Roll On Re-Entry: AMA on Addiction, Lifestyle Change, & A New Format

Welcome to the 2023 season premiere of ‘Roll On’, the version of the podcast where we indulge in some good-natured banter and ramble on matters of interest across culture, sports, politics, literature, art, self-betterment, and more. My co-host is Mr. Adam Skolnick, an activist, veteran journalist, author of One Breath, and David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me and Never Finished co-author. Adam writes about adventure sports, environmental issues, and civil rights for outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, ESPN, BBC, and Men’s Health. Today Rich and Adam talk about the new ‘Roll On’ format, share their streaming selects, answer listener questions, and more. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Athletic Greens: athleticgreens.com/richroll Native: nativedeo.com/rrp Calm: calm.com/richroll Birch Living: birchiving.com/richroll Indeed: Indeed.com/RICHROLL Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:13Adam Skolnick?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:17Rich Roll?

  Roll On is back!

• 1:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, it is!

• 1:19Rich Roll?

  What zone are we in? Are we in Zone 2?

• 1:22Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know.

• 1:23Rich Roll?

  We'll figure it out. But first...

• 1:32Rich Roll?

  All right, let's do the show.

• 1:37Rich Roll?

  All right, let's just get into it. Hey, everybody. How's it going? How are you, Adam?

• 1:42Adam Skolnick?

  I'm doing great, man. It's great to be back here.

• 1:44Rich Roll?

  Welcome back. Back to Roll On.

• 1:46Adam Skolnick?

  Back in the studio, Diggs. It looks great. You look great.

• 1:50Rich Roll?

  I don't quite know what to do. It's been...I checked. It's been since November 10th, 2022, since we've done this.

• 1:58Adam Skolnick?

  Wow.

• 1:58Rich Roll?

  Feeling a little bit rusty.

• 2:00Adam Skolnick?

  Right. You and me both. I've been just locked in a room with no windows or doors. I don't know how I got in there. They built it around me.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 2:10Adam Skolnick?

  And there's a trapdoor. They fed me.

• 2:13Rich Roll?

  They did.

• 2:13Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 2:15Rich Roll?

  The Darkness Retreat, is that what you're talking about?

• 2:18Adam Skolnick?

  Ding ding ding ding ding.

• 2:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so I actually have a funny story about that. I thought about doing that, as a matter of fact, because I just, the reason we haven't done Roll On since November 10th. Right. Is, I mean, I had a bunch of travel stuff and then I did what I do every January, which is I take the month off and in this case, I ended up going to Australia and I can share a little bit about that in a minute, but I was kind of looking at experiences to, you know, kind of catalyze a little bit of growth. Yes. And the Darkness Retreat thing like came across my transom and I looked into it. There's a place, I had, I actually had it in the outline, where is it? Is it in the Pacific Northwest? Well, there's multiple different places, but there's a place called Sky Cave Retreats, which is in Ashland. Okay.

• 3:02Rich Roll?

  And it's kind of like a little boutiquey sort of retreat center, like hotel situation. But yeah, they, you get a room and you basically, I think it's three days, six, I think you can do six days, something like that, I'm not sure. And you're in darkness for the entire time and they feed you food, I think through like a trapdoor thing, but in a way where no light ever like penetrates the room, so. Like during the day too, there's no light? No light, no devices, no nothing, like utter total, complete darkness with no stimulus. Listen, Rich. Which actually sounds like, you're like, wow, that would be intense. And then the more you think about it, you realize how just utterly terrifying. Right, that does not sound like a vacation to me.

• 3:47Rich Roll?

  No, I know. What kind of resort is this? So, but I think as we speak. Yeah. Our friend Colin O'Brady is ensconced in just such an experience. Of course he is. Yeah, he was talking about it, I think he's in the middle of it right now. Is he really? Yeah, so I thought about doing that. Good for him. And then I thought.

• 4:07Rich Roll?

  I already live in a prison of my mind. Like, I should probably resolve some of those things before I put myself in that situation to torture myself. Like-

• 4:14Adam Skolnick?

  I guess the idea is you, you come to the silence at the end, right?

• 4:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 4:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Rich Roll?

  Or you work through that level of discomfort to arrive at some level of like peace and immersion in presence.

• 4:27Adam Skolnick?

  But isn't that like-

• 4:28Rich Roll?

  It's gotta go sideways, though, for some people, you would think.

• 4:31Adam Skolnick?

  Right. I mean, isn't that what they did in Shawshank Redemption with Andy Dufresne? They put him in the-

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  It's-

• 4:38Adam Skolnick?

  In the sky cave?

• 4:39Rich Roll?

  It's voluntary, it's voluntary solitary confinement, right? Except in the dark.

• 4:45Adam Skolnick?

  It's a punishment. It's not a retreat.

• 4:48Rich Roll?

  Well, you know, isn't an ultra endurance event like, hey, run 100 miles? You could construe that as a punishment.

• 4:55Adam Skolnick?

  This is the mental version of that.

• 4:56Rich Roll?

  Spartan challenge, or a cold plunge, or any of these things that we sign up for are, you know, they're all voluntary, you know, exposure to different forms of discomfort.

• 5:07Adam Skolnick?

  It's true. No, I get it. I understand the idea is to, is to kind of shortcut you to like some shock de pod moment of self-acceptance. I'm just saying, I think I would rather run 100 miles, to be honest with you.

• 5:18Rich Roll?

  It is a pretty scary prospect, right?

• 5:20Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Rich Roll?

  Anyway, we got through line one of the outline before we got sidetracked, which is why I love doing this.

• 5:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 5:26Rich Roll?

  For those of you who are tuning in, maybe you're, you're new to this whole format, or perhaps the amount of time that's lapsed since the last time that we've done this has led to some kind of memory failure situation. So if that's you, this is the version of the show where, in the most general sense, Adam, Mr. Adam Skolnick, sitting across from me and I, play a little fast and loose with items of interest that have caught our fancy and our whimsy, and we share our curiosity on certain things. It's a little bit different from the normal show that we do, and it is also a format that we have now kind of put under the microscope and maybe playing with in the new year, which we can talk a little bit about.

• 6:06Rich Roll?

  But I think today's gonna be pretty standard, except we're gonna kind of cut to the chase and be a little bit lean. It's gonna be much more of a AMA kind of listener question focused type episode.

• 6:18Adam Skolnick?

  We're gonna get some stuff off Rich Roll's mind. Let's just clear, let's clear the slate.

• 6:22Rich Roll?

  It's been three months.

• 6:23Adam Skolnick?

  Let's unpack the bags.

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  How about you?

• 6:26Adam Skolnick?

  My goal when I come here is to share nothing. I want to share nothing personal.

• 6:29Rich Roll?

  Come on.

• 6:30Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, no, no.

• 6:31Rich Roll?

  Come on.

• 6:31Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 6:33Rich Roll?

  How are you?

• 6:34Adam Skolnick?

  I'm good, man.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  Let's start with the check in.

• 6:37Adam Skolnick?

  So I feel like I can describe the essence of fatherhood. I think it's distilled into these little moments. And one of them is my newfound appreciation for Ice Ice Baby.

• 6:48Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. How long have you worked on this joke?

• 6:52Adam Skolnick?

  I'm just saying, this is a true story.

• 6:53Rich Roll?

  Go ahead.

• 6:54Adam Skolnick?

  It's a true story. Do you know what it's like, like when you, like a song you never liked, but has caught, has become an earworm for your two-year-old?

• 7:03Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's been, you know, a minute. Like, we're in different phases of fatherhood, but...

• 7:07Adam Skolnick?

  Slightly.

• 7:08Rich Roll?

  Go ahead.

• 7:09Adam Skolnick?

  So somehow a while back, he heard Ice Ice Baby and couldn't stop saying Ice Ice Baby. So it became a go-to on the Zuma playlist. And over time, at first I was kind of hesitant. I didn't, you know, I never liked the song much, even though I grew up in Ice Ice Baby's era. I never really liked it that much, even though I admittedly it's catchy.

• 7:31Rich Roll?

  That's a shocker.

• 7:31Adam Skolnick?

  I never thought it was a good rap song. But now, now I, I know it's a good rap song. And is this my love for Zuma? Is it latent appreciation for the artist that is Vanilla Ice? Is it just a good rap song? I don't know.

• 7:48Rich Roll?

  It's confusing. It's all very confusing, right? So what is the truism that you're extracting from this experience?

• 7:53Adam Skolnick?

  My point is, you can love someone so much that you learn to love the songs they love, even if you don't want to.

• 8:01Rich Roll?

  There's a poem in there somewhere.

• 8:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's my high.

• 8:04Rich Roll?

  Less a joke, more a poem.

• 8:05Adam Skolnick?

  It's kind of poignant.

• 8:07Rich Roll?

  The things that the person you love loves.

• 8:09Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 8:09Adam Skolnick?

  Cause he loves it. He jumps around to it. And to be honest, when it comes to the point in the song where he's like, A1A, beachfront avenue!

• 8:18Adam Skolnick?

  I say it out loud, just like that, that's what I do.

• 8:20Rich Roll?

  Well, enthusiasm is infectious.

• 8:22Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, thank you. So I love, I love Ice Ice Baby now. At me if you must. I love it.

• 8:28Rich Roll?

  All right, good. All right, so we checked that box. Fatherhood.

• 8:32Adam Skolnick?

  Fatherhood distilled. My foot is a little better, better than it's been in a long time. It's not perfect. It may never be perfect, but it's, I had that two PRP injections. My post tibial tendon has reconstituted itself of its own accord.

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  That worked well for you.

• 8:47Adam Skolnick?

  It's worked well. I'm, I'm running. I've done like six runs in three weeks. So it's not like I'm, I'm hammering it, but I'm back doing that. I'm in the gym. Part of my rehab, Dr. Goggins ordered me into the gym to lift weights, which is not my favorite thing to do, but I've been doing it, enjoying it with the great Nick Nurr. Shout out. We were in Kauai. We did a sabbat, we did a mini sabbatical, but not like a total sabbatical, about the whole family.

• 9:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:11Adam Skolnick?

  And that was awesome. Saw some old friends in Kauai, because I know we both have a Kauai backstory. And so that was January for us. We kind of skipped out on a lot of the rain. And other than that, it's just been kind of watching the Goggins book kind of happen and unfold. And that's been really rewarding.

• 9:30Rich Roll?

  Right. So the last time we sat down together was before the book came out.

• 9:35Adam Skolnick?

  That's right, that's right.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  Because it came out in January, December?

• 9:38Adam Skolnick?

  It came out in December, December 6th.

• 9:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right. Okay, so, I mean, it did what you expected it to do, right? Like it hit number one on Amazon, which is a crazy expectation to actually set and then achieve. But anyway, did that. Once again, competing against not only Michelle Obama, but like the Royals.

• 9:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 9:55Rich Roll?

  Right, so.

• 9:56Adam Skolnick?

  The Royal, the Royal, the Royal Smashup.

• 9:59Rich Roll?

  But like mixing it up, up there. I mean, by all appearances, it seems like it's done fantastically well.

• 10:05Adam Skolnick?

  It's done really well. You know, we, we did, we were number one for that week on Amazon. And then Harry came out, but we've been, we were number one on Audible for like five weeks. I mean, we were doing really well. Can't Hurt Me, got a bump out of it.

• 10:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Is the, is the audiobook outselling the hard copy?

• 10:20Adam Skolnick?

  That's, that's been the way it's been even for Can't Hurt Me. I think it's like, I don't exactly know the numbers, but it's like 55 or 60% of it's audio.

• 10:27Rich Roll?

  Right. Which of course, the margin, you know, doesn't even compare, right? There's no cost. And when you're self-publishing, that's massive.

• 10:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah. When you're self-publishing, it's massive. And so that's been really cool. And David hasn't even really been, I mean, he was on. The Joe Rogan Podcast.

• 10:42Rich Roll?

  Right. He did a couple podcasts and that was kinda it.

• 10:45Adam Skolnick?

  That's it. That's it. So, you know, it's pretty amazing that it's staying up there. And, you know, it's, I will say that like when we were writing it, David's idea was to, he was always thinking about the reader from the beginning. And that experience, more than any other experience I've ever had in writing, including the Lonely Planet books, which are obviously service journalism. And you should be thinking about the traveler. I, I don't think I've ever been in a space of thinking about my readers more than I am now. And part of that is David, part of that obviously being on the show with you as well, because it is service in its own way. And so obviously like, it wouldn't be doing this well without the readers. We really appreciate you guys. I can't thank you enough for all the support, both personally, for the Goggins books.

• 11:30Adam Skolnick?

  You know, we do care about giving this content in a way that will motivate and inspire you. It does mean a lot that it's working. And also want to thank you because, you know, I wouldn't even know who David was if it wasn't for your original interview with him.

• 11:44Rich Roll?

  Well, you would have eventually.

• 11:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah, I would have eventually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then the fact that we're like started there and then to come full circle is just, it's such a cool thing. And so like to see David, who is this incredible, you know, he really does set an example on so many levels. And I look up to him a lot, even more so than ever, really personally. And so it's, it's just great to be a part of it. And, and really thank all the listeners out there who's been, who's been supporting it.

• 12:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool, man. I'm, I'm proud of you. I'm happy for you. I'm happy for David. It's quite, you know, a trajectory. And, you know, the books are powerful and they do motivate and inspire people. And, you know, I'm sure countless lives are, are, you know, kind of permanently transformed by his, by his work. And, and, you know, the work that you put in to making it the best that it could be is like no small thing.

• 12:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, man, it was. But, you know, it made me a better writer. Like it made me better in so many ways. So it's like, it's great to have gone through that process and the process is always different. But the good thing about writing is, is, is a process. You can rely on the process when you've done it enough. And really the process is just continuing to. To distill it down and down and down.

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  Does it put you in a position where now you're getting pitched to be a ghostwriter on other people's books?

• 13:01Adam Skolnick?

  Well, that's happened.

• 13:02Rich Roll?

  And do you want to do that? Is that something you're interested in doing?

• 13:05Adam Skolnick?

  That's happened since Can't Hurt Me was a hit. Like, periodically, we'd get real offers from like real publishers and then just random people who say, hey, I've got this, you know, and some of these random people are Olympians or like, you know what I mean? But who are asking me personally. I have so far said no to all of it. I'm not against it. Obviously, this is the golden age of ghostwriting, you know? We've talked about it. It's obvious. It's the New York Times. It's a story on J.R. Mooreinger, who's like the alpha ghostwriter who just did Prince Harry's book. So the fact it's out there being talked about is interesting. It is this golden age of ghostwriting. So the funny thing is, you can get paid more as a ghostwriter than as a, like, writing your own stuff, which is kind of like backwards, right?

• 13:46Adam Skolnick?

  But typically, when someone asks me to write their book, I do my best to convince them to write their book. That's what I do. That's my first move. I think you should write your book. That's what I say.

• 13:57Rich Roll?

  Well, we'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. But just to kind of wrap up goings on with you, you also just published this New York Times story, which got a pretty good reaction, right? You want to talk about that a little bit?

• 14:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah. I did a story on Lakshmi Sherpa, who is a Sherpa woman from Mount Makalu in Nepal. And she, last climbing season, last May, she became the first woman ever to get 10 summits of Mount Everest. She's the first woman ever to go to hit the summit and make it back to base camp alive. There was another Nepali woman who in the 90s reached the summit but died on her way down. And she was the first to do it. Now she's the first to get 10 summits. That's like a hallowed number. So if you're a sports fan, it's like 500 home runs or 3,000 hits in baseball. It's like this number, only 36, I think, is the number of people have ever done. 24 of them are Sherpa, and they've all been men. And so she's the first woman to do it.

• 14:51Adam Skolnick?

  And her life story is just tragic, but also triumphant in its way. She survived domestic violence. She moved. She's been working at Whole Foods in West Hartford. She cleaned houses for a living. She's an immigrant woman. She came over here after summing it twice with a Romanian climber. And started living in Hartford, Connecticut and has gone through the wringer like as a single mom and but still managed to get back there and add to her summit total. She was on the mountain when the big avalanche came through base camp. She was on the mountain when they had the big earthquake. So she's, you know, her mentors have died there. She is just this incredible woman that has never been sponsored. And so it was a great story. I was tipped off to it by a guy named Ben Pryor, listener of yours, who has done some

• 15:34Adam Skolnick?

  research for me. And he said, you should do this. And at the time, it was like, six weeks after she'd done the climb, maybe it was like a month. And I thought, it's too late to do a story like that now. But then I tried to get a hold of her, couldn't do it. And then Badra Sharma, who is a New York Times reporter out of Kathmandu, he and I worked on the NIM story together. I messaged him and I said, hey, do you know Lakhba? Or have you ever met her? And it turns out, he was there when she came back to Kathmandu and had this hero's welcome and had a great interview with her. So we started there. We got in touch. I interviewed her after that. And we just kind of collaborated on this piece and it's, people have loved it.

• 16:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool, man.

• 16:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, thanks. I turned it in in September, and then it didn't get published till like last week.

• 16:16Rich Roll?

  Wow. Welcome to mainstream media publishing, I guess. I don't know.

• 16:21Adam Skolnick?

  I think what happened was, I interviewed her in July, August, but I think in August, but I couldn't get to it until late September because I was finalizing, never finished. And then by the time I got to it, I turned it in like a week before the World Cup. And like, the Times sports desk was all in Qatar.

• 16:40Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 16:40Adam Skolnick?

  Qatar.

• 16:41Rich Roll?

  Cool. Qatar, I think.

• 16:42Adam Skolnick?

  Qatar.

• 16:43Rich Roll?

  Qatar?

• 16:43Adam Skolnick?

  Qatar.

• 16:44Rich Roll?

  Are you working on anything else for the Times?

• 16:47Adam Skolnick?

  There's a, there's a swim race in late April in Arizona. Have you heard of this thing, the SCAR race? It's where it's this four contiguous lakes, reservoirs in Arizona that people swim in a stage race. And so I'm gonna do that story for them. Yeah.

• 17:03Rich Roll?

  I haven't heard of that.

• 17:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, Munetones turned me on to it. And so he won it last year. But this year, apparently, a lot of really established and well regarded open water swimmers who've got like, the resumes on these guys are insane.

• 17:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:17Adam Skolnick?

  They're all gonna be there. So it should be a more interesting, kind of weird carnival to follow around in Arizona.

• 17:23Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 17:24Adam Skolnick?

  So that's on my radar. But other than that, just finishing up this other big project. And excited to talk about that at some point.

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  When appropriate.

• 17:33Adam Skolnick?

  When appropriate.

• 17:34Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 17:34Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, man. How are you? Good to have you back.

• 17:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, thanks, man. It's good to be back. Sabbatical was great. I'll get into it in a second. Before that, I just want to make sure I make this announcement, which is that we are finally reprising our Plant Power Italia Retreat. This is something we've done every year up until COVID, and then we canceled it a couple of years in a row. And last year, it was sort of on the fence and ended up deciding not to do it. We are going to do it this year. It might be the last time that we do it. It's going to go down April 22 to 29. Right now, we're about half sold out. So I think that leaves about, I don't know, somewhere between 15 and 20 open spots at the moment.

• 18:20Rich Roll?

  And it's a pretty remarkable kind of life-changing experience to spend a week with a group of people cooking, doing nutrition, hiking, trail running, doing yoga, meditating, touring, you know, Tuscany, you know, hanging out, music, like live podcasting, kind of sessions. Like, we do tons of great stuff. We have special guests. It's really quite something, and so I'm really looking forward to it.

• 18:50Adam Skolnick?

  Special guests, meaning like yoga teachers or like experts in their field?

• 18:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know. Well, every year, like, we've had different kind of people, like, and we'll figure that out at some point, I'm sure, you know, TBD, but it's always pretty cool. We've had the Happy Pair guys come, for example, and we'll do like a live podcast with them, that kind of thing. And we do it at this place called Aisalana, which is this incredible agriturismo. It's like a working farm, but it's beautifully appointed, like villa and accommodations with like two pools and this beautiful yoga room and dining hall. And it's nestled sort of halfway between Siena and Florence, like just an incredible, you know, part of the world.

• 19:28Adam Skolnick?

  Very sky cave. And it's very, this is a very sky cave.

• 19:31Rich Roll?

  This is the antithesis of the sky cave, right? Like, you know, hanging out with like amazing people, doing really high-vibe shit. So if that sounds cool to you, you can learn more about it at ourplantpowerworld.com. Ourplantpowerworld.com. I'll put that link up in the show notes. Again, about half full, so if you're interested, I'm pretty sure it's going to sell out quickly, so jump on that. And then just to, you know, kind of goings on recently with me. Yes, I did the sabbatical, but prior to that, we haven't done a roll-on because I was traveling. I went to Hawaii to crew for the Ultraman World Championships, which is the race that I did a number of times, like 10 years back.

• 20:13Rich Roll?

  I hadn't been back, I'd been back to the big island, but I hadn't been back to that race. And that race is really so much about, you know, not just the aloha spirit of Hawaii, but also like ohana, like family, right? And, you know, giving back is kind of a fundamental aspect of participation in the race. And that was kind of a glaring omission in my relationship or history with the race. Like, I always felt compelled or, you know, this desire and need to go back and serve the race that had given me so much. And an opportunity arose to go and crew for a friend of mine, Howie Nordstrom, who was competing. He asked me and I said, of course, this is great. Like, he's asking right at the moment where I thought, like, I need to do this anyway.

• 20:56Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 20:57Rich Roll?

  And it was cool. Like, it was weird and cool to be back there after so long.

• 21:01Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  So much of it is exactly the same. Like, it's sort of, to the race's credit, it has not, like, sort of succumbed to the pressures of commercialism. Like, it's very much, you know, still in its roots of what it is in that kind of purity sense.

• 21:16Adam Skolnick?

  As opposed to these under-mile races that have, like, mushroomed in terms of attendance.

• 21:20Rich Roll?

  Right, like, sponsors get involved and then they grow into some, you know, kind of big money-making enterprise and it loses sort of its soul. Like, Ultraman is not that. Like, it's still like, wow, this is exactly the same as it was. Same people, some of the people who were racing when I was racing are still doing the race.

• 21:34Adam Skolnick?

  Do you think, I don't want to interrupt, but do you think it's because it's so hard that, like, the demand is still not great? Or do you think it speaks to just the fact that they've kept it down?

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  I mean, there are, like, you know, when there's the Moab 240, like, there's a lot of hard stuff out there, right? I think there has been a conscious, you know, concerted effort to keep it that way on purpose. Like, there's an intentionality behind that. To keep it small, like, only, you know, 30 to between 30 and 40 participants, et cetera. And it was great. It was great to be back and reconnect with that, you know, part of myself and it brought back a lot of memories and then to serve Howie and get him, you know, across the finish line and, you know, that race is hard for everybody and it had its highs and its lows and all of that. And to be on that side of that equation and appreciate just how challenging the crew role is and being in that service capacity was, you know, an amazing experience and I

• 22:28Rich Roll?

  did it alongside another friend of Howie's, this guy Ryan Smoke, who is an Ironman athlete, who is one of those guys that does it in partnership with a challenged athlete, like he pushes a younger kid. Yes. But really cool guy. We had fun serving Howie and it was, you know, it was hard and it was, there were highs and lows and all that kind of stuff. And it was cool to meet some of the younger athletes and also see how the quality of athletes continues to improve, like on the women's side especially, like Didi Greisbauer, who's a very accomplished former Ironman professional triathlete, who's now 52, just absolutely like crushed it, rewrote all the records, got third overall, like dominated

• 23:12Rich Roll?

  the whole thing and was amazing and that was really cool to see. On the men's side, Richard Thompson from Australia got first and this guy Stephen Keller, who's a veterinarian, got second and, you know, those guys were both just, you know, superstars and excelling, you know, at a pretty high level. So it was, it was cool. A full circle moment to be back and I feel like that chapter has kind of like, okay, you know, like it's complete now. Julie was like, if you go back and do that, do you think you're going to want to do that race again? Right, or some other kind of ultra. I didn't have that sensibility. I was like, no, I did it. Like I, I had that experience. I learned what I wanted to learn and what I needed to learn from it. I went back and contributed to it and it feels like complete.

• 23:55Rich Roll?

  What about ultra in general? I don't know. I mean, the back has to get healed first, you know, and that's not. The case at the moment.

• 24:03Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 24:04Rich Roll?

  So I can't really make any of those predictions until I figure out how to get to the other side of that.

• 24:08Adam Skolnick?

  Fair enough.

• 24:09Rich Roll?

  Which is longer.

• 24:09Adam Skolnick?

  But that's pretty cool to be able to do that. And then, and then I think you, I remember you telling me that there was this cool banquet afterwards. And you got to say your piece too, right?

• 24:18Rich Roll?

  Um.

• 24:19Adam Skolnick?

  You got to speak to the.

• 24:20Rich Roll?

  No, I didn't speak. I mean, there was a bit, like they do a banquet at the end and every athlete gets to go up to the podium and share their experience of, you know, participating in the race. And so you get to hear all of these stories and all their flavors and, and everybody's got a crazy story, right?

• 24:34Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 24:34Rich Roll?

  Like, you don't sign up for something like that unless you're, you're like, you know, kind of living outside the box on some level.

• 24:40Adam Skolnick?

  Nobody has an easy day.

• 24:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, you know, all the different flavors of that are pretty cool. And it, and it was also cool, like to go back and know, like, some of these people, like, listen to the podcast, which is cool too. You know, that was, that was really fun.

• 24:53Adam Skolnick?

  I would imagine.

• 24:53Rich Roll?

  And gratifying and all of that.

• 24:54Adam Skolnick?

  I'm sure there's people that were there that because they read your book or heard the podcast, there has to be some.

• 24:59Rich Roll?

  There were a couple.

• 25:00Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there were a couple of people who, yeah, that, well, that was the initial spark or, you know, hearing about the race. And frankly, like David Goggins, like reading about Goggins doing Ultraman was a spark for me, right? Like, so that lineage continues, which is pretty great.

• 25:14Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Rich Roll?

  Um, but I returned from Hawaii and then, you know, almost immediately, uh, while I was in Hawaii, my college swim coach, Skip Kenny, passed away.

• 25:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 25:25Rich Roll?

  So when I returned, I had to go up to Fresno for, I didn't have to. I drove up to Fresno for a memorial for him. He was 79 years old. And that was a interesting experience to reunite with a bunch of teammates from my swimming days, many people I haven't seen in decades. Some people I've stayed in touch with, but for the most part, like lots of people I just, I didn't know, I thought maybe a ragtag group of a couple Bay Area people might show up, but there were a lot, like a lot of swimmers over the, over the many years that he coached that showed up. And, and that was pretty cool. And, you know, kind of analogous to the Ultraman experience, like another kind of like. Full circle moment, like putting an end cap on, you know, a life experience.

• 26:06Rich Roll?

  You know, in sort of a sense of completion and, and also, you know, sort of a resolution to a relationship with a complicated guy who, you know, was very successful. He, you know, arguably one of the most successful NCAA collegiate athletics coaches of all time.

• 26:25Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 26:26Rich Roll?

  Across any sport.

• 26:27Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 26:27Rich Roll?

  His, his winning streak and his success speaks for itself.

• 26:30Adam Skolnick?

  He's the John Wooden of swimming, basically, right?

• 26:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, you know, had like, I don't even know the stats off the top of my head, but like, you know, so many NCAA championships, like an incredible streak of winning Pac-10 championships. The number of Olympians, NCAA champion, you know, individual athletes that have passed through the program. It's like, it's pretty crazy. And, you know, I have conflicting emotions about the whole experience because on the one hand, I'm, I'm so proud and to have been, you know, a member of those teams and participate. It's like a, it's such an honor to, you know, have competed and trained with so many great athletes during the heyday, that heyday in which Stanford was the reigning, you know, number one swimming program in the world.

• 27:13Rich Roll?

  But also, you know, like reckoning with the fact that, you know, at least for me, like Skip didn't work as a coach.

• 27:19Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 27:19Rich Roll?

  And, and it left me kind of reflecting on mentors that I've had in general in my life and the role that this show kind of plays in terms of providing mentors to other people. And then what is the relationship to, like on an unconscious level, I started this podcast.

• 27:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 27:35Rich Roll?

  And I started inviting these people on who I guess on some level, I'm sort of like, well, how can this person mentor me now, at least for two hours? And then sharing that.

• 27:44Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 27:44Rich Roll?

  There seems to be some kind of connective tissue between those two things.

• 27:48Adam Skolnick?

  Interesting. And is that why you went and I don't want to jump on you, like push the outline we have here, but you did just do this intense therapy week too. Like that was before Byron Bay, right?

• 27:57Rich Roll?

  Right. So then, so then I get back from Fresno.

• 28:00Adam Skolnick?

  Perfect time for that, right?

• 28:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I'm thinking like, what am I going to do? You know, what am I going to?

• 28:05Rich Roll?

  You know, I'm trying to figure out some kind of growth catalyst to kind of shake me out of my stasis a little bit beyond just going to a nice place and relaxing. And that's where the idea of the Sky Cave Retreat thing came up, which I quickly dismissed, thinking, I still got some demons in the closet. Like, if I'm in a dark room for six days without having ever really confronted that in an honest way, what's that gonna look like? That might not go so well, right? So maybe I should find a therapeutic modality to kind of deal with some stuff that's just been a hum in the background for most of my life. And that's where the idea of doing a week of Family of Origin therapy came up at Paul

• 28:49Rich Roll?

  Conti's clinic in Portland. So listeners may or may not remember that I had Paul on the podcast. He is one of the leading experts on trauma. And realizing that I have all this stuff in my past, I've done a lot of work and I've come a long way and I've grown, etc. But there's always more growth to be had. And there's a lot of stuff from like, you know, early childhood that I just haven't really unpacked and made peace with. And I've noticed that it comes up in certain behavior patterns, like with my wife or in the way that I parent my kids. And Julie's often the one to point out, like, hey, you're kind of mimicking this pattern that you said you didn't want

• 29:34Rich Roll?

  to do, or that is something that was something your parents did that you didn't like. So she's always like, I'm like, oh, wow, you're right. Like, I am doing that. Why do I do that when everything about me is trying to not do that and be kind of in opposition to that, right?

• 29:49Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Rich Roll?

  And sometimes it's so embedded in you, right?

• 29:52Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 29:52Rich Roll?

  And it's so part of just who you are. It's hardwired into your system because it was implanted there at such a young age. And I just felt like, I have this time, like, I'm gonna go really dig into this. And it was an incredible experience, you know, five days of like, you know, eight hours a day, working with a team of different therapists to really figure out why I have certain latent anger issues or resentments and how to really kind of work through them and transmute them and make peace with myself and the people that I love. You know, obviously, you're not going to solve everything in a week, but you know, coming out of that with a lot of clarity and understanding and like tools has been like

• 30:37Rich Roll?

  revelatory, has been incredible. Yeah.

• 30:40Adam Skolnick?

  Are you doing like the like, you say holotropic breathing exercises, is that like a lot of hyperventilation?

• 30:45Rich Roll?

  No, no, I put that like in the outline. Like, you know, one of the kind of triggers for me that made me realize like I have a lot of stuff like percolating in my unconscious is an experience I had doing holotropic breathing many years ago. I've had good experiences with holotropic breathing experience, but on this one occasion, and this has happened like two or three times, I did a very intense holotropic breathing exercise with a group with Julie. And in the wake of that, felt this overwhelming sense of like anger, like almost like rage, which is, I'm not, I don't, I'm not an angry person.

• 31:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, you're not a yeller or anything.

• 31:25Rich Roll?

  And I literally had to go into a room and like shut the door and be away from people for more than a day, like almost 48 hours to like, reset. And it was very disorienting and confusing. Like, why? Why did that happen? Like, what is, you know, what is going on there? And it just made me realize, and this was many years ago, like, hey, I got, there must be something, you know, driving this. Like, I don't know why that is. And, and so that was always in the back of my mind. Like, if you really want to be whole and free yourself from whatever that is, like, you're going to have to go towards it. So.

• 31:59Adam Skolnick?

  So six days of intensive therapy.

• 32:01Rich Roll?

  It was, it was five days. No, it was five days. Yeah, Monday through Friday.

• 32:05Adam Skolnick?

  And then you get on a plane to Byron?

• 32:08Rich Roll?

  I came home, I had holidays. I had holidays with the family. And then, and then, yeah, it took a couple of weeks in Byron Bay to like, kind of reset, which was, it's like my favorite place. I love it.

• 32:19Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:20Rich Roll?

  And this is the fourth year that I've done like a, you know, a break of this nature to really just, you know, stop everything and, you know, go inward and.

• 32:30Rich Roll?

  Meditate and write and engage in a little solitude, sun, surf, you know, all that good stuff. And it was fantastic, you know, I did do one podcast while I was there.

• 32:41Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, you did?

• 32:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you know this guy Ned Brockman?

• 32:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, the runner.

• 32:46Rich Roll?

  He's the best.

• 32:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 32:46Rich Roll?

  I was like, I'm in Australia.

• 32:48Adam Skolnick?

  You love him.

• 32:49Rich Roll?

  Ned Brockman is like, you know, an Australian hero right now. This dude like ran all the way across Australia. He's the most Australian dude of all Australians with the bleach blonde mullet. And like, you know, you can't even like his Australian slang and vernacular is like so, you know, like intense that you're like, what, I don't even know what he's talking about, but you can't help but fall in love with this guy. Like, he's very, um, he's so earnest, right? And he's young. He's like, he just turned 24.

• 33:17Adam Skolnick?

  And tell, remind people what he did.

• 33:20Rich Roll?

  So he, after only running for two years, he only had like two years of running experience, decides he's going to run all the way across Australia, which is in the range of running across the United States, about the same, except like you're in the middle of nowhere.

• 33:34Adam Skolnick?

  Except you're in the outback. There's a lot of bugs and like.

• 33:37Rich Roll?

  And a lot of like, you know, these apparently like these trucks, like the 18 wheelers, they go, they're called cargo trains or something like that because they drive together. So there'd be like a whole bunch of them at once. And there's not a lot of, um, shoulder and, you know, so there's a lot of like harrowing experiences that he had. Um, but it's like, I gotta meet this guy, right? And when he finally finished and ended up in Bondi, there were like thousands of people to greet him. 5,000, 10,000, I'm bad at estimating numbers, but it was quite the thing, right? Like all of Australia turned up to like support this guy. And so anyway, I did do a podcast with him.

• 34:13Adam Skolnick?

  Did you rent a studio space or borrow a studio space?

• 34:15Rich Roll?

  Friend of the pod and personal friend, Simon Hill, who is a Byron Bay resident. He was like my sort of sherpa introducing me to people. He hooked me up with this place called Soma in Byron, which is a 28 acre meditation retreat center that is owned and run by these two guys, Gary Guro, who's a meditation, uh, Vedic meditation teacher, and this guy Peter Ostick, who's sort of an entrepreneur, who is the kind of financial partner in all of this. And it is the most beautiful meditation retreat center I've ever seen. And I'm not alone in thinking that because Hulu, and they built it apparently like right before lockdown and COVID and all of that.

• 34:55Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 34:55Rich Roll?

  And they complete it. Lockdown happens, so they can't even host retreats, but Hulu came along and said, "Hey, we'd like to rent this place for this limited series we're doing with Nicole Kidman that was called like Nine Perfect Strangers." Do you remember that show?

• 35:11Adam Skolnick?

  I do, I vaguely remember.

• 35:12Rich Roll?

  She was like a cult guru or something like that? I haven't watched it, but apparently the whole series takes place at this meditation retreat center, which is like beautiful, modern architecture and rolling green hills and like incredible or whatever. So anyway, Peter and Gary made the space available for us to record there.

• 35:30Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 35:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so that'll be coming out at some point. But yeah, I loved Byron, just brought my bike, rode in the hills there.

• 35:39Adam Skolnick?

  It's like, there's a lot of influencers there. There was like, I think there was some sort of show about that, like a funny reality show about the Australian influencers.

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  I think, I think there's a show called like, like a reality show called like Byron Bays or something like that, but I was told not to watch it, that it would ruin my, my relationship with this beautiful place.

• 35:57Adam Skolnick?

  It might, I've seen a little bit.

• 35:58Rich Roll?

  But there are a lot of cool people there. Like, my other Sherpa is this guy Ben Gordon, shout out to Ben, who is sort of a mayor of Byron. He grew up there and he's a drummer in a pretty successful heavy metal band called Parkway Drive.

• 36:12Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  And he also owns this place called the Byron General Store, which is kind of like the cool place to go have brunch or breakfast, have your green smoothie, healthy food. He's plant-based, he's a meditator, and you know, he's in this like successful rock band, but he's into like surfing and all, you know. I got to hang out with him and he took me surfing, I cut my finger open, it was fun though, and introduced me to a bunch of people and, you know, was able to go to his house for dinner. I just was, my point being like, I was made to feel very at home in a place that's very far away from my home, but felt very much like a home for me, yeah.

• 36:47Adam Skolnick?

  It's like a blend of like Hawaii, there's Hawaii, there's California, there's like, you know what I mean? There's like a mix of all these.

• 36:54Rich Roll?

  It also has like a hippie vibe to it, you know, a lot of natural, organic markets and vegan food places and stuff like that. To me, it was like Topanga meets Maui with a, like a light dusting of Ireland. Like when I was riding my bike, I'm in the hills, there'd be these incredible ranches and everything is so green, like these rolling fields and, you know, but then you have like 80 degree water and just beach breaks in every direction. I mean, incredible like. Very surfable breaks all over the place. Like, it's pretty cool.

• 37:24Adam Skolnick?

  Super cool, man.

• 37:25Rich Roll?

  Anyway, so it was good.

• 37:26Adam Skolnick?

  Did you cry in the departure lounge?

• 37:29Rich Roll?

  I did not. No, I did not.

• 37:31Adam Skolnick?

  I'm always on the lookout for tears in the departure lounge of a place like that.

• 37:34Rich Roll?

  I did not. We gotta take a break in a second here, but before that, I will say, I'll kind of round out this story by just saying that it was very productive in terms of cracking open a new book project and getting momentum on that, which I'm pretty excited about. And you were with me the other day when we were with our mutual friend and literary agent, Bird Level. So I was able to show him.

• 37:58Adam Skolnick?

  Shout out Bird Level.

• 37:59Rich Roll?

  Shout out Bird. The pages that I've been working on. Yeah, I showed him some stuff.

• 38:04Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, because you were talking about it. I had to leave and you showed him some pages.

• 38:07Rich Roll?

  You had to leave and then I was like, let me show you what I'm doing. And he was very happy.

• 38:10Adam Skolnick?

  Like, Adam's gone, it's safe. Let's show him the pages.

• 38:13Rich Roll?

  So, anyway, I feel really energized and excited about that. Yeah.

• 38:16Adam Skolnick?

  I'm excited. That's so cool, man. You know, like, because I was listening to the Seth Godin podcast you did recently, and you were talking about like, this drive to get back to writing, but this, like, this block because you're diving into the podcast and you have all these commitments, but you, there's a part of you, there's like, the thing about writing that I found is 90% of it is dealing with this insect gnawing at your brain until you deal with it, right? Like, it doesn't go away, right? I mean, it does not go away. You can try to like.

• 38:47Rich Roll?

  It's like the cordyceps in Last of Us, like, just eating away at your, like, your brain stem.

• 38:54Adam Skolnick?

  It is. It is. So now you're dealing with it. And then it kind of quiets down.

• 38:58Rich Roll?

  Not only does it quiet down, you actually feel good about it. Like, you're like, oh, now I feel like a normal person.

• 39:04Adam Skolnick?

  Right. You feel a little bit more normal.

• 39:06Rich Roll?

  When you're like, yeah, attending to it. When you're ignoring it, you walk around like, just angsty all the time, right?

• 39:13Adam Skolnick?

  It's cool, man. I can't wait to read some stuff and I'm really excited for you.

• 39:18Rich Roll?

  So, let's take a quick break and then we're gonna do some listener questions, a few more things to say about the future of Roll On in 2023 in general. And, uh, yeah, it's gonna be awesome. So stick around.

• 39:38Rich Roll?

  All right, everyone, we're back. We're going to get into some listener questions. Before that, though, we mentioned earlier that we're going to be exploring a few format changes with Roll On. So let's talk about that for a hot minute.

• 39:51Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 39:51Rich Roll?

  So I think what we're going to do is move Roll On to once a month. And then for the other midweek episode, we're going to play around with some new kind of supplemental ideas. And we're also going to iterate on Roll On. We're going to, you know, I don't know, push the envelope here.

• 40:09Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 40:09Rich Roll?

  I think there's a sense that, at least my sense, is that Adam is a very talented man. And the format in which we are engaging with Roll On right now, I'm not sure, takes advantage of your best talents. And I think there are better ways to to use this opportunity to be, you know, a better servant of the audience.

• 40:31Adam Skolnick?

  I 100% agree.

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  Not today, though, because we're just bullshitting and bantering. And people are like, what are you even doing? Like, why am I listening to this?

• 40:38Adam Skolnick?

  Right. Like, this is kind of, I am a good bullshitter.

• 40:41Rich Roll?

  You are.

• 40:42Adam Skolnick?

  I'm just not as good at that.

• 40:42Rich Roll?

  We're an hour in. Have we provided value yet for the audience? I don't know.

• 40:48Adam Skolnick?

  You know, I'm excited about doing some original reporting with you, doing some, like, we're gonna, I think the idea is to script it a bit more and to do kind of segments. And this is what we've talked about. We don't really fully know what's going to happen, but the thought was to put a little more pre and post-production into it and create, one idea is to create an audio magazine that reflects kind of the Rich Roll Pod universe and kind of dive into some cool subject matter.

• 41:18Rich Roll?

  And if we're only doing one a month, we have the time and the, you know, kind of bandwidth to do something a little bit more elevated.

• 41:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, just a little more creative and like, a little, put more resources in. Because so many people are just turning on the mics now. And like, you've done that, and you're great at it. But it'd be fun to see, you know, to create in a different way. And I think people who love the banter, because we got some calls about, like, there's some people who just love this format. The banter will be there. We're going to sit down and talk about it. We're not going to just, like, throw some segments together and not talk to each other. The banter's going to be there. It's just going to be in a different kind of way.

• 41:54Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:55Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, you know, on that note, I think it's important to throw it out to the audience. Like, what would, you know?

• 42:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 42:02Rich Roll?

  What would, what would be most beneficial for you, audience member, in terms of how Adam and I use this, you know, opportunity to, to serve you? And, and maybe the best place to let us know would be in the comments section on YouTube, because that's an easy, kind of one-stop place to go and canvas through that stuff.

• 42:23Adam Skolnick?

  Perfect. So if you're like, we're talking about, if you think about it from an audio magazine perspective, like, what are the departments you'd like to see? Like, what are the worlds you'd like us to explore? And, and kind of, and sometimes it might just be, like, one thing we've thought about is a Q and A with someone from the Rich Roll Audio verse. Some of it could be an original report, like NPR, or This American Lifestyle reports, and, and, and anything in between. So, and some of it's going to be just Rich, kind of speaking his mind and writing some stuff and sharing where he's at, and, uh, just like we're doing now. But it's just a little more elevated.

• 42:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and a little bit more creative, I would say.

• 43:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  Right? And I think, you know, my perspective is always, I want to serve the audience. Like, is this working for you? Is it not working? I don't want to waste anybody's time. And I think now, you know, everybody, there's a lot of content out there. There's a lot of choices, right? And so I want to be in a position to be delivering, at the highest level, the needs and the desires and the wants of the person who's taking time out of their busy day to check this out, right? And if we're missing the mark, like, I'd like to know that.

• 43:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 43:31Rich Roll?

  How can we do better? What would be interesting? And then also us, on our own, like, pushing the creative envelope and trying to think of things that, that aren't being done right now that we think that we could, you know, do well. And executing on that, I think, is exciting.

• 43:45Adam Skolnick?

  Very exciting. I'm excited to be a part of it.

• 43:47Rich Roll?

  So, should we dive into some questions now?

• 43:50Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it. We're doing it a little bit differently this time. There was a lot of questions, because we hadn't been, we hadn't been doing this for a couple of months. So we had a lot of stuff in the voicemail. So what I did is kind of combed through and found some subject matter that I'm going to paraphrase.

• 44:04Rich Roll?

  Like headings, like top, like, sort of themes?

• 44:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:08Adam Skolnick?

  So these are questions that have come in, in various forms, uh, more than once. And that's where we're going to start. Uh, we're going to dive right in. The first question we're gonna handle is tips on breaking bad habits. And when do you know that a bad habit is actually an addiction? Such as gaming or doom scrolling. This one spurred by a listener whose Iron Man training got waylaid by travel and a gaming addiction.

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  So the listener was training for an Iron Man and something happened. And he got off his game and then got onto gaming?

• 44:43Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 44:44Rich Roll?

  Like video gaming?

• 44:44Adam Skolnick?

  I think gaming was always a thing.

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 44:46Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah Warcraft, I think it was.

• 44:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Rich Roll?

  And that, and that like just cratered his, his Iron Man training?

• 44:53Adam Skolnick?

  Cratered everything. Yeah. Everything went into Warcraft.

• 44:55Rich Roll?

  I love it. Okay.

• 44:58Adam Skolnick?

  You love a good addiction story.

• 45:00Rich Roll?

  Right. So essentially the question is bad habits versus addiction. What is the difference?

• 45:04Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 45:07Rich Roll?

  And there is a difference. There's a difference between what a habit is and what an addiction is. A habit can be like a persistent, you know, behavior that you perpetuate. And it might even have negative consequences. But the difference between that and an addiction is that addiction entails a psychological and generally also, sometimes also a physical dependence. And there's a discomfort when we don't engage in the addiction, right? That sense of withdrawal or like craving or yearning. It's something that we, we do repeatedly despite negative repercussions.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  Addictions are things that typically escalate over time, whether it's behavior, the frequency of use, the dosage of use in the case of substances. And, and we do this irrespective of escalating negative consequences, right? I think there's also like a compulsivity to addictions that are, that's different from just a bad habit. Where there's this physiological again, or psychological need for, for, for engaging in this habit.

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  And when we don't do it, there are symptoms, right? Anxiety, irritability. You know, there's physical symptoms with substances like tremors or nausea upon withdrawal or abstinence. That is the state of being addicted, right? And I think addiction, and I've said this many times, is something that is a self-diagnosis. Like, only you can diagnose yourself as to whether you are engaging in addictive behavior or just a bad habit. And I think in trying to figure that out for yourself and distinguishing a habit from an addiction, think about choice, right?

• 47:03Rich Roll?

  Like, with habit, choice plays a larger role. With addiction, part of addiction is the removal or the denigration of choice in the matter, to the point where it doesn't feel like there is a choice, like there's such a compulsion that it just happens. You're being automated. You know, your wish to have a choice over it, it like happens no matter what. I mean, I think that's a good kind of litmus test for figuring it out. So, examples, right? Like, a bad habit would be, like, you just put your dirty dishes in the sink and you don't wash them, or like, you don't brush your teeth before you go to bed, or something like that, right?

• 47:47Rich Roll?

  Not great, you know, these are not awesome habits, but is there a compulsivity around it? Is there a sense of unease when you wash your dishes? You're not, you know, you're not just leaving them dirty in the sink? Right, right. So, that's the difference between, you know, something that would be an addiction. So, you would put gaming more into the addiction category for a long time? Yeah, well, I don't know, you know, only he has to ask himself that. Right. There are people that play video games who are not addicted, and there are people who are addicted. And often, the amount of playing isn't necessarily the determining factor.

• 48:23Adam Skolnick?

  No, I think a lot of that's the problem with smartphones. A lot of people are addicted to the tech now, right? It's low level, but like they can't put their phone down. They can't stop scrolling.

• 48:34Rich Roll?

  No.

• 48:35Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 48:36Rich Roll?

  Of course not, right? And it's not, is it low level?

• 48:39Adam Skolnick?

  No, maybe not.

• 48:40Rich Roll?

  You know, and this is, this is, you know, I've been banging this drum for a while, but let's expand our notion of addiction and how we think about addiction. Like addiction isn't just alcoholics and drug addicts or people that, you know, lose all their money gambling. It is, you know, the inability to like, you know, put down the phone can be an addiction. When it is, you know, taking you out of the present and robbing you of the experience of being in your life, right? Video games are, you know, another screen version of that where there's an engagement on behalf of the individual, but certainly, you know, plenty of people are addicted to video games.

• 49:24Rich Roll?

  And the fact that this guy like cratered his Iron Man training because he got all caught up in a video game, I mean, that's what it sounds like. I don't know the details of it, but it sounds like an addiction to me. But again, like it's not for me to diagnose this person.

• 49:37Adam Skolnick?

  Self diagnose.

• 49:38Rich Roll?

  Questions to ask that this person or whoever is relating to this should ask themselves is, you know, do you feel like this is a compulsion? Do you feel like your engagement with it is outside of your control? Is it something you covet? Is it something that you, you know, tell lies about, that you rationalize or downplay? And then getting honest about what the costs of this behavior are to yourself and also to other people, right? And then the other question I had is kind of going behind the question. Like the question is, is this a bad habit or an addiction? Like, why is he asking this question? If he's asking the question, it's probably a problem.

• 50:23Rich Roll?

  If it's not a problem, you're not asking this question.

• 50:25Adam Skolnick?

  No.

• 50:26Rich Roll?

  And there's sort of a light dusting of hopeful, hopefulness that like, I'm going to say this is just a bad habit and don't worry about it. Like, does it matter? What I say, is this a bad habit? Is this an addiction? Because my sense is that this is interfering with this person's well-being, right? And he knows it. And he's looking for an excuse or some way to rationalize continuing to engage in the behavior, which is, to me, indicia of it being an addiction. Does that make sense?

• 50:57Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 51:00Rich Roll?

  Like, you already know it's not good for you. You know it needs to be addressed. This is why you're asking the question.

• 51:06Adam Skolnick?

  Because you're not just asking your friend, you're calling a line. There's like a lot of decisions you have to make.

• 51:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:12Adam Skolnick?

  To get this clarification.

• 51:13Rich Roll?

  This person knows the answer to the question already, right? And maybe that answer is uncomfortable, but, you know, deep down, when the head hits the pillow, the clarity is there.

• 51:25Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, that's why I haven't been an insomniac.

• 51:28Rich Roll?

  It's you?

• 51:30Adam Skolnick?

  The hive of the brain hive does not stop.

• 51:34Rich Roll?

  What are you hiding, Adam? What are you running away from?

• 51:37Adam Skolnick?

  It's so deeply hidden, I can't tell you.

• 51:38Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, maybe you need to go to the Sky Cave Retreat and sit with yourself in the dark for six days.

• 51:45Adam Skolnick?

  I think I would try to get the room next to-

• 51:46Rich Roll?

  Something would come up.

• 51:47Adam Skolnick?

  Next to Colin, and I would just be like-

• 51:49Rich Roll?

  Morse code.

• 51:50Adam Skolnick?

  Hey!

• 51:51Rich Roll?

  There must be, there must be some of that. Like, it would be so interesting to know, like, whoever, the people that own that place must have stories-

• 51:59Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 51:59Rich Roll?

  About people losing their minds.

• 52:00Adam Skolnick?

  Exactly, like, did you get the chocolate pudding or just the Jell-O? Because this is shit food.

• 52:07Rich Roll?

  So like, how would you, I don't know, so many questions. Anyway, let's go to the next-

• 52:12Adam Skolnick?

  All right, next one.

• 52:14Rich Roll?

  Question.

• 52:15Adam Skolnick?

  How do you speak to friends or family members about lifestyle changes that might help them? When is it time to help? And when is it better to let them struggle and come out of it on their own? This is a kind of a composite of a handful of questions of people. And, you know, we've asked, we've answered kind of something like this before, but I think it always bears repeating some of this stuff.

• 52:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's, this is a very tricky, delicate thing. Yeah. And, you know, by lifestyle changes, that could mean like, hey, don't eat crappy food, eat this food, or, you know, maybe don't stay up all night, or maybe don't drink so much. Right. You know, or, you know, it could be anything, right? But, you know, one of the things that, that I've learned in recovery is that I, I, you know, I just don't, like, I, I stay out of giving advice or trying to change other people, and I try to just keep my side of the street clean, and for people that are interested, happy to share my experience. So that's kind of the general way that I approach all of this stuff. So I do have this default reluctance, or, or kind of, you know, reflex to hold back

• 53:21Rich Roll?

  from getting involved in solving other people's problems, especially when it comes to lifestyle changes, which, you know, often can be the most recalcitrant of problems to change. And there's, there is a, I recognize there's a little bit of irony in this, because this show and, and what I do is, you know, fundamentally about change, right? How can we be better, serving as this sort of change agent, as you will? But, but if you pay attention to the show, I think you'll find that it's quite rare that I ever tell anyone what to do or not to do. Right. Right? Like, you know, I'm always trying to kind of abstain from judgment, or taking other people's inventory, or providing any kind of unsolicited advice.

• 54:06Rich Roll?

  And, and this is especially true, in my experience, when it comes to friends and family. And again, another built-in irony here is that, you know, the people that you care the most about are often, you know, the people that are the most difficult to reach, and that, and, and, you know, myself, or whoever is trying to carry this message, are often the exact people that they can't hear the advice from, right? Like, you're just too close. To them, and I have countless examples of, you know, family members, friends, you know, people who I've worked with, who, you know, like, like, I can, through this show and books and all these things that I do, like, I carry a certain message, right?

• 54:49Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  And, and I try to be divorced from how that lands, or whether it impacts people or changes them or not. But with family members, like, you know, there's like a force field around it. Like, they can't hear it from you. Like, you're the kid that, you know, like,

• 55:02Adam Skolnick?

  Because they also know, they also know where it's not, you're not always, you're not always as, as perfect as it might sound.

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 55:09Adam Skolnick?

  Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:09Rich Roll?

  Of course, right?

• 55:10Adam Skolnick?

  So they know all that stuff, right?

• 55:11Rich Roll?

  So after, like, you know, doing this for so long, and then suddenly, you know, somebody's like, hey, I just, you know, I'm, I'm 30 days plant-based, or I did, and I was like, great. Like, how did that happen? Oh, I heard, I read this book from like, somebody else, or like, on YouTube or something like that, has nothing to do with me. And it's always funny, it's like, I'm right here, Ben, right here the whole time, kind of saying the same thing, but like, okay, that's great, you know? But that's the way it works, right?

• 55:37Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, that is the way it works.

• 55:39Rich Roll?

  Friends and family, like, you can't make somebody willing to change, and when you're kind of forcing your idea, like, you've had, okay, let's say you've made a lifestyle change, and it's improved your life, and you're enthusiastic about that, and of course, you want to evangelize that, but that makes you annoying, and people don't want to hear that, right?

• 55:57Adam Skolnick?

  Right, no.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  Like, you know, that, you become like, the antithesis of what you're trying to accomplish in that other person.

• 56:06Adam Skolnick?

  You're more like, be the example, you're a lighthouse, you put it out there, the light's on.

• 56:10Rich Roll?

  And live your life.

• 56:11Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:11Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 56:12Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 56:12Rich Roll?

  Live your life. I would say that the exception is when the advice is solicited. Like, if somebody comes to you and says, hey, I need help, like, can you help me, here's what I'm, you know, struggling with, or do you have any advice for me? That's a different situation. And I think in those cases, the response that I generally offer is like, do you want me to tell you what I think and give you advice? Or do you want me to just listen to you and, and be supportive? Because those are two different things. And sometimes people who are coming to you under the root, under the kind of auspices of seeking advice, actually, they just want to be heard.

• 56:51Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 56:51Rich Roll?

  And listen to.

• 56:52Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 56:52Rich Roll?

  And they don't really want you to tell them what to do. So getting clarity about that, I think, is important. They don't want your dime store wisdom. They don't, right? And so behind all of this is willingness, right? Willingness is what drives transformation. And, you know, without willingness, and by willingness, I mean, you know, that, that, that internal desire to change that is driven from within the self and not impulse by something external, any kind of sustainable change is impossible, right? And you can't will somebody to be willing. No. You can't compel somebody to be willing, no matter how much they're suffering,

• 57:33Rich Roll?

  or no matter how much you think you have the solution for them. They have to decide for themselves that they want that. And you being in the position of trying to convince them, not only, you know, how to change, but that they should change, is really kind of a fool's errand. And it's a mistake that I see a lot of people make often. And I think in those cases, you're probably better off, like, leaving the person alone. Letting them know that you love them and that you're available for them if and when they want to do something different than whatever it is that they're doing. But in the meantime, like, allow them to, to be. Because perhaps they need to, you know,

• 58:18Rich Roll?

  be in the world and have this experience that might actually catalyze that internal willingness at some point. You don't want to rob them of that. But it's hard, it's hard to watch people struggle. I mean, I think that's where this comes from. It's really hard, especially when it's somebody that you care about. Right, especially. Imagine your child. Of course. Imagine my parents when I was doing what I was doing. Like, it's, it's, it's, this is like, the hardest thing. Yeah. It's really hard. Like, when do you intervene? When do you, you know, try to help? When do you say enough is enough and you step aside? Like, these are very difficult, you know, situations. And it's a case by case thing. Life does not fuck around, does it, Rich? No. No. Anything else there? Any other thoughts that I have on that?

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  I think I would just say... For that person that you're seeking to be of service to, I don't see a problem in testing the waters from time to time. For example, just kind of calling them up or getting together with them and then posing it as a question like, hey, how's that thing going for you? Like, you happy? Like, what's going on? Like, trying to strip any judgment or kind of veneer of like, you know, like, I'm here to change you or help you. Just like, get rid of that and just be curious about them.

• 59:37Adam Skolnick?

  Or even just hang out. Like, you could just say, hey, I'd like to take you to lunch. Or, I'd like to, like, let's go watch a concert or something and just hang out, right? And not even bring it up. And sometimes that's the thing to do to reach somebody.

• 59:48Rich Roll?

  Right. But when it's family, that's pretty hard to do because there's so much history and baggage. Like, oh, you want to take me out to lunch? What are you going to tell me what to do with my... You know, it's like, it's already fucked up.

• 59:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 59:58Rich Roll?

  So, you know.

• 1:00:00Adam Skolnick?

  This is why I should not... It's not AMA DAM.

• 1:00:06Rich Roll?

  AMA?

• 1:00:07Adam Skolnick?

  Ask Adam anything. It's not AAM. It's AMA.

• 1:00:11Rich Roll?

  Anyway, those are my thoughts on that. I don't know if that's helpful or not, but...

• 1:00:14Adam Skolnick?

  Don't listen to me, folks.

• 1:00:15Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:00:22Adam Skolnick?

  So, this is another one inspired. A lot of people called in with, they knew someone that they want you to interview, or they had a recommendation for someone they admire that they want you to interview. Josh Lewis recommended Bob Weir, the great, legendary Bob Weir, The Grateful Dead for the pod. I've mentioned Henry Rollins to you in the past. We talked about that privately. And I'm just curious if you want to give us your list of rockers and musicians at the top of your pod guest wishlist? And then also, if you want to talk to the folks and just tell them, because people are asking about booking people, like, how do you generally select guests and book them?

• 1:01:00Rich Roll?

  Right. So those are two questions.

• 1:01:02Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:01:03Rich Roll?

  I mean, the, the, the, the general question around selecting and booking guests is kind of an evolving thing and something I've put a lot of thought into when I was taking my sabbatical. I have some ideas about how to do that differently. I would say in general, like I keep a, a working list, like a spreadsheet. Like anytime I come across somebody who I think would be cool, I add them to this list. I try to figure out who to contact or who knows who to, you know, so it's, we don't work with a booking agency. You know, nobody else books the show except me. Nobody else decides who's going to be on the show except me. So it's all about like who I'm curious about and then who I kind of pursue. And some of these people like I don't, I'm like, how am I going to figure out how to get to,

• 1:01:45Rich Roll?

  I don't know who, you know, like I can DM them on Instagram, but you know, short of that, like, um, it's difficult. So a lot of these take a long time and there's a lot of no's. And I think I also have, you know, if I'm being honest about my weaknesses with this, I've been overly reactive in terms of booking the show as opposed to proactively going after the people I really want, you know, and I, I've never been super systematic or about the whole thing. And I think I have a lot of room for improvement there. And that's one thing I want to do better this year than I've done in the past because the show's at a scale right now where I get a lot of incoming, you know, and I have a lot of, hey, you know, friends who recommend or whatever. And so it's pretty easy to be

• 1:02:28Rich Roll?

  like, oh, that, that would be cool. Yeah, sure. I'll do that. Like that's being kind of responsive to stuff that's

• 1:02:33Adam Skolnick?

  Easy to fill the slots.

• 1:02:34Rich Roll?

  People, yeah. And, and it's, and when, but I'd like to think of it differently from the point of view that over the course of a year, with the exception of the master classes and the best ofs and the roll-ons and things like that, I, I have about 50 open slots for the year. Who are the 50 best people in the world that I can get to come here and sit down with me? Like looking at it not like, oh, that would be cool. Let's do that. And being very casual about it. I'd like to be a lot more.

• 1:03:08Rich Roll?

  Conscious and intentional about really going after the people that I want the most. And I think what has traditionally gotten in my way is somebody say, oh, you should get this person in some like fancy. I was like, well, I don't know that. They don't want to do it. You know, like I get, I get self defeating about it. Like, why would they come talk to me, you know?

• 1:03:27Adam Skolnick?

  Right.

• 1:03:27Rich Roll?

  As opposed to, you know, just having more at bats. And if they say no, fine, but like, try, you know? But so the answer is like, yeah, I have a list and, you know, I'm in communication with lots of people at any given moment. And sometimes it takes a long time before schedules aligned because we only do it in person.

• 1:03:48Rich Roll?

  But every time I come across somebody interesting, they get added to that list.

• 1:03:51Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 1:03:51Rich Roll?

  And, and so I kind of slowly work my way through that list. In terms of musicians, that's the other part of the question.

• 1:03:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:03:58Rich Roll?

  Who are the musicians that are on the list currently?

• 1:04:00Adam Skolnick?

  Who's on that list?

• 1:04:01Rich Roll?

  Uh, there's some interesting ones. I mean, I'm not going to go through all of them, but maybe the ones that are most interesting. Dave Grohl, number one on that list.

• 1:04:10Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:04:10Rich Roll?

  Got to get Dave Grohl on. I listened to his audio book when I was in Australia. It's, it's good, man. Have you read his book?

• 1:04:16Adam Skolnick?

  I have not. It's, I should, I should.

• 1:04:17Rich Roll?

  It's really good. It's super enjoyable.

• 1:04:19Adam Skolnick?

  I'm gonna get the audio.

• 1:04:20Rich Roll?

  I mean, like, that dude is awesome.

• 1:04:21Adam Skolnick?

  Of course. Yeah.

• 1:04:22Rich Roll?

  Uh, so he's up there. Flea is up there.

• 1:04:25Adam Skolnick?

  Of course.

• 1:04:25Rich Roll?

  Another incredible book.

• 1:04:26Adam Skolnick?

  That's a great book.

• 1:04:27Rich Roll?

  You just read his book, right?

• 1:04:27Adam Skolnick?

  I read his book. It's phenomenal.

• 1:04:29Rich Roll?

  Ask for the children.

• 1:04:29Adam Skolnick?

  I love Flea. I love.

• 1:04:31Rich Roll?

  He's fantastic.

• 1:04:32Adam Skolnick?

  We're both Laker fans. He was watching a Laker game on his iPad in Australia while playing Bridge Over Troubled Water. It's not, it's, it's been a fraught season.

• 1:04:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:40Adam Skolnick?

  Um, and I just, I, sometimes I watch that.

• 1:04:43Rich Roll?

  Australian, too.

• 1:04:44Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Rich Roll?

  Grew up in Australia as a kid. Yeah.

• 1:04:47Adam Skolnick?

  Both, both his parents were Australian. Yeah.

• 1:04:48Rich Roll?

  Um, who else? Uh, Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden. I'm not like a heavy metal guy, but this guy's life story is bananas.

• 1:04:57Adam Skolnick?

  So until I'm, you're saying he flies his own, he flies his own plane?

• 1:05:03Rich Roll?

  He has like such a diversity of expertise and, and like different things that he's into. So, yeah, he became a commercial pilot, like when Iron Maiden was huge and, uh, and started a whole like aircraft maintenance and pilot training company. Um, and he, he would fly the band. In a 757, like he piloted the band in their own 757.

• 1:05:29Adam Skolnick?

  So the reason that's amazing to me is because in Bali, I can't tell you how many times because I I used to cover Indonesia a lot for Lonely Planet and and every almost a lot of times, not every time, I frequently would fly into Bali and see in and out of Bali and see Iron Maiden's plane.

• 1:05:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:45Adam Skolnick?

  That's him?

• 1:05:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so he flies it.

• 1:05:47Adam Skolnick?

  So he has a, he's in Bali a lot, obviously.

• 1:05:49Rich Roll?

  Apparently.

• 1:05:50Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Rich Roll?

  I don't know about that. He also writes novels and film scripts.

• 1:05:55Adam Skolnick?

  He does?

• 1:05:55Rich Roll?

  And like, yeah, I mean, just like Google the guy.

• 1:05:57Adam Skolnick?

  I will.

• 1:05:57Rich Roll?

  It's crazy.

• 1:05:58Adam Skolnick?

  Gotta get him. It's perfect for you.

• 1:05:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Dave Grohl, Bruce Dickinson, Flea, Michael Stipe, top of the list, too. I'm a massive R E M fan. Did you hear Courtney Love on Marc Maron's podcast?

• 1:06:11Adam Skolnick?

  I did not.

• 1:06:11Rich Roll?

  You gotta check that out.

• 1:06:12Adam Skolnick?

  I will.

• 1:06:13Rich Roll?

  It's wild.

• 1:06:14Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:06:14Rich Roll?

  Like wild. I can't tell whether she's a genius or like bananas or somewhere in between, but she's got stories.

• 1:06:23Adam Skolnick?

  She has stories.

• 1:06:24Rich Roll?

  You know, it's kind of amazing.

• 1:06:26Adam Skolnick?

  She's got more stories than.

• 1:06:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think Bjork would be incredible.

• 1:06:31Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Rich Roll?

  I think Sinead O'Connor would be amazing. I mean, her life and kind of how she was treated and everything that happened with her.

• 1:06:38Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Rich Roll?

  Does Bo Burnham count?

• 1:06:40Adam Skolnick?

  Of course. Bo Burnham's incredible.

• 1:06:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I tried to get Tom Morello a while back. I think he had a book coming out and I went through a publicist who said no.

• 1:06:50Adam Skolnick?

  Really?

• 1:06:50Rich Roll?

  So I might have to revisit that. I mean, you know, who else? Thom Yorke, Trent Reznor. One, one, one musician who I quite fancy, who people might not be familiar with,

• 1:07:05Rich Roll?

  is this film composer called Ludwig Gornson.

• 1:07:08Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, I'm familiar.

• 1:07:08Rich Roll?

  Swedish composer. He wrote the score for Black Panther, the score for The Mandalorian. He works with Christopher Nolan. He wrote the score for Tenet. And the score for the upcoming Oppenheimer movie. He also produced Childish Gambino and like this guy's cool. Like he makes these videos where you're in his studio and he'll show you his process. Like he goes through the whole thing about how he came up with the theme for The Mandalorian.

• 1:07:33Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, really?

• 1:07:34Rich Roll?

  Working with all these weird instruments and how it all came together. And I'll put links up to some of those videos in the, um, in the show notes. And he, he's kind of like the new kid in terms of advancing what a film score can be. Like iterating on, on like, you know, kind of a new, you know, like new sound modalities for film. Like if you go and like really listen to the music in Tenet, like it's, it's pretty wild what he does in that movie.

• 1:08:01Adam Skolnick?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:02Rich Roll?

  So anyway, I would love to sit down with him.

• 1:08:04Adam Skolnick?

  Cool. I'm glad I asked you that question.

• 1:08:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:07Adam Skolnick?

  It was kind of a paraphrase, but also it was my, my curiosity.

• 1:08:10Rich Roll?

  Interesting to anybody, but anyway, all right.

• 1:08:12Adam Skolnick?

  I think the way you choose your guests is interesting and all of that. And the fact that you've been reactive now, you're going to be more proactive, hopefully, and, and, and, you know, try to break down these publicists, these publicists working with the old game.

• 1:08:25Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:08:26Adam Skolnick?

  Old media.

• 1:08:27Rich Roll?

  Don't get me started. Keep going.

• 1:08:31Adam Skolnick?

  Then there were a lot of messages, messages from listeners who were actually just calling to thank you, you know? And, uh, for a show that enriches their lives.

• 1:08:41Adam Skolnick?

  And I just thought it was cool because it just shows, you know, then they would talk about how they recommended to friends or they would, they would recommend their friends and mentors to you to be their, to be, to be guests on the show. It just speaks of this powerful connection, word of mouth phenomenon and how the branches kind of link back and forth. And, uh, you know, so I just thought I wanted to share that with you, having, having gone through so many of these messages and curious about how that makes you feel hearing that.

• 1:09:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's weird, you know, on some level. I mean, it's incredibly gratifying.

• 1:09:14Rich Roll?

  The fact that this thing that, you know, we started 10 years ago on a creative whim, without any kind of plan and just sort of nurtured with love and curiosity has like grown into this thing that I would have never imagined. And it didn't, it didn't happen because of any kind of like business plan or anything like that. And we've never advertised or bought reach or done any kind of paid promotion. Um, you know, we've never really had a viral moment that produced any kind of huge growth spike. I mean, we've had some shows that have done well, the Huberman one in particular, which did like 12 million, I guess. So that would be an outlier. But in general, like, it's just been this very

• 1:09:53Rich Roll?

  slow creep of, you know, growing the show gradually and organically. Um, it's, it's, it's, the analogy is like being an ultra endurance athlete, right? Like, slow and steady wins the race. Like, being the tortoise, um, the prize doesn't go to the fastest, it goes to the guy who slows down the least. And, and we've just maintained a certain pace over a very long period of time. When we began, we were kind of in the right place at the right time. There's a lot of luck involved. And then a lot of work that went into the, into it behind the scenes that, that, you know, made it what it is today. Um, which, like I said, is very gratifying. It's, it's, you know, it's an incredible thing that I feel incredibly privileged. Like, I just, you know, I get to do this

• 1:10:38Rich Roll?

  thing every day. Like, are you kidding? It's amazing. Um, but it can be a little bit weird and surreal at times because there's this parasocial relationship with the listener. Yes. That occurs that, that can create some kind of strange encounters in the world. Okay. But also nice. And there are things that, you know, I don't, I don't deal with really when I'm at home, but when I travel and I'm at airports or in different cities, and I get approached quite a bit. But it's always like... Like, there's all, when somebody comes up to me, it's almost as if we have a pre-existing relationship. Like, they already know me. Like, I'm their friend that they just, they were just with the other day, and like, oh, now he's here now, so I'm gonna go say hi to him. Right, right, right. Like, but it's a one-sided thing, you know?

• 1:11:22Rich Roll?

  And, and so, there is a little bit of awkwardness with that, but it's actually, it's really, it's, um, it's very endearing, like, and, and, and I guess, you know, the main thing in terms of like, what I could impart to the listener or the viewer, is that this experience has proven to me that we're all more powerful than we think we are, especially in this internet era, where anybody can, you know, go online with a camera or a microphone and, and, and share, you know, share themselves. And the fact that, you know, I'm just a guy, and I started this thing, and over time, it's become important to other people, and like, I don't have any more ownership over it than, than the audience does.

• 1:12:05Rich Roll?

  Like, it's as much theirs as it is, you know, mine, or the team of talented people that I now surround myself with that work really hard to create this thing every week. Like, they, they work harder, you know, or at least as hard as I do, to do this. So, it's really not about me, I think it's really about the power of the individual to, to produce change. Like, if I could do this thing, like, I just think everybody has something inside of them, that they could express to make the world a little bit of a better place. Uh, and, you know, if I could do this thing, and, and perhaps change people's lives a little bit, um, I think everybody, you know, can make a difference in the world.

• 1:12:49Rich Roll?

  And, and I can tell you that being engaged in the process of like, trying to offer something positive to the world, and, and, and not get caught up in metrics, and, well, that guy's doing this, and he's bigger than me, and like, why is that guest doing the, you know, like, when I get, when I free myself of all of that noise, and just remember like, why it is that we're doing this, um, it's just, it's just a like, overwhelming sense of like, gratitude. So, I want everyone to feel, you know, their version of, of that. And I think it's, we're in a, a time and a, and a place where that's more possible than it ever has been in history.

• 1:13:28Adam Skolnick?

  Boom.

• 1:13:28Rich Roll?

  So there you go.

• 1:13:29Adam Skolnick?

  Well said, well said. We have one more department.

• 1:13:34Rich Roll?

  Are we gonna do that?

• 1:13:35Adam Skolnick?

  The media diet. We gotta do it.

• 1:13:36Rich Roll?

  The media diet?

• 1:13:37Adam Skolnick?

  We're doing the media diet. One more department, the media diet.

• 1:13:41Rich Roll?

  So we're gonna, all right, introduce this.

• 1:13:43Adam Skolnick?

  So I was, Joanne Molinaro, the Korean vegan, had us over for dinner the other night, and she was saying how she loved knowing that you're a binge-watching geek, just like everyone else.

• 1:13:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's so funny, because I see her at the gym, and she's like, oh, I like figured out what to like stream because of what. I was like, really?

• 1:14:03Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Rich Roll?

  Like, you might be the only one, but okay.

• 1:14:07Adam Skolnick?

  So you had a lot of time on your hands?

• 1:14:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:10Adam Skolnick?

  At the Sky Cave of Byron. Did you do some binge-watching? Did you stream or not?

• 1:14:16Rich Roll?

  I tried not to stream too much, but I did, I did, you know, I did, I did watch a few things.

• 1:14:21Adam Skolnick?

  So tell us the highlights. Just don't give everything.

• 1:14:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't want to make like a huge thing of this, but I did one thing that I do every year, which is I re-watch Michael Clayton, because I need to watch that movie every single year.

• 1:14:32Adam Skolnick?

  I love Michael Clayton.

• 1:14:33Rich Roll?

  It's one of the greatest movies ever made. Fantastic.

• 1:14:36Adam Skolnick?

  I love Michael Clayton.

• 1:14:37Rich Roll?

  Love it so much.

• 1:14:38Adam Skolnick?

  It's like an old-school suspense movie, you know, like one back, like, yeah, but some great performances.

• 1:14:43Rich Roll?

  It's fantastic, right? It is, it is, I don't know, it's everything that I love in a movie.

• 1:14:48Adam Skolnick?

  I love it too.

• 1:14:49Rich Roll?

  And I think Tony Gilroy, who wrote and directed that movie, is now applying his talents beautifully in Andor, which is the Star Wars spinoff.

• 1:14:59Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, that's him?

• 1:15:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Tony Gilroy created that, so that would be another streaming recommendation that's also great for the family and the kids and all of that. You know, I'm somebody who likes Star Wars, but I'm not like a huge Star Wars person. And now in this extended Star Wars universe of like all these shows and all these movies, it's sort of like, really? But Andor stands apart on a quality level. It's like

• 1:15:23Adam Skolnick?

  I've heard.

• 1:15:23Rich Roll?

  And Tony loves doing it. Like, he's like In his prime, he gets to write the stuff that he cares about and the themes that he explores in his movies are explored in Andor. It's like Star Wars for grownups.

• 1:15:36Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:15:36Rich Roll?

  And it's almost not even Star Wars, like with the occasional TIE Fighter flies by, but like you could forget it's even Star Wars. It's just a very well crafted story about economic disparity, uprising, revolution. You know, it's political in that regard.

• 1:15:53Adam Skolnick?

  Like early, like the first part of Hunger Games.

• 1:15:55Rich Roll?

  Well, it's, it's, it's like the early part of the rebellion. Like what caused the rebellion? What is actually happening? What is the empire doing to these people? That's causing them to want to rebel.

• 1:16:04Adam Skolnick?

  So it's classic sci-fi parable to the present day.

• 1:16:08Rich Roll?

  It's good. What else? You know, a lot of, a lot of the movies that I watch are rewatches. I rewatch Broadcast News. I rewatch Copland, which is Sylvester Stallone's best movie.

• 1:16:20Adam Skolnick?

  Never seen it.

• 1:16:21Rich Roll?

  You've never seen Copland?

• 1:16:22Adam Skolnick?

  Never seen it.

• 1:16:23Rich Roll?

  Come on, man. Also, hot take. Hot take. Have you seen The Informant by Steven Soderbergh?

• 1:16:30Adam Skolnick?

  I have seen The Informant.

• 1:16:31Rich Roll?

  My hot take is that this might be Matt Damon's best performance of any movie.

• 1:16:36Adam Skolnick?

  I like him in Siriana.

• 1:16:37Rich Roll?

  I like Siriana too.

• 1:16:38Adam Skolnick?

  I also love Siriana. I think that, to me, that's, and I also, I mean, he's amazing and talented, Mr. Ripley.

• 1:16:43Rich Roll?

  I really like Siriana. Siriana got like a bad rap from the critics.

• 1:16:47Adam Skolnick?

  I don't know why.

• 1:16:48Rich Roll?

  I think it's great.

• 1:16:49Adam Skolnick?

  I do too.

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  And I love Stephen Gagin. I think he's incredibly talented filmmaker.

• 1:16:54Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, who, who wrote, directed that movie.

• 1:16:56Adam Skolnick?

  Great writer too.

• 1:16:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And amazing storyteller who would be welcome on this podcast at any time.

• 1:17:01Adam Skolnick?

  Yes. I love Siriana. I don't know why people didn't like it.

• 1:17:04Rich Roll?

  I like Siriana very much.

• 1:17:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:07Rich Roll?

  I rewatched a little known series called Rubicon on AMC, which is kind of like hard boiled, you know, spy trade craft. I love that stuff. Anyway, what are we talking about here? Like I, you know, I watched White Lotus. I like that. I want to shout out The Klein.

• 1:17:22Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:17:22Rich Roll?

  The Jason Momoa and Chris Sharma.

• 1:17:24Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:17:25Rich Roll?

  Uh, series, which is really cool.

• 1:17:26Adam Skolnick?

  People love that. I have not seen it yet.

• 1:17:28Rich Roll?

  Really good.

• 1:17:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah. Last of Us, are you into Last of Us?

• 1:17:31Rich Roll?

  I am, because my kids are super into it.

• 1:17:33Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:33Rich Roll?

  And I've enjoyed that, you know, based on the video game.

• 1:17:35Adam Skolnick?

  Of course you are. We talked about Corey Sebbs. We just got into it.

• 1:17:39Rich Roll?

  Uh, one other kind of off kilter series that I would recommend on Netflix is Song Exploder. It's based on the podcast Song Exploder.

• 1:17:46Adam Skolnick?

  We've talked about it before.

• 1:17:47Rich Roll?

  I've probably talked about it, yeah.

• 1:17:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, when the R E M one, we talked about it.

• 1:17:49Rich Roll?

  They have a season two up right now. There's only like four episodes per season or whatever, but I just really love that show. It's fantastic. And then in terms of podcasts, because we're talking about streaming, podcasts falls in that. I enjoyed this limited series called The New Gurus by Helen Lewis, who's a writer for The Atlantic. Each episode kind of looks at this secular guru landscape, kind of in the way that the Decoding the Gurus guys do it. But she does it in a documentary kind of style. And it kind of paints the picture of what this new world of internet gurus looks like and what it's doing to people and where it's working and where it's going sideways. And, you know, Helen is very introspective and insightful on this subject matter.

• 1:18:34Adam Skolnick?

  That's cool.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  So check that out.

• 1:18:35Adam Skolnick?

  I had to shake her. She was trying to tail me here.

• 1:18:38Rich Roll?

  Helen, yeah.

• 1:18:40Adam Skolnick?

  She's gonna knock on our door.

• 1:18:41Rich Roll?

  She actually just wrote a really amazing piece for The Atlantic. I'm pulling it up right now. It's called The Internet Loves an Extremophile. The subtitle is Online Culture Favors Influencers Who Pinball From One Enthusiasm to the Next. It's a, it's a pretty great long read.

• 1:18:58Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  I'll link that up in the show notes as well.

• 1:19:00Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do that.

• 1:19:01Rich Roll?

  But yeah, I don't know.

• 1:19:02Adam Skolnick?

  Cool.

• 1:19:03Rich Roll?

  What have you been enjoying?

• 1:19:04Adam Skolnick?

  Um, I, so far, I haven't seen too many movies. We saw Everything Everywhere All at Once, really liked that, obviously. Saw White Lotus, uh, loved White Lotus, uh, The Last of Us, we're just getting into now. But I think of all the things that I've seen or heard, I, you know what stuck with me the most is David Sedaris's new audiobook, Happy Go Lucky. I think it's probably the most. Prescient take on the pandemic and the lifestyle that we all kind of had to undertake and his responses to it. I mean, if you don't, obviously, David Sarris, he's a master at

• 1:19:46Adam Skolnick?

  the height of his powers here. He's meant to be heard, not just read. He's so great when he reads it himself. He unpacks his life story, unpacks his family members. He basically puts the light on everything and he really, I mean, he's merciless. But in the end, there's so many poignant moments and you learn about kind of his relationship with his father, you learn about his relationship with his siblings, you learn his own quirks, and he's just obviously hilarious. I mean, I think, to me, he's a descendant of Mark Twain. I know Mark Twain was a master novelist. He's not a novelist, so it's not exactly a great comparison. But in terms of an American humorist who kind of can nail the American

• 1:20:28Adam Skolnick?

  culture so easily and mercilessly, here's a guy that does. It is laugh-out-loud funny and cringey and awesome. Happy-go-lucky. Happy-go-lucky. I will definitely check that out. I love that guy. Yep. And I have been listening to Dialogue by Robert McKee. I know he's a guest that's coming up. Yeah, he's coming up soon. And, you know, like, working on this other project for so long, I mean, like, I get so crazy. Is it good? Is it gonna suck? Whatever. And so like, I ended up diving into like, writing, like, how to become a writer. I'm like, learning to be a writer. And so I found this book. And the one thing I will say, I don't want to, I don't know if he talks about Shakespeare. Do you guys talk about Shakespeare in your podcast?

• 1:21:11Adam Skolnick?

  We recorded it so long ago. Did we talk about that? I don't think so. So one thing I'll say, because I'm one of those writers, I'm not the guy who's in love with Shakespeare. Like, I like certain plays, but I'm not, you know, to me, Shakespeare's awesome. I like certain plays, but I've never been the guy that has to read everything. And sometimes I think, you know, why is it overblown? But what I didn't realize and what he says in Dialogue is that Shakespeare invented like, Thousands of words that have become part of the English language lexicon. Among them, elbow, eyeball. Like, when he needed a word, he made up the word. That comes out of dialogue by Robert McKee.

• 1:21:50Rich Roll?

  I did not know that.

• 1:21:51Adam Skolnick?

  And so like, that's why there's, basically, ding ding ding. That's why there's this obsession among so many people in English departments with Shakespeare. Because he didn't just entertain, he crafted the lexicon we're all using now.

• 1:22:02Rich Roll?

  Does that mean that we're allowed to make up words now?

• 1:22:05Adam Skolnick?

  Yes.

• 1:22:06Rich Roll?

  Okay, good.

• 1:22:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 1:22:09Rich Roll?

  That's cool. Yeah, I didn't know that. Wow, interesting. I forgot to mention that, you know, on the, on the tip of like sharing movie stuff.

• 1:22:18Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Rich Roll?

  You know, I did spend New Year's Eve at the Arrow Theater in Santa Monica enjoying a 70 millimeter print of 2001 A Space Odyssey.

• 1:22:28Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:22:28Rich Roll?

  So that should like ensure my like film nerd card.

• 1:22:31Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:31Rich Roll?

  That I would spend New Year's Eve.

• 1:22:33Adam Skolnick?

  Big time.

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  Doing that with Jaya and Julie. Actually, it was awesome.

• 1:22:37Adam Skolnick?

  Was it just you and Julie?

• 1:22:39Rich Roll?

  And Jaya.

• 1:22:39Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:22:40Rich Roll?

  It was pretty cool.

• 1:22:41Adam Skolnick?

  That's a great one.

• 1:22:42Rich Roll?

  Um, my favorite, I should, we'll wrap it up. Like, my favorite movies of this year, because I know the Oscar nominations just came out.

• 1:22:48Adam Skolnick?

  Yep.

• 1:22:49Rich Roll?

  I still think, I mean, Tar is incredible.

• 1:22:52Adam Skolnick?

  I gotta see it.

• 1:22:53Rich Roll?

  You haven't seen Tar yet?

• 1:22:54Adam Skolnick?

  I gotta see all these that you have there.

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  But I'm glad that Everything Everywhere All at Once, you know, it felt like maybe that came out too soon, but then it got like, what did it get, like 11 nominations?

• 1:23:02Adam Skolnick?

  Don't you think it's gonna win? I feel like it's gonna win.

• 1:23:05Rich Roll?

  I think it's in a good position.

• 1:23:07Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Rich Roll?

  Banshees of Inisherin, incredible. I love that movie. You haven't seen it?

• 1:23:13Adam Skolnick?

  Not yet, even though I, I, you know, In Bruges is one of my favorite movies of all.

• 1:23:16Rich Roll?

  Colin Farrell, brilliant in that movie. The movie that I think got sort of dismissed or overlooked, and maybe this is a hot take, but I really like this movie, is White Noise.

• 1:23:26Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah, some people didn't like it, right?

• 1:23:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Adam Skolnick?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Rich Roll?

  I've not seen it. Based on Dumb and Little Book, Noah Baumbach, like, it takes a lot of big swings and maybe it doesn't always connect, but, um, I don't know, man, I dug it.

• 1:23:40Adam Skolnick?

  It's built for middle-aged guys trying to figure out what life's all about.

• 1:23:44Rich Roll?

  My choices are like, you know, like I like spy stuff. Like I'm dad core. Give me Jack Ryan on Amazon. Like I'm happy. You know what I mean?

• 1:23:53Adam Skolnick?

  Yes, you are dad core.

• 1:23:56Rich Roll?

  And then the other, the other movie that I really enjoyed is Triangle of Sadness. I don't know if you saw that.

• 1:24:00Adam Skolnick?

  I've heard that's amazing. We gotta watch all these. We're just reading more and more.

• 1:24:04Rich Roll?

  In the meantime, go see Megan because that movie fucking rules.

• 1:24:08Adam Skolnick?

  Megan?

• 1:24:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the AI robot that goes on a killing spree. Come on, Adam.

• 1:24:12Adam Skolnick?

  That sounds like Terminator. Terminator.

• 1:24:14Rich Roll?

  It's a little girl, four foot tall girl.

• 1:24:17Adam Skolnick?

  Oh, even better.

• 1:24:17Rich Roll?

  Goes on a killing rampage. Come on. All right. You think I'm highbrow?

• 1:24:23Adam Skolnick?

  Is AI a good idea?

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  Well, go see Megan and decide for yourself.

• 1:24:26Adam Skolnick?

  I've already seen Terminator. Why aren't we doing AI? It's a bad idea.

• 1:24:31Rich Roll?

  Please go see Megan.

• 1:24:32Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:24:33Rich Roll?

  And we will reprise Roland again soon, right?

• 1:24:37Adam Skolnick?

  But not, is this it for this?

• 1:24:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:40Adam Skolnick?

  There'll be a little kibitzing. We gotta have some kibitzing.

• 1:24:43Rich Roll?

  And, you know, like I said, you guys let us know. Leave a comment on YouTube.

• 1:24:47Adam Skolnick?

  All right.

• 1:24:48Rich Roll?

  Tell us what you think.

• 1:24:48Adam Skolnick?

  Okay.

• 1:24:49Rich Roll?

  Is that it? We're out?

• 1:24:50Adam Skolnick?

  That's it.

• 1:24:50Rich Roll?

  Good. All right. Thanks, everybody. Welcome to 2023. Adam, so good to see you. I love you, buddy.

• 1:24:56Adam Skolnick?

  I love you too, man. Thanks for having me.

• 1:24:58Rich Roll?

  Let's make some cool shit this year.

• 1:24:59Adam Skolnick?

  Let's do it.

• 1:24:59Rich Roll?

  All right. Cheers. Peace.

• 1:25:02Adam Skolnick?

  Ice, ice, baby.