ROLL ON: Embracing Stillness, Recovering From Surgery & Going Slow To Go Slow

Roll On returns! Brace yourselves! Adam Skolnick and I catch up on spinal fusion surgery, going slow to go slow, and what happens when the universe finally gets your attention. On tap: recovery realizations, walking very slowly, and the wild idea that maybe you're enough without all the doing. We dive into LA's current chaos, maintaining humanity, and why "dear one" isn't as cringy as it sounds. Last but not least, we explore worthiness, presence, and the art of sitting still when your whole identity is built on movement. Cheers! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Momentous: 35% OFF your first subscription👉livemomentous.com/richroll ON: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉on.com/richroll ROKA: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL👉ROKA.com/RICHROLL Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF 👉gobrewing.com Bragg: Get 20% OFF your first order with code RICHROLL👉 Bragg.com ProLon: Get 15% OFF plus a FREE bonus gift 👉 prolonlife.com/richrollCheck out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange 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.

• 0:01Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody, welcome or welcome back to another edition of Roll On. It's been a minute. We did one not too long ago.

• 0:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 0:09Rich Roll?

  Uh, but here we are. Today is Friday, the 13th, June 13th.

• 0:14Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, wow.

• 0:15Rich Roll?

  Um, were you aware of that?

• 0:17Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 0:17Rich Roll?

  Is this podcast doomed out of the gate already? What's gonna happen today?

• 0:25Rich Roll?

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• 1:09Rich Roll?

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• 1:31Rich Roll?

  So much is happening in the world right now. I can't imagine that, you know, layering Friday the 13th on top of it is...

• 1:37Adam Skolnick?

  It's fitting.

• 1:38Rich Roll?

  It's sort of like, it'll just get lost in the shuffle of everything else.

• 1:42Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you know, you don't hear about Friday the 13th anymore. Like, when we were kids, maybe it's something like when you're young, like, you're super focused on... Or maybe it was because those movies were happening, like, in the 80s when I was growing up. And so those movies freaked us out, and so the Friday 13th was way more su... I don't know that superstition is... Is superstition still a thing?

• 1:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, I think so.

• 1:59Adam Skolnick?

  It is, okay.

• 2:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:00Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 2:01Rich Roll?

  I mean, look at the conspiracism that is rampant across the world right now. You don't think that Friday the 13th gets slotted in there somewhere?

• 2:09Adam Skolnick?

  There's a Reddit thread on Friday.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  And some kind of voodoo. I'm sure there is.

• 2:12Adam Skolnick?

  There's got to be.

• 2:13Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? But it is true. It's one of those things that, um, that you think that, that was like such a big deal when we were kids.

• 2:21Adam Skolnick?

  Totally.

• 2:21Rich Roll?

  And you wonder, is it still like, I'm not sure. Like, is it like the, the kid who died from, uh, eating too many Pop Rocks and drinking coke? Do you remember that?

• 2:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, totally.

• 2:31Rich Roll?

  You know, like all these like urban legends that existed before the internet that somehow found their way from coast to coast.

• 2:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes, yes. How did that happen?

• 2:38Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 2:38Adam Skolnick?

  It's like the, uh, what's it called? The, uh, coconut wireless or something like that across the country?

• 2:43Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I mean, we had a telephone, so that could explain part of it.

• 2:47Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, it was the telephone?

• 2:48Rich Roll?

  But still, it doesn't account for how deeply embedded some of those things became.

• 2:53Adam Skolnick?

  It's true. But then what was cool about those times also was that like local bands, like you could have a band that was huge in the West Coast and the East Coast never even heard of them.

• 3:02Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:02Adam Skolnick?

  Like, and vice versa. I remember like-

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  But that was exciting and cool. And that's, that's gone. You know, the idea that you're going to discover something and share it with your friend, uh, is, is, is, is sort of a relic of the past in many ways.

• 3:14Adam Skolnick?

  It's happening on the phones now.

• 3:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It used to be you needed, you needed like your friend's older brother to like tell you what was cool.

• 3:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes.

• 3:25Rich Roll?

  And then you could share it with your friends. It was like currency.

• 3:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 3:27Rich Roll?

  Or you'd go to the record store and the owner would like pull something out that you'd never heard of before.

• 3:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 3:34Rich Roll?

  Or you could go to a store where there was a certain, you know, kind of shirt or pair of pants that you could only get there.

• 3:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 3:42Rich Roll?

  And fashion was very localized in that way. And when you would go to some other place, you would be able to discover new things. And now everything is just kind of generalized. You know, every main street is the same string of chain stores, et cetera, across the world. And it's becoming harder and harder and harder to find, you know, anything that's you, unique and-

• 4:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:03Rich Roll?

  Distinguished.

• 4:03Adam Skolnick?

  Homogenized culture, but then that's why-

• 4:07Adam Skolnick?

  Just thinking of the podcast that we were just talking about off the air, Craig Maud's, your episode with Craig Maud, that's what's so interesting about what he has to say about Japan, which is the craftsman culture is so revered that that is still retained in these, in these towns that you go through. It's that, that the, the homogeneity hasn't really hit in the same way, which is interesting.

• 4:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Which also speaks to having a safety net where there is a robust middle class and there isn't the same, you know, kind of ambitious chase that we have here in the United States where there are many, many shopkeepers that have these little unique places and they can have a nice life doing that and persevere and pay their rent and pay their bills. And that was what made that town that he highlighted for the New York Times list like special to him, but also confusing to the Japanese for thinking, you know, this is a very unremarkable town and kind of what unfolded from that. But like, yeah, that was a fantastic podcast. I really enjoyed him. That one was really special.

• 5:13Adam Skolnick?

  It was cool. It was cool, man.

• 5:15Rich Roll?

  Well, I thought that we could use this occasion to dive a little bit deep into my back surgery because although I've posted on social media about it, I haven't really given the full blown story on the podcast. And there seems to be some desire for people to better understand like what happened, why I made this choice and kind of what I'm going through right now.

• 5:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, let's do it, man. I mean, you look, you look really good. I've been enjoying the, the, I am one of the people, and I know you're hearing from a lot of us, that loves the short films, you know, shout out Brogan Graham really quick, like the short film idea that he brought us, you know, like you're just, you're creating these videos and he meant them exactly as they're, what you're, you're taking it to high art. Like your short films are not just inspirational, they're like your life IRL, but like you're seeing it from trailside view. You're dismissing it a little bit, but to me it's like, I miss the trails so much and I see it. It's like, man, it looks very, very beautiful. So.

• 6:19Rich Roll?

  Well, I appreciate that. It's, it's funny. Basically, all I can do right now is walk. There are still several weeks before I can even begin to do PT. And so my life is essentially ground to a halt for, for the most part. And

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  I'm not allowed to walk really longer than like 15 minutes at a time. And so rather than do that by like walking a lap around my house or on a treadmill or something like, ah, let's go to the trail and do that, even though it's super short. And just out of boredom, I was like, well, you know, I need to stop anyway. Like I'll take some.

• 6:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 6:58Rich Roll?

  No one's gonna care about this, but at least I'm sharing like this is what I'm going through right now. And, and sort of surprisingly, people seem to enjoy that. I, it's, it's the thing that has, that has resulted in the most number of like messages and texts from people and DMs from people like, like really enjoying that, which is sort of confusing to me because it's so banal and completely boring.

• 7:22Adam Skolnick?

  No, but it ties.

• 7:23Rich Roll?

  Really? Like I'm not doing anything, you know?

• 7:25Adam Skolnick?

  Right, but it ties to like how you used to do things I see when I run. So now you're doing the things I think see when I walk very slowly. But what that allows, I think, is even more of an experience of the trail. And like you're seeing the mustard, wild mustard, like in bloom and you're already now, you've been doing it so many days that you can also now see it phase out from, from bloom to back to kind of dormant summer.

• 7:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's quickly going away and it's going to be brown, scorched.

• 7:56Adam Skolnick?

  It is, but that'll be interesting too. Yeah.

• 7:58Rich Roll?

  Anyway, I am on day, I think it's 36, 37 of my recovery from spinal fusion surgery, fusion of the L5 and the S1. So just to back up a little bit, why did I have this procedure? What was going on? Well, for over a decade at this point, I've been suffering from chronic lower back pain that over time, not only never went away despite all efforts to try to treat it in a holistic manner, but only continued to get worse. And the nerve pain, the sciatic nerve pain down my leg and into my, my left leg and into my left foot

• 8:40Rich Roll?

  just became unbearable and was continuing to get worse. So much so that my left foot is almost entirely numb, at least on the upper of it. And the numbness was creeping up my left leg on the outer side of my shin to just below my knee.

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  So obviously, I started to get concerned that that I might end up with drop foot. Right. Unless I really, you know, kind of dealt with this in a way that I had not yet. So for many years, I trained through it. I was first diagnosed by Shashani, who's my chiropractor, very holistic practitioner that I've been seeing for a very long time. He took an X-ray of my spine. I think it must have been, it's probably like 2011, maybe 2010. And he was very clear. He's like, look, you have spondylolisthesis. You are going to need surgery. Like there's, and this is, he's like, I've never, I've only recommended surgery like

• 9:45Rich Roll?

  five times in the history of my career, but this is a very clear cut case. And it's a type of spondy that you're not going to be able to resolve short of this fusion procedure. Of course, I didn't want to hear it and I wasn't that symptomatic at the time. And I thought like, I'll just train through it and I'll look into all of these other ways of resolving it through PT and acupuncture and peptides. So I kind of wandered in the wilderness, dabbling with a variety of these modalities for many years. And, you know, some of them were helpful, but the, the positive results would always be temporary. And, and it just continued to get worse.

• 10:30Rich Roll?

  And it's sort of paralyzing for anybody who's had a lower back problem. If you happen to bring it up in a social context, it's like, just don't, you know, like, at least in California, because if you, if you happen to mention it, you know, every single person, not every person, but like, quite frequently, people will, will say, oh, you know, I had that or so and so had that. And like, I've got the guy or the woman, like, you need to see this person. They're a miracle worker. They're a healer. Right. And, and for many years, I would, I would say, tell me more, you know? And then I would explore that and go see that person. Interestingly, none of those people actually ever asked me if I'd been diagnosed, let

• 11:13Rich Roll?

  alone asked to see an X-ray or an MRI. They would just sort of say, I can help you. I can fix this. It's a red flag right there. Right, right. And these are well-meaning people, but you know, some of them have a bit of, what is it called?

• 11:30Adam Skolnick?

  Savior.

• 11:30Rich Roll?

  Savior complex. Yeah, Savior complex. That's the word I was looking for.

• 11:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  And so that can be problematic. And also it's paralyzing because when there's so many people out there who, you know, who have all different types of modalities who all say, this is the one way to fix it. You have to pick a lane. And when there's so many options, you can get paralyzed. And I would plead guilty to that and train through it. And I could go out and run, but I just became increasingly more and more impaired.

• 11:58Adam Skolnick?

  And but it's interesting to me that you had this diagnosis so early. And yet we would never have known it. Like you, you talk about training through it like it's a little thing, but you were doing like real running, real swimming, real, real riding. I mean, you were really training.

• 12:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Adam Skolnick?

  And.

• 12:13Rich Roll?

  In pain.

• 12:14Adam Skolnick?

  In pain. But like, no, you never mentioned it.

• 12:16Rich Roll?

  Competing also.

• 12:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 12:19Rich Roll?

  And I should also point out that it wasn't as if I developed this in 2010 or whenever, you know, I got that first x-ray. It's now clear that this is like a congenital thing. There's a certain percentage of people who are born with something called a pars defect, which is a fracture of the bone on the back of the vertebrae that kind of holds the vertebrae in place. Is it the facet joint? I'm not sure. I'm a layperson. Don't hold me to this, right? But the bone, you know, the, like on the back of your spine, the vertebrae are kind of, there's like these bones that flare out off the back and they kind of hold the Jenga

• 13:01Rich Roll?

  together, right? And that bone is fractured on my L5 and has been my entire life, basically. Like, it's just something that you have. And of course, I've been hard on my body. So I'm sure I've exacerbated it. But when I got the x-ray right before my surgery, that fracture, I mean, you could see, it was like completely broken, you know, like it's like, so, so my spine was unstable. And this condition called spondylolysis is, is one in which the vertebrae, in my case, L5 was, was sliding forward towards my abdomen. Like you could see it like.

• 13:38Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 13:38Rich Roll?

  Pushed forward. So it creates this instability in the spine. So it wasn't necessarily a disc degeneration issue. It's really, this bone is like pushed forward. And so the spine is unstable. And that instability.

• 13:55Rich Roll?

  Compresses the nerve roots that come out of the spine between L5 and S1. And it's that compression on the nerve roots that causes obviously the sciatic pain and the numbness and the like, but also the pain around the lower region because of that instability and all of the other compensations that your body has to make to like, hold yourself upright and move forward and the like. So that's spondi in a nutshell. But in my case, the decision to have surgery versus not have surgery is really one in which you have to evaluate whether the vertebrae is continuing to slip or whether it's stable. And in my

• 14:40Rich Roll?

  case, it was continuing to slip. It was continuing to get worse. If it's stable, then you don't necessarily need to do surgery. You can do other things to kind of keep yourself out of pain and functional and live with it essentially. Like rebuild the muscle structure around it. Yeah, I mean, you can do a little bit. And I know some athletes who have done that and have been successful. They'll have flare ups occasionally, but they can kind of live with it and still be active. But mine was continuing to slip and I would probably end up with drop foot, you know, if I didn't get surgery right away. So anyway, I finally, went to see a couple neurosurgeons and basically everyone that I showed my MRI or my x-ray to was like, listen, you know, you should have had this done a long time ago. I don't

• 15:24Rich Roll?

  know why you waited so long. You've got to do this. You need to do it as soon as possible. Right. And we can help resolve this, basically. So that was the decision to undergo surgery, which I had done on May 8. And what they do, at least in my case, is they go through the abdomen. So I have like a cesarean scar on my lower abdomen. Right. They, they open you up there. They push your organs aside. They reach in and they scraped out the disc between L5 and S1 and they insert this little metal cage. Right. And inside the cage, Is bone grafting material.

• 16:04Adam Skolnick?

  From your own bone?

• 16:05Rich Roll?

  No, they have, there are some people who take bone marrow from the patient and use that as grafting material. In my case, for whatever reason, this surgeon, who's called Dr. Langston Holly at UCLA, Santa Monica, who did a fantastic job, shout out Dr. Holly, he uses a synthetic material and it's inside this cage. And then there's a screw where they screw the cage into the bone to kind of hold it in place. And over time, that grafting material will grow those two bones together, L5 and S1, until it's just one bone. But by inserting that cage, they create the proper alignment and they relieve the compression on the nerve roots.

• 16:48Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 16:48Rich Roll?

  So that you're not experiencing that nerve.

• 16:50Adam Skolnick?

  It pulls everything back together.

• 16:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, basically aligns you.

• 16:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Rich Roll?

  But it's only one screw, insufficient to create true stability. So they have to, so once they do that, they flip, they flip me over and then they open me up on the back.

• 17:02Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 17:03Rich Roll?

  And they put two screws on each side of L5 and S1 and then these posts, right? So they create this scaffold to, to really hold the whole thing together. So I got filleted back in front and, and the whole process took about six hours. So it was, you know, quite something.

• 17:24Adam Skolnick?

  Do you watch any video? Did they give you video?

• 17:26Rich Roll?

  I probably watched too many, like YouTube videos.

• 17:28Adam Skolnick?

  Of your own, no, your own video.

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  Oh, no. Somebody asked, you know, somebody asked me the other day, you should get the video of the procedure. I didn't realize they even videoed that.

• 17:36Adam Skolnick?

  I'm sure they do.

• 17:36Rich Roll?

  So I have an appointment coming up next week. So I'm going to ask for that because I would like to see that.

• 17:42Adam Skolnick?

  You want to see how many hands were in here?

• 17:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Adam Skolnick?

  How many people were in there?

• 17:46Rich Roll?

  But the weird thing is, first of all, I've never had like a major surgery. I don't know if I've ever had any surgery, really. So it's scary, you know, they're going to literally open you up.

• 17:58Adam Skolnick?

  You've never been put, you've never been put out, right? Anesthesia?

• 18:01Rich Roll?

  Um.

• 18:02Adam Skolnick?

  General anesthesia?

• 18:03Rich Roll?

  Maybe. I'm trying to remember. I'm sure I have at some point. For something. For like a. I can't remember. I'm sure at some point in my life I have.

• 18:14Rich Roll?

  But yeah, it's no small thing. I mean, Yeah. I don't need to give the blow by blow of every aspect of this, but yeah, going into the hospital, you know, obviously Julie's right by my side or whatever. And, and the surgeon comes in and the vascular surgeon comes in and the, and the, you know, the nurses and they're all giving you, you know, all the information that you need, et cetera. And then they, you know, put the thing on you, the, the anesthesia mask and, you know, do the countdown and obviously you're, you're out, you know, in two seconds. And then you're just, then it's done. You know, like it's the weirdest thing, you know, like you're like, wow. You just, Julie calls it like, yeah, you just, you're, you've checked out of the matrix.

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  You just hope to check back in. It's not like, it's not like sleeping and waking up. It's a different experience. Like you're just, there's a seamlessness, you know, like that you go from one to the other. But when you're coming out of the anesthesia, like there's a weird, like, I don't have very clear memory of like those first couple of hours. But I will say this, Julie, afterwards, you know, when they came out and told her like, okay, we're done. It went well. She was like, can I see, can I see him? And they were like, no, you can't see, he's in, he's not in good shape. So apparently like what I gather from this is like, you know, I emerged out of this in like, you know, extreme pain and they had to like stabilize me. And all I can tell you is that I completely underestimated

• 19:41Rich Roll?

  the acuteness of the pain that I would experience over the, the first two to three days, where I was alternating between intravenous Dilaudid and then oxycodone. So I'd like, like every, I think every four, like every two hours. So I could get, I could get like one of those every four hours. So. Oxycodone, Dilaudid, oxycodone, like basically, I think in like two or three hour increments or something like that. So heavily, like heavily, heavily medicated.

• 20:11Adam Skolnick?

  And would the pain start at like the second or third hour? Would it start to build again? Is that, or did you?

• 20:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah. You could, yeah, you could feel it. It was, it was quite intense.

• 20:20Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 20:21Rich Roll?

  And they want you moving pretty quickly, like figuring out how to sit up in bed. You gotta like roll over and like prop yourself up. And all of that was incredibly excruciating. Like the idea is they want to get you moving. They don't want you just laying flat. You can get blood clots. They want the blood moving. But this, this proved like very difficult for me. Like, just trying to get upright in bed and my legs over the side and then standing up and then walking with a walker. I mean, that was perhaps the most painful thing I've ever, I've ever tried to do. And what's interesting about that, and why I bring it up, is, is twofold.

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  First, as the surgeon told me, like later in my hospital stay, because I ended up staying like a day and a half longer than is typical or normal, pain is a subjective experience. People have a variety of experiences with pain in terms of, of, of the degree of it, et cetera.

• 21:25Rich Roll?

  And he's like, you're on the high end. Like, we don't normally see people in as much pain as you clearly seem to be experiencing. Not that you're making it up or anything like that, but, but it was curious to him. And I'm like, I'm the voluntary suffering guy. Like, I thought I would be on the other

• 21:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 21:43Rich Roll?

  side of this.

• 21:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  You know, I thought I would be like, I would be like a warrior, you know? Cause I don't want to be on the meds and all that. Like, you know, I'm gonna be the guy who can like tough, tough it out

• 21:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Rich Roll?

  and get through it more easily than the average person who gets this procedure, which, let's face it, is probably, you know, not, not taking care of themselves as, as well as I have. So that was interesting in and of itself.

• 22:04Adam Skolnick?

  That's interesting.

• 22:05Rich Roll?

  And I actually asked Kelly Staret about this, who's been very helpful to me. Shout out Kelly, podcast guest, movement specialist.

• 22:15Rich Roll?

  I said, why, you know, why was I having this extreme experience? Because you're more connected to your body, you're more sensitive to how your body's feeling. He's like, that's actually more common than you would think.

• 22:24Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, interesting. Yeah. Well, I'm like, I'm glad the doctors are so comfortable with other people's pain, you know?

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Adam Skolnick?

  The way they talk about your pain. It's like, it's a subject, you're actually what you're feeling. It's like, all right, doc, thanks, man.

• 22:37Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 22:45Rich Roll?

  So it took me a lot longer to get comfortable and kind of standing up and like pushing a walker around.

• 22:54Rich Roll?

  And what was interesting about that is, is the mental aspect of it. Because I think part of the pain experience is this idea that your body is broken because you feel broken. And then if you move, you're going to irreparably harm yourself.

• 23:09Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 23:09Rich Roll?

  You're going to do irreparable damage.

• 23:11Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 23:11Rich Roll?

  And your body's trying to tell you, or your mind's telling the body, like, don't do that. But once you kind of do it and push, sit up, walk in, and you're like, oh, I'm okay. Like, you start to rewire the brain and, and, and the brain starts to understand this isn't like a mortal threat to the body. And the pain dissipates quickly, even though the body hasn't healed that much. There hasn't been enough time for there to be like a physical change. That mental tweak actually dissipated the pain considerably, which was interesting. But anyway, I completely underestimated how challenging those first three or four days would be.

• 23:49Rich Roll?

  But it shifted quickly. By the time I got home, like, I had gotten over the worst, most acute part of the pain. But I also underestimated, despite being told a million times, like, this is a long journey and you're going to have to be patient. And there's not much that you're going to be able to do. This is a six-month recovery period in order for those bones to fuse. I underestimated the, the physical and mental toll that it would take on me. And now we're 36 days into it. I would have thought, you know, by week three and a half or week three, I would at least be able to return back to work. All I'm doing is sitting down and having conversations and looking at a computer screen.

• 24:30Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 24:31Rich Roll?

  But I've just been exhausted. You know, I, I, I had to like, last week I was meant to do five podcasts and two public appearances. That was on the schedule.

• 24:41Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 24:41Rich Roll?

  And the week before I was like, there's no fucking way I'm gonna be able to do that. And I had to cancel almost everything. I, I, I did one podcast and I, and I fall through on the two public appearances because I'd committed to them so long ago. And I was able to do it, but it took like a huge toll. And so essentially, I just sleep all afternoon. Like I've, I've been coming into the office here, but I have to leave around like noon. I'm sleeping from like 1:30 or 2:00 to like 4:00 every day. And just, other than walking around, doing not much of anything. And there's a mental toll with that, right? Like a languishing, it feels like COVID lockdown, except worse.

• 25:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 25:22Rich Roll?

  You know, because you can't move your body physically.

• 25:25Adam Skolnick?

  And then you feel like-

• 25:26Rich Roll?

  So it's making me feel like in that headspace again.

• 25:28Adam Skolnick?

  And also emotional, right? You're like, man, I should be doing, you know, the I shoulds must be populated in your-

• 25:34Rich Roll?

  The I shoulds, you know? But so that's, that's the opportunity, right? So I went into this very intentional, like, okay, I'm going to be sidelined. Like I can be pissed about it or I can resist it, but where's the opportunity? You know, what happens when you can't outrun your discomfort?

• 25:51Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 25:51Rich Roll?

  You can't lose yourself in productivity or work as a distraction from, you know, sitting with yourself. And instead just trying to embrace that, which has its own challenges.

• 26:01Adam Skolnick?

  Right, it is.

• 26:02Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 26:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Rich Roll?

  So that's been, that's been difficult as well.

• 26:05Adam Skolnick?

  I bet, man. Well, first of all, 36 days is not very long.

• 26:10Rich Roll?

  It feels like a long time.

• 26:12Adam Skolnick?

  But it's not like, like for this procedure, I mean, it's like, it's not long anyway, but thirty six days for what you went through, like, it's amazing that you had that much on the schedule already, you know, like, it proves how much you had to carve out and how into demand you, your schedule is. And so that's interesting, like, to that perspective of thirty six days, it feels like a long time for you because each day is just stretching out. But really in healing, you know, like, if you had, I just had like this weird strain, and it's four to six week injury recovery, thirty six days isn't even six weeks. And that's just like a muscle strain. So I'm not surprised that it's taking a little bit

• 26:54Adam Skolnick?

  longer than that to feel good. But it's amazing that you let us in. I remember seeing the walker, you on the walker in the hospital. I remember seeing like you talking us through this on social media. It's been interesting to watch your recovery. And one thing that struck me was actually that it was, it seemed pretty fast, to the point where getting up and walking and feeling all right. Like, to me, it felt like, wow, that was like week one or so, or week, the end of, beginning of week two, where you're like, wow, you're more, this is happening faster than I thought.

• 27:25Rich Roll?

  That gets tricky, though, because I did feel so much better all of a sudden, once the really, you know, kind of terrible acute pain dissipated. And even though everyone's like, you got to take it easy, you know, like, you're really not supposed to do anything, you know, I felt like I could just go out and walk ten miles. And I would be on my treadmill at home and realize like, oh, man, I walked three miles.

• 27:47Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 27:47Rich Roll?

  Like, I'm just like, watching videos, or, you know, looking at my phone, or whatever. I'm walking so slowly, but on a treadmill.

• 27:54Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 27:55Rich Roll?

  It didn't feel taxing in any way, but that was a mistake, you know, that I quickly shifted, you know, back towards. So, yeah, it felt, that's the thing, like, this is not a linear thing. I realized like, oh, you know, I really can't be doing that. Obviously, you can see I'm wearing a brace right now. I have to wear this brace every time I'm sitting up. And the, I'm not even allowed, I can take a shower, but I can't, like, get in a pool, or use the sauna, you know, can't do a cold plunge or anything like that. They don't want any submersion of the wounds. Because even though they look like they're healed, they're so deep that they take forever to heal. And they still, that's like the main pain now, is around the incisions.

• 28:39Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Wow.

• 28:41Rich Roll?

  So.

• 28:41Adam Skolnick?

  So you, so does it hurt now, just sitting here?

• 28:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's uncomfortable.

• 28:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Rich Roll?

  And I'm actually not supposed to sit in this position for very long. So I'm making an exception for the podcast. Like, they want you upright and moving around. I bought these zero gravity chairs.

• 28:57Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 28:57Rich Roll?

  They're just, there's nothing fancy about them. They're just like lawn chairs, but you know, they have that recline, you know, where you're, they just relieves pressure on your back. So you're kind of laying back in them.

• 29:08Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 29:09Rich Roll?

  But now I gotta figure out how I can work and use a computer.

• 29:13Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I guess you don't have to, you still have a little bit of time, but.

• 29:16Rich Roll?

  What am I supposed to do while I'm reclining in this zero gravity chair?

• 29:20Adam Skolnick?

  You could speak, you could, you could, your writing could be voice. Have you ever thought about that, like talking it out?

• 29:26Rich Roll?

  I've tried to do a little bit of that. The problem, the bigger thing is, is, is my inability to maintain focus for very long. Like I have a stack of books by my bedstand, but I can't read for more than a couple of pages without, you know, basically losing track of what I'm doing. So that's something I didn't expect either.

• 29:47Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm. One thing that theme that has kind of like wanted to ask you about is this idea of things I see when I go walk very slowly is that have you, have, have you had any kind of realizations about the slow path and, and what you were, what you get out of the slow path? Have you had any, or are you still too in it to like, you know, to see kind of the, the, the messages of this process you're going through?

• 30:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know that I could articulate the rewards beyond the self-awareness of it all. You know, obviously there are benefits to slowing your life down. And I'm somebody who has always lived their life in the fast lane. Somebody who is, uh, whose default mode is like hyper productivity. And, you know, work always provides a safe haven for any kind of emotional discomfort. You know, I love my work and so it's easy to kind of just lose yourself in that. And I'm always. Catching myself when I'm not present because I'm ruminating on something I need

• 30:58Rich Roll?

  to do or someplace I need to be, et cetera. And when you strip all that away and you're forced to confront yourself as you actually are, and there's nowhere to run, no way to hide, no escape, and you're just at home, like, how do you, how do you, how do you contend with that? Like, what happens when you have to just turn your gaze inward?

• 31:20Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 31:21Rich Roll?

  And I think this is all divinely orchestrated for my, my benefit and my growth. Because despite all of the changes and transformations that I've had in my life, this is the thing that is sort of sitting right out there waiting for me, you know, this idea of, of being okay with who you are irrespective of external reward or influence.

• 31:56Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 31:57Rich Roll?

  So that's the lesson that I'm trying to learn and lean into right now.

• 32:02Adam Skolnick?

  That's interesting. You know, I've, I've had a very similar, it's so interesting. And maybe it's that we've had other discussions about childhood or X, Y, and Z, you and I, but like, I've had this same path. Like, I've been reading a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh lately. And for those who don't know, Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist legend. He was, he awarded, he was nominated, not awarded, the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King. So he is connected to Martin Luther King in the 60s as a, as a Vietnamese monk, but he was educated overseas and he ended up founding a monastery, excuse me, called Plum Village in France. And he's just an amazing thinker, writer. He's got a million books

• 32:45Adam Skolnick?

  out there. And he was talking about like,

• 32:52Adam Skolnick?

  Being kind to yourself and like in the early chapters of this book, the way he talked about it was like, you know, address yourself as dear one, dear one, you're going to be okay, like as if you're addressing your child, your inner child that like didn't get X, Y, or Z, didn't feel nurtured or didn't, or whatever felt somehow out of sorts. You need to, the way to solve your, your own emotional imbalances is to address your inner child. Dear one, and it sounds so corny, like, like I couldn't even imagine myself doing it.

• 33:24Rich Roll?

  It's more than corny. It's like, it's like cringe worthy.

• 33:27Adam Skolnick?

  It's cringy.

• 33:27Rich Roll?

  You recoil from that.

• 33:29Adam Skolnick?

  Dear one, talking to yourself that way. And more, more, more often, I'm more comfortable saying, you motherfucker. You know, like that's how I'm more comfortable, but not really, but like in some ways, I'm more, more comfortable with giving myself an order or like, less an order, but more like, why did you do that in the aftermath, you know, like, why, why did you react that way? Why, you could have done X, Y, and Z. He's saying, when that happens, dear one is, you know, dress dear one, it's going to be okay. You're going to be okay. And by the end of the book, it's not even a long book, this last book called, I think it's called You Are Here Now. By the end of the book, it's so deep, that practice, that I was thinking anytime I feel a pang of jealousy or envy that, that, that happens, you know,

• 34:14Adam Skolnick?

  most of my envy that I feel within me is around professional stuff. Like see other writers who've done X, Y, and Z, or, you know, I've had struggle with this project. So, you know, you feel it. And I'm never proud of that envy when it surfaces, but like the antidote is really, you are enough as it is, like you are enough as it is. And it's, it's what sounded so cringe worthy before, like has really helped, has really helped me. Like I can already feel it and I've only been like thinking like the end, they're like, it's almost like the envy just completely dissipates. Like it's gone and you don't even have an impulse for it anymore. And that's only in a couple of weeks.

• 34:56Adam Skolnick?

  And so it's interesting that you say that, like that this revelation of you are enough because we don't, we might know it intellectually, but we don't allow ourselves to feel that way.

• 35:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I understand the concept and I agree with it. Do I feel it? Can I experience that? That's what I'm aiming for, right?

• 35:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  As somebody who, you know, kind of comes from a place where love is transactional and your worthiness is a function of your ability to achieve and produce, I can have self-understanding about the wrongheadedness of all of that, that everybody is deserving of love and that, you know, love is something that you should give and receive unconditionally. And, you know, it's, it's the way I, you know, attempt to parent my children in ways that are different from the way that I was raised. But it's so deeply embedded, like, you're enough. Like, what do you mean, I'm not enough? I'm only valuable to the extent that I can provide to take care of other people, that I can, you know, distinguish myself as special

• 36:03Rich Roll?

  or be noteworthy in any of these ways. And when I reflect back on my life, like, all of these decisions that I've made, like, I do this thing in a public forum. Like, why am I doing it this way? Is it because it, it, it results in, you know, kind of external validation? Of course, that's part of it, right? Like, that is my makeup. It makes me feel like I am, that I have worthiness or value, or it's a way of, like, filling that hole, right?

• 36:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 36:31Rich Roll?

  But if you take all of that away and say, what if it all goes away? Can you still feel that way about yourself? Do you feel like you have value outside of any kind of external situation? And it also, you know, in this period of forced repose, like, is challenging all the structures of identity that I've built around myself. I'm an ultra-endurance athlete. Well, now I can go out on these walks really slowly and take pictures. Like, am I an ultra? I'm like, I'm certainly not right now. You know, it's like, so, so it's challenging all of those structures that, you know, we all create to create narratives about who we are, right? And when you take that away and you have a blank canvas,

• 37:16Rich Roll?

  what are you left with? And what are you gonna make of that?

• 37:18Adam Skolnick?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:19Rich Roll?

  And what does that mean? And so... Am I worthy outside of the things that I do in the world or the things that I chase?

• 37:28Adam Skolnick?

  It's interesting. Two things to piggyback on that is like, I mean, obviously, I feel the same way as a person in like, writing was my vocation and being in having that kind of plug into the media. Part of it is you want to, you want to raise your voice. You want to express, you know, like we intake so much from the world and we want to input upon the world in some way. But also, the other part of it is this idea of sovereignty. Like, we don't want to take some job everyone else takes. We don't want to like, so it's not just that external validation. That's a piece of it.

• 38:06Adam Skolnick?

  And I think this is for you too, because you had done the more paved path before and you went off road with this. And there was no guarantee that it was going to be some external validation exercise. It very well could have gone a different way. And so I think it was also a parallel quest for some autonomy in life so that you can figure out a way through this adulthood without having to be the typical grown up doing X, Y, and Z to accumulate all the different things we're supposed to accumulate. And so I think there's, that's two things and they're both, those thrusts, I think they sometimes take turns on which ones in ahead.

• 38:45Adam Skolnick?

  Because when you get to the point where it's working and you don't even think about the autonomy part anymore, then you're thinking, oh, it must be just I'm extra. That's not true. Like, you know, they're both, they both kind of are, are, are parallel reasons. And the other thing I was thinking was, remember when David Cho, you had him on and he asked you, could you take six months off? And he confronted you with that, like, what would you learn? He's basically implying, I forget what his exact words were, but it was like, what would your life, what would you think of yourself if you took six months off? Who are you really? You know, and, and you're like, no, I could never. And but, and I, at the time, I thought, well, he's got kids, he's got, you know, he's got, there's bills to pay. There's like, whatever.

• 39:27Adam Skolnick?

  But now I see it's not just that that you were talking about. You couldn't take six months off for, for more than just that reason.

• 39:35Rich Roll?

  It's as if, you know, God or the universe was speaking through David Cho and challenging me directly because that was very confronting. Like if you were like, what would that be like? Like that, you know, talk about recoil. Yeah, you didn't consider it for a second. No, no. So it's that idea of, you know, the universe knocks, you know, when it's trying to get your attention, when there's a piece that you need to learn or a lesson for you to, you know, consume or a growth arc that is available to you. And it knocks gently, you know, trying to get your attention. Hey, there might be something to look at over here. David Cho, six months, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. You know, so it has to knock louder.

• 40:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. At least in my case, to get my attention. And that knock has to kind of visit me with pain. Right? So here we are. And I'm in this six month period where, I mean, it's, you know, it's different. So it's not like I'm going off, off the radar completely. But I am being forced for a six month period of time to change everything about the way that I'm living. And there's something deeply uncomfortable about that. One of the things that I've always prided myself on with this podcast is like, I've never missed a week. You know, I hold on to that. Like I'm gripping on, I've never, I'm so consistent, you know, consistency is everything. And not once has a Monday gone by where there wasn't a podcast.

• 41:01Rich Roll?

  And now we do, you know, every other Thursday like this one, but new content every time, no matter what. And now it's like, okay, well, what would happen actually if you missed a week and you couldn't, would everything fall apart? Like, of course not. Like, nobody, nobody would care. Right? And so one of the things I have been able to do is just to be okay with that. Like, I literally haven't checked my email in like, in a month. And the world didn't end. And we've put up some, you know, past episodes here and there. We still have a new episode every Monday, and we're probably not going to run out. But like, what if we did? What if I just went dark? Would it be that big of a deal? I don't think so. Look at Marc Maron. He just announced after 16 years that he's like done.

• 41:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:47Rich Roll?

  Going out on his own terms, like, good, good for him.

• 41:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's different. It'll be interesting. I mean, he probably has a million acting projects already lined up.

• 41:56Rich Roll?

  Well, now his acting career is really starting to take off.

• 41:58Adam Skolnick?

  So I think, I think it's a little bit different because he's got something equally kind of sexy to like launch on to. It would be different for you because you'd have to really kind of consider your next move in a different way.

• 42:12Rich Roll?

  I couldn't economically afford to stop. But I think this part of the sentiment behind it is something that I share. Like, yeah, he's burned out. He's done two a week for 16 years. And I don't think he's missed either. And he's talked to everyone at this point. But the landscape has changed.

• 42:29Adam Skolnick?

  That's true, too.

• 42:30Rich Roll?

  It's a lot different now. There's pressure on him to do video, which he never wanted to do. Like, he knows that to be relevant, he would have to do that. And that just is antithetical to his whole thing. And God bless him for never bending on that and maintaining the purity of WTF the way it's always been. But there is something dispiriting about how crowded the marketplace is now. I mean, you remember when he had Obama on his podcast and what a big deal it was?

• 43:00Adam Skolnick?

  Of course.

• 43:00Rich Roll?

  Like, when you had a big guest, like, there was, it was sort of an event. You know? And now, like, everybody's doing podcasts and everybody has a podcast. So it's very, it's very difficult to distinguish yourself and to be a signal in the noise. So that takes a little bit of the fun out of it. But again, that's all external stuff. Like, for me, I want the motivation to be purely internal. Like, I'm curious about this person. I want to learn so that I can grow. And then I want to be able to share that in service to other people. And when I focus on that and let go of all that external stuff, like, oh, we're not in the rankings the way that we were, or what's happening on YouTube? Like, I can get caught up in all of that.

• 43:43Rich Roll?

  But that's really trivial in comparison to the substance of what it is that you're actually trying to do and making that the core motivation for the entire enterprise.

• 43:59Rich Roll?

  But the story I wanted to tell, it's back to the Thich Nhat Hanh thing of like, "Dear one," you know? Yes. "Dear one, Adam." So here's a different lens on that. Okay. I was talking to my friend Chris Davis on the phone the other day, who's just the best, friend of the pod from way back in the day, just a man of great wisdom and wit. And he's somebody who has had a really hard go of it in terms of his health. He's had more operations than you can imagine and more challenges in and out of the hospital, surgery, like more. So I call him because he's had a million surgeries.

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  And this guy is the embodiment of PMA. He's always in the best mood. He always tells you, "Everything is fantastic." But physically, like, you know, he quietly, you know, has challenges that most people can't imagine. And I was starting to feel really down, like my mental, like I started to really just, I was really struggling and feeling depressed and kind of in the darkness with this whole thing, thinking like, "The window has to lift at some point. It's been over 30 days at this point. Like, I just don't feel like myself and I can't move in the ways that make me feel like myself." And there's a discomfort there that has been very dysregulating to me.

• 45:21Rich Roll?

  And so I do what I've learned to do in sobriety, which is you reach out and you ask for guidance from people who have experience with this kind of thing, and nobody has more experience than Chris. And he said that he had a relationship with Arlie Ermy. Do you know who Arlie Ermy is? Arlie Ermy was the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. Okay. You remember that guy? Of course. Like, the most iconic Yes. Drill sergeant ever rendered on film. Yes. Right? Like, the hardest, like... Imagine Arlie Ermy shouting at David Goggins. Like, what would happen? You know, I think he might intimidate David. This is how, this is how like hardcore. Young David, yes.

• 46:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right. Anyway, apparently, Arlie had had a, like, open heart surgery or some, heart surgery of some form or another. And Chris was talking to him about the same thing that I reached out to Chris for. And Arlie told Chris, here's the thing. When you undergo anesthesia, you think you're asleep, but your brain is actually awake. Like, in a certain way, there's an awareness in your mind, an unconscious awareness of what's happening to your body. And obviously, you've undergone a trauma. And there's a part of your brain that is like living in that reality, even though you don't have a memory of it.

• 46:50Rich Roll?

  And you have to make amends to your body. Like, you basically have to say, like, I'm sorry for putting you through that. Interesting. And it's gonna be okay now. And this is part of the healing. And I know what you endure. Like, having a conversation with your body. Right. To essentially, like, make them, to apologize, to apologize for it, like, and say, I'm take, this is part of taking care of you. I know, like, like telling a child, like, who, that they have to do something that they don't want to do or whatever, because it's in their best interest. And making that amends, which is a form of, of saying, dear one, like, I am caring for you. And I know it didn't feel like that, whatever. And like, walking them through that. And I thought that was such a unique,

• 47:35Rich Roll?

  such a unique kind of like, practice. But because it comes from Arlie Ermy, it's like, it kind of takes the cringiness off the dear one, tic, not han, version of it. But there, it's the same thing. Right, it's the same thing. Right. Dear one, do you hear me? I am so sorry.

• 47:57Rich Roll?

  I thought you'd like that story.

• 47:58Adam Skolnick?

  I love that story. But it's true, like, you know, it's amazing to think that dialogue works because what you were doing, what your choice you made, we don't know for a fact, but it very well could have added 10, 15, 20 years to your life. Because if you do end up with drop foot and your mobility is really compromised, that is the number one killer.

• 48:22Rich Roll?

  Right, well, I did it for a reason.

• 48:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 48:25Rich Roll?

  But that reason might not be what you think.

• 48:27Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 48:28Rich Roll?

  Like, it could be, like, you could easily say, well, he did it so he could get back to running and competing. Maybe I'll do that, I don't know. I will tell you this, the surgeon was not exactly sanguine about the prospects of me being able to return to running. Personally, I'm very confident that I'll be able to, and I know other people have had this procedure, who have gone on to do ultra marathons and Ironmans and stuff like that. I just have to not screw it up right now and get ahead of myself. Because my inclination is to like, always do more, you know, do more than what's recommended. And all I can do right now is impede or interrupt or derail the process. But the weird mental tweak is every time I move, you're not supposed to bend, lean,

• 49:11Rich Roll?

  or twist, and obviously, you're going to move your spine a little bit every time you move, is that you're going to break something, like, I'm going to screw it up. You know what I mean? I'm going to, somehow, I'm going to do something and that, all the alignment's going to get thrown off, and it was all for naught, and I'm going to have to do it again. Like, apparently, this is a common fear. But it's always with me, like, if I bent, oh my god, like, I'm going to mess it up.

• 49:34Adam Skolnick?

  It's always with you so far, it's only 36 days, so it makes sense that it's with you. It's good that it's with you.

• 49:39Rich Roll?

  But to your point, sorry, I stepped on you.

• 49:43Adam Skolnick?

  No, you didn't.

• 49:45Rich Roll?

  Look, it would be great if I got back to a place and I could compete again, but that's not the motivation. Like, I just, I want to be well, I want to feel good in my body, I want to be pain-free. And I want to learn from this experience, something that will give my life greater meaning. And I'm not sure that racing is going to, I've learned what I need to learn about that, but I think the real lessons are in the ones I most avoid, that have to do with stillness and presence. And in one of those posts, I shared...

• 50:21Rich Roll?

  This idea of going slow to go slow.

• 50:24Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 50:24Rich Roll?

  Like, I've written and spoken in the past about going slow to go fast. This whole like zone two thing. Like, you have to like build this base and foundation. You have to be patient. You have to go slow. And you have, you have to exercise a different kind of discipline to hold back in order for the benefit that you can reap through that patience by being able to go fast much later. If you can, if you can, if you can really lean into that discipline. But the premise there is that you're going slow so that you can go fast later.

• 50:54Adam Skolnick?

  You're still trying to get something.

• 50:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, well, there's two. There's two things, two points here. The first being the whole, the whole point of going slow is so you can go fast later.

• 51:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 51:04Rich Roll?

  But what if the point of going slow is to go slow?

• 51:06Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 51:06Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 51:07Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Right.

• 51:08Rich Roll?

  Like, who wants that? But like, I think that's where the juice is. So what if it is just about going slow? And there is no going fast later? Like, how does that feel? What would that experience be like? What could you learn about yourself? How does that challenge your expectations and your attachments about what your future looks like or might not look like? Which is very confronting. And then the second piece of that is, is that there's still a race happening, right? You're, you're, you're going slow now to go fast later. And that's the way to win the race. Or the way to win the race is to just go slow consistently. And then that's how you win the race. But is there a race?

• 51:53Rich Roll?

  It's, it's more than what if there was no race? Like, there is no, there is, of course, there's no race.

• 51:57Adam Skolnick?

  No. No, I mean.

• 52:00Rich Roll?

  So what happens when you stop rushing or behaving? Or, or interfacing with life as if it is a race that you're attempting to win? Or at least be competitive in so that you can extract something external that will make you feel good about yourself and make you feel whole? But if you take all of that away and you're just like, dude, this is it. You and me right now, you know? Present, conscious, there's nothing to be gained, there's nothing to be won. There is nothing else other than what is exactly happening right now. What if that's it? And I'm pretty sure that is it.

• 52:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Rich Roll?

  And again, it's something that's easy to talk about, but to actually feel into that. So that is, that's what I'm trying to do.

• 52:51Adam Skolnick?

  It's hard to give.

• 52:52Rich Roll?

  Poorly, I would say, most of the time.

• 52:54Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, the fact that first of all.

• 52:55Rich Roll?

  As I'm frustrated and resentful and, and taking it out on everyone around me, trust me.

• 53:00Adam Skolnick?

  I believe it, I believe it, I believe it. But the fact that you're aware of this stuff is like, that's the, we're already on the path, you know? We're already on the path and, and, and it's like, it's very hard to give ourselves permission in this time and this space and this day and age for the space and the silence, because the space and the silence used to be more accessible to everybody. There was, uh, when you were in the garden, you were only in the garden. When you were, uh, like fishing on a river, you were only fishing on a river. Now you're, the phone's there all the time, there's music, there's like, we don't have the, because we've gotten, gone so far technologically, we've, we've muddied all the water. And so it's hard to find those clear spaces.

• 53:45Adam Skolnick?

  And so, um, it's not easy to get to that place where, where the only thing that matters is presence. It's harder now than ever. We're more distracted than ever. And so, um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's deep stuff. You're, you're in it, man. You're in it.

• 54:00Rich Roll?

  I had been distracting myself all along though, also. I think I've seen every, you know, movie and, you know, limited series that I've wanted to watch over the last 36 days.

• 54:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes it's just, you know, it's as simple as, can you feel that warmth in your third eye? Do you feel like, do you feel like, to me, that's like, presence, true presence for me, it comes and goes, you know? Like, it's very hard for me to stay in it for long periods of time. And so like, you know.

• 54:33Rich Roll?

  You can't.

• 54:34Adam Skolnick?

  That's one thing this, this podcast does for you. You're on point. You know, this is presence. You're giving your guest total presence. You're giving yourself presence. This has become kind of in its own way, a ritual space for presence with another person.

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  Right. But that presence is invested in another person.

• 54:54Rich Roll?

  In an experience, in curating something that hopefully is valuable for other people. Like, there's a lot of

• 55:01Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 55:01Rich Roll?

  attachments to that, right?

• 55:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:03Rich Roll?

  That, that take it out of the pureness of being present, like just being present with yourself.

• 55:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

• 55:09Rich Roll?

  But I have, you know,

• 55:13Rich Roll?

  used this time to double down on my meditation. And yeah, you get those fleeting glimpses and moments that don't, don't stay long, don't, don't, and don't visit predictably or regularly, but give you just enough to see and feel like what that's about.

• 55:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  And, and the practice is about trying to bring more and more of that into your life and then allow it to infuse, you know, the other 23 hours of the day. It's not about like that, okay, you did your practice and now you live your life. Like, how do you bring that experience of presence more and more into the interstitial moments of mundanity throughout your day?

• 55:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Well, I'll end, I'll end this whole Zen moment with this.

• 56:02Adam Skolnick?

  I listen to the Jack Kornfield podcast. Sometimes it's like a lot of his old Dharma talks and things. And in one of them, he talks about how he was with Thich Nhat Hanh. He was one of his teachers. He was with Thich Nhat Hanh somewhere. And he saw Thich Nhat Hanh get irritated with somebody and it made him so.

• 56:18Rich Roll?

  I was gonna say, that would bring me such great joy, you know?

• 56:23Adam Skolnick?

  It made him, it was like a relief washed over him, you know?

• 56:29Adam Skolnick?

  So.

• 56:29Rich Roll?

  It's hard to trust someone who, you know, doesn't do that because then you just think they're hiding something. Because they're, they're in the three dimensional world, like they, have they transcended the mortal coil? So it's like, despite gurus behaving badly when, you know, the sex scandal, you know, ultimately erupts. It's, there is like, there's disappointment, but there's also comfort in that. It's like, you know, it's like, yeah, you know, he wasn't.

• 56:54Adam Skolnick?

  But that's different. Those guys are frauds.

• 56:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know.

• 56:57Adam Skolnick?

  This guy's like the real deal.

• 56:58Rich Roll?

  The real thing, but still in a human incarnation.

• 57:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, right, exactly.

• 57:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:03Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly.

• 57:04Rich Roll?

  Before we end this, should we talk a few minutes about LA? You're wearing your Dodgers hat.

• 57:08Adam Skolnick?

  We got you, man.

• 57:09Rich Roll?

  I'm wearing my, I love LA shirt. The news moves fast. There's gonna be a week before this goes up. Anything can happen, but I think it is worthy of, of. Of just taking a few moments to share some thoughts on what's happening in our beloved city. I mean, where are you at with everything that's going down right now?

• 57:31Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, let's remind ourselves that we're only five months since the fires. Five months. That's not very much time. So that's like, just the background of this?

• 57:43Rich Roll?

  Well, and essentially, 2025. Like, look at everything that has happened this year alone. It's insane, especially in this city.

• 57:52Adam Skolnick?

  Well, where I'm at with it is, you know, I'm in the Craig mod idea. We're gonna, we're gonna, was it keep the light, lightness over heaviness? So I want to make sure, if I say things that might be construed as political in some way, that keep listening, because what I'm trying, I'm gonna get somewhere else. But what I, what I want to say first is I am pro-immigrant. I am pro-immigrant. You know why? Because my grandparents and great-grandparents were immigrants. So, or my great-grandparents were, my grandparents were born here. But,

• 58:31Adam Skolnick?

  so it would be hypocritical for me to think any other way, because that's why I'm here. And so, and almost all of us feel that way. So, or are that, we don't all feel that way, but we are all results of immigration. And so, if you look at the history of immigration, from the first wave of Irish immigrants in the middle of the 19th century, they were considered invaders, they were disparaged, nobody wanted them here, they were victims of the Irish potato famine, so they were refugees of famine, and they moved here for a better life. But then you fast forward, there was Jewish and Italian immigration,

• 59:14Adam Skolnick?

  there was Chinese immigration, Chinese immigrants built the railroads here, and they were then banished, they stopped that, they didn't allow that anymore. Jewish and Italians came over around the same time, in turn of the 20th century, that's when my Family came over and they were, you know, thought of as alien creatures and not respected. And so this history of scapegoating immigration Japanese, we all know about the internment during World War II. So this distrust of immigrants is kind of baked in this, the American soil has always been there. It's this fear of outsiders and that's what we're seeing again. So everything that we're seeing now is a replay of something that's happened before. And I just want to say

• 59:58Adam Skolnick?

  that I think it is, any thinking, feeling person should really consider where your family came from because if you are an American, unless you're a Native American, you are an immigrant from somewhere. And so you're, you are, you will, and then obviously African Americans were brought here as slaves primarily. So that's different, but at the same time, they're not Native American either. So all of us are a conglomerate of, of people from elsewhere or descendants of people from elsewhere. And so that's important to me. And I just want to say that first. Second, it's just alarming to have Border Patrol in LA. It's not surprising. It's not surprising because we

• 1:00:43Adam Skolnick?

  knew this was coming at some point that this crackdown was coming. He, you know, this is a campaign promise being fulfilled. And so, but it is alarming to have it so close. I had ICE 10 blocks from me yesterday in Santa Monica. So you, you see stuff happening, all the craziness was happening around downtown LA and, and, but actually it's not just there. They've been in Santa Monica since day one. They're at the Santa Monica courthouse probably right now. They were at Santa Monica High School. They were at construction site on 16th and Washington. They were in the Oxnard Strawberry Fields, which are what 30 miles from here? So they're all over Southern California and it's probably gonna keep going.

• 1:01:25Adam Skolnick?

  And so there's that. And then there's people that I know that I care about that are terrified. You know, that are literally hiding out or looking over their shoulders. And so all of that is kind of, I don't know how I feel about it. That's kind of what's just coming out right now. But like, that's what we're dealing with. And then the last part I'll say is that it's hitting us hard at home because April, my wife, her parents were undocumented in Australia. And when she was 16, the Australian Border Force banged on her door in the middle of the night and dragged her father away because he was undocumented.

• 1:02:05Adam Skolnick?

  And that's even more personal because she was a really good tennis player as a junior. And so she was a nationally ranked tennis player in Australia as a junior and had been invited to play an overseas tournament. And since she was born in Australia, they thought it was okay for her to get a passport. But April didn't know her parents were undocumented. They were too proud to tell her. So she didn't have an option to research it to make sure it was safe. And so she just went ahead and did it. And that's what triggered the Border Force to come to her house. And he was dragged away, broke up the family. She's no longer close with either parent. It's completely, she was an honor student that dropped out of high school after that. So her life could have gone haywire. I didn't know that story at all.

• 1:02:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could have gone haywire. It didn't. And so when we see this stuff happening, she's flashing to that, like, all these people, all these families that are getting damaged and why. And so that's the real question is why. And I don't mean legally why, because what we're seeing here is not, you couldn't, it's not the same thing as internment camps or whatever. Like, talking to some friends who I know, they're philosophical about it. They know what they did. They know they came here. They didn't get documented. They understand that. But most people came because of economic, they're economic refugees.

• 1:03:30Adam Skolnick?

  You know, there's all sorts of reasons people are coming here, but they are coming here out of the adventurous spirit of trying to make a better life for themselves because they don't see a way forward where they're from. And that's something I think we all can connect to. So

• 1:03:44Adam Skolnick?

  the, the, what we're, what we're talking about here, to me, it goes much deeper than what's legal and what's not. Who has the right to this or that? It, it's much, we need to take a much more human view. And so the last piece I'll say is when I saw the footage of this guy getting chased down in the strawberry fields, my instinct was to go. Who makes their life? What choices do you make to where that becomes what you have to do with your time on earth? To chase a, like a, someone in the fields. This is not like chasing a bad guy or whatever. Yes, maybe you broke a law, but you're chasing someone in the fields. But then I remind myself that we can't hate.

• 1:04:26Adam Skolnick?

  We can't hate as a response. We can't hate the people that are enforcing these laws or being told to do X, Y, and Z. We can't even hate the people that are making the decisions that cascade down to that. Because then we can't outlast them. We can't win. So I guess that's the last piece of it. We, we can't, our response to this cannot be hate. It cannot be. It has to be love in some form and does, and, and I'm proud of the city, man. I'm proud of, I've, I've read a lot of it's the wrong thing. You're gonna provoke Trump, blah, blah, blah. I disagree. I think you gotta raise hell. And I'm not going to be the guy in the streets on this, but I'm with you.

• 1:05:08Adam Skolnick?

  And I, you just gotta do it peacefully because you can't, this is a major, major thing. We had a US Senator thrown to the ground yesterday.

• 1:05:18Adam Skolnick?

  Twists is, I mean, like that is I think he was handcuffed too. Yeah, yeah. This is authoritarianism is happening. So you know, I think that I'm proud of the city, man. I'm proud of us. We've, we've endured a lot already this year. I'm so, I've never loved the city more. I'll say that.

• 1:05:38Rich Roll?

  I think that's really well said. I would cosign every single thing that you just said. I thought that was really beautifully articulated. So I don't want to repeat any of that. I mean, I can get into the kind of more controversial and political aspects of it. You know, listen, it's been an interesting lens on how narratives are shaped and weaponized for political purposes. I shared a few things on my Instagram stories the other day, which is atypical for me. I don't, I'm not generally overtly political, but this is our city. And to me, what was unfolding was so abhorrent, and I felt an obligation and a responsibility

• 1:06:22Rich Roll?

  to do the least amount, right? And I'd been in downtown Los Angeles the day before I was there last Sunday morning. I saw the National Guard. This was early in the morning, so things hadn't really begun yet, but I saw where all the National Guard vehicles and soldiers were being stationed. And I saw how all the pieces of the puzzle were kind of coming together and what the setup was going to be for the afternoon and the evening.

• 1:06:52Rich Roll?

  And I just think that, I mean, does it even need to be said, like, the vast, vast majority of immigrants here are good people trying to do the right thing. They're trying to fill out all the paperwork and do it the right way. There's a lot of aspersions being cast on like, well, just, you know, just get your status or whatever. Like, as you know, I'm sure with April, like, this is not an easy process. It's very difficult. It's very drawn out. It could take years and years and years. And now there's a threat of deportation just for trying to do the right thing. Like, if you go to the office, like, what are you going to, what are the consequences that you're going to suffer as a result of that? Obviously, we need sound immigration policy, and the Democrats have a lot to account for, for

• 1:07:37Rich Roll?

  Basically, you know, help being, being a co-creator in the situation that we're seeing now. Like, if we had had sound immigration policy, would we be here right now? But the way in which this is being weaponized as a means to strengthen autocratic rule is something I cannot stand silently on the sidelines and say nothing about. Certainly, if there are criminals out there or people who are abusing the process, like, let's, you know, let's, let's exercise due process in this regard. But let's maintain our humanity here. And when I see ICE and the National Guard and the way that they're being deployed across

• 1:08:17Rich Roll?

  Los Angeles, this is a function of an authoritarian who is trying to consolidate power, point blank. This is textbook. This is right out of the rulebook of like, how you do this very thing. And I think it's important to note that the National Guard, which was deployed by the administration as an overreach of executive branch authority and federal, federal authority, was not deployed for the purposes of maintaining the peace.

• 1:08:54Rich Roll?

  It was, it was deployed to provoke and incite violent incidents, which would then allow the administration to create a narrative to justify strengthening their grip. I've been watching Andor. You know, first of all, like, Andor is incredible. He's like the best thing on television. I love it. Season two is just, it's just god-tier television, created by Tony Gilroy, who, you know, master screenwriter, screenwriter of my favorite movie, Michael Clayton. But it's really about the beginning of the rebellion and how authoritarian rule and

• 1:09:37Rich Roll?

  autocracy, you know, operates. Super interesting and has its parallels to what we're seeing right now. But basically, you know, this is instigation to incite fear, to catalyze violence, and to, once again, justify this further consolidation of power. Yeah. They want the clash. So I don't think it's helpful to play into that by...

• 1:10:07Rich Roll?

  Doing anything violent like I don't think that like when listen first of all this idea that like LA is ablaze and that you know the whole city is burning and there's riots everywhere is nonsense like there's one little area downtown where there's a flashpoint but you know LA is gigantic it's operating peacefully there are protests across the city that are all completely peaceful but it's not helpful when you graffiti a Waymo and set it on fire like you're basically just playing right into this playbook nor do I think it's essentially helpful to you know wave Mexican flags around like I understand I understand that but I don't

• 1:10:47Rich Roll?

  think it's effective you know because you're basically creating a reason for them to you know adopt a narrative that gets used against

• 1:10:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that that dates back I mean just historically that dates back to the 1960s kind of Chicano power movement which was a way of saying hey that you know this was Mexico once so

• 1:11:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I understand I understand but it's sort of like it's the difference between being right and being effective

• 1:11:11Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right. I agree with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have a leader you know we don't like like one thing that we don't have is like we don't have on the left a leader that that gets everyone together behind anything like we thought Obama might be that guy and he was but then like the progressives were irritated that he was a little bit too centrist or whatever it was too moderate which is unfortunate that he was nibbled at on the left because that really hurt us in terms of having unity but it is what it is you know politics aside it's like we should be human and we should be human first you know and and this is all gonna bite us by the way like who do you think

• 1:11:52Adam Skolnick?

  picks the food in this country you know like who who who does the hard work in Los Angeles like we are going to suffer more than most places but California is the fourth biggest economy in the world it's one of the biggest agricultural producers in the world you know there's thousands of farms just in Ventura County which is like my like you're what are we like two miles from Ventura County line or are we already in Ventura County so it's like you know this is going to bite us all so it's not like it's just gonna affect us so there's there's there's downstream effects of everything obviously and this is one of those so

• 1:12:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's the, there's what's occurring here in its isolation, but the more macro kind of implications of this, I think are really quite dramatic.

• 1:12:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Rich Roll?

  The idea that, that political dissent is illegal, you know, is basically what we're, what we're kind of walking towards, right? Like protest is crime.

• 1:12:55Adam Skolnick?

  It's already happening because what the, the presence of the National Guard has, has basically meant that LAPD mounted troops are going through and dispersing any protest because they're, because, because the city officials are so, and the governor is so concerned that, that, that the National Guard will move in or the Marines will be deployed, they're trying to prevent, they're trying to prove that's not necessary. So you're right, it's creating these kind of chain reaction of events.

• 1:13:19Rich Roll?

  And regardless of your, your political leanings, like that should be of grave concern.

• 1:13:25Adam Skolnick?

  I would hope so. Yeah.

• 1:13:26Rich Roll?

  Anyway.

• 1:13:26Adam Skolnick?

  I would hope so. I mean, it's interesting. One, one last thing is like we, when we first started Roll On, kind of responding to the moment of politics was kind of one of the things that we were doing. And then pretty quickly, I don't know, not quickly, but at some point it became like, it felt like we were just beating the same dead horse and it wasn't useful. And so we kind of, both of us went away from, and like I just kind of, when Biden won in 2020, I was like, all right, I'm done. Like I can't be outraged anymore. And even in the lead up to this election, I wasn't as outraged as some people. I was just like, okay, this is what it is. I'm, I'm going to stay in love and, and, and positivity and deal with the consequences as they come. And now they're coming. And

• 1:14:07Adam Skolnick?

  so now we're speaking up, but we're not doing it out of like some sort of like desire to be political. It's actually the opposite.

• 1:14:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not, I'm not doing this to engagement farm.

• 1:14:18Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:14:18Rich Roll?

  You know, I'm, I'm reluctant about doing this because there's no incentive really to doing that. Like when I shared that stuff on, on, I mean, the amount of vitriol that I received, just, I was telling you earlier, at least a thousand messages, DMs, whatever, just hateful, hateful stuff. Like I don't, I don't like getting that. And I thought what I shared was, you know, relatively.

• 1:14:46Rich Roll?

  Mild. It wasn't like I was trying to incite some kind of like debate over this whole thing. And, and so I'm always, I'm always conflicted about talking about these kinds of things because I think the show for a lot of people is a safe haven away from political discourse and I like to respect that and I understand that completely. While at the same time balancing that against the idea that if you have a large platform, what is your responsibility to speak truth to power when you feel that it's necessary? And when it's in your own backyard and you see things going down that, that are alarming

• 1:15:27Rich Roll?

  to the extent that these things are, I think that it is important to speak up and say something. And I know that by doing this, all we're going to do is reap hate upon ourselves. Like it's a thankless, it's a thankless job, but I think, I think it's important to do it. And that's why I decided to have this second half of this podcast be about this.

• 1:15:50Adam Skolnick?

  Well, thank you for doing it. And thank you for speaking up because to be honest, like I don't put politics on my page at all anymore. And I won't, I continue, I will not do that. But like for me to be able to come here and express myself in a public way is like cathartic for me. But also I think that we're at a time where we do have to raise our voices in whatever way you feel like you can do it. It doesn't have to be endless, but it doesn't, we should join the chorus because we're not saying any one party is superior. We're saying we have human values here and we need to, we need

• 1:16:30Adam Skolnick?

  to stay true to our humanity, no matter what. And so we all need the encouragement. You posting that encouraged me. Other people are also joining in. The senator yesterday who put himself in that position.

• 1:16:49Adam Skolnick?

  You know, it was encouraging. So there are people out there that are trying to, to, to stick their neck out. And, uh, you know, this is one small way that we're going to do it. So I appreciate it.

• 1:16:59Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Thanks, dude.

• 1:17:01Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you.

• 1:17:01Rich Roll?

  I think that's a good place to put a pin in it for today.

• 1:17:04Adam Skolnick?

  This is like a record of the shortest podcasts we've ever done together.

• 1:17:07Rich Roll?

  Is it? How long have we been going? I don't think so.

• 1:17:10Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:17:10Rich Roll?

  No. Dude, we've been going a while.

• 1:17:13Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, good.

• 1:17:15Rich Roll?

  All right, that's it for now. Uh, we'll be doing more of this, of course, soon.

• 1:17:19Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 1:17:19Rich Roll?

  Um, and I'm still, I'm still upright. I'm like, yeah.

• 1:17:24Adam Skolnick?

  You seem good, man.

• 1:17:25Rich Roll?

  I'm probably gonna crash.

• 1:17:27Adam Skolnick?

  Let's get you to, let's get you to bed.

• 1:17:29Rich Roll?

  Thanks, everybody for watching, subscribing, sharing the show. I appreciate you and, uh, look forward to more of this.

• 1:17:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, thanks, man.

• 1:17:37Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 1:17:42Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or a comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't

• 1:18:22Rich Roll?

  be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake. Content management by Shana Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor. And of course, our theme music was created, all the way back in 2012, by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper

• 1:19:07Rich Roll?

  Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support, see you back here soon. Peace. Bonjour Namaste