ROLL ON: American Tiger, Adventures Abroad, & The Art of Showing Up

Roll On is here! Adam Skolnick and I catch up after a month of nonstop travel. Tokyo for the Track & Field World Championships, New York, and DC multiple times. Big news: Adam announces his debut novel American Tiger—20 years in the making, with the audiobook recorded right here in our studio. Also on tap: my family crisis that required an Ocean's 11-style heist, accidentally crashing the wrong high school reunion, Alex Honnold scaling skyscrapers live on Netflix, the Norwegians sweeping Ironman Nice, and Sean Penn's performance in “One Battle After Another." I get candid about what it means to show up when every button you have is being pushed, generational trauma, and practicing unconditional love. Buckle up! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Momentous: High-caliber human performance products for sleep, focus, longevity, and more. For listeners of the show, Momentous is offering up to 35% off your first order👉https://www.livemomentous.com/richroll On: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉https://www.on.com/richroll Seed: Use code RICHROLL25 for 25% OFF your first order👉https://www.seed.com/RichRoll25 Pique: Get up to 20% OFF plus a FREE rechargeable frother and glass beaker with your first subscription 👉https://www.piquelife.com/richroll Roka: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL👉https://www. ROKA.com/RICHROLL Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF 👉https://www.gobrewing.com Check out all the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody, Roll On is back and it's coming right up, but first.

• 0:07Rich Roll?

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• 0:51Rich Roll?

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• 1:12Adam Skolnick?

  It's nice to see you, I can see you.

• 1:14Rich Roll?

  We're doing it, Roll On is happening.

• 1:16Adam Skolnick?

  Here we go.

• 1:17Rich Roll?

  I'm a little bleary-eyed, I just flew in from the East Coast last night. My energy is a little unstable, so it's unclear how this is gonna go. Do you notice anything different about the studio, though?

• 1:28Adam Skolnick?

  I do, I can see you perfectly.

• 1:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, there's no obstruction.

• 1:33Rich Roll?

  How is this being recorded and put on the internet without a microphone?

• 1:38Adam Skolnick?

  And no lapel mics.

• 1:39Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:39Adam Skolnick?

  I don't really have a lapel, so it's good.

• 1:41Rich Roll?

  Look up.

• 1:44Rich Roll?

  We have the overhead mics.

• 1:46Adam Skolnick?

  You got an overhead boom situation.

• 1:47Rich Roll?

  Hopefully, people can hear this, but there is something beautifully liberating about not having a microphone right in your face. I kinda like it.

• 1:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:55Rich Roll?

  We'll see how this goes. It could go completely off the rails, because we're gonna forget that we're being recorded.

• 2:00Adam Skolnick?

  That'll be better. That'll be better going forward. Yeah.

• 2:03Rich Roll?

  How's it going?

• 2:04Adam Skolnick?

  It's going good, man. It's nice to be here. You know, I've had this very interesting, I didn't tell you this, but for the first time I had an Instagram post go, not viral, but fungal, without your help.

• 2:20Rich Roll?

  Fungal?

• 2:20Adam Skolnick?

  Fungal.

• 2:21Rich Roll?

  Meaning it burrowed into the soil underground?

• 2:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's like it

• 2:24Rich Roll?

  It reached its tentacles far and wide, but in ways that people can't quite see it?

• 2:28Adam Skolnick?

  The tens of thousands. Do you ever go to the Dodgers? You ever go to a Dodger game?

• 2:32Rich Roll?

  I do not. I have been to a Dodgers game, but not in a long time.

• 2:35Adam Skolnick?

  Do you remember the guy that tosses peanuts that like used to be behind the back and he's like very famous?

• 2:41Rich Roll?

  Kinda.

• 2:41Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, so I was a couple of weeks ago at the game and I saw him and I was like, I was with April and her friend from Australia, Christie, and our friend from Australia and we, the three of us were there and I said, this guy's a legend. You know, I grew up going to the baseball, like my, like that's been part of my life for a long, long time. And I've seen this kid, this guy since I'm a little kid and he was famous. His thing was, he would take, at the time they were double bag wrapped paper, paper bags and he'd go behind the back, he'd do sky hooks, he would no look, he would go, you know, honestly 20 rows away and he'd be hitting you and you just raise your hand, he'd hit you, then he'd come back around for the money later. Turns out, so I was talking

• 3:23Adam Skolnick?

  to him and he's still doing it. He's 83 years old, still out there doing it. And, and I told his story, which is that, you know, he was a teenager when he got the job and the stadium opened in 62 and he's been doing it. He's only missed one year and that was last year because he had a stroke and he was 10 months in a rehab hospital and nobody knew about it. Like, he was just kind of like buried there. Like, and then a Dodger fan found out, word leaked out, cards kind of started trickling in and then like a flood, then all of a sudden his room was just decked out and, and it was all, come back, come back, we miss you. And that drove him through the rehab and now he's, he still has like a slightly uncooperative thing with his left side. He still has to kind of be mindful sometimes, but he's literally hauling

• 4:06Adam Skolnick?

  this big bag of peanuts and he's still doing it. He's still doing his Back on the job. So I took a photo and just like told his little story. And it's it's been so fun seeing all the people who recognize him and just like posting on the comments. It's one of those that like people are just like tagging their friends and just talking about this guy. Oh, we love him. We get him a bobblehead, that kind of thing. So his name is Roger Owens. Amazing guy. He was super cool to talk with me a little bit there.

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  Eighty three, eighty two, eighty three.

• 4:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 4:38Adam Skolnick?

  Eighty three, and he's still hauling peanuts. And apparently he used to do the USC games too, football. So I've been hearing hearing from people who know him, who are friends of mine. Jessica Ritz, who we had some fun on the comments, talking about like the old carnation malls, all the different things that how it used to be at the stadium. But then you see lots of older people who are like inspired by the story, just people who, you know, this is a guy who's touched literally millions of people, right? Like this Dodgers stadium is one of LA's like power spots, right? We have our little power spots and it's definitely one of them that unites the whole city.

• 5:09Rich Roll?

  He's been doing it for sixty years too. So imagine how many people have have have passed through and experienced his thing.

• 5:16Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And he's he's just there to deliver you some fun, a smile.

• 5:20Rich Roll?

  He's there for the vibes. And then you put the you put the vibe out and I'm I'm heartened by the fact that like a good, a good news story, a heartwarming news story could go fungal.

• 5:32Adam Skolnick?

  Totally. It's completely blown my mind. Like I'm doing, I've been doing Instagram wrong this whole time. Like when I started to do it, it was like I was a Lonely Planet writer. I thought, oh, I'll just give you know, it was really Instagram. It would go up immediately. And I thought, you know, I'm in unusual places. I'll put like unusual photos, no caption. But now it's like, if you can find.

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  Journalist, though, where's the story?

• 5:54Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I need to find the Roger Owens's of the world. What I like about Roger's story more than anything is it can show, no matter who you are, no matter what you do, you can make a huge impact, you know? And that's what this guy has done.

• 6:08Rich Roll?

  Just through doing this thing that brought him joy.

• 6:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Rich Roll?

  Bringing other people joy. And now you have had the the joy of experiencing the dopamine hit of the internet.

• 6:20Rich Roll?

  And you're a goner.

• 6:21Adam Skolnick?

  I know. It's so weird.

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  You're gonna become a slave to it.

• 6:24Adam Skolnick?

  I was getting twitchy.

• 6:25Rich Roll?

  You're gonna be like, I need a story.

• 6:26Adam Skolnick?

  Well, what was weird about this one is like, it had gone, it's like, it'd gotten its 3,000 views of the people in my world that would care a little bit about the Dodgers. And it was like, you see the interior stats and it's like 98% followers and 2% non-followers. And then they thought it was done. And then all of a sudden, it just got this lift off, like the algorithm found it.

• 6:45Rich Roll?

  Somebody, or somebody reshared it with a larger profile or whatever, and then it went from there.

• 6:51Adam Skolnick?

  And so for the first time, I'm like diving into the statistics of my following. And I realize, I am not, I am not killing it with Gen Z. I am not killing it with Gen Z.

• 7:00Rich Roll?

  Stay away from that. All right. I want to keep my friend. Don't become a slave like the rest of us.

• 7:08Adam Skolnick?

  I won't, I won't.

• 7:10Rich Roll?

  But you have actually some even bigger news.

• 7:13Adam Skolnick?

  I do.

• 7:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:14Adam Skolnick?

  It's very big, that news.

• 7:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, go get it.

• 7:16Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  Go get it. Tell me, tell me what it's about.

• 7:20Adam Skolnick?

  Well.

• 7:23Rich Roll?

  For those that are just listening, you just held up a giant poster with the cover art for your new book, your novel, American Tiger.

• 7:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, this is my, this is my announcement. Like, I haven't announced it at all publicly.

• 7:33Rich Roll?

  You've been super quiet about this.

• 7:35Adam Skolnick?

  I've been quiet. It's coming out December 2nd, American Tiger. It's, um, the origins of this go back 20 years, but I've been working on it intently since the pandemic.

• 7:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right. You can put it away now and sit down.

• 7:48Adam Skolnick?

  All right, all right. Pretty amazing.

• 7:52Rich Roll?

  A novel.

• 7:53Adam Skolnick?

  A novel. Yeah. So, um.

• 7:57Rich Roll?

  That's a bold move, Skolnick.

• 7:59Adam Skolnick?

  I know. You know, I, um, you know who John Branch is, the New York Times reporter? He writes about sports. I used to know him. We worked together a little bit, just like, and just were communications a while ago. And he's like, what are you working on? Are you working on another book? And I said, uh, I'm working on a novel, actually. He goes, you're insane. That's it. That was the, you're insane. Didn't hear from him. And he was right. I was insane. It drove me insane. But, you know, we're getting close. I'm so excited to share it. I think it's, you know, you hear this all the time, but I do feel like it's my best work. I feel, ever since I got into writing, I've wanted to do fiction and nonfiction. All the writers I most admire have done that.

• 8:42Adam Skolnick?

  You know, you just had Liz Gilbert on here. She's one of them. And so it's something that publishing doesn't really want you to do. So it took a while to figure out the right pathway to publication, but we found it. We're excited. And, you know what? It's been great. I'm so happy to be able to announce it here. We have a preorder campaign that's just kicking off. You can go to AmericanTigerBook.com. You can sign up to win one of 10 signed copies. So we're just getting that all rolling. And you can go to the Substack, Adam Skolnick, it's dot Substack.com as well. Get some more info on it. And so we're just getting this whole process rolling. A lot of fun stuff lined up.

• 9:25Adam Skolnick?

  And one of the best parts of it is being able to record the audiobook right here.

• 9:31Rich Roll?

  It's pretty exciting that an actual audiobook has been recorded in this facility. And even more exciting that it's yours. And our guy Jason up there engineered it, right?

• 9:43Adam Skolnick?

  He did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:44Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool. So we made this whole booth and everything. It was a whole process, right, to get the engineering of it correct? Because it's very different than doing a podcast. Like, anyone who has voiced an audiobook will know. Like, it's a very specific kind of way to engineer this with a different kind of software. And you need a proper booth that's soundproofed. And there's all these standards, right, before you can get approval to have it on Audible and all of these places, right?

• 10:15Adam Skolnick?

  So you have to go to typically like the kind of recording.

• 10:20Adam Skolnick?

  The recording studios that were made for musicians, like, you know, it's like that kind of level where you have the right door and you have the glass and all that. And so you guys put this studio together recently and you didn't have that, you weren't graded for that, that wasn't something that was on your radar. But one of the reasons I wanted to do it here, besides just to collaborate with you guys and because it's so, it's been so meaningful for me to do that, is that the book takes place in this, I'd say ecosystem, because that's what it is, you know, it's about a game warden and his daughter and, and the rumors of a tiger kind of roaming around the suburbs of Los Angeles. And it's based on a true story I reported for the LA Weekly in 2005.

• 11:03Adam Skolnick?

  I won't go into too much detail now about it, but the whole idea is it's rooted in, in Southern California, it's rooted in this ecosystem, the chaparral, the mountains, the wildlife. And, and so it takes place out here. And literally the wildlife crossing that's going in, a couple exits down, leads to, the whole idea of it is to lead wildlife from the Santa Monica Mountains to that very ecosystem that's in this book. So it's like, it all fits and for it to have come together, because it wasn't easy, like you said, we had to kind of get the booth to a certain, certain standard that, and Jason was busting his ass to do it. And we managed to do it. And so that has allowed me to record it in the natural habitat, which is exciting and

• 11:47Adam Skolnick?

  thrilling and the whole thing is cool. And reading a fiction book is different than non-fiction. Like, I had to learn how to be a narrator in a very different way, because I had the success with the others. But, so this has been a complete learning experience and quite wild, yeah.

• 12:01Rich Roll?

  I'm excited for you, man.

• 12:02Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks.

• 12:03Rich Roll?

  It's a whole, that is like such another level to, to, to write a novel.

• 12:08Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks, man.

• 12:09Rich Roll?

  I can't imagine.

• 12:10Adam Skolnick?

  Oh dude, it's like 25, 26 drafts. And the thing about writing any book is that you're always in the weeds for a period of time. And that period of time could be one year, could be five years, could be four months. It depends on, on the scope of the project and how you're able to do it. But like-

• 12:26Rich Roll?

  I wouldn't know anything about that.

• 12:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, right. As you know, as we've been talking about- But like with a novel, the first 10 drafts, I was convinced I was like, what am I doing? Like, I'm not because what you're doing is you're spending all your, literally all my time for years was on this book. And I'm like, my kid is like growing up, like I should be earning money. Like, what am I doing? Like, and you, the so, so the doubt gets kicked up another level. But like, all these books, you get to, you know, the, the, the freedom comes, well, not the freedom, but at least the, the uplift comes when you realize that what you're writing is pretty good. But that takes a long time to get there. And for fiction, it takes even longer than nonfiction, in my opinion.

• 13:07Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm proud of you, man.

• 13:08Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks.

• 13:09Rich Roll?

  And I look forward to getting into that place at some point in my life.

• 13:12Adam Skolnick?

  You're getting there.

• 13:13Rich Roll?

  We'll see.

• 13:14Adam Skolnick?

  You're gonna get there.

• 13:15Rich Roll?

  Awesome, man. So, AmericanTigerBook.com.

• 13:20Adam Skolnick?

  AmericanTigerBook.com. That'll take you right to kind of the, the book page. And then also on, on Substack, I'm on Substack now. I finally joined the Substack brigade.

• 13:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, welcome to modernity.

• 13:32Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you. Thank you. So, yeah, it's all just starting. A lot of fun stuff coming. And, you know, Roll On Book Club, maybe? A Roll On Book Club night?

• 13:42Rich Roll?

  Maybe.

• 13:43Adam Skolnick?

  For the Roll On people?

• 13:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Live audience, maybe?

• 13:46Adam Skolnick?

  Live audience.

• 13:46Rich Roll?

  Situation?

• 13:47Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Rich Roll?

  We'll figure it out.

• 13:49Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 13:51Rich Roll?

  I went to New York City, then I went to DC, and I came back to LA for like, two days, and then was in Tokyo for 12 days.

• 13:59Adam Skolnick?

  At the World Champs, right?

• 14:00Rich Roll?

  At the Track and Field World Championships. Then I was in New York City, back to DC, back to New York, and then flew back home last night. So, I'm a little bedraggled. It's been a lot. I mean, Tokyo was dope. I'd never been to Japan before. What an incredible experience. I was there to work with ON, our brand partner, the running shoe and apparel company. They were making a big presence in Tokyo around the, the World Championships of Track and Field. They had an ON Labs that was similar to the one that they had in Paris for the Olympics, but on just a, a much more massive scale. Like right in the heart of Shibuya, which is the bustling, you know, like very populated

• 14:45Rich Roll?

  area. Like when you see photos of Tokyo, it's probably that area. The mega crossing. Where there's lots of people. Yeah, it's not that far from that big mega crossing and all of that. And it was, you know, a two-story gigantic complex that had, you know, all of these experiences for the public to take advantage of over the course of this track and field meet. They could try on the light spray. It was all the light spray stuff, you know, the shoe that they have engineered. But then they had like an athlete lounge and they would do panels and then they would have all these cool things at night, like sort of urban street culture events with DJs and Wow.

• 15:24Rich Roll?

  You know, run club stuff, like a dance experience. And then they had a woman who was like painting gigantic, like Japanese characters on walls and like, you know, it was, it was very cool. Is this their big splash into the Japanese market? I mean, I think it was their introduction to the Japanese market as a brand. Not that they didn't have a presence there, but they were really

• 15:51Rich Roll?

  you know, putting a big imprimatur upon like this, this, on this country. And they opened up a brand new store in Ginza, this fancy, you know, on-store. And so, yeah, it was sort of like, we're here now. And they had 68 athletes competing in the track and field meet, which is their, it's like, I don't know if it's double, but it's close to double what they had, like the last world championship. So, you know, they're just kind of expanding their, their scope in elite performance, but also in the kind of consumer market with everything that they're doing. And so it was just cool to be there as a brand ambassador and do a bunch of stuff with them. I got to do this Kintsugi experience with one of their athletes, Bella Whitaker. There was a video that went up on our Instagram. Did you see that? Yeah, I did see that.

• 16:36Rich Roll?

  Which was really fun. We kind of like had a podcast while we were doing Kintsugi. Yeah, you're doing the broken. And, you know, I did a couple of things like that. I did some man on the street interviews for a video that they use for This town hall that was an internal kind of livestream that they did for their entire team like while I was there and it was fun, man. I went to finals on two nights. The first night that I went, I got to see George Beamish win the gold medal in the 3000 meter steeple chase.

• 17:08Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing.

• 17:08Rich Roll?

  He's the first ON gold medalist at the world championship level. He's an ON athlete. And I was in the ON section. There's all these like people that work for ON, including Olivier Bernhard, who's the co-founder. And when, when this guy won the gold medal, like he came, he was the guy who in the, in the, in the heats, like he fell.

• 17:29Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 17:29Rich Roll?

  And almost got stomped on.

• 17:30Adam Skolnick?

  It looked like he did get stomped on.

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  Well, that photo was a little like the way it made it like if you watch the video.

• 17:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 17:36Rich Roll?

  I think the shoe wasn't quite as close. It was sort of, it wasn't lined up with his head.

• 17:40Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 17:41Rich Roll?

  But that photo made it look like literally, you know, the spikes were going into his temple.

• 17:45Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I saw, I saw the video first and I'm like, did that guy just get stomped on? And then I saw the still, I'm like, he did get stomped on, but then.

• 17:53Rich Roll?

  He didn't quite get stomped. I guess when you're a steeple chaser, is that what they call them?

• 17:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Rich Roll?

  A steeple chase athlete. When you're chasing steeples.

• 18:00Adam Skolnick?

  You're a steeple chaseman.

• 18:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Rich Roll?

  You're used to falling, you know, I guess you fall a lot. I don't know. I mean, how could you not? You're like jumping over these things. First of all, how do they, you know, those hurdles, like they're all jumping over the same hurdle.

• 18:14Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 18:15Rich Roll?

  And it's a, it's wider. It's not like a thin.

• 18:18Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 18:18Rich Roll?

  The top of it is like this metal thing. It's wide.

• 18:21Adam Skolnick?

  It's like traffic barricades.

• 18:22Rich Roll?

  But they're in, but they're in spikes.

• 18:24Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 18:24Rich Roll?

  Which are like a slippery, maybe they have a different kind of shoe. I should know this.

• 18:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:29Rich Roll?

  So it's amazing to me that more of them aren't falling all the time. But I guess the point being like they fall. So they, they know how to practice their fall and get right back up. But in the heats, he gets up, but he's obviously way behind now. And he runs his way like all the way into second place and almost like won the heat. If he had another 10 meters, he probably would have.

• 18:49Adam Skolnick?

  And he'll need a second, right? To get it.

• 18:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. To advance. So by the time he gets to the finals, he already has like, the crowd is behind him because like of the story.

• 19:01Rich Roll?

  But with about 300 meters to go, just as a like a layperson watching track and field, like I'm like, there's no way this guy's gonna win. Like, he was so far back. I'm like, oh, well, you know? Oh, well, there goes On, this guy. 200 meters, it was like, there's no way, you know? And then this guy's kick was so insane. Like, he just literally flicked a switch and just passed everyone and like won the victory. It was like crazy. That's awesome. I've never seen anything like that. That's awesome. But the On section obviously goes insane. Yeah. And Olivier, you know, he was like a kid in a candy store. Like, he's so excited. It's their first gold medal. And then shortly thereafter, they won their second gold medal in the women's 100-meter hurdles. Amazing.

• 19:44Rich Roll?

  Dida, this athlete Dida, who won that. And Olivier's like, it took 15 years for us to win our first world championship gold medal and like 15 minutes to win our second one, you know? That's how it works, right? The way it works, right? Good metaphor. But what was cool was that he was so, he was like a little kid. He was so excited. And even after the finals were over and we're kind of in the stadium, you know, in the hallway trying to exit, he's like taking photos of the team and he's like jumping up and down. And it was a moment, like a sweet moment, you know, in this brand that has grown so much and now has this global presence, but still is this newcomer, you know? Yeah, for sure. They're not Nike, they're not, you know, they haven't been around. Like, they had

• 20:25Rich Roll?

  68 athletes there, but you know, they're still, you know, trying to, you know, put their stamp on this. And they were able to do that. And to be able to be there was super cool. That is cool. And I got to see Mondo break his world record in the, in the pole vault, which was great. Oh, really? Yeah. And was he, is he an On guy too? No, he's not. The Swedish guy, he kind of looks like Timothy Chalamet. Do you remember him from the Olympics? I do, I do. Like, everyone loves this guy. Yes, yes. Well, the great thing about him is that he's so much better than everyone else. Right. But he gets like a bonus payment every time he breaks the world record. So he has no incentive to, to, you know, break it by a wide margin.

• 21:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 21:05Rich Roll?

  So, once a year or whatever, like he'll just, you know, it gets to the point where it's like, you know, one centimeter higher than it was the year before.

• 21:12Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 21:12Rich Roll?

  And he easily clears it, you know. So, he's just gonna keep doing that, I guess.

• 21:17Adam Skolnick?

  Smart.

• 21:17Rich Roll?

  Instead of this, he could like, you know, put it up like, you know, probably like, I don't know, quite a bit more.

• 21:23Adam Skolnick?

  It's interesting.

• 21:24Rich Roll?

  But it's fun to see that.

• 21:25Adam Skolnick?

  The pole vault technology has changed. You know, like the pole, I wonder if it's more bendy, if it's like...

• 21:30Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know anything about that. I mean, obviously, the training is advanced and the apparel and the shoes and the gear. I don't know about the pole, though.

• 21:39Adam Skolnick?

  What about this light spray? So is the idea that like the light spray is the place you'd go to get a shoe that's like custom right for an event and then, or is it, is it like...

• 21:48Rich Roll?

  No, it's not. It's, I mean, it could, it could be that one day. They have the technology for that, but essentially, it's just this robot arm that can create an upper for a shoe in three minutes.

• 22:01Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 22:01Rich Roll?

  And it adheres to the last, the sole, without any glues, and it's just one ingredient, this microfiber, and it revolutionizes the supply chain of shoe manufacturing, because most running shoes are comprised of, you know, someone, something like, you know, 80 to 100 different pieces, and those things are shipped from all over the world and require, you know, human interaction in order to finally assemble them.

• 22:28Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 22:28Rich Roll?

  And this removes all of that, and so the ecological, like the sort of, the, the, the carbon footprint is obviously much lower, and you can have these robots like all over the world, so you don't have to, you, you remove like the need to like ship massive volumes of, of shoes. But it's still in its early days, like it's not even available for retail yet, but they have, some of their elite athletes are wearing them in competition.

• 22:56Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 22:56Rich Roll?

  So, not all of them, but, but plenty of them are. So they're, you know, they're being tested and they're developed in cooperation with the athletes to make sure that they're getting the best product. And it's kind of an amazing innovation, actually.

• 23:09Adam Skolnick?

  It is amazing.

• 23:10Rich Roll?

  So, there's a story behind it, and so the ON Labs and part of my role is to kind of help tell that story, the same way that I did in Paris.

• 23:17Adam Skolnick?

  The shoe without a footprint.

• 23:19Rich Roll?

  The shoe, oh, that's good, that's good.

• 23:21Adam Skolnick?

  What time you got that one's free.

• 23:24Rich Roll?

  You want a job in in marketing in advertising?

• 23:29Adam Skolnick?

  You know what? I'm anomalous. I obviously need a job.

• 23:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's right. That's true. And Tokyo was just fantastic. I said in the intro to another podcast recently, I kind of rehashed that experience. But we did get a chance to hang out with Craig Maude.

• 23:46Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Oh, my God, that's awesome.

• 23:47Rich Roll?

  For a day, and he took us on a walking tour through, you know, through a couple different neighborhoods, and we had an authentic experience, and that was pretty cool.

• 23:55Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, that's amazing. Like, I would like, we, I mean, you know, I love that that podcast. I want to meet that guy. But it would be so amazing just to walk, do one walk with him, you know, just through any town in Japan.

• 24:08Rich Roll?

  It was fantastic. You know, because he knows every little nook and cranny, and he has stories about everything. And he took us into this, like, Omakase Coffee Experience that was, you know, one of the most, you know, high, you know, kind of like, high level experiences you could imagine. And it was just this tiny little place, you would walk right by it and not know. That was cool. We went to see his friend's apartment. He's friends with this young kid, who's an, who is an artist who just graduated from art school, or maybe still in art school, anyway, and he just moved out of his house and had his own apartment. So we thought, we saw, like, the inauthentic young person's apartment in Japan, which is essentially, you know, a tiny room, you know, but like, he was so happy, and it was fantastic.

• 24:52Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool. What about the food? What about the food for you? Was it challenging at all for a plant-based?

• 24:59Rich Roll?

  Uh, there's a lot of vegan places now, actually. I guess that's pretty new. It hasn't always been the case. You know, historically, it's pretty difficult to eat plant-based there because fishes and everything, and fish sauce and stuff like that. Wasn't that big of a problem. We had some great experiences and some misses, you know, because Julie and I were walking around, and we're like, let's try this place. And, you know, it's like, not every place is, you know, going to be amazing. But it was, it was super fun. I loved it. I, you know, just, it solves for so many problems that we experience in America, just the congeniality of people and the respect and the dignity and, and, you know, the care,

• 25:41Rich Roll?

  like, the sort of care that, that everyone takes for each other and also for, like,

• 25:49Rich Roll?

  For their occupation, like whether they're cleaning the public bathrooms or they're a taxi car, you know, taxi cab driver, whatever. Like, it was very evident, like, that is a, you know, like, a cultural thing that we don't have here, which was, which was super nice.

• 26:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Rich Roll?

  I loved it. And it was a lot different than I expected in certain ways, having been programmed my entire life to believe that, like, all of Tokyo is so crowded, you can't move around, and, you know, everyone's smoking all the time. And it's not, it's not like that. Certainly, there are crowded areas, but I found it to be incredibly livable and, um, and, and rather delightful.

• 26:27Adam Skolnick?

  Man, I've only spent nights there, like, at different times. Because when I used to do the Indonesia beat a lot, I would go back and forth through Japan. And there was, like, a flight you could take LAX to, um, to Bali or Jakarta, that it would basically, Japan Airlines just made you stay the night, and they'd put you up in a Narita hotel, which is kind of far from the city. But you would, like, you could take the bullet train into the city. You're there in an hour, and you just go have fun. And a couple of times, I spent two nights there, just, like, in Tokyo. But that's all I've ever done.

• 26:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you gotta go back.

• 26:59Adam Skolnick?

  I gotta go back and do probably, I got friends over there, man. I got, yeah, I got, like, the freedivers.

• 27:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's right.

• 27:04Adam Skolnick?

  I got the freedivers over there.

• 27:05Rich Roll?

  There's a big freediving community.

• 27:06Adam Skolnick?

  There is. They're fabulous.

• 27:13Rich Roll?

  So that was great. And then I, you know, I went to New York, and my intention was to-

• 27:16Adam Skolnick?

  You came back straight to New York, right?

• 27:18Rich Roll?

  I went straight to New York, yeah.

• 27:21Rich Roll?

  Was to really focus on the book that I'm working on right now. But that got interrupted by some family stuff.

• 27:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 27:28Rich Roll?

  As I've mentioned before on the podcast, my mom has dementia right now. And we've been trying to figure out how to best take care of her. And there have been fits and starts with getting my parents into assisted living that have, at the last minute, kind of fallen apart, or they've backed out of. And my dad is sort of living, has been living with my mother, trying to take care of her on his own. And it's just an unmanageable situation, because she really needs help that he can't provide. And this has been going on for a long time, to the point where it's starting to get dangerous.

• 28:04Adam Skolnick?

  During their eighties.

• 28:04Rich Roll?

  And I was in, I was in DC before I went to Tokyo and got a real taste of what's actually going on. And realizing, like, this is, this has gotten-

• 28:15Rich Roll?

  Dire and needs to be addressed and you know, I don't want to impinge upon my dad and his autonomy and make decisions on his behalf about how to live. That's for him to decide, but you know, he, it was clear that he needed some help here. And so I went from New York down to DC and have been in DC for several days. And the long and short of it is that I showed up to really help solve this problem by getting my mom into a memory care unit in Washington. So it was a very trying and difficult, emotionally draining week that, you know, was tremendously sad and challenging and difficult like for

• 28:59Rich Roll?

  my dad, for my mom, of course. She's in a state where it's not that she doesn't recognize me at all. Like it takes her a minute, but you know, she doesn't really remember that I'm married or that she has grandchildren. If you remind her, she'll kind of clue in and you're not sure whether she is pretending or whether she really knows. And because she can't really remember anything from one minute to the next, like my dad has been having to like manage this and he can't really leave the house. Or if he wants to do something with her, it just becomes an incredibly unwieldy thing. And like a lot of people who suffer from this condition, she's prone to angry outbursts and paranoia and thinks that, you

• 29:41Rich Roll?

  know, everyone's against her and there's so, and he's kind of suffering in silence and has been for a long time to the point where, you know, it's, it's almost like elder abuse, honestly. And it's dangerous because, you know, she was starting to wander out of the house and she can't really quite dress herself. And it's, you know, there's, there's a lack of dignity there. And, and, and also like a level of denial on some part, like it's fine, you know, my day, it'll be okay. And it's like, not okay, you know? So I had to kind of insert myself to move this thing forward. And what ended up happening was that we had to perform a bit of an Ocean's Eleven type, you know, heist to get my mom

• 30:24Rich Roll?

  out of the house and into this place. And it was not easy, you know? And it was, it was extremely, extremely difficult and draining. And so I'm, I'm kind of in, in, in the midst of a hangover from that experience.

• 30:37Rich Roll?

  And as sad as it was, it really was the right thing for her because she needed to be looked after in a way that like, none of us are equipped to. But also, I'm choosing to look at it like, a gift that I was able to help give to my dad. Because now, he finally is able, he still has some vitality left in him. And he's still at our house, and he can kind of live his life now. He needs some help, but on a day-to-day basis, he can function. And he's been suffering for so long, and now he has an opportunity to kind of do what he wants to do, without feeling like he's been captured. So, yeah, it was tough.

• 31:20Rich Roll?

  And we're at that age where this is life. We're taking care of life stuff. And I think the lesson really, for me, is that, yes, it's part of being an adult, but it's also like, this is what you get to do when you're sober and you're clear-minded. You show up for the people in your life that need you when they need you, to be of service to them. And so, I'm so grateful that I was able to be able to be there to help my dad do this. Because I could have easily been in Tokyo, or it could have happened at a different moment, or something bad could have happened, or I could have come up with some reason why I couldn't be there. You could have avoided it.

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  I could have avoided it. Or circumstances could have been that I couldn't be there, or whatever, but actually, I could. And so, I was there. And I'm really, as difficult as it was, and as inconvenient, and disrupted this entire experience that I was supposed to be having. This is what you do when you're a sober person. And I feel really good about that, and very grateful that I could be of service in that way, and to help my dad reclaim his life, and also, be of service to my sister, who lives there and is kind of dealing with it on the front lines, on the daily. So, she's the one who's burdened with it, while I'm out in Los Angeles, doing what I want to do. Right. So, it was nice to be able to show up for that. They're in their 80s, right?

• 32:49Rich Roll?

  Mid-80s? Yeah, my dad is only like, maybe a year older than the peanuts guy at the Dodgers stadium, you know?

• 33:00Rich Roll?

  And my mom's a couple of years younger and they've been together like over 60 years. I mean, they've been together since high school. Must have been so hard for your dad.

• 33:08Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, it seems like your dad and your sister are there and but they weren't going to be able to get to cross the finish line with this thing and you came in. I mean, do you want to talk about like your relationship with them over time and how that complicates this even more?

• 33:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, my, my, my relationship with my dad is, is quite good. And this experience has brought us closer together, meaning just the experience of him trying to manage my mom over the last couple of years. So I would say that our relationship is, is better than it's ever been. My relationship with my mother has always been difficult and challenging. And just fraught, you know, she's somebody who, who was never able to kind of see me for me. And I want to respect her privacy in some regard. So I don't know how detailed I want to get about it, but it's been a painful relationship with her for, for many years.

• 34:05Rich Roll?

  And, and I've been trying, like, I've been on this, this journey to try to find a way to have more compassion and unconditional love for her. Because I have a lot of resentment and anger about my emotional needs not being met. And it's crazy like to be like, I'm almost 59 years old, you know, to like, be like, thinking about these things, you know, but, but I bring it up because I think so much of the dynamic under which I was raised by her continues to impact like my relationships as an adult, like in the way that I interact with my wife and my kids. And because I've hosted so many

• 34:52Rich Roll?

  Experts in psychology and early childhood trauma and addiction on the podcast for so many years, I have a hypersensitivity or a hyper awareness around the psychological issues at play. And I'm so determined to like heal them so that I don't feel this way about my mom and I can be liberated from patterns that inhibit my ability to experience more intimacy with my wife or to parent my kids in the healthiest way possible, right? So I think it is important. I think part of our job as parents is to

• 35:32Rich Roll?

  interrupt unhealthy generational patterns so that we don't pass them on to our kids. I feel like that's a really important part of the job. And that's what I've been trying to do. But being with her in her demented state where she's reverted, you know, into more of a childlike state of mind, has allowed me to do that. While also, at the same time, part of the dementia is, is just her more unfiltered, you know, so I get a really clear picture. It's like, oh, this is what she's always thought. Right. That's interesting.

• 36:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right. You weren't imagining it.

• 36:10Rich Roll?

  Maybe she never liked me.

• 36:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 36:12Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like, I had this experience, I was like, trying to help her all day and and it was so difficult and she's so combative and doesn't want to be around me, like my presence antagonizes her. And I remember going to bed that night and I was like, my mom doesn't love me. She's like, a grown ass man, you know what I mean?

• 36:37Adam Skolnick?

  But you know, it's interesting, like, if you, if you trigger her and she triggers, like, I wonder how much of it is like, competitive fire, like, that you have, like, that you got you to the play, you know, because like, if you look at it, just because we've been talking about, about, you know, we've been working on this other thing and, and I got, I'm understanding you a lot more. And I'm seeing like, the aloneness that that brings when you, when you're not sure if your mother is approve or even likes you, you know, like, that's an aloneness there that, that is going to hover. And it takes work, it takes, I mean, it's, that's what the sobriety, to bring up the sobriety, I think it. Plugs in right there because that's the beginning of, you know, you getting sober is

• 37:18Adam Skolnick?

  the beginning of you looking inside, right, and figuring out where the broken bits are. And so I just wonder, like, you think about it, like, here's someone who's kind of competing with you in some weird way, diabolical way, which is not healthy and she shouldn't be doing that, but like, what, you know, you just think about these generations and with, and this is not to degrade her in any way, because it's with compassion, like, you think of generations of women who didn't have the options that, to be living, and still not a fully equal study, I'm not trying to say it is, but there's much more opportunity now, and so you wonder how much of that played into the misery that people ended up in, and then take it out on their family or their loved ones.

• 38:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's an astute observation. I would say that the competition aspect, that's probably more with my dad. Like, I'll see my dad, you know, saying things where I'm like, oh, he's trying to compete with me, you know, whereas like, all I've ever wanted is his approval, you know, like, all these things that I've done in the world are solely for the purpose of him saying, "Good job, I love you," you know, and never quite getting it, you know, but with my mom...

• 38:28Adam Skolnick?

  You should have gone to Harvard, Rich.

• 38:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm constantly reminded of that to this day. It's hilarious. But with my mom, I think that, like, the armchair psychologist in me, if I had to diagnose her, I would diagnose her thus, thusly. This is a person who grew up in a household where her mom was a depressive shut-in. This is a person I know almost nothing about, like, no one in the family talks about her, my mom never talks about her, my dad barely brings her up, but essentially, my mother didn't have a mother, you know. There was something going on in terms of mental health with her mom, but this was a person who was checked out, right? So, my mom never learned how to mother, because she didn't have a mother to model it for her.

• 39:16Rich Roll?

  And I would imagine that must have had a significant impact on her ability to give and receive intimacy, right? Because she didn't get it herself.

• 39:27Adam Skolnick?

  To nurture, yeah.

• 39:27Rich Roll?

  But she had an older brother and a father that I presume she became close with out of necessity. I know that she revered both of these people. Her dad, who I'm named after, and he's the guy who I talk about in Finding Ultra, that was captain of the University of Michigan's swim team and nearly made the Olympics and was an American record holder in swimming. It's like this crazy story in ways that like my life sort of mirrored his. Anyway, he passed away from a heart attack when I think he was 56, and she was in college. And I know that was a traumatic experience for her. And then her older brother died in a tragic car accident. He was a lawyer. He was 40 years old in Grand Rapids. And

• 40:11Rich Roll?

  I think he was coming home from a business trip or something like that. I know he had a 280Z, a Datsun 280Z, and I think it was a collision with a semi, like an 18-wheeler. Anyway, I remember vividly when he died, the grief that my mother experienced. It was just, you know, something that I'll never forget. And I probably was like, I couldn't have been older than maybe seven or something, maybe eight or something like that. But I remember her just being inconsolable and like apoplectic from the loss. And she never sought or received help. So she suffered these two losses. She didn't have a mother. And so what do you do? Like she compartmentalized it. She pushed it down. She put on a happy

• 40:56Rich Roll?

  face and got on with her life. But what you resist persists, of course. And so, you know, her pain, I think, over time manifested in fear, like this fear that the world is an unsafe place. And if you care about people, they're going to abandon you and you're going to get hurt. So be careful who you, you know, become connected to because then you're vulnerable. And, you know, she probably protected herself by not Allowing herself to feel too close to anybody while also having this control impulse, like wanting to make sure that the world was safe for her children. Right.

• 41:37Rich Roll?

  And, and, and over controlling me, you know, as a result, out of a, out of a, out of a, out of a genuine desire to like protect me, right? Right. But ultimately ends up like suffocating me. And, and the worst, you know, and then, and then manifesting the thing she's most afraid of, of which is that I'm going to leave her, which I had to to survive. Like I moved to California and I had to get away from her. At the same time, I think there was, you know, some unhealthy attachment stuff going on. Like my job as a young person was to meet her emotional needs. She was a very fearful person and constantly needed reassurance that she was safe or okay. And I had to do certain things in order to make her feel that way.

• 42:21Rich Roll?

  And I adapted to that and became that dutiful son who would like do the things that she wanted me to do so that she would feel okay. And it wasn't until much later in my life that I realized that was a betrayal of myself. And so it's not a surprise that I end up like drinking out of confusion because I just don't, you know, like I was living somebody else's life essentially. And I don't think that she would have accepted like anyone I married because my job was to be her, you know, I was, I'm, I'm, I was supposed to be the primary relationship for her. Right. So it's not a shocker that she's not a fan of my wife.

• 42:59Rich Roll?

  And, you know, so it's just been a very difficult adulthood, like trying to find a way to have somewhat of a relationship with her. And so we've gone through extended periods where we don't, we don't talk or she can't really be around my family. And it's sad, there's a lot of, there's a lot of sadness there. But I think this is what happens when you have unhealed wounds or you refuse to, you know, acknowledge and work through. These sorts of things, like they spill out and they affect your relationships in ways you never intended. And of course, I'm sure she never would have wanted to be estranged from me or to not have a relationship with her grandkids and all that kind of stuff.

• 43:43Rich Roll?

  But that's kind of how it played out. And that's why, to me, it's so important to heal whatever wounding I have, so that I don't end up in that place with my kids. You know, I have a different relationship with my kids and I'm setting them up for healthy relationships in their own lives. So that's, you know, occupies a lot of my headspace these days. And going to DC and just being in her presence, like, in this unfiltered state where I'm seeing her behave in an unbridled way, like, the clarity, I was like, oh, my God, like, I can see it so clearly now, like, where she's coming from and what she really thinks of

• 44:22Rich Roll?

  me and how that has impacted me, like, doing the math on that equation, which was liberating, but also painful while I'm trying to get her into this facility where she doesn't really want to go. Like, this is somebody who won't go to the doctor. She can't, she's living in such denial. Like, it's in the same way that she denied her grief and her pain, she's in denial that there's anything wrong with her. She can't hear, but she won't go to the ear doctor to get a hearing aid. Even if you bring it up, she gets angry. And I know this is, this is something that's normal with people with dementia, but I promise you that she would have reacted that way, you know, without the dementia. This is just the way that she's wired. And so the prospect of her being put in a home, like, that's

• 45:04Rich Roll?

  her worst fear, you know? And then, that's exactly what happened.

• 45:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 45:09Rich Roll?

  So there's guilt with that, and there's guilt that I know that my dad feels. But also a conviction, like, this, this had to happen, you know, like, making peace with that. The emotional, like, I'm just exhausted, you know, for days after this. So it's been, it's been very difficult.

• 45:28Adam Skolnick?

  I'm sorry, man.

• 45:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, but this is, this is adulthood, man.

• 45:32Adam Skolnick?

  It is. It's real. You know, my parents are 81 and 79, and so you kind of, you know, we're, we're not there, obviously, but it's, um...

• 45:42Adam Skolnick?

  You know, it's you hear this and you hear these tales of, you know, that's how these things go is that people, you know, as you get older, it becomes harder and you realize you're at a place where, you know, it's your job to take care of them and it's not always, these decisions are not always clear cut, man, they're not always clear cut. It sounds like this was, but it wasn't.

• 46:03Rich Roll?

  But one of the interesting observations that I made was, was that, was how much the dynamic mimics alcoholism, just without the alcohol. So I have this mother who's in denial, right? And she's behaving in ways that is creating chaos for everyone around her, but has no awareness of, of, of the impact of her behavior on other people. Like, that's not important. What's important is that her needs are met and there's no conscious awareness at all of, of, of just the toll that, you know, is being incurred by everyone around her. And then my dad, who is a very

• 46:48Rich Roll?

  kind of avoidant personality, has that disposition. He's a wonderful man and I love him to death, but he just wants everyone to get along and it's easier to just say, it's fine, you know? And avoid like the hard conversations or confronting reality. And so you could say that he's codependent in that behavior as an enabler, you know? And that's perpetuated this situation going on much longer than it would have otherwise. And I'm like, wow, this is just like, this is just like an alcoholic relationship. Like, you know, the same way as somebody who would be married to somebody who's using drugs, right? And they're like trying to like make it okay, but suffering and the addict's behavior is like causing chaos for everyone around them.

• 47:32Adam Skolnick?

  Crazy.

• 47:32Rich Roll?

  Which is kind of an amazing thing, but on the unconditional love tip, like I just do this conscious meditation like before I go to see her every time. And I'm like, just, you know, it's just unconditional. Everything is like, just your response to everything is just more love, you know, just more love, more love. Like this is what the Dalai Lama, you know, is talking about, right? And it's like, can I practice this when all of my buttons are getting pushed because she installed them? Can I be non-reactive and, and do the contrary action, which is just more love for everything? And so she could say the most outrageous thing. And I'm like, I love you, mom. And I kiss her on the forehead, which makes her very uncomfortable, you know?

• 48:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right.

• 48:14Rich Roll?

  And that's the only way to liberate yourself from all of this is to transcend it because there's no, there's not, there's, there's no possibility for reconciliation, right? So it becomes about your relationship with yourself and the dynamic, not some understanding that you're going to come to with this person that you have such a challenging relationship with.

• 48:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you have to, you have to make peace within yourself with the circumstance. I agree. I mean, I had a, the only thing I can think of is, you know, my grandfather abused me. And when I was first dealing with all that, like when I first kind of started telling people about it in my family, like he ended up having a stroke like, oh, like a week after and then was in a hospital and then was, you know, it was like, I had the opportunity to go see him, but I was like, I didn't feel like, I didn't feel like that was right to confront a sick man in his hospital bed like that.

• 49:15Rich Roll?

  How old were you when that?

• 49:18Adam Skolnick?

  I probably was like 27, 28. You know, I got some advice from Gurus Singh, who was like, you know, write it all out and tear the, tear it like letter by letter and, you know, have a ritual with it. And he's like, you don't have to. His thing was you don't have to have these gnarly confrontations because the confrontation is within yourself and your relationship to the story and what happened. And you know, you, you know, you, because I got advice from some people, you should go have the big confrontation.

• 49:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 49:48Adam Skolnick?

  But he was like, but that's not, I'm kind of more like your dad. Like, that's not really in my nature to confront people like that.

• 49:54Rich Roll?

  Also, it's not, it's not going to get you anywhere.

• 49:56Adam Skolnick?

  No, it doesn't solve the problem.

• 49:58Rich Roll?

  You want him, you're going to want this person to give you something they can't give you.

• 50:01Adam Skolnick?

  And they're, and they're like.

• 50:03Rich Roll?

  Stroke aside.

• 50:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right. They're just, yeah, either way, it's never going to work, right? Like, that's how, right? That's the problem we're all in as a society now is that like, we, we want to get something out of this, but you're never going to get what you want out of the confrontation. So, uh, or very rarely. So, um, yeah, so I did, I did that kind of, I, I developed my own relationship to it, which has been good over time, but like, I mean, obviously there's a very different situation. I didn't mean to commandeer it, but I'm, that's, I just, my brain went there to like, you have to, because your mom isn't in a capacity to where you can have an honest discussion and try to unpack these things for both of you and for her as she gets older so she can kind of see things more clearly and at least understand.

• 50:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, that would never happen.

• 50:46Adam Skolnick?

  But even if she was, right, even if she was in full capacity.

• 50:49Rich Roll?

  No, no, yeah, there's no possibility for that being successful.

• 50:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 50:53Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, it's about, it's about you and the story and your relationship to it.

• 50:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  Which is wild, man.

• 50:59Adam Skolnick?

  Heavy, heavy stuff, dude. You know what? You told me about this. I was thinking, one thing I want to bring up is kind of just not to make light of it, but you were saying how nice this place was because my memories of these, these places are usually.

• 51:12Rich Roll?

  My dad found this great place. Like, it's expensive, you know, but it's, it's like, in terms of like what a, a facility like this could be, like, I'm telling you, I, I can't imagine there's a nicer version of it.

• 51:24Adam Skolnick?

  In the old days, like, it doesn't matter how much you spend, it smells horrible in there, you're gonna, it's like, it's really depressing. And then the same is true with, with dorms. Dorms now are like, like MTV Real World level. So like, somehow these kinds of weird institutional.

• 51:38Rich Roll?

  Is that true? I don't know anything about dorms.

• 51:40Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, dorms have gotten nicer at colleges because they're trying to recruit. So dorms and assisted living facilities are getting, they're getting some bling. It's not so, it's not as, you know, hostels too. Hostels are like, all the places that were like hellholes that you had to kind of go through at some point in your life are becoming like, I don't know. Dialed out.

• 51:58Rich Roll?

  Dialed out. That's gotta be a good thing, isn't it? I'm all for that kind of gentrification. Are you like bummed that you can't go to Indonesia and have, what was that? The beach that Leonardo DiCaprio, he goes and he's in the hostel?

• 52:16Adam Skolnick?

  The, I was thinking about, like, you were saying, these people that work there, how amazing it is that they choose to do this with their life.

• 52:23Rich Roll?

  These people are incredible. The level of patience that they have to have to just be in the presence of these people all day long and manage them, like, God bless these people, man. And it's kind of amazing watching them because someone will get agitated and they just know how to like gently, you know, navigate them and, you know, change the subject. They're like, they were telling me, they're like, it's a lot like improv. It's like yes-anding people. Oh, it's fine here, we'll just go over here. Yeah, that, we'll take care of that in a minute, you know? And then, you know, the, the mind resets every, you know, minute or so or whatever. So they forget whatever was agitating them. But this, it's just this recursive process.

• 53:08Rich Roll?

  I just, it's so draining and exhausting to be around. And these people, these people have elected this to be their job, their vocation, you know? Like, it takes a certain special kind of person to do that kind of work.

• 53:22Adam Skolnick?

  No doubt.

• 53:23Rich Roll?

  And I'm grateful for these people because I know that they're, you know, like, my mom is in good hands with them. So if they're listening, thank you.

• 53:30Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you. Thank you, folks.

• 53:39Rich Roll?

  I gotta tell this story.

• 53:40Adam Skolnick?

  We unpacked a lot right there. Let's, we were transitioning. You gotta go to Dumbo. Should we go back to Dumbo and tell me what's happening in Dumbo?

• 53:45Rich Roll?

  No, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta tell you about my 40th high school reunion.

• 53:50Adam Skolnick?

  That was also in DC, right?

• 53:53Rich Roll?

  We can't have a four hour podcast here, but I'm gonna, I gotta tell this. So, the amazing thing in the context of like universal synchronicities is that when I had to be in DC to like manage this whole thing, it just happened to coincide with my 40th high school reunion. Like, what are the chances of that? Like, I would have ordinarily not, like, I'm not going out of my, like, I'm not gonna fly across the country to go to this thing. Like, I'm not really that close with anyone I went to high school with, and anybody who read Finding Ultra knows that I have a challenged relationship with the school that I went to and, you know, that, that period in my life, which is another thing in need of healing. You know what I mean? Like, I have all this pain and I have this story about it, right? And here we are.

• 54:37Rich Roll?

  It's like, hey, not for nothing, like, I know you're tired from dealing with your mom, but now you gotta go over here and do this.

• 54:44Adam Skolnick?

  You're a teenager. Like, the gods, the gods have handed you...

• 54:48Rich Roll?

  It's like rehab. It's like some kind of, yeah, like, like spiritual rehab, like, treatment situation that I'm in. And I'm like, alright, well, clearly I have to go to, you know, I'm gonna have to go to this. Like, I can't like be here and not go, like, how lame would that be?

• 55:03Adam Skolnick?

  You know you gotta go.

• 55:04Rich Roll?

  But I was dealing with my mom all day, so I didn't go to the school for like all day festivities or whatever, but there was, I was on an email chain where there was discussion of like, oh, on Saturday night, we're gonna go to this restaurant. You know, we've reserved a room or whatever, so just come here, you know, between 7 and 10. So I was like, alright, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go do this, this'll be interesting. And it was in Bethesda, so I'm, my parents live in Georgetown, I'm staying in Georgetown. Like, I had my dad's car, so I drove to Bethesda. Which is where I grew up. Which is across town, right? Yeah, it's just up, it's like, you know, it's like a 20 minute drive or whatever. Bethesda is now like a city, though. Like, when I went, when I grew up there, it was just a suburb. But now there's like buildings everywhere and this restaurant was in, I think it's called Bethesda Row. Like, it's, there's like a whole nightlife scene happening. Really?

• 55:49Rich Roll?

  And like, all these restaurants and bars and I see the restaurant, I'm like, alright, I gotta, I gotta park. I pull into this parking garage and I just made a mental note, like, okay, when I come out of the garage, I need to turn right and left and the restaurant's on the corner. So I go into the parking garage, park, come out, I make the right, I make the left, I go into this restaurant. It's pretty crowded, it's a big place, but there's a back room where there's like, clearly there's a party going on. I was like, well, that's obviously it. I go back there and a guy gives me, here's two drink tickets and here's, you know, write your name on this thing. I put, put my name on my jacket and I go into this room and it's very crowded and I'm alone, like, I'm by myself and I'm mingling, I'm mingling around, like, walking around,

• 56:29Rich Roll?

  like, looking for a familiar face. Like, 70% of the guys are bald, but like, okay, so that's gonna make it a little more difficult. But hopefully, like, you know, somebody will recognize me or whatever and I'm doing a loop, I don't see anybody. I'll do another loop. And then that, there's, it's that awkward thing when you're alone at a party and you don't know anyone and you're trying to like, you're like, how do I behave so I don't look weird? Go to the bathroom. And I'm like, I can't, why can't, like, I don't understand, like, somebody, I should be able to see somebody here. And I do another loop and I end up facing, did I tell you this story already? So then I'm facing the wall and there's a class photo on the wall.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  And I look at the class photo and it says, Walt Whitman High School, class of 2000. And I'm like, I'm at the wrong fucking reunion. And the wrong year, the wrong year. There's literally a high school reunion going on. This is a high school reunion party. It's just not the right one. I'm at the wrong, I stumbled into the wrong reunion party. I also didn't recognize the fact that, like, I graduated in 1985. Right. I'm 15 years older than all these people. That didn't occur to me. Like, I'm looking at these people, they all, once you get a certain age, it's like, everyone looks old. Right, right, right. So, I'm like, oh my god, like... I'm in the wrong, this is not the right party. Maybe there's another room in this restaurant. I leave the, I leave that back room and I'm wandering around the restaurant. Maybe they're eating at a table.

• 57:55Rich Roll?

  I'm looking at everyone eating. I go out onto the, there's a patio where people are out there. I'm looking there. Not, they're not there. I'm like, what is going on? And I think, do I have the date right? Like I checked my email on my phone. I was like, maybe I have the wrong day. No, I have the right day. Uh, let me try one more. No, still don't see anyone. I'm like, maybe I'm being punked. Like maybe like I'm getting bullied again. No, like it was a setup. Like we're gonna get this guy to go to the wrong.

• 58:25Adam Skolnick?

  Roll wants to come.

• 58:26Rich Roll?

  Go to the other high school reunion. Um, I'm like, what is wrong? Something is wrong and I couldn't figure it out. And then I look around and I, and I go, oh, this is a Mexican restaurant. And I think the restaurant that I'm supposed to be at is like an oyster bar plate. I go, I'm in the wrong restaurant. I walked in the wrong restaurant.

• 58:45Adam Skolnick?

  The wrong nice Bethesda restaurant. There's too many, too much options.

• 58:50Rich Roll?

  And I realized when I came out of the parking garage, I went out. I thought I was going out the front of it, the same way I drove in, but I went out like the back. And so I took the right and the left, which was correct, but it, and it landed me at a restaurant. That's like on the other side. You're like, it's like, oh my God, you're such a dumb fuck. What is the matter with you? So I go over like, so then I go in, I'm in the right place. And it's just like 15 guys that I went to high school with. And actually, you know what? It was, it was super nice. I ended up having like some really cool conversations. I mean, 40 years post-high school, like you're kind of past the bullshit. Everyone was fantastic and it was wonderful to reconnect with these people, many of whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. So.

• 59:32Adam Skolnick?

  Was there instant recognition? Like you saw that guy, oh, that's like somebody you haven't seen for years.

• 59:36Rich Roll?

  Well, there was an email chain. So I already knew, there were a couple of guys that I was like, I'm not quite. And then it kind of locked in. I had one embarrassing moment where I mistook somebody for somebody. I won't name any names about that. Like I kind of stepped in it in one situation accidentally, but for the most part, yeah. And because what I do is. Public, like, they kind of know

• 59:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you know more.

• 59:59Rich Roll?

  what I do, and they know more about me than I do about them.

• 1:00:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Rich Roll?

  But it was, it was actually super nice and, and quite healing. Like, I talked to a couple of guys that, you know, in my mind, I had a whole story about who they are and like what they think of me, and of course, it's all illusion, you know? So that was interesting and healing in its own right. And I'm really glad that I went.

• 1:00:21Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool. I've only ever been to my 10th high school reunion.

• 1:00:25Rich Roll?

  I think you should go.

• 1:00:27Adam Skolnick?

  You think I should go to mine?

• 1:00:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Adam Skolnick?

  Let's see what's coming up. It would be, it would be my fourth, the next option is four, I don't think they do 35 or any like, like that.

• 1:00:34Rich Roll?

  I don't know, maybe, depends on, I think, well, I don't know.

• 1:00:37Adam Skolnick?

  Sam Ohio, class of?

• 1:00:39Rich Roll?

  Maybe.

• 1:00:40Adam Skolnick?

  89?

• 1:00:40Rich Roll?

  I mean, I will say this.

• 1:00:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:00:42Rich Roll?

  It's helpful when you're happy in your life and you like what you do for a living.

• 1:00:46Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:00:47Rich Roll?

  And you're feeling fulfilled. That's a, that's a better way to go into a reunion.

• 1:00:52Adam Skolnick?

  Then I went to my 10th reunion.

• 1:00:54Rich Roll?

  No, I don't know. I don't know how you felt, but I'm just saying, like, for me, like, I'm like, I feel good about my life. Like, I don't, you know, I imagine a lot of people, the prospect of going to reunion, like, if you're not happy with your life or you feel like, you know, uh, maybe you're not living the life that you wish you were, or wish, or thought you could be, like, then the idea of showing up at a, at an event like that is, is, is, is challenging.

• 1:01:16Adam Skolnick?

  I bet, I bet it is. I mean, when I, my 10th reunion, I wasn't necessarily on the track that I wanted to be on. I wasn't, I didn't hate my life by any means, but I was like, what I found was, it didn't matter. Like, nobody cared, because you end up having like these speed, you know, this is different now. There's 15 people, you're gonna have longer conversations, but, um, but what I found was, that was what was refreshing about it, was it didn't matter at all what anybody was doing. It was just people were happy to see each other.

• 1:01:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and the, and the conversations that I had with these guys, it had nothing to do with, like, what do you do for a living?

• 1:01:49Adam Skolnick?

  Of course not.

• 1:01:50Rich Roll?

  Whatever, it's just like your kids and like, you know?

• 1:01:53Adam Skolnick?

  You guys were...

• 1:01:54Rich Roll?

  It's like, no, no one cares anymore. Like, so it's like, the lessons with my mom in memory care are about showing up, sobriety service, and the lessons with this are like, not dissimilar. Like, you show up, right? You show up and you realize, whatever your bullshit story is, like, I guarantee you, it's unfounded for the most part.

• 1:02:15Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:02:16Rich Roll?

  And, you know, unless you show up, you can't be surprised and, and, and, you know, experience closeness. Like, I just had... Katie Couric in here earlier today and we had this amazing conversation for two hours. And at the end of it, I said something like, you know, what is your advice? Or what have you learned over your like 40 years of like talking to every amazing person in the world? And, and having this storied career? And basically her answer was, you know, happiness is about your relationships. It's about your closeness with the people you care about. And the people that are happiest and live the longest, obviously like a blue zones thing,

• 1:02:55Rich Roll?

  like are the people who, who really foster and cultivate and, and care for their, for their friendships and their relationships. And I feel like this reunion thing was a way of me beginning the process of not just reconciling my past, but also, you know, reaching out to people that I have a lot of history with and realizing that there's more connective tissue there and shared experience than, than you realize. And, and I left just feeling better, better about myself because I just felt more connected rather than disconnected from this formative experience in my life. So the lesson is, is like, show up, you know?

• 1:03:39Rich Roll?

  And don't be avoidant, you know, like, like my dad, like, you know, walk, walk, walk towards the thing that makes you uncomfortable. And that's the only way that you can grow, but also be disabused of whatever narrative you have in your mind about what it means.

• 1:03:56Adam Skolnick?

  It's so interesting because like, if you think about it as kids, we're just, it's basically all a science experiment. Like, life is just this weird science experiment. You're like, you know, we, we're sending our, we're sending Zuma to a certain school. We like the school, but he doesn't have any choice in the matter. Like, he's just being put into a bag and shaken up with the other ones that have been chosen. It's like, and that's what happened with you and your classmates. It's like you got sent to a place and you had this weird experience and it was all a science experiment. And now at the end, you come out and you're like, whoa, it was weird to be subjects in that experiment. What was that like for you? And then you can have this connected. Like ultimately, the stories, I think, that you're talking about, when we get into stories

• 1:04:36Adam Skolnick?

  about what our life was like and all the, all the, you know, our, our dramas and our relationships and how people see us. All those stories are like these fake separators when in reality like we have almost everything in common with every human being, you know, we have almost everything in common.

• 1:04:55Rich Roll?

  And let's focus on like that one thing that I remember forty years ago.

• 1:05:02Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And part of it is that we've been subject to this bizarre science experiment called life, right? And we're like, and our reactions to it are probably more similar than different. So it's interesting.

• 1:05:13Rich Roll?

  And we're mad at all these people who who just didn't know any better, you know? Because the truth is, the older you get, you realize no one knows anything. And like all, you know, when you're young, you think like adults have they've got things under control. And then you get older and you're like, yeah, no one really knows what they're doing at all, pretty much.

• 1:05:33Adam Skolnick?

  And and like that, nothing freaks me out more than someone who thinks they know know what's going on.

• 1:05:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's a lot of I heard there's a few people like that on the internet. Have you discovered that?

• 1:05:45Adam Skolnick?

  On the internet or like they know what to do. This will solve the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:50Rich Roll?

  Anyway, man. So, yes, I encourage you to go to your next high school reunion. I don't know what your high school experience was like, but you seem like a guy who probably my my, if I had to guess, you were a guy who knew how to get along with all the different kinds of groups. You weren't really in any one clique, but you could maneuver like you could hang with the athletes and then hang out with the potheads. Because you have a certain like ease about yourself and not necessarily class clown, but like a disposition that allowed you to like, maybe not be like a super popular kid, but like a kid that like everyone was cool having around.

• 1:06:32Adam Skolnick?

  I feel I feel sane.

• 1:06:34Rich Roll?

  Is it? Was that accurate?

• 1:06:37Rich Roll?

  That's pretty good. Maybe I should be a psychologist.

• 1:06:39Adam Skolnick?

  That is accurate. That is accurate. I don't know how like, I definitely wasn't in the popular crowd, but I wasn't like, yeah, I was one of those boundary walkers. I've been like that boundary walker type person my whole life, but also.

• 1:06:50Rich Roll?

  Like you could, you get in, you could go, show up at any of the parties and it was cool.

• 1:06:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, I could go to the parties, but I also often would rather not, but like the, um, the Samo High was different because it was so big. It was like 3,000 kids or something like 700 kids per class. So it wasn't like one of those right out of like, you know, central casting kind of places where there's the losers and the jocks and all that. Wasn't like that at all. There was a lot of room for anonymity. And so there was a lot of us kind of that had little pockets and that kind of crossed over in different places. So I think that was one of the healthy things about Samo. We didn't have like the big bully culture and I'm sure some people had horrible experiences that I wasn't aware of, but it was pretty, it wasn't, you didn't have to get, you know, you could, you could avoid a lot of conflict if you wanted. It was just a big

• 1:07:37Adam Skolnick?

  spot. Um, but you're right in the sense that I had friends in different groups and yeah, you're a hundred percent right.

• 1:07:42Rich Roll?

  All I know about Samo, Santa Monica High School is, is from stories that guys like Charlie Sheen and Rob Lowe and like Sean Penn, like, you know, all these guys who became huge actors, Robert Downey Jr., like they were all classmates at Samo High, like around the same time.

• 1:08:00Adam Skolnick?

  It was Sean Penn and it was, uh, Char- Charlie Sheen, S.T.V. was Rob Lowe there too?

• 1:08:05Rich Roll?

  Rob Lowe, I mean, Rob Lowe is the best storyteller amongst them from the whole Brat Pack era. He even does like a one man show where he tours and he just, he just like tells the craziest stories about those years from high school, you know, into the St. Elmo's Fire, you know, like when they were like the Brat Pack and that whole thing. Um, he's very good at that. Like they're really compelling, but there's something, you know, there was something special about Samo High at that period of time because literally it gave birth to like, you know, basically a whole generation of Hollywood.

• 1:08:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's crazy, huh? Because Malibu was there and Malibu wasn't, you know, Malibu was coming.

• 1:08:41Rich Roll?

  But Malibu wasn't a thing, like, like, uh, did you watch the Charlie Sheen Netflix documentary?

• 1:08:46Adam Skolnick?

  I did, yeah, I know, yeah.

• 1:08:47Rich Roll?

  I've only watched the first episode of it.

• 1:08:50Adam Skolnick?

  I couldn't stop watching it.

• 1:08:51Rich Roll?

  It's so interesting that they had all that Super 8 footage of them being kids running around Point Doom. Because Point Doom, now it's like, super fancy. So Point Doom, for people who don't know, is a neighborhood in Malibu that is very fancy. You know, lots of, lots of fancy houses.

• 1:09:08Adam Skolnick?

  Well, Point Doom is like that rock, yeah.

• 1:09:09Rich Roll?

  It's the promontory, yeah, so it's like, it sticks out and there's these beaches there. And, you know, if you live there, you get a key and you can go and open this gate and you have access to these beaches where, you know, you go down there and it's like crazy who you would see. But it's just, that's for people that live there, it's not open to the public.

• 1:09:26Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  But it had always been a working-class neighborhood.

• 1:09:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right.

• 1:09:31Rich Roll?

  Until, I don't know, a couple decades ago.

• 1:09:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Tranqus.

• 1:09:34Rich Roll?

  Maybe like 30 years ago or something like that.

• 1:09:36Adam Skolnick?

  Tranqus 2, yeah.

• 1:09:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Tranqus 2.

• 1:09:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  And so Martin Sheen raises his kids on Point Doom. And it was just, you know, feral kids running around, riding bikes. And in the case of Charlie Sheen and his brother Emilio Estevez, they had this Super 8 camera and they were just making little movies themselves and they had all this footage in that show. Um, but Rob Lowe's around, Sean Penn's around.

• 1:10:00Adam Skolnick?

  Chris Penn.

• 1:10:01Rich Roll?

  Chris Penn, yes. Um, they all grew up in that area and they all went to Santa Monica High School, even though it's way down PCH because there was no Malibu High School.

• 1:10:09Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, yeah, like, and that's the same when I was in, like, Malibu High didn't come until the 90s. Maybe it was the mid 90s or maybe it was early 90s, I forget. But like, um, I went to school with those Malibu kids. And so we would go out sometimes to parties in Point Doom. And Sean Penn says in the documentary it's 100% true. It was, uh, schoolteachers and contractors. Um, there were, there were the nice houses.

• 1:10:30Rich Roll?

  There's still a couple of those houses in Point Doom.

• 1:10:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:10:33Rich Roll?

  But they're like few and far between now because most of the, you know, those raises, those houses get raised.

• 1:10:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  And then mansions get built.

• 1:10:40Adam Skolnick?

  And the same was true with the Palisades. We talked about in the Palisades fire, there was that same thing. So it was a different era because in the old days, the money wanted... To stay closer to LA and like Beverly Hills was kind of

• 1:10:49Rich Roll?

  Who wanted to go up to Malibu like there was nothing going on up there.

• 1:10:51Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right. And so, and I think, I don't know the reason that Martin Sheen chose it, but I know he's really deeply connected to that like Catholic retreat, Sarah retreat.

• 1:11:02Rich Roll?

  Oh, Sarah retreat.

• 1:11:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, so I don't know if that was.

• 1:11:04Rich Roll?

  Was he deeply Catholic way back then?

• 1:11:06Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know. I think I kind of feel like he was, he's been religious or something, but I'm speaking out of turn because I don't know.

• 1:11:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:12Adam Skolnick?

  But I know that's the kind of place that I know he's been known to go there in recent years. And so, maybe that was something, but, but yeah, so you see this super, I always love that, like the, these documentaries that can find that footage, like that Charlie Sheen has, was making movies with Emilio Estevez.

• 1:11:28Rich Roll?

  When they were kids.

• 1:11:29Adam Skolnick?

  When they were kids and their rivalry that they had and like,

• 1:11:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I, one of the trippiest, the trippiest things for me was like, Emilio Estevez was originally supposed to be the star of Platoon.

• 1:11:39Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:39Adam Skolnick?

  And then the funding fell through and then like Charlie Sheen got it. And that was, that must've been like.

• 1:11:44Rich Roll?

  He was the latecomer because everything was set up for Emilio, like Breakfast Club, all of that. Like he had the early, the early ascent and then Charlie, like market corrected him a little bit, it seems like.

• 1:11:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And then Jennifer Grey like got Charlie Sheen the job.

• 1:12:00Rich Roll?

  I know. That story is crazy.

• 1:12:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And like, but what's also crazy is that he's alive.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:12:05Adam Skolnick?

  It's.

• 1:12:06Rich Roll?

  That guy's constitution for drugs and alcohol is superhuman.

• 1:12:09Adam Skolnick?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:12:10Rich Roll?

  But the interesting thing, like I liked that he's just owning it and is not afraid to like just tell you everything that happened because it is an amazing like sort of document to like.

• 1:12:22Adam Skolnick?

  It is.

• 1:12:23Rich Roll?

  See how this person survived this. And an interesting exploration of, you know, alcoholism, ego, insanity, Hollywood, you know, it's an indictment of what happens when you're young and you have an addictive personality and you have power and money. I didn't realize that Nicolas Cage was like his, his main dude, his main running man.

• 1:12:47Adam Skolnick?

  That's weird. That's weird. So you're only the first one. What you find in the second one, like Denise Richards, and then I forget who is, I guess would be his third wife because he was married really young and then you had Denise Richards. And what you find in the, in the second one, and it's worth, I don't want to spoil it, but like, is that he's like, and you don't know what to think because he's obviously like, he's an actor and like, who knows how much of this is genuine or not, but it does come across genuine to me, but. It takes you through that whole meltdown with the two and a half men. So the first one is like building up and it's the reminiscent.

• 1:13:21Rich Roll?

  The whole like winning and Tiger Woods, all that stuff.

• 1:13:24Adam Skolnick?

  And it shows how weird that was. But one takeaway for me was this guy is like ex wives still love him. And you like during the meltdown, you didn't get the sense that he was anything other than a bully and like, you know what I mean? I got a real bully energy from him. He wasn't like, he seemed like he was very demeaning to people, but it was obviously he was in the throes of a serious addiction. So I'm not trying to place judgment, but that's how I felt. But then you, and you watch this and they're like these, and it could be a show, but like it seems like he's on good terms with, with his ex wives and like, like they're close and he, and he's, you know, his kids are kind of back, at least, you know, it's hard to say, but his son was living with him. He's close with one of his daughters. She's in it.

• 1:14:09Adam Skolnick?

  So we don't really know what's real, but it makes you think that we didn't fully also know how he, who he really was, even when he seemed to be showing us, you know?

• 1:14:19Rich Roll?

  Who knows? I mean, I, I mean, that's nice to hear. In the first episode, you're introduced to his like best friend from high school, the football player guy who's still his best friend.

• 1:14:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:14:30Rich Roll?

  So I guess that says something. But there doesn't seem to be like any kind of like spiritual awakening. You know, it's sort of like, here's what happened and it was crazy. You know what I mean? And I'm still living as opposed to like, what did I learn from this that could make me a better human? You know, so, so to me it, it rings a little empty and maybe that's why I didn't end up watching the, the second episode.

• 1:14:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, maybe so.

• 1:14:58Rich Roll?

  But it is remarkable that he was able to survive all of that stuff. And I also think it's interesting that his brother and his dad decided not to participate.

• 1:15:08Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:15:09Rich Roll?

  And, you know, we don't know why, but I would have to imagine maybe it has something to do with the fact that, that by participating in it, like anything, like it's, imagine you're Martin Sheen, who was just terrified when his son was doing this because Martin has had his own, you know, had like the parallels between Platoon and like.

• 1:15:29Adam Skolnick?

  Apocalypse Now.

• 1:15:29Rich Roll?

  Charlie being on set for Apocalypse Now when his dad was like going through that and had the heart attack and all of that. Like it's cra- that's pretty wild stuff. And it was, was like portrayed very cinematically in the show, but.

• 1:15:42Rich Roll?

  But anything that is potentially ego aggrandizing, you know, for this person is going to set them back towards their addiction.

• 1:15:51Adam Skolnick?

  That's true.

• 1:15:51Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? So like all of the, suddenly he's back in the limelight, he's got this book, he's got this Netflix. Is this, is this really like in Charlie's mental health interest, you know? And maybe just by saying, we're not going to participate in it, is there a way of saying like, you know, we don't want to be involved in anything that might move him back towards a drink?

• 1:16:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, but there might have been economic necessity involved, you know, like he spent all his money, maybe, you know, like, who knows?

• 1:16:17Rich Roll?

  Right, but that doesn't mean that, that his dad and his brother have to like, you know, kind of, you know, contribute to this, I guess. And who knows? I mean, I don't know.

• 1:16:27Adam Skolnick?

  One brother's in there.

• 1:16:28Rich Roll?

  I don't know these people, I don't know.

• 1:16:29Adam Skolnick?

  One brother's in there.

• 1:16:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's the one brother.

• 1:16:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:31Rich Roll?

  And Sean Penn is in there a little bit, you know? I mean, that dude.

• 1:16:35Adam Skolnick?

  He's sweating through it.

• 1:16:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Adam Skolnick?

  He doesn't seem stoked to be there, but he's there.

• 1:16:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Speaking of which, you haven't seen One Battle After Another?

• 1:16:45Adam Skolnick?

  No, I haven't seen it. I read the interview, the David Marchese interview in New York Times that Sean Penn did, I thought was interesting. No, I haven't seen it. No spoilers, please. I'm desperate to see it, but I haven't, you know?

• 1:16:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I won't, I won't spoil it. I was in DC and despite me being kind of full-time on deck for my family, I did find, you know, a four-hour window where I could escape and I went by myself to go see it in Georgetown in IMAX.

• 1:17:13Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing, yeah.

• 1:17:14Rich Roll?

  It's a remarkable, it's a remarkable movie and Sean Penn's performance is really something. I mean, it's, it's out there, you know, it's really out there. It is, it's masterful filmmaking and I think, you know, Paul Thomas Anderson sort of asserts himself as, as one of, if not our greatest living filmmaker. Like, it is a remarkable work of art.

• 1:17:41Adam Skolnick?

  I can't wait to see it.

• 1:17:42Rich Roll?

  And an achievement and you're gonna love it. Try to see it in IMAX. In LA, it's all about seeing it in Vista Vision.

• 1:17:48Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, with that?

• 1:17:49Rich Roll?

  Which you could see at the Vista in Los Feliz. But like, it's basically the film cut that is made for the specific camera, the Vista Vision camera that Paul used to film it, which has a certain grain. And so film enthusiasts are like, you have to see it in Vista Vision. But at the Vista Theater in Los Feliz, like... It keeps breaking.

• 1:18:12Adam Skolnick?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:18:13Rich Roll?

  And so they just end up putting it up, you know, in the digital projection or whatever. And I think there's only like a couple of theaters in America that even are outfitted to screen it in Vista Vision anyway, but IMAX is definitely worth it.

• 1:18:27Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. So Charlie Sheen's on Netflix. We have a couple of other Netflix things happening that we should talk about, right?

• 1:18:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:34Adam Skolnick?

  Which where you want to go first?

• 1:18:36Rich Roll?

  Well, we can start with the fact that I was in, I was also in New York City the past couple of weeks and I happened to be in New York during Climate Week.

• 1:18:44Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:18:45Rich Roll?

  And I went to this event for Protect Our Winters, which is this nonprofit and is doing all kinds of cool stuff. I'd heard the founder speak before and they were screening one of Alex Honnold's movies, one of his climbing movies, not Free Solo, but there was a little gathering beforehand. I'd already seen the movie, so I just wanted to go and mingle and socialize. So I saw Alex and I was catching up with him. And this was before the announcement of what we're going to talk about, but you know, I was asking him like, aren't you supposed to go and like climb some skyscraper in Dubai or something like that? And he's like, no, it's Taipei. And I was like, yeah, we've been working on that for a long time. And I was like, because he was saying, well, he was talking about,

• 1:19:25Rich Roll?

  like, I was like, how is it being a dad, you know, like he's being a dad now? And also, you know, he's a celebrity, so he gets asked to do talks all the time and, you know, come to New York for Climate Week and do all sorts of stuff. And, you know, how does that work with you being a professional climber and you, you know, your goals, like what are your goals? Do you still have goals? What do those goals look like? And, and, and just to talk about like how it gets harder, you know, to like prioritize that kind of stuff? Like, does he have anything to prove? But he still loves it. And like, is there anything that he still wants to accomplish? Like, he probably has, he's 40, so.

• 1:20:00Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:20:01Rich Roll?

  Probably has five years, you know, he has a, he has a window of time, you know, where he can like be a baller. And then it starts to, you know, decline a little bit. So we're just talking about that. And I was like, well, you, aren't you doing some skyscraper thing or whatever? And he's like, yeah, he was talking about, anyway, so there was a, a. An announcement in the trades about this Netflix, it's Netflix, right?

• 1:20:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Netflix.

• 1:20:24Rich Roll?

  Is gonna do this, so it's gonna scale.

• 1:20:25Adam Skolnick?

  Netflix live show.

• 1:20:26Rich Roll?

  It's gonna scale this skyscraper in Taipei. Do you have the details on this?

• 1:20:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, 101 floor skyscraper, 1,667 feet high. And I think you asked about it and you said, wow, and it's gonna be free solo.

• 1:20:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's gonna free solo.

• 1:20:40Adam Skolnick?

  A two hour free solo special.

• 1:20:42Rich Roll?

  And he told, yeah, and they're gonna livestream it, basically. So it's, it's meant to be this global event. Like, we're gonna be able to watch him do this in real time, like, around the world on Netflix.

• 1:20:51Adam Skolnick?

  That's right, that's right.

• 1:20:52Rich Roll?

  Which is kind of, kind of amazing.

• 1:20:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:54Rich Roll?

  According to him, you know, assuming it's not raining, or, you know, like, crazy windy or whatever, he seems to think this is not that big of a deal.

• 1:21:02Adam Skolnick?

  He always says that.

• 1:21:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's like, it's, it's pretty basic.

• 1:21:04Adam Skolnick?

  It's easier than you think. It's easier than it looks.

• 1:21:09Adam Skolnick?

  Well, it doesn't look easy. It looks insane.

• 1:21:11Rich Roll?

  I know, it looks completely insane. Yeah, he's like, it's pretty basic. This is a pretty basic climb.

• 1:21:17Adam Skolnick?

  That's nope.

• 1:21:18Rich Roll?

  Cause we really had, like, time for training, and he was sort of like, well, I don't really need to train for that. Like, that's not, you know, it's like, that's not that big of a thing, or whatever. I was like, okay, our frame of reference, you know?

• 1:21:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  It's all, it's all like, uh, um, you know, it's all a matter of perspective.

• 1:21:34Adam Skolnick?

  But how do you train for a building? Like, do you do it in, like, a climbing gym? Or do you actually go climb other buildings? You know, like, like, like the guy who, uh, who did the, um, I forget his name, the great Frenchman who did the high wire between the Twin Towers?

• 1:21:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, right, yeah.

• 1:21:49Adam Skolnick?

  He was doing, like, Notre Dame. He did it, he had to do it a few times, you know what I mean? Like, how do you?

• 1:21:54Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:21:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I'm sure that'll be part of the, the show, but like, yeah, it's interesting. And, you know, they're getting into expeditions. Colin O'Brady's got an expedition on Netflix that's happening, right?

• 1:22:04Rich Roll?

  Well, first of all, before we move off of the Alex thing, I mean, the only other thing I can remember seeing in recent memory is, is, uh, what's his name, the magician? Didn't he?

• 1:22:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, David Blaine.

• 1:22:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, David Blaine, like, did a skydiving stunt, or he, he did something crazy that was livestreamed on a streamer, or whatever. And, and so, and I remember, like, it was a big deal, like, the whole world was sort of watching it, cause you didn't know what was gonna happen, and this feels... A little bit like that.

• 1:22:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, this is definitely like that. It's like Evel Knievel does, you know, like jumps the grand.

• 1:22:34Rich Roll?

  Right, I know. It's like, this is when we were little kids, there was stuff like this, you know?

• 1:22:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But of course, that wasn't.

• 1:22:38Rich Roll?

  I kind of dig it. I remember that.

• 1:22:39Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, I'm gonna watch this.

• 1:22:41Rich Roll?

  Evel Knievel jumping snake, it was Snake River, I think.

• 1:22:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's what it was.

• 1:22:44Rich Roll?

  And he didn't make it.

• 1:22:44Adam Skolnick?

  And he didn't make it.

• 1:22:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. I can't, I can't wait to watch this. I'm like, I'm like, you know, I'm a junkie for the Alex Honnold stuff. I mean, he's in Climate Week probably for the Honnold Foundation, too.

• 1:22:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was a, it was a Protect Our Winners, but it was also on behalf of Honnold Foundation.

• 1:22:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:58Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, he's very involved in that, honestly.

• 1:23:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And Protect Our Winners is Jeremy Jones, great, great snowboarder, and a great, very eloquent.

• 1:23:05Rich Roll?

  He was at the event also.

• 1:23:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Rich Roll?

  And yeah, there's another Netflix, this is Netflix also, right? Our friend of the pod, Colin O'Brien.

• 1:23:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Rich Roll?

  Has a, is gonna be doing this new adventure show where he's gonna go across Antarctica again.

• 1:23:21Adam Skolnick?

  Again. He loves it there.

• 1:23:22Rich Roll?

  Unsupported. But it sounds like this one is like longer, like he's going from...

• 1:23:27Adam Skolnick?

  I don't have any insight into this because the first I heard of it was a day and a half, a day ago or something, and we were, and then we emailed.

• 1:23:34Rich Roll?

  It was an article in Deadline.

• 1:23:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:35Rich Roll?

  And I was just texting with him because he was doing some retreat and he was with Guru Singh.

• 1:23:39Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:23:39Rich Roll?

  And so he sent me a photo and we were chatting a little bit. And he said he was training for his next, he was doing this retreat. There was like a love retreat. He's a love retreat, that's what he called it. But then he's, he's like, I'm training for my next thing. And I didn't know what his next thing was, but now I do.

• 1:23:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Well, the only thing I can think of is after we, you know, he did the Antarctica race against Lou Rudd in 2018, finishing in like, I think New Year's Eve was like, or whatever, it was like shortly, almost, I think it was almost on New Year's Eve when he finished. I have to go back and look at those stories.

• 1:24:09Rich Roll?

  But for people that, that don't know, like you were covering that for the New York Times.

• 1:24:13Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 1:24:14Rich Roll?

  And it was like this multi-color, like it was a big splashy kind of ongoing story that you were covering.

• 1:24:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I covered it periodically. I was covering the, I was talking to Lou and Colin while they were out there on their satellite phones. I was keeping, I was messaging with them and Colin was, you know, the whole thing, Colin brought me in as, hey, can we, you know, would you be interested in the story? And so kind of he told, he tipped me off early. But in the aftermath, those stories went really large, right? People liked him, but then there was a whole undercurrent within the real serious expedition kind of community that were backing a guy named Borg Osland. Borg is the amazing Norwegian explorer, like, who wasn't necessarily, all of these guys want the attention to what they do, but he wasn't like, he was like really the kind of nuts and bolts or old school explorer and he had, he had

• 1:25:02Adam Skolnick?

  used a kite to help him a little bit on the ski, but he went from sea to sea. What we, what, what Colin and Lou did, they went from the edge of the sea ice, like a couple of miles out on the sea ice to the landmass and what they were crossing was the landmass. So as soon as they got to the other sea ice, they were done. But in reality, the sea ice is kind of expands to the point where it's like, makes Antarctica twice as, as wide in some, in some places and the, and the ice is fused there. So if you look, if you flew over it, you'd be like, well, that's part of the land. So that was criticism that they both received and Colin, I think, must have felt that. I haven't talked to him about it specifically, but it must have sunk in because this

• 1:25:45Rich Roll?

  This is sea to sea.

• 1:25:46Adam Skolnick?

  Sea to sea.

• 1:25:47Rich Roll?

  Sea to sea. And it's gonna be a series, I guess, on Netflix?

• 1:25:51Adam Skolnick?

  Is it a series?

• 1:25:51Rich Roll?

  I don't know. But I know that it's being directed by the guy who directed My Octopus Teacher.

• 1:25:56Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:25:56Rich Roll?

  And did that win the Oscar? I think it did. I can't remember.

• 1:26:00Adam Skolnick?

  It should have.

• 1:26:00Rich Roll?

  But either way, like, high level director, you know, so this is not a, you know, not like a low rent project. This is like a, this is gonna be like a high profile kind of thing.

• 1:26:11Adam Skolnick?

  But it is his fourth time back there, from my count, at least.

• 1:26:14Rich Roll?

  His fourth time in, are you including the Drake Passage thing? I mean,

• 1:26:18Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no. I mean, I'm just, just pulling, just, just pulling the pull.

• 1:26:21Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, the last time he was there, he fell into the crevasse and like, almost died.

• 1:26:25Adam Skolnick?

  And he, and he pulled out, right? So that was, and that was a, like, another type of race. There are multiple people going to try to break his record or something and he was

• 1:26:32Rich Roll?

  I don't remember.

• 1:26:32Adam Skolnick?

  That was 2023. He, and he was also there for the Explorers Grand Slam, the first, the kind of thing that put him on the map in the, in this adventure kind of community where he broke the FKT for the Explorers Grand Slam, which is the seven summits and the both poles. And so he pulled a polk to the South Pole as part of that, so.

• 1:26:52Rich Roll?

  It's just interesting that these adventurers are getting Netflix shows.

• 1:26:56Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 1:26:56Rich Roll?

  You know, it's wild.

• 1:26:57Adam Skolnick?

  It is wild. It's good. I mean, I mean, it's, it is cool. It's like, you know, what I've heard about, what I read, I did a little bit of just baby digging on this Netflix thing is, I guess, in the, in the streaming wars, everyone kind of suffered some erosion. They suffered some subscription erosion, erosion, and getting into sports and live events enables them to get some advertising dollars as well as gets people who want to pay for the subscription. So it kind of, it helps retain subscribers and recruit more and then get some advertising dollars and it helps the stock price stay buoyant or something like that. It's like a strategic play because they'd already kind of played out what they could do in their original model.

• 1:27:38Rich Roll?

  Yes, if you're a competing streamer. If you're Netflix, you're in an entirely different situation. Like Netflix is so much bigger and more powerful than any of the other ones. I think it's like, basically, if you, if you added up all of the other streamers, Netflix would still be bigger. Like, it's so dominant in the space. So they don't really need to do that in the way these others do, but I think that they also recognize that the future is in live events. And so I think this Honold thing, like, the one thing that the streamers have yet to really conquer is like live sports, right? Like, live events. And that's the one thing that's keeping people tethered to cable boxes.

• 1:28:23Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:28:23Rich Roll?

  Right? Because, because you're not going to be, I mean, you can like stream sports on, but it's not the same, you know, it's not the same experience. So, anyway, all of that's super interesting.

• 1:28:32Adam Skolnick?

  Well, they're doing it. I mean, Amazon Prime has football, NBA is going to be on a couple of the streamers. So, yeah.

• 1:28:39Rich Roll?

  I think so. Wasn't there, wasn't there some, some of those deals? I don't know. I shouldn't, you know, listen to The Town, that podcast. They'll, they'll.

• 1:28:46Adam Skolnick?

  They'll tell you everything.

• 1:28:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, I don't know. I'm not like steeped in that. I know there's like a lot of deals going on right now in that space, but I'm no expert at that.

• 1:28:55Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 1:28:56Rich Roll?

  I think we should wrap this up. Is there anything final you want to say? Well, we should congratulate the Norwegians on their sweep in Nice.

• 1:29:04Adam Skolnick?

  Casper, Gustav, and Christian. Casper Stornes, because usually you don't hear about him as much as Gustav and Christian. Coming into this with the Nice, the Nice World Championships.

• 1:29:17Rich Roll?

  Ironman World Championship.

• 1:29:18Adam Skolnick?

  Ironman World Championship, yeah. And Nice.

• 1:29:20Rich Roll?

  Which happened when I was in Tokyo at the World Championships. And Gustav and Christian are both ON athletes. So, obviously, everyone at ON was pretty excited about those guys going 2-3.

• 1:29:34Adam Skolnick?

  It's amazing. Well, I mean, Christian coming in was absolutely dominant. Absolutely dominant. He'd won, I think, three starts in a row, two full Ironmans, and one of the half-Ironman championships he won.

• 1:29:44Rich Roll?

  And Gustav has had a harder comeback trail. His mother passed away, I think he had an injury or something like that. And it was unclear if he was going to be back in form, but he just absolutely crushed.

• 1:29:55Adam Skolnick?

  He crushed. And so they were all together at one point. And I guess Stornes won 751-39.

• 1:30:01Rich Roll?

  He was their training partner, right? Like, they train, all three of those guys train together.

• 1:30:05Adam Skolnick?

  It's nice to see.

• 1:30:06Rich Roll?

  Crazy. In Norway, not under the tropical sun somewhere.

• 1:30:11Adam Skolnick?

  No, they're in.

• 1:30:12Rich Roll?

  They travel a lot.

• 1:30:13Adam Skolnick?

  They're in Spain a lot, I think, to train and stuff. But what's interesting is, you turned me on to their data-driven approach. And that became a New York Times story that I did.

• 1:30:27Rich Roll?

  Then you wrote an article about that.

• 1:30:29Adam Skolnick?

  Right. And this became, but it's amazing to see it continue. Because that was a while ago.

• 1:30:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:34Adam Skolnick?

  That was like several years ago.

• 1:30:36Rich Roll?

  And it hasn't been linear. Christian didn't exactly perform in Paris in the way that he wanted to. And then he didn't acquit himself well at the Ironman World Championships last year after Paris. And I did a podcast with him then.

• 1:30:52Rich Roll?

  And so there was a big question mark. And meanwhile, Gustav was struggling. He was dealing with the grief of his mother passing. And so it's like, was that just a chapter? And now we're on to something else? So to see these guys come back and prove that they're in it for the long haul and that what they're doing is working. It's pretty cool.

• 1:31:11Adam Skolnick?

  It's amazing, amazing to see it. So, congrats to those guys. Congrats also to Antonio Argüés. He got his seventh Catalina crossing and our boy Hank Wise.

• 1:31:20Rich Roll?

  That's right Hank Wise. Was he, did, so he, was he in the boat? You were in the boat with?

• 1:31:26Adam Skolnick?

  I was in the boat with Antonio.

• 1:31:28Rich Roll?

  So, just explain for people like what the Catalina crossing is all about.

• 1:31:33Adam Skolnick?

  So, it's a 20 mile crossing from Catalina to mainland or vice versa. It's a channel. And so, it's one of the Ocean's Seven, one of the seven main channel crossings. It's also one of the triple crown of open water swimming along with English Channel and Swimming Round Manhattan. So, it's one of the major places. And Antonio was going for his seventh crossing and we set off and he invited me to be on the boat. And as much as I've written about the sport, I'd never been on a boat for one of these crossings. And so, I had to go, you know, I wanted to experience it. And also on the boat were Steven Munatones, you know, who we all know, who's like a longtime

• 1:32:17Adam Skolnick?

  open water swimmer, open water swim booster and.

• 1:32:20Rich Roll?

  Sort of like the man in charge of storytelling. Like he sort of lords over open water swimming as the person who champions it and is writing about it and telling stories.

• 1:32:38Adam Skolnick?

  And doing it. And he's, you know, he won a SCAR one year. He's instrumental in helping get into the Olympics. He invited Diana Nyad. It was the first time Diana and Antonio.

• 1:32:47Rich Roll?

  So, she was in the boat with you too?

• 1:32:48Adam Skolnick?

  She was in the boat. They'd had dinner like a couple of days before and then she came on the boat and she was a blast. I mean.

• 1:32:53Rich Roll?

  So, you were hanging out with Diana Nyad like on the boat for the?

• 1:32:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I'd heard so many, you know, people tell these horrible stories about this person, you know, and even watching the movie, you get the sense that it's not really her. It's like, it's like the movie, I enjoyed the movie a lot. I'm not criticizing the movie, but it was like she seemed much more serious and she's like, she was a lot of fun. I mean, she was a good time. I mostly hung out with Diana. That was most of the time.

• 1:33:18Rich Roll?

  And so Hank was on the boat or not? Sorry, I was looking at something online.

• 1:33:20Adam Skolnick?

  Hank came with Munatones to say hello to Antonio and then, you know, we took a picture. I told you that, you know.

• 1:33:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Hank was texting me. I was in the middle. I just, you know, I owe him a phone call. But anyway, go ahead.

• 1:33:32Adam Skolnick?

  But he, you know, you're.

• 1:33:34Rich Roll?

  So Hank Wise, Hank Wise was my teammate at Stanford. And he's one of the most interesting, hilarious and cool, unique people you're ever gonna meet.

• 1:33:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:33:46Rich Roll?

  And like me, you know, he didn't exactly become a star on the Stanford swimming team. But he really found his groove in open water swimming later in life. And he holds the record for the Catalina Crossing. Did you know that?

• 1:34:01Adam Skolnick?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:34:02Rich Roll?

  I just looked it up. Yes, 7 hours 55 minutes in 2018.

• 1:34:05Adam Skolnick?

  That's amazing.

• 1:34:06Rich Roll?

  He's the fastest guy to ever cross from Catalina to Los Angeles.

• 1:34:11Adam Skolnick?

  That's incredible. I didn't know that.

• 1:34:13Rich Roll?

  He still holds it. And I think he did a swim shortly after that swim. Like he went and did it again. I don't know what he did or whatever, but he's still out there getting after it.

• 1:34:22Adam Skolnick?

  No, he just did it. He swam from Terranaya Resort, so from Palos Verdes to Catalina. So he went the opposite.

• 1:34:28Rich Roll?

  Oh, he went the opposite direction.

• 1:34:29Adam Skolnick?

  And he did it in eight hours and like nine minutes or something at 60 years. I mean, it's like, that's incredible.

• 1:34:34Rich Roll?

  He's probably 57, 6 or something like that. Yeah, he was a couple of years younger than me. But I've known Hank since he was, I don't know, 17, 18 years old.

• 1:34:43Adam Skolnick?

  He's a great, he's a great follow on Instagram. If you find him, he's hilarious.

• 1:34:46Rich Roll?

  He's great. He's got a little mustache and it's basically cooking videos for the most part.

• 1:34:50Adam Skolnick?

  You're plant-based.

• 1:34:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's plant-based, you know?

• 1:34:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:34:53Rich Roll?

  So do the math. Fastest guy to ever swim the Catalina Channel, plant-based, and he's 50, you know, he's my age.

• 1:34:59Adam Skolnick?

  And he's a swim coach.

• 1:35:00Rich Roll?

  And he's a swim coach, yeah.

• 1:35:01Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, he's a great guy. It was fun to meet him.

• 1:35:03Rich Roll?

  He is an amazing, amazing person.

• 1:35:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So shout out Hank and shout out Antonio. Yeah, man.

• 1:35:10Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Well, I think that's a good place to put it.

• 1:35:12Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:35:12Rich Roll?

  We had other stuff on here, but you know, well, you know, well, uh, we're not here to exhaust the audience, are we, Adam?

• 1:35:20Adam Skolnick?

  No, I've been told.

• 1:35:21Rich Roll?

  If you're still here, I'm exhausted. I'm pretty exhausted.

• 1:35:27Adam Skolnick?

  No. Hey, it's good to see you, man.

• 1:35:30Rich Roll?

  You too, man. Uh, hey, maybe we'll do this again sometime.

• 1:35:33Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it. Let's do it.

• 1:35:34Rich Roll?

  Peace out.

• 1:35:39Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep

• 1:36:23Rich Roll?

  this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake. Content management by Shana Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor. And of course, our theme music was created, all the way back in 2012, by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt,

• 1:37:05Rich Roll?

  and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.