Our Social Dilemma — Thoughts on Technology, Addiction, and the Illusion of Free Will

Welcome to another edition of Roll On—my bi-monthly deep dive into (semi) current events, topics of audience interest, and of course answers to your questions. Commanding co-host duties is my hype man Adam Skolnick, an activist and veteran journalist perhaps best known as David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me co-author. Adam has written about adventure sports, environmental issues and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. He is also the author of One Breath, which chronicles the life and death of America's greatest freediver. He's also currently hard at work on a novel and just welcomed his newborn son into the world. Some of the many topics explored in today's conversation include: The new Netflix documentary, 'The Social Dilemma,' and the dangerous human impact of social media The mental health effects of the pandemic on teens Rich's exploration of barefoot running Ethan Hawke's new TED Talk, Give Yourself Permission To Be Creative 30 Day Single-Use Plastic Challenge Update The ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship Tony Riddle's #3barepeaks challenge Maya Gabeira's big wave surfing world record In addition, we answer the following listener questions: How do you balance climate consciousness with realistic needs? How do you know if you are living your purpose or should pursue a career change? How do we navigate professional relationships in the age of Zoom? Thank you to Mark from Germany, Josh from outside D. C., and Victoria from Ottawa for your questions. If you want your query discussed, drop it on our Facebook Page, or better yet leave a voicemail at (424) 235-4626. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:22Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Another hotly, hotly anticipated edition of Roll On/ Roll Call. We're still in a no man's land about what to call this. I guess it's Roll On. It's Roll On, but Roll Call is good. Yes. It's been a minute since we've been here. I think it's been a month. One month. Since I sat down with you. A lot has happened during that period of time. We're going to unpack all of it. But just to reintroduce you, in the event that there are new listeners and watchers to the show, I'm sitting across from my friend, Adam Skolnick, journalist at large, adventurer, environmentalist, author, co-author of the great David Goggins book, Can't Hurt Me.

• 2:06Rich Roll?

  New York Times contributor, among many other things, swim run aficionado. Swim run is like probably the most recurring theme on this podcast as of late. We're going to talk a little bit about that today.

• 2:19Adam Skolnick?

  Even more.

• 2:20Rich Roll?

  Brief overview, basically what we do in this special version of the podcast is talk about what we call the big story. We pick one thing from the news or something that piques our interest. We dive deep into it. We have a teachable moment. We do a little show and tell. And then in the second half of the show, we take a couple listener questions. You can leave your question if you would like it addressed on our Facebook group, or you can leave us a voicemail, which is most preferred at 424-235-4626. And we will air it on the show and discuss. The main reason why we missed our last bi-weekly edition of Roll On is because the man sitting

• 3:03Rich Roll?

  across from me had kind of a life-changing event that occurred that prevented him from being here. And then we had to scramble to get another episode up in time. It was predictable, of course.

• 3:15Adam Skolnick?

  Sorry about that.

• 3:16Rich Roll?

  Tell us what happened.

• 3:17Adam Skolnick?

  My wife gave birth to our son.

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 3:21Adam Skolnick?

  Zuma came to us on August 29th at 6:11 in the PM. And it was, yeah, man, it was an incredible day. It started early in the morning. She started getting contractions and we had like the full yoga spirituality mantras kind of blaring in the office in our, we have a two-bedroom and so in the office slash maybe future baby room. And, and she was super in charge of the energy. There was so much energy flowing. And then by the, by eight o'clock that night, we were in the hospital. And then it was a full, almost 24 hours later, she was in labor for 38 hours.

• 4:00Rich Roll?

  38 hours.

• 4:01Adam Skolnick?

  With that, we, that Zuma came in. Once she started pushing, it was like just over an hour. The doctors were like, whoa, that's very fast because you're one to three hours. And. And he was, you know, almost eight pounds and healthy. And, and then we had nurses for a couple of days in the hospital. And, and by the way, the team at UCLA, at the Labor and Delivery UCLA Santa Monica is incredible. Just incredible doctors, incredible nurses. And then after two days, they send you home and you have to figure out.

• 4:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's that thing. It's like, wait, wait, you're not coming with me?

• 4:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Rich Roll?

  Like, where do we go home now? What do we do now?

• 4:40Rich Roll?

  When's somebody gonna come and pick this thing up?

• 4:42Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:43Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 4:44Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly.

• 4:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:45Adam Skolnick?

  And, uh, and meanwhile, your wife is just torn up and like, you know, emotional and just like, everything is going haywire in her body.

• 4:52Rich Roll?

  And you're completely ill-equipped.

• 4:54Adam Skolnick?

  And you're ill-equipped, but you have to step up, like, you like into the breach. And so it was cool, you know, like the first day, the first night.

• 5:03Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I'd always, I'd thought of people who've like done co-sleeping and slept in the bed with their babies. I always thought that seems hazardous. But on that first night, the only thing that soothed him was being on, on one of our chests. And so, uh, I had him on my chest on the couch and he fell asleep and I just brought him to bed and literally had him like in the nook of my arm, um, sleeping with him that way on night one. Uh, now we have a better sleeping system, but like that first night, right away, you're breaking all your rules. You know, you're just trying to figure it out.

• 5:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Adam Skolnick?

  But there's something profound that happens there. And in reality, he's like a super chill baby and, and, um, not, he, you know, he doesn't like, uh, being in poopy pants or having his diaper changed. So there's an irony there.

• 5:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, who does?

• 5:49Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Who, who wants that? And, uh, so the, other than that, he's like really chill and he's, and he's doing great. And, uh, mom is doing great. She's bounced right back and, and everything's going well. I mean, I'm knocking on wood. It's been cool.

• 6:02Rich Roll?

  Are you one of those guys who always wanted to be a dad? Or were you on the fence about that?

• 6:09Adam Skolnick?

  No, I mean, I, it's, uh, it's both. You know, growing up, I always assumed I'd be a dad. I loved kids. I was one of those people like as a teenager and in college and, you know, as a young adult, gravitated towards that. I was in education for a hot minute and, um, love hanging out with little kids and always had a good time with it. And so I just assumed it was gonna happen. Um, then after my divorce, I was married once before. Uh, when I was 40, I, we were divorced, 41, I think I was divorced.

• 6:41Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I just thought it wouldn't happen. I just assumed, okay, well now, you know, when I remarry, if I remarry, probably someone a little older, it probably just won't happen. And so I just assumed that, or maybe I'd be a stepdad or something like that. You know, that was kind of the assumption I had.

• 6:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 6:54Adam Skolnick?

  And, um, and then, and when April and I got together, we, we still didn't have plans to have kids. We weren't like necessarily trying. Um, and so, so then when it happened, you know, we embraced it. Uh, but no, I didn't think, by the time like we got married and, and you know, this time last year, I did not think I would be a father.

• 7:13Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Yeah. Did you have that experience of instant love?

• 7:19Adam Skolnick?

  It's interesting. You hear about like the instant, like for me, I'm just not, I mean, I think, I don't, I, I, I take it like, I don't think I'm like that. Like people think, they talk about these really high moments. For me, the high moments tend to be not the things people think about. Um, I didn't have this all of a sudden shockedy pod, like heart bursting, my life is totally different experience. Um, not to say that I don't love my son or have enjoyed the experience, but it didn't, didn't realign everything for me right away. But I will say this, last week, and we'll talk about it in a little bit, this story came my way and I just couldn't resist getting back in after just one week off and like doing a little bit of writing. Um, and, uh, and I'll, you'll, I'll tell you guys why.

• 8:00Adam Skolnick?

  But that experience, like doing a story used to always be like, I'd be so hyped up on it and I'd be like, I'd need to get every interview. And if I didn't have it coming, I'd, I'd, I'd have all sorts of anxiety. When will I get it? Or, or when, when will the editor read it? All that's gone. And I don't know if it's sleep deprivation or just like more chill about things because, you know, I have something way more important in my life. Like I have no anxiety about that at all.

• 8:27Rich Roll?

  Right. A realignment of priorities and what's really important.

• 8:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. So I think that's the most profound thing I've noticed so far. And I do feel like the love, the love is there. It's not like it's not there. And I think as I, as I grow into this, uh, new phase, I'll probably see more of those kinds of more subtle realignments and it'll grow into something huge.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  Two points that I want to make. First, the most important point is that I was the only one who called the day.

• 8:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. You called the day. I forgot. Yes, he did. August 29th.

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  Let's make that known for the record.

• 9:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, on the record.

• 9:03Rich Roll?

  Although I thought it was gonna be at 2:30 in the morning.

• 9:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, but you thought it was Saturday night, but 2:30 in the morning.

• 9:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 9:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Second thing is, uh, Zuma, I mean, it's the most epic name of all time, also very California.

• 9:17Adam Skolnick?

  It is very, well.

• 9:18Rich Roll?

  So, explained.

• 9:19Adam Skolnick?

  Okay, so it's Zuma James Kalu, Skolnick is his name, Zuma, um, it means abundance in Chumash, uh, it's...

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  And Chumash is the native, uh, indigenous tribe of this region.

• 9:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, and we spent most of our recreation time off Point Doom, diving a reef out there, and Point Doom was sacred in the Chumash culture, and so...

• 9:41Rich Roll?

  And Zuma is the beach.

• 9:42Adam Skolnick?

  And Zuma is the beach, right there. So, uh, so that was April's decision, she wanted it to be Zuma. And originally, she was throwing out Aspen, and I'm like, I like Aspen trees, but we're not really ever in Aspen or around Aspen trees, so she came up with Zuma, which I think fits better. Plus, I have a nephew and niece, Zach and Zoe, so it like adds some Z's in the family.

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  A little alliterative.

• 10:06Adam Skolnick?

  So it's nice. Um, and then James, uh, in the Jewish tradition, we sometimes take the first letter of someone's name that you want to name your child after. We don't usually do the like, the, you know, Adam Skolnick Jr. type stuff, but you might take someone's first initial and, and honor someone with that. And so I had an Uncle Jay Michelson, who growing up meant, uh, you know, we spent a lot of time with he and, uh, my Aunt Sid and, and the three cousins, uh, John, Jeremy and Jenny. And we spent a lot of time together, like a lot of road trips, all the first travel experiences of my life were with them. And he just meant a lot to me growing up and into young adulthood, and he died, uh, younger than you're supposed to in his 60s.

• 10:50Adam Skolnick?

  Um, and, uh, and so I wanted to honor him, so James, J for Jay Michelson. And then Kalu for Ekalu, who is, uh, who died last year, freedom fighter in, uh, Corinne State, Burma area, and he's exiled, uh, freedom fighter who became basically...

• 11:10Adam Skolnick?

  Ran his country's health system from exile in Mysat, Thailand. Like you've heard about the Rohingya who were massacred and abused by the Myanmar military. For years, that's happened in all sorts of ethnic states in Burma, which is this country with a lot of different ethnicities. The Karin people are one of those states that was under continual attack for decades. And Ekhalu was helping to kind of keep a medical system in place, even though all these people are getting displaced. So he would train medics and bring medics to displaced people camps all over Karin State.

• 11:51Adam Skolnick?

  And he was just a gentle, giving, credible, peaceful warrior soul.

• 11:56Rich Roll?

  Right. And you interviewed him or you did a story on this?

• 11:59Adam Skolnick?

  So I did a story on that, on how some American doctors were working with Ekhalu and his team of medics in Karin State in the displaced people's camps to try to cut down on malaria, because malaria is killing a lot of people. Once you're displaced, a lot of times what ends up killing people in Burma, after the military burns down your villages, you have nowhere to go and you're out and exposed and you can die of malaria. That's the number one killer. And so, you know, they had come up with this rapid malaria test that was enabling some really early interventions and cutting down on malaria deaths. And it was able to be, they did studies that was able to be replicated in other places that weren't necessarily war zones.

• 12:42Adam Skolnick?

  And so it was really important work that they were doing, like actually public health work, but doing it in like, in this really high intensity war zone type area. And so, yes, I was out there. I basically uprooted my life and moved to Mysat for months and reported on this story. And Ekhalu was like, you know, my number one source and I featured him in the story and just stayed close with him. And You know, always remember him. So it's also because my wife is Asian. She's from, she's from Australia, but her family is, her roots are Malaysia, Southeast Asia as well. So it's a good way to honor our son's Asian heritage, even though it's not Malaysian,

• 13:23Adam Skolnick?

  but it's still Southeast Asian heritage. So it's a good way to put a little of that in there, too.

• 13:28Rich Roll?

  A lot of thought and intentionality into this name.

• 13:32Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  Zuma James Kalu Skolnick.

• 13:35Adam Skolnick?

  That's it.

• 13:36Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 13:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, man.

• 13:38Rich Roll?

  So with that, having a newborn in the house.

• 13:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 13:42Rich Roll?

  How's the, how's the fitness?

• 13:44Adam Skolnick?

  How's the training going?

• 13:45Rich Roll?

  How's the swim run training?

• 13:47Adam Skolnick?

  Not a lot of swim running.

• 13:48Rich Roll?

  All out the window, right?

• 13:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:49Rich Roll?

  Barely any sleep.

• 13:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:51Rich Roll?

  Just forget about it.

• 13:52Adam Skolnick?

  Barely any sleep. He's been, he's been pretty chill with sleep, but he's still, you still have to attend to him. You wake up, you know, your, your sleep is, you're lucky if you get, you know, six hours of sleep.

• 14:03Rich Roll?

  Right. Six hours is great.

• 14:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, six hours is great. You know, I've been an insomniac for years, so I'm kind of built for it in a way. Like, broken sleep has been my thing for so long that it doesn't, but I still need at least like seven hours to feel good. And we've been able to get, we're building up to that. But I've done two, three mile runs, basically. And that's all I've done. And that, they were all in the last four days. So, so I haven't done a lot. I hope to do more. I hope to get in the ocean soon and just get a swim in. But what do you think? You think, what are my prospects here?

• 14:36Rich Roll?

  I think you grab what you can. You know, this is a really precious time. You want to be as present as you possibly can for it. And with that realignment and priorities, your focus is on your newborn and in supporting your wife.

• 14:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Rich Roll?

  So, so it's natural and appropriate that your fitness regimen is going to get short shrift. But you still have to carve out some time for yourself because as the adage goes, if you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of others, right? So you still have to make sure that you have at least a little bit of time that's just for you so that you can recharge your battery and then show up with the best of your abilities to, you know, support what's going on at home.

• 15:20Adam Skolnick?

  That's it, man. I gotta stave out the dad bod.

• 15:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no dad bods allowed in the podcast studio.

• 15:26Adam Skolnick?

  I'll lose this job.

• 15:27Rich Roll?

  You're gonna get fired.

• 15:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, that's good. I mean, I'll check in with my sort of latest on the fitness front. When we last spoke, I told you that I was shifting my focus away from endurance and on to strength, taking that 90 10 kind of 90% endurance, 10% strength, flipping it to 90% strength, 10% endurance. And I've adhered to that routine. And I've been doing it now for, I don't know, five weeks at this point. Really? And it's been great. You know, I will say that I'm not a gym rat by nature. When I wake up in the morning and it's a nice day, I just want to go out on the trails. Right. And I just want to be wild and free for a couple hours of just running and being

• 16:16Rich Roll?

  in nature. And the idea of being, you know, throwing some weight around inside a building just is not appealing. And for many, many years, I just shrugged it off. I was like, I'm not doing that. And I found myself, you know, at 53, coming quickly upon 54, with some back issues and some imbalances and just not feeling strong. You know, I've gone through periods of my life where I was very strong, but this sort of over prioritization of endurance training and not really taking the time or carving out the time to pay attention to functional strength and making sure that overall my body is sound has taken its toll. And like I mentioned, I'm having some sciatica stuff, some back problems and just feeling,

• 17:01Rich Roll?

  you know, janky and not in command of my corpus in the way that I would like. So I was like, now is the time where there's no rate, there's nothing to be trained for at the minute. So let me do the things that I'm always, you know, telling myself I don't have time for. And, you know, I started really slow and was, you know, appalled at how weak I was in the gym. And I should say, just so people know, there's a little gym near my house that's part of the pool where I swim. And they moved some of their gym equipment out of the gym and into an outdoor space.

• 17:37Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 17:37Rich Roll?

  And you can book one hour, you know, one hour appointments. So you can only go in for one hour and they restrict how many people can be in there and you're wearing a mask. So they've under

• 17:48Adam Skolnick?

  In there, meaning in this, in this outdoor area.

• 17:50Rich Roll?

  A tiny, yeah, it's like, it's not a big space and there's only like four people there when I'm there. But the one hour window forces me to go in and get it done and not like, you know, kind of walk around.

• 18:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:02Rich Roll?

  Do the kind of things that you would do at the gym where you're there for hours and you didn't really do anything. So it makes me focused. Keep the heart rate up, you know, get through the workouts and I'm doing really basic stuff like bench press and like squats and like, you know, just stuff that ordinarily I just would never do.

• 18:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 18:20Rich Roll?

  And like I said, you know, started off with really light weights in an almost embarrassing fashion, which was a nice lesson in humility and also a dose of just how far away I'd moved from that aspect of being a physically fit athlete. But I've shown up for it almost every day and now it's kicked in and I'm starting to see the gains and see the progression. And I feel good in my body and I have one of those physiques where, you know, if I touch a weight, like I blow up, like, you know, I can make gains pretty quickly and, and I'm already seeing my body change. Like I'm getting like wider and like squatter. Like I'm used to, in endurance training, it's all about power to weight ratio. You want to be as lean as possible

• 19:05Rich Roll?

  without sacrificing power on the bike or in the run. Like the lighter you are.

• 19:10Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  In general, the better you are. You can get too light and then you're weak, but it's finding that perfect balance between those two things. So you're paying a lot of attention to getting, and so when you're riding your bike and running all the time, your upper body just.

• 19:24Adam Skolnick?

  It's the upper body, yeah.

• 19:25Rich Roll?

  You know, you, you start to look like a, you know, like a 13 year old boy after a while. Like if you look at the Tour de France riders, they take their shirt off. You're like, holy smokes.

• 19:33Adam Skolnick?

  Right. But their legs are just like.

• 19:35Rich Roll?

  Massive, right.

• 19:36Adam Skolnick?

  Greek gods.

• 19:36Rich Roll?

  But they're so lean, you know, they're so light, their chassis are like, you know, just reduced down to the barest minimum. And now I'm trying to build that back up and. It's been interesting, but now I'm at a place where I've gotten over the hump of that initial phase where, you know, I feel like I'm embarrassed to even be there. And now I have like some momentum and I'm seeing some gains and I'm looking forward to it in a way that I wouldn't have predicted and I'm really enjoying it.

• 20:04Adam Skolnick?

  Are you working with a trainer there?

• 20:05Rich Roll?

  No, I mean, you know, I know what to do in the gym. So that's been really fun.

• 20:11Adam Skolnick?

  So no spotter on the bench press?

• 20:13Rich Roll?

  No, but I'm not like, I do lower weight, higher rep stuff. But I'll do like three rounds per exercise and I break it down into like, one day I'll do chest and arms, the next day I do back and shoulders, and then I do legs and I kind of rotate through that. And it's a really basic rudimentary, I'm not doing anything, you know, funky or weird. I'm not throwing around kettlebells yet. Like I'm still just trying to get fundamentally like strong enough so then I can start to challenge myself with different and newer exercises. At the same time, doing a ton of core stuff, like trying to strengthen my back and strengthen, you know, my abdominals. At the same time, what I left off, what I left out in the last time we spoke was the

• 20:53Rich Roll?

  other aspect of what I'm focusing on right now, which is trying to relearn running, to rewild my running, to quote the great Tony Riddle.

• 21:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 21:05Rich Roll?

  Was a fantastic guest on the podcast, who's all about barefoot running and functional strength and getting back to kind of an ancestral biomechanic relationship with the body and with nature. And in the course of my day that I spent with Tony, when he came out to do the podcast, we went out, well, the first thing he did when he arrived is he started showing me all these drills for barefoot running. And we made a video, Ally's right over here, she created a really cool video that people really enjoyed. Of us doing some drills and him taking me through. A couple really basic routines to retrain how to run and like, you know, I've, I just go out and run. Like I haven't really thought that much about technique in a very long time.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  And this is a very counterintuitive approach to what is fundamentally, you know, natural for everybody.

• 21:56Adam Skolnick?

  But in those videos, you didn't seem like, it didn't seem for you, actually, when I'm watching those videos.

• 22:02Rich Roll?

  Oh yeah. Well, I was like, what am I doing here?

• 22:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 22:04Rich Roll?

  Like he's, he's running barefoot on my gravel driveway and I couldn't even walk on it. And I was like, how do you, what are you even doing? Like, how is it even possible that you could run on these rocks?

• 22:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 22:13Rich Roll?

  And not hurt your feet. Like it was amazing, right?

• 22:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 22:16Rich Roll?

  And it just seemed so foreign and impossible to me. Um, I'm not there yet. I will say that. Um, but after we did those drills, then we went out to Malibu Creek State Park and we went running. And in allegiance to, you know, what he was teaching me, I pulled out my pair of Vivo barefoot running shoes, which I had not worn in quite some time. He did the whole thing barefoot. I did them in my Vivos. And I couldn't walk for like a week after what was essentially a pretty easy six or seven mile run. Cause my calves were so sore, which was an indication of the fact that this is a very different kind of motion than what I was used to. And I was just amazed at his ability to do this trail run barefoot.

• 22:59Rich Roll?

  Like, you know, like on little rocks and all kinds of things that you would think would just tear your feet apart. But he's so accustomed to this that he could do it in an extremely graceful way.

• 23:10Adam Skolnick?

  Because his feet have a musculature that ours don't, right?

• 23:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, it's also this technique of lifting. Like if you watch that video or you go to and take his programs, he's got all these online programs. It's all about like this light touch with the earth where you're focusing on, on pulling your heels up and kicking them back and working your hamstrings and this leaning forward motion. It's a whole thing.

• 23:36Rich Roll?

  That's very different from how you're running in running shoes. And what I realized initially, even when I did that run with Tony, was just how hard I was landing. Like, you know, when you're wearing a minimal shoe, you can feel the pounding, you know, and you're, I'm like, I have like a lead foot. And what is the relationship to that?

• 23:55Rich Roll?

  The biometrics of that on the back pain that I'm experiencing, or you know, the occasional pain in my hips that I'm feeling. What if I could relearn how to run so that I have a very soft touch? And it's not a pounding experience, but a more human and natural approach to this movement. Right? So I devoted myself to trying to learn this. And this is a very, I'm very much just in the starting gate of trying to figure this out, to retrain, you know, this process of running. And so I don't know what happened to those Vivo barefoot shoes. I couldn't find them, so I went out and bought another pair. And I haven't worn anything, but we're going to do a show and tell. And I'm wearing them right now because I just came from the gym.

• 24:39Rich Roll?

  But I'll, in the show and tell, I'll pull them out and show you guys. And we could talk a little bit more about it. But it's been really interesting. And I've started, this is another thing that I started really slow, just doing the drills, being very gentle on myself, not overdoing it. And then went from drills to doing a run, like I ran 10 minutes, you know, just trying to keep my cadence really high, focusing on lifting my feet up, being gentle on the earth, not pounding, not landing hard.

• 25:06Adam Skolnick?

  Where were you running?

• 25:07Rich Roll?

  Just on like, there's, I alternated between trails and pavement. Cause I wanted, I wanted to mix those two things up.

• 25:15Adam Skolnick?

  In the vivos or barefoot?

• 25:16Rich Roll?

  No, in the vivos. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not like running barefoot yet.

• 25:19Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So I'm just trying to do this. I don't want to get injured either. And you know, when I, when my calves, you know, were hurting for a week, when I, when I overstepped it and went out running, you know, full stop in these things, I realized like, this is something that, you know, I could easily get hurt doing if I don't take it slowly. So yeah, it started off with like a 10 minute run. Now I'm up to being able to run an hour in them and I have no soreness. And you know, my technique is coming along. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm getting better at it and it's been really fun. And this is an example of looking for the opportunity in the quarantine. Like, okay, all these things that I like to do, they're kind of off the table. What can I do that ordinarily I wouldn't be able to justify?

• 26:04Rich Roll?

  Or I would just have a hard time wrapping my head around. It's like the world has stopped. Like, let's learn this thing. Let's take the time, be patient and try to master a new skill. So it's been really fun and I'm enjoying it.

• 26:17Adam Skolnick?

  I love it. I think also like you can't understate, overstate the.

• 26:23Adam Skolnick?

  Uh, what that does to your brain, just learning this, starting again at, at zero and being the beginner, like the beginner mind, like what that does for you, how that kind of keeps you young to, to some degree and just keeps you humble and all sorts of good things come from being open to being the beginner again.

• 26:41Rich Roll?

  It also changes your relationship with time. When you're in a rut and in a routine and doing things the way that you always do them and always kind of doubling down on your strengths and ignoring your weaknesses. Uh, time, especially as you get older, seems to speed up. It's like, wow, it's already September, like what happened to the summer?

• 27:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 27:02Rich Roll?

  But when you decide to try to learn something new, time slows down and it seems more technicolor than it would ordinarily because it's triggering. You know, it'd be interesting to hear what, what Andrew Huberman would have to say about that because I think it lights up other areas of your brain that are, that are dormant.

• 27:20Adam Skolnick?

  That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, what kind of like brain health thing is there from like taking up something new? I mean, they talk about it all the time with older people, learning a new language or, you know, like, you know, I wonder there, there's got to be some sort of brain health benefit.

• 27:32Rich Roll?

  I'm sure there is. It's definitely an overlooked aspect of well-being and perhaps even longevity.

• 27:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Rich Roll?

  Especially in terms of brain health.

• 27:40Adam Skolnick?

  It's, it's very inspiring to me because I've had all sorts of foot problems and, and, uh, you know, just playing basketball for so many years and just spraining both ankles, you know, a half a dozen times and, and just like I've had, you know, I have orthotics for my regular running shoes and then going into the swim run shoes, which are very minimal, even the Solomons that I typically run in because the Vivos are so hard for me to deal with. I'm wearing Vivo every days right now.

• 28:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:05Adam Skolnick?

  For this episode and I have worn them, but like if I wear them too many hours, like I feel the, this calf pain and I feel my foot pain even more. But the Solomons, you know, I had to, one of the reasons I, I actually stopped running the week before, um, April gave birth because I'd had, I had like this, almost a shin splint feeling that was starting to happen and so I had to stop. And so I, I, I mean, I'm definitely a lead footer. I mean, I'm a, I'm a thumper. So, um, you know, it's just.

• 28:33Rich Roll?

  And there's this sense that, well, that's just the way I am. Like I have a heavy foot. Well, that's not the case. That's just because this is the way that your brain is wired to move yourself in this way, but that can be retrained and in addition to, excuse me. You know, what I witnessed spending time with Tony, I also reflect back upon my experience doing the, the world championships.

• 28:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 28:59Rich Roll?

  And I was amazed how many people were wearing Vivo's in that ultra race. Not everybody, you know, there was a, there was a variety of different kind of shoe selections, but there was definitely a contingent of competitors who were wearing the, and I was like, how are you going to do this race, be on your feet for nine hours or however long this thing goes on in this minimal barefoot shoe? Like, I couldn't wrap my head around it. Now I'm starting to understand that not only is it possible, like, maybe it's a better way to go. And I think to really, you know, punctuate this whole thing and bring it back to Tony, he just completed last year.

• 29:41Rich Roll?

  He did this thing where he did the, the, he basically ran the entire length of England, like, did the John O'Groats run, like, ultra running, like, you know, I don't know, something like 40 or 50 miles a day, barefoot.

• 29:54Adam Skolnick?

  Remember that?

• 29:54Rich Roll?

  From one end of the, you know, the, the island to the other. It was an incredible accomplishment. This year, he just completed something called Three Bear Peaks, where he ran 450 miles over nine days. It was like nine days, seven hours, 18 minutes, where he tackled the three tallest peaks in the UK. Mount Snowdon in Wales, Scafell Peak in England, and Ben Nevis in Scotland. When, so there's a lot of

• 30:23Adam Skolnick?

  He ran between them all?

• 30:24Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of pavement in between these, in these mountains.

• 30:27Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 30:28Rich Roll?

  Which he ran in Vivo's, but then he would scale the mountains barefoot, or some combination of barefoot and wearing his Vivo's. In addition to that, according to an article I just read, which I just found out, I didn't know this, apparently he had COVID, like, he was just coming off having COVID when he did this. It must not have been a very severe case of COVID.

• 30:52Adam Skolnick?

  Well, no, COVID just can't deal with Tony. Like, Tony

• 30:54Rich Roll?

  Maybe, yeah. Well, he's the natural lifestyleist, right?

• 30:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. COVID's like, I don't want to be in Tony. Tony's gonna make me run barefoot.

• 31:03Rich Roll?

  Apparently, this is a thing, this race, and he broke the record for it. I don't know how many people have done it over the years, but essentially, he was running the equivalent of about two marathons every day.

• 31:16Adam Skolnick?

  He's a beast, man.

• 31:17Rich Roll?

  Seventeen marathons total over this nine-day period.

• 31:20Adam Skolnick?

  Incredible.

• 31:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, which is amazing, right?

• 31:23Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 31:23Rich Roll?

  And he's all about, this is gonna dovetail into the big idea that we're gonna talk about. This kind of ethos that he lives is all about trying to align himself with the natural rhythms of the planet. Like, he's removed all the chairs out of his house, and he's about squatting and being barefoot, and trying to connect with something that is very primal and ancestral about being human, which, in many ways, as a result of the modernity of the world in which we inhabit, we've lost connection with.

• 31:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, and I think, just one last physiological question. I mean, I imagine his feet are extremely muscular. I met a guy in Tahiti named Mato, who is barefoot all the time, and he once sailed a canoe with some other Tahitian guys all the way to Shanghai, and then was walking down the city streets of Shanghai barefoot. And this guy doesn't, like, his feet are thick, just like muscle. It's like a pure muscle with toes coming out. And everywhere he goes, he can run on any surface and hike any surface. I imagine Tony's feet have to be like that.

• 32:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, they don't look deformed or anything like that. I mean, the original impetus for him getting into this was that he had some kind of foot deformity, and this was a means of trying to correct that. They don't look freakish, but they have, like, the skin on the bottom is much thicker, obviously. Like, he's not, like, the tenderness on the underside of most people's feet, mine included, not sure yours, is so paper-thin. And that gets conditioned in a way where he can run on loose, tiny, little gravel rocks, and it's not cutting him.

• 33:11Adam Skolnick?

  Doesn't feel it.

• 33:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he doesn't feel it.

• 33:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Amazing.

• 33:22Adam Skolnick?

  Well, you had a couple of questions that we aren't going to tackle later that kind of get into this fitness area. One is a woman, Linda in Marin, who is trying to do the same thing, get into more functional body strength to age gracefully and kind of transitioning out of mostly running and endurance. And she wondered if there's anywhere to start. Like, where would you recommend somebody to follow your lead? How would you recommend Linda to start?

• 33:51Rich Roll?

  There's a million videos on YouTube. You can just dial up functional fitness routines on YouTube and you'll get tons of instructional videos. I wish I'd written this down, but there's one called like, Mountain Fitness, or something like that. Like, they literally take every exercise and make like, a two-minute video out of it. Whether it's a kettlebell exercise, or some kind of abdominal or back exercise, and they walk you through it so that you can watch it. And that's how I learned how to do some really basic, like kettlebell moves, because that's really foreign to me. So, you know, the perils of YouTube, which we're going to get into in a minute-

• 34:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's a better transition.

• 34:31Rich Roll?

  ... are buffered by, you know, a lot of helpful information when it comes to this kind of stuff, right?

• 34:36Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 34:36Rich Roll?

  So I would start there. I mean, I think the larger point, to her point about desiring to age gracefully, is well considered, because, and we talked about this last time, as we get older, she's 53, I'm 53, I can continue to advance my, you know, endurance capacity. That doesn't go away as we age. What becomes more difficult is maintaining strength and muscle mass. Like, that starts to diminish as we get older. And I think, you know, it's important to make sure that you're taking care of that. You know, I've, I told you, like, oh, I touch a weight and I blow up, and that's always been the case for me. But

• 35:19Rich Roll?

  I have noticed, now at 53, it's taking a little bit longer. It's coming back, but I do have to be more patient with it. And I think-

• 35:28Rich Roll?

  You know, I can, five weeks into this, what do I have to say? But I can tell you that I feel better in my body and I feel like I have more control and agility and it's a good feeling and it's something that I'm gonna continue to do irrespective of, you know, how much I dip back into the endurance world. And you see it with, we mentioned this last time too, like this is the David Goggins approach, like

• 35:50Adam Skolnick?

  He's been doing both the whole time.

• 35:52Rich Roll?

  You know, 100 mile plus runs doesn't mean that he's not in the gym and, you know, he might be a better ultra runner if he cut back on that stuff and lost 15 pounds of shoulder, shoulder mass.

• 36:05Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 36:05Rich Roll?

  You know, he might be a better runner, but overall, over the course of his life, will he be as strong and as fit and as healthy? Who knows?

• 36:13Adam Skolnick?

  Right, well, I mean, I'm sure he's been told that a million times by people, you know,

• 36:17Rich Roll?

  What are you bench pressing for?

• 36:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, but he's been in the gym this entire time. Like he's like, it's two a days and three a days. Every time and one of them is always in the gym, so.

• 36:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:29Adam Skolnick?

  And functional stuff, like often body weight stuff more than anything.

• 36:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:33Adam Skolnick?

  You know, like pull ups and pushups.

• 36:35Rich Roll?

  Right, because the gyms are closed.

• 36:37Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 36:37Rich Roll?

  You know.

• 36:38Adam Skolnick?

  There you go.

• 36:39Rich Roll?

  All right, the big story.

• 36:40Adam Skolnick?

  The big story, do you wanna, you wanna kick this, you brought this one up, so.

• 36:44Rich Roll?

  It's not gonna be a surprise to anybody who follows me on social media, because I've been posting about this. But what I really wanna do is spend some time talking about this documentary, The Social Dilemma, which just premiered on Netflix. It's essentially an exploration of the dangerous human impact of social networking, interspersed with talking heads, these tech experts who are sounding the alarm on their own creations and the existential threat to humanity they pose. And I think what makes it so compelling and distinct from other kind of alarm bell documentaries is that these talking heads are not only

• 37:24Rich Roll?

  Alerting us to the dangers of what's going on online right now, they are the architects of it themselves, right? And they're holding themselves to account on some level. That's, you know, a tangential thread that we can pull on in a minute because it's fraught with complications.

• 37:41Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 37:42Rich Roll?

  But I found this documentary to not only be incredibly powerful, I really believe that it is the most important movie of the year. And I can't stress enough how much I think everybody needs to see this film.

• 37:58Adam Skolnick?

  It is, it is the revelation, the Neo revelation in The Matrix, you know, it really is. It's like, we're all Neo. And this is Laurence Fishburne coming to us to try to, Morpheus, trying to tell us, tell us what's really going on. Don't you think? I mean, not to be, not to make it like bigger than it is, but it is a really big issue and Morpheus is Tristan Harris.

• 38:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Adam Skolnick?

  And, and that's what's happening.

• 38:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And he closes the movie by essentially saying like, how do you get people to wake up from The Matrix when they don't even realize that they're in The Matrix?

• 38:33Adam Skolnick?

  Which is the whole point of The Matrix.

• 38:34Rich Roll?

  Which is to put yourself in the position of Neo when he comes to realize that there's more going on than he originally imagined.

• 38:42Adam Skolnick?

  And we, and to make it clear, what's happening is basically, we're the product. You know, I think you also sent me this GQ article that one of the people who's featured in the movie, Jaron Lanier, Zach Baron's GQ profile of him. And in that, Jaron is basically quoted as saying, anytime you're provided with a service like Facebook for free, you are in fact the product being sold. And that's the point of this whole documentary.

• 39:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:10Adam Skolnick?

  We are the product. We are what's being mined. We are the precious metal, you know, lifeblood of the earth that's being mined for money. And we're doing it because we think we're getting better connection to our friends and family. But in reality, we're being teed up with content in these news feeds that might feel sometimes really good, but in the long run are really bad for mental health, especially in young people, and are really, really bad for social welfare and democracy.

• 39:41Rich Roll?

  And it's happening to such an extent that we're completely unaware that it's happening. And it is undermining our free will. I mean, we could talk about whether we have free will at all, period, but certainly this is triggering us in a way to navigate the world from a perspective where we think we're making decisions about the content that we consume, but we've been so manipulated by these platforms that it leads us down these pathways and introduces us to ideas that we didn't consciously choose for ourselves. And I think Jaron Lanier is, is like the godfather of this notion. Like this guy is unbelievable, right? Like, I would love to get him on the podcast. I mean, he's been

• 40:25Rich Roll?

  around forever. He's a pioneer of virtual reality. He, you know, worked at Atari for a long time. He's kind of this futurist philosopher king. Many years ago, he wrote his own manifesto. And we could talk about Tristan's manifesto, but Jaron's, you know, he wrote like 10 reasons to delete your social media. Like, this is not a new idea.

• 40:43Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 40:44Rich Roll?

  From his perspective, he was recently a guest on Andrew Yang's podcast, which everyone should check out. Super interesting, thoughtful, you know, perspective on the impact of social media on, on, on everybody. But the movie is really the brainchild of Tristan Harris, who has been making the podcast rounds for many years. You know, I would highly suggest checking out his first appearance on Sam Harris's podcast. It was amazing. He's a former design ethicist from Google and has kind of now stepped into this role as, you know, the quote unquote conscience of Silicon Valley. He wrote this manifesto when he was at Google, like, hey, you know, shouldn't we be thinking about like the impact of these products and how addictive they are? Like, what are we really doing

• 41:29Rich Roll?

  here? I think we need to stop for a minute and assess the long-term implications of these tools that we've crafted. And everybody seemed to agree. It kind of went viral within not just Google, but Silicon Valley at large. Everyone nodded, but then nothing happened. And that led him to quit his job and create this now nonprofit called

• 41:56Rich Roll?

  The Center for Humane Technology, which is really the one organization, I'm sure there's others, but the leading organization that's trying to redress the ills of these social platforms and these technology behemoths and how they're impacting not just personal mental health, but how they're undermining the cohesion and the social fabric of society at large.

• 42:21Adam Skolnick?

  So let's take, let's kind of like unpack it. So we'll start with like the human psychological component because that's one thing that I think I didn't fully get until watching this is the idea is that that they are the, this AI that is basically taking our data, analyzing the data, and then using what it's learned about us to serve us more content in the idea to capture our attention, to mine our attention so they can sell this stuff for pennies. I mean, it's pennies a click, like pennies. So basically, we're being sold super cheap.

• 42:59Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 43:00Adam Skolnick?

  You know, but just a million times over. But it is, it's an understanding of human psychology and twisting. It's like the greatest con ever. It is, it's computer con and it's understanding who we are and what we want next before we even know we want it. That's why it feels like free will when we're clicking on something that's not necessarily free will.

• 43:20Rich Roll?

  Correct. The way that they illustrate that is with these little dramatic interludes that they pepper throughout the movie, which I will say, if there's one flaw in this movie, I'm not so sure that these, these things are successful. They do, they do one where they play out kind of a family drama with actors and, you know, the classic kind of trope of being at the dinner table and like, don't have your phones and the teenagers are rebelling and that all feels kind of dated right now. But the other- Little drama that they interpose throughout is this panel of Vincent Carthizer, who you might know from Mad Men. Pete from Mad Men plays the AI. He plays the AI. He plays three guys or he plays all of them and they're all

• 44:05Rich Roll?

  sitting behind monitors, you know, as puppeteers trying to, you know, staring at their product, who is the young teen boy in the other drama, trying to maintain his connection to this platform. Like, oh, he looks like he's going to log off. Send him this so he stays here. Right. And it's sort of cheeky and fun. It's fun. It makes the point, but the point, the larger point being like, all of these little bells and whistles are very well thought out and intended in the same way a Vegas casino intends to keep you, you know, in front of that slot machine or at the table. Right. To keep you engaged on this platform and not let you leave, whether it's the color

• 44:47Rich Roll?

  scheme or the way that every time you refresh, it's a new feed. All of these things are A/B tested to the gills to maintain your focus and keep those eyeballs on that platform. They serve you up the ads you want to see. They, you know, know who the people are that you really want to hear from on these platforms. And so we think we're just staying in touch with our friends, when in reality, we are being mined for so much data that this AI understands us better than we understand ourselves. And that's a frightening prospect. And how this gets played out, it's one thing to talk about it in kind of an intellectual academic context, but we're seeing the deleterious implications of this getting played out

• 45:32Rich Roll?

  in the fracturing of our society. And one of the quotes that was really impactful for me in watching this movie was when somebody said, I can't remember which person said this, maybe you'll remember, but he said, you know, we have this idea of the Truman Show, like, you know, you're in a reality show where you're being manipulated. Well, imagine that everybody, every single person, the billions of individuals that are on Facebook.

• 45:56Adam Skolnick?

  Two point seven billion Truman shows.

• 45:58Rich Roll?

  Are all in their own respective, personal Truman show.

• 46:02Adam Skolnick?

  Roger McNamee said that one. Yeah, Roger McNamee.

• 46:05Rich Roll?

  And when you realize that, you realize that we're not engaging in a shared reality. We all have our own reality and we're deluded to think that everyone is living in our reality when in fact they are not.

• 46:17Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly. So, uh, which, which means that, you know, the, the Time Magazine article that we both read this week, which you're going to include in the show notes, which kind of, um, it's from Boots. It's basically a reporter that's been in Kenosha, Wisconsin, um, uh, in the post Jacob Blake, uh, kind of protests and everything that's been happening there. She's there, you know, smoke is cleared and she's there and interviewing, uh, which I think it was nine dozen or seven dozen people, um, about, you know, from all parts of, you know, from the left to the right about what they think about this upcoming election. And, um, it's scary, some of the views from both sides that are, that, that people were, were, uh, you know,

• 47:01Adam Skolnick?

  just basically parroting Q and on theory and, and things like that. And one point she makes is you can't have a functional democracy if you don't have an informed public. And, um, it used to be a little easier to figure out, uh, or to figure out how to be informed. And now that's all very muddy. And the reason that's muddy, and we can talk about the, you know, fake news traveling six times faster than real news on these platforms. And that's one of the reasons. The other reason is that the AI doesn't care what's fake or, or, or real, because it doesn't know what's fake or real. It just knows clicks. And, and so some of the, sometimes what you're getting on your Facebook feed, it won't necessarily feed you stuff you like.

• 47:42Adam Skolnick?

  It won't necessarily feed you material from people you like hearing from. It will feed you stuff it knows you don't like, because it knows it'll keep you on that feed longer.

• 47:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:52Adam Skolnick?

  So you'll find, if you wonder why there's all this politics on your news feed, that's because it knows you don't like it. But you can't resist reading this shit.

• 48:02Rich Roll?

  Right, if you click on it, that's the paramount consideration.

• 48:05Adam Skolnick?

  That's all that matters, right?

• 48:06Rich Roll?

  There's a quote in that Time article by this woman, Whitney Phillips, who's a professor at Syracuse who studies online disinformation, and she said, "They're not on the same..." She's talking about these people who are kind of canvassed, who are all harboring, you know, ideas that range from insane conspiracy to, you know, countercultural or what have you. And she said, "They're not on the same epistemological grounding. They're not living in the same worlds. You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not, at the very least, occupying the same solar system." And this is what is so troubling and problematic about all of this. And I said to you the other day when we were talking about this,

• 48:49Rich Roll?

  when we look at the very large existential problems that we face, from climate change to political division to wild conspiracy theories to the protesting in the streets, none of it can be properly addressed and worked through if we're not sharing some basic set of facts here. We cannot solve our problems existential and practical if we don't solve this social dilemma first. This is like the... This is a root driver of the division, the divisiveness, the polarization, the anger, the acrimony that we're getting...

• 49:32Rich Roll?

  that we're seeing getting played out on the streets all over the country. And I think we really need to pause and reflect upon the role that these technological behemoths play in our society. And I think it's incumbent upon us as the public to call for their regulation. You know, this movie is very dystopian when you watch it. And at the very end, it's sort of like, okay, well, we can't leave the audience just feeling absolutely horrible without some sense of hope or solution. But that...

• 50:06Rich Roll?

  Kind of hopeful note that's cast at the very end feels a little bit tacked on. There is a sense that, well, we know we need to change, like delete your social media from your phone. Okay, that's one thing we can do. We need to regulate these companies. Okay, but what is the path forward? You know, I have, I have hope that Tristan and his team at, you know, the Center for Humane Technology are, are, they've got their eyeballs on this and they're, they're coming up with these solutions. But it's not like we have it all worked out right now.

• 50:38Adam Skolnick?

  No, I mean, I think that there are, all right, so let's, let's pan. I mean, one thing that you're talking about in the dystopian ending is you can cut from all over the world. You're seeing street clashes.

• 50:53Adam Skolnick?

  And then the, the guy who was, who went from Facebook or, yeah, he was like the Facebook.

• 50:59Rich Roll?

  Guy who came up with the like button?

• 51:01Adam Skolnick?

  No, the guy that was in charge of monetizing Facebook that went to Pinterest.

• 51:05Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:06Adam Skolnick?

  He said, they asked him what he most worries about, and he said, in the shortest time horizon, civil war. And if that sounds extreme to you, consider what, when you look back and read about wars, they start with kindling and it's like one little moment of kindling that could spark it. We've had them already. We've had the kindling moments. I'm not trying to be alarmist, but we have had them. You know, we had Charlottesville, Kenosha, where, where a 17 year old kid goes around and is with a gun to try to protect property, I guess. He thought he was in the right. He ends up shooting and killing people. And then he's used as a pawn by right wing people like Tucker Carlson and, and Ann Coulter and Donald Trump himself.

• 51:51Adam Skolnick?

  And, and they don't care about this kid. You know, like it's, it's, it's a tragedy that a 17 year old kid went and did that for, you know, it's a tragedy for him. And, and it's, it's a tragedy for obviously the people, the families he affected. You know, like. We've had these skirmishes now so much. We have in Portland, we have anarchists throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers. In Compton, we have people hunting cops.

• 52:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:16Adam Skolnick?

  I mean, I'm not, I'm not picking sides here. This is just what's happening. And so we have the kindling. The kindling is in place. I don't think it's, our destiny is that, but, but certainly, you know, if we, if, if it is, we can look back at now as being, as being where, when it started.

• 52:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:35Adam Skolnick?

  And if you look at how Twitter, Twitter's big moment was 2010, the Arab Spring, right? When everyone's in Tahrir Square in Cairo and, and calling for the end of, of the Murabak? Murabak? Yeah, something.

• 52:48Rich Roll?

  Mubarak?

• 52:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Mubarak era. He'd been a dictator in Egypt for, you know, decades and, and they depose him and the same thing happens. It replicates across, you know, the Arab world and it becomes Arab Spring. And if you look at it now, only Tunisia has come out of it in a, in a better place. Libya is, is on the verge of even more civil war, looking like Syria. Syria is a shell of itself. ISIS came up out of it. And, and how did ISIS become so strong? They recruited on Facebook. You know, how did Charlottesville rally happen?

• 53:28Adam Skolnick?

  They recruited on Facebook. So the social media can be beneficial, but it's not in itself beneficial. It's like this medium that it does tend towards the dystopic, even when things seem to be going well, it can twist and turn on you. And so that's, I think, what you're talking about, the dystopic ending, right? So how to, how to fix it at the end of this movie, one way is to bust these companies up.

• 53:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we need, they need to be broken up.

• 53:59Adam Skolnick?

  Broken up.

• 53:59Rich Roll?

  We need to get. Elizabeth Warren, you know, either running the Justice Department or the FTC because she's on top of the anti-competitive nature of these companies. And there's just no reason that they should be as large and as powerful as they are.

• 54:17Adam Skolnick?

  Right, like Instagram came up independently as Facebook, Facebook gobbled it up. WhatsApp came up independently, it got gobbled up.

• 54:23Rich Roll?

  Like certainly WhatsApp and Instagram should be separated.

• 54:26Adam Skolnick?

  And Google and YouTube.

• 54:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:28Adam Skolnick?

  Google and YouTube should be separated.

• 54:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you know, look, there is something to be said for like these, all these talking heads. These guys are all became super successful as a result of their involvement in tech. They're all worth tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 54:43Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 54:43Rich Roll?

  Because of their involvement in this infrastructure. And a lot of how they learned how to create these persuasive technologies and these sort of, you know, the bells and whistles that get packed into this, they learned at Stanford in BJ Fogg's persuasive technology lab. BJ Fogg, who's a master of behavior change, he's an amazing guy. I'm trying to get him on the podcast, we've been going back and forth, scheduling thing. But they took what they learned in his lab and then kind of weaponized it to create this addictive, you know, like call and response relationship with the mobile apparatus.

• 55:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. It's, and yes, there's a certain amount of guilt, I think, that some of these people in the movie must be feeling. They didn't see it coming. The guy that created the like button, what's his name? You have him listed here, Justin Rosenstein.

• 55:41Rich Roll?

  Justin Rosenstein, yeah.

• 55:43Adam Skolnick?

  He was like, our whole goal was to spread love and connection. They didn't see it coming.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:48Adam Skolnick?

  They were playing chess and didn't realize it. You know, I'm not, you know, they didn't see it, they're so smart, but they didn't see this coming. But you know, maybe they couldn't see it coming because they were creating something like the like button. They weren't, you know, it's like all the different departments created this greater. Computer mind, you know, this big brain like that Jaron talks about. And so they couldn't see it coming. And, uh, and now that they do see it coming, it's, it disturbs them and they're trying to get people to engage with the fact that this isn't, isn't healthy.

• 56:23Rich Roll?

  Google's not, it's not a partisan thing.

• 56:25Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 56:26Rich Roll?

  So in the, in the drama around the teenage boy, you see him get radicalized by way of YouTube, but they, they, they specifically, you know, create some, you know, fictional, you know, faction, you know, that he gets radicalized into because they don't, this is not a Republican liberal thing. Trump makes no appearance in this documentary whatsoever. And the only politicians that kind of offer soundbites are Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake, both Republicans who are sounding the alarm for this being problematic. So this isn't a conservative liberal thing.

• 57:02Adam Skolnick?

  It shouldn't be.

• 57:03Rich Roll?

  Well, it shouldn't be. Yeah. Everything gets weaponized and everything, you know, becomes politicized.

• 57:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 57:09Rich Roll?

  But in truth, anybody who's looking at this clear eyed and objectively will understand that this is a disease. It's a pox on our society. And once we lose the ability to effectively and communicate with each other, as Tristan Harris says, it's checkmate on humanity. That's how big this is. Yes, civil war. I don't think that's overreaching to say that. When you look at what's happening right now, we're seeing the early stages of what could become a failed state.

• 57:43Adam Skolnick?

  Definitely. I mean, and, and I think what Jaron talks about is like a place where we can't solve any of the problems like you had mentioned, um, because, uh, all we have is this contentious political arena and authoritarians running everything and no clear idea of what to do. And so, you know, that, that's what he, he's worried about a hundred years out. He is worried about our ability to solve any problems whatsoever. Failed state absolutely is, is, is something to be concerned about. You also got to be concerned about the kids. I mean, uh, we didn't get into what they talked about that, but they're talking about spiking suicide rates of, of, of girls between 10 and 14 years old. I mean, 10 and 14 years old.

• 58:28Adam Skolnick?

  Uh, that's usually there aren't 10 year olds don't do that. 10 year olds don't do that. You know, and so, uh, obviously between 14 and 17, it's a spiked rate as well. That's something you maybe could, could understand why. But between 10 and 14, so what we might feel is FOMO as adults. Little kids are thinking of, I wish I wasn't me. And this is the evidence why. So they're always seeing that evidence of why they don't want to be themselves.

• 58:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Adam Skolnick?

  And, and, um, and so, yeah, so it's, it's, it's, it's emergency time and Zuckerberg doesn't feel, doesn't seem like the type of guy that could fix it. He has to be imposed upon.

• 59:05Rich Roll?

  Well, he, I mean, he's as feckless as ever. The talking, the sort of soundbites that they share of him, you're just like, seriously? Like, you know, he's not even addressing this at all.

• 59:15Adam Skolnick?

  And what about the Google guys? Remember, don't be evil was their whole thing? I mean, that, that's gone. You don't hear that anymore. Like, where are those guys?

• 59:24Rich Roll?

  There's a Fast Company article that I'll also link up in the show notes. That was published on nine 11 of this year. And the headline is, we can have social media as we know it, or we can have democracy.

• 59:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:35Rich Roll?

  That's how dire and serious this is. It's as serious as a heart attack. And, you know, it's, it's terrifying and I can't stop thinking about this movie. And I can't overstate how important I think it is to, that everybody, you know, watch this and have conversations about it. At the same time, I would be, you know, remiss in not calling out my own duplicity here. You and I.

• 1:00:00Adam Skolnick?

  Me too.

• 1:00:00Rich Roll?

  Both, I mean, I have an entire career because of social media. Like there, there is some logic to this idea that it is a tool. And if used appropriately, it can, it can be beneficial for other people and for ourselves. It's given me a career. But one of the things that they kind of dispel in the documentary is that trope of it's just a tool. It's neutral. Right?

• 1:00:24Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:00:24Rich Roll?

  And you can, you know, you can use it for good or you can use it for evil. And it kind of belies, it pulls the, pulls covers on that trope to say, it's not actually neutral. But, you know, yeah, it's like.

• 1:00:37Adam Skolnick?

  Well, I think

• 1:00:38Rich Roll?

  This podcast is transmitted over the internet.

• 1:00:41Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:00:41Rich Roll?

  And people find out about it because of social media.

• 1:00:44Adam Skolnick?

  Well.

• 1:00:44Rich Roll?

  I have a Facebook account. I have, I have an Instagram account. I post there.

• 1:00:48Adam Skolnick?

  Well, but in podcasts, new media in general, if you look at podcasts or any sort of new media, and podcasts being the most successful form of new media, I think, than we've ever seen. You know, blogs couldn't touch what podcasts are doing.

• 1:01:02Rich Roll?

  Blogs are dead.

• 1:01:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, blogs have, and they never really, you know, it's just another website. But, but podcasts are doing financially, but also culturally, it's a whole nother thing. And that's new media. And one thing they, they kind of, this movie kind of looks at Steve Jobs as this figure and as if social media somehow twisted his dream of the computer being the most important tool for human evolution, when in reality, Steve Jobs' parting shot was the iPhone, which is probably the number one tool, which gave us podcasts and gave us social media to this level, the smartphone. I don't think the hardware is, they got, you gotta touch the hardware too. The hardware is the problem too. You know, when you can get notifications and you can get this stuff

• 1:01:46Adam Skolnick?

  right in your pocket, and that you can watch it right here, you're never far from it. I think that is, is, you also gotta call out Apple. I mean, you know, if you're gonna call out Facebook and Google and everyone else, Instagram, you can call out Apple too. But you can also call ourselves out, right? So like, we were, we were talking about, yes, you, you've got your whole career in this podcast, and here I am sitting here, and my biggest success so far has been able to collaborate with David on his book, and he is, you know, he, he, he's not famous from social media, he's famous from the podcast, but that fueled his social media, which allowed the book to become this mega hit and, and gave, so there, there's things that come out of this that are positive. But look at the way David

• 1:02:30Adam Skolnick?

  uses social media. He uses it. It doesn't use him.

• 1:02:33Rich Roll?

  That's the difference.

• 1:02:34Adam Skolnick?

  He follows nobody. Right. That's the difference.

• 1:02:36Rich Roll?

  I don't even think, does he even have an iPhone?

• 1:02:38Adam Skolnick?

  I don't even know. I don't think so. No. No, I don't think so.

• 1:02:41Rich Roll?

  His fiancee manages all of that.

• 1:02:43Adam Skolnick?

  She has the iPhone, yeah.

• 1:02:43Rich Roll?

  And yeah, he doesn't like, she'll shoot a video of him and post it, but he's not at home seeing who commented on his thing.

• 1:02:50Adam Skolnick?

  He doesn't give a shit about that.

• 1:02:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. And he's like the most inspirational figure in the kind of fitness, you know, self-improvement space on the internet, essentially.

• 1:03:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, because he doesn't, he's not a slave to that stuff, you know, like, like I, I am like, I want to see who commented. I care about all that stuff.

• 1:03:13Adam Skolnick?

  But also, you know, you, I, I'm not going to go as far as saying there is no free will. Like you can, I go on YouTube and I watch The Daily Show and other late night snippets on YouTube. And that's the only thing I use it for. And I go in with a specific thing I want to watch and I get the fuck out and I don't watch their queued up videos. So you can use it as a tool. You can, but the, the larger thing is just because you can doesn't mean it's easy for everyone to do that.

• 1:03:40Rich Roll?

  One comfort that I take, because the documentary sort of establishes this idea that these AIs are all powerful. Like, oh, we don't even know what they're doing and they're controlling all of us. And it's now it's beyond our control, this idea that, you know, we're gonna, you know, live in this, you know, kind of Terminator world where the computers are already, where they're like, it's already happening, right?

• 1:04:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:04:04Rich Roll?

  But here's the thing.

• 1:04:07Rich Roll?

  The AI ain't that great because like sometimes I'll watch a YouTube video because I want to see like some knucklehead say this stupid thing, you know? It's like, oh, let's see, let me see how bad this argument is. And then I get served up all these videos as if like, that's the person that I like. Or I'll like buy something like, oh, I bought a pair of shoes from an ad that I saw on Instagram. And then I get served up more and more ads for that. And it's like, well, I just bought the thing. I don't need it anymore. Like, why are you doing, so it's like, it's very rudimentary still.

• 1:04:38Adam Skolnick?

  You're saying, you're saying the good news is tech doesn't work.

• 1:04:42Rich Roll?

  Well, it's not.

• 1:04:42Adam Skolnick?

  Tech often doesn't work.

• 1:04:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like, it's hilarious. Like, if I, I'm like, and I'll think like, oh, if I watch this video, then, then I'm going to get all these suggested videos all of a sudden. And that happens every time.

• 1:04:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, just being like, oh, that's why they're serving me up that video because I clicked that other thing and being aware of that. Look, you can delete your social media apps off your phone. I go through periods of time where I do that. Then they always find their way back.

• 1:05:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Rich Roll?

  You can grayscale your phone. You can, I mean, one thing I think is, is, is really important is turning off your notifications.

• 1:05:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:05:16Rich Roll?

  You're not just constantly inundated with bells and whistles all day long. That's one way to take greater control of your sanity. And I think just having conversations about this stuff, like, you know, as a parent of teenage girls, I'm very connected to the ills of, you know, what these platforms are doing to young people. And when you layer the pandemic on top of it, and now like the, we didn't even talk about the fact that California's on fire right now and the sky's orange. You know, all of this is contributing to a very unhealthy state of mind in young people. And it's really tragic. And I'm seeing kids cracking out there, like friends of friends who have teenage kids who are having a really

• 1:05:59Rich Roll?

  hard time. And, you know, my family's not immune from that. It's been really challenging. And social media is not helping, it's making it worse.

• 1:06:08Adam Skolnick?

  No. So, just real quick, a couple of things on their solutions. One is breaking up the big tech. The other is regulation. What kind of regulation? One suggestion was a data stream tax, like the more data they take from you, the more tax they pay the government, which would, which would, which would limit, like, they basically be more strategic about taking. And then there's a more radical version of where if they take your data and they earn money off it, then you get money.

• 1:06:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it should be, the default shouldn't be that they own the data and you have to try to get it back. It should be that we own our own data and that we can make the choice of whether we want to allow people access to that or not.

• 1:06:49Adam Skolnick?

  And Australia is phasing in a law that basically Facebook has to pay, I think it's Australia, has to pay the publishers if they, if their articles wind up on the platform.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, that's radical.

• 1:07:03Adam Skolnick?

  And they're talking about closing, Facebook is talking about getting out of Australia.

• 1:07:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because of that. There's no way they'll stand for that. But I think we need to see some experimentation in this realm. I know that Twitter is like beta testing a subscription model. Like, what if you just had to pay 10 bucks a month to have Twitter? Like, I'd probably pay that to have access to that platform.

• 1:07:25Adam Skolnick?

  And they don't get it.

• 1:07:25Rich Roll?

  And then strip away all the other, like, if you can create a different model, it's the ad model that's driving this, right? So if we can figure out, we can pivot away towards a healthier, you know, version that still allows these people to, like, it's a capitalist enterprise. You know, so I don't begrudge that at all, but not when it comes at the sacrifice of human dignity and health and the degradation of the social fabric of our democratic principles.

• 1:07:58Adam Skolnick?

  Absolutely. I think Jack could be the guy that does the most experimenting and gets it done quicker. Even though Twitter is, in some ways, the most problematic of these, because it's so polarized on Twitter, he also seems to be the one trying to do the most. And, you know, Google seems, as bad as Zuckerberg and Facebook is, Google seems completely out of touch. Like, Google's not even trying to talk about this. I mean, at least Zuckerberg realizes he has to say something every once in a while. Like, I don't hear from Google ever on YouTube. I mean, to me, they are, it's appalling what's happening on YouTube.

• 1:08:35Rich Roll?

  And Sundar just, he, I mean, he seems like such a nice guy.

• 1:08:39Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Rich Roll?

  Like, he's very polished and camera-ready, and he's very likeable. But he's not the face of the platform in the way that Jack is with Twitter or Mark is with Facebook.

• 1:08:52Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:08:52Rich Roll?

  And Facebook just feels irredeemable to me at this point.

• 1:08:57Adam Skolnick?

  It's, it's, it's, um, it's crazy. And then talking about the fires here in Oregon, in Oregon, there was rumors going on, on social media that Antifa was starting the fires in rural Oregon, which is like Trump country. And, and like the fact that it's ever even brought up while people are running for their lives, it's appalling. And it just fuels my suspicion that 2020 is the 2012 that they warned us about.

• 1:09:22Rich Roll?

  The Quetzalcoatl.

• 1:09:23Adam Skolnick?

  Like, like, you gotta give it to the Mayans, because a plus minus eight years.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  Daniel Pinchback kind of way?

• 1:09:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, like in the Celestine prophecy kind of way. Yeah, yeah. Like, like 2012 was supposed to be like the beginning where everything ends or gets better. And it's actually 2020, not 2012. And it's that Buckminster Fuller quote that, uh, that I sent you that was in the movie, something about how like, it's gonna be touch and go between utopia and utopia with human, with, you know, we're either gonna go from oblivion or between oblivion and utopia, it's gonna be touch and go, and we won't know until like the last act, what's gonna happen? Because these, obviously, our technology trends towards both simultaneously. And that's

• 1:10:08Adam Skolnick?

  what we're talking about here. But if we're gonna get to utopia and leave oblivion behind, we have a lot of work to do.

• 1:10:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, it does feel like an inflection point. And I certainly concede that, you know, it could go either way. And it's up to us.

• 1:10:28Adam Skolnick?

  It's up to us.

• 1:10:28Rich Roll?

  It's up to us. And so if there is a way to leverage these platforms for good, certainly that's what I'm about. But I think it's incumbent upon all of us to shoulder the responsibility of getting active, having the conversations that need to be had around the health of these platforms and the health of our families, because the stakes could not be higher right now.

• 1:10:53Adam Skolnick?

  And activism.

• 1:10:55Adam Skolnick?

  When you come down to it, is just talking to people. You know, it's, it's, you know, activism on a big, on the scale now, it's all online, but it used to be phone banks and knocking on doors. And for you, it could be making some phone calls. I plan to call people as the election closes in and talk about this kind of stuff, voice to voice. I'm going to take some time and I'm going to call people. And that's the activism I'm going to do around this. And I'm going to implore them to think of love first. And, and, you know, obviously I'm going to advocate for me, that means voting for Biden over Trump in this thing. But I also want to talk about in general YouTube and find out where people are getting their politics from, you know, where they're going to get their, they're getting their

• 1:11:38Adam Skolnick?

  information from and have that greater conversation as well. And I plan to do that. So that's what I'm going to do. I pledge to do that. I pledge it to you guys now, and I will follow through on that. And Rich can ask me how those conversations are going.

• 1:11:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 1:11:53Adam Skolnick?

  But those are going to happen in my, in my world. And I think the more conversations, let's using our phones to call people. And if you have to, you get a landline because to me, that's my favorite tech. It's my landline.

• 1:12:06Rich Roll?

  I haven't had a landline in 20 years.

• 1:12:07Adam Skolnick?

  It's the best piece of tech I've ever.

• 1:12:09Rich Roll?

  I'm not getting a landline.

• 1:12:09Adam Skolnick?

  You gotta get a landline, bro. It's the new, it's the new.

• 1:12:12Rich Roll?

  Is that the new like prepper thing?

• 1:12:14Adam Skolnick?

  That's it, man.

• 1:12:15Rich Roll?

  Like having a landline?

• 1:12:15Adam Skolnick?

  You telling me Jaron doesn't have a landline?

• 1:12:17Rich Roll?

  I'm sure he does, right? Probably. Meaningful conversation matters now more than ever. And the truth is found in nuance, something I tweeted the other day.

• 1:12:28Adam Skolnick?

  I love it.

• 1:12:28Rich Roll?

  I think it's something we should all take to heart. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with some show and tell and some wins of the week. And we're going to take some listener questions.

• 1:12:39Adam Skolnick?

  Beautiful.

• 1:12:48Rich Roll?

  All right, and we're back. I think that went well, Adam. I feel good today. My neurons are firing, my whoop score is through the roof, my hurry variability is good.

• 1:12:56Adam Skolnick?

  Bro, your neurons are firing so hard, I'm ducking.

• 1:13:01Rich Roll?

  Yes, you have to say that because you're the co-host.

• 1:13:03Adam Skolnick?

  That's right.

• 1:13:04Rich Roll?

  I feel like a walking advertisement for the podcast today. I've got like my whoop on.

• 1:13:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:10Rich Roll?

  I've got like this bottle that says Four Sigmatic on it.

• 1:13:14Adam Skolnick?

  I can smell the sweat over here.

• 1:13:15Rich Roll?

  You know.

• 1:13:16Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, is that a Tracksmith?

• 1:13:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like they're not a podcast sponsor yet, but we're talking to them. Like, I love their stuff.

• 1:13:23Adam Skolnick?

  Come on.

• 1:13:24Rich Roll?

  It's really cool. I'm wearing my 10,000 shorts.

• 1:13:26Adam Skolnick?

  Malcolm's probably wearing that same shirt right now.

• 1:13:28Rich Roll?

  I'm sure he is. I think I saw him wearing this shirt in an ad. Like, well, Tracksmith's a really cool brand. They work with Malcolm Knox Robinson, who's been on the podcast, is collaborating with them on a few things. They're sponsoring Mary Kane.

• 1:13:41Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:13:42Rich Roll?

  Who you know was the woman that Lindsey Krauss wrote the article about in the New York Times about how she was the fastest runner, but her career was sort of decimated by Alberto Salazar and all that. So they're sponsoring her. Like, I don't know. They make like really cool stuff.

• 1:13:58Adam Skolnick?

  Amazing.

• 1:13:59Rich Roll?

  Kind of like their ethos.

• 1:14:00Adam Skolnick?

  How great is Lindsey Krauss? Can we just say something?

• 1:14:02Rich Roll?

  She's the best.

• 1:14:03Adam Skolnick?

  I think she's just one of the best.

• 1:14:04Rich Roll?

  Have you met her?

• 1:14:05Adam Skolnick?

  I, no, but I have emailed with her just a couple of times, but I have not met her, but I find her reporting to be as good as it gets.

• 1:14:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I love her. I loved having her on the podcast and she's an excellent Twitter follow.

• 1:14:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Adam Skolnick?

  She's fabulous.

• 1:14:21Rich Roll?

  What do we got?

• 1:14:23Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Well, the Ethan Hawke TED Talk is out.

• 1:14:25Rich Roll?

  Yes, it is.

• 1:14:27Adam Skolnick?

  Give yourself permission.

• 1:14:28Rich Roll?

  It is.

• 1:14:29Adam Skolnick?

  My favorite part.

• 1:14:29Rich Roll?

  I love this TED Talk. I shared this on social media, back to the social media, but like, I love Ethan Hawke and I thought this TED Talk was so great and it leveraged the best of what can be done in quarantine. Like, he's not on the TED stage.

• 1:14:44Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:14:45Rich Roll?

  He looks like he's in a country western bar in Austin. He's got, he's, he's got the denim jacket like he's got on and he delivers this monologue that makes it look like he's coming up with it on the spot, but clearly like, you know, he's. Rehearse this.

• 1:15:00Adam Skolnick?

  I like him removing the glasses and getting into it.

• 1:15:03Rich Roll?

  So well done.

• 1:15:04Adam Skolnick?

  Very actor, very actor.

• 1:15:05Rich Roll?

  Yes, I loved it. I loved it. I love, and I was like, how can I get this guy on the podcast? Who, I don't know Ethan Hawke. I've never met him. I'm like, I gotta figure out a way to.

• 1:15:14Adam Skolnick?

  But he's had such an interesting career path because he's also, he's never just pigeonholed himself. He's always, you know, he's written novels.

• 1:15:21Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:15:21Adam Skolnick?

  And now he's like taking on kind of some self-help, uh, you know.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  Stepping into the McConaughey universe.

• 1:15:28Adam Skolnick?

  Well, that's the thing. Are actors the new self-help scions?

• 1:15:31Rich Roll?

  I don't know. It feels that way.

• 1:15:33Adam Skolnick?

  Ethan Hawke and Matthew McConaughey. Have you talked about Matthew McConaughey's?

• 1:15:36Rich Roll?

  No, not yet. But before we do that, like Ethan Hawke just drops bombs on creativity. And it was so inspiring and so beautifully delivered in a way that you could, um, it wasn't like, here's the 10 things you need to do. Like it was a, it was like a poetic monologue on, on, you know, the inherent creativity that exists and lives within all of us that's yearning to be expressed. And, you know, I just, I just thought it was beautiful.

• 1:16:04Adam Skolnick?

  And following what you love.

• 1:16:05Rich Roll?

  Give yourself permission to be creative.

• 1:16:06Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And follow what you love to figure out, because you can, he was talking about his brother. You can live, you can have a creative life and not necessarily be a creative, you know, artist or whatever.

• 1:16:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:16:17Adam Skolnick?

  You can, you have a creative life and just do the things you've loved and, and do them to the utmost. Um, and that's still a creative life. Uh, and he also, but when he is talking about kind of art, it's like, don't, don't worry if it's good. And that's like the hardest thing. You know, I've been writing this novel and it was like mid second draft when the baby came and I'll get back to it soon. But like, uh, that's the hardest bit is like, and even just writing an article, the hardest bit is, is this good?

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Adam Skolnick?

  You know, and, and the less you think of that, the better. And it's good. You know, give yourself permission to have it not be good. You know, like be, you're playing the fool. It's a fool, it's kind of a fool's errand to try to make a living as a creative person anyway. It's like, it was never a good career choice. Like even back before when like newspapers were in good shape. We didn't have all this, we had a kind of fractured attention and fractured outlets. It still wasn't necessarily a smart move to try to become a writer or a painter or a standup comic.

• 1:17:16Rich Roll?

  This outrageous ego, like, oh, the world needs to hear what I have to say. Are you fucking kidding me?

• 1:17:22Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right. And he's like, he's, his point is your voice matters. All people trying to become creative matters. But in a, in kind of a fly overview, none of it matters either, which is also kind of gives you permission to be a fool. Cause if it doesn't matter, who gives a shit? And, and you're not going to be the one to decide whether it matters anyway. You could never know what, what's going to make something a success. It's like a secret sauce recipe that nobody has the, it's a secret sauce, no one has the recipe for. Timing matters so much and like, you can't control timing. So,

• 1:17:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:17:54Adam Skolnick?

  You know, you can do the best.

• 1:17:56Rich Roll?

  Do it for the sake of doing it because it is part and parcel of what makes us human.

• 1:18:01Adam Skolnick?

  And, and you know, he doesn't get into the artist's way, but you talk about the artist's way, the morning pages. I mean, that's a great way to figure out and just to be creative for yourself, you know?

• 1:18:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. So are actors the new scions of self-help? Adam Skolnick.

• 1:18:16Adam Skolnick?

  Are they?

• 1:18:16Rich Roll?

  I don't know. It feels that way.

• 1:18:18Adam Skolnick?

  But it's not just Ethan, it's Matt, Matt. So he's got a book, right?

• 1:18:22Rich Roll?

  Leading the charge, leading the charge. The latest chapter in The McConnaissance is this new book that Matthew has coming out called, Green Lights. And it is interesting when you kind of look at Matthew's career, how he's had these fits and starts and then he was kind of a, you know, he, he kind of started off with the, you know, the, the dazed and confused era where he, you know, carved out like a little niche for himself and then. You know, became a sort of cog in the machine of studio rom-com land. And that played itself out and was never really him. And he had to find his way back to what his sweet spot is.

• 1:19:03Rich Roll?

  And he's just blossomed into this beautiful, you know, expression of creative humanity.

• 1:19:10Adam Skolnick?

  Brilliant actor.

• 1:19:11Rich Roll?

  The latest chapter of that are, you know, these snippets, like he only recently created an Instagram account and he'll just like drop pearls of wisdom.

• 1:19:21Adam Skolnick?

  I didn't even know he had that.

• 1:19:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, it's great. Oh, are you kidding? It's like, oh, it's so, he's so wise and soothing in his delivery. I don't know what it is specifically about him, but it's a guy who has like sort of,

• 1:19:36Rich Roll?

  you know, grabbed the horns of life and created this, you know, path for himself. And there's something to be said for the intentionality that he's brought to his life and his career that is super inspiring. And the way that he kind of conducts himself is so welcoming and inviting.

• 1:19:57Adam Skolnick?

  It's like if Wooderson had a master's degree in psychology or something, Wooderson from Dazed and Confused. It's like, you know what I mean? Like the Wooderson, Wooderson himself was his own prophet, you know, like the idea.

• 1:20:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Adam Skolnick?

  He was the prophet of that movie. He was, he was the Yoda. He was like, you just gotta, you know, he's go with the flow kind of thing. And then like the, you have the Lincoln ads, you have the Lincoln ads, which are like another kind of version of that, a more sophisticated version. But the reality of, of him is he does have his priorities straight. And, and, and so he is a guy to take advice from. I mean, I think, you know, both those guys are. So it's interesting though, that they're staking out that claim and that territory. And that is a function of new media, isn't it? Like that where, where, you know, there's, there's a place now. And it's not just them. Look at LeBron James and his voting and stuff and, you know, his promotion of social causes or, or whatever he wants to promote.

• 1:20:56Adam Skolnick?

  Athletes do it and they've done it for a long time, but it's kind of different for actors, I think, to do it.

• 1:21:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:02Rich Roll?

  It has to be the right one. You know who's also incredibly inspirational online as an actor?

• 1:21:08Adam Skolnick?

  Who's that?

• 1:21:09Rich Roll?

  Josh Brolin.

• 1:21:10Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:21:11Rich Roll?

  Have you, have you ever gone to his Instagram?

• 1:21:13Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:21:13Rich Roll?

  He is a poet.

• 1:21:15Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:21:15Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable. He writes these, uh, posts that are just beautiful.

• 1:21:24Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:21:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And at first I had no idea.

• 1:21:27Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  That this guy had it in him. Check it out.

• 1:21:30Adam Skolnick?

  Josh Brolin.

• 1:21:31Rich Roll?

  Your life is about to change.

• 1:21:32Adam Skolnick?

  Matthew McConaughey and-

• 1:21:34Rich Roll?

  Brolin is, is, is real, I mean, it's very, um, you know, he'll just like tell these stories that are really about place and mood. They're not, they're not trying to say anything, but he is able to kind of evoke an emotional response where when you're reading what he's written, you feel like you're there. Like it, it's, he's very gifted in that regard.

• 1:22:00Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:22:01Rich Roll?

  So enter Josh Brolin into that universe as well.

• 1:22:04Adam Skolnick?

  See?

• 1:22:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:05Adam Skolnick?

  All right, let's stop, let's stop.

• 1:22:07Rich Roll?

  What are we, what are we doing now? Are we going to talk about the Vivos?

• 1:22:10Adam Skolnick?

  Fanning.

• 1:22:10Rich Roll?

  I've got like, I came-

• 1:22:12Adam Skolnick?

  The beautiful Hollywood stars.

• 1:22:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You leftist coastal elites, you fawning praise on these movie stars.

• 1:22:21Adam Skolnick?

  I don't want to fawn these movie stars anymore.

• 1:22:24Rich Roll?

  So I just came straight from the, the gym right here. By the way, like some people were, remember how I was like kind of wearing a jacket and like presenting myself in a nice way on the podcast?

• 1:22:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, I do. Yes.

• 1:22:36Rich Roll?

  So some people were like, that's cool. Some other people were like, that doesn't feel authentic. You feel like you're-

• 1:22:41Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:22:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Some people were not happy with that.

• 1:22:43Adam Skolnick?

  Who are these people?

• 1:22:43Rich Roll?

  I don't know who they are, but they should be happy that today I'm wearing shorts and I came straight from the gym and I haven't taken a shower.

• 1:22:48Adam Skolnick?

  Do they care what you wear?

• 1:22:50Rich Roll?

  I don't know. The Vivo, I got these Vivo barefoot shoes. Vivo is not a sponsor of the podcast. I would like them to be. They'd be great. These are the ones that I've been wearing and they're made out of recycled materials, which are great. These are intended for kind of trail running. So there's some like rivets on the bottom here, but when you're, they look like they have more padding on them than they do. I assure you, it's basically just to prevent you from cutting your feet up. Like, it's completely no drop. It's flat. There's no padding whatsoever.

• 1:23:22Adam Skolnick?

  It's like running in Javier.

• 1:23:23Rich Roll?

  They're comfortable. And these are the only shoes that I've been wearing lately. As I make this adjustment and I've been enjoying it.

• 1:23:30Adam Skolnick?

  See, I thought you were running barefoot.

• 1:23:31Rich Roll?

  You know, On Running is a sponsor of the show and they make amazing running shoes. So this isn't, it's not an either or thing. You know, On are very kind of revolutionary in the traditional running space. Like what they've done with their technology is super interesting and I love their shoes and their products. This is just an entirely different thing that I'm trying to learn right now. I've been having a lot of fun with it.

• 1:23:55Adam Skolnick?

  You might go back and forth. You just want to get your mechanics better, even if you put on running shoes. I thought when there was a shot you put on social media of you on a beach and I thought, oh, maybe you're barefoot running on that beach.

• 1:24:05Rich Roll?

  I was actually. Yeah. So that on the, yeah, I can, my bare feet can handle the sand. I'm just not ready for trail running barefoot, like Tony's style.

• 1:24:15Adam Skolnick?

  So the Vivo guys, I met them in Catalina at that Swim Run event and they told me to wear the everyday shoe around for a while before you start trying to run and like just do them 10 minutes at a time. Like you were saying, this is the everyday shoe. I'm sorry, it's leather.

• 1:24:31Rich Roll?

  It does look like leather. How dare you?

• 1:24:34Adam Skolnick?

  I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring this in here.

• 1:24:36Rich Roll?

  My vegan sensibility is offended.

• 1:24:39Adam Skolnick?

  I know. My son is probably sleeping on a leather couch right now.

• 1:24:43Adam Skolnick?

  I know. You can't blame him, though.

• 1:24:44Rich Roll?

  Listen, Vivo makes recycled shoes. You should be all over the recycle thing, knowing you.

• 1:24:51Adam Skolnick?

  I know. Well.

• 1:24:53Rich Roll?

  On that subject of recycled materials, should we check in on our 30-day single-use plastic challenge?

• 1:25:00Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah. Let's go. What's going on?

• 1:25:02Rich Roll?

  So, how have you been doing with this?

• 1:25:04Adam Skolnick?

  Me? I'm changing diapers, bro.

• 1:25:07Rich Roll?

  Right. You've opted out. You don't need another challenge.

• 1:25:11Adam Skolnick?

  I'm out. I'm out. I'm changing plastic diapers.

• 1:25:14Rich Roll?

  Let me preface my answer here by saying that I haven't done a great job. Like, I think what I said at the last, when we introduced this, was that I would post something on Instagram and try to enlist, you know, everybody to do this with me. And then I didn't do it. Like, I just, I didn't post anything on Instagram about it. So, that's my bad. Like, I've just, you know, I'm trying to not be on Instagram all the time. You know, I'm trying to be offline. So, you know, I just, I forgot to do that and didn't take the time to do that. But why can't a 30-day single-use plastic challenge turn into a 60-day or a 90-day? This is ongoing. This shouldn't have a sunset on it, right? This is about changing habits. In terms of

• 1:25:56Rich Roll?

  my own experience over the last month trying to do this, I would give myself like a B- minus or a C-. Like, I've done okay, but I haven't knocked it out of the park. And what it has done is exactly what I mentioned last time, which is create a much more profound awareness of how big this challenge is and how difficult it is to do. I will say that I don't really buy stuff. So, yeah, I'm not buying bottled water. I'm not buying things in the store that are wrapped in plastic. But I'm also not doing most of the shopping for my home of six people right now. You know, like Julie's going to the grocery store

• 1:26:41Rich Roll?

  or Mathis is having food delivered, you know, takeout food. I don't have control over them.

• 1:26:47Adam Skolnick?

  So, is that why you're getting a C+?

• 1:26:48Rich Roll?

  A bunch of stuff ends up at our house that's all plastic. And I'm like, Julie, you know, I told her about this and she's been trying to do her best as well. But she's like, "Look, man, I gotta get this..."

• 1:26:59Adam Skolnick?

  Gotta get shit done.

• 1:27:00Rich Roll?

  It's friggin' hard, you know? And it's just appalling when you look at the amount of garbage that, you know, I've got six people in my house, two older boys, two girls. We've had somebody stay with us for a little bit last week in the teepee. And that's a lot of people and it's really disturbing how much refuse we produce. And this experience has made me more mindful and pay more attention to the choices that I'm making. It's engendered a greater appreciation for how difficult it is to make this switch. You know, I don't have Lauren, I think her name's Lauren Singer, Trashers for Tossers.

• 1:27:38Adam Skolnick?

  Lauren Singer.

• 1:27:38Rich Roll?

  I don't have a Lauren Singer store down the street from me where I can bring my glass thing and get it filled up.

• 1:27:43Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 1:27:44Rich Roll?

  So.

• 1:27:44Adam Skolnick?

  But you know what we can do is we can enlist the whole family in this cause. And everyone can be part of this. That's how it's, that's how you're going to get from C plus to A.

• 1:27:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it's tough, you know, like my, my daughter is not interested. You know what I mean? How do you get her on board? She's in that phase of like, I'm not interested in anything my parents are interested in.

• 1:28:07Adam Skolnick?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:28:07Rich Roll?

  As a point of, you know, just making a point for herself and trying to disassociate, not disassociate, but like differentiate her life from her own.

• 1:28:15Adam Skolnick?

  She's punk rock, I get it.

• 1:28:17Rich Roll?

  And my 13 year old, the same, they're trying to figure out who they are.

• 1:28:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:20Rich Roll?

  And they can only do that when they're in contraposition to who we are. So I'm okay with that. It's an exploratory.

• 1:28:28Adam Skolnick?

  Kind of cool, actually.

• 1:28:28Rich Roll?

  It's an exploratory period.

• 1:28:29Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:30Rich Roll?

  But it's very difficult for me to get her on board with something like this right now.

• 1:28:35Adam Skolnick?

  So she's not plant based?

• 1:28:36Rich Roll?

  You know, she is, she's plant based, but like she'll order, uh, you know, she'll like get Beyond Burger from Carl's Jr. You know, it's like she's, that's where she's at right now.

• 1:28:49Adam Skolnick?

  I love her.

• 1:28:50Rich Roll?

  And listen, you know, I don't want to talk about like, it's like my, my daughters particularly are at an age right now where, you know, they didn't sign up. To be talked about on a podcast where hundreds of thousands of people are listening to it. And so, you know, when they were younger, it's one thing. And now it's like they have their own lives and they're entitled to their privacy.

• 1:29:09Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah, I get it. I'm not putting my son's face on any social media at all.

• 1:29:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:29:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, so I get it.

• 1:29:17Rich Roll?

  But the challenge continues.

• 1:29:19Adam Skolnick?

  The challenge continues.

• 1:29:20Rich Roll?

  If I find myself on Instagram, I will try to post something so we can have a conversation about it.

• 1:29:25Adam Skolnick?

  You know, we could do is we could get Marcus and Anna. Well, here's the thing I forgot though. Marcus and Anna from Five Gyres.

• 1:29:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, before I forget, I believe that I said I was going to give away a bunch of stuff.

• 1:29:35Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:29:36Rich Roll?

  So we're gonna have to revisit that next time.

• 1:29:39Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:29:39Rich Roll?

  But we will do that, but we have to be able to solicit everybody's stories from their experience of this.

• 1:29:45Adam Skolnick?

  We're gonna realign, we're gonna recalibrate on this challenge.

• 1:29:48Rich Roll?

  I'm using you having a baby.

• 1:29:50Adam Skolnick?

  I had a baby, so this whole thing went under.

• 1:29:54Adam Skolnick?

  But we gotta get Marcus Erickson and Anna Cummins in on this, the Five Gyres, the people that started Five Gyres. Marcus is, they both have great stories, you know, we gotta, we'll talk about this.

• 1:30:03Rich Roll?

  Who are they? I don't know who they are.

• 1:30:04Adam Skolnick?

  So they started Five Gyres. They're early in on plastic pollution. They're like, they were, Anna was talking about plastic bag bans 20 years ago. And Marcus and Anna have a nonprofit called Five Gyres, which is all about researching and creating citizen science around the plastic, marine plastic pollution problem.

• 1:30:26Adam Skolnick?

  Marcus once built a boat out of plastic water bottles and sailed it to the Pacific Garbage Patch outside Hawaii. He's paddled the Mississippi River.

• 1:30:37Rich Roll?

  That's different from David, David Rothschild in his plastica, plastica boat.

• 1:30:42Adam Skolnick?

  Different, but around the same time they were both doing that. But what Marcus has done is made it his entire life, which is going to all the different gyres, trawling for plastic particles.

• 1:30:53Rich Roll?

  What is a gyre?

• 1:30:55Adam Skolnick?

  A gyre are these currents, like the great current systems in the oceans. There's five of them. And so the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and then the Indian Ocean. And they all have these current systems that, that, that bring water into the center of these oceans and then spin it back out. And so what ends up happening is a lot of the plastic trash gets swirled into these gyres and broken down into, into particles. And so when he went out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which he'd heard about. It sounded like a big landfill in the middle of the ocean, but in reality, it's a lot of water and just like tiny particles. There are some big stuff, but it's very rare.

• 1:31:32Rich Roll?

  It's like a gelatinous soupy.

• 1:31:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it's almost like plankton. It's like, I remember being, when I went with the Five Goshen Expedition in the North Atlantic,

• 1:31:43Adam Skolnick?

  we would trawl in the bluest water you could ever have ever seen, you know, blue, so blue, so clear. And we'd still come up with these plastic particles that were like, look plankton sized. And so they created this organization, they, they have ambassadors that go and talk about plastic pollution. There are, they advocate for, yes, we can all reduce our plastic reliance and single use plastic, but also solutions are upstream. We need to stop plastic plants from being built. We need to create, pass laws to make it illegal to have plastic bags, you know, plastic bottle bans, single use plastic bans. That's kind of their focus because you can't fix it on an individual basis in time.

• 1:32:28Adam Skolnick?

  The idea is that this, these particles are everywhere now. They're in the Arctic ice cores. We've talked about this before. So, um, you know, we're the plastic age. Uh, and anyway, they're great. We've got to get them on this, on podcast.

• 1:32:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. I would love to do that. I mean, there are some things that are happening right now technologically. It seems on a surface level that creating an analog to plastic that is biodegradable and dissolves in water shouldn't be that difficult.

• 1:32:54Adam Skolnick?

  You'd think.

• 1:32:55Rich Roll?

  You'd think.

• 1:32:56Adam Skolnick?

  But a lot of that, a lot of that stuff that says compostable, it's only compostable if the recycling center that your stuff goes to has the machine to break it down and almost none of them do. So the, the smoothie place that has the compostable thing, it's not the type of thing you put it in the landfill, dissolves to soil. No, it needs to be heated in a specific way and they rarely aren't.

• 1:33:21Rich Roll?

  That's depressing to hear.

• 1:33:23Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. So just so you know, so it's always better to bring your own bottle, like you have your water bottle. Just bring that. It's always better to bring your own, right? That's the key.

• 1:33:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, sometimes they won't fill it though, in the age of the COVID.

• 1:33:34Adam Skolnick?

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 1:33:36Rich Roll?

  The other thing that's, you go to Starbucks.

• 1:33:38Adam Skolnick?

  It's complicated, this stuff.

• 1:33:39Rich Roll?

  Not that I go to Starbucks that often. My daughters like it and.

• 1:33:46Rich Roll?

  You bring your own thing and they won't fill it. And then they're like, well, they'll pour it in a plastic cup and then you can pour that plastic cup into your thing and then that plastic cup gets thrown out. And it's like, well, that defeats the whole purpose of the fucking thing.

• 1:33:58Adam Skolnick?

  Well, that's been happening. So like that, that's, that's a lot, that's, that's been, that's pre-COVID. You'd sometimes run into that, but now it's probably even more so. Yeah.

• 1:34:07Rich Roll?

  All right. Let's move on.

• 1:34:09Adam Skolnick?

  Let's get to the wins, man.

• 1:34:10Rich Roll?

  We need some wins.

• 1:34:11Adam Skolnick?

  We need some wins. You go, you're, you go.

• 1:34:12Rich Roll?

  We gotta pivot away from the dystopia. So, um, first win of the week here is, uh, the triple Ute La. Back to swim run. We can't get away from swim.

• 1:34:25Adam Skolnick?

  The greatest sport in the history of mankind.

• 1:34:27Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:34:29Adam Skolnick?

  It's the greatest sport.

• 1:34:30Rich Roll?

  Actually, by the way, I got an email or a DM notification from, from Michael, uh, from Otello. They just put out a video that's like a retrospective on the history of swim, their race series and they kind of go through the origins and through over the years and clips from all the races, when it started and everyone was had backpacks on and all that kind of stuff. And I made, I have like a cameo, like a couple of comments from interviews in there. Yeah, we should link up that video. It's cool. Then for people that are new to this and they don't even know what we're talking about, it gives you a retrospective on this sport.

• 1:35:05Adam Skolnick?

  Love it.

• 1:35:06Rich Roll?

  Beautiful.

• 1:35:06Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 1:35:07Rich Roll?

  In any event, because the swim run races are, like all races are getting canceled, although I think they did do end again, didn't they? Conduct a race?

• 1:35:15Adam Skolnick?

  They did end again and then they did the Ute La final 15, which is always an option of the regular world championship weekend, but this time it was the only thing available.

• 1:35:24Rich Roll?

  Right. But the world championship race not happening.

• 1:35:27Adam Skolnick?

  Was canceled.

• 1:35:27Rich Roll?

  Canceled. So.

• 1:35:29Adam Skolnick?

  They did a final 15K of that.

• 1:35:31Rich Roll?

  The world champion of the whole thing.

• 1:35:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:35:35Rich Roll?

  Decided to, uh, instead, because of this race getting canceled, to do, to swim run the entire Stockholm archipelago.

• 1:35:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:35:45Rich Roll?

  Which is insanely huge. Anybody who's been there knows it's like there's thousands of islands in this archipelago. And it involved 80 kilo, an 80 kilometer, eight, doing 80 kilometers a day of swimming and running. The world championship race is 75 kilometers.

• 1:36:02Adam Skolnick?

  More so.

• 1:36:02Rich Roll?

  Like doing.

• 1:36:03Adam Skolnick?

  It was 260 kilometers altogether.

• 1:36:05Rich Roll?

  Altogether, yeah. So 80 a day, but they did three. So it was three days.

• 1:36:09Adam Skolnick?

  Started on Friday at like four in the morning.

• 1:36:11Rich Roll?

  And you talked to these guys. So break this down.

• 1:36:13Adam Skolnick?

  Before they left, George, I'm gonna mispronounce him. Giacomo? Giacomo?

• 1:36:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you probably don't pronounce the B. Giacomo.

• 1:36:23Adam Skolnick?

  Giacomo. George, world champion.

• 1:36:25Rich Roll?

  We're American. We don't know what we're doing.

• 1:36:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. So what he told me was that there is a lot of, there are maps and charts that they can use to create their route for the second day. Cause the second day was basically the, the world championship course.

• 1:36:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:38Adam Skolnick?

  And the third day is closer to Stockholm and it's, and, and they're swimming in a, a shipping channel part of the time.

• 1:36:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:45Adam Skolnick?

  And, uh, and so they, that, that, and people have been to those islands. But there are islands that they, nobody had even really been to, um, in the top part. So where they started at Arhama.

• 1:36:56Rich Roll?

  Like way out on the outer reaches.

• 1:36:58Adam Skolnick?

  Way out. And so they didn't go to every island, but they, um, they did go to 90 islands.

• 1:37:04Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:37:04Adam Skolnick?

  Over the course of these three days.

• 1:37:05Rich Roll?

  And it was, how many of them did it?

• 1:37:07Adam Skolnick?

  I think it was six and four of them were, did the whole thing. And the other team was going to switch off, uh, swimming and running legs. And they only had one boat. That was their whole support was one boat.

• 1:37:18Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:37:19Adam Skolnick?

  So they would like, all their food and everything was in that boat. So when they, when they left on their swim run leg, they had to bring whatever food and when nutrition they were going to use on that run part also, and then get back in the water, get back to the boat. And so they couldn't really separate. They had to kind of stay together and hang together because their only support was one boat. And especially at the end, when they're going through the shipping channel, you have to have a boat, you know, you can't, you can't be out there on your own. No one will see you. And so, uh, yeah. So I'm looking at what they told me, 90 islands, 210 K of trail running, 50 K of open water swimming in three days. I mean, that is beast.

• 1:37:54Rich Roll?

  That's a lot.

• 1:37:55Adam Skolnick?

  That's a lot, dude.

• 1:37:56Rich Roll?

  A lot in rough waters. And, and, you know, I saw some of the, the Instagram story clips. Like it was, the weather didn't look so great.

• 1:38:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it got, it got cold.

• 1:38:05Rich Roll?

  A lot of wind and rain.

• 1:38:05Adam Skolnick?

  It got cold. So they had to, they had to move it up. I think they were going to do it at another time, but then, and then the, the weather started to turn to fall and fall in Scandinavia. It's not like fall in Southern California.

• 1:38:20Rich Roll?

  No, and the shipping, like the exposed swims where you're in these shipping lanes, it's not just that it's dangerous because of boats, it's that with that exposure, you get like high seas conditions, right? Like the pig swim in the world championship course, like that's the choppiest and the most tumultuous of the waters because you're not getting the wind breaks from having the islands, you know, preventing that kind of chop.

• 1:38:48Adam Skolnick?

  It does look like there was a lot of glassy seas and certainly in the early stages. I mean, it looks beautiful. I mean, I'm so impressed with them. No, it was eight people. It looks like eight people.

• 1:38:59Rich Roll?

  So did they camp?

• 1:39:00Adam Skolnick?

  Eight people, four teams.

• 1:39:01Rich Roll?

  Did they, where did they sleep and stuff?

• 1:39:03Adam Skolnick?

  So I think at night, they found an inn, like the first, you know, they got to the, they got to an inn, I think, they slept the night in an inn and then they started and then they got to an inn for the second, they slept in inside.

• 1:39:15Rich Roll?

  Got it.

• 1:39:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. All right, well, good on them.

• 1:39:19Adam Skolnick?

  Congrats.

• 1:39:20Rich Roll?

  That's awesome, keeping the flame alive on Swim Run when there's no organized races. Tony Riddles, Three Bear Peaks was another win of the week for me, but we already, we already talked about that and you have one more.

• 1:39:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Maya Gabeira, the Brazilian big wave surfer, surfed a 73 and a half foot wave at Nazaré. It was the biggest wave ever surfed by a woman and it was the biggest wave surfed by anybody in the winter season 2019, 2020, which is big wave surfing, that's their Danica Patrick moment, basically.

• 1:39:52Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 1:39:53Adam Skolnick?

  It's amazing. Maya surfed this wave in February, but it was only, this week was when the World Surf League released that it was as big as that. Basically what happens with big wave surfing is every May, people submit photos and videos and they try to decide, they have the big wave awards and they try to decide who's got the best ride of the year, who's got the biggest wave of the year and so on. And this year, there was no big wave banquet because obviously COVID. And so they've been releasing these awards piecemeal on Zoom sessions that are broadcast by the Surf League.

• 1:40:33Adam Skolnick?

  And, you know, we already knew Kai Lenny had the big wave of the year for the men and then ride of the year and was all that. But the women's, they were waiting because Maya Gabeira and then a French woman named Justine Dupont also surfed a massive wave at that same toe in competition where Kai set his mark at Nazaray. Seventy foot wave. It was the toe challenge, Nazaray toe challenge and where Maya set her seventy three point five. And basically, they couldn't decide, like, the committee couldn't decide who had the bigger wave between Maya and Justine. And so they brought in wave engineers from Kelly Slater's Wave Co. that have, you know,

• 1:41:13Rich Roll?

  Right, from his surf ranch.

• 1:41:15Adam Skolnick?

  They brought in oceanographers from Scripps. They brought in aerospace engineers from USC. And together.

• 1:41:22Rich Roll?

  How did they make that decision?

• 1:41:24Adam Skolnick?

  They looked at the cameras that were taken and the angles and the amount of light in the sky and the tide tables. And they, and they looked at the imagery and the stuff in the images. And they tried to determine based on all of that, who had the biggest wave. And Maya was surfing in the men's competition. She was teaming up with a male surfer from Germany named Sebastian Stutner, who's.

• 1:41:48Rich Roll?

  I think he did, he clearly surfed a huge wave too. I believe there was a video of him surfing Nazaray that was circulated pretty widely like a week ago. No, I'm like, I'm talking about like a week or two ago.

• 1:41:58Adam Skolnick?

  A week ago?

• 1:41:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:59Adam Skolnick?

  He's, he's a beast. I mean, that guy, the wave, the waves there can be so big and this wind can be so heavy that there are basically four foot waves on the big eighty foot waves, you know, like that. So they have to ride these heavy boards in order to stay upright on these massive mountains of water. And the reason that the waves are so big there, real quickly, there's a story I wrote for the New York Times that'll be out when this is out. It'll, it comes out Wednesday. We're recording it on Monday. We release on Thursday. So it'll be out there and we can put it in the. But there is an offshore canyon that's deeper than the Grand Canyon that can capture some of the swell that comes in and speeds it up and then it bends it northwest. And

• 1:42:42Adam Skolnick?

  so when there's also a southwest swell in at the same time, those two swells meet and there's a magnification effect, an amplification. So typically, a 15-foot swell can be a 30-foot wave if it hits a reef, right? In this case, a 15-foot swell can be a 70-foot wave because the canyon, all of a sudden, it butts a 40-foot sandbar. And so that verticality, plus these two swells and that sped up swell and the bending of it converges and it creates this incredible wave that crashes on the cliffs, right, you know, where there's a lighthouse and a fort.

• 1:43:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you always know Nazaré because you see that lighthouse in the foreground. And that, there's something about that camera angle that gives you, like, it creates a dramatic perspective because you see that, that tower in the foreground on the left-hand side always, it makes the wave look bigger. So when you say Maya surfed a 73 and a half-foot wave, when I'm thinking of the videos that I've seen of people surfing Nazaré, they look like they're well over 100 feet.

• 1:43:42Adam Skolnick?

  Right. So when Garrett McNamara was like the first guy to surf Nazaré. And so what happened with, I talked to Garrett for this story and so.

• 1:43:51Rich Roll?

  I've tried to, we've gone back and forth about getting him on the podcast, too.

• 1:43:55Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, he's a hell of a storyteller. He's great. Yeah. So he basically said that in 2005, he was, he came up in the 90s in Oahu.

• 1:44:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's old guard.

• 1:44:07Adam Skolnick?

  He's old guard. So he was, when Laird Hamilton was, was inventing tow-in surfing, he was, he was there in the early gen. And then around, you know, in the middle 2000s, late 2000s, tow-in surfing became passe, kind of like the big wave guys were like, it's not cool, it's cooler to paddle in, why do you need this gas guzzler? It's not the purist, you know, the sports purists were kind of turning their nose up at it. But Garrett wanted to surf 100-foot wave and so he never did. And so in 2005, some bodyboarder from Portugal who lived there, sent him an email saying, you got to check out this wave. And he didn't even get it. Like floating in his archives until his wife found it in 2010. And so he got it. He's like, okay, let's go check it out. So he went over there. He teamed up with a surfer from England called named Andrew Cotton.

• 1:44:52Adam Skolnick?

  And the two of them created this, they decided to try to surf it. And so in 2011, I think he surfed a 78 foot wave there. That was, went all over the news, went viral.

• 1:45:01Rich Roll?

  I remember that.

• 1:45:02Adam Skolnick?

  And that one was estimated to be over 100 feet at the time. Now it's considered 78 feet.

• 1:45:06Rich Roll?

  Because you measure from the back?

• 1:45:08Adam Skolnick?

  You measure from the trough of the wave. And then you just measure it up to the very tip of the lip of the wave. It's just because the reason people thought it was over 100 is because what you're talking about that angle from above will always make it look bigger. So the angle, the camera angles kind of gave it this distorted view that it was over 100 feet. But so far, nobody on paper has surfed 100 foot wave there. 80 foot is the men's record. In 2011, he surfed it. Still, there was a lot of, most surfers were saying, oh, it's a, it's a messy wave. It's just a slope. It's not like Jaws or Mavericks. This like, people just poo-pooed how hard it is to surf there and how, how dangerous it is.

• 1:45:49Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's literally like a skyscraper is about to fall on you.

• 1:45:53Adam Skolnick?

  Who knows? I'm not, I'm not sure why people would poo-poo it to me, but you know, we're not big wave surfers. So you know, whatever. But he would kept trying to convince people to come surf there. And in 2013, Sebastian Stutner showed up, Maya Gabeira showed up. Maya had a very famous accident there and she almost died. She was pulled from the water unconscious. She was given CPR to, to be resuscitated. She ended up breaking her fibula. Herniating a disc. It required multiple back surgeries, spinal fusion surgeries. In the aftermath of that accident, she was hated on by big wave legends who are basically saying, you know, you were irresponsible and you put people in danger and blah, blah, blah.

• 1:46:32Adam Skolnick?

  Well, in 2018, she set the women's mark for, for riding a 68 foot wave and put that in the Guinness Book of Records for the first time. And now she's surfed a 73.5 foot wave, breaking her own record.

• 1:46:44Rich Roll?

  And I'd never heard of her.

• 1:46:45Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:45Rich Roll?

  Until now.

• 1:46:46Adam Skolnick?

  And, and she lives there in Nazaré. Full time. She's a great interview. It was an honor to do the story. Justine Upton turned out her wave was 70 feet. Kai's was 70 feet. So Maya, for the first time, has created this, like I said, the Danica Patrick moment. A woman actually having the biggest wave of the year.

• 1:47:05Rich Roll?

  Nice.

• 1:47:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, pretty incredible.

• 1:47:07Rich Roll?

  Hats off to Maya.

• 1:47:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:08Rich Roll?

  Chapeau. So that'll be in the New York Times on Tuesday?

• 1:47:12Adam Skolnick?

  Wednesday.

• 1:47:13Rich Roll?

  Wednesday?

• 1:47:14Adam Skolnick?

  Wednesday, the 16th.

• 1:47:15Rich Roll?

  Sports page or?

• 1:47:16Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, should lead this, it should be.

• 1:47:17Rich Roll?

  With some epic photos?

• 1:47:18Adam Skolnick?

  Epic photos and some video.

• 1:47:20Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:47:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:21Rich Roll?

  All right, man.

• 1:47:21Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:21Rich Roll?

  Awesome. Well, let's do some listener questions.

• 1:47:24Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 1:47:26Speaker 02

  Hey, Rich. Hey, Adam. My name is Mark. I'm from Germany. I'm a nutritionist, an athlete, environmentalist, and of course, 100% plant-based, inspired by your podcast, Rich. My question has to do with the climate emergency we find ourselves in. I already impose a lot of restrictions upon myself, like choosing my bike instead of my car, reducing the amount of plastic I buy, increasing the amount of local and seasonal fruits and vegetables, not taking planes, and many things more. And these restrictions have actually improved my quality of life, especially the plant-based diet. However, I'm also struggling to choose between what is unnecessary and should thus be restricted, and what is still acceptable, like using the car for holiday, creating carbon emissions by watching Netflix, or living in a beautiful

• 1:48:10Speaker 02

  but huge house instead of a more minimalistic and environmentally friendly alternative. I'm trying to figure out the right spot between Tom Hanks and Castaway and Leonardo DiCaprio and The Wolf of Wall Street. Thanks, guys, and you can use this on air.

• 1:48:24Rich Roll?

  Thank you for the question, Mark. That's a great question. It sounds like he's, he's more Tom Hanks in Castaway than he is Leonardo DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street.

• 1:48:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:48:34Rich Roll?

  By, by a country mile.

• 1:48:39Rich Roll?

  This is the dilemma that we're all struggling with, is it not? And I think there are things that we can do, which you are already doing. And I applaud you for that. And I'm trying to do the same. At the same time, I think we need to like acknowledge and just recognize that that none of us are living, you know, a completely carbon neutral lifestyle. Like, we are consumptive beings, living in the material world on planet Earth. We have an aspiration to live more gently on the planet, to live more in alignment with

• 1:49:19Rich Roll?

  the rhythms of what serves the ecosystem that we all share. But none of us are immune from the harms that just our existence creates. And I don't think that anybody is served by somebody becoming, you know, a complete martyr or a recluse. I think that we do what we can, and we always strive to be better if we can, you know, the more carbon neutral we can become, the less that we get on airplanes, the less, you know, petrochemicals that we're using. All of these things are great.

• 1:50:00Rich Roll?

  But I think where we have to think about, how can we leverage this message to create a ripple effect with other people, right? So if everybody reduced their carbon footprint 10%, that would be massive and more impactful than you living in, you know, an electric van down by the river and never communicating with anyone, you know what I mean? So it goes back to... What we were talking about at the outset of this podcast, which is that meaningful conversation matters. So I think where you can create leverage is to engage your community

• 1:50:43Rich Roll?

  with these ideas, to try to spread them. And what I found, and everybody has their own personal strategy for how they communicate and share ideas, I found that, that what seems to work really well is to make these lifestyle choices seem fun and cool. Like, they're not the purview of an antiquated class of people that you can't connect with, but they're actually awesome, you know, and, and we can thrive and live and be happy and fulfilled and connected in a way that perhaps eludes us in our modern world by adopting some of these habits and practices. So I think it's, I think that the evolution

• 1:51:25Rich Roll?

  for you is not to, you know, become Tom Hanks in Cast Away, but to try to be, you know, a lighthouse and to be an example of some of these lifestyle principles within your community, because we live in the world, right? You're not, you're not a monk meditating in the cave, right? You're a spiritual being having a human experience in the midst of a lot of chaos and disruption. So how can you be a force for positive change among those people that you're connected with?

• 1:52:02Adam Skolnick?

  I like that. I mean, I think, first of all, it's very funny and witty ending to the question, but I'm pretty sure that Tom Hanks didn't want to be the guy in Cast Away. Remember that movie? But yeah, I mean, I think we make choices to live our lives because we like, you know, like the fact that you've had positive reinforcement from the lifestyle choices you've made, shows that you did it for you as well as for any, any other reason, you know, you, yes, you're limiting your emissions, you're limiting your impact. And that's a great thing, but that's a great thing for you as well as for the world. And that's great. I mean, that's, I think that's the ideal, right? You that you that that's the kind of balance that we want to strike where we're feeling like

• 1:52:47Adam Skolnick?

  we're living our truth and we're feeling good, living our truth and we're actually feeling better than we did when we weren't. And some of it is like so-called restrictions have actually ended up being beneficial to us personally. I think that's great. I think it's amazing that you've done that. And, uh, but I agree. I think there's also fixes you can do if you if you live in a regular house. I mean, there's a lot between living in a, in a tiny home and a big house. And if you do own your own home, uh, you could install gray water systems, cistern to capture rain. You can, you can model some environmental technologies that could be then used widespread in your neighborhood or your town. Uh, I think there's things you can do that could, that then those kinds of modalities that can be

• 1:53:32Adam Skolnick?

  replicated to really fix cities and systemic problems. Um, that's another way of going if you are going to choose to live, uh, kind of in a house you have now.

• 1:53:41Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:53:42Adam Skolnick?

  And so I think that there, you know, you can just keep going with this, uh, but you don't have to live in a certain type of way. You know, you, you don't have to live in a tiny place to have a big impact.

• 1:53:53Rich Roll?

  Right. And it shouldn't be driven by guilt, but rather, you know, this, this aspiration to live more connected.

• 1:54:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And you can be minimalist. I mean, I, I don't live, I don't have a big footprint, uh, in terms of where I live, but, um, but some of that is, is just kind of the circumstances that, you know, of, of my life. So, uh,

• 1:54:14Rich Roll?

  And there's ways to, uh, correct me if I'm wrong. You probably know more about this and I probably should know more about this than I do. But when you are, um, uh, traveling by air, you can, you can purchase carbon offsets.

• 1:54:28Adam Skolnick?

  Carbon offsets.

• 1:54:28Rich Roll?

  Or you can find a way to do that travel in a carbon neutral way.

• 1:54:32Adam Skolnick?

  You can. You can do carbon offsets or you can.

• 1:54:34Rich Roll?

  How do we do that? Do you know about that? That would be something to look into.

• 1:54:37Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I, I can find out.

• 1:54:38Rich Roll?

  Cause I love travel.

• 1:54:39Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:54:40Rich Roll?

  You know, and I, I feel guilty when I get on a plane, of course.

• 1:54:43Adam Skolnick?

  I don't buy carbon offsets for my plane rides, but I do know somebody that does. Um, or you could be like Greta and just see if you can hitch a ride on a nice sailboat.

• 1:54:52Rich Roll?

  By the way, she's got that documentary coming out soon.

• 1:54:54Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:54:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. She was sharing about that the other day. Um, did we answer Mark's question?

• 1:55:00Adam Skolnick?

  I feel, I feel like you did.

• 1:55:01Rich Roll?

  All right. Thank you, Mark.

• 1:55:02Adam Skolnick?

  All right. Moving on. Let's hear from Josh.

• 1:55:07Speaker 03

  Hey, Rich and Adam. This is Josh from right outside DC. I just wanted to say I love you guys were able to kind of go between the format and the interview segments. Kudos to pulling it off. My question is more of an ask for advice. I'm a few months away from 30 years old. I've been successful in the traditional sense of monetary relationship, career progression, making my way up the corporate ladder at a Fortune 500 company, and probably a lot faster than I ever could have imagined. But I can already see my mindset and the leadership style doesn't quite match up with that of my soon to be peers.

• 1:55:39Speaker 03

  I was with Dan Buettner in July, emphasized kind of how I'm feeling. I'm a rebel in heart, so I'm comfortable with pressing on the edge of the status quo. But I worry it might be the universe telling me my purpose may lie somewhere else. I know you've both kind of successfully transferred from corporate styles to the more independent channels. And I was wondering if you were sitting in my chair, what would you do? All right. Thanks, guys. Bye. And of course, this is great to put on air. Thanks.

• 1:56:07Rich Roll?

  Thank you, Josh. That's a great question. First of all, congrats on being successful on the cusp of

• 1:56:17Rich Roll?

  becoming 30 years old, moving up the ladder. Certainly something to be proud of, to be, you know, really stable and to have a future ahead of you. And that's no small thing. You know, I think there's this like sensibility right now, like everybody needs to quit their job and like, you know, go on these vision quests. And we've lost sight of just valuing, you know, the product of like hard work and making your way in the world. Like, that's fantastic. So first of all, you should be proud of what you've created for yourself, and you shouldn't feel guilty about that. I'm not surprised that you have a little tickle in the back of your mind saying, maybe this isn't my ultimate purpose in life.

• 1:57:00Rich Roll?

  If you found your purpose in that Fortune 500 company, then more power to you. That's fantastic. But if you think maybe there's something else that might, you know, provide your life with a little bit more meaning and and purpose outside of the context of your career, my suggestion to you would be To continue to fertilize and foster that instinct. You know, you may not know exactly what it is right now. It sounds like it's pretty vague at the moment. That understanding, I think, is powerful. It doesn't mean that you need to do anything different than what you're doing right now. Stay at your job. It seems like it's serving you well. In the meantime, knowing that perhaps there might be something else you might want to do

• 1:57:44Rich Roll?

  later, just means that you should be more mindful about your consumptive habits. Like, try to live lean. Like, don't go out and, you know, lease, you know, the BMW because your peers, who are in your income bracket, who are sitting in the office right next to you are doing that. Like, don't get caught up in the keeping up with the Joneses game. That happens with the ascension up the corporate ladder. I saw myself do it when I was doing the same thing at a law firm. When my peers would get to a certain point, I felt like, I have to upgrade here and I have to upgrade there. And I was quickly, you know, living outside of my means. And this is a moment in which you should be, you know, banking that cash so that you

• 1:58:29Rich Roll?

  have choices and freedom, so that when that impulse matures to the point where you have clarity around what might give your life greater meaning outside of your job, you have the flexibility, the freedom and the opportunity to take advantage of that. The thing you don't want to have happen is the creation of the kind of gilded prison that happens to so many people. And it happens imperceptibly, very slowly over time. Like, well, I'm making good money and I'm moving up and I'm going to get that promotion and that bonus, so I can not only afford this car, but that new couch, and I'm going to, you know, move from this apartment to the next one. It's a very gradual process, like the frog, you know, slowly boiling in the, in the water. It's not until it's too late that you realize, like, you're stuck.

• 1:59:14Rich Roll?

  Now I'm married and I have kids and I've got a mortgage and

• 1:59:17Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:59:17Rich Roll?

  That thing that I wanted to do, it's just not possible. So I guess it will happen in the next life. Like you don't want to be that guy. So live lean, live minimally, save your money. You know, continue to show up for your job, learn as much as you can, you know, create a network of people, meet as many people as you can. And, uh, and, and understand that, look, you're 29, you've got your whole life ahead of you.

• 1:59:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:44Rich Roll?

  This is not, you know, a foregone conclusion that you have to stay at this job. You have tons of opportunities that will be available to you throughout your life. Like I just, a couple of years ago, I wrote this tweet about how I thought my life was over at 30. Like you're, you've got to, compared to where I was at 30, it's ridiculous. Like you're doing great. Um, I was in a very different state at age 30, and yet here I am at 53 with this completely unique life that I never would have thought possible. And I wrote this tweet about how, you know, basically, you know, just keep showing up for life and anything is possible. And that freaking tweet like will not die. Like it continues to get shared. And just today, Upworthy posted it on their Instagram page. So like

• 2:00:28Rich Roll?

  a million and a half people. So like my phone blew up and it's, it's intended to mean like, listen, you know, if you think you're stuck in life or on a certain path, you can always reinvent yourself. You can always do that. You want to make responsible decisions. So that reinvention process can be less painful than it needs to be. But don't think that just because you're 30 and at a Fortune 500 company, that your life is already scripted out.

• 2:00:53Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 2:00:54Rich Roll?

  It certainly is not. One reason I think that, that tweet that I wrote still has life is that, you know, people are like, oh, it inspires me and makes me feel like I, you know, I still can make these choices and these course corrections in my life. But I think. It also makes people feel better about the fact that they haven't done anything.

• 2:01:15Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:15Rich Roll?

  Like, oh, I'm 40. Like, look, he didn't do this until he was 50, so I still have time. You know, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, you know, life is about constant reinvention. We tend to think of it as static. I'm here, and this is who I am, and this is what my life is, and will always be. And that is not the case. You always have the power and the domain and the control to make changes in your life. Just make sure that you're doing what you need to do now so that that doesn't have to be problematic, that you're not stuck. And you don't want to be that guy with regrets who's like, oh, if I had done this differently, then I could have, you know, become a scuba instructor in Aruba, or whatever it is that, you know, your heart is yearning for.

• 2:02:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, man. That's well said. I think, uh, setting yourself up for flexibility so you can be responsive to and move and do what you need to do without

• 2:02:10Rich Roll?

  Nimble.

• 2:02:10Adam Skolnick?

  Be nimble. Yeah, not to weigh yourself down.

• 2:02:13Rich Roll?

  Have your go-bag.

• 2:02:14Adam Skolnick?

  Have a go-bag. I mean, I will correct you one thing. I was never, I was never on any corporate ladder. I was working in the nonprofit world and then never really made any money, which made it easier in some ways to then leap and still not make any money.

• 2:02:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you didn't have the ability to create the gilded cage.

• 2:02:28Adam Skolnick?

  I didn't have the cage. I didn't have a lot, um, a lot of bills. So, um, but I've certainly also lived in there where I had a lot of bills and was trying to figure it out too at the same time, mid-career. So, you know, I think the idea of saving money is good. Um, I think, I agree that doesn't sound like you know exactly which direction to go into yet, or maybe you do, you just didn't say. Um, in which case, uh, fertilizing that might mean, uh, following that intuition, the things that you love. You follow what Ethan Hawke was saying. Follow what you love to do. What is it you love to do and figure out and figure that out. And if you know what that is, and you spend more time doing that, you're kind of fertilizing and watering that, I think you can

• 2:03:10Adam Skolnick?

  find some pathways, um, towards a new life there. I do think it sounds like you already know that you don't want to stay at the Fortune 500 company forever, that you're seeing, wait, I could go this far, and I'm seeing the people that are the senior positions in that company, and you're seeing yourself, and you're like, mate, I'm not really That's not necessarily me. And that's cool. That's fine. It doesn't mean you have to quit right now. It just means that you've gotten a viewpoint and I would, I would trust that. It sounds like it's an instinct to trust to me. And it sounds like you've, if you've been successful at this place, you can be successful in anything. And I think you know that.

• 2:03:47Rich Roll?

  Part of the celebration of the entrepreneur, that's very much a part of our culture packed into this kind of hustle, you know, 24/7 sensibility is, there's a, there's an idea with all of that, that is to say, if you're not founding your startup, if you're not like following your passion 24/7, that, that, you know, your life doesn't have value, or that you've missed the point, or something like that. And I think that that pendulum, you know, needs to swing back a little bit to say, hey, you at the Fortune 500 company, you know, you're doing good. Like that's, you know, you should, you shouldn't feel like if you're not like in Silicon Valley, you know, creating the next whatever, that what you're doing isn't, you

• 2:04:32Rich Roll?

  know, of equal value.

• 2:04:33Adam Skolnick?

  No, I don't think we're saying that. But what we're saying is if you're not fulfilled in your job, and you haven't built the, you don't have the payments and all that, then you still are versatile. You can go any direction you want. But if you are considering between staying at the Fortune 500 company, and creating the app that's going to save the world, and becoming a dive instructor in the Caribbean, please become a dive instructor in the Caribbean. I will say that.

• 2:05:02Rich Roll?

  What? What if you could invent the app that saves the world?

• 2:05:06Adam Skolnick?

  No, don't do that. No, no, because that won't, won't work that way.

• 2:05:09Rich Roll?

  We already, we already know from this movie, The Social Dilemma, that that goes sideways on us.

• 2:05:14Adam Skolnick?

  Please don't create an app.

• 2:05:17Rich Roll?

  What about the app that tells you about the sustainability factor of your consumer purchases? Remember when we were talking about that?

• 2:05:24Adam Skolnick?

  No, I don't know. I remember reading, someone tweeted that she and her husband want to start a venture capital firm to pay people not to do podcasts.

• 2:05:36Adam Skolnick?

  Because everyone has a podcast now.

• 2:05:37Rich Roll?

  Put me on the dole.

• 2:05:40Rich Roll?

  You'd have to pay me a lot of money to not podcast.

• 2:05:42Adam Skolnick?

  You can keep podcasting. You're good at it.

• 2:05:44Rich Roll?

  Right. Just, nobody new. No more, no more podcasts.

• 2:05:47Adam Skolnick?

  There's too many podcasts.

• 2:05:48Rich Roll?

  All right, let's, let's, let's, let's round this out.

• 2:05:51Adam Skolnick?

  Let's round this out. One more question from Canada.

• 2:05:55Speaker 04

  Hi, Rich and Adam. My name is Victoria Asikis. I'm calling from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and you can absolutely play this on the air. I love the podcast and do thank you both for your work and wisdom. My question is with respect to working from home and still trying to navigate your career as a young professional. For some background, I'm 31 years old and a business lawyer. I always used to think of myself as an introvert who craves working from home all the time, especially when it wasn't an option pre-COVID. Fast forward to this now mid-COVID time, and I'm finding myself really struggling, especially as a young lawyer with working from home for what is soon to be half a year.

• 2:06:35Speaker 04

  I never appreciated before the importance of collaboration with colleagues, meeting clients for lunch, creating longstanding relationships both in the workplace and outside the work environment, and the true importance of establishing these relationships, especially relatively early in my career. No matter what point you're at in your life career-wise, we are constantly reminded of the importance of networking, building a book of business, getting out there and meeting people. The problem is, this has now been completely turned on its head. We can't have these social interactions. We can't meet people to build business, and we can't truly have those professional experiences where these relationships can thrive. My question is, how do you think the corporate-client relationship will change going forward?

• 2:07:18Speaker 04

  As a young professional, what do you think I and others like me should be doing now to try and salvage some of these relationships, while also trying to establish new ones, when we can't do it face-to-face in the manner that we've been taught? Thank you. I really hope you consider my question. And as someone from Canada, I've got to throw in a go rafters.

• 2:07:37Rich Roll?

  All right, Victoria, thank you for the question. It's a great question. I mean, I first, I would say that I'm with you 110% on this idea of being an introvert. I thought, I've been training for this my whole life. This is not going to be a problem. Like, this is my default setting anyway. And I've really met my maker with that. And, you know, I vacillate between moments of despair and melancholy with the the social isolation of it all. You know, we're not, we're not hardwired to be separate. And it has its challenges for everybody. And there's a spectrum. Some people are having a harder time of it than others, of course. But I'm sympathetic to the toll that it's having on, on all of us, not being able to

• 2:08:21Rich Roll?

  function and be in the world in a way that we're meant to be. You know, I think the first thing I would say is that there is a sense, the part of where you're coming from feels like, you feel like you're the only one in this predicament. But this predicament is something we're all contending with. What you're struggling with is the exact same thing that every single person, not only in your field, but all across the world is dealing with. And just today, there was a news thing that popped up that I saw that, you know, there's, there's a good chance that we won't have a safe vaccine until like 2024.

• 2:09:02Rich Roll?

  And that's a possibility that we have to factor into this. There may not be a short-term, I mean, we're already seven months into this thing, short-term. What does that even mean anymore? But there may not be a short-term resolution to this that's going to get us back into the world in the way that we would prefer. So with that, how do we move forward professionally in terms of how we approach our career and how we build a book of business and how we interface with the world? And

• 2:09:32Rich Roll?

  We're left with no choice but to take advantage of these digital platforms, back to digital platforms again, in order to do this. I think one thing I can say from experience as somebody who's worked from home for many years at this point, and prior to that, did work in an office as a lawyer, that it's important that you take control of your daily schedule. Otherwise, it will control you. So you have to set in place a structure that's conducive not only to your productivity, but also to your happiness.

• 2:10:15Rich Roll?

  I think the idea initially of just being in your pajamas all day and sitting on the couch with the TV on in the background as you're typing away on your laptop, might seem appealing, but we've been at this long enough now, where most people are realizing that that's actually making them unhappy. And I think you need to be regimented, diligent, and mindful about what your schedule is. So you get up in the morning as if you're going to commute to your office, and you mimic some version of that in your house. You should have a morning routine, and you should have clear boundaries that differentiate the workday from the rest of your day. So that you're creating some structures in a sense of stability

• 2:11:00Rich Roll?

  and healthy boundaries around your profession, so it doesn't bleed into everything. And I think most people are just learning this now. And when you don't have those things in place, then everything becomes like a drab gray. Like, you're kind of always working, but not really working. You're not as productive as you could be or should be, even though you seem to have more hours during the day because you're not commuting. And all of these things contribute to this soupy mess of disaffection, I've found in my own experience. So getting up, making your bed, putting on the clothes that you would wear to work, or doing your meditation, doing your journaling, taking breaks to go outside, to have an exercise regimen. All of these things are crucial.

• 2:11:44Rich Roll?

  In terms of the professional aspect of your question, how do you build a book of business? How do you remain connected with these people? Look, it's going to have to be on Zoom. The only other thing you can do... Is to try to engage with people in your locality from, uh, from, you know, a perspective of doing it, you know, with social distancing, like, hey, we can meet outdoors at this cafe and sit six feet apart and have a business meeting. I mean, we're seeing this happening in Los Angeles. I don't know what it's like in Ottawa right now. I suspect because Canadian, it's much better than it is here. But, you know, there is some flexibility with travel and physical presence with other individuals. And if you're wearing masks

• 2:12:26Rich Roll?

  and you're outdoors and you're separated or what, you know, there are ways of doing this that are, uh, you know, not as risky, that don't mean that you have to be staring at a screen all day long. Uh, you can also be like Adam and get a landline and call people up on the phone. Not everything needs to be on Zoom. Right.

• 2:12:47Rich Roll?

  And, you know, making sure that you're staying in, in, in touch with friends and family and doing all of that just for your own personal, uh, you know, well-being. But on the professional tip, look, there are very, like, we're going to go back to the social platforms, like LinkedIn is actually an incredible resource for making contacts, for developing those contacts, for, you know, trying to, you know, cultivate new business on the client front. That's true. And right now, that's just the way the world is. So, um, you know, suffering is a result of, uh, suffering is a, is a, is directly correlated to the extent to which we, we resist what is. Resist.

• 2:13:30Rich Roll?

  So you can either resist what's happening right now, which is that we're all in our houses, and you can develop a resentment about that and be a victim and say, well, if I wasn't at home, then I could be going and developing all of this business and I could be much more successful than I am. Or you can accept what is happening and educate yourself about how to use these very powerful tools to innovate in your career in a new and interesting way. When everyone's zagging, how can you zig? Always looking for the opportunity, the hidden opportunity in what everyone is perceiving as a crisis, right? What is the one thing that no one else is doing that you could do that could give you an advantage

• 2:14:15Rich Roll?

  in terms of how you're building your network and your relationships that will fuel and underscore your book of business and put you in good stead with your employer?

• 2:14:24Adam Skolnick?

  That's awesome. Really well said. I'll just highlight a couple of things you already mentioned and a couple of them are, number one, make sure you have that exercise routine. You have that you're taking care of yourself outside of the workplace and you have that getting outside, running, cycling, whatever it is, hiking, walking, whatever you like to do, swimming. Make sure that's locked into your program because that'll alleviate some of this stress and it'll get you outside because it sounds like you're just kind of going a little stir crazy, which I get. I understand that. B, I would say, you know, the interesting thing about COVID is it gives us an opportunity to press pause a little bit. You know, that's one of the power of pressing pause of like, you know, all of

• 2:15:07Adam Skolnick?

  a sudden the sky is cleared and the traffic, you know, we can't say that now because of the fires, but you know what I mean? Like there was a pressing pause aspect of COVID that was really nice. And I would say that, you know, don't function from a pre-COVID playbook now. Like, yes, you want to advance your career. Yes, it will happen on its own. It's probably happening now without you even noticing it. But don't expect necessarily to have, you know, picked up this client or that client as easily as you might have before and don't beat yourself up for it. You know, you're functioning within this new sphere. You're accepting what is. And so part of that is, don't necessarily put yourself under so much pressure like maybe you might have as a type A person in a different type

• 2:15:51Adam Skolnick?

  of environment. You know, you don't want to give your, you don't want to put that kind of pressure on yourself also.

• 2:15:56Rich Roll?

  You have a job.

• 2:15:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:58Rich Roll?

  A lot of people don't right now.

• 2:15:59Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:59Rich Roll?

  So focus on gratitude.

• 2:16:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. And then ultimately, you, we are all going to come out of this. And at some point, this period that seems like you're running in place and kind of languishing in this middle part of your career, or, you know, not making necessarily getting the terrain that you're covering the train you wish you had at 31. At some point, you're going to be 35, 36, presumably in the same, same career. And you're going to have this incredible experience of what it was like to be a business attorney in the worst climate for business in the history of our lifetime. And you're going to have all this, all this information that you'll be able to impart on other clients and it's going to be a wealth of information. It's going to be very positive

• 2:16:44Adam Skolnick?

  for you in the future. So just getting through this period, staying employed, still working, and then figuring out how to help your clients within this climate. All that is going to pay off for you, even if you can't see how right now.

• 2:16:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a very good point. There's a, an adage in the recovery community, which goes like this, I wonder what that would have been like had I been truly sober, right? And that is to say that when you're weathering a difficult situation, whether it's like the death of a relative, or a divorce, or, you know, some kind of difficult emotionally trying situation, you want to be your best self. You want to be your most emotionally, mentally, spiritually fit. It's not just about not doing drugs or, or drinking. It's about emotional sobriety,

• 2:17:40Rich Roll?

  right? Because you don't want to look back on that experience a year later and think, I wonder what, how I would have conducted myself had I really been dialed in. You know what I mean? You want to look back and go, you know what, like I did the work and I was able to show up 100% and be of service and do it with grace and gratitude. And that's the stuff of esteem building, right? To look back on that and go, you know what, that was really hard, but I was available for all of it. And I got through it. And I feel more empowered as a result of that, and more resilient and able to handle whatever life can throw at me.

• 2:18:20Adam Skolnick?

  And one day we'll all grow up and tell our grandkids really boring COVID survival stories.

• 2:18:25Rich Roll?

  Right. What's going to really be interesting is how the younger generation not only gets through this, but the stories that they will tell their kids and their grandkids, because this is very formative.

• 2:18:39Adam Skolnick?

  That's going to be the real baby boom. Not that during COVID, but post-COVID, when everyone could go party again.

• 2:18:47Rich Roll?

  There's plenty of people partying now.

• 2:18:49Adam Skolnick?

  That's true. I forgot.

• 2:18:52Rich Roll?

  We're gonna avoid, you know, pulling on that thread and we're gonna put a pin on it. Until next time, thank you, my friend. How do you feel?

• 2:18:59Adam Skolnick?

  I feel good.

• 2:18:59Rich Roll?

  This was good, I thought.

• 2:19:00Adam Skolnick?

  This was good. I'm not even tired yet, but I feel like it's coming. It's like nibbling at my synapses.

• 2:19:05Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, you're gonna go home and crash.

• 2:19:09Adam Skolnick?

  I better not. I think it's baby time.

• 2:19:11Rich Roll?

  You gotta take those cat naps whenever you can, man. If you want to come over to my house and grab a snooze in the teepee.

• 2:19:20Adam Skolnick?

  Hey, that sounds good.

• 2:19:21Rich Roll?

  It's available.

• 2:19:21Adam Skolnick?

  Thanks, man.

• 2:19:22Rich Roll?

  Good, man. All right. Well, hopefully, we're back in two weeks again.

• 2:19:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 2:19:26Rich Roll?

  Until then, you can follow Adam at Adam Skolnick on the social medias that you're trying to avoid and that you're taking off your phone right now because you just watched that movie. If you want your message considered for an upcoming episode of the Roll On edition of the podcast, leave us one at 424-235-4626. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, on Apple, and on Spotify. Check the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. We'll put links up to everything we talked about today. You can also submit your questions on the Facebook group. And I think that's pretty much it. I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiola for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music.

• 2:20:11Rich Roll?

  Blake Curtis for videoing today's show, which you can find on YouTube, youtube.com/richroll. Jessica Miranda for graphics, Ali Rogers for taking portraits today. Georgia Whaley for copywriting, DK, David Kahn, our boy.

• 2:20:25Adam Skolnick?

  DK.

• 2:20:25Rich Roll?

  For advertiser relationships and theme music by my boys Tyler, Trapper, and Hari. I can't talk anymore. I think that means we need to end this podcast.

• 2:20:35Adam Skolnick?

  Cap it.

• 2:20:35Rich Roll?

  Appreciate the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple of days. With another episode that I really want to tell you who it is, but I'm not going to. You're just gonna have to wait. That's the way it is. Because I'm making the rules. Because it's my podcast.

• 2:20:47Adam Skolnick?

  It's your podcast.

• 2:20:49Rich Roll?

  Peace. Blinds.