Bonnie Tsui On Why We Swim

Unlike other land mammals, humans are not natural-born swimmers. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival. Now it’s one of the most popular activities in the world. So why do we swim? What is it about water that seduces us despite its dangers? A lifelong swimmer reared by swimming parents, this week’s guest couldn’t shake this question. What she discovered is far more compelling than you might imagine. Bonnie Tsui (@bonnietsui) is an alumnus of Harvard University, where she did not swim but instead rowed crew—and graduated magna cum laude in English and American Literature and Language. In 2009, her book American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods won the 2009-2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and Best of 2009 Notable Bay Area Books selection. She has been the recipient of the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for travel journalism and the Jane Rainie Opel Young Alumna Award at Harvard University. In 2017, she was awarded the 2017 Karola Saekel Craib Excellence in Food Journalism Fellowship by the San Francisco Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier. She is also the recipient of a 2019 National Press Foundation Fellowship. A frequent contributor to The New York Times and California Sunday magazine, Bonnie’s latest book—and the focus of today’s conversation—is Why We Swim. Propelled by stories of Olympic champions, a Baghdad swim club that meets in Saddam Hussein’s palace pool, modern-day Japanese samurai swimmers, and even an Icelandic fisherman who improbably survives a wintry six-hour swim after a shipwreck, Bonnie dives into the deep, from the chilly San Francisco Bay to the South China Sea, investigating the ancestry and essence of water’s allure. Widely lauded, Why We Swim was named to TIME magazine’s list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2020. It’s also received praise from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, Buzzfeed, Bustle, Booklist, Kirkus, and more. Beautifully written and completely immersive, it definitely ranks among my 2020 favorites—I couldn’t put it down. So let’s talk about it. This conversation is a love letter to swimming—a sport, lifestyle and obsession that Bonnie and I share. It’s a deconstruction of humanity’s relationship with the transformative power of water—an archeological dig that unearths mankind’s historic and fraught yet undeniably alluring connection with the sea. It’s about swimming as a means of survival. It’s about swimming as a conduit for well-being, competition, and community. It’s about the unique power of water—when combined with breath—to produce that elusive state called flow. But underneath it all, this is a conversation about why to be a swimmer is to be a seeker. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll574 YouTube: bit.ly/bonnietsui574 It was an absolute delight to share space and passion with a woman who hopes, as Oliver Sacks writes in Water Babies, to “swim till I die.” I concur with that idea. This conversation sheds light on why. 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.

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Swimming in my life has changed over time. I mean, it has played different roles, but especially over the last year, I think about getting in water as such relief, like flotation, weightlessness, and unburdening, I think, is really what happens physically and mentally, emotionally, I think. You can't help but respond to the medium in that way, like, so profound from this fire hose barrage of badness in the world. I think just to have a momentary pause from that, a relief from that, is just, you know, it's such a gift because it's so easy to do, and yet, not everyone does it.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  I'm Bonnie Toye, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:03Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Did I mention that Bonnie Choi is here? Not only is she wonderful, she's here to discuss my very favorite subject, swimming, and more broadly, the allure of water. Why, despite its dangers, it seduces us. And the evolutionary psychology behind how it went from being this thing that we related to only in terms of survival, this thing we just tried to survive, into one of the world's most popular activities, a thing that we seek out. But first.

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  Okay, Bonnie. Lifelong swimmer, magna cum laude graduate of Harvard. Bonnie is also a contributor to publications like The New York Times. She's the author of a book called American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, which won a whole slew of very fancy awards. And her new book, Why We Swim, has also been widely lauded, including being named to Time Magazine's list of the 100 Must Read Books of 2020. It's definitely one of my favorite reads of the year. And this is a conversation about that book. It's a love letter to swimming

• 3:35Rich Roll?

  and a deconstruction of our historic relationship with water through the lens of survival, well-being, competition, community, and flow. But underneath it all, this is a conversation about why to be a swimmer is to be a seeker. So, check it out. This is me and Bonnie Choi.

• 4:02Rich Roll?

  All right, well, we're rolling. So nice to meet you. Thank you for doing this.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  It's such a pleasure. I'm so glad to meet you.

• 4:07Rich Roll?

  I appreciate you coming down from Northern California, and I'm so glad that you jumped in the ocean today. Like I said before we started, I would have been horribly disappointed.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  You would have been disappointed, right?

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  If you didn't go swimming before our conversation about swimming.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  It was, uh, it was one of those, you know, really beautiful sunrises. I mean, you kind of get jaded living down here, I think, in California specifically.

• 4:28Rich Roll?

  Jaded.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Jaded. And I paddled out this morning, I took a photo, and I sent it to a friend who lives here. And he said, I think we talked about it, sort of like maybe puncturing his, like, jaded heart. Even his, after being out here, he could enjoy it.

• 4:44Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a lot of reasons to complain about Los Angeles, but the beaches and the weather is not one of them. When I see, you know, when I hear you talking about surfing at Ocean Beach, like, I used to live in San Francisco. I'm like, oh, my God. So cold and, like, unforgiving and uninviting on some level compared to when you get down here.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  It is a battle. It's a battle to get out.

• 5:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but that's part of the thing, right?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  It's like, I think about it, I like to think about it as making a date to, like, go wrestling with the ocean in the morning. And I expect it, right? At OB, you always expect that it's going to be somewhat hellacious, even on an easy, low, you know, baby day. But, um, but I kind of like that. I kind of like being challenged. And I partly am okay with it because my, my surf buddy, Caroline Paul, she's, um, she is one of the first, she was one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  And so she's just like, you know, she's a pilot, she's just tough. And she has basically had, like, nine, 10, 11, 12 lives of adventure. And she...

• 5:57Speaker 01

  We'll go out and look, stand on the beach looking out. And every time she goes, "It doesn't look that bad."

• 6:04Rich Roll?

  No matter what.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  No matter what. It could be, you know, overhead, double overhead. And she'll just say, "It doesn't look that bad." And then so we'll go, we'll try it, you know? We'll be repelled back. We'll be, you know, booted out of the whitewater. But I think just like, having that mindset is a good way to be. And I like that about.

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  It kind of gets easier the more you do it, but it never quite gets easy enough. Like, the number of times, you know, I couldn't count the number of times I've stood on an outdoor pool deck in ridiculously cold weather, staring at the pool, knowing that the water in the pool is warmer than the water in the air, and still being unable to jump in that like, that like moment where you're just staring at it going, "How am I going to get into this water?"

• 6:48Speaker 01

  It's breaking the seal, right? You know, it's still the membrane. It's like an invisible membrane between you.

• 6:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  And it. And yet, it's, I think that it takes something, it takes some activation energy to break that seal every time, no matter what.

• 7:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  But it's always worth it, right?

• 7:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, always. You're never like, "Oh, I wish I hadn't done that."

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:10Rich Roll?

  Are the pools still all closed up north?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  They are, they've started to reopen. So my local pool, the Albany Aquatic Center, sort of just north of me in Berkeley, that's sort of my home pool. And I, it didn't reopen until very recently.

• 7:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  A month, two months. And so I just ended up swimming in the bay for the last eight months, or surfing.

• 7:37Rich Roll?

  Did they, didn't they close Aquatic Park also?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  They did.

• 7:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, they did, because I think too many people were going there in the beginning. And then they closed the Dolphin Club and the South End Rowing Club, the facilities. So even now, you know, I have friends who-

• 7:51Rich Roll?

  That seems like pretty low risk.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  But I think in the beginning, it seemed-

• 7:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Just the flock. We didn't know enough.

• 7:58Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  So there's the flocking together. But now we know, of course, being outside, great. You know, in the water, ocean breezes, great. Like, keep doing it. Survive. Get through this, you know?

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  There's a couple pools that are open down here, but they've all migrated to these online platforms where you have to reserve a lane.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:16Rich Roll?

  You know, you gotta like-

• 8:17Speaker 01

  You've been doing that, right?

• 8:17Rich Roll?

  I have, but every time I look at, I log in and all the, everything's booked.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like zero, zero, zero.

• 8:25Rich Roll?

  And I never know. Like, I just like to go, I'm like, oh, I got a, I got an open hour. I'm gonna go do it. Like, it's difficult for me to know day to day.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:33Rich Roll?

  So the other week, I like booked a lane every single day at different times throughout the day, and I didn't make it once, because there was some intervening.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  You just were throwing a bunch of things on the wall.

• 8:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because it's a long drive, actually, from my house, too. And it's just, you know, I'm, I'm struggling with how to figure that out.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  I did the exact same thing that you just did this morning.

• 8:52Rich Roll?

  You did.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Because they opened up and I said, I'm just gonna, this one's open, this one's open. I'll just, you know, snatch it and see.

• 8:58Rich Roll?

  Grab them, yeah. Sometimes I show up without a reservation, just to see if somebody doesn't show up, because I've missed so many. I assume other people are having the same issue.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Any luck?

• 9:08Rich Roll?

  I'm hit or miss with that. I am. Anyway, I'm so glad to talk to you about my very favorite subject, swimming, and the human relationship with water. And this book that you created is just a beautiful work of art. It must be incredibly gratifying to have it be so well-received. I mean, making the Time 100 must-read books of 2020. I mean, that's incredible, right?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  It was.

• 9:34Rich Roll?

  As a writer, somebody who's been writing for a very long time, that's, that's quite the accolade.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I, of course, um-

• 9:45Speaker 01

  I've been thinking about this book for many years before I decided to write it and figure out how to frame such a big topic, right? Swimming is a topic, it's not a book, it's not a story, it's not a narrative. And I had to provide that and I had to figure out how to do that in a way that felt right to me. And to see it finally out in the world, and of course, I could never have imagined that it would come out into the world during a time when most people actually couldn't go swimming.

• 10:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Was just very strange. And then, of course, you know, over the months, I mean, it came out in April, the hardcover, and then it will, it came, it sort of rolled out around the world in the summer, and then the paperback will come out this coming April. But to have then the gift of those months where people were thinking about their relationship to swimming in a way that they always had, they'd always taken it for granted. They'd never interrogated why, it made them feel good. They would just show up at the pool, you know, do their workouts, see their friends and go home. Basically, did not enter their minds because we didn't have to do things like make lane

• 10:54Speaker 01

  reservations, you know, two weeks out to get some time with the water. And to get these, I've gotten the most incredible letters from people, just, I mean, I, it's, I would never have thought that the book would get people to swim in open water. You know, that wasn't, I didn't have any specific intentions.

• 11:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no agenda like that.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  There's no agenda, exactly. It was meant to be this, you know, this cultural and scientific exploration of our human relationship with water and with swimming and how it's so curious that we, we as a species are not born knowing how to swim, we have to be taught. That's a very interesting thing about us humans and about, you know, higher order primates.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  Right, you make the point that we're the only land mammal that doesn't instinctively know how to swim already, and I'd never really thought about that.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Think about, I mean, I, once I started to look into this and I, you know, in the book, I list examples of, you know, dogs, cats, cats hate water, but they can swim.

• 12:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Bats can swim, bats can do a crazy like butterfly, it's insane.

• 12:05Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I look, look, after we finish talking, please Google.

• 12:10Rich Roll?

  Some YouTube rabbit hole.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  It's just, so we have this, you know, we came from the water, but we're not suited to it anymore. So we have to sort, we've been kind of clawing our way back to it as land animals. And, and, and part of it is, of course, survival, but also it is so much more than that. Once you learn how to survive the water, it's can be so many things. And that's sort of how I laid out the book. You know, the question is presented in the title, Why We Swim. And then it's structured in these five thematic ways we can answer that question. And I wanted to get at all of that because I wanted it to be this expansive and really inviting, an invitation to, to come in the water and look at it.

• 12:58Rich Roll?

  I took it to be very, like, sort of a swimming version of Chris McDougal's Born to Run.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  That was my, I joked with him about it. That was my goal.

• 13:09Rich Roll?

  Oh, you do? Yeah. Meats, there's a little bit of Murakami, you know, what I think about when I think about running. It's like a swimming version of that.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 13:17Rich Roll?

  The Born to Run thing, but with the Born to Run thing, though, it would have been great if you found some undiscovered indigenous tribe somewhere of super swimmers.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  That'd be too, that'd be too, you know, too much of a nail on the head, right?

• 13:28Rich Roll?

  Right. But it, but it has that vibe. It has that, that feel to it. And, you know, I'm somebody who's, who's passionate about the water and somebody who's had a, you know, on a personal level, had a relationship to swimming from as long back as I can remember. And I've thought deeply about it. And I've written, you know, snippets about it over time. I wrote my college essay about what it feels like to be like underwater, you know, like this is something I've been thinking about for a long time, but never thought about what that might look like in an expanded, you know, comprehensive version. And you captured it perfectly. Like, it's the perfect book that fires on all cylinders. And it is this weird, like, when you telescope up and look at humanity's relationship to water

• 14:12Rich Roll?

  over time, like, there's an anthropological kind of aspect to your book. There's this push-pull, like, we're drawn to the water. You know, coastal, you know, real estate is expensive for a reason.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:24Rich Roll?

  There's something about being by the water that appeals to us on a very profound level, and we're also terrified of it and repelled by it. So it's that tension that makes it interesting.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. I really wanted to get at that. I mean, I wanted it to be a book that was not just for swimmers, but for people who didn't, don't call themselves that, don't think of themselves that way. And why is that, right? It's because of this tension that you speak of between life and death, you know, immersion, submersion, flotation, like, this, this kind of, I talk about in the book, this porousness between states that I think is like, it's the, it's what's so enigmatic about the water and so alluring, and that we want, you know, we see of this gorgeous sparkling body of water, we want to get in it. I mean, kids, you look at babies, like, they just are just in the bathtub, you know? They're just enamored with it because it's, it is not of us.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  It's not for us necessarily. You know, we need water to survive, we need it, obviously, but when we see it around us in our environment, there's just something that is talking to us on a very essential level, and I wanted to explore that a bit.

• 15:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So what do you make of that? Like, what is that, do you think?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Well, I was really interested to, you know, in the course of my research, discover that our brain activity changes with the sound of water, seeing water. You know, we know about how we respond to green spaces, right? We, as humans, just, there are set points in the environment that we respond to. I think there's a great book by Florence Williams called The Nature Fix, and she talks about how we are evolutionarily suited to respond to certain set points in the environment, and that makes sense, right? So we, you know, being in the forest, being by the water, and so...

• 16:21Speaker 01

  We have always known this on some level, right? So the books and philosophers and writers and poets since time immemorial have all spoken about.

• 16:33Rich Roll?

  Right. You talk about the Greeks.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:36Rich Roll?

  You know.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  You know, the water.

• 16:37Rich Roll?

  The samurai, which we're going to get into.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Right. And so, once you start looking, you realize it's everywhere. It's everywhere across time. And so, I was very interested to know and wanted to learn a little bit more about the science that's starting to catch up to explain why that is, how our bodies respond, not just physiologically with immersion and with the mammalian dive reflex and all that, but that just being near water, not even getting in it, looking at it, walking by it, smelling it, listening to it.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  That, you know, our brain activity, our alpha waves like increase and that's calm, relaxation, creativity. I mean, that's good stuff and we know that to be true.

• 17:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's no mistake that images of sunsets at beaches are on meditation apps. And you know, there's something about the gestalt of the waves crashing and the light bouncing off, you know, the surface and the smell too, that produces this calming effect that can't be replicated in other environments. And I just know personally, when you swim, as somebody who runs and rides bikes and does all different kinds of things, there's something unique about swimming, the experience of that and how you feel in the aftermath of it that is very different and unique and special.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  What do you think it is when you think about it?

• 18:09Rich Roll?

  I think there's something about the submersion and the muting of the sound.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:15Rich Roll?

  Or the sound of what the waves, you know, what that does in your ear canal, you know, like, and the sort of suspension of gravity and the loss of feet, like you lose your sensation of your limbs in the same way that you have on land, like all of those things combined to create this.

• 18:34Rich Roll?

  You know, very different experience that I think is, you know, healing to the human body.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:42Rich Roll?

  And mind.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  I mean, just flotation, weightlessness, and unburdening, I think, is really what happens physically and mentally, emotionally, I think. You know, you can't help but respond to the medium in that way, I think. And there have been times, I mean, there are, you know, the swimming in my life has changed over time. I mean, it has played different roles, but especially over the last year, I think about getting in water as such relief, like so profound from this fire hose barrage of badness in the world, you know?

• 19:25Speaker 01

  I think just to have a momentary pause from that, a relief from that is just, you know, it is so, it's such a gift because it's so easy to do, and yet, not everyone does it.

• 19:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  No one thinks to do it.

• 19:42Rich Roll?

  And it's kind of the last frontier if you want to get away from the phone and all the signals and the noise and the stimuli.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 19:48Rich Roll?

  And it changes your perception and your relationship with time.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:53Rich Roll?

  It's uncomfortable if you haven't done it before because you're like, wait, you know, I need to listen to music, or I need to, you know, like, I'm not comfortable with not being overstimulated, and you kind of have to, like, let that go.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  You are left alone with your own thoughts in a way that can definitely...

• 20:07Rich Roll?

  Right, how terrifying. The worst, right?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Why would I do that? Why would I do that when I have air holes?

• 20:13Rich Roll?

  But now there's like these devices where you can get underwater audio, and they're figuring that out, and I'm like, I don't want it.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:19Rich Roll?

  I don't want any part of that. I need to protect this place as the one place where I get away from all of that.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  I think about, you know, they've had sort of somewhat crappy technology to do that for some time.

• 20:30Rich Roll?

  Right, doesn't work so well.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Exactly, and there's a reason why you don't see people using them very often. I mean, by and large, I mean, I would say, like, in a pool on any given day, 98% of the people are not using anything like that.

• 20:44Rich Roll?

  Right, I hope it stays that way.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  I know, you do too.

• 20:47Rich Roll?

  Well, let's take it back to the beginning. I mean, you know, the obvious question is, like, you know, why write this book? From whence comes your deep appreciation and love of the water?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, I gotta go back to my parents, right? By now, I've talked about this story so many times, but maybe you haven't heard it.

• 21:06Rich Roll?

  I've heard it, but people listening might not have heard it. So this is the book tour. You answer these questions.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  This is the book tour that I have never had.

• 21:15Rich Roll?

  We'll go in different directions, but you gotta, I like this story, so go ahead.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  It's a really good story. My parents met in a swimming pool in Hong Kong, and that's our family origin story. And it has, you know, we, when we were kids growing up and heading to the pool for swimming lessons, and my parents would be there. And then, over the years, we joined the swim team and we became lifeguards. And it always, people who came to know us laughed when we told them that our parents had met in a swimming pool because it was just, it was too perfect.

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  Of course they did, right? Yeah, there's that black and white photo of your parents. They were quite young when they met.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  They were, I think they were, I asked my mom recently, and I think they were 18, 19, something like that. I mean, they're just gorgeous. I mean, they just had the hots for each other. You know, I just wanna read them.

• 22:02Rich Roll?

  It's all happening.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, because I see them, you know, and I hate to say this, but that I have never seen them so happy. This beautiful, you know, unfiltered, I mean, the, both of their smiles are so big, you know, and, and I, and it is a memory that I never had myself. But I look at it, and I like to think of that as a time when they were really happy, you know?

• 22:29Speaker 01

  So my dad was a lifeguard and my mom was at the pool. But when we grew up, they were always at the pool with us or at Jones Beach when we would go in the summers and spending time together. It's just very much baked into my brother and my experience of our nuclear family because until I was, I guess, in junior high, early high school, my, our parents were together, ostensibly. And then they, my father started... Kind of, they separated, but we didn't really know it as such. And so he started traveling back to Hong Kong and then to China. He's an artist.

• 23:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  You know, he's, I actually, for someone-

• 23:08Rich Roll?

  He won an Emmy.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  He won an Emmy, yeah. He won an Emmy. And, you know, he and I were so close when I was, when I was a kid. And I was the one who accompanied him on trips. You know, we, I grew up in New York and Long Island mostly. And I would go with him to client trips into Manhattan. And we'd go to the Met and we would just, I would spend hours with him in his studio. He would, we were very close. And so I associate, you were, you were telling me about, you wrote your college essay about swimming. I wrote my college essay about swimming and art and writing. And those things were, now that I think about it, they still are me.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  You know, they, they, I knew from a young age that those three things were so essential to who I was. Certainly, it's, it actually, I was visiting my mom this summer back in New York. And she made me clean out the garage and I found my college essay. And I thought, ah, it's very strange to be looking back at this person and understanding what, what stayed the same. Many things stayed the same. You know, essentially this, this relationship I have with the water and also with writing and creativity, that's something that I traced back to my dad.

• 24:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Very much so.

• 24:27Rich Roll?

  He was the permissive free spirit.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 24:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  You know, he was fun and he was a kid. And he's today, at 73 years old, he's still a kid. He is, he, he actually hasn't changed that much, but I have, you know.

• 24:42Rich Roll?

  Was your mom more of the taskmaster then?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Oh, totally.

• 24:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  She was the strict one. I don't actually remember her smiling. It's terrible. It's so terrible. But, you know, after they divorced, which was really, really painful, they didn't, they didn't finalize their divorce until I was in college. And, but then I got to know my mom as this, as who she was. She was a person who was not- In relationship to my dad, she was fun, she had her own ideas, she was, she had stories to tell. And I, that's when I got to know her, you know, as a real person.

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  You need both of those.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:23Rich Roll?

  You know, I think you need, you need the artistic sensibility, but you need the regimented person as well.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I, you know, she was the one who said, you know, my desire for order, my desire to prepare, like, all of those things come from her. Like, my sort of risk averse, older person self is because of her. And I say those things lovingly and because I understand that those are things that you need to operate and be a responsible human in this world. And I take the fun and the creativity and the light from my dad, but I also know that in the context of our family, that really ruined our family, the sort of shirking of responsibility and not owning up to that.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  So profoundly, both parents have shaped me to be who I am.

• 26:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you came out pretty good.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks.

• 26:22Rich Roll?

  So it worked out, you know?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  It could have gone terribly wrong.

• 26:25Rich Roll?

  You go to Harvard, right? So, but, and yet you're an artist, so you have, you know, you know how to focus and, you know, organize your life. But you can also be a free spirit and creative and, you know, follow these whimsical, you know, passions that you have to track down these stories.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, my mom, I remember my mom said to a good friend of mine, and it was not in a, this was when I was 22 and I took off for a few months to go on a fellowship to New Zealand. And I was, came back and I had student loans to pay off. And I said, I really want to work at this adventure magazine, you know, they're not paying me right now, but I just, I'll just, you know, take a waitressing job or something in New York while I'm doing it. And she, she turned to my friend and she said, Bonnie is such a free spirit. And she was not a compliment. Right. I was, but I said, but you know what, though?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  To her credit, like a couple of weeks later, she said, you know, if you really want to do this, I will support you in this. And I did, I did it for six months. And then I got a job that paid money, actual money. And, and there we go.

• 27:43Rich Roll?

  That was probably a big step for her.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  It was. Actually, now that I think about it, it really was. I have to ask her about that if she remembers.

• 27:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But you grew up in and around pools all the time. Swam competitively, you and your brother. But you didn't end up swimming in college, right? You rowed crew in college.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, by the time I got to college, and I wasn't good enough to swim in college, like not, no, I, but I was done with competitive swimming. Because college to me represented like something new, like something super fun and exciting. And I always knew that I was going to, um, college was going to be the place where I got to meet new people and do new things. And I very much felt that I wanted to do that. Cause I wasn't, you know, I, I think I was a very old person when I was like a kid. You know, I was like, I want to be 20 and I am eight. Something like that.

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  I get it.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Just wanted to have autonomy, I think.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  And I rowed crew and I, you know, it's so quintessential. It's almost, it's a cliche to be like rowing.

• 28:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Sculling in the Charles.

• 28:58Rich Roll?

  At an Ivy League college.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like the Ivy is like, you know, within sight as you're on the water.

• 29:04Rich Roll?

  Still a water sport, though.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  It is. Um, I want, and I was talking to a friend about this recently. Um, you know, I, I just thought it was so cool to have a different perspective of water. And when, you know, when you're swimming, it's so solo, right? It's a, you're on a team, but you're, the experience of swimming is very much you in the water. And when you're in a boat with, you know, seven other people and you have to. Become one, you have to move in unison. Almost all of the time, I would say like 98% of the time, you can feel like the slight tug of someone else who's not in quite in your sink. And then the 2% of the time when you are flying together is just so magical.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  It's like, it's as if you are taking flight and you didn't even, you're not trying. And I was thinking about this the other day because I wanted, I really loved experiencing water from a different perspective. And then I only quit because, you know, you're looking at me and I'm not a giant person. You know, I'm probably between like a coxswain size and a lightweight rower size.

• 30:17Rich Roll?

  You're not small enough to be a coxswain.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  I was, I was not, I'm only 5'4". I was like, the, the coach said to me, your technique is great. I put you in stroke in this boat, you know, but you have to put on like 20 pounds. And I had already packed on, like, I was eating like a crazy person, you know, in the freshman dining hall. I was working out in the weight room. I was urging like a maniac and I just was like, I think I have maxed out. I don't know that I can gain any more weight to do this. It was weird.

• 30:54Rich Roll?

  So you were like, I'm done?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Well, and then I joined water polo.

• 30:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did? Okay.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Again, another water sport.

• 31:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  But it was fun. I mean, it was, it was hard. I just realized that after a while that I was playing a sport in college, and you know this more than anyone, is it's, that's all you're doing.

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  It's pretty all encompassing and I didn't want that.

• 31:17Rich Roll?

  You wanted to broaden your

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:19Rich Roll?

  aperture, your horizons.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:21Rich Roll?

  Totally. I get it. What's, what's interesting about your relationship to swimming in high school?

• 31:28Rich Roll?

  Is that it, the pool represented like this refuge for you, right? Like you had, you know, a complicated relationship with your peers in school. But at the pool, which was a much more diverse, you know, it was literally a pool of all different kinds of people.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 31:44Rich Roll?

  It was kind of like a refuge, like a place where you felt at home. And I think that's worth exploring a little bit. And I really liked how you, you did this kind of archaeological dig into the history of, the United States and its relationship with swimming and in particular, you know, pool building and access to pools and how that changed over time. So let's talk about that a little bit because I think it's, it's, it's pretty interesting. I know, like I grew up in the Northeast and, you know, most high schools don't have pools. Whereas in other parts of the country, they do. And that tracks back to our, you know, sort of checkered relationship with, with race and segregation.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I really did not appreciate, meaning I didn't understand

• 32:37Speaker 01

  the extent to which the current, you know, gap, the racial gap in swimming ability between especially blacks and whites in this country is so traced back to

• 32:56Speaker 01

  this era of segregation in our country. And it, that it, the fact that it persists to the degree that it does. I mean, I think the rate is that the latest statistics show that black kids are five times, they drown out a rate five times that of white children.

• 33:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  I mean, that is just terrible, it's horrible. And I, you know, and then it's not just swimming access and education, but it's also then when you break through to join a team, you find a team, you're swimming, you love it, and then you feel like you're the only one or you're the, you know, swimming remains a very white sport.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  And you don't feel welcome, or you don't feel that you belong, or that you have positive images and stories. I think that that has a really profound effect on whether you want to keep doing something. So like I recently got to talk to the founders of an organization called Black Kids Swim. And Ebony Rosman is the founder, and she was talking about how when her daughter started swimming, and then I think the reason that they started the organization is because when they Googled like "black kids swim," they would come up with the top Google hits

• 34:22Speaker 01

  were like "black people can't swim," or "black kids don't know how to swim."

• 34:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, when I was growing up, as a kid, there was this trope like, you know, "black kids can't swim," or "they have a higher density," body density, or something like that, like some crazy reason why black people weren't good at swimming, which is just ridiculous.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  And then that is pervasive, and it persists. And that's, you know, those are the ridiculous things that I heard growing up, too. At the same time, I think of my experience, as you pointed to, was really special for me because I grew up, I swam on a team that was in the next town over, and it was a very diverse community. Freeport, New York is, you know, has a large African-American and Latino demographic. And also, the team also attracted kids from all across Long Island. And, you know, even though I was one of the, you know, the quote-unquote "the onlys"

• 35:22Speaker 01

  in my high school, a town away, two towns away, that pool was super diverse. You know, the head guard, you know, at that pool where I lifeguarded, the Freeport rec, was black, you know? And she, I don't know, I think to see, my point is to be able to see representation around you is no small thing. I really credit that experience with, I mean, making me who I am today.

• 35:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:03Rich Roll?

  This section in the book where you talk about this era, you know, in the 1910s and early 1920s, when America was building these massive public pools, right? We've all seen pictures of that extraordinary pool in San Francisco that just looked like the size of a mall.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Flashback pool.

• 36:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was like massive. I think there was one in Chicago, too. There were a couple of these gigantic, you know, glass ceilinged, you know, like they looked like arboretums almost that were gigantic that went the way of the dodo, right? Like, they just disappeared.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were. So this was a shift in public pools from being, you know, during the progressive era, there were pools for like, before that was public hygiene, you know, like, they were actually bathing facilities. So like, working class and immigrants would go, and men would go on alternating days from women. And so it was much more a gender split with these pools. And then, once they became what you described, these like, pool palaces, basically, like, pools then, public pools were then for recreation,

• 37:12Speaker 01

  and so then were for families, and were then, you know, public authorities, you know, the sentiment was that people of color could not swim in these pools with white people. And so they were turned away from a lot of pools. There were, you know, and then during the civil rights era, the public, the pool spaces, the watery spaces, even public beaches, that they were sites of protest. And in the book, I talk about how there was this incident called Bloody Sunday. It was like, on a public beach in Mississippi, and it's where blacks

• 37:56Speaker 01

  went to be, you know, to use this public beach. And there, you know, there were riots, and many of these pools, that happened. There was violence. And if you think about it, we're talking about how water is freedom, water is relief, water is so universal to all of us as humans. And yet, this essential...

• 38:23Speaker 01

  This essential thing was not available to everyone. And I think the right of leisure, the right of recreation was something that was seen as symbolic of this fight for equal rights and equity.

• 38:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and so ultimately, these pool palaces closed down. They just shuttered, right? And then hence begins this movement towards the backyard pool. So the public pool kind of, you know, isn't a primary focus anymore because it's complicated for those reasons.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, after desegregation, you know, you'd think that the fight is, you know, is over, you know, equality won. But actually, a lot of whites then, you know, of means, like fled the public community pools and built their own backyard pools. And you'll see this, you know, in California. It's interesting, right? Because California, especially Southern California, is such an epicenter for this backyard pool culture. And it's this beautiful, I mean, you look at these photos of like Palm Springs and LA, and it is such a, it is this very golden light, perfect visual history.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  And yet, where are the black people, you know, where are the people of color in these records? And I think that that is being rewritten and pushed at, and, you know, that beautiful bubble is being punctured in a way that is starting to be, in a way that is really important to our understanding of what those images actually meant. It meant exclusion, right?

• 40:06Rich Roll?

  It feels like there's still some way to go, though, because the country is littered with these public works pools that are all over the place, many of which sit drained and empty. Like that pool... In Central Park, at the north end of the park, that massive pool, like, most of the time, there's no water in that pool. Like, there seems to be a lot of establishments like that all over the place that either because they lack funding, or for whatever reason that I'm unfamiliar with, they just don't, they're not really, you know, they're like in disrepair and just not taken care of.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really expensive to maintain a pool. And what I learned in this pandemic period, I was reporting a story about a reopening of a public pool in my neighborhood. And I learned that most municipal pools, you know, the public pools that are run by cities, operate at a deficit, even in normal times. So they're hemorrhaging money. And the season in which they would take in revenue is the summer, you know, camps and like swimming lessons and swim teams. And for this entire year, they did not have any of that. And so now they're even more in the hole. And so now, as many pools have struggled to reopen in

• 41:24Speaker 01

  some limited fashion, right? So, but think about it, it's one lane per person spaced out.

• 41:32Rich Roll?

  If they were losing money before, now it's a disaster.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  I hate to think about what it means, because the sad fact is, a lot of these pools will not reopen, you know, even after the pandemic. And so that, to me, is, I mean, it's hard to stomach, because that means then another generation of kids might not get what we had, you know? And that's just really, it's hard. I think about, you know, in the course of researching this book, I learned that swimming education is universal, it's part of the public school education in so many other countries. And I think that would be amazing, you know, if that were the case in this country. It would make such a difference.

• 42:18Rich Roll?

  But you need adequate pool access to do that. And most schools, you know, don't have pools, or don't have a pool that's proximate enough, or is accessible.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  It just comes, it's a really huge funding issue. But I just think about these, you know, in Iceland, you know, there's Every town has a pool. Every town.

• 42:39Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Tiny, tiny town of like 100 people has a pool.

• 42:42Rich Roll?

  Well, let's talk about Iceland because this is a big part of the book. It's super fascinating. I mean, first of all, we should mention you said at the outset that you broke the book up into these various sections, survival, well-being, community, competition, and flow, which kind of cracked the code for you and helped you figure out a way in. Like, how do you write a book about swimming? Like, it's just like this ethereal, amorphous thing, right? But kind of planting your flag in these various categories provided you with like some footing to do this. A big part of the book, or the early part of the book, is about Iceland, and in particular, this one fisherman, whose name there's no way I'm going to be able to pronounce. But I'd never heard of this guy before, and it's an unbelievable story.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  I will tell you about Gudlegur Fred Thorson.

• 43:32Rich Roll?

  How long did it take you to figure out how to let that roll off your tongue with ease?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  It's been some time, many years.

• 43:40Rich Roll?

  Say it one more time.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Gudlegur Fred Thorson. But the thing that we have to know is that his nickname is Loyer. And everyone calls him that. So I will

• 43:51Rich Roll?

  Loyer.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Henceforth, very good, call him Loyer, because that's way easier. So I opened the book with a story, because how could I not, right? It's a story that my husband told me one night, and he'd heard it from, you know, he works in, with fisheries and the environment and oceans, and I think he'd heard it from an Icelandic friend. And this story is famous in Iceland, because in 1984, there was a fishing vessel that capsized off the coast of Iceland, and Gudlegur Fred Thorson, Loyer, was the ship's mate. And he was like, he was 22, he was super young.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  But it was, the fishing trawl caught on the sea bottom, and then it overturned, and everyone got thrown overboard. And everyone's in the water, holding on to the boat's keel before it starts sinking. And, you know, this is bad news. It's 41 degrees water.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  It's freezing, it's the middle of the night, and they are, you know, they are unable to deploy the life raft.

• 44:55Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  And the sad thing about it is that they were supposed to, the self-deploying life rafts had become a sort of thing fairly recently at that time, and they were supposed to have installed that in the boat, but they hadn't done it yet. So this boat is sinking, and the, you know, the few of them that are left are holding on to the keel, and then they say, you know, we're gonna start swimming, captain and lawyer. And so they start swimming, and pretty soon, he's the only one left.

• 45:22Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Was there a lighthouse? Like, how were they finding their?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  There's a lighthouse.

• 45:26Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, but it's six kilo, at least six kilometers away.

• 45:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  So he's, it's the lighthouse on this island, which is off the coast of the main island of Iceland, it's called Heyme, and it's part of the Vestmenia Archipelago. I've been practicing how to say that.

• 45:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you got that down.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  The Westman Islands, but he, so he saw the lighthouse, the light from the lighthouse, and he started swimming. And he's just swimming, swimming, swimming. And he's wearing like a flannel shirt and jeans, you know, and a sweater.

• 45:58Rich Roll?

  Right. That part confuses me, because I would just take that off. Like, that's holding you back, right? Get rid of that.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I think he took his sweater off. I can't remember what the, I mean, he certainly lost his boots. But he's swimming, and, you know, he's talking to seagulls, and he, and it's, it takes him six hours. Six hours, six kilometers, and he gets to shore. Now, the thing to understand about this island is that it is a volcanic island, like all of Iceland. And I think it was 10 years before that, there was a volcanic eruption that had resulted in like, the island got bigger by like 20%. But then there were also these like sheer 100-foot cliffs, and like, very spiky lava fields. So he gets washed ashore at the base of one of these 100-foot cliffs. So he gets there, and he cannot get out. There is no way for him to climb.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  So he has to get back in and start swimming. So he swims around to a place where he can finally get out, and he's walking across this lava field.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  And he's, you know, his feet are bleeding because it's really sharp and he like, there's a frozen, um, a sheep's sister and it's like a tub of water that feeds, waters the animals and he like punches through because he's so thirsty, you know, he's been out there for hours and hours. And then he trudges into town and, you know, I think day is breaking and there's like a light on the first house and he like walks up to the house and there's like bloody footprints behind him in the snow. And it is just insane because then they're like, I cannot, you know, they rush him to the hospital. They can't, I think can't discern his like heartbeat. I mean, it's like very faint and his, or his like, they can't really read his body temperature, but he has no

• 47:42Speaker 01

  signs of hypothermia. So like you and I.

• 47:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  20 minutes, max.

• 47:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 41 degree water.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  We would be dead.

• 47:50Rich Roll?

  Almost everybody would die.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  And he.

• 47:53Rich Roll?

  And then how long was the trudge into town?

• 47:56Speaker 01

  I know. I don't, I really don't, I don't even know if he knows, you know?

• 48:00Rich Roll?

  What was the, what was the air temperature?

• 48:02Speaker 01

  I can't remember what the air temperature was, but it was significantly colder than that. Um, and he, you know, they, he's just a little dehydrated. He's fine. Um, and he's, they keep him in the hospital for observation and it turns, you know, and it's not for some time when they have done some, um, research and studies that he's taken part in, but he has this, um, the reason he was able to survive, okay, A, he's a very good swimmer. Everyone ice on swims. He was trained to be as such as a sailor. Um, and he has, he's like a seal. He, his fat is two to three times normal human thickness. He's, it kept his, you know, core body temperature.

• 48:46Rich Roll?

  Was he a fat dude?

• 48:47Speaker 01

  He's a big guy. He's six, four. I don't know how much he weighs, but I thought, you know, you, you can see photos of him from that. He's not unusually gigantic, but he's, he's a solid guy. But you think about plenty of guys who are really big, who would die very quickly in, you know, water that cold. It's not, it's not about the fat, but certainly the quality of the fat.

• 49:12Rich Roll?

  Right. The quality or where the, is the fat subcutaneous in the right places to protect the organs.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:19Rich Roll?

  It's crazy, right? So he becomes this massive hero and also a science project for a lot of people. And he gets so much media attention that it kind of compels him to become this recluse.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  That's right. And so you can imagine that when I came across this story, I thought, this is, I gotta talk to this guy because it just is so compelling. And I know that he doesn't, you know, he's told this story before, but it hasn't been a really long time since he talked to journalists. But of course, the first thing you find when you Google him is that this happened to him and then also that he doesn't talk to journalists.

• 49:59Rich Roll?

  What soured him on the whole thing?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  He told me, it just, he felt that his story was being misrepresented. And, you know, of course, he started to feel harassed, right? So like, his friends died.

• 50:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's, he's being celebrated for something that's quite tragic.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think at a certain point, you just want to live your life. You just want everyone to leave you alone. And it kept kind of coming up and coming up. And to be honest, though, I mean, I want to, I want to point out that he was very vocal in the first years after the accident because the conversation they had on the boat's keel was like, and he told me this later on, was if someone, if someone makes it, they have to tell. And he said, you know, nine times out of 10, actually 9.9 times out of 10, nobody survives this. And so they don't know what happened. And he said, I was the person who could tell.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  And so he was advocating, he spent quite some time advocating for, for the mandatory...

• 51:06Rich Roll?

  Lifeboat thing.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, the like self-deploying life rafts. And, you know, they have the swim every year in his honor for like, you know, the last 35, 6, 7 odd years called Gudlugsend, which means good liquor swim. And it's everyone, it started out as something that the navigation college did, you know, all the sailors did with their clothes on to...

• 51:28Rich Roll?

  But in a pool, right?

• 51:30Speaker 01

  In a pool, absolutely. Yeah, because everyone would die. So that was the point, right?

• 51:34Rich Roll?

  You can't have that. I know they breathe them strong in Iceland, but, you know, not, not that crazy.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  But it's interesting because he became this symbol of Icelandic resilience, right? They embraced...

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Him and that story and the honoring him with the tradition of the swim. Because to Icelanders as a people, like this is, this is what, he's like the epic symbol of their survival resilience, you know. And so he accepted that mantle, but then after a while, just, you know, he's, he's a very, well, so I really, it was hard for me to figure out then, how can I approach him in a way that's

• 52:20Rich Roll?

  Right, how are you going to engender trust from this guy who's been burned by the media and wants to be left alone?

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:26Rich Roll?

  But you being the dutiful journalist.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  I did my

• 52:29Rich Roll?

  You play the, you play the long game.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  I played the long game. Well, there was a movie, I guess, not too long after I found out about his story, there was a movie by this like blockbuster Icelandic director, Cormicur, I think is his last name, Baltasar Cormicur. He like did some Everest movies, I think with like Denzel Washington.

• 52:50Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Or Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington. He's directed these like big blockbuster movies and he, but being Icelandic, he was obsessed with the story of Gudlegur Fritthorson. And, and when he, I guess he was a teenager when this happened and he said, you know, this to me is the story. This is like the adventure story. It's like, what does it mean to be a person and a speck in the sea and, and what drives someone?

• 53:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  And so he, they approached, the producers approached Loie about the film and he was just like, you know, I think at this point, he was, he had kind of, things had quieted down. He was starting to live a life that was more to his speed. You know, he has grandkids, he has kids, he has a, you know, why, he, he works, you know, he still works in a fishing, for a fishing company. And he was just like, make the movie when I'm dead. Like, I don't want any part of this. So, but they made the movie.

• 53:52Rich Roll?

  They made it anyway.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  They made it anyway.

• 53:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  And his

• 53:55Rich Roll?

  So he felt betrayed.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  He felt betrayed and his, you know, to, you know, he lives in a very small town on a very small island in a very small country.

• 54:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  You know, everyone knows him. The town, you know, protects him.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  But people, so I was just like, okay, how do I, how do I follow my, you know, sort of storytelling instincts? And also, I respect this person as a human. I respect his desire for privacy. What if I write him a letter? So I wrote him a letter. I wrote him a letter and then I ran it through Google Translate into Icelandic and then I mailed it.

• 54:34Rich Roll?

  But, but you can't pitch, right? So what's the, just, you know, I appreciate you. Like, what does the letter say?

• 54:41Speaker 01

  I think I said, um, I said, I, I think I told him that I was, I was working on a book about swimming and I knew about his story and that I would love to just talk to him about what swimming means to him. I wanted to hear from him in some way, right? So he, he wrote back almost immediately, but he said, no.

• 55:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  And then I thought, oh, that's, oh, that's so disappointing. But then we started to have this like pen pal relationship and we just, and I remember my husband had said, like, you could just write to him and see what happens, you know, just, so we started, because there's something about his opening message to me that seemed to leave the door open a little bit.

• 55:28Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  He just said something about, you know, I have not had great experiences in the past with journalists. It has something to do with your project. But he said something in that email and I'm trying to remember what it was.

• 55:42Rich Roll?

  Like if you, the, the message being sort of, if you can prove to me that you're trustworthy.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Not in so many words, but yeah, I got the sense. And, um, so I just kept writing and, and I would send him, you know, little bits of trivia or when I was in Japan, you know, doing some research, I would send him a photo from there. And because he, I think he said that he, um, he said something about swimming, saving lives and, uh, and that was, and he used emoji. I thought, would he use emoji if he wasn't leaving the door open a little bit? I don't know. It was interesting. Yeah. So I just persisted. And then I didn't meet him in person until a year later.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  And I still, like, to the day that we actually met in person, I did not know if he was actually going to see me.

• 56:35Rich Roll?

  Right. But you go out to Iceland.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  I go to Iceland.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  You end up getting an audience with him, and the guy ends up being like your buddy.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  He is this wonderful, funny, um, he loves jokes, storytelling. Like, he's just a very endearing guy. And he actually, you know, we got to the point where he trusted me with a story. And then he very quickly, you know, he had an interest in my family. And we went, oh, my God, now it seems so long ago. The summer of 20, last year, 2019, we went to the Faroe Islands and we went to Iceland to see him. And, um, you know, he, he and his wife, being very experienced grandparents, like, they just had all these snacks on the table for my kids.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  You know, they just, and my kids adored them because they were just like, can we go visit Lui Amuria again, like, again and again and again? And to the, I mean, yesterday, my son told me, he said, can we go back there?

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Um, and, you know, on Christmas, you know, he sends a, he sends me a text with a photo because he looks like Hemingway crossed with Santa Claus now.

• 57:48Rich Roll?

  That's kind of exactly how I would envision him.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  He sent a photo of himself in a Santa suit and said, I think, this guy says he knows Felix and Teddy.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  I mean, it was hilarious. Like, he's, he's a great guy.

• 58:02Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  But what did he tell me? I mean, he, he told me his story, but also what I realized is that, so much of what his story means is what other people say about him, what he means to them. So I tried to do this kind of twinning effect of like telling both stories at the same time.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Because it is about the stories we tell ourselves.

• 58:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And on some level, it's his story, but it's the national story.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:37Rich Roll?

  Right? And he's got to release that and allow people to have their own experience with who he is and what he endured.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's right.

• 58:47Rich Roll?

  But this kind of opens the book up to this, you know, kind of dialogue about not just human survival in the elements and in water, but also the unique properties of cold water and human exposure to cold water.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  We talk about brown fat, like converting the white fat to the brown fat and all the new studies that are, you know, going on right now about how cold water exposure extends longevity and, you know, is healing to the body.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  One of the studies that I looked at showed, okay, so you're, you know, warm, what warm water versus cold water, right? So I think it was like an hour immersion in 90 degree water is like very comfortable, very relaxing, you know, reduction in pain. You're just like, you're very, it's, it has positive effects on your body. And a same amount of time in like 56 degree water or something like that. It was like dopamine levels through the roof, like metabolism revved up, like feelings of euphoria, you know? I mean, and it is, you know, and just like very alive wellness, kind of, you know, things that are

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  measurable, but also things that you experience that are very acute, you know? Reduction in inflammation, of course. And I just think it's so interesting, you know, the way it speeds up our metabolism. It's actually like, on its face, cold exposure is not that great for you, right? So like cardiovascularly, it's like terrible. It's, it just like jacks up your blood pressure. Very quickly at first. And then over time, you actually, it lowers your blood pressure because it's just your, your heart and your blood vessels are then able to handle it.

• 1:00:40Rich Roll?

  Over time, within a single session or with repeated exposure?

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  With repeated exposures, yeah. So, you know, we talk about where the, the sort of longevity, a scientist I talked to, Hiro Tanaka, he was talking about how he went to Japan, back to Japan where he's from, and he studied the ama, right? So those freediving grandmas, really, like, you know, they're,

• 1:01:06Rich Roll?

  Pearl divers.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Pearl divers, you know, diving for shellfish. And they, a lifetime of cold water exposure, right? Their cardiovascular health is amazing. Their hearing is terrible because the cold water really destroys your hearing. But they, they're, you know, he wanted to know about the, you know, their, like, how were their arteries, you know, were they flexible or had they, you know, was it like, was their experience over time, had that made them something a little bit

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  more akin to a marine mammal, you know, just like how they're able to, you know, cope with, with the water? And he found that they were like, they're just, their cardiovascular health was really great. And, you know, I, I think they live to be quite old, you know? And the traditions, I think that there's been renewed interest in just again, like, these people who hew to thousand-year-old traditions and are able to do things that we wouldn't imagined doing, you know, in our modern day.

• 1:02:25Rich Roll?

  And they're not dying young of heart disease.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  Right. And, and that, you know, Hiro Tanaka also did research with arthritis, you know, and, and cold water and swimming. And what I was really interested in was that the swimming practice.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Lessen the effects of arthritis, you know, from a pain perspective, from an inflammation standpoint, from mobility, increased mobility. And those effects lasted for much more, be much more time beyond the actual time in the water.

• 1:03:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  And so it's just like, the benefits are enduring. And I found that really compelling.

• 1:03:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's super interesting.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Rich Roll?

  So your way into this cold water world quickly becomes our mutual friend, Kim Chambers.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:03:16Rich Roll?

  Who's a looming figure throughout the book.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Rich Roll?

  Like she's, you know, other than yourself, like almost the primary protagonist throughout this narrative.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  I mean, how could she not be?

• 1:03:26Rich Roll?

  I know. Well, she's larger than life. I mean, she's just, I just, I love her so much and I just think the world of her. She's amazing. But she brings you down to the Dolphin Club and introduces you to the whole aquatic park ecosystem down there.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  The whole crew. Exactly. That's exactly what it is. It's an ecosystem.

• 1:03:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  And it's a very...

• 1:03:47Rich Roll?

  Explain what that is. I used to live around the corner from there.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:03:50Rich Roll?

  So I never, I mean, I've swum in aquatic park many times and I've swum from Alcatraz and, you know, all of that. But I was never like a member of the Dolphin Club. I only know a few of those people. I know Vito and a couple other people, but...

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  It's a, I mean, so the Dolphin Club and the South End Rowing Club, they've been around since the late 1800s. They, they share an actual building, you know, but they're clubhouse.

• 1:04:15Rich Roll?

  Kind of rivals.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're rivals, but they're friendly rivals and they love to trash talk and, and they are very much, the, the members are like diehard bay swimmers, cold water swimmers. Most of them, you know, take pride in the fact that they don't use wetsuits, do it year round and have this, I mean, there is a celebration of like the hardiness, the vigor, the, you know, how long to stay in and, you know, and...

• 1:04:47Rich Roll?

  Not cool to go and swim in aquatic park in a wetsuit.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Well, you can't, you know what?

• 1:04:51Rich Roll?

  You can.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  The first time I did it, I was afraid.

• 1:04:53Rich Roll?

  That's cute, right?

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  I was afraid I was gonna get ridiculed, but you know, people were very nice to me. But they just said, you can't bring your wetsuits into the, into the clubhouse.

• 1:05:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  They said, leave them outside. I'm like, okay. It's almost like...

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  You know, when the wet, wet suit, like, there's like a, there's a line that's like a no, no passage through the space, no wet sushi under the space. Uh, but, so it's this, and it's all ages, like, all body types. It is amazing to me that, that there's this community there. It still amazes me, and I've seen it, and it's just beautiful. And so Kim, you know, Kim's the first woman to swim from the Fairlands in San Francisco. She is a sixth person to the Ocean Seven. And she did all of this after almost, I mean, I think all of your listeners will probably be familiar with her story, but that she almost lost her leg to amputation after this

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  accident where she fell down the stairs. And she, it took her two years to relearn how to walk. She was embarrassed about her scars, and part of the rehab was like, you know, maybe swim, you know? And she, by her own description, was a horrible swimmer when she started, had horrible technique. And then, one day, she's invited by a couple of guys at the pool to, to swim at the Dolphin Club at Aquatic Park. And she said, this is, I love the way she describes this. She, she says, "Not many people have a, a visual record of their rebirth." And she said that they happened to, like, video her that day when she got in the water and started swimming.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  And she said, like, you know, "Here's this, like, broken, skinny, like, 120-pound woman who's just like, has been through hell and, and is like the biggest shit-eating grin on her face, and she's in this water, and she feels so alive, and she feels so, she feels reborn." Like, it literally was her, it, it started this completely new life for her, you know, as a marathon swimmer, as a freakishly accomplished marathon swimmer. And I think a large part of that, of course, is that she is a very resilient person. Yeah. She also talks about how she has a very, very high pain threshold, which has gotten to her into a lot of trouble, you know, over the years. Why?

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the whole thing with her leg, when she fell down the stairs that day. She kind of ignored it. She ignored it. And she drove to work, and then her leg was like, twice the size. Right. And then she passed out, and then she got to the hospital, and it was like, you, you know, all that swelling was killing all the nerves in her leg, and they almost had to- You know, amputator leg. And so she laughs at it. And again, of course, then that pain tolerance, of course, allows her also to do extraordinary things.

• 1:07:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  And she also had a bout with, a couple of bouts with Guillain-Barre.

• 1:07:58Rich Roll?

  Right. That's more recent.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  More recent, yeah.

• 1:08:01Rich Roll?

  How is she doing now?

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  She seems to be doing pretty well. We talked recently, a few weeks ago, a couple weeks ago. And, you know, she's swimming, you know, during, during the pandemic, she is, she's back in the bay swimming.

• 1:08:16Rich Roll?

  And she's trying to knock out the seven summits also, right? Is that, did that get tabled for?

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  That was her big goal, I think, when, and that really was, I mean, she was, she was well on her way when Guillain-Barre happened to her. And I don't know if that's something that's still on the table.

• 1:08:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  But she wanted to be the first person to do both of those things.

• 1:08:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, nobody's ever done that, have they?

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Don't get any ideas, people.

• 1:08:56Rich Roll?

  But what's, you know, even additionally compelling about her is not only her, her, you know, love for cold water, like she took to it immediately, her freakish, you know, endurance capacity, but also this interesting relationship with fear, because she swam from the Faroe Islands, you know, to San Francisco.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  That is not for the faint of heart.

• 1:09:20Rich Roll?

  She did it at night, too. You can't see anything. Like, I just, it sounds like my worst nightmare.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  It is pretty much everybody's worst nightmare.

• 1:09:26Rich Roll?

  And she's like, oh, she thought it was fun, you know, like it's, you know, so that's a thing on top of all of this that makes her, separates her, I think.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  Right. The fear. I mean, she'll be the first person to talk about how she was afraid so many times about, you know, like, people seeing her scars, you know, that's one thing. I mean, just that she had changed so much. From that person who fell down the stairs that day.

• 1:09:55Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  And then over the course of becoming this swimmer and then, you know, breaking these world records and then coming to this point where she wanted to make these swims bigger than herself, right? So then turning her attention from her own struggles outward to say, okay, if I have a voice, what can I use this for? And she did that Colibri swim.

• 1:10:21Rich Roll?

  The Red Sea thing?

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  No, the one, well, that one too. But the one across the border.

• 1:10:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, right, in Mexico.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, to Tijuana. And that, you know, she did that with Mexican swimmer Antonio Agüas. And they were like the ambassadors, you know, across the, and it was really to call attention to all the deaths at the border. You know, it was, she, she kept saying that it wasn't, she didn't want it to be political. She wanted it to be about life and caring about life. And she said, when they swam across and got out the beach in Tijuana, all these school kids were on the cliff, wearing the Colibri T-shirts.

• 1:10:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  And cheering and she's like, it was this, it was like wanting to use the swims as a way to bring people together. And I, and I really, I, I, I so admire her for, for all of the, you know, this evolution that she's gone through in her life. I mean, she always talks about how, and it's hard for me to imagine this, but she said she was a really shallow person, like before all of this.

• 1:11:20Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. You can't imagine it, right? She's like this glowing light.

• 1:11:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. But something got activated in her.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Something got activated.

• 1:11:29Rich Roll?

  You know? And in the Venn diagram of these various buckets or categories that you've divided the book up into, you know, she overlaps, you know, survival with community.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, she is that bridge because, you know, not just the healing part, but the, you know, she survived so many things in her life because of swimming. And then what, and swimming was the thing that kind of brought her back from both her leg injury and then from Guillain-Barre and was a way for her to. Rehab her life. She really did do that.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  But it was through this amazing community at the Dolphin Club. And I think about, I remember being in the locker room there, the locker room. And that's something that I super miss in this time, like the locker room at the pool.

• 1:12:19Rich Roll?

  Right, the post-swim.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Just like the chatting and the secrets and the, and you're, you're in everybody's intimate space. But I don't know what it's like in the men's locker room. Actually, I want to ask you about this. Because it's not, I mean, at least from my perspective, it's like this, I think Kim has described the Dolphin Club sauna as like a hen house. Like everyone's just sharing like, you know, stories of like illness or boyfriend troubles or things that they're struggling with. I don't know what it's like on the other side.

• 1:12:50Rich Roll?

  Well, it's changed with different phases of life.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Rich Roll?

  You know, but I think the, the unifying principle is that when you complete a swimming workout, you're kind of, it's like this pipe cleaner for your mind and your soul, right? Like you emerge from that experience like feeling very grounded and, and also open, right? So then when you go to the, like, you know, like, listen, when I swam in college, you, everybody goes into the hot showers and is in there forever, right? You don't just quick, take a quick shower and get dressed. Like you, you stay in that hot shower as long as possible. And there's a lot of, you know, yeah, there's a lot of conversation that goes on there. And even in master swimming, it's the same.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:13:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, I don't know what the women's locker room is like, but like, there's, yeah, there's a lot of, you know, bonding. And I think

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:36Rich Roll?

  it's, it's different with men because men, you know, are, it's harder to get men to, you know, have kind of intimate conversations with their friends and their peers. But there's something about that locker room experience that's conducive to that in the wake of just enduring like a difficult workout together. And, you know, maybe it's the same in track and field or any other sport. I don't know. But

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Rich Roll?

  it's certainly, you know, a tight knit bond that you have with those people that, you know, you do this hard thing together. And even though it's individual, you are doing it as a collective.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Right. You're doing it. You're doing it apart together.

• 1:14:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that makes it interesting. Well, let's talk about the well-being component of this because I think there's a lot of people listening who either are swimmers or people who are perhaps intrigued by the idea of maybe getting into cold water for the first time or, you know, trying to learn how to swim when they didn't learn as a kid. There's so much well-being to be mined from this sport or just this activity.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  I mean, I also want to, you know, we talked a bit about the physical and physiological benefits, right, of immersion, but I also want to talk, you know, a big part of the well-being is the flow, right? It's the flow state. It's where your mind goes when you're doing it. And I think, again, what's so interesting about swimming and makes it unusual and unique in the sort of sports world is that you are, you're alone, you're in your head a lot, your senses are muted, you're not really talking to someone else.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  I mean, even if you're doing a workout together, even if you're doing a long swim together with someone, you know, in the bay or in the ocean or whatever, you're not chatting the way you would if you were going for a long run together. And so your awareness, I mean, I think it depends on, okay, so I want to talk about two things, like pool swimming is super different from open water swimming, right? So in a pool, what's so great about that is that it's this very known, circumscribed, the distance is known, your body knows where to do the turns and, you know, you can, your mind is freed in a way that is different from open water because open water, you have a sort of acute noun-ness.

• 1:16:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You need a little bit of hypervigilance.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:16:13Rich Roll?

  In open water.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  And even if you're someone like Lynn Cox or Kim Chambers and you're swimming for like a shit ton of time, like just so long, you are still attuned to what's going on in your environment in a way that's like, again, you're attentive to dangers, potential dangers, although your crew is probably supposed to be doing that. But when you're out there, I mean, you're, I find that when I'm swimming in the bay, I'm constantly scanning, you know, it's this, you can't really stop yourself from doing that, even if you know this place, there's still some alert, you know, and I think that then, then the acuteness and the

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  presentness of being in the water is like, again, like taking you out of that, your head and all the shit that's going on outside of that. Like, I think to be, to be forced to pay attention to that moment.

• 1:17:11Rich Roll?

  Right. You're just compelled to be in the moment and present.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you have, for that hour or 45 minutes, or whatever, you have forgotten about just everything, all of the things that are holding you down, are occupying, preoccupying you. And, you know, right now, there's plenty of that.

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  But, I mean, actually, I just realized, like, in this conversation with you, the way a great conversation can take you out, I haven't thought about COVID for a while. So, thank you for that.

• 1:17:45Rich Roll?

  Okay. I gave you a one hour reprieve from that.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really appreciate that.

• 1:17:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But I'm distracting you, right?

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  But to be, yeah, so that, you know, being in open water is a, I don't want to say distraction, because distraction sounds negative. Like, distraction sounds like, it's not quite the right word, because it seems like it's something that you shouldn't be focusing your attention on. But it compels your focus in a way that I think is super useful. And, again, it's a relief, it's, it's, it's a, it's a breath away from the rest of everything.

• 1:18:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Your normal state of being, your normal land self.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  And then in a pool, it's, I find it no less, I know a lot of people don't love swimming in pools, but I really love pools.

• 1:18:35Rich Roll?

  I do too. And when people say it's boring, I don't find it boring at all. There's something about that constriction, like how can you stare at the black line the whole time? But because you know exactly how long the pool is, and you know that your environment is static, essentially, that gives you the opportunity, and safe, right, that you don't have to think about it, right? And it allows you to like, live in this state of presence, but also kind of, and you talk about this in the book as well, like this liminal state, right? Where you're not, you're not, you're not on land, you're not underwater, you're kind of in between. And there's something about that, that place, puts your mind in a, in a, in a place to problem solve, or, you know, to be in this active meditation

• 1:19:18Rich Roll?

  state. And that's very related to the breath, of course, and you talk about that in the book as well, like, the regulated, you know, inhaling and exhaling that comes with that, that, you know, has some impact on your, you know, sympathetic nervous system in a certain particular way.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  You're allowed to wander. I mean, you're allowed to make connections and things are floating around, and you, they're, they're not tethered in the same way. I think that, again, I come back to the quality of the medium. It's like, there are, things don't have to be connected in the same way. At least for me, I have, I have interrogated myself many times over the writing of this book when I'm swimming, like, what the hell am I thinking about? How am I thinking about these things? And, you know, I wrote a great amount of the book in my head when I was swimming.

• 1:20:06Rich Roll?

  I'm sure.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Because I had to come back.

• 1:20:08Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm sure you get stuck, you go swim, and then by, you know, not focusing on it, you are allowed, you're able to free associate and solve that problem, so that when you're, you're in the locker room afterward, you're like, I got it.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  I think that's the, I love that term, the, the soft fascination, right? There's something that's holding your attention, but not too.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Closely, so that you're able to do that free association that you're talking about.

• 1:20:38Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Which is so great.

• 1:20:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's, you know, it's different from running, like, running is analogous, I suppose, but the experience isn't quite the same.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  I mean, definitely not for me. I don't know about you. I hate running.

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  I mean, I love running too, but the feeling that I have afterwards is different.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Rich Roll?

  It's different. Certainly swimming makes me more tired and definitely more hungry.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  So hungry.

• 1:21:02Rich Roll?

  I don't know, why do you get so hungry? And also, talk to me about this. When I sw- after a swim workout, I have to pee like 400 times. I cannot stop peeing.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:13Rich Roll?

  What is going on? That doesn't happen to me running.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  It's weird, right?

• 1:21:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  It's gotta be have to do something about like the hydrostatic pressure or something on your body that somehow then you're like, all the water gets forced out.

• 1:21:25Rich Roll?

  Right. I literally have to go to the bathroom like 10 times over two hours.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  If there's someone listening who knows why this happens, please email us because we want to know.

• 1:21:34Rich Roll?

  I think I tweeted that question out a long time, and I got a bunch of answers.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Where any?

• 1:21:37Rich Roll?

  It was a long time ago, but there is some biological reason. I think part of it has to do with being horizontal, part of it has to do with the temperature, water temperature.

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:48Rich Roll?

  You know, that even, even when you're swimming in a 75 degree pool, it's still so much colder than your body. So your body is expending a large percentage of its resources just to keep you warm. On top of, you know, the exercise that you're doing.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think that the tiredness and the hunger, and also it's like a delayed thing, right? So you're not really thinking about, I mean, I don't really get hungry when I'm swimming usually, but then like, you know, sometimes I'll be in the shower and I'll just be like, holy shit. Give me a, I'm so hungry.

• 1:22:20Rich Roll?

  I know. But I get freaked out open water swimming.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Do you?

• 1:22:24Rich Roll?

  Well, I don't, I don't mind it in tropical locations where I can see everything, but in the Pacific, it's so murky and I don't like not being able to see the bottom. And then your, your mind starts to wander.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, in a bad way.

• 1:22:37Rich Roll?

  You know, you're, you're part of this food chain, you're unbelievably vulnerable. And then it's difficult for me to like relax and enjoy it.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Well, part of that is definitely the temperature. Do you have particular moments that you recall as being?

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Super terrifying in open water?

• 1:22:55Rich Roll?

  Um, I mean, I will say that when I'm with other people, it's fine. But sometimes I want to just go by myself, but I'm reluctant to do that. I just don't feel like that's a responsible thing to do. So I've done it, but then I'm nervous because I'm alone and no one quite knows where I am.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. One of the things about open water swimming in the time of COVID was I kept telling myself that you have to be more conservative than you might be otherwise because you don't want anyone to have to save you.

• 1:23:23Rich Roll?

  And I got freaked out when I did the Alcatraz swim. This is a very long time ago. My buddies and I did it without a wetsuit.

• 1:23:32Rich Roll?

  Cause we were, you know, 25 or whatever. And it's like, you're a puss if you wear a wetsuit. So we did it without wetsuits. And I just remember being halfway. I mean, it's not that far. What is it like a kilometer and a half or something like that?

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  It's like a, what is it? A mile and a half?

• 1:23:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Being in the middle, like perhaps like smack in the middle. And I just stopped for a moment and looked around and I was like, I'm in a shipping channel. Like that freaked me out because there's massive boats out there.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  They come and they're on you in a second.

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  So it wasn't the marine life. It was like the fact that like there's gigantic cargo ships that pass through there. But my hands and my feet got so numb, they just felt like nubs.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  You're like doing this, the fist swimming.

• 1:24:17Rich Roll?

  I didn't do that again without a wetsuit.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  I had a similar experience when I was doing my Alcatraz swim. And then I hit a patch of seaweed. And you know, when you hit something when you're swimming, you, you can't stop yourself from doing that jerk upright. And it was like, my heart was like in my mouth. And then I just was like, oh, seaweed, seaweed, seaweed. Because you're just, you can't, you're right. You can't see anything.

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  And it touches you.

• 1:24:46Rich Roll?

  I'm not, I'm not really afraid of shark. Like if I'm in Hawaii and I can see everything, even if I saw predatory fish, like I don't know that it would scare me that much.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  I've been recently, I've been working for the last couple of months on a story about fear and that involves a shark, involves sharks and someone who spends a lot of time with them. And I was thinking to myself that I have never, sharks haven't been a thing for me either. Right. It's not something that has occupied my mind, but I also have been really intrigued by how it occupies the imagination of so many people who would never encounter sharks. But, but it lives in their imagination and of course jaws, but also that it, it's like a convenient receptacle for your fear.

• 1:25:37Rich Roll?

  Right. Right. It personifies whatever fear that you have.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And actually, it just is a way for you to deal with it. Like it's, it's all of these other things.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  And when we were just talking earlier about the, you know, being in the dark, deep ocean and sharks, like that being the, the most profound fear or the scariest place in any

• 1:26:03Rich Roll?

  Like a primal thing that we have inside of us. Do you know this guy, Michael Muller, this photographer who's done all these photo essays on great whites and he swims outside of the cage and it's incredible. He was on the podcast and now he's creating this virtual reality.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:26:22Rich Roll?

  Series where you put on the goggles and you know, basically you're swimming with great whites outside of a cage.

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  Have you tried it?

• 1:26:29Rich Roll?

  He let me test it in the middle of the podcast. We took a break and I put him on and checked it out. It's, it's wild, right? But they're using this now in kind of a.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  Oh, like a fear conditioning?

• 1:26:41Rich Roll?

  Exactly. Yeah. To work with people who have PTSD and you know, other kinds of fears to help, help them like process all of that in a healthy way.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think that that fear exposure or exposure therapy is really interesting. And I, and I think it's fascinating how VR can. Help with that. And I'm really curious about how the technology, you know, because the so much of the earlier iterations of it have made people so nauseous.

• 1:27:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think there's, they're still working that out. I got a little bit like that.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  I think I would have then develop a fear of nausea. But I, but it's, I think, I don't know how you could possibly solve for that problem, though, because your body, your inner ear is just doing whatever it's, I don't think that you, how do you correct that? You know, how do you?

• 1:27:31Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  Solve the disconnect, I mean?

• 1:27:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. You can ask Kim.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  Talk to Michael.

• 1:27:36Rich Roll?

  You should, yeah, I'll hook you up. You should interview him. When you look at Kim, or people like Lynn Cox, or Lewis Pugh, or Martin Strell, like these epic, you know, super long distance swimmers, Lewis like swam in the Arctic Circle, right?

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:27:56Rich Roll?

  Didn't Martin swim the Amazon?

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  He swam the Amazon.

• 1:27:59Rich Roll?

  He did like, a ridiculous amount of butterfly, too, didn't he? Did you?

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  Yes, which I think is hilarious.

• 1:28:05Rich Roll?

  I'm like, I don't, how is that, he's like, he swam the whole Amazon River butterfly. I'm like, that's not humanly possible. I don't know what kind of butterfly he's doing.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  He seems like a kooky guy.

• 1:28:13Rich Roll?

  It can't be the butterfly.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  What's your form like?

• 1:28:16Rich Roll?

  I would like to see that. It's still crazy impressive. I can't imagine. But like, what is it that these people share?

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Um, definitely a high pain threshold. I think there's, what I, what I have gleaned from talking to some of these incredible endurance swimmers is that they, they are different. They're definitely different from us. Or maybe not from you. You're, you're an endurance athlete.

• 1:28:48Rich Roll?

  I don't like cold, though. Go ahead.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  I think cold is a, is a, is a divisive thing.

• 1:28:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Amongst us.

• 1:28:55Rich Roll?

  I mean, I like it after I've done it, and I've put myself in that situation for that reason. But I, I'm not like Kim, who like, can't wait to get into the cold water.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  Right. She just jumps right in.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  There's like a certain single-mindedness, I think. And certainly, an ability to, I think, disassociate from their bodies in a lot of ways, because their bodies are enduring so much. Not just with the cold, but with the length of time and the distance that they're swimming. But they seem like they have all kinds of different reasons for, that they say.

• 1:29:36Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, Lewis, it's very much about environmental preservation. Like, he has a big why, you know, a big purpose behind why he does what he does.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  But he also talked about how, before he started doing that, I think he was a lawyer. Wasn't he a lawyer?

• 1:29:52Rich Roll?

  I think so.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  And then just started. Yeah, I think that he so wanted to swim, he kind of developed the reasons to swim over the course of time. But he was a very driven person. So like, I think that these athletes are, do start out as very motivated people. Whatever it is they're doing. Kim, Kim was super motivated, like, doing her, you know, and her Silicon Valley job.

• 1:30:26Rich Roll?

  Right. Adobe, I think.

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  So I think that they have just turned their focus and vision to something that they can really go all in on, in a practice that rewards that. Right?

• 1:30:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  And it is very extreme. Like, I don't, I am, I think I'm having trouble talking about it, because I don't understand it myself. You know, even in the competition part of the book. And actually, this is interesting. I asked Lynn Cox and I asked Lewis Pugh about competition, right? Because, and Lynn really chafed against me asking her that question, because she said, "I'm not competitive. I'm not swimming against anyone else."

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  And then it kind of as she started-

• 1:31:12Rich Roll?

  You can still be internally competitive.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then actually was she kept talking, she chafed against it because she didn't see it as, she, she didn't see it as being externally motivated by what anyone else was doing. I think that was the thing that she, that rubbed her the wrong way to, to think about. But she, you know, she, she is the, she is concerned with it though. Like it was about being the first and the, you know, coldest and the longest.

• 1:31:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  But it was against herself, for sure. I think that, because once she started to talk about it, it became this, it was clear that she is a competitive person, even though she didn't necessarily like to think of it personally.

• 1:31:51Rich Roll?

  But with Kim, it all seemed so easy, like, because she's always laughing and smiling, you know, like, eh, nothing but the thing.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, but she is like, she's got some shark in her.

• 1:32:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. Did you talk to Ross Edgely?

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  I didn't talk to Ross Edgely. Ross Edgely, I remember, God, I remember when he did, what was the last?

• 1:32:09Rich Roll?

  It was a year and a half ago, I think, when he did the Great British Swim.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  It was, the book was done. But I remember reading about that and thinking, he would have been an interesting guy.

• 1:32:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's great.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  And he has his own book.

• 1:32:21Rich Roll?

  He's great.

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's, I mean, he, I mean, he's also a force of positive energy. Like, he just, he really, he's, he's insanely fit and like, trains like a madman.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:33Rich Roll?

  But he's always laughing. Like, it is play. I mean, this is another theme of the book, like, the relationship between swimming and play. And Kim has that. Ross definitely has that. Like, he's a beast, but he's literally constantly cracking jokes and just, you know, lighting up whatever room that he walks into. He's very charismatic in that regard. And what's interesting about him is he looks like a bodybuilder.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:54Rich Roll?

  But he has unbelievable endurance. So he wrote this book about, you know, this combination of endurance and strength and how that works. Because you would think like, oh, you gotta be really lean to be able to do something so long. But he swam all the way around Great Britain. It was bananas. And he documented the whole thing along the way. Like, he had the rashes on his neck from his wetsuit were just like-

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just got like, open, sort of like, beaten by the seawater, too?

• 1:33:23Rich Roll?

  On week one, you know, when he's doing this. And he came out and did the podcast like, right afterward. Like, he literally had just completed it.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  Did you see his scars? Did he show you?

• 1:33:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's got a massive scar. He was putting, you know, that heavy, heavy duct tape on it and all kinds of stuff.

• 1:33:39Rich Roll?

  But he's somebody who, you know, grew up as a water polo player, was kind of a competitive swimmer, but not at an elite level or anything like that, and just comes up with these events to do. So he's internally competitive, he's competitive with himself and he's battling the elements. But it's not about, there's never anyone else that he's competing against other than himself.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:00Rich Roll?

  And, and the elements.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that you, to do all of these things, you, you have to have some motivation that is just very consuming, you know, whether it's externally motivated or internally. It's just, it is, and, and I think that because you've had conversations with all kinds of people who are pushed to do extraordinary things, I'm sure that the sort of like outset, you know, what, you know, whether it's something that they were always striving for approval from someone, or that they always just wanted to know that they were capable of something more than what everyone told them that they could do. Or whether it's for some, you know, I want to raise awareness about some, but it is like,

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  there is, how do we talk about it is important. I suppose that it's not necessarily, it doesn't necessarily matter what, what the specific thing is, but there's got to be some force that is compelling us to do it.

• 1:35:02Rich Roll?

  Right. I loved the backtracking into the history of, of swimming, and in particular, competitive swimming, tracing it back to its roots, all the way to Ben Franklin inventing the hand paddles, which was like, that's blew my mind, I can't stop thinking about that.

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  I mean, he is the true Renaissance man.

• 1:35:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course he, of course he invented hand paddles, you know? It's unbelievable. And that cave in the Sahara where

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:31Rich Roll?

  It was basically a tomb, right? Where there were drawings of people swimming in a pond when, at one time, very long ago, the Sahara was a lush

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  Green, the green Sahara.

• 1:35:41Rich Roll?

  Green area, yeah.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Wasn't the desert, it was Dotted with paleolakes, you know. I love that story. I love that, you know, the first human record of swimming is in the middle of the desert in Africa, because of course it is.

• 1:35:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  But that you look at these images and it really looks like people are just breast stroking up the walls. And I also love that the Hungarian explorer who discovered that cave at the time, Lozal Almazin, he wrote a book about it. And he speculated that there were actual lakes and bodies of water around the cave at the time that the drawings were made. And of course, the theory of climate change then was just outrageous and so radical. And he was like, his editor reportedly was so like upset about that, that he put a footnote

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  that said, I don't subscribe to this like harebrained idea of.

• 1:36:43Rich Roll?

  That at one time, there was water in the middle of the Sahara.

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  Right, but of course, he was right.

• 1:36:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  But at that time, it was pretty radical. And now, of course, there's so much evidence about the Green Sahara and that there are, you know, hippo bones, tortoise shells, like fish, you know, mittens of clam shells. Like, it's just amazing to think about.

• 1:37:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:10Rich Roll?

  And to think that humans' relationship with water dates back to the inception of mankind.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And certainly before any, you know, this is probably days back up to 10,000 years ago. But we likely knew how to swim way before that. It's just that there's no, there's no trace of it.

• 1:37:28Rich Roll?

  No evidence.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:30Rich Roll?

  Let's talk about the samurais.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:37:32Rich Roll?

  The martial art of swimming. This is something else I had no idea about, which is super cool.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  So there is, of course, there is a swimming martial art in Japan. So nihoneho is the term for it in Japanese. It's the Japanese classical swimming art. So much like judo or kendo, there is, there's the practice. And it originated with the samurai.

• 1:38:00Speaker 01

  During the feudal period of Japan and think about all these parts of the land that had to be protected by these different samurai clans. And because of Japan being archipelago and there's different, you know, there could be on the ocean or it could be on the edge of a lake or a river, the clans each developed their own schools of swimming. So they had different techniques for how to protect their, you know, the land that they were protecting. And there are these, one of my favorite tidbits is that the sort of egg beater technique of synchronized swimming has its, has been described in Samurai scrolls, like hundreds of years old.

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  And if you think about some of the things that they taught in these schools of swimming, they're called ryuu, I'm not pronouncing it right, R Y U, that, you know, you would learn how to cut through breaking waves with your arms, like in a parallel fashion, or that you would learn to approach in a very calm lake, you know, submerged, like most of your body submerged. And you would learn to leap up out of the water into a boat. There's a, there's a move called the flying mullet. You can also Google this.

• 1:39:16Rich Roll?

  The flying mullet?

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, on YouTube.

• 1:39:18Rich Roll?

  But this is from a warrior culture. Like this is how you be, you use water to your advantage.

• 1:39:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it is much in the same way that now martial arts, you know, they are practice, right? They are a physical but also a psychological practice, a philosophical practice, a whole body practice and mind. And I love, I loved learning about Nihoneho because it, it was a different way to think about swimming outside of this Western idea of.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Competition and racing. And it is fascinating because, you know, Nihon Eho is still practiced in Japan today. And there, and I went to Japan to research this and, you know, in the Tokyo Olympics, they were supposed to have an exhibition of-

• 1:40:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. I spoke with a lot of these masters of different schools of Nihon Eho who were preparing this exhibition to kind of reintroduce to the world and perhaps introduce for the first time what the sort of foundation of Japanese swimming, you know, the national team's success that we know it today, so much of it breaststroke, right? So like they've been, Japanese swimmers have been really dominant in breaststroke for a long time. And there is an interesting historical link to the techniques of Nihon Eho. I mean, I remember talking to one of these masters of the art and he was trying to explain,

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  and we were observing a class in Yokohama of these swimmers taking the class. And he said, you know, he was, we were observing the glide and the certain formations that they would be swimming in. And he said, you know, you know, Kitajima, you know, Kosuke Kitajima, which is like the-

• 1:41:14Rich Roll?

  The world record holder in her breaststroke.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Right. Just this dominant breaststroker known for like this incredible glide. And he said, that's Nihon Eho. Like he was just like, that's the skill that we teach and that has been ingrained into like coaching.

• 1:41:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's fascinating to track that, you know, the antecedent of Japanese swimming success back to that practice. And I didn't know that the Japanese were so dominant at the end of the 1920s, like the 1934 Olympics, they won like 12 medals or something like that. I had no idea that-

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  They like blasted onto the scene.

• 1:41:55Rich Roll?

  They were crushing it back then. That was crazy. And it's all rooted in this practice, which my sense is, it's not quite a Tai Chi thing, but maybe where they might share some sensibility is this idea of-

• 1:42:12Rich Roll?

  Learning how to use, learning how to work with the water, like being symbiotic with the water and using it to your advantage. Like, we all know the swimmer who isn't so experienced and they're in a race or in a triathlon or something like that, and they're fighting the water.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  They're fighting. It's obvious.

• 1:42:28Rich Roll?

  They're making the water work against them. You know what I mean? And, and really, you know, swimming is about fitness, of course, and technique, but it's really about finesse. And it's, it's this delicate relationship and this touch and this feel that you develop over time and some have an innate talent for, where they just know how to flow with the water and make it work for them. And those tend to be the most successful swimmers.

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  I think that the Tai Chi analogy is really salient in this, in this context. I mean, it is about working with the element and figuring out how to use it to your advantage and be really efficient, too. I think that's something that people don't really think about with swimming. And they think that it's, like you said, when, when there's, when people are starting to swim, are starting to learn how to swim competitively and go fast, like, there's so much muscling, there's so much over, like, windmilling, you know, you're just trying to, like, overpower it with brute force. And really, it's about, like, your timing, your angle of entry,

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  your, the position of your body in the water. And if you have that, it's actually quite, you're not expending a lot of energy.

• 1:43:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  One of the things that's interesting about Lynn Cox is that her buoyancy is such that in, in saltwater, she's like neutrally buoyant. So she's in that perfect body position to be swimming for hours and hours and hours and miles and miles and miles because she has that unique.

• 1:44:04Rich Roll?

  She's riding a little bit higher than the average person would.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  And she's talked about that. And so that also helps her, you know, with her very, very long swims. But it's also about touch and finesse, like you said, for sure.

• 1:44:18Rich Roll?

  And in this practice, they have, much like karate, like, you get lines on your cap or whatever at each, like, level that you achieve.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  I think it was like stripes in some cases.

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  Because I asked them, I said, how do you know who's the master? And they said, look at the caps. And they all have their special caps. And it was so cool to learn about it. And I, I hope to get the opportunity. I actually had been trying and planning to get to the Tokyo Olympics so I could see that, you know, happen, see that sort of reintroduction of New Haneho to the world.

• 1:44:56Rich Roll?

  What's your sense of whether the Olympics are going to happen or not?

• 1:44:59Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Well, can they make a bubble big enough? I don't know. Right? What do you think?

• 1:45:04Rich Roll?

  I don't know. It's changing so quickly. I mean, the spikes that we're seeing right now make me feel pessimistic about it. We'll have to see. But at some point, they have to make a decision. There's so many moving pieces and so much money at stake. They can't just snap their fingers right beforehand and say it's happening or it's not. Like, at what point do you pass that point of no return in terms of the green light or the red light?

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  Well, now we're getting, and then we'll be getting to the point where then it is in the same year as the Winter Olympic year, right? Again, which is kind of ironic.

• 1:45:34Rich Roll?

  I know. Can you imagine being an Olympic athlete and living in that space of not knowing?

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a state of suspended animation. And I think it's so, I so feel for those athletes who are not knowing, you know, they're training, and then they have had to calibrate their training for another year. And I think it could like break a lot of people if it doesn't happen.

• 1:45:58Rich Roll?

  I mean, it'll play to the advantage of the younger, less experienced athlete, I suppose, who, who, who benefits with additional time. But there's so many people that are hanging on and trying to make ends meet while they do it. And without that certainty, it's probably really difficult to get sponsor support. Like, it's just got to be really challenging.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  It turns out it's expensive.

• 1:46:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  To be an athlete.

• 1:46:22Rich Roll?

  It is, right? It's expensive to live. Another idea that I really love about the book is this idea that to be a swimmer is to be A seeker on some level. And, and when you track through history, there are so many leaders and great thinkers who had this profound relationship with the water. From Thoreau to Lord Byron, and you know, even JFK, like people who would gravitate towards the water in times of crisis or as a daily practice to basically help them be more self-actualized, better human beings.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Right. I love that FDR was the one who put the pool in.

• 1:47:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  You know, FDR put the pool in the White House and it lives under the White House press pool briefing room, which is just.

• 1:47:15Rich Roll?

  Is that why it's called the press pool?

• 1:47:16Speaker 01

  It cannot get better than that. I don't actually know. I've never quite been able to pinpoint if that's why. But I recently had, yeah, I recently was talking about this with someone and, you know, one of the reporters at NPR who goes to, who reports on the White House said, yes, you can see the tile. So you'd be in the room. So it's underneath the room, but you can still see the tile and like where, where the pool actually is, is a, is a bunch of like internet servers and stuff.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  And I thought that is, oh, and that Hillary Clinton wanted, when they moved into the White House, she wanted to reopen the pool again.

• 1:47:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  As a pool. Somehow that didn't happen, but I thought, wow, that would have been great.

• 1:48:05Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, I know JFK swam a lot and in particular, it was very helpful when he was in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:15Rich Roll?

  To try to like get some distance and, and balance so he could solve this unsolvable problem.

• 1:48:21Speaker 01

  Isn't it fun to think about swimming as like a, a hidden actor in, on these moments of history, maybe? That's a good one.

• 1:48:29Rich Roll?

  Well, and imagine being FDR, the freedom, you know, of being able to get out of the wheelchair and move your body.

• 1:48:34Speaker 01

  Well, and that he hid his.

• 1:48:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, nobody knew.

• 1:48:37Speaker 01

  You know, yeah, his, he hid his, it was so hard.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  And then it finally became, you know, impossible to hide his physical, you know, limitations.

• 1:48:50Rich Roll?

  Right. So how do you think about that relationship between being a seeker and being in the water?

• 1:48:58Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I certainly think it's true for myself.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  One of the, I wrote my first book, American Chinatown, about how I noticed that when I would go to a city, I would, the first, the first thing I'd do, I'd look to see if there had Chinatown and I would go and kind of see. It was interesting, it was just a little window to see how is this place different or the same to me across the Chinese diaspora. And then I realized what I do with swimming is that I look for a place to swim. A pool or body of water and.

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  How often is the pool in Chinatown?

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  Oh, well, there is the Chinatown Y M C A in San Francisco. There you go. Gorgeous pool. But, yeah, not that often, it turns out.

• 1:49:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  But I, I don't know. I think that water, I think water and seeking it is something that, for me, it's about finding freedom. It's about finding a new perspective. It's about finding a new way of looking at things. And, I mean, isn't that what being a writer is? So I think for me, it's like these two things are hand in hand, for sure, about how my mind works that way.

• 1:50:22Rich Roll?

  What's the longest you've gone without swimming?

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a great question.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  Even when I tore my ACL many, many years ago, oh, God, I remember this. I had that stupid machine that like moves your knee at night. And my husband made me sleep on like the couch because he was like, I'm not sleeping next to that thing. Oh, God, that was like, what, 15 years ago?

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  I wasn't out of the water for that long. But I, but it's because it's rehab. It's recovery. It's like one of the first, like the only things you could do when you're, you know, recovering from surgery in many cases.

• 1:51:04Rich Roll?

  Right. It's interesting that when people get injured on land, they send them to the pool to repair themselves.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:51:10Rich Roll?

  And then they go back on land and injure themselves.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  And then pound the crap out of their bodies.

• 1:51:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I had Laird Hamilton here the other day, and he's got these legendary pool workouts, you know, and part of the philosophy behind it is that very thing, which is when you injure yourself and you go to physio, they teach you all these rudimentary like things and you kind of do them for a while and then you're healed and then you stop doing them. And he's like, we should just keep doing them. And what if we do some of the more rigorous exercises in the pool where you remove the thing that's making you injured in the first place and create this supportive environment that allows you to do more with less risk?

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Laird Hamilton is basically saying what every physical therapist is like yelling at their, at their patient and saying, just keep doing it. Why don't you keep doing it? My brother's a PT, so I hear him lamenting all the time. And he says to me, because I said my, my elbow and my shoulder were sort of bothering me the other day. He said, so did you stop doing the exercises that I gave you?

• 1:52:12Rich Roll?

  Of course I did. I could go back and swim. So that was in the past.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  So then I stopped, of course.

• 1:52:17Rich Roll?

  Right. Let's talk about this guy in Iraq, Iraq, who was, who was teaching swimming lessons. Because this is another cool story. I didn't know anything about this guy.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:52:29Rich Roll?

  Like a foreign service dude.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  Jay Taylor. This is another story. Actually, this section of the book came, he was also another pen pal of mine, but he was a pen pal like many, like a long time ago. He had read something that I had written for the New York Times about swimming as a last refuge from connectivity. And he said, You know, I have a story for you about how it brought people together and it was about community, about connection. And he was this Foreign Service guy who got sent to Iraq for a posting for a couple of years. I think it was 2008 to 2010. And it was a time when Baghdad was seeing a lot of, a lot of activity, like shelling activity.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  And so it was a pretty hairy time to be there. And he was in the green zone, which at the time was part, was in, situated in Saddam Hussein's Republican palace. Now, I don't know if you know this, but Saddam Hussein and his sons were very fond of swimming. And so at all of their palaces and homes around Iraq, they had these crazy pools, like just, again, like luxury upon luxury in the desert is like having a pool that you keep filled. And this pool had multi-level diving boards. In fact, you can see, there

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  are some, I don't know if they're still up, but there are some YouTube videos of service.

• 1:54:02Rich Roll?

  Soldiers.

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, soldiers like jumping off of the diving boards. Which doesn't actually, it doesn't, see, watching them doesn't speak well of us. I don't know. There's just something

• 1:54:13Rich Roll?

  Well, we just, we descend upon the palace and take it over and turn it into like a playground.

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  It's that kind of like imperialist view that has so gotten us into trouble. But anyway, so, but in this time of war, of course, there is a community that forms around this pool because of course, everyone is drawn to this oasis.

• 1:54:34Rich Roll?

  Wouldn't want to be at that pool.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And suddenly they're like, wait, we're allowed to use this pool? It is like got fountains and tiles and diving boards and it just is glorious. And again, it's peace. It's finding quiet. And he said that when he

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  Would get in this pool, he would just then that's when he stopped hearing like the firing range, you know, you'd be muffled and otherwise it's like this incessant noise of like military exercises. And, um, you know, there the, the people who were there were from all over the world. You know, there are diplomats, soldiers, UN peacekeepers, translators, local Iraqis who were, you know, there providing support. And he saw that that pool was again, like everyone, all the animals flock to the watering hole, right? But this, in this case, it was like a psychological space.

• 1:55:31Rich Roll?

  Like a coping mechanism.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  A coping mechanism. And, um, he was swimming, he, he taught swimming lessons for a long time. He was a lifeguard, you know, had grown up in the Baltimore suburbs, I think, DC. And he, he has, you know, great form and he started to teach a lot. People would come up to him and say, hey, you got any tips for me? And he would see his colleagues flailing around in the pool and he would offer some tips and he's a very like, when you read the book, you understand that he's just like a very kind, he's a teacher. He's like a, he's his, his joy and his role in life is to be a teacher, you know? He's a very, and to do it and, and, and you've, you've encountered many coaches over your

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  life, as have I, and the best coach is one who kind of instills a little bit of fear, but all, but, but that, but that you want you, it's authority.

• 1:56:29Rich Roll?

  You seek that approval.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  You seek that approval. I wouldn't say that he's a person, I don't know what, what he is like as a parent, but he's a very gentle guy at this point in his life, but you see that he has this quiet authority that you want to, you know that he knows things and you want him to share them with you. And so he was able to kind of, I mean, I, I think of him as a Pied Piper of all of these swimmers in. In the green zone because he kind of was. He ended up building this Baghdad swim club of like a roster of 250 some odd people rotated over two years and would be teaching swimming lessons. I mean, they kept having to add classes because they kept coming to inquire.

• 1:57:14Rich Roll?

  It's like a feel-good movie.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's totally a feel-good movie. Jay Taylor, folks, you can contact me for the rights with him.

• 1:57:23Rich Roll?

  I didn't realize, what really struck me, aside from that story, is this discussion around how beautiful the sunsets are and like how people would swim like sort of at dusk or at dawn, like not at high noon, it was too hot. But when the sand would kick up, that's when you would get the really epic sunsets. But that was also the danger signal because that's when the incoming mortars would occur, right? Because that sand would obscure the ability to find the people who'd been hit.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  Right, right. You, it was cover for, it was a good mortaring opportunity. And it's just like to exist in that reality.

• 1:58:12Rich Roll?

  Like you're in this, you have this pool with fountains, but right outside of it, like people are getting shelled.

• 1:58:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, Jay almost got hit by a mortar in his trailer, like on the third day he was in Baghdad. You know, he really almost didn't live to have this club, you know, teach these people to swim. And it is, it sort of underlines this, just how, again, porousness between states, and that's one of the big themes of the book, is like, we're, I think with swimming, what's so intriguing to me about it is that it is a sport, it is a practice, it is something we do for exercise, but it is, it is.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  It is the difference between life and death and water. That is the reality. I mean, that is crazy. And we don't, we don't dance very often. It's that close these days to death. I mean, last year, this past year is, has been an exceptional year to that. But in our modern day, we don't experience that acute, acuteness. Most of us don't anyway. Most of us are lucky not to. And so I think sports, of course, competition is a way to experience this acuteness of being, right? This, um, the adrenaline rush, the, um,

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  the urgency of feeling just really alive. And, and oftentimes that, you know, that feeling

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  is something that we, we kind of can only really approximate with something that's a very heightened experience.

• 2:00:01Rich Roll?

  Right. But swimming allows you to practice literally putting yourself in an unnatural environment.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. One that can really, again, and certainly, especially with the ocean, can really rob you of that life in pretty short order. If you're not careful. I don't want to scare people, but, but it isn't.

• 2:00:22Rich Roll?

  I don't think about that. Like I, you know, that doesn't occur. I'm so acclimated to swimming, like, pool, forget about it. Like, I don't think about a pool being dangerous at all. Like, it's just, that is my natural habitat. I'm more hyper aware of that when I'm in the ocean, of course, but.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  Right, but you were talking about how you don't like it.

• 2:00:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. I mean, that's definitely a thing, but, but like in the pool, like the idea that, that something bad is going to happen to me is not anything that I think about.

• 2:00:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:48Rich Roll?

  And that, but that is a very real thing for a lot of people.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, and I think that's super interesting. And I wanted this book to.

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  Explore that with that reader. I wanted to acknowledge that reality, that that fear is real. Like, so the people who don't like swimming, who are afraid of the water, that is very, that is a profound fear. And that is, is something that, once you get to, you know, to become an adult to be a certain age, where you feel that that door is completely closed to you because that fear is so profound and it's so primal. And it is something that you have to be fucking brave to actually push past that and, and say, I want to learn how to swim. And I've talked to quite a few folks who, um, you know,

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  had recently started to take lessons or had, um, uh, started to try to address their, you know, their, their fears and their lack of swimming ability over the, over the course of the last couple of years. And it's, you know, it is very much tied to like some bad experiences they've had, maybe when they were kids. But also there's, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of baggage there.

• 2:02:11Rich Roll?

  Well, you're very vulnerable. You're essentially naked, you know? And you're putting yourself in this environment where you can't breathe.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:17Rich Roll?

  Your whole life, you've like said, talked to the hand, you know? So it is, it is courageous.

• 2:02:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:23Rich Roll?

  It's doable if you submit to the process.

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:26Rich Roll?

  You know, you're, it is a weird thing. It's like violin or, you know, anything else. Like, if you don't learn it when you're a young kid, it's a lot harder when you're older. But that doesn't mean that you can't do it. And I know plenty of people who learned later in life and just love it.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:39Rich Roll?

  Now, and it does serve, you know, everybody has their own relationship with it. I know that your relationship with it has changed over time, as has mine. But what will always remain consistent is this, you know, flow-like experience that you have in water that I can't replicate in any other way.

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:58Rich Roll?

  You cite, uh, like Moby Dick in that, right? Like this idea of sea dreaming, like, like meditation and water are wedded forever, which is a line out of that book.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Keeps me going.

• 2:03:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It is meditation. It is and it isn't. It's a specific type of meditation.

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  It's moving meditation. I think that's.

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  Actually, someone had told me recently that they stopped doing yoga once they discovered swimming.

• 2:03:27Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 2:03:27Speaker 01

  Because it did.

• 2:03:29Rich Roll?

  Serve that function for them.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, I'm not surprised, but you know what? It's better when you do both. They're different.

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  They are different.

• 2:03:37Rich Roll?

  They are different. And surfing is a whole different thing, right? Which is another aspect of swimming, I suppose, on some level.

• 2:03:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:46Rich Roll?

  Its own unique relationship with water and symbiotically living with the elements.

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  And timing. I mean, I thought about that this morning when I got out was just you have to... But it's the same principle of you have to time it right. You have to read the water right. And then you have to move in just the right way to get on the wave. Otherwise, it's not pretty.

• 2:04:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So I suppose you're gonna swim for the rest of your life?

• 2:04:14Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 2:04:15Rich Roll?

  They better open the pools back up soon.

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:19Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. I know a lot of mer people out of water these days. They're just, they're not the same. Don't you feel more just... I feel like when I get in water in the morning, I'm just a better person. I just feel like it's all smoothed back.

• 2:04:39Rich Roll?

  Way, way better. I'm way more capable. And when I said, "They better open the pools soon," let me please, like, couch that in context. Like, I'm not saying be unsafe. I just wish we could be in a situation where it was, where pools could safely open.

• 2:04:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:53Rich Roll?

  Because I know that I'm a better person and I enjoy it and I miss it.

• 2:04:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:57Rich Roll?

  I know you do, too. What do you... Let's close it with this thought, which is, what is it that you, you know, want people to walk away from after reading the book?

• 2:05:08Speaker 01

  I think it's a sense of possibility, right?

• 2:05:15Speaker 01

  I just think about water these days, and I've given this a lot of thought lately, especially because I can't do it, I can't do it as readily as I once could and take it, and I took it for granted too, like anyone else, right? That I could get in the water whenever I wanted to and find that peace, find that, you know, smoothing back of feathers and that time with myself. And now it's like this juggling act of trying to find, again, like the lane reservation or the window where like I know I have to manage all, you know, stuff at home with my kids and work and whatever. And my husband, who only supports me, by the way, getting out in the water, he's just like, go.

• 2:05:56Rich Roll?

  Please go.

• 2:05:57Speaker 01

  Go, please go. We'll all be happier.

• 2:05:59Rich Roll?

  Does he swim?

• 2:06:00Speaker 01

  He is, he's a pretty good swimmer. He enjoys the water. He hates the cold. He's like you. He will not get in the cold water. I mean, we woke up the other morning and it was, it was like, you know, one of those mornings that where you could see your breath. And that's not that usual here in California, guys. It's many places.

• 2:06:22Rich Roll?

  This time of year, though. I mean, it's high 30s at night here, but then it'll be 82 by like 2:00 in the afternoon.

• 2:06:28Speaker 01

  So we got up and it was before dark and I was getting up to go surf. And he looks at me and goes, "Boy, what I really want to do right now is jump in the freezing ocean." And I just had to laugh because I said, you know, that actually, I mean, I know that sounds insane, but it sounds pretty good to me. And that's why I'm leaving. I love you. Goodbye.

• 2:06:52Rich Roll?

  That's hilarious.

• 2:06:53Speaker 01

  And so he understands me, for sure.

• 2:06:55Rich Roll?

  It took me a long time to come back to that kind of appreciation, though, because I was so steeped in competitive swimming for so long and the idea of the early morning alarm clock, you know, and then standing on the freezing cold deck in the dark. And I was like, I do not need this in my life anymore. I did that for many years, you know, but I've kind of come around to, you know, fall in love with it in a new way, as long as I don't look at the pace clock.

• 2:07:20Speaker 01

  Because that will give you PTSD. That is gonna do it. Yeah, I think it is interesting, and I love to hear you talk about how you had, you had to come around full circle from, from what was a very intense and formative experience in your life, you know, which is to compete at a collegiate level. And a very competitive.

• 2:07:45Rich Roll?

  And very gratifying and one of the highlights of my life, but also extremely difficult and not without its traumas.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:07:52Rich Roll?

  And like I needed to do other things. So there was a long period of time where I didn't want anything to do with the swimming.

• 2:07:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you have to have enough distance from it and also to understand that, yeah, like you're at a different stage of your life. And I think, you know, I like to think about how I came back to swimming as well. Like I, there were times when I wasn't as present in my life and now it's gonna come roaring back.

• 2:08:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:19Speaker 01

  In a very wonderful and real way.

• 2:08:21Rich Roll?

  Do you have a sense that you're more creative when you're swimming consistently? Like you're more in touch with your creative voice?

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  I think so. I mean, and again, like it was not something that I thought about until I wrote this book. Like I did not, you know, examine or interrogate why I wanted to get in the water and then would go and sit and write.

• 2:08:45Rich Roll?

  But unconsciously you were, you would not have been compelled to write the book.

• 2:08:48Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 2:08:49Rich Roll?

  Or been interested in exploring that.

• 2:08:51Speaker 01

  It kind of nudged me that way.

• 2:08:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:54Rich Roll?

  Well, thank you.

• 2:08:55Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:08:55Rich Roll?

  For talking to me today. I love the book. Please go check it out. It's called Why We Swim. It's a very direct title. And it answers that question. I really loved it and I'm so happy that the book is being so well received and so successful. I know you've got another book, right? About, it's like a children's book about a woman, big wave surfer?

• 2:09:21Speaker 01

  It's, it's Sarah and the Big Wave and it's about Sarah Gerhardt, the first woman to surf Mavericks.

• 2:09:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Is she the one that's in Riding Giants?

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  She's, um.

• 2:09:33Rich Roll?

  In the Mavericks segment?

• 2:09:35Speaker 01

  Oh, she probably was.

• 2:09:36Rich Roll?

  There's one woman that's interviewed around the Mavericks discussion in that movie. But I can't remember what her name is.

• 2:09:41Speaker 01

  It's been so long since I've seen that documentary. But yeah, it was, I mean, she, 1999. And she's in, she lives in Santa Cruz. She's a, you know, she's a professor, you know? It's like so, she's a.

• 2:09:55Speaker 01

  It's a wonderful story. And it was my first children's book, and it was such a joy to write. So fun.

• 2:10:03Rich Roll?

  How did you find, like, I assume you got an illustrator to work with?

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:10:09Speaker 01

  Sophie Diao, she, they asked, my publisher actually asked me, like, they don't normally do it. So in publishing, I only just found this out when I encountered this. It was usually children's books, you think that, you know, the writer and the illustrator is working together. No, it's like usually the writer writes the book and then they find an illustrator and pair.

• 2:10:33Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 2:10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:34Rich Roll?

  No way.

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  Because it's, all these books seem so.

• 2:10:37Rich Roll?

  How is that possible? Like, you have to be simpatico.

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. But, and usually the publisher does not consult the author. The publisher just chooses. But in this case, they let me choose. And she said, yes.

• 2:10:49Rich Roll?

  They don't consult the author?

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  They don't do that.

• 2:10:51Rich Roll?

  They go and get some illustrator?

• 2:10:52Speaker 01

  It's two lanes. It's like, and they have the author and they have the illustrator. And they do the pairing. That's like 90% of the time. Isn't that fascinating?

• 2:11:03Rich Roll?

  That's shocking to me.

• 2:11:04Speaker 01

  I know, because it seems like you have to have it braided together.

• 2:11:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess it works. But I feel like they're missing out on an opportunity, is what I'm saying.

• 2:11:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think so. Speaking of which, why didn't you read your audiobook?

• 2:11:20Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a great question. I, I don't know that the option was offered to me, but they said.

• 2:11:28Rich Roll?

  You should have just said, I'm doing it.

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  They asked me, well, again, they asked me who I wanted. So they gave me a bunch of different professionals. Maybe they just thought they needed a professional. But I thought Angie Kane.

• 2:11:44Rich Roll?

  She did a great job. But I just think because you're so much a part of the narrative.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:48Rich Roll?

  That I would have, I would have liked to have heard you read it.

• 2:11:51Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. Next time.

• 2:11:52Rich Roll?

  Next time.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  But it was.

• 2:11:53Rich Roll?

  Put your foot down. It's your book.

• 2:11:55Speaker 01

  Now I throw my weight around all the time.

• 2:11:58Rich Roll?

  Cool. Well, come back and talk to me again sometime. This was really fun. I appreciate it.

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  Thank you, Rich.

• 2:12:02Rich Roll?

  Where should I direct people who want to learn more about what you're up to? What's the best place? You're on Twitter and all the things.

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  I'm on Twitter and Instagram and all the things. You can find me. On my website at bonnietoy.com.

• 2:12:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Easiest way to do it.

• 2:12:19Speaker 01

  Do it.

• 2:12:20Rich Roll?

  All right. Thanks.

• 2:12:21Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 2:12:22Rich Roll?

  Let's go swimming.

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 2:12:25Rich Roll?

  Plants.

• 2:12:28Rich Roll?

  Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed the show. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, you can visit the episode page at richroll.com. And you can also find me on Instagram and Twitter, @RichRoll. 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, Spotify, and YouTube. Sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and always appreciated. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com.

• 2:13:13Rich Roll?

  Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, portraits by Ally Rogers and Davy Greenberg, graphic elements courtesy of Jessica Miranda, copywriting by Georgia Whaley, and of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  Namaste.