Roll On: How Social Media Erodes The Mind, Finding Meaning in Grief & Fitness After Covid (+ Endurance Wins & Rollie Victors!)

Welcome to another edition of ‘Roll On’, wherein Rich Roll and journalist & author Adam Skolnick riff on matters of interest across sports, culture, entertainment, and self-betterment. Topics discussed in today’s episode include: Rich’s recent adventures in Miami (and getting COVID) Oz Pearlman’s Central Park FKT Robbie Balenger on ‘outlasting a Tesla’ Memorable performances from the Boston Marathon Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid Winners of the 2021 ‘Rollies’ Coaching check-in with Chris Hauth; and We field a listener question on how to make sense of catastrophic and heartbreaking losses If you want your query discussed in a future ‘Roll On’, leave it on our voicemail at (424) 235-4626. Note: We will be recording a sleep specific AMA episode with Dr. Matthew Walker (RRP 600) in the near future. Please submit your seep questions for consideration by sending an e-mail to [email protected] or leaving a voicemail at (424) 235-4626. Reminder that you can watch today’s podcast on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Enjoy! 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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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Roll On, where my journalist appendage, Mr. Adam Skolnick, and I rip matters of interest from the headlines and our lived experience. We riff on sports, culture, entertainment, self-betterment. We answer a few listener questions and so much more. Today, we've got a fun, I should say, light in comparison to at least the Roll On from two weeks ago, show today. We're going to announce the winners of the 2021 Rollies. Ooh, very exciting. We're going to talk a little bit of endurance news, answer one single listener question. And once again, we're going to close with a coaching call check-in with friend of the

• 1:54Rich Roll?

  pod, my coach, Chris Hauth, the man guiding me towards this perhaps ill-fated 12 and a half mile open water swim race that is looming on my calendar. But first, how goes it, comrade?

• 2:08Adam Skolnick?

  Rich, Larry Ellison owes me $25.

• 2:13Rich Roll?

  That sounds like a story.

• 2:16Adam Skolnick?

  It's not that great of a story, but I went, you know, with the family and I, we went to the tennis tournament, Larry's tennis tournament, Indian Wells. And we had two days planned. One day we went, we took my parents, we got like two stadium seats and we had two grounds passes and we brought Zuma because April was a very high ranked junior tennis player in Australia. So tennis is a big deal in our house. And so anyway, we parked the car in this huge grassy lot, looks like size of Coachella festival. And as we're walking, we're pushing the stroller, it's a vaccinated only entrance thing. And Zuma's under five, can't be vaxxed. But usually they're, you know, they're allowed in anyway. But in this

• 3:00Adam Skolnick?

  case, we had all the people who were working in the parking lot saying, they're not going to let them in, they're not going to let them in. So we were prepared. I go up to the, to the counter or whatever, the ticket place to get my refund because I said, well, okay, I'll just get my money back. Couldn't go because they wouldn't let Zoom in. And nowhere on the website does it say, you know, you have, under five aren't, aren't allowed. And so then, but she wouldn't give me my parking, my parking refund because she couldn't because it's been scanned.

• 3:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Adam Skolnick?

  So like, there was no way for her to do it. And so I'm like, okay. And so she said, you can just call, you know, email this guy and he'll, he'll.

• 3:37Rich Roll?

  Larry Ellison.

• 3:38Adam Skolnick?

  And it turned out to be Larry. And yeah, I haven't heard back yet.

• 3:43Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 3:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 3:45Rich Roll?

  So how are we gonna get justice for you for this?

• 3:49Adam Skolnick?

  You know, Larry's very busy. I don't want to be an apologist for Larry. He is very busy. He does owe me $25 and I am gonna tax some interest on there.

• 3:56Rich Roll?

  Well, maybe when you're out swimming, you'll see him fly by on one of his sailboats.

• 4:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Well, to make matters worse, I shorted Twitter.

• 4:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, not smart.

• 4:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because Elon, Elon comes in, he's a regular at the B and J. And.

• 4:12Rich Roll?

  That and Jerry's.

• 4:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah. He comes, he gets a.

• 4:14Rich Roll?

  That won't die.

• 4:15Adam Skolnick?

  He gets a triple scoop. I'm just saying. And, and he, he told me he was gonna buy Twitter. He was gonna bull rush Twitter. And I didn't, I thought he was kidding because he's that kind of guy. We have a like, like you and I, like you and I, you know, we have a thing. And, and I thought he was fucking with me. So I shorted Twitter.

• 4:33Rich Roll?

  It's gonna be interesting to see what pans out with that.

• 4:36Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 4:36Rich Roll?

  It's all upside down.

• 4:38Adam Skolnick?

  Poison pill and everything.

• 4:39Rich Roll?

  That's a different podcast, though. We're not gonna, we're not gonna pick that one apart today.

• 4:42Adam Skolnick?

  We're not getting into Elon's head today.

• 4:45Rich Roll?

  I will say that I stood behind Larry Ellison in line at a CVS once.

• 4:53Adam Skolnick?

  How did that go?

• 4:54Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I mean, it was just, he was buying Band-Aids or something. I can't even remember. This was years ago.

• 4:59Adam Skolnick?

  Celebrities are just like us.

• 5:00Rich Roll?

  What's interesting is that, you know, he owns like an insane amount of Malibu beachfront property, including, I think, where like Nobu and the Soho House is and that.

• 5:08Adam Skolnick?

  Doesn't he own the Malibu Beach Inn and the RioCo?

• 5:11Rich Roll?

  I think so. I think so.

• 5:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 5:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:12Adam Skolnick?

  And Lanai. He owns the island of Lanai.

• 5:14Rich Roll?

  He owns like that whole island, right?

• 5:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Rich Roll?

  Founder of Oracle, for people that don't know.

• 5:19Adam Skolnick?

  Which is cloud, cloud stuff, right?

• 5:21Rich Roll?

  He did make, he did make an appearance in, in Founder Television. Did you watch the dropout?

• 5:29Adam Skolnick?

  I watched the first, because we were talking, I watched the first episode of the dropout.

• 5:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he, he is portrayed in that mini-series. Including a scene with Elizabeth Holmes, played by Amanda Seyfried, on one of his yachts in the San Francisco.

• 5:44Adam Skolnick?

  He does seem to live well.

• 5:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Anyway, that is all aside of what we're actually gonna talk about today.

• 5:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  But first, I should probably check in with what's going on.

• 5:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, what's going on with you? I know you were in Miami.

• 5:58Rich Roll?

  I'm always waiting, you know, I always ask you what's going on with you. You never ask me what's going on with me.

• 6:03Adam Skolnick?

  It's true. I miss my cue.

• 6:07Rich Roll?

  Unfulfilled in this relationship.

• 6:09Adam Skolnick?

  Every week I miss my cue. What's going on with you, Rich?

• 6:13Rich Roll?

  If we're gonna have a healthy relationship, it has to be two ways.

• 6:16Adam Skolnick?

  That's what I told Elon yesterday.

• 6:17Rich Roll?

  Okay. Anyway, I'm good. I was in Miami like two weeks ago and had this incredible experience. I hosted my first conference. It was for this organization called YPO, Young Presidents Organization. I've done a lot of events for this organization over the years and...

• 6:35Adam Skolnick?

  What does that mean?

• 6:35Rich Roll?

  It's, it's basically like this global organization of young CEOs and each kind of local chapter functions almost like a mastermind group, where it's, it's pretty cool, though. Like, they really help each other out and they have all these like family, community-oriented events and all this infrastructure. But it's essentially like... Young CEOs, I think there's a cap on the age limit. And, and it's, you know, kind of like a way for them to, you know, have a means to, you know, share what's going on with them and have other people help out, et cetera.

• 7:11Adam Skolnick?

  Info share.

• 7:11Rich Roll?

  And they do like a lot of speaking stuff. So like when I went to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and Morocco, like all of those were YPO events.

• 7:19Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  Which is cool, but I.

• 7:21Adam Skolnick?

  Do they cap on the boomers when they're in private?

• 7:24Rich Roll?

  I don't know. But this was my first stab at actually hosting like an all day event.

• 7:31Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting.

• 7:31Rich Roll?

  Where I had to be on stage, like, I don't know, 14 times over the course of the day. And it was a wellness oriented thing where a lot of friends of the podcast were actually the speakers, like Matthew Walker and Volter Longo, Laird and Gabby were there, Dan Buettner, Mark Hyman was there, Ken Cook from the Environmental Working Group, Chip Conley, who's this hotelier who was instrumental in helping build Airbnb, who now has this thing called the Modern Elder Academy. He was super cool.

• 8:00Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 8:01Rich Roll?

  Ken and Chip, I'm definitely getting on the podcast. We're trying to schedule all that right now. But my point being like, I thought it would be like, oh, it'll be cool. Like you just get up and you introduce each guest, like how hard can it be?

• 8:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 8:14Rich Roll?

  And then when I got into like the responsibility of what that entailed, because you're, you're basically like charged with holding the energy of the crowd and keeping this thing moving.

• 8:23Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 8:24Rich Roll?

  You know, making sure that everyone's really engaged and interested in what's happening. And ended up like rehearsing for like eight hours the day before, wrote like a 35 page script. And then during the day was like revising the script and trying to find jokes. And, you know, it was a cool challenge and definitely like a puzzle that I've never tried to assemble before, but it was pretty thrilling.

• 8:46Adam Skolnick?

  It went well.

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I dug it. It was super fun.

• 8:48Adam Skolnick?

  And everyone was into it.

• 8:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it went really well and I found like a groove with it. I found it to be more fulfilling than just being one of the keynote people.

• 8:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 8:58Rich Roll?

  Cause it's like, okay, it's up to you. Like, can you get these people excited? Can you make sure that they're holding their attention? Can you keep them entertained? Can you keep this thing moving on time? All that kind of stuff.

• 9:09Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 9:09Rich Roll?

  It was pretty cool. So, anyway, that was really gratifying.

• 9:13Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 9:13Rich Roll?

  I really want to do more of that. Like, that kind of busted my cherry with that type of work. And I have such a whole new level of respect for people that host. Cause I think it's easy to look at, you know, I don't know, people that, that host like reality TV shows and the like, and just be like, you know, they just read, you know, they're reading off the teleprompter. How hard can it be?

• 9:34Adam Skolnick?

  Like the Bachelor guy.

• 9:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, well, I called my friend Asher Gunsberg, who hosts The Bachelor in Australia. And I was like, cause I was having a panic moment. I was in, I was like, dude, I gotta do this thing tomorrow. And I just realized like, it's so much more intense than I thought it would be.

• 9:48Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 9:48Rich Roll?

  And I only have so much time to get ready. Like, you gotta, you gotta talk me through this. And he spent a couple hours with me on the phone and it was incredibly helpful. He gave me all of these tips and tools, cause he's been doing it for like 25 years.

• 10:02Adam Skolnick?

  I like the amazing race guy, Jeff Probst.

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right?

• 10:06Adam Skolnick?

  I could see you as a Jeff Probst.

• 10:08Rich Roll?

  It's a cool thing. Like, I, I was very dismissive of the whole thing until I did it. And I was like, wow, this is like a lot, you know?

• 10:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, no.

• 10:15Rich Roll?

  Props to anybody who hosts stuff.

• 10:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 10:18Rich Roll?

  So, that was very cool. And I had gone to Miami a couple of days earlier so I could get some swimming in, and prep for this race. Got a bunch of cool, open water swims under my belt, including one the final day. I had, I shared this on social media and I talked to you about it.

• 10:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 10:33Rich Roll?

  I was out, I was probably a little bit too offshore. Like Miami Beach, it stays pretty shallow. Until you get pretty far out. And it was a little bit choppier than I would have liked. So, I wanted to get past the break. But it was still only, I was probably like 200 meters offshore. It was still only like maybe eight feet deep.

• 10:50Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 10:51Rich Roll?

  So, it's not like, oh, man, I'm out at open sea or anything like that. It's all very manageable. Swimming along and then four five-foot lemon sharks swam just beneath me, like right along the bottom.

• 11:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  Which was super cool, but also, you know, it's like, dude, they're sharks. They're right there.

• 11:10Adam Skolnick?

  Sharks look like sharks.

• 11:12Rich Roll?

  And I know that lemon sharks are not the most aggressive. And I found myself much calmer in the situation than I would have predicted. I was like, okay, I should probably get a little bit closer to shore and just kind of calmly pivoted towards shore. And it's not like any of them even noticed me or anything like that.

• 11:28Adam Skolnick?

  Well, they probably noticed you, but they didn't care.

• 11:30Rich Roll?

  Right, but they don't give a shit.

• 11:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 11:31Rich Roll?

  Right, which is, that's.

• 11:32Adam Skolnick?

  And they would go close to shore, too. I mean, that's, that 200, it's not like they're staying at 200.

• 11:37Rich Roll?

  Do you know much about lemon sharks?

• 11:39Adam Skolnick?

  No, would you like me to Google?

• 11:41Rich Roll?

  Well, live, right now?

• 11:42Adam Skolnick?

  Live Google?

• 11:44Rich Roll?

  I mean, they're not innocuous, like, they, they have attacked people. I don't think, I don't think they've ever, I don't know if they've ever killed anybody.

• 11:51Adam Skolnick?

  It's, it's so rare for people to get even bit, it's crazy rare. You know, it's, it's insane.

• 11:58Rich Roll?

  But they weren't small. I mean, they were like the length of this table.

• 12:00Adam Skolnick?

  They can get 11 feet, they can get, they can get, those are probably juveniles, I can, I'm just looking at.

• 12:04Rich Roll?

  And they look like, you know, like, it's not like they look different than what you would expect.

• 12:09Adam Skolnick?

  Sharks always look so sharky, don't they?

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  They can be counted on for that.

• 12:14Adam Skolnick?

  The funky, kinda like port, port towns.

• 12:16Rich Roll?

  We just found the title of this podcast, Sharks Can Look So Sharky.

• 12:20Adam Skolnick?

  I mean leopard sharks.

• 12:20Rich Roll?

  That's the quote graphic that we're gonna use.

• 12:23Adam Skolnick?

  Like, nurse sharks have the little, like, catfish thingos that makes you realize that whale sharks still look sharky, but that, you know, they're, they don't bite you. But, uh, everything from reef shark up, uh, looks so sharky. Let's see what it says, what does it eat? It eats known ultra athletes that wrote books.

• 12:44Rich Roll?

  That's a very small.

• 12:45Adam Skolnick?

  Loves podcasters.

• 12:46Rich Roll?

  People.

• 12:47Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 12:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, they eat crustaceans. You know, they're not eating, they're not eating humans.

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  I know. So that was a cool experience. I'd never had, I'd never been out in the water and seen a shark in the wild.

• 13:00Adam Skolnick?

  Never?

• 13:01Rich Roll?

  No.

• 13:02Adam Skolnick?

  What about in Hawaii, you never seen it? You never seen reef sharks in Hawaii?

• 13:04Rich Roll?

  Dolphins, but never, no.

• 13:05Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 13:06Rich Roll?

  Maybe tiny little sharks that I don't even remember, but nothing that was like, wow, that's a, that's a legit.

• 13:11Adam Skolnick?

  A legit shark.

• 13:12Rich Roll?

  Group of sharks right there.

• 13:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:14Rich Roll?

  In any event, the conference that I was at was just prior to the Bitcoin conference, which is what brings like, that was like a big deal. So I left like the day before that started, but I have a bunch of friends that are Bitcoiners who came into town early. So I was able to see one or two of them.

• 13:32Adam Skolnick?

  You guys hit the clubs?

• 13:33Rich Roll?

  It made me, no, like, but my, I have this friend, Peter McCormick.

• 13:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 13:37Rich Roll?

  Who has the biggest Bitcoin podcast. It's called What Bitcoin Did. And he came on one of our retreats to Italy several years ago. And I, he had this idea of starting a Bitcoin podcast and I kind of helped him get it up on its feet. And now he's like the man in Bitcoin. Like he, he ended up like hosting essentially like a full day of the conference. Like he's a big name in that world. And it made me think like, oh, maybe Peter would be a good guest. Like I've never had anyone on to talk about Bitcoin.

• 14:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's a good idea.

• 14:09Rich Roll?

  I have a lot.

• 14:10Adam Skolnick?

  We've attempted to talk about NFT.

• 14:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I, I, you know, I'm the furthest thing from an expert on crypto.

• 14:16Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 14:16Rich Roll?

  But it ain't going away. And that Bitcoin conference was a big deal.

• 14:21Adam Skolnick?

  You know what my favorite thing about crypto is? The Larry David commercial.

• 14:25Rich Roll?

  That you don't have any of it?

• 14:27Adam Skolnick?

  The Larry David, I do have some.

• 14:28Rich Roll?

  Oh, is that the Super Bowl commercial one? I can't remember whether I saw that or not.

• 14:32Adam Skolnick?

  Oh yeah, it's great. Well, we'll link it in the show notes. There's a long form on YouTube.

• 14:38Adam Skolnick?

  I, yeah, no, I do own some Bitcoin, not Bitcoin, some lesser known cryptos.

• 14:44Rich Roll?

  Some weird crypto coin. All right. Why is that?

• 14:48Adam Skolnick?

  No, I own some lesser known cryptos that haven't quite taken off yet.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  I, I own like a negligible amount of Bitcoin.

• 14:56Adam Skolnick?

  Like, like a quarter of a coin?

• 14:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, less than that. A quarter of a coin would be, I mean Bitcoin's at 40 grand right now.

• 15:02Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  So a quarter of a coin would be.

• 15:05Adam Skolnick?

  10 full grand?

• 15:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it would be 10 grand.

• 15:07Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 15:08Rich Roll?

  I don't have that.

• 15:10Adam Skolnick?

  Larry Ellison, if you're listening, you can put that 25 straight into a Bitcoin percentage.

• 15:15Rich Roll?

  Into your wallet, your crypto wallet?

• 15:17Adam Skolnick?

  In my crypto wallet, not yours, Larry.

• 15:20Rich Roll?

  But here's the thing. I returned from Florida with COVID.

• 15:26Rich Roll?

  Which is interesting because I thought, I thought COVID didn't exist in Florida. But maybe that's why I didn't start to experience symptoms until I was on the plane home.

• 15:34Adam Skolnick?

  I like that joke, but Rich, I think it's good. You left Miami with a communicative disease like you should have.

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  I mean, I interacted with hundreds of people. It was spring break. The Bitcoiners were coming into town.

• 15:47Adam Skolnick?

  You also went to spring break?

• 15:48Rich Roll?

  Well, spring, like you're in these hotels at Miami Beach and it's just like

• 15:53Rich Roll?

  like at the pools all day long and all night. You can't escape it.

• 15:57Adam Skolnick?

  And the music, let's, you know what? I like dance music. I like house music.

• 16:01Rich Roll?

  This is where I'm an old man. I'm like.

• 16:02Adam Skolnick?

  I like dance music. I like, I like the, I like the disco house, the old stuff. This crap, this like Miami version, it's remarkably bad.

• 16:11Rich Roll?

  What's interesting is that in Miami, everywhere you go, that's the soundtrack. I went to the Time Out Food Court, like Time Out builds these food courts all over the world with like, and they're pretty cool spaces. And I had, they built one on Lincoln Road in Miami and I'd never seen it or been to it. I was like, oh, I'm gonna go check it out. And I walked in and it was like like so loud in there that I did a loop and just walked out. I was like, I can't, I can't eat in here.

• 16:38Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, that was the dinner soundtrack?

• 16:40Rich Roll?

  No, it was in the middle of the day.

• 16:41Adam Skolnick?

  What, let me, let me hear what was the soundtrack again?

• 16:45Rich Roll?

  You know, like, come on. All right. Anyway.

• 16:49Adam Skolnick?

  What, what hotel did you stay in?

• 16:52Rich Roll?

  I was at the W.

• 16:53Adam Skolnick?

  Is the Standard still there? Cause they closed here. But the Standard there is cool.

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  There was there, but the Delano, which was kind of like the OG hotspot is closed down right now. And that used to be the furthest north than anybody would go in South Beach before it kind of got gnarly. Now it goes quite a bit further north, but there's still, you know, it's like, it's an interesting spot.

• 17:12Adam Skolnick?

  Like, I, I like Miami. I think Miami, I think Miami has some charm. Some people don't like it because it looks like shallow on the surface. I like that it's like this pan, great Pan American city, probably the only Pan American city where people from all over Latin America live. It's a true bilingual city. It's, it's got great Cuban and just Latino food in general, Mexican Cuban, whatever. Everything's there.

• 17:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And if you're there and you want to eat plant-based, you gotta go to Love Life.

• 17:36Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 17:37Rich Roll?

  In Wynwood. So our friends Diego and Veronica own this restaurant. They're geniuses. It is the best.

• 17:44Rich Roll?

  Plant-based restaurant I've ever been. Really? And that's like, I say that like I've been to a lot of places. You're gonna get a lot of phone calls and texts. I know. I love it. They're so good. Diego's recipes are incredible. Does he have a cookbook? I shared it. No, they don't have a cookbook. I think one of the recipes is gonna be in, in Dan Buettner's next book, which is coming out soon. Oh, cool. And they're making some cool moves that that aren't public yet, but I'll be sharing about soon. Buettner, Buettner's living out there. So yeah, that's my recommendation. Love Life in Wynwood. Good stuff. But anyway, yeah, I came back, I came back with COVID. That's why there was no roll on last week. Right. Uh, which is, you know, we would have typically done it then. How was it for you?

• 18:27Rich Roll?

  It was pretty mild, you know, I was vaccinated. So within a couple of days, I was kind of over it. I didn't lose my taste. I didn't lose my smell. I had two nights where I experienced some form of fever and chills. So for 48 hours, just at night, I got like, you know, shivery or whatever. Um, and then basically just kind of achy and weak for a couple of days and then it passed. So. Did you isolate somewhere in the house? I isolated in my tent. You stayed in the tent? So I was like the English patient. It was like, Tyler was joking. The smallpox guy in his tent. It's like, it's like it's 1910 and you're recovering from consumption. Yes.

• 19:08Rich Roll?

  That's very funny. In the backyard. The only problem is it was like 95 degrees out. So the tent got way too hot in the middle of the day for me to convalesce. Right. But yeah, I isolated. Um, and everybody else in the family is fine. Um, I basically just hydrated, slept, rested. I did do a five day course of Paxlovid, which is an antiviral that was recommended to me. Um, and I think that probably expedited how quickly I got over it. In addition to that. I took a lot of supplements. I took about 40,000 IUDs of vitamin D every day, vitamin C, vitamin K, quercetin, curcumin on top of what I typically take,

• 19:51Rich Roll?

  which is just a multivitamin, athletic greens, B12 and stuff like that. So.

• 19:56Adam Skolnick?

  So your pee was like rainbow color.

• 19:58Rich Roll?

  It was very, yeah, it was very yellow. It was very yellow. But three and a half days in, I was pretty much fine. I had talked to a bunch of athletes who were cautioning me not to get back into any kind of training and to really take my time with it because it can snap back on you.

• 20:18Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 20:18Rich Roll?

  I've had friends that have taken three weeks off, but I felt like five days in, I was like, I felt completely fine. So I went back to the pool at, on day six, I think, for a light swim and have just been slowly building since then. But I feel 100% now.

• 20:34Adam Skolnick?

  Nice.

• 20:34Rich Roll?

  But I did miss, I think, seven days of training. So in the context of training for this long, open water swim that is not too far away in the future, that definitely set me back.

• 20:49Adam Skolnick?

  Seems like you're rocking it though, from Instagram stories.

• 20:52Rich Roll?

  Okay. It's been nice to just be in the pool and focus on swimming every day because during all of the ultra endurance races that I trained for, I would only swim two or three days a week.

• 21:01Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  Because the focus was on other stuff. So it's been decades since I just focused on swimming and kind of swam pretty much every day. And it feels good. I feel strong and getting stronger every day.

• 21:13Adam Skolnick?

  You look great.

• 21:14Rich Roll?

  Thank you, sir.

• 21:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 21:16Rich Roll?

  Yes. What else we got? A quick little piece of housekeeping before we move into the next thing. Matthew Walker, who is in Miami, I talked to him about coming back on the podcast.

• 21:26Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 21:26Rich Roll?

  And I think what we want to do is an AMA formatted conversation that's obviously specific to sleep. We haven't scheduled it yet, but we'll be doing that at some point in the spring or the summer. And I thought it would be good to just make the announcement now. If you have a sleep question, you can submit that on our voicemail at 424-235-4626, or you can send an email to [email protected]. So sleep questions only to that email from Matthew Walker. We'll go through all the questions, of course, find the best ones and kind of do a very structured, sleep-oriented conversation.

• 22:05Adam Skolnick?

  I'm really not that great at sleep if Matthew cares to tinker with me or in any way.

• 22:11Rich Roll?

  I think Matthew cares deeply, Adam.

• 22:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he seems like a caring guy.

• 22:15Rich Roll?

  He is. He's a wonderful, wonderful man.

• 22:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 22:19Rich Roll?

  All right, well, let's do our endurance sports check in. We got a lot of news to share today. Where do you want to start?

• 22:24Adam Skolnick?

  Robbie Ballinger.

• 22:25Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 22:26Adam Skolnick?

  John Henry, or as I call it, John Henry 2.0, or as I call him, Don Juan Henry.

• 22:32Rich Roll?

  Don Juan, he is very charming with that mustache, very swarthy.

• 22:36Adam Skolnick?

  Don Juan Henry.

• 22:37Rich Roll?

  The idea was that he was going to outlast a Tesla, outrun a Tesla. I think there's a lot of people who don't know.

• 22:44Adam Skolnick?

  Tesla, you pronounce it Tesla.

• 22:46Rich Roll?

  As opposed to what?

• 22:47Adam Skolnick?

  Tesla.

• 22:47Rich Roll?

  Tesla? Tesla. Tesla.

• 22:49Adam Skolnick?

  Tesla.

• 22:50Rich Roll?

  Like a Z with a Z vibe on it?

• 22:52Adam Skolnick?

  That's what you said.

• 22:53Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I'm not even consciously aware of how I'm pronouncing it. My point, though, is that you throw the name John Henry out like everybody knows who that is.

• 23:01Adam Skolnick?

  People don't know who John Henry is? Do they not learn that in grade school anymore?

• 23:05Rich Roll?

  There are less studied in, in American history, so spell it out.

• 23:10Adam Skolnick?

  John Henry, it was this period of time when, um, basically people were, were building the roads and, and getting through mountains. So they were using, they would blow it up and then people would kind of go in with a pickaxe and like hack their way through mountains.

• 23:27Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:28Adam Skolnick?

  And then the steam engine was invented and John Henry was the greatest of them all. He did the work of 20 men. There's like folk songs about him.

• 23:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he was like the David Goggins of road engineers.

• 23:41Adam Skolnick?

  He was the workhorse of beyond, like he was like, you know, 50 men, he ate like, you know, 10 steaks for breakfast kind of thing. I forget what it was, but he, um, and he was like revered. And this steam engine came along and promised to put them all out of work. And so John Henry was challenged to beat the steam engine. I think he did it for his fellow workers, you know, let's, let's show this, this engine. Who's boss and the coal powered steam engine versus John Henry and John Henry was in a race, but it was a timed race and John Henry beats the steam engine.

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  Basically like, like drilling through the side of a mountain.

• 24:23Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 24:24Rich Roll?

  Type body.

• 24:25Adam Skolnick?

  And, and then he dies at the finish line, but he wins. There's a great book called John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead, who I've name dropped on this podcast a few times before. It's one of his first books. It's, I think it's his second or third. Very, very, very funny, very poignant. It's excellent. Uh, and so John Henry days, but, uh, and I actually recommended that to Robbie in case he was interested.

• 24:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Rich Roll?

  Well, not to spoil it, Robbie did not die.

• 24:53Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 24:53Rich Roll?

  At the end of his challenge.

• 24:54Adam Skolnick?

  And it wasn't timed.

• 24:55Rich Roll?

  It wasn't timed and he did technically outlast the Tesla, although he didn't meet his kind of time goal. So basically this Tesla starts out on the outskirts of, of Austin and drives until, it has a full battery charge and drives until the battery dies. It goes 242 miles and Robbie's challenge was to, um, run that distance from where the Tesla started in under 72 hours. He succeeded in running the full 242 miles. It took him a little bit longer, just under 77 hours. Um, and I think, you know, the heat and humidity of the Texas hill country.

• 25:34Adam Skolnick?

  Crazy.

• 25:35Rich Roll?

  Like an average of 93 degrees Fahrenheit plus 13,000 feet of elevation gain. We think of Texas as flat, but they did it in the hill country. So lots of ups and downs, um, was, you know, it laid the pain on him.

• 25:48Adam Skolnick?

  It's a lot of miles.

• 25:50Rich Roll?

  And I had serious FOMO watching this because I was invited to attend and support and I really wanted to, but I had just gotten back from Miami and didn't feel like I could leave town again. Plus I had COVID, so I couldn't have gone, even if I had, uh, agreed to do it. So I just watched it on Instagram like everybody else, but what was cool is so many cool people and friends of the podcast were there to support Robbie. We had Hella was there, Hella, Hella Sidibe, of course. Dan Churchill, who hasn't been on the podcast, but is a good friend of mine. He is the, uh, owner and head chef at Charlie Street in New York City. Just an amazing dude, uh, a guy that everybody should follow on Instagram. He shares recipes and training stuff, super positive, fit dude, Australian contributor to Chris Hemsworth center app.

• 26:36Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? I love this guy and he's an incredible athlete as well. So, Dan underscore Churchill. He's very photogenic. He's very handsome and charming. Yeah. And positive. Must be nice. Wonderful, wonderful guy. Robbie, of course, is Robbie Ballinger on Instagram. There's his page if you're watching on YouTube. So he was sharing, of course, you know, images and videos along the way. But here's the idea, basically, Outlast Tesla. And he did. He did it. We had Hella there as well. Here's Hella with another guy who showed up to support Robbie. William Gooch. Gooch. Gooch, who Robbie supported when William ran the circumference of the U. I think he ran around the United Kingdom. Yeah.

• 27:20Rich Roll?

  Like a year ago and Robbie went out to crew for him and support him. He's an incredible athlete, very unique human being. He ran like 48 marathons in 30 days. Crazy. And then in the week like prior to Robbie's challenge, he did Marathon de Sable. And he shared all his whoop scores, like I think whoop posted a bunch of stuff like on their website. Maybe I can find a link to that. And then like a day later, he went to Zurich and ran a marathon there. And then he flew to Austin, did the Robbie thing. And then he went like straight to Coachella. Now he's like a hype beast in Coachella. Like this guy, like he wears gold chains. He's very like, he's like a hype beast.

• 28:01Rich Roll?

  And there's something like kind of cool. I like that the baggy sweats are back. I noticed clothes are getting baggy. He's a style master, this dude, like, you know, check him out. But like a beast of an athlete and it was cool that Robbie supported him. And then he flew all the way, you know, basically halfway around the world to support Robbie. Here's William at MDS. Oh, nice. Looking like a fashion model. Done. Out on the sand. Anyway, really cool. Congrats to Robbie for his latest adventure that was. You mean Don Juan Henry. Don Juan Henry, supported by 10,000, of course, that works with.

• 28:38Rich Roll?

  Dan Churchill and I.

• 28:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  Another, you know, a group of really cool athletes. So it was kind of a 10,000 sponsored challenge.

• 28:45Adam Skolnick?

  It was.

• 28:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Adam Skolnick?

  It was cool to watch.

• 28:47Rich Roll?

  What Robbie does next.

• 28:49Adam Skolnick?

  It didn't, it looked, at one point, it looked like he was real shaky, like he could move. If he, if he was moving, he was fine, but like, like getting up from his support vehicle and getting back on his feet, man, there were times where he was like, he was real wobbly. Yeah.

• 29:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Super wobbly. And then he was running like no problem.

• 29:06Adam Skolnick?

  But then he was fine. Yeah.

• 29:07Rich Roll?

  And that's the way these ultras are. You look like, oh, there's no, this guy's done. You know, there's no way. He can't even walk. And then a couple of hours later, or night falls, gets a little bit cooler out, gets some calories and some food, a little bit of a nap, and then all of a sudden, it's a new human.

• 29:22Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 29:23Rich Roll?

  So good on you, Robbie. Sorry I wasn't there to support you. We love you, though. And it's, uh, it's cool to see you continue to inspire people all over the world.

• 29:32Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent.

• 29:33Rich Roll?

  But Robbie plays a big part in the next dispatch from the world of endurance that we're going to talk about today.

• 29:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. The Oz Perelman record. Yeah. Um, you know, if you, if you have not seen, I mean, I feel like your listeners and our listener, our listeners.

• 29:52Rich Roll?

  I feel like they're our listeners.

• 29:53Adam Skolnick?

  Own it, Adam. Our listeners are aware of what happened. You were, you were Instagramming about it, tweeting about it. Oz Perelman, Oz The Mentalist, who is just recently a guest on this here program, wanted to set the record for the FKT for most loops around Central Park. He ended up doing 19 loops, 116 miles.

• 30:15Rich Roll?

  In a day.

• 30:16Adam Skolnick?

  In a day.

• 30:16Rich Roll?

  And the, it's important to note.

• 30:19Adam Skolnick?

  It's 18 hours, 50 minutes.

• 30:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they don't, it's only, the part, that loop is only open during certain hours of the, like 6:00 AM to 1:00 AM or something like that, right?

• 30:27Adam Skolnick?

  That's right. 6:00 AM and you can't, you can't start till 6:05 and you have to finish at 12:55. So it gives you 18:50 when, and he's breaking Robbie's record. Robbie did 16 loops and, and he, Robbie held the second FKT. So it's not that, like it's been around a long time. It started in 2020. Someone laid down, I believe it was 12 loops, loops. It's in the article. Aaron Zollhoffer, I believe is his name.

• 30:52Rich Roll?

  And by the article, you must be referring to the New York Times article that you wrote.

• 30:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. So I was, I was lucky enough to be able to cover it. So I knew Oz was going to go for this. Oz, you know, the backstory of the whole article. Is that David Goggins invited me to a Zoom at the beginning of the pandemic when Oz was like having to transition his business from live shows to Zoom. And I'd heard of Oz before, but I hadn't really, you know, I wasn't really that acquainted with how great he was. And I sat in on this Zoom and I saw him predict like the serial numbers on some dollar bill in some dude's wallet, like 2,000 miles away from him through Zoom. And I realized, wow, this guy's amazing. And then quickly after that, I found out he was a great runner.

• 31:39Adam Skolnick?

  And so I stayed in contact with him, just mostly Instagram messaging. And then I, you know, said, if there's ever an event he's going to tackle, let me know, because I think it would be a cool story. And he was going to do last summer Montauk to Manhattan, 170 miles, but it didn't, didn't end up happening. And so I'd already gotten New York Times Sports interested in that. And then he called, he called me like two weeks before this, so three weeks ago now, two weeks before this, and said, what do you think of me doing this? And I said, I think that's great. And so I talked to my editor, who's in charge of endurance and adventure sports at New York Times. Her name's Talia Minsberg. And we

• 32:19Adam Skolnick?

  talked about Oz and she quickly got on board. And so I did it, you know, at first I said, you're the New York Times at Central Park, like, I can't get there. And you don't need me there. You have a whole, you have a whole office of reporters, really good ones. Why don't you just do it? I wasn't even going to do it. And, or that's how I positioned it. But it turns out she wanted me to do it. So I ended up having to report it remotely. But Hillary Swift, who did amazing photographs, she was also kind of my eyes and ears. So we stayed in contact. I was obviously watching him on Instagram. I FaceTimed with him. I called him, I texted, everything. So I had full access, but it was interesting that it was a remote story.

• 33:01Rich Roll?

  And you talked to Robbie also.

• 33:02Adam Skolnick?

  I talked to Robbie beforehand. So I interviewed Oz and Robbie the week before. And so that was cool. It was my first chance to really talk to Robbie and understand what he's about. So he's in, he's mentioned in there. The best story that's not in there is, is there's a guy named George A. Hirsch. Have you heard of George A. Hirsch? He's the chairman of the New York Roadrunners. He's like 87 years old, I believe. And he, uh, he also is a giant in publishing. He, he started New York Magazine. He went on to become the global editor, first global editor of Men's Health. Wow. Yeah. And so head of Men's Health, started New York Magazine, also a giant in, in running. Not only is he now the acting chairman of New York Roadrunners,

• 33:47Adam Skolnick?

  he is the founder of the Five Borough New York Marathon. Wow. So he changed that whole course and was an early runner, like in the sixties, he's running around, nobody's running. Anyway, so he became friends with O's many years ago. And, uh, so he knew about, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's known him for a long time. And at one point, when his wife was in the hospital, she died of cancer. And when she was in the hospital after like a treatment went bad, O's was out on a long run and stopped by. And you could tell he was running, he stopped by to, to lift her spirits because they'd had dinner. They, they were close. And, uh, he comes in and says to his, well, you know, he does a whole, he does a whole thing with his wife to lift her spirits. And at one point he's like, this is what George described.

• 34:32Adam Skolnick?

  He says, he says, uh, I want you to think of one person that is famous and one person who's not. And she said, okay. And then he goes over to her laptop and he pulls up a picture of Bill Clinton and turns it to her. And she's like, of course. Wow. You know, it's crazy. And then, and then, uh, I want to get this right. So I'm going to go to, then she, then he scribbles down a note to, uh, you know, and hands it to her. And she opens up the note and, um, let me just make sure I get it. And she opens up the note and it's, uh, it says, say hello to Shirley. And George's wife was named Shay. That's Shay's childhood best friend from Idaho, Shirley.

• 35:17Adam Skolnick?

  And so like, that's the kind of stuff he's doing. And the fact that he took his time out and he did that, I think that's amazing. And I really wanted George to be part of the story, but there just wasn't enough words. And so, uh, they ended up using. An example of what he did to me, which at mile 80.

• 35:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:31Adam Skolnick?

  Which was.

• 35:32Rich Roll?

  You're on the phone with him.

• 35:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Rich Roll?

  He's on mile 80.

• 35:34Adam Skolnick?

  Mile 80.

• 35:34Rich Roll?

  He's like running while talking to you on the phone.

• 35:37Adam Skolnick?

  FaceTime.

• 35:37Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:38Adam Skolnick?

  And he's like, Adam, I want you to think of a friend. And I said, okay. And he goes, he said, no, you're not thinking. If he was a friend, I could find, I could, I could have researched. I could, you're thinking less clearly than me and I'm at mile 80. I want you to think of your first crush. And so I said, okay, thought of my first crush. Then he asked me, you know, how many letters were in her name? Or think of how, yeah, no, he said, he said, think of her name. Okay. And then he didn't ask me how many letters. He said, he said, I want you to count the letters in her name. I said, okay, done. And he's, and that's, and he goes, see? Now I know it's a short name.

• 36:12Rich Roll?

  Short name.

• 36:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, he got that right away. But that still doesn't, I mean, it's, it was an odd name. And, uh, and so then, you know, pretty quickly he gets it. It's Roz, R O Z. It's a really remarkable how quickly he gets it. And this is someone I haven't talked to, I haven't heard from, I haven't had any contact with in decades.

• 36:32Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 36:33Adam Skolnick?

  So there's impossible for him to like, it's just incredible.

• 36:36Rich Roll?

  And he's, he's running.

• 36:37Adam Skolnick?

  And he's running.

• 36:38Rich Roll?

  At this point, I mean, he did that time and time again. We just put up a video of kind of behind the scenes of when he was here, where he's screwing around with the, with the, with the team here and doing all kinds of shenanigans. And it's just, it's unbelievable.

• 36:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Blake, who the hell is Eman?

• 36:53Rich Roll?

  So that was the version of what he did to Hirsch's wife, right?

• 36:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:57Rich Roll?

  He basically pulls this name out of nowhere.

• 37:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Rich Roll?

  So quickly.

• 37:01Adam Skolnick?

  So he's a magic, he's a magical man.

• 37:03Rich Roll?

  It is wizardry.

• 37:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's really awesome. And, uh, it was a lot of fun to write it and it was, it was, it was cool. It was one of those, one of those stories I'll remember.

• 37:11Rich Roll?

  So if you're, if you're watching on YouTube, we're just kind of sharing the New York Times article. And in print, it was beautiful. I mean, they put all of these photographs in there and it was a full page deal. So that's gotta be cool.

• 37:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it was cool. And yeah, it was.

• 37:25Rich Roll?

  And how does it work with the New York Times?

• 37:26Adam Skolnick?

  To A1.

• 37:27Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, tease day one, right? That's a big deal.

• 37:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Rich Roll?

  Like, so you submit, you, you get like the green light to write this thing.

• 37:34Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 37:35Rich Roll?

  They assign a photographer, even though you're not there. You do your reporting, you write the thing, you turn it in. And then it goes through like a fact checking and an editorial process, right? And they strip a bunch of stuff out of it.

• 37:48Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, I think it depends on the desk. With sports stuff, I do my own fact checking. I want it real tight. So what happens is I, I report it, I'll file it. And then depending on the quick turnaround, this one we published Monday. So there wasn't like they had they had stuff already Saturday and Sunday covered, so they didn't need more stories. And so we were later than everybody else, which means you have to be better than everybody else. You have to be smarter, right? So, so we but we also had more space. So we so I file it and then Talia does an edit, gets it back to me. I might make some changes. Then she there's a second edit, like a like a copy edit, top edit. In that period of time, I'm doing all my fact checking. And then I so anything I'm not 100% certain on, I will

• 38:33Adam Skolnick?

  call whoever. So with O's, I had to call him like three times on Monday.

• 38:37Rich Roll?

  And then he here's the other thing. So we didn't even say what he did. He did. He did 19 loops, 116 miles.

• 38:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 38:44Rich Roll?

  Crushes the record.

• 38:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 38:45Rich Roll?

  Goes home. It's, you know, at that point, it's like, what, 2:00 in the morning or something like that. Goes home, grabs a couple hours of sleep, and then has a 1:00 p.m. flight to Augusta because he's doing a show at the Masters the next day.

• 38:59Adam Skolnick?

  Totally fine. He's fine.

• 39:00Rich Roll?

  And then he shared he shares this and he's like, I feel guilty for not running today, or I feel like I need to go running.

• 39:05Adam Skolnick?

  He only lost one toenail.

• 39:06Rich Roll?

  Because he's on a streak, I think, too.

• 39:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, no, he took a week off. He took a week off.

• 39:11Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 39:11Adam Skolnick?

  Shout out Hillary Swift, the photographer. She was on a bicycle, like riding around with him all day. She must have done 50 miles on the bicycle. And she's a she's a good marathoner. She's a sub four hour marathoner.

• 39:22Rich Roll?

  And friends with Alexi.

• 39:23Adam Skolnick?

  And friends with Alexi Pappas. And Talia, the editor on this was also just ran Boston today. And she's a sub four hour marathoner.

• 39:31Rich Roll?

  So we're going to talk about Boston, but let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

• 39:44Rich Roll?

  All right, and we're back. We're going to talk about Boston for a couple minutes. Today is Monday, so Boston was just run and concluded right before we started recording. By the time anybody listens to this, it will be Thursday at a minimum. So there'll be lots of articles out and hot takes, etc. So I don't want to spend a ton of time on this other than to just kind of note a couple interesting performances. First of all, friend of the pod, Scott Fabel. Been on the show before for a previous amazing Boston experience. He came in as the fastest American in seventh, ran PR of 20852, seventh fastest American of all time. And what's interesting is that he's unsponsored right now.

• 40:27Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 40:28Rich Roll?

  He literally wore a Lululemon tank top that he bought himself off the rack.

• 40:32Adam Skolnick?

  Incredible.

• 40:33Rich Roll?

  Which is crazy.

• 40:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 40:35Adam Skolnick?

  He's gonna be sponsored now.

• 40:36Rich Roll?

  And interestingly, he even split the race. He went from 22nd to 7th in the second half, ran 6426 for the first half, and 6426 for the second half, which is unbelievable. Fastest American man since Meb in 2014. So a burrito for you, sir. That's his thing. Burritos. We love you, Scott. Congratulations. There were a lot of eyes on this athlete, CJ Albertson. He ended up being the third American, ran 210, his PR. And the reason there's a lot of eyes on him is that he kind of, he led Boston last year for the first, I don't

• 41:17Rich Roll?

  know, 21 miles or something like that. Yeah, I think 21 miles, he led the race. He's a rabbit. He loves to be super aggressive. And he's been sharing his workouts on Strava, and he's just an absolute maniac. So everyone's like, this guy's gonna crush it, based on what he was posting in this public forum. His final long run leading into Boston was a 22 mile run where he averaged five minute pace. So he's a beast. And he sprinted like right off the start of Boston and like led immediately and like really aggressively kind of forced the lead pack into a pace that was probably uncomfortable for most. So good for him. That's cool. On the women's side.

• 41:59Adam Skolnick?

  Evans Chabat won for the men.

• 42:01Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, we should have, we should have noted who actually won the race correctly. Thank you. And congrats to him.

• 42:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 42:08Rich Roll?

  On the women's side, Olympic and New York City Marathon champion Perez Jep Churcher.

• 42:15Rich Roll?

  I hope I'm pronouncing that right. From Kenya, one, it was an epic final mile duel with the half marathon world record holder Ababel Yesheine. Oh, really? I'm pronouncing that as well, from Ethiopia.

• 42:29Rich Roll?

  Perez ran 22101, second fastest ever at Boston. Yesheine ran 22105, so just four seconds separating them. Wow. Their final mile was a 523 mile. That's how fast these women were running. That's amazing. But just of kind of personal interest, 42-year-old Edna Kiplagat got fourth, running 221, destroying her own masters record. Forty-two years old, 221, that's unbelievable. Same. Nell Rojas was the top American with a 22557 performance. Among the other American women who were getting a lot of attention, Stephanie Ross Dean Bruce ran a 228. Dez Linden, friend of the podcast, Yep.

• 43:12Rich Roll?

  was the third American. She ran 228. Molly Seidel, there was a lot of eyes on her, and she ended up dropping out. Did she not even toe up? No, she toed up, and I can't remember at what point she dropped out. I mean, again, I just glanced at results on Twitter quickly before we started recording, so my take is half-baked at this point. Okay, cool. I do know that Knox Robinson, of course, was there running, because he goes to every cool marathon. Alexi Pappas, interestingly, ran as a guide to a blind athlete, Lisa Thompson. Amazing. So that's pretty cool. And also, and this is kind of a story that's a bit aside, that I've been tracking and paying attention to. Yes.

• 43:52Rich Roll?

  Ultra runner and amputee Jackie Hunt Burzma, and I hope I'm pronouncing her last name correct, also ran Boston. It was the 91st consecutive marathon that she's run. She's on pace to set a new world record, 92 days into her goal to run 102 marathons in as many days, which is pretty cool. Amazing. So I think Boston was, was it day 90? Maybe it was day 92. I'm not sure.

• 44:19Adam Skolnick?

  Have you run Boston?

• 44:20Rich Roll?

  I have not.

• 44:21Adam Skolnick?

  How many marathons have you run?

• 44:23Rich Roll?

  None, really.

• 44:24Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, you haven't done an official marathon?

• 44:25Rich Roll?

  I did, no, I did the Long Beach Marathon, like, early in my ultra career and was humbled by that. And that's the only legitimate, like, marathon that I've ever.

• 44:33Adam Skolnick?

  Do you ever want to run New York? I know you love New York.

• 44:35Rich Roll?

  Well, I got a charity slot for New York this year. I've got to heal my back, though, because I'm not running at all right now. But I'd love to be able to go and participate in the New York City Marathon in the fall. We'll see.

• 44:47Rich Roll?

  Let's talk about St. George.

• 44:48Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it. What about it? I'm a little.

• 44:51Rich Roll?

  I threw the ball to you. You're fumbling a little, little bit. Come on. This is your jam, dude. You've, you've been following the Norwegians.

• 44:59Adam Skolnick?

  I have, I have.

• 45:00Rich Roll?

  I thought you were gonna go to St. George and be boots on the ground and report.

• 45:03Adam Skolnick?

  I was supposed to go to St. George at one point, but it's just not gonna happen for me, unfortunately. But I'm really excited to see what Christian Blumenfeld can do and, and some of the other guys, Gustav Eden as well. The Norwegians are ready to drop the hammer, but it does seem like this race is, lost a little shine for me. I was excited to see Lucy Charles Barclay, who won the half out there, the world championship. And she was kind of like rounding in a form and feeling really good about her form. I interviewed her for that same story I did on Christian and the, the Norwegians. And so she felt, you know, she was like really confident then, and to have a fracture like that in the hip is unfortunate.

• 45:45Adam Skolnick?

  Because it seems like that could take a little while. And then Jan Frodeno, who I also interviewed for that story, was very excited to see run. He also is.

• 45:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I heard that he's out, but why is he out? What happened to him?

• 45:58Adam Skolnick?

  I didn't, I didn't follow up on that, unfortunately. I'm sorry. It's been very busy. I've been busy. I'm sorry.

• 46:04Rich Roll?

  You're working on a top secret project that we'll be able to talk about soon, but we can't talk about it right now.

• 46:09Adam Skolnick?

  But I was, you know, he's 42 years old, so like you want, but I think that having talked, having spoken to him. Most likely, he's gearing up his year. You know, when you're, I think he, everything orients for him to the North Star of Kona. And so I know that he wants to do Kona, and I know he reveres Kona. I know he wasn't really super stoked with the idea of racing outside of Kona.

• 46:30Rich Roll?

  Right. So just for people that don't know, this St. George Ironman is taking place on May 7th, and it's been set up as

• 46:36Adam Skolnick?

  St. George, Utah.

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  An Ironman World Championship.

• 46:39Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 46:40Rich Roll?

  Because of COVID and all these other

• 46:41Adam Skolnick?

  Last year. It's last year's

• 46:43Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, because they couldn't do it in, they canceled it in Kona because if there had been an outbreak, they would not have been able to handle it on that island.

• 46:51Adam Skolnick?

  The island was like, basically saying, we don't think you should do it. And then that kind of stopped.

• 46:56Rich Roll?

  So this is last year's world championship, but Kona will still, is scheduled to take place in October as usual.

• 47:03Adam Skolnick?

  Same, same. Yeah. So it's still supposed to happen. They're not, they're not divorcing from Kona by any means, but they're, they're interested in seeing, Ironman as a brand is interested in seeing what's going to transpire. Will this, like, maybe people won't miss it. Maybe they can travel every other year from Kona to cities around the world because Europe is such, is, is kind of where the sport's happening now. Anyway, you know, it's so funny because when it really started, California, like San Diego, Santa Cruz, Mark Allen, Hawaii, like, that was the epicenter of triathlon. Some Australians too, but mostly it was like

• 47:35Rich Roll?

  San Diego.

• 47:36Adam Skolnick?

  Californians.

• 47:37Rich Roll?

  North County San Diego was really where the heartbeat of the whole thing.

• 47:41Adam Skolnick?

  And then Boulder came into it, but, but, but it was always really North American focused. And if you look at now, the rankings and all the big athletes, it's European focused. So to, to be able to take everyone, I think this St. George is setting them up to maybe see, hey, can we do it in Berlin? Can we do, can we make it a more interesting thing for the sport?

• 47:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:59Adam Skolnick?

  Which I like that idea, but then to come back every other year to Kona, that's how it was kind of told to me.

• 48:04Rich Roll?

  I like that idea. I think it is important to shake this up a little bit and try to make it more interesting. There is something, you know, epic about the legacy of Kona and Kona is what it is. But frankly, you know, it's not that interesting of a course. Like, you're on the Queen K going, it's like, I've spent a lot of time on the big island. I've done a lot of riding on the Queen K. After you've done it a couple of times, you're like, is there anywhere else to ride? Like,

• 48:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 48:27Rich Roll?

  I think that the sport would benefit from mixing it up. Putting the world championships every other year in a different setting with a different type of course that would favor or disadvantage a different type of athlete to really make it interesting.

• 48:43Adam Skolnick?

  Well, that's what's interesting about this course. It's gonna be hillier. The cycling will be different. The swimming, you're swimming in a lake versus the warm sea. May is not always hot in St. George, so it'll be interesting to see. And yeah, I agree with you, like the cinematics of imagine doing a race and, you know, moving it around like Paris or, you know, Tokyo or wherever it is. I think that there is an appeal there. But we'll see how it goes. And but I am kind of bummed that these two big stars are out. You're always bummed when the two big stars are out. But I think really it was always going to come down, will the Norwegian experiment work? You know, will they will they have a world Ironman champion?

• 49:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, what's cool is that there has been some shit talking going on. If you want to be on top of that, the best follow on Twitter is Brad Culp, who's a journalist in the triathlon space. He's at BB Culp on Twitter. And he tweeted the other day, "Triathlon needs rivalries." And a few weeks ago, Joe Skipper, who's a British pro, he's the UK Ironman champion, started talking a little bit of smack about the Norwegians and saying, you know, "Don't believe the Norwegian hype train."

• 49:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yeah.

• 49:49Rich Roll?

  You know? And when we talk about the Norwegians, what we're really talking about is Christian Blumenfeld and Gustav Eden.

• 49:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Rich Roll?

  Who are just crushing it right now. And what's great is that there's this training video on YouTube. It's Gustav and Christian on a track with snow everywhere, throwing down like insane intervals.

• 50:08Adam Skolnick?

  In Sierra Nevada, Spain.

• 50:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, at altitude, right? And they're just hauling ass. And at about 10:40 or something into this video, we'll share it for those on YouTube, Christian's got a little bit of a response. Here he is. He just dusted Gustav on this set, pulling away from him.

• 50:29Chris Hauth?

  Whatever you do, don't believe the Norwegian hype. Believe Joe Skipper.

• 50:44Rich Roll?

  A little reverse psychology from the Norwegian hype train.

• 50:49Adam Skolnick?

  He looks great, doesn't he?

• 50:50Rich Roll?

  The Norwegian hype train is looking good. If I was a betting man, I'm not betting against these guys.

• 50:55Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, me neither. I think, I think he's already shown what he can do at the distance, Christian, and Gustav has too, quite frankly. He had a very fast race as well in Florida.

• 51:04Rich Roll?

  The source of this is, sorry to interrupt you, the source of this is that, you know, look, Christian's only, he did cause him out, but he's not that experienced at Ironman.

• 51:12Adam Skolnick?

  Fair.

• 51:12Rich Roll?

  And, you know.

• 51:13Adam Skolnick?

  And he didn't, and he didn't have a great half.

• 51:15Rich Roll?

  He's in over his head here.

• 51:16Adam Skolnick?

  He didn't have a great half in St. George.

• 51:18Rich Roll?

  Correct.

• 51:18Adam Skolnick?

  So, we'll see.

• 51:20Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, we'll report back on that in the wake of May 7th.

• 51:25Rich Roll?

  We gotta talk about the rolies.

• 51:27Adam Skolnick?

  The rolly winners.

• 51:28Rich Roll?

  Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when we announced the nominees for the first annual rolies?

• 51:33Adam Skolnick?

  Do I remember?

• 51:35Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 51:35Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 51:36Rich Roll?

  You don't remember?

• 51:37Adam Skolnick?

  I blanked it out completely. You know how I feel like people have received the rolies? They're like my parents, who by the way are devout listeners now of yours.

• 51:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How do they feel about the rolies?

• 51:45Adam Skolnick?

  My dad wasn't really thrilled by them. My mother really liked them. And I think that's kind of like 50/50, right?

• 51:52Rich Roll?

  It was an interesting response. Like, yeah, I mean, a lot of people were like, "Come on, man. Really? You're gonna waste my time with this? My time is limited." But we introduced them saying like, "We're gonna now waste your time."

• 52:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:05Rich Roll?

  With a bunch of nonsense.

• 52:06Adam Skolnick?

  I mean.

• 52:07Rich Roll?

  So tune out or enjoy.

• 52:08Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, it's entertainment.

• 52:09Rich Roll?

  It's your choice.

• 52:10Adam Skolnick?

  It's entertainment.

• 52:11Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 52:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 52:11Rich Roll?

  That's what we're doing. Are we entertaining? I'm not sure.

• 52:14Adam Skolnick?

  We're somewhere, we're like.

• 52:15Rich Roll?

  Are we wasting your time? Probably.

• 52:16Adam Skolnick?

  We're infotainment.

• 52:17Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 52:19Adam Skolnick?

  What do you think? Are you committed?

• 52:20Rich Roll?

  We're knee deep in this, so we have to see it through.

• 52:22Adam Skolnick?

  Are you committed now, though?

• 52:23Rich Roll?

  I am committed.

• 52:24Adam Skolnick?

  So we're doing year two?

• 52:25Rich Roll?

  I'm committed. So for year two, we also have to come up with a trophy.

• 52:29Adam Skolnick?

  I agree.

• 52:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Or trophies.

• 52:32Adam Skolnick?

  I think year two, we have, we have special guests.

• 52:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think that would be good. We can have a lot of hype leading up to who the nominees are gonna be.

• 52:40Adam Skolnick?

  We nominate, maybe we don't nominate on, on the air.

• 52:42Rich Roll?

  We can just dominate, roll on content.

• 52:44Adam Skolnick?

  We don't nominate on the air. We do extended rolies for the winners. We don't nominate on the air.

• 52:50Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, we got to report back on who the winners are. And what's great about this Google form, thank you to everybody who voted, they come back at you with like, yeah, we got like pie charts. We got analytics on this whole thing. It's unbelievable. So I don't want to spend a ton of time on this. Let's rifle through it.

• 53:09Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 53:09Rich Roll?

  First category, best endurance performance in an RRP supporting role. Who lobbied for this award the hardest? We all know who did. It was Jason Camiolo. He wanted it badly. He posted about it on social media. He courted voters. Who knows what else he was doing? Sending checks out, holding cocktail parties, pulling a full Miramax campaign.

• 53:31Adam Skolnick?

  It's a scandal.

• 53:32Rich Roll?

  He changed his avatar on Instagram to the rolly symbol.

• 53:35Adam Skolnick?

  It worked.

• 53:36Rich Roll?

  This is how bad he wanted it. And you know what? He shall be duly rewarded because he walked away with 49.7% of the vote to be the 2021 victor.

• 53:47Adam Skolnick?

  He destroyed us.

• 53:48Rich Roll?

  Of best endurance performance in an RRP supporting role. Congratulations.

• 53:52Adam Skolnick?

  Congratulations.

• 53:53Rich Roll?

  Jason, I wish we had a trophy for you. It was actually Jason's idea that we get a trophy. I think he wanted it for himself. We didn't get it together in time. Maybe we can do it post-ostermally.

• 54:04Adam Skolnick?

  I'd like to, just for the record, say I voted for everyone but me. Blake, I think I was one of your two votes.

• 54:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So Davy came in second with 22.6% of the vote. Then we've got Adam. We've got 22.3. Poor Blake. Courteous Blake, gentleman Blake.

• 54:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 54:24Rich Roll?

  We'll have to work on that for next year.

• 54:26Adam Skolnick?

  What do you get?

• 54:26Rich Roll?

  I think Blake, Blake's impressive arc in becoming a competitive athlete is not being duly

• 54:35Adam Skolnick?

  I think there's an argument that Blake is the best athlete.

• 54:37Rich Roll?

  I think that probably is true.

• 54:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 54:39Rich Roll?

  And the most diverse.

• 54:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 54:41Rich Roll?

  But we'll have to wait for another year.

• 54:43Adam Skolnick?

  But that doesn't matter when voting day.

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  The pressure is on the staff to really up their game for the following year. I see this category just getting more and more competitive.

• 54:52Adam Skolnick?

  I see my resume not changing at all.

• 54:56Rich Roll?

  You could be the constant.

• 54:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I'll do the same three things every year.

• 54:59Rich Roll?

  All right, next category, best endurance performance of the year by an RRP guest.

• 55:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 55:05Rich Roll?

  The nominees were Hellicite Bay, Robbie Ballinger, Courtney Dewalter, Harvey Lewis, Lea Goldstein, The Iron Cowboy, Timothy Olsen, Louis Pugh, and Jason Caldwell. Walking away with victory with 42.9% of the vote is, drumroll, we need sound effects, Jason.

• 55:25Rich Roll?

  The Iron Cowboy.

• 55:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 55:26Rich Roll?

  Well deserved. Congratulations, James.

• 55:28Adam Skolnick?

  Good job, James.

• 55:29Rich Roll?

  We have a lot of categories to get through here.

• 55:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 55:32Rich Roll?

  Coolest person of 2021? The nominees were Johnny Greenwood, Raphael Nadal, Bo Burnham, Nirmal Persia, and Billie Eilish. And victorious with 28.7% of the vote this year is one Billie Eilish.

• 55:49Adam Skolnick?

  It's not really fair that-

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  Headlining Coachella this past weekend, by the way.

• 55:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 55:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, come on.

• 55:53Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, Billie and Rafa are like two legit stars. It's kind of not fair to the others.

• 55:57Rich Roll?

  I feel like Johnny Greenwood didn't get enough love.

• 56:01Adam Skolnick?

  I know. That was your, that was your guy.

• 56:02Rich Roll?

  6.1%. He got so little that there wasn't enough room to actually write the percentage in his little slice of pie.

• 56:09Adam Skolnick?

  When did you have time to vote for him 48 times, Rich?

• 56:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, right? I didn't vote, you know, I stayed out of this. Here, you want to handle this next one?

• 56:17Adam Skolnick?

  Best limited series about narcissistic self-mythologizing, AKA scammers.

• 56:23Rich Roll?

  Scammer series or Founder Television, I guess, right?

• 56:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, Founder TV.

• 56:27Rich Roll?

  My favorite category, but I'm handing it over to you.

• 56:29Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, super pumped. We crashed the dropout, Inventing Anna, Bad Vegan, and the winner is? Bad Vegan.

• 56:37Rich Roll?

  With 35.7% of the vote. Very interesting.

• 56:41Adam Skolnick?

  Low voter turnout on that one.

• 56:42Rich Roll?

  Not the, uh, not the best of that group, but I guess, given the subject matter and interest of our particular audience, it's not surprising.

• 56:51Adam Skolnick?

  But Inventing Anna came in second, even though it's not that great of a show, but that shows the popularity of the show.

• 56:57Rich Roll?

  That's so interesting.

• 56:58Adam Skolnick?

  And by the way, like-

• 56:59Rich Roll?

  The dropout is the best of all of these.

• 57:01Adam Skolnick?

  But it's the hardest to watch.

• 57:02Rich Roll?

  In terms of quality.

• 57:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, hardest to watch.

• 57:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, inventing Anna is garbage. Didn't I say that last time?

• 57:08Adam Skolnick?

  You did, but, but.

• 57:09Rich Roll?

  I guess the audience disagrees.

• 57:11Adam Skolnick?

  How many people disagree with you?

• 57:12Rich Roll?

  I guess. But maybe the best at self-mythologizing? I don't know. Anyway, all right, next category.

• 57:20Adam Skolnick?

  Anna Dovray.

• 57:20Rich Roll?

  We've got to keep this moving. I'm a host these days, right?

• 57:23Adam Skolnick?

  Most RRP larb-like film of 2021. The Alpinist, 14 Peaks, Don't Look Up, Roadrunner, The Rescue, Dopesick. And the winner is?

• 57:33Rich Roll?

  With 31.8% of the votes, 14 Peaks.

• 57:37Adam Skolnick?

  Nims with a win. Nims was nominated for two rolies.

• 57:40Rich Roll?

  This one was a little closer with Don't Look Up and Dopesick. Pretty close on the heels.

• 57:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, but I like that. This is like one of those, he's walking up and you say, Nims was nominated for two rolies this year and he came home with one.

• 57:53Rich Roll?

  That's right. Best book by an RRP guest in 2021. Another hotly contested competitive category. We got Bravy, Think Again, Why We Sleep, Dopamine Nation, Regeneration, Your Turn, The Awakened Brain, Stolen Focus, and Transcendence. And the winner is Adam.

• 58:13Adam Skolnick?

  Bravy by Alexi Pappas.

• 58:15Rich Roll?

  Audience favorite. Of course, everybody loves Alexi.

• 58:18Adam Skolnick?

  Where's it, where's it? How come everyone only claps for Jason? Come on.

• 58:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, right?

• 58:23Adam Skolnick?

  It's Alexi.

• 58:24Rich Roll?

  We need like that little button drop with a little applause, you know? And also the music that like cues us offstage. The little symphonic, like little ditty. We need that too.

• 58:34Adam Skolnick?

  My favorite category is coming up. It had a lot of responses.

• 58:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this was your, I'll let you do this one because this was your, this, you came up with this category. Should we re, we're gonna have to revamp these, put a little more thought into categories next year?

• 58:47Adam Skolnick?

  Max.

• 58:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know what we're doing.

• 58:49Adam Skolnick?

  Best ritual new of a obsession. Sprouting, weightlifting, decoding the gurus, ice baths, and Adam's swim mask.

• 59:00Rich Roll?

  Now, this one, this must be very gratifying for you.

• 59:04Adam Skolnick?

  This is a landslide.

• 59:04Rich Roll?

  By a landslide, the biggest obsession, the most rewarded obsession of the audience is Adam's swim mask.

• 59:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 59:13Rich Roll?

  With an incredible 47.7% of the votes.

• 59:18Rich Roll?

  People can't get enough of the swim mask. In fact, when I posted pictures of me swimming in Florida, people were outraged that I was not wearing the mask that you gifted me.

• 59:28Adam Skolnick?

  Where was the mask? Where is that mask?

• 59:30Rich Roll?

  Have I ever expressed any interest in wearing a swim mask while I'm open water swimming? No, I have not.

• 59:35Adam Skolnick?

  It's your birthday gift.

• 59:36Rich Roll?

  That gift, I appreciate it. It was symbolic. I could put it in like a lucite case and keep it in my office, but I probably will never swim with it.

• 59:44Adam Skolnick?

  When you, when you set up the Rich Roll Museum, then I think that's where it belongs.

• 59:49Rich Roll?

  And I think, given the, the way that the audience voted on this, that will be the thing people will be most interested in seeing of anything that we've ever done in the history of the show.

• 59:57Adam Skolnick?

  It'll be great. It'll be like your mask and then my mask. My mask will be all corroded and used. Your mask will be pristine as if you could just, it's never been used.

• 1:00:03Rich Roll?

  Right. But among the many other artifacts, signed books by luminaries or whatever, you know, knickknacks that we've collected over the years as a, as a result of hosting this show.

• 1:00:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Rich Roll?

  The swim mask will be the thing.

• 1:00:15Adam Skolnick?

  The low tech swim mask.

• 1:00:16Rich Roll?

  That will go on the epitaph, you know, of the show.

• 1:00:19Adam Skolnick?

  My swim mask won a rolly. I, I lost, but my swim mask won a rolly.

• 1:00:23Rich Roll?

  What do we make of that? Like that, we could dissect that into an interesting narrative. All right. Next category, luckiest rocker of all time. All right, this is, this is a garbage category. This was your idea. The nominees were Ringo Starr.

• 1:00:39Adam Skolnick?

  It's a repudiation of my theory.

• 1:00:41Rich Roll?

  And again, Ringo Starr. So, okay.

• 1:00:46Adam Skolnick?

  It's a repudiation.

• 1:00:47Rich Roll?

  So.

• 1:00:47Adam Skolnick?

  An outright repudiation of my theory.

• 1:00:49Rich Roll?

  Is that the, the first mention of Ringo Starr got 41.4% of the vote.

• 1:00:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Rich Roll?

  The, the second mention of Ringo got 42.5%. So Ringo walking away with a whopping 80, 84% of the vote, ostensibly.

• 1:01:06Adam Skolnick?

  And, and once again, my George Harrison theory does not hold water.

• 1:01:12Rich Roll?

  Jason's clapping back.

• 1:01:14Adam Skolnick?

  You should be rooting for the drummer, my friend.

• 1:01:16Rich Roll?

  Let's put this in the rearview mirror. The dystopia you would most want to live in.

• 1:01:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:21Rich Roll?

  The nominees are Dune, Station 11, Don't Look Up, and Squid Game.

• 1:01:27Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting.

• 1:01:28Rich Roll?

  And the victory goes to Dune.

• 1:01:31Adam Skolnick?

  What do you feel about that?

• 1:01:32Rich Roll?

  45.5% of the vote. Would you rather live like with the giant worm trying to swallow you whole all the time?

• 1:01:39Adam Skolnick?

  See, here's what I think people don't get when they're voting for this. They all imagine themselves as the hero in Dune. But most of us are not the hero. We're the people.

• 1:01:48Rich Roll?

  You're like the slave drone.

• 1:01:52Adam Skolnick?

  So you gotta think of yourself that way.

• 1:01:54Rich Roll?

  Driving the mining craft.

• 1:01:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:56Rich Roll?

  And being victimized by the Bene Gesserit.

• 1:01:59Adam Skolnick?

  Totally. You don't want to be victimized by the Bene Gesserit.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  It's surprising that Station 11 only got 25.4% of the vote. I chalk that up to people just haven't watched it yet because clearly that is the optimal dystopia that you want to live in.

• 1:02:11Adam Skolnick?

  No, you don't want to live in that dystopia.

• 1:02:14Rich Roll?

  If you survive it, then you're fine. And you can go like about your merry way as a Shakespearean actor.

• 1:02:21Adam Skolnick?

  Maybe. I didn't have quite a sunny reaction to Don't Look. I think I.

• 1:02:25Rich Roll?

  But there is something communitarian about it and celebratory about trying to, you know, find meaning in your life in this post-virus world that they live in.

• 1:02:34Adam Skolnick?

  And they love Shakespeare.

• 1:02:35Rich Roll?

  They do. And they seem to be, they seem to actually be enjoying themselves. All right. As long as they're not getting killed. Best performance by an ice cream scooper in a leading role. This is another Skolnick category. You know, I don't, what, I don't, what do I even say about this?

• 1:02:52Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you.

• 1:02:52Rich Roll?

  Two nominees, The Cold Stone Guy or Adam at Ben & Jerry's.

• 1:02:55Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you, folks.

• 1:02:56Rich Roll?

  Adam's being crowned with his first rolly victory.

• 1:03:00Adam Skolnick?

  Adam Skolnick's been nominated for.

• 1:03:01Rich Roll?

  83.8% of the vote.

• 1:03:04Rich Roll?

  What are we even doing here? Why are we wasting people's time?

• 1:03:06Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you. Thank you, folks. Thanks for chiming in.

• 1:03:08Rich Roll?

  Best streaming series, the nominees, White Lotus, Station 11, The Northwater, Severance, and Succession. White Lotus, winning with 35.1%. Severance, which has taken my top spot. Actually, behind Station 11. I love Station 11, but

• 1:03:25Adam Skolnick?

  You have Station 11 over seven.

• 1:03:26Rich Roll?

  Severance's season finale was unbelievable. If you haven't watched that, I know you've kind of lost interest.

• 1:03:31Adam Skolnick?

  I heard, I heard. I gotta go back in.

• 1:03:32Rich Roll?

  It's an extraordinary achievement, that show. You gotta check it out. Shout out to Ben Stiller. Unbelievable work from him and his team on that project. Best film content, period, series film, whatever. Adam, you wanna?

• 1:03:47Adam Skolnick?

  Bo Burnham for Inside, Denis Villeneuve.

• 1:03:53Rich Roll?

  Villeneuve, Villeneuve, Adam.

• 1:03:55Adam Skolnick?

  Villeneuve, dude. The Northwater, Severance, Station 11, and Rich's stealth TikTok account.

• 1:04:04Rich Roll?

  Why is that even a count? That got 23.5%. More than my favorite show, The Northwater, coming in with a dismal 6.7%.

• 1:04:14Adam Skolnick?

  But it wasn't your favorite show. Your favorite show, you just said two shows you liked better.

• 1:04:18Rich Roll?

  You're right. I've got lots of favorites. The Northwater, though, I mean, come on.

• 1:04:22Adam Skolnick?

  You know what? Richard Skolnick.

• 1:04:24Rich Roll?

  That show is unbelievable.

• 1:04:25Adam Skolnick?

  Richard Skolnick is now, he hated The Roly's, but he was very interested in your Northwater.

• 1:04:30Rich Roll?

  So is he watching it?

• 1:04:31Adam Skolnick?

  He's gonna watch it, yeah.

• 1:04:32Rich Roll?

  All right, good. Hopefully I've converted him.

• 1:04:33Adam Skolnick?

  See, The Roly's do help.

• 1:04:34Rich Roll?

  But Bo Burnham walks away with The Roly with 30.4%.

• 1:04:38Adam Skolnick?

  He's a genius.

• 1:04:39Rich Roll?

  Well deserved, he is, indeed.

• 1:04:40Adam Skolnick?

  Give it up for him.

• 1:04:42Rich Roll?

  Honor Roly Lifetime Achievement Award for Artist Working Film Prof. There's no vote here. Frank Grillo was the guy.

• 1:04:48Adam Skolnick?

  Honor Roly.

• 1:04:48Rich Roll?

  I mean, congrats to Frank. Last category, most overrated overhyped film of 2021. There was only one category here, The Matrix Resurrections. So it walked on with 100% of the vote as well.

• 1:05:01Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you know, it didn't make a lot of sense that the hero of the revolution would then opt back into the Matrix.

• 1:05:06Rich Roll?

  Right. Let's just create a better Matrix. That's how that thing panned out.

• 1:05:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Rich Roll?

  Anyway.

• 1:05:11Adam Skolnick?

  All right, congrats.

• 1:05:12Rich Roll?

  We did it. So you can be mad if you're still with us, but, you know, we had to see it through.

• 1:05:17Adam Skolnick?

  We had to see it through. And based on that, I'm not sure year two is going to happen, but it could.

• 1:05:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, right? It could. We'll see. I'm sure we'll be on the receiving end of some responses, both tepid and enthusiastic.

• 1:05:39Rich Roll?

  What do we want to talk about next? A couple of things I want to mention. The first is-

• 1:05:43Adam Skolnick?

  See what happened there?

• 1:05:45Rich Roll?

  What?

• 1:05:46Adam Skolnick?

  I tried to then get into it. I'm trying to-

• 1:05:48Rich Roll?

  Okay, go.

• 1:05:49Adam Skolnick?

  I tried the timing.

• 1:05:50Rich Roll?

  I am throwing it to you, sorry.

• 1:05:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, no, this is Bill Spindel's Substack-

• 1:05:53Rich Roll?

  I want to be a generous co-host, Adam.

• 1:05:55Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:05:56Rich Roll?

  Sorry, I interrupted you.

• 1:05:57Adam Skolnick?

  No, no.

• 1:05:57Rich Roll?

  While I'm interrupting you again. People get really mad that I interrupt you too much.

• 1:06:01Adam Skolnick?

  I think it's a- I interrupt you.

• 1:06:03Rich Roll?

  I do, and I plead guilty to that.

• 1:06:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I do too.

• 1:06:06Rich Roll?

  But also, as a host, you're like, I gotta move it forward.

• 1:06:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:06:08Rich Roll?

  What are we doing next?

• 1:06:10Adam Skolnick?

  The Energy Adventure is what we're doing next. Bill Spindel's Substack, your cousin?

• 1:06:15Rich Roll?

  My cousin.

• 1:06:15Adam Skolnick?

  Your cousin.

• 1:06:16Rich Roll?

  Couple of years older than me.

• 1:06:17Adam Skolnick?

  Tell us about your cousin.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  So, Bill Spindel, he's been my cousin my whole life.

• 1:06:23Rich Roll?

  He's a couple of years older than me. He is an amazing journalist. He's been a journalist his whole adult life. He was editor of The Daily at the University of Michigan, and after that, has just pursued this career. I think he got his graduate degree in journalism at Columbia. He worked for The Wall Street Journal for 20 years. He was the former South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, covering India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. Also, the former Middle East bureau chief. He lived in Abu Dhabi for many years. He was in New York City, living downtown, working for The Journal when 9/11 happened. And he's just been covering climate change, energy, that sort of portion of the world for a long time.

• 1:07:04Rich Roll?

  He's currently a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, living in India. And he started this Substack to travel across India, cover climate change, and, in a broader context, the transformation of the global energy system. And he's a wonderful writer, and he's sort of reporting boots on the ground, and it's pretty cool, what he's done. So, in this world of subscriptions and so many Substacks, I think he's signal amidst the noise, and everybody should check it out. So, the link is billspindel.substack.com, and I'll link that up in the show notes.

• 1:07:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I read great stuff on the Indian Railway System, which was really cool. It reads like a journalist that's been set free, you know, like,

• 1:07:47Rich Roll?

  He doesn't have to, right.

• 1:07:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49Rich Roll?

  He's not reporting to anyone.

• 1:07:50Adam Skolnick?

  No, but his reporting is still good. Like, it's solid stuff, but yet it has a voice and it has a, you know, we try to have a voice, but usually it's kind of restrained in journalism. But like, he's set free and he's trying to, he has a point of view that's really interesting. And I mean, I think we always do, but like I said, it's usually restrained. This time it's kind of set free and I love it. And I've always said many times, the best travelers are journalists with their boots on the ground in any country and they can teach us so much. So I'm going to be staying tuned in to Bill.

• 1:08:21Rich Roll?

  That's cool. I could see you in another life with a Substack, hoofing around the planet.

• 1:08:26Adam Skolnick?

  Is this my two weeks' notice?

• 1:08:28Rich Roll?

  This is your multiverse. Like, if you were living in a parallel universe, no.

• 1:08:32Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, I can see what I'm...

• 1:08:34Rich Roll?

  No, your job is secure here, Adam.

• 1:08:36Adam Skolnick?

  What would you do without you? You know, it's funny, I did that. You know, I did it for nine months a year for Lonely Planet, but Substack-y.

• 1:08:43Rich Roll?

  It was a pre-Substack world.

• 1:08:44Adam Skolnick?

  It was pre-Substack-y. I don't think at that time I would have made much of a living on Substack. I do have an idea for a Substack, but I got to get some stuff done this year and then we'll, we'll turn to it.

• 1:08:53Rich Roll?

  Right on.

• 1:08:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Rich Roll?

  All right, well, one of the main things I wanted to talk about today is this recent article that Jonathan Haidt wrote for The Atlantic, which has been up now for, I don't know, at least a week and is still the number one most-read story on the site.

• 1:09:07Adam Skolnick?

  Is it?

• 1:09:07Rich Roll?

  It's entitled, "Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid." So you want to launch into this for us, Adam?

• 1:09:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, so the background of the story is, he launches with the story of Babel, the biblical story of the tower of people who are technologically advanced. They build this massive tower, but God curses them to make sure they can't communicate. And it becomes this metaphor for social media and what we've done and how that miscommunication has imperiled groups and institutions and the future of our country. I think he talks about it as America, but you know, this same problem is overseas. Many places have these exact same problems. It's not just here. Brazil has had it, Burma's had it, Russia has it right now. And so the idea is, how do we get to this point where people's idea of the truth are so completely divergent?

• 1:09:58Adam Skolnick?

  And not just people left and right, but within the right and within the left? And what's happening to keep dialogue from happening and make us dumber? And it really... He really hands it to Mark Zuckerberg, to be honest.

• 1:10:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. And he talks about the kind of inflection points along the timeline where this really tipped into being a real problem, where we went from this idea of social media being the great uniter and this modality that would facilitate unity and communication into kind of the dystopic division that we're seeing and the increasing acrimony between in-groups, I suppose, is a way of putting it. And I think what's, you know, first of all, it takes like an hour to read this article. Like, it's not a small thing. Like, it requires you to really kind of like wrestle with it and grapple with it. It's incredibly well done.

• 1:10:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Rich Roll?

  He walks you through kind of like how social media evolved to the point where these algorithms, you know, are what they are that are, you know, increasingly creating these information silos, but...

• 1:11:00Adam Skolnick?

  Pre-share, pre-retweet to post.

• 1:11:02Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 1:11:02Adam Skolnick?

  Like, it's really the share button and the retweet.

• 1:11:04Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 1:11:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:05Rich Roll?

  And that's what brought the algorithm in to reward those or to, you know, basically serve up what people like to retweet and share the most.

• 1:11:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Rich Roll?

  But in addition to the use of Babel, you know, as a metaphor or as an analogy, it's also a way of approaching this subject matter through the lens of James Madison and the Federalist Papers.

• 1:11:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that was cool.

• 1:11:25Rich Roll?

  As well as de Tocqueville, which I think is fantastic, right? Like, I'm trying to recollect my study of these individuals as, you know, as a young college student. But, you know, essentially, like what Madison was saying, which is true today, is, you know, you just can't quite trust the masses.

• 1:11:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:11:43Rich Roll?

  They get very emotional.

• 1:11:44Adam Skolnick?

  They're factionized.

• 1:11:44Rich Roll?

  Which is kind of an anti-democratic idea, right? But what people often forget is that we don't live in a pure democracy. We live in a democratic republic. There are checks and balances on our purely democratic systems that favor kind of institutional stability. And this was the whole idea with Madison's perspective in the Federalist Papers. And Hite makes the case that... That idea, that warning that Madison was forecasting, we're seeing in reality getting played out in the democratic kind of forum of ideas that social media avails us of.

• 1:12:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the idea that Madison's saying that humans kind of tend towards factionalization and mutual animosity. And so, and he kind of called this. And the Zuckerberg point of it is kind of like, he paints Zuckerberg as this, obviously, no one's saying he's not a very, very smart guy, so he's this genius, but he's a very, very greedy, very, very naive genius who kind of bumbled his way into something that has costs that he couldn't comprehend. I mean, he, you know, like, he was so taken with his invention and the amount of power and money he was gonna make, that he didn't think of any negative costs. And so, this idea of lack of skepticism, which started there, has then been passed, I think, he doesn't actually say this, but I think the

• 1:13:03Adam Skolnick?

  fact that the founders of these platforms lacked so much skepticism in what could it go wrong, or just simply ignored it, that lack of skepticism has been passed down to us now. And so, now you have people, because one of my favorite parts of the story is, he basically breaks down, most of the people who are so political on these platforms are a very small minority of people. They tend to be wealthy white people, and they're either far right or far left.

• 1:13:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:30Adam Skolnick?

  And the one thing I notice when people who are super impassioned on social media platforms like to make points, almost always, they're not skeptical of their own ideas.

• 1:13:40Rich Roll?

  Right. There's not a lot of self-awareness around that.

• 1:13:42Adam Skolnick?

  Hence, the dumbing down.

• 1:13:43Rich Roll?

  On both sides.

• 1:13:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, he talks about this hidden tribe study.

• 1:13:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:47Rich Roll?

  That was implemented by this pro-democracy group called More in Common, that surveyed 8,000 Americans in 2017 and 2018, and ultimately identified seven groups.

• 1:13:58Rich Roll?

  That shared beliefs and behaviors. And there's the one furthest to the right that they call the devoted conservatives, which comprise 6% of the US population. And the one that's furthest to the left, that they call the progressive activists, comprise 8% of the population. So we're talking about 14% of the population that really monopolizes public discourse on social media, because they're the loudest and they're the ones that get the most retweets and shares, which creates this imperfect sense of what is actually transpiring in households.

• 1:14:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, they're the bulk of the shares.

• 1:14:33Rich Roll?

  And that they're both like white and rich on the polls, right? Yeah. So we're being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite.

• 1:14:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:14:43Rich Roll?

  Even though we're shouting about the elites in the context of all of that.

• 1:14:46Adam Skolnick?

  And what's funny, it's like how I, I think last time we were on the air, I even mentioned this, it's like, I said jokingly that, you know, if you're being ultra-political, you're an asshole. And so we're being torn apart by assholes.

• 1:14:59Rich Roll?

  Right. So yeah, basically, that's the, that's the TLDR of this whole thing, right?

• 1:15:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:15:06Rich Roll?

  So in other words, like, you know, conservatives, if you're within, you know, an aspect of one of those in-groups on both sides, if you divert from that, let's say you divert from that conservative perspective, you're going to get accused of being a traitor.

• 1:15:23Adam Skolnick?

  A rhino.

• 1:15:23Rich Roll?

  And if you take a position at odds with the progressive side of it, you're not going to get called a traitor, you're going to get called a racist, a transphobe, or a Karen.

• 1:15:31Adam Skolnick?

  So on one side, it's the political candidates. If you're a rhino, you lose, you have no chance. But on the left, it's almost more insidious because it can really harm you in your daily life a lot more. And I think he's a little bit breathless and over dramatic about cancel culture. I do think it's a problem. I think we've talked about it. We've talked about this whole thing. I think it stems from academic theories that have leaked into our newspapers and even, I think it's a problem. I do think that there's too much academic thought in our daily papers. Yeah.

• 1:16:05Rich Roll?

  Sorry, I was interrupting you again. The idea being that that small percentage of people who are screaming about that thing finds its way into these institutions, into media and academia. And even though it's such a small percentage of people, they're able to hold those institutions hostage.

• 1:16:24Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:16:25Rich Roll?

  Because the social ramifications of, you know, the shouting that's going on about these issues, it's the consequences are too dire. So there's a retreat from really contending with the issues and a kind of silencing of ideas that results as a matter of course.

• 1:16:41Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  But you think that's overblown?

• 1:16:43Adam Skolnick?

  No, I think the way he frames it is a little overblown. I don't think, you know, I think he, one, I think I have a quote here. "The punishment that feels right for such crime does not execution. It is public shaming and social death." I mean, I don't think every time something happens, it gets to that level, but I think there are examples of that.

• 1:17:01Rich Roll?

  Sure, there's plenty of examples.

• 1:17:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:03Rich Roll?

  Of professors losing their jobs and journalists getting fired and the like.

• 1:17:07Adam Skolnick?

  You're right.

• 1:17:08Rich Roll?

  There's quite a bit of it, but it's more about like, okay, so maybe there's not hundreds of those, but there's enough of them. And what is the chilling effect of that?

• 1:17:16Adam Skolnick?

  That's right. No, 100%. You and I, almost every week, we talk about stuff we're not going to talk about.

• 1:17:21Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, let's kind of contextualize this article with the conversation we had on the last roll on about Leah Thomas. So we tried to have a balanced, nuanced conversation about a very difficult issue and the challenge of trying to solve this problem of serving both fairness and inclusion. And I think we did as best as we could with a problem that, you know, has yet to have a solution. And I could tell you just publicly, I was on the receiving end of a lot of vitriol from both women on the one hand and trans advocates on the other hand. So women were angry that I didn't take a hardcore position, or you and I didn't take a hardcore position on fairness.

• 1:18:03Rich Roll?

  And trans advocates were very angry that we were even having this conversation without doing it in the presence of a trans person.

• 1:18:10Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:18:11Rich Roll?

  Basically making the argument that you shouldn't even be talking about this unless you have a trans person with you.

• 1:18:16Adam Skolnick?

  Which I, which I completely reject.

• 1:18:18Rich Roll?

  I have a hard time with that.

• 1:18:19Adam Skolnick?

  I reject it completely.

• 1:18:20Rich Roll?

  Well, if you're gonna set up a condition that you can't talk about this issue unless you do A, B, and C, like, most people are just gonna say, "Well, I'm just not gonna have the conversation."

• 1:18:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:18:28Rich Roll?

  Right? We have to be able to talk about these things. And yes, would that conversation have been more informed had we had a trans person who's familiar with this terrain with us? Probably. You could make the same argument if we had a coach of a college, you know, women's team with us as well.

• 1:18:47Adam Skolnick?

  Which is a women's summer.

• 1:18:48Rich Roll?

  Whatever.

• 1:18:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:49Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, of course, any kind of, like, experience-based perspective on either side of that would've better informed the conversation.

• 1:18:56Adam Skolnick?

  But to say you have to, that's the problem.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  Right. But the point being that, like, publicly, I felt like, it was hard. Like, I'm not courting controversy. I tried to have that conversation. I felt like it was important. I think you and I agree on that.

• 1:19:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Rich Roll?

  Publicly, it felt like I'd failed everybody and, you know, had done like a terrible job of even trying to do this. Privately, I got a lot of phone calls and text messages and DMs from people thanking us for having that conversation. And those messages came from both sides of the camp, from women athletes, women, trans people, trans advocates, trans parents, and the like. So, you know, but that's one example of the difference between, you know, what is truly kind of like the larger, quieter majority of people versus the very loud polarities.

• 1:19:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, we were speaking to that quiet majority, right? Which is what I think people like about the roll-on stuff is because we tend to do that. I mean, we might get onto the progressive side more often than not, but I don't think we're that kind of religiously progressive. And so, we'd speak to this majority. And I think that's important. I think the majority needs to speak up more and support liberalism, which is free thought and free debate and free speech. And it's not, "In order to talk about this issue, you have to have this in your background," or you have to... I mean, that's crazy. And it doesn't... I mean, yes, you should be a serious person. You shouldn't be talking about bullshit you have no idea about. But like, if you study up, you can have a discussion. And it doesn't matter your background. So I think that that's important.

• 1:20:26Adam Skolnick?

  I also think that he talked about the fact that... The left is the one that controls majority of written media, entertainment and all of this. So there is this broader impact of a quieter middle and a vocal left. And I, you know, I thought about this when I watched, because I had my niece stayed with us and she wanted to watch the Grammys. I don't typically watch the Grammys. I've been like out of the mainstream music scene for a long time. Like, I like what I like and I never paid attention to the Grammys since I'm like in high school. But I really enjoyed it. And the difference between the Oscars and the Grammys is like, it's almost like film people seem to think that their job is education now, and the Grammy people

• 1:21:09Adam Skolnick?

  know it's entertainment. And like, your job is to entertain. And so like, there's this different, like, people have a different perspective. That's why I have a problem with academic theory in journalism. It's like, yes, you can be in the op-ed section, but academic theories should not impact news reporting.

• 1:21:26Rich Roll?

  But everything is op-ed now.

• 1:21:27Adam Skolnick?

  Right. There's so much, yeah. But that's kind of my take is that like, people forget what their primary job is. It's a stay in your lane idea. We should focus on our primary job. If you're, yes, we need to have equal opportunity. We need to have more opportunity for more people who've been shut out of the system. But that doesn't mean that your job is in entertainment. That's how I look at it.

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Back to the Substack issue, though. You're seeing this flight of journalists from these institutions that have been kind of degraded in terms of public trust. But what's interesting is that those Substacks tend to be like opinion first, right? It's some version of activism journalism, for the most part, in the most popular Substacks.

• 1:22:09Adam Skolnick?

  That's true.

• 1:22:09Rich Roll?

  And people who are distrustful of the old guard, the New York Times, whatever, seem to have the inability to lend that critical eye to the opinion-driven pieces of some of the big Substackers.

• 1:22:23Adam Skolnick?

  Well, sure. I mean, especially if we look at it on the left, because who invented opinion journalism? Rupert Murdoch. So you're basically playing by that playbook. And it's a bullshit playbook. Because what opinion journalism does is what a lot of people, I've seen it before. People make, they overstate their argument. And when you overstate a winning argument, or any argument, but specifically a winning argument, you make yourself look like an idiot. And it doesn't actually help the cause. And so, like,

• 1:22:52Adam Skolnick?

  We should all be more restrained. We should all be trending more to the middle. We should all be thinking, actually, you know what? I don't know enough. I don't know shit, really. And that's what you, we were saying with the Leah Thomas stuff was, you know, look, this is what it's at stake. We didn't make any judgments. We just kind of presented all the thought and feelings that were out there.

• 1:23:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:12Adam Skolnick?

  And did our best.

• 1:23:13Rich Roll?

  Well, well put.

• 1:23:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Rich Roll?

  Well.

• 1:23:14Adam Skolnick?

  Anyway, but like the, the idea of back to the Oscars, the Grammys, the Grammys was fun. The Oscars.

• 1:23:20Rich Roll?

  Performing, yeah.

• 1:23:21Adam Skolnick?

  The Oscars didn't get fun until the very end.

• 1:23:23Rich Roll?

  The Oscars are, well, that got crazy.

• 1:23:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it is a different vibe.

• 1:23:30Adam Skolnick?

  You know what I'm saying? Like Trevor Noah's up there having a great time. Everyone's having fun. It's like, it felt like a global thing. It felt like free, felt like art. It felt like entertainment.

• 1:23:39Rich Roll?

  It's also much more diverse in terms of the artists, you know, from country music to hip hop and the like. Like you're casting a much wider net in terms of the kind of people that are adorning the stage.

• 1:23:50Adam Skolnick?

  It felt like the silent majority's preferred entertainment system to the elite ivory tower weirdos.

• 1:23:57Rich Roll?

  Okay, there you go.

• 1:23:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Rich Roll?

  All right. Speaking of elite ivory tower weirdos, we had a whole category here of like cool stuff to share and content that we're enjoying, but we're at like an hour and 30 in.

• 1:24:09Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:24:09Rich Roll?

  So maybe let's just save that for next time because we did the rolies already. So we had our.

• 1:24:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:14Rich Roll?

  Diversion down entertainment alley that I think is plenty for this episode. And maybe we'll revisit that next time. So let's just go to, we're going to go to this listener question. And then after that, we're going to go to a quick zoom call with Chris Hauth.

• 1:24:31Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 1:24:31Rich Roll?

  Just as a reminder, we entertain listener questions here. If you want your question considered for Adam and I to talk about on the show, leave us a voicemail at 424-235-4626.

• 1:24:44Adam Skolnick?

  That's 424-235-4626.

• 1:24:47Rich Roll?

  Do it now.

• 1:24:48Adam Skolnick?

  Our voicemail is standing by. All right, here we go. Jake from your old neck of the woods, Palo Alto.

• 1:24:54Rich Roll?

  Here we go.

• 1:24:56Speaker 03

  Hi Rich and Adam. My name is Jake. I'm calling from Palo Alto, California, where I just relocated five months ago. I left my hometown Ventura, California, and dream job of four years in order to be closer to my wife's family, and in hopes for the betterment of our marriage and future of our five-year-old son. I'm a vegan, thirty-seven-year-old, primary care doctor, and swim, bike, or run for about an hour every morning for my sanity. Last month, my larger-than-life, younger brother Steve was tragically killed at the age of thirty-four by a rogue power line that hit him on the head while he was working on a ranch. Six months ago, he married his high school sweetheart after a sixteen-year courtship that included world travels and great adventures.

• 1:25:41Speaker 03

  Steve regularly swam in his Speedo in the San Francisco Bay, even in the winter. He surfed big waves, snowboarded in the backcountry, went off of cliffs, and lived life to the fullest. He was on top of his game with ambitious goals, looking forward to starting a family, expanding his agricultural tech company, and was in the process of buying an avocado ranch in Carpinteria. Sixteen years ago, my older brother Dave died at the age of twenty-four after a heroic battle to leukemia. He was diagnosed with leukemia at age six. I was four and Steve was just one. He was cured at ten, re-diagnosed at eighteen, cured at twenty-one, re-diagnosed at twenty-two, and had a bone marrow transplant and suffered the last year of his life

• 1:26:25Speaker 03

  on a ventilator at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, not once giving up the fight. These catastrophic losses have been heartbreaking, and trying to make sense of them is emotional torture. My questions are: Do you believe everything in life happens for a reason? And is there a point in trying to make sense of this incomprehensible life and world we live in? Or does this just lead to despair? I respect you guys and appreciate all you do. The RRP has been an inspiration to me. Feel free to play this on the air.

• 1:26:58Rich Roll?

  That's heavy, Jake. It's a pretty heavy one. My heart goes out to you. This is heavy stuff, real life stuff. And the questions that you're asking are philosophical and, you know, difficult to answer. So I'm not sure that I can come up with anything that's going to be fully satisfying to you. But I will say this, to your question of whether we believe, or whether I believe, everything happens for a reason. I mean, I can't say that everything happens for a reason in the universal sense of the word.

• 1:27:32Adam Skolnick?

  100% no.

• 1:27:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And of course, you know, I concede and recognize the difficulty and the pain that you've experienced trying to reckon with this and in this endeavor to kind of try to make sense of something so seemingly senseless and tragic. And so I think what I will say is that, setting aside like, is there a universal point to any of this? And focus on what I do know, which is that I think you can find solace and comfort in your own personal attempt to find personal meaning in these events. Because these events, which are big, hard events, present you with a choice. On the one hand, you can either

• 1:28:14Rich Roll?

  allow them to define you in a self-destructive way. The world sucks. Nothing's good. Bad things happen to me. But, you know, I probably don't have to tell you that this mindset is not going to serve you well. Or on the other hand, you can try to find some spark in what has occurred to ignite you in a more positive direction. When I look at, or when I listen to you talk about your brother Steve being this incredible adventurer and how he lived life to the fullest, I can't help but think perhaps that was a choice that he made in response to your brother Dave and his early demise. Like, looking at his life and realizing life's short. And I've been gifted this life. I'm gonna make the most out of it and celebrating

• 1:28:59Rich Roll?

  the fact that he lived his life in that way. And that was a risky way to live. And if you're gonna live your life on the edge, surfing big waves and doing the things that he did, like this shit happens, you know? And it doesn't mean that the world is a terrible place. I think he probably would say that he understood that there was a risk in living his life that way, but that was a choice that he made for himself.

• 1:29:20Adam Skolnick?

  It seems like the way it happened was such a tragic accident.

• 1:29:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it was like freak out.

• 1:29:24Adam Skolnick?

  It's not how he died. So it's like, I could see how that would be like, wait a second. And you do hear about that, like these great people who have this amazing lives and then they die doing something random, like falling off the second story by accident.

• 1:29:38Rich Roll?

  It happens all the time, though, you know?

• 1:29:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40Rich Roll?

  But on that point of, you know, making this other choice, like this can come in many forms, like you could channel that energy to raise awareness around leukemia, or perhaps share transparently how you're surviving this seemingly senseless passing of a loved one. In other words, like, can you take the unique experiences of your life, tragic, hard, and flip them to fuel a path in service to others? And I think we see this all the time, like parents of kids that are killed in school shootings become activists, or they start nonprofits to raise awareness around these issues that have affected them so deeply and personally.

• 1:30:21Rich Roll?

  And I think that, you know, heartbreak and despair, these emotions that you're experiencing are totally, you know, they're totally natural human responses to what has occurred in your life. And I think you should feel all of that. But the challenge for you at some point, after you've felt all of it, is to process the events in a healthy way so that they don't fester and become, you know, the foundation for a lot of unhealthy responses. So you gotta find a way to make peace with yourself over what happened and transmute the events into something positive for other people. And I think when you direct that energy outward in service, that will provide you with a

• 1:31:02Rich Roll?

  path that's lined with meaning, with purpose, with direction, with fulfillment. And it doesn't mean that you have to quit your job, or that this even needs to be your primary focus, but devoting some part of your energy or your intention to that, first through Therapy or some kind of modality to help you cope and process what has happened to you, which is an act of self-love. And then after that, through service, which is an act of love for other people.

• 1:31:33Adam Skolnick?

  That was so beautiful, Rich. I can't add anything to that, other than to say, you're a primary care physician as well. So you're already living a very cool life. Like, you're kind of leaning towards service already. You know, I think when you have a broken heart, I think you can feel more what people have gone through. I think it allows you to be more empathetic. And I think that there's power in that. And not power, like, personal power, but power in your ability to reach others and to reach parts of yourself, maybe that you didn't even know were there. And I just want to commend you for living a cool life already, and for sharing this in this way. And, you know, life is a beautiful gift. And so, we can't forget that. No matter everything that happens, we have to remember

• 1:32:18Adam Skolnick?

  that life is a beautiful gift. Whatever is happening out there, it's often tragic, but it is a gift. So we have to remember.

• 1:32:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 100%, man, 100%. Well, good. I think that's a good place to put a pin in it. We're gonna turn our attention to a coaching call with Chris. But Adam, thank you.

• 1:32:38Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you.

• 1:32:39Rich Roll?

  Appreciate you.

• 1:32:40Adam Skolnick?

  Appreciate you.

• 1:32:40Rich Roll?

  I love you. And I'll see you back here in two weeks.

• 1:32:44Adam Skolnick?

  I love you, too. Where's my rolies? Let's go party.

• 1:32:46Rich Roll?

  We gotta, we gotta design. Maybe we should outsource the, or just put it out to the audience to come up with designs for the roly trophy.

• 1:32:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I think that's a good idea. I'm gonna go celebrate with fellow roly winner, Jason Camiolo.

• 1:33:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, at the after-party. Where's the after-party?

• 1:33:08Rich Roll?

  Yes, behind the velvet robe.

• 1:33:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes, of course.

• 1:33:10Rich Roll?

  Very exclusive and elite.

• 1:33:12Adam Skolnick?

  If he lost, he might have slapped us.

• 1:33:14Rich Roll?

  It would have been, it would have been rough. I'm so glad that the audience came through.

• 1:33:18Adam Skolnick?

  I'm glad, too.

• 1:33:19Rich Roll?

  All right, dude. See you back here in two weeks. Like I said, I love you. Thank you, everybody, for taking this journey with me. And roll on. We'll be back in two weeks from now.

• 1:33:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right. Peace out.

• 1:33:35Rich Roll?

  There he is.

• 1:33:36Chris Hauth?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:37Rich Roll?

  I guess the first thing I would ask you is,

• 1:33:41Rich Roll?

  you know, what is the typical experience with the athletes that you're working with? Cause I'm sure a lot of them, if not most of them have had COVID at some point. So you have some data points on what's working, what's not working? People who try to get back into it too quickly, et cetera.

• 1:33:58Chris Hauth?

  Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. I think it's gone through every one of my athletes. I can't really think of anybody who hasn't besides myself. That's the crazy thing.

• 1:34:08Rich Roll?

  You still haven't had it? Wow.

• 1:34:10Chris Hauth?

  Not with four kids. That's even more surprising.

• 1:34:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:34:14Chris Hauth?

  So, and we have to test also going to different households because it affects different households. So if somebody's feeling under the weather or something like that. So anyway, but that being said, your question is a legitimate one because it's across the board, different for every athlete. But what I've found is really two camps. One, and this is the larger group, it takes longer than they thought to kick out of it. They have this general sense of malaise of just not being a hundred percent. They feel good enough to train. They feel good enough to do all the activities, but they're just missing a gear or two and they're surprised how long it takes.

• 1:34:55Chris Hauth?

  And then from one day to the next, the cloud lifts and they feel mostly back to normal. And so the advice has-

• 1:35:03Rich Roll?

  In those cases, yeah, in those cases, are you just asking people to train through it and deal with it? Or is it better to just take your foot off the gas completely or slightly?

• 1:35:14Chris Hauth?

  Well, I think the first component there is you can train or I let them train how they want to, but recognize that they might not be at a hundred percent and not be so hard on themselves because of it. Right? We're constantly evaluating how we're progressing. And so it becomes just like, oh, I'm not progressing or I feel off or I'm tired or I'm flat or I didn't eat enough or something. And I say, you know, it might still just be this carrying on for a longer period of time than you think. So allow yourself to not necessarily, once again, train without intention, but give yourself that little extra space of forgiveness, quite honestly.

• 1:35:55Rich Roll?

  But you don't think that the training itself is ill-advised or prolonging that recovery period?

• 1:36:03Chris Hauth?

  I haven't seen it because those that I've given more time off to or have backed off the training completely, they're not necessarily getting healthier quicker.

• 1:36:15Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:36:17Chris Hauth?

  And so there's those who three, four days later are basically back to normal and then maybe another two, three days and then they're 100%. But then there's others, three, four weeks of just feeling just enough to notice that they're off, that they just can't perform, let's say, intervals or strength work or paces that they were before getting COVID. And so it's just a close watching process for the athlete and really providing the insight to me so that I can say, all right, you know what, we're not, we'll take out a few of these higher quality, higher intensity workouts and just stay true to the endurance or stay true to clean motions or just good strength work.

• 1:37:02Chris Hauth?

  Maybe we're not looking to top out the strength work, but just staying connected to so that once you are healthy, that you're ready to really hit that gear. And that's the fun, right? That you, as the athlete, feel good about like, okay, as soon as that fog lifts, at least I'm ready and I can have some really good training days.

• 1:37:21Rich Roll?

  Well, I feel pretty fortunate in that at least so far, I don't feel that malaise or that general fatigue. I thought like I might have to take a couple of weeks off. Like I had athletes pinging me, friends of mine, and I know, you know, because I know them and they're friends, I know that they, you know, they're not afraid to train hard.

• 1:37:43Chris Hauth?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Rich Roll?

  And a couple of them were like, I took three weeks off, like I just needed that. But I felt. Pretty good, pretty quickly. Like after four days, I felt pretty much fine. I was like, "Yeah, but I'm gonna be conservative. I'm gonna sit this out." And I think I took seven days off total, but I felt ready to go and just very gradually and gently got back into the pool. I didn't push anything. Like I would go three or 4,000 yards, but I didn't really do anything very hard, just to gauge it and see how I felt. But today, you gave me a 4,700 yard workout and there were some hard efforts in there. And I felt pretty good, you know, and I got through it. And that's the most yards that I've done. And I know there's a lot of volume waiting for me, but I'm feeling pretty grateful that

• 1:38:29Rich Roll?

  I'm not in that camp of feeling like I'm missing a step. Maybe that'll change, but right now, that's kind of where I'm at. But I did miss seven days on a pretty short time window. I'm now eight weeks out of this swim. So there's a lot of work that has to happen. And obviously, you know, not everything has gone perfectly to plan. And I've got a lot more hiccups, you know, along the way over the course of the next eight weeks, including this weekend where I'm going to be driving up north to your neck of the woods for an appointment for my back. And I'm gonna miss a couple swim days in there as well because I'm doing it, doing the road trip with my kid and I don't want to be just training all the time.

• 1:39:08Chris Hauth?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, there's pools up here, too. I could help you.

• 1:39:11Rich Roll?

  I know. That's true. But like, I don't know. I'm like, "Hey, hey, Jaya, go sit in the corner while I go train." Like, I gotta balance that. You know, it's supposed to be kind of like a father-son road trip.

• 1:39:25Chris Hauth?

  Yeah. Yeah. So with that being said, it's hard to know where you're at with regards to the health, because you might have felt pretty good today because you also had a week lighter leading up to it to really absorb the training that you were doing prior and also increasing sort of the build as you were going. So it's hard to know that until we're a couple of days further down the road here, at which point you're taking a couple of days off. So that's why we're taking the windows. And you're, you're just a classic example of most any athlete that has a full-time job and has a family, right? Like, it's stressful for all of us. And that's the whole challenge, how to navigate these little windows of when

• 1:40:07Chris Hauth?

  we can train and using the time we have to maximize the fitness gains. And so- Here we are, eight weeks out to do 21,000 yards in one fell swoop.

• 1:40:20Rich Roll?

  Right. So what am I looking at here? How, you know, how, how, how is this volume going to escalate? Cause I'm itching, I'm always itching at this phase to be doing more and you're always like pushing me to slow down a little bit. But I've worked with you long enough to know, like those days are coming.

• 1:40:37Chris Hauth?

  Yeah. Well, the beauty is we're starting the sort of the bigger prep this week with some longer sets. I'm hopeful that we can get in two key workouts this week and they include some long, continuous swimming. And you're going to curse me plenty then, when you say, I want to do more. And then I have two 1800s straight for you waiting with four minutes rest.

• 1:40:58Rich Roll?

  Good.

• 1:40:59Chris Hauth?

  And you're going to do that in the pool and be like, really? My brain is going mush back to our youth.

• 1:41:04Rich Roll?

  No, I love that stuff.

• 1:41:06Chris Hauth?

  But the good thing is, is that with that, you know, with our watches these days, we no longer have to count. Remember back in the day, if we had to swim longer, we didn't know if we missed the 50 or 100 or something. Now we can just look at our watch. So lucky on that. But that being said, it's a great opportunity to swim 3,600 yards broken. And to do some fueling and hydrating halfway through to see how you're doing with that. And just we want to get better at finding that all day swim day pace, right? Swim pace, excuse me. So that rhythm and that pacing that you can just turn the brain off and just keep swimming. And getting familiar with that so that now we have a baseline for going along in order to do that just a bit faster.

• 1:41:49Chris Hauth?

  And using that in our training in order to work around it, you know, a few seconds faster than all day swim pace. A few seconds slower than all day swim pace so that we can start setting the intervals and the work around that.

• 1:42:03Rich Roll?

  Right. A couple of questions. The first thing is, I got some good open water swims when I was in Miami and I have a lifetime of open water experience. So I've never been uptight about making sure that I'm in the ocean doing.

• 1:42:19Rich Roll?

  Doing workouts because I'm comfortable enough to know that like when I get there, it will be fine. But do you think that it would be wise to start incorporating some long course workouts in? Because I'm swimming in a 25 yard pool and I specifically go to this pool where they overheat it because it's more of like an older person therapy pool. But that's perfect for the environment that I'm going to do this swim in. It's going to be really hot. So I want to acclimate to the heat and the overheating. But I do think I would be well served by getting some long course workouts in, but I have to drive great distances like either to Pasadena or way out to Simi Valley to get access to a 50 meter pool.

• 1:43:01Chris Hauth?

  Yeah, so that will take some planning. And again, if we have to choose between getting to a 50 meter pool or getting in a longer workout in a 25 meter pool because you're using your training time to drive, I'd rather, right?

• 1:43:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:16Chris Hauth?

  Because you're going to, and I say that we're both nodding our heads because I'm saying that because you already know, okay, that what the benefits are of 50 meter and you know how you'll feel getting into the open water and lengthening out your stroke and just finding that all day pace. So if that means we spend 45 more minutes in the pool versus driving and you get in another 4,000, that's sort of the equation that we need to play in these last eight weeks, given that you have limited time every day anyway.

• 1:43:49Rich Roll?

  Right. I think that that those moments, I could pick those moments though, where I do have more free time, like on a weekend or whatever. And, you know, you and I both know that no matter how fit you are, short course, when you get into a long course pool and you throw down pretty hard, like you're going to be sore the next day. Like, it is different in a meaningful way.

• 1:44:09Chris Hauth?

  And depressing too, because you thought you were fit. And next thing you know, you're like out of breath on a couple hundreds.

• 1:44:18Rich Roll?

  Long course, don't lie.

• 1:44:19Chris Hauth?

  Yeah, no, that's a whole different, and it's a different swim sport. I mean, just knowing from being swimmers, we know, both know people who were world class at short course meters or even yards, NCAA swimmers. And then you put them in a 50 meter pool, they never even qualified for, you know, the Olympics, let alone. Up to their potential than the world fastest times they were doing in the NCAA swims. So it's it's it's almost a different swim sport.

• 1:44:46Rich Roll?

  So. Right. So when you're looking at how much work I've done and how much work remains to be done, are we talking survival here? Like where where where you know, like, like, obviously, I'm not going to be tip top, but I would like to be more fit than just trying to get through it.

• 1:45:04Chris Hauth?

  For sure.

• 1:45:04Rich Roll?

  With also knowing like, I'm not going to be able to hammer the way that I would prefer if I lived a different life.

• 1:45:12Chris Hauth?

  Well, there's always that risk. We could just throw the throw the dice out there and see what happens.

• 1:45:19Chris Hauth?

  You know, it's saltwater. You'll float long enough. No, but you got to look at it this way, that you woke up today after a week sort of off and gently building your fitness back in and quickly in three, four days, or trying to, and you did a quarter of the distance, basically, this morning. So if we needed to push ourselves, could you have done a third or even up to half today and back off the pace substantially, but just continue to keep going? Probably you'd be sore tomorrow or a little bit more fatigue, but you could. So we're that's where we're moving to next, where you do half the distance and you feel like you did today for a quarter of the distance. That's our next check in point. Now, hopefully that happens in the next two, three weeks.

• 1:46:04Chris Hauth?

  We have five weeks to go to sort of add that last little component. Are we going to do the full distance? Of course not. Are we going to do three quarters of the distance? Most likely not, because we'll miss that window. But will we go 12, 13,000 yards and you feel good about that? Yes.

• 1:46:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that seems totally doable. And if I can throw down 12, 13,000 and not be completely wrecked, that's enough confidence for me.

• 1:46:31Chris Hauth?

  Exactly. That and fueling and hydrating during or the combination in swimming, because you sort of. Fuel with hydration.

• 1:46:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:39Chris Hauth?

  That that will sustain you an hour three and so forth. So that you feel good versus getting fatigued. And you think it's fitness where it's actually running low on fuel. Those that combined with as you're building the volume. I think you will have plenty of confidence going into 21,000 yards.

• 1:46:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The hydration and fueling piece is the next thing because I haven't done any experimentation with that. I just go with water or nothing so far because the workouts haven't been long enough to justify it. But starting to play around with that is something I'm eager to begin doing, especially in the higher temperature water where

• 1:47:19Chris Hauth?

  Perfect, yeah.

• 1:47:20Rich Roll?

  it's more meaningful. And what have you? So what have you? Obviously, this is a very personal thing, but what have you determined in your experience? And, you know, all the open water marathon stuff that you've done? That seems to be a good workable equation.

• 1:47:34Chris Hauth?

  Yeah, so for me, it's first off, in the warmer temperatures, it's hydration, right? Electrolyte hydration is so that at least that component I'm staying topped off with regards to hydration. Because we dehydrate in warm water dramatically.

• 1:47:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:49Chris Hauth?

  And it's hard to recognize until it's too late, until we're completely sort of dehydrated and it's affecting our performance. The second part is that you will have that opportunity this weekend, just before I forget that, to do two 1800s with four minutes rest. And so you can start laying out some different products, whether that's gels or chews. Personally, I like the chews. If I'm going to eat something solid, I can get through them pretty quickly, wash it down with water and keep swimming. Anything more substantial, like a bar or anything like that? I'm still chewing hard and working in that rest or even swimming one-handed backstroke while we're continuing to swim. And that's not ideal.

• 1:48:30Chris Hauth?

  So therefore, we have the chews, gels or bottles with calories in them. And there's plenty of those products out there that are really good, that have really advanced the technology over the last few years. There's a variety of products out there like precision fuel and hydration. There is Martin's. So there are these bottles that have 200, 300 calories in them. A lot of electrolytes, plenty of sodium, and therefore you can also get your calories in for what we're looking to do. We're not going that big in a deficit for your 21,000. It's probably going to be around five, six hours. And so that's not going to be something too dramatic that with a good breakfast, being topped off and staying on top of it

• 1:49:13Chris Hauth?

  with liquid fuel, you'll be pretty well versed in that by then.

• 1:49:19Rich Roll?

  Right on. With the added complexity of salt water.

• 1:49:23Chris Hauth?

  Exactly. And so that's why you want cold, fresh water so that you can rinse out your mouth, so that you can get rid of that, that hunger debilitating sensation in your mouth, that salty water. You don't want to eat anything or drink anything. You're just like, you know, so therefore we want to be able to test that over the next few weeks.

• 1:49:45Rich Roll?

  Cool. All right. So we'll check back in in two weeks. Where would you like to see me then versus now?

• 1:49:54Chris Hauth?

  Well, that's where we're going to start adding those longer swims. So in two weeks, you're going to have maybe even up to 6,000, 7,000, where you feel pretty comfortable. And you feel like, you know what? That wasn't so bad. Like I got out, went out and went on with the rest of my day. Then we're starting to get good that we can quickly extend to 10,000 or 11,000 because the beauty of six to seven to eight thousand, let's just say 65 to 8,000, 10,000, 11,000 is no difference. It's just more time in the water, but your arms and your body doesn't feel any different. And you're going to laugh because it's really remarkable how you feel just as fatigued at 7,200 as you do at 9,800. You're just like,

• 1:50:38Chris Hauth?

  I spend more time in the water, but I'm not necessarily more tired. And that's our next sort of. You know, threshold to cross.

• 1:50:46Rich Roll?

  All right. Sounds good, man. I appreciate all the sage counsel.

• 1:50:52Chris Hauth?

  Of course.

• 1:50:52Rich Roll?

  I'm actually really enjoying this. It's nice to just kind of do one thing. I can't tell you the last time I just swam like pretty much every day and didn't have to worry about all the other stuff because even during the most intense kind of Ultraman training, we were still only swimming like two or three days a week at most, right?

• 1:51:11Chris Hauth?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:11Rich Roll?

  So you never got that day in, day out, um, cycle of swim training that compounds much more quickly when versus when you're wedging it into, you know, the sw- the cycling and the running.

• 1:51:25Chris Hauth?

  Isn't the, the psyche sort of so happy to be returning to this ritual?

• 1:51:31Rich Roll?

  It is like.

• 1:51:31Chris Hauth?

  Isn't it bizarre?

• 1:51:32Rich Roll?

  It's like going back into the womb.

• 1:51:34Chris Hauth?

  Yes. I think it's like, I, I, I kept telling Emily last year or two years ago, or last year when I was getting ready for the length of Tahoe, I was like, I miss this, this just being able to swim forever or turn on the gears automatically or just settling into a really smooth swim pace, the day in, day out, it just comes so naturally and it feels so good for us who are so used to staring at a black line at the bottom of a pool.

• 1:51:59Rich Roll?

  And it is crazy for anybody who's watching or listening, because we have so, so robust the background, like even at 55, like I know that I'm still tapping into what I started to build when I was 12, 14 years old.

• 1:52:15Chris Hauth?

  Yeah. And it's just going back in the mind going, oh yeah, I remember this feeling that I can just click two hundreds and three hundreds over and over again. And I just, there it is. It's fine.

• 1:52:27Rich Roll?

  Right. Cool, man. Well, always appreciate it.

• 1:52:31Chris Hauth?

  Well, glad to see you're healthy.

• 1:52:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:33Chris Hauth?

  Glad to see you're healthy. And you're starting to look like a swimmer again.

• 1:52:36Rich Roll?

  I know. My hair has gotten fried. You know, it's like, I wore, I wore a cap when I had long hair, but I was like, my hair's short. I'm not wearing a cap. And now like my hair is completely fritzed out from the chlorine. But I'm kind of like, yeah, that's what you do when you're a swimmer. I'm just embracing it. You know what I mean?

• 1:52:52Chris Hauth?

  It's just that we didn't have beards back then when we were swimmers.

• 1:52:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Let alone completely white beards.

• 1:53:00Chris Hauth?

  Well, it's good to see you're healthy and I'm glad you're back. And I will dive into your training as we speak.

• 1:53:07Rich Roll?

  Sounds good. Thanks, my friend.

• 1:53:08Chris Hauth?

  I'll talk to you soon.

• 1:53:09Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:53:10Chris Hauth?

  Peace. Bye.

• 1:53:11Rich Roll?

  Bye.

• 1:53:29Rich Roll?

  You know, like, come on.