Olympian Caroline Burckle On The Power Of Vulnerability

Becoming an Olympic medalist doesn’t tell the story. It wasn’t until the klieg lights dimmed that she was compelled to meet herself. The inner journey that ensued forged the amazing person she’s now become. Meet Caroline Burckle. Friends call her Burks. A fellow former competitive swimmer, today’s guest is a 23-time All American and 2-time NCAA Champion. In 2008, she was crowned NCAA Female Swimmer of the Year in recognition of breaking Janet Evans’ legendary 500 freestyle NCAA record—a seemingly impossible task and the oldest record on the books at the time. Later that same year, Caroline would qualify for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, where she won bronze as a member of the women’s 4×200 freestyle relay. More interesting however, and certainly more relatable, is Caroline’s path post-swimming. A close cousin to my conversations with Olympians Anthony Ervin, Apolo Ohno and John Moffet, hers is a hard-wrought journey of self-discovery shrouded in institutional neglect and even, at times, abuse. Let’s just say she weathered some shit. But she faced it. She showed up and did the work. And she emerged at peace with her past and her self—now hellbent on helping forge healthier lives for the next generation of Olympians. Beyond the play-by-play of Caroline’s storied career, her experiences as a young swimmer, and what it was like to stand on the Olympic podium, this is a conversation about the psychological struggles she faced as a prodigious athlete. Her battle with depression. And her familiar addiction to people-pleasing. It’s also an alarming exposé on the harmful paradigms perpetuated by calcified athletic institutions—and what we must be done to better support the next generation of Olympians. But more than anything, this is a playbook on how to find power in vulnerability. How to listen to your body. And most importantly, how to use your voice. One of my very favorite people, Burks and I are buddies going back several years. A powerhouse and a humble empath, her energy is infectious. And I’m honored to share her story with you today. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. May her words inspire you to seek own your truth. To ask for help. Lean into vulnerability. And never stop learning. P. S. Links to a comprehensive collection of news coverage specific to the sensitive events discussed in this episode can be found in the show notes below. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Caroline Burckle?

  I walked away from the sport because I was tired of the politics and the feelings that I got about my worth as a human being and my body. And it was so exhausting to always feel like I was an object, or a project, or something. I couldn't figure out how to find my love for it again, so why not just run away? And I want to keep trying and forcing this if I'm just gonna feel angry at it. And that was my reason for stopping. I was tired. I was tired of what was going on. I was tired of feeling like I was just, like I said, this object, or this project, or not enough, or needed to be somebody for these coaches or these people I just wanted to be.

• 1:48Caroline Burckle?

  And it was such a powerful feeling within me that I was just so tired of that. And so I just ran away. So I sort of view my purpose in life as being able to heal, so the next generations can continue to heal. Regardless of if I have my own children or not, that's my whole mission, is how can you create space for people to know that they're able to be whatever they can be if they can really work on healing their mind and their body together? It's possible.

• 2:17Rich Roll?

  That's Caroline Burckle, and this is episode 565 of the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:33Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Needless to say, I am the first to admit it has been way too long since we've had some powerful female energy on the show. So today, we fix that courtesy of my buddy Burks, who you will soon discover has far more to offer than her admittedly impressive Olympic biography might suggest. But first, a quick reminder that we're running a special holiday deal on the Plant Power Meal Planner Stocking Stuffer Gift Cards. Just a great way to help graciously and conveniently ease your loved ones towards cooking and eating

• 3:12Rich Roll?

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• 3:40Rich Roll?

  Okay, Earth to Caroline Burkle. A fellow, former competitive swimmer, Caroline is a 23-time All-American. She's a two-time NCAA champion. In 2008, she was named NCAA Female Swimmer of the Year, mainly because she broke Janet Evans' legendary NCAA record in the 500 free, which at the time was the oldest record on the books. And Caroline would then go on to win a bronze medal in the 4x200 free relay at the Beijing Olympics. More interesting, however, and I think highly relatable, is her life post-swimming. So this is a conversation about her athletic career, of course, the psychological struggles that

• 4:25Rich Roll?

  she faced as a prodigious athlete, her battle with depression, and her familiar addiction to people-pleasing, something that I personally very much relate to. But it's also an expose on the harmful paradigms perpetuated in athletic institutions and what we must do to better support the next generation of Olympians. But more than anything, this exchange is a playbook, a playbook on how to find power in vulnerability. How to listen to your body and ultimately, how to use your voice. Burks and I are buddies going way back several years.

• 5:06Rich Roll?

  She is both a powerhouse as well as a humble empath. Her energy is super infectious and I'm honored to share her story with you today. May her words inspire you to find your own truth and to never stop learning. So without further ado, this is me and Caroline Burckle.

• 5:30Rich Roll?

  Burckle, you're in the house.

• 5:32Caroline Burckle?

  Hey dude.

• 5:32Rich Roll?

  It took a minute to make this happen.

• 5:35Caroline Burckle?

  I think for a reason.

• 5:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Oh, definitely for a reason.

• 5:38Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 5:39Rich Roll?

  Well, we met, was it like five years ago at this point? At that Mind Body Green thing?

• 5:44Caroline Burckle?

  Dude, I saw that picture the other day. It popped up in my reminders or whatever. Memories.

• 5:49Rich Roll?

  Thing, yeah.

• 5:50Caroline Burckle?

  What year was that?

• 5:51Rich Roll?

  It might've been 2015, 2016 maybe.

• 5:54Caroline Burckle?

  We took it to send to Jack.

• 5:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 5:57Caroline Burckle?

  And it was, I remember it specifically. I was like, dude, we know, I know the same person you know. And it was like this moment where we, let's send him a selfie.

• 6:06Rich Roll?

  It wasn't the kind of conference where you expect to run into swimmers.

• 6:10Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, no.

• 6:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I didn't know who you were and then we met and we immediately hit it off. That was super fun to establish that we both were friends with Jack Roach. He's this beautiful mentor in the swimming community. You know, this amazing human being who I know means so much to you and is a more recent friend of mine, but somebody who I care deeply about. So that was like our, our, our meeting point, our meet cute.

• 6:33Caroline Burckle?

  Yes.

• 6:33Rich Roll?

  And then we became friends ever since. And I think the last time I saw you was that up in Tahoe when we did that training camp?

• 6:40Caroline Burckle?

  Yes.

• 6:41Rich Roll?

  So it's been a couple of years. That was 2017.

• 6:44Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, there's a reason for that on my end, but.

• 6:46Rich Roll?

  But here's the thing, the minute I met you, I was like, this girl's lit. Like she would be great for the podcast, but she's dealing with a few things. I think I'll let her bake for a little while.

• 6:57Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, you needed to let me bake.

• 6:59Rich Roll?

  Sort a few things out and I'm glad that I did. Like you said, these things, you know, that timing is important. And I think the time for this is perfect right now. I think had we done it. A couple of years earlier, it would be a very different conversation.

• 7:12Caroline Burckle?

  Very different.

• 7:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Caroline Burckle?

  Half of the things wouldn't have, I would have never been aware of half of the things that I would want to talk about.

• 7:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:19Caroline Burckle?

  It wouldn't even have been in my consciousness, like it would have been buried seven layers deep.

• 7:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:24Caroline Burckle?

  Way down.

• 7:25Rich Roll?

  Maybe I could have teased it out to you a little bit.

• 7:27Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, I probably would have been like sobbing my eyes out.

• 7:29Rich Roll?

  But now you're, you know, fully embracing this growth trajectory that you've been on. And I think what's unique and interesting about you as somebody who has hosted several conversations with Olympians over the years and plenty of Olympic swimmers, most of those conversations are rooted in the Olympic experience itself. And we're going to talk about that with you, of course, but what's most interesting about your story is the aftermath of that and the kind of growth that you've experienced and the issues that you've wrestled with, you know, post-career to become this more actualized human being.

• 8:07Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, it's been a ride.

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Caroline Burckle?

  When I think back, I was actually listening to your podcast with John Moffet Sunday morning.

• 8:14Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:14Caroline Burckle?

  Oh, my God. I was just, I was walking, I was on my like power walk for five, six miles because I'm trying to get some foot time in right now. Like trying to get back to running still.

• 8:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Caroline Burckle?

  Still on this like five-year journey back to running. And I was listening to that podcast with him and it was just speaking to me because he was like, I don't even remember that person.

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  Hmm, right.

• 8:32Caroline Burckle?

  I don't even remember the person that competed in the games. I remember this other person that was, you know, afterward and the feelings that I had and the emotions that went through this process to transition. And I felt so seen. I feel seen. I'm not the only person that feels like I just don't identify with that one, you know, Olympic name in my life. That wasn't just it for me.

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:01Caroline Burckle?

  And I feel selfish. I feel selfish saying that.

• 9:04Rich Roll?

  Why?

• 9:04Caroline Burckle?

  Admittedly, right now, I feel selfish saying that.

• 9:07Rich Roll?

  Because you feel like it's such a gift to have had that Olympic experience. And with that, there's some responsibility that you shoulder to communicate about it in a certain way?

• 9:19Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, because here I am, 34, I run a business of Olympic and professional athletes that give back to the next generation.

• 9:28Caroline Burckle?

  And I have shame associated with being an Olympian. So, you know, it's like this, this pull of both directions. It's like, you need to be this and you need to be really proud of it. But you also like had this experience with it and you're not really wanting to claim and own some of that experience. And so, how can you settle in the middle of that?

• 9:47Rich Roll?

  But what is that about? Like, where does the shame emanate from?

• 9:52Caroline Burckle?

  Where do you want to start?

• 9:53Rich Roll?

  Let's start at the beginning. We can go all the way back to the beginning. We can go back to the quarry pool in Kentucky.

• 10:00Caroline Burckle?

  Did you ever swim there?

• 10:01Rich Roll?

  I haven't, but it's on my bucket list. I love, you know, outdoor pools like that. I was in Austin a few weeks ago and went to Barton Springs. I just, you know, and when I was in Australia, swimming at icebergs every day. Like, I love those pools.

• 10:15Caroline Burckle?

  I was so jealous when you were there. To answer, to sort of say the first thing first about the shame with being an Olympian and the shame, you know, why is it that it's so difficult to say that you have that if you're also trying to hold this image that you're proud of it? Is that I have this concept in my mind that I cannot have both. I cannot have a feeling about being Olympian that's negative and also the feeling about being Olympian that's positive. I've been raised to think-

• 10:49Rich Roll?

  So you default to the negative?

• 10:50Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. I'm sure you very well know that. I know you well. I feel like I get you-

• 10:56Rich Roll?

  Not being an Olympian, I can't own that aspect of it.

• 10:59Caroline Burckle?

  But the feeling of, you know, how could I be so proud of it and also have so much trauma and shame associated with the same thing? Like, how are both of those things possible? And I grew, growing up, I didn't think I could have two feelings. It was, you had to have one feeling and it needs to be this and you need to follow that. Like, you're not allowed to have multiple opinions and feelings and, and-

• 11:30Rich Roll?

  Or perhaps the shame is a result of not feeling the way that you feel like you're supposed to feel about that experience.

• 11:36Caroline Burckle?

  Right, yeah. Because that's what has been ingrained, is that that is just, that's it. You've got to feel really good about that.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  Don't you know how lucky you are?

• 11:45Caroline Burckle?

  Okay, so should we start there? Because that is something I've been unpacking a lot over the past couple of years is-

• 11:54Caroline Burckle?

  Growing up, I grew up in this amazing pool, this great city, this wonderful family. It was wonderful. But the society that I grew up in Louisville was very much, you should be very grateful for what you have. Don't question it. This is the way it is. This is who you are. And I grew up in this mindset of, well, I can't have a darn bad feeling to save my life. Because if I have a bad feeling, or if I have a negative feeling, or thought, or emotion that comes up, then I'm a bad person. My character is bad.

• 12:33Rich Roll?

  Does that come from the parents, the parental units? Or where does that idea germinate from?

• 12:40Caroline Burckle?

  It comes from several avenues. I grew up in a very strict Catholic school system. So we're at church three times a week. Oh, my goodness. I mean, so church three times a week. And I don't want to talk poorly about the system that it was, but I always felt like I was so different than everybody there in the first place. So I grew up in this place where everyone's telling me what to do and how to do it. And I didn't like that. I didn't like that feeling of, why do I have to think one way? You know? So it originated there. This, I have to please. I can't have my own thoughts and opinions and emotions. I can't have more than one feeling, and it needs to be positive, or else people will be upset with me.

• 13:24Caroline Burckle?

  And so that whole thing that I've been unpacking was sort of a pattern that I continued to follow throughout my career and my life.

• 13:31Rich Roll?

  Your brother doesn't seem to harbor that, though.

• 13:34Caroline Burckle?

  Interestingly enough, not as much.

• 13:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So part of that, perhaps, is because you were a girl.

• 13:39Caroline Burckle?

  My father was tough.

• 13:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Rich Roll?

  So your parents were both athletes. Your dad owned all these fitness clubs, right? Tennis and swim clubs?

• 13:49Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, tennis and swim.

• 13:50Rich Roll?

  So it was a very active... Ensemble.

• 13:53Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. So he swam for U of L. He swam for Lakeside. He was like Mary T's teammate. Him and Mary T grew up together. She would kick his ass, the whole thing, you know?

• 14:02Rich Roll?

  So Mary T's gotta be like a huge looming presence in, you know, in the swimming kind of lore of Kentucky, right?

• 14:09Caroline Burckle?

  She's amazing.

• 14:10Rich Roll?

  For people that don't know, I mean, she dominated Butterfly for years and set world records that at the time just seemed untouchable.

• 14:18Caroline Burckle?

  Oh, my God, Madame Butterfly.

• 14:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:20Caroline Burckle?

  I mean, her stories, the stories just of her practice with her lungs collapsing and her finishing 10 500s Butterfly. It's insane. I'm like, what? Your lungs collapsed and you finished 10 500s Butterfly? Like, what are you talking about? So, you know, she was a legend there and it was a gift to swim for Lakeside. You know, it was like, you're lucky. You're in this space where you're in this outdoor rock quarry pool. You should be so lucky. And so, yeah, so my dad owned these fitness clubs. My mom was a tennis player. So she played professional, top pro. And her whole mindset is, she's from here. She's from California. So she's just like, woo,

• 15:05Caroline Burckle?

  like, you know, you do you, like, I'mma do me. Like, her whole deal is very open mind, free mind. Like, she's just very spirited and my dad is very strict and, you know, dogmatic and follows the rules. And so the combo of them, I think, was confusing for me as a child. Cause I felt this pull to like, please, but then also like, you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want. Please, you can do whoever you want and be whoever you want. And

• 15:33Rich Roll?

  But a little bit of each of those is probably good.

• 15:35Caroline Burckle?

  Absolutely. Absolutely. And they also, you know, grew up in really tough environments themselves. So like knowing where they came from and what their background is makes a whole lot of sense.

• 15:48Caroline Burckle?

  So that's sort of where all this originated.

• 15:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:50Caroline Burckle?

  Is in this space of, as a child, how could I have had?

• 15:56Caroline Burckle?

  More than one feeling.

• 15:57Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:58Caroline Burckle?

  And not plea, like I had to please. But that came from everywhere.

• 16:03Rich Roll?

  Well, the people pleasing comes into play in a big way later down the line. We're going to work our way up to that. But at this early age, was it that, was there an expectation? Like you're going to be this athlete? Or it was just, it was kind of the atmosphere that you were in, right? It was just an active environment and you were just by dint of being your parents' kid, like around a swimming pool all the time.

• 16:26Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, so they dropped us off at 8:00 AM, pick us up at 9:00 PM when it closed. We were at the pool all day long. I mean, totally unsupervised, just running around like pool rats. Clark was competing with every 18 year old. And as a nine year old, she's like, let's compete, you know, let's do this. I was not that way, really. I had a very, um, more of a calm demeanor with competition. Like I didn't really, I wasn't really like a savage competitor. I didn't really have this like, I'm going to do this and win. And like, I need to train, you know, 20 hours a day. And but I had this like, I want to be here around my friends. I enjoyed the social aspect of it. And I really liked this feeling of being a part of a team and a community.

• 17:10Caroline Burckle?

  And my suit's cute and, you know, all of these different things that I could experience as a young girl that felt like, um, I was just free to be me in that space. Like I could just be me.

• 17:24Rich Roll?

  That's so interesting because that's atypical of somebody who excels at the highest level. Right? Like you're, have this kind of freewheeling approach to the whole thing. Was the talent immediately evident from the beginning? Or did that, how did you grow into that aspect of, of being a true competitor?

• 17:46Caroline Burckle?

  I had a lot of talent as a young girl. I had a lot of natural, just fluid talent. I was not a workhorse. I was a racehorse. So, you know, I didn't perform in practice. So when people would see me as a little girl, they would have never guessed that I was really good because I was dog last and I don't practice all the time.

• 18:08Rich Roll?

  But then you get up on the blocks for the race and win?

• 18:10Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, I had something innate within me that I could click on and off very well. I didn't have to show that or prove that to people. I didn't feel the need to do that. Swimming felt like this artistic expression or something internal that I could do that felt like for one time in my day or in my life or in my week, I could feel free and that I didn't have to do it for anybody else.

• 18:36Rich Roll?

  That's a very 2020 relationship to sport, but not a very 1995 relationship to sport.

• 18:44Caroline Burckle?

  But that's why I felt so outcast with every, like, nobody understood me. There wasn't a meet that went by as a child in high school and college to where I really felt seen for how I performed and the way that I trained and the way that I saw my relationship with the sport. I wasn't obsessed with times. I wasn't obsessed with stats. I didn't know any of that. My brother was that. My brother was like, boom, boom, boom. Here's your time. Here's your split. And I'm like, ah, I can't.

• 19:15Rich Roll?

  I'm trying to visualize what the communication would have been like with your coaches at the time then because that must have been frustrating. Or was it a situation in which, you know, they're trying to, you know, jam this square peg into a round hole and you're just doing your own thing?

• 19:31Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, Mike DeBoer, who, do you know Mike?

• 19:33Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:35Caroline Burckle?

  Legend of a coach.

• 19:36Rich Roll?

  Lakeside coach?

• 19:37Caroline Burckle?

  Lakeside coach. Legend of a coach. He got me. It took him a little bit, but he got me. And so, once I got into his group, so it's like, you know, bronze, silver, gold, pre-senior, senior. Like, once I got into his senior group, it was like boom. I could feel seen. I was, which I know it's a very cliche term, but now looking back. I felt so comfortable with him because he understood the way that I performed was in my body. It was a somatic experience of this feeling. I was a feeling athlete and I wasn't a thinking athlete. I didn't have the stats and the splits and all of that down. I had no idea. I had no idea what I was going into at a meet. I had no idea

• 20:21Caroline Burckle?

  what ranking I was. I had no idea. I'd miss my races all the time because I didn't pay attention.

• 20:26Rich Roll?

  It's kind of hilarious and endearing though because swimming is so stats driven. It's all about what the pace clock is telling you and your heart rate and you know, you know kind of the splits that you need to hit to get your goal time and you know what the Olympic trials qualifying time is and all of that stuff is like imprinted onto the brain. But not for you.

• 20:49Caroline Burckle?

  No. And I tried. I tried really hard. I remember sitting down and writing my goals and trying to figure out my splits. And I remember these stories where I would sit at the kitchen table at our very first house, you know, Barbary Lane. And my parents would sit there and help me. My mom, of course, had no, she was not into that either. But my dad would sit and help me with splits. And I just did not understand it. There was no comprehension at all as a child. Like I, it was right over my head. And I tried. Like, I tried really hard. And I'm glad that I did because I could see that side of it. That's really important to develop and understand. But I personally just, I didn't, it didn't resonate with me.

• 21:30Rich Roll?

  So I suspect not so good in math class.

• 21:33Caroline Burckle?

  Horrible. Like failed the whole way through. But like oddly enough, like, you know, all A's in language arts and art and spelling and science and social studies and all of these other classes, but math, straight fail. And I would go to tutors and I, you know, I'd come home crying so much just because I felt like I was a failure because I wasn't the same as everybody else. My school was a math and science school. It was heavy in that. And I was this artist, this mind that was free thinking and saw things abstractly and, you know, shapes and all, and all these things. Like I count things by like this curtain right here. I'll count by the number of creases in it, you know, like I'm weird. I think

• 22:18Caroline Burckle?

  of things in a very odd and abstract way. And that was not okay. Like when I, that was not okay. That was very confusing to people. And so, once I started to realize that, I started to gear myself more towards things like that in high school and stuff. I took art and AP art and stayed in that lane. But when it came to swimming, I really had to work with Mike on what that looked like for me, because I wasn't the same as everybody else in the pool.

• 22:44Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Do you think that your swimming career would have looked different if you'd just stayed in, under his tutelage the whole time?

• 22:53Caroline Burckle?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:54Rich Roll?

  Because he understood, yeah.

• 22:55Caroline Burckle?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Caroline Burckle?

  I think there would have been a learning curve again, and again, and again, as I went on through the ranks of it. You know, like, I would have changed, and I would have grown, and I would have gone through X, Y, Z, and it would have gone over and again. But, oh, I think about that all the time, just like what I could have achieved or done differently. And I suppose that's normal for people to think about.

• 23:20Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 23:21Caroline Burckle?

  But, um, yeah, having to go to college then and sort of relearn, or have a, have a coach relearn me, was a whole exhaustion, exhausting process.

• 23:33Rich Roll?

  We're getting up to that. But, but first, was there, I'm wondering whether there was like an inflection point early in your career when you were still in high school, where you were like, oh, man, like, I'm really good at this. Like, was there a race, or an event, or something that occurred that, that, you know, dawned upon you, like, oh, I've got a real bright future?

• 23:54Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, so, um, I was a breast droger first, so...

• 23:59Rich Roll?

  That's weird.

• 24:00Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Rich Roll?

  I wouldn't have thought that.

• 24:01Caroline Burckle?

  I mean, that was my first junior national cut, and my first senior national cut.

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  So, how old were you when you first made junior nationals?

• 24:08Caroline Burckle?

  Thirteen.

• 24:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, okay.

• 24:10Caroline Burckle?

  I didn't go.

• 24:11Rich Roll?

  Why not?

• 24:12Caroline Burckle?

  Because I wasn't ready.

• 24:15Rich Roll?

  According to who?

• 24:17Caroline Burckle?

  Me. So, I had this, uh...

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  Who doesn't go? Like, that's a big deal when you're a young kid and you make that, that qualifying time.

• 24:25Caroline Burckle?

  I, I, uh...

• 24:28Caroline Burckle?

  I remember, so it was at the University of Kentucky. I made it in the 100 brushstroke and I got out and I remember my brother was like pumping his chest, just like happier than I was. I was like, sick, I made this cut, like, I don't even care. You know, it was this weird thing and he's like, dude, you know what that means? Like, you know what that means? You get to go to this meet in Orlando and all this stuff. And I'm like, no, I'm not going. I started crying on deck. And Mike looked at me and he is like, I could cry right now. And you know me, I'm very like vulnerable and emotional. So thanks for bearing with me. But he, um, he, he looked at me and he goes, you don't, you don't want to go? And I said, no, I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not there yet. And he was like, okay.

• 25:11Rich Roll?

  That's a impressive level of self-awareness for a young person, though.

• 25:16Caroline Burckle?

  I was extremely self-aware. I, I don't.

• 25:18Rich Roll?

  But how much of that was just fear of the unknown versus self-understanding?

• 25:23Caroline Burckle?

  Certainly fear, 100% fear. But my fear was stemming from going there and not making people happy if I performed poorly. So my fear was never that I wouldn't do well. Cause my fear didn't, how do I say this? Like, without sounding weird, I, I had a really strong trust in my ability. I knew I wasn't gonna be a bad swimmer. My fear was that I wouldn't please people. My fear was that I'd go and I'd fail and people would be upset with me. And if they're upset with me, that means I'm a bad person. And then if I'm a bad person, that means, you know, whatever else it means when you're 13 years old.

• 26:07Rich Roll?

  But it doesn't sound like your parents cared that much. So it wasn't coming from them, was it?

• 26:11Caroline Burckle?

  That's the crazy thing is they were extremely hands-off with my swimming. My mom didn't even know what, like, I'd, I'd swim and she would say, like, oh my God, like, that was, you know, that was a great swim. And mom, I just added 10 seconds, you know? She had no, she was just, you, but you were the cutest one out there. I'm like, thanks, mom, you know? My dad was more in tune, um, but they, they never made me feel badly for any of my performances. So. I've started to realize that I was running from something throughout this time. And then I kept running, which we'll get to, but I was running from something. And I think I just have this, and I had this very strong fear of upsetting people.

• 26:53Caroline Burckle?

  And I still think, you know, I think if you ask anybody that, where does that come from? Sure, you can pinpoint a person or a place or a thing or whatever. But truthfully, you create a story about where that comes from. You know, you create what that looks like. And then you have this whole scenario in your head about why you're not pleasing people. And I was so imaginative that my stories were seven ceilings high.

• 27:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. To me, it almost sounds like fear of your own strength and power.

• 27:24Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Rich Roll?

  That if you were to go to a meet like that and actually excel at the level that innately you knew you were capable of, that that would actually be the thing that would upset people. Not failing, but actually being as awesome as you knew that you could be. Like, that might ruffle feathers. Does that fit?

• 27:44Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, you struck a chord just there, for sure. Because upsetting people to me was not being liked, right? So if I'm not liked, which is the same thing as what you're saying, if I beat other girls, if I do, you know, greatness.

• 28:01Rich Roll?

  What does that mean?

• 28:02Caroline Burckle?

  Right. They don't like me. And if I'm not liked by these girls or by these people, then I'm a bad person.

• 28:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:12Caroline Burckle?

  It all stems back to this like innate worthiness within myself that like, I'm just not a good person if that happens, which is so interesting how that manifested at such a young age. But I, this happened all the time. I would let people beat me. I would literally let people beat me in meets sometimes because I was afraid to win.

• 28:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:31Caroline Burckle?

  I'd be looking around and they would be passing me and I would be like relieved. It was crazy.

• 28:36Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 28:37Caroline Burckle?

  And really, and then I'd get to the wall and just be so upset because I knew that I could have won and I still have my best races in my life. Knew I could have gone seven seconds faster than that.

• 28:47Rich Roll?

  It was more important to you to fit in than it was to excel at the level you were capable of?

• 28:54Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Caroline Burckle?

  And it's, it's a very.

• 29:00Caroline Burckle?

  It's an intense emotion to revisit. Because you know, then you think, well, what could I have done? And how do you train somebody to not give a shit about what people think? And like, how do you catch this? And like, you know, you could go down the rabbit hole of all the ways I could have done it differently. But the truth of the matter is, as a young woman, I didn't feel worthy enough. And bottom line, the issue is, I didn't feel worthy enough. And so that, you know, as a woman and as a young girl, I would imagine so many people feel the same way. And I know for a fact.

• 29:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing. I mean, you know, some people, maybe the majority of people listening to this, might struggle to connect with or relate to, you know, the high highs of your career and going to the Olympics and all of that. But that experience that you just related, I think, is highly relatable, especially, particularly to young female athletes.

• 29:55Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Rich Roll?

  Or young females in general. Because I don't think it's a thing that many guys go through.

• 30:02Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Rich Roll?

  But you can see it with young girls all over the place.

• 30:06Caroline Burckle?

  All over the place. And there's nothing wrong with it. I think it's just we're catching it faster. You know, like, we're able to catch it faster. People are becoming more aware. Coaches can become more aware. Parents, friends, peers can become more aware when someone's like, I'm not good enough. I don't want this person to be mad at me. You know, that's being caught faster, I think, so that these young women can actually move up a little, a little better and feel a little stronger and a little more empowered. And, you know, I say all this and it's, I'm so human. Like, I don't have a problem with saying I, like, knew that I was amazing and also freaked out that people wouldn't like me.

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:46Caroline Burckle?

  Like, but you know, it's so real.

• 30:48Rich Roll?

  That idea of I'm not good enough, but, but also the idea of it's not okay to be too good.

• 30:54Caroline Burckle?

  Right.

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. Yeah, too much, not enough syndrome.

• 30:58Rich Roll?

  You still stumble forward and, you know, continue to excel as you mature as an athlete.

• 31:04Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Rich Roll?

  So that must have been the little war that you were waging in your, in your, in your consciousness.

• 31:10Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, it, it's a trip to think back to when you're young and to start unpacking. You know, I don't know if you've ever done stuff like this where you just go back and it's not just the past 10 years, but it's the 10 before that. And then you start to realize. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure you have. Just gonna throw that out there. But um, it's, it's so fascinating to see the patterns. And the different things that you, you thought were just this problem and you need to push down. And when you can finally just say it and be like, I was afraid of being too much and I was not, I didn't think I was enough. And just say it and like get it off your body and let it out of your system.

• 31:53Caroline Burckle?

  It's like, oh, okay, I feel better now. And now where do I start?

• 31:57Rich Roll?

  Right. And it's confusing because those two ideas seem at odds with each other. How can you possibly harbor both of those thoughts at the same time?

• 32:06Caroline Burckle?

  It goes back to the two thoughts part, right? Like you can't, I can't have both of those. So it just must be one. And I just need to stick with it and deal with it and shove it down and move on and keep competing and make everybody happy. And then it's like, whatever, you know? And that was my mindset is it's just like, well, just keep going.

• 32:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the, the alcoholic disposition is you feel like you're superior to everybody and you know more than anybody else and you're more capable than anyone else. And at the same time, you're a complete piece of shit and don't deserve anything.

• 32:40Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 32:41Rich Roll?

  And those two identities coexisting at the same time.

• 32:46Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Rich Roll?

  Neither of which are true.

• 32:48Caroline Burckle?

  Right. And we create these stories that become such a reality. And especially if you're an imaginative soul and you have all of these, you know, little fairy tales in your mind.

• 33:00Rich Roll?

  Artistic sensibility, Caroline.

• 33:03Caroline Burckle?

  Like nothing is in like a linear sequence in your brain. You've got like 12 different Alice in Wonderland's going on. So it's like, oh, that must be true. Oh, that must be true. Well, that's true. You know, and you're picking from all these parts of yourself. And I think that's where I could, that was a blessing, but it could also be a curse for me as a swimmer and as a human in general.

• 33:25Caroline Burckle?

  It was a lot to unpack when I finally did. I was, there's a lot of shame that comes with that. Cause you feel.

• 33:33Caroline Burckle?

  I think what I started to really pick apart, I guess, I don't know if that's the right word, but dissect, was how is it possible to hold space for something like that? Like, how is it possible to hold space for parts of you that you have a lot of shame in, parts of you that you have a lot of grief? Like, you grieve parts of yourself with people pleasing, which is a weird thing as well. And also not sound like a victim all the time, or like you're complaining. You know, so doing that works hard because you don't know how to say it and feel like you can own it and claim it because you don't want to complain.

• 34:18Caroline Burckle?

  You don't want to sound like you're complaining to people.

• 34:20Rich Roll?

  You don't want to be a burden to other people, too, with that.

• 34:22Caroline Burckle?

  So I just didn't. And I just didn't for however long.

• 34:26Rich Roll?

  How'd that work out?

• 34:28Caroline Burckle?

  Horribly.

• 34:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Rich Roll?

  All right. So by the time you're a senior in high school, though, you're crushing it. I assume you're getting recruited at all these colleges. You're probably rocking out the NAG, you know, records and all that kind of stuff at that point.

• 34:58Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. So my college recruiting experience was really interesting. I went to Arizona, Texas, Northwestern, Florida, Cal and Stanford. Stanford. My mom was like, let's go to California. You know? My dad's like, no. So I ended up having to choose between Arizona and Florida because I wanted to train with the guys. I loved training with guys.

• 35:26Rich Roll?

  Those are the only two programs where they trained together.

• 35:28Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. Ended up choosing Florida.

• 35:30Rich Roll?

  So what was that about? Why was that important?

• 35:34Caroline Burckle?

  This is like kind of strange. So I somehow knew that, first of all, I trained with guys at Lakeside, tons of guys. There was like five people on the senior team that were girls. The rest were dudes. My brothers were, I grew up around guys, like a lot of guy cousins. I just, I liked that energy for training. I didn't even know what it was like to really train with all girls. So I was sort of just biased right off the start. But I also knew that the men backstrokes in the 200 were equivalent to what I wanted to be in the 200 free. I didn't know times, but I remember my brother saying to me, if you want to go really fast in your 200 free, you need to train with dudes in the 200 back.

• 36:14Caroline Burckle?

  Cause it's the same time. And I was like, whatever that means. But so, you know, I checked the box of looking at University of Florida, palm trees, like Mike DeBoer's best friend, Martin Wilby was one of the coaches.

• 36:27Caroline Burckle?

  You know, men and women's team, warm weather, and a lot of male backstrokes. So I can train with them. Isn't that weird? And I ended up doing it my whole career too.

• 36:36Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, you're, you're somebody who has a lot of guy friends. Like it feels like most of your friends are dudes.

• 36:41Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 36:42Rich Roll?

  You know, so not, I think the word masculine has a pejorative when used in association with somebody who's a woman, but there's like, there is a masculine aspect to how you carry yourself socially.

• 36:54Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. Yeah. I like to hang.

• 36:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And you're super tight with your brother.

• 36:58Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I, I really needed that experience and I wanted that experience. And, and then he ended up going there.

• 37:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 37:06Caroline Burckle?

  And that was like a dream come true.

• 37:07Rich Roll?

  He transferred though, right?

• 37:08Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. There was a lot that went on with that. Just a lot of, yeah, there was a lot that went on with that. But you know, Greg Troy recruited me to University of Florida.

• 37:20Caroline Burckle?

  And he was my main coach throughout the years there. And that, you know, that's the whole up and down relationship between him and I.

• 37:31Caroline Burckle?

  But yeah, so I went to University of Florida and up signing with them, full scholarship. Went in my freshman year.

• 37:39Caroline Burckle?

  Oh, man, I had the best freshman year out of all the years, really, actually.

• 37:46Caroline Burckle?

  Two hundred free, five hundred free at SECs, won them at SECs, was second in both at NCAAs. And then my sophomore year came around and I had so many expectations and I just swam like crap. I mean, it was a rough year for me.

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  So what was the change? Like, what do you attribute that dip to?

• 38:05Caroline Burckle?

  Expectations.

• 38:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Caroline Burckle?

  So.

• 38:08Rich Roll?

  So suddenly you're this artistic personality who kind of just goes with the flow. And suddenly you're in a position where you're actually paying attention to all that stuff that everybody had been telling you all along that you needed to pay attention to. And it had the opposite effect.

• 38:24Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, so all of a sudden I had to pay attention to times, like you said, you know.

• 38:29Caroline Burckle?

  And coming in as a freshman, there's no expectation. It's just, you know, go. And Greg Troy, you know, put a lot of pressure on me in my sophomore year. He also had me training in the distance group. So Anthony Nasty was my coach and Nasty is amazing. He's the greatest human, but every day I'd walk on the pool deck, on the outdoor pool deck where the distance group trained. And he would say, why are you out here? I don't know why you're out here. And I'm like, I don't either. I don't, you know, I cannot do four one thousands for time, right? Like, that's not the way I train. So I started, I started doing this distance training and stepping out of the weight room and then into the pool more and training straight distance and my body didn't respond.

• 39:13Caroline Burckle?

  I have pretty sensitive adrenals. And so it was like, boom, I was, you know, severely underweight. I wasn't training well. I wasn't competing well. I got sick a few times. I was also in an unhealthy relationship for the first year of my life. And so it was just like, coming from every angle was like the great storm of, oh, dear God, like now I have to like prove myself and people don't like me again and I'm not well and I don't know what to do.

• 39:44Rich Roll?

  Was there pressure to lose weight?

• 39:47Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 39:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:49Caroline Burckle?

  Every day I went on the pool deck, I was told either, you know, tighten it up or go on an extra run this week or.

• 39:58Caroline Burckle?

  You know, there were specific groups for extra runs and stuff and I was not anywhere near needing to do an extra run. And that was, that was a really, really hard time for me. I, I didn't know either how to, I didn't have a voice. I didn't speak up. I didn't say a damn word, you know, because I believed in what was going on. I believed in it. And I just remember being so confused, like, I don't understand why I'm being told these things. Like, why am I not enough? So we're back to that again.

• 40:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, you have a certain level of success in your, you know, you're this big fish in a small pond in Kentucky. But then, you know, for people that are unfamiliar, like, the University of Florida was a mecca of swimming. We were in that bubble pool, right? That like, that epic architectural pool. Is that still there? I love that pool.

• 40:55Caroline Burckle?

  Yep, with a little five lane outdoor pool.

• 40:57Rich Roll?

  Right. Greg Troy, legendary coach, Anthony Nestie, Olympic gold medalist in the Hunter Fly from Suriname, right? I remember they, when he won the gold medal, they like, they put him on the currency, like he was such a national hero.

• 41:12Caroline Burckle?

  Oh, yeah. He would go back for parades and they parade him around in a chair, you know, the whole deal. And he married this beautiful, tall redhead woman and they had the most amazing little girl. Like, I mean, he was just fantastic. And, you know, honestly, unfortunately, he was the distance coach, so I didn't have a lot of interaction with him after sophomore year.

• 41:33Rich Roll?

  What was the decision that you needed to go into the distance program? Because, I mean, that ends up being your thing, but that wasn't what you arrived thinking you were going to be doing.

• 41:42Caroline Burckle?

  He wanted me to swim the mile. He wanted me to, I don't know. I really don't know.

• 41:51Rich Roll?

  Well, he was kind of right.

• 41:53Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, I mean, I was good at the 500. That was like the-

• 41:57Rich Roll?

  And the 800 meters, too.

• 41:58Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, yeah. But I wasn't mentally a miler. That wasn't my thing. I was a very much 500 that went toward the 200 and not the other way.

• 42:11Caroline Burckle?

  But I mean, the amount we trained, you know, John's interview with you. Oh, my God. I mean, we were training four times a day.

• 42:23Rich Roll?

  Four times a day?

• 42:24Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, we had morning practice, we had weights in dry land, and we had afternoon practice. So morning, go to class, go to weights, go back to dry land, go to afternoon practice, eat, go to bed.

• 42:35Rich Roll?

  So two, two, two pool sessions and two gym sessions every day?

• 42:39Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Caroline Burckle?

  And I was tapped.

• 42:42Rich Roll?

  And you're looking at like, maybe 15,000 yards a day or something?

• 42:46Caroline Burckle?

  Easy, easy. Some days way more. But I was just tapped, you know? And so I think there was a belief that I needed more training. And I remember one day I walked into the pool deck sophomore year, and it was like four, 2,000? No, nine, what, nine 1650s.

• 43:07Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 43:08Caroline Burckle?

  And I mean, I'm not kidding, Rich, like, I start crying, like, immediately start, like, and I was, I didn't know what to do.

• 43:15Rich Roll?

  1650 is a mile. So nine, nine one mile repeats in the pool.

• 43:20Caroline Burckle?

  I mean, let's put it this way, it takes from two until like seven. So I just start crying.

• 43:25Rich Roll?

  Unlike the 18 minutes or something like that?

• 43:28Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. And so Nesty comes up to me, and he puts his hands on my shoulders, and he was like, "You're gonna be okay." I'm like, "I don't know if I am, actually, you know, I'm gonna give this a try." But, um, he, they pulled me out at four. So that day I only did four, but I'll, I'll never forget, I got out at four, they still had five more, they didn't finish till like seven, by the way, 7:00 PM. And I called Mike DeBoer, and I'm sitting on the side of the pool, the outdoor pool, like, over in a corner, on my little flip cellphone, you know, it's like 2,005 and a half or whatever. And I just said, "Something's not right. I'm not, I'm not doing what I need to be doing here. Like, something isn't right." And, and he was just, he talked me through it, like, you know.

• 44:12Caroline Burckle?

  What are you training? What's going on? Whatever. I guess what happened was he ended up talking to one of the coaches, Willby. Willby talked to Troy and it was like, we need to switch around her training again. Like she can't be training this way. It's not working for her. So they ended up putting me back in the weight room, two extra days a week, and putting me in the middle distance group and breaststroke group, like breaststroke IM. And I started swimming way better, like lights out. So, you know, the balance of that, but also I think as I sort of have reflected on that, feeling seen from Mike, and then having a conversation with my coach and connecting on that level, and having a real conversation about what's happening with my body, why my cycles are gone, you

• 44:54Caroline Burckle?

  know, why I'm sick all the time, why my blood work sucks, like getting real with the actual biological effects of what's gone on inside my body with that overtraining was eye opening for them and also, you know, for me, because I didn't, I've never been overtrained before, really. Like, I didn't understand what that felt like. So that really was the first time in my life I saw the combination of the mind-body working together to kind of pivot me back on course.

• 45:26Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 45:27Caroline Burckle?

  I didn't have that connection before. I always, you know, so to kind of refer back to what I was saying earlier, I always sort of felt weird because I had that innately. I knew that I was a somatic experiencer and I felt things in my body, but I didn't understand that the brain and the body were working together to feel things and that where you feel one, you feel the other.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  It's very similar to John Moffet's trajectory, because he was, you know, a guy who couldn't handle that kind of volume, but had the self-awareness and the boundaries, the healthy boundaries to say, like, I'm not going to that morning workout. Like, it's not in service to the goals that I've set or of the team. And I think people don't understand how difficult it is to create that boundary, because you're part of this program that's legendary and this is what we do here. So get in the pool and don't ask questions.

• 46:18Caroline Burckle?

  I used to have my academic advisor, Tim, pull me out of workouts because he knew how drained and tired I was, like my grades were suffering. And he would just have me sit in the OSL, the Office of Student Life, over in the corner and tell Coach that I had a tutor, quote unquote, because I was so drained. Yeah, I would just sleep.

• 46:41Rich Roll?

  And it takes a long time to emerge out of that.

• 46:43Caroline Burckle?

  Super long. I felt very guilty, held a lot of guilt there because it felt like everyone else is training, but I was also going through trauma. Like, I was also going through a very unhealthy situation with a relationship. And so not only that, my whole systems and sympathetic 24/7, showing up to the pool, you know, with zero hours of sleep because I'm up all night the night before, going through whatever I'm going through. And I get to the, you know, I wasn't even accounting for that. Like, I didn't realize how much that was playing a part in my performance. And it was like eye-opening to me to finally realize that that was working against me. Like, all of these factors were working against me. And if I didn't align myself in the right path, mind and body, I wasn't going to go anywhere.

• 47:26Rich Roll?

  But you emerge out of that.

• 47:29Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 47:31Caroline Burckle?

  Senior year, NCAAs was like the big emergence out of it. I slowly emerged, but that was my, probably my favorite performance.

• 47:41Rich Roll?

  Was that 2008?

• 47:43Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 47:43Rich Roll?

  So 2008, you break the NCAA record in the 500 free.

• 47:48Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 47:49Rich Roll?

  And that was the longest-standing record at the time, right? Was it Janet Evans?

• 47:54Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 47:54Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's pretty epic.

• 47:56Caroline Burckle?

  That was my favorite performance of my life.

• 47:58Rich Roll?

  Was it like 433 or something like that?

• 48:00Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, and I ripped two suits before that. And I remember just being totally in flow. Like, I don't remember that race at all. I touched the wall and I had oodles of energy. I could have gone for another 500. And I remember just being like, holy shit. Like, trials are in three months. I'm gonna do this. Like, I remember that thought going through my mind, like, the moment that I touched the wall.

• 48:26Rich Roll?

  I'm going to the Olympics.

• 48:27Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, and also with that comes a lot of, you know, pressure, but that moment was really powerful for me because it was the first time that I felt like I really hit that stride of feeling in flow and seeing the struggle throughout my college career come to a place where I could. Put aside these distractions that I had, you know, going on at the exact same time and use the tools that I had to make something happen. You know, it felt like.

• 48:58Rich Roll?

  And what were the, what were those tools specifically at that time?

• 49:04Caroline Burckle?

  I went from not doing any sort of mindset work at all, or really understanding what that was, to focusing in on that kind of stuff, breath work. I don't know if you'd call it meditation, but I'd journal, I'd.

• 49:18Rich Roll?

  Visualization.

• 49:19Caroline Burckle?

  Felt visualization, imagery. I wrote all my goals and images and pictures and none of my goals were in time. My locker had like the pictures or like an icon of something like a banana and that banana reminded me of like whatever I wanted to do was, you know, I was weird.

• 49:36Caroline Burckle?

  So that was a big factor in that, those tools. But also, I think I felt, I felt very aligned with, with Coach Troy at that time because right before that year, we had a huge, you know, conversation about the way I perform, what I need to go and do in practice. And a lot of that stemmed around like tempo work, visualization work, like our conversations were about that, like he saw me, you know, for the first time in that relationship as a coach to swimmer and I was able to really turn that around. And so I think it was the connection.

• 50:21Caroline Burckle?

  With him, like the connection that I felt finally, after however many years of feeling zero connection with this person, yeah, trust, communication, clarity.

• 50:35Caroline Burckle?

  So instead of this resistance that we had, like he doesn't get me, I don't get her, he doesn't get me, I don't get her. It was like one conversation, one, one two hour conversation could really change the trajectory of what I was going to do based on sharing what works for me and how I can be a better student of whatever it is that I need to get done through the methods that my brain understands, the learning styles my brain.

• 51:02Rich Roll?

  So forming some kind of partnership.

• 51:05Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Rich Roll?

  Type of relationship, yeah. So trials comes up three months later.

• 51:11Caroline Burckle?

  Three months later.

• 51:13Rich Roll?

  It's an interesting one because you end up making the Olympic team by getting fourth in the 200 freestyle, but you got a bunch of fours, right? And a fifth, like.

• 51:23Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, 100 free, 400 free. I barely, and then I would have medaled at the actual Olympics with the times I went. So I know it was a pretty.

• 51:32Rich Roll?

  It's like, yeah, it's like, it's gotta be like mixed emotions because you didn't actually qualify in an individual event.

• 51:38Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 51:39Rich Roll?

  You were just one place shy of getting that. You still medal at the Olympics in the relay. You swam the preliminaries and then also on the finals. So they bumped you up?

• 51:50Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Rich Roll?

  Did you just rock out a split they didn't expect or?

• 51:54Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. So this is where things kind of get interesting. My Olympic trials was a pretty emotional ride for me. I was going through like the thick of some traumatic experiences, literally at the trials, like in the process of that meeting.

• 52:19Rich Roll?

  Like relationship stuff?

• 52:20Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 52:21Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 52:22Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. So I think, you know, as I've, as I've worked through that too, that is where some of that resentment and shame comes from because I think to myself, could I have been better had I not had that kind of experience?

• 52:40Rich Roll?

  Been distracted by a boyfriend situation that wasn't working out?

• 52:43Caroline Burckle?

  Right.

• 52:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 52:46Caroline Burckle?

  So let's see, I made it in the, well, the 400 free, I missed it by a spot. 200 free, I made it. And then the 100 free and the 800 free, I was like fifth, fifth, fourth, something like that.

• 53:05Caroline Burckle?

  And you know, the trials are so intense. The most intense meet, way more intense than the Olympics. But you know, gearing up toward the Olympics, this was the year that prelims were at night and finals were in the morning in Beijing. So, you know, really having to change how I trained, like, I was a night swimmer. Now I had to be a both swimmer. Now I had to be a morning, a prelim, a final, the whole thing. But you know, that was, it was a really important time.

• 53:38Caroline Burckle?

  Olympic trials were a really important time to get to the, to the games. I think, I wish I would have made it an individual event, for sure. I still feel that.

• 53:47Caroline Burckle?

  But I also am so proud of myself for how I handled everything else that was going on and the way that I was able to show up during the darkest part of my life. Like, the, I was in the darkest, one of the darkest parts of my life before I even made the team. And so, you know, yes, the transition was really dark, but that part right before was really hard to pull myself out of to get there.

• 54:13Rich Roll?

  Were you keeping all that private, though? Or were you letting people help you?

• 54:17Caroline Burckle?

  I had one person helping me, my counselor at school. I didn't talk to anybody about it. My parents had no idea. My teammates, my roommates knew because they lived with me. But I didn't have any, you know, conversations with people about it.

• 54:33Rich Roll?

  And Greg tried it now, or?

• 54:37Caroline Burckle?

  You know, they did, but nothing's gonna-

• 54:41Rich Roll?

  It's complicated.

• 54:42Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, they can't do anything about it.

• 54:44Rich Roll?

  So when you reflect back on your Olympic experience, I mean, how do you, how do you think about it now versus then?

• 54:54Caroline Burckle?

  I feel like it was the beginning of my life, in a weird way. Like, it was like the first of so much to come. And it was a springboard, for sure, for a lot of different reasons.

• 55:11Caroline Burckle?

  But it was the beginning of my life in that- I was able to to look at, I'm able to look at it and know that I have sort of been reborn again from that experience. Like, I was a certain way leading up to it. And then this experience happens, and it's easy for people to say, sure, you go to the Olympics, of course you're reborn, you know, it's this big achievement. But personally, internally, the way my nervous system was wired, the way my whole body and my being are in this world, I was able to sort of start there and say, what's been working and what hasn't? And, and, you know, how can I go from here? Did I know that at the time? No. Did I know

• 55:50Caroline Burckle?

  that 10 years after? No. Do I look at it now and say, oh, wow, that was a beautiful thing. And I'm so glad that I can look at that experience and say, holy shit, I stood on the podium in front of the world, and also can see every age of Caroline Burckle. Two, four, six, eight, 10, 12, every age of myself there, showing up to that podium, every single age until that moment. And that's really special, because to me, it doesn't symbolize this like 200 free, like yay, that's great. But it's, to get there, it took all versions of me. And then to go from there, it's going to take a whole different Caroline.

• 56:34Caroline Burckle?

  And I think that feeling and that realization is powerful to feel, that you can have stages of your life like that.

• 56:42Rich Roll?

  What do people not fully understand about the Olympic experience? I mean, I suspect it's got to be disorienting to go from, you know, churning out sets in Gainesville to suddenly being, you know, foisted on the international stage and being on television in a bathing suit, for all the world to, you know, cast their judgments on and their opinions.

• 57:10Caroline Burckle?

  It's definitely.

• 57:13Caroline Burckle?

  It really challenges your focus. It challenges your ability to stay in your lane and to be able to to block things out really well, especially with media and with with other things going on. Luckily then, we didn't have a lot of media. There wasn't, we didn't have phones at the Olympics.

• 57:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:30Caroline Burckle?

  We didn't have phones.

• 57:31Rich Roll?

  Facebook was online, but it wasn't, there was no iPhone or anything like that.

• 57:36Caroline Burckle?

  No social media, no iPhones. We didn't have any technology in the village. The village is a very, you know, dense experience. There's just a lot of people, obviously vying for the same thing. So the energy is just palpable. You can feel it from everybody. But there's also this camaraderie. It's beautiful, you know, you see every country and every walk of life. And it's a really special experience. And you see a lot that you've never seen before, too, as a girl from Kentucky in Florida. And, I mean, I'm seeing the world, right? You're seeing the world right in front of you. And you have to really check yourself with what you've, you know, been thinking your whole life and and put your judgment aside and be able to to hone in on really what you're doing, accept everybody and kind of move forward. Because that's the point of the Olympics, right?

• 58:21Caroline Burckle?

  Is to accept everybody. The rings symbolize that unity of the world together. So it is a special experience where you're trying to compete against each other, but you're really trying to bring everybody together as the world into this special place to achieve this goal.

• 58:36Rich Roll?

  Do you feel like in the wake of that, you you departed Beijing thinking, I'm just starting, like, I got a bunch of force and I was on this relay and I got a medal. But, you know, my individual time would have medaled in this event, like, I'm getting back to work.

• 58:53Caroline Burckle?

  No.

• 58:56Caroline Burckle?

  I knew, I was bummed that I couldn't have medaled on my own. But I was so burnt out at that point. I was beyond ready to walk away and to run away. You know, I was listening to Apollo's podcast with you and he just, you know, some of the things he said struck a chord, too, just with, you know, the weight of gold and how that all works, right? And we can go down that path, but it's a, it's a whole.

• 59:32Caroline Burckle?

  It's a whole experience of what now?

• 59:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:38Caroline Burckle?

  And that's the easiest way to say it. But there really is no better way to say it.

• 59:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:44Caroline Burckle?

  It's daunting and also you can't be bothered to go back into the fires. Like, we're so good as athletes at focusing and at pivoting our focus. So we pivot to running and you don't look back that way because you're really damn good at what you do. So you're going to focus this way instead of focusing.

• 1:00:06Rich Roll?

  But you don't know what to focus that spotlight on. That's the problem. And on paper, like from a academic perspective, you know, who wouldn't want to hire an Olympian? These people know how to work hard. They know how to set a goal. They know how to achieve it. They know how to show up under pressure and overcome obstacles. Like, they just seem like the ultimate candidate for the marketplace. But it doesn't work that way. And I think the more often than not, it is the weight of gold where they become, they have this existential crisis, like, what am I supposed to do now? I've never thought about this because getting to where they got to achieve what they achieved

• 1:00:48Rich Roll?

  required every ounce of focus and discipline and intention. There just wasn't any time to ponder what comes after. And there aren't structures in place to help athletes with that transition.

• 1:01:02Caroline Burckle?

  No, none.

• 1:01:03Rich Roll?

  So that's why I think that movie was so, you know, so powerful and instructive.

• 1:01:08Caroline Burckle?

  It was incredible. I watched it a few times and was just sobbing my eyes out. Because, again, it goes back to that same conversation of how can you be feeling two things at once? Like, so proud, like, sick, you know, Lolo Jones, like, sick, I just won this medal and also I'm making smoothies, you know? So it's like, how can you be so angry and harbor this anger and frustration at what you've done and also be so proud and so excited that you've done this thing? And can't wait to like, tell your friends, like, you know, even though they know, can't wait to do all these other things? And.

• 1:01:46Rich Roll?

  But you can't tell your friends that you feel that way.

• 1:01:49Caroline Burckle?

  No, so much shame with that because they would think you're an entitled spoiled brat. Or, you know, that was my story. No one wants to hear that sob story, you know, and Michael Phelps says it really well, too. He says the same thing, like, I couldn't possibly tell people I was depressed. I had 700 gold medals. Like, there's no way I could tell somebody that I'm depressed. Like, there's no way that I could share, you know, that I've had suicidal thoughts. There's no way that I could share that, you know, I was in a traumatic situation or relationship. There's no way that I could share that, um, you know, God, I, that, that, that I hated myself at a certain part of, you know, day four at the Olympic.

• 1:02:32Caroline Burckle?

  You know, there's no way you can share these specific feelings because what then? What would, what would people think of you?

• 1:02:41Rich Roll?

  Right, right. You're, you're, you're a bulletproof Olympian.

• 1:02:45Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, you've got to be Superman. You know, you've got to be this special, um, force that, you know, people would kill to be in your shoes and, um, so, yeah, you could never say something that would jeopardize your Olympic status.

• 1:03:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Caroline Burckle?

  Because then if people find out, and not only people, but media, let's say media finds out and they're, oh, she's complaining about.

• 1:03:17Rich Roll?

  She's got a bad attitude.

• 1:03:18Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, she's got a bad attitude. So there's, there's.

• 1:03:20Rich Roll?

  She's a bad Olympian.

• 1:03:21Caroline Burckle?

  Right. And the, the, um, psychology of it is changing because I think there's a lot of awareness now around the fact that you can be depressed or having a difficult time or going through something traumatic and also perform. That both of those are okay. Again, back to the two things.

• 1:03:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, Michael is to be credited, you know, considerably for the work that he's done to expand that awareness.

• 1:03:48Caroline Burckle?

  Huge, and.

• 1:03:50Rich Roll?

  I mean, when you, you've, you were on the Olympic team with him. Like, is there, when you're, you've spent a lot of time with him, I presume.

• 1:03:56Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, he's great.

• 1:03:59Rich Roll?

  You know, was there any, like, I'm sure your, your, your relationship with him is when you're at swim meets, right? So you don't see that aspect of it.

• 1:04:07Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, no, and we saw it with Michael, though, just because he's.

• 1:04:13Caroline Burckle?

  He's vulnerable, like he could show, he wears his emotions, you know, on his sleeve. And so you could see him struggling, but you don't know to what extent. You don't know if that's just, you know, at that point in time, we're all so laser focused. You don't know if that's just like with training or with, you know, not going times you want to go or whatever it is, you just assume that that person is struggling for another reason, not with worth, even though I was struggling with worth. So it's like you can feel it, but we just never, it was like hush, but no one would ever utter those words.

• 1:04:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Caroline Burckle?

  We all feel this way, but no one's saying anything, you know? So he was like, the cat's out of the bag, like he broke the mold there of we've all been feeling this and somebody just needs to say it.

• 1:04:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Caroline Burckle?

  Cause we're all feeling it and walking around with this like weird thing where everyone's awkward and, oh yeah, I'm great. How are you? I'm great, you know, years later. And it's like, that's not the case. Like, let's just say it how it is. And also you can be struggling and be proud of your experience at the same time. No one's telling you, you can't have both.

• 1:05:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Caroline Burckle?

  You know, and, and I think that a lot of us felt like we couldn't have both.

• 1:05:30Rich Roll?

  So you kind of cut and run, right? Like you just, you just walked away from the pool for a little while. I mean, you found your way back to it, but you took this break.

• 1:05:40Caroline Burckle?

  So I cut and run. I didn't look one direction from a pool for years. First time I stepped inside of a pool.

• 1:05:48Rich Roll?

  Years?

• 1:05:49Caroline Burckle?

  Years, probably two and a half.

• 1:05:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:05:53Caroline Burckle?

  I retired in 2010. First time I stepped foot back into a pool was Clark's Olympic trials. And that was like really hard for me.

• 1:06:04Caroline Burckle?

  I cried so much at that meet by myself in the hotel room in Omaha and I was so proud of my brother. Like I have never seen a better race than his race to make the Olympic team in that 200 breaststroke. He's hands down the best underwater pullout kid in the world. I mean, he's insane. He's so strong and I was so proud of him and so emotional there at that meet.

• 1:06:29Caroline Burckle?

  But of course I didn't show anybody. I cried in my hotel room because of course I couldn't be seen.

• 1:06:33Rich Roll?

  Are there any other brother sister duos that have both become Olympians? There must be.

• 1:06:39Caroline Burckle?

  Crippens, I believe. Or no, maybe I'm thinking of something else.

• 1:06:45Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:06:45Caroline Burckle?

  I don't think so. Maybe in other sports.

• 1:06:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:06:48Caroline Burckle?

  In swimming, there's sister, sisters like Haley and Alyssa Anderson.

• 1:06:56Caroline Burckle?

  No, but that was, that was the first time. So you can imagine I ran away and the first time I come back is around the exact same world, the world I ran away from.

• 1:07:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:05Caroline Burckle?

  And I had a purpose. My purpose was to support my brother. So I was able to, again, block out my stuff, handle it on my own and be there for him. And I treated that whole Olympic trials like I was competing. My ass was up at 4 a.m., going on a run, getting ready, eating breakfast, like the whole, like I felt like I was in the experience, but I, I was not. Experience, like I wasn't in that experience. But so he makes the team and then we go to London. And that, again, you know, it's like my second meet back. And that was really difficult for me. So throughout this whole process, um, difficult but proud, so, I mean, I can't tell you like, I was way more proud of my brother than I ever was of myself.

• 1:07:47Caroline Burckle?

  It's crazy how that works. Uh, and I get to, um, oh, well, throughout that process, I was like, struggling with some body dysmorphia, some disordered eating, wasn't healthy. Let's put it that way. Um, at all. Like just full stop, wasn't healthy, wasn't eating, wasn't taking care of myself, didn't feel worthy of love. Period. Didn't have that. My system had been in overdrive. I had been in sympathetic, literally, for years. And I had not come down. My body was churning every last morsel of energy just to get through that meet.

• 1:08:30Caroline Burckle?

  And I got back from that meet and I just like. Crashed, like my body just started to break down. Like it was this whole thing with that. But that was the, that was sort of the first realization that I had I wasn't healthy.

• 1:08:45Rich Roll?

  Right. So between 2008, the Olympics, you walking away from the sport and 2012, when you, you don't really return to swimming, but you return to the culture, right? To support your brother, a lot, there's a lot that happened, right? So I want to spend a little bit of time here. I mean, you, you end up, you know, you're trying to find your way. You get a fashion degree, you got to fit them, right? And you're working with some apparel brands and you're employed. You're trying to figure it out. But I feel like there's a crucial event that takes place that I think, you know, puts you deeper into that psychological hole. And that happens around 2010.

• 1:09:29Rich Roll?

  So can we talk about that a little bit?

• 1:09:31Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. So I had transferred from the Fidham OC campus to the LA campus. So I was living with Haley Pierceall. And Aaron came to visit for like three months. Classic Aaron move.

• 1:09:49Rich Roll?

  Is he like living in Costa Rica now or something?

• 1:09:51Caroline Burckle?

  I guess, yeah. But he came to live with us. He just lived with us. I was on the corner of Los Ina and I got an Olympic, like, what am I doing here?

• 1:09:59Rich Roll?

  Right in LA, LA.

• 1:10:02Caroline Burckle?

  And I was, you know, I was working for Lululemon. I just like, I didn't know what to do, you know? So I was sitting in my apartment one night and I get like multiple calls in on my phone, one after the next. I'm like, who is this unknown number? I don't understand what's going on. And then I got a bunch of text messages and voicemails that were left. And I had just retired from swimming, so literally a month retired, fresh. I had been training, you know, for context, at Fullerton Aquatic Club with Sean Hutchison. And

• 1:10:46Rich Roll?

  And what was the intention of the training at that time? Because this is two, this is two years after the Olympics. Like, were you thinking you're, was it because you just couldn't let go of it and didn't know what else to do? Or did you have designs on some lofty goals?

• 1:11:04Caroline Burckle?

  I was just running. I was chasing different things to check off the list that I could just do. Like, I needed something to feel worthy. I needed to have something to show. So I just kept doing things. I was collecting accolades and degrees and all these things. And I was like, oh, yeah, I'll just do all these things. Distract myself.

• 1:11:25Rich Roll?

  You're living on Olympic in Los Yenagon. You're driving to Fullerton to swim. I mean, that's a hike.

• 1:11:30Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, I mean, I did that just until I retired. And then I was like, I can't do this anymore. Because you had to transfer campus for FIDM.

• 1:11:36Rich Roll?

  I got it.

• 1:11:36Caroline Burckle?

  But I felt like I just had to prove myself in the sport, you know? Like, I felt like I needed to finish it off and prove myself. And when I retired, I retired at Irvine Nationals.

• 1:11:50Caroline Burckle?

  I knew, I knew my last race. I knew it going into it. I knew the moment I did the 200 free, I was in lane one. I swam horrible. I got out, I started, went to the diving well, put my goggles on, tried to not let anybody see me cry. And Amanda Beard, of course, comes over and puts her arm on my shoulder. And she was, you know, she was an angel for me my whole career, by the way. She was an angel at the training camp with some coach situations. She was an angel, you know, afterward. She just said, like, you're gonna be okay. You may not know what you're gonna do, but you're gonna be okay. And I was like, okay. And, you know, this is coming from somebody that's like, started the sport seven different times. And, you know, had a crazy, cool career and child and, you know, all these things.

• 1:12:31Caroline Burckle?

  And so I just let it be. And I just walked away from the sport. But I walked away from the sport because I was tired of the politics and the feelings that I got about my worth as a human being and my body and my... Like, I was just tired. I just needed to get away. Like, it was so exhausting to always feel like I was like, an object of, or a project, or, you know, something that I couldn't...

• 1:13:04Caroline Burckle?

  I couldn't figure out how to find my love for it again. So like, why not just run away? I don't want to keep trying and forcing this if I'm just going to feel angry at it. And that was my reason for stopping. I was tired. I was tired of what was going on. I was tired of feeling like I was just, like I said, this object or this project or not enough, or needed to be somebody for these coaches or these people I just like wanted to be. And it was such a powerful feeling within me that I was just so tired of that. And so I just ran away. And that's when I had a lot of different things happening.

• 1:13:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:42Caroline Burckle?

  But I, I fully ended my career

• 1:13:47Caroline Burckle?

  on a very intense, like,

• 1:13:52Caroline Burckle?

  bodily feeling that I had to go.

• 1:13:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:55Caroline Burckle?

  Like I had to go. Like it was just too much for me.

• 1:14:02Caroline Burckle?

  And also, like, I got out what I put in, that I, that I, you know, that I got what I came for. I did what I wanted to do as a little girl.

• 1:14:12Rich Roll?

  On the, on the pool deck.

• 1:14:13Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Caroline Burckle?

  But oh, I just feel it in my body when I talk about that. Cause that moment, that moment was so powerful. It was, I was sitting on the side of the pool and I was ending this thing. It's like you're breaking up with this thing you've been with for 25 years or whatever. And it was just this, this is what, this is how it is.

• 1:14:34Rich Roll?

  This is how it's going to end? Just kind of petering out in a, in a local meet?

• 1:14:38Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:39Rich Roll?

  With a subpar performance?

• 1:14:41Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:42Caroline Burckle?

  Subpar performance, really not good. And proud of myself for continuing, but you know, I just wanted to prove myself. And when I realized that, I just didn't need to be in it anymore. I needed to find something else and I knew that I could, and I knew that I could, could be rebirthed in my life. And I had that feeling that that would happen. I just didn't know how.

• 1:15:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Caroline Burckle?

  I had no idea how. I had no idea what I was going to do.

• 1:15:06Rich Roll?

  Well, you move to La Cienega on Olympic and you start working for a Lululemon, apparently.

• 1:15:11Caroline Burckle?

  And then I walked the Santa Monica stairs every day. That's my workout.

• 1:15:18Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. So I moved there. I live with Haley. And then Aaron came to, came to live with us. And I was just very depressed during that time. I don't really recall.

• 1:15:31Caroline Burckle?

  Any moments that felt like pure joy for me, you know, I,

• 1:15:38Caroline Burckle?

  I was really struggling during that time. That was really hard for me. It's when I started to hide. Started to inch my way into the little hole, step by step.

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  And it was right around this time that you start, you got, this evening occurred where you get these weird text messages.

• 1:15:54Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Caroline Burckle?

  And that felt like the last straw for me. Like, that was like the last straw for me. So I get.

• 1:16:06Rich Roll?

  So explain, explain what happened. Yeah.

• 1:16:08Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Caroline Burckle?

  So my coach Sean from FAST was out with Coach Bowman one night and I guess, you know, whatever they were doing, they decided to send me some vulgar text messages and voicemails. And it involved myself and some of my brother and just things that were very traumatizing for me as a 20, I don't know, three-year-old girl that had just retired from the sport and also run away from that exact thing, that exact experience of, you know, abuse in a lot of ways. And so

• 1:16:51Caroline Burckle?

  I was just done. Like that, that moment was traumatizing for me. And it felt like, my, my initial reaction was that I needed to turn them in. So I turned messages in.

• 1:17:07Rich Roll?

  Right. So let's just contextualize it a little bit.

• 1:17:10Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:10Rich Roll?

  Sean Hutchinson is this from Coach at FAST and, you know, was a well-regarded coach who had birthed many a career. Bob Bowman is Michael, you know, famous for being Michael Phelps's coach. So you get these weird text messages from unknown numbers and it turns out it's Bob and Sean and they're off color, they're off putting, they're distasteful. We don't need to get into exactly what they said, but there's articles out there if you want to read about it. It's been reported in the press, but it was highly, highly inappropriate. And it also was a glimpse into, you know, some things that.

• 1:17:53Rich Roll?

  Sean had been doing that he shouldn't been doing with a friend of yours, a swimmer, Ariana Kukors, that then precipitated, after you report this, a whole scandal with USA Swimming, not just with respect to Sean and his inappropriate relationship with Ariana, and the legal actions that took place in the wake of that, but also more broadly about how USA Swimming deals with these sorts of situations historically.

• 1:18:27Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Rich Roll?

  So you get these weird text messages, in them you respond, and you're like, "This isn't funny, blah, blah, blah," and you reported at the time, right? So is this like 2011, 2010?

• 1:18:40Caroline Burckle?

  2011, the beginning of 11, or the middle of 10.

• 1:18:45Rich Roll?

  And what does USA Swimming say to you?

• 1:18:49Caroline Burckle?

  So I turned them in, and admittedly, following my classic Caroline pattern, my first message to them was, "Please just do what you need to do and leave me out of this. I don't want to make anybody upset." And that was my first reaction.

• 1:19:07Rich Roll?

  But being the people pleaser that you are, I suspect it was even a struggle for you to decide to report them to begin with.

• 1:19:15Caroline Burckle?

  Very, very difficult.

• 1:19:17Rich Roll?

  Despite it being so highly inappropriate.

• 1:19:19Caroline Burckle?

  Very difficult. Aaron actually was the one that encouraged me to do it. He's an advocate for what's right in USA Swimming, and he's been fantastic with that. And so I said, "Okay, okay, I'll do it. I don't want to upset anybody." So I turned them in, and I remember them asking me if I wanted to appear on a call. So I appeared on a call. Sean didn't show. Bob did show, and he was apologetic, and the whole thing. And that was that. There was never anything else done about it, and that, I think...

• 1:19:57Rich Roll?

  Bob Bowman gets named to be an Olympic coach the following year.

• 1:20:02Caroline Burckle?

  My brother's coach.

• 1:20:04Rich Roll?

  Right. So nothing happens to Bob Bowman at all, except maybe some stern words from Frank Bush, and that's kind of it.

• 1:20:10Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, that was it. And of course, I was so...

• 1:20:18Caroline Burckle?

  I don't know if the word traumatized is correct, but it's really the only word that comes up for me. That I just was like, sure, you guys do it. You know, I just want to stay out of it. Please just leave me out of it. I didn't feel I had a voice to even insert myself into this situation and share how I felt and what my thoughts were and what my feelings were.

• 1:20:41Caroline Burckle?

  And I since have felt more empowered

• 1:20:48Caroline Burckle?

  to talk about that and how it's absolutely not okay. And it just shouldn't happen across the board. But man, did I just not feel like I had any voice in that at all. There was no-

• 1:20:59Rich Roll?

  And when you raised your voice, it didn't seem like it had any impact. I mean, Sean ended up paying a greater price for a good reason. But none of this was reported until 2018. So you do this and then it's all kind of dealt with behind the scenes-

• 1:21:17Caroline Burckle?

  Eight years later.

• 1:21:18Rich Roll?

  On one level or another. Until 2018, when the OC Register of all publications, you know, does this deep dive investigative journalism into this story. And this story breaks in this local paper. And then it becomes like a national story.

• 1:21:35Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, and that rocked me. Like, that rocked me because I had never-

• 1:21:43Caroline Burckle?

  I ran away from it. I ran away from everything for those eight years. Every single thing that occurred in my life that was not okay, from, you know, a coach or a relationship or, you know, basically those two things. I ran away from it all because I didn't know how to address it. I was sheepish. I didn't, I didn't know how to even say anything. I, it wasn't a big deal to speak up then either. People don't do that. People never really did that, you know? Women didn't really speak up. I mean, Ali Raisman sort of put that on the map, right? Where you're just like, this isn't okay. Like, I'm going to stand up for what's right. And you can't be speaking like this to young women. And I understood that I was 23, you know?

• 1:22:27Caroline Burckle?

  And that I was a little bit older and I was retired, quote unquote. But the, the idea is that these things shouldn't be happening at all. Because if they're thinking it then, it was being thought when I was a swimmer. And being, you know, not just because it wasn't acted on then, doesn't mean it's still okay.

• 1:22:45Caroline Burckle?

  And so, nothing happened until 2018. And that was when they dug up all that stuff for Ariana's case and they called me. And, you know, they were like, did this happen to you? And I'm like, yeah, of course. I turned in the information, like, what's going on? I was startled, totally, like, what's going on? Well, this is so and so, I need to know this because you're under investigation. Because we found files from Sean toward you. And I was just, in that moment, Rich, like, my whole being shut down. Because my body in fight or flight was just like,

• 1:23:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:26Caroline Burckle?

  Oh, my God, like, you're gonna die. Like, that was how I reacted. And I was just literally on my apartment, my, like, second apartment in LA, my floor, for a straight week. I don't think I ate one meal. I was on the phone with Jack every day, like, all day. I don't think I drank any water. I don't think I went out of my apartment. I was ordering in anything I needed. Like, I didn't want to be seen. It was all of a sudden, like, I was the bad guy. That was my view of it, is that I was now the bad guy. And I...

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  Because Bowman's this huge hero, too.

• 1:24:00Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, and I respected him as a coach. I really, really did. And I, you know, I didn't have any, that was a shock from him. I didn't have any problems with Bob, you know? So that was a shock from him. From Sean, no. You know, but...

• 1:24:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for people that are listening, I mean, Sean, it turns out, had, had, you know, developed a highly inappropriate relationship with Ariana, dating back to beginning when she was 13 years old, like, grooming her, sexually assaulting her at 16, I believe, ultimately getting banned from the sport. I think they just settled the civil lawsuit.

• 1:24:37Rich Roll?

  I don't know if there's any update on what's going on with that guy, but he's not at swimming anymore.

• 1:24:43Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:43Rich Roll?

  But, short of that story coming out in 2018, this was all being dealt with surreptitiously, which is kind of par for the course for USA Swimming, that time and time again, has to weather these scandals. And you would think they would learn their lesson and figure out a way to deal with this stuff above board. But they seem to continue to trip on themselves and handle it miserably. And it's... It's really reprehensible and inexplicable. I mean, I guess I can understand these people who are trying to cover their ass and, you know, keep these things from being public scandals, but they consistently seem to do the wrong thing here. And this dates back decades. And I don't, I think we've talked about this.

• 1:25:27Rich Roll?

  I don't know if you know this, but, but my high school girlfriend was Kelly Davies, and she was sexually harassed by our swim coach, Rick Curl.

• 1:25:35Caroline Burckle?

  Oh, right.

• 1:25:36Rich Roll?

  That was going on while I was in a relationship with her. This is like back in the, you know, like the early mid eighties. And, you know, it was a very different time back then. That was settled civilly, privately for like $150,000 back in like 1988 or 86 or something like that. And resurfaced many years later because Kelly, for reasons that I'm sure you can relate to, had a lot of unresolved trauma over this. And when she saw Rick Curl, when she turned on the television to watch Olympic trials on the deck, and it occurred to her like, this guy's still coaching and nobody knows what happened because this was dealt with and the way that it was dealt with, it became

• 1:26:21Rich Roll?

  an intolerable situation. And, you know, she alerted USA Swimming. I don't think that they dealt with it as well as they should have at the time. Ultimately, it all came to light because the Washington Post, like the OC Register, cottoned on to the story and decided to, you know, pull on a few threads and expose the whole thing, which ultimately led to Rick Curl going to jail. But this was so long after the fact.

• 1:26:47Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47Rich Roll?

  Right? And it was something that I'm sure USA Swimming thought was in the past. And, you know, these things, you know, tend to not go away unless they're dealt with swiftly and responsibly.

• 1:27:00Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. What you don't deal with will always come back, you know, and across the board. It always comes back full circle, like things that aren't dealt with, whether it's personally or within an organization or whatever it is, it's going to come back around. It's not just gone. And I think I always had a feeling it would. I just didn't know when, you know? I always like, I always felt like, how is this it? This can't really, that can't be it, right? Like, something has to, to come to the surface with this, even if it's just bylaws and different things that come out that are, you know, governing the whole. Coaching body as you know, USA Swimming coaching body as a whole, like what do they need to do in order to pass certain ethical

• 1:27:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:45Caroline Burckle?

  Standards.

• 1:27:46Rich Roll?

  Well, they seem to kind of adhere to the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law. Like they have the hotline you can call if, if something happens and you can report it. But in the case of, of Sean, didn't the USA Swimming's general counsel like appointed this former FBI investigator to do the sort of, you know, roll up your sleeves work and interview all these witnesses, but they ended up shutting her down. And in the case of Hutchinson, she was deprived of being able to interview certain critical people, including like Tara Torres

• 1:28:18Caroline Burckle?

  Right.

• 1:28:18Rich Roll?

  In this situation. So the true story is never fully documented for the public record.

• 1:28:24Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. And there's just, I, I had to commute to Long Beach multiple times to do different things with lawyers and all this. I just, just, and I felt like, how is this, how's this ever gonna be okay? There's so many layers to this. Like so many people have these stories and these things about multiple people in, in USA Swimming and in USA Gymnastics. And, you know, in all these sports and these NGBs, it's like, there's so much of this going on. And there's also great coaches. I mean, my club coach, oh my gosh, just gave me utmost respect for him. But there's, something's gotta change. And it's, you know, as we talk about with everything, it's gotta kind of wipe the system clean and start over. And that's the hard part is where do you even, how do you even do that when there's been

• 1:29:09Caroline Burckle?

  legends floating around forever. But, you know, back to what you were saying about people just trying to cover things up. I think everybody was just afraid to upset someone else who's afraid to upset someone else who's afraid to upset someone else. So everything just got swept under.

• 1:29:22Rich Roll?

  Right. And then there's you, who doesn't want to upset anybody either.

• 1:29:26Caroline Burckle?

  Exactly.

• 1:29:26Rich Roll?

  So you've suffered the trauma of having, you know, been in the middle of that experience itself. And then there's the trauma of now this is public and I'm a people pleasing person who doesn't want to rock the boat and wants to be well liked.

• 1:29:40Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40Rich Roll?

  And now all this attention is being directed at me.

• 1:29:43Caroline Burckle?

  Right. And.

• 1:29:46Caroline Burckle?

  You know, it's not just the text messages. It's, there's other stuff that goes on that people don't know. You know, comments on pool deck and little emails here and there. And you know, it's like all different things throughout my career that I had to not only dig up and turn in, but say out loud. And that in itself is like a whole trauma re-experience. You know, that whole thing was just, really flooded me. And this was like, what, two years ago? Three years ago?

• 1:30:14Rich Roll?

  Two.

• 1:30:14Caroline Burckle?

  Two.

• 1:30:15Rich Roll?

  Two in March of...

• 1:30:17Caroline Burckle?

  Gosh, it feels like so much longer though. Yeah.

• 1:30:21Caroline Burckle?

  But the act of actually becoming aware, you know, it's kind of as interesting. The awareness piece in sport is huge, right? Like you hear Gervais talk about like, awareness is everything. Because I was so aware and then I pushed it down. When I became aware again and everything rose to the surface, it was like, whoosh. My whole world was just like, holy crap.

• 1:30:46Rich Roll?

  Right, because you hadn't, you hadn't done anything to heal from any of that. You've just been compartmentalizing it.

• 1:30:51Caroline Burckle?

  Compartmentalizing it, coping, all my coping strategies with food and with exercise. And I became so obsessed with these other things in order to feel like I could run from the things that had really hurt me, that started with this pattern way long ago. And it just carried on throughout my life. It's like, not these little symptoms of things, right? It's like this underlying thing that I just couldn't speak up about, or I was afraid to, you know, hurt people's feelings. So I never did any of these things. And when all that was unpacked and my awareness was so high and my senses were out and I was so in tune with what was going on, and holy crap, this is a big deal, Caroline. Like, you've been pushing down a lot of stuff.

• 1:31:36Caroline Burckle?

  That was like, a whole tornado of things in my life. It felt like my whole, it felt like my life was ending, to be honest. Like, at that time, in 2018, I was like...

• 1:31:48Caroline Burckle?

  I've been essentially abused for a really long time and I haven't even been able to say that. And you know, I don't, and I'm not trying to laugh at that, but I'm just, of course I'm not, but I get so shy saying that because I, I'm very sheepish at the fact that I didn't see that.

• 1:32:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:05Caroline Burckle?

  That I didn't, I wasn't aware of how not okay that was. I thought it was normal to be given comments on full deck by a coach. I thought it was normal to be sent secret emails. I thought it was normal to have text messages. You know, I thought that stuff was normal. It means they liked me.

• 1:32:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:19Caroline Burckle?

  And that's, yeah.

• 1:32:20Rich Roll?

  And this is what it took for you to confront that. So on some level, as painful and as uncomfortable as it must have been when all of this, you know, was revealed in the way that it was, this compelled you to face these certain things and wrestle with them so that you could ultimately heal.

• 1:32:36Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, something had to crack.

• 1:32:37Rich Roll?

  Well, what's interesting is, and I think we talked about this around this time, because we had some communication when these articles came out.

• 1:32:45Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:46Rich Roll?

  I was, I was confused because although it was picked up by the media, it went from the OC Register, I mean, Sports Illustrated, ESPN wrote about it. This was also kind of right in the thick of Ronan Farrow Me Too stuff as well. And I thought this was going to blow up much bigger than it actually did. Most people aren't even aware of this.

• 1:33:07Caroline Burckle?

  So did I.

• 1:33:08Rich Roll?

  It kind of went away.

• 1:33:09Caroline Burckle?

  So did I. And I think there's so much that has happened in the swimming world that hasn't even come to the surface that could.

• 1:33:19Caroline Burckle?

  I did too. I did too. And I think the anticipation of that was terrifying because being exposed like that is, there's nothing worse. There's nothing worse in the world than opening up CNN and seeing your name on the first headline.

• 1:33:33Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:34Caroline Burckle?

  I mean, I was sitting in my apartment on the floor, just like, In total shock, like, what did I do wrong? And that was, that was where my brain was at.

• 1:33:46Rich Roll?

  But you must have been getting calls and texts from friends and getting a lot of support from people.

• 1:33:51Caroline Burckle?

  Tons of support, ton, like, I mean, through the roof, letters, emails, this whole thing. But at the same time, where I was at was still, what did you do wrong, Caroline? People aren't going to like you here. You're going to lose, you know, your friends will be gone. Like, oh, no, Michael doesn't know what to say. He, you're going to lose his friendship or Allison or, you know, these people that were under Bob and all this. And I just felt so paranoid that I was-

• 1:34:16Rich Roll?

  You'll never be able to have a relationship with swimming again.

• 1:34:18Caroline Burckle?

  That it felt like-

• 1:34:19Rich Roll?

  You're not going to be able to show up on the pool deck at Olympic trials to support your brother.

• 1:34:25Caroline Burckle?

  And that was everything, like, that, that feeling that I was losing my world. And even though I had ran away from that world, I was losing my world, yet I had been running away from it for eight years. So I don't know why I thought I was losing it. But to me, I, and I still, like, honestly, full disclosure, full vulnerability here. I still have some days where I'm like, huh, I wonder what they would think of me if I just saw them headed to the airport? Or, like, would things be okay yet? Like, would things be normal if I ran into, you know, some of my friends or whatever that I seemingly thought in my mind are mad at me, even though I know for a fact they're not?

• 1:35:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:10Caroline Burckle?

  But again, that pattern and why is it that's ingrained in me that, like, I've upset, you know, the men in power? And that was, like, that was the thing for me, was like, these men in power. Like, I didn't want Bob to be upset with me.

• 1:35:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:35:25Caroline Burckle?

  That was all I was telling Jack. That was literally all I was telling Jack was, I just don't want Bob to be upset with me. And he was like, he's not upset with you.

• 1:35:31Rich Roll?

  And what did Jack say? Yeah, what did Jack say?

• 1:35:33Caroline Burckle?

  Oh, Jack's so supportive. He's not upset with you, you know, this isn't a Bob issue, this is a Sean issue. Like, this isn't, you know, also, like-

• 1:35:42Caroline Burckle?

  This isn't okay.

• 1:35:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:35:43Caroline Burckle?

  You know, so like, this isn't about that. And like gearing me back toward away from my pattern and toward the truth.

• 1:35:49Rich Roll?

  And also, like, who cares?

• 1:35:51Caroline Burckle?

  Right. And like, honestly, though, and like, I remember being like, when I got to that point, it was a very much a freeing feeling, because I get so proud of how far I've come in two years from that moment. But I'm, I can take myself back to that feeling. And it's just so intense of how, how much people pleasing played a role in justice and truth. Like, my truth was tainted by people pleasing.

• 1:36:23Rich Roll?

  And your default setting to kind of defer to men in power.

• 1:36:29Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. That was all I knew.

• 1:36:31Rich Roll?

  So I wanna, I wanna talk about the two years since, because you've done a lot of work.

• 1:36:36Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:36Rich Roll?

  To put yourself back together. So I want to get an understanding of how you began that process and what it looked like for you.

• 1:36:44Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:45Rich Roll?

  Because I think this is, Olympics aside, like, I think this is the, the peace that so many people are going to be able to relate to.

• 1:36:52Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, this is the meat and potatoes, I guess you could say. The most important part about what I

• 1:37:01Caroline Burckle?

  went through was asking for help. I finally asked for help. And I had been in and out of therapy for years, you know, leading up to all this in 2018. But it was coping. It was, I learned how to cope really well.

• 1:37:18Caroline Burckle?

  I started to recognize, right around the time that this stuff came out in the news, that my body was telling me something, right? So I hadn't had a period in 10 years.

• 1:37:28Rich Roll?

  10 years?

• 1:37:29Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, maybe more. Not one. Like, nothing. So as a woman.

• 1:37:35Rich Roll?

  2008 to 2018?

• 1:37:38Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. As a woman, you're, yes, exactly that long. Yes.

• 1:37:43Rich Roll?

  So your entire career.

• 1:37:45Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, my entire post Olympic career. And I had like very irregular hormones throughout my career as well, like very sporadic. But the feeling as a woman of nothing vibrating through your body, like no hormones, you're just flat. I was in complete dorsal state for this entire time. Nothing. I couldn't cry. You know, I couldn't cry at all. I was like barely emotional unless it was something gigantic. But you know, something would happen, I wouldn't cry. I was just flat. I was, I was kind of like dead in a way inside.

• 1:38:20Caroline Burckle?

  And you know, my body was very unhealthy. I had disordered eating. I wasn't eating. I was doing different things that were not healthy with my nutrition at all.

• 1:38:32Caroline Burckle?

  And my body started to break. So as we know, I broke my heel right before Otilo. Rich and I were gonna go head on over, run Otilo and I or Utaloo, however you say.

• 1:38:52Rich Roll?

  Every time I do that, though, I get a bunch of messages from, from people in Sweden who are angry that I got it wrong. So I don't even try. It's something like

• 1:39:04Rich Roll?

  So But we're just gonna be ugly Americans and call it

• 1:39:07Caroline Burckle?

  We're just gonna be ugly Americans. Yeah. So

• 1:39:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you were gonna do it. And then you, me and House went up to to Donner Lake to train.

• 1:39:16Caroline Burckle?

  And you texted me like the day that you were gonna go and you said, please come, come out, let's just do this. And I'm like, but my heel's broken. I'm a mess. This thing just happened. Like, what do I do?

• 1:39:25Rich Roll?

  I know, but like you need to come anyway.

• 1:39:27Caroline Burckle?

  And you were like, I don't think you understand how God sent you were for me at that moment. It was like, Somebody believed in me, even though I was like on the ground, literally on the ground crying for, you know.

• 1:39:41Rich Roll?

  I didn't know.

• 1:39:43Caroline Burckle?

  I didn't tell anybody.

• 1:39:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:45Caroline Burckle?

  I didn't show it.

• 1:39:46Rich Roll?

  I mean, I knew you were going through stuff, but I just liked your energy and I wanted you around.

• 1:39:50Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, I, and I, and I loved you guys. So I was like, sure, I'm there. So I go up there with my broken heel. And that was the first sign, right, that something was off. But to me, it's just an injury, get through it, boom, maybe you can go, whatever. So we didn't end up going to that race. I didn't do it. Hillary ends up being pregnant. So it was all a wash anyway. It was perfect. She was relieved when I told her. She was like, wait, I'm pregnant. I was like, okay, great. So we are on the same page here. So I healed up from that. The moment I healed up from that, I got septic knee in my right knee from the ocean, getting in after it rained. Was in the hospital for three, four days. You know, the whole thing went into my body.

• 1:40:34Rich Roll?

  Your body was just saying, fuck you.

• 1:40:36Caroline Burckle?

  It was pissed.

• 1:40:37Rich Roll?

  You need to stop.

• 1:40:38Caroline Burckle?

  Yes. Like you've been running. Why are you still running? Like, let's, you know, let's do something. So.

• 1:40:45Rich Roll?

  Like, I'm throwing all this stuff at you emotionally, but you're still operating as if everything's normal. So I'm gonna, I need to literally cut you off at the knees in order for you to pay attention.

• 1:40:58Caroline Burckle?

  And did literally that.

• 1:41:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:01Caroline Burckle?

  And then the moment I get back from my, my knee, I get, I broke my heel again. And at that point, I was like, holy shit, I think I get this. And it was this light bulb that went off that was like, okay, remember your career, Caroline, when you finally realized the mind body connection and you realized that you couldn't train that way if you needed to be, you know, here. And so you pivoted and you did this. That's what's happening. Your body is overtrained and telling you something, you know, simplest terms at that point. So what's going on? Let's heal it. So the second heal comes around. Dr. Batten, who's down the street here, he's amazing. He's our Olympic ortho. He works for the Dodgers. He looked at me and he was like, you need to stop right now. 14 weeks on crutches.

• 1:41:46Caroline Burckle?

  And I was like, no, I thought my life was over. So 14 weeks or whatever, the second time. And I finally healed. I got my periods back. I had started acupuncture and I started somatic experiencing therapy all during this time. So it was this whole-

• 1:42:04Rich Roll?

  What is that? Tell me what that is.

• 1:42:06Caroline Burckle?

  So it focuses on the nervous system. So they, basically it's not talk therapy. So it's not just cognitive behavioral therapy. It does like rapid eye movement work, kind of takes you back into experiences of your life. And you kind of heal them through going back into them and then working through them. It's nasty at first. It's nasty, but you work, you do the nervous system. Like it's through your nervous system.

• 1:42:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:27Caroline Burckle?

  Some breathing and meditation work, but you're working with somebody this whole time. So it's not just talking and then leaving, you know, which works, but you know, I think that's fantastic for whoever's choosing to do that. But for me personally, as a feeler, you know, as I've explained here, it's like, I feel. My body feels its way through performance. It feels its way through everything I've done. It's shown me first before my head has. And so it changed my life because I was able to repair the trauma that was going on in my system. And I mean, it took a year for me to get to a point where I wasn't having nightmares and flashbacks in the middle of the night. It was brutal.

• 1:43:08Caroline Burckle?

  Like, um, but so during that time, I started all of that. So it was like the, in conjunction with healing myself, you know, on crutches. I was able to sit still and work on what I needed to work on internally. And-

• 1:43:27Caroline Burckle?

  It was so, it was so eye opening to me to realize that I was finally in alignment with what I do best, and that's working through my feeling and through my nervous system, instead of just trying to solve it all here and think about it and intellectualize it.

• 1:43:44Rich Roll?

  You gotta put pictures of bananas in your locker.

• 1:43:47Caroline Burckle?

  Yes.

• 1:43:47Rich Roll?

  Right? You have to get back to that.

• 1:43:49Caroline Burckle?

  I need to get back to that.

• 1:43:50Rich Roll?

  That's what works for you.

• 1:43:52Caroline Burckle?

  That is what works. And I had been going against what worked for me for so long, trying to intellectualize change and create all these thought processes that like, you know, I'd listen to all these things and read all these books and whatever, and try and do everything that I was told and nothing was working for me. Because I wasn't getting to know myself and what worked for me. I wasn't diving into me. I can read all the books I want, I can do all the things I need to do, but if I'm not choosing my body and my system, I'm not actually healing. And this topic I'm so passionate about. But, um, so then, caveat here, so then I get a concussion. So I'm giving blood, I leave the facility, this corner of this table right here, it's

• 1:44:37Caroline Burckle?

  like a cement table. I'm almost six, I'm 5'10". Just collapse, leaning Tower of Pisa, straight to the side, nail my head on the side of the concrete table, hit the floor, ricochets back, hits it again, staples, stitches, cracked my skull open.

• 1:44:56Rich Roll?

  You just, I don't get it, you slipped?

• 1:44:58Caroline Burckle?

  No, I just fainted. I fainted.

• 1:44:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, you fainted, you collapsed.

• 1:45:01Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. But it was like a straight to the side kind of deal, not just like a collapse kind of deal. It was like a boom, as hard as possible. So luckily I was one minute from the ER at that facility, so went over there.

• 1:45:15Rich Roll?

  Why did you faint, though?

• 1:45:16Caroline Burckle?

  Guess I can't give blood, I guess it's just a thing.

• 1:45:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's right, you were given blood, okay.

• 1:45:20Caroline Burckle?

  You can't do that, I guess, yeah. Which is a bummer, because I was really excited about that.

• 1:45:25Rich Roll?

  All right. Anyway. So you're, you're, so basically what I gather from this, the universe is like, okay, you're starting to pay attention, but like, we need to go a little bit deeper.

• 1:45:36Caroline Burckle?

  Deeper.

• 1:45:36Rich Roll?

  So I'm gonna, I'm gonna literally knock you out.

• 1:45:38Caroline Burckle?

  Yes. And that moment really did, it woke me up in a very harsh way. So I hit my head and I've never understood a brain trauma until the, you know, I don't understand what happens with a brain trauma. Nobody does until you go through it. You can see people with TBI, you can see them go through concussion, football players, like people you know, and how like glossed over they are, how you can't have a conversation with them. They, they appear quote unquote stupid or slow. That is real. I couldn't carry a, I couldn't string a sentence together.

• 1:46:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, whoa.

• 1:46:12Caroline Burckle?

  I couldn't have a conversation. Like if you and I were sitting right here, I couldn't last for five minutes. I would have gotten out and left. 2019.

• 1:46:20Rich Roll?

  I had no idea about this.

• 1:46:21Caroline Burckle?

  In the, yeah, like right Christmas.

• 1:46:24Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:46:26Caroline Burckle?

  18, sorry, at Christmas. So like, well, I'm talking, all this happened within

• 1:46:31Rich Roll?

  Right. This is not that long ago.

• 1:46:32Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, no. So that took me until like July to heal. Like a whole year. This is about a year and a half ago that I felt healed for the most part. And so that was like a whole thing where I, you know, I was just, I was really working through what this TBI was like. I couldn't associate with things. I couldn't really understand what was going on. And then when I started to heal, I started to see things differently. I was like, holy shit. Like I have a lot to unpack. It was literally like I got hit over the head and it woke me up to different things that I had started, but that still needed to be dug a little bit deeper. So we dug up another layer and we go a little deeper in therapy.

• 1:47:14Rich Roll?

  When you say we, what, what does that look like? Like working with a, with a therapist?

• 1:47:19Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. So Sarah Baldwin is the woman I had been working with. And so, you know, that kind of sets you back and then you have to dive back into things and kind of peel up what has happened for you. Cause actually when you do get hit in the head, your brain actually does bring, it does ruffle things around and brings things up that have been buried, which is terrifying.

• 1:47:41Rich Roll?

  So you had like weird memories that?

• 1:47:43Caroline Burckle?

  Mm hmm. Weird dreams. We're coming back up again. Weird memories. And so that sort of healed up there. And then

• 1:47:54Caroline Burckle?

  As I'm kind of getting back into the somatic experiencing at that point, which was exactly a year and a half ago now,

• 1:48:06Caroline Burckle?

  all of the sudden, and I kid you not, like this, and this happened for a reason. It was the most beautiful experience. All of my trauma came back. Like, everything, everything came back to my dreams at night. Like, I was waking up with, I was waking up in panics and sweats. And I don't know if you've ever experienced some of that, like PTSD, you know, post-traumatic stress kind of feeling where you just, you feel like you're in it again.

• 1:48:34Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, right. Right, like you, you rebooted your operating system. You, you get this head injury and you've got to, you know, shut it down and reboot. And those memories, which were, you know, maybe in the, you know, some subfolder deep on the hard drive or suddenly on the desktop, like staring at you.

• 1:48:53Caroline Burckle?

  Totally. That's a good way to put it.

• 1:48:58Caroline Burckle?

  So, I, I started to, to finally understand. Okay, so now that I've done the prep course for the healing with, with Sarah, I've, I've done the prep course, done my pre-rex.

• 1:49:17Caroline Burckle?

  Holy shit, now I gotta like go to grad school for this and it's gonna be really hard. And that was

• 1:49:25Caroline Burckle?

  really, really difficult time, actually. So, difficult in a different way. Not difficult because I'm going through anything particular. Not difficult because it's present moment. Difficult because I'm reliving everything again in order to heal it. Because I hadn't, and I had been pushing it down. And, um, oh, it has been incredible. Like, truly incredible for me to go through this experience because it has felt like I'm able to see things.

• 1:49:58Caroline Burckle?

  Actually feel things, which as painful as it can be as a feeler, to feel it again with a different perspective at a different chapter of your life, you're able to understand that that's not okay.

• 1:50:12Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:50:13Caroline Burckle?

  And that that comes from somewhere and that pattern is there. And then you can really, you know, work through that, go through that process, unpack that and kind of move on as they come up. And it took me a year, like I said, to not have dreams and nightmares and panic attacks in the middle of the night. Like I'd be calling, I called the hotline on more than one occasion last summer, every other night for months.

• 1:50:39Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:50:40Caroline Burckle?

  Cause I thought I, your body is in that place again. You think you are going to die. Like that's what you, your brain is telling you that. When you are in a traumatic state, you don't think with a certain part of your brain at all. You just think, what do I need to do to survive right now? And I was embarrassed.

• 1:50:57Rich Roll?

  The body's experiencing it as if it's happening in the moment, right?

• 1:51:01Caroline Burckle?

  And you learn all sorts of tools, you know, to move through that, but it would wipe me out for days. And this is when I didn't talk to anybody and this is when I sort of went missing. Like I just, I hid the whole year of 2019.

• 1:51:15Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:51:17Caroline Burckle?

  Most of, end of 18 and 2019, I didn't, everything I did was just to make sure that people knew I was fine.

• 1:51:26Rich Roll?

  Still breathing.

• 1:51:27Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:28Rich Roll?

  So that process of, of, you know, on some level reliving those experiences or just, you know, emotionally confronting them, I mean, that's required if you're gonna heal, right? Like you've got to walk through that process. So what was the methodology or the technique? Like was it a specific, like is it behavioral cognitive therapy or what kind of

• 1:51:53Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:53Rich Roll?

  vein, you know, were you exploring this in?

• 1:51:57Caroline Burckle?

  So it's called somatic experiencing, SE, and Peter Levine started it. I don't know if you've ever heard of Peter Levine. I feel like you would love this field, by the way, if you kind of dive into some of the SE stuff and, and more of the.

• 1:52:09Rich Roll?

  Well, I had, I had Andrew Huberman in here talking about some of the, you know, techniques that they use, like, you know, with the way that you move your rapid eye movement and stuff like that, and how that helps you rewire some of your neurochemistry.

• 1:52:22Caroline Burckle?

  Exactly. So you're basically rewiring your entire nervous system to think and to feel something different that you haven't ever felt before. And your body's going to want to not do it. You know, you're, you're not going to want to do it. So half the time, we have to stop and start over, but it's a lot of rapid eye movement stuff. It's a lot of, like, would be like ventral things where you're like holding different parts of your body. You recount, you, you say the event again out loud and she like take notes on what parts of your body were tensing during that process, so that you can then realize what parts of your body you're holding on to that trauma. And then you do work on like releasing that area and letting that go because that's real. I mean, it's stored

• 1:53:02Caroline Burckle?

  in specific parts of our body. Mine are hips and feet and like lower extremities. So, so that's a big part of it. Also, just essentially, like, I did a lot of, like, actual active work. So when I would go in with Sarah, I would stand on the opposite side of the room. She would stand on the opposite side of the room. I would walk a little bit closer and she would do certain things to like come toward me or, or act a certain way. And whatever happened, I would have to stop and explain what that, what showed up for me in that moment or like what happened.

• 1:53:37Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:53:38Caroline Burckle?

  And it's, I mean, there's days when I would just be like, like just sobbing my eyes out. But like, the whole point of this is to let your system get rid of it, so that you can then create space for it to rewire. So you have to start by like sweeping, like getting rid of it, bringing it up, letting it out, and then rewiring it. And so now I'm like, I see her like once a month. It's, you know, so we've really weaned down, but, you know, rewiring.

• 1:54:05Rich Roll?

  At your peak, how often were you having these sessions?

• 1:54:08Caroline Burckle?

  Three days a week.

• 1:54:09Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 1:54:10Caroline Burckle?

  I was like, well, I'm either gonna pay for it now or pay for it later. So I'm, I'm sick of running. I was sick of my own bullshit. I was sick of getting injured. I was sick of make, seeing all these symptoms pop up when really the issue was that I hadn't chosen to heal myself. I had chosen to run. I had chosen to continue to follow the same pattern I did since I was a little girl. And it's just, where can I run? What can I do to just not be seen and just make everybody happy and do all these things? Like, no, I need to choose myself for the first time in a really long time. And I can't make excuses anymore. I can't just be like, oh, this happened to me. It's like, no, it's not, it's not working for me anymore.

• 1:54:50Rich Roll?

  It's super powerful. And I, I love how basically, you know, your life directed you towards this by stripping you down, right? This was your divine moment. Like, you were being compelled to confront this, one way or the other. And had you continued to be in denial or refused to engage with this, you know, some kind of therapeutic process, your life was going to continue to decline. Like, your body was going to continue to break down. It just was a matter of how much pain are you willing to sit with before you're actually gonna engage with this and like grapple with these issues?

• 1:55:28Caroline Burckle?

  And here's the thing is, as women, as men as well, that you pass on everything that you have not healed. Your system and your cells actually hold trauma and they will actually continue to carry that on. I don't want to have children and pass that on to them. I don't want to be harboring resentment and anger and, you know, all of it, and pass it on to the next generation. I don't want to do that, you know? So I sort of view my purpose in life as, as being able to heal so the next generations can continue to heal. Regardless of if I have my own children or not, like, that's my whole mission is how

• 1:56:08Caroline Burckle?

  can you create space for people to know that they're able to be whatever they can be if they can really work on healing their mind and their body together. It's possible. It's just... Weird for people to understand at first. It's not, it's nuanced.

• 1:56:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:26Caroline Burckle?

  It's not to the forefront.

• 1:56:28Rich Roll?

  Well, it gives the work that you do so much more resonance now, like with Rise Athletes and the, you know, these young athletes that you and Rebecca are mentoring. Now that you've undergone this experience, like there's so much more depth to what you can convey.

• 1:56:43Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:44Rich Roll?

  In these relationships.

• 1:56:45Caroline Burckle?

  And everything has started to make sense. You know, it's all been the same thing. It's just shown up in all of these different ways and different places, which I think if we look at our lives and we see a thread tied through them, it's usually that thread is one thing that everything keeps mirroring whatever it is in one way or in one direction or another, you know? So for mine, it was this people pleasing thing that needed to be fixed. But then as it started to heal, it's this mind-body thing where, okay, your whole life has been surrounded about being a feeler.

• 1:57:21Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:57:22Caroline Burckle?

  So now let's use that to your advantage instead of using it as you can only please people. Let's use it as a way to be in this world, as a way to change and make change, you know?

• 1:57:32Rich Roll?

  What a relief.

• 1:57:33Caroline Burckle?

  What, and it finally all made sense. I was like, I'm not weird. I'm not weird. It's just, it's just who I am and that's okay. And I don't need to apologize for it anymore.

• 1:57:42Rich Roll?

  And what a gift that your body broke down or that you, you know, had the traumas that you had so that you were given the opportunity to confront this because short of that, you can live your whole life kind of babysitting these character defects on the back burner, but nothing severe enough ever happens that compels you to look at it to the deep extent to which you have. So ultimately you become this stronger, better person because of your pain.

• 1:58:13Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. And I've had some people ask me things like, well, what if nothing's really happened to me to where it's like allowed me to see certain things? You know, it's like, I know they're there, but nothing's really happened to push me into that place that's like really bad to where I need to figure this out. And it's a great question. And I don't necessarily know that it has to be that way. I think what we

• 1:58:34Rich Roll?

  Makes it easier.

• 1:58:35Caroline Burckle?

  It makes it way easier.

• 1:58:37Rich Roll?

  The thing, people ask me that question. I'm like, I don't know what to tell you because like, I just was in so much pain. I didn't feel like I had any other choice. That choice is available to all of us at any moment. It's just harder to make that choice.

• 1:58:49Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:50Rich Roll?

  When you're not suffering.

• 1:58:51Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:51Rich Roll?

  Because who wants to do that kind of work?

• 1:58:53Caroline Burckle?

  Suffering really does lead you to that.

• 1:58:55Rich Roll?

  And if you feel like you don't need to, it's like, I got shit to do.

• 1:58:57Caroline Burckle?

  Right. You'll continue to, right. And, and so I guess the only thing that I could really think to say to someone in that position is like, you know, maybe you're just trying to think about it too much. And you really have to see what your body is telling you. Because our bodies are actually giving us so much information that we completely ignore. And you're an expert at this, you know?

• 1:59:25Rich Roll?

  Well, athletes, but athletes of all people are so much more integrated in that regard. Like, they've been trained to pay attention to their body and the signals that their body is giving them. So to the extent that you are still refusing to pay attention to that, I think, you know, is powerful. But the greater point being that most people aren't as connected to their bodies in the way that athletes are. So when their bodies are sending them those signals, those signals are muted or unhearable. Because they're, you know, clouded underneath, you know, layers of whatever else is going on with that person, where they're, they're just disconnected from

• 2:00:03Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:03Rich Roll?

  that signal.

• 2:00:04Caroline Burckle?

  And I guess the question is, how do you teach somebody that's disconnected from their body, how to become connected to their body? There's a ton of modalities, but I think the real truth to that question is getting to know them and what actually, what their learning style is, so that you can like, place one of those to it. Because I think there's different places everybody can start. Some people start in meditation, some people start by changing diet, some people start by movement, some people, you know, so it's

• 2:00:29Rich Roll?

  Some people need spreadsheets and other people need pictures of bananas.

• 2:00:32Caroline Burckle?

  Yes, exactly. There's so many ways to do this. No one way. But yeah, I think that that's, that's something I'm sort of exploring now. A lot of people ask me that. Well, I'm not in tune with my body. So how am I supposed to feel this somatic experience or whatever? If I don't even, like, I don't feel anything.

• 2:00:51Rich Roll?

  How has the last two years changed how you, how you mentor these young athletes?

• 2:00:57Caroline Burckle?

  I love that question. I think we've incorporated a lot more visualization and imagery work and breathwork into our program, which is huge. You know, truth be told, Rebecca and I only work with two now each because of, we have like 35 mentors, so we sort of have to run the business side of it instead of, you know, just mentoring. But my specific athletes, it's changed in that we have conversations about what's showing up in their body. And they're able to, every time they do it, they get better and better. At first, it's like, I don't know, I'm sore. I don't know, my right shoulder's kind of sore from 700 butterfly I did yesterday. And now it's more, well, I was really short of breath yesterday because I was super stressed because I had a fight with my boyfriend.

• 2:01:41Caroline Burckle?

  Or, you know, I, and I noticed I stopped breathing. So it's like, cool, cue. And we work on that. And then they take that and they apply it to their competition and to school. It's, you know, it's against the thing that runs across, like, how can that work in multiple environments?

• 2:01:57Caroline Burckle?

  But it has increased awareness. It's increased awareness for all of our mentors, the mind-body aspect in general. Like, knowing that working on an athlete's mind isn't it. You have to really work on what they feel in their body, what's showing up, and how to speak to their body in a way that they can not only become more aware of it, know what it needs, but in a way that they can create worth through their actual being, so that it is aligned with their mind. And that they find that happening together and things start to click. It's like, oh, I feel less tense, or I felt really relaxed going into that race. What did that feel like? Oh, my shoulders were down and I felt like I could breathe and, you know, I felt, you know. So they're recognizing what's happening in their system.

• 2:02:40Caroline Burckle?

  Which, if we're going to change generations in sport, you can't just tell them to think about things. You know, I mean, sure, you can, but... In my personal opinion and experience, I've never seen an athlete, even if they love spreadsheets and love splits and times like my brother, not be able to tune into their body.

• 2:03:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:01Caroline Burckle?

  In a time when they need to and understand what's going on and what it's telling them, what information that's giving them.

• 2:03:06Rich Roll?

  And to be able to do that under pressure or in a high-stress environment where, you know, your thinking brain isn't going to cut it.

• 2:03:14Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, you have to, yeah, because your body's going to tell you first what's going on always. And that's the crazy thing is if we listen close enough and if we put in the reps, everything is reps. Reps, reps, reps. Like, you've just got to keep putting in the reps before you realize it. But if you listen close enough, you're like, oh, I'm super jittery like before this race, or I, um, my stomach hurts. My, you know, rib hurts, you know, all these things that will give you information. Well, why do those things hurt? What are you holding on to? You know, a lot of swimmers' stomachs hurt. A lot of performers always claim, you know, they'll throw up before races, their stomach hurt, you know? Those things are telling you something. It's information.

• 2:03:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:03:57Caroline Burckle?

  It's not bad. It's just information.

• 2:04:00Rich Roll?

  It's, it's difficult to figure out what's meaningful out of that, too, because as you know, you're used to beating your body up for so long during training and then you go into this taper phase, right? And then you're just hyper-aware of every little niggle in your body and you're like, there's something wrong because, you know, I, I, my toe hurts or something. You know, and you gotta just be like, no, you're just nervous, right? There's nothing wrong with you. You're just hyper-aware. You're being hyper-vigilant because you've put so much time into preparing for this very specific moment. And everything in your, in your world, in your experience is super heightened.

• 2:04:36Caroline Burckle?

  So true, because the amount of times I was told. Don't pay attention to how you feel, or don't worry about it if you hurt, or you know, don't think about it. Don't think about how you feel. And it's so foreign to me. I was like, what do you mean? That's all I do is I feel. I don't understand. Like, how am I not supposed to think about how I feel? But you nailed it with that, is that you become so hyper aware that how can you reframe whatever it is that you're feeling in your system as an okay thing, as something that's just giving you information, accepting it, the practice of acceptance, if you're at a race or whatever, and your right knee hurts, but you're behind the blocks. Well, not a lot you can do now. So reps of doing that in practice, reps of doing that with, you know, a sports psych consultant, reps of

• 2:05:20Caroline Burckle?

  doing that with your coach, like, what is it that that means? How can I reframe whatever it is in that moment through injury or through pain that I can then use toward whatever I need to get done? And then address it after if it's something serious, you know, when it comes to like injury and whatnot. But yeah, that whole field of injury psychology is really cool. You should pick Dervais' brain on that sometime.

• 2:05:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've never spoken about that specifically with him.

• 2:05:48Caroline Burckle?

  It's a whole deal. It's for sure. It's really interesting. Like, when I was in grad school.

• 2:05:52Rich Roll?

  You guys hang out? Do you hang out?

• 2:05:54Caroline Burckle?

  We used to work out together, and then he started a different gym routine.

• 2:05:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, he did?

• 2:05:58Caroline Burckle?

  He came to my gym.

• 2:05:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, he did?

• 2:05:59Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. We were buddies. I see him, you know, at Source Cafe every now and then.

• 2:06:04Rich Roll?

  He's the best. Yeah, you guys are like neighbors down there.

• 2:06:06Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, he's great. I love Dervais. He's, we've always just had like a great rapport. But yeah, that field is really cool.

• 2:06:15Rich Roll?

  Well, I want to talk about your relationship to sport now, because, you know, look, if you scroll through your Instagram, like, you're, you know, you're getting after it, whether it's CrossFit or like swimming in the ocean, like, you still have this profound love for movement and fitness. But what's interesting is that it's completely outside of any competitive context, right? Like, I almost feel like it was a blessing that you didn't go and do Otillo, because you're not supposed to be, your relationship to sport isn't supposed to be about competition, even if you could have done that. From a healthy perspective of not really caring like, you know, about how well you did and just enjoying the experience.

• 2:06:56Rich Roll?

  I think there's something beautiful and instructive about how you've completely reframed your relationship to sports so that it has nothing to do with any metric other than like joy.

• 2:07:10Caroline Burckle?

  Exactly. So it's interesting. I started to want to be a student of different things. I'm very curious. I wanted to try different things because after I broke my heels, I couldn't really do endurance things like run and whatnot like I used to. To me, that was what I needed to get done right when I retired, right? Run, run, run, run, run, keep running. And I love running, but I was like, you know, let's see what's possible. Let's see what's possible with your body.

• 2:07:37Rich Roll?

  Running is great as long as you're running towards something and not away.

• 2:07:40Caroline Burckle?

  Away, yes. I'm just, yes, I'm so obsessed with that.

• 2:07:44Rich Roll?

  Running is awesome for running away from stuff.

• 2:07:46Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, running is great. Once you're running away, oh yeah, it's fast as hell. Yeah.

• 2:07:53Caroline Burckle?

  So I started getting curious and I started thinking, okay, Caroline, you did the same thing forever. Let's see what's possible and let's test the boundaries a little bit and see what your body can handle, what it can't. Learn a little bit more about what your adrenals and kidneys can handle, learn a bit about what they can't. So I started taking courses at the gym. I took a strength 101 course. I took a strong man course. I took a weightlifting course. I started swimming in the ocean.

• 2:08:27Caroline Burckle?

  What else have I done? I think that's pretty much it, mainly just strength and addition. But those three courses were like eight to 10 weeks long each. So over a span of two years, I took these courses.

• 2:08:36Rich Roll?

  Was one of those, what's that CrossFit gym in Venice?

• 2:08:39Caroline Burckle?

  Deuce, that's where I belong.

• 2:08:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:41Caroline Burckle?

  So they actually have a two, three gyms, one in Venice, one in Hermosa and one in Hollywood. And so I was, I'm at the Hermosa one. And I loved it because all of a sudden I entered back into like eight-year-old Caroline. And it was like, everything's new. I can do whatever. I can learn things. I don't have to be. Like a veteran at this and like, you know, I can just start over again with everything and feel new and learn. And I became so obsessed with learning. I loved it so much that I felt like a little kid again, a student. And throughout, I remember just being so sad, week eight, graduation day of these courses, because I was just, just now getting started

• 2:09:24Caroline Burckle?

  of, I get this. This is a new skill. And I love learning new skills. And I love being able to see what my body can handle. And so throughout this process, I have quickly learned that strength, strict strength is not my jam. My body is not built to just

• 2:09:40Rich Roll?

  Like power lift?

• 2:09:41Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:42Rich Roll?

  Very traditional weightlifting, you mean?

• 2:09:45Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. I love it. It makes, I need it, but it's not like what I'm very good at. Loved learning it, though. Could really pick imbalances out. But I took a strong man course, which I loved. And it's exactly like swimming movements. So it's like full body, like stones and kegs.

• 2:10:04Rich Roll?

  Like throwing logs around and stuff?

• 2:10:05Caroline Burckle?

  Yes. Like you're doing like caveman stuff. And I was just in love, like flipping tires. And I was just in love with it. I felt like very prime, it was a very primal feeling kind of thing. And everything is like a short circuit. And you really only train it twice a week. That's all you need. I love that. That was my favorite. And I could do that every day.

• 2:10:23Rich Roll?

  That's a little different from four workouts a day.

• 2:10:25Caroline Burckle?

  Yes. Yes. And so about around that time, this was the second course I took, around that time, I started to realize, okay, Caroline, remember when you couldn't train, you know, more than four times a week at Florida, once you got down to the wire and understood what you needed? Same thing with this. Don't overthink the fact that you only need to train two times a week here. Train two times a week. Do the other days, just a longer walk, something smooth, some yoga, you know? And I was in the best shape of my life. My body loved it. And all of a sudden, it was like, less is more. Feel yourself into this. You don't need to overtrain. Your adrenals don't need to go to town, you know, with all of this

• 2:11:10Caroline Burckle?

  20 hours a day kind of stuff.

• 2:11:13Rich Roll?

  You got to unravel all that programming around, you know, the kind of training you were doing in college.

• 2:11:18Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. And that's what these courses served a purpose for, is it taught me again how to be an athlete. And I didn't have to just be one type of athlete. I could be multiple different versions of myself and learn what I needed. And it was beautiful, especially because it's going to change every year. I'm 34 now, I'm not 24, you know, it's going to change. So then I took a weightlifting course, which was like snatches and power cleans. And I really enjoyed that. That did tax my nervous system a little more for me. So out of learning these things, I really did settle on like a couple of days a week of strength training is perfect for me. The other days really easy stuff.

• 2:11:58Rich Roll?

  Throw some kegs around, jump in the ocean.

• 2:11:59Caroline Burckle?

  Yes. Like so on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturdays now, I walk.

• 2:12:05Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 2:12:05Caroline Burckle?

  And I'm just, I mean, I'm like expert power walker in South Bay, just do, do, do. And I love it, Rich. Like I am just listening to podcasts and music. And before I know it, I've logged five and a half miles just walking. Just go for it. Hour, you know, come back and I feel great. And that's same with swimming, swim at 1500. Get out of the ocean and you're fine.

• 2:12:27Rich Roll?

  1500?

• 2:12:28Caroline Burckle?

  That's actually a lot.

• 2:12:29Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 2:12:30Caroline Burckle?

  Oh, that was.

• 2:12:31Rich Roll?

  But you look, I mean, you look crazy strong and super fit and happy. And clearly you're on the other side of this whole process, like with some clarity and a lightness to you.

• 2:12:42Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, thanks. I think I have a little ways to go on finding, um, I don't know if finding my voice is, is the right word, but I'm still learning that it's okay to have opinions and still learning it's okay to speak my mind. I know, I'm still learning it.

• 2:12:57Rich Roll?

  The people pleasing thing is tough, man. I suffer from that tremendously, you know? It's, it's not easy.

• 2:13:04Caroline Burckle?

  You know, it's, it's hard to, I think with social media stuff, because I feel like who I am as a person can't be portrayed in a square. So it's like.

• 2:13:13Rich Roll?

  What about a rectangle?

• 2:13:14Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. I'm like, what other app can I join that feels like me? You know, I, I don't know. It's just, it's a funny world, but I'm still waiting for my, uh, myself to believe in myself a little more with things I have to say and things that I, um, I can only hope that. Storytelling and sharing experiences will allow other people to feel empowered to do the same, because I think we connect through experiences and through being able to share our lives with people. So I love what you're doing with prophets walk among us. Like, that's exactly it. That's exactly what it is that life is about, is everybody has a story to tell. And how else are we going to get to understand ourselves and others?

• 2:13:58Rich Roll?

  It's the only way forward, you know, and I think that's why I'm such a strong believer in conversations like this, because to the extent that your life experiences is vastly different from somebody who's listening, there is a shared humanity. And my hope and my belief is that, you know, the person who needs to connect with what you have to say is going to connect with it, you know, and it's only by giving a person like yourself enough bandwidth to share themselves openly over time that you allow that process to occur.

• 2:14:32Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, it takes a minute to get there, too. And no shame if people aren't ready to share their stories in their lives. I certainly wasn't.

• 2:14:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:14:41Caroline Burckle?

  For however many years, I don't know.

• 2:14:43Rich Roll?

  But if I was to plop you down onto the pool deck of Olympic trials, like right now, like, and you had to go see all these coaches and all these old friends, what does that bring up for you right now?

• 2:14:59Caroline Burckle?

  In a weird way, it's like the first word that came to mind was peace. Like, I just feel okay with it, you know, like, I feel like it would, maybe not peace, maybe indifferent.

• 2:15:13Caroline Burckle?

  Like, of course, you have the, what does this person think of me based on the situation two years ago, or, you know, based on whatever, what is this, but at the same time, kind of like.

• 2:15:24Rich Roll?

  That's their business, not mine.

• 2:15:25Caroline Burckle?

  I'm just sort of indifferent. I think I, I see myself as.

• 2:15:34Caroline Burckle?

  A human more than a swimmer now than than I used to. I used to only be able to identify with my worth in life with that. And that's why it was so confusing. Because my worth was identified as something that I was proud of, but that I was also like, that's, that's it. That's not me. I don't want to be associated with that all the time. Like, you know, so.

• 2:15:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think the confusing and somewhat pernicious aspect of that is that it's not like your parents or the coaches or anybody is saying, you're only valuable to me to the extent that you perform. It's not like that.

• 2:16:09Caroline Burckle?

  Totally.

• 2:16:09Rich Roll?

  It's, it's a more ephemeral systemic thing where, you know, maybe it's not even an expectation, but it's just an environment in which you're reared to believe that you're more valuable if you perform at a higher level.

• 2:16:23Caroline Burckle?

  Absolutely.

• 2:16:24Rich Roll?

  And you, you start to intuit that and you imbue that. And then that becomes like this, you know, seed of destruction later.

• 2:16:33Caroline Burckle?

  Yes. And just on that note, I always, I always want to say that you can have your feelings about sport and your experiences and also be so passionate about what you're doing to create change and to create something better for the world, you know? I, it's like anybody that goes through something and then they become an activist in that thing so that they can create change. But it doesn't mean that they're still angry at that. And I think I'm to the point now where I'm not angry at it anymore.

• 2:17:14Caroline Burckle?

  It's like I'm just in a space of like, okay, you know? The anger has subsided. Like, that was strong, but now it's just like, okay. Let's do something about this.

• 2:17:29Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, that feels honest to me. That feels honest to me. You know, and I think ultimately with your continued, you know, commitment to growth, that ultimately you could land on that pool deck and just be excited and joyful and looking forward to seeing these people as opposed to indifferent.

• 2:17:50Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. And I, yeah, I definitely want to get to the point where it's like, hell, yeah.

• 2:17:58Caroline Burckle?

  And I would imagine, you know, evolution is not, you know, it's not linear. It's also not instant. I think a lot of people go through, you know, that path of, of, well, you know, is this happening now or never? Or do I give up? Or do I keep going? And the answer is keep going. You just keep going.

• 2:18:20Rich Roll?

  And you can't gauge the process when you're in it anyway.

• 2:18:23Caroline Burckle?

  100% not. You can't really even see it, you know? And I don't think that any human that sits in this chair that talks to you has anything figured out. Nobody has anything figured out. We're all still learning, you know? And, and I say that with utmost love for everybody. I learn so much from people that, you know, speak on your podcast, that speak on multiple, and I'm sitting here thinking, how vulnerable it is to hear from people that are still growing. How cool is it that we can learn from people that are still growing and still learning and still sharing? And in five years, they're gonna have something totally different to say.

• 2:18:58Rich Roll?

  I think it's more powerful that way.

• 2:18:59Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:00Rich Roll?

  When somebody, you know, is delivering some message from the perspective of, I have it all figured out, and let me tell you, here's how you do it, I immediately tune out.

• 2:19:11Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:11Rich Roll?

  I want to hear, you know, the honest, vulnerable truth of somebody who's made progress but is struggling and is sharing their experience from the heart. Like, that's what I'm able to connect with.

• 2:19:23Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. We're, we're all sharing what we're still processing. It's just a matter of if we're aware of it or not, you know? Like, we're all sharing things we're still working through.

• 2:19:32Rich Roll?

  So maybe a good way to end it is to.

• 2:19:37Rich Roll?

  Share a little bit or impart a little bit of wisdom or experience to the younger athlete who's tuning in, who perhaps is feeling like their worth is being measured by the extent to which they're able to perform, or who feels like they're not able to be themselves completely in whatever lane they've chosen right now and is trying to figure out how to have a healthier relationship to, you know, maybe it's sport, but maybe it's some other thing that they're involved in.

• 2:20:10Caroline Burckle?

  Well, there's two things. One is that you can be feeling, it's okay to feel that way. Your feelings are valid. I think that is very important for a young athlete to feel. Your feelings are valid. They're not right or wrong. They're not measured. But learning how to use them constructively, whether it's through sharing or understanding it, communicating and being able to use those and move forward with whatever that is, is the key. So I think we get wrapped up in not saying anything because we're afraid to upset somebody. But if there's somebody that you can share how you feel with and that feels like a safe space for you, feels safe to validate your feelings, say, it's okay, you feel that way? Let's get a little more information about that. What is it that's really showing up there?

• 2:20:55Caroline Burckle?

  And really understanding the human's heart first, they're going to be able to perform better. They're going to be able to take that and use whatever that is and turn it into something constructive. Because I think we get stuck in our feelings and we get stuck just thinking they don't matter, brushing them away, pushing them away. Really, there's so much power in that. There's so much information to be had in that. That's beautiful. Regardless of if they're positive or negative, you can take that, remold it and turn it into an amazing performance, a grade on a test, relationship with somebody, with your family members, extracurricular, whatever it is that that person's wanting to do. So that's something I like to say because I think.

• 2:21:41Caroline Burckle?

  We're shameful of our feelings. We're shameful of what that means. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just information. And I wish I would have known that. I wish I would have been okay, knowing that however I felt was okay. And that it wasn't, there was nothing wrong with it. It was just information.

• 2:21:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. I think it's super important. I feel like, at least in the context of sport, there has been a lot of progress and movement in the right direction in terms of better understanding that aspect of it. I mean, I'm two generations older than you, but when I see, you know, the way that young athletes are being coached and mentored now compared to what it was like when I was a kid, I mean, that was a long time ago. But, you know, of course, much more, there's much more to be gleaned and learned.

• 2:22:26Caroline Burckle?

  Totally. Mental health is at the forefront right now. People are caring about how people feel. And, and, you know, this is an important thing to note is that you can be struggling and also be okay with your performances. You can admit that you're having a hard time, and also you'll, you'll still be okay. You can still be and do great things. I think there's a misunderstanding there that if I, again, back to that, if I share that I'm depressed, or having a hard time, or going through something, then that means I'm not

• 2:23:11Caroline Burckle?

  gonna compete well.

• 2:23:12Rich Roll?

  It's gonna impinge on your performance, right? I mean, that's the whole message of the weight of gold, right? It's like kind of a call to action to embrace that aspect of what it means to be vulnerable and, and to have the courage to raise your hand and ask for help.

• 2:23:26Caroline Burckle?

  Absolutely.

• 2:23:27Rich Roll?

  The shrouding of it, the hiding of it, because you're supposed to be, you know, this bulletproof individual is not in service to anybody, and certainly not yourself.

• 2:23:36Caroline Burckle?

  And it's not complaining. It's owning. It's self-ownership.

• 2:23:42Caroline Burckle?

  You know, I think there's a difference between complaining. I have some athletes say, "Well, I don't want to complain." It's if we can shift it to its self-ownership, then we can take that and use it. Just because you're having a hard time, have asked for help, etc., doesn't mean you're all of a sudden going to perform poorly.

• 2:24:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:24:01Caroline Burckle?

  It doesn't mean that you're not focusing on your swimming, or your baseball, or whatever. It means that you're doing something for your mental health, which will then help that. So it's a perspective shift.

• 2:24:12Rich Roll?

  Right. It does require some level of mind-body integration, though, because you have to know when you are copping out, like, "Am I just wimping out here? Or am I really in jeopardy where I need some outside help?" Like, there is a difference. And if you don't have that kind of intuition, then, you know, you might be just, you know, indulging in your laziness, you know, instead of really being in peril.

• 2:24:39Caroline Burckle?

  But that's where great coaches and mentors come in. Because if somebody is vulnerable enough to share whatever it is, then they can catch that and be able to change that and turn that into something. Otherwise, they will just sit in their shit, so to speak, and, you know, let it go to shit, and, well, whatever, I'm just copping out, you know? So if they can articulate that, communicate that information to whomever, you know, coach, mentor, and this is where coaches and mentors can hear that, taking that information and being able to help somebody, being able to identify it without shame, and turn it into something better, call them out on what it is, in a nice way, in a beautiful way, like, "Hey, you're tough.

• 2:25:23Caroline Burckle?

  Let's make something out of this. Like, we're not going to let this happen to you here." That's where things can shift for the positive. Because you're changing the behavior through, "Let's act on this." "Let's move through this. Let's not tell you it's wrong and just make you sit in it longer. Let's make some change here. You know, let's do something, and that's on you. You're the one, athlete. You're the one that needs to make the change. I'm here to guide you."

• 2:25:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I think that responsibility, like, we're kind of talking about it from the perspective of the athlete, what their responsibility is. But that responsibility also rests on the coach to create an environment that's conducive and safe for that person to do that. And I think that...

• 2:26:07Rich Roll?

  This is applicable outside of sport in the workplace, like a boss, employee relationship, or how management is structured so that the work staff feels like they can raise certain issues and the manager is creating an environment that's conducive to that, I think ultimately leads to a much more effective, healthy place to work or environment to excel as an athlete.

• 2:26:32Caroline Burckle?

  Absolutely. And that is one of the most important things that I think any organization can hold, coaches, teams, USA Swimming, is that if the standard is held there and if people are all believing in whatever leadership there is and the leaders are able to develop these people, athletes, employees, whatever it is, into a space of vulnerability, openness, and action on what it is that we're doing, not just talking about it and sitting around, it's like actually acting on it, whether that action is let's sit with this for a minute, or that action is let's take action and do something right now. Both of those things are beautiful. That's how things develop. And yeah, those are my greatest

• 2:27:15Caroline Burckle?

  learnings from Mike DeBoer. He was just very much either like, okay, let's, now that we have that information, let's either go this way and act on it immediately, or I'm gonna let you sit with that for a second. I'm right here, next to you, but I'm gonna let you sit with that for a second. And like, knowing that I was held in that space, I think reflecting back, that makes all the difference, because either way is an action. You're empowering them either way. They gotta figure it out on their own either way, but it's the person that's gonna hold steady and sturdy there that's holding a leadership standard, that you believe in that.

• 2:27:48Rich Roll?

  Last thing. Were there any books that stand out that you've read through this process of trying to manage everything that you've, over the couple of years that you found to be helpful?

• 2:28:02Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. Well, I love yours, by the way, that I just got. Wish I got it a long time ago.

• 2:28:08Rich Roll?

  I don't know that it's gonna help anybody with their people pleasing tendencies.

• 2:28:11Caroline Burckle?

  No, it doesn't. But it also does help you feel not alone. So that's huge. My favorite books are very abstract. So I like Eastern Body, Western Mind, if you've read that book.

• 2:28:28Caroline Burckle?

  The Body Keeps score, huge for me. I'm actually reading Becoming Supernatural right now, which I really love. Loyalty to your soul. I read like a lot of mind-body style books to where you're integrating like energy centers with mindset work. So it's an abstract way of thinking. I could name all my books and sports psychs in grad school, but those are just sports psychs.

• 2:28:56Rich Roll?

  I'm thinking more in the context of, you know, somebody who's dealing with these kind of particular emotional things that you've been dealing with.

• 2:29:03Caroline Burckle?

  And I didn't read a book for however many years during that.

• 2:29:06Rich Roll?

  I know, I saw your latest Instagram post about that.

• 2:29:09Caroline Burckle?

  I didn't read one single book. I started reading in like, when I broke my heel, I started reading again. I started doing everything that I hadn't done again to try. But those are the books I gravitated toward. I gravitated toward books that felt like intuitively they were calling me to, I was drawn to them because they were about the things that I felt unseen with, that I needed to understand better about myself, which was that connection between the mind and the body. In a way that wasn't just psychology and sports psych, in a way that was like a very spiritual sense that I could understand a little bit better about myself. But there are several others in there that I really enjoyed throughout that time.

• 2:29:54Caroline Burckle?

  I'm probably blanking on a lot of them, but.

• 2:29:58Rich Roll?

  Well, you can email me a list or whatever and we'll put them up in the show notes.

• 2:30:01Caroline Burckle?

  I'll go through my little shelf.

• 2:30:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:04Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, got a lot of good ones.

• 2:30:05Rich Roll?

  Berkel's reading list from the mind of somebody who didn't read books for six years.

• 2:30:10Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, it's like just sketchbooks and like, yeah.

• 2:30:13Rich Roll?

  Right. Pictures of bananas.

• 2:30:15Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, pictures of bananas.

• 2:30:17Rich Roll?

  Cool. So what's left? Like what's the, what's the thing that's tripping you up now or like the hurdle that you're trying to overcome?

• 2:30:27Caroline Burckle?

  I think the last, the last part of what I was just talking about, about my voice and finding what it is that I feel okay to talk about. It's really difficult. Like, I'm very comfortable with you. I can talk with you about these things. But I feel like something that I'm really working on and getting over is feeling judged for how do you share your story and what it is that I'm, you know, that I stand by without sounding like this complaining victim or something. And I would really like to get to the bottom of that.

• 2:31:10Caroline Burckle?

  Because it feels like I get stuck in that space of so much to say and I have so much I believe in, but I articulating it still, I don't, I don't know, I wanna, I wanna feel confident in that, that it's just sharing and not making anybody feel sorry for me or anything, you know?

• 2:31:33Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, I think it's about intention.

• 2:31:34Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:35Rich Roll?

  What is your intention? What's your motivation? What's behind the desire to write whatever it is you're gonna write or say whatever it is you're gonna say?

• 2:31:43Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:44Rich Roll?

  You know, if it's coming from a whiny place, then, you know, it's gonna come off as complaining. But if it's coming from a desire to, to share and service to other people who might be experiencing those emotions, then it has a different tenor to it.

• 2:32:01Caroline Burckle?

  I love connection. If I can connect with people, that's my number one intention. I just, I love connection. It's everything to me. So whenever I hear people experience something similar or go through something and, and approach me about it or ask questions, feels like we're human together. It feels like we can be constructive in that conversation and not feel like it's just...

• 2:32:25Caroline Burckle?

  A problem.

• 2:32:25Rich Roll?

  Well, you must get that with Rise, though.

• 2:32:28Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:28Rich Roll?

  In all these relationships with these athletes.

• 2:32:30Caroline Burckle?

  I definitely do, and I really enjoy that. And I've been sketching more and getting back to my Fidem roots a little bit.

• 2:32:36Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 2:32:37Caroline Burckle?

  Which I love.

• 2:32:37Rich Roll?

  I've noticed.

• 2:32:38Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, I love it. I just, I started drawing just fashion sketches and then I was just like, shoot, I'm just gonna draw the body. And that actually started helping me heal my body. I started sketching during my concussion, by the way, because I couldn't formulate words. But that was huge.

• 2:32:51Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:32:52Caroline Burckle?

  So that was really helpful for me in order to connect with people because I met a whole new community of people in the art world. And that felt really cool to explain and share what it is that I'm doing through, I'm healing my body through sketching. I'm healing my body and my mind through drawing the body, through becoming one with my body again that I struggled with for so long. So that was really cool. And that was a whole new world that opened up my eyes to connection and that there's a lot of, there are a lot of worlds out there.

• 2:33:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:24Caroline Burckle?

  There's a lot of people out there. There's a lot of stuff out there that I can open my eyes to, finally.

• 2:33:30Rich Roll?

  Well, as somebody 20 years your senior, I can tell you that there's plenty more out there for you to learn and explore. And I can't wait to see where you end up directing your energy.

• 2:33:39Caroline Burckle?

  Well, thanks. I'm excited for it. I'll probably call you up for some advice.

• 2:33:43Rich Roll?

  Anytime.

• 2:33:46Rich Roll?

  That was super inspiring. Thank you.

• 2:33:48Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 2:33:49Rich Roll?

  I think it's gonna be really helpful to a lot of people. So I appreciate it. I adore you. I want only good things for you. And I hope that you consider me a friend and a resource.

• 2:33:58Caroline Burckle?

  I for sure do. Thank you so much.

• 2:34:01Rich Roll?

  Cool. So if you want to connect with Caroline, you can find her on Instagram, caro burkle there. If you're an athlete in search of mentorship, you should check out Rise Athletes, rise-athletes.com, which I should have said earlier, is the company that you and Rebecca Sony founded to, you know, be the kind of mentor to young athletes that you wish you guys had had when you were younger. I had Rebecca on very early on in the podcast, and she shares a lot about that. So you can check out that episode as well.

• 2:34:33Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:34Rich Roll?

  And your website, carolineburkle.com, where you can buy art prints.

• 2:34:38Caroline Burckle?

  I spruce that up, by the way.

• 2:34:40Rich Roll?

  You're selling art prints.

• 2:34:41Caroline Burckle?

  I'm working on it. I am. And originals.

• 2:34:44Rich Roll?

  And at some point, perhaps.

• 2:34:48Rich Roll?

  An Otilo swim run might lie in the future.

• 2:34:50Caroline Burckle?

  I'm so down. I'm so down.

• 2:34:52Rich Roll?

  You know, Garrett Weber Gale just did one.

• 2:34:53Caroline Burckle?

  No way.

• 2:34:54Rich Roll?

  In Austin. He called me the other day.

• 2:34:55Caroline Burckle?

  I love that kid.

• 2:34:57Rich Roll?

  He was all fired up. He loved it.

• 2:34:59Caroline Burckle?

  He's great.

• 2:35:00Rich Roll?

  He has such good energy.

• 2:35:02Caroline Burckle?

  He's hysterical and he's doing his same mission. You know, he went through the same struggles.

• 2:35:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's gone through it trying to figure out what his thing is.

• 2:35:08Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah. You know? Yeah, I really, I always enjoyed him. We got along great.

• 2:35:12Rich Roll?

  He's great.

• 2:35:12Caroline Burckle?

  He's a jokester.

• 2:35:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:13Caroline Burckle?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:14Rich Roll?

  Cool. All right. Well, come back and talk to me again sometime.

• 2:35:16Caroline Burckle?

  I will. I'm down.

• 2:35:18Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:35:22Rich Roll?

  Beautiful soul that Caroline. Hope you guys enjoyed that. How much you love her. She's the best, right? Be sure to give her a follow on the socials, at Caro Burckle on Instagram and Twitter. C A R O Burckle, B U R C K L E. And also check out her mentoring program, Rise Athletes, at rise.athletes.com. Quick reminder, the Plant Power Meal Planner is where it's at. Thousands of customized, plant-based recipes at your fingertips with access to nutrition coaches seven days a week, all integrated with grocery delivery. And right now, we got a $20 off membership gift card offer. Thanks, stocking stuffers people. To learn more and grab your gift card today, click Meal Planner on the homepage menu at

• 2:36:05Rich Roll?

  richroll.com or go directly to meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, the single most impactful thing you can do is subscribe. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. I love it when you share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media, and you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition was created by Blake Curtis. Graphics by Jessica Miranda. Portraits by Ally Rogers. Sponsored relationships are managed by DK David Kahn. And theme music, as always, by Tyler Trapper and Harry. Appreciate the love, you guys.

• 2:36:47Rich Roll?

  We skipped a week of Roll On due to a scheduling thing with Adam, but we'll be back answering your questions and Talking Shop on Thursday. Until then, stay true. Peace. Plants. Namaste.