Davos.

• 23:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:54Adam Skolnick?

  You don't typically see Airstream, you know, be on the same level with the people that you're managing. You don't typically see it. And when you do, it's news. That's why the $70,000 a year CEO is news.

• 24:06Rich Roll?

  Well, the legacy, you know, he, he was at the forefront of creating that kind of idea of being a different type of leader. And I think you see that in startup culture now. And I would suspect that he deserves quite a bit of credit for that. I mean, this is a guy who, he, you know, he did do events where he's sitting with Bill Clinton, you know, at some big fancy conference, but then you'd see him on stage somewhere else and he has a mohawk that's like two feet high, you know, like, and he was a partier, like, that's the thing. You know, this guy loved to be with people. He loved to be out late into the night, you know, having a good time. That all becomes relevant in the wake of him stepping down as CEO. We should mention that he sells the company.

• 24:51Rich Roll?

  To Amazon for like 1.2 billion, you know, makes a ridiculous amount of money, continues to be the CEO, but I don't know exactly when he stepped down, but it was sometime last year.

• 25:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 25:01Rich Roll?

  And with that, as you might imagine, it appears from reading these, these, these long read articles on his life, that there was a bit of an existential crisis about what to do next. So he ends up moving to Park City. He surrounds himself with quite a few sycophants who he's paying, they're all on his part, on his payroll essentially. Like, I think for a lot of them, there was something about, he would say, tell me, you know, what your dream salary is, and then he would double it.

• 25:29Adam Skolnick?

  Is that right?

• 25:30Rich Roll?

  Buying homes for some of these people.

• 25:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he was buying up Park City in kind of the same way he was downtown Las Vegas.

• 25:36Rich Roll?

  Right. There was an idea that he was gonna try to replicate, I think that was his idea, like, I want to replicate what I've done, done in downtown Las Vegas and Park City.

• 25:44Adam Skolnick?

  Except that Park City wasn't, wasn't derelict.

• 25:46Rich Roll?

  It's a very different kind of community. Yeah. Yeah. So, he moves there, quite a bit of partying is going on. Meanwhile, COVID hits. And for a guy who is an introvert, but also seemingly needed to be around a lot of people, being deprived of that took its toll on, on him emotionally in a, in a pretty significant way. And he starts doing all this weird stuff, like experimenting with all kinds of psychedelics and, you know, really amping up his dosage of whatever he was taking and doing.

• 26:18Adam Skolnick?

  They said that in the Wall Street Journal, also drinking more, right?

• 26:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I guess. And then doing all this other weird sort of behavior, that I guess you could shroud in, in soul searching, or even biohacking, but.

• 26:34Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 26:35Rich Roll?

  But I think is indicative of somebody who's, who's in trouble, who's having a hard time and, and searching for answers outside of himself. He ends up dwindling down to like 100 pounds, he's doing these crazy fasts, and he's experimenting with oxygen deprivation, and that ultimately is related to how he passes away.

• 26:54Adam Skolnick?

  Just breathing nitrous oxide.

• 26:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and he's locking himself in sheds, and he's obsessed with candles, and he, like, he starts fires, and he's breathing in the smoke, like, that's part of the oxygen deprivation thing. Ultimately, it appears that that's what contributed to his, to his passing.

• 27:09Adam Skolnick?

  Do you want to get into that now? He, there was a fire in New London, Connecticut.

• 27:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:14Adam Skolnick?

  And one report is that he barricaded himself inside this, they call it a shed, but it was like a three-bedroom structure.

• 27:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know it was that large. I was envisioning some little tool shed in the backyard.

• 27:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I know, I know. Well, maybe in New London, that's how, sheds are three-bedroom or something. But it was like a structure because the three-bedroom structure was on fire, according to that story. And then family couldn't get to him. And so originally, the reporting was, you know, it was just accidental fire, whatever. But then one firefighter did report that, that the person had barricaded himself inside. That doesn't mean.

• 27:49Rich Roll?

  But didn't he also tell his friends, like, "Check on me every five minutes"?

• 27:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:53Rich Roll?

  So it's hard to, it's hard to say that there was any kind of suicidal ideation. Like, it wasn't a result of that.

• 28:00Adam Skolnick?

  But it was some sort of stunt of some kind.

• 28:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Rich Roll?

  Well, he was, he was, I mean, among his experiments, he was like trying not to urinate. You know, he was attempting to induce hypoxia. I think that's what that was all about.

• 28:13Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 28:15Rich Roll?

  But, you know, ultimately dies as a result of complications from that shit incident.

• 28:19Adam Skolnick?

  Smoke inhalation a week later.

• 28:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, only 46 years old. Meanwhile, there was indications that he was in trouble. There's this letter that's been published where Jewel, who he was friends with, wrote him a letter basically saying, "Look, man, you're going down the wrong path here. Like, I'm worried about you and you're surrounded by all these people who won't tell you the truth about how you're behaving." So it wasn't unnoticed, but he didn't have people in his immediate circle who could intervene and, of course, correct him.

• 28:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Rich Roll?

  There's this legendary story that Tony used to tell about the moment when he sold Zappos to Amazon, where he traveled to Seattle to pitch Zappos to Jeff Bezos. Who, like I said, ultimately acquired the company for a crazy amount of money, like 1.2 billion, I think. And in the middle of the presentation, Tony starts talking about the science of happiness and how, you know, at Zappos, he was trying to use the company to serve the customers and the employees better. And Bezos then says, well, you know, people are pretty bad at predicting what will make them happy. And Tony then says, yes, but apparently you are very good at predicting

• 29:45Rich Roll?

  PowerPoint slides, because his next slide addressed that very thing. But this idea of being bad at predicting what will make people happy is so interesting, because you can make the argument that Tony couldn't predict his own happiness. And this is a guy who wrote a New York Times bestselling book called Delivering Happiness. Like, he was the happiness guy. He was all about serving other people. And he was an incredible example of that, because he was unbelievably giving in his own life. And yet, the irony, the inescapable irony, of course, being that he was seeking out happiness that eluded him. Like, the guy who was all about happiness seemingly died an unhappy person. Does that surprise you?

• 30:27Rich Roll?

  Does and it doesn't. I mean, you see it again and again. Like, there is this... It's not unusual to see somebody who is seeking, whether it's happiness, or fulfillment, or approval. Successful business people, you can say, well, they're doing it through money. And then they get the money, it doesn't work. They consolidate power, power doesn't work. They try to find it in sex, or polyamory, or something like that. Right. You know, then you turn to drugs, maybe drugs will be the answer, which, which, you know, kind of broadens the aperture of what we want to talk about, because that involves psychedelics, and psychedelics are, you know, very much...

• 31:09Rich Roll?

  In the news at the moment as a treatment protocol for that thing that we're seeking, that that that sense of happiness, or as a protocol for dealing with things like depression or PTSD.

• 31:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Rich Roll?

  Obviously, in Tony's case, you know, he's taking it to these extreme levels like, you know, losing all, you know, dwindling down to 98 pounds, fasting, breathing, you know, all of these practices. So what is fueling all of that? Like, why is it that this guy who seemingly had everything, who was about happiness, who was so generous with the people that he cared about, was pushing the envelope so hard at this phase in his life where most people would look at it and say, dude, just like, hang out, it's good.

• 31:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 31:54Rich Roll?

  You built this amazing thing, like, take a breath, enjoy your life.

• 31:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 31:58Rich Roll?

  For some reason, it appears that that escaped him, his ability to do that.

• 32:03Adam Skolnick?

  It appears so. I mean, you know, I think of Martin Seligman, who started the positivity, I think, at University of Pennsylvania. It's called Authentic Happiness. It's like a whole school of psychology, positive psychology out of University of Pennsylvania. He was one of the people that was the first to study happiness. And then there was the, a guy named Philip Brickman, who's early on, a psychology happiness person, I think, for 40 years, he studied it. He was the guy that did the lottery winners and accident victims study, which, you know, if you, if you meet a lottery winner and someone who became a paraplegic, and you interview him the day after it happens, and then a year after it happens, it's, it's interesting

• 32:48Adam Skolnick?

  how, in the day after it happens, yes, you're gonna have a big disparity, but a year later, sometimes the paraplegics actually fared better than the lottery winners, of course.

• 32:57Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:58Adam Skolnick?

  You know, in my own life, someone who has been broke is a joke, and has had eviction notices on their door, and was never a money guy, like, I never really made my decisions for, for money, at least not until...

• 33:13Rich Roll?

  But now that you're a podcaster...

• 33:17Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 33:18Rich Roll?

  Not till you you got a little of that can't hurt me cash?

• 33:22Adam Skolnick?

  I joke about it, but I I used to be like, you know, you know, the whole thing of money can't buy happiness. No, but it can buy happier. I've learned that. But that's up to a point. I think that's what these studies show. It's up to the point. Anyway, the not to bury the lead, but Philip Brickman took his own life and he was an expert in happiness. So it's almost like there and I think we should get back to the psychedelic drugs in a second, but like, because I've taken my share of those too, but and I, you know, and we should talk about that. But I think there's something, the problem isn't happiness. The problem is like, what are we chasing as human beings? What's the human animal looking for?

• 34:05Adam Skolnick?

  Because I'm not sure happiness is what we're designed to look for and consume and thrive under. You know, I think happiness is great. We all want to be happy. We all want comfort. We all want to be fed and watered and loved. But I don't think happiness is a person, a permanent state anyway. And to pursue it at, as the main goal in life, might be actually the wrong thing to do.

• 34:31Rich Roll?

  Well, happiness is a very effusive, fleeting emotion. It's it's not really a state of being. It's like a byproduct of something else that kind of comes and goes. And I don't think we're hardwired to just be quote unquote, happy like as a, as a permanent state, right?

• 34:50Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  I like to think of it more in terms of, of, you know, feeling purposeful, intentional, living a meaningful life. And as a result of those things, like being fulfilled, like I'm very fulfilled in this vocation and in what we're doing right now. Sometimes it makes me happy, but often it makes me frustrated and anxious and all of those things, but I wouldn't trade it for some kind of, you know, state of, of, I don't know, like perpetual bliss. No, I don't think that's what, you know.

• 35:20Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, listen, I'm talking to a very accomplished ultra athlete. Those are not the people that seek out happiness typically, right? Like, you're seeking something beyond that. You're seeking, you, like, Ultra is the crucible to which you learn about yourself. It's kind of a good analogy, in some ways, to psychedelics. Although psychedelics would be a shortcut. But like, you know, you're not trying to be comfortable when you sign up for a, you know, to do five Ironmans and-

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  And by all indications, that pursuit of comfort ultimately, you know, leads us away from happiness. Like, I, uh, last night, I got a screener for this new documentary that's coming out on Netflix called Less is More by the Minimalists guys. You know the Minimalists? Joshua and Ryan. So they're coming tomorrow to talk to me.

• 36:07Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 36:07Rich Roll?

  And this documentary, which is their second documentary, if you haven't seen Minimalism, their first one, it's fantastic. It's on Netflix. Everybody should watch that movie. I've talked about it many times. Directed by Matt D'Avella, who's gone on to become like this huge YouTuber. He's very talented and just, you know, they're just really good, cool people on a really important mission. So I'm watching this documentary last night, Less is More, which is all about what minimalism is and what it isn't. But essentially, the message is about, you know, where our consumerist ideology, which is really the foundation upon which this country is established, you know, leads us away from these things like happiness and fulfillment and living a life of purpose

• 36:52Rich Roll?

  and meaning, et cetera. And essentially, the things that are most valuable aren't things at all. This is, you know, what Joshua says in the movie, but they're these intangible things. And they're the things that we don't spend enough time trying to cultivate in our lives, like community and, you know, service and things like that. Those are the things that actually genetically were hardwired to, that provide us with those emotions that we're seeking through the accumulation of material belongings.

• 37:27Adam Skolnick?

  It's fulfillment, not happiness.

• 37:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, those are two different things, for sure.

• 37:34Adam Skolnick?

  But which one is the-

• 37:35Rich Roll?

  I would pick fulfillment over happiness. Like, I don't even know how you pursue- Happiness.

• 37:42Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you can. I mean, like, there's this idea that, I think the idea that Tony was trying to put out there was that there's a way to have a happier workforce, because what does happier workforce mean? It means employee retention, you keep the intelligence, industrial, whatever it is.

• 37:56Rich Roll?

  But that happiness is a product of them being fulfilled in their, in their role in the company, right? Because they feel empowered, they feel seen and heard, they're taken care of, they're respected, you know, all of these things that, yeah, I guess, fall under the, the umbrella of happiness in some respect, but, you know, how are we defining happiness? And what does that actually mean?

• 38:17Adam Skolnick?

  It's a good question. It reminds me of like, it's like the intellectual version of what Guru Singh always talks about when he talks about food, you know, people, people nourish their bodies based on the, the first inch of taste buds.

• 38:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:29Adam Skolnick?

  You know how he talks about that?

• 38:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:30Adam Skolnick?

  And, and it's like, uh, it's the same, that's, it's kind of like the intellectual equivalent, like, I'm unhappy today. Today, I'm sad, you know, like, and depression's a real thing. I'm not talking about depression, but we're talking about, like, can I be happier? The grass is always greener. Um, and that's the kind of stuff you can get through by pursuing fulfillment over happiness. Because if you're always kind of, not every day is, you don't wake up happy every day. Some days, you don't even sleep well. How can you possibly wake up happy? Um, I think, I think, uh, that, that's where you go wrong.

• 39:04Rich Roll?

  Well, there's also a conversation to be had about the pursuit of those states externally versus internally. Like, you can, you can cultivate an environment that's more conducive to those types of emotions, and that's certainly what Tony was about with his Zappos Corporation.

• 39:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  Um, but ultimately, it's also, and fundamentally, mostly, it's about your relationship with yourself, right? So you can be in a great job, but if you're disconnected from who you are, or you're, you know, in, in the wrong career path, or... You don't understand how to have functional relationships with other people, or you have unresolved childhood trauma, or you know, all of these things contribute to that, right? And if you're blind to that, and instead focused on the big screen TV, or the next thing that you're gonna buy, or the job promotion, or the car lease, then you're losing the opportunity to really, you know, wrestle with what it is that fundamentally is gonna lead you towards a path of greater fulfillment, and as a byproduct, happiness.

• 40:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I think it's interesting, I think it's important to say that we're not kind of trying to get in his head and claim this is how he was.

• 40:15Rich Roll?

  No, and I'm not.

• 40:16Adam Skolnick?

  This is all coming from an article that we read.

• 40:18Rich Roll?

  Right, and I'm not vilifying this guy in any way, like I'm, I'm celebrating his life.

• 40:22Adam Skolnick?

  No, you are.

• 40:22Rich Roll?

  But I'm looking at his passing as an opportunity to, you know, do a case study on, you know, the trajectory of, of a, of a very successful life, what may have gone wrong, and what we can learn from that for ourselves.

• 40:38Adam Skolnick?

  And the reason that we, we are surmising that it's gone wrong, or that things weren't going well, I mean, his own family in that Wall Street Journal story is said to have been planning intervention for him. So I think.

• 40:51Rich Roll?

  And certainly if you read Jules' letter, you know, it's, it's pretty clear that he wasn't in a good place.

• 40:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I think we should unpack a little bit about the psychedelics, because I know that that, there's kind of overlap there with, with kind of some stuff that you talk about in Guess even, and so what are your thoughts on that? Because I know that it seemed, according to that one, one story, that he was increasing his intake in ecstasy, and I think, was it mushrooms, or something like that?

• 41:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think there was some psilocybin, I don't know if there was ayahuasca or DMT. I mean, he was a big Burning Man guy, so I wouldn't be surprised. I'm sure he's had plenty of psychedelic experiences in, in his path, and maybe, maybe those were spiritual breakthroughs for him that, that contributed to this culture that he created at Zappos. So I'm not demonizing any of this, but I do think it's important to at least take a moment to pause on this notion of. Psychedelia for a moment because we're in a cultural moment right now where there is this convergence of that particular genus of drug culture with the wellness movement.

• 42:04Rich Roll?

  Like those two circles are starting to overlap and to create a Venn diagram. And I think we need to appreciate just how incredibly powerful these mind altering substances are and that their use, specifically their routine use is not without ramifications or consequences. Despite the fact that there is some incredible research coming out that's been widely reported regarding the therapeutic application of these substances, which I don't dispute and I do celebrate when you see work coming out of Johns Hopkins that psilocybin can help ameliorate depression or PTSD.

• 42:49Rich Roll?

  Right. And these other therapeutic applications that are starting to emerge from the scientific community, these are good things. Like I'm celebrating that, but I also think that there's a difference between that and the kind of, you know, what happens is you see that and then for some reason that creates a permissive attitude around these substances and it trickles down into what does become routine or overly routine use with people. Right. So, you know, if you look at, Tim Ferriss talks about this all the time on his podcast. I think he's, he's helped fund some of those studies coming out of Johns Hopkins. Oh, really? If you read Michael Pollan's book. That's a feedback loop.

• 43:34Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, I think it's a personal interest to him. Right. You know, I think that he's, he's very emotionally engaged with that, with that whole thing. And I think that's a good thing. And, you know, he talks about it all the time. And then there's Michael Pollan's book, How to Change Your Mind, you know, and I think there's a lot that can be learned from, you know, he subjected himself to all of these different drugs and reported on it and did a deep dive into, into the science. So again, I'm not.

• 44:02Rich Roll?

  Raising this in any disparaging way whatsoever, I celebrate all of this. But I do think it should be said, in my opinion, that there is an epidemic right now of very unhappy people, a lot of people who are in considerable pain. And although some, or perhaps even many of these people, may be good candidates for that kind of chemical therapy, there are too many people out there who are casually and irresponsibly looking to these substances for answers, for the answers that elude them. In this effort to kind of shortcut the path to greater self-actualization, or happiness, or at the end of that spectrum.

• 44:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 44:40Rich Roll?

  Enlightenment.

• 44:41Adam Skolnick?

  Or sobriety.

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  And it does come.

• 44:42Adam Skolnick?

  I've heard of people actually going and did ayahuasca treatment in Mexico to stop taking opioids. I know somebody who did that.

• 44:50Rich Roll?

  And I, yeah, I do too. And I know people who have done that, and it's been successful for them.

• 44:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 44:55Rich Roll?

  So again, I'm not robbing those people of those experiences.

• 44:58Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 44:58Rich Roll?

  I'm validating that. But that's different from, "I'm gonna do ayahuasca every weekend, or we're gonna take mushrooms all the time because I'm unhappy and this is my solution." It's more complicated than that. And if ayahuasca was so effective, then there'd be a lot of enlightened people walking around right now. Now, some of those people are better people as a result of those experiences. Again, I fully acknowledge that. But I think there's also a lot of people who are a little bit awash and lost, and return to those experiences, looking for answers that continue to elude them. So there is no panacea here.

• 45:37Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 45:38Rich Roll?

  And I'm always suspect when something appears in the culture as a shortcut to these things that all of us seek more of, and that there is a dearth of right now, these feelings of engagement with ourselves and the world, and a sense of grounded belonging, and community, and love, and compassion, and the like. So I'm only sounding a little bit of... Not even really a cautionary tale, but maybe just a pause button.

• 46:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 46:08Rich Roll?

  So that we can reflect a little bit on this. In Los Angeles right now, like the pot dispensaries are like Starbucks. You know, and there is this idea. That like, oh, well, you know, THC is just part of your wellness routine and like microdosing and all of these things. It's like, I'm biased because I'm a product of 12 step and I'm somebody who has addiction issues. So I have my own, you know, kind of set of ideas around all this kind of stuff that maybe make me a little bit more calcified to the new ideas. But I just think that that's dangerous.

• 46:41Adam Skolnick?

  Well, it's not just Los Angeles. I mean, you know, it just got decriminalized nationwide and it's, and it's in lots of places. But, um, and I think the big fear was young people were going to be the ones that end up getting high all the time and it impacts their brain development. And what we've learned is it's the baby boomers who go on QAnon and just get high and watch YouTube all day. They're the ones who really we should have been watching out for this whole time.

• 47:04Rich Roll?

  Well, if they just did that, I'd be fine with it.

• 47:06Adam Skolnick?

  If they just watch YouTube.

• 47:07Rich Roll?

  It's when it spills into the world that it becomes problematic.

• 47:11Adam Skolnick?

  You know what? I, I, I keep thinking of a couple of things. One with, in terms of hacking your way to something, I think there is something inherently dangerous in thinking that you can take a shortcut, especially to something as, you know, look, you're 12 step, but you know, you're sober for years and years and years. And maybe there's something to going slower to get there and making it last longer. I don't know. I haven't looked at the studies, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a higher relapse in people that, that do a shortcut versus that people that are, are in the community and doing the daily, daily work that you do.

• 47:47Rich Roll?

  Are you saying that it's about the journey, Adam?

• 47:50Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know. Well, speaking of journeys, at the same time, like the first time I ever kind of like had that crack open, love the world feeling was tripping. So like, you know, to me psychedelics were an important part of kind of cracking me open.

• 48:05Rich Roll?

  It was a portal.

• 48:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's a portal.

• 48:06Rich Roll?

  And I think, yeah, and like, look, as a sober guy, like that, that, that's like a tripwire, you know, like that pushes my buttons. Cause I know, I know sober people who have in sobriety, uh, volunteered for psychedelic, like under, you know, supervision had psychedelic experiences. And I think we've talked about this before, but, and, and emerged from it saying that it was revelatory.

• 48:29Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 48:30Rich Roll?

  And so that's interesting to me. Like, would that be something that I would want to check out? Maybe. I don't know. I won't dismiss it. But again, my instinct is, you know, that the answers that I'm seeking are not going to be found in a substance. That's not to say that that might not open up some portal for me and, and put right in front of me some blind spot that I have. But when you tell somebody in recovery that the answer to their, their problem lies in a mind altering substance, like, you know, it's like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, like, everything lights up in your brain. And that scares me.

• 49:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Well, I get it. I also actually don't even believe that. I think what it did for me, and I was very young at the time, I was probably 20 at the time, is it showed me that love can be unconditional and expansive.

• 49:18Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:19Adam Skolnick?

  And then, and then I was dropped right back into my body that I didn't necessarily love, or didn't feel very expansive. And the, the way to actually get there in life and day to day life, isn't to take that drug again and again.

• 49:34Rich Roll?

  You got the lesson.

• 49:35Adam Skolnick?

  It's the lesson.

• 49:36Rich Roll?

  You learned what you needed to learn.

• 49:37Adam Skolnick?

  And then you have to keep moving in, in life in a way that's productive. And, and, and so he didn't have to do that because he had too many resources at his disposal, perhaps. And he could do whatever he wanted any day. But there's danger to that level of freedom, to not being tethered to, to having to do X, Y, or Z to get to, you know, pay bills, or to accomplish this task or that task. It's almost like freedom and happiness were, were kind of what became the undertow. And I would want to touch on escapism, because I think that came up in a couple of the stories. He was into escapism. And I'm not against escapism, because like, if you look at the way the world is, and the way people treat each other, and, you know, who would not want to escape from that every once in a

• 50:21Adam Skolnick?

  while? Like, we escape in it in our different ways, you know, whether it's a trail run, or a free dive session, or an open water swim. That's what it is. I mean, that's to me what it is. And I'm totally down with that. Like, I think, I think you'd be crazy not to want to. Check out for a little bit and try to reconnect in something that's bigger than the bullshit that we see every day. And I know a lot of your listeners are nodding in agreement would feel the same exact way. Escapism isn't the problem. The problem is when escapism becomes everything.

• 50:55Rich Roll?

  Well, two things, I agree. And two other things that I took, that I take away from this. One is the very significant emotional and mental toll that the pandemic has on a lot of people, right? This is a guy who could not be alone, like he needed to be around people. And suddenly, when that was removed from the realm of possibilities, I think that that impacted him disproportionately. Like, I think that's a big part of what led to this spiral. And maybe being around people, you know, I don't know, you know, I don't know him, and I can't get inside his head. But maybe, you know, him being around people all the time was some kind of distraction that kept whatever demons he had at bay.

• 51:39Rich Roll?

  Being a social animal amidst a group of people, maybe he could be part of it, but also hide in it. And when that's gone, and you're forced to be with yourself, the discomfort of that became unbearable. And he started to look for different ways to, you know, medicate that.

• 51:55Adam Skolnick?

  It's interesting. He was interested in the communal mind, right? He was interested in that, like, the hive mind. And maybe that was another escape, like you said, wait, so he could get out of his own mind.

• 52:05Rich Roll?

  Right. The second thing is, no matter how successful you get, it's absolutely critical that you surround yourself with people who can give you objective feedback, right? Like, too many stories of people that get successful and are surrounded by yes people, or people that have a financial incentive and you, you know, not being as healthy as you should be. And, you know, things go haywire.

• 52:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 52:34Rich Roll?

  So surround yourself with good people and solicit feedback, honest feedback on how you're living. And when people deliver that, don't take it personally.

• 52:43Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 52:43Rich Roll?

  Right? Like, thank them for that. Because that's the stuff that's ultimately gonna catalyze the growth.

• 52:50Adam Skolnick?

  Growth over happiness.

• 52:52Rich Roll?

  But beautiful man, Tony, and it's quite sad what happened. So

• 52:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 52:58Rich Roll?

  I celebrate his life.

• 52:59Adam Skolnick?

  But his life was kind of a work of art in a way.

• 53:02Rich Roll?

  It was.

• 53:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Rich Roll?

  An incredible work of art.

• 53:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 53:04Rich Roll?

  Incredible work of art. So he will be missed. So let's take a break and we'll come back with a bunch more stuff.

• 53:24Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 53:25Rich Roll?

  We ready to go?

• 53:26Adam Skolnick?

  Let's get into it.

• 53:27Rich Roll?

  Should we talk a little antitrust?

• 53:29Adam Skolnick?

  Let's talk antitrust. You're, you are.

• 53:31Rich Roll?

  Cause it's fascinating.

• 53:32Adam Skolnick?

  People don't realize you're an antitrust expert.

• 53:37Rich Roll?

  It is, it might be one of the few As that I got in law school.

• 53:41Adam Skolnick?

  Rich Roll got an A or two in law school.

• 53:45Rich Roll?

  Right. Which, let's just be clear. My father is an antitrust lawyer.

• 53:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 53:50Rich Roll?

  So, so infer as you will, my deep seated need to get approval from my dad. That would have been the one A that I got.

• 54:00Adam Skolnick?

  Now, in law school, did you have your Stanford swimming hair going still? Or did it grow out by then?

• 54:05Rich Roll?

  Who knows, man? I was drunk the whole time. It's very, it's, it's all murky. But no, not swimming, not swimming, not the chlorinated hair. Oh, you mean the flat top?

• 54:16Adam Skolnick?

  The flat top that you supported on.

• 54:17Rich Roll?

  No, no, no. We would get a flat top before big meets every year. So, yeah, I would rock that like once a year.

• 54:26Adam Skolnick?

  That was just for me?

• 54:27Rich Roll?

  Not, not a solid look.

• 54:28Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. Well.

• 54:30Rich Roll?

  With the glasses that take up like the whole face too.

• 54:32Adam Skolnick?

  Cause I mean, with, with that mane you have, I would, I was gonna be like, God, did he do that all in college? Because that'd be unfortunate. I have to wear my hair. This is the only way that it looks good.

• 54:41Rich Roll?

  And you could grow it long. You could get a mullet going.

• 54:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I could do like the Trump mullet and like comb it over. That could be a good look.

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Adam Skolnick?

  No?

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  Let's try that. Diet blonde.

• 54:53Adam Skolnick?

  Bio hack for you.

• 54:54Rich Roll?

  Antitrust. Are we gonna have, we could have a new category of a podcast, Legal Corner.

• 55:00Adam Skolnick?

  Ooh, Legal Corner with Rich Roll. You wanna try to reclaim?

• 55:03Rich Roll?

  We'll see how this goes.

• 55:04Adam Skolnick?

  The problem is then we're gonna start getting calls and asking you to take the case. The next thing you know, you're in front of Judge Judy and it's a whole series and Netflix buys it.

• 55:11Rich Roll?

  There is a reason why we're bringing up antitrust today.

• 55:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 55:14Rich Roll?

  Because it impacts all of us because I would suspect most people listening or watching are. On Facebook or have some connection to Facebook. And Facebook is very much in the news right now.

• 55:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 55:25Rich Roll?

  Facing antitrust backlash. The US government and 48 states have sued Facebook for illegally crushing competitors and demanding the company to undo its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. And I think it's worth talking about for a couple of reasons, because it does affect all of us so deeply. And I think it raises interesting questions about the power of these massive platforms and the control to which they exert over our lives, which obviously is a subject you and I have talked about before with the Social Dilemma documentary and also talking about Feels Good Man.

• 56:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:09Rich Roll?

  Which I just had those guys. So this is the second podcast that we've recorded in the new studio because I had the filmmakers from that documentary here the other day. That episode's not going to go up for a little while, but I'm telling you right now, that one is not to be missed. We had an unbelievable conversation that's rooted and related to how we use these platforms and the impact that they have. And to the extent that they are wielding monopolistic power in an anti-competitive, anti-consumer way, I do think, as bland as a legal discussion around antitrust potentially might be, that it was worth planting a flag here and talking about it for a few minutes.

• 56:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, just for a few minutes, teachable moment on why it's important. I mean, I think, you know, one thing that comes to mind for me is like, if you're going to have a brain that you carry around with you in your hand, it would be better if it wasn't just a few dominant companies that are controlling most of what you're getting and seeing and accessing, because that starts to play on you. I think that's what you were talking about with the guys. And so the idea is kind of from what my understanding is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that they, the government, Facebook acquired Instagram and WhatsApp.

• 57:31Adam Skolnick?

  And 2012 for WhatsApp, 2014 for Instagram. And in some reports, they're saying the government signed off on those acquisitions. Kara Swisher says that they just didn't intervene and they allowed them to go forward. And now with more data and more, better understanding of how that has transformed the innovation in social media or lack thereof, the government is now saying that they acquired them in order to crush competition in that space. And because of that, that's illegal. That's my interpretation of it. Is that correct?

• 58:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, the federal argument and state argument is that these organizations, particularly in this case, Facebook, because that's what these specific lawsuits are about. The Google stuff's a little bit different, but in the, in the Facebook context, the argument is that Facebook is trying to reduce competition by purchasing rivals in an explicit violation of the antitrust laws. Essentially, when another platform or a new technological advancement, you know, comes up before, or when it looks like it's an emerging threat to Facebook's business, they are faced with the decision of either crushing it or acquiring it. And in the case of WhatsApp and Instagram, they acquired these companies, they consolidated their power.

• 58:53Rich Roll?

  And that has a downstream impact of reducing competition in the marketplace at large. Facebook's argument is that, as you said, the government signed off on these acquisitions. 2012 was WhatsApp, 2014 Instagram, they went through the whole process. Like when you, when you're a large company and you're acquiring another company, the FTC and the Justice Department have to get involved. Like as a lawyer, I've been involved in, in these situations. Like you have to produce a tremendous amount of documents. It's called a second request that the FTC does where they look over everything and they have to do an analysis, like is this going to have an anti-competitive impact on the marketplace? Or what is the impact on the consumer?

• 59:38Rich Roll?

  So this gets run through their system. And in the case of Facebook, Kara Swisher said they allowed it to happen, but I'm sure if you were to talk to one of the FTC lawyers that they did look at this stuff pretty intently, signed off on it. So Facebook's saying that a do-over is unfair. And second to that, their other argument is that Facebook actually made Instagram and WhatsApp better than they could have been on their own. If you listen to Kara and Scott Galloway and their podcast Pivot, they talk about this at length. And Scott, who's a professor of business at NYU and has an amazing mind for these kinds of things, he's basically like, I don't think that that's true. I think that if you look at WhatsApp, for example, what would WhatsApp have been had it been

• 1:00:23Rich Roll?

  independent, particularly in a pandemic? Maybe they would have gotten into video. Maybe they would have innovated in different ways. Maybe they would have acquired some other company. Maybe WhatsApp and Zoom would have merged. You can't say that these apps are better by dint of being under the umbrella of Facebook. In fact, you could make the argument that Facebook has impeded their ability to iterate because when you're part of a massive organization, you're not going to be able to be as nimble with your technological advances. The problem with all of this, we're just at the starting gate of these lawsuits, is that the burden of proof in an antitrust case is quite steep and it's two-pronged.

• 1:01:06Rich Roll?

  Essentially, the government has to show that Facebook purchased its rivals with the express purpose of squelching or killing off competition. So essentially, they have to prove intent. And proving intent is very difficult.

• 1:01:20Adam Skolnick?

  Although Swisher is hinting that there's some interesting Zuckerberg emails that are going to come out of this.

• 1:01:27Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a book coming out, right, about Facebook?

• 1:01:30Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. And she's hinting at like some emails where he's basically hinting at, I want, we got to crush Instagram or crush WhatsApp.

• 1:01:37Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Yeah, I've heard that. I mean, I think those emails have been, like, they acknowledge that intent, right? But then they'll deploy a battery of defense lawyers that say that's taken out of context or what have you.

• 1:01:52Adam Skolnick?

  Pretty sure they're gonna have some good lawyers.

• 1:01:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Facebook is not gonna go quietly into the night on this. They have too much to lose. They're gonna fight this tooth and nail for sure. I mean, and the second prong of this burden of proof is that is that the government has to show that the consumers in the market would have been better off without the merger. And that's, that's hard. That's a tough road to hoe. And my favorite part, there's a couple of New York Times articles on this that, that we'll link up in the show notes. But there was one where, uh, where my former antitrust law professor, George Hay, law professor at Cornell and former antitrust official at the Justice Department was quoted. So I felt so good about that. He basically said, "It should be assumed that Facebook will seek to obtain all the internal work product that lay behind the original decisions,

• 1:02:36Rich Roll?

  that the acquisitions did not pose a competitive problem."

• 1:02:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:02:41Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:02:43Rich Roll?

  So, this is just beginning, but I think it's gonna be fascinating.

• 1:02:47Adam Skolnick?

  It's gonna be years, right?

• 1:02:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's gonna take years, but to watch this, you know, the, the battle lines are being drawn. And if I was a law student right now, or a young lawyer looking to be in the middle of the action, I think being at the FTC or the Justice Department right now would be an amazing place to be because I think antitrust activity is gonna explode with growing political will to really look at these gigantic companies and the deleterious impact of the power that they wield over the market and the consumers.

• 1:03:23Adam Skolnick?

  What do you think is, if they're doing, if Facebook is now, what do you see as some future kind of terrain that, that antitrust lawyers might look at?

• 1:03:33Rich Roll?

  Well, face, you know, honestly, I think, I think that, that you do need to decouple WhatsApp and Instagram from Facebook. I, I think 100% that consumers would be better off and Facebook needs to be right sized with that. But then, when we look at the other big players out there,

• 1:03:53Rich Roll?

  In the pecking order of like, who would be next? I mean, Facebook is the easy first target because there's this sensibility around Mark Zuckerberg and this kind of, you know, the evil empire idea. Right. So that it's, I'm not surprised that they're going after Facebook first, but who's, who's next? And, you know, I would look at Amazon and their, you know, suite of businesses that they lord control over. AWS, they, they run, they, they own the biggest cloud service in the world. Like, remember when, was it Twitter? No, there was a day when like, you couldn't refresh your podcasts, like all the podcasts were not available for a couple hours because all of these platforms are backed up on AWS. Like AWS is like the engine

• 1:04:38Rich Roll?

  behind the internet. Right. And the idea that that's owned by Amazon, this e-commerce website is crazy. If you're smart, you would prophylactically decouple some of these businesses from your core enterprise as a measure, as a defense measure against the government going after you. And that's something that Karen and Scott Galloway were talking about with respect to Google. Scott was saying that, you know, if you look at Google, all right, you know, should YouTube be part of Google? Like certainly those are businesses that should be separated, but Google's not going to voluntarily cut ties with YouTube and spin it off. But if they

• 1:05:18Rich Roll?

  were smart, you know, if you listen to what Scott's saying, they would spin off their cloud service, right? Like let go of Drive to say, we're a good actor in the space. Try to save YouTube? Don't go after us. Yeah. Yeah. So they can hold on to YouTube. Right. Right? You know what I mean? Like, it's going to be fascinating to see the, the kind of jockeying and the strategy and the moves that these companies are, you know, are going to make. But I think breaking them up will be this amazing spark to innovation in the space. And I think consumers will benefit from that. So you think it's going to happen? Well, the lawsuits are moving forward. Right. You know, how they'll play out is anybody's guess, but I do think it's interesting that this is happening right at the end of the Trump administration as we're heading

• 1:06:01Rich Roll?

  into Biden. Certainly the Biden administration is going to be much more.

• 1:06:08Rich Roll?

  Politically interested in this, although Trump, you know, he was on record as saying these companies are too big and seemed to have an interest in.

• 1:06:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I mean, ultimately, these Justice Department, the people who bring these suits, they aren't really politically appointees.

• 1:06:24Rich Roll?

  No, but if you're at DOJ, if you're the Attorney General, like, you're, you know, you're still taking orders from the White House in terms of the kind of cases that they want you to pursue or not pursue.

• 1:06:36Adam Skolnick?

  It's interesting, you know, when it comes to consumers, when you, you know, having seen Social Dilemma, and we've talked about it, is like, who are the consumers of Facebook and Google and YouTube? Because it seems like their consumers are their advertisers. It's not us.

• 1:06:50Rich Roll?

  It's super interesting, right.

• 1:06:51Adam Skolnick?

  And by users, I mean, we're getting used. And it's like, we do use it, we do access it.

• 1:06:56Rich Roll?

  Well, the Social Dilemma said, we're the product.

• 1:06:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, we're the product and the, and the resource. I mean, look, I do think, I use WhatsApp in my reporting, I use Facebook Messenger in my reporting. I think early on, I used Facebook a lot to connect with subjects and then to keep in touch with people that overseas I wouldn't otherwise see. That became WhatsApp. Small businesses, local businesses are deeply knotted into Instagram. Travel, the travel industry is deeply knotted into Instagram. There are people who this could affect, because if, to decouple, it won't be necessarily so seamless, probably. Although, maybe it will feel seamless to us. But I am in favor, obviously, of reduced corporate hegemony.

• 1:07:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:07:43Adam Skolnick?

  Anyway.

• 1:07:44Rich Roll?

  And the idea that, that the market is better with these companies holding on to all these things, all you have to do is look at antitrust history, like, look at the breakup of, of the telecoms spinning off Ma Bell and all these, you know, smaller, you know, companies. That was a period of great innovation as a result of that, and I think that's what you'll see here now. In terms of the moves that these companies are making, what should they do prophylactically? How are they, you know, trying to protect themselves right now? You see Facebook starting to take their messaging service and, and integrate it across all of their platforms. So it becomes very difficult to disentangle. Whereas, Apple, conversely...

• 1:08:27Rich Roll?

  Is cutting its commission charges on the App Store to say, we're a good actor. Like, I think what Tim Cook is doing and how Apple is proceeding here of all of these, like, they're in the best stead in terms of weathering this and not being a big target. But when Facebook is going out of its way to make separating WhatsApp from the rest of its ecosystem more difficult, to me, that makes them all the more a likely hard target.

• 1:08:58Adam Skolnick?

  Well, also, Apple can afford it because their big money is the phone. It's the hardware. You know, that's where they're making their coin.

• 1:09:04Rich Roll?

  Right. It's a different kind of thing.

• 1:09:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, different.

• 1:09:06Rich Roll?

  But their profitability, I mean, they're so massive, too, that, you know, the lens is gonna get, you know, aimed in their direction at some point. But this idea of who's the customer is super interesting.

• 1:09:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, the advertisers are the customer. That's how they make their money, so they gotta keep them happy.

• 1:09:23Adam Skolnick?

  And that's what I hope comes out of this. Like, that's the, like, who's the consumer? Because, you know, people are gonna, the news is gonna be reported and consumer's gonna be used a lot. And I hope that what we're paying attention to is, I wanna know how, who Facebook thinks the consumer is.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  Well, I think we know that Facebook thinks the consumer is the advertiser.

• 1:09:44Adam Skolnick?

  But what do they call that?

• 1:09:45Rich Roll?

  But what is gonna get reported and how is the narrative gonna be spun? I mean, I think, you know, I think, you know, with the exception of very savvy reporters like Kevin Roos and the like, most of it's gonna get positioned as us being the consumer.

• 1:10:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Rich Roll?

  Don't you think?

• 1:10:03Adam Skolnick?

  I think so. I think user and consumer are two different things in this case, and often they're not. I mean, so, like, that's, that was always the argument for, don't, don't break up Amazon when they were getting all their terrible press for how they operated their business and abuse, employee abuse and whatever, was that you can say what you want, but the consumer gets lower prices.

• 1:10:25Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:25Adam Skolnick?

  You know, they chased, they chased the diaper company out of business, but the consumer gets lower prices. They chased that company out of business. Walmart cracks down on mom and pop shops all over small-town America, but the consumer gets lower prices. But the problem is, when you look at things just like that... The collateral damage is completely ignored and you wouldn't need to buy things so cheap if everyone made a little more money, right? If the wealth was shared a bit more. And that's the biggest problem with tech companies is they siphon money into smaller and smaller straws, or big straws, but for few people.

• 1:11:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Adam Skolnick?

  And that's why I think breaking them up and having more competition means more money gets spread around. And I think that that's not being talked about really, but that's what it's about. It's a way to redistribute wealth in an era of a gilded age.

• 1:11:14Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Yeah, I mean, Facebook's argument is there is a robust market when it comes to social networks and there is a lot of competition when you look at TikTok and Snap and things like that, but is there really?

• 1:11:28Adam Skolnick?

  Who looks at TikTok?

• 1:11:29Rich Roll?

  You know? TikTok's huge.

• 1:11:34Adam Skolnick?

  I know, it's huge.

• 1:11:35Rich Roll?

  We're a bunch of old dudes.

• 1:11:36Adam Skolnick?

  I can't do it.

• 1:11:37Rich Roll?

  That's the bridge too far for me. I mean, my daughters are on it all the time, but you know, yeah, I just, that's where I have to draw the line and say, okay, it's not appropriate.

• 1:11:47Adam Skolnick?

  I know. Maybe I'm just getting older. I'm listening to the Obama book. That's what I'm doing for entertainment.

• 1:11:51Rich Roll?

  How is it?

• 1:11:52Adam Skolnick?

  It's fabulous.

• 1:11:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm sure it is. Him and his little book out there.

• 1:11:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Rich Roll?

  So cute.

• 1:11:59Adam Skolnick?

  Dainty little 750-page, volume one.

• 1:12:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right, well, more will be revealed on this, and I think that concludes this week's edition of Legal Corner.

• 1:12:07Adam Skolnick?

  Slash teachable moment. I hope you learned something, kids.

• 1:12:10Rich Roll?

  What do we got next? We're gonna do a little show and tell.

• 1:12:13Adam Skolnick?

  A little show and tell, baby.

• 1:12:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, my big show and tell, which, you know, we have locked down cameras here, but my show and tell is our new studio.

• 1:12:21Adam Skolnick?

  It's fabulous.

• 1:12:22Rich Roll?

  So check us out. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, go to YouTube and see what the new studio looks like. I mean, we maintain the same aesthetic from the temporary place, but we've dialed it up a notch.

• 1:12:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I'm getting a pedicure right now.

• 1:12:36Rich Roll?

  You are? Yeah, that's right.

• 1:12:38Adam Skolnick?

  It's socially distanced.

• 1:12:39Rich Roll?

  I'm telling you, it is next level.

• 1:12:40Adam Skolnick?

  So next level stuff's going on.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  But you got a couple of things you want to talk about, right?

• 1:12:44Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I just wanted to, because I couldn't make, I wanted to say hi to the guys that made Feels Good, Man, because, just to reiterate, I love that movie. I think it's one of the best documentaries I've seen in years. I highly recommend everyone to see it. And I love Matt Fury and his ill-fated quest to try to reclaim his froggy. Pepe the Frog.

• 1:13:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:05Adam Skolnick?

  Pepe the Frog? Pepe the Frog.

• 1:13:07Rich Roll?

  Pepe.

• 1:13:09Adam Skolnick?

  But so, my wife and I loved it so much, we went out and bought his children's book, The Night Riders, which is his second attempt, I think, at reclaiming Pepe, but in a different way, because he loves drawing frogs.

• 1:13:22Rich Roll?

  Well, it's a different frog.

• 1:13:23Adam Skolnick?

  It's a different frog.

• 1:13:23Rich Roll?

  They say in the movie, it's unrelated to Pepe.

• 1:13:26Adam Skolnick?

  It looks kind of a little like him.

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:28Adam Skolnick?

  But, I mean, the guy's been drawing frogs since he was a kid.

• 1:13:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:31Adam Skolnick?

  So, he's gonna draw them, and it's, the artwork in here is spectacular. I mean, it's like, it's like an art gallery as a children's book, and it's so weird.

• 1:13:40Rich Roll?

  And there's no words in it, right?

• 1:13:41Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:13:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:42Adam Skolnick?

  It's like incredible.

• 1:13:44Rich Roll?

  That mushroom frame was in the movie.

• 1:13:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Adam Skolnick?

  I'll get something. Oh, look at how he eats a moth.

• 1:13:49Rich Roll?

  Right. It is, it is beautiful. He is quite the artist, and it was a bummer that you couldn't be here when, when Giorgio and Arthur were here, because they were, they were amazing, and, and I watched, I watched Feels Good Man a second time to get ready to talk to those guys, and it was better the second time.

• 1:14:07Adam Skolnick?

  I bet.

• 1:14:08Rich Roll?

  I'm telling you, this movie is unbelievable, and it's so shocking to me that everybody isn't talking about this movie constantly.

• 1:14:17Adam Skolnick?

  It, it should be nominated for an Oscar, that's how good it is.

• 1:14:21Rich Roll?

  Hopefully, if, if there's justice in the world, and maybe this is a subject for a future legal corner, if there was justice.

• 1:14:27Adam Skolnick?

  Spoiler alert, there isn't.

• 1:14:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right. They will get an Oscar nomination. But, what's interesting about this movie is, is that despite premiering at Sundance, and, and winning these guys an Emerging Filmmaker Award at that lauded festival, struggled to find a distributor, and so, although it's available on a variety of platforms online, Apple TV, Apple, is it Apple TV, Apple Plus, what do you call it?

• 1:14:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Apple Plus.

• 1:14:56Rich Roll?

  They asked that people watch it there because Amazon takes a big cut if they watch it there. It's available VOD.

• 1:15:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Rich Roll?

  But there is a visibility problem, like it's, it's, it's, it's suffering from discoverability, I think. And so I just want to shout from the mountaintops that I think everybody should see this movie because I just thought it was phenomenal. And everybody that I've turned on to the movie absolutely loves it. Davey's here, he was like watching it the other night texting me like, this is unbelievable, you know, it's insane.

• 1:15:25Adam Skolnick?

  It is insane. It like, I was like oohing and aahing and like feeling, the feelings I was getting similar to I got in Blackfish, which is another great documentary that exposed something that I wasn't aware of. But this is artistically a whole nother level.

• 1:15:41Rich Roll?

  Artistically phenomenal and also so relevant to our everyday lives. Like you watch Blackfish and it alerts you, it's an incredible movie. It alerts you to, you know, a wrong in the world, but it doesn't necessarily, you know, impact you when you open up your computer screen every day.

• 1:16:00Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, that's a perfect example. So you, Blackfish alerts you a wrong in the world. It's very captivating in its own way. Then you have like the R. Crumb movie, which alerts you to weirdness and art in the world in a, in a very disturbing way. And you wrap those things two together and the artistic value of this, I mean, I think the animation, I mean, this just is all those things wrapped up in one. It's, that's why it's so great.

• 1:16:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I was, I was delighted that they were the first, I love you, Adam, but I was delighted they were the first guests in the new podcast studio. And they brought me an incredible gift, which was a print from Boys Club of the actual

• 1:16:36Adam Skolnick?

  The moment.

• 1:16:37Rich Roll?

  Page where, you know, you see the, the four pains or whatever it is culminating in the feels good and, you know, glow bubble.

• 1:16:45Adam Skolnick?

  You're saying it's the page that Matt wishes he never wrote?

• 1:16:47Rich Roll?

  I'm sure, right?

• 1:16:48Adam Skolnick?

  That's the one you have?

• 1:16:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's in like this glow and glow in the dark like color scheme. It's like, you know, I don't know, three by two and a half, like just a beautiful print. And what a, what a. Incredible like artifact of culture, right? So they actually were going up to see Matt over the weekend and they were going to get it signed for me, which I will proudly be hanging in this studio. So I appreciated that.

• 1:17:14Adam Skolnick?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:17:15Rich Roll?

  It's very cool. But that book I want to get in the, in the movie, they talk about the book and I can't remember, was it his, the publisher or some, somebody in publishing was commenting on, on The Night Riders and talking about how it, you know, it, it's, it's very much in the vein of where the wild things are.

• 1:17:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Rich Roll?

  And on that level artistically, it, you know, it's

• 1:17:36Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, it is.

• 1:17:37Rich Roll?

  It's a pretty cool book.

• 1:17:38Adam Skolnick?

  But it doesn't have the words. It doesn't have like the, the neat and tidy story for kids. It's like, you can kind of see it's not necessarily for kids or it's for bigger kids.

• 1:17:48Rich Roll?

  Did you buy it online?

• 1:17:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Rich Roll?

  On Amazon?

• 1:17:51Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not at liberty to say, Rich.

• 1:17:58Rich Roll?

  We will figure out where the best place to buy that is and link it up in the show notes, because if you're listening and you have very young children, I think it would be a really cool holiday gift.

• 1:18:07Adam Skolnick?

  I hear they sell it on Amazon.

• 1:18:09Rich Roll?

  You heard.

• 1:18:10Adam Skolnick?

  I've heard that.

• 1:18:10Rich Roll?

  Right, but I'm not going to quote you on that.

• 1:18:12Adam Skolnick?

  We're not getting into my past purchases on this show right now.

• 1:18:17Adam Skolnick?

  But I did make a past purchase.

• 1:18:19Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:18:19Adam Skolnick?

  Rob Bell's writing class.

• 1:18:21Rich Roll?

  Yes. Friend of the show. I want to hear all about this. You were going to tell me about this earlier and I said, don't tell me, I want to, I want to just hear it fresh on the pod.

• 1:18:28Adam Skolnick?

  Friend of the show, Rob Bell.

• 1:18:29Rich Roll?

  Right. Very good friend of the show and good friend in person.

• 1:18:34Adam Skolnick?

  Also.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  Of both of us.

• 1:18:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. I can't wait till we can see persons again.

• 1:18:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And beautiful human being.

• 1:18:40Adam Skolnick?

  Great human being.

• 1:18:41Rich Roll?

  Incredibly gifted writer and speaker and just guru of all things unlocking creativity.

• 1:18:49Adam Skolnick?

  He's so smart. It's just, that's why I took it. It's like, I took it because A, I took it for a couple of reasons. One is, yes, I'm wrestling with a novel that is kind of occupying a lot of space in my brain and it's not easy for me because it's a different form. I'm not used to it and I have my own little imposter syndrome around it. But also I'm interested in kind of this love, this part, I think we talked about this, this, this time in my career, looking at craftsmanship around writing and around storytelling in ways that I previously was just kind of not, didn't have time to engage in or just wasn't really that interested in engaging in. And so then.

• 1:19:29Adam Skolnick?

  Knowing the third thing, that Rob is so smart and brilliant, that it's fun to listen to him anyway.

• 1:19:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:35Adam Skolnick?

  Talk about anything.

• 1:19:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I could just listen to him read the phone book.

• 1:19:38Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly.

• 1:19:39Rich Roll?

  Raise his eyebrow.

• 1:19:40Adam Skolnick?

  He gets so excited.

• 1:19:41Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:19:42Adam Skolnick?

  Well, and so that's the, and the first thing I noticed is that he and I are very, very different in our approach to our own work. He's very thrilled by it all the time. And like at the beginning of a project, I'm very not thrilled with what I'm producing. And so, but that's the lesson, right? So one thing that he, he goes into the project with, with wonder. So he, this, this class, he went through every book he wrote. And he kind of went through it and told the story behind it. And kind of as he did it, he was opening each book and like, kind of gleefully looking at his chapter titles and just like really stoked on it. And I love that because he's owning it in a way and giving permission to really love yourself and your work at the same time.

• 1:20:27Adam Skolnick?

  And it's a great example. And it's something that I think is my biggest takeaway is to feel free to do that for myself, which I do not feel free to do typically.

• 1:20:36Rich Roll?

  Right. And that enthusiasm and wonder is infectious.

• 1:20:39Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 1:20:40Rich Roll?

  But there's a half-life on that too, because I've, I've, you know, been in his orbit and I feel so good when I'm around him. And, and, and I find myself trying to meet his energy in that way. And then I leave and then I wake up the next day and I'm, I'm back to myself.

• 1:20:54Adam Skolnick?

  And you're like, shit, I wrote this shit?

• 1:20:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Adam Skolnick?

  But you know what? It's interesting is he comes into it with a what is this? That's how writing starts. What does this want to be? He referenced the great architect Louis Kahn. Before he started designing, he asked the building, what does this building want to be? So he's asking, what does this thing want to be? Coming into it with-

• 1:21:17Rich Roll?

  He's co-creating with the thing that does not yet exist.

• 1:21:19Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly. And he actually suggests interviewing the book idea, like interviewing and asking it questions. And in doing that, there's, you become a steward of the energies of whatever the project is going to be. Because that's what he sees a writer as, a steward of energies. It's not just you.

• 1:21:37Rich Roll?

  Well, that's, that's a very, um, uh, you know, big magic Elizabeth idea.

• 1:21:44Adam Skolnick?

  And he and Liz Gilbert, I think there's a lot of overlap there. Um, you know, he's saying- Are you a writer? If you write, you're a writer and someday you'll become good. You don't have to worry about becoming good. That's not your job right now if you're a beginner. He talks about the separation between flow and edit. Flow, just let it come out. Edit, go back later and deal with, which I engage. That's definitely something I believe in. I believe in a certain amount of words per day and getting that out and not necessarily rereading it even the next day. I try to, I try to get through a whole draft before coming back and doing a full reread. Sometimes that changes, but that's what I try to do exactly for that reason. There's a flow draft and there's an edit draft for me. He talks about how it feels to him. How is it feeling when you're writing? Is it urgent? Is it personal?

• 1:22:31Adam Skolnick?

  Is it spiritual? I think that's interesting. I don't really feel, care about how I feel when I'm writing that much. But he's talking about the feel of the story itself. Not how you feel about it, but the feel of the actual product. The project. And that I got a lot out of. I actually took something because I never thought about the feeling of the book. I've always thought about story points and characters, but now I have a feeling that's like a theme. And, and I'm only in the second draft. Right now, I'm like two thirds of the way through a second draft and my goal is to have the second draft done by the end of the year. But then I, this is going to be a 10 draft process to get this to any point where I even give it to my wife to read. I mean, it's, it's going to be a while. So to have the feeling now, I think is great.

• 1:23:16Adam Skolnick?

  So I got that directly out of it. And the number one thing I got out of it is own it, you know? Own, own the piece. Like, don't question. If you're going to write it, don't keep questioning, are you good enough? Are you doing it? Like, is it worth doing? Own the fact that it's worth doing because you're doing it. And I think that that level of confidence has been missing. And he just gives you permission to feel that way. And so I think overall, did I get a lot structurally out of it? Not necessarily. I mean, I don't write memoir. He, he's a guy who was, who, who basically writes about the Bible and writes memoir. He also write, he writes some fiction stuff he hasn't really shared necessarily. I mean, he's a, he's, he is a much more.

• 1:24:01Adam Skolnick?

  He writes about anything he wants, but the stuff that we know of him is typically memoir related. I don't do that.

• 1:24:06Rich Roll?

  Did he share anything about productivity or

• 1:24:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Rich Roll?

  You know, the resistance, the creative resistance and how to get over that kind of thing? Because the reason I ask is he's one of the most prolific and productive, creative people that I know.

• 1:24:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he's very prolific.

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  He just doesn't ever seem to, you know, get gapped out in any way. Like, he's just constantly putting out amazing stuff. And even his podcasts, like the amount of intention and thought, like, most of them are monologues, you know, that could be characterized as sermons, and they feel very natural and casual, but it's indisputable that he's thought deeply about everything that he's saying. And the naturalistic, you know, approach that he, like, it's so attitudinal, because he does, he does, like, enter into everything that he does with a certain kind of enthusiasm and joy.

• 1:25:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Rich Roll?

  As opposed to the gnashing of the teeth and the, like, pulling your hair out.

• 1:25:06Adam Skolnick?

  There doesn't seem to be a lot of self doubt.

• 1:25:08Rich Roll?

  I know, and I'm like, how does that work?

• 1:25:09Adam Skolnick?

  He doesn't have the self doubt problem that we have. And I don't know if it's, or I have. I'm not, I don't mean to say it, but you have.

• 1:25:15Rich Roll?

  I got plenty of it.

• 1:25:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And he doesn't seem to have it. It seems like that could be a product of his faith, you know, the fact that he is, he's got so much.

• 1:25:23Rich Roll?

  But I would suspect everybody has these angsty moments, right? But he seems to be, I mean, I'm not standing over him, watching him write, but.

• 1:25:31Adam Skolnick?

  We should be getting him on.

• 1:25:33Rich Roll?

  It feels like he's figured that out. That would be, it would be great to get him on and just, just to talk about creativity. I mean, I've said this before, but he has, I don't know if it's still up on his website, because I listened to it quite a long time ago. I suspect it is. It's called, I think it's called Something to Say, and it's an audio lecture that is hours and hours and hours. I think it's like eight hours or something like that. It's like an unbelievably long lecture, series of lectures on basically how to create.

• 1:26:05Rich Roll?

  Like a speech or a presentation or a keynote, like if you have something to say, here's how you take an idea and, and, and turn it into something worthwhile. It's a masterclass on communication, on clarity of thought, on executing on an idea. I mean, of everything that I've, you know, consumed on the subject of creativity and writing, it was the most interesting, thoughtful and, and helpful thing that I've ever listened to and very different from anything else that I'd ever-

• 1:26:34Adam Skolnick?

  Well, this was not necessarily that. So he didn't get too in the weeds on structure and like helping you figure out-

• 1:26:40Rich Roll?

  Right, this is a different thing.

• 1:26:41Adam Skolnick?

  This was, this is a little bit more general than I thought it might be, but, but like, a couple of things that were really stuck out is if you've written multiple things, it's okay to go back to the drawing board and write this one differently. So to him, he's like, how am I going to write this one? Am I going to do, maybe this one I'll do longhand. Maybe this one I'll speak into a recorder and have someone transcribe it. He, he likes to keep it fresh. For someone who's done a lot of writing and he's very prolific, I think it was like nine books we went through, I forget. You know, like he, he, he's very open-minded. He keeps that mind and that space as open as possible. You know, how do I write this one? What does this one want to be? How do I align head and heart?

• 1:27:25Adam Skolnick?

  And like I said, I'm, I'll quote him here. Here's the thing, own it, own it. The thing you're trying to write, own it. If it's a sci-fi novel, inventing an entirely new world, make it as weird and wild and strange as you can. Own it, own what you're trying to do. And that's the key. Like, I think that writers can get into trouble trying to be too nice and he hates that. And so that was a nice piece to hear from him, who's like typically, who is one of the nicer people you'll ever meet. For him to say that because, because he knows that that won't come across well on a page if something's too nice, if it doesn't have that edge. Cause there's nothing for the reader to hang on. And I, I think, I mean, to me, he doesn't want people sanitizing their experience or

• 1:28:09Adam Skolnick?

  sanitizing their writing. But for me, the things I got out of it is how do I write this one? What, what is the feeling of this piece? And, and own it. Those are kind of the three major things I took. It was very worthwhile.

• 1:28:22Rich Roll?

  And for somebody who's listening or watching, who's not a writer, doesn't consider themselves to be a writer, but perhaps has a creative spark, like of these ideas, what can be extrapolated, you know, to the, you know, to anybody who's listening, like the, the lessons baked into this are specific to writing, but they seem to me to be easily translatable to other pursuits.

• 1:28:45Adam Skolnick?

  I think anytime that you have an idea that you want to pursue and you feel self doubt, it's okay to own what you're trying to do and not give yourself a third degree about it too often, because that can infect what you're trying to do. It can, that insecurity can leak itself into, into the work itself. Doesn't always, but it can. So I think owning it is good. How do I want to go about it? And asking yourself those questions, even if you're mid-career in any job, like say you're a lawyer and you're taking on a new case. Okay, how am I gonna research this case? How am I gonna try this case? Doesn't have to be the same way, even if they're all wins.

• 1:29:20Rich Roll?

  What's the weirdest, craziest argument I could come up with?

• 1:29:23Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, yeah.

• 1:29:25Rich Roll?

  How to attack each new project from a fresh and different angle?

• 1:29:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And then, you know, he comes with the, don't be precious or attached to your writing. I think that's very important. That could be used for any idea in any job. Don't be precious or attached to your ideas. But he has something that's interesting. He has a bits file, stuff that doesn't fit into the, you know, cuts he's made that he wants to keep. And then he puts it into a bits file and he's used that. He gave a couple of examples of using it in later books.

• 1:29:53Rich Roll?

  Ends up in another book, right.

• 1:29:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And I've never done that. I always just move on completely and start again from a different, from scratch. So that's interesting.

• 1:29:59Rich Roll?

  It's been years since I listened to that, something to say, but I seem to recollect that one of the practices that he talks about is just being more observant in your daily life, because if you're paying attention, there's weird stuff going on all over the place. And, and making a habit of like writing one of those things down every day, or like making a list of those things. And the more that you do that, the more engaged you are with the world and your environment, and the more you pay attention, the more that that kind of, you know, fuels a creative spark.

• 1:30:30Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. That just reminded me-

• 1:30:32Rich Roll?

  Maybe I just completely imagined that, but I-

• 1:30:34Adam Skolnick?

  You know, that just reminded me of that movie adaptation where-

• 1:30:38Rich Roll?

  I just watched it a couple of weeks ago with the boys. They had never seen it and I was like, "How can you be cinematically literate and not have seen this movie? This is the greatest."

• 1:30:47Adam Skolnick?

  It's the greatest adaptation.

• 1:30:49Rich Roll?

  It's easily in my top 10 movies of all time.

• 1:30:52Adam Skolnick?

  I was splashed on that moment where Nick Cage stands up in Robert McKee's story class. Robert McKee is like, you probably have heard of him. He's on Twitter, but he all, he kind of burst-

• 1:31:01Rich Roll?

  Legendary screenwriting teacher, wrote story-

• 1:31:04Adam Skolnick?

  Script doctor. He wrote story, which is amazing. And he's like the mentor of the script doctors, right?

• 1:31:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:31:12Adam Skolnick?

  And Nick Cage raises his hand in this, you know, he's, he plays Charlie Kaufman, very like mousy guy. And he's like, "You know, I'm writing a story and it's about nothing." And, because nothing happens in life, so I want nothing to happen in this movie." And Robert McKee just goes, "Who plays Robert McKee?"

• 1:31:29Rich Roll?

  Uh, Brian, um, what's his name? I can't believe I'm blanking on it right now. Legendary-

• 1:31:34Adam Skolnick?

  Brian Cox.

• 1:31:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Brian Cox from Succession.

• 1:31:36Adam Skolnick?

  And just launches, and what do you mean, "Nothing happens in life?" And then basically-

• 1:31:41Rich Roll?

  He just like, yeah, a lion's roar emits from his mouth in an auditorium of thousands of people. It's classic.

• 1:31:48Adam Skolnick?

  It's a classic scene.

• 1:31:50Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:31:50Adam Skolnick?

  Anyway, Robert Bell's class was not like that.

• 1:31:52Rich Roll?

  So, I trust this was like on Zoom or how did you do this?

• 1:31:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it was on, um, it was on Zoom. It was like, he had us all kind of muted and nobody, you could-

• 1:32:02Rich Roll?

  Was it unlimited? Like you could, everybody could sign up?

• 1:32:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it was like, it was like 50 bucks and he did like a few sessions and then, and then people, you could, you could fire questions at him through the chat and he was answering some of them. So it was like a mix of like 20 minutes of lecture, then some questions, 20 minutes of lecture and some questions. And it was really good and he's going to repurpose it. I think he's going to do some version of it on his podcast, he claimed.

• 1:32:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:32:30Adam Skolnick?

  But he hadn't decided when.

• 1:32:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:32Adam Skolnick?

  And so I don't know, um- It was good. It was worth it. It wasn't, if you're looking for a nuts and bolts writer's workshop where you learn how to do X, Y, and Z, this was not that. But if you're looking for true inspiration and trying to figure out how to find joy in it and to feel like you can do something, this was that. And then if you're a mid-career writer like me, just looking for a fresh take on how it's done, I definitely got something out of it.

• 1:32:58Rich Roll?

  Right. Thus concludes the We Love Rob Bell Fan Club segment of the show, which will likely reappear at some point.

• 1:33:05Adam Skolnick?

  Slash Adam Takes a Class.

• 1:33:06Rich Roll?

  I enjoy your continuing education.

• 1:33:10Adam Skolnick?

  Adam's continuing education. That could be a theme. Send me on another mission.

• 1:33:14Rich Roll?

  Let's talk about this Goldman Prize as the win of the week here.

• 1:33:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. The win of the week is the Goldman Prize. Would you like me to explain the Goldman Prize?

• 1:33:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, please do.

• 1:33:22Adam Skolnick?

  The Goldman Prize, one way of putting it is it's the Nobel Prize for grassroots activists, which is really what the Goldman family who's behind the prize kind of created it for, was to reward people. Every continent gets one winner every year, except for Antarctica. So six continents a year are recognized. And the winners are people doing grassroots work that have had a significant impact. And what they get is a cash prize, like the Genius Grant or anything else, that they can do anything they want with. And it's a six-figure prize of some kind. I used to remember the exact amount, but it's escaping me. And so the first time I heard about Goldman Prize was when Berta Casares, who

• 1:34:06Adam Skolnick?

  we, I think we might have mentioned her on the show before, she's the Honduran environmental freedom fighter who was murdered for trying to stop a dam from being built on the river in her ancestral homeland.

• 1:34:22Rich Roll?

  I think we did talk about her.

• 1:34:23Adam Skolnick?

  And I went down and like a week after she was murdered, another environmental activist was murdered there. And Honduras is

• 1:34:33Adam Skolnick?

  There's no other way of saying it. It's basically verging on failed state status. There's so much corruption that it's kind of leaked all the way up to the presidency. And the people who killed her have been connected to the current administration there through the lecture company. And so I went and reported on that. That's how I heard about Goldman. But what makes this announcement this week special to me is that Crystal Ambrose from the Bahamas, Ocean Plastics activist and pioneer in education and study of ocean plastics, is one of the winners.

• 1:35:13Adam Skolnick?

  And I was with her on the Five Jires expedition from Al Uthra, where she lives and where she works, to Bermuda. And her story is really interesting. She started kind of like, just as, you know, she used to be a scuba diver in Nassau, like a scuba diving instructor at, what's that, Atlantis in Nassau. Right. And next thing you know, she's in Al Uthra. And she sees all this plastic on the beaches, and she's saying that something's wrong here. And she starts, through her curiosity, finding her curiosity in that, realizing that, is this our plastic? Is this the Bahamas' plastic? Or is it coming in from elsewhere? She started to collect it. She started to educate. She ended up connecting with Five

• 1:35:58Adam Skolnick?

  Jires. She made an invitation to go on one of their expeditions to the great Pacific Garbage Patch. She made the flight, made the expedition, and like, at the last minute, like, running to get on the boat. And next thing you know, flash forward, whatever, seven years later, I forget exactly how many years later, she's a Goldman Prize winner. And the reason that she won is because... In 2017, after their fifth annual plastic camp where she takes students of primary and middle school age, and she gets them to look at the problem of plastic pollution and come up with ideas that could solve the problem. It's youth activism workshop. She hosted a

• 1:36:41Adam Skolnick?

  second edition with kind of her all-stars from the summer camp program, which is, and did something. The first is kind of a plastic pollution work, education workshop. Then she did this youth activism workshop with her all-stars. And they surveyed the community to find out if locals would support a plastic bag ban. And through this process, the students decided with Crystal, let's try to get the Bahamas to implement a plastic bag tax. Not a ban, but a tax. And so eventually, she got a meeting with the Minister of the Environment in the Bahamas with the students. And the students, this was 2017, that summer, she met with the students. 2018, she gets this meeting. And on the way to the meeting, she's

• 1:37:25Adam Skolnick?

  all nervous. She's like, come on, students, wear your best clothes. No talking out of order. Be on your best behavior. We have to do it properly. And the students are like, Ms. Crystal, that's boring. We want to sing the song that we wrote. And they'd written this song about, you know, it was, we are the change, we are the solution, we can fix this plastic pollution, which had been a part of their video that had gone very well. And so that's what they did. They went in and they did their song. And the minister was like, you want to just ban or tax bags? What about all single-use plastic? Oh, wow. And so it grew into this thing where by 2020, after they helped write this bill, now the Bahamas doesn't, it's illegal now to import any single-use plastic into the country. I didn't know that. And so because of this work-

• 1:38:09Adam Skolnick?

  Wow. So you can't get plastic water bottles in the Bahamas? It's now, it was a six-month, there was a six-month, what's it called? A six-month phase in or whatever. Right, right. And now, apparently, you can't. That's amazing. And, but that doesn't solve the problem with plastic on the beaches because a lot of it is- Grace period. Grace period. Thank you. You are a lawyer. It took me a minute, though.

• 1:38:34Adam Skolnick?

  It's not, that's not antitrust law.

• 1:38:36Rich Roll?

  I got a white beard for a reason, buddy.

• 1:38:38Adam Skolnick?

  But the plastic is coming in from elsewhere. It's coming in from cruise ships. It's coming in from the United States. The Gulf Stream goes right through the Bahamas. And so they have a lot of transboundary waste. And so right now, she's getting her PhD in, uh, and studying that exact thing. Transboundary waste and how it's hitting these island nations that are kind of caught in the middle. Uh, so, but she still is, is got this, you know, the Bahamas Plastic Movement is her baby. That's what it's called. And Crystal Ambrose is the head of that and.

• 1:39:09Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool. So this Goldman prize is a big deal, right? Like for, and, and their whole thing is finding these gems, like these grassroots people who are making change.

• 1:39:17Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly. I mean, just a quick rundown. Chibeze Ezekiel in, uh, the Ghanaian, uh, the Ghanaian winner was basically stopped a coal power plant and changed that into a solar plant, basically, and did that through grassroots activism. Lady Peck, I think, in Mexico. Uh, she's an indigenous Mayan beekeeper and led a coalition that successfully halted Monsanto's planting of genetically modified soybeans in the Yucatan.

• 1:39:47Adam Skolnick?

  Lucy Pinson and, or Pinson in France, Lucia, maybe. Uh, she successfully pressured France's three largest banks to eliminate financing for new coal projects and coal companies. Uh, and Niamonte Nankimo in Ecuador. She is an indigenous activist that, uh, protected 500,000 acres of Amazon forest in her territory from oil extraction. And then another one that kind of hit close to home is Paul Saintois in Myanmar. He's a Corin, uh, activist that, uh, created a 1.35 million acre peace park along the Solween River, uh, which is a major, uh, river basin, a major biodiversity zone,

• 1:40:29Adam Skolnick?

  and a place where the Corin state, the Corin, the Corin state is on one side. Thailand's on the other side and Myanmar, um, has been trying to, uh, basically. Eliminate the Korean state as a, as a place and as a people for years and years. Um, and there's been a rebellion there ongoing off and on for dozens of years. And so this was a peace park, a way to stop the war in this area and protect nature. And so all those people are heroes. They're, they're all incredible activists, Crystal among them, and it's incredible slate. And I just felt bad because I was supposed to celebrate with Crystal in San Francisco at this great gathering.

• 1:41:07Rich Roll?

  Right. Do they have some big fancy gala?

• 1:41:09Adam Skolnick?

  They do.

• 1:41:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:10Adam Skolnick?

  And the fancy gala, you know, like Crystal comes from humble origins in Bahamas and her, her father, you know, her parents go to Florida every once in a while, but they've never been to San Francisco where this was going to take place. So she was kind of bummed. We were bummed for her, but you know, at the same time it's, it's gotten her lots of attention and press, all these activists, and it's a great thing for all of them. It's, it's, it's, and it's recognition for life work without them looking at, she didn't even know she was being looked at for this.

• 1:41:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:41:34Adam Skolnick?

  So they do it in such a really stylish way.

• 1:41:37Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:41:37Adam Skolnick?

  And Robert Redford was narrating her life on this video. We'll drop the links in the show notes.

• 1:41:42Rich Roll?

  Um, Goldmanprize.org.

• 1:41:44Adam Skolnick?

  It's a one hour, you could actually watch the Sigourney Weaver hosts the um, one hour presentation. And you can get, there's mini docs on all these activists.

• 1:41:53Rich Roll?

  On each one of them. So these docs are getting made and these recipients aren't even aware that.

• 1:41:58Adam Skolnick?

  No, by the time the docs are being made, they knew.

• 1:42:00Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 1:42:00Adam Skolnick?

  So they, they do research on you when you don't know.

• 1:42:03Rich Roll?

  They don't know if they're a candidate.

• 1:42:05Adam Skolnick?

  They don't know they're a candidate.

• 1:42:05Rich Roll?

  It's not like you submit or you lobby for this.

• 1:42:08Adam Skolnick?

  No, but like even the docs, like in the case of Berta, when she was down there, the activists were, were, I mean, there were threats against her life the whole time. And when the Goldman people went down there to actually do their mini doc, it was no puff piece. Like they got into some real trouble. They wondered if they were going to get out alive.

• 1:42:25Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:42:25Adam Skolnick?

  So it's like real, and sometimes some years it's real reporting in areas where there's real conflict and, and real stakes, life and death.

• 1:42:33Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 1:42:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was not familiar with that at all. That's, that's pretty cool. And it's like, you know, like every one of those people that you've named, I'm like, that would be a good person to have on the podcast to learn more about that. You know, true heroes, all of these people.

• 1:42:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And I'll drop the link to the Berta Casera story too, that I reported for Playboy.

• 1:42:51Rich Roll?

  Cool. Congratulations, Crystal.

• 1:42:54Adam Skolnick?

  Congratulations, Crystal. Crystal Ambrose, people.

• 1:42:58Rich Roll?

  Let's do some listener questions.

• 1:43:00Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. This is from Joe.

• 1:43:03Adam Skolnick?

  In northern New York.

• 1:43:05Speaker 02

  Hi, guys. First, thank you both for what you're doing with Rollin' Month. And thank you, Rich, for the podcast in general. It's been very influential for me over the past year and a half. My name is Joe. I'm 42 years old and live in northern New York. I'm in this place in my life right now where for the first time, I feel like I'm living in a period of stepping onto my own path. I've heard you discuss this concept before, the notion of living authentically, paying attention, and looking for doors that are opening for you. I'm looking for some guidance about navigating this experience. I've always valued humility as a character strength, and now feel a tension between my usual humble mindset and the feelings associated with recognizing the call of this path.

• 1:43:49Speaker 02

  It's almost as though you need to have a certain amount of ego involved to maintain the confidence necessary to believe that you are on the right track and that the door is really about you, that no one else has done exactly what you're doing. It's a strange tension that I've never experienced before. I hope this makes sense, and I would love to hear your thoughts and any advice you could give me. Feel free to play this on the air. Thank you both.

• 1:44:12Rich Roll?

  Thank you, Joe, for that question. Northern New York is a place that I'm glad I'm not in right now because I know what it's like living in upstate New York. At this time of year, it's very cold and dark, so sending you good vibes from sunny California. This is an interesting question. I mean, it's a bit esoteric, which I like. And in trying to wrap my head around how to best answer this, I guess the first thing I want to say is, of course, you need ego. I feel like there is this tension that he's having between humility and ego.

• 1:44:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:44:44Rich Roll?

  You need healthy ego in order to move forward in the world, right? That does not exist at odds or in contradiction to things like humility. You can be humble with a healthy ego, and those things coexisting, I think, is where I want to focus my answer today. You also need patience for this kind of journey. And with that healthy ego and humility and patience, it's about learning to lean into intuition, which I think he's already understanding because he's saying, looking for the doors that are opening for you.

• 1:45:19Adam Skolnick?

  Sounds like he's got something. Sounds like he's excited about something.

• 1:45:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, like what's beneath here. Like, we don't have specifics, so I don't know exactly what's going on, but... I feel like something has woken him up that is getting, that's sort of shaking the sleeping self a little bit and energizing him in a certain way. And I think looking for those doors that are opening is key here, like learning to lean into your intuition about which doors to walk through, I think, leads to a certain hypervigilance around your environment. Like, the more you're paying attention, the more you're going to see those doors, or learn how to discern the doors that are opening from the ones that you should yourself close. So it's about paying attention to the signals that are being given to you.

• 1:46:06Rich Roll?

  And I think so much of this is about not sweeping change or grand gestures, but really micro-adjustments. Like, when you're in that hypervigilant state, and you're thinking about this move, and you're trying to identify those doors, it's about when you're saying yes and when you're saying no. And I think saying no is equally important, if not more important, than looking for the open doors, right? Like, you're gonna have to say no to stuff you're used to saying yes to, and that can feel uncomfortable. And that's a practice that I think you have to, you know, kind of acclimate to over time, and can be practiced in these little micro scenarios where, you know, it's essentially a low-risk situation.

• 1:46:50Rich Roll?

  But I think what's most interesting to me about this question is Joe's perception that there's a conflict between his innate humility, this character trait that he obviously values in himself, and living authentically. As if to step out and into this more authentic version of yourself, or to follow, you know, whatever this instinct or intuition is, must be some kind of ego trip, right? Like, that by doing this, he's engaging in his ego, and he's betraying his humility that he prides himself on. Right. And I don't think that that's the best way to look at this. I mean, you need confidence in yourself. You think it's a false choice.

• 1:47:34Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it's a, well, let me explain it this way. You need confidence in yourself, you need faith, you need patience, but these things are not selfish. I think there's this false...

• 1:47:47Rich Roll?

  Comparison that he's drawing between this drive for authenticity and it being an ego, a selfish ego trip.

• 1:47:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:47:56Rich Roll?

  Because in fact, what it is, is an act of self-love. Like, you're honoring yourself by listening to your intuition, by following that muse. And creating boundaries around that isn't an ego trip, and it's not selfish. It's actually protecting what serves you. And I think that that requires conviction and courage, and those are laudable traits in a human, in a human being. So, I would encourage Joe to not look at this as ego, egoistic or selfish, but to flip it and to understand that it's actually selfish of other people and the world to want or expect you to be something that you're not.

• 1:48:39Rich Roll?

  So, if you've been living your life in a certain way to fit into a box, or to please other people, or for whatever reason, and you're worried about stepping outside of that because it feels self-serving or egotistic, consider the fact, or consider what's kept you in that box, or kept you limited in those ways. And those forces, if they are external forces, those are the self-serving forces, right? And, and you catering to that is an act of, of self-betrayal in many ways. So, I think-

• 1:49:15Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting.

• 1:49:16Rich Roll?

  -letting go of that ego aspect and understanding that it's self-love will allow you to move forward while also honoring and embracing this idea of humility with the whole thing.

• 1:49:28Adam Skolnick?

  I feel like you're picking up on like, some sort of like, external definition of humility and ego that was transferred to him when he was younger.

• 1:49:36Rich Roll?

  Well, let's talk about humility. Like, when he's saying, "I feel like this is, this is, you know, an affront to humility." Like, is it humility? Like, is this truly humility that he's considering? Or is it sheepishness? Right? Like, "Oh, when I stay small in this world, I'm being humble." But maybe you're just afraid, or maybe you lack the confidence to actually be yourself, and it's not, in fact, humility. So, the question that I would pose and leave for Joe is, is, is there a sense that you're not entitled to live your life your way?

• 1:50:16Rich Roll?

  And that to be humble is to stay in that box or to stay small.

• 1:50:20Adam Skolnick?

  And so he was thinking of anything that is like self promoting is considered ego kind of inflating, but you're talking about-

• 1:50:29Rich Roll?

  But put the Rob Bell lens on it, right?

• 1:50:31Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly.

• 1:50:32Rich Roll?

  So elaborate on that.

• 1:50:33Adam Skolnick?

  Finding the joy. And you know what Rob Bell also said is that-

• 1:50:37Rich Roll?

  And finding the joy, but also the freedom to be, to be in self-love and you know, sort of congratulate, be your own biggest fan of your life.

• 1:50:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And, and you know what he also said is, it's not egotistical, it's humbling. That's something he specifically said in that, and it's true. Like if you, if you really embark on something, doing something that, that, that feels like is connecting to your soul and what you're meant to be doing here, you're going to find it's more humbling than it is ego promoting. But I don't mean that in like beware. What I mean is that like, it doesn't have to be in a negative way. It can be in, in, in like, you feel so at one with the cosmos some days-

• 1:51:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:51:25Adam Skolnick?

  That you feel like a speck.

• 1:51:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:27Adam Skolnick?

  And that is humbling in a way that's like, wow, that's how big the world, that's how beautiful the world is and I'm playing my little part. And it could also be the other way, which is, you know, you might get kicked in the face a couple of times to see if you really want to do this.

• 1:51:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:51:42Adam Skolnick?

  It is humbling innately to go on, branch out on your own path and try to do something that, that you, that you didn't know that you could do, or that you just dared yourself to do. It is a humbling act, I think, like Rob Bell would say.

• 1:51:56Rich Roll?

  So what, we're leaving Joe with this idea that what he thinks is ego is actually humility, and what he thinks is humility is actually ego and fear, because he's attached to this story that actually is false.

• 1:52:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Or that's certainly one way to look at it.

• 1:52:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:52:13Adam Skolnick?

  And if it gets you on the road to doing, to self-actualizing, then look at it that way.

• 1:52:17Rich Roll?

  Right. And Joe, if this doesn't resonate with you at all, then-

• 1:52:20Adam Skolnick?

  You get your money back.

• 1:52:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm refunding you because I don't know enough about the story. But I have a feeling we might be on to something there.

• 1:52:30Adam Skolnick?

  And callers, just so you know, I'm trying this new thing where if you are concise with your question, it gives you a better chance.

• 1:52:37Rich Roll?

  That's the Skolnick algorithm?

• 1:52:40Adam Skolnick?

  My new algorithm.

• 1:52:40Rich Roll?

  If you want to game the algorithm, keep it short.

• 1:52:43Adam Skolnick?

  Keep it short and to the point. And also, like, just be really clear thinking and, you know, it might help. A lot of these, you can tell some people are reading from a script they've written themselves. And it's easier to answer a question that's a little bit clear. And even though that that was esoteric, it still was clear. He still had a very specific thing he was asking.

• 1:53:01Rich Roll?

  Right. He made his way through the algorithm. He made it through. All right, let's go to Seth from Wisconsin.

• 1:53:06Adam Skolnick?

  Let's go to Seth.

• 1:53:07Speaker 03

  Hey, hello, Rich and Adam. This is Seth from Madison, Wisconsin. The listening to the podcast has been transformative for me ever since I first came across an episode on a solo road trip I took after my divorce. So your podcast became my soundtrack for that soul-searching tour of national parks. And my question revolves around the distancing that can occur in relationships. And in the relationship with my ex-wife, my poor self-esteem and the avoidance of discomfort kept me from what Zach Bush said in one of your interviews, from being seen and truly seeing my ex-wife.

• 1:53:46Speaker 03

  So endurance training and a plant-based lifestyle is transforming my sense of self and avoidance tendencies. But I'm curious as to what practices that you both encourage that couples can cultivate to close the distance that can build over time and help both partners in a relationship see each other. So thank you for the opportunity to ask a question. You know, take care and please, keep doing what you're doing. The game's a lot to people.

• 1:54:14Rich Roll?

  Thank you Seth.

• 1:54:15Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks Seth.

• 1:54:17Rich Roll?

  Also, coming to us from a very cold part of the world.

• 1:54:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and it's a divorce question. I love divorce questions.

• 1:54:23Rich Roll?

  You do?

• 1:54:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:24Rich Roll?

  Well, let me say this.

• 1:54:26Adam Skolnick?

  Well, not divorce question, relationship question.

• 1:54:28Rich Roll?

  Right. Poor self-esteem and avoidance of discomfort is like the perfect one-two combo that fuels isolation. That keeps a lot of people stuck, gets them stuck, keeps them stuck. And also is very effective for keeping people at arm's length that day, right? Like if you don't feel great about yourself and you're not comfortable with any kind of conflict or doing anything outside your small little zone of comfort.

• 1:55:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:01Rich Roll?

  Then you're unlikely to take any risks with other people. And that's going to keep you separated from other human beings. So when I hear those two qualities, I think, what's behind that combination? And I hear somebody who feels like they don't have a voice or they're not entitled to have a voice or to speak their truth. Somebody who's afraid of letting anyone else know who they really are. And perhaps somebody who even feels undeserving of love itself. And I think the avoidance of discomfort is rooted in the sense that if somebody really knew you, if they truly understood you,

• 1:55:44Rich Roll?

  if they could see right into your soul, that they would leave you, right? That you're not worthy of love. But I think what I would urge Seth to do is to look at how these tendencies maybe contributed or in some way led to the dissolving of the marriage. I mean, obviously, we don't know anything about what happened there.

• 1:56:11Rich Roll?

  But those things, you know, that avoidance of discomfort, that poor self-esteem, you know, those are ways that they're like coping mechanisms.

• 1:56:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:20Rich Roll?

  To keep you safe, right? And to prevent you from being in the position of being hurt.

• 1:56:26Adam Skolnick?

  It seems like he's figured that out, like that that is what led to it.

• 1:56:29Rich Roll?

  But ultimately, that manifests the very thing that you're trying to avoid.

• 1:56:33Adam Skolnick?

  You get hurt.

• 1:56:33Rich Roll?

  Right? So in truth, it's the vulnerability, it's the taking risks, it's the willingness and the courage to, you know, weather that discomfort that ultimately creates the intimacy. It's counterintuitive, right? Like if I stay safe, then I can be in this relationship and I'm not going to get left. But you have to take the risk to pave the road for intimacy that brings you closer. So as uncomfortable and as counterintuitive as it is, that's, I think, the growth arc for this person to embrace.

• 1:57:09Adam Skolnick?

  Vulnerability, meaning revealing your, how you really truly feel.

• 1:57:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, being, being willing to be honest with somebody else about your insecurities or your poor self-esteem or what's bothering you and the willingness to have the uncomfortable conversations.

• 1:57:26Rich Roll?

  You know, understanding that they may lead to a conflict, but it's only through that kind of like tension that you can come to a place of understanding and bonding.

• 1:57:34Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you have some suggestions again in terms of how to cultivate that?

• 1:57:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. I mean, I think some of them are super basic and elementary. I mean, the first thing is, you know, if you're trying to create this bond, you've got to, you've got to set aside time for conversation and treat that as sacred rather than just saying, well, the next time I see this person, I'll try to do it. Like if you establish it as a formal thing that's calendared and respected by both parties, you're creating a crucible, like an environment in which there's expectations around that kind of thing transpiring. So setting aside time is super important. I know that, you know, it's scary if you're somebody who is conflict avoidant or afraid of that kind of discomfort.

• 1:58:21Rich Roll?

  So the best way to get over that is to start to practice it in a low stakes environment. So maybe not with your ex-wife, but find a friend who you trust and, and, you know, use them as an experiment. Like say something vulnerable, like take a risk and try to have a conversation that gets you, that shakes you out of that safety zone a little bit, knowing that that person, you know, is somebody who's close to you and nothing bad is going to happen. And I think that will help you acclimate or get a sense of how this can work. And then over time, slowly increase the intensity, take little, you know, bigger and bigger risks until you're ready to kind of do this with your ex-wife.

• 1:59:04Rich Roll?

  I wouldn't, you know, do the trial run with the ex-wife because my sense is that that might be too perilous at this moment. You can do pushups to get ready for something like that.

• 1:59:15Adam Skolnick?

  Or even like if it's for a new relationship, which it could be for, think of these things, you know, it's still good to get the muscle working, you know, with a friend so that when the next relationship comes around that you're ready to be who you are.

• 1:59:30Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and what a burden you're carrying around trying to prevent that person from seeing who you really are. Like the weight of that is tremendous. And when you let that go and let somebody in, there's a huge release and the intimacy that comes with that is tremendous. The other thing I would suggest is in these exchanges or in this dynamic to always, this is something I do all the time and I do it on the podcast, is to lead with vulnerability. Like if you, instead of waiting for that person to give you the feedback or to say the intimate thing, like you've got to go first. And I think when you do that, you're giving the other person permission for that level of intimacy.

• 2:00:13Rich Roll?

  You're saying, this is safe. I trust you. You can trust me. And then with that, it's practicing how to listen, like really listen, because the most valuable thing that you can give another person is your time and of course, your full attention. And the more that the other person Really feels like they're being heard, then the closer they're going to feel to you and the more they're going to gravitate towards you. Staying out of the other person's reaction to your attempts at intimacy, I think, is important. If you're wed to a certain result, like, "I'm gonna have this conversation and then this is gonna happen," then you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

• 2:00:53Rich Roll?

  So it's not about the result, it's just about engaging in the process of being open, vulnerable, and intimate, and trusting that over time, that's gonna breed the intimacy that you seek. But trust takes time, so patience, I think, is super important. And then the esteem piece, I think, is super important, and forgive me if you heard me say this, because I repeat it all the time, but self-esteem comes through performing esteemable acts, whether it's on behalf of others or for yourself. It applies to yourself as well. So, simple things like setting healthy boundaries and making time for those that you care about, investing in helping other people, all will slowly open you up and ground you a little

• 2:01:38Rich Roll?

  bit better and make you a healthier person for your current and future relationships. And then the final thing I would say, sorry, did you want to say something? No, I'm disagreeing with you. Yeah, the final thing, and this is important too, is to forgive yourself, to like, let it go, because there is this narrative about, "I'm somebody with self-esteem and I don't like to be uncomfortable, and I'm afraid of this, and I'm afraid of that." You've gotta rewire that neurology and start telling yourself a new story. Like, in other words, letting go of that story and opening up to perhaps a new and better story. And again, those push-ups, those little actions that you're taking, will help inform that,

• 2:02:21Rich Roll?

  but that story is likely hardwired into you and pretty calcified. So it's gonna take some work and practice and intentionality to...

• 2:02:31Rich Roll?

  To create that new narrative, but that's the work, man. And I think.

• 2:02:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, the only thing I'd add is that distancing that can occur in relationships. I mean, I think there is a certain, as relationships mature, there's going to be a certain areas of freedom where people can operate and you don't all, you know, relationships can evolve and distance, it depends on what you mean by distance, but you can operate in different spheres and function differently. And as long as you have that, like you said, you have the space to communicate, you're listening, you're being vulnerable, you are not reacting and not expecting certain responses or certain things coming your way and you feel good about what you're giving to the world. In the end, that distance won't even feel like distance. It'll just feel like your life is working.

• 2:03:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And there's something about just owning your truth and being who you are.

• 2:03:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:25Rich Roll?

  And the more that you do that, the more you can kind of stand on your own two feet and it becomes less about what that person thinks of that and just about you and your relationship with yourself.

• 2:03:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And if you do all that and everything your wife says, everything will be fine.

• 2:03:40Rich Roll?

  Is that a guarantee?

• 2:03:41Adam Skolnick?

  That's a wife joke. It's a wife joke.

• 2:03:43Rich Roll?

  All right. Let's go to Michael.

• 2:03:46Adam Skolnick?

  Sorry. Hey.

• 2:03:49Adam Skolnick?

  All right, here's Michael.

• 2:03:50Rich Roll?

  We have another cold, cold wintery place right now.

• 2:03:53Adam Skolnick?

  Sorry. Next time it'll all be the island.

• 2:03:57Speaker 04

  Hey, Rich and Adam. This is Michael from Boulder, Colorado, and certainly fine to play this on the air. I can't tell you both how much I really enjoy the new role on addition to the podcast. I look forward to listening to it every other week and it's thankfully become a part of a routine for me. Anyway, I'm 55 years old and have been active really since high school as a runner and triathlete, but really primarily as a cyclist over the last 30 years. My question is around heart health and endurance activity for an athlete now heading into my late 50s. I recently signed up for a couple of lengthy gravel bike races, but in the back of my mind, I have concerns with this type of. Activity and heart health. Living in Boulder, Colorado, I've known and certainly

• 2:04:41Speaker 04

  heard of a number of athletes that have died or had heart issues with either training or racing. And while I know there are a number of factors at play, genetics, lifestyle, I'm primarily plant-based. I'd be curious to hear of any advice or changes that you both have discussed or considered with your training. Well, I've certainly put a greater premium on recovery these days. Training for a day where I'll be in the saddle for seven to 10 hours will still require considerable effort. Anyway, much gratitude to you both for engaging and intriguing format, and I appreciate any thoughts you can share. Thanks.

• 2:05:14Rich Roll?

  Great question, Michael. Let me preface my response by making it very clear that I am not a doctor. I'm certainly not a cardiologist, but I would encourage you to see a cardiologist and develop a relationship with a cardiologist. I think it's always a good idea to have your heart regularly tested, get a calcium scan, get your blood work done. It's all very easy. Do you do that regularly? Affordable. Yeah, I had a calcium scan done like a year and a half ago. I should probably get another one. Like, starting at 50, you recommend that? I think even, I think even sooner. You know, all the cardiologists that I've had on the podcast, you know, say the same thing, which is that, you know, the plaques

• 2:05:55Rich Roll?

  in your, in your arteries begin in your teenage years. It's not like you wake up at 50 and suddenly you have a problem. Like, this is a progressive thing over many, many years that's informed by genetics, diet, lifestyle, all of these things. It's complicated. But being ahead of it, I think, is important. Davey, call a cardiologist. Yeah. Get me in there. Today. Stat. So at least you have a baseline to know what you're dealing with, right? If, there are cases where people get a calcium scan and are alarmed to get some crazy score because they're completely asymptomatic, and then they realize, like, they have to deal with stuff. So.

• 2:06:33Rich Roll?

  That's a good idea. Of course, there are cases of endurance athletes that end up with heart issues and you hear this a lot. I don't know what the statistics are on this and I don't know how many of the, how much of this is outlier versus, versus, you know, majority or anything like that, but I think it's important to not live your life in fear and not use those, those incidents as an excuse to opt out of life or to make excuses for yourself. I think it's important to be prudent and responsible and appreciate the fact that as you age, you're not going to be able to do things like you could do them in your twenties and that we need to gauge our efforts a little bit more consciously than we needed to when

• 2:07:16Rich Roll?

  we were in the past. And, you know, the question is really specific to things that I do or that we do. You know, my life is very different now than it was when I was training for Ultraman. So my training is at a very low boil right now, but even in the event that I was to sign up for a race that would be eight or nine hours or 10 hours or whatever the gravel race distance is that you're, you're thinking about, some of the things that I would think about and take seriously is not overtraining, not being chronically exhausted. You know, I, I don't think that those are good ideas as we get older and to pay much more attention to recovery, nutrition, et cetera, particularly recovery and all the kind of pesky little

• 2:08:01Rich Roll?

  things that are annoying like foam rolling and body work and getting, you know, adjustments and having active, you know, tissue release and all of those things I think are really important.

• 2:08:14Adam Skolnick?

  Which is hard right now also.

• 2:08:16Rich Roll?

  It's hard because yeah, right, but you can get devices that can at least help you with some of that stuff until we can safely do that again. Also, it's important to train responsibly. You don't, this is not something, you know, if you're going to be out for nine or 10 hours, you don't want your training to be you just winging it and you're like, I'm just going to go out and ride my bike and ride hard when I feel like it. Like I would encourage you to get some professional consultation, whether it's a coach or a training plan of some form and paying attention to how your body is responding to that on a day to day and a week to week basis so that you're not overdoing it.

• 2:08:54Rich Roll?

  You know, I feel like at 54, I love just going out in that like zone two mode and enjoying myself. And that way I don't get run down. I'm not overtraining. I'm giving myself a workout, but I'm definitely more gentle with myself than I would have been 10 years ago even. And do it for the joy of it, I think is important. You know, to the point of, you know, endurance athletes having heart problems, for every person like that, there's a guy like Don Wildman, who I was talking to Laird Hamilton about, who was just killing it, you know, up into his, up through his 80s on the mountain bike, just destroying, you know, every young buck

• 2:09:34Rich Roll?

  in Malibu, you know, with, with his, you know, Jack Lalanne-esque, you know, lifestyle. So, you know, there's guys like that too, who, who, you know, went all the way to the end and lived a very long and fulfilling life, basically doing what he loved to do.

• 2:09:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:51Rich Roll?

  So, I guess those are my thoughts on that.

• 2:09:53Adam Skolnick?

  Even Dan Buettner's guy, the, in Loma Linda, who was swimming into his 90s, that doctor, the plant-based guy.

• 2:10:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:01Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 2:10:02Rich Roll?

  I forget his name.

• 2:10:03Adam Skolnick?

  I think Dan had him on the Today Show at some point.

• 2:10:05Rich Roll?

  On the tip of my tongue. I know exactly who you're talking about.

• 2:10:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:10Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing guy.

• 2:10:10Rich Roll?

  But that guy wasn't doing, he wasn't racing.

• 2:10:13Adam Skolnick?

  No, but he was still active.

• 2:10:15Rich Roll?

  And, you know, you know, Michael lives in Boulder and, you know, everybody in Boulder looks like they're ready to win Ironman at all times. So, it's a, it's a very, you know, hyper-active.

• 2:10:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 2:10:27Rich Roll?

  You know, and competitive environment.

• 2:10:29Adam Skolnick?

  And yes, and middle-aged guys especially, there's so many of them.

• 2:10:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:34Adam Skolnick?

  You know, to be honest, I'm, Michael, I'm, right now, I've got an ankle thing, a back thing, and my back locked up on me. I got a neck thing. I've had, you know, my biggest problem is-

• 2:10:47Rich Roll?

  You have a baby.

• 2:10:48Adam Skolnick?

  I have a baby. I'm like, I haven't been, that's the main thing, is I haven't been doing my recovery. I haven't been doing the yoga. Obviously massage is out. And so the recovery stuff backs up on you, and the next thing you know, your body starts to rebel. So, but I've never done the cardiologist, never had a calcium scan. So, this is all news to me. So, I don't have any-

• 2:11:10Adam Skolnick?

  But that's why we have the guru of Ultra here to tell you how to do it. I would, um, I, I think that makes sense to think about these things, you know? As, as I'm getting older, I'm in my late 40s now. As I'm getting older, I think about it too, you know? You know, I think it makes sense to think about heart health. I think you're doing the right thing by even bringing up the question. I think it's something probably a lot of people in their 50s think about. And we've all heard, you know, when, when we were kids, it was Jim Fix or whatever. I forget who it was, the runner that like-

• 2:11:38Rich Roll?

  Right, it was, it was, was Jim, it was Jim Fit, the guy who wrote that book. Yeah, yeah, who died, who died quite young.

• 2:11:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, so there's always those crazy horror stories and of course, people you might know. But, and, and, uh, in Hollywood, the stories were always like the 50 year old producer who had, had blow in his system, died on the basketball court.

• 2:11:57Rich Roll?

  It's very different.

• 2:11:58Adam Skolnick?

  Very different than Boulder.

• 2:11:59Rich Roll?

  Right. On a very tactical level, a couple of things that you could do, since you're living in Boulder, you probably have a heart rate monitor strap already. Like this is, this is not going to be news to you.

• 2:12:10Adam Skolnick?

  You're born with it, right?

• 2:12:11Rich Roll?

  But if you don't, that would be one thing that I would do. Get a heart rate monitor, track your heart rate when you're training, understand what your zones are so you know specifically which energy systems you're training, which will help you be more efficient to pinpoint, you know, how to work the systems properly without overdoing it. And you might want to look into, to getting like a whoop, you know? Because a whoop basically is very good at tracking your recovery, how you're bouncing back, um, by monitoring your heart rate variability and also your respiratory rate. And all of these kind of markers help inform the level of strain that your body is prepared to endure.

• 2:12:53Rich Roll?

  And that could be a tool in paying attention, paying better attention to your heart health.

• 2:12:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:59Rich Roll?

  And I'm sure there's plenty of doctors and perhaps cardiologists in Boulder who are well versed in this subject because it's so much a part of the culture there. So find the right person, um, to be your, uh, consulting partner on this.

• 2:13:16Adam Skolnick?

  And zone two forever. I just did an hour, 20 minute run, zone two the whole time. For the first time, I was able to do that.

• 2:13:23Rich Roll?

  Look at the smile on your face.

• 2:13:24Adam Skolnick?

  And it felt great. My, my back was killing me. My ankle was fucked, but it was a great time.

• 2:13:31Rich Roll?

  On that note.

• 2:13:34Rich Roll?

  This shall conclude.

• 2:13:36Adam Skolnick?

  This concludes 2020's Roll On Edition.

• 2:13:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. On that note. Awesome, man. So I don't know when we'll be back with this. It will be at some point in the new year. Stay healthy, everybody. Enjoy the holidays.

• 2:13:50Adam Skolnick?

  Happy holidays.

• 2:13:50Rich Roll?

  Love your loved ones. Be kind, be grateful, and I'll catch you in 2021 because we are putting this fucking bad boy in the rearview. Are we not?

• 2:14:01Adam Skolnick?

  2020 is gone, baby.

• 2:14:03Rich Roll?

  Done and dusted.

• 2:14:04Adam Skolnick?

  We are, we are done with it. It is not quite yet done with us, but it will be soon.

• 2:14:08Rich Roll?

  Very soon. How do you feel?

• 2:14:11Adam Skolnick?

  I feel great, man. This was a good first, uh, first session in.

• 2:14:14Rich Roll?

  Breaking in the new studio.

• 2:14:17Adam Skolnick?

  We did it, man.

• 2:14:18Rich Roll?

  We did.

• 2:14:19Adam Skolnick?

  You look good. Feel good?

• 2:14:21Rich Roll?

  Feel good.

• 2:14:22Adam Skolnick?

  Ready for the January break?

• 2:14:23Rich Roll?

  I am. Travel's kind of out the window, so I don't know what I'm gonna do. Yeah, I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do. Maybe get in my car and drive around, but we'll see.

• 2:14:32Adam Skolnick?

  Adventure.

• 2:14:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Um, cool. Uh, if you want to learn more about Adam, you can find him at Adam Skolnick on all the fun social stuff that is owned by the giant conglomerates.

• 2:14:43Adam Skolnick?

  They're all owned by Facebook.

• 2:14:44Rich Roll?

  Facing anti-trust violations right now.

• 2:14:47Adam Skolnick?

  No, Twitter is on its own.

• 2:14:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's true. Uh, you can find me at Rich Roll. If you would like your question answered on a future edition of the show, you can leave us a voicemail at 424-235-4626. If you want to game the Skolnick algorithm, keep it concise and clear.

• 2:15:05Adam Skolnick?

  And you can sing. Sing if you want.

• 2:15:06Rich Roll?

  Do what you want.

• 2:15:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:07Rich Roll?

  Make it crazy. What would Rob Bell sell? Dude, make it crazy.

• 2:15:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, if you're gonna do it. Put your imprint on it, baby.

• 2:15:14Rich Roll?

  Own it.

• 2:15:14Adam Skolnick?

  Don't be afraid.

• 2:15:15Rich Roll?

  Don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. There will be show notes on the episode page at richroll.com with links to all the stuff that we talked about today. All the, I've already compiled all those links, so plenty of stuff to dive deep into today's subject matter. You can also submit your questions on the Facebook group, but honestly, leave us a voicemail. It's more fun that way. And that's it. Appreciate you guys. I love you. I don't take your attention for granted. I love doing the show. It means so much to me that you guys are on this journey with me and tuning in. So I will see you back here at some point in 2021. I'll be here. Enjoy all the shows that we have banked and all the intros that I've already recorded

• 2:15:59Rich Roll?

  for them. That makes it sound like I'm in the present moment, but I'm actually in parts unknown. Parts unknown. Cool. Until then, peace. Blatz. Namaste.