The Best Of 2019: Part I

Welcome to the 7th annual Best of the RRP Anthology — our way of taking a moment to reflect on the year, express gratitude and give thanks for taking this journey with us. To be honest, I didn’t think we could top 2018 -- but we did. It’s been an incredible year. I'm deeply indebted to all my extraordinary guests. And unbelievably proud of the library we dedicated ourselves to creating over the last twelve months. To prepare for the year ahead, it’s critical to pause. To reflect back. Celebrate the victories. Take inventory of the missteps. And visualize the goals you wish to self-actualize in the months ahead. I believe in this process. And I feel strongly that 2020 holds the potential energy manifest your aspirations. It is in this spirit that we created a tradition of closing each year with a look in the rear view with a 2-episode compilation of clips excerpted from many of year's best guests. Consider these next two shows as a love letter. My way of saying thank you. I see you. I believe in you. And I believe in the power we all have to do, be and live better. To step into our best, most authentic selves. And in turn, share freely what we have learned in service of others. For long-time listeners, the next two episodes are intended to launch you into 2020 with renewed vigor and intention. Lean in to the wisdom. Leverage it to clarify your 2020 goals. If you're newer to the show, my hope is that this anthology will prime you to peruse the back catalog and check out episodes you may have missed. Links to the full episodes excerpted in this anthology can be found in the below show notes. You can watch it all go down on YouTube (with the exception of the Gemma Newman, Jack Dorsey and Kevin Smith excerpts, episodes that we did not film) Here's to an extraordinary 2020. Join me, and let's make it the best year ever -- together. Enjoy! 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.

• 0:01Gemma Newman?

  My take on it is I like to put out positive energy and I like to be able to maintain a compassionate approach to this because people try these diets because they want results and they feel frustrated with what they've currently got. I remember myself, I did low carb for a while thinking it was best for me and I got results and I looked good and so I thought, well, of course, this is the way forward. So I can completely understand where people are coming from with regard to this and the same with keto, like people go on keto diets to get results or to feel better. And I'm not going to be in a position where I deny people's personal experience, but I am going to be in a position where I share information both on long-term health and short-term health outcomes so that they can then hopefully come to a decision based on

• 0:45Gemma Newman?

  rationality over what someone told them once on the internet.

• 0:51Rich Roll?

  That's Dr. Gemma Newman, just one of the amazing guest clips to come in part one of our annual Best of 2019 edition of the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:11Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, podcast people of planet Earth. Happy holidays, Merry Christmas to those of you out there who celebrate that. Welcome or welcome back. For those new to the show, this is the podcast where I do my very best to have deep and meaningful, long-form conversations that matter with the world's best and brightest across all categories of wellbeing, education, and positive paradigm-breaking culture change. To be honest, I didn't think I could top 2018, but suffice it to say, it has been an amazing year. I am so proud of the content that me and my team has worked so hard to create and share over the last 12 months.

• 1:54Rich Roll?

  And I think a really important part of the process of preparing for the year to come to getting your head and your heart properly aligned to tackle 2020 is that it's critical to pause and to reflect back, to celebrate your victories, to take stock and inventory of where you were last December and begin the process of visualizing, preparing, and setting goals and aspirations to self-actualize who you would like to be 12 months from now.

• 2:26Rich Roll?

  I believe in this process. In my experience, we are all more capable than we tend to believe. And I feel strongly that whatever aspiration you hold for yourself, that 2020 holds the potential energy to make it happen. In that spirit, it's been an annual tradition here at the RRP to end each year with a look back at the previous 12 months of the show with a two-parter compilation of clips excerpted from many of the year's best guests, sort of a refresher course for the avid fans and an anthology or digest for those newer to the show.

• 3:09Rich Roll?

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• 3:50Rich Roll?

  own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way. It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 4:14Rich Roll?

  Anyway, these next two shows are basically my love letter to all of you, my way of saying thank you. I recognize you. I appreciate you. I believe in positive change. I believe in you, and I believe in the power we all have to do better, to be better, to live better, to step into our best, most authentic selves and help others around you to do the same. So let's just dive in. To blast you into 2020 with some motivation and heart truths, why not begin this episode with one of the most unique, remarkable, and inspirational humans you're ever going to come across, I promise you, the man, the myth, former Navy SEAL

• 4:58Rich Roll?

  turned hardcore ultra athlete, author of the mega hit book Can't Hurt Me, and motivational force of nature, David Goggins, in this excerpt from episode 413.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  My whole thing is whenever I'm weak at something, wherever I'm scared of something, I master it. I was a weak-minded person, so I mastered my mind. And in mastering my mind, I mastered the human mind. And I realized why I no longer judge people, why I no longer put people on a pedestal, because we're all fucked up our own way. We all have demons. Some people hide them better than other people. So I know we all have them. By me knowing that, I know the most alpha males are very fragile, very fragile. They never want to see another person harder than them, especially in that kind of realm.

• 5:46Rich Roll?

  The ego attachment to that is very strong.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  The ego will fuck you up every time. Ego is serious. So if I can hurt your ego, I got you. So by me having such a fragile ego growing up, all this was my advantage. I was doing a live autopsy on how fucked up I was. I was like, hey, this fucks me up. I better fuck some other people up, too. So I started using all these different tools and tactics to get in instructors' heads and taking souls. That's what happened, man. We were Wednesday, freezing fucking cold. Everybody's jackhammering. Everybody wants to, you know, everybody's just wanting to get through it now.

• 6:21Rich Roll?

  Jackhammering is when you just can't stop shivering.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  You can't stop shivering. You're sitting there, this uncontrollable jackhammering. And the instructors take great pride in watching you suffer. They do. You know, in a sick way, it's kind of funny. You were there once as a student, now you're an instructor. But I knew, how would I be thinking if I was an instructor? I would love seeing this sadistic shit go on. But what wouldn't I like to see? I would hate to see some guys just looking like this is just another fucking day on the fucking beach and go fuck yourself. I would hate to see that.

• 6:57Rich Roll?

  So they all wanna think like when they did it, they were harder.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  They were harder. Everybody's hard. So I said, you know what, man?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  It's time. You all, I can't fight you. You guys can fuck me up all day long. That's your job and I love your job. I love what you guys are doing. You guys are making us better. But now I'm gonna take the tactical advantage and I'm gonna start fucking with you. So I got my boat crew, Bill Brown. I had Chris Kyle on my boat crew.

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Americans tonight. I had a couple hardcore motherfuckers. And everybody right now is kinda like in their own world. Let's just get through this, man. I can't wait till Friday so we can graduate. How we can get going? I said, let's go ahead and have some fun. I said, we're gonna start, we're gonna start fucking with these guys. So the evolution here was we just got through with med check. You know, we're stripped down to nothing and they're checking us out, making sure we're good. You know, checking for pneumonia, checking for fucked up knees. My knees are all jacked up, but they're giving me shots and shit. And I was like the boat crew leader of boat crew two. So I'm in the front of the boat and I tell our guys, this is what we're gonna do. The boat was like on our heads. So all it was, we're supposed to lift the boats up above our head. That's all you gotta do. But when you're this weak, you're this fragile, you're this tired, the boat's heavy.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  So there's a thing you can do when you do boat presses. You can get the boat and like toss it up, toss it up and catch it. And that shows like you're jacked up. So everybody's holding the boat and they're shaking and the boat's starting to come down their head and all the boat crews are all lined up and they're fucked up. And I'm looking at that and I turn around my boat crew and say, hey, guys. It's time to fucking take some souls. And they're like, what the fuck are you talking about? I said, we're gonna get, I go, see all these fucking instructors out here, all in their fucking jackets and drinking coffee and laughing and smiling and shit? I want their fucking faces to go straight up fucking numb. So we're gonna do this. We're gonna start boat pressing this motherfucker. Just take my lead. Trust me, you'll get energy from it.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  We start throwing this boat up in the fucking air, catching it, throwing it up and catching it. We start yelling, can't hurt fucking boat crew two. We're yelling our fucking ass off and we doing it. And they make a stop, like, like, like, what the fuck, like, stop. I look at these instructors. And their faces literally looked like someone like just like took their soul out. I knew where their minds were like they were thinking about themselves. Like what the fuck just happened, man? I know me on Wednesday, I couldn't have done that. How are they doing it? So the rest of the time going through hell week. It was like we just.

• 9:15Rich Roll?

  You owned it.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  We owned it.

• 9:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Boat crew too, we, we won every single race. We were just dominating and um, it was a, it was a strong boat crew. And that's where taking souls is uh, there's a few taking soul stories, but that's one of them.

• 9:30Rich Roll?

  Um, scheduling it in. So, so I like this idea of, you know, doing, taking this inventory um, tool and applying it to how you're spending your time throughout the day. You know, I talk about this a lot. You went into detail in this challenge about, look, man, if you, if you actually write down how you're spending your time throughout the day over a seven day period. You're gonna, I mean, it's crazy because I thought I was being pretty efficient with my time and I've done this. And it's just amazing how much time is wasted that you're not even consciously aware.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Unreal how much time you waste during the day. And most of it is on these fucking computers, phones, you know, Instagram and back and forth, whatever the heck you call this shit nowadays. Tweeting and texting and shit. We waste so much time on our little gadgets. It's unreal. And we talk about we have no time. If you really take, you have to take your day and write, write down this one day. Everything you do, write that down and you're like, my God, I am wasting so much time on frivolous bullshit. It's not even funny. I mean, it will, it will, if it doesn't infuriate you, it should. Cause there's so much time, I can't get it in. Look at your schedule, you just wasted seven hours today on bullshit. I mean, and you don't have an hour a day to try to get something in for yourself. I guarantee everybody can find an hour.

• 10:46Rich Roll?

  Then it becomes about willingness.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:49Rich Roll?

  Because most people just, they're not, they're not willing to get up that early or to, you know, make those sacrifices required. So it's a function of, of how badly do you want to change your life? And what are you willing to endure to craft that life that you aspire to have? Or do you just want to talk about it?

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's fucking miserable. It is miserable. I mean, to get up every day or five days a week, whatever. When it's snowing, shiny, not shiny, not comfortable and to go in the gym and work out when you don't want to go to the gym. It is not fun.

• 11:21Rich Roll?

  Well, and we're in a culture that that is driving everybody towards this idea that happiness is purchased through luxury, comfort and ease.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 11:31Rich Roll?

  And the truth could not be, you know, more different from that reality. That if you want to find peace with yourself, self-understanding, self-knowledge, uh, self-esteem, all of these things are going to be found only through sacrifice, getting uncomfortable, uh, reevaluating what your normal is and and putting yourself in situations that you don't want to fucking do.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Yes, and we want it very fast. If you don't see results in the first two days or the first week, I'm done. That's the mentality of most people. The struggle is too real, we're not patient. We like in a world where you can Google the best restaurants around me right now, no one is patient. And for you to lose weight, for you to stop drinking, if you, wherever the hell you're going through, it takes a lot of patience, a lot of time and a lot of pitfalls, a lot of plateaus. You're gonna hit so many fucking plateaus, if you don't know how to get around that plateau, it's not gonna happen fast.

• 12:29Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, everybody wants the hack.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, everybody wants to hack, there is no hack, man. There's no hack.

• 12:36Rich Roll?

  So what do you think is the biggest stumbling block that most people face with this kind of journey?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Honestly, is they have the woe is me mentality. It's too hard, life isn't fair, these things in life are are not easy for me. You you you look to your left and you look to your right and you start to judge yourself off other people. Like if you're a female, well, she's skinny, she doesn't work out as hard as I do and everything starts to corrupt your mind. You start to look around too much at other people and what they're doing and that starts to corrupt your own dialogue. We are judging ourselves against too many fucking people. You have to judge yourself against yourself. And that's the one thing I started learning, man, this is in the race against me and Rich Roll. This is a race against David Goggins and David Goggins alone.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  And once you can silence all that bullshit, all the outside interference and things that are attracting your mind to everything, you can then start to grow in realizing, I'm stressed out for no reason.

• 13:40Rich Roll?

  You gotta go to war with yourself before there's peace.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  That's what I say in the book.

• 13:43Rich Roll?

  What you say in the book.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  You must go to war with yourself before you find peace. So I'm trying to give you tools on how to do that. And I'm not considering smile and be happy about it. It's a hard journey. It's a real journey. It's a, it's a journey that's gonna take you way outside of being comfortable. If you wanna be great, wanna be baddest motherfucker ever at which you do, you could be misunderstood by everybody because you're gonna be so fucking obsessed and so driven to get there. That's what it takes.

• 14:12Rich Roll?

  That's a truth.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Takes every second of your fucking life. Anybody says balance? Yeah, balance is important for a lot of fucking people. It is. But if you wanna fucking go to that edge where people do not like you, don't understand you, question everything you fucking do, you, you've arrived. When you are misunderstood to the point where fucking people think you're psycho and you're nuts and you're this and that, why are you in the fucking gym at one o'clock in the fucking morning? You just got to doing an op for fucking thirteen, fourteen hours at the Ranger School, man, at the gym. What is wrong? You will never understand what is wrong with me. And that's why I'm so fucking glad you don't, cuz I'm in the right fucking spot. When people don't understand you anymore,

• 14:54Speaker 02

  you're in that spot of obsession and drive where people are like, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? I don't wanna talk to you, man, cuz you're not gonna get it. You're not gonna get it.

• 15:04Rich Roll?

  Boom.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Don't want you to get it.

• 15:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Don't want you to get it.

• 15:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's powerful, man.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Large is that, man. It's all about mindset.

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  That's it, man. You have to change the dialogue within your head. And one thing, I guarantee you, there's some stat out there about January one. All that kindling that you started, all that motivation usually burnt out by about 10 to 12 days later. So let's see how far you can take that shit. Let's see if you can get a fucking inferno going.

• 15:33Rich Roll?

  That is a challenge from Goggins to you.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Usually it's 10 to 12 days, man. People always come in and say, "Hey, I want a workout program." I no longer give them anymore because you're gonna waste my fucking time. Because I know most people out there, once that fucking one alarm clock goes off at the wrong time of the day, I'm not going to the gym.

• 15:52Rich Roll?

  Right. Or they get the workout program, but then they're like, "Hey," they hit you up again. "What kind of watch do I need to get?"

• 15:58Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 15:59Rich Roll?

  "What kind of shoes?" The question is, "Keep coming."

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Keep coming, man.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  "Every day goes by without anything going on."

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Keep coming. Go to the store, buy a pair of shoes, and Merry Christmas. Have fun with that shit. Call me after you lose some fucking weight running your ass in the dirt, and then we'll work on some other shit.

• 16:13Rich Roll?

  Next stop is an exploration of faith with the delightfully unusual, heavily tattooed, former drug addict turned iconoclastic Lutheran pastor and three-time New York Times bestselling author, Nadia Bowles-Weber. And this clip from episode 428.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Well, I met my now ex-husband, and I'd never heard of Lutherans, except for, I guess, maybe Garrison Keillor. Like, I had never, I didn't know what a Lutheran was. And so he sort of introduced me to more progressive form of Christianity. And I was just, I was just fascinated that that even existed. And, you know, we moved out to California, and I very begrudgingly started going to this Lutheran church that had this gay pastor and going to this adult confirmation class at night. And just, I just soaked it up. I had no idea that you could believe those things. None. So it was like, the thing I still loved,

• 17:14Speaker 03

  which was Jesus, plus stuff that seemed just real and genuine and, like, easy to believe because I knew, already knew it was true. Like, when they said, "We're simultaneously sinner and saint," I'm like, "Fuck, man, that, that explains a lot." That's super helpful. Thanks, guys.

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  And then what, what compels you to go to divinity school and become a pastor?

• 17:44Speaker 03

  There were two things. The first time I had that hit of, oh, I think I have like quote a calling, was when my friend PJ committed suicide. And he was a comic and also in recovery. And I had not been to divinity school or seminary at this point. But when PJ died, our friends just turned to me and were like, well, you could do the funeral, right? And just literally because I was the only religious person in my friend group, the only thing that qualified me. And I said, okay. And it was like this, it was at the Comedy Works in downtown Denver, and it was packed. And I was giving his eulogy. And I just looked out and there were all these like academics and comics and queers and recovering alcoholics.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  And I just thought, oh, man, these, these people do not have a pastor. And then I went, oh, shit.

• 18:38Rich Roll?

  It's gonna have to be you.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Oh, damn, you know? So that was my first hit about that.

• 18:45Rich Roll?

  And there was this sense of being called.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I felt called to be a pastor to my people, not to fit in some box that the institutional church has for if that's a job you want. You know what I mean? Those are two different things.

• 18:56Rich Roll?

  Right. Like you could minister to these people in a way that no one else that you knew could.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I think that we need load-bearing structures, you know? And that's what religion, it's, this is the first time we've had cultures that weren't religious, like in human history. So there was a way in which religion was a load-bearing structure in terms of understanding who we were, understanding morality, having a symbol system for imaging the divine, for marking the year together. There's a function that religion has played in, throughout human history, that I feel like even though the institutions of religion have hurt a lot of people, I just think it's just not time

• 19:45Speaker 03

  to dispense with that idea entirely. And it's a really recent idea in human history that you can just choose your own symbol system. That's, that's new.

• 19:55Rich Roll?

  Well, the foundations of religion are crumbled, you know, and there's a, you know, a crisis of trust in those structures and those institutions.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Which I think is why people are like, "Well, I feel like I can, I like to listen to Nadia." Well, I think it's just because I really do try to be very forthcoming with my shortcomings and with things I've gotten wrong or shit I don't know. You know, there's not the curtain so much.

• 20:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  There's nothing you're gonna like, find out that's gonna like,

• 20:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Like, at one point, I was like-

• 20:26Rich Roll?

  But that's also like, something that you learn in AA, right?

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 20:30Rich Roll?

  To like, own those flaws-

• 20:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:32Rich Roll?

  And, you know, find the empowerment and the vulnerability.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  And to not actually have shame about it. I mean, that's the thing is like, I believe in the power of grace so strongly that I have no shame in admitting why I need it.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  So then people feel like they can trust what I'm saying. Also, like, self-incrimination is like, my go-to rhetorical move. And that allows me to be more hearable to people, because I'm not standing above them.

• 20:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're human, you can connect with you. And, listen, I've heard you speak, it's very, you know, it's not just, it's, it's, it's, it's an incredible experience to hear you speak. And I can feel myself connected to the message that you're putting out there. And it makes me reflect back on my experience as a young person going to church and just sitting in these pews, thinking, "What am I doing here? I can't relate to any of this. I don't understand what they're talking about. I'm falling asleep. Why is that guy swinging that rope with the terrible smelling stuff?"

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Were you Catholic?

• 21:27Rich Roll?

  And he's dressed up, no, like, I went to an Episcopalian-

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:30Rich Roll?

  You know, like, elementary school. I just found the whole thing totally bizarre, and I was like, confused about what I was supposed to get out of it. It wasn't that I had, it wasn't that I was traumatized by it. I just didn't understand it. And I didn't understand why everyone felt compelled to go. Like, I was getting nothing out of this.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  But have you reverted to any of it in times of crisis at all?

• 21:52Rich Roll?

  Not in a, in a, in an organizational-

• 21:56Rich Roll?

  Structured.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  No, but I mean personally.

• 21:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, in a, in a, in a non-denominational kind of

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:03Rich Roll?

  Spiritual way, yeah. You know, I found God in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And my spiritual growth has, has, you know, taken me through, you know, an exploration of many different types of faith and, and experiences and practices and teachers and the like. And I haven't settled into one particular perspective on that, but I've learned from all of them.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Well, one thing that Esther said, and I'm just quoting like smarter women than myself, but she, um, she said that, that it's easy, that the, one of the things that religion offers is that in times of, of crisis and of pain, when we're collapsing, there's something to hold us. Like, like it's easy to come up with rituals and practices and stuff in times of birth or weddings, but when shit hits the fan, there's something there to hold you, that there are these sort of rituals or prayers that have been worn smooth by

• 23:04Speaker 03

  generations of the faithful, in a way that can kind of bring us comfort when you can't just create your own thing on the spot when you're in a position of crisis and pain. I thought that was beautiful.

• 23:18Rich Roll?

  But can that be, can, can you have that connection without the baggage that comes with the institution?

• 23:23Speaker 03

  That's the question. No, that's literally the question right now. I mean, I, when I left Christianity for a decade, I couldn't have anything to do with it. I was, you know, after I left the church I was raised in. So when people say like, look, a lot of us have to leave for, for reasons of self-preservation. Like, I get that. I, I, I never judge it. But I think that there is a path to integrating. Our religious upbringings, rather than rejecting, that eventually, there's that kind of work that can be done, too.

• 23:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Even if it's just, you know, there's this prayer my grandmother said when I was going to sleep every night that's still really meaningful, and I'm gonna integrate that into my life, you know?

• 24:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  That, that, that's a part of wellness to me, to be able to do that. So I've been just sort of inviting people into considering what that might look like. And it doesn't have to be a betrayal of the part of you that needed to reject it for good reason, to say, "Yeah, but it's still formed who I am on some level, and I want to make friends with that part of me."

• 24:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Say something to the person who's listening, who, who doesn't have a connection with faith, or perhaps like, lost their connection with faith, in whatever tradition they find themselves in. Like, what is it about faith and connection that, that you find to be so important as part of the human condition? And how can that person find their way back to a place of incorporating that into their life?

• 25:08Speaker 03

  Well, in a way, it's not like a super popular sentiment, but I just, I don't feel like I'm enough, in a sense that I do think having a power that's more than just me and accessing that is, has transformed my life, and that that's possible and available for anyone, regardless of what they believe, or what sort of, you know, faith they have, that, that there are things that...

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Accessing, like having a connection to our source and to the divine, allows us to undergo a certain type of healing and transformation that would be very difficult for us to do just as our own, on our own as individuals. So that's the power of it to me. And, um, and there are things, like people who were raised religious and had to leave, sometimes there are still like hymns that are dear to them, or prayers their grandmother said, or whatever. And I think just finding those things and integrating them back into our lives on our own terms can be really healing. And, um, it's like this spiritual reclamation project. And, um, and it's okay to do that.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  It's who you are and it's fine because your symbol system forms you in a way that's hard to escape. So making friends with it on your own terms as an adult can be, um, yeah, it can be healing.

• 26:38Rich Roll?

  Rates of depression, loneliness and addiction have reached epidemic proportions. Journalist and author Johann Hari has a powerful and perhaps controversial take, excerpted from episode 416, suggesting, "Everything we think we know about what contributes to these malignancies just might be wrong." For him, the path forward is all about connection.

• 27:05Speaker 04

  It, it's important for us to think about this. So there's, there's, there's extremely strong scientific evidence that there are three kinds of cause of depression and anxiety. And to some degree, they play out in, in fact, all forms of, um, mental and emotional problems. So there's biological causes, like your genes, like real brain changes that happen when you become depressed, that can make it somewhat harder to get out. Those are real, right? There are people who deny them, they are definitely wrong. The evidence is very clear on that. There are psychological causes, which are how you think about yourself. And then there are social causes, which are how we live together. And these are all real, but what we've done is we've largely, as a culture, told a story that focuses exclusively on the biology, right? Think about what my doctor told me, there's just a problem in your brain.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  The problem with that, well, the first problem with that is it's not true, right? But the second problem with that is what it tells people. Is your distress doesn't mean anything. It's like a glitch in a computer program. And someone who really helped me to think a bit differently about this, I went to interview this South African psychiatrist called Derek Summerfield, who's a wonderful man, and he happened to be in Cambodia in two thousand and one, when they introduced chemical antidepressants for the first time to for the people in that country. And the local doctors, the Cambodian doctors, had never heard of these drugs. So they were like, what are they? And he explained. And they said, we don't need them. We've already got antidepressants. And he said, what do you mean? He thought they were going to talk about some kind of herbal remedy, like St. John's water or something. Instead, they

• 28:34Speaker 04

  told him a story. There was a farmer in their community who one day stood on a landmine and got his leg blown off. He worked in the rice fields. So they gave him an artificial limb and he went back to work in the rice fields after, I forget what it was, some months. But apparently, it's very painful to work underwater with an artificial leg. I'm guessing it was traumatic for obvious reasons. The guy started to cry all day, didn't want to get out of bed, developed classic depression. They said to Dr. Summerfield, well, that's when we gave him an antidepressant. And he said, what? They explained that they went and sat with him. They listened to him. They realized that his pain made sense. They figured if they bought him a cow, he could become a dairy farmer. He wouldn't be in this position that was screwing him up so much. So they bought him a cow. With a couple

• 29:17Speaker 04

  of weeks, his crying stopped. Within a month, his depression was gone. They said to Dr. Summerfield, so that cow, that was an antidepressant. That's what you mean, right? Now, if you've been raised to think about this the way we have, that sounds like a joke. I went to my doctor for an antidepressant, he gave me a cow. But what those Cambodian doctors knew intuitively is what the leading medical body in the world, the World Health Organization, has been trying to tell us for years. If you're depressed, if you're anxious, you're not crazy, you're not a machine with broken parts, you're a human being with unmet needs. And what you need is practical love and support from the people around you to get those deeper needs met. It's a very different way of talking about these problems. It explains to people their pain is a signal. It means something. It evolved for a reason. It's telling you

• 30:01Speaker 04

  your needs aren't being met. Or some other things, obviously, reference to a biology.

• 30:05Rich Roll?

  Right, or there's some, you know, psychological event that occurred that you haven't really... Fully processed or worked through, there's some hitch in your operating system that requires redress.

• 30:19Speaker 04

  So I wouldn't say, I wouldn't call it hitch in operating system.

• 30:22Rich Roll?

  Well, if you're experiencing grief in the loss of a loved one, or something like, like, yes, there are natural reactions that, you know, we've kind of been told we should just get over that kind of stuff, rather than really just embrace them for what they are, because that is what it is to be human, and that's certainly fine, and to stigmatize that, or to kind of pathologize that is certainly wrong. But they're messages, they're wake-up calls that...

• 30:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're signals, exactly.

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  Basically, you need to do that. And I think, to go back to the cultural piece, you know, if someone's grieving the loss of a loved one, and they're uncomfortable sitting with that grief, we have a system that's set up to help you and say, you don't need to feel this way, like, take this pill, right? Because we've gotten to a place where it's almost understood that we never need to feel bored, or uncomfortable, or ill at ease, right? That we can just medicate all of that, and implicit in that is this idea that we should all be happy all the time.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  I think people are right to want to be happy and satisfied in their lives. The question is, it's a deeper thing I think you're getting at, which is, so let's think about grief, for example. There was this thing that happened in the 1970s that I think is really revealing. So in the 1970s, the APA, the American Psychiatric Association, who are the, obviously the main body of psychiatrists in the US, and psychologists, decided to do a kind of basic, kind of obvious thing. They decided they were going to standardize how depression was diagnosed across the US. So up to then, doctors were just basically deciding for themselves, oh, what depression meant. So the APA drew up a simple checklist of 10 symptoms, kind of obvious things, crying a lot, you know, you could guess them.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  And there's 10 symptoms, there's 10, list of 10 symptoms, and they send it to doctors all over the United States, and they say, if your patient shows more than five of these 10 symptoms for more than two weeks, diagnose them as mentally ill and do what you can. So they send this out. But within quite a short period afterwards, psychiatrists started to come back and go... We've got a bit of a problem here. If we use this checklist in the way you're telling us to, we're going to have to diagnose every grieving person in the United States as depressed because these are also the symptoms of grief. And the APA got together and they said, well, that's not all we meant, clearly we didn't intend that. So they invented something that became known as the grief loophole, where they said, okay, if your patients come to you and they've got more than five of these 10 symptoms for more than two weeks, diagnose

• 33:01Speaker 04

  them as mentally ill, unless someone they love has died in the last year, in which case it doesn't count.

• 33:06Rich Roll?

  That's the only exception.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  They're not crazy. Well, exactly. So they started doing this. But this began to beg the question, hang on a minute, why is someone you love dying? What we're saying, what we're meant to tell doctors, meant to tell people is, so if you feel this way, it's just a problem in your brain that just needs to be drugged into submission, except there is one circumstance in life where it's an understandable response. Well, why is that the only circumstance? Why if my mother dies, I'm allowed to feel like that, but not if I lose my job? Why not if I become homeless? Why not if I'm stuck in a job I hate for the next 40 years, right? But what that does is a wonderful woman called Dr. Joanne Cassia-Tore, who's the leading expert on traumatic grief in the United States, has really done amazing

• 33:46Speaker 04

  work on this, asking, well, once you acknowledge that depression can be largely a response to life, that just challenges the whole system we've built. The system we've built is not designed to talk about context. It's not designed to talk about how do we sit with you and hold you and love you and help you change your life, right? And as she puts it, we just don't understand pain in this culture. We've developed a bizarre way of talking about pain. It's so bizarre that I did an interview recently on a radio show, where I was talking about, we were talking before, in a similar way to the way we were talking before, about loneliness causing depression. And the interviewer said to me, well, this is an extremely controversial theory. And I thought, how did we get to

• 34:28Speaker 04

  the point where it was regarded as controversial to point out the most banal and obvious thing, which is if you're lonely, you're going to be much more likely to be acutely unhappy? But so I think the grief exception debate reveals something really deep about how we have misunderstood pain. And so Joanne, Dr. Cassia-Tore, who'd be a great person for you to talk to and give an intro to, she's an extraordinary woman, her baby died during birth, her daughter Cheyenne.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  And she was devastated and she was horrified to be um to see how many other grieving parents were very rapidly being diagnosed as mentally ill and and and drugged, right? Because the APA was so uncomfortable with this debate about the grief loophole, they just got rid of it, doesn't exist anymore, right? So now you can be diagnosed almost immediately after your child dies. In fact, nine percent of um parents who lose a baby in the United States are diagnosed and drugged in the first forty eight hours, right? And as Dr. Cassiopeia puts it, we grieve because we've loved, right? Grief is a testament to our love. It's not a glitch, it's not a pathology, it's a profound form of love.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  If someone you love dies, it is natural and necessary to grieve. If you interrupt that process, if you pathologize the pain, if you say, you know, it's a sign of good. So for example, one of Joanne's clients, she now treats people with traum uh who've gone through terrible traumatic grief, you know, one of her parent, one of the parents she worked with um mentioned to a psychiatrist that she, when she would lie there at night, she would sometimes hear her son's voice talking to her, not in a distressing way, in fact soothed her, entirely natural form of grieving. She was diagnosed as psychotic and prescribed loads of antipsychotics. You can see what a, ironically, what a crazy system that is that's telling us we're crazy for having perfectly natural human responses.

• 36:26Rich Roll?

  Killian Journay is inarguably the greatest mountain runner of all time and just might be the world's greatest endurance athlete, period. For him, it's not about podiums or records or wins, it's all about adventure, exploration, and living outside your comfort zone. They say never meet your heroes, but I gotta tell you, I'm very glad I met this one. So here's Killian from episode four seventeen.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  We do an activity that we know that it's possibly, like we can die there in the mountain. And it's nothing that we look, we are not doing that because we are close to death, but because we are alive when we're doing, but it's the possibility of, yeah, of an accident. And when you have some close calls, it can be like, yeah, some friends that they die by your side, or it can be like some accidents. But all the times, I think it's funny that when you start to do mountaineering, like you are afraid about your capacities because you don't know yourself,

• 37:42Speaker 05

  but you see the mountain as something solid, that it's there, it's like a ball or it's something. And more you go into the mountains, less you are afraid about yourself, and you know better your capacities, your technique, your experience. But you see that the mountain is moving and it's dangers there that you don't see, but they are there. So you are more afraid about the mountain. So it's this thing that, it's many things that you cannot control. Like you can think logically, but then avalanches come where it's supposed to not, or like some rock fallings and things. And you need to accept in a way that that's part of it, that it's many things we can control, but it's some of them that is not possible to do.

• 38:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I look at you as somebody who, despite all of your accomplishments, you know, is very humble, like you have a very healthy relationship with humility. And not to project, but I would imagine that comes from an appreciation and respect for nature. Like you're never going to beat the mountain, right? And if you don't have a respect and a healthy level of humility when you're attempting these challenges, then you're putting yourself in great peril. So it keeps you like sort of right-sized about everything.

• 39:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think conquering mountains is a very, very ironic word. I think like we are not conquering mountains, like we can conquer ourselves and the mountain is where we, is this big mirror where we see ourselves. But, but we can never pretend to, to be fighting against the mountain or to be fighting against nature because, first of all, because we are part of it. Like we, we are part of the nature. So I think it's important to, to pass there lightly. So we can only see our footsteps. But we, like leaving no trace is not only like about leaving rubbies,

• 39:46Speaker 05

  but it's also about like, uh, being, being accepted by the mountain or being try, yeah, kind of like being there, but trying to don't aggress the mountain. And I think on a way, I don't think that if you don't aggress the mountain, it will respect you more, but at least it keeps you aware of like, okay, you are really, really nothing, you are very, very small, even if you are like, and especially because sports, it's so much about ego and, and how the sport is organized. Like you win a race and you are in a top of a podium that it's like, it's something very artificial, like why you are better? Because you run faster than the guy that is second or one, the one is third

• 40:31Speaker 05

  or the one is last one. So we'd really like building kind of this egocentric mindset, uh, how a sport is organized. So you can think, and it's easy to believe that you are someone good or that you are better than others. And especially in mountains, that's very dangerous. And, and at the end, like it will put in your side, like, yeah, you are nothing.

• 40:56Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 05

  We are so much about, we want to leave a legacy or we want to, to be remembered or we want to do something important. And at the end, nothing we do is important, like it's, yeah, it's, it's nothing. And, and I think when you realize that we are not important and what we do is not important, then you realize how wonderful it is.

• 41:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  We get so much with inertia. It takes a lot of people today, I think. We tend to do what is the simple thing, the simple thing, and to try to do what's easy and what it's supposed to be. And we don't take time to find what we want to do and not what we are supposed to do. But then, like, when you find that that's what you want to do and to find that the balance on that is much like, it's just the life is much better. Like, everything around is much better. But, yeah, I suppose it's just like,

• 42:07Speaker 05

  it needs to, it needs some courage or it needs some, like, seeing sometime, okay, I don't want to that and to be able to say, no, I don't want to that and I want to cut on things. And maybe that means less media exposition or less money or less, I don't know, things that they are supposed to drive you through success. But then, like, how you count success is very different, yeah.

• 42:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So what is living outside the comfort zone taught you? Like, this ability to be comfortable with being uncomfortable? Like, how is that a teacher for you? And what can be learned from that?

• 42:53Speaker 05

  Well, I think it teaches you, it's mostly decision-taking, like, how to take decisions, how you take the decisions in the zone, like, to be always exposed, like, to not be sure about what's going on and to be able to be really rational on seeing very fast what are the different consequences on each decision you are taking at that period. I think that you can apply on life and you can apply on everything else. And, yeah, it's, I think...

• 43:35Speaker 05

  It's to be really cold blood, but to be cold blood to to follow your your emotions. And that's that's kind of contradictory. But then like is you want, you need to to listen to your emotion or to listen to your to yourself to see where you want to go, what's the lifestyle you want to have, what's the things you want to achieve. And that that need to be your emotion that decides this. But then the decision taking through there, it need to be really like a rational.

• 44:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What what scares you the most?

• 44:14Speaker 05

  Um, well, uh, many things I would say like, uh, uh, of course, like, uh, when going out, like, uh, dying or like, uh, having like a big accident, things like that. But I think what scares me i- i- in more general is like where where are we going? Like, uh, the the world, like, uh, now we see like all the environmental problems and especially when you are in in, uh, in these areas, like with a lot of glaciers, like you can see day by day almost how it's changing.

• 44:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  Um, so on this way, like, where are we going as as the planet? And, uh, that's something that it's it's scurrying. Uh, yeah, and and I think, uh, that and where where a society like all the the problems between humans that we have, all the the with, yeah, it's a lot of, uh, yeah, conflicts, human conflicts too. And I think that's that's more scary than not then like dying.

• 45:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The future of humanity.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, future of of, yeah, humanity, but humanity, like, uh, there, yeah, we are one is peace, more of the planet, so also the planet, yeah.

• 45:32Rich Roll?

  The planet too. Well, the planet would be fine without us.

• 45:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:35Rich Roll?

  Much better off, actually.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 45:37Rich Roll?

  No question about that. As somebody who's seen much more of it than than I, you can attest to that, I would imagine. What's driving all of this? Like, where does the motivation come from? Like, where is the muse? Like, what's what's behind the curtain here that's propelling you?

• 45:55Rich Roll?

  Is it a sense of wanting to be the best version of who you are? Is it a search for excellence or perfection? Is it just connecting with nature? Like, what is the driving impulse for you?

• 46:07Speaker 05

  I think the driving impulse is happiness. Simply, it's like to be happy. And that's an easy answer, but it's a deep answer too, because where I find happiness is on knowing myself, challenging myself, and seeing who I am, where I can go, and experiencing different things. I think it's a lot about experience and experiencing places, nature, views. Like, I've run in places that they are beautiful, and that's what it motivates me to go to one place or another.

• 46:51Speaker 05

  Why to go there? It's to see the views from that point and see the beauty of the nature. It's one big motivation. And if I can combine that with an inner challenge, that it can be able, like, to put the question, I'm able to progress. And like, I think achievement on the sense of like, doing things that you think that they are not possible for you before, like, all the effort you put to be able to change this status from impossible to possible.

• 47:34Rich Roll?

  All right, people, how we doing? Are we good? Good, because next up is the Plant Power doctor herself, the great, the delightful Gemma Newman, M.D. In this excerpt from episode 449, recorded during our Italy retreat in May, she drops relatable pearls that take the confusion out of eating right and making lifestyle changes with staying power.

• 48:01Gemma Newman?

  My take on it is I like to put out positive energy and I like to be able to maintain a compassionate approach to this because people try these diets because they want results and they feel frustrated with what they've currently got. And oftentimes when, you know, I remember myself, I did low carb for a while thinking it was best for me and I got results and I looked good. And so I thought, well, of course, this is the way forward. So I can completely understand where people are coming from with regard to this. And the same with keto, like people go on keto diets to get results or to feel better. And I'm not going to be in a position where I deny people's personal experience, but I am going to be in a position where I share information both on long-term health and

• 48:43Gemma Newman?

  short-term health outcomes so that they can then hopefully come to a decision based on rationality over what someone told them once on the internet. So the internet, I think, is fantastic. I do honestly, when patients come up to me and say, oh, I Googled this, I'm really sorry, I know you won't like it, or I know I shouldn't, I think, actually, no, I'm really glad that you did because it shows me you have an inquisitive mind, you want to learn, and, you know, we can discuss this and you can hopefully find some answers that are going to suit your long-term health and wellbeing. So I don't get involved with the diet wars, but I do like to disseminate positive information. And I think when people are ready and willing to receive that information, then they'll come and they'll read it and hopefully they will accept it.

• 49:27Gemma Newman?

  And I'll be honest, I think most doctors don't go on PubMed and read past the abstracts. This is partly why we have a big problem is that people who have medical credentials don't necessarily read the whole paper, or they may misrepresent the paper. So all I can say is, based on the evidence that I have read from mechanistic data, from cellular longevity, from epidemiology, making plants the basis of your diet is key for microbial health and beyond.

• 49:57Gemma Newman?

  I think it's interesting because when people do well, for example, on the ketogenic diet, I don't wanna discount their experience. I think to myself, well, why is it, why is it that they are doing well at this point? And what's interesting to me is that a lot of it does seem to stem from gut health. So if somebody has something like swollen intestinal bacterial overgrowth or a leaky gut, then it's going to be very difficult for them to tolerate these healthy vibrant foods that are so common in a plant-based diet. And so maybe they do feel a little bit better to start with. But of course, if they then try to eat these healthier foods in the future, then they've made their underlying issue worse. And so my aim in speaking with patients is always to come at it with empathy and compassion.

• 50:39Gemma Newman?

  Like, what has made you do this way of eating and how do you feel now? And then take it from there. And gut healing, I think, is one of the major things that, that, that people need to do when they, when they are starting on this journey. If they've got gastrointestinal issues and things like quercetin and glutamate and, and Restore Gut Health by the fabulous Dr Zach Bush. As well as, you know, gradually reintroducing FODMAP foods, fermentable foods that are tremendously healthy, but may cause initial bloating or discomfort. So it really depends on where they're coming from and where they're at. Bottom line is, a plant-based diet is the only one that's been proven to reverse heart disease. And it's been proven to be very beneficial for people suffering from a variety of different cancers.

• 51:24Gemma Newman?

  And we have great mechanistic data to show why that might be possible. So I have every confidence in, in recommending a predominantly plant-based diet. And then what they do with that is up to them. But yeah, in terms of things like keto, part of the reason that they might be feeling good on it initially is because it's quite an effective way of regenerating mitochondria that are a little bit tired and worn out by the PGC1 alpha pathway. So I think to yourself, well, how else, how else can you regenerate your mitochondria? And there's plenty of ways of doing that that don't involve high meat consumption. In fact, if you are eating a lot of meat on a keto diet, you're probably doing it wrong because you're getting too much protein when you should be having more in the way of fats, actually. So. What are the other ways of doing that?

• 52:07Gemma Newman?

  Well, you can do high intensity interval training, for example. You could have an intermittent fasting and time restricted feeding. I mentioned quercetin, which is a plant based nutrient that you can get from a number of plant foods and also in supplement form. Even jumping in the ocean, having a cold plunge is another way of doing it, having a massage. There's so many ways of activating the mitochondria that you don't have to do a ketogenic diet to do that. So it's just about kind of helping people understand why they've got a benefit and how else could they do so without risking their long term health. In fact, that's what I would encourage people to do, anyone that's listening right now. If you've been thinking about a plant based diet, if you've been wondering about a plant based diet and you're not sure what the first step to take is.

• 52:48Gemma Newman?

  We've obviously covered a lot of ground today, but this could be your chance to make one change, just one thing that you can do tomorrow that could change your daily habit. And if you can keep doing that for a few days and then maybe make one more change, that's the beginning of a new reality for you. So maybe have a think, is there one thing that you could do today or tomorrow that would make a difference to your daily routine that you could commit to doing, that you could maybe tell your spouse about, or maybe a friend, so that they can keep you accountable and then start you off on your fantastic abundant health journey.

• 53:27Rich Roll?

  That's so inspiring. You're very optimistic.

• 53:31Gemma Newman?

  You've got to stay optimistic.

• 53:32Rich Roll?

  Are you truly, you know, when I look, when I kind of like take a, take a look from 10,000 feet down on planet earth, it's easy to, to despair of how we're treating the planet and to see the declining health of our population.

• 53:46Rich Roll?

  There are tools like we've just been talking about today that can transform all of that, that are accessible and very doable. And yet sometimes I feel like, I don't know, are we, are we going to win this war? How do you look at that?

• 54:03Gemma Newman?

  I like to think of it as, as a journey of enlightenment for humanity, rather than a war. Because otherwise, it does get kind of depressing. But if we think of it as a journey of enlightenment, we know instinctively that staying close to nature is super important for our health and for the health of our children. And we know, seeing that one species is dying every 20 minutes, we know we're in the middle of something serious and that something has to be done. But overwhelm is not the emotion with which to face this. Hope and gratitude and love are the emotions with which to face this. So stay positive, make a change for yourself, tell others about your change, feel good, and hopefully, the message will spread.

• 54:46Rich Roll?

  Mic drop.

• 54:53Rich Roll?

  I would say that there is a very big difference between inspirational gurus who sling a bunch of BS and those that have the credibility and the life experience to back it up. Tom Bilyeu is the latter. In this excerpt from episode 425, the host of the wildly popular podcast and YouTube show Impact Theory breaks free of the matrix to deliver the goods on embracing struggle, changing the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, and accessing the hidden potential that resides within us all. So when someone comes to you and says, "Oh, my God, look what you've built. It's so inspiring, but I don't know what my purpose is. I don't know what makes me passionate.

• 55:37Rich Roll?

  I'm not sure which direction to take. Like, what is the counsel?" I'm sure you field this question all the time. Like, what is your counsel to that individual?

• 55:44Speaker 06

  So first and foremost, go play. Go discover. Like, wander around. Go to a different country.

• 55:52Speaker 06

  Encounter enough stuff that you see what actually gives you that spark of interest. Don't expect a spark of passion. It doesn't happen like that. You're gonna be interested by something and that something will be maybe a little more interesting than the next thing. That thing now go down the process of really engaging with it, like go full in. So if you were traveling around India and you went and taught a, you know, a week-long math class and you were like, I've never been this fulfilled in my life, move to India and teach in the slums for a year. And if in that process-

• 56:22Rich Roll?

  Or how about just when you go back home, maybe, you know, start tutoring kit? Like, you don't have to revolutionize your life overnight, but if you start bringing greater expression to that impulse, it will lead you in a trajectory that you can't foresee in that moment.

• 56:37Speaker 06

  Super powerful answer. So I'm a thousand percent with that. Engaging with it, whatever phase that takes, but really spending time with it, really doing it. Then if it turns into a full-blown fascination where you're like, I really dig this, then we're gonna go down the process of gaining mastery. Only in the process of gaining mastery will you find passion. So to me, passion comes out of, it's kinda like love. I don't believe that love, it needs a different word. Unrequited love is a very different neurological state than reciprocal love. So if you have unrequited love, to me, that's something you really, like, I love singing, but I'm shit at it. So I have unrequited love. I love singing, but singing does not love me back.

• 57:18Speaker 06

  Now, I could go down the process of gaining mastery and then I may find that I have a real passion for it. Because part of it's going to become, oh, I'm gaining this skill and this skill of singing allows me to have an emotional impact, not only on myself, but on other people. I can make them feel good. I can change their mood. I can tell a story, whatever it is that you wanna do with the music. But when you're able to do that and you're truly good at it and it has the outcome that you desire, then it can become a passion. But to get a passion, you've gotta fight through just ridiculous amounts of boredom, fatigue, everything, to truly become good enough at it, that it's a skill that has utility. So when it came to do I buy an island and retire? Or do I double down? It came down to what will make me love my life the most? And the reality is the thing that would make me love my life the most,

• 58:03Speaker 06

  because it would still be fun to just go home and be with my wife. But the thing that will make me love my life the most is to do the things that are fulfilling. And I think fulfillment has a very specific, universal formula. And that formula is work your ass off to get very good at something that you care deeply about, that allows you to serve not only yourself, but other people. That's it. You gotta have all of it.

• 58:25Rich Roll?

  Techni.

• 58:27Speaker 06

  Literally.

• 58:28Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 58:30Speaker 06

  It is literally techni.

• 58:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 58:32Speaker 06

  And people, they don't think about that.

• 58:33Rich Roll?

  Explain what that is for people that don't know.

• 58:34Speaker 06

  So it's this ancient Greek notion of fulfillment, basically. And the fact that it's coming from that word techni, like to get good at something and something that's hard. So the way that I explain it to people is, people think of like doing something like going and ladling soup at a soup kitchen, which may be the right place to start. But ultimately, you're going to realize anyone can do this. And so I have earned something special that allows me to serve myself and humanity. So it's, part of it is working your ass off to get a set of skills that have real value. And my, my whole thing, here's, this may be the biggest problem we face as a society. People don't remember that skills have utility. They let you do something.

• 59:18Speaker 06

  You don't learn to build a house to impress your parents. You learn to build a house so people can live in the house you build. And once people understand that, like, holy shit, you're building this house so somebody can live in it, build a home in it, have a family, be sheltered from storms. Like, fuck, it's a real thing, man. And so all of that effort and energy went into, I have the chills right now, is so you can create that moment for yourself, for other people. It is, it is something so much more than going to architecture school, which maybe you went to because your parents wanted that and they, they were architects. And so you do that thing for that and you forget that the whole reason you became an architect was to build houses. And so once people realize, oh, I'm putting all of this time and energy to build these things because they let me do something.

• 1:00:03Speaker 06

  What do I want to do? What do I want to give? What do I want to create? When you look at skills from that perspective, it is like, It is being a superhero. It is being a superhero. You're going to collect these abilities. These abilities actually let you do something. The fact that Superman can fly allows him to save people, allows him to do things other people can't do. We all have this opportunity to become capable of the extraordinary, to be able to do things other people can't do. And that feels so good.

• 1:00:30Rich Roll?

  The thing is, though, most... The thing that's unique about you is that you were able to come to this realization and develop a level of maturity and self-awareness without having to go to the, you know, play it out at the Lamborghini dealership, right? Because most people who would come into that kind of wealth would go and have that experience for a period of time only to discover, you know, what you just expressed, but on the other side of it. So why were you able to do that? Why were you able to avoid that experience and circumvent it?

• 1:01:06Speaker 06

  They say, "A fool never learns. A smart man learns from his mistakes, and a wise man learns from the mistakes of others." Far too often, I've been a fool and have repeated mistakes over and over and over. But I really do try to be smart. I'm not usually as wise as I would like to be and just find that I, um, I learn things a hard way. But I really do learn them. So pain for me is a tremendous instructor. Maybe because I hate it so much and just want to move away from it. But thankfully, I don't run from it. I figure out what I did that made me feel that pain, whether it's what I value myself for or whether it's just, hey, bad skill set. You need to address it, and then actually addressing it. So I think that everything in life comes down to what your own value system is.

• 1:01:50Speaker 06

  So what's your identity? What are your beliefs? What are your values? What are your habits? What are your routines? When you figure those out, that... Like, if you just gave me a sheet that told me what those were about somebody, I would tell you what the outcome of their life is going to be. And... For me, implementation, being willing to face the fears, the anxieties, the unknown, the need to stare at my inadequacies so I can figure out what skills I actually need in order to go and do something, because implementation is really a question of skill set. So that's why motivation ultimately is going to let you down. It's like, you may be motivated to go do something, but let me walk you through exactly what will happen. You're motivated to try this thing, which you don't know how to do, and you suck at it. And so you go do that thing, you suck. It hurts your ego, because your ego is tied up in being right, being good, being talented,

• 1:02:34Speaker 06

  worthy, all those like permanent set states that people don't realize are malleable. And so they get stuck in that. It damages their self-esteem, so they want to run in the opposite direction. Psychological immune system kicks in, reminds them that that was stupid anyway, why were they worried about even trying that? And so they back off. And any one time doing that, it's not a big deal. It's just that people do that over and over and over and over and over. And my thing is that's such a predictable pattern in humanity. It's like, what do you have to do to counteract that? And the thing you have to do is emotionally reward yourself for being willing to take the steps. So, okay, I know I'm going to do this, I'm going to suck at it, it's going to hurt, it's going to hurt my self-esteem. And so what do I need to do to make sure that I don't trip up over that in a way that makes me turn and run in the opposite direction?

• 1:03:16Speaker 06

  Number one, stop valuing myself for being good at something, and start valuing myself for being willing to learn.

• 1:03:27Rich Roll?

  What does it feel like to shoulder the responsibility for improving the health of global conversation on one of the world's biggest social networks? In this excerpt from episode 430, Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey expounds, including thoughts on solitude and self-care, in my attempt to better understand the human behind the curtain.

• 1:03:51Speaker 07

  We tuned into something that was interesting, that was intriguing, that we didn't know what it was going to become. And in the same light... People figure out how to game it, too. And that's

• 1:04:07Rich Roll?

  Right, this living, breathing organism, right? That could also, you know, become a virus.

• 1:04:15Speaker 07

  Yes, absolutely. It could be, at least

• 1:04:18Rich Roll?

  Or have a pathogen.

• 1:04:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, at least the pathways and the vectors that it provides can carry both positive and and negative attributes. And, you know, like any tool, you can figure it out in a way such that you can use the vectors to be more destructive and to be distracting and to divide, which I think is antithetical to the base technology. But it doesn't mean that we should assume that it'll just work itself out. We have to actively maintain and garden this conversation.

• 1:04:59Speaker 07

  And, you know, the challenge is, no one's done it at the scale before, so we have to learn it. You know, we have to learn it in real time. And part of the conversations like this is like, I want to, I want to share that I'm I'm learning it in real time. We're learning it in real time. And we're going to make a ton of mistakes along the way, but we're going to do it in public. And we're going to admit when we're wrong. And we just haven't done enough of that in the past.

• 1:05:26Rich Roll?

  On this idea of doing it in public, you know, failing and succeeding in the public eye, how do you, just as a human being, deal with the reaction that comes with every single thing that you tweet? Like, do you, like, do you put a lot of thought into what you're putting out into the world? Do you not read your app mention? Like, how do you, like, knowing that every, every time you tweet something, at least with respect to what's going on at Twitter, that you're going to get, like, there's going to be a certain percentage of people that are going to want to say not-nice things, like, how do you insulate yourself? How do you see that and take it to heart, but also protect your own, you know, emotional well-being?

• 1:06:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, and this is where the meditation practice has helped me a lot, is just not constantly allowing myself to be reactive to whatever comes in front of me. This is, the less control I have over my own Well-being and space and mindset, the less effective I am in fixing our issues. I get my sense of spirituality through connection. And, you know, what Twitter represents is spiritual to me. Like tapping into the consciousness, the, you know, the, the, the larger organism, whether it be, you know, the, the planet, the universe, the, the social consciousness

• 1:06:50Speaker 07

  is what, is what, is what drives me. And it's the, it's the answer I like to get at, you know, and the question that I like to ask. And so that's where I feel like the flow and that's where I feel most alive is when I, I feel like I can tap into that. And like, you know, I go down to Big Sur a lot and Big Sur, like we have this amazing fortune here in San Francisco, being able to travel two and a half hours away and go, you know, to this place that you immediately feel is mystical because of the redwood trees and this dynamic coast that goes down a thousand feet to the ocean where you see whales and,

• 1:07:34Speaker 07

  you just feel this, this connection and this wisdom. And I, I think that's so, so powerful and such an important reminder. Like today is my day where I don't, you know, Saturday is, is my day where I don't think about work at all with the exception of this conversation, but it's at a different level. I, I just clear the day completely to, you know, walk outside or to go down to Big Sur or to, to be with my best friends. I have dinner with them ideally once a week and just laugh and have some wine together. And they just had a baby, so that's a whole nother new sense of joy.

• 1:08:15Speaker 07

  And I, I, I need a lot of that balance because that, that is my, my spiritual connection at the moment. It's just like feeling that a connection in as tangible a way as possible. And you, you know, you mentioned, you know, My path of like, you know, thinking about designing jeans and botanical illustration. And I took a thousand hours of massage therapy along my path of becoming an engineer and a CEO. Because I grew up writing programs and it's so damn abstract. There's so much in your head and you're not using your hands. And every time I realize I'm just like, my dreams were me programming my dreams.

• 1:08:56Speaker 07

  It was just such a weird experience where I would have this dream where I was programming the next part of my dream. And it was so lucid, but it was so, it wasn't grounded. So I would always shift towards something that I loved, like botanical illustration and just drawing, or something that would solve a need. Because I was developing Carpa Tunnel and I didn't just want to get a massage. I wanted to learn the why behind it and the mechanics behind it so I could fix myself. But all these variations, these side paths, these forks in the road have always brought me back to building technology and added depth and enriched building that technology.

• 1:09:39Speaker 07

  Because it's just where I feel my creativity most.

• 1:09:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I can't help but think that there's this weird meta-parallel between like your own personal path towards broadening your consciousness and raising your awareness and growing as a human being and the kind of hive consciousness that is Twitter and the commitment to kind of raising the vibration of that. Like the interplay between those, I think is super interesting.

• 1:10:12Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah. I think in that sense, like, you know, back to our conversation around meditation, the observation is not just that we are...

• 1:10:30Speaker 07

  External observers, but we are part of the system. The very act of observing is changing the system as well. And we have a responsibility to really reflect the essentialness of humanity and being that reflection on the world for all the good and all the bad. I mean, there's a lot of power to seeing how people think in ways that make us feel great and also things that are super uncomfortable because we need to be able to acknowledge those things. We need to be able to acknowledge in person in order to have a conversation about it. And there's no other path towards evolution and making something better unless we can

• 1:11:15Speaker 07

  talk about it.

• 1:11:25Rich Roll?

  And we're back. Now, we're going to grapple with the hard problem of trying to better understand one of the great captivating mysteries of the universe, the scientific and philosophic nature of consciousness. How does it arise? Where exactly does it exist? And why? Our steward for this deep dive, excerpted from episode 460, is Annaka Harris, the New York Times bestselling author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind.

• 1:12:00Speaker 08

  Really, the goal of the book is to shake up our intuitions about consciousness as much as possible because I think if we're able to make progress, if we're able to... The human brain, I think, is not capable of understanding everything, and so it may just fall into that category. But if we can understand consciousness better, it will require that we really challenge some strong intuitions that we have. And I think we're at that point with regard to consciousness.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  I like that you say that the human brain isn't capable of understanding all of these things. I feel like there's a hubristic flair that emanates across the scientific community that we can indeed understand everything. And perhaps that's true at some future point or with the...

• 1:12:47Speaker 08

  I think it's an aspirational...

• 1:12:51Speaker 08

  It's interesting because most science I know and typically scientists more than other people I know are much more willing to say they don't know something, or we may never know, or you know, this is deeply mysterious physicists in particular, but scientists in general. I think the messaging that comes out, and I would partly fault the media, but I think it's also just a natural circumstance of the messaging. When we learn something new, it's kind of declared as if we know all these things and everything is knowable.

• 1:13:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:25Speaker 08

  But I don't actually think that's the stance of science.

• 1:13:28Rich Roll?

  Well, particularly with physicists. I mean, the more you dive deep.

• 1:13:32Speaker 08

  I mean, they're just throwing their hands up all the time.

• 1:13:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like, how do you even begin to understand what these things mean?

• 1:13:38Speaker 08

  I've been watching these wonderful videos of this physicist, Nima Arkani-Hamed, who's brilliant and hard to understand, but I do my best. But he spends most of his time talking about how spacetime is no longer something that we think is fundamental, that there's something that's more fundamental than spacetime, that basically there is no, at a fundamental level, there is no space and time. So yeah, I mean, if we're never going to get our minds around that, even if we can believe it.

• 1:14:08Rich Roll?

  Well, time is a focus of the book in the later chapters, and I want to get to that. But let's start with, let's just, let's just define our terms here. Like when we're talking about consciousness, like, what do we actually mean?

• 1:14:24Speaker 08

  So people do use the word many different ways, and it's confusing. The way I'm using the word in the book, and what I think most people mean when they're talking about the mystery of consciousness, the kind of the consciousness in the most fundamental sense, is the closest word I can get to is experience. And I use Thomas Nagel's description of consciousness from his essay called What It Is Like to Be a Bat, which is a great essay, and I recommend from the 70s. And he says in that essay, "An organism is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that organism." And that language, for a lot of people, they kind of get it right away. Actually, for me, that happened. I knew exactly what he meant.

• 1:15:09Speaker 08

  But the language really isn't very precise, and it can be confusing. So. I usually follow that up with a series of questions, especially for someone who just says, "I don't, I don't know what that means to say it's, it's like something." And so I'll say, "Is, is there something that it's like to be you right now?" And I run through this in the book. And of course, whoever I'm asking, we all know, we're having an experience, right? We're, we're conscious and we're having an experience. And then is there something that it's like to be this book on the table? And our intuitive answer is, is no. And despite what's actually true in the world, the fact that we can imagine a collection of matter in the universe that entails no experience at all, the lights are not on from the inside, right? That's non-conscious material. And then a collection

• 1:15:54Speaker 08

  of matter in the universe, like your brain, where there's something that it's like to be that matter. That difference is consciousness, and it's how I'm using the word in the book. Although I do actually prefer experience. I think it's slightly less confusing.

• 1:16:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I've been thinking about that definition over the last week. And I can't escape this sense that it's still reductive in the sense that we're looking at experience through our own experience, right? We're defining what experience means only through the lens of what it means and feels like to be human. And it doesn't leave a lot of space or room for, for contemplating that experience could take another form that we can't relate to.

• 1:16:36Speaker 08

  Well, yes and no. No, I think, I think, but that, so that's where I'm talking at a more fundamental level. So I think, and that's partly what I tried to do in the book, is strip away everything that could be human. Like you could, you could radically change an experience, but the fact of any experience at all, and you know, I get into these more far out theories, but even if you contemplate that, you know, a single cell or bacteria has some minimal level of experience that you and I could never imagine what it would like to, what it would be like. If there's any experience, I mean, the most minimal experience you could imagine, if there's something it's like, then that is consciousness. And that could be completely unlike any human experience.

• 1:17:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:17:16Speaker 08

  It's just whether, whether it's completely dark and dead, you know, whether the stars...

• 1:17:24Speaker 08

  There's, there's no experience there at all. It's a collection of atoms that are doing their thing, but there's nothing that it feels like at all. Or, or there is.

• 1:17:36Rich Roll?

  Or there is, right, in a very binary way.

• 1:17:39Speaker 08

  Yeah, well, and yes and no. I mean, it's in a binary way, once you go from nothing to something. But then, of course, there's this gradation of what's possible in, in experience, once you have experience. But yeah, I think you can, you can say that it's either there or not.

• 1:17:55Rich Roll?

  Right. The fact that it exists begs the question of the evolutionary advantage of having it at all. Like, what is the reason that we developed this?

• 1:18:06Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:18:07Rich Roll?

  As opposed to, you know, the sort of zombie example that you use in the book.

• 1:18:11Speaker 08

  Yeah, no, and I think that's, that's a, that's a very interesting question. And that's kind of where I, where my thinking started. And it's early on in the book that I posed these two questions that I think. So I have, I have two categories of intuitions that I want to challenge. One category is our intuitions about consciousness itself. And then intuitions that occur in other areas that are, in our lives that strongly influence on, or inform our intuitions about consciousness. And so I kind of put those into two separate categories. And I start with consciousness. And I just, for, you know, for myself and in my own notes, I just wanted to get at what are the most basic, strongest intuitions

• 1:18:53Speaker 08

  we have about consciousness? And so I asked these two questions in the book. One is, is there behavior we can point to from outside a system that we can use as conclusive evidence that consciousness is present in that system, right? Is there, is there something we can witness from the outside, some physical behavior that we could say, yes, anytime we see behavior A, B, or C, that's absolute evidence of consciousness? And I think our intuitive answer is, is yes. And it's a very strong yes. And even after dissecting this for 15 years, my answer is still yes. So an example of that would be.

• 1:19:31Speaker 08

  I mean, there are so many, but I often use, you know, my daughter. If my daughter's fallen down and she's crying and asking for a Band-Aid, all of that behavior, to me, absolutely signifies that there's consciousness present, right? She's having an experience of pain.

• 1:19:47Speaker 08

  And so I wanted to start there because I thought this is an important exercise in all areas of science, and this is where our strongest intuitions are. But could we be wrong? Is it possible that the behavior that we think is evidence of consciousness is not necessarily evidence of consciousness? And so you can kind of go in the direction of AI and imagine we might, in the future, create something that seems like a child who was crying because she fell down, but the lights are actually not on, there's no consciousness there. But I think the flip side of that is also interesting, which is even if we can come up with behaviors, and for myself, I can't, and I think it's super interesting that we can't.

• 1:20:28Speaker 08

  But on the other side of that, we know that consciousness can be present with no behavior at all.

• 1:20:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:36Rich Roll?

  So you use the Diving Bell and the Butterfly as an example of that.

• 1:20:39Speaker 08

  Have you read that book?

• 1:20:40Rich Roll?

  I saw that movie.

• 1:20:41Speaker 08

  It's so beautifully written.

• 1:20:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Speaker 08

  Yeah, so that's based on a writer who had something called locked-in syndrome, where I believe his was due to a stroke, but it can, it can happen a variety of ways that damage the brain, like a stroke. And it left him completely paralyzed, but with a full experience of consciousness, as full as our experiences right now, as full as his experience was before the stroke. He could hear, see, think, write a book, but he had no way, he was completely paralyzed, except for, in his case, his left eyelid, there was some mobility left in his left eyelid, and miraculously, his caretakers noticed this, and they were able to develop

• 1:21:25Speaker 08

  a way for him to write through, I don't know the exact details, but yeah.

• 1:21:30Rich Roll?

  Creating a language.

• 1:21:31Speaker 08

  Each blink made a, created a certain letter, and then he would spell out words, and, and wrote this beautiful book. But so, so that's a case of, even if we can find behavior, there's this other problem in terms of behavior, which is there can be zero behavior and still be a tremendously detailed experience of consciousness.

• 1:21:53Rich Roll?

  Every year, heart disease claims one out of every four American lives. Filmmaker, actor, and OG podcaster Kevin Smith narrowly escaped adding his name to that statistic, surviving a widowmaker heart attack last year. The experience changed his relationship to food, to lifestyle, and prompted him, among other things, to go vegan. It's an incredible story, masterfully told by a master storyteller, super entertaining. So please enjoy this brief excerpt from episode 433.

• 1:22:25Kevin Smith?

  So I went into the green room and there was milk there in a glass bottle in ice. So I cracked it open, took a big thing of milk, big drig, and then I was suddenly fairly nauseated. My first thought was like, ew, somebody fucking pissed in the milk or something, like the milk's been fucked with. Like, you know, it's gotta be bad milk. I think I've just had some bad milk. So I felt weird and I asked Jordan, who runs our company, and Emily, who does my hair and makeup. I was like, hey, man, can I have the room? Like, because when I'm sick, I don't want to be around people. I just want to go off and fucking die like an animal. So I was like, can I have the room? I don't feel that well. And they were like, yeah, totally.

• 1:23:09Kevin Smith?

  And they stepped out and I laid down on the floor. So there I am, I'm laying down on the floor, feel nauseated, feel hot, and I throw up, bile, and then I feel a little better. Then Emily comes in and she's like, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, can you turn on the hairdryer and just dry me off like I'm sweating profusely and stuff? So she's like, yeah, totally. So she sits me in the chair, puts the hairdryer on me, and as she's drying my hair, you know, she feels my neck and she goes, you know, this is gonna sound creepy, but I feel your neck all the time for, while I'm doing your hair. Never felt this before. You're freezing cold on your neck. Like, you sure you, maybe something we should look into? And I was like, yeah, I don't feel great. I was like, I'm gonna, I need a couch.

• 1:23:54Kevin Smith?

  Somebody find a couch? And this is at the theater, the Alex Theater in Glendale. So Jordan found a couch and I was like, alright, I'm just gonna lay down here for a while, man. Which is like, you know, now again, knowing what happened, like, that's how fucking people die. You know, I'm like, I'm just gonna lay down. I gotta feel good. I'm gonna lay down. And meanwhile, my heart was... Fucking attacking me. Or, you know, fair enough, I had attacked it most of my life with all the shit I ate. So the heart was like turned about to fair, fair play. So I'm laying on this couch and I can't get comfortable. Flip around and stuff, which is weird because I could fall asleep with the drop of a hat. So then there's a chair there. So I went to the chair and, and sat in it and I put my arms above my head to facilitate breathing because I couldn't quite catch my breath.

• 1:24:39Kevin Smith?

  I was like.

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  But no like tightness in your chest or anything like that?

• 1:24:43Kevin Smith?

  No arm, no, you know, they tell you like your left arm, your right arm goes numb. It's going to feel like an elephant sitting on your chest. None of that shit. Just couldn't quite like catch my breath. This is a normal breath up to the top. Then I could only go. And I couldn't ring the bell. I couldn't. Like get it all the way up to the top. So I put my hands above my head. I was raising them up like this, like, you know, like a, like a football referee. Try facilitate breathing. And so I'm sitting in the chair and Jordan kind of creeps in around the corner. She goes, you all right? I was like, I feel really fucked up. I've never felt like this before in my life. I was like, maybe I should see a doctor.

• 1:25:26Kevin Smith?

  She's like, well, we canceled the second show. And I was like, why would you cancel the second show? And she was like, I've never seen you be sick before. This is really weird. So called off the second show. I was like, all right, well, if the show's called off and I felt okay because Brian said he could cut everything out of one. So I was like, all right, we're covered there. I was like, if the show's called, called off, maybe I should go see a doctor right now. And she goes, it's Sunday night there and the doctor's open. So I called an ambulance. And I was like, why the fuck would you call an ambulance, man? Oh my God, this is embarrassing. Like they're going to show up, they're going to tell me I smoked way too much weed and stuff like, don't, why would you do that? She was like, better safe than sorry. I didn't know what to do. So I'm sitting there in the chair with my arms up and all of a sudden like, and when you call the ambulance, fire department comes as well. So six brawny ass fire, firefighters come in the room.

• 1:26:11Kevin Smith?

  And there I am sitting there in the chair with my arms up and one of them young enough to like, be like, oh, I fucking know who this guy is. And he looking at me like, why Silent Bob's celebrating a touchdown? And I was like, hey. And they were like, you all right? I said, yeah, I just, I can't quite catch my breath. Two paramedics come in, guy and a girl, Bobsey twins. And the guy goes, uh, hi, what's your name? I said, Kevin Smith. He goes, Mr. Smith, how you feeling? I said, Mr. Smith's my father. And he goes, oh, I've heard that joke before. He goes, uh, what's going on? I said, I can't quite catch my breath. He goes, all right, let's see what's going on here. I'm gonna get a blood pressure cuff on you. Put a cuff on me. Starts pumping it and then the lady's got this, what looks like a fishing tackle box. And she opens it up, it's got leads and wires in it and stuff. All of a sudden she grabs my fucking hockey jersey, yanks it up and every one of my titties

• 1:26:56Kevin Smith?

  and guts falls out. And I'm like, whoa! And she's like, what, what's the matter? I yank it right back down. I said, don't do that, there's a bunch of people around here. She's like, I gotta get these wires on you. And I was like, well, I'll hold my shirt out, you just reach under it and use my nipples as guideposts, like, but don't lift my shirt up. And she looks at the other guy, she's like, we ain't got time for this. And the guy goes, uh, uh, Mr. Smith, I need you to do me a favor, open your mouth. And I opened my mouth. He's like, lift your tongue. I did. And he's like, I'm gonna put something in it. I said, okay. And he sprayed something under my tongue. And then he said, close your mouth. And I did. And I remember thinking like, this is so fucking weird. Your whole life, your parents trained you, like if a stranger says to you, open your mouth and put something in it, you fucking say no. But because the dude's wearing a uniform, I was like, ah, just totally let him do whatever he wanted.

• 1:27:38Kevin Smith?

  So the guy goes, uh, he looks at the lady's fishing tackle box, which is now wires attached to my chest. And I didn't think anything of it, right? Like, they're moving fast, they're paramedics and stuff. I'd seen paramedics work before, but I'd never been at the receiving end of them. So the guy goes, you know what? We're gonna take you for a ride to the hospital. And I was like, oh my God, please don't do that. This is embarrassing. I honestly just smoked way too much weed today. He goes, yeah, that could be the case. He's going, but we're so close, better safe than sorry, man. We're gonna take you to the hospital. You ever been to the hospital before? I was like, no. He goes, oh, you're gonna love it. I said, really? He goes, yeah, man, we're gonna take you in an ambulance. You ever been in an ambulance? I said, no. He goes, we'll even ring the siren. I was like, all right, let's fucking do it.

• 1:28:20Kevin Smith?

  So they put me in this chair that becomes a bed, that becomes a gurney, right? It's like a transformer. But in order to get me there, that's where the firemen come into it. Cause I go to get up and like, whoa, you stay right there. And they bring the six firemen over and they're like, all right, pick them up. And dudes put their hands under me and six fucking brawny ass firemen lift me to the ground. It was the most fun I had, like in the last year. Cause nobody ever tries to pick my ass up. Like it was fun. I was like, whee. They put me in the chair and shit, got me upstairs as I was being wheeled out. There's a bunch of people lined up for the next show. And I guess they'd been informed that I was not having a second show because I was suffering from food poisoning. Somebody had heard that I threw up. So they're like, oh, it must be food poisoning.

• 1:29:05Kevin Smith?

  So that's what they told everybody. He can't do the second show, he's got food poisoning. And as I'm leaving, there's somebody, you know, a bunch of people outside, they're all clapping, like way to go, Kev. And then there was one guy who was making the universal face for sticking his finger down his throat, you know, the vomiting face. But I didn't know that they were told that I'd puked and I wasn't honestly thinking about that. I was so like, what the fuck? I'm in an ambulance now? I saw a dude pointing his finger in his mouth and I was like, is this fucking man telling me to suck his dick as I'm being put in an ambulance? Like where's the decency and shit like that?

• 1:29:35Rich Roll?

  You're being wheeled out in front of all your fans.

• 1:29:38Kevin Smith?

  Totally. And I was like waving to them and stuff like the queen. They put me in an ambulance. I go to Glendale Adventist and that wasn't the name of the hospital on the call sheet since we were shooting, we were in production. There's a call sheet for every production. Call sheet has a bunch of useful information on it, including where to go in case of a medical emergency. This is the hospital we've designated as the production hospital. The ambulance didn't take me there. They take me to Glendale Adventist, which is a little further away. But because the medics knew what was happening and they knew that Glendale Adventist was a fantastic cardiac hospital. So I get there, they bring me into the ER. That's where I meet Dr. Leydenheim, Mark Leydenheim, guy who saves my life, comes in, he's like, hi, how you doing? I said, I'm good, I just can't catch my breath. He goes,

• 1:30:23Kevin Smith?

  well, how's your pain? You know, on a level of zero to 10, what kind of pain you in? I was like, negative three. And he goes, oh, well, then you're doing this all wrong. I said, what do you mean? He goes, if you're having a massive heart attack, you're supposed to be in pain. As I'm having a massive heart attack, he goes, you sure are right now. You don't know that? And I was like, no, nobody said anything.

• 1:30:39Rich Roll?

  That was the first.

• 1:30:40Kevin Smith?

  First time he was communicated to me in the emergency room where I was like, what the? And he goes, so we're gonna move fast, because is what I think it is, we gotta get there as quickly as possible. So I'll see you upstairs. And he leaves and another guy comes in with a bucket, a razor, and he goes, okay, in order for the doctor to get up to your heart, we gotta go through your groin. So I'm gonna need to shave your groin. So can you take off your shorts? And so I take off my jean shorts and then I leave my underwear on, because I'm like, I ain't taking my underwear off in the emergency room, dick out in the emergency room. Like, I'm seeing, I've been in the emergency room before with other people. And it's a mess, man. Once you're done looking at the person you're there with, once they're stabilized or whatever the fuck, once you look around, you're like, oh, my God, people in various states of undress and whatnot, can't help it, it's emergency room. So I'm

• 1:31:25Kevin Smith?

  sitting there going, I ain't fucking taking my underwear off, like, forget it. Like, all I need is one person with a fucking cell phone camera to be like, it's on the Bob's dick, and I'm ruined for life. So I'd say, the guy goes, you gotta take your underwear off. And I was like, ah, why? And he goes, because I gotta shave your groin. And I said, well, what's the groin to you? And he goes, it's where your leg meets your body. What are you talking about? I was like, all right, well, if that's the case, I'll pull my underwear to the side, and you just get in there and do virgin smoothie or landing strip, whatever you gotta do.

• 1:31:53Rich Roll?

  You're tearing on death and you're negotiating over like, how much of your junk are you gonna see?

• 1:31:57Kevin Smith?

  Because I was ashamed of my dick. Like, I was got, he goes, what are you doing? What are you talking? And I said, look, man, I got a small dick. I got body shame issues and shit, obviously. And that man just told me I had a heart attack. And if you make me take off my underwear in front of all these people, I will have a second heart attack, and that's gonna be on you, man. So let's do this. And he goes, fine, just pull him over. So pull him underwear over and he shaves both sides of the groin.

• 1:32:19Rich Roll?

  I can't believe you won that battle.

• 1:32:20Kevin Smith?

  It was, I think they were just like, how amusing. Well, he's gonna die anyway, let's go. So they got me upstairs. And the first thing, Dr. Leydenheim said when they brought me in, he goes, why is he still wearing his underwear? And the guy who pushed me in goes, he's got a story. He's got body shame issues. And I said, yeah, doc, my dick is real small. And the doctor goes, we ain't got time for this. And he yanks my fucking underwear off my body like I'm a heroin in a seventies porn movie and stuff. So I was trying to fight to keep my hockey jersey on. Cause hockey jersey is like a mu mu and it covers everything and stuff. So I was like, if I can keep my jersey, that'll cover my dick at least, even if he's going up my groin. He don't need to see my dick. None of these people need to see my dick. So I'm like, uh, he's like, take that shirt off him. And I go, no, I need that, man. This is my lucky hockey jersey.

• 1:33:04Kevin Smith?

  Like, you know, even though I'm drugged, I didn't know this. I was drugged at this point. They started feeding me fentanyl. They have to because they're gonna fucking puncture your body and your groin, cut a hole into you. And then feed a fucking tube up your femoral artery. So naturally they don't want you feeling anything. So the moment they start this shit, I'd be like, fuck you. So they drug you with fentanyl. I didn't know this. So I think I'm being keen and clever and shit. Like coming up with a lie about having to wear my fucking hockey jersey and shit. Cause it's my lucky hockey jersey. And really I was drugged and I didn't know that till after I was coming out of the operating room. My wife is just like, are you okay? And I said, you know what? If that's a heart attack, man, I'll take fucking five more. That was easy, man. And she goes, you must be on drugs. I was like, no, they didn't give me any drugs whatsoever. I was sober that whole time.

• 1:33:48Kevin Smith?

  And she said, the doctor was behind me and he goes, he's on a lot of fentanyl, like right now. So they're pumping me full of fentanyl. And even though I was drugged, I was like, I gotta keep this jersey on. It's my lucky hockey jersey. And the doctor's like, if it's so lucky, why are you having a heart attack? Get that off. And they took off all my clothes and I was laying there. I was like, you have your will of me. That was, I was more scared of than the heart attack.

• 1:34:09Rich Roll?

  I've been a parent for two decades, helping raise two young men to maturity. And I thought I had a decent handle on the dad thing, but I gotta tell you, nothing could prepare me for teenage daughters. So I brought in the expert, Lisa Demore, PhD. A teen whisperer par excellence. Lisa is a Yale educated psychotherapist with a doctor in clinical psychology. Best known for her New York Times bestselling books, Untangled and Under Pressure. Here's a clip from episode 438, a conversation I reflect upon almost daily.

• 1:34:50Speaker 10

  Thirteen-year-olds, right, are in this extremely unique developmental box where their brains are wildly dysregulated, you know, where they're very gawky, they're very easily overtaken by emotion as a function of neurological development, right? There's, it just, they are caught in this moment where their emotion centers have been upgraded, but their perspective maintaining centers have not been upgraded. And so if they become upset, the whole system, you know, crashes. And what my work feels like, my main aim is so that parents know the developmental box they're in. So when their thirteen-year-old walks in the door and they say one word and the kid loses it, or, you know, has some sort of meltdown, they can actually have the developmental perspective

• 1:35:33Speaker 10

  of, oh, oh, okay, they're having, you know, a meltdown because neurologically they can't. It's not that this is about some, you know, something about me. And then to try to offer some strategies for getting through that moment, you know, um, so I, I would say, what I aim, you know, hopefully is, is that, you know, I think the, the work that psychologists can do is the more we can just give parents a perspective that is neutral developmental, you know, twelve-year-olds are like this, thirteen-year-olds are like this, fourteen-year-olds are like that, you know, and it doesn't always map perfectly to onto your own kids' ages. Then, parents can adjust. But kids are a moving target, right? And, and unless you

• 1:36:18Speaker 10

  have a good memory for your own adolescence, or, you know, good access to developmental information, it's very easy to take them at face value, but that's not really appropriate.

• 1:36:29Rich Roll?

  But the more you can do that, then you can, you can sort of uncouple from the emotional trigger and depersonalize it, right? We all have our buttons and, and, you know, our kids know where those buttons are and they know how to push them. And, you know, it's taken a lot of, a lot of work on, on my part, a lot of meditation and mindfulness work and work that I do in recovery, to just be able to have the capacity, the facility to pause when agitated and not just react and get emotional about something, but just, you know, take a beat, take a moment, and try to, you know, cogitate the, the neutral, you know, best next thing to say or do.

• 1:37:10Speaker 10

  I think that's awesome, right? That's one reaction. I also, I want parents to know, like, it's okay to get mad at your kids. You know, not in a mean, nasty way. But I think, you know, if you don't always have the wherewithal to not react, I think another way to look at those moments is to think, um, you know, no one's gonna ever think our kids are as cute as we think they are, right? And, and I think there's a lot to be said for learning at home that, you know, if you're a jerk, people aren't gonna like it, you know? And they're gonna get angry sometimes, or they're not gonna wanna be with you.

• 1:37:46Speaker 10

  And so, you know, in my own parenting, um, I remember when I had toddlers, I had two daughters, um, I would get mad. You know, eventually toddlers make you really mad, right? And, um, and I, I learned to say to my daughters, you know what, I'm actually getting mad, right? Like, I, I'm asking you repeatedly to do this thing, and I know I'm being patient, but I want you to not get mad. And, and I'm, I'm gonna start to be mad, you know, if this goes on. And then when, if they continued to be annoying, then when I got mad, I felt like you had fair warning, right? Like, so it wasn't out of the blue. So I think there's a place for anger in family life. Um, if a kid has really been incredibly provocative and the parent is predictable, right? And they know it's coming.

• 1:38:31Speaker 10

  I also think there's a lot of value in apologizing to kids when we screw up, right? So say we blow it, right? And, and they didn't have it coming. Um, to me, there is no, there's a lot of power, and there's a lot of beautiful research on this about rupture and repair, right? There's a lot that happens in a relationship when a parent comes back to a teenager and says, you know what, I overreacted, and I owe you an apology, and I am sorry. There's, there's a real, there's real growth that happens.

• 1:39:02Speaker 10

  When parents can do that, what parents can't do is they can't keep doing it repeatedly. Right? Like, I mean, that's where it can fall apart. But I'm definitely sort of the brand of psychologist who feels like, let me give you five options for how to react to a kid, because it's going to depend on so many contextual factors. So sometimes you may be able to be reserved. Sometimes you might just get mad and they shouldn't be surprised because they always know that's going to get you going. And sometimes they didn't have a comment and you're going to apologize, you know? But they all are available. And in the course of the millions of interactions we're going to have, we're going to need them all.

• 1:39:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and those millions of interactions, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's a scientific way of kind of approaching that. And then there's a very kind of intuition-based, you know, artistic way of approaching. It's like this dance, right? And you have this beautiful analogy of the swimming pool that I think kind of encapsulates that. Can you kind of elaborate on that?

• 1:39:59Speaker 10

  Sure, sure. So this is an untangled, and it grew out of my observation that, you know, teenagers work to become independent. That's their job. The piece that seems to really get parents is that they don't become just slightly more independent each day. You know, they don't just become a little bit further and more autonomous each day. That a typical pattern is that you haven't heard from your teenager for three days, right? Or she's barely acknowledged your existence. And then something goes wrong, right? And she's very, very upset. And so then she comes seeking the parent, right? And it may be that she's needing physical comfort or just wants to talk and wants to share things. It is not unusual in these moments where there is actually a physical, like they're draping themselves on you or like cuddling near. Okay, so the girl may be upset.

• 1:40:44Speaker 10

  I know, the parent's thrilled, right? The parent's like, ah, you know, like loving it, absolutely loving it. And then, and then she's gone again, right? And so in observing this happening in families, the metaphor I came up with, and it's slightly belabored, but it does work really well, is that

• 1:41:01Speaker 10

  The girl is like a swimmer and the water is the world and the parents are the wall that hold the whole thing together. They're the pool. And swimmers want to be out in the water, right? I mean, they want to be out in the pool and with, they want to be with other swimmers. They want to be gaining strength. And I keep thinking about this metaphor, you know, when you're in the middle of the pool, you're not thinking about the edge of the pool. Like, that's the furthest from your mind, right? But then they get dunked, or they get exhausted or something, and they have that feeling, you know, I think all of us maybe can remember this from swimming lessons where they're like, I'm drowning, I'm drowning, right? So they come scrambling for the wall, which is the parent. And they cling to the parent to get their breath back. Okay, so the parent's loving it. I think that usually what happens for teenagers is they do have that swimming pool lesson experience where they're like, oh, wait, never mind, I'm fine. You know,

• 1:41:46Speaker 10

  and so then

• 1:41:47Rich Roll?

  Goodbye.

• 1:41:47Speaker 10

  Goodbye. But I think actually, it becomes a pretty abrupt goodbye, because they're like, I'm fine, and oh, my God, I'm in my mother's bed, right? Like, this is so awkward. So they shove off, right? They push off in a pretty abrupt way. So they may say, and I love this about teenage girls, even my own, like, that margin of like, um, mean but not punishable commentary, you know, that they make. So they may say like, wait, did you wear that today, like, out? You know, or something like that, like, it's

• 1:42:14Rich Roll?

  Just with like a razor, razor blade precision.

• 1:42:17Speaker 10

  Yes, yes. And so the parents' repeated experience is, I have no idea where you are. Oh, my God, you're letting me cuddle you. You just kicked me in the stomach, right? And it's sort of on repeat. And so what I wrote that up for is not because I'm like, and so here's the magic solution to prevent this, because you actually cannot prevent this, and I actually don't want you to prevent this. Though I don't think your kids should be rude. You know, if they say something really rude, you can say like, that's rude, you know, we don't talk like that. What I wanted was for parents, and this is exactly what we were talking about, to know this, this score. Like, this is what's happening. This is not meant as a, as a personal rejection. Your daughter can breathe again. Now she's

• 1:42:59Speaker 10

  on, you know, to her next thing. And so what my aim in, in offering parents this metaphor was so that they would savor when they did get to have those moments.

• 1:43:18Rich Roll?

  Okay, this next guy truly knows no limits. His name is Colin O'Brady. He's a good friend, and he's an absolute beast. An elite adventure athlete with four world records to his name. Colin is best known for his latest jaw-dropping feat of endurance and sheer human will, pulling a 300-pound sled 932 miles for 54 days straight to become the very first person in history to cross the continent of Antarctica solo and unsupported. Here's an excerpt from episode 439, in which he shares his experience, lessons learned along the way, and how we can apply his wisdom to our own

• 1:44:03Rich Roll?

  daily lives.

• 1:44:05Speaker 11

  It was this beautiful sunny day, actually, this kind of calm day where I had these tears of joy rolling down my face. It was actually one of my best moments. I was kind of like, oh, like I made it. Only 23 people, I think, have ever done solo unsupported and unassisted from the coast to the South Pole, 23, 24 in history. And so just doing that was like an amazing accomplishment. And so like, it's a big moment for me. And I'm like, oh, I'm kind of, you know, feeling good about this. And then the next day, I just get lit up in this storm. And the next seven or eight days, like the storms had lasted previous to this about one or two days. And then all of a sudden, this storm got seven, you know, six days, seven days, eight days. I find myself, you know, kind of picking through this Sestruki, you know, day 48, eight days in this battle with this storm. The wind hasn't been any lower than 40, 50 mile per hour.

• 1:44:49Speaker 11

  It's just brutal conditions. And I find myself falling like really bad. So I actually fall on the ground, hit the ground super hard. And I remember this one moment, I fall into this big hole, and my rope on my harness pulls tight, and then my sled starts sliding towards me. And I'm in this kind of four-foot hole, and I see this sled like kind of like maybe kind of fall down on top of me. It's like, I'm looking where my leg is, but like I can't move it because the skis are on the ground. I'm like, wow, like, and it's like teetering. It's like, this sled falls on me. It's like, broken leg, broken ski, in a Sestruki storm. And then I look down, and my skins have ripped off the bottom of one of my skis, which is impossibly hard to get back on in this storm. And I've only gone for one hour. And so I'm like, okay, the only way to get my skins back on is to set up my tent. So I think to myself, okay, like, I should set up my tent right now, and

• 1:45:34Speaker 11

  then like maybe regroup, but I like can't just waste the day because I am starting to run or lower on food and certainly, you know, trying to stay in the front of this race. And so I set up my tent and there's this video clip of me where I filmed a lot of this stuff, obviously I filmed it all myself, but I filmed a lot during the time and I'm looking in the camera and I'm just going like, I'm sobbing and I'm like, I'm not doing good. Like, I just want to give up. Like, I'm like so beat down and this. And it was just kind of in this moment, you know, two things for me happened in that moment, to get out of that headspace, which is another one of my favorite mantras, it's the simple one that a lot of us have, which is this two shall pass, you know, remembering sort of the impermanence of this moment. But also, I had this satellite device that I was pinging to the satellites every 10 minutes that people could track me in real time. That's how the New York Times

• 1:46:16Speaker 11

  and family and friends and all these school kids through a nonprofit were following along. And, you know, they see that I've stopped. And a friend of mine, Blake Brinker, he saw that I stopped and was like, wow, something must not be going like well for you. Like, and was checking in. You could send these like rudimentary text messages to the satellite device. And he sent a text message and it's a passage from one of my favorite books, which is The Alchemist. And he says, he says, remember the allegory from The Alchemist that you're being tested by all the lessons you have to go through before finally achieving the ultimate success. And he goes, don't forget when passing, you know, The Alchemist, of course, is about the desert, but in order because it's its own kind of desert. And he says, more often than not, people die of thirst when crossing the desert a few minutes

• 1:47:01Speaker 11

  before seeing the palm trees on the horizon. And so it was just this reminder of like, yo, like, you're in it. Like, you are getting tested right now. But if you can manage to get back out of this tent, out of this tent, remember that this two shall pass, then you will hopefully get to the other side of this. And sure enough, on that day, it was tough. But, you know, just taking my tent up and down in the storm takes an hour, hour and a half. And I, so I do that. But instead of getting my sleeping bag out, I take my tent down again, fix my skins and get back out and battle through this storm and manage 20 miles that day, which was a pretty solid mileage for me on any given day. And I think to me, that was both the lowest moment, but also a crux moment where I'm being tested by all of these things. And it would have been, there was a million reasons to quit in that moment, at least maybe not quit the whole project, but quit in that moment, be like, I'm falling, I'm gonna get hurt, my sled's gonna fall on me, my skins are falling

• 1:47:46Speaker 11

  off, the storm's lasted a week. Like, I'm starting to get frostbite on my nose and my cheeks. Like, I'm beat up. And I still managed to, you know, with the strength of sort of others and that vibration from family and friends and supporters is able to kind of draw some strength and inspiration to keep going. And really, kind of the essence of all of this was how much as humans, of course, I'm all alone. This is what I'm pontificating about, but I'm thinking about the importance of community, the importance that we all have to lean in, to love one another, to really be compassionate, to help, to uplift and support one another, and how much stronger we can be when there's that, you know, not this finite level of love, but this infinite love that we can share with one another. And what that can really create in this universe was was absolutely spectacular to feel that and be so viscerally connected to that at the end of this journey.

• 1:48:30Rich Roll?

  And what has it taught you about not only your own capabilities, but about human capabilities in general and potential?

• 1:48:38Speaker 11

  You know, I feel like I scratched the surface of this, you know, 11 years ago. And we've talked about this before, but when I was severely burning this fire in Thailand, I was told I would never walk normally. And then I recovered from that through the guidance of my mother's love and positivity ultimately.

• 1:48:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I'm going to interrupt you really quickly here, just to share one reflection on that. We have talked about that, and I'm well aware of that story from your life, but this is how weird memory works.

• 1:49:04Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 1:49:04Rich Roll?

  In my mind, I had this sense that that had happened way earlier in your life than it actually had. And when I sort of realized like, oh, wait, that was 2008. Like, that wasn't that long ago, dude. That was only 10 years ago.

• 1:49:19Speaker 11

  Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I was, I had been a collegiate swimmer before that. I mean, kind of gone through a big chapter of my life. And, um, yeah, it was, uh, you know, took a surfboard and a backpack and scraped together some pennies after college to go travel the world. And I met Jenna at the very beginning of that trip. So that was a net positive for that who ultimately became, of course, this most important person in my life. But not long after that, I found myself in rural Thailand with a kerosene flaming rope wrapped around my legs. My body lit on fire and having to dive into the ocean to extinguish the flames to save my life, but not before my legs were severely burnt and spent several months in the Thai hospital, being told I would never walk again normally. And in that moment, My mother came, she arrived about the fourth or fifth day and kind of comes to my bedside and she says like, Colin, like visualize your future, like visualize yourself, you know,

• 1:50:04Speaker 11

  being whatever you want to be, you know, your life's not over. And I was just in this deep tragic, you know, place in my mind and my body and my spirit. And I closed my eyes, kind of trying to, you know, placate my mother in some regard. And I pictured myself crossing the line of a triathlon, which is not something I'd ever done. And so I won't get into the whole story, but the, you know, the next 18 months were kind of learning from that lesson and keeping this sort of fixed goal, my mind of racing this triathlon and ultimately, you know, competing in the Chicago triathlon as an amateur and winning my first, you know, ever triathlon and my first go at it, which was a crazy moment. But the reason I bring that story up, I mean, it's important inflection point in my life, which is, you know, in that moment, I started to feel, I wasn't like, wow, like, I'm so amazing, like I'm so blessed and so good at this. I was like,

• 1:50:48Speaker 11

  wow, like as humans, I believe we all have these reservoirs of untapped potential inside of us and can achieve these extraordinary things when we shift our mindset for the positive, when we're supported by this loving community of infinite love and compassion and positivity, like, wow, like, how extraordinary is that? And so that was my first kind of lesson towards that. But I was, you know, 22, 23 years old and I'm kind of the beginning of this journey, which has been the last, you know, decade of my life in this chapter. In Antarctica, certainly not the last chapter of my life, but the most recent chapter of my life is Antarctica. And to connect to that on such an even, even, you know, 10x or 100x deeper level, which is like, wow, like, what, like, look at what we are capable of myself. I mean, people keep coming back, you know, I do these interviews and things

• 1:51:30Speaker 11

  and people want to say like, Colin, like, are you superhuman? And I'm like, yeah, I'm superhuman and so are you. Like, so are all of us. But it just, I think it just happens how we flex this muscle between our ears, this six inches between our ears, like what we can do with our minds is extraordinary and how we can all be connected and uplifting each other in that sense. And so for me in Antarctica, the lessons learned were, yes, about my own potential, but really were resonant, you know, across humanity of what we are all capable when we set our minds things. And again, I don't think that necessarily anyone wants to walk across Antarctica solo and unsupported and unaided. I don't blame you for not wanting to do that. But like, we have dreams, we have goals and it's so easy to get in our own ways of stopping the progress towards that. And like, when I started this whole thing, like, Like I said, you know, Jen and I had like no money. We had like a whiteboard on our wall.

• 1:52:15Speaker 11

  Every reason not to do this. And like, it should be like, yeah, like, go get a real job, like grow up, like do something. We're like, no, like, what can we do to have positive impact? Let's start a nonprofit, like, let's dare to dream greatly. And like, we started out by like, taking out our Mac laptops and being like, well, if we want people on social media to do this, we better know about marketing. I had like 200 Instagram followers, like my parents and my close friends, and we're Googling like, Google, what's the difference between marketing and PR? Like, we're basic of all basic questions, you know, but I just got the metrics back on this last project and we did, you know, as of now, it's 1.8 billion media impressions and counting. And I don't say that because like, I care about having like my name in like, the press. But because of that, we've created this platform, this ability to share

• 1:52:55Speaker 11

  these stories about inspiration, positivity, love, nutrition, health, all the things that I'm passionate about. And I know for you, from having this podcast, it's also a blessing for you to be able to, you know, have this voice, not because like, you want to be Rich Roll, this like famous guy, but because you have this opportunity to share with the world and the resonant positivity that you can put in the world from that is incredibly humbling and meaningful. And I applaud you for it.

• 1:53:16Rich Roll?

  I mean, you know, lasting impact, that's the juice, right? So what is the, what is the lasting impact that, that, you know, what is the impact that you want this adventure and everything that you're doing going forward to have? Like, what is the change that you want to see in the world?

• 1:53:31Speaker 11

  Yeah, you know, I think that when I've really tried to drill down to this, I, you know, I mentioned this before, like sort of this athlete in arena. And I'm, by the way, I'm a massive sports fan. Like, I'm, you know, I like watching sports as throughout my life. But I think that our sort of knowledge or interest in sports in general, not always the case. I think like, the NBC Olympic coverage is a great example of not doing this. But oftentimes, the sports are like, winning, losing, like, this sort of like, the zero sum game of like cheering for your team or rooting against the enemy or something like that. But, you know, for me and doing this, it's not so much about that at all. It's about tapping into these sort of universal truths that we all face and encounter, which is like facing obstacles, stepping outside of our comfort

• 1:54:12Speaker 11

  zone to grow, and being an example of those lessons and showing, you know, showing all the flaws. Like, I'm not sitting here going like, yep, I stepped off the plane. I knew I could be. He was not, you know, it's like, no, like, I like, had this huge daunting task of crossing Antarctica. Oh, and by the way, like, the most experienced explorer in the world, it's also out there beside me. But I was willing to like, give it a shot, which is, I think, emblematic of someone starting a small business. Everyone going like, oh, but like, why wouldn't Google or Facebook just like, do the same thing? Why would you start with that tech idea? Like, that's never gonna work. Or, you know, the person that's like, starting a family or has lost a loved one and like, just figuring out how to get on through life.

• 1:54:50Speaker 11

  And so hopefully, like, by sharing my story as authentically and really as I can with all the ups and downs and the struggles and the warts and the successes, that people can take from that in their own lives what they will and really paint their own masterpieces.

• 1:55:04Rich Roll?

  She is the most dominant and decorated female in the history of obstacle course racing. It's an athletic career. She's balanced against full-time professional duties as a corporate lawyer. And her name is Amelia Boone. Dubbed the queen of pain, she's been lauded for her grit and ability to suffer. But her biggest challenge is the courage and the vulnerability that she has summoned to face a 20-year eating disorder. And her very public desire to change the way we talk about an affliction that impacts over 30 million people in the US alone. Here's a clip from our powerful conversation, episode 475.

• 1:55:45Rich Roll?

  So what is the protocol now? Like, how do you make sure? Because you've been in, you know, treatment centers before.

• 1:55:52Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:55:53Rich Roll?

  And have seen what has happened when you haven't had like, active, you know, aftercare and, you know, really made your recovery a life priority.

• 1:56:01Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:56:03Speaker 12

  You know, that, I mean, I think that's the greatest unknown. And that's so you set up, I set up as much guardrails and support as I could, coming back here. I started work initially part-time and then I was still doing more like an intensive outpatient. So I was kind of doing the two and then you slowly step down. And then right now I have kind of an outpatient team. And then really just setting up a support network. And for me, I have a great support network, but it's Making sure that I actually use it um and actually reaching out and being saying like, "Hey, I need help." And this thing that we talked a lot about um at treatment is outing yourself.

• 1:56:45Speaker 12

  And just saying like, "Hey, guys, I have to out myself right now. I'm having really bad disordered thoughts, and I just need to tell somebody and put it out there, because when I put it out there, then it doesn't hold as much power over me.

• 1:56:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you have to do that in real time when it's occurring, because the tricky thing is, when that moment arises, when you're, you know, staring at a plate of food, and you're thinking about like not eating it away, it's too late. Like, then they're like, "Call somebody." But that that train left the station a long time ago, maybe months ago. Like, it's it's about the daily habit of checking in with people and people who know you and can monitor, like, "Hey, you're a little off today. What's going on?" and kind of compelling you to be honest.

• 1:57:26Speaker 12

  Yeah, exactly. It's having that support system and network. And and really, for me, fully owning that, there are some things that I can't be completely self-reliant on right now, you know? And and that's a bitter pill to swallow for somebody who likes to be fully self-reliant. But there have been times in in coming back um to the Bay Area and coming back to work, where I realized, like, I need to set up, like, I need to set up dinners with folks right now to like go out and eat with them, because it's better, I do much better in like a social scenario than that, than when I'm by myself, you know?

• 1:58:03Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, now you're publicly on the hook.

• 1:58:06Speaker 12

  I know. Well, and so now I have the entire world as accountability.

• 1:58:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, right?

• 1:58:11Speaker 12

  So it's a double, I mean, it's a double-edged sword, because I did have some people reach out to me and say, "Oh, well, now everybody's watching. You you can't screw up."

• 1:58:19Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:58:20Speaker 12

  And all of a sudden, my heart was like, "Oh, my God, I'm like, I'm human. I'm gonna screw up. I've screwed up. Like, we're all gonna have screw-ups." And I think it's You know, with with alcohol or drugs, it's very easy to name your screw ups because it's like, I did the substance, or I didn't do the substance. Food, it's very, very slippery.

• 1:58:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not binary.

• 1:58:41Speaker 12

  No, it's very, it's like, did I restrict that meal a little? Or did I, am I really eating to hungry, you know, so?

• 1:58:48Rich Roll?

  You gotta really be in touch with yourself and and, you know, be willing to have that kind of honest dialogue going on all the time. Like, it's about your intentions as much as anything else, right?

• 1:58:59Speaker 12

  Right.

• 1:58:59Rich Roll?

  Um, but you know, the the authenticity and the vulnerability with which you, you know, kind of have offered this up to the world, I think, is honorable and and and super courageous. And I don't say that in a perfunctory or light way. Like, it was, I I know it was a move that, like, you, you know, had a lot of consternation about, like, should I, should I, you know, should I talk publicly about this? You don't have to, you have no obligation to. You made that decision. I was on the, um, I went to the website for Opal, because I wanted to see what this organization is about. And they uh, they had like, there's like, a slogan on the homepage, that is beauty in imperfection and authenticity.

• 1:59:39Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:59:39Rich Roll?

  And that's lovely, right?

• 1:59:41Speaker 12

  Absolutely.

• 1:59:41Rich Roll?

  Because we're all imperfect. And I think the the path towards being that fully integrated person who's not living with that kind of dissonance, uh, requires, you know, the courage to be authentic in real time, you know, and to be human and to be, uh, you know, exposed on some level. And, you know, I can't imagine what it felt like after you wrote that blog post and you like, hit, you know, publish on it. Like, walk me through that.

• 2:00:11Speaker 12

  It was actually the most freeing experience that I've ever had. I sat down and I bawled my eyes out for the next half an hour or so.

• 2:00:21Rich Roll?

  As you were writing it or after you published it?

• 2:00:23Speaker 12

  After I published it. I mean,

• 2:00:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like just a catharsis.

• 2:00:25Speaker 12

  The catharsis, because I had been writing it, you know, over like, a a span of, since, I mean, I left treatment, um, at the end of June. And then so it took me like, a few weeks to kind of wrap my brain around it. Um, and, um,

• 2:00:42Speaker 12

  I was so anxious. I remember that day before I was like going to publish it. Um, it was all done. It was sitting. It was ready to go. And I remember actually going to the pool to swim that morning and then just like, it was like the best swim of my life. Cause it was just like anxiety or something like that. I don't know fueled, but um, in in putting it out there, it finally, I just, I cried because it was just, I finally felt true to myself.

• 2:01:13Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:14Speaker 12

  Um.

• 2:01:15Rich Roll?

  And what was the motivation behind doing that?

• 2:01:21Speaker 12

  Honestly, a lot of it, I hate to say that there was a selfish motivation because it was, it was almost a um, an alignment for myself.

• 2:01:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:31Speaker 12

  You know, people are like, oh, would you, were you, you're so great. You're inspiring other people. And I'm like, that's

• 2:01:38Rich Roll?

  Now, the discomfort of living in that kind of dissonance becomes intolerable.

• 2:01:42Speaker 12

  Exactly. And and I don't, I can't say why exactly I felt the need to out it to the entire world as opposed to just, because I understand there are portions of yourself that you can keep close, you know, at hand. You don't have to let everybody know your dirty laundry. Um, but for me, it was very important to have that be a part of my story. Considering I've been so open and vulnerable um, about many other things, but not this. And then that kind of selectiveness didn't sit well with me.

• 2:02:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:02:22Speaker 12

  Um, and just to be able to be, feel free. I felt very, very free after I published it and I went for a run the next day and I was like, I was the most. Just free feeling. And then people started giving me negative feedback and then that one wiped me off the

• 2:02:43Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, first of all,

• 2:02:44Speaker 12

  The initial 24 hours was great.

• 2:02:46Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I didn't, I'm sure, you know, well, look, first of all, shame can't survive the light, right? So whatever shame you were harboring, the only way out of that is to do exactly what you did. And I'm sure there's trolls out there, whatever, but like, all I saw was this overwhelming, like, outpouring of like, love and support. Like, it was like, it was like a viral moment in the, in the endurance sports world.

• 2:03:11Speaker 12

  I did, I honestly will say, I expected a reaction. I did not expect that type of attention to it. And I'm blown away in the best way possible. I mean, I, I was, it was amazing. Like, I mean, I get kind of like choked up thinking about it because people were so supportive and so great. I'm still like sorting through emails to respond to people. And I think, for me, it was very important to talk about it too, at a time where I am not recovered. And, and that was, that was, that's a bit tough, because I think

• 2:03:53Speaker 12

  that you see so many people talk about their disorders in the past, or their addictions in the past, but it comes from a recovered perspective. And I, you know, I got a lot of feedback saying like, thank you for being open before you're there, you know, because it's not as simple as that. And, and I go back and forth on whether like, total freedom is possible. I feel like the voices get quieter, like, things like, they get easier, the further and further, like, you get into recovery. But I think that you always kind of have to be vigilant. And I, maybe you can speak to that, too.

• 2:04:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm of the mind that, that there is no recovered. There's recovery, there's being active in your recovery. I would never consider myself recovered, you know? And, and, you know, I had a relapse eight years ago, after I'd been sober for 13 years. Like, I'm very aware of how fragile it is and how, how

• 2:04:53Rich Roll?

  How it requires, you know, constant attention and focus. And that's not to say that, you know, your situation is the same. You know, it's different, but I would be curious about, like, is there a sense like that there is a recovered when it comes to relationship with food? I just feel like that impulse is always there and keeping it at bay, you know, is important and there's tools for doing that. But to fall under the belief that it could disappear altogether and never reappear, I think is dangerous.

• 2:05:25Speaker 12

  Yeah, I think there's different mindsets. I think some people think that if you don't give, if you don't believe in that fully recovered is possible, then, you know, you're never going to get there. But I, maybe this might be more of the unpopular opinion, but I do kind of similarly believe to what you do is that, you know, like you can be in a very, very good place of recovery, but you still need to be mindful of things. And especially the longer, you know, like this has been 20 years of my life. And a lot of this stuff has become so ingrained and automatic in me. And so it's almost in some ways like

• 2:06:07Speaker 12

  exposure therapy and unlearning habits and things like that, that didn't happen overnight, you know?

• 2:06:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's all about where you are in the moment. Like my relationship with this is like, what am I doing today? Like where, where is my recovery? Like in the middle of this experience that we're having right now? Because I know people with 30 days of sobriety who like are super sober. And I know people who've been sober for 35 years who are out of their minds.

• 2:06:34Speaker 12

  Right.

• 2:06:35Rich Roll?

  They may not drink, but they're not, they don't have, they don't have like emotional sobriety, which is really kind of like where there's no, there's no, there's no destination for that, because you can always iterate and improve on, you know, who you are as a human being. So it's less about where are my cravings for alcohol right now than, than it is about like, what's up with my character defects?

• 2:06:58Rich Roll?

  I like being married to my wife. Like, I don't want her to leave. Like, so I have to, like, be on top of this shit.

• 2:07:04Speaker 12

  It's funny, as soon as, as soon as I started to realize that, like, the food was no longer, like, the scary issue, and I was like, God, now I have to work on myself.

• 2:07:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:07:15Speaker 12

  It's like, now I have to, like, kind of like, underpin-

• 2:07:16Rich Roll?

  But that's the whole thing.

• 2:07:18Speaker 12

  That is the point.

• 2:07:18Rich Roll?

  The universe is driving you, like, this is, this is all about that.

• 2:07:22Speaker 12

  Right. And I, and I think, and my big thing is that I'm, I'm a thinker. And I've always like, no, no, no, I know my feelings. For so many years, I was really good at thinking about my feelings. Like, really, really good at, like, thinking about my feelings, but not actually, like, feeling anything. And I think that, actually, in our society, we prize a lot of thinking over feeling. You know, a lot of people follow, like, the Stoic, like, philosophies and things like that. And, and, um, once I finally start to, like, tap into, what am I feeling right now? And like, then just, like, not even, not even assigning, like, not assigning judgments to that. But then just actually, like, being like, feelings are valid, too. It doesn't all have to come from the mind.

• 2:08:09Rich Roll?

  Chase Jarvis is one of the most influential and award-winning photographers of the last decade. And I think it's fair to say that this host of the Chase Jarvis Live Show, and the founder of CreativeLive, the world's largest live streaming education company, is also a bit of an authority on the creative process, which he distills in his marvelous new book, Creative Calling. No better way to close out this episode than by sharing Chase's thoughts on creativity, which isn't reserved for the talented select few, but which is, in fact, an essential aspect of being human.

• 2:08:48Rich Roll?

  Our culture has shifted and changed. The gatekeepers are gone. The tools of creativity are more accessible than ever. There's a democratization of this universe that didn't exist back then, that I think has stimulated and motivated and inspired a lot of people to think about creativity more broadly.

• 2:09:06Speaker 13

  You nailed it.

• 2:09:07Rich Roll?

  And whether that means quitting your job to be an artist, or just finding a hobby, or like, you know, being intentional about the images you put on Instagram.

• 2:09:17Speaker 13

  Sure.

• 2:09:17Rich Roll?

  These are all aspects of creativity. And really, what you've done is broaden the aperture on what creativity means, while also underscoring the importance of it in everyday life for everybody, no matter who you are.

• 2:09:32Speaker 13

  If you took that away, I am done. I'm out.

• 2:09:34Rich Roll?

  This podcast is over.

• 2:09:36Speaker 13

  No, that's exactly, I mean, literally, you just sort of, you know, I don't even need to introduce the book, because that is the ethos behind the book. That was, you know, specifically broadening the aperture on creativity. Because right now, there's people going, hey, I don't know. If I'm not really identified as a creator, I'm an attorney, or I'm an accountant, or I'm whoever's listening. And it's like, no, no, no, this is exactly why you. And if you're, if you're a creator, you identify as that, great. This is like right in your sweet spot. But there's a whole universe of people who are what I call creative curious, that understand that there's some power there that I can't kind of, like the je ne sais quoi, I don't know how to grab onto it. And I want to understand that a little bit more. And when you broaden that definition of what creativity is, which to me is part of the challenge that we've had historically

• 2:10:19Speaker 13

  with how art and creativity have been viewed in our culture. When you broaden the aperture a little bit, you can all of a sudden sink your teeth into it and find immense and powerful meaning.

• 2:10:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think historically, the word creative or creativity isn't necessarily pejorative, but it's exclusionary. People either identify with that, or they don't, or they're scared of it.

• 2:10:42Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 2:10:43Rich Roll?

  And in truth, it is, it is part and parcel of what makes us human. It is a universal aspect of. The condition of being in one of these bodies.

• 2:10:54Speaker 13

  Yeah, literally, we are creating machines. And that's part of like expanding the definition to understand that, wait a minute, you know, my decisions on which, how to get to your house today, do I go this way or that way? The, what I, you know, decide to do with my day and my time on a, on a minute by minute basis, but also on a life scale basis, like those are all wickedly wildly creative acts that have been discarded into like, you know, if you were thinking of a neural pathway, it's just like the base neural pathway that you always go. But there's an opportunity for, in all of those places, to do something different. And when you start to realize that this creativity in small daily doses is the same exact muscle

• 2:11:37Speaker 13

  that we use to create our life, it's just creativity at a different scale. Your head starts to go like, okay, I need to pay attention here.

• 2:11:45Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, so then if I was to ask you how you define creativity, what is the response to that?

• 2:11:51Speaker 13

  It's such a, the way that I approach it is so simple, it might be painful for some people, but it's the act of putting two things that might not have gone together just a moment ago, of putting those two things together to create something new and useful. So it is a very broad definition, but that's to me what actually makes the book really relevant. Because there are people like, this is not about changing your lifestyle. This is not about moving to Paris and wearing a beret and smoking a cigarette.

• 2:12:22Rich Roll?

  It can be about that, if that's your deal.

• 2:12:24Speaker 13

  Totally. It can be, but it's also, it doesn't have to be about a new set of friends. Instead, it's a new way of operating. It's a new way of seeing what's in front of you. And, you know, just at a super top level, it's like, I operate from the principle that A, every person is creative. That it's the thing that separates us from every other species on the planet. And it is, it's fun, I just walk into any first grade classroom, right? Who wants to come up to the front of the room and draw me a picture? Every hand goes up and then do the same thing with the sixth grade class and then a ninth grade class. And you see that we're this is a thing that is innate and we're training it out of us. So if that's principle one, principle two, sorry, one is that we're

• 2:13:07Speaker 13

  just creativity, every person. Two is that creativity is a muscle. It's a habit, not a skill. It's a process, not a product. It's a muscle. And I guess Maya Angelou said it well, like, the more you use, the more you have.

• 2:13:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:13:22Speaker 13

  Think about training or anything else, right? So it becomes more available to us. And then if you follow one and two, the simple argument, number three is, so then, all these small creative acts that we do every day, yes, playing the guitar, making a meal, building a family, writing code. Yes, those things are literally the things that are going to give you the insight that you have agency over creativity with a capital C, like creating the arc of your life. So to me, though, like, it from a very simple definition, you just have to make a simple three step argument. And all of a sudden, you're at this like, I need to pay attention.

• 2:14:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that creativity is a non depleting renewable resource, that it's not something that certain people are struck with, but that they cultivate through a deliberate and intentional practice over time.

• 2:14:17Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 2:14:17Rich Roll?

  That is divorced from the results of it and all about the process of doing.

• 2:14:23Speaker 13

  You've got it. Again, I'm out of here.

• 2:14:25Rich Roll?

  I think you said, I think you say in the book, like, it's not fake it till you make it. It's make it till you make it. So the process of being a maker in whatever form that is for you.

• 2:14:37Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 2:14:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:38Speaker 13

  And when you think about it, like, let's, let's talk about it away from the sort of small C creativity of making a meal or building a business or whatever, and talk about it on the life scale. The people that you are inspired by, that you moved by, that you're connected to, that you admire, their lives were created intentionally.

• 2:15:00Speaker 13

  There's all kinds of circumstances, but they created the puzzle that is their life and they're expressing themselves in a particular way. And it's intentional, it's designed and it's created. It's not just you just fell into this thing one day. Right. And so when you start to look at creativity with that sort of capital C on the life arc, you're like, who do I am? And it doesn't need to be someone famous or fancy on the internet or some, you know, well-known entrepreneur or artist. It can be your next door neighbor that lives in amazing integrity and they have a mindfulness about them that you really like. That's not on accident. That was created. That person set out with a vision for themselves and slowly but surely got there. There was no overnight.

• 2:15:46Speaker 13

  There was no, it was a creative process and that's available to you. And the only way you learn is through practice. And this is why I advocate action over intellect. Like if you're sitting around trying to figure this out and make the perfect chess move, like that's not how it happens. You make a lot of little imperfect moves. You learn a little bit of a lesson and then you move on just trying to make the same mistake more than, you know, one or two times, ideally one. But it's the action, it's the doing that actually creates the learning. It's great to get information from the internet or your mentor or whomever, but learning, like actually doing that part is incredibly valuable.

• 2:16:28Speaker 13

  What needs to be the takeaway from this talk is whether you are all in on this or you're just deciding if you're going to put your toe in the water, amazing time. And it just so happens that this corresponds with, it is the riskiest time in the world to play it safe. Because whatever you were sold as safe, now that's beige, it's vanilla. It's not like you'll blend in in a good way. It's you're leaving so much on the table in terms of identity, earning power, connection with other people, vulnerability, authenticity. It's the equivalent of not participating.

• 2:17:17Rich Roll?

  What do you guys think? I think that was proof positive that this has indeed been an incredible year. I really hope you guys enjoyed that look in the rearview. Links to all the full episodes and the social media accounts for all the guests excerpted today can be found in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. Part two, with a bunch more awesome excerpted conversations, will be up later in the week, late Sunday night, December 29th. So Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. And a reminder that you can watch a version of this recap on YouTube at youtube.com/richroll. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts, which really helps new people discover the show.

• 2:18:00Rich Roll?

  Tell your friends about your favorite episodes, share the show on social media, hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, and you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing the show. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Ally Rogers for portraits. DK David Kahn for advertiser relationships. And as always, theme music by Enalema. Appreciate the love, you guys. We'll see you back here in a couple of days with part two of our Best of 2019. Until then, relax, it's gonna be fine. It's okay to take a break. It's okay to pause when agitated.

• 2:18:44Rich Roll?

  And, you know, try to enjoy the holidays. Peace. Blatz. Namaste.