John Joseph On The PMA Effect: Transcending Labels & Transforming Lives

Back by popular demand, my main man and provocateur-at-large John Joseph returns for his 6th appearance on the show to share more of his extraordinary story. A story that lays bare the indelible power of the human spirit to face and transcend unimaginable obstacles and ultimately transform one’s life wholesale. If you’re a longtime listener, Johnny Bloodclot needs no introduction. For the uninitiated, John is a sui generis American original. The very definition of hardcore. A survivor. A spiritual warrior spouting straight talk directly from the streets of the Lower East Side with one singular, driving purpose: getting people to wake the f&*k up. Conceived and raised in abuse, deprived of opportunity and left to his own devices, John turned to violence and drugs on the rough and tumble streets of downtown Manhattan in the 1970's — during New York's most violent decade. It’s a path that predictably led to crime, addiction and incarceration. Spending his teens as a drug mule led to a series of unsavory foster care homes, culminating in unimaginably horrific stints in juvenile detention. Then things went downhill. To avoid long-term incarceration, John enlisted in the Navy, only to go AWOL after a fight. Fleeing the law and rudderless, he found redemption in the hardcore punk rock scene flourishing on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the early 1980’s. Taken in by the Bad Brains’ frontman H. R., John began to explore not just his musicianship, but his spirituality. It’s a journey that birthed the Cro-Mags – one of the era’s most iconic and influential hardcore punk bands. Later, he found his spiritual salvation living in a Hare Krishna monastery, birthing a life-long love of meditation, yoga, the vegan lifestyle, racing Ironman triathlons, and most importantly, his profound devotion to service. Renown for his straight talk, no BS approach to living, John is the author of Evolution of a Cro-Magnon*;Meat Is For Pussies*; and the upcoming The PMA Effect* — the latter two books each featuring a foreword by your truly — hitting bookstores October 2, 2018 and available for pre-order now here. Today we pick things up where we last left off – a conversation that covers a multitude of subjects. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05John Joseph?

  It's not how many times we get knocked on our asses, it's how many times we're willing to pick ourselves up and push through the next gap between expectation and result. Take action, better yourself every day. Don't just keep talking. Zip it and push through every single day. That's what it's about.

• 1:27Rich Roll?

  That's John Joseph, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:42Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What is happening? How are you? How are you feeling? How are things working out in your life? Are you good? Are you struggling? It's gonna be okay. Let me provide you with a little reprieve from your daily existence with another episode of the podcast, my podcast. I am Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome. Thanks for joining me today. Pretty excited because today I reconvene with the one, the only John Joseph, AKA Bloodclot, punk rock legend, lead singer of the iconic Cro-Mags, author, Ironman athlete, survivor, and one of my most popular guests ever, returning

• 2:26Rich Roll?

  for his, uh, his zillionth appearance on the show.

• 2:38Rich Roll?

  All right, John Joseph. For those new to the show, John is a man raised in abuse. He was raised in violence. He's a guy who really had to learn how to survive on the gritty Lower East Side of Manhattan as a young person. And he's had to face and overcome tremendous odds and obstacles just to become this amazing human that he is today. Uh, the circumstances of our respective upbringings could not be more different, but I really consider this man a brother and I love him deeply. Those who have been listening to the show for a while know the depth of our friendship. Uh, in addition to duties as lead singer of the Cro-Mags, John is a bhakti yoga devotee. He is a multiple Ironman finisher. He is

• 3:22Rich Roll?

  an avid advocate for the plant-based lifestyle and he's the author of a couple of books, Evolution of a Cro-Magnon, which is his memoir, a book called Meat is for Pussies, to which I wrote the foreword, and a brand new book coming out in October and available for preorder now entitled The PMA Effect, to which I also contributed the foreword. Uh, John is also the creator of a new documentary series currently in production called 30 to Life. It's a collaboration with former podcast guest Kip Anderson of Cowspiracy and What the Health, as well as Paul DeGelder, the guy who survived a bull shark attack. And it's a really cool project that involves mentoring recent paroled violent felons to

• 4:02Rich Roll?

  provide them with life and lifestyle skills to rebuild their lives. Today, we pick things up where we last left off. This is a conversation that covers many things. We talk about John's recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. We talk about the current divisiveness and toxicity that embroils American culture and our crisis of consciousness. We talk about his past as a Hare Krishna monk and his current relationship with spirituality. We talk about his documentary and his new book, what it means to live a life of service, and the importance of ahimsa, removing violence from our lives.

• 4:46Rich Roll?

  If you're new to me and John, I strongly urge you to check out our very first episode. That's RRP 41, which goes into John's life in great detail and compelling technicolor. You can also find links to all of his other appearances on the podcast in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com, or you can just search the archives on my website. Final word before we get into it. John, JJ, is no stranger to language most foul. He drops F bombs like Eminem drops rhymes. And I'm not one for editing anybody's authentic voice. So just a heads up for those squeamish or parents with small children within earshot. All right.

• 5:31Rich Roll?

  Put your seatbelts on and prepare thyself for the John Joseph Experience.

• 5:40John Joseph?

  What kind of, what is this called again?

• 5:43Rich Roll?

  I actually don't know what that's called, but it's cool.

• 5:47John Joseph?

  It's cool as hell. Good day. I used to love gemstones, man.

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  Jai Ananda Das.

• 5:55John Joseph?

  Jai Ananda Das.

• 5:56Rich Roll?

  In the house, dude.

• 5:57John Joseph?

  Dude.

• 5:57Rich Roll?

  Back for round 25. I don't know how many times we've done this, but good to see you again, my friend.

• 6:04John Joseph?

  Absolutely.

• 6:05Rich Roll?

  Delighted to have you back here. We should quickly say, I don't want to linger on this, but we did record a podcast like two weeks ago. And it was epic. It was like over an hour and a half. And I looked over at my digital audio recorder and realized that at some point it had, it had cut out. And we did not.

• 6:24John Joseph?

  That's the universe.

• 6:25Rich Roll?

  Mechanical failure that I actually only want in 400 episodes, it's only happened one other time. So there's a reason.

• 6:32John Joseph?

  That's special. It's bringing us together another time.

• 6:35Rich Roll?

  We're back again. And it tested the, the boundaries of my PMA, my brother, because I definitely got up in my head about it. I was like, I can't believe this is happening. And you're like, dude, it's a challenge, man. It's an obstacle.

• 6:49John Joseph?

  Actually, we were just talking and everything that we were talking about manifested that when, you know, things happen, you gotta be able to, to push through it and to see that it's a test and this and that. And then next thing we know, I look over, you're sweating, you got your glasses off. You're like, I'm having a fucking panic attack. What the fuck? I'm like, I thought it was like, holy shit, what's going on? And then you're like, none of this recorded.

• 7:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. It was rough. And here's the thing, like adaptability is what it's about. It's not about like, oh man, you know, shaming myself because I had a strong reaction because I was emotionally invested in our conversation and excited about the prospect of sharing it. And then it goes sideways. It goes left. The expectation is not met. And that doesn't mean that you're not going to be disappointed. But what I've noticed is the half-life of that disappointment fading much more quickly. So I can like shuff it off like a little bit easier than perhaps I used to be able to.

• 7:50John Joseph?

  Well, you know what it is too, and doing this documentary and that I'm doing 30 to life and working with these parolees that have done insane amounts of time is that you can't keep punishing yourself when things happen. And you know, it was the same thing.

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it's a little embarrassing to compare like, oh, our conversation didn't record to a guy who's, you know, coming off 25 years of prison.

• 8:16John Joseph?

  Well, you know, the thing was, you always have to look ahead and try to make a positive and look to the positive. And immediately when that happened, I was like, yo, chill, it's cool. We're gonna go ready to have your anniversary dinner and, you know, it's, you know, things happen, man. It's always like, we were talking about that even in my races and I've never had a race where it hasn't.

• 8:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, every, it's been a running joke between us because I'm like, every time you do an Ironman, something goes crazy sideways on you. You've never done an Ironman race where you showed up and it just went to plan.

• 8:54John Joseph?

  Nope.

• 8:55Rich Roll?

  What's going on with that?

• 8:57John Joseph?

  It's the test of tests because not only do you have to complete the endurance test, it's a mental test to, you know, things are gonna happen. And it's like, you always have to be resilient. Resiliency is a quality that I've had to develop in my life to push through bad shit, man.

• 9:21Rich Roll?

  Well, speaking of things that are happening right now, yesterday you were on Joe Rogan's podcast. That was a big moment. So I wanted to kind of recap it for a minute. I mean, it was cool. I thought you crushed it. I thought you rocked it. And I thought you guys had a really amazing conversation that I think goes a long way towards bridging this gap between the vegan plant-based community and other perspectives on diet and nutrition. And, you know, I really liked the way that Joe opened it up by saying, look, There's a toxic dialogue happening right now. Whether you're paleo or carnivore or low carb or whatever it is, we're all in our respective silos.

• 10:04Rich Roll?

  We're shouting at each other on social media and we're missing the big picture, which is that most people out there are just suffering. They're eating McDonald's, they're not taking care of themselves, they're over-medicated, they're in jobs they hate. And all of that bickering basically just perpetuates a status quo that's in nobody's interest. And the fact that Joe had the grace to have someone like yourself on the show who's coming from a different perspective, I think speaks very highly of his character and his genuineness when it comes to really trying to find a better way to communicate. And I think this breakdown in productive dialogue is something, you know, obviously

• 10:47Rich Roll?

  we're not just seeing it in the debates around health and nutrition. It's, it's, you know, infected our political discourse and basically every other kind of productive conversation that we're trying to have is being poisoned right now by sectors of the population.

• 11:07John Joseph?

  And walls.

• 11:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and we're divided. And you said it during the podcast, like, we're supposed to be the United States of America and we're the divided states of America right now.

• 11:15John Joseph?

  Well, you know, what's interesting is that when I left from doing the podcast here, you sent him, you screenshot your text message exchange with him and told him, hey, I just had John and he said he's coming on. And, you know, his response was exactly that. It's so fucking toxic and there's so much disrespect and so much shit going back and forth with this social media stuff. Like, I just want to sit down and have a conversation about the whole thing and be respectful. Obviously, I don't agree with a lot of the things that he does, but, you know, I have friends that do the same thing and I don't, I don't hate on them, but the fact of the

• 11:56John Joseph?

  matter is, it's bridging a gap and it was an olive branch that was extended to come on and have a conversation. I think, I personally think this shit went epic, man.

• 12:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that was good.

• 12:09John Joseph?

  We went and talked about so much different shit and had a good time and had laughs. I mean, you know, when he got into the whole, uh, you know, cholesterol and saturated fat, I was like, well, you know, who's funding those studies? Like, there were certain things I had to be like.

• 12:27Rich Roll?

  Well, I think you have to pick your battles and, and, and look at the bigger picture of what are you trying to accomplish in this conversation? Like, you could have dug in and gone into the trenches on a specific sort of point that he was trying to make. And I think ultimately, you making the decision to, like, look, let's just make this about inspiration and goodwill.

• 12:46John Joseph?

  That's what I did.

• 12:46Rich Roll?

  We could quibble about these little things, but I think that would have just gone off the rails and, and, and I think it would have undermined the greater, you know, impact that you can have by saying, "Look, this is where I'm coming from," and, and having people leave that experience with perhaps a different perspective on a lifestyle that you've been leading for, you know, what, 30 years at this point?

• 13:07John Joseph?

  Thirty-seven, thirty-seven, going on thirty-eight. I mean, you know.

• 13:11Rich Roll?

  And really shift people's, you know, opinion on, on, on the lifestyle because you're coming from a very unique perspective on it.

• 13:17John Joseph?

  I mean, so many people commented that were like, you know, yeah, you, you know, it's just one, like, just, you get all the trolls on social, and, and a lot of it was coming, uh, you know, this, these vegans were like, "After listening to that shit, I don't even know where you stand on hunting. That was bullshit. You had a chance to..."

• 13:37Rich Roll?

  You got attacked by vegans?

• 13:38John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 13:39Rich Roll?

  I don't pay attention to any of that stuff.

• 13:41John Joseph?

  No, I don't, but it was like, you know, I saw it because it came up and, and I was, you know, tagged in. Do I give a shit?

• 13:48Rich Roll?

  They're, they're basically perpetuating the very thing that you were trying to speak out against.

• 13:54John Joseph?

  And you know what? Most of the people were like, "That shit was epic." Like, fucking 99%, uh, percent of the people that heard the podcast all the way through and, uh, you know, it was, it was, uh, it was, it was a great conversation, man.

• 14:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What was hilarious is, it was clear very early on, like, Joe makes this decision to just kind of, you know, throw you a little bone and then like lean back. And you just, you were like a wind-up doll.

• 14:20John Joseph?

  Which, which one?

• 14:21Rich Roll?

  Well, basically, like, you would just go. Like, he'd ask you one question and then you'd go for like 25 minutes.

• 14:27John Joseph?

  Yeah. Well, he said-

• 14:29Rich Roll?

  And he could have interjected, but he's like, "I'm just gonna let this guy tell his story."

• 14:32John Joseph?

  Well, one of the things-

• 14:33Rich Roll?

  You know, because you were on fire.

• 14:33John Joseph?

  One of the things that I really wanted to get across was the fact that I don't limit myself. He was like, you know, vegan, and I was like, "I don't call myself a vegan."

• 14:43Rich Roll?

  Well, let's talk about that. I mean, yeah, you're like, "Look, I'm more of a bhakti yoga guy." Because that's your entry point into all of this.

• 14:49John Joseph?

  Yeah, because I was like, "I don't call myself a vegan. I don't call myself, uh, I don't label myself a Iron Man. I don't label myself a punk rocker. I don't put mundane labels onto my..." And somebody just asked me that, because like, before I even went on the podcast, I was like, "I don't call myself a vegan." And they're like, "Why not?" And I'm like, "Because that limits..."

• 15:10Rich Roll?

  Well, Joe was like, "Yeah, but you are, right?"

• 15:12John Joseph?

  Yeah, I said, "I practice all the ethics of veganism, uh, to the unteamed degree, which is I don't use animal products. I don't wear animal products. I don't support any testing. I don't eat any, any animal products whatsoever." But I'm coming from a more universal approach with everything that I do, which I said, "I call myself a Hare Krishna before I call myself anything." And he's like, "What?" Like, it was, you know, I kinda threw him sideways on the whole thing, because he expected to me to defend my vegan position, and I was like, "Well, dude, here, check this out."

• 15:48Rich Roll?

  He's like, "Where did, where did the Hare Krishna thing come in?" And then you, you told like a 40-minute story-

• 15:54John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Rich Roll?

  To bring that around.

• 15:56John Joseph?

  Yeah, and I'm like-

• 15:57Rich Roll?

  But it was good, because you had to contextualize that in order for it to make sense.

• 16:00John Joseph?

  Yeah, otherwise, it's like, "Yo, this dude's weird. He got into that. People don't know really what Hare Krishna is about." And I kinda tried, I had to, uh, you know, to, to break it down and say like, "Yo, it was bad brains, and they got me the job at the health food store, and then the guy there was this famous punk rocker named, who played in this band of dots, and then he was, you know, I would challenge him every day philosophically, like, and he would defeat me by quoting Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita and like, all of this stuff, and giving me this book, Science of Self-Realization. That shit was... Once I read that book, and, and actually, wait a minute, to correct myself, he did not give me that book. He said to me-

• 16:42John Joseph?

  Krishna is gonna show you that what I'm telling you is the truth. And two days later, I took organic vegan groceries to my mom and I'm in 74th Street in Jackson Heights Roosevelt's train station. And there's a Hare Krishna there and that's who gave me the science of self-realization. Two days later, and then I'm like, "You're not gonna fucking believe this dude." I go back to the helpful store and he just laughed.

• 17:07Rich Roll?

  Did he have like the shaved head with the pot, little patch of hair?

• 17:10John Joseph?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:10Rich Roll?

  What do they call that?

• 17:12John Joseph?

  Sika.

• 17:12Rich Roll?

  Sika.

• 17:13John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Rich Roll?

  With the robes and the whole thing?

• 17:15John Joseph?

  It was, he was a monk and, and he was distributing books in a train station. And the thing was, that's where I learned about service because he goes, I said, "Well, you should just give me that book. I, I, why should I have to pay for the knowledge?" And he goes, "It's about you surrendering to the process." And that's why I said, "Well, I don't have any money. All I have is these groceries." He's like, "Well, I've been working here all day. How about I, I, we, we, I take one of those bottles of juice?" And I said, "Yeah, that's a good trade. I'll trade you the bottle of juice for the book." And then I read that book and I was like, "I gotta go to the temple, man."

• 17:51Rich Roll?

  That's what brought you in. So, uh, the Hare Krishna thing is fascinating and I wanna kind of explore this a little bit more deeply. Um, I recently had Nimi Delgado on the podcast. By the time this airs, that will have already aired, but, um, everybody knows him as the crazy, you know, fit vegan bodybuilder guy. The guy like rocks a physique like nobody's business. It's insane. He's never eaten meat in his whole life, but what I did not know about him was his crazy spiritual story. He grew up with Hare Krishna parents and he is an adherent to the principles to this. He sort of ventured away and now he seems like he's kind of back in that world in an interesting,

• 18:31Rich Roll?

  in an interesting way. Um, and what's compelling about that is he obviously doesn't, doesn't, you know, sort of cut the picture of what you would expect of a person who is, uh, of that perspective and faith. And, and I think, you know, from my own personal perspective, when I think of Hare Krishna, I think of, you know, the people, the, the monks ringing the bells and, and, you know, trying to get you to buy the book in the airport or the bus station or walking through the park in some urban center. And looking at it like, well, that's weird. That's clearly some kind of weird cult. And that's about all I knew about it.

• 19:07John Joseph?

  Right.

• 19:08Rich Roll?

  You know, that's, that, that is the be all, end all of my education when it comes to Hare Krishna. Just some weird fringe like religious cult. So walk me through and explain to me why you found this compelling? And, and maybe what's, you know, the truth behind it that resonates with you versus kind of that image that I have in my head.

• 19:32John Joseph?

  Right, so to break it all down, I would reference my guru, Sri Loparabod, and a film that came out about his life called Your Ever Well Wisher. And he comes from a Sampradaya in India that goes back thousands and thousands of years of unbroken teachers.

• 19:53Rich Roll?

  A Sampradaya is like a lineage.

• 19:54John Joseph?

  A disciplic succession, pran prar, the disciplic succession. So his spiritual master, his guru Bhakti Siddhartha said, you have to go to the West and spread this knowledge. Now Prabod, at 70 years old, he was already in retired life, senyasi. So for him to get on a ship and cross two oceans and have a heart attack, two heart attacks, and come to New York, because his guru told him to take the knowledge of the Vedas, whereas all yoga stems from the Veda means knowledge. So at 70 years old, he comes to New York, he gets robbed, he's, you know, just, his life was about service.

• 20:39John Joseph?

  So, you know, down on the Lower East Side, opens up a storefront, all the yippies and hippies and Allen Ginsberg and everybody. And he starts the printing of his books. So Bhagavad Gita as it is, Shri Ma, Bhagavatam, all of this. So.

• 20:58John Joseph?

  This is back in, in, in the sixties and uh back and He came to New York in the seventies though? No, he came to New York, I believe it was sixty-six. Uh-huh, and he passed in like seventy-seven. Seventy-seven, yeah. Um, so, you know, where he came to was the neighborhood where I live and grew up, basically, which was uh, a very dangerous area for him to be down there, but that's the work. While all the other gurus were living up on Park Avenue, that's why I think he resonated with a lot of people and especially with me when I found out about his story because he came here with seven dollars and a case of books. Can you imagine at seven, at seventy

• 21:41John Joseph?

  years old, seven dollars and a case of books and the order of his guru and having faith in that order? That his guru told him, this is already preordained that this is gonna happen, this is, there's a golden period, you know, whatever, the age of Aquarius, everyone's looking for spiritual knowledge, just go and everything will happen. And it did. People started joining, the temples got built and the books, the books went out. So when you see people uh in the robes and the shaved head, those are the monks. So their job is to go out there and follow in the footsteps of the Acharya. Acharya means one who leads by example, and that's what Prabhupada did. And distribute those books to help the next person in line.

• 22:27John Joseph?

  So, coming from where I came from, which was a life of violence and a life of crime and a life of drugs and just all the insanity that me and my brothers had to go through. And still, uh, you know, when I first met the devotees in nineteen eighty, I actually met them first in Washington DC when I was hanging out as a punk rocker. And we used to like make fun of them dancing and all the punk rockers, we would just spoof on them dancing around on the street, you know, like punk rockers with the Hare Krishnas. Right. But then somebody tried to get, you know, we would see them all the time and they would be so nice and then some jerk-offs tried to like

• 23:09John Joseph?

  Get in their face and I stood and I just got up and in the dude's face, I was like, yo, back the fuck off dude, don't, don't do nothing to these people, I'm gonna fuckin' smash you. They're not bothering you, fuck off.

• 23:20Rich Roll?

  And that was before?

• 23:21John Joseph?

  That was before I got to New York. But see, that was, and when I found out later, it's all about, in a, in a weird way, that was doing some devotional service. It was like, you know, it, it was planting a seed. I'm hearing the mantra, they gave me the food, they like, and then even with the Bad Brains, um,

• 23:43John Joseph?

  when I was meeting them down in DC, they, I was, I was in this health food store called Fields of Plenty, and they, the guy would go to the temple every day and go get the food, and then bring it back, and I would like steal some of his food, and after working there for like two months, the guy goes, yo, you know, I know you stole my food every day. I was like, what? I did not, man, cuz I, you know, and he's like, yeah, but it's okay, it's spiritual food, you're supposed to steal it, there's no hard and fast rules. So it was, everything leading-

• 24:13Rich Roll?

  That had to be the first time anybody had said anything like that to you?

• 24:16John Joseph?

  No, hell no, cuz I was over, I was a little thief.

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:19John Joseph?

  You know, I had to hustle.

• 24:21Rich Roll?

  He brought you to the temple for the first time, right?

• 24:22John Joseph?

  Yeah, uh, well, I went to the temple the first time when I got back to New York, and then, uh, the Bad Brains got me a job at the health food store, and then all of that stuff happened, it just kept happening and happening, and it was like, then when I read the book and knew, understood the philosophy of what it is, Bhakti Yogi, it's about service to other people, it's about helping other people, uh, you know, spreading, you know, the wisdom and stuff like that, and renunciation, and all this amazing stuff, because, you know, it says that, uh, you know, religion without philosophy is fanaticism, and that's what you have today, is a lot of fanatics. And then, you know, philosophy without religion or devotion i- is

• 25:06John Joseph?

  mental concoction, you need a combination of both. So when I read those books by Prabhupada, the Bhagavad Gita as it is, the Ishyapana Shad, the Bhagavatam, all these little other books, Science of Self-Realization, which was, uh, snippets of his lectures to people on certain topics, I was like, you know, uh, and the main chapter that hit me was like, spiritual solutions to material problems, cuz everyone's trying to fix a material problem with another material answer, it don't work. What really starts healing people, and I needed healing because everything that I had gone through, lockup and the drugs and everything else, I needed to do some deep healing.

• 25:49John Joseph?

  And punk rock wasn't doing it, nothing was doing it. It's only when I came in contact with bad brains and then that led me to the health food store and then I started going to yoga and then I started going to the temple and everything and reading the books and applying it because you know, it's not just about being armchair philosophers. That's one of the things Prabhupada said was that you don't just read this book and then, okay, I have this knowledge and I'm above you and I feel superior to you. It's not about that. It's about taking that knowledge and applying it to your life, not being an armchair philosopher and staying humble, humility. Shinana pishanaichana, taroivashishnana.

• 26:30John Joseph?

  You should always think of yourself lower than the straw in the street, devoid of all sense of false prestige and always ready to offer respects and service to others. That's the mood that you're trying to cultivate as a devotee. And it just resonated so much with me because you would go to the temple, they would just make you feel so special. They would serve you hand and foot and sit down with you and and talk philosophy and I came at it very challenging. I was trying to defeat it because I thought I was Mr. Philosopher because I read Gorgiev, Krishna Moretti, all these books. And I couldn't defeat it.

• 27:06Rich Roll?

  What's interesting to me is, is your openness and receptivity to this, like the fact that you have this thirst for knowledge, this thirst for growth and expansion. And, you know, I've heard you talk about, you know, kind of the, you know, the process that led you to that, like meeting the bad brains and the impact that HR had on you and, you know, changing your relationship with food and all of these little kind of dominos. But I'm not sure I totally understand what it was that actually catalyzed this shift from, you know, sort of, you know, street cretin type character

• 27:48Rich Roll?

  to somebody who really like wanted to improve their life, their life, you know, like that thirst, like it's one thing to go, okay, I know I need to get my shit together and kind of begrudgingly drag yourself through some process of like, You know, uh, you know, cleaning house. But that's very different from, you know, a spiritual awakening where you're like, let me read that book. I can't wait to go see what Krishnamurti has to say. Like, where did that enthusiasm come from? Because that's self-generated.

• 28:16John Joseph?

  Um, I think it came from the fact that I started seeing how it was making me feel to meditate and making me feel how to do, when I was doing yoga, and then how I felt when I went to the temple enchanted and got up enchanted Japa meditation, the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra on beads. It wasn't anything that had to do with something I can explain mentally. It was going beyond the mind, beyond, you know, the spiritual, uh, education and spiritual knowledge is something you have to live and experience. And that's what, and I tell this

• 28:58John Joseph?

  story in the new book I wrote, and Chris Garver, the tattoo artist, he told this story. He said, oh, yeah, his mother and father went to Korea and his mother was involved with these Buddhists that meditated and they, you know, his father's like an old school type dude. And, uh, took his father there and they tried to get the father to meditate. And Chris Garver's father said, why should I meditate? And the monk said, try it for 30 days and see how you feel after 30 days. And he did. And he, and I just had dinner with Chris the other night. His father's still meditating. So I use the analogy all

• 29:41John Joseph?

  the time that it's not enough to really taste the nectar and, and, and, you know, that's inside the jar. You have to open the jar. It's not something that you can continuously mentally speculate about. You have to actually apply yourself to the science, the formula, and then get the result. And the result that I got to see, uh, through spiritual practice was what's, it was freeing me from my anxiety, which, you know, the material world is full of that. I was AWOL. I had... Fucking, I was hunted as a fugitive. I had people looking for me.

• 30:22John Joseph?

  It was all this stuff going on and still doing the drugs and still doing whatever. And it was how I felt, how meditation and practice and getting up early in the morning and and going and doing service and all this stuff, it's how it made me feel and freed me from all of those demons of my past. So if I'm gonna say, you know, how did the process work? It was because I did the work.

• 30:56Rich Roll?

  Right, you did the work. The practice thing is

• 31:01Rich Roll?

  such an obvious, but really underappreciated and overlooked aspect of this whole thing. I mean, you know, you're, as somebody who travels all the time, you're in airports. What do you see when you walk into the airport bookstore? It's just like 8,000 self-help books, right? Every month, like, you know, 20 more new self-help books. And like, if these worked, then there would be no need for more self-help books. And I think what happens is, and I'm not besmirching self-help books. They're well-intentioned and I'm sure most of them have good information in them. But I think what happens is, people are in pain, they reach out to these books, they read them, and they can intellectually understand what they're saying.

• 31:43Rich Roll?

  But there's a gap between that and actually putting whatever wisdom is packed into whatever book into a practice that is replicable and sustainable and daily.

• 31:58John Joseph?

  Right. Well, that's one of the things that I say in the new book that I wrote, The PMA Effect. That one of the first things I say is, you have to agree with me right now. To do the things daily that are listed in the book. It's not enough to just understand them and grasp them intellectually. You have to actually do the work and apply yourself for the change to work. For, I just know what, I just tried to put in the book what worked for me. And what worked for me was taking action. When I got into this, I was like, I got, I wanna live as a monk. I wanna live this because I started getting, nobody can sustain life without pleasure.

• 32:41John Joseph?

  It's you're either gonna look for pleasure in the material world, which ultimately, because most pleasure is in the mode of passion. So it's pleasure in the beginning and misery in the end. Only pleasure in the mode of goodness is pleasure in the be, in the beginning and the end. And then beyond that is spiritual pleasure. So in order to really experience that, you get those little tastes. It's called rasa, which is taste. Yeah, it's gonna be there and you're gonna get that taste. But in or, what I saw was how it made me feel. And then I'm like, I wanna do this more. How do I do this? How do I, I said right away, how do I, I, I wanna become a monk.

• 33:20John Joseph?

  I wanna become a monk and I wanna live this e- every day and reap the, the effects uh, in my life of, of what this process could do. And I would see the other devotees and be like, man, these people are so happy. And I think that's the greatest thing that everyone sees Hare Krishna is dancing and they're so ecstatic. And they're like, oh, they're fucking brainwashed because everybody that's walking around. I definitely had that thought. If you look at peoples, they say the face is an index of the mind. So if you look around and you look at people on the street, nobody's fucking happy. And here's these people, they have nothing and they're dancing around and they're happy and joyous.

• 34:02John Joseph?

  And it's because, yo, they've devoted their life to this path and, and there's so much power in that mantra that it just, it brings happiness. And, and I know that from experience because I would do my two hours of Japa meditation. I would go and, and do the congregational chanting with the drums and everything. And how it made me feel was something I never experienced in the material world before. That's why I took to the process. It was a feeling that I experienced. It wasn't, you know, mental, mental, you know, intellectual.

• 37:01Rich Roll?

  But on the protective armor thing, you had this crazy story, right? When you were in it, you were traveling with the band in a van, you guys got in an accident? Like the van rolled down?

• 37:10John Joseph?

  Yeah, it was crazy because like, you know, we were on tour and it was in the 90s and, you know, the ultimate test is they say, yo, will you chant at the time of death? That's the ultimate thing. Everyone is born, death is certain. So, death is the big test. We have little exams during our life, but then when death comes, can you focus and meditate at the time of death and remember Krishna and chant the holy name? So, we were like playing up, it was the wintertime, and we played in Vermont, and we were driving home through the mountains. And I told the dude, I said, "Look, man, stay on the highway, man." And, you know, I know that he smoked fucking hash too, and I was like, "Don't smoke and

• 37:55John Joseph?

  stay on the fucking highway."

• 37:56Rich Roll?

  I had on like black ice in Vermont in the middle of the night.

• 37:59John Joseph?

  Yeah, it was fucking, it started to snow and get bad, and I'm like, dude, and I'm sleeping in the front chair, and I'm sitting in the front passenger seat of the van, and I wake up to hearing, "Oh, my God, we're going off the cliff." That's what I woke up to in the middle of the night, and then the van just started. The van was just, just went off the road, we hit black ice. The guy was smoking fucking hash, and he went on a side road to save 30 minutes of time or whatever he thought he was saving, and we went off the road, and the van just flipped and bounced, and flipped and bounced, and the whole time, I was just chanting Hare

• 38:43John Joseph?

  Krishna at the top of my lungs. Everybody else was screaming, and I just was like, you know, I just chanted as loud as I could.

• 38:51Rich Roll?

  So, at that point, it's like, it's so deeply ingrained in you as like the go-to thing for dealing with stress.

• 38:58John Joseph?

  Well, you know, I've talked to a lot of people and found it is to be true. If you talk to a lot of people who have near-death experience, the mind, it's so painful at the time of death that the mind is racing to find what it felt more comfortable, the most comfortable with in its life. For some people, that's going to be family, or, you know, greedy people, it's their bank account, "Oh, my God, I'm losing everything." Or, so if you practice spiritually every single day at the time of death, what are you going to take shelter of? I took shelter of Krishna, and I was chanting. And uh it was just crazy, man, because like eh the one dude got thrown out of the back window and was laying on the highway uh when we foot because the van first flipped.

• 39:40John Joseph?

  He was going so fast. He was the cops said he was doing eighty miles an hour. So when the van first flipped, it like one dude got thrown or right when we started going over and flipped the first time, he got thrown out the back window. Like all the gear was in the van, so it was on top of everybody. And my face was all bloody. The bolts in the front seat snapped and like slammed my face off the fucking windshield. I was cut up. I ran back up onto the road. And it was like kinda like a bad comedy because just as I got to the top of the road, the salt truck went by and I'm like, you motherfucker, man.

• 40:22John Joseph?

  And then I can see that there was a construction uh night crew down on the road, like probably a three quarters of a mile down the road. It was all lit up, so I ran down there to tell them. But the interesting thing was uh as I got to the top of the road and I walked uh probably twenty feet, had we gone off that road twenty feet later, the drop was over three hundred feet. We would have fucking died. And I was like, yo, and I was just chanting and thankful and I ran all the way down there and fucking said, hey, man, we got in an accident. We went off the fucking road. People

• 41:04John Joseph?

  are hurt and they called the cops. Oh, they have broken bones and shit like that, like but uh.

• 41:11Rich Roll?

  And you were fine.

• 41:12John Joseph?

  Yeah, man, I had cuts on my fa- forehead and shit and whatever the fuck and my nose got fucked up, but compared to what the fuck I could have happened, but I really feel uh you know, for whatever reason, that was just and I've been tested like that certain times where shit crazy shit's happened and like all of a sudden out of nowhere because death can come at any moment and it's like. You hope that you have enough preparation time to say, you know, say your mantras and, and, and take shelter of what you gotta take shelter of. But it's a test. And that's why I try to chant every day and, and, and, uh, you know, trying to, trying to live a positive life every day because, uh,

• 41:55John Joseph?

  I think we attract the energy that we put out into the world too, like, you know. And even then, I was like having parties and fucking making pot brownies and being a fucking jerk. And I kinda think that that was like, hey, man, slap.

• 42:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 42:12John Joseph?

  I saved you from 20 feet of dying.

• 42:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:15John Joseph?

  You would've went off a cliff, but wake the fuck up, man. Human life is very valuable and you're pissing it away. And the thing is, when you do things in knowledge of what you're supposed to be doing, as opposed to not knowing any better, the karmic reaction of that is much more severe. You know, so I, I, I took that as a, as a, as a blessing.

• 42:37Rich Roll?

  As a calling, as a, as a call to action to take it to the next level.

• 42:42John Joseph?

  Absolutely.

• 42:42Rich Roll?

  And, and how long were you in this before you became a monk? And how, and you were a monk for like two years, right?

• 42:49John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  And how much of that was in Hawaii?

• 42:51John Joseph?

  Well, it first started out in Puerto Rico. And when I got to Puerto Rico, eh, eh, like, I was doing the raw food thing, you know? I was, uh, CJ.

• 43:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, if I look, if I glance at the recorder, it's just cause I'm neurotic.

• 43:03John Joseph?

  It's alright, it's alright.

• 43:04Rich Roll?

  I'm listening to you though.

• 43:05John Joseph?

  So, no, I know, but, uh, it, what was really weird was, eh, but when I joined the temple, see, I first got into the whole thing. I went full bore raw foods. I met Victorious Kovinskas. I like met the people from Apocryty's Health Center. Uh, this dude I knew, Kevin, had a raw food restaurant. So I got in, I was completely raw, organic, organic vegan. So when I went, my friend Vinny that talked to me, the drummer from the Dots and now the Unseen, he told me he lived in Puerto Rico and the temple, you're in the fucking mountains and it's fucking beautiful. You look across the valley, you're in Garabo and then El Junque's right there. It's like so magical and mystical. I was like, I wanna join that temple. He's like, just go down, man, they'll accept you in.

• 43:50John Joseph?

  So I didn't call ahead, nothing, and

• 43:52Rich Roll?

  You showed up.

• 43:53John Joseph?

  I showed up with We each had three twenty-five pound bags.

• 43:59Rich Roll?

  How did you get to Puerto Rico when you're kinda on the lam?

• 44:02John Joseph?

  Dude, they didn't check ID. They didn't check ID. You were able to get on planes without fucking shit back in the day. I traveled all over the goddamn place. Puerto Rico's part of the United States, so I didn't even, I had like a fake ID, so like...

• 44:17Rich Roll?

  You don't need a passport to go there.

• 44:18John Joseph?

  You don't need shit to go to Puerto Rico. And I flew down and I had three twenty-five pound bags of sprouting seeds and this other guy, Tomas from the punk rock scene, he had twenty, because he was on this journey with me. We went down there together. He had bags of sprouting seeds. We showed up to the temple with no possessions other than sprouting seeds. They're like, "What the fuck is this?" I was like, "Yo, those are sprouting seeds." And right away from, like, the vibe that I realized something's fucking going on here, something's... They're like, "Well, I doubt you're even gonna get to use those," like, and then... It was just this weird vibe and, uh, I just remember like,

• 45:02John Joseph?

  the first, so they said, "Okay, here, you sleep in this, uh, you know, you sleep in this, the dorms and shit." And it was up in, up near the rainforest, so like, the first night, we fucking got like, I was like, "Yo, is there any more mosquito nets?" They're like, "Nah, no, we don't have any extra mosquito nets." So I had like fucking, you know, three hundred mosquito bites. And then at four o'clock in the morning, I hear animals screaming and it turns out there's a pig slaughterhouse across the road and they're killing the fucking animals. I'm like, so, the dream and this tropical fantasy of being in this beautiful temple in the rainforest and everything started becoming a fucking nightmare and I'm like, "Whoa, man, this is..."

• 45:48John Joseph?

  And I just wanted to surrender and be a devotee. And then the temple president, this guy, Vicreche, total fucking criminal.

• 45:58John Joseph?

  Calls me into the office and I'm thinking he's gonna welcome me and me and my friend sit down and he's like, "Who the hell told you to come to this temple?" I'm like, "What?" He's like, "Who told you to come to this temple?" I said, "Well, my friend lived here, Vinny, and you know, he said it's a, it's a great temple. I just wanted to surrender." He's like, "Bullshit." "I'm gonna find out what you're doing here, "and I'm gonna get to the bottom of this and then I'm gonna throw you the fuck out." And I'm like, "Dude, how are you coming at me like that? I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm trying to be a devotee. I'm trying to surrender." He's like, "What's with all those fucking seeds you got?" Like, he's cursing at me. Very aggressive.

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  He thought they were drugs?

• 46:39John Joseph?

  No, he just was like, "That's bullshit. Nobody wants that shit and, "you know, this and that." And then, so the first morning, they always give a class on the Bhagavatam and his whole class, "he's sitting on an elevated seat looking at us and he's like, "If you don't like it here, you get the hell out on that road and you just, "we're not even giving you a ride back to the air." It started feeling like some Jim Jones type shit, like, "What the fuck did we step into over here?" And then, uh, I'm like, "Yo, I'm a raw foodist, like, you know, can we get some fruit and vegetables?" And he's like, "We have no fruit and veg-" I'm like, "This is a tropical island." He's like, "He's like, 'Throw more chilies into the milk,' you know, fucking type, you know, stuff."

• 47:22Rich Roll?

  Basically, it's, it's, you know, interject, "imbalanced human into, you know, a spiritual organization and like, light a match."

• 47:30John Joseph?

  And, and then, uh, "we just, he, he made us work "all day long in the hot sun. "No hats, no nothing, on a, on a cliff."

• 47:41Rich Roll?

  Come on, dude, where's your gratitude?

• 47:42John Joseph?

  Removing tree stumps with an axe. I was like, "Yo, there's a, there's a bull." He's like, "You're not using the bull. This is building character. Get out there and, "you know." We had to chop around, uh, "the whole thing and then pull the tree stumps out on this hill." And it was just, "after like, three days, we were fried. I was like, 'Yo, let's just get the fuck out of here.'" And that's, and that's what we did. And then it- Turned out he was raping women in the temple, he was, he was fucking smuggling drugs, he was doing all this crazy shit. He was like a fucking, a total gangster, you know, and that's the same guy. He was the vice president of the Brooklyn Temple and later on asked me to sell, sell drugs for him and do all this crazy shit.

• 48:26Rich Roll?

  Is that the guy who threatened you?

• 48:28John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:29John Joseph?

  So what happened was I had left the temple, uh, I, I ended up joining Hawaii and then I came back. Uh, after a year in Hawaii, I came to New York.

• 48:39Rich Roll?

  And did you do the whole thing with the, the crazy hair and the?

• 48:42John Joseph?

  Yeah, I shaved my head, I wore the robes, I went out enchanted, I went out.

• 48:46Rich Roll?

  Do you have pictures of you from that time?

• 48:48John Joseph?

  Uh, nah, man, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's some somewhere, but I don't have any.

• 48:56Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 48:56John Joseph?

  Uh, and then I, I, I left Hawaii and I came to New York.

• 49:01Rich Roll?

  How, but how long were you in Hawaii?

• 49:02John Joseph?

  A year.

• 49:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and that was, that was where it clicked in and that's when you started also doing martial arts and it was kind of like this karate kid.

• 49:10John Joseph?

  Well, it was, it was, uh.

• 49:14John Joseph?

  They had me first on a big island up on the farm and stuff like that and this one devotee practiced martial arts and then, and then we, we came back to the, to the, uh. Oahu Temple and he would train, uh, you know, train every day. So we would, um, go, I would get up at two o'clock every morning. Chan all my rounds, two hours before Mangala Rati, which is the, it, it, it's the morning ceremony. And then I would do that, I would go to class and then before breakfast, I would train. Run or swim or do kathas or whatever and then, uh, eat breakfast and then go out to Kalakaua Avenue and distribute books and do whatever.

• 49:56John Joseph?

  So that lasted about a year and I started noticing now in retrospect that weird shit was going on out there too. It was like, you didn't know about it, but then when you heard about it, you're like, oh shit, that's what the fuck was going on there.

• 50:12Rich Roll?

  And this whole institution ultimately kind of collapses upon itself, right? This like, this sort of poisoning of the, you know, the ideas of Prabhupada and the kind of fundamental-

• 50:22John Joseph?

  Well, Prabhupada never appointed any of them to become, they took it upon themselves to be his successor when he left the planet in 77. So, I went back to New York and that's when I did, uh, I was the biggest, one of the biggest hustler collectors in the entire movement. They had me out-

• 50:42Rich Roll?

  You told me some stories about that before.

• 50:43John Joseph?

  Doing stickers at concerts and fucking, just crazy shit dude. Wheelchair Santa and fucking just, you know, crazy stuff to make insane amounts of money. Like I was collecting like 3,000, 4,000 dollars a week and turning it over. And then I started hearing that they're stealing the money and all this shit's going on and Prabhupada never appointed any of them to be guru, they did it themselves and you just started hearing all these nightmares, these kids were getting raped and all of this shit was going on and I'm like, once, you know, I heard about the kids in the school getting raped, that's when I was like, yo, I'm fucking, I'm, I'm,

• 51:25John Joseph?

  I'm going against these people now and I let, I left the temple to do music and stuff, whatever like that, but I never lost faith, I kept going to the temple. So then, one of the weekends I was going back to the temple for the Sunday feast, that guy, Vikrash comes up to me and he's like, "We get large amounts of marijuana and cocaine donated, do you know where I could get rid of it? And, and, and we can give the money to the temple." I said, "Dude, you're asking me to sell fucking drugs?" He's like, "Yeah, well, you know, the person doesn't want to give money, like, they, they have, uh..."

• 51:59Rich Roll?

  It becomes like a mob thing.

• 52:00John Joseph?

  Yeah, so that's what he was doing and he was stealing money, like, he, he did, he had all these businesses and he was just keeping the money and driving sports cars and selling guns and doing steroids. He was like an African-American fucking thug dude, that's what, that's what the fuck he was. And then I told this woman, I was like, I, I said, "Yo, you know, Vikrash asked me to fucking sell drugs for him." She's like, "What?" And, uh, and I said, "Yeah, he fucking said, you know, do I know where to get rid of pounds and fucking kilos of cocaine and shit?" And I was like, because he knew I was street, you know, he knew I'm from the fucking streets and, uh...

• 52:41John Joseph?

  I did know where to get rid of it, but I never, I always kept my material life. I kept the temple a sanctuary. I never brought any bullshit into the temple. When I had material desires to have a girlfriend or do whatever, I left. I was like, yo, I can't. This is my sanctuary. I'm never going to pollute this sanctuary. If I want to smoke weed, or I want to be with girls, or do whatever, I'm not gonna do it in here and fake the funk and be fake. And be a hypocrite. I left. These guys did it in the temple. And did whatever the fuck they wanted. And... And is that still going on? Uh, it's not. It got exposed. Well, let me, let me not get ahead of that, and then I'll get to what the fuck's going on now.

• 53:25John Joseph?

  Uh, so what happened was I came back to the Sunday feast. Unbeknownst to me, she went and told everybody that, yo, Vikrash is selling drugs. So he comes up to me in the Sunday feast. He's like, I should beat your fucking ass. This is how he's talking to me. I said, what? He's like, yo, you fucking told everybody the conversation we had? I should fuck you up. And I was like, yo, you're selling drugs. I said, let me tell you something, bro. And I was only like, what, 22, whatever the fuck, younger. He's a grown ass man taking steroids. I know he got guns and everything else. And I just said, bro, I ain't like these other dudes. If you put your fucking hands on me, you better watch your back for the rest of your life,

• 54:09John Joseph?

  because I'm gonna put a baseball bat across your fucking skull. I'm not playing. You ain't doing shit to me. So he let it die out. And then, like, months down the road, it was like four or five months later, he goes, uh... Because I had started doing press in the magazines and saying like, yo, these people are fucked up. And I started exposing, and I lost every single friend of mine that was a Hare Krishna turned against me. How could you do this? You're destroying... I'm like, I'm not destroying nothing. I'm putting the truth out there so people don't get fucking hustled by these charlatans in the garb of devotees. And Prabhupada said, demons will come to this movement dressed as devotees to destroy the movement from within.

• 54:54John Joseph?

  And that's who these fucking people were. That's what they were doing. So everybody turned against me and called me a fucking demon. And I, I, I went against Ramapod. Who now turned out he tried to sucker and steal the temple for fifty-eight million dollars. And they kicked him out. But they, what they were calling me demon and all this shit for speaking the truth. And they, they ostracized me from the whole community. Nobody would talk to me. But I, I knew what I had to do was right. And I've done that my whole life. I don't care if you are against me. I will stand in the face of a thousand motherfuckers and speak the truth. That's what I do. So then months he waits by and all, I was doing all this press and exposing them.

• 55:40John Joseph?

  And I go to the temple and he's like, oh, you know, hey, uh, you know, I got, I, I got these condominiums in, in Virginia. And, uh, you know, we need some work done. Uh, I'll pay you a hundred dollars a day. Come down there for a couple of weeks and do work on the condos with me. And I was like, really? Oh, man. He's like, everything's cool. I understand, you know, just, you know, pretended everything was cool. So I told my friend Googie, uh, the drummer from The Misfits, who was also coming around the temple. I said, yo, he just invited me down to work on the condominiums. He goes, bro, they're gonna fucking frag you. If you go down there, you're not coming back. They're gonna fucking kill you. These guys don't fucking play. They killed

• 56:24John Joseph?

  Sulo Chan, they killed these other devotees that spoke out against them. They're gonna fucking whack you, dude. You're in the press saying all this shit, exposing them. And I was like, he goes, bro, don't go. You're gonna get, you're not coming back if you go. And I didn't go. Whoa. And, uh, and then it just kept continuing and continuing. I kept, and my friends.

• 56:49John Joseph?

  Were these kids that got raped in the fucking schools, they protected them, they covered it up. And I just kept speaking out against them and even so now it became this whole big thing in America. So now they hustle and they use the temples as, you know, and this is what's gone on in Brooklyn, the guy just tried to fucking sell the temple for like, and I have connections everywhere, I know people everywhere, a big ass real estate person, three years ago goes, "Hey, man, ain't this the temple?" And he does big, huge real estate development deals. And he goes, "Uh, isn't this the temple you lived in 305 Skamal Street?

• 57:31John Joseph?

  It's on the market for fucking fifty-eight million dollars, the building." I'm like, "What?" They're trying to sell the temple. They kicked all the devotees out and then this one, these corrupt dudes at the top, Ramapad and all these guys were trying to sell the temple underneath the devotees' nose and and I started telling people and then it came out that it's true. And they just, now the devotees all stopped it, because don't get me wrong, ninety-five percent of the devotees, it's the hierarchy who put themselves, they created a pyramid scheme where they're the enjoyers and every, the underlings underneath them. Uh, you know, that's exactly what it is.

• 58:15Rich Roll?

  Right, so the organization still exists, they're still...

• 58:17John Joseph?

  Yeah, so now they do their shit in India. Like, I've been told, "If you go to India, we're gonna have you killed" and all this shit.

• 58:24Rich Roll?

  So did you have any further run-ins with that dude?

• 58:26John Joseph?

  Yeah, I just saw him, uh, well, he just got out of prison because they caught him with drugs and guns. No, but, here's the thing, I saw him maybe, I don't know, I think it was five or six years ago, and he started trying to spread rumors about me to fucking, and I was like, I was like, "Yo, what the fuck are you talking all this shit?" He's like, "I didn't say that," and I was like, "Yo, I was a kid when you threatened me. I said, 'Let's walk out of this park right now. I'm challenging you. Let's go. I know right where we could go and I will fucking beat your ass.'" He's like, "I don't want any problems with you."

• 59:00Rich Roll?

  Alright, man.

• 59:01John Joseph?

  Anyway.

• 59:08Rich Roll?

  But here's the thing, like, you've been able to maintain your...

• 59:13John Joseph?

  Krishna consciousness.

• 59:14Rich Roll?

  Your connection with the, with, you know, what for you is the truth of, the truth of the, you know, the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, Vedas, and like this information that was so impactful for you at that time.

• 59:26John Joseph?

  Exactly, because I knew it was still the truth, no matter what. I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. I knew that there's, there's this corruption going on, but I knew that what Prabhupada came to teach was the truth, the absolute truth, and how he lived his life, and that's the example that I saw. Service to others, renunciation, no bank account with millions of dollars in it like these other dudes. Everything, they went against everything what Prabhupada taught, but that doesn't mean that what Prabhupada taught is not the truth. So I had that, and I held on to that tightly. And now all the other devotees are coming around and being like, "Yo, man, you fucking was spot on with everything, man," like, you know.

• 1:00:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean, it's an amazing, you know, history lesson on sowing the seeds of destruction of your own spiritual religious organization.

• 1:00:20John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Rich Roll?

  And, you know, it's not the first time that's happened, it won't be the last, and, you know, it's part and parcel of, of, you know, human sickness, you know, and I think it's, it speaks to, it's, it's so ironic because it's an organization of elevated consciousness, and yet, you know, here, here, you're, you're, you're butting up against, you know, the lowest vibration you can imagine.

• 1:00:43John Joseph?

  In the material world, the most...

• 1:00:45Rich Roll?

  And that's the tragic thing about humanity, and I think when you kind of, you sort of project out or broaden that aperture and look at, you know, what we're seeing right now, are we still in the age of quarrel?

• 1:00:56John Joseph?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:00:58Rich Roll?

  It's a, it's a, well, let me just finish this thought, it's, it's... We're not going to solve our problems through the next election cycle, or, you know, adopting the most optimal diet, or whatever it is. We are in a crisis of consciousness, right? And the solution lies in elevating our awareness and expanding our conscious awareness of what is happening, on an individual level, on a systemic level, across the board, right? So, you can adopt, you know, the ultimate diet, whatever that may be, for you, but if you're fucking crazy, and you're an asshole, and, you know, you hate your spouse, and, you know, you're unproductive at your job that sucks, or whatever, like, you're not a healthy

• 1:01:43Rich Roll?

  person, and perhaps there's a lesson in elevating that awareness, right? So, I think that's really, you know, for me, when I speak to you, like, that's the heart of, of the power in your life experience and perspective.

• 1:01:59John Joseph?

  Absolutely. I mean, we are in the age of quarrel, but there is a golden period for 10,000 years within the age of quarrel. Kali Yuga lasts 437,000 years. We're only 5,000 years into it, but we're 500 years into the golden period of awareness and consciousness, and we're just starting it. And what I try-

• 1:02:24Rich Roll?

  This is from the Bhagavad Gita?

• 1:02:26John Joseph?

  Yeah, well, Bhagavatam, Shri Mahabhadra, the spotless piranha. And really, I always try to see the glass as half-full and be positive, and I'm seeing so much awareness and consciousness of people that I would have never thought 20 years ago would be getting into meditation, and plant-based diet, and all this great, amazing stuff, spirituality, their own path, whatever it is, because it's not dogmatic, my path ain't right for the next person, I'm fully aware of that. But, I see a lot of growth that's happening in the world, and that's really the only thing that's going to fix what the fuck is going

• 1:03:08John Joseph?

  on. No, no political agenda, no food diet, no nothing, is going to fix what's going on. It's, it's going to come from each individual's, like you said-

• 1:03:18Rich Roll?

  You're optimistic.

• 1:03:19John Joseph?

  Absolutely, 100%. I have to be, and, and remain optimistic, and work-

• 1:03:25John Joseph?

  To educate the people because that's the whole problem is the lack of access to knowledge and education because there's so much Meyer illusion being being broadcasted to people. You know, just like Rage Against the Machine, one of my favorite bands, they say, what does the billboard say? Come and play, come and play. Forget about the the movement. And the movement to me is the movement of the revolution of consciousness. So there's so many distractions in life, but I see those as jewels on the head of the serpent. You may be attracted to the razzle dazzle, but when you get close to that, it's the bite of death, man.

• 1:04:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I think new media platforms like podcasting and, you know, there's so much amazing information that's now available. You know, there's, there's, there's too much information in general. We're being bombarded with so much content that it's impossible to stay on top of of everything. And I think you have to be more discerning about what you let into your consciousness and your awareness.

• 1:04:29John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Rich Roll?

  And perhaps most people aren't. But a lot of this information is free. You know, it's like podcasts are free. You know, anybody can dial this up. Well, I guess you have to have a device, right, to listen to it. So there's that. But I think we're in an interesting place where we do have the, the ability to cross this socio economic divide that I think has been problematic in recent years that, that has been promoting this message that these ideas, whether it's wellness, diet, nutrition,

• 1:05:11Rich Roll?

  plant based or otherwise, meditation, mindfulness, that these are luxuries of, of the well healed. These are elitist ideals. That's great if you got a six figure income, you know, or whatever, but I'm just trying to get through the day, right? I'm working two jobs, all of this sort of thing. And I, and I think what's so powerful about your example and how you live your life and the way that you're of service is that for you, it's all about. Blowing up that idea and making these ideas, practices, habits accessible to the people who need it the most.

• 1:05:48John Joseph?

  Yeah. I mean, that's my story in a nutshell, too. You know, I didn't have the luxury of all this stuff and I just see that this whole, even the plant-based and vegan movement is like, you know, you go to these, it's like, the people that really need it the most, they can't afford thirty dollars, twenty-five dollars to go into a veg fest and, you know, all this food and all the access to this stuff and, and go-

• 1:06:15Rich Roll?

  Well, even if they could, they probably wouldn't, it's not where they're going.

• 1:06:18John Joseph?

  Well, you know, the whole thing is, is it comes down to the value system that's, they've been subjected to their whole life, what's important. And, I mean, I'm, I'm doing this documentary now and it's, it's really about that whole thing of, when people grow up in their surroundings and circumstances, you can't remove their surroundings, just like what my surroundings were that led me to get incarcerated and led me to be a drug addict and let, you know, it's, it's not passing the buck and, and not

• 1:06:56John Joseph?

  taking responsibility for my own actions because I do, but it's just, you know, the surroundings and sets of circumstances that I've encountered with these individuals that I'm working with in this documentary, which, we, you know, we can get into it, it's, it's unfucking believable what's happened to these people. So you could say, hey, this guy did such and such crime and got away for twenty years and it's nice to categorize that person and put him on a shelf, but let's open that fucking book up and let's see what really went down. Oh, wow, he was abused and molested as a child, his mother turned him back on him and

• 1:07:38John Joseph?

  didn't care, the father died, they put him in a foster home, he was more abused, he became very angry, anybody trying to do anything to him.

• 1:07:47Rich Roll?

  Well, if you do a forensic analysis on, on every person- Who becomes a violent offender, you're gonna be able to identify, you know, the, all the steps, all the things that occurred, all the abuse suffered, et cetera, that led to creating that, that individual, that human being. And we have a penal system that is becoming more and more privatized with built-in incentives to, you know, keep more and more people incarcerated for longer and longer, without enough redress or, or interest in developing the rehabilitative side of it. That's got completely lost in the, in the system, and it's, and it's broken.

• 1:08:28John Joseph?

  It's not about education, it's about warehousing. And what really fired me up to get involved with this documentary and reach out to Paul, was Paul De Gelder.

• 1:08:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:41John Joseph?

  Was several factors. And the one was, I saw this movement that I've been involved with since before any of these people, becoming more of an elitist kinda thing, this plant-based movement and the fucking vegan shit and whatever the fuck, and not reaching out to the people that needed the most. And the other thing was, I saw the documentary 13th.

• 1:09:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:02John Joseph?

  And knowing Noah Levine and the work he's done, writing Dharma Punks and going into the prisons and doing the Buddhist ministry and reading articles in Satchin Magazine that said, you know, by these inmates, if I had access to this knowledge, I would not be where I am. So all of that lit a fucking fire under my ass, and I'm like, I need to do something to try to get out there and show these people that what worked for me can work for anybody. This is the, this is, you know, it's the blueprint on, on how to do it. And I never forget, because I remember that back in the day, I was doing drugs and

• 1:09:47John Joseph?

  drinking and doing all this crazy shit, and, and, and HR from the brains just said, "Come out on this 30-day tour. You come out on this 30-day tour, and you stay off the drugs, and you meditate, you iditate, you eat ital man, and you're gonna see in 30 days..."

• 1:10:03Rich Roll?

  Ital is vital.

• 1:10:04John Joseph?

  "Ital is vital, and lo tal is fatal. You're gonna see that your life is gonna change." And I was like...

• 1:10:12John Joseph?

  I went on a tour and after thirty days, I was like, my fucking life changed. So that's where the concept of this-

• 1:10:19Rich Roll?

  But also, you had somebody who took an interest in your life-

• 1:10:22John Joseph?

  Mentor.

• 1:10:22Rich Roll?

  Probably the first time that somebody had, or if not the first time, one of the few people who'd ever said, like, "Look, I can see something in this guy, like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take him under," right? I mean, how much of it is that and how much is it the actual practices, right? Just, just the feeling, the sense that there's somebody out there that even, even if it's just on a limited basis, like, actually cares enough to like-

• 1:10:46John Joseph?

  It's so important, man, and it's like, and I'm gonna tell you, that's where the title came from, Thirty to Life, but we sat down, myself and Paul, when we first met, uh, the twelve parolees that are involved in this documentary, and we sat in a room and we told them our story and where we came from, and then they started going around and telling their story, and the one brother, and he was in, um, he was in the worst prisons, man, and he did, he did hard motherfucking time that we can't even imagine. He was in, um, just the worst places you never wanna go, and he just broke down crying,

• 1:11:29John Joseph?

  because he's like, "This is the first time, I can't believe somebody cares about me enough to come in here and do this, and mentor and help us like this, this is..." You know, and it, it got me emotional too, because, and even today, uh, I was working with one of the brothers and he's, he writes lyrics and, and poetry, and I told him, "I'm, I'm gonna send Dante Ross, the Vice President of Warner Brother Records, he's signed all these hip-hop dudes in the eighties, he's famous." And I told him, "He's coming in next week to talk to you." And his writings and poetry, it was just like, it was all his pain and suffering coming out,

• 1:12:12John Joseph?

  and, and it was, you know, he just was so unbelievably moved that we're there mentoring him, and then this other brother, John, he's seventy years old, man- And he's like, I can't believe, and I seen him in passing today. He's like, I can't believe what y'all is doing for us, man.

• 1:12:33Rich Roll?

  Well, imagine, you know, and I'm sure you can imagine what it must feel like to, to go through life without any hope that anything is ever going to change, you know, to be in, to be stuck in this cycle of, of violence and incarceration after a certain amount of time, and whatever abuse and, you know, history gets packed into that, like the mental state that you're walking around with has to be self-defeating and has to, you know, at some point, you know, be one of hopelessness. And so to enter, enter that equation and say, hey, man, I'm going to take an interest in you, like it seems like a small thing.

• 1:13:14John Joseph?

  It ain't.

• 1:13:15Rich Roll?

  And it's so massive. You know, and we should, we should just say, for people that are listening, John and Paul DeGelder, who's been on the podcast, if you haven't listened to my episode with him, you should definitely check that out. Guy like is an inspiration, you know, beyond words. You're the one who first introduced me to him. Guy survived a bull shark attack. He lost his arm. He lost his leg. And one of the most positive dudes you're ever going to meet.

• 1:13:36John Joseph?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:13:37Rich Roll?

  And his life is completely all about service. He just did, uh, you know, a week on Shark Week. So probably a lot of people saw him on that. But you're the one who introduced me to him. He came on the show. He was unbelievable. And you guys teamed up with Kip Anderson from What the Health and Cowspiracy. And you're creating this documentary where you're taking these 25 parolees.

• 1:13:58John Joseph?

  Well, it's 12.

• 1:13:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, 12, okay. Parolees, recently released dudes.

• 1:14:02John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Rich Roll?

  And they're all living in this place called, it's called Amity House.

• 1:14:06John Joseph?

  Amity Foundation.

• 1:14:07Rich Roll?

  Amity Foundation, right.

• 1:14:07John Joseph?

  Downtown LA.

• 1:14:08Rich Roll?

  And you're kind of putting them through this, this boot camp experience, right?

• 1:14:13John Joseph?

  Like a spiritual boot camp. They're going on a plant-based diet for 30 days. We have meditation workshops, training. Uh, they're training for a 5K. Paul DeGelder's taking them skydiving. There's a, uh, NFL player, um, I'm just spacing on his name right now, has been doing yoga and meditation workshops with them. So it's, you know, they've Been going to farm sanctuaries to meet animals. We showed them what the health. Um, it's just all this stuff. And these dudes have come so far and we're only fifteen days into it and they're like. It's it's like the fucking light came on and the older dude is. His name is John, man. He's.

• 1:14:56John Joseph?

  So full of fucking wisdom and his story is insane. He was a kid as both his parents were fucking murdered. And his uncle took him in and he he sold him into slavery in the fields. Of fucking of of of the Carolinas to work on plantations and fucking. Dude, he worked seven days a fucking week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, man. He was exploited. Bad shit happened to him. And he has so much fucking knowledge. Everything he says. He waits. And you see him really think it out and then he speaks. And it's it's epic, man. It's like.

• 1:15:37John Joseph?

  It's been the most and and I've been back and forth from New York because I'm dealing with other stuff too, but. The time I've got to spend with these people. This thing is fucking and it's setting a a a like the pilot. For a program like this for the rest of the country and I kept telling these people like, yo, you guys are pioneers, man. People are gonna look to this and be like, wow, this is the change that's necessary. You have to change people from within. And all I did. Was take the process that worked for me and it was a deep, deep, deep search inward. To fix the fucked up me. And that's what I even wrote about in the in the PMA effect. I'm not cured. I'm I'm I'm still a work in progress.

• 1:16:23John Joseph?

  I'm still fucking every day. I told this dude today, I said, yo, just the other day. I knew this dude had kilos of cocaine and I was like, fuck it, I could. Like my mind just through this thought fucking washed through my brain real quick. You could take that cocaine. Imagine all the freebasing you could do with all that cocaine. Like that thought actually. Manifested in my fucking enemy mind.

• 1:16:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I, I mean, I, I get that, you know, I entertain crazy thoughts like that all the time, like once an addict, always an addict.

• 1:16:53John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Rich Roll?

  You know, so you have to be, you have to be vigilant. You have to be.

• 1:16:56John Joseph?

  Well, I, I told these.

• 1:16:58Rich Roll?

  They're, they're blessings, though. They're little reminders.

• 1:17:01John Joseph?

  Absolutely.

• 1:17:02Rich Roll?

  They make you, because if you forget where you came from, you're likely to go back.

• 1:17:06John Joseph?

  If you don't remember your past, you're doomed to repeat it, right? So that's, uh, it's just been a blessing to me to work with these guys and, uh, and offer them opportunities and they, many of them have dreams to do cer- certain things. And it's just like, you know, they don't have access to that knowledge or a way to get that done. And that's what we're trying to do, whether it's chefs coming in there and saying, hey, man, if you want to get trainers that are like, yo, you could get an NASM certification and make six figures a year training people or whatever it is that they want to do, have a dream and go after it. And that's, that's kind of what we, we've been instilling in these men.

• 1:17:47Rich Roll?

  You know, you should have, do you, are you still looking for mentors to go and talk to these guys?

• 1:17:51John Joseph?

  Sure, yeah, I mean.

• 1:17:52Rich Roll?

  You should get, you should get George Raveling. You know George Raveling?

• 1:17:55John Joseph?

  I don't.

• 1:17:55Rich Roll?

  I had him on the podcast. Uh, you should, you should listen to this, this episode that I did with him. Legendary African-American basketball coach, like one of the greats of all time, uh, who has become this extraordinary mentor to young people. Like he's just revered in the NBA and in college basketball. Um, one of the great all-time guys. And he's also this huge civil rights activist. He was standing, when he was a young dude, he was standing right next to Martin Luther King when he delivered his I have a dream speech. And after the speech, Martin Luther King handed him the paper with the speech written on it and he has it.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  He's an incredible, I mean, he's an older guy, he's in his seventies.

• 1:18:36John Joseph?

  Can we reach out?

• 1:18:37Rich Roll?

  Oh yeah, I'll, I'll reach out. I saw him, I saw him recently.

• 1:18:40John Joseph?

  They, they will fucking bring him in in a second to talk to these people.

• 1:18:44Rich Roll?

  I'm sure he'd be up for it.

• 1:18:45John Joseph?

  Tell him, man, tell him what's, you know, reach out, I'll put him in touch with, uh, with Kip and the, and the producer, uh, uh, that would just fucking be amazing.

• 1:18:55Rich Roll?

  How's the, uh, how's the plant-based diet going over with these dudes?

• 1:18:58John Joseph?

  They fucking love it, cause we have this chef, he's cord on blue, he has, uh, certification.

• 1:19:03Rich Roll?

  He came and cooked us dinner on our anniversary last time you were over here, man.

• 1:19:06John Joseph?

  He has not

• 1:19:06Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:19:07John Joseph?

  Repeated a dish twice in the whole fucking time that he's been cooking. Now the other-

• 1:19:13Rich Roll?

  Talk about Seva, that guy's level, like, his service consciousness is off the charts.

• 1:19:19John Joseph?

  Dude, he came down here on his own dime, packed up his car, he fucking works, he works fourteen hours a fucking day. Now they wanna give him a job there because he helps clean up the whole kitchen, he works with the chefs, like, he's just-

• 1:19:33Rich Roll?

  We're never gonna find a guy like this.

• 1:19:34John Joseph?

  Dude, he's like an amazing, uh, amazing, uh, amazing dude, man, Jay, um, and he was a chef. That's how he met Kip, he did pop-up, plant-based pop-up things in San Francisco, and Kip went to one of them and he's like, "Yo, bro, you're a fucking amazing cook." And then, uh, they said, "We wanna do something with you down the road," and Kip was talking about opening up a plant-based pizzeria. And then he called Jay and, and Jay thought, he's like, "I got this project," and he's like, "What, the pizzeria?" He's like, "No." "I'm doing this film, I want you to come down." And it manifested out of there, but the guy's so humble and his service attitude is just,

• 1:20:17John Joseph?

  I mean, I'm just looking at the guy and I'm like, "Wow, man, you're fucking, you're the real deal, you're the real fucking deal." You have compassion. Now the other inmates who are, who are paroled to the, they're not inmates, they're parolees. They're seeing the food and they're like, "Yo, man, yo, vegan power, like, fucking, can I get,

• 1:20:35Rich Roll?

  That's crazy.

• 1:20:36John Joseph?

  Can I get, I wanna get plates of that stuff," so now he's having to cook for, he makes extra food for the other guys who want it now, cause they're seeing the films. And it's-

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  There's something about, as, as sort of, you know, out there as it may sound, and I know you're on the same page with me on this. You're taking these people who have lived a life of violence. You're removing the violence from their life in a very practical, material way. But by eliminating the violence on their plate. There is a spiritual impact to that.

• 1:21:18John Joseph?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:21:19Rich Roll?

  And there's a lot of people who will call bullshit on that. And that's like, you know, woo woo or whatever. But I had that at my, you know, I didn't come into this to live some holier than thou lifestyle or, or to save the animals. That was not my perspective. But I have found in the 11 years that I've been doing this, that I have grown into a, a, you know, a perspective of Ahimsa that kind of surprised me, you know? And I think there is something about, you know, cleansing your life of not just practices and foods and things like that. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a cleansing aspect to that.

• 1:22:01Rich Roll?

  And so my question really is like, is that something that you can see evident in the, like, how long have these guys been doing this?

• 1:22:08John Joseph?

  15 days.

• 1:22:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's only been two weeks.

• 1:22:10John Joseph?

  Yeah. And, and they begin, first of all, they're getting their blood work back. And one of the guys who was, one of the guys is in remission of cancer. He has cancer and his, and the other guys, you know, they've been eating prison food, man. It's the worst shit you could ever imagine. They have all kinds of health problems. And now the dude told me today, he's like, the doctor is like, yo, you know, and was saying like, your, your health and everything is turning around. Like we're seeing, because they're doing blood work on the guys. So not only is the health turning around, uh, they're grasping the message. Cause that's the first thing I said. I learned it from Rastafarians and Rastafari literally means prince of peace.

• 1:22:53John Joseph?

  So when I first was told about this thing, it was like, we don't have the right to kill these animals and do this shit that we're doing to these animals. That is affecting your consciousness. And one of the things I even said on the back of Medus for Pussies, it says that I credit. Removing the violence from my plate being the catalyst for change in my entire life. Something clicked. When I abstained for thirty days from animal flesh, something clicked in my consciousness, man. It was, it was, you know, it was removing that karma from my life.

• 1:23:37John Joseph?

  And, and, you know, imagine the, the pain and suffering. And I, and I, I've been saying this a lot too, because now I have a dog. And we rescued this pit bull. He's fucking amazing. And you look in this dog's eyes, man, just like your beautiful dogs here. There's a soul there, man. There's consciousness. The dog feels love. The dog feels pain. And it's made me more of a fucking warrior to, to stop and spread the message of what we're doing to these animals on this planet. And I was just in Europe and we would be passing the, the, the pig trucks and this truck and that truck. Yeah, I saw you posted about that. Oh, my God, it's fucking fucked me up, man. I was like, you know, you, you look in the eyes and the fear there.

• 1:24:21John Joseph?

  And you realize that in a few hours, that living entity, that being is no longer gonna be alive. Because some motherfucker wants to eat a fucking sausage. We are, we're gonna destroy the life and we have incarcerated that animal. We've created a Holocaust for the animals on this planet. We've actually turned this planet into a, Prabhupada said, "We've turned this planet into a hellish planet for the animals." And that's what we're doing. And we don't have a right to do that to these, to these animals. And I speak from my own experience. You could call it hippie bullshit or whatever the fuck you want. But I'm telling you right now, some of the baddest, toughest motherfuckers that I've ever fucking come in contact in my life,

• 1:25:03John Joseph?

  when they went and they abstained from the animal shit, the light switch came on. This ain't hippie shit. This is real shit that we're talking. The Ahimsa is real shit. And when you come from a life of violence and seeing people's throats get cut in front, fucking shot and murdered in front of you in prison and all this shit that myself and these guys have personally witnessed. San Quentin and fucking, they've been in the worst prisons, man. You know, Pelican Bay and fucking like just every fucked up place. Chino, every place you could possibly imagine that is hell on earth.

• 1:25:41John Joseph?

  And then you're telling these dudes, "Look, man, remove the violence from your life completely. You're in this program, but you're still ingesting violence and you're surrounding yourself by violence because you're responsible, because you're eating that, you're part of the karmic chain of that animal. And that animal, and Prabha said, "Anyone who grows the animal, anyone who transports the animal, anyone who kills the animal, anyone who cooks the animal, and anyone who eats the animal gets the karma." And from my own personal experience, I know that to be the truth. Like, I don't want to have a hand in that. So...

• 1:26:20Rich Roll?

  At the same time, you know, it's worth mentioning or recognizing that, that, you know, Ahimsa, this idea, this ideal of avoiding harm

• 1:26:34Rich Roll?

  is just that, it is an ideal. Like, none of us are karma-free.

• 1:26:38John Joseph?

  No.

• 1:26:38Rich Roll?

  You know, I know that you don't look at yourself as any better than anybody else or stand on a podium or anything like that. And just by virtue of us existing, we're contributing on a karmic level to, you know, to problems, no matter what you're ingesting, right? So it's really about like, how can I reduce that?

• 1:26:57John Joseph?

  Yeah, it's reducing, just like you're reducing your your carbon footprint, you want to reduce your karmic footprint. You know, you can't stop the killing. There's bacteria in your stomach that you're eating food that's killing the bad bacteria. So, you know, that's the material world. One living entity is food for the next. There's always going to... Whatever's being born, it's gonna, it's gonna... You know, you're born, you grow, you produce some offspring, you dwindle and you die. That's the material world in a nutshell. That's what's happening. But where you, what you do between birth and death, that's up to you to take the proper action and say, "Hey, man, you know, I'm gonna live this life."

• 1:27:43John Joseph?

  That's gonna be more conscious and aware of what I'm doing and not just be this blind consumer, you know, consuming these products and sucking up this shit that's oozing out of the fucking TV with this politics. And that's why I said, yeah, it's become the divided states of America and that's what these people are doing now. It's like they know what the fuck time it was to be electing this guy Trump and all this shit and divisiveness that's going on in this country. It's sick. And those labels and those walls exist even with people's diets and people's religions and people's everything. That's why it says

• 1:28:22John Joseph?

  that one Swami said about Prabhupada that he built the house that the whole world could live in peacefully. Because what are the principles?

• 1:28:31Rich Roll?

  Until some other assholes moved into it and fucked it up.

• 1:28:33John Joseph?

  Yeah, some squatters. They had to get kicked the fuck out.

• 1:28:38Rich Roll?

  But let's talk about service a little bit. Like you're somebody, I mean, you're really an inspiration to me for the level, you know, the service aspect of your life is really the priority of everything you do. Right? And that really, like I've watched you over the years and time and time again, I've seen you as somebody who's had opportunities to kind of capitalize on this and monopolize on this, like get a better apartment or kind of just do what we do as humans, as humans with aspirations to, you know, live better lives and consistently I see you make choices where you walk away from those things in order to

• 1:29:21Rich Roll?

  ensure that your priority of being of service is always first and foremost like intact, whether that's the soup kitchens that you do or, you know, whatever it is, bro, like this documentary, like everything that you do is about that, is about helping people. And I'm interested in like your perspective on how, like, what I know is that people that live in that place, which is a place I aspire to live in more, are the people that ultimately not only have the biggest impact on the world in a positive way. Well, I shouldn't say always, but I see the impact of that, but they're also the most

• 1:30:06Rich Roll?

  purpose-driven, fulfilled, and the happiest.

• 1:30:13John Joseph?

  I have to say, you know, that's true. I mean, my happiness is not derived from getting the next thing. Or, you know, and I wrote about this in this book. I said that somewhere along the line, I realized that having a lot of shit ain't what brings you happiness. Cause I never had nothing and I've given what I did make when I had it. I gave it away and my mom, she couldn't understand. When I took a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that I had saved up and opened up the yoga center and then maintained it for 10 years, you know, spending probably close to half a million. She's like, you could've-

• 1:30:56Rich Roll?

  As a non-profit, like it was for free, right?

• 1:30:59John Joseph?

  Yeah, I didn't get anything. As a matter of fact, I did the construction in the place too at 93 St. Marks. And then I just turned over the key and I was kinda like the protector of the place. Making sure nobody came there and fucked with it or did anything. What's known as like the temple commander. I just made sure nobody fucked around and did anything stupid. And when people came in there and misbehaved, they got a warning. And then the next time it's like, alright, motherfucker. But the point is, my mother was like, you could've had a house. You could've had all, and I'm like, ma, this is what I want you to do. I want you to come to the Sunday feast and I want you to meet the people that this place is helping.

• 1:31:41John Joseph?

  And the family that we've developed with the community and all these beautiful people that have gotten off drugs and overcome horrible shit by doing what I did with the bhakti yoga. And this is the place that they're, they're learning it and they're healing. So she came to the Sunday feast and she's like, now I understand. She was like, this is the most fucking beautiful thing that these people, um-

• 1:32:10John Joseph?

  You know, are changing their lives. You're helping so many people. And I'm like, you know, there's a lot of people living in big mansions, man, and they're miserable people and they have no love and all their friends are there to fucking

• 1:32:25Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of them around here.

• 1:32:26John Joseph?

  Yeah, we pass some places, but you know, everyone's sponging off them and they don't know who to trust. Are they after my money? It's like, if you're my friend, I know you're my friend because you're my friend. I ain't got shit to give you. Only thing I could give you is my time and my service and try to help you. You're not my friend because you could get something from me materialistically. That's, I don't have that to offer. And, you know, when it comes, it comes. I'm not attached to it either way. The Bhagavad Gita says, "You have the right to the work, you don't have the right to the results of the work." That's not what you're supposed to concentrate and meditate on. But the happiness of the service that I've done over, since I learned about it

• 1:33:10John Joseph?

  in eighty-one and started my journey, I wouldn't trade it for the fucking world. If you said to me, "Yo, you can go back and I'm gonna give you fucking ten million dollars," I wouldn't take it. And that's the God's honest truth. I've turned down TV shows and all kinds of shit because it's not along the lines of my core values and what I see as important. So, my happiness is not derived from, you know, it's derived from service.

• 1:33:39Rich Roll?

  And what's interesting is that that's very punk rock.

• 1:33:43John Joseph?

  It is. It's not selling out. You're not supposed to sell out. That's the ethics of punk rock. But too many motherfuckers did sell out. Everybody could talk the talk, but guess what? What does McKee say? "True characters revealed under pressure." And when that money came dangling in front of people's faces, you saw a lot of people change and take off one uniform and put on another. This ain't a motherfucking uniform for me. That's why, even back in the day, I said, "This ain't about fashion and clothes and how you look." Some of the most punk rock motherfuckers I ever met don't look like a punk rocker. Punk rock is a spirit, man. It's a fucking consciousness. It's like, fuck the man. It's about us, the people.

• 1:34:30John Joseph?

  And how do we help people? You know, you can't just, and that's one of the things I always said about punk rock, I'm like, it ain't enough to just fucking complain about something and bitch about it. How do we fix it? And that's where-

• 1:34:44Rich Roll?

  That's not punk rock. Punk rock is more like anarchy, like blow it up, right? They're not big on solution.

• 1:34:50John Joseph?

  Yeah, well, that was what I was finding, but then I was seeing people like the Bad Brains and Crass, who started organic plant-based communities and fucking this and that, and like, you started hearing about other people and Chrissy Hyne, and what's she into? And she's into Vedic stuff and, and all these different people. And even the guy from the dam, Captain Sensible, was vegan, and like, all of this, you, you saw an underlying spirituality in the, in the punk rock movement. And a lot of people in the movement, like I said, when I was getting down with this shit in 81, 82, there wasn't too many aware, conscious punk rockers. A lot of them motherfuckers laughed that I stopped eating meat,

• 1:35:32John Joseph?

  and that I would go to the Krishna temple and meditate and go do yoga, or what do you, I mean, they would say it to my face.

• 1:35:39Rich Roll?

  Well, there's the straight edge, you know, movement within punk, but that was later, right?

• 1:35:43John Joseph?

  That came later, and that was part of the whole kinda judgmental, they didn't, they didn't come at people on the same level. They came at people thinking they were superior to everybody else. And that's why everybody hated that fucking movement. And that's why everybody hated the fucking vegan movement. Because they didn't come out of compassion. A lot of people just were like, "I have this knowledge that makes me superior to you. I'm even gonna fucking, you know, talk down to you like I'm better than you." And I think that's changed a lot now, uh, because more and more conscious people are getting into this for the right reasons. Like I said, I see it as a positive thing.

• 1:36:25John Joseph?

  And a lot of those people's voices got silenced. As a matter of fact, I've seen a lot of them go back to eating meat. And, and, and, and, and leaving punk rock and straight edge and going back to do drugs and all kinds of shit. So when you get into something for the wrong reasons, that's not going to sustain. Your values and your desire will always be tested in life, whatever the fuck you pick up and decide to attach yourself to. That's why I don't put any of them labels on myself. I know what my ultimate service is. It's bhakti yoga.

• 1:36:57Rich Roll?

  Well, that sanctimony doesn't help anybody.

• 1:36:59John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:00Rich Roll?

  And I think when somebody's coming from that perspective, or you can feel that vibe where they're, they're, they're rolling up with a, a level of, you know, superiority.

• 1:37:11John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:12Rich Roll?

  Around whatever idea it is, whether it's veganism or, or whatnot. Um, that's not attractive and it doesn't work. And usually it's a reflection of the pain that that person is carrying around or their, their, their need to adhere to a certain ideology or belong to a particular tribe in order to feel safe and okay in the world. So it really, it really speaks more about that person than anybody else. But ultimately, it's not in service to, you know, greater humanity because it's preventing people from accessing ideas that might be helpful to them.

• 1:37:54Rich Roll?

  And, and what I love about you is, is, is this, is this devotion to transcending the label. Um, and rolling up on people from a, from a perspective of, of compassion and non-judgment. And, you know, that's a, that's a higher, that's an elevated perspective. That's, you know, how I'm, I'm trying, that's how I, you know, aspire to communicate with people.

• 1:38:17John Joseph?

  You do it.

• 1:38:17Rich Roll?

  And ultimately, you know, that, that, that is giving you the better chance of being able to connect with another human being in a very real way. And ultimately, that's the only way you're ever going to be able to communicate a message that will be um, potentially helpful to them in a real way.

• 1:38:37John Joseph?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, uh,

• 1:38:41John Joseph?

  You know, even in this place where I'm at with these guys like society looks down on them and have treated them in this program. Uh, you know, society looks down on them as, as, as trash and if you saw 13th documentary, they replaced the word slave with criminal. See, it's the whole thing. It's still that slave mentality that they can label them as criminal. And it's like, okay, now we don't have to give a fuck about these people. They're criminals.

• 1:39:09Rich Roll?

  Deep personalization of the whole thing.

• 1:39:10John Joseph?

  Yeah, it's deep, uh, that, that's exactly what it is. It's like, don't even treat them as humans. They're fucking criminals. And they're trying to do away with this whole thing too. Now you saw that about, I think it's called the block, box, the, uh, block the box campaign or whatever to remove. It's to remove off the job applications that they've been convicted of a crime. It's happening in California. There's a big push for that right now. And I-

• 1:39:36Rich Roll?

  So you don't have to disclose that you're a felon?

• 1:39:37John Joseph?

  Yeah, and I think that that's true because yo, if you paid your debt to society and you did the time, why should you continuously be punished? These guys can't even get jobs, not that they should, at McDonald's just to show you. Or a fucking janitor or whatever. It's like, somebody has to give a fuck enough about human beings to say, hey, man, I'm willing to take a risk on you and let you come and, you know, work at my establishment. And, you know, I have to say that, you know, I, I give props to Tal Ronan because Crossroads, you know, he never judges anybody, man, whether they did a crime or whatever. He treats them like family, fucking, um, you know.

• 1:40:22John Joseph?

  It, it's, it's, it's like, there's so much love going on in that restaurant and I think above the food being amazing, I think it's really because of the love that exists. When you go in that kitchen, man, these guys are like, they fucking love Tal. And, and, and just knowing that dude, he's so real and genuine and he really means it and, and, and, and gave guys a second chance and I, I, I think seeing the humanity in people, man, even though we, you know, they might've made fucking pretty bad mistakes, but-

• 1:40:55John Joseph?

  Anybody can change and that's the whole thing, you know?

• 1:40:58Rich Roll?

  Anybody can and the system needs to change.

• 1:41:01John Joseph?

  Exactly.

• 1:41:02Rich Roll?

  You, you, uh, you listen to my episode with, with John McAvoy.

• 1:41:05John Joseph?

  Fuck yeah, I listen to that shit was fucking and what he's doing now.

• 1:41:09Rich Roll?

  What that guy has, has done.

• 1:41:12John Joseph?

  Holy shit.

• 1:41:12Rich Roll?

  And it started with, I mean, there was a lot of internal drive on his part, but it was sparked by a prison guard who took an interest in him when he didn't have to.

• 1:41:22John Joseph?

  There you go. The guy would show up on his days off and come in and work with him with the rowing and

• 1:41:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:41:29John Joseph?

  and showed an interest like, yo, this guy gives a fuck about me. And he's not trying to get anything from me. He's fucking, he honestly cares. He sees something. These people have been made to have no va- they don't value themselves. So when somebody else comes in and says, hey, man, you have value, man. Like it, it, it just.

• 1:41:53Rich Roll?

  And at first you have to overcome the, the the guarded skepticism, skepticism because that person's going to be like, what's your angle? Like no one's ever rolled up on me like that. So it's like, hey, man, where are you coming from?

• 1:42:06John Joseph?

  It's a hustle.

• 1:42:06Rich Roll?

  It's just a ticking time bomb until you're going to drop on me, whatever it is you're trying to get out of it. Right? So you have to earn that trust over time. Like it can't just happen with one person being nice one day. Like you have to be committed to overcoming that hurdle in order to engender the trust in that individual that will ultimately catalyze that change. And that requires, that's a, that's a big ask. That's a big investment on somebody's part.

• 1:42:32John Joseph?

  It has to be selfless.

• 1:42:32Rich Roll?

  Somebody do that. Like that's an amazing thing.

• 1:42:35John Joseph?

  Well, it has to be selfless too, you know, it has to, it's selfless service. It's, uh, you know, what it says even in the Vedic teachings is devotional service to others has to be unmotivated and uninterrupted. And that means unmotivated by, you know, material things other than the person's own growth. And, and uninterrupted, if you're not seeing the result, imagine you're trying to do something and, and I've tried to, listen, I tried to help a lot of people, these three kids that were in this.

• 1:43:04Rich Roll?

  It doesn't work out.

• 1:43:05John Joseph?

  They raped and murdered a woman, you know, and it's like. It has to be, you know, unmotivated and uninterrupted, meaning like sometimes you're not always gonna get the result right away, but you have to just keep endeavoring and endeavoring and, you know, the material conditioning is so heavy in this material world that, you know, we've been doing fucking crazy shit for this lifetime, past lifetimes, there's a, there's a lot of conditioning that, that's there and everybody's working out their karma, but, you know, I'm even seeing it with these guys. Now they're trusting, uh, when we first get in there, they were all like, "Yeah, what's this motherfucker's angle? What the fuck, yo?" You could see the skepticism.

• 1:43:47John Joseph?

  Now they're like, they're like, "Yo, Jay!", like they're calling me and they're fucking like, "Yo!", they, they see, I'm not trying to get nothing from them. I'm trying to give, you know, this move, this whole process 30 to life is about giving and the story of John McAvie, man, and what he's doing now, because now I follow him on social media and he's going, he's getting standing ovations for,

• 1:44:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:44:12John Joseph?

  when he gives these talks.

• 1:44:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he went and spoke at the House of Commons right after we did the podcast. And that video like went crazy viral. And I got up the morning of, of Ironman Hamburg because I was like, "I gotta, how's he doing?", right? Because that was his big race. And as you know, they had to cancel the swim on that.

• 1:44:31John Joseph?

  Yeah, because of the algae.

• 1:44:32Rich Roll?

  Freaking, yeah, the algae from the runoff and whatever bullshit is going on there. So there was, it was gonna be this duathlon. And I log into the Ironman website, wanting to see how he's progressing. And he hadn't even started yet. And I was like, "What is, what's going on? Something's wrong." So I DM'd him and he said, "Yeah, there was a fuck up. His parole officer had the wrong dates for the Ironman and he couldn't go to the race." Because they screwed up some paperwork over it. So he couldn't travel because he can't travel.

• 1:45:05John Joseph?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:45:06Rich Roll?

  Doing a whole bunch of bullshit.

• 1:45:07John Joseph?

  Well, I'm finding out with this program now, which I'm Paul's trying to get him skydiving and the parole offices have not, it's out of their zone where they can travel to because they're like, you know, wearing the fucking monitors and shit. So it's like, it's a whole thing. You know, to, uh, to get the clearance from the parole offices.

• 1:45:26Rich Roll?

  And you know, it's tough. Yeah. So he trains for this race. This is his big race for the year. And then like, I don't know when he found out how many days in advance, but then it's like, yeah, sorry, you can't do that. You know? So he's got another race he's signing up to do, but like the, the bigger point being like, look what that guy has done with his life.

• 1:45:45John Joseph?

  Amazing.

• 1:45:45Rich Roll?

  And that is, that is, you know, he, he wasn't walking around with PMA from day one. Like that guy had to evolve into a perspective where now he can be this beacon of light.

• 1:45:57John Joseph?

  Right.

• 1:45:57Rich Roll?

  And it's so powerful because not only is that story just beyond belief, like it's just insane. Like it's so cinematic.

• 1:46:06John Joseph?

  It's movie worthy.

• 1:46:07Rich Roll?

  It's a movie.

• 1:46:08John Joseph?

  Uh, when he was telling it on the podcast, I'm like, holy shit. Like you see the scenes on your fucking head.

• 1:46:14Rich Roll?

  You're like, there's no way, right? Um, and that gives him the gravitas, like the weight, the power to be able to speak to these issues and the fact that he is committed to prison reform. Um, you know, that's his version of your service. And when you see Paul DeGelder committing his life to, to shark preservation and the preservation of the oceans, when it's, it's the ocean. You know, it is the shark that took away his limbs.

• 1:46:41John Joseph?

  You know, and yeah, and it's the shark. He's protecting that which changed his life.

• 1:46:47Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 1:46:47John Joseph?

  And I saw him say, I don't know that I would want my limbs back. You know, I think it was on your podcast that he said that if somebody said you could have your leg and your arm back, I wouldn't take it. I mean,

• 1:47:00Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:47:01John Joseph?

  And you know that he means it.

• 1:47:04Rich Roll?

  So the question for you is, why? Like, why do you do all this?

• 1:47:14John Joseph?

  First of all, I have to say that it's a degree of selfishness in that

• 1:47:24John Joseph?

  it's how good it makes me feel to help other people genuinely feel how good it is. And going out on the food line and feeding people plant-based meals and having these conversations with people and and and helping people and every day writing letters to people and getting people. I mean, every day I get 20 to 30 fucking emails on social media or my

• 1:47:48Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna read you one right now. I don't want to interrupt you, but I'm gonna read you an email that came in that you got, but it also was sent to me. Can I do this?

• 1:47:55John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56Rich Roll?

  All right. I'm not gonna say the person's name, but it goes like this. Uh, hey, Rich, I also sent this to John Joseph. Couldn't find your direct email, blah, blah, blah. I wanted to reach out personally. Because of the impact you and John have had on on me over the last few years. Here's the email in its entirety. Rich and John, I just wanted to say thank you for the impact you've had on my life over the last few years. I have ulcerative colitis and struggled for the better part of 10 years with flare-ups and hospitalizations. I was lucky to avoid surgery, but that didn't mean I had a good quality of life. Eventually I went on a drug that costs $25,000 a year. It's known to cause cancer in some patients, but to me it outweighed the higher risk of colon cancer due to chronic inflammation.

• 1:48:37Rich Roll?

  During this time, about three years ago, I was also trying to make positive changes in my life to try to get off this cancer-causing drug. While I was thankful for the effects of pharmaceutical intervention intervention played on my symptoms, I was also aware that blah, blah, blah, Canada had the highest IBD rates. Countries like Japan and China had very few. Da, da, da, da, da. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts frequently. I was listening to Finding Ultron Audible. I I interjected it with an episode where Ben Hobbs interviewed John Joseph. It led me to JJ's interview with Rich. The rest of the podcast, it didn't take long before I was convinced that a plant-based diet was my only option. I struggled at first, but eventually came around. And after three or four months, I was nearly 100% plant-based.

• 1:49:21Rich Roll?

  My goal was just to increase fiber intake, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Basically, uh, it cured his ulcerative colitis, essentially. He's his doctor said he'd never seen such a wild turnaround. And that the only cases where he saw this kind of healing were mild cases with very few flare ups. He goes on and on and on, and he refuses to say he's cured, it's still too early, the disease is complicated. But he's basically found freedom, you know, and it's through your message, dude. And I know you get emails, and I'm not reading this to like butter you up or to be self congratulatory. Like, it's just, it's powerful, dude, and I will echo your sentiment. Like, there's nothing better than getting an email like that, knowing that

• 1:50:05John Joseph?

  You helped somebody's life.

• 1:50:06Rich Roll?

  They are helping somebody in a very real way, and it's just, it's just words on a computer screen, but, you know, not for that dude.

• 1:50:12John Joseph?

  No, that's, that's, that's fucking years of pain and suffering that's in that email. And, you know, the thing that was told to me is like, how do, when I asked my teachers, how do I repay you? They just said, teach the next person in line, pay it forward. And that's, that's really what it's all about. And when I say that in a selfish way, I mean that the joy that's derived from helping people, it's, it's incredible. And it's not that I'm trying to have this Jesus complex or any fucking stupid shit like that.

• 1:50:52John Joseph?

  Because I try to always turn it back on them and I say, yo, I put the information out there, but you, sir, ma'am, you did the work. You get the kudos, not me. All I did was give-

• 1:51:05Rich Roll?

  It's like this guy, he did the, he changed his life.

• 1:51:07John Joseph?

  You know how, and I wrote about you in my new book, and I was like, do you know what it fucking took for you? To kick alcohol and do all the stuff that you did, the intestinal fortitude that that took? To change your diet and do, and do, you know, the ultras you've done and do the Epic Five? And, you know, constantly being put under pressure, you know, is the revelation of true character, who the fuck you really are. And, you know, to me, it's like, to get asked, you know, why? It's, the one answer that I would give is, is, is like, we have a debt.

• 1:51:53John Joseph?

  We, our lives were saved, your life was safe, people helped you, even Julie and you read all this stuff. So many people helped. It's like, we have a debt, how the fuck do we, how the hell do we repay the fact that I didn't go to prison and get fucking killed on the streets for being a drug addict and robbing crazy motherfuckers? Like, how do I repay that? And the only way is to constantly, every day I wake up, I touch my head to the floor and I say my mantras, and I've done that for the last, since I ever heard about it in eighty-one, thirty-seven years, even in my crack period and pill period, I wake up and I touch my head to the floor,

• 1:52:37John Joseph?

  namo om vishnu braya, krishna bhasa, buddha le, I say my mantras, and I give thanks for another day on earth, and now because of all the work I've done on myself, I say, you know, send me someone to help today. I'm looking for that. You know, to be like, let me find somebody that's, and I get letters about like, dude, I literally had the fucking gun in my mouth and like, I got one letter like that about the lyrics in the Chromeags that this song I wrote malfunction, and how like, you know, people's lives have just been helped, that's the greatest, you know, feeling in the world that you helped somebody

• 1:53:22John Joseph?

  who was suffering because like, we're living in a world where it's like, people are acting like it's not cool to be compassionate and care about someone, it's this, it's because, look at this shit that's going on with this whole fucking presidency and everything, it's like, fuck you, separating mothers from their children and putting them in fucking camps and all this crazy shit, it's like, fuck you, I have my political beliefs, I don't care if you're suffering, all this shit that's going on, we just have to pull back from that and say, hey man, this is a living being, man, this is a human being with feelings and emotion, and, you know, can,

• 1:54:00John Joseph?

  you know, has the ability to do amazing things with their life, like, I want to fan that spark, man, I don't want to throw water on it. I want to help. Whatever good, look for the good, the center of good in people. That's what you have to look for and try to fan that spark, man.

• 1:54:19Rich Roll?

  How can we make compassion cool? You know, how can we make caring cool? You know, we're in this age of irony. Irony and, and, and, you know, flippant skepticism and anger and, and, and, and fear. And, and, and a zero sum attitude about the world. If you get this, then I don't get mine and fuck you.

• 1:54:39John Joseph?

  I think it comes down to the core value system again, because there's prisons filled with motherfuckers that thought that way. And it's like, I'm gonna get mine no matter what. Or you get people in the material world, I'm gonna exploit everybody and get mine no matter what. I don't care who the fuck they, uh, they step on. But there has to be a spiritual awakening. And spirituality is, is becoming cool. It's, it's not, and I'm not talking about the people who go to yoga class and stand on their fucking head and then they go eat fucking steak tartare and fucking, and do all this other crazy shit and fucking banging. You know, that's not yoga, that's gymnastics. There's a real spirituality to intense work on oneself.

• 1:55:22John Joseph?

  And I think there's a lot more people, uh, that can smell the lie now and the hypocrisy that exists everywhere. And they're looking outside of that whole system of just bullshit and the lies. It's, we're becoming oversaturated with bullshit. It's being just pumped at us constantly on billboards and fucking, we're seeing all these people even, you know, they, they, they just get above people and exploit the fuck out of them all over the world and, and nobody's caring. And it's like, I, I just think like the way, the way to, to heal all of that is, is,

• 1:56:00John Joseph?

  is to let people find it for themselves, but point them in the direction so that they feel like they made the journey. Because ultimately they are. Like I just point people in the direction of the knowledge. I say, bro, go down this fucking rabbit hole and do some motherfucking research. And then I get, and I tell them, read this book, that book, go look at this documentary, check this out, see what this is about. And then they do it and they come back and they're like, yo, and I just got like five messages today. I've been playing bass for a month, man, I feel fucking great. I started doing yoga, like I stopped drinking, like yo, even me and my wife, the whole, our relationship's better, you know, and, and, and a lot of

• 1:56:45John Joseph?

  other things come into play too with helping people because I'm, my life is the result of like crazy shit that my father subjected my mother to. So it's like, a lot of these people have kids, and if they don't fix their damaged selves, what's gonna, you're perpetuating the circle, the, the, the cycle of abuse and, and incarceration and everything. And, and the similar, the common denominator of a lot of these guys is broken families, man. How do we tighten up the family? Look at the beautiful things that go on in your house with your kids and how you and Julie love each other and are nurturing to your kids

• 1:57:26John Joseph?

  and setting the proper example. You guys set the example. And that's why I keep saying example's better than precept. You could talk all the shit you want about yoga and this and that. Motherfuckers don't care about that because there's a lot of mouthpieces out there that just talk shit, talk shit. And then when you really pull back that mask and you see what the fuck is behind there, that's an ugly ass person. And I don't mean that on a physical, I mean that inside that person is nothing that anyone's attracted to because it's, it's all they're developing the bad qualities. It's, it's, um, instead

• 1:58:07John Joseph?

  of the, you know, the, the, uh, four agreements, it's, they practice the four disagreements as a, as so to speak. So, you know, look at, you know, that, that family, and I think the family

• 1:58:22John Joseph?

  Uh, makeup has changed a lot too, and that's why I'm like, yo, if two women or two men want to adopt a kid, and them parents fucked up and they caused that fucking kid so much pain, so what? If those people want to love that person, why the fuck should they not be allowed to adopt kids? Like, they're gonna give that kid a nurturing home. They're not looking to do, you know, and that's the thing that these homophobic people and all these people, they're like, oh yeah, who knows what they want to do with, it's like, that's your twisted fucking brain. You are projecting. Well, who was it that said the, the, the only source of self,

• 1:59:01John Joseph?

  uh, the, when we criticize others, that's the real true source of self, of, of, of what you're projecting.

• 1:59:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a window in your, into your own soul. I don't know who originally said that.

• 1:59:11John Joseph?

  But it's like, you know, I think the family, uh, structure is, is, uh, a very important thing.

• 1:59:18Rich Roll?

  It's super important. Um, I want to talk about-

• 1:59:21John Joseph?

  I, I want to ask one question though, before we jump ahead to that, cause I had a question about John McAvoy. Did you get into like plant-based diet with him and all, or you didn't?

• 1:59:30Rich Roll?

  No, it wasn't about that with him. You know, I just, I wanted to share his story, which is so powerful. Like, I, that would have been a distrai-, he's not, you know, he's not vegan, he's not on a plant-based diet. You know, I want to have that conversation with him later, but it felt, that would not have been appropriate, you know?

• 1:59:46John Joseph?

  But that's what I love about you, and you have people on your podcast that have amazing stories of triumph and, and stuff like that, and you put them on there regardless if they're plant-based or not. It's the story that's inspiring. Your podcast is inspiring. Dude, I gotta tell you, I sat downtown in the last couple of days, fucking, I was eating outside this vegan spot, and, and I had literally five people come up to me and were like, yo, man, you know, heard you on the Rich Roll Podcast, man, I fucking love Rich Roll, like, I'm, I'm doing triathlon now because of that shit, and like,

• 2:00:25John Joseph?

  like, just the amount of people that you have inspired through your podcast and these inspiring people that come on, and are doing amazing things, I mean, you know?

• 2:00:36Rich Roll?

  Well, I appreciate that, um- I mean, look, man, you know, you, you, you bring the fire, you bring the heat every time you're here. So people are connecting with you. I just, I'm like a cipher, like I get to be the conduit so that you can share your truth more broadly. And it's a privilege and an honor to be able to, to, to have the platform to be able to do this. And I think to your point about kind of bifurcating these conversations, it's like, yeah, tons of plant-based vegan people on, but like, like you said, like, I'm more than, like, I'm more than that. And just because somebody isn't on a plant-based diet, does that then exempt them from having an inspirational

• 2:01:20Rich Roll?

  story? Of course not. That's ridiculous.

• 2:01:22John Joseph?

  Well, to the dogmatic vegans, yeah, that's why I don't fuck with them.

• 2:01:25Rich Roll?

  Look at what this guy overcame. You're gonna then judge him because he doesn't eat the way that you eat? Like, to me, that doesn't make sense.

• 2:01:31John Joseph?

  It doesn't. It doesn't. I'm sorry.

• 2:01:33Rich Roll?

  So, so he's not capable of, of, of providing you with some insight and some wisdom that can be helpful to you? I think if you're coming from that perspective, then, and, and it, you know, I think that's, if you're coming from that perspective, you're robbing yourself of an opportunity to low and to, to grow and learn. Every individual that you come across has something that you can learn from.

• 2:01:54John Joseph?

  Absolutely.

• 2:01:54Rich Roll?

  You know, like in recovery, there's that thing like, hey, man, you learn as much from the people that go out as the people that stay in. Everybody carries the message one way or the other. You know what I mean? And it's up to you to be able to have the insight to figure out, okay, what is, what can I glean from that person's experience that can be helpful for me? And there isn't a human being walking on planet earth that you can't learn from. And if you're coming from a holier-than-thou perspective and think, well, that guy doesn't see the way, the world the way that I do. So, you know, screw him, or I can't learn from him, then you're the, you're the, you're the one who's losing out. You're missing out.

• 2:02:31John Joseph?

  Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 2:02:37Rich Roll?

  I want to talk about the new book. But before we do that, you mentioned a couple of minutes ago, like you meet these people, you try to be of service and helpful to them. And you recommend, you're like, read this book, you know, watch this. Like, what is it? So if you're, if you had to like, write down, here's the list of, of things that are your most recommended books or movies, what's on that list?

• 2:02:59John Joseph?

  Uh, it's podcasts, too. And, uh, first and foremost, I tell them the documentaries for their diet, which is obviously Forks Over Knives, What The Health. I tell them to check out Earthlings for the compassion and Calspiracy for the environment. So, you know, those are really the top films that I'll tell them to check out. And books, there's even this one, I quote all the time, The Prophet, one of the first books I read, Bhagavad Gita as it is.

• 2:03:41John Joseph?

  And The Science of Self-Realization, that was the book. Actually, I even said in Evolution of a Cro-Magnon, my memoir, that, you know, if you want, I'll send you this book. And I've sent out thousands of copies of the book, which, uh, you know, I paid for myself, bought the book, shipped it, paid for everything.

• 2:04:03Rich Roll?

  The Napoleon Hill books, too, right?

• 2:04:04John Joseph?

  The Napoleon Hill, absolutely. You know, there's, uh, you know, for self-help, and, you know, he, he wrote some great books. And even like, the I Ching, you know? And, uh, I mean, I've read so many, you know, even, you know, you can even check out the Krishnamurti books. I love that Ram Dass book, Be Here Now. It's just great inspirational quotes.

• 2:04:35Rich Roll?

  Can I tell you a story about that?

• 2:04:36John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:37Rich Roll?

  So Ram Dass is not the guy who said, be here now. Be here now. Was uttered by Bhagavan Das. So Ram Dass arrives in India. He's searching for his guru. He's convinced he's gonna find his guru. He's walking all over the place, meeting with everyone. It's like not working out. And Richard Alpert, you know, Harvard professor is his real name.

• 2:05:00John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:01Rich Roll?

  And he's, and he's sort of dismayed and thinking, well, maybe this isn't where I'm supposed to be. He's starting to question why he went to India in the first place. And he's about to like pack his bags and come back home. And he runs into this dude who's like six, seven, young handsome guy with the long hair and the whole, he's American, but he's got like all the garb on, right? He's got the sandalwood on his forehead and he's barefoot and it's like 1968 or whatever it is. And, uh, and the guy's like, come, I'm gonna take you to this guru. And they're walking and they're walking and like Richard Alpert, AKA Ram Dass is like, when are we gonna get there, man? When is this? This is far. Like, how long are we walking?

• 2:05:46Rich Roll?

  You know, he just kept like, he was so impatient, like he wasn't present in the experience of this adventure. And finally Bhagavan turned around to him and said, like, be here now. That becomes the name of the book.

• 2:06:00John Joseph?

  Right.

• 2:06:00Rich Roll?

  Ultimately, they end up at the feet of Nima Karoli Baba, who becomes, you know, who names Ram Dass, Ram Dass becomes his guru and all that whole thing. But Bhagavan, have you ever met Bhagavan?

• 2:06:11John Joseph?

  No.

• 2:06:11Rich Roll?

  Cause he would do kirtan at Jiva Mookti in New York, spends a lot of time in upstate New York, et cetera. But Bhagavan married.

• 2:06:17John Joseph?

  My friend knows him.

• 2:06:18Rich Roll?

  Married Julie and I. There's a portrait of him in the other room.

• 2:06:21John Joseph?

  Really?

• 2:06:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:22John Joseph?

  Wow.

• 2:06:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 2:06:23John Joseph?

  I wanna see that.

• 2:06:23Rich Roll?

  And he did a, and he's an amazing musician. And he did a, uh, a kirtan album that was produced by one of the Beastie Boys. I think Mike D. I'm not sure. I can't remember.

• 2:06:34John Joseph?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:06:35Rich Roll?

  Maybe, uh.

• 2:06:36John Joseph?

  I think it was, was it Yaut MCA?

• 2:06:41Rich Roll?

  Well, who's the one who's the biggest yogi?

• 2:06:44John Joseph?

  That's uh Mike D.

• 2:06:45Rich Roll?

  I think it was Mike D. Who lives out in Malibu.

• 2:06:46John Joseph?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Mike D.

• 2:06:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:49John Joseph?

  Wow, that's amazing, man.

• 2:06:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. So he was he's a character cuz he's he's not like a guru type guy like you can talk to him like a norm. He's very, you know, like, he's actually pretty funny dude.

• 2:07:00John Joseph?

  Wow, that's crazy.

• 2:07:01Rich Roll?

  I'll tell you more stories about that later. But anyway, alright dude, let's talk about

• 2:07:04John Joseph?

  Well, well, let's

• 2:07:05Rich Roll?

  BMA effect?

• 2:07:06John Joseph?

  Well, well, we didn't, we didn't finish with that cuz we got to the books and the films and I also, you know, um.

• 2:07:14Rich Roll?

  But Be Here Now is an amazing book.

• 2:07:15John Joseph?

  Be Here Now, yeah, there's a lot of truth in there and then, you know, the Krishna Murthy teachings. But mainly I try to just to, I really tell people, you know, to pop out books and then podcasts. And I have to say, not just cuz you're sitting here. I say, look, man. Go on the Rich Roll Podcast and look at the guests and go through that. There's lessons to be learned and what was the um? I just sent somebody cuz they were a swimmer and they were gonna do this big swim. What was the woman's name?

• 2:07:46Rich Roll?

  Kimberly, uh, Kimberly.

• 2:07:48John Joseph?

  She like broke her foot and like?

• 2:07:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. She has, um, she's got a disease right now.

• 2:07:54John Joseph?

  Wow.

• 2:07:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Um, I can't remember the name of it, um, right now, but she's uh, yeah, she's incredible.

• 2:08:02John Joseph?

  Yeah, and I told her to listen to that, yeah.

• 2:08:04Rich Roll?

  And like, you know.

• 2:08:05John Joseph?

  Shark infested waters and like fucking and so there's always some, you know, all the different people that you had on your podcast, it's like there's stories there for everybody. I think it's a very powerful medium, uh, podcast to, uh, help people. So that's really what I, I tell people, uh, in a nutshell, this, just do the research.

• 2:08:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:08:31John Joseph?

  And people, you know, wanna feel like they discovered it. That you, you, you just point them in the right direction and then let them, uh, you know.

• 2:08:40Rich Roll?

  And detach.

• 2:08:40John Joseph?

  Find their truths.

• 2:08:41Rich Roll?

  You gotta detach from your expectations or your attachment as to whether anybody's gonna do it. And that's, that's a painful lesson that you learn in, in in recovery when you're trying to help people get sober because you carry the message. And you know, nine times out of ten, it doesn't, it doesn't stick, you know, but you just keep doing it, you keep doing it.

• 2:08:59John Joseph?

  Right.

• 2:09:00Rich Roll?

  You just stay out of the results, you know?

• 2:09:02John Joseph?

  Exactly. You just keep, that's exactly what it is, man. It's like, I tried to help my nephew, he's incarcerated again. And then there's another kid that, and I talk about this in the book, they, they all made fun of this kid Matt, cause he was a nice kid and a sweet kid. And they called him, they called him all kinds of fucked up names and made fun of him. Matt got an apartment, he graduated college, he has a wife, he has a kid coming, he fucking has a job, and we're all these other dudes that made fun of him. It's not cool to be kind, right? But they're all fucking locked up, including my nephew who made fun of him. Cause he had a little bit of a learning disability, Matt.

• 2:09:46John Joseph?

  But he worked so fucking hard to cure himself of that and graduate college. And I'm so proud of him. He calls me Uncle John, and it's funny, cause he's like this six foot seven, you know, black man now, but I knew him as a teenager and you know, people are like, they're like, Uncle John, like, you know, this fucking short, white motherfucker, like, you know? It's pretty funny, you know, but I love the kid, man. He comes, uh, he comes to every event that I do. He came to the, to the last, uh, the book thing, uh, when we did the Meet Us with Pussies.

• 2:10:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, the one downtown at the last bookstore?

• 2:10:22John Joseph?

  Yeah, yeah, he was the fucking, no, the one, uh, in New York. When we did it at, um.

• 2:10:28Rich Roll?

  Oh, when I was, when I was there, when your mom was there?

• 2:10:30John Joseph?

  Yeah, he was there too, and then he came for the evolution of, you know?

• 2:10:34Rich Roll?

  That place in Brooklyn's not there anymore.

• 2:10:36John Joseph?

  Yeah, I know, it closed down, it's crazy.

• 2:10:39Rich Roll?

  Um, alright dude, PMA Effect. You got this new book coming out. The PMA Effect. Are you showing it there? Yeah, like, dude, do you have any printed copies? You could have had one sitting right here.

• 2:10:49John Joseph?

  Nah, I don't yet, uh, cause we just, um.

• 2:10:52Rich Roll?

  I don't need it, I read it. I read, you know, I read it already.

• 2:10:55John Joseph?

  Actually, you wrote the foreword and you wrote it, you always fuck me up, man, cause you're so eloquent and then I gotta, it's like, you're like the toughest act to follow, like, when it comes.

• 2:11:04Rich Roll?

  Write like you. If I, if I tried to write like you, I would sound like an idiot.

• 2:11:07John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:08Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? I can only write the way that I write.

• 2:11:10John Joseph?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. The, the foreword is amazing. Thank you so much.

• 2:11:15Rich Roll?

  Of course, man.

• 2:11:16John Joseph?

  You know, for, for that gift, and it is a gift and, uh, but the book is, is really, uh, so many people are going through a lot of shit right now. And I'm like, I just, I took all the lessons and I, and I wrote, you know, even the homeless person. Uh, you know, like you mentioned, had a lesson to teach me in life. Everybody had lessons to teach me. So really, I, I just incorporated a lot of the lessons learned and how I overcame certain things. Um, in this world by continuously practicing, uh, seeing things. Uh, from different perspectives and, and working through my shit and trying to keep a positive mindset.

• 2:11:57John Joseph?

  Uh, through all the shit that I was going through and, you know, four years ago, a little, a little under four years ago, I started like. You know, writing stuff down and, and I talk about that. I have a cork board. I don't know if you've been in my house.

• 2:12:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've seen it. I know your writing room.

• 2:12:13John Joseph?

  Yeah. So I pinned, I just kept pinning these ideas to the, to the fucking wall and I'm like. Fuck, man. The PMA thing's become such a big thing. I mean, you know, everyone's getting the tattoos. It's on bumper stickers, fucking Napoleon Hill, the Bad Brains, even fucking, uh, Breaking Bad. They, you know, they had a P, the guy said.

• 2:12:37Rich Roll?

  Did they?

• 2:12:37John Joseph?

  PMA in the reference. Yeah. And one of the things they, they talked about PMA. Man, you better have that fucking PMA. Like, I think it was, uh. Somebody said it to Walt and, uh, I'm like, there's so much to that. There's so much to resiliency and the methods of. Pushing through shit and, and how do I do that and. You know, and I said, you know, even in the intro, I'm like, yo, this book comes from a place of humility. I'm not fixed. I'm still a work in progress. I'm a neophyte on the path and all I'm trying to do is be the mailman and say, yo, this is the stuff that I've been taught that's helped me thus far in my life and got me to where I am. And yes, I have

• 2:13:20John Joseph?

  a lot more work to do on myself, but even this book for me is a reminder because it's a lot of knowledge in there. And I even quoted him, one of his quotes in the book.

• 2:13:32Rich Roll?

  The prophet.

• 2:13:33John Joseph?

  Yeah. So it's like, it was a reminder to me of work that I still need to do on myself. And I just saw it.

• 2:13:42Rich Roll?

  The work's never done.

• 2:13:43John Joseph?

  It's never done. We're all, we're all works in progress, man. It's, and that's really what, you know, but it's all about reaching our ultimate potential and how do we do that? That's why I said, how a positive mental attitude can make you the badass you were born to be. Because all of us were born to do great things with our lives, man. And it, you know, seeing that in every person. And there's also an artis, there's the unwanted things in Sanskrit that we have to, you know, that we have to clear out of our path. It's like boulders on the path. But that's what Prabhupada said was with knowledge, those boulders become pebbles that you can just kick away. So that's where the book was.

• 2:14:27Rich Roll?

  What I love about the book is it's incredibly accessible and relatable. And there's just no getting around the fact that, that you're this incredibly powerful steward because of your life experience, right? You're standing in a place where you have the gravity to speak to this because of where you came from, you know? And like, if people want to really hear the whole backstory of blood clot, like you can listen to one of our 10 podcasts.

• 2:14:57John Joseph?

  I think it's 41 or whatever.

• 2:14:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, way back or even, you know, you recapped it pretty good on Rogan the other day, like, you know, conceived in rape, abuse, abuse, abuse, foster, you know, foster homes, juvenile detention halls, jails, you know, drug dealing on the streets, like just, just a road to nowhere. And it's just unbelievable that you were able to transcend that. To live the life that you're living now. So how do you do that? Like, how does somebody go from there to here? And the fact that you took the time to extract lessons from your life and hang them on the principles that have been transformative in your journey and then communicate them in a way that's relatable to people,

• 2:15:42Rich Roll?

  I think is, is, is, you know, I keep using this word, is powerful. You know, it's powerful and I think it's really gonna help a lot of people, man. So I commend you for, for writing the book.

• 2:15:50John Joseph?

  That's why I wrote it. I, I, I wrote it because I really shouldn't be fucking sitting across from you right now.

• 2:15:58Rich Roll?

  No.

• 2:15:58John Joseph?

  Because the statistics, and I had people tell me that shit, that you're just gonna be another fucking dead motherfucker or you're gonna be a motherfucker that spends the rest of his life in prison. You know, no, you know, but I always had this thing to prove people wrong. Like, because, like, and that was my problem even, even as a kid, was I would never let the people that hurt me know that they hurt me. I would act like that shit didn't matter. You're not gonna see me fucking cry. I wouldn't cry in front of them. You're not gonna see me and my pain. I'm gonna keep that, even when my girl was like, you know, it's fucking unbelievable you went through all that shit and it's like,

• 2:16:41John Joseph?

  I never knew how much that shit really affected you because I'm an expert at hiding my emotions and, and, and not letting, and it's still one of the things I'm trying to work on now. And that's one of the things I talk about in the book is that, you know, to confront things and don't let them fester. And if, if somebody does something that I'm not happy with or it makes me feel a certain way, I'm gonna get it off my chest. I'm not gonna sit there and hold that poison in and, and, and let it fester till it, till it blows up on something and, uh...

• 2:17:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, there's that, but then, I mean, that's an easy example of like, somebody pissed you off, let's redress it immediately, like, or even if you fucked up, to like, rectify it as quickly as possible. I have a friend who calls that, like, if you're gonna eat crow, like, eat it hot. You know, like, deal with it right away. But that's very different from...

• 2:17:42Rich Roll?

  The, the compartmentalization of like the abuse that you suffered and trying to put on a happy face and be like, well shit happens, man. PMA, like, I'm just over it. And then you're gonna walk around the Lower East Side and become friends with every shopkeeper. That shit's still there, dude.

• 2:17:59John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:59Rich Roll?

  So confronting that, like, peeling back the layers, like, that's, you know, that's a process.

• 2:18:05John Joseph?

  That took, that took me all the way to, like I said, it didn't happen until I started working on the script and then McKee and that whole thing that happened with him of him saying that, you know, writing about a character that was abused is the fucking cliche of the day is about what a character does, uh, as a result of that. That's the story.

• 2:18:29John Joseph?

  And, uh, and then he wrote in my book that he signed for me, he goes, he goes, John, always write the truth. And, you know, it was about admitting and, and coming clean on, on what happened to me. And like I said, I, it, it took, it took so much work and, and, you know, there, there's the false ego that's there like, yo, you're this fucking whatever, like, you know, you been through all this shit, you're so fucking iron tough and whatever the fuck and, you know, fantasies we have in our own mind, which is all false ego that has to be stripped away and stand there naked in the fucking,

• 2:19:10John Joseph?

  you know, like at the end of the earth and just be like, you know, I gotta confront this. And, and, uh, it took, it took decades.

• 2:19:19Rich Roll?

  And forgive, forgive, forgive and forgive yourself.

• 2:19:22John Joseph?

  Well, you know, I, I, I mean, and I'm not over all of that forgiveness too, because I went back to that people, them people's houses. And I, I, it wasn't, it, I wasn't able to forgive, eh, eh, like even the two dudes that were doing that shit to me. I was like, that's the first thing I said, where are they?

• 2:19:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:41John Joseph?

  And I don't know.

• 2:19:42Rich Roll?

  When you went back to that foster home, right?

• 2:19:44John Joseph?

  I don't know what I would have done. I'm, I, I haven't reached a point where I could be.

• 2:19:51Rich Roll?

  Do you think that you can get to that place? And if you could?

• 2:19:57John Joseph?

  I would have to get it off my, I have to, I would have to.

• 2:20:00Rich Roll?

  Because it's causing you suffering. You know that.

• 2:20:02John Joseph?

  Of course it is. Because I still have that thing where like, I've learned through the writing of this book though, believe it or not, this has been very therapeutic for me because like, you know, it had to remind me of this stuff. So I let a lot of other shit go. But I know that that's something, that's part of the work that still needs to be done. But there's a part of me that still, I can't remove myself from the street person and the fucking, uh, dude who has to tell motherfuckers what time it is and.

• 2:20:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's an identity, you're, on some level, there's an attachment to that identity, right?

• 2:20:40John Joseph?

  Of course.

• 2:20:40Rich Roll?

  And there's an ego, there's an ego aspect of that, right?

• 2:20:43John Joseph?

  I would be fucking.

• 2:20:44Rich Roll?

  So it's like, when you say the work's never done, it's like, okay, now I gotta look at that, right?

• 2:20:48John Joseph?

  Yeah, and it's like, that's the one thing. Everything else is, I've been able, I forgave my mom, I actually forgave my father, like, you know, I forgave certain bandmates who did the fucking most grimy shit to me who was supposed to be my friend, you know? Don't hold no grudges, I don't give a fuck. But that's the one thing that I'm like,

• 2:21:12John Joseph?

  uh, you know, that still kinda haunts me to this day is ever running into them because like, you know, they took advantage of me and they were bigger than me and now I'm like, you know, it's kinda like that sleeper sting if you saw that movie when the fucking, and like, dude, I, I, I get so fucked up when I see that scene every time that shit comes on, cause I'm like, you know, I understand, I could, I, I, I, I understand that whole situation, what that dude did to them and, and, uh, and now they're in the position of putting fear into that person's.

• 2:21:51John Joseph?

  You know, Kevin Bacon.

• 2:21:54Rich Roll?

  I can't imagine so long since I've seen that movie, but as I recall, it like.

• 2:21:58John Joseph?

  They went to the bathroom, they were in a bar and. And he went, as he went downstairs, they got out of prison and all this shit and they were these tough Irish hooligans and shit. And then he goes down to go to the bathroom and he sees him there and he fucking gets down, he knows.

• 2:22:14Rich Roll?

  The priest that abused all of them.

• 2:22:15John Joseph?

  No, it was the, it was the warden. Kevin Bacon was one of the guys that worked at the boys home. He was one of the cops that worked there. So then he was eating in the diner.

• 2:22:25Rich Roll?

  Right, cause all those guys had been in that boarding house together.

• 2:22:28John Joseph?

  Yeah, and then when he comes back upstairs, he goes and tells his friend, he's like, you're not gonna believe who's, look who's fucking sitting over there. So they both went over there and sat across from him and he's like. Can I help you? And he's like, take a look at me, you, you remember me? And he's looking, he's like. Told him like, yo, the boarding home. And he's like, oh, yeah, I remember you fucking little pricks. And it was just like. You know, he had no forgiveness. And that's what I think where I'll lose my shit if they don't fucking just straight up and come out like saying apologizing. Then it could get ugly because that's what I'm looking for and I, it's not gonna, you know, be any sense of forgiveness and, you know.

• 2:23:13Rich Roll?

  But you know that the spiritual jujitsu is for you to forgive them without an expectation of anything in return.

• 2:23:20John Joseph?

  But that's part of the work. I'm not at that point yet. And it's just, you know. It's a traumatic situation.

• 2:23:32John Joseph?

  That's still gonna require work on my part, you know, that's more of the growth that has to take place. And I know that that's still. You know, when I did Ben Hobbs podcast, man, I fucking. All of this shit, my friend dying right before the race, fucking, and then him, my brother fucking, you know, in a coma. When I went to do Kona the first time and, and then like. You know, thinking of all that and, and what was done to us has been a part of my brother's addiction problems that he can't face. And then, you know, he just asked this question and I lost my shit on the podcast. I was like sobbing for like fif- you know, 10 minutes. And I couldn't talk.

• 2:24:18John Joseph?

  You know, it was fucked up.

• 2:24:21John Joseph?

  But, um, a lot of people heard that and were like, yo. Including, uh, Tony, uh, what is his name? Chris, the Iron, the, uh, Iron Man? Chris Lieto? No, O'Donnell. Chris. Oh, Tim O'Donnell? Tim O'Donnell. Uh huh. He saw me, um, when, uh, when, uh, I went, um, to the Iron Man Foundation thing where they showed the thing in New York. He's like, bro, that was like one of the most fucking intense moments, like, but it's not acting. It's Yeah. It's still raw. And when I see what my brother, now, my brother's been clean for forty days now. Oh, wow. That's new.

• 2:25:06John Joseph?

  He got his thirty day coin. That's pretty good. So, um, you know, there's a lot of people out there who was helped by the evolution of a crow magna and wrote, write me, and I think that this is the next phase in that because we all go through shit. And I said, even if this book saves one human life, how can we put a value on that? Then every fucking minute of everything I spent on that book is worth it, but I think it's gonna help a lot more people. Because there's serious life lessons to be learned there and how we deal with trauma and how we push past and how it's not just about

• 2:25:44John Joseph?

  success and making it and fucking becoming, like, all of that bullshit don't matter to me. It, it, it, that's not what this book is talking about, is, is talking about how do we heal the hurt? How do we push past obstacles in our life? How do we push past fear? You know, and even talking with you and, and, and all the other people, it's like, I ask those questions all the time because I'm trying to learn. I'm still trying to learn. And I said, even when I asked you questions and I wrote about it in a book like, you know, how do we keep growing? And you said, face something you fear all the time.

• 2:26:27John Joseph?

  Do something that challenges you. Face your fears. Remember when you gave-

• 2:26:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I didn't make that up, by the way.

• 2:26:33John Joseph?

  No, I know. But I'm saying you delivered the message, just like you were the mailman. You've, you delivered that message and that's what I'm doing here. And the little lightning bolt there, that's a, that's a nod to the Bad Brains.

• 2:26:47Rich Roll?

  Oh, it is?

• 2:26:48John Joseph?

  Yeah, because their first album, it was the lightning bolt coming down, striking the Capitol. So it's, uh,

• 2:26:54Rich Roll?

  Well, what I, what I, what I like about that is, is that

• 2:27:00Rich Roll?

  it's getting at

• 2:27:03Rich Roll?

  the root

• 2:27:05Rich Roll?

  of how you, of how you grow and how you evolve into the best version of yourself. You know, most books of this ilk, of this genre, it's like how to make a million dollars, how to like, network or shit like that. It's like they're missing the big picture. It's like you can go out and set a goal and I can tell you how to achieve that goal. But if you want to know if your goal is the right goal for you, you better start investing in yourself, in the real hard work that is internally focused in order for you to answer that for yourself. And that's not as sexy. That's, that's the, the messy kind of ephemeral, you know, process

• 2:27:46Rich Roll?

  that I think is fundamentally required if you want to create the best foundation for living the life that, you know, that is, you know, that is sort of like accessing your best blueprint for yourself. But it's hard to talk about that stuff. And it comes in all different shapes and forms, depending upon your spiritual perspective and, and you know, what you believe and don't believe. But I think you did a really beautiful job of like, exploring that in a way that that is very inviting and like I said earlier, like accessible to everybody.

• 2:28:21John Joseph?

  Yeah, thank you. I mean, coming from you, that, uh, it means a lot. And that's what I tried to, um, do in this book. There's something for everybody. You know? From the hardcore people to the, you know, whoever, like, uh, make it accessible, man. And, um, just relate my journey and, um, help people who might be going through, you know, similar stuff. I told the guys in the program every, that I'm working in the documentary Dirty of Life. I said, "Every one of you guys are getting a copy of this book." And it's amazing, like, how smart those guys are.

• 2:29:05John Joseph?

  They have degrees and they, you, they wouldn't be in Amity Foundation unless they were exemplary prisoners, because that's who gets in there. And they did work, they got degrees. And this guy was reading me the stuff, not the musician, another guy wants to do a book, and he was reading me this, his level of fucking awareness, you, you don't understand when you're sitting in a cell for fucking 20 years and you can't run from yourself. You have to face that. Like, I, I had to do the same thing. And everyone does. Everyone has to face themselves.

• 2:29:43Rich Roll?

  Life is gonna throw something at you, no matter who you are.

• 2:29:46John Joseph?

  That's how the book-

• 2:29:47Rich Roll?

  And if you can look at that like an opportunity.

• 2:29:49John Joseph?

  Well, that's how the book came about. Everyone was, I had Evolution of a Cro-Magnon, and everybody was patting me on the back and saying, "What a great..." And I thought I had everything figured out and solved, and life threw me that fucking 80 mile an hour curveball and said, "Yo."

• 2:30:05Rich Roll?

  Not so fast.

• 2:30:06John Joseph?

  "Not so fast, homie. Slow down, you got a ways to go." And that's how I look at it now. I don't try to ever see an end to the journey. I'm just, you know, "Okay, this set of circumstances came up today. I'm not gonna project ahead or worry about it. I'm gonna fucking, I'm alive today." Like, my friend that died-

• 2:30:26John Joseph?

  Kevin McQuaid, he got, you know, he did time in prison, he was addict, everything. And he told me, and I wrote about it in the book, that any day above ground, Johnny, that's a good fucking day. And, you know, if I could, I dedicated a whole thing to him in the book because like, it just shows, even with him, how fragile life really is and the stuff, you know, we take for granted. And one of the things I said was, imagine someone who had a near-death experience, the next day, how she's gonna look at life. She's gonna watch the birds scrambling on the sidewalk for crumbs. She's gonna smell the flowers.

• 2:31:09John Joseph?

  She's gonna notice the breeze blowing through the leaves. You get a whole different awareness of life by going through things. And I think that's a lot of the message that the book takes away is, you can take away from the book is like, there's a lot to be learned in those experiences when we learn to see it that way. Like what I thought was a curse, and you know, now I look at it, it's all about perspective and vision of how we see, are we gonna play the victim? And I played the victim. I'm guilty of it. I played the victim. I had all this shit done to me. I fucking, here's the reason why I'm fucked up.

• 2:31:48Rich Roll?

  Nobody would begrudge you for playing a victim.

• 2:31:50John Joseph?

  And yeah, of course, they'd be like, well, he had it rough, but fuck that. That wasn't gonna be my story. I didn't let that be my story. I wanted, I wanted a different story. I wanted a different path. And that's why I keep fighting every single day, and I keep reaching out to people because that's part of my service. That's bhakta yoga means devotion to Krishna, devotion to others, helping others. It's what the path is all about. It's not about, it's about all of us getting somewhere. I like to look at it as a spiritual party.

• 2:32:27John Joseph?

  Who wants to party by themselves, man? I want to fucking bring all my friends and everything, man, and, and, and, and, and just keep doing big shit, which is helping somebody else get out of the fucking, you know, and I, and I, and that was another quote. They say, oh, when you hit rock bottom. I said, no, you could go below the fucking rocks to the maggots.

• 2:32:49Rich Roll?

  There's always a lower.

• 2:32:50John Joseph?

  There's always fucking, don't think you hit rock bottom. You could always go fucking lower.

• 2:32:54Rich Roll?

  And by the way, you don't have to hit rock bottom and everybody's bottom is different. We all have different pain thresholds. You know, if you're suffering and that elevator is going down, it doesn't have to hit the, the ground floor.

• 2:33:05John Joseph?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:06Rich Roll?

  You can step off. So to kind of round this out and, and, and, you know, bring it home.

• 2:33:13Rich Roll?

  You know, if someone's listening who's suffering, uh, and they're listening, they're, they're hearing your story and they're like, man, that guy like, I can't believe how far he's come from where he was to where he is today. But obviously he's just, you know, he's a genetic freak or he's wired differently. Like I, you know, I just can't, I can't, I can't get out of my own way and I'm stuck and I, I just, I hear what he's saying, but like, he doesn't understand my life. Like, how do you respond to that?

• 2:33:42John Joseph?

  I'm one word, man, honesty. And I think that's, we have to be honest with ourselves. And I tell people that all the time. I have not, like when people write me, oh, you did all these races and you done all this shit in the Crow magazine. I said, man, you could do the same fucking thing. But the first thing that it requires is honesty with ourselves. We have to be, charity starts at home. We have to be honest with ourselves enough to say, and I had to do it, and I'm speaking from my, I had to say, I'm fucked up. I'm

• 2:34:18John Joseph?

  an addict. I'm a, a person who has admittedly done grimy shit to people that have transgressed and done shit against me, which I felt, okay, now I got the right motherfucker to, you got what's coming to you. So it took a lot of honesty on my part.

• 2:34:47John Joseph?

  To be willing to take that mirror that I'm holding up to everybody else and and and and looking at everybody else and flip that shit around and be like, I'm the one that needs to get fixed.

• 2:34:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:34:58John Joseph?

  How do I do that?

• 2:34:59Rich Roll?

  You're the common denominator in all the fucked up shit in your life.

• 2:35:02John Joseph?

  Yeah. I mean, but that's a big fucking challenge to accept. And I have a chapter called, "Accept." You have to accept the blame.

• 2:35:13Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 2:35:14John Joseph?

  Don't keep trying to fucking, you know, use events in your life as a scapegoat for being a fucked up person or, you know. Everything's, everybody's life is different.

• 2:35:29John Joseph?

  But we can all attain the same things if if that honesty is there and that's one of the 26 qualities of a devotee is that they're honest. You know?

• 2:35:41Rich Roll?

  It's tough.

• 2:35:42John Joseph?

  It's it's the fucking hardest thing, man. Listen, man, you may look at where I came from and where I'm now, but what you don't see is the 37 fucking years of of tears and pain and fucking bloodshed and and and fucking tests that have come that I failed and failed and failed again, but was willing to get the fuck back up. And it's not how many times we get knocked on our ass, it's how many times we're willing to fucking pick ourselves up and push fucking through the next gap between expectation and result. And then the world throws us through another fucking curveball, puts us at risk. That's story in a nutshell. So it comes down to what you want your story to be. I didn't want my story to be,

• 2:36:27John Joseph?

  "Oh, yeah, he was abused and he was abandoned and he was fucking made to feel like shit and it's okay that he's in prison or fucking dead." That was, it's understandable. Fuck that. I didn't want that to be my story. And that's what I'm trying to tell people with this book. Don't let those events that have happened in your life determine who you are as a character. You can break free of any of that adversity. And it just takes, like you, like you said, flip the mirror, man. Look at yourself. Stop looking at everybody else and what they're doing, that don't matter. What anybody else does don't matter. You know, it's, it's about what's going on with us.

• 2:37:12John Joseph?

  That's what we have the power to fix is us. We don't have the power to determine how people are gonna treat us or look about us or talk about us. And especially with social media these days. Everybody goes on there talking shit about other people. It's so toxic, coming back to the Joe Rogan thing. It's so toxic and so poisonous and so disgusting. You could have the best intention in the world and you're still see fucking people on your videos on YouTube, thumbs down. Fuck this guy. Fucking fuck him, fuck you.

• 2:37:46Rich Roll?

  It's such a weird thing because I can't imagine, even if I had a negative response to somebody's piece of content to like go and like, you know,

• 2:37:56John Joseph?

  Take the time.

• 2:37:57Rich Roll?

  Let them know where I'm coming from, like,

• 2:37:59John Joseph?

  Like dude, does your life, that's, I like,

• 2:38:02Rich Roll?

  I just wouldn't do that.

• 2:38:02John Joseph?

  Does your life really suck that fucking much that you took all that time to go and fucking go on that shit and watch it and then be with, with a poisonous fucking comment? Like that, you know, the Four Agreements talks about that. Not to take things personal. That's their poison, that's their hell. And when I saw Don Miguel speak, you know, I still read his book and read, read those things because that's what I fucking, yeah. I do take shit personal. I'm like, I'm gonna come fucking bash you and you've, I've still sent those emails.

• 2:38:40Rich Roll?

  No, that's like,

• 2:38:41John Joseph?

  I'm like, motherfucker, I'm playing in your town in a fucking month. I'll put you on the guest list, play the show.

• 2:38:47Rich Roll?

  If you ever wanna wind up,

• 2:38:48John Joseph?

  And beat your motherfucking ass.

• 2:38:50Rich Roll?

  Say something personal because that is your, your Achilles heel, dude. Like that's the character defect that will like set you off and get you to do something you're gonna regret, bro.

• 2:38:59John Joseph?

  Yes, I know. And I, you know, I gotta catch myself.

• 2:39:03Rich Roll?

  Dude, I got plenty of them.

• 2:39:04John Joseph?

  You know.

• 2:39:05Rich Roll?

  Alright man, we gotta end this thing.

• 2:39:07John Joseph?

  God bless, man. Shit. Hey, this one, did we record? Check it.

• 2:39:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah dude, two and a half hours.

• 2:39:13John Joseph?

  Awesome. I love you Rich, thank you for the forward. The book's called The PMA Effect.

• 2:39:18Rich Roll?

  The PMA Effect, it's for, it's up per pre-

• 2:39:20John Joseph?

  Pre-order link is up now on Amazon.

• 2:39:23Rich Roll?

  And on the-

• 2:39:23John Joseph?

  And the PMAEffect.com.

• 2:39:26Rich Roll?

  The PMAEffect.com.

• 2:39:28John Joseph?

  And you know-

• 2:39:29Rich Roll?

  And you got, you're doing signed books for a minute here.

• 2:39:32John Joseph?

  500 of the first copies, it's signed and then, and then, and then, um, hey, we got 400 already. October 2nd, the day before my 56th birthday.

• 2:39:42Rich Roll?

  Right on.

• 2:39:43John Joseph?

  Um, so-

• 2:39:44Rich Roll?

  Why do I not know your birthday's in October? I'm in October too.

• 2:39:47John Joseph?

  Cause you're, you're, you're- And you're in July's what?

• 2:39:50Rich Roll?

  July's July.

• 2:39:51John Joseph?

  Oh, July, right.

• 2:39:53Rich Roll?

  So-

• 2:39:53John Joseph?

  Yeah, positive.

• 2:39:54Rich Roll?

  Alright, PMA Effect.

• 2:39:55John Joseph?

  PMA Effect.

• 2:39:56Rich Roll?

  30 for Life, we don't know what's happening with that yet. Yeah, that's what I said, isn't it?

• 2:40:00John Joseph?

  Oh dude, you said 30 for Life.

• 2:40:02Rich Roll?

  30, oh 30 to Life.

• 2:40:03John Joseph?

  30 to Life.

• 2:40:04Rich Roll?

  I don't know. We're not sure where-

• 2:40:05John Joseph?

  It's coming out next year.

• 2:40:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we don't, we don't know where yet.

• 2:40:07John Joseph?

  It's gonna be epic. That's all I can say.

• 2:40:11Rich Roll?

  Right on dude.

• 2:40:12John Joseph?

  Alright.

• 2:40:12Rich Roll?

  Alright man, let's go uh, get something to eat, brother.

• 2:40:15John Joseph?

  Are we doing that? Let's do it, baby!

• 2:40:17Rich Roll?

  What are we doing?

• 2:40:17John Joseph?

  Peace and plans, we're shaking hands. Love you, man.

• 2:40:20Rich Roll?

  Take us out with a mantra.

• 2:40:21John Joseph?

  And thank, thank you for helping everybody. And uh, here's, here's my, here's my mantra. Teisham satatayuktanam, padjatam prithipovakam. Dadamibudi yogamtam, yenemamupiyantetay. That's from the Bhagavad Gita. There's nutshell verses of the Bhagavad Gita, the essence of the Bhagavad Gita. And that means, "Those who are constantly devoted to the path, I give them the understanding by which they can come to the supreme." In other words, it's action. Take action, better yourself every day, don't just keep talking. Zip it.

• 2:40:59John Joseph?

  There's a chapter in my book called Yo Zip It. And that's what it's about, take action, man, and push through every single day. That's what it's about. God bless everybody, man.

• 2:41:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not even gonna say peace and plans, I just want that to be the capstone.

• 2:41:14John Joseph?

  Yes sir.

• 2:41:15Rich Roll?

  Right on, brother. Good talking to you. Much love.

• 2:41:18John Joseph?

  Yes.

• 2:41:21Rich Roll?

  Lot of life force, lot of wisdom in that man. Hope you guys enjoyed it. There's a reason why he continues to be such a popular guest on the show. I love him like a brother. Thank you for listening. Please let John know what you thought of today's conversation by hitting him up on the social channels. You can find him at Twitter @JJCromag, on Instagram @JohnJosephCromag. Make a point of pre-ordering his brand new book, The PMA Effect. You can find that at purepma.com or on Amazon. And as always, check the show notes for additional links and resources to expand your experience of today's conversation beyond the earbuds. If you're frustrated with your eating habits, if you're looking for a little bit more nutritional

• 2:42:02Rich Roll?

  guidance, you're trying to dial up your plate, I can't stress enough how helpful our meal planner could be to your experience. Meals.richroll.com is where you go, and if you do, you will find there thousands of super nutritious, delicious, and easy to prepare, plant-based recipes, literally thousands, all customized based on a wide variety of personal preferences, with unlimited grocery lists, grocery delivery in most US cities, with international coming soon, and an extraordinary team of customer service professionals, people who really understand this stuff, people with degrees in nutrition, to help guide you and answer all of your questions. All of this is available to you for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. Super

• 2:42:46Rich Roll?

  proud of it. It's really helping a lot of people, and I love the fact that it's so affordable. So again, to learn more and to sign up, go to Meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. If you would like to support our work here at the RRP, just share it with your friends and on social media. That's the best way. I love seeing people share the show in that manner. It's great. Word of mouth is what this is all about. If you want to take that extra step, you can also support the show on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today, because I don't do this alone. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for the video version of

• 2:43:28Rich Roll?

  the podcast, as well as graphic elements that I share on social media. Reese Robinson for behind-the-scenes video and photos. David Kahn, my man DK, for sponsor relationships. And theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thanks, I love you guys. See you back here. Next week with filmmaker Sanjay Rawal, who is the man behind a brand new documentary called 31: Run to Become, which really impacted me. It's a really cool movie and we had an amazing conversation. So you have that to look forward to. Until then, be well, do good. Live a life of gratitude and seva and ahimsa. Peace, blessings, namaste.