Roll On: What Happened to the Olympics?

Marked by endless scandal and rampant corruption, the Olympics are in free fall. Today we explore how the world's most highly acclaimed brand has become corrosive, and what can be done to repair it. But fear not, we also celebrate a selection of inspiring athletic highlights from Beijing to Oahu, answer listener questions, share a few products that have caught our fancy, and more. As always, my co-host for today's rendition of 'Roll On' is ‘His Semi Deepness’ Mr. Adam Skolnick, an activist and veteran journalist known as David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me co-author. Adam writes 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 still uses the ‘new dad’ excuse to avoid working on his novel. Topics discussed in today's episode include: the politics behind the declining global interest in the Olympics; bribery & corruption within the International Olympic Committee; how a Florida town with no ice rink produced three Olympic speedskaters; the backlash levied upon teenage freeskier Eileen Gu; speedskater Nils van der Poel's manifesto on Z2 aerobic base training; how Erin Jackson became the first Black woman to win individual Winter Olympic gold; Kelly Slater's Pipe Masters win days before turning 50; and the benefits of using "dumb phones" in limiting screen time & phone addiction; and more As always, we close things out by taking a few listener questions. Today we answer: How do you cultivate optimism and gratitude as a natural cynic? How do you stay true to your goals? What advice do you have for young people navigating their twenties? Thank you to Brett from NYC, Bill from Crested Butte, and Evan from Iowa for your questions. 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 it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Enjoy the show! 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?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Today, we're getting back into our regular bi-weekly Roll On routine. Got a great show for you coming up quick, but first...

• 1:31Rich Roll?

  All right, let's do the show.

• 1:37Rich Roll?

  All righty, greetings, everybody. Welcome to Roll On, where Curious Sir Adam Skolnick and I tap the non-alcoholic keg frothing with frivolity and matters of note, stories current that have captured our interest. We share a few products that we have enjoyed. We answer some listener questions, get up to no good, hopefully have a bit of fun while we're at it. But first, soon-to-inherit Sylvia Earle's crown, Lord of Malibu's underwater currents, his semi-deepness himself. Mr. Adam Skolnick, how you doing?

• 2:09Adam Skolnick?

  Semi-deepness.

• 2:10Rich Roll?

  Semi-deepness. Well, you have not gone as deep as Sylvia.

• 2:15Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 2:15Rich Roll?

  That's a fact.

• 2:16Adam Skolnick?

  And to suggest I might inherit her crown anytime soon is, I don't know, it's borderline.

• 2:22Rich Roll?

  It's preposterous. I'm throwing it in your direction.

• 2:25Adam Skolnick?

  I appreciate it. You know, Rich, I can't complain. I am now the proud owner of life insurance.

• 2:32Rich Roll?

  Wow. You are a middle-aged Jewish man. Responsible, taking care of his family.

• 2:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. If I die tomorrow, April gets a million bucks.

• 2:43Rich Roll?

  Well, it depends on how you die.

• 2:45Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, shit, wait. Oh, no, I haven't signed it yet.

• 2:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:47Adam Skolnick?

  So after I sign it.

• 2:50Rich Roll?

  If she kills you, she doesn't get it.

• 2:52Adam Skolnick?

  Well, not if it's proven that way.

• 2:54Rich Roll?

  Right. Okay. Do you have a plan?

• 2:56Adam Skolnick?

  If I fake my own death, April gets a million bucks.

• 3:01Rich Roll?

  They have to discover the body, though.

• 3:03Adam Skolnick?

  They need a body?

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's, you know, caveats.

• 3:06Adam Skolnick?

  Life insurance needs a body?

• 3:07Rich Roll?

  I think so.

• 3:08Adam Skolnick?

  Ah, fuck.

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Back to the drawing board.

• 3:11Adam Skolnick?

  Rich, are you insured?

• 3:13Rich Roll?

  I am.

• 3:14Adam Skolnick?

  How well?

• 3:15Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I should know. I think okay.

• 3:19Adam Skolnick?

  You're pretty well insured, are you?

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  Okay. Well, mainly because if something happens to me, this whole thing stops and there's no business, right? That's the weird thing with podcasting. Like, I don't, I don't run a business that could continue without me.

• 3:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 3:35Rich Roll?

  So, and you're in the same situation.

• 3:37Adam Skolnick?

  I am. I mean, listen, Ben and Jerry's has some nice benefits, and I like the life insurance plan they got for me, but I need it to supplement. I need it to supplement.

• 3:45Rich Roll?

  Okay. How's it going over there, scooping? Scooping the dream?

• 3:49Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I came down with a scoop elbow. Have you ever heard of that?

• 3:52Rich Roll?

  No.

• 3:53Adam Skolnick?

  Scooper's elbow?

• 3:53Rich Roll?

  A little tendonitis?

• 3:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like one of the tendons in there. There's so many, I don't even, I can't, I used to memorize all my tendons, but.

• 4:01Rich Roll?

  Is that impacting your TikTok game?

• 4:03Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, dude, I don't do it for TikTok. I do it for the soul of scooping.

• 4:07Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, I wanted to say, today's Monday, it's February 14th. That makes it Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day, my friend.

• 4:16Adam Skolnick?

  Happy Valentine's Day to you.

• 4:17Rich Roll?

  And as much as I resent state-sponsored holidays, that mandate that we show affection for our loved ones, I could not resist the following. I got you a little something.

• 4:29Adam Skolnick?

  What?

• 4:31Adam Skolnick?

  This is terrible.

• 4:32Rich Roll?

  Courtesy of the local CVS.

• 4:35Adam Skolnick?

  You got me CVS roses?

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 4:38Adam Skolnick?

  And CVS chocolates?

• 4:39Rich Roll?

  Roses and candy for the love of my life.

• 4:42Adam Skolnick?

  Aww.

• 4:43Rich Roll?

  The bromance that knows no bounds.

• 4:45Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you, bro.

• 4:46Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 4:47Adam Skolnick?

  I got, I got you.

• 4:50Adam Skolnick?

  Your gift's in the mail? Your gift is in the mail.

• 4:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:54Rich Roll?

  There you go. I think I left the price on that, too, if you want to check.

• 4:57Adam Skolnick?

  Um, no, but there is a QR code. The rainforest lions screw these.

• 5:02Rich Roll?

  If you turn those flowers upside down, the petals might all fall off of all of them.

• 5:09Rich Roll?

  There you go.

• 5:10Adam Skolnick?

  Isn't it? You got me top-quality flowers.

• 5:12Rich Roll?

  I did, I did.

• 5:14Adam Skolnick?

  Nothing but the best. Were these left in a car overnight?

• 5:18Rich Roll?

  No.

• 5:18Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 5:19Rich Roll?

  I picked them up on the way over here this morning.

• 5:21Adam Skolnick?

  You have a petal guy at this studio?

• 5:23Rich Roll?

  Uh, no.

• 5:23Adam Skolnick?

  A rose petal guy?

• 5:24Rich Roll?

  We could use one. We could use some flora and fauna. Here in the studio.

• 5:28Adam Skolnick?

  I wish I had a gecko here.

• 5:29Rich Roll?

  Um, in addition to it being Valentine's Day, yesterday was the Super Bowl. How was your Super Bowl experience?

• 5:35Adam Skolnick?

  You know, it was great. We thank God for DVR, the geniuses behind DVR. That way you can check in on a bathing baby, or help prepare food and clean up occasionally, and still not miss a second of football action.

• 5:49Rich Roll?

  Right. Rams, the Victors, LA celebrating.

• 5:53Adam Skolnick?

  LA, title town. Three titles in, what, two years? Something like that? Three sports? Come on.

• 5:59Rich Roll?

  Plus, an epic halftime show.

• 6:01Adam Skolnick?

  It really was good. I feared for the halftime show, because anytime a bunch of old guys get together, do their, their, their, I knew Kendrick Lamar would be good. And, uh, and I had a feeling Mary J. Blige would be great. A voice like that, doesn't matter. You're always gonna be good. I worried about, about the other guys, but they were fantastic.

• 6:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I thought it was pretty great.

• 6:21Adam Skolnick?

  Fantastic.

• 6:22Rich Roll?

  And it was entertaining to see certain factions of the more conservative part of our culture lose their minds.

• 6:30Adam Skolnick?

  Do they not like that?

• 6:31Rich Roll?

  No, that, that, this, this marks the, you know, the decline of human civilization. Which is ironic because there was nothing new in that show. I mean, when did Eight Mile come out? 2006 or something like that?

• 6:44Adam Skolnick?

  What's the decline of human civilization? That there's not one, there's one show without a country music star?

• 6:48Rich Roll?

  I don't know, I suppose.

• 6:50Adam Skolnick?

  Um, I liked Anderson Paak as the drummer. Didn't see that coming. Uh, one of my top drummers, Ringo, Jason Camiolo and Anderson Paak.

• 7:00Rich Roll?

  He was cool. His outfit was dope.

• 7:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it was great. He was great. I don't know if people know, he's got some, some wonderful hip-hop records. He's collaborating with Bruno Mars a lot now. He's got a band with Bruno Mars. And, um, but my favorite record of his is called Malibu. And, uh, I don't know if you know that record.

• 7:17Rich Roll?

  I have, I don't know that record.

• 7:18Adam Skolnick?

  Fabulous.

• 7:19Rich Roll?

  Cool. Um, I had the, uh, exciting good fortune of attending a Super Bowl party.

• 7:25Adam Skolnick?

  You did?

• 7:25Rich Roll?

  At, uh, yeah, Toby Morse, friend of the pod, invited me to join him at Frank Grillo's house.

• 7:32Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 7:32Rich Roll?

  So I went to a Super Bowl party. For people who don't know, Frank Grillo is sort of an action movie star.

• 7:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 7:37Rich Roll?

  He's in like every movie. He's gotta be like one of the hardest working men in show business.

• 7:41Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 7:42Rich Roll?

  I'd never met him before. He was delightful. And he's, I think he's 55.

• 7:46Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 7:47Rich Roll?

  And just ridiculously fit, maintains like 4% body fat year round. He's a boxer. Um, anyway, he was super kind and, uh, we'll see if we can't get him on the podcast.

• 7:57Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 7:58Rich Roll?

  He seemed interested in coming on, so that might be fun.

• 8:00Adam Skolnick?

  Was it weird to be at a Super Bowl party, not really knowing that much about the players in the NFL?

• 8:08Rich Roll?

  Slightly. I actually don't think I've watched the Super Bowl in like 10 years.

• 8:11Adam Skolnick?

  I figured.

• 8:12Rich Roll?

  And I was like, well, LA's in the Super Bowl. I enjoy the spectacle of the Super Bowl, but I don't watch football throughout the year. I'm much more interested in the sports that we're gonna cover in a few moments.

• 8:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Rich Roll?

  The Olympics being at the top of that, um, sort of, uh, pyramid of, of interest. Uh, you know, but, but professional sports is not my bailiwick.

• 8:33Adam Skolnick?

  Be that as it may, what I love about sports is, I bet you could tell me who the two best players on the Rams are, just from watching a game. You haven't seen them play all year. You don't know anything about the team and you probably tell me who they are.

• 8:44Rich Roll?

  No, we should move on.

• 8:46Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  I enjoyed the commercials though.

• 8:49Adam Skolnick?

  It's Cooper Cup and Aaron Donald. Larry David won.

• 8:53Rich Roll?

  Cup scored two touchdowns.

• 8:55Adam Skolnick?

  He did, and Aaron Donald was the guy.

• 8:56Rich Roll?

  The game got very exciting in the last five minutes, although it was a bit of a slog before that.

• 9:00Adam Skolnick?

  A bit of a slog, bit of a slog.

• 9:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Anyway, enough of that. Let's turn to the topics that we want to get into today. Specifically, the Winter Olympics, but I want to talk about the Olympics through this kind of interesting lens of declining interest, right? Have you been watching the Winter Olympics? Like, what is your perspective on how this has been transpiring in terms of the media attention and just general, you know, public engagement with what's happening?

• 9:30Adam Skolnick?

  I have not been watching it. And, but I have been reading stories on it because some colleagues of mine in New York Times Sports are over there and they do a fantastic job every Olympics and they're doing a great job again. And so I kind of have been cluing into the main stories and the winners. And for me, it's because it's, you know,

• 9:54Adam Skolnick?

  it's a tough one just because of my, my life right now with a little one. Like, I can't really make time to like, sit down and absorb these longer events and these, all these heats and all that. You know, after the kid goes down because I'm up at like five. So there's really no time for it. And, and so that's really the only reason. And then in general, I kind of don't tune into the Winter Olympics on a regular basis anyway. Like, there are some times I do. There are some years I do some, some, it's not years, some, what's the, what's the word for four years?

• 10:26Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 10:27Adam Skolnick?

  Sometimes.

• 10:28Rich Roll?

  Quad annual, quadr- quadrennial.

• 10:31Adam Skolnick?

  Some quadrennials I do tune in, but this quadrennial I have not.

• 10:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think, you know, certainly there's some amazing stories and NBC is covering it in the way that they always do. And now they have Peacock, so you can stream it, which wasn't the case in the prior Olympics. And you would think with that, there would be this sort of audience capture. But my sense is that that's not the case. And it's left me kind of reflecting on what the Olympics mean. Personally and at large, and when I think back, you know, over the course of my own life, the Olympics has been huge as an inspiration and as a motivational force in many decisions that I made in my life. Like, I remember being a kid, I'm older than you, and just being obsessed with the Olympics. And this was a time when Sports Illustrated

• 11:18Rich Roll?

  really mattered, and you would wait for that latest edition to come in the mail, and it would always be an incredible photograph on the cover. They did such a wonderful job of covering the Olympics. And, you know, within that, in the context of the Winter Olympics, like, I have vivid memories of the Miracle on Ice, the 1980 US hockey victory that became this movie, which is actually a really good movie. Have you seen Miracle?

• 11:41Adam Skolnick?

  I have seen Miracle. It's been a while.

• 11:43Rich Roll?

  Miracle holds up.

• 11:44Adam Skolnick?

  But, I mean, I remember, I mean, I'm old enough to have been kind of a semi-conscious sports fan in 1980. That was the most remarkable team. That was probably, if you had to pick the Olympics that really turned me on to it, that was the Olympics, the 1980 Winter Olympics. So my first favorite Olympics was Winter Olympics.

• 12:01Rich Roll?

  Right. So we had the Miracle on Ice, where literally the whole world stopped.

• 12:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Rich Roll?

  And everybody was tuned in to what was happening. And it was a, you know, incredible monoculture moment that now, in today's fractured, you know, kind of media ecosystem, is rare. Those moments are few and far between. I mean, the Super Bowl is one of the few remaining things like that, and the occasional Marvel movie.

• 12:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 12:27Rich Roll?

  But beyond that, you're hard-pressed to think of things that happen in sports or in culture in general that make everybody pay attention at the same time. It just doesn't exist. The Miracle on Ice was like, an incredible moment. And I remember, you know, Mike Iaruzioni and Jim Craig and Herb Brooks, the coach, and all the intrigue around that. And I think the movie, if you haven't seen Miracle, it does a really good job of capturing that, and it does hold up the rewatchables, which is a Ringer podcast where they go over old movies. They did a recent episode on Miracle, which, if you're into that kind of thing, was super fun to listen to. I listened to that when I was in Hawaii.

• 13:05Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 13:06Rich Roll?

  And then beyond that, like, my personal, one of my- Favorite athletes of all time from that same Olympiad was Eric Hayden. He won five golds in speed skating, set four Olympic records, one world record, gathered more medals than personally than any other country in that Olympiad, other than the Soviet Union and East Germany. And then he becomes this pro cyclist for 7-Eleven. And he was one of the first crossover athletes. It's like, I remember that cover of Sports Illustrated when he was in the all gold, like bodysuit and his quads were just enormous. And I just thought that was the most unbelievable coolest thing I'd ever seen. Cause I didn't know anything about speed skating before that.

• 13:44Adam Skolnick?

  And speed skating is like made for television. It is such a cool, it is such a cool thing to watch.

• 13:49Rich Roll?

  Very cool. Yeah. Just the way in which the Olympics, even with sports that are so kind of a scance of mainstream interest could galvanize the world for a given moment in time. It just doesn't feel like that's the case right now. And there's a lot of reasons for that, which I want to get into. Not the least of which is, you know, doping scandals, IOC corruption, and just our fractured media culture where there's too many choices. And it's very difficult to drive everybody's attention into one thing. I mean, when the 80 Olympics was going on, there was like four TV channels and that was basically it.

• 14:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 14:26Rich Roll?

  You had to watch when it was happening. You couldn't tape it or, you know, time delay it. And there was no Twitter or internet to spoil the news.

• 14:34Adam Skolnick?

  They would delay it for you and funnel it to your prime time.

• 14:37Rich Roll?

  It was very easy to avoid knowing what had happened.

• 14:40Adam Skolnick?

  It didn't matter because the newspapers wouldn't report it till the following day. So you, it didn't matter if it had happened already. There was like, unless you're like paying attention to the, the radio news, you weren't going to get that headline until the following day. So you had, they could delay it till dinnertime or after.

• 14:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And when you think about why, you know, sort of the sheen has faded off the Olympic brand and why it's this brand that's, that I think you can make a fair argument is in decline, is the dissonance between what it stands for, which are, which is like principles and values and ethics has been tainted by so. Much controversy and corruption and this dissonance between what the Olympics represents and what it actually is in reality, there's a huge gap there. And of course, then that's even further handicapped by our media dispersed culture.

• 15:33Adam Skolnick?

  Media dispersed, meaning?

• 15:35Rich Roll?

  Meaning like, there's just too many choices.

• 15:37Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 15:37Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 15:38Adam Skolnick?

  You missed the old days when the brainwashing came right to your living room.

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  And I welcomed it gladly. The propaganda washed right over me.

• 15:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Rich Roll?

  As I draped myself in the American flag.

• 15:50Adam Skolnick?

  And then at like, 2:00 in the morning, the American flag came on your television, then it went to the white snow, whatever that is.

• 15:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 15:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, the static. Boy, those were great days.

• 16:00Rich Roll?

  How I wish for that.

• 16:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  But I think that played a big part in me wanting to be a swimmer and just loving everything about the Olympics and the Olympic movement and then being able to train with other Olympic athletes. It's played such a huge part in my life, which is why, you know, it's so dispiriting to me personally to see this thing kind of falling apart before our very eyes.

• 16:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 16:21Rich Roll?

  And so, to kind of further get into, you know, the hows and whys of that, I wanted to draw attention to a newsletter that David Epstein puts out, David being a friend of the podcast, he was on in 2016, episode 466. He's the author of some great books, Range, The Sports Gene, and he has this newsletter called Range Widely.

• 16:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 16:45Rich Roll?

  And he posted this article.

• 16:49Adam Skolnick?

  Great article.

• 16:50Rich Roll?

  Called, "The Olympics Have An Integrity Problem, Here's How To Fix It," wherein he interviews this guy, Steve Mezler, who's a three-time Olympian, who had won a gold medal in bobsled, and is now a board member of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. And what was so interesting about this interview is how frank this guy was, because he was sort of talking out of school.

• 17:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 17:11Rich Roll?

  In terms of what he thinks is going wrong, as a current, you know, sitting board member of this organization.

• 17:19Adam Skolnick?

  Being, yes, the US OPC.

• 17:22Rich Roll?

  Right, and you know, we can point to a number of factors. You know, this came up in my podcast with Brian Fogel, the documentarian behind Icarus, who explored Russian state-sponsored doping. So in 2019, Russia gets banned from the Olympics, but as we all know, they're like still competing as the Russian Olympic Committee, which is just, and we all just kind of like, okay, oh, well.

• 17:44Adam Skolnick?

  They were banned before Tokyo. I mean, I think, so when it first happened and they had the ROC, got to compete in Tokyo, my sympathies were a little bit with the Russian athlete that may be clean, like, maybe.

• 17:56Rich Roll?

  Well, if the doping is state-sponsored, on some level, like, that denigrates the culpability of the individual athlete, right? So this is not about pointing fingers at athletes. This is about systemic problems and power politics that are at play.

• 18:10Adam Skolnick?

  Right, and so, but the bottom line is, if a country continues to violate, then the athletes may get penalized, but that's just part and parcel of it. So you can't, like, there might, even if you're an athlete that is under that flag, and you can't trust that country to play a fair game, then, then I do understand the penalty, but then you gotta actually administer the penalty. You can't, like, say it's a penalty and then just, like...

• 18:35Rich Roll?

  Find some technicality that allows it to take. They did the same thing. Putin was supposedly banned, but then there he is at the opening ceremonies in Beijing, because they created some kind of corollary rule that allowed heads of state to attend, despite the Russian ban, so...

• 18:52Adam Skolnick?

  He was invited by the head of China.

• 18:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the duplicity here is unbelievable, and, you know, we have opulent demands by the IOC members, all the corruption that goes on behind the scenes with the bidding. How about the UGAR athlete lighting the flame?

• 19:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 19:09Rich Roll?

  Which is sort of a, sort of, political whitewashing of, you know, a pretty terrible situation.

• 19:16Adam Skolnick?

  Of labor camps within China.

• 19:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, within China. And now, I guess, future Olympiads are being awarded without bidding, because, as David points out in this newsletter, there's a decline in cities bidding for this. Like, there isn't the demand that there once was. Like, it used to be this huge prestigious thing to land an Olympiad, and now, very few cities are even interested in hosting.

• 19:39Adam Skolnick?

  Because you'd have to build arenas, you'd have to, it costs so much to put it on, but yet, you'd still, they would still bid. They would still make these incredible, you know, presentations and bid. You know, I don't know if it got to $100 million, but I believe it did.

• 19:53Rich Roll?

  I think it's in excess of that. Didn't LA decide to defer an Olympiad in exchange for like $180 million bonus or whatever?

• 20:00Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Like, I think David points out, or is it David or Steve? Someone points out what happened in Paris and LA both went for 2024. And they both won. Basically, the Olympic Committee said, we'll give it to Paris and we'll give you LA $100-plus million if you'll take 2028. And then they awarded Brisbane in 2032 without any bids because

• 20:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:21Adam Skolnick?

  they didn't want to be embarrassed by only having one bid or no bids. And so maybe now it's like you're almost recruiting. It's almost, they're actually having to pay cities to take it.

• 20:31Rich Roll?

  There's a desperation with that. And why Brisbane, Adam?

• 20:34Adam Skolnick?

  Because it's awesome.

• 20:36Rich Roll?

  Well, maybe. It is awesome. Yeah, I can see it being a cool place to host the Olympics. But let's go behind the scenes a little bit.

• 20:43Adam Skolnick?

  The Gold Coast.

• 20:44Rich Roll?

  And understand, first of all, the kind of political co-mingling between WADA and the IOC.

• 20:51Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 20:51Rich Roll?

  That's highly problematic.

• 20:52Adam Skolnick?

  That's right. Yes.

• 20:52Rich Roll?

  Half of WADA seats are occupied by IOC members, which is insane. Because basically, you know, one of these organizations is a police force and the other is a promotional force. And these two things should not intersect. They should be checks and balances on each other. And yet they're completely co-mingled, so much so that John Coats, who's president of the Australian Olympic Committee, and who is on the IOC board, he's VP of the IOC, is also president of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. So he's overseeing jurisprudence at the same time. I mean, talk about, it's like, you know, in government, you have, you have these different houses with different responsibilities. The judiciary and the legislature should not be co-mingled, right?

• 21:39Rich Roll?

  And he's also the final, which, well, the Court of Arbitration for Sport is the final arbiter of WADA decisions.

• 21:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 21:45Rich Roll?

  And he's leader of the Brisbane bid.

• 21:48Adam Skolnick?

  I guess they won.

• 21:49Rich Roll?

  So you tell me, you know, how that came to pass, right?

• 21:51Adam Skolnick?

  I guess they won.

• 21:52Rich Roll?

  So here we have this unbelievably corrupt and broken system of bribes and political favoritism and doping scandals and failure to adhere to, you know, rules that I thought we agreed upon.

• 22:06Adam Skolnick?

  And the writer, like you said, that these IOC members' opulent demands basically amount to, David compares them to a concert writer from like a diva star.

• 22:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:17Adam Skolnick?

  And like they're demanding-

• 22:18Rich Roll?

  They want to be wind and dine.

• 22:19Adam Skolnick?

  Wind and dine, they want their own traffic lanes, they want, like, I mean, it's crazy the demands they make and, you know, there's been incredible corruption in how IOC members are being bribed, there's accusations of being bribed with money and prostitutes in that story, it's a crazy story.

• 22:35Rich Roll?

  I know. So when you think of the Olympics as a brand, right?

• 22:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Rich Roll?

  What an incredible brand because of what it stands for. But if you denigrate, like if the foundation of that brand is eroded and the principles and values upon which it stands are no longer kind of like practiced in reality, then what does that brand stand for? And I think that's really at the root of the denigration of the Olympics. And I think in turn, people's interest in it. Like, there's a cynicism now and a kind of less sanguine, you know, relationship that we all have because we've been clued into some of these things that are going on behind the scenes. And, you know, I don't know if it's worse now than it always has been, or maybe we're just pulling the covers better than we ever have before. But it's a problem. You know, I feel like the Olympic brand is

• 23:24Rich Roll?

  sort of in freefall and they're trying to do damage control at a time right now while the games are going on, where it should be all about celebrating the athletes and the spirit of what this is kind of about.

• 23:40Adam Skolnick?

  I agree with you. I think that we're at a time in human history where the, this disparity between the wealthy and the poor is at the biggest, I think, of our lifetimes and maybe the biggest in history. And that kind of greed, I think, does infect these brands. And I think it's twofold. I think probably there was always a certain amount of corruption and racism and cynicism built into these structures that we all revered. But I also think that there was more honor. I do think there was more honor in organizationally. I think there was more honor in terms of how people, you know, being fair and having certain values and honoring the brand itself.

• 24:22Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, you could look at any sport, like everything's up for sale, corporate sponsorship left and right. And so when you get into that place, the money becomes the god and the values are secondary. Now, maybe money was always that way, but I do think that it has eroded a bit more in recent years and recent decades, anyway. At the same time, I think that everything's up for review right now. So it's not surprising to see the Olympics get the, you know, just as FIFA's being exposed, just as the NCAA has been exposed, USA gymnastics, the IOC is being exposed. And you can just, you know, peel back every layer of almost every institution and you'll see exposure.

• 25:05Adam Skolnick?

  And what is kind of scary for me is when all these institutions start to crumble at different times, what replaces them? You know, so you don't want these things to completely collapse because we do need institutional pillars to keep us, I think, to keep us within the guidelines of a healthy society. But at the same time, you can't abide some of the crimes that we're seeing, some of the corruption that we're seeing. So what happens? I'm not so sure, but I agree with you that there's certainly trouble. I also think, though, that when fans are back in the arenas and the Summer Olympics come back around, which are more popular anyway, and it's in Paris, it could be a different story.

• 25:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I guess the question really is, is the IOC beyond repair? Can it be, can these problems be resolved with, within the current context of how it operates? Or do we need to, you know, basically create a new IOC from the ground up? Like, who polices the IOC? And how can we root out this corruption and hold these people accountable and get people in there who share the values of the Olympics, you know, that have integrity?

• 26:17Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 26:18Rich Roll?

  And, you know, how can we eradicate the undue monetary influences that are causing some of these, you know, corruptions?

• 26:24Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not sure you can.

• 26:26Rich Roll?

  That's the thing.

• 26:27Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not sure you can.

• 26:28Rich Roll?

  Because it used to be, it was all about amateur athletics.

• 26:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 26:32Rich Roll?

  That ship sailed a long time ago.

• 26:33Adam Skolnick?

  Which is fine. I mean, I think we wanted, we always wanted the best athletes to compete. I mean, it's like, you need the best in the world to compete. The athletes need to make a living. You can't, before you had athletes trying to be amateurs and they couldn't make a living. And then afterwards, you know, it's still that way, but it's, at least they have a chance to make a living when they're at their peak earning potential.

• 26:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:56Adam Skolnick?

  And so, I think it's great. I think Lindsey Krauss wrote a devastating column.

• 27:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, she did.

• 27:03Adam Skolnick?

  In the New York Times. And the lead to this story, I mean, I'll just read a couple paragraphs. It's, this is what's happening. This explains why I haven't watched. Imagine a dystopian Olympics. Maybe it would have athletes skiing on fake snow down parched slopes. Robots mixing cocktails, making dumplings and disinfecting the air. Events staffed by workers not in sportswear, but hazmat suits. Instead of a stadium, you are eager to get a seat in a bubble you cannot leave.

• 27:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah. There's a line in this article, "The games reek of societal decline."

• 27:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 27:40Rich Roll?

  It's very, it's a very pessimistic view. And she says at the bottom of the fourth or fifth paragraph, "Instead of showcasing the best of what humanity can do, this Olympics seems to reflect what we can't." And so, it's a more pessimistic, you know, take on kind of what David was talking about in his piece.

• 27:58Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 27:59Rich Roll?

  And it's dispiriting, and it's not helped by the fact that there's a nuclear power plant right behind the ski jump.

• 28:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, but like, it's true.

• 28:09Rich Roll?

  How did that happen?

• 28:09Adam Skolnick?

  But then there's a lot of people who think nuclear power is an answer to the climate crisis. But the, uh, the ski jump itself, if you look at it, if you strip it down, like to people like Eric Hayden or the ski jump, I mean, the ski jump is just mental.

• 28:23Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:23Adam Skolnick?

  They fly so high and so far. And I mean, that's one of the great sports that that's what the Olympics are about. These sports you don't normally tune into that can be so captivating. So, um, you know, it still has the core. The core is still there, you know, the events, the athletes, the purity is in the athletes. It always was, you know?

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  There's a flickering tiny little Olympic flame at the bottom of a very deep, deep hole. And it still continues to, to flicker.

• 28:51Adam Skolnick?

  Well, let's put a little more water on it and then, then we'll, we'll fuel it back up with some good stories.

• 28:57Rich Roll?

  We do have some good stories I want to share, but what's the final douse of water you want to throw on this?

• 29:02Adam Skolnick?

  The Camilla Valieva situation.

• 29:05Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 29:06Adam Skolnick?

  The Camilla Valieva situation.

• 29:07Rich Roll?

  So walk me through this.

• 29:10Adam Skolnick?

  15 year old Russian figure skater, basically Nadia Komanych on the ice, uh, tested positive for an angina drug in December. And she basically is this prodigy. The drug helps you, makes you more efficient, I guess, in athletic endeavors. It's called Triometazidine.

• 29:31Rich Roll?

  Triometazidine.

• 29:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. It's a cardiac metabolic modular proven to improve physical efficiency. Anyway, this test came in long before the Olympics, but it was still a, uh, tested positive for it. And it's a 15 year old girl. So at first they didn't, they didn't, uh, the, the Olympic committee did not identify, or WADA did not identify who it was, but she had helped Russia to team, team gold. She was favored to win gold in, um, the individual rounds as well. And, um, and it was sad because you know, if a 15 year old girl is taking a drug like that, she's doing what she's being asked to do.

• 30:09Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 30:10Adam Skolnick?

  Um, and Katarina Witt, two time Olympic figure skating champion. Is quoted as saying, "What they knowingly did to her, if true, cannot be surpassed in inhumanity and makes my athlete's heart cry infinitely." Camilla Valieva is a young girl and child prodigy whose highly difficult performances and grace enchanted the whole world at only 15, a minor, depending on adults, and she is not to blame here. So, defense of Camilla, I agree with that. What's crazy is the story of who this coach is. And I want to make sure I get the name right, this coach.

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, before you get, while you're locking that in. I mean, look, you know, complete prodigy, this poor girl. And you could see the stress on her face if you're watching her in the wake of this controversy. First to land a quadruple jump, you know, helps her team win the gold medal. What's interesting is she tested positive on December 25th, and I believe there were some interim competitions between then and now.

• 31:12Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 31:12Rich Roll?

  And that result was not reported until the day after she won gold or her team won gold, but before the medal ceremony. So like, why did this take so long? Was there some kind of, you know, political machinations that delayed the reporting on that? Because it's not like she's just some athlete. Like, she's a leading contender for gold. You would think that they would prioritize that test result.

• 31:35Adam Skolnick?

  Strange, right? And so she wouldn't, she wouldn't have had to go to the Olympics at all because they could have figured it out beforehand.

• 31:43Rich Roll?

  Right, and so Rusada, Russians Anti-Doping Agency, lifted the provisional suspension on her.

• 31:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 31:52Rich Roll?

  They're the ones who oversee, you know, anti-doping for not Russia. And here we are in this quagmire, which is not helping, you know, the Olympic movement. Like, how do we move forward from here? With this girl, this poor girl is caught in the middle of an international scandal regarding, once again, Russian athletes and doping.

• 32:13Adam Skolnick?

  And I think that kind of the institutional problem with that the Olympics have had is if you've seen, if you follow gymnastics here in the US, there are these young women and girls and young athletes in general are being crushed by this system. You just don't see it too often. And now this is an example of someone who is very publicly and it's happening in real time, not like years later after the it's over kind of telling the story. Her coach, she competes under a coach named Etary Teteridze, a Russian who has just a bonker story. I mean, it's like, it's right out of movie villain, kind of like, you can't even make this stuff up. She was a skater in her own right, never made it as a top

• 32:58Adam Skolnick?

  skater in Russia, moved to the US as a young woman, became an ice dancer, like an ice show dancer, just cruising around the United States, ended up in Oklahoma City where she lived in a YMCA in downtown Oklahoma City. She used to have to go to Baptist church services to get food, to like be able to eat afterwards. She was in Oklahoma City, a block away at that YMCA, a block away from the federal building when it exploded. And she wandered around in a daze, broken glass, limbs, blood everywhere. She is on the Survivor Wall at Oklahoma City. That's so crazy. She ends up- She's Russian. Russian. She moves back, she moves back to Russia. She could have stayed in the

• 33:42Adam Skolnick?

  US. She moves back to Russia and decides to climb the coaching ladder. And I guess ice skating coaches, there's a bunch of them over there. So it's hard to find the great athletes and to get into a top position. So for a decade, she's kind of, you know, running, working her butt off, trying to get there, finds these great athletes. And now she's the top coach. She was the top coach before Camilla, but Camilla was gonna basically cement her, her name. And who does she work with? A physician previously banned by Rusada in 2007 in a rowing doping scandal. And so that's the doctor that is overlooking Camilla's care. Right. The former athletes of this coach complain of injuries, they quit the sport, they have

• 34:26Adam Skolnick?

  anorexia, they have depression, they never, they don't come back to the sport. And so, you know, that's what you worry about with Camila.

• 34:34Rich Roll?

  Right. So if there is a silver lining in all of this, it's that it shines a spotlight on this issue. But like, yeah, that's a crazy story.

• 34:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Rich Roll?

  Blake, there's a, there's a NBC Sports article about this called, "Why Do Figure Skaters Under This Russian Coach Have Short Career?" So we'll link that up as well. And you can see that if you're watching it on video. And I guess the way that the kind of latest as of, you know, Monday, February 14th, how this is shaking out is that they're going to let her compete in the singles, which is this week, I believe. But they're not going to have medal ceremonies for the team event that they already won, or for the singles competition. So these other athletes who are innocently caught up in all of this don't get to have their podium moment, which is a tragedy.

• 35:26Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 35:27Rich Roll?

  And not helping.

• 35:28Adam Skolnick?

  None of this is helping.

• 35:37Adam Skolnick?

  Let's get to a story that is helping.

• 35:39Rich Roll?

  But we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna turn to some good news because there's some incredible stories coming out of this Olympiad. Some well-known, some less well-known. And of course, you know, we just picked a few.

• 35:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 35:52Rich Roll?

  There's plenty more where that came from because the Olympics is still the Olympics and the athletes are still the athletes.

• 35:59Adam Skolnick?

  They are.

• 35:59Rich Roll?

  And there are remarkable performances and stories behind those performances that I think are worthy of noting. The first being Erin Jackson, who's a 29-year-old speed skater. And she became the first black woman to win an individual Winter Olympic gold, winning the 500 meters in, in long track.

• 36:18Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 36:18Rich Roll?

  And the story, that in and of itself is such a cool story, but it just gets so much better the more that you learn about Erin and her backstory. So in the Olympic trials, she slipped.

• 36:32Rich Roll?

  And her teammate Brittany Bowe ended up giving up her spot so that Erin Jackson could go to the Olympics. Like, that is crazy.

• 36:40Adam Skolnick?

  Doesn't happen.

• 36:41Rich Roll?

  I've never heard of an Olympian or an Olympic prospect who qualifies for the Olympics donating their slot to somebody else because they think they deserve it or they might be better.

• 36:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yep. Never happens.

• 36:53Rich Roll?

  I know. And that is, this is why that little flickering Olympic flame, deep down in the bottom of that hole, will continue to blaze its light.

• 37:02Adam Skolnick?

  It just got a little bigger.

• 37:03Rich Roll?

  Stories like this, right? I mean, what a beautiful gesture. And then, of course, Erin goes on to win the gold. And she's the first woman to win a gold in speed skating, period, since Bonnie Blair in 1994. So it's been a while.

• 37:17Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 37:17Rich Roll?

  And then, when you dig even deeper into this story, she starts out as an inline skater. She does roller derby.

• 37:24Adam Skolnick?

  Roller derby.

• 37:24Rich Roll?

  And she's from Florida, which is weird. We have more to say about this in a minute.

• 37:28Adam Skolnick?

  Ocala, Florida.

• 37:29Rich Roll?

  So put a pin in Ocala, Florida for right now.

• 37:31Adam Skolnick?

  I will. I will put it in there.

• 37:33Rich Roll?

  And there's video that I saw the other day on social media of her getting on to, even though she was this inline skater, which is rollerblading, essentially, which is its own, you know, competition, its own sport. Apparently, like in 2016, she couldn't skate. There's video of her, like, going out onto the ice with speed skating skates on. And she couldn't even get her footing. She's, like, slipping all over the place. So literally four years ago. Although I did read something else that said she was a figure skater when she was young, so.

• 38:06Adam Skolnick?

  2016 was six years ago.

• 38:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's how old I am. The dementia is setting in, Adam. Yeah. I keep thinking it's 2020. That's pandemic mindset, right?

• 38:17Adam Skolnick?

  We had no Olympics in 2020.

• 38:18Rich Roll?

  You're right. Six years ago. But in six years from, from going, from a place of not really even being able to skate.

• 38:25Adam Skolnick?

  It's crazy.

• 38:26Rich Roll?

  To winning a gold medal is just a beautiful story.

• 38:28Adam Skolnick?

  It is. It speaks to dedication.

• 38:30Rich Roll?

  Continuing on speed skating, because it is my favorite. My, I think it's my favorite of all the Olympic, uh, winter Olympic sports.

• 38:36Adam Skolnick?

  And it's Ocala.

• 38:37Rich Roll?

  Because it's, you know, it all goes back to Eric Hayden, of course.

• 38:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 38:41Rich Roll?

  This guy. Joey Mantia.

• 38:45Adam Skolnick?

  Is it Mantia or Mantia?

• 38:46Rich Roll?

  Mantia.

• 38:47Adam Skolnick?

  I would pronounce it as Mantia, but I don't know. Could be Mantia, who knows?

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  It's probably Mantia. We should know that, right? So, he's this short track speed skater, 28 time world champion, world record holder. He's 5'8", 168 pounds. He didn't medal in this Olympics. I think he competed in the 1000 meters and the 1500 meters. He got sixth.

• 39:09Adam Skolnick?

  And the team pursuit's still going, I think.

• 39:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so he has another shot at a medal. But what caught my attention about this guy was a photograph from his Instagram of this dude's legs.

• 39:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 39:22Rich Roll?

  So if you're watching on video.

• 39:23Adam Skolnick?

  That's crazy.

• 39:24Rich Roll?

  Check out those quads, because I've never seen anything quite like that, with the exception of a bodybuilder.

• 39:30Adam Skolnick?

  I will never brag about my quads again.

• 39:32Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. Like, that's the sort of power that you have to generate at the elite level to be an Olympian in speed skating.

• 39:40Adam Skolnick?

  It's like, I'm looking at like Rich Roll's legs circa.

• 39:44Rich Roll?

  Mine do not. Even at my peak, never looked anything like that. I mean, that's.

• 39:49Adam Skolnick?

  Epic five.

• 39:50Rich Roll?

  There's some work that went into that.

• 39:51Adam Skolnick?

  Did I say big five? The epic five.

• 39:55Rich Roll?

  I mean, first of all, you look at that and you're like, how does that guy not win every gold medal with those legs?

• 40:00Adam Skolnick?

  Well, if it's the best legs comp, he's the gold medal winner.

• 40:04Rich Roll?

  He definitely wins that. It's interesting how those somehow still couldn't power him to gold medals in his. He's older, though, right? I think he's.

• 40:13Adam Skolnick?

  He's 36, yeah.

• 40:15Rich Roll?

  36, yeah.

• 40:15Adam Skolnick?

  So that's probably why.

• 40:16Rich Roll?

  He's been around for a long time. But here's where it gets even more interesting. Where do you think he's from?

• 40:22Adam Skolnick?

  Alberta, Canada.

• 40:23Rich Roll?

  Alberta, Canada.

• 40:24Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, he's American.

• 40:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. He is American. He is from Ocala, Florida.

• 40:30Adam Skolnick?

  Ocala!

• 40:31Rich Roll?

  So, the question of course is, what is happening in Ocala, Florida to produce speed skating Olympians? I had to know. I Googled this. And it turns out, there's an incredible story behind this. How this small Florida town with no ice rink produced three Olympic speed skaters. The third being. That woman, Brittany Bow, who gave up her spot for Aaron Jackson.

• 40:56Adam Skolnick?

  No ice rink.

• 40:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So it's like this small inline skating club in Okala. And this woman who kind of runs this club that has produced all of, like ironically, produced all of these, these talented people that have become Olympians.

• 41:13Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable.

• 41:14Rich Roll?

  Without any ice rink in the town.

• 41:16Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, how Olympics is this story?

• 41:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's pretty cool. This feels like a movie.

• 41:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it should be.

• 41:22Rich Roll?

  And they're all, they don't even know how they've done it. So anyway, I'll link this, this is from Yahoo News. I'll link this up in the show notes.

• 41:31Adam Skolnick?

  It's a great story as well.

• 41:32Rich Roll?

  It's a pretty cool story, so.

• 41:34Adam Skolnick?

  The stories are just bonkers. I mean, like, that's the thing about Olympics. And since we're so driven by story, I mean, that's why the Olympics, as troubled as they may be, will always, will always find, they will always be part of the conversation.

• 41:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:47Adam Skolnick?

  Because these stories are too good.

• 41:49Rich Roll?

  And just in case you thought we were done talking about speed skating, we are not.

• 41:53Adam Skolnick?

  Not on Rich's watch, folks.

• 41:54Rich Roll?

  We are not done talking about speed skating. Because the other story that really caught my eye that I thought was fascinating is this speed skater Nils Van Der Poel, who set the world record in the 10 kilometers. And he, what caught my interest about this was the fact that he published a 60-page document that chronicles his training philosophy and his training logs, like everything that went into him breaking this world record. And you can find that at howtoskate.se. And you can download the document and read it yourself. Like, here's what the website looks like. How to skate a 10K. And here's what the document itself looks like. Like, it's literally like.

• 42:39Adam Skolnick?

  It's a white paper.

• 42:40Rich Roll?

  It's, that's exactly what it is.

• 42:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Rich Roll?

  It's a, it's a white paper. And this started circulating on Twitter and it caught my eye by dint of Alan Cousins, who is a, one of the world's top endurance coaches. Also a great follow on Twitter, at Alan underscore Cousins, C O U Z E N S.

• 43:00Adam Skolnick?

  That's how I devoured the white paper. Through this thread.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  Through his thread.

• 43:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Rich Roll?

  He published a thread that kind of deconstructs this document, this white paper on how to achieve world beating levels of fitness. And what it really is and why I felt like it was important to talk about is how important this athlete felt about building his aerobic base. So it's back to this zone two discussion.

• 43:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 43:27Rich Roll?

  And how crucial it is to build a massive aerobic base that you can then layer on top of all of your kind of harder efforts to break through the glass ceiling on your performance.

• 43:39Adam Skolnick?

  It's almost like he said, what comes out of the white paper is he advocates seasons where it's all aerobic base, then all kind of interval training and threshold stuff, then all aerobic base again.

• 43:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 43:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Rich Roll?

  And he doesn't do any threshold work when he was in this like extended period of many months, just building this base. And when you look at the work that he was doing, it's pretty spectacular. So here are just sort of excerpted things from his white paper where he's talking about the importance of aerobic fitness. The stronger I got aerobically, the more anaerobic sessions I could do later on. I purified the aerobic season, meaning during this number of months, he only trained aerobically, never went above his zone two level of intensity.

• 44:27Adam Skolnick?

  You think it's zone two only, or you could have been zone two and zone three?

• 44:31Rich Roll?

  I mean, it, you know, it gets technical with that. Like it's not a, it's not an on off switch. There's like a range in between those two, but I would, I, basically what he's saying is I am in my aerobic

• 44:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 44:43Rich Roll?

  fitness building phase, so I don't exceed that threshold. And the top end of his zone two would be max efforts for like mortal human beings.

• 44:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 44:53Rich Roll?

  But he's so fit that he could handle like just unbelievable workouts. There's some, there's another Twitter thread where he, here's a typical week. Monday, seven hours of biking at 260 watts. So for people that aren't cyclists, maintaining like 260 watts on average over a number of hours is, you have to be. Extremely fit to do that.

• 45:17Adam Skolnick?

  He's doing that at zone two.

• 45:18Rich Roll?

  Next day, six hours of biking at 250 watts. Wednesday, two hours of cross-country skiing, four hours of biking at 250 watts. Thursday, seven hours of biking at 265 watts. Friday, six hours of biking at 240 watts. And then Saturday rest, Sunday rest. So in a five-day period, he put in 35 hours of aerobic training, and that was just a typical week. So that gives you an idea of like what a beast this guy is.

• 45:43Adam Skolnick?

  And he was eating like crazy, right? He was having like straight whipped cream, like.

• 45:48Rich Roll?

  7,000 calories a day.

• 45:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:50Rich Roll?

  And putting on weight.

• 45:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Rich Roll?

  And.

• 45:52Adam Skolnick?

  He put on five kilos, I think.

• 45:54Rich Roll?

  Explaining how this is, you know, important. Like, a lot of athletes skimp on their calories during this phase because they're worried about weight gain. And he put on weight and was happy with that. And it also is a buffer against, you know, injury and overtraining and these other things. So, anyway, fascinating white paper. Very good analysis by Alan, who kind of identifies some core principles out of this program, which is, A, we already mentioned, purifying your aerobic season, not having mixed messages. The idea that the stronger you get aerobically, the more anaerobic sessions you can do later. Because the more aerobically fit you are, then you can go anaerobic and go back to base more quickly. Like, you bounce back more quickly, you recover more quickly.

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  So your capacity for that higher intensity work increases the more aerobically fit that you become. So more aerobic capacity, faster recovery for hard stuff later. And also, he talks about finding joy in all of this. Like, if you're going to be putting in that much work, how can you make it meaningful and joyous in doing it? Otherwise, it's not sustainable, right? Not everybody is living this guy's monastic lifestyle to be an Olympic world champion and world record holder. But I think the principles are applicable in all of our lives. So, anyway.

• 47:11Adam Skolnick?

  And he even, he ran, part of his training was running a 100-mile race, a 100-mile ultra. That was part of his aerobic training base.

• 47:17Rich Roll?

  Which he said was one of the most. Meaningful and impactful things that he did, like it gave him a new sense of what his capacity was and his capability.

• 47:26Adam Skolnick?

  Pretty exciting.

• 47:27Rich Roll?

  And this is all for a race, like 10 kilometers in speed skating. How long do you think that takes, right?

• 47:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 47:34Rich Roll?

  This is.

• 47:35Adam Skolnick?

  What is it? It's 12.

• 47:36Rich Roll?

  It was 12 and a half, 12:30.

• 47:37Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 47:38Rich Roll?

  He set the world record. So this is all of this aerobic work for a 12 and a half minute effort, which is, you can characterize that as an endurance event, certainly in speed skating, it is an endurance event, but still, this is not an ultra marathon that he's training for. It's a 12 minute race, and yet he put in that much work into building his aerobic base. So I think that's instructive for all of the endurance athletes out there.

• 48:05Adam Skolnick?

  I like how that Alan Cousins gave props to the Norwegian saying, similar to the Norwegian approach in his.

• 48:12Rich Roll?

  The Norwegian, see, I feel like they're more dialed in on quality.

• 48:16Adam Skolnick?

  They are, but no, but they do both and they don't purify aerobic and, and intervals. They, they mix it up, but they are very much about fuel, external fuel is the only fuel. They're very much about eating and training in a particular way and, and staying, you know, true to it. And they're both Scandinavian, you know, which is interesting. Can we talk about my zone, zone two problems?

• 48:38Rich Roll?

  Oh, I can't wait.

• 48:40Adam Skolnick?

  Well, this is good stuff.

• 48:41Rich Roll?

  This is really, I mean, really, this is what the podcast is about. Please tell me your zone two problems.

• 48:46Adam Skolnick?

  I'm not sure if you've been keeping track.

• 48:48Rich Roll?

  Do you know what your zone two is?

• 48:49Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I think it's.

• 48:51Rich Roll?

  Do you know what zone two is?

• 48:52Adam Skolnick?

  You taught me this stuff. I think it's like 134 to 147.

• 48:57Rich Roll?

  For running.

• 48:58Adam Skolnick?

  For running. So I injured my back at the beginning of the year and I had to take basically a month off. I ran twice in four weeks because I couldn't, I ran, then I got hurt, then I ran once at the two week mark and I just wasn't ready. Had to get some PT. So then I came back to it and have been, you know, but when I, right before I got hurt, I'd been running my zone two was down to like a 10 minute mile. And I started at like 12 plus minute mile for zone two. And so I was actually trending really well. And then, um, all of a sudden, you know, now I'm coming back to it and it's like, it's almost like starting over.

• 49:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you kind of, it, it will come back more quickly.

• 49:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 49:36Rich Roll?

  But you can't get around that first phase of re-acclimating your body to it.

• 49:41Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 49:41Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, it won't come back immediately. It's going to take some time, but that patience will pay dividends.

• 49:47Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you, Rich.

• 49:48Rich Roll?

  So you just have to stick with it.

• 49:49Adam Skolnick?

  I will.

• 49:49Rich Roll?

  Thank you for that zone two update.

• 49:51Adam Skolnick?

  Little zone two update, little, little thing.

• 49:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, fear not, the good news continues with the Olympics. What do we have next?

• 49:58Adam Skolnick?

  Actually, this isn't quite great news. It's good news that veers into some, um, sad and, and, and also vital news. We need to know about it, but it starts with good news and it, anyway, I don't, I'll just get into it.

• 50:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:14Adam Skolnick?

  Eileen Gu, freestyle skier. She is an 18 year old, not just the best free skier in the world, which is kind of, uh, if you're not familiar, it's basically X Games on skis. It's like what the, it's slope style, it's, it's big air and it's half pipe, but on skis.

• 50:33Rich Roll?

  Right. So that's the distinction between freestyle skiing versus aerial skiing.

• 50:38Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right. Aerial skiing is just, uh,

• 50:40Rich Roll?

  Going off the jumps.

• 50:41Adam Skolnick?

  Going off the jumps and just doing that. This is big air, which is, you know, the, the, the biggest jump you can do with tricks. Um, half pipe and slope style. And she's the best at slope style. She already won big air and she got gold. She's basically set up for a potential of three gold Olympics and she's also an IMG model.

• 51:01Rich Roll?

  Um, and she models for like Louis Vuitton and all these like high end brands. And in China, she's just enormous.

• 51:07Adam Skolnick?

  She is a supermodel in China already and she's budding, you know, international that way. And she came up, she grew up in San Francisco. She grew up in San Francisco, started skiing in Tahoe, where her mother used to be a, she was raised by a single mom. Her mother used to be a ski instructor part-time there when she wasn't working.

• 51:26Rich Roll?

  And now she's a venture capitalist in China.

• 51:28Adam Skolnick?

  Big time. And but she started the venture capital stuff in the United States too, as my understanding is. But she decided to compete as Chinese. You know, she always spoke the language. She was always connected to the culture. And she just decided to compete under the Chinese flag. And she's gotten a bunch of criticism for it. And, you know, more recently, I hate to bring him up because I don't like to give him any press or anybody who's on his show press, but Tucker Carlson took a run at her. She had, he had a guest on Will Kane. They talked about her turning her back on America, a betrayal, how we should be, you know, should inspire collective revulsion. And remember, this is an 18-year-old kid who is making decisions that she's allowed to make for herself, just like Naomi Osaka chose

• 52:12Adam Skolnick?

  to represent Tokyo and.

• 52:14Rich Roll?

  And let's not forget, like, just because she's a fashion model, she's no dummy. She got a 1580 on her SAT. She's bilingual and she's headed to Stanford next year.

• 52:23Adam Skolnick?

  And the implication is she's made a shrewd financial move and, or she's made a financial move only in turning her back on the country. It's appalling. First of all, it's a smart thing to do. If your goal is to maximize your value, it's, it's not, it's not a dumb thing to do. It's a very intelligent thing to do. She would never, in this country, an Asian woman, to become the biggest model in the country, it's almost impossible. It would, it's so unlikely to happen. It's almost, to become the, one of the biggest athletes in America, you're competing with LeBron James, Tom Brady, Serena Williams. It's never going to happen as a free skier. You know, like Sean White's as big a, a Winter Olympic personality you're going to get. And so there, you know, she has an opportunity to really grow and to, and to be, and to be big. And, and if that's what she wants,

• 53:06Adam Skolnick?

  more power to her. I mean, look at Khloe Kim. Khloe Kim just won gold again in the half-pipe. Second time she's won it in two Olympics. And she has gotten death threats. She's been accused of taking white girls' spots on the team. She, Sonny Lee, the gymnast everyone celebrated last Olympics, the Mong girl, she was getting ready to compete in Dancing with the Stars, and she was pepper sprayed from a car, called a slur. And the reason I bring this stuff up is because what's happening to these athletes who are

• 53:43Adam Skolnick?

  Very powerful women that can handle stuff. It trickles down to the real world and we have an epidemic of mentally ill, unhoused people attacking Asian elders and women in New York City, in the Bay Area. We've talked about on this show before. It happens here. There was another murder just yesterday. Christina Yuna Lee murdered in her New York City Chinatown apartment. She was 35 years old. She was stabbed by an unhoused person or someone in and out of the justice system, a mentally ill person, I should say. Michelle Alyssa Go pushed in front of a train in the subway. She was 40. That was weeks ago. I'm sure you all heard about it. These people are quite literally out of their minds, but you know, where do you think this

• 54:27Adam Skolnick?

  inspiration comes from? It's trickling down from this kind of language and treatment that we give to people like Eileen Gu, who is a great athlete worth celebrating. And yet it trickles down to these kinds of attacks. My wife has had, April, has had three separate scary experiences with people, vagrant type people here in LA. Three. She was, one, someone got into her face. The rest has been yelling at her as they pass by or she passes by. This is happening and Asian women in particular and Asian people in general are feeling it. It's terrifying.

• 55:04Adam Skolnick?

  And so the reason I'm bringing it up is not to bum everybody out, but it is to please pay attention to this, intervene if you see something, you know, because it's something that is not ending. And it doesn't seem to be like we're even trying to understand what's happening. Like, how does that even happen? How does, how does there become this epidemic among unhoused people that are like putting all their vitriol, all their anger towards one small group of people?

• 55:33Rich Roll?

  No, it's completely galling. And the fact that Eileen Gu would be used as a political football by somebody like Tucker Carlson to denigrate her lack of patriotism, I just find so, you know, upsetting. It's ridiculous. And as somebody who has been an athlete my whole life and competed in collegiate athletics, I'm no stranger to foreigners coming to the United States to train. Like, half the collegiate swimming programs in the US, half their rosters are swimmers who came from Europe or Eastern Bloc countries to come to the United States and train. And then they go back home and represent their country in the Olympics. Like, that's fine. I have no problem with that.

• 56:15Rich Roll?

  She, Eileen, in particular, has every reason to want to represent China in the Olympics. She's a big deal there. She's on their 30 under 30 Forbes list in China. She's widely celebrated there.

• 56:31Adam Skolnick?

  On the cover of Vogue, Elle, everything?

• 56:33Rich Roll?

  Exactly. It's like, she has every incentive to participate. And, you know, that kind of attention enriches if that's what she's getting versus what she's going to get here. I have no problem with that whatsoever. And the fact that people are denigrating her and criticizing her and judging her for making that decision just belies a level of ignorance and, frankly, like racist undertones. That is deplorable.

• 56:59Adam Skolnick?

  And when you hear that, you know what I hear? Why the fuck would she want to represent this country? That's what I hear. When I hear Tucker Carlson going off like that, I hear, why would she? Like, why would she want to? Like, that's what I hear. So, you know, you're proving the point. I mean, they are proving her point by going off like that. And so, you know, which is it? Are these girls American? Are they part of the American family? Are they celebrated that way? Or are they traitors? It's like, it's like they can't win, and it's got to stop.

• 57:35Rich Roll?

  Well said. Well, let's take a quick break, and we'll come back with, I promise, some good news.

• 57:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, good news.

• 57:49Rich Roll?

  And we're back. You want to put a button on the Eileen Gu conversation, Adam? Because we failed to mention one material aspect of this story, which is her incredible athletic performance at the Olympics.

• 58:03Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I mean, just in the first event, she basically was in a battle with her competitor. I don't have the competitor's name offhand, but she was, basically, they traded the lead twice and then she had one more run to nail. And she pulled out her absolute best trick, landed it, and had like a score over 97, I'm pretty sure, and she got the gold. It's the type of performance that athletes are celebrated for. And she should be celebrated, and that's the whole point, is that she's a tremendous athlete, tremendous individual.

• 58:39Rich Roll?

  And her best event is upcoming, right?

• 58:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, in reality, the way I look at sports, I root for Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer. I root for international athletes too. And so like, I know your listeners do as well. We all, you're the same way. I love a great athlete. I love watching great athletes perform at their best. And the idea that it's a big flag show, I know the Olympics are to some extent, but at the same time, it's like, that's part of the reason I think Olympic viewership is declining as well.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  Because the US medal haul is at an all-time low.

• 59:13Adam Skolnick?

  But also just like the media that has it, NBC, they typically want to give you the Americans in the race. They don't give you necessarily the best athletes in all their heats going in. And that's a problem in the Summer Olympics too. And I just think that's myopia, and I think we're beyond that now, especially since we're getting media from so many sources. And we know who the greats are, and that's who we should be watching.

• 59:36Rich Roll?

  100%. Let's talk about Winter Vinicki.

• 59:39Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 59:40Rich Roll?

  This is another great story that I came across by ESPN. I wrote this story about this fantastic young athlete. The article's called "Olympics 2020: Winter Vinicki's Unfathomable Journey Makes Next Stop in Beijing." And this is a 23-year-old aerial skier who's at the Olympics. But her backstory is unbelievable too. Like, there's so many crazy stories like this that are underreported. And I'm glad ESPN wrote this article. It's a very long read on the history behind this phenomenal athlete who...

• 1:00:13Rich Roll?

  Started competing in triathlons when she was five years old.

• 1:00:18Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:00:18Rich Roll?

  Five. Her parents were very permissive in letting her get involved in all of these adventures. She was very, you know, kind of gregarious and ahead of her time in terms of like wanting to conquer challenges. And I think at 12, she had won the Iron Kids National Championship or something like that. And then at 14, she becomes the youngest to complete the seven marathons on seven continents. 14 years old.

• 1:00:43Adam Skolnick?

  She ran the Antarctica.

• 1:00:44Rich Roll?

  Traveling all over the world, you know, Antarctica.

• 1:00:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Rich Roll?

  Machu Picchu, like all these places.

• 1:00:49Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 1:00:50Rich Roll?

  And I think she's the youngest by far at this point. And then at 12, she leaves her family and moves to Park City to become this skier and quickly develops. It's only due to injury that she was sort of kept out of the 2018 Olympics, as I understand it. And now here she is in 2021, competing in Beijing in aerial skiing. But it's a very cool, heartwarming story that also involves the loss of her father along the way and, you know, a lot of kind of touching, heartwarming details in there as well. So I'll link that up in the show notes.

• 1:01:24Adam Skolnick?

  Shout out Aishwara Kumar for that story. She wrote it or?

• 1:01:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Do you know her?

• 1:01:31Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:01:32Rich Roll?

  Oh.

• 1:01:32Adam Skolnick?

  No, but I just wanted to give the reporter some props.

• 1:01:35Rich Roll?

  For sure. Cool. Like, there she is on a bike, like raising a tri- I mean, how old is she in that photo?

• 1:01:41Adam Skolnick?

  Eight.

• 1:01:41Rich Roll?

  Right? And then here she is, like, running in Antarctica.

• 1:01:47Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:01:47Rich Roll?

  As a 14-year-old with her mom. Anyway, cool athlete, cool story.

• 1:01:54Adam Skolnick?

  Very cool.

• 1:01:55Rich Roll?

  Check it out. Shaun White.

• 1:01:57Adam Skolnick?

  Shaun White.

• 1:01:57Rich Roll?

  He's retired finally after getting fourth at the Olympics. So a storied career comes to an end. So he deserves a shout out for being the absolute GOAT. And I thought he handled, handled, you know, all of it with quite a bit of grace.

• 1:02:14Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, you don't get better than that. He gets out there. He leaves all his- first of all, he fights. He has to land his best. Run to get into the final. Did you see that?

• 1:02:28Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:02:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, so he had to come out.

• 1:02:30Rich Roll?

  I did see that.

• 1:02:31Adam Skolnick?

  Pull out an epic run just to get into the final.

• 1:02:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:02:34Adam Skolnick?

  And he did that and then he was there and he's like, who knows, I'm in the final. Let's see what happens. And you never know with him. I mean, he is, he is such a clutch performer, such a groundbreaking athlete in so many ways. And obviously the greatest ever. So it was cool to see him when he, when he came in fourth to the same two guys he beat last time, when he thought it was his last Olympics.

• 1:02:56Rich Roll?

  And the Japanese kid won, right?

• 1:02:58Adam Skolnick?

  He won.

• 1:02:58Rich Roll?

  That guy looks so young.

• 1:02:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, still.

• 1:03:00Rich Roll?

  That's really like how old I am, I guess. But like, I was like, wow, that kid looks like.

• 1:03:05Adam Skolnick?

  But four years ago, he came in second, that kid. And he really was young. He was like 16 or something like that.

• 1:03:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:03:11Adam Skolnick?

  So this, so now he's like, I love that Sean White's big realization, his big epiphany was, maybe I have been waiting for these guys to beat me. And like, having them beat him actually felt good. And I think he was, it must have been surprising for him.

• 1:03:26Rich Roll?

  That's interesting.

• 1:03:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because that's how he explained it anyway. And.

• 1:03:30Rich Roll?

  Sort of like, by being beat, then he can kind of walk away now and feel like it's complete.

• 1:03:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Rich Roll?

  If he had won, then it's sort of like, do I stay in this? Like, what am I going to do now?

• 1:03:41Adam Skolnick?

  And you know what also, for them, it's great for them because they got to beat him.

• 1:03:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:03:45Adam Skolnick?

  You know, as opposed to if he just had hung it up. It's like, it's like, the, the passing of the torch works so well because it's such a great moment, just in sports, but also between these two great athletes. And, and so pretty exciting to see that. And, and you know, the other thing I thought that, which I didn't know about was his, that came out of this Olympics, a story that kind of bubbled up and now it's been catching on a little bit is, his physical therapist, she's a doctor in physical therapy, Esther Lee. Been with Sean for seven years and it came out last year that she had stage four. She was fine. She just felt a little fatigued and then she ended up, she had a tumor on her pancreas and she was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer then.

• 1:04:29Adam Skolnick?

  And she's and, and you know, that was very terrifying for her, obviously with for obvious reasons, but her grandmother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and then two weeks later died. So she didn't think she had any time at all. And she used to work with Serena and Venus Williams, was their PT, traveling with them on the tour for years. She's only 43 and she's been effusive on social media about Sean White's support of her and their friendship and their connection and how they've laughed together and cried together. And, you know, he insisted on her coming with him and they, and they made it work. And she's been having multiple surgeries, multiple chemotherapy treatments. And it just so happens that like the break from that, like you know how it works in the medical world?

• 1:05:15Adam Skolnick?

  You have to go on these rhythms of chemo treatments or whatever. It just dovetailed perfectly for this Olympics and, and she made it. And, um, and then was there for this whole time. And it's just a beautiful story and it kind of shows Sean. You know, the one thing I think Sean has had a problem with, he's been so great. He hasn't always appeared human, you know, he's always appeared great and kind of above everything and the fray. And, um, and he's even had his own kind of semi cancellation and which, which was last Olympics that came out. And to see this, a human side of him to show that people are more than you assume and think, I think is a great thing.

• 1:05:52Rich Roll?

  Well, also he's older, he's matured. Like I think that perspective might not have been possible two Olympians, two Olympics ago.

• 1:06:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:06:00Rich Roll?

  You know, because he's, he's, he's a man now.

• 1:06:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Rich Roll?

  He's grown into himself.

• 1:06:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Rich Roll?

  Which is cool. Well, on the subject of goats, we, we have to talk about Kelly Slater.

• 1:06:09Adam Skolnick?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:06:09Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:06:11Adam Skolnick?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:06:12Rich Roll?

  Kelly, on the cusp of turning 50, won his eighth Pipe Masters.

• 1:06:17Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. 30 years of dominance, 11 world titles, 56 tour championships. And just a, you know, an incredible ambassador of longevity in sports, like all time, right? It's just, it's him and Tom Brady. Up there.

• 1:06:33Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I think LeBron James, considering what he's doing at 38 years old, is he 38 now? Yeah, I think so. What he's doing, and he's 29 points a game, he's right there. I mean, you can't really separate him from that group. And then you have Rafa Nadal, who just won

• 1:06:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:49Adam Skolnick?

  his 21st major at 34, 35 years old. That never happened in tennis before.

• 1:06:54Rich Roll?

  And what is the consistent theme between those three guys?

• 1:06:59Adam Skolnick?

  Four guys, yeah. Super into wellness, I guess.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  Super into wellness. Like, these guys really care about what they put in their body

• 1:07:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:06Rich Roll?

  and all of the, you know, things outside of their sport-specific training to take care of themselves and take an insurance policy out on, you know, those kind of long-term career successes that they've experienced.

• 1:07:21Adam Skolnick?

  And Tom Brady with his avocado ice cream. I mean, you have, you have Chris Paul, who's a great point guard, and he's, you know, the most important player on the best team in the NBA right now. And, and he went plant-based, which kind of gave him longevity. And he's, he's been, he was public about it, kind of, but like, he was keeping it to himself because he just doesn't want other people to go plant-based, because he doesn't want to give up the competitive edge.

• 1:07:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I like that. I mean, Tom Brady, I don't think Tom Brady would, would characterize himself as, as quote-unquote "plant-based," but he's very plant-predominant in his dietary approach. And I don't know what, what Kelly's diet looks like, but, you know, I suspect that he's very conscious about what he puts into that vessel of his.

• 1:08:05Adam Skolnick?

  It's just incredible, though, because even the, I forget who won Mavericks last year, and it was somebody that has been, he's a legend in, at Mavericks, but he was over, he's over 50, and he won, so it's interesting.

• 1:08:19Rich Roll?

  Not McNamara.

• 1:08:19Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no. It was someone who's just a Mavericks guy. He's up there, he's the guy up there. But like, that's not necessarily the guy usually wins a surfing competition.

• 1:08:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:29Adam Skolnick?

  And so it's just interesting to see, it's really exciting to see, you know, these, these guys continue to do it, and women too. You know, Serena is older, and she's been going to finals for the last several years until this year.

• 1:08:41Rich Roll?

  It's crazy how much things have changed. I mean, when I was a kid, if you went to two Olympiads, that was like unbelievable. And now, there's lots of athletes who, this is their fifth Olympiad.

• 1:08:51Adam Skolnick?

  It does seem that way. Like, there was Kareem and Martina, and there was nobody else really pushing the age.

• 1:08:58Rich Roll?

  Well, there was a lot of that is money.

• 1:09:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:00Rich Roll?

  Because, yeah, if you're a professional athlete, you're getting paid and you're incentivized to, you know, play as long as you can. But in almost every other sport, like, you can't make a living, right, and, and compete at the highest level. But now with sponsorships and the way kind of our economy works, more and more people are finding ways to make that possible for themselves, which is cool.

• 1:09:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Well, congrats to Kelly.

• 1:09:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:09:26Adam Skolnick?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  So I think that concludes the, the sports part of this podcast.

• 1:09:31Adam Skolnick?

  No more sports?

• 1:09:33Rich Roll?

  Not for today.

• 1:09:33Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:09:35Rich Roll?

  What did we leave out? I mean, look, we left out a lot. We picked a few stories.

• 1:09:40Adam Skolnick?

  That's what we always do.

• 1:09:41Rich Roll?

  That we thought were cool.

• 1:09:42Adam Skolnick?

  I want people to know that about this show. We do, I know it's long, we do leave things out. I know it's hard to believe.

• 1:09:49Rich Roll?

  More than a few. I wanna, I wanna hard pivot to a different subject matter. So the podcast that went up this week was with, is with Johann Hari. He's the author of this new book, Stolen Focus. And it's all about our declining ability to sustain attention, and the reasons for that, and kind of the way out of that. And the reasons range from, of course, social media and big tech kind of hijacking our dopamine systems, but also, you know, lack of sleep, exhaustion, stress, environmental toxins, all of these things contributing to, you know, our declining ability to kind of just do one thing at a

• 1:10:31Rich Roll?

  time. And in the context of that conversation, we were talking about our relationship to our phones. And Johann, in the writing of this book, or kind of what prompted the writing of the book, was he went to Province down for three months. He left his iPhone on the mainland, and only brought a laptop that couldn't connect to the internet. And the idea was he was gonna live for three months, like, completely in an analog way. But he brought this, he was, he was like, I need to be able to make a phone call, right? So is there some kind of phone that isn't connected to the internet that I could get? And the only phone that he could find was this thing called the jitterbug, right, which is for old people, it has big buttons on it, you know, if you're half-blind. And if you fall down, it like automatically calls 911. It's like, it's a geriatric phone, right? And I

• 1:11:16Rich Roll?

  said to him, I was like, there has to be a better... dumb phone than that. Like, I would love a phone that would allow me only to make calls and maybe text people. I'd like to be able to listen to podcasts or audiobooks and maybe have like a navigation, like so I could, if I needed directions or whatever, I could find my way and just get rid of all the apps and all of that.

• 1:11:38Adam Skolnick?

  A semi-smartphone.

• 1:11:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, like, like, I don't know, middle school phone.

• 1:11:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Rich Roll?

  You know, I don't know, like, kinda dumb, mostly dumb.

• 1:11:45Adam Skolnick?

  A tweener phone.

• 1:11:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. A handicapped smartphone. I don't know what you would call it. But it was brought to my attention by my team here after we finished that podcast that one such phone exists and it's called the Lite Phone. I have a link for it. Let me find that. What did I do with that? Oh, here it is. Lite Phone, L-I-T-E, thelitephone.com.

• 1:12:08Adam Skolnick?

  L-I-T-E or L-I-G-H?

• 1:12:09Rich Roll?

  L-I-T-E. Oh, oh, you're, I'm, I'm, I'm wrong. L-I-G-H-T phone. The Lite, L-I-G-H-T phone. And I haven't, this is not a sponsored thing. I haven't even tried this yet.

• 1:12:22Adam Skolnick?

  Not yet.

• 1:12:23Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna order it though, because it looks cool. So it has only a couple core functions, phone, alarm.

• 1:12:29Adam Skolnick?

  Looks like a Kindle.

• 1:12:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it is. And it has, it's, it's made to have that Kindle screen without the blue light and all of that. So it doesn't like screw up your eyes.

• 1:12:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  And you can like, you can have podcasts on it. There's a couple like, you know, customizable features to it, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna try this thing out.

• 1:12:52Adam Skolnick?

  It's premium minimalism.

• 1:12:54Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 1:12:55Adam Skolnick?

  Are you gonna try?

• 1:12:56Rich Roll?

  Premium minimalism. I like that. Did you just coin that?

• 1:13:00Adam Skolnick?

  Well, no, it says, they, on the website, it says it's called, they call it a premium minimal phone. So I went from that. I, I did create it, yes.

• 1:13:10Rich Roll?

  I think it looks cool. So I'm gonna try it out and I'll keep you posted. $2.99.

• 1:13:16Adam Skolnick?

  But I was gonna ask you, because I know, like, social media is so connected to the podcast business. I mean, it is so much about, it is a big way you're able to keep in touch with your listeners and build listenership and, and, you know, shout out to your guests and all that stuff, which is valuable to both listeners and to you and to the guests. So, how do you know, I just wanted to ask you about that, like, how would, like, if you decided to go premium minimalist forever, like, how would that impact you? Is that something you worry about?

• 1:13:47Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm not gonna close my social media accounts because that is part and parcel of my, my career and my business. But I think there's plenty of room to have a healthier relationship with all of it. And these things can live on a laptop, they don't have to be with me at all times, so that every time I find myself in line somewhere, I'm scrolling mindlessly. And that's really what it's aimed at. So, I would still, like, use those platforms, but be less prone to them using me, I think is the way that I'm thinking about it.

• 1:14:20Adam Skolnick?

  Can I get Spellingbee on the light phone?

• 1:14:22Rich Roll?

  Probably not.

• 1:14:23Adam Skolnick?

  You can't get Wordle.

• 1:14:24Rich Roll?

  That's probably not. Does it have a web browser? I think it might, you might be able to get a bit, I don't want a web browser on it.

• 1:14:30Adam Skolnick?

  If they give you a web browser, it's like the Pandora's box, baby.

• 1:14:33Rich Roll?

  I know. Yeah, that's not good. You don't want that, right?

• 1:14:36Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:14:37Rich Roll?

  We'll see, stay tuned. The second product I wanted to bring up is my friend Compton Rambada's company called Ascended Health. And again, this isn't a sponsored thing, this is just something that I use, that I've enjoyed and found helpful. Compton is a microbiologist, he's a, he's a dear friend, and he was very instrumental in helping me when I was training for my Ultraman races by creating these crazy probiotic concoctions that I would drink for recovery, that were all fermented and had all of these adaptogens in it. And he was living in Los Angeles at the time, and I would go to his house and he would have giant vats of things that he was brewing up, and he's like, "Try this," and I'm working on this, like a mad scientist.

• 1:15:21Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool.

• 1:15:22Rich Roll?

  Like a mad microbiologist scientist. And I just, I love him dearly, he's incredibly bright guy, and he's since moved to Utah to kind of grow his company, and he opened up his own facility for his products, and suffered a terrible fire, where he lost a lot of his fermentations and samples and all the like, and has slowly been trying to rebuild it. In the meantime, and actually could use everybody's support, because I think the products that he creates are next level and wonderful. And one of my favorites... Is this skin oil that he makes called I Am Beautiful Oil that I put on my face?

• 1:16:03Adam Skolnick?

  I feel like I've ordered that dish at Cafe Gratitude.

• 1:16:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it probably is a dish called I Am Beautiful Cafe Gratitude. And this is just, it's like a wonderful smelling oil that you put on your skin and it helps with sun damage and aging. And it's got like marine phytoplankton in it, like all of these organic, like cool ingredients in it. And I just, I love the smell of it. So here, I'll slide that over and smell that.

• 1:16:33Adam Skolnick?

  What do you do? You drink it?

• 1:16:34Rich Roll?

  No, you just rub it on your face.

• 1:16:36Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:16:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Can you reach that?

• 1:16:38Adam Skolnick?

  I can.

• 1:16:38Rich Roll?

  I didn't slide it long enough.

• 1:16:41Rich Roll?

  And I love Compton. I love his products. So I would, I would start with the I Am Beautiful Oil. It's something I've been using it for over 10 years at this point. It's good, right?

• 1:16:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Rich Roll?

  So check that out as well. And again, not a sponsored thing. Like he's just a friend and I just love what he does. That can be like, wow.

• 1:17:00Adam Skolnick?

  So if I start using that, how long will it take for me to become beautiful?

• 1:17:04Rich Roll?

  You're already beautiful.

• 1:17:05Adam Skolnick?

  Aw, thanks.

• 1:17:06Rich Roll?

  You are beautiful.

• 1:17:07Adam Skolnick?

  I am beautiful.

• 1:17:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. This isn't, you will become beautiful. You already are beautiful.

• 1:17:13Adam Skolnick?

  It's not, you could be more beautiful?

• 1:17:14Rich Roll?

  I gave you candy and flowers. Like now you're just feeling needy.

• 1:17:19Adam Skolnick?

  I know. Now I'm fishing for compliments.

• 1:17:21Rich Roll?

  Right? All right. Let's, let's get to some listener questions for act three of this podcast.

• 1:17:28Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it. We're gonna start in New York City.

• 1:17:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, baby.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  Hey, Rich and Adam. This is Brad calling from New York City. Love the pod. Love what you guys do. Keep it coming. My question is mostly for Rich, although Adam would love for you to weigh in as well, if you feel it's relevant. Rich, you have admitted to being prone towards negativity and cynicism. And I have to admit that I myself am inclined in this direction as well. And I'd love to hear from you how you actively work against this, to show up in the world not negative, not pessimistic. You've touched on this in many pods, but today what I'm looking to hear is really practical advice on how you work against this. I think a lot of people out there.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  Would really benefit from this type of advice with the world being what it is with COVID, climate change, geopolitical issues, we could all use this really practical advice. Thanks much, guys. Love you.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  That's a great question. Brett? Is her name Brett?

• 1:18:38Adam Skolnick?

  I think it's, maybe it's Brett.

• 1:18:39Rich Roll?

  Brett, maybe. I think I misheard it. Brett from New York City. I appreciate that question. Yeah, you know, it's, it's true that I am not predisposed to optimism. My default is not gratitude, nor necessarily even positivity. And I do find myself at times confounded by guests that I've hosted over the years on the podcast who seem to burst with unbridled optimism. And, and sometimes I struggle with thinking like, is that really even authentic? Like, how is that person actually exuding that level of positivity all the time?

• 1:19:17Adam Skolnick?

  It just happens. I can't, I can't hold it inside, Rich. It just pours out of me.

• 1:19:22Rich Roll?

  I'm speaking directly to you. And, and like despite every counterpoint, you know, I hurl in their direction, nothing seems capable of derailing that positivity. And I admire that. You know, that's, that's a sensibility that I wish I could inhabit more and better, but which despite, you know, fleeting flirtations, I do not consistently exude myself. So I feel you, Brett.

• 1:19:50Rich Roll?

  For example, like just the other day, like two days ago, I woke up feeling not great. I slept poorly and I was just like a disaster all day. I was dark. I was moody. I felt angry. I felt unfit to be around other people and I had like no energy or enthusiasm for anything. And this is like a darkness that befalls on me from time to time. In this case, it was directly related to not waking up rested. And so I have, over the years, developed a couple of strategies for, for combating this and dealing with this. And,

• 1:20:25Rich Roll?

  you know, the first thing is to just accept it, you know, like to kind of be angry that you're feeling that way is only making it worse and enhances the level of suffering that you're experiencing. I also think it's important to always remind myself that like cynicism

• 1:20:43Rich Roll?

  Is kind of a lazy reaction to things. I think it takes a lot more gumption and courage to be optimistic and have a positive outlook. So I remind myself of that. When I do feel that way, I try not to dwell on it or beat myself up for it again, because that creates kind of a vicious cycle that seems to perpetuate it and make it worse. And then I try to engage in really simple activities to help shift it, like go for a walk, or even a 10-minute meditation. Or you know what, I'm feeling off, like maybe I should go to an AA meeting. And you know, take those actions, because it's only truly through actions that you can kind of shift that perspective.

• 1:21:25Rich Roll?

  And then beyond that, like trying to remind myself that it's okay to feel however you feel, like being okay with yourself. And then, from there, you know, I try to engage in practices that lead to or cultivate more optimism, positivity, and gratitude in my life, all of which I've talked about many times at length on the podcast. And I think for the most part are things that are pretty self-evident and not complicated. And they all trace back to this idea of mood follows action, this mantra, right? If you want to shift your mental or emotional disposition, you have to do something to accomplish that. So are you getting enough sleep? Are you exercising on the daily? Are you connecting with nature?

• 1:22:10Rich Roll?

  Are you connecting with other people? Are you of service to somebody less fortunate? Like often, and this is, you know, completely a 12-step thing. Like if you feel off, or you're grinding on your own, you know, self-obsession, like pick up the phone and call a friend who's going through a hard time. It doesn't have to be some huge grand gesture, but anything you can do to kind of get out of your own self-obsession seems to ameliorate those kind of negative emotions. And then beyond that, you know, again, simple stuff. Meditation, mindfulness practices, a gratitude list, which helps shift the narrative.

• 1:22:51Rich Roll?

  And helps you identify or kind of appreciate that there are a lot of good things in your life. And maybe, you know, in my case, my life is crazy good. I lose sight of that unless I intentionally practice contrary action and behavior. So stop dwelling on the enormity of problems that you're powerless to solve, like you talked about climate change, like these existential things. Like, you can walk around with a cloud over your head and it will paralyze you. So try to get out of that kind of doomsday scrolling, or doomsday thinking, and just focus on and execute the small things that you can actually do on the daily,

• 1:23:32Rich Roll?

  and then do them. And here's the thing, and again, this is another like 12-step thing. These solutions, it's like, I'm sure Brett already knows all of this, right? Sometimes we need to be reminded of them, because inherently, as humans, like, we're annoyed that the solution, or the answer, again, goes back to these basic things. We want it to be more complicated, or what's the better solution, or what's the latest in science that can solve this problem for me? Where's the advanced course? How can I get, you know, beyond the velvet rope, and you can tell me the new thing that I can do to deal with this stuff? But there is no magic bullet. It's the same old shit. And no matter

• 1:24:13Rich Roll?

  how much you practice meditation, or no matter, you know, how many times you get a good night's sleep, like, it doesn't carry into the next day. These are things you have to do consistently every single day, if you're in that place, if you want to emerge out of it. It's just doing these things over and over again, rinse and repeat. And that's not to say, you know, sometimes people need some exogenous help. Like, if you have a true case of depression, clinical depression, or some other kind of mental condition, then you should seek help for that. Whether that's therapeutic, talk therapy, which is another thing that, you know, I think is good, and what I've been practicing for many years, or some kind of,

• 1:24:54Rich Roll?

  you know, outside help in that vein. But that's the best answer that I can give you, and I hope that's helpful.

• 1:25:00Adam Skolnick?

  That's a fantastic answer.

• 1:25:02Rich Roll?

  She wanted to hear from you, too.

• 1:25:04Adam Skolnick?

  If I felt it was applicable.

• 1:25:06Rich Roll?

  Oh.

• 1:25:06Adam Skolnick?

  I think she senses that I have internal buoyancy control, which I don't get into like the, I don't wake up with like the dark drearies.

• 1:25:17Rich Roll?

  But you, you have, you have a comedic cynicism to you.

• 1:25:20Adam Skolnick?

  I, oh, I have a deeply embedded like global cynicism within me. I do, I am concerned for the state of things.

• 1:25:27Rich Roll?

  You cultivate it.

• 1:25:29Adam Skolnick?

  It's part of my persona.

• 1:25:30Rich Roll?

  And you deploy that.

• 1:25:31Adam Skolnick?

  But like, it doesn't, what I'm saying is it doesn't, I don't wake up like feeling that. You know, what gets me is when I have a lot to do and I don't feel like I have enough time. And like the big stuff, like the real crises, I'm actually good, I'm actually able to deal with quite well. It's the stuff that is actually not a crisis that I make into a bigger deal than it is, and it drives me nuts. So I'm like, kind of the opposite, if that makes sense. Like, I don't get caught up in like the stuff you.

• 1:25:58Rich Roll?

  It's not climate change. It's like, why is there a scuff on my shoe?

• 1:26:03Adam Skolnick?

  It's like, like, there's so many deadlines and there's other things I want to do. And you know what I mean? Like, and like, when am I gonna, it's looking for the next thing is my big dilemma. But that said, I certainly have really bad days and sometimes I am the asshole. And you always don't want to be the asshole in the world, but sometimes you are. And, um, and what I usually, if I'm not doing daily yoga in the morning or exercising first thing in the morning, I'm much more susceptible, susceptible to that. So for me, the big, the big thing is movement. And if I do that, and I can usually keep my mind right.

• 1:26:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you can't be the person you want to be in the world if you're not exercising some basic self-care.

• 1:26:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And then I, like, I do, it is important to me to stay in that connection and all that. But like I said, I am, I am cynical in a lot of ways. I just don't end up with, wake up with the drearies too often.

• 1:26:56Rich Roll?

  All right, well, let's go to Bill from Crested Butte.

• 1:26:58Speaker 03

  Hey, Rich and Adam. Thank you so much for what you guys do. This is Bill Wolfson out of Crested Butte, Colorado. I am calling to ask a question regarding discipline. I have the goals and aspirations of being a vegan, socially, physically, and morally, I guess you'd say. And I am lacking some fortitude or some ability to really stick with it, either based on social influences, my own discipline, or just inconsistency. I've

• 1:27:39Speaker 03

  gotten past beating myself up for it, but that was also a struggle for a while. And now I'm just wondering if you have any tips or tricks for some of us people that struggle with this. I'm guessing it's a relatively common occurrence for a lot of people who love what you guys do and how you do it, but are not 100% integrated on how we are doing it in our own lives. Thank you so much. I hope you can shed some light on this. And peace, plants, and namaste to you all.

• 1:28:13Rich Roll?

  Thanks, Bill. I think that's a great question. It is a common issue that I think we all confront in our own ways. I mean, you use the example of striving to go vegan, but this quandary, I think, applies to any type of habit change. So, the question first is, why is letting go of bad habits so hard? And why is creating better habits equally hard, if not harder? Many people smarter than me have tackled this terrain. So, I would start with the wisdom of James Clear in his book Atomic Habits. We did a podcast together that was very popular. It was a couple of years ago, October 2018, episode

• 1:28:51Rich Roll?

  401. So, check that out if you haven't already. But I think a lot of this begins with identifying your values. And what I mean by that is, first, being clear on who you are now and who you aspire to be. So, the values that you desire to inhabit, like, what does that look like for you? And then getting really clear on the dissonance between the two, the person you are now and the person you aspire to be. And I think that in-between zone...

• 1:29:26Rich Roll?

  Within that in-between zone, there is a dissonance that creates a psychic toll that I believe is a barrier to really feeling comfortable in your own skin and living as authentically as you can. So, the less dissonance between those two, the more fully embodied and empowered you're going to feel and become. So, that's the goal, right? How do we get there? Well, to close that gap and eat away at that dissonance, you need to know the end game first, the person you aspire to be. So, again, back-to-back clarity. And then you need to backtrack from there and identify the steps that are going to get you there. So, there's a goal, and then there's the stepping stones towards achieving that goal.

• 1:30:08Rich Roll?

  And I think as you begin to identify those steps and begin to take them, it's a perspective that I think is helpful is to look at it through the lens of forming new habits rather than letting go of bad habits. So, rather than dwell on the bad habits, which tend to lead you to beating yourself up, sort of let go of that or put it in the back recesses of your mind and focus on the new habits that you're trying to build. These new steps, these new stepping stones, are going to be the fabric upon which you build these new habits until they are fully ingrained. And the way that you do that is you identify and start with really small, doable things that you can begin doing right away. Things that are just a little bit out of your comfort zone,

• 1:30:53Rich Roll?

  but not too much out, like there shouldn't be too much of a stretch. And then you start knocking them down, like doing them. And that creates momentum. And with that momentum, you'll find yourself more emotionally engaged with the journey itself. And then it's about just continuing to keep the pressure on and increasing the degree of difficulty of those little doable steps as you kind of progress. And I think when you do this, as you're building these new habits, often what happens is it will crowd out the bad habits and they will fall away without effort. So, without even focusing on letting go of these bad habits, the new habits will create so much space that there isn't really any room for those bad habits anymore.

• 1:31:36Rich Roll?

  And they will evaporate without having to put a lot of mental effort into them.

• 1:31:45Rich Roll?

  I think that it's also important to create an environment that's conducive to making those healthy changes and, and leading you to take those little, little steps along the way. So in the context of this vegan example, it's like get rid of the foods in your house that aren't on the program. And that way you make it additionally more difficult for you to veer off the path that you're, you know, trying to walk. And I think also it's important to be patient and gentle with yourself. This is not a linear thing. It's not about perfection. If you slip up or make a mistake, it's not about beating yourself up or abandoning it.

• 1:32:29Rich Roll?

  It's about doing a forensic evaluation of why you misstepped and trying to understand what led you to that choice. And then closing that gap so that next time you're not in that position again. Like, oh, I was feeling tired, or I just had an argument with my partner and suddenly I found myself eating this thing I promised myself I wouldn't. Like, you know, first of all, get the thing out of the house and then understand like, oh, wow, I guess like I veer off the path when I'm in this emotional state. Like, all of those things I think are, are building your self-knowledge and self-understanding about why you make the choices that you make. And those turn out to be very helpful. Back to the patience thing. Progress is generally microscopic. Often other people are able to

• 1:33:13Rich Roll?

  identify changes that you've made in yourself before you're even able to. So if you're not seeing it in yourself, or you feel like you're not making any progress, that's not necessarily a pragmatic or reliable indicator of where you are. Just keep, keep doing the thing. Keep like trotting the path and build on that momentum. And if need be, leverage external accountability, both positive and negative. Like bring people into your life to whom you're accountable. Like people that know you're trying to do this hard thing that you're checking in with, who are aware of whether you're, you know, Doing it properly or not. And they can say, hey, what's up? You said you were gonna go to the gym at this time. You didn't show up or whatever. Like, the more you can kind of build in those measures,

• 1:33:57Rich Roll?

  the more likely you are to, you know, remain, remain on that path. And I think it's also important because these, you know, sometimes these change, like, if you wanna make a big change in your life, like, I wanna go vegan and let go of these animal products that have been eating my whole life. Like, that's a large thing that you're endeavoring to do, right? So, the best way is to break it down into tiny little things and master one thing at a time. So, an example that I always like to give in the vegan context is, you know, maybe swap out dairy milk for plant milk, like, and put that in your coffee or tea in the morning, or put that on your cereal, or however you use milk, and just do that for a period of, I don't know, six weeks or eight weeks.

• 1:34:40Rich Roll?

  And what you'll find is, suddenly, you won't think twice about it. It's just the default choice that you make. And then you can move on to another category, and you kind of knock those, you know, bowling pins down one at a time. And I think, you know, when you do it that way, then you're kind of, you can celebrate these little successes, too. And the more little successes that you can celebrate, then the better you feel about the progress that you're making and the more emotionally invested you are in, you know, the long-term plan of what you're trying to accomplish. Final thing I would say is, is it's important to look inward within yourself and kind of deconstruct your own psychological framework.

• 1:35:22Rich Roll?

  Because you said in your question that your resolve often fails in the face of social influence. So, like, why is that the case? And what does it say about how you feel about yourself and your ability to set healthy boundaries? Like, the idea that you would cave who you wanna be because someone might be uncomfortable with it. That tells me that you lack a certain level of esteem to stand in your own truth. The fact that you would change your habits because you're in a certain social setting where people might have a certain opinion about what you're doing. But each act that you take to align your behavior with this value set is like a building block in your fortress of self-esteem.

• 1:36:07Rich Roll?

  So, what it will do over time is allow yourself to be who you are. And I think you'll find, as I have, that Those people that you're so afraid are judging you, not only don't really give a shit, because everyone is self-absorbed and they're just thinking about themselves, but that in fact, they will actually respect you more for, you know, what I would consider to be an esteemable act. Like, hey, I don't do that anymore. I'm doing this. It has nothing to do with other people. This is about your relationship with you and you. And I think getting clarity on that and having the gumption or the courage to, you know, stand firmly in your own value set is a very attractive quality.

• 1:36:49Rich Roll?

  So that fear of like, oh, I'm going to cause problems in my social circle. A lot of that you'll discover is truly in your imagination. Like, I remember when I got sober, thinking, holy shit, I gotta go to a, I have to go to a, I have to go to a wedding in six months and there's a bachelor party. Like, how am I going to go to that bachelor party and not drink? Like, not only am I going to be uncomfortable, I'm going to make everybody else uncomfortable. You're future tripping on something that hasn't happened yet. And when you get there and you kind of walk through it, you get to the other side of it and you realize like, that just wasn't the big deal that I thought it was. Like, nobody actually really cares. So, value yourself and in that valuing, make those better decisions.

• 1:37:32Rich Roll?

  That self-esteem will begin to flourish and blossom. And make those healthier choices that align your behavior with your values even easier. But first, you gotta begin. So what is that first step? What is the thing you can do right now, today, that will shift that trajectory and start to create momentum in the direction that you want to move?

• 1:37:52Adam Skolnick?

  That was just so beautifully put. I think I didn't realize till just now, how much recovery helped you in your approach to integrating a plant-based diet and just your wellness.

• 1:38:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's huge.

• 1:38:05Adam Skolnick?

  And it's so the software. Like, I heard all that and I just heard like the recovery software kind of like go into computation mode and tackle this issue with this software that works and can be applied so many different places. It must be such a core element.

• 1:38:20Rich Roll?

  It's a rubric for... You know, how I make decisions in all facets of my life. And certainly, especially when you realize how much we eat to kind of solve our emotional states and you realize there is an addictive nature to that, the template of recovery becomes all the more apt. And I think it's really instructive for any kind of habit change that you're trying to make.

• 1:38:45Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. It was great. Can I add just two quick things to that? For someone who I'm, as I've said before, about 95% plant-based. Occasionally, I do eat some seafood. I make sure it's sustainable. I know, I'm so sorry. Sylvia would hate it.

• 1:39:03Rich Roll?

  There's no such thing as sustainable fishing, Adam. You notice at this point.

• 1:39:07Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I don't want to get into it.

• 1:39:08Rich Roll?

  Your semi-deepness is now being downgraded.

• 1:39:12Adam Skolnick?

  Listen, so 95%, but that's pretty good, right?

• 1:39:16Rich Roll?

  So, listen, if everybody was 95%, we'd be in a better place. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, yeah.

• 1:39:22Adam Skolnick?

  So what I'm.

• 1:39:22Rich Roll?

  I'm not gonna say I'm not gonna judge you.

• 1:39:25Adam Skolnick?

  You can judge me on your own time.

• 1:39:27Rich Roll?

  This is not my own time? This is my own time right now, buddy.

• 1:39:34Adam Skolnick?

  The point I'm trying to make here is with Bill, what helped me, when I first started, I was just full omnivore. And I also wanted to gravitate and let go of some habitual eating patterns that were deeply ingrained, just like you described, exactly how you described. And so I'd already, I'd been off dairy milk for years, so that wouldn't have been a good place for me to start. So I'm just sharing to kind of give that idea. And I, our old buddy, Dan Buettner, Blue Zones, I kind of went with his approach, which was, here are all these hotspots around the world, in a good way, blue spots around the world, where people, Blue Zones, where people are living to over 100. And what are the concepts that they all share? And one of them is eating very little meat products. So.

• 1:40:19Adam Skolnick?

  The idea was you can eat it once or twice a month and it probably won't have a big health impact on you. And so I, I did that. That's how I approached it. So I would eat meat every two weeks. I'd give myself every two weeks because it's also how I quit smoking cigarettes. I smoked cigarettes in my early twenties. It's the same idea. I just, I don't want to get into that because it involved a different bad habit, but I, I saved up this thing that I wanted so badly till the end of the day, or in this case, two weeks. And then eventually what happens is it falls away. And in the course of me eating, what you'll find, if you do that, you, you, you put a container where you can have it so

• 1:41:03Adam Skolnick?

  that it makes it easier to say no in the interim. And then when you get there, you eat it and you enjoy it. But eventually what's going to happen is your taste buds will change. I think that's the biggest surprising thing to me is when you first start going plant-based and you've been eating a lot of meat, it may be the flavor, you lack a certain, you don't, you don't have the flavors that you are used to in your meals. But the more you eat plants, when you go back to eating meat, even because I went from twice a month to once a month. And when you go back to it, pretty soon, you'll notice it's actually the meat that doesn't have the flavor and everything else has a lot more flavor.

• 1:41:37Rich Roll?

  It's all the spices and the flavors and the sauces.

• 1:41:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And so that I think could be helpful to you. I don't know if it will be, but it could be. And then the other thing I would say is, social pressure wise, crested bute, it's in, you know, sometimes living in certain places, it can be very challenging because there are not a lot of options, especially if you're not cooking for yourself all the time. So I do understand that. And I would say, look for, you know, Chinese food, Thai food, look for places that have a good option for you that might not be what you're normally eating, but good, really good, healthy, plant-based options because Italian, you know, a lot of ethnic food does have that. Indian.

• 1:42:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I don't mean to be insensitive to the location or geographic location and whatever constraints that presents, but I will say this. Your response is spoken like a true normie, like non-addict, because everything you said does not work for me. Right? Like the idea, like in the smoking example, that you would like, okay, well, I'm trying to quit smoking, so I'm just gonna like save that cigarette for the end of the day.

• 1:42:43Adam Skolnick?

  That's not what it was. Do you want me to tell you what it was?

• 1:42:45Rich Roll?

  What?

• 1:42:47Adam Skolnick?

  I would save it. I would, every time I had the urge to smoke a cigarette, I would just realize, when you get home, you can have a big bong hit.

• 1:42:56Rich Roll?

  And that was a replacement?

• 1:42:58Adam Skolnick?

  That was a replacement.

• 1:43:00Rich Roll?

  Also, that, that actually does sound like an addict.

• 1:43:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:43:05Rich Roll?

  But equally, uh, non-workable in, in practice.

• 1:43:09Adam Skolnick?

  I don't think that works for Bill.

• 1:43:10Rich Roll?

  Here's the thing, like, yeah, I think, like, this is a thing that people who are not addicts or alcoholics, uh, struggle to understand. Like, if you're a normal person, you're like, oh, I'll just have it like, once a month, and that works great for me. For me, that doesn't work at all.

• 1:43:24Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:43:25Rich Roll?

  Because it keeps me connected to the thing that's the problem. And I can't truly be free until I'm totally liberated from it. So if you were to tell me, and I've told this, I've given this example many times on the podcast, so forgive me if you heard me say this before, but if you told me, look, you can go to In-N-Out Burger like, once a week, and that's all the meat you're gonna eat, I would spend five days a week obsessing upon when I could go to In-N-Out Burger and get that cheeseburger. Like, the amount of mental energy that would go into that would just be unbelievable. So, I'm not free of that obsession until I'm truly, you know, distanced from it completely. Because I, I don't have, because of the addict gene in me, or whatever it is, like, I don't have

• 1:44:10Rich Roll?

  that luxury. And if I was told I could eat meat once a week, then three months from now, that would be twice a week, a month later, that would be four times a week, and then, you know, blink, and I'm just eating meat all the time.

• 1:44:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:44:23Rich Roll?

  That's the way it works for me. So, I have to, and I realize, like, I'm, maybe I'm wired differently than the average human being who's listening to this. That's just what works for me. Like, I have to completely step over the line and not go back. And with that, there's some discomfort. For a couple of weeks, it is like detoxing off a drug. You're like, I really want that thing. I crave that thing. The only way out is through. You get through a couple of weeks of it, those cravings start to dissipate. A month later, you're barely thinking about it. And then you wake up and you realize, like, wow, I haven't thought of that thing in quite some time. Like- I guess I'm I'm free from it. And that to me is a more powerful, long lasting way to do this. Although for a lot of people like they they're like you, they're like, well, I can I can kind of

• 1:45:08Rich Roll?

  dabble here and there and it's not a problem like I wish, you know, I truly I wish.

• 1:45:14Adam Skolnick?

  You make my my example sounds.

• 1:45:18Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:45:19Adam Skolnick?

  Wait.

• 1:45:20Rich Roll?

  And also for me, it's like, oh, these people, it's like, OK, the here are these blue zones people. They barely eat meat. So you look at that as well. I have a license to eat meat a couple of times a month. Whereas I'm the extreme and I'm like, well, I'm just getting rid of that altogether.

• 1:45:33Adam Skolnick?

  But my point is, is that I don't do that, right? Like, the meat that I was talking about was chicken or beef or whatever. I don't touch that at all. So what happens is you you get to a place where you realize actually it's not good food. There's no reason to do it. So all those reasons. So in my case, that's how it happened. So in my case, I was like, I don't have a desire anymore for for either of those two things. But I couldn't go cold turkey because for what I could have, I guess, but I decided not to. And it worked for me.

• 1:46:01Rich Roll?

  But here's let me throw this one at you. As this ambassador for the oceans.

• 1:46:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:46:07Rich Roll?

  The idea that you would eat seafood and then quote unquote classified as sustainable. See, that that to me.

• 1:46:13Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I have I have I have. So I know what sustainable seafood actually is.

• 1:46:18Rich Roll?

  I understand. I understand. But I think that that like when we're talking about that dissonance gap.

• 1:46:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Rich Roll?

  Like, that gap between what you stand for, which is the beauty and purity and majesty of the oceans.

• 1:46:30Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:46:30Rich Roll?

  And then like eating ascension animal from said ocean. To me, those things don't exactly line up.

• 1:46:37Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:46:38Rich Roll?

  So maybe just something to think about.

• 1:46:40Adam Skolnick?

  I'll think about it. Yeah, OK. It's not the first time I've thought about it.

• 1:46:43Rich Roll?

  See, there's the psychic drain.

• 1:46:46Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:46:46Rich Roll?

  Because you know, on some level, you're like, this is an inconsistency.

• 1:46:49Adam Skolnick?

  A lot of the best watermen I know also are fishermen.

• 1:46:52Rich Roll?

  We're not talking about them, though. OK, we're talking about you.

• 1:46:59Adam Skolnick?

  Anyway, Bill, you have a couple of options there.

• 1:47:04Rich Roll?

  That's okay.

• 1:47:05Adam Skolnick?

  Bill, you have a couple of options. I would go with Rich's option, but if it doesn't work for you, come on over to my side.

• 1:47:11Rich Roll?

  All right. We'll see how it goes. Check in with us in a couple of months.

• 1:47:14Adam Skolnick?

  We're going to Iowa for this last question, and I love it. I don't think we've been to Iowa yet.

• 1:47:19Rich Roll?

  Have we?

• 1:47:20Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know. By the way, can I make a plug? We need some questions, people.

• 1:47:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, call us.

• 1:47:25Rich Roll?

  We didn't do, we didn't call out the voicemail number.

• 1:47:27Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it. Let's call it out.

• 1:47:29Rich Roll?

  What is it? Do you know it?

• 1:47:30Adam Skolnick?

  It's 424-235-4626. That's 424-235-4626.

• 1:47:38Rich Roll?

  Operators are standing by.

• 1:47:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. Call us if you are going, well, no, here we go.

• 1:47:44Speaker 04

  Hello, guys. My name is Evan. I'm 20 years old, pursuing entrepreneurship from Iowa. I wanted to ask this question because I hear this statement so often from my parents and a lot of older people, and it really bothers me. So the statement is, but you're young. This really annoys me because this kind of triggers a self-assumption that I'm not doing the right thing while I'm, quote, "young," no matter what it is, especially as a person that is pursuing something other than college. Even though I'm doing the right things to progress towards my goals, these older people usually make me feel like I'm doing the wrong thing or not doing enough. Also, how do I enjoy the moment while I go through this process

• 1:48:25Speaker 04

  when I might not be doing all this work, but not seeing any of the progress in the present time? But with that being said, I think it'd be great for you both to give an objective statement that could apply to all young people, so we might have an idea of what the right and wrong things are. I know this is a pretty dense question, so maybe there's a possibility to create it into a section of one of the roll-ons. I know it would be very beneficial to a lot of people listening. Whatever happens, I appreciate you guys taking the time for these questions, and I hope you have a great day. Thanks.

• 1:48:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, the youth.

• 1:49:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:49:02Rich Roll?

  The Gen Z.

• 1:49:03Adam Skolnick?

  As a representative of older people, I'd like to hear your take on this.

• 1:49:07Rich Roll?

  The Gen X take?

• 1:49:10Adam Skolnick?

  Um, yes, uh, I think it's, you know, listen, it's a, it is an open ended question. It could be interpreted so many different ways, but I think, um, it's interesting to get a question like that because it shows you, because often you don't, we don't get that. You get it at home, but I don't have, I don't have 20 year olds at home. So, uh, I don't get that, that same kind of viewpoint too often. So it's cool to, to hear it unfiltered here.

• 1:49:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm around a lot of people that are in Evan's age bracket and, you know, I am aware of how, look, there's something like beautiful about young people, um, you know, shirking the trends of their elders and, and, you know, believing that they know what's best, you know, and as an older person, you're like, there's so much, you don't know what you don't know, you know? And so as an older person, you always want to like save people from making mistakes. And oftentimes those people need to make those mistakes and then other times they're right. And that's what's incredible about young people. Like we can point our finger and as old men and be like, these crazy kids, but this is the way of the world.

• 1:50:15Rich Roll?

  Like the youth inherit the earth and they reshape it in their, in their image. And there's something, you know, to be respected about that. So I appreciate Evan's question. Yes, it is a bit vague and open ended. It's really kind of hard to, um, get a grip on, on what exactly these older people are telling you that you're doing that's, that's wrong. Like I don't understand the context, um, that's being hurled at you as a specific criticism. So without knowing enough specifics, it's, it's hard to, you know, give you a completely concrete answer, but, but I'll do, I'll do my best. And, and I think the first thing I would say is that, um, I feel strongly that, that...

• 1:50:59Rich Roll?

  That youth, your twenties, is the time in your life for trying lots of things, exposing yourself to as many experiences and cultures and jobs and careers as you possibly can, and being okay with changing your mind, changing your plans, changing gears, and being even better with failing, right? This is the time to do it, like not in your 40s when you have a mortgage and a partner and a car payment. This is the time. And I think that are at odds with this, and probably where some of these older people are coming from, is this culture that we live in that reinforces this mentality that we're in a race.

• 1:51:40Rich Roll?

  And if you're not on a certain pre-approved track, that you're falling behind. But falling behind what exactly? So much of this is like illusion and projection. But that projection or that fear comes from a very specific place. Because as a parent, I can sympathize with their concern, because we all want our kids to be happy, productive, safe, secure. We only know what we know. And what we know is how we did it and how our parents did it. And breaking free of social paradigms, like when you see a young person who's like, "I'm not going to follow that program. I'm going to do it my own way," can be scary for an older person or a parent, because

• 1:52:25Rich Roll?

  it's not only a threat to kind of sometimes our values or the way we made it our way in the world and the way we'd like to see our children make it, like we want to pass down our wisdom, but also a threat to that compulsion that we have as parents for control and for certainty. But like I said, those impulses are quite often generally wrong-headed, and they're based on this kind of illusion of control anyway. So what I say to you, Evan, is that you should follow your heart. You should pursue what gets you excited, what gets you out of bed in the morning. I would suggest that you might enjoy reading David Epstein's book, Range, David who came up earlier on the podcast.

• 1:53:07Adam Skolnick?

  Double, a double mention.

• 1:53:09Rich Roll?

  He's getting a double mention today. What's up, David? Where's that check?

• 1:53:14Rich Roll?

  And in that book, it's sort of a canvassing of all these amazingly successful people across a wide variety of fields. And David realized that that kind of what unites these people, or the trends that he sees in the arc of their life, is that these people were dabblers. They tried many, many things before they finally settled on the one thing that they found purpose in. And all of those dabbling endeavors that they did over the course of their life kind of come into play to create this stew that makes them kind of the only person who could do the thing that they end up doing, because it's this mix of interesting past experiences and skill sets. But I say this with two caveats. And the first is that, you know, following your heart, pursuing what gets you excited,

• 1:53:59Rich Roll?

  is not an excuse to be irresponsible. You still have to live in the world. And if you're going to do this, you have to live lean so you can invest whatever money and time you have in experiences and not get captured by debt or obligations that don't serve you. So that's super important. Don't end up leveraging yourself so that you owe a bunch of people, or you have payments, or you're in an apartment that's too expensive for you. All of those things, like, try to live as leanly as possible, and that just provides more opportunities and also serves your ability to, like, change gears if you want to. And the second thing I would say, and I say this because I have no idea if you should

• 1:54:42Rich Roll?

  or should not go to college, or should or should not be doing what you're doing right now, is to do a really honest and open inventory of yourself and your actions. Because perhaps, just maybe, your elders are correct, and you're not seeing something that they can see. And because you're young and, you know, full of vim and vigor, you have your blinders up to, you know, something they're trying to express to you that you've just... Sort of willingly or unwillingly blinded yourself to. So in that inventory, it's about doing a really honest accounting of your actions to identify possible blind spots. Like, are you, are there areas in your life where maybe you are being irresponsible,

• 1:55:27Rich Roll?

  or reactive, or petulant? And what are your true motivations for what you're pursuing right now? Are they truly born out of like a passion and an intuitive knowing pull towards something personally meaningful that is girded with purpose? Or is there a little bit of like fuck you to your parents built in there somewhere? Because that's true of a lot of young people, maybe most young people. Like, to what extent are you being driven not by this honorable, you know, sentiment, but by some kind of latent resentment or other kind of petty emotion that could trip you up and, um, and, you know, cause a lot of undue suffering in your life?

• 1:56:09Rich Roll?

  So I think getting that part right is absolutely fundamental and key.

• 1:56:13Adam Skolnick?

  Getting clear on the motivation.

• 1:56:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like being really clear with what it is you're exactly doing and, and what your motivations are. And the only way to get that clarity is to really do this inside work. And everyone's like, well, what is the inside work? And it's, it's hard to give a concrete, clear definition of that. But, you know, it's something that, that, that you discover through kind of grappling with your interior emotions. And that can be done with a therapist. It can be done through journaling. It can be done through mindfulness practices. But I really think talking these things out with somebody who is skilled at helping you kind of get this type of clarity is really important.

• 1:56:54Rich Roll?

  So if you're capable of seeing a therapist or being in some kind of therapeutic construct, I think that would be helpful in trying to cobble together that kind of inventory and clarity. The other piece that he mentioned was progress, like not feeling like he was making any progress. And to that, I would say that, that, that nothing in life is for naught. Everything good takes a lot longer than you can possibly imagine. I'm an example of that. And if you feel like you're not making, Adam raised his hand. If you're not making progress under your definition of what progress is.

• 1:57:33Rich Roll?

  Perhaps you could change, you might want to change the definition of progress, or change or extend the timeline and ask yourself irrespective of all of that progress, regression, like what are you learning along the way that could be helpful to you in other facets of life? Because even if you feel like you're not making progress, if you're grappling with whatever problems you're trying to solve, or business you're trying to build, or whatever it is, everything that you're experiencing, particularly the setbacks and the failures and how you kind of tackle and overcome obstacles, that's the, that's the, that's the curriculum, right? For whatever you end up doing later, even if you never make progress in, let's say, this business venture that you're, that you're striving towards

• 1:58:15Rich Roll?

  building, you're, you are learning many important life lessons along the way that I have no doubt will come into play in a, in a positive and material way later in your life. So I guess that's my big speech. Be nimble. You know, if you really feel like you're not making progress, you can't be afraid to, you can't hold on so tightly. You should be able to let go. And if it's not working, change gears, switch it up. This is what your twenties is for. You know, the youth is built for this. And if you are living lean and ensuring that you're not under any kind of undue financial constraints, then you're able to do that. And you can pivot

• 1:58:57Rich Roll?

  your energy and just do something else and not beat yourself up as if you had failed at something, despite whatever these elders are telling you and kind of, you know, apply the lessons that you learned in that past experience into, into a new one.

• 1:59:12Adam Skolnick?

  Well said. It's the exact speech I give to the scoopers on the line every morning.

• 1:59:18Rich Roll?

  The scoopers on the line?

• 1:59:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:19Rich Roll?

  What is a scooper and what line?

• 1:59:21Adam Skolnick?

  Ben and Jerry's.

• 1:59:22Rich Roll?

  Oh.

• 1:59:26Adam Skolnick?

  The young scoopers.

• 1:59:27Rich Roll?

  I forgot that you have a day job.

• 1:59:30Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 1:59:32Rich Roll?

  Just so we're clear, this is a joke, everybody. Some people actually think you work at Ben and Jerry's.

• 1:59:37Adam Skolnick?

  I don't work at Ben and Jerry's-ish. That's it. I think it's a great question. I think you handled it. I think.

• 1:59:43Rich Roll?

  I mean, the question's pretty vague. Like, I can't really tell exactly what his elders are upset about.

• 1:59:48Adam Skolnick?

  No, but you could tell that there's some sort of generational pressure he's getting. He's getting pressure from his parents or some other people that are like, you know.

• 1:59:55Rich Roll?

  You should go to college. This is crazy.

• 1:59:57Adam Skolnick?

  This, what you're doing isn't going to work. And all I can say is, what I was doing certainly didn't seem like it was working for a long, long, long time. And so, um, you know, but at the same time, I got to a point where there was no turning back. So there is something to be the commitment of it.

• 2:00:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but core to that, in your example, there was some knowing that you were a writer.

• 2:00:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:19Rich Roll?

  Like, I am a writer. What that looks like in the world and how I make a living doing that, that's where you had to be flexible and nimble. And there was a lot of different incarnations of that along the way.

• 2:00:30Adam Skolnick?

  There was. I was a writer and a traveler first of all.

• 2:00:32Rich Roll?

  You were always a writer and you knew that. So you had that self-awareness and self-knowledge.

• 2:00:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:36Rich Roll?

  You know, maybe Evan believes in his heart of hearts. He's an entrepreneur. He's a business person. It's unclear. But I think that's where it all starts, right?

• 2:00:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:46Rich Roll?

  And if you don't know that, all the more reason to do as David Epstein would suggest, dabble. You know, spend your twenties exposing yourself to lots and lots of things. Because how are you, how are you supposed to know? I do think there's this enormous pressure on young people that you're supposed to know what you want to do with your life. I mean, you go to college at 18 and you have to choose a major? It's insane.

• 2:01:07Adam Skolnick?

  That's what I was about to say. It's like, it's like, as much as fun as I had in college and meeting my friends and all that, in all honesty, I shouldn't have gone for two years. Like, because I didn't take anything specific to something I want to do later, which is fine, too. It got me, mostly the best thing about college for me was meeting friends and reading some books that helped me down the line and at the time. But like, the bottom line is, if you do ever decide to go back, you're going to know what you want to go back for and you're going to get more out of the experience and you'll be, probably pay more attention. So I don't think there's any big problem with punting college at all. And I'm with you. I think that this program that people are on is a bit crazy.

• 2:01:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I would say that, you know, my history demonstrates, you know, me being a terrible example of all the advice that I just gave, like. I went to law school. I didn't know why I was going to law school. I'm practicing law for like a really long time, never enjoying it, never having any passion for it, but so wed to the idea that this is what I had to do because I had invested so much into it. And I, and I had put myself in a position where I couldn't be nimble and I was overspending and created, you know, financial instability that made it even worse. It was like terrible. Yeah. Like, and I'm just like, please.

• 2:02:20Adam Skolnick?

  Even that will work out.

• 2:02:21Rich Roll?

  But that's why I feel so strongly about this. Like, please don't do what I did.

• 2:02:25Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:02:26Rich Roll?

  You know, please don't do what I did.

• 2:02:27Adam Skolnick?

  And that's probably all your, your, uh, the older generation is trying to tell you is, is please don't fuck up like we fucked up.

• 2:02:33Rich Roll?

  But at the same time, the fear would be like, oh, go to law school. It's secure. And yeah, if you, if you lease a BMW and live in a nice condo and have a prestigious job, then I can go to the cocktail party and tell my friends that you're doing awesome.

• 2:02:47Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 2:02:48Rich Roll?

  And that's fucked up.

• 2:02:49Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And also, unless, we don't know, Evan could be a young Walter White in training. We just don't know what his business is.

• 2:02:55Rich Roll?

  I don't know. Do you think he purposely was vague to not incriminate himself?

• 2:03:00Adam Skolnick?

  Walter White shout out.

• 2:03:02Rich Roll?

  All right. Um, that's just a joke, Evan. I hope you're doing good in Iowa.

• 2:03:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:08Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, thus concludes another roll on. There was a minute there where I thought we were going to land this in well under two hours, but here we are again. Well over two hours.

• 2:03:18Adam Skolnick?

  And we did leave stuff out. We promise.

• 2:03:20Rich Roll?

  We did. Um, you feel good?

• 2:03:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I feel, I feel, uh, good to great. Good to great. Yeah.

• 2:03:29Rich Roll?

  Your semi-deepness just got a little bit deeper.

• 2:03:32Adam Skolnick?

  You know what? I love that we gave two polar opposite answers.

• 2:03:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:37Adam Skolnick?

  To one question. I think we should strive, I will strive for questions where we totally disagree. And that way it gives the listener options.

• 2:03:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think the answer to that question would, would be good as a standalone video. We should put up, so we'll, we'll work on that.

• 2:03:50Adam Skolnick?

  There you go.

• 2:03:51Rich Roll?

  All right, my friend, until next time. In the meantime, thank you for joining us today. I appreciate your attention. I don't take it for granted. You can follow Adam at Adam Skolnick on the internet. I'm at Rich Roll everywhere. Once again, we do love the questions and could use some messages. So if you've got something on your mind you want us to discuss, the phone number is 424-235-4626. Show notes, as always, are available on the episode page at richroll.com. And please don't forget to subscribe to the show. That really does help us out a lot on YouTube, on Apple, on Spotify, wherever you enjoy this content. This show is a team effort. I certainly don't do it alone.

• 2:04:35Rich Roll?

  So thanks, go out today to my team. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Dan Drake for handling the video side of things. Daniel Solis for graphics. AJ Akpo Diatte for TikToks, more video content. Dave Greenberg for portraits. Georgia Whaley for copywriting. DK for advertiser relationships and theme music. As always, by Tyler Trapper and Harry. Appreciate you guys, love you. See you back here in a couple of days with another amazing episode. Until then, my friend, Adam.

• 2:05:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 2:05:10Rich Roll?

  Last words.

• 2:05:11Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks for all the great reporting out from Beijing.

• 2:05:14Rich Roll?

  True.

• 2:05:15Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, you, you crew of intrepid reporters.

• 2:05:17Rich Roll?

  True, true that.

• 2:05:19Adam Skolnick?

  Make sure you, make sure you go see the Great Wall in, in winter before you come back home.

• 2:05:24Rich Roll?

  Safely.

• 2:05:25Adam Skolnick?

  Safely.

• 2:05:26Rich Roll?

  Peace. Bye.

• 2:06:01Rich Roll?

  There you go.