ROLL ON 2025 So Far: Navigating Uncertainty, Getting Unstuck, Elmo, Psychedelics, ‘Adolescence’ & More

Roll On is back baby! Today Rich and Adam Skolnick catch up on the decade that is 2025. On tap is SXSW, Elmo, psychedelics, the LA fires, and practical strategies for navigating the turbulence of our current moment. They also go deep on the Netflix hit “Adolescence” and its many important themes, including the impact of social media on teenagers and the crisis of young men. Along the way, they answer listener questions and more. Rejoice! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Seed: Use code RICHROLL25 for 25% OFF your first order 👉seed.com/RichRoll Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF 👉gobrewing.com Pique: Get up to 20% OFF plus a FREE rechargeable frother and glass beaker with your first purchase 👉piquelife.com/richroll Roka: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL 👉ROKA.com/RICHROLL Bragg: Use code RICHROLL for 20% off your first order 👉Bragg.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at 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.

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• 0:52Rich Roll?

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• 1:14Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody, welcome back to Roll On.

• 1:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:17Rich Roll?

  Mr. Skolnick. Welcome back to a much delayed return to the beloved Roll On.

• 1:25Adam Skolnick?

  I couldn't be happier to be here. Thanks for having me, man. This is, it's an honor to be in, not just back, but in this space.

• 1:32Rich Roll?

  So we are recording from a brand-new space. For those that are watching on YouTube, hopefully it looks exactly the same, but we have relocated to a new space. That space is an unfolding story that we will be telling at a future date. I don't want to go too much into it, but we have moved into a new headquarters for the purposes of housing our burgeoning and quickly growing Voicing Change Media Network of podcast partners with multiple studios, so we can house other creators and kind of have this collaborative community, which is really exciting. So we're in the midst of honing in on the final details of completing it.

• 2:16Rich Roll?

  Once that's done, we'll definitely be talking more about it. I'm sure we'll do like a video tour of the whole thing, and it's gonna allow us to kind of up-level. Not only the kind of creative aspect of this show by creating, you know, kind of ancillary types of content, but also content around all of our partners who are coming in and out. It's been wild because now that we have other shows recording here, I'll come to the studio and like, oh, hey, there's Abby Wambach, you know, in the lot, like, what are you doing? You know, it's like wild, right? Like, it's very cool. I'm super excited about it. And like I said, more will be revealed. But welcome. This is the very first podcast

• 2:59Rich Roll?

  episode of the RRP that is being recorded in the new space. The other creators have been here for a while, but we took our time moving our set over. And so this is the version episode. And I couldn't think of anyone better to kind of celebrate that than with you, my friend.

• 3:16Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, man. Thank you. It's a, like I said, it's an honor. I'm stoked to be here. It's really exciting to see what's happening with the network and all the different collaborators that are involved. And, you know, I'm, I mean, I'm, I'm working on a little something.

• 3:30Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 3:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 3:31Rich Roll?

  Maybe zip it for now. Create a little anticipation. You're a storyteller.

• 3:36Adam Skolnick?

  I'm a storyteller.

• 3:37Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 3:37Adam Skolnick?

  Something might turn up.

• 3:38Rich Roll?

  Build anticipation in the way that White Lotus seems very intent upon building anticipation by literally this incredibly slow boil where it seems like nothing is happening. You know, it's coming. And it's like, we're going to go through another episode with not that much happening. Anyway, we'll talk about that.

• 3:53Adam Skolnick?

  I'm literally mimicking that slow boil with this project.

• 3:57Rich Roll?

  All right. We also put out the call for some audience questions. We got a bunch. They kind of rotated on themes, but I thought what we would do is sort of answer them, not at the end, but kind of throughout the conversation, because they kind of dovetail nicely with the topics that we wanted to cover today. But one of them was, why don't we do Roll On more frequently, Adam?

• 4:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 4:18Rich Roll?

  It's a good question.

• 4:18Adam Skolnick?

  Why not?

• 4:19Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I mean, I think, first of all, I would say that the idea for Roll On was twofold originally. One was to kind of provide an opportunity for me as the host to like, share more of my thoughts because it's always so guest oriented. And I'm not so great at like, doing it alone, looking to camera. I wanted somebody to spar with and you have turned out to be the perfect person to do that with. And then secondly, because it seemed like an easier lift than all the prep that goes into the guests. It turns out it takes just about the same amount of prep in order to, you know, kind of do it well. You know what I mean? I find, at least, maybe I don't need to prep as much for it as I do, but I end up doing that the same. And so maybe we haven't done it as much because it didn't alleviate that

• 5:04Rich Roll?

  kind of first need of being an easier lift, but also because they have to be kind of timely and of the moment and with our production schedule and we work way ahead. And now I'm in the midst of working on this book and we're batching stuff. And so we've had that experience of recording a roll on like a couple of weeks before it goes up. And then because the news, you know, moves increasingly faster and faster, the things that we talk about are kind of stale by the time it comes out. So this one, we're recording on Monday, it's going up on Thursday. That's about as tight of a post-production cycle as we can manage at this point. But it's a good question and, you know, the fans have spoken. I think the fans of Roll On might be smaller, fewer than, you know, the larger podcast audience at large, but they're very

• 5:49Rich Roll?

  passionate. You know, I don't know about you, but I'm constantly getting pinged by people like, when's Roll On? Like enough of this bullshit with the guests. Like we need our Roll On. And then of course, we've got Chris Evans over in the UK who's constantly, you know, saying like, get back on the Roll On. You should just be doing Roll On every day.

• 6:06Adam Skolnick?

  Well, some people who love Roll On, that's like their favorite podcast. So it's like as if their podcast went off. But also, I think when Roll On first happened, it was also a response to the fact that it was hard to do a show during the pandemic. Like because it was hard to get people in and there was a whole protocol around that that you hadn't mastered yet. And so we were doing it twice a month. And that's probably too much because, you know, unless you're changing the whole format of your show, which you didn't want to do and you shouldn't. But

• 6:35Adam Skolnick?

  But yeah, like, you know, every so often, it's like comforting for people. They want to hear.

• 6:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna talk a little shit. It's a little unfiltered and it's a more relaxed version of me than the kind of sphincter clenched version of me that shows up when I have to sit across from somebody impressive and pretend like I know what they're talking about.

• 6:54Adam Skolnick?

  I'm gonna take that as a compliment. But also, the difference though is when you're talking to an Adam Grant or someone like that, there's only so much of yourself that you're sharing, you know, because you're mostly there to prop up your guests and to like explore their lives and what they have to say. And so, this is an opportunity, I think, for your listeners to hear from you. And so that's probably why people like it the most.

• 7:18Rich Roll?

  Hopefully. A second question was, do we spend time together off mic?

• 7:24Adam Skolnick?

  Not enough.

• 7:25Rich Roll?

  Not enough. There is a bit of a bromance that goes on off mic though, you know? I wish I'd spent more time with you off mic. We do talk a lot, but it's not like, you know, you're coming over for Sunday brunch and stuff like that. Maybe we could rectify that.

• 7:41Adam Skolnick?

  I don't go anywhere, bro.

• 7:42Rich Roll?

  I don't either. That's the thing. I don't hang out with anyone.

• 7:45Adam Skolnick?

  No, I've got a, I've got a four and a half year old. My margins are small. You know what I'm like? Like, my margins are to the point where I just, I exercise them for exercise. Like, my margins are tight. So like, I'm not gonna cash in like a night out with people, like with the, with the boys for like a run. I just don't, you know, I'm not gonna do that. So, so I'm kind of, I had this conversation with a buddy of mine who invited me out and he goes, and he, and he's got older kids and he said, you know, I forget what it's like to have a kid under five. You're right. There's a lot of staying home. And he was saying it as kind of, not like he thought it was negative, but just that like there's, you miss out.

• 8:25Adam Skolnick?

  And I think two things for me, I had Zoom a late, we had Zoom a late enough where I, I don't have any of the FOMO. Like, I did a lot of stuff. Like, I was all over the world. I was did a lot. I was out a lot. I did all that and I don't have it. And the second, so the second is, I just like it. I like being home. I like, like practicing my guitar and going to bed early and watching stuff and reading. I actually like it.

• 8:50Rich Roll?

  The comforts of the middle aged man.

• 8:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I'm enjoying it. Yeah.

• 8:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, me too. Also, for people that aren't. Super familiar with the topography of Los Angeles.

• 9:00Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  Like, I happen to live, you know, out in the middle of nowhere. This studio is quite far away from most things that people would consider Los Angeles proper. You live in Santa Monica and the drive from like here or my house to where you live ordinarily wouldn't be that bad, maybe thirty, forty, forty, forty-five minutes.

• 9:20Adam Skolnick?

  Forty minutes, no traffic.

• 9:20Rich Roll?

  But now, the Pacific Coast Highway is closed due to the LA fires. It's still closed. And so without that, you have to go all the way around 101 to the 405 and you're looking at like an hour and fifteen. I mean, how long did it take you to get here today?

• 9:34Adam Skolnick?

  Today was okay. It was like forty-five minutes because it's a weekday and it's not, you don't have the beach traffic and it's a little off, off the time. I forgot, I was gonna bring my press pass to get through the checkpoints in case I wanted to go home, the PCH, because I've done that a couple of times where I just, I've driven through and you just have to have a press pass and they just let you through. And I've done it for work. I haven't done it. Well, one time I did it for work, but also to beat traffic to come, to come out here for that, for that year, like that.

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  Well, it's a worthy, you know, use of your press pass. You are on your way to a press event.

• 10:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes, yes. And so I went through, but you know, it's devastating. It's still devastating and the fact that PCH is still not open just shows you what we're dealing with and it's not open anytime soon, I don't think.

• 10:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't think so.

• 10:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 10:25Rich Roll?

  I'm curious about what that's like to see it up close and up front like that. That's an experience I haven't had yet and I'll preface that question by saying that although our home was incredibly proximate to the northwest edge of the fire, it was arrested like on the ridgeline just shy of our little neighborhood. We were evacuated for nine days. We went up to Ojai and, and because we were out of town and when we were able to finally get back into our house, the PCH being closed and all these roads being closed, I actually have yet to even see.

• 11:05Rich Roll?

  With my own eyes, any evidence of the burn, like my entire experience of the fire has been like everyone else on Instagram, seeing videos or on the phone, talking to friends who lost their homes or were kind of like right there. I mean, I've had plenty of conversations with people. I was at the On retail store on Abbe Kenney in Venice, like handing out apparel and shoes in the aftermath of the fire to like all these people who had lost everything. So I feel connected to it in that regard. I just haven't like seen it and I haven't been on PCH, which is weird and deranging. Like it's all around us.

• 11:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, but I think that's common. I think that's common. I think most people's experience of it, unless they've gone out and sought the views or have the access. Most people have seen it on television or on Instagram, a lot of like drone footage or that chopper footage. I saw like, I can't remember exactly, it was probably the end, like in January, when he had that dinner, like later January is when my first time I drove through it in the Palisades section.

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  That was the time we hung out off mic.

• 12:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, no, it happens. We get in the water sometimes.

• 12:16Rich Roll?

  It's been a while since we've done that.

• 12:18Adam Skolnick?

  It exists. But the, you know, the alphabet streets in the Palisades just completely wiped out, like a whole plateau of homes. And, you know, we don't have to go too deep into it. Everyone knows what happened. But the things that have kind of stuck with me is that it was such an organism, that fire, to start from like that burn scar from the New Year's Eve burn scar and just explode. And then it goes all the way, wanders all the way to Mandeville, all the way out by you. You know, this is, this is what, how many miles? Like, this is like 50, 40 miles or something like that, just from point to point. That's how far that fire spread before it was even close to contained in any way.

• 13:01Adam Skolnick?

  Just one of those, one of those crazy, you know, nuclear storms.

• 13:09Rich Roll?

  So when you're driving on PCH and seeing it, what is that like?

• 13:14Adam Skolnick?

  You know, going through the Palisades, it's more like a neighborhood, neighborhoods that are completely wiped out. So I've been, for reporting, I've been in displaced people's camps. I've talked to people who've been victims of war and have had to flee, and many refugees. But I've never actually been to a site like I saw in the Palisades where a neighborhood was erased. You know, I've been to the aftermath where I saw people who have left villages that were torched, but I've never seen it, like I've never been in it. So it was very post-apocalyptic, you know, it was windy, the chains were rattling, the fire department was still around, the National Guard was still manning the checkpoints, and I think they probably still are. But so it was very, it was pretty early on to

• 13:53Adam Skolnick?

  be there. But it wasn't like during the firefight. And so that was so overwhelming. And then coming down towards PCH, Zuma's school is West Side Waldorf, and they are, their main campus was on Sunset, just inland from PCH. And that, I thought it was completely burned down because that was the intel we were getting, but it was like half burnt. And that campus is owned by Self-Regulation Fellowship, but so they were renting that space. So they're not going to go back to that space. I mean, it is burnt to the point where they can't, it's like an unsalvageable situation. Luckily, Zuma's school is in Santa Monica. Now, all the kids are on that one little campus in Santa Monica, which was originally

• 14:36Adam Skolnick?

  a satellite campus. So I was, the point being, I was so consumed by this feeling of a post-apocalyptic doom, and then checking out Zuma's campus, that by the time I got to PCH, it's overwhelming because you see it, house after house burned, but it doesn't hit you to the same way as if you're surrounded by it, because it's still on the flank of PCH. So it didn't, it didn't really hit. And then just Wednesday, I was out on a boat. I was helping a photographer friend of mine, Glenna Gordon, who shoots for the New York Times Magazine sometimes, and she and I worked together in the past. She wants, she's trying to do something on the fires' long-term impact on the coast. And so... Through our friend Kyle Tierman, you're my friend. I got hooked up with a buddy of his

• 15:21Adam Skolnick?

  and he took us out on a boat and so she could get in the water and do some over under shots. And so I was in the, it was the first time I've been in the Santa Monica Bay since the fires, which is so abnormal for me. Like, and the water quality is something we've all been very concerned about and air quality, but the water, water looked and felt the same as it would in March anytime. It was 53 degrees. It looked very green algae, but not, not scary contaminated or anything. And then that, it hit me harder that way because I was looking at the whole coastline of houses where you'd normally see it and it was just gone and Bald Mountains behind. So that's my feeling of it. But, you know, for, for me, for our family, we,

• 16:03Adam Skolnick?

  we evacuated the first night, that Tuesday night, because it was coming closer and closer. And we were voluntary evacuated and then I came back the next day. And the funny thing for me was I had rolled my ankle on a trail run on New Year's Day. And so I was in a boot, hobbling around in a boot, getting the family out, then coming back and like clearing brush in my little, my boot. And it turned out I'd broken, like I had a fracture in my fibula. So I'm like, like just scraping by. It was one of those comedies of errors while, while we're just like doom is taking place. So it was this very weird surreal beginning of 2025 and that doesn't seem like it has ended. That's a weird dream.

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  It's a, it's a lot, man. We, we went up to Ojai. As soon as we arrived, we went to, there was a little farmer's market. There's like a field there and I guess it takes place once a week. We've got some friends up there and a friend of ours let us use a house that they owned that was sort of like vacant or whatever. Didn't even have any furniture. So we were sleeping on like air mattresses. But we go to this farmer's market and I kid you not, like within 10 to 15 minutes, I run into Pete Holmes and Rob Bell. Like, like, like that, that is sort of like the, you know, podcasting annex of what you like. Those guys moved up there. Both of them are like.

• 17:22Adam Skolnick?

  They live there. Rob Bell's up there now?

• 17:23Rich Roll?

  They both live there. Both friends of the pod, friends.

• 17:29Rich Roll?

  There's gotta be a better term than friends of the pod. How about pod champions?

• 17:32Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 17:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:33Adam Skolnick?

  Pod pals?

• 17:34Rich Roll?

  Pod champions.

• 17:35Adam Skolnick?

  Pod pals?

• 17:35Rich Roll?

  Rob Bell and...

• 17:36Adam Skolnick?

  Pod punks?

• 17:38Rich Roll?

  No.

• 17:39Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 17:39Rich Roll?

  We'll work on it.

• 17:40Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 17:41Rich Roll?

  Put your literary mind to work on that. You could do better.

• 17:44Adam Skolnick?

  Pod punks is weak.

• 17:45Rich Roll?

  Anyway, there's a real sense of community up there. I liked it up there. I had a good time. But my intuition, my take is that all of these predictions around rebuilding are wild underestimates. I think it's gonna be like 10 years before things feel like they're back to some kind of, you know, proximate level to what they were before. And all these people that are looking at rebuilding, you know, are, I think, most of them are gonna pull up sticks and move somewhere else.

• 18:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 18:19Rich Roll?

  Like the prospect of rebuilding, like waiting that long. So we're already seeing a lot of real estate sales, a lot of commercial real estate developers picking up these, you know, lots, aggregating them, and you're gonna just see over, they can wait it out, right? And then they'll just build spec homes and, you know, sell them at above-market prices.

• 18:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because the undertold thing about the Palisades especially, but also Malibu, is that, you know, these places weren't like ritzy places. And even as recently as the 80s, certainly there were some wealthy people that lived there, but it was also places where teachers lived. And, you know, in Palisades case, it was kind of aerospace workers.

• 19:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:02Adam Skolnick?

  It was the base of that population. And so, and so those, there's people that have lived there, they're in their 90s, they're not rebuilding. And then after Wolseley, my understanding, you know better than me, that a lot of fire insurance pretty much spiked. So people might have been carrying fire insurance, and then all of a sudden, they couldn't carry it to the same level. And so people are underinsured, a lot of people are underinsured. And so, yeah, it's... It's interesting. Like, one of the takeaways for me is that nowhere, nowhere's really safe anymore. Like, nowhere's like, because if you go to the Palisades, sure, they've been evacuated before, but it feels like a neighborhood. Like, even my neighborhood is even further

• 19:47Adam Skolnick?

  from the Santa Monica Mountains, and we weren't that far. Like, it went to voluntary evacuation on that first night, and we were two miles from flames. And so, you could see it, it could, it could have happened. Like, even there, it could have happened. So, there's no place you can really run to, especially if you like to interface with nature in this climate. So, it's just, we're gonna have to deal with that existential threat, and like, how we deal with that, and, you know, make the best of it, because it's, that's kind of the era we're in. I think that's my takeaway. Not to be doom and gloom, because I don't mean it that way. It just means, it just does seem that we're in this new era where you can't, you know, these, these once-in-a-generation storms that never happen, the 100-year storms, they do happen now, and they happen more regularly.

• 20:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, maybe every 25 years.

• 20:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's, uh, it's, uh, it's an opportunity to engage with uncertainty.

• 20:38Adam Skolnick?

  It is, it is.

• 20:39Rich Roll?

  Life is fundamentally uncertain, as much as we would like to, you know, believe it not to be the case. This is what Alan Langer was talking about on the podcast. Like, it's uncertain, and we're actually terrible at making predictions, you know, even though we think we're good at it.

• 20:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 20:53Rich Roll?

  And the more that we can have a healthy relationship with uncertainty, the, the kind of more grounded and less anxious, I guess, we, we can be. And here we are with this opportunity to engage with a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the century that is 2025.

• 21:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's quite a century so far.

• 21:14Rich Roll?

  I know, we're gonna get to that. I did want to hit on a few things. We gotta keep this moving, because we have so many things to cover in the outline.

• 21:20Adam Skolnick?

  100%.

• 21:20Rich Roll?

  I went to my first South by Southwest. What was that? It feels like months ago, but I think it was only like, two weeks ago.

• 21:27Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Rich Roll?

  Did a panel with the great Baratunde Thurston on why conversation matters. But despite always having wanted to attend this festival, I'd never gone before, and I was, I was really impressed. Like it felt like I'd heard that it kind of waned and maybe that's COVID oriented, but it felt like it was firing on all cylinders. Like it was, you know, so many things going on in that city. It was almost impossible to get your hands around like what to go see and what not to see. All these events competing with each other. Of course, I know you dug into the history a little bit. It was historically music and then independent film and then tech kind of became a big piece of it. But I can tell you this year,

• 22:11Rich Roll?

  it was insane how much of it was about podcasting. There were just dozens of panels on podcasting. There were all these live podcasts happening and, and, you know, Spotify and iHeart and these big networks took over hotels or spaces to throw big parties and gatherings. And it was just super weird and interesting to reflect upon like the early days of doing this and realize like how far this, this form of media has come.

• 22:39Adam Skolnick?

  Wild. Yeah. I mean, even so, the, the quick backstory South by, for those who don't do it, it started in 87, 700 attendees, just a music festival. I mean, a cool music festival because at this time, Austin was still, you know, in the weird stage. It's not, it wasn't kind of on the, I guess it was known, but it was mostly known as an arty town, a music town, slacker town. And then by 2018, it was 161,000 attendees for the music festival or for the total festival. In film and multimedia launched in 94, 95, film split from multimedia. Multimedia was renamed interactive in 99. And now from, if you look at like the music festival part of it, I looked at

• 23:24Adam Skolnick?

  kind of the lineups. It wasn't big bands. Like it wasn't too long ago, like in 2018, it was really big acts that were still going there. And this year, kind of like, That part seems to be dialed way down to like the 80s days, like these interesting indie weird bands that might be great, but just not the same level of like Coachella level of headlining acts. And now it's the podcasters that have kind of become the rock stars of the event, huh?

• 23:49Rich Roll?

  Well, I think the bigger acts also are appearing in part of the kind of branding exercise around like the sponsors of the event. Like St. Vincent played at the Rivian party, you know, so there's, but that's not really part of the festival aspect of it. That's more like, you know, that's more like, you know, kind of marketing and branding.

• 24:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Rich Roll?

  So yeah, I mean, the bands are there, but they're not like in the white hot spotlight of like what the festival is had traditionally been about.

• 24:18Adam Skolnick?

  No. How's it feel for you like as a podcaster, starting in the wilderness where you had to explain what a podcast is probably to everybody you knew?

• 24:27Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's great. It's dizzying, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's both like gratifying, but also you're like, oh man, like now we're part of the, you know, kind of, you know, industrial complex of, of media in a way that this was supposed to be kind of like the radio free Europe version of, you know? But I'm, I mean, look, I'm super grateful to be in this incredibly privileged position where, um, where, you know, what we're doing is successful and has an audience. Like I can't imagine how difficult it would be to, to, you know, start something like this now where there's so much competition and it's much more, um, if you want to do video,

• 25:08Rich Roll?

  it's much more like cost intensive. When I started, there was no competition and, uh, zero barrier to entry. And, you know, video wasn't even a thing. And so it was easy to, um, get this thing up on its feet and cultivate an audience and distinguish it from everything else out there because nobody was really doing very much at the time.

• 25:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 25:32Rich Roll?

  Uh, and that's certainly not the case now. And now you have to have a strategy and you have to know, you know, you have to have kind of like a, a conceit, you know, and a value proposition. Um, and there's all this, uh, you know, kind of intensity that goes into how you launch a show. Like I didn't launch a show. I just uploaded an episode and said, that was fun. Let's do it tomorrow, you know, kind of thing. And like those days are gone, you know?

• 25:55Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 25:55Rich Roll?

  But it was cool to go there. Like I, Marc Maron did a thing. I went to go see him speak.

• 26:02Rich Roll?

  You know, I didn't go to the Spotify, Spotify party I should, but like all these creators were there. And

• 26:09Adam Skolnick?

  Well, Simmons and Marin and you and Rogan, these are some of the early names, right?

• 26:13Rich Roll?

  I mean, you know, I wasn't like first, I mean, Marin, Marin was doing it before me by a couple of years. Simmons was, you know, there were people around. I mean, Rogan had started Adam Carolla, like a lot of comedians, right? But it just wasn't, you know, the landscape it is now. But interestingly, one of the things that happened when I was there was the launch of Michelle Obama's podcast with her brother Craig Robinson. It's called IMO. And I had the opportunity to kind of attend this intimate gathering at the Rivian House to celebrate that launch. So Michelle Obama was there, Craig Robinson was there, and they kind of came out and like talked about their show. They had just recorded an

• 26:56Rich Roll?

  episode with RJ Skaringe, the founder and CEO of Rivian. People who watch or listen to this show know he was on our show recently. And it's just why it's like, oh, Michelle Obama is here, like she's launching a podcast, you know? So that was really cool. I got, she split as soon as she kind of got out and said a few words, but Craig Robinson hung around and I got a chance to talk to him for a little bit, which is cool.

• 27:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, you know, Michelle Obama hosting a podcast, I would say that the medium has, has come along.

• 27:26Adam Skolnick?

  It might do well, that show.

• 27:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think they're, I think they're gonna, I think they're gonna do all right. Yeah.

• 27:30Adam Skolnick?

  Okay. Yes, the medium has matured. The corporate, the corporate people are involved. You know, it's not just South by, like, there are, people are selling out arenas to do their, like, live shows. Like, remember, there was that

• 27:45Rich Roll?

  Acquired.

• 27:46Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly.

• 27:46Rich Roll?

  Acquired. So, yeah, yeah. Speaking of acquired, those guys do amazing work if you're interested in entrepreneurship, or just high performance in general, or what makes successful people successful. Like, those guys are extraordinary at what they do, and they've developed an incredible following, and they're doing arenas, right? And I actually just listened to one of those episodes last week, because right after South by Southwest, I, I had a speaking gig in Tucson at an event called People for Bikes, which is sort of a bike industry gathering.

• 28:20Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 28:21Rich Roll?

  And, and part of that

• 28:24Rich Roll?

  Speaking opportunity involved me interviewing Jim Weber on stage, who is the former CEO of Brooks, Brooks Running.

• 28:33Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 28:33Rich Roll?

  And he had been the guest on Acquired at one of their giant auditorium shows.

• 28:39Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  So I listened to that to prepare for this conversation. And, and, you know, once again, was not disappointed at what a good job those guys do.

• 28:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 28:49Rich Roll?

  But Jim Weber was super interesting, very friendly, affable guy who came into Brooks in 2001, when it was a distressed asset. I think they had, can't remember what their revenue was, something, maybe it might've been something like 60 million, but I think they were something like 20 or 40 million dollars in debt. They were losing $5 million a year. They were teetering on bankruptcy and he was the fourth CEO in two years, brought in to try to turn this thing around. Everyone else had failed. And, and, you know, in a couple of years, he did turn it around. And ultimately, you know, it blossomed into a billion dollar plus brand under his stewardship.

• 29:30Rich Roll?

  So he's like this sort of like really dynamic leader who also in 2017 got diagnosed with esophageal cancer and continued to like steward Brooks. He only recently stepped down like this past year.

• 29:43Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 29:43Rich Roll?

  But it became a independently, like wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. So he has all these stories about, you know, working with Warren Buffett, who he had always been obsessed with and stuff like that.

• 29:57Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 29:58Rich Roll?

  He's a cool dude.

• 29:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Warren might be my favorite billionaire of all my billionaire baseball, baseball cards I got at home. I've got a whole, you know me.

• 30:05Rich Roll?

  You do.

• 30:05Adam Skolnick?

  I've got a whole altar to the billionaires and Warren is now at the top of my, I've had to demote some, I've had to demote a few of them. Yeah. I want, I want Zoomer to know who the billionaires are.

• 30:17Rich Roll?

  You do. Well, we do have an obsession with billionaires in our, in our culture for better or worse, probably mostly for worse.

• 30:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, for worse. Long ago, I thought billionaires should be banned because you should be able to get by with 999 million dollars. So like add a billion, like I had this whole.

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  But how would you ban them?

• 30:34Adam Skolnick?

  Well, so my, I had, so.

• 30:36Rich Roll?

  I mean, I'm not down with that.

• 30:38Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 30:38Rich Roll?

  If you can, if you can figure out how to make a billion dollars, you should be able to do that.

• 30:41Adam Skolnick?

  Of course.

• 30:41Rich Roll?

  But I do think. If you are so lucky, so fortunate, so resilient, or whatever, to accumulate that much wealth, doesn't it come with a little bit of responsibility to give back?

• 30:54Adam Skolnick?

  Right, so my whole thing was predicated on like, you know, when Eisenhower was in office, something like, people in the top tax bracket, after you earned a certain amount, like, you had to pay like, almost 90% in taxes, it was crazy. I hate taxes too, no one likes to pay taxes. I understand even billionaires don't want to pay taxes, they think they can do a better job with their money, helping people probably is the narrative in their head, I'm guessing. But not having a billion dollars, I don't really know. But I did have this whole idea for my presidential platform, which was, eliminate billionaires, if you make, once you get to a certain amount of net worth, it's 100%, you can still do your job, still enjoy the job, but you know, it's 100%

• 31:33Rich Roll?

  Tax.

• 31:34Adam Skolnick?

  Taxed. And then

• 31:36Rich Roll?

  You work for the government then?

• 31:37Adam Skolnick?

  Well, or you can, maybe there's a way to use that entrepreneurial spirit as a way to solve some problems, like our infrastructure, instead of just complaining, you know, you have to actually solve one of the problems we have. And then my other thing, the conservatives can get around this, my other, the second prong in my platform was, you can no longer pass laws, you can only repeal laws. That was my second thing. So first, you tax the anti-billionaire tax, then you stop passing laws, you just repeal the laws that you don't want. And that was my two-pronged platform, and then once that was in place, I would resign. So like, that was all I was gonna do, like, that was my whole, but now we have Doge, which is kind of like, the worst version of that idea.

• 32:19Rich Roll?

  It does channel a little bit of that spirit.

• 32:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, a little Doge, a little Doge in there.

• 32:25Rich Roll?

  A light dusting of Doge on your platform.

• 32:38Rich Roll?

  But the executive branch doesn't even have the authority to repeal laws.

• 32:43Adam Skolnick?

  I know.

• 32:44Rich Roll?

  I guess it doesn't matter, right?

• 32:45Adam Skolnick?

  It doesn't.

• 32:46Rich Roll?

  Does anything matter anymore when it comes to governance?

• 32:50Adam Skolnick?

  Maybe not.

• 32:51Rich Roll?

  It's unclear.

• 32:52Adam Skolnick?

  That's part of the decade that has been 2025 so far, right after the fires, we're dealing with this chaos.

• 32:59Rich Roll?

  There is quite a bit of chaos.

• 33:00Adam Skolnick?

  A lot of people asked about it. A lot of people asked about.

• 33:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, listen, you know, I'm sort of of two minds on this. You know, I get a lot of emails from people and messages saying, thank you for being a sort of safe harbor away from the political discourse that's out there. Like, what I like about your show is I tune in because I need a break from that.

• 33:24Adam Skolnick?

  Of course.

• 33:25Rich Roll?

  And the minute the issue of politics is raised, not only is it inflammatory and sort of, you know, kind of alienating for a lot of people, it sort of violates that sacred trust that, you know, people have come to rely upon with this show. But at the same time, the countervailing perspective is, what is the point in having a big platform? Like, what is the responsibility that you then hold to kind of speak truth to power and, you know, kind of do the right things that, you know, use it to do what you think is right and responsible right now? And those two things, I feel like, are intention. So I don't know what the solution to that is, but I would say that,

• 34:07Rich Roll?

  I guess my way into it is not to, you know, dive into all of the particularities of every issue. There are other people more equipped to do that. But, you know, there's a lot of wild shit going on right now. And for a lot of people, it's destabilizing and it's anxiety-producing and it's confronting us with.

• 34:29Rich Roll?

  Again, uncertainty and fear, right? And how do you navigate that? So there were a bunch of questions around like, how do we, you know, how do we get through this period of time when it feels like, you know, we're dismantling the federal government? Or there's this broad expansion of executive branch powers? Judges are being ignored? We've got Doge doing what Doge is doing. There's the deportations issue. You know, antisemitism is on the rise. There's, you know, they're seeding the groundwork for a third term, you know, like a lot of stuff. And like, the news cycle is so insane that you can't help but like, get caught up in it, get, you know, kind of agitated by the whole thing, depending upon your perspective.

• 35:14Rich Roll?

  And, and really, the only thing that I feel like I can really speak to and provide value on is like, how do you kind of emotionally regulate throughout all of this? And, you know, look, there's the easy pickings in this, which is like, curate your media diet, you know? You don't have to be addicted to the news. You don't have to be up to the minute on every single thing that's happening. Like, a lot of this stuff is sort of by design intended to, you know, agitate you and distract you and, and, you know, distance you from kind of living your life. So I think it's important to just, you know, ground yourself. If you need to remove apps from your phone, do that. Turn off cable news.

• 35:59Rich Roll?

  Invest in real-life experiences. You know, call up a friend. You know, engage with the people you care about and exercise a little bit of self-care. And also, I think it's important to like, know your triggers. Either avoid them or find a way to develop resilience so that you're not triggered. You know, you and I were talking about... Adam Grant, the other day.

• 36:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 36:23Rich Roll?

  His book, Think Again, he's got this paradigm. Instead of being a prosecutor, or a preacher, or a politician, you're best to inhabit this, this kind of mindset of the scientist, which is to approach conflict and ideas from a perspective of open mindedness and curiosity, like to be kind of excited to find out that you're wrong, or to kind of test your, stress test your ideas, et cetera. And maybe that's a way for people to think about like how they approach difficult conversations, or ideas that are getting thrown at them that perhaps they disagree with, or find kind of emotionally, you know, charging in certain regard.

• 37:02Adam Skolnick?

  Even just to cope with this information that is coming in, even just as a coping mechanism.

• 37:06Rich Roll?

  Right, like, like, like, hold your ideas a little bit loosely.

• 37:10Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 37:10Rich Roll?

  We all think we know what's right. Every man is right from his or her perspective.

• 37:15Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 37:15Rich Roll?

  And like, maybe we don't know, you know?

• 37:18Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 37:18Rich Roll?

  And is there a way to kind of feel comfort with, you know, receding a little bit further into the background for your own kind of self emotional preservation?

• 37:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. You know, it's, I have this one tried and true tactic whenever things get crazy, and it's, I don't always do it, but I rely on it quite often. Show great concern and do nothing. Or, don't just do something, sit there.

• 37:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Opposite of good advice, actually. You know, it's sort of like, I think there's a lot of people who get, they get agitated, and then you go into like reposting mode, or like reply guy stuff.

• 37:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 37:59Rich Roll?

  And you feel like you're doing something. You're not doing anything.

• 38:02Adam Skolnick?

  No, you're doing nothing.

• 38:02Rich Roll?

  You're, you're basically engaging in self harm.

• 38:05Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 38:05Rich Roll?

  You're not accomplishing anything. So if you do feel compelled to be part of what you might believe to be the solution, then do something towards that end. Like, do something actually in the real world that would advance that, you know, idea that you're, that, that you feel is important.

• 38:22Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you know, it's such an overwhelm, right? All these things are happening at once. And it's like you said, it's, it's, it's like this dominoes are falling and. And we are easily triggered because we, you know, first of all, it should be said that, you know, Elon Musk did too. Not, I mean, I'm a Jew who loves Nazi movies. You know, we've talked about it on the, like, I love that, that I'm a student of that era of history, partly because it was a liberation kind of narrative. But I know, I know a Nazi salute when I see one. So when you see that, it triggers. But, you know, he's not meaning it necessarily in that way. He wants to trigger, right? So when you're dealing with this, like, the news is triggering, everything's triggering. But I think it's important to also, like,

• 39:07Adam Skolnick?

  understand the dissonance that is happening as well, because it's not like everything that's happening is bad, right? But it feels bad because the way it's happening is bad. But like, I wasn't a fan of RFK necessarily, but he is the first guy that I've heard of in my life that has gone up against the food companies, telling them, we don't want this kind of food in our system anymore. He, you know, like, we were talking about pharmaceutical ads, he's trying to deal with that. Now, like, all these things aren't necessary, there are bad things happening, but it's not all bad things. So when you hear about, like, that happening, like RFK thing in particular, you're like, okay, that's interesting. And when you hear about tariffs, well, I remember when, like, I was an activist, when, you know,

• 39:51Adam Skolnick?

  the WTO protests were happening in Seattle, and everyone was against globalization, all the environmentalists didn't want it, none of the unions wanted globalization, everyone was saying, this is gonna be the worst thing ever. And a lot of bad has happened, a lot of good has happened at the same time. But they were trying to pump the brakes on it, and they didn't like it. And now you have an administration that actually is trying to end it in its own weird, wacky way. And so, like, you know, is it all bad? Like, it is important to take the scientist's approach, is my long way of saying, because, because not everything is happening is happening because of the way you, even that dumb salute, you don't know why it's actually happening. So it's different. It's like, it's, that's the dissonance that's crazy. And so I don't think it's bad advice to say, you have to

• 40:35Adam Skolnick?

  take a beat, and you have to, like, tune in with some modalities are gonna help you get through it, because it's gonna be never ending. It's gonna be one after another after another. And, and I was saying this to, like, like, April was kind of...

• 40:49Adam Skolnick?

  stressing about this before inauguration day like I went through that in the last administration with Trump where I was angry the whole time and I wasn't going to be that now I'm the guy that keeps an eye on the news because I feel like you do have to know like if prisoners are going to like psycho prisons in El Salvador like it's crazy it is crazy by the way that El Salvadorian president is a crypto bro and he's got crypto beach out there there's all these weird dissonant you know

• 41:14Rich Roll?

  and they have these like super prisons there

• 41:16Adam Skolnick?

  yeah yeah and they have them because El Salvador was a gangster state like normal people couldn't get through the day that's how bad the gang problem was there so then this guy comes in goes super hard line and now is in with crypto bros and the Trump administration so like I guess the point I'm trying to make is we try to solve a problem and a problem is solved but new ones crop up in the most bizarre ways and that's kind of like the weird dark side of evolution right like life evolves and things evolve and civilization evolves in ways that are confronting and wrong a lot of times but we have to live through it so I guess that's

• 41:56Rich Roll?

  yeah I mean there's a lot of crazy stuff that is going on but there's also a lot of talking and we don't know you know when that talking turns into action or not right and and I think in the context of like RFK to your point like yeah like I don't I'm not gonna buy into you know all of his stuff but the one thing that I can get on board with is his perspective on big food and and big pharma like these are topics that have come up you know since day one on this podcast finally there's a guy who's got a lot of energy around him who seems intent upon not only doing something about this but actually getting people interested in it right which which I think in and of itself is is interesting and that doesn't mean that I'm down

• 42:41Rich Roll?

  with like beef tallow or like a lot of his other stances that are very controversial but here's one for you and it goes to that that topic of of like not knowing right it's it's sort of the the consequence of unforeseen circumstances

• 42:58Rich Roll?

  That illustrates the difference between like talking a big game and actually governing, whether it's Doge getting in there and dismantling things maybe they shouldn't have that are causing, you know, a bunch of, you know, kind of tangential problems as a result. With RFK going after Big Pharma, I believe he said like, you know, he wants to make it illegal for Big Pharma to advertise on television. We've all had that experience of watching pharmaceutical ads. They're incessant, especially on like cable news. It's one after the other where two thirds of the ad is dedicated to all the side effects. And it's comedic at this point, right? But those ads sustain mainstream network television, right?

• 43:41Rich Roll?

  Like, if you, if you, like, I'm, I'm totally on board with getting rid of Big Pharma doing ads on television. I think it's, I think it's criminal that that actually exists. But that is the business model.

• 43:52Adam Skolnick?

  At this point, at this point.

• 43:53Rich Roll?

  If suddenly that becomes illegal, like that, there's like, I don't know how, not just like CNN, but like Fox News, like Fox News is contingent upon that, like to survive, right? So, so if that happens, or if that's on the horizon or being threatened, how long before Rupert Murdoch picks up the phone and calls Trump and says, you can't do this?

• 44:15Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 44:16Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, we gotta keep Fox News going. The only way we keep it going is Pharma.

• 44:20Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 44:20Rich Roll?

  So these are the, this is like, this is just an example of like, when you get into the nuts and bolts of like actually, actually trying to solve a problem or governing. There's all these other factors that come into play that you quickly realize like, oh, this is, this is more difficult than it appears to be.

• 44:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right, well, I mean, it's like, uh, it's kind of like that, that old line, um, you know, be careful of, uh, the unintended consequences of good intentions.

• 44:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, that was the one thing I was trying to say.

• 44:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, like even if you're doing something good. And it's the same, it's reversed, the same thing, like this globalization and the Clintons were behind globalization. Right, that was that whole thing. So. You know, I guess ultimately it's, um, to me, there's like, it comes down to, are you making the world a little bit kinder or a little bit crueler? Because we're so miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Not to say our actions don't matter, because I do think, you know, this is, we're here once, and this is our, this is for all intents and purposes, this is it. And so you gotta make it count. But to me, making it count, the ledger is, are you making it a little bit kinder? Are you making it a little bit crueler? Now, some people would think me naive for having that as my ledger. But that is my, that is my compass, right?

• 45:33Adam Skolnick?

  Because like, a lot of people would be like, no, it's about efficiency, or, you know, get the most you can get, or whatever. I mean, you see it the way our, our, our society runs. But to me, it's really basic. It's like, kinder or crueler? What are you gonna do? And we all have a million times, chances a day to answer that question in different ways. And it's, I'm not saying you have to choose the kind choice every time, because it's impossible. But, you know, that's, that's kind of the needle I'm trying to move in my life. And so there's, you can still do that in this crazy time, in this crazy year. And it's kind of the only way to get through these kind of crazy times, in my opinion.

• 46:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if you're struggling to find hope or some energy around optimism, like, I think like meditation and mindfulness is really key in that regard. Like, if you're, like, right now, in this exact, precise moment, is anything different than it would have been, you know, if somebody else was in it? Like, we're not affected in this moment, right? Like, everything is fine, we're breathing air, we're healthy, we get to do this thing, we get to have fun. The more you can kind of ground yourself in the present, I think that's the pathway towards, you know, recognizing like, a little sliver of beauty, hope, and optimism in life.

• 46:52Rich Roll?

  And I would say, to kind of end this chapter, as, as, as, as podcast champion Ryan Holiday is fond of saying, it's just not that hard to not be an asshole.

• 47:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, I love that.

• 47:08Adam Skolnick?

  The more I see of him, the more I like.

• 47:09Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of assholery out there. And it's like, would it be that hard for you to not be that way?

• 47:15Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 47:16Rich Roll?

  And maybe we, you know, can reflect upon that in terms of how we comport ourselves.

• 47:20Adam Skolnick?

  In this, in this era.

• 47:22Rich Roll?

  All right. Adam.

• 47:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, sir.

• 47:25Rich Roll?

  Did I mention that I had a psychedelic experience?

• 47:29Adam Skolnick?

  Wait, what?

• 47:30Rich Roll?

  I did.

• 47:31Adam Skolnick?

  I think, I think I heard about it. It was on a podcast and it was also, you did tell me a story once, just briefly. I want to hear more about it.

• 47:38Rich Roll?

  So I did, I did, uh, share this publicly in the recent episode with Annika Harris. It felt right because that was a conversation around the nature of consciousness, um, which is my utter like obsession and fascination these days.

• 47:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 47:56Rich Roll?

  She did this incredible, uh, audio book, audio documentary called Lights On, um, that everybody should listen to. It's really quite fabulous. Um, but, but, um, and so she felt like the right person to kind of share that story publicly. But if you haven't listened to that episode, um, I'll tell, I'll, I'll tell a version of that here. And if you have, sorry, like, tell the story again. But I will, I will contextualize it by saying that I, so this was in December. I went to Mexico City for the purpose of taping this, this thing with On, with Elmo.

• 48:38Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 48:39Rich Roll?

  So that all took place in Mexico City. They, they, it was with a, a brilliant ad agency called Flower Shop. Um, there was a whole production crew, like this was all part of their new soft winds campaign with Elmo being kind of the ultimate avatar of like softness, you know?

• 48:59Adam Skolnick?

  I, can I say, when you start out in the wilderness of podcasts where no one has ever heard of a podcast, and then you end up in an On ad with Elmo, the only thing to do after that is a psychedelic, you're already living this.

• 49:12Rich Roll?

  I know. Well, that's why I'm telling this story because the juxtaposition of these two things. You know, like in proximity to each other. Yeah, to be able to have the like, when the opportunity arose, like, do you want to do this thing? I was like, I couldn't raise my hand fast enough. I was like, are you kidding me? Like, that's a once in a lifetime, you know, opportunity experience to have. Like, who doesn't want to hang out with Elmo, you know, just for a day or whatever? I only wish my kids were younger so that they would kind of appreciate it. I mean, not that they don't now, they thought it was funny, but it was a really cool thing.

• 49:44Adam Skolnick?

  That was cute, but they would have been like through the roof.

• 49:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was really fun. They rebuilt the podcast studio, Tuati, in this like warehouse. And, you know, we shot for an entire day with like a, you know, a real director, a dolly and the whole thing. And, and, you know, Elmo is a, it's fascinating. Like, it, it's a whole nation state, Elmo. There's like three, it takes three people to operate Elmo.

• 50:11Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 50:11Rich Roll?

  And this one guy, Ryan, who does his voice, who's like a brilliant improviser, really funny guy. There's a groomer, like, there's a stand that Elmo goes on and like, there, there's like a, um, there's an eye mask that goes over his eyeballs when he's not being, you know, like, when he's not on camera.

• 50:30Adam Skolnick?

  He's a real diva.

• 50:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a whole thing. And it was just so much fun to like, do that.

• 50:36Adam Skolnick?

  You were acting, it wasn't even interviewing you.

• 50:38Rich Roll?

  There was a script and then we kind of would go through it and then we would riff. But there was only one camera, so we had to do like the wide and the reverse and the, you know, all the angles. So we were, we were going through it a bunch of times. And I would say the best lines were the ones that Ryan kind of came up spontaneously on the spot. And, and so that was, that was a super treat. But because we were in Mexico City, we have a friend of a friend who like knew this medical doctor who specializes in these types of experiences. And so. It was just a timing thing that we happened to be there and this person happened to be available, that it seemed to line up for me to do this. Now, backing up, this is something

• 51:23Rich Roll?

  I had thought about for a very long time, something that I've changed my mind about, and something that, you know, through the experience of hosting so many people on the podcast, became apparent to me that, you know, I needed to kind of like adopt the scientist mindset and be a little bit more curious about it. Because I'm, if anything, I'm like a 12-step indoctrinated person, you're sober or you're not. And when you tell someone like me that the answer to all your problems lies in a very powerful mind-altering drug, that's scary and dangerous, right? And something I had decided a long time ago with respect

• 52:04Rich Roll?

  to psychedelics, like, not for me. You know, and I would know, I would see and hear stories of many people whose lives had been benefited from this, but I just thought like, I'm gonna have to find another path. But then, it was like the universe just kept putting, I would have guest after guest after guest, and the purpose of these guests was not to come on and tell me about their psychedelic journeys, it would just come up like ancillary to something else they were talking about. And so, all of that seeping into my mind, and, you know, then Michael Pollan's book, and then his Netflix series, like, all these things kept happening, and it just became undeniable that this was worthy of deeper investigation. And, you know, I've been in this process of trying to heal some, you know, childhood

• 52:49Rich Roll?

  trauma stuff, and, you know, make peace with my past, and find a way to alleviate some of my unnecessary suffering and resentment, and my challenges around like gratitude, and like love, and intimacy, and all of these things. And I just thought, like, perhaps this is a tool that could be beneficial with that. So, so I decided to go forward with this and, you know, had this incredible experience that was a combination of MDMA and psilocybin. It was like a six-hour experience, and it really just...

• 53:27Rich Roll?

  Was, was, I would say, the most profound single event experience in my life that overdelivered in every category of, of what I thought it would do. Like, I, my expectations were very muted. I thought in my mind, because I'd never had, I'd never had any experience with psychedelics before. I thought, maybe I'll have a, you know, a repressed memories will be unlocked, or I'll have some, you know, conversation with, with, with, you know, my young mother, or some way of healing, like, you know, like my connection with my past, or something like that. And instead, it just kind of said, well, that's cute, and let me show you this instead. And my head exploded, and I entered the tesseract,

• 54:11Rich Roll?

  and, you know, like, you know, time and space evaporated, and I was, you know, in this cycle of death and birth, and, you know, the complete dissolution of ego, and the, the complete breakdown of identity, and the barrier between, you know, self and everything else, and this sense of oneness that you can't describe in words. But, I, I can't stop thinking about ever since.

• 54:40Adam Skolnick?

  Love is a word.

• 54:41Rich Roll?

  It's true, it's a word. It's a word, but what is it?

• 54:45Adam Skolnick?

  That's what you felt, right?

• 54:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but it was also scary.

• 54:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 54:50Rich Roll?

  It took me, like, all the way to the edge of, like, it's a flirtation with madness, at times, I think. Like, I went as far as I could go, and I had glimpses of wondering whether maybe I didn't wake up that morning, and I was in some kind of afterlife, or perhaps I had, I had imagined my life, but was in fact somebody, like, locked up in a padded cell, living in my mind, you know what I mean? Like, the whole time.

• 55:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. And you had blinders on, right?

• 55:20Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, I had, I had an eye mask on, and there was a soundtrack that was, like, you know, quite intense at times. There was a bodywork piece to it, that really, kind of, like, in the, sort of, final third of the experience, that, like, deepened it. And when I emerged out of it, and finally, kind of, I was so glad to be, like, back in a body. And I was in this person's home where it took place. And this person has like a big library of books, like hundreds and hundreds of books. And I'm, I'm looking at the books, you know, as I'm kind of returning into my physical corpus, you know, and realizing like, like book after book after book was written by somebody who had been

• 56:05Rich Roll?

  on the podcast, like, I know that guy, I know that person, I've read that book. And like, it was insane, like how, how much it tracked.

• 56:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Rich Roll?

  And then I thought, and I said this to Julie, I was like, I have this idea that I'm this podcaster out in the world and I've read all these books and I've met these people and I know them. But I'm now starting to think, maybe I've never left this room. And I'm looking at these books and like, like, like verbal Clint, Clemson in, uh, what's that movie, um, The Usual Suspect, where he makes up like, it's all a story.

• 56:39Adam Skolnick?

  He's taking it off the bulletin board.

• 56:41Rich Roll?

  I've imagined that I've like, you know, read all these books and talked to all these people, but I've actually never left this room. You know, like, that's the kind of scary piece to it. But it was, it was pretty expansive and, and I'd been really exploring, um, this idea of non-dualism in my, in my meditation practice, this idea that, that, um, that consciousness is something that lives in your head, like you, who you are is kind of like in here, right? Like between your ears and just abusing you of that, like, that's just another appearance in consciousness, this sense or this feeling that you're in your head. Because you actually have no head, like that's sort of the non-dual, like kind of notion, right?

• 57:26Rich Roll?

  And it's such a difficult idea to get your head around. Like, what do you mean? Like, I am me, like, you have your sense of self, right? And to try to inhabit.

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  Any kind of connection with the idea that that is an illusion is almost an impossible leap. That this experience allowed me to get a taste of, that I've then taken back and incorporated into my meditation practice in a really profound way that has stayed with me. But I think that the, part of the reason I bring it up is because it gets to, it gets to like notions of identity, like I am a 12-step person and I'm sober and I have this much time and that time is important because it's a defining attribute of like who I am that comprises a part of my identity.

• 58:20Rich Roll?

  And to have an experience like that is to kind of shatter your identity, but then when you piece it back together, you're like, what does that mean in the context of me being like a quote unquote sober person as part of a community that has a perspective on how you define sobriety? Like, do I reset my clock? Do I not? I took a, I voluntarily took a mind-altering substance, right? So, under the, you know, strict kind of like Right. rubric of 12-step, I guess that means that I start my days over. But you weren't a drug addict. You were an alcohol, you were a drink, you were a drinker, right? You're like, yeah, but you're, it's, that doesn't, yeah, but Doesn't matter? that doesn't mean I can be California sober.

• 59:05Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, you know what I mean? It's like, mind-altering substances are like off the table. Right. And it's a very binary thing. Okay. But I think with this experience, like, and that was something that maybe even in the lead-up to this experience was, was scary for me. Like, what will that mean about like, what do I, what happens when I go back to that community? And I have to like be honest about that. Like, do I get shunned? Am I Right. then looked at differently? And I think this experience, like having that like dissolution, that sort of ego death and dissolution of self, has put me in a place where it is like quelled the people-pleasing tendency in me. And it's like, I honestly don't care. Like, that's not my business. It's up to them.

• 59:49Rich Roll?

  If other people think that that should be the case, I'm totally fine with that. Like, their perspective or opinion is, is none of my business. And I actually feel like Okay about that because I do feel good about having made that decision. I don't have any regrets and it's quite the contrary.

• 1:00:09Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool. It's like, you know, there are people using ayahuasca to get over like opiate addiction and things like that. And I don't know what the success rate on that stuff is, but like what you're bringing up is, you know, when you fundamentally start to engage with your consciousness and your identity, you can leave a big experience like that and it doesn't have to be a psychedelic experience. It could be some crazy near death experience or whatever. You can shed a skin and come out of it. Not necessarily a wholly different human being because you're not wholly different, but with a different perspective that can guide you subtly and but profoundly. Yeah. So it sounds like that's what happened.

• 1:00:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's not like something that I'm like clamoring to go do again right away, you know?

• 1:00:57Adam Skolnick?

  Well, not, well, you did tell me you're going to introduce me to this doctor in Mexico.

• 1:01:01Rich Roll?

  I will. I think I will do it again. I think I have more, more to, more to learn there. But it's not, it doesn't, it didn't trigger that like addictive thing where there's like a craving.

• 1:01:12Adam Skolnick?

  No, no.

• 1:01:12Rich Roll?

  I think that's the, that's the difference.

• 1:01:15Adam Skolnick?

  I've, you know, it's been a long time since I went in the psychedelic, into the, into the psychedelia and I've never done it in this clinical setting, which is this new way of doing it, right? Like this newer thing where it's like an accepted medicine that you can, which is what oddly enough, Timothy Leary and Ram Dass were trying to do. They were like, wanted to begin there. In the 50s, they were doing it in a lab, kind of more as a study, not as a, they were, but there was a guiding component to it. I'm pretty sure. I have, it's been a long time since I read about those studies, but it wasn't like they were, they were feeding, they probably were, they hadn't mastered the dose and they were messing with people to some degree to understand it. But it's funny that it's coming back into a, not the lab, but the clinical setting.

• 1:01:56Adam Skolnick?

  So funny, funny, peculiar, funny, good, you know, like kind of an interesting return in a way.

• 1:02:02Rich Roll?

  I think it's pretty undeniable at this point that there are, you know, very real positive benefits from. Appropriate medically supervised use of certain compounds in certain contexts, whether it's PTSD or depression or addiction.

• 1:02:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:02:18Rich Roll?

  But I also think it's important to say that, you know, I'm not in a position to recommend this to anyone. And in fact, you know, quite the contrary, I probably spent five or six years thinking about this before I did it. And I don't think it's for everybody. And I think that, you know, you really need to do your research and be prepared if this is something you're in. I mean, it was so powerful. I had no idea. Like, it just completely, you know, exploded, you know, like

• 1:02:46Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:02:47Rich Roll?

  A certain frame, you know, that I'd always applied to the world. And, but it left me with a deepening of my fascination with the nature of consciousness itself. Like, I don't think there's anything more interesting than trying to understand the nature of consciousness. I think it's just an utterly fascinating rabbit hole to go down because it conjures not only science, but philosophy

• 1:03:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:03:13Rich Roll?

  And faith and the nature of reality and quantum physics and, you know, all of these things. Like I said, I told Annika, when I was in it, it felt like I was simultaneously in interstellar and inception at the same time.

• 1:03:27Adam Skolnick?

  [laughing]

• 1:03:30Rich Roll?

  Like in inception, you're going down, you're trying to, you're going down those levels, right? You keep going to a different level until you get to like the snow castle, right?

• 1:03:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:03:38Rich Roll?

  And in interstellar, you're in that tesseract where there are, you know, an infinite number of realities that are available for you to kind of, like, every moment is an opportunity to enter, you know, a different reality of yourself.

• 1:03:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. But that, that is an amazing allegory for like, the truth about every moment, you know, it's true though, in small ways, not in big ways, but yeah. It's true. It's like, you know, it's, it is, you know, our, our, we were talking about it yesterday. Our, our neural plasticity hardens after we're 25 years old. Maybe in some way, these substances allow you to revisit the plastic nature of reality. You know what I mean? Um, but in the ultimate, you know, then you come back out and, and you're back grounded in the earth, you know? And how do you then take it? Cause I think, I mean, I started to, I, I started experimenting with psychedelic drugs like any California college student would.

• 1:04:38Adam Skolnick?

  Dropping acid on college campus and then walking for miles to wherever you end up. Um, but I came out of it with same, I, you know, this, this intense experience of oneness. You know, the very first time I, and, and, um, that has stayed with me. That has guided me and I've had experiences of that without psychedelic drugs since then. But I don't think it would have been possible if I hadn't taken them originally and had that original experience. So I have had like, I mean, I remember I've had long versions that lasted a couple of days where I felt the oneness of the world. Like at my fingertips and was like, like riding a high. And I've had little moments where like someone was pouring water into a glass and it just like hit me. Like I was being poured into the glass, but I don't think that would have happened.

• 1:05:23Adam Skolnick?

  And that, this is years after taking psychedelic drugs. Um, but I don't think it would have happened if not for the first time, having that first big, it's like a Shaktipod almost in a way. It's like a Shaktipod experience. Yeah, that, that, that's a good, that's a good way of framing it. Yeah, just like, it just fractures everything, which is why it's hard. But then to me, the best experiences on that, if your, your brain is basically fractured. Like that, uh, testaract, like you're talking about, and then all of a sudden at the end of it, it kind of coalesces. And I'll, if it's a good experience for me, it always ends up in love. It always ends up in, I'm a pagan at heart, right? It always ends up in earth and love, you know, like nature and love. Um, so maybe we just need to dose the new, this administration.

• 1:06:10Rich Roll?

  I think Elon is dosing himself.

• 1:06:13Adam Skolnick?

  That's true.

• 1:06:14Rich Roll?

  Quite a bit.

• 1:06:14Adam Skolnick?

  He's overdosed.

• 1:06:15Rich Roll?

  The results of that are unclear. But yeah, I mean, I would say also, like, I still have this allergy to like, you know, there, I think we both know a lot of people who like do too much of this stuff.

• 1:06:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:06:30Rich Roll?

  And that becomes, it's that be like, all that pursuit of like,

• 1:06:37Rich Roll?

  of ego death and like disabusing yourself of the illusion of self, creates a different self and a whole identity. Like you can craft a whole new identity around that.

• 1:06:49Adam Skolnick?

  You can have an addiction around that, right?

• 1:06:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. You know, you're doing the work, the quote unquote work. Okay, what does that mean? You know, and I think, I think that can be, I've seen it become problematic for people.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  And also like all the costuming around it.

• 1:07:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Rich Roll?

  You know, like, you start wearing, you know, long robes and, you know, things like that. You know, it's like, that's not, that's not me. I had one experience, it was profound. I'm sharing my experience. I'm not advocating for or against this. It turned out to be quite profound and beneficial for me. And that is not to say, once again, that this is something for everybody.

• 1:07:28Adam Skolnick?

  No. Well, I mean, the great, the big story is Ram Dass, who was like, you know, in those early Timothy Leary experiments, and he ends up, he thinks he's, he thinks he's like, found the, the secret to life, which is take this, right? I mean, you know the story better than me, but take, take this, this acid, this is gonna, you know, you'll find the real nature of reality and it'll guide you home. And then all of a sudden, he ends up in, in India and meets people who don't need the piece of, you know, need the tab, right?

• 1:07:57Rich Roll?

  Well, when, when Bhagavan Das, you know, leads him to Nima Karoli Baba.

• 1:08:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Rich Roll?

  Bhagavan, Bhagavan's the guy who not for nothing said, be here now, not Ram Dass. That's how it ended up, it's the title of his book. So when Richard Albert, you know, goes to India, when he gets booted out of Harvard, and he's walking around trying to find, you know, the, the meaning of life, he's. Out of options, he isn't meeting anyone, it's not working out, he's getting ready to like, pick up sticks and go home and he encounters Bhagavan Das, who was like this kid from Southern California who was like a surfer guy who had the dreadlocks and is walking around India barefoot and Bhagavan's like, "Come with me." And he takes him ultimately to, after they

• 1:08:44Rich Roll?

  do this long walkabout, to Neem Kauri Baba. And Alpert, it was Neem Kauri Baba who gave Alpert the name Ramdas. But Alpert, if I have the story correct, gave LSD to Neem Kauri Baba and said like, "Check this out." And as the story goes, Neem Kauri Baba took it like a massive hero dose or whatever and like, nothing happened. Because he's already enlightened, he's already inhabiting that higher state of consciousness.

• 1:09:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. You know, when I first started practicing yoga, that's kind of when I stopped even playing in the psychedelic realm. Like, I stopped. So it's kind of interesting how that works. Because ultimately, you have to, it's good to know kind of the nature of yourself in reality, but ultimately, you have to contend with it on its terms. So it's not a tool to use to deal with reality on a daily basis. It's like a scope that you have to then take what you can and you just got to move forward in strength. That's kind of how I always thought of it.

• 1:09:52Rich Roll?

  All right, you want to talk about adolescence?

• 1:09:56Adam Skolnick?

  Dude, first of all, I could barely sleep last night after watching one episode of adolescence. Like, it was so, it is the most tense, kind of like nervy show. I think it is brilliant. It is brilliant. I mean, you know so much about it and I want to hear what you have to say about it, but like, you just turned me on to it yesterday. And I heard about it and I knew it was good. The subject matter scared me because it was like, I have a four and a half year old and this is about like troubled 13 year old kid and like the worst trouble ever. And so I was kind of, you know, I wasn't interested in like putting my brain there. And, uh, man.

• 1:10:34Adam Skolnick?

  But it was quite an experience and now I'm hooked, hooked. Yeah.

• 1:10:37Rich Roll?

  There is no other way to describe Adolescence other than just god tier television. It's unbelievable. And I will say that Roll On is, is like, one of the main reasons I like Roll On so much is it gives me this opportunity to like indulge the audience with my, you know, content streaming TV and film takes, you know.

• 1:10:59Adam Skolnick?

  They're not beyond takes, bro. You go deep. You know this stuff. So.

• 1:11:03Rich Roll?

  Secretly, I want to just be hosting, you know, like, the show that I, the podcast that I listen to the most, or there's two, is, is The Watch and, and The Big Picture, which are both regular shows about, about TV and film. I love those. Those guys are the best at it. But I think I secretly harbor this desire to host like a, like a film and television podcast. So maybe down the road. I love doing this. Hopefully you'll enjoy this. But the reason I want to focus on Adolescence today is not only because I think it's better than basically everything else out there at the moment. And, and it's the show that everyone's talking about.

• 1:11:47Rich Roll?

  We got a lot of listener questions about it. It's mainly because the themes in this echo many of those that recur on this podcast.

• 1:11:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:11:57Rich Roll?

  At this point, unless you're hiding under a rock, you've probably heard of this show or already watched it. I think we should do our best to not overly spoil it. You're like two episodes in. It's four episodes. I've completed it. But for those that don't know, Adolescence is a Netflix limited series. It's for, it's a four-episode exploration of this 13-year-old boy who's accused of having murdered a female classmate. It's utterly riveting. It's emotionally devastating.

• 1:12:29Rich Roll?

  It is storytelling at the highest level of art and technical proficiency and social commentary. The character performance, the pathos, like, there is not a false note in this entire thing. It's extraordinary. And it was co-created by Stephen Graham, who also is a co-writer and co-lead. He plays the dad.

• 1:12:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it takes place in England, like Birmingham or something like that, right?

• 1:12:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Birmingham or Liverpool. I think Stephen Graham's from Liverpool, but, you know, not in London, right? Stephen Graham is a, like, lauded character actor who's been around forever. He was in Gangs of New York, Band of Brothers, Peaky Blinders. He has this great story, I don't know if it's apocryphal, about how he got his start, which was when Guy Ritchie was casting Snatch. And I think, as the story goes, like, a buddy of his was auditioning and he accompanied his friend to this audition, where I think they were just auditioning, like, people in Liverpool or whatever, like, you know, like, average, you know, normal people or like, kind of, less experienced actors. I might have that wrong.

• 1:13:37Rich Roll?

  Anyway, Guy Ritchie looked at Stephen and said, "Are you the next audition? Are you auditioning next?" And he's like, "No, no, I'm not, I'm not here for that." And Guy Ritchie said, "I like your face, though, like, show up on Monday." And that's how he got his start.

• 1:13:51Adam Skolnick?

  He didn't even have that audition.

• 1:13:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. He's also in Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, which, shout out, one of, I think that might be my favorite all-time spy movie, up there with one of my all-time favorites of the century, Michael Clayton.

• 1:14:06Adam Skolnick?

  I love Michael Clayton.

• 1:14:07Rich Roll?

  Which I watch, like, twice a year.

• 1:14:08Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 1:14:09Rich Roll?

  It's just a masterclass in every regard. Also, a movie with not a single false note.

• 1:14:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:15Rich Roll?

  And, not for nothing, this is a little bit of an aside, if you're into, kind of, Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, like, tradecraft spy movies, this is the greatest time ever. If you're, like, dad-core about this, like I am, there is so much incredible stuff out there, you know, in this terrain. If you're into the CIA or the MI5 or the, like, there's The Agency. Remember when we talked about Le Bureau?

• 1:14:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:43Rich Roll?

  On the podcast? There's this French series about the DGSE, their intelligence service? Well, they remade it.

• 1:14:54Rich Roll?

  With Michael Fassbender.

• 1:14:56Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, right.

• 1:14:56Rich Roll?

  It's pretty.

• 1:14:57Adam Skolnick?

  That's what that is. That's what the agency is. Right, right, right.

• 1:14:59Rich Roll?

  It's pretty allegiance to the original series. Um, but with a lot of money and like this incredible cast. And it's set in London in the, the, like, the London office of the CIA. Uh, and it's incredible.

• 1:15:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Rich Roll?

  And no one's talking about it.

• 1:15:17Adam Skolnick?

  No, they, well, that's the problem with, I mean, we'll get back to the show, but that's the problem with this over, overly contented era. There's just too much content.

• 1:15:24Rich Roll?

  There's so much out there.

• 1:15:25Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:15:26Rich Roll?

  Michael Fassbender, one of the great actors of our, our time is the lead in this extraordinary series right now. And I haven't heard anybody talk about it.

• 1:15:34Adam Skolnick?

  Nobody talks about it. Like, some stuff rises. Adolescence rises, White Lotus rises. It's kind of like akin to, it's partly because there's no rhythm to the TV schedule like there used to be. And, and partly because it's just like the streaming wars is like the aftermath of the streaming wars. But, um, like, for instance, The Day of the Jackal, great novel that's been, is getting remade, right? As a television series.

• 1:15:56Rich Roll?

  Eddie Redmayne, yeah, it already, it already aired. It's unbelievable. It's so good. Eddie Redmayne is like, you know, just going full bore in that series.

• 1:16:04Adam Skolnick?

  Cate Blanchett's in Black, I mean, Cate Blanchett's like the greatest actor alive or something.

• 1:16:08Rich Roll?

  Well, we have, we have, so in the spy genre, the agency. Then there's Black Doves on Netflix with Keira Knightley and Ben Wishaw, who played Q in Skyfall. He, he's like, that's, it's, then there's Black Bag with Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett. Like Fassbender again, and this is a Steven Soderbergh movie that's out right now. Day of the Jackal, Slow Horses, Lioness, even the bad ones, like The Recruit and The Night Manager on Netflix. Still like pretty good if you're like a dad like me, you know what I mean? Anyway, this, this is like a divergence away from Adolescence. Like, if you're into this, you know, genre, like, it's a good time. Um, anyway, so, so Adolescence, Steven Graham, co-creator, co-writer, Phil Barantini, director,

• 1:16:52Rich Roll?

  uh, who Graham had worked with, um, they did a movie called Boiling Point and a series called Boiling Point as well. And Jack Thorne, who's the co-creator and co-writer. And together, this sort of theater troupe of, of extraordinary talents.

• 1:17:06Rich Roll?

  You know, created something really special and the conceit at the center of this is the one-shot format. Each episode is told in, each of the four episodes are told in one hour meticulously planned, single take, continuous, one take, tracking shots, which are called one-ers. So the camera never stops, right? And each of them, each episode is this really convention-defying standalone piece of theater, a story within a broader story that slowly unveils like how this boy ended up in this place that again is executed flawlessly, no false performances, no false notes.

• 1:17:49Rich Roll?

  And the one, the one-er conceit, you know, can go either way, I think. In many cases, I think it's misused because it's sort of show-offy, like, look at how cool I can be with the camera. But when it's integral to the themes and the characters and, and what the piece is trying to say, I think it can be masterful. Like, we think of the opening shot in The Player or the Copacabana scene in Goodfellas, like, those are kind of very memorable, you know, kind of one-ers.

• 1:18:16Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:18:17Rich Roll?

  But I think adolescence is the best use case I've ever seen for this technique.

• 1:18:21Adam Skolnick?

  It's the most expanded. I mean, you've never seen this before.

• 1:18:24Rich Roll?

  It goes everywhere and you're, you're, it does take you out of it at moments because you're like, how did they do that? When you want to stay rooted in the story, because there's a couple, like, they're going in windows and there's like, you're like, whoa, like, how did that happen? But I think it's masterful because at all times, it's serving the characters and the narrative and, and the verite of all of it. Because it's seeming to say that like, life is really about the moments in between. And when the camera never leaves the characters, a lot of what you're seeing is, is in the in-between. And when you watch the first episode, you're like, can we speed this up?

• 1:19:02Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:19:03Rich Roll?

  Can't we just get to the part where, and you're like, oh, no, it's about like, what happens in between when you're there and you, and you end up in that other place. And also, it doesn't give you a break or the ability to look away from the really difficult moments that it's forcing you to confront. So the technical is really serving the narrative. And amazingly, from a technical perspective, they had, from what I understand, they had one day.

• 1:19:33Rich Roll?

  Per episode to shoot, so the one day to shoot an entire one hour episode. And they would have 10 chances to get it right. So they could go through it 10 times. And hopefully, because you have to go an entire hour without a mistake. You get to like, almost the end and something screws up.

• 1:19:48Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Or they have various outs where they know like the characters are.

• 1:19:54Rich Roll?

  They could do a cut.

• 1:19:55Adam Skolnick?

  You can say something wrong, or you can, there must be a way. I'm not saying they cut. I'm saying there must be a way. I'm not saying they didn't get it 100% right to the page. But like, there must be a way, like if the camera went a little bit off where it's supposed to be, or the characters came out, maybe that ends up being the take they like, you know, in a certain way.

• 1:20:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'd be curious. I don't know the answer to this. But you know, usually there's techniques where you can like swivel a camera. Such that.

• 1:20:21Adam Skolnick?

  They could cut it.

• 1:20:22Rich Roll?

  You can do, you can just like, you could do a cut in there and like mimic it. So it looks like you didn't cut. And I would suspect there probably are a couple of those in there. I can't imagine they would go and it's, maybe they did. I don't know.

• 1:20:32Adam Skolnick?

  But the rehearsal must have been incredible.

• 1:20:34Rich Roll?

  But yeah, I mean, it is like theater, you know, it is like theater. And it brings up, like I said, like a lot of themes that come up on this show. I mean, first and foremost, the relationship between, you know, teens and tweens and the internet. It does this masterful job of really elucidating the shadowy world of communication that, you know, young people engage with that adults can't begin to understand. And the vast and destructive power of it that, you know, we kind of all underestimate. That, you know, Jonathan Haidt talked about on the podcast. And, you know, Scott Galloway is always talking about.

• 1:21:14Rich Roll?

  And it also leaves you with questions, but not answers. Like it doesn't really land on like, here's who's to blame, or it's this person's fault, or it's this institution that we should hold culpable. Kind of everyone's to blame, but no one single person is to blame for this set of circumstances that creates like this, you know, tragic event.

• 1:21:39Adam Skolnick?

  It's interesting, like. The phone is ever-present in the school episode. You see it and you see the tension between the adults. I mean, there's a little cynicism in the in the public school representation that these kids go, you know, that they exist in. I think it's probably a version of reality, but but I couldn't stop thinking about the anxious generation when I was watching it. It's like, it's right there. And the one thing that the anxious generation, it talks about, I'm not criticizing, because I think it's a groundbreaking piece of work. I think it's, it should, it should win. I mean, to me, it's like one of the great gifts from academia to the pop culture era,

• 1:22:22Adam Skolnick?

  one of those, one of those books that is seminal. But because of the way the evidence works, the data is more there for what it's doing to young girls. And it, he definitely talks about the impact on young men, but if you read the book closely, the data doesn't pile up to show young men are having the same level of consequences as young girls when it comes to teen suicide and things like that. And this, even though the young girl dies in this, so obviously she suffers the most. But I think what you take away here is, is young men and the struggles of young men. And so there are people out there talking about Galloway, talking about this a lot. So not to, you know, there are people out there doing that, but it, to me, it just

• 1:23:07Adam Skolnick?

  shows, it's like Jonathan Haidt meets Galloway in terms of what, where the focus should be of society's ills, you know, like, this is the place we should be looking.

• 1:23:16Rich Roll?

  And not for nothing, they're both professors at the same university at NYU. I mean, they're colleagues, right? But I think you're absolutely, you're absolutely right. This is, this is, at the, at the core of adolescence is something to say about the vulnerability of young men. And when you look at violence, addiction, self-harm, all of these things have escalated precipitously, precipitously for, for this cohort, cohort of people. And when you look at the statistics, it's pretty crazy. I mean, seven out of 10 high school valedictorians are girls. Girls are graduating college at twice the rate of boys. Young men are. Three times more likely to overdose, four times more likely to commit suicide,

• 1:23:57Rich Roll?

  14 times more likely to be incarcerated than young women. And not surprisingly, 98% of all mass shooters are male. And this is not to say that we shouldn't be celebrating the advances of of young women. Like, this is a fantastic thing. But clearly, there's something going on with young men in which they're they're suffering in a profound way. And there's plenty of root causes for that. And, you know, you could spend hours kind of parsing all of that. But I think what adolescence does so beautifully is it doesn't point its finger at any one thing. It's basically saying, everything is contributory to this. And, you know, when you mentioned the school, like, the teachers are like, you know, I'm a zookeeper, like, what, it's chaos, right?

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  So there's the institutions, there's the educational institution, there's the judicial institution, there's the mental health therapeutic institution, and there's the family institution. Like, what is the role that parents play? And there's an episode that's kind of really all about that, which seems to say some version of like, it's not all your fault, but you're not off the hook either. And, you know, could you have done this better? Or could you have done that better? Sort of like, these parents are not bad parents. They're good parents who did the best that they could. They overlook certain things and in the aftermath are kind of looking back in the rearview mirror and say, should we have done that? Should we have done this? But I'm so much, you know, like, my dad did this to me and I didn't do that.

• 1:25:25Rich Roll?

  Like, we're all better than, you know, what preceded us. But what's right in front of us that that that we're overlooking? And what's in front of us that we're overlooking is those in-between moments, right? It's like, it's like being passive in the midst of like, the person who's scrolling right in front of you and not knowing what they're actually looking at and making that decision to like... Not engage with like the reality of what's occurring before your very eyes.

• 1:25:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right, well, we are in some ways more advanced in terms of how we handle emotion and things with our kids than our parents were. I mean, this is a vast generalization, but in some ways. But what's different is the landscape is completely like a funhouse mirror. And so like the laws of physics don't apply because there's this other world that we don't understand and that they and there's rooms in it, we don't go. And so we can be have more tools and be, you know, psychologically and emotionally more equipped to handle.

• 1:26:36Adam Skolnick?

  And not all of us are, but we can be and still strike out in places. And because that's just human nature and that's probably true anyway, but it's especially true now in this when there's a fourth dimension.

• 1:26:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and in that dimension, you know, the fluency in, you know, kind of emoji encryption and what those things mean that speak to bullying and the manosphere and insult culture, like all of these things are sort of, you know, probed in this series from the perspective of adults that have no understanding of it, yet is so much a part of these young people's lives and how they kind of make sense of the world and what drives their behavior.

• 1:27:18Adam Skolnick?

  And we say they, but like we are they, we were that. And I remember how lonely it was, you know, like even a good childhood in adolescence is very lonely at times, like you're.

• 1:27:28Rich Roll?

  But it's very, it's qualitatively different now when everybody has a phone in their pocket where,

• 1:27:36Rich Roll?

  you know, everybody's talking about everybody else.

• 1:27:39Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:27:40Rich Roll?

  You know, and and they're doing it in that mean spirited way that only adolescents can.

• 1:27:44Adam Skolnick?

  Right, well, I guess what I was trying to say is that we carry a level of shame in adolescence. Like one of the beautiful things about being with a kid Zuma's age is the self-awareness and shame isn't there yet. And so you can see.

• 1:27:58Adam Skolnick?

  You can see the purity, but the shame's gonna come. And adolescence, like pre-adolescence and adolescence, it really peaks. Because it comes in tidal waves and you don't know how to manage it. And you don't have the tools and you don't want anyone to know how you really feel, even your friends or your parents. So that's what I meant by loneliness. And that was true, I think, when we were growing up. But it's worse, like you're saying, it's worse.

• 1:28:21Rich Roll?

  Right, it's on steroids, right? We're running this mass experiment. And it's happening, you know, right, you know, right? It's happening in our homes. Like the idea that's sort of advanced, you're not there yet. This kind of comes up in the fourth episode with the parents, you know, kind of reflecting on this and doing an inventory on their own parenting. And thinking like, like, we did a good job, right? Like, didn't we, you know, like, like, we got him a computer when he wanted it. And because he was home, thinking like, he's safe, right? But not really understanding what's happening in that room. But because he was under the roof, like, everything is cool, you know? And realizing like, oh, that's, that's not the case.

• 1:29:05Rich Roll?

  And this gap between thinking you know what's going on. Like, the sort of interior lives of teenagers will always remain a mystery. But to the extent that like, there is, there is something to be said for the communication and the involvement of the parent in whatever that kind of discourse is that's going on, that is creating and driving so many of these, you know, unfortunate mental health and at times violent outcomes.

• 1:29:41Adam Skolnick?

  It makes me really happy to see your new, the new pod on the Voice and Change Network. Ask Lisa.

• 1:29:48Rich Roll?

  Ask Lisa. Like, I texted, I texted her and I said, please do an entire episode devoted to adolescence. Like, this is like, I've never seen anything more up her alley to discuss. And the fact that this is like the number one show on Netflix. And in the UK, I mean, it's huge here, but in the UK, it's massive right now. And it's already having a kind of impact that.

• 1:30:13Rich Roll?

  John Height's book had here, right? In terms of like driving change. So like even the even Starmer, the prime minister is calling for screenings in Parliament and schools. Thorne, the co-creator is calling for a digital age of consent, ban smartphones under 16. Like, there's a lot of kind of things that are actually happening downstream. And that's the power of art, right? Like, this is art at the highest level. It's something that has something to say that is very timely and of the moment. And whether you're a parent or not, you probably have contact with some young people who are struggling in some regard for from some version of the malaise that these young people are experiencing and has demonstrated in this show.

• 1:31:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's heavy shit, man. Heavy. You know, but it's so well done. Like, it's absolutely captivating. Episode three, which you haven't got to yet and which I'm not going to spoil, is probably one of the finest hours of television I've ever seen. It is pure theater and acting excellence. And I was astonished to learn that Owen Cooper, who plays the 13-year-old boy. Yeah. Not only was this show his first acting job, that episode three was the first one that they shot, which is essentially him in a room with somebody else talking the entire time. And it is absolutely riveting in the range that this kid shows in his in his in his acting skills.

• 1:31:42Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's you're seeing like the next Leonardo DiCaprio. Like, this kid is gifted. His first acting job on the first day of the first episode of this thing, and he absolutely like hits it out of the park. It's unreal. Unbelievable. Fear, innocence, rage, power, misogyny. I mean, the other piece here is is is the misogyny. Right. And there's a lot to be said about the perspective of the women in this show. And again, I don't want to spoil it, but whether it's mother to daughter or this therapist in episode three that has to engage with not only this kid, but also another worker in this mental health institute.

• 1:32:26Rich Roll?

  Observing the dynamic between that other employee and this therapist, like it has so much to say without saying anything about what women have to experience every single day that plays into the behavior of this kid. It's, it's just, I'm obsessed, dude. So good. There's also a great video on, on YouTube on the making of, of the show. I'll link that up in the show notes, but it's pretty cool. And I think it's only like, I don't know, 10 or 15 minutes or something like that. It's great.

• 1:32:58Adam Skolnick?

  Thank you for turning me on to it and ruining my next week of sleep because I can't sleep after watching this.

• 1:33:03Rich Roll?

  But listen, you will be better for it. Zuma, this is the time, like, you know, my youngest is, is 17. Like I, I see this played out and all the parents who have, you know, young people who are in the same age bracket, like, you're so lucky that you're getting schooled on all of this stuff in advance.

• 1:33:24Adam Skolnick?

  We're not in the Petri dish. We have a chance to escape the Petri dish.

• 1:33:28Rich Roll?

  You do.

• 1:33:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, we have a chance.

• 1:33:29Rich Roll?

  And, and, and it's going to be work. You know, it's going to be work.

• 1:33:33Adam Skolnick?

  Well, one thing is April really is into Waldorf education and, and I'm seeing it up close. I'm into it too. It just happens to agree with also with Zuma sensibility. So it's like a nice mix and, and there's no like, in some public schools, you're still getting an iPad for kids in like first grade or something like Waldorf. There's nothing like that. And so hopefully we have a chance, you know, there's going to be some bumps and bruises. I mean, I, I told April about adolescence and we watched the trailer. She goes, I am not in on that. She's like, she was like, she wants to watch Megan make tacos for her girlfriends in Mendocino. That's what she wants to watch. And you know what?

• 1:34:12Rich Roll?

  We could do a whole podcast on that TV show alone.

• 1:34:15Adam Skolnick?

  That, that's not a bad TV show.

• 1:34:18Adam Skolnick?

  That's where she's at. Before, before.

• 1:34:21Rich Roll?

  I understand that.

• 1:34:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:34:23Rich Roll?

  Julie doesn't want to watch Adolescence for different reasons. Like, you know, it's traumatizing to watch.

• 1:34:29Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:34:29Rich Roll?

  It's not, it's not a light thing.

• 1:34:31Adam Skolnick?

  No, no, no. And, you know, my own media diet has been, you know, White Lotus is like the first series in a while we got into again because like I was back into like high maintenance, which is, I love high maintenance. To me, it's one of my favorite television shows ever. You know, it came out years ago. It's like the weed dealer on his bicycle and he goes and you get slices of life in Brooklyn. This was in the, I think it came out like 2010 or something like, I forget exactly. Maybe it was more recent than that, but, um, and I love that show. So I was watching that and just watching the Lakers and watching, you know, The Americas came out, a great nature doc that Tom Hanks is narrating. Like, that's the media diet at our house. And then Adolescence.

• 1:35:13Adam Skolnick?

  It's a different experience, but it's like so visceral. I'm into it. I'm into it. I'm into it.

• 1:35:20Rich Roll?

  Well, the takeaways are, are, you know, not only is it a must watch for, for parents or anyone who's a caretaker of young people, I really think it's something that everybody should see. Especially anyone who has the opportunity, who's not a parent, to get involved in, in the life of a young person. Like, a lot of it is about the lack of strong role models. And to the extent that it might motivate you to become a role model of a young person in your life, that would be, you know, a net positive for society as well.

• 1:35:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:35:53Rich Roll?

  I also think, you know, I found it personally to be an incredible conversation starter with, with my kids. Like, I had a, I had a long, um, talk with Mathis, our 21 year old about it. Like, you know, she, she was on to it even before me, watched the whole thing. We gotta talk about this, like. And I was saying to her, like, this is a lens into like what, you know, into a world that you understand that most, you know, older people don't, like, what is, is, how accurate is it? Like, what is this like? Do you feel like, you know, this is really giving voice to something that you've kind of always understood to be the case? And yeah, it was like, we had this amazing conversation about it. So I think it's great connective

• 1:36:35Rich Roll?

  tissue as a topic of conversation with, with like your own, the young, the young people in your life.

• 1:36:43Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting, you know, and like the, the Ask Lisa podcast, perfect time for it. Like, people need this stuff. My, my friend, Adam Dodge, has that tech savvy parent kind of business where he's trying to educate people on what's happening to their kids in this world. Ask Lisa is kind of helping, you know, like, to be able to have a resource, like a Love Line was a resource, but a resource for parents, a place to go to ask questions. That's why I'm excited for that podcast on the, on the network because, because it's important, like,

• 1:37:12Rich Roll?

  And she's the best at it.

• 1:37:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Rich Roll?

  She's so good.

• 1:37:14Adam Skolnick?

  We need it, man. We need it because we are in the dark and that, it's almost like it's shame transference in a way. It's like the adolescent is feeling this heavy dose of shame because it's kind of nature, but also the world or the way we structure things. And then the parent kind of gets it by osmosis because like, yes, some parents are honest with their other parents about problems, but sometimes we're not, you know, like sometimes we want to keep, because we don't want to expose, this is what's happening with our kid, not necessarily for judgment, but we don't want the kid to be judged. And so it's like this weird swirl of judgment where there's just not a lot of transparency. And so, you know, this podcast could help a lot of people. Yeah.

• 1:37:55Rich Roll?

  No doubt about it. What else you want to talk about?

• 1:38:00Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, well, White Lotus, I love White, White Lotus is a good time.

• 1:38:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it definitely is an indulgence.

• 1:38:07Adam Skolnick?

  If you want a cocktail and kick it by the pool and make fun of wealthy people.

• 1:38:11Rich Roll?

  You know, you could just, you could just feel superior watching all these horrible people behave badly, you know?

• 1:38:18Adam Skolnick?

  I'm enjoying it, you know, like I miss, for those who don't know, I spent a lot of time in Thailand. I did, covered Thailand for Lonely Planet for many, many different parts of it. I've driven up the coast from Malaysia to Burma and back. I've been, lived in Phuket for periods of time. I've been in Bangkok many times. So, watching this, I've got friends there. It's like, makes me want to go back, you know, makes me want, I love it there so much. You know, I lived in Maysat on the Burma border for a period of time. So, it's fun for me. Like, I know that some people, like, the chat was that season three is kind of not as good as one and two, but that's not my experience. I love it as much, partly because of the location. And partly because, look, I mean, that's Sam Rockwell,

• 1:39:02Adam Skolnick?

  if you haven't seen it, episode five. That's like, that's maybe the best monologue of all time, right?

• 1:39:06Rich Roll?

  Incredible.

• 1:39:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:07Rich Roll?

  I mean, there's a lot to love. I'm not bagging on it. I really enjoy it. You know, I think this season is a little bit different because when you take Jennifer Coolidge out of the equation, you're not going to get a lot of that, you know, that, that type of humor. You can't replace her, right? So, the tone of the humor shifts a little bit. And I think, just from a structural perspective, it's been a slower build towards like, the chaos that you know is kind of around the corner.

• 1:39:39Adam Skolnick?

  You make a good point.

• 1:39:40Rich Roll?

  And so, every episode, it was like, well, these characters are kind of in the same place they were last week, having the same conversation. And you know, it's, you know, you're inching towards something happening, but I sort of got progressively a little, like, let's just get on with it. Like, we've already seen a version of this conversation already. Why are we doing it again? And it's, the volume's slowly getting turned up. And like, Mike White is a genius. I trust him. Like, he's earned my trust, time and time again. He knows, he is so masterful as like, a satirist of, you know, kind of culture, like, it's amazing. And all of these people, I think, one of the reasons why it's so good is, is the characters that he writes.

• 1:40:21Rich Roll?

  Like, we probably all like know people who kind of fit them, right? So there's a relatability of like, oh, I know that person. I know that person. I know who that, I know exactly who that guy is or whatever. And so we have experiences with those people. And so we create this like parasocial relationship with these various characters. And, you know, we want it, we want to see the whole thing implode.

• 1:40:43Adam Skolnick?

  But he is so good, like his, his, his, his dialogue on Buddhism, like the stuff he can, he can speak so intelligently about Buddhism. He can nail every bit of corniness, the corniness of the expat in Thailand, the corniness of the rich, rich family from North Carolina, the like, like his, his, his eye for detail on, on how insipid like humanity can be.

• 1:41:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:08Adam Skolnick?

  Is remarkable and his dialogue is, is just incredible. And, and, uh, you know, it's funny, um, when I was reporting on the, the Burma story, the displaced people in, in, and current state on the, on the Burma side of, uh, the Burma border of Thailand. At one point I had a meeting with one of the main guys in charge of delivering aid to all the different aid organizations, basically USAID, which has gotten in the news lately, was giving money to this organization and was like, it was in the millions and tens of millions of dollars was this budget and going out to different areas to service these refugee camps and displaced people. And I end up sitting down, he knows I'm there, I was there for men's health and he knows I'm there as a journalist.

• 1:41:52Adam Skolnick?

  And it just goes into this weird kind of, it wasn't Sam Rockwell, but it was in the ballpark of his like sexual deviancy in Thailand and who he was with, you know, like, and I'd met him in different, like a social occasions a couple of times prior to that. But he just like opened the curtain on the guy he really was. And, um, I never forgot that it was so wild. And, and so like, everything you see is just like, obviously turned up to 10, but like it's there, you know, the, this is.

• 1:42:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's true that, that people go there for that reason, right? I mean, the first, the first joke that I laughed out loud at this season was when, um, the joke about like, uh, you know, he's the bald guy, all the bald guys, you were like.

• 1:42:42Rich Roll?

  And the performances are great. Yeah. And I think, I think the fact that he chose to set it in Thailand allows him to ask bigger questions this season.

• 1:42:56Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, more spiritual.

• 1:42:57Rich Roll?

  It's, it's identity, right? Like, the whole Sam Rockwell thing is like, what is identity? Who am I? Or whatever. And I think all the characters are, are asking themselves some version of that. Like, here I am in my life. And like, you know, who do I want to be? Who am I? And, and to what extent does this identity that I have, like, hold me prisoner, or hold me back from who I could be?

• 1:43:21Adam Skolnick?

  And how about Sam Rockwell, the, the roles he chooses? Like, I don't know how, I would love to just hear him talk about how he ends up, like, in Jojo Rabbit is like the reluctant Nazi, or in Three Billboards, or like, this role. Like, you know what I mean? It's, he picks the most interesting, and then he shows up. And it takes, always takes me like, 30 seconds to figure out who he is. You know, I've seen him a million, but you know what I mean? Like, I knew, I knew, who's that, what's his name again? I always forget his name, because he's the character to me.

• 1:43:51Rich Roll?

  But in the case of White Lotus, he's married to Leslie Biff. So it's sort of like, we could have seen that coming, I guess.

• 1:43:58Adam Skolnick?

  And he's buddies with Walter Goggins.

• 1:44:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, are they? Like, yeah, you could see those guys hanging out, like, partying together.

• 1:44:05Adam Skolnick?

  How great's Walter Goggins?

• 1:44:07Rich Roll?

  Walton.

• 1:44:08Adam Skolnick?

  Walton.

• 1:44:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Amazing.

• 1:44:10Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 1:44:11Rich Roll?

  As always, yeah. I mean, he's

• 1:44:13Adam Skolnick?

  Sorry, Walton.

• 1:44:14Rich Roll?

  He's, he's quite something, that actor.

• 1:44:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:17Rich Roll?

  On Monday, a podcast will go up between me and Maria Shriver.

• 1:44:23Adam Skolnick?

  Oh.

• 1:44:25Rich Roll?

  Which we recorded a while ago. We recorded it, the, I think, a day or two before the season premiere of White Lotus. So, no episode had gone up yet. But her son, is Patrick Schwarzenegger, who, you know, plays a pretty indelible character in the show. And I gotta say, is crushing it. You know, I think he's doing an unbelievable job. Like, he has taken this opportunity and like, turned it up to 11.

• 1:44:51Adam Skolnick?

  Hundred percent. And he's his own, he's his own actor. There's no, you know what it reminds me of?

• 1:44:55Rich Roll?

  But he is, like, I heard Bill Simmons talking about this, like, There is a charisma that you're gonna have when Arnold Schwarzenegger is your dad and you're part Kennedy, you know, and he's able to like carry that swagger pretty well, but also make it his own. Like he's, he's doing protein shakes and getting buffed up, but he's not like trying to be his dad, like he is his own thing.

• 1:45:17Adam Skolnick?

  He's almost like, God, why am I spacing on this major actor? He did Bradley Cooper. He's got some, I mean, it's deeper, it's a deeper experience, it's a deeper show and a deeper character, but like he's kind, it's kind of like that Bradley Cooper in Wedding Crashers character for him. And look what happened to Bradley Cooper.

• 1:45:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that was, yeah, I mean, he, he came, he crushed it in Wedding Crashers and then, you know, he really made the most of that opportunity and turned it into a career. Or, or the first time that you saw Brad Pitt on screen in Thelma and Louise.

• 1:45:48Adam Skolnick?

  Well, yeah, but he was likeable, but like here's an unlikeable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but he's, but he's, he's likeable in his unlikeability.

• 1:45:57Adam Skolnick?

  But he's so charismatic. I mean, if you haven't seen that, go watch, go watch the Brad Pitt, Gina Davis scene in, in Thelma and Louise. That's a, an old timer.

• 1:46:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. As soon as you see that, you're like, wow, that guy's gonna be a movie star. Like you just know it immediately, right? Anyway, kudos, Patrick Schwarzenegger for crushing it.

• 1:46:17Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:46:19Rich Roll?

  We gotta get out of here, but I will say a couple of quick things before we end.

• 1:46:25Rich Roll?

  I got a question about the telepathy tapes.

• 1:46:28Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:46:28Rich Roll?

  Have I told you about this? This was a astronomically successful podcast series.

• 1:46:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:46:38Rich Roll?

  It's Planet Rogan for a while. It was like the number one podcast. And it's all about these non-verbal autistic people

• 1:46:49Rich Roll?

  who quite possibly have.

• 1:46:52Rich Roll?

  Telepathic powers. Like, this is wild. Like, this is the craziest, most engaging podcast series I've listened to in a long time. Like, it is really a great listen. It's fascinating, whether or not there's truth to it or not. Like, who knows? You know, it goes to the nature of consciousness and all these sorts of things that I'm interested in. But I had Kai Dickens on the podcast, so that episode is coming up. It's gonna, it's gonna air April 28. We had a great conversation, because a question came up from the listeners about the telepathy date. So, trust me, I'm on it.

• 1:47:26Adam Skolnick?

  I've heard amazing, amazing things.

• 1:47:29Rich Roll?

  And I think that's it.

• 1:47:31Adam Skolnick?

  There was one question, there was one audience question you didn't get to, is how to get unstuck if you feel stuck, or when you feel stuck?

• 1:47:39Rich Roll?

  Mood follows action.

• 1:47:41Adam Skolnick?

  Do something.

• 1:47:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if you're stuck, you have to do a pattern interrupt. You have to do something. And when you feel stuck, you don't feel like doing anything different. But the only way to get unstuck is to, you know, upset the balance. And the way you upset the balance is by taking a contrary action. And when you don't feel like taking a contrary action, you have to remind yourself that mood follows action, and that you have to develop the reflex to act in spite of your resistance or emotional baggage around it. And the unstuckness is a byproduct of the action, not the other way around. So I think it's identifying one small thing that you can do, that perhaps isn't so intimidating, that you're gonna

• 1:48:23Rich Roll?

  resist it forever, and is just doable enough to get you over the hump. Because the unstuckness only, you know, gets unstuck by doing something that will unstick you. You know what I mean? What do you do?

• 1:48:36Adam Skolnick?

  This is a Dr. Seuss, this is a Dr. Seuss book. No, but you know what? It's true. It's like, for me, it's a mental game first, right? Like, like, being stuck is a state of mind before it's, before it's your reality. And

• 1:48:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, so changing up the routine, I guess, is hard when you feel stuck. But if you just do one thing, you know what I did once when I was feeling kind of like lost and stuck is I decided to jump in the ocean every morning, rain, you know, and I think it started like in the new year, like January 1. And so it was like cold water that I was looking for. And this was before I was ocean swimming or anything on a regular basis. And so I would walk from my apartment in Santa Monica to go jump in the ocean. I was like trying to make it as a writer. It wasn't going well. It was like I was staring at my eviction notice phase. And, uh, and that kind of started, I mean, next thing you know, I'm an ocean swimmer. So that's a great example of exactly what you're talking about. Just do something.

• 1:49:35Rich Roll?

  It's a pattern interrupt. You took a contrary action.

• 1:49:37Adam Skolnick?

  I did.

• 1:49:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  Also, just the idea of being stuck is, is, is, you know, you, you said it starts as a mental construct, but it's basically a story.

• 1:49:49Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 1:49:50Rich Roll?

  Like, what does that even mean, right? It's something you're telling yourself and affirming as true, but is it even true?

• 1:49:58Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 1:49:59Rich Roll?

  Like, can you deconstruct that story? What is the evidence to support you being stuck? And perhaps there's another story that you can tell that begins with, you know, taking an action that somebody who isn't stuck would take.

• 1:50:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:50:14Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:50:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. You know, it's interesting because we didn't talk about it, but Bonnie's, Bonnie Schoy's new book coming out.

• 1:50:21Rich Roll?

  On muscle.

• 1:50:22Adam Skolnick?

  On muscle. It's her follow up to Why We Swim.

• 1:50:24Rich Roll?

  Another champion of the pod.

• 1:50:25Adam Skolnick?

  Another champion. Um, you know, you should lift it up, show the people this thing. It's a, it's, I think it's her best book so far.

• 1:50:32Rich Roll?

  I haven't read it yet. Um, and I can tell you have, it's dog ear.

• 1:50:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. One of the, it's basically, it's as in true Bonnie fashion, it's a deep dive into a subject matter. In this case, it's, it's muscle and the physical body. And it's also a memoir about her relationship with her father.

• 1:50:50Adam Skolnick?

  Who was a kind of a great athlete. He was an early bodybuilder and a great artist. And then, and then her parents separated and her relationship became distant. And it's about all of that because Bonnie is a tremendous athlete herself, great swimmer, great surfer. Just a, just a, you know, and you can read through how she became a great athlete. It's obvious. And her brother is also athletic. But then it's also, it deep dives into different characters, different protagonists dealing with muscle or their body in some way. There's a paraplegic yoga instructor. She, she talks, she spends a lot of time with, she spends a lot of time with the guy, who, you know, the guy that jumps off, jumps into Lake Michigan, does flips in Chicago into Lake Michigan. You know, that guy, he became like internet

• 1:51:34Adam Skolnick?

  famous. And she spent same exact deal, pattern interrupt during the pandemic. And now his job basically is to jump into Lake Michigan. He's got fans everywhere. But to me, it's like, in terms of, I was, I liked Why We Swim a lot. So this is not to put down any other books. That's a good book. But this, I think, is her best work so far.

• 1:51:56Rich Roll?

  All right. On Muscle.

• 1:51:57Adam Skolnick?

  And it comes out this month.

• 1:51:59Rich Roll?

  Excellent.

• 1:51:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:00Rich Roll?

  Shout out Bonnie.

• 1:52:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:01Rich Roll?

  Cool. I think we did roll on. Did we do it?

• 1:52:04Adam Skolnick?

  We did it.

• 1:52:04Rich Roll?

  Do you feel good?

• 1:52:05Adam Skolnick?

  We did.

• 1:52:06Rich Roll?

  Feel good about it?

• 1:52:06Adam Skolnick?

  I'm just happy to be here. Like, I don't need to know when the next one is.

• 1:52:11Rich Roll?

  Sooner rather than later, most likely. We'll see. We'll see how this one goes.

• 1:52:15Adam Skolnick?

  See how it plays.

• 1:52:16Rich Roll?

  Who knows? You know, back to uncertainty.

• 1:52:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, no, it's good to be here. It's good to be in the new space. It's exciting times. So 2025 has been a long run, but there's good stuff coming this year.

• 1:52:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Given the decade of experience that we've had in the last, you know, couple months.

• 1:52:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:35Rich Roll?

  It might be 20 years before we do another roll on.

• 1:52:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:38Rich Roll?

  At this point.

• 1:52:38Adam Skolnick?

  Like in two weeks.

• 1:52:40Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:52:41Adam Skolnick?

  All right, man.

• 1:52:41Rich Roll?

  See you soon. Peace.

• 1:52:48Rich 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, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. 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

• 1:53:30Rich Roll?

  and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated, and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the Meal Planner, 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, with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic

• 1:54:12Rich Roll?

  and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Tractor Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.